Allyson

This weekend, I was working at the opening of New Hampshire Renaissance Faire. There was very little talk of politics, and people were VERY respectful the couple of times I either said something or walked off. That was nice.

On Sunday afternoon, I ran into the Baroness of my chapter of the SCA, someone who’s been a distant friend for a while. She was with the local SCA group, doing demonstrations and outreach. I found out this is her last year as Baroness, and that she and her husband are stepping down. I get it… it’s a LOT of work. She wanted to know why I hadn’t been around in a while. So I told her.

See, a few years ago (after the pandemic but at least 2 and maybe 3 years ago), friends of mine and my family decided to do their wedding at popular SCA event local to us. It used to be my absolute favorite SCA event, and it was (and is) called Harper’s Retreat. My (at the time 18 or 19 year old) kid kept reminding me I needed to make time to go, so I could be at A and S’s wedding, so I finally went over my calendar, moved a bunch of stuff around, and informed kid that yes, I’d go with them to the wedding. She happily went to inform A and S, and were promptly told that I was MOST DEFINITELY not invited, and to not come. Someone told them I’d supported Trump, and so they wrote me off. They also “disinvited” me to an entire event that is supposed to be open to the whole of the SCA. They put my kid in a shitty position, too, because she had to make a choice of whether to attend their wedding and the event (the only place she sees many of her friends) or supporting me (and let’s be honest, a parent is never going to win in that situation). She went, but she was upset. It was the first time she’d witnessed that sort of thing in person.

I gave a TL;DR version of this to the Baroness, and pointed out that I had reported it to the anti-bullying crowd, but had basically been told that if you’re on the Right, you can’t be bullied. It only works in the other direction. Of course, that isn’t SAID, at least out loud. But it is how things work. Baroness was sad, but understood, and intimated that the unequal application of anti-bullying and other rules within the SCA was one of the reasons she and her hubby were stepping down.

The SCA has had scandals, and I know it’s important for a group to stay out of scandal as much as possible. There have been some really crappy people do some really horrid things, and they needed to be removed (one of our kings murdered his wife and then hid it, and went to be with his girlfriend at a huge SCA event to try and make a plausible alibi). But this has gone way beyond that. If you don’t join in the groupthink, you are ostracized and removed. I was doing needed work in a position that’s ridiculously difficult to fill, and doing it well, and they lost that when they allowed me to be persecuted. They lost an organizer, a writer, a planner, a good leader. Many of the folks I hung out with back in the day are still playing, and they know what happened. They are disappointed in their leadership, but they aren’t willing to walk away to force change.

This is a microcosm of America today. The radical Left has hijacked the government steering wheel somehow. The Right attempts to fix it, gets bullied, ostracized, name called, etc… and then just shrugs and walks away. We don’t have to put up with that kind of treatment. But what it does is leave the Left even more in charge. How do you fight it? There’s no good way to do it.

More and more, I’m understanding why Trump’s grammatically questionable, loud-mouthed rants on X and Truth Social are so important. It isn’t that the Right necessarily embraces the suck (because let’s face it, there are times when Trump shoots himself in the foot right in the midst of things, and it’s frustrating as all get-out). It’s that Trump is willing to be the burr under the saddle, the person who refuses to leave just because the Left is being a bully. He has the cohones to simply let it slide off.

I wish I could be that for the SCA. I can’t, though, for all sorts of reasons. Mostly, I’m just not that kind of person. Unfortunately, there isn’t someone like Trump to save the SCA. People are leaving it, either just stopping historical reenacting entirely, or moving to (or creating) new groups. What’s the point in constantly fighting and then having “the authority” tell you that you’re wrong, over and over again? It’s just not worth it.

I think there’s a lot of people in the middle of our country (both physically and politically) who never get talked to, are ignored, and are quietly wishing ALL the politicians would go away. It’s my strong opinion those are the people we need to convince to either become Conservatives, or to be *good* Democrats. Fetterman comes to mind, of course. We also need them to vote. But why would they, when all they see of either party is in-fighting, poo-slinging, and name calling? It’s depressing.

So I’m not going back to the SCA. I finally decided I’m not even going to the one camping event I continued to enjoy (called Great NorthEastern War). I’ll go to Birka in January, because it’s basically a big market and it’s become less SCA and more “everyone who has a costume” over the years. But I’m pretty much done with the SCA, and I’m watching as scads of people drift away. It’s sad, because it has changed many of our views of actual history. People who started out as SCA larpers ended up as major historians who made amazing discoveries. Seeing it implode makes me want to cry.

