Rant

Another dog whistle that only leftists can hear.

This was in reply to a moron who claimed that this was just par for the course because “…he tried to have a rally on Juneteenth in Tulsa.”

The original post:

I don’t even want to go looking for what the accusation actually is. They have a clip of Trump saying something, but I don’t trust anything posted until I can examine it in context.

Defamation: A statement that injures a third party’s reputation. It is a type of tort.

Slander: A false statement, usually made orally, which defames another person. The damages from slander must be proved by the party suing.

Libel: A method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person’s reputation.

In other words, it is all linked together. In general, we speak of libel as written defamation and slander as spoken defamation.

E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her. Trump denied the allegation he raped her. Carroll then sued Trump for defamation.

Trump lost the defamation case. I believe that the case is on appeal.

This is the case that leftists have been using to say “Trump was found guilty of rape.”

No, he was not. Rape is a criminal offense, tried in a court of law, prosecuted by the state. E. Carroll was unable to find a single prosecutor willing to charge Trump with rape.

She brought a civil case. In a criminal case, the accused must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, it is a preponderance of the evidence. Very different.

Nobody on the left is willing to say that a court that finds in the way they want might be biased, while at the same time screaming that any court that finds against their wishes must be right-wing extremists/right leaning bias. In terms of this case, the suit was brought in a notoriously anti-Trump court.

The court allowed statements that did not directly relate to the charge.

In the end, the jury found that no rape occurred but felt that there was a sexual assault. See past articles regarding multiple charges to allow a jury to do the right thing and then give a lesser charge to make the plaintiff (in a civil suit) or the prosecutor a “smaller” win.

The jury awarded E. Carroll 5 million dollars.

Trump makes it all back, and then some

Yesterday, December 15th, Trump reached a settlement with ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle Trump’s defamation suit against ABC News for statements made by George Stephanopoulos.

George claimed that Trump had been found guilt of Rape. This is a false statement that damages Trump’s reputation, i.e., defamation.

Rather than a length and expensive civil trial, which they would have lost. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million for the building of the Trump presidential library. They will also pay $1 million dollars towards Trump’s legal fees.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/george-stephanopoulos-abc-apologize-trump-forced-pay-15-million-settle-defamation-suit

When I was a small kid, I would get in fights with the neighbor kid across the street from me. The parents were cool about it, but were unhappy with the bare knuckle part of the fighting. So, we were issued boxing gloves and went at it with all the grace of two gangly 3rd graders.

Plenty of swings, plenty of hits, but no real damage. Jimbo won all but one of those fights.

After every lose, I would think about what had happened and vowed to get better. Only to be beat in our next confrontation.

It was soul crushing. At the same time, I was dealing with a bully who would chase me home after school, every day.

After each battle, as I lay on the ground, crying, humiliated, he would taunt me.

The last time we fought, I won. I had learned enough to actually beat him. When he was about to go down, I went at him even harder.

He went down, and I took a step back, started to taunt him.

His brothers and sister immediately stepped in to cool things off. It was about sportsmanship. Being the better man. Doing the honorable thing.

As a 3rd grader, it was difficult, but I did manage it.

That was our last fight. He was no longer interested in fighting, preferring to talk about it instead.

When the Democrats lost control of the congress, Obama was famously quoted as saying, “I have a pen and a phone.” Telling the world that he was going to use executive powers to do what congress had not authorized him to do, sort of like a dictator.

From the moment that Trump was declared the victor of the 2024 election, there have been two loud groups of Democrats and leftists.

The first is calling me stupid because of how I voted, cutting their hair to spite Trump voters (huh? I don’t get it), wishing that the economy will crash, and in general exhibiting all the standard symptoms of TDS.

The other group is making speeches, telling me that we have to remember the other half of the country, that we have to work to end the divide between us, to allow the losers a place at the table.

In other words, don’t do to them what they do to us, every time.

Ally was very upset that Merrick Garland wasn’t given a chance to testify before the Senate Judicial committee, to find out if he was a good person for the Supreme Court.

I pointed out that the best that Merrick could be was worse than anybody a Republican would nominate. She is still upset that he didn’t get a full hearing.

There is no reason for the Trump administration to put wolves in with the flock. There is no reason for him to trust the olive branch that is handed to him. There is no reason to try to temper the response that is coming.

Here’s the thing, it is time for a scorched earth response. It is a time to clean out the rat’s nest that is the unelected bureaucracy of the Federal Government.

I’m looking forward to hearing about the RIFs that are going to happen. I’m looking forward to higher ups that are not fired, but offered positions in Nome, Alaska. I’ve been offered that choice, I could find a position elsewhere in the company, in the next six weeks, or I could resign.

