• For the last week or more, I’ve been watching Paris burn, and with it, France.

    This is portrayed as “the far-right” vs. the “left-wing”. Which begs the question, what does it take to be “far-left”?

    Right-wing and Left-wing come from where the different parties sat in the German parliament. The communists sat on the left, the Nazi, and socialists and everybody else sat on the right.

    So to say that Nazi’s are right wing only refers to them being further right than communists. Which wasn’t very far.

    The “right” in these United States are conservatives, not Nazi’s or other socialist scumbags.

    Parliaments

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  • Following the Alex Baldwin saga is frustrating. This is a man who claims that he bears no responsibility for killing another person because somebody else should have made sure his gun was safe to shoot at people.

    The gist of the case: Alec Baldwin was an actor producer on a low-budget western called “Rust”. As the STAR, he demanded the biggest, baddest gun. He was a jackass during safety briefings. He failed to follow the safety briefings.

    There is evidence that he engaged in horseplay with the revolver while making videos during his firearms training while using full load blanks, displayed reckless behavior as it related to the use of a firearm, such as pointing it and firing a blank round at a crew member while using that crew member as a line of sight as his perceived target.”

    He then, again, failed to follow the four rules. He pointed a gun at a person, cocked the hammer, and pulled the trigger. Killing the cinematographer.

    He claimed he never pulled the trigger. The FBI tested the gun to destruction, and was unable to get the gun to fire without the trigger being pulled.

    In other words, it looks like he is a lying sack of bull dung.

    Now, the state is introducing new evidence:

    After October 21, 2021 [he] was insistent that he not be required to follow safety recommendations made by film set safety experts on the continuation of the filming of Rust in Montana.

    The “continuation of the filming” means after he shot and killed a person, the asshole was still disregarding his safety briefings and the safety rules.

            

  • It still comes up on my random play list. If you want fun, go look it up on YouTube. There are some Kyle R. versions.

            

  • There are many things that are important to Conservatives and Republicans that are also important to me. First and Second Amendment issues are prime examples. Freedom to speak, to protest (not riot), to think your own thoughts, to live free, these are fundamentally American things. Other countries, if they have these things at all, have done so because we did it first. Firearms and arms in general, I might be more Right than some of you, because I firmly and 100% believe that “…shall not be infringed…” is the be-all and end-all. I am a “small government” kind of gal, and would love to see the swamp drained. I think that government has the anti-Midas touch – everything it touches turns to shit. Government should be interfering only when absolutely necessary, especially at the Federal level. It should not be possible for someone to be a “career politician.” EVER.

    And then there are other issues, ones which are not Constitutional but are near and dear to my heart. I believe that a person’s body should be inviolate, and that includes during pregnancy. I believe birth control should be inexpensive (already possible) or maybe free at point of use, and easy to get ahold of. I think marriage, from the government’s perspective, should simply be a listing of who did what, when, for the purposes of census taking and whatever Federal and State level benefits people get for being married. I think if five people want to get together and form a family, that’s fine. I think gay people are “just people” and should have exactly the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else (and not more, btw). I think black people are “just people” and should have exactly the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else (and not more, btw). I believe that people should be able to get (very basic) healthcare that is free at point of service (largely because it saves money at the community and county level, overall). I believe that religion, and freedom of AND FROM it, are between a person and their gods, and there should be no government level (including schools) statements that are inherently religious.

    There’s a lot going on here, and I labeled this article “fears” for a reason. Here are some of the concerns I have, and why I have them. Some echo the concerns that those on the Left have. Take what you will from it.

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  • What is a GVR?

    The process for an appeal is to request that a case be heard. When the superior court Grants that appeal, the case is moved to a final opinion. One of the possible outcomes is that the inferior court’s opinion is Vacated.

    When an inferior court’s opinion is vacated, the superior court has an option to Remand the case back to the inferior court for a do-over.

    When the superior court does this without hearing anything from the parties outside the request to be heard, it is called “GVR”.

    If the superior court were to just “GVR” a case, it wouldn’t be helpful to the inferior court. Nobody learns from “You are mistaken, do it over.” There needs to be some level of feedback.

    On July 2nd, 2024, the Supreme Court issued their final orders of the 2023 term.

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  • The Fort has been trying to recover from the lack of visitors during covid. It is also working with volunteers that know much about their area of interest, but not so much about other parts.

    Consider power transmission. We have been working with power transmission since ancient Roman times. What is power transmission? It is how you transmit movement from one place to another.

    In the modern era, we will convert running water, high heat or a dozen other things into electricity. That electricity is then transmitted over wires to a motor. At the motor, the power is converted back to motion.

    Another part of the transmission of power, is the simpler physical transmission. Consider a water wheel. The wheel rides on an axle. The axle sits in bearings. When the wheel turns, the shaft turns. Anything attached to that shaft will also turn, doing work.

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  • We are a society of instant gratification. You go to Amazon, click two buttons, and the next day that thing arrives at your door.

    Your kid sends you a written message from a different continent, three times a day. You snap a picture of your cat, develop it, do some touch up, decide you can do better, reshoot the photo, edit, and share it with your 42 followers.

