Again, the Economic Left parrots Leftist idiocy, without any consideration or cognitive effort. California Mayor Fights For A “Right To Housing” Ordinance To House Every Single Resident. The story that he references (but has broken links to) is here, This Northern California mayor wants to give everyone a right to housing.

This is a wonderful example of the difference between Rights and rights. A Right (big R) exists without the presence of government. A right (small R) requires government to enact it, usually by compelling a third party to provide the service the government is paying for. And it's rather magnanimous of him to "give everyone a right to housing," isn't it?

As someone who has worked with (and been) homeless, I have a little personal authority to speak on this subject. First of all, people lose their stable place to sleep for a thousand specific reasons. The general categories that they fall into are these:

• Economic no fault of their own (job loss, catastrophic injury, etc.)
• Economic by their own fault (substance abuse)
• Mental health issues (debilitated to the point they cannot take care of themselves and have no family support)

Living on the streets is very hard. You have to learn skills that will keep you alive that don't translate well in "normal" society. You have to constantly hustle to get what you need for the day, be it cash, in line at the soup kitchen, or to the shelter for a bed to sleep in.

I used to work for a wonderful woman who's job and personal mission was to house the homeless. She worked to get funding to build apartment complexes, ranging from a 10 studio apartment building to a 25 family unit complex. She worked with HUD to get the funding, local contractors to build them, HUD some more to get them set up as "Section 8" housing, where you paid 25% of your income as rent. She also got them furnished. She then worked with the local mental health agencies to screen clients to become residents. The complex office was also a therapists' office, where these people could get the emotional support and resources they needed.

And what did these people do with these apartments? Mostly, they kept off the streets. Some would relapse into substance abuse and would have to vacate, some stayed there a while before moving on to bigger and better things, Most would stay there until something forced a change. One guy I knew, it took over six months for him to sleep in the bed in his apartment. Those first few months, until the "you are safe now" light came in in his head, he slept on the floor, curled up in the corner of the room, with all of his possessions stuffed into the corner behind him, because that's how you slept on the street to protect yourself and to keep your stuff from getting stolen.

And what government giveth, government can taketh away. Programs like this are never more than one spending cut away from disappearing. You know, that "running out of other peoples' money" thing. So you depend on the largesse of government, being subtly (and not so subtly) reminded of, "you're here because we want you here, and you couldn't have gotten here or stay here without our help."

Government builds apartments to be sturdy and low maintenance. Esthetics are not a significant consideration during design. One of my best friends ended up in one of these complexes. It was dank, dark and crowded. His apartment was a 200 square-foot studio. The elevators were not functional a good portion of the time, and his apartment was not comfortable to live in due to a lack of air conditioning during the summer when it's 90+ outside. The heat was on full blast all the time during the colder months and no thermostat to even slow it down. His neighbors were barely functional drug users, and/or had serious mental issues. Roaches and bedbugs were also prevalent. Given a choice between living in an apartment like his or the street, that would be a really hard decision to make.

The last point, people by and large do not appreciate what is given to them, especially if they don't have to worry about maintenance or repairs. Invariably, the more you give, the more they want. It never ends well.

I've had some time to think on this, plus the recent developments in Florida to expand on my thoughts of Killing Butterflies in the wake of the push of school officials to “help” children transgender, let me offer this:

“Grooming” is one of those words where you need to apply context in order to determine if the act has positive or negative aspects. You can be groomed for a political office, groomed to be promoted in your job, or groomed to be abused. Grooming is more than training or teaching. I can train you how to do something, say some kind of management position. Or I can groom you for that position, which means extra work for me to make sure the person being groomed knows exactly what to do (and not to do), along with specific knowledge or skills.

Now let’s put it to the test. Remember when you were 6 years old. You had no experience, no moral compass, and every day you learned something new. You were a sponge, absorbing everything the authority figures in your life (parents, family, teachers, etc.) told you. You absorbed it without too much cogent consideration (remember, you’re still six years away from your pre-frontal cortex really beginning to develop) and took it at face value. “An adult said it, it must be true.”

Every day held new challenges. As you grew, you always felt unbalanced, too small or too big, constantly unsure about everything in your life, especially who you are.

I do oversimplify, and there are always exceptions to the rule here. That being said, trusting good adults is how children grow up and mature into adults who do good things.

Now let me introduce our groomer. The groomer has an agenda, or a personal belief held so deeply no amount of facts will shake their belief.

When a person decides to go on a quest to “help transgender children,” that quest will never end. They will look until they find one (or more) and sometimes what appears to be a borderline case is “close enough.” The appropriateness of this quest will never be questioned, for (as C.S. Lewis put it) "[F]or they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Children and young adults as part of their nature question and try almost everything. Why else would a two-year-olds’ third word (after momma and da-da) is “NO!”? Because they try everything without any concept of it will hurt them or not. We, as the adults have to guide them properly.

When a groomer exploits a child’s questioning about themselves, the unsureness they have about who they are, this is when the groomer swoops in to steer the child to what the groomer wants.

I remember an episode of Diff’rent Strokes (Season 5, “The Bicycle Man” in two parts) where they showed exactly how a child molester works.

The methods for a child molester and a “transgender advocate” are exactly the same. Get the kid interested in something, get them to trust you. Then slowly push the kid further and further in the direction you want them to go until they get there.

When I put it like that, the concept is terrifying, is it not?

I’m not here to incessantly roast Economic Left, just on the crap they get massively wrong. And like a blind pig, sometimes the get something right. Hey, it happens. Man Explains To Boss How No Raise For 2 Years = Low Effort On His Part.

First of all, there is a pay range for any job. That pay range is determined by how much revenue a person can generate at that job. That revenue caps how much that person can be paid. If a worker generates $8/hour in revenue, it makes no sense to pay him $10/hour, does it?

Next, this is not the Pre-80s, where a worker can expect to spend 25+ years of their life working for a single company. The bad news about today is, if you want a pay raise, the most efficient way to go about it is to improve your skillset and jump to another company that pays more.

Another thing is to consider is the Pareto Principle (also known as the “80/20” rule), which says “80% of your businesses’ output comes from 20% of your workforce." This means out of ten employees in a shop, two of them are producing 80% of the output.

