Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM JEFF DUNTEMAN AND JAMES R. STRICKLAND: Drumlin Circus / On Gossamer Wings

A starship malfunctions and strands its 800 passengers on a planet eerily like the Pleistocene Earth, complete with prehistoric mammals including woolly mammoths, dire wolves, and smilodons. And something else: tens of thousands of abandoned alien machines consisting of a bowl and two pillars that respond with drum-like sounds when touched. Tap 256 times on the pillars in any combination, and…something…coalesces in the bowl. It might be a spoon or an axe or a twisted lump of silvery metal. These artifacts (dubbed “drumlins”) help the unwilling colonists survive, but there’s something a little weird about what comes out of the “thingmaker” machines. High-pitched sounds sometimes make drumlins twitch and combine into more complex things. Stranger still, what drumlins do seems to depend on the thoughts of nearby humans. Wish hard while you whistle just so…and something amazing may happen. 260 years on, the castaways have created a civilization resembling late 19th Century America, based in part on coal, steam, iron, and hard work–and in part on the mysterious drumlin artifacts. Both short novels in this volume are set against this background. Drumlin Circus: Every spring, Bramble Ceglarek takes Pretty Alice’s Wonderland Circus down the dirt roads of the west country, dazzling townfolk with clowns, acrobats, calliope music, and trained animals — especially trained animals. His wife Julia trains them with a drumlin whistle, and they obey with peculiar precision. The cultlike Bitspace Institute, hoping to train animal assassins, sends agent Simon Kassel to steal the whistle. Unknown to him, Kassel has been set up to fail by his Institute rivals who want to be rid of him, and after Julia and her apprentice Rosa are abducted by Institute thugs who attempt to kill him, Kassel switches loyalties and joins the circus as a very scary clown. He returns to Institute HQ to rescue Julia and Rosa, only to discover that the training whistle is much more than merely a whistle: a mysterious “function controller” that compels animals, human beings, and even the alien drumlin artifacts themselves to obey its bearer. On Gossamer Wings: From out in the dry rye fields of the west, rumors have come to the Bitspace Institute that someone has drummed up something valuable from the alien thingmakers: a large sphere of pure iron. Institute agent Hiram König rides out to investigate, and discovers the strange, mute young woman who has done the drumming. He also learns that the Big Ball of Iron is just the beginning of the previously unknown drumlins that she has discovered in the vast “bitspace” of the alien thingmakers. Despite the slow progress of technology in the Valinor colony, where steam locomotives and the first primitive hydrogen airships are state of the art, Natalie Bishop is using her talents with the thingmakers to seek out the drumlin parts she needs to build a heavier-than-air flying machine. For her, the flier is her masterpiece, the work that will prove her worth to the people she cares about. The race is on for König to extract Natalie from the pressure-cooker of a small town that is her home, before it blows up around her and before she takes the dazzlingly risky final step and tries to fly.

FROM SHANE GRIES: The Big Dead One (The Line)

The best place to be in an Apocalypse is inside a thirty ton Bradley Fighting Vehicle grinding rotting bodies to paste under your tracks or using an Abrams 120mm canister round to turn a horde of undead into a pink mist. Here’s the thing though … tracks and guns and the people who operate them wear out, even as the living corpses keep coming at you.

After a brutal summer of combat in the plains and cities of the Midwest, the First Infantry Division is conducting a fighting retreat back to the Pacific Northwest. Both the winds of Fall and the howls of the undead are echoing in their wake when they’re re-tasked to take Denver Airport. Along the way they have to safeguard thousands of civilians who are following in their armored wake, and one mistake can turn them all into a ravening horde.

For Staff Sergeant Mark Foley and his tired mechanized infantry squad, it means diving once more into the hell of combat against both raiders who will shoot you dead for a gallon of gas and infected that will send you to a special kind of living death.

The third volume of Shane Gries’ best selling, “The Line” series.

FROM MARY CATTELI: A Diabolical Bargain

Growing up between the Wizards’ Wood and its marvels, and the finest university of wizardry in the world, Nick Briarwood always thought that he wanted to learn wizardry. When his father attempts to offer him to a demon in a deal, the deal rebounded on him, and Nick survives — but all the evidence points to his having made the deal. Now he really wants to learn wizardry. Even though the university, the best place to master it, is also the place where he is most likely to be discovered.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Out of Contact

Radmir Gagarin is not an Exec, he just does the job of one. Working for the richest man in the Alliance, Lord Diomid Devi, is not easy, even though he’s retired. And it gets a lot harder when the Plague strikes the World Lord Diomid purchased as his personal retirement home. And then the invasion . . .

As the Three Part Alliance crumbles, it’s every world for itself, and even a man so rich he can buy an entire parallel Earth to retire on, can find himself in a lot of trouble!

BY MANLY WADE WELLMAN, REVIVED B D. JASON FLEMING: Sojarr of Titan (Annotated): The Classic Pulp Planetary Romance

When the spaceship crashed on Saturn’s largest moon, the pilot adventurer died. But his infant son did not. Raising himself in the wilds of an alien world, Sojarr survives, and thrives, discovering a strange tribe of gypsy humans, and battling roving bands of monstrous natives…

Until the day another ship falls from the sky and threatens to throw two worlds into chaos!

• This iktaPOP Media edition contains a new introduction giving the novel genre and historical context.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Highway to Tartarus

Insanity seems to run rampant in the immortal population, and Hades seems to be the one the Fates tap to contain them all; however, this time, Hades, and Kyra, the former goddess of War from Atlantis, have to find and catch the one who’s gone dangerously insane: Deshayna, Kyra’s identical twin, and the former goddess of Death.

Along for the ride are a pregnant Persephone, Hel from the Norse pantheon (and Hades’ and Persephone’s lover), Tyr and Thor, and Kyra’s adopted daughter Rowan.

The seven of them follow rumors, leads, and death-god connections around the world in an RV that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside, while trying to maintain a bare semblance of normalcy despite the chaos of never knowing when or where their Fates-assigned mission will end…or if it will end them.

FROM KAREN MYERS: Bound into the Blood – A Virginian in Elfland

Book 4 of The Hounds of Annwn.

DISTURBING THE FAMILY SECRETS COULD BRING RUIN TO EVERYTHING HE’S WORKED SO HARD TO BUILD.

George Talbot Traherne, the human huntsman for the Wild Hunt, is preparing for the birth of his child by exploring the family papers about his parents and their deaths. When his improved relationship with his patron, the antlered god Cernunnos, is jeopardized by an unexpected opposition, he finds he must choose between loyalty to family and loyalty to a god.

