NoVaMoMe 2020:
Rescheduled for August 29, 5:00-10:00 pm, Fairfax, Virginia. Contact Bluebell & Weasel with questions.
June 01, 2020
Monday Overnight Open Thread (6/1/20)
—Misanthropic Humanitarian
***
The Quotes of The Day
Quote I
“When the first of these little trust fund sissies figures out he’s not walking out of his cell after 20 minutes with a $50 fine but looking at five years in Leavenworth on a Fed rap, he’ll squeal on his comrades. This is an opportunity to destroy Antifa root and branch, and to eliminate the armed wing of the Democrat party. Forever." Kurt Schlichter
Quote II
". . . there is need that our young men should appreciate the Constitution of the United States, under which we have enjoyed so many blessings and under which we must work out our political and economic salvation. And this need is especially keen in a day when that instrument is regarded so lightly by a class of fanatical enthusiasts seeking short cuts to economic perfection, on the one hand, and by unscrupulous demagogues who to promote their own interests do not hesitate to promote disrespect and even contempt for the Constitution and the laws enacted under it on the other." -- William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States, February 25, 1913
H/T Isophorone Blog
Quote III
Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time. And the order exempts or treats more leniently only dissimilar activities, such as operating grocery stores, banks and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.Chief Justice Roberts
MINNEAPOLIS, MN—In a powerful display of their care for love and justice, protesters in Minneapolis burned the word "LOVE" into the city, arranging the inspiring message with homes and businesses set ablaze by their riots.
Heartfelt and moving.
"We just really wanted to show how much we care about love and social justice by burning this community into a powerful reminder of what it's all about," said local protester Jake Hernandez, who had flown in from Portland for the event. "Now, when police and fire helicopters fly over to try to restore order, they'll be inspired by our message of love and harmony."
Upon seeing the heart-wrenching message of unity, police dropped their batons, ripped off their badges, donned bandanas, picked up bricks, and joined the protesters in their rioting and looting. "I don't know how I didn't see the light before," said former police officer, now Antifa chapter leader Bridget Morrison as she lobbed a Molotov cocktail into a minority-owned business. "I'm woke to the cause of love and harmony."
Having sex in your own home with someone from a different household is illegal from today, after the government altered its coronavirus legislation.
At 11.30am on Monday, a change to the law was introduced that bans two people from different households in England gathering in an indoor, private place during the coronavirus lockdown.
The amendment to the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) Bill states: “No person may participate in a gathering which takes place in a public or private place indoors, and consists of two or more persons.”
Previously, going to another person’s home to have sex would have been a breach of coronavirus lockdown restrictions, but now both parties could be prosecuted under the law. Having sex in public is already illegal.
According to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), voting by mail is the only way for people to vote safely amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While speaking to reporters Sunday, he said the state has not had any experiences that cause him great concern.
More than 3 million ballots have been mailed to Maryland voters for the state’s primary to prevent crowded polls and the spread of coronavirus. Gov. Hogan also noted that the state of Maryland has had mail-in-ballots for a while now.
“We want to make sure we get the opportunity for every single person to vote,” he stated. “We want to make sure that no voting fraud is taking place, whether by mail or any other way, but I’m not concerned about that here in our state…we’ve been doing it for a long time.”
***
A little levity here this evening..........The Manitowoc Minute goes aquatic.
Given the current circumstances, it seems valuable to revisit a post we did a half-decade ago when Baltimore went up in flames. The question then, as now, was whether or not the property destruction would likely be covered under one's insurance. Of course, it gets a bit more nuanced, as coverage will differ slightly by locale and policy form. I reached out to FoIB (and P&C Guru) Bill M, who reminded me that a key distinction lies with the difference between terrorism (generally excluded) and civil unrest (generally covered).
He also confirmed that coverage is likely under both homeowners and commercial lines policies. As he so often instructs us: look to the exclusions for the best answers.
Bill O’Reilly just announced he has landed a new deal that will mark his return to cable television.
Bill was banished after the liberals sons took over Fox News from their father Rupert Murdoch and someone leaked the info about his settlements. They ran Bill out of town and he has been looking for a new home ever since.
Bill was always a straight shooter and boy could this nation need some hard-fought nonpartisan wisdom right now.
From Axios:
Bill O’Reilly’s show, “No Spin News,” which currently airs on his website and across YouTube, will be broadcast twice daily on The First, a conservative digital television network that runs on several platforms, including ViacomCBS-owned Pluto TV.
Why it matters: The Trump era has given rise to a number of newer, right-wing outlets, including The First, which leverage big names in conservative media to gain traction.
***
The ONT Musical Interlude
Born on this day: 1 Jun 1934
American singer, composer, actor, Pat Boone, who had the 1956 UK No.1 single 'I'll Be Home', and the 1957 US No.1 single 'Love Letters In The Sand'. Boone was the second-biggest charting artist of the late 1950s, behind only Elvis Presley. via thisdayinmusic.com
***&&&***
Born on this day: 1 Jun 1947
Ronnie Wood guitarist, songwriter, painter and radio presenter. Originally a member of UK band The Birds, he first worked alongside Rod Stewart in the Jeff Beck Group. He then got together with three members of The Small Faces to form the Faces joined by Rod on vocals. His songwriting partnership with Rod extended to Rod's early solo albums. Wood joined The Rolling Stones in 1975 after the departure of Mick Taylor. via thisdayinmusic.com
***&&&***
***
For every action there is an equal reaction, or something like that. Genius Award Winner.
If women want equal treatment, here you go.
***
Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Panache.
Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire, AceCorp, LLC and viewers like you. For a transcript of tonight's ONT please send $5.00 and SASE to petmorons at gmail dot com.
RedState Legal Analyst "Shipwreckedcrew:" Emmit Sullivan's Response to the Court of Appeals Is Deranged, Doesn't Cite Any Authority for His Actions, Just Tells Them To Let Him Do Whatever He Wants
—Ace
Emmet Sullivan has submitted the reply he used taxpayer funds to pay a high-price lawyer to write for him. You can read it here.
30,000 Foot Observation and why I think this is not a serious effort to prevail:
1. The Cir. Ct. did not ask for an explanation from Sullivan because they were intrigued by his approach and the just wanted to know more about it.
That is: the Circuit Court was not asking him, "Hey, buddy, this is interesting, can you tell us more?!"
They were saying: DEFEND YOUR ACTIONS. CITE LAWS. SHOW YOUR WORK.
As we'll see, Sullivan decided he couldn't defend his actions and so decided to ignore the orders of the court.
2. The question they asked him to address was pointed, and their reference to Fokker [which recently held that Sullivan had no discretion in this situation but to dismiss] told him where he should focus his attention.
3. But what he has done is basically said "Regardless of what Fokker says in terms of limiting my discretion, I've got a plan and you folks in the Cir. Ct need to just stay out of the way until I'm done. And he tells them all about his big plan and why he's in this position."
Obviously, that's a paraphrase, but even the lawyerly-sounding version of that will not sound good. It will sound like an act of contempt by a judge against the Circuit Court that is his boss.
4. If the Cir. Ct. was just intrigued and was simply expressing its curiosity about what he had in mind when it issued its Order to him, then his response might elicit a response along the lines of "Great -- can't wait to see what comes from your plan."
5) But given their "inquiry", the more likely response to exactly what Sullivan has set forth is "That's what we were afraid of, and we're not interested in what that kind plan might turn up because there's no legal basis for you to do what you propose to do.
Sullivan looks like John Forbes Nash from "A Beautiful Mind" who just can't help by continue to try to convince people in his life that the figments of his imagination are real, and if he just explains it with more earnestness they'll come around and see what he sees.
"Shipwreckedcrew" also claims that Emmet Sullivan has included a falsehood in his reply:
I'm going to resist the urge to blast out on the Sullivan filing in the Flynn case.
But I would note that Beth Wilkinson made a bald face false statement on Page 1 where she says Judge Sullivan found Flynn's statement to be material.
Among the final comments he made at the Dec. 18 hearing was for the attorneys to prepare before the next hearing to answer his questions about "how" the statements were material, because he still didn't understand that issue.
For him to say "I found them material" while having said "I don't understand how they are material" is judicial misconduct -- no way around it. He can't make a determination on a factual element of a criminal offense and profess to not understand what he's just done.
Yes, he never did schedule that hearing, and he never ruled about it. This is either a lie, or complete stupidity from an obviously-unqualified "judge."
I skimmed the reply myself -- shipwreckedcrew is right about Sullivan just saying "Splunge" to the court's actual question. He basically just asks a series of rhetorical questions -- which frankiy, do sound like those of a raving paranoid -- and postualtes that only his Freelance Sleuthing can get to the bottom of this mystery. And in response to the court's question, "Where the fuck do you think you get this power from?," he seriously answers, "The court (you) will really really find my Investigations into this Nefarious Scheme helpful, so let me do what I do."
Among the questions this lunatic incompetent keeps asking is Why did Flynn swear under oath he committed the crime when I asked him if he did?
He knows the answer, but he prefers to leave it a mystery so that the rhetorical question suggests something insidious.
The actual answer is, "Michael Flynn said he had committed the crime of making a false statement when you demanded he do so, immediately after threatening him with a count of treason."
Something this lunatic incompetent had to later apologize for.
But he really wants to know why Flynn reversed himself on his decision to withdraw his guilty plea and instead reaffirm it? Becuase you threatened to put him in jail for treason if he exercised his right to withdraw the plea.
This isn't a mystery, you arrogant, useless check-that-box know-nothing.
This is not going to work. This seems, as someone said, like a "last will and testament" -- when this lunatic incompetent is slapped around and slapped down, he'll point to this daffy filing and say, "See? My personal creation of the Emmett Sullivan Detective Agency would have gotten to the truth, so They couldn't allow it."
What the fuck ever, cretin. YOLO, you stupid, incompetent diversity-slot motherfucker.
Polk County, Florida Sheriff to Antifa Terrorist Raiders Thinking About Coming to Pillage: We're All Armed Here and We Will Kill You Dead If You Come
—Ace
As antifa and BLM threaten to come to the suburbs to assault, loot, and burn, the Sheriff of Polk County, Florida, has a stark warning: Trespassers will be shot, and this is not just lip-service.
"The people in Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns... And if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I'm highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns."
FLORIDA SHERIFF: "The people in Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns. — And if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I'm highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns."
With leftwing mayors and governors giving their voters/rioters/arsonists/murderers "space to destroy," of course citizens are required to do the job the cops won't do, or have been ordered not to do:
BREAKING: Armed business owners are now stationed outside and on top their properties in Santa Monica. They are taking their protection into their own hands now. @FOXLApic.twitter.com/GTawCJPA2g
So what the fuck is left of our country? Blue states and cities have entirely given up their primary responsibility, that of protecting the citizenry and keeping the public order.
Instead, they've unleashed Mad Max violent atomism on us all.
I hope Polk County ignores Joey Fingers' bizarre new protocol for law enforcement: If someone is literally rushing at you to attack you, you must NOT shoot center mass, but should attempt to "wing 'im," like a fucking Tom Mix cowboty.
Joe Biden says he wants cops who have someone running at them with a knife to “shoot them in the leg.” pic.twitter.com/uhtj8gQa6l
Whether the sad bromide repeaters of the National Review want to admit it or not, this country is dissolving. When the local armed forces (I mean the police) of one county has to threaten to kill cross-border raiders from an adjoining county -- as if these were Texan settlers warning Pancho Villa's raiders to stay in Mexico -- there is no more America anymore, there is only Thunderdome.
But let's keep talking about Norms and Principles and Muh Twitterz.
Or whatever Premium Quality TV Cable Show you're binging on and squeeing about this fucking week.
I'm guessing he's going to invoke the Insurrection Act to federalize the state National Guards, and then instruct them to take out the fucking trash if the leftwing mayors and governors refuse to act against the terrorists.
Update:
Brett Baier floated, WITHOUT EVIDENCE, the leftwing conspiracy theory that "right wing extremists" were responsible for antifa's and BLM's and BAMN's riots, assaults, looting, and arsons.
Because of course he did.
But he'll be the first to scold somoene about an Alex Jones conspiracy theory about Crisis Actors.
Antifa, "Mainstream" Media Join Forces to Push the "Right Wing Extremists Are Behind the Riots" False Flag Conspiracy Theory
—Ace
Does that mean the known antifa terrorists, and the many black and brown faced rioters, are "crisis actors" hired by these "right wing extremists" to be the fall guy?
This is a conspiracy theory pushed by a radicalized leftwing media determined that their Direct Action arm -- antifa -- should not be blamed for the violence they're obviously perpetrating.
America is now Palestine, where they Palestinians blow up schools and then say, "It was really the Jews."
So here's Jake Tapper now, saying, "It was really the Jews."
Jake Tapper repeatedly demands that NSA Robert O'Brien comment on conspiracy theories being peddlied by Democrats and the #ResistanceMedia (but I repeat myself) that these attacks are not being conducted by the left-wing antifa and BLM cells, but by "right wing extremists."
O'Brien repeatedly ignores Jake Tapper and treats him like the callow antifa-symp manchild that he is.
On CNN Sunday morning, after several nights of antifa and Black Lives Matter-fueled violence in multiple American cities, anchor Jake Tapper asked President Trump’s national security advisor if white supremacists were using the unrest to start a race war.
"What can you tell us about any of the far-right groups that might be trying to use this as a predicate to prompt a race war as Vice News reported?" Tapper asked NSC advisor Robert O’Brien.
O’Brien didn't take the bait, telling Tapper that the violence was in fact being driven by antifa.
The lefty blog "Vice" on Friday first promulgated the conspiracy theory that much of the violence in recent days was being driven by the far-right, saying "far-right extremists are showing up with guns to the protests against police brutality that have exploded across the country" and "others are egging on the violence from behind their computers."
Wait, they're showing up to protest, but not committing crimes?
I thought that made them just... protesters?
But no, these are White People, so criminal intent is presumed.
Various Democrat politicians in Minnesota and elsewhere picked up the ball on Saturday, floating the idea that right-wingers were behind the violence.
I like this snap-back from O'Brien:
"I have not seen those reports," O'Brien said. "I generally don't read Vice so I haven't seen the reports on far-right groups."
Jake Tapper is pushing yet another conspiracy theory, but no one, not Twitter, not his sycophants on the pseudoright who follow him around like remoras, will say a damn thing about it.
David Hradzka has an interesting thread. His belief is that liberals approve of antifa, and think they're Heroes Who Punch Nazis. Juts like Chris Cuomo and the leftist media told them.
But they don't like seening churches burned down or stores being looted.
So they've made up a fiction -- a conspiracy theory -- to ease their cognitive dissonance: That while it may appear that antifa and BLM and BAMN are doing all this, it's really Right Wing Extremist instigators who are tricking peaceful antifa types to do these things, or doing them themselves.
