Hat tip to Thompson Blog. (Note: he’s recently renovated his digs… very nice.)
Unless you live under a rock you know that two electric substations were damaged, leading to a power outage in North Carolina.
I’m not interested theories about who did it or why. Frankly I don’t give a shit; not my circus, not my monkeys. Though I do think it’s funny that the FBI announced they’ll get out of the “causing crime” business long enough to “solve” this one. Given their track record, they’re more likely to freak out and kill 86 innocent Jesus freaks than use their Bat computer to sleuth out this mystery.
(It’ll be interesting to find out if the dipshit that did it is on their payroll, as is often the case. If they come up with a cockamamie story about a lone actor using 24 guns before they memory hole the entire event he or she or it was one of their wind up toys. If the dipshit wasn’t on their payroll they’ll pin it on the nearest person who didn’t vote Democrat. Then they’ll get back to their real job of disappearing evidence that embarrasses Democrats or hassling some parent at a school board meeting.)
What interest me, is that they (the press) called it “vandalism”. Not once, but all over the place. (I took examples from one article but you’re welcome to read others for yourself. Check and see if you hear the same word repeated over and over.)
“As utility companies began responding to the different substations, evidence was discovered that indicated that intentional vandalism had occurred at multiple sites,”
At least two substations were vandalized “with criminal intent,”
“We are also investigating signs of potential vandalism related to the outages,”
I call bullshit. Pay attention kids because this will be on the final exam. Get out your pencil and write this shit down:
There is a difference between vandalism and sabotage.
Yes indeed, this is a whole new kettle of fish. It’s yet another step on the decline. When you see something new it behooves you to observe. Take time, breathe in the air, accept the passing of one world and the beginning of the next. Mark where you were and what you were doing as this new thing became part of your world. Commit the new knowledge to memory because in the future, as shitty situations level up into full shitstorms, you’ll reflect on this moment of change.
And for God’s sake, don’t deny the obvious. Taking out the grid is not in the same category as some fuckwit painting his name on a boxcar!
Someone instructed (or perhaps it developed as emergent behavior in the school of fish) that the only word to use is “vandalism” (at least until they can pin it on some MAGA Trump patsy and call it terrorism). I’m starting to theorize that the press (and the monkeys running DC) know this is a big deal. They’re pants shitting, flat out, no holds barred, panicked. They don’t even want to speak the world aloud, lest they call Voldemort into existence. Except, the world isn’t social media. What they call it doesn’t matter. They can call it “rainbow happy time” and it’s still fucking sabotage!
I clicked on a few online dictionaries to back me up but they’re getting pretty NewSpeak. Rather than waste brain cells sorting this week’s gaslighting from last years shenanigans amid the current of a rapidly declining populace, I tried a different approach. I looked at one of my dead tree dictionaries.
Go ahead propagandists, censors, and woke morons, try to fix the “misinfomation” on a printed & bound college edition dictionary from 1959!
Lets start with “vandalism” (sorry for the blurry photos, I just took a few snapshots):
Vandalism: malicious or ignorant destruction, especially of that which is beautiful or artistic.
Is a power substation beautiful or artistic? Not unless you get off on industrial wiring. Ya’ freak!
Was it ignorant destruction? I don’t think so. It seems the very exact opposite of ignorant. Nobody else thinks it’s ignorant either:
“It was targeted, it wasn’t random,” he said.
“The person, or persons, who did this knew exactly what they were doing,”
Nope, this absolutely wasn’t an attack on beautiful art by people who were ignorant. (That’s a thing that has happened lately, but not here.)
Lets check out “sabotage”:
Sabotage: “Intentional destruction of machines, materials, or some productive process or organized activity. Examples include labor disputes, and enemy agents in time of war.
Damn! Clearly sabotage is a whole lot more serious. Vandalism is some kid spray painting a dick on a wall. Sabotage is when someone targets serious things to cause serious problems; like power substation, a factory, or a pipeline.
I don’t know why everyone is so afraid of using the true name of things. Words are words. Reality is reality. Regardless, whatever happened… it ‘aint vandalism.
Also, I want to make the point that this is definitely a bad thing. I’m not happy with the decline in civilization. I don’t want to be the medieval loser left to scratch out a living amid the ruins of Roman marble halls. Shitting in a bucket next to an aqueduct that no longer functions sounds horrible. The power grid is probably one of the greatest achievements in human existence. It’s gonna’ suck if it all falls apart after only 100 +/- years.
To avoid ending on a dire note I’ll provide this:
P.S. Before I put the dictionary away, should I check? You know you want it! Fine; here it is:
Vaccine: a causative virus or preparation of dead bacteria induced into the body to produce immunity by causing antibodies.
Hm…
Was it a virus or dead bacteria? No.
Did it produce immunity? No.
I just sayin…
A few years ago I was listening to college lectures about medieval history and was struck by the clarity of the professor.
Don’t judge! One of my hobbies is learnin’ stuff I didn’t already know. As a product of American public school I didn’t know shit about medieval history! (You probably don’t either.)
One of the more interesting (to me) topics was the Inquisition.
It wasn’t the gore and violence and corruption that interested me. It was the vocabulary.
The professor didn’t default to the vague pathetic phrasings of the common generic current-era woke dipshit student or mid-wit prof. Being skilled enough that he could run a side gig selling lectures and knowing non-students like me actually wanted to learn, he didn’t dumb it down. He carefully he used the correct vocabulary in the proper context.