It is not fun. It happens to many people.

I’m also looking forward to true investigations of the criminal activities against The People, against Trump, and against my country.

I don’t remember what the statute of limitations is on mishandling classified materials, but if it is long enough, Mrs Clinton should be charged. She was investigated, the acting director of the FBI determined that she wasn’t guilty because her purpose was pure.

Nobody else with a security clearance would get that pass.

Or the serial leaker.

Or the people who refused to show up for congressional subpoenas. I have a strong feeling that the Democrat party is going to have a tough few years.

I did not want Jimmy Carter to win. Neither did my parents. When he was elected, we were willing to cheer for him to succeed.

He didn’t. As much as Biden and Clinton messed up this country, no single President comes close to Jimmy. Most of the mess in the Middle East can be laid directly on him.

When Clinton was elected, I was unhappy. He did not strike me as a good person for the job. Still, I cheered for my country. I wished him success in bringing good things to our country.

It turns out that Bill is a morally bankrupt person. The rumors of people taking the “w” key from all the keyboards in the White House? My boss at the time was responsible for replacing all the vandalized keyboards.

I was extremely disappointed when Biden won the election. Because numbers are a gigantic part of my life, I looked at the numbers and knew that these were questionable numbers. Not that they were proof of cheating, but that they were indications that the event should be audited.

No court heard any of the Trump challenges on the merits.

Larry Correia wrote a great article regarding how auditors find fraud, —Obama to GOP: “I won”, POLITICO, (last visited Dec. 1, 2024).

My issue was how it felt like “they” were out to punish “us” for speaking up.

Still, I hoped that we would make it through 4 years of Joe without too much damage. We are still here.

They Want Us to Fail

An article caught my attention, A Trump judge blocked overtime pay for 4 million workers in TEXAS….

Having been reading and following court cases, I was interested in what was going on.

First, Trump appointed the judge. That doesn’t mean the judge was wrong, nor does it mean that the judge acted in a biased way. But they had to hang this on Trump, so “Trump judge”.

To anyone in Texas that voted Blue and is affected. I am so sorry… To anyone in Texas that voted Red and is affected… Fuck you, you got what you voted for…

I’m on salary… but I wanted yall to have it. But folks voted for this.

Trump voters are about to find out the hard way and I will laugh the entire 4 yrs as their broke ass’s get on interviews begging for help!

The actual ruling? Judge blocks Biden administration’s rule to expand overtime pay for millions

Sounds to me like it was a judge following the law.

Conclusion

They want the economy to tank. They want everybody to be hurting more than we are now.
They want it out of spite. They are evil and like most evil people, think they are on the side of good.

Much of the noise in the MSM and social media (X) is leftist, attempting to call more than half the country “stupid”.

“How could you vote for a convicted felon?” ask many. Well, we’ve just seen that case evaporate. It should never have been brought. And as Justice Thomas said, …the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel… A private citizen is not allowed to bring a criminal case.

Then there was the story about how a company informed their employees that they would not be getting “Holiday Bonuses” because they were going to use their assets/profits to buy foreign made goods before the tariffs start. With the “you are so stupid you voted for this.”

The latest meltdown has been about Trump slapping a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico. How this was going to drive up the price of gas, which will drive up the cost of everything.

Tariffs are the only tax you can avoid

The People pay for every tax. The government uses many methods to hide the taxes you pay.

Most people know that they pay income tax. This is pretty simple, take the amount of many you were paid for your labor and give a portion of it to the government, under threat of deadly force. People with guns will take you to jail if you don’t pay.

When I was living in Maryland, I sent about 37% of my income to the local, state, and federal government.

I was also sending 5% sales tax to the state for everything I purchased in state.

But that is just the beginning.

The state slaps a tax on fuel. This drives up the cost of transportation, which drives up the price of goods, which is a tax I’m paying.

When people talk about how greedy the oil companies are, consider that taxes make up 14% of the cost of a gallon of gas, while the profits are $0.10 to $0.20 per gallon. Or about 5%. Who is greedy?

Speaking of greedy, why is it considered greedy to want to keep the money I’ve earned?

When the left screams “Tax the Rich!” or they want to raise the taxes on the wealthy, they really mean they intend to tax you more.

If the cost of doing business goes up by 10%, then that cost will be passed on to the consumer.

If we were to tax the very wealth, the rich, at 100%, it wouldn’t fund our government’s spending addiction for a full year.

The left refuses to acknowledge that taxing corporations is actually taxing the people.

When they talk about the massive profits a corporation sees, most of that goes out to The People who hold stocks. Like those of us with any sort of retirement fund outside social security.

