Ace of Spades HQ

June 26, 2017

Guest Post: Observations From Flyover Country (Cumberland Astro)

—CBD

Since Donald Trump was elected I have seen a spate of local news stories about companies building, expanding, or investing in manufacturing plants within a 50 mile radius of Chattanooga. With these new plants there will be hundreds of new manufacturing jobs. Although pundits in Washington who are much smarter than me (just ask them) keep saying that manufacturing in America is dead, I'm observing a multitude of companies behaving otherwise, including several foreign companies. I don't think the Acela crowd is aware that manufacturing is expanding in business-friendly states.

Posted by CBD at 11:15 AM Comments

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows
John Constable

It looks like a ~~crossword~~ jigsaw puzzle, and a damned complicated one at that. The artist's technical prowess and patience is obvious, but I wonder if that is all that is necessary? It's certainly not evocative of any personal triumph or tragedy. I guess it could be seen as social commentary.

Or just a cool painting.

I don't know, but it's fun.

Posted by CBD at 09:30 AM Comments

The Morning Report 6/26/17

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning, kids. Another week is upon us and first up we have the continuing meltdown of the Media/Democrat Complex as their Russia collusion/obstruction-of-justice meme is crumbling like a wet blini. Propaganda outlet CNN is front and center after having pumped out and then been forced to retract a complete fable (pushed most notably by Senator Elizabeth Warpath among others) their own media critic Brian Stetler was refused comment by his own employer. Wow.

Next, there is a push to ram home the Senate Obamacare Rehash and Relabel Bill by the July 4th holiday. I find it infuriating that a) it doesn't go nearly far enough in dismantling the monster and bolstering free market solutions (as promised) but that b) those who point this out are labeled as "purists." Sorry, but no amount of ketchup and Everclear will wash down a feces sammich and make it taste like sirloin steak. If it's not obvious by now that this is all kabu-kakke theater to keep in place a bureaucracy that keeps DC denizens empowered and swimming in lucre, then you (the royal you) should not be coming here any more.

Lastly, the final link about this shyster lawyer who scammed over half a billion dollars in SSDI money is infuriating to say the least. It is a perfect example of why we need tort reform, judicial reform, entitlement reform as well as why government functions best when it functions least. And if Obamacare remains whole, in part, or as Mark Levin warns we get single payer, the fraud and abuse outlined above will look like a rounding error in what's to come. Sadly, to paraphrase Oberst von Scherbach "you will not get them." Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.

Posted by J.J. Sefton at 07:00 AM Comments

Sunday Overnight Open Thread (6/25/17) Rusty Edition

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

(Here's hoping this isn't the entire ONT)

*****

Quotes of The Day

Quote I

A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking. Earl Wilson

Quote II

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. Steve Jobs

Quote III

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. Samuel Johnson

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:45 PM Comments

C'est La Vie (MJ)

—Open Blogger

Our civic debate and the intellectualism surrounding it has become boring. We all know the prism through which Charles Blow (racism), Thomas Friedman (globalism), or any left leaning publication will present its view. Everything the Left does is predictable.

The Right is oftentimes similarly rote, although there exists a stronger willingness to debate an issue beyond the merely emotional. It's more about the construct than the destruct; the depth and breadth.

Whereas speech is the hallmark of the Right, it is anathema to the Left. Their adherence to a limited cadre of acceptable words has led directly to their stunted and sheltered views.

I believe this unwillingness for honest diagnosis is leading to a growing, if not already fatal wound in Europe; the pinnacle of Leftism.

Posted by Open Blogger at 07:00 PM Comments

Food Thread: When I Use A Word, It Means Just What I Choose It To Mean -- Neither More Nor Less

—CBD

Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Afternoon Food Thread, where men are men, all the 'ettes are gorgeous (and naked under their aprons), knives are always sharp and never used to cut tofu or kale, and special snowflakes starve to death. And unlike other AoSHQ threads, the Sunday Afternoon Food Thread is so hoity-toity, we have a book! And bacon...

Or at least we will have a book, if you get off your asses and submit some recipes (and just once, could you color inside the lines please? We have rules!) And if Weasel and Bluebell and the rest of the reprobates and voluptuaries and debauchees (who claim to be assisting this grand project but really are just stealing the booze samples), put down the bourbon bottle and actually get something done.

******
Now that we have spent weeks touting the Moron Cookbook, nagging you to refine and submit Aunt Tillie's recipe for rutabaga mash with chopped chicken feet, it is time to discuss the inescapable reality that recipes are not received wisdom, that they are, at least for people who are comfortable in the kitchen, guidelines and ideas, not rigid and immutable laws.

Sort of like the US Constitution is for liberals.

I'll give you an example. Ina Garten has a Guacamole Salad that she has featured on one of her shows and in Barefoot Contessa: At Home. It's really good, and can be prepared mostly ahead of time. But...and you knew that was coming...she calls for yellow pepper and red onion in the salad. The pepper is sweet, and to my palate adds nothing else, so I swap it out with sauteed corn, which is just as sweet (maybe even sweeter) but has a flavor and texture that seems to go better with the dish. And those red onions? They can be quite strongly flavored, so I cut back a bit and rinse them in cold water before adding them to the salad. That cuts the sharpness just enough for most people. And I salt and drain the tomatoes after I cut them. Actually, that's what I almost always do with tomatoes.

Ina Garten has real talent, especially when sticking to comfort food. She took a good but sometimes tired old standard (guacamole) and turned it into something fun and fresh and absolutely worth trying out. I don't have the imagination to be able to do that kind of cooking, but I know what I like, and swapping a few ingredients to please MY palate is well within my culinary skills.

The point of all this blather is that even if you aren't comfortable creating your own recipes from the contents of your larder and your brain, make someone else's recipe once, and then the next time make it your own! If that means twisting it and massaging it into something unique...so be it. The only rule is that the result is pleasing to your palate.

One of the advantages of the internet (aside from pron) is that most recipes can be found in printable format. What I do is print a new recipe, and as I cook I annotate, so the next time I will know what works and what doesn't. It also makes it easier to read; if it is long or complex I will tape it to the cabinet above my main workspace, so I don't have to keep turning toward an open cookbook and splattering the kitchen with a carelessly held spoon. Eventually I will correct the saved copy and make it my own (with credit to the original writer).

By the way, this advice applies to most recipes, but be careful with baking and candy-making. Those recipes are black magic and cannot be toyed with, lest you summon demons from the deepest recesses of the earth.

