Ace of Spades HQ

September 19, 2018

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

After The Rain
William Merritt Chase

Posted by CBD at 09:30 AM Comments

The Morning Report 9/19/18

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. Mid week and before we delve into the Kavanaugh sabotage disgrace, the other big story that is flying somewhat under the radar is the reaction to the the President's announcement that he is going to declassify documents relating to the FBI/DoJ manufactured witch hunt against his campaign and his nascent presidency (and still going strong in virtually all quarters of the bureaucracy per Project Veritas' latest revelations). The usual suspects - both figuratively and literally - are blasting the President's move as an abuse of power, threat to national security, obstruction of justice, blah blah blah, etc. That can only mean one thing; he's directly over the target and the documents will prove to all who have eyes to see and even the tiniest scintilla of a brain cell to reason that all the charges against him are a lie and that those who are screaming the aforementioned the loudest are themselves the guilty parties. Lee Smith at The Federalist lays out a fascinating unraveling of how in the waning days of the Obama Tyranny the strategy went from offense to defense, vis a vis preserving the Iran sellout and then sabotaging preventing President Trump's scrapping of it. Meanwhile, Robert Mueller is yet again trying to usurp executive branch authority by undercutting his boss' - that is, President Trump's - ability to issue a pardon to Paul Manafort. I'd say, who the hell does he think he is when, in point of fact, he has built his entire career and lived his life believing that of the American people 24/7/365. If there is a G-d in Heaven, I pray he sees fit to have Mueller thrown into the general population of a Federal prison, preferably the same one he tossed innocent people into to protect Whitey Bulger.

Now, on to the more or less main event. I am not going to go into any more details about this Accuser/Liar Ford's charges although in the RUFKM Dept., I find it interesting (read "disgusting") that the strident Leftist hack shyster who is representing her represented both Al Franken and Bill Clinton. And you'll be surprised, I'm sure, to learn of Accuser/Liar's interesting connections to Nazi collaborator George Soros and that the latter's minions are preemptively handing out bail money to rent-a-mob protestors in the event they get pinched.

It is now obvious that this woman is a paid liar in service of the Democrat-Left-Media complex. The parallel strategic goals are to sabotage Trump, fire up the base in order to protect the political hides of the old guard (Feinswine, Schemer, etc.) from the Maoists on the rise, pressure Trump into replacing Kavanaugh with a Bader-Meinhoff clone, and if successful hold onto their most powerful instrument of illegitimate policy implementation as well as in their mind fire up their base for the "Blue Wave."

From our perspective, the GOP leadership and key players including Jeff Flake of all people have apparently had it up to here (I'm pointing at my receding hairline [scalp, not crotch]) with this crap. Look, Feinswine herself is backtracking faster than a tobacco auctioneer on whether Accuser/Liar Ford is truthful or not, despite the Dems insistence on no vote until the FBI finds Kavanaugh guilty, the FBI - which has no jurisdiction on this whatsoever - has declined to investigate this, and Accuser/Liar Ford is not going to testify on Monday. Bearing all of this mind, then for the love of all that is good, Senators Grassley and McConnell should announce that the Monday additional hearing and flea circus is cancelled and that a vote in front of the full Senate will take place on Thursday.

If they do not do this, and if they allow Monday to happen (despite the optics being even worse for the Dems than they were the first time around) and if Kavanaugh is either stonewalled until after November or even until after 2020, the GOP is going to get wiped out in November. Worse than that, the Dems will now have a free pass to do this and get away with it from now on. Again, I call on Grassley and McConnell to end this garbage here and now. If you do that, I can almost guarantee a Red Wave come November. Assuming that that really is what they want, and the jury is out on that.

Last, but not least, in the REALLY R-U-F-K-M Dept., when I saw the link by Jeffrey Lord over at American Spectator my jaw just hit the floor. Cory "Blucher" Booker, the closet(ed) organizer is either utterly clueless or is a chutzpadik of such titanic radiance that it staggers the imagination, even for a Democrat (I know; embrace the power of "and"). On the verge of proclaiming himself "Spartacus" in his opposition to Brett Kavanaugh, and then as everyone in his party is seeking to destroy this good man over something that he allegedly did as a teenager, what does Booker go and do? Announce that he is sponsoring legislation to mandate leniency for teen offenders.

...If one assumes that Christine Ford's account is accurate, it happened for one reason -- the reason that no less than Cory Booker himself has -- truthfully -- asserted. Again, that is this:
Studies of youth brain development have found that the decision-making functions of the brain do not fully develop until much later than was previously believed to be the case. Despite this, some states still try 17-, and even 16,-year-olds as adults by default.

In other words? The activities of a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, not to mention 15-year-old Christine Blasey, were the result of immature teenagers whose "decision-making functions" were impaired to begin with because they had brains that were not "fully" developed. Not to mention that if Booker is literally sponsoring legislation that would make it the law of the land to seal youthful criminal records, there is no way that Ford's 36-years later allegation -- when no charges were even filed in the day -- should be relevant in the first place..."

Well done, Senator Booker. You're not only a despicable egomaniac but you have just confirmed yourself to be dumb as a stump. Possibly lower than a Joe Biden-level functioning imbecile. Would be nice if the GOP made some hay out of this.

Moving along to the political scene, looks like Doomberg and possibly Hickenpooper and even the Wookie with the killer triceps are eyeing a 2020 run (the latter two are not in the links), the RNC is worried that GOP voters may not turn out because they think the midterms are in the bag, Virginia students evidently never heard of Kasich's father and a big "OK" for Loopy Ocasio-Fiasco.

On the Amnesty scene, the Feds are being forced to release illegal kiddie border jumpers to illegal alien felons (why?), chain migration is a freaking disaster of a time bomb and that ultimately leads to fundamentally transforming our nation. Which is a big Leftist wet dream.

Internationally, Whoa, Fat! is once again singing PDT's praises, crisis possibly averted in Syria, the Chi-Coms retaliate with $60 billion in tariffs, IBD analysis of China vs US in a trade/tariff war, Putin doesn't blame the Jooz for controlling the weather and Syrian SAMs (but mostly Syrian SAMs), a shocking yet unsurprising video from a UK sharia law no-go zone (y'know, the ones that don't exist), and PDT putting the screws to Iran is already paying big dividends.

In First Amendment, AgitProp and Censorship, interesting take on Google becoming the Chi-Com Stasi, Daniel Greenfield shreds the Trump killed 3,000 in Puerto Rico bromide, NPR attempts to sabotage promo efforts for the "Gosnell" movie (why have we NOT defunded NPR yet?), Vanderbilt Poofter is all wet, Brett Kavanaugh's wife is a class act, and more on the Wa-Po's border passport fiction.

Domestically, as the GOP dithers on Brett Kavanaugh, they manage to pass a titanic spending bill so fast that if you blinked, you missed it, Planned Parenthood's new prexy spews lies on The Yenta Patrol, aka The View, and Hurricane Florence defies the Global Warming fraudsters' "science."

From hither and yon, Rozelle, Cosell and Dandy Don are rolling in their graves as Monday Night Football craters to a new low for week 2, an essay on Feminazi male-blaming for doing the Fluke, and the insane corporate culture at Google.

On a point of personal privilege, today marks the 2nd Anniversary of The Morning Report. Thank you to Ace for affording me the privilege to be here, the Cobs for all their support and to all of you who come here, comment and make it all worthwhile.

Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.

SPYGATE, MUELLER WITCH HUNT, DEEP STATE, COUP

Posted by J.J. Sefton at 07:38 AM Comments

Tuesday Overnight Open Thread (9/18/18 )

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

***

The Quotes of The Day

Quote I

We just starve little children, we go bomb houses.Sen. Bernie Sanders, ~~Politburo~~ (I-VT)

Quote II

“The government’s abject failure – and the huge risk we face of a bad deal or a no-deal Brexit – means that giving people a fresh say is now the right – and only – approach left for our country." London mayor Sadiq Khan

Quote III

“Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up.” George Saunders

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:58 PM Comments

Breaking: Kavanaugh's Accuser Says She Won't Testify Until The FBI, Which Has Already Declined to Investigate Her Non-Federal-Jurisdiction 37 Year Old Allegations, Completes Its Investigation, Sometime After a Democrat is President

—Ace of Spades

Coming over Tucker Carlson: After saying she would testify, she now says she won't, not until the FBI investigation (which is not happening) is completed.

Breaking on @CNN: Dr. Blasey Ford wants an FBI investigation into the alleged Kavanaugh assault before she testifies so that “the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a non-partisan manner.”
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) September 19, 2018

Strangely enough, this tracks perfectly with the Democrats' talking points that the FBI must conduct a long, slow investigation which, conveniently enough, delays the vote until after the midterms.

And what would Republicans do then?

Well, believe it or not, even Jeff Flake says if she doesn't testify, then they just move forward with the confirmation:

Flake called me to apologize for missing the interview. He said he would support GOP push to move forward with Kavanaugh nomination if Ford does not appear at hearing. "I think we'll have to move to the markup," he said. "I hope she does (appear). I think she needs to be heard." https://t.co/abncqr7zwI
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) September 18, 2018

And Jim Acosta decided to deceptively edit a Kavanaugh clip to create even more CNN #FakeNews.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 08:36 PM Comments

New York Times to Issue Correction After Mistaking Academy Award Nominated Actress Angela Basset for... Omarosa

—Ace of Spades

Racism, straight-up.