He discovers he doesn’t know either of them as well as he thought he did. His search for answers takes him to the human world with unsuitable companions.

How will he keep a rock-wight safe from detection, or even teach her the rules of the road? And what will he awaken in the process, bringing disaster back to his family on his own doorstep? What if his loyalty is misplaced? What will be the price of his mistakes?

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Sound of One Child Crying

Who is the child Reza can hear crying every time she goes to the new addition to the Royal Library? Her boss insists there is no child, that it is nothing more than her uncanny sensitivity to the unseen world making a nuisance of itself.

Worse, searching for answers gets her angry rebukes about respect for the dead. The further Reza goes, the more certain she becomes that someone is hiding an ugly secret.

It’s a secret that traces back two generations, to a dark period in this land’s history. A time most people would prefer to forget, not caring that denial doesn’t make a problem go away.

The truth may set you free, but not without a price. And Reza fears that death itself might turn out to be an easier price than the one demanded of her.

THIS WEEK WE HAVE A SPECIAL TREAT: FROM OCCASIONAL ATH COMMENTER AND ACE OF SPADE HABITUE SCOTT, HIS FIRST PUBLISHED STORY IS FREE HERE: The Waystation Incident

And if it gets enough votes, it will be printed in an anthology. So go and read, and if you enjoy it, support it.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: PREMIUM

I is said that science changes at the speed of filling graves.

Thing is it’s not just science. It’s the world. And actually, no, it’s not that fast.

Also, the hacks that fill graves faster, like fascism and communism DO change things fast — I suspect this was the realization of the totalitarians of the 20th century that led to all the mass graves “if we kill people, we kill institutional memory” — but they lose a lot of he things that make the world work, along with the things they’d like to lose.

The problem is that you aren’t precisely you. You’re, as I am, as we all are, partly creatures of our time and place, and partly have bits embedded from what “everyone knows” in our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Then you realize they had things embedded too, and some of that might have passed on.

How far, you ask? Well– The word pecuniary probably is related to one of the oldest words archeo-linguists have found: pecu. Which means long haired cattle. Pecuniary, for those of you behind on your word-of-the-day calendar means relating to money.

So even though theories of eugenics throughout the ages have failed, and even though by the time I was born the Germans had got their *sses kicked so hard that it was hard to find their heads almost 20 years before, there is an assumption that tall blonds are somehow more put together or efficient somewhere at the back of my mind. (No, I didn’t marry one.) Why? Because it was at the back of my parents’ minds. And at the back of the minds of a lot of people of their generation. Germans were just more efficient and orderly, you know? There is probably a similar belief in Europe about Russians being more organized and capable now, born of communist propaganda in the last century.

It’s not that I BELIEVE that Germans or tall blonds are more organized and efficient, mind you. Not rationally. As I said, Germany had got kicked hard (twice) by the time I was born, and I despise all half-assed theories of genetics that think skin color correlates to anything other than ability to tan and high or low incidence of skin cancer. I’m not stupid.

It’s that with the kids in school I caught myself trying to help/push them, because by virtue of being my kids they were at a disadvantage versus the mostly blonds (strange thing, that) in their classes. Once I realized I was thinking it, I stamped on it, because it was stupid and also crazy, but it was still there, somewhere at the very back, whispering crazy things.

And that is because my parents/grandparents/great-grandparents automatically assumed Northern Europeans were smarter and more efficient. (PFFFFFT. I have IQ tests that– Never mind. The kids certainly do.) And that was in the air all around as I was growing up. Never examined. It was just what “everyone knows.”

I suspect this is true also, for most of the mid-century-modern kids. (Not boomers, precisely, but born ten to fifteen years either side of the middle of the century.) Because it was there, in the back of the heads throughout the first half of the century.

This too by the way explains ideas about central “organized” power being best and about a time when everyone “agreed.” (They didn’t. the agreement was faked, by one side having full control of the media.) Not to mention the time of great respect for laws, etc. The truth was that the mid century was a very peculiar time, due to both the sudden sundering of the long war of the 20th century which left a lot of kids either parentless, or being raised by someone far busier with something else (like the war or rebuilding after the war.)

So not only did some extremely not true things get passed on, unquestioned, but a lot of things that should have been passed on aren’t. My generation has spent a lot of time trying to figure out “how things are done” because after the boomers’ massive student revolt tizzies and their demands for changing curriculums, my generation wasn’t taught a lot of the stuff everyone had been taught for a century. (The change was stark. My brother took Latin and some Greek, for instance, but I didn’t. Our math was watered down. And heck, I had to use a procedural trick that involved my parents, to be allowed to learn English. And don’t get me started on how simplified and bowdlerized the History I got was. I was blessed because I had my brother’s school books but not everyone that that.) There were also a lot of things our parents didn’t pass on, either because they were too busy or because it was assumed to be obvious. Stupid stuff, mostly, about say, how to clean house, or how to cook this and that. Pre-internet I spent a not inconsiderable time trying to figure the lost knowledge out.

So, it was a weird time. There was just enough knowledge not passed on to foster a lot of illusions about what was possible or even should be attempted.

To an extent you could say, even now, what we’re seeing are attempts at recovering from and rebuilding the deep fractures of the 20th century long war. Oh, sure, the overwhelming majority of people who fought in it, or were even alive at the end of it are gone. But enough remains embedded in the back of people’s minds that it affects us all.

Change happens. But it’s not fast, it’s not simple, it’s not easy.

It’s never easy.

If only I were sure we’re not going to revisit another set of the 20th century errors before all this is said and done.

But nothing for it. All we can due is continue and fight today’s battle. Even if our foot is in the cement sack of the past.

Because the truth is, contrary to an idiot’s often proclaimed idiocy, there is no “what can be unburdened by what has been.”

We’re all burdened by what has been. Erasing it only dooms us to repeat it.

I almost called this Teacup in A Tempest. Because the whole thing is being talked about upside down, sideways and tiltawhirl. And in the end it’s just what it always is, the same old games played in the same way.

In case you missed the tempest in the tiniest of teacups: This far-right influencer who liked to talk about how everyone else was controlled by Jewish money was named in a Justice Department indictment for taking millions of dollars to run a Russian influence operation on YouTube. And Everyone on the right with an audience is a Russian asset 2 months before an election, says the Biden DOJ. And Tim Pool: My statement regarding allegations and the DOJ Indictment. And Dear Vladimir.