A default professorial nullity would dumb it down until it hurt: (“Inquisition = Bad”). This would include wrapping actual knowledge in modern sensibilities (“Inquisition = Women and minorities hurt most”).
Using the proper terminology, as befitting serious events, made it a better experience. Events happened to legitimately devout peasants and they wouldn’t have thought in Marx/athiest garbled NewSpeak. In using the right words the lectures felt almost poetic.
We forget how to use the right words for things. There are English words that are perfectly adequate to most situations. They come from a time when words actually meant things. Words were once used to convey thoughts precisely instead of bury facts that might make us use our intellect. Unlike our current world of perpetual relativism which is a vocabulary of nudges and winks.
For example (and I’m just paraphrasing here), the Inquisition derived its authority from the Papacy. It was interested in the sin of heresy, which had arisen from schism within the Catholic church. Inquisitors sought out testimony and considered evidence (obviously lacking evidentiary rules we currently take for granted). There were protections (though less than ideal) against false accusations. There was consideration whether a transgression was merely odious or truly sinful.
We assume the Inquisition just threw box lots of innocents into a wood chipper but it was more of a spectrum (with the Spanish Inquisition taking the gold in the terrifying psychopaths category). More often than not, blots on the accused person’s soul (and life!) could be rectified. For many, a simple admission of remorse and a public vow to turn from the path of wickedness was enough. Friends, relatives, and neighbors would vouch for the accused. Assured that henceforth the accused would model proper behavior would merit forgiveness and everyone would breathe a sigh of relief as the Inquisitors moved on from Springfield to far off Shelbyville. Even if you were an ornery cuss, you had a fair shot with repentance, atonement, and/or demonstration of good character.
Depending on the era and actors involved (and your past behavior towards your neighbors, the morality of the nearby Bishop, and how much the church coveted your assets) things might go off the rails. (See the Spanish!) Also, if you were a flat out asshole they might fling your butt into a dungeon faster than you can say “your legal defense has been ignored”.
(Have you ever wondered what situation would make anyone wish they’d been nicer to your neighbors? The Inquisition (again, with some exception for those whacky Spaniards) was all about that. Keeping malcontents from getting out of hand in hopes of maintaining social order seemed as important as spiritual purity! In modern times you might rip off everyone in town at your used car lot and nothing will happen. An old style Inquisition rolling through town shortly after you’d dumped a bunch of clapped out Hondas on unsuspecting villagers, might involved wronged parties extracting serious karmic payback! [Note that “karma” is not a Catholic / European concept of the time. Probably the better phrase would be righteous retribution.])
Look at all of those words in bold! How often do you hear them spoken in modern time? We still have sin and malcontents and (a seriously faded) concept of morality. But we tiptoe around even speaking such ideas. None of this is to defend the Inquisition (they were clearly dangerous people prone to the inevitable corruption that results from unchecked power) but my point is that one cannot intelligently discuss the real world using the vocabulary of a child. 15th century European events came with powerful words like God and repentance. 21st century events merit the same level of discourse.
Listen to modern bullshit and you’ll hear what I’m talking about. It’s all a mishmash of weasel words. “Mistakes were made”; by whom? “Follow the science”; without apparently using the scientific method? Hunter Biden’s laptop is “misinformation”; yet it’s verifiably true. January 6th was an “insurrection”; of unarmed people who voluntarily dispersed? Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were guilting of sex trafficking; to nobody.
How can “misinformation” be true? How can a mistake exist without having been made by anyone? How can a victim be sex trafficked to nobody?
When I hear weasel words I ignore the speaker. Those who talk as children, think as children.
In my next post I’ll talk about vocabulary and the power grid.
[I didn’t know how to communicate my thoughts for this post. Ever had something to say that eludes your ability to write? Bear with me as I give it a shot.]
How deep does the rabbit hole go? Deep enough that:
The second point is key. I don’t want to go to hell even if everyone else insists on riding there in their stupid little handbasket.
By now, chaos is just another name for Tuesday. We’re in the third year of “OMG we’re all gonna’ die in a plague”. Coincidentally, the pandemic freakout began in the third year of the “OMG Orange Man Bad” psychic shitstorm. The shitstorm never ended but entered a new phase with the “we’re going to peacefully protest until there’s nothing but ashes” clusterfuck. Have you noticed there’s always an urgent reason folks use to excuse shitting their own pants?
Way back in 2017 I figured people would get tired of self-flagellating and get back to living life; like a toddler burning out after a long tantrum. I was wrong! I moved on but society itself remains in a self-reinforcing loop of failure.
So long as chaos benefits one party (or the uniparty) “emergencies” will never end. So long as we’re an unserious society, we’ll be awash in bullshit. Wise people (including wise asses) see the futility of engagement with chaotic unhinged human bots. We’re unwilling to shoulder the burden of other people’s self-inflicted ills. We stay checked out of the “panic of the day” whirlwind. We carefully root ourselves in reality. As for the rest:
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
None of this shit will end through normal means; self correcting mechanisms have been thwarted. When a group of people fuck up everything they touch, they should be replaced with better people. For various reasons that’s not happening. In terms of medicine, has Fauchi ever cured anyone who was sick? If not, why the hell would anyone listen to him? In economics, Paul Krugman is wrong about everything he says. The same is true for Robert Reich and for that matter Jim Cramer. Why would anyone listen to them? Public schools have a terrible track record in education. So why do parents let people who can’t even teach fractions expand into morals, ethics, or sex. Biden was either unwilling or incapable of leaving his basement to campaign. A man who can’t leave his house is going to be a shitty president; and he is. When people who fail aren’t replaced by people who perform you continue to get failure.