By the way, did Angela Basset get nominated for an Oscar? I don't know. I assume she must have, at some point. Makes for a better headline-- so I guess, like the media, I don't care if it's true or not.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 07:15 PM Comments

WSJ: Questions Multiply About Blasey-Ford's Memory, and Motives

—Ace of Spades

A couple of good points here:

The woman accusing Brett Kavanaugh of a drunken assault when both were teenagers has now come forward publicly, and on Monday it caused Republicans to delay a confirmation vote and schedule another public hearing. Yet there is no way to confirm her story after 36 years, and to let it stop Mr. Kavanaugh's confirmation would ratify what has all the earmarks of a calculated political ambush.

...

Ms. Ford concedes she told no one about it--not even a high school girl friend or family member--until 2012 when she told the story as part of couples therapy with her husband.

...

The Post reports that the therapist's notes from 2012 say there were four male assailants, but Ms. Ford says that was a mistake. Ms. Ford also can't recall in whose home the alleged assault took place, how she got there, or how she got home that evening.

...

The Post says Ms. Ford contacted the paper via a tip line in July but wanted to remain anonymous. She then brought her story to a Democratic official while still hoping to stay anonymous.

Yet she also then retained a lawyer, Debra Katz, who has a history of Democratic activism and spoke in public defense of Bill Clinton against the accusations by Paula Jones. Ms. Katz urged Ms. Ford to take a polygraph test. The Post says she passed the polygraph, though a polygraph merely shows that she believes the story she is telling.

The more relevant question is why go to such lengths if Ms. Ford really wanted her name to stay a secret? Even this weekend she could have chosen to remain anonymous. These are the actions of someone who was prepared to go public from the beginning if she had to.

...

It would also be a serious injustice to a man who has by all accounts other than Ms. Ford's led a life of respect for women and the law. Every #MeToo miscreant is a repeat offender. The accusation against Mr. Kavanaugh is behavior manifested nowhere else in his life.

The WSJ's editors suggest this is all just a failure of memory, trying to avoid the inevitable claim that "you're smearing a victim."

But that's the very question that needs to be resolved first --whether she is in fact a victim. If she's not a victim, you can't just say "You're smearing a victim." That's begging the question, using the very claim that is in need of proving to help prove itself.

Meanwhile, Dianne Feinstein offers a ringing endorsement of Blasey-Ford's shaky powers of recollection, saying she cannot attest that everything Ford says is truthful:

From colleague Connor Marley. Feinstein on Ford. Says Ford "is a woman that has been, I think, profoundly impacted, on this..I can't say that everything is truthful. I don't know."
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) September 18, 2018

Well I'm sold.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 06:34 PM Comments

Former Fusion GPS Employee: Almost Every Claim We Made About Paul Manafort Was Wrong and I Regret Having Pushed This Hoax On to the Public

—Ace of Spades

Chuck Ross reporting.

#SalonHot25 hardest hit.

A former contractor for Fusion GPS claims the opposition research firm got its investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort "almost completely wrong."
Graham Stack, who was hired by Fusion GPS in July 2016, writes in the Kyiv Post that he "share[s] the blame" for creating what he now says is a false narrative that Manafort worked for the Ukrainian government to advance a pro-Russia agenda.

"There have been scores of media articles about Manafort -- and 90 percent regurgitate the simplistic narrative of Manafort as a Kremlin trojan horse," Stack wrote at the Kyiv Post.

"This narrative was developed by Washington commercial intelligence firm Fusion GPS in 2016, as part of their now famous dossier on Trump, distributed widely among major media outlets," Stack continued.

...

Stack, who has written for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, argues that Manafort's work in Ukraine did not advance Russia’s interests.

"What we got wrong about Manafort -- and what Mueller has got partly right in his indictment -- is that Manafort was nothing like a pro-Kremlin influence on the former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, as the dossier alleged. Instead, Manafort was one of the driving forces pushing Yanukovych towards signing the agreement with the EU. The Kremlin has every reason to hate him," Stack wrote.

"Manafort was amazingly successful in bringing Ukraine into the Western fold," he said.

OUT: Manafort is a secret agent for Russia

IN: Manafort is a double-super-secret agent for the E.U.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 05:36 PM Comments

ABC News Political Director and Noted Thumb Matthew J. Dowd: It Doesn't Matter Whether Christine Blasey-Ford's Accusations Are True or Not; We Must Treat Kavaugh as Guilty to Vindicate a Higher Social Justice

—Ace of Spades

People often don't think about what "social justice" means. It means group justice, as contrasted with individual justice. Social Justice Warriors always claim race- and gender-based privileges (you know, like racists and sexists do) on the theory that "social justice" -- justice for an entire group's asserted challenges -- trumps any considerations of individual justice, individual merit, or individual achievement.

Noted leftwing troll and thumb Matt Dowd promotes the idea that social justice for a group comprising 51% of the world's population must trump any considerations of individual justice for Brett Kavanaugh.

Or Christine Blasey-Ford, for that matter -- whether or not not she was wronged just doesn't matter. What matters is that some women somewhere were wronged, and we must burn this scapegoat Kavanaugh to please our New Gods of Gender and Race.

Evidence and specifics don’t matter, you see. We must achieve Larger Justice. pic.twitter.com/qYt3UQ0IIC
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) September 18, 2018

Posted by Ace of Spades at 04:31 PM Comments

New Project Veritas Sting Video Series Catches State Department Official Bragging About #Resistance Activities

—Ace of Spades

More to come, as usual.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 03:09 PM Comments

This Is CNN: Thumb Chris Cillizza Says It's "Walking a Very Dangerous Line" to Ask Kavanaugh's Accuser When and Where This Assault Is Supposed to Have Taken Place

—Ace of Spades

Seared, seared into her memory.

But she doesn't remember where it happened, when it happened, or who else was there.

And asking those questions is "very dangerous," says CNN's Special Thumb for Snowflake Advocacy.

NEWS: Top Senate Republican raises sharp questions about the account of Judge Kavanaugh's accuser.

“The problem is, Dr. Ford can’t remember when it was, where it was, or how it came to be,” Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) says. “There are some gaps there that need to be filled.”
— Robert Costa (@costareports) September 18, 2018

Walking a VERY dangerous line here..... https://t.co/GTKVb1Q7XU
— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) September 18, 2018

Meanwhile, Kavanaugh's accuser is ready to testify, except for the actual testifying part.

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Judge Brett Kavanaugh of high-school-era sexual assault, has so far ignored repeated inquiries from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley told Hugh Hewitt Tuesday.
Grassley announced Monday that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the woman’s accusations, which surfaced Sunday after Blasey Ford granted an interview to The Washington Post. The senator noted to Hewitt, however, that he had reached out to Ford and her attorney "three or four times" in the last 36 hours but has yet to receive any communication.

"It kinda raises the question: Do they want to come to the public hearing or not?" he inquired.

No, they don't. They want this accusation to be reported only by friendly media, with no one asking impertinent questions about when or where it is supposed to have happened. She will "testify" by lawyer and by media.

Meanwhile, the plan calls for Kavanaugh to be hailed back in front of the committee to be grilled not just on this woman's (not under oath) claims but anything else they can think of to embarrass him, like if he's ever touched a woman's boob without getting strict verbal consent and how many times he's been drunk in his life.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 01:55 PM Comments

Anne Hathaway Gets #WOKE, Demands We "Tear This World Apart" and Reject White Cishet Privilege (Of the Sort She Enjoys)

—Ace of Spades

Here's the background on this:

Everyone pretty much hates Anne Hathaway, also known as Brunette Linsay Lohan.

The public has turned on her. Her career is in steep decline. (She wasn't even a main star in Oceans 8.)

They find her false and desperate in her Oscar-grubbing.

So, who knows, maybe she's going the Tammy Faye Baker route and trying to get new fans by being Super-#Woke.

Actress Anne Hathaway told an audience Saturday night that she’s been frightened by the hatred of LGBT people that bigots spew -- but a speech by former Vice President Joe Biden went a long way to restoring her faith.

...

Hathaway said she felt better after hearing speeches from Biden and HRC president Chad Griffin, who spoke earlier in the evening.

"You guys just gave me my heart back," Hathaway gushed.

Then, speaking to the ladies, gentlemen and "gentlethem" in the crowd, Hathaway denounced white, straight and cisgender privilege.

"It is important to acknowledge with the exception of being a cisgender male, everything about how I was born has put me at the current center of a damaging and widely accepted myth," she said.

"That myth is that gayness orbits around straightness, transgender orbits around cisgender, and that all races orbit around whiteness."

Hathaway explained that it was when she spent time with the LGBTQ community -- her older brother is gay - -that she learned to reject this myth.

"I appreciate this community because together we are not going to just question this myth, we are going to destroy it," she told the crowd.

"Let's tear this world apart and build a better one."

Posted by Ace of Spades at 12:48 PM Comments

The Morning Rant: J.V. Edition

—CBD

Chutzpah: 1. Killing your parents and asking for leniency because you are an orphan. 2. Senator Robert Menendez.

He is a lifelong crook, who emerged from a particularly corrupt part of NJ, and embraced the expanded opportunities for graft in the United States Senate. In addition, there are credible suggestions that he took part in offshore sexual adventures, possibly with underage people (see? I'm being PC!).

For Menendez to do anything but shut his mouth and meekly vote the way he is told by his superiors in the DNC is a travesty, and something that would be trumpeted from the mountaintop by an honest and impartial media. But...he is a Democrat and therefore off limits.

