Just after the midterm election, an AP reporter asked President Joe Biden (D) what he’ll do differently in the last two years of his term. Biden said, “nothing.”
“Nothing, because they’re just finding out what we’re doing,” the president said.
Just finding out?
We know Biden wants to ban popular semi-automatic firearms—he even again promised to do this right before the midterm election.
We know Biden wants to ban so-called “high-capacity” magazines—according to him, these could be any magazine that holes 10 rounds, or perhaps eight.
We know Biden nonsensically wants to ban the 9 mm handgun, even though it is easily the most-popular centerfire pistol caliber sold today—Biden said, “A 9 mm bullet blows the lung out of the body. So the idea that these high-caliber weapons is of—there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of thinking about self-protection, hunting. I mean, I just—and remember, the Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute … .”
We know Biden wants to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) so that activists can again use frivolous lawsuits to sue firearms manufactures into bankruptcy. We know a lot more about Biden’s thoughts on our rights, but let’s stop there; instead let’s take a look at what the midterm elections wrought and, therefore, what Biden might be able to do in the last two years of his term.
On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump announced he is running for president. While Democrats publicly suggest they want Trump to run because they think they can beat him, Joe Biden already proved that he’s terrified of Trump’s candidacy.
How?
Before Trump’s announcement was even over, Joe Biden tweeted an attack ad against him, rehashing his usual anti-Trump talking points.
Joe Biden hasn’t officially announced his candidacy, so this video lacks the typical disclaimers we are used to seeing in a campaign ad. But make no mistake, this is a garden variety campaign attack ad, and Biden let the cat out of the bag that he’s afraid of Trump by releasing it even as Trump was speaking.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine cruised to re-election last week, defeating Democrat Nan Whaley by an eye-popping 25 points. Now the governor, who signed Constitutional Carry into law back in March, is hoping to spend some of his newly-acquired political capital to put several new gun control measures on the books, and his allies in the state legislature are doing everything they can to help.
The bill in question is SB 357, and though it’s been bottled up in committee for most of the year, there’s now a push to move the bill forward during the legislature’s lame-duck session that started this week.
An attempt to revive some of the “Strong Ohio” proposals against gun violence, stalled in the General Assembly since 2019, faces a timeline that’s hard to meet.
State Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, is trying to resurrect some of the “Strong Ohio” proposals against gun violence that stalled in the legislature in 2019. His Senate Bill 357 will get a first hearing, but also faces a tight timeline. The bill includes a “red flag” provision, better background checks, some limitation on private sales, and using $175 million in federal funds to improve mental healthcare.
Gov. Mike DeWine has signaled approval of the bill, which includes some of the ideas he unsuccessfully floated following the August 2019 mass shooting in Dayton’s Oregon District.
On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee held its first hearing on SB 357, but didn’t hold a vote on the measure. Dolan, meanwhile, has made a few tweaks to the legislation, which would create a new category of prohibited persons, require adults under the age of 21 to have a co-signer for all gun purchases, and establish a “seller’s protection certificate” that is designed to encourage (but not require) background checks on private transfers of firearms.
“Everything in this sub bill is about before you buy a gun,” said Dolan, who chairs the finance committee.
During months of campaigning for the Nov. 8 election, legislators heard people statewide asking what they’d do to prevent gun violence, he said.
From speaking with healthcare personnel, law enforcement and others, it became clear the state’s current involuntary commitment program is not sufficient to identify all the at-risk people who shouldn’t be able to buy guns, Dolan said.
His substitute bill adds a sixth “disability” to state laws preventing people from buying guns. Existing ones prohibit fugitives from justice, felons, those who committed juvenile crimes that would be adult felonies, drug addicts and alcoholics, and those with established dangerous mental problems from buying guns, he said.
Dolan’s bill adds people who go before a behavioral risk assessment team and have been determined to be a “suicidal or homicidal risk.”
Ohio law already prohibits people under age 21 from buying handguns, he said. His bill would add that under-21 buyers of other guns would need a cosigner age 25 or older. There are exceptions for anyone under 21 in law enforcement or the military, Dolan said.
For some reason Dolan’s really focused on the fact that these provisions are all directed at individuals before they purchase a firearm, though that doesn’t mean that any or all of his proposals would be constitutional or effective.
Take his new category of prohibited persons, for example. The supposed reason to add those who’ve been determined by a behavioral risk assessment team to be a “suicidal or homicidal risk” is that the state’s current involuntary commitment law isn’t working as well as it should. Seems to me the proper legislative response would be to determine why that’s the case and work to fix the existing law, rather than avoiding improving the state’s mental health system by making it easier to deny some individuals the ability to purchase a firearm. If someone truly is a risk to themselves or others, simply denying them the ability to purchase a firearm at a gun store isn’t going to make them any less dangerous, but Dolan’s bill treats guns as the issue and not the supposedly dangerous individual.
