Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Sunday, October 25, 2020

I Feel Personally Attacked by this Cartoon

 


Quote of the Day - Jennifer Fitz Edition

Ms. Fitz wrote an op-ed for Patheos entitled Feeling Pushed Towards Trump.  It's an interesting piece, but this quote is what leaped out at me:

From the right, I continue to see the usual callous indifference to the lives of ordinary people, but it’s just indifference.  The message I am getting from the left is that I am a target they mean to destroy.

I’m not real comfortable with that.

Nor should she be.  Nor should anyone.

Friday, October 23, 2020

Too Little, Too Late Most Probably

This is interesting.  Quoting from Instapundit:

REPORT ON BIDEN’S ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA. “First, it is almost exclusively taken from public sources and documentation. Everything from Chinese news reports to corporate records. The report is immaculately cited so that anyone who wishes to replicate where a specific piece of information was found or see the underlying documentation can do so.”

The full report is here. Looks like lots of stuff for investigative journalists to run with, if there are any of those left.

Redstate picked it up, but you can bet nobody in major media will touch it, and Facebook and Twitter will do everything they can to suppress it.

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Requiescat in Pace

Ronin-René Espinoza, my great-grandson, 8/10/2019 - 10/20/2019 being held shortly after his birth by my wife, his great-grandmother.


It doesn't seem like it's been a year.

I Voted Today

 Two weeks before Election Day, and there were at least eight people there at the same time, voting, plus there were collection boxes outside for people who had received mail-in ballots to drop off.

But I parked right next to this:

It's not a Prius?!? 

I can't IMAGINE a more appropriate vanity license plate.

So This Popped Up in my Facebook Feed....

 

Am I concerned about right-wing extremists?  No.  I'm concerned about the LEFT-wing extremists.  They've already trashed and burned down major portions of several cities, they've announced that they'll really get violent if Trump wins re-election, they're threatening Trump supporters with retaliation, etc.

Am I concerned about right-wing extremists?  No.  But LEFT-wing extremists should be.

Quote of the Day - Michael Walsh Edition

From his column "Held Captive by Pandemic Lies" at Epoch Times (paywall), copied from the excerpt at Instapundit:

In previous pandemics, the bug was allowed to burn its way through the body politic, its toll just part of the cost of being human. So what’s different about this seasonal malady?

For one thing, it’s occurring in an election year, at the start of which the American economy was firing on all cylinders in a way it hasn’t in decades. When President Trump’s political enemies realized the Covid shutdown could be wielded as a wrecker’s ball against the American and global economies, they jumped at the chance.

For another, a society that has moved from “pay any price, bear any burden” to “if it saves just one life” is no longer capable of facing or dealing with reality.

As they used to say, "WORD."

Sunday, October 18, 2020

Is This When Biden Gets Torricelli'd?

Back in March I predicted that Joe Biden would not be the Democrat candidate on the ballot November 3.  I cited as precedent the 2002 Senate campaign of New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli.  When it became obvious that Torricelli, under criminal investigation, was not going to win that race, the DNC - in direct violation of election laws for the state of New Jersey - replaced him on the ticket with former Senator Frank Lautenberg.  The RNC appealed.  The New Jersey Supreme Court rubber-stamped it.

Lautenberg won.

I predicted that Cuomo would get tapped.  He still might! 

There's 15 days to November 3 as I write this.  It's still not too late!

(I write this half in jest.  But only half.)




A warning letter from the niece of Osama bin Laden

 Yes, seriously.  Excerpt:

Though I am an unlikely messenger at first glance — rest assured that the name that I carry is antithetical to the values I hold — my heart is in the right place: with you. The level of urgency coupled with the platform afforded to me by my circumstance compel me to speak up and warn you before it is too late.

Read the whole thing.

Well, She Did

 

She said so right here:

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Quote of the Day - Angelo Codevilla Edition

From his review of Michael Anton's new book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return in the Clairmont Review of Books, The Election to End All Elections:

They (the Ruling Class) do not believe they have to worry about controlling their own violent troops because they are sure that they have nothing to fear from conservatives. That is because conservatives have continued to believe that the United States’s institutions and those who run them retain legitimacy. Conservative complaisance made possible a half-century of Progressive rule’s abuse. 

When the belief in that legitimacy goes away, they're going to get a hell of a shock. 

As always with Prof. Codevilla, read the whole thing.

Friday, October 16, 2020

The Hunter Biden Revelation that Bothers Me Most

 ...is this one:

If Hunter "gave" his father half of everything he got paid, Burisma, the Chicoms, the Russian oligarch's wife, what are the tax implications for his father, not to mention the foreign influence questions?  That should be the real story.  And when was the last time Joe Biden got audited by the IRS?


Thursday, October 15, 2020

Winston Smith has been Working Overtime

 


Quote of the Day - Sarah Hoyt Edition

AMERICA DOESN’T HAVE TWO PARTIES. IT HAS ONE PARTY, WHICH SURE, HAS ITS FLAWS. AND THEN IT HAS THE DEMOCRATS, WHICH ARE A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY SKINSUITING A POLITICAL PARTY. THE ONLY WAY TO HAVE TWO PARTIES AGAIN IS TO SLAP THE CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY SO HARD THEY TASTE 2024. LET’S GET TO IT. - Sarah Hoyt

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Quote of the Day - Ben Shapiro Edition

Republicans believe the Supreme Court exists to defend the Constitution. Democrats believe the Supreme Court exists to ram through their policy agenda. - Twitter, October 12

Monday, October 12, 2020

250 Yards

.204 Ruger T/C Encore.  32 grain Nosler lead free Ballistic Tip.  Single GSW to the chest.  Didn't exit.  

