Merry Christmas!!

It's that time of year again!

And in celebration of 2022 being the Year of Omicron:

Exactly!

 

A Good Day

 

I know I do a lot of pissing and moaning about just about everything here on this blog, but some days are just plain good days. Saturday, we visited the Sweet Blossom Alpaca Farm during their annual Open Barn event. It can never be a bad day when you get a kiss from a llama.

Time Flies

So I look at the date of my last post and realize that it has been two months since I last posted. There are reasons, of course; the biggest one being that we've been working our butts off trying to get the place in Michigan ready for winter, then three days on the road driving to Florida only to find that the jungle had taken over down here while we were gone. One of our vines had even tried to eat the house. We've got things about 75% of the way cleared, but there is still a lot of work to do. We have a couple water control projects that we had hoped to get done while we were down here, but I'm not so sure we'll get to them.

Everyone has experienced what I call the Covid-excuse; due to Covid, wait times are longer, some items may not be available, blah, blah, blah. Recently, Covid-excuse has been replaced with other excuses like supply chain problems, labor shortages, etc.

(And just for the record, there is no labor shortage; we are in the first stages of a general strike.)

But on the way down to Florida, we hit the mother-lode at the Kennesaw, Georgia Chili's restaurant. The fun started before we even got in the door. Like many business establishments, the handicap parking spaces were closer to the dumpsters than the front door. We rounded the corner of the building only to be blasted with music so loud, it was pushing us across the parking lot. We looked like four mimes walking in the wind as we struggled our way to the front door.

We at last managed to fight our way inside only to find that the music was even louder. We tried to communicate with the hostess, but it was no use. We finally resorted to ASL to tell her there were four people in our party and that we would prefer a table. The hostess signed back that there would be a 35-40 minute wait. We settled in while Heart screeched at ear-splitting volume about how she was crazy on me. It was so loud, every beat on the kick drum banged our heads against the wall.

We were seated in about 30 minutes, grabbed menus, decided what everyone was having, then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Twenty minutes later, the only server in sight came sprinting over to our table to take our drink order. We gave her our drink and food order. Our server told my dad that they were out of coffee. We stared at her in disbelief. How does a restaurant run out of coffee? Our server informed us that it was "supply chain problems", a "national coffee shortage". I just laughed, we figured out something else for my dad to drink, then off she sprinted. More waiting.

While all this was going on, in comes The Table of Nine. These were obviously Very Important Persons as their table had two servers plus someone running plates. Meanwhile, our server was literally running flat out trying to serve the rest of the restaurant.

After more waiting, our server comes out with Debbie's and my steaks, but not my parents order. All they had ordered was potato soup, so I was thinking that this had to be good. Sure enough. "Sorry but my manager just informed me that we're out of potato soup." Let me guess: a national potato shortage? And why did it take half an hour to figure out that you were out of soup? And why wasn't it the manager who came out to tell us? So were scrambling trying to figure out something light for my parents when my mom blurts out, "Can you manage a couple grilled cheese sandwiches?" Sure! Would you like some fries with that? Yes, please. And off she goes sprinting for the kitchen. 

Oh, and did I mention that we had no napkins? Debbie finally went out to the van and dug a bunch of Burger King napkins out of the glove box. I suppose there is a national napkin shortage....

So here we set with our food and my parents have nothing. Finally we dig in. We had ordered our steaks medium. What was on our plate was not medium. It was not medium well. It wasn't even well done. We had been served two charcoal briquettes. At this point, we were so tired and hungry we didn't care. We crunched on our steaks. At least our sides were good. 

My parents' grilled cheese sandwiches came out. They looked perfect. We ate the rest of our food and waited some more for the bill. Our server brought it out and was gone in a flash. It was close to $50. We started looking at it more carefully. Debbie and I had ordered one of the $25 for two deals. That included an appetizer, two small steaks with sides, and a dessert. My parents' two grilled cheese sandwiches with a small handful of fries cost nearly the same. Seriously? At this point, we didn't have the energy to argue; we just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Just to be clear; I'm not blaming our server for any of this. This was a management failure pure and simple. At least we were entertained during our interminable waiting watching the Very Important Persons at The Table of Nine being endlessly fawned over by their two servers, table runner and even someone that looked suspiciously like a manager that came over and chatted everyone up while conspicuously NOT looking in our direction. I'm not sure who these people were, but I hope they give Chili's a lot of business, because I am done.

