Fun With Lawn Signs

 First off I read that Warren Buffet, of Berkshire Hathaway fame, who usually puts out a simple white yard sign with a blue dot on it to encourage people to vote Democratic, has decided to do without any signs this year. I like his approach, so I tried making one myself, a blank white sign with a simple red dot. Problem with this is that it looks like a Japanese flag. Changing the dot to an oval solves that problem, as would changing the dot to a square box. Problem solved.

Meantime, up the block, someone got a very fancy yard sign, in pink, with lace and feminine script reading "Madame President". Beautiful sign, wonderful sentiment. Only problem is that Margret Thatcher isn't on the ballot. To clear up the confusion that might result, I generated a modification to the sign. See below:

The only improvement I could think of was to make the feet separate pieces, with springs between each foot and a clip to attach them to the sign, gibing the assembly a dynamic aspect. Making the feet easily removable would probably result in them getting easily removed though, so I'll just stop here. I get 2 reactions to this picture: Shock and horror, vs guffaws of laughter. The originators might have picked a better font, as I had to explain that it doesn't say Maclam.

Vote For The Crook! - Convicted Felon!

Back in 1991, Louisiana was a one-party state, the Republicans having gone moribund, and it was an election year. The leading Democratic wannabe for Governor was Edwin Edwards, who had just been released from the state prison after serving 5 years for official corruption. Challenging him for the nomination was KKK leader David Duke. Duke changed his party affiliation after losing to Edwards in the party primary, and petitioned himself onto the general ballot. Edwards and Duke finished 1-2 and moved on to the runoff.

Humorous unofficial bumper stickers were created in support of Edwards over Duke, despite Edwards' negative reputation. One bumper sticker read "Vote for the Lizard, not the Wizard", while another read "Vote For The Crook: It's Important."

FWIW, the Wizard was never really a republican and the “crook” won.

QOTD - Republicans

 Here's a repost of a comment found at Insty:

 “Omg I wish establishment republicans would take their love of getting beaten into the bedroom and then maybe they wouldn’t get off on losing to democrats.”

 Hear! Hear!

Trump/Gaetz

 At Scot Adams suggestion:

Plagiarizing Your Way To A Pulitzer - Ukraine

 Today, my hometown paper, the Denver Post (Ved Nanda), and the Times of London, (Max Hastings) are both running similar articles rehashing the old arguments in favor of buying off aggressive tyrants to somehow buy peace. Shades of Neville Chamberlin. Let the Germans Russians have the Sudetenland Donbas regions, and forestall the possibility of an a actual shooting war. Peace In Our Time!

I bet I know how that will turn out.

Both the abovementioned articles are behind paywalls, but you can get the general gist of both by searching for Chamberlins agreement with Hitler which he waved for the press on his return from negotiations.

The New Biden, Coming Soon To A TV Near You

 Expect the DNC to soon demonstrate recent innovations in AI purchased from the Chinese. They now have a couple of newscasters done with advanced animation and AI broadcasting the news daily and undetectable by watchers.

The original news people were popular and widely watched, and when the original AI models were introduced, they were not hard to spot. Currently the AI has learned to refine its modeling to the point that the models are virtually indistinguishable from the real people.

Expect this to be imported into U.S. politics soon. The giveaways will be the politician getting through a speech without self-correcting an error, either factual or grammatical. Speeches will be written by a committee, carefully checked for errors, and then piped out to us peons in a manner reminiscent of Max Headroom. Our new crop of pols can be expected to appear only on TV, or in meetings via Zoom or something similar. Slo Joe will be locked away in his Delaware basement, and his "steering committee" will have his AI driven image taking care of business. 

Actually, the uses for this are much more extensive than just keeping a demented meatloaf in the oval office. Imagine if a nationwide TV broadcast/youTube production went out in Iran in which the Supreme Leader threw his turban on the floor and denounced Islam as a fraud. Or if Xi JinPing were to suddenly announce the end of communism, or Kim Jong Un announced he was retiring to some South Pacific Islands with enough money to never bother with North Korea again. The mind boggles.

Meantime, watch for Slo Joe to suddenly begin making sense, or at least stop with the gaffes. A sure sign he's been replaced

QOTD - History

 From Ace of Spades:

The Boston Tea Party: Tax us without representation and we will destroy the goods meant to be taxed.

Lexington and Concord: Come take our guns and we will kill you.

The Battle of Trenton: We'll cross an icy river and kill you in your sleep. On Christmas!

Lies, Damn Lies, And Polls

This poll suggests that Coloradans love being East California and all that entails, but... 

I am suspicious of a poll showing large majorities in favor of rapidly increasing taxes, including fees, high unemployment, large homeless encampments, a new taxing zone for a high speed rail corridor, restrictions on charter schools, etc, etc. When you take a poll, you poll large numbers of people, and sort them by political affiliation, then adjust their weighting to match, say, the turnout from the last election. As well, the poll runs an incumbent against an unknown opponent, never a winning proposition.

