• This story showed up in my feeds. I took note of it because, of course, they blamed the death of this poor black man on the conservative Supreme Court justices.

    The three liberals, would have granted the stay, but the six justices that insist on following the law did not.

    So what is the actual case?

    On August 11, 1998, F.G. was murdered in her home. A jury convicted Marcellus Williams of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, and first-degree robbery, and two counts of armed criminal action.

    The court then sentenced Williams to death for the first-degree murder.

    The case was State v. Williams, 97 S.W.3d 462, 466 (Mo. 2003) (Williams I).

    Williams then appealed to the supreme court of Missouri. After briefings were received, they issued a unanimous option denying Williams’s appeal and affirming the lower court’s judgement of convection and sentence.

    In 2013, Williams filed a writ for certiorari with the Supreme Court, which was denied.

    Williams asserted that DNA evidence would show that he was innocent.

    The case went up and down multiple times before that issue was put to rest. Remember, the lack of DNA does not mean that a person did not commit the crime.

    One of the most famous cases of this was the Central Park five. A young woman was stopped in Central Park by a pack of animals. They beat and raped her, leaving her severely injured. I do not remember when/if she died.

    Of that large pack of animals, 5 were brought to trial and found guilty. The evidence that convicted them was their confessions. These confessions were given with their mothers present.

    As an example, one of them stated, “I didn’t rape that woman, I just held her down while ??? raped her.”

    This is an admission of guilt of the crime of rape.

    Was his DNA found in or on the victim? No. It doesn’t matter. He admitted to doing the crime. He was found guilty by a jury of his peers.

    Later, a jailhouse confession by a man serving life sentence(s), with no option to ever leave prison, confirmed that the convict did rape the victim.

    This does not change the guilt of the original animals. The juries knew that there were unindicted individuals who took place in the gang rape. The juries knew that the animals on trial did not physically penetrate the victim. It does not matter.

    20+ years after the crime, they were set free. They were “innocent”. No, they were not.

    Back to Mr. Williams, his conviction was by jury. Multiple attempts to overturn that conviction happened. His case was before the Supreme Court, asking for a writ of certiorari 3 or 4 times. It was denied every time.

    In the latest trip to the Supreme Court, there were 6 conservative justices. There was a majority of liberal, results-based justices on the court when the case was appealed originally. Those majorities did not grant cert. either.

    The new appeal claims, not that Mr. Williams is innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted, no. It is a claim that he was only convicted because the prosecutor was racist.

    When a case is going before a jury, the parties get to evaluate the potential members of the jury. These people are formerly known as “venirepersons”.

    Each party has several peremptory strikes. These can be used to exclude any venireperson. No reason needs to be given. They can be excluded because the party thought they read too much, or too little. They are allowed.

    In addition to the peremptory strikes, the parties can challenge a venireperson for cause. “Do you know any of the people involved with this case?” “Yes, you prosecuted my little brother last year.”

    There were 131 venirepersons in total. Only 7 were black. The prosecutor struck six of them peremptorily.

    What was the racist thing that the prosecutor did? He dismissed one of those six men because he thought the two men looked similar.

    So, the left is very upset. They are very upset that a murder was executed for murdering a woman over 25 years ago.

    They have not proven that he was innocent. He had the presumption of innocents when on trial before a jury of his peers. In his appeals he has to prove that he is innocent or that new evidence, if the jury had known about it, would have caused them to reach a different verdict.

    This murder was long overdue, his chance to present his case to Saint Peter.

            

  • Update – Wed. Sep. 25, 2:39pm:

    So it turns out that each state has its own election rules, and there are several places that you cannot do what is suggested in the video below and the post. I encourage everyone to find out BEFORE the election what you should do if you find out someone has stolen your identity. Also, if you’ve had family members move out of state, pass on, or change voter status, make sure your local pollsters know that. It behooves us to ensure this stuff before each election, so that only the people who should vote, do vote.

    I also urge people who live in states that only allow mail-in ballots to change that. There should always be the ability for a citizen of the United States of America to step into a polling station and cast their ballot in person. Always.

