To explain my thoughts on the Trump verdict, let’s start with something else that tells us more or less the same thing. The conservative California Assemblyman Bill Essayli introduced a bill this session to require police in the state to cooperate with federal immigration officials so that pedophiles who are illegal immigrants can be deported following child porn and child molestation offenses. The Democratic supermajority in the legislature pounced on the bill and
The only thing I'd point out, because I've encountered this attitude a lot, is that this did not happen overnight. It didn't. We've been on this path for a while. And Trump is not the first person this has happened to. Our judicial system is rotten with politics. Trump is just the most visible.
I am glad Trump was convicted. Maybe enough people will see we are never going to vote our way out of this or litigate our way out of this. Populism — in various forms - has been bubbling for a long time: Ross Perot, Patrick Buchanan, Ron Paul, the Tea Party, Bernie Sanders, and Trump all offered an alternative to the status quo.
The managerial state, ruling far above us is their cloud, do not care what we, the dirt people, think. They have no interest in our votes. They hate us. They will not relent until we are dead or enslaved. In fact, I doubt they even want us as slaves.
The German people were disarmed by the Weimar government, and the Russian peasants by the Tsars. The Nazis & Bolsheviks were happy to waltz into absolute power.
Fortunately, the American people labor under no such disadvantage. The fact of the matter is that there are not enough “federales” to make a real difference if the People decide it’s time for a change in government.
The key is to meet government aggression with utter resistance (and aggression if necessary) rather than historic deference. Yes, casualties will be incurred, but so they were at Concord as well…
There is no leadership in that direction. Any action will be warlord led and will quickly devolve into squabbling and killing over turf or booty. It will be easily infiltrated and rendered impotent.
Exactly what I woke up thinking with total clarity this morning. We don't have anyone directing any counter-punches, or gathering the troops for a long-term mission. It's chaos and something needs to form itself into a valid resistance.
"…something needs to form itself into a valid resistance.”
That, right there, will be ruthlessly crushed without trial. The DS has seen that the fallout from Jan 6 has only pissed us off, so their next response to actual resistance will be to declare “insurrection” and send in the goons. At that point, the citizenry will have to decide how much they value their former freedom.
Can’t organize fuck all on any digital source of any kind. As it stands right now, there are more fuckers from the fbi, has, and cia reading our posts, and will be the first bastards to sign up. No, this will need to be perfectly organic, extremely violent, and the servers of the media need to be taken out first. Otherwise,with the evil fucks in these alphabets,and the cunts in the media, we’d be fucked. Stamps anyone?
I appreciate your perspective. I'm murderously angry and you poured oil on the water. so, thanks!
I think, though, that POTUS Trump isn't just a "person" anymore, not after he became POTUS. While you speak truth, his "conviction" is the nail in the coffin of the former Republic, and can't be directly compared to the complete rot the judicial system's been for more years than I've been alive.
Yes, he is the most visible and, as you can see, he expected it. And I think he wants it so that if there was doubt before there should be none now as to what has happened to our justice system.
I disagree with casting Trump as a cartoon. Peter Thiel summed this up perfectly:
“The press never takes Trump seriously, but it always takes him literally. ... His voters take Trump seriously but not literally…”
Trump was my last choice in the 2016 primary, but the only choice since then. He’s a showman, but his policies have produced sound results. (Some dump on him for COVID business closures, but don’t explain which Oracle they would have consulted to learn that Fauci, et al were full of 💩 and lying bastards).
Thanks John for this reminder. I've not heard the Peter Theil quote but it is so apt.
Someone once said "You want to make an idol? Separate it from the created whole and expect miracles from it." Some have have come to see him as superman, and some as a scape goat, both are idols, and miss the mark. He is flawed because he is human. He either doesn't wish to hide, or to acknowledge his flaws.
Victor Davis Hanson describes Trump as without affect. And that unwillingness or inability to play a part, but to just be that guy with a Queens accent is both what makes him popular and hated. He does not see politics as a performative art. And this really upsets those who have make the performance of politics their only way to processing the world. They feel safe when the performances are on display. So those who hate Trump have poured all their hatred into his lack of affect and made him a carrier of all that they can't/wont accept or understand, and which they call evil. They don't understand him because he does not play the performative game, in fact, he's terrible at it. And this enrages them.
I could go on about what the Trump idolizers are all about, but this is already too long.
“Separate it from the created whole and expect miracles from it.”
Bingo! That encapsulates why I’ve never had the slightest interest in movie stars or musicians for anything except their craft. It’s also the inverse of why so many millions of veterans love the military (at least until recently) – they get you ALL into green clothing ASAP and infuse you with the belief that your unit is everything. The phrase is “esprit du corps,” not “esprit du individuel.”
“I could go on about what the Trump idolizers are all about, but this is already too long.”
Actually your post was too short. It was informative and succinct. I would very much like to hear your comparable analysis of Trump supporters’ motivations.
I've been a bit awestruck with the verdict. Dazed. Really?! Are we really here? Yes, yes we are.
Read a decent post on Alex Berenson's sub from a foreigner. She basically said the US courts were one thing that made doing business with the US so great. The world trusted our judicial system. Past tense.
These people have absolutely ruined everything. I am bereft.
34 entries of “Legal Fees” into Trump’s financial ledger by his comptroller. Each entry was a separate charge. Apparently, in our banana republic legal system, it’s a felony for Republicans to enter fee’s paid to lawyers as “Legal Fees,” but not for Democrats.
Heard on Clay & Buck in the car yesterday (cause Alex Jones isn't on the radio) that there were four separate counts for each payment. As in one felony for writing the check, another for entering it in the accounting system, etc. Also, as in the trials of Roger Stone and Alex Jones, exculpatory evidence was barred. Trump's defense wanted to call the former head of the Federal Election Commission to testify that the payments were not found to be campaign contributions. Judge said that testimony was irrelevant and wouldn't be allowed.
It's made-up-as-you-go pretended law. The Separation of Powers means the Judicial is absolute, which is a good system if judges will be honest but a terrible system when political bias comes in. The Dred Scott decision triggered the Civil War; the 2020 SCOTUS ignored the evidence to install Biden out of fear and favour and the SCOTUS is absolute. A Gordian Knot begging for an Alexander to chop it.
As a follow up, Melissa Goldin, a fact checker for AP, says the learned judge didn't bar the FEC guy specifically, just set out rules in advance that there'd be no expert opinion allowed on campaign violations (because we don't want dueling experts on the underlying issue). It's only the alleged Federal campaign violation that "elevated" the NY records charges to low-grade felonies, and we sure don't want to bother with misdemeanors, do we? Fact checker didn't go into the details, of course, just said everyone knew the rules in advance. Fact checker's law degree? Nada. B.A. in journalism, minor in anthropology, hence sexual intellectual (i.e., a f---ing know-it-all).
Before AP, Melissa worked for NewsGuard. Wonder if the career disinfo expert ever fact-checked NewsGuard's senior adviser and former CIA boss Michael Hayden on his claim, just before the 2020 election, that the Hunter Biden laptop (with its evidence of millions in foreign money for the Biden crime family, with checks going even to the grandkids) was Russian disinfo? Or Hayden's numerous lies under oath before Congress? Seems more important than Trump's non-disclosure agreement given that Biden's financial ties to Ukraine's penis piano player pose a serious risk of nuclear war before the year is out.
“Dred Scott” did not trigger the CW. It maintained the status quo from the South’s perspective.
The South had become increasingly restive about restrictions on the expansion of slavery into new states (1:1 under the 1850 Compromise). The REAL trigger was the 1860 election being won by the anti-slavery Republicans (despite Lincoln being omitted from numerous Southern ballots). South Carolina seceded 30 days later, and several more states followed in early 1861.
The Confederacy wouldn’t tolerate Union forts in their midst, and when Lincoln sent Navy ships to resupply some of those coastal forts with food & essentials, the Confederates turned away the one approaching Ft. Sumter on April 12 and immediately began a 34 hr bombardment. The fort surrendered on April 14.
The war was on like Donkey Kong.
(Not strictly relevant, but I think it needs to be said that Maryland and Delaware remained slave states until December 1865 when the 13th Amendment was ratified, a full 6 months after the last battle of the war at Palmito Ranch, Texas.)
I’m a CPA with 45 yrs experience, and I can’t conceive of how 1 entry can be 34 different crimes or 34 repetitions of the same crime. Reminds me of Carlin’s “7 Sins From One Feel.”
I think the each juror should be questioned individually and asked to explain the crime of which s/he found Trump guilty. Obviously they’re not lawyers (other than 2), but they should able to connect the basic dots. Failure to be able to do so would be a mistrial.
This will be one trial where writing the appeal brief will take longer than preparing for trial. The list of major procedural errors is gargantuan.
The judge never picked the actual jurors vs. the alternates. Did they just pick the 1st 12 guilty votes and designate them as the jurors?
On the word of a convicted fraudster and jailbird and known perjurer. And a former porn star who has changed her story more often than her underwear. "Crimes" that are not even misdemeanours and which four years of Muller's $30 million lawyers stag party and FBI and CIA and NSA lawfare could not turn up when he was POTUS. It's so shameful and contemptible. It's like New York City, reduced to a shambles and a crime ridden crap hole by these human tapeworms, is pissing in its pants like a drunken, senile Godfather at a mafia funeral. And the whole world, especially Russia and China, are looking on. This is the global image of America.