DRT.

 

They know to fear me now.

READ. THIS. ESSAY.


Suicide of the Liberals, by Gary Saul Morson.

Pullquotes: 

Between 1900 and 1917, waves of unprecedented terror struck Russia. Several parties professing incompatible ideologies competed (and cooperated) in causing havoc.
--

Instead of the pendulum’s swinging back—a metaphor of inevitability that excuses people from taking a stand—the killing grew and grew, both in numbers and in cruelty.

--

How did educated, liberal society respond to such terrorism? What was the position of the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party and its deputies in the Duma (the parliament set up in 1905)? Though Kadets advocated democratic, constitutional procedures, and did not themselves engage in ­terrorism, they aided the terrorists in any way they could. Kadets collected money for terrorists, turned their homes into safe houses, and called for total amnesty for arrested terrorists who pledged to continue the mayhem.

--

One sometimes hears that “the pendulum is bound to swing back.” But how does one know there is a pendulum at all, rather than—let us say—a snowball accelerating downhill? It is unwise to comfort oneself with metaphors. When a party is willing to push its power as far as it can go, it will keep going until it meets sufficient opposition.
Seriously.  Read it.  History doesn't repeat, but it very often rhymes.

Tuesday, October 06, 2020

Going to Blogorado!

I attended Blogorado for the first time in 2017.  I missed it in 2018 due to my illness.  I tried as hard as I could to make it to the 2019 gathering, but that effort ended in disaster when I managed to blow up the engine in my truck, stranding me in Las Vegas, NM.  That was the most expensive vacation (that wasn't) I've ever experienced in my life.  I could've taken my wife to Tahiti for what that ended up costing.

Blogorado 2020 is this weekend.  I leave tomorrow.  I've never needed a vacation this badly in my life.

I'm taking the T-shirts I had made for last year:  

That's "the most photographed barn in Colorado."  It's gone, now, but not forgotten.

Them's Fightin' Words (Quote of the Day - Glenn Reynolds Edition)

 I have said repeatedly that some time beginning in the 1960's the Left's infiltration of education, media and politics kicked into high gear.  A few years later, they had control of all three.  That was the period when the Right stopped being their "loyal opposition" and became "The Enemy."  Opposition to Leftist ideology and policy wasn't from ignorance or misunderstanding, not because those on the Right were too stupid to understand (though that was part of it), it was because the Right was evil.  Only an evil person could oppose such obviously correct thought.

What do you do with evil? 

You don't debate with evil. You don't negotiate with evil.  You certainly don't compromise with evil.

You placate evil while you look around for a rock sufficient to bash its head in.  You DESTROY evil.

We're past the placation stage.

The Left has been "Othering" the Right for at least the last forty years, basically since Reagan was elected.  The evidence is everywhere.  Here's an example:


There's lots more.  Andy Ngo, Aaron Danielson, Bernell Trammell, Adam Haner, and many others have been the recipients of the tolerance, caring and acceptance of the Left, and I imagine that after November 3 there will be a whole lot more.  

Today at Instapundit was this post by Stephen Green comparing 2020 America to 1917 Russia, but Prof. Reynolds tacked on the QotD:

I don’t think it’s 1917. But in 1917, it’s obvious in retrospect that the only moral and practical thing to do was to kill Bolsheviks, starting at the top. An unparalleled human tragedy could have been prevented, had the Czarists, or the Mensheviks, been willing to act appropriately.

Monday, October 05, 2020

Quote of the Day - Austin Schue

 From A Poor Farrier's Journey to Political Sanity.  (RTWT)

American politics now looks like the end-state of a dysfunctional, increasingly abusive marriage between Right and Left. Younger adults have been put in the role of children who now must decide who gets custody. When I don’t play my expected role, I’m not just accused of ignorance by ideologues, but of betrayal.

Friday, October 02, 2020

Tough History Coming, Part XX

In re: The Left's response to the Trumps testing positive for COVID-19, Charles Krauthammer, 2002: "To understand the workings of American politics you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil."

You do not debate with evil. You do not negotiate with evil. You do not compromise with evil.  You do not tolerate evil. You destroy evil. It’s a religious crusade.

The Right is "The Other."

I'm reading Evan Sayet's new book The Woke Supremacy. In it he relates the story of Jimmy Fallon as host of the Tonight Show having a guest on the September 15, 2016 episode:

"Fallon, whose show was number one in the ratings at the time, did what late-night talk show hosts do in a normal society and booked one of the biggest names and most entertaining guests he could find. He then did what late-night talk show hosts do by being engaging, fun and funny. Fallon was warm and welcoming as he treated his guest in exactly the fashion he'd treated all of his other guests, and in the style that had made him number one in late-night in the first place.

"The trouble was that the guest was Donald Trump.

"By the next morning, Variety, one of the two uber-powerful trade magazines for the entertainment industry, came out with a hit piece that set the tone and let all of Hollywood know what the Powers-That-Be in the (Woke) Supremacy expected them to do.

...

"The word most often used by (Fallon's) attackers for the "wrong" he had committed was that, by treating Trump in the way the TV show host treated any and all other people, Fallon had served to 'humanize' the Other." 

The Trumps aren't human to the Left. No one who isn't Progressive is.

This will not end well.