Product review: Mayonnaise maker

As preppers, if there's one thing I'm always on the lookout for, it's something inexpensive, hand-operated, and highly useful. I hit the jackpot on a spiffy, unheralded little product from my beloved Lehman's store: a mayonnaise maker.

As many of you may know, Don is a sandwich guy. As such, he goes through mayonnaise fairly fast. We normally buy it in gallon jugs from Costco or Cash'n'Carry. In the past, I've tried re-canning mayonnaise into pint jars and it was a total failure. Therefore we have something of a perpetual gallon-sized jug of mayonnaise taking up room in the fridge.

I've made homemade mayonnaise before. It requires the oil be titrated into the egg in a blender at a fairly slow and precise rate. I did it once and it was enough of a hassle that I never bothered repeating it.

But here was a little gizmo that promised to take the hassle out of making mayo. Intrigued, I tried it out. (The device is made in France, hence the ungrammatical description on the front of the box.)

There is literally nothing to it: a lidded jar with markings on the side, and a silicone "mayo turber" that looks like a wrinkled rubber ball and acts as an agitator.

The directions (printed, literally, in 15 different languages) are very simple. Interestingly, this mayonnaise maker "should never be used by children under 15 years!" (exclamation point in the original) Um, why 15? That's a fairly advanced age for anyone to swallow the "mayo turber."

But whatever. Following the directions, I added an egg yolk, a tablespoon of mustard, and enough oil to reach the first line on the bottle. Then I dropped in the "mayo turber."

I put on the lid, shook the bottle for about 30 seconds, and added a bit more oil, and repeated this until I had reached the third line.

And it worked! Holy cow, it actually worked! The mayo comes out yellow (due to the egg yolk as well as the mustard), but it tastes like mayonnaise with a slight mustard tinge.

This silly little jar quickly morphed into a "Where have you been all my life?" item, ideal for the person who isn't fond of the preservatives found in store-bought mayo but up to this point the homemade stuff was too much of a hassle.

Like all homemade mayo, this version will not last as long in the fridge ... but conveniently, the jar makes just enough to enjoy for a few days before it's used up. And the mayo can be stored in the jar as well (just another convenience factor).

I'm going to start playing with recipes now: a whole egg instead of just the yolk, a little less mustard, maybe a different type of oil (I used olive oil), perhaps a touch of lemon juice....wow, this is gonna be fun.

I'm absurdly pleased with this little mayonnaise maker. I never thought to find something so simple, so useful, so inexpensive, and so easy to clean. Yep, definitely a keeper.

Does anyone have a kidney?

I was in Coeur d'Alene doing errands last week when I saw this desperate plea:

I have no idea who this person is, of course, but I thought I'd do my part to help spread the word.

The Magic Pear Fairy strikes again

If you lived in our neck of the woods, you might have found a mysterious bag on your doorstep this past week, a gift from the Magic Pear Fairy.

Yes, the Magic Pear Fairy has stuck again. Each fall, she polishes her magic wand, flexes her sparkly wings, and flits around from house to house, bestowing the blessings of pears on any unsuspecting mortal she can catch.

This is a very necessary yearly ritual because let me tell you, pear trees produce abundantly.

Here's the Pear Fairy's assistant, plucking from the upper branches.

Estimated weight: 100 lbs.

When the day came to distribute the pears, the hay sled came in handy to handle the load.

The pears landed anonymously on multiple doorsteps.

Others, the Pear Fairy was able to visit in person. Altogether seven neighbors (and one friend in town) were blessed with pears. When the Pear Fairy returned home, nothing was left but a few rotten specimens that went to the chickens.

The Magic Pear Fairy struck again!

Powerful father-son duet

A (more cultured) friend sent me a YouTube link to a powerful duet song by the blind Italian classical singer Andrea Bocelli with his son Matteo Bocelli. Beautiful.

The fruits of fall

Fall is falling fast around here. We've had some below-freezing nights and are cutting firewood and harvesting the garden like mad (which accounts for my silence here on the blog -- I'll have a harvest update in the near future).

But it's not just the garden that's putting out fruit. The wild plants are producing abundantly before the first snow falls.

The rose hips (rich in Vitamin C) are very abundant this year.

The elderberries are ripe as well.

The wild honeysuckle put out some startlingly florescent-orange fruit.

Lots and lots of snowberries this year.