It’s funny you say this Brian D. I served on a jury early 2021 and it actually restored some of my faith in humanity. The jurors I served with all seemed to take their roles very seriously, we carefully deliberated based very much only on the evidence and rules. After the 2020 summer of covid lockdowns and political division and never ending riots on my city’s streets, serving on a jury in person with people who felt strongly about doing their civic duty was a bit of a revelation. Reminds me of Chris’s own words which are relevant in the face of this verdict, we as a people are sick from the top down but healthy from the bottom up. Make sure your relationships with “the bottom” people near you are strong.
My jury service on a child rape trial ≈15 yrs ago matches yours. The jury was truly diverse (before that was an obsession) but we all had similar reactions to the witnesses’ testimony. It was very enheartening.
But none of us (nor the general populace) had ever heard of that defendant nor would again. In a community (Manhattan) that’s 85% Democrat, these 12 New Yorkers would be demonized and financially cancelled if they’d voted to acquit. Can you imagine what would have happened to them if the 1955 Mississippi jury had voted to CONVICT Emmett Till’s killers?
You make a strong argument in favor of change of venue. 1955 Mississippi and 2024 NYC rival each other in corruption, and that corruption kept the trial in their judicial system, just where they wanted it.
BINGO!!! Applies to the Derek Chauvin trial 100%! It only came out later that the coroner's autopsy of Floyd proved that he did not die of strangulation – there were no burst capillaries evident in the whites of his eyes as there always in a strangulation death. So Chauvin did not cut off Floyd's airway, so Chauvin was Not Guilty as Charged. But meanwhile all the jurors lived with their spouses and kids in the town that BLM was burning down while Maxine Waters was screaming for riotous insurrection and the cops had fled for their lives from their burning precinct and a luckless innocent woman was raped and murdered when her car was immobilized by the mob. And ruthless drug criminal thug George Floyd – who earned his last stint in the slammer by pressing a gun into the pregnant belly of a young black woman while she begged for her life – is still praised as a hero and saint.
We were herded into a room and the case was explained: a woman reported to police that her automobile was stolen, turned out her boyfriend borrowed it without telling her, she didn't want to press charges, the DA in that (Pennsylvania) county decided he wanted a conviction. Seriously. I wasn't chosen for that jury, maybe they heard my eyes rolling.
You see the same thing as a witness. For example, I once witnessed a traffic accident caused by an elderly driver crossing multiple lanes of traffic, causing another driver to slam on her brakes and end up on the guard rail. I wove through the carnage, followed the guilty driver, got the license plate and description (elderly, sex undetermined, wearing a knit cap), and called the police. When I was later called to testify, I was told by a state trooper that the driver, though she drove that route regularly, claimed she hadn't that day, and that someone must have taken her car for a joy ride, then returned it to her driveway. Ridiculous, of course, but the trooper said without my ID, there was no case. I explained that I hadn't seen the driver that well, thought the knit cap and license plate would do. Trooper repeats that they need a positive ID, and what's more, there's a friend of the driver sitting next to her and I'll have to guess which one is the driver. The two were almost twins, and I picked the one with the knit cap, which of course was the decoy. The young woman whose car was totaled was in tears as the guilty woman walked free. It isn't what you see on Perry Mason or Law and Order.
I went to college in Pittsburgh 75-79. It became clear that something was (and is) wrong with the complex criminal justice system of counties, cities, boroughs, townships, & villages in PA. The quality of police investigations and criminal prosecutions is truly appalling.
The brother of a college friend was an integral participant in a series of thrill killings in the Pgh area in 1980 – 3 civilians, and a cop 3 days in uniform. The cops caught the 2 perps with the murder weapons. In 1981, they were both sentenced to death. The next 44 yrs have been spent litigating a host of procedural irregularities in the trial due to incompetence on the DAs part as well as by the judge. One of the cases only ended when the perp died of illness in 2017 at 59. The other perp was resentenced in 1995, but remains on death row 44 yrs after the murders. “Keystone Cops” takes on a sad second meaning.
This incident was on the other side of the state, in mostly rural Monroe County in the Poconos. I just could not understand why, when the 'victim' had no interest in pursuing the issue, the local DA wanted to waste time and resources on such a trivial matter. I thought it was ridiculous.
Foreigner butting in: our prosecutors foten do stuff like that when they are still greenhorns. The reason for this is simple metrics. Their future career is weighed by measuring how many cases they've brought where the accused was convicted of something, in some way.
They just can't let a simple slam-dunk pass by them, due to this. And it's a crap way of measuring, but a prosecutor arguing against it, well there goes your career. Before 1994, we didn't measure stuff that way.
Police have it even worse, and our stats are so messed up they are useless: if 20 police man a stop-and-check to see if people comply with the regs for bicycles, then every person fined for not having lights (f.e) on the bike counts as 20, making the police look hyper-effective.
Perhaps things like that, procedural and bureaucratic tangles, are the reason for many problems with your justice system, and the attendant corruption simply exploits these things the way a fungal infection exploits a crashed immune system?
A bedrock principle of management is that “you get what you measure.” The tire store I previously used got a new manager who pushed his employees HARD – measuring “service minutes per tire sold.” I was unaware of this, and my new tires were completely out of balance. I brought the car back and they found nothing wrong. I went to a different store, and they discovered the old tire weights had not been removed before rebalancing with the new tires.
It’s impossible to quantify “judgment,” which is a critical component of evaluating the administration of justice.
In Lagos, Nigeria, the authorities measure police on how quickly they apprehend perpetrators. While I was there on a trip, 2 bank customers were robbed on the front steps of a bank by a pair of men on a motorcycle. The police arrested the next 2 men on a single motorcycle driving by.
Sorry, I left out the connecting point. PA seems to lack a statewide “standard of professionalism” in law enforcement and judicial performance – not even tacit, let alone formal.
My wife’s family is from the Pgh area and even now, it’s a highly relationship driven society, with incompetence widely tolerated because “he’s my wife’s cousin’s son…” I think the same tolerance of mediocrity is endemic to the entire Commonwealth.
Kevin O’Leary was on “The Five” a couple of days ago recounting a pitch meeting he’d just held for potential investors in Europe, and them being dumbstruck at the (alleged) salacious details being dragged out in open court about a PRESIDENT by the government of NYC, as well as the recent 2 civil cases also by the government of NY (Harris case enabled by NYS legislature). They questioned how they could invest and be subject to a legal system like that. O’Leary’s point was that the Democrats have severely damaged America’s “brand” purely out of obsession.
Lefties show us over and over that they generally do not consider possible blowback from their actions. It would serve these Islands of Blue right to find themselves with a rapidly shrinking tax base and nowhere to turn to stop the decay. When I was a child - heck, when our sons were children - it was a real treat to go to NYC in December to see the Christmas show at Radio City. I'd never set foot in the City now.
As much as I'd rather not see this lawfare degenerate into a kind of cold civil war, the less-nice part of me kinda likes the idea floated by someone (forgot his name) that Republican DAs everywhere ought to carefully review their local Democratic pols to see what obscure law s/he may have violated at any time and then to prosecute, since "no one is above the law."
The thing about R’s prosecuting D officials just for being D’s is that it requires us to become D’s in spirit. Mainly because we have principles and they have feelings. If we give up our principles, we are nothing.
You have to wonder how many NYC-based corporate CEO’s have initiated an urgent review of the accounting entries for all NDA settlements recorded in the last 10 yrs.
I think we’ll see foreign investment in the U.S. declining (probably sharply) because almost all of it flows through NYC. The U.S. used to be the gold standard of *zero* political risk. Prosecutions of accounting scandals (Equity Funding (1974), Enron (2001), WorldCom (2002) to name 3) caused no reputational damage to the U.S. because the crimes were obvious. But the idea that (allegedly) mislabeling otherwise lawful expenditures could lead to 136 yrs in prison if the authorities don’t like you should and will dissuade foreign investors.
I think we’ll see fewer companies going public because that road leads through NYC.
None of you are actually Americans. You are all Russian trolls using the same talking points and poutrage on a hundred forums. A handful of cranks think this is evidence of conspiracy and “what real Americans are thinking”. And are thus emboldened.
You are not seeking truth but to annihilate it and replace it with strong man worship. I say great. Rise up, do your worst. Most if us arent suckers and see through your gaslighting.
I'm glad to be up here in Canada because our old age pension is still intact (I'm 77). But as far as politics and law? Our southern border feels like a mighty thin shield. Potentially, we are way more vulnerable than Americans. Truckers' Freedom Convoy? Emergencies Act? In essence, martial law and bank account confiscation simply declared by the PM and rubber stamped automatically by the federal legislature.
"They’ll burn the house down, but they’ll rule over the ashes..."
I apologize for gloating but I told ya there was zero chance Trump would walk.
Life is very different in a one-party state, but not that different from the glory days of Joe Stalin:
If Stalin says someone is an enemy of the people, the only way to stay on his good side and make a name for yourself (and not be targeted) is to out-Stalin Stalin and say it's not just the person whose an enemy but their entire families and associates, who must all be hunted down for the good of the Party and the State; if Stalin says Trans is a sacred category, the apparatchik must not just worship Trans but must denounce all of Trans' opponents and maybe also give Trans their own special holidays, special language and a special place high up in the moral hierarchy where they become an extension of the State and Party itself (who are themselves replacements for God and religion).
In a one-party state all other possible concerns—the rule of law, the validity of elections, the rights of parents over their children, the ancient Hippocratic Oath of Do No Harm, plus any integrity, honesty, veracity—are subordinate to the needs of the Party and to the apparatchiks who feed on it like a piglet feeds on a sow.
