Lazy Sunday CLXXVIII: The Worst of 2022

Happy New Year, my portly friends!  2022 is in the books, and 2023 has dawned.  What fresh opportunities—or nightmares, gasp!—will it bring?  Whatever it is, The Portly Politico will be offering up flabby commentary about it, and God is in Control!

As I do every year, it’s time to look back at the worst posts of the recently expired year, 2022.  In years past I’ve made this post quite extensive, but due to a dearth of time—and due to feeling a tad under-the-weather as the new year dawns—I decided to stick to just three of the “worst” posts, though there are many more with single-digit views.

To explain the criteria—and what I mean by “worst”—here is yours portly from 31 December 2021 in “The Worst of 2021“:

Now, by “worst,” I don’t mean “the lowest quality” or “the most offensive.”  I wouldn’t be an impartial judge of the former (and my readers are generally too polite to tell me if my writing sucks), and I’ve toned down my rhetoric too much to be the latter (although, who knows with the delicate sensibilities of modern Westerners).

No, by “worst” I simply mean “the posts with the lowest views.”  In the old days, when I routinely had posts with single views, I’d just hoover up those and plop them into one big post.  Fortunately, the blog has grown to the point that I don’t have single-view posts anymore, but I still have some neglected posts.

For this list, I will ignore posts that were written in prior years, with the exception of TBT posts, as I often add substantial new commentary on such posts.  I will also ignore posts that merely informed readers that that day’s real post would be delayed, or has been posted (so classics like “SubscribeStar Saturday Post ‘The TJC Spring Jam’ is Posted!” and “Lazy Sunday is Coming” won’t be included).

At the end of 2021, I looked back at single-digit posts; in other words, those with fewer than ten views.  For 2022, I just looked at the three lowest, each with only five measly views.

So, without further ado, here are the three worst posts of 2022, with five (5) views each:

Here’s to a new year of blogging!  I’m excited to see what’s next for yours portly as TPP enters it’s fifth year of daily posts.  WHOA!  Let’s all work together to ensure that none of my posts suffer such negligence in 2023, eh?

Happy New Year!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT^2: The Morning After

I’ve been pretty salty—in the parlance of the kiddos these days—about the midterm election results, a level of disappointment I haven’t experienced since the 2020 presidential election.

It brought me back to this post, in which I opine about Trump’s loss and the stolen election.  My hope was that the Republican Party would embrace the working-class voters that helped Trump win in 2016, lest they simply “return to being the party of agreeable losers.”

Looks like—ironically—the “agreeable losers” won, and have made losers of us all.

With that, here is 4 November 2021’s “TBT: The Morning After“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Disappointment

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Well, the midterm elections have come and gone, and my primary reaction is bitter disappointment.

I’d been tepid about the elections this year, barely taking notice of them, but allowed myself to fall for the “red wave” hype.  In a sane world, that should have happened—a major backlash against inflation and insanity.

Instead, we have a brain-dead automaton in the United States Senate and a lean Republican majority in the House—a majority, I fear, that will be ultimately meaningless.  At the time of writing, the balance in the Senate itself is questionable, and the Democrats may even walk away controlling it—completely the opposite of what we all thought would happen.

I was a fool to get my hopes up about national politics.  Even had the Republicans taken huge majorities, what would have been the result?  Would anything have substantially changed?

Perhaps with time I’ll take a more measured response to events, but right now, it seems like our national republic is a joke, and the American people are addicted to government largesse and cultural degradation.  We don’t want to improve, and we don’t want to be free.  We want to be children, and children can’t govern themselves.

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Election Day 2022

Well, here it is—Election Day 2022.  The much-vaunted midterms have arrived, and it looks like it’s going to be a pretty good day for Republicans.

I’ll admit, I’ve been tuned out from and burned out on politics of late, and while I’m optimistic about today’s results for Republicans, I’m a tad disillusioned with the state of electoral politics generally.  Will a “red wave” result in some meaningful reform this time around, or will GOP Establishment types wrangle the feisty upstarts and neutralize the MAGA Wing?

I’m not a “doomer” by any stretch—I sincerely hope for the latter, and I think it is the future of the Republican Party, if the GOP hopes to survive as a viable political party.  History, however, is not an encouraging indicator.

That said, a sweeping Republican victory is, by any measure, vastly preferable to a sweeping Democratic one.  At worst, I know a Republican House and Senate won’t screw things up further, and may make some marginal improvements; but a Democratic House and Senate, at worst, will double-down on the current insanity of lawlessness and moral relativism.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Malfunctioning Robots

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After two years under the befuddlingly tyrannical rule of a mentally-impaired geezer, our electoral standards have slid to meet the lowered expectations of our time.  Now a mentally-impaired greaseball wants to be the United States Senator for Pennsylvania, and until a disastrous debate performance that was impossible to ignore, it seemed that Pennsylvanians were willing to vote for him.

To be clear, I take no pleasure in the profound illness of another person.  John Fetterman suffered a stroke—a terrible thing—but he is still pursuing public office.  As much as Henry Clay disliked Andrew Jackson in the 1824 presidential election, he wasn’t going to throw his support behind Secretary of Treasury William Crawford of Georgia (the election was thrown to the House of Representatives; Crawford was in third, but had suffered a major stroke and would pass away soon afterwards, with Clay giving his support to John Quincy Adams).

