This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Ex-PH2

  • Vlad, You Naughty, Naughty Man….

    It appears that Vlad Putin, the guy who is really in charge of everything Russian, has two more spy guys who have recently been arrested for attempted murder in March 2018 of the 67-year-old defected Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, through the use of a Novichok nerve agent known as A-234.  They were trades in a spy swap several years ago.

    If you will recall, in 2006, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned and murdered by dropping polonium-210 into his tea.  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-19647226

    This most recent attempt to destroy ex-spies who defected to the West seems to be a continuing story.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/second-spy-poisoning-suspect-identified-as-russian-military-doctor-1539069356

    From the article:  A London-based investigative journalism group said it has learned that one of the men accused of poisoning a former Russian spy in Britain earlier this year is a medical doctor and veteran of Russia’s military intelligence service.

    The group, Bellingcat, reported on its website Monday evening that the man identified and charged by U.K. authorities as Alexander Petrov is actually Alexander Mishkin, a highly decorated member of Russia’s military intelligence service, commonly known as the GRU.

    Bellingcat used documents including a passport to identify Mr. Mishkin, it said.

    The announcement came two weeks after Bellingcat and investigative website Insider reported that Ruslan Boshirov, identified by U.K. authorities as Petrov’s partner in the alleged assassination attempt, was actually Anatoliy Chepiga, a GRU colonel of high rank.

    Bellingcat said it used “multiple open sources, testimony from people familiar with the person, as well as copies of personally identifying documents,” including a scanned copy of Mr. Mishkin’s passport to prove that he wasn’t in fact Petrov.

    Last month, British prosecutors charged two Russian men—named in court proceedings as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov—with four offenses related to the poisoning of 67-year-old defected Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who has lived in Britain since a 2010 spy swap with Moscow. His daughter Yulia was also poisoned, and like her father, left critically ill following the attack.

    Western allies expelled dozens of Russian diplomats as punishment for Moscow’s alleged role in the Skripals’ poisoning. In August, the U.S. unveiled a new series of sanctions and threatened additional stronger measures in November if Moscow fails to comply with certain criteria. — WSJ article

    The two Russians who were arrested and charged with attempted murder insist that they were in Salisbury simply to see the cathedral. I’ve been there myself. It is quite old and quite impressive in that it took so long to complete building the cathedral that it includes both Gothic and Romanesque structures and windows. It is a quiet place, with scars from the swords of Oliver Cromwell’s army when they entered the cathedral and tried to destroy some of the tombs.  It’s not far on a daytrip bus tour from Stonehenge.

    These episodes of murder and attempted murder of people who either defected or were trades for others clashes with Vlad’s efforts to build Russia into a major power, when he engages in this extremely petty and nasty stuff. If they were trades in a spy swap, why would you have them murdered? Yeah, I know – they defected afterwards, which is embarrassing, but they just don’t like you, Vlad. Revenge is just a dumb thing to do. If they had any info, it’s already in the hands of “others”.

    Read the linked articles, especially the one about Litivinenko. Nobody believed him at first, until it was literally too late.

     

     

  • Please Help Me Solve This Puzzle

    In regard to claims by the various members of the media, the count of protesters in those crowds runs from “several hundred” to ‘thousands’, and yet, when you look at photos taken en scene, there is an apparent gap between the real crowd numbers in the photos and what is reported. You can see some of that at this link:

    http://dcist.com/2018/10/kavanaugh_confirmation_protests.php#photo-1

    Per that article, “even as the hundreds of protesters move on from the steps of the court….”

    Per this twitterpating by the President:

    When I looked at the AP crowd photo in the Sunday Chicago Tribune newsrag, the image was closely cropped at the sides, possibly to make it appear that the reported “thousands” were just that, rather than a few hundred people.  I can personally confirm that, in the Autumn of 1967, the march on the Pentagon had several thousand people in it, because I lived at Quarters K, just up the hill from the Pentagon, and I watched that business unfold. The MPs threw three guys out of the Pentagon when they tried to get past them to find the Selective Service files.