And all these tales have the same ending: the true believers will go to their graves convinced of their righteousness, proud of having devoted their lives to the great cause, while the rest of us are left behind to live in their rubble.
That comes next. Right now the useful idiots WANT to clap. I guess they will be induced to thin each other out now to make things more “manageable.” Wasn’t it J.P. Morgan that said, “I can hire half the middle class to kill the other half.” ?
You were right and I was wrong on the "Never Get High On Your Own Supply" thread.
The idea that there is always room for optimism seems to work only about 10% of the time. So I'll be right one of these days. Sure, it will be finding a turnip when we're all eating our pets or discovering a way to drink urine after the water goes out...
But one day, one glorious day, there will be room for optimism, you fucking asshole.
i never claimed the guilty verdict was my preferred outcome or even that it would make any sense, i only said there was no way he was walking free in NYC.
That last paragraph may be the most poignant thing you've ever written. We have all seen this coming. It started around the time of the OJ trial, hit peak weird around Chauvin, went off the rails during Rittenhouse and somehow was pulled back to sanity a bit with an acquittal. Now we get to wait on a possible reversal again. But the big shift was today. They saw what they can get when they corrupt the system and corrupt a jury pool. I'm looking at my "fellow" countrymen a little differently from here on out.
I think it's the opposite. They want the freakout. They want the anger. It's that scene in Return Of The Jedi with the emperor croaking out: "GOOOD! LET THE HATE FLOW THROUGH YOU!" - they want you just like them. Not gonna happen.
JAA—Not to be nit picky, but it pre-dates OJ. It also pre-dates Clarence Thomas’s hi-tech lynching, Ray “Where do I go to get my reputation back?” Donovan, and Richard Nixon’s Watergate. The mask first slipped when they murdered JFK.
I was never a fan of JFK and had no interest in the grassy knoll and all that stuff. Then a friend in 2018 implored me to read James W. Douglas’s,’ “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.” I thought I was reading about the Trump presidency. JFK was being targeted by the MIC, just as Trump was. Every other president since JFK has succumbed to it, until Trump. The judiciary has always been corrupt. After all, Earl Warren was the Chief Justice of the USSC when he took the side hustle to cover-up the JFK assassination.
As I read what I just wrote, I sound like the conspiracy nuts I used to mock. But, I agree with what Mark Steyn wrote about the NYC verdict. He says this isn’t banana republic shenanigans. This is one of world’s nuclear super powers—the supposed leader of the free world— run by idiots leading the collective west over a cliff. He predicts the bloodshed in the next ten years will far exceed what followed the end of imperial Europe in the early 20th century. The communists and Nazis filled that vacuum.
Thank God “we the people” are heavily armed. I just hope we have the same resilience and fortitude as the Vietnamese and Afghanistans.
All very true, but I was going with the actual convictions gained for political purposes. But that is a great primer. Heavily armed, check! Don't forget night vision, thermals, and body armor while you are at it...
Heavily armed but led by whom? How does this end as anything but Warlordia? I fully support being heavily armed, I'm just not sure what it accomplishes.
It turns out Franz Kakfa’s novel, “The Trial,” in which Josef K. Is tried for a crime the government won’t tell him he committed, was really non-fiction, and it has played out right in front of us, in public, and nothing stopped it.
Every dystopian novel I read in high school, “1984,” “Brave New World,” “The Trial,” are all coming true.
Have you seen the Mike Wallace/ Huxley 1958 interview? If not make sure you’re seated in chair deep enough to not fall off. Perhaps down a couple of shots first. It is mind blowing. Inexplicably prescient and prophetic.
“ Brave New World” was pure fiction, predicated by a rift with his brother, a eugenicist, fearing it would become a very dark agenda. He got that right. Huxley’s incredibly brilliant imaginatio was not of this world- literally. I asked a noted intellectual whether he believed there are actual prophets- placed here to act as bell ringers, warning of what’s to come. To thwart horrific events from taking place. That we are in a sense, tested. We. can choose a path. Either heed the warnings or suffer the consequences. Forewarned is fair warned.
He asked who it was that prompted the sudden interest? I replied, “Promise not to laugh? Huxley.”He didn’t laugh, surprisingly. Instead, he immediately said,” Absolutely” and took it one step beyond.” Gail, it’s your turn to promise not to laugh. I really don’t know what to call him. He’s reminds me of a time- traveller. You know what I mean the popular subject of Sci-Fil books and films. As though back from the future. He’s been there and it’s hideous. We can change course if we act now”. It was a great analysis.
Huxley became alarmed that his fiction was becoming reality in the late forties. He was seeing signs of it-particularly the advance of technology, pharmaceuticals and synchronized television messaging. He noticed a single message being purveyed on the three major networks and noted a global phenomenon. It was propaganda. Repeating the same message using the same wording, and intonation over and over. Manipulation that was so effective the public didn’t ask questions. Because it was a singular narrative. By the mid-fifties. Huxley was becoming frantic. He needed to get the message to the public. When he appeared on Wallace’s show, Wallace so patronizing. Supercilious. Inferring that Huxley was nuts. Huxley wasn’t paying attention. He was so deeply engaged in his narrative. And what a narrative it was. He laid out in detail EVERY event we’ve been experiencing and how we got here. The pattern. It will make the hair on your arms stand up. The Great Reset.
You know Klaus Schwab’s freakish tag line, “ You will own nothing, have no l privacy and be happy”.
It sounded weirdly familiar. I was wracking my brain as to why. I really thought I was losing it. And then I remembered. It was from Brave New World, circa 1932. The horrid protagonist, Mond told the protagonist, The Beast, “ You will own nothing, have no privacy and love your servitude”
It seems the megalomaniacal cabal of psychopaths-WEF/UN/WHO/Bilderberg/Trilateral Commission and their satellite sociopaths are using a concomitant 1984/ Communist Manifesto/Meim Kampft /I,Robot/Soylent Green/ Brave New World as the playbook.
Life is imitating art and an already Stepfordized populous is sleepwalking into slavery. While our “ vaunted” elected representatives are doing NOTHING! Aside from colluding .
Prediction... if the party retains control, "The Trial - 2024" will debut on Broadway within 18 months after the election. De Nero is already auditioning.
You’re right! It was posted on the inner book jacket of my high school copy. Extraordinary mind. I became a Huxley devotee because I was so slavishly infatuated with Jim Morrison ( he’d already been dead 15 years) Because “The Doors “was an homage to “ The Doors Of Perception”, it was a de rigeur read. Then “ Eyeless In Gaza”, “ After Many A Summer Dies The Swan”.. yada, yada , yada.
My daughter, 13 at the time, found a box of my Doors memorabilia. She took one look at his image and lost her mind. Did the same thing, know every lyric, quoted his poetry, got into a pissing contest with med, read Huxley, Nietzsche until she fell into a deep depression. Because he was dead. It became so concerning, I took her to a therapist. She inherited my obsessive need to know everything. I guess it paid off , she’s the Chief of Radiology at Miami’s Baptist Medical. Appointed at age 28. My obsessive crazy isn’t applied to anything productive..
THANK YOU! You’ve scratched an OCD itch. I was trying to remember the movie’s name and spent about 2 hrs this AM searching based on plot points. No joy. Turns out it was made in 1962 vs. the 40s and 50s. AND it’s available on MAX!
I was born in California (and once proud of it). Most of my extended family is here, my wife's kids are here, and I own property here. Realistically, I am not leaving. But .
. don't come here - at all! No amount of money is worth it if you have kids.
I miss them more than I can even begin to say. They orientated me to my surroundings without my ever realizing it. And I always just knew where NSEW were. Since moving to a very flat place that’s covered with dense growth everywhere, I never know where I am. It’s very upsetting on a subliminal level.
Tracking the sun is a skill I lack here as the sky is often leaden. From my home I have a general idea, but anyplace else not so much.
Also the roads are not laid out on a grid like back in California. You must usually go in twisty paths that wind and loop and are not direct lines from A to B.
Hey, we've got mountains here in the Green Mountain State, stunningly gorgeous ones. And cows, lots of cows.
Sure, Vermont is a progressive mess right now, but it wasn't always. It's only been the last two/three decades that useless lefties moved here and can now outvote the natural conservatism of native Vermonters. Good news is that, with a population of around 600,000, a reasonable influx of conservative newbies could restore Vermont to what it long was: a moderately conservative, Republican state.
Consider: in 2016 and again in 2020 Trump got roughly 30% of the popular vote in Vermont so there is definitely a conservative base here and it's not unthinkable that things could change. Hope springs eternal.
Funny you mention that. We escaped prison planet at the beginning of c19 to spend a month in Coeur d'Alene. We went up north for several days to see mountains.
I was born in San Mateo and left at about age 3 to be raised in Seattle.
I lived in/around San Diego from 2003-2013 and had to leave because Dad got cancer.
I've since fled WA for North Idaho.
It's a good place to rebuild, but I fear for my family in WA. I think the coastal states will make moving from the State illegal, sooner rather than later. Commies always pull shite like that.
Yeah, when I left in 2013 the CA tax man harassed me for years after. The commies have been trying to put up a financial net that keeps rich people (anyone with a job) paying regardless where they move.
Similarly, New York tried to tax the begonias out of my husband's entire yearly income because he spent 5 days at a conference there, so he quote worked in New York, unquote. Texas, where we live, told them to pound sand. Our state constitution forbids it.
Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t/isn’t CA considering an exit tax on the higher tax bracket individuals or businesses if they leave the state? Further, that they can tax that individual or business on earnings after they’ve actually relocated?
I too, was born there but left about 24 years ago. I miss the beach. The last time I was there it smelled like sewage and there was trash everywhere except the cans. My daughter lives in downtown LA . On our walk home from dinner we were rerouted by the police due to a murder on the street.
Such a great place to grow up in the 70's . I'll never move back.
Last time I drove through central LA was about 3 years ago. Near the LA Times building, I missed a merge. I had to exit the Interstate and turn quicky left into an underpass. The stench was of the Third World. I can't do justice to it. Yet the Mighty LA Times, a few hundred yards away, blunders along publishing that nothing is wrong with California.
Like the LA Times itself, the LA Times building is mostly a shell at this point. The newspaper operates out of a building in El Segundo that you can see from the 105. Used to be a great building, with that giant clock. Now you can feel the death inside.
I worked at the LA Times in the 90s, in the promotions department. I was so proud to be part of that history, working in that historical building, enjoying the walk around City Hall, squinting and trying to imagine what it was like to live in Los Angeles in the 40s and 50s. My family moved to Los Angeles in 1964 from West Virgina. I'm sick and heartbroken over what it has become. I'm about to attend my 50th high school reunion (fight, fight on Westchester High) and my friends and I feel that we are probably the last generation that experienced the gift of growing up there. I live on the other side of the country now, and soon will be moving to the middle so I can make a 2-day drive to LA to see my friends after our overlords decide I can't fly because I'm unvaccinated or because I voted for Trump or because . . . who knows.
On the sexualization of children, this is why pagans, Muslims, and atheists have such intense hatred of Christians and Jews, as we proscribe sexual contact between adults and children (read the Christ's prescription for what should happen to adults who abuse children). And, yes, Trump's convictions were terrible and uncalled for but he and all his supporters, plus any lawyers who defend him, will all be sent to jail of destroyed professionally. That's what happened to those who opposed the Nazis after the Reichstag fire in '33 in Germany. (amazing how similar to the Nazis the Democrats and some "R's are). And, yes, this civilization is collapsing before our very eyes. What took Rome several centuries to do, we are doing in a few decades. So, vote for all "R"s in November, no matter how stupid, lazy, or incompetent they are, (they are the "stupid party"). I don't know if they can save the Republic, but almost all "D"s are going to destroy it.
One other thing. Biden has supplied and approved of the use of long range missiles, which can be equipped with nuclear warheads, to the Ukrainians, and they are using then to destroy targets deep in Russia. Pray for the long life and good health of Vladimir Putin. He's shown amazing restraint in the murder of hundreds of thousand of Russians and much damage to his country. If we'd done this to Xi and the Chinese, we'd already be in a kinetic, probably nuclear war.
I share your concerns, but Putin could simply have permanently repositioned a couple of infantry and armored divisions to near the Ukrainian border and not invaded. The message would have been clear. Now he’s in a fight he MUST win, no matter the cost, and it’s become something of a perpetual motion machine.
I suspect there may have been a person or two who thought “this is wrong, but I’m not going to get run over for the sake of morality; let them figure it out on appeal.” In a sense, societal scrutiny was providing the necessary witness intimidation.
It’s clear that being attorneys did not affect their vote. A legitimate attorney would have voted NG based on the paucity of evidence & witnesses presented by the prosecution. The state presented NO witnesses to substantiate that the alleged conduct was an election crime. (In fact, the judge prohibited such testimony.) The level of proof achieved by the prosecution was SO far under “beyond a reasonable doubt” that only a prejudiced or fearful juror could have voted guilty.
Ah, I see. I guess I was thinking in terms of lawfariousness and a narc-y lawyer’s capability of making himself/herself foreman with his legalese and manipulating the rest of the jurors accordingly.
That’s always possible. OTOH, I’ve worked with attorneys my whole career, and with 2 distinct exceptions, they have been fabulous professionals.
The role of jury foreman is pretty limited: passing out, collecting & counting “ballots” (mail-in not accepted 🤣), taking meal orders, writing the group’s note(s) to the judge, and lastly, filling out the verdict form. The foreman is not allowed to stifle a juror’s discussion of the case.
BTW, a good way to get disbarred is to instruct fellow jurors on the law. Even if the judge is blatantly wrong on an instruction, the jury can ask for clarification, but if ratified, must accept the error as truth and let the appellate process sort out the mess.
We’re running out of adjectives to describe what’s happening to our judicial system. However, when it comes to children, it’s evil. We can no longer mock and shake our heads about ancient cultures that literally sacrificed children for adult/society gain.
"All I'll say is what we are seeing is profound weakness."
I really waver between this statement and my fear that they so brazenly destroy others, because their grasp of power is so complete. I do take great hope in knowing that the other side is generaled by DEI incompetents, unhinged women, and thoroughly feminized men. Can't think of a single time in history that such a coalition ruled for any length of time.
Most of human history is varying degrees of tyranny. The freedom and prosperity that the US enjoyed is just a blip in the timeline of world history. This is just reversion to the mean,
When Obama was elected in 2008, I knew that I had lost my country. I saw that at least half of the people occupying this land were living in a different reality, and I wanted nothing to do with them. My alienation has only increased as time goes on. Covid, Ukraine, and the Mideast pushed me farther away. Today was just one more step. I was already boycotting NYC. Now it's permanent.
If I ponder what's just happened, the ache in my chest makes me cry. It's the start of a hard cry I'd rather not have. I'm 64 and this is the last thing to fall, the rule of law. And it aches. Even knowing that we've raised another great set of generations behind us, and that we'll rebuild, it hurts bad.
I want to shake the people celebrating this travesty online - don't they realize this weapon, this star chamber treatment, can and will be turned on anyone? Like Robespierre's guillotine, anyone can now be pulled in front of a judge, have the law tailored to their "crime", be denied a valid defense, and be found guilty by a group of people who want nothing more than the eye be turned on someone else, anyone else.
They’re 100% banking on Republicans’ dedication to principles (or lack of cojones) to save them from turnabout. There is NOTHING distinguishing in the Trump verdict vs the last 3-1/2 of Biden Admin policies. This is just more obvious. But the failure to “take care of that the laws be faithfully executed” is just as corrosive.
The only thing I'd point out, because I've encountered this attitude a lot, is that this did not happen overnight. It didn't. We've been on this path for a while. And Trump is not the first person this has happened to. Our judicial system is rotten with politics. Trump is just the most visible.
I am glad Trump was convicted. Maybe enough people will see we are never going to vote our way out of this or litigate our way out of this. Populism — in various forms - has been bubbling for a long time: Ross Perot, Patrick Buchanan, Ron Paul, the Tea Party, Bernie Sanders, and Trump all offered an alternative to the status quo.
The managerial state, ruling far above us is their cloud, do not care what we, the dirt people, think. They have no interest in our votes. They hate us. They will not relent until we are dead or enslaved. In fact, I doubt they even want us as slaves.
But by all means, vote harder.
If the ballot box is taken the cartridge box is next.
Simply put but yes. The ruling class appears oblivious, perhaps confident in the powers of the ICs.
But you are correct. Millions of Americans are on hand to enforce a correction if required.
I wholeheartedly hope the fools in charge do not make it necessary.
“…confident in the powers of the ICs.”
The German people were disarmed by the Weimar government, and the Russian peasants by the Tsars. The Nazis & Bolsheviks were happy to waltz into absolute power.
Fortunately, the American people labor under no such disadvantage. The fact of the matter is that there are not enough “federales” to make a real difference if the People decide it’s time for a change in government.
The key is to meet government aggression with utter resistance (and aggression if necessary) rather than historic deference. Yes, casualties will be incurred, but so they were at Concord as well…
There is no leadership in that direction. Any action will be warlord led and will quickly devolve into squabbling and killing over turf or booty. It will be easily infiltrated and rendered impotent.
The cartridge box should be empty, and all rounds in mags at this point.
outta my cold dead fingers! MOLON LABE
Well said. We are in a war and only one side is fighting it. So far…
Exactly what I woke up thinking with total clarity this morning. We don't have anyone directing any counter-punches, or gathering the troops for a long-term mission. It's chaos and something needs to form itself into a valid resistance.
"…something needs to form itself into a valid resistance.”
That, right there, will be ruthlessly crushed without trial. The DS has seen that the fallout from Jan 6 has only pissed us off, so their next response to actual resistance will be to declare “insurrection” and send in the goons. At that point, the citizenry will have to decide how much they value their former freedom.
Can’t organize fuck all on any digital source of any kind. As it stands right now, there are more fuckers from the fbi, has, and cia reading our posts, and will be the first bastards to sign up. No, this will need to be perfectly organic, extremely violent, and the servers of the media need to be taken out first. Otherwise,with the evil fucks in these alphabets,and the cunts in the media, we’d be fucked. Stamps anyone?
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I appreciate your perspective. I'm murderously angry and you poured oil on the water. so, thanks!
I think, though, that POTUS Trump isn't just a "person" anymore, not after he became POTUS. While you speak truth, his "conviction" is the nail in the coffin of the former Republic, and can't be directly compared to the complete rot the judicial system's been for more years than I've been alive.
We will rebuild.
Amen
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We will destroy.
not just the judicial system. we'll be rebuilding for decades.
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https://x.com/dowdedward/status/1796296042352423394?s=46
Yes, he is the most visible and, as you can see, he expected it. And I think he wants it so that if there was doubt before there should be none now as to what has happened to our justice system.
