ICYMI, this past week the FBI has admitted that the Steele Dossier which was used as the centerpiece for the investigation of President Trump and his "Russia Collusion," is in fact, a collection claims which remain unverified or have been proven false. Which means, in non-politician speak, lies and false rumors. I know this is true because it's in the New York Times: Secret Sharers: The Hidden Ties Between Private Spies and Journalists.

I've known this to be true from the start. I've known that the FBI ignored their own verification process, known as the "Woods Procedures," and lied to a FISA judge to get the warrants to conduct monitoring against Trump and his organization, telling the judge the information in the Steele Dossier was true, when they knew it wasn't.

We also have a tidbit of indirect verification, namely a diary. Part of that diary relates that the author's father sexually molested her as a child. There are claims that the owner and author of this diary is Ashley Biden, President Biden's daughter. Images of the pages of the diary are online, and some people are claiming they have verified that Ashley Biden is the author.

The biggest and most obvious confirmation is the FBI has raided Project Veritas, who is the last known possessor of the diary. Why does this raid verify the truthfulness of who's diary it is and the truthfulness of the statements in it? Because if it was false, Jen "Circle Back" Psaki would say so, and people friendly to Biden who can access it physically or its' images could prove that it's false. But to exert this much effort to obtain it, says the government is wanting to avoid any independent confirmation. So the FBI finds this diary to make it disappear. Then Pravda lets it fall out of the news cycle. POOF! It's gone like it never existed.

I commend Project Veritas, who did not publish images of or the text in the diary, as their strict journalistic standards could not verify it is Ashley Biden's diary. If only Pravda put their own journalistic integrity ahead of sensationalism or their agenda.

Those four words are inscribed on the West Pediment, above the front entrance of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. Those words also separate a Republic from a lawless or autocratic State. I am sad we have gone from the former to the latter.

I promised that I discuss this link from an earlier post, so here it is: 43 members of Congress have violated a law designed to stop insider trading and prevent conflicts-of-interest. The article then describes 27 Republicans and 16 Democrats who are alleged to have violated this law. As a legal point, you have to be convicted of violating a law (thus "proving the fact") in order to unconditionally say you broke the law. Until then words like "alleged" and "accused" have to be used.

First of all, this is a law written by Congress that affects Congress, so it's milquetoast at best as far as penalties go. You can read the law here.

My only point is to show the difference between the Left and the Right. A Leftist will minimize, excuse, justify and deny any culpability for the Democrats on this list, while simultaneously calling for the maximum penalty for every Republican on the list.

How do I know this? Let's take a look at the last three presidential impeachments. MoveOn.org was founded on the concept that President Clinton should be censored, not impeached. They also kind of ignore the facts of the matter, because Clinton was impeached for lying under oath during a deposition, not giving a facial to an intern in the Oval Office.

The first Trump impeachment was made, even when their main piece of evidence, the Mueller Report, specifically says:

Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. [emphasis mine]

The second Trump impeachment was about a quid pro quo with Ukraine, which didn't happen. It's kind of hard to pressure someone to do something when they don't realize they're being pressured. Whereas President Biden (then Vice-President) did engage in a quid pro quo ("we give you military aid, you fire that prosecutor") and openly admits and jokes about it. Afterwards we found out his son Hunter was one of the indirect targets of this prosecutor. You don't have to believe me, here's Joe telling the story himself:

Again, if there is a law that is alleged to have been broken, I am all for equal application to all, and party or any other criteria is not a factor in the decision to investigate, prosecute or in the levying of penalties upon conviction. I take that back. I want a higher standard applied to those who represent us. They assumed that mantle of public office, and with great power comes great responsibility. I realize Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Dan Crenshaw and more are on that list. If they are proven guilty, I want the appropriate penalty assessed. I also want to see every Democrat held to the same standard and receive the appropriate penalty.

That's the difference between us and them.

The United States and Norway have a lot of distinct differences. Racial and social demographics, work ethic, the role of government in people's lives and more. Because there is virtually zero strife of any kind in Norway, it makes the world news when a man takes a perfectly legal-to-own bow and arrows and starts killing other people with it.

Which only proves the point that every pro-gun advocate has made for decades: The heart of the killer caused this to happen, not the tool.

Think of it this way: If you believe that "guns are evil," then the rifle used to kill JFK, or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is especially evil, because they were used to bring about the untimely demise of men who were making a distinct positive change in the world.

Now, let's say I obtained one of those rifles and took it back in time to Germany 1923, before Hitler could carry out his "Beer Hall Putsch" that started his rise within the NAZI party ranks.

As an aside, you don't want to kill "baby Adolf," because the Universe would just put someone else on the track to run the NAZI's when he was there. It's best to disrupt it when you know he's the one.

If you kill Hitler in 1923, you stand a chance that WWII never happens. So, you have just saved the lives of over 100 million people who would have died if Hitler had come to power. So is that rifle still evil, or is it somehow good now, because it saved millions of lives?

My answer is, NEITHER. It is a tool, with no ability to operate on its' own. It has no consciousness or ability to reason so intent can be formed. A tool can only perform the function its' designed to do. For that function to be applied for good or evil depends on the wielder of the tool.

If you insist on taking away the power of men to perform evil, as a consequence you also destroy their power to perform good as well. When that ability, that choice, is destroyed, you remove the je ne sais quoi that separates men from ants.

Back to the story. Because this place is so peaceful, even the police weren't armed. In response to this horrific event, the police get to arm themselves with guns. The citizens don't. But whose asses are on the line until the police get there? You guessed it. The police won't be there until minutes after they're called, if they're called and if they decide to respond at all. Put yourself in that position, you're being attacked, people are dying around you. You manage to call 911 and the dispatcher says, "No police for you!" What are you going to do other than bleed and die? Having the proper tools to defend yourself and end the threat sounds pretty good in that case, don't they?

I am now fully and officially tired of this shit. Time for things to change. Grab the torches and pitchforks people.

We no longer have government officials who "were trying to do the right thing" and "somehow went astray" and betrayed the public trust. We have government officials who believe they are sovereigns of their territory and they can do damn well what they please, and all of us peasants can Eff the Eff off.

So in the last post, with the embroilment of the Loudoun County Schools, angry parents are demanding the resignation of the superintendent and the entire school board.

I SAY THEE NAY! (that's old style for "No.")

In early America, whenever a miscreant or ne'er-do-well started causing trouble in a town, the other townsfolk would ban together and "escort" the offending person(s) to the edge of the area and told him to never return. This is where the term "ridden out of town on a rail" comes from. And when I say "rail," I don't mean a railroad (those were still 100 years+ in the future), rather a fence rail. Fence rails were made by splitting a log (Abraham Lincoln did this as a job when he was young) into quarters. End on, it looked like this:

Imagine having to straddle this, naked. Your intimate parts are at the apex of that roughly split trunk. So we start off with "sharp" and "splinters" in the nether regions. And it's not a smooth ride. This log you're sitting on is being held up on the shoulders of two men. Add "rough and jolting ride" to the above.

I almost forgot the most fun part, tarring and feathering. Pitch (pine tar, used to seal the bottom of ships and boats) is spread all over your body, then a sack of feathers is dumped upon you. You are covered in a layer of pitch and feathers that would be hard to remove today, let alone back then before bathing became widespread.

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The pain and splinters were meant to serve as a lesson that you should not repeat your errors. The tar and feathers was to warn people who might encounter you that you are trouble and are to be avoided at all costs. A truly non-fatal way to communicate and drive home the importance of maintaining proper social behavior.

In the United States today, officials who have violated the public's trust are "allowed to resign." The origin of this comes from warfare. When a general sees they will be defeated, they ask their opponents for the opportunity to "resign from the field," with their remaining troops alive and intact under the condition that they cease armed conflict. These "leaders" are allowed to "resign from the field," and move on with their lives with minimal disgrace or punishment.

Betrayal of the public trust is an extremely egregious transgression second only to treason itself. It must be dealt with harshly, with absolute certainty and maximum visibility in order to provide enough incentive to these people to discourage bad behavior.

Politicians, high appointed public officials, talking heads of the media and more, all in visible positions of authority should be drummed out of their station and profession to great proclamation and ceremony. No apologies will be accepted, no waffling "SorryNotSorry" excuses. Their boss holds a press conference and they stand there, publicly humiliated as they are summarily relieved of their position, its responsibilities and benefits, while being barred from any future work in that profession. If we are talking about a government official, then they are deemed ineligible for any government position, or interacting with any government official, elected, appointed or hired. Then all applicable criminal charges are filed and the civil lawsuits may commence. Oh, and they are personally liable, the government they worked for will not pay for the lawyers or the penalties, because all that does is raise the taxes on all of us.

We have all seen over the past couple of decades where every high government official has a lot of other fellow officials cover them for any transgressions, who expect that favor to be returned when the moment comes. So any investigation should come from outside, from a randomly chosen state-level investigator, who has had no contact with anybody in or associated with "the swamp." I can't stand to see another "We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing."

Lt. Col Jeff Cooper said (paraphrased), "Criminals do not fear the police, nor the judge and jury. They must be taught to fear their victims." I think "Politicians" could replace "Criminals" in the quote above quite nicely, don't you agree?

Speaking of which, this will get it's own article in a couple of days.

"Justice," as in the concept of "the process or result of using laws to fairly judge and punish crimes and criminals" is now officially dead, and we have undoubtedly entered the realm of a Totalitarian State.

How can I say that? What makes me thing that? This picture, of a man being arrested and his being called "The face of domestic terrorism":

This story starts way before this photo.

The Loudoun County Virginia School Board decided to institute a policy that allows students who wish to transition their gender into bathrooms that conform with their new gender. One of these "trans girls," who is a functional male (all equipment intact and functional), and wears a dress, cornered this mans' 14-year-old daughter in a bathroom and sexually molested her.

When Mr. Smith (the subject of the image above) found out about this, he went to the school to find out what happened. He became angry that the school was handling it "in-house," which means no police and no formal charges. Some unkind words were said, the police were called.