    __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Original post, unedited:

    I’ve never had it happen to me, but I know a couple of people local to me were told at their polling place that they had already voted. This is, essentially, a form of identity theft. There are things you can do. What you should absolutely NOT do is harass the volunteers at the voting station. It’s not their fault and they are just following their rules. I was trolling on TikTok while I’ve been sick, and ran into this video, which I suggest you watch. The sound can be funky on it, not sure why. Works on my phone but not my computer.

    https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFjSh3rx/

    There’s a lot of other stuff on the video, such as advice on checking to make sure dead relatives aren’t on the rolls, and making sure that someone who’s changed their name (due to marriage or whatever) doesn’t have someone steal their pre-change identity.

    So apparently there are people out there, professional looking people, telling the populace to fill in their voting oval, and then to draw a line to their candidate. Please know, that will INVALIDATE your vote. Do not do that! Just fill in your oval.

    If you make a mistake, do not scribble on it. Go request another ballot. Yes, it’s a hassle. No, it’s not stupid. Yes, it’s worth it.

    If someone makes any kind of mark on your ballot, request another one. You do not take a ballot that has been marked on by another person, because it can invalidate your ballot.

    For those who don’t do TikTok, here’s the step by step written explanations on what to do. Please note, I am not a lawyer, and I literally got this off TikTok. It “passes the sniff test,” as Chris often says.

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  • Creating rules for anything, a game, a business, the interaction between parties, there can be negative rules, or there can be positive rules.

    You can have a set of negative rules. You cannot touch the ball with your hands. This is a rule in soccer.

    What was the original intention? We don’t know. What we do know is that it is legal to hit the ball with your head, knees and body, as long as you don’t touch the ball with your hands.

    This means that what is not forbidden is allowed.

    If on the other hand, the rules are written in a positive mode. You can only touch the ball with your legs from the thigh down. You have inverted the restrictions. What is not permitted is not allowed.

    You don’t have to state “you cannot touch the ball with your hands”. This is subsumed from the default negative. If it is not permitted, you cannot do it.

    Our Constitution was written as a set of positive rules for the government. The government is authorized to do X, Y and Z. They are, by design and default, not allowed to do A through W.

    When the Bill of Rights was ratified, we added negative rules. “Congress shall make no law…”

    There is no conflict between the amendments and the original Constitution. The Bill of Rights made explicit that which was implicit. The government shall not do C, G, and W!

    Unfortunately, this left the door open for the government to do evil. “Since the Constitution doesn’t say anything about A, B, and D, we can intrude in that area!”

    The explicit addition to our Constitution made this argument possible.

    Since the state always seeks to increase their power over The People, this is a fight that has been going on for decades.

    In Bruen, the Court made it clear that the state must …demonstrate that the regulation was consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. —New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. City Of New York, Oops. Novel citation pattern. 8 (U.S. 2020).

    The state bears the burden of demonstrating to the court that the law is consistent.

    Not the plaintiffs, (Good Guys), nor the court, but the state.

    For the state, this is a losing position. “Shall not be infringed!” is powerful language. They want that history to be as open as possible and as wide-reaching as possible.

    In the early post-Bruen cases, they through the legal dictionary at the wall to see what would stick. In Duncan, the first iteration of “historically reinvent” regulations ranged from the 1500s through the mid-1900s. They were forced to reduce that for their second iteration, I think it was limited to 50 or 100.

    Today, they are attempting a different path. Using the Rahimi language, Bruen was “not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.—United States v. Zackey Rahimi, No. 22-915 (U.S.) as amplified by Justice Barrett:

    Many courts, including the Fifth Circuit, have understood Bruen to require the former, narrower approach. But Bruen emphasized that “analogical reasoning” is not a “regulatory straightjacket.” 597 U. S., at 30. To be consistent with historical limits, a challenged regulation need not be an updated model of a historical counterpart. Besides, imposing a test that demands overly specific analogues has serious problems. To name two: It forces 21st-century regulations to follow late-18th-century policy choices, giving us “a law trapped in amber.” Ante, at 7. And it assumes that founding-era legislatures maximally exercised their power to regulate, thereby adopting a “use it or lose it” view of legislative authority. Such assumptions are flawed, and originalism does not require them.
    —id. Barrett, concurring.