This is exactly why we can’t rush nominations. How can we vote on Kavanaugh when disturbing, credible allegations of sexual assault have been made? Even Republican Senators Jeff Flake & Bob Corker want to delay the vote. I agree. #DelayTheVote. https://t.co/0f1Pme7UWU
— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) September 17, 2018

The milquetoast Republican challenger to Menendez' Senate seat has a non-zero chance of upsetting him in the November election, but I have no doubt that Menendez has mobilized his crooks and thieves and precinct captains and underage hookers to massage the vote, so he can maintain the style of life to which he has become accustomed, courtesy of the United States taxpayer.

Posted by CBD at 11:00 AM Comments

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

Domine Quo Vadis?
Annibale Carracci

Posted by CBD at 09:30 AM Comments

The Morning Report 9/18/18

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. Tuesday and the disgusting and frankly dangerous attempt to derail Brett Kavanaugh's deserved appointment as an associate justice to the SCOTUS continues along with the President's decision to declassify all the FBI and DoJ documents, transcripts etc. related to the investigation-cum-sabotage campaign of his 2016 presidential campaign. And do not think that these two subjects are unrelated. They are one and the same. The effort to destroy this President has many fronts and many agents but the overall goal and message is crystal clear to all who have eyes to see: any attempt to reverse the 100+ year counter-American Revolution will be crushed. If you run as a reformer you will have your character assassinated (if not the target of an actual assassination), if you either win an election as a reformer or are appointed to office by one and share the same goal, you face the same threats (see the lead piece from Breitbart about the State Department). And if you are an originalist jurist who believes that the Constitution as written is not fungible and/or "a living and breathing document," as the IBD editorial states:

This is about sending a warning.
Democrats are warning conservatives, and those who would appoint them, that they will do anything to derail their nominations. That includes flagrant attempts at character assassination -- even if that requires throwing out unverifiable allegations from the distant past at the 11th hour.

At this point, the only real question that needs an answer is whether Republicans will reward Democrats for their craven attempts to scare highly qualified conservatives away from public service.

Bingo.

And that's why the link to the Washington Times piece that GOP Senate candidates now have to tread lightly on the campaign trail because of this is total bullshit and just making me incandescent with rage. Even considering the dynamics of the anti-Trump Republicans, whether it's Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Janice Rogers Brown and now Brett Kavanaugh (to say nothing of the scores of cabinet nominees and political candidates over the last 30 years or more), this is all part of the same goddam orchestrated playbook from the Dem-Left-Media Complex. Use a smear, even one like this that is so patently obvious in the way it was vomited up by Dianne Feinstein as a weapon to hold over the heads of the GOP and make them cower in fear, apologize and then demand the withdrawal of the nominee for the good of country. The GOP either believes this or, more likely, pretends to believe this so as not to throw a wrench into the machine of the perpetual Leftward/over-the-cliff/globalist drift of the nation that has been preordained since forever.

Fuck that. THIS IS WAR. If you are running for Senate and you do not see this you really have no business seeking the job. The GOP for now is in the driver's seat. The reputation of the press and Leftists is in the toilet, and this President won by exposing them for the frauds, perverts and criminals that they are. What is being done to Brett Kavanaugh - unless absolutely 100% bona fide incontrovertible evidence comes forward to say otherwise - is an absolute travesty and a crime. If Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley full-throatedly went to the cameras and stated this flat out, cheers and applause would break out across the land at a volume that even John McCain and Ted Kennedy - the father of "Borking" - would hear even as they molder in their graves.

But, alas, we have to endure what is sure to be a flea circus and freak show come Monday, when Brett Kavanaugh and the lying, psycho, piece-of-shit Leftist slag testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, no doubt interrupted by Democrat confederates (heh!) intentionally brought in to fill the galleries and make a spectacle in front of the TV cameras. That is if Feinstein, Spartacus, Kamala-Toe and the other Democrats let them get a word in edgewise. I guess on a positive note, the delay is only until Monday, all of the aforementioned will go over with the public perhaps even worse than it did on the first day of the initial hearings, and maybe Accuser/Liar Ford won't even show up. And Feinstein refusing to cooperate with Grassley now that she's pulled this loathsome stunt speaks volumes, or at least it should. Meh - they're huddling now to get their story straight as well as pay off people to come forward and "corroborate her harrowing ordeal" of being ignored as a Janis Ian "At 17" wallflower - which of course is the same as rape.

I find it funny, disgusting funny not ha-ha- funny, that every nominee put up by the Democrats sails through because the GOP feels compelled to give deference to a sitting Democrat president's picks. Ruth Bader-Meinhoff, a loathsome old prune who has a complete disregard for our laws, Constitution and customs and even recommended the South African constitution over own as a model to be emulated (does that include the land expropriation?) and formerly served as the general counsel for the ACLU sailed through on a 96-3 vote (I hereby propose sainthood for Jesse Helms, Robert Smith and Don Reigle). This is madness. But is that worse than letting Robert Bork get borked and then "settling" for Anthony Kennedy? Like a choice between projectile colitis and shingles of the eye.

The GOP better confirm Brett Kavanaugh. That's all I can say. And I hope that going forward, no matter what happens, every nominee that this President puts forward is an originalist/strict constructionist. It's a winning campaign issue. It's just a pity we don't have a party that represents us going into the midterms to take full advantage of it.

Speaking of coups, the President late yesterday has authorized the release of all the FBI, DoJ documents and materials related to the "investigation" (read: sabotage) of his 2016 presidential campaign and everything that came after it. Aside from being long overdue IMHO and the 100% right thing to do, I suppose one can look at it as PDT's way of sucking the air out of the Feinstein Kavanaugh smear. Or is that so big that we'll get just the opposite? In any case the abuse of FISA, those who abused it and for what purpose will be revealed as the documents are examined. Not by the press of course, but by the real media such as you find on these pages. Again, I hope the Kavanaugh mess does not suck the air out of this because the revelations are going to be dynamite. But, all things considered, the prospect of lengthy terms in Leavenworth let alone a date with the hangman are seriously in doubt. But at least Hillary Clinton will never be President of the United States of America. And that can be taken literally and sarcastically right about now.

On to better news, on the Amnesty front the administration has cut refugee admittances to 30,000 which is a record low, the ACLU is admitting that so-called refugee families are splitting apart in order to game our system, the Wa-Po Nat'l Laugher lie about border passport denials has been blown to pieces and Sanctuary Cities love sex offenders. Meh, Future Democrats gotta Democrat.

In politics, Keith "Wife Beater" Ellison is actually in a dead heat with his GOP challenger, Joe Biden out-deplorables the word "deplorable," Bill Nelson is on board with Joo-hater Gillum to try and drum up black support, and Chris Collins though indicted will fight on for the GOP. Our hero.

On the international scene, Iran is about to get hit hard with sanctions, a Russky recon plane goes down over the Syrian coast and is a possible victim of friendly fire (heh), the "Fight for 15!" is killing what is still alive in Venezuela and goulash backlash as the EU is going after Hungary's Viktor Orban.

From hither and yon, the Trump effect hits Latinos with their biggest increase in household income ever, back to college and another year of indoctrination, and "boys will be boys" is hate speech.

Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.

SPYGATE, MUELLER WITCH HUNT, DEEP STATE, COUP

UPDATE: Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, starts at sundown. May you have an easy fast and be inscribed in the Book of Life! - jjs

Posted by J.J. Sefton at 07:12 AM Comments

Monday Overnight Open Thread (9/17/18 )

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

***

The Quotes of The Day

Quote I

Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. Warren E. Burger

Quote II

Free speech is not just another value. It's the foundation of Western civilization. Jordan Peterson

Quote III

“Nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. “She didn’t say anything in the confirmation hearing, she didn’t say anything in our confidential session with Judge Kavanaugh when the senators and the nominee met privately. And now, after it’s all over, she produces the letter.” Sen. John N. Kennedy, (R-LA)

Quote IV

Colin Kaepernick has the absolute right to protest anything he damn well pleases. I don’t dispute that for one second. My father, my husband, and many, many friends have all served this country and were willing to fight for his right to kneel.

But that right goes both ways. I also have a right to express my disgust at your decision to portray him as some kind of hero. What, exactly has Colin Kaepernick sacrificed? His multi-million dollar paycheck…? Nope, you already gave him one of those. His reputation? No, he’s been fawned over by celebrities and media alike. Funny, Tim Tebow was never called courageous when he knelt. Sherry Graham

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 10:03 PM Comments

Kavanaugh and His Accuser Will Testify on Monday; Confirmation Vote Delayed

—Ace of Spades

Well, at least there's still 60 days until the election. There's some room in the schedule.

Meanwhile, the legal adviser for Blasey Ford (the accuser)*, says that it's not up to her to corroborate her client's story, and if her client can't even say when or where this party allegedly took place, well, you'll just have to believe her anyway, like we believed the Duke Rape Hoaxer or Jackie Coakley.

During the interview, Katz revealed that there was another girl present at the party, which allegedly took place in 1982 while Kavanaugh was attending Georgetown Prep. Ford previously told the Washington Post that there were four boys at the party but never indicated if there were other girls beside herself.
"While we have you, perhaps you can help us fill in the blanks on some of her story. She says that she was at a party in probably 1982 in Montgomery County, Maryland. She says that there were four guys there, these are high school students, as was she. There were four guys there. Were there any girls there that day?" anchor Alisyn Camerota asked.

"Yes, there was another girl at this party, yes," Katz said.

Camerota asked if Ford has tried to talk to any of the other partygoers to see if they will corroborate her story, but Katz declined to place the burden of proof on her client.

"That's not her job to do that. If this is going to be investigated, it should be done by investigators," Katz asserted.