There are also major issues with Dolan’s desire to force young adults to find someone who’ll sign off on their gun ownership. The co-signer assumes some legal liability if the under-21 gun buyer were to misuse the firearm; an extraordinary provision that is unlike any existing (or historical) gun regulation that I’m aware of. Not only would this have a chilling effect on the Second Amendment rights of young adults, it’s hard to see how this restriction even remotely fits with the text, history, and tradition of the right to keep and bear arms.
SB 357 has been floating around the Ohio legislature in one form or another since 2019, and so far it’s received a very cool reception from the Republican majority. Clearly DeWine is hoping to capitalize on his overwhelming victory last week, but whether or not his Republican colleagues in the statehouse have had a change of heart about his gun proposals is still very much up in the air. The first test will be a vote in the Senate Finance Committee, and Ohio gun owners should be reaching out to those committee members to share their concerns before the bill has a chance to reach the Senate floor.
Agrowing list of Illinois counties disenfranchised with the goings-on in Cook County have voted in nonbinding resolutions to leave Illinois and form a new state.
Residents in three more counties – Brown, Hardin and a portion of Madison County – voted in favor of a nonbinding resolution allowing their county board to explore the possibility of leaving the state, bringing the total to 27. In all three counties, close to 75% of residents were in favor of the idea.
The driving force behind the referendums was to allow the county board of each area to coordinate with other county boards to explore the possibility of leaving Illinois because of the influence that Chicago and Cook County have on the state’s political decisions.
In Brown County, the ballot question read, “Shall the board of Brown County correspond with the boards of the other counties of Illinois outside of Cook County about the possibility of separating from Cook County to form a new state, and to seek admission to the union as such, subject to the approval of the people.”
“We don’t use the word secession because that’s not what this is, it’s legally something different,” said G.H. Merritt, chair of the nonpartisan organization New Illinois. “We are trying to form a new state, and we’re not trying to kick Chicago out of Illinois, we’re trying to kick ourselves out of Illinois.”
Only Congress has the power to create new states, but there has never been a formal agreement on how the process should take place.
Merritt said a driving force behind the expanding movement is that many southern Illinoisans want to be heard regarding issues that affect the state as a whole.
“You have this movement in Illinois, you have it in California, you have it in New York, you have it in Colorado, it’s because the people in the rural areas don’t have a meaningful voice in the government,” Merritt said.
She said a resolution is expected to be filed in January to begin the process.
This is not the first time frustrated downstate Illinoisans have lobbied to split from the state. In the 1970s, residents of western Illinois declared themselves “Forgottonia” as a protest against the government’s failure to improve the transportation infrastructure.
It would have been an utter surprise if he had announced he wasn’t
As a gun rights advocate, I’m often accused of being stubborn. I refuse to give any ground or entertain any position that favors gun control. I, personally, might prefer to see laws enforced until they’re declared unconstitutional, but there’s literally no gun law I can remotely favor.
Speaking at a protest near the Texas Capitol on 27 August, Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old nephew and adopted son Uzaiyah was one of the 21 victims, left no room for equivocation. He was there with hundreds to demand that the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, call a special legislative session to raise the age to buy assault-style weapons from 18 – the age of the Robb elementary mass murderer – to 21.
“Fight with us,” he said. “Because you don’t want to be fighting from this side with a hole in your heart.”
There is no middle ground left in Uvalde. The shared cause of raising the age for buying assault rifles clarifies the two sides of the fight: those who demand change and those who oppose it. While Abbott himself had told Cross he didn’t see guns as the real culprit in Uvalde, to simply accept inaction wasn’t an option. Giving up was inconceivable to families who would have given anything to prevent their children from dying. The families saw no good excuse for those unwilling to join their cause.
“If you’re not trying,” Cross said, “you’re complicit.”
And that is why there will never be any middle ground in the gun debate.
This line of “argument” pisses me off and it always has. Why? Because I’ve been there. Not to the extent Cross has, but I’ve lost someone to a mass shooting, someone I cared about, and I’ve talked about how this line of argument infuriates me.
Then there’s our own Ryan Petty, who lost his daughter at Parkland. I haven’t talked to him about it, but I’m pretty sure it makes him furious as well.
See, this line of argument stems can only make sense if you believe that everyone agrees that gun control works, they only oppose you for some other reason. As a result, your opposition to gun control can only be motivated by factors in spite of this self-evident truth.
They cannot grasp that we simply know. It. Won’t. Work.
Then again, it’s not like they’re willing to sit down and listen when it comes to guns. They’re often too busy preaching.
For example, take Uvalde. For all the talk of some deep divide in the community, with anti-gun voices supposedly being on the side of the angels, Beto O’Rourke lost Uvalde County. It seems there’s a strong possibility that many in the community, perhaps even a majority, recognize that it wasn’t the tool used that resulted in that atrocity, but the tool using it.
Do not come at me or people like me and pretend we’re somehow responsible for the actions of others when you have made it clear you’ll accept nothing but capitulation from us. Do not pretend you’re looking for solutions when the only thing you’re wanting is something that doesn’t yield the results you think.
Frankly, don’t be surprised when we’re not willing to listen to you when all you do is screech and blame us for things we’re not responsible for.