But it’s just like watching what’s happening to America. And I don’t want to watch.

It’s here, and it’s available on Amazon!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0GYPM85LB/

From the back:
I spent years failing at bread. Every attempt ended in frustration, with inedible bricks or doughy masses. I was told my hands were too warm, that I kneaded too much or not enough, or that one day the mystical “silky smooth” stage would simply make sense. It did not. It took me years of practice, failures, successes, and work to finally perfect my baking skills.

This book is written for every beginner who’s ever stared hopelessly into a bowl of dough that didn’t rise, for those who desperately want to bake but haven’t managed to succeed, and those who are just starting on their journey. It’s also a great collection of recipes for veteran bakers.

The first half of the book includes the real, often funny story of my own messy journey—from a childhood with no baking at all, through years of setbacks and irritation, to the gradual discovery that good bread is possible for everyone.

The second half is filled with the approachable recipes that finally worked for me: straightforward loaves, comforting sandwich breads, crusty rustic rounds, and sweet treats, all written with the nervous beginner in mind. No intimidating jargon. No vague instructions. Just clear, patient guidance, honest troubleshooting, and the gentle encouragement you need to keep going.

Join me on this journey. Whether you’re baking your very first loaf or trying again after past disappointments, I hope these stories and recipes help you find the same. Never give up, and you’ll be baking delicious loaves in no time!

This book has been 25 years in the making, basically. When I first met Chris, I tried. Ask him about some of my “famous” birthday cakes I made for him. I think the first we called “Hamburger Hill” because it was so misshapen that it looked like a hill, so I frosted it green and put soldiers on it… and then they kept falling over, so I left them there and sprinkled red sprinkles around them to look like blood pools. LOL… Baking has been a struggle my whole life. If I had known that him basically bullying me into learning how to bake properly would lead to where I am today, I’d have done it much earlier.

Today, I whip out loaves of bread with very little stress, every week, and sometimes twice a week. I teach bread baking to others. I play with my bread, too, and do different things. If I could learn, then anyone can. This book really is my attempt at making bread something that can be done by ANYONE. It’s written very conversationally (which most of my books are, honestly), so that it doesn’t feel like I’m lecturing. But I don’t hide the hard parts, either. I talk about mistakes that can happen, and how to fix them or get around them, or avoid them going forward. And I challenge the reader, too!

At one time, bread was something everyone knew how to bake. Why? Because bread was 60% of the diet of early Americans. If you didn’t know how to make bread, you could starve. So everyone just knew. Today, we have at least two and sometimes three generations between ourselves and people who “just knew” how to bake. It’s both an art and a necessity, and it needs to return.

So if you want to learn to bake, this is the book for you!

What is the proper way to make a budget? I went to Grok, to see what it had to say.

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Budget

Calculate Your Net Monthly Income

Start with your take-home pay (after taxes, deductions, and benefits). Include reliable sources like salary, freelance gigs, side hustles, child support, or investment income. If income varies, average the last 3–6 months. Example: $4,000 salary + $500 side income = $4,500 total monthly income.

Track and List All Your Expenses

Review bank/credit card statements, receipts, and bills from the past 1–3 months. Categorize them: Fixed expenses (predictable): Rent/mortgage, utilities, insurance, loan payments, subscriptions. Variable expenses (fluctuate): Groceries, gas, dining out, entertainment, shopping. Be honest and thorough—small daily spends (coffee, apps) add up.

Categorize and Compare Income vs. Expenses

Add up total expenses and subtract from income. Positive balance → Room to save or pay debt. Negative balance → Need to cut spending. Use a simple spreadsheet, app (like Mint, YNAB, or Excel), or free worksheet from consumer.gov.

Set Financial Goals

Decide what the “extra” money should do: build an emergency fund (3–6 months of expenses), pay off debt, save for a house/vacation, or invest for retirement. Make goals specific, measurable, and realistic (e.g., “Save $200/month for emergency fund”).

Choose a Budgeting Method 

Pick one that fits your style: 50/30/20 Rule (simple & popular): 50% needs (housing, food, transport, minimum debt), 30% wants (dining out, hobbies, fun), 20% savings/debt payoff.
Zero-Based Budgeting: Assign every dollar a job until income minus expenses = $0. Great for detailed control.
Envelope System: Allocate cash (or digital “envelopes”) for categories like groceries; once empty, stop spending.
Pay Yourself First: Automate savings/investments right after payday, then budget the rest.