* CNN's legal analyst said that Kavanaugh, by hiring a lawyer, must have feared being prosecuted for lying. But Blasey-Ford hired a lawyer -- or a legal adviser -- first.

Does she also fear prosecution for perjury? Or does this logic only work the way left-wing CNN wants it too?

Posted by Ace of Spades at 08:03 PM Comments

CNN's "Legal Analyst:" Kavanaugh Hired a Lawyer to Defend Him Against These Accusations, So He Must be Guilty of Attempted Rape or Lying to Congress

—Ace of Spades

This. Is. CNN.

And this is a banana.

This is interesting—why did Kavanaugh hire an attorney? Presumably the statute of limitations on the assault has passed. Is he concerned about exposure for lying to Congress? https://t.co/usQ9q4V15o
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 17, 2018

Well, that explains it.

If he was never in a room with Professor Ford, I imagine this wouldn’t be necessary. It may mean he will admit being with her but will deny her account of what happened.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 17, 2018

Meanwhile, CNN is tearing its hair out claiming the unredacted FBI texts are a threat to "national security:"

CNN spinning unredacted text messages as "threat" to national security. Have you ever seen reporters try so hard to not cover a story, and not want to see more documents?
— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizWFB) September 17, 2018

A twitter user suggests that the unredacted texts might contain references to reporters the FBI officials are leaking to, which seems possible.

Sean Davis is also dubious of CNN's hysteria.

Fixed. I put the right tweet in. Sorry.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 06:48 PM Comments

Trump: I'm Going to Declassify Those Redacted FISA Application Pages That Supposedly Establish My Guilt and Would Result in My Impeachment if the Public Knew About Them

—Ace of Spades

Yeah, all the evidence of his guilt has been lurking secretly in those redacted pages -- redacted to spare him, not the FBI! -- but he's going to rat on himself anyway.

Statement of the Press Secretary
At the request of a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency, the President has directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to provide for the immediate declassification of the following materials: (1) pages 10-12 and 17-34 of the June 2017 application to the FISA court in the matter of Carter W. Page; (2) all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G. Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation; and (3) all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications.

In addition, President Donald J. Trump has directed the Department of Justice (including the FBI) to publicly release all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction, of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.

Unredacted.

Commenters mention comparing the redacted texts to the unredacted ones -- to establish these redactions are about sparing the DOJ/FBI embarrassment, not protecting nationals security.

Here's the Fletch theme and other pieces from the movie to get you in the mood for the coming twists. (Which may be flaming skull worthy.)

Posted by Ace of Spades at 05:54 PM Comments

Ahoy: Commodore Cuck Says He's Building a "War Machine" in the GOP to Challenge Trump in 2020

—Ace of Spades

Cap'n Bill is building a cruise ship to the future.

Conservative commentator and outspoken "Never Trump" critic Bill Kristol says he is building a "war machine" within the Republican party to challenge President Trump's 2020 reelection campaign, according to CNBC.
Kristol told the network that he's preparing "for a primary run against Trump," adding that Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) is on his shortlist of possible candidates.

You had my interest, but now you've got my attention.

I hear some sexually frustrated wives call their marital aids "War Machine." But that's just what I hear.

Cuck Cruise Rating:

🚢 🚢 🚢 🚢

4 out of 5 cabins on a cuck cruise.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 05:05 PM Comments

Susan Collins Statement Is Kind of Empty and Doesn't Move the Ball Much

—Ace of Spades

She wonders why this letter was not released until after the hearings.

Wants both parties under oath and both parties asked "a lot of questions."

She says in a Friday phone call with Kavanaugh, he "emphatically denied" the accusations and says he "never acted that way with this then-unnamed woman or any other woman." She adds again that he was "absolutely emphatic."

She does say that if it's proven he lied, then that would be "obviously disqualifying."

Asked at the end what she would do if this is merely a "he said she said" situation with no dispositive evidence either way, she wouldn't say what she'd do. She said instead something like "that's why it's important to get these questions answered under oath."

Posted by Ace of Spades at 04:25 PM Comments

#MeSue: Asia Argento Threatens Lawsuit Against Fellow Nutter Rose McGowan

—Ace of Spades

You've got your Borderline Personality Disorder in my Persecution-Messiah Complex! No, you've got your Persecution-Messiah Complex in my Borderline Personality Disorder!

Asia Argento is threatening legal action against Rose McGowan. On Twitter, Argento gave McGowan 24 hours to retract claims she made detailing how she discovered that Argento had reportedly paid off actor Jimmy Bennett, who alleges the actress assaulted him when he was 17 years old.
"Dear @RoseMcGowan," Argento tweeted."It is with genuine regret that I am giving you 24 hours to retract and apologise for the horrendous lies made against me in your statement of August 27th. If you fail to address this libel I will have no option other than to take immediate legal action."

...

After the story broke, McGowan said that her partner, Rain Dove, told her that Argento said she had slept with Bennett when he was underage and that she had been receiving unsolicited nude photos of Bennett since he was 12 years old.

Rain Dove?

These people are nuttier than a Snickers bar.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 03:33 PM Comments

Democrats Refusing to Cooperate in Scheduling Follow-Up Calls With Kavanaugh's Accuser

—Ace of Spades

For some reason they don't seem to want their 11th-Hour Accuser participating in an investigation.

Because they don't want an investigation. They just want Republicans to fold. And as soon as one Republican folds, that gives Trump State Democrat Senators permission to vote "no" as well.

And of course, Flake and Corker are already making all kinds of noise about folding.

They're exactly who we thought they were.

New statement from Judiciary chairman Grassley. Short version: Procedure is to hold calls with Ford, Kavanaugh. So far, Dems are refusing to participate. GOP still trying. Extremely unhappy Feinstein withheld information. pic.twitter.com/qP6WPolOuV
— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 17, 2018

Any of you Democrats troubled that Feinstein basically became a face on a milk carton over the weekend? She drops this bomb, then goes into hiding and refuses to answer questions or perform the most basic duties. You're all cool with that? https://t.co/frgC1oO1QY
— John Hayward (@Doc_0) September 17, 2018

Then hold the vote. https://t.co/7gbWa96lTW
— EducatédHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) September 17, 2018

Posted by Ace of Spades at 02:31 PM Comments

Lisa Page Admits No Evidence of Collusion When They Opened Investigation, Raising Questions About Her Desperation to "Open the Case" "In a Formal Chargeable Way"

—Ace of Spades

They had no evidence, but they were determined to find some.

I was assured by my establishment betters that no one in the entire Department of Justice would do such a thing, ever.

Text messages from disgraced FBI figures Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, discussing whether to open a "case" in a "formal chargeable way" after Director James Comey was fired, are under fresh scrutiny after Page told congressional investigators there was no evidence of Russian collusion at the time, according to three congressional sources.

Two hours after Comey's termination became public on May 9, 2017, Strzok, a now-former FBI agent, texted Page, his then-colleague and lover: "We need to open the case we've been waiting on now while Andy is acting."

"Andy" is a reference to then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe who temporarily took over the bureau until Christopher Wray was confirmed as director in August 2017.

Page, a former FBI attorney, replied to Strzok: "We need to lock in (redacted). In a formal chargeable way. Soon."

Trump's tweet about this below.

Posted by Ace of Spades at 01:41 PM Comments

#FakeNews Reporter Stages Dramatic Storm Footage;
Brian "Tater" Stelter Defends

—Ace of Spades

Blood in, blood out.

So dramatic! Dude from the weather channel bracing for his life, as 2 dudes just stroll past. #HurricaneFlorence pic.twitter.com/8FRyM4NLbL
— Tony scar. (@gourdnibler) September 14, 2018

This looks bad, obviously. But FWIW, in @MikeSeidel's defense, the channel noted that "the 2 individuals in the background are walking on concrete" while he's on wet grass, and he was "undoubtedly exhausted" from constant live shots... https://t.co/KcnxW2Ejoi
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 15, 2018

Posted by Ace of Spades at 12:40 PM Comments

The Morning Rant

—OregonMuse

"Let's not go back to the old ways. I'm talking about these hippy-dippy types who style themselves 'pagans' who think we should regress back to the days when we all lived under a benificent matriarchy where everybody was happy and groovy and smoked pot all day and there were no wars or fighting. They actually believe this. But of course, it wasn't that way at all. There weren't any matriarchies, but there was a lot of fighting and wars and blood, not to mention human sacrifice. And would they really like to live in a culture with religious ceremonies wherein metal idols were superheated by fire and then infant children were placed alive in their arms to be burned to death to appease the gods? Is that what they want? No, of course it isn't, but there is a big reason why such practices are now nothing but distant specks in history's rear view mirror. It starts with the letter 'C'. The smelly hippie pagans hate it and curse it mightily, but they can only do so because they were born in a culture which is permeated by its norms and values. They're too ignorant to know how much of this is coloring their view of what they think paganism is. Or was. But it's not, and never was. So as I said, let's not go back there again. It's a brutal, barbaric place that we're well rid of."

What Could Go Wrong?

"Wait, something about this looks
oddly familiar. Let's get a close-up
on that demon idol's face."

Posted by OregonMuse at 11:24 AM Comments

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

Snow Storm - Steam Boat off a Harbour's Mouth
Joseph Mallord William Turner

Every time I look at a Turner I think something different. Sometimes it is awe of his fantastic skill at evoking elemental forces, and sometimes it's, "Huh? What the fvck?"