Trump is now Jesus Christ Superstar. Heaven help us
Only to a certain crowd.
You are merely regurgitating what you have been fed by the Regime. Please take the time to meet, or at least read, those who oppose the Regime.
Lolol. It's true though
A nation of 330 million Americans and these are our choices? The Shambolic Man and the King in Orange? It is enough to make one believe in the Devil.
We can always turn to Cornel West!
Vivek!
Fuck.
I disagree with casting Trump as a cartoon. Peter Thiel summed this up perfectly:
“The press never takes Trump seriously, but it always takes him literally. ... His voters take Trump seriously but not literally…”
Trump was my last choice in the 2016 primary, but the only choice since then. He’s a showman, but his policies have produced sound results. (Some dump on him for COVID business closures, but don’t explain which Oracle they would have consulted to learn that Fauci, et al were full of 💩 and lying bastards).
Thanks John for this reminder. I've not heard the Peter Theil quote but it is so apt.
Someone once said "You want to make an idol? Separate it from the created whole and expect miracles from it." Some have have come to see him as superman, and some as a scape goat, both are idols, and miss the mark. He is flawed because he is human. He either doesn't wish to hide, or to acknowledge his flaws.
Victor Davis Hanson describes Trump as without affect. And that unwillingness or inability to play a part, but to just be that guy with a Queens accent is both what makes him popular and hated. He does not see politics as a performative art. And this really upsets those who have make the performance of politics their only way to processing the world. They feel safe when the performances are on display. So those who hate Trump have poured all their hatred into his lack of affect and made him a carrier of all that they can't/wont accept or understand, and which they call evil. They don't understand him because he does not play the performative game, in fact, he's terrible at it. And this enrages them.
I could go on about what the Trump idolizers are all about, but this is already too long.
“Separate it from the created whole and expect miracles from it.”
Bingo! That encapsulates why I’ve never had the slightest interest in movie stars or musicians for anything except their craft. It’s also the inverse of why so many millions of veterans love the military (at least until recently) – they get you ALL into green clothing ASAP and infuse you with the belief that your unit is everything. The phrase is “esprit du corps,” not “esprit du individuel.”
“I could go on about what the Trump idolizers are all about, but this is already too long.”
Actually your post was too short. It was informative and succinct. I would very much like to hear your comparable analysis of Trump supporters’ motivations.
Lolol. That's funny dude!
Well written Chris.
I've been a bit awestruck with the verdict. Dazed. Really?! Are we really here? Yes, yes we are.
Read a decent post on Alex Berenson's sub from a foreigner. She basically said the US courts were one thing that made doing business with the US so great. The world trusted our judicial system. Past tense.
These people have absolutely ruined everything. I am bereft.
bsn
Anybody know what the 34 felonies were?
Horseshoes and hand grenades
Least of all, the jury. I would bet my house not one of them could explain one of the 34 crimes they’ve convicted him of committing.
Not one.
Amen
No.
Apparently all the lawyers/former prosecutors/law professors they've been parading on the TV also aren't sure.
34 entries of “Legal Fees” into Trump’s financial ledger by his comptroller. Each entry was a separate charge. Apparently, in our banana republic legal system, it’s a felony for Republicans to enter fee’s paid to lawyers as “Legal Fees,” but not for Democrats.
Heard on Clay & Buck in the car yesterday (cause Alex Jones isn't on the radio) that there were four separate counts for each payment. As in one felony for writing the check, another for entering it in the accounting system, etc. Also, as in the trials of Roger Stone and Alex Jones, exculpatory evidence was barred. Trump's defense wanted to call the former head of the Federal Election Commission to testify that the payments were not found to be campaign contributions. Judge said that testimony was irrelevant and wouldn't be allowed.
It's made-up-as-you-go pretended law. The Separation of Powers means the Judicial is absolute, which is a good system if judges will be honest but a terrible system when political bias comes in. The Dred Scott decision triggered the Civil War; the 2020 SCOTUS ignored the evidence to install Biden out of fear and favour and the SCOTUS is absolute. A Gordian Knot begging for an Alexander to chop it.
As a follow up, Melissa Goldin, a fact checker for AP, says the learned judge didn't bar the FEC guy specifically, just set out rules in advance that there'd be no expert opinion allowed on campaign violations (because we don't want dueling experts on the underlying issue). It's only the alleged Federal campaign violation that "elevated" the NY records charges to low-grade felonies, and we sure don't want to bother with misdemeanors, do we? Fact checker didn't go into the details, of course, just said everyone knew the rules in advance. Fact checker's law degree? Nada. B.A. in journalism, minor in anthropology, hence sexual intellectual (i.e., a f---ing know-it-all).
Before AP, Melissa worked for NewsGuard. Wonder if the career disinfo expert ever fact-checked NewsGuard's senior adviser and former CIA boss Michael Hayden on his claim, just before the 2020 election, that the Hunter Biden laptop (with its evidence of millions in foreign money for the Biden crime family, with checks going even to the grandkids) was Russian disinfo? Or Hayden's numerous lies under oath before Congress? Seems more important than Trump's non-disclosure agreement given that Biden's financial ties to Ukraine's penis piano player pose a serious risk of nuclear war before the year is out.
hence sexual intellectual (i.e., a f---ing know-it-all)
Brilliant. Stealing it.
bsn
“Dred Scott” did not trigger the CW. It maintained the status quo from the South’s perspective.
The South had become increasingly restive about restrictions on the expansion of slavery into new states (1:1 under the 1850 Compromise). The REAL trigger was the 1860 election being won by the anti-slavery Republicans (despite Lincoln being omitted from numerous Southern ballots). South Carolina seceded 30 days later, and several more states followed in early 1861.
The Confederacy wouldn’t tolerate Union forts in their midst, and when Lincoln sent Navy ships to resupply some of those coastal forts with food & essentials, the Confederates turned away the one approaching Ft. Sumter on April 12 and immediately began a 34 hr bombardment. The fort surrendered on April 14.
The war was on like Donkey Kong.
(Not strictly relevant, but I think it needs to be said that Maryland and Delaware remained slave states until December 1865 when the 13th Amendment was ratified, a full 6 months after the last battle of the war at Palmito Ranch, Texas.)
It’s insanity. And then the judge splits the jury up into groups of four? WTF is that?
I’m a CPA with 45 yrs experience, and I can’t conceive of how 1 entry can be 34 different crimes or 34 repetitions of the same crime. Reminds me of Carlin’s “7 Sins From One Feel.”
I think the each juror should be questioned individually and asked to explain the crime of which s/he found Trump guilty. Obviously they’re not lawyers (other than 2), but they should able to connect the basic dots. Failure to be able to do so would be a mistrial.
This will be one trial where writing the appeal brief will take longer than preparing for trial. The list of major procedural errors is gargantuan.
The judge never picked the actual jurors vs. the alternates. Did they just pick the 1st 12 guilty votes and designate them as the jurors?
Good to get your CPA's informed opinion. I'm learning a lot. It's no bouquet of roses but cold hard truth is at least a solid ground.
I've heard that there were 11 or 12 payments to Cohen, so each one is "only" ≈3 crimes. MUCH more comprehensible... (nitwits)
On the word of a convicted fraudster and jailbird and known perjurer. And a former porn star who has changed her story more often than her underwear. "Crimes" that are not even misdemeanours and which four years of Muller's $30 million lawyers stag party and FBI and CIA and NSA lawfare could not turn up when he was POTUS. It's so shameful and contemptible. It's like New York City, reduced to a shambles and a crime ridden crap hole by these human tapeworms, is pissing in its pants like a drunken, senile Godfather at a mafia funeral. And the whole world, especially Russia and China, are looking on. This is the global image of America.
100%👍.
But I have one question: What have tapeworms ever done to you to warrant being compared to NYC officials?
No. Not even the prosecution.
I will never serve on a jury. The jury system is corrupt. The judicial system is corrupt. All of our major institutions are corrupt.
When will people WAKE UP???
If you had been on this jury we might not be on this path. Juror nullification is very powerful, you just need to keep your mouth shut about it
It’s funny you say this Brian D. I served on a jury early 2021 and it actually restored some of my faith in humanity. The jurors I served with all seemed to take their roles very seriously, we carefully deliberated based very much only on the evidence and rules. After the 2020 summer of covid lockdowns and political division and never ending riots on my city’s streets, serving on a jury in person with people who felt strongly about doing their civic duty was a bit of a revelation. Reminds me of Chris’s own words which are relevant in the face of this verdict, we as a people are sick from the top down but healthy from the bottom up. Make sure your relationships with “the bottom” people near you are strong.
Yes! Sick from the top down but healthy from the bottom up!
Best summation yet. I totes trust the American people.
My jury service on a child rape trial ≈15 yrs ago matches yours. The jury was truly diverse (before that was an obsession) but we all had similar reactions to the witnesses’ testimony. It was very enheartening.
But none of us (nor the general populace) had ever heard of that defendant nor would again. In a community (Manhattan) that’s 85% Democrat, these 12 New Yorkers would be demonized and financially cancelled if they’d voted to acquit. Can you imagine what would have happened to them if the 1955 Mississippi jury had voted to CONVICT Emmett Till’s killers?
You make a strong argument in favor of change of venue. 1955 Mississippi and 2024 NYC rival each other in corruption, and that corruption kept the trial in their judicial system, just where they wanted it.