    A lot of people who worked there lived at Quarters K. It is now expensive apartment buildings, and we were told we had to move to the Triservice barracks at Ft. Myer or move off base.

    It is being reported that the crowd is now still pounding on the doors of the Supreme Court building, but the photos I’m finding online show only a few people at the base of the steps, not several hundred, as shown in the photos accompanying the linked article. And no one is pounding on anything, including the cops positioned on the steps.

    So here’s the real question (maybe): what Universe is the media inhabiting? Are they all drunk?

    Seriously, reporting now is so unreliable that when I take notes on Accuweather’s forecasts for a week ahead, never mind a month ahead, I keep those notes handy and go back to make updates and am sincerely glad that I don’t have to listen to these people.  I think they are all nuts. Accuweather is, in fact, so bad now that they reported a thunderstorm in my area, per their weather station, when the day was perfectly sunny and the only clouds in the sky were puffy cumulus clouds to the south of me. If Accuweather’s ineptitude is symptomatic of what is wrong with the rest of the media world, then a good, hard shakeout would not hurt them at all.

    There have been times when news reports were so off the wall that I would turn the sound down and insult the reporters in heinous ways. Gross exaggeration is the metier of yellow journalism like tabloids. They should know that and avoid it if they want to be believed, and that includes WaPo and the NYT.

    I get that they don’t like dTrump. He isn’t the pushover that bodaprez was, nor is he the Other Person who made promises that only little kids would believe, and was a major risk to national security. Those things don’t matter when you’re dealing with little kids, you know. Promise them a pony and a Popsicle, and they are so dumb they’ll get right into your car.

    But for Pete’s sake, when you are so angst-ridden by this childishness that you are now taking on that “jealous little kid” stuff and trying to excoriate his claims of self-made this or that, when his daddy Fred left him $413 million, but didn’t leave any of it to you, you are dumping this ridiculous preface to a temper tantrum on people who just don’t give a damn.

    Job numbers available are higher than they’ve been in a long time. Unemployment is at its lowest rate since 1969. Wages are good and some techno stuff may be coming back here. We might not get things like garment-making or furniture construction back for a while, but towns in what used to be the Rust Belt are reviving because tech companies’ employees are moving to them. These cycles do tend historically to repeat themselves. We now have trade deals with Canada and Mexico, because China’s a bit annoyed with us and our tariffs. Some foreign companies like Foxconn are bringing jobs here.

    If you want a real smack up the side of your head, Merkel’s Greenbean energy hasn’t been working, so more coal-fired power plants are under construction in Germany than have been in a while. Australia’s “green energy” utilities are so costly to consumers that people have to choose between light and food, so the Australians are going to build new nuclear power plants. The reality of the extreme cost of “renewables” is pounding on these silly people. 

    The point is that even a possible recession in the early to mid-2020s may be extremely mild, and not have much impact except on unskilled labor. The reality of what is going on now, which started after dTrump was elected and broke the back of Terminal Socialism, is that we are moving forward despite the cries of anguish from the Left side of the political fence. I think that the political pendulum swung as far as it could to the Left, reached its zenith, and slowly but surely has begun to make its way back to center where it belongs. You have  to have a certain amount of opposition in order to stay balanced.

    So I’ll ask those questions again:  what Universe is the media inhabiting? Are they all drunk? Is this a collective herd mentality that believes its own delusions? Or are they just kids still in diapers throwing tantrums because they can’t play with the burner knobs on the stove?

    Note: No grackles were harmed in the construction of this article.

  • T.I.N.S., I was there….

    I see you’re all sitting around, trying to figure out how to get through the weekend without a lot of stolen valor stuff to pound on and with a dirth of news about fraudulent claims or major triumphs. As I understand it, the SJC is either voting on Kavanaugh’s confirmation or will vote on it, but I believe there is now sufficient support for him to be confirmed.

