Category Archives: General Interest

February 22, 2021 · 1:31 am

A few thoughts about the TX blizzard

When the pandemic mess moved into high gear last spring with the “slow the spread” mitigation efforts, many previously happy-go-lucky Americans became interested in emergency preparedness, especially acquiring a supply of toilet paper and emergency food.

Before talking about this past week’s blizzard that left TX in a huge mess, it’s easy to point the finger and try to attach blame in every crisis, especially in America, where everything now turns into a partisan political controversy.

Politicians and the media seem to delight in hyping hysterical people in emergencies, using these personal tales of woe to frame partisan political spin attacks. So, in this TX crisis, a reporter interviewed a couple who burned pieces of furniture in their fireplace and had a stack of small branches gathered from their yard.

Another media story was about a lady burning some of her art canvases to stay warm. People burning furniture, treated wood and random household objects in their fireplace isn’t a great survival story, it’s dangerous. Treated and finished wood can give off toxic fumes, as can many household items.

While it may sound mean to say anything negative about actions people take in a crisis, it’s irresponsible for media to elevate people, doing unsafe things, as heroes. The lady who got in her car, inside her garage with her child, and ran the car to try to stay warm wasn’t a hero, she was a panicked mother making a tragic decision. She and her child died from the carbon monoxide. There were also reports in TX of people bringing their gas and charcoal grills inside and lighting them to try to stay warm.

Despite media and politicians amplifying stories like this to heighten the drama and hysteria in a crisis atmosphere, the more disturbing thing is portraying these people’s actions as heroic tales of survival, when the sad truth is, they’re more object lessons of people reacting in panic, because they weren’t adequately prepared for a cold weather emergency. Many people make no emergency preparations before bad weather events, even when the coming storms are reported several days in advance. These are the people who will likely fare worst and make panicked decisions, because they never gave any prior thought to: “What would I do if this happened?”

Since the pandemic hit last year, emergency preparedness has become something I’ve tried to learn more about. Those lockdowns and shortages of items in grocery stores served as a wake-up call for me to start assessing my emergency preparedness, because honestly, I considered most of the “prepper movement” as Domesday kooks, anti-government radicals, bunker in the backyard alarmists, and a lots of gung-ho gun & ammo preppers,

It seems a very dramatic change from the emergency preparedness my parents and most people where I grew up practiced when I was a kid (they had stopped the nuclear attack drills in schools by that time, lol). Their preparedness efforts were geared mostly to weather and natural disasters, plus the everyday emergencies, like the car breaks down and emergency first-aid skills. Now “doomsday” preppers and “survivalists” turn into media sensations and there’s a huge prepper industry selling high-priced gadgets, gears and guns, that often come attached with a lot of anti-government and far right-wing political overtones. The same thing goes for this blizzard in TX last week. I didn’t want to hear about political garbage from the green energy left or the fossil fuel right. Political leaders should have been providing useful information and focused completely on assisting efforts to help the people impacted.

In my family, I have always been the first person to get out a flashlight and have it right beside me when I hear a storm starting (or reported heading our way) and I go pull out any supplies I think we might need. Often I preemptively lit a candle or two, just in case, so we weren’t left in the dark feeling around for a flashlight, if the power goes out. LED camping lanterns have now replaced candles in our house (although I still have a lot of candles on hand, just in case).

My husband and kids used to make fun of my storm rituals, which I calmly went through, no matter what they said. I didn’t care how much that they made fun of me; I did what I thought was sensible to BE PREPARED. My family, by the way, always used the candles and flashlights I got out. However, I never considered myself a “prepper” and have had a rather negative view of the “prepper movement” that has developed in recent decades. Although, I am very conservative, I just don’t want emergency preparedness to be a political issue at all.

Since last year, my attitude about emergency preparedness changed. I don’t care if anyone calls me a kooky prepper, a hoarder, ridiculous, or stupid. I hope people all across America have this change of attitude too and start learning to be more prepared for emergencies. Being unprepared, especially with basic food, water, and supplies leaves you trying to play catch-up in a crisis environment, where people are rushing to stores and panic-buying or stores are closed due to the emergency situation.

Way back in 2012 when I started this blog, a friend, Gladius Maximus, wrote a piece, Gimme A Knife, which I’ve quoted several times since then:

I understand that folks growing up in the cities don’t have some of the outdoor opportunities that some of us have, but I am convinced that there are opportunities to develop individuality, independence, self-confidence and other survival skills without having to spend a year in the Rockies on some kind of sabbatical. Survival is more a mind-set than a setting. Attitude is everything.

Being innovative and imaginative is essential whether you’re in downtown Houston or central Nebraska. Skills of observation and patience are not natural talents, but acquired skills; both are essential and both can be acquired through discipline. The ability to reason and employ a rational, decision making process is needed in order to survive and thrive. Again, that is an acquired skill. Determination, grit if you will, is a trait to be cherished, not erased.

