Don’t Look Away

437 thoughts on “Don’t Look Away”

1. You know those animated gifs people put on face book, with someone vomiting, or some animal pooping?

   Really, people do that? No, I didn’t know.  Wow.  You just added one more reason I am ever so glad I don’t face book.

   1. Ditto.

      1. There’s a reason my blocklist is long, and it’s not that I can’t stand disagreement.

         1. Yes. This ^^ what Foxfier said.

         2. The only persuasion I’ve found effective is to tell them that jurors are selected from the voter registration list – volunteering to vote applies to jury duty. (D)s are usually horrified at being chumped into performing a civic duty, (R)s are not surprised.

            This puts a real damper on a (D)s enthusiasm for politics – they usually shut up, and seem a lot more apathetic about voting. If not, I tease them about their eagerness to spend some August sequestered while being paid 10$ a day making a couple of lawyers rich. This seems to bypass their tendency to spew personal vitriol, even if they know I’m an (R).

            (R)s should mention this in every speech or ad: “Thanks for your service – voters are important as jurors, too”?

            Arguing with lunatics is pointless. If you must, there are issues that even (D) voters oppose at about 70% like voter ID and illegal immigration. Start by asking if they realize they support the gang that insists on allowing these, and are OK with that – yes or no, they have not credibility or integrity to discuss with any further.

   2. For a while, some of the people in my family were passing around a short clip of characters in Family Guy throwing up. I refused to watch it, even though I was encouraged to do so multiple times.

      On the other hand, I did play through the snuke sequence in South Park: The Stick of Truth (Do NOT look up a play-through of that if you’re at work. Or around children. Or want to preserve your general peace of mind.), which is pretty gross. But it’s a different kind of gross than watching people vomit.

   3. You’re not the only one. Never been seriously tempted by that partuicular book.

2. Again, if you want an education read contemporary accounts (by supporters even) of the Woodrow Wilson presidency.It’s just that it largely wasn’t reported or credited.

   How could it be? To believe such shenanigans were going on at the highest level of the nation’s governance would be horrifying, wouldn’t it?

   One of the horrors of the Woodrow Wilson presidency was that reporting on the problems within the government, or challenging the government could get you put in jail.

   1. Yep. Or summarily lynched, in at least one case I read of.

   2. Woodrow Wilson is what would happen if the Leftists’ worst caricature of Trump had a baby with the Right’s worst caricature of Obama. There was a reason he was the subject of the first chapter of Liberal Fascism.

   3. Similar problem during the Lincoln Presidency. Old Abe did have some newspaper owners put in jail and their papers shut down to keep them from printing oppositional news.

      1. Lincoln, for his faults, did what he did due to the crisis that the country found itself in.

         Wilson did it because he could.

         1. After watching what the Dems did to Bush the Younger, I was forced to revise my opinion of Lincoln’s actions. At least he didn’t play Wilson’s game of actually criminalizing criticism.

      2. Also, keep in mind that in his *home state*, people who had printed things other people didn’t like had been murdered for it, in the lead up to his Presidency. It was a different time.

3. > Sound the alarm. Don’t look away.

   I’ve been doing it for a quarter of a century. It’s the right thing to do.

   Most people don’t want to know; you can almost hear their minds snap shut as soon as they identify the subject when I bring it up. Others just roll their eyes and humor me.

   Funny, a lot of them panicked when the Patriot Act went through, and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t upset. “No, I’ve been telling you about this for years and you acted like I’d just claimed to have beamed down from the mothership. There’s nothing new here; it’s all the same old pieces you didn’t want to hear about, except tied together with a pretty red ribbon.”

   Still, ones does what one can, and keeps moving forward…

   1. My reaction to the Patriot Act was similar; “All this stuff is ALREADY legal to do to suspected drug dealers. All this does is say we can use it against the idiots who play footsie with Hamas also. And the reason the Intellectual Left is so upset is that they have been sleeping in that bed for decades.”

      1. I had the same reaction as well. First, given that so much of legislation is “paragraph 1.3.4 of subsection A of annex Z to public law XYZ is amended to read thus and so”, it is hard to figure out what it actually SAID. And secondly, all it did was bring together a bunch of things that people were already doing to apply it elsewhere. And was because politicians had to be shown to be “doing something”*. Which is still an issue.

         *To be fair, there was (and sometimes still is) a huge disconnect between intelligence collection/surveillance and law enforcement collection/surveillance. And the attempts to plug holes can be problematic.

      2. And both of those are why they’re flipping out so hard at the mere SUGGESTION that Trump might recognize the Cartels are international terror organizations.

   2. “Funny, a lot of them panicked when the Patriot Act went through, and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t upset. “No, I’ve been telling you about this for years and you acted like I’d just claimed to have beamed down from the mothership. There’s nothing new here; it’s all the same old pieces you didn’t want to hear about, except tied together with a pretty red ribbon.””

      I feel your pain. I’ve been saying a hot civil war was inevitable since 2002. I’ve been called everything but a child of God for doing so. I hate being right.

4. The best way to destroy sleight of hand is to look where they don’t want you to look. It really destroys the trickery.
   Surprise! I’m on to you.
   I’ll keep shouting so long as I have the voice – the means – to do so.

5. If you try to bring it up, they think you’re a bad person, to put it mildly. You are quite literally self-banishing to even broach the general subject. We’re 25 years too late. They’ll believe it when the shelves are empty and the churches are bulldozed. This is an old movie; it just hasn’t played here.

   1. AND YET YOU MUST DO IT.
      Do you think it was painless for me? Or that half of my own field doesn’t consider me insane? Or that I didn’t give up a potential career not to mention money my family could have used.
      Pfui.

      1. Pretty sure I lost my promotion bid for simply mildly pointing out discrepancies. Gotta love academia. But, I’m still over here indoctrinating students!

         1. Why I’m going indie. They can’t silence me.

            1. Has even Baen fallen? (I’ve been away from facebook for a couple of months, I’ve possibly missed a lot.)

               -Albert

               1. Long story. Can talk pm. It’s… complicated.

                  1. Holy crap….

                     1. Nothing holy about it. Took a year to process. Now I’m fine.
                        Look, I can write and I can publish. I’m fine.

                        1. It’s just… I had generally happily sent most of my book money to Baen, knowing that they stood apart from other publishers in actively promoting fun stuff without regard to author personal politics. To hear otherwise is… disturbing as hell.

      2. You made the right choice. Money doesn’t seem to be worth much in Venezuela at the moment.

      3. Just because you’re insane doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

         But the fool on the hill
         Sees the sun going down
         And the eyes in his head
         See the world spinning round

      4. To Sarah in concert with you, and of special note to those who say they can’t do something now…

         Borrowing from something written years ago, by someone smarter than I, and tweaking it somewhat:

         The Four boxes of Freedom

         The Prayer Box;
         The Soap Box;
         The Ballot Box;
         The Bullet Box.

         the dhimmicrats/communists/traitors have removed our use of the first box from the public forum; have been drowning our voices out from the second, and are in the process of trying to destroy our Will as expressed through the third.

         Pretty soon, there will only be one Box left (… and Virginia may be the harbinger…)

         En Libertad,

         The JG

         1. The Four Boxes are:

            The Soap Box
            The Ballot Box
            The Cartridge Box (Cartridge/Bullet/Ammo)
            The Jury Box

            Not to denigrate prayer, but without coupling prayer to one of the above it does little good. As the apostle wrote, “What is Faith without Works?” One of the things which killed Prohibition 1.0 was juries refusing to convict on alcohol charges.

            1. jury, then ammo.

   2. Only too late if people quit. Painful to speak out? Can be. That, however, is when it is most important to do so. If your comfortable life and security (such as it is, so long as they let you have it) is more important to you than the fight for liberty (particularly while the fight is still mostly being waged with words and ideas) then I commend to you the words of Sam Adams:

      “If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

      1. I’ve been known to play around with online “quizzes” from time to time. I’ve seen some on the theme of “What Founding Father are You?”

         I usually get John Adams or Patrick Henry. So…rabble rouser.

         I can live with that.

         1. I get Thomas Paine often.
            Only I’d never fall for the French revolution. Even if I’m FURIOUS enough to shout “Aristo, Aristo, a la lanterne.”

            1. Same. I worry about our anger, though, sometimes. Those of us on the small “l” libertarian, leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone, side. The left doesn’t get that. They get angry and go on twatter and call a bunch of innocent people nazis. They get angry and form cancel mobs on the internet. They get angry and form actual mobs, bust up innocent shops and attack the weak and the isolated. One of them got angry and shot a congressman.

               *shakes head*

               No one can “make” me angry. That was a d*mned hard lesson to learn and I’ve still the scars. I’d much rather we channel that passion into productive change, when and where we can. Swamp the (massive) fraud machine with honest votes and perspicacious citizens. Tough to do in places where dems control the levers of power.

               In a lot of places, even with the media, the bureaucracy, and sometimes even the legal system on their side, they only barely edge out their opponents. That tells me the support for, well, something as humble as “less blatantly kleptocratic” is there. We know there is going to be democrat shenanigans. They telegraph their moves well in advance to prime their loudest supporters.

               Now, at least, we know them for what they are. And we know we can win.

               1. The problem is the TEA Party. They were shut down and don’t seem to be doing much anymore. I understand they still exist and are working but.

                  Yelling and screaming and stamping your feet is a Progressive thing.
                  I need to believe that my actions would actually have an effect.
                  Speaking up at work, get me fired other than that nothing.
                  Working hard in politics. In San Antonio? Like that would have an effect.
                  Send money to Trump, he doesn’t need it.
                  Work for Trump’s campaign. Texas and San Antonio. No effect.

                  We don’t do mass demonstrations much, (work, families, etc.). The TEA Party did that. Effect ZERO.

                  WE CANNOT EFFECT THEM!!! They will NOT wake up and face reality.
                  I am sorry, I like many other would like to DO something to help but WHAT????

                  Sarah is a rabble rouser, she informs us, joins us together and calls us to action.

                  How is someone in California, New York going to do anything that will have an effect?

                  1. I expect you would be amazed at the effect of simply standing witness to what is going on, and the benefit of dropping the appropriate snarky remark.

                     Or so I’ve heard. Never much got the knack of snarky remarks, myself.

                     1. Now witness the power of this fully operational Snark Star.

   3. This is older than the movies … from the beginning of the nation there have been those who wish to curtail freedoms. More recently we have faced the progressives and Woodrow Wilson, as sited by Our Esteemed Hostess. Much of what we face now can be traced to the expansionist government under FDR. There have been those who have stood against it. We have to be constantly fighting it, as Ronald Reagan observed:

      “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

   4. They respond as if you’re telling the tots the Truth About Santa Claus … and about the Tooth Fairy and the Great Pumpkin.

      That they are the ones profiting from these myths is all the more incentive for denouncing you for having told adults to “grow up.”

   5. “If you try to bring it up, they think you’re a bad person, to put it mildly. You are quite literally self-banishing to even broach the general subject.”

      You want to live in Hell? Do it anyway, don’t be a pussy.

      I spent a fun-filled ten minutes the other day explaining why the Ninja Missile is the most American weapon ever to some man-bunned hipster at the art store.

      All the little arteest chicks were scandalized, and now they all think I’m the Scary Conservative Whackjob who talks about the flying ginsu-knife missile. (Really, I don’t care a damn because I’m well past trying to date the art babes. They’re not that hot, I can do better. ~:D )

      But at least now they know how much the Americans don’t want to kill everybody on the street when they wax a terrorist leader. Like $10 million dollars a shot is how much.

      1. The weather’s nice, and our necks are much more relaxed. They can call it hell all they want, but we are free. Put that way, perhaps hell to a socialist-progressive-maoist-marxist-kelptocrat is regular people living free, trading with each other freely, expressing their own ideas without governmental restraint, worshiping as they like, and protecting themselves and their families with legal, personally owned weapons.

      2. Point of order: Some Americans.

6. To cite the intolerance of nonsense in the public discourse of the 1940s and 1950s is to forget that neither were decades where free and open discourse flourished.  That period covers WWII to the beginning of the Cold War, and war times rarely are.  People who wish to to use the power of the government to censor opposing opinion rather than answer it take full advantage of the excuse to suppress it.  (See, as you noted, the Woodrow Wilson’s administration.)  

   But yes, we would all have been better off if the behavior of the protesters and the lack of serious discourse in the 1960s had been recognized for what it was by the general population, juvenile and lacking in content.  As the press was part of the problem and a work around for the press as we have today did not yet exist it the problem instead festered. 

   Now we have the current mess.  Meanwhile the ones who once advocated for free speech are now the advocates of censoring.  It recently occurred to me that their move to make illegal to challenge climate change, the laws regarding hate speech and the institution of limited free speech zones are just the most recent form of of a ongoing human problem. 

   1. It took me a while to realize that the Berkley Free Speech Movement in the mid 1960s was intended to give the leftists free speech at the expense of everybody else. Clever how they did it; slowly, slowly, like the frog boiling method…

      1. The Berkley Free Speech Movement was about as accurately named as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and they cared about free speech pretty much to the same extent that the Kims care about their people. It was an excellent piece of marketing (who wants to be against the Free Speech Movement?) but that’s all it was.

         1. You may be right with the originators of the Berkley Free Speech Movement long term plans, and they certainly took advantage of willing fellow travelers. At the same time there were others at the time that were concurrently advocating for free speech for more principled reasons. As to who wants to be against free speech — there have been more than one period in our history where free speech was not considered such a holy proposition and political and/or social pressures were brought to bear.

            Attempts to limit free speech have happened not only when the country is at war, but when any group is in unquestioned ascendancy for too long, right or left. If nothing else being the established power attracts the people who want to use that power to shut down anything they deem uncomfortable.

      2. Saw a theory being floated … recently? I can’t say exactly when I saw it… that the environmentalist movement has roots in Nazism. I’d say the idea has some teeth, given that current day environmentalism (or most of it) has all been about pushing against individual prosperity, slide into socialism to communism, a wholesale government change of lifestyles, but I thought I’d mention it here because I thought some folks would find it of interest too.

         1. Try this chain of organizational succession (in that the groups following drew their core membership from the groups preceding)

            US/Soviet “Friendship” groups (known to be Soviet fronts)
            –> Ban the bomb groups
            –> general antinuclear groups
            –> “Environmentalist” (scare quotes intended) groups

            Commies, not Nazis.