Let me make this clear: The police were called, not because a student was raped, but because her father showed up and was making a scene, being loud, angry and (rightfully) disrespectful to the school administrators.

The school then released a statement concerning "student safety" and said,

"...There was an incident in the main office area today that required the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office to dispatch deputies to Stone Bridge. The incident was confined to the main office and the entrance area to the school. There was no threat to the safety of the student body. The incident was witnessed by a small number of students who were meeting with staff adjacent to the main office..."

The statement then concluded,

"...The safety of our students and staff is the top priority of Loudoun County Public Schools.”

I find that last sentence to be the definition of irony. To institute policies that contributed directly to the rape of a young woman, then to cover it up by trying to handle it "in-house" is beyond all rational comprehension. Unless you are trying to advance an agenda that no rational person wants and you don't care about the body count you accumulate along the way.

Mr. Smith managed to avoid arrest at that moment, and got his daughter to the hospital where a rape kit was used and evidence recovered.

Fast forward a few days, to the Loudoun County School Board public meeting. Mr. Smith went there to voice his dissent to this policy that led to his daughter being raped. At the meeting, Scott Ziegler, the school superintendent, denied that any student sexual misconduct had happened in a Loudoun County school. To quote Mr. Ziegler:

“…the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,” Ziegler said.  To his knowledge, he added, “we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”

Let me be even-handed here. The school board has no reason to know about incidents like this. Their purpose is to develop and set policy, not to be "read in" on incidents like this. The superintendent, though, would have known about this. That's part of his job. And even if he didn't know, it would have been because his staff purposely didn't tell him. And I have no idea if "plausible deniability" was in effect here or not. That being said, like the captain of a ship, he is responsible for everything that happens in his area of responsibility, no matter if he knew about it or not.

At the meeting, while Mr. Smith was speaking, a woman stated, "I don't believe your daughter" (whatever happened to #BelieveAllWomen?). This woman is claimed to have said to Mr. Smith, "Oh… I’m going to ruin your business on social media," This led to heated words between Mr. Smith and this woman. A deputy tried to get Mr. Smith away from the encounter, however Mr. Smith threw the deputy's hand off his arm and started to go back for another round of yelling at this idiot woman, when he was tackled and dragged off. Mr. Smith was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Since I started writing this article, I discovered the punk who raped Smith's daughter was quietly transferred to another school, where he cornered a second female student in an empty classroom and raped her. Sounds like a serial rapist to me. Evidence has also surfaced that the Mr. Ziegler's office has not complied with state and federal laws in reporting sexual assaults on school property for several years. And on October 15th 2021, now five months after the rape of Ms. Smith (and after everything is coming to light, including his own lies) Mr. Ziegler issues this mealy-mouthed #SorryNotSorry "apology":

Still, it doesn't end there. Our "esteemed" Attorney General Merrick Garland has gotten involved, stating that FBI would now investigate and prosecute any parent who it deems to be 'threatening' towards school staff. Garland said:

"Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation's core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety."

And at this point Justice dies. The FBI has no legal authority or power to do this. The FBI investigates crimes involving federal workers, crimes that occurred on federal property, or a crime that crossed state lines. The FBI could not pursue John Dillinger (the FBI's "Public Enemy #1") until he crossed from Indiana into Illinois with a stolen police car and a kidnapped chief of police with him. Banks were not under federal authority in 1933 and 1934 when Dillinger and his gang robbed a dozen of them. Unless the Patriot Act or some other totalitarian-advancing law makes holding local officials accountable for their bad actions a federal issue, the FBI has no jurisdiction here. 

Back to the point. We have a girl, raped by a boy who says he's a girl. We have The victims' father, a man who takes the charge of protecting his child seriously. When he turns to and demands answers from the people who are supposed to protect his child while she is in their custody, they rebuff him, several times. The local government obfuscates and lies about the matter, covering their own asses. And when his and his daughters integrity is attacked, he lashes out as any good father has done since the dawn of humanity. His efforts have gotten him two local misdemeanor charges. It also seems the (allegedly George Soros funded her election to DA) local DA is escalating things by attempting to "throw the book" at Mr. Smith by asking for jail time well above the seriousness of the "crime" as well.

I cannot stress enough that Mr. Smith is far from alone here. Millions of fathers share the same anger, indignation and righteous fury he is experiencing. To know your child has been repeatedly brutalized because the school set the stage for this to happen, tries to cover it up, denies it happened, then throws him in jail for having the temerity and unmitigated gall for daring to speak out against his overlords.

The end result is this young woman is traumatized. I pray she defeats it. The policy that enabled this tragedy will remain in place. And, the Eye of Sauron weight of the federal government will now be brought to bear (illegally, I will add) on Mr. Smith and any other parent that dares question the authority of their Government Overlords.

Loudoun Country is not an isolated case either. School Board Deploys Police to Block Parents from Entering Meeting, Arrests Threatened. When the people cannot express their anger verbally and peacefully, they will express it in other, more unpleasant, ways.

That is why Justice is dead.

Taking up the mantle of calling out Leftists on social media has led me to take on the phrase, "Always Insulted, Never Refuted." Here's why I subject myself to the slings and arrows of Leftists. Not just because they're really Lilliputians, but I fight for the real prize, our Third Person.

Believe it or not, We the People have become polarized, thanks to our government and the Pravdas. Despite what the Pravdas want you to believe, it's actually a very small minority that's the "loud extreme" that the Pravdas give voice to. They want you to think the majority of Americans are these ultra-radicalized super-woke activists.

I'm here to tell you, they're not.

Looking at the entire body politic of America, their actual size in numbers is very small. They have an influence way more than they should because they are lauded and we are demonized by Pravda. In reality, they are like Salacious B. Crumb, the little cackling pet of Jabba the Hut.

Don't fall for the Pravda hype. And this isn't new. The Bolshevik Party was a minority offshoot of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The RSDLP actually forced the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. There were two groups that split from the RSDLP, The Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks being the smallest of the three numbers-wise. Just so you know, "Bolshevik" in Russian translates to "Majority" in English. They weren't the majority, they just called themselves the majority.  And because they called themselves the majority and acted like they were the majority, everyone else just went along with it. And the the third group, larger than the Bolsheviks, accommodated the Bolsheviks and called themselves the Mensheviks ("Minority"). [Edit: I removed the sentence here because I was factually wrong.]

This is why I'm talking about "The Third Person." In such discussions, no matter if it's in person or social media, there is the shrill, puffed up Leftist, you, the informed, reasonable "Defender of All That Is Good and Proper" ;-) ...and the spectator, our Third Person. This third person might be "going along" with our fictional majority just because they don't want to be noticed, called out and cancelled. When you show up and steadfastly bring reason, facts, logic and second-order thinking to refute the Leftist nonsensical and no-substance talking points, you stand a very good chance of Redpilling the Third Person. Maybe not right then, rather they just start their journey to be fully Redpilled.

How do I know this? The Asch Conformity Experiment. Here we have one test subject and seven confederates to the test in a room and were asked which of three lines was the longest, which the lengths were blatantly obvious. While the correct answer was that "A" is the longest line, the confederates insisted "B" (the middle-length line) was longer than A, and berated the test subject when he said A. In about 35% of the subjects, the subject gives into the social pressure and agrees with everyone that the "B" line is longer than "A."

Part two of this experiment was to have one of the confederates agree with the test subject and stand with him against the group. In this case, the instance of the subject bending to social pressure dropped to 5%.

THIS RIGHT HERE is why you stand up to the Leftists. You provide the validation to the Third Person that they aren't crazy, or wrong, or alone. You won't convince the Leftist under any circumstance, they've drank gallons of the Kool-Aid. But you're not trying to. You're looking to win over the Third Person.

Put this in the pile of "Sounds good" idea pile, rather than the "Good, Sound" idea pile.

What? You didn't hear about this? If you pay attention to the news, you did hear about it, he just didn't use those exact words. Biden is proposing a massive corporate tax hike. That's what he said, what he meant is a tax hike on you. Let me explain.

A business, be it a mom-and-pop shop, or a multi-national corporate conglomeration, has revenue and expenses. A profitable business has more revenue than expenses. The difference between the two is called profit. If expenses are greater than revenue, the business will sooner rather than later go out of business. If expenses exceed income, the company will try to cut expenses and/or raise prices. The net profit is almost never cut, because if there is no net profit, why even have the business?

Here's my point. Taxes are an expense to the business. Just like office supplies or building rent, taxes deduct from the revenue of the company. True, taxes are paid first, payroll second and everything else third, but taxes are at the end of the day just an expense that counts against revenue. This is different from "pass-through" taxes where businesses collect things like the sales taxes you're charged at the register. The business counts that as income, but not revenue. Yes, there is a difference.

So, the only thing a corporate tax hike does is raise prices of what you buy. The business sees its' expenses increase because "they" are paying taxes, and in the end, they add all the expenses together, add their net profit on top of that, and adjust their prices to you on top of that.

This is on top of prices already increasing because Biden's out-of-control federal spending is giving us inflation on a scale we haven't seen since Jimmy Carter.

20 years ago today, we were collectively glued to our televisions or radios, listening and watching the horrors of that day again and again. The images of that day and the days after made us one America. One French newspaper declared, "We Are All Americans Today." We came together and as one vowed to make those who made that terrible event possible pay.

And we did.

Now, that war is over. But we must all remember that day. We must teach to our children what it felt like, not only the fear and uncertainty of that day, but the slow-burn anger and the resolve afterwards. Much as my parents told me about how they felt when their radios announced the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941.

We all talk about the heroes that went down on Flight 93. The reason why they fought back was because they knew about the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. They knew what their fate was, and as Americans one and all, took that resolve passed down to them from the men at the Concord Green and did something about it. I sincerely believe if the other flights had known their fate, they all would have fought back.