Even if elections were squeaky clean, voting once every two years ain’t enough.* You can’t solve a world where losers are put in charge by checking a few boxes bi-annually. However, this brings our focus to the elephant in the room…
“Joe Biden won more votes than any other candidate in American history.” Say it! “Joe Biden did better in off year elections than almost any president in the last century.” Go ahead, say it aloud.
You’re required (almost literally by law) to pretend it’s true. So go ahead and speak the words aloud and see how you feel. Tell your cat that “Joe Biden won more votes than any other candidate in history”. Repeat the official line (assuming you don’t believe it) and you become a tool of your oppressor. Did the cat scratch your lying ass?
We just experienced the second consecutive “election of statistical improbability that can’t possibly mean anything at all so shut up“. The first “statistical surprise” shocked even cynics like me. The second “statistical oddity” is only a few weeks old but EVERYONE knows what it means. If it worked in 2020 that’s possibly a one off but if it happened again in 2022, then “unforeseen unusualness” will happen continually until the gambit no longer works.
Perhaps I was fool to trust any election? Did the cheating really just start? 2020 was so obviously weird that an accountant seeing similar shenanigans in your bank statement would nail you to a wall. But weren’t the hanging chads of Bush v Gore 2000 not the same situation? How long has this been happening? Nobody is surprised when they read about the Chicago effect during Nixon v JFK 1960. Are we all as fixed as Chicago has always been? It’s as old as human corruption. 1876 had flat out proven cheating. Interestingly, the cheating was unearthed, aired out, and dealt with more peacefully and intelligently in 1876 than the concertina wire and political prisoners mess set off in 2020.
When the selection process is shit, you get shit results. Nobody knows who’s really running things and Biden is a barely ambulant meat puppet. Even the people who voted for him don’t really like him. Nobody thinks he’s a good president. Ask your leftie friends to speak aloud a statement like “Biden won more votes than any other candidate in history and is therefore the best president ever”. Watch their eyes when they say it. They know.
Events, both wise and foolish, have consequences and they hit fast. It took a year for Orange Man bad to make a roaring economy out of Obama’s seized engine. It took a year for Captain Dementia to curbstomp Orange Man’s roaring economy. Today’s economy is the worst since Carter. It matches the current leadership’s inability. We will have Carter level inflation and Carter style gas prices so long as we have Carter level dipshits. This is true regardless of party (it wasn’t Dems who desperately wanted to run the walking human sedative called Jeb Bush).
I dimly remember poverty and inflation in the 1970’s but not shortages at the grocery store. This was followed by four decades of success so complete that I began to doubt my memories of inflation. Now, I get to see it all over again but with “supply chain disruption” (which is the phrase to used to avoid saying “predictable results of idiots messing with the economy”). People younger than me had never experienced failure this great. They’re beginning to bleed and the party’s just starting. Presumably the wonderous socialist miracle of food shortages and gas lines are only a few “improbable” elections away.
Given all that, I would expect to be in the same sour mood as the rest of the nation. However, I feel vaguely optimistic.
I queued up this video to enjoy the feeling of the times. (If you need a NSFW warning after the title of this post you’re clearly stupid… but here goes: they swear. Grasp your pearls and toddle to the fainting couch as needed.) I figured I would use the video to express rage.
But I don’t have rage to express. I’m not particularly pissed off because all the fucking up that’s happening is not mine to claim. I’m not the cause of problems. That’s key. Society going to shit doesn’t mean I’m shit.
Anger is for those who just realized what’s going on and more commonly for those who feel bad about what they’ve done. Helpless resignation is poison. I have my faults but neither being unaware nor helpless resignation are among them. If you’re reading this, it’s probably not an issue for you either. We saw these things coming. We weren’t the players creating them.
As bad goes to worse and stupid goes to malevolent we have a clean conscience. It would be better if things weren’t almost comically mismanaged but at least we have pride in our own behavior.
I’ve been happily humming “we are fucking fucked” as if it were any other song. Because it is:
(Hat tip to 357 Magnum.)
So what’s the deal? I’m happy because my freezer is full and it’s full because I made it so.
As the decline accelerates, there are a million little situations where I stood firm. Thus, I don’t feel guilty. For example, I didn’t go apeshit during COVID and I didn’t use it as an excuse to fuck up other people’s lives. I generally try to avoid fucking up my own life too. Basic human behavior that puts me far above politicians. Who gets into naked hammer fights, flew on Epstein’s plane, has a mansion on a $200K salary, or drowned their secretary to death? Politicians. Not me.
I never boss other people around. I won’t submit to coercion. I think before I act.
I didn’t wear a mask because I can define a micron and know the size of a virus. I know the difference between medicine and an “amulet of protection”. I know that when the man on TV says a lie, it’s still a lie. I didn’t shut down schools or businesses. When the gym required masks, I quit and stacked wood. I didn’t get the shot for a free donut because that’s dumb. If I really believed in perfect immunity to a plague that would surely kill me, I wouldn’t need a fucking donut to seal the deal.
When the president said he’d make all OSHA employees take the vax I didn’t bend the knee. He could have ordered me to eat chocolate ice cream and I’d have fought that too. I won’t move a fucking inch if someone is trying to force me. In the end, God seemed happy with my decision. As far as I can tell, every single human being on earth who refused the vax is happy with their decision. Could the other side say as much?
How good it feels that I didn’t panic and lose my soul!
I never fomented evil. I never caused harm. I never backed down. Given how people have acted lately, I’ve done well enough.