Inflection Points

I know people are constantly saying this, but it feels like we are living through a series of inflection points; socially, politically, economically. In its war on Ivermectin, the FDA is destroying what little credibility our political institutions have left. Between Wokeness and the undisguised lying by politicians, media and the rest, normal people are getting sick up and fed with the whole project. But first, our economy:

Imagine being at a party celebrating the vast wealth generated in the last ten months in stocks, cryptocurrencies, real estate and just about every other asset class. The lights flicker briefly but the host assures the crowd the generator powering the party is working perfectly.

Being a skeptic, you slip out on the excuse of bringing in more champagne and pay a visit to the generator room. To your horror, you find the entire arrangement held together with duct tape and rotted 2X4s, the electrical panel is an acrid-smelling mess of haphazard frayed wire and the generator is over-heated and vibrating off its foundation bolts. Whatever governor the engine once had is gone, it clearly won't last the night.

Large systems have huge amounts of inertia and can seem to be running normally for long periods of time before the wheels come off. Things have to be rather far along the process of disintegration for it to be so obvious to us smucks.

The FDA, the CDC, "Dr." Fauchi, the WHO all insist at the top of their lungs that the Covid "vaccines" are perfectly safe. Any attempt to say otherwise will get you quickly silenced by Big Tech followed by loss of employment. But we know these things are dangerous:

The spike proteins travel all through your body, through all your blood vessels, stick to their linings, and cause inflammation there. How would you like it if that happens to your brain, your heart, your lungs, your central nervous system? With no virus around? Remember, spike proteins are cytotoxic, they kill cells and/or turn them into spike protein factories, possibly for a long time. You don’t want these things in your body.

Yet, we inject millions of people every day with them, many two or even three times, and say this will make them safe. What do you think?

I think I'll pass on the "vaccine" and take my chances with Ivermectin, only now the AMA is threatening the medical license of any physician who has the temerity to prescribe Ivermectin to anyone with Covid. As luck would have it, there is a work-around; bed bugs. Just tell your doctor that your house has been infested with the little pests and that you need some Ivermectin. Just don't tell the FDA (or Google) that I told you.

Do you ever get the feeling the over half the country has completely lost any functional grip on reality? You are not alone:

Everybody I consort with has had enough of the whole nauseating game — the lying politicians, the lying media, the lying medical bureaucrats, the lying generals, the lying teachers, the lying celebrities, the lying tech moguls, the entire armature of counter-reality you want to impose on a once-fair land. We will never do your bidding. We will never peel your grapes. There are more of us than you. Go ahead, push just a little bit harder. 

Because most liberals are also pussies (literal or figurative) who have never thrown a punch or been hit by one, they have no idea what happens when you push too hard. We've been patient; we've waited for you to pull your own head out of your ass. We're done. From here on in, it gets very fucking real.

Odds and Ends

Some bits I picked up from the internets:

Hello Wordpress

 I never thought I would find myself here, but here I am. There are rumors floating about the internet that Google is considering dropping Blogger. I can find denials from high-placed officials, but we all know what those are worth. As a precaution, I copied all content from Blogger to here. Not sure what happens next; I guess I will keep both of them updated until something resolves.

Message from Sally

This is either Sally sending me a joke from the other side, or the simulation is developing a sense of humor. Family will understand....

Sally Otto, RIP

 A very hard day today; a funeral for someone who has been very special to me since I've been old enough to remember.

See you on the other side, Sally.

(Thanks Blogger for being too stupid to show the correct video. Here is a link to the correct video. The video below should be correct. I really need to find a better blogging platform....) [Update: You can also click on the title to open just this post and all will be right with the universe. And it also proves that I know what I'm doing unlike the morons over at Google.]

