I have this friend whom I’ve known since 1971. When we were kids, we liked science fiction (heck, we both still do) and so we’d ponder in, say, 1978 what the future might hold. We came up with some pretty fantastic ideas of what humanity might achieve but among the possibilities, cannibalism wasn’t one of them. Now we’ve got alleged cannibal gangs in Haiti and there was this train accident in California the other day where a leg was thrown clear and a guy apparently picked it up and started snacking on it. We seem to be devolving at an increasing pace.
Gas prices are starting to rise again and this is putting downward pressure on Biden’s poll numbers. In response to this, Team Pudding Brain has asked Ukraine to not blow up Russian oil facilities which would put even more upward pressure on gas prices. So, we’re paying for Ukraine to fight the Russians while also doing what we can to ensure Russia has money to fight the Ukrainians. Got a call from Zombie Kafka and he asked that we knock it off.
That terrorist attack in Moscow was of the quite horrific variety. Moscow is, of course, tightly protected and gun control is universal in Russia but this terrorist squad managed to get there and accessed a pre-positioned cache of some pretty heavy weapons. You can’t stop determined lunatics. Aside from that, what’s it all about?
Nobody knows. Very good chance that nobody will ever really know. US government word is that ISIS took responsibility and that is a possibility: ISIS has a gripe against Russia over the Syrian Civil War where the Russian- and Iranian-back Syrian regime fought ISIS. The Russian government is clearly indicating a Ukrainian connection and even if that wasn’t true, the Russian government would be keen to make it true. If any element of the Ukrainian government was involved – even rogue – the US will do all it can to suppress that information. We’re in for a raft of conspiracy theories on this one, guys.
Could Ukraine have had a hand in it? That is a distinct possibility. The Russians are advancing again; not very fast or far, but definitely moving the line westwards. There was a massive Russian missile strike against Ukrainian electricity production a couple days ago. Ukraine is having ever more trouble filling its depleted ranks (there are stories that French combat units are moving into Western Ukraine; don’t guess wrong here…this is probably more to prevent Russia from moving too far west in the event of a Ukrainian collapse; the French don’t want a shooting war with Russia; they don’t have the army for it). Could desperate times in Kiev lead to desperate, even foolish, measures? They could.
Bottom line: a messy situation just go messier – and if the Russian government can pin this on Ukraine, even with bogus evidence, it will strongly motivate the Russian people to take a pound of flesh from Ukraine.
Biden’s people are pushing very hard to stop Israel from hitting the southern part of Gaza. This is because of polling in Michigan and Minnesota with their large Muslim populations. But it is also rather disgusting that our government is increasingly aligned with Hamas against Israel. I don’t think the Democrats really come back from this – once you start down that road, it ends at Der Sturmer; they’ll be repeating blood libels by 2028.
Blogs For Victory 
I am not that worried as many should be but then again I am informed as the entire voting population should be. Best guess is very few if none have read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or even know what the Federalist Papers even are or that they exist. I have saved copies for the generation that may survive the current onslaught of power and greed by both parties. It will be the combination of the fast takeover and slow creep we have seen for years. I will fight it as many others have and continue to do so, however for the moment (may be a wee bit early)….
Welcome to the Thunderdome.
Maybe we really are living in the Matrix.
That really does sum it up, doesn’t it?
Some screeching leftist from “Moms Demand Action” (which, oddly, is not a naughty website) was shouting about how our rights are not as important as her right to be “safe”…I mean, what the heck does that even mean? But these lunatics just repeat it.
She IS safe -from me and every other gun owner I know.
What fascinates me is the conviction in these fevered minds that the biggest danger they may ever face is a legal gun owner. And until they come up with some way to magically get illegal gun owners disarmed, what they are really talking about is legal gun owners.
Then there is the fear that these people are…..what? Stalking them? Lurking in the bushes to jump out at them and shoot them? These silly vapid narcissists seem convinced that they will, somehow, no doubt because of their inherent specialness, attract a crazed gun owner.
In the meantime, while quivering in fear of gun fire, they drive on freeways, drink alcohol, smoke, drink diet soda, probably eat very unhealthy food, fly in airplanes, definitely line up for infinitely repeated jabs of experimental drugs already known to be dangerous, and in general expose themselves to the many dangers of life.
Most gun deaths are due to domestic disputes or other disputes among people who know each other, and suicides. A very small number are random shootings or in the commission of a crime, such as a robbery. So if Screechy Mom is really concerned about gun violence she might consider avoiding extreme conflicts with her husband and people she knows. She does sound like a potential victim of a fed-up spouse.