BINGO!!! Applies to the Derek Chauvin trial 100%! It only came out later that the coroner's autopsy of Floyd proved that he did not die of strangulation – there were no burst capillaries evident in the whites of his eyes as there always in a strangulation death. So Chauvin did not cut off Floyd's airway, so Chauvin was Not Guilty as Charged. But meanwhile all the jurors lived with their spouses and kids in the town that BLM was burning down while Maxine Waters was screaming for riotous insurrection and the cops had fled for their lives from their burning precinct and a luckless innocent woman was raped and murdered when her car was immobilized by the mob. And ruthless drug criminal thug George Floyd – who earned his last stint in the slammer by pressing a gun into the pregnant belly of a young black woman while she begged for her life – is still praised as a hero and saint.
I was called for jury duty once.
We were herded into a room and the case was explained: a woman reported to police that her automobile was stolen, turned out her boyfriend borrowed it without telling her, she didn't want to press charges, the DA in that (Pennsylvania) county decided he wanted a conviction. Seriously. I wasn't chosen for that jury, maybe they heard my eyes rolling.
You see the same thing as a witness. For example, I once witnessed a traffic accident caused by an elderly driver crossing multiple lanes of traffic, causing another driver to slam on her brakes and end up on the guard rail. I wove through the carnage, followed the guilty driver, got the license plate and description (elderly, sex undetermined, wearing a knit cap), and called the police. When I was later called to testify, I was told by a state trooper that the driver, though she drove that route regularly, claimed she hadn't that day, and that someone must have taken her car for a joy ride, then returned it to her driveway. Ridiculous, of course, but the trooper said without my ID, there was no case. I explained that I hadn't seen the driver that well, thought the knit cap and license plate would do. Trooper repeats that they need a positive ID, and what's more, there's a friend of the driver sitting next to her and I'll have to guess which one is the driver. The two were almost twins, and I picked the one with the knit cap, which of course was the decoy. The young woman whose car was totaled was in tears as the guilty woman walked free. It isn't what you see on Perry Mason or Law and Order.
I went to college in Pittsburgh 75-79. It became clear that something was (and is) wrong with the complex criminal justice system of counties, cities, boroughs, townships, & villages in PA. The quality of police investigations and criminal prosecutions is truly appalling.
The brother of a college friend was an integral participant in a series of thrill killings in the Pgh area in 1980 – 3 civilians, and a cop 3 days in uniform. The cops caught the 2 perps with the murder weapons. In 1981, they were both sentenced to death. The next 44 yrs have been spent litigating a host of procedural irregularities in the trial due to incompetence on the DAs part as well as by the judge. One of the cases only ended when the perp died of illness in 2017 at 59. The other perp was resentenced in 1995, but remains on death row 44 yrs after the murders. “Keystone Cops” takes on a sad second meaning.
Wow.
This incident was on the other side of the state, in mostly rural Monroe County in the Poconos. I just could not understand why, when the 'victim' had no interest in pursuing the issue, the local DA wanted to waste time and resources on such a trivial matter. I thought it was ridiculous.
Foreigner butting in: our prosecutors foten do stuff like that when they are still greenhorns. The reason for this is simple metrics. Their future career is weighed by measuring how many cases they've brought where the accused was convicted of something, in some way.
They just can't let a simple slam-dunk pass by them, due to this. And it's a crap way of measuring, but a prosecutor arguing against it, well there goes your career. Before 1994, we didn't measure stuff that way.
Police have it even worse, and our stats are so messed up they are useless: if 20 police man a stop-and-check to see if people comply with the regs for bicycles, then every person fined for not having lights (f.e) on the bike counts as 20, making the police look hyper-effective.
Perhaps things like that, procedural and bureaucratic tangles, are the reason for many problems with your justice system, and the attendant corruption simply exploits these things the way a fungal infection exploits a crashed immune system?
A bedrock principle of management is that “you get what you measure.” The tire store I previously used got a new manager who pushed his employees HARD – measuring “service minutes per tire sold.” I was unaware of this, and my new tires were completely out of balance. I brought the car back and they found nothing wrong. I went to a different store, and they discovered the old tire weights had not been removed before rebalancing with the new tires.
It’s impossible to quantify “judgment,” which is a critical component of evaluating the administration of justice.
In Lagos, Nigeria, the authorities measure police on how quickly they apprehend perpetrators. While I was there on a trip, 2 bank customers were robbed on the front steps of a bank by a pair of men on a motorcycle. The police arrested the next 2 men on a single motorcycle driving by.
You get what you measure.
Never underestimate the power of incentives. They always achieve the behavior they incent.
Sorry, I left out the connecting point. PA seems to lack a statewide “standard of professionalism” in law enforcement and judicial performance – not even tacit, let alone formal.
My wife’s family is from the Pgh area and even now, it’s a highly relationship driven society, with incompetence widely tolerated because “he’s my wife’s cousin’s son…” I think the same tolerance of mediocrity is endemic to the entire Commonwealth.
never unfortunately….
The jury system is not corrupt. Certain jurors are. The system is actually quite reasonable, for a religious and moral people.
Kevin O’Leary was on “The Five” a couple of days ago recounting a pitch meeting he’d just held for potential investors in Europe, and them being dumbstruck at the (alleged) salacious details being dragged out in open court about a PRESIDENT by the government of NYC, as well as the recent 2 civil cases also by the government of NY (Harris case enabled by NYS legislature). They questioned how they could invest and be subject to a legal system like that. O’Leary’s point was that the Democrats have severely damaged America’s “brand” purely out of obsession.
Lefties show us over and over that they generally do not consider possible blowback from their actions. It would serve these Islands of Blue right to find themselves with a rapidly shrinking tax base and nowhere to turn to stop the decay. When I was a child - heck, when our sons were children - it was a real treat to go to NYC in December to see the Christmas show at Radio City. I'd never set foot in the City now.
As much as I'd rather not see this lawfare degenerate into a kind of cold civil war, the less-nice part of me kinda likes the idea floated by someone (forgot his name) that Republican DAs everywhere ought to carefully review their local Democratic pols to see what obscure law s/he may have violated at any time and then to prosecute, since "no one is above the law."
👍 on all counts.
The thing about R’s prosecuting D officials just for being D’s is that it requires us to become D’s in spirit. Mainly because we have principles and they have feelings. If we give up our principles, we are nothing.
You have to wonder how many NYC-based corporate CEO’s have initiated an urgent review of the accounting entries for all NDA settlements recorded in the last 10 yrs.
I think we’ll see foreign investment in the U.S. declining (probably sharply) because almost all of it flows through NYC. The U.S. used to be the gold standard of *zero* political risk. Prosecutions of accounting scandals (Equity Funding (1974), Enron (2001), WorldCom (2002) to name 3) caused no reputational damage to the U.S. because the crimes were obvious. But the idea that (allegedly) mislabeling otherwise lawful expenditures could lead to 136 yrs in prison if the authorities don’t like you should and will dissuade foreign investors.
I think we’ll see fewer companies going public because that road leads through NYC.
Power is their only ethic.
None of you are actually Americans. You are all Russian trolls using the same talking points and poutrage on a hundred forums. A handful of cranks think this is evidence of conspiracy and “what real Americans are thinking”. And are thus emboldened.
You are not seeking truth but to annihilate it and replace it with strong man worship. I say great. Rise up, do your worst. Most if us arent suckers and see through your gaslighting.
^^^
I second that emotion.
I'm glad to be up here in Canada because our old age pension is still intact (I'm 77). But as far as politics and law? Our southern border feels like a mighty thin shield. Potentially, we are way more vulnerable than Americans. Truckers' Freedom Convoy? Emergencies Act? In essence, martial law and bank account confiscation simply declared by the PM and rubber stamped automatically by the federal legislature.
If a natural disaster does not strike that area of California God owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.
"They’ll burn the house down, but they’ll rule over the ashes..."
I apologize for gloating but I told ya there was zero chance Trump would walk.
Life is very different in a one-party state, but not that different from the glory days of Joe Stalin:
If Stalin says someone is an enemy of the people, the only way to stay on his good side and make a name for yourself (and not be targeted) is to out-Stalin Stalin and say it's not just the person whose an enemy but their entire families and associates, who must all be hunted down for the good of the Party and the State; if Stalin says Trans is a sacred category, the apparatchik must not just worship Trans but must denounce all of Trans' opponents and maybe also give Trans their own special holidays, special language and a special place high up in the moral hierarchy where they become an extension of the State and Party itself (who are themselves replacements for God and religion).
In a one-party state all other possible concerns—the rule of law, the validity of elections, the rights of parents over their children, the ancient Hippocratic Oath of Do No Harm, plus any integrity, honesty, veracity—are subordinate to the needs of the Party and to the apparatchiks who feed on it like a piglet feeds on a sow.
And all these tales have the same ending: the true believers will go to their graves convinced of their righteousness, proud of having devoted their lives to the great cause, while the rest of us are left behind to live in their rubble.
And keep clapping until there's no one else clapping
keep clapping till your heart gives out!
That comes next. Right now the useful idiots WANT to clap. I guess they will be induced to thin each other out now to make things more “manageable.” Wasn’t it J.P. Morgan that said, “I can hire half the middle class to kill the other half.” ?
Damn that's a good one
You were right and I was wrong on the "Never Get High On Your Own Supply" thread.
The idea that there is always room for optimism seems to work only about 10% of the time. So I'll be right one of these days. Sure, it will be finding a turnip when we're all eating our pets or discovering a way to drink urine after the water goes out...
