Read All About It!

 This is all over MeWe and Gab already, but on the of chance you haven't sen it, Time Magazine just published what amounts to a SuperVillain Monologue that details how the presidential election of 2020 was rigged. 

Oh, wait. How the Presidential Election of 2020 was fortified to ensure that Democracy was saved! 

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

Interestingly, that's the way the title on the web page reads, but the tab calls it "The Secret Bipartisan Campaign..."

There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.

But's was okay, because Trump did it first by saying mail-in ballots were insecure. 

Happier New Year

 Posted at 1600 PST, 31 December 2020, which is 00:00, 01 January 2021 UTC, AKA Zulu Time.

Looking back, all I have to say for now about 2020 is "Good riddance."

I may have more to say later, but, for now...

Whose Bright Idea Was This?!

So the weather has finally broken enough I can get out and put in a good 10000 steps.

On the homeward leg, I stopped at the local grocery store -- where I learned that for some reason grocery store workers don't seem to have priority for vaccines -- to pick up a couple things, cheap enough I paid cash.

When I got home I looked at my change and discovered that the 2020 Commemorative Quarter recognizes American Samoa National Park.

Yeah, I'd never heard of it, either but that's not the point.

National Park of American Samoa Quarter

Background

National Park of American Samoa is located some 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii and is one of the most remote in the U.S. National Park System. The site includes sections of three islands—Tutuila, Ta’ū, and Ofu. Almost all of the land area of these volcanic islands—from the mountaintops to the coast—is tropical rainforest. The park’s area totals 13,500 acres, 4,000 of which are underwater.

That's still not the point. 

This is the point:

That's right, for 2020, #YearOfTheBlackSwan, #YearOfTheFruitBat, the Year of the Wuhan Flu, the CCPVirus, the year the world learned that some people eat bat soup, rare...

...The US Mint decided to commemorate the home of the Samoan Fruit Bat with a 25¢ piece.

Mind you, the decision was make well before 2020, but, still.

Meanwhile, I had to see this ad three or four times before I realized it was an ad for a mating dating service, not a trailer for a Marvel Supervillain movie. 

I have to say, it surprises me not at all that 2020 would best be summed up by an ad for a dating app. 

Thanksgiving is Canceled!

 King Jay says so!

From 11:59 PM on Monday, November 16 through Monday, December 14, all counties in Washington rollback to the restrictions outlined below...

1. Indoor Social Gatherings with people from outside your household are prohibited unless they (a) quarantine for fourteen days (14) prior to the social gathering; or (b) quarantine for seven (7) days prior to the social gathering and receive a negative COVID-19 test result no more than 48-hours prior to the gathering. A household is defined as individuals residing in the same domicile.

I foresee widespread civil disobedience. 

Also, wide-spread pearl-clutching and calls to snitch hotlines by the "caring."

Also, people thinking "Maybe I should have voted for Culp after all", as well as "This is all #OrangeManBad's fault!"

I gotta get out of this state.

Truth

One of my favorite parts of this is the people who spent the last four years insisting the 2016 election was rigged now demanding that after four days, in an election where we have demonstrated actual evidence of irregularities, @realDonaldTrump must concede.

No.

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) November 8, 2020

The Riot Makers

Currently reading The Riot Makers, by Eugene Methvin. 

(At Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/yyg7c4kc Good luck!)

(At Archive.org: https://tinyurl.com/y4vnv2yc One hour or 14 day loan, updated/corrected. No print, copy, etc of e-book loaner.)

Published in 1970, and apparently only in one print run, it is an in-depth study of commie methods of inciting riots, based on the "disorder" of the 1960s, primarily in the United States, both on- and off-campus. 

I realize that in some corners the phrase "commie methods of inciting riots" makes the author (and me, I suppose) sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the evidence is pretty compelling.

The book opens with a description of the Newark, NJ, riot of July, 1967. 1967, of course, having been the "Long, Hot Summer".

The author then follows the history of social engineering from Lenin to Mao, with brief looks at the Gracchi brothers and Mark Antony, Sam Adams, the "Babouvists" of the French Revolution, and Karl Marx.

The history of Lenin and social engineering is detailed, as is the description of the social engineering process. 

One constant theme is they manner in which communications technology facilitates the organizing and incitement process; it takes absolutely no imagination at all to add the internet and cellular telephones to radio and television and see how that amplifies the effect. 

You have probably heard the saying that "History doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme"; reading this book with an eye towards current events will certainly confirm the notion, if not, as I alluded to above, make you think about triple-layering your tin-foil hat. 

I got this book through an inter-library loan, courtesy the King County Library system. If you can find a copy, I strongly urge you to do so.

EDITED to add: The writing style and attitudes in this book may seem dated. Certainly, some of the psychological and sociological terminology used is out of date and/or obsolete. Also, this book was published back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, when I was growing up, and "Negro" was still the word used in polite company. Some may find that jarring, or even, this being 2020, offensive.

Here's a documentary based on the book:

Isn't that interesting... -- An Update

 So, what with all the news about Hunter Biden and the while sleazy, corrupt Biden clan, and the CSPAN "journalist" confessing to lying about sending that tweet and all, it has been an interesting day or two in social media, especially if one is part of the leftist/progressive/media/DNC persuasion, and I mean "interesting" in the Chinese curse sense. 

Or, of you prefer, in the US Senate accusing you of interfering with an election, and the FEC  being out for blood sense.

So I go into Twitter and I see John "Oh No!" Ringo has tweeted as follows:

(I took a "snip" and copied it in, instead of embedding the tweet, because embedding the tweet these days is... messy. Stray code all over the place. Link to the tweet here.)

So I attempted to tweet as follows: "Their brain is full?" and got:

Note the pink bar at the top...

I can't even tweet "Testing". 

Have I finally reached the level of deplorableness where I am worthy of having Twitter shut me down?

Or is Twitter just so all upgefukt over the mess it has made the least few days that it is melting down?

Stay tuned!

UPDATE: apparently it was everybody, everywhere. They're "investigating." 

Just coincidence it hit right as they were discovering the Streisand Effect? 

Sure, let's go with that.

The Great Barrington Declaration

Great Barrington Declaration - As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.