Gladius was right. Survival is more a mind-set, but part of that mind-set has got to be learning to stay calm in emergencies. Being prepared isn’t just about running out and buying food, water and supplies; it’s about building up some emergency preparedness knowledge and acquiring skill sets. People can survive in very formidable cold conditions, even with very few supplies:

As an outside observer to this cold weather emergency last week, sitting cozy warm in GA, I learned a lot of emergency preparedness lessons. My youngest daughter, son-in-law and 4 month old grandson live in TX and their power went out and stayed out shortly after the storm rolled in. They went to a friend, who had gas heat working, Monday afternoon, when the temperature in their house got down in the low 50s. Early Tuesday morning their power came back on, which they knew because the baby monitor over the crib came back online. It was 35 degrees in the nursery. They went back home once their house had warmed up some. My daughter told me that my grandson didn’t like being in a blanket tent in a cold house and he didn’t like sleepovers very much either. My oldest daughter and grandkids live in Indiana and they didn’t experience any problems with this storm.

Sure, it’s easy to think the people who burned furniture or lit their gas and charcoal grills in their homes, to stay warm, were idiots, but that’s not what I took away from these stories. Where I live in southeast GA, we rarely get freezing temperatures. We hardly ever use our fireplace, but we have a couple days worth of fire logs (going to buy more) in the garage. We aren’t well-prepared for a cold weather emergency either. I did a lot of googling cold weather survival information this past week. What’s become a go-to prepper source for me is The Provident Prepper YouTube channel. They have several cold weather and power outage videos. They also have a website and a book with a vast amount of emergency preparedness information :

A closing thought on the TX cold weather emergency is that surely there will be investigations into what all went wrong with their power grid in this crisis and lots to learn there. Knowing what went wrong there is important, so changes can be made to assure it doesn’t happen again. The military does after-action reviews and uses this process where leaders share information and use this information to figure out what went right and what went wrong and use those lessons learned to improve performance. Taking a little bit of time to talk to your family (if they are on board with prepping) or if you are the lone prepper in the family taking a little time to calmly assess things you did that worked, things that didn’t and unforeseen problems will help you learn and be better prepared next time. The worst thing to do is not learn anything from this weather emergency and just brush it out of mind.

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest

February 12, 2021 · 10:35 pm

“Aggressive niceness” might be good for what ails America

A few weeks into the Biden presidency and despite the Biden administration hype of “America United,” it’s obvious the partisan rancor remains. This week the US Senate commenced the second impeachment trial of former President Trump, so the media coverage leans heavily into rehashing the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. The political winds blow in favor of Democrats falling short on votes to convict and Trump being acquitted again.

A lot of ink has been spilled painting the millions of Trump supporters as QAnon, anti-science, violence-loving kooks, but there’s been much less attention given to the dedicated #Resist liberals bigotry and zealotry, especially within the media. The mainstream media paints the picture of Trump supporters as ignorant, second-class citizens, who aren’t fit for polite society or any respect.

Since January 6th, many Democrat and liberal media mouthpieces have become the moral arbiters of “The Truth” and they’ve been aggressively preaching a new spin word game, to frame the events of January 6th. They dubbed the attack “an armed insurrection,” bandied about the terms “white supremacy” and “domestic terrorism” frequently. Trump’s insistence that he won the presidential election has become termed “The Big Lie.”

The latest Dem spin war game targets, not only Trump-aligned pols and right-wing media mouthpieces, but also every Trump supporter in America for shunning and demands that they denounce Trump and “The Big Lie.”

Last week an op-ed, Column: What can you do about the Trumpites next door?, by Virginia Heffernan, a Harvard-educated LA Times political columnist, generated a good bit of response on social media. Heffernan took a rather simple neighborly good deed and turned it into a massive political and personal moral dilemma:

Oh, heck no. The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway, who seem as devoted to the ex-president as you can get without being Q fans, just plowed our driveway without being asked and did a great job.

How am I going to resist demands for unity in the face of this act of aggressive niceness?

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-05/trumpite-neighbor-unity-capitol-attack

Breaking this down, an urban liberal, fled the city due to COVID-19 and finds herself living next door to some self-sufficient rural neighbors, who support President Trump. The rural neighbors plowed this ungrateful, uppity urbanite’s driveway and rather than be grateful, the urbanite wrote an angry op-ed in a large newspaper, turning an uncomplicated neighborly good deed into a partisan political issue.

Heffernan’s piece goes on to make the argument that her neighbors’ support of Trump is akin to people in Lebanon supporting Hezbollah or French people collaborating with the Nazis during WWII.