    So I thought that maybe, while you’re awaiting the news on that item and trying to pass the hours while you’re stuck indoors watching college fussballspielen, you might take advantage of an open thread where you can drop in your own adventures without let or hindrance.  They do not have to be military-related, which means that you can relay those moments when the firing pin in your neighbor’s rifle was stuck and he couldn’t get the thing to fire, so he looked down the barrel… and I’m sure you know what happened after that.

    Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules!

    Fire away then.

     

  • Thursdays Are For Cooking….

     

    Oh, gee, it’s that time of year again. Getting cold at night, sweater weather during the day. Time to fix something for the weekend so you can go do other things and not have to pay attention to the stove.  All kinds of slow cooker recipes are online, and Betty Crocker has an entire section devoted to crockpottery and slow cookery, as well.

    You know what’s really good? Scalloped potatoes with diced ham, oozing with cheese in the sauce. Yowzah!

    Someone wanted my chocolate chip recipe so here it is. It’s based on the Tollhouse recipe, with a little extra of this and that.

    3/4 cup of cane sugar

    3/4 cup of dark brown sugar (more molasses than lt. brown)

    Stir that together to get a good mix, then add:

    1 cup of melted butter (that’s two sticks, kids, and leave some in the box for the popcorn later on.)

    3 teaspoons of extract of vanilla (Yes, 3. Tollhouse calls for 1. Pfft! Wienies!!)

    Stir this together, and then add 2 fresh eggs. Stir the wet mixture thoroughly, and keep stirring it until it looks like satin.

    Have your dry ingredients handy, mixed together for better distribution:

    2.5 cups of unbleached flour

    1 teaspoon of baking soda

    1 teaspoon of salt

    Add the dry to the wet ingredients slowly, mix thoroughly, and halfway through add a 12 ounce bag of chocolate chips. Get the best and make sure they have the MOST cacao (at least 60%) you can find.  Don’t be shy about ingredients – ever! I let these cool on several layers of paper towels.

    I don’t put nuts in these cookies. There are enough nuts running around loose as it is. Don’t need more of them. Put those in oatmeal cookies with lots and lots of raisins. The recipe is on the lid of the Quaker Oats oatmeal box.

    These are drop cookies, so drop a heaping teaspoonful on your baking sheet. Bake at 375F for 8 to 10 minutes, then let them cool. The time length depends on your oven, but if the temperature is too high, they get dried out.

    These can be kept fresh by storing them in a ziplock bag in the fridge and/or freezer until they’re eaten up. They won’t last long.  If they’re left out, they’ll get stale because they have no preservatives in them.  On the other hand, if you leave them out on a plate, they won’t last long because some Invisible Fiend will make off with all of them, and turn up again with chocolate and cookie crumbs smeared all over his/her/its face and hands.

    I think the cost to make a batch is about $2.50+/- plus some elbow grease.

    Time to get cider, too, and make a pumpkin pie… with whipped cream… and roast a turkey and some acorn squash.

     

  • As Long as We’re On the Subject of Veterans

    This is kind of long, but it has to do with how veterans have been treated in the past in some place other than the USA.

    Does this sound familiar? An unpopular war in a foreign location that nobody knows much about, nor does anyone really care, but which costs lives and leaves veterans disliked and often stranded when trying to get help of any kind… war-related medical needs, including counseling going sadly lacking, no real support, disdainful remarks about serving, the media not telling the truth about it, etc.

    Welcome to the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan. It started in the late 1970s and lasted until 1989, just before the Politburo was dissolved and Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union was out of money and bankrupt.  And now, the Russians are embroiled in another war in the Middle East, in Syria. Another generation of Russian veterans is on deck.  http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9902/09/afghan.veterans/

    From the article:

    Once a year, Zhdanov — among the last soldiers to leave Afghanistan in February 1989 — visits the grave of his friend Nikolai who died two months before the Soviet pullout.

    “At least his gravestone says where he died,” Zhdanov said, sprinkling another glass of vodka over the grave in a traditional Russian gesture. “Relatives of soldiers who had been killed earlier were not allowed to mention that for fear of ‘demoralizing the population’.”