Now let's assume that Colorado used the same Dominion voting machines and tabulators that gave Dems a 2-5% boost across the board. One could be left with the idea that there are a lot more "Bernie boys" in this state than there actually are, and that thus, far left positions are much more popular than in actual fact. This can also bias later polls which would be weighted to match fraudulent voter data. Done carefully, this sort of thing can convince the majority that they're in the minority, and depress their turnout in elections, and convince them to leave the state.

This Rassmussen poll suggests that the far left is far less popular than the media would have you believe. The trick here is to get honest polling data out to the electorate to give them some confidence that they are not lonesome voices crying in the wilderness.

UPDATE: I seem to have been right.

 

 

Local Control - Colorado

 Jon Caldera has a nice piece up at Complete Colorado describing in great detail what the notion of "local control" means to Democrats. Bottom line, the state can make living here as onerous as they want, and localities are permitted to make it worse. But only worse.

For myself, I've been ready to decamp to a freer location for the last 10 years as I see Colorado becoming East California, and no real chance of it ever being reversed. After all, our Secretary of State has assured us that we have the cleanest election process in the country, and it's so free of taint that she has issued a ruling that it shall be illegal to investigate any aspect of it.

The reason I'm still here is my spouse, who sees proximity to her sister and daughter as being worth any inconvenience the state wants to impose. She reminds me of a prisoner in the State pen who has served his sentence, but doesn't want to leave because all his friends are there.

Fun With Headlines - Gun Law

 First this:

House Democrats Push Biden to Create ‘National Gun Violence’ Director

Which makes me wonder if Biden really needs a director for this sort of thing, but what do I know. First person to come to my mind is James Hodgekinson but a bit of checking shows that while he's probably qualified, he's no longer available. 

However, the person who inspired him is still available as shown in this excerpt from the second link above:

The shooter posted several political statements on a Facebook page that appeared to belong to him and was a member of anti-Republican groups, including "Terminate the Republican Party," "The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans" and "Illinois Berners United to Resist Trump."

Why It's Different This Time

 

Having entertained myself watching the endless farce that is politics since about 1955, I've notices some things that never seemed to change. First off is the nature of the parties. The Republicans believe in minimal government, so when they are in they tend to leave us alone.

We'll call this phase one. This causes prosperity. Everyone gets a job, or starts a business, and makes money. This creates a demand for workers with the largest numbers at the bottom of the ladder, about where you'd expect things to start.

Next comes phase 2: This creates a problem, or so we're told. All those people at the bottom of the ladder need to be pushed up it, rather than letting them climb or fall according to their abilities. Or so the Democrats tell us. Tugging at our collective heartstrings, they loudly advocate for the poor, demanding that the very richest chip in a small part of their ill-gotten gains to help the less fortunate. This works, and they get elected, frequently in large numbers.

Now comes phase 3. Inevitably, they over reach. Regulate this, ban that, basically put the hobnailed boot of government on the throat of the public, driving small businesses out of business in favor of their model of One Big Business with government sitting on the BOD. The public notices this and usually, we next move to phase 4.

This happens, in general, after 2 years of a Dem trifecta. 1994 comes to mind. The Big Over Reach results in the Big Backlash, and the Reps take over one or both of the legislative houses, putting the brakes on the Dems. The result of this is to keep the Dem President from looking like an economic buffoon, and gets him re-elected on the premise that the economy is improving. Which it is, though not due to anything he's doing. Of course the Reps have to be on their toes here lest the damage abatement from the opposition legislature be ascribed to the Dem president. Usually people figure this out and the improved economy is eventually ascribed to the legislature, and a Rep president is elected.

This trick works both ways though, and Republican prosperity is used to call for a return to punishing the successful and rewarding the laggards. Now we're back to phase 1.

This time I believe is different. The Dems have discovered that to win elections you only have to win over 1 vote, which currently is Eric Coomer of Dominion, maker of the vote counting machines. It appears that these machines can be tuned to produce any results desired all by themselves, or set to allow operators to “adjust” ballots as they go along. This can speed up the process for stage 2, and eliminate the problems causing Stage 3. Over reach is no longer sufficient to get them run out of office, and after a couple of elections, the Republicans get the feeling that their state or country has been over run with Democrats and they can never vote them out no matter how bad a job they do, thus discouraging turnout.

