This morning I woke up with my husband reading to me. As we know this is always a problem. That’s why I have two novels with the Red Baron, one fantasy and one a science fiction trilogy, sitting at the back of my brain, waiting to bust out…. As soon as I do another 10 ahead of them, including the second of Elly, which is now being a problem.
Fortunately or unfortunately what he was reading didn’t pertain to dead heroes, or fiction or much I could convert into anything beyond a preachy short story, which I don’t write.
You see, he was reading me a politics editorial. First let me tell you, right now, that if this had been even ten years ago, I’d have performed an exorcism on the spot. Because the Mathematician and I divide the world in two as surely as the treaty of Tordesillas, (spell checker insists this is “tortillas.” This amuses me more than it should.) but in a more insubstantial ways. We specialized within the first three or four years of our marriage. He does the accounting for the household and my business(es) (poor man) because I’m digit dyslexic. I do the housekeeping. He keeps abreast of movies, games, music and informs me if there’s something I might like. I keep abreast of books and blogs and inform him if there’s anything he might be interested in. I refinish pianos, he plays them. He does math, I do politics.
That last one is hard and fast. Mostly because while I’m a nervibore (I live on my nerves) and politics makes me crazy, not keeping abreast of them makes me CRAZIER. I view politics as a dangerous ocean that might at any moment throw out a sneaker wave that drowns me. I have reason for this. If the streets are going to turn into the kind of mess where I turn a corner and run into armed lunatics who will shoot on vague impressions, I want to have some (years of) warning.
He on the other hand hates arguments and sneaking and such things politics are made of, and he would be driven completely raving insane by following all the tendrils of argument and nonsense that is my bread and butter.
It took him years to realize when I started yelling at a movie he was watching and calling it “rank propaganda” I wasn’t being paranoid. He still enjoyed some movies that would make me put a shoe through the expensive screen. (This is why I have noise cancelling headphones and a laptop and am usually blogging, doing instapundit, editing, anything but watching the movie, unless I think it will be “safe for Sarahs.” Those are rare.)
But well… he started paying SOME attention during the Obama administrations, because the sheer rain of sh*t that little psychopath inflicted on this nation got through his consciousness. Then there came 2020. In 2020 for the first two weeks he went raving insane in a mathematical way. No, really. He created a program that extracted actual numbers of hospitalizations and deaths from Covid from every County hospital system (y’all in Utah gave him problems because you use a system different than the rest of the country. I no longer remember why.) Even knowing half of those who died “from Covid” were “with something else like a hole in the head” the numbers were ridiculous. For instance, KC went to “condition red” and hard lock down with four hospitalizations and no deaths.
Anyway, he made this program that updated weekly and told me to share it on instapundit. I did. Every day for a week. The push back was insane. Including “Oh, but they haven’t updated the numbers yet. Next week it will be black plague level.”
He was baffled — guys, he’s a mathematician. His big problem is that he doesn’t understand people being illogical, just like I don’t understand people being rude. Or rather we do, but we just feel it shouldn’t be so. Very strongly — and persevered for a while. The numbers never really increased. The response was all out of proportion. Most people didn’t believe him.
And suddenly he saw what I’d been yelling about for years. And suddenly some of his favorite movies went out of watching rotation because all the good characters were leftists. And suddenly he read politics.
Now keep in mind he’s still not by instinct a political animal, like the rest of us. He’s still, actually, largely apolitical. Those who know us well can attest that I’ll be deep in discussion with a buddy about some ridiculous political snag and Dan will erupt from the office with a baffled expression and say “Did you guys know that–“
He’s outraged, we’re laughing because this is something we were exercised about three months ago, and have since successfully fought back on. He’s my barometer for what the normal “right of center” is like. He’s the person who shows me “Why aren’t we all running around the hills with Klashnakovs yet?” is nonsense, since most of the normal people don’t know a tenth of what the jokers on the left have done. (We’ve learned not to laugh btw, since it offends him. It shouldn’t. He’s the sane one.)
Anyway, so waking up to a mathematician reading politics at me is still confusing at best, alarming at worst.
Picture it: I usually wake up with his alarm clock circa seven thirty, then lay there arguing with the morning.
Morning: is
Me: Oh, no. Oh, no. Not ready. Go away.
Morning: You know you have to get up. You have books to write, a house to clean, food to cook, and you didn’t cue up the blog last night you lazy bum.
Me: mggggggffffffffff.
Morning: Up, up, up….