    In December 1979, the Soviet Union sent 80,000 troops into Afghanistan to support the leaders it had installed there.

    The operation was planned as a “little victorious war” meant to thwart Western-backed Islamist rebels and subdue growing discontent over economic and social problems at home.

    But the full-scale war proved too expensive for the creaking Soviet economy and the flow of zinc coffins with the bodies of dead soldiers, most of which were delivered in secrecy, only compounded the unpopularity of the aging Soviet leadership.

    The glasnost policy of more public openness encouraged by Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev after he came to power in 1985 exposed the truth about the Soviet role in Afghanistan and the atrocities of the war, fueling public rage and making withdrawal inevitable.

    On February 15, 1989, the last Soviet commander in Afghanistan, General Boris Gromov, crossed a border bridge to complete the pullout. Behind him lay one million dead Afghans and the memory of 15,000 comrades in arms who perished.

    “Perhaps glasnost was good, but when we came back home people treated us as criminals, as if we started the war,” Zhdanov said. “‘We did not send you there’ was the mildest answer one could get turning for official assistance.”

    The appalling conditions under which the Soviet troops in Afghanistan were far worse than you can imagine, but they are described in that 1999 article.

    We all know what followed: the collapse of communism, wars in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the appalling use of passenger airplanes to attack Americans at home, the invasion of Kuwait, the Great Recession, so-called “lines in the sand”, and now the seemingly endless conflict in the Middle East.

    By 2000, not only were Russian military wages low and benefits nearly nonexistent, but also when someone left the military there was no real support system in place. Families had to pay to bury their veteran members, and in some cases could not afford the cost of a coffin. There were local veterans’ organizations that were set up to try to get medical and other help and were given tax exempt status to do so, so that they could provide some support such as food and housing for these Russian Army vets, but it was not a government organization like our Veterans Administration. Crime was rampant in some of them, also.

    http://factsanddetails.com/russia/Government_Military_Crime/sub9_5b/entry-5209.html#chapter-7

    In regard to active duty pay, in early 1996, a Russian pilot holding the rank of major was paid approximately 1.5 million rubles per month, or about US$300. By comparison, a 1996 NATO pilot of equivalent rank earned US$6,000 per month. [Source: Library of Congress, 1996]

    1996 is now 22 years in the past. In the 1999 collapse of the USSR, the frail base of support for veterans collapsed with it. The Russian economy literally imploded.

    In 2001, Russian soldiers were paid USD $2/month and officers were paid $12/month. This was after the collapse of the ruble fo a value of $0.01733, which has since recovered with a 2018 value of about $0.15 on the dollar. My cousin and his wife went to Moscow back then, and told me that they found Russian vets on the streets trying make a little money for food by selling their uniforms and medals.

    Currently, in 2018, wages are better, as are housing, food and medical care for troops but there are still issues with caring for veterans, because that is where the real expense lies: the aftermath. In January this year, Deputy Defense Minister Tatyana Shevtsova told journalists on Friday that military pay and pensions will increase four percent per annum in 2018, 2019, and 2020. It remains to be seen if this will happen consistently, as the Russian economy is still quite creaky.

    June 2017, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin addressed military pay publicly for the first time since 2012. It had not been indexed for inflation once during the interval according to NVO.  But Putin said he wants to improve the “material stimulus” for the MOD, MVD, FSB, and SVR.

    With another presidential election looming, he wanted to show he’s still concerned about men in uniform. This is not easy when the federal budgets scarcely have money for it and economic recovery is weak. While four percent raises will be welcome, they won’t make up for the eroded purchasing power of military pay. The CPI in Russia has increased more than 50 percent since May 2012. An increase like that sounds wonderful on paper, but it does not address the real sluggishness of the Russian economy at the time. Theirs was considerably worse than ours, and the impact on ex-military with no base of support was heavy.

    Whether or not this 4% raise does become an annual reality, remains to be seen. It may be less or may be inconsistent. It is an election year in Russia, just as it is here.  Politicians are prone to make many promises, but, as some say, campaign promises are made to be broken.