Posted by CBD at 09:30 AM Comments

The Morning Report 9/17/18

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning kids. In the lead as we head into a new week is the blatant, last-second, desperate Alinskyite smear of Brett Kavanaugh less than a week before his nomination comes up for a vote in the Senate on Thursday. Even if I'm being generous, this thing stinks to high Heaven. The fact that Dianne Feinstein knew about this from the moment the President announced Kavanaugh's nomination, (and considering the President had a list of potential nominees months ago, you can bet your ass the Dems had dozens if not hundreds of people working to dig up dirt on all of them) and yet said nothing until the absolute last second means that she used this information - true or not - as a weapon to torpedo the nominee. I put Michael Ledeen's piece up front because this woman is attempting to destroy a decent, honest jurist and family man and yet she has spent the better part of almost four decades embellishing her bank account while unwittingly - or not - against the will of the people and at the expense of this nation's national security. But I digress...

On a granular level, the accuser, one Christine Blasey Ford (big anti-Trump Lefty, surprise surprise) has now officially come forward after allegedly telling her Congress-critter, Democrat hack Anna Eshoo and then Feinstein that she did not want her allegations made public (then why even tell her in the first place?). But now, she claims that she feared for her life as Kavanaugh supposedly tried to rip her clothes off and rape her at someone's house when both were in high school. A supposed witness to the event who was identified in the report, who no doubt the Dems were relying on to corroborate the story is vehemently denying it.

But none of this matters at all. This is a straight-up character assassination and minus the details is a rerun of the "high-tech lynching" that was perpetrated on Justice Clarence Thomas back in 1991. In fact, I highly recommend the second link "Dianne Feinstein's Metzenbaum Moment" (I did not know, or didn't remember, that Anita Hill's attorney was none other than Janet Napolitano).

A few things to consider:

1) what Feinstein and the Dems are trying to do will have no affect on the general public, although a secondary objective is to try and deflect the damage done by the #MeToo movement which has claimed the scalps of quite a number of some of the most prominent political and cultural figures on the Left (ironic, given that the "War on Women" was supposed to be perpetrated by white Judeo-Christian conservative males exclusively). The Left is itching to try, convict and execute Kavanaugh as a way of evening the score and thereby legitimizing the propaganda that at most this is a male problem, and not a Leftist-Male problem.

2) the courts, especially the Supreme Court, is where the Democrat-Left gets its real power. Whatever they cannot inflict on us electorally or legislatively they do via their hacks-in-black from the bench. President Trump's placing of dozens of (hopefully) decent judges on the lower courts and Neil Gorsuch has devolved much of the Left's ill-gotten power away from them. If Kavanaugh is confirmed (please G-d) and if Ruth Bader-Meinhoff or perhaps the overweight, diabetic and hot-tempered Latina were to suddenly join the Choir Invisible, another Scalia-like pick to take their place will make what we are seeing now look like a meditation retreat in Tibet, as well as really screw the Left's ability to ram things down our throat and up our ass for at least a generation - bullets and bike locks notwithstanding.

3) The only power the Dems have to stop this rests in the hands of the GOP. So far, Chuck Grassley is standing firm but turds like Jeff Flake are stating that their sacred honor demands that we give a full and honest hearing of the accusations before casting any votes, or some such dreck. This is a total crock of shit and I fear that Flake could very well want to pull a McCain and give a thumbs down both to screw over Trump as well as burnish his credentials when he switches parties. Oh yes. This fake-tanned fuck-face is drunk on power and lucre and I fear he'll do this. More to the point, I fear others might use this as a pretext and cover to go wobbly as well. Not good.

4) If Kavanaugh is seated, just like the Steele Pee-Pee Dossier, the accusations will forever taint Brett Kavanaugh and all of the decisions he makes as an associate justice to SCOTUS as illegitimate. It will only add fuel to the fire of the Left's rage going forward. That alone is just utterly loathsome. And that I will never forgive, not that any of the above is even remotely forgivable.

Moving on, in Fake News and First Amendment issues, the NY Slimes is walking back its Nikki Haley drapery smear, Twitter purges a Coastguardsman for giving the racist "OK" sign, cops in Massachusetts are using the Facebook pages to monitor the activities of anti-Trumpers and Lefty heads are exploding, and the Euro-Peon Union is angling to get its hands on the internet.

In politics, Loopy Ocasio-Fiasco can't seem to articulate much of anything, especially where the $40 trillion will come from to fund her policies, Fauxcahontas is not concerned about that either as she ramps up her rhetoric for 2020, while Cuomo beat "Dickless" Nixon handily in New York, the down-ticket races went big time for the Dem-Socialites, Georgia Dem candidate for governor Stacy Abrams won't disclose her million dollar donors, and Daniel Horowitz is downbeat about the midterms; I agree with the points he makes about the dead GOP but not his conclusion. I think we'll hold Congress because the Trump base knows what losing it would mean. And with jerks like Beto Agarn in Texas as well as the Kavanaugh crap, I think that that is a fair wager to make. I hope.

Internationally, Pompeo slams Kerry, a pro-Israeli activist is knifed to death by a Palestinian,and an essay on Trump and the South Africa situation. Sliding into the related topic of Islam and terrorism, how that New Mexico jihad training camp festered for so long, the EU is totes kosher with Holocaust 2, and a sobering piece on moderate Muslims and other mythical beasts.

Domestically, good news on the President's deregulation efforts and this is the 10th anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis, and IBD asks the questions on what the Fed will do if that ever happens again.

From hither and yon, Taco Bell fired a miscreant who refused to serve English-speaking customers, voters could care less about "climate change" and yet Al Gore and the Dems continue f***ing that chicken, Harrison Ford is a jerk and a Venezuelan journalist (a real one, not Jm J Acosta) calls out Jim Carrey for his pimping socialism. If Carrey would live in a Caracas barrio without access to any of his money... yeah, sure.

Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.

UP FRONT

Posted by J.J. Sefton at 07:43 AM Comments

Sunday Overnight Open Thread (9/16/18 )

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

***

The Quotes of The Day

Quote I

“Exercise makes you look better naked, so does Tequila. Your choice.” ~ Johnathan Bush (founder and former CEO of medical billing company Athenahealth Inc.)

Quote II

There are no rules when it comes to leftism. Owen Benjamin

Quote III

“Well, it has gotten warmer as you said, since the 1950s there has been a warming trend, but what we haven’t seen in terns of any long term weather measurements is whether there’s been any change in severe weather. There hasn’t been any increase in hurricanes. That’s on a global basis in the United States.”

“The frequency of hits of the United States by major hurricanes has gone down by 50 percent since the 1930s and 1940s. There’s been no increase in droughts, no increase in floods. Tornados are down but still weather varies a lot especially hurricanes, year to year, decade to decade.” Dr. Roy Spencer

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:44 PM Comments

Gun Thread: 357 Magnum - Bigger is Better! [Weasel]

—Open Blogger

Smith & Wesson Model 19

If the .38 Special cartridge is good, then a bigger, faster version has to be great, right?

Posted by Open Blogger at 07:05 PM Comments

Food Thread: I Will Never Sour On Sourdough, And Other Stories From My Kitchen

—CBD

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for a long time, so I have a soft spot in my heart (and palate) for its finest product; sourdough bread. Even the mass-produced stuff from the big bakeries was spectacularly good, and the local bakeries would occasionally produce ethereal loaves that were difficult not to eat in one sitting...or on the way back from the shopping trip.

Making sourdough is not quite as easy as the bakers writing cookbooks would have us think. The suggestion that the perfect ratio of yeast and bacteria can magically appear in a homemade sourdough starter is a bit silly. Sure, if you are lucky it will work, but sometimes it just doesn't work out. And even if you do get the right ratio of lactobacillus bacteria (they eat sugar and shit acid) and yeast (they eat sugar and shit CO₂), you still have to keep it going, and that takes work.

So my years-old sourdough starter was a bit long in the tooth, and my attempts to revive it didn't work as well as I had hoped. The dough I made a few days ago simply did not rise. At all! Luckily it was a wet dough, so I figured I could make a slurry of yeast and water and mix it again. It worked, and I got a very nice dense loaf of sort-of-sour bread. I am pleased with the results, but it certainly isn't going to make those glorious San Francisco bakers worry about East-Coast competition.

Posted by CBD at 04:00 PM Comments

An American's Reading List: What Should Everyone Read?

—CBD

Most of us are all too aware of the failings of the current American educational system. Home schooling is one antidote, but what about for people who have survived its leftist indoctrination intact, but are still handicapped by the many inadequacies of a typical trip through public school and college?

What to read? There are lists...the 100 great books comes to mind...but some of those lists assume a basic knowledge of world and American history, and I fear that that supposition is incorrect.

The Bible, The Iliad, Plato, St. Augustine, Shakespeare, Dante, Machiavelli, Adam Smith, Chesterton, Conrad, The Federalist Papers, Gibbon, etc.

It's a huge list, and a daunting one.

So...where to start? Maybe five books per year, and a five year limit. So 25 books that will provide the basis for an understanding of Western philosophy and American Exceptionalism.

Yup, it's a tall order, and I don't think it is possible. But the idea is to pique an interest in the topic, not to provide a comprehensive list.

So...me first.

"Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn."

Posted by CBD at 02:00 PM Comments

European Radicalism Has Come To Polite Society In America

—CBD

Radicalism in America is not new, and like much of Europe it seems to be most popular amongst the well-off and the academy, who seemingly have too much time on their hands and not enough dirt underneath their fingernails. But they pretty much kept it to themselves, in particular the academics, who rarely entered polite society (people who work for a living) and were content to pontificate at faculty soirées and write scholarly articles that were read only by their peers.