            1. I’d agree with that (since ultimately, Nazism is a variation of Italian Fascism, which was derived from Communism… the whole incestuous lot of them.

            2. Eh. A Socialist is a socialist is a socialist.

               1. Yes, but one should be specific.

                  The claim was that the modern greens are organisationally descended from the Nazi Party. They are actually linked to the Soviet Communists.

         2. Too old. The conservationists were around for decades before them. Deriving from some of the same roots, and influenced by the same factors, I might grant you.

            1. ((waggles hand))

               The old conservation groups have largely either been taken over or supplanted by the Greens.

               1. Nevertheless the roots were there.

   2. Sure, it was a more conformist mess, but they’d still been taught history and how to think, and the slogans would occasion a “What?”

      1. Are you so sure that that generation had been taught history or logic?

         Both my Daddy and his father had been history majors in college. Grandpa wanted to accept a position at Duke to teach history. When his father died his fiance’s father insisted that he take over the family business until Grandpa’s siblings were on their feet. Neither thought much of what was being taught when I was in school. Daddy often complained vociferously.

         By the time I was in school they were beginning to drop required reading of primary documents such as The Federalist Papers. Some schools were not even reading the Declaration or the Constitution. Once you no longer know the grounding documents it becomes much easier to be sold a load of bunk.

         1. I recall having to memorize the Declaration, defend a position found in the Federalist papers orally, and write up an essay on why any two of the amendments were deemed *necessary* at the time by the people of that time. The first in grade school, the second in junior high and the last as a freshman in high school, I think. My history teachers rarely taught anything before the first sources were requried.

            What a change a few decades makes in public education. *chuckle* Weren’t we talking home school the other day?

            1. Heck, I can remember being required in the 6th grade to memorize the preamble to the Constitution. And the Declaration of Independence. But my 6th grade teacher was an Odd, I am certain on reconsideration, five decades later. Ave, Mr. Terranova!

      2. George Leef, of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal:

         It’s Spreading Like the Plague — Social Justice Education
         More and more, education in the U.S. is turning into propaganda for statism. What’s taught is not knowledge that helps people to live their lives but rather beliefs that are calculated to turn them into obedient citizens of the welfare state. The overseers of that state don’t want people who can think, but people who won’t question what the state does.

         The National Association of Scholars has been doing its utmost to expose this spreading plague, and it has just released a new study on social justice education in higher education. The author of the study, David Randall writes about his findings in today’s Martin Center article.

         Randall writes, “Social justice activists say they want to bring about a golden age. The road to the golden city always requires more gold from our pockets to pay the activists’ salaries. Social justice activists always work to create more activists. Everything they do in higher education has an eye to the bottom line—seizing control of general education requirements, of departments, of administrative offices. They want to do well for themselves as they do what they think is good.”

         Higher education is being transformed so that the activists can have the greatest impact possible on students. What they regard as correct thinking (about equality, power, the environment, etc.) is pushed at every turn, while incorrect thinking (such as the importance of private property, limited government, and individual responsibility) is denounced or even punished.

         Randall provides lots of examples in his article and far more in his report. If you think it’s proper for our universities to train political activists, you’ll be happy. If you think not, you’ll be deeply upset. …

         [END EXCERPT]

         Once upon a time Liberals were like Alan Dershowitz, committed to debate and respect for everybody’s civil rights. Now? They are cultists, worshipers of the Doctrine of Marx, which demands all heretics be silenced and all dissidents be suppressed. They are become that which they believed they were fighting.

      3. I’m struggling to get kids to understand that the Bill of Rights and Constitution do not give us rights. They state the limits on how government can curtail rights inherent in people. But that’s not what the kids have picked up from the media and surrounding culture.

         1. Best analogy I can come up with is rights are like a field and things like the BoR and COTUS are like a fence put up around that field or similar. The field still exists even if there is no fence around it and it existed before the fence.

            Something like that.

         2. Precisely.

         3. A Right is innate to you, inherent in being alive. You have freedom of speech – unless somebody interferes in that. You have freedom of worship – unless somebody interferes in that. You have freedom of assembly – unless somebody interferes in that. You have the right to defend yourself – unless somebody interferes in that.

            The Bill of Rights explicitly states that the government is not permitted, absent compelling cause and articulable justification, to interfere in your exercise of your rights. And it is subject to recourse and penalties if it does so. Thus the government is not authorized to engage in prior restraint, may not forbid you to “falsely yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre” — it may only punish you for after the fact.

            OTOH, you cannot have a right to free education or free health care, free housing or free transportation because those things are not available absent some other party’s interference. Those are demands upon Society, not demands against Society.

            1. “The Bill of Rights explicitly states that the government is not permitted, absent compelling cause and articulable justification, to interfere in your exercise of your rights.”

               Yes. Therefore when I tell someone to “shut the Heck up” and their response “The 1st says you can’t do that!!!” tantrum. My response is “I’m not government. I don’t have to listen. Shut up or go away.”

               1. Some people seem to think that “rights” are like those game show buzzers where the first one to buzz in shuts out the other contestants. If they exercise “free speech” then no one’s allowed to argue back, or exercise their own other rights like, going elsewhere. Example: Dixie Chicks back in Gulf War II. Yes, they were allowed to object. But other people were allowed to stop listening to their music, and when playing them lost radio stations listeners, the radio stations were allowed to stop playing them. Everyone got to exercise their rights, not just the “protesters” at the top of the stack.

               2. Re the 1st amendment:

                  I sometimes run into folk who aver, ‘I got a right to be heard!’ Not so fast, Sparky. You have the right to say what you want; doesn’t mean that anybody has to listen to you (with the limited exception of the ‘petitioning the government for a redress of grievances’ bit). If you had a ‘right to be heard’, that’d mean the government would be required to round up a crowd of folk (at bayonet point, if necessary) to listen to you if your pontifications aren’t engaging enough on their merits to draw one. Doesn’t work that way (yet).

            2. You can have no right which requires someone else to labor on your behalf. That would be slavery.

               Leftists do nothing but make claims on the labor of others to provide them with ‘free’ stuff.

               John Galt said something about “They see only what they can take from their betters, not what others with even less will take from them.”

               Because somebody, somewhere always has less.

7. “And yet… There is a tendency to look away, even now.”

   Two things. One, everybody likes to be on the winning side, even if that side is cheating. The DemocRats, Lieberals in Canada, have been the winning side since Kennedy or before. My whole life, pretty much. That’s where the “smart money” goes. Except lately they haven’t been looking very smart.

   Second thing, everybody can see this shit. Most people turn away because they don’t want to deal with it. It looks like work. They gotta put up signs, go out and vote, talk to people they don’t know, spend money. And they have to take a risk.

   No one wants to do all that shit. So they look away, and try to find a way to ignore the rotting elephant corpse as long as they can. But if somebody comes along and starts shoveling, they’ll join in.

   Here’s where the shovel meets the dead elephant in the culture war:

   I watched The Irishman. I swore I wasn’t going to, but I did, somebody twisted my arm. My impression was a lot of skill and expertise (and money!) was used to tell the story of a bunch of evil psychopaths. This is Martin Scorsese’s idea of “great cinema.”

   Scorsese is the same guy who talked a bunch of smack about Marvel superhero movies. Said they weren’t “cinema.”

   By his definition they’re not. In the superhero genre the psychopath is the -bad- guy. He’s there to provide a threat sufficient to need a superhero. The story is the hero’s battle and victory over evil.

   The Marvel movie doesn’t dwell on the evil, sit down in it and finger paint with it. We leave that type of thing to Scorsese.

   1. You’ll find all of this predicted in Ayn Rand’s essays on aesthetics from the 1960s (now collected in The Romantic Manifesto: In particular, the progression from heroes to ordinary people to “victims of society” to monsters.

      1. Yep. You watch The Irishman, everybody in the damn thing is a monster or a coward. You watch the Marvel universe, the monsters are the ones constantly getting their asses beat.

         I know which I prefer.

         Incidentally, for people who like them some big, over powered, burly heroes, this season’s Sword Art Online is particularly fun. Crunchy Roll for the win!

         https://www.crunchyroll.com/sword-art-online

         Episode 10, Yuuki Asuna finally makes her appearance as Stacia, the goddess of kicking bad-guy ass.

         Also this season, the hilarious “Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun” is fun!

         1. Crunchy Roll is a good site. I went there to watch Girls und Panzer before deciding to buy it.

            1. Girls und Panzer, that’s another hilarious anime. Even more hilarious, they GET THE TANKS RIGHT!!!

               1. Getting the gear right is rare enough to be worthy of note.

                  1. One of the reasons I picked up the anime Noir is because of someone’s offhand comment that they’d paid attention to detail. The two protagonists each have a preferred handgun they use in most of the combat scenes, and the gunshot sound effects the anime uses are from those two specific handguns when the protagonists are firing them. You also see the protagonists reloading during combat (sometimes, while other times the reloading is assumed to have happened off-screen), and in other scenes you see them cleaning their weapons, or practicing with them.

                     1. Not much of a gun expert, so I’ll admit the soundtrack was more of a draw for me.

               2. You might like GATE. They got the military equipment right. They show the Howa Type 64 rifle, Panzerfaust-3, Mitsubishi Type 90 tanks, F-4 Phantom jets, UH-1 Iroquois (Huey) and Super Cobra helicopters.

                  One pilot picks up some abuse for getting his F-4 scorched by a dragon.

                  They explain that they’re using ‘obsolete’ equipment because there are no satellites on the far side of the GATE. None of the fancy GPS and battlefield integration equipment works there. Against medieval opponents, even augmented by magic, that’s not much of a handicap.

                  1. I love Gate. Wish there was a third season. I wish there was more of the LN, and that it was translated. Granted, I haven’t kept up with it for a while.

               3. Season 1 of Girls und Panzer is on Netflix! Woo hoo!

                  1. I haven’t heard of there being more than one season.

                     1. There’s a movie. 🙂 Yay!

            2. From the preview clip – “Compulsory elective’? Is that like how paying your taxes is ‘voluntary’ according to the IRS?

               1. No, in the school there’s a selection of electives and it is compulsory that a kid take one of them. Flower arrangement, calligraphy, kendo… and sensha-dō!

                  aka Tank-fu! Its so ridiculous that its genius.

   2. > In the superhero genre the psychopath is the -bad- guy.

      In the Progressive world, they’re all bad guys.

      They find the concept of good offensive. It implies there are people better than they are, and they can’t abide with that. And they certainly won’t change…

      1. Something that has been echoing in my head lately: “no heroes, no history, no hope”. You can’t have heroes because that might inspire individual action; you can’t have history because you might realize that it’s not all an eternal state of Oppression; and hope is the Party’s to dispense.

         I am articulating it poorly, but NuStar Wars got me going that direction: “the Resistance” sprung out of nowhere without explanation of what they were Resisting* or where it had come from, and then Luke and Last Jedi happened. After that, I started seeing it everywhere: you’re not allowed to look up to anybody fictional, never mind *actual*, without triggering shrieks of outrage from the usual suspects.

         I am bad at dealing with shrieks. I am rapidly getting better.

         *in-universe. Out-of-universe…well, any time since 2016 that I see “resistance” as a title or tagline, I turn around and go the other way. Sad, considering how much I adored that trope as a teen or young adult.

         1. then Luke and Last Jedi happened

            I believe that somewhere, before the handlers managed to shut him up, Mark Hamill made some comment about, “I don’t know who the heck this guy is, but he sure isn’t Luke Skywalker.” It actually gives me some comfort that they had to butcher him even beyond the actor’s ability to recognize him before they could make him someone not worthy of looking up to.

            1. Which makes me wonder where this last Star Wars movie is going to go. The Rise of Skywalker sounds like the start of a dynasty, not a group of heroes.

               1. Its going to Hell in a hand-cart, is where that thing is going. And I for one am not paying money. Fuck ’em!

                  1. I can’t remember where I saw it (might have been Ace’s blog). But the early reviews of RoS are apparently out, and most of them are bad.

                     1. Yeah, but that’s just because the movie is too good for the modern moviegoers. It’s so much better than Empire and all the other old ones.

                        Cranial-rectal impaction

            2. I’ve heard rumblings over the years that Mark Hamill has been treated like a donkey by Lucas and Disney alike, and that he was gravely unimpressed by the script for Last Jedi.

               And I thought to myself “yeah, no kidding. They made Luke Skywalker into a mope.”

               1. After I saw “The Force Awakens”, I said “Nope. No more”.
                  Nothing I have heard since has changed my mind about any of it.

         2. DIL and I call this “Nobody is clean”. It has caused us to give up on British Mystery series a few times.
            wanna expand that and write me a guest post? pretty please?
            Because you’re right on.

            1. China Mike just gave you your next culture war post on a plate. I won’t give the prick a link here, its the Barkley column of Dec. 17th. Review of The Watchmen tv show (which I am not-watching as hard as I can) and how wonderful it is because of the “deconstruction of hero myths.”

               aka Nobody Is Clean. Superman -must- be shown to have feet of clay.

               I’ve always considered Watchmen one of the most disgusting and perverse things DC ever produced. This Barkley dude calls it the gold standard of visual storytelling.

               Just in case anyone was wondering why Sad Puppies went the way it did, just read that review. It will all become clear why they hate you.

               1. Yeah, a lot of my nascent ranting was triggered by Yet Another Deconstruction when I am seeing damn little CONstruction.

                  1. Watchmen was Not Fair, especially since it was a Brit using an alt-US and his own alt-history and alt-mythology to attack US comics, while making money out of US comics fans.

                     Never wanted to read it, never wanted to watch the movie, never wanted to watch this show.

                     1. And he failed. Rorschach was correct, actually the hero, and everyone who compromised was wrong.

                  2. Construction is equal to Whiteness and Fascism in their tiny minds. Only by leaching off and destroying all that has gone before is Art created.

                     Really mashes my RANT button.

            2. Yes’m. With pleasure (and a certain amount of palpitations). How many words d’you need, and by when? I can be reached at a g g r o k i t t y at the mail of gees if you’d rather talk there.

               1. When you can. No more than 4k words. No less than 750. I’m on my phone and will never find that email again. Mine is my first 2 initials and last name at the thermically enhanced email

               2. I am going to hit a bit of the theme at MGC today, under a “Why we write” but my perspective is not precisely the same as yours, and I want yours for here.