    The fact that military wages in Russia’s military are low to begin with means that the money Putin makes from gas and oil sales is stretched quite thin already.

    From what I have found, it appears that the military may be more of a show with “advanced” equipment production being more important than real-world improvements for the troops, as in Big Missiles instead of better equipment and logistics. The pounding they are taking in the Middle East, in Syria, may be taking its toll, too.

    As for how Russia’s veterans are treated now, things seem to have improved somewhat since 1999, when the returning Afghan veterans were not just looked down upon but despised. This comes from Quora, from someone in Russia:

    Andrey Yanovski, Senior Business Development Specialist Answered Jun 19, 2017 Russian Federation.

    First of all, I want to say that here under “military veterans” I will understand “combat veterans” – people who have participated in active combat operations as they receive a set of social support measures in extension to the social support of a retired military person who has never participated in combat operations. Also some people may be legal combat veterans and not be actually former or active military personnel.

    That includes:

    1. WWII vetrans include anyone, who has received a medal or a decoration both on the front and in the rear. That may include. for example, military factory workers, security officers, engineers etc, who contributed to the war effort.
    2. Persons, who were engaged in minesweeping duties both on land and at sea after WWII
    3. Some police/security services officers who were engaged in military combat operations
    4. Persons who served in “automotive battalions”, delivering cargo to Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
    5. Wounded, concussed or otherwise disabled persons, who were at any time engaged in supporting (servicing) military units of USSR or RF in foreign countries, if at that time there was a military conflict at that county.
    6. People, who received medals or other decorations for actions in support of combat operations (doctors, drivers etc.)
    7. Pilots, who were performing flights (including civilian) from the territory of USSR to Afghanistan at the time of active combat in Afghanistan.
    8. Citizens commandeered to work in Afghanistan in the period between 1979 and 1989.

    So, for all veterans both civilian and military the following social support is available:

    1. Veterans are exempt from property tax
    2. Veterans have also tax reductions of personal income tax and land ownership tax, but the reduction amounts are negligible.
    3. Veterans have a right for additional annual leave of 35 days per year, however this leave is unpaid.
    4. Veterans receive a pension increase (in addition to their military pension) of ~2500 rub/month (roughly $50).
    5. Veterans don’t need to pay fees for court applications.
    6. Veterans have the right to receive free housing, however there is a queue for the housing being constructed, so it is unfortunately not guaranteed.
    7. Veterans have a 50% discount on housing services fees. Note: not utilities payments, only housing fees.
    8. Veterans are entitled to free medical care in military hospitals and clinics, Note: military hospitals and clinics are able to provide treatment for a fairly limited number of conditions, of course.
    9. Veterans are entitled to free medical examination every 3 months.
    10. Veterans are entitled to receive free limb prosthetics (only manufacturing cost included, including replacement of worn ones, any treatment/surgery costs still need to be paid by the vet.  In some regions of Russia, tooth implants are also included.
    11. Some medication can be received for free (specific list is updated annually, but generally it’s the most basic stuff).
    12. Veterans have a right of free pass on suburban electric trains.
    13. Veterans receive increased scholarship payments in colleges and universities.
    14. Veterans receive priority admittance to colleges and universities.

    Our own politicians use veterans as a mounting block to get votes for themselves. Some of them do mean well and do support the veteran community, but in the end it still comes down to votes. And as I said, talk is great; politicians are prone to make many promises, but, as some say, campaign promises are made to be broken.

  • All Hands!! Attention On Deck!!! Listen Up!!!!

    You should all be aware that the “Me Too” movement by women regarding sexual harassment and misconduct started about one year ago. Furthermore, this next week, there will be an investigation by the FBI as ordered by dTrump, as well as a one week delay on the confirmation vote.

    .https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-judiciary-committee-prepares-to-vote-on-kavanaugh-this-morning-1538134779

    The drama is not over yet, but may be reaching a peak shortly.

