westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
Crawford H. "Chet" Taylor served as the 14th governor of South Dakota, from 1949 to 1951. Taylor was born on July 23, 1915, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and he grew up in nearby Flandreau. Taylor attended the University of South Dakota, where he earned a law degree.
Of course, this is ChatGPT "hallucinating" again. Chet Taylor not only was never elected governor of South Dakota, no such person ever existed.
While Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is announcing incomprehensibly expensive AI supercomputers at Computex, the actual results of generative AI - in the field of language and information, where all the interest and the big money is right now - are frankly, shit.
Things are looking much better when it comes to AI-generated art, because there the look of the thing is what matters. Is that a period-accurate representation of 2nd century Rome in the background behind the topless gladiatrix? Nobody cares, so long as it looks good.
Well, one person cares. We'll get to him.
And Chet Taylor looks good too. He's just not real. And since ChatGPT can't sustain a hallucination long enough to form a coherent short story, just for a couple of paragraphs, it's utterly valueless.
Nvidia still has a valuation greater than AMD and Intel combined, but at least one corner of that market cap is built on sand.
Xiaoxing Xi was arrested in 2015 on charges of fraud related to economic espionage, but the case folded like a damp tissue when it went to court thanks to the FBI basically just making shit up.
You'd only buy a PCIe 5 SSD if you needed the absolute best speed you can get, and most of the time you'd be better off with a regular PCIe 4 SSD with a DRAM cache than a more expensive PCIe 5 model without.
That One Person Who Cares Video of the Day
He actually discusses the historicity of topless Roman gladiatrices in another video (spoiler: they were real, and spectacular). Here he's just debunking the notion - nearly Jaynesian in its vapidity - that the ancient Greeks couldn't see the colour blue.
Well-researched and well-argued, including a deconstruction of an old RadioLab episode that I had assumed was largely accurate. He is careful to address the argument rather than attacking the arguer except in the case of the BBC, who just made shit up and fully deserve it.
Disclaimer: It's doesn't look blue, it just looks like it looks blue.
Although my family has been spared the anguish of losing a loved one in war, my childhood best friend (“Buddy”) had an uncle killed in Vietnam in 1967. More specifically, Buddy’s mother lost her kid brother, Jack, in Vietnam. She was my “emergency backup mother” while I was growing up, and is still a part of my life.
Buddy was too young to remember Jack or his death, but Uncle Jack’s pictures were on the wall, and he was held in reverence in that family.
As the 1970s became the 1980s, Jack seemed to now be a person from another era, rarely discussed except on Memorial Day, and far removed from the life of his surviving sister and her family.
But in the early 1990s, by which time Buddy and I were young adults, our families decided to have a multi-family, multi-generational vacation at a beach house on the Gulf Coast.
Joining us from out of state were Buddy’s grandparents…Jack’s parents.
It was in that beach house that I came to fully understood their pain and loss. 25 years after losing his only son, Grandfather still talked about Jack constantly. He told us about Jack’s character, his heart, and his patriotism. He told us what a great father Jack would have been, and how he wished that Buddy had cousins from Uncle Jack here at the beach with us.
When Buddy, my dad, and I headed out fishing one day, Grandfather told us that Jack would have loved to join us.
At grace before supper each night, Grandfather thanked God for the years Jack was in their lives, and prayed that He would hold Jack in his loving embrace until the family eventually reunited in Heaven.
Grandfather talked about the war and the circumstance of Jack’s death, striving to find the words to assure himself that Jack’s death was not in vain.
Grandmother cried several times during the vacation, still heartbroken about losing her son 25 years prior.
Their pain only ended when they left this earthly realm. I pray that they are now reunited with Jack. Buddy’s mother still grieves the brother she lost 56 years ago.
We are so blessed that there are men like Jack who selflessly gave their lives for our country. May God give comfort to their survivors, and provide us guidance to make such heartbreaking deaths less common.
*****
Here is Jimmy Fortune joining Daily & Vincent in More Than A Name On The Wall
I saw her from a distance
As she walked up to the wall
In her hand she held some flowers
As her tears began to fall
And she took out pen and paper
As to trace her memories
And she looked up to heaven
And the words she said were these...
(Chorus)
She said Lord my boy was special,
And he meant so much to me
And Oh I'd love to see him
Just one more time you see
All I have are the memories
And the moments to recall
So Lord could you tell him,
He's more than a name on a wall.
She said he really missed the family
And being home on Christmas day
And he died for God and Country
In a place so far away
I remember just a little boy
Playing war since he was three
But Lord this time I know,
He's not coming home to me
(Chorus)
*****
The Statler Brothers released Silver Medals and Sweet Memories in 1977, 34 years after the subject of this song was widowed in World War II. There are still many WWII widows among us, plus widows from all the wars that followed. Blessings to them all.
Just a picture on a table
Just some letters Mama saved
And a costume broach from England
On the back it has engraved:
“To Eileen, I love you;
London, nineteen forty-three”
And she never heard from him again
And he never heard of me
(Chorus)
And the war still ain't over for Mama
Every night in her dreams she still sees
The young face of someone who left her
Silver medals and sweet memories
In Mama's bedroom closet
To this day on her top shelf
There's a flag folded three-corner
Laying all by itself
And the sergeant would surely be honored
To know how pretty she still is
And that after all these lonely years
His Eileen's still his
(Chorus)
*****
How about one more song honoring loved ones whom we dearly miss after they gave their lives for our country. This is Kathy Mattea singing the Civil War era song The Vacant Chair
We shall meet but we shall miss him.
There will be one vacant chair.
We shall linger to caress him
While we breathe our evening prayer.
When a year ago we gathered,
Joy was in his mild blue eye.
Now the golden cord is severed,
And our hopes in ruin lie.
(Chorus)
We shall meet, but we shall miss him.
There will be one vacant chair.
We shall linger to caress him
When we breathe our evening prayer.
At our fireside, sad and lonely,
Often will the bosom swell
At remembrance of the story
How our noble Willie fell.
How he strove to bear our banner
Through the thickest of the fight
And uphold our country’s honor
In the strength of manhood’s might.
(Chorus)
*****
Let’s end tonight with a flyover in the Missing Man Formation.
Repost: A Very Special Guest Post from Tom Friedman
—Ace
A Conversation With a Cabbie and What It Tells Us About The Next Several Minutes of My Life
by Tom Friedman Special Guest Columnist for Ace of Spades HQ
I was talking to my cabbie in Cairo, making idle chit-chat as we threaded our way through a colorful and boisterous bazaar, what the locals call a souk, when I pointed out how the world is becoming more interconnected every second.
Then, he stabbed me.
As the blade slipped between my ribs, it occurred to me the rubber of the knife's handle was made in Brazil, and the steel crafted in Japan. Much like the gaudy wares on display at the souk outside the red-flecked windows, my backseat butchering was a glorious melange of the intersection of ideas at the great crossroads of the world.
As my cabbie continued to stab at my torso, I pondered that this moment was made possible by what I call "the pollenization of possibility."
Consider: It required the melding of three cultures, Brazilian, Japanese, and Egyptian, to produce the perforation in my Minnesota-made kidney. It was as if the grand viziers of thought and the great moguls of trade had conspired for years to come together into the red-tipped point of my itinerant assassin's dagger.
You can see this everywhere in the world, in "American" cars with parts made in Japan and largely assembled in Mexico, or in the latest "killer" app, conceived in Silicon Valley but coded in Seoul.
The pace of cross-pollenization and adaptation is unstoppable and ever-increasing, much like the crazed murder-tempo of my assailant's unexpected blood-frenzy.
I hold up my hands in defense, like those "left behind" in the New Economy, trying to protect themselves from the incoming sharp edge of disruptive change. Though, in my case, I was actually trying to protect myself from the incoming the sharp edge of stabbing.
But, just as ideas from far-away cultures penetrate our society, the blade cuts into me like a viral meme, or perhaps a catchy Bollywood song.
But one of those songs that plunges deeply into the meat of your palm and severs the nerves to your fingers.
I cry out to passers-by for help, but just like those left behind by globalization, they are heedless of the changes happening all around them.
Finally, I catch their attention. Then they begin stabbing me too.
As the crowd gathers around me with knives and antiquated farm implements, some scratch-made, some from the nuevas factorias of Veracruz, it strikes to me that I am witnessing what I call the "sudden inevitable."
In my book The Sudden Inevitable, I trace how events that overtake us have percolated in the collective unconscious for decades, even centuries.
This guy just cut off my foot with a shovel.
Ideas are pregnant in the ether before any human speaks them aloud, much like the idea of stabbing me to death has long percolated (I suspect) in the collective mind of my closest confreres.
And thus, as I lie wet and wriggling upon the ground, this conclave of multicultural avatars pulling off my pants and leaving me naked to the waist for God knows what reason, I think about the quickening pulse of international concourse, and how it matches my own quickening pulse, as my heartbeat becomes fast, weak, and thready due to rapid exsanguination. Something of the world has been lost, and it will not be returning any time soon.
Rather like my foot, which I see now has been placed upon a table in the souk and is now being offered for sale at the price of one pound, sixty piastres. I'm rather proud that the foot of a simple man from the farms of Minnesota should command such a lofty price in this place, this chattering beehive of a bazaar where the locals come to haggle over bolts of cotton and baskets of taro, and where Westerners come to be butchered and stripped down for their organs.
And their foot.
I cannot speak any longer. My microrecorder (made in the Netherlands) is almost full. Oh bugger, they just took that too
In February 2021, a long article in Time magazine by journalist Molly Ball celebrated the "Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election." Biden's victory, wrote Ball, was the result of a "conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes" that drew together "a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election" in an "extraordinary shadow effort." Among the many accomplishments of the heroic conspirators, Ball notes, they "successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears." It is an incredible article, like an entry from the crime blotter that somehow got slipped into the society pages, a paean to the saviors of democracy that describes in detail how they dismembered it.
Not so long ago, talk of a "deep state" was enough to mark a person as a dangerous conspiracy theorist to be summarily flagged for monitoring and censorship. But language and attitudes evolve, and today the term has been cheekily reappropriated by supporters of the deep state. For instance, a new book, American Resistance, by neoliberal national security analyst David Rothkopf, is subtitled The Inside Story of How the Deep State Saved the Nation.