            3. There is a difference between nobody is clean and everything is dirty. The former is like having a truck or boots covered in mud. It could mean just laziness or it could mean that something got finished. On the other hand, the latter is wallowing in a San Francisco street. Its solely to destroy the beautiful, not to accept the compromises that happen in life.

         3. “‘the Resistance’ sprung out of nowhere without explanation of what they were Resisting”

            It is the toddler stage when the child has learned it can say “No!”

            I was considering earlier the way in which Democrats (and the MSM, BIRM) denounce Trump for “dividing us” without ever acknowledging their insistence, from before Day One of his administration that he not be “normalized” — the political equivalent of busting his knees then decrying the fact he cannot run.

            Whatever their tantrum produces they declaim, “Look what you made us do!” and insist we act the role of grown-ups. Consider Schmuck Chumer’s insistence that GOP senators be impartial in any impeachment trial, as Democrat senators were not in Billy Jeff’s trial.

      2. Yep. “nobody is clean”
         It implies to me that in the great fight, they’ve picked the wrong side.

         1. It also ignores the need in the human psyche for heroes. They try to make “The Movement” or “The Resistance” the hero, but it never works. Heroes can have weaknesses- *must* have weaknesses to be a good story (viz. early versions of Superman). The story evolves around the hero *overcoming* weaknesses, trials, and challenges. In a lot of ways, that’s what America was *built on.*

            “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” wasn’t because we like beggars and parasites. It was and is because such people as those willing to work to improve their lot *can do so* here, where they cannot under the boot of the noble classes, and oppressive regimes.

            They loudly declaim about being oppressed, whilst all the while oppressing others. That isn’t the story of a hero.

      3. It implies there are people better than they are

         I hope to whatever gods there might be that there are better people than I am or this world is really screwed.

         1. I’m better than I am. Not by much, but it does give me room for constant improvement.

         2. I don’t have to hope. I know. Throw a ro- well, don’t throw rocks, but a tennis ball, say, in any crowd at LibertyCon, or the Huns, and you’ll hit at least three folks smarter than me before it touches the ground. There are countless people I’ve met more skilled at this or that. Better able to manage groups of people, more athletic, charismatic, perspicacious, and harder working than I am. It isn’t hard to find someone better than me at *something.*

            Given that, I try to just be a little better than I was yesterday. That can be a challenge in and of itself some days.

            1. I don’t tend to think in terms of “this person is smarter than me” so much as “this person knows more than me about $TOPIC”. Which, for any topic other than computer programming, doesn’t surprise me at all. And if that person needs to know about programming for some reason, I am very happy to fill them in, because in most crowds, I’m probably the best-informed on that specific topic. (In a geeky con, OTOH, there’s a decent chance that even on my personal topic of expertise, I’ll find people better-informed than me.)

8. I’ve been lurking the arfcom threads on Virginia.

   We aren’t looking away on this one.

   Sure there are still people wandering in insisting on clown world nonsense to be nice (the suggestion that everyone showing up to an armed rally should have a ziptie through the action of their gun is still the best), but they are the minority, and even the doubters are coming around.

   The discussions are not “how can we be nice and lose as the better man?” that is so typical of people on the right. It is “how can we mitigate the dangers, while still scaring the shit out of the politicians?”, or “what demands can we make to give the negotiation table a hearty shove in our direction for once?”.

   1. Yup. I’m a voice for not starting the shin-kicking…but only as a tactical decision to seize the moral high ground and win over neutrals. I’m no Buckleyite Good Little Loser-Boy.

      1. You do understand that your position is the one the Buckleyites were actually taking, right?

9. Pingback: Don’t Look Away — According To Hoyt | The zombie apocalypse survival homestead

10.  No one ever said, “Wait, the party of the giant papier mache heads is nominating Obama?  This is not a candidate who has a clue about reality, obviously!”

    Some of us did.  I know that The Spouse and I did.  Well, not those exact words, I think that I said something about the people who thought gorilla theater represented sophisticated argument, but definitely the same sentiment.

    There were those who pointed out Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn.  He was forced to disavow the Reverend Wright, claiming that he didn’t really pay that much attention to what was being said from the pulpit at Trinity United Church of Christ.  Michelle’s public appearances were limited and more carefully scripted after her statement that her husband would fundamentally transform America.  While the initial of each such item caused a fuss, even in the press, the public ultimately choose to ignore it.  For many the symbolism of the ‘first black president’ over road everything else.

    1. I had even folks who did not vote for 0bama state “I didn’t think he would be THIS bad!” One moved back to Pennsylvania so I don’t know, but others were totally fine with his getting a second term.

       1. We don’t even know how bad he was yet. Some of this noise coming out of the Afghanistan war investigation is seriously stomach turning.

          1. I’m cynical enough nothing will surprise me.

    2. I voted for BHO the first time around. I thought Congress and the Supremes would be enough of a check on him; and I wasn’t happy with where John McCain was going to take us militarily in foreign affairs. In hindsight, I’d have done a write-in for Ross Perot. Didn’t vote for BHO the second time around because there was more than enough evidence for this blind guy to see how bad he was/is.

11. Bricks, Safety valves… whistles stopped, kabooms not…

    1. So much this …

    2. Which shows that these people have never been around actual “muck with it and you will die, I’m not kidding” equipment and processes.

       1. Sadly, a lot of them have– and their forebearers, too, which is why there are multiple levels of failure.

          What pisses me off is that when one of the sensible folks in the group notices the second fail-safe going off, after they silenced the first one, and manages to drag everybody out of Bad Stuff before things go kaboom– their take away is “see? Nothing bad happened!” *growls* Yeah, no *****, because I worked my *** off to keep it from happening, AFTER you screwed it up!

          1. Take a page from A Planet for Texans: Anyone who executes such an idiot on the spot will be tried, not as a murder, but on whether the idiot had it coming.

             1. *wry* You want me to trust the judgement of entire packs of these guys?

                1. Eh, you just didn’t kill enough of them. Everyone Knows the road to Paradise is constructed by feeding Bad People into the road paver machine.

                   1. The extreme opposition thinks we are the ones who need to be shut down and eliminated, i.e., that belong in that road paver machine. 😉

                      This is not the stuff of freedom.

          2. “Y2K was no big deal…so we can ignore other things.”

             Except a HELLUVALOTTA work went into making it NOT be a big deal.

             I was there for an admittedly very minor part of it, but everything that had any date-keeping at all was checked.

             1. Y2K
                What the world doesn’t realize is that disaster was averted because the entire business and financial world literally had a Manhattan-level project (or several actually) going on to fix it.

                1. Interestingly, most of the Y2K bugs I read about happened not on January 1st but on February 29th. A lot of people were concerned about what would happen when all the nines rolled over, but not so many were thinking about the fact that 1900 wasn’t a leap year.

             2. Example from another field:

                My ex never seemed to understand that the reason my blood sugar and A1C were low was because my diabetes treatment (including a rather aggressively low-carb diet) was working, not because I didn’t need it any more.

                1. Oh dear.

                   There are many people who seem to fail to recognize that some things are life long challenges to maintain, like freedom.

       2. Yes, there is a certain pedagogical value to being around such things, even at an early age… a hard but durable kind of truth.

          “This is a gun. If you touch it, it might kill you.”

          Which might explain some of the motion towards such things as gun control and “self-driving” vehicles… or simply calling car crashes “accidents” even when we *know* they’re not random.

          1. Things like farm and factory work have those in abundance. Heavy machinery and ornery bovines *cannot* have a sufficient amount of safety equipment to be termed completely “safe.” A certain amount of respect and common sense are required. Not a lot, actually, but enough.

             1. And still more than an alarmingly large segment of population

                1. a bit of a combo of both lacking, but moreso on the part of Child Services nazis- I lived on a horse ranch and the neighbors were showing the daughter’s teacher and her kids (6, 5, and 3) the horses … one got a touch agitated and managed a side kick that ruptured the neighbor’s 5 yr old’s spleen. CPS fools were all over the place for weeks afterwards just looking for an excuse to pull the kids from both families, and were looking at the teacher askance. Though they are very mild mannered normally, just a hair more attention paid to not mobbing the horses and keeping the kids in the front of the horses and it doesn’t happen.
                   Other CPS involved injury was the 14 yr old boy of one family getting stepped on, but hey, if two of you are in the stall with a horse and an earthquake hits, stepped on is a minor thing. That horse was not happy with ground movement. CPS acted like they were forcing the kids to break wild critters at gunpoint or something.

          2. The first gun safety class I took, the instructor had to tell me to stop handling the gun so gingerly, because it wasn’t going to go off: he’d taken the magazine out and locked the slide open, so there was no way it could go bang. I was too focused on “I’m holding a deadly weapon and need to treat it with respect”, and he wanted me to get to “I’m holding a tool that I need to familiarize myself with”. Worked, too: by the end of the session I was much more comfortable with handling it, while not losing my respect for its dangers.

12. I’m also sure I’m not the only person ever to tell someone something and have them hear it completely backwards, because that’s what they expect.

    Definitely happens a lot to me! To the point that up until I went to mostly talking in text, I thought I reversed what I was saying about half the time when I was nervous. Only way to explain how folks would hear things exactly backwards so often, when some of the folks I trust almost never do.

    Nope. Pattern held in text…. /sigh

    Maybe it’s a maladaptation of the “my brain auto-corrects spelling errors” thing?

13. First, I really miss those giant papier-mâché heads.

    Second, a lot of my depression is from not being able to look away at what you describe. What the Left does doesn’t make sense, and even if you share their stated goals, it doesn’t work. The relentless disconnect from reality is hard to live with. Unfortunately, I have had negative consequences for trying to politely disagree with others’ politics. It always results in personal attacks (fortunately not physical) so I don’t do it anymore. But living in a world that doesn’t make sense is hard when there’s no hope for improvement.

    1. Hey, they have huge balloons now.

       1. And pink crocheted hats with little horns on them.

       2. And inflatable dinosaur suits. (At least other people are having fun with those.)

          1. There was one lately on the tube thing where someone in a velociraptor suit decided to see how the cats reacted…

    2. “I have had negative consequences for trying to politely disagree with others’ politics. It always results in personal attacks…”

       Yeah, me too. I look at it this way: it is such a convenience for me when the assholes self-identify. All I have to do is say I’m conservative, and every prick I don’t want to have anything to do with immediately tells me who they are.

       Its not your job to fix this shit. And besides, you can’t. But what you can do is figure out who’s on your side and hang out with them, instead of wasting your time and energy on fools.

       Also if you live in a large Eastern city (or Toronto) you should strongly consider moving. Those places aren’t going to do well when Reality finally comes knocking.

       1. Dude, the Western ones won’t do so well either. I live in Langley (near Vancouver) and I am mildly worried.

          1. My sister is Hockinson, east of Brush Prairie; but then she believes the BS. At best a never Trump. Her husband OTOH, & kids, are a little more unclear. They don’t say a word. Youngest first election will be 2020.

             Politics topics are 100% no go, if sister is there, & they will be Christmas day. Mom (85) has stated, she will cry and leave. Sis isn’t going to take a different view. CA is definitely a loss. Washington & Oregon? Most the state is colored Red, but the Blue takes it every time. If there is any undercurrent changing that? It isn’t evident. Oh, I’ll hope for a miracle but won’t expect it.

             1. Same here. Some of my relatives are big Liberal supporters, love the Shiny Pony. Old conservative Phantom is the crazy uncle they only come to visit at Christmas.

                Or when something’s broken and they need the left handed grapple-grommet crimp tool. And need a barn to work in, because its snowing. Or when they blew up a knee joint and need advise on what to do. Funny how nobody cares about politics then, eh?

                No need to belabor these things, it isn’t like anybody’s going to change their mind, right? They make fun of Trump, and instead of joining in I tell stories about the cool new American guided missile with the swords on it. Everybody understands.

                Next Christmas (or next time they need the crimper) they know where I am.

             2. Oh, I get it. I’ve been told I can’t get in physical fights with my brother over politics anymore, no matter what stupid things he says, because dad is too old to prevent me killing him. The corollary is brother is not allowed to bait me.
                Family is not the place for this. Not unless you’re not going to kill your parents with it.
                AND as for Oregon, oh, my dear. You too have Fraud by Mail.

          2. As long as you’re not -in- Vancouver you should be okay. Anything you can walk out of in half a day. Zombies and NPCs don’t like to walk.

             1. I’m more worried about the supply situation if things come apart. We have a decent amount of storage for a 1900sqft townhouse, but that isn’t a huge amount.

                1. Can put canned goods/water under a standard bed.

14. Sarah, perhaps some of us are not so much looking away, as looking around, in desperate hope of finding someone else who can hear the alarm sounding

    1. And I feel like the army in South Korea. watching for movement, sounding the alarm, knowing I’ll be killed in the first offensive.
       it’s all I can do.

       1. One of the reasons that I’m really surprised sometimes that I survived the 80’s and my .mil time.

          1. In my early ’80s Guard service, my expectation (hope?) was that when the Sovs poured through the Fulda gap the fellas in-theater would slow them down enough that they wouldn’t overrun the depots where our equipment was stored before we got there to pick it up. Then we’d try to keep them occupied long enough for replacements to be recruited/trained. Didn’t expect to survive the experience; awfully glad I didn’t have to find out in person.

       2. To Sarah:

          A Whittaker Chambers quote, from “Witness” –

          “…I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism…”

          Stand resolute, Sarah, as you do now. Even more so, because you must know that thousands, tens of thousands of your fellow Americans stand with you. So in a sense, you do not stand alone – you stand with us, and we with you. I know this, because I, too, stand on that battlefield — and I will not shrink before the enemy.

          Whittaker Chambers knew it. I know it. And you know it too.

          … but every once in a while, it is a great comfort to have the steadying hand of a compatriot on your arm…

          En Libertad,

          The JG

          1. “May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”

             Which was quite Roman of Mal, honestly…. (losing battle against overwhelming powers, ooo-rah.)

             1. Some of us come by our Roman-ness naturally.

15. The thing I’m expecting now is, for starters, a sort of implosion, first in the media, then in politics. For Hollywood, pandering to the Chinese market hasn’t worked out all that well in preventing yet another industry crash (which is it this time – fifth?), and it’s become increasingly harder to defend given the CCP’s actions in Hong Kong, among others. It’s not just a matter of open competition that big-budget films are struggling for attendance.The once-anointed actors and directors have basically lost face, and they’re only just becoming aware of it.