The Word(s) of the Day

Today's Word(s) of the day is ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement). This now appears to be just the latest in a long line of serious side effects of the covid-19 "vaccines". Here's one take on where we are, how we got here, and where we may be going:

When ADE becomes too widespread to ignore and people begin to die in significant numbers, expect governments to proclaim the arrival of the predicted new hyper-lethal variant and impose a new round of shutdowns, mask mandates, and the like. The media will insist that the people who are dying are all unvaccinated as long as they can get away with it; pay attention to the vaccination status and health outcomes of people you know for a reality check. Unless some way of stopping ADE-enhanced infections can be found in a hurry, medical systems will buckle under the caseload and triage will become the order of the day. How soon this will happen, if it does, is impossible to say in advance. It’s also impossible to know in advance how soon it will become clear that the vaccines are responsible—or just how violent a backlash against the political and economic establishment this could provoke.

Good times, for sure. Stock up on beans and ramen.

The New Hokey-Pokey

 

The Jab

I refused the Covid "vaccine" largely for personal reasons: I've already lost several organs and the use of my legs due to some sort of autoimmune disorder. The last thing I needed was to have myself injected with something linked to autoimmune disorders. I was simply not willing to take the risk especially given that it was completely unnecessary; I've already had and recovered from Covid-19. 

And as it turns out, the CDC now admits that after jabbing over half the country (and making billions for the virus-makers) we have evidence that the "vaccines" do nothing. They do not prevent infections or transmissions, and even the claim that they make infections less severe is looking shaky. Just to repeat, this isn't from some conspiracy theory, Q-Annon BS website. This is from the CDC. Ya know, "The Science".

All downside and no upside. No way in hell will I ever get jabbed.

Happy Anniversary

 

 

 You are my breath.

You are my life

You are the reason I exist.

I will love you through all eternity.

Heh...

 

Ivermectin and Other Radomness

For a little over a year, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter have waged a desperate campaign to silence any discussion of using Ivermectin for Covid-19 infections. Some of us in the cynical camp have always assumed this was to a) allow the mass distribution of untested vaccines under the Emergency Use Authorization leading to b) massive profits for politically connected Big Pharma. Now the conspiracy is unraveling as I type this. More and more studies show the effectiveness of Ivermectin (especially when combined with zinc and Vitamin D) is equal to or greater than the (heavily inflated) numbers for the vaccines.

Meanwhile, Democrats insist that Donald Trump is a murderer for not telling people to wear masks. Leaving aside that masks have very limited use to prevent the spread of Covid-19, if Trump appearing on national television maskless makes him guilty at least in part for over a half-million deaths, how much more do Zuckerberg, Bezos, Dorsey and Pichai have to answer for? How may of the millions dead could have been saved by the early use of Ivermectin? How much sooner would we have known that Ivermectin works if these four... gentlemen had not decided to conspire to silence any discussion even among virologists of Ivermectin?

In completely unrelated news, we just suffered through one of the coldest first days of summer I can remember. It "only" got down in the mid-30's here, but further south, there were several inches of frost on some people's gardens. Then we had storms blow through that hit us with lightning, hail and waterspouts in Traverse Bay. For a minute, I thought we were back in Florida. We got outside today and got a bit done before the rain moves back in tomorrow for a week straight. We're going to need a row boat to get around the yard.

Not much else going on with us. We've sort of settled into our little hideout in the middle of nowhere. Governor Mussolini has finally lifted all restrictions, but we still don't leave the property any more than we have to. Summer Fudgey Season is nuts enough at the best of times; after being locked up for year, things are likely to be... well... lively. I'll take a hard pass on that.

Well, it's getting close to midnight and I have a delivery truck showing up at 0730, so I'll be signing off.

Fentanyl

 During the (completely unnecessary) lock-downs, fentanyl over-doses have more than quadrupled to 88,000 deaths over the last year, up from 19,000 the previous year. Seizures are up 800% at the Texas border. We know who and where in China this stuff is coming from. We've told the Chinese government who and where this stuff is coming from. They do nothing, and we do nothing about them doing nothing.

Meanwhile, 88,000 people are dead in the last 12 months alone. Add to that, all the spouses, parents, children, friends whose lives have been destroyed forever. This should be the primary focus of our conversations with China. It isn't. Not even close.

Scott Adams talked about his very personal encounter with fentanyl on his podcast from June 11, 2021. The relevant part starts at 20:15. Fair warning, it gets a little intense.