    Why? An astrologer would said it has to do with Venus (women) retrograde in Scorpio and square to Saturn in Capricorn, no longer retrograde but moving forward. Capricorn is the control freak sign in the zodiac. Saturn symbolizes structure and authority, which applies to control freaks. I should know. My sister is a Capricorn.

    So we can go with the astrological explanation, or we can take a different and more prosaic viewpoint.  They seem pretty much the same.

    Whether or not you believe in karmic influence is immaterial. Per karmic law, the energy from whatever you do goes out into the Universe and comes back to you nine times over. It ‘s another way of saying ‘What goes around, comes around.’

    Bearing in mind that the Democrat side of the Senate is dead set on controlling everything, the reality is that their control is slipping, and they may know it but refuse to recognize it. However, their behavior is clearly saying ‘we know we are losing control here’. Why else would Pelosi put out a begging letter already?

    Sen. Flake has asked for an investigation and a one-week delay on the vote. Pres. Trump has asked the FBI, as I said, to pursue an investigation.  What will happen next?

    In one week, the SJC will be required to vote ‘Yes” or “No”, like it or not. Nothing will be found impugning Kavanaugh. The “guilty until proven innocent” is as Medieval as you can get, and I once said ‘Do NOT go Medieval on my ass!’  I meant every word of it.

    Therefore, should Mr. Kavanaugh not receive the vote to seat him on the SCOTUS bench, the next candidate is Amy Barrett. 

    Barrett is, as we all know, a Catholic, which means that her view of things like abortion may be even less acceptable than Kavanaugh’s history. The fact that Roe v. Wade, passed in 1967 and tested several times since then, has not yet been overturned is immaterial to them. The first thing they will pounce on, like the fools they are, will be that issue, which in my view is, and for 50+ years has been, a non-issue. To say that it will be automatically overturned is utter nonsense boiling out of pure ignorance.

    By delaying the vote instead of holding it, and letting everyone know that they are the most obnoxious control freaks on the planet, the Democrats are setting themselves up for what can only be termed the most laughable and obnoxious public decision they have ever inflicted on themselves.

    They had a good choice with Kavanaugh, but trumped-up fantasies from “this one time in high school…” have had them chasing themselves and their stubby, wrinkled, little tails in entirely the wrong direction. And now, unless I’m informed otherwise, they will have to vote for someone, whether or not they like it, or leave SCOTUS in an unbalanced and untenable position.  While I realize that there are other candidates waiting in the wings, they and Barrett all have the advantage of witnessing the biggest, and possibly most egregious clown show since Bozo left the circus.

    And frankly, the leftreds and Democraps brought it on themselves.

    “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” : Puck to Oberon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Sc. 2.

    Chin up! It is not over yet.

  • Even Skunks Have Better Manners

    Been digging up stories about things like people being harassed by crowds at restaurants, e.g., Ted Cruz and wife being bullied right out of a restaurant popular with politicians. They’d have been better off going to some place without getting a reservation first and also choosing a restaurant at random.

    But what happened was the ambush in the restaurant, surrounded by an angry mob of howling creatures – can’t call them women or human – and finally leaving. This is not public commentary. It is exactly the “ambush tactics” described by the writer of the WSJ article from yesterday, which also addresses throwing due process out the window.

    The restaurant owner did call the cops,  and they came. She also offered the Cruzes another reservation. I don’t know whether or not they took her up on it. But the cops are under no obligation any more to do anything other than investigate and arrest. They are no longer here to protect anyone, period.

    That means that if you get confronted by an angry mob that suspects you of doing something, based on hearsay, rumor, innuendo, and fictitious claims, and nothing else, you are toast. Period.

    Likewise, anything you may do to defend yourself and anyone with you against such an angry mob of loons will get you the label of ‘mass-something or other”, even if you are not that kind of person.

    In a Leftred article on another site, the title included the words ‘All-out War’. You have to ask why? What is the purpose of using a term like that? The writer who said that has likely never seen a real war, never faced destruction of anything other than his paycheck when the bills arrive and never had to deal with the real tragedy of warfare. I doubt that he’s ever had to face a true legal challenge, either. But real all-out war? Bring it, Stupid!