    A similar situation is forming in the field of politics – now that it’s becoming obvious that Western Europe has also started to follow the Eastern example, rejecting leftist policies and attitudes wholesale, the more moderate (looking) liberal politicians across the Pond would also begin to reconsider their political options. It’s no wonder Bloomberg started campaigning – it’s not like he’s got any real chance of winning, but that vouching support for him – a fair-weather Republican, of all things – would give a number of lefty politicians a safe way out of having to support any of the other Democrat candidates, and the Wicked Witch of the West Wing in particular.

    Eventually (I reckon once RBG gets replaced in the Supreme Court, both groups would try and play “the Devil made me do it”, denouncing their former comrades while sucking up to the now increasingly stronger right-wing establishment / conservative audience and media, respectively. At most, they’ll try and form some sort of “new left” and yet another “new Hollywood”, who tries to “see beyond racial and social issues” and just look after “the common good”. And I got a bridge to sell at the Bosporus…

    Overall, however, I expect a lot of duplicitous grovelling and posturing once the turning tide becomes too obvious to ignore, even for your average lefty. I’m not counting on too much blood either – not when one side of the equation has both an overwhelming presence in the armed and police forces, and pretty much all of the civilian-owned firearms in play. Instead, it’ll be a more subtle deal, but one no less dangerous, if the past ten years (at least) are allowed to be forgotten. The masks have fallen. The truth has been revealed. The main thing to do now, is to make sure it stays that way.

    1. It’s not so much Chinese markets as that Chinese companies have partial or complete ownership of various bits of the American film industry now.

       1. That just means it’ll be even more fun driving them bankrupt.

    2. You forget the GOPE. If they can get rid of Trump then they can snatch defeat from victory.

16. c4c

17. > And then they spent years throwing a screaming tantrum that we should abolish the electoral college, because they can’t commit that level of fraud everywhere.

    Note that the British leftists are busy screaming about their “first-past-the-post” electoral system as we speak, for the exact same reason: it didn’t give them their preferred outcome, therefore it must be done away with.

    Never mind that the UK has had this system since…forever, and never mind that Arrow’s Theorem tells us that ANY ranked voting system is going to have problems.

    It’s a large-scale version of what happened with the Hugo Awards… someone you don’t like wins? Demand that the rules be changed so the Bad Person can’t win again.

    Bah.

    1. Did they even calculate that they would get a better result by another means?

       1. Nope. They’re doubling down on screaming RACIST FASCIST BIGOT WHITE SUPREMACIST GREEDY CAPITALIST shrieking over there.

          1. You mean at the Hugos or in Britain?

             The flopping camel was Quite Put Out that fascist/bigot/homophobe forces had destroyed his homeland. I thought it was one of the funniest posts he’s ever done. He accidentally made it hilarious.

             Elsewhere the Brit Left are having a conniption that the Forces of Darkness triumphed over their Borg collective.

             My popcorn bag runneth over.

18. The Democrats have fielded the most insane field of candidates ever assembled on a stage.

    One of them is spending serious money to play a minute to two minute long ad of him at some debate talking about how climate change “action” bill will pull us all together.

    Whiskey…tango…foxtrot?!?!?

    1. Oh, whathisname, the other billionaire in the race? I just saw that ad last night. Seriously crazy.

       1. Heck if I know, it’s not like I can say “the crazy one” or something, and they’re all pretty dang rich from where I stand.

          I had to drop off a package yesterday, ended up being in the car for the ~3 hours that folks will be driving home in and heard it at least a half dozen times, even though I wasn’t in the car the whole time and for a significant portion I was listening to the local Catholic station instead, which doesn’t do political ads.

       2. It’s Steyr who yes is another fricking billionaire in the race. I get bombarded with this crap (and from the NYC Midget) because the Boston market also includes New Hampshre. It is like this every 4 years. Hopefully the two of them will spend enough of their money so they can’t cause any more harm

          1. Steyr’s also been running ads since the 2016 election publicly denouncing Trump and demanding that the president be removed from office.

          2. New Hampshire? I am in the middle of North Effing Carolina and campaign ads for Bloomberg and Steyer are turning up months ahead of our primaries. Were I in the Charlotte market it would be reasonable as out-reach to South Carolina voters, but TG for fast forward.

             I confess I often annoy Beloved Spouse by backing up and watching the ad – once! – to see what buttons they’re trying to push, but that is the limit of their entertainment value.

             1. I’ve actually seen a political ad I enjoyed recently. It was Boris Johnson doing a get-out-the-vote for the Tories as a pastiche of Love Actually. You might find it worth tracking down. You can probably find it as “Brexit Actually”. . . .

                1. ESPECIALLY hilarious since Hugh Grant was actively campaigning against him, and was trying to do this in areas that were SOLIDLY CONSERVATIVE. The flaming idiot.

             2. My condolences RES. My agony will end February 12th (unless the money runs out sooner). You’ll have to tolerate a bit more. With Steyr I wonder how he made his billions. Doesn’t seem that sharp from his adds.

                1. “With Steyr I wonder how he made his billions.”

                   The blokes at Power Line have had something to say about this, but the TL:DR version is that he was a hedgefund operator primarily investing in fossil fuel infrastructure.

                   Shocking, I know.

                   THE EPIC HYPOCRISY OF TOM STEYER
                   Billionaire hedge fund operator and “green” energy magnate Tom Steyer has pledged $100 million in the 2014 election cycle to help Democratic candidates who oppose the Keystone pipeline and who favor “green” energy over fossil fuels. Steyer claims to be a man of principle who has no financial interest in the causes he supports, but acts only for the public good. That is a ridiculous claim: Steyer is the ultimate rent-seeker who depends on government connections to produce subsidies and mandates that make his “green” energy investments profitable. He also is, or was until recently, a major investor in Kinder Morgan, which is building a competitor to the Keystone pipeline. …

                   … The North American press’s lack of awareness of Mr Steyer’s activities in the coal sector is due to the fact that all of Farallon’s investments in coal have been made outside of North America, and wherever possible through opaque structures which mask their direct involvement.

                   In order to gain an appreciation of the extent of Farallon’s epic involvement in the coal sector under Mr. Steyer’s tenure one needs to spend time in Jakarta and Sydney, and in the regional financing centers in Hong Kong and Singapore, and speak to professionals (bankers, lawyers, mining consultants and principals) who were directly involved in these Farallon-sponsored coal transactions. With a modicum of effort one discovers that since 2003 Farallon has played the pivotal role in financing the tremendous restructuring and growth in thermal coal production in the region. All of this took place under Mr. Steyer’s tenure as founder and senior partner of Farallon. …

                   … the coal mines that Mr. Steyer has funded through Farallon produce an amount of CO2 each year that which is equivalent to about 28% of the amount of CO2 produced in the US each year by coal burned for electricity generation. …

                   1. So essentially he is a previous sinner convert trying to buy indulgences in the religion of Gaia. How sad.

                   2. i thought most of his money came from the insurance industry? That’s what they said when he ran for governor of CA….

                      1. Sadly, my confidence in the veracity of “they” and “what they say” is far less than once it was.

                         Not that I was ever much inclined to accept a left-wing politician’s word on much, from what his past was to whether it be currently raining.

       3. Drinking their own ink, is what it is.

    2. Tom Steyer? Yeah, another semi-closet socialist and environut. He tries to paint himself as a “reasonable” Democrat compared to the rest of the herd, but he falls flat on his face every time I look.

       1. Trying to be the most reasonable of this herd is like trying to be the most moral serial rapist. Even if it’s true, it doesn’t say anything good about you.

          1. Aye — there’s a vast gap between more reasonable than that herd and “reasonable,” one through which you could sail an aircraft carrier flotilla.

       2. I’ve been following his enviro-craziness through Range magazine for at least a decade now. *sigh* It gets predictable. Although he’s still not as far in the weeds as the Trumbo dude who had a pathological hatred of domestic cattle, and no, I’m not exaggerating. That guy was . . . way past Barking (to use the English term).

          1. If anybody is looking for an unusual but awesome gift, try Range magazine.

             http://rangemagazine.com/

    3. Bat crap insane and unconstitutional polices aside, I am really beginning to despise Steyr and that Fascist Little Prick from NYFC. They extended the radio and TV campaign ad season way beyond it’s already intolerable extended tenure here in Ohio.

       1. Reminds me, I need to print out a new sign for my front door as the next silly season approaches:

          NO SOLICITING
          That goes double for politicians, their fanboys, and other associated rif raf.
          (Yes, this means you. Get over yourself.)

          It seemed to work well during the 16 silly season

    4. The Liberals just won a federal election in Canada with that platform.

       “Carbon tax is GOOD for you!”

       Yes, they ran on that, and they fucking well won.

19. One thing I’ve started to see is that their pattern is becoming seriously obvious. The whole HRC & Steele claiming that Boris Johnson is a Russian stooge was hysterical. I noticed that one died immediately. But the pattern I’m starting to see is

    1. #metoo them if male (attack character; this looks like you’d be OK w/ policies but this guy is a scumbag)
    2. Crazy and/or self-hating woman if female (same as above).
    3. They’re corrupt/too wealthy (by some unknown metric)/a Russian stooge (also character attack, but with “national safety/interest” thrown into the mix, therefore cannot be trusted with the nuke codes or economy or our health, or whatever).
    4. Final and desperate move: everybody that supports this man/woman is either stupid or psychotic or some combo.
    5. If the act in question is not political, then drop it down the memory hole when perps are not your preferred villains (see synagogue shooting in NJ).

    The British election brought these out in rapid succession, such that it was impossible to ignore. I’d like to think that more and more people are refusing to look away, but I’m also worried that too many people believe that “the system” is self-correcting and therefore the crazies won’t be in power that long. People, “the system” is NOT self-correcting. It relies on *us* to see problems and use the existing methods to stop those problems before they get out of hand. We’re dealing with unethical, power-hungry, determined enemies.

    1. Y’know, I’m starting to see why Winston Churchill was a hardcore monarchist. At least a monarch has a vested interest in how things are going. And if you get the occasional nutter, it’s only one person who has to be dealt with.

       Parliament seems to consist mostly of enemies intent on destroying the country and I expect the bureaucracy is just as bad.

       On the other manipulator, the House of Windsor seems to have played out after Edward VII. None of his successors seem to have had much interest in maintaining their realm, and Elizabeth’s potential replacements don’t even look that good.

       1. I’d argue even Eddie 7 wasn’t exactly a model whose example should be followed. He’s my Exhibit A on why a long Crown Princeship doesn’t do much for your long-term stability and mental health.

       2. In fairness to her Majesty, she did say that Brexit ‘is to happen on October 31’; the shitstorm with Andrew, I think, made her step back quite a bit, otherwise. There are still quite a few Brits who notice that she doesn’t often talk about hardcore political events these days, and I’m fairly sure that this not being carried out by her government was noticed. I would reckon that had a bit of nudge in the vote, or at least helped bolster it in people’s minds.

          1. In fairness to Her majesty, her function there is mostly ceremonial, with no real power or authority.

             Sorta like Nancy Pelosi.

             1. But her majesty seems like someone you might like to meet. Nancy Pelosi, not so much

             2. Mostly, but there are powers she still has, and does not often exercise; dissolving parliament being one. Her Governor General here in Australia being the ultimate rein-in for the insanity by enforcing the Constitution and can dismiss the Prime Minister (which happened in 1975.)

                https://www.rd.com/culture/queen-elizabeth-governing-power/

                1. Hmmmm … how’d that “dissolving Parliament” thing work out this last summer?

                   1. She didn’t use it, so…

                      It’s really a huge last resort, and it hasn’t been used in a long time, and I think with good reason.

                      1. Didn’t use it?

                         Used it and was rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the UK, demanding, in effect, “Who died and made you Queen?”

                         2019 British prorogation controversy – Wikipedia
                         On 28 August 2019, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was ordered to be prorogued by Queen Elizabeth II upon the advice of the Conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson. The prorogation, or suspension, of Parliament was to be effective from between 9 and 12 September 2019 and last until the State Opening of Parliament on 14 October 2019; in the end, Parliament was suspended between 10 September and 24 September. Since Parliament was to be prorogued for five weeks and reconvene just 17 days before the United Kingdom’s scheduled departure from the European Union on 31 October 2019, the move was seen by many opposition politicians and political commentators as a controversial and unconstitutional attempt by the prime minister to avoid parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s Brexit plans in those final weeks leading up to Brexit. Johnson and his Government defended the prorogation of Parliament as a routine political process that ordinarily follows the selection of a new prime minister and would allow the Government to refocus on a legislative agenda.

                         In early September 2019, judges in the High Court of Justice and Outer House of the Court of Session—the English and Scottish civil courts of first instance—ruled that the matter was not subject to judicial review as it was a political decision; an appeal in the latter case to the Inner House of the Court of Session—Scotland’s supreme civil court—overturned the Outer House verdict and ruled the prorogation was justiciable and unlawful. To resolve the differences of opinion between the courts, both cases were appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom which, on 24 September, ruled unanimously in R (Miller) v The Prime Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland that the prorogation was both justiciable and unlawful; consequently, the Order in Council ordering prorogation was quashed, and the prorogation was deemed “null and of no [legal] effect”. When Parliament resumed on the following day, the prorogation ceremony was expunged from the Journal of the House of Commons and business continued as if the ceremony had never happened. A second much shorter prorogation, this time for six days, began on 8 October.

                         1. I stand corrected, thank you. And I am not sure if that the ruling of the court is correct, but my understanding of this is only surface, given that the advisory of the Prime Minister is required for the Governor General to act here in Australia, one would guess that the process is the same for the Queen.

                            That’s greatly disturbing, to me (and as I said, my understanding is skim-the-surface), as it seems that the law is being subverted even at that level, much as it is being misused over in the US.

                         2. Found this while just looking around for random videos.

                            From the description: Dr David Starkey railed against the Supreme Court ruling, insisting that it completely changes the way parliament will govern.

                            The 11 justices of the Supreme Court ruled that Boris Johnson’s prorogation was unlawful – a decision that Dr Starkey vehemently disagreed with.

