Too much base

 

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.

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Grab bag

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.