Republicans, or people who vote for them, are still, in a bizarre act of idolatrous religious faith, counting on national-level voting to change things. Meanwhile, the communists are tearing at the foundations with increasing success. If you feel you should vote, even knowing your government is thoroughly corrupted, then do it; we believe there is a Biblical case for that, but let the idea go that anybody but Christ can save us now.
First, your District Attorneys continue to be replaced by communist party adherents, faithful only to Mao’s little red book.
Secondly, as we’ve warned, the defund police movement in some cities is moving to phase two of their operation. They only want control of the national security apparatus with which to destroy you. **Warning, not a family-friendly link**Hard-core violent communists are training the police to be party enforcers, which means you, dear religiously Republican voters, are being targeted for genocide.
Thirdly, these religious Republican voters scoff at the leftist State’s and City’s policies of allowing rampant crime and homelessness, never understanding that it’s being done on purpose. Crime, along with national tax policy and immigration, has been designed to drive leftist constituents into the Red States, turning formerly quiet, friendly, and quaint small cities and towns into communist enclaves, one Uhaul truckload at a time.
Why can they read this post, understand it’s true, yet live and remain in their fantasy? Shamefully, the next national-level election will be no different. Those going through the various iterations of the grieving process for America today will once more put on their denial dunce hats and start looking for a national savior by pushing the R button on the machines that are pre-programmed with the results.
Your enemy is at war, and your faith in a foundation you know has already been destroyed is silly. Seriously, it’s like watching a Benny Hill skit, and you’re the object of the caricature. Please stop; you look foolish. National politics is an open failure for all the world to laugh at in derision, and your religious adherence is making it worse. Unless you have the money and a plan to conduct a counter-communist revolution, then today should be the day you end your fantasy. Rend your clothes, stomp up and down, flop on the floor and beat your fists as much as you must, get angry and scream, cry and wail, eat a bowl of ice cream in your PJs sobbing, but end it today, no more whining and no more denial. Your country needs you, not Washington but your real country; the people who know you and love you are counting on you.
Sorry for calling you names, but seriously, stop being dodo birds.
No more politics. I love the direction that TCJ is taking; you need a plan, practical knowledge, friends, tools, and the right spirit for what’s coming. Every moment you spend on politics is time wasted you could be spending on praying, training the young, teaching yourself craftwork, making practical application of pioneer, homestead, or survival skills, family team building, firearms and self-defense training, sharing the Gospel, deepening commitments among local trusted allies, etc., etc., etc.
Be a self-sufficient Christian. Nothing is more subversive than self-reliance, declaring Christ is King.
Comment O’ The Day People know the system is total baloney. Yet the GOP does little or nothing to fix it, even to help itself! At some point, we have to assume this level of loserdom is deliberate.
Robert Shibley
While votes are still being counted, and there could be a few, rare bright spots left for Republicans, one thing is clear: The red wave didn’t materialize in 2022.
Ironically, some accused me of being too conservative when I predicted the GOP only getting to 235 seats in the House. Now, the Republican Party might end up with a majority far less than that. The Senate is pretty much a wasteland as well, with Mehmet Oz, despite a strong push down the stretch, not being able to overcome his unfavorables in Pennsylvania. Don Bolduc got trounced in New Hampshire, Georgia is headed to a runoff, and Masters is an underdog as counting continues in Arizona.
Far from the optimism of suggesting that 54 senate seats were on the table, my “low” prediction of winning 51 seats would actually be a minor miracle for Republicans now. I whiffed, not because I was too conservative, but because I was too bullish. That’s an outcome that seemed improbable just a day ago.
What happened on Tuesday can’t be left to lie. There has to be a reckoning, and it’s going to be uncomfortable and challenge some deeply-held priors. Republicans can’t keep running the same play over and over, hoping that the next time things will be different. No one should escape accountability.
On the congressional side, Kevin McCarthy did not earn the mandate necessary to be handed the role of Speaker of the House. There should be a real battle for the position. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell, even though he should be lauded for raising and spending a ton of money this cycle to help elect Republicans, is 80 years old and is deeply unpopular with most Americans. For Republicans to escape their current malaise, new leadership is needed.
The recriminations don’t stop with elected officials, though. Donald Trump is the de facto leader of the Republican Party. He is the face, he does the rallies, he makes himself the center of attention, and he is the kingmaker. He has now failed in that role for three straight elections. Frustratingly, he refuses to take any responsibility for his failures, pointing to no possibility of change on his part as the standard-bearer.
For example, after Don Bolduc lost in New Hampshire, Trump trashed him despite the fact that he was one of the former president’s endorsed candidates. He also bashed Mehmet Oz after that race was called. Worse, in the midst of Republican struggles becoming clear late on election night, Trump took to Truth Social to celebrate the loss of Joe O’Dea in Colorado’s senate race. Later, he bragged about his supposed endorsement record, calling the disappointing night a “great victory.” That’s not leadership. It’s self-serving buck-passing, and it’s especially off-putting given Trump was attempting to take credit for the red wave right up until the moment that it ceased to be.