                            Speaking to Iain Dale, the constitutional historian said: “The language of the verdict verge was political. It is not for judges to rule on political truthfulness.

                            —
                            In short, this was not supposed to happen and it was a very, very bad idea.

             3. > mostly ceremonial, with no real power or authority.

                Weeellll… as with everything involving the British government, “it’s complicated.”

                From the monarchist POV, Parliament simply operates as her representative, and she can withdraw her authority at any time. Many Parliamentarians take a contrary view, but there’s still the fact that they’re sworn in under her name, that every soldier, policeman, judge, and court operate under her personal authority, and so forth.

                Elizabeth II has been mostly a “do-nothing” monarch, content to let the Empire disintegrate around her. But she still has way more authority than most people think.

                And if nothing else, if she or her successor were to start issuing orders, there would be a *lot* of British and Commonwealth subjects who would be delighted to have *someone* take charge of things and lead them out of the morass of chaos and bickering. Unfortunately, that can often turn out badly.

    2. “The whole HRC & Steele claiming that Boris Johnson is a Russian stooge was hysterical.”

       Maybe hysterical in the original sense of the word.

       The problem is that so many people buy into that nonsense. Moderates might not, but moderates are becoming increasingly irrelevant (see: fraud, media manipulation).

       Again, people believe this bullshit. Lots and lots of them. Just like they believe that Trump has committed some crime, or that gender is a social construct, or that Nazis make up almost half the electorate. No evidence for any of the beliefs is required. It’s the new religion with its daily councils of Nicaea.

       It’s just that this religion doesn’t involve any of that icky virtue or self-sacrifice. You get to offer up other people for that.

       1. The embarrassing thing is that it recently came out that Labour leader Michael Foot (the previous worst-loser-ever, to Maggie Thatcher) was a paid KGB agent.

          And that the MI agencies knew about it and decided not to tell Thatcher. Because she might tell the voters or use it politically! Horrors!

          So yeah, the “Boris Johnson is a Russian stooge” died pretty quickly, because their lefties have a little tiny bit of sense.

          1. At least he was paid. Most of em do it for free.

             1. How committed a Communist can he be if he demands to be PAID.

                1. Just means he sees himself as the upper echelon

    3. As Left as Piers Morgan is, the schadenfreude at him signing another 2 years at GMB is funny, because while he’d voted Remain, he hammered everyone about refusing to carry out the vote and saying this was insane and anti-democratic.

       That lunatic Ash…something or the other who was on his show at some point arguing with him and eventually blurted out that she was ‘literally communist’ is haring off the deep end right now, and it’s amazing.

20. I remember people praising Obama one in minute, then blasting Palin tube next for her lack of experience. 🤔

    Then there was the people who coined “ChimpBushHitler” complaining about the lack of civility on the right.

    People who compared Obama favorably to Christ talking about how the right is worshipping Trump.

    😳 I don’t understand this world.

    1. The media ran Obama against Palin. The Presidential candidate against the Vice Presidential candidate.

       And on experience she should have beat him.

       1. McCain’s ineptitude during the financial crisis scuttled that campaign. Why suspend your campaign when you should be reminding the voters how Bush *warned Congress about this coming* and the House Dems ridiculed him for it.
          Ready made campaign ads in the Cspan footage.
          Of course as a member of the Keating 5 he wasn’t going to be the best messenger…

          1. McCain the GOPE candidate, to fill the place because they had to have SOMEBODY run. They didn’t WANT to win.

       2. If only Palin had had the sense as Mayor to vote more often “Present”.

    2. I don’t either.

    3. Ox try not think too hard about it. Makes ox head hurt bigly.

    4. Yes you do. Don’t look away. They’re not misguided. They’ve CHOSEN their side.

    5. And anything with Obama and primate of any kind was considered racist.

       BHO was the worst President in history to happen to comedians.

       1. And just like with trump there is a huge field of nonpartisan stuff that could be used to poke goodhumored fun. Both had speaking quirks (let me be clear/huge and hyperbole) that could be used very well by comedians and such but politics is now the driver of those shows.

          1. Ok, that was supposed to say yuuuge

          2. It isn’t tough to envision a SNL skit of Obam’s “beer summit” with that snotty law prof and the cop, or how they might have portrayed Eric “Wingman” Holder and Obama walking into a bar …

             The original cast did a terrific job of sending up Carter’s micro-managing uber-competence schtick. Note also how well Bill Murray captures Walter Cronkite’s smarmyness.

             1. Not a law prof. An ENGLISH prof. 😀

                1. Oh? My error, then.

                   In my defense, these days there is very little difference between the two. Each ignores the text of the authors in favour of what they decide ought have been written.

    6. I remember people praising Obama one in minute, then blasting Palin tube next for her lack of experience.

       Oh, come on. All Palin ever did was be governor of the largest geographical state in the US*. Obama ran his own presidential campaign. Clearly, there is no comparison.

       * = well, alright, she was also the former mayor of Wasilla, a fact the press kept repeating as if they were saying, “former drug dealer” or something else she needed to be ashamed of.

       People who compared Obama favorably to Christ talking about how the right is worshipping Trump.

       There was a nice example of that recently with the discussion of how almost as many Republicans picked Trump as the greatest president ever over George Washington. Conveniently left out was that a large majority of Democrats picked Obama over Washington.

    7. People complained about Palin’s inexperience at the bottom of the ticket while simultaneously informing us that Obama’s inexperience at the top didn’t matter because Biden was there to give him advice.

       1. They’re doing it again, honestly, with Biden’s corruption (and Obama’s) being not worth mentioning, while Trump’s conversation with the president of Ukraine is OMG CORRUPTION RAWR.

          Seriously, the Democrats will destroy all the institutions of the government and law to try get their way if you let them.

    8. Jasini, all you have to remember is that the Democratic Party is composed of liars. The only question is whether they are lying to themselves in addition to the rest of us.

       1. At this point if they’re lying to themselves, they’re dunces.

          1. They do it, even when they flee California’s taxes, and impose the same crap they fled on their new home states.

21. I think that treating Hillary as a good and reasonable candidate broke them as much as Trump did. After all, it wasn’t just “I like her best but I’m realistic about her, but I do think she’s tough enough for the job.” No. It wasn’t “she’s better than the alternatives” at all. For one thing, there were no alternatives allowed to run against her. (Crazy Uncle Bernie doesn’t count.)

    I watched people intelligent enough to know better insist that she was VIRTUOUS and that all the crabby things said about her were lies born of sexism, all the way back to Bill’s governorship and even to her very brief legal career. She was *moral*. She was upright and praiseworthy!

    She also, and we know this for a fact, wanted to run against Trump and worked to make sure he got the Republican nomination. The media and early open-voter states got the memo. There’s no one to challenge her in the Democrat primaries so why don’t you go f*ck up the Republican primaries. It’ll be fun.

    1. Synova it’s not obvious that impish cross voting to select the “weakest” candidate got us Trump. It may have lent an impression of momentum that might have helped. If it did it’s another Own Goal for the queen of Own Goals…

       1. Well there was the fact that when Cruz won Iowa was the headline “Cruz wins Iowa” it was not, it was Trump comes in second.

          1. That. Yes.

          2. I looked New Hampshire was 35% Trump,
             The others got 15-10% each, Cruz was like 11% like 4th place. I don’t think New Hampshirites pay much attention to the Iowa Caucuses. Actually ~50% more Voters in the Democrat primary. Bernie won it big (60% to 38 for Clinton), Not sure for New Hampshire it mattered. New Hampshire is an open primary. It used to be a republican state, but the South is full of Masshole refugees that are either democrats or independents, and mostly wicked liberal. No theories fit other than folks were annoyed at the rest of the republican field.

       2. People have claimed that they looked at the numbers and only for the very first primaries was there a significant difference between how well he did in “open” and “closed”. And of course no one was the least bit *sneaky* about how fun it would be to go vote for the worst candidate in the Republican primary. It actually may have ended up giving Bernie the appearance of momentum!

          But we have those wikileak emails from the DNC naming who they wanted to have as preferred opponents. Ben Carson was another.

          And of course Trump got so much free air time that it was unreal. The “news” almost ignored the other Republican candidates.

          I’m not disappointed, by the way. It just makes the schadenfreude sweeter.

          1. That coverage was probably the thing. He was paying the least for ads, and getting far more coverage, more than offsetting the ads.

             The TV news at the time, I understand, was in bad shape and really needed the ratings.

       3. The MSM free media coverage given Trump was not intended as anything other than an effort to promote “the Republican least likely to offer HRC a serious challenge.”

          Heh. How’d that turn out?

          1. Hoist on their own petard. may it always be so.

             1. From your lips to the Authors ears…So mote it be.

    2. Let’s not forget how sooper dooper totes gosh darn competent she was. A real stateswoman for the 21st Century.

       Nevermind the blank stares you elicit when asking what her legislative accomplishments were in the senate, or how that Russian “Reset” panned out while she was SoS.

       This savvy and experienced politician – the creme of the Democrat crop – campaigned….campaigned in California, instead of places like Wisconsin and Michigan.

       Our best and brightest, Ladies and gents. Like you said, they were broken because they convinced themselves that this objectively stupid outlook was not only supposed to work, but result in a landslide.

       1. Once upon a time, I knew a fellow who would repeatedly state, “Too many politicians, too few statesmen.”

          It was years later I happened across one particular definition of a statesman:

          Statesman — A dead politician

       2. I think it was more that she campaigned in Arizona, thinking that she could grab a red state, while ignoring the warnings going off in Wisconsin and Michigan.

          1. One of two things happened.
             1) she hired very poor campaign advisors
             2) She petulantly ignored advisors because she didn’t like campaigning in places where she was not treated like the second coming (i.e. NYC, Mass., California, Illinois)
             Truthfully I think some variant of two happened. Bless her little heart…

       3. “Why are you looking for your keys under the lamppost if you dropped them in the alley?”
          “Because there’s more light under the lamppost!”

    3. I am so glad Hillary wasn’t elected.
       Means I didn’t go to jail or get killed; and neither did a bunch of other people.

       1. I just wish some of the ones who by all rights ought to have gone to jail, had.

    4. I knew someone who said that he was glad there was Bernie as an option back then… then hated being forced to vote for Hillary. I don’t know if he did, but he was seriously tempted to not vote that time because he disliked Hillary that much.

22. Before the blood, must come the Great Shunning.

    If we’re not willing to do that, we’ll never be willing to spill the blood.

    The Great Shunning means: friends. Family. Business. Employers. Hobbies. Everything.

    Do Not Support that which oppresses us. That means no Disney. That means no New York Times. That means no flying, because no TSA.

    Please, please, get going with the Shunning. Because that’s the last, best hope of avoiding the blood and/or tyranny.

    We are in Europe in 1932, in terms of how desperate things are soon to be. That which is unthinkable now will soon be not close to being enough. People need to get serious.

    1. > Do Not Support that which oppresses us. That means no Disney. That means no New York Times. That means no flying, because no TSA.
       —
       No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Google here.

       1. Except we can’t. Abandon FB and you’ve ceded the playing field.
          As for the TSA: well, I fly now only when absolutely needed. We’re doing a lot of driving. And we don’t “read commies” (my dad’s words. And we don’t watch their movies. It’s been no sacrifice.

          1. Most of my friends are on FaceBook. I am also on Mewe and Minds, but…well, the traffic is a tiny fraction of what I get on FB, judging by every metric I have (for instance, I’ll get several hundred hits to my blog from posting on FB for every one I get from Mewe and Minds is even farther behind that). That may change in the future, but it would be cutting my own throat to quit facebook. Twitter, I really only just let the automatic “share” of my blog posts go to it.

             1. Apparently you can’t get on MeWe unless you have a smartphone with the app?

                I mean, if Kindle Fire doesn’t have the app, and desktops and laptops don’t have the app, then you are cutting off a lot of customers.

                1. Nope. I got on via the web.

                   http://mewe.com

                2. You can. I get through it by computer only. I don’t have social media on the phone. I have this blog, in case I need to check on it. That’s all.

                3. I look at MeWe exclusively via desktop and laptop.

          2. Not only is abandoning FB cedeing a battlefield, but it’s surrendering a means of humint.

             Also it means actually moving into that echo chamber that statists accuse us of living in, which is another example of their projection issues but that’s another topic.

             1. FB isn’t the world. It’s just Yet Another Sandbox.

                *Their* sandbox, that you play in by their sufferance.

                1. Ah, but I like being the rock in the sandbox.

                2. Methinks many cats have visited Facebooks sandbox.

          3. I’ve been far too antisocial for the book, or the other social medias so it hasn’t harmed me a smidge. Quitting amazon, where I get many of my ebooks, now that would hurt.

    2. Do Not Support that which oppresses us. That means no Disney. That means no New York Times. That means no flying, because no TSA.

       I tend to avoid things that I can. I don’t have a Disney+ account even though I’ve heard really good things about The Mandalorian and would actually like to see it. (Flip side of the retail version of BDS that you are advocating, do you not want to encourage folk when they’re doing stuff you want them to do?)

       However, I have my own life to live to. If my boss says “fly here to deal with that customer”, well, I fly there to deal with that customer because. I. need. to. provide. for. my. daughter. This is not optional. You might be able to just quit whatever job you have for something like that and feel virtuous about it (or maybe not–not judging here, just a hypothetical) but I most certainly can’t.

       Even if, say, I became an invited guest at something like LTUE (like that would ever happen), and I could afford it, I’d go. And that means flying because 23 hours driving each way (not counting stops, and I need a lot of stops) is really not viable. But I’d go because benefit (a number of friends I get very little chance to see in meatspace are likely to be there) outweighs downside.

       As another example, I made a mistake of thinking the Dresden files was Tor (anyone following the Sad Puppies bits should get why that’s relevant) but even if it were, I’d still buy the new one when it comes out, not to support Tor but to support Butcher and a damn fine book series. And my life is not dictated by them.

       And, yes, it would take a lot, a whole lot, to get me to go “black flag” and start stacking bodies. It will be hard for me to turn that corner because I’m not a psychopath. Ending other human lives is…not someplace I want to go. “It’s a hell of a thing killin’ a man. You take away everything he has and everything he’s going to have.”

       But the fact that I have had to deal with TSA (which pisses me off every. single. time.) or that I bought a book that I enjoyed from a publisher that despises everything I stand for is way down on the list of reasons I might hesitate.