Heffernan sounded angry and resentful about her rural neighbors plowing her driveway and it came across as she didn’t want to have to express gratitude to her neighbors for plowing her driveway and that speaks volumes about her own moral character. For all the effort she went to trying to pull historical analogies to broad brush all Trump supporters as evil people and anguishing over what phony gestures of gratitude she will offer, the one thing missing from her piece was any recognition of her neighbors as individuals with lives beyond partisan politics.

The important lesson from this op-ed isn’t the one the author intended. For the good of America, across all partisan political divides, we should embrace the “aggressive niceness” habit of her Trumpite neighbors whenever we can and it just might be good for what ails America. Only by working hard to take politics out of our daily lives, as much as possible, can we work to build some stronger bonds within our communities.

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Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics

February 2, 2021 · 12:37 am

Democrats gain spin momentum

Here’s my current take on our corrosive American spin information war situation. Trump lost a lot of ground after losing the election in November and his disastrous January 6th rally, that devolved into an attack on the US Capitol. Republicans lost even more ground, since losing control of the Senate and the GOP still being tied to Trump. Frequently, Congressional Republicans most vicious spin attackers are Trump’s spin pundits and smear merchants rather than Democrats and liberal media.

Democrats and the mainstream media have lost no time in trying to elevate conspiracy theorist/ QAnon supporter, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene as the new face of the GOP and once again playing their corner-hapless-Congressional-Republicans spin game, to bait them with questions about Marjorie’s wacko comments and beliefs. Here again, Trump is the one who elevated Greene’s profile and embraced her – handing the Democrats and liberal media attack dogs more red meat with which to beat up Republicans.

Democrats and the mainstream media have gained spin momentum, but seem well on their way to overplaying their hand.

It would be easy to blame Trump or one side of rabid partisans, either Democrats or Republicans, for America’s scorched earth spin war, but there are plenty of other players in this corrupt spin war.

To rehash – the mainstream media, to include Hollywood, conservative media, and social media venues online, all play an outsized role in our spin war and without media providing the “spin battlefield” and most of the spin warriors to keep the high-octane spin cycles churning, this spin war would not even be possible. A whole lot of media people are making a vast fortune off of keeping the spin war ablaze every day in America.

Of course, the politicians also make loads of money, drive their political agenda, but most all consolidate their power off of spin war, so they will keep the spin narratives and smear campaigns roiling. Assuredly, there are also foreign intelligence operators, who seek ways to influence America’s spin war and foment more chaos and divides.

President Trump is out of the White House and President Biden is busily signing one executive order after another, advancing the Obama progressive agenda, all while mouthing platitudes about “America United.” The one thing that’s obvious is the scorched earth spin war did not end with Trump being defeated. In fact Trump’s January 6th rally, that progressed to an attack on the US Capitol, has provided Democrats and the mainstream media a wide opening to launch a new, more ominous spin offensive.

Hyping a “domestic terrorism threat” from QAnon and radical Trump supporters, Democrats, the mainstream media and social media honchos are openly advocating limiting the reach of conservative and right-wing media. CNN is asserting FOX News spreads “dangerous disinformation” and efforts must be made to limit FOX news’ reach. A couple months ago Twitter actively began suspending conservative accounts, alleged to be spreading “dangerous disinformation”. Democrats have been floating the notion that the Pentagon must start screening recruits for dangerous far right-wing beliefs and weeding them out of the military. However, there’s no concern about dangerous far left-wing radicals or leftists spreading “dangerous disinformation.”

The Democrats and liberal media are trying to use fearmongering about far-right “domestic terrorists” to silence conservative views and even news outlets that present views liberal censors decide are “disinformation.” Defining “disinformation” and “domestic terrorists” remains fluid presently, but assuredly the only targets the Democrats and liberal media want to paint with spreading “disinformation and being “domestic terrorists” are Trump and anyone who supported Trump.

On the right, the Republican Party remains divided and Trump, reportedly wants to stick to his “stolen election” spin crap show, that led to the January 6th rally where he, his son, Don Jr., his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, fed massive spin lies to an angry crowd. I watched their speeches and believe they deliberately incited that mob and encouraged them to raise hell at the US Capitol. None of them openly advocated violence or attacking the US Capitol, but they used a lot of inflammatory language about fighting to “Stop the Steal.”

Trump, as the leader of the GOP, feeds the Dem’s “domestic terrorism” spin narrative by sticking to his looney-tunes “stolen election” conspiracy theories and makes the case for them. His penchant for latching onto any crazy conspiracy theory he hears about or sees online, is the Dems’ best weapon to keep the GOP in constant disarray. He remains an unprincipled, toxic leader, who has no ability to unite or organize a functioning team, whether it be his own staff, the Republican Party or the country. However there doesn’t appear to be any Republican leader, who can compete with Trump or organize any effort to effectively counter Trump’s aggressive spin war efforts.