The Great Resignation has been brought on by employers who fail to recognize and properly compensate that 20%. If the guy in the article really was the top performer, then the boss made a terrible mistake in not bumping up his pay. That can manifest itself by just him getting a raise, or maybe the boss letting the bottom guy go and the top performer gets the pay the boss was paying the other worker.

So, yeah, if employers want to keep the workers responsible for the most output, they should do what is needed or be prepared to lose that revenue. Employers in this "NOW HIRING!" signs everywhere environment no longer have the leverage in employee negotiations.

I didn’t want you venturing into the Great Unknown concerning my suggestion to make Biden Stew, so I made a pot. I was a bit (well, a lot) hesitant about throwing the beans in because I hate beans in general, but I did it anyway. Under conditions where you would actually have to make this concoction, you don’t get a choice anyway. It would be this or starve.

I was able to get all of the ingredients at Wal-Mart for $7.16. I splurged on the veggies and got Peas and Carrots for $1.82, and cheaped out with Jumbo Bar S hot dogs for $1.58. I could have gone with Corn or Green Beans for 86 cents. If I had went that way, it would have run me $6.20. Peas, if I had bought a 6-pack, would have run me 64 cents a can. At its’ most expensive, that’s 48 cents a cup.

I cooked it according to the instructions and I got 15 cups of food out of it. My normal servings are in the 2-3 cup range, but if there’s no other food, the limit is going to be a cup a day. I ran the numbers, and out of each cup you get 230 calories, with 35 grams of carbs and 8 grams of protein.

And my predictions were correct, the taste was as bland as all get out. I highly suggest adding black pepper, garlic, etc., whatever seasoning you like to give it some taste. Again, if you’re in a true survival situation, taste is not an option until the needs of calories, carbs and proteins are satisfied.

Again, my biggest personal sticking point was the beans. Dark kidney beans are what I get in my chili, that’s why I went with them. And, they weren’t that bad. I had to focus on tasting for the beans in order to notice them.

At the end of the day, if I’m out of town at a class or at home while the family is away, I can cook a pot of this and be happy for a week. In fact, I’m putting a 3 cup serving in my lunch bag and just having it cold for lunch. Considering what I ate in the Navy, this isn’t all that bad.

The inability for second-order thinking cannot be any clearer in this rant from the Economic Left: Landlords Are Using Secret Algorithms To Screen You As A Tenant — Find Out What They’re Saying!

First of all, put yourself in the shoes of this landlord. Let’s say you have an 8-unit apartment building. Empty or full, you have expenses like taxes, insurance, maintenance, and maybe some extra money left over you can live off of.

Here’s some criteria a landlord (any reasonable person, really) would want in a tenant:

• No loud parties overnight, every night (occasional Fri/Sat okay)
• No leaving trash everywhere
• No tearing up the common area equipment (pool, laundry, etc.)
• No conducting illegal operations out of the apartment (cooking meth, etc.)
• No changing their motorcycle oil in the living room
• No tearing up of the apartment appliances/walls/etc.

Why, you may ask?

Well, items #1-4 would discourage other people from renting your apartments, which means less income for you. Items 2 through 6 also means less money for you, as you have to clean up after them or replace the stuff they broke.

So, why would it not make sense for a landlord to check out your history to see if you’re going to be able to pay the rent (paying it on-time would also be a big plus) and you’re not going to abuse the building, the apartment and scare off other tenants?

You get a good credit score by not taking on too much debt and paying it on-time or early.

You get a good tenant score by paying the rent on time, not abusing the building, parties all night every night, taking good care of the unit, fixing small stuff yourself (and letting the landlord know that you did so), promptly informing the landlord of stuff that needs fixing that you can’t do and things like that. This is pretty basic courtesy and proper adulating. Nothing very hard about it people.

It also entails you as the prospective tenant to run a “background check” on the landlord as well. Is he prompt with repairs? Does he enter your apartment unannounced/when you’re not there? Is he an asshole? The answers to those questions would help you decide to rent there or perhaps the next complex down the road.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!

After writing, rewriting, editing and double-checking, I finally got all of my articles on prepping completed (well, at least as I was going to get). So I posted them. I am not an expert, I am not the "be all and end all" well of knowledge on it or anything else. I wanted to get you some of my thoughts and a place to start if you wanted to prepare for the gathering storm.

I have said this many times, let me say it again. "I do not unilaterally condemn or condone a person based on their political party positions." If I can work with someone in a limited way on one issue, I do, as long as they can work with me. Even if we disagree on 20 other issues.

I have a couple of Conservative jokes that I haven't posted yet, here's one to set the context of this post:

I ran into a couple I am acquaintances with and their young daughter the other day. The couple is rather Liberal and I don't see them very often. Their daughter was an infant the last time I saw her, and now she's graduating elementary school.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" I asked her.

"I want to be President!" she happily exclaimed. Her parents beamed.

"That's great!" I replied. "What are you going to do as President?"

"I'm going to help the homeless!" she again, enthusiastically replied.

"That's great" I said again. "But you don't have to be president to help homeless people." She looked at me quizzically. "You know Charlie the homeless guy who asks for change in front of the supermarket? You can help him today. If you come over to my house, mow the lawn and edge my driveway, I'll pay you $50 for your efforts. I'll then take you over to the supermarket and you can give Charlie that money so he can eat and get a room for a couple of days."

The young lady furrowed her brow as she thought about this. After a minute, she said, "Why doesn't Charlie mow your lawn for you and you could pay him?"

I said, "Welcome to being a Conservative." Her parents haven't spoken to me since.

I related that story because David Hogg, the pretty-boy survivor of the Parkland school shooting who became an anti-gun mouthpiece, much like Scoldilocks Greta Thunberg did for climate change, posted the following Tweet the other day:

In other words, he is lamenting the fact that government bureaucracy is overbearing, capricious, frustrating, and another seventeen synonyms. He is griping about something I have been complaining about since before his parents met. I wrote an article about bureaucracy, and how Liberals and Leftists love to use the bureaucracy to stymie and deter people they don't like. The process is the punishment.