******
Thread Winner

I add sweetened iced tea to Val-u-Rite and pretend it's Woodford Reserve.
-- fly gal

******

******
Commenter "Red Mind Blue State" recommended this website to me, and I am getting a huge kick out of it.

An alarming trend has swept across America and the world. As people begin to adopt a new "healthier" lifestyle, they find themselves willing to acquire the dietary habits of rodents and to compromise ingredients in some of the most sumptuous recipes in the world. Suddenly, supermarkets are inundated with items boasting their "fat free" or "lite" quality. Suddenly, everyone is convinced that if they don't cut out the fat and the cholesterol, they will die of a heart attack by the age of 32. Suddenly, people are feeling guilty every time they eat something that actually has flavor...

Can you see why? This is great stuff. It's a pathetically badly designed site, but don't let that bother you too much. Hell...you're reading AoSHQ with its cutting-edge 1995 technology,so I am sure you will love it at "Eat Dangerously."
******
I found this recipe in People magazine a long time ago in a doctor's office far far away. My first attempt worked well, but I thought there was too much cayenne pepper, so I have modified it somewhat. It is imperative that you use a thermometer, unless you are an accomplished candy maker and can handle the incantations necessary to do this with the ridiculous manual tests for sugar candy hardness that were created by Morgoth.
Cayenne Peanut Brittle
Ingredients

Vegetable oil or cooking spray (or butter)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 ½ tsp Kosher salt
½ tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp baking soda
3 cups salted dry-roasted peanuts

Preparation:
In a heavy medium-sized pot on medium heat, add the sugar, corn syrup, butter, salt and Cayenne pepper. Mix well until the sugar dissolves.

Bring the mixture to a gentle boil. Regulate the heat so that it continues to warm but doesn’t splatter molten sugar all over you. This is not the time to be wearing assless chaps. You are shooting for a temperature of 300°F It is tempting to stir the mixture, but try to resist the temptation.

When you reach 300°F remove the pot from the heat and add the baking soda over the mixture. It’s going to froth and bubble, so you will feel like a real cook and a bit of a wizard. Add the peanuts and stir completely using a oiled or buttered spoon or spatula.

Pour the mixture onto a greased or oiled baking sheet and using your greased spatula spread the brittle out. The bigger the baking sheet, the thinner the brittle, so choose one for your desired thickness.

Cool until…um…it’s cool, then break it up into whatever sized pieces you like.

******
Food tips, extra Pappy van Winkle bourbon, fresh Morels and other goodies:
cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com

Close it up

Posted by CBD at 04:00 PM Comments

The Human Cost Of Government Regulation: 79 Dead In One Day

—CBD

This NYT article is a mass of evasive and sneaky explanations for the failure of government regulations and regulators to create and enforce reasonable building codes. At every turn it seems it was pressure from "business friendly" politicians that forced the regulators to allow substandard materials to be used. Why Grenfell Tower Burned: Regulators Put Cost Before Safety is a typical NYT article; it wows the unwary with seemingly in-depth reporting but it is clear that the conclusion was written before the reporting was complete.

Promising to cut "red tape," business-friendly politicians evidently judged that cost concerns outweighed the risks of allowing flammable materials to be used in facades. Builders in Britain were allowed to wrap residential apartment towers -- perhaps several hundred of them -- from top to bottom in highly flammable materials, a practice forbidden in the United States and many European countries. And companies did not hesitate to supply the British market.

How this would have turned out worse without the existence of any regulation is difficult to imagine. The only difference would be that the people responsible would go to jail. The fire-safety regulators and the building code writers and the inspectors and all of the other government bureaucrats whose very existence is to prevent exactly this catastrophe will be carefully insulated from any blame. There will be a large and expensive government inquiry, and they will find irregularities in the regulatory apparatus, but mostly they will find that it was private industry that is the real culprit. "Mean old Alcoa should never have sold us that exterior cladding!"

A formal government inquiry into the fire has just begun. But interviews with tenants, industry executives and fire safety engineers point to a gross failure of government oversight, a refusal to heed warnings from inside Britain and around the world and a drive by successive governments from both major political parties to free businesses from the burden of safety regulations.

So the very people who failed so spectacularly will be doing the inquiry? Brilliant!

And let's not forget to blame rich people!

Survivors have charged that the facade was installed to beautify their housing project for the benefit of wealthy neighbors.

Posted by CBD at 12:00 PM Comments

Sunday Morning Book Thread 06-25-2017

—OregonMuse

Central Public Library, Oslo, Norway

Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, where men are men, all the 'ettes are gorgeous, safe spaces are underneath your house and are used as protection against actual dangers, like natural disasters, or Literally Hitler, and special snowflakes do not last. And unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these pants, which look like they can also be used as a sail for a good-sized yacht.

When The English Stopped Being Gentlemen And Started Fighting Dirty

Going all the way back to WWII for this:

In preparation for D-Day, a highly secretive British department known as Baker Street worked to drop 250 saboteurs behind enemy lines with one purpose: to stop the German army from sending supplies and reinforcements to Normandy. These guerillas were tasked with a massive coordinated sabotage mission to frustrate and block Hitler’s war machine in any and all ways possible. Especially important was stopping Germany’s most lethal division, the 2nd SS Panzer Division, Das Reich.

One saboteur destroyed all of Das Reich’s tank transporters by replacing the axle oil with axle grease mixed with an abrasive, forcing the division to travel by road and damaging six out of every 10 tanks. A separate team then barraged Das Reich with sabotage after sabotage, including felling trees in their path and planting bombs beneath them. In the end, what should have been a 72-hour journey took Hitler’s crack tank division 17 days—enough time for the allies to establish their beachhead.

All of this is detailed in the book Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat by Giles Milton. The D-Day operations of this group was part of a larger, more comprehensive war effort:

In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage.

The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now, his talents were put to more devious use: he built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich. Another, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world's leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men—along with three others—formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, single-handedly changed the course Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

Perhaps this is the last great untold story of the Second World War.

It Pays To Increase Your Word Power®

‘All their geese are swans’ is a 17th century expression implying that everything that somebody says is wildly exaggerated or overblown.

Usage: All of CNN's geese are swans.

Liberty's Nemesis

An article entitled A Literary Guide To Hating Barack Obama appeared in The National Laughingstock last August. It lists the usual books by Jerome Corsi, Dinesh D'Souza and Michelle Malkin. But it does have one that I had never heard of before, Liberty's Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State

...a dense work that will never be a bestseller but that nonetheless offers the most enduring conservative criticism of the Obama years. “Liberty’s Nemesis” (2016), edited by Dean Reuter and John Yoo and featuring some three dozen contributors, mixes scholarship, ideology and activism to argue that Obama has presided over an enormous and dangerous expansion of the administrative and regulatory state. “Its operations are so vast and its reach so sprawling that it lies beyond the control or comprehension of any one man or group of men,” Yoo writes, making “rational management impossible.”