    Under Bruen, silence in the historical record indicates that the current has no support in this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. Now, the state claims that silence does not mean a loss. Instead, they claim that it just indicates that they didn’t wanna at the time. They could have, if they wanted to. Since they could have, the state is now authorized to do so today.

    This shifts the burden to The People to show that the state in 1791 not only didn’t want to pass such regulations, but instead were prohibited by the Second Amendment.

    Nasty stuff.

            

  • Ally here, stepping in for Chris for a change. I ran across this on TikTok, and then went and found it on YouTube to get the full effect. I found myself tearing up while watching and listening. I’m impressed. The song itself is amazing. The video is… yeah. I’d love to see Trump walk into an event with this playing. Regardless, I really wanted to share it.

    At the end, when they show the iconic moment where Secret Service hustle him off the stage, I saw things I didn’t in the color version. The black and white gives you a look at Trump’s face that you just do not get in color. He’s obviously afraid. And then he stood up and did what he knew he had to, to reassure those who were there. Damn. Never thought I’d hear myself saying the words, but thank you, Trump. I hope you win.

     

    Header image attribution: Office of the President of the United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

            

  • I made this one this past week, and was thoroughly impressed by it. The flavors were good, though it needed a bit of tweaking to make it perfect. It was a VERY good “dump meal,” meaning all I had to do was stuff things in the crock pot and set it to high. I’ve been sick as a dog this week, and needed stuff that was simple to make. This fit the bill, and was healthy and tasty as well!

    Ingredients

    • 1-1/2 cups barley
    • 1 lb mushrooms, sliced
    • 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken (thighs, breasts, or a combo)
    • 4 cups chicken broth
    • 1/4 cup lemon juice
    • 1/4 cup dry white wine
    • 6 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
    • 1 tsp dried thyme
    • 2 tsp salt
    • 1 tsp onion powder
    • ½ tsp red pepper flakes
    • black pepper, to taste
    • 10 oz frozen sweet peas
    • 1/4 cup creme fraîche, sour cream, or plain yogurt (dairy free works well)
    • 2 tbsp Dijon mustard, plus more to taste
    • 1/2 cup fresh tarragon or dill, minced
    • Parmesan cheese

    In your crock pot, combine all the ingredients from barley to the black pepper. Stir well to combine, and then cook on high for about 3 hours. Stir again, making sure to immerse the chicken in the liquid. It’s going to seem a bit soupy, but trust in the recipe. Cook for another hour on high, or switch to low to cook for up to another 3 hours.

    Remove the chicken to a plate and let sit for a few minutes while you do other things. Stir in the frozen peas and let them heat for about 2 minutes.

    While the peas are warming, whisk together the creme fraîche and mustard. Taste, and add more mustard to suit your palate. Fold this mixture into the barley and mushrooms in the crock pot. Now, shred or pull apart your chicken. It should fall apart easily. Return the chicken to the pot, then taste to see if you need any more salt or pepper. Stir in the chopped fresh herbs, and serve immediately.

    Add the Parmesan at the table, for those who wish it.

    Notes:

    I found the tarragon to be a bit strong in flavor, even though I only used about a tablespoon of it. The slight liquorish flavor just overpowered the rest of the dish. I would omit this next time, and use either all dill, or a mix of dill and Italian Seasoning instead. Another suggestion would be Herbs de Provence.

    Even though you’re only adding about a half cup total of “creamy” stuff to this dish, it comes out incredibly creamy tasting. I used a cashew based yogurt, because I’m not able to eat dairy, and it was delicious. I used a smooth traditional Dijon, and I think I might try a more stone ground style next time. This was great as a stand-alone, and could easily be put together in a morning before running out the door. I think it would also be nice paired with a light salad.

            

  • “We can’t afford… We can’t afford… four more years of this”

    Every so often the masks slip and they tell the truth.

    Note, the ellipsis in the quote are him pausing. Not anything being cut out.

            

  • Or Cultures of Honor.

    Most people in western civilizations understand the concept of Honor. Or, at least, they think they do. Most understand, “do the honorable thing.”

    It is a question of right and wrong. It is a moral decision.

    The honorable thing to do is to return the wallet you find on the sidewalk. The honorable thing to do is to protect the lives of the innocent over your own. The honorable thing to do is to put yourself between the bad guys and the innocents.