Do you remember the story from a couple of years ago about the black woman in a fast food restaurant who freaked out when an armed Park Service or game warden came into the restaurant? She saw the holstered gun and lost it, and demanded that the manager walk her to her car to keep the game warden from shooting her in the parking lot.
The number of Insanity Points she racked up in that tirade was pretty high, culminating in the question of just how a fast food restaurant manager was going to protect her once a game warden went crazy and decided to gun down a complete stranger in public for no reason. But this is the level of stupidity combined with hysteria that, sadly, drives many voter choices and ends up giving us bad government.
This, literally, is where we’re at:
One of the responses to this pointed out that many, if not most, of these are from drop boxes—that is, without postmarks or any way to know when they were delivered.
This made me wonder how big a hysterical firestorm would erupt if we were to say to the Left, “Okay, you get your drop boxes. But we want all those ballots sequestered, kept separate, until every envelope is marked to indicate it was from a drop box and then every ballot inside those envelopes is marked the same way.”
I’m pretty sure this would result in a massive hair-on-fire hissy fit, because the last thing the Left wants us to know is how many of their votes come from drop boxes.
I keep racking my brain to figure out how to get a handle on the drop box problem. One solution, which I know is unrealistic but which would be very effective, would be to have every drop box locked except for certain hours and then require anyone dropping off ballots to show a photo ID to a monitor and sign or initial a form stating how many ballots are being dropped off. Another would be to spring for equipment that would date every envelope as it is dropped into the box. The least desirable would be the one I described, but that at least would carry the identification of being a drop box ballot all the way through to the vote itself.
If (totally inventing numbers here) 10% of all votes are from drop boxes and of that 90% are for Biden, that would seem to be a statistical anomaly that would call for attention. If it could be further proved that none of these were from ballots not shown to be properly submitted in the legal time frame for voting, that would be significant.
I guess what bothers me is the attitude that “Yes, drop boxes are the main problem but gee, there just isn’t anything we can DO about it”. So we don’t try.
So get state GOP legislators to at least put up bills to allow the kinds of things I mention. Even getting them shot down, voted down, is progress in a way as it identifies the determination of the Democrats to cheat. After all, if all drop box ballots are legitimate why NOT identify them? After all, if the law already says ballots have to be in by a certain time, why NOT be able to confirm that?
My point is, even if these efforts fail in one way they still succeed in another, if only to provide fodder for the next elections. They would provide piercing questions in election debates, demanding that incumbents defend their refusal to allow more election transparency.
We defeat ourselves by assuming defeat and then letting that stop us from even trying.
You already have the answer but it is too easy to do so we do nothing. First, there is no reason for drop boxes but if we are going to have to live with them I think like an ATM or other device. First you insert a standard ID (govt. issued) and get your picture taken before the “drop” portion of the box is opened. Dropped ballots are then fed through one at a time and will be encoded with identifying information to include time/date. These can be scheduled to be picked up with start and end time/dates predetermined. Don’t forgot the giant (entire front sides) of the drop box stating that a minimum penalty of, say $1,000 / ballot and jail time for false or illegal ballots. No or fake ID or covered face during a drop–save them separate (date/time stamped) for potential prosecution.
Even though I rarely hunt fish in a barrel when I do I prefer dynamite fishing.
I will leave it at that but since we can’t even rectify all of the illegal “rules” during the last big flu season known as Covid-19 I see my vote has the same odds as my MegaMillions/PowerBall ticket does which is not promising. But I just do it for the children.
db, I like your idea. Mine was similar but more clunky. Let’s pretend this would fly in today’s political climate. For one thing, it would require agreement in Congress that although the states can run elections as they choose, according to the Constitution, federal elections must be standardized. That would be a big but important hurdle.
There would not be time to get your ATM-style machines built by November, but an interim solution of human beings with scanners would be a step in the right direction. They could scan IDs and use something like existing time card stamp machines to manually stamp each envelope. I would like, though this would entail even more screeching and outrage, to have each envelope identified as to the person delivering it, so if that were accepted the time stamp machine could be set when the ID is scanned to stamp an ID number on the envelope. The rest of your concept could easily be accomplished this election cycle and the ATM-style machines in place next time around.