I don't know or really care what business Mr. Hogg is trying to start. As long as it provides a legal product and doesn't infringe on my liberties I'm genuinely happy for him. And once he gets it off the ground and has to start worrying about repaying investors, corporate taxes, payroll, profit margins and even more bureaucracy, I hope these experiences can lead him to the point where I can say to him with a smile and an extended hand, "Welcome to being a Conservative."

I have decided to add a new category, this will give me some "fresh fodder" to chew on. I've been thrown off a FB page "Economic Left" because I dared express dissent to this writers oversimplified, worn-out and pedantic tropes. It's where I came up with the self-describing "Always Insulted, Never Refuted" tagline. This person also has a web page that I have now added to my linkroll. Don't worry, I'll bring you the most baseless, idiotic assertions and "conclusions" that website has to offer right here, along with the receipts. And if he's correct on a point (or agrees with me, not necessarily the same thing) I'll put that out there as well.

Oh, please feel free to email him, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and send him links to my articles about his articles.

If you didn’t know it by now, my day job is fixing things, which I am very good at my job. I’ve been taking things apart since I was 12. It took me a while to learn how to put them back together with no leftover parts though. 

I like to see how things work, and how I can break or exploit them. So, I’m going to show how someone (MIGHT HAVE) altered the election enough for Biden to win.

I have no direct or circumstantial evidence on the “who” or “how,” only how I would have done it if someone paid me to fix an election.

First of all, Pravda likes to throw out the term “Widespread voter fraud,” and all I can say is, there was no “widespread” about it. I can tell you exactly where it (could) have happened. I possess nothing but open public records, I have no proof of anything. I only have my reasoning ability and enough things to make you go “Hmm… that’s strange…” Which is how most discoveries happen.

The people who (might have) done this had four years to plan and set this in motion. They would have had years to move people and things into position, then activate them at the planned moment.

ATTACKING THE MACHINES

I had a friend (he passed last year) who worked for the County election Commission where we live for a couple of elections. He explained the system to me as best he could.

“Each polling location is its’ own network, not connected to anything. The computers used to verify voters, the voting machines themselves, and the server recording everything was a closed network. After the polls closed and the data downloaded, a data module was removed from the server, and along with the box containing the paper votes and two poll workers hopped into a police car, who ran with lights and sirens to the Election Commission offices, where everything was counted and then reported to the State.”

I related this to show hacking individual machines (what the Pravda always talks about) is useless. You can’t hack a machine except for those few minutes IF they are updated from the manufacturer well before the election. Usually these would be updated via thumb drive or closed and air-gapped network after the updates were downloaded and verified. If you did hack “A” machine, you can’t substantially affect its numbers. If one machine at a polling station shows substantially (100+) more votes than the other machines, that would be a red flag.

So, if you wanted to hack a machine, which would it be? How about the one that combines all of the precincts? I’ll explain “what they might have done” later. I would have also used a variety of methods that are easily penetrable and lacking of point-to point control, like mail-in ballots. However I am discussing here the method with the lowest risk/highest reward criteria. This gets WAY easier if the voting machine company is “on your side” politically, because compromising the system (and the necessary risks entailed) would not be necessary. They would put the “secret features” you need into the code itself. This way the user machines would do it and be totally undetectable.

ATTACKING THE SYSTEM

A voting system is useless without people. That being said, it’s easier to hack people than it is systems. You could blackmail someone into compromising the system, but that takes a terrible risk of malicious compliance, which would lead to discovery. You run the risk of the person in question being immune to blackmail, or someone with even a bit of morals to regret doing the work and going to the authorities. No, the people you need are active, willing and even aggressive confederates. What you want to do is get a solid believer of your goal into the positions where they could carry out the plan quietly, and any overwatch of their actions would also be “in on the plan.” That being said, these different people must not know that each other is in on the plan. That would lead to compromise in multiple different ways.

WHERE TO ATTACK

Okay, we have the “What to attack” and “Who will attack” but we need where to best apply this attack. Now a concept: If you had only one index finger to push someone over, where would you use it, the forehead or the small of their back? The forehead, because the person’s feet can’t help keep them up, not to mention the leverage of 6 feet, rather than 3 feet.

Another thought: You want to hide a needle, where would you hide it? In a haystack, or in a warehouse full of needles?

There would not be a single state to do this. I would pick the 5-8 states where the Trump –Clinton results were the closest, even though only 3 larger “battleground” states would be all that is needed. You want extra states because redundancy and overlap is critical if the efforts fail in 1-2 states.

I have looked at four states that had a lot of controversy in the 2020 election. I’m going to use Wisconsin as the example, however Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania it appears all got “the same treatment.”

THE DIRTY DEED ITSELF

Votes, like money is “Fungible.” once they are tallied together, you can’t point into the pool and say “that’s my vote right there, #12,382.”

Here’s a table showing the reported 2020 state-wide results and the Dane County results:

.

Now, we do a “What if…?” and through a minor “computer glitch” 14,000 Trump votes out of the 339,006 cast across the County, a measly 4.1% of the Dane County votes tallied for Trump suddenly came up Biden:

Notice between the two tables the state-wide and Dane County total votes are the same, and notice how Dane county vote tally still stomped Trump to elect Joe. But back on the state-level, Trump went from losing by 20,682 to winning by 7,318.

Again, I do not know what system they use, I don’t know what safeguards that county election commission has in place. Considering that it was designed and run by fallible humans, this would not be an insurmountable task to plan for over the span of three years.

Let’s go over this one more time.

• You select 5-8 states where the election will be close.
• You pick a county that is heavily Democrat
• You get “true believers” into key positions of the county election commission who will a) compromise the necessary systems and b) not raise alarms if something looks off while the malware does what it’s supposed to do.
• You compromise the 8-10 tally machines (not the hundreds of voting machines you and I interact with) with malicious software that will “flip” a certain number of votes from Trump to Biden, then cleanly remove itself so as not to be discovered by later audits. 

Don’t forget, a flipped vote counts as two votes because it takes away from the other guy while adding it to “your guy.” So you only have to do half the work with less exposure than ballot stuffing.