I could have done better, but I did as well as I could. That’s the satisfaction of an internal locus of control. It feels good. If far off government fucks the economy back to the stone age they still won’t have broken me. I’ll master flintknapping and sell non-OSHA approved arrowheads.
That’s why I can enjoy a song like “We Are Fucking Fucked” without bitterness. I might be just as fucked as a Roman citizen just before the fall… but I didn’t cause the fall.
A.C.
*You know where I was during the election? Right in the fucking room. The election was squeaky clean and boring in my district. I know this because I was right there holding the stack of ballots in my hand. Where were you?
Lets talk homesteading technologies. Pressure canners rock!
This year’s hunt led to a rare event with butchering and then into the mysteries of canning. Canning is a whole new world for me. We took “better than burger, worse than steak” meat from our hunt and pressure canned it. This came mostly from my smaller deer but it was still a lot of work and plenty of meat to keep me occupied.
Up until this point we did everything in my workshop (which my hunting partner and I had cleaned for this very purpose). With the switch to canning, we had to abandon the garage and perform a forward incursion into Mrs. Curmudgeon’s domain of the kitchen. Just for the record we left it much cleaner when we were done than when we started.
In the middle of the process, my hunting partner wound up carrying a tub of 20# of raw meat while our dog just completely went bonkers. The dog is a good 90 pounds and it tried to climb into his back pocket to get at the meat!
The poor dog was completely out of sorts! Not aggressive, but more like an addict who’s realized you’ve got a pound of cocaine in your hand. We gave it a few treats, carefully placed in its bowl (to avoid teaching it to beg) and that just barely kept the dog from exploding. (Mrs. Curmudgeon has given the dog all manner of treats so don’t blame me if it’s a begging dog. Also, no dog is so utterly civilized that 20 pounds of cubed raw game meat won’t blow a few circuit breakers.)
There are a thousand ways to pressure can meat. I think they’re ALL just fine, so long as you do the sterile part properly. I let my partner show his method and nodded my head in agreement whenever he asked a question.
We browned it, meaning there was a bucket of meat the size of which you’d use at the kitchen in a battleship and it was filled with warm, tasty, yummy smelling, meat. The dog had a stroke. After browning it, we added water and simmered until we’d made a broth. I had to agree with the dog; it smelled delicious.
We hot-packed. Meaning we ladled the hot meat into pre-heated jars and topped it off with hot broth. Then we sealed it in a canner; which violated a lifetime of carefully avoiding situations that build pressure!
I’m still new at this but I was pleased with the results. Out of my tiny harvest I got a happy pile of frozen steaks, a bunch of 1 pound bags of burger, AND 8 quarts of that heavenly dog addicting meat. After that we canned 11 pints of broth! I tasted some with a spoon and it was good enough to make a salad bar weep! There was a little broth left. We poured it on the dog’s food; which sent it to canine bliss. I also kept a pint of broth out of the canner for immediate use as gravy on mashed potatoes.
Given I’d started with a small deer and had no clue, I’m impressed with how it worked out. I want to see how the canned stuff holds up but it looks so darned good I may need to chain it down before Mrs. Curmudgeon breaks it open (or the dog evolves opposable thumbs out of pure desire and gets it into them).
This was shortly after the election but I was making progress in my own life. Thus the world’s worries just didn’t seem to matter. It was a distant far away sadness; like hearing someone you don’t know has died after a long painful cancer. The eternal cut me some slack in a world that’s increasingly frustrating to me. It shielded me from the election results. No TV, too busy to linger on the interwebs, no long rides to get Public Radio shoved in my ears, and for 15 hours at the election place itself I carefully avoided all mention of any political opinion.
This last part is key. As any damn fool knows, a judge should never voice a political opinion. (I’m going to just put this out there, Ruth Bader Ginsberg sucked as a judge and part of how you know that is there were RGB T-shirts and memes. A good judge, like good plumbing, should do their job without becoming the focus of attention! If there are action figure dolls and fan clubs for a judge, that judge sucks.).
So yeah, when everyone was either elated or immiserated I was too busy to follow the “fall of Rome” spiral. It went to shit but I was too busy to let the shit pull me under. First I had a job to do which prohibits getting wound up and then I had a job to do which had me concentrating on canning pressures and laughing at a spastic dog.
A boat can sail right over a tsunami; provided it’s sailing in deep water.
Could I have done what I did without a bit of divine intervention? Hard to know. I’d rather not take bets on it. I’m just happy for my good luck; which may be less luck than proper living.
I did the right thing for the right reason. That’s all any man can do. As I’ve already mentioned: “If honest people do nothing, then honest people will have done nothing.”
Which brings me to the reaction to my silly camping story. I got a few very nice comments. That made me very happy. I also got a bunch of very well appreciated “coffees”. But there’s more. Y’all aren’t privy to every reaction that yours truly gets. I’ve gotten a few compliments through private e-mail and they mean the most to me. (You know who you are and I hope you know it made my day!)
That story was a happy thing I did. I set out to shine a light. Yeah, I glance at the abyss, as we all do; especially in these dark days of societal decline. But I do not let the abyss gaze into me. There’s so much that’s good and happy in the world; don’t step past a sunset to seethe at Twitter. I thought maybe my blog would reach a few who could use a happy story. It seems to have done just that. People need to hear a voice from the “real” world and once in a while I fill that need.
I hope my stories are a welcome distraction but the thing is that they’re not distractions at all. To sit by a fire and ponder one’s place in the universe is the whole point. The. Whole. Point. People mired in politics lose their humanity (for some, they never had it). For it is in the pursuit of power over others that one forgets the reason for the self.