Meanwhile he showers, and by the time he’s done the morning has usually won and I get my *ss out of bed. (No, you don’t usually see me till close to noon, which you know when I forget to cue the post the night before, or set it wrong. That’s because I’m enrolled in this aerobics program where I run up and down the stairs carrying laundry baskets, or dust and vacuum, or clean the litter boxes, or– Look, it keeps me from being 400 lbs. And provides a sense of accomplishment.)
Anyway, this morning, in the middle of these delicate negotiations between me and the rotation of the Earth, someone walks in phone in hand and says, “The left thinks we’re stupid.”
My eye — on a stalk, yes — emerges from under the covers and I say “mmmmf?”
And then he proceeds to read me this editorial written by some preening MSM slime about how the SAVE act is all a ruse to disenfranchise minorities because:
- the documented cases of “undocumented” (like they forgot their birth certificate at home, and their home is not in another continent.) voting are negligible all over the country.
- This is just to make it harder to vote and prevent black people from voting.
My husband, who likes to think the best of people is indignant. Since we have motor voter, vote by mail on request, machines where the votes get “adjusted” how do we even prove illegals vote? And do they really think that black people have no ID? Or that black people think they have no ID? Hence “they think we’re stupid.”
He’s right of course, though I wonder how much it is “they think we’re stupid” (They undoubtedly do. Preening disdain for everyone who disagrees with them is a hallmark of the left, because they mistake their political opinions for an IQ test. But they’re probably not the only thing at work) and that their ideology and concentration on theory makes them a peculiar kind of dumb that has nothing to do with natural mental powers. As in, their theory says this, and they need the theory to be right for emotional reasons, so they never think past it. And never examine what is behind the theory.
So, yes, they don’t understand that when you have a school district administrator in Iowa who not only got his position on forged credentials but also — ALSO — is an illegal who has voted for years, or a MAYOR in Kansas who not only is an illegal but has voted for decades, this is what we call a “leading indicator.” Note these are flyover places, not exactly centers of illegal immigration and fraud. If we found the school superintendent in Chicago was a voting illegal, that might be a “Forget it, Jack, it’s Chicago” (Or Detroit. Or California, or, increasingly, Minnesota.) But this is IOWA and KANSAS for sobbing in bed till your pillows are soaking wet. If these two cases exist you bet your sweet and swinging beepy that they’re ALL OVER the country. They’re not documented because as with “undocumented” immigrants, no one has gone looking for documentation. Because what they would find would end up toppling our already worm-eaten trust in our electoral process.
So “documented cases of fraud” are a stalking horse.
More importantly, he’s absolutely right. Look, humans are humans, whether they’re from El Salvador, Barbados or the US. This is something I learned really hard as an exchange student. The Germans had a different culture, but weren’t inherently more sinful or kinder than the people from Guinea.
We have so many means of fraud. SO MANY. From Motor Voter, where, if you’re not a citizen you have to FIGHT not to be signed up to vote, to vote by mail, to vote ahead, to no ID needed to vote, to– And one thing you learn really quick is that if the means of fraud exists SOMEONE will exploit it. And groups who are good at organizing will exploit all those means on an industrial scale.
The Motor Voter thing is peculiarly insidious too, because it can even catch people who aren’t TRYING to be dishonest. Look, Americans themselves don’t understand the difference between illegal immigrant, legal immigrant, resident and citizen. On my civil wedding day a month after I landed in the country for the second time and BEFORE I HAD MY GREEN CARD (which came around December, because bureaucracy) I had an argument with my smart, civically active mother in law, because “You’re an American now. You need to register to vote and make your voice heard.” No, she wasn’t joking. She really thought that’s how it worked. And since then I’ve run into any number of college educated (sometimes with graduate degrees) Americans who think stepping on American soil conveys citizenship. Or an even stupider set who thinks that the rest of the world should vote because “our elections affect the world.” (Let’s not. Most of the world has the kind of culture where if they voted here we’d be as miserable as they are. This is also why “no citizenship without acculturation”. And yes, I have IDEAS.)
So when the newly arrived illegal (or even legal) goes to get a drivers license and the kind lady, having looked at documentation that shows they’re definitely NOT American asks them if they want to register to vote… WHY SHOULD THEY THINK IT’S ILLEGAL? Yes, there’s a line on the paperwork. BUT this is not the paperwork. This is something she does does on the computer, and that’s it. So why would you think something is wrong? And then, because you want to prove you deserve to be an American and Americans vote, of course you VOTE.
So how many illegals vote? Oh, I don’t know. Probably more than 50% of them. Perhaps as many as 80%. (The rest not voting because they’re busy with other stuff and don’t care, not because they think it’s illegal) AND MOST OF THEM HAVE NO IDEA THEY’RE DOING ANYTHING WRONG.
