Where a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.
This is my official tradition now for Christmas, I guess. You can sponsor as many wreaths as you want or you can help laying them in different veteran cemeteries across the nation. All the information can be found in their website.
Some things that came across my feed:
Arrogant Dem quote of the week: Rural Americans ‘have no contact with the expert class’
New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks ignited a wave of backlash after insulting rural Americans who have no contact with the “expert class.”
The political commentator’s pompous contention, during an appearance on MSNBC, that the right feeds on conspiracy theories and have been “left behind” while those in blue cities are “thriving,” sparked much head-scratching and criticism on social media.
Last week on @MSNBC, @nytdavidbrooks said there’s demand for conspiracy theories on the right because “blue cities are thriving” and “people left behind in the rural parts of America feel threatened”. What? Mr. Brooks: Who exactly is thriving in “blue cities”? pic.twitter.com/MxD30DOU0X
— Rashad Robinson (@rashadrobinson) December 9, 2020
Then this:
Most notably, the stark economic rift that Brookings Metro documented after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory has grown even wider. In 2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36% of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate economy.
A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time, Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 28 mostly low-output counties, and this piece will be updated as new data is reported.)
How can that be? How can only 17% of the countries in this country be responsible for 70% of the economy?
It’s banking, finance, corporate boardrooms, stock trading, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley.
It’s not manufacturing, agriculture, mining, refining, etc.
Put these two together.
Our “expert class” is made up of people who have been groomed in a handful of institutions to spend their lives fondling money, bloviating, and sucking themselves and each other off about how great they are for being masters-of-the-universe types.
This is neo-feudalism.
Today’s lords are not titles of nobility granted by birth or a king. They are degrees granted by a few institutions and titles given by big corporations.
They are more and more clustered and cloistered into socio-economic Mottes.
The other 83% of counties and the populations within are populated by peons beyond the Bailey to toil in the dirt.
At least Medieval nobility has a religious obligation to take care of their peasants.
This new class of lords has figured put how to divorce themselves from us. The harvest may be spoiled but they still make money by financial wheeling and dealing. People got rich off the housing bubble then got rich off the bust.
If you want to know what they think of you, it’s this. You are unenlightened and unimportant and you need to know your place is under their boot.
.@JaneMayerNYer "they say her short-term memory has grown so poor that she often forgets she has been briefed on a topic, accusing her staff of failing to do so just after they have. They describe Feinstein as forgetting what she has said & getting upset." https://t.co/nAQAF7CFFg
— Michael Luo (@michaelluo) December 10, 2020
Thread unrolled:
One aide to another senator described what he called a “Kabuki” meeting in which Feinstein’s staff tried to steer her through a proposed piece of legislation that she protested was “just words” which “make no sense.”
Feinstein’s staff has said that sometimes she seems herself, and other times unreachable. “The staff is in such a bad position,” a former Senate aide who still has business in Congress said. “They have to defend her and make her seem normal.”
A stickler for detail, she demanded to see every page going out of her office with her name on it. But with her diminishing capacity, this has become increasingly difficult. The former Senate staffer who still works with Congress declared, “It’s been a disaster.”
As the ranking Democrat, Feinstein ordinarily would be expected to run the Party’s strategy on issues of major national importance, including judicial nominations. Instead, the committee has been hamstrung and disorganized. very different mode now.”
“Other members were constantly trying to go around her because, as chair, she didn’t want to do anything, and she also didn’t want them doing anything,” the former Senate staffer said.
A current aide to a different Democratic senator observed sadly, “She’s an incredibly effective human being, but there’s definitely been deterioration in the last year. She’s in a very different mode now.”
We are a nation led by people who should be lying in bed, eating Jell-O, watching daytime TV.
One was has now been declared President Elect.
Washington DC is little more than The Villages for white collar criminal.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CIlpyeYABIz/?igshid=y5sn94uxsdax
It appears that running for reelection for her Agriculture Commissioner job isn’t politically viable anymore for Nikki Fried considering how she has decided to go all out with her attacks against Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Florida Politics’ Juicy Read — 12.10.20
And I believe there will be something else at play against her re-election and that is the realizations by pro-legalization types that all the promises he sort of made about decriminalizing pot were just obvious load of crap. Even the most confused pothead has to figure by now that she has not delivered and won’t be able to because she never had the power to change the law.
And whatever thoughts Moms Demand may have had about a rabid anti-gunner in charge of the Country’s premier concealed carry licensing department, also went in a haze of pot smoke and have to be disappointed at her lack of action. Say what you want about Florida legislators, but we ended up with a pretty much self-sustained, self-defending and hard-to-mess-with system. The only way to mess with it is for the Legislature to turn democrat and for that, we need to make concealed carry bulletproof: Constitutional Carry.