Right under the Eye of Sauron you can live so well it’ll make the political slavers cry. Eat a steak, laugh as the dog flips out, mess with a pressure canner in the kitchen, and live a life that’s rooted. Two teams out there are going berserk on bread and circuses as Rome collapses into dust… but that’s not your burden. Enjoy nature and the good things in life and maybe you’ll still be smiling when wildflowers grow where the great coliseum once stood; DC and it’s cancerous tendrils are annoying but ultimately ephemeral.
Thanks for reading.
A.C.
Part of why I volunteered to be an election judge was to see for myself “how the sausage is made”. It is better to know than either assume or merely bitch.
I could sit down and write reams about what I did and did not see but I’m not feeling it. However, I did want to mention one thing. It relates to this:
Every state is different (in fact elections are one of the rare times when States act like States and less like vassals of DC). But there are some commonalities. Let’s see if I can flesh out a few details:
Generally speaking and painting with a broad brush, one part of the election system determines if a ballot is to be issued, a second part issues the ballot, and a third records it. This is a good idea and I like it.
The first step is where a sane State (or really any sane organization trying to do any business transaction) would use ID. The ID should be matched to a good solid registered voter database. (Yeah, I know. Just bear with me as I discuss how it works in theory without getting into the weeds of Chicago’s dead voters.)
Suppose Bill Johnes registered to vote at 1 Maple Lane in Rationaltown, USA. It’s a good sign if a dude shows up at the polling place in Rationaltown, USA with ID that says Bill Johnes.
In theory, one of the election judges addresses Bill Johnes and asks “where do you live Bill?” Bill says “1 Maple Lane”. Notice the judge doesn’t say “do you still live at 1 Maple Lane?” It’s up to Bill to provide the information and not just agree to whatever the judge says. Plus of course, only a raging asshole would assume great swaths of our population are too stupid and lazy to obtain ID… but that’s a topic for another day.
So now Bill has established who he is and where he’s from and the ID matches the voter registration. This happens pretty much instantaneously with almost all of what I’ll call “normal, average, non-weirdo, sentient, voters”. (The spaz that doesn’t know their own name, or the planet where we live, or if they have pants on… is a different story. These losers add a lot to the workload but they’re not a big part of society overall. They’re just a fraction of the in-person on-the-day voters… or for that matter humans on earth.)
So the judge thinks “yeah, this is pretty solid” and agrees that a ballot should be issued to Bill. They also check Bill off the voter roll for that election. This keeps Bill from voting a second time. Bill! What were you thinking! It also keeps some other jackass from pretending to be Bill and using Bill’s name to make a fraudulent vote. If Bill’s purple haired freazoid sister in law tries to pretend she’s Bill, the poll judge will say “Bill has already voted, would you like to discuss it with my supervisor?” at which point the bitch will run into a wall of rules and regulations meant to stop her from misusing Bill’s legitimate vote. (You can see now how every single bullshit entry in a voter register is a dangerous thing. Every unused record is a place were a fraudulent vote can be parked!)
At least in my limited experience, that person doesn’t issue the ballot. In America we try hard to have voter privacy and also (at least in theory and in “the old days”) it’s a check on cheating (or mistakes!) to have two separate people isolating tasks. One for checking voters and the other for handling the ballots.
So Bill is handed off to the next step in the process. Someone who has not the slightest idea (or care) who Bill is, hands Bill a ballot. The judge at the next step does this because the first part of the process cleared him.
Assuming a State has paper ballots, that is to say it’s a sane State, Bill goes into a little booth to mark his choices. Then Bill goes to the next step. This is the third independent part of the process. The judge that issued the ballot has no clue who Bill is, only that he’s allowed to vote. The judge that checked Bill against voter rolls doesn’t get to play with ballots at all. Neither of them sees the ballot after Bill has thoughtfully (we hope) made his choices and approaches the nearest machine (or as I like to say “controversy generator”).
Bill, in total anonymity, stuffs his ballot into a scanner. The guy manning the scanner just makes sure the scanner received it properly. He doesn’t know about or mock or hassle Bill about his choices. Plus he hands out dumb little stickers.
In theory, the scanner reads the paper ballot, interprets the scan, and (one would hope) properly records the results. In theory, the scanner isn’t in communication with anyone. It’s supposedly not sending messages to the State capital, Russian bots, Bill Gates, or Space Aliens. It’s also keeping a paper tape recording of everything that happens. It also keeps every damn ballot in a locked box!
It’s supposed to be a dumb fuckin’ machine that does nothing but count. It should never ever have odd communication capacities or the ability to count in non-integers. (I’ll leave further discussion about that for a later time.)
Then Bill gets a sticker and goes home to work on his turnip farm. Well done Bill. I hope you didn’t vote for a dumbass, but if you did, we’ll count it just like we’re supposed to.
Here’s the important part; there are three things that can be counted and they are completely separate. One person (or group) counts how many people were matched up to the voter registration and thus were cleared for a ballot. Another person (or group) counts how many ballots were handed over to voters. A whole different person (or group) and the infamous “machine” count how many ballots were received. In my case, all the ballots in the locked box in the machine were hand counted too. I consider that to be part of the third data stream
Each of the three counts MUST match.
Multiple counts that crosscheck each other. This is one of the simplest and most rudimentary concepts in collecting data. It’s the sort of thing every statistics student learns as freshmen (are there still statistics students in colleges?). Every single accountant in creation (in any culture and from any nation) would also recognize the idea of crosschecks too. It’s not rocket science and it’s not a new idea. I’m pretty sure you could unearth a wheat merchant from a shipping dock in Spain from the year 1653 and they’d understand it too.