    Is this insanity ever going to end? Yes, it is, because every cycle has a beginning and an ending. This cycle is at its midpoint, maybe a little past it. It’s entirely possible that it will implode soon, but we have to be patient and watch it. It’s also possible that the crazypants stuff will become such a turnoff to voters that anyone wavering over “which candidate” may go to the conservative side.

    When Robespierre’s hatred of the  aristocracy so blinded him to the way other people regarded him, the council he had set up voted to execute him by guillotine, a rather fitting end to his rampages. He might have been good at inciting the mob to rule, but he was quite blind to how much other people despised him. His nasty crap lasted barely a little over four years, starting in 1789. No one was spared. No one received due process. They were guilty by association, by heredity, by their existence. Then he met his own fate in 1793.

    This is why I say that every cycle has a beginning and an ending. Robespierre’s came and went, and France went back to being La France. History shows us that these cycles all start, expand and end, sometimes abruptly. Some are long, like Stalin’s rule of the Soviet Union until he had a brainfart and died, and some are short, like Pol Pot’s lethal roughshod ride over Cambodia, which lasted two years. Again, under these heinous criminals, no one received due process. They got the firing squads if they were lucky, or the gulags if they weren’t.

    Should you be concerned? Absolutely. When you cannot go to a grocery store or a restaurant without being harassed and threatened with physical harm by spoiled brat three-year-olds in adult bodies throwing tantrums in public, it means that mob rule has become their norm, which is exactly what the current so-called Democrats want. It is especially onerous for people in public offices, whose images appear in the media, and whose values at this point are slammed into pulp, first by the media and after that by mob rule. You are guilty of something regardless of your real innocence, while nothing the mob says would ever hold up in court.

    But returning to the incident at the restaurant: if the worst thing that happened was that a bunch of obnoxious overgrown kindergarten bullies made nuisances of themselves with the Cruzes at a public restaurant, and no physical damage was done to either the Cruzes or the restaurant itself, this may be a signal that the Idiotic Era of Screaming Hysterics and Throwing Things may just be coming to an end.

    There’s Newton’s 3rd Law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Isaac applied it to physics. He also sold insurance when he wasn’t waiting for the apple to bonk him on the head. It has a wider application that just physics, however.

    Think about it for a minute. Real mob rule is getting into the Old Fart Stage of its life. That’s the state in which it starts up fast, makes a huge effort, runs out of breath, can’t quite pull itself together, tries to acquire fresh blood, and then begins to wilt, slumping back into its chair and trying to catch its breath. It may have started a new cycle with the French Revolution, but that is now well over 200 years ago.  It destroyed the real Russian government, leading to decades of trampling under the heel of Stalin’s thug-driven Communist government, which was not quite what those Russian people were expecting. And driving Batista out of Cuba ended with far more poverty and financial ruin than was promised by Fidel and Che. No one was spared under these thugs.

    For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

    This rampaging horde business started 2 ½ years ago with the Masked Assholes in downtown Washington smashing windows, turning over newspaper boxes, and setting a couple of cars on fire. It didn’t go too well when they tried to beat up a female cop. It subsequently became an on-campus rampage and fire at UC-Berserkley when a conservative gay guy (Milo) tried to have an appearance there. That ended quickly. The part-time “prof” who whacked an opposition protester with a bicycle lock got his ass fired. (Has he found real work yet? No?) The protests over the following spring and summer were short, not widespread, and not damaging, as they could have been. The so-called “women’s march” in Chicago was supposed to attract a million marchers and had, by one newspaper’s guesstimate, barely 175,000. Another paper said 200,000. But how do you really tally a crowd properly without a tickets total? You can’t. As desperate as these crowds may have been to commit mayhem, those who were arrested for arson and property damage did receive due process under the law.