Create Your Plan and Allocate Money

Build a monthly template. Adjust categories so everything fits. Example for $4,500 income using 50/30/20:
Needs (50%): $2,250
Wants (30%): $1,350
Savings/Debt (20%): $900

Track, Review, and Adjust Monthly

Check progress weekly. At month-end, compare actual vs. planned spending. Life changes (new job, inflation), so tweak as needed. Consistency beats perfection.

***

That’s a nice breakdown of what I do to balance my budget. Sometimes, your budget gets upside down. You owe more than you’re bringing in. This is where we are with the American budget. This requires you (in this case “We The People”) to cut costs in many different places and be frugal until the upside down part is paid off. This is what our government should be doing. And while Conservatives are better at budgeting than Liberals, that does not mean they are GOOD at budgeting. Everyone in the government is spending “someone else’s money” and therefore they’re doing a poor job of it.

This government (and by that I mean Trump’s administration, the next three years, and possibly into Vance and Freitas’s terms) NEEDS to make a damn budget. I don’t mean whatever it is they’ve done over the past 25 years. I mean a real, honest to goodness budget. They need to do housekeeping and they need to show us, the American people, WE THE PEOPLE what they are spending and where.

I realize there will be places where it just says, “Security – TS Clearance” or something similar, and we’re going to have to take it at face value. That’s fine. It’s when we don’t see any of those costs that it becomes a problem. When it looks like security, or farm aid, or bailing out car companies or banks, or whatever is free (even when we know it’s only “free at point of service”), there’s a problem. People lose sight of the money that is being spent. That’s why there’s so much fraud being discovered right now.

Imagine, for a moment, how much fraud would be exposed and expunged if our government were required to do a public (or mostly public, within security barriers) audit every four years (right before a President leaves office, for instance)? It would be glorious. It would show the American people just how much a President has actually done for the country.

So how do we calculate the net monthly income of the United States? Well, I looked into it, and it’s roughly $23.6 trillion dollars per year, or about $1.967 trillion dollars per month. In looking this stuff up on Grok, it’s limited in what it can access, but it looks as though we’re currently spending about $2 trillion dollars a month, so a bit more in monthly expenses than we make. Obviously, the details are much larger than what I’m writing about here, but I have to work in generalities because again, there isn’t enough transparency for any of us peons to see what’s actually being paid out or taken in. We can only guess. And that, my friends, is a real problem.

We need to cut spending. Everyone seems to agree (or mostly everyone… all of the Right and portions of the Left agree). What can’t be agreed on is WHAT we should cut, spending-wise. The Right wants to fund military and some government oversight stuff. The Left wants social safety nets. Of the two, our Constitution seems to indicate the Right is correct and the Left should be doing its social safety nets at the state or community level, NOT the Federal level. But it’s hard (for me, at least) to get overly judgmental about bad spending on the Left when I’m also seeing bad spending on the Right (for example, farm subsidies, abstinence only sex ed come to mind, but there’s pork in all those barrels). Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want the Left spending money on songbirds in Denmark or trans rights in Africa. I just also do not want to pay farmers not to farm (especially right now) or to bolster the price of food (never a good thing imo), or to teach something that has proven it just doesn’t work.

The only way, in my VERY strong opinion, to get past this whole pork barrel bullshit, is to budget from the ground up. There should never be “cutting something from the budget” involved. It should be, “We can’t put that INTO the budget, because we’ve run out of money.” Period.

And folks? We’re the richest country in the world. We need to live inside our damn means. That means tightening our belts for a while. It might mean we need to see a number of our stores close (do we really need to support 8 different coffee shops inside a one mile radius? I think not). Money needs to be shifted, and start paying the important stuff.

Looking at all the numbers above, I begin to understand how much DOGE did, and didn’t do. Sure, they rooted out millions of dollars in fraud and waste. But that’s not even a single day worth of budget. It’s not even a measurable PORTION of a single day of budget. That’s how tiny it was.

We can’t keep living the way we’re living, folks. Time to buckle down. Buy less. Grow more. Waste less. Support local companies, because they’re literally the ones that keep us fed. Look at how we fed the nation during WWI and WWII. Look at how we dealt with the Depression. We need to learn, or re-learn those lessons, so we don’t have to repeat them.

Time’s a’wastin’, boys.