But one day, one glorious day, there will be room for optimism, you fucking asshole.
hey!
i never claimed the guilty verdict was my preferred outcome or even that it would make any sense, i only said there was no way he was walking free in NYC.
don't shoot the messenger!
That last paragraph may be the most poignant thing you've ever written. We have all seen this coming. It started around the time of the OJ trial, hit peak weird around Chauvin, went off the rails during Rittenhouse and somehow was pulled back to sanity a bit with an acquittal. Now we get to wait on a possible reversal again. But the big shift was today. They saw what they can get when they corrupt the system and corrupt a jury pool. I'm looking at my "fellow" countrymen a little differently from here on out.
Right.
It is to intimidate us and to cower us into silence.
I think it's the opposite. They want the freakout. They want the anger. It's that scene in Return Of The Jedi with the emperor croaking out: "GOOOD! LET THE HATE FLOW THROUGH YOU!" - they want you just like them. Not gonna happen.
I concur. They need to destroy America from the inside in order to make it easier to usher in globalist control.
100% what's going on.
^^^
Yes. They want to draw us offside when we have the ball on the 1 yard line on 4th down.
Well, they’re not gonna get it.
Fuck it. Let’s revolt.
The only people I still trust are right here. Otherwise, humans suck. A lot
JAA—Not to be nit picky, but it pre-dates OJ. It also pre-dates Clarence Thomas’s hi-tech lynching, Ray “Where do I go to get my reputation back?” Donovan, and Richard Nixon’s Watergate. The mask first slipped when they murdered JFK.
I was never a fan of JFK and had no interest in the grassy knoll and all that stuff. Then a friend in 2018 implored me to read James W. Douglas’s,’ “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.” I thought I was reading about the Trump presidency. JFK was being targeted by the MIC, just as Trump was. Every other president since JFK has succumbed to it, until Trump. The judiciary has always been corrupt. After all, Earl Warren was the Chief Justice of the USSC when he took the side hustle to cover-up the JFK assassination.
As I read what I just wrote, I sound like the conspiracy nuts I used to mock. But, I agree with what Mark Steyn wrote about the NYC verdict. He says this isn’t banana republic shenanigans. This is one of world’s nuclear super powers—the supposed leader of the free world— run by idiots leading the collective west over a cliff. He predicts the bloodshed in the next ten years will far exceed what followed the end of imperial Europe in the early 20th century. The communists and Nazis filled that vacuum.
Thank God “we the people” are heavily armed. I just hope we have the same resilience and fortitude as the Vietnamese and Afghanistans.
All very true, but I was going with the actual convictions gained for political purposes. But that is a great primer. Heavily armed, check! Don't forget night vision, thermals, and body armor while you are at it...
…and don’t forget crates of Jack Daniels and Marlboros for currency.
Heavily armed but led by whom? How does this end as anything but Warlordia? I fully support being heavily armed, I'm just not sure what it accomplishes.
Deterrence. That’s what it accomplishes. If we’re gonna have Warlordia—and if we do it will be started by the regime—might as well be heavily armed.
Perhaps. The question of coherent leadership remains. I hope we don't have to find out.
I would rather have *this* country die for me.
You’re getting your wish.
It turns out Franz Kakfa’s novel, “The Trial,” in which Josef K. Is tried for a crime the government won’t tell him he committed, was really non-fiction, and it has played out right in front of us, in public, and nothing stopped it.
Every dystopian novel I read in high school, “1984,” “Brave New World,” “The Trial,” are all coming true.
I weep for our country.
Have you seen the Mike Wallace/ Huxley 1958 interview? If not make sure you’re seated in chair deep enough to not fall off. Perhaps down a couple of shots first. It is mind blowing. Inexplicably prescient and prophetic.
“ Brave New World” was pure fiction, predicated by a rift with his brother, a eugenicist, fearing it would become a very dark agenda. He got that right. Huxley’s incredibly brilliant imaginatio was not of this world- literally. I asked a noted intellectual whether he believed there are actual prophets- placed here to act as bell ringers, warning of what’s to come. To thwart horrific events from taking place. That we are in a sense, tested. We. can choose a path. Either heed the warnings or suffer the consequences. Forewarned is fair warned.
He asked who it was that prompted the sudden interest? I replied, “Promise not to laugh? Huxley.”He didn’t laugh, surprisingly. Instead, he immediately said,” Absolutely” and took it one step beyond.” Gail, it’s your turn to promise not to laugh. I really don’t know what to call him. He’s reminds me of a time- traveller. You know what I mean the popular subject of Sci-Fil books and films. As though back from the future. He’s been there and it’s hideous. We can change course if we act now”. It was a great analysis.
Huxley became alarmed that his fiction was becoming reality in the late forties. He was seeing signs of it-particularly the advance of technology, pharmaceuticals and synchronized television messaging. He noticed a single message being purveyed on the three major networks and noted a global phenomenon. It was propaganda. Repeating the same message using the same wording, and intonation over and over. Manipulation that was so effective the public didn’t ask questions. Because it was a singular narrative. By the mid-fifties. Huxley was becoming frantic. He needed to get the message to the public. When he appeared on Wallace’s show, Wallace so patronizing. Supercilious. Inferring that Huxley was nuts. Huxley wasn’t paying attention. He was so deeply engaged in his narrative. And what a narrative it was. He laid out in detail EVERY event we’ve been experiencing and how we got here. The pattern. It will make the hair on your arms stand up. The Great Reset.
You know Klaus Schwab’s freakish tag line, “ You will own nothing, have no l privacy and be happy”.
It sounded weirdly familiar. I was wracking my brain as to why. I really thought I was losing it. And then I remembered. It was from Brave New World, circa 1932. The horrid protagonist, Mond told the protagonist, The Beast, “ You will own nothing, have no privacy and love your servitude”
It seems the megalomaniacal cabal of psychopaths-WEF/UN/WHO/Bilderberg/Trilateral Commission and their satellite sociopaths are using a concomitant 1984/ Communist Manifesto/Meim Kampft /I,Robot/Soylent Green/ Brave New World as the playbook.
Life imitating art
I turned around quickly and caught a fleeting glimpse.......of myself.
I love this analysis.
Life is imitating art and an already Stepfordized populous is sleepwalking into slavery. While our “ vaunted” elected representatives are doing NOTHING! Aside from colluding .
Prediction... if the party retains control, "The Trial - 2024" will debut on Broadway within 18 months after the election. De Nero is already auditioning.
LIKE!!
You’re right! It was posted on the inner book jacket of my high school copy. Extraordinary mind. I became a Huxley devotee because I was so slavishly infatuated with Jim Morrison ( he’d already been dead 15 years) Because “The Doors “was an homage to “ The Doors Of Perception”, it was a de rigeur read. Then “ Eyeless In Gaza”, “ After Many A Summer Dies The Swan”.. yada, yada , yada.
My daughter, 13 at the time, found a box of my Doors memorabilia. She took one look at his image and lost her mind. Did the same thing, know every lyric, quoted his poetry, got into a pissing contest with med, read Huxley, Nietzsche until she fell into a deep depression. Because he was dead. It became so concerning, I took her to a therapist. She inherited my obsessive need to know everything. I guess it paid off , she’s the Chief of Radiology at Miami’s Baptist Medical. Appointed at age 28. My obsessive crazy isn’t applied to anything productive..
THANK YOU! You’ve scratched an OCD itch. I was trying to remember the movie’s name and spent about 2 hrs this AM searching based on plot points. No joy. Turns out it was made in 1962 vs. the 40s and 50s. AND it’s available on MAX!
I was born in California (and once proud of it). Most of my extended family is here, my wife's kids are here, and I own property here. Realistically, I am not leaving. But .
. don't come here - at all! No amount of money is worth it if you have kids.
Yup. That's exactly why we left...but goodness I miss the mountains
Come to Montana. We have mountains.😎
I miss them more than I can even begin to say. They orientated me to my surroundings without my ever realizing it. And I always just knew where NSEW were. Since moving to a very flat place that’s covered with dense growth everywhere, I never know where I am. It’s very upsetting on a subliminal level.
Agree. We just had to get out. I love Florida but like you said it's disorienting when you've grown up with the mountains in your "backyard".
I spent 30 yrs in Houston, which is a glacial plain. You learn to track the Sun. Plus the city is a combo of hub, spoke & grid.
Tracking the sun is a skill I lack here as the sky is often leaden. From my home I have a general idea, but anyplace else not so much.
Also the roads are not laid out on a grid like back in California. You must usually go in twisty paths that wind and loop and are not direct lines from A to B.
“You must usually go in twisty paths that wind and loop and are not direct lines from A to B.”
Same is true here in the Smokies, with similar effect on our sense of direction.
It’s definitely a holdover from the carriage paths or trails blazed at the founding of our country.
I do love the mountains.
Yeah me too. We're heading back next week for 10 days up in the Mammoth area
I live by Sequoia National Park.
So jealous
It was a concious decision as a young man. I knew that I was giving up earning potential
Hey, we've got mountains here in the Green Mountain State, stunningly gorgeous ones. And cows, lots of cows.
Sure, Vermont is a progressive mess right now, but it wasn't always. It's only been the last two/three decades that useless lefties moved here and can now outvote the natural conservatism of native Vermonters. Good news is that, with a population of around 600,000, a reasonable influx of conservative newbies could restore Vermont to what it long was: a moderately conservative, Republican state.
Consider: in 2016 and again in 2020 Trump got roughly 30% of the popular vote in Vermont so there is definitely a conservative base here and it's not unthinkable that things could change. Hope springs eternal.