We've all seen images of the buildings burning, or in the process of coming down. Today, I give you this single image. This man is known but to God, and is referred to simply as "The Falling Man." He had a choice no one should have to make. Stay with the building and die in the fire or collapse, or leap to his death. Put yourself in his place and imagine the thoughts that were going through his mind in the too few seconds it took him to fall to the concrete below.

Never forget. Keep this memory alive. Not only the horrors, but the unity in the days after. Let's Roll.

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I'm putting this one under "Duct Tape Alert" because I suggest you wrap your head in duct tape before going any further. That way when your head explodes you can find all of the pieces.

Think about it. A law is a government-defined rule that declares specific acts to be against the best interests of the people within the jurisdiction, with a penalty attached. It doesn't matter what the act is, you're told "Don't do this. If you do, we will punish you in this manner." 

All that being said, just because a law is passed by using the approved methods does not make that law proper or good, or advances the interests of the people. After all, it used to be legal for one person to own and control another person. Or incarcerate people based on their ethnicity.

We've all seen the hashtag #DefundThePolice. If you have blindly agreed with and followed along with this idea, I will now explain, clearly and as simply as I can why this is a terrible idea. and why it won't address the underlying problem that manifested the situations to create this response.

Police (and Sheriffs, Marshalls, Special Agents and the rest of them) are known collectively as Law Enforcement Officers. That's because their job is to enforce the laws on the books. Police are not part of the process to make the laws, nor do they have the power to choose on a large scale what laws are or are not enforced. They are supposed to enforce every law equally. Upon complaint by someone or they themselves witness a possible criminal act, the police investigate to see if a crime has been committed and arrest who they suspect committed said crime. At that point, the police hand the suspect and gathered evidence over to the prosecutors (part of the Executive branch, you'll see in a moment), who determines what (or if) charges are filed and the suspect prosecuted.

Now, this is where some second-order thinking is necessary. Where did these laws that police enforce come from? Do you know? The legislative branch! Be it your local city council, the state legislature or Congress, they are the men and women who create the laws of this country. And by the number of laws they pass, you'd think they're on commission, getting paid by the number of laws they create. And there are a lot of stupid and inane laws, like in Arkansas, Men are not allowed to ask women to dance during the month of July.

Now let's do even more second-order thinking and ask, "Who do the police work for?" The very concept of law enforcement is the purpose of the Executive branch of government. The Legislature passes the laws, the Executive enforces them. The executive branch is headed by the mayor, governor or president, depending on the level of government.  This person can and does direct their LEO's to provide maximum or minimum enforcement against individuals and groups. Then we have the prosecutors, who work for the Mayor/governor/president who exercise their own "prosecutorial discretion," which simply put, if the attorneys who prosecute people doesn't think the case is provable, or the department doesn't have the resources, or sometimes the prosecutor is sympathetic to the criminal or their cause, no charges are filed or any filed charges are dropped.

Right now there are so many laws on the books that it's impossible for you to go through your daily lives without committing at least Three Felonies a Day. The only reason we're not all in prison is it doesn't serve the interests of government. Unless you have earned the ire of the government. Then our lives and actions will be monitored and examined through a microscope until they find something they can use to make your life hell. Like Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was accused of violating the Logan Act (the last time someone was charged under this law was 1852). Too bad the facts showed he didn't. Then Flynn was charged with "lying to federal investigators" (a catch-all crime, kind of like Article 134 of the UCMJ) and threatened with 1) his son getting charged with crimes, and 2) dragging the investigation out until Flynn's attorney fees from defending himself would bankrupt him.

Let's take a step back here to look at this in total. First, you have a group that pass laws like a drunken sailor spends money (apologies to my shipmates), an Executive branch full of bureaucrats that makes more regulations with the force of law, coupled with mayors/prosecutors who routinely make go/no go decisions to prosecute based on politics rather than law, that right there is a bad situation. This is how tyranny comes to our door.

To make things worse, the good and professional police officers who have positive ethics and morals, who possess the spine to not enforce illegal laws, end up leaving for other professions. The police you have remaining are basically bullies who do what they are told and don't think about such moral quandaries because their paycheck depends on them not thinking about if they are doing the right thing or not.

For the empirical evidence on how successful #DefundThePolice experiment went, every city that drastically cut funding to their police departments experienced the same result, tragically verifying the outcome of the experiment over and over again. Every city that defunded the police experienced massive spikes of crime. Why? Because the Bad People who hurt, rob and kill other people knew their chances of facing the consequences of such acts dropped to almost zero. And as I wrote in the prior post just below, San Francisco will start paying criminals to not commit crimes. Talk about rewarding bad behavior.

How to fix this? It's simple, just not easy. And these would be the first steps, there's more once we get these done.

Cut the number of laws. I am not saying eliminate all laws. I am saying every law or regulation on the books that has a penalty attached should be reviewed by a Citizen board, and discarded if it unnecessarily or unconstitutionally interferes with the freedom of Citizens.

Reform the police and government. No one likes law enforcement when they are on the receiving end of it. Much like no one likes to be on the receiving end of an angry Pit Bull. It is a necessary fact of life that in order to have a safe and orderly society, we must either have a good and moral population, or we have to have police. Considering the former is rapidly disappearing, we must choose the latter. By only putting and keeping laws that advance society in place, and clearly defining police actions and authority can we strike the proper balance between freedom and law. Pay officers better and quickly weed out the bullies and corrupt ones.

To reform the government itself, that's a simple answer. Don't ever re-elect a politician. I don't care how outstanding a job they're doing. One term and you're out. Our Founding Fathers did not see political office as a career choice. He (or she) can go through the process when the next election cycle comes around. Make them live off their own efforts, not just our taxes.

Weaken Qualified Immunity. If you are unaware of the term "Qualified Immunity," it means a police officer cannot be held personally liable for bad acts they made while acting as an LEO. I think this should be weakened, not eliminated. If an officer commits gross negligence, exceeding their authority and things like that, those actions should expose them to legal and civil liabilities.

Like I said, these are small but foundational steps towards a better police force, a better government in general, and a safer community.

No, I'm not dead (yet). Like the blurb says, I do this after family, home and job. I've been busy and not able to have the time I believe is necessary to devote to this.

I have said for years now, governmental control of healthcare will lead to people control. Here's your evidence: Here's one of a thousand opinion pieces: Climate Change is a Health Crisis. The Treatment is Legislative Climate Action. White House: U.S. INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE FINANCE PLAN (PDF). Here's one from the CDC: Firearm injuries are a serious public health problem.

Government control of healthcare leads to control of you. Because all totalitarian acts can be justified with "if it saves one life...". Thusly, serious encroachments to curtail your freedoms can be justified with the simple phrase, "This improves health outcomes and saves the healthcare agency money." As a result, declaring the climate as a "public health crisis" can justify the end of all domestic mining of fossil fuels, drastic restrictions on the importation of foreign fossil fuels, and drastic taxes on what fossil fuels are imported to "discourage" their use, it goes on and on. The same with firearms. By declaring firearms a "PHC," they can (not Constitutionally) justify limits on the production, purchase, and ultimately possession and confiscation of firearms. To further discourage you, massive taxes on firearms and ammunition, a heavy burden of licenses and bureaucratic red tape will be imposed on you, all in an effort to "curb gun violence."

As a slight aside, San Francisco will soon pay career criminals to not shoot people. I guess that proves that guns don't kill people, because if guns kill people, why not pay the guns? Instead they are paying felons to not commit murder.

Back to the original topic. This goes way beyond a "soda tax," or restrictions/bans on tobacco, alcohol, sugar, trans-fats or anything else the CDC/FDA says is "bad for you." You might want to look up the Eighteenth Amendment and the Hatch Act. That was the one time Social Engineering was written into the Constitution and the only Amendment to be repealed.

The people in government who seek power are doing this. I do not discount and actually agree that we need to reduce carbon emissions, too many people are gunned down every year, or most of us are overweight from a caloric intake way off the scale. All that being said, the government trying to "solve" these crises this way, it's like using a flamethrower in your house to kill a single spider. It's heavy-handed, over-reactionary, too broad of a "treatment" and will cause many unintended consequences that are more serious than the original problem.

I happened across this the other day. TikTok video shows mom receiving $9 paycheck after working over 70 hours.

This is how young people are failed by our schools and their parents, plus just how duplicitous Pravdas are.

So, let’s go over the facts. I picked these numbers off the back of her paycheck.

Effective hourly wage (708 + 150.81 divided by 70.80) = 12.13/hr.

So the math checks out and agrees. What our bartender and reporter didn’t mention was the average of $70 (assuming she was scheduled 10 shifts over 2 weeks) she brought home in tips every night. Yeah, did you hear her talk about the $708 she brought home? Other than mentioning "why you should tip your server," she didn't reference how much she got. And frankly, working as a tipped server in some of my jobs, it is a common occurrence to under-report your tips. You can't wiggle out of the tips added to a credit card, but I would not be surprised that at least $5-10 of her cash tips "disappears" on the way to the manager's office to count tips at the end of every shift. We could be easily talking about another $50 in income she took home on top of the $708 she did report.

So if Ms. Cortez would like to be paid more on payday instead of just paying the taxes, I suggest the manager keep her credit card tips and “deposit” them into her payroll so instead of taking home $70 every night, she gets a bigger check at the end of two weeks. See? Problem solved! And the unanticipated problem to this is now all of her tips might not make it into her account, or there will be a “service fee” for the business owner to do the bookkeeping to do this for her. No matter what, chances are high she wouldn’t get the whole $708.

Now, this is partly the fault of the school system because if Ms. Cortez is sincere in her anguish, the schools did not teach this woman math or reasoning. If she knew her video statements were bullshit and was trying to be a drama queen or whatever for likes (or whatever Tik-Tok does) then her parent(s) failed to teach her truthfulness and integrity.