I really can’t emphasize enough the new arrivals complete disorientation in the US. The US is different from most other places in various ways, and when you get here, it’s as though everything you learned as true and solid your entire life suddenly shifts. And not just upside down, but it goes dancing upside down and sideways and tiltawhirl to the point you have no fricking clue what’s legal and not, what is correct and not, or even what would “just” shock your neighbors.
I was college educated and had spent most of my life reading American authors, and I kept being sucker punched by “Wait, what?” I knew stuff like what being a citizen meant because I’d actually taken two civics classes during my exchange student year in the US.
BUT the number of even legal immigrants who understand that stuff is vanishingly small. And the number who are willing to doubt native-born “smart” citizens are even smaller.
This is why requiring proof of birth or citizenship to vote is not any kind of onerous requirement. Look, the people already registered will stay registered. They just need to show ID to vote. (Which means, yes, some illegals will stay on, but since we’re disincentivizing their staying here… well… It’s also why Jeffreys (Temu Obama) is so upset about ICE having access to polling places. It might discourage illegals from voting. Which he thinks is bad. SMDH.)
We don’t actually have a ton of people born in the US who lack a birth certificate, and those who do can usually get one. And a lot of states accept “entry in the family Bible” still, or did last time I looked. And naturalized citizens, TRUST ME have a citizenship certificate. And it’s in their go to bag if they ever need to evacuate. They also usually have a passport. (Because we don’t trust the funny people on the left, that’s why. At least if we speak against them.) And that’s not counting funny places like Hawaii where they will write you a birth certificate even if they have no proof you were born there. (They have some weird name for it like preponderance of evidence, or something.)
Women who changed their names? Well, most women are not mentally damaged. I have friends who were divorced more than once and have no trouble obtaining passports and proving their identity. That is, what do you call it? Bullshit.
However even if 80% of illegals vote, that’s the tip of the iceberg. I’m much more concerned about people over 140 years old voting. On principle, vampires shouldn’t vote, and no one else CAN be that age. And that’s not counting imaginary people. When we bought a house that smelled like an ashram in downtown Colorado Springs, we later received voting cards for 90 some people. This was I GRANT YOU a large Victorian, but it only had six rooms. And the family that lived there before us was three people. And I hear enough of those stories to tell you it’s not just Somalian Learing Centers that are housed ten to the abandoned warehouse.
If people have to vote in person and show ID to vote, that — by itself — will force them to at least get fake IDs for all the people registered as Minnie Mouse and Daffy Duck. That will, at the very least slow the fraud enough to make the margin actually controllable. It won’t stop fraud but it will make the fraud actually “a marginal number” that might affect district elections but not state ones.
Which brings us to “But it will make it harder for people to vote” or my “favorite” “But it will disenfranchise black people.”
If you think the first you’re merely an idiot. I actually have to show my ID to vote. And a picture ID, not merely a (Imminently fake-able in batch lots) utility bill, as in Colorado (And while we’re at it, stop the same day registration bullshit. If it didn’t occur to you you want to vote until the day, you failed the “proof of IQ” needed to vote. And you probably don’t exist, actually.) Do you know how much trouble this is? Well, I usually take my purse. When my name is called (my first middle name pronounced as Marquez because why not? Gah) I grab my license, show it to the volunteer, then get assigned a booth. That’s it. It takes maybe ten seconds. And the license is in the wallet with my credit card and other things I take for literally every transaction in life, from buying a gallon of milk to cashing a check.
“But Sarah, what about people who don’t have those documents?”
Well, people who have been in a persistent vegetative state for the last ten years and whose documents have expired shouldn’t vote. Next?
“But black people–“
Well, and now you can take your frigging racist ass out of the conversation. Because while Joe Biden thought that poor kids were “just as smart as white kids” the rest of us don’t march with KKK hoods. It would be as bad for my asthmatic ass as the Covidiocy masks for one. For another sooner or later someone would tweak to my 23 and me profile and… well, you guys have seen Blazing Saddles. ‘nough said.
FOR THE THIRD AND MOST IMPORTANT HAND: I don’t believe people are defined by race. I think 99% of the differences we attribute to race are actually cultural. And even if we had hard biological differences that weren’t stupid shit like a susceptibility to some genetic issues, and/or an inability to process milk or wheat (REALLY? I needed that why? I don’t care if ggggrandmamas preferred Cassava or barley and oats, this is stupid. The majority of my ancestors lived on wheat!) it would be unlikely to hit American blacks who are, frankly, genetically, as much of a mutt as anyone else here, and more so, since most of them have had ancestors here well over a hundred years. Don’t believe me? Go look at the picture of the LA Mayor in Africa. Your first reaction will be “Who is the white chick?”