       I hesitate because that’s a terrible road to go down and because it’s entirely too likely that the destination will actually be worse (if we don’t win the “culture war” the “bombs and bullets” war is more likely to cement the problem than fix it. If we do win the culture war, the “bombs and bullets” war will likely be unnecessary–or will at least be set off by the other side which removes a lot of the moral ambiguity).

       1. *looks* Peace Talks, from what it seems on the site I prefer, to be published either under Ace (Penguin) or Orbit (Little,Brown Book Group).

          1. Yes. As I said, I’d made a mistake. That was based on the notice that showed up in my feed being from tor dot com.

    3. If we are in Europe 1932, then we should not let the time for effective opposition to tyranny, even violent opposition, pass. Austria and Czechoslavkia did nothing. Poland did too little, too late. Denmark and the Netherlands restrained themselves from effective action so as not to provoke Hitler – and what did that get them?

       1. Well, about what it would have got them, anyway. Do you understand the different sizes and abilities of those countries, particularly at the time?
          Look, right now, if you go hot ALL you’ll get is the shunning of any resistance (real resistance) to the left.
          Dear Lord. How young are you? Go look up Clinton and the militias. They actually found or created (there’s debate) attacks by “militias” so they could justify demonizing any opposition to Clinton.
          Yes, running around the hills with a Kalashnikov sounds like way more fun than destroying your reputation and your potential career success by speaking the unwanted truth to deranged power. It’s sexy, and if you don’t get pneumonia, it’s less embarrassing.
          It’s also a short road to utter defeat.

          1. Between decongestants and lack of sleep, I think my post was both less coherent and more belligerent than I intended. My point was NOT that I believed reform impossible and violence the only answer, just that if it does becomes necessary. waiting too long or employing it ineffectively can render it useless. As much of Europe learned to its dismay. Well, that and I think comparing the Dems to the Nazis is both appropriate, and something they’d hate.

23. No, even otherwise rational people talked about how smart the man was, even though both his intelligence and his political acumen joined invisibility to their other qualities.

    Well, I talked about “how intelligent” he was. But that was in the context of mocking it. In an interview, the “smartest and most articulate” President in recent memory (It Says Here) talked about how difficult he found his daughter’s seventh grade math homework? Really? (One of a long list of examples.) Oh, sure, he was trying to present as “relate-able” but using that as a tool for that in and of itself is not particularly bright. Even I, with my cluelessness about matters social, can figure that out.

    1. Fershlunger clicky thing. Clicky thing first, then post comment.

       1. That just gives the WP gremlins more time to uncheck it for you.

    2. Yeah : “talked about how smart the man was”. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. He certainly isn’t a scholar, if he was he’d have been touting his 4.0 GPA and 1600 SAT all over the place. Not like Obama has any idea what modesty is and we’d have heard about it incessantly. Rather we heard about his Harvard review position, which just means he was a first rate brown noser and suck up to the various Law review people.
       He was a third rate state senator and a half term junior senator from a state that votes bluer than Massachusetts. At least Jimmy Carter had some accomplishments (Nuke Engineer in the days of Rickover implied fairly technically capable if not necessarily leadership qualities). Obama was also serious slime. Using divorce proceedings (that were supposed to be sealed) against his Senate opponent is just a scum maneuver. But the press loved him and got all excited about him. Probably mostly because it meant someone far more interesting than Hillary. Not that that’s saying much…

       1. “Rather we heard about his Harvard review position, which just means he was a first rate brown noser and suck up to the various Law review people.”

          I prefer the likely theory that his position on the Law Review is why his grades remain a more secure national secret than the launch codes. That’s reserved for, what, the top five percent? Having his grades publicly available would show that he was there because of Affirmative Action, not academic achievement. His output as editor certainly doesn’t show it.

          After all, you have to bolster the myth of him being a ConLaw professor with something, because he certainly never actually taught it.

          1. “you have to bolster the myth of him being a ConLaw professor with something, because he certainly never actually taught it.”

             He was not a ConLaw professor, he was a ConLaw adjunct lecturer — which, given his proclivity for lecturing Americans should have been a flashing amber light.

             1. My understanding was that he was an adjunct who, while he *may* have been titled “ConLaw” the only actual classes or lectures he gave were on Community Organizing.

                1. My admittedly vague recollection is that he lectured on the Fourteenth Amendment but really, given the Constitutional insight he demonstrated in office, what difference, at this time, does it make?

                   It isn’t as if the ranks of ConLaw professors have been covering themselves in glory of late.

             2. Res, and to all on this part of the thread.

                obambi was the consummate conman – the rorschach that every self-anointed progressive overlord saw their own highest endeavor for the good of the people reflected in.

                And as for his status as a law professor – ya’ll know that ubiquitous foto of him in harvard, on the blackboard, with the caption below citing his bonafides as a “Constitutional Law Expert”? Look at the picture closely – he is illustrating Alinskyian methods on the blackboard (relationships built on self-interest).

                Think of it – the picture was right there in front of MILLIONS – and we didn’t see it! (well, others didn’t see it. I did, and raised my voice on it… but who cares what an old guy has to say about this kinda stuff?).

                Creepy, eh? That a cowardly, intellectually shallow – but cunning and amoral – pitiful excuse of a creature should rise to the greatest civil executive office in the land. And in such a manner!

                which just goes to show… the greatest trick ever played on man was when the Devil convinced him he doesn’t exist..

                The JG

          2. I looked, Basically al 1L (first year law students) are encouraged to write as part of a competition at the end of the first year

             The selection criteria are:
             Forty-eight second-year students are invited to join the Review each year. Twenty editors are selected based solely on their competition scores. Seven editors, one from each 1L section, shall be selected based on an equally weighted combination of competition scores and 1L grades. Three editors shall be selected based on an equally weighted combination of competition scores and 1L grades, without regard to section. Eighteen editors shall be selected through a holistic but anonymous review that takes into account all available information. The Review remains strongly committed to a diverse and inclusive membership.

             Look at those last two sentences. What would you like to bet that Obama got selected as one of the 18 where Grades etc could be ignored. Or maybe he just did really well in 1L after putzing around as an undergrad. Naaah sorry just pulling your leg…

       2. Think how hard his intelligence people had it. First, he never attended the briefings because he was smarter arms knew more than they did.

          Then when something blew up on him, his irrelevance people gabby told him anything, he had to find out about it on the news like the rest of us.

       3. The sealed divorce thing happened twice during that campaign. Everyone heard about the Ryans. But it also happened with his Dem opponent in the primary.

          1. Interesting, Jeri Ryan (aka 7 of 9) I knew about but to do it twice, that is slimey even for an Illinois Democrat.

             1. Well, Obama was considered particularly scummy, even by Dem standards. It’s why I think he’s at the core of the Seditious Conspiracy…and would bet money he ran the same sort of FISA spy operation on the Romney campaign.

                1. Not taking that bet. Obama had less backbone and acumen than Carter and fewer scruples than Nixon or Johnson. He’s probably in the running for worst president with Wilson.

                   1. @tregonsee314 & Mike M.

                      also, it’s because it’s Obama’s MO – others do his dirty work for him.

                      Google up his election in 2004, for US Senate. He was running against Jack Ryan, the Repub who was favored to win (obambi was a state senator att). Ryan’s divorce records were made public (4th amendment violation anyone? Aw shucks, it’s Chicago!) – and his lead fell off the edge of the table like lemmings hurdling over a cliff.

                      He pulled out, The pubbies in desperation ran Alan Keyes in his place. A landslide, and the rest is history.

                      the JG

       4. What makes a man smart is a teacher willing to thunk the back of the student’s head when the student says stupid things.

          1. “For how will fully equipped instruction, in whatever art or wisdom, be able to get into the student, unless he first should be taught by a fully equipped teacher?

             “And certainly the teacher draws the student into the “treasures of wisdom” (Col. 2:3) in many ways: sometimes with kindly words, sometimes with constant reminders, often with the strap, most fully with seriousness of manner, but many times with sweet and enjoyable explanations.

             “And then after he has done this, he sends the quick student into the hidden places of wisdom at the run — in that order.

             “When the student has entered there, gladness in the present will send to oblivion every injury from the teacher, which felt harsh when it happened.”

             – Aponius, Commentary on the Song of Songs

    3. What people forget is that Obama was a lot like Bill Clinton–he was good at getting elected.

       Unlike Bill Clinton, he was bad at governing.

24. Eh, the Right has been sounding the alarm for a couple of decades. I’ve been reading articles similar to this for years. Until the Right adopts the strategies of the Left, we’ll continue the same course until Blood.

    No, I don’t mean kindergarten crafts or pussy hat marches. I’m talking about funding and organization. I can think of probably ten Leftwing billionaires off the top of my head. The closest the Right has is Koch, who isn’t really on the Right. Then there are their organization networks that extract gobs of money from the rank and file, and the unsuspecting, and the taxpayer.

    And it’s all this organization and cash that keeps them dominant, no matter how badly they lose the war of ideas. What does the Right have? The TEA Party could have been great, if not for the Leftist grifters who killed it. Other than that it’s a few ineffectual think tanks and institutes that seem to have no problem coming up with The Conservative/Libertarian Case for [Progressive Policy].

    Until the Right can get its financial act together and develop some serious organization, I don’t see the occasional massive protest (TEA Party, March for Life) preventing the flow of blood.

    1. Oddly enough, there are a few organizations trying to educate the Right on how to play the political game. IIRC, National Association for Gun Rights has a political action seminar they run all over the place, but primarily for 2nd Amendment right support. However, it works equally well for any other conservative position./group.

    2. Part of this is because if you don’t mouth the right things, you’re shut out of careers.
       TRUST me on this: THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR DECADES.

       1. Yep. Goes double if you tan darker than deep pink, or you are female, or sound foreign to local ears. Union jobs used to find no work for you if you stepped out of line (several different ones, it wasn’t just the Teamsters). Promotions disappeared like a fart in the wind. Things like that.

          If one party only hires its own while the other cares only for minimum competence, it’s not great stretch to realize which will end up being the entire workforce before long.

          1. Yep. I tan dark. And am female. And have an accent…. And I’m not a dim. I’m the devil.

    3. > Until the Right adopts the strategies of the Left, we’ll continue the same course until Blood.
       —
       Then we’d *become* the Left, just a different faction of it.

       I’m not playing that game.

       1. Funding and Organization are a bad thing? Perhaps read the whole comment.

          1. You stopped with “money and organization.”

             You didn’t propose they do something different with them.

             I’m listening.

             1. The things that get talked about in this post and this blog on a near daily basis: Taking back the institutions.

                1. Ok, got a method?

       2. Then you are agreeing with the proposition that liberty is not worth more than your “sacred honor”. Plain and simple.

          1. If we become the left, we’ve sacrificed liberty for license.

             1. “Better dead than red” doesn’t have much of a track record….

                1. Well, there’s an example of how to do absolutely nothing to support your argument and change minds, and in fact bring disrepute to what you are supposedly supporting.

                   It is a good example of why copying the left doesn’t work, though; folks who already escaped or evade the left are not going to bow to the same tactics.

                2. Except RIGHT NOW our guy is still in the white house, and the left is covered in flop sweat.
                   So, who is winding up the revolution chimes, and what is their real intent?

25. I’ve seen that phenomenon where a person is blamed for an action that hadn’t done, while person who did it walked away scot-free. I had a sister who was very good at that by the time she was five years old. I know a person who I like, but has TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). I tried to tell her that this need to be outraged at tweets is a little over the edge… and that there other things that are more damaging such as Fast and Furious or Benghazi.

    She told me that it was in the past. I don’t understand this attitude at all. She things I’m blind where Trump is concerned. So yea, we don’t talk politics and only do crafts together… in many other ways we have a lot in common.

    I just don’t understand the short memory… Or I should say I don’t understand people who don’t have a memory.

    1. I apologize for the spelling errors. My fingers don’t work this morning. I’m wondering if people have lost their brain computing powers since they went all smart phone and techy. So no long term memory storage or the ability to compute and compare various actions.

       1. You are in good company, Cyn. Don’t sweat the typos. Posts here are cheap, but entertaining and educational on occasion. *grin* That’s more than worth the occasional bit here and there.

    2. Trump’s winning the election was three years ago. In my language that’s part of “the past.”

    3. Cyn, yes, I see the memory hole a lot with friends and colleagues. We don’t do the past on our guy because reasons. But, we’ll go after the childhood of your guy because we don’t want to look too closely at our guy. In some ways it’s really bizarre; perfectly intelligent individuals will tie themselves in knots explaining how what their guy did is a joke/normal/necessary/understandable while what my guy did is unfunny wrongthink/immoral/unethical/illegal when those actions are exactly the same. When I ask how that can be, I get splutters and subject changes (if in person). If we’re online, I often get vitriol from people who know me. I’ve had “friends” tell me that they feel sorry for my students. People who claim they “felt like” they knew me well profess bafflement at my “sudden” turn toward ignorance and stupidity. I’ve learned to laugh in their faces. They know they’re making sh*t up to assuage their cognitive dissonance.

       My favorite is a college friend who insists she’s an independent all the while refusing to read anything deemed wrongthink. She’s an actress living in NYC…I just have to laugh and unfollow on FB…

       1. Exactly– I like the term “memory hole.”

       2. LAUGHING is our strongest weapon. They are social creatures and want to be thought serious and important.
          LEARN to laugh out your mad.

          1. This. Yes, this. Laughter helps. Life is absurd. (If you don’t learn to laugh you’ll cry.)

          2. LAUGHING is our strongest weapon. Laughing and mockery. Laughter and mockery are our two strongest weapons. Laughter, mockery and ridicule. Laughter, mockery and ridicule are our strongest weapons. Laughter, mockery, ridicule and derision. Our strongest weapons are laughter, mockery, ridicule, derision and near fanatical devotion to the Constitution.

             1. As many thumbs up to this comment as I can manage. Only two, at last record…

          3. If you can’t manage laughter, you might try Curly Joe’s jive from The Three Stooges.

       3. “She’s an actress living in NYC…”

          That’s one of those areas where, unless you’ve already made it, ideological conformity is demanded if you want to be employed.