There now? Up to date on this very serious, never to be recovered from ELECTION INTERFERENCE by Russia Russia Russia?

Cool. Now let’s talk like adults.

First of all whatever the f*ck this is it’s not in fact “election interference.” Oh, the Russians probably think it is, or social engineering or something. I’m not exonerating the Russians. But Putin is an old KGB horror playing old KGB games, and he doesn’t GET the US. He never did.

The whole purpose of this is apparently to “sow dissension.” Only if you believe it’s needed, it works, and it makes any sense, I have some swampland in Florida you’ll adore. We Americans dang well can sow their own dissension. As the periodic brouhahas and donnybrooks in the commentariat here prove, we are a fractious people, and can fight over the stupidest things.

I was irked, in the Tim Pool link above, by the usual idiots calling him a traitor and saying he’d be raped in prison. Not just because this is the left’s favorite fantasy (no, really) but because it’s so mind-bogglingly stupid.

I don’t care if the Justice Department did a big bad press release. NO CRIME WAS COMMITTED. NOT A SINGLE ONE.

Oh, mind you, the person handing out the cash on behalf of the alleged Russians MIGHT have been laundering money from other operations, in which case some money laundering laws might have been broken. That’s way above my pay grade.

What I will say though is that in the “pay bloggers to say bad things about Jews” or “pay bloggers to praise Putin” or “Pay bloggers to say my eyes are pretty” stakes, no crimes were committed.

If they were, most of the traditional media would be in jail.

None of this is election interference. Not even a little bit. None of it compares to the media’s operation to “fortify” the election in 2020; to various NGOs introducing non-existent voters in rolls; to the campaign by various state AGs to keep Trump off ballots; to the retired spooks lying about Hunter’s laptop; to the left convincing various social media platforms to deplatform those who disagree with them. THAT, any of those, are election interference.

Some vatnik paying a lot of money — no really, an amazing amount of money. How were these people not suspicious? — to vloggers to…. well, Tim Pool says to change nothing, but let’s say it was to praise Putin, give Trump the side-eye, and maybe, because it comes from Russia throw some hate at the Jews (Dudes! The left does it FOR FREE.) IS NOT ELECTION INTERFERENCE.

And if it were, it wouldn’t be actionable.

Look, other countries try to influence our politics all the time. China-linked ‘Spamouflage’ network mimics Americans online to sway US political debate. And All In Cognitive Warfare.

Why do they do this? Well, they’re too broke and unorganized to go against us in the field of battle. No, way more than we are. (I say, and I’m not joking, that WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.) And messing around on the internet makes them feel they’re doing something, and it’s easy and relatively cheap. It also doesn’t have much effect, however bombastic announcements by our DOJ sure make them feel like it does.

HOWEVER FOREIGNERS MESSING AROUND TRYING TO INFLUENCE OUR OPINION IS NOT A CRIME. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s obviously not a crime IN THEIR COUNTRIES. And we can’t precisely go to their countries and drag them to our courts without going to war — real war — with the countries. Yes, I know that we charged some Russians with “election interference” about 2016. Yeah. We can indict a ham sandwich. Nothing changes. It’s still not a crime for them. And for us it’s at most annoying.

Oh, but surely, as those leftist vatniks slavering after how Tim Pool would be raped in prison know what they’re talking about, right? Isn’t it TREASON for American bloggers to take foreign money?

I’m sorry. I’m giggling so hard I had to take a break from typing.

TREASON TO WHAT? To their readers/listeners, maybe, but that’s not the kind of treason they put you in jail for. We don’t take a blogger oath. Heck, if we took a blogger oath to not write anything against American interests, the left blogsphere would shut down tight.

We are not government agents. I mean, maybe Russians think we are, and thought they were big-time entrapping people. It would fit with their misunderstandings of us. But our DOJ d*mn sure knows better. Even under Merrick.

So what was the big release about? Well, a) Kamala is in trouble in the polls and owned self pretty biggly with the Arlington cemetery thing. This will distract from that. b) Also the governor of NY has had Chinese agents in her inner circle, so it’s time to gin up some Russia! Russia! Russia! panic.

I mean, look, I’m not even saying the Russians were in cahoots with the Justice department. They don’t need to be. This stupid crap is what Russians do by default, and my guess is they’re about as hard to track as an elephant with muddy feet crossing a white tile floor.

There is no there, there. The DOJ release is just a way to say “Hey, look over there!” And “Evil right wing bloggers.”

In fact, Tim Pool was right. Whether he got paid or not, he was the victim (the other people are not on my radar/are obnoxious anyway.) Even if it was a self inflicted victimhood.

The only people hurt by this will be in order 1) the bloggers who took money and who — even if they didn’t change anything about their reporting — now will have to win back the trust of their listeners/readers. 2) right wing bloggers in general, if nothing else because for the next month we’re going to have to put up with a lot of stupid comments (my assistant will likely spam them) asking how much we were paid (my disclosure is below) and such. 3) in a minimal way all of the countercultural blogsphere, because this will make people suspicious of alternate media. This is very minimal, because as the laughing wolf link above points out, most of you know that most of us couldn’t stay bought if we tried, even if someone offered us money which they don’t. (Again, my statement on my undue influences will be at the end.)

In fact, as far as I can tell, other than a handy distraction, what the DOJ is hoping to accomplish by this is to discredit anyone on the right who has an audience.

I have only one more thing to say, before my statement on who has paid me with what on this blog: DEAR LORD BLOGGERS TAKEN IN BY THIS (and for various reasons I think there’s layers and layers well below Tim Pool) DIDN’T YOU GET THE SLIGHTEST BIT SUSPICIOUS?

There is no money on the right. Or rather, there is, but it’s nickle and dime money, the thing my fundraisers rely on. I and others run the cringe fundraisers, because there are no big one-shot donors on the right. We can’t just put at the bottom “Paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation” or whatever. The millionaires, by and large, are lefties, because it’s a positional good. They are lefties the same way former plutocrats built libraries or in Europe churches. IF YOU’RE ON THE RIGHT BLOGSPHERE AND SOMEONE GIVES YOU BIG HEAP MONEY be scared. Or as my grandma would say “when the handout is too big, the beggar should be wary.” BE WARY. Yeah, the money might be sweet, but be aware what you’re selling is your appearance of integrity and independence. And you’re hurting the causes you purport to support.