I don’t understand how the left can pound their chest and say “I am standing up for blacks who are too stupid to get an ID” and not spot the racist. I mean, the men have to shave and the women have to at least occasionally apply makeup. How do they manage not to look in the mirror.
No, most black people aren’t some kind of infant being looked after by someone else. (Always excepting people who have been in a persistent vegetative state for 10 years.) They do have to bank, or at least cash checks, fly and buy groceries. This means most of them have an ID. Like 99.9% of them. The ones who don’t landed here yesterday from Somalia, and the Learing Center hasn’t gotten around to faking them an ID yet.
So would it hinder people from voting? Yes, billions of them as a Democrat in Congress (I don’t even remember which just now) said. (HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE IN THE US AGAIN?) But they are mostly illegal, imaginary, vampires and such.
And they shouldn’t be voting.
According To Hoyt 
And of course, they think we’re Nazis, Fascists, Sexist, Religious Fanatics, etc.
So what’s new? [Big Crazy Grin]
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My friends and I had a similar spreadsheet.
It was depressing and infuriating and I got to the point where I wasn’t allowed to watch the governor give updates.
so yeah .. they’ve all thought we are stupid for awhile.
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In May or June 2020 I put together a spreadsheet with all the Washington data so far, did some math, and decided that if:
1. Everyone under 40 had been deliberately infected with Covid
2. Everyone 40-60 had gone about their lives in a normal way, and
3. Everyone 60+ had stayed home and ordered everything in,
we would have had fewer deaths, would probably reach herd immunity in a few months, and would have had far fewer economic problems, overdoses, etc.
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Yeah. Lost a neighbor to suicide, and the ME made a comment about the shutdowns being the last straw in a manner which made me think he’d been seeing a lot of them.
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In March 2020, right when they announced the indefinite lockdowns, I predicted there would be a wave of suicides, overdoses, alcoholic relapses, domestic violence, child abuse, and so forth.
I got called a granny-killer and a Social Darwinist (!?) by (ex-)friends I’d known for 20 years. Turned out all of my predictions came true.
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There were a lot of them, particularly among the young.
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I’m doing my darndest to stop caring what “they” think, say or do. When my friend, who died of liver cancer, was marked as a Covid death in 2021, what little (which is to say infinitesimal) amount of faith, trust or belief I had in the government evaporated on the spot.
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The Treaty of Tortillas – in the Americas, tortilla will be defined as a flat, grain-based food, and both corn and flour will be provided as options. Exceptions will be made for known preferences, such as Mexican Street Tacos, and Tex-Mex burritos [ever try to make a corn tortilla burrito? Don’t bother.]
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You can make a taquito with them, though. Not easy, but it can be done.
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Funny enough, when my wife the engineer is speaking to me about politics I know it’s bad, really bad.
IN other news, zerohedge has gone off the rails again and is spreading Iranian propaganda. As I wrote the other day, propaganda is always there in the background — mostly Russian, which this probably still is — but I ignore it because he does cover what they all try to bury and detecting the BS isn’t hard — think anything marked Escobar. I stop looking at the sight when there is chaos because I don’t need him anymore, call me fickle, this is one of those times. I don’t need hysterical headlines when I can look at the actual numbers and see they’re well within historical norms, like now all the press BS notwithstanding. Each time I stop reading him I wonder whether I’ll come back, might not this time since he’s actively giving aid and comfort and that’s unforgivable.
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Yes. That absolutely is unforgivable.
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It’s not just him. The Financial Times isn’t even a newspaper anymore, it’s just an organ for the blob, and the WSJ is right behind them. Effectively then, there are no newspapers left, anywhere, since the financial press was the last mass market organ that had any attachment to reality. That’s actually a problem. I’m not so naive that I didn’t know about bias, but there’s a difference between bias and flat out propaganda. If WuFlu taught us anything, it’s that we need accurate, timely information, and there’s no visible supply. I suppose we’ll have to continue to maintain the parallel structure ourselves, or for any entrepreneurial types, an opportunity.
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I finally canceled my WSJ sub. I realized I just wasn’t reading even the movie reviews any longer.
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I had to read it for professional reasons since my superiors always did and I had to anticipate what inane questions the board would ask me. Now I’m retired and so don’t read any of the financial press anymore. All I need is market prices and and my own models,
In other news, nothing says spring like crocuses in the snow, both of which have manifested today here.