We on the Right tend to let the perfect get in the way of the good, and even of the just better. When I floated my idea of making the oath of office binding—essentially an employment contract so if the official swears to defend the Constitution and then in his office acts in contradiction to the Constitution he loses his job and and the associated benefits—–the arguments against it included the concern that this could be abused. To which I said “So what?” Name a law that is not abused, or subject to abuse. Prosecutors can be and often are corrupt. There is nothing as stupid as a jury. But the purpose of laws is not to achieve absolute compliance (though that would be nice) but to set boundaries of acceptable behavior and establish processes by which blatant violations can be punished. We know that people will kill other people, but having laws against it makes the statement that this is not acceptable and there might be a high price to pay for doing it. But the obverse is also true, to some extent—-if violation of the oath of office is such a meaningless and insignificant thing, there is the message that it’s OK, it’s no big deal. Having a framework around it stating that it is NOT OK, and that there are penalties, sets up boundaries. Yes, they might not be perfect. Yes, they would be tested. But there would be an official stance that this is not acceptable and might cost the perpetrator.
The same thing is true of election laws and their violations. Without rigid boundaries and at the very least the mechanism for prosecuting violations, there is the impression that election laws are meaningless and easily ignored or bypassed.
We know we will meet strident opposition to any effort to reform our electoral process as it stands today, so many just shrug and say “It’s too hard” or “It can’t be done”. I say that even having a bill defeated serves a purpose, in that it identifies a person and his political position. It’s harder to claim allegiance to integrity in our voting system if you are on record as repeatedly voting to keep it corrupt or at least subject to corruption. It might take a long time for these positions to bear fruit, but the reason the Left has the power it has is because it plays the long game and understands attrition.
And we can make a little progress by attacking with great vigor on several fronts at once. While the Left has millions of mindless foot soldiers ready to “protest” and howl and screech, and owns nearly all the media talking heads, they still don’t have much depth on the bench, and can’t effectively defend a dozen different kinds of attacks from a dozen different directions at the same time. So go after photo ID, drop boxes, indiscriminate mailings, voter registration rolls, false certification, illegal changes of election laws, illegal blocking of supervision of vote counting, technical issues regarding machines, failure to verify signatures, acceptance of envelopes with no postmark, etc. All of this, relentlessly.
And start playing the Left’s game. Instead of being on defense all the time, go on offense. Instead of defending photo ID, just calmly state that there is only one reason to object to it and that is to allow illegal voting. Make that our stand, repeat it endlessly, never veer from it. We don’t have to defend it. Make them defend their position. And outflank them. If the argument (silly as it is) is that a lot of poor folk (black) just don’t have photo IDs don’t argue that they still somehow manage to drive, buy liquor, have bank accounts, cash checks, etc. No—-suggest that if this is a problem it is a problem that calls for a solution, by damn, so let’s find one! and suggest a budget for helping people get photo IDs. Let’s dig down into this problem and solve it! We let ourselves get sucked into Leftist bickerfests, such as arguing about how many people do have photo IDs, when we should be turning those arguments against them and offering to fix this horrible problem that has so many poor Americans isolated, blah blah blah blah blah. Set up some bipartisan committees to research the problem. The whole issue would die on the vine if the Left were put in the position of actually getting involved in solving this “problem” because they know it doesn’t exist in the first place.
It seems like eons ago I was helping a friend “automate” his restaurant with simple handheld devices for the waiters to put in orders from the tables which were then transmitted to the various stations of the restaurant as well as the main office for bookkeeping. It also printed a copy at the table for the patrons.
Something along those lines today could easily be done in time as well as read ID and stamp ballots before deposit. Only drop boxes that are manned would be allowed so no midnight runs. Or something like that–if you need 45 days in order to vote I am sure a set number of hours during the day should be no issue. Or even have midnight hours if need be. Just make sure the penalties are well known and enforced with teeth.
I believe it was Willy Sutton who said he robbed banks because that is where the money was. If you make the penalty real, hard and publicized you will not have as many “vote robbers.”
Funny, but I was just thinking of Willy Sutton yesterday, after reading some starry-eyed comments on NextDoor about how our neighborhood is so safe it’s overreacting to be concerned about people ringing doorbells, going onto docks in the middle of the night, etc. I was thinking that this is a relatively affluent neighborhood and therefore, according to Willie Sutton, where one would go to find good stuff to steal.
Techies like you can solve the “problems” if allowed to do so. Back to challenging the Left so they either have to go along or go on record as being against efforts to rein in election fraud. A very simple step would be to limit the times drop boxes can be used, followed by mandatory surveillance of those boxes when they are open. Narrow the time frame down two weekends plus the week in the middle plus the Monday before the election plus election day, and the hours of operation from 6 A.M.-10:00 P.M. and have volunteers work 4-hour shifts, 4 shifts per day. Even in cold weather that is doable. Drilling companies work all the time in subzero weather around the clock with diesel-powered light towers and high-powered heaters, all easily rented.