Interesting video about Brentwood renter
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vBf4H_xQa_A&feature=youtu.be
Interestingly, Elizabeth’s alma mater, Harvard, started as a divinity school. They must be SO proud of her leech personality.
Trained her well, disgustingly well. 🤮
There are mountains in Idaho… and smaller ones in Tennessee.
Funny you mention that. We escaped prison planet at the beginning of c19 to spend a month in Coeur d'Alene. We went up north for several days to see mountains.
God's country.
There’s a nice mountain about 70 miles west of where I’m sitting.
I was born in San Mateo and left at about age 3 to be raised in Seattle.
I lived in/around San Diego from 2003-2013 and had to leave because Dad got cancer.
I've since fled WA for North Idaho.
It's a good place to rebuild, but I fear for my family in WA. I think the coastal states will make moving from the State illegal, sooner rather than later. Commies always pull shite like that.
They won’t make moving illegal, just the cessation of paying them income tax.
Winner winner chicken dinner. Yep!
California is considering an exit tax on high net worth individuals.
Yeah, when I left in 2013 the CA tax man harassed me for years after. The commies have been trying to put up a financial net that keeps rich people (anyone with a job) paying regardless where they move.
Similarly, New York tried to tax the begonias out of my husband's entire yearly income because he spent 5 days at a conference there, so he quote worked in New York, unquote. Texas, where we live, told them to pound sand. Our state constitution forbids it.
Same issue for the many thousands of people living in northeast Pennsylvania who commute to NYC for work. Keeps a lot of CPAs busy.
Louis Rossman is a YouTuber who New York and NYC tried to continue to tax after he moved his board repair business from NYC to Texas.
^^^
Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t/isn’t CA considering an exit tax on the higher tax bracket individuals or businesses if they leave the state? Further, that they can tax that individual or business on earnings after they’ve actually relocated?
New York has been trying to tax escapees for a while.
And New Jersey too I believe.
I say good luck with that.
I too, was born there but left about 24 years ago. I miss the beach. The last time I was there it smelled like sewage and there was trash everywhere except the cans. My daughter lives in downtown LA . On our walk home from dinner we were rerouted by the police due to a murder on the street.
Such a great place to grow up in the 70's . I'll never move back.
Last time I drove through central LA was about 3 years ago. Near the LA Times building, I missed a merge. I had to exit the Interstate and turn quicky left into an underpass. The stench was of the Third World. I can't do justice to it. Yet the Mighty LA Times, a few hundred yards away, blunders along publishing that nothing is wrong with California.
Like the LA Times itself, the LA Times building is mostly a shell at this point. The newspaper operates out of a building in El Segundo that you can see from the 105. Used to be a great building, with that giant clock. Now you can feel the death inside.
I worked at the LA Times in the 90s, in the promotions department. I was so proud to be part of that history, working in that historical building, enjoying the walk around City Hall, squinting and trying to imagine what it was like to live in Los Angeles in the 40s and 50s. My family moved to Los Angeles in 1964 from West Virgina. I'm sick and heartbroken over what it has become. I'm about to attend my 50th high school reunion (fight, fight on Westchester High) and my friends and I feel that we are probably the last generation that experienced the gift of growing up there. I live on the other side of the country now, and soon will be moving to the middle so I can make a 2-day drive to LA to see my friends after our overlords decide I can't fly because I'm unvaccinated or because I voted for Trump or because . . . who knows.
Ah!
A true injustice today and a morally bankrupt society
Well at least trans month was declared on Easter.
You're right. Total depravity.
Like
And casually nihilist. Feels like a large scale version of a Clockwork Orange. The Droogs rule the streets. Fuckers.
And “ Quueers For Hamas is the new “ I’m with stupid”
On the sexualization of children, this is why pagans, Muslims, and atheists have such intense hatred of Christians and Jews, as we proscribe sexual contact between adults and children (read the Christ's prescription for what should happen to adults who abuse children). And, yes, Trump's convictions were terrible and uncalled for but he and all his supporters, plus any lawyers who defend him, will all be sent to jail of destroyed professionally. That's what happened to those who opposed the Nazis after the Reichstag fire in '33 in Germany. (amazing how similar to the Nazis the Democrats and some "R's are). And, yes, this civilization is collapsing before our very eyes. What took Rome several centuries to do, we are doing in a few decades. So, vote for all "R"s in November, no matter how stupid, lazy, or incompetent they are, (they are the "stupid party"). I don't know if they can save the Republic, but almost all "D"s are going to destroy it.
One other thing. Biden has supplied and approved of the use of long range missiles, which can be equipped with nuclear warheads, to the Ukrainians, and they are using then to destroy targets deep in Russia. Pray for the long life and good health of Vladimir Putin. He's shown amazing restraint in the murder of hundreds of thousand of Russians and much damage to his country. If we'd done this to Xi and the Chinese, we'd already be in a kinetic, probably nuclear war.
Never, never, ever, ever, give up the fight!
Danny Huckabee
I share your concerns, but Putin could simply have permanently repositioned a couple of infantry and armored divisions to near the Ukrainian border and not invaded. The message would have been clear. Now he’s in a fight he MUST win, no matter the cost, and it’s become something of a perpetual motion machine.
^^^
wondering who among the trump jurors had a book deal locked up by the time they sat in that box
saw this coming a mile away. same reason why john gotti and so many of his mafioso brethren managed to walk
I also wonder how much the fear of jury doxing/shaming influences verdicts.
100%. Especially those 2 attorneys. Buckshot into their careers if they’d voted NG.
I suspect there may have been a person or two who thought “this is wrong, but I’m not going to get run over for the sake of morality; let them figure it out on appeal.” In a sense, societal scrutiny was providing the necessary witness intimidation.
100% 👍!
Who the hell agreed to attorneys on a jury????
It’s clear that being attorneys did not affect their vote. A legitimate attorney would have voted NG based on the paucity of evidence & witnesses presented by the prosecution. The state presented NO witnesses to substantiate that the alleged conduct was an election crime. (In fact, the judge prohibited such testimony.) The level of proof achieved by the prosecution was SO far under “beyond a reasonable doubt” that only a prejudiced or fearful juror could have voted guilty.
Ah, I see. I guess I was thinking in terms of lawfariousness and a narc-y lawyer’s capability of making himself/herself foreman with his legalese and manipulating the rest of the jurors accordingly.
As you suggest, it probably didn’t get THAT far.
That’s always possible. OTOH, I’ve worked with attorneys my whole career, and with 2 distinct exceptions, they have been fabulous professionals.
The role of jury foreman is pretty limited: passing out, collecting & counting “ballots” (mail-in not accepted 🤣), taking meal orders, writing the group’s note(s) to the judge, and lastly, filling out the verdict form. The foreman is not allowed to stifle a juror’s discussion of the case.
BTW, a good way to get disbarred is to instruct fellow jurors on the law. Even if the judge is blatantly wrong on an instruction, the jury can ask for clarification, but if ratified, must accept the error as truth and let the appellate process sort out the mess.
BINGO!
We’re running out of adjectives to describe what’s happening to our judicial system. However, when it comes to children, it’s evil. We can no longer mock and shake our heads about ancient cultures that literally sacrificed children for adult/society gain.
All I'll say is what we are seeing is profound weakness.
We shall overcome. Let's not get mad...let's get even!
"All I'll say is what we are seeing is profound weakness."
I really waver between this statement and my fear that they so brazenly destroy others, because their grasp of power is so complete. I do take great hope in knowing that the other side is generaled by DEI incompetents, unhinged women, and thoroughly feminized men. Can't think of a single time in history that such a coalition ruled for any length of time.
Anyway, here's a great essay that echoes your assertion: https://theworthyhouse.com/2021/02/23/on-the-brawndo-tyranny/
Thank you, Doc.
You bet, Andy.
Me too. But I think they've miscalculated the zeitgeist this time.
Maybe they've gone too far ....finally.
I hope so. Has there ever been a more loathsome ruling class than ours?
NEVER. We have to get these commies out of office. Nothing else matters imo
Well, they haven’t hung any pitch-covered Republicans from lamp posts and lit them on fire…yet.
Most of human history is varying degrees of tyranny. The freedom and prosperity that the US enjoyed is just a blip in the timeline of world history. This is just reversion to the mean,
This ends very, very BADLY.
When Obama was elected in 2008, I knew that I had lost my country. I saw that at least half of the people occupying this land were living in a different reality, and I wanted nothing to do with them. My alienation has only increased as time goes on. Covid, Ukraine, and the Mideast pushed me farther away. Today was just one more step. I was already boycotting NYC. Now it's permanent.
If I ponder what's just happened, the ache in my chest makes me cry. It's the start of a hard cry I'd rather not have. I'm 64 and this is the last thing to fall, the rule of law. And it aches. Even knowing that we've raised another great set of generations behind us, and that we'll rebuild, it hurts bad.
I want to shake the people celebrating this travesty online - don't they realize this weapon, this star chamber treatment, can and will be turned on anyone? Like Robespierre's guillotine, anyone can now be pulled in front of a judge, have the law tailored to their "crime", be denied a valid defense, and be found guilty by a group of people who want nothing more than the eye be turned on someone else, anyone else.
Feckless destruction.
They’re 100% banking on Republicans’ dedication to principles (or lack of cojones) to save them from turnabout. There is NOTHING distinguishing in the Trump verdict vs the last 3-1/2 of Biden Admin policies. This is just more obvious. But the failure to “take care of that the laws be faithfully executed” is just as corrosive.
^^^