As for me? Well, I do get offers in email about every other week. Mostly, I’ll admit, Chinese, though there have been a few Russian-sounding ones. I spam them. Because, listen guys, I’m mildly on the spectrum and extremely paranoid. I sort of assume they’re all either phishing or the call of Cthulhu.

NOW AS PROMISED MY STATEMENT ON WHO PAYS FOR THIS BLOG: You do. All of you who decide to. (Not that you have to, and I don’t want any of you to hurt yourselves.) Most of it is nickle and dime stuff, and the ones who aren’t are still not telling me what to write.

HOWEVER I do admit I’m kept in coffee by a shadowy coffee company that claims extraterrestrial influence. I gladly publish their propaganda pieces, and have done the occasional review, even. To be fair, they keep me awake to type these blogs, so I figure they deserve it.

No, this post actually has practically nothing to do with conventional religion. It has a lot to do with worship and the vision of religion.

First of all let’s establish what politics is, from my POV. I don’t like politics, unlike what you might believe from reading this blog. I do watch it, though. Because if I turn my back on it, it might decide to take an interest in me. I learned that early, you see.

So I watch it obsessively and try to guess what it’s up to, not because I love it or think it is the salvation of mankind, but because I think government is one of the most dangerous forces known to men, arguably made more so by Marxist philosophy and the super-sized countries made possible by mass communication and incentivized by mass production. And politics is the language spoken by government, the way it telegraphs its intent, and the way it is sometimes controlled — but mostly not — by the will of the people it governs.

Second of all, I think government by and large is not a force for good. In fact, I think the larger and more powerful the government the less of a force for good it is.

I’m not going to say government is unnecessary, but its ability to interfere in the life of the citizens should go down the farther away and larger it is. Like this: your local government might be able to give you some aid in case of trouble or tell you to move that pile of trash from your yard already. However your national government has no business doing either, since the local conditions might be totally opaque to it.

In fact, national governments should be able to do little more than negotiate with foreign governments to (hopefully) prevent war. And command the defense forces in case that’s impossible.

But Sarah, you’ll say, what about the ultimate safety net for families and children? What about ensuring our food supply is safe, our medicines real, and our environment clean? What about some basic over-arching measures to ensure industry isn’t exploiting workers? What about–

Yeah. Dig into any of those and you’ll find your national government is in fact doing more harm than good and in point of fact destroying the country’s ability to feed itself, medicate itself, or have enough energy to subsist. Let alone making it impossible for Americans to have A manufacturing industry of any size and sending all our stuff-making abroad.

What does this mean?

It means that politically I’m going to incline to the politician running who wants to do the least stuff. Yes, I’d be ecstatic if someone were actually running like Milei in Argentina, who wanted to take a chainsaw to our federal government. If someone promised that, and I believed him to any extent, I’d be the first one in line to vote for him. Heck, I might be ringing doorbells for him from the moment I woke up to when I dropped in bed.

Which brings us to the important question: If such a person were running, would I think he was a new messiah, and worship him, or belong to a “another Milei” cult? Would I think he was amazing in all things, and every word that came from his lips sacred?

Don’t be ridiculous. I’d be working for him because he would be my instrument. No more, no less. And I might be very protective of him if he were the only one promising chainsaw-licious government cut backs. Which is not the same as thinking he’s perfect, just that right then he’d be the best we had.

Also I want to make a point here that if one side running are outright communists, talking wishfully of getting rid of the constitution and redistributing wealth according to “oppression” (which is an hereditary quality and linked to race and other characteristics in their eyes) and the person running against them is the emissary of hell, I, like Churchill, will at least say something nice about the devil. Because old scratch can be gotten rid of with prayer and holy water, while communists have to be gotten rid of with lots of blood, and often leave a country in no shape to survive. (And in the case of the US will destroy the whole world as they starve us, because we feed the world. And provide innovation to the world, too.)

There is nothing — NOTHING — that pisses me off more than being accused of being in a “cult of Trump”. Not because it hits “too close to the truth, uh?” as idiots will claim, but because it’s like being accused of being secretly a unicorn. It’s both terrifying in revealing how out of touch my opponents are, and insane to a level that makes me sure our polity is headed to hell.

I’ve recently been accused of this by both pro-lifers — will you people PLEASE stop letting yourselves be spun by the left? Please? Half of the things you’re reacting to are the usual truncated statements. The others are just your wanting stuff that can’t happen, not yet, and for which the remedy is to continue fighting — and by the intellectual right who is very afraid any sign of supporting Trump will get the left to call them stupid. Apparently this is different from supporting W or Romney of McCain because reasons. Also Trump is so uncouth and speaks so loud, and has orange hair, donchaknow? And he didn’t even graduate from the ivy leagues, the dunce.

And yes, I’m quite sure of how I’m classifying these people, because these are people I KNOW and have known online for years. My sympathy in this case is with the pro-lifers, partly because they’re sick and tired of fighting. But I’ll remind them Trump allows them to continue fighting. The other side means millions of term-babies killed (Partly also because the economy will encourage more abortions) and also a lot more pro-life activists in jail. Neither of the sides is what you’d want. I GET THAT. But unless you have a raging Jones for martyrdom, vote for the guy that allows you to continue fighting for what’s right.

The people who are trying to signal how much better and more INTELLECTUAL than Trump they are can eat my shorts. They are the same old tired midwits terrified someone will find out they got good grades by kissing up to teach. Again, I repeat, they can eat my shorts.

Do I love Trump? No. There are things that worry me about him, particularly in this campaign. I do not like the alliance with RFK and Tulsi Gabbard. It might be needed, but so was our alliance with Stalin in WWII (maybe.) Doesn’t mean it won’t cast a long and very bad shadow into the future.

Does Trump say and do things that annoy me? Sure. But he also proved in his first term that my perception of what is possible and what is right is not always true.
I didn’t understand until I saw him fight Russia (who in case everyone else has forgotten, on the right and left, engaged in a lot of provocations and small scale attacks on our troops during Trump’s tenure. Just nothing on the scale of invading a country) in the way that really hurt them: with money. By securing the US energy independence, Trump could take away Russia’s main source of income. Also could threaten the Middle East with poverty enough to cow them. All of what he said about this, about immigration, about Europe seemed wrong, but it turned out he was approaching the matter as a businessman, not a politician. It was an untried option I’d never thought of. Did it work perfectly? Eh. But he did have some notable successes.

However, right now? He’s the best on offer. And we actually know how he would govern, because we know how he governed.

Was his tenure perfect? Oh, please. And yeah, there were missteps. However, a lot of what he achieved (peace in the middle east, US energy independence) I’d have thought UNACHIEVABLE.

