Tuesday, November 12, 2024

another foot update

Check out the walk blog for some good news about healing.


Monday lunch

The last time I had a week's worth (well, three days' worth) of this breakfast-for-lunch (back when my buddy Mike was here, but also in late April, before the heart attack), I lost weight:

Bacon qualifies as dirty keto. The sausage is completely keto. So are the pancakes (almond flour). The eggs are the most keto of all as they contain cream, salt, pepper, and cheese, with the eggs themselves as a keto powerhouse, full of fat and protein and only 1.3 g of carbs per egg. I've got this setup as a meal for Wednesday and maybe Friday (unless I meet my buddy Tom, in which case the last portion will be next Monday's meal). Oh—the strawberry syrup is also keto. Artificial sweetener, no added sugar, plenty of fiber, low glycemic index since it's strawberries. And agar agar as a thickener (0 g carbs... nice).


how chicks think dudes talk

City chicks. Because they live in a bubble.





Monday, November 11, 2024

images 1


Burn down more than just the snowflakes.

I've put this one up before. It's the little blue patches that unfairly have so much influence.

This works for the joke, but in what other context would a man ever want to be known as "Beerpussy"?


I love "Titania."


Many versions of this joke are going around.

Scott Presler is one of the architects of this revolution. Glad he's part of the team.

Without the vocative comma, the meme is saying, "We know Ben's character."


mad at the weather, yet hopeful...?

I go to work late and usually stay late. This afternoon, I got to the office around lunchtime, and the afternoon sun was hot. This felt more like the tail-end of summer than the tail-end of fall. Is this Korea's version of Indian summer? No idea. I had on my new windbreaker/raincoat, yet another gift from my boss (who has given me many, many gifts over the years, probably to bribe me to stay with the company), and I felt stupid for wearing it. When I finally left work tonight, I put the jacket back on, thinking it would finally be cold... but no, it was still short-sleeve weather—mildly cool, and that's all. What the hell is going on? (I can hear my liberal friends offstage, all screaming, Climate change!)

Anyway, this got me thinking: we're almost halfway through November, and if it's still warm like this at the end of the month when I restart my walk, well, that'll be nice: the weather won't be that bad, and I can finish the final eleven days of the walk fairly placidly.

This might end up being a fantasy, though. If today's weather really is Indian summer, it's going to end soon, and the end of November is nineteen days away. A lot can happen in nineteen days, especially as fall transitions into winter. Plus: even though I'll be picking up my route in Daegu, which is warmer than other parts of the country, I'll be leaving the city soon after. Once I reach Sangju and break east for Andong, it'll be nothing but farms and small towns until I'm at Andong City. Without the waste heat of the big cities to protect me, I suspect it's going to be a mite chilly, so I'll have to prepare accordingly, especially when it comes to protecting the top of my head, my face, and my hands, especially my poor fingers, which can feel frozen even through two pairs of gloves if I'm not careful.

Another thing to remember is the need to keep my tech warm. Cold is the enemy of batteries; if I take my phone out too often when it's cold, I may experience a quicker-than-normal power drain. I had that happen to me during a simple 25K walk to Hanam City, next to Seoul. This was before strokes and heart attacks, so I could walk that distance in about five hours, and in that short time, I lost power in my phone and my portable charger. Since then, I've learned to keep my tech bundled close to my own person so it can benefit from body heat, with only occasional forays into the cold to snap the odd picture.

But the prospect of biting cold doesn't feel real right now. After today, it feels as if the walk might be unusually warm. Well, I guess we'll see soon enough. As always, the one thing I really hope doesn't happen is a cold rain. I've talked many times about how this is, without a doubt, the worst weather for me: it saps the morale. A cold rain would suck leprous donkey balls. But I'll try to prep for that, too, as a possibility. Leukotape to the rescue! Preferably before the irritations become blisters this time! Yes, I'll be pre-taping thoroughly.


"The View" starts to cannibalize itself

DeVory comments on "The View" as its panel descends into chaos:





400 electoral votes?

Headline:

Biden’s internal polling had Trump winning 400 electoral votes, ex-Obama official claims: ‘Catastrophic mistake’

President-elect Trump was on track to win 400 electoral votes in a head-to-head race against President Biden, according to the White House’s own internal polls.

The news was revealed by Jon Favreau, a one-time speechwriter for former President Obama who now hosts the liberal Pod Save America podcast.

“Then we find out when the Biden campaign becomes the Harris campaign, that the Biden campaign’s own internal polling at the time when they were telling us he was the strongest candidate, showed that Donald Trump was going to win 400 electoral votes,” Favreau said.