This excerpt from Spencer Brown’s post-election write-up over at Townhall is correct.
It’s also impossible to separate the national GOP political apparatus from former President Donald Trump, who, before the election, circulated a memo hyping up the number of rallies, candidate endorsements, fundraising numbers, and primary wins for which he claimed responsibility.
For Trump, his biggest win on Election Day was arguably J.D. Vance’s victory in Ohio. But losses for his candidates, including Oz, Walker, Bolduc, and numerous others, call into question his role in picking candidates and getting them across the primary finish line — something he’s bragged about endlessly.
After all, the rest of the GOP machinery ended up pouring money and time into the races where Trump-endorsed primary candidates advanced to the general, but that’s all downstream from Trump (and in some cases, Democrats who backed the same candidates in a now proven theory that those candidates would be easier to beat).
Meanwhile, in Florida, Ron DeSantis turned a state he won by 30,000 votes four years ago into a 20-point blowout. It was the most shocking shift in a single state in decades, with Republicans actually winning Hispanic voters outright. In a sea of terrible, what happened in Florida showed a better way. It showed what issues voters care about. It showed that being likable and effective as a leader matters. I don’t know if DeSantis runs in 2024, but Republicans would be foolish to pass over him for a nearly 80-year-old man with extremely high unfavorable ratings.
I realize saying that definitively is going to ruffle some feathers, but I assure you that’s not my goal. None of what I’m saying means that 2016 wasn’t special. It doesn’t mean that the big rallies weren’t fun when they actually meant something and weren’t just irrelevant spectacles. It doesn’t mean Trump didn’t accomplish a lot in the White House.
What it does mean is that times change, appeals diminish, and not adapting going forward would only guarantee another gut-wrenching loss in the next election. Republicans need a course correction just as they needed one after the George W. Bush era (which ended with Mitt Romney). It’s not about establishment vs. Trump because, to be frank, both sides have shown themselves incapable of winning at this point.
It’s going to take a combination of inspirational fight and extreme competence that hasn’t been shown by the party’s national leadership, from McConnell to Trump, to turn this ship around. And while I may personally think that’s DeSantis, I’m not trying to browbeat anyone into that position. I encourage people to support whoever they feel convicted to support, and if we end up agreeing on 99 percent of everything else but disagreeing on that one issue, there should be no hard feelings. All I ask is that people step back, look at the whole picture, and think critically about how we got to where we are. Changes have to be made because I’m tired of losing, and I hope you are too.
So today isn't the existential threat to democracy that was repeated every day for the last 2-3 months?
The issue here is that if every election is 'the end of democracy' then it becomes boy who cried wolf when there's minimal changes.
Republican voters in Eastern and Central Oregon are so fed up with liberal lawmakers that they want to break rank — and state lines — and become part of Idaho.
On Tuesday, two Oregon counties, Morrow and Wheeler, are set to vote on a ballot measure about whether to explore leaving the state. Since 2020, nine counties in Eastern Oregon have already voted to join the Greater Idaho movement.
“People in Eastern Oregon are just different and have different views on crime, the Second Amendment, abortion, taxes and minimum wage [from the western portion of the state],” Matt McCaw, spokesman for Greater Idaho, told The Post. “The polarization with the western part of the state is real. When I meet with people and host meetings, there are a lot of complaints about the lack of representation. Eastern Oregon is just very conservative and has its own culture.”
The Greater Idaho movement is made up of residents in Eastern and Central Oregon who are so fed up with liberal lawmakers that they are pushing for the region to break state lines and become part of Idaho.Matt McCaw, spokesman for the Greater Idaho movement, told The Post: “Eastern Oregon is just very conservative and has its own culture” compared to the state’s more liberal western region.
So he and a group of fellow disgruntled Oregonians in the small city of La Pine began to hash out a plan to secede because they no longer felt represented by the liberal lawmakers in the state capital, Salem. The solution: Join Idaho, where the Republican Party is firmly in control.
“Eastern Oregon, where we all live, could get state-level government from Idaho that matches their values,” McCaw said.
It’s a radical proposition that would see nearly two-thirds of Oregon’s 63 million acres (98,000 square miles), but less than 10% of its population, blend into neighboring Idaho.
For the first time in 40 years, Oregonians might vote in a Republican governor, as Christine Drazan (above) has a slight lead going into Tuesday’s race.
McCaw, 46, said the movement’s leaders are hoping to attract 15 of the state’s 36 counties and two partial ones to join Idaho.
“We asked the simple question, ‘Would you like your elected leaders to change the border?’ and we’ve won our last six elections with more than 60% of the vote,” McCaw told The Post.
For McCaw, who owns a small math-curriculum company with his wife, and his supporters, the largely rural and conservative residents of Eastern Oregon have very little in common with their progressive urban neighbors in western cities like Portland, Eugene and Bend.
The plan to move to Idaho came about because some Eastern Oregonians no longer felt represented by the liberal lawmakers in the state capital, Salem.