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I would like to read a guest post by you on this topic.
I suspect I’m not alone.
Just sayin’
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I feel terrible about the WSJ. I used to have a subscription….
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See also, formerly rock-solid pollster Rich Baris. Now (on TwiXter at least) total, utter doomerism on the very existence of the Iran war (‘the midterms are lost’ ‘we must stop the war now’ etc.), and assorted other things. Even in an active shooting war (of course, undeclared). Even as actual Iranians with pipelines to the inside are telling him he’s all full of… you know, on facts on the ground; and others’ polls find a totally different, far more credible and consistent story.
IIRC, Second World War Britain actually had a wartime law against, essentially, doomerism. Of course now they’ve made waving their own flag illegal and are removing Winston Churchill from their currency, but… idiots gotta idiot, stooges gotta stooge.
At some point you just admit the obvious, mourn their fall, ignore the zombiefied post-life of what they used to be, once upon a better time — and close ranks and move on best you can.
Build under, build over, build around, as we walk on forward.,
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“But it will disenfranchise black people.”
Of course they say that. Because to a Leftist, Black people, immigrants (who are all the same, right?), women, teh gays etc. are merely sub-human useful idiots who will be easily herded into doing whatever the Left wants. Sheep for the shearing.
That’s why the war on White men. Because the Left views White men as the only humans worth being concerned about. Beat them down and make them quit, then the Left wins.
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And when any representative of those sub-groups goes off the reservation, the blow-back is epic.
They think they own us, but last time I checked slavery was illegal in thus country.
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There are some states where it is illegal, but Federal law says differently, along with some Federal laws and acts.
However, the 13th Amendment un-slaved existing slaves, then reserved the creation of new slaves to the Judicial Branch.
—
[via Library of Congress]
Thirteenth AmendmentThirteenth Amendment Explained
Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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Basically, that was so prison chain gangs could not be challenged.
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The Supremes also ruled that the draft in WWI was totally not slavery or “involuntary servitude”, even if compliance was forced with the threat of prison.
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Well, Prison Chain Gangs started up AFTER SLAVERY WAS OUTLAWED.
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I for instance am neither a woman, nor an immigrant nor remotely Latin. (Rolls eyes.)
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Because of course only the Democrats are allowed to disenfranchise black people. As they tried to do for most of the party’s existence.
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Yes. Only the way I heard it (see e.g. former rock drummer and historian Larry Schweikart on this one), the party itself was formed expressly and specifically to perpetuate slavery — that’s been its goal and raison-d’etre from the very get-go. (Just as capital-R Republicanism was founded to “eradicate those twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy” — yes that’s a quote or very close to it. So much for alternative marriage, 1860s-style; contrast and compare that with our country’s nationally-court-mandated second experiment with non-traditional marriage, now ongoing.)
So if one thinks of “The Democratic Party” — or “The Democracy” in mid-1800s-speak — as just and simply being, quite literally and authentically, “The Slavery Party” instead and more honestly… well, a lot suddenly comes far more sharply into focus.
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There was another plank to the Republican Party—the creation of the transcontinental railroad.
Huh. I wonder if any other political party managed to get its original planks passed?
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Well, obviously! They’re The Smart Ones™! and they’ve got the credentials to prove it! Therefore, we must be even stupider than they are.
———————————
George Carlin: “Think how stupid the average person is, and then consider that half of them are even stupider than that!”
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I realize I’m talking too much about hats here, but this is a wonderful line:
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You talk too much about hats? HATS? What?
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Thursday is Hat Day.
This morning I saw a picture of a guy dressed as a Hassidic Jew, rocking a really cool Indiana Jones hat. I then went down a long rabbit trail, the very reason I try to *not* do a web search on the off questions the Voices occasionally put forth.
The hat the Hassidim wear is a fedora. The only thing that makes it a “Chabad hat” is the color; black. Fedoras can come in any color, and varying forms of creases or ‘dimples’.
The costumers for actress Sarah Barhnhardt made a hat for her performance in a play called “Fedora”, performed in 1882. The hats became popular female apparel, and were then adopted as political symbols by the early feminists and prohibitionist. (there was quite a bit of overlap.)
In the later 1920s men started wearing them too, led by such personages as Edward VII and Al Capone.
The Lubovich Chabad started wearing them in the 1940s when they were still extremely popular. They wore them in addition to the kippah, doubling down the usual head covering custom. At the time the hats were unremarkable; they didn’t stand out until the whole hat-wearing thing (for men, anyway) same to an abrupt end in the early 1960s.