It's a nice idea but I don't believe it. Sure, a few absolutely deluded people might believe this. But CNN has been defending antifa for literally years now. The "mainstream" media has been comparing them favorably to US troops storming Normandy for years now.
And for years now, there has been graphic video evidence of antifa's casual resort to mayhem and violence.
There is a simpler answer than Hrazdka's: The left is now just employing Palestinian tactics. They know damn well antifa-- their Hamas -- is responsible for the violence.
But they're going to provide propaganda cover to Hamas by claiming It was really the Jews pulling the strings, Hamas is innocent.
America is now Palestine -- thanks to the leftwing.
And Jake Tapper and the rest of CNN are playing Pallywood games to defend their American Hamas.
Campaign staff for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden are advertising their donations to a group that pays bail fees in Minneapolis after the city's police jailed people protesting the killing of a black man by a white police officer.
I think they were jailed for rioting, arson, looting, and assault, not "protesting," but the antifa media's gonna do what it does.
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to Reuters that the former vice president opposes the institution of cash bail as a "modern day debtors prison."
But the campaign declined to answer questions on whether the donations were coordinated within the campaign, underscoring the politically thorny nature of the sometimes violent protests.
President Donald Trump's re-election campaign on Saturday said it was "disturbing" that Biden's team "would financially support the mayhem that is hurting innocent people and destroying what good people spent their lives building," in an email about the Reuters story that called for Biden to condemn the riots.
Are the leftwing celebrities and Biden staffers pro-"right wing extremist"? I mean, if these are right wing extremists, why don't they want to see them kept in jail? Why the outpouring of sympathy for Nazis?
Or do they just understand that this "right wing extremist" line is obvious horseshit and part of the new Pallywood production house in the US?
Sleepy Joe Biden’s people are so Radical Left that they are working to get the Anarchists out of jail, and probably more. Joe doesn’t know anything about it, he is clueless, but they will be the real power, not Joe. They will be calling the shots! Big tax increases for all, Plus!
Little Marco Rubio heard from his very good friends in the leftwing media that Right Wing Extremists groups were posting dangerous tweets, and so he rushed right out to echo their claims, without inquiring if any of it were actually true.
Because that's what a good little Simp for the Left does.
What groups on the right? With all due respect, this is a cowardly response.
With all due respect @LisaMarieBoothe what would be cowardly is condemning what Antifa is doing in the street but ignore what certain extremist groups on the far right are encouraging followers to do on telegram & facebook. I am against ANY group that undermines law & order https://t.co/c4Ak0e6SdM
And xhe still doesn't answer. But Little Marco knows it's true -- a liberal on TV said, so it has to be true. His liberal friends never lie. It's only the scheming, evil, stupid conservative Deplorables he's forced to associate himself with who lie and spread Fake News.
Why is Rubio rushing to repeat a conspiracy theory pushed by the Antifa Media?
It could just be that he's a repulsive c*ck who believes everything his leftwing taskmasters tell him to believe. He is a weakling and a coward and a simp, after all.
Or it could be that he's claiming that "right wing instigators" are behind all this for the same reason Jake Tapper and the leftwing media are claiming it: Because they've previously defended and even praised antifa, and can't now admit they have defended and praised a domestic terrorist organization currently waging a war of insurrection against the citizenry of the United States.
Ergo, the "right wing instigators" are conjured up out of the ether -- no evidence required!
I think I see a possible Trump Voter here, but he's the one with the gun telling the looters to "MOVE, MOVE, MOVE" out of his store before he kills them. He doesn't seem to be one of the looters himself.
Right Wing Extremists raided and destroyed the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, because you know, Right Wing Extremists just hate college football.
The College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta has been destroyed.
The sport of football represents bringing people of all backgrounds together for a common goal. Last night, rioters obliterated the hall of fame.
This is not reportage; this is simply propaganda from enemy forces in what is now as close to a war as you can get without being forced to admit it's a war.
No patriotic American should brandish or proudly celebrate the iconography of a rebellion that resulted in tremendous devastation, the loss of more than 620,000 American lives, and the continued subjugation of Black America. pic.twitter.com/wc0VxVOrxA
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 1, 2020
The "mainstream" media -- the propaganda arm and communications division of antifa -- sprayed lies all over the internet, claiming that a church which was clearly burning was not in fact burning. Anything to protect their Revolutionary Comrades.
Here's Brian Stelter engaging in Stalinesque antijournalism:
Like firefighters run to a fire, Brian Stelter runs to defend rioters burning down a church. https://t.co/6Qg0JwIxeB
CNN's media pundit Brian Stelter apologized on Sunday after he was mocked for falsely claiming the historic St. John's Church showed "no sign of smoke or fire" as it was shown ablaze live on television.
As authorities clashed with demonstrators in Washington, D.C. for the third straight night, the parish house connected to the historic St. John's Episcopal Church across the street from the White House was set on fire late Sunday -- and the chaos was aired live on Fox News.
...
The reporter, Daily Caller's Katrina B. Haydon, responded that she was watching it live on Fox News -- but Stelter didn't take her word for it.
"You can see the church on your TV, right? No sign of smoke or fire at the church. Small fires across the street. Your tweet is going viral, and it's not accurate," Stelter responded.
Brian Stelter "apologized," but instead of taking responsibility for instantly jumping to protect antifa, he blamed... "this website" -- Twitter -- for making him act the fool.
I deleted my tweets because I fell victim to the worst foolish impulses of this website. I'm sorry for criticizing your tweets. I'm also sorry if anyone uses this brief exchange to distract from what really matters -- the protesters, the police, the church.
He fucking does the same thing on his gay-ass tv show, too. Does Twitter make him do that?
I deleted my tweets because I fell victim to the worst foolish impulses of this website. I'm sorry for criticizing your tweets. I'm also sorry if anyone uses this brief exchange to distract from what really matters -- the protesters, the police, the church.
Notice he immediately attempts to preemptively attack his critics, but accusing them of "using this brief exchange to distract from what really matters -- the protesters (you mean the rioters?), the police, and the church."
So he's telling you you can't criticize him for his antifa leanings.
Some apology!
By the way, this guy does nothing but report on Fox. His show is all about Fox. That's his idea of "media criticism" -- attacking Fox all day.
So it's very strange that when people were telling him that Fox was showing live video of the church burning, he refused to avail himself of the evidence.
Does he actually watch Fox, or does he just get clips sent to him by allies at Media Matters?
"The website made me do it" is a pretty weak response. "Apologizing" for people pointing out your failure is even weaker. Don't rent your mistakes, own them. https://t.co/Ssxtv7HR5c
Brian hosts a show on @CNN called “Reliable Sources” and this is exhibit 2,453 why journalism in the US is like a dumpster fire. https://t.co/DYNVlW8JE8
Journalists are meanwhile complaining... that their Aristocratic Privileges aren't being respected:
One group of journalists I follow on here is upset that rioters are burning down churches in DC. Another group is upset that Cleveland police are preventing journalists from entering protest zones. Guess which group better reflects what pisses off Americans more.
Antifa Posts Home Address of Right-Leaning Journalists; Within Hours, Antifa Shows Up At Cassandra Fairbanks House and Fires Fireworks and Possibly Guns at the House
—Ace
She called the cops. The cops said, We'll get there when we get there.
People just showed up at my house where I’m alone with my nine year old daughter and fired gunshots and fireworks at my house. After my address was posted online while I was receiving hundreds of death threats for 3 days. I caught the tail end when I hung up on 911 bc they said pic.twitter.com/jctXUwajLC
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 1, 2020
They didn’t know when they could get here because of the protests.
Fuck you people.
They were banging on my windows, shooting, and lighting off fireworks.
Lucky I couldn’t see them from my window or they would be dead.
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 1, 2020
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 1, 2020
Wow I’ve never pulled a gun out with the intent to shoot like this before. Im wide awake now. So much for sleep.
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 1, 2020
This lawlessness is ridiculous.
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 1, 2020
But you’re still not oppressed, rioting terrorist scum. If you were, this would be over by now.
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 1, 2020
There's a backstory here. Antifa types had just tried to "cancel" her last week, looking to get her fired or her income streams shut down. But she had anticipated all that, and she's not fireable, and she has "multiple secure income streams" (or words to that effect) that can't be cancelled.
And so the next step: physical intimidation.
I hope none of them ever have to scream at their child to go back in the room, lay on the floor, and lock the door.
I will find out who this was.
— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) June 1, 2020
I look forward to the pussies and cowards of the Kept Woman Pseudoright lecturing us, the victims of violence, not to be hotheads about things and just trust in George W. Bush's great plan for America.
The important thing is that the Cruiservatives keep babbling gassy platitudes and keeping "Cleanskins" so they can collect big checks from corporations looking to ingratiate themselves with the hard left.
Right on cue:
You can have order without liberty, but you cannot have liberty without order.
Yes, let's definitely keep sending money to National Review so it can burp up obvious, and cowardly evasive, bloviations like this as a way of avoiding saying anything that might keep them from getting that MSNBC gig or that AEI Fellowship slot.
If You've Forgotten: I tried to find Chris Cuomo's pro-antifa tweet likening them to the Normandy heroes but couldn't. But Instapundit linked it:
Trump to Governors: Do Your Jobs. Stop Letting Trust-Fund Terrrorists Push You Around Like Pussies.
—Ace
Apparently this audio was leaked by Democrats, who were aghast that Trump demanded they do their jobs and arrest their antifa voters for terrorizing citizens.
Via @edokeefe, whose report of this leak has unleashed all a storm of soy-tears:
JUST IN: President Trump unloads on the nation's governors on a call, calls on them to step up enforcement: "You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time. They're going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate."
In audio obtained by @CBSNEws, Trump tells governors: "Washington was under very good control, but we’re going to have it under much more control. We're going to pull in thousands of people."
MORE: Trump tells governors: "You've got to arrest people, you have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years and you'll never see this stuff again," per audio obtained by
One person listening in on the call describes the president's words and tone as "unhinged."
On the call, Trump references Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Milley and Attorney General Bill Barr. "We will activate Bill Barr and activate him very strongly," Trump says.
MORE: Trump tells governors later: "You're making a mistake because you're making yourselves look like fools. And some have done a great job. But a lot of you, it's not -- it's not a great day for our country."
TRUMP ADDS: "You know when other countries watch this, they're watching this, the next day wow, they’re really a push over. And we can't be a push over. And we have all the resources -- it's not like we don't have the resources. So, I don't know what you're doing."
More: The media has the vapors over Senator Cotton suggesting it's time to deploy the military against their antifa terrorist buddies:
And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry—whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters. https://t.co/OnNJmnDrYM
More rhetorical support for treating antifa, BLM, BAMN, etc., as insurrectionists and therefore proper targets of the military:
The radical-left formally divorced itself from America last night. They are domestic terrorists and enemies of the United States. They should be treated as such. pic.twitter.com/GOA3msSOb6
The counter-argument, from the c*cks, would be: "If you do that, they'll brand you terrorists as soon as they get into power and use the miltiary against you."
Yeah, here's the thing: Wake the fuck up. They already plan on doing just that the moment they get into power. This cuck idea that if we just treat the left nice they'll respond in kind is what makes the fucking dispicable, cowardly cucks the reality-evading, pleasant-fictions-repeating cowards and blue falcons that they are.
So explain to me why the alleged direct descendants of the boys who stormed Normandy beach are vandalizing and desecrating the monuments of their spiritual ancestors?
In the wake of last night's demonstrations, there are numerous instances of vandalism to sites around the National Mall. For generations the Mall has been our nation’s premier civic gathering space for non-violent demonstrations, and we ask individuals to carry on that tradition. pic.twitter.com/LmIHfW2AHj
— National Mall NPS (@NationalMallNPS) May 31, 2020
And here are the people who spring to work cleaning up after spoiled-rotten trust fund bitches:
If Antifa are just anti-fascists like those storming the beaches of Normandy, why are they defacing the monuments to the people who stormed the beaches of Normandy? https://t.co/JnbBafjmCD
Our cities are burning because some people refused to accept the results of a legal election.
Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised by how fast the Democrats in charge of the blue cities started to circulate the narrative (and by 'narrative' I mean 'totally made-up bullshit') that the rioting and looting and vandalism that has been tearing their cities apart of the last few days is the fault of 'white supremacists.'
Yes, they actually said this. And without any photographic evidence, I might add. No confederate flags, no tiki torches, no klan hoodies, not even any photoshopped MAGA hats. There were just a bunch of white guys with their faces covered that looked very much like standard-issue antifa goons.
And I guess there's a good reason for that.
But I guess I should've been able to predict this would happen.
Because "white supremacists" are the left's go-to bad guys in all of their narratives now. It used to be "large corporations", but ever since the rise of the left-wing high-tech giants, large corporations sre cool now. They aren't the evil, sinister monsters they used to be. Except if you're one of their employees who happens to hold conservative political views and appears on the radar of the HR department (for whatever reason), you might well have reason to hold a different view.
But there's some little part of me that says "oh come on, nobody would ever say anything that ridiculous and expect to be believed", but I guess I really need to recalibrate my expectations.
And another thing that I shouldn't have been surprised by is the number of celebrities who have publicly announced on social media that they will be donating money to bail out the rioters and looters and vandals. Which is weird, because, why would they want to bail about a bunch of white supremacists? Don't they think that white supremacists belong in jail?
That's my "gotcha" observation. But there's something more important to this sort of celebrity charity, and it's rather pernicious. By choosing to allocate their funds for this purpose, they have announced that they are IN FAVOR OF lawless acts of vandalism and looting and AGAINST law-abiding citizens and business owners who are trying to earn an honest living providing a service to their communities. And not just celebrities, I see.
To these celebrities, I would like to say this:
HAVE YOU LOST YOUR FREAKING MINDS??
Because what you're doing is taking sides against normal Americans. Normal Americans, I might add, who buy tickets to see your movies or concerts, pay cable fees to watch your TV shows, and buy whatever products you're endorsing.
How do you think this looks? Do you really want to do this?
How is that going to play in the swing states? I know you'll be the toast of San Francisco and New York, but how about Wisconsin? Florida? Heck, even Minnesota. How about Minneapolis?
Our cities are burning because some people refused to accept the results of a legal election.
My sense is that if Trump wins, Hillary supporters will be sad. If Hillary wins, Trump supporters will be angry. Important difference.
Friday's celebs: Introducing Miss America 1955, the lovely and talented Lee Meriwether, who along with singer/actor James Darren, co-starred in the short-lived science fiction TV series The Time Tunnel, another schlock production of 60s schlock-meister Irwin Allen.
Today's Edition Of The Morning Rant Is Brought To You By Italian Sausage, Potatoes, Peppers and Onions:
Good morning, kids. Monday and another grim milestone of yet another day of America held hostage.