Even the technology we have right this minute could be used. Not as efficiently, not as comprehensively, but more than we have now. The app Tiny Scanner lets a photographed/scanned image be sent immediately to an email address or file. Surely someone could set up a file system so each new data batch would go to a discrete searchable file. Each party could contribute an equal amount to the state’s election commission to buy cell phones and service specifically for this purpose. Just the most basic record of a name and the number of ballots dropped off would be a start, even without the photo and electronic stamping, until a more comprehensive system could be set up. If hacking is a problem then have data transferred by wire to a station onsite, to be delivered and downloaded at headquarters.
I’m imagining the impact on a crooked ballot deliverer knowing that he or she will be photographed and ID’d and that every ballot dropped off will have its envelope tied to him or her by a number associated with the ID confirmation., and if he or she is handed a printed receipt showing X number of ballots dropped at Box # ??? at 8:45 P.M. on November 4 by the person shown on the photo and verified ID. This would send the message that the process is so locked in, with detailed records and instant wireless communication, that if he or she tries to go to another drop box the information will show up there. Even if the state is so in the bag for the Left that it allows any number of ballots to be dropped off by anyone, anyone doing this is going to be intimidated by the knowledge of the paper and electronic trail identifying him or her. But an honest citizen bringing in family ballots won’t have to worry and won’t care.
They discovered during the pandemic just how easy it was to cheat on a massive scale. The only way it ends if for the cheaters to pay a significant price. I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to what kind of price I think would be appropriate.
My suggested penalties would probably be a little less, shall we say, “noisy” than yours, but still quite harsh. And mine would extend beyond the actual committers (if that’s the right word) of the acts to those who enable it, in much the same way that the driver of the getaway car is equally responsible for the robbery. That is, Secretaries of State and legislators who arbitrarily change election laws in contradiction to state constitutions, election officials who enable cheating in various ways such as refusing to even try to verify signatures or accepting envelopes without post marks, etc.
A photo of a T shirt held by Kid Rock:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJDfjLcXcAAE7cq?format=jpg&name=900×900
Biden pretty much limits his fondling to little girls.
I know. Did you ever see the C-Span videos of him as VP swearing in new federal officials while openly fondling the young daughters of those being sworn in? I was amazed to see it all available back in the 2020 campaign and have often wondered if it is still available.
I also wondered why clips of these videos were never part of Trump’s campaign. Even now they would be great—-“The Left makes a big deal out the allegation that I once, many years ago, supposedly had a consensual relationship with an adult woman—-but they elected this guy. Makes you wonder about what really matters to them, doesn’t it?”
The only conclusion one can draw is that pedophilia is OK for the vast majority of Democrat voters. We can’t shovel them into the ash bin of history fast enough.
That is exactly the only conclusion we can reach about acceptance of Biden’s behavior, especially when combined with the strident demand to keep pornographic material in student libraries and on school required reading lists.
Completely off topic, which is a specialty of mine, but has anyone considered what the “Black Swan” event may be this election cycle. I have run across many folks predicting one but nothing definitive. I have a couple of ideas but at this time nor through the election am I that concerned about something I would have no control over.
We talked about this a while back. The possibilities are almost endless, and neither you nor I, nor Amazona, Cluster, JDGE1 or Mark has any control over any of them. About all you can do is pray and hope you’re someplace else when it happens. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that it’s about a 90% likelihood that something really bad is going to happen before the election. The most likely event, IMO, is an attack on the electrical grid, and if that happens it won’t matter where you are, unless your on vacation out of the country.
Every time I do this I end of with different numbers because I don’t have anything written down, and the numbers keep changing. It’s generally accepted that around 10 million illegals have entered the country through the southern border on Biden’s watch. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick was on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo Sunday, and claimed the number is probably 13-14 million. Using the lower number, if 1/100th of 1% (.0001) are bad guys, that’s 1,000 or 125 eight-man terrorist cells throughout the U.S. You think maybe one or two of those cells might pull off a significant black swan event/ I’d take that bet.
I not only think it will happen, I think it will be coordinated to have as big an impact as possible on the election. The Covid plandemic was pretty effective but can’t really be used twice, but it showed that anything that can be claimed to affect the ability to vote can and will be used to create ways to control the votes. The awareness of this, and the publicity starting up about it, might have an inhibiting effect but I wouldn’t count on it.