It will be nice to make sure she is no longer in charge of the Concealed Carry License process. You know eventually the Democrats figure how to gum up the works of anything they don’t like even if it is doing good.
Speaking of concealed licenses, we are moving slowly but surely to the two and a quarter million, unfortunately it won’t happen this year.
We broke the 2 million barrier May 2019 and we would probably end up over 225,000 extra in total by year’s end if you consider that we added over 43,000 since September 30th
I love space horror stories. I don’t like most horror, but space horror is different. I love the movie Pandorum, even though it was mostly a flop.
I have a long commute to work so I like listening to audiobooks on my drive. Right now I’m listening to The Martian.
I love that movie, and I have to say, if you averaged the book and the movie, it would be perfect. There are challenges in the book that Mark Watney faces that are just too over-the-top, that the movie in cutting for time, dealt with better. Then there were things explained in the book that were left out of the movie that shouldn’t have been and should have been left in there as a few lines of throwaway dialog.
Perfect example: it would have been just a few lines in the movie for Mark to say that he had enough multi-vitamins to last and all he needed was calories so he could live off potatoes for over a year and be fine, but they left it out.
Also – and I understand plot and all – but NASA knows that he has surplus water and his water is a closed system. Why did they launch protein bars? Dehydrated food would have been lighter and they could send more calories. Weight is the enemy in spaceflight so why send one more drop of moisture than the needed to. He could have used his surplus water to rehydrate his food.
But I digress…
One of the parts in the book left out of the movie is when the crew of the Hermes fly by Earth, they talk to their families.
Beth Johanssen has a conversation with her dad and tells him not to worry about her because she is the designated survivor. It’s a lie to make him feel better, but it’s a weird scene.
That gave me an idea for a space horror that I want to write inspired by The Martian but have no idea how.
Nutshell plot:
A team of astronauts is on its way to Mars. While one astronaut is on an EVA, the craft is hit with a meteoroid. The hull is breached and the ship goes to vacuum. Everyone but the astronaut on EVA is killed and flash frozen. A lot of stuff is blown out into space.
The astronaut re-enters the ship. She manages to patch what she can and seals off the rest. Puts the bodies into a part of the ship that has been exposed to space with the intent of at least bringing her crewmates home for burial.
The only way for the ship to come home – due to orbital mechanics – is a free return trajectory. Exactly the same as Apollo 13. When she gets close to Earth, NASA will launch a small craft to dock with the trans-Martian ship and rescue her.
With the loss of supplies blown out into space, she doesn’t have enough food for the rest of the mission. She stretched and stretches her rations but clearly, she will starve.
So one by one she has to retrieve her frozen crewmates, thaw them and eat them. The ship is on free return so there really isn’t much for her to do besides some regular minor maintenance. Not like The Martian where it is a constant struggle against the nature of space.
She is along for the ride, all she needs to do is not die of hunger. This is a slow, psychological descent into madness as she reminisces about her crewmates and her multi-year experience training with them for a Mars mission, as she eats them over the course of several months a piece at a time.
Of course, during this time NASA knows what’s going on, but can’t say anything about it to the public because of how they would react so that adds a dimension to this I haven’t exactly figured out yet. Probably something where it’s this giant cannibalistic elephant in the room that nobody can talk about to keep it a secret from the public. So while she’s still in contact with NASA, she’s isolated because of this unspeakable thing that is happening.
Space horror.
Lastly, I’m waiting on grades but I feel like I did well. I’m glad for the semester to be over, I was at the point where I was equating Hugoniots in my sleep.
Remember back in 2018 it was revealed that Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein had a staffer for 20 years who was also a Chinese spy. Feinstein in on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.
She was shocked. Shocked. When the FBI told her about it.
Next, we find out that since 2018, the FBI has been investigating Hunter Biden because of his business dealing with the Chinese government.
The FBI never bothered to tell anyone about it because the DOJ didn’t want to influence the election.
Now we discover that Congressman Eric Swalwell, who was absolutely sure that Trump was a Russian agent, was in fact being played by a Chinese spy. The Congressman, who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee (which is ironic because Swalwell himself has a tepid IQ) refuses to say if he ever dipped it into Winnie the Pooh’s honeypot. Which means he absolutely did.
Swalwell is pissed, pissed that… the story that he was probably banging a Chinese spy while he was on the Intelligence Committee was leaked to the press.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.
We know that China is our enemy.
What is disturbing is how easily Democrats with important access are compromised by the Chinese governemnt.