Reducing visual profiles

 Someone ditched their empty Ruger boxes today at a county recycling site.

I presume the firearms are stored somewhere out of sight, and that idea was to get rid of empty marked boxes betraying their presence. The boxes didn't look new, they had signs of storage.

Acquittal, again. So what's next?

Democrats and their media allies had hoped to normalize political show trials with the latest Trump impeachment. The odds of it happening were slim, but Democrats pushed the lie it would, and many in media played along.

Fact is, most Americans were unimpressed. Few followed the trial. Local newscasts I saw (which covered other major national stories) didn't cover it or only gave scant mention. Only a sliver of the population bothered to watch any of the live telecasts.

Most everyone knew is was a shoddy scam doomed to failure.

But media wanted you to think just the opposite, and will likely now use the latest Trump acquittal as an excuse to more broadly target Republicans the way it's targeted Trump the past four to five years.

Changing our traditions

"We're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation." - Michelle Obama, May 2008

Fast forward to February 2021:

The Dallas Mavericks have stopped playing the national anthem before home games at the direction of owner Mark Cuban, he confirmed to ESPN on Tuesday. The Mavericks do not plan to resume the tradition to play the national anthem before games in the future.

Squandering the last gasps of government legitimacy

Deceptively edited video. A graphic with an inflated capitol riot death toll. These are the sort of things Democrats believe they need to prosecute Trump? Welcome to the latest round of bad actors circus, another misadventure in squandering what little is left of the legitimacy of this now Democrat-controlled government.

Will @Twitter put its “manipulated media” label on House Dems deceptively edited impeachment video?

— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) February 9, 2021

The strategy and tactics seem familiar

Democrats now have troops guarding Washington DC, have erected a fence around the Capitol, and require House members to pass through metal detectors before being allowed on the floor of the House. Democrats are embarking on screening the military in search of those with political views that don't sync with the "progressive" agenda. Our southern border is being opened up, hurdles that have kept down illegal immigration for the past four years are being removed. Don't worry they say, it's all for a better America.

Meanwhile, social media mega corps continue to isolate or ban from their platforms those who dissent.

How do you react to things like this, because each day seems to bring a new surprise, a new "emergency"?

"Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty." - They Thought They Were Free

A taste of the resistance, circa 2017

Any less inciteful than much of the material Democrats insist is "insurrectionist" when it now comes from Republicans? Via Senate Democrats, as poste on Facebook, 2017:

 

Perceptions of Legitimacy

Perceptions matter. And the perception left by rushing to kill court challenges to the 2020 election has left a perception that election results were not fully vetted. 

The result? Tens of millions of Americans do not believe Biden was legitimately elected. 

This is quite different from 2017, when Democrats pledged resistance, claiming Trump was illegitimate. 

Very few Democrats actually believed cheating got Trump elected. 

The 2020 doubters, millions of them, are sincere. 

Critics may deem them misguided, but that doesn't negate their sincerity. Talk of deprogramming, or loyalty tests for Republicans amplifies distrust of the present majority party. 

Democrats now appear ready to  compound the perception of government illegitimacy by governing far to the left of most Americans' viewpoints. Troops in Washington, a fence around the capitol won't fix this. 

A government seeking common ground with its people, and encouraging them to find common ground with one another might be a step in the right direction. 

It won't happen, as it appears to run against the present Democratic Party agenda. 

"If you're ready for a zombie apocalypse, then you're ready for any emergency"

We're dealing with an unprecedented global emergency. There's no point in blaming Trump or Pence for what they did or didn't do. No one else saw it coming. This is a global threat, a killer virus that did not exist in humans before four months ago.

Every nation in the world is facing the same kinds of challenges and shortages. Some are slightly better off at this stage, many are much worse. And let's knock off the myth someone else as president could do better. Consider how well President Obama and his team carried out the Obamacare roll-out. And that was a scheduled event.

Blame games are counter productive. If present trajectories hold, if countries like China or Italy are an example, things are going to get far worse here before they get better.

Everybody has to do his/her part to get ready, to take care of themselves as best they can. Get provisioned (I'd hope you already are).

Get off the streets. Stay at home. Do what you can to avoid becoming part of the problem.

Maybe the CDC was right in 2012 when it suggested people should watch episodes of the Walking Dead, especially early ones, to get a survival mindset. A survival mindset sure beats the whiny partisan blame game so many in media's attempting indoctrinating us with.

Obvious to those willing to see

Thoughts for a Sunday morning

"Hillary Clinton sure got her money’s worth with the Fusion GPS deal: it induced a three-year psychotic break in the body politic, destroyed the legitimacy of federal law enforcement, turned a once-proud, free, and rational press into an infernal engine of bad faith, and is finally leading her Democratic Party to an ignominious suicide. And the damage is far from complete. It’s even possible that Mrs. Clinton will return to personally escort the party over the cliff..." - James Howard Kunstler 

More people finally waking up

Matt Taibbi's a journalist probably best known for his work at Rolling Stone.

Bernie Sanders once cited Taibbi as a journalist who "speaks truth to power."

And now?

Taibbi writes of turmoil in the federal government, a government that finds itself caught up in a "permanent coup."

I don’t believe most Americans have thought through what a successful campaign to oust Donald Trump would look like. Most casual news consumers can only think of it in terms of Mike Pence becoming president. The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections, using the lunatic spookworld brand of politics that has dominated the last three years of anti-Trump agitation.

If Americans were still mostly a thinking people, thoughts like this would have dominated discussions three years ago.

Instead, we've been lead down a path the nation will likely long regret.

Also saw this on social media this morning. I pretty much hate how true is rings today:

Wish I could say this was a joke

"I've held an AR-15 in my hand, I wish I had it. It is as heavy as 10 boxes that you might be moving and the bullet that is utilized, a .50-caliber, these kinds of bullets need to be licensed and do not need to be on the street" - Rep Sheila Jackson Lee.