Now, I came up with this with a total of about 6 hours of thinking and research... Imagine what I could do if given a couple of years, access to the machines and systems, along with a budget to make it “worth my time.”

Don't tell me this "Just doesn't happen." Here's a Tweet about Dara Lindenbaum, Biden's nominee to head the Federal Election Commission on April 6th of this year. The Tweet has video, so you can't say I'm misquoting her.

Sen. Ted Cruz: "As an officer of the court, you were willing to put your name on a legal pleading alleging that the machines used in Georgia in 2018 were switching votes illegally from one candidate to another. Is that correct?"

Dara Lindenbaum: "Yes"

This means it has happened. It was caught, I don't know how or why. Knowing that (given the time and resources) I could circumvent stuff like that.

Last point, I can make the same argument for Wayne County in Michigan, Delaware County in Pennsylvania, and Fulton County in Georgia. All of these counties voted massively for both Clinton and Biden, so how’s a few votes being switched from Trump to Biden really going to show itself? And the 69 Electoral College votes from these four states alone would have kept Trump President.

Yeah, shit like this keeps me awake at night.

So I found this article by The Guardian, What happens when a group of Fox News viewers watch CNN for a month? and had to say something on it.

According to The Guardian, this was,

A study that paid viewers of the rightwing cable network to switch shed light on the media’s influence on people’s views.

According to dictionary.com, the 2nd definition of "study" when used as a "verb with an object" reads, "to examine or investigate carefully and in detail."

This is not a study, it's a chilling propaganda piece. First of all, here's the actual study the article references. The bias of the "researchers" who ran this study is blatant and appalling.

The basis of the study was to pay people who normally watch FOX News to watch CNN. There was a control group who remained watching FOX, and at the end of the study, the participants were questioned, including questions that you had to be watching CNN to properly answer. The results found that the views of the people who switched to CNN had changed significantly.

All this proves is CNN has great marketing and delivery of their "version" of the news. Much like in a Coke/Pepsi blind taste test, more people go with Pepsi, but still buy and drink Coke. I think there should have been a study the other way as well, Have a group of CNN viewers (if you can find any with their viewership being down 90%) and pay them to watch Fox and see what those results would be.

Now, here's the two things that should chill you to your spine, no matter your political views. First, the assumption by the researchers and The Guardian that FOX News is wrong and CNN is correct in all things. Second, that no matter who, facts and opinion are blended together and you can no longer separate them.

When I was growing up, my Dad watched Walter Cronkite almost exclusively. Rarely the Huntly-Brinkley Report. I still remember watching Walter Cronkite on January 22nd, 1973. They came back from a commercial break and Walter was on the phone, something I had never seen before. He remained silent, occasionally giving sideways glances at the camera, but mostly downwards and to his left, probably taking notes. After a couple of minutes (it seemed like an hour), he hung up the phone, looked at the camera and reported the passing of former President Johnson. The thing of it is, you never knew the personal politics of Cronkite, Huntly, Brinkley, Jennings or any of them. They reported the news and let you decide for yourself.

Today, you are given your opinion if you like it or not, and that goes for most every news outlet. Which is why I get my news from The Babylon Bee. Just kidding. I read multiple sites on both sides, go directly to the source when I can and link to mostly Left-leaning sites to perform Political Judo on them, using their own words against them.

And CNN can't catch a break, even on their home court...

(When I publish my Prepper section, this will also be in there)

If your parents or Grandparents lived during the Great Depression, they probably didn’t talk about it that much. When the stock market crashed, my mother was six years old, living in an already dirt poor part of Pennsylvania so far up in the hills that “they had to pipe the sunshine in.” My dad was thirteen and was living in Cleveland, Ohio. What they did tell me was "times were tough."

I happened across this recipe perusing through the Internet. This was originally called “Hoover Stew,” pertaining to President Hoover, who oversaw the start of it. This is a simple, cheap concoction that has bulk and meets most of the basic dietary needs for daily life.

Starting off with the tomatoes, which have multiple benefits all by themselves. If you’re looking to grow your own food, this is first on the list. Then you have a second vegetable, never a bad thing. The beans provide plant protein, the hot dogs provide the animal protein, both of which are essential for people.

Ingredients:

* = your choice or whatever is at hand.
1lb macaroni or any pasta.
2 15oz cans stewed tomatoes
1 15oz can beans (with the juice) *
1 15oz can vegetables (with the juice) *
1lb of pre-cooked cheap meat (hot dogs, sausage, etc.)

Caveats:

This will be bland. Add spices to taste, try spiced tomatoes, fry hot dogs before adding them, etc.

Instructions:

Start with large pot. Cook pasta for half the specified time. Drain and set aside. In the now empty pot combine tomatoes, vegetable and beans. Include juice from cans. Mix well, then return pasta to pot and mix well. Add cut-up hot dogs and mix well. Add water if needed. Simmer 5-7 minutes until pasta is fully cooked. Serves 8+.

Serve!

Here's another simple question by Senator Ted Cruz that a Leftist cannot give a simple, straightforward, human answer:

"Judge Kato, is racial discrimination wrong?" 

This is what happens when a persons political agenda takes precedence over their morality. The human and obvious answer should be, "Senator Cruz, racial discrimination is wrong. Morally, ethically and legally." And in six-and-a-half minutes, she can't say that for any of them. She hems and haws about the legality and case law, but can't come out and say, "It's wrong."

This reminds me of President Clinton, "It depends on the what the definition of 'is' is."

Greetings all! I finally got enough time to sit down and sort through all of my notes and articles in progress queue. It turns out I have four posts to go up on this feed (the first is right below this post), and they will be coming out for the next several Mondays. I also have eight articles on "prepping" that will go into their own Deep Dive section. AND I have another 3-4 that I've transcribed to myself so those will be transcribed and edited forthwith. And I think there's a couple more that I haven't found yet.

I was told many, many, (many) years ago, “opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.” However, it’s the kind of opinion is what matters.

I found this a while back. Twitter @sgrstk 4/8/40:

A fact is information minus emotion. An opinion is information plus experience. Ignorance is an opinion lacking information. And, stupidity is an opinion that ignores a fact.

There are different levels of opinions.