“Joe Biden’s decision to run for president again was a catastrophic mistake,” Favreau added. “They refused to acknowledge until very late, that anyone could be upset about inflation. And they just kept telling us that his presidency was historic and it was the greatest economy ever.”

Favreau accused Team Biden of “shivving” Vice President Harris and telling reporters quietly that she could not win.

“I’m done being generous,” Favreau said, echoing a long line of Obama alum who have always disdained Biden and his inner circle.

This is Jon Favreau the politico, not the Hollywood actor/director. Read the rest.


good thing this is just AI





the loaf-sagna grilled cheese

Happy Pepero Day! Another metafood from El Burrito Monster.


"Reagan": review

Dennis Quaid as Ronald Wilson Reagan* at the Berlin Wall, with Brandenburg Gate in the background
The 2024 biopic "Reagan" stars Dennis Quaid in the title role as the Gipper himself, a.k.a. Dutch in his younger days. The film was directed by Sean McNamara; the screenplay is credited to Howard Klausner, and it's apparently based on a particular Reagan biography titled The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. The film has what is considered the largest-ever enthusiasm gap on Rotten Tomatoes: an 18% score from professional critics (all of whom are lefties, of course) and an audience score (now called the Popcornmeter) of 98%. Having now seen the movie, I can safely say that neither extreme is justified. "Reagan" is, as biopics go, a plodding and ponderous film whose through-line is a conversation in Russia between young and ambitious Russian politician Andrei Novikov and aging ex-Soviet KGB agent Viktor Petrovich (Jon Voight). Their conversation, taking place in the 2020s ("the present"), drives the flashback narrative that takes us from Reagan's formative years through his presidency and to his final years with Alzheimer's.

Young Novikov (Alex Sparrow) has visited several older statesmen to ask them why the Soviet Union fell as it did, and largely without a fight against its mortal enemy, the United States. He hasn't gotten a satisfactory answer from anyone, which is why he turns at last to Petrovich. Petrovich (not entirely fictional: the trivia is that he is a composite of several real KGB agents who had followed and studied Reagan and his life closely) offers a lengthy explanation of the life and thoughts of Ronald Reagan, a man that Petrovich suspected early on of becoming a major problem for the USSR.

The story takes us from Reagan's youth, when he was dealing with a drunkard of a father and a mother who instilled religious values in him while also encouraging him to get into public speaking, a skill Reagan began to use to some effect in church and other places. Reagan learns to face bullies, a moral lesson he'll apply when he gets into politics. We see some of "Dutch" during his lifeguard years, young and strong and svelte, with some girls faking drowning just to be rescued by him. Reagan eventually gets into acting, meets and marries Jane Wyman (Mina Suvari), and becomes the head of the Screen Actors Guild. With communism on the rise in the US as Russian agents infiltrate the culture, Reagan becomes an FBI informant; he and Jane lose her daughter Christine, and Jane divorces Ronald, partly from the stress of that loss and partly from her disagreement with his political activism.

Ronald eventually meets and marries actress Nancy Davis (Penelope Ann Miller), and much of the movie is about how the two support each other. No mention is made of Nancy's weird penchant for astrology (Ron was a born-again Christian, so one wonders what sort of conflicts of belief might have simmered in the Reagan household, even though Reagan himself is shown entranced by one Protestant minister's sudden prophecy that the presidency will be Reagan's if he walks the straight** and narrow path, i.e., he himself wasn't immune to magical thinking). Ronald eventually accedes to the presidency after failing against Gerald Ford. He does beat Jimmy Carter, though, and the famous "There you go again" debate line is depicted. (Later, while debating Walter Mondale, Reagan's joke about Mondale's relative youth and inexperience is also included.) Reagan deals with the Soviet threat, finding help from both Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. Reagan survives his assassination attempt; the pope survives his, and the two form a connection thereby. And help comes, strangely, from another corner: the Soviet Union itself, in the form of Mikhail Gorbachev, who takes over after a series of Soviet leaders, from Brezhnev onward, dies one after another. Reagan deals with Gorbachev through a mixture of personal conversations and obstinacy after stating goals and desired results. Eventually, we see the famous "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" speech, and not long after that, the Soviet Union is no more. Reagan retires to his ranch after his second term, and after announcing to the public that he's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He goes riding with a particular Secret Service agent until his mind deteriorates to the point where he can no longer ride without getting lost. Reagan eventually dies in 2004; world leaders, including Thatcher and Gorbachev, attend his funeral.