If he manages to have as good a term as his first, it will go a long way towards recovering from the near-mortal blow of the Bidentia’s tenure. If it’s better than that, I’ll be the one in the backyard throwing up fireworks.

And if it’s worse?

It’s still likely to be better than Unrealized Capital Gains Que Mala and her racial game of spoils. And it’s likely to be far better in not totally revoking the Constitution.

When Kamala says things like this, casually, and seemingly without understanding how horrific it is:

Kamala Harris: “He [Musk] has lost his privileges.” Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a “privilege”? Kamala Harris: “There has to be a responsibility placed on these social media sites to understand their power.” Translation: “If they don’t police content to conform to government-approved narratives, they will be shut down.”

And our system of vote is binary, I will vote for her opponent. And if I don’t bestir myself to actually ring doorbells for him, I will at least refrain from hitting him over every little misspoken word. And I will maybe say a few kind things about him, and praise him where he deserves.

Once he’s won, and the spectrum of Communism is banished for another 4 years (We need to fix our schools. Abolishing the dept of education AND teaching colleges is a good start) I will go back to nipping at his heels and complaining about bone headed moves. And pray for someone else not a communist in four years.

For now? A cult? You’ve got to be kidding me. When I make jokes about naming a cat Orange Cat Bad they’re that: jokes. (Though Indy taking apart his food dispenser might be worthy of being called that.) And that’s naming a cat, not a baby or a car even.

If your only explanation for your opponents not agreeing with you is that “they joined a cult” you might be in one.

Sure, I see lots of defects in the logic of the left, but I can explain what they are, and where they came from. And if I think that Marxism is a Christian heresy, I have more backing for it than “they joined a cult.”

And for that matter, when seemingly rational people I’ve known for years behave in a way I don’t understand, I look for an explanation, rather than assume they were snatched up by pod people. (I often don’t find them. Sometimes the explanation seems to be “X broke people badly” — where x is most recently 2020 — and I’m still sure they are wrong. But often I also can tell why they have this particular blind spot. Again, it’s not “joined a cult.”)

But Trump is not a messiah. He’s not even the best I could hope for. That might be Rand Paul, if he shed his internationalist delusions (he might have recently. I haven’t followed very closely. Mostly because the poor man hasn’t been the same since he was attacked in his yard) but it’s certainly not Trump.

Trump is at best the instrument the blind fury of the long-denied people grabbed onto. He was aided into his first nomination by his media-persona name recognition. And he’d probably have governed just slightly to the right of Hillary Clinton if the left hadn’t gone insane against him and aroused his spite.

His second nomination was baked in, regardless of what people thought could be, by his name recognition alone. I realized that when I had people come and install the fridge and chatted with them about the primaries. They knew who Trump was, like him or hate him. DeSantis was DeWho? And “Oh, he governs…. Georgia? Florida?” In fact my biggest question about the DeSantis run and how vicious his surrogates got was “What on Earth possessed him to think he could get the nomination this year?” Yes, it could be positioning for 2028, but dear Lord, surely he knew that the best thing for that would be what he’s doing now: being a good governor to Florida, who makes the left’s teeth ache.

So, he’s what we have. Sure, I’d prefer a chainsaw. But all we really have right now is this weed whacker. And the best we can do is use the weed whacker to advantage to at least clear some of the overgrowth of government and regulations.

Perfect governance doesn’t exist this side of heaven, for the simple reason governance is of humans for humans, and humans are not and can not be perfect.

Whether I live another year or another 30, I’ll probably die mid-fight for a smaller, more localized government, and taking authority away from the federal branch. It is the best I can do.

But until I die, I will fight against a communist take over of the US. And if that means voting for someone who is only slightly to the right of the other candidate? Sure. I’ll do that. I’ll even say nice things about them.

Can’t spatter me with mud more than doing that with W did, right?

So, do the best you can and pray for a miracle. I’m assured G-d looks out for fools, drunkards and the United States of America.

Let’s hope He’s not lost patience yet.

(This is an older writing of Tom’s, but I thought it was still worth looking into. From the questions you can tell it’s from before the ongoing disaster of the Biden Junta, but if it was ever published — he’s not sure — it was on twitter. So I thought it needed wider dissimination.)

Why We Still Believe There Was Election Fraud in 2020 – Tom Kratman

So why, after all this, do so many of us _still_ believe the election was stolen?

In the first place, there are two things we mean by “the election was stolen.” They’re mutually reinforcing, yes, but they’re not the same. The first of these is via the influence of media and social media. It was not illegal for them to have been Biden’s campaign, but they _were_ Biden’s campaign. What that means, in practice, is that they used their privileges under the first amendment to violate the intent of the first amendment. I say “privileges,” by the way, rather than “rights” because by their conduct they have undermined the first amendment to the point we can calmly consider killing it, as regards the media, as so many lefties want it to be killed for the common citizenry. It no longer serves its purpose.

The second factor is our belief that actual spurious ballots were introduced into the system by both mailing in and other means. And the numbers were not even that large; Trump “lost” by about twelve thousand in Georgia, eighty thousand in Pennsylvania, and under twenty-one thousand in Wisconsin. Let’s not pretend that those were particularly difficult numbers to have illegally come up with.

But there’s not a shred of evidence…the courts…

Look, friends, we live in the age of MiniTru and Comrade Ogilvy. We have precisely zero sources of reliable direct information. Don’t believe me?

Answer these questions:

1. What was on Hunter Biden’s laptop?

2. What party and philosophy ruled the states that drove United States’ Covid stats into the stratosphere?

3. Who took the blame?

4. How much evidence did there turn out to be of Russian interference with the 2016 election?

And, conversely:

5. How many Arab states has Israel recently signed peace treaties with?

6. Who got NAFTA replaced with a treaty that more carefully guards US workers’ interests?

7. Who hasn’t gotten us into any new wars?

8. Under which presidency did the United States regain energy independence, so we DON’T get into any new wars?

9. Why are illegal immigrants largely going or staying home?

10. And how much do we hear about this: USPS worker charged with dumping ballots, as mail carriers perform extra trips before Election Day | Fox News

And, if you don’t know the answers to these, ask yourself why you don’t?

Moreover, why did Facebook and other social media suppress any notion of election fraud? One doesn’t need to suppress a lie; “a lie will not stand.” There’s only benefit in suppressing “inconvenient truths” (to steal another fraudulent Democrat meme).

