lummi island wine tasting Sept 12-13 ’25
Hours this weekend: 4-6 pm Friday & Saturday
Two old watches I posted on the Blizard Trail charm pole some while back…
now they’re gone!! Is that legal???
This week’s wine tasting
Cloudlift chardonnay ’22 Washington $28
Scents of honeysuckle, sweet lemon curd, and pear drift out of the glass, with mouth watering acidity carrying flavors of crisp green apple and pear with a burst of lemon zest on the finish.
Wolftrap Red ’24 South Africa $14
Consistently appealing aromas and flavors of ripe plum, red currant, violets, Italian herbs and exotic spices; vibrant flavors of dark berries and spicy plum with hints of orange peel that linger on a juicy finish. Terrific value!
Alain de la Treille Chinon Cab Franc ’22 France $21
From Loire valley’s alluvial gravel & yellow limestone terraces cultivated along the Vienne for five generations; offers complex minerality and juicy, spicy flavors that dance from plum to cassis, game, earth, and tobacco, all with a delicacy that speaks of the village’s cool conditions.
Economics of the Heart: Maggits Go Full “Reichstag Fire”
Yesterday’s very public murder of 31-yr old Republican activist Charlie Kirk has focused global attention on the growing violence in American politics. Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at a well-attended event on the campus of Utah Valley University near Salt Lake City. Kirk had been a Republican activist for about two years, and had been quite effective at building Maggit support among college students.
Almost immediately the usual Republican pundits starting accusing Democrats for the escalation of violence and calling for Maga-retaliation. Remember, these are the same guys who cheered the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol, the warrantless arrests and “disappearing” of tens of thousands of asylum-seeking immigrants, the deployment of the National Guard to LA, and the Tweetster’s threat to do the same in Chicago and other “Blue” cities in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
All of this closely mimics the actions of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in February 1933. Just four weeks after Hitler managed to make himself Chancellor of Germany, an arsonist attack on the Reichstag building, which housed the German Parliament, was burned to the ground. Hitler blamed the fire on the Communists (the opposition party to the Nazis), suspended civil liberties, and pursued a “ruthless confrontation” that “removed” enough of the Communists from government to give Hitler complete control of the entire government and set the stage for WWII.
Fast forward to today: Project 2025 is the Maggit Reichstag fire. The Tweetster is the Maggit wannabe Hitler. A bunch of white male “high-functioning” autistic billionaires are putting up the money and giving the orders. And the United States is being ripped apart a nickel at a time by a Cabinet and a Republican-controlled Congress of gutless sycophants.
The Rise of Political Violence in the US.
As we have seen over and over since January, Congressional Republicans have quietly capitulated to the Tweetster’s authority over them and Project 2025’s detailed plan for turning the United States into an Authoritarian dictatorship. They are drastically changing economic rules to make the richest men in the world even richer, the poorest even poorer, the environment more toxic faster, and putting a “Closed” sign on our influence on the international economy. And all of this has been unfolding right before our eyes since 2015, as described in considerable detail in Rachel Kleinfeld’s very detailed 2021 and 2024 studies of the subject. She is a widely published and highly respected researcher with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; the two articles listed here provide a detailed analysis of the rise of political violence in wealthy democracies. The abstract of the 2021 paper begins with this:
“Recent alterations to violent groups in the United States and to the composition of the two main political parties have created a latent force for violence that can be 1) triggered by a variety of social events that touch on a number of interrelated identities; or 2) purposefully ignited for partisan political purposes. This essay describes the history of such forces in the U.S., shares the risk factors for election violence globally and how they are trending in the U.S., and concludes with some potential paths to mitigate the problem.”
She identifies two subgroups most prone to far-right political violence. The first consists of white Christian evangelical Republicans, who portray Democrats and cultural elites as Satanic forces arrayed against Christianity and seeking to harm Christian children. “They often hold jobs, are married, and have children. Those who attend church or belong to community groups are more likely to hold violent, conspiratorial beliefs.4 These are not isolated “lone wolves”; they are part of a broad community that echoes their conspiratorial beliefs in a Q-Anon conspiracy.
The second subgroup consists of those who feel threatened by either women or minorities, and are particularly concerned that the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast” that they “may have to use force to save it.” The article describes in detail what is essentially a broad sort of existential paranoia that their “traditional values” are being taken away and a resultant willingness or even compulsion to use any means to stop them including murder.
We have seen over the past eight years how the Maggit false narrative media machine speaks directly to this kind of socio-religious paranoia. It has been deliberate and well-planned, beginning with the elimination of broadcast requirements to present all sides of every story, taking religious control of Congress and the Supreme Court, and turning our country from a democracy to some dystopian Christian nightmare.
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