I can think of several relatively low-tech attacks that would take thousands of lives, and I am sure that terrorists already have several in mind. But the goal would be to provide an excuse for not having the election at all, followed by excuses for controlling how people can vote.
If I were a writer I could do a pretty inspirational script with something designed to interfere with voting and dedicated patriots cobbling together a printing press to print paper ballots and people lining up to mark ballots and stick their fingers in ink bottles like they did in Iraq, preserving the electoral process in spite of everything. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house. Taking out the grid would just end up wiping out about 80% or so of the population, making it less desirable as a political move by the Left but more appealing to Islamic terrorists.
Ever since I was very young, there was constant chatter about how short time is, in relation to religious matters. There was always this emphasis on “soon”. To most anyone, but especially a young child, “soon” is one of the most imprecise words. To God, soon can mean 100+ years. To a child, the anticipation is generally in minutes to days, but rarely more.
For example, when our Blessed Mother appeared to the 3 children at Fatima, she talked about how we must repent, for time is short. Many adults, including some church leaders thought, some of what was mentioned would have already come to pass. In some ways it’s similar all of these sky-is-falling claims of cataclysmic events that are right around the corner due to climate change, where the goal-line keeps moving and new claims have to continue in order to keep people in fear. After repeated talks of some major event that will transpire soon and never seeming to actually happen, it becomes easy to start dismissing all of these conversations.
Also, in a conversation with a brother many years ago, he talked about how over the past 2,000 years, generations of people believed the 2nd coming of Jesus would happen “soon” in their lifetime, mostly because the tragedies they witnessed were too monumental to go unanswered.
For those reasons I rather dislike trying to guess at how things will unfold in the near future. However, though I can’t pin it to anything specific, there are a culmination of things unfolding where it feels like something unprecedented is likely to transpire within the next few years, maybe less. I’ve no idea what “it” will be, but there is a sense it will be an event or series of events that will impact everyone worldwide. Prophecies were foretold of a time where there will be diminishing believers, where good will be seen as evil and evil seen as good. We are certainly in the mist of that now.
There could also be prophetic significances to the current war in Israel. It has been said that God refers to Israel as “His people” and whatever you to do Israel, God will do to you.
There are also prophecies that suggest current Pope will be the last. In 1139, then Archbishop Malachy went to Rome from Ireland to give an account of his affairs. While there, he received a strange vision about the future that included the name of every pope, 112 in all from his time, who would rule until the end of time. We are now at the last prophecy.
In a series of 112 cryptic Latin phrases, the Irish saint “predicts” the Roman Catholic popes. He predicted there would be only one more pope after Benedict, and during his reign comes the end of the world. So Francis could be the last.
Saint Malachy’s final prediction in full is: “In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End.” It is said, his predictions are taken very serious, especially considering how acutely accurate they’ve been.
There are certainly many more pieces not mentioned here. While I’m not suggesting this is the “End Times”, I certainly wouldn’t dismiss that or some other biblical like event either.
“The Minneapolis City Council wanted to help out Uber and Lyft drivers, so it recently passed an ordinance setting a minimum wage for drive-share drivers. Under the law, companies such as Uber and Lyft must now pay their drivers a minimum of $1.40 per mile and at least 51 cents per minute while carrying a passenger.
In effect, the new law will ensure Uber and Lyft drivers operating in Minneapolis will get paid the equivalent to the city’s $15.57 an hour minimum wage.
Council Member Robin Wonsley sponsored the ordinance. She called the victory “a David Goliath story.”
“Regular working-class people took on two corporate giants and their political allies and won. Uber and Lyft want us to believe they are untouchable, and the status quo of exploiting workers cannot be fixed.”
This is indeed a great victory for all of the Uber and Lyft drivers operating in Minneapolis!
Except now there are none.”
It’s amazing how smug leftist ruin things with the never-ending unintended consequences of their laws & regulations, while at the same time postering themselves declaring a moral high-ground. Even more amazing is how these imbeciles, who are rarely held accountable for their devastating actions, keep getting elected.
https://headlineusa.com/the-real-minimum-wage-is-always-zero-no-matter-what-politicians-say/?utm_source=HW_EMAIL_NSP1400&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HWemail
This is indeed a great victory for all of the Uber and Lyft drivers operating in Minneapolis!
Except now there are none.
Proving once again that the real minimum wage is always zero, Uber and Lyft both announced they will simply cease operations in Minneapolis. In fact, Uber said it would pull out of the entire Twin Cities metro beginning May 1.
Somehow I doubt that these Uber and Lyft drivers are thanking the City Council. Nor are the people who use those services. But….but….MINIMUM WAGE!!