First is the “echoing mind chamber” level, where the only important facts on the subject in question is your “thoughts on the matter.” Which translates to, “I have zero data, zero observations, and zero facts that support my position, but because I think it is so, it must be so.” This level makes you look like an idiot the second someone brings a fact to the discussion.

Next we have the “Somewhat-informed level”, where you have collected data/facts/etc. that only supports your position. Any data/facts that don’t agree with yours are “irrelevant/fake/made-up” and thus don’t count and are summarily ignored. When you achieve this level, you can hold your own until facts that disagree with yours are presented.

The highest level is the “fully-informed” level. This is where you have researched and documented the facts and opinions of both sides of the issue. You have thoroughly cogitated through the entire subject. You came down on the side you did according to the facts plus your morals, beliefs and character. By being fully informed this makes you able to adequately argue for both sides of the discussion. This gives you the edge in the discussion in the fact that you probably know their arguments better than they do. By knowing what their points are going to be, you can have your facts to refute anything they have to present on hand and ready to go. I call this the “Ben Shapiro level” because he can shoot down your opinion and facts with better facts before you can get your opinion/facts all the way out of your mouth.

Here’s the most important point: In doing all of this research, you may learn something you didn’t know before. Something that may modify or even change your whole view and position on the subject. Which is what happens when you let facts and firmly-rooted morals determine your opinion. That’s a whole lot better than letting your emotions of the moment shape your opinion.

My apologies for missing last week, I was out of town for a training and just got back that Saturday.

I have multiple articles on the hook, or in the queue, and real life keeps throwing me curve balls. Those I can handle, but the knuckleball I got on Thursday was a bit harder. We were hit with an ice storm (rain during freezing temperatures, trees and everything gets a coat of ice) overnight on Groundhog Day. Thursday the power went out, and as of Monday, as I write this, it's still out.

Which brings me to my point: I have several articles on preparedness (aka "Prepping") and I never had the time to set up a section and banner for it, but that's my top priority as of now.

I was mostly prepared for this outage. The only thing I lacked was a generator. Well, I have one now. Luckily the utility gas hasn't stopped, so all I needed to do was have enough of a generator to power the furnace. I have a propane heater that can keep a single room warm and enough propane to keep it going for over a week. The family and pets were hunkered down in there until I got things working again. It took two trips to towns outside the affected area (450 miles total) to first get a too-small generator (the last one they had) and then get one adequate for my needs.

So right now we are warm, and the family has their computers and Internet to keep them entertained. The refrigerators and stove are working, but the microwave is not. We are using headlamps at night, thankfully we have lots of batteries for them. The next outage I will be able to run lights and the essential stuff as well. I just have to do the work to know amperage and the what and how to "backfill" the house with power but not to energize the external lines. There will be an article on that.

So I found this Tweet the other day. The full video on this is here but I don't have an exact time index where it is for you. It's over two hours long.

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked a very simple, straightforward question of Jill Sanborn, who is the Executive Assistant Director of the FBI.

Cruz asked,

"Did any FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events of January 6th?"

Before I give her answer, let me say Senator Cruz asked specifically about "active participation." I have no doubt there were undercover agents or confidential informants among the people, that's a given. That's also not what was asked. "Observe and report" is one thing, "actively participate" is a entirely different matter.

Ms. Sanborn answered: "I can't answer that." My view here is any answer short of an unequivocal "NO" answers Senator Cruz's question as a "YES."

Senator Cruz then modified his question to "Did any FBI agents or confidential informants commit any crimes of violence in the events of January 6th?", then asked again, "Did any FBI agents or confidential informants actively encourage and incite crimes of violence on January 6th?" Both of these questions received the same response: "I can't answer that."

When you consider events like the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmore of Michigan seems to have had FBI agents or CI's help with the planning of the plot, you have to ask yourself what side of the line that constitutes entrapment the FBI is on. Actually, that's a rhetorical question, as the answer provided in this short exchange. Agent Sanborn's non-answer answer clearly indicates the FBI, directly through actual federal agents or CI's, contributed to a protest becoming a riot, which Democrats then turned a molehill into a mountain, calling it an "insurrection."

In the words of Senator Mark Rubio,

"...you're not going to convince most normal and sane people that our government last year was almost overthrown by a guy wearing a Viking hat and speedos."

So there you have it. If you are part of a group, especially groups with "radical" ideas, you must act as you have been infiltrated by a federal agent or one of your members has been turned by said agents. The FBI is sounding more and more like the secret police.

FBI no longer means "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity." I don't know and don't want to know what they stand for now.

ICYMI, the start of the new year saw a new government for the City of New York assumed the reigns of power. The new District Attorney for Manhattan is Alvin Bragg. Yes, the job Adam Schiff, Nora Levin, Arthur Branch and Jack McCoy held on Law and Order. Mr. Bragg ran on some sort of a "compassion for criminals" platform. His "Day One" policy memo to his ADA's had the following points: 

-Robbers wielding guns or other deadly weapons to steal from stores and businesses will be prosecuted only for petty larceny - a misdemeanor - provided no victims were injured and there is no 'genuine risk of physical harm.'

-Convicts who are caught with weapons other than guns will have their charges downgraded to misdemeanors, as long as they are not also charged with more serious offenses. The felony would normally see crooks jailed for seven years.

-Burglars who loot residential storage areas, parts of homes that are not 'accessible to a living area' and businesses located in mixed-use buildings, will be prosecuted for a minor class D felony, where they would normally face class B and class C charges punishable by up to 25 and 15 years in prison respectively.

-Drug dealers suspected of 'acting as a low-level agent of a seller' will only be charged with misdemeanor possession.

-Offenses like marijuana misdemeanors, prostitution, resisting arrest and fare dodging will no longer be prosecuted.

Let's step back for a moment and look at how things are supposed to work. The legislative branch (State Assembly, City Council, etc.) pass laws that define unacceptable social conduct. The executive branch is supposed to zealously enforce those laws uniformly by using the police to investigate complaints, gather evidence, arrest suspects and present the suspects and evidence to the District Attorney's office to be prosecuted.