Except, America is not being held hostage by a Chinese virus or, to be more accurate, the phony propaganda about the virus as a pretext to take away our civil liberties. No, we are being held hostage by what can only be described as a pre-meditated, organized act of insurrection. For four years, the Democrat-Media Complex has failed in its singular mission to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States and destroy his wildly popular and successful agenda. Even its latest attempt - the forced strangulation of our economy with the concomitant loss of millions of jobs and businesses - is finally petering out, as are the slim chances of its standard bearer, a decrepit degenerate of mind, body and soul that can no longer be shielded from serious and substantive criminal charges, as well as a decades-long career of venality, arrogance, megalomania and incompetence. In that regard, Joe Biden perfectly encapsulates the essence of his party.
So what's left? We're now at the point in the film where after finally grabbing the cat, lighting the fuse, punching the accelerator in the escape pod and breathing a sigh of relief as the Nostromo explodes in a nuclear fireball in the rearview mirror, Ripley can breathe a sigh of relief as she strips down to her panties. And then...
As horrendous as the death of George Floyd was at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman, with three of his colleagues standing by and doing nothing to stop it, it in no way justifies the past several nights of out of control mayhem that have rocked numerous American cities. More to the point, it cannot have been a spontaneous reaction; someone or some group of people gave a pre-arranged signal to start this insurrection.
"This is an organized internal coup by a small group of agitators acting as a domestic terror group. That's a fact...
"There were legitimate reasons looking at the tape of Mr. Floyd for all Americans who agreed in unanimity, for one of the first times I've seen in the last probably 10 years, that there was something seriously wrong there and you know what we're not talking about? Any of that because we're talking about an Antifa group, an organized group of agitators, committed unquestionably now to the destruction of the United States..."
... Virtually every official in Minnesota with influence over the Minneapolis police and the decision to keep Derek Chauvin on the force despite his alarming record is a Democrat: the governor, the attorney general, the Minneapolis congresswoman and the mayor. The city council consists of 12 Democrats and a Green Party member. The Democrat Party is the "system" that protected the bad cop and led to George Floyd's death.
Just as the Democrats protected the bad cops, so they encouraged the rioters by fueling the myth of America's systemic racism, by not providing a sufficient police presence, when the mayhem started, to nip it in the bud, and by attacking Trump for "glorifying violence," when he warned the rioters that if the local authorities failed to protect law-abiding citizens he would meet force with force.
The organizers of the violence were two far left organizations - Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Until the Minneapolis riots Attorney General and former DNC head, Keith Ellison featured a picture on his website advertising the Antifa handbook for conducting civil war. The proximity of the Antifa-spearheaded riot in Minneapolis prompted Ellison to remove the photo, because Antifa's destruction of his capital city would obviously lead to bad press...
I see that Ellison's son has now openly pledged his loyalty to Antifa, along with the daughters of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Bro-Fo Omar/Nur and Bill DeBolshevik. They seem nice.
...The Democrats created the atmosphere. They spilled the gasoline, lit the match, and are still too busy signaling their virtues and blaming Republicans, to do the hard work of putting out their own flames.
Black Lives Matter and Antifa are their organizations. The Minneapolis city authorities and the police force bosses are also their people. The atmosphere was the undiluted work of the Democrats. And with the pandemic fading, they dug into their old playbook and decided that it was time for a new crisis.
After locking down the country didn't work, the Democrats decided to set it on fire instead.
Bingo. From a political standpoint, I think the Democrats have done what one of their little darlings did last night - set themselves on fire with their own Molotov cocktail. And with President Trump officially declaring Antifa a terrorist organization, it's going to consume them. Already the brain dead meat puppets and warblers in the entertainment industry are rushing to defend a violent domestic terrorist organization, with cretins like Patton Oswalt trying to compare these cowardly sucker-punchers to the GIs who stormed Normandy. Calling Antifa "anti-fascist" is like Hitler declaring the Wehrmacht and the SS the same as the Irgun and Hadassah.
It's funny how everyone thinks Trump is brilliant at hoisting the Democrat-Media Complex on its own petard but it's not so much brilliance as it is common sense and the willingness to pull the rhetorical trigger. As David Horowitz notes, the mainstream Democrat Party going back almost 10 years to the astroturfed Occupy Wall Street event have embraced extremist and violent agitators in its quest to gain political victories. Even with 50-plus years of school brainwashing and reinforcement in the media, much of America finds what they stand for repulsive and abhorrent. With individuals such as Sanders, Warren, Bro-Fo, Rancida Taliban, Donkey Chompers and all the rest, there is no going back to the sham of pretending to be pro-American.
... "This is going to get Trump reelected. Please stop. Think first. Do not get Trump reelected for your behavior," the woman said. "Please, Santa Monica. We don't want Trump reelected."
Even a dim-bulb in Soviet Monica knows that this does not play well in Peoria, despite schmucks like Ali Velshi felching up Baghdad Bob-esque hairballs of "mostly peaceful protests." Yes please, Democrats. Do tell us why Antifa are peace loving pro-American freedom fighters.
...Who are those masked men in black with secret-service quality ear-pieces, military grade gas masks and backpacks full of Molotov cocktails? They are very likely professional rioters, recruited, transported and paid by the likes of some George Soros front group or other anonymous Cloward-Piven devotees who share Soros' hatred of America and want to see this nation bought to its knees. Panic over the virus was waning. These orchestrated riots across the country are the next ploy. Someone is organizing this madness. Someone is supplying the most lethal rioters with all the accoutrements of conflagration and moving them into place to all the affected cities. That all costs a great deal of money. Antifa owes its funding to Soros as do the more violent branches of Black Lives Matter. These players seem strangely secure that they will not be arrested or that if they are, they will be quickly released...
With the President officially declaring Antifa a terrorist organization, the full weight of the national law enforcement and national security apparatus must be brought to bear to destroy it. Frankly, death, destruction and mayhem warrant extreme measures as it is not hyperbole on my part to state that we face a mortal threat and open insurrection. Unfortunately, thanks to the Obama regime's almost total subversion of our national LE and IC agencies, there are doubts as to whether or not we can trust them to be on our side or the terrorists.
Here's an idea: declare war on Antifa and tap both General Mike Flynn and Rick Grenell to crush the insurrection. Target number one should be Nazi collaborator and convicted felon George Soros. He should be arrested and deported to Hungary as an actual Nazi collaborator, or better yet Malaysia where IIRC he has been sentenced to death in absentia. At the same time, all of his assets should be seized and every political front group be shut down immediately.
Obviously Soros is not the lone actor in all of this, and I strongly suspect individuals including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Tom Steyer and even Warren Buffet have been funding this madness as well. But the rot is deep; truly the Democrat Party is now an openly anti-American organization that seeks the overthrow of this nation. I'd say dissolve it as well but that's a bit more problematic. There's crossing the Rubicon but at some point I think the Rubicon will cross us, if it hasn't already.
STRUGGLE FOR LOCKDOWN LIBERATION
Cheap Justice Roberts sides with the terrorists, and "The TRACE Act will not keep Americans healthy or safe. Instead, it will erode what remains of our constitutional freedoms -- freedoms which have been all but washed away during the pandemic's hysteria."
CHINESE CORONAVIRUS, FICTIONS AND FACTS
Angel-of-Death Cuomo continues pimping Chi-Com propaganda, masks are totally useless against the virus, HCQ does work, and Dr. Joondeph on the Democrats' mass murder of senior citizens.
SHAMPEACHMENT, CLINTON/OBAMA COUP, CONGRESSIONAL PERSECUTION, SPYGATE, DEEP STATE, MUELLER DECEPTION,
Dana Boente feels the heat and splits, the Flynn-Kislyak transcript reveals Flynn's innocence and exposes his persecutors as liars, Cuck Schemer sweating like the pig who knows he's dinner, and dump the entire FBI along with Wray.
DEMOCRAT-LEFTIST SCANDALS, CRIMES, CHUTZ-POCRISY, MESHUGAS
Not sure if even this will help Martha McSally, but this bald-headed stooge looks to be a Chi-Com stooge.
POLITICS, 2020 ELECTION
Wow, Van Jones with a pretty big truth nugget, Dems blame everyone except themselves, Gallup teases that Trump may be on the verge of winning, father of Rump-Roast throws Klownbuchar under the bus as a veep pick, Cooper balking at no-mask demand by Trump for the RNC, House proxy voting a disgrace, Iowa Dem senate candidate sinking, V.D. Hanson gets the vapors about Trump's recent Tweets but events may have overtaken that story, and the last link underscores both that and my feelings about November. If we live that long.
FIRST AMENDMENT, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER BIG TECH
Twitter is now aiding and abetting violent crime and insurrection. Trump should nationalize it for the duration. Also, Trump NSA destroys Fake Tapper, Amazon pimps phony racism propaganda, former ESPN mouth cheers on the rioters until they come to his neighborhood, Go-Go Gohmert goes after social(ist) media, Malig-Nancy rips Zuckerberg, FFS! Instagram censors Marsha Blackburn's kids book, Beatles' former press agent in bed with Chi-Coms for years, and Fredo's ratings lower than the real Fredo at the bottom of Lake Tahoe.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INTERNATIONAL
Trump with medical aid to Brazil, Hong Kong under the gun as Richard Fernandez warns that Taiwan might be in China's sights, Bo-Jo seeks US alliance in beating Chi-Coms in 5G race, and PDT postpones G-7 to get other/more attendees.
THE ECONOMY, STUPID
"The US needs to control debt in order to restore prospects of long-term growth," "ESG investing is already taking a toll on state pension funds - now it might transform the world's largest private asset manager, too," and "A new poll shows that 75% of the US electorate support bringing manufacturing home to American shores."
EDUCATION
Silver lining in CA nixing standardized tests? Also, blasting LA for keeping kids out of school, strange bedfellows, and bid ed goes after homeschoolers.
CULTURE WARS, HITHER & YON
Christian Toto with a thumbs down on Space Force, Dinesh D'Souza on Herbert Marcuse's toxic legacy, a conversation with Christina Hoff Sommers, and "while 1 in 3 Americans show signs of clinical anxiety and depression, faith can be the vaccine to the nation's insanity."
NOTE: The opinions expressed in some 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.
“In Minneapolis, you can get arrested for opening a business, but not for looting one.” – Rush Limbaugh
Quote II
If you want to end unrest, end the conditions that create it. If you want to end unrest, work to end the conditions that create it. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
Quote III
“We’re not rich people giving handouts. We eat this food too. This is where I get my dinner as well. We’re trying to do something good, and trying to help people out who may need it and might not want to go to a grocery store, too. When people are taking the time to get to know the people in their neighborhoods and communities, we’re stronger and more secure.”Thadeaus Umpster
Jeremiah Ellison, a Minnesota City Council Member and son of Minnesota AG Keith Ellison tweeted Sunday:
I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA
Unless someone can prove to me ANTIFA is behind the burning of black and immigrant owned businesses in my ward, I’ll keep focusing on stopping the white power terrorist THE ARE ACTUALLY ATTACKING US!
***
***
Paul Joseph Watson.............NSFW-Language
Well, the language is safe for my immediate work space.
If you need more news that sounds too weird to be true, you're in luck: Someone in Kent County tried to recycle a Civil War cannonball.
Grand Rapids police officers were dispatched to the Kent County recycling center at 12:20 p.m. Tuesday when workers came across what was described as a 6-inch, 6-pound shot-put ball on the processing line, according to the police report.
Officers on site found the cannonball was live and likely a percussion-cap style detonator and subsequently evacuated the center, according to the report.
Ilhan Omar’s daughter promotes list of ‘supplies’ for rioters burning and looting Minneapolis
Amid the chaos, rioting, and looting that followed the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd last week, the daughter of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) passed on a list of “supplies” for protesters tweeted by the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists.
Items on the list retweeted by Isra Hirsi included bandages, saline for eye washing, and plywood for shields that could also double as weapons to be used against police officers.
The great melting pot has had too many rotten ingredients added to it. Or, "shit in, shit out."
Anonymous on Saturday seemingly posted a video waging war on the Minneapolis Police Department in response to George Floyd’s killing. Then, the department’s website mysteriously went down.
A restaurant caught in the crossfire of unrest in Minneapolis Thursday night has sent a powerful message to its followers on social media: “Let my building burn.”
Gandhi Mahal, at 3009 27th Av. S. in Minneapolis, caught fire overnight. The restaurant is located near the same corner as several other food businesses, including the Town Talk Diner and Gastropub, El Nuevo Rodeo and Addis Ababa, that appear to have been heavily damaged by fire. The restaurant is about a block away from the Minneapolis Third Police Precinct.
Owner Ruhel Islam’s daughter, Hafsa, wrote the post Friday morning. Here is an excerpt:
“Thank you to everyone for checking in. Sadly Gandhi Mahal has caught fire and has been damaged. We won’t loose hope though, I am so greatful for our neighbors who did their best to stand guard and protect Gandhi Mahal, Youre efforts won’t go unrecognized. Don’t worry about us, we will rebuild and we will recover.”
As she wrote the post, Hafsa said she overheard her father on the phone, saying “let my building burn, Justice needs to be served, put those officers in jail.”
Born on this day: May 31, 1948 - John Bonham
English drummer John Bonham from Led Zeppelin who had the 1969 US No.4 single 'Whole Lotta Love'. The bands fourth album released in 1971 featuring the rock classic Stairway To Heaven, has sold over 37 million copies. He is regarded as the greatest and most influential rock drummer of all time. Bonham died on September 25th 1980 aged 32 after choking on his own vomit. via thisdayinmusic.com
Top 10 sockpuppeteers:
1 [354 names] 'Concerned Woman of Brattleboro' [49.69 unique names/day]
2 [73 names] 'Duncanthrax'
3 [60 names] '18-1'
4 [38 names] 'Two Weeks From Getting A Restraining Order From Zooey Deschanel Who Is Afraid of Her Love For Me'
5 [35 names] 'Axeman'
6 [35 names] 'Notorious BFD'
7 [28 names] 'Cicero (@cicero)'
8 [26 names] 'Romeo13'
9 [26 names] 'freaked'
10 [24 names] 'I am the Shadout Mapes, the Housekeeper'
***
Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by The Odd Couple.
Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire and AceCorp, LLC. You know the routine. ONT tips, loose change, drink tokens and burner phones to petmorons at gmail dot com. Complaints and decorating ideas to someone who cares more than I.
Gun Thread: Never, Ever Volunteer for Anything Edition! [Weasel]
—Open Blogger
Hold my beer! (not an M1917)
Welp, I've been promising you a video of the Model of 1917 for a while and I was able to get down to the farm for a couple of days this past week and do some shooting with it. Let's take a look at that below, shall we?