The America spin war still rages. Democrats control the White House and Congress, plus social media and most of the American media are run by liberals, who still loyally run the Dem spin. The momentum presently is on the side of Democrats’ and the liberal culture warriors (many of them who are part of the liberal news media).

FOX News, after facing dramatic declines in viewership, after toning down their post-election Trump cheerleading punditry, appears to have moved back into a full-blown Trump spin zone. The Trump spin commandos continue to bleat and blare loudly on social media and right-wing venues.

Meanwhile, Democrats and liberal media pundits are busily working to redefine censorship as protecting Americans from “dangerous disinformation.”

Fun times ahead.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War

January 9, 2021 · 2:15 pm

More mayhem ahead

On January 6, 2020 a mob of Trump supporters broke into the US Capitol, where both houses and Vice President, Mike Pence, were carrying on their constitutional duty to count the electoral votes from the November presidential election, which Joe Biden won. That MAGA mob first listened to incendiary speeches from President Trump’s son, his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and President Trump himself. President Trump had branded his effort to overturn a lawful election, which he lost, as “Stop the Steal.”

After more than 60 post-election legal challenges by Trump’s lawyers, there was no evidence of massive election fraud presented in these legal challenges. Trump would have had to produce evidence of election fraud to overturn the results of three states. His lawyers never produced that evidence. All they produced were hearsay, rumors and dubious statistical assertions.

Trump refused to concede the election and he initiated a massive spin effort to incite his followers to “Stop the Steal.” He strong-armed Republican officials in GA, pressuring them to change the results of the election. As a last ditch effort he publicly pressured Mike Pence to interfere in the Congressional counting of the electoral college votes. Pence refused and stated he did not have the power to change electoral college votes, which were certified by each state.

Against this backdrop, a mob of angry MAGA misfits stormed the Capitol, while Trump watched the events unfold from the White House. With the mayhem still ongoing, Trump released a video praising the attack on the Capitol and Giuliani was calling Republican senators, trying to strong-arm them into delaying the counting of the electoral college votes.

Five people died in this attack, including a Capitol police officer.

Trump’s incitement and grotesque manipulation of these supporters shows unconscionable callousness and a total lack of judgment. Trump truly is unfit for the office he holds and I believe he deserves to be impeached and banned from holding federal office ever again. He has not offered a single word of condolence about the death of a Capitol police officer, despite his mantra of how much he supports the police. He tried to get out tweets last night about his social media though. That is his main concern.

The reality though is this corrupt spin information war that continues to drive America into a land of raging partisan loons, assures that impeachment likely will fail and that Trump will quickly regroup and use the Dem and media rage about the attack on the Capitol to rally his supporters and spin this event into an unfair attack against him or the Left treating him so unfairly.

This corrupt media-driven spin war assures that Trump will probably survive and America will be dealing with more scorched earth spin war for the foreseeable future.

I’ve warned about the dangers of this spin information war since 1998, when Dems and the liberal media controlled the political spin narrative in America and Republicans had no clue how to counter liberal spin. I’ve written dozens of blog posts, tweeted thousands of tweets, written comments at various sites warning about the dangers of spin information war, all to no avail.

When Trump came along and entered national politics in 2015, I noted that someone had taught Trump how to spin just like the Dems. Since 2015, the American spin war changed into a supercharged spin death match of the entire mainstream media and Dems pitted against the Trump’s one-man spin POTUS reality show.

At this moment, days away from the end of Trump’s presidency, Democrats want to impeach Trump for his role in the attack on the Capitol. Twitter and other social media big tech honchos jumped on board the Dem spin effort selling impeachment and yesterday decided to ban Trump from using their platforms. Twitter didn’t just ban Trump, but also some MAGA pundits. Twitter also began screwing with the follower lists of many MAGA supporters, ostensibly to root out bots. Trump will seize on this liberal big tech banning and play the victim again and he’ll be right back fueling his followers’ rage against the Left. Democrats and the liberal media are already overplaying their hand attacking not only Trump, but all of his supporters.

It seems that even a speedy impeachment will be outpaced by the rapidly shifting spin cycles in this perverse, corrupt spin information war.

Many Republican leaders keep assuring themselves that Trump only has 11 days left in office, while Dems are hysterically ranting Trump’s an existential threat to the republic. My belief has always been that Trump is a man who has no boundaries or rules he lives by, other than self-interest and self-promotion. He has nothing to gain by going out quietly, at this point. I expect more Trump-induced chaos. The belief that Trump is contained and will behave with decorum, flies in the face of reality, which is Trump is cornered, facing probable impeachment, unending legal problems, collapse of his brand and financial ruin, if his MAGA reality show crumbles to dust.

Trump’s going to cause more mayhem in the next 11 days.