These are berries from our Virginia creeper vines. The wild birds gorge on them.

With the exception of the rose hips and elderberries, the other fruit may or may not be edible -- or only edible in small quantities. They taste yucky anyway, so none of us bother harvesting any of them (we have no shortage of fruit from the garden).

The fall colors have been especially vibrant this year too. Of course we don't get the explosive jubilee of the east coast deciduous forests, but the undergrowth turns lovely shades of orange, red, and yellow.

As I said, I'll have updates on our harvest and wood cutting in the near future. Right now we're too busy harvesting and wood cutting.

Why I don't believe Kavanaugh's accusers

Last week I wrote a scathing satirical column focusing on the collected accusations against Brett Kavanaugh. To say I got emails would be an understatement in the extreme. Critics did everything from question my Christian beliefs to express hope our two daughters would be raped so I would feel more sympathy for sexual assault victims.

Here’s the thing: Kavanaugh’s accusers probably did suffer sexual assault during their lives. My belief, however, is that Kavanaugh wasn’t the perpetrator. I believe they’re accusing the wrong man … and they’re doing it on purpose.

I’ve been informed, with the greatest possible profanity, of how horrible it is when women aren’t believed when claiming assault. They ask, “How would I feel as a woman if I weren’t believed when I said I was sexually assaulted?” My response is this: “How would you feel, as a man, if you weren’t believed when you denied it?”

To understand my hostility toward Kavanaugh’s accusers in this issue, let me relate a story.

Back in the mid-80s, my cousin “Bob” was working as an engineer in the Silicon Valley, and living in a sprawling apartment complex. One evening around 6 p.m. (in winter, so it was dark), he left his apartment and walked across the complex to buy a soda from a vending machine. Suddenly he was approached by a woman flanked by two police officers. The woman pointed at Bob and said, “That’s him!” Next thing he knew, Bob was handcuffed, taken to the police station, strip searched (including body cavities), and jailed.

My uncle and aunt were awakened around 2 a.m. by Bob, informing them of his situation and asking them to engage a lawyer on his behalf. His accused crime? He allegedly exposed himself and performed an extremely personal act on this woman’s back porch, right at her glass door.

Fast forward three months. Tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees later, the case went to court. It took three days – three days! – to present all the “evidence” the woman had up her sleeve. My cousin denied everything. Then the jury retired to deliberate, and our family was tied in knots for hours and hours until finally, at last, they came back as a hung jury. The judge declared a mistrial, and the case was dropped.

After it was over and my cousin was free, my uncle – a strong and noble man – broke down and cried for 20 minutes, right there in the court room.

As it came out later, the woman who accused my cousin of sexual misconduct was having an affair. She was nearly caught when her husband came home early, and just in time managed to shove her lover out the glass door onto the patio, where he fled. Then she raised a ruckus, shrieking her victimhood to her understandably distraught husband. He called the cops and they searched the apartment complex. She literally fingered a perfect stranger, accusing him of a vile act.

My cousin came within a whisker’s breath of being convicted as a sexual pervert, required by law to register as a sex offender wherever he went. How would that have impacted him for the rest of his life? How would it have impacted his career, his relationships, his finances, his entire future?

He was never convicted – but the allegations and court case impacted him nonetheless. It was costly not just in money, although it wiped out his own savings as well as that of his parents. It also cast aspersions on his good name, it made coworkers sidle away and eye him warily, and later it took a special and wonderful woman to understand his side and share her life with him.

When I look at Kavanaugh, I see my cousin. I see a good man facing down unprovable allegations from decades before. I see rabid frothing-at-the-mouth feminists clawing him into the ground to fulfill their agenda. In the insane rally among the leftists to defend women’s feelings, they’re forgetting – dismissing – entirely scorning – the feelings of unjustly accused men and their families.

They're also forgetting something else: The presumption of innocence that is the bedrock of our legal system.

I have a husband. I have a father. I have brothers. I have uncles. I have cousins. I have nephews. I have friends. Every single one of these fine upstanding men stands a chance of being accused by a random woman of sexual assault in a “He said/she said” situation … and their only recourse is the courts, a judicial system already stacked against them solely on the basis of their Y chromosome, thanks to the feminists.

Don’t tell me women can’t lie. They can, and they do. I've heard plenty of women lie. If you're an honest woman, you have too.