Also, it’s “put up or shut up” time. When I volunteered, I was told “nobody leaves until the count matches up”. If we differed by even one ballot. Even one! Everyone stayed right in that room and counted and re-counted until the issue was handled.
I was told that a mis-count was a huge PITA and everyone would be pissed off if it happens. Apparently it sometimes occurs and it would burn a lot of time on the end of a taxing 15 hour day. But the training was clear… tough shit! Nobody leaves until it’s figured out. You’re not done until you’re done. No excuses, no bullshit.
In my case, it went as smooth as butter. We wrapped it up in half an hour. Everything matched: number of people approved to have a ballot, number of ballots issued, and number of ballots counted (AND we hand counted the physical ballots in the machine’s lock box too). Not “sorta’ matched” but “every damn one accounted for”.
Half. An. Hour. Close doesn’t count. Must. Get. It. Right!
“In P-612 in the 7th district, 531 ballots were reported as having been scanned by the machines, even though workers counted just 504 ballots. In P-104, there were at least 10 more ballots counted by the machines than counted by hand.”
In that example, P-612 in the 7th district counted 105.3% of the issued ballots. This is utterly and completely impossible. Someone fucked up. It must be fixed. Until it is, the count is complete bullshit.
In this particular example, I’m not taking a position on “cheat” versus “fuck up”. Nor do I want to beat up people in Virginia who either cheated or fucked up. I don’t even care whether it’s a cheat or a fuck up. All I know is they had one job and they failed and it should be rectified.
There are times when your numbers have to match. This is a serious business (even in our declining corrupt society we still pretend votes are accurate) and it has to be that way or “the will of the people” doesn’t reside with our representatives. (Which, you’ll note is a thing that can fade with abuse!)
Regardless of whether Turd Sandwich or Giant Douche wins, the numbers MUST match up. In this article they didn’t. It’s not open for interpretation and it’s not a subtle issue. Something went terribly wrong. It should be made right.
I don’t care whether it’s incompetence, malfeasance, or a combination of the two. Fucked over by accident and fucked over by a cheat have virtually the same effect on our society. My concern is that a society that can’t count three data streams to get a perfect match is already halfway down the drain. I don’t want to live under a totalitarian madman or in a mud hut… yet here we are. As I said before, this ain’t rocket science and it’s not a new idea.
Also, I was there. I saw it done. It can be done. I did it.
Nobody leaves until it’s done perfectly. It’s not as hard as it sounds. It matters!
Update: Here’s an article from New Hampshire that covers a similar error. In this case, they got to the root of the matter, though perhaps slowly. I salute the New Hampshire Secretary of State for getting to the right destination… eventually.
In this case, the players performed honorably and fixed the mistake instead of circling the wagons and/or putting up a wall of obfuscation. Well done! That should be the baseline default behavior everywhere. There were no excuses, the error was not due to malice, which made it dirt simple to catch.
The point is there’s a time and place to be accurate. Particularly in a nation that has multiple hazy, drawn out, potentially biased elections in series, clean elections are deadly serious. America is jittery like a chihuahua on meth. We don’t need and cannot indefinitely endure rule by people who have not secured “consent of the governed”.
To restore order, election shenanigans have to be minimized, handled transparently, and corrected rather than hidden. Even in this dirt simple situation, the 11/8 mistake remained uncorrected until 11/14!
Based on what we saw in 2020, and what we’re seeing from 2022, and the howls of indignation in 2016, and the hanging chads of Brower County in 2000, the system is only good if it’s kept on a tight leash. In general, when there’s an error (particularly one that might have a malice in the mix and therefore covered tracks like carefully mixed ballots, disposal of things that ought be retained, or complete absence of chain of custody). The courts want nothing to do with it. They stampede to call it “moot” and I can see their reticence. Governments do what governments do. They’ll simply deny any errors until corruption is so rampant that even little old ladies on Facebook lose faith. Then the whole house of cards collapses.
It does nobody good to shout “it’s a conspiracy theory” while deplatforming complainers. It does everyone good to audit the living shit out of every precinct until they become as squeaky clean as the bore-fest I witnessed.
In the middle of my busy and eventful “vacation”, I disappeared for a day of election judging… which was even more exhausting than the hauling and lifting of butchering.
I may (or may not) give a full report on that later. Mostly it was the pure hell of good natured gossip (I don’t gossip and don’t care to hear it) and endless talk. I was working with nice, kind, sweet, generous, well meaning people but they just talked so much. Some folks start the day with their mouth running and keep it up until they go to bed. I’m used to long periods of silence. I just don’t have that much shit to say. I found it difficult to think.
BTW: the voters were near universally awesome. With very few exception, everyone who found time to go to a place to vote in person were just plain old normal people and not the flaky lunatics that one tends to notice when you’re out and about… we may see human train wrecks everywhere but there’s still a large group of sane citizens out there. Many people arrived, voted, and left having said less than a dozen words. I wished I could have gone with them. But I cooled my jets in a cheap plastic seat for 15 very tiringly verbal hours.
During a few brief moments in the afternoon I got to look at internet memes gloating about the red wave. That was fun. Later I heard third hand that the election (which I’d hoped would be fairly straightforward) was already going full retard. Ironically, I was too busy managing and counting ballots to bitch about the results. I was literally 100% focused on getting them to the people who needed them and had no time to get all judgy about their votes.