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Filed under 2020 Election, General Interest, Information War, Politics

January 5, 2021 · 3:27 pm

Politics again…

Well, here goes some political ponderings…

This morning I turned off the ringer on my landline phone after 4 “get out and vote” phone calls in a row. Yesterday started with a recorded message from Donald Trump, Jr, ended with a recorded President Trump message last night and was filled with recorded calls with messages from Newt Gingrich and many other Republican calls.

I am not voting in this GA Senate run-off election, because of the craven way Loeffler and Perdue caved to all of Trump’s corrupt pressure and vicious attacks on Governor Kemp and the GA secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. I certainly can’t bring myself to vote for far-left candidates like Ossoff or Warnock, so I’m sitting this one out.

In November my principles took a backseat to “binary choices” and fear. I voted for Trump, in hopes it would help prevent Democrats from controlling Congress and the White House, which I feared would be very bad for the country at this time. The regrets came very quickly for allowing political calculations to take precedence over my principles. Even more upsetting about my vote is I knew Trump was a fraud, a liar, totally untrustworthy and yet, I still listened to arguments that voting for Trump would also help Republicans maintain control of the Senate.

It was so stupid, to ever lose sight of the fact that a lying, corrupt fraud can’t be trusted – ever. Trump has deliberately turned the GA Senate run-off into chaos and he has deliberately fomented disunity in the GA GOP and pushed Loeffler and Perdue to turn on the GA governor and secretary of state. Trump, the political saboteur, has been trying to wreak havoc on their Senate races – deliberately.

Trump lost the 2020 election and his legal team produced no tangible proof of widespread election fraud or some massive sinister Democrat plot that robbed Trump of victory. After over 60 failed Trump legal challenges, many of which were heard by Trump-appointed judges, the Trump lawyers seemed to spend more time engaged in their news media appearances and Twitter efforts, to appease Trump, than they did on putting together strong legal challenges.

Watching as Trump’s corrupt public smear and disturbing pressure campaigns against Republicans keep expanding, where Trump loyalists, like Senator Tom Cotton and Vice President, Mike Pence, are now being singled out by Trump in public attacks makes me wonder, who is next on Trump’s hit list. It’s been totally disgusting, to watch him flip the truth on its head, repeat and retweet any crazy conspiracy theory that crosses his radar and pretend he is the victim of a “stolen election,” when he lost. Most of all it’s been infuriating to watch Trump followers rush to join in Trump’s smear campaigns and vicious attacks on elected Republican officials, who won’t go along with Trump’s “stolen election” effort to overturn the 2020 election. Trump followers have been outraged by these same smear tactics being used against Trump for 4 years, but they rush to jump on-board Trump ringleading the same reprehensible smear attacks against Republicans.

Over the weekend Trump tweeted out about a phone conversation he had with the Sec. of State of GA. Quickly, Raffensperger tweeted refuting Trump’s framing of that phone call and then a recording of that phone call was leaked to the Washington Post. Trump-friendly Twitter erupted in outrage over Raffensperger leaking that recording, but it is Trump who made this phone call public and Trump who lied about what Raffensperger said. That Trump phone call was nothing less than the POTUS pressuring the GA secretary of state to change the election results in GA. If a Dem POTUS had said those things, trying to overturn the results of a state’s election, Republicans would have been rushing to pen articles of impeachment and demanding an immediate resignation. This is the new Trump GOP, where none of the rules ever apply to Trump, because “Trump’s not a politician” (ignorant of the law, which doesn’t stand up in any court in America) and/or “Democrats have treated Trump so unfairly and tried to destroy his presidency” (true, but still no justification to act as corruptly as Dems).

Last night Trump showed up at a rally in north GA, ostensibly to campaign for Loeffler and Perdue, yet he spent most of the time whining about how he won the election in November and was being robbed. He attacked Governor Kemp and Sec. of State Raffensperger. Even more disturbing was he publicly pressured Mike Pence to reject the certified election results tomorrow, as if the vice president has the power to overturn states certified elections. This effort will most likely fail, but make no mistake about it, Trump is trying to corruptly alter election results. If Democrats attempted this action, Republicans would be howling in outrage.

After 4 years of corrupt Dem and mainstream media scorched earth spin attacks to destroy Trump, many Trump supporters perceive Trump as a victim of corrupt liberal spin attacks and as a strong fighter against the liberal spin mob. These people are willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt over anything Dems or the mainstream media say. One can only wonder how far Trump will go in inciting his followers to “fight for Trump” after the Congress counts the electoral votes tomorrow and Biden is officially the winner, but it seems a given that Trump will stick to his “stolen election spin effort and refuse to admit he lost and Biden won.

Truly, I dread a Biden presidency, that will assuredly clash with my conservative views, but going against my principles in November, by voting for Trump out of fear of Democrats controlling the WH and Congress, left a bitter taste in my mouth and made me feel in some small way culpable for this Trump post-election chaos. I want to stick to my principles and vote for candidates whom I really do support, not vote out of fear or make some binary choice, choosing “the lesser of two evils.”