For most of our history Americans have been reflexively dismissive of class structure, enjoying egalitarianism and its result, a vibrant and successful society. There is nothing quite so American about a rags-to-riches story, and it has been the reality here far more than in any other country on earth.

But class-structure and radicalism is emerging from the shadows and is becoming acceptable. That college students are unaware of the evils of socialism and consider it just another political and social structure is evidence enough that we have a difficult time ahead.

Here is a Swedish woman writing about her conversion. What struck me about her story is not the vile anti-Americanism of her peers -- that is to be expected in European society -- but that there are hints of the same attitudes here in America.

How 9/11 Made a European Upper-Middle-Class Radical a Conservative

Night fell and morning broke before I managed to get off that floor to answer my phone. On the other end I heard my boyfriend’s voice, chanting frantically:

Two more towers! Two more towers! Two more towers!

He and his friends were having a party, celebrating the attack on America. He called to invite me, and to this day I have never felt such intense shame.

Posted by CBD at 12:15 PM Comments

Sunday Morning Book Thread 09-16-2018

—OregonMuse

Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes. Oh, and we've got a new category of readers, escaped oafs and oafettes. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, a weekly compendium of reviews, observations, and a continuing conversation on books, reading, and publishing by people who follow words with their fingers and whose lips move as they read. Unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these pants, which, if I were either one of these models in this photo, I'd spend my life's savings tracking down and destroying every last copy of it that I could find.

It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary defined LUGGAGE as “any thing of more weight than value”.

Usage: My fondest memory of 9/11 is seeing the video of Hillary being tossed in the back of a van like a piece of luggage. Oh, you mean 9/11/2001. I thought you meant 9/11/2016. My mistake.

Because Some Stories Are Bigger Than You Are

Book Curses

In medieval times, books were rare, and copying them was labor-intensive. So those who produced them did not like kindly on book thieves. Nowadays, if you forget to return a library book, you pay a fine, or, at the most, the replacement copy of the book. But back then, the punishment was a bit more severe:

“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand & rend him. Let him be struck with palsy & all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, & let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, & when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever.”

This is all detailed in the book Anathema!: Mediaeval Scribes and the History of Book Curses by Marc Drogin. If you're interested in this, you might want to check out this book at your local library because you can't find a used copy online for less than $150.

(h/t Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing)

Why English Is Hard To Learn

We'll begin with box; the plural is boxes;
But the plural of ox is oxen, not oxes,
One fowl is a goose, and two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose is never called meese.

You can find a lone mouse or a house full of mice;
But the plural of house is houses not hice.
The plural of man is always men.
But the plural of pan is never pen.

If I speak of a foot, and you show me two feet,
And I give you a book, would a pair be a beek?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't two booths be called beeth?

If the singular's this and the plural is these,
Should the plural of kiss be ever called keese?

We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
When the masculine pronouns are he, his, and him;
Just imagine the feminine....she, shis, and shim!

--James Donovan

Books By Morons

Moron author Vince Milam's latest novel, The Caribbean Job (the third in his Amazon bestselling Case Lee series) has recently been released:

A simple job. Low key. Investigate the mysterious deaths of two rich guys. No worries. Until spies and professional hitters started coming out of the woodwork, pointed my direction. Just another day at the office.

Welcome to the world of Case Lee, retired Delta Force operator. Stuck nose-deep in the muck and mire of a trillion-dollar deal, espionage maneuvering, and shadow games.

Case ignores sound advice to let other high-powered players handle the situation. With his family in danger, he takes matters into his own hands. And affords his enemies the opportunity to discover something. You can mess with a lot of people on this good earth. But you don’t mess with Case Lee.

Fans of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp, and Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne will love the Case Lee series.

The Kindle version is currently on sale for $0.99.

___________

Lurking moron author Neovictorian has released his first novel, Sanity, which he describes as "kind of a thriller/alternate history with a dash of bildungsroman". Also rated R for right-wing:

Have you sometimes felt, since an early age, that you were an alien, somehow placed on Earth and observing the antics of humans as if they were a different species? Why do they believe such stupid things? Why do they do such dumb things? Any why do they keep doing them over and over again seemingly incapable of learning from the bad outcomes of all the previous attempts?

That is how Cal Adler felt since childhood and, like most people with such feelings, kept them quiet and bottled up while trying to get ahead in a game whose rules often seemed absurd. In his senior year in high school, he encounters a substitute guidance counselor who tells him, without any preliminary conversation, precisely how he feels. He's assured he is not alone, and that over time he will meet others. He is given an enigmatic contact in case of emergency. He is advised, as any alien in a strange land, to blend in while observing and developing his own talents.

Then he meets a Mystery Woman...and the real adventure begins.

I had to look up bildungsroman, which means, according to Merriam-Webster, "a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character." You gotta love the Germans. They have a word for everything. Unfortunately, most of them are very long and you sound like you have a mouthful of rocks when you try to say them.

And on his author page, Neovictorian says his hobbies include "firearms, edged weapons and making The World's Best Martini, all of which come into play in the book. Especially the martinis." Which Kindle version you can purchase for $3.99.

___________

I have mentioned moron author Robert Zimmerman's account of the Apollo 8 flight, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8: The First Manned Mission to Another World in an earlier book thread. To mark the occasion of the 50th anniversary of this historic space flight, an audio version of the first book about the mission of Apollo 8 has been released, narrated by Grover Gardner, a legend in the ears of fans of audiobooks all over the planet.

Apollo 8 was an awesome achievement:

It was Christmas Eve 1968. And the astronauts of Apollo 8 - Commander Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders - were participants in a mission that took them faster (24,000 mph) and farther from the Earth (240,000 miles) than any human had ever traveled. Apollo 8 was the mission that broke humanity's absolute bond to the Earth: it was the first manned vehicle to leave the Earth's orbit.

Confined within a tiny spaceship, the astronauts were aided in their journey by a computer less powerful than one of today's handheld calculators. Their mission was not only a triumph of engineering, but also an enduring moment in history. The words these three men spoke from lunar orbit reverberated through American society, changing our culture in ways no one predicted.

The entire press release can be read on the author's site.

___________

Moron author Hans Schantz's second book, A Rambling Wreck: Book 2 of The Hidden Truth is on sale for $0.99 through Friday. I've mentioned this book before. A reviewer describes it like this:

It's sort of like what might happen if one of Heinlein's juvenile heroes (say Kip from Have Spacesuit Will Travel) was thrust into the modern era and was forced to use SJWs Always Lie as his freshman orientation guide while battling the Black Hats.

I've read the first book in the series, The Hidden Truth, but not this one yet. It was quite a good read. And I can confirm that it does have that distinctive "early Heinlein" feel to it.

Moron Recommendation

Moron lurker 'Delaforce' highly recommends the military aviation novels of Derek Robinson that he found in the attic of his now-late grandmother.

The first one I read was Goshawk Squadron, by Derek Robinson in 1971. It's about an RFC squadron in 1918, flying S. E. 5's with a hard-ass commander. Major Stanley Woolley was 28 years old, young for a major, old for a pilot. His gamekeeper manners and trade unionist voice makes his pilots and adjutant uncomfortable. His training and outbursts were even worse. He pushed the squadron harder and harder, and he keeps going, probably until "He's gone too far," as one of the pilots said.

The issue at hand is the conflict between Woolley's realistic expectations against the young officers just out of college, filled with their ideas of honor and as "knights of the air". The major knows that it will kill them, as they might not realise till they're dead. He calls "fair" a dirty word.

Robinson's novels include:

Goshawk Squadron (his first novel, nominated for the Booker Prize)
Piece of Cake
Hornet's Sting
War Story
Damned Good Show
A Good Clean Fight

He's also written a number of spy novels and some non-fiction history. Interested readers should check out Robinson's web page.

___________

If you like, you can follow me on Twitter, where I make the occasional snarky comment.

___________

Don't forget the AoSHQ reading group on Goodreads. It's meant to support horde writers and to talk about the great books that come up on the book thread. It's called AoSHQ Moron Horde and the link to it is here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/175335-aoshq-moron-horde.

___________

So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.

What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.

Close it up

Posted by OregonMuse at 09:00 AM Comments

EMT 09/16/18

—krakatoa

No bills posted.

Posted by krakatoa at 06:00 AM Comments

Saturday Caturday Overnight Open Thread (9/15/18 )

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

***

The Saturday Night Joke

Jimmy was having trouble in school. His teacher was always yelling at him, "You're driving me crazy, Jimmy. Can't you learn anything? One day Jimmy's mother came to school to see how he was doing. The teacher told her honestly that her son was simply a disaster, getting very low marks, and that she had never had such an unmotivated and ignorant boy in her entire teaching career. Jimmy's mom, shocked at the feedback, withdrew her son from school and moved out of Detroit, relocating to Cleveland.

25 years later, the teacher was diagnosed with irreversible cardiac disease. Her doctors all strongly advised her to have open heart surgery, which only one surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic could perform. Left with no other options, the teacher decided to have the operation, which was remarkably successful.

When she opened her eyes after the surgery she saw the handsome young doctor who headed her surgical team smiling down at her. She wanted to thank him, but could not talk. Her face started to turn blue, she raised her hand, trying to tell him something, but quickly died.

The doctor was shocked, wondering what went wrong so suddenly. When the doctor turned around to leave the room, he saw Jimmy, now a janitor at the Clinic, had unplugged the life-support equipment in order to plug in his vacuum cleaner. If you thought that Jimmy had become a heart-surgeon, there is a high likelihood that you voted for Hillary.