Likewise, it is the fault of the reporter to perpetuate either the idiocy or duplicitousness of this woman by being sympathetic to Ms. Cortez in her article. It is also condescending to the reader, as it implies that most people don't know about this issue. I am sure most people have at one time in their lives worked in a "tipped" job. I personally always tip. How much I tip depends on the server. More than five visits (take your order, deliver drinks/appetizers, deliver food, check on you/top off drinks, deliver check) also gets more. A smile, even when they are obviously exhausted, gets a lot more.

Crap like this does not make me angry, it does not make me upset. It makes me sad to see such mindsets in the world.

Before I get into what I’m commenting about, I have to lay down the context, because most people don’t know what’s behind what they know.

Marking the Jewish people to ostracize them from the other people where they lived was documented to start in 807 AD with Abbassid caliph Haroun al-Raschid, who ruled the Abbasid Caliphate. This Caliphate stretched from what is now Libya to Iraq/Iran and even farther east.

Pope Innocent III and his buddies got into that ship in 1215, who decreed in Canon 68 that Jews and Muslims must wear clothing to set them apart from Christians. The Nazi’s, of course, were persecuting Jewish people from the moment they came to power. It wasn’t until September 1941 that they came up with this:

4/19/2023 Update: The graphic that was here and showed the Nazi Star of David has been removed by the request of the owner of hatWRKS. She told me what she had to go through to get one of her suppliers back, and she didn't want the whole kerfuffle starting all over again to to my image here. I have accommodated her, because this was not an unreasonable request.

From that point on, it was easy to tell who the Jews were, so they could be persecuted by the Brownshirts, the Gestapo, the SS and anybody else who swallowed the propaganda.

When it comes right down to it, this was a simple and visible method to separate a group of people from the whole and that mark was a tacit approval by society to ostracize, ridicule and even assault the wearer.

The biggest trait of Americans (not necessarily citizens of the US) is when someone is forced to wear a “mark of shame” (which is what this is), Americans will also put it on as a very large “FUCK YOU” to those in favor of these badges. It also means “we got your back” to those who are forced to wear it.

Which brings me to the whole point of this piece.

The other day, HatWRKS a hat store in Nashville, TN evidently put an image on their Instagram account (since removed due to a bunch of crybaby SJW’s) of a yellow Star-of-David with the words “Not Vaccinated” rather than “Jude” (German for “Jew”). This made the local news in Nashville, Protestors surround Nashville hat store following controversial Instagram post.

And in typical Leftist temper tantrum style, SJW’s surrounded the store in protest and held up a sign that reads, “No NAZIs in Nashville!” I really like how it looks like they initially forgot the “s” in NAZI and added it later.

So can someone tell me, how voluntarily wearing a sign similar to what the Nazi’s used to persecute Jewish people makes them a Nazi themselves? To me, this is a statement that the current government and society is ostracizing people based on their personal choice. We are willing to protest that social force to conform, by externally and proudly wearing the most visible symbol of persecution.

I just bought a fedora last month, so I’m not in the market for a new hat. But the next time I pass through Nashville, I’m getting a hat from these people. I’m BUYcotting this place!

And in going through news articles, I found out Stetson and Goolrin Bros have ceased their partnership with HatWRKS. Please contact Stetson at 855-707-2798 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and Goolrin Brothers.

Please, clearly and respectfully inform them of your displeasure of their choice and your choice to never purchase their products in the future.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Occam’s Razor, but you might not know exactly what it means. If you do, good for you! If you don’t, here you go:

A scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.

Simply put, “The simplest explanation is almost always the most correct.”

Let me put the story up here before I get any farther. Fauci admits US sent $600k to Wuhan lab at center of Covid ‘leak’ theory – but defends ‘modest’ virus research funding.

To refresh your memory, in late 2019, three scientists at the Wuhan virology lab came down with a “mysterious illness.” This facility was located across the way from a “wet market” where food such as produce, animals and seafood are sold. These scientists likely stopped at this wet market to pick up food on their way home each night, giving this “mysterious illness” to other people at the market while they were in their contagious and asymptomatic state.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not wanting to “lose face” by letting everyone know that this escaped from a lab performing “gain of function” testing (i.e., weaponizing it), said in essence, “this came over from bats sold and consumed at the market.”

Of course, the Domestic Pravda totally swallowed this line (just because Trump said the opposite) and in a magnificent case of Stockholm Syndrome, decided to squash and suppress any differing viewpoint from the CCP Party Line. Those of us who applied Occam’s Razor to the facts in evidence, were branded “Conspiracy Theorists!” and actively silenced.

So let’s look at the facts here. These facts are not in dispute.

1. A virus we now call COVID-19 had its’ “Patient Zero” at that wet market in Wuhan, China.
2. There is a laboratory in Wuhan within a stones’ throw of the market that was performing virology research into various virii, including COVID.

Now we have two possible scenarios for the outbreak:

1. This strain of Corona spontaneously jumped from bats to humans at that specific particular wet market out of the thousands across China,
-OR-
2. The virology lab across the road from the market had an accidental release and the first people not part of the lab staff that were infected worked or shopped at that market.

Occam’s Razor clearly points to scenario #2, because it is much more likely to occur. Scenario 1 is plausible and possible, just not very likely. Like betting on 00 on the Roulette wheel versus Black. You’re going to hit Black a lot more times (47.3% of the time) than you will 00 (2.6% of the time).

There is no “conspiracy” here. Yes, Fauci raised money for the Wuhan lab and gave it to them. Did Fauci give that money specifically to fund that project? I don’t have any credible evidence to point for or against that point. Occam suggests the lab took the money and spent it on what they wanted to research. They could have spent it all on hookers and blow, I have no evidence either way.

And because I keep an open mind about things and research over a wide range of websites, I had seen documents stating that Fauci was involved with funding this lab before the lockdown was put in place.

The bad news is, the people who still don’t believe this was from a lab-leak still believe “The evidence to impeach Trump is right there in the Mueller Report.” But when asked to point to the page and paragraph with their “evidence,” they just fall silent.

In the end, Occam’s Razor always points to idiots and blundering people that cause bad things to happen way more than any coordinated group of people carrying out a nefarious conspiracy. The more suppositions, conspiracies and leaps of logic and faith it takes to explain something, the more and more likely that isn’t the explanation.

I realize we will never really know exactly how COVID-19 infected humans. Between the paranoid level of secrecy and “saving face” of the CCP and the lack of information about its’ first start on humans, anyone who really knows will ever tell. Only now, 18 months after three Chinese "scientists” working at the Wuhan lab came down with “a mysterious illness” are some truths coming to light. It is my suspicion, like many others out there, that someone screwed up and carried it home to spread to the rest of us.

If the CCP had weaponized it and actually wanted to unleash it on the world, they probably would have done it the 12 Monkeys way. Get contagious people onto multiple long international flights at the same time, making it impossible to pin down the “patient zero” and the origin of the virus.
Something like this COVID-19 outbreak concerns me, but it doesn’t scare me.

What scares me is there are groups of people out there, with access to the keys of power that were waiting for a crisis of this scale to trigger their contingency plans.

Hang with me on this. Think about what we’ve been through in the last year.

1. Federal, state and local governments ordered private businesses to cease operations. I don’t see that power granted to the government in the Constitution.
2. The debt of the federal government jumped tremendously. It’s now over $28 Trillion. Our whole economy only generates $20 Trillion.
3. Between the drop in the economy and the boost in the federal debt, our debt ratio is now over 140%. We owe more than we can generate.

Now, when a country owes more than it’s worth, well, just plug the word “hyperinflation” into your favorite search engine, with words like “Weimar Republic,” “Zimbabwe,” “Venezuela” and “Greece.”

We have also seen absurd levels of restrictions placed on the American People. From being arrested for kayaking in the ocean alone, to not being able to buy things like vegetable seeds, to a woman who was arrested and jailed for making a choice of opening her nail salon so she could earn money to feed her hungry children, and then the judge demands an apology from her, this shit has got to stop.

Logic and common sense reasoning demands the conclusion that there are individuals and groups with ill intent towards the United States and the American people out there. We see people every day actively working towards tearing this country down to the bedrock and rebuilding it in their twisted image. From the halls of power have come Common Core Math, the Affordable Care Act and more. From the common person we have political riots at a scale the Brownshirts would have applauded. Incessantly browbeating our neighbor over their immutable personal characteristics, ostracizing people for their perceived differences in belief on any subject, the list goes on. To those at the highest levels of the federal government now exposed as actively trying to pull off a silent coup through lies, misinformation and more.

I’m not saying these groups are coordinated. I actually kind of wish they were. It would be easier to stop this madness by finding one spot or several places where the proper application of force could bring the whole plan crashing down. But there’s no coordination or unifying plan. It’s like 40 six-year-old children running amok in the classroom with one teacher trying to regain order. There are children coloring on the walls, taking a crap in the teacher’s desk drawers, smoking weed in the corner, setting the curtains on fire, destroying furniture and more.

The difference between a conspiracy theory and a real conspiracy is, if you can tie up all of the loose ends into one nice, neat package, it’s a conspiracy theory. Real conspiracies are just like freedom and a healthy economy. Everyone is acting in their own best interests and on their own agenda. There are loose ends all over the place like you just flung an entire pot of spaghetti all over the kitchen.

I don’t know how or even if it can be stopped. All I can hope for is the Americans of today bring forth the spirit of their forefathers. To have a natural skepticism, suspicion and inherent distrust of the government. To take a hard look at what’s going on and knowing the difference between the government asking for social distancing, wash your hands and all the rest, versus the government ordering what businesses get to remain open, then using the police enforce those decisions. To have the backbone for when the government tries to go too far, the citizens say “NO” and have the firepower to make it stick.

What I am seeing right now is a test run. We are being tested to see how far government can push, how much the people will take and if we can be psychologically manipulated into acting against our own best interests to comply with government mandates.

Here’s what should keep you awake at night. Right now there are people taking notes on everything that worked and didn’t work. When we get out of this, those “bad actors” are going to go back to their think tanks, review the data and revise what they have. Then they will run some more experiments here and there to see if they can work out the bugs for the next time.