Critics are wrong when they accuse me of not being sympathetic to women who have been sexually assaulted. On the contrary, I have the deepest sympathy for women who are truly victims.

But I have the deepest contempt for women who level unverified (and unverifiable) charges and accusations against innocent men. “Rape is a devastating crime,” wrote Michelle Malkin in a brilliant column. “So is lying about it.”

I’m not particularly concerned whether or not Kavanaugh gets on the Supreme Court. That’s not my focus. My concern is the loathsome ammunition used against him, the lowest possible weaponry imaginable. It’s devastatingly effective and it never goes away.

It’s almost as if the more honorable a man is, the worse the accusations must be to get rid of him. It’s clear this immoral and destructive tool will be used again and again for political gain. As a result, real assault victims will suffer from the inevitable backlash.

Advocates for assault victims point out how the raw emotions can still come flooding back, even decades later. They’re right. As I wrote this column and remembered what happened to my cousin, the raw choking emotions did indeed come flooding back, a bitter and vile loathing for the woman who accused him.

You can never forget an assault – and that includes a false one.

My affair with Brett Kavanaugh

Here's my weekend WND column entitled "I had an affair with Brett Kavanaugh."

To my surprise, it ended up on the WND skyline:

And holy cow, did I get emails. (Except from Robert.) Most were supportive, but a few were blisteringly ugly and full of profanity. No surprise.

Before posting this column here, I took the precaution of backing up my blog. You never know what Google might find offensive. Blogs have been known to disappear.

For those unable to access the WND website, the text is below.

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I Had an Affair with Brett Kavanaugh

I had an affair with Brett Kavanaugh.

No, really I did. I can’t remember the time, the place or the circumstances – but I certainly had an affair with Kavanaugh. I’m a woman, so you have to believe everything I say.

It doesn’t matter that my memory is poor, my sources unverified, or that I never told a soul about my passionate involvement with Kavanaugh. I couldn’t possibly have an agenda when it comes to making public my affair. The fact is, I’m an über-leftist woman; therefore everything I say is true. Period, end of sentence, no debate allowed or you’re just a bully.

And now … hang on a second, it’s all coming back to me … did I say I had an affair with Kavanaugh? My bad. The truth is, I was nearly raped by Kavanaugh. I just remembered that part. It was at a party, one of dozens I attended in my youth. Of course, I was drinking and I don’t remember the time, date, year, location or circumstances of the most traumatic event in my life, but I’m positive Kavanaugh tried to rape me back around 1982 or so. Or maybe it was 1983. It’s true. I’m a woman, so you have to believe me.

That’s a new movement, by the way: “Believe women,” a wonderful campaign to force everyone to “believe women” who make sexual assault allegations with no proof. What a great idea! We should believe women, not evidence!

Of course, there are exceptions in the “Believe women” movement. We can’t believe anything against liberal men. Liberal men are incapable of rape or sexual assault. Bill Clinton is a saint who would never mistreat a woman. Juanita Broaddrick was a liar. Oh wait, didn’t I just say women can’t lie? Um, forget I said that. We’ll just forget Broaddrick exists. Don’t believe her.

Of course, this “Believe women” movement couldn’t possibly have any negative repercussions on women who truly have been raped. It means ALL women must be believed, not just the ones who have actually been assaulted.

Now back to me. (It’s all about me.) Of course, I never told anyone – my parents or any friends, let alone law enforcement – that Kavanaugh tried to rape me at this party I can’t remember. The reason was it never happ … I mean, I was too intimidated to talk about it. To my parents. To my best friends. To the school principal.

And the people I name as witnesses to my assault? They just have poor memories when they claim they weren’t at the party. Or maybe they were involved too. Or maybe they're Republicans. What do they know?

Let’s see, back in 1982 I was 20 years old, but I just remembered I was actually 15. Yeah, 15. Underage! I witnessed “rape trains” at these parties I attended. At 15. Somehow during all these dozens of inebriated events with underage minors held at private homes, parental oversight was conspicuously lacking, conveniently providing an absence of adult witnesses to these shenanigans just in case some random kid should get nominated for the Supreme Court 36 years down the line.