It reminds me of a mailing that a democrat sent out which showed how horrible Oil Companies were. They got over a billion dollars in a refund, proving they didn’t pay enough. And the average leftist buys into it.

You’re stupid, tariffs will raise your prices!

Well… Yes, they will, in the short run. They can also be used to good effect to modify purchasing behaviors and the policies of foreign countries.

Just a few days after Trump announced he was going to put a 25% tariff in place against Mexico, the Mexican President announced that they were going to be turning the latest migrant caravan back, before it reaches the Mexican boarder.

And don’t let the Democrats pull a Jimmy Carter. This is not happening because of Biden, it is happening because of the incoming administration.

If you maintain a static model, then our prices will go up. But the world is not static. It is dynamic.

Under a static model, a 100% tax will bring the most amount of money to the government. The truth is that a 100% tax means that people stop working, there is no reason to work if the government takes it all. People adjust the amount they earn to modify their tax liabilities.

As an example, today I can buy a piece of machinery, made in China, for $1000. The same piece of machinery, made in the USA, will cost me $1500. For a $500 difference, I might choose to buy the made in China version.

If there is a 25% tariff, then the China machine will cost $1250, or more. Now the cost difference is less, I can decide to buy the American production.

But that is still an increase in price. Yes.

What if the American machine was only $1200? If the China machine is $1250, it is a no-brainer to buy American.

There is another thing that happens, that is there is a reason to manufacture in America.

The Chinese government subsidizes a great deal of their products to capture market share.

While the leftists will scream about the evil corporation having a monopoly and driving competition out, they fail to see it from state actors. China uses these subsidies to drive competitors out of business. Sort of like the leftists complaining about Walmart forcing small, local, business to close.

If American manufacturing can have an honest chance of competing, there will be more product made in the United States. Having more product means that there will be more supply. More supply will drive prices down.

In the end, my prices might go up. On the other hand, eventually, it is good for the country.

Sunday was supposed to be the day I migrated a couple of machines. I have a new physical device which is described as a Level 2 switch with SFP+ ports.

The idea is to replace my small mixed routers, 2 SFP+ ports plus some RJ45 ports with either a L2 SFP+ only switch or an L3 SFP+ only routers. This allows me to move some servers around and to increase the bandwidth from nodes to the backbone.

The switch arrived with a nice little instruction manual which claims I can find a web interface at 192.168.2.1 while the website claims there is no management interface.

Plugging it into an Ethernet port with an Ethernet SFP module gives me nothing on 192.168.2.1 and nothing on 192.168.2.x/24 but for my machine. It looks like it is unmanaged.

This means, it should be a simple plug in replacement for my tiny switch, giving an upgraded data path to the backbone.

It didn’t work.

So now I have to do some more testing. I’ll figure this out, one way or another, but it is another bottleneck in my path to full conversion to fiber from copper.

Conversations with friends can be difficult. One of my friends is burdened by the inequity of the world.

Because he is conservative and a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, his issues with inequity are putting him in serious mental anguish.

What Has Been

You struck out, westward, when you found a place to your liking, you made it your own. This included clearing the land, building your home, cultivating your ground, hunting, and surviving.

If you were lucky, you might find an abandoned homestead to take over. You paid for that home with the sweat of your brow. Nothing was easy.

In other cases, you might be close enough to civilization that you could purchase your home. Be that the wood to build it, or the house itself. You could also buy a house from the previous homeowner.

As time went on, the areas around the towns became more built up. The houses within the towns became more valuable. People invested in their homes, making them still more valuable.

Still, it was almost always a buyer’s market.

With vast amounts of “free” land, land was cheap, if you didn’t want a big house, your house was cheap too.

When you start seeing more expensive homes, they were passed down from father to son, as was the land. The family’s wealth was tied up in their land.

It’s NOT Fair!

But that means that those who came first got it easy! They got it cheap! There’s nothing left of ME!

My grandparents bought their home in the early 1900s. If I recall correctly, they paid around $5k for it. According to the googler, the average house price in 1929 was $6k. In 1929, my grandfather was likely earning about $1700/year. So a house would cost about 4 years worth of labor.

My house cost about one year of labor, the year I bought it. My house is actually cheaper than my grandfathers house. And my house is huge in comparison.

My grandparents, with their three daughters, lived in a two bedroom, one-bath house. There was a living room and a dine in kitchen. There was a full, unfinished basement. My grandfather built the detached garage later. It had a massive porch that extended the entire width of the front.

Grandpa added a back porch that was closed in to make it 3.5 seasons. Oh, there was a big mudroom off the back entrance.

