The Frankish Reich

Would it kill you to give a hat tip to Laura Loomer? 😁

I see the conflation of the two meanings of "exceptional" with that whole thing about "American exceptionalism." As I've always understood the term from a historical perspective, it was not intended to mean "America is exceptionally good, the greatest nation on earth." Rather, it was intended to mean that other countries are formed by "nations" - a collection of people united by ethnicity/language/etc. "The French people," "The German people" or nation-state. America, rather, was a country defined by an ideal, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and an ideal that people from many nations/backgrounds/languages could accept and in turn be accepted as an American. (Just a little digression on what I consider to be a misunderstanding based on an older use of the term "exceptional")

Umm, because we've never had that type of shutdown in response to an infectious disease in recent memory? In other words, it was an "exception" to our typical response. We might call that "exceptional."

I think you just found QAnon. Again.

What I'm saying is this: nobody has any evidence in support of the counterfactual, that things would have been better (or at least not any worse) had we just continued with life as usual. We made mistakes. Understood. But here we are 4 years later having emerged from a pandemic in pretty damn good shape.

And so far she's the only one of these judges to be slapped down by an appeals court for a clearly incorrect procedural decision. And yet I don't see Biden supporters threatening her or her family's/staff's personal security.

Taxes: I'm doing mine now. I'm missing a 1099 that the issuer knows I should have. I can't seem to shake it out of them. My question: I received notice from the issuer that they were informing the IRS of a distribution. In other words, reporting it on a 1099. So the IRS already has this information. Why on earth do I need to get it myself to report it on my 1040? Why do I have to pay a third-party provider like TurboTax to re-report what's already been reported? For years critics of the IRS have demanded direct filing, cutting out the middleman. And for years Congress has blocked that in response to Intuit, Block, and others lobbying to preserve their source of income. There is no better example of broken government.

In other words: "Would someone please block quote any responses from @BillStime so that I can read them and then call him a commie while continuing to pretend ignore him." I remember doing this as a child, using an intermediary: "tell my sister I'm mad at her." But then I grew up.

Partial shutdowns, Operation Warp Speed were the big two.

True. But overall, we muddled through it and after that rough start we were able to recover - at least economically - remarkably fast. That's my issue with all the hindsight heroes. You know the type: we shut down for too long, required masks that did nothing, moved to work/school from home too readily, pushed vaccinations too hard, etc., etc. Do these people know that the number of deaths wouldn't have been considerably higher had we not taken these steps? Of course not.

Currently at 1.187 deaths. So ... the estimate was off by a factor of about 5. Even if you discount that number by 50% (the old "died with coronavirus rather than because of coronavirus"), that's still over half a million deaths. We shouldn't forget how awful this pandemic was, and how, despite an initial comedy of errors, we were able to take prudent (and sometimes exceptional) steps to work our way out of it.

Four years ago the country was awash in nutty conspiracy theories. I mean, you don't see this kind of nonsense anymore, do you? (Hint: if you don't, just look a little harder.) From March 16, 2020. Anyone recognize yourself? Read this interesting tidbit today, whether it's true or not it's still interesting The Great cover up of 2020: Yesterday morning at 4:30 a.m., Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was served a criminal indictment by the U.S. for corporate and financial crimes. Media owners were instructed to brainwash everyone that Trudeau and his wife have the Corona virus, and that they won't be leaving their house for a while. Tom Hanks was arrested a little over 48 hours ago for pedophilia and he is currently being kept in a hotel room in Australia, refusing to fly back to the USA. The next celebrity arrests will be Celine Dion, Madonna, Charles Barkley, and Kevin Spacey. All will claim Corona virus infections. Italy's airports have been completely shut down, as over 80 Vatican and financial officials have been served the same criminal indictments for financial crime, pedophilia, child trafficking, and sex abuse. United Emirates have completed mass arrests of their own Royal Family and affiliates. Convicted Hollywood rapist Harvey Weinstein agreed to a deal in exchange for his testimony against hundreds of top Hollywood celebrities and their involvement in the drug business, pedophilia, and child trafficking. Instead of a 55-year sentence, he only received a 23-year sentence. In exchange he provided testimonies against some of the biggest and most powerful names, including Prince Andrew of the U.K., former president Bill Clinton, former vice president Joe Biden, Tom Hanks, Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Sheen, Bob Saget, Kevin Spacey, John Travolta, Steven Spielberg, Podesta, NXIVM and PIZZAGATE sex trafficking clubs, and hundreds more who all were directly involved with Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was similarly allowed to make a deal and have his suicide in prison faked in exchange for his testimony CEOs of some major world corporations have been indicted/arrested, and some have been forced to resign — all in the last 30-60 days — such as the CEOs of the NBA, Harley Davidson, the Bill Gates Foundation, Intel, McDonald's, Cesar Awards, and Disney; the Vatican Chief of Police; etc. Approximately 700-800 more resignations are coming in the next 3 months. The lab-created Coronavirus was a cover-up for the mass mandatory vaccination agenda. Now it has become the biggest covert U.S. Intelligence operation that the world has ever seen. This mass 158,000-arrests operation will remove and capture the biggest evil and corrupted politicians, celebrities, and CEOs, including global elites and bankers such as George Soros, U.N. officials, and the founders of GRETA, inc. President Trump will win the 2020 elections, and arrests of former U.S. presidents will occur in early 2021. All major arrests will be portrayed by the media as accidental or as conspiracy theories. All arrested individuals will be given "Rommel Death", meaning that they will have a choice between their death bring portrayed to the public as a suicide or an accidental death in return for assurances that his or her reputation will remain intact, or, alternatively, they can choose to face a criminal trial that would result in public disgrace. Some top religious leaders will be arrested or forced to resign, and some will suddenly get "sick." The Vatican will be the first, and the Pope will be removed in 2020. Production of human extracted Adrenochrome will be revealed, and Hollywood and the Vatican will be exposed as being directly responsible for that. Coming up there will be a 2-month complete shutdown of the world's most common operations, such as schools, the stock exchange, some banks, airports, shipping, travel, events, galas, expos, sport games, sport championships, music award ceremonies, NBA/NHL/Baseball games, and ship cruises. There will be food shortages and staged electricity power loss. Gas prices will go down, food costs will go up, insurance will go up, gold and silver stocks will fall, and many corporations will either go bankrupt or take a significant financial loss, such as in the case of what's about to happen to Air Canada, Disney, and Coca-Cola. Welcome to the Geat Awakening. What's about to happen this summer and fall will change the world's timeline. All the world's a stage.