The system works well, but you have to be careful. Simply adding ballots to the total will work up to a point, and having more votes cast than you have registered voters can be explained away by pointing to same day registrations, which no one seems to check post election to see if this is what actually happened. There is another safeguard which is comparing the number of people who voted to the total number of votes. A pretty strong case for fraud can be made if there's a significant discrepancy here, but so far doing this has never been a standard practice. Given the number of people voting and the number and varying types of ballots cast, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to see the numbers not match, but not by very much. Pennsylvania had a discrepancy of some 200,000 more votes cast than voters casting votes. About 4 times the margin of victory and way over anyones expectations. This is still being looked in to but Mr. Biden will be well into his term before any conclusions get drawn. 5 other states also had this issue, with enough electoral votes to swing the election. Again it's being looked in to. What if, by 2022, it is concluded that Biden was fraudulently elected? So what?

The Dem majorities in the legislature are very thin, and phase 3 says Biden should take a beating in both houses due to incompetence and over reach. 2020 was won by focusing on the presidential end of the ticket. The Senate was taken by being able to focus on only 2 races, in a state that already used compromised Dominion machines. By 2022, all the software in the Dominion machines will have been updated so as to allow a technician with a thumb drive, or maybe just a technician with an internet connection to make the necessary adjustments to the machines. Unless legislation is passed in all the states requiring a forensic audit of the machines following any election with said machines placed in quarantine when the polls close, I predict a great Dem sweep of the legislature.

Since this requires effort on the part of legislators I have no great hopes of seeing this happen. In states where the Dems control the legislatures, I have no expectation it will happen at all.

The Future Of Immigration

 Sock-puppet-elect Biden says he'll reverse the Trump policies on immigration, by adding "guardrails". Presumably this means the 4-lane overpasses spanning the border wall will now include OSHA-approved guardrails to prevent any unregistered democrats invading foreign infantry immigrants from falling off the edges and requiring Obamacare in the U.S.

Suggestion: He could avoid the bad publicity of ICE having to detain all those folks while paperwork is being processed by simply proposing legislation to grant statehood to all the Mexican states which would automatically make the entire population of Mexico eligible to vote. This would add some 120M new voters, and 32 new states, presumably all Democratic. Admittedly some are effectively run by violent drug cartels, but these would fit in nicely with Illinois which is run by Chicago gangs.

Get Trump – Chapter 6?

At least 6.

Started out with the locker room talk scandal, but as Trump never presented himself as a plaster saint, it didn't carry any weight.

Next came the Russia. Russia, Russia. Trumps energy policies pulled the rug out from under the Russians, and Gen Mattis put a stop to their more egregious adventurism in the middle east so unless Putin was trying to undermine his own country, the charge against Trump made no sense.

As a by-product of the Russia fiasco, the involvement of the DNC and Clinton campaign in the Steele dossier became painfully obvious.

The impeachment effort filled headlines daily with people increasingly noticing that it served as an excuse for the House to do nothing else. I suppose that if you know that whatever the House does will be stopped in the Senate, and vice versa, there must be little incentive to even show up for work.

The involvement of the Chinese in stealing everything they could get their hands on in the US and adventurism abroad was met with resistance which the left tried, unsuccessfully to label as racism.

The virus problem was used as an excuse to shut down the fastest growing economy ever seen and mute Trumps claims to economic success. Used as an attack on Trump, it worked, but it worked sort of like setting off a giant stink bomb in a crowded elevator. The Chinese are trying to blame the virus on Trump. So far, no one is buying that. Trump is trying to get people back to work and is meeting strong resistance from the Dems who would prefer we all stayed home and starved.

Now comes the latest attack: The George Floyd riots. Note that the riots are happening in Donk controlled cities, and that the municipal administrations are for the most part, siding with the rioters. Black Lives Matter? Not really. If they did, the riots would be put down, the Antifas would be jailed, and black-owned businesses would not be burned out. Unemployed blacks are victims and as such are actively courted by the Dems. It's a good thing since the last time we had unemployment this high they elected their president 4 times in a row.

The riots being municipal level disturbances, the president has limited ability to jump in and put them down. It's a local problem after all. Somehow Trump is expected to come up with a Federal solution to local police problems while the house panders to black nationalists and tacitly supports their militia, Antifa. As such, I expect the left will be actively supporting the riots all the way through November with calls for more every time some thug of the right pigmentation gets shot by a cop in the commission of a crime. They will probably call for more if Trump gets reelected to protest “Vote Suppression”, something that can be investigated through his second term. Get out in the street, wave a sign, spread plague, burn your house down, and vote Dem. It's a safe bet that if a Dem becomes President, money for the rioters will dry up over night.

Every Monday, for the last 3-1/2 years, we've been told that the coming Friday would be the big day with Trump frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs. I'm still hearing this. I expect to hear it until 2024, unless the election turns into a huge landslide of voters fed up with Dem shenanigans who hand Trump a second term with both the House and Senate. In that case, the republicans will revert to form and spend most of their time attacking each other.