I know I saw some traumatic things in my youth – I have a “firm recollection” of lines out the door in the rape rooms at all those parties I kept going to … and going to … but somehow it all slipped my mind that the ultimate culprit behind everything was Kavanaugh until my memory was jogged by six days of careful assessment and the help of an unbiased attorney to get my story straight. Thank goodness for sound legal counseling; where would we be without it?

There are other women coming out of the woodwork to support my claim that Kavanaugh is a sexual predator, and my claims have just as much merit as theirs. My memory is just as accurate as theirs. Above all, my motives are just as pure as theirs. Pure as the driven snow, folks. Really. Honestly. I’m a woman, so you have to believe me.

And because you have to believe me, you can’t pry into my political or personal beliefs. You can’t factor in my support for abortion as a taxpayer-funded right which might be jeopardized if Kavanaugh gets on the Supreme Court. You can’t examine my social media posts where I say Donald Trump is a bleepity-bleeping bleeper bleep bleep. You can’t take into account that I’m a rabid feminist who think all men should shut up and sit down, as Mazie Hirono recommends.

In fact, Hirono says it’s about “whether or not a woman who has been a victim at some point in her life is to be believed.” Does this mean we should “believe” Kavanaugh when he denies he was even at the party where he assaulted me? Of course not. If you believe him over me, then you’re a racist, a bigot, a misogynist and a bully. All men are liars. All women are truthful. Our entire judiciary system is based upon this understanding.

Now I demand an FBI investigation into my accusations. It doesn’t matter if my allegations against Kavanaugh are unprovable. That’s not the point. The point is I need to justify my pay from Mr. Sor … um, what I meant was, I need to speak for all women – “Believe women” – no matter what. And if you don’t believe me, then you’re a racist, a bigot, a misogynist and a bully.

Y’know, it’s kinda fun to go forward with these charges against Kavanaugh! It gets me all kinds of attention and lots of uplifting support from my fellow women. No matter what the outcome of Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, I’m set for life. I can write books, get paid obscene amounts of money for speaking engagements, get a professorship at any university in the country, and be the darling of the progressive set for ruining the lives of Kavanaugh and his family. What’s not to love?

And if Kavanaugh gets dumped from consideration to the Supreme Court, I look forward to Trump’s next nominee so I can recall my sexual assault from him as well. All I’ll need is a poor memory, six days with a porn attorney, a leftist agenda and I’ll be ready … right after I scrub my social media accounts and bleach my laptop.

So my deepest thanks to everyone who has helped kill the antiquated and patriarchal concepts of the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. We finally get to reap what we sowed.

One year ago today

“Today is my one-year in the Navy mark,” Younger Daughter emailed this morning. “A year ago today I arrived at RTC, stayed up all night stenciling and peeing in cups and getting screamed at by people in red ropes.”

Younger Daughter has been stuck in the same spot (Great Lakes, Illinois) for a year now, undergoing lots of academic training, but this will shortly change as she heads off to another location for her specialized “C” school training, and then hitting the fleet – at last!

I’m being purposely vague about her whereabouts because I don’t want her movements public – but she’s moving ahead in her naval career and will soon be facing life aboard a ship.

Happy logs?

I was coming back from a nearby town a few days ago and found myself behind a logging truck.

I noticed one of the logs had a happy face.

Is this a happy log or a happy logger?

The lazy man's guide to world domination

Here's my WND column for this weekend, entitled "The lazy man's guide to world domination."

For those unable to access the WND website, here's the text.

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The Lazy Man’s Guide to World Domination

Most people are familiar with Paul Harvey’s classic radio piece, “If I were the devil.” (If not, listen to it here.)

Though this piece dates from the mid-1960s, it’s still as fresh and frightening today because, of course, every statement is coming true. In a nutshell, it’s a lazy man’s guide to world domination.

In this column I’d like to discuss, not world domination, but national domination. World domination starts at home.

Domination, as it turns out, isn’t that hard to do. It merely has to be inspired by the world’s enemy, the devil, and voilà.

So what is the easiest way to take over the nation? To examine this question, we merely have to look at the tactics of those who were successful in taking over their own nations (Stalin, Hitler, etc.). This is an ambitious subject to tackle in a 1000-word column, so let’s see how far I can go.

• Do as you please. Encourage decadence and immorality by calling it “liberty.” Push immorality as the new norm. Mock self-control. Harass those who object to the normalizing of depravity; if necessary, intimidate and threaten them into silence.