I hope the Voices don’t ask any more questions today…
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I like hats. Not counting baseball caps, I have about 50. Including 2 Fedoras. Storage is an issue.
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I have five hats but only ever seem to wear the Panama. I mourn my Stetson fedora that finally wore out, and the replacement isn’t quite the right size.
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Younger son running out the door in a black fedora, and his wife running after to remove the hat because younger son looks like some of my ancestry AND they’re not living in a “safe” area for such right now. We’re working on it.
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And Saturday is Pie day!
Random thought for a very chaotic week. I hate time change weeks.
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It’s white people who are stupid. Anyone who watches TV ads knows this. It’s always the Black/brownish/heavier than just a tan people in the drug commercials patiently explaining things to the white patient. Ditto dark attorneys and executives. Even car sales…uh persons as obviously no white devil is smart enough to sell cars or houses.
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Yeah. Weirdly. I’ve noted that too.
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Sure, they have to look in a mirror. But the fangs kind of prohibit them from seeing themselves….
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Illegal aliens voting needs to be stopped for sure, not matter how many it is. But I am even more concerned about the “vote harvesting”. The ballots that get filled out for people who don’t know what’s going on, colllected up, and put into the system. The Mrs. (fairly liberal) is slowly coming around on this. One thing that seems to be having an effect is her acceptance when I say that every system put together in society eventually gets “gamed” by the greedy. She’s seeing this a lot now with medicaid and related fraud. Why wouldn’t that apply to vote gathering?
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Agree.
Vote harvesting from people who, although citizens, of age, who no longer have the mental capacity, regardless of age, whether they are institutionalized, or cared for at home, have no business voting. I do not care who is helping (spouse, child, nurse, aid).
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Autocorrect, along with its diabolical sibling autotune, is Skynet’s cutting edge, helpfully nudging us stupid carbon units towards our beckoning emoji hieroglyph future of equity for all.
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I’ve read that under the SAVE act, an original birth certificate wouldn’t be accepted as ID, you’d have to get a new one. If that’s true, it would stop me from voting; I can afford a new certificate, but it’s not worth it to me. And if it makes it harder for married women to vote, Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot. Married women are more likely to vote Republican than are single women.
Ending universal mail-in would be enough to bring fraud down to a manageable level. Ending motor-voter and deporting the majority of illegals would get it down to where it would only swing the very close elections.
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Yah, no… Don’t tell me where you read this garbage, either – I’m exposed to too much idiocy as it is.
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Couldn’t tell you if I wanted to–I don’t remember. Probably some random post on Facebook or Nextdoor.
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Oh for the love of! Nextdoor is where the mentally ill post.
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Yep. All of that.
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I didn’t have to show a “new” birth certificate when I got my passport or my REAL ID drivers license, I showed them the same old copy I’ve had for decades. Why would the SAVE Act require anything else?
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Why would the SAVE Act require anything else? I don’t know. Doesn’t make sense to me either, but laws sometimes don’t.
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So, read it. You can. And no, this is not in it. GEESH.
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Precisely it’s scary nonsense to frighten people.
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er… a) no. b) if you’re already registered you don’t need to do ANYTHING.
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C) the only married women who would be unable to vote are those who’ve been in a persistent vegetative state for 10 years. OR really really really STUPID ones.
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I have a Real ID. Showed all the appropriate paperwork, including the marriage certificate. The only pain was getting the appointment time.
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I did not bother with real id for driver’s license. Already have passport (both versions, because paranoid. Lose/stolen one? Have backup.) Requirements for real id is the same as passport. Have had a passport since 2012.
Hardest part was getting certified copy of marriage license because the pretty witnessed one doesn’t count. I had to send away to the correct county (the one where we took out the license, not the one we were married in, even though both counties got signed and witnessed versions, sigh). These days (having nieces who have gotten married, and divorced, in the last 15 years), not only do they automatically get a certified copy back, both partners send in signed copies of what name they are legally using. Granted, not standard for the husband to change name, but possible, and cases where the couple chose a different surname. This tracks all names used from birth, through adoption, marriage, and divorce, no matter how many of the latter two. At least this is what I have observed both in Oregon and Washington.
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Always believing the worst of people is a kind of moral disease. I’ve got it, I think. If I drop my keys and someone reaches for them, I’ll stomp on them as quickly as I can, and if I catch someone’s finger … well, I’m protecting some particularly valuable property. (If you want to help, ask. If you don’t ask, you’re not helping, you’re taking over. Exception made if they are sliding downhill.) But this is a symptom of a society in which we are trained to believe that everyone has both the trust and the duties of a sibling, not the duty of a citizen-of-a-republic to think things through. Thinking things through is a moral duty, especially since we have the awsome responsibility of the vote.
