Syd, a Great Pyrenees dog, joined our family eight years ago, just before Thanksgiving.
Like many Great Pyrenees, he had been given to a rescue society because he was too big at more than 100 pounds, slobbered a lot, shed his long, white hair all over the place, and barked like a basso profundo in an opera. A practiced escape artist, he’d also jumped out of the second-floor window of his owner’s house, breaking a leg in the process.
When we arrived at the halfway house for the National Great Pyrenees Rescue in central Pennsylvania, he jumped into the back of our car without a worry. He’d found his forever home.
A genuinely sweet dog at home, he didn’t play well with others. Great Pyrenees protect other sheepdogs and sheep from predators like wolves. Syd protected our family from invaders, including lunging at a local veterinarian who made house calls.
Often, he would sleep just outside our bedroom to make sure no one messed with the Harper family.
On walks, he was constantly sniffing the ground and surveying the landscape, ensuring every animal around wasn’t messing with HIS turf!
Syd loved the snow. He’d rub his hose in the snow and drop down on his side and make Pyr snow angels.
He loved playing with his fellow rescue Pyr, Sparky, and later Lucien, a Husky. They’d romp around the yard and run through the hallways in our home in an almost never-ending bout of roughhousing
Syd often sat outside and barked at almost everything that walked by or drove by. It wasn’t an annoying bark, but one that transfixed virtually everyone. People would stop to listen to the bark that rose from the depth of his lungs. I once found a mother and young son mesmerized by the sound.
He hated motorcycles and postal trucks. The sound differed from ordinary traffic, and he’d tear after both when he had a chance.
A few months ago, he had trouble walking. By last Tuesday, he couldn’t get up in the morning.
I took him outside and sat with him, but I knew it was time to say goodbye. Almost at that instant, Syd heard a mail truck. He paused, hobbled to his feet, and barked at the retreating vehicle. He’d sent it on its way once again.
At age 12, Syd, our wonderful friend and protector, went out in style just a little while after his final bark.
Posted: November 15, 2022 by datechguy in Uncategorized
The steals that are being done in front of your face in Arizona are being deliberately done in front of your face to show you who is boss. This kind of thing will continue until people decide they will not longer tolerate it and punish those who do it.
But until there is a consequence for this kind of fraud it will continue because the goal of the left is not clean elections that can be counted in one day. The goal is to win in an environment when the demographics no longer favor you and you are encouraging your own base to either kill their own kids or castrate them for the profit of those who you they serve.
SHREVEPORT – I didn’t want to write about election results, BUT, since all politics are local, I will say that here in Louisiana, John Kennedy handily won re-election with 62% of the vote so, there’s that. And even more locally, our ridiculous mayor here in Shreveport was soundly defeated, coming in at a lame fourth place. There will be a runoff in December between an attorney and a career politician. Meh.
As for Kennedy, the state political world is on the edge of their seats waiting to see if he will announce a run for governor next year.
Kennedy is in the pole position after waltzing to reelection with nearly 62% of the vote in a 13-candidate field. A Republican in a GOP-dominated state, he has nearly $15 million in the bank, according to sources close to the campaign, that he could shift to an outside super PAC for the governor’s race… Kennedy is so formidable that political analysts believe U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, Treasurer John Schroder, state Sen. Sharon Hewitt and other Republicans are waiting for Kennedy to announce his plans before deciding whether to run themselves.
Louisiana State Attorney General Jeff Landry has already jumped in the race. No Democrats have declared. Speculation has it that as the Democrats now control the Senate, a gubernatorial bid may be more attractive to Kennedy. When asked his intentions, Kennedy refuses to comment at this time, opting instead to savor his current election win.
Here in Shreveport, back to our mayoral election, we are faced with a choice between Greg Tarver who is 74 years old and been in politics since 1984 or Tom Arceneaux who is an attorney and has served in local city politics. Tarver is in the funeral home business too, and a local radio station had a good time with Tarver’s revelation that on occasion he sleeps in a coffin at work. This one will clearly come down to party lines. The runoff is in December.
I was around for the 1994 and the 2010 Red Wave elections. And for the most part, they were pretty awesome, particularly the first one, when the Republican Party bulldozed the Democrats and captured the Senate after eight years of Democrat control, as well as the House of Representatives, after a record 52-year reign by the Dems. And while the GOP didn’t win the Senate in 2010, the Republicans gained an astounding 63 House seats in what is now known as the Tea Party election.
After both midterms, conservatives salivated at the prospect of the next presidential election. In 1992, Bill Clinton was victorious, it was believed, because George H.W. Bush ran a lackluster campaign–that was true–and votes for third-party candidate Ross Perot siphoned enough support from the GOP conservative base to elect the Democrat. In 2008, the feeling was that John McCain never had a chance against Barack Obama after the Great Recession market crash two months before Election Day. But McCain ran a lackluster campaign too.