• Trash religion. Take God out of the equation and encourage people to become their own gods. That way, everything they do is justified in their own eyes and they are not restrained by any higher power. (To paraphrase Dostoevsky: If there is no God, everything is permitted.) Make morality subjective rather than based on Judeo-Christian traditions and values. Anyone who tries to “bitterly cling” to those silly fables should be mocked, ridiculed and excluded.

• Popularize violence and immorality. Flood television screens and movie theaters with visual stimuli dripping with sexual or bloody excess to dull peoples’ senses and make peace and morality seem boring by contrast. Portray immortality as normal, and depict religious people as either hypocrites or evil. Show immorality as being utterly without consequences. Make sure the immoral characters are sympathetic and come out as winners.

• Destroy the family. It’s critical to disrupt, destroy and redefine families, since these societal units will just get in the way of the new agenda. Portray it as normal for husbands and wives to hate each other and fight all the time. Portray it as normal for teens to explode into horrible rebellion and spend their adolescence fornicating and doing drugs. Portray it as normal for divorce to tear families apart. Exalt the single parent. Punish parents who discipline their children. Be suspicious of happy families; label them as abnormal and closely examine them; be ready to tear them apart if necessary (Child Protective Services?) because hey, no one can really be that happy, right?

• Abolish self-control. In a feel-good society, no one should be expected to exercise any restraint whatever. Teach people – especially young people – that self-control is not only unnecessary but wrong. If it feeeeels good, do it.

• Cultivate envy. The rich are only rich because they are lucky. They don’t deserve their wealth, even if they worked 18 hours a day for 25 years to get it. All their money should be redistributed. Vote for anyone who promises to sock it to the rich.

• Encourage hatred. Accuse anyone who disagrees with you of being a racist and a white supremacist, no matter what the subject. Make everyone sputter a denial and apology every time; it weakens their position. Separate people into either “oppressors” or “victims,” then punish the “oppressors” for crimes they never committed and reward the “victims” for crimes they never experienced.

• Encourage a welfare state. Nothing kills ambition or incentive better than free everything. No one should have to work for life’s necessities. Declare such things as housing, transportation, education, health care, etc. as “rights” which should be distributed by the government, especially if the government steals more money from “the rich” to do it. Vote for anyone who promises to keep the freebies coming.

• Encourage illegal immigration. Legal immigrants have the unfortunate habit of coming to this nation, learning English, working very hard, buying homes, educating their children, and becoming business owners. In short, they assimilate. These people are bad examples and every obstacle should be put in their path. Instead, throw open the borders and welcome a flood of illegal immigrants. Ignore factual statistics of drug smuggling, human trafficking, violent crimes, and other petty issues. Give these illegal immigrants free food, housing, education, medicine, and transportation. Oh, and make sure they vote only in approved ways.

• Capture the press and dominate the internet. The only permitted point of view is the satanic one; label anything else as “intolerant. Social media and internet search engines must only be geared to find positive information on approved positions. Moral or ethical opinions and viewpoints must be shadow-banned or censored.

• Capture the children. This is critical, possibly the single-most important facet of world (certainly national) domination. Because adults tend to be stubbornly resistant to devilish tactics, it’s essential to get children away from their parents and education them only in satanically approved ways. Homeschooling should be abolished, or at best made so difficult that parents give up. Take away pride in the nation and teach children our country is evil and oppressive. Refuse to study the Founding documents lest children get a notion that our nation is unique and special. Teach kids the Founding Fathers were white supremacist monsters. Keep children ignorant of economics and teach them everything should be free. Drown them in sexual permissiveness so they never learn self-control and spit on the sanctity of marriage. Let them know clusters of cells are not babies and Planned Parenthood is their savior. Mess up their young minds (and bodies) with faddish notions like transgenderism. Fill their unformed brains with earth-worship and punish them when they express religious devotion (except to Gaia). Teach them emotion should override logic at all times. Remove parental authority, which also removes God’s authority.

Hey, you know what? A brilliant man (inspired by the devil) summed it all up in a tidy instruction book entitled “Rules for Radicals.” Gosh, it’s almost like he listened to Paul Harvey and followed the devil’s advice word for word.

Imagine that.