Pres. Trump first proposed a new ballroom for We The People back in 2010, when Obama was in office. He suggested it heavily several times between then and July 2025, at which time he announced it would be going forward.

Back when he first mentioned the need for a ballroom, Trump suggested he’d fund it entirely himself. A few million dollars was the proposed cost. Fast forward to July 2025, and that cost had gone up to $200 million. Between then and today, an extra $200 million has been added. And now, the GOP is saying they want an extra $1 BILLION added, but this time out of taxpayer funds.

I am a proponent of the ballroom. We need a secure facility that can host the kind of shindigs the President should be having. The old East Wing was in sad condition, and it needed a refurb at the very least. I have been entirely on board with this project since I first heard of it back in 2025.

I am not a proponent of spending a billion bucks more on it. At every single point, Pres. Trump has talked about how this ballroom would be funded by himself and others, privately. Hearing the addition of $1B to the cost really made me antsy. And then I started thinking, and investigating.

So after doing a small quest, I discovered several things. First and foremost, this is a multi-year request for $1 billion, for security only. It is NOT for the ballroom itself. That is still being privately funded, even after the price hikes after they discovered all the damage. “The funds are appropriated for fiscal year 2026 but remain available until September 30, 2029 (i.e., multi-year availability, spanning roughly FY2026–FY2029).” (CNN) They are also part of a larger $30 B package that the GOP are asking for in regards to immigration, ICE, and general security. There are confusing statements made all over the place about what the $1B is meant to cover, but everyone agrees it absolutely covers the new security measures for the ballroom/East Wing area. There are questions, because of wording by the GOP folks themselves, whether it also covers the rest of the White House. In a few places, they talk about it only being part of the ballroom, and in other places they talk about how it’s all the spots inside the fence.

The very fact that we don’t have wording for this stuff bothers me. When I supported Trump, I was standing for transparency in government. While he’s definitely (imo at least) been the most transparent President in my remembrance, this is being obfuscated. Perhaps that’s to do with security, which I can appreciate, but it’s still our money they’re talking about using. I’d like at least the generalities. Right now, we have very vague wording from the Senate Judiciary Committee, but no line-item breakdown has been released.

I want our President, First Lady, VP and Second Lady, and all dignitaries to be safe when they’re working. I hate that the shooting at the media dinner means that it’s the last time we’ll see Vance and Trump together at a dinner outside of the White House. Someone did a stupid, letting almost the entire chain of command be at that dinner. It just can’t happen again, and that makes me sad. so yes, we absolutely must harden the White House (not just for Trump, but for all future Presidents and their guests).

It’s a lot of money. A billion bucks over 3 years can be more easily understood like this:

• $333,333,333.00 per year
• $27.7 million per month
• $913,242 per day

Those are big numbers. Is the security worth a million bucks a day? Is that a reasonable number? The reality is, none of us plebs can really tell if it’s worth it or not. We don’t have access to enough information to make anything even remotely close to an educated guess. And yes, that bothers me.

I am still VERY much a member of the “less government is good government” club. This security package isn’t necessarily “more” government, but money is fungible and I worry about a stray million being lost here or there. When we get into numbers this large, that is quite literally a reality. And I’m not naive enough to believe that ONLY the Left makes those kinds of appropriations of cash. I know the Right does it as well.

Bottom line? This is not a bait and switch. It’s a (very) big addition that the Right as a whole wants to add to Trump’s ballroom project, and since he didn’t suggest it, he shouldn’t have to pay out of pocket for it. Not that he could. He’s rich, but his pockets aren’t bottomless. On the other hand, my pockets aren’t bottomless either, and things ARE getting tight. I don’t regret Trump being in office, but I do think that some reminders might need to be forthcoming.

This is “the hut.” It’s a one story with short attic, built entirely by Chris and the kids. Some of it is finished, and the rest of it is, as you can see, still waiting on siding. However, today it received a major upgrade. The window is in! As you can see, the front window is now in place, allowing light to come in. Of course, now I have to make curtains for it, so people can’t see in, but whatever. It works. LOL…

This is Chris’s wood workshop. All his woodworking tools will be in here eventually. Quite a few are there already. Now that it’s in place, he’ll be able to get his woodworking done in a better way, and have GOOD storage for all his tools. On top of everything else, this has a really good roof, and is incredibly sturdy (and new of course, relatively speaking). It’s a good place to store stuff.