The District Attorney does have some "prosecutorial discretion" to decline to prosecute where the DA believes the case is not winnable, or there are insufficient resources able to be devoted to get a conviction, things like that. All that being said, for a DA to blanket downgrade or ignore laws is an usurpation of power, and is basically telling the legislative branch to eff off.

Mr. Bragg is also indirectly telling criminals to terrorize the city as they see fit. This is not an unforeseeable result of the "defund the police" movement. Mr. Bragg has also indirectly told the good people of New York he doesn't give a shit about you. Citizens and businesses are now expected to let bad people take their money and possessions, then meekly say, "Thank you sir, would you like some more?"

How do I know what will happen? Up until 1993 or so, New York was a shithole. Citizens were not safe, crime was rampant. You carried two wallets, one with your ID, cards and cash, then a second wallet with $40-50 in it to give up when (not if) you were robbed. When Rudy Giuliani took over as Mayor, he instituted a "broken windows" model of policing. This means if a police officer saw you do a minor crime (breaking a window, jumping a turnstile), you were arrested. Not ignored or detained and given a warning. You see, a turnstile jumper didn't just steal the subway fare, he most likely assaulted and robbed several people while riding the trains to where they were going, which probably was to something like rob a bodega or do a drug deal. If he's arrested and taken to the police station for jumping the turnstile, the other bad stuff he would have done didn't happen because the guy was in a cell instead of continuing to run loose. With this type of policing, crime of all types plummeted and the city became safe to walk the streets.

As Giuliani's successors (Bloomberg, De Blasio. and now Adams) have each progressively departed from Giuliani's methods, NY is once again a shit hole. With policies like this now in place, A-B testing has clearly indicated that the skids to accelerate for the inevitable downhill slide are now thoroughly greased.

To explain the wording for the title, Mr. Bragg openly campaigned that he was going to do this, and he still got 83.7% of the vote. Now, are the people who voted for Mr. Bragg in agreement with him and okay with his policies, or did they just pull the "D" lever, I don't know. The only thing I do know is it's nigh impossible to get a U-Haul or moving truck to go from NY to anywhere else, just like California, and other "deep red" states. 2020 Migration Report by North American Van Lines. So we know that the people who are fed up with the crime, high taxes and high cost of living are moving to where those issues aren't.

So for everyone who voted for this DA, your permission slip to act shocked (SHOCKED! I say!) is hereby revoked. You made this bed, now sleep in it.

The thing about having hard, declared personal moral standards is sometimes they conflict with what you want or think. If you're truly committed to your moral standards, you have to change what you want or think when there's a conflict between the two sides. Morals are like Amendments to the Constitution. Yes, you can change or modify them, but it's a hard and long process and it's meant to be that way. Morals that can be easily created, modified or deleted are not morals at all.

Since I've had an opinion on abortion, it's been "pro-choice." I have always held the belief that life started at conception, however I also believed it was the woman's body. A few years ago, I started really looking into the standards and particulars on this subject. That being said, I'm not here to sell you, either way. I'm here to describe why I'm now 100% pro-life.

Take a through physical survey of yourself right now, at this moment. Look carefully at what (not "who") you are. Now, think about what you were an hour ago. With the exception of a catastrophic event (trauma, dismemberment, heart attack, etc.), You are 99.999% of the person you were an hour ago. Your weight might be a pound heavier or lighter if you have just eaten a meal or had a waste dump, but again for all intents and purposes, you're basically the same person and the two "you's" are indistinguishable.

Now continue that trend. Compare the you of one hour ago vs. you of two hours ago. Continue that process all the way up until you were 30 minutes old. During this whole time you are a considered a person. Now, go back one more hour to 30 minutes before you were born. According to the law at that minute, you are not a person. But is that really true? Like every hour span you've studied up until this point, the only significant difference is where you are, i.e. you're inside or outside your mother.

Now go all the way back, to that moment when you were 8 cells, or 4, or 2 or just one cell. Go back ten more seconds, when there was an egg and a sperm nearby trying to get into the egg. That moment, when the egg receives the DNA from the sperm and now has the ability to start growing. That moment, that second, when the egg and the sperm combined then divided, that is when you were born. This is that hour where there is a big difference between the start and end of that hour. From that moment until you left your mother's womb is just paperwork. Those who are heavily invested in abortion-on-demand would say, "It's not a baby, it's just a clump of cells." And, semantically, I have to agree with them. But every baby started this way. And like Ben Shapiro says, "Aren't we all, right now, just a clump of cells?" 

Yes, we can't make the connection between the "us" now and the "us" at two cells. It's too big of a leap. I am saying it is us, you just have to look at it in that shorter time frame.

Looking throughout recorded history, the most heinous atrocities that mankind has committed has been the killing of babies and pregnant women. Killing men was no significant thing, killing women was worse, but still not very bad. But if you really, really wanted to piss off a tribe of people, kill an infant or pregnant woman. Destroy that promise of life.

So now I ask, why is abortion not just normalized, considered no big deal, even celebrated today? Remember, when Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, she was a racist and eugenicist. When the pro-abortion people use the phrase "For the health of the mother," uninformed people take that (reasonably) to mean, "the mother and/or baby will die if the baby is carried to term." What I found out is the term "health" encompasses physical, mental, financial and relationship health.

Think I'm blowing smoke? From Newsweek, Abortion: What the 'Health' Exemption Really Means. Quoting from the article:

...[I]n Doe v. Bolton, a companion case issued the same day as Roe, the court provided further guidance on what preserving the "health of the mother" entailed. "Medical judgment may be exercised in light of all factors--physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age--relevant to the wellbeing of the patient," the court wrote. "All these factors may relate to health." [emphasis mine]

So if a woman goes to an abortion clinic and tells them, "I can't have this baby. I'm trying to get my career started and I don't have the time or income to raise a child," that is enough reason for the doctor to proceed with an abortion to kill that baby. And ICYMI, the legal definition of "baby" is anyone before their twenty-first birthday, i.e., an adult. So, just in case it becomes legal to kill babies after birth, remember that.

Okay folks, thank you for sticking with me this far. As we move into 2022, I wanted to do a little housekeeping.