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Now, for added amusement, here are two emails from my faithful liberal reader Robert. First email:

Hello again Patrice ! Sorry, but Trump is a very lazy man, and no doubt the laziest president in US history . He was born rich , but if he had not been such an incompetent, corrupt and wasteful businessman, he would be much richer than he is . Remember what the Bible says "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven . " Being or becoming wealthy is not a sin .
But greed, avarice, unscrupulousness, mendacity , cruelty , lechery , pride , arrogance , conceit and dishonesty , all of which which Trump is guilty of in spades , are definitely sinful . Why do so many Christians still
support this monstrously evil man ?

Here are some examples of the differences between liberals and conservatives in America

Liberals favor the common people . Conservatives favor the rich and corporations .

Libs seek to liberate people . Cons seek to subjugate them .

Libs seek to unite and protect people . Cons seek to divide and exploit them .

Libs encourage individuality . Cons encourage and enforce conformity .

Libs celebrate diversity . Cons fear diversity .

Libs embrace science and the arts . Cons oppose science and the arts .

Libs promote peace . Cons promote war and oppression .

Libs promote hope . Cons promote fear .

Libs promote education . Cons promote ignorance .

Libs promote truth . Cons promote deception .

Libs promote cooperation . Cons promote unilateralism .

Libs promote innovation and progress . Cons defend "tradition " against progress .

Libs believe that people are fundamentally good . Cons believe that humans are
fundamentally sinful .

I'm not saying all these thongs are characteristic of you personally, Patrice , just
conservatives in general in America .

All the best, Robert

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And second email:

Hello again Patrice ! No offense meant, but this is just a rehash of the same old tired conservative talking points and straw men . It implies that only conservatives and Christians can be good and moral people . In fact, I know many atheists who are the nicest , kindest and mot
generous people you could ever imagine , and there is a small but very vocal number of Christians in America who are horrible people - disgusting bigots and hateful hypocrites who think they have monopoly on morals and ethics . But they are nothing but appallingly narrow-minded,
intolerant , self-righteous and arrogant jerks .

No, Satan doesn’t actually exist , unless you count Donald Trump . Why do so many Christians in America worship a man who may have raped at least one 13 year old girl and who thinks he can do anything he wants with any woman and get away with it ?

1. Do as you please . No, liberals do NOT think it’s OK for people to do anything . However, they rightly feel that people should be free to do as they please as long as they do not harm anyone else , do not interfere with other people’s lives and violate their rights , are not a
public nuisance and don’t do anything which endangers others . Sex between consenting adults in private is no business of any one else - certainly not the police, the law, the courts , or the law . This includes gay sex, which is NOT a “sin “ or a “crime “.

2. Trash religion ?” Conservatives are unable to see the difference between criticizing christianity and individual Christians who say and do reprehensible things and “trashing religion “. Religion SHOULD be criticized . It has caused an unimaginable amount of human misery over the centuries .
Death and destruction, mass murder , brutal torture , etc and has caused so much ignorance and blind fear .

The Spanish Inquisition . The witch hunts . The slaughter of the Albigensian heretics by the Catholic church . Islamic terrorism and brutality . Christian brutality . Oppression prosecution and mass murder of Jews (yes, long before Hitler who was actually a Christian ! ) .
Catholics slaughtering protestants and vice versa . People who criticize and condemn the bigotry and hypocrisy which SOME Christians are guilty of do not “hate” Christians as a whole . American Christians can be among the worst hypocrites on earth .

3. Popularize violence and immorality . The Bible is chock full of violence and immorality ! And it has been used often as an excuse to justify hypocritical immorality and still is . The Bible has done infinitely more harm to America and the world than all the racy movies and TV shows and all the pornography in the world .

If people don’t like movies, books, magazines, websites, movies and TV shows which are ore adult , no one is forcing them to buy the DVDs , go to th movies , watch them on TV etc . Censoring TV and film etc will never make people more virtuous . This only encourages more censorship and ultimately,.government tyranny . There is also plenty of entertainment which Christian themes for anyone who wants it available, and no liberals are trying to censor it .

4. “Destroy the family “? The notions that liberals have been setting out to “destroy the family “ in America is pure poppycock . You know what destroys families ? Poverty . Unemployment . Lack of good education and college education being too expensive except for the rich .
Children raised in poor , cold housing who do not get good nutrition and medical care . And who has caused all of this poverty and helplessness in America ? The Republicans - by denying the poor the help they need, preventing them from escaping poverty etc .
Divorce is unfortunate but often absolutely necessary . But many kids have survived it and gone on to become successful in spite of everything .