       4. I confess to being greatly amused by the outrage voiced by people (who dismissed highly credible testimony Bill Clinton perpetrating rape) over Trump’s offhand remark about female hypergamy, misrepresenting his “you can practically grab them by the [short & curlies] as boasting of having grabbed women thusly.

          No, it is not possible to take these folks as seriously as they take themselves because they insist on donning the clown mask. Their minds are washed nightly and awake as if to a new day.

    4. Hillary used That’s In The Past during the investigation. Maybe that’s a starting point for understanding the phenomenon.

       1. Yep– extremely scary… and very dishonest

    5. Oh, and I forgot the Kavannaugh circus, which a blind toddler could see through, and yet held the nation hostage.
       And now they’ve looked away.

       1. The blind leading the blind

       2. How DARE you suggest a woman could lie about sexual assault by a Republican! They only lie about Democrats, everybody knows that.

          Besides, the only thing that really matters is defending the right of women to kill their children. THAT’s in the (shadows of the auras of the penumbras of the vicinity of the) CONSTITUTION!

26. “ARE YOU ACTUALLY INSANE? DO YOU KNOW WHAT COMES NEXT AFTER YOU DESTROY THE LAW OF THE LAND?”

    We know.
    That’s why many of us are preppers of one sort or another, and to varying degrees.
    That’s why many of us are 2nd Amendment advocates, and experienced gun owners.
    We know, and with all due respect to our hostess and other inhabitants here, we unfortunately realize that very little of what we say is going to make much difference at this point.

    I got slapped with it in the face this weekend. I was at a fencing tournament in Vermont and a guy I know, who knows I’m a conservative sort, sought me out and immediately started haranguing me about how Donald Trump was literally killing tens of thousands of people in California by abolishing much of the EPA regulations. By the end of his tirade I thought he was about to physically attack me. He certainly wasn’t about to listen to any reasoned arguments. If he’s any indication of the rest of the country, this nation is a frigging powder keg, no, rotten dynamite, just waiting for a stray spark or jolt to set things off. And that’s a sign we’re past the point where speaking loudly is going to stop blood in the streets. Because speaking loudly WILL set them off.

    “Mock them. Point out how ridiculous they are. How dangerous they are. Never let them forget the venal, despicable, stupid and insane things they say.” All triggers for them, Sarah.

    You’re right about another thing too.

    “Don’t look away. Look on, full on and without flinching at the horror the left has become.” You’re facing a pack of hungry hyenas. Don’t run, don’t take your eyes off them for a moment, and make sure you have your hand on your gun, ready to draw, if it gets as bad as I think it will.

    1. “…how Donald Trump was literally killing tens of thousands of people in California by abolishing much of the EPA regulations.”

       This, Climate Warmening, and health care are where they find their moral justification for violence. Nevermind that these deaths only exist as the skewed projections of activists. No, these are brave heroes who are vanquishing evil and literally Saving The World.

       This truly is their new religion. Reason to them is as sunlight to a vampire.

       1. I tried to get in that Donald Trump hasn’t actually killed anyone and he ratcheted up the volume twice and was going white in the face. All I could do was say, “I hear you. I need to go take a piss really bad.” and then disengaged and avoided him as much as possible for the rest of the day.

          1. You did poke him as hard as allowed in the lists, though?

             1. Even better, do you fence Sabre by any chance? a flat of the sabre (by mistake of course) hurts like hell. Getting a mask shot in Epee isn’t fun either although that is avoided as every once and a while someone has let their mask rust and things go bad…

                1. Anyone who goes to the Pomme de Terre gets a good mask inspection once a year. Concord Fencign CLub does an inspection and punch test about every other tournament they hold.

                   1. Excellent, as one of the armorers in my college club we tested the masks at least twice a season (once at the beginning once near the end). For a college club sport we were pretty anal retentive about it. But then again the head armorer we learned from had a waffle shape scar just over his eyebrow from grabbing a mask someone hadn’t tested recently. An inch or so lower would have been very bad, an epee is very rigid.

                      1. And the example of choice for most coaches and armorers is the 1982 accident when Russian World Champion Vladimir Smirnov was killed by a blade, puncturing his mask.

    2. Bursting out laughing at him, if you can muster laughing out your outrage might have got through though. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. These are people wedded to social signals, and we’ve let them get away with taking the “serious” high ground.
       They are dangerous, conniving and horrific, but they are also ridiculous and should be made to feel THAT. It will affect them more than anything else. The devil has no sense of humor and hates being mocked.

       1. The Spouse advises that a horse laugh is the appropriate reaction to nonsense.

          1. The last time I got this type of bilge from a friend was 2011 and I was so embarrassed for her I could barely talk. Now… I’d like to think it would be different.

       2. Interestingly, nobody has yet confronted me in person with such inanities. I really, really want to laugh I do do the “lol” thing on FB in a lot of my responses. I have a very hard time hiding it when I have no or low respect for somebody. I know this has caused me problems at work (academics – you will honor my faux respect demands!). But then I think, if they respected me, I wouldn’t need to hide anything from them.

          1. I found years later part of my problem with my career is that, unknown to me, I have a glass fronted face. You can read my thoughts in it in six foot tall print.

             1. YEah, I’m a terrible poker player too.

       3. Right up to the point the laughing gets you kicked out of your house.

       4. When this occurs, the perpetrator of nonsense tends to respond by trying to talk *louder.* Talking louder in men and women often tends to raise their voice a bit. Which makes them sound even more ridiculous. Occasionally petulant, too.

          Also, people like to laugh. Bystanders might just start to laugh with you. People the perpetrator thought were on *his* side are now mocking him. This sort of prick to the ego is far more devastating than the most carefully reasoned argument in the heat of the moment. Nobody is going to listen to you whose mind is already made up. But everybody likes a good show.

    3. And this sort of thing isn’t (remotely) limited to one-on-one “engagements” of people who know each other — this new(-ish) version of TDS (perhaps Trump Derangement with Aggression Syndrome, compare ADD vs. ADHD) can now be seen hunting in packs, even visibly in “safe” private spaces…

       Like this past weekend in Washington at the storied Willard Hotel, where a group (or mob) of apparent high-degree Democrats from a nearby wedding also there crashed a pro-Trump political event, harassed the event and harangued some of the guests, ambushed them (verbally) in restrooms, blocked them from using the elevator, and assaulted at least one person (ex-Seal and former FBI agent Jonathan Gilliam) who was trying to get people to safety past the ongoing ah, deranged and aggressive behavior — leading to at least one arrest.

       See, for example, their group’s statement at

       womenforamericafirst dot org slash news slash attackatwillardhotel

       And one “modern” news source is said to be working on identifying specific individual perpetrators, who (subject to verification) may be Names We Might All Recognize, spouting “self-privileged” rhetoric that sounds positively, ah, Biden-esque. (Or maybe even more Page-and-Strzok-ian.)

       Now just, uh, imagine the national, wall-to-wall news coverage if that shoe had been, hypothetically, on the other foot. Perhaps even mentions in this week’s upcoming riot at the asylum, sorry, Demo-wanna-be-debate.

       Instead… not even crickets.

       So it’s not just “Mad Maxine” Waters exhorting her minions / followers to gang up on Cabinet officials and other public figures going about their private lives. Or acquaintances going politically nut-wing at other people they sort-of know. This is flat-out TDAS many-on-one pack hunting behavior, spontaneously (it seems) aimed at individuals “cut out of the herd” or even the whole herd itself, maybe a bit too eerily reminiscent (again) of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Or perhaps even of certain non-fictional episodes in 20th-century history.

       As above (Pelosi Nadler Schiff “PNS” House crazy), so below…

    4. “immediately started haranguing me about ”

       There are time when the only appropriate response is “Shut the Eff up, you G-D moron. This ain’t the time nor the place, and if you don’t stop I will take appropriate action.”

       Then slap him across the face with your fencing glove and demand satisfaction on strip.

       Attempting to gain unfair advantage by such distractions is against the entire spirit of honourable combat.

    5. An effective tactic has been to record these people going absolutely insane at other folks. There’s a guy – a very short, effete pathetic sort – who has been recorded repeatedly assaulting conservatives on some Washington State campuses. I suspect that part of YT’s crackdown on certain content creators have been because of how successful TPUSA, Campus Reform, etc and other conservatives / non-Left / classic Liberals have been at voicing sanity.

       Showing off the insanity to the whole world has been very effective in letting the world know that ‘no, there are still people standing against this insanity, so if I vote, it’s not completely useless.’

       The sad thing is, in your story, that guy had effectively stopped seeing you as a person, and you were a target on which he saw fit to scream at, and perhaps even attack if he worked himself up to it (I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, Antifa regularly do so), and you were supposed to take it and let him physically destroy you like the strawman you’d become in his reality.

    6. Good example of a lefty escalating to violence when unable to back up anything said or accused.

       1. That is not in the least surprising. I hope that reporter, and the cameraman, filed assault charges. They’ve definitely got plenty of evidence!

          That is what we have to do. Get them arrested, tried and convicted, thrown in jail, and fined for all of their illegal actions. If the law refuses to act against them, document that too, in detail.
          ———————————
          Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

27. As an example of the current State of the State in VA, this is one of the doubters:

    I’ve been waiting for someone to call me out on this.

    I’ve never attended Lobby Day, but that dickhead Northam convinced me that I had no choice but to start. Accordingly, I made arrangements to go this year. Then, when it became apparent that it was devolving into a embarrassing case of testosterone poisoning, I kinda started to waffle. Finally, I realized there was pretty good chance of people actually getting shot and decided I needed to be there – St. Crispin’s Day and all.

    If even the doubters are reaching this stage the turnout ought to be quite good. Also highly pissed.

    1. Ian: I’ve been a voice for calm all along.
       Now I’m so angry I have to make myself stop and think.
       If I’m here… imagine where the others are.

       1. I’m usually not angry. Because, well, from where I’m sitting where is any of this news? Sure the depths of the rot are sort of news. And it can feel odd to see something you “always knew” in a childlike way confirmed in all its true despicableness. But I never had any investment in any of the standard institutions not being corrupt in the first place.

          The counter-institutions, sure, I’m thoroughly pissed about those. There is the source of my occasional rants on here that sound like I’m jumping down everyone else’s throat.

          But as much as it is becoming a broken record; “homeschooled in the 90s”. It is a different outlook. And the real surprises come from your own side stabbing you in the back.

          1. Your last sentence: Ain’t that the truth.

             1. Since this subthread started about 2A I can bring this up without it being a hobbyhorse.

                Thousands of people are going to Richmond to show the political class a physical manifestation of the Gladsten. The state level VCDL is going all in supporting efforts to fight. Most of the counties are declaring themselves sanctuaries. And to anyone paying attention this is a clear case of Stop Here or it will never be stopped.

                Fortunately when it comes to 2A matters we have the five trillion ton juggernaught of unstoppable defence. Politicians collapse in a puddle of goo if they so much as receive a phone call. And since the NRA HQ is located in VA they will have no difficulties in bringing the full force of their lobbying power to bear on the problem.

                *crickets*

                Oh.

                Well, I guess that is an improvement on their usual strategy of explicitly telling the state level orgs to piss up a rope.

                I previously said that where I’m coming from “is a different outlook”. The disadvantages of that are that it is hard to care about one’s country in anything but abstract terms. What its Ideals are, completely divorced from anything in the real world. And also the idea that anyone might have your back is completely alien.

                I’m glad to see that people have VA’s back.

                Who knows? Maybe WLP will swing after all.

                1. The NRA has always been squishy; they supported the Clinton AWB as a “compromise”. Which led to their membership (and revenues) taking a serious hit, and the profileration of other gun rights groups who are far less “reasonable” (from the statist point of view).

                   1. Why I always laugh whenever I hear or read about the NRA being extremists. Y’all don’t get out much do ya?

                   2. They supported GOPA ’86, and specifically the closing of the machine gun registry. Which prompted enough of their members to write angry letters to American Rifleman, which printed the official stance of the directors, “we don’t support those people.”

                      Oh. I was suddenly a “those people.”

                      Well, that clarified the situation, anyway.

                      The Fudds kept on sending money, and the rest of us said “never again.”

                      1. Yep. The NRA has a history of being less than solid on things it really, really needs to be solid on.

                         That said, NRA training courses are good. Individual NRA members are friends. But Lawd HaMercy, clean yer bloody house folks. The latest fiasco is but the very latest in a long string of things that should have had folks paying attention long since.

                      2. While I think 922(o) was both bad law and bad policy, I think FOPA was overall a win for our side.

                         That being said, firearm owners are VERY guilty of Fudd-ism. Not only the orthodox “I’ve got my shotgun, so fie on you” sort, but the regional “That state’s laws don’t affect me, so fie on them” variety.

                         1. There is a thread on reddit where someone went into detail of the absolute hell they had to wade through to get FOPA passed.

                            https://as.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/9qai6e/official_politics_thread_22_october_2018/e888ecx/

                            I like this story. It shows what a determined fighter can do, and fills in some history that most people aren’t familiar with.

                            But most of all: what the NRA did in those dark days means they can NEVER claim that it is just too hard to fight something off, or that now isn’t the right time to push back (for some reason it never is).

                            I don’t have to condemn the NRA. The NRA’s greatest victory condemns them more thoroughly than the worst scandal ever could.

28. Yesterday’s Jim Geraghty column at National Review Online observed that, in contrast to the Clinton Foundation methodology it is no wonder the GOP grassroots yawns over this Ukraine kerfuffle:

    Perhaps you think that losing the presidency is sufficient “punishment” for Hillary Clinton.

    But many Americans believe the evidence indicates that the Clinton Foundation offered the world’s wealthy a secret way to buy access to the Secretary of State and potential future president, in hopes of influencing current or future U.S. foreign policy, and that sleazy deep-pocketed power brokers from all across the globe homed in on it like moths to a flame. What’s more, just about all Democratic legislators, the rest of the Obama administration, the foreign policy professionals and think-tank types and a big chunk of the media pretty much just accepted it. Maybe they didn’t like it; maybe they occasionally offered on or off-the-record quotes about how “the optics looked bad” or some other wet-noodle tsk-tsk. But almost no one in official Washington looked at the Clinton Foundation and saw it as an unacceptable form of corruption.