Yes, the awesome responsibilty of the vote. Through an accident of history, our votes affect not only us individually, not only us as citizens off communities, states, and countries, but the whole world and generations yet unborn.
A cynic is an optimist by nature and a realist by sad experience. That’s usually treated as a character flaw, but it looks more and more like a moral necessity–a necessity to keep both the optimism and the suspicion.
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I keep waiting for someone to question the statistics of those without ID. The supposedly reputable numbers claim 15 or 18% of blacks and 8% of whites don’t have any in the various blog, tweets, and videos I’ve seen.
No one yet has asked for a breakdown. What age range is most likely not to have ID? The recently turned adults who live in urban areas with buses and not old enough to so driving isn’t a high priority and not old enough to drink so legal ID isn’t a priority? Or what about the elderly who have had licenses taken away or someone else is in charge of them?
Or are they talking about current ID and not expired ones that someone hasn’t bothered to update yet?
What about urban vs rural?
Those with jobs and those without?
How long does one typically go until you get an ID?
But I guess if we break it down, we can find where there are problems and work on actual solutions to them rather than use them as scare tactics and sob stories
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They’re statistics. You can’t question the numbers. They just *are*.
Reminds me of when I began questioning some of the equations in engineering textbooks. It turned out many of them were just rules of thumb, expressed in a mathematical format. It was amazing how many people got angry at that. At me, not the handbooks. [shrug]
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Questioning the assertions of Democratic politicians is thoughtcrime, comrade.
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Who did what is always relevant and maybe important.
Methodology is key to any number that someone arrived at.
I can have all the qualifications, and choose to use a bad methodology, and thereby screw up my number or numbers. I can try to use a good methodology, and fail because of a stupid mistake that I didn’t catch and fix in time. I can use what the literature says is a good method, for a problem I don’t have the background to know is one where the method breaks down.
Conversely, I can deliberately use a terrible method that is intended to randomly give me a bad number, and by accident or intuition select something okay as a number.
Auditing is expensive enough in time that people always hate it at least a little, but not wanting to be audited is still red flaggy.
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Honestly? I suspect by those numbers it’s infants and kids under school age.
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Sarah: I’ve been interested in epidemiology and infectious diseases from my early high school days – circa 1970. I took that interest into college, where I qualified as a medical lab rat, and later to medical school.
I noted some of the same problems your hubby did, but didn’t have the energy to try to work out the math, especially the conflation of “Died WITH COVID vs Died OF COVID” – I found that some of the most preeminent critical care physicians around the world sometimes had trouble differentiating those two, especially in the beginning.
It also should be noted that:
a: some countries where Ivermectin was in routine use continued to report flu cases but reported few if any COVID cases;
b: The American Red Cross and the American Association of Blood Banks did the only wide screening for anti-COVID antibodies – and found that, IIRC, there were almost 10x as many serological confirmed cases as clinically reported cases – those reports were quietly buried, even in professional literature;
c: there were three viable antigen candidates for immunizations – IIRC, the S (Surface) antigen was the most variable, and the changes in the S antigen due to natural variation and mutations were the cause of the multiple waves;
d: no reliable serological testing – in the past, consisting of acute – during the infection; convalescent – during the immediate recovery phase; and residual – 30 days or more after full recovery- tests were reported. Even more interesting, serum antibody titers – ascertaining the level of the antibodies, primarily of IgM (a 5 bladed rosette of antibodies) and IgG (the single Y shaped antibody) – results were rarely reported. When I asked for a titer due to a clinical case of COVID with negative nasal swab testing, it was refused as an unnecessary test!
This serological testing has been the mainstay of this kind of epidemiology since the procedures were invented a very long time ago. Yes, they have been augmented by DNA screenings, but the DNA procedures require significant capital AND running costs, while the Sero tests require maybe $50 in misc parts and a source for the purified (ie: NON INFECTIOUS!) antigen, and the lab skills of a HS Junior or Senior who has been in a Hard Science College track, and learned how to do blood typing.
I’d love to review your Hub’s work – if you contact me through the Bar we both frequent, I should be able to set things up for him to upload to my Drop Box, as I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be a BIG file!
Thank you!
ps: I’ve been enjoying your cover artwork as well!
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I don’t know if he’s been updating the site, but I’ll ask him hwen he knocks off for the day. If I forget poke me again.