Making it hard to divorce has actually resulted in the MURDER of many married women by their husbands . No fault divorce is actually a GOOD thing . Child abuse destroys families . And most victims of child abuse have heterosexual parents , not gay ones .
Who is “suspicious of happy families “? Another star man .

5. “Abolish self control ?” Give me a break ! No liberals want to do this ! Where is the self control of people who spread mindless fear and hatred of gay people , non-christians , Hispanics, atheists and others ? Does Donald Trump have “self control ?” Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha !!!
I’ve seen toddlers with more self control ! Where is the ”self control “ of all the pedophile Catholic priests and the many evangelical Christian preachers who are also pedophiles , or serial adulterers , and who live lives of concealed debauchery while pretending to be “men of God ?”

6. “Cultivate envy ?” Who is doing this ? No liberals I know of . Liberals are not opposed to rich people, or people who are able to become rich .. They don’t want the government to take all or even most of their money away in order to give imaginary “free stuff “ to the poor or others .

But if more rich people paid their fair share in taxes , our economy would be in much better shape . They could still live lives of unimaginable luxury . “Redistribution of wealth ?” ROFLOL !!! It’s our government which redistributes wealth as reverse Robin Hood,s by taking men from the poor and
middle class to make the rich even richer . And some people, like Trump were BORN rich . To be rich is no sin . But to be a rich person who is greedy and callous is a grievous sin . Remember - the vast majority of poor people in America are NOT “lazy “. In fact they work incredibly hard often at
more than one job, and they can barely make ends meet . So do so many members of the middle class , and life is getting tougher than ever for them .too .

7. “ Encourage hatred ?” Come on now . Another straw man . You know who encourages hate din America ? Donald Trump. He encourages hatred of anyone who is not a white Christian in America . Hatred of innocent Hispanics who are NOT “ murderers and rapists “.
Mindless fear and hatred of innocent people merely because they happen to be Muslims . And Trump has refused to condemn the KKK, the Neo-Nazis and other white supremacist hate groups . Some “Christian “.

All over America, preachers and others encourage mindless hatred of gay people, and transgender people . Accusing them of being evil perverts who are “out to recruit children into the gay lifestyle, even though nobody chooses to be gay . And accusing ays of being pedophiles despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of pedophiles are actually HETEROSEXUAL !

And preachers encouraging hatred of atheists , even though they are just abut the most harmless people in the world . Liberals encourage TOLERANCE of others . Compassion for hated minorities and the underdog . And racism SHOULD be condemned . AS well as sexism,
antisemitism, xenophobia, homophobia and any kind of bigotry .

8. “Encourage the welfare state ?” Give me a break ! No one is doing this . The government MUST provide a secure social safety net for the unfortunate and those who are down on their luck . Conservatives want to destroy or greatly weaken this safety net in America . They don’t care
about the poor, the unemployed , people struggling to earn enough to survive , the disabled, children and infants , the elderly and infirm etc . They blather about “self reliance “. How can people rely on themselves if they are helpless ?

Our government does not provide “free stuff “ and no one is asking the government to support them generously while they do no work and nobody is demanding that the government take hard-earned money form those who do work . People want to be ABLE to earn a decent living .

But too many can’t through no fault of their own . Who gets all the free stuff ? The RICH ! And the big corporations and their CEOs .

Millions of Americans are struggling to get by . Many have fallen through the cracks . 30,000 Americans die every year because health care is too expensive . And far more who are not even poor go BANKRUPT in order to afford it .

In America , our government , especially the GOP , have kept wages stagnant for decades while allowing the cost of living to rise steadily . This has had a disastrous effect on the nation. Yet conservatives still accuse the poor and middle class of being “lazy bums “!

Please consider what I am saying here and please respond. Please put as much of it as possible in your nest post at WND . Thanks !

All the best, Robert

Silly Darcy

Here's just a few photos of Mr. Darcy being silly in the front yard, playing with assorted stuff like a bundle of baling twine and an old cheap Frisbee.

And here's Mr. Darcy barking at some cows, who are supremely indifferent to him and calmly chewing their cud.

Only after a couple minutes did the cows leisurely get up, stretch, and wander away. Mr. Darcy was very proud he'd routed the animals All By Himself.