“The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Project.
…
“Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”
From an article written by: Molly Ball
The article is titled: “How Close We Came: The secret history of the shadow campaign that saved the election“
Appearing in: Time Magazine
Dtd: 15 February 2021
[This story is not even close to being over. Unless there is a massive turnout of Democrats this November, the Republicans will likely take both the House and the Senate. If that happens, the treasonous insurrection of 6 January 2021 will be swept under the rug and the Republicans will use their dominance at the state level to guarantee the election of a Republican nominee, irrespective of the actual vote totals. They will “find” the votes necessary to win. Voter suppression and fake ballots? You ain’t seen nothing yet… After all, to Republicans it seems it is less important who wins the election at the ballot box than who actually gets to take office and rule. (And, yes, I said “rule”. Not “govern”; rule.) — KMAB]
For the last 10 years, I’ve been posting personal health / fitness updates on pages under my menu topic “Sweat Equity“. I was doing this to create an open site for me to refer to if I ever needed to, while not having access to my home computer. I have used the pages very rarely – no more than 2 or 3 times per year and I’m fully settled into retirement now so I don’t really have the need for this type of access.
As such, I will no longer be updating or adding to these pages. If anything of note happens, I will simply publish a “normal” post. Typically, it will be as an additional post for a given day.
I will be updating my “Tributaries and Eddies” section (on my sidebar). Two of the blogs there have (more or less) stopped updating, so I’ll be removing them. One has changed location, so I’m just updating the address. I used to do this updating (removing and adding) every six months, but I’ve kind of let it slide, so this will be a bit of New Year’s housekeeping.
Third, for now at least, I will no longer be posting music videos every day. I’ve been doing it for almost a two years and it started off as a “lark” – just to share music (lyrics) I’ve enjoyed. Once I got past a month, I thought, I’ll just do it for year (365 days straight). Then I thought, well, just do it for a full calendar year. Now, that’s done, too… I will post a music / song video every now and then, I just won’t be doing it every day.
Finally, I’m going to try to write more posts of my own. I started this blog to practice my writing and to vent at the universe. When I began to run out of bile I began using quotes and book / movie reviews more and more and using the post titles as my “creative” tool. My intent was to express a view / twist of the quote / review with a pun or hi-lite of a few words from the quote(s). This was my way of pretending to be a newspaper headline writer. I feel this was mostly unsuccessful, but I’ve enjoyed trying, so I will keep at it (on post titles anyway).
I hope everyone reading this has a prosperous year and that you keep on blogging! Excelsior!!
Today my wife and I both got our COVID booster shots!! We got same day scheduling at the pharmacy in our local supermarket.
Six(6) months and two days after receiving our second original vaccination.
No ill effects to speak of other than a slight soreness at the shot location which passed after a couple of hours. (That was me. Hil had NO effects.)
If everything works out, we should be good to go until next year when they’ll probably have an annual regime in place. Time will tell…
If you have not received your vaccinations yet… Get on it! Protect your health and let’s get living our lives back to normal. If you have received your initial vaccinations, but not your booster shot – get it scheduled as soon as you are eligible. Life (and health) is too precious to risk losing it over politics.
I sent the club a wire stating: “PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.“
― Groucho Marx
I, on the other hand, will make a few exceptions to my own “no joining” policy…
It normally takes seven to seven and a half years of retirement for the average American to “recover” all of the funds paid into their Social Security retirement funds during their forty odd years of work. I’m over half-way there! — KMAB
So, this was our house last year after the new paint job…
And here it is after updating our front garden to help conserve water…
As you can see, we’ve removed the front grass and replaced it with (mostly) white stone. We’ve circled the two trees with larger riverbed stones and red pumice (like) stones. We’ve high-lighted the roses on either side of the brick path and added river stone edging on the sides. We added a “fake” stream bed curving from near the top of the path, around our big tree, down to the sidewalk. And, finally, we sprinkled various plants in the white stone areas. We hope they will fill out and add a bit of color to the otherwise plain white space.
Many (not quite most) of the houses in our neighborhood have already done the same to their front gardens. I don’t know how much money we’ll save, but every drop of water counts in this age of climate change. Over 25 of the last 30 years have been drought years here in California, so our action is long past due. Hopefully, better late than never…
And, of course, the best news is: NO more mowing the lawn, while reducing the expense of our water bill.
[This weekend, when you are celebrating with your family, please take a minute to think about these soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who throughout our nation’s history have made the ultimate sacrifice for us all. Please try to think of them, not as warriors, but as sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters… as part of a “greater” American family – which all (they and us) surely are.
I know that Memorial Day is specifically set aside to honor these brave souls in uniform, but please also take an extra minute or two to remember and be thankful for the over 3,600 medical and health care staff around the country who also fought the good fight – just doing their jobs – and who gave their lives in the last year defending us from COVID. They too have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
All five images were found on the web. No claim of ownership is intended or implied.
To be honest, I was not a “big” Van Halen (group) fan. I do own their “Greatest Hits” CD and “1984” album and I did really like a number of their songs (particularly this one and “Jump“). Having said that, I was a fan of Eddie Van Halen. I thought he had some great riffs and he always seemed to bring a sense of joy to their videos.