QOTD - The Senate

This from the floor of the Senate during debate on the proposed economic relief bill from Sen. John N. Kennedy (R-LA):

“You know what the American people are thinking right now?” Kennedy inquired rhetorically. “They’re thinking that the brain is an amazing organ. It starts working in a mother’s womb and it doesn’t stop working til you get elected to Congress.”

Nailed it, Senator.

Western Civ in 5 minutes

Everything they refuse to teach you in college, or even in High School any more:

Fun With Headlines In The New Year – Iran

Found on Strategypage, this article looking at how the world is and speculating on how it might be

I found the bits on Iran to be interesting in light of their recent adventurism in Iraq. President Rouhani says Iran never bows to superpowers but their history tells a different, and much longer story.

From Strategypage this:

First there is Iran, which has been a regional superpower for thousands of years but fell on hard times after the 7^th century because of a succession of damaging visits by invaders. First came conquest by the Arab revival (the initial wars of conquest by newly converted Moslem Arabs). This was humiliating because Persians never thought such a thing possible. That was followed by a devastating visit by the Mongols (1219-1221) after which came a series of exhausting wars with the Ottoman Turks and finally the Western nations and all their new tech and ideas.

The protests in Iran which have reportedly resulted in over 1500 deaths by the regime include some interesting demands by the protesters who are acutely tired of the Islamic dictatorship and are proposing some interesting changes:

Even more disturbing was that some of the protesters are calling for Islam to be banned and replaced with something else, like Zoroastrianism, the ancient Persian religion that Islam replaced, violently and sometimes incompletely in the 7^th and 8^th centuries.

Replacing Islam with almost anything would be a big help to Iran or anyone else. RTWT, mainly the first link. It's lengthy but covers most of the world and in a lot more detail than you get from CNN for sure.

Happy New Year 2

Over and above the young lady in the previous pose, It seems that 2019 was pretty damn good. The U.S. economy has moved from being 20% of the whole worlds economy to being 25%. My 401k, if it could vote, would support making Trump President For Life.

I wouldn't, although as of right now and subject to change, I'd support Ted Cruz in 2024. I was wondering why, if the market was taking off like a Nork rocket, was GDP growth down at 2.1%, but I'm told the whole world has been taking a bit of a beating last year and the US is the only G7 country to show better than 2% so we're still #1.

Guns: My Hi Point finally had a failure that all have agreed is non-repairable so it looks like I'm getting a new one in about 3 weeks. Go Team Hi-Point! For you folks in Virginia, mass demonstrations are a tool of the left. The only mass demo that matters is the one at the ballot box and it looks like the left has imported enough refugees to swing the last 2 seats they needed to take the trifecta. The newly empowered El Puerco Grande, as we call him, is taking the opportunity to attempt to disarm his citizens just like several other South American dictators. This is causing some firebrands to use words like bugaloo. Stay away from that. Those sorts of things are messy and usually more drawn out than anyone expects. I recommend targeted assassinations. Saves on ammo and causes less collateral damage.

Advice:
To the College of Cardinals (hey, go big or go home, right?) Next time elect someone who is arguably Catholic. You want an economist? Hire one from the University of Chicago who knows what he's talking about.

To Greta the Grinch: Great timing, leaving the U.S. to vacation in a Mediterranean country. You could be here helping me move 3-1/2" of Global Warming from my drive and walk. Probably wouldn't pay as well though.

To the Ayatollah Hominy: Give it up. Admit you've been wrong all those years, and convert to Zoroastrianism like your forebears.

To Fat Kim: Let the Donald build a nice hotel on the coast and maybe he'll get you a Pelloton for your birthday.

Fearless Predictions

It's that time of year again and since I've been mostly wrong in the past, let's see how well my record holds up.

#1a for 2020: Pelosi will time her transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate so that the trial will coincide with the presidents SOTU address in a last ditch attempt to embarrass him.

#1b: This will inspire the Senate to reject the articles outright.

Impeachment - The Edwards Bar

At this point I'm inclined to think that President Trump has cleared the Edwards bar to re-election.

The only way I can lose is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.

This from Edwin Edwards more than slightly notorious Governor of Louisiana.

In Court For A Crime Not Yet Committed

This belongs in the Florida Man file, but since it's happening in Great Britain, it rises above that. Since the defendant is PM, it rises a bit higher. Since the court agreed to hear the case one might begin to wonder just how high the plaintiff and Judge might actually be. Since it's the Scottish High Court, you gotta read this.

The upshot is that a sitting politician is being hauled into court for a crime that, even though he hasn't committed it yet, the plaintiff thinks he will and should therefore be sanctioned in advance. An interesting concept which if applied here would make it possible to jail our elected officials as soon as they take their respective oaths of office. One supposes that the legislatures could meet in the exercise yard for one hour each day to take care of business as long as state laws allow interred legislators to vote from their cells.