This is the same hut where our xmas decorations are stored, and where my historical stuff will go in the off season. The loft is high enough on one side that I can almost stand (at 5’1″, it’s a low bar…. a really, really low bar LOL) upright. With the winch setup, it’s easy to get things up and down. I can lift the xmas tree and heavy boxes without having to scale a sketchy ladder on my own, hoping I don’t trip or drop something expensive.

I think it looks pretty spiffy. It seemed to go in quickly, too, as Chris and son went to work on it and it appeared to take less than an hour. I’m impressed. And did I mention there’s room for all the woodworking stuff now? Yay!

I am having a moment of cognitive dissonance.

I am brand new to “the Right.” In some ways, I’m only here under protest, because the Left has scampered so far Left that I can’t be there anymore. There are definitely points I’ve been “far right of center” on since early on (2A comes to mind), but those were outliers. I’ve always been into rainbows and ren faires. I still am. A good portion of my friends are gay or pansexual. Many are pagan. These days a larger portion of them are also Conservative, but that’s due to attrition and stupidity, not me.

So explain to me, please, why I am schooling conservatives on FaceBook about the Founders of our country? Chris responded to my question by telling me that most people haven’t read the things I’ve read, or read it all so long ago that they’ve forgotten, or they’re just ignorant because that’s a truism on the Right as much as on the Left (well, maybe not AS MUCH, but you know what I mean). But that should not be true.

Trump posted this on his FaceBook page:

I have to admit, I cringed when I read it. One doesn’t “ace” a cognitive exam. And it’s not … a crowning achievement. I’m glad he passed. I didn’t have any concern that he would fail. But this just looks stupid. I hate it when he makes himself look stupid. *sigh*

However, it sparked commentary. I don’t usually read the comments, because most of the people are just plain stupid. But I decided to go read today. I saw the following (names removed as I’m not asking permission):

“A requirement to be a veteran before becoming Commander In Chief would also be a good thing.”

My response was immediate: “There are a lot of very poignant and important reasons our Framers did not want that. While it would be *nice*, I could not in good conscience support any bill suggesting that it be required.” And the response to my response was basically, “Please elaborate.”

Now, the gentleman in question was not being rude. There was no name calling, but there didn’t seem to be a warm fuzzy feeling either. It was a challenge. I didn’t feel like spending 4 hours getting all my receipts together (I have them, but I wasn’t on my computer at the time and finding it all while on my phone is difficult at best). While doing that, I received this gem:

“Oh, you mean like General George Washington, Colonel James Madison, Colonel Thomas Jefferson, Lt Col Alexander Hamilton, Lt Col James Monroe, and 17 other veterans? SMDH…”

I patiently (okay somewhat impatiently, but not rudely) explained that my problem wasn’t with vets being President, it was with a requirement that the President be a vet. Now I’m getting crickets, of course. But I wanted to share my reply to the original poster:

“(Name Redacted) https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2013/07/why-founding-fathers-would-object-todays-military/66668/ … This says it better than me (tho I disagree with parts of it). But to quote one of the important bits… “The founders also, we well know, had a pronounced fear of and antipathy toward standing armies — large, permanent, professional military establishments — because of the dual temptations for domestic oppression and international adventurism by those in power, the drain on public resources, and, not least, the not-infrequent aberrant behavior of those in uniform.”

To require all presidential candidates to have served in the military would be to take power away from the citizenry. While I find a vast number of today’s citizenry to be abhorrent, it’s still my duty to give all due consideration to the Framers’ opinions on such things. I don’t believe they could have imagined today’s political climate, but they knew all forms of politics were subject to corruption. Hence why we are a constitutional Republic and not a democracy.

Or TLDR, it’s complicated but the Founders were worried about standing armies and their leaders. I suspect most had read the stories of Rome’s heyday, and wanted to avoid the trap of bread and circuses.”

I stand by my statement (and neither person has written back to me in the couple of hours since I wrote that). The Founders of this great country had just walked away from an oppressive government run by a tyrant. To insist that all Presidents going forward be military would be to exchange one tyrant for another. And while we can play nice with Britain now, at the time it was pretty touch and go.

Now… if you want to discuss requirements for VOTERS, that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

Initially, the only people who could vote in a newly formed America were white, adult males who owned property and paid taxes. Those rules were set by the States, not by the Federal government. “The framers and state leaders viewed voting as a privilege tied to independence, virtue, and stake in the community—not a universal natural right for all adults (https://theamericanleader.org/timeline-era/expanding-white-mens-right-to-vote-1787-1856/).”