And there will be a next time.

This is the other video my responder gave me to watch. Please excuse me for a moment while I put a fine edge on my fillet knife.

It sounds like this guy studied at the knee of Robert Reich. “18 million Millionaires.” What he didn’t tell you was about 14.4 million of them (80% if you don’t math) are first-generation millionaires. Also, most of these self-made millionaires didn’t start on their “second million” until they were on average 50 years old. That means they worked hard, lived within their income and saved for THIRTY YEARS to get to that point. He laments the wealth of the millionaires, yet implies those rich people were lucky, when it actually took decades of hard work and discipline.

In stark contrast to those millionaires is the nihilistic YOLO hedonists that seem to be the prevailing type of young person. These YOLO’s dig themselves a $90K student debt hole at age 21 for a worthless degree in Gender Studies or Comparative English, and then never earn enough to pay that student debt off. That’s not including the car loan that has “negative equity” from their prior two cars plus the credit card debt as they try to keep up with the Joneses. With all of that debt and stress, these people will never realize that goal of becoming a millionaire. That inevitably leads to anger, resentment and jealousy.

He then laments for an extended period crying about how broken the US medical system is. Thankfully, I’ve already written on the subject to provide a simple, clear solution to fix healthcare, some of it anyway. Curing Healthcare. And any time you want to see what American socialized healthcare would look like, go to any Veterans Administration hospital. It’s free, and you pretty much get what you pay for it. Once you get into the system, it’s pretty good. But to get into it, you’re looking at the paperwork equivalent of trying to successfully pole vault a 16’ tall bar with a 6’ pole.
The best way I can describe such a system is, “The efficiency of the DMV and the compassion of the IRS.” And Charlie Gard is one of the many victims faces of such a system.

The OP also quoted Albert Einstein from the first article in the first issue of Monthly Review, which Al founded in 1947. Why Socialism:

Here’s the conclusion:

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Albert died in 1955, and I wonder, after he saw some of the ravages that the Soviet system inflicted upon its own people, if he ever changed his mind on the subject. By the time Albert had passed, the Soviet government had starved to death or just executed over twenty million people. And every other centralized economy has followed suit to varying degrees.

In conclusion, I will never claim or imply that Capitalism is a perfect system. It’s not. No system developed or run by us fallible humans will ever get close to that goal. Capitalism is a cobbled-together mish-mash of kluges that the only things keeping it from exploding have been duct tape, bailing wire and hope. But it’s the best we can do. Yes, people are “left behind” in a Capitalist system for a variety of reasons. But the people in the middle and high ends of the bell-curve move the whole population to the right. By their efforts, more and better goods are produced cheaper. The excess capital they generate is used by government or private corporations to provide for those who can’t work. The poorest of the poor in this country would be considered rich in any undeveloped country.

The only allure of a Socialist economy is that the people on the right side of the economic bell curve are taxed and forced all the way to the left side of the curve, where everybody sits, equally in squalor and misery. Is that really the kind of “equality” you want? Because that’s a real “Dog in the Manger” kind of attitude to have.

Then, of course, when the common people start exercising their own “enlightened self-interest” and throwing the centralized and command-controlled economy into chaos, well, the leaders just start shooting or starving those “dissidents.” ONE HUNDRED MILLION people between 1917 and 1999 were killed by their own Socialist governments. Everywhere Socialism got a foothold, it became a cancer and people paid the price.

For recent examples of this, in the past few years we heard about the average Venezuelan losing about 17 pounds of body weight from lack of food when the Socialist government nationalized the economy. Or that North Koreans are about 1.5” shorter than their cousins in South Koreas because of the decades of starvation diets. I can’t imagine the amount of mental gymnastics from all of these people who push how wonderful Socialism will be, while simultaneously ignoring the millions of dead in the wake of that same system. If you get the “we’ll get it right this time” argument from them, remind them of Jordan Peterson’s words, “How arrogant can you be to think you’ll do better than everyone else who has already run a Socialist system?”

Failure is a feature, not a bug in the system of Socialism. It literally requires individuals to do things against their own self-interest. While you can get people to do that in the short-term, maybe, in the long term, human nature wins out. And when people’s desire to act in their own self-interest exceeds their desire to act for the community, Socialist governments have the choice to exterminate the people or collapse. When they had the choice, these governments always chose the former.

You can’t sell me on the advantages of Socialism. It looks great on paper, however it fails miserably when put into execution. Marx and Engels were the greatest snake-oil salesman in human history.

Because I wrote these at the same time, part 2 is under this post, not above.

Before I say anything else, Socialism is defined (by me and older dictionaries) as “An economic model where the government controls the means of production and distribution of goods.”

This all started with the Planet Money Podcast Socialism 101. I went on their Facebook page and told them how I could take their featured “Socialist Economist” apart without any difficulty.

I was ultimately responded to by another user who said (I did not edit or clean it up) this:

We Produce More Now Than Ever In Our Recorded History, And The Workforce----The Ones Who Make It ALL Possible----Are Poorer Than Perhaps Ever(, & Drowning In Foisted Debt).....We're CLEARLY Being Scammed ---> #FollowTheMoney
Management ain't Nothin', But it's Not hard. Bezos, etc., is Nothing without the Laborers; They're Almost Everything-----With Or Without him. C(r)apitalism's payscale is Mostly 'Regressive'...
I disagree with the Minimum Wage, as it has been structured, because it Doesn't work; it's Too Easily defused. It's idea's heart is in the right place, but it is Too Flawed to be implemented effectively. What's Needed is the 20-to-1 rule; Not necessarily that Exact fraction, But That Principle. Tie the wages of the Lowest Payed to the Highest Payed.
That said, it's better than nothing, For The Moment.
Imagine NOT working, Exploiting the Labor of those who Do( work), And Extracting this
https://www.google.com/imgres...
The fact of the matter is, Moving "up" is Nice, but Realistically Not Everyone CAN because of Simple Physics------You Can't pick yourself off the ground. There Needs to be people in All Stratas for the society to function-----The Higher Up, The Less Possible Positions Available. If you work, you should have enough to survive And enjoy your Life/Freetime. Wages Need to be Tied to business's ( Total-)Pies, not Archaic Extortion-Brackets.
Janitors may not be Technically as valuable as Scientists, True, But, if the scientists have to do the Janitation As Well, they'll hardly have Time for the Science-----Suddenly Janitors-Etc. are Revealed To Be Almost As Valuable As Gas To Automobiles, lol.
..and What Good is a Car Without Gas?
We ALL Need Each Other OR The Whole System Ceases Functioning. We're ALL Essential. We're ALL Necessary To Produce 'Value'.

This user gave me a couple of videos to watch, which I did. Here’s the first:

Let me say right off, “The blackest lie is a lie that is a half- truth.”

Yes, some large corporations like Luxotica have an actual monopoly in some markets. That’s called “The Setup” where you throw out a couple facts to establish you’re being truthful. It reminds me of Robert Reich, whom I took apart one of his videos in 12 Strawmen.

It was at 1:26 when the lies started with the “Work or starve” point. Please, Ms. Teachout, point out any point of history outside of the post WWII developed nations, where this wasn’t true.

For the past 100,000 years of Homo Sapiens, this “work or starve” concept has been a simple, cold, hard truth. If you were able to work (not physically or mentally impaired) and didn’t work, no one supported you for very long. Individuals or churches (not government) would perform short-term charity to individuals to “get them on their feet.” The charity quickly stopped if the person receiving the charity didn’t start working somewhere. If this not working and begging continued, the person was deemed a freeloader and “ridden out of town on a rail.” The rail was not part of a railroad, rather a fence rail, which was a quarter-log, like this:

The community would also express their displeasure on this freeloader and to encourage him to leave the area (and serve as a warning to those who might encounter him), he was tarred and feathered.

The only exception to this was when a couple became too old or infirm to work, their children would support them. And example #2 where individuals, not government supported those who could not provide for themselves.

In the Antebellum South, slave owners used to work a slave until they were too old to work anymore, then the owner would give them their “freedom papers” and let them loose to fend for themselves. Believe it or not, it was the Southern states that passed laws to stop that kind of thing. But it was the slave owner, not the government, who had to support the retired slave. Example #3.

Just to keep you off balance, they throw in another fact: 40% of people don’t have at least $400 in a personal emergency fund.

I’m sorry, most people are sold a bill of goods about a job, with the understanding of “you should always go after your dream job.” I’m here to say, “NO. You shouldn’t.” The quickest way to kill your interest in a passion or hobby is to do it as a mandatory income-producing activity on a daily basis, knowing that you have to live off the profits generated from it. You should do what you like and you’re good at doing. I like and am good at fixing machines. That’s what I get paid to do and that keeps food in my fridge, a roof over my head and my lights on. My “dream job” would be to sit here and write content for this website, a YouTube channel and so on. The good news is I know my wordsmithing does not rise to the level where I could earn enough to live off, and I’m okay with that. I am perfectly happy to make this website my #5 priority and crank out articles when a subject or an idea that I want to write about hits me. Not “I have to crank out articles on a consistent basis to keep my income streams going.”

Next, she laments that “All jobs are menial and repetitive.” No matter what you do, you perform the same actions over and over and over again. It doesn’t matter if you’re putting a ball through a net on a basketball court, fixing a machine, assembling a product, or dealing with people. While the exact circumstances may change, the overall concept is exactly the same. Repetition is how we become fast, efficient and good at our jobs. Michael Jordan probably shot 1,000 baskets on the practice court during his career for each shot he took during a game. And not just “shooting baskets” like you or I might do, but the mental work, the physical work and the striving to make each shot better than the last one.