How much you end up liking "Reagan" depends at least in part upon your politics. If you're a leftie, and you've done your homework, you'll recognize quite a few conservative actors in the cast: Dennis Quaid most prominently, but also Robert Davi as Brezhnev and Jon Voight as Petrovich among others. Your appreciation for the movie will also depend on what you think of Dennis Quaid's sustained Reagan impression. The movie was made on a relatively small budget, so there was no digital de-aging of Quaid involved. Instead, Quaid's looks, as the adult Reagan, remain more or less the same over the decades, with some small tweaks in terms of facial wrinkles, clothing fashions, and mental acuity. Quaid himself is 70. Overall, he captures Reagan's most prominent and parodied mannerisms well (including Reagan's sentence-opener "Well..."), and without falling into parody himself.

But also if you're a leftie, you'll note that the movie breezes by or papers over Reagan's flaws in terms of how he managed the US budget and national debt, the Iran-contra affair (Reagan is painted as having had the best of intentions, but his guilt or innocence is left unexplored and ambiguous), and other incidents. No mention is made of biological son Ron Reagan Jr., a die-hard liberal, or of his adopted son Michael Reagan, who has been in legal trouble several times. The biopic will be seen by liberals as, at best, a superficial and heavily edited hagiography for an undeserving president; righties, by contrast, will read the movie as a proper tribute to a great and honorable man.

For me, the movie's slow pacing and bland dialogue were the main problems; they were also the reason I would give the film neither an 18% nor a 98%. "Reagan" sits somewhere in the boring middle. If anything, it's a bit of a snoozer, especially with a run time of 140 minutes. The one thing that does come through, though, is the love that Ronald and Nancy had for each other; during the ending credits, real video footage is run, including the painful moment when Nancy has the chance, at her husband's funeral, to lean over his coffin and say her quiet, sad goodbyes. I'd never had much sympathy, or much feeling at all, for Nancy Reagan, but that moment hit me pretty deeply. It humanized her in a way that even Penelope Ann Miller's performance did not.

I can only imagine that the entire cast and crew had been warned that the biopic would receive a lot of hatred, especially given its release during a crucial election year for Donald Trump. Some of the movie's dialogue was obviously aimed at current audiences, too, suggesting that, as they say, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. The 18%/98% split on Rotten Tomatoes may partially be thanks to both positive and negative review-bombing by people who either watched only part of the film or never watched it at all. I think that, as made, "Reagan" would serve better as a made-for-TV movie. Among its best moments, aside from the Ron/Nancy situations, were Reagan's friendship/rivalry with Democrat House Speaker Tip O'Neill (played by Dan Lauria, whom I immediately liked but didn't recognize at first; he was the dad in "The Wonder Years"), and Reagan's exchanges with Mikhail Gorbachev (Olek Krupa). Margaret Thatcher (Lesley-Ann Down) gets one or two moments, but disappointingly, she doesn't figure too greatly in the overall picture.

Overall, I'd recommend "Reagan" to the faithful, to the conservatives who see the man as a great president (my conservative buddy Mike has a photo of himself shaking Reagan's hand). To the doubters, I would say, Skip this. It's not worth your time. Quaid does an impressive job inhabiting the Gipper, and the framing story with the two Russians provides enough of a cosmic perspective to help us toward a particular understanding of Reagan's significance on the world stage; Reagan became the template, I think, for Republican presidents who did much more abroad than they ever did at home; Donald Trump is lauded by his faithful for his foreign-policy coups, many significantly undone by Joe Biden, but Trump's primary focus, like that of any Clinton-era Democrat, has mostly been on his America First policy and the rehabilitation of the American worker. It could be that, as Trump reconfigures the Republican party, he is slowly erasing Ronald Reagan's legacy. Only history can answer that question for sure, but what's also sure is that the judgment of history is itself always changing.

__________

*Enemies of Ronald Wilson Reagan noted that each of his names had six letters: 6-6-6. This notion of equating every Republican to Hitler and/or Satan goes back a ways.

**The biblical verse in question (KJV) uses strait, not straight: Matthew 7:13-14: Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. But both Webster and Dictionary.com say that the modern phrase is the straight and narrow. Language often changes through misuse and misunderstandings. Pretty soon, "AFFER-mentioned," currently a mispronunciation, will be considered an acceptable pronunciation of aforementioned.


that is one big-ass burrito

Do you think you could eat the whole thing? I'm pretty sure I'd explode.





Sunday, November 10, 2024

Alan Lichtman—haw haw

"13 Keys," my fat, off-white ass. I bought into that shit for a while. But like Nate Silver, Lichtman proved to be another woke idiot who previously got lucky. As Jon Stewart recently said about all of these people: he doesn't know shit about shit.







Ave, Herr Gilleland!

A really good one from Dr. Gilleland with an evergreen insight from 1919. I'm tempted to quote the whole post here, but it's a short one, so please click over and visit.


I wouldn't have been so nice





who're the racist ones again?

Headline:

Trump's Performance With Latinos Drives Libs Into a Racist Rage

If there’s one thing that brings me joy, it’s watching a liberal’s worldview burn to ash. These people are overeducated, detached, and just had their world rocked because deductive reasoning is now lost among individuals of this persuasion. It’s astonishing to watch: the kneejerk reaction from the media’s left-wing darlings is to wish ill upon those who didn’t vote for their candidate. These sentiments partially contributed to Trump’s win on Tuesday night.

One thing that seems to floor the Left is Trump’s strong showing with Latino voters, especially Hispanic men. It also led to liberal America’s latent racism over this group bubbling to the surface. MSNBC’s Joy Reid went on an unhinged rant that these voters will reap what they sow, an odious wanting for bad things to happen to people who don’t support you. Please keep this up because this is how we’ll get President JD Vance in four years.

[ ... ]

Yet, it also feeds into the white-progressive nonsense that every Latino person in America is an illegal alien. It’s not hard, folks. Americans don’t like illegal immigration, a complicated prism through  which to view things for liberals who need to bean-count race at every turn. Maybe nominating a candidate who doesn’t suck and can reach working-class voters could have saved you, along with an actual data set that isn’t riddled with confirmation bias. Again, the usual liberal talking heads don’t have the mental capacity to do this, so expect more behavior that led to Trump’s landslide win this year. Ironically, some of the most left-wing voices actually have the better take on Latino men and Trump, but they are more critical of the Democratic Party elite, so they won't get an invite.

Visit the link and laugh at all of the tweets.

Yes, our side won a victory, but do remember the struggle is forever. There's nothing definitive about this victory. Trump and his team can build an edifice of better policies, then another Biden can bumble along and fuck it all up again. Over and over it will go. In the meantime, though, if the left wants to guarantee another Republican/conservative in the White House after Trump, please just keep right on being racist while accusing others of racism.


VFX Artists React

This is a good one, with a tricked-up tennis match and scenes from "Hardcore Henry":





Saturday, November 09, 2024

Nerdrotic on the implications for Hollywood

Chris Gore and Gary from Nerdrotic discuss the implications of the Trump victory.



new foot update

I'm sure you didn't miss it; after all, you do still occasionally check the walk blog for new posts. But for the clueless and lazy among you who need special prompting, here you go: an update on my foot's status.



meltdowns

I'll have a lot more to offer about meltdowns. Just you wait. 

What's that word? Oh, yeah: Schadenboner.





bacon?





I love it





vintage Sam Kinison: if Jesus had had a wife





Friday, November 08, 2024

election aftermath and views of "The View"

Election aftermath:

Rogan is reflective.

The hilarious Link Lauren lays it down.

Who's a sore loser?

Ricky Gervais mocks celebrity shills.

WDW Pro: Hollywood in shock.

Tim Pool, agitated and awesome, with his post-election thoughts.

DeVory on MSNBC going nuts.

Warren Smith: "The people have spoken."

Liberal Hivemind: checkmate.

Depressed Ginger: Trump just destroyed Kamala.

Sky News on US lefties losing it.

The View has, of course, melted down in the wake of Trump's victory.

DeVory sounds off.

Amala sounds off.


Glenn Reynolds on Musk

Headline:

Elon Unbound

There are lots of consequences to this week’s election, ranging from economics, to diplomacy, to outright freedom. But I want to focus on one in particular, what it means for Elon Musk.

It’s quite possible that, had Musk not become actively involved in Trump’s campaign after the first assassination attempt, Trump wouldn’t have won. It’s certain that, had he won, it would have been much closer, not the landslide it turned out to be. And had Musk not bought Twitter earlier, thus disrupting the Democrats’ message-control strategy, Trump’s chances of winning at all would have been much, much lower.

But let’s look at what it means for Musk, and what that means for America.

The first-order effect is that the campaign of bureaucratic harassment aimed at Musk under the Biden Administration, which likely would have escalated, will now recede. After facing a suspiciously simultaneous assault from the SEC, the EPA, the FAA, and various other regulatory agencies, Musk can now expect reasonably clear sailing. He won’t be free from regulation, of course, but he will be free from bureaucrats’ efforts to weaponize regulatory powers, and bureaucratic discretion, against him. Knowing his clout with the White House – and possibly his own budget-cutting powers if Trump actually makes him efficiency czar – they will be reluctant to cross him.

The second-order effect of that is that Musk will be able to move his space plans forward more rapidly. Instead of having to fight against bureaucratic headwinds, he’ll be able to move at the speed that his technological capabilities permit. Musk’s plans for 5 uncrewed test missions to Mars in 2026, followed by human missions in 2028, will proceed if the rockets are ready.

There will also be Moon flights, Moon bases, at least one new space station, and possibly orbital solar power stations and asteroid mining beginning within a decade. The second-order effect of Trump’s election is that humanity will likely take over the solar system, and do so decades earlier than it might have. (It’s also much more likely that the humanity doing so will be largely American, instead of Chinese.) The result of this takeover will be incalculable amounts of resources available to humanity, and eventually a diversity of human settlement rivaling or exceeding that of Earth.

The [third-order] effect, however, will be the biggest. This space expansion will turn America into a dynamic frontier nation again. As I wrote a few years ago in America’s New Destiny in Space, the existence of the frontier had a huge impact on the character of America, making opportunity a positive-sum game rather than a zero- or negative-sum game.

And even beyond that, it imbues a sense of purpose. For her next book, my wife has been interviewing men of all ages, but what has struck her most is that younger men are looking for some grander purpose than working in a cubicle or going to school. (Many of them mentioned Elon Musk or Jordan Peterson as role models or influences.) And that search for purpose, and Musk’s role in providing one, already bore fruit in this election.


yeah, bitches

Some of us can relate to Benny Johnson's gloating. Of course, as anyone who's read Watchmen knows, the story is never over, and "You failed" is only a temporary thing. The creatures will be back. The war never ends. God's victory on Earth is never assured.


Bill Whittle on the new paradigm: insiders versus outsiders





when the heckler tells you to go back to your therapist

She handles the guy like a champ:





I may be in trouble

My F4 visa's period lapses at the end of November, and I'd forgotten all about the temperamental reservation system for in-person visits to Immigration. It seems that November is all booked up; no visits are possible. I guess, if you want to reserve for November, you have to do so several months in advance. All is not lost, though: it seems possible for me to renew my F4 visa via an online procedure. I can't do it right at this moment, though: (1) I haven't gathered all of my relevant documents, and (2) it's well after midnight, and I can only do the online thing during proper business hours. I'll probably have to call the Immigration hotline in the morning to speak with someone about what documents I need, and I'll talk with my boss about what else I can do to smooth out this process. I'd honestly thought I had more time, but we're more than a week into November. The crunch is here.



Steal 2.0 and why it seemed so tiny

Compared to 2020, Steal 2.0 hardly affected the outcome of the presidential election. What my thoughts are on this, what other people think about it, and where we go from here are all topics to be discussed in this post. 

It appears, first, that I won't have to wait several weeks for election results. Despite some major foot-dragging by slowpokes Nevada and Arizona, poll-watching outlets like Decision Desk HQ have declared Donald Trump the election winner. Even Fox, the New York Times, and AP, despite not having finalized the results for Nevada and Arizona, still show an electoral-vote tally of 295-226 in favor of Trump and have declared the race for him. Meanwhile, Decision Desk HQ (et al.) has the final tally at 312-226 in favor of Trump because they decided to call it for Nevada and Arizona even though those two states continue to dawdle. Nevada has around 90-92% of its votes totaled. Arizona is at around 69-71% totaled. Why Arizona is taking so long is a mystery.

Cynics, however, think Arizona is taking so long because of sneaky Maricopa County, the huge, Dem-heavy county that contains Phoenix, which they claim is trying to spirit illegitimate votes into the count. Maybe this is true; maybe it's not. In Arizona, there's more riding on the count than just the presidency (which has already been decided): there's Kari Lake's Senate race. Now, Lake (who ran for governor against Katie Hobbs and bizarrely lost) seemed to be losing pretty badly when I checked a day or so ago; the three maps I have up currently say that Republican Lake is indeed losing to Democrat (Ruben) Gallego by almost 50,000 votes, but this article hopefully speculates that Lake still has a chance of winning. But even Decision Desk HQ is currently showing Lake behind by about 50,000 votes. I don't think she has much of a chance, and if Maricopa is doing a Steal 2.0 on her, she's got no hope of overcoming fraud. What reason is there to think the rest of the untallied votes are GOP-leaning? This does also leave us with the strange question of how Arizona as a whole could tilt for Trump, a Republican, while also tilting for Ruben Gallego, a Democrat. There's something schizophrenic going on.

Anyway, this year, the Steal may be more about Kari Lake than about Trump. As I'd noted before, the Heritage Foundation has a site with a state-by-state chart, plus rankings, to show which states have implemented anti-fraud measures (and to what degree), and which haven't (i.e., bottom-tier states, almost all blue). It's a disappointingly small number of states that actually care about election integrity, but it may have been enough to stanch most of the fraud in the presidential election if not in the down-ballot elections.

As for my thoughts on what this general lack (or feebleness) of fraud means, I wrote the following comment on Instapundit on Wednesday:

Trump's on track for the magic 312. I'll be damned: the poll-watchers I'd been seeing on YouTube have been right for weeks (hat tip to Gold Crown Politics, Red Eagle Politics, and On Point Politics).

And even if that means we didn't have as much in the way of shenanigans to deal with this time, (1) there's already proof of scattered 2024 shenanigans, and (2) there's no logical reason to apply this insight—that shenanigans were relatively minor—retroactively to 2020. I still think Biden's "81 million votes" were an utter sham, the 3 a.m. trucks were real, the faux-ballot printers were indeed doing their thing, etc. If we've swerved somewhat away from 2020's fraudulence, good. May we continue to swerve. But we're not out of the woods yet—not by a long shot. I hope the new administration comes down hard on election integrity. After freeing the J6ers, of course.

So that's my attitude in a nutshell. I've already covered some of the shenanigans obliquely mentioned in the above paragraph, so you don't have to go back too far into my archive to find the evidence. Here's what others theorize may have happened. We'll start with this graphic, which has been circulating over the past 48 hours:

The above image shows quite distinctly that Joe Biden benefitted from a suspiciously high number of votes, or "votes." There are theories, and there's evidence the above "votes" came from the dead, from illegals, from fake and suspicious ballots, etc. I've already gone over a lot of this, so I won't repeat it here. Kamala didn't benefit from a similar wave of fakery. One theory is that the Dems knew from the beginning that she was cooked, so why waste the effort? Here, gathered from Instapundit's generally over-60 commentariat, is a smattering of opinions and conjectures as to what might have happened:

1. Maybe there was no big steal to begin with, and maybe all it was was traditional fractional-percentage fraud that had an impact in a close election. [i.e., a rightie is saying there simply was no steal.]

2. The margin was too big, not because they would not cheat: the GOP changed laws and changed ENFORCEMENT. [True, but only for some states.]

3. The 2020 election steal was not a haphazard, decentralized conspiracy. Vote counting was simultaneously stopped at 10 PM in the swing states. The cabal calculated how many votes they needed to win. Ballot dumps were made early in the morning to tabulate Biden's 81 million votes. In 2024, 15 million votes disappeared. Trump should order the FBI to track down anyone, starting with Obama, who participated in this conspiracy. [serious accusation]

4. This time around, I think the Dems realized that their own candidate was a dumpster fire and backed off, recognizing that her administration would be a disaster that would cost them everything in 2026. Besides: out of power, they could keep the TDS gravy train and all its fundraising possibilities going for another four years, and that's too lucrative to pass up.

5. In Pennsylvania, Centre County voting officials tried to suspend vote-counting like many counties did last time (in order to ship in fake ballots). This is absolutely against state law, yet they tried to do it anyway. The GOP had their lawyers there threatening immediate legal action, and the count resumed. Just look in Lancaster County. Several days before the election, the DA went on record to announce that a Democrat-run group submitted 2,500 voter registration forms, of which 60 percent (of the ones they counted and investigated) were fake. This was a group sent out from Arizona that's run by Mark Kelly. And there were at least 5 other counties reporting the same problems. And that's just a few of the scams they've been running. The Democrats have been spending years and millions of dollars baking vote fraud into the system. But this time, they couldn't steal the election.

6. This time, unlike previous elections, the Republicans had monitors in place, fully spun up on what to watch for, and ready to film anything spooky. It was an aggressive, very visible operation. I think that factored in. By comparison, in 2020, we weren't prepared, and certainly not ready for the amount and sophistication of The Steal™. If anything, the Demmunists overplayed their hand and practically invited the degree of oversight we put in place this time. [While this sounds plausible, the Heritage Foundation page makes it look as though only a minority of states, including red states, bothered to ratchet up their security. So while I agree there was extra vigilance, there wasn't much of it.]

7. [In 2021,] [people] were also preoccupied and distracted by Covid, which offered the Dems a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to steal the election, especially in justifying the use of the boxes, ballot harvesting, etc.

8. Pet theory, we didn't get the steal this time because Shapiro and Whitmer didn't want to have to take a back seat to Kamala for 8 years before getting their shot at the oval office. [This sounds crackpotty.]

9. Don’t know if it’s specifically those two, but I do think the powers that be pulling the Democratic Party strings decided Kamala was not the horse to back and therefore did not go full-on cheat. The reality is Trump got far more votes than any other candidate in history, which would require a lot of cheating. They would rather save that cheat for a better candidate. It wasn’t just Kamala but also Walz (who proved to be a terrible candidate in a different vein from Kamala). Shapiro, Whitmer, (some other Democrat) want their chance to move up, and Kamala and Walz were just bad horses blocking the path.

10. Trump absolutely worked the outreach to communities who either don’t vote or traditionally vote Democrat.

11. Is that why those 20 million extra voters didn’t materialize this time?

12. Let's wait a few days. One good point surfaced that California and Arizona haven't finished their vote count. California still has—as of Thursday morning—45 percent uncounted. Arizona has 30 percent. Oregon and Washington have 20 percent. Wait a few days and we'll see what that chart looks like.

13. Trump received 74 million votes in 2020 and so far has 72.6 million in 2024 with more to come as some states still receive, process, and count more ballots. Biden received 81 million votes in 2020 and Harris has so far received just shy of 68 million votes in 2024. Trump essentially maintained his level of support from 4 years ago while Harris lost some 13 million votes as compared to Biden. Does that seem odd to anyone?

14. [reply to the above] Biden clearly never really had 81 million legitimate votes.

The above adds up to a whole mess of theories, most of which I'd never have thought of myself. And the above quotes represent only a fraction of the opinions I've seen. There's general agreement that Biden's vote count in 2020 was never legitimate; there's also agreement that whatever happened in 2020 either didn't happen this time or was greatly reduced, in part because of measures taken to stop the Steal. I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that a lot of states took heroic measures in that vein; the blue states could be counted on to claim that electoral procedures were/are squeaky clean; what was disappointing to me was how the Heritage chart showed that many red states were also fairly blasé about shoring up election integrity. Some of the above rhetoric includes claims that there were packs of lawyers ready, this time, to pounce on any potential fraud. Maybe; maybe not.

I can't draw any definitive conclusions from admittedly limited data (which I've made no effort to group or to categorize scientifically, anyway), but I think it's safe to say that the field remains wide open for fraud later on. Maybe this was just an off year for the cheaters. Maybe this year really was either a cheat-free or cheat-sparse year for reasons having nothing to with any anti-fraud measures, real or imagined. The above comments, which drag out very little real evidence, point to vague likelihoods but no definitive answers. So I'd simply say that I still think we were done dirty in 2020, and we should be thankful that 2024 went more smoothly, but we need to be cautious moving forward because the Dems are always looking for newer and better ways to bypass security. Meanwhile, the Reps are far too quick to let down their guard and become complacent. I hope that, with Trump bringing much sharper minds on to his team this time around, something sturdy and semi-permanent can be done to protect election integrity in 2026 (midterms), 2028, and beyond.

As some people have noted, the count isn't actually over, though. What if we find out that Trump actually lost the popular vote because of places like California, a state that seems intent on enacting its own destruction? (The California tally is currently only at 60%, but quite reasonably, the state was called for Harris given its obvious 60-40 blue bias.)


Thursday, November 07, 2024

the Kari Lake problem

How could Arizonans vote for Trump, on one hand, but not for Kari Lake on the other?

Headline:

Kari Lake Still Has Chance to Win Election

 Kari Lake, a Republican running for Senator in Arizona against Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is currently losing the election but still has a chance to win.

The Election Hub on the Daily Wire showed that as of Wednesday, Lake had 1,145,947 votes (47.7%), and Gallego had 1,205,927 votes (50.2%). According to the results, 72% of votes have been counted.

“GOP SOURCE IN AZ: Kari Lake has a 60-70% chance of victory right now, given the outstanding ballots. If true, wow. Just, wow,” political strategist @RedEaglePatriot wrote.

Last I saw (yesterday), Lake was losing pretty badly. Arizona took its sweet time tallying for Trump, and I guess they still haven't tallied up votes for Senate. Hurry up, slowpokes! A nation is waiting. Otherwise, my boss hopes Lake ends up being appointed by Trump to a decent post. As I noted before, Lake was one of Trump's staunchest supporters. She deserves better than to be kicked to the curb. In a just universe, she'd have won the race for governor over the high-voiced, cowardly idiot occupying that position right now.


linky links

Amala: young Iranian woman arrested and supposedly thrown into a psychiatric ward for defying Iran's repressive dress code. Amala fears we'll never hear from her again. At the time of the video, no one even knew her name. Amala also compares the Iranian state's real oppression to pampered American women's attempts to "cosplay" oppression—as if they knew what real oppression was. (I think they should find out.)

Asmongold: the leftie meltdown begins. More meltdowns here.

Fun biology: get a load of these parasites.

Sky News Australia: the Bidens' final "kick" at Kamala.

Freedom Toons: Kamala 100% popular with 3 a.m. voters.

Zuby's thoughts on Trump's victory.


better after a day of rest

I still have a sore throat, so I stayed home yesterday, but I'm a bit better today and back in the office despite still having a sore throat. I took a COVID test last night and tested negative; my boss had phoned me earlier in the day to say that he'd tested negative (he was home on Wednesday, too). I waited until beyond Wednesday before testing myself: 2:30 a.m. Thursday was my time. My negative result was a relief; I hadn't wanted to end a year of COVID, breathing problems, heart failure, and a heart attack with yet another bout of COVID. Two times is enough, and you'd think that that would give me some fucking immunity.

I'm supposed to be meeting my buddy Tom tomorrow for a brief dinner (Tom's busy with his side jobs as usual). Will I be better by then? I guess we'll see.


U. Georgia shenanigans(?)

Headline:

‘My phone number shouldn’t be public’: U. Georgia students question Harris campaign texts

Students at the University of Georgia received text messages and mailers from the Kamala Harris presidential campaign urging them to vote for her.

College Republicans at UGA confirmed with The College Fix that Georgia students received these texts following initial reports by Arizona State University’s CRs chapter.

“100,000+ Georgia STUDENTS and some PARENTS from MULTIPLE Georgia Colleges have received a text from Kamala Harris’ campaign telling the students to vote for her,” College Republicans at ASU wrote in a post on X.

The ASU chapter did not respond to requests for comment from The Fix via email and phone calls to ask how the group verified the number of students that received these texts.

College Republicans at UGA Chairman Luke Winkler sent The Fix screenshots of a text he received.

“Hi Dawgs, it’s Kamala Harris,” it reads, a reference to the university’s bulldog mascot.

“Tim Walz and I are the underdogs in this election, but student voters could make the difference. We need your support to win. As a University of Georgia student, you can register and vote in Georgia,” it reads in part.

Brenton Sykes, UGA College Republicans outreach director, told The Fix via email that while he “cannot confirm a widespread trend across the state,” he and several of his friends did receive this message.

“I assume if they were targeting me, a Republican, they were not limiting their reach,” he said.

“I really do wonder how they got my contact information, considering I have never donated to any Democrat let alone Harris, and my phone number shouldn’t be public information on my voter profile,” Sykes told The Fix.

I'm sure it's all innocent.


I'll be damned

Michigan swung for Trump. Unbelievable. Every Michigander I've met has hated Trump. I thought it was a disgustingly woke state. Guess I was wrong.



your Elmo nightmare

More mad sculpting by Adam:





Wednesday, November 06, 2024

one more gasp

fuckin' comma splice


Is the joke that you're supposed to knock it off with the stupid comparisons?







The "take a guess" sentence is a command, not a question. Nix the question mark.

If you can't even spell "I'm done," you deserve the crazy chicks.

We need a period and a comma. Where do they go?


Alyssa used to be cute and adorable. What the hell happened?





Puerto Rico flipped for the GOP despite the comedian. Guess the joke wasn't that awful after all.




When wit fails the test of reality, is it wit?

Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Führer!

the not-so-veiled threat






Lack of Self-awareness Award!




Grinding poverty is coming for us all as we get woker.

Slow, public execution.



Despite the 312-226 landslide, I too am astounded by Kamala's 226 electoral votes. People are stupid.



Yeah, but Trump is a small-fry billionaire.





That's me.

















"Grocery trolley" sounds like a British term. Yanks say "shopping cart."