First off, I have updated my Markisms in a major update and I now have about 3,400 of them. Please, download and enjoy.

Next, likewise my Ringtones have been significantly added to and there are now 373 of them.

I have also added several various deep dives (in no particular order), namely Soviet Jokes, Self-defense is a Right, Centralized Gun control, The process is the punishment and Price vs. Cost.

And the biggest news of all... I have decided to start a video channel next year. I plan to put it on both YouTube and Locals. While the YT channel will likely be banned in short order, I'll be using it to drive viewers to the Locals page. Of course, I'm still in the process of researching, grokking, then actually setting things up. I'll let you know when.

Right now I am recording some recent subjects and various evergreen Deep Dives. "Evergreen" means the subject doesn't "get old," because they are about general issues and not specific events. What was relevant when I wrote it then is still relevant today. And it won't be me blandly rereading (ala Ben Stein) what I've already posted, but more like Jordan B. Peterson, who works through his thoughts during the presentation.

What this will do is generate a couple months worth of content and a foundation of who I am and what I think and believe. I'll be using those to develop the back-end process to easily and consistently post content. Just as a reminder, I have two jobs, a family, a house and a hobby going on as well that take priority.

Despite it being near Christmas, this isn't about that star. A while back, I wrote about a hat store that had earned the ire of the SJW's because they had a yellow Star of David like the German Jews had to wear in 1940's Germany. This one, though, had "Unvaccinated" rather than "Jude" (German for "Jew").

I just came across this article, German call to ban 'Jewish star' at Covid demos. From the article:

"Anti-lockdown protesters argue that the ruling liberal establishment is violating their personal freedom and exaggerating the Covid health risks. However, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said last year it was "unspeakable" that Germans were comparing restrictions on their lives with the abuses of the Third Reich."

I can see their point. Just because the Australian government is forcing the non-vaccinated into concentration COVID camps, and New York State is setting up "Quarantine Camps", I just know the German government would never follow suit. (That's sarcasm if you missed it)

Every day, we all move a little closer to a world Totalitarianism. Resist. Fight back. Do not comply. This is the hill to die on, because a lot more will be crushed if we don't.

I was told many, many, (many) years ago, “opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.” However, it’s the kind of opinion is what matters.

I found this a while back. Twitter @sgrstk 4/8/40:

A fact is information minus emotion. An opinion is information plus experience. Ignorance is an opinion lacking information. And, stupidity is an opinion that ignores a fact.

There are different levels of opinions.

First is the “echoing mind chamber” level, where the only important facts on the subject in question is your “thoughts on the matter.” Which translates to, “I have zero data, zero observations, and zero facts that support my position, but because I think it is so, it must be so.” This level makes you look like an idiot the second someone brings a fact to the discussion. You won't feel that way, since your thoughts on the matter trump any facts presented.

Next we have the “Somewhat-informed level”, where you have collected data/facts/etc. that only supports your position. Any data/facts that don’t agree with yours are “irrelevant/fake/made-up” and thus don’t count and are summarily ignored. When you achieve this level, you can hold your own until facts that disagree with yours are presented.

The highest level is the “fully-informed” level. This is where you have researched and documented the facts and opinions of both sides of the issue. You have thoroughly cogitated through the entire subject. You came down on the side you did according to the facts plus your morals, beliefs and character. By being fully informed this makes you able to adequately argue for both sides of the discussion. This gives you the edge in the discussion in the fact that you probably know their points better than they do. By knowing what their points are going to be, you can have your facts to counter those points on hand and ready to go. I call this the “Ben Shapiro level” because he can shoot down your opinion and facts with better facts before you can get your opinion/facts all the way out of your mouth.

Here’s the most important point: In doing all of this research, you may learn something you didn’t know before. Something that may modify or even change your whole view and position on the subject. Which is what happens when you let facts and firmly-rooted morals determine your opinion. That’s a whole lot better than letting your emotions of the moment shape your opinion.

Just to give you a scale for this, the best day of my life was when my Beautiful Blushing Bride said, "I Do." The second best day was wen my son was born.

So, I got permanently banned from Facebook two days ago. I was responding to a meme in a group that the purpose of was to push the limits of propriety and bad taste. I actually used a meme that I had posted on my personal feed and FB didn't bat an eye. My response was the straw that broke the camel's back and the group was shut down.

Here's the offending meme:

To be truthful, I could appeal, but I've wrote about the difference between a platform or a publisher before, and I'm tired of expressing myself on a publisher without getting paid. My ban isn't permanent until 1/14/22. However, in order to return I must first prostate myself before their nearly omnipotent Philosopher-Kings and beg for their favor to let me return to that reached hive of scum and villainy. Let me think about it, no. Also, this ban happened while I was appealing the group ban. Here's what I sent to their "Oversight Board."

So, I will now recover the several hours a week I previously spent discussing and arguing various points on FB. I'm sure I'll live, I've lived for several decades before FB came around without social media. I haven't forgotten.

(I meant to post this last week, real life got in the way)

In a week's time, Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty and the men involved with the death of Ahmund Arbery were found guilty.

Kyle did everything legally proper and prudent to fulfill his self-defense case. He had a right to be where he was, he was legally armed, he didn't escalate and tried to deescalate the situation. Kyle was retreating when he fell, and shot only when the deadly threat against him was imminent and unavoidable.

Ahmund's killers were not under imminent threat by him, the killers pursued Ahmund when he attempted to break contact. Ahmund only attacked when he was no longer able to retreat, he perceived the threat against him was deadly and immediate and he was dead either way.

Our founding Fathers were wise when they codified that the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a panel of fellow citizens that the accused is guilty. It doesn't work all the time. In these two incidents, they did.

I wrote this article as a supplement to this: Self-defense is a Right.

I’ve been to Kenosha. The C&NW (Chicago & Northwestern) commuter rail line ran past the Great Lakes Navy Base from Chicago and all the way up to Kenosha. When I was there in 1980, Kenosha saw a lot of Sailors because at that time, in Illinois you had to be 21 to drink alcohol, but 18 was the legal age in Wisconsin. Kenosha is a working-class town, middle-class and below. Nothing flashy or special about it.

