Report from the OP, November 19, 2023

For what you are about to receive, may you be truly thankful. 🙂

The GrandThing subreport: GrandThings are doing well. Thing 1 is crawling when she finds it necessary to get to that special toy. She is also pulling up. All of this happened in a week. It seems she’s going through all the same steps as Thing 2, just in a blur. Thing 2 is letting go of whatever he pulled up on, usually when he isn’t paying attention. When he realizes he’s standing unassisted, he plops down on his butt. It’s moderately cute. He also hates to be told “no”. He’ll plop down and scream when you do that. I expect them both to walk unassisted by year’s end.

But enough about cute kids–let’s get on to the doom and gloom, shall we?

Globally, I don’t think anything has substantially changed. Events may be moving faster or slower, but Russia is still in Ukraine, Israel is still in Gaza, West China isn’t in East China, Europe is in for a cold winter and so on. This isn’t a perfect situation, but all things considered, it beats most of the likely alternatives.

Chatter about the next pandemic is getting louder. We were out for our usual Sunday supper and the everpresent TVs showed a news story about the nascent scourge of the “tripledemic”. It’s supposed to be the flu, the Wuflu and something else. They didn’t have closed captioning on, so I couldn’t figure out the third thing. But whatever it is it’s going to sweep the world. I wish it would sweep the hall bathroom–the cats are bad about kicking litter out of the litter boxes.

The globalist Great Reset crowd needs something they can use to scare us back into our homes and into compliance. We’re getting rowdy again. We’re refusing to support Slow Joe, increasingly reluctant to support Ukraine and not buying enough Chinese solar gear. At this rate, we may show up at Davos and start burning them in effigy. Or at the stake.

Nationally, things are almost amusing. Trump leads every other Republican Presidential candidate, Slow Joe and any prospective Democrat candidate by the proverbial country mile. Every time a new poll comes out showing his support slowly growing, another legal charge or lawsuit is filed against him, and his support grows again. This has got to be maddening for the political consultant crowd.

I predict the amount of cheating in 2024 will make 2020 look like a kindergarten picnic. If we had any sense, we’d be staking out ballot drops and…interfering with it.

Last week I listened to a podcast from a guy who calls himself The Conundrum Cluster. The episode was titled “War to the Knife” takes a shit on your stupid Civil War 2 fantasy”. Catchy title, isn’t it? Despite the title and the low quality of the podcast itself (Dude, get a script or at least bullet points!), it had an interesting message, that being that the Extreme Right will lose to the Extreme Left because the Left is organized and the Right isn’t. To tell his story he used the history of Bleeding Kansas. (I can’t find a version that meshes with what I remember from high school, but the Wikipedia version is better than most. I’m shocked.) According to our intrepid podcaster, even though Kansas was all set to be a slave state, due to the better organization of the Abolitionists, they were able to marshall far more settlers and over a few years, turn Kansas into a free state.

The guy may be right or he may be wrong, but his point is valid. If you look at the Leftists in the US, they are far more organized than the Right. They can put together large protests at the drop of a hat and their protests make things happen, like city centers burning and people being frightened enough to not interfere. We managed one big one in Virginia in 2020, and it was in the end a failure because it wasn’t organized enough. Everyone went to Richmond and “Boy, we showed ’em!” Then they all left and the Virginia legislature did what they had been going to do, just a little later.

It also doesn’t help that elected Republicans are little better than the Democrats they replace. Let’s look at Virginia again. Glen Youngkin swept into the Governor’s office in 2022 on a wave of distaste for what the Democrats had done to education in the state, helped along by a big turnout in the gun vote. This was based on the “promise” that those pesky anti-gun laws would be changed. It’s nearly 2024, and not one of those laws has been changed. He’s barely made a dent in the education issue, and many counties, looking at you, Louden, simply thumb their noses at whatever comes out of Richmond. In a word, the guy’s been ineffective.

If it was the late 1850s the angry parents would be burning school administration buildings and stringing up the administrators. Instead, they go to the school board meetings and get themselves arrested. Our Revolutionary and Rebel ancestors are spinning in their graves.

Still, hope is not dead. It may be on life support, but it ain’t dead yet. A lot of parents across the country are yanking their kids out of government-run schools and homeschooling or putting them in private schools that more closely align with their values. Bastions of Wokism such as Disney are feeling the pinch as visitors and viewers are staying away in droves. People are waking up a little.

Whether we like it or not, we’re going to have to get angry (angrier?) and get organized. Push the parallel economy, which is struggling off the ground in dozens of places. Take back control of the electorial system (By any means necessary?). Hold the politicians’ feet in the fire until they’re burned off–if they won’t see the light, make them feel the heat. Be like the folks in the Bitty Burg who held off the BLM horde for months before they finally managed to get the government to pull down our Confederate memorial for them.

Whether it’s a revolution, a civil war or a national divorce, things are going to have to change. Let’s be as sure as we can be they change our way, not theirs.

Oh look, the Freeholder is Fedposting again. *snork*

<Deep, cleansing breaths>

Locally, gas continues to slowly subside in price and is now widely available for, eh, $2.96-ish/gallon. I find this unusual, because, according to Slow Joe, we’re in a rip-roaring economy. That would imply that we need more energy, and all energy prices would rise. It can’t be an oversupply, because Slow Joe’s Greenies are doing everything they can to kill anything fossil-fueled and the fossil fuels themselves. Curious.

This probably should be under national, but since all inflation, like politics, is local, let’s look at it here. Look at what’s inflating and what’s deflating. Much more is inflating than deflating, and a few of those numbers are frightening. I wish they had homeowner’s insurance on there because mine went up just like the vehicle insurance sent up–about 20%. They also need utilities, which are also up, for me, about, wait for it, 20%. Funny how this works. But these are government numbers, and we are all pretty convinced at this point that our government pathologically lies.

I know we’re feeling the bite. We need to refill the freezer with meat, and I’m not looking forward to that bill. I’ve found that one of the vehicles has sprung a transmission leak, and I’m not looking forward to that bill. So on and so forth, and all here at Christmas. I supposed I’ll be back to where I was in the 2001 timeframe, where my “Christmas money” went to help pay bills. It is what it is. My kids will find that the gifts are a little less expensive so we can do more for the grand.

Still, we’re far better off than many, and here at Thanksgiving I’m going to concentrate on that. I’m going to be grateful for the gifts bestowed on us as a family and as individuals. I’m going to be very thankful for grace because I’ve gotten some breaks I know I did nothing to deserve. I’m going to be grateful that we are still in the black, if barely, and should stay that way if nothing else bad happens. And I’ll be grateful because if something bad happens, we’ll do as we always do and figure it out.

Folks are decorating for Christmas. I refuse, because my Thanksgiving turkey blowups are still in the yard, but I still like to see them. And I’ll be adding my bit in a few days.

It’s past 10 PM and the kitties are circling expectantly. So…

Out here.