    This is honor in western culture and civilization.

    An “Honor Culture” or a “Culture of Honor” is not about doing the honorable thing. It is about personal honor.

    Scotland was an honor culture for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This is what led to clan wars. These people weren’t attacking other clans because they intended to take land or goods, so much as “honor demanded it”.

    At some point in the past, the offending clan had done something to “dishonor” the clan. So the entire clan is at war with the offending clan.

    There is new jargon, To “Dis’” somebody. This means to show them disrespect. To dishonor them.

    Dissing somebody often escalates into verbal or physical violence.

    You don’t disrespect somebody in an honor culture unless you are ready and willing to defend yourself. And to those members of an honor culture, you are the instigator.

    Calling somebody the “N” word when not a member of that sub-culture is to dishonor them. It is to disrespect them. As such, you have invited violence upon yourself.

    The Scots migrated from Scotland to the United States. Many of them came to live in the south. They brought their honor culture with them.

    Thomas Sowell discusses this in —New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. City Of New York, Oops. Novel citation pattern. 8 (U.S. 2020).

    One of the signs of an honor culture is a tendency to “defend my honor”. Dueling. When the south was fully invested in being an honor culture, duels were common.

    Later, as the honor culture dissipated, the number of duels, both gun, knife and fist, decreased.

    According to Sowell, that honor culture didn’t just disappear, though. It was adopted by the slaves. When the slaves became freedmen, they didn’t forgo that honor culture. Instead, they took it with them.

    That honor culture survives today in “the hood”.

    For the most part, honor societies in the west exist as a decoration we wear. It is blustering over a football game. It is taking a joking offense at some perceived slight.

    In an honor society, you do not joke about some ones honor. “Them’s fighting words”

    Other primitive cultures still exist as honor cultures.

    It is dishonorable for a woman to have sex outside marriage. The woman’s owner is dishonored by this. Because his honor has been harmed, he is entitled to punish her. Like having her stoned to death.

    He is dishonored if _____. Fill in the blank. A Jew defends himself and stops an attack. They have dishonored the attacker.

    When I use the term “honor society” or “honor culture”, I am not talking about an “honorable society” or even a society that is governed by being honorable. I am talking of the horrific, barbarous, back world “honor culture” that hangs gays from construction cranes, and kills women who have been raped.

            

  • https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFMrGM3X/

    I love this woman. She is one of the people whose words and thoughts made a difference to me in coming around to the right.

            

  • Years ago, my lady discovered that one of my co-workers was plagiarizing content. She brought it to my attention. I reported it to the owner of the company. I cc’ed my boss to keep her in the loop.

    When I arrived at work that day, my boss was waiting for me, took me to a private location and started to berate me for going over her head. I listened and waited for her to wind down. “Is it my turn to talk?”

    “Yes”, and as soon as I started to speak, she would start up again. I’d wait for her to run down, then ask again. At some point, I asked, “You’ve been yelling at me for 10 minutes, do I have permission to yell back?” “YES!”

    She finally let me speak, “You gave me permission to yell, I am not going to…” I did my spoke to her softly, without anger, without pushing into her personal space. It broke her.

    She was not prepared to deal with somebody not responding and realized she had gone over the line.

    People of all types respond to emotional cues in different ways. One of the easiest ways to make people look bad is to be good when they are not.

    Arabs are very “honor” driven. They do not deal well with insults. This is why their screeds against Israel and the United States are filled with so many insults. They expect it to cause us pain.

    In the same way, they cannot handle being laughed at. That is a grave insult.

    Israel pulled off some super serious psychological damage to the psyche of terrorists, everywhere.

    Operation “Below the Belt”, which has been reported as the official name of the operation, is an incredible feat of logistics, intelligence, and technological sophistication.

    Israel was so embedded in the inner workings of Hezbollah that leadership decided that they needed to ditch the smartphones that were being used. Instead, they would go low technology, using pager technology.

    Pagers do not indicate where they are located. They are simple radio receivers. There is no way to know where an unmodified pager is located. This is the type of security that Hezbollah leadership wanted, and needed.