BTW yes, on a). I have fans with family all over the world, so we knew this. On b): I’m fairly sure my family had it in Jan 2020. You see, older son was doing his trauma surgery rotation in medschool and he worked on a gentleman who had been in an accident on his way back from China. The thing made me ill for over a month and had all the symptoms. But then they wanted me to get a vaccine. BAH. No.
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I’m pretty sure that all three of my cardioversions due to atrial fib were related to taking the mRNA vaccine.
Since it was VA, and they just paid to get the problem permanently corrected, it’s not like even my wife has cause to sue for damages.
Part of the problem is that the VA refused to do a VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) report on my condition, and without access to the hospital system to make the report, it was impossible to complete over the internet access we had at the time.
Suffice it to say, if they want me to take an immunization again, it will NOT be an active agent such as an mRNA – purified viral or cellular extract, even live virus – smallpox for ex – sure, but odd ball ‘hijack the system’ stuff? no way!
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The stupidest people DO have ID. My son is IDD – Intellectually Developmentally Disabled (new word for mentally retarded) and HE has state-issued photo ID, because we (parents and guardians) got it for him.
He won’t be voting, since he’s minimally verbal and can’t understand anything symbolic or abstract*, but you can consider him a documented case of the most “stupid” person you are aware of, and who does have ID.
He will never vote, or have someone steal his vote, because I carefully check the voter rolls to make sure no one has registered him without our knowledge.
*He could reliably vote for tacos or pizza, but he would vote for both, so his ballot would be invalid.
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That’s not stupid, it’s just ill. BUT yes, they have to have ID to access services anyway.
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Ask a police officer what adults they encounter not carrying ID, and they will tell you it’s exclusively the perps. The potential advantage of not having such on their person outweighs the disadvantages for pretty much only that narrow class of criminals, offering a chance to dissemble if searched and possibly get out of an arrest. Naturally those same individuals will have ID when visiting check cashing storefronts or buying alcohol or such other establishments that require ID to transact, but otherwise they do not.
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Then there were the teenagers who just happened to leave their ids at home when they were attempting to purchase cigarettes.
(I encountered plenty of those when I was working at a 7-11.)
[Very Big Twisted Grin]
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They also continue to demonstrate that they think we’re all dumber than a bag of rocks by…continuing to do ALL the things that lost them the last three elections (we all know they only won 2020 because fraud. Which is also why they’re freaking the hell out now…)
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“…these delicate negotiations between me and the rotation of the Earth…”
There’s a phrase I’ve used a lot, incl. in a few vignettes if I remember that rightly:
Inexorable as the dawn.
This idea (as many of us will already have recognized instantly) comes from very much the same place as the line quoted first.
It’s coming, nothing you can do about it. Oh, wait, no it’s already here.
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So I was talking to my mom about remembering getting my start of interest in theory of toxicology in kindergarten. I segued from there to my ten year old knowledge in that giving me really weird estimation problems for what ‘everyone’ knows. Which connects to me having wild problems estimation what normal intelligence is or can do.
Democrats in congress have kind of an opposite problem. That they may be so stupid, so ignorant, or so badly educated, that they also cannot predict a normally educated and experienced rational actor.
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I’m gifted but maybe in narrow ways that peaked at an early age.
(I don’t know what IQ I have, and do not think that raw IQ without appropriate supporting skills is very useful.)
I’m not saying that I am well educated or well informed. But for reasons of experience and niche interests I have some information/knowledge, which may be incorrect or badly applied.
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https://babylonbee.com/news/donald-trump-appoints-grand-admiral-thrawn-to-lead-the-carrier-strike-group-in-persian-gulf
America’s Paper of Record and the Kingdom Hearts Fanfic I didn’t realize I really wanted to see.
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It has been 24 year’s since Zhang Yimou’s Hero was released, and it still enrages me that such a talented director, and such a beautifully executed film, was such a disgusting piece of propaganda. And so few people see it for what it is.
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One thing that has taken me a lot to realize is it is generally not that they cannot tell the difference between truth and party. Rather it is that truth is not relevant to them. They value their closeness to The Group above all other things, and their every action orbits around that axis.
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Based on what they have successfully sold to the electorate over the past decades, I’d say they have a fair amount of empirical evidence that said electorate is in fact stupid.
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Yeah, at the DMV each time. And here in the formerly golden state, if one is not covered at work for health insurance and thus must go to the Covered California barrycare exchange, one also has to get past that exact same autoregister-to-vote opt out every single year at renewal.
And hey, look at them bragging about the “undocumented” illegals they enrolled and covered through that exchange…
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