I also made a few quick checks on my blog to approve comments (love ya’ guys). I found out my previously posted quasi-metaphorical stories of hanging out at my campfire with the eternal were accepted in the spirit intended and not misinterpreted by some jackwit SJW looking for an excuse to spread their own misery. Nice! The comments, both public and private, really made my day! (A handful of “coffees” were nice too!)
Aside from the nice comments and the good people voting, I wound up just plain tired of human interaction. In case you’re wondering, I expected everything in my tiny little rural nowhere to be squeaky clean and it was. Everything I observed was completely up to snuff.
Also, we didn’t have to count many votes (small town y’all) but we did everything by the book and it took no time at all. We closed at 8:00 pm and had a hand counted “audit count” that matched the “machine count” done by 8:30. Half. An. Hour! There was none of this “still waiting on a truckload of ballots from Chicago” crap that infects population centers. We had “completely done, three independent counts of three data streams matches perfectly” in the bag with absolutely zero drama. Yeah it’s a small town but still… Suck it Arizona!
Stay tuned…
It was shortly after the pre-dawn gloom. A critter walked into view; a fat doe followed by a smaller doe. I hesitated. When would I process it? Wasn’t my freezer already full enough? I had shit on my mind. I eased off the trigger and waited.
My hunting partner wasn’t so clueless. He was 50 yards off to my left. BAM! Good shot! The fat doe bucked like a bronco and tore off into the forest.
My partner tried a follow up shot on the second doe. (We had ample tags.) I couldn’t tell if it was a hit. The doe trotted toward the forest. I decided to put it down just in case. Unfortunately, a tree branch blocked my view. Damn it! I watched through my scope as the doe trotted off. Based on its stride, it had zero fucks to give. The doe next to it had gone airborne and then hit the land speed record for the forest edge. This one was in no hurry to do anything. I took it as a good sign. It was probably mortally wounded.
A few minutes later, my partner showed up and we were both very happy. My concerns about election volunteering were completely forgotten. Now I had visions of steaks and full freezers.
He was ready to gather his critters and begin the arduous work of gutting and hauling. I wanted to wait a while. Better to let them die quietly than harry them lest they run. He agreed. As we were happily chatting and planning a future of steak dinners, another doe showed up.
We already had two. That’s plenty of work and plenty of meat for two guys. Wouldn’t a third overload our limited available time? Then again you get the chances you get. One must choose among what is and not what might be. As a meat hunter I rarely pass a fair shot. Three deer might work us to death but meat ain’t cheap and there’s a time to put up or shut up.
At my partner’s urging I took aim. The deer turned it’s ass toward me as it grazed. I could have taken the shot. I know my marksmanship ability (both the good and bad). I’m 100% sure I could have taken a shot that would have been fatal, even on that small-ish target. But what a mess it would be! I had visions of a big gooey deer-splosion. Imagine a bullet entering near the rectum, mushrooming out, and blasting through the organs like a cruise missile. It might ruin some meat and I’d have to gut it with a ladle. I noped out on that idea!
Patience grasshopper. I spent long agonizing minutes watching that ass through the scope. It clearly had no idea we were there. But every second was a chance for a shift of wind or a stray noise. You can’t wait forever!
It turned crossways and I felt pretty smug. But immediately it disappeared behind some brush. I was shit out of luck. Egad! I’d held that shot for such a very long time only to have no shot at all!
Regardless, I held still. It ain’t over until it’s over. Every nerve was vibrating but I was willing my heart and breathing to remain calm. So far it was working.
It stepped forward and through the brush that was blocking my view. I finally had a clear shot. Breathe out, squeeeeeeeeze.
Bam! It took off like a rocket. I was sure I’d hit but I had not visually verified the strike. (When you take a shot you almost always know if you hit or not. But it’s better if you see some blood through the scope; that way you really know for sure.) I followed through the scope it as it ran and racked the bolt. Before I could do a follow up it dove behind some more brush. (I suck at follow ups!)
I swung to where it would surely emerge. Nothing. It was like it stepped behind a blade of grass and teleported away.
Ten agonizing minutes later I could wait no more. My deer (or wombat!) had piled up not a foot past where I’d lost sight of it. It was small but well within my tag; it was just what I wanted. Small, young, critters are more tender than old ones and they’re easier to carry out. Also, I wasn’t sure I could fit a large animal in my freezer. (Two overly full freezers! What a delightful first world problem!)
The first doe had barely made it into the shadow of the trees. With a better view we’d have seen both drop, but we’d had to spend several minutes before we found out the truth.
My partner wasn’t sure he’d gotten the second doe. Replaying in my mind I thought about my initial impression that it’d been hit so hard that it was moving slow out of a mortal wound. I remembered that the doe had stopped to grab a mouthful of grass on the way to the forest. A severely wounded animal will sometimes walk slow but they’ll never stop for a snack! It had been missed and was probably utterly confused as to why the deer next to it had run off in such a hurry. Even so, I tracked the area carefully to make sure there wasn’t a hint that it had been affected. We upended every leaf, twig, and stem of grass over a goodly area; just in case. It was a clean miss. Whew!
Three deer would have been excess work but one split in half would have been minimal food. Once again, providence had dragged my idiot ass into the ideal solution. I’ve got to get better at trusting fate!
Then came the hard work. This is the internet so y’all are required by law and tradition to tell me that your grandpa could gut a deer in 5 minutes with a pocket knife but I’m not him. It’s hard work in my book. Then again the drag wasn’t too hard and soon I was enjoying the electric heated seats in my partner’s truck as we hightailed from hunting grounds to my place for butchering. (This hadn’t been part of the plan but thankfully my friend never bitched once about my crazy ass dedication to the election judge conundrum.) Even with the heated seats, my back ached the next day.