If you haven’t heard, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on November 19^th of all charges against him for shooting three people, two of whom succumbed to their injuries.

There are no winners here. Two men are dead, leaving grieving friends and family. One is missing an arm. Kyle himself will live with that fact for the rest of his life that he did that. The circumstances or level of justification do not matter, ending the life of another person changes you. I pray for everyone involved to heal and get past this.

This was not a criminal trial. This was a political trial. It was political because all of the Pravdas and the Leftists actively encouraged and supported the riots like the one in Kenosha. Since Kyle stood up to the riots by saying “Not in my community” he had to be excoriated to discourage anyone else from trying this ever again. Kyle had to be demonized, ridiculed, and destroyed.

To objectively look at this through the lens of the law, Kyle should have never been forced to fight for his future in the courtroom because of this. He obeyed the law and acted appropriately all the way through it.

He had a legal right to be there (he worked and had family in Kenosha), and was legally armed (17-year-olds can carry a rifle in public in WI). He was there with a first-aid kit to help wounded people, rioters, civilians and police alike, he was cleaning up the damages and graffiti from the riots, and was protecting property by standing guard.

When it came to the actual shooting, Kyle attempted to deescalate (shouting “Friendly! Friendly! Friendly!”), and retreated until he fell. The people he shot were attacking him and from every indicator, an immediate and a grave threat to Kyle’s life.

But you never heard about any of that from the Pravdas.

Why was Kyle protecting property? Let Nelle Bowles tell you from Bari Weiss’s Substack:

A note on Kenosha in light of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial: Until quite recently, the mainstream liberal argument was that burning down businesses for racial justice was both good and healthy. Burnings allowed for the expression of righteous rage, and the businesses all had insurance to rebuild. 

When I was at the New York Times, I went to Kenosha to see about this, and it turned out to be not true. The part of Kenosha that people burned in the riots was the poor, multi-racial commercial district, full of small, underinsured cell phone shops and car lots. It was very sad to see and to hear from people who had suffered. Beyond the financial loss, small storefronts are quite meaningful to their owners and communities, which continuously baffles the Zoom-class.

[…]

If you lived in those neighborhoods on fire, you were not supposed to get an extinguisher. The proper response — the only acceptable response — was to see the brick and mortar torn down, to watch the fires burn and to say: thank you.

Read this to learn the true aftermath of the riots: Skyrocketing demolition costs for riot-damaged Minneapolis, St. Paul properties delay rebuilding.

One day after rioters destroyed the Sports Dome retail complex in St. Paul, a construction crew hired by the city knocked the building down because it was dangerously unstable.

Then the city presented the property owners with a $140,000 bill for what it would cost to haul away the debris.

“We were really upset about that,” said property owner Jay Kim, whose insurance policy covers a maximum of $25,000 in demolition costs. “We thought that was high. But we didn’t know how much demolition would cost at the time.”

Of course, after the rubble was removed, a new building would have to be built, furniture would have to be purchased, installed and stocked. And there was no money to do so. And these stories are repeated every time a Leftist-controlled city burns. If you want to know why inner cities look like warzones, answer this question: “Why would anyone want to invest their life’s savings into a small business that’s in an area likely to be burned to the ground if there’s a riot?” The answer should be pretty clear.

Back to Kyle. The DA must have been pressured to press these charges, because they should have never been filed in the first place. I can’t tell you if the prosecuting attorney is inept beyond all relief or intentionally threw this case. The defense had no reason to present their side of things, as the prosecution never met the burden of proof and actually validated the defense’s claims of self-defense. The prosecution committed every possible strategic and tactical blunder you can commit in a courtroom. From asking questions of their own witnesses they didn’t know the answer to, charging Kyle with offenses that they should never have (failing to measure the rifle to determine if it’s a “short-barreled rifle” before charging him with having a SBR), to berating Kyle to dare to exert his Fifth Amendment Right to not self-incriminate. Then you have the “hiding and distorting of exculpatory evidence” thing, by texting a critical exculpatory (proving innocence) video rather than hand-delivery of the video on a USB drive or DVD, thereby destroying the quality of the video and destroying its’ value to the defense. And there’s more, a lot more. This case will end up in a book for potential lawyers, “Egregious Courtroom Fuck-ups: What Not To Do as a Prosecuting Attorney.”

Despite Leftist fears of armed people showing up to counter-protest and mow the protesters down under the pretext of “self-defense,” That’s not what this means.

What this does mean is we have been inspired by a 17-year-old man, who had the testicles to wade into a volatile situation, a rifle in one hand and a medical kit in the other, who was not content to let those who sought to destroy lives and his town not get away with it. He was there to help and prepared for the worst. May we all have the moral character he has.

Kyle will also never have to work a day in his life again. After all of the Pravdas and President Biden viciously maligned Kyle and maliciously distorted the facts to fit the agenda, there will be many multi-million dollar settlements coming shortly. The Covington Kid should team up with the Kenosha Kid to start or fund a news agency that actually upholds journalistic standards, that doesn’t write opinion and present it as hard news, that upholds truth and accuracy over “breaking news” and an agenda.

Hat tip to Adam Carolla for coming up with the term as it applies in this context.

Crate Training is where you train a dog to willingly enter a cage on command and stay there. The animal behaviorists say that the dog feels safe in the crate since it simulates the enclosed or underground den when they lived in the wild. The reason behind crate training is the human doesn’t trust the dog to not take a dump in the house. The dog craps in the house because the humans are neglectful and he isn’t taken out enough to do his necessary business.

Looking at the whole thing, we have a pet who isn’t trusted. The pet is then conditioned to consider the crate to be a safe space and to enter it on command. A toy or two is kept in the crate/safe space to keep the pet entertained while in there. The owner then lets the dog out to “do his business” every now-and-then, but on the owner’s schedule. Otherwise, the dog is ignored while in the crate.

My point? You, my mask wearing Liberal reader, have been trained to consider any space outside your house as dangerous (and by implication your house/crate is a safe space). You are trained to go there and stay on command. You get to play with your Internet, your GrubHub and Amazon while in your crate.
And you actually have it better than your crated pet. You have a bathroom in your crate, they don’t.