Which is ironic, because the origin of the "administrative state" can be traced back to Woodrow Wilson who thought that government had grown too complex and technical for Joe Sixpak voters and politicians and instead, had to be managed by experts. So now apparently it has grown too complex even for the experts.

I'm glad to see that this issue has picked up a bit of traction. One of Glenn "Instapundit" Reynold's recent columns mentions The Administrative Threat by Philip Hamburger who traces the origins of adminstrative law back ever further:

Hamburger explains that the prerogative powers once exercised by English kings, until they were circumscribed after a resulting civil war, have now been reinvented and lodged in administrative agencies, even though the United States Constitution was drafted specifically to prevent just such abuses. But today, the laws that actually affect people and businesses are seldom written by Congress; instead they are created by administrative agencies through a process of “informal rulemaking,” a process whose chief virtue is that it’s easy for the rulers to engage in, and hard for the ruled to observe or influence. Non-judicial administrative courts decide cases, and impose penalties, without a jury or an actual judge. And the protections in the Constitution and Bill of Rights (like the requirement for a judge-issued search warrant before a search) are often inapplicable.

And it's just going to get worse. Unless it starts hurting progressives. Then we'll start seeing news stories 24/7 on the National Crisis caused by government agencies. They'll be using phrases like "unelected bureaucrats" and the "imperial presidency."

Moron Recommendations

Longtime moron fitzworth recommends the novel Close Hauled, about which he says:

Rob Avery’s first novel, “Close Hauled”, reads like a pleasant melding of Robert Parker’s ‘Spenser’ series and John D. McDonald’s ‘Travis McGee’ series, but set in modern day with the protagonist (Sim Green) living on a boat in a Southern California marina. The plot is intelligent, the writing smooth and unobtrusive, the logic sound, and the violence sudden. It’s a great start to what I hope will be a long series (the second novel is already complete).

The Amazon blurb is quite long and not easily excerpted, so just go over there and read the whole thing.

What I'm Reading

I'm about half-way through The Hidden Truth: A Science Fiction Techno-Thriller, novel by moron author Hans Schantz that I've mentioned here before. The two main characters are high school science nerds, of the sort you used to encounter in the Heinlein juveniles, except that one of them devotes most of his time to trying to pick up girls, which is something you didn't see too much of in the old Heinlwin books.

who have stumbled upon a mysterious anomaly:

...a discrepancy between an online version of an old physics book and its pulp original, he quite naturally assumes there was an error made in its scanning. Investigating further, he discovers other 'discrepancies' between old physics books and their online copies, discrepancies which are all related to a particular and peculiar theory of electromagnetism. The more he investigates the clearer it becomes to him that there exists a century-plus long conspiracy to erase all evidence of the intriguing, though counterintuitive, theory. Before too long, the cabal notices the student&8217;s nosing about and the young man learns how deadly serious the conspirators are about suppressing that bit of knowledge.

Schantz has completed the sequel and I should have an announcement about it in next week's book thread.

___________

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 09:05 AM Comments

Overnight Open Thread (24 Jun 2017)

—CDR M

It looks the firm behind the dubious intelligence dossier on DJT is really an opposition-research group for Democrats and are political activists. You don't say. No wonder they are stonewalling the congressional investigators.

Testosterone

Well, this could explain some of the things we suffer through today like pajama boy. Men's testosterone levels declined in the last 20 years.

Healthcare

Yo, California. You should probably read this before y'all go hell bent on single-payer government run healthcare. Nearly 100 patients died waiting for care from Los Angeles VA.

Spaceballs Turns 30

Idiot

Yeah, if you're using Paul Krugman for advice, you're setting yourself up for failure. Paul Krugman on the minimum wage.

Paul Krugman has said that he doesn't read conservative blogs, so obviously he may not be familiar with the literature on how the minimum wage costs jobs. But that's no excuse for not even reading the first page of the study he links to in support of his claim.

What They Really Think

Oh I think there are many, many more progs who think this way and these two stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Professor says North Korea detainee got what he 'deserved'.

And this one from earlier this week. Democrat party technology chairman: I'm glad Scalise got shot, I wish he was f*cking dead".

Who knew, Republican's are murdering their own families according to Montel Williams on CNN.

Ultraboss

I guess they're calling this shredwave. Reminds me a bit of Joe Satriani.

Heh

'Sorry about that, eh' - Canadian sniper apologizes after record breaking kill shot.

According to experts, Canadian standard operating procedure is to ask a target's permission before ending his life, so as to maintain a spirit of good sportsmanship.

"We're all aboot friendship and fair play up here in Canada, even if we're just killing a bunch of hosers like ISIS," said Canadian military spokesman Mick Robinson. "All the famous Canadians that everyone's heard of like Frank Boucher and Jack Bionda would tell you the same, buddy."

You Don't Say

This wasn't getting a whole lot of national coverage for a bit but its starting to hit the MSM. Jane Sanders lawyers up.

Cat Video

Tonight's ONT brought to you by a mystery product:

Top image via.

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to the cob of your choice or CDR M. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Close it up

Posted by CDR M at 10:09 PM Comments

Saturday Evening Movie Thread 06-24-2017 [Hosted By: TheJamesMadison]

—OregonMuse

Starting at Zero

When the lights go down and the movie comes up, the audience is opening up to new experiences, new adventures, and new connections. Most of the time, these new things are fake, but the audience is willing to suspend disbelief and try to connect with what's happening on the 60-foot screen before them.

But no matter how successful or abysmal the effort on the part of the artists is, the audience always starts at zero. They have no emotional connection with any of the characters. Because of the artifice of fiction in general, there's a wall between the audience and the film on basic things like setting even if it's set in a familiar place.

What happens next is the movie tries to convince the audience of its authenticity. It's not always an authenticity around placing the events in a real world context, but an authenticity that creates an emotional connection of some kind.

You can take this a bit more granularly and say that individual sequences need to build up to specific emotional payoffs. Without the buildup, the emotions meant to derive from the payoff never really materialize. Think of it like a punchline without a joke. That drumbeat and clash of symbols without any humor before it.

What I show next is three examples of payoff. Two have, in my opinion, well established buildups, and the third does…not.

Ride for Ruin

Say what you want about the Peter Jackson's work on The Lord of the Rings as an adaptation, but the man certainly showed that he knows how to put together a tension filled moment in those movies. One of the first things I remember hearing about the quality of The Return of the King movie before its release at the end of 2004 was a story that Steven Spielberg had gotten to see some sections of the movie including the below clip, the Ride of the Rohirrim. He saw that and said, "Nothing's going to stop this movie from winning Best Picture."