As I mentioned in the video, when I bought this rifle it still had the original barrel, dated 1919, which was toast. After a thorough cleaning I could tell it was a mess and a quick trip to the range confirmed it. I looked around and decided the Civilian Marksmanship Program Custom Shop in Anniston, Alabama was the best bet for having this classic rifle rebarreled, and they did an outstanding job. It's not quick, but the cost was very reasonable and I cannot say enough good things about the experience. The way it worked was to fill out a work order and send it in to be placed on a waiting list, which at the time was about six months. Right on schedule, they called to give me a service order number and authorized me to send in the rifle. At that time I inquired about custom chambering, and was told it was no problem. I sent in the rifle and the chamber specifications I wanted, and a few weeks later I had the rifle back with a new parkerized Criterion barrel, and the chamber cut exactly as I had requested.
Although in the video I was shooting surplus Lake City M2 Ball ammunition manufactured in 1969, I have worked up a custom handload for this rifle and as I recall without too much effort it was holding right around 1.5 MOA. The limiting factor, of course, is my marksmanship and more specificaly my old eyeballs. I had briefly thought about competing in Service Rifle Matches with the gun, but ultimately never pursued it, and just enjoy shooting it for funsies now. If you ever have a chance to own or shoot one of these classics, don't miss the opportunity!
Here's a vintage photo of some guys and an M1917.
Some guys with a M1917
Oh! And a followup on the Oakley glasses. They worked fine and I would recommend them. The model is M Frame Strike and Oakley currently has them discounted on their website at about $100. Again, that's sort of pricey for a pair of plastic glasses which probably cost 7 cents to produce, but the lenses are very clear and I noticed only a minimal tendency for fogging. With a Dorkiness Coefficient of .3 they're not likly to chase off all of the range babes either, so as long as I can keep from scratching them all to hell, I think they're a decent investment.
******
So our pal Jim Sunk New Dawn recently took a trip to the range, and here is his report:
A quick 25 rounds, before lunch today. Taurus Model 85, Total Titanium, chambered in .38 Spl +P. Two-inch barrel, fixed sights. Winchester-Western 148 gr. Full Wadcutter, Hollow Base target loads. 7 yards, all rounds fired double action. 6 minutes, 37 seconds on the PACT timer, first shot to last.
Range Report. There were no Rental pocket guns available, they had all been sold, at premium prices, to desperate, grasping customers. I had planned to fire another 25 rounds from a Kel Tec .32 or .380. Next time to the range, I'll break out the Beretta .32 Tomcat, and give it a whirl.
Lesson One: It's not that snubbies aren't as accurate as their larger kin.
Lesson Two: Develop SKILL with the mouseguns, and build CONFIDENCE in what they can do, if skillfully employed.
Lesson Three: Don't consider yourself "under-gunned" with one. Consider the bad guy OVER-SURPRIZED at the effectiveness of your defense.
Jim SND 25 rounds at 7 yds
Let's take a closer look
Words of Wisdom, brother! In addition to being an all around great Moron, you can see that Jim is one hell of a shooter. Nicely done, and thanks for sending this in!
******
Last week our pal Sua Sponte was breaking in a new rifle and trying various .22LR ammo. This week he was back on the range and let's see what he had to say.
Had some time to go another round of testing and nothing could be more enjoyable than being out in the open and seeing what this Ruger Precision can do and with what ammunition.
Probably spent about four hours out on my range today and there are a few things I've learned:
-Work on my trigger control
-Work on my breathing
-Relax and enjoy
-Expectation management
This! Absolutely a thousand times this! If you want to improve your shooting, you have to have a plan during practice at the range, and it helps to remind yourself what it is periodically. Focus on the fundamentals, but have fun and manage expectations. I cannot overemphasize this enough. Everyone has a bad day at the range. It happens. I have seen competitors make a bad shot and come completely unglued as a result, effectively taking themselves out of the match. They may have made a mistake in their fundamentals, but they also stopped having fun and were certainly not managing expectations. Relax.
Sorry for the mini-rant, and back to Sua Sponte's report...
Out of the table today, along with what I've compiled the past few weeks, I would have to say the ratings for which ammunition I think best performs with the Ruger Precision, just my opinion - your mileage may vary, for precision shooting would be:
1-CCI Mini Mag 40g CPRN
2-Blazer 40G LRN (surprisingly)
3-Winchester Sub Sonic 43G LHP (another surprise)
4-Federal Automatch 40G LRN
5-Aguila SE 40G CPRN
6-Aguila SE 40G LRN
7-Winchester Super-X 40G CPHP (I just could not get this stuff to tighten up)
8-Remington Golden Bullet 40G PRN (This has not performed well at all. It's decent ammo, but, probably stretching it to fulfill a precision role)
I think the next step is to zero down on the top six and then maybe go on to a top three out of that. Once I accomplish that, will move out to 75 yards, narrow those down and then see what they'll do at 100 yards. Regardless of how things turn out, I'm having a blast and I do believe that installing the Tandemkross Game Changer comp has helped. But, sometimes firearms can be picky with ammo, even used in the same name brand firearm. If anyone has suggestions on any ammo they have tried that performs well at distance, would love to hear.
I've included two that I did take out to 75 yards, which I had time to do more but it was getting dark.
Aguila SE 40gr 75 yds
Blazer 40gr 75 yds
Thanks for the report, Sua Sponte, nicely done. Look forward to seeing how it goes at 100!
******
Virginia
Remember earlier this year when more than 20,000 gun owners and gun rights supporters attended a rally in Richmond, protesting infringements on their Second Amendmenton rights, and burned the city to the ground?
Yeah. Neither do I.
******
ATTENTION NoVaMoMe 2020!!
Sad people who cannot make the new NoVaMoMe date of August 29th
Due the Chinese Cooties hysteria in Virginia, the NoVaMoMe 2020 has been postponed until Saturday, August 29th. The time and location remain the same. If you haven't already, please check your email and let the Central Planning Committee know if you are able to make the new date. If not, your registration fee will be refunded and we will open your spot to those on the wait list. Questions? Just email us at NoVaMoMe2020 at gee mail dot com. Thank you!
This week we have an unidentified photo from our pal redc1c4. Amazing.
******
Please note the new and improved gmail account morongunthread at gmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. 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?
Is anyone else deeply ambivalent about flavoring good steak? I sure am, in spite of the delights of some of those flavorings. compound butters (like the chipotle butter in the photo) usually taste great, and the classic Italian presentation of excellent olive oil and a squeeze of lemon is a marvelous thing. But the flavor of a perfectly cooked piece of nicely marbled beef is so good and pure and simple and...dare I say it...perfect, that it seems a bit of a waste to tart it up with other stuff. It's almost (shudder) French!
Commenter redc1c4 sent along some cooking tips from a high-end butcher in La La Land, and while they are pretty straightforward, I would not consider them the Gospel.
1. Temper the meat.
Yup...I agree. Take it out of the refrigerator about an hour before cooking. I have been doing this for years, and when I can't for some reason I think I have noticed a difference.
2. Season aggressively.
Our second point of agreement, but I season when I take the steak out of the refrigerator. I think that with time, salt penetrates the meat a bit and adds to the experience. And...I hold the steak in one hand and a big pinch of Kosher salt in the other, and sprinkle from up high. That makes it nice and even.
But they also say to use pepper, and I must disagree! I think pepper burns at high temperatures and does not belong on the steak until it is done cooking.
3. Heat.
Preheat whatever method you are using. No argument from me.
4. Patience.
Don't poke and prod and move the steak too much. That's true of all foods!
5. Rest!
Let it rest. Absolutely. This may be the most important bit of advice they provide. Relax, pour yourself a glass of wine or mead or the blood of your enemies or whatever you drink with steak, put up your feet and enjoy the experience of waiting for something glorious. Five minutes won't kill you.
6. The Finish.
They suggest using a thermometer to check the final temperature, and I guess that is good advice. I certainly use my thermometer all of the time, especially on fish. Just not on steak. I think the touch method works just as well, and you get the opportunity to lick your fingers or burn yourself!
7. Plating.
Sure. Why not. Warm the plate. I usually put it next to the grill so it is warmed by the copious quantities of ambient heat, but hot water or a warm oven or a bunch of other ways will work just as well.
I think most people who take steak seriously do all of these things as a matter of course, but if you are just starting out on the road to steak perfection (it is a long road, you'll never get there, but the ride is great!), this advice is a good place to begin.
That's the first loaf from a batch of dough made from a no-knead recipe sent to me by Shiv-Master Bluebell. It was really, really easy, and turned out a very nice loaf. Is it fantastic? No, but a fresh-baked loaf of bread is, sort of by definition, quite good eating, especially with butter.
Next time I'll goose it a bit with some sourdough starter, but it is a solid recipe all on its own. And weird too. I am accustomed (as many of you are) to fairly complex bread recipes, with multiple folding and kneading sessions and timing according to the phases of the moon and the ambient temperature divided by your astrological sign times your mom's birth date.
So it was a real pleasure not doing much of anything and still getting a pretty good result.
******
Last night I served dinner for five. Roast chicken, pork ribs, ratatouille, salad, fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies. Two big eaters, two normal eaters and a child (so pretty typical for many people), and there were leftovers.
Doing a quick accounting yields a total cost of about $40, and that includes a fancy chicken from a local poultry farm. To be fair, that is balanced by the ridiculously inexpensive but excellent quality pork ribs from Costco.
What's the point? Well, I think most people can cook frugally with just a bit of planning. It's not that tough, and it doesn't mean that one has to eat boring crap.
Remember that chickpea and chorizo dish I linked to? The one that made me suspicious of hard cider as the liquid? Well, a braver Moronette than I gave it a shot, and:
I made it with cider and chickpeas I soaked and pressure cooked. It was delicious and most ingredients are in the pantry. I will make again. I really enjoy the Food Thread. I bought a Sous Vide (Joule).
Covid19 lockdown is a good time for cooking.
Hah! My work is done! I have a convert.
The Joule she mentions is by all accounts a fine piece of equipment, but the one drawback, at least for me, is that it is controlled only through an app. There is no way to run it on the machine itself, unlike the Anova, the one I have.
The note was signed with a name that may or may not be her nic, so in the interests of privacy I will refer to her only as "Reader with fine taste in blogs and cooking technique."
******
Looks great huh? But look closer. Have I taught you nothing? Frenching bones is a crime against all that is good about cooking and eating. I mean really! It's even named after France. Yuck.
Commenter Mr. Bingley should know better. Although he did redeem himself by serving them (I assume he grilled them) with a red wine reduction/Dijon dipping sauce.
******
Alton Brown. I love the guy. And he likes guns, so that is a big thumb's up. But sometimes he gets so damned fussy that he makes a simple food far too busy and multi-stepped to take seriously. Lacquer Bacon sounds really good, but dude, how many extra steps do you need to coat bacon with sugar and pepper?
I'll still make it though.
******
I'm not even a fan of cherries, but their season is approaching, and this looks really good. Too bad they speak European kickball units, but with the internet even that's manageable. Traditional vanilla cherry ripple ice cream.
******
Food and cooking tips, Large-breasted Muscovy ducks, young wild pigs, bartenders who use vermouth in Martinis, crisp bacon (although I am moving toward less crisp), low-temperature-roast chicken, and good tomatoes that aren't square, pale pink and covered with Mestizo E.coli: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com. Any advocacy of French Toast with syrup will result in disciplinary action up to and including being nuked from orbit. And yes, shaking a Manhattan is blasphemy...it's in the Bible!
No, they aren't cute. They are terrorists with bushy tails.
They have been digging up my yard this spring with tremendous vigor, and I have had just about enough. Some of you know the lengths to which I will go to end the squirrels' domination of the suburban landscape. I will take no prisoners. I will play for keeps.
It's gratifying to see an American launch. Yes, that is patriotic and nationalistic and jingoistic and probably racist and sexist and age-ist and whatever pejoratives we have become inured to...
And open thread, because you are going to talk about the rioting anyway...
Below the fold is a live feed of the ISS (not sure how long that will last).
Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes, wine moms, frat bros, crétins sans pantalon (who are technically breaking the rules), rioters, looters, outside agitators, and the rest of you standing on the corner minding your own business. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, a weekly compendium of reviews, observations, snark, witty repartee, hilarious bon mots, and a continuing conversation on books, reading, spending way too much money on books, writing books, and publishing books by escaped oafs and oafettes who follow words with their fingers and whose lips move as they read. Unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these pants, which, I need to warn you, are especially bad today, and cannot be unseen. So if you have a weak heart, liver or an otherwise sub-optimal constitution, you'd best just keep on walking and enjoy the rest of the book thread.
Stockholm Public Library includes more than 2 million volumes and 2.4 million audio tapes, CDs and audio books.
The "international library" is the section for foreign languages, housed in two floors of an annex behind the main building... Its holdings comprise more than 100 languages with 17,000 volumes in Persian, 15,800 in Arabic, and 14,500 in Spanish. In 2007 the most borrowed languages were Russian (19,300 loans), Thai, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Polish and Japanese. For some of these languages, Stockholm serves public libraries in the rest of Sweden through interlibrary loans.
Here's the story I always like to tell about Sweden:
A few years ago I saw the Swedish movie Let The Right One In, which plot concerned a bullied school kid finding himself protected by a vampire. He is the son of a single mom and there are several scenes shot inside the apartment they live in, and I was surprised how depressing and shabby it looked. I know she's a single mom and probably doesn't make much money, but even still, we're talking Soviet Union/East Bloc levels of shabbiness. Then there was a scene shot at a municipal swimming pool in the town where they lived and the facility looked absolutely magnificent. No expense was spared in the construction materials. It looked like a swimming pool you'd find in Emperor Nero's palace.
‘The higher the ape climbs, the more he shows of his arse’ is a 16th century proverb implying that the more an unsuitable person is promoted or venerated, the more they reveal their incompetence. pic.twitter.com/tXLYh44Fow
When I was a young boy living in Ontario, Canada, I read a children's book that changed my life. It was The How and Why Wonder Book of the American Revolution by Felix Sutton, and when I read it, I knew I was an American born in the wrong country. That was the moment, some fifty years ago now, when I fell in love with the story of the American Revolution and the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
Ha! I remember those 'How and Why Wonder Books' and you can still get used copies of the American Revolution one, but it's rather spendy. Abebooks is considerably cheaper. I'd kind of like to read it for myself, actually, to see how it inspired a Canadian boy to become an American.
But he especially likes the Declaration of Independence. From the introduction:
The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s...
The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought—what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
National Review (yeah, I know) has a pretty good review by a writer I am not familiar with, who points out that this book is
...not organized in chronological order but in a philosophical order that explains the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration of Independence point by point and demonstrates just how thorough was the colonists’ consensus on those principles. Rather than stopping with familiar quotations from celebrated revolutionaries, Thompson, a political-science professor at Clemson University, musters evidence from scores of writings by lesser-known figures, many never published before, and deftly assembles it all into a logical sequence that begins with fundamentals (one section is entitled “The Meaning of Truth”) and works its way up to such concepts as entrepreneurialism and “the ideal of the self-made man.”