Pyro Pastor "finds" trailer with hundreds of burning Bibles. "It was 100 percent directed at (Global Vision Bible Church)," Locke said. "It blocked the entrance to our campus and the fact that it was an entire load of Bibles is rather conclusive proof that is was most assuredly directed at us. "It did not, nor will it stop us. It was cleaned up in time for people to drive into the parking lot. We had a full house and a marvelous service." Global Vision has held burning events in the past that involved materials the church believes is connected to witchcraft and the occult.

For whatever reason, Jussie Smollett comes to mind. Should burning the Koran be investigated? Burning a children's book about gender identity?

Cringe is overused, but ... cringe.

Follow the arrow ... I'm pretty sure he just called Jesus a trans DEI commie cultist ...

During Holy Week, my wife and I started watching The Chosen, an unambiguously (evangelical) Christian telling of the life of Jesus. I believe it is by some of the same people who made the "controversial" Sound of Freedom movie. I like it. It does not shy away from the radical interpretation of Jesus as an anti-authority (Rome, the internal Jewish hierarchy) figure and as a communitarian (if not socialist if you prefer) leader. There is also a focus on how as a charismatic preacher he was able to recruit and spiritually transform those reviled by ancient Jewish society: the woman of ill repute Mary Magdalene (here creatively presented as the victim of family violence, suffering from mental problems), the tax collector Matthew (here presented as someone definitely on the autism spectrum), the hothead Simon/Peter, etc. A nice departure from the crime stories that seem to dominate the leading streamers these days. And no blond Nordic Jesus. Well worth watching if you are at all interested in a somewhat different take on the greatest story. Hope all had a Happy Easter.

And NCBills would most definitely call him a commie. Maybe a fcu.k stain too.

Very Christ-like sentiments.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/30/michigan-congressman-tim-walberg-suggests-nuking-gaza-ending-humanitarian-aid-nagasaki-hiroshima/73156051007/ @Irv, is that you?

This is getting close to Picketty's argument, which I find pretty compelling on its surface, but so far not really supported by most good examinations of economic history.

Thanks.

I agree. I don't see any reason for these proclamations in general. As for "no religious symbols" - I agree with the Biden White House on that one. There's the religious Easter (church services, prayer, and expressions of communal joy), and there's the secular Easter (real bunnies, creepy grown ups in Easter Bunny costumes, egg rolls and egg hunts, Peeps, etc.) and it's best to keep those two very different things separate. I wouldn't want to go to Easter Mass and be assaulted by a priest in an Easter Bunny costume handing out Peeps either.

To her credit: She worked like hell to get pregnant with Sergey Brin's child, ensuring her financial security forevermore.

Have you noticed the duplicate threads posted by someone else? Look at the list this morning. And look at the pointless repeated postings of Trump as Lincoln/Moses/whatever. A lot of people would benefit from a little course correction.