The Morning Rant

First, thanks and a series of hat tips to Weasel, Buck Throckmorton and Misanthropic Humanitarian for filling in for me on the rant thread during my absence.

And thanks to all of you who have been praying for me and sending me their best wishes. For those of you who don't know, at the beginning of May, I lost my balance and fell on my right arm (the one with the artificial shoulder), which resulted in a massive hematoma. My forearm swelled up until it looked like Popeye's. So I had to have surgery to drain off the blood. I lost a lot of blood and my right hand suffered some nerve damage due to the swelling. Recovery took a while, but now, by the grace of God, I think I am strong enough to get back up on the AoSHQ horse.

While I was in the hospital, unable to sleep because they kept coming in pretty much every hour to do stuff that wasn't really necessary, I had lots of time to think about lots of things. And the more I thought, the more disheartened I grew about America.

Specifically, why aren't we fighting harder against the politicized pandemic?

This country was founded on the principle of telling government to f* right off. And we're not talking about some easy, consequence-free virtue signaling on social media, but rather, the government we were telling to f* right off belonged to what was arguably the most powerful country on the planet at that time. Their response was "F* us? No, f* *you* and we're sending our army over there to f* you up and what do you think about that?"

Our forefathers stepped up and put their money where their mouths were. They did not merely issue 'blistering dissents', but also blistering musket fire. George Washington didn't just run his mouth, but also guns across the Potomac. The Declaration of Independence was certainly 'stunning and brave', but so was honey-trapping the Hessian mercenaries and shooting them in the ass on Christmas night.

Because we're Americans. That's what we do.

That is, in order to back up our words, we had to fight a war.

So, along with mom and apple pie, telling government to f* right off is embedded deeply in the American DNA. And, in order to guarantee we'd always have the ability to do this, they included the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, our founding document, so our right to tell government to f* right off could not be taken away while we weren't looking. As the America-phile British commentator Katie Hopkins tells us:

You have the fight within you. Americans are different from Brits because you are built differently, your Constitution is hard-wired into your soul. If I cut you open, somewhere inside you is a visceral understanding that your right to life and liberty and happiness is God-given, and no man has the power to take those rights away.

Only now I think we sort of gave them away ourselves.

Here is how recently history should've gone:

When the Chinese flu first hit, and the federal government issued lockdown and quarantine mandates, we should've complied for public health reasons. We didn't really know what we were dealing with, how bad it could get, people were dying, etc., so giving the government the benefit of the doubt was probably the reasonable thing to do at the time. But that didn't last long. Within about, oh, I'd say, 2-3 months, it became obvious that something was rotten in Denmark: the pandemic had become politicized, and various governments at all 3 levels were using it to criminalize dissent and harass groups the ruling classes didn't like.

That should've triggered our American DNA.

What finally did it for me was reading about John Lewis' funeral. Remember that one? Everyone was packed cheek by jowl into the memorial service and all of the social distance rules were waived. And then progressives claimed that this was justified because "racism is a public health issue". And then it got worse:

In June, 1,200 “health experts” signed a letter approving the BLM protests because, it said, “white supremacy is a lethal public health issue.” But it cautioned that “this should not be confused with a permissive stance on…protests against stay-home orders.”

Yes, you read that right, some protests are public health hazards while others are just fine. And the difference is determined purely by politics. That's when I knew all of the lockdowns and quarantine rules had nothing to do with science or public health, but had become just another politicized scam to benefit groups favored by the ruling classes at the expense of others.

If you want to raise your blood pressure, go ahead and read the open letter. It's an infuriating abuse of logic so shameless that it would make a Jesuit blush.

And God bless Trump, but he wasn't a lot of help here. I think his germaphobia prevented him from seeing the WuFlu panic for what it was, namely, another weapon in the progressives' armory to prosecute their war against normal Americans. He allowed himself to be jerked around by that malignant little homunculus Anthony Fauci whom he should've fired in February of last year. For starters. Because if there's one thing Trump didn't do enough of, it's house-cleaning.

And it might even have cost him the election. This is ex post facto speculation, but if he had kicked Fauci under the bus early on and went full steam ahead with a "no lockdowns, no symptomless quarantining, take reasonable precautions if you're in a high risk group" approach, I wonder if that would have put him above the margin of cheat. Instead, he just sat there while Democrats rewrote the election laws on the fly, even during the actual vote-counting, all in the name of covid "safety".

I guess nobody's perfect.

But neither are the rest of us. It was hard to see how many us just bent right over and took it up the chute:

A little more than a year after Governor Gavin Newsom instituted the lockdowns, nearly a third of California restaurants have closed permanently.