I received e-mail this week from 3 (count 'em) 3 new moron authors:
Long-time lurker Alma Boykin has written many urban fantasy novels and has just released the 12th in her Familiar Tales series. But let me introduce you to the very first one so you can get an idea of what's going on in this universe, Familiar Tales, which is a collection of 5 short stories in a universe in which
...Familiars choose magic workers, and a few others, as their partners. A world of adventure, tax-deductions, bad publisher tricks, and odd veterinary clinics, where wolverines wear glasses and iguanas sing along with the radio—badly—while casting spells and keeping their chosen humans out of mischief.
Nothing aside from magic comes easily for two shadow mages. André Lestrang relocates to Riverton just in time for the summer humidity and storm season. He and his fiancée Lelia Chan struggle to balance work, magic, their relationship, and his Army career. When someone sends a magical package bomb to one of their friends, a chain reaction of trouble ensues.
Add in two Familiars determined to ensure that their mages don't get "in trouble" before the wedding, the usual mischief a ring-tailed lemur, kit fox, wolverine, and others can devise, and a dash of new responsibilities to the magical community. Lelia and André discover that the summer starts to feel
Another long-time lurkette has just published her latest science-fiction thriller Going Ballistic:
When her plane tries to come apart at apogee during a hijack, ballistic airline pilot Michelle Lauden handles the worst day she could imagine. After getting down without losing any passengers or crew, though, she finds her troubles have just begun!
The country she's landed in has just declared independence from the Federation. The Feds intended her passengers to be the first casualties in the impending war - and they're not happy she's survived to contradict their official narrative in the news.
The local government wants to find her to give her a medal. The Feds are hunting her to give her an unmarked grave. As they both close in, Michelle's running out of options and time. The only people able to protect her are an accident investigation team on loan from the Federation's enemies... the same enemies who sent her hijackers in the first place.
And they have their own plans for her, and the country she's in!
...the 2020 Summer Special of Cirsova Magazine. It includes my story "The Fourth Gift": "Baltasar, one of Ulrik's many Menders, diligently performs his task of recreating the Solar System -- until a mysterious anomaly forming around the Moon threatens the outcome of the Plan!"
Cirsova is in the spirit of the old pulps, as you can tell by its tagline: Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense.
Pulpy? Boy, I'll say! Just look at the cover:
Click on the pic to go to the Kindle edition, which is $3.99. At 277 pages, you'll be getting a lot of bang for your buck.
Moron Recommendations
Amazon informed me that the Kindle edition of Theodore Dalrymple's collection of essays, Life At The Bottom, is selling for $3.99:
The doctor and consultant psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple looks at Great Britain - the nation which produced Newton and Darwin, Shakespeare and Dickens, David Hume and Adam Smith - and marvels at what it has become.
Its inner cities and council estates are places where 'the whole gamut of human folly, wickedness, and misery may be perused at leisure... abortions procured by abdominal kung fu; children who have children; women abandoned by the father of their child a month before or a month after delivery; insensate jealousy; serial stepfatherhood that leads to sexual and physical abuse of children on a mass scale.'
Dalrymple's political observations are insightful and his essays on the British lower class are hearthbreaking to read, even depressing. He is the the modern-day version of Cassandra, a Greek prophetess cursed by the gods to be 100% correct in her predictions, but never believed by nobody. I think the Illiad has her jumping up and down screaming her head off as the celebratory Trojan army was dragging the wooden horse into the city.
___________
Moron 'DIY Daddio' said that The Blood of Others by Rick Mofina is a pretty good murder mystery:
The disappearance and murder of a lonely San Francisco insurance clerk puts a relentless crime reporter and legendary homicide cop on separate tracks in their pursuit of a killer.
The suspect lures solitary women out of their quiet worlds and into his nightmare as he races the clock and travels the globe searching for the one woman who will forgive the unforgivable.
In the course of a widening investigation, Olivia Grant, a shy gift store sales manager who aches to escape her painful solitude, meets Ben Wyatt, an outcast San Francisco cop on the case, Wyatt is a man gripped with self-doubt over the shooting of his former partner.
Blood of Others is a study of loneliness and human frailties; a story steeped in terrifying suspense that threatens to destroy the lives of those drawn into it as it rockets to a heart-pounding conclusion.
So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, insults, threats, ugly pants pics and moron library submissions may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.
What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.
The king wanted to go fishing, and he asked the royal weather forecaster the forecast for the next few hours.
The palace meteorologist assured him that there was no chance of rain.
So the king and the queen went fishing. On the way, he met a man with a fishing pole riding on a donkey, and he asked the man if the fish were biting.
The fisherman said, "Your Majesty, you should return to the palace. In just a short time I expect a huge rainstorm."
The king replied: "I hold the palace meteorologist in high regard. He is an educated and experienced professional. Besides, I pay him very high wages. He gave me a very different forecast. I trust him."
So, the king continued on his way.
However, in a short time, torrential rain fell from the sky. The King and Queen were totally soaked.
Furious, the king returned to the palace and gave the order to execute the meteorologist.
Then he summoned the fisherman and offered him the prestigious position of royal forecaster.
The fisherman said, "Your Majesty, I do not know anything about forecasting. I obtain my information from my donkey. If I see my donkey's ears drooping, it means with certainty that it will rain."
So, the king hired the donkey.
And so, began the practice of hiring dumb asses to work in influential positions of government.
And thus, the symbol of the Democrat Party was born.
And they’ve become radically more complicated in just the last year. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon — the big fish in a small pond — are still making big moves (especially in the original programming game). The slightly younger CBS All Access is still the streaming home of CBS programming, of Star Trek, and of The Good Fight (one of TV’s best shows).
But the last seven months have heralded the arrival of AppleTV+, Disney+, and HBO Max, all pulling on their wetsuits to take a dip in a pond that seems to have less room by the day. When you consider that NBCUniversal’s Peacock is yet to arrive in earnest — it officially launches this summer — and that this census of streaming services doesn’t account for the scores of boutique options out there (to say nothing of streaming extensions of TV channels, like the Showtime and Starz apps), you begin to realize just how difficult it can be to figure out where to spend your streaming dollars.
Do you want to give someone a memorable wedding gift? Why not take your inspiration from Renaissance art and give them a painting of a sexy weasel?
In the 16th century, weasels were a catch-all category for many of the furry, long-bodied carnivorous creatures in the mustelid family, such as ermine, sables, martens, ferrets, stoats and mink. These creatures often appear in Renaissance portraits of high-ranking noblewomen, and represent a fascinating language of sexual symbolism. Explore some of the hidden meanings of weasels below!
On the verge? No, not really. This is The ONT after all.
***
Locating Saturday Night material is challenging these days.............
After Shanchuk (pictured at right) confronted the man, he did not reverse course in the aisle. Shanchuk, cops charge, then “just stopped in the aisle to prevent him from continuing down the aisle in the wrong direction.”
Shanchuk “continued to yell” at the man, who was “not listening to her,” police report. She then “removed her face mask and spit in the male's face."
Cops responded to the market after the victim dialed 911 to say that “while shopping at Big Y, he got into an argument with a female shopper about going the wrong way down an aisle and that during the argument, the female spit in his face.”
Arrested for breach of peace, Shanchuk is free in advance of a July 17 court hearing
***
It does take all kinds to make the world go round. Doesn't it?
A man with a flip-flop fetish has been arrested after being found with more than 100 stolen pairs of them in his possession.
Theerapat Klaiya, 24, stole the footwear from homes in his neighbourhood, and later apparently had sex with each of them after several hours of wearing them.
The 24-year-old was arrested after police received dozens of complaints from confused residents saying their flip-flops had gone missing in Nonthaburi, central Thailand.
Grenades are diabolical little devices that go back as far as the 8th-century when soldiers from the Byzantine Empire began putting incendiary compounds in small stone or ceramic jars and hurling them at their enemies. Today’s grenades aren’t a whole lot more elegant.
There are a few kinds of grenades, with time-delayed fragmentation grenades being the most common in modern armies. Frag grenades are made of steel or some super-hard synthetic, and filled with explosive material. When you pull the detonation pin and release the handle, it triggers the fuse to ignite the charge.
Despite their explosive power, it isn’t the explosion itself that’s harmful. It’s the shrapnel. When a grenade blows up, the steel body disintegrates into a multitude of tiny pieces. Those fragments hurtle through the air in all directions, like a shotgun blast. The bumpy texture on the outside of many grenades (hence the nickname “pineapple”) helps them erupt into more effective shrapnel. If one of those pieces catches you wrong, it can be deadly.
Switzerland’s sex workers have released a few guidelines for banging during the Wuhan virus outbreak. The guidelines even highlight preferred sex positions while renting some love.
Swiss sex workers have drawn up a list of rules which they say minimises the risk of transmitting coronavirus in brothels, in hopes that the country’s ban on the industry could soon be lifted.
***
The ONT Musical Interlude
No rhyme.......
No reason.......
Just cuz..........
Logan Township police say a mother and son have been cited for fighting following a physical altercation that occurred on Memorial Day, according to a news release.
Police say officers were dispatched to a home along the 600 block of Avalon Road in Altoona, just after 9:30 p.m. Monday, after receiving reports of a domestic dispute.
Upon further investigation, officers say the incident began when the 41-year-old mother got into an argument with her 20-year-old son, and his girlfriend, and disconnected the WIFI service.
Police say in response, the son disconnected the power to the entire house, which led to the altercation becoming physical.
***
Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Deal Breakers.
Notice: Posted under the category that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission from the Ace Media Empire, AceCorp, LLC and the "Hamsters".
Saturday Evening Movie Thread 05-30-2020 [Hosted By: Moviegique]
—OregonMuse
This Film Is Not Yet Rated
I have, in the past, been a bit of a censorship buff (which, sadly, is neither the least weird nor the least boring thing about me) so I was much intrigued by Kirby Dick’s film exposé of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) This Film Is Not Yet Rated. The film, of course, is not actually rated, severely limiting it’s options for box-office success—the point of the film—but given the way most people reacted when I said I had seen it, I doubt this made much of a difference. Sample true dialogue:
“I just saw a film
about the MPAA.”
“The what?”
“The MPAA! The Motion
Picture Association of America.”
“Oh.” Blinks of
non-recognition.
“They rate the
movies!”
“‘kay.”
“They’re also lobby
for the studios.”
“Got any dip?”
People do not seem to be fascinated by the topic. I first became aware of the ratings board through the late H.B. Halicki who griped that his film Gone In 60 Seconds(the 1974 classic, not the recent remake) had gotten an R-rating instead of a PG because he was an independent and not a big studio. (By the way, I was told this story second-hand as a young child, so it may be entirely apocryphal.) Nonetheless, indies getting a harsh rating where the board was lenient with the big studios are a fair chunk of this film’s exposé.
Most of this movie's posters have a naked woman on them, not that it's dabbling in exploitation. *kaff*
The reason I’ve been fascinated with censorship in the past is precisely because it is, almost by definition, arbitrary. One use of the F-bomb gets you a “PG”, unless you use it to refer to the act, in which case it gets you an “R”, to use one of the few, semi-hard-ish rules that the basically free-wheeling MPAA uses. The excellent Gunner Palace is riddled with swear words and gets a PG-13, presumably because it’s a documentary, and because the director appealed (and won).
I have to say before I get into specifics, that while I went into the film thinking ratings boards and censorship were generally stupid, I actually came out with a bit more respect for the ratings board, especially when presented with the film’s idea of alternatives. This is probably a bad sign, like when I came out of Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room thinking that the media had unfairly demonized Ken Lay. I’m sure that this wasn’t the filmmaker’s intention but then, I can get a little contrary if I think I’m being manipulated.
In between making various points, the film shows largely gratuitous clips of (mostly sex) scenes that got other films “NC-17” or “X” ratings. This was the most entertaining aspect of the film. Also, the film maker hires a detective to “out” the members of the ratings board, who are generally kept anonymous. This felt a little creepy.
Come see all the scenes edited out of other movies for BEING TOO HOT! (Totally not exploitation.)
So, what are the movie’s basic points?
The MPAA, a
private organization, holds tremendous power that favors its members and
locks indies out of theaters.
The MPAA ratings process is ill-defined and mysterious. Its
appeals process is even more so.
The MPAA claims not to be a censorship board but, in fact, is,
since an
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NC-17#X_is_replaced_by_NC-17">NC-17
kills a movie’s box office.
People should be aware of what’s going on.
A more sensible ratings system should be used. One that reflects a
broader set of values.
Other minor premises:
The government should do the rating, if there’s any rating to be
done.
Sex should be less strongly rated than violence.
The movie studios have been colluding with the US military for the
past 40 years to inure the public to violence so they’ll be more
amenable to war.
I did not make that last one up. But let’s start with the top five points: First, the MPAA is a private organization and it most certainly favors the big studios that formed it. The film’s most correctly damning example comes from Kevin Smith, whose film Jersey Girl is a solid “PG-13”, or even a “PG”. There’s a discussion about masturbation that pushed it into an “R” because one of the raters would be uncomfortable if her 16-year-old daughter heard about that mysterious practice. This is such a mild film and such a mild discussion—about on a par with a “Seinfeld” episode—that the “R” seems absurd. It also seems unlikely that they would’ve given an “R” to a major player in the same circumstance.
I think this part comes right after Kevin Smith argues against "hackneyed" ideas. And this trope must be the most hackneyed idea in history.
Second, the MPAA is mysterious, weird and, em, obtuse. This is a big deal for the filmmakers who appear in TFINYR. But honestly, what do I care? The bulk of the greatest movies ever made were made under far more restrictive rules. Do I find it weird that the MPAA sometimes seems to penalize filmmakers for showing female orgasms? I suppose. Is the point possibly undermined by having the lesbian director of the dishonestBoys Don’t Cry whine about not being able to show Chloe Sevigny’s orgasm as given by Hillary Swank to the degree she’d like? Probably, yes, for most people.
Also, the murky appeals process involves clergy, which seems to appall Mr. Dick. It’s not clear whether they vote or not, but they probably have a “chilling” effect in some fashion. The process being already weird is made that much weirder and perhaps anachronistic, given the diminished role of the church in society.
Third, the MPAA is a censorship board. This is true, but it’s not really their fault that large chains and newspapers won’t play or run ads for NC-17 films. So, what it comes down to is that you can do whatever crazy thing you want in your movie, but you’ll pay the price for it. And what we really have is filmmakers bitching about that price. But, it’s not really clear what would happen in the absence of the NC-17. Surely the objections to the material being shown would not evaporate. Here, we clearly have a situation where (once again) people fail to realize the difference between “nobody wants to listen to me” and “I’m being censored!”
Fourth, sure, people should know. Why not. But do they care? Probably not as much as passionate filmmakers believe.