And what IS a job exactly? It starts with a person or company has decided they want you to make/do something for them. It doesn’t matter what “it” they are asking for is. In return you receive an agreed amount of compensation. If you do “it” to the company’s satisfaction, you get to do it again. You are there to generate income for the company, period. If you can’t generate enough income for the company to pay you and generate a profit, you’re out of a job. In 2020 I was hired by “Company A” to be an on-site IT technician at “Company B” to fix stuff broken by the workers of “B.” I was laid off after 4 months because there wasn’t any work for me to do. I sat around for 7+ hours a day watching YouTube videos and other stuff because everyone was still working remotely. There was a financial liability to keep me around. They liked the work that I did, but that was the economic reality. And while I don’t like or justify it, an employer has the duty to monitor you however they see fit concerning your paid work. If you’re not doing what you’re told (and paid) to do, why should you be paid for that time?

If you think there should be “worker protections,” look at places with those kind of policies, like New York Schools. How to Fire an Incompetent Teacher. Something is wrong when a teacher can openly admit to sexually harassing a student, and then got paid to do nothing for SIX YEARS, getting paid $350,000 overall as the school system goes through the laborious (and expensive) process of firing them. The average time it takes to fire a teacher is 830 days, or just over two years, at a cost of $313,000, which means that money wasn’t spent on children or raising the pay of good teachers.

I cannot and will not defend the actions of any company. Not my place to do so, unless I am paid for the effort. Yes, people are worked long, hard and incessantly at an Amazon warehouse. Ms. Teachout decries Amazon’s treatment of their warehouse workers, but I just wonder how many Amazon packages are delivered to her doorstep every month. Because every box she orders keeps Amazon in business and more people are oppressed.

If you don’t like the work practices of a company, don’t buy stuff from them. Leftists are good at boycotts (well, they think they are. Check out how well their boycott of Chik-Fil-A is doing), maybe they should all boycott Amazon. More importantly, you need to BUYCOTT companies who do engage in practices you like.

Here's Part 2, just in case you came here directly.

If you haven't heard the term "SWATted," This refers to a person (for whatever reason) anonymously calling the police and reporting "Person B has a gun and is threatening to kill people." The police will then respond (appropriately, based on the information they've been given) with overwhelming force and their Special Weapons and Tactics team (hence the acronym SWAT).

In this story, SWAT team with guns drawn raids Arizona home for toddler with fever, An unvaccinated toddler had a high fever. The pediatrician suggested that the family take the child to the emergency room. First of all, the family couldn't afford the $2,500 charge for the ER, and the fever broke soon after the doctor's visit, so they didn't go. When the doctor learned the child did not show at the ER, he called DCS. DCS called the police. The police initially did a "health and wellness" call and were refused entry to the home by the father, so the police came back later that night with a warrant, broke down their door and abducted all three children.

DCS are even more aggressive to use their power and authority than cops are. If DCS thinks a child is in any kind of danger, their first response is to remove the child and investigate later. And if DCS can't abduct the kid, the police will be all to happy to step in. I just love how DCS adheres to the concept of "innocent until proven guilty." [/sarcasm]

So, if the police can SWAT you on the word of a doctor (who's not an agent of the state), if the politicians tell them to round up guns and gun owners, what makes you think they won't hesitate to do so?

The police are not our friends. They are Law Enforcement Officers, which means they (shockingly) enforce the law. LEO's will be friendly toward us, but they are not our friends. They are like an aggressive pit bull. As long as the dog is on the leash and properly controlled by the owner (politicians), they are in their place. And when the politicians let slip the leach and they issue the "attack" command, the dog doesn't care who the target is, only that the owner that feeds him pointed you out.

Never for a second rely that police will quit that job when they are told to ignore the Constitution. When given a choice between feeding their kids or upholding the Constitution, 90+% of them will feed their kids. I'm not angry about it, it's a fact of life. And even if most officers would resign rather than take away your Rights, there's 100 guys just waiting to go through the police academy to bust your head and take your guns.

Any addiction is a terrible thing. A physical or psychological dependence to a chemical drives people to do bizarre things. A person deep into their dependence will do anything to reacquire the euphoria, especially when the symptoms of withdrawal start. When external substances (sugar, caffeine, meth, opiates, etc.) enter the body, they activate the body to release endorphins. The problem is how much is released. On a scale of 1 to 10, let's say the euphoria from a climax during intimate relations is a 3 and lasts from 3 to 10 seconds. A dose of heroin will give you an endorphin release of like 100 for an hour. The down side is that these off-the scale rushes kill the cells that produce the endorphins. Which means your next high will not be as good and you have to increase the dose to overwork those remaining cells even more just to achieve the same high.

Also considering that the part of the brain that registers pleasure and the part that registers pain are in the same area, some people achieve their high through some form of pain. This is because if the pain is too much, endorphins are released to mute the pain signals. Which is why there is a subset of the population likes being tortured. Not torture torture mind you, rather being restrained and lightly flogged, whipped, etc.

I bring these points up to support my statement, Leftists are addicted to anger. The anger they feel when they see an injustice in the world and they want to fix it. Like people who smoke meth feel great after a hit, Leftists feel great whenever they go "all-in" on their cause. The problem is, like illicit substances, that high fades after a while. Which means the Leftist has to take a bigger dose of the SJW wokeness to achieve the same euphoria. This also explains why Leftists are always switching targets, because the euphoria fades and they must rage at something else to regain that righteous level of anger.

I honestly don't think there's a cure. Certainly no rehab facility that I know of. We can only wait for an individual to grow weary of the anger and at that point we can present facts and logic to hopefully bring them to reason.

The term "business model" refers to a written plan that identifies what a company sells and how they intend to make a profit out of selling it.

Here are some examples:

Movie Theater: In case you didn't know it, the theater makes no money off ticket sales. The $17+ you paid to watch a movie all goes to the studio who produced it. The theater makes its money from concessions. All the profits from that hideously expensive popcorn, hot dog, candy and soda is what keeps the theater showing movies.

Social Media: If you didn't know it, YOU'RE THE PRODUCT. Actually, your eyes and attention, and by extension your money. You are sold the concept of "keeping in contact with friends and family, groups, etc." by browsing through Social Media (Facebook, YouTube, Parler, Rumble, Twitter and so on) and when you do so, you see advertisements in your stream. This is why they use a variety of methods to give you recurring dopamine hits. That rush of excitement you feel when you see a notification that someone liked or responded something you said? That's a dopamine hit.

I gave these examples so you can understand the next one.

Advertising has been explained to me as "The science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it." And yes, it is a science. A lot of behavioral science studies are conducted to determine colors, layout and every microscopic detail about how to maximize the impact of an advertisement.

The news networks (ABC/CBS/CNN/NBC, et.al.) sell you panic and fear disguised as "information." Just the term "Breaking News" elicits a massive dopamine hit. Pay attention to the adjectives used as well. Here's an example:

A group of patriots stormed the Capitol on January 6th, attempting to stop the Senate from certifying the Electoral College votes. These patriots believe that several states .

You feel a strong urge to stop what you're doing to see what it is, even though you're late getting your spose to the hospital for an operation. The longer they can keep you glued to whatever you're watching them on, the more advertisements you see and when it comes time to make a purchase of whatever kind, the advertising has convinced you to buy that particular brand or model.

While the term "clickbait" is relatively new, the concept is not. I remember a story from the 50's about a Dwarf Gypsy fortune-teller who escaped from a county jail. The local newspaper's headline the next day was "SMALL MEDIUM AT LARGE."

Printed media does the exact same thing. The covers have "clickbait" headlines in an effort to grab your attention, get you to pick up their magazine/newspaper. At that point they have you. From that point it's a very small step to throw the magazine into your cart and buy it. The actual chances that you'll read it when you get home are small, but you bought it and that was the point..

.

A bit of a click-baity title, but it's true.

The other day a Dinesh D'Souza video popped up in my YT feed the other day. I was half-listening, until two words he said jolted me: Reichstag Fire. I had learned about that in High School (back when history was actually taught) and I looked it up again. Here's the synopsis:

Germany had a national election in November 1932. The National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, we know them as Nazi's) had the largest number of seats in the German Reichstag (one-house Congress), but wasn't enough to have a majority. The Nazi's formed a coalition with the Communist Party to place Hitler in the Chancellor's position (think Speaker of the House or Prime Minister) on January 30th, 1933.

The evening of February 27th, a fire was started and destroyed most of the Reichstag building (Capitol). Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, was accused and admitted he acted alone. There is also some evidence that the Nazi's themselves may have set the fire.

No matter who set it, the day after the fire, at Hitler's request, President Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree into law by using Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, and the secrecy of the post and telephone.

This was a very lucky event for Hitler and his pals. Hitler was already planning on trying to get the Enabling Act passed, which would have allowed the Chancellor (Hitler) to pass laws by decree without the Reichstag. President Hindenburg already had that power, but only in times of emergency. The Enabling Act could be used by Hitler at any time and for any reason.

Here is where I say, "History may not repeat itself, but it sings the same tune."

Just in case you forgot, on January 6th 2021, while the Senate was counting the Electoral College votes, the process was disrupted by a couple dozen active rioters and several hundred curious people who wandered in behind them, who entered the Capitol and windows were smashed, things were taken and Lawmakers were scared.

The result was miles of 10 foot high fencing, topped with concertina wire, concrete barriers and thousands of National Guard troops. The logic of why this works in Washington DC and not at the border escapes me. But I digress.

Earlier this month, a report was published to update the Capitol security posture. Here are two high points:

-The commander of the National Guard for DC can deploy troops at a moment's notice, without being ordered by the President.

-There will be a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) on standby at all times.

If the military can deploy without civilian authorization, this pretty much shreds the concept of Posse Comitatus Act.

The concept and use of QRF was developed in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are soldiers in vehicles at the base, engines running, ready to be out the gate in seconds if the conditions warranted it. Usually the troops were nearby their vehicles and could be out of the base in 1-2 minutes. The QRF was the overwhelming rescue force if a convoy or patrol came under fire.