    Israel managed to intercept the shipment(s) of pagers and modify them. At what point in the supply chain this took place is unknown. They were able to modify or replace thousands of pagers. The pagers that were sent on had two known modifications. A couple of ounces of explosive with a thermal trigger, and some modifications to the code to increase the power draw to heat the battery enough to trigger the explosion.

    Pagers are carried in pockets or on belts. When leadership handed out pagers to Hezbollah assholes, those assholes put the pagers on their belts or in their pockets.

    In the afternoon of the 18th, the devices were triggered. They sounded a beep for an incoming message. Many terrorists assholes were able to take their pagers off their belts or out of their pockets to look at them before the boom.

    If they were just holding the pager, there was significant damage done to the hand. If they had brought the pager close to their face, then there was serious eye damage. If they left the pager in their pocket, well, they are looking for their balls now.

    This is one of the greatest psychological victories in modern history. These assholes were not martyred. They did not die in battle. They weren’t even in battle.

    If they lost their dicks, the 72 raisins they are supposed to get aren’t going to do them any good.

    And with no hands and no eyes and no dicks, they are never going to be a threat to people again.

    Moreover, the stress this puts on the medical infrastructure is immense.

    Well done Israel.

    This was a good win and a good place to take a victory lap.

    We were doing that lap for Israel, laughing at those dickless, less than wonders.

    Israel, was busy lapping the track, again.

    On Thursday, they initiated another round of devices exploding. This time on two-way handheld radios. This was not as successful as the original attack, but it still added to the toll.

    Again, well done Israel.

    So Israel was doing that Victory lap. Well, no. They were busy.

    You see, Hezbollah leadership really needed to discuss this new turn of events. They couldn’t use the phone system, they knew that was hacked, they were unable to use pagers to call a central number. And the radios were out too.

    So they did the sneaky-sneaky thing. They sent out the word to meet in the super secret place, known only by the trusted leadership.

    Well, it just so happened that an Israeli fighter jet was doing that victory lap when this meeting took place. And since they really, really, really, felt the need to celebrate, they decided to set off some fireworks. Mostly sound.

    So they dropped some noisemakers. These big ass noisemakers just happened to land right on top of that super secret meeting location. And they were so big, that it disrupted the party.

    20 top commanders are dead. The snake’s head has been cut off. The arms and legs (and sausage plus dingle berries) are missing as well. Everybody is scared, or should be scared of coming close to a communications device.

    I look forward to learning what new surprises Israel has in store for us. This story can get better, but I have a huge smile on my face tonight.

            

  • Following the basic rules of three, we can live without water for three days. That’s not entirely true, but it’s close enough. Water is largely what we’re made of, being between 50% and 60% of our makeup. Water keeps our brains working, flushes toxins out of our bodies and protects our muscles, helps lubricate our joints, and keeps the blood flowing through our veins. We can become dehydrated incredibly quickly, depending on our level of activity, the ambient temperature, and the humidity, so it’s important to keep drinking. A general rule of thumb is, if you’re feeling thirsty, you’re already well on the way to being badly dehydrated.

    It is possible to become dangerously dehydrated within 24 hours. Dehydration is when you take in less water than your body is using up in sweat, tears, urination, etc. and it’s very serious. While you can be on day 2 or 3 of not having water and still survive it, it will be a painful survival. After that first day, you are not going to be thinking well, because your brain will not be functioning as easily. You will be sluggish. Your mouth will be dry, and possibly your nose, and skin. You become exponentially more likely to have seizures or experience hypovolemic shock (when your blood volume drops below a certain level). This all has to be kept in mind when you’re dealing with a SHTF scenario. Drinking is going to be incredibly important.

    So how do you keep water on hand? That’s something you have to decide for yourself. I live in a water rich area of the world, and so I don’t store a lot of water. I keep enough on hand for 72 hours of drinking and washing (of myself and my dishes), which is about 2 to 3 gallons per person per day. Instead of keeping lots of water on hand, I keep water purification items on hand. I have the means and knowledge to get water, but I’ll need to purify it. To purify water, you have to either boil it, disinfect it, filter it, or treat it with UV light. For safety’s sake, I recommend doing at least two of the four methods, though depending on your emergency, that may change.

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