The movie disintegrates on point number five. There is no such thing as a sensible ratings system, especially in a country like the U.S. of A. In order to establish what is offensive, you have to be able to catalogue all the things that offend people. And we are too diverse. Nowhere is this made more hilariously obvious in the parade of filmmakers discussing what they would consider unsuitable for younger audiences. At this point, I began to feel sorry for the raters. The chestnut always dredged up is that sex should be more permissible than violence. (For some people it’s always 1969 and we need to “make love, not war”.) Kevin Smith offers the most interesting suggestion: Hackneyed plot ideas should be given severe ratings.
The Dick that made this film.
Perhaps surprisingly, listening to the litany of things that the various directors themselves find offensive, you realize they’re not at all against censorship: They’d actually impose more of it. They just want to pick what gets censored.
About 2/3rds of the way through, the movie swings to the far left, starting with the observation that war movies that want the Pentagon’s help have to be approved by the Pentagon. (What a shock: An organization doesn’t want to help you make them look bad!) This culminates in the idea that Hollywood is part of a grand conspiracy to make war acceptable to the general public through film. (Like I said, for some people, it’s always 1969. And the guy who said that apparently hasn’t seen a movie since 1969.)
Finally, the film swings back to reality, showing us Dick’s own attempt to get a rating—which must, by definition be NC-17, since it’s laden with scenes from other films that got them NC-17s. This was, at least more interesting than the conspiracy silliness but the documentary seemed to be dragging at this point. Only a few minutes are spent at the very end with the MPAA’s lobbying efforts, which are highly destructive and against the public interest (copyright extension and the reduction of “fair use”, the DMCA, etc.). The actual substantive destructiveness of the MPAA as a lobby would have been more interesting than the trips to la-la land, and the extensive sub-plot where lesbian detectives reveal the identities of people you don’t really care about.
Once again, it’s weird and it’s arbitrary, but that’s what the “Director’s Cut” is for. And that’s what this film skirts, and has to skirt to be relevant at all. Box-office receipts account for an increasingly small percentage of a movie’s total receipts. DVDs are constantly released in “unrated” versions, and the film itself comes on the (cultural) eve of Internet distribution, threatening to render all ratings boards and censorship irrelevant. It was kind of a gutsy move to make the movie, sure, but I somehow doubt most people are going to feel the outrage that filmmakers do when they feel like some talentless hacks have say over their work.
"Lesbian Dicks" is such a good name for a cop show, I'm shocked it hasn't been done. (Wait, is that what they called the reboot of "Cagney and Lacey"?)
But the point missed, overall, is that the board ostensibly exists for the public. The real question is does the public feel served by the ratings board? Dick never asks that question, preferring instead to take the opinions of people who are, by definition, outside the mainstream.
As a documentary, I give it fair marks: it makes most of its points pretty well, though veering off occasionally. As entertainment, it’s uneven. The killer, though, is relevance: It’s not the '50s, the MPAA isn’t the Hayes Commission, and the film treats the real, modern threat of the MPAA (as a lobbyist group) almost as an afterthought.
As a postscript, I saw this movie at the Laemmle in Encino, which is about a mile from the MPAA headquarters. So, it was pretty cool to be watching them drive around my stomping grounds for most of the movie.
Moviegique will be along later with the movie thread. As always, the chess/dress pr0n thread is an open thread, so there is no such thing as an off-topic comment.
Beginner Problem - White To Play (400)
Goal: White can force mate in 3 moves
Hint: Deflect the pawn from the g6 square
Goal: White can force mate in 5 moves
Hint: Force the king into the corner
3Nk3/4r2p/3p1R2/4pB1P/1p2P2Q/pPq2P2/P1P1n3/1K6 w - - 0 1
Advanced Problem - Black To Play (1149)
How many mating lines can you find? And which (forced) line is quickest?
5rk1/1pp5/p2p2pp/2bPp3/2P1P1q1/2NB2B1/PP2N1K1/R6Q b - - 0 1
Dress Pr0n For The 'Ettes:
Throughout The Philadelphia Story, Tracy is compared to a goddess, and Katharine Hepburn's costumes, designed by Adrian, reflected this. She said: 'Adrian was my favourite designer. He and I had the same sense of smell about what clothes should do and what they should say'. pic.twitter.com/mUxxO9IEKU
Sumptuous House of Worth gown by Jean-Philippe Worth, 1912, @NGVMelbourne. Silk cascades down the body combined with lace net sleeves which hang from the shoulders. Silk is weighed down and lined around seams with glass and diamanté beads, which are also used for some tassels. pic.twitter.com/LjfoEKo8Rk
5rk1/1pp5/p2p2pp/2bPp3/2P1P1q1/2NB2B1/PP2N1K1/R6Q b - - 0 1
1...Rf2+
2.Kg1 Rf5+
3.Kh2 Qh5+
If 3...Rh5+ then 4.Kg2 and the attack fizzles
4.Bh4 (4.Kg2 Qf3+ 5.Kh2 Rh5+ 6.Bh4 Rxh4#)
4...Qxh4+
5.Kg2 Rf2+
6.Kg1 Rf3+
(6...Qg4+ 7.Ng3 Qxg3+ 8.Qg2 Qxg2#)
7.Kg2 Qf2# 0-1
So I think the shortest forced mate is in 7 moves.
Hope to see you all next week!
___________
Note: that cryptic line of letters and numbers you see underneath each board diagram is a representation of the position in what is known as "Forsyth-Edwards Notation", or F.E.N. It's actually readable by humans. Most computer applications nowadays can read FEN, so those of you who may want to study the position, you can copy the line of FEN and paste into your chess app and it should automatically recreate the position on its display board. Or, Windows users can just "triple click" on it and the entire line will be highlighted so you can copy and paste it into your chess app.
___________
So that about wraps it up for this week. Chess thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to my yahoo address: OregonMuse little-a-in-a-circle yahoo dott com.
Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. C'mon in and enjoy the world of pets. Its a wonderful place to be for the next couple of hours. So leave the world and current events at the front door.
We have both known pain, fear, hopelessness. We have both had the odds stacked severely against us. Given our histories, Vector and I could each easily be dead.
On October 10, 2011, I sideswiped a taxi while blind drunk, then sped away into the streets of Manhattan. Police tend to frown upon that; I received a night in jail, a hefty fine and a suspended driver’s license.
More importantly, I also received the precious gift of desperation. I was finally scared enough to get sober after years of steadily worsening alcoholism. Despite the disease’s discouraging statistics, I haven't had a drink since.
I believe addiction is a takes-one-to-help-one disease. It thrives on degradation and hopelessness and, to combat both, recovery relies upon identifying with others who compulsively drank and drugged before finding an unlikely solution. That solution is one another: a bunch of former fall-down drunks who went from doomed to deliverance, and whose experiences in addiction and sobriety are invaluable to fellow sufferers.
My dog, Vector, is a more traditional form of rescue. He is alive by the scarred skin of his mauled-off tail and the saint-like kindness of the Sato Project, an organization that rescues strays from Puerto Rico's infamous Dead Dog Beach.
Tilda, our American Pit Bull suggestively posing. - P. Aaron
We debated whether or not we should have shown Tilda. After all this is a family friendly thread. J/K. Great shot. Thank you.
***
Hi MH,
This is Thor (named for his bark) camping with the family up on the Mogollon Rim in Arizona. The only thing he likes better is lots of snow on the ground. He’s a husky/mastiff mix so he loves to run in the cold stuff. Thanks for letting me share. - JD
What a beautiful spot to camp. Looks like Thor is right at home there at that spot. Snow? You're always invited up to the Frozen Tundra. We appreciate your submission today.
***
Hi Mis Hum,
This is Blackie. Late February I took my mom to a shelter in Spokane, WA to get her a new cat. He's about the friendliest cat I've been around, but he is weird. Except for a little milk, cottage cheese, and butter, he loves butter, he's not interested in people food. He once jumped inside the refrigerator and sat in it, but I think he was still in his exploring phase. He has a habit of sleeping on his back whether on a chair, sofa, or someones lap. Every now and then I'll hear a thump, that's him stretching out and falling on the floor. Because of the goofy stuff he does, and at times he's a doofus, I often call him Goofus. I don't think he minds, or cares.
Jake Holenhead
p.s. I sent and you posted a photo of him in late February a few days after we got him.
Hello Jake and Goofus Blackie. We are happy you shared with us today. Blackie seems to be fitting in there nicely. Well done.
***
Wildlife on the Pet Thread. This fine gentlemen spent about two weeks camped outside our front door. I miss him now that he has moved on. - Crystal
So I'm guessing with that fine rack it was early winter there at your humble abode? Nice photo. It was pretty neat that he hung that close. Thank you for sharing.
***
Dear Mis Hum,
After seeing your pet morons thread two weeks ago I knew I had to write to you… there were too many coincidences… There was the cat that was a “colored point”, a pet named Angus, and a pet that was rescued in a snowstorm in 2006. All of these things have a lot in common with a colored point cat I used to have who’s name was Angus that my wife and I rescued just before the Blizzard of ‘96.
My wife and I had just moved into a new apartment together, she brought her two cats with her, and I had one of my own named Kitty. To me that was enough mammals in one space. Just as the blizzard was starting, my wife noticed a cat hanging around a dumpster and she knew that if she did not rescue the cat, it would most likely die in the storm, so she brought him inside. When I got home I told her that after the storm was done, she would have one week to find a home for the cat or take him to the shelter. Well after almost 20 years he was still waiting to go to the shelter and he became the best animal I have ever had.
We named him Angus because the first thing we all noticed was that he had really huge balls, reminding me of the AC/DC song “Big Balls,” and at the time I couldn’t remember the lead singer’s name so I just named him after the guitarist, Angus Young. (I’m glad I did because Angus does sound a lot cooler for a cat then “Bon”). This cat was incredibly friendly and immediately bonded with my cat probably because he felt bad for it getting bullied by my wife’s cats.
I can’t say enough how awesome this cat was, sometime he wasn’t even like a cat but more like a dog because he would come to you whenever you called him and he was the quintessential lap cat & would sit on you for hours or however long you wanted him to be there. He was such a laid-back and easy-going cat and the only things that seemed to bother him was if he thought somebody was hurting his friend, Kitty, or if you tried to take his salmon away from him, both of which elicited a very scary growl. He also had these hypnotizing blue eyes and a very unique meow which can only be described as “Mrrraaah”. Angus was a very patient and tolerant cat, putting up with the antics of all of my kids when they were very young. For being an indoor cat, he was a very prolific mouser (leaving parts of his quarry for us to find) and he certainly was a survivor, outliving all three other cats by many years.
Unfortunately, he crossed over the rainbow bridge on December 14, 2012 in the arms of all of us. This was the same day the subhuman shot all of those children in Newtown but I would like to think that God called Angus so he would be there to greet all of those children up in heaven. Godspeed Angus - Joe
Your buddy Angus has been gone quite a while and yet the love for him clearly shines to this day. He was an awfully special creature. We are happy that you got to spend time in each other's lives. Thanks for sharing.
***
I had to put my Weimaraner (Zelda) down this week. It was both awful and beautiful at the same time. She had a massive stroke at 3am on Wednesday and I found her rolling around my sitting room scared and confused. I sat with her and spent a couple hours just trying to keep her calm and mostly immobile. Gave me time to thank her for being such a good girl. One by one I woke up the kids starting at about 430 so they could say their goodbyes. Yeah, that was the hardest part because they grew up with her. My son arrived from VA about 6am to an dog who was wagging her tail in excitement for him being there. It was beautiful and painful. My son and I put her in the car and we went off to give Zelda her last ride. We were both with her when she took her last peaceful breath. I have no regrets and only fond memories. We all will miss her. - Truck Monkey
Jeez Truck Monkey, what a tough way to say good bye. So sorry to hear of your loss. Zelda sure was a looker. Once again, those special creatures aren't with us nearly long enough. Condolences.
***
Mikey watches TV with us. But he got to interested in the PBS show on
CATS that he couldn't sit still on the sofa.
We yelled at him, "You'll ruin your eyes watching that close!", but he ignored us. - John
To be fair, John submitted several photos which included Mikey watching PBS. This photo really cracked me up with his inquisitiveness. We appreciate you sending in this story. Thanks.
***
am a AOSHQ lurker but we have some pets that are especially adorable.
These are Nubian goats. We are borrowing them from a friend while we wait for our baby goats to be born.
We live on 40 acres and the goats roam free during the day.
There is no danger they would wander off- they object if we even go in the house and tend to hang out on the back deck calling loudly to us until we come back outside.
They follow us around everywhere we go like dogs.
I don’t have a nic since I haven’t posted anything since several years ago. I guess I would be Nancy B. if I did post so you can use that.
I have really enjoyed reading the posts and comments at AOSHQ especially during these crazy times.
It’s nice to know there are some likeminded, clever and intelligent people out there. I wish I knew more like you guys in person. Nancy B
Quite the interesting pets you have there Nancy. No mention if they play fetch or any other tricks. Glad you lurk and if you would like to meet fellow Morons keep an eye open for possible MoMes in your area. Thank you for being a lurker and coming out today.
***
&&&
Thanks for the pet thread MisHum. This submission is long overdue.
The guy drinking the McCafe is Jiggs the pug and the lady in the recliner is Maggie, a pug terrier mix. These two really helped Grandpa cope with Grandma's passing back in 2014, but unfortunately we lost Jiggs on April 21st. He was nearly 12, which is a good long life for a pug, but it was still hard on us all.- Prince Ludwig the Deplorable
No need to thank me Prince Ludwig. Cute pups in those 2 photos. So sorry to hear of Jiggs' passing. We are glad you shared with us today.
***
This is Big Poodle. We've had him for 3.5 years. He enjoys eating sticks of butter and digging through garbage cans. We are convinced he has opposable thumbs because he can get into anything. We had a Fiesta Ware butter dish that had a cover to it. We had a stick of butter in it. We put it on top of the toaster on the back of the kitchen counter so he couldn't get it. He took the cover off the butter dish, ate the butter, put the cover back on the dish, all without knocking it off the toaster.
Amazing creature. - Patrick
You mean that big sweetie is amazing and exasperating all at the same time? I've heard the larger poodles are smart. This guy certainly lives up to the hype. Great photo and story. Thank you for sharing.
***
Good post today on putting your pets down. Little did I know I was doing it 2 hours later Gracie (the white one)was breathing har so we took her to vet Internal bleeding , probable tumor so we have to do it. Came out of the blue. She was 10 .She is also the dog that found Opie the Opposum. If you remember that post from awhile ago. Rip Gracie. That's Greta her partnering crime - Al
Damn Al. That's horribly sad. We are so sorry to hear of Gracie's illness and death. I can't speak for the others but I do remember the Opie story. Hopefully Greta will be ok without her buddy.
***
If we learned anything from today's Pet Thread is that life is short and unpredictable. Give those critters an extra S-N-A-C-K and several extra scratches.
A great group of pet photos and stories. Thank you for taking the time out of your schedules to share with the Horde.