    But now, a bunch of snot-nosed twits invade a Washington, DC, restaurant popular with politicians and pester someone whose position is the opposite of theirs. At least they didn’t overturn the tables and chairs, trash the place or set it on fire, and they didn’t chase the Cruzes out the door. The owner showed the Cruzes how to leave by the back door, and invited them back.

    Still, their decision to harass and bully the Cruzes is a direct manifestation of, not just crowd/mob action, but an unwillingness to allow due process to take place. A refusal to listen to the other side of the story. Guilty until proven innocent. Cruz did nothing wrong, but those people clearly wanted to pillory him, if they could have gotten away with it. Mob rule does, however, seem to be reaching its limits now. The juice is running low. If you post your image online bullying someone – anyone including a politician and his wife, your employer can and just may fire your ass.

    For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

    We do have another two years to go. There will be more SCOTUS seats to fill. The midterms are coming up. The outcome in each district and state will be determined by how many people go vote and of those voters, how many vote Leftred or Rightwingythingy.

    Let’s stop calling these “liberals” Democrats. The Democrats of the past were much more conservative and better mannered than this bunch of birdbrained idiotas. Let’s call them what they really are: Communistas, Leftreds, herd mentality idiots, spoiled brats – whatever.  I doubt that they’d like it if they had to live under real communism, because as anyone who was fortunate enough to escape that prison planet can tell you, it was hell on earth. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was about more than just survival in a gulag. Pot Pot’s Khmer Rouge were nothing but murdering, torturing savages. The Kims made people dig their own graves before executing them.

    The Leftreds are making very unpleasant nuisances of themselves now, getting a lot of face time on the screens, going to a lot of trouble to let us all know how truly intolerant they really are.

    My reaction to it is that I would not vote for anyone they endorse. Period.

    For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

  • The Stakes Are Higher Than Ever

    From the Wall Street Journal online last night:

    The Kavanaugh Stakes

    A vote against the judge is a vote for ambush tactics and against due process.  — by Kimberley A. Strassel

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-kavanaugh-stakes-1538088433

    “The Ford-Kavanaugh hearing consumed most of Thursday, and unsurprisingly we learned nothing from the spectacle. Christine Ford remains unable to marshal any evidence for her claim of a sexual assault. Brett Kavanaugh continues to deny the charge adamantly and categorically, and with persuasive emotion.

    Something enormous nonetheless has shifted over the past weeks of political ambushes, ugly threats and gonzo gang-rape claims. In a Monday interview, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski noted: “We are now in a place where it’s not about whether or not Judge Kavanaugh is qualified.” Truer words were never spoken. Republicans are now voting on something very different and monumental—and they need to be clear on the stakes.

    To vote against Judge Kavanaugh is to reject his certain, clear and unequivocal denial that this event ever happened. The logical implication of a “no” vote is that a man with a flawless record of public service lied not only to the public but to his wife, his children and his community. Any Republican who votes against Judge Kavanaugh is implying that he committed perjury in front of the Senate, and should resign or be impeached from his current judicial position, if not charged criminally. As Sen. Lindsey Graham said: “If you vote ‘no,’ you are legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.”

    The stakes go beyond Judge Kavanaugh. A “no” vote now equals public approval of every underhanded tactic deployed by the left in recent weeks. It’s a green light to send coat hangers and rape threats to Sen. Susan Collins and her staff. It is a sanction to the mob that drove Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife out of a restaurant. It is an endorsement of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who kept the charge secret for weeks until she could use it to ambush the nominee with last-minute, unverified claims. It’s approval of the release of confidential committee material (hello, Spartacus), the overthrow of regular Senate order, and Twitter rule. It’s authorization for a now thoroughly unprofessional press corps to continue crafting stories that rest on anonymous accusers and that twist innuendo into gang rapes. A vote against Brett Kavanaugh is a vote for Michael Avenatti. No senator can hide from this reality. There is no muddy middle.

    The print edition is available at newsstands this morning. The entire article is worth your time. “Due process”, the element of legal proceedings that protects even the most heinous criminal from the lynch mob, is under severe threat now. Read the article, read it twice, tell others about it.