According to The Associated Press, California’s lockdowns have left the food industry battered and bruised in the Golden State. Prior to the pandemic, up to 76,000 eating and drinking establishments employed up to 1.8 million people. Those numbers dropped precipitously as the lockdowns continued throughout 2020 and into 2021. Though the state has eased restrictions over the past few weeks, about two-third of the industry’s employees lost their jobs at least temporarily and employment remains a quarter below what had existed prior to the pandemic.

As more and more small businesses closed, never to reopen, why were there not many protests? Why did more small business owners not band together and defy the government's lockdown edicts? Why did they not tell government to f* right off? Even after it wa obvious. I got tired of seeing photos of signs on permanently shuttered businesses saying things such as "We're now closed, but thank everyone in this community for all your support over the years." What!? That's it? You mean you're going to let some government official issue an edict that shut your business down for good and your response is 'oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles'!? Where is the outrage? Where is the defiance? Where are the cries of "hey government, you can f* right off!", which is our our birthright as American citizens?

Have we turned into a bunch of wusses? Even the Europeans are making us look bad. This hasn't gotten a lot of coverage by the usual media outlets (who like to preen and puff themselves as "the guardians of democracy"), but there have been massive anti-lockdown protests in England, Belgium, France, and other European countries, and we're talking about hundreds of thousands of protestors. Europe! Not America! I can scarcely believe it.

So, there I was in the hospital at 3AM, thinking about all of this, and also the videos I saw of police arresting maskless protestors and other police retreating/running away from antifa/blm thugs, waiting for the next scheduled sleep interruption, and now I'm convinced that, if this were the 1930s and Biden was Hitler, half of Americans would be helping load the other half of Americans into the cattle cars, and the passengers would be thanking them for being polite about it.

Lastly, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a hospital is no place for a sick person.

Americans -- Old Vs. New:

"MAgA IS a cULt"

Great Idea! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

AoSHQ Weekly Prayer List

Please submit any prayer requests to “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo atsign hotmail dot com.

Prayer Requests:

5/4 – Annie’s Stew thanks God for a healthy baby girl for a sweet young family she knows, and successful treatment (so far) of brain cancer for the new dad.

5/12 – G. requests prayers for his blog partner and dear friend Maggie P., who is going to have open heart surgery on 5/18.
5/18 Update – Maggie came through surgery with flying colors, and they send thanks for the prayers.

5/21 – SB’s mother was just diagnosed with cancer; they will get the full results on Wednesday. He requests prayers for her and for his father.

5/21 – gp sends thanks to God for healing Jimmy D from Covid!

5/24 – Katya, the designated driver sends an update on her cancer treatments. She has finished her 33 rounds of radiation with minimal side effects and is starting to feel great. This week she stats a chemo pill for the next 4 months. She also will continue to receive Keytruda infusion treatments every 3 weeks. As far as she knows the cancer is gone but will not know for sure until she receives the final scan. She sends her thanks for the love and prayers.

6/1 – Tonypete asks for prayers for his lifelong friend who is approaching the end stages of ALS. For a myriad of reasons, the friend could use monumental amounts of prayer and petitions for his immortal soul.

For Healing:

4/3 - My life is insanity asks for prayers for peace of mind and healing for her sister, who just learned that her breast cancer from 6 years ago has spread to her spine. She has a small tumor at the base of her neck and a fracture in her lower back. She is waiting on a treatment plan and is unsure at this time what that will bring.
5/3 Update - Her sister sends her thanks for everyone's prayers, and this medical update. They no longer see a tumor on her neck, but there is a spot on her spine, and they have determined it is a reoccurrence of her breast cancer that has spread to the bone. They also see spots on her ribs and pelvic bones. She has had a vertebroplasty, but it hasn't helped the pain. She will soon be undergoing radiation and drugs for women with metastatic breast cancer.

4/27 - Grannysaurus Rex requests prayers for healing for Michael as he undergoes experimental treatment to clean his blood in preparation for a liver transplant. His entire body is failing from an infection caused by exposure to mold. The procedure has only a 30% success rate, but it is his only chance. Please pray for wisdom for his medical team and for his family, especially his 4-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, that God's grace surrounds and comforts them.

5/12 - Ladyl asks for urgent prayers for two year old Ronan who has suddenly developed neurological symptoms.

5/13 - Give thanks to God on behalf of OregonMuse, who is healing far more quickly from his injury than expected, and with virtually no pain. Pray that he would regain the rest of his strength, as he tires quickly, probably due to the losing so much blood.

For submission guidelines and other relevant info, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com.

Romans 8:26-27:
[26] In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. [27] And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

Who Dis:

For the 'Ettes:

May 3rd Who Dis: Austrian sexpot Senta Berger teamed up with the Russian-born actor Yul Brynner in an international thriller about drug trafficking, The Poppy Is Also a Flower.

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posted by OregonMuse at 11:08 AM

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