We are at war and we don't even realize it. Fuck Trump. Fuck Biden. Fuck China.

Something to Consider

 

Lord Farquaad on Mars

So, I'm pretty sure everyone understands that Elon Musk considers himself Emperor of Planet Earth and the only human that matters, but even he went a little over the top a few days ago when he declared, "a bunch of people will probably die" in his quest to colonize Mars. Our living, breathing Lord Farquaad continued, "but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make." 

Okay, so he actually said, "but it's a glorious adventure and it'll be an amazing experience." Which is kind of the same thing. I'm sure someone slowly suffocating on the Martian surface after some bit of tech built by the lowest bidder fails, will say with their last gasp of air, "What a glorious adventure... gack!"

Global "Warming" in One Graph

 

Notice that there are a few of the models that don't grossly overstate the amount of expected warming. But I can pretty much guarantee that those models are not the ones that get shown to Greta or our congress.

Exactly This

 

Voter ID

 

 

The entire voter-ID-is-racist thing has to be one of most stupid ideas put forward by the BLM assholes. First, the primary reason (that 25% of blacks do not have photo ID) is complete bullshit. Are you telling me that fully 25% of blacks do not have jobs, do not have a place to live, never buy alcohol or cigarettes, are not legally married (which, come to think of it, may be true), never go into a bar or nightclub, do not drive, or any of the dozens of other everyday activities that require photo ID? And even if it is true, shouldn't the focus of the wokesters be on getting them photo ID?

On top of all that, MLB is moving the All-Star game from a state that just passed a voter ID law to a state that has had a voter ID law for years.

But it's all OK; now that I identify as black, I'll be screaming "JIM CROW" and "RACISM" every time I am required to show ID.

As for MLB, I can't tell you the last time I watched a game on TV. I haven't seen a game live since middle school. But I'll be damned if I ever do either of those things again. I said this when the NBA went on strike after the George Floyd death; professional sports seems to be dying out. Even the mighty Super Bowl managed to alienate about 15% of its audience, despite covid-19 giving people fewer options for how they spent a Sunday afternoon. So keep up the good work, guys! Keep playing politics while making whatever game you play increasingly boring to watch, and before you know it, you will all be doing what you were meant to do: flipping burgers.

Biden: The Golden Years

 

The New Day Dawns

I was going to post earlier, but things kept seeming to resolve, then go spinning off in some other insane direction. So lets dive right in with the latest in...

Trump Derangement Syndrome

All anyone in the media has been able to focus on for the last five years is Donald J. Trump. It's like the entire universe simply froze in place while Nancy Pelosi et. al. screamed, "ORANGE MAN BAD!!!" nonstop for the last five years. They claim that their man Sleepy Joe won the election, and contrary to all expectations The Donald vacated the White House and SJ was sworn in as the next president without any incident. You won. You got everything you wanted. SO WHY ARE YOU STILL TALKING ABOUT TRUMP!!! Even liberals I consider to be intelligent and articulate like Jon Katz keep saying that they are done talking about Trump, then less than 24 hours later, they are at it again! This whole farce of an impeachment trial is the same thing. The dude is out of office! Quit talking about him! But no! We're going to interrupt programming on every TV station and show videos that will make America understand how we feel! How all that hate directed at us makes us soooo sad!

Funny how these same assholes don't care how a shopkeeper in Portland feels watching his entire life's work and savings go up in smoke while the cops stand down and do nothing.

January 6th

What happened at the Capital building was a riot. It was not a coup attempt. It was not an insurrection. Those things require the participation of at least a portion of the military. Ya want to know what isn't a coup? Some dude in a viking hat taking selfies. Some dumb ass walking out with the speakers lectern. These people were so stupid, they live-streamed themselves committing multiple felony crimes. The thing that is either hilarious or just plain sad; at the one point in the nation's entire history when it would have been acceptable for everyone to wear a mask, I didn't see more than a dozen people with masks on. Now let me get this straight: I go to the capital, not wearing any sort of mask, wear face paint and viking horns, take lots of selfies while committing multiple felony crimes, post them on social media, brag about being there on social media, find myself in someone else's videos or photos on social media and tag it with a "THIS IS ME!" That is not a coup.