When we were looking at houses, our minimum requirement was two full baths, four bedrooms, large kitchen, dining room. What we ended up with was larger than that. And it was still cheaper than my grandparents’ home.

It is fair.

But they didn’t have to pay as much!

It is all relative. My grandparents didn’t spend as much on entertainment. When they did go out, it was often very cheap dates. A nickle movie with popcorn and a soda was a 1/2 hour of labor. A movie with popcorn and soda is about 3/4 of an hour of labor today.

My friend wanted to buy a house for 2 years of labor, while having “needs” that would cost him 5 to 6 years of labor. And being upset.

His argument is that if they people that had come before were to stop being “evil” and “greedy”, there would be more houses.

The issue is that the housing market is currently a seller’s market. The demand is higher than the supply. This means that sellers can demand more money. When they get to where they are going, they will have to pay more as well.

Listening to people dancing at the “profit” they made selling their homes on Monday, and bitching about how unfair it is on Friday when they have to pay more for a new home, makes me giggle. I feel for them. I don’t understand why they don’t get it.

If we were just to…

We have a small lot, for the area, which backs on a few acres of forest. I do not want somebody to build a house right behind us. My options are to purchase the property behind us, risk it, or get the government to zone the land to stop new building.

I would like to purchase the land outright. That would be the best option for us. The risk is fairly low, there isn’t much demand for new housing in our area. But going to the zoning board…, now there’s an idea.

The wonder of the zoning board is that you can often convince the zoning board to put limits on the uses of property to protect the community.

We will zone land as noncommercial to keep traffic out, we might zone an area for single family dwellings to give people a sense of space and property, we might zone an area for high density housing or even trailer parks.

Zoning laws help protect the community from things like semi-trailers driving down the road in front of your house. The government put a US highway through my grandparent’s town. It was the street in front of their house. When they moved in, the road was a tree—lined boulevard. The first time I saw it, it was a four lane road with street parking on both sides and big rigs running through town all day and all night.

Occasionally, we find zoning laws designed to protect our farm land. The farm up the road was on the market for 10 years. Nobody was willing (or able) to buy it. In the end, they were able to sell off about 5 acres of the 100+, which became 3 lots with big houses on it.

Zoning laws kept that farm from becoming a huge apartment complex, or a subdivision.

If we were just to allow people to build as many houses as densely as they want, then house prices would be low enough for me.

Conclusion

I’m wealthy, by world standards. By world standards, I’m part of the “1%”. Then again, so are you.

The people of the United States are unbelievably wealth. The poorest of the poor in America are obese. They are not starving. Some might be hungry, but they are not starving.

I’ve been in section 8 housing to service computers. At a time when large, flat screen TVs were running 1000 to 2000 dollars, they had three.

When I was in high school, at one bus stop the “poor” kids would get off, they would run into their tar paper shacks. These were the kids who got to go to gym class as their first class. So they could use the showers.

They were so poor that they didn’t have enough running hot water for showers. I don’t know if they had showers in those shacks.

I do know that there were always two or three late model Cadillacs in the driveway.

The “poverty line” for the United States is higher than the average income of most countries in the world. Even some 1st and 2nd world countries.

If what you want as a home isn’t here, you need to look further afield or change your specifications.

Crying over what has been isn’t going to change anything.

Complaining that the people with wealth are “greedy” and “evil” isn’t going to change anything.

If it is the government standing in the way of lower costs, then we can get the government out of the way. That doesn’t mean that all zoning laws are bad, some might be.

In general, being upset that some people have things you want and are unwilling to give it up, or are willing to fight to protect their property or the value of their property, is only going to make you mad.

Stop stressing over what others have. Take stock of what you do have and give thanks.

I have a friend who voted for Kamala. He is an intelligent person. Reasonably educated, firearms guy. I like talking to him and hanging with him.

We don’t talk politics because politics stresses him. I didn’t know he was voting for until recently.

I got about ten minutes of his time and asked him if he could tell me why.

There were multiple reasons, the one that stuck in my mind was, “How could you vote for a convicted felon? He should be in prison.”

I’ve heard this many times, I just tune it out because it is a true statement without context.

He had other reasons having to do with his perception of Trumps morals and how he believes Trump treats people. Not relevant to this discussion.

I asked him if he knew what Trump had been convicted of. His answer was “fraud”.

This set me back a little bit. I know what the case was about. The big “37 counts” was the same charge repeated in different ways.

If I recall correctly, for each check that Trump signed a check to his lawyers, it was notated as “legal expenses.” The state claims there are three separate counts for each one.

Regardless, I asked my friend if he was aware that these felonies were misdemeanors until they changed the law and that the statute of limitations had expired.