But we’ve grown accustomed to power-hungry wives and political parties propping up brain-dead puppets in public office.  Indeed, the historians of the distant future will no-doubt look back at our time and think of it as The Age of The Impaired.  We celebrate every manner of impairment—transgenderism, paralysis (both moral and physical), gluten intolerance, etc.—as some kind of special mark of holiness.

Of course, we should treat such people with compassion, but we shouldn’t be electing them to public office, no matter how good it makes us feel about ourselves to do so.  Public service is hard, even for the able-bodied and clear-minded.  Being a United States Senator is exceptionally difficult—and a position with incredible amounts of power and prestige.

What we saw with Fetterman—much like Marco Rubio’s glitching out in 2016—was an Establishment robot malfunctioning on live television.  I’m only being mildly hyperbolic—Fetterman can only process incoming sounds via a computer.  That’s a miraculous bit of technology, but do we want a cyborg serving as one of the 100 men and women of the US Senate?  Even if we did, would we want one that was constantly breaking down in stressful situations?

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Memorable Monday: Happy Labor Day [2022]!

Ah, yes—Labor Day.  The last day off (for yours portly, anyway) until the glory that is Thanksgiving Break.

I’ve been writing a brief, annual Labor Day post since 2019, and it’s interesting to see what has changed (and what hasn’t) in that time.  I don’t play video games nearly as much as I used to (or as much I’d like to), and my life has gotten much more interesting (read: busier) and better since 2019.  Even if Western civilization is collapsing all around us and we’re living in a banana republic, I can at least enjoy and appreciate God’s Blessings as the ship goes down.  And, hey, it could be worse!

Speaking of cautiously optimistic declinism, Labor Day seems to be a day immune to progressive chicanery.  It’s the product of radical labor unionism and the socialistic tendencies thereof, so it should be safe.  Of course, we’ve always been at war with Eurasia, so if labor suddenly falls out of favor for being too “white” or not “woke” enough, then I suppose we could end up changing it to “BIPOC Exploitation Memorial Day” or some such nonsense.  Columbus Day sure isn’t safe.

Well, whatever.  I’m not worried about the Leftist whiners today.  I’ve spent the weekend (presumably) in sunny Florida, enjoying getting to know my girlfriend’s family better and living it up.

With that, here’s “Memorable Monday: Happy Labor Day [2021]!“:

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Loomer and Liz

Today Laura Loomer—the most censored woman in America—is taking a stab at the Republican nomination for her congressional district in Florida, which includes The Villages, the massive retirement community.  She’s running against incumbent Daniel Webster, who skipped the Trump impeachment vote and is therefore, according to Loomer, complicit in it, as well as some swarthy nobody who might get a couple of percentage points.

Laura Loomer’s election—if she wins the primary, she’ll very likely win the very pro-Trump Florida 11th congressional district—would be a major boon for the America First movement, and would be yet another repudiation of the Establishment Republicans who are content to fiddle about an “insurrection” while the nation burns.

That very same Establishment suffered a major defeat last week, when busybody and daddy’s princess Liz Cheney fell to a Trump-endorsed candidate in the Republican primary for Wyoming’s single congressional district.  Cheney’s defeat was a drubbing of epic proportions:  she only garnered 28.94% of votes cast, with her opponent Harriet Hageman winning with 66.33% of the vote.  Talk about a “repudiation of the Establishment Republicans,” am I right?

It’s a tale of two candidates.  Liz Cheney represents the ossified, corrupt, dynastic, moralistic, staid, boring, ineffectual, kabuki theatre style of politics that has haunted our dear Republic for the last century.  Loomer, on the other hand, is the bold, persecuted, spicy, fun, energetic, bombastic future.

If she wins today, it’s icing on the cake of Cheney’s defeat.

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Primary Election Day 2022 in South Carolina

Today (Tuesday, 14 June 2022) we have primary elections in South Carolina.  I’ll be honest, I haven’t followed these races nearly as closely as I should have been, but the big one is the Republican primary for South Carolina US Congressional District 7.

The current occupant of that position, Congressman Tom Rice, infamously voted in favor of the impeachment of President Donald Trump following the 6 January 2021 protests over the fraudulent election.  That single vote has haunted Tom Rice, who was first elected in 2012, then the 7th Congressional District was created, ever since.

I like Tom Rice.  He’s was overwhelmingly pro-Trump, that one vote notwithstanding.  He’s been pretty good on the House Ways and Means Committee.  He’s brought a lot of important infrastructure projects to the district, like the inland port.  He’s also a very sweet, congenial man one-on-one.

But that one vote.  Perhaps it’s silly to vote against a man based on one vote, when almost all the others cut the other way.  That’s certainly what Rice’s team is hoping South Carolinians in District 7 will think.

But that one vote was a betrayal so deep, most of us can’t abide it.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Happy New Year: Looking Back at 2021 and Plans for 2022

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Happy New Year!  Hard to believe we’re in 2022.  I still look back nostalgically 2012, which I consider a pretty banner year for yours portly.  That was ten years ago, and a lot has changed in that time.

2021 was fairly eventful, too, with a number of firsts for yours portly.  I was elected to Town Council (twice), wrote a book, hit 1000 days on the blog, got a dog, and made some great friends.

So, what does 2022 hold?  How will I build upon the groundwork of 2021?  And will I keep blogging every single day?

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