What that sequence does (it's actually from the Extended Edition. The bit with Gandalf facing the Nazgul is not in the Theatrical Cut) is to simply build tension until the charge. The orcs in Minas Tirith, the breaking of Gandalf's staff, the quiet as the Rohirrim take the hill, the steady escalation of music, and the speech from King Theoden all work together to take the audience from the emotional low of a seeming defeat to the high of surprise victory. Without that build up, just starting with the cavalry starting its charge would be far less effective a moment.

Moscow Windup

I think that The Bourne Supremacy is one of the best spy thrillers ever made. I find its technique effective and its emotional connection oddly affective. Hell, the below sequence takes place after the actual plot of the movie has been wrapped up. It only happens because Jason Bourne is wracked with guilt over a murder he committed in his previous life, and he needs to make amends to his victim's daughter. The chase only happens because Bourne has to go to Moscow to seek forgiveness.

But aside from that, the whole sequence from his arrival in Moscow to the police beginning their search to Karl Urban tracking him down to the bit in the grocery store and Bourne actually getting his hands on a car is done in a rather understated manner. The music is there, but it's relatively soft and mostly just a pulse. Once the actual car chase begins, though, the build of tension isn't over. The chase itself evolves and changes, making it increasingly difficult to guess where it will end. Again, without the bit building it up, though, the chase wouldn't feel as exciting, I think.

Below is the buildup. If you want the actual car chase, click here (for some reason it's not embeddable).

Ugh…Sausage Party

Okay, I'll admit it. I thought the trailer for Sausage Party looked funny. Just for reference, here it is:

There's a very specific reason I thought it was funny, and I bet you can guess why. There's buildup. It feels like a cheap Disney knockoff with innocence and a cheery atmosphere, until the truth of the food's plight is revealed in a violent action of the Irish Potato getting skinned. That violence forces a change from innocence to something far more sinister, and that sudden change makes everything that happens after it feel very funny.

Except…that's not how the movie actually works. Before we go any further, here's the opening musical number:

Yeah, it's vulgar from the opening scene. Now, I'm not a guy who turns off things because they're vulgar (I just finished playing South Park: The Stick of Truth and laughed the whole way through), but the humor of the situation the food finds itself in should stem from the juxtaposition between the innocence of the early stuff with the very different feel of the later stuff. The trailer does that. The movie doesn't. There's no great change in the feel of the movie from before the reveal to after it. The movie pretty obviously mistakes vulgarity for humor instead.

See? There's no buildup to the joke. It'd be like the drums and cymbals being hit constantly through a standup routine without any regard to whether a joke was actually playing or not. The vulgarity has just become a signal that something is supposed to be funny. Whether it's actually funny or not isn't really important because so many people have been conditioned to simply laugh at the sound of "naughty" words.

So…

Without a proper buildup to emotional highs, the audience has a much harder time connecting with a movie. This is one reason why certain movies seem to have very large impacts on their first release and then largely forgotten later. Many movies end up being all about payoff without the requisite work in making that payoff mean something. The Transformers movies are largely like this. With just constant drumbeats of giant robots hitting each other for twenty to thirty minutes straight, it's hard to maintain interest, especially when we don't care about the puny humans running around in the background.

Movies of Today

Opening in Theaters:

Transformers: The Last Knight
The Beguiled

Next in my Netflix Queue:

Love on the Run

Movies I Saw This Week:

Bed & Board (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 3.5/4) Poster Blurb: "Another light but touching slice of life about Antoine Doinel."

Alien: Resurrection [Rewatch] (Netflix Rating 3/5 | Quality Rating 2.5/4) "Better than I think people remember it. It's surprisingly funny, and on purpose, too."

The Invitation (Netflix Rating 2/5 | Quality Rating 1.5/4) "One good scene and the rest bad scenes is not quite how John Ford put it."

Paddington (Netflix Rating 4/5 | Quality Rating 3/4) "Sweet and easy to enjoy family fare."

Contact

Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.

Close it up

Posted by OregonMuse at 08:02 PM Comments

Saturday Afternoon Chess/Open Thread (Featuring Dress Pr0n) 06-24-2017

—OregonMuse

"OK, so you know the loser has to go over to the Obamas' house for dinner, right?"

Good afternoon morons and moronettes, and welcome to the Saturday Afternoon Chess/Open Thread, the only AoSHQ thread with content specifically for all of us chess nerds who pay homage in the temple of Caïssa, goddess of the chessboard. Also, dress pr0n. Each week, I pick out a few lovely, modest, conservative dresses for the 'ettes to admire and appraise. And, for those of you who aren't nerdly enough for chess, you can use this thread to talk about checkers, or other games, or politics, or whatever you wish, only please try to keep it civil. Nobody wants to get in the middle of a pie fight on a Saturday afternoon.

“A bad day of Chess is better than any good day at work”
(Anonymous)

Problem 1 - White To Play (198 )

Hint: White can force a win of material, or the game

rbb2r1k/p3qp1p/1p2pp2/8/3P2Q1/P2B4/1P3PPP/R4RK1 w - - 0 1

Problem 2 - Black To Play (196)

Hint: How does Black achieve a draw?

8/4R1R1/7k/7p/7P/2q3P1/5P1K/8 b - - 0 1

Problem 3 - White To Play (300)

Hint: White wins material

3k4/ppqbr3/2r1PQ2/8/8/P7/1P3PPP/3RR1K1 w - - 0 1

Problem 4 - White To Play (BWTC 38 )

How many paths can you find?

Hint: Mate in 5, with many shorter paths

1r1q3k/1bp1n1pp/3p4/4n3/4Nr2/1P1Q3R/P1P2PPP/5RK1 w - - 0 1

Endgame of the Week (Endgame 28 )

It's White to play. How can he stop Black from cashing in on his material advantage?

Hint: Do not simplify

8/1p6/8/2P1B3/8/8/p2K4/1k6 w - - 0 1

Lovely Dresses, Goofy Hats

This week, I grabbed some photos from this link to the Queen's carriage parade at the Royal Ascot racing meet in England. Lots of fancy clothes, lots of dresses, and some are pretty outlandish. And hats. Click on that link to see the photos I didn't include. All of the men have to wear the Ascot hat as is traditional, but the women are free to indulge themselves as they see fit. I have never seen such ridiculous, goofy-looking hats that some of the women were wearing.

But enough about hats. On to the dress pr0n:

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Solutions Update

Problem 1 - White To Play

rbb2r1k/p3qp1p/1p2pp2/8/3P2Q1/P2B4/1P3PPP/R4RK1 w - - 0 1

Black doesn't have much of an answer to:

1.Qh4!