Meanwhile in Myanmar....

Big Tech Censorship

For years, there have been some who saw this day coming. Thanks to unchecked consolidation in the tech industry, no one can run a business or even run a humble little blog like this one without being entirely dependent on Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon or Microsoft (typically it will be several of those). For a long time, that power was not really used and everyone grew complacent. Then Alex Jones got cancelled. No one much cared, so Big Tech grew bolder by the minute. Now they are banning people wholesale by the thousands and the tens of thousands. Most times, they don't even give a fig leaf of an excuse; people are just disappeared. After Trump was banned from Twitter, hundreds of thousands signed up for Parler. So Twitter and Amazon and Apple and Google all conspired to eliminate Twitter's primary competitor. The excuse was that Parler was used to plan the Capital "insurrection", but the fear was that Trump would open an account on Parler and then it would be bye bye tweety bird. Gab was also threatened with extinction if they didn't adopt a TOS similar to Twitter and Facebook.

So for now, liberals have control of the news, the internet, the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate. What will they do with it? So far, they've mostly stabbed their constituents in the back, got into verbal cat fights with each other, and walked back every promise made in the campaign. ($2,000 checks? No No No dear man; you misunderstood. We said $1,400 checks. Send out the checks on day one? No No No dear man; you must realize we have to impeach Trump! So it's really all his fault you won't get your check until March or April or never. He made us impeach him!)

In other words, Democrats doing what Democrats always do when in power: nothing constructive.

Politics in the US has always been a pendulum swinging left to right inside fairly tight constraints. Trump gave that pendulum such a hard swing to the right it actually did real damage to our civic life. Now the pendulum has come thundering back to the left on an even wilder swing with active censorship, talk of lists of people in need of "deprogramming" and "deradicalization"; pretty much the whole Marxist shtick. As I said back in 2016, what comes next will destroy whatever remains of our traditional civic structure.If we are very, very lucky, we get Marcus Antony. More likely we will get someone like Nero.

Voting Irregularities

Something no one is allowed to talk about, or even think about. Unlike every election in the 3,000 years of democracy, this election was absolutely perfect with not a stray ballot from sea to shining sea. Even though it is a simple fact that anything with a computer chip can be hacked, God and his angels had their hands upon every voting machine, every vote tabulator, every Excel spreadsheet preventing any of them from being hacked and preserving, nay fortifying our democracy.

Now the explosive revelation in Time magazine that out betters, those individuals appointed by the Lord on High worked their fingers to the bone throughout 2020 fortifying our democracy by ensuring that American made the correct choice on November 3rd.

Vaccine Woes 

We still haven't gotten even the first jab, while people our age in other states have already had both. Florida is still trying to vaccinate the over-65 crowd which is about 3/5ths of Florida's population. The health department is supposed to be coming around to the parks and poking everyone over 65, but still no firm date when that is supposed to happen. At the rate things are going, we'll probably get ours up in Michigan if we ever get one. 

Like any vaccine, there are going to to adverse reactions, side effects, even deaths. A smart country would carefully track such things and report them publicly. We are not a smart country. We do everything we can to suppress any discussion of negative vaccine outcomes. Because like elections in America, our vaccines are absolutely 100% effective with no side effects whatsoever. None. Because Jesus himself made it and any criticism of the vaccine is therefore a criticism of Jesus. Why do you hate Jesus so much?

I could go on (and on and on...) but it's already 2am and I have a doctors appointment tomorrow. Find me on Gab (@rlfrost) and we'll stare awkwardly at each others' shoes. If this blog disappears real sudden like, it means they got me.....

"Literal Fascism"

 

I'll have more to say on January 6th, Parler, etc., as well as the worst start of a new president's first term in all of US history.

Happy 2021

Nothing exemplifies the American belief in magic like flipping the calendar to a new year. All our problems will simply vanish into the ether like so much smoke. Everyone gets a fresh start. We even get us a new president!

 Uh. Yeah. Me, I'm in the same camp as Tim Rickard, author of Brewster's Rocket: 

[The comic should be here, but GoComics rigs its pages so the image cannot be inserted in anyone else's web page. The bastards.]