    When I was doing photography, I stared developing my own film and processing my prints. That way, I could see what I shot within a day of shooting.

    The courts are not instant gratification. Not even close.

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  • several brains in a row

    I’m going to carefully report from the Left side of the line today. I don’t like it. I’ll officially say I like it a lot less than I like reporting Right stuff to Left friends. It feels a lot more dangerous. Still, here I am, the designated person reporting “from behind enemy lines.”

    I didn’t watch the debate between Biden and Trump. I don’t like listening to either of them talk, for very different reasons. I caught the media backlash, of course, and I did watch bits and pieces that various pundits felt were important. I watched enough bits to know that saying “Trump won” was sort of like saying “guns fire bullets.” No shit, Sherlock.

    The media even stepped up on this one. Mainstream media (CNN, CBS, ABC, etc.) all said basically the same thing: Biden is old, and now we can see it, and gee those Dems have been hiding it really well for the past few years. But let’s get real here… even MOTHER JONES said Trump won that one.

    It wasn’t a fair contest. Trump, while I still dislike him on a personal level, is not feeble. He’s brash, energetic, and on point. I don’t have to like him to admit that he answered most of the questions in fairly plain, honest language. Biden, he had to be led off the stage like a toddler up past his bedtime. I hate that the Left is engaging in the level of elder abuse that they are. It’s disturbing, and wrong.

    But all the above… is nothing compared to what I’ve seen on FB this week from people that I am “FB friends” with. You can check these out or not.

    • Isaiah Martin says, paraphrased, we all knew Biden was old, but Trump is an existential threat.
    • A meme: Just because you think Alfred is too old to take care of the BatCave, you don’t replace him with the Joker.
    • Occupy Democrats says Biden should use his “newfound presidential immunity” to add four new seats to the Supreme Court and a bunch of other things.
    • An acquaintance said this (and I’m withholding their name): “Let me spell this out for those in the back: Trump v Hillary was choosing vomiting or Diarrhea. Trump v Biden is choosing stage 4 cancer or mild heartburn. Do not get it twisted.”

    I can’t even. I keep hearing things along the line of, “Yeah, okay so Biden is senile and half dead, but at least he isn’t Trump!” And that, well, this isn’t about the presidency, it’s about the country as a whole and that if Trump gets in again, the gays will all be in concentration camps and women will become walking incubators.

    Y’all… I need you to understand, no matter how hard it is for you… the Left who are saying this stuff, they really believe it. They actually believe that Biden will be okay, that his advisors will keep him propped up and animatronic no matter what. They would rather participate in the physical and mental abuse of a decrepit old man, than make another choice. And that really is what they’re saying. They want Biden, no matter what. They don’t want to think about anyone else in Biden’s place. They definitely don’t want Harris in there. Michele Obama is probably the closest to a “well, I guess” comment I’ve gotten from some of them. And that’s only because she doesn’t have a penis.

    At this point, I believe Trump will win. I believe the Dems will burn their own homes to the ground over it. What I *hope* will happen after the year or two of civil unrest and tantrums (or riots… or both) is that we’ll actually get some decent candidates that can work toward what’s best for the whole country. I think that’s the best I can hope for right now. And boy, it sure feels lonely over here on this fence.

            

  • I am so pleased that Ally has stepped up her postings. It helps me keep going.

    I’ve had way to many 503 errors recently. This is the service is temporarily unavailable error message.

    At issue is a resource allocation problem. I’ve added a couple of new sites to the mix, added a mail service, and suddenly, there aren’t enough resources to go around.

    There are two fixes, more hardware, or to reduce the load. I have reduced the load somewhat, I’ll be reducing it still more.

    The issue isn’t even that the pods are dying. That I can work around with replicas. It is that an entire node is going down. When that happens, it is 5 minutes before the node is fully up and all the pods repopulate.

    On the great news, Miguel has found a place to post his thoughts. It is good to see him posting again.

    From a personal perspective, I know that it seems like it was just one tweet that killed GunFreeZone.net. It isn’t.

    Miguel ran out of go juice for the blog over two years ago. He wanted to kill it then. J.Kb. and I asked if we could take over his baby and he agreed. Over time, the site morphed from Miguel’s baby to something else.

    I’ve read remarks about how GFZ was so much worse, once I started posting regularly. That’s fine. It hurts at one level, but I realize that I am not Miguel.

    One of the things that I have noticed, is that there isn’t a Vine of Liberty “voice” yet. I’m working towards it.

    We are still looking for more guest posts. Poor Elrod was the first victim. His well-written comment was promoted to a front page post. I hope he takes it as the compliment I intended it to be.

    Which leaves the two questions of for the day:

    1) What one thing is missing from the site which you want back, right now? And no, you can’t just say “Miguel”, I’ve already told him that I want him here.
    2) What topic do you think is in line with The Vine of Liberty, which isn’t being covered?

    Thank you for being here, it means a lot.

            
  • image of gettysburg battlefield
    Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
    Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
    But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
    It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
    —Abraham Lincoln

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