My hope remains that at some point Americans will find some ways to find some common ground and common aspirations for our country rather than splintering into more and more hostile factions. At this point this seems like wishful thinking, but all things are possible, if we each decide to make the commitment to pulling our country together rather than tearing it apart.

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Filed under 2020 Election, General Interest, Politics

December 13, 2020 · 7:16 pm

Trying a new path

Since the election in November, I’ve given a lot of thought to how I spend my online time and pondered how much time I really want to devote to following our corrupt partisan spin information war blazing across American news media every single day. Each side’s spin game is predictable, boring and phony, staged agitation propaganda. Spin war is really just corrupt, ruthless agitation propaganda waged against the American people. It’s all about inciting Americans to anger and rage at other Americans. I haven’t written much, because I’ve given a lot of thought to writing about other topics and leaving the politics to the occasional blog post. Thanks to everyone who has taken time to read my blog, but this year has left me feeling it’s time to try a new path – less politics and more about things that really matter to me.

I don’t want to write about corrupt Trump, corrupt Dems, the corrupt media or their destructive scorched earth spin information war anymore.

It’s become almost cliché to talk about 2020 as the worst year in our lives, but it’s December and none of the “worst case” scenarios that worried me happened. That’s not to diminish the 305,000+ Americans who have died of COVID-19 complications, the millions of Americans who lost their jobs and/or businesses or the alarming ways in which sacrosanct constitutional rights have been trampled by overzealous local and state officials, all in the name of “public health” or the personal challenges that did occur in my own life. All those dreadful things happened, but so far our governmental and economic systems have not completely collapsed and most Americans, including me, continue to quietly go about our everyday lives.

The most disturbing aspect of 2020 was the pile-on aspect of experiencing a pandemic, a government-induced economic catastrophe (yes, the government closures of businesses has been a real catastrophe), and major civil unrest (much of it orchestrated with leftist political groups, Dem politicians and media incitement), replete with widespread rioting and looting. Even the pandemic, appears to have been caused due to deliberate decisions by the Chinese government not to warn other countries about COVID-19 spreading in China. Of course, many people would prefer to attribute all of 2020’s dire events on mystical, malignant factors, but the truth is terrible human decisions and the repercussions of awful decisions were the root causes of these large scale disastrous events in 2020.

I’m not following the minute-by-minute spin war on Twitter anymore, because there are too many other real life things that require my time and effort and I feel better away from following the Twitter drama so much. It’s pretty predictable that the mainstream media will continue to pretend they are unbiased, professionals, when in reality they are mostly Dem spin hacks, who deliberately squashed the Hunter Biden laptop story in October – to help Joe Biden. Biden will be inaugurated in January is a safe bet.

Trump won’t go away quietly. He will continue lashing out at people, whom he targets as “disloyal,” so if he fires Bill Barr soon, that should come as no surprise, but none of Trump’s petty revenge tantrums will change a thing, except assure his own administration stays in total disarray until Biden is sworn in. And no, I don’t believe the election was “stolen” from Trump – he lost. His legal team has offered no hard evidence of any of their “stolen election” conspiracy theories and Trump repeating and retweeting any crazy conspiracy theory he hears, should clue his followers in that Trump’s not concerned about facts, only inciting his followers.

No matter how much most Americans try to avoid the partisan political chaos, it’s going to further intrude on our lives and unravel our institutions and our civic spirit. The best thing every American can do is work to become more self-reliant and become better able to adapt to rapidly changing situations. I plan to write more about other topics in the coming months, because there’s not a thing I can do to change the entrenched scorched earth spin war raging across American news media.

Finding ways to unite people or at least find some common ground appeals to me more than banging away on my keyboard giving daily reports from the Twitter spin war trenches or expressing outrage about the latest American political spin drama.

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Filed under 2020 Election, Blog Notes, General Interest

November 27, 2020 · 8:38 pm

Better than a blog post

Sometimes a song says more than thousand-plus word blog posts:

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Filed under General Interest

November 11, 2020 · 8:46 pm

Still clinging to hope for America

Here’s where I’m at with this election – Biden won. Period. I’ve seen no evidence to support some massive “systemic voter fraud” case that President Trump insists happened.

Sure, President Trump has a right to pursue legal challenges and sure there’s likely plenty of voter fraud and shenanigans around the country, but in no scenario do I believe there’s proof of some massive “systemic voter fraud” legal case with merit or enough cases of voter fraud that will lead to changes in the margins to flip several states to red and garner Trump a win. It’s just not happening, in my view.

I regretted voting for Trump very quickly after the election and it’s not because he lost, it’s because of his shameless lying and trying to create some big media sideshow, selling he was robbed, without having a single shred of evidence. Even worse is he’s latched onto every internet rumor and allegation, without any investigation or concern those stories were false. Trump’s vast conspiracy claims have about as much veracity as Hillary’s “vast, right-wing conspiracy” deflections.