Predictions for 2021:

Trump is still trying to contest the election results, but it will be to no avail if for no other reason than the MSM and BigTech have declared Biden the winner. Conservative media is full of theories about various methods Trump could use to overturn the official election results. My prediction is that, if any of them are tried, they will land with the same resounding thump as all the other "Krakens" the feckless Team Trump have tried. So Biden will be POTUS regardless.

Trump's vaccine is slowly being rolled out with a smattering of stories of the elderly dying shortly after receiving the vaccine, or some testing positive for covid after getting "the jab". I'm holding off on getting it and may just skip it altogether. Not so much out of fear of some nasty side effects, but just because of the talk of "vaccine passports" and such shit. Push me hard enough and I push back. Along with nearly half of the US population. There are even rumors of doctors and nurses refusing the vaccine, preferring to take their chances with covid. All of which adds up to covid not going anywhere anytime soon. 

And that all means that none of the economy-crushing restrictions will magically disappear when Biden pops into the Oval Orifice.  There will still be plenty of opportunities for state governors like Michigan's Gretchen "Mussolini" Whitmer to rule by fiat. 

The economy is continuing its spiral into a black hole. The media likes to blame covid because if it is only because of the pandemic, then as soon as the vaccine is widely distributed all the restrictions can be eliminated and everything goes back to normal. First of all, for those in the bottom 80%, normal sucked. Second, the economic collapse was already well underway before anyone ever heard of Wuhan, China. Covid and the lock downs just made what probably would have been a year-long contraction happen in about a week. And the longer the lock downs continue the more small businesses that are "temporarily" closed or are being forced to run at 50% capacity will close permanently, and more wealth gets concentrated into the hands of the elites.

Speaking of elites, thanks to the Federal Reserve printing money like mad, stock indexes set so many records in 2020 including on the final trading day of the year, it stopped being a newsworthy event. We are in an everything-in-a-bubble economy as prices for stocks, bonds and real estate become increasingly divorced from the real world.

Bottom line: 2021 will look a great deal like 2020 only more so.

How badly did 2020 kick the crap out of my predictions last year? Pretty much every which way. The biggie of course is the coronation of Biden by the press. No, I do not believe that he won the election. There is solid evidence all over the place of various types of fraud, from the Omar family's ballot harvesting operation in Minnesota to Republican poll watchers being locked out of ballot counting locations in Detroit to video of ballots being run through ballot counting machines multiple times to there somehow being tens of thousands of negative votes for Trump. The fraud was large scale and systematic. And remember, this was supposed to be a landslide for Biden. All the polls showed that Trump was only going to carry a few Republican strongholds like Montana and North Dakota, and Biden was going to carry in a Blue Wave on his coattails, giving Democrats a super majority in the house and a majority in the senate. This election was never supposed to be a nail-biter. But wrong is wrong, and I suppose that Biden stealing the election is as moral a path to the presidency as any other way in 21st century America.

Funny though, how the press still cannot shut up about Trump while Biden continues to hide in his basement.

I keep saying year after year that at some point, the Fed trick of printing money to keep the stock, bond and real estate markets in the stratosphere would stop working. Hasn't yet. Maybe this year....

Our personal lives got knocked for a loop last year as well. We ended up spending the summer in Michigan living in my parents' cabin mostly so Debbie could do their driving after we took my dad's keys away. Turned out there was a lot of work to do up there after several years of my parents not being able to do much. The current plan (subject to revision without notification) is that we will snow bird with them for a few years, then force them to decide: Florida or Michigan. The greedy corporate bastards at Sun will likely price us out of the park by then. The easiest financially is to just start staying in Michigan year 'round and sell our places down here. But that means dealing with winter and feet of snow every day. Not a fan.

Summer in Michigan turned out to be good for me. All the outdoor work built back some of the muscle that I lost while living in a recliner for a year. That gave me enough of my balance back that I can walk short distances without any assistance (as long as I have my braces on my feet). I'm still prevented from doing most of what needs to be done because I cannot kneel down. Well... to be accurate, I can get down on my knees; it's the getting up part that requires a call to 911. We may have a solution for that in the next week or so. We'll see if it works or if I just wasted $55. And have to call 911.

So that's how things look from here. We'll just have to see how everything shakes out.