In the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump dominated Eastern Oregon, receiving nearly 80% of the vote in some counties, but President Biden ultimately won 56.5% of Oregon votes thanks to liberal cities.
Oregon’s current governor, Democrat Kate Brown, has a 56% disapproval rating, the worst in the US. Brown, whose term expires next year, has been criticized for doing little to stem rising crime and homelessness in the state’s urban centers since she became governor in 2015.
Some Oregonians are so fed up with spiraling crime, easy access to drugs and homelessness that — for the first time in 40 years — Oregon may see a Republican become governor.
Christine Drazan, 50, a former Oregon House minority leader, has a slight lead over her closest opponent, former Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, a Democrat. Independent Betsy Johnson is also in the race, and some predict she might split the blue vote.
But even the prospect of a Republican governor would not help the situation for those in the eastern part of the state, said Sandie Gilson, who lives in Grant County, one of the first Oregon counties to vote in 2020 to explore joining Idaho.
“Even if we have a Republican governor, the Democrats still have a supermajority in the legislature,” said Gilson, 56, a fifth-generation Oregonian whose gold-miner great-great-grandfather arrived in the state in the 1800s. “It will change nothing.”
Mike McCarter, one of the group’s founders, described Greater Idaho as being about “people who value freedom, independence and self-sufficiency.”
Gilson and her husband are small-business owners who say they want to be self-sufficient in a rural region where making an emergency call to police could result in a two-hour wait for help. The couple, who own firearms, say they are not able to defend themselves if faced with an emergency, because of government mandates. Last year, the state enacted a safe storage law that requires the owners of firearms to keep them locked up.
“It would take us more than five minutes to unlock our guns, and in that time a lot could happen,” Gilson told The Post. “The legislature does things that just don’t make sense for us.”
Gilson also said she doesn’t feel safe after Oregon decriminalized personal portions of all drugs in 2020 and, earlier this year, instituted bail reform laws that allows defendants charged with misdemeanors and some felonies to be released without posting bail.
While Donald Trump won as much as 80% of votes in Eastern Oregon counties in the 2020 presidential race, more populous liberal cities like Portland helped Biden dominate the state.Getty Images/iStockphoto
“How does that make me safe in my home?” Gilson said, adding that residents in Eastern Oregon, which has a fraction of the population of the western part of the state, generally get outvoted.
Like Gilson, Mike McCarter, 75, said residents in Eastern Oregon are almost always getting outvoted by the much more populous western region. McCarter, who lives in La Pine and is one of the founders of Greater Idaho, told The Post that eastern residents voted two to one against recreational drug use, but “Western Oregon wanted it, and they carried the vote.”
Still, McCarter insists that the movement for a Greater Idaho is not a political one. “We try to keep the movement away from politics,” he said. “Our movement is a traditional-values type movement of faith — of people who value freedom, independence and self-sufficiency.”
Current Gov. Kate Brown has the country’s highest disapproval rate, at 56%, in part because of a perceived lack of control on crime.
In 2020, Gov. Brad Little of Idaho said he welcomed the move, adding, “They’re looking at Idaho fondly because of our regulatory atmosphere, our values. What they’re interested [in] is they would like to have a little more autonomy, a little more control, a little more freedom and I can understand that.”
Although states have had their borders reconfigured in the past — Maine seceded from Massachusetts in 1820 — there is no historical precedent for large land masses to leave one state and join another.
Ryan Griffiths, a political science professor at Syracuse University who studies the secession of sovereign states, told The Post that “the bar is pretty high” for state secession in the US.
“This is not the kind of thing that is done unilaterally by people in counties,” Griffiths said. “They have to get the state of Oregon on board and the state of Idaho, and that’s a very high bar.”
Let me introduce you to a concept called “singularity.”
It was the hot thing in my field in the 90s. We were accelerating in tech so fast that eventually we were going to hit a point called the singularity. After that point, everything that came before would be non-understandable to the average human. And everything that comes after would not be understandable to us now.
This went along with augmented humans, where were were all going to have hardware ports in our brains and be plugging in thumb drives for extra knowledge. And stuff.
For the record, I was always agnostic on this. (Kind of like on aliens, yes.)
I’ve written one trans-humanist story, and it was because I was invited to a trans-humanist anthology. It’s kind of the price of admission. You get a call that says “Hey do you want to be in x y z anthology?” What they are actually saying is “Do you want six hundred bucks?” (More or less.) And if you’re trying to make a living with words (which is a remarkably precarious existence) you go “Sure, I can do that.” And when the prompt is something like “psychedelic drugs of the seventies” or “Alien strip clubs” you build in a morning to go down the weirdest internet rabbit holes, and become an expert (over time) in the strangest subjects.
What you don’t do is say “Your notion is silly. What even.” Because, you know, you want six hundred bucks, which are the difference between buying groceries and… uh…. not.
But I never truly bought it. Look, yes, a lot of people are nuts. My husband, for instance, wanted us fully hooked on to Alexa, and it took me months of carefully disconnecting the thing whenever I caught it connected before he gave up.