Still plenty of photos in the old in-box. We are getting to them. We appreciate your patience. Our address is petmorons at gmail dot com
Saturday Gardening and Puttering Thread, Almost June! [KT]
—Open Blogger
Hello gardeners, putterers and dreamers! It's almost June. Anything interesting going on in your garden? First up today, how about we visit Manny's garden on Kauai? Well, actually it's MrsM's garden. Above, a Lobster Claw Heliconia.
And below, a few of MrsM's orchids.
She grows them on the trunks of her Manila palms in the yard.
Wow. We have some indoor orchid enthusiasts in The Horde. How would it be to be able to grow those outdoors?
The Edible Garden
Manny also sent in some photos of edibles:
Here are two views of an habanero plant grown from seed in MrsM's garden. I used one last weekend to make a Thai shrimp recipe with lemon grass, lime leaves and basil, all also from her garden. It was *very* spicy (!!!) but excellent with coconut milk served over green "BamBOOM" rice
Hidden fire. Is that mint I see encroaching?
Anybody else growing super-hot peppers this year? Taking any safety precautions in the garden?
Lemon grass, between her mint and basil (in the background at left.)
Here in Central California, our Apriums made it through 107 or 108 degree heat this week without getting pit burn. Yay! And they didn't get stolen. Yay!
We did give some away. Didn't take any photos. Interesting how fruit of different species doesn't always bloom in the same sequence every year. The year I took this photo, the Apriums and Arctic Star Nectarines ripened at the same time. The little fruits with them are an old Plumcot that tastes sort of like perfume. Kind of mushy, not too sweet. Europeans tend to like them.
Farming, Farmer's Markets, Produce Stands
Sweet cherries are on here. First ones were outstanding. Second batch had some doubles (likely due to March rains). Getting better again now. What's on your local produce counters?
The fields up the road from us that had been planted in grapes, then put up for sale, seem to have been bought. There may be a nut grove still available. If anyone is looking for some land.
Gardens of The Horde
Here is my pineapple guava in bloom. It is a very unassuming bush/tree depending on how you train it. Mostly I see it in bush form. It is evergreen with silver green leaves. But when it blooms the flowers are gorgeous. The petals are eatable and have a slightly sweet and pleasant flavor. I haven't tried the fruit yet since this is the first year it will probably actually produce any. I have two of them about 10 feet apart on the west side of my house.
lin-duh
If they are hardy where you live, pineapple guavas are an attractive shrub. Quite easy to care for. The blossom petals have a mild, fruity flavor.
There are dwarf landscaping varieties. If you want fruit (best flavor where summers are not scorching), look for named varieties. There are a couple recommended for areas with hotter summers.
Thanks, lin-duh.
If you would like to send information and/or photos for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden
at g mail dot com
Include your nic unless you want to remain a lurker.
Police car on fire outside CNN headquarters
Atlanta
In previous weeks and months, we have been reviewing developments since the New York Times announced last August that it would be focusing its news coverage, as much as possible, on racism (with particular emphasis on Donald Trump, of course). Other media outlets joined in.
Some other news items have distracted the media since then. But they sure have a bonanza of race-related stories to cover now. I decided to go back and look at one of the essays which was submitted by black Americans for the "1776 Initiative", which is aimed at countering the pernicious effects of the NYT's "1619 Project". Might it have some relevance to today's news?
Mr. Steele's essay describes how he decided, after the disillusionment of the late 1960s, not to abandon America, after visiting Africa. It explains how both minorities and white elites gain power and a sense of historical place through promoting a continued emphasis on victimhood.
You might want to read the whole thing. What has changed and what hasn't since the late '60s?
When I traveled to Africa back in 1970, it was partly because I had been more and more seduced by this great looming idea of America's characterological evil. It was such a summary judgment, and, at the time, still new and audacious. It had not existed in the original civil rights movement of the 1950s and early 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr. had never charged America with an inherent and intractable evil. He had lived in good faith with America, believing in reform and the innate goodwill of the American character, even as he also lived under constant threat of assassination. Still, when his assassination actually came to pass--with almost macabre predictability--young blacks, like myself (and many whites as well), saw it as a final straw. The evil character of America would always prevail over decency.
I came of age--in my early twenties--precisely when this idea began to take hold. Suddenly it was everywhere among the young. . .
He gets into the development and purposes of identity politics:
The point is that these identities--driven by the need for "place," esteem, and power--keep the idea of American/ Western characterological evil alive as an axiomatic truth in the modern world, as much a given as the weather. In other words, this charge of evil against the white West is one of the largest and most influential ideas of our age--and this despite the dramatic retreat of America and the West from these evils. The scope and power of this idea--its enormous influence in the world--is not a measure of its truth or accuracy; it is a measure of the great neediness in the world for such an idea, for an idea that lets the formerly oppressed defend their esteem, on the one hand, and pursue power in the name of their past victimization, on the other. It is also an idea that gave a contrite white America (and the Western world) new and essentially repentant liberalism.
In this striking vision of the white Western world as characterologically evil, both the former dark-skinned victims of this evil and its former white perpetrators found a common idea out of which to negotiate a future. This vision restored esteem to the victims (simply by acknowledging that they were victims rather than inferiors) and gave them a means to power; likewise, it opened a road to redemption and power for the former white perpetrators. This notion of America's characterological evil became the basis of a new social contract in America.
Things did not look as good in the new revolutionary republics in Africa as Mr. Steele had expected.
He also visited with American radicals while there, and kept track of their lives afterward. They did not seem to lead happy lives. How many of today's rioters even have a Step 2 in mind?
"This is not a protest. This is chaos. A protest has purpose," Bottoms said. "You are not honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. You're not protesting anything running out with brown liquor in your hands, breaking windows in this city. T.I. and Killer Mike own half the West Side, so when you burn down this city, you are burning down our community."
The speech was part of a 9 p.m. press conference after a peaceful protest downtown became destructive. Hundreds of protestors gathered around 3:00 p.m. and peacefully marched against police brutality in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But as the police corralled the protest outside CNN center, some began to vandalize the building and CNN statue and smash the windows of police cars parked outside. One police car was set on fire. . .
"Go home," she implored protesters. "I cannot protect you out in those streets."
Rappers T.I. and Killer Mike both gave speeches after the mayor's address. . .
During the 1992 riots, the California National Guard, United States Military and Federal Law Enforcement agencies intervened. A friend who worked for the LAPD (but who didn't get to the hot zone until most of the action was over) said that the National Guard was not entrusted with guns. They did back up the police while the police did things like this:
Would the police force in Atlanta be allowed to do things like that today?
Correction from the comments: Some units of the California National Guard were armed while on the street.
Music
From a time when worries were a little different from ours today, something not too frenetic: Scarlatti
Be good to each other. Hope you have a good weekend.
Good morning Morons. For many of us it was a short work week. And this coffee break couldn't happen quick enough.
Opine away or bloviate. Whatever trips your trigger. Just remember no running with sharp objects, don't pull the 'ettes hair and be nice to one another.
Have a great weekend!
PS: To the Morons in the metro areas where the lawlessness is taking place. Be safe and keep your head on a swivel.
I'll Have An ONT With A Side Of Fries And A Draft Beer
—WeirdDave
So last night I was pretty bushed and I just posted some of the amusing pictures I collect for content, and y'all went almost 1700 comments. It's like sticking my thumb in a bowl of water – interesting to note the impression I make. :P
Tonight I got to do something I haven't done in months- eat out at a real restaurant like an actual human being! Lockdown Larry said restaurants with “outside seating” could open today and one up the street did. We sat in a tent, but I guess that counts. Our poor server had to be gloved and masked, so I left her a big tip, just because I was so glad to be able to go out to eat.
While Bob and Alyssa planned on hosting the orgy in their apartment, they think they may need to rent a bigger venue.
“No matter how big this gets, we’ll put something together,” Bob says.
The pair had hoped to host the event in June, but the pandemic has lasted longer than they anticipated.
“I would say an orgy sounds like a thorough phase green activity,” says Bob, referring to Pennsylvania’s three-color reopening plan, but “we’re willing to be patient,” adds Alyssa.
There's a picture of the poster with an email address on it at the link. Reserve your spot today!
My response to this is “Meh”. I knew this already, it's why God equipped me with an immune system. I know it's not the most pleasant thing in the world to think about, but people acting like this is a big surprise bore me. The world is literally made out of dirt, y'know? Suck it up, princess.
And Holmes Picks Off The Pass! He's At The 20..The 10...CHECKMATE!
I love the part of the story where his father turned his life around after being shot and arrested, and then made damn sure his son didn't make the same mistakes he did. That's a MAN!
We've pretty much decided that the time has come to run red. I love Baltimore, truly I do, it's my hometown, but enough is enough. Tell me why we should move to your state. Ready? Go!
Related:
No, it’s not racist to criticize the leftists who have turned Baltimore into a ruin. The politicians who made Baltimore a rat-infested, crime-ridden ghetto need to be held accountable. TPUSA’s @robsmithonline traveled to Baltimore & took the broken ideology of the Left to task. pic.twitter.com/IX1Xwc6wt8
Does the analysis in this tweet thread make sense? I mean, I can read it and think “OK, I see what she's saying”, but I am not a lawyer, and I have no idea if she's right, wrong or something in between.
To clarify what I mean when I say third degree murder simply doesn't apply here and is a completely nonsensical charge: THREAD.
In Minnesota, 3rd degree murder is also known as "depraved mind murder." The Minnesota Supreme Court has clarified exactly what this means. 1/
Declassified Flynn/Kislyak Transcripts: Mueller, Schiff, the Entire Media (Including Broad Swaths of "Fair and Balanced News Alternative" Fox) Straight-Up Lied
Also: if you’ve called me every name in the book for almost four years because I support the president, don’t lecture/shame me to “be nice” or “show respect” by wearing a mask.
Putting aside the fact Twitter isn’t the government, has anyone offered a non shouty explanation of why including a link to more information/fact check amounts to “censorship”? I mean the greatest censors in world history rarely included a “click to learn more” link.
This article is actually three weeks old, but it's new to me!
Also, it's about general trends which are continuing.
Traditional cable and satellite TV providers posted their most massive quarterly subscriber losses in the first three months of 2020, as the COVID-19 tornado started to hit the U.S. economy in March. What's more, internet-delivered "virtual" TV providers registered a net loss in the period, too.
Oh no, TV took a hit on the internet too?
Oh no!
And the cord-cutting bleeding is only going to get worse in Q2, as the economic fallout from the coronavirus takes a deeper bite, analysts predict.
The combination of high prices -- amid the backdrop of record unemployment -- as well as loss of live sports fueled an overall drop of 1.8 million pay-TV subscribers in Q1, per estimates by Wall Street analyst firm MoffettNathanson. That translates into an annual rate of decline of 7.6%, the fastest shrinkage of the sector on record.
"At 63% of occupied households, traditional pay TV penetration has reached a level not previously seen since roughly 1995," analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a research note Friday. "There are now as many non-subscribing households (46M) as there were pay TV subscribers in 1988."
The Hollywood Reporter wrote about this yesterday, stressing that the Great Turn Off will accelerate, not diminish.
The rise in unemployment due to the novel coronavirus pandemic led to a new record in pay TV subscriber losses in the first quarter of 2020, and one pay TV analyst on Thursday predicted cord-cutting would accelerate further.
"We see cord-cutting as a secular trend that likely will kick into high gear during and on the other side of COVID-19," Wells Fargo's Jennifer Fritzsche wrote in a report. "With this belief in mind, we have moved our estimates for residential video subscriber losses lower across our cable coverage" to be "worse than Street for 2020 and 2021."
For example, she still projects Comcast to lose nearly 1.79 million pay TV subscribers in 2020, followed by 1.37 million in 2021, up from her previous estimate for a loss of 1.00 million users.
Comcast is a major cable provider and parent company of NBC Propaganda Operations.
The analyst says her "stress tests" modeling accelerating cord-cutting do not "spell doomsday" for the financial health of the media and cable providers.
But... all of her scenarios are bad, and the worst ones are "really bad."
Learn to code, bitches. Learn to fucking code.
Oh that's right, you're too stupid to code.
Learn to dumpster-hunt, bitches. Learn to fucking dumpster-hunt.
"Protesters" Blocking Traffic, Attacking Cars Are Surprised And Hurt to Discover That Car Drivers May "Protest" Right Back
—Ace
Run them down, a wise man said.
Seriously. If an unruly mob is blocking your car from going forward and attacking it, that is false imprisonment and it may lead to being dragged out of the car and being beaten to death, or raped, or both.
Correction: I should say, run them down when they surround your car and prevent it from moving in any direction. You wouldn't be allowed to run anyone down just because they're blocking forward progress, assuming you could turn around or go into reverse.
But if they're surrounding you and attacking your car: They are attackers. Lethal force isn't authorized by force unlikely to kill (like rolling into someone at 7-10 mph) is.
Not with the intent to injure, but with the intent to flee an attacker using the most expeditious and safe means possible.
No one is required to cooperate with one's kidnappers or obey the commands of an illegal, violent vigilante mob.
Update: It's being claimed that a woman ran after the car and grabbed on to it -- and now The Twitter Mob is saying that is attempted murder, too, because the driver did not stop her car just because Antifa decided she must.
Update: In the past few minutes, Chris Wallace has lied -- again -- and claimed Trump called "the protesters" thugs, when of course he was referring to arsonists, rioters, and looters.
This is FoxNews, baby. The Fair and Balanced News Alternative.
What is happening to Fox News Channel?
With the exception of its primetime lineup and a few regular contributors, Fox News increasingly is indistinguishable from its cable news competitors. The network, once considered the sole antidote to dominant left-wing news organizations--both print and broadcast--is making a fatal brand mistake: Alienating its customer base.
...
[T]here is a noticeable change in the tone at Fox News.... [T]rump haters on the Right--folks who long ago burned their credibility with rank-and-file Republicans and conservatives--continue to earn air time on the network. I mean, Chris Stirewalt? Really?
Once-trusted anchors now are openly hostile to President Trump. In a dramatic repudiation of Trump’s comment that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine, Neil Cavuto ranted that the drug is deadly and not effective.
"If you are in a risky population here and you are taking this as a preventative way to ward off the virus or in a worst-case scenario, you are dealing with the virus and you are in this vulnerable population, it will kill you," Cavuto warned his viewers on May 18. "I can't stress this enough. This will kill you." Cavuto insisted he wasn't making a political point but rather a "life-and-death point"” (Cavuto, who is not a doctor, was referring to one non-peer reviewed, retrospective analysis of 368 Covid-19 patients in VA medical centers.)
I'd also note that Neil Cavuto is not a doctor, and in fact looks like a man who routinely hides from medical advice. But here he was, on his own authority, telling you what the "science" says, and picking and choosing between conflicting studies.
Then she gets to Chris Wallace, who is plainly a fat, decaying MSNBC host who gets on the wrong bus every Sunday and shows up at the wrong "news" organization.