Of course, when you control the media, a lie most certainly WILL stand…if it’s your lie.

Instead, we are thrown back on secondary increments of data, because the left isn’t clever enough – well, not YET, anyway – to have doctored those. (“Call for Comrade Ogilvy from Democratic Party Headquarters! Comrade Ogilvy please pick up the red phone in the lobby…”)

Among the secondary sources of information are:

The railroading of secession through various Democrat-run southern states by careful selection of those who would be allowed into the secession conventions.

Tammany Hall.

“Vote often and early for James Michael Curley.”

The Battle of Athens and the E. H. Crump (Democratic Party) political machine.

Cook Country, which is to say, Chicago, 1960.

Princess Nudelman, the dead goldfish (yes, I know the fish didn’t cast a vote. What’s important is that someone TRIED).

Look at the heritage.org election fraud map.

In short, election fraud is so completely a part of the Democratic Party and the left, more generally, and has been for so long, that it would only be remarkable if there were a close election where there wasn’t any. We expect it. If we can’t easily see it, we expect it to be only because it’s a little better hidden than usual.

The Democratic Party is and always has been a party of corruption, heavy on power, short of or bereft of principle. The only difference between it and any given sub-Saharan African kleptocracy is in the shade of skin.

But what about the courts?

No, wait; you didn’t know that the legal profession is up there – or down there – with college sociology departments for its tendency to lean left? You didn’t know that coming up with direct evidence is often quite difficult? Investigations take years to uncover single instances of discrete bank fraud; we’re expected to find evidence of massive voter fraud quickly? See below.

Then, too, one might well wonder just _which_ John Roberts it was that visited Epstein’s pedophile island. Epstein didn’t waste his efforts on nobodies, you know; oh, no, he turned over the use of his harem of barely post-pubescent teens to the already powerful and the up and – you should pardon the expression – comers.

I don’t know that it was him. I will not insist it was him. I want to see an honest investigation into whether or not it was him.

Of course, to be more fair than he probably deserves, Roberts probably does think he’s heading off a civil war. He’s wrong, of course, as Roger Taney was before him; he is bringing the war closer and ensuring it will be worse.

Difficult to come up with evidence? Enter the mail-in ballot, a positive Godsend for would be election fraudsters. Just think about what’s required to prove effective fraud on that scale. It’s not the mere one hundred and thirteen thousand vote that allegedly swung things in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

We’re not talking here about railroading Jefferson Washington Lincoln III, the small-time dope dealer and occasional fence. Oh, no; this is a much more – an infinitely more – difficult problem.

For one thing, the investigators would have to scrub the voting rolls themselves. Then they’d also have to scrub the obituary columns and social security death register for the last century or so…or three. Add in the birth and naturalization records. They’d have to match not just the one hundred and thirteen thousand votes in question, but every mail in ballot AND every other ballot too. (No, the mere likelihood of most of the fraud coming via mail does not rule out more traditional methods.) And they’d have to do all this in a country that has an automatic revulsion against keeping and consolidating those very kinds of records, and often where the government in charge of the states in question will interpose every possible obstacle. And all of that with MiniTru ensuring that no adverse information ever sees the light of day.

Has anyone put that kind of effort into the investigation? No, they have not. Hence, with the best will in the world, the courts had not enough to work with. Hence, none of the investigations can be said to be valid. No, none of them. Neither can any of the court decisions, even where legally sound – and they were not all legally sound; Roberts, you swine, I’m looking at you – are dispositive, either.

So forget it; the information coming from the media is doctored and dishonest, with anything contrary studiously suppressed. The investigations were trash. The court’s refusal to hear cases prejudiced where not just outright unconstitutional.

Now some ignorant toad is going to scream, “Conspiracy loons! Conspiracy theory!”

Not on your life. People are not competent to conspire at this level, while Biden, cowering in his basement, certainly wasn’t. No, no; this is not a conspiracy but a consensus or, rather, several of them. A consensus exists when similar people, with similar values, backgrounds, and educations, see similar issues and problems, similarly, and come up with similar programs and solutions. A consensus doesn’t rule out conspiracy (“Adam, should we introduce spurious bit of bullshit X as people’s exhibit A, for the impeachment trial?”) but doesn’t depend on it either. It was sufficient in this case for enough middle and lower party workers and sundry activists, plus the media and the vile and filthy denationalized rich to a) believe that the only legitimate directions for the United States to go were further left, more globalist, less nationalist, more feminist, less nativist, etc., b) to recognize the promise of mail-in ballots, c) to deny for themselves that any principle is more important that continuing to move in those directions, and d) a resolve to do it, each in his or her or s/h/its individual capacity. No, Facebook did not conspire with Twitter; there was no need. No, X judge didn’t conspire with the Democratic Party; there was no need. No, Buffet and Bezos and Billzebub Gates didn’t conspire with Soros; there was no need. There was no need because they share a consensus.

And, so, no; we do not have any faith in the election results. Nor will we have, especially since we are quite certain that election fraud is now the way of the future. Soon to be President Harris (does anyone, anyone at all, have any illusions about that? Did anyone, ever? I have no more doubt of it than I have that she gives the best blowjob in the world, if the payoff is right) will never be considered legitimate. And she, and we, can expect everything from civil disobedience to nullification to riot to resistance in arms until the war commences. (Bet you didn’t know that the South was not the only region the states of which engaged in nullification.)

Labor day is one of those holidays that never made any sense to me. “Let’s celebrate people who work” makes about as much sense as “Yay for everyone who draws breath!” or perhaps more accurately “let’s hear it for people who have two thumbs.”

Sure, there are people who don’t work, but just like people who don’t have two thumbs they are vanishingly rare. And to a great extent equally unfortunate. Because humans were made to strive, and lack of strife makes us impaired and handicapped, just like people lacking one or both thumbs are impaired and handicapped. Both sets can rise above the handicap and live normal lives, but it’s an extra block on their way.

But of course, I’m not stupid, and I know that “labor” in the sense of the early 20th century doesn’t mean merely work. It means “work that might fall under collective action of organized labor.” All over the rest of the world, labor day was May 1st and dear Lord, in the seventies, during the cold war, it was the gamboling day of commies and other enemies of mankind.

Mayday was ripe for bombings, “mostly peaceful” demonstrations, etc. And in countries suffering from mental illness, like Portugal, the one TV channel that ran during the day was entirely turned over to USSR parades of troops before stands draped in red crap and flying red flags.