One of the things I detested most after the 2016 election was the Dem rage, hysteria and corrupt spin war antics tossing out various spin lies in the media, to try to gin up enough public outrage to somehow change the outcome – even launching that entire Trump-Russian Collusion spin lie in January 2017, before Trump’s inauguration. That spin lie was launched with the aid of top FBI officials and top former intelligence officials working with Obama administration officials and the Clinton campaign. There will be zero accountability for their corruption seems a sure bet. The Dem-Clinton public corruption has run unchecked for decades and frankly plenty of Republican insiders seem just fine with public corruption in DC too.

I regret breaking my rule of never buying into binary choices of the lesser of two evils, because there is no lesser evil – only evil. Trump will continue to act out and fume, but I also realized that I want to stop fuming about the Clinton and Dem political machine scoring another victory and that there will never be any accountability for any of their wholesale public corruption.

The surreal disconnect after four years of having both Dem/mainstream media scorched earth spin war blazing across American media AND Trump/FOX/right-wing media scorched earth counter-spin blazing too, is we live in a deeply divided country, where even corporate news media spread so much partisan spin disinformation that’s it’s very hard to trust any of their reporting on anything.

One last thought about this election and then I’ll end this post. Biden started making carefully crafted statements about how he will work to unite America, but it felt surreal to hear his words and think back over the past 4 years of scorched earth #Resist spin information war Dems have blazed across every avenue of mass media 24/7. Now Biden, Dems, liberal news media and pundits all pretend none of the last 4 years happened and it’s, “What is wrong with you mean Repubs… Biden is trying to unite America… Now hurry up and get on board!”. These people are as deceitful, hypocritical frauds as Donald J. Trump. What a bunch of lying losers we have leading America!

I still cling to hope for America’s future and I pray that someday we find some decent, honorable leaders to forge a better path for our country, but it takes a lot of effort to cling to that hope after watching so many dishonest frauds engage in this level of mass, organized lying, that is our domestic scorched earth spin information war.

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Filed under 2020 Election, General Interest, Information War, Politics

October 26, 2020 · 12:25 am

Never say never

Today I decided to do something that I swore never to do. I decided to vote for Trump and a straight Republican ticket. A few small things happened today, but it was my personal tipping point.

Twitter blocked The New York Post’s account over a week ago for posting a report on Hunter Biden’s laptop. In the ensuing days the mainstream media totally froze out any reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story. Today, I saw a retweet by Brit Hume, with a sensitive content warning masking the original tweet. I clicked on VIEW and it was a Matt Taibbi piece at Axios, With the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is Bigger Scandal Than The Actual Story. Twitter has escalated this petty censorship effort against mentioning the Hunter Biden story and kept The New York Post blocked unless they remove a number of tweets Twitter demanded be removed. Their sensitive content warning, so you don’t see the story immediately, is meant to slow down amplification of Taibbi’s article.

On top of that I’ve been following Andrew Cuomo and Bill DeBalsio’s escalating efforts to harass Orthodox Jews in NYC and Cuomo blustered on about his new COVID plan and how he’s going to force compliance by Orthodox Jews.

Then this morning I read a Newsweek article about the new Thanksgiving Restrictions Governor Newsom, in California, has issued and it’s like looking at America’s future if the Democrats control Congress, the White House, most of the mainstream media and big tech, which owns the large social media companies. It felt like I was reading a dystopian novel, with COVID rules people must follow in their own homes, down to telling them:

“All gatherings must include no more than three households, including hosts and guests, and must be held outdoors, lasting for two hours of less.”

and

“The new rules state those at a gathering “may remove their face coverings briefly to eat or drink as long as they stay at least 6 feet away from everyone outside their own household, and put their face covering back on as soon as they are done with the activity.”‘

and

“Gatherings that occur outdoors are significantly safer than indoor gatherings. All gatherings must be held outside. Attendees may go inside to use restrooms as long as the restrooms are frequently sanitized,” the statement added.”

There’s way more, like restrictions on singing and restrictions on playing music (no wind instruments) and a whole bunch of other draconian lunacy. And I thought, this is America’s future if Biden wins the White House and Republicans lose control of the Senate.

I detest Trump’s reality TV show presidency, I detest his pettiness, his mendacity, and most especially his vicious name-calling and I never thought I would even consider voting for him or decide to vote for him, but I did.

For a while now, I’ve believed the worst possible outcome for America would be for Dems to control Congress, the White House, in addition to liberals controlling most of the major news media organizations, Hollywood, and the largest social media companies. With this much control of information dissemination and the levers of powers in America, Democrats would be be able to totally marginalize dissenting opinions, in addition to fast-track the far-left’s radical wish list.