The deep state refers to the power wielded by unelected government functionaries and their paragovernmental adjuncts who have administrative power to override the official, legal procedures of a government. But a ruling class describes a social group whose members are bound together by something deeper than institutional position: their shared values and instincts. While the term is often used loosely and sometimes as a pejorative rather than a descriptive label, in fact the American ruling class can be simply and straightforwardly defined.
Two criteria define membership in the ruling class. First, as Michael Lind has written, it is made up of people who belong to a "homogeneous national oligarchy, with the same accent, manners, values, and educational backgrounds from Boston to Austin and San Francisco to New York and Atlanta." America has always had regional elites; what is unique about the present is the consolidation of a single, national ruling class.
Second, to be a member of the ruling class is to believe that only other members of your class can be allowed to lead the country. That is to say, members of the ruling class refuse to submit to the authority of anyone outside the group, whom they disqualify from eligibility by casting them as in some way illegitimate.
Faced with an external threat in the form of Trumpism, the natural cohesion and self-organizing dynamics of the social class were fortified by new top-down structures of coordination that were the goal and the result of Obama's national mobilization. In the run-up to the 2020 election, according to reporting by Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein for The Intercept, "tech companies including Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Wikipedia, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Verizon Media met on a monthly basis with the FBI, CISA, and other government representatives ... to discuss how firms would handle misinformation during the election."
Historian Angelo Codevilla, who popularized the concept of an American "ruling class" in a 2010 essay and then became its primary chronicler, saw the new, national aristocracy as an outgrowth of the opaque power acquired by the U.S. security agencies. "The bipartisan ruling class that grew in the Cold War, who imagined themselves and who managed to be regarded as entitled by expertise to conduct America's business of war and peace, protected its status against a public from which it continued to diverge by translating the commonsense business of war and peace into a private, pseudo-technical language impenetrable to the uninitiated," he wrote in his 2014 book, To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations.
What do the members of the ruling class believe? They believe, I argue, "in informational and management solutions to existential problems" and in their "own providential destiny and that of people like them to rule, regardless of their failures." As a class, their highest principle is that they alone can wield power. If any other group were to rule, all progress and hope would be lost, and the dark forces of fascism and barbarism would at once sweep back over the earth. While technically an opposition party is still permitted to exist in the United States, the last time it attempted to govern nationally, it was subjected to a yearslong coup. In effect, any challenge to the authority of the ruling party, which represents the interests of the ruling class, is depicted as an existential threat to civilization.
An admirably direct articulation of this outlook was provided recently by famous atheist Sam Harris. Throughout the 2010s, Harris' higher-level rationalism made him a star on YouTube, where thousands of videos showcased him "owning" and "pwning" religious opponents in debates. Then Trump arrived. Harris, like so many others who saw in the former president a threat to all that was good in the world, abandoned his principled commitment to the truth and became a defender of propaganda.
In a podcast appearance last year, Harris acknowledged the politically motivated censorship of reporting related to Hunter Biden's laptops and admitted "a left-wing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump." But, echoing Ball, he declared this a good thing.
"I don't care what's in the Hunter Biden laptop. ... Hunter Biden could have had corpses of children in his basement, and I would not have cared," Harris told his interviewers. He could overlook the murdered children because an even greater danger lurked in the possibility of Trump's reelection, which Harris compared to "an asteroid hurtling toward Earth."
With an asteroid hurtling toward Earth, even the most principled rationalists might end up asking for safety over truth. But an asteroid has been falling toward Earth every week for years now. The pattern in these cases is that the ruling class justifies taking liberties with the law to save the planet but ends up violating the Constitution to hide the truth and protect itself.
Doc_0: You Can't Libertarian Your Way Out of Tyranny
—Ace
John Hayward
@Doc_0
Libertarians and small-government conservatives may not like it, but the cold truth is that reforming a titanic mega-government is impossible without amassing and using State power. You have to play the game, and play to win. Your adversaries most certainly do.
You have to play the game at every level, too. It's important to organize at the local level and win state and county races, but that doesn't count for much in the long run if the gigantic central government is wholly run by aggressive totalitarian statists.
Totalitarian ideologies prosper by exploiting the natural desire of dissidents to be left alone. They don't like win-at-all-costs politics. They fear corruption. They aren't looking to impose their views on others by force. They're focused on family and individual achievement.
But totalitarians LOVE all of those things. They absolutely do want to impose their views on others by force, and they do whatever it takes to amass the government and corporate power to do so. They laugh as the desire to be left alone gives them isolated targets to pick off.
When the totalitarian Left was out of power, it spent decades mocking the notion of teaching positive "values" in school or transmitting them through culture. Those who value liberty and individualism, who want to be left alone, were easily bullied into silence by these lectures.
But the instant the totalitarian Left gained power, it began constructing gigantic government and corporate machines to transmit ITS values. Culture became the endless, dreary woke scolding we're accustomed to now. Private employees are force-marched into indoctrination sessions.
Clearly the Left never believed for an instant that values cannot be transmitted, or that the State should not "impose morals" on citizens. It only needed to bully ordinary people into silence for a decade or so, until it gained total control over government and capital.
Totalitarianism is a game you cannot elect not to play. You can't hide from it. You cannot impress totalitarians by showing them how YOU refuse to compromise your libertarian principles. There are no cease-fires, no safe areas, no holy ground where swords cannot be drawn.
The deeper problem is that you cannot reform a titanic, aggressive, totalitarian State by simply winning elections now and then. Lord knows everyone should see that clearly by now. You have to develop the political infrastructure necessary to exploit electoral victory.
That's the part of the game libertarians naturally shy away from, but if you win elections without a deep bench of dedicated, energetic, skilled professionals ready to sweep into the bureaucracy and implement your programs, you'll be easily thwarted by the permanent State.
The Left has such armies constantly ready to roll, with reinforcements on standby. It has institutions, both private and funded by taxpayer dollars, that exist primarily to keep left-wing officials and bureaucrats paid and ready for the next Democrat administration.
Of course sincere small-government conservatives recoil from such endeavors. They don't want to siphon off tax dollars to finance ideological armies and crusades. They don't dream of conquering the federal bureaucracy. That's the kind of thing they oppose on principle.
Most people with libertarian leanings are very leery of anything that smacks of "imposing values" on others. It's why they fell so easily into the "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" trap the Left built for them, while Lefty ran wild building his indoctrination machine.
But as we've learned painfully over the course of the post-Reagan era, if you don't fight to defend and transmit your values, the totalitarians will enshrine and forcibly transmit THEIRS. The only two options in a "culture war" against totalitarians are fight and surrender.
That means you have to develop institutions that can protect and transmit your values - and you have to build aggressive institutions that can win, and ruthlessly USE, central political power. If you don't take and hold ground, you will be conquered, simple as that.
We're far past the point where the march to totalitarian - and, increasingly, authoritarian - centralized power and national ruin can be won by playing defense. We need leaders who will pick important fights, win them, and exploit their victories with gusto.
And we need generals with bureaucratic armies lined up behind them, not just a few charismatic vote-getters or skilled rhetoricians. Not people who can win arguments, but people who can win battles - and who know how to use those victories.
The Left realized long ago that whining about tactics is transitory. With titanic amounts of money and power at stake, what matters is the victory. That money can be spent to change people's lives, to hire more bureaucrats, to build ideological machinery that lasts for decades.
Look at any corrupt cesspool on Earth, and you'll see honest people backing completely away from politics because they're disgusted, they fear they would themselves become corrupted if they participate, and they think defeating the entrenched power cartel is impossible.
Can you grapple with a monster without becoming a monster? Yes, with faith and discipline - but in any event, you MUST. If you don't get into the game, you will lose. You must control the State to make it smaller. Ride the Leviathan, or you will be devoured by it. /end
Kyle Shideler noticed that The Regime has a funny ol' habit of framing people for the crimes they themselves are committing:
Just as Hillary Clinton needed an answer to her own national security investigation and dialed up the completely-invented "Trump is a Russian Agent" scam to deflect from her own crimes, so too is the DOJ now dialing up some Very Dangerous and Scary Pro-Life Protesters so you don't notice the antifa and Jane's Revenge firebombers.
Shideler:
In a very real way, the FBI jujitusing a rash of anarchist attacks against pro-lifers into a reason to investigate pro-lifers is very similar to the J6 situation & Russia Collusion Hoax before it.
For the better part of a year, anarchist and black identity extremists launched massive violent riots. 2 billion dollars in damage, numerous people killed. Serious people (AG Barr) were calling for seditious conspiracy prosecutions & POTUS was threatening the insurrection act.
The DOJ/FBI was being hammered on its failures to investigate and prosecute, including when anarchists like Lisa Fithian openly called for preparing to occupy govt buildings in the event the 2020 election didn't go their way.
So with J6 we see an overwhelming demand to use the term insurrection and for DOJ to charge seditious conspiracy (including using as evidence the fact defendants armed themselves against Antifa which had attacked numerous previous rallies in DC).
And before J6 with the Whitmer fednapping case. The story HAD to be about right wingers storming government buildings in a seditious conspiracy. Why? BECAUSE that is what the radicals on the left were being accused of and the accusation needed to be neutralized.
That's why J6 couldn't be the story of a rowdy protest that got out of hand. It needed to be about seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government and an insurrection --specifically those words.
Similarly with the Russia Collusion hoax. We think of the previous Clinton scandal as being about classified information. Which is true. But perhaps more importantly, Clinton was being accused of selling access, including to Russia.
[Link to TheHill.com article]
FBI's 37 secret pages of memos about Russia, Clintons and Uranium One
The FBI actually released a few documents -- but they were just already-public letters from members of Congress demanding answers in the Uranium One case.
It was therefore imperative that the DOJ investigate Trump for foreign ties, and not just any foreign ties. It needed to be Russia.
In each case, what you see is the FBI/DOJ coming under criticism by conservatives for failing to enforce the law. And each time the response was "oh yeah. We'll enforce it good and HARD. Against you."
Complain about firebombs at pregnancy centers. We'll arrest sidewalk counselors. Complain about a presidential candidate selling Uranium to Moscow, we'll claim yours was a Russian agent. Complain about insurrection? We'll show you insurrection.
We'll lose all of our rights so that 0.1% of the population can feel "validated" and "seen."
Oh -- and speech will be criminalized to protect immigrants, too.
LIMERICK, Ireland -- Ireland is on the verge of passing the most aggressive hate crime law in the European Union, which includes the first legal protections in the EU for transgender individuals. Government officials say the bill offers necessary protections at a time when immigration is on the rise and traditional ideas about sex and gender are being challenged.