In the US, and frankly in saner parts of the rest of the world, people will use labor day to remind us that all work has dignity and all work deserves to be respected.

Mostly people seem to emphasize manual, dirty-jobs type of work, because, well, people tend to assume that’s the work that’s less valued.

To an extent they’re not wrong, though we’re on a cusp of change on that. It used to be when I was a kid, in pre-history, er…. I mean the mid 20th century, and until about ten years ago, everyone assumed if you had the brains you went to college, and jobs that wouldn’t require a college degree — yes, those existed. Why, you used to be able to be a retail manager or serve people fries without a degree. Crazy, I know — were for “stupid people” and had no attention or honor.

Therefore Labor day should recognize these unsung heroes of work!

We’re now at a sort of cusp. Everybody knows the money, the glory, frankly the ability for anyone to make enough money will young, is in skilled manual labor.

This is no longer working exactly as advertised. These manual jobs, which were always physically hard, are becoming hard to get, or to get reputable ones. And the glut of people applying means the pay is down. And–

But none of that matters. What matters is that regardless of what “Labor” is being celebrated by whatever society, work matters to humans.

Work might be necessary to humans. Regardless of what work is, or what work is prized by the society you live in.

Work gives shape to our days. Work allows us to live on our own as adults. If we’re working we are probably doing something needed, something others will pay for. And all work has its own dignity. Whether what you’re doing is a dirty job or a clean one, a desk job in a cube farm or a creative writing job at your comfy chair (she says.)

I say this as someone who spends a large part of her time defeating the idea that her job is utterly useless, since it’s work for leisure and not for necessities. I mean no one ever died for lack of a good novel, or even a blog post.

But the truth is that people don’t live only for the bare necessities, and there were definitely days, or months (sometimes years) that books kept me this side of the sod. And sometimes a blog post made me see everything differently and better.

So all work, so long as someone is willing to pay for it at least, is important and has dignity.

And yeah, even if you’re just doing it because you need to eat and have a roof over your head, it still has dignity, because you’re looking out for yourself, and avoiding being a responsibility for others.

Not everyone can have a glamorous career, whatever a glamorous career means now. Most people just have jobs.

And “just jobs” is enough.

Of course the prize is jobs you love. Labors of love.

But if you can’t do what you love, it’s sometimes enough to love what you do. And sometimes you can learn to love it, by thinking of all the things you love that are enabled by the (however irksome) work.

So go love and labor, and labor for love.

Working is part of being human, and it’s necessary to help us stay human.

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Best Enemies

Hayden Jaeger, youngest son of the Chairman of the Council and Ambrose Vinogradov, the youngest son of the Founder, were thrown together by random chance as they were assigned to be dorm mate at the University. It was not an instant friendship.

300 years before the fall of the Troystvennyy Soyuz, the foundations of a secret society are about to be laid down . . .

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: An American in Iya (Timelines Universe Book 8)

Over 200 years ago, a Plague overran the world, and 9 out of 10 human beings died.
In a small Japanese village on Shikoku, a group of American tourists found themselves stranded — and in grave danger of being murdered, merely for the sin of being 外人 (gaijin).
Luckily for them, their Japanese hosts took pity on their plight, and took them in as their own.
This is the story of their descendants — who still, more than anything, wish only someday to go home. That is . . .
. . . if they still have a home to return to.

FROM SAM SCHALL: Warbound Legacy: Betrayal Among the Stars (Honor & Duty Book 9)

A decade ago, Fuercon and its allies won the war with the Callusians. In the years since, peace reigned, and the horrors of the war became a distant nightmare. However, that peace is an illusion. A new enemy lurks in the deepest shadows of space, patiently waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Not everyone, however, is blind to the danger. Brigadier General Ashlyn Shaw (ret.) remembers the war that came close to costing her life and sees too many similarities between the early days of the war and now. Others see it as well. Unfortunately, they are the minority and too many choose to ignore their warnings.

As they work to identify the source of the threat, a new generation attends the Basilone Military Academy on Fuercon. Among them is Jake Shaw, Ashlyn’s son. He and his fellow cadets are set to take part in training cruises during the summer between their first and second years. It is a rite of passage for them and a chance for the Academy instructors to see how they react to military life onboard a working military cruiser.

FROM SCOTT MCCRAE: Jewels Of The Feathered Serpent (Jeff Galleon Adventures Book 2)

Second in an exciting new series of adventure novels by master storyteller Scott McCrea!

When archaeologist Steven Mauceri is stabbed by a mysterious figure wielding an ancient obsidian knife, California surfer and beach bum Jeff Galleon is dragooned into accompanying the wounded man and his family on an archaeological dig in the Philippines. The expedition survives murder and kidnapping attempts, but will they keep their lives once they enter the ghastly underground temple of the great god Quetzalcoatl?

Jewels of the Feathered Serpent is the second Jeff Galleon Adventure by Western Writers of America Spur Award finalist, author Scott McCrea.

BY GEORGE WASHINGTON OGDEN, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Long Fight (Annotated): The Classic Pulp Western

For years, old Solomon Heiskell told anyone who would listen that his land had oil in it. After years of drilling, and finding nothing but dirt and rock, his son Ared gave up the dream and took up sheep farming, even as so much oil was being discovered a few miles away that Oil City sprang up overnight. But when his flock is slaughtered in the night, and his father vanishes, Ared uses his remaining capital to buy a drilling rig and hire out to any of the smaller landowners in the area that will have him. The big money doesn’t want competition from wildcatters, they want control. And his father’s reputation as an eccentric shadows the son.

But come what may, Ared Heiskell has signed on for — The Long Fight!

• This iktaPOP Media edition contains a new introduction giving the novel historical and genre context.

FROM RUSSEL WORKING: The Insurrectionist

Denied a promised posting in Paris, Ian Landquart, a reporter with the storied Chicago Bullet newspaper, is shunted off to a suburban bureau and assigned to redact racist language from the historical archives.

To salvage his career, he investigates an elephant-owning farmer who protested nonviolently on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. But as Ian gins up an FBI probe, he learns that his progressive teenage daughter is dating the farmer’s conservative, gun-owning son—ensnaring the teens in the case.

With a Swiftian eye, The Insurrectionist lampoons the news media, our woke era, and government overreach in J6 prosecutions. Defying the official narrative, The Insurrectionist explores the abusive nature of politicized prosecutions.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, WITH STORIES BY ZAN OLIVER AND LEIGH KIMMEL: Steam Rising: Tales of steampunk and wondrous inventions (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 35)

Steampunk. It’s not just a genre, it is science fiction in its purest form. In this collection, you will read of the ways that technology could both help and harm mankind. Steam power took a special kind of bravery to use and master, and the people who live in a steam-powered world adjust to that need: engineers, inventors, tinkerers and experimentalists of every kind and every manner imaginable.