Now I have to ask: Are we not seeing the same grab for power, the same stripping of Liberty from us? Many of us can't speak our minds for fear of our lives being ruined. There are multiple attempts to squelch the right of the citizen to protect themselves, from criminals and especially our government. Our lawmakers, restrained by the Constitution, lament about "this person" or "that person" having too much latitude in what they say. The sympathetic Lords of Social Media then restrict that person's access  Our Capitol is now a Police State Zone.

In concert with my deep dive “What is Capitalism,” I have decided to Fisk this article by Teen Vogue, What 'Capitalism' Is and How It Affects People.

Let’s skip the history lesson, and dive right to this part:

A capitalist nation is dominated by the free market, which is an economic system in which both prices and production are dictated by corporations and private companies…

No, no and no. Prices of non-essential goods and services are driven by consumer demand. This demand then determines production. If something is priced at $100, but most people would only pay $50 for it, the choices of the business is to find a way to sell it for $50, accept that very few people will pay $100 for it, or not make it at all. This is the bedrock of Capitalism, the law of supply and demand.

Believe it or not, it is the first people who buy the product at that $100 enable the economies of scale that brings the price down to $50. Just think about flat-screen TV’s. When they first came out, a 48” flat-screen cost $2,000. Today, they are $200. Not only are the $200 TV’s 10% of the price of the original, they have better resolution and has more features.

Then there’s this paragraph:

The kind of impact that capitalism has on your life depends on whether you’re a worker or a boss. For someone who owns a company and employs other workers, capitalism may make sense: The more profits your company brings in, the more resources you have to share with your workers, which theoretically improves everyone’s standard of living. It’s all based on the principle of supply and demand, and in capitalism, consumption is king. The problem is that many capitalist bosses aren’t great at sharing the wealth, which is why one of the major critiques of capitalism is that it is a huge driver of inequality, both social and economic.

That’s a lot to unpack. Let’s get this straight. “many capitalist bosses aren’t great at sharing the wealth,” but what about those Party members who allocate the resources in a Socialist economy? You would be a fool if you think they wouldn’t “take a cut of the action.” For any business that has employees, payroll is the first expense to be paid. Because no employees means no goods or services produced, which leads to no income and very quickly no company. As far as pay goes, you are paid directly proportional to how much income you generate. If the company receives $10/hr of income due to your work, does it make sense for them to pay you $15/hr? And you are not “stuck there.” You can improve your skills and as a consequence generate more income for the business and yourself.

Another thing is the owner is the person on the hook for everything. If the business closes, the owner is still responsible for the building and equipment leases, along with any the loans or other obligations. A good owner takes enough net profit to live off of and continually pours the rest back into the company.

If a worker wants to be paid more, they have to improve their skills. There’s always a high demand for people in the HVAC industry. You can get your certificate in 8-24 months, pay averages around $23/hr and as long as there are air conditioners and freezers, you have a job.

The downside is you’ll be outside a lot, winter and summer, in hot attics, or crawling under houses. You’ll be lifting heavy things constantly, dealing with angry customers and more. Most people don’t want to put up with that, so they don’t get the pay for it either.

We continue:

Capitalism’s supporters believe in several key points: Economic freedom leads to political freedom and having a state-owned means of production can lead to federal overreach and authoritarianism. They view it as the only sensible way to organize a society, insisting that alternatives like socialism, communism, or anarchism are doomed to fail. As former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whose pro-capitalism stance is said to have devastated the British working class, once put it, “There is no alternative.”

The proper quotes by Thatcher which the author ignores are.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.

And

Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay - that 'someone else' is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money.

I’ve done some research, and the earliest society that I found that practiced Socialist ideals (“From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”) was the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620. Everyone gave the fruit of their labors to a “company store” then received equal shares. They starved under that system with everybody giving to and drawing from a “communal stock.” They didn’t start thriving until the colonists had control over the land and what they produced. This manifested as people growing food for themselves and could sell excess goods to others.

William Bradford, in his journal “Of Plymouth Plantation” related this:

So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family.

My task for you Anti-Capitalist/Pro-Socialist readers, is to remark in the comments below, any group of people, large or small since 1620, who successfully practiced Socialist principles and didn’t eventually commit Democide. I know of one (not telling), and it didn’t outlive the founder.

To show Marx and Engles in such glowing terms like this shows you how much of a sell job this is:

The essential anti-capitalist argument is that “the hallmark of capitalism is poverty in the midst of plenty.” They say the immense suffering and violence that has been forced upon the laboring classes, the ruthless emphasis on profits over people, the proliferation of wage slavery — in which people have no choice but to sell their labor…

Think about it this way. In order to survive, a person must have:

1) Enough good food and clean water to be healthy and strong enough to be able to carry out the rest of this list.
2) Have a warm and safe place to sleep.
3) Have the tools to make labor easier (try chopping a tree down with a stone axe).
4) Stockpile food and fuel to get you through the winter.

Now, that’s what you need to survive. To accomplish those tasks alone is nigh impossible. You are doing what needs to be done from dawn to night. However, one mistake will probably kill you. A scratch can turn septic, a broken limb means a slow death from thirst or starvation. To flourish, you need time to rest from your labors and think about things, make things that will comfort and enhance your existence, etc. That takes a group of people, each doing different jobs and exchanging the fruits of their labor with each other.

That may sound Socialist, but it’s not. To be Socialist (meaning a command-controlled economy), “someone from the community” (a single person or committee, rarely the whole community) has to decide who will do what, what goods or services will be produced and how those goods will be distributed. Under a free-market Capitalist economy, each person decides what and how much they want to produce. If no one produces one thing that is needed, someone will see the need and demand for whatever “it” is, and make a profit.

And frankly, you’re going to be a “wage slave” under both Capitalism and Socialism, because someone has to make the goods and services no matter who’s in charge.

This is the part that chills me to my core:

There are many forms of socialism, but at its core, socialism is an economic system in which a whole community — not just bosses or private companies — control the means of production equally. It assumes that people are naturally cooperative, instead of competitive. The goal of socialism is an egalitarian society run by democratically elected representatives for the benefit of all in accordance with a set of collectively determined parameters; unlike under capitalism, industry and production is run by the state, and the acquisition of private property is seen as counterproductive. [Emphasis mine]

Consider this very, very carefully. The first piece of private property every person owns… is themselves. As long as you own yourself, you control what you do and what you produce. The dictionary definition of a slave is someone is “chattel” (property) of another person. The economic definition is a person who does not control or own the fruits of their labor. So, under the concept of “the owning of private property is counterproductive” means you don’t control your labor, you don’t control the fruits of your labor, and you don’t own yourself. You do what the State tells you to do, not what you want to do. As the article says,

“…a whole community — not just bosses or private companies — control the means of production equally.”

So now I have to ask, define “community.” Is that neighborhood, city, county, state or country? And define “control the means of production.” Does this mean everyone stops working and we hold a communal meeting to debate the merits of producing Windows phones instead of iPhones, along with the 378 other things the city produces? How long will that take? Days? Weeks? And while everyone is doing that, nothing gets done.

Maybe we just need to elect committees to make these decisions for us. Which would make the committee the de facto owners of the company and make them our bosses/leadership. In a free market, you vote for who your bosses are by applying to different companies.

Now I’m going to jump back to the beginning of the article. Right after the first quote I gave, there’s this point:

[Capitalism] and places a heavy focus on private property, economic growth, freedom of choice, and limited government intervention.

Notice how the author doesn’t mention “freedom of choice” or “limited government” as positive aspects of Socialism, just that private property is ‘counterproductive.’ I can only infer from these omissions that in a Socialist society, you don’t have freedom of choice or have a government that follows the will of the people.

And before you ask “What about Democratic Socialism?” it’s not a pig with lipstick, it’s a wild boar with lipstick. It’s a pig, with different markings, but a pig nonetheless. The only difference that I see between Socialism and Democratic Socialism is that you think you’re voting for who’s in charge of things. There will still be a committee for everything that needs a decision and you will still be a wage slave, with the major difference being if you don’t like your boss or the working conditions at your job, you can’t just quit without permission from the Labor Board (or whatever it would be called).

And the best argument against Socialism is expressed in one word: Democide.

One hundred million (100,000,000) people died by government action (or lack thereof) in Socialist countries last century. Most of the deaths were by starvation, but more than a few were executed for things like having ideas that weren’t approved by the Politburo.

To give you an idea about the hunger I’m talking about, imagine being so hungry that you make a literal mud pie and eat it. The bad news is, the dirt basically solidifies in your intestines blocking everything and you die, slowly and in tremendous pain. All because some asshole in Central Planning slipped a decimal point and your village got one truck of food for the month instead of the ten that it needed.

Korea is an interesting microcosm of Socialist vs. Capitalist ideals. It is a genetically homogenous gene pool (very little immigration) that has been under an A-B experiment for seventy years now. North Koreans are on average about 1.5” shorter than their cousins in the South. This is from multiple generations of near-starvation diets. Those people never got the nutrition they needed. And on the few occasions that food agencies personally gave food to the people of the villages, the Army came along and gathered the food up as soon as the aid workers were out of sight. And anyone who ate even a handful of food, you know, because they were hungry, they and their family were dragged out to the center of the village and executed to serve as an example.

And if Socialism becomes the law of the land in our time, we will probably not see atrocities like that, but our grandchildren will. It’s happened every time Socialism gets a stranglehold on a people.

Let that stew in your consciousness as you go to sleep tonight.

I've said from the start, "If Biden is elected, he will be out of office by Easter." The three most likely ways he will be shown the door is a) Removed via the 25th Amendment, b) Resigns due to a scandal, or c) Resigns due to "health issues."

And the signs are all there. Pelosi was talking about the 25th Amendment option even before the 2020 election. The other day this article came out, Dozens of House Democrats Call on Biden to Give Up Sole Nuclear Launch Authority. Of course Kamala is already handling the President's duties interacting with foreign leaders as well. Old Joe is not helping things when he does things like his "stable Jesus" kind of speeches either.

Now, the article is couched with the quote, "The worry is not about Biden, but more about Trump or another future Trump-like president..." but the reality is, why are you worrying about a possibility 3 years in the future? They're not. They're worried about right now.