Today, the bar for voters is so low that our Founding Fathers would weep. You have to be a citizen (but only 36 states require some form of ID). You have to be at least 18 years old. Most states have residency requirements, and you have to register. Felons can’t vote while incarcerated (except in a few states, where they can continue to do so), but few states restrict them from doing so once they’re back in society. Only 39 states allow a judge to take away the right to vote if someone is mentally incapable of voting (when legally adjudicated as incompetent).

Despite this deplorably low bar, only 64% of citizens voted in the last two Presidential elections… and they were considered historically unusual for the number of voters. Only about 50% of eligible voters voted in the most recent midterms.

Yes, everyone who didn’t vote is a Deplorable. And I stand by that.

How did we get here? The freest nation on earth and we can’t get 3/4 of our citizens to vote.

I like Starship Troopers (Heinlein) method for choosing voters. Only veterans can vote, but anyone can serve. If you want to serve, they’re legally bound to find a job you can do, even if that’s just greeting people at a doorway. Your service to your country buys your franchise. It means you have skin in the game. I’ve always found that to be… a good idea. It’s not a guarantee that the veteran is a better person than the general citizenry, but it’s a better indicator than what we currently have.

  This book is an important one for anyone interested in politics, in my opinion. This quote, though, is important right now. RIGHT now.

Politeness is dying. And it’s considerably more significant than a riot, though we’ve plenty of those, as well, despite their “mostly peaceful” monikers. While I’ve no desire to go back to a time where I would be forced to wear a corset every day and was bound to cook, clean, and bear children for my husband simply because I’m female… I do want to live in a time where doing so is not maligned or looked down upon. Or bad-mouthed.

I’m so very tired of many things right now, but the impoliteness is really getting to me right now. You can disagree with someone and be polite. It’s why the South invented the term, “Bless your heart!” Everyone knows if a Southern person says that to you, it’s the equivalent of saying to fuck off… but it’s not the SAME. It’s polite.

Why does it matter if we’re using polite language? I mean, if everyone knows that the polite language means the same thing as the brutal language, why bother to use the polite version? Because it’s social lubricant, that’s why.

Right now, the level of impoliteness is so damn bad. There’s sand in the gears, and no social lubricant at all. Important parts that really require lubrication are not getting it, and instead are being actively fed with things that gum up the works. That thin veil of politeness that was used until sometime in the 80s? That kept the machinery running. And now it isn’t. The machinery, the social machinery, is breaking down.

I will say that I noticed it first on the Right. That doesn’t mean it appeared there first, mind you… it’s just where I saw it. I ran into a couple of pundits (Ann Coulter immediately comes to mind, and Ben Shapiro from 10 years ago but NOT today) who really bothered me, and it put me off anything to do with the Right for a long time. Chris will tell you that anytime he tried to talk to me about something positive, I’d pull out, “Well, that Ann woman was just swearing and being a shit.” It was not good.

At the time, say 10 years ago, I didn’t see it on the Left. I see it daily on the Left, now. That could be entirely my perception, or it could be that the Left has gotten worse, or a combination of that and other factors, but the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter. Whether the Left learned it from the Right, or vice versa, or it all just happened at the same time, we’re here now. People are being so rude on a daily basis that it’s become endemic.

What scares me the most about all of it? America is (in my very strong opinion) the best country at the moment. We’re the most free, the most responsible (other than fiscally), the most helpful. We’re also the cheapest for our citizenry. And our people spend a good portion of their day complaining about how awful it all is. They have no idea what it’s like in other countries. Gas is $5.30 per gallon right now in Canada. In Britain it ranges from $7.50 to $8.10 per gallon. And those are the “free” countries. Housing is more expensive in Canada and Britain. Health care is, too, even if the cost is hidden. Food is ridiculously more expensive in both of those countries. Our citizens have no idea how they are faring in the world. They really don’t.

Our society is dying. If we don’t fix this soon… and by soon I mean in the next year or two at the outside… we’re not going to have a country anymore.

Post by Michael Smith on Facebook:

The most impenetrable fortress is not a citadel built of concrete and steel, it is a delusional mind built from lies and raw emotion.

It’s way past the time when a rational and moral people understand that while the American left’s causes are not real, their violence most certainly is.