Overconfidence, bordering on hubris, kicked in for the GOP after those Red Waves.
As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House.
Bubba had a come-to-Jesus moment–having Dick Morris in his camp helped–and Clinton after the ’94 midterms pivoted to the center by declaring, “The era of big government is over.” The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, widely-known as the Welfare Reform Bill, offered tangible proof.
After what Obama deemed “a shellacking” in 2010, Obama, as he does best, talked a good game–but he didn’t pivot. With no hope of getting unpopular legislation, such as cap-and-trade passed by the new GOP House, he channeled his charisma to win in 2012–as conservatives seethed. And ObamaCare didn’t go into effect until 2013.
Besides over-confidence hindering their White House chances, Republicans nominated country club-flavor Republicans, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, for president in 1996 and 2012, respectively. In essence, their campaign was, “I’m not the other guy.” Yawn.
As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House.
Election denial.
It’s time for the GOP to look at what went wrong this year, starting with election-denial. As I wrote in March, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump was not a free and fair election. Big Tech and media meddling in regard to suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, in my opinion, was the foremost reason. Richard M. Nixon was the victim of a suspicious presidential election tally in 1960. I was a child in 1968 and 1972, but I don’t recall reading about Nixon mentioning the 1960 race at all during his ’68 or ’72 successful presidential runs.
Deal with it. The Dems won in 2020 and we lost. Move on. If Trump runs in 2024, that needs to be his message. Most of the candidates in close races who said that Biden stole the election from Trump in 2020 were defeated. Election denial is toxic for Republicans.
The big winner in the midterms was Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He’s not an election denier and he has a solid list of accomplishments to point to after four years in office.
The new election playing field.
I loathe mail-in voting, “election season” instead of Election Day, and ballot drop-boxes. But these things aren’t going away. To prevail, Republicans have to adapt and find ways to perform better on the new playing field. Mail-in voting is a good place to start. Increasingly, the GOP is the party of private sector jobholders. Let’s say you’re a construction worker raising a family who is told by his boss, “Hey, I need you at this worksite tomorrow in Nebraska–it pays well.” But that worker hasn’t voted yet and Election Day is two days away. Meanwhile, in Blue Illinois, Election Day is a holiday for government workers.
What if it snows on Election Day? That happened in a Republican area in Nevada last Tuesday.
Shortly before Election Day in 2016, my mother was hospitalized. She had voted in every presidential election since 1956, but mom wasn’t able to vote for Trump, much to her disappointment. We need to reach out to seniors and, gently of course, convince them to utilize mail-in or early voting.
Republicans need to build on its increasing support among Hispanics and reach out to Asians. The GOP is the party of law and order. However, the media wing of the Democratic Party labels the phrase “law and order” as racist. So Republicans need to rebrand and become, let’s say, the “safety and security” party. Safety and security is an appeal that will resonate among all racial groups.
Tribalism.
If the increasingly frail and mentally feeble Joe Biden runs for reelection and wins renomination–the Democrats won’t have a strong campaigner like Clinton or Obama on the top of the ticket in ’24. And Biden has already said that he won’t pivot, as Bill Clinton did, to the center now that the midterms have passed.
Woo-hoo! We’re gonna win!
Slow down there, cowboy.
Republicans face disaster if they underestimate the support Biden will enjoy from the tribalist base of the Democrats. That tribe will vote every candidate who has a “D” next to their name. In the Chicago area, I live among millions of these people. They might wise up one day. Maybe they won’t. But as Dan Bongino said numerous times in the last week, “Things are just not bad enough yet for a lot of people to wake up from the Kool-Aid slumber.”
And it’s not just Illinois that is afflicted by Dem tribalism. Pennsylvanians chose a cognitively challenged far-left US Senate candidate, John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke this spring, over a mentally nimble Republican candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz. True, Oz could have run a better campaign.
Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 landslide win over Walter Mondale, won 49 states. But in the popular vote–yeah, I know, the Electoral College declares the victor–Mondale still collected more than 40 percent. In 2024, even if Biden is in worse physical and mental shape than Fetterman is, he’ll do much better, courtesy of tribalism, than Mondale did, in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.
Fetterman, if by some other-worldly convergence ends up as the Democrat nominee for president in 2024, could match Mondale’s popular vote percentage. I am dead serious about that. Tribalism is a tough nut to crack.
There is much to think about and much to do for the Republican Party. But at least the GOP won’t be overconfident in 2024. That might be the best news out of this Red Ripple election.
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