I can see — just not near, because tech is not there — augmented thought and reality devices in a headband, or perhaps a hood, or even glasses, or a neat clip that goes around your ear. Kind of like based bluetooth headsets. Heck, people get me one I can reliably dictate to with my thoughts, so I can write every minute I’m not actually asleep and I’ll buy it and never take it off.
But actual hardware installed in the head? Or inserted in my body not to treat a permanent problem, but just because? Yeah. No. No with bells on and a little mandolin.
Look, I came of age in the time of reel-to-reel home movies. Now? Now my DVDs are gathering dust, because everything is streamed. I’m not doing that with things that require major surgery.
And as for singularity? Like the last trump, it happens every day, little by little and man by man. If you’d brought me forward from 1990 even to day, I’d have a week of extreme confusion trying to understand how we live now. And hard adaptation. Me from the sixties… well, I’d probably eventually happen (Humans are more pliable than most people think) but it would take a long, long time.
But sometimes, sometimes, there singularities of experience and understanding. And once you go there, you can never ever go back. You just can’t.
And we went through one of those in the last six years. And how. Things we thought we knew turned out not to be so. Experts have proven themselves either craven, stupid, or bizarrely twisted. And if they believed half the things they told us too, they’re experts ONLY in make believe.
The masks came down. The whole beautifully painted picture of a reality that we all accepted because …. well, because pretty much everyone did. Even those of us who thought that they were out of their minds on certain things accepted some vast parts of it.
Because you had to believe some parts of it, and well… We believed things like that our politicians, no matter how idiotic, weren’t deliberately malicious and trying to kill us. We believed things like that our medical establishment was actually trying to keep people healthy. We believed– well, a lot of things that just weren’t so.
But the last few years have proven we were wrong. However stupid we thought our politicians were they’re dumber than that, but also they will say and do anything, even if it kills you, to avoid losing power or to gain more power. Our doctors might be fine — I know there are several here as regulars — but the establishment is horrendous.
And we’re not going back. What’s been seen can’t be unseen.
All polling points to Biden’s majorities in the House and Senate being wiped out come the November midterm elections. When that happens, and I mean the very next day, these innuendos and grumblings for Biden to step aside will become full-bore primal screams, and he won’t be able to survive them.
It may not be something that CNN watchers are used to seeing, but President Joe Biden got hammered by a fact check from the network.
“Gas prices weren’t over $5 when Biden took office. The Social Security hike isn’t a Biden achievement. The Trump tax cut didn’t ‘only’ go to the top 1%. Biden didn’t cut the debt in half. Biden didn’t get Congress to pass a law to forgive student debt,” CNN fact checker Daniel Dale said.
“The unemployment rate. Biden said at the Florida rally on Tuesday: ‘Unemployment is down from 6.5 to 3.5%, the lowest in 50 years.’ He said at the New Mexico rally on Thursday: ‘Unemployment rate is 3.5% – the lowest it’s been in 50 years.
“But Biden didn’t acknowledge that September’s 3.5% unemployment rate was actually a tie for the lowest in 50 years – a tie, specifically, with three months of Trump’s administration, in late 2019 and early 2020,” the fact checker said.
“Since Biden uses these campaign speeches to favorably compare his own record to Trump’s record, that omission is significant.
“The unemployment rate rose to 3.7% in October; that number was revealed on Friday, after these Biden comments. The rate was 6.4% in January 2021, the month Biden took office,” he said.
Biden’s student debt policy
“During an on-camera discussion conducted by progressive organization NowThis News and published online in late October, Biden told young activists that they ‘probably are aware, I just signed a law’ on student debt forgiveness that is being challenged by Republicans.
“He added: ‘It’s passed. I got it passed by a vote or two, and it’s in effect.’
“Biden’s claims are false,” he said.
“He created his student debt forgiveness initiative through executive action, not through legislation, so he didn’t sign a law and didn’t get it passed by any margin.
“Since Republicans opposed to the initiative, including those challenging the initiative in court, have called it unlawful precisely because it wasn’t passed by Congress, the distinction between a law and an executive action is a highly pertinent fact here,” the fact checker said.
“A White House official told CNN that Biden was referring to the Inflation Reduction Act, the law narrowly passed by the Senate in August; the official said the Inflation Reduction Act created “room for other crucial programs” by bringing down the deficit. But Biden certainly did not make it clear that he was talking about anything other than the student debt initiative” he said.
Gas prices
“Biden correctly noted on various occasions in October that gas prices have declined substantially since their June 2022 peak – though, as always, it’s important to note that presidents have a limited impact on gas prices.
“But in an economic speech in New York last week, Biden said, ‘Today, the most common price of gas in America is $3.39 – down from over $5 when I took office.’
“Biden’s claim that the most common gas price when he took office was more than $5 is not even close to accurate,” the fact checker said.
“The most common price for a gallon of regular gas on the day he was inaugurated, January 20, 2021, was $2.39, according to data provided to CNN by Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.
“In other words, Biden made it sound like gas prices had fallen significantly during his presidency when they had actually increased significantly,” he said.