Before the release of the Mueller report, Wallace accused Attorney General William Barr of "acting as the counselor for the defense, the counselor for the president, rather than the attorney general," a common refrain of the Left. In a testy exchange, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Wallace, who claimed the administration was ignoring Russian election interference, that the peevish journalist was "fixated" on Robert Mueller.
Hit the link for more.
She concludes that FoxNews' current, but not eternal, core audience is Trump supporters -- whether the Murdoch Boys like it or not, whether Paul Ryan likes it or not, whether Chris Wallace and Chris Stirewalt like it or not -- and they will soon lose most of their audience if they continue trying to cultivate Rachel Maddow's audience.
Do we need yet another #Resistance TV channel?
If you follow ComicsGate, you know the problem occurred when Marvel looked at its actual audience, and discovered they were almost entirely male, almost entirely in their thirties, forties, or fifties, and mostly white.
And Marvel decided it didn't like this audience, so it would start alienating this audience deliberately and chase a "phantom audience" it liked better, a phatom audience of young multi-ethnic girls who love superhero comics becuse if there's one thing a teenaged girl likes, it's stories which are almost entirely about macho posturing followed by single combats or small-team group skirmishes.
I mean, young girls are just ga-ga for barely-disguised boxing stories and war stories! Everyone knows that.
Why, it's working out so well for Marvel they're now in year five of a five year decline in sales.
But hey -- at least they got rid of some of those Deplorable former customers.
Hey, good luck with your new direction in programming, FoxNews. I'm sure you'll have a lot of success when all conservatives are boycotting you and you're forced to compete for the same audience that's already split seven ways by all the (open) liberal outlets.
Oh -- and I'm sure you'll have success fighting for an audience which has lived on poisonous hate for you for twenty five years.
Hey, I've got an idea for a new show you can run to attract your new Phantom Audience.
Can I interest you in a news show hosted by "The New Warriors"? Maybe "The News Warriors"?
Reposting, from the day before yesterday, as it's relevant to content:
-------
Fox News is a curious case. Their product is shit. It has always been shit. Even in context of the rest of our execrable cable news media, it's of noticeably lower quality.
Their people are so low-grade, that I'm surprised they can finish complete sentences between Crossfit sessions and appointments with the hair stylist. It's like the cable news version of Balls' Models from Zoolander.
But they've been #1 for quite awhile, on the strength of precisely one strategy: being the only right-of-center news outlet in the United States.
Rupert Murdoch rightly perceived that he could serve up the very thinnest of gruel - a thoughtless, cheap, trashy product - and make a gazillion dollars by serving a yuuuuge and utterly ignored mass-market.
And they are knifing that golden goose right in the neck. It's bewildering.
Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice
I constantly ask this of low-level twitter idiots who think they're "thinkfluencers" or whatever -- if all you can do is repeat what's on Jake Tapper's twitter timeline every fucking day, what possible reason would I have to go to a scrub like you? Why not just go to the source?
And yeah, Fox is a rather shabby, shoddy, tawdry brand. It's always been tacky.
Always has been -- and not because of the conservatism. Just was a cheap-ass knockoff brand. They hid the cheapness of the outfit with a bold design innovation -- sticking flags and eagles everyfuckingwhere.
Why would anyone watch a cheap CNN knockoff while CNN is still available? And available in airport lounges, to boot?
Trump Warns Rioters: When the Looting Starts, the Shooting Starts; Twitter Censors Tweet -- Again! Demented Suburban Empathy Mom Nancy French Reports Trump For "Threatening My Nation"
—Ace
....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
Even though Twitter censored Trump's post for supposedly "glorifying violence," rather than announcing a policy he was entitled to announce, Twitter has not yet censored Kathy Griffin's latest urgings that someone assassinate the President:
Here's another tweet not just "glorifying violence" for which Twitter has hidden one of @realDonaldTrump's tweets, but advocating violence against the president. It's almost like @TwitterSafety is a political actor with an agenda. https://t.co/kEFl8Pxc2q
Twitter also continues allowing the Ayatollah Khameini to make threats against Americans -- without any cenorship or chiding about "glorifying violence."
Many are rightfully upset about what Twitter censors. The bigger scandal is what Twitter deliberately refuses to censor, such as calls to destroy the democratic Jewish state of Israel. @jack censors the U.S. government, but not demands for a new Holocaust. https://t.co/Krmcv619HJ
Meanwhile, this sexually frustrated, spiritually unfulfilled bored cow of a sterotype of a useless, empty-headed housefrump continues Living Her Best Life on Twitter and playing Sheriff Karen:
Name a more demented couple in center-right political media than the Frenches. https://t.co/c6RzdjWpxZ
Update: Charlie "3-Wives" Sykes agrees -- threatening to shoot looters is 1, racist, and 2, the foundation of the racist Republican Party.
Remember, he's a True Conservative! Send him some money so he can fight for Norms and Principles!!!
A friend comments: "I'm confused. I thought their beef with the GOP was solely what Trump had "done to the party"."
But now we find out that Sykes' split with the party traces back to... 1964. Before his latest wife's father was born.
(I assume.)
Update 2:
They're left-leaning urban cosmopolitan liberals and always have been. The only reason they were not previously Democrats is that they were taking money from major corporations and banks to protect them from the other Democrats' depredations.
I say we toss them all out -- including the major corporations.
They can get their carve-outs and special legislation from the Democrats they donate to and support in their corporate advertising and hiring.
MSNBC's Al Veshi Denies There Is Any Rioting, But Will Allow "Some Fires Have Been Started," Including the Inferno Behind Him
—Ace
By the way, FoxNews is still calling these "protests."
The Fair and Balanced News Alternative, delivering the same pablum we get on MSNBC.
Clarification: I mean the shows controlled by the so-called "News Division," which is pretty much all of their programming except the "opinion" shows like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Lord knows we don't see any opinions from Chris Wallace and Brett Baier.
That's where the corporate enforced censorship is occurring.
Why you shouldn’t let liberals anywhere near the levers of power, in 12 seconds: pic.twitter.com/RclcSOypb3
— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) May 29, 2020
Karenpundit's favorite MSNBC host compared the arsonists, rioters, and looters to the American Revolutionary soldiers:
I think a lot of Americans really don't know how much the American Revolution was precipitated by the Crown's abuse of the policing power against the colonists. It was *central*, and often led to unrest, riots, tarring and feathering and the like.
Connecticut's "Anyone Can Pretend to be a Girl in Girls Sports" Policy Found to Violate Title IX, Which Guarantees Equal Athletic Opportunities to Women and Girls
—Ace
How serious is Title IX? Well, it's been applied vindictively, mandating, for example, that colleges have to get rid of half of their sports programs because male and female participation should be equal, and if there are more boys than girls interested in sports, whoops, there goes your wrestling team.
I know of a college which had a national champion hockey team. The girls started their own hockey team, which was... not competive. More of a fuck-around than a really competitive program.
Nevertheless, even though the men's team had just won the national championship, and the other was basically Square Dancing 101 on Ice, they were forced to share the ice exactly evenly.
Because... equality.
Women and girls are to be given equal access to their own sports. You can't just have a single wrestling team and say "Girls are invited to try out, but if they fail, oh well."
No, they need their own Women's Wrestling squads.
So how is that in any way reconcilable with the new idea that boys who claim they're really "girls" can compete with actual girls on girls teams?
Connecticut's policy allowing transgender girls to compete as girls in high school sports violates the civil rights of athletes who have always identified as female, the U.S. Education Department has determined in a decision that could force the state to change course to keep federal funding and influence others to do the same.
...
The office said in the 45-page letter that it may seek to withhold federal funding over the policy, which allows athletes to participate under the gender with which they identify. The policy is a violation of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that guarantees equal education opportunities for women, including in athletics, the office said.
It has "denied female student-athletes athletic benefits and opportunities, including advancing to the finals in events, higher level competitions, awards, medals, recognition, and the possibility of greater visibility to colleges and other benefits," according to the letter, which is dated May 15.
So this is what the CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute) has to say about President Trump's new executive order on social media:
President Trump's new executive order on social media speech, if implemented, would require a significant government apparatus to oversee it, as would the legislative proposals we have seen from Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). If the right's concern is the left's presumed dominance of online discourse and the blocking of viewpoints, the proposed Executive Order would worsen the problem by delivering the Internet into the hands of the administrative state...If the Trump White House goes forward with this executive order, some conservatives will have helped erect an Anti-First and Fifth Amendment machinery to police online speech that they are highly unlikely to control as time goes on.
Of course, this misses the point completely. Whoever wrote it has no understanding of the way Trump operates.
It's like tariffs. Many doctrinaire libertarions got upset when Trump proposed new tariffs and increased tariffs on Chinese imports. But it's not clear that he thinks that tariffs are a positive good in and of themselves. He had another end in mind: more advantage trade deals with China, ones that benefitted America more. The threat of tariffs was simply a club that he used to bring China to the negotiating table.
I think this same narrative is in play here. Trump is not interested in adding another layer of government bureacracy to enforce social media regulations. I think his EO is just a shot across the bow to warn social media to clean up its act. The tech giants now know that Trump means what he says and that there are off-the-radar negotiations going on. I don't know this, I am merely speculating, but this is how Trump always seems to work: make a lot of noise in public and get stuff done in practice.
I don't think it is a coincidence that he started taking shots at the pathetic dweeb Joe Scarborough a few days ago. It's part of his distraction strategy. As I've said many times, Democrats and journalists (BIRM) are like a roomful of cats and Trump is the one standing at the door waving a laser pointer. "Just you wait!" I can almost hear them say, "we'll get that red dot this time and that will be the beginning of the end for -- oh, look, there it is, over there on that wall -- get it! Oof! Curse you, Trump!"
He does this *all* the time. And they *always* take the bait. It's like they can't help themselves.
And on a related note, Twitter's fact-checking of Trump's tweet about mail-in ballots turned out to be wrong. Oops.
Here's The Guy Twitter Put In Charge Of Their Banhammer:
CNN's Jeff Zucker said in a company-wide memo that "the majority" of CNN employees will not return to the network's office this year. https://t.co/DZS6FEdsTJ
Wednesday's celebs: Bollywood actressAishwarya Rai Bachchan who co-starred with Martin Henderson in the Bollywood remake, retitled Bride and Prejudice. Not sure what Jame Austen would think of her satirical take on Regency social life brought to the screen with show-stopping dance numbers added to it. I like to think she would be wryly amused.
Today's Edition Of The Morning Rant Is Brought To You Dairy Queen Blizzards:
All Systems Go For SpaceX's First Manned Dragon Launch - Liftoff is scheduled for 3:22PM Eastern. Live stream from NASA here, courtesy of Bob Zimmerman at Behind the Black [J.J. Sefton]
UPDATE: Be sure to hit the refresh button to see the latest updates and images at Behind the Black.
Summer Low-Carb Treat?
They used to make sugar free popsicles. They don't seem to make those anymore. But searching on Amazon, I found sugar-free sno-cone syrup and disposable popsicle mold bags. You know, the bags that hold the freezer pop. I just got the bags, so I can't tell you how it all works together, but I got the snow-cone syrup last night and have been eating a lot of popsicle-flavored ice cubes. Pretty darned good! When the freezer pops freeze, i'll let you know how they are. I made like 15. I will probably eat like 10. I'm wondering if having so much ice will dull hunger pangs during a fast.
Commenter "..." says:
76 In 2014 I said:
In five years,
FOX will be CNN
CNN will be MSNBC
MSNBC will be Pravda
Nailed it, though I'm not sure MSNBC is any worse than CNN. We're so used to assuming MSNBC is more partisan and looney than CNN -- but is it? Has that been true in five years?
Dan Bongino
@dbongino
·
May 28
Parler is everything Twitter isn’t. It’s free. Literally. Free to you, and free for your thoughts.
There are no thought-police on Parler. Sign up today.
Some heavy hitters I know just signed up today. I might, but to be honest, I don't really want to be involved in any Twitter-like time suck, whether free or unfree. But I think conservatives will now depart en massse for Parler, leaving just liberals on Twitter -- and by "just liberals," I include the National Review types who are themselves liberal, who only wish to be associated with liberals, and who only talk with liberals. They'll have their long-desired Heaven where there are no Deplorables to argue back against neoliberal corporatism, and the only people permitted all agree on almost every fundamental point of politics. Except for some playfighting over how much the law should favor the multinational corporations paying all of them off.
All the usual Twitter C**ks are tweeting their fury at Josh Hawley for daring to suggest that their church, that is, the Twitter platform, should be exposed to lawsuit if they do not act as a platform, not a publisher; Dave Reaboi responds to them:
@davereaboi
PRO-TIP: Use Evernote to keep URLs of all your anti-Hawley tweets; you’ll need to find them when asking for money from Big Tech in the future.
Say, National Review takes money from Google, right? Why do they never feel obligated to disclose they're on the Tech Monopolies' pad when they fulminate against the Tech Monopolies' opponents?
"S.E. Cupp, I'd like to introduce you to The Wall. The Wall, S.E. Cupp.
"Oh, I see you two have already met...? When was that? About six years ago, you say? Ah yes, I can see that now. Yes, I can see The Wall really made an impact on you, S.E."
Proud Goucher College Alumnus Jonah Goldberg Back to Writing About His True Passion, "His Shows"
@JonahDispatch
So I finally finished Westworld. Rarely has there been a show more adept at holding my attention but not my interest. Such a weird viewing experience.
you know there's no rule that says you have to watch so much tv, and then chitter about it on Twitter like a big fat red-faced bearded housewife
@thehill
Anti-Semitic crime in Germany at highest level recorded http://hill.cm/teM1oAZ
Ever recorded? Are you quite sure about that? Hint: You know the only book you've ever read, Harry Potter? Think about the historical exemplars the evil wizards were based on. Another hint: Indiana Jones' second most hated foe, after snakes.
PS: That was like 100 years ago, dude.
At 31:00 in this Derek Hunter podcast, Ann Coulter blasts FoxNews and Jonah Goldberg, with a knock Goucher College She says that she doesn't watch FoxNews because she knows exactly what they're going to say on it by just watching a few people's twitter feeds a couple of days in advance. I imagine she means Trump's twitter feed -- to attack his latest outrate -- and Jake Tapper's twitter feed, to get the liberal CNN line which gets a very light rewrite for FoxNews and is repackaged as "consensus conservative opinion"
Babylon Bee: Stacey Abrams Says She Will Step Down from the Governorship If Asked to be Biden's VP If she does step down from the governorship, the chain of succession is as follows: The new governor will be the current governor, Brian Kemp, who is the actual governor, and will succeed himself as governor, being that he is in fact the governor, and not the Let's Just Pretend to Make the Retard Happy Governor that Stacey Abrams is
A carrot and an altidudinally challenged woman walk into a bar...
Drift Compatible Podcast
.JPG)
.jpg)