I heard (today) Eddie passed away after a multi-year struggle with throat cancer. The world is better for his having been a part of it. The music world is a little less tonight for his loss.
Hendrix, Prince and (now) Eddie Van Halen… Heaven must be jammin’ & screamin’ tonight! I bet Glen Campbell and Roy Clark are fingerin’ in a few licks with them, too!
So, today I am completing my 365th day of Intermediate Time Fasting (ITF), which has “really” been a mix of ITF and One-Meal-A-Day (OMAD) mixed eating and it’s time for an update:
My weight is down from 364lbs to 345lbs.
19lbs in 12 months or “roughly” 1.5lbs per month.
Had I been on a “strict” ITF – or my modified three(3) day cycle) (MITF), today would have been day:3 of cycle:119
As it was, this was day:267 of ITF / MITF and day 98 of OMAD. Now, of course, there were multiple “normal” days mixed in during the year, but by and large I tried to stick to the time guidelines / eating periods. Surprisingly, (to me) there was very little exercise done other than my daily walking of our pet dog. This would be between 15 minutes / .4 miles; 30 minutes / 1 mile; and, 45minutes / 1.3 miles. There would be some minor deviations in time or distance, but these were the overwhelmingly most common times and distances.
I would amend I was doing some body-weight exercises for about 45 to 60 minutes each day, but they did not result in significant weight loss or gain. Although I felt much better at the end of the 60 day period. At the start of August, I began suffering from vertigo and lower back pain, so I curtailed the exercises. The main accomplishment was going from zero(“0”) pushups (from the floor) to 15 pushups. I was pushing myself through a 30 day / 100 pushups a day challenge. I started with 20 sets of five(5) inclined pushups and worked from 10 X 10 to 5 sets of 20 (inclined), with mixing in one or two sets from the floor on alternating days.
I am still dealing with the vertigo (off and on, mostly off), but my back issues seems to have cleared up.
An observant reader might ask about my food plan… The reality is / was there was virtually NONE. Every third day was ALL YOU CAN EAT / anything you want, within the eating 2Hr window and I did just that. I started off with pizzas and cakes, fried chicken, chow mein and ice cream, and… Well, you get the idea. Almost nothing healthy every third day for almost three months. I did tone it back after that, but I “just” toned it down to “crazy” every 6th day. I did not stop. My test was to see if controlling the time windows (6Hr, 4Hr and 2Hr) would work as a diet / lifestyle variable. I would say, it does seem to have worked. Relatively little exercise for most (10 months) of the year and a gross amount of unhealthy food every third (6th) day (but only within 2Hrs) and I still lost weight. I can only imagine how much I would have lost had I adopted a healthier food program (at least on the third / 6th day) and added a modest exercise program to go with it. Or alternatively, if I had just done the every other day eat / fast regime which seems to be more commonly recommended.
And that’s where I stand moving forward… I am hoping to continue both the OMAD and a workout routine to continue to lose weight and get healthier.
This isn’t one of those songs which makes my “Poems / Lyrics” page, but it is one which makes me “smile and shuffle” every time I hear it. I heard it while I was standing in a checkout line earlier today. “Shuffle” is pretty much as close I come to dancing these days. (Now many of my friends would say, that’s as close as I EVER came to dancing. LoL!)
Having completed my 10th year of blogging and a little more than a quarter of the way through my 11th, I thought I’d check to see my world coverage. The U.S. recognizes about 195 countries / territories. I believe the U.N. is upwards of about 210.
Aside from the normal (“expected”) ones missing (Cuba and North Korea), I’m still missing almost 15% of the world’s countries from at least one visit / view. As near as I can tell, here is my list of countries which I have not had a view from (in alphabetical order):
1) Benin
2) Burkina Fasq
3) Central African Republic
4) Chad
5) Côte d’Ivoire
6) Cuba
7) Djibouti
8) Equatorial Guinea
9) Eritrea
10) Gabon
11) Guinea
12) Guinea-Bissau
13) Haiti
14) Liberia
15) Mali
16) Mauritania
17) Niger
18) North Korea
19) North Macedonia
20) Sierra Leone
21) Sao Tome and Principe
22) South Sudan
23) Suriname
24) Togo
25) Turkmenistan
26) Uzbekistan
27) Vatican City
28) Western Sahara
29) Yemen
I know it is pure vanity to imagine it — given my relatively small number of followers (1,400-ish), but I like to imagine if I cannot personally visit every country in the world in my lifetime, at least my blog has been viewed by at least one person in each country.
Like I said — pure vanity — but at the end of each year I seem to inch a little closer to my goal. Someone should tell them: “Assimilation is inevitable. Resistance is futile…” (LoL!)
Kevin Barrett's Blog 
Defeated: So Far (Anyway)
Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged American Democracy, American Politics, General Comments, How Close We Came: The secret history of the shadow campaign that saved the election, Ian Bassin, Molly Ball, Norm Eisen, Philosophy, Protect Democracy, Quotes, Time Magazine, Voter Protection Project, Voter Suppression on January 6, 2022| Leave a Comment »
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