December Looms

Another rough, herky-jerky hour on the treadmill. Maybe we need a break? No weights today. Our arm hurts. That's right, we got the booster. You know, we've been places without a mask that you wouldn't believe; schools, doctor's offices, vax clinics. We will never voluntarily put on a mask again, that's our policy.

We opened up The Great Salvation of 1976 Yesterday and got to work. The book begins with a couple of military scenes. Haig watches troops board a transport in Antwerp, Cheney gets a helo tour of Task Force 76 in Subic Bay. This section needs expanding. Probably a North Korean scene, no? What other bits of the US military should we see? Thoughts?

We didn't submit anything to our Soviet handler last week and now he's on our case about it for this week. 'Where is latest bit of misinformation? Recall the Kompromot we have on you, comrade.' I dunno. I don't feel like rehashing the Rittenhouse thing for the Ruskis. Speaking of...  

What Will's Watching, Tucker's Kyle Rittenhouse interview. What a nice, polite, well composed, dare we say good looking young man. We didn't really learn anything about the case that we didn't already know, but it was nice to see Kyle. He wants to be a nurse, he said. Good for him. Kyle also strongly implied that a legal reckoning is coming for the media. 

What Will is also watching, the Mannings Broadcast. For those who don't know, ESPN runs an alternate Monday Night Football broadcast where Payton and Eli Manning sit in their rec-rooms and talk football during the game. We like it a lot. Eli comes off as an unpretentious dork. There's nothing Payton doesn't know about football. Last night Tom Brady's Buccaneers destroyed the Giants 30-10. A decade of suckitude now for the Giants. What are they, the Jets?

Saturday Updates with an Emergency Monday Metal

A weird but good week at the gym. We missed a session so only three in all. We could do a makeup day today if we really wanted to. We lifted yesterday (a good session) so that would mean the treadmill today. We were planning to do some yard work this afternoon, and we certainly count that as exercise. We'll see. 

This blog hasn't commented much about the Kyle Rittenhouse case because we prefer to deal in things we know. And we don't know the law. It's lame for a non-lawyer pundit commenting on legal matters. However, this blog would be remiss if it didn't say something. So we're stunned that the Kenosha jury arrived at the correct decision. This blog also says without hesitation, USA-2, Commies-0. Degenerate commies at that. USA! USA! 

Aside from Portland we don't know of any riots last night. Now that they'll have a day to prepare, we expect riots tonight. 

The Things:

We have one last chapter of The Great Nuclear War of 1975 to read. We read The Falklands chapter yesterday and overall things are as good as we an make them. At some point one has done all that one can to one's masterpiece. From there one must step back and say, this is it, this is the novel. Steps to turn over the MS to the editor have been taken. We've one chapter left to go. Even the Looking Glass scenes are looking good. 

We've more or less written The Final Storm's Crimea scenes, if we decide not to add some Soviet POVs. Which might help. We're not sure what we're doing next week, but we know we're moving on from the Crimea chapter. Oh, we haven't written the Israeli section because we have the definitive account of the Israeli raid on Osirak and we why wouldn't we consult that before writing? But the book is in our book refugee pile and we have no idea when we'll see it again. We'll be doing a lot of work on The Final Storm in 2022.

What you people want me to write next?

Will Assesses his Campaign 2020

 Adam Piggott says you can't be neutral anymore:

As the year 2020 draws to a close, another rallying cry is beginning to be heard around that nation as people openly pick sides and disavow those who are attempting to remain bystanders on the sidelines.

Read the whole thing, as Piggott talks about the case of brave Kyle Rittenhouse and Black Rifle Coffee Company. We used to have one of their T-shirts.

As the political situation grows worse, we're not sure what we can, would or should do. We're a bystander for most events, an observer, really.

But we've been meaning to inventory what we did during the campaign and this seems like as good a time as any to do so.

First, all year we wore our MAGA gear wherever we wanted too, including liberal Great Barrington, MA. During the George Floyd Riots we wore a MAGA hat through Somerville a few times. We've been to several Trump/Stop the Steal rallies in Bedminster, just a few minutes from Trump National. And several times we manned the phone bank at Tom Kean Jr. for Congress. We hate the telephone.

Here's how it works. One sits at a laptop computer with a red phone. The computer has special software with all the district's Republican voters vital info*. The computer calls four numbers at once and routs the first ringing number to you. When someone answers, you give them the schpeel and log it in as a contact and then hit, 'Next Number'. This is done strictly on a volunteer basis. On election day a half dozen of us where in the office making calls and chatting amiably. 

So we did more than we usually do. More than we've done campaign wise since college, when we walked around Wesley College hanging Fire Florio/Hire Whitman and Contract with America posters in '94.

We did a hell of a lot more than we ever would have or planned to do. We don't think it amounted to much. We don't know what to do next. But we know we won't be neutral.

*NJ07