“In other recent remarks, Biden has discussed the state of gas prices in relation to the summer peak of more than $5 per gallon, not in relation to when he took office.
“Regardless, the comment last week was the second this fall in which Biden inaccurately described the price of gas – both times in a way that made it sound more impressive,” he said.
But the president may be getting desperate as on Saturday, polling analysis publication FiveThirtyEight changed its Senate forecast from a “toss-up” to leaning Republican, Newsmax reported.
At president, the analyst firm lists Republican chances of winning the Senate at 55 in 100 versus Democrats retaining control at 45 in 100.
The new predictions come after the outlet reported on Monday: “Herschel Walker’s scandals may hurt his chances against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. Meanwhile, Democrats are hoping to pick up a seat in Pennsylvania, but that race has gotten a lot tighter recently.”
“Other Senate races are competitive but have identifiable favorites. For instance, strong Democratic incumbents currently have an edge in Arizona and New Hampshire. And the Senate races in North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin are also close but will likely result in Republican winners,” the outlet also added.
I always judge my politicians by their ability to shoot a handgun like an awkward female at 10 yards. https://t.co/4rLmW00lMh
Prediction: 8 years from now—maybe even 4 years from now—most Democratic politicians are going to say they support shall-issue concealed carry laws https://t.co/oAkDopuJ5n
BLUF
The stereotype of gun owners is a lie. The media calls us male-pale-and-stale, and who cares if old white men are disarmed anyway. In fact, gun owners now look like a cross section of the USA. Minority urban women are the fastest growing segment of new gun owners. I think Democrat politicians are afraid that more women and minorities will decide to become gun owners. These new gun owners might enter the culture of armed America and protect themselves.
More people own guns today than ever before. That growth is a continuation of a long term trend that goes back several decades. In addition to that gradual increase, we’ve also seen an extraordinary growth in new gun buyers in the last two years. We had to rewrite who owns guns and why they own them. Today, about four-out-of-ten families have a firearm in their home. Despite the astounding changes in gun ownership, the way some politicians talk about guns and gun owners is out of date. New gun owners are subjected to a crash course in being misperceived and misrepresented by politicians and by the mainstream news media alike.
What is real and what is fantasy?
Sitting President, Joe Biden, echoed old myths about gun owners at a fundraising event in June. He said,
“More people get killed with their own gun in their home trying to stop a burglar than, in fact, any other cause.. Think about that. Because it’s hard to do. It’s a hard thing to do.”
Mayor John Fetterman, the Democrat candidate for the US Senate from Pennsylvania, also felt the need to comment on guns and gun ownership. He said,
“I have seen with my own eyes at the scenes in my community what a military grade round does to the human body.” He said that rifles, particularly modern rifles, should be outlawed.
“This whole concept that a good guy with a gun will stop the bad guys with a gun, it doesn’t hold up. And the data bears this out, so that theory is over.”
Those statements don’t fit what we know. We know a lot about new gun owners because we talked with them. Gun stores asked new gun owners why they wanted a gun so the gun shop employee could direct the customer to the appropriate products. The industry trade group representing firearms manufacturers and distributors collected those answers. The stereotypical gun owner used to be an old white man who bought a gun to go hunting. Several years ago, personal safety replaced hunting as the major reason new gun owners buy a firearm. Today, gun owners are from every demographic group; male and female, rich and poor, urban and rural. Gun owners represent every ethnic and racial group. About one-out-of-four African-American adults own a firearm. It seems strange that the mainstream media and politicians have deliberately ignored that change.
BLUF
Bassitt, the farmer, said the conservative values of rural, small-town Brazil were now the driving force in national politics. Those beliefs “dovetail nicely with Bolsonarismo,” he said. “They don’t click with Lula and the PT’s socialism.”
CATANDUVA, Brazil (Reuters) – The small city of Catanduva in the rural farm belt of Sao Paulo state has been ahead of the political curve in Brazil.
In 1996, the city elected leftist Felix Sahao as its first Workers Party (PT) mayor – a full six years before Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva became president of Brazil, establishing nearly 14 years of PT rule.
But Sahao’s administration was marred by financial scandals, presaging the vast corruption probe that jailed Lula, destroyed the PT’s reputation, and paved the way for the scorched-earth politics of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
The residents of Catanduva, who have benefited from robust Chinese demand for Brazilian commodities, are now fully behind Bolsonaro. They are attracted to his unique mix of social conservatism, evangelical fervor and small government, sowed in the fertile soils of a booming agribusiness sector and watered with hatred of the “communist” PT.
So even if, as polls suggest, the president loses to Lula in Sunday’s presidential runoff, the whirring tractors and bulging wallets of conservative boomtowns like Catanduva suggest Bolsonarismo is here to stay.