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 10:02 PM Comments

Saturday Evening Movie Thread 09-15-2018 [Hosted By: Moviegique]

—OregonMuse

Movie Review: Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I was never a fan of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" (though now more than ever I appreciate the proper use of the possessive apostrophe), a sleepy little TV show that seemed impossibly gentle for its time (from 1968 till August 31, 2001). But over the years, I began to respect Fred Rogers as a genuine man because you only ever heard one thing about him: That he was exactly who he seemed to be on the show.

That, and he was a crack sniper in 'nam. (He wasn't.)

89 confirmed kills.

But beyond celebrity gossip (Johnny Carson used to marvel how genuine Mr. Rogers was) which is, of course, subject to PR agencies and just run-of-the-mill slander and hagiography, you would also hear over the years from individuals who had run into him with the common theme of: He stopped everything he was doing (including trying to catch a plane) to talk to someone in need. In other words, beyond cultivating a persona of "grownup you can trust and confide in", he actually lived that life.

There aren't nearly enough of those stories in this otherwise fine documentary, which traces his beginnings as a minister and his concern over television as a babysitter. I'm phrasing things a lot more harshly than he did: He never says "TV is a babysitter and you all should be ashamed of yourself". He simply observed that children were being exposed to a lot of television, and that television was very unfriendly toward them.

The only solution: Creepy puppets!

He never says, "The news media promotes chaos and fear because that's what gives it power." No, he talks about words children surely heard a lot of, like "assassination" in one of the earliest shows of 1968, and then he repeats his message about the goodness in people, and the trustworthiness.

I found myself objecting to the reality that Mr. Rogers lived in: One where children were set in front of a TV and had to be shown a safe, fake neighborhood with simple rules, basic manners, and small-C christian values; A world where public monies had to be spent to create even that fake neighborhood—and Mr. Rogers, per this documentary, was pivotal to PBS continuing at a time when the Nixon administration might have killed it; A world where his attempts to translate his success with children to success with adults was amazingly unsuccessful; In the end, a world where he was brought out of his retirement to try to address 9/11—something not suited to his overall message.

But I can't object to how he navigated that world: With sincere and at least locally successfully attempts to make it better.

I, for one, could not have resisted (for 40 years!) marching
Godzilla through this neighborhood.

Beyond the stage persona, the documentary shows us the charming behind-the-scenes aspects of his personality. There's humor (not all of it appropriate for children) and struggle, and a little undercurrent of darkness—though thankfully nothing of the squalor which is de rigueur in these sorts of docs. The closest to anything of that sort is a little vignette of Francois (Officer) Clemmons.

Officer Clemmons is central to the movie's premise of Mr. Rogers' significance: In 1968, Mr. Rogers coaxed Clemmons into playing a police officer. In 1968, police officers were not considered too groovy in the black community...which is doubtless why Rogers wanted him to play that role. In 1969, on a hot day in the neighborhood, he invites Clemmons to splash his feet in a kiddie pool with him. These were pretty edgy things for a kid show.

A fabulous singer, Francois Clemmons is also a homosexual, which Mr. Rogers found out about due to certain indiscretions. Obviously, Mr. Rogers couldn't have an "out" homosexual on the show, so Clemmons stayed in the closet and even had a sham marriage. I couldn't quite piece this part together, since Clemmons has apparently been "out" since his divorce 1974, and was on the show until 1983 and then re-appeared in 1993.

Recreating the scene 25 years later.

I consider three main points when rating documentaries: (1) Is the subject matter worthy or interesting; (2) Was the presentation worthy of the material; (3) What's the slant? So, on that scale:

Subject matter: Mr. Rogers is a cultural icon to a lot of people. Despite having been in the target audience, I never made it 5 minutes into one of his shows, yet I knew quite a bit about him and the tropes of The Neighborhood. But beyond that, Rogers would've been interesting (though much different) if he had been a late night horror host.

Presentation: Fairly minimal. This isn't a big, stylized production. That's fine for this topic.

Slant: The movie begins with the irascible King Friday trying to build a big wall to keep all the strangers and modernity out. At the end of the movie, they have a clip of Brian Kilmeade on "The Five" talking about how Mr. Rogers is the problem with society (because he told everyone they were special)! The wall bit is kind of funny. The Fox bit is gross, because in the movie chronology, Mr. Rogers had just died and the Kilmeade quote had to be well over 10 years later. Kilmeade is wrong, of course: When Mr. Rogers said "you are special", he meant to him and (probably, though the movie doesn't say this) to God. The overriding message of the show is service (you to others and others to you), and the relatively mild slant isn't enough to drag that into mere politics. Still, I would've preferred less of this stuff and Clemmons and more of things like Jeff Erlanger, a five-year-old who asked to meet Mr. Rogers before undergoing spinal surgery, and who ended up being on the show a few years later.

And who grew up to be Steven Hawking.

Still, I liked it despite not being a fan of the show, kiddie shows, public television or TV generally. My companions ranged from maybe-saw-a-show-once to born-after-Rogers-died, but they also found it worthy.

Close it up

Posted by OregonMuse at 07:15 PM Comments

Chess Thread 09-15-2018

—OregonMuse

Pic #2: WIM Ivette Garcia Morales

Note on Problems

A white back, after some discussion, I decided to just present the problems as "White|Black to Play" and leave it up to you to figure out the best course of action. Well, I received a mild complaint last week on the MCP because the best course of action was a draw, and that's kind of a difficult evaluation to make. Because even though you may see the draw, how do you know for certain that there's not a win that you've overlooked? So based on that, I've added a "Goal" to each problem that's normally hidden, but you can view if you swipe the blank area with your mouse. We'll see how that works.

As always, the chess/dress pr0n thread is an open thread, so there is no such thing as an off-topic comment.

Easier Problem - White To Play (782)

Goal: There's a mate-in-2 here for you to find.
Hint: Surprisingly, the solution does NOT require any kind of wacky-ass underpromotion that you would almost certainly never see OTB

8/4P2P/6k1/8/5K2/8/8/8 w - - 0 1

Oh Capablanca

Neat song about chess:

People have asked whether she's singing about an actual game played by Capablanca. I have no idea.

(h/t 'Off the reservation')

More Challenging Problem - White To Play (791)

Find a winning line for White. Don't settle for a draw. This is a complicated position. The more I looked into it, the more I saw, and the decision tree expanded like kudzu. I have found two solutions (i.e. two completely different first moves by White) and so thefore there could be more. Coming up with a hint was hard, so I broke up the goal into two parts and hopefully you'll be able to get an idea how to solve this one:

Goal 1: Get the pawn safely to the queening square
Goal 2: Exploit your newly created material advantage

Hint: Force Black to trade off his queen while avoiding his threats of perpetual check

6K1/5PR1/3R4/4k3/8/8/q7/8 w - - 0 1

Dress Pr0n For The 'Ettes:

Playful monochrome in a #1950s novelty print dress, Mexican origins suggested by motifs of Mariachi musicians spinning around the skirt. Although printed cotton, it is given some extra sparkle with the addition of sequins outlining leaf motifs on the bodice @RISDMuseum #sparkle pic.twitter.com/4Gsm4TTDLK
— Dr Kate Strasdin (@kateStrasdin) July 27, 2018

Greetings from Portugal(click for larger sized version)

___________

Solutions Update

Easier Problem - White To Play

8/4P2P/6k1/8/5K2/8/8/8 w - - 0 1

1.h8=Q Kf7

That was the only legal move for Black.

2.e8Q#

Kaboom!

More Challenging Problem - White To Play

6K1/5PR1/3R4/4k3/8/8/q7/8 w - - 0 1

So White's strategic goals are:
1. Get that pawn queened
2. Force Black into a position where he has to trade his queen for White's queen.

For Black:
1. Avoid trading queens
2. Try to force a draw by perpetual checking.

One set of solutions starts out with the move

1.Rd5+

If Black responds with 1...Qxd5 then it's an easy win: 2.Rg5+ Ke6 3.Rxd5 Kxd5 4.f8Q

However, if black chooses 1...Kxd5 with the idea to get a draw through endless perpetual checks, then

2.f8=Q Kd4+
3.Rf7 Qd5 (not 3... Qg2+ 4.Qg7+ puts an end to the checks)
4 Qg7+ Kc5
5.Qc3+ Kb6
6.Qb4+ Ka6
7.Qa4+ Kb6
8.Qa7+ Kc6
9.Qb7+

And this check is what White has been trying to get to force the exchange.

9...Kc5
10.Qxd5+ Kxd5 and wins

If Black instead moves 2...Ke4+ then White's maneuvering is similar:

3.Qf7 Qa8+
4.Qf8 Qd5+
5.Qf7 Qd8+
6.Qf8 Qd5+
7.Kh8 Qh5+
8.Rh7 Qe5+
9.Qg7 Qe8+
10.Qg8 Qe5+
11.Rg7 Qh5+
12.Qh7+

Another solution begins with 1.Ra6:

1. Ra6 Qxa6
2. f8=Q Qe6+
3. Qf7 Qc8+
4. Qf8 Qe6+
5. Rf7 Kd4 (5... Qg6+ 6. Qg7+)
6. Qg7+ Kc5
7. Qc3+ Kb5
8. Qd3+ Kc5
9. Qf5+ Qd5
10. Qxd5+ and wins

A solution is:

1.Rgg6 Qb3

Black's queen needs to stay on that diagonal.

2.Rde6+ Qxe6

Otherwise, the pawn queens.

3.Rxe6+ Kxe6
4.f8=Q 1-0

Hope to see you all next week!