>b>Critics counter that the bill's vague language could be used to enforce the increasingly progressive Irish government's increasingly woke agenda and forcibly muzzle critics of unpopular government policies.
The legislation, the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Act, underscores a divide between Ireland's leaders and many of its people. The bill is making its way through Parliament, winning approval last month in the Dáil Éireann, Ireland's lower chamber, by a vote of 110-14.
But Irish citizens, in a 2019 consultation phase, overwhelmingly expressed a worry that the proposal was an unnecessary expansion of the country's existing hate crimes law. Seventy-three percent of respondents took issue with the bill's potential for encroachment on free speech and questioned what qualifies as "hate speech," particularly asking who crafts that definition. Less than 25% of those polled approved of the legislation.
...
The ongoing controversy opens a window into how quickly Ireland, which only legalized abortion in 2018, is moving from its long religious traditions at a time when leaders in other European countries and the United States are seeking to create laws that punish not just deeds but thoughts.
Over the past 30 years or so, the Irish nation has become increasingly progressive. In 2015, the Emerald Isle legalized gay marriage, just two years after the progressive vanguard of France did the same. That same year, Ireland was ranked among the top 10 most LGBT-friendly nations in the world, and the present taoiseach (Ireland's word for prime minister) Leo Varadkar is openly gay. The proposed law would expand the 1989 law's purview by adding gender, sex, descent and disability to the list of protected categories, which already includes race, color, nationality, religion (including "the absence of a religious conviction or belief"), national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, or disability.
The bill treats not just public presentation or dissemination of material deemed hateful, but also private preparation or even storing of material deemed hateful, such as memes on your phone or books on your shelf. Individuals convicted on such charges face fines of up to €5,000 (about $5,400) and anywhere from six months to two years in prison. Furthermore, as McEntee noted, a conviction "will allow for the 'hate criminal' label to follow an offender in court, in garda [police] vetting, and so on... "
Paul Murphy, a member of the left-wing People Before Profit-Solidarity coalition, even warned the bill will legislate "the creation of a thought crime." Conservative chairman of the Irish Freedom Party Michael Leahy told RealClearInvestigations that the bill "represents the most far-reaching and invasive attack against civil and religious liberty enacted in any Western democracy since the Second World War."
Incredible. From "European Tiger" to communist gulag sh1thole in ten years.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chair of the Joint Chiefs General Milley Both Lie to Congress, Claiming the Military Doesn't Support Drag Queen Story Hours
—Ace
This is perjury. There are drag shows announced on the regular at military bases.
Both Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Milley, Chair of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, insist that the Department of Defense neither funds nor supports drag queen story hours on military bases.
That was and remains a lie. When presented with the evidence in a Congressional hearing Austin repeated the lie, even when confronted by incontrovertible evidence that he was spreading falsehoods.
He lied. Then he lied again. And again.
I have no idea if he was under oath, but it shouldn't matter. Lying to Congress and the American people is unacceptable, except when a Democrat is in the White House. Then it is apparently mandatory.
It doesn't matter. Whether they were under oath or not, lying to Congress is obstruction of Congress, and obstruction of Congress is the same process crime with the exact same penalty as perjury.
It is bad enough that the military is promoting "all-ages" drag shows, to begin with; it seems a bit at odds with what we would come to expect and perhaps is not conducive to the good order and discipline we expect from the military brass. I would have thought that such things would happen when the troops were on leave, not on base.
But promoting these shows to the children of the troops? I would have to assume that at least one or two of them might object, which suggests that perhaps the brass should stay out of the business of dealing in drag shows.
Usually the strip clubs are off base. At least it is that way in the movies.
The strip clubs continue to be off the base -- heterosexual sexual material remains taboo. It's only gay sexual material, particularly that intended to be enjoyed by children, which has had all taboos lifted.
Here's Gaetz, handing him a folder full of articles about DoD sponsored Drag Queen Story Hours.
But don't worry -- next time he's asked about this, he will claim to have "no awareness" of it again.
Gen. Milley asked @RepMattGaetz to give him the articles the congressman referenced on drag queen story hours and shows on military bases, claiming he was unaware of them.
Here is a photo of Gaetz taken by his staff of him physically handing Milley a folder of the articles… pic.twitter.com/5CJmPt5oL8
THE MORNING RANT: AB Distributor Abandons Bud Light to Promote Alternative Light Beer; Other Musings on Being a Franchisee/Distributor for a Woke Corporation
—Buck Throckmorton
You’ve read all the reports about the catastrophic drop in Bud Light sales since Anheuser Busch (AB InBev) slandered its loyal customers as being the wrong type of people, and then decided to make a celebrity cross-dresser the face of the product.
A major re-branding, or an all-new replacement light beer, is likely the resolution that AB will have to pursue.
A story from Tennessee shows just how damaged the Bud Light brand is. For decades, one of the stages at Chattanooga’s downtown summer music festival has been “The Bud Light Stage,” sponsored by the local AB distributor.
Change has been the name of the game for the Riverbend Festival in recent years, and the changes keep coming as the Bud Light Stage has been renamed the Ultra Stage.
Michelob Ultra is another light beer produced by AB. The change in the name of the stage’s sponsor was made at the request of the local AB distributor.
The rebranding of the “Bud Light Stage” to the “Ultra Stage” reflects more than just how toxic the Bud Light brand is. AB distributors need to sell beer, and any money spent promoting Bud Light is going to be wasted. While AB as a whole is being hit hard, its other brands are not as radioactive as Bud Light.
Selling Bud Light nowadays is like selling Ford Pintos in the late ‘70s, when that car’s reputation was permanently marred as being prone to gas tank explosions. Fair or not, Pintos became a joke, which was very difficult for the dealers trying to sell them. The arrival of the Ford Escort in 1980 was a re-birth for Ford and for its dealers.
Until AB comes out with a Bud Light replacement, it makes perfect sense for AB distributors to abandon any marketing efforts for Bud Light and instead use those dollars to steer disaffected customers to other AB products (or to competing products that they also distribute.)
*****
Fortunately for most Anheuser Busch distributors, they carry a wide array of products, so the death of just one label need not be a bankrupting event.
But it’s sad that those most invested in AB’s products aren’t the executives and marketers who are actively destroying the company in support of cultural communism. Distributors’ actual survival depends on AB remaining a major player in the beer industry. Destructive managers at AB will just get golden parachutes and move along.
Anheuser Busch’s CEO, Brendan Whitworth, is an Ivy Leaguer who worked at the CIA, and in just a few short years after hiring on at AB, he somehow leapfrogged all the AB lifers who were truly committed to the company. Under Whitworth’s leadership, AB hired more Ivy Leaguers - who openly discuss their contempt for Budweiser’s actual customers - to remake the company into something that would impress the communists in Davos. Thus, Alissa Heinerscheid was hired to insult Bud Light drinkers and to make its image more gender fluid.
Budweiser distributors need AB to be successful. Whitworth and Heinerscheid don’t. If their mismanagement completely destroys AB in the United States, they will still be feted in Davos and have any number of opportunities to further enrich themselves in the government / globalist nexus.
As I’ve pointed out several times, this same situation is playing out at Ford and General Motors. The CEOs of Ford (Jim Farley) and GM (Mary Barra) have committed that those companies will be electric vehicle manufacturers, period. Failure at the EV business will mean the failure of Ford and GM.
But again, Farley and Barra will be globalist celebrities even when their EV efforts go bust. Perversely, they would face shame from their globalist peers if they steered their companies to prosperity by making internal combustion vehicles and shunning EVs.
When Ford and GM are bankrupt, and when its abandoned dealerships litter the landscape, Farley and Barra will still be held up as the ideal for corporate executives.
So what should you do if you are a Ford or GM dealer, or an AB InBev distributor?
If it were me, I would sell my franchise. You don’t have to place your financial fate in the hands of cultural communists who hate your customers and who will personally prosper from destroying the product that you sell. Anyone who buys your franchise can do the risk analysis and if he chooses to buy your operation, he will have made a risk / reward decision.
It’s not that much different than the housing decision many of us have made in our lives. We see our neighborhood, or our schools, or our city deteriorating. We had hoped things would improve, but finally decided it was best to sell. Meanwhile, the buyer determined that at the price he was paying, the risk of crime or deteriorating property values was one he’d take.
Good luck to franchisees of woke corporations. That’s a dependency I would not want right now.
Personally, I’m cheering for woke capital to suffer a mighty backlash, be it Target, AB InBev, GM, etc. If they go out of business, I won’t grieve their passing. I’m sorry for the franchisees and distributors of their products. I presume they were pushing back against the woke insanity, but clearly they didn’t push back hard enough to make a difference.
Good morning, kids. So congratulations, I guess, to Kevin McCarthy for the big "win" in the debt ceiling standoff. Evidently Joey Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants caved and there will be spending cuts in exchange for adding another $1.5 trillion to the national debt. About the only thing that you can give credit for is that it's a political/propaganda win for McCarthy since the Dems were hell bent to dig in their jackboots on this to prevent the "crash of the economy" if we defaulted.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news for these raving loons but the economy is on the high speed rail line to destruction and there's nothing that can stop it. If only that rail line were like the real thing and a boondoggle that never gets built. And as for spending cuts, I'll be the first to admit that I haven't the sitzfleisch to go through that mountain of paper/pixels to see if any real cuts are there, as opposed to merely cuts in the rate at which spending and borrowing increases. There are never any real cuts. Ever. Hence, being how many tens of trillions in the hole.
Kevin McCarthy trumpeted a debt-ceiling deal Sunday, but increasing debt another $4 trillion with minimal concessions is nothing to boast about.
To be fair, the House speaker has a razor slim majority and Republicans don’t control the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his sidekick Lindsey Graham have announced that the only thing they care about is Ukraine.
But McCarthy’s one dealbreaker should have been his promise to defund President Biden’s massive $80 billion to turbocharge an already weaponized IRS.
This was the totemic centerpiece of his pitch to become speaker.
It was the most memorable promise of the Republicans’ midterm campaign to win back the House.
It struck a chord with voters, wary of funding a new “army” of armed IRS agents to harass middle-class families and small business owners and abuse their powers to target political dissidents, Soviet-style.
“Our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” McCarthy vowed. “You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you.” Sure enough, the House voted 221-210 to repeal the extra IRS funding. “Promises made,” the newly minted speaker said Jan. 9, banging the gavel on the first bill of the Republican-controlled House.