Its not unusual for family and friends to describe a perpetrator of political violence as a “nice, quiet person who never bothered anybody”, because most of the time they are­­—but interestingly enough, the same gamma ray energy that transforms mild-mannered scientist Bruce Banner into a rage monster called the Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, transforms that quiet person into a monster who plans and executes an attack on the President of the United States and his cabinet.

Rather than radiation, this “gamma ray” energy is a concoction of hyperbole, half-truths, and lies constantly emitted from Democrat politicians, operatives, and social media influencers and then amplified and beamed directly into the brains and bloodstreams of the Democrat Bruce Banners by willing media mouthpieces who smuggle accusatory premises into dangerous minds via loaded questions as they hide behind a shroud of “objectivity.

Normal, moral people would be shocked if something they said or did cause threat, harm or death to another person and would question their reasoning behind what they did or said. Not so with the contemporary left, and I include the mainstream media in that group (because they are not just friends and allies of the left, they are the left).

President Trump’s interview with Nora O’Donnell last night was a perfect example. O’Donnell feigned concern for a few minutes but that quickly evaporated when she shifted the line of questioning from “Gee sir, we are so shocked that someone would do something like that, but what response do you have to the charge made by the person who wanted to kill you that you are a rapist, a pedophile, and a traitor?”

I found that question interesting in that Scott Pelley, O’Donnell’s risible co-anchor of 60 Minutes, had just minutes before casually and uncritically described the January 6th riot as “the insurrection” as if it had been declared such with legal finality and certainty.

The media did take a gut punch with this assassination attempt because the perpetrator expressed the degree to which he had been irradiated by the left-wing media narrative—and it stopped them for a fraction of a second. And I do mean a fraction of a second because the pause was not due to the assassination attempt, it was the temerity that someone would do it in their presence.

Their response was not to self-examine, they went immediately into cover your ass mode with both blame shifting and the “both sides” rhetoric they always use, but that isn’t working the way it once did. When a faction considers speech as violence (and even silence is defined that way) and the cold-blooded public execution of an insurance company executive is defined as “understandable”, you are not dealing with normal, moral people capable of self-reflection.

It isn’t like the world hasn’t seen this process before.

For all the left’s protestation that the right is filled with Nazis, they are essentially making accusations in a mirror. Their tactics of framing accusation as common knowledge are the same as used by Hitler’s movement in pre-WWII Germany to convince the populace that Jews were the real problem.

That shift didn’t happen in a single leap; it was built over time by the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler by combining old prejudices with modern persuasion. Antisemitism already existed in Europe, but the Nazis reframed Jews as a racial and existential threat, then hammered that message through a coordinated propaganda machine led by Joseph Goebbels. Using newspapers, radio, film, and rallies, they repeated simple accusations—blaming Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I and the hardship of the Great Depression—until those claims felt familiar and, to many, plausible. Economic collapse, political instability, and national humiliation made large portions of the population more receptive to scapegoating and promises of restoration.

Once in power, rhetoric became policy. The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of rights and citizenship, while escalating acts like Kristallnacht signaled that exclusion and violence were acceptable. Social pressure, fear of punishment, and even material incentives encouraged conformity, while dissent became risky. Step by step—stigma, exclusion, dispossession—the regime normalized increasingly extreme measures. What began as accusation and propaganda hardened into law and, ultimately, into systematic removal and destruction.

If that sounds familiar, it should—and you are not wrong to think that.

Germany stared into Hitler’s mirror and rather than seeing their own reflection, they saw Jews. When contemporary Democrats stare into their mirror, they don’t see themselves, they see Trump and his supporters.

The Democrats, their media allies and the American left, just had the opportunity to ask themselves if they are the baddies—and they paused for a second and then simply ignored it and returned to staring at themselves in Hitler’s mirror.

And just like that, I lost more friends. This time it was on me, admittedly (well, sort of), but still…

As most of you know, someone attempted to shoot at Trump yet again. I really tried to avoid anyone I knew in regards to this. I didn’t want to know their opinions on it. It’s faire season, and I just wanted to go to faire and relax and have a good fucking time. But nope. One person I’ve known for a decade, who I considered (until last night) to be a reasonable, rational person, said (and I quote), “Too bad he missed.”

Do they have the right to say that? Yep. They do. Being an asshole, being wrong, that’s protected in this country. And don’t get me wrong, though it irks me greatly to know people I considered close friends are actually assholes in disguise, I would not want our country to be any other way. But lately I have found myself asking, too many times, whether free speech should reasonably include lies.