Now the good news.

We have (or at least had) a "no first strike" policy. IOW, the only time the US would launch our nuclear missiles would be as a response to an incoming nuclear strike. The fact that we are moving away from that policy to "consider the first-use of nuclear weapons in a wide set of circumstances" is terrifying. Here's more on it and the process.

I seriously hope that if a president even considers a nuclear first-strike the 25th Amendment would immediately be invoked. There is no scenario where if we opened that can of worms, we could not expect a nuclear retaliation from somebody.

If you remember, in 2007, Hugo Chavez, as President of Venezuela announced “All that was privatized, let it be nationalized.” Chavez was talking about nationalizing (government control) companies in the telecommunications and electricity industries. Of course, the major oil company was nationalized soon after.

If you were taught factual history instead of the whitewashed bullshit, you would have seen this is where Venezuela started declining. The bottom dropped out of their economy when the oil prices fell and the bureaucrats didn't know what to do. It started getting bad when Venezuela couldn't pump and refine enough oil for domestic use, let alone to the rest of the world.

You should know the rest of the story. In 2016-2017, Venezuelans lost an average of 19 pounds because they were starving. Bakers forced to make bread at gunpoint because they wanted to make pastries. Hyperinflation, worthless currency, massive refugee crisis and all that.

The other day, Bloomberg reported that Venezuela has given up on their "Socialist Utopia" and started privatizing businesses and industries again.

What this means is another example of failure to heap upon the dumpster fire known as "Socialism."

This is way late, I started it at the end of 2020, but I didn't get it to where I liked it until now. Better late than never...

In 2016, as a response to Trump's win, there were cries of "RUSSIAN COLLUSION!!!" The Pravdas (Pravda, a Russian word meaning "truth," was the major news paper of the Soviet Union, along with Izvestia, and my new term for the US Mainstream Media) breathlessly exclaimed every night for almost two years, "Evidence proving Trump stole the election will break soon!" My Leftist friends repeatedly told me, "The evidence that Trump is guilty is in the Mueller report!" but couldn't show me when I asked for page and paragraph.

Especially after I quoted the Executive Summary of the Mueller Report, pp.1-2:

Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. [emphasis mine]

So then we come to November 2020, the first "It doesn't matter" election. I mean that in the "Now that the technology is in place and the methodology has been refined, in any close race the victor will invariably be the Democrat candidate" context. In the words of Joseph Stalin, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." The graph below is of the January 5th 2021 Georgia Senate races, total vote count per hour. Notice the two Democrat candidates were trailing until about 11:15pm, then in the space of a few minutes, they jumped from far behind to just ahead. We can surmise that something fishy (i.e., it doesn't pass the smell test) to have both Democrat candidates each have 150,000 votes tallied and almost zero Republican votes in the same time span, which was about seven minutes.

When we look at the chart to see how fast the ballots are being counted, I see an average of about 18,166 votes total (all four candidates together) per minute. So, to have a sudden seven-minute surge of over 42,800 votes per minute, 99% Democrat and equally for both Democrats, if you don't go "hmmm. that's strange...", then you're a delusional Democrat to "see nothing wrong here."

Occam's Razor would indicate that "those who do the counting" saw the trends in votes per hour and issued an "adjustment" to put the Democrat candidates on top. Any investigation or recount would yield little difference, because, you know, the whole "We have investigated ourselves and have found that nomistakes were made" kind of result.

The point I want to bring up is that Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and other states all experienced similar jumps in vote tallies between Trump and Biden. While Pravda kept reporting "NO WIDESPREAD FRAUD FOUND!!!", you have to be cognizant of two things: Their choice of words and the fact that the Pravdas didn't look. In fact, Pravda either ignored the claims or actively explained them away.

The term "widespread" is a worthless word without a context. If we're talking across all 50 states, I'm sure no "widespread" fraud would be found. If we look at just Michigan, the answer would likely be "No" as well. Wayne County Michigan, which has Detroit? Now we could probably get some traction on that word.

Imagine this election as a Jenga tower. If you kick a log out one way, it falls in one direction. Tap on the one next to it and it falls the opposite direction. Those people who caused this alleged fraud to occur only had to target 8-10 counties out of the 2,000 counties in the country. They concentrated on inflating the vote count (which can be done in a variety of methods) in a deep Blue city in a battleground state to "bump up" the vote count so Biden won.

Along with the Georgia machine that counted some Trump votes as Biden votes. Then there was the "signature verification of mail-in ballots will not be conducted," and the "We will accept mail-in ballots up to three days after the law says we must stop accepting" issues in Pennsylvania, and a few other "minor incidents" like those. Kind of like the "mostly peaceful" rioters kind of thing.

What really separates 2020 from 2016 is the people. For the 2020 election, hundreds of people gave sworn depositions of their own free will of many "irregularities" that viewed individually seemed insignificant, but viewed in the aggregate pointed in a very specific direction. The 2016 election didn't have individuals voluntarily coming out to give sworn statements (that have a 5-10 year penalty of perjury if the statements are found to be lies) standing on their own pointing out irregularities, but 2020 did. Don't for a moment dismiss them out-of-hand either. Even if these people are never charged or face trial for Perjury (the penalty for lying under oath, which is what a sworn deposition is), their personal lives were wrecked. Disowned by their families, fired from their jobs, excoriated on social media, these people faced a severe price for speaking out.

Then we have what are known as the "Bellweather Counties." These are 20 counties scattered across the US, that have all been 100% accurate in voting for the winning president since 1980. In other words, these twenty counties all voted for the winning president, regardless of party, ten times in a row, from 1980 to 2016. Vigo County in Indiana has flubbed it twice since 1888, in 1908 and 1952. That's thirty-one correct, and two wrong, and the last sixteen presidential elections have been perfect, until 2020. Well, this time 19 of 20 got it wrong by voting for Trump. Given this record of two hundred correct choices with zero mistakes, I can understand changing demographics, or any of a dozen other reasons, for up to about half of them. To have 95% of these counties simultaneously screw this one election up is statistically improbable to several decimal places. Kind of like the "being struck by lightning, then getting hit by a meteor, only to have your body obliterated a minute later by an aircraft that crashed on top of you" odds.

And the Democrats are doubling down on this travesty by the House rolling out HR 1, the very misnamed "For the People Act of 2021." If I can drive a tractor trailer through the holes of the 2020 mail-in balloting, cruise ships will get though the holes in this "plan," and I mean that in the context of "Custer had a plan."

"This was the most secure election in US history!!!" Oh, pish posh.

Back when I was in Elementary school many, many years ago, the worst insult one child could throw at another on the playground was the term “Indian giver.” It was a serious accusation, not a term quickly or commonly bandied about like “Racist” and Nazi” are today. It was a literal “top of the mountain” insult and if proven, stuck with you for a while. This meant the other kid promised you something but then broke the promise. It was a real Scarlet Letter for an eight-year-old.

In case you missed it, on January 8th, Twitter banned Trump from their platform. This resulted in a lot of people “jumping ship” to Parler, where you weren’t banned merely for having a different opinion than the corporate staff. As a result, on January 9th, Parler became the most downloaded app in both the Apple’s AppStore and GooglePlay.

Then, within a few hours, both Apple and Google banned that app from their respective stores. At 11:59pm on January 10th, Amazon Web Services (AWS) stopped hosting the website and service entirely.

Parler has been down hard ever since. There’s a “placeholder” website back on the web to show you it’s there but there’s no user functionality for it. The bad news is the website code was specifically designed for AWS and is not easily copied over to another hosting service.

Now that I’ve set the table, let’s get into the meat of things.

First, in discussions I’ve had on this, my argument of “businesses can refuse service” (e.g., Masterpiece Cake Shop) was tossed in my face. To refresh you there, the man who owned MCS refused to make a custom cake for a same-sex couple. They were free to buy a standard cake, but the owner would not, under his personal religious morals, use his skills for them. Just to show he doesn’t selectively apply it, he also won’t do stuff like Halloween cakes either. I firmly believe MCS had the option to refuse to serve this couple’s request. He offered his cakes without his talents and referred them to other bakeries who would have been happy to serve them with customized cakes.

But there’s a big difference between MCS and AWS: a contract. AWS was under contract with Parler to provide web services.

The important parts are:

1. If AWS tells Parler that there’s “offensive content” that AWS doesn’t like on Parler, which started a 30-day clock for Parler to remove the stipulated content. The contract can be cancelled if the contested content is not modified or removed after 30 days.
2. If AWS cancels the contract for whatever reason, Parler has 30 days from that moment to move their website to another hosting service.

AWS notified Parler on January 8th and 9th of “offensive content violations,” on Parler. These were deleted within hours of Parler receiving the notification. By doing so, Parler held up its’ end of the contract. By removing the “bad” content, this act in contract terms “healed” the issue. So AWS had no viable complaints against Parler.

With no active issues, let alone any that had gone unresolved for 30 days, AWS still gave Parler only a thirty hour (not day) notice to get off AWS.

So this is where I start calling AWS an “Indian giver” because AWS promised a 30 day notice if they were going to cancel the contract and they broke that promise. What’s worse, there were no active grievances, only AWS’s animus over healed issues.

There are a lot of other issues and facets of this particular case that are not important to my point (namely the Sherman Antitrust act) and I’m not going to cover. As long as Justice is blind, Parler will most likely win and AWS will owe Parler lots of money for loss of income, reputational damage, penalties for breaking their contract and so on.

THIS is my point: By AWS making this a political/ideological decision instead of a profit/loss business decision, who from this point forward will want to do business with a company that breaks their contracts? Amazon got to where it is because they made win/win contracts with other companies. That built a solid reputation. From now on, many companies will look very hard at doing future business with AWS and Amazon overall because these companies will worry that they’ll get “Parlered” if AWS/Amazon takes a dislike to them.

Here’s the video that caught me up to speed on this: