I was a DeSantis supporter.

I never had one Trump supporter ask me why I supported DeSantis over Trump, but I’ll tell you.

I think DeSantis had a better track record of conservative victories in Florida than Trump did as president.

DeSantis had a better response to COVID.

DeSantis had a better fiscal policy than Trunp did.  Trump spent almost $2 trillion on the CARES Act, paying people to stay home during COVID.

Trump said a lot, but DeSantis did a lot, and I value that.

On a more subjective level, I just didn’t like how Trump behaved. I was disgusted by the Little Marco and DeSanctimonious nicknames. I don’t like the petty insults. I think it’s childish.

I was disgusted by the DeSantis wears heels or shoe lifts conspiracy theory. It was reminiscent of the Trump hands thing from 2016.  It was a near literal duck measuring contest. That’s not how a president should be picked.

Lastly, I didn’t like his habit of criticizing former staffers and anyone he didn’t think was sufficiently personally obsequious to him as disloyal.  It’s bad behavior for a boss to publicly castigate a subordinate.  And it reminded me of the Soviet trait of leaders who failed blaming their failures on traitors and having their nearest subordinates shot for treason.

Miguel pointed something out to me, that I agree with.

J Edgar Hoover had this thing of taking on any agent or friend who was getting more fame than he did. Many good agents like Purvis were suddenly sent to shitty posts for doing stuff that made them Press darlings.

Trump is equally petty with the people on his own side and even those who supported him.

With DeSantis dropping out, Trump is going to be the nominee.

What worries me, legitimately worries me, is what Trunp is going to do as president.

He has run on a campaign of retribution.

But, if you look at what he said, it seems that he’s more interested in getting retribution against Republicans who he thinks were disloyal to him than getting retribution against democrats.

I’m worried that President Trump 2.0 will go on a rampage of personal vendetta against Republicans and cause so much chaos that nothing gets done and 2028 gets handed to the Democrats on a platter.

There is precedent for my believing this. Look at what Trump’s biggest supporter in Congress, Matt Gaetz, did in the House to McCarthy.

Now add in the fact that “disloyal” and “traitor” are was Trumo and his supporters call DeSantis and his supporters.

I would hope to see Trump supports have magnanimity in their victory, but that didn’t happen.

The overwhelming social media has been mockery, humiliation, and belittling.

When you ask for unity, they attack.

Then they get you with the emotional blackmail, “What else are you going to do, vote for Biden? Let Biden win?”

Usually, it’s both. Mockery and emotional blackmail.

I’m a human being with dignity.

I should want to vote against Biden.

I want to vote against Biden.

I do not want to be humiliated into giving up my dignity by voting for Trump while Trump supporters shit on me for being a loser and a traitor who supported a loser and a traitor.

That is struggle session type bullshit.

When you point that out, they tell you that they don’t want or need your vote.

Do these people have any idea how elections work?

I know many people who are so disgusted with the Toxicity of Trump and his supporters they will stay home on election day.

I’ve seen that sentiment repeated many, many times on social media.

I will go to vote for Trump with alacrity once I hear:

“DeSantis supporters, we’re sorry about the nasty nicknames. We’re sorry about the shoe lift bullshit.  We’re sorry about calling you disloyal RINOs. What we did was wrong. Let’s unite against Biden.”

But they can’t do that.

All thru can do is double down on their derision.

And you know what?

I’m not about to give up my dignity and self respect for any politician.

And of your argument is, “so you’ll let Biden win,” that falls on deaf ears. If you can’t win without emotional blackmail, you don’t deserve to win.

So let me ask, do Trumpers want to lose?

Because right now they are doing their damnedest to make sure every DeSantis and Halley supporter just says home on election day.

B.L.U.F.
Filler. Yapping about medicine and my kids having a tough time after oral surgery.
(550 words)

It has been a long weekend for us, here at the house.

On Friday, the kids finally got in to see the oral surgeon. A few hours later, they no longer had wisdom teeth.

My youngest has been having a hard time of it. They gave them a total of 5 does of Oxy and 600 mg Ibuprofen.

They were able to eat some soup today. The broccoli in it was too hard, so we had to put it in the blender.

My youngest son only had 3 wisdom teeth to remove. He’s been doing much better than his sibling.

I am so proud of him. He got up this morning, decided he wanted scrambled eggs. He made them himself and made extra for his sibling and made sure they ate some protein.

He spent most of the day on his computer playing games with his friends, yelling and laughing. I think he over did it as he looked a bit sore today.

So what is it about modern medicine? Well, first and foremost, it is freaking amazing.

While both kids are sore, there was no pain while their teeth were extracted.

They have antibiotics and pain meds for recovery. The odds of something bad happening is nil.

We saved up the money to cover the parts of the surgery that insurance didn’t cover. It was still something that we could do.

My wife has had 4 knee replacements. We are not bankrupt from medical bills.

I know that there are people who are not as fortunate as us.

On the other hand, I have a hard time with the people who say that they cannot afford health care.

I have a friend who has not had insurance in years. When her appendix burst, it was handled on an emergency basis. They took care of her. They didn’t worry about money until afterward.

When they learned she had no insurance, they got her to the finance people, and they basically paid for that surgery from their uninsured patients fund.

While they were taking pictures of her appendix before starting the surgery, another organ photo bombed the x-rays. The radiologist, with an abundance of caution, said it could be cancer, and she had to have it inspected.

That was another expensive procedure, as they had to take x-rays from the inside. Again, it cost her very little.

Years ago, I watched a show where a couple was trying to live as “poor folk”. The man got a job and the woman stayed at home, I think. She was prone to UTIs. She got a UTI. She knew it was a UTI.

Instead of scheduling an appointment to see a doctor or going to an urgent care clinic, they decided to go to the Emergency room.

They reported that it cost hundreds of dollars just to get antibiotics.

I’ve been there too. A friend without insurance got an infection. $100 at the urgent care clinic and they walked out with a bottle of antibiotics after the doctor reviewed her symptoms.

There are options. Make plans if you need to.

(It was a babble or pictures of ice and snow while telling Miguel that he should be happy he lives in the warm country)

Reporter: "Where are you from?"

Middle Eastern illegal migrant: "Soon you will know who I am. Believe me. You will see."

pic.twitter.com/arTVxIGTgr

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 21, 2024

We’ve seen a number of isolated Islamic terrorist attacks in the US.

American first responders and law enforcement have training and procedures in how to deal with them.

Even in a mass shooting event like Uvalde, which wasn’t Islamic terrorism, where police failed to respond adequately, the victims were isolated to one room. The Pulse nightclub shooting was the same.

Israel prepared for attacks by one or two terrorists going after cafes or buses.

A few hundred to few thousand terrorists crossing the border en masse overwhelmed the Israelis ability to respond and caused disproportionately more chaos and casualties.

I think this is the next step.

Have a few hundred or few thousand Islamic terrorists enter the US and congregate in a couple of large cities.

Then attack all at once.

It would overwhelm law enforcement.

There aren’t enough SWAT teams to deal with a thousand active shooters in a city.

The Army or National Guard couldn’t be activated fast enough to respond.

Such an attack would last for days and kill many thousands of Americans.

I believe that people like this are entering the US and waiting until they reach a critical mass to pull off a 10/7 type attack.

Woke up to this crap again, but the experts are guessing we are getting back to “normal” starting tonight.

Seriously, enough of this shit.

B.L.U.F.
Don’t let the government cheat! Plain text first. Know what it means. K.I.S.S. it. Is it an arm? Are they a member of The People? Do they want to keep or bear?

Done!
(1550 words)

While Justice Thomas said that the inferior courts had gone one step too far in their two-step analysis of Second Amendment challenges, the Heller Court did lay out a two-step analysis.

Heller said that the first step was to determine if the proposed conduct implicated the plain text of the Second Amendment as understood at the founding. The second step was for the state to provide historical analogues of the modern infringement from the time of the founding.

The inferior courts cheated. They took the Heller methodology and just assumed that the modern infringement was unconstitutional without deciding.

This allowed them to say, “We will assume an ‘assault weapon’ ban is assumed to be unconstitutional. Moving on, we look at how bad your rape is, if it is bad bad, then we’ll use strict scrutiny. If it is only a bad rape, then we’ll use intermediate scrutiny. The government then has the burden to show that they have a good reason to be raping you.”

Justice Thomas slapped the inferior courts around. He explained that the inferior courts, when deciding a Second Amendment challenge, must first determine if the proposed conduct touches fingers with the plain text of the Second Amendment. If it does, then the inferior court moves to the second and final step, can the state prove a history and tradition of regulations from the founding which are analogous to the modern infringement.

The Heller Court analyzed every word and phrase of the Second Amendment. They have laid out the meaning of the plain text of the Second Amendment. There is no “It depends on what your definition of is, is”. It is defined.

The plain text of the Second Amendment is implicated if a member of The People wants to keep or bear arms.

Is means IS!

Read More

We had accumulated enough kitchen garbage, so the wife sent me to take it to the convenience center. Our road had been salted/brined and is in pretty good shape to drive, even at the 10 degrees we were having. And then I got to the road to the dump.

And since our vehicle is a front wheel drive, I can say it was a nice butt-tightening ride there for a while. But my old off-roading experience finally processed this as a very-frigging-slippery layer of mud and I applied acquired knowledge with the new input to keep me “safe.”

I realized I can deal with ice, but dealing with dumbasses also driving in the ice near you is another matter. I actually had one idiot tailgating me as it was the funniest shit in the world because he had a raised pick up truck… which was not 4×4.

Morons everywhere.

Article from Nov 25, 2023

A total of 2,516 NYPD cops have left so far this year, the fourth highest number in the past decade and 43% more than the 1,750 who hightailed it in 2018, before the pandemic and crime spikes hit the city, NYPD pension data show.
…
The weary officer said the workload at the whittled down NYPD is already crushing cops, and things will decline further now that the city put the kibosh on the next five Police Academy classes, as part of planned budget cuts announced by Mayor Adams on Nov. 16.

The drastic cuts will reduce the department to just 29,000 cops by the end of fiscal year 2025.

2,516 NYPD cops head for exits so far in 2023: Pension data (nypost.com)

NYPD is supposed to be running with at least 35,000 officers so they will 6,000 under and I firmly believe that is wishful thinking.

Now add this morsel of fun:

The driver who struck a policeman at a Manhattan crime scene told authorities it was intentional, adding, “F–k these cops, it’s a lesson to him,’’ sources said Friday — with the mow-down caught on shocking video.

Sahara Dula — a 24-year-old Brooklynite whose lawyer said mentors kids to stay off drugs — was driving her black Lexus the wrong way on the Upper East Side while high on marijuana Wednesday when she barreled into the NYPD officer, officials and sources said.
…
Dula was charged with first-degree attempted assault, attempted aggravated assault upon a police officer, second-degree assault, second-degree reckless endangerment and operating a vehicle while ability impaired by drugs and reckless driving, according to the criminal complaint.

Shocking video shows NYC driver intentionally hit NYPD officer (nypost.com)

So she is being held without bail or a very high one, right?

Shephard —  who called Dula’s alleged actions “egregious” — asked that she be held on $100,000 bail, but Judge John Zhuo Wang set bail at $25,000. The suspect did not immediately make bail.

Not even charged with attempted murder? D.A. gives her a break and then the judge gives her another break? I am not knowledgeable of the bail system in NYC, but I figure she or a bail bonds place has to pony up 10% to get her out of graybar residence and walk the streets as a champion who stood against the fascist police.

I believe that rather than 6,000, they will probably lose 2,000 more and I am being generous. As a cop, I wouldn’t be where is open season on my ass and pretty much blessed by the powers that be.

Whatever is coming to the Big Apple, they have it coming and well deserved. You won’t have an effective police force and nothing effective to use to defend yourselves.

Enjoy.