___________

Note: that cryptic line of letters and numbers you see underneath each board diagram is a representation of the position in what is known as "Forsyth-Edwards Notation", or F.E.N. It's actually readable by humans. Most computer applications nowadays can read FEN, so those of you who may want to study the position, you can copy the line of FEN and paste into your chess app and it should automatically recreate the position on its display board. Or, Windows users can just "triple click" on it and the entire line will be highlighted so you can copy and paste it into your chess app.

___________

So that about wraps it up for this week. Chess thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to my yahoo address: OregonMuse little-a-in-a-circle yahoo dott com.

Close it up

Posted by OregonMuse at 05:10 PM Comments

Ace of Spades Pet Thread

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Welcome to the almost world famous AoSHQ Pet Thread. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the thread, A BIG THANK YOU TO KT for filling in. Here's hoping Ace lowers her dental deductible to under 4 figures.

Here's hoping our fine feathered and furry PetMorons and their humans are safe and sound along the eastern seaboard.

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 03:00 PM Comments

Saturday Gardening Thread [KT]

—Open Blogger

Daylily at Brookgreen, earlier this summer

Hello, gardeners and friends of gardeners. Well, there are still fires in the West, there were explosions in the Northeast this week, but the real garden news is that Florence has hit. Hope everyone affected is doing OK. Let us know.

My niece and her husband recently moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, one of the places that was hit by flooding. They had already evacuated. They bought a chain saw to help with recovery. We might want to discuss chainsaws today for the edification of those helping after the storm.

The photo above was taken by my niece during a visit to Brookgreen Gardens earlier this summer. But that hybrid daylily is one that would be adaptable to the gardens of novices. Unlike this one:

Posted by Open Blogger at 01:20 PM Comments

The Big Eraser [KT]

—Open Blogger

The Really Big Eraser

I've noticed something a little weird about the Left lately. They seem to be obsessed with destroying PEOPLE for failing to meet their behavioral and attitudinal standards, and will never let anyone forget a mistake, not matter how small. Well, unless the person in question is one of the "chosen". One misstep lives forever. But they seem bent on erasing IDEAS which offend them.

Erasing Scientific Inquiries

One recent example of the Left erasing scientific inquiry was when Brown University published a note about a study concerning "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" and was attacked by a howling mob of activists. They apologized and retracted the note.

Of course, this is not the first time something like this has happened. And many researchers have avoided researching certain topics for fear of activating the mob.

Heather MacDonald Fights Back

The College Fix reviews a new book by Heather MacDonald, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

"The Diversity Delusion" rebuts many of the Left's sacrosanct narratives with piles of facts, studies, anecdotes and observations. It would serve as a fantastic tool for any young college student seeking to address their peers' grievances with data over feelings.

MacDonald also managed to get a piece written in TIME:

"You have blood on your hands. You're a murderer," shouted one of the protesters at Judge Brett Kavanaugh during the Senate hearings of his nomination to the Supreme Court. This apocalyptic rhetoric had been espoused before -- at none other than the Yale Law School, . . There, a group of alumni and professors circulated an open letter declaring that selecting Kavanaugh "presents an emergency -- for democratic life, for our safety and freedom, for the future of our country." People "will die" if Kavanaugh is confirmed, the letter announced.

Whoa.

Taught by a metastasizing campus-diversity bureaucracy to believe that they are subject to an existential threat from circumambient bias, students equate nonconforming ideas with "hate speech," and "hate speech: with conduct that should be punished, censored and repelled with force if necessary.

MacDonald will be speaking at a DOJ Forum on Free Speech in Higher Education on September 17.

Erasing Knowledge from Libraries

Richard Fernandez:

The fire which destroyed as many as 20 million artifacts in Brazil's national museum was caused perhaps by the most trivial of accidental circumstances. The Brazilian culture minister's explanation that the blaze was likely caused "by either an electrical short-circuit or a homemade, paper hot-air balloon that may have landed on the roof" was greeted by riots because mischance does not satisfy the human urge to blame someone when things go wrong.
ut catastrophes can happen for no discernible reason. Historically natural disasters have vied with human malevolence in the destruction of libraries. . . .

The destruction of 20 million Brazilian records, tragic as it might be, pales in comparison to the potential loss of the digital libraries upon which our world depends. The 21st century is generating libraries at an unimaginable rate and they are by no means safe. . . .

Some data is even thrown away in real time. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey explained how they could ban anyone they wanted. "Not even President Donald Trump is immune from being kicked off the platform if his tweets cross a line with abusive behavior. ... The Twitter CEO also denied a Wall Street Journal report that he personally intervened to keep far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and white supremacist Richard Spencer on the site." If it was decided someone should go then off they went; it was as simple as that. The archivists rule.
Today's librarians no longer operate out of ivy covered buildings in bucolic campuses with collections of a few millions. They now operate on an unimaginably gigantic scale using hardware scattered across continents. For the most part the public don't even know who they are. Yet these librarians wield enormous power: the effect of their decisions on access, erasure or alteration of digital data are identical in impact to fire and earthquake on earlier paper.

Their power is even greater because digital libraries, unlike physical ones, can not only be destroyed but changed continuously. . . .

Read the whole thing. Thoughts?

Maybe one challenge is that they don't want us to remember where we came from. Maybe we should make some time to remember.

Note: This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Serving your mid-day open thread needs

Take care if you are near fire, flooding or other hazards. Hope you have something good planned for the weekend.

Close it up

Posted by Open Blogger at 11:34 AM Comments

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

The Morning Report 9/19/18

—J.J. Sefton

Tuesday Overnight Open Thread (9/18/18 )

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Breaking: Kavanaugh's Accuser Says She Won't Testify Until The FBI, Which Has Already Declined to Investigate Her Non-Federal-Jurisdiction 37 Year Old Allegations, Completes Its Investigation, Sometime After a Democrat is President

—Ace of Spades

New York Times to Issue Correction After Mistaking Academy Award Nominated Actress Angela Basset for... Omarosa

—Ace of Spades

WSJ: Questions Multiply About Blasey-Ford's Memory, and Motives

—Ace of Spades

Former Fusion GPS Employee: Almost Every Claim We Made About Paul Manafort Was Wrong and I Regret Having Pushed This Hoax On to the Public

—Ace of Spades

ABC News Political Director and Noted Thumb Matthew J. Dowd: It Doesn't Matter Whether Christine Blasey-Ford's Accusations Are True or Not; We Must Treat Kavaugh as Guilty to Vindicate a Higher Social Justice

—Ace of Spades

New Project Veritas Sting Video Series Catches State Department Official Bragging About #Resistance Activities

—Ace of Spades

This Is CNN: Thumb Chris Cillizza Says It's "Walking a Very Dangerous Line" to Ask Kavanaugh's Accuser When and Where This Assault Is Supposed to Have Taken Place

—Ace of Spades

Anne Hathaway Gets #WOKE, Demands We "Tear This World Apart" and Reject White Cishet Privilege (Of the Sort She Enjoys)

—Ace of Spades

The Morning Rant: J.V. Edition

—CBD

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

The Morning Report 9/18/18

—J.J. Sefton

Monday Overnight Open Thread (9/17/18 )

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Kavanaugh and His Accuser Will Testify on Monday; Confirmation Vote Delayed

—Ace of Spades

CNN's "Legal Analyst:" Kavanaugh Hired a Lawyer to Defend Him Against These Accusations, So He Must be Guilty of Attempted Rape or Lying to Congress

—Ace of Spades

Trump: I'm Going to Declassify Those Redacted FISA Application Pages That Supposedly Establish My Guilt and Would Result in My Impeachment if the Public Knew About Them

—Ace of Spades

Ahoy: Commodore Cuck Says He's Building a "War Machine" in the GOP to Challenge Trump in 2020

—Ace of Spades

Susan Collins Statement Is Kind of Empty and Doesn't Move the Ball Much

—Ace of Spades

#MeSue: Asia Argento Threatens Lawsuit Against Fellow Nutter Rose McGowan

—Ace of Spades

Democrats Refusing to Cooperate in Scheduling Follow-Up Calls With Kavanaugh's Accuser

—Ace of Spades

Lisa Page Admits No Evidence of Collusion When They Opened Investigation, Raising Questions About Her Desperation to "Open the Case" "In a Formal Chargeable Way"

—Ace of Spades

#FakeNews Reporter Stages Dramatic Storm Footage;Brian "Tater" Stelter Defends

—Ace of Spades

The Morning Rant

—OregonMuse

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

The Morning Report 9/17/18

—J.J. Sefton

Sunday Overnight Open Thread (9/16/18 )

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Gun Thread: 357 Magnum - Bigger is Better! [Weasel]

—Open Blogger

Food Thread: I Will Never Sour On Sourdough, And Other Stories From My Kitchen

—CBD

An American's Reading List: What Should Everyone Read?

—CBD

European Radicalism Has Come To Polite Society In America

—CBD

Sunday Morning Book Thread 09-16-2018

—OregonMuse

EMT 09/16/18

—krakatoa

Saturday Caturday Overnight Open Thread (9/15/18 )

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Saturday Evening Movie Thread 09-15-2018 [Hosted By: Moviegique]

—OregonMuse

Chess Thread 09-15-2018

—OregonMuse

Ace of Spades Pet Thread

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Saturday Gardening Thread [KT]

—Open Blogger

The Big Eraser [KT]

—Open Blogger

#FakeNews Reporter Stages Dramatic Storm Footage;
Brian "Tater" Stelter Defends