The Year In Pictures

On Wide Eyed Wonder/Side Eyed Wonder & True Believers

 

On Coal & Carnies

 

On Struggle & Need

 

Two months after Helene hit North Carolina with heavy rains resulting in massive flood damage, the situation in the areas surrounding Ashville remains dire.  The people who live and work in that region are contending with a huge, close to unimaginable and unmanageable mess.  They're presently in need of help, intervention, and an infusion of the material and means to move forward with cleanup before rebuilding can take place.  The video above, showing drone footage of the damage yet to be dealt with, lays it out like this: 

"There are 3 primary needs right now! First is building material for all the buildings and homes devastated by the hurricane. Next is big machinery, bulldozers, dump trucks, excavators to clean debris. Lastly money so we can see a need and fulfill that need.''

We've been able to connect through Samaritan's Purse, with other places to contribute listed with the video.  Even though it's likely more work can be accomplished through private sector contributions than  realized with government involvement, it appears as though this administration is intentionally looking away from some obvious and legitimate needs right here at home.  

On Pardon Me & Grave Side Humor

 

This is just Too, Too Cute

OK, if you're outraged by the Hunter pardon, I've got some very good news for you. As always the guy who flunked 3rd grade and finished in the bottom 9th of his law school class shows he hasn't lost his touch (actually, it's the people around him since he's either dead or in extended care for life and we all know he wouldn't have anybody around him smarter than he is/was).

This has been floating around the comment boards for a few days and it sums up the legal ins and outs pretty succinctly*. First, he was prohibited from holding public office in the US government because of his admission used upwards of $1 billion of US government loan guarantees in a bribery coercion scheme to threaten the Ukraine president to immediately terminate the Prosecutor General who was investigating the corrupt practices of Burisma Holdings. Second, of course Idiot bragged about on videotape. This is a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Also a violation of the US Code.

So where's the joy? The pardon of his notorious crime partner and son is completely null and void coming out of the gate. And that doesn't even cover the now-revealed 18 million vote fix that stole the '20 election.

Even better, the Bum can be called to testify, but can't take the 5th. He is also open to civil suits which could bleed the family white**.

Something else that may eventually deepen the grave of the Democrat party and its most eager would be king. The people of Shasta County CA are challenging the count of their vote on Constitutional grounds. They say 1 out of 2 votes was tossed and that violates a SCOTUS decision which declared people not only have the right to cast a vote, but to have that vote counted accurately. How many Rs would take a seat in the House if this went Federal (and I think it will; just the sort of thing the new AG would love to see investigated, and tried)?

*Follow the links. They're lots of fun, too.

** By way of Team Jacobson.

On Word & Trust Erosion

 

On Load After Load & A Bigger Truck

 

On Turkeys & Side Beef

Finished the third season of Lincoln Lawyer and had a good time watching it.  Other than that, we're hesitant to pick up a new series these days, and have stopped watching most old series episodes produced after 2020.  One by one, we dropped shows we used to enjoy as entertainment when the writing and focus underwent a noticeable (and not for the better IMO) change following Covid and the advent of Woke.  While realizing all television viewing requires some suspension of disbelief, the lecturing, posturing, peculiar emotional dramas, forced set-ups, stories that didn't hang together and general goofiness (especially with female characters) eventually brought us to the point of asking each other, "What is going on? Is this what we want to watch?".  And our answer was "No". 

That said, when we went back in time to try and watch Moonlighting from 1985, we found it to be less fun and weirder than we remembered or wanted.  So here we are in No Man/Woman's Land, with less and less ways and means of escape.   Had fun with Jumanji over the weekend, and then when this  showed up in the Pics of the Week, I smiled with the awareness we aren't alone in the hope we hold as we navigate our way through the losses and differences involved with living in shift and change.

On Pronouns & Multiple Choice

 

On Big & Juicy

 

On Reap & Release

Remember when Chuck Schumer stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and said, “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."?  That pronouncement took place four years ago, on June 8th of 2020, with Schumer using the phrase "released the whirlwind" to conveying his convictions about what was to come. 

Eighty four years ago this month, while visiting Coventry after the city was razed on Nov 14, 1940 in an 11 hour raid involving nearly 500 Luftwaffe bombers, Churchill quoted this verse from Hosea 8.7: “They have sown the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind.”  

While the two quotes may sound somewhat similar, they're not. Reaping is different from releasing. 

Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house

OK, we all know there's a lot of loneliness out there. The Left has been doing its best to destroy the family, nucular and extended, for 50 years or so. Add to that the separation of miles in the name of finding a job and a lot of people need somebody. We are, after all, pack, if not herd, animals. 

Some turn to false voices, partly because they promise everything. Fortune, success, love, family, and everything else. They've been particularly successful with women. 

Feminism, like Black Power, La Raza, revolting students, Gay Is Good, and all the other dodges dreamed up by Yuri Andropov when he was head of the KGB, calls to those who felt, for right or wrong, alienated. After a couple of generations, blacks, Hispanics, and some women and students have seen that, for all that was promised, little was delivered.

These were the voices, mainly female and homosexual, screaming into their phones on November 6 and since. They still believe the lies and women, most especially, seem to feel like they must strike out because they did not win.

This is the crowd that is looking into the mirror asking, "So, is it me, the cat, and the vibrator for the rest of my life?". And the false voices still lead them astray. No men, they say; no women, especially white, who voted for Trump, cut yourself off from the family for Thanksgiving (and Christmas, New Year's, St Swithin's). They want them to tell black or Hispanic friends who went for Trump that's not the way minorities should act.

I expect the suicide rate will skyrocket before too long.

A lot of people had fun watching the hissy fits, but there comes a time when you have to see a lot of these people as terribly broken human beings (maybe that's what differentiates us from them) and you feel badly for them.

All of the "causes" I mentioned above had their "other", their Emanuel Goldstein, and it usually boiled down to straight white male, Conservative, church going, working. Someone to blame.

I know family gatherings can sometimes seem like the Battle of the Bulge, but I do hope there are people who can negotiate a truce, even if it means acknowledging that Uncle Harry really is a jerk, and to get him to just smile and say nothing for once.

They may be crazy cat ladies, but they're still people.

On Sinks & Signs