A day of clearance is here, and also a night for celebration, so

here.  We. Go.

Two things this evening

First, Calvin Coolidge's words about the Declaration on its 150th Anniversary:
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.


The second, I'll link so you can read the whole thing, from Lawdog a few years back:

My siblings and I grew up in Africa, and the Middle East. We have seen poverty — the poverty where mothers make cold-blooded decisions about which child to sell so that she can feed the rest of her children.

America’s poor enjoy a level of comfort that is the envy of the well-off in Africa.

My brother and sister an I have seen repression — we have seen the crushing of the Ibo people (and we saw how the Ibo people treated their own ohu1 and osu2); the ‘Years Of Lead’ in Morocco aren’t a mystery to us; we weren’t there when the Gukurahundi3 swept through Matabeleland, but we knew some who disappeared; we saw the comfortable contempt of the Emiratis for the Filipino and Baluchi; and we have close personal experience with the casual repressive brutality of those cultures and many others.

America’s people enjoy a freedom from brutality and repression that is unimaginable for most of the rest of the planet.

Is America perfect? Of course not, but it is the closest thing to it that we will find this side of the grave.

Happy 250th 4th to you all

I'm going to borrow a piece from the original draft that would cause problems for those who hate Jefferson:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

As told my kids a long time ago, the founders of this country were people, with all the faults of any; doesn't mean they didn't try to do it the best they could.  And we've still, despite idiots and evil men, got the results of their best, and it's up to us to keep them.


And, because it never hurts to repeat, how it came out

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

In "My, this could be very useful", we have

the start of the stillsuit.  Doesn't process your own body water, but still could be damned handy.


I mentioned the other day the Democrat calling for murder as a standard action by Democrats; I can't find the article, but remember Van Jones?  Self-described as a 'revolutionary Marxist' when he hit the airwaves?  He's having fits about the open communists running for office- or in office- in NYeffingCity.  The question that comes to mind is, does he actually think they're going too far, or just being too open about it?  Bunch of other Democrats as well, and they're smashing the actual American Democrats.  This will not go well.


The Brit government is still working hard to destroy the country.  Multiple rapist gets out of prison early, AND can't be deported.  Wonderful.


Someone mentioned and I looked up Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration.  One part in particular I wish had remained in it, would've saved a world of trouble in generations to come.


Unconnected with the above, the physical therapy on the shoulder has moved from "Let's loosen you up some" to "Let me know when this gets to the 'almost too much' point, which caused me to laugh and refer her to the torture scene in 'The Princess Bride', which made her laugh.

Too close to the edge for comfort at times.

And now I've got crap to take care of and not enough time.

Under the heading of "Why won't you give on the 'right to arms' thing you keep talking about?", we have the example of

a bunch of Democrats who want us disarmed because they want it to be easy to kill us.

As a 'moderate position'.

I guess the non-moderate would be to start the camps and cattle cars.

NEVER give up your arms.

If nothing else can be done about Fauci, yank his ass into committee,

put him under oath and if he lies, charge him for it.  

It's not all the bastard deserves, but it's probably all that can be done.

Part of why South Africa is screwed,

and why Trump was willing to fight to let a bunch of white SA people come to the US.

These people are proving just what racists and accessories to murder lots of the NGOs and church organizations have shown themselves to be, too.

I've been buying movies on disc for the last few years, not a whole bunch but

one I actually like, I get it.  Books, the same, and any electronic books I back up offline, because Amazon plays games just like these bastards with games and movies.

Physical media when you can, because you cannot trust these companies.

Yes, a bunch of 'educators' spent a lot of time demeaning the trades

and pushing kids into college no matter what, and the current situation is the result.  It was done deliberately, some by people who truly thought it a good idea, a bunch by people who are idiots or crooks pushing to make colleges happy no matter what it does to students.

Son learned to be a machinist, got his first job before he finished the classes and never looked back.  And for quite a while he was, in his 30's, the youngest guy in the shops he worked at, and those shops were desperate to get more people.  In his early 40's he was still the youngest guy in that shop.  And they can use a lot more.

Bless Mike Rowe for his work and what he's done to push the trades, and it's working.

'France says it's the fault of the US that they've got piles of dead people

because of the heat!  Journalists and 'social media' influencers should pay attention, says Deputy Mayor of Paris!"
In other news you can blame us all you want, Froggy, you tax the hell out of everything and make it all, including energy, more expensive than need be, because you don't care how many people die as long as you can paint yourself as caring.

Which makes you an asshole.  Kiss our ass.

Short version: "We colonized for the sake of Allah, therefor it was good,

no matter how many bodies and what suffering it created!"

"It doesn't matter you're queer and support queers, you're a JEW

and you don't want to get rid of all Jews!  How can you betray us this way!"

Just bloody amazing, isn't it?

A new Taurus wheelgun with two cylinders,

one for .38 Special/.357 Magnum, the other for 9mm.  It is a pretty thing,

and that is a nice combination for it.

No, barring them saying "We want you to test this out", I don't need one, but it would be nice.

Speaking of 'when they tell you what they are', we have the Democrat in the race for a House seat (added)

from New Effing York:
Meet Darializa Avila Chevalier, running in the Democrat primary for NY’s 13th Congressional District, & who has the full backing of NYC Mayor Mamdani:
▪️Celebrated after Hamas brutally murdered, raped, tortured & kidnapped thousands living in Israel
▪️Claims Israel doesn't exist.
▪️Called the US a “fucking disgrace” and tweeted “ I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me”
▪️Doesn’t believe in borders & wants to not only abolish ICE, but to stop ALL deportations, even for violent criminals
▪️Wants to abolish prison- even for murderers
▪️On the police - “We’re gonna defund and abolish”
▪️Believes the government should seize private property & nationalize major industries
▪️Wants a universal basic income
▪️Wants to abolish private insurance & replace with Medicare for all
And yes, multiple sources have reported this.  Also her playing "Why do you want to talk about past statements instead of what I want to say right now?" games in interviews.

This is what the commies elected.  Barring a LOT of people deciding to start voting and otherwise making their thoughts known, NY is screwed.  As if it wasn't already with Mamdani having already started the process, without lube.


Added:
Avila Chevalier, a sociology PhD student whose victory sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic establishment, has been under fire for a since-deleted Twitter account, previously reported by CNN, that included phrases such as “seize the means of production,” along with calls to abolish police, prisons and borders. Other controversial tweets include one that said Black and Arab men are both “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women” and another that described wiping her dirty hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin.

As an undergraduate, Avila Chevalier attended Columbia University, where she organized with Students for Justice in Palestine, and after graduation became involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. She also attended a controversial October 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square — one day after Hamas’ attack on Israel — that featured speeches and rhetoric praising the attack.

She previously told CNN, “I have grown considerably in the years since these tweets, and I am focused on our community and our community’s future.”
Translation: "I'm still a communist, I still hate this country, and I won't deny it."
Well done, Democrats.

Yes, when they tell you what they really want and are,

you'd better pay attention to them.  They mean it.