A few years ago, I learned about the reach of the political and news media Twitter crowd on American news reporting and on political messaging. At first I dismissed the Twitter influence operations as having so much impact, since a very small percentage of Americans even follow politics on Twitter, but then I realized that this small group of journalists, political pundits, and politicians literally battle for control of the news media’s political narratives and this is where most of the spin battles in America are really fought – out of sight of most Americans. And once I started following the politics Twitter crowd and trying to understand what was going on, I understood why President Trump felt his Twitter account had so much influence.

Twitter is the current epicenter of the American political spin war and it is where the Dems and the mainstream media people hang out to generate spin attacks and it is where President Trump and conservative media people hang out to generate counter-spin attacks. Dems and the mainstream media have waged a spin information war in America for decades, to propel leftist policy and promote Dem politicians, while Republicans floundered around trying to find a way to counter that liberal media dominance and complaining about media bias. It’s not bias, it’s an orchestrated spin information operation run by Dems, their operatives and their media friends.

I understand fully that Trump is everything that I consider a toxic leader to be, but at this moment in time, Republican control of the Senate is iffy and so is the White House. I do not want America being controlled by a Democratic Party that refused to condemn rioting and looting, engaged in smearing police across America, that ran the appalling smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh, and who are poised to ram through the most radical leftist agenda in my lifetime. And in the midst of a COVID surge this winter, I do not want live in an America that embraces draconian policies, propelled by media-fear mongering campaigns that scare people into submitting to massive encroachment on basic civil rights.

I said NeverTrump since 2015 and I’ve written a whole lot of that on my blog, but at this point in time the choices are Dem control of the White House and Congress, which alarms the hell out of me, after watching the craziness of 2020 or hoping that Republicans can hold at least the Senate or White House and perhaps both. I do not want Democrats with unchecked power after watching their spin and smear operations escalate in the past 5 years.

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Filed under 2020 Election, Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Politics, Twitter Tales

October 21, 2020 · 1:43 am

Living a happy life in gloomy times

My last blog post offered all gloomy takes on America with this upcoming presidential election, COVID-19 spread and the endless spin information war raging across American media every single day, but despite all of that we all can try to live a happy life, as we feel our way through the gloom.

Find other things to do besides listening to media hysteria and political drama. I have been a news junkie since I was around 12 years old, so with watching “spin war” develop since the 90s, often I’ve had to step away from the news watching, especially in “crisis” periods, and just find other things to divert my attention, like my family, crafts, needlework, and lots of reading.

Many Americans, myself included, pay too much attention to issues the media hysterically spins up and we often listen to advice from national figures, politicians, Hollywood and TV celebrities, sports figures, and even social media influencers, when we’d be better off talking more to our family, friends and people in our own communities. My most despised media phrase is, “We need to have a national conversation about…” And that conversation is all one-sided as the media bombards us with partisan spin talking points or talking heads spewing claptrap that fuels distrust and anger. We end up being pawns in the spin war.

By paying so much attention to so many famous (yes, even YouTube famous) “personalities” rather than talking and getting to know more people in our own neck of the woods, we fail to build a real and meaningful support network for ourselves. I mentioned this before in a blog post long ago and I firmly believe it’s the truth. Get to know and develop relationships with real people around you. In an emergency or even if you’re just feeling stressed with all the bad news these days, having real live people to talk to and share your concerns and bitches with can help you feel like you’re not alone.

Many people do make friends in social media groups too, so I’m not dissing that type of networking by any means. I learn a lot watching all sorts of YouTube videos and reading blogs, from cooking, to crafts and needlework, to gardening and in recent months I’ve learned a whole lot about prepping and food storage.

My oldest granddaughter is a senior in high school this year and she’s handling all the COVID craziness with calm and cheerfulness. They were supposed to start in school classes, then more parent and teacher fears postponed that. She’s doing distance learning and trying to maintain her grade point average, so she’ll be the salutatorian of her class. She learned to drive this year and got her driver’s license, she found a job in a retail store. She’s also applied to three colleges, been accepted and offered scholarships. On top of that she’s got a boyfriend, whom my daughter says is a very nice young man. I’m very proud of her and I’m glad she hasn’t let all the craziness of 2020 hold her back from living as normal a life as possible.

To highlight the craziness of COVID decision-making, my next younger granddaughter, also in high school, is at home doing distance learning too, but started basketball practice at the school… wearing masks. She’s just happy practice started.

I have been at home this whole time and go out very little, but I try to work on some craft projects, read, sew and take breaks from the news. I also look for new recipes to try, learn new things and most of all try to remember to be grateful for every day.

Sure, I expect more political chaos and perhaps a tough winter with COVID, but I feel hopeful we’ll get through these challenging times. No matter what happens we all still need to live our lives and carry on as normally as possible, without letting the media-driven hysteria turn us into fear-driven basket cases.

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