What about promises kept? In the debt-ceiling deal outlined Sunday and due to be inked later this week, McCarthy has allowed the lion’s share of that extra IRS funding to remain unmolested: preserving $78.1 billion of the $80 billion. As rebel GOP Rep Dan Bishop put it: “So there will be 85,260 more IRS agents rather than 87,000 to eat you alive. Big win.”
Overpromising and underdelivering is what turns voters off the GOP.
You don’t mount a powerful six-month fear campaign about 87,000 new, armed IRS agents ready to break down people’s doors, and then meekly capitulate at the first sign of resistance. Even if those fears were exaggerated, your credibility rests on delivering a lot more than 2% of what you promised. In any case the fears about a weaponized IRS targeting Biden’s opponents are very real. If anything, the IRS is worse today than it was during the Obama administration, when Lois Lerner presided over the targeted harassment of Tea Party groups and other conservatives. Not a single IRS employee was held accountable for the scandal. Lerner retired on a full pension without even a slap on the wrist.
This is the same IRS which went after journalist Matt Taibbi last December, three weeks after he started reporting on the so-called “Twitter Files,” which revealed that censorship on the social-media platform had been coordinated by federal government agencies such as the FBI and CIA. On March 9, when Taibbi was testifying in Congress about, ironically enough, the weaponization of the federal government, IRS agents showed up unannounced at his New Jersey home. The IRS file on Taibbi was opened the day he posted his ninth and most explosive Twitter file, detailing how agencies including the Pentagon and the State Department had colluded with Twitter to stifle dissent. It was Christmas Eve, a Saturday, which shows what an unusual priority it was for an agency that normally goes to sleep for two weeks over Christmas and whose standard work week is Monday through Friday.
Under questioning from Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, the IRS has claimed it had concerns about “identity fraud” with Taibbi’s 2018 and 2021 tax returns, and that he was sent two letters before the home visit. Yet Taibbi says he and his accountant never received any letters. Even more “unnerving” as Taibbi puts it, was the fact that an IRS case agent had compiled a dossier on him which included personal information such as his voter registration records and whether he had a concealed-weapons permit or a hunting or fishing license. Unlike Hunter Biden, Taibbi didn’t owe the IRS any taxes and in fact was due a refund. . .
. . . This is the IRS that is still getting almost $80 billion of taxpayer money to double down on its malfeasance in the countdown to the 2024 election — with the benign approval of the House Republicans who promised to stop it.
While the details of the agreement are still being ironed out, and congressional leaders still have to convince their Members to vote for it, some on the top Republicans in Washington, D.C., are not happy with the agreement.
“There are members of the GOP claiming Democrats got nothing from the ‘deal.’ Oh really? 1) An uncapped debt ceiling with an expiration date – worth approximately $4 trillion…? 2) basically no cuts – a freeze at bloated 2023 spending level?” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), a House Freedom Caucus member, tweeted. “ZERO claw back of the $1.2 Trillion ‘inflation reduction act’ crony giveaways to elite leftists for grid-destroying unreliable energy…? 4) 98% of the IRS expansion left fully in place…? 5) no work requirements for Medicaid? – & only age adjustments for TANF/SNAP…?”
“No REINS act statutory requirement for congress to approve huge regulations – just an ‘administrative’ paygo that the administration will get to enforce? 7) No border security!! – & a deal allowing them to avoid policy riders in the fall… 8) more…” he added.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) responded, “With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) echoed Lee’s tweet, writing: “Fake conservatives agree to fake spending cuts. Deal will increase mandatory spending ~5%, increase military spending ~3%, and maintain current non-military discretionary spending at post-COVID levels. No real cuts to see here. Conservatives have been sold out once again!”
“He’s right. There’s not ‘one thing’ for Dems. There are $4 trillion things—a blank check—for Democrats,” Cruz responded. “Plus 87,000 things: new IRS agents to harass Americans. All in exchange for eliminating virtually ALL of the House’s spending cuts.”
Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) added, “This pretty much says it all. Democrats got everything they wanted with this bill and don’t have to defend their reckless spending prior to the 2024 election. It’s a win for them.”
Yup. Winning. Regardless of who is at the top of the GOP, it's still the same old story as it's been since Ike was president. The Republican Party in the main does not have a problem at all with an ever-expanding bureaucracy and big, central all-powerful government. The only differentiator that they would tell you (that is if they were being honest in the first place about my statement) is that they're better managers than the Democrats. Whether it's Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, the Shrubs or even Trump, the size and scope of the bureaucracy has never ever been starved of the lifeblood it needs to metastasize into what it has become. The money.
I'm no economist, but had there been no deal reached and we indeed did default, would the sky have fallen in on our heads? I don't think so. In any case, assuming there was some degree of pain and disruption to our daily lives, my contention is that it would be eminently better than what we are suffering under now and for sure what is to come under the continued non-stop functioning of the beast that is our tormenter, the all-powerful State in DC and its tentacles in far too many statehouses.
It's all kabuki-bukkake theater anyway. There will be no intentional stopping and reversing of course of this under any circumstances, even if the GOP wins 100 Senate seats, the 530-odd House seats and the White House come 2024.
This nation, whatever you want to call it, is no longer run by the governmental system laid out in 1789. Hasn't been for decades. Christopher Wray essentially telling Rep James Comer to go fuck himself by refusing to hand over smoking gun documents regarding the Biden Crime Family is just one example of dozens we all could cite off the top of our heads. He, Wray, is the embodiment of what is essentially an authoritarian regime that runs the show, somewhat akin to a monarchy insofar as its generational elitist, globalist bloodline.
"This is an unusual Memorial Day. Today we remember, with a debt of gratitude we can never repay, those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us free from external enemies. As we do so, internal enemies are working steadily to erode and ultimately destroy the very freedoms for which so many gave their lives, and to render their sacrifices meaningless.
Today is May 29. It is not only Memorial Day; it is also the 570th anniversary of an event that is largely forgotten today, but was one of the most momentous occasions in all of human history: the conquest of Constantinople and final destruction of the Roman Empire. . . In many ways . . .we are still living in the Roman Empire; its cultural influence has never dissipated. The lessons we can learn from it are so many and various as to defy easy synopsis. But one of the most telling of those lessons for our situation today is that for most of its long lifetime, the Roman Empire was generally thought to be invincible on the battlefield, so far superior to other military forces that the Romans at times even prevailed against stronger forces on the power of their reputation alone. Not only Romans, but many non-Romans at times assumed this.
Roman politicians likewise thought that the empire could never be defeated, and behaved accordingly, unhesitatingly engaging in savage infighting without regard for how this fighting would weaken the empire before its external enemies. The empire was forever. It would never end . . .
. . . On this Memorial Day, we are likewise still threatened by those Islamic jihadis, although most Americans have forgotten about their existence and think that they are a spent force. We are also threatened by a mass migration that weakens our national character and unity. And just as was so often the case in the Roman empire, the most immediate threat comes from within, from those who are so intent on securing their power, and so short-sighted, that they are destroying the very basis of that power. As we remember the fallen today, we must realize that the existential threat we face today cannot and will not be defeated by military force.
The soldiers now are ordinary citizens. The warriors who win the next victory for human dignity and freedom will be people who had the courage to stand against the officially mandated madness and say, “No more.” We have been brought to a point where it is no longer enough to be grateful to God that some people gave their lives to defend and protect our civilization. It is now incumbent upon us to arise and be willing to do the same, not with bullets and bombs, but with the force of reason and the unyielding refusal to surrender and submitWe live in an age when absurdity and madness are not only in the ascendancy, but are insistently forced upon us by an increasingly authoritarian ruling traitor class. In this age, staying sane is a revolutionary act. On this Memorial Day, dare to be part of that revolution.
We'll have a Memorial Day thread just after the Morning Rant.
"Our institutions are failing the American people and will continue to do so until accountability is demanded by the public and restored by our political leaders." This Is No Way to Run a Government
"But now it seems that the radical queer lobby has done us a favor by overreaching by several miles and waking up normal low-information citizens who don’t watch the political news and had no idea what was going on until they walked into a Target and saw satanic transgender violent propaganda next to the air fryers." Target Store Bomb Threats Sent By . . . Angry Pro-Pride Left-Winger!
FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH
"According to a report by POLITICO, it appears that the Big Tech entrepreneur may be prioritising his freedom of speech committment over pleasing EU overlords, with the publication detailing rumours that Musk was pulling Twitter out of the voluntary anti-disinformation project." EU Furious After Elon Musk Pulls Twitter Out of Online Censorship Programme
"A society without free thinkers, dissenters and contrarians is not only one that lacks color and vibrance, it is accelerating toward a wreck." America’s Dangerous Shortage of Free Thinkers
"The Penn Biden Center and the National Conference on Citizenship published a 2020 report, which was funded by a $259,050 grant from Open Society Foundations, recommending increasing the number of refugees permitted to come to the U.S. and easing restrictions on refugee eligibility, actions the White House has since taken. The report was led by Ariana Berengaut, who now serves as senior adviser to national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Eric Hysen, who was sworn in as chief information officer (CIO) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in February 2021; Rosanna Kim, who serves as senior adviser for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) since January 2021, also contributed to the report." Nazi Collaborator Soros Funded a Biden Center Report on Letting More Refugees into the US. Some of its Authors Now Work for Biden
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, JUNK SCIENCE, LYSENKOISM
“Despite these setbacks, we must save the American economy from Republicans’ irresponsible and radical plans to impose a damaging default. The failure to do so would have catastrophic impacts on every American, every family, and the global economy,” Hoyer reportedly said. Democrats Acknowledge Defeat in Debt Negotiations, Urge Members to Vote ‘Yes’ Anyway
“Maybe it doesn’t do everything for everyone, but this is a step in the right direction that no one thought that we would be able to today,” McCarthy said. “I’ll debate this bill with anybody. Is it everything I wanted? No, because we don’t control all of it. But it is the biggest rescission in history. It is the biggest cut Congress has ever voted for in that process.” Speaker Kevin McCarthy Touts Wins Conservatives Secured In Tentative Debt Ceiling Agreement
Steve Bannon sez: “Any Republican that votes for this—they should primary them because this is nothing but a set of small optics compared to the real problem. The problem that this exacerbates the debt problem because it takes off any limits to what can be added to the debt ceiling. There’s no number, and we know it’s for two years.” What Does Biden and McCarthy’s Debt Ceiling Deal Mean, in Practice?
"The lack of private retirement accounts held by the French is not irresponsibility, rather, it is by design. The French pay high taxes and social security charges (mandatory payments for daycare, retirement, and healthcare), and the system, by taxing citizens at high rates, coupled with the cultural expectation that the government provides for one’s retirement, encourages the French to depend on the government for retirement." One European Country Shows What Might Happen In America If Reckless Spending Continues
With the way the 'recovery' of the dollar index is going, it almost looks as though the dollar functions differently for the rich elite and for the regular middle-class American." Poor Man's Dollar, Rich Man's Dollar
". . . The Adams administration makes it appear that school enrollment in New York City is up, despite leading all other cities in outmigration due to crime and broken education, via mass absorption of illegal immigrants. Also, the administration can now justify why the education budget needs more money, even though hundreds of thousands of families have left New York City with their student children." NYC Schools a Being Overpopulated with Illegal Aliens
CRIME & PUNISHMENT, NON-DOSTOYEVSKY
"New York City shows what happens when consequences are replaced with social services." How Not to Fight Crime
Lloyd Billingsley: "San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins follows the law and the evidence and does not make decisions based on what may be politically expedient." What a Difference a Real DA Makes
DeSantis made the comment while describing the harm done in liberal-run cities that delayed reopening schools after the [Chinese] COVID threat had waned. “Nobody wants to admit that they wanted to lock kids out of school for a year and a half because you've seen the results,” DeSantis said, noting how school attendance never recovered in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York: DeSantis: In Chicago, "You're More Likely to Get Shot" than Get Good Education – Study Finds Chances Are Actually 1 in 15
AMERICA AND THE WORLD IMPRISONED: CHINESE CORONAVIRUS FICTIONS AND FACTS
The public learned, among other things, that former Health Secretary Matt Hancock discussed “deploying” a new variant for PR purposes, and suggested the government “get heavy with police” to enforce stricter lockdown measures. The British Government is Fighting to Hide Chinese COVID-Era "Secrets"
As a parent, I certainly don’t want my young daughters accessing pornographic content under any circumstances, let alone without my knowledge or consent. I think most Virginia parents, regardless of their political party, would agree with this sentiment. Yet Sen. Mason thinks protecting children from indecent material online amounts to a “garbage” policy that’s “stupid.” Democrats Are Now Referring To Protecting Children as "Parental Crap'
“Thanks to the work of legislators and governors in Iowa and Florida, we will have thousands more students taking advantage of school choice in the USA. We have potential expansions lined up in North Carolina and Ohio, which would again add thousands more eligible students, with millions in total in school choice states.” ‘Unprecedented Push’: Here Are The Red States That Have Enacted Sweeping School Choice Legislation In 2023
"In an odd way, out-of-control schools may be our best defense against those who insist upon teaching dangerous nonsense." The Futility of School Reform
“The momentum for protecting life is for early limits, which reflects what we are seeing across the country,” Students For Life Vice President of Political Affairs and State Operations Dustin Curtis told the Daily Caller News Foundation. (if abortion really was political suicide, then would this be happening? - jjs) Nearly One Year After Dobbs, Half the Country Now Bans Abortions By 12 Weeks
K.T. McFarland: "So they’ve gotten away with it for two elections. They will for sure get away with it — try and get away with it in 2024, right? Because there are no consequences. The difference is in 2024, the evidence is there. We now have the Durham investigation and all the Congressional investigations." Trump National Security Adviser: Deep State Will 'for Sure' Rig 2024 Election
Winning elections and taking back the state government appears to be the only way elections in Arizona can be cleaned up and the will of the people can be implemented. According to The Epoch Times, Hobbs has vetoed 99 bills passed by the Republican-controlled legislature — more than any previous governor — including bills that ban the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 public schools, eliminate the food tax, protect infants born alive in botched abortions, and even a bill that protected pregnant women from being attacked. Of Course: Illegitimate Gov. Hobbs Vetoes Election Integrity Reforms in Arizona
"The proliferation of long-shot Republican presidential hopefuls has only one upside: Donald Trump will get to do his thing." Why Are We Doing This Again?
". . . a solid 42% of Biden supporters polled said they could be persuaded to vote for someone else in the primary. . . As Biden’s mental facilities decline along with his poll numbers, it’s difficult to imagine what tricks his handlers are going to pull out of the hat to turn the ship around between now and November 2024." (82 million volts, er, votes! - jjs) Poll: Biden Approval Rating Declines to All-Time Low
"A board member for Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund, Cox’s reason for departure is still unknown, with POLITICO reporter Alex Isenstadt reporting: 'Phil Cox is stepping down from his volunteer role at the pro-DeSantis Never Back Down super PAC, per person familiar. People close to Cox say he remains a supporter of DeSantis.'” DeSantis’ ‘Never Back Down’ PAC Advisor Backs Down, Leaves PAC
"So why has my vote for Trump morphed from reluctant in 2016, enthusiastic in 2020 and now for 2024, there is no one else?" Answering the Big Question: Ron or Don?
Roger Kimball: "The blind trajectory set by Joe Biden’s autopilot just barreled on through, unhindered." The Politics of Inertia
"Ukraine should be told, not asked, what the terms of a peace settlement will be." If Russia Wins
"Government ethics watchdogs say the [so-called quote-unquote "president's"] friendship poses a potential conflict of interest. How has massive foreign aid been used, and who has benefited from it?" Ukraine War Threatens Biden Megadonor
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INTERNATIONAL
"Erdoğan eked out somewhat surprising victories in several of the provinces most devastated by deadly earthquakes in February, where he faced significant political headwinds for a real estate developer “amnesty” that allowed buildings not up to earthquake code to persist unrepaired, likely worsening the five-figure death toll.: Erdogan Declares Victory on Bus Roof in Violent Turkish Presidential Election
"Milley’s replacement, Air Force General Charles Q. Brown, has published a blatantly racist, quota-based personnel promotion document, while presiding over tanking recruiting and military readiness numbers." (does he have a dildo and is he also an anti-semite? - jjs) Joint Chiefs Chairman "Vanilli" Milley’s Replacement Even More Woke, If That is Possible
New York City Republican City Councilman Joseph Borelli warned in April the new law will “empower people to sue anyone and everything.” “I’m overweight, but I’m not a victim,” Borelli told the New York Times in April. “No one should feel bad for me except for my struggling shirt buttons.” New York City Mayor Makes Obesity a Protected Class
ACTUAL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY
"Note that this really isn’t news. Anyone with any intellectual honesty at all will know that every aspect of SLS and Orion is mismanaged and will go over budget and behind schedule endlessly. These problems are not a bug, however, but a feature of the system. " NASA inspector general finds more cost overruns in the agency’s SLS rocket program
"The astronomers believe the star is recovering from the ejection of material from that 2019-2020 dimming, its gas bag shape bouncing in and out like a blob of water floating in weightlessness. They also think it might take five to ten years for those reverberations to settle down." Betelgeuse continues to fluctuate in unexpected ways
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
"They reduce the individual to something sub-human, to mere sexual desire or preferred pronouns." Resisting the Alphabet Reich
"The modern leftist agenda—which lies at the foundation of the Democrat party, the mainstream American media, government schools, and the like—is itself a war on truth." Transgenderism and its War on Truth
"A great franchise famous for its artful dodging has lost its way." Dodgers, Indeed
"The 'national pastime' tries to define reality to protect its brand." Major League Censorship
". . . there is a polite way to address the pronoun madness at work, and we can learn from this man’s example how to speak up for what’s right in our culture in a gentle and thoughtful way." Is There a Polite Way to Handle the Pronoun Madness? (brass knucks and baseball bats - jjs)
"It seems as though Marvel Comics is moving in a good direction (even if Disney, its owner, isn't). Hopefully the insanely woke DC will follow suit." Is Marvel Comics Done Being Woke?
“Just being able to hear my national anthem, see my flag, I definitely want to stand. Now everybody that will not stand or not come out, I totally support them 100 percent. That’s our right, as an American in this great country.” (meh, she says this now, but let's see how long it lasts - jjs) Brittney Griner Will Stand for National Anthem After 10 Months in Russian Prison
"Film on Sky finished and tv pinged onto #OpenHouse what fresh hell is this?!? I can’t believe this is on normal TV,” one person wrote on Twitter. Another asked, “I’m too British to have an orgy. What do you talk about? Is it okay to laugh a lot? Is it okay to take a break and make a sandwich? #OpenHouse." UK TV Show Leaves Viewers Shocked After Airing 15-Person Orgy
HITHER & YON
Richard Fernandez: "The Biblical injunction to 'put on the full armor of God, so that you can make your stand against the devil’s schemes' may not be so archaic after all. The Return of Good and Evil, Part 2
"A reissued book of Vietnam War stories raises important questions about how we remember conflicts and those who fought in them." Make the Days Count
"No popular regime, it would seem, can sustain civic piety based on reason alone because too few will grasp the truth of it and even those few who grasp it will infuse it with error." Sorcery or Nihilism, Part II
"We should never take for granted the willingness of Americans to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the republic." Reflections on Memorial Day 2023
NOTE: The opinions expressed in the links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.
The catch there is that mobile chips come with a mix of fast, power-hungry cores, and slower more efficient cores. It's the slower cores that are 40% faster, and the faster cores are only 15% faster. That fast core - the Cortex X4 - is alternatively 40% more efficient for the same performance, but expect phone manufacturers to take the 15% and sacrifice your battery.
But the mid-tier and low-end A720 and A520 cores are both faster and more efficient, so if you're in the market for a $500 phone - or a $250 one - rather than a $1000 model, things look a bit brighter.
Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!
Please take a moment to remember those who have given their lives in military service to the United States and show your gratitude by living your days as someone worthy of their sacrifice.
Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be the end of May? Know what that means? I say, do you know what that means? Why it means June is next, and with June comes the NoVAMoMe on the 9th and 10th. That's right, the social and cultural event of the season, the 2023 NoVAMoMe is now less than two weeks away! If you haven't registered, do not despair. There is still time to sign-up and spend a day with your friends. Specifics on how to get more information can be found below, and there is always a helpful email link on the main page left sidebar. Remember, the deadline to register and make payment is midnight May 31st so do not delay. We have to guarantee the number of attendees, so after that date, there are no additions or refunds. Please note mug sales closed on May 20th, so while you may be mug-less, you can still attend. Register today!
Psssst! Something else you will note on the main page; the dates for the 2023 TXMoMe have been added. More on this fabulous and frankly life-changing event coming soon.
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
Hi folks - just a quick PSA. If you write for info about the MoMe, please give us a few words in the body of the email just so I know you are a Moron and not a spammer (moron). I do receive spam on this email account because it's sitting right here in my nic, so that's why I'm asking. I don't want to give our details to a spammer.
Thanks.
Posted by: bluebell - NoVaMoMe registration now open!
Nothing complicated, people. Just let bluebell know you're a regular and not an imposter by using the secret handshake and related gang-signs. Lastly, don't forget, there is a meetup for the airing of grievances on Friday afternoon and evening, then the main NoVAMoMe on Saturday, and the opportunity to do some shooting on Sunday (separate registration required). Don't be a pathetic girly-man loser, register today!
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New! for 2023, the Moron Gun Club, Northern Virginia Chapter has organized a group shooting event at a local range in Virginia on Sunday the day after the official NoVAMoMe. There is only ONE slot left, so do not delay in contacting Sharon(wa) if you're interested. Details below:
The DMV MGC has made a reservation at our range to host a group of no more than 15 people in their party room on 6/11, the Sunday after the MoMe. This consists of 3 15 yd lanes and totally for our use only. We will have the lanes starting at 1:30 but will be asking people to arrive at 1 so we don't waste lane time getting organized and you will have to go through the safety briefing. There was a pretty significant fee so we need to charge $20 but there are no additional fees unless you want to buy ammo or rent a gun. Handguns only. We will have our personal arsenals (some much larger than others) so if you are weaponless that is not a problem. We only have ONE slot left so if you are interested, email Blaster at this address Novamomeshoot@proton.me.
The range is in Virginia so little more flexible if you are carrying. Once you have a spot, we will send you a link to fill out the guest form and sign the waivers so we don't waste time at the range getting people checked in. This way you just have to show ID.
Couple of caveats: a) you must attend the NoVAMoMe ($20 cash due at the MoMe), and 2) this is not part of the official MoMe. After the range meetup, we will head to our favorite restaurant for dinner. Separate checks.
Sharon(willow's apprentice)
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Guns of the Horde
First up, our pal Ed L sends in this beauty for us all to enjoy.
At first glance, this pistol looks like any other Beretta 92FS pistol. Tens of thousands of these have been produced. But this example is a very rare variant for the civilian market. It's a US military issue M9 pistol.
Beretta has produced commemorative pistols that duplicated the M9's military markings, but the serial number definitively confirms this example as a genuine M9. M9 pistol serial numbers started at 1000001. This serial number, 1001851, shows that this pistol was the 1,851st pistol delivered to the military by Beretta.
The US military has not yet declared M9 pistols surplus. But one small group of people have been able to obtain M9 pistols out of military stocks. These are retired flag officers (generals and admirals), who have the option to purchase their sidearms upon retirement from active duty. This M9 pistol was the issued sidearm of Major General Bernard L. Weiss, USAF. He purchased the pistol upon his retirement from the USAF in 1988. As the commander of the USAF Contract Management Division from 1985-1988, he was certainly heavily involved in the M9 program. His selection of a brand new M9 as his sidearm is not surprising. You can see here his official photo (as a Brigadier General) and a copy of the Cash Collection Voucher used to pay for his sidearm upon his retirement. Later flag officer sidearms would have presentation grips and their own special serial number range, making this M9 a rare, unaltered original example.
This M9 comes with the full rig, including the USAF general officer's belt, black leather M12 Bianchi holster, and matching black leather magazine pouch. Major General Weiss' two-star flag is also part of the package.
Wow! Very nice, Ed L! Amazing provenance. Thanks for sending this in!
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Next, a follow-up to last week's Gun Thread featuring a Lee-Enfield Rifle No. 5 Mk. 1, from our pal Scampydog.
A few days ago I considered sending the attached pic. But I'm rarely around on Sundays, and thought if I can't participate in the thread - don't send a pic. Regardless, it was both cool and ironic to see your write up this evening.
Nice looking example of the Jungle Carbine, Scampydog, how does it shoot? Oh, and submissions are always welcome! Thank you!
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Range Time!
Next, our pal RedMindBlueState shares a picture from a range trip past.
This is a pic of a target I fired some mumblemumble years ago with the Model 70 and some handloads my dad worked up for it. No rear bag, nothing special. Just a good day on the range. For a non-custom rifle, it'll shoot pretty well if the operator is properly switched on. Six shots at 100 yds. Just ignore that one flyer.
Nice shooting, RMBS! Thank you!
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Worth Watching
Your ol' pal Weasel is a sucker for restoration videos of mechanical things, and this one is a real doozy!
It's not too long so let me know what you think in the comments. Would you have attempted to restore the gun? Would you have tried firing it afterward?
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Ax Weasel
Q: Weasel, how radioactive is the first atomic bomb site?
A: This radioactive, thank you for axing.
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Let's say you're wandering around and suddenly find yourself at the controls of a SR-71. If this were to happen, you'll be glad to have had this tour of the SR-71 cockpit. You're welcome.
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NoVAMoMe 2023
Not so fast on the gun stuff, buckaroos! We have a little bit more on the NoVAMoMe to discuss. In fact, this will be the first of a long and seemingly endless series of reminders to get yo' big butt off the couch and come out and meet some of your online friends. Let's kick things off with a few NoVAMoMe FAQ.
Q: Is it fun?
A: Yes. Just ask anyone who has been to one. You will have fun, or else.
Q: When is it again? Did you say June?
A: Yes. A thousand times yes! June 10th, from 1pm til 6pm or so.
Q: I'm sort of a dork. Can I just slink-in, watch for a bit and then slink out without having to actually speak with anyone?
A: Yes. In fact, we have strategically placed large potted ferns for lurkers to hide behind.
Q: Will bluebell be there? I really want to meet bluebell.
A: Of course! Well, assuming things go well at the parole hearing.
Q: Is there food and drink?
A: Yes! $30 for a bigly buffet, and a cash bar. We had to bump up the food price a bit to cover costs this year.
Q: Can I make references, even veiled references to the secret MoMe location on the blog?
A: NO!Seriously, please don't.
Q: Sounds great, Weasel! How do I sign up?
A: We have an online page for registration. Email novamome@protonmail.com for all the details!
OK, I'm talking to YOU Mr. or Ms. I'll Go Next Time. Guess what? The next time is here. It's a really fun event and we would love to have you join us. Hopefully some NoVAMoMe veterans will speak up in the comments and encourage the introverts to stop being big baby chickens and make this the year to come out of the shadows!
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Musical Interlude
Here is Muddy Waters with Hoochie Coochie Man
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Gun Basics 101
No new video from the She Equips Herself gal so here is one from the archives on easy ways to rack a pistol slide.
Bonus Content!
Here is another video on the same topic, with significantly less racking.
Armed Attorneys
As promised, here's a weekly video installment from the Armed Attorneys YouTube channel. These are always worthwhile to watch!
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Cigar of the Week
This week I have a review of two cigars from Nick's Cigar World, a cigar shop I like and use online regularly.
Terrible cigar at any price
First, the Casa de Garcia Maduro available atfor $32 per bundle of 20. Casa de Crapola is more like it.
WeaselReview: Complete waste of dinero. More awful than bad. Bad simply implies a matter of taste, and these are terrible in every respect, both objectively and subjectively. Do not buy. Atrocious construction and you'll suck your eyeballs into the back of your head trying to get this turd to draw. Zero stars, and at FREE these would be overpriced. Recommend only to people you hate.
***
Moving along...
Pretty decent $2 cigar
Next we have a slightly pricier option, the Quorum Maduro Robusto at $38 per bundle of 20, which are actually quite decent and worth every bit of $2 each. You're not going to find these on Cigar Aficianado with a 120 rating, but hey, they're two bucks.
I like finding decent bundled cigars around $2 a pop which are my farming chores and mowing-the-grass cigars. I absolutely recommend the Quorum Maduro Robusto. Decent construction, burn and taste, and won't break the bank!
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Here are some different online cigar vendors. You will find they not only carry different brands and different lines from those brands, but also varying selections of vitolas (sizes/shapes) of given lines. It's good to have options, especially if you're looking for a specific cigar.
A note about sources. The brick & mortar/online divide exists with cigars, as with guns, and most consumer products, with respect to price. As with guns - since both are "persecuted industries", basically - I make a conscious effort to source at least some of my cigars from my local store(s). It's a small thing, but the brick & mortar segment for both guns and tobacco are precious, and worth supporting where you can. And if you're lucky enough to have a good cigar store/lounge available, they're often a good social event with many dangerous people of the sort who own scary gunz, or read smart military blogs like this one. -rhomboid
Anyone have others to include? Perhaps a small local roller who makes a cigar you like? Send me your recommendation and a link to the site!
This week's mailbag entry is from our pal WTM. Great one!
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Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food Thread: Grilling, A Quiz, And Some Weird Sweet Stuff: Business As Usual!
—CBD
It's no secret that I love grilling...and beef. Put them together and I am a happy camper. Except I don't camp! My idea of enjoying the wilderness is to hike into it in the morning, out of it in the afternoon, go directly to a shower, and then to a nice dinner, complete with cocktails and air conditioning.
But good food doesn't require perfect kitchens and tools, as the photo above shows quite well. That's chicken wire over a camp fire, and I'll bet the steak was just fine!
I've cooked in an indoor fireplace during a ten day blackout, and I absolutely loved the result. Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good, and in cooking, that certainly applies more often than not. After all, no matter how awful the result, you get to try again in just a few hours!
How many of you have just made do? One pan, one fork, two spoons and some salt. And you made a meal! Probably one you remember more than the thousands of just-another-Tuesday meals you have made!
10+ people for dinner, with a couple of tri-tips and a nice pork leg (2-3lbs) available.
So...is that enough?
If not, how about a chicken?
And how to cook the meat?
Sous Vide is of course the method of choice for the pork and the beef, and there are a variety of grills available, so finishing is trivial.
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Commenter "Martin" has shared some delicious-looking foods with us, and this certainly doesn't disappoint!
I was just finishing a pork shoulder on the Kamado when I saw you mentioned vegans in the Food Thread.
Just by coincidence, I had also grilled some veggies for a grilled veggie and Provolone on Focaccia bread sandwich tonight. Special request from [my wife]. So good drizzled with olive oil and lemon.
That looks delicious, and while I often spout ridiculous hyperbole about the awfulness of vegetarians and vegans, the reality is that vegetables play a role in any good diet. The important thing, for both health and interest is to eat lots of different things...fruits and vegetables and all sorts of different proteins and even a starch now and then!
I'll bet that sandwich was wonderful...the juices from the vegetables soaked into the bread and mingled with the olive oil and lemon juice, all held together by the Provolone! Which is a wonderful cheese if you can get the good stuff, and not the industrial crap that passes for it at most delis.
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Baby-Back Ribs vs. spare ribs. Yes...I agonize over the big questions so that all of you don't have to worry your pretty little heads about them.
And unfortunately my conclusion won't make many of you happy, especially since recently the baby-back ribs I see have grown in thickness and width...and while I can guess the reasons, it doesn't matter. I think they are both delicious, and the sometimes greater thickness of the baby-backs lends itself to longer cooking times.
Oh..they seem to have gotten fattier, which is always...ALWAYS...a good thing.
Any thoughts?
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At first glance this soundly fairly repulsive, but swapping out the execrable milk chocolate for dark chocolate and it might work, especially since I have an embarrassingly well-developed sweet tooth!
Pretzels and chocolate go well together, and bacon goes well with..well...everything, so the outlier is the jelly beans. I submit that it will be weird, but we sugar addicts can push through the strangeness and overcome!
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It's Memorial Day weekend, and while it is a diminished holiday in many parts of America, many of us will remember those who fought and died so that we could enjoy the freedoms that have been so dear to our country for so very long. It is a joy being an American, and it is because of those men who sacrificed all that I can say that. It is also incumbent upon us that we respect their sacrifices, and continue the fight so that they will always be remembered.
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[Hat Tip: PowerLine]
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The oyster imperative remains in effect, especially now that we are entering the summer months. Yup, I'm not afraid of oysters in the summer! And send pork rib roasts from the front end of the pig where all the good and fatty meat lives, carrots that don't taste like stalky chalk, spare bottles of Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year Old Bourbon, garlic...lots of garlic! (but no basil!), well-marbled NY strip steaks and elk backstrap to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
And don't think that the rest of you are off the hook with maple syrup and French Toast: I'm still watching you! And I am watching you perverts who shake Manhattans and keeping a list for the Burning Times.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a large steam boiler was replaced by a smaller and more efficient one. The plumbing company neglected to repair the concrete floor, and left a shallow cut-out instead of patching it with a few pounds of concrete.
Fast forward to today, and your obsessive-compulsive correspondent is sick and fvcking tired of seeing the functionally trivial but unsightly and irritating flaw in the floor. The concrete floor in the boiler room. Where nobody but he goes.
I wonder if they sell bags of concrete that small? Or should I just order a full truck-load?
The Vast Entitlement And Even Vaster Uselessness of a 30-Something Twit Must Overshadow A Looming Teamsters Strike Against UPS
—CBD
The Teamsters Union is making noises that they are going to strike against United Parcel Service (UPS). Well, they always do that before contract negotiations, although the Teamster leadership seems to be more aggressive than usual, so they might go through with it.
Unfortunately for them, there is a significant competitor of UPS that was an afterthought in 1997 (the last time the Teamsters went on strike against UPS), and that is Amazon. So a strike that eliminates...even for a week or two...one of Amazon's main transportation channels will push huge amounts of volume into their own transportation system, and UPS may not recover some of that volume.
But the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of workers and the significant delays that a strike will cause for manufacturing, distribution and retail across America pales in comparison to the unimaginable catastrophe of Jessica Ray not being able to get her favorite toilet paper delivered to her door!
Living in New York City, working full time and without a car, Jessica Ray and her husband have come to rely on deliveries of food and just about everything else for their home. It has meant more free time on weekends with their young son, rather than standing in line for toilet paper or dragging heavy bags of dog food back to their apartment.
"I don't even know where to buy dog food," said Jessica Ray of the specialty food she buys for the family's aging dog.
Standing in line with other people? Filthy uncouth people without the rarefied esthetics of poor Jessica? The horror! And carrying her own groceries? Is that even legal to force her to do that?
"We finally reached a point where we finally feel pretty good about it," Ray said. "We can take a Saturday afternoon and do a fun family activity and not feel the burden of making everything work for the day-to-day functioning of our household."
Oh..Thank God! She feels good about "it!" The immense weight of maintaining a household...of three people and a dog...has finally become manageable! Will wonders never cease! Dear old Jessica must be a titan of energy, planning, fitness and resourcefulness to be able to juggle all of that...with the assistance of delivery services, her doorman, her husband, and obviously a nice salary...just look at the size of her apartment!
This entitled, oblivious, spoiled little bitch has the temerity to whine about a very nice middle class life in a big city, in which she has the financial resources to pay other people to do a lot of the stuff that normal people do on their own without any thought that it was difficult or stressful or worthy of notice.
"It has the potential to be significantly impactful," Ray said. "My husband and I have invested a lot in figuring out how to remove the burden of just making sure we always have toilet paper."
Get off your fat, lazy ass and take a walk to the corner grocery store and buy a family pack of toilet paper. And while you are there pick up some food for dinner...and cook it yourself. Oh...and some cleaning products. Anyone care to bet whether she has domestic help?
The decades-long shift from a manufacturing-based economy to one that has a much greater percentage of service-based industry has conspired to lull people into what can only be a false sense of security...that someone else is going to take care of "it," whatever "it" may be.
But that attitude naturally devolves into the arrogance of superiority based on literally nothing at all. Jessica Ray sees herself as deserving of the service provided by more capable people, for no other reason than she has the financial resources to pay for those services, yet she sees that as a confirmation of some social hierarchy. She is a Houyhnhnm, and those hopefully anonymous drones who provide for everything in her life are the Yahoos.
As much as I despair of a breakdown in society, people like Jessica, and their obvious inability to manage even minor dislocations in their worlds, make the prospect of societal collapse rather amusing, if it takes a big bite out of her fat, entitled ass. Maybe her next job in the dystopian landscape of America 2.0 will be as a fluffer in a sex show, or if she doesn't lose some of that weight, maybe her lot in life will be as dinner for some roving band of ex-toilet-paper delivery folks!
Sunday Morning Book Thread - 05-28-2023 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, especially if you are wearing these pants...
So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, PLEASE PUT ON SOME PANTS, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?
OK, I know I said we'd be returning to libraries around the world, but please bear with me for one more week. Hexie had the "zoomies" and was running along the tops of my bookcases in the living room. I was able to snap the pic above, just as she tried to ensnare my soul.
We'll be returning to regularly scheduled libraries from around the world next week...(pinkie swear! Got a good one lined up courtesy of a Moron!)
CHARACTER MOTIVATIONS
In any story, character motivation *matters.* It's important to us as readers to be able to understand the reasons why characters behave. Now in the real world, we can see lunatics engaging in behavior that doesn't make a lick of sense to us. Seems like we see more and more of that on social media, as well as in the people in our neighborhoods that behave a bit oddly. Still, in their minds, whatever they are doing makes sense to them in the moment. How many of us did something stupid, crazy, or both when we were younger (less than 29) but it seemed like a good idea at the time? Raise your hand! (Mine is raised as well!)
Even in stories where characters go mad--or start out mad--there has to be some rationality in place for us to at least perceive a possible reason for character motivations. Otherwise, we end up with a plot that is all too common in Hollywood these days where the characters simply stumble from one set piece to the next with little reason for them to be there. Motivations do not have to be serious or weighty matters that drive the plot. You can have characters motivated by relatively shallow thoughts and feelings, so long as you are entertained by the story. For instance, in L. Sprague de Camp's The Honorable Barbarian the main character is mostly motivated to find a way to lose his virginity. Even though he's had a few opportunities to do so, fate seems to be keen on intervening. He's also on a quest to find a new escapement for the clock business his family runs, and then gets tangled up in a scheme to deliver an important message to a foreign king when the original messenger is presumably killed by prostitutes. All these motivations combined keep driving the plot forward as his adventures become more and more farcical and ridiculous (it's supposed to be comedic fantasy).
By contrast, Jake Sullivan's motivation in Larry Correia's Grimnoir Chronicles can be summed up as follows: The bad guy loses. Period. Jake is obsessed with adhering to his own moral code, which is how he's survived numerous potentially fatal situations. Of course, he's sometimes "Lawful Stupid" in that he gets in over his head but is still able to survive thanks to his mastery of the (super-)Power he commands. This dedication to an ideal is a common characteristic among Correia's main protagonists, usually driving them to insane actions in pursuit of their goals.
What are some examples of characters with poorly-developed motivations? Or examples where the motivation doesn't quite seem to work for the character?
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FINDING NEW AUTHORS...
Let's try something a little different...
I've pretty much hit a dead end. Most of my favorite authors have either died or retired. Too many of the newer authors can't write worth a damn. I go to the library or the bookstore, read the first few pages of a book that looks interesting, only to put it back because the writing is so atrocious. Part of the problem is I've already read the premise half a dozen times.
Posted by: Captain Josepha Sabin -- I wasn't particularly fond of the '70s the first time around at May 21, 2023 10:55 AM (B7rlW)
I know what you mean. Finding a new author you like can be very tricky. I recently had some luck with an old author, one so ubiquitous that I assumed I would not like him, so I ignored his work when searching for new detective fiction. Silly of me. I am now on the 4th of Robert Parker's Spenser books, and having a good time with them. There are 48 more of these books waiting for me.
Posted by: Splunge at May 21, 2023 11:31 AM (IKlwI)
I, too, struggle when finding a new author to read, or at least one that is new to me. Last year I attended a few library book sales, which were a good source of books by authors I'd heard of, but had never read. That turned out to be a generally good solution, as I would most likely never have tried Peter F. Hamilton's Void Trilogy. Same with Larry Correia's Monster Hunter series. I thoroughly enjoyed both authors' writing styles. Writing and participating in the Sunday Morning Book Thread has also expanded my horizons. Y'all have so much to offer in terms of suggestions for reading material it's downright scary. That's one reason why I've been collecting recommendations--if you get bored, you can check out a Moron-recommended book. You may not always enjoy it, but you will almost always learn something new. For example, I know Adrian Tschaikovsky is highly recommended around here, so I will definitely check him out one of these days.
I've also been taking pains to try and put a dent in my to-be-read (TBR) pile. I've accumulated hundreds of books over the years that I've meant to read, but somehow didn't get around to it. So that's been my main focus for the past couple of years. Unfortunately, it's hard to make much headway in my TBR pile because I do tend to acquire more books, though not this week. I just can't seem to crack the "80% of my books read" threshold...
What do YOU do when you want to find an author new to you?
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MORON RECOMMENDATIONS
This week I listened to the Audible book The Demon Next Door, which is about Texas serial killer Danny Corwin.
Corwin was executed in 1990 for the murder of three women (he raped two of them). He also raped and attempted to kill two other women and raped a third. Most were around Temple.
The book does not play the sympathy game with Corwin.
After finishing I found myself wondering how serial killers select their targets. Opportunity will be part of it but surely Corwin would have had more six opportunities.
BTW his weapon was a knife.
Posted by: That Northern skulker at May 21, 2023 09:30 AM (eGTCV)
Comment: True crime stories about serial killers and psychopathic monsters seem to be very popular. Maybe because their way of thinking is so alien to the "normal" person. In Larry Correia's Warbound, one of the secondary characters who joins the heroes is a legitimate sociopath. It's mentioned more than once that he only interacts with humans so that he can pretend to be one. He lacks all of the empathy required to relate to humans as an equal. He's also very smart and twisted, so to him we are a game or puzzle to be solved. Sociopaths and psychopaths (yes, there's a difference) are unredeemable monsters. There is NO possibility of true atonement for their evil ways.
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Haidt and Lukianoff's The Coddling of the American Mind has been informative. (A very minor example - President Trump's "good people on both sides" comment after Charlottesville is a bit worse than what right wing commenters have taught us to believe.) As an elderly person, the material describing the likely relationship between social media and increasing incidence of mental illness among college students is compelling. While the authors seem willing to contort their thinking in whatever ways are necessary to excuse leftist nonsense, I think the book is worth reading.
Posted by: Oglebay at May 21, 2023 11:50 AM (j4NKg)
Comment: According to the introduction in this book, it's based on disputing three Great Untruths that are widespread on American college campuses:
The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker.
The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between "good" people and "evil" people.
Even a casual examination of each of those three Untruths can see that there are significant problems when people accept them as fact. We learn and grow through struggle and conflict, by overcoming challenges. Our feelings can and do deceive us regularly. Who gets to define "good" and "evil?"
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Last night on the Hobby Thread, Polliwog asked about books that would be good references for plant illustrations. This was my quick response.
- Beatrix Potter (as in Peter Rabbit) did some excellent floral paintings that were included in scientific publications of the day.
- The botanical illustrations in the Brambly Hedge kids books. They are loose but completely accurate to form and color.
- Redoute's Fairest Flowers. They were done in the early 1800s. Phenomenal.
- Botanical Portraits with colored pencils by Ann Swan.
- Botanical Drawing in Color by Wendy Hollender.
- Any of the works by Martin Johnson Heade.
The only problem was I got looking through the various volumes and lost a few hours of sleep looking at the beautiful artwork.
Posted by: JTB at May 21, 2023 09:31 AM (7EjX1)
Comment: There's nothing wrong with getting lost in admiring beautiful illustrations of plants/flowers.
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Been relaxing in Michigan the last couple of weeks. Read Chaim Potok's The Gates of November, about the Slepak family of refuseniks. It intersects a little with Natan Sharansky's Fear No Evil.
What's really fascinating about it are the occasional glimpses into the mindset of the people who maintained faith in the Soviet leadership. Volodya Slepak's father never lost faith, even when Stalin and his government started persecuting Jews and inciting violence against Jews.
When Stalin died (which followed the comedy-drama movie fairly closely),
Even in the labor camps, many cried.
Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at May 21, 2023 09:36 AM (olroh)
Comment: Totalitarian propaganda can be very, very effective in controlling the population. Remember when Kim Jong Il died? We saw how much his people wept genuine tears of sorrow for the death of their beloved Dear Leader. He was worshiped as a god in that country, even to this day, I believe. There will always be those who place their complete and total faith in Man instead of their Creator.
More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (790 Moron-recommended books so far!)
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WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:
Grimnoir Chronicles Book 3 - Warbound by Larry Correia -- The heroes go in search of the mysterious Pathfinder, who heralds the attempt by the Enemy to invade Earth and destroy the Power that gave humanity their gifts.
The Honorable Barbarian by L. Sprague de Camp -- I've never read any of his work before. Seems like a slightly more humorous version of Jack Vance. Really just a series of misadventures of a young man struggling to find his way in the world.
Runelords Book 1 - The Sum of All Men by David Farland -- I don't much care for the magic system in this series. It's incredibly parasitic and destructive, even for the supposedly "good" faction. Not sure if I will finish this one.
Daughter of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts -- I acquired the rest of this series a short time ago and thought I'd give this one another read. I read it when I was teenager and didn't enjoy it much. Now that I'm 29+, I can see why people tend to rate it fairly highly within the overall Riftwar Saga. It's a political thriller rather than an action-packed fantasy adventure story.
Servant of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts -- Political intrigue continues as Mara Acoma strives to consolidate her legacy after defeating her most hated rival house.
That's about all I have for this week. Thank you for all of your kind words regarding the Sunday Morning Book Thread. This is a very special place. You are very special people (in all the best ways!). The kindness, generosity, and wisdom of the Moron Horde knows no bounds. Let's keep reading!
If you have any suggestions for improvement, reading recommendations, or discussion topics that you'd like to see on the Sunday Morning Book Thread, you can send them to perfessor dot squirrel at-sign gmail dot com. Your feedback is always appreciated! You can also take a virtual tour of OUR library at libib.com/u/perfessorsquirrel. Since I added sections for AoSHQ, I now consider it OUR library, rather than my own personal fiefdom...
Eugene Sledge, speaks about "The Costs of War."
The author of With the Old Breed on Pelelieu and Okinawa gave this talk in 1994 and it is well worth your time. Meant to include it in the Memorial Day thread but forgot. [J.J. Sefton]
Excited to announce the relaunch of Christian Faith and Family Day at Dodger Stadium on July 30th. More details to come-- but we are grateful for the opportunity to talk about Jesus and determined to make it bigger and better than it was before COVID. Hope to see you on July 30th!
LOL, "relaunch." So the Dodgers didn't host this for years and years and now suddenly realize they forgot to invite Christians to their games. Gee, what could have prompted this sudden realization?
Notice they're not hosting Christians... during "PRIDE" Month. Oh no, not that.
Liz Wheeler
@Liz_Wheeler
How dare you try to pander to Christians because you need us as consumers while at the same time you HONOR an anti-Christian hate group that blasphemes Jesus with "Jesus and Mary striptease" and "dildo dipped in drugs blessings" & "semen" filled chalices? You are grotesque.
Mollie
@MZHemingway
Are you going to reuse the cross from the blasphemous pole dance performed by the anti-Catholic hate group you guys are honoring in June?
No "Hero" award, I notice. It's clarifying to know that the Dodgers hold Christians in lower regard than Satanic perverts.
On the cooldown from my run I passed a guy carrying a case of beer... Yuenling Light. And I don't live in Pennsylvania.
Update on the Bigot Suburbs of NYC:
Several New York counties have already declared states of emergency in an attempt to block the mayor’s efforts.
Rockland, Orange, and Onondaga counties have all filed in court to reverse the bussing efforts, saying that the hotels where the illegal immigrants are staying in are in violation of local ordinances.
Posted by: Ferd Berfall
Shut up and take your cultural enrichment, bigots.
WOKE DISNEY CUT OUT THE ENTIRE LOVE STORY IN "THE LITTLE MERMAID" BECAUSE IT'S ANTI-FEMINIST TO SHOW A WOMAN WHO WANTS A (HETEROSEXUAL) RELATIONSHIP A mermaid needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle! The feminists are extremely dogmatic on this: A man can never be shown teaching a woman anything, because women have nothing to learn from men. That's why the dead Carrie Fisher taught Ray in the last Star Wars movie, instead of the alive-and-very-available Mark Hamill. And they are absolutely insistent that women should never want a relationship with a (spit) man. If she wants another woman, that's good and "diverse," but no woman can ever be shown to be attracted to a man. That would be un-empowering. They're not against all relationships -- just the heterosexual kinds. It's incredible. Male-female love is just now absolutely taboo at Disney. But they'll keep cramming movies with their Not-So-Secret-Gay Agenda! They are determined to headf*** every child who is negligently taken to see their movies.
Target could have decided to stay out of the culture wars, instead it decided to wage war on a large share of its customer base. I no longer shop at Target, and it seems many families are doing the same.
Woke Corporations: You will be made to care. from redridinghood
Charlie Kirk
@charliekirk11
Did you know: Target is financial supporter and self-described "proud partner" of GLSEN, a radical far-left group that pushes school districts to keep gender transitions SECRET from parents.
GLSEN advocates for radical gender ideology to be injected into every subject, including math.
This is from the GLSEN Arizona website:
https://tinyurl.com/3eh3z7b4
Gross. I'm not a Jack drinker, but hopefully some Jack drinkers decide to try something new. I recommend Knob Creek Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. It's nothing like Jack, I just like it.
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!)
"Nobody imagined it would go on this long," Schuhmacher said. He continued: "It seems random -- it struck a nerve. I've never seen anything to compare it to, in all of the [consumer packaged goods] industry. It's a real shock."
When you take away the people's normal avenues to express dissent, e.g. the media and the justice system, the anger will be vented elsewhere. Get used to it.
Posted by: Archimedes
NBC News
@NBCNews
Target, Bud Light, the Dodgers and Disney have all been backed into a corner over their support of the LGBTQ community. The strategy has conservative activists celebrating.
Actor portraying black elf in Amazon's disastrous Tolkein non-fan fic Rings of Power claims he was the subject of "online bullying and racism," and has been in therapy for three years trying to overcome this brutalization Bounding Into Comments notes that he has not pointed out a single racist tweet but asking a Victim of a Hate Crime for proof of a Hate Crime is itself a Hate Crime, bigot.
Superb article by Melanie Phillips... Jew-hatred struts the stage in Berlin: "The obscene spectacle staged by Roger Waters exposes the moral vacuum in Holocaust memorialising." [CBD]