“No, I wasn’t aware.”

“Were you aware that this is the first and only time this crime has been prosecuted?”

“No, I wasn’t aware.”

“Were you aware that the crime charge was that he had attempted to cover up a crime by filing false statements, but that they never proved the precursor crime?”

“No, I wasn’t aware.”

This is propaganda at play. He would rather not be involved in politics, but he can’t escape it. Listening to someone like me just stresses him out. He would rather not have that conversation, and I do not blame him.

The overwhelming political noise that he is exposed to is always, “Trump is bad, Trump is Evil, Trump is a rapist, White Supremacists, and he is a convicted felon!”

He can’t escape that noise. It is everywhere.

One of the things that Allyson exposed me to is the left’s filter method.

You can’t vote for him because

I like to believe that we have a big tent. If you are a conservative, you are welcome under the tent.

This is surprising to most leftists. They believe that if you are gay, trans, black, brown, immigrant, poor or whatever other label they have, that you will be not only kicked out of the Conservative tent, but you will be attacked and hurt.

Some of that “attacked and hurt” comes from their claim that speech is violence.

What do I mean by “the left’s filter method”?

It is the process of finding a fault or flaw or “unacceptable” position to rule a candidate out.

Consider Ronald Reagan. He was a great president. He also made mistakes as the Governor of California. He signed gun-control bills into law as Governor.

I have heard people say that because I find Reagan to be a great president, I should agree that gun-control is good, since my hero signed gun-control bills.

That is not how it works.

From the left’s standpoint, that single error on Reagan’s part is enough to disqualify him. If it doesn’t, then I’m stupid.

Every time I would talk to the leftist Ally about a conservative candidate, she would tell me how she could never vote for them because… She would then present a single point to prove that they were unqualified for her approval.

It wasn’t about the whole of the person, it was about filtering them out for any reason possible.

This is why the left runs campaigns of emotion. Kamala never said anything that would cause the filter to kick in. And those filters are always judged against the enemy.

“He endorsed a person who said that Puerto Ricans were garbage.” And that would filter him out of the acceptable list.

All the hoaxes we saw are based on this. They are quick sound bites that are designed to trigger that filter. “He called White Supremacists ‘fine people'”. It doesn’t matter how often this is debunked, it still works.

It works because there will be people that hear just the sound bite and it will be enough to support their desire to not vote for orange man bad.

BLUF: Be compassionate. Yes, even if it hurts. Yes, even if they’re assholes and dickwads. I want to know that I picked the right side. I want to know that this is the side that isn’t lying to me.

Right, we have a new President Elect. Trump defied the odds, and he took it all. He is the President Elect. He won us the Senate. And it looks like he won us the House. I’m sure most of us have been celebrating in some fashion or another for the past couple of days. And now it’s time to buckle down.

The Right have decried the Left for having majorities and doing nothing with them. We have the majority across the board for the next while, and we NEED to be doing stuff with it. We need to enact those campaign promises. Better economy, getting dangerous criminal aliens out of the country, lower grocery costs, better housing market, and the list goes on. This isn’t going to happen overnight, but Trump must put himself to work immediately and start getting things done.

The Left is so aflutter with terror right now that there might actually be a teaching moment, if the Right can keep things together. For the next few weeks, between election results and inauguration, the Left expects to be treated like dirt. We can’t. We must act with compassion.

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Willful incel stupid

You would have voted for Kamala. But you are a stupid incel, so Trump is president-elect.

racist

It isn’t Democrat messaging that caused people to turn away from Kamala in droves, no, it was you were racist. Against the woman who can’t figure out if she black, brown, Indian, or something else.

uneducated

The uneducated population of America is holding the rest of the country hostage.

You uneducated want to weaken education, ban books and outlaw teaching BLACK history.

entrenched in tribal superstition, irrespective of all facts

You wouldn’t have voted for Trump. Because your mortgage, grocery, fuel prices will go up under Trump.

You need to understand just how wonderful the economy is right now.

didn’t vote for a convicted felon

Those 34 felony counts are real. For you to vote for a convicted felon is horrible.

knew that Trump is coming for your Social Security and Medicare

You wouldn’t have voted for him.

white supremacist and full of toxic masculinity

You would know that Kamala is right for America.

able to recognize bullshit coming from Democrats

The meltdown is incredible. My favorites have been the leftists claiming there was something fishy about this election because 15million votes have “disappeared”. There is no ability on the left to look at the numbers and think that 2020 was the outlier.

Why did they lose? Not their fault. It is your fault they lost. If only YOU had.

There is no introspection going on, only blame.