The rest was a flurry of work. Since I’d cocked up the schedule we were in a hurry. We violated every OSHA regulation in creation hanging the carcasses from a nearby tree.
Then came the next decision. Was I going to “level up”? Most of my hunting “career” I’ve hunted solo and then hauled my animal to a butcher. I’ve sheepishly paid a fortune to have someone else turn it into steaks and reasoned that one man alone only has so much labor to expend… which is just an excuse. My partner is made of sterner stuff than I (and has all sorts of cool butchering equipment too!). The initial plan had been to butcher them ourselves.
Tough schedule or not, I wanted to do the whole thing. Hunting turned to butchering. In the middle of this I slipped off to vote absentee for the first time in my life. I didn’t like that but I’d been backed into a corner.
(I’m opposed to just about anything other than “vote in person, with ID, at the specific place you live, on the single day of the election”. I didn’t always have that opinion but I’ve grown hardened with time. I’ve seen the corrosive effect of trying to squeeze every vote from fuck ups who can’t even make one appointment every other year. As far as I’m concerned, part of being a civilized human being who’s got his shit together is the ability to get to a place on a day with ID in hand. Everyone who’s done a job interview, gotten married, flown on a plane, attended a rock concert, or made a golf tee time has gotten to a place at a time. If you can’t make it to the polling place, you haven’t skin in the game. That may sound cruel but if you’re too busy then you’re too busy. Also if you choose not to make the appointment, it shows you placed a higher priority on whatever else you might care to do (like go hunting). Call me a Neanderthal if you wish but unless you’re on a ship at sea, in a coma, or deployed with the military you should either hump it to the polling place or not vote. But it is what it is and I voted absentee specifically because I’d be an election judge in town B instead of town A where I live.)
Butchering is a bear of a job. I’m at best modestly skilled at such things. I tried to learn everything I could by watching my more skilled compatriot. I hacked at my smaller animal (and wore myself out in the process) while he sliced and diced like a Japanese hibachi chef. Damn but what I’ve got a lot to learn!
Having sliced, diced, wrapped, labeled, and played Tetris to cram it all in the freezer. I was exhausted and smelly. Oh did I mention that we burgered the grindable bits? I can say with complete honesty that catching the output of a meat grinder in the little plastic bags feels exactly like when a baby takes a dump while you’re holding it. TMI? Too bad! I’m sharing the experience so y’all can enjoy the cycle of life in all it’s yucky glory.
Through this all, the dog absolutely lost it’s damn mind. The hanging carcasses and skin and garbage can full of “icky bits” drilled into the poor dog’s mind and fried it’s circuits. Our cute, fluffy, puppy has always been completely amenable… but when it smelled the discarded bits it just lost all semblance of rational thought (or what passes for it in an airhead dog). On periodic walks, the dog had to be physically dragged away from “the garage of enticement”!
More to come…
[Note: my hunting partner is an honorable fellow for whom I have considerable respect. He has no idea I write a blog and he deserves every bit of privacy I can offer. I don’t want him unfairly involved in my petty bullshit literary endeavors. I mention him in passing only to flesh out the story. Out of respect for his privacy, I’ve changed any details that might identify him (or our hunting spot). For example, his name in this story is Beetroot McTavish and I’ll say we were hunting deer even though we were hunting wombats. I’m pretty sure no human has ever been called Beetroot and wombats taste great with a side of fries.]
So, where was I? Oh yeah, the furnace was out of oil, my truck was on it’s spare, the TV was broke, and my HAM radio was not fully assembled. That’s not too bad. There are little sacrifices one makes when they’re in a recession. (You know what it is when you’re in a recession but DC changes the definition of “recession”? It’s a fucking recession because changing definitions doesn’t change reality. Suck it Orwell!)
I needed a break, I’d planned for this hunt and tilting at windmills over being an election judge had gone for naught. I figured that was a gold plated all-clear signal by the eternal. Time to hang out with nature!
I left Mrs. Curmudgeon with a warm fire in the woodstove and a full box of wood nearby. Then I tanked up on the most expensive diesel I’ve ever purchased and rolled out. A few days later I was hunkered under a pine when my cell phone vibrated. (I knew I should have left it in the truck!)
After months of rejection, I’d been called to be an election judge. I barked into the phone “you gotta’ be shitting me”, but it was true. My small irrelevant county has a million little old ladies that do the election thing and it sounded like they wouldn’t need me until someone died. Fortunately, nobody died but someone was on chemo. I had promised, to the darkness near my campfire, that I would come if called. So I agreed and hung up.
What now with the logistics? Election judges are occupied the entire voting day. This meant I had to somehow vote absentee at the last minute and definitely do it before the day in question. Then I had to get my ass to the place at the time.
Why? Because if honest people do nothing then honest people will have done nothing.
Even if it amounts to nothing… even if we all wind up in concentration camps after Fauchi has become a robot overlord that shouts “I am science” and nukes Baltimore… I’ll know I did the right thing. If you do nothing but sit at home bitching about things, you will have done nothing but bitch.
Unfortunately, I was busy with the entirely unrelated endeavor of hunting. How the hell was I going to accomplish both? I decided to hunt when I could hunt and bail when time was up. This event’s timing, like so many in 2022, was uncertain, rushed, and decided in realms I don’t’ control.
Stay tuned…