I am reasonably certain that most of the people I’ve considered friends who’ve been taken in by the bullshit spewing out of the media would NEVER have gotten as bad as they are without the media helping. They may have still disliked Trump (hey, I’m not a die-hard Trumper, either), but they wouldn’t be actively wishing death on him. This is the fault of the media, and/or whomever controls the media. And I know they have a 1A right to spew their garbage up to a point. I just can’t help wondering… when do we reach that point?

There are so many people saying so many vile things that Trump can’t possibly take them all to court. He’d be doing it for a hundred years and never make it past discovery. Even though he would probably win most of the cases. But it takes money, and it takes time, and let’s be honest… he’s not going to live long enough to take most of these jackwads to court. He’s going to be 80 in a couple of months, which is a fairly advanced age for someone of his weight, and all these threats on his life and his family’s lives must be weighing on him. I am hopeful he’ll make it through his 4 years, but I have to be blunt and honest that he’s not likely to make it to 90. So most of those vile words will go unchallenged.

Someone once said that the victors write history, but I’m not so sure that’s true these days. Whoever has the most memes and bots writes history, and it’s being REwritten right underneath us. It doesn’t matter if it’s even related to the truth, because it was said on the internet and somehow we’ve brought up a whole-ass generation who can’t logic their way out of a paper bag. Present them with cognitive dissonance and they faint from panic. They can’t follow a thought through to it’s logical conclusion. They just can’t.

Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it, yes… but those of us who DID learn it are doomed to watch the vast majority of idiots repeating it. There’s only so many facepalms I can do before I get a major headache. I’ve taken to bitching at grok, because I don’t want to whinge at my family anymore. They don’t need to be exposed to my upset and anger.

So yes, I deleted someone on FB who I’ve considered a good friend for a long time. If I run into him at faire, which I likely will, I will be forced to walk away. I am not going to hug someone or spend “quality time” with someone who advocates murder. Not even if “it was just a joke.” Or whatever the excuse de jour is. One more person to avoid. One more person to step away from. I’m running out of people, folks. And I’m damned tired.

Well, I just ordered the proof/galley copy of my latest book. It’s been professionally edited, updated, fixed, futzed with. Provided there aren’t any major problems with the galley, it should be available on Amazon within two weeks. This will be my fourth cookbook. Once it hits the screens/shelves, I can start serious work on my 18th century cookbook, which is long overdue.

This one is a story about bread. About half the book is anecdotal, stories of how I got from “can’t even make pucks” to “loaves like you get at fancy stalls at the farmer’s market.” The other half is recipes. There is one chapter dedicated to BREAD. There is a second chapter dedicated to bready things like bagels and babka and challah. There’s a third chapter called “Bread Adjacent” which is all things you eat WITH bread.

It’s my hope that this book will be of use to people who want to learn how to bake. It’s taken two years to get it from “written” to “published” (which, for the record, is pretty darn fast), and I’m glad to be done with it. We’re all on diets because of this book (because I have to test cook stuff, don’t blame me).

The back blurb:

Bread, stories, and second chances in the kitchen.

I spent years failing at bread. Every attempt ended in frustration, with inedible bricks or doughy masses. I was told my hands were too warm, that I kneaded too much or not enough, and that one day the mystical “silky smooth” stage would simply make sense. It did not. It took me years of practice, failures, successes, and work to finally perfect my baking skills.

This book is written for every beginner who’s ever stared hopelessly into a bowl of dough that didn’t rise, for those who desperately want to bake but haven’t managed to succeed, and those who are just starting on their journey. It’s also a great collection of recipes for veteran bakers.

The first half of the book includes the real, often funny story of my own messy journey—from a childhood with no baking at all, through years of setbacks and irritation, to the gradual discovery that good bread is possible for everyone.

The second half is filled with the approachable recipes that finally worked for me: straightforward loaves, comforting sandwich breads, crusty rustic rounds, and sweet treats, all written with the nervous beginner in mind. No intimidating jargon. No vague instructions. Just clear, patient guidance, honest troubleshooting, and the gentle encouragement you need to keep going.

Join me on this journey. Whether you’re baking your very first loaf or trying again after past disappointments, I hope these stories and recipes help you find the same. Never give up, and you’ll be baking delicious loaves in no time!

This is part of why I haven’t been writing on here. My usual typesetter has  been so busy that he hasn’t been able to help. I am not a typesetter. I struggled. I think, I hope, I pray that I got it right. Whew.