Personal
comments
I’m
going to share here that I have regular readers of my blog numbering in the
dozens and that’s on a good day. Since I have been unable to figure out how to
enable comments I haven’t had to worry about trolls (thug wannabes). BTW I have
checked with the help boards and I am doing all the correct settings to no
avail in regards to enabling comments.
What
I have noticed on the comments posted to other people that I follow is the
level of outright threats made in addition to all the name calling. I follow
both conservative and liberal posts, Conservatives without a doubt own the low
ground when it comes to threats, intimidations, thuggishness and all around
ugliness. The same holds true with email that I have received over the years
when I circulated in conservative circles. During the Obama years the amount of
outright racist email that I received was phenomenal.
So,
why am I sharing this now? Whenever I mention Putin Russia shows up in my
tracking statistics. (Probably a bot.) I’m too small potatoes to mess with. My
following isn’t big enough and my writing isn’t strong enough.
And yes foreign governments are active and
involved in our country with China and Russia both being very active—especially
when Trump was in office.
I
waver when it comes to doing things that will boost my readership. Why invite
the ugliness of the world in? This is especially true as we observe daily the
purges the Republican Party enacts against anyone that speaks out against glorious
leader and his policies of hate.
Given
the seriousness of what’s going on in the world though I will probably continue
to ‘write out’ from my little corner of the internet.
Now
on to a hodge-podge of comments.
~~~
Grab bag
~~~
Bullseye
There
is an article from The Atlantic titled “The Bad Guys Are Winning” by Anne
Applebaum. The piece is probably behind a paywall so the link won’t do much
good. It’s an excellent article. Here’s the link just in case. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/the-autocrats-are-winning/620526/
It’s a well-researched, well-thought-out half hour read.
The
gist of the article is about authoritarians being on the rise worldwide and
that it isn’t by accident. Men like Putin, Lukashenko, Xi, Maduro, Erdogan, Un,
Burmese Junta, MBS, Santos, Akhundzada, Bolsonaro, Khamenei, and so on. The
list would be waaaayyy too long for my purposes. I didn’t bother listing their
country by their name. Keep in mind that these men are just the tip of the
iceberg. They are supported by a cabal of wealthy, make that ultra-wealthy,
elite. They “govern” through fear, intimidation and acting upon their threats
by those that benefit through their association with them.
Ex-President Trump seeks to join this
crowd.
~~~
Fascism
Before WW2
there was a pro-Nazi movement within the continental United States. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/americans-hold-nazi-rally-in-madison-square-garden
They’re back.
~~~
SAP PAC!
Know what
SAP stands for? It’s Trump’s PAC. It stands for Save America PAC. It’s a profit
center started by Trump to funnel SAP money into his pockets. His family as
well but mostly his. Trump supporters
have a wonderful opportunity to be SAP donors.
Can’t make this stuff up.
~~~
Defeat
from the jaws of Victory
It’s
kind of amazing really. Democrats manage to do this on a regular basis. Replace
a megalomaniac narcissistic wannabe dictator that staged a coup with a good
decent honorable man and then fight amongst themselves gaining all the negative
press that they can right before critical elections and take a drubbing at the
polls.
President
Biden managed to tank his favorability rating after saving countless lives
through his handling of the pandemic and get negative ratings for his handling
of the pandemic at the same time while Republicans do everything within their
power to make the pandemic worse.
Impressive.
~~~
Practice test
Remember in
school when we would be given a practice test to help us prepare for the real
test? The current pandemic (with its relatively low mortality rate) was like the
practice test, except that there were, are, and will continue to be real world
consequences. It’s a test that has cost us 770,000 lives so far and we still
have a ways to go. We could hit 800,000 by the end of the year. The real test will
be a really bad pandemic with a high mortality rate.
We have already learned some things though:
Vaccines
work.
Masks work.
Social
distancing works.
Ivermectin
doesn’t work.
Hydroxychloroquine
doesn’t work.
Drinking
bleach doesn’t work.
Ignorance
knows no bounds.
We failed this test.
~~~
Hail Mary
Vaccine
I
watched a video of an ER nurse saying that she wasn’t going to take the vaccine
because she felt that it was rushed too fast. She said that after witnessing
deaths from Covid 19 firsthand.
One
of the reasons if not the main reason that so many vaccines were developed so
quickly is that the corona virus was already well known and studied. Several
breakthrough technologies have been developed over the years that made rapid
development of effective vaccines possible.
Science.
It
also helps that a couple of billion vaccine doses have been administered with
adverse reactions kept to 4 decimal points. Not unusual results for a vaccine.
We were fortunate to have enough months available for vaccines to be tested in
target populations. This wasn’t fortunate for all those that died while waiting
for the trials to finish.
These
weren’t ‘Hail Mary’ vaccines. Such a vaccine is what would be necessary for a
virus moving through a population so quickly affecting everyone exposed and
that acted fast enough to kill people within hours. The kind of virus that has
people dropping dead in the streets. A virus that didn’t leave enough time for
testing other than in a lab. A virus that violates non-existent constitutional rights.
A species-ending virus.
~~~
Christian
Sharia
Remember
when the Evangelical Party and Republicans went around states warning that
Muslims were going to impose sharia law here in the United States? Just Google
“Republican Sharia Opposition” and go trippin’ back to 2011. It was a totally
made up threat but that didn’t stop their base from going totally off their nut
about it. Republican leaders went on stages across the country declaring their
opposition to sharia law being implemented in our great nation.
Now
ex-convict pardoned by Trump General Flynn has come out and said the quiet part
out loud. He said that our nation needs one religion. This is what the
Evangelical Party and Republicans have been saying all along. When they say
they want prayer in school they mean Christian prayer. When they say “One
nation under God” they mean a Christian god. They want a faux theocracy
governed by a dictator. Then they can throw abortion seeking women in jail and
try those that have had abortions for murder.
Will
they fulfill the desires of their black hearts?
They’re close. Very close. Too close.
~~~
The Beast
The Beast is awake now
For everyone
to
see
It sees itself as well
And admires what it isn’t
It preens.
It attracts,
it is.
The Beast is hungry
~~~
To the movies
When my
wife is gone I like to watch shoot ‘em ups. According to that little disclaimer
that proceeds a movie before it’s watched making a copy if caught by the FBI is
punishable with up to 5 years in jail and a $250,000 fine. Seditionists
attempting a coup by storming the Capitol and trying to overturn the election have
been given zero time and a $500 fine. Good thing that they didn’t try to
illegally copy any movies while they were in there.
They’d really be in trouble then.
~~~
Reap what they
sew
I watched a
video of Senator Lindsey Graham addressing a crowd of supporters where he told
them that he had got a vaccine and said that they should think about getting
one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i12qBRhtwEI
Hoo boy! For what it’s worth Trump got
booed at his own rally for suggesting that people vaccinate.
These
people believe the conspiracy theories that they have been fed by the Republican
and Evangelical Parties for the last couple of decades. They do NOT operate in
the real world. They believe that they have the constitutional right to
endanger and kill others in the name of liberty. They revel in their ignorance.
They threaten just like they have been taught. They want to overthrow our
democracy for not being in their anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-Muslim,
anti-brown people anti-science, anti-government image.
Elected
officials and leaders of the Republican Party play to this base. These people
appreciate the name calling thuggery. It’s why so many conservatives don’t talk
about getting vaccinated willingly. They are in the minority of their party.
This is why they don’t voice negative opinions about Trump or what he does.
They don’t want to alienate HIS base. The Republican Party suffers from…
…too much base.