"Contrary to our expectations, our data suggest that it is liberal—not conservative—men who engage in increased political aggression after experiencing threats to their masculinity." https://t.co/c49tkINU2bpic.twitter.com/O2wIEGqQ4j
Interesting! This appears to be applicable to Markley’s Law. Liberals attack the masculinity of their political opponents because they view that as an extremely potent attack—as it would be against themselves. They are insecure about their manhood and they imagine the same of their political opponents. As frequently suspected, projection is strong with these people.—Joe
BLUF Democrats, Demoncraps, who have spent years delegitimizing the Supreme Court and rule of law, undermining legislative norms, cheering on unprecedented and blatant executive abuses, and using the DOJ to target their political enemies, among other “democracy”-destroying behaviors, do not occupy any high moral ground. And while “democracy” was once just a transparently silly euphemism for “stuff we want,” it has since evolved into a rhetorical device that denotes a decisively illiberal mindset.
At this point, it would save everyone time if Democrats could simply point to a policy agenda item that isn’t going to save democracy — if such a thing exists.
If Republicans vote, they are killing democracy. If they don’t vote, they are killing democracy. The only way to “save democracy,” writes The Washington Post’s Max Boot, is to empower one-party rule — a position that probably sounds counterintuitive to anyone with a middle-school education. “Now you need to vote to literally save democracy again,” contends President Joe Biden, or we will lose our “fundamental rights and freedoms like the right to choose, the right to privacy, the right to vote — our very democracy.”
Chilling stuff. But it doesn’t end there. You will remember that by failing to “reform” the filibuster, which would entail authorizing the thinnest of fleeting majorities to shove through massive generational “reforms” without any national consensus or debate, we are also killing democracy. This has been the position not only of left-wing pundits and the New York Times editorial board, but also senators tasked with defending their institution. I wonder if they will support this democracy-saving fix next session, as well?
Then again, if we don’t nationalize the economy to avert a climate crisis, we are also killing democracy. “We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species,” Jamie Raskin explains. And if we don’t empty the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to temporarily keep gas prices low to help Democrats win in 2022, we are killing democracy. “We find ourselves in a situation, where keeping gas prices low is key to preserving and strengthening the future of our democracy,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says.
We must allow the president to unilaterally create trillion-dollar spending bills and break existing private sector contracts by fiat. For democracy. We must pack the court to “save democracy.” We must create a Ministry of Truth to help with “strengthening democratic institutions.” We must vote for a Pennsylvania candidate who can’t cobble two consecutive coherent sentences together because the “fate of our democracy” is at stake, says our former president.
I don’t think she fits into the fascist democrat party well, but they are probably using her as a spoiler to steal weak minded voters from the republicans. This is why she did that silly shooting photo op.
I met her a while back, and asked her about her voting record. I had notes about her voting record to have all of my facts straight. She lied to my face about it, telling me that she didn’t vote that way. Classic narcissist style.
The disturbing part of this interaction was that she didn’t even flinch when lying to my face. Not a single physical “tell” that she was lying. It was downright creepy, like talking to a robot.
She did look pretty good in tight black pants and high heeled boots. If people fall for her game, the democrats won’t have to cheat as much in the future because all of the old Fudd guys will be enthralled by the gun bunny who pretends to be one of them.
Standard practice for demoncraps and their organs. The “different bill” is actually Biden trying to promise he’ll somehow forgive student loans.
A CNN reporter wrote a dishonest hit piece where they wrongly used quotes about a different bill to attack Republicans regarding alleged hypocrisy related to the infrastructure bill. A day later, the President is promoting and parroting that dishonest and error-filled piece. https://t.co/123mruEHTY
Jen Psaki is usually wrong, not because she’s stupid, but because she’s an ideologue, a rabid partizan, and statist zealot. And, she seems to savor a well placed lie. But that’s expected from a former White House press secretary, and William and Mary graduate, who spent her entire tenure contorting the borders of reality, gleefully creating fictions to explain Joe Biden’s precipitous decline into senility.
Joe Biden has always been a dummy. Obama admitted it when he commented on Lunch Bucket Joes’ propensity to always screw things up. Biden is a comic book character inked and colored by media hacks and stooges like Psaki.
Jen’s recent statement is a concession to the spectacular proportion of Joe Biden’s failures. To ignore this would produce a lie that would simply be too big to sustain its own mass — even Psaki has to face the facts at some point:
“If it is a referendum on the president, they [democrats] will lose. And they know that.”
The Biden calamity is everywhere. Even casual, single issue voters are forcefully confronted by Biden’s imbecility, ineptitude, and brittle vindictiveness at every turn. Contrary to Psaki’s statements, no one down ballot is safe from this democrat owned and operated national calamity.
He’s that mean old man, raging in his senility from the front porch at all the kids enjoying a bright summer’s afternoon — a pervert showering with his daughter and sniffing the hair of little girls. With a grumpy, malevolent, misanthrope occupying the White House, the November election cycle is there for the taking — and Jen knows it, is gathering her skirts, hoping to salvage a shred of credibility.
The only things standing in the way of a sweeping Republican win in November are the calcified crony capitalists like Mitch McConnell, diddling the Chinese yen in his pocket. Or the moon-faced warmonger Lindsay Graham. This brand of Republicanism is in league with Democrat statists who all vie, like squealing piglets, at the slop trough of tax payer funded slush.