Note that there are three squares White could have moved his queen to, h3, h4 or h5. But h5 is the only destination square that will enable White to force the issue. If 1.Qh3 or 1.Qh5, then 1...f5 stops the attack. Black can't move f5 after Qh4 because of the immediate Qxe7.

1...Bxh2+

Black really has nothing better. He should probably just resign at this point.

2.Kh1 f5
3.Qxe7 and wins

Problem 2 - Black To Play

8/4R1R1/7k/7p/7P/2q3P1/5P1K/8 b - - 0 1

Black is in deep kimchi here, so he pretty much has to go for the draw. A simplification would be disastrous: 1...Qxg7 2.Rxg7 Kxg7 and the 2-pawn advantage pretty much seals the deal for White.

Black's king is kind of in a restricted position, so Black tries to force a stalemate with

1...Qxg3+!

Any of the recapture moves Kxg3, Rxg3, or fxg3 results in stalemate.

White's only recourse is

2.Kh1

But then
2...Qg1+

3.Rxg1

Forced. And there's the stalemate.

Problem 3 - White To Play

3k4/ppqbr3/2r1PQ2/8/8/P7/1P3PPP/3RR1K1 w - - 0 1

1. Qxe7+ Kxe7
2. exd7+ Kf6

Not 2...Kd8 3.Re8#. If 2...Kf7 then 3.d8=Q Qxd8 4.Rxd8

3.d8=Q+ Qxd8
4.Rxd8 and the rook advantage is enough for a win.

An alternate line that will get you to the same place is:

1.Qh8+ Re8
2.Qxe8+ Kxe8
3.exd7+ Kf7
4.d8=Q Qxd8
5.Rxd8 and wins

Problem 4 - White To Play

1r1q3k/1bp1n1pp/3p4/4n3/4Nr2/1P1Q3R/P1P2PPP/5RK1 w - - 0 1

1.Nf6 Nf3+

There are a number of early missteps that will cause Black to lose early:

1...gxf6 2.Qxh7#
1...Rxf6 2.Qxh7#
1...g6 2.Rxh7#
1...h6 2.Qh7#
1...Qg8 2.Rxh7+ Qxh7 3.Qxh7#

2.gxf3

And now it gets a bit complicated:

If 2.Kh1 then Rh4 3.Qxh7+ (3.Rxh4 Ng5 (3...Nxh4 4.Qxh7#) 4.Rxh7+ Nxh7 5.Qxh7#) 3...Rxh7 4.Rxh7#

Back to the main line, which is:

2...Rg4+
3.fxg4 Be4 (3...Qg8 4.Rxh7+ Qxh7 5.Qxh7#)
4.Rxh7+ (4.Qxe4 Ng6 5.Rxh7#)
4...Bxh7
5.Qxh7# 1-0

Endgame of the Week

8/1p6/8/2P1B3/8/8/p2K4/1k6 w - - 0 1

1.Ba1! Kxa1

No other choice.

2. Kc2 b5
3. c6 b4
4. c7 b3+
5. Kxb3 Kb1
6. c8=Q a1=N+!

If 6...a1=Q then 7.Qc2#

7.Kc3 Nc2

If 7...Ka2 then 8.Qb8 Nb3 9.Qxb3+ Ka1 10.Qb2# is an alternate line.

8.Qf5 Ka2
9.Qxc2+ Ka1
10.Qb2#

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 past 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 05:15 PM Comments

Ace of Spades Pet Thread (6/24/17)

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. The thread is a little different today as I've been away and off the grid. So a light thread today. Still grab yourself a beverage and enjoy.

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 03:00 PM Comments

Saturday Gardening Thread: Firewater [KT]

—Open Blogger

Oregon Tiger Lily, Photographed by Kindltot

Well, we've got something pretty close to "fire" going on all over the southwest. "High pressure system", they call it. "Miserable" I call it. And some actual fires in a few places. One near my cousin's home. And there is a lot of water in the Southeast about now. Is everybody OK?

The closest thing I have had to actual "firewater" this week has been sedatives for a rather unpleasant medical procedure. And we are adjusting to someone who works a night shift moving into the house. I have not been well-organized, so don't expect much of a theme today. There are some garden news items today, though.

Kindltot on our lead photo today:

These are the Oregon Tiger Lily, Lilium Columbianum. Such a showy lily in the woods here, they prefer open forest and the edges of clearing s and pastures. They grow a good 5 feet tall in the woods
The bulbs are supposed to be edible when steamed, but who would want to do that when the flowers are so beautiful? You can get them from native flower nurseries around here. They are very productive and grow even taller when they are watered and fertilized

They sound like a great plant for those who have some room.

Gizmos

Mr. Bar-the-Door has been looking at tillers. Here's something a lot smaller: a prototype Roomba for your garden. Solar powered. You need to keep your plants taller than the weeds and put collars around the seedlings you want to keep. Some other people are working on weeding robots, too. Check around.

I don't think I'me neat enough in the garden for this gizmo to work for me. How about you?

On an unrelated note, inspired by the weather, when's the last time you changed your AC filter? Do you have an older neighbor who may need help?

Recipe Time

Remember that it is time to submit your recipes for the AoSHQ Recipe Book. One of the recipes I am submitting calls for peeled tomatoes. Some varieties of garden tomatoes peel easily (pulling skin against a paring knife) without any treatment if fully ripe. But many do not, even when perfectly ripe or even a little over-ripe.

There are several methods for peeling tomatoes. This is a basic blanch-and-peel method. Bonus: Seeding a tomato:

But if you will be cooking a big batch of tomatoes, this is faster. Really. Plus, you can feed the skins to the pigs!.

Plants in the News

A study finds that green space around schools helps kids think. Plants around the house help, too. But not as much. Probably because, you know, common spaces.

Kids running through bluebells

Climate scientists are not the only ones who hide data, apparently. Here, results of a glyphosate study were apprently hidden because they were not negative enough. Heh.

I can dream, can't I?

We haven't forgotten those with cooler, shadier yards. Looking for something fragrant to go with your fragrant hostas?

Polemonium caeruleum 'Bressingham Purple' - Polemonium 'Bressingham Purple' is a Jacob's ladder with purple foliage and purple flowers that smell like grape Hubba Bubba bubblegum!

Jacob's Ladder 'Bressingham Purple'

The plant above is rated for hardiness zones 4 - 9. You can see a photo of a variegated Jacob's Ladder in this post. Even though the flowers are similar, the plants give very different effects.

Gardens of The Horde

Trying to keep plants alive in the heat. Weeding some. Anything going on where you are?

If you would like to send information and/or photos for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:

ktinthegarden
at g mail dot com

Include your nic unless you want to be a lurker.

Close it up

Posted by Open Blogger at 12:24 PM Comments

Thread below the Gardening Thread: Roman Drama [KT]

—Open Blogger

Serving your mid-day open thread needs

All-male theatrical troupe preparing for a masked performance
House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii

A week ago, before Johnny Depp, um, made the news, Neo-Neocon wrote:

The current New York production of "Julius Caesar" in which Caesar is portrayed as a Trump-like figure is no ordinary propaganda.
Caesar is a particular figure with particular characteristics. Why was he assassinated? Because the assassins thought he had become a tyrant. They met a bad end themselves, as assassins often do, but along the way they felt they were doing Rome a service by ridding it of a dangerous leader. They considered it to be not an assassination, but tyrannicide. . .

She goes on to make some interesting comparisons with the theatrical visions of John Wilkes Booth. But she also includes commentary on a writer at HuffPo calling for Trump's legal execution. The HuffPo writer also called for additional executions. The HuffPo writer's plan for purifying the land is considerably more disturbing to me than Johnny Depp's recent foray into heroic fantasy. Because Johnny Depp is kind of crazy. And because the HuffPo piece actually got published.

And because Julius Caesar was not the only guy assassinated in Rome.

When classical historian Victor Davis Hanson thinks about Trump, similarities to a later Roman emperor seem to become apparent. Is Trump our Claudius? You know, the guy who came between "the charismatic, youthful heartthrob Caligula" and "a young, glib, handsome, intellectual, and artistic Nero".

Claudius's rule of some 13 years as emperor was marked by financial reforms and restoration after the disastrous reign of the spendthrift Caligula. Claudius-haters like Seneca, Suetonius, and Tacitus focused mostly on Claudius as the uncouth outsider--and overlooked what he had done for Rome after the disasters of the Caligula regime.
The empire under Claudius grew and was largely at peace. Rome annexed Britain, and added a variety of border provinces in the east. While court insiders and gossipers ridiculed Claudius's supposed ineptness, he nonetheless assembled one of the most gifted staffs of advisers and operatives--many of them freed slaves--in the history of the Julio-Claudian and Flavian dynasties. . .

If Claudius constantly scribbled down observations on imperial life (unfortunately now mostly lost), Trump is an incessant tweeter, who daily issues forth a litany of impromptu impressions, half-baked thoughts, and assertions--that are likewise the stuff of ridicule by journalists.

What differences and similarities do you see between our day and the days of Claudius? I, for one, do not want to see anything like the installation of a Marxist Nero.

I get the feeling that palace intrigue goes way beyond the palace these days. Anybody else get the sense that way too many people want a part in political drama?

Neo-Neocon again:

People like the author of that HuffPo piece see themselves as heroes on a great stage. Their disagreements with Trump can't be just the usual political dissension, because that would make them petty and ordinary too. No, the scale must be grand, and the remedy equally grand. There are a disturbing number of people around who feel this way, and some of them almost undoubtedly will try to act.

Hope your personal life is not this dramatic. Anything good going on this weekend?

Close it up

Posted by Open Blogger at 11:13 AM Comments

Saturday Morning Weird News Dump (6/24/17)

—Misanthropic Humanitarian

Damn dog!! Doesn't he know it's Vacation Day Saturday??????

Posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:05 AM Comments

EMT 06/24/2017

—krakatoa

I've spent every free moment the last 2 weeks rehabbing my first house to put it up for sale. Been a rental property for the last 6 years or so. Good tenants, but lots of stuff to do.

I think I am about 2 days from done.

New paint inside, pressure washed the siding, new kitchen counter, re grouted all the tile, fresh stain on the deck, repainted the garage, new caulk everywhere, reseeded the lawn... I contracted out for the counter install and some of the exterior trim repairs and painting. The rest is all me. The wife doesn't know this yet, but when this place sells, daddy gets a new TV.

Posted by krakatoa at 05:52 AM Comments

Overnight Open Thread (23 Jun 2017)

—CDR M

It's going to take years to build back up trust in the FBI and other government agencies. Who does the FBI work for?

Considering how ludicrous the FBI's conclusions are as it relates to an attack on the third ranking member of the House of Representatives, you might reconsider whether to trust the FBI's conclusions in other areas, as well. And this is how our faith in institutions is degraded: steadily, gradually, with incident after incident where men in suits stand in front of microphones and make claims we know are not the whole truth.

If CIA contractors are willing to hack vending machines, what else do you think they're willing to do with capabilities they have access to in their official capacity? No one has really been punished at the IRS for their political shenanigans and the DOJ obviously interfered with the Hillary private server investigation. Until big name folks are held accountable for their violations, public faith in these institutions will continue to crater.

Posted by CDR M at 09:54 PM Comments

"Russia, Russia, Russia!:" Kellyanne Conway Goofs on Indian-Slurring Alisyn Camarotta

—Ace

Alisyn Camarotta was most recently embarrassed when she asked a girl of Indian descent who'd just won a national spelling bee to spell "confeve," and then, when the girl got it slightly wrong, excused her mistake because "it doesn't have a Sanskrit root, which is what you're probably used to."

The Indian girl in question lives in the United States, speaks English, and wouldn't know Sanskrit even if she lived in India, where less than 1% of the population speaks it as a primary language.

Apart from being an expert on Languages That Indians Don't Really Speak, Camarotta also fancies herself a bit of a "player" in matters of national security and geopolitics.

Posted by Ace at 08:30 PM Comments

Matthew Continetti Gets It, Finally: What if the Political Class Knows Absolutely Nothing About Anything?

—Ace

Continetti had been a populist critic of the puffed-up, jumped-up false elites, but then backed off that position in reaction (I speculate) to Trump's populist victory.

But he seems to be permitting himself to get it again.

Events are turning me into a radical skeptic. I no longer believe what I read, unless what I am reading is an empirically verifiable account of the past. I no longer have confidence in polls, because it has become impossible to separate the signal from the noise. What I have heard from the media and political class over the last several years has been so spectacularly proven wrong by events, again and again, that I sometimes wonder why I continue to read two newspapers a day before spending time following journalists on Twitter. Habit, I guess. A sense of professional obligation, I suppose. Maybe boredom.
The fact is that almost the entirety of what one reads in the paper or on the web is speculation. The writer isn't telling you what happened, he is offering an interpretation of what happened, or offering a projection of the future. The best scenario is that these theories are novel, compelling, informed, and based on reporting and research. But that is rarely the case. More often the interpretations of current events, and prophesies of future ones, are merely the products of groupthink or dogma or emotions or wish-casting, memos to friends written by 27-year-olds who, in the words of Ben Rhodes, "literally know nothing." There was a time when newspapers printed astrology columns. They no longer need to. The pseudoscience is on the front page.

...

"Like a bearded nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel good, not reporting hard facts," Michael Crichton once said. "We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. It's not sensible to listen to it."

Don Surber coincidentally has a piece demonstrating that they're literally always wrong about everything, noting that they have learned absolutely nothing since November.

That's not just laziness. Even a lazy person learns by osmosis.

To actively reject all information is a purposeful exertion. They're remaining proudly ignorant as a demonstration of mule-headed willful stupidity.

Posted by Ace at 06:04 PM Comments

The National Laughingstock: Our Deep State Embeds and Criminal Leakers Have Exposed Major US Covert Operation to Infect Russian Computer Networks with Malware

—Ace

Obama secretly ordered cyberweapons planted in Russian networks. It will be up to Trump whether to use them. https://t.co/FUlcL79Uq0
— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) June 23, 2017

There apparently is only one Law the Deep State follows now: Get Trump.

Rather than reading the article, see Comrade Arthur's thoughts about this being primarily a blame-shifting exercise excusing Obama from acting: Obama didn't deploy his weapons, but Trump is somehow to be blamed for following Obama's lead.

I guess that makes Trump a Russian stooge -- but not Obama, for some reason.

In any event, it's pretty clear that serious natsec secrets are being leaked here, and there must be a legal reckoning.

Posted by Ace at 05:05 PM Comments

Love Trumps Hate, They Threatened: Swishy Bankrupt Actor Most Famous For Silly Hats and Stupid Accents Dreams About Assassinating the President

—Ace

The name "Johnny Depp" is synonymous for "late in age one-note formerly famous person who is broke and is now making even more awful movies than he used to.

So now he's musing about the last time an actor killed a president, and wondering if it isn't time for another one to do the same.

The Secret Service should take this seriously -- Johnny Depp has been alleged to have a history of violence, though usually against women even smaller than himself.

The Black Mass actor split [with Amber Heard] last year amid accusations he was abusive, and although he has always denied the claims, The Management Group (TMG) stated they knew he was 'volatile' in filings submitted as part of their ongoing legal battle with their famous former client.
In documents submitted this week, the company said: 'During his recent divorce from Amber Heard, Depp publicly and repeatedly denied having physically assaulted his former wife and accused her of manufacturing the allegations to 'extend her 15 minutes of fame'.

'However, [TMG were] informed well after the fact through communications with various house staff and security that Depp had been extremely volatile and sometimes "gotten physical" with Heard. [They] were also later informed that Depp had violently kicked Heard during an incident that took place in or around 2014.'

During the bitter divorce battle, Amber made public texts she had exchanged with the 54-year-old star's assistant, in which the employee apologised for his boss' behaviour, but the actor denied the texts were real - a claim which TMG dispute.

Heard later settled for $7 million, with no party admitting fault.This article mentions other instances of Depp's alleged "volatility."

The deal came on the eve of a hearing scheduled to begin on Wednesday and last five days, unleashing combative, high-priced lawyers to battle over lurid claims of jealous paranoia, drunken rages, manipulative greed and a severed fingertip.
Heard, 30, filed for divorce in May and obtained a temporary restraining order, alleging her Oscar-nominated husband assaulted her after a drunken argument in their LA apartment. Her filing said Depp, 53, “began obsessing over something that wasn’t true” and “became extremely angry”, throwing a phone at Heard, striking her cheek and eye “with extreme force”.

A separate statement from a friend of Heard’s who witnessed the scene, Raquel Pennington, supported Heard’s version, including a description of Depp swinging a magnum-sized bottle of wine “like a baseball bat”.

Heard, who stars in the upcoming London Fields, supplied photographs of her bruised face and smashed wine bottles and said the incident fit a pattern of abuse, including a violent row in Australia which disrupted filming of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Io Tillett Wright, another friend of Heard’s, wrote in an essay for Refinery 29: “The reports of violence started with a kick on a private plane, then it was shoves and the occasional punch, until finally, in December, she described an all-out assault and she woke up with her pillow covered in blood. I know this because I went to their house. I saw the pillow with my own eyes. I saw the busted lip and the clumps of hair on the floor.”

Apparently the "severed fingertip" claim went like this: Depp accidentally severed the tip of his finger when raging about his suspicions that Heard was having an affair with much-more-manly actor Billy Bob Thornton. So he "dipped the stump" into blue ink and wrote "Billy Bob" and "Easy Amber" on a mirror.

Which isn't crazy or worrying at all, and the Secret Service should definitely not take a long look at this "volatile," drunk, financially distressed asshole.

We have nothing to fear from broken drunks with Nothing Left to Lose.

Posted by Ace at 03:53 PM Comments

Senate Announces Probe Into Loretta Lynch's Possible Interference in Email Matter During 2016 Election

—Ace

Notice the media doesn't want to talk about the interference that's actually evidenced.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has opened a probe into former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s efforts to shape the FBI's investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the committee’s chairman announced Friday.
In a letter to Ms. Lynch, the committee asks her to detail the depths of her involvement in the FBI's investigation, including whether she ever assured Clinton confidantes that the probe wouldn’t "push too deeply into the matter."

Fired FBI Director James B. Comey has said publicly that Ms. Lynch tried to shape the way he talked about the investigation into Mrs. Clinton's emails, and he also hinted at other behavior "which I cannot talk about yet" that made him worried about Ms. Lynch's ability to make impartial decisions.

Remember, the leftist media all reported that email between Lynch's confidantes claiming she wouldn't let the investigation get too far was "faked" or "forged" - these anonymous leakers swearing it, but not publicly -- but Comey himself gave no indications he thought the emails were faked.

The FBI never asked the writer of the email nor the addressee if it was "forged" by the Russians or real.

Maybe it's time for someone to ask them that, under oath.

Posted by Ace at 02:27 PM Comments

Court Dismisses 14 of 15 Charges in the Persecution of Those Who Exposed the Trade in Organs of Aborted Babies

—Ace

When you charge someone with 15 counts, and 14 of them are so obviously without merit a judge dismisses them pre-trial, it shows the prosecution to be a politically motivated exercise in weaponized government.

On Wednesday the San Francisco Superior Court tossed for lack of evidence 14 of 15 criminal charges against journalists who recorded high-level Planned Parenthood employees discussing trafficking the body parts of aborted babies, reports LifeSiteNews. California’s Department of Justice says it will re-file the charges within the ten-day deadline for providing more evidence.
...

As a Democratic member of Congress, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra received thousands of dollars in campaign donations both from Planned Parenthood and fellow abortion promoter NARAL. His predecessor, whose department initiated the action, received $81,000 from Planned Parenthood for her campaigns.

In May, another California judge, who had contributed a quarter of a million dollars to former president Barack Obama’s campaign, slapped Merritt and Daleiden with contempt charges for releasing another video despite a restraining order. Their attorneys say the videos are already public thanks to their opponents’ public court filings, and the already released videos remain on CMP’s YouTube page.

In April, California’s Department of Justice raided Daleiden’s home and seized the recordings.

Posted by Ace at 01:32 PM Comments

Nebraska State Democrat Official: I Wish Our Leftwing Assassin Had Succeeded in Murdering Steve Scalise

—Ace

The official has been removed from her post, but that wouldn't be enough if he were a Republican.

The recording was made during a conversation between Montag, party official Chelsey Gentry-Tipton and a friend of hers. Gentry-Tipton faced criticism last week for saying the GOP members of Congress crying about the shooting on television were funny because they supported the National Rifle Association’s agenda.

"I'm glad he got shot," Montag says in the recording. "I'm not gonna (expletive) say that in public."

"Well then what are you saying it to us for?" someone else in the recording asks.

"I wish he was (expletive) dead," Montag replies.

Here's the thing: The media milks one-day bad stories about Republicans into two, three, or four day stories by adding on secondary, follow-up, and spin-off stories. The easiest and most obvious way to milk a one-day story into multiple days is to turn to asking each and every Republican in the world if he denounces the person in question, and if he himself has contributed to the "Climate of X" that (unstated assumption offered with no evidence) caused the Recent Unpleasantness.

By doing so, you not only keep the story alive, so that more people hear about it, as it dominates all media chatter, but you subconsiously link the bad story involving one Republican to all Republicans.

This is deliberate.

But notice that the press never does that for Democrats. No one in the press -- not even in the conservative press -- will be asking Democrats if they denounce this Democrats' death-wishes, and if they think that Democrat hate-speech has encouraged this death-wish-speech, and if death-wish-speech encourages all the political violence on the left.

The media knows how to make a one-day bad story for one Republican into a weeklong bad story for all Republicans.

It also knows how to make a one-day bad story for a Democrat a half-day story about a minor office-holder of unknown party affiliation.

Corrected: I incorrectly wrote "she" when referring to Montag. The article identifies him as male, but who knows any more.

Posted by Ace at 12:31 PM Comments

I Never Knew This Had A Name

—OregonMuse

Feminist: All men are rapists.

OregonMuse: What, are you high? You know that's complete bullshit.

Feminist: No, it's not, it's why we need feminism -- to smash the patriarchy.

OregonMuse: Feminism is bullshit.

Feminist: You're obviously a h8r. "Feminism is the radical proposition that women are people, too." How could you be against that?

-----

Do you see what the feminist did there? She led with a controversial, hard-to-defend statement, and then, when pressed, retreated to a safe, no-sane-person-can-be-against-this platitude. And then pretended the two are the same. I've seen this in one form or another for years and it's just infuriating. But I never knew until about an hour ago that it has a name.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold, the Motte and Bailey trick:

Motte and bailey (MAB) is a combination of bait-and-switch and equivocation in which someone switches at will between a "motte" (an easy-to-defend and often common-sense statement, such as "culture shapes our experiences") and a "bailey" (a hard-to-defend and more controversial statement, such as "cultural knowledge is just as valid as scientific knowledge") in order to defend their viewpoint. Someone will "support" the easy-to-defend (motte) temporarily, to ward off critics, but does not actually believe what they're saying. The "difficult" (bailey) version always remains the desired belief, but is never actually defended. For all intents and purposes, the MAB'er is defending a "ghost" belief.

So MAB is a specie of the genus "bait and switch." I found this graphic on Twitter that illustrates the MAB with a couple of examples:

Posted by OregonMuse at 11:31 AM Comments

Mid-Morning Open Thread

—CBD

Scène de fête
Giovanni Boldini

And from the Cookbook committee:

We are looking for some Horde artists to do some pen-and-ink drawings for our Moron cookbook. We don't need the art just yet until we find out the file lay-outs required by the printer, but we would like to collect some names of artists who might be interested. They can email Weasel and Bluebell at the email address at the cookbook link, which is shared by both of us: recipes at moroncookbook dot com

Posted by CBD at 09:30 AM Comments

The Morning Report 6/23/17

—J.J. Sefton

Good morning, kids. The weekend is here once again and the top story is the rolling out of the Senate Obamacare Repeal/Replace Bill. As expected, there's no repeal and the replace component essentially anchors the original 2010 monstrosity in our lives for all time. On a positive note, McYertle apparently does not have votes to move it forward and there will be amendments. Thankfully, Cruz, Paul and Lee are in the mix so that at least some of the more odious, economy-killing, freedom-killing aspects of this disaster are removed. To be sure, no matter what, parts of the original are here to stay. As someone once said, the one thing that you can never destroy is an entrenched government bureaucracy, but perhaps it can be made as benign as possible. Obviously, the Democrats are fueling the fires of more violence claiming millions will die in the streets if it passes. I would not be surprised if someone, somewhere steps forward and threatens GOP lawmakers with death if the bill becomes law. And Obama opened his cake-hole because the one good thing about this is that if it passes, there goes the single most important legacy of his 8-year reign of error. Amazingly, he's so wrapped up in his own little world that he doesn't appreciate the fact that a good sized chunk of his original namesake poison will no doubt continue to course through the veins of an atrophying America, perhaps forever. Meh, screw him to Hell.

If you look past our rage at and disappointment in the party that is allegedly ours, the Democrats are in absolute free fall. The Robert Mugabe Leadership of octogenarians has no clue about how to deal with PDT and who he represents; us. Their puppet masters in the MFM are equally clueless as are the cadres in academia and the culture complex. To them, it's all about the messaging and not their message itself. As Ive said before, if we only had a fraction of support from the GOP, the Democrats could become less relevant than "The Rent Is Too Damn High." But as we have seen from this insult from McYertle and Ryno, their interest is in preserving the power of the State. What a crying shame. But, thank G-d for Donald J. Trump.

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

Posted by J.J. Sefton at 07:00 AM Comments

ONT-88 Lines About 44 Congressmen

—WeirdDave

Kamala was an AG once
Bent the law to her own whim
Cory was a different type
He invented all his friends
Charlie was an orange guy
I've never seen a tan like that
Charles avoided taxes
claimed he couldn't do the math