Within, you will meet clockmakers and war-widows, steamship captains and airship pilots; you will see wailing engines race and clanking automata strut. Hurry on! The engineer is feeding the coal, and says she’s raring to go.

See that red lever over there? Grip ‘er tight, and heave forward the throttle…

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: A Sudden Departure (April Series Book 9)

The Earth below is a house in disorder. The spacers increasingly just want to be left alone. They need less from Earth all the time so many don’t really care what they do down there on the Slum Ball, but what if improving technology made it easier for them to bring all their old factions and sects and rivalries among the stars? The three partners April, Jeff and Heather hope to beat them at that game and find a firm foothold out there before the Earthies arrive. The book is also laying out details leading up to the merge of the “April” series of books with the story of the “Family Law” series.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Magic And Secrets

Tales of Wonder and Magic A woman, sent to a far off duchy, finds a mysterious wolf haunting the forest, and learns there are secrets no one even suspects. Playing with props for amateur theatricals has more consequences than any of those doing it dream. . . act with care. A king’s tyranny sends a woman searching desperately for a legend of lions, there being no other hope.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Normalcy Bias: Look closer…things aren’t always what they seem to be.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: THRONE

Lines of Departure 2-2: The Choice isn’t Trump or Harris by Tom Kratman

Copyright © 2024, Thomas P. Kratman, (Widest possible dissemination authorized and encouraged.) 

 No, no; the choice is between Trump and a closed oligarchy that does NOT have your interests in mind. In short, whatever you want to do, you _cannot_ vote Harris. Oh, yes, you can cast your vote beside her name, but she is not the front runner; she is a front, just as her putative boss, Joe Biden, was. 

 Go back to the year 2020, the year when, under cover of COVID, Joe Biden ran for the presidency from his basement. Why did he do that? Fear of COVID? That was the claim, of course, but the movers and shakers of the country, especially the democratic ones, did a very impressive job of demonstrating that COVID was just not that impressive. Sure, during the George Floyd riots, they might sic the police on people sitting on their front porches, shooting those same people with paintballs. But for themselves? Please; it was party city throughout the pandemic for anyone well connected enough. And for the rioters? They were pretty much hands off. 

So much for COVID. 

 Flash forward to the Trump-Biden debate. There it became fairly obvious that the sitting president was…mostly not there anymore. I write this not with contempt but with a degree of sympathy; that fate awaits most of us, with time. More importantly, is there any reason to believe he was fully there when his handlers kept him locked in the basement during the 2020 campaign? There really isn’t. Moreover, the people who would swear that he was are the very same people who were telling us that he was sharp as a tack right up until the debate and for some time after; their word is worthless.

And then we have the pattern of conduct, the misguidance and mismanagement from the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle through the collapse of our southern border. It is not just hard, it is impossible, to identify a single thing that has gone well for the United States in between. Especially has the economy been a disaster, and not one that the smoke and mirrors of the Democratic Party and their lapdogs of the press has been very successful in hiding. That pattern is consistent and consistently horrifying. That pattern says very strongly that the Joe Biden of the debate was the same man who stayed in his basement in 2020. 

 He’s been this way all along. 

Then, too, we have the palace coup that drove Biden from the 2024 race. Obviously, he did not decide that for himself, either. 

Even so, even if Biden was incapable of doing much of anything on his own, or was not allowed to, decisions still were being made, to include decisions to do nothing, to include the decision to force him from the campaign. 

Who was making those decisions? We don’t really know. Obama is a likely member of the junta – and, yes, clearly, it is a junta – as are the Clintons, both the rapist and Felonia von Pantsuit. I would suggest that the thirty-five or so members of the House and the five senators who publicly called on Biden to step aside are not members of the junta, but that those who likely gave them their marching orders, Schumer and Pelosi – who is never out of office even when out of office, are. Hakim Jeffries may well be. Garland probably is a member. Kagan may represent the left wing of the Supreme Court. Perhaps there are a few others. 

Speaking of Kagan and the legal system, do but note that the supporters of the junta are the same people who will talk about the rule of law even as they prostitute the law to wage lawfare against anyone – Trump and the J6 protesters, principally – who tries to supersede them and return the country to an actual republic. 

It is, by the way, unclear and I think rather unlikely that Kamala Harris is a member of that junta, any more than Joe Biden was. This, quite despite her holding views that are not easily distinguished from, say, Marx or Engles….or Lenin…or Mao…or perhaps – we cannot say for sure and when we are sure it will also be too late – Pol Pot or Stalin. 

Soros? No, I don’t think so. He’s pretty distasteful from all perspectives. Now does the junta consult with him? Regularly, I am sure. But the names don’t matter and will probably never be known for certain. The only name we’ll be allowed to see is that of Kamala Harris, the frontwoman for the junta that has been telling Joe Biden what to do for more than four years. And which will be telling Kamala Harris what to do for another four to eight, if they’re allowed to. 

Just think of it, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a bit over three terms; Obama and the junta may have as many as five. Hell, they may have an infinite number, if they succeed in destroying the Republic.

“Bu’, bu’, bu’, muh democracy!” 

I have some bad news for you, the people moaning about the loss of democracy are the same people who decided to simply install as their nominee a woman who is thoroughly disliked, even within their party, whose previous run for the nomination was a disaster, who has had, in other words, not a single vote cast for her this year, and a paltry few in 2020. 

In short, let me suggest to you a more modern, more accurate definition of democracy in 21st century America: 

Democracy, n. The unlimited and uninterrupted rule of the junta that looks after the interests of the vile and already filthy rich kleptocrats, corrupt bureaucrats, quasi-literate journalists, drooling pedophiles, academic lunatics, soulless and stupid entertainers, and other assorted human garbage on the inside of the Democratic Party. 

If that’s the definition of “democracy,” and it now is, and that is what you want, wouldn’t you be happier in, say, China or perhaps North Korea? 

But to finish with the same point we started with, which should be much clearer now, it is impossible to actually vote for Harris. The most you can do is vote for a junta, and, indeed, a junta that bears close resemblance to the Politburo that ran the Soviet Union or the one that is now running China, an oligarchy the members of which loathe actual democracy and don’t really hide that they do.