    All of it was legal, or legal enough, or in a gray area, and not something any prosecutor wanted to waste time on. (How many juries would convict Hillary Clinton?) No one got arrested, no one got charged with crimes, and Bill and Hillary Clinton got away with it, other than the admittedly significant consequence of losing the presidency that she wanted so badly.

    In this light, Trump fans find it easy to shrug off all kinds of allegations — from trying to bring the G7 to his own resort, to foreign governments staying in Trump hotels and then gushing on Twitter to suck up to the president, to big checks to Stormy Daniels, to having a bunch of shady felons working on the campaign, campaigns and party committees spending millions at Trump businesses, to allegations of using his personal foundation to promote his own interests . . . all the way to everything with Ukraine. Every Trump fan can easily fall back on, “hey, it’s no worse than what the Clintons were doing, and nobody even bothered to investigate them. Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Biden, while the Clintons just wanted cash.”

    Do two wrongs make a right? No, not at all, and I would prefer a world with institutions that rebuked conflicts of interest wherever they found them — in the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party, in Chappaqua and Mar-a-Lago, in the Clinton Foundation and the Trump Organization. But as long as grassroots activists feel like one side has gotten off scot-free for unethical behavior, they will convince themselves what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

    It isn’t that what Trump is accused of doing is right so much as it is the sense they only object because it is Trump, not they, abrogating the privileges and perquisites of the Elect. They scolders bear the unmistakable tone of a cad’s chastising his wife for one flirtation while ignoring his multiple affairs.

    Until we convince certain Powers The Be they have to live by the same rules as we Deplorables this nation will know little peace.

    1. It’s not that he’s my guy and so I want to make excuses for his “wrongs” but geez… but bring G7 to his own resort? I mean, how does this even approach corruption in any sense? No, “sure, you can do that, but we’ll have to make sure that it’s all budget neutral so no one can say you made money” or rather “no, Sir, that’s just a really bad idea,” and the response is “You people are weird. Okay, so where are we having it?”

       Frankly, having all the news media in pretzels to avoid showing the interior or any of the grounds because it would be “free advertising” would have been worth the show. Because my recollection is that he offered to NOT make any money, but that was still a complete violation of… something. Because some lower level functionary from somewhere would go, hey, this place is pretty nice, I’m going to come back here with the family.

       OMG! IMPEACH HIM!

    2. Jim Geraghty is Yet Another NeverTrumper of Conservative Inc., the clowns who sold us a bill of goods for 20 years while championing open borders, refusing to support Tea Party candidates while insisting we HAD to support RINOs, and who sold out to Irainian expat Leftists to keep their rice bowls full. They think that after they’ve given the Democrats that wonderful “bi-partisan” cover to take down Trump, they’ll be able to resume their sinecures as the token Opposition. It’s not happening.

       http://ace.mu.nu/archives/384816.php

       “And if Trump doesn’t need them, neither do we. They believe that when Trump leaves in 2024, everything will revert to the way it was before, and guys like Rick Wilson and Charlie Sykes and Max Boot and all of other NeverTrump clowns will recover their lost mojo, that is, their influential positions in conservative circles and the GOP. But I don’t think this is going to happen. Trump has changed what it means to be conservative. It’s more than paying the grifters, from subscribing to their periodicals, going on their cruises, listening to them speak.

       “We will remember the Steve Schmidts and the Bill Kristols and the David Frenches. We will remember how they betrayed us. We will remember that they told us that voting for Hillary was preferable than voting for Trump. We will remember that they pretty much threw in with the Democrats to sabotage and destroy a duly elected President all because of Trump’s mean tweets. So they can all f* right off.

       “Because Trump has exposed these clowns as just grifters who hope that Pierre Omidyar will throw them a bone just like he did Cap’n Billy Kristol. They have no future in any conservative environment. They’ll spend the rest of the careers with Evan MacMullin in their own private circle jerk. And making this happen was perhaps the greatest service Donald Trump could render to us.”

29. ” it is no wonder the GOP grassroots yawns over this Ukraine kerfuffle”

    I think they’re yawning because “kerfluffle” assigns too much gravity to the situation, at least as far as wrongdoing from the President.

    Personally, I’m not happy about appearances of Trump’s improprieties as a candidate or officeholder because he’s advanced my political worldview (either through policy or rhetoric) farther than any Republican has even given lip service to since at least Reagan.

    As soon as a Unicorn appears on the ballot, it has my vote.

    1. What the heck? Improprieties? PRESIDENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO HORSE TRADE. He’s not Caesar’s wife.
       The impropriety is the ridiculous leaks.
       Mostly this shampeachment is making me furious and I think I’m one of the calmest on our side, so you figure it out.

       1. Totally with ya here. I’m of the opinion we’re not voting ourselves out of this mess, and I’m trying to keep my more sanguine outlook in check.

       2. Bingo on the horse trading. It’s in his job description. It also happens to be in the damn DEMOCRAT-Ratified treaty we have with The Ukraine; which most people, including the alleged news media, don’t have the brains God gave a truffle, to look up.

          The Biden affair, on the other hand, had his son, being paid outrageous amounts of money for sitting in a board position he had no competence for in a company being paid by the Ukraine government with funds received from the U.S. that we tax payers gave our government. It’s called money laundering, it’s corruption, and it was a disguised bribe and means of funneling money and favor to Joe Biden, regardless of whether he thought it up or authorized it. the fact that Vice President Biden used the threat of withholding money from the Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor looking into the Biden’s “business”, by the way, Biden publicly admitted it, is 1000% more evidence than exists for any claims of wrong doing by President Trump & Co.

          1. I have to get training in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act every year. What Hunter Biden did is a black letter violation. What his daddy confessed to is also a black-letter violation.

             President Trump was REQUIRED by his oath of office to have this investigated, and the US-Ukraine treaty provided him the legal means and authority to do so. Contrast that with Obama, who violated his oath of office by NOT having it investigated.

       3. I just hope Trump has the nerve to go all the way.

          Here’s my thinking. The Dems in the House will impeach, that’s evident. Trump goes to the Senate. Lays out the evidence that Biden violated Federal law. Including his public, unsolicited, videotaped confession. AND the treaty obligations requiring anti-corruption investigations.

          Being a Presidential candidate does not render someone immune to the law. Biden was and is a perfectly legitimate subject of investigation and probable prosecution.

          And impeaching a President who is investigating violations of Federal law is obstruction of justice.

          If Trump has the nerve, he’ll delay the State of the Union address until after the Senate refuses to remove him. Enter the House to make the speech…followed by Federal Marshals and the Marines. Arrest every Dem who obstructed justice on national television. Simultaneous arrests of their Propaganda Press allies. Then lay out the case publicly.

          1. (Facepalm)
             There are good reasons to believe that Biden was involved in shady dealings in Ukraine.

             That video is not one of them. Everyone wanted that prosecutor gone.

             1. Presented* for your consideration:

                Giuliani Says He’s Uncovered ‘Two Major’ Money-Laundering/Bribery Schemes Involving Joe Biden, Obama Admin
                Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News with Laura Ingraham on Monday and dropped a huge bomb onto former Ukranian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Joe Biden.

                “What I uncovered, there are two major schemes,” said Giuliani. “One for 7.5 billion and the other one for 5 billion in money laundering that went on all through the Obama administration, part of it involved Joe Biden, the bribery part.” Giuliani went on to implicate American law enforcement at the very top for not investigating what he says is corruption.

                “It’s a disgrace that he’s not under investigation in America, maybe because our law enforcement is too afraid, but the reality is it’s a complete defense for the president. When the president of the United States was asking the president of the Ukraine to investigate, he was asking him to investigate crimes at the highest level of both governments….he’s being impeached for doing the right thing.”

                Giuliani also tweeted on Tuesday that “Yovanovitch needed to be removed for many reasons most critical she was denying visas to Ukrainians who wanted to come to the US and explain Dem corruption in Ukraine. She was OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE and that’s not the only thing she was doing. She at minimum enabled Ukrainian collusion.”

                [SNIP]

                “I have 4 witnesses who will testify that she personally turned down their visas because they were going to come here and give evidence either against Biden or against the Democratic Party,” Giuliani told Ingraham. “There’s no question she that she was acting corruptly in that position and had to be removed. She should have been fired if the State Department weren’t part of the Deep State.”

                Giuliani first heard about Yovanovitch’s deception from former Rep. Pete Sessions and a “number of congressman” who told him what Yovanovitch was up to. “When I interviewed witnesses they told me she was specifically holding up visas in order to obstruct the investigation of collusion in the Ukraine and specifically to obstruct the Biden investigation. I have that testimony under oath. I gave it to the State Department, they never investigated a single witness. When they say she’s innocent, it’s innocent without investigation. It is a cover-up.”

                Giuliani says he has audio recordings to back up his story that also implicate Barack Obama in the scandal. “I also have tape recordings with Ukrainian officials including career prosecutors who say that during the Obama era the corruption in Ukraine became substantially worse and that she [Yovanovitch] was a contributor to the corruption.”

                [SNIP]

                Giuliani reports that he has been trying to get anyone in law enforcement to look at his evidence and no one will. “I am willing to show this to anybody who wants to pay attention to it. So far law enforcement has been afraid to look at it.” Obviously, it’s time for Giuliani to release the evidence to the press. PJ Media reached out to Giuliani’s office and offered to publish this evidence, but have not heard back yet.

                *PJ Media, add salt as appropriate

                1. Addendum*:

                   Latvia Flagged Burisma Payments to Hunter Biden in 2016, Suspecting Money Laundering
                   Back in February 2016, the government agency in charge of investigating money-laundering in the Baltic country of Latvia flagged some “suspicious” payments from the notoriously corrupt gas company Burisma Holdings to Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. Latvia asked for Ukraine’s help in investigating the payments.

                   “The Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity … is currently investigating suspicious activity of Burisma Holdings Limited,” Latvia’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) wrote in a memo to Ukrainian financial authorities, according to investigative journalist John Solomon who unearthed the document Tuesday. The Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office turned over the February 18, 2016 memo to Solomon, and Latvia’s embassy in the U.S. confirmed its veracity.

                   The memo drew attention to a series of loan payments totaling about $16.6 million routed from companies in Belize and Britain to Burisma through Ukraine’s PrivatBank between 2012 and 2015. The funds were “partially transferred” to Hunter Biden, who became a Burisma board member in May 2014 despite his lack of experience in the gas industry. His father, however, was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine. The funds in question were also transferred to three other officials working for Burisma.

                   The memo asked Ukrainian officials for evidence of whether the funds were involved in corruption and whether Ukrainian officials were investigating Burisma.

                   [SNIP]

                   The corruption investigations were dropped in late 2016 and early 2017. But in early 2019, NABU and the Ukraine prosecutor general’s office announced they were reopening the investigation into Burisma.

                   Solomon’s reporting on this issue has proven essential to unearthing the real story about Hunter Biden and Burisma. President Donald Trump infamously asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate this potential corruption in the July 25 call at the center of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. Trump insists he made this request in the interests of America, not to help his campaign.

                   John Solomon’s revelations have undercut Joe Biden’s narrative, bolstering Trump’s claim that a request for an investigation into Hunter Biden would indeed be in America’s interest. If a sitting vice president did pressure Ukraine to fire its general prosecutor in order to protect his son’s job at a notoriously corrupt gas company, that is a serious scandal. Perhaps, for this reason, the impeachment effort seems to be hurting Biden’s chances against his competitors in the Democratic primary, while Trump’s poll numbers are increasing.

                   *PJ Media, add salt as appropriate

                   1. Speculation:

                      If the Dems get their way on Senate impeachment witnesses (anybody have a bid in for the popcorn concession during John Bolton’s testimony?) does anybody think they can block Hunter Biden from being called to testify?

                      Anybody think Hunter Biden can withstand examination?

                      Conclusion: Dem demands for witnesses shielded under Executive Privilege immunity is an example of unmeetable demand, intended to allow them (and their MSM adjuncts) to declare exoneration invalid.

                      If there is a Senate trial it is to be hoped McConnell will arrange for it to occur during the lead-up and ballot casting of the Iowa Caucuses, making any victory there tainted and further buggering the race for the Dem nomination.

             2. Yes, the prosecutor was crooked, and the Biden investigation was the only non-crooked thing the prosecutor was doing.

                1. That the prosecutor was crooked does not mean Biden was innocent. Apparently Biden had never complained about that prosecutor ere his looking into Burisma.

                   Nor, I hasten to add, does it inherently follow that Biden’s leveraging USAid was explicitly for his own (and/or his son’s) benefit.

                   That’s just the way the smart money bets.

                   I am curious, however, in the morality of Europe’s milieu (or even just that of Eastern Europe) just what exactly does it require for a prosecutor to be deemed corrupt? Failure to stay bought?

                   1. I could believe that. On the other hand, does anyone believe that Trump would give a single care about Hunter Biden’s shenanigans if Dad weren’t one of the Democratic front-runners?

                      That having been said, however, so far the evidence does indicate that there were good reasons to go poking into what the Bidens were up to in Ukraine. Hopefully the Senate trial will get us more info.

                      1. Yes I do believe it Also seriously? He needs Ukraine to defeat slow Joe?
                         But on the serious side, 60, yeah, that matters too. Because the media will paint him as this man of great probity and knowledge. I think Trump is mad enough at the whole of them that if we choose to vote for Biden he wants to know what we’re voting for.
                         I think he cares — passionately — about the anti-americanism, Marxist bilge, and nation-killing going on on the left. And he wants to expose them for what they are. it is possible to want to do that without having a pony in the race, even.
                         Those people are bad for America and arguably bad for the world. And what is he doing but fighting them?
                         Note he’s also trying to expose the Clintons.
                         I think you have it the wrong way around. He’s not wanting to expose them for personal gain. He ran for president because he lived for years in the political closet and heard 10x more than I did when they thought they were safe.
                         For me it was enough to get so furious I came out of the political closet, knowing the price. For him? It was enough to make him run for president.
                         Because these people are darkness pretending to be light. And no one else will expose them.

                         1. President Trump is willing to what he needs to expose the marxists (I refuse to capitalize it, dang it) corruption, or any corruption, through anywhere, including the democrat party. Regardless of whether they are perceived as a direct political rival or not. Which, for the record, until the democrat party picks a final candidate with their vice president pick, none of the primary field, including slow Joe, are political rivals, regardless of perceptions.

                            What President Trump has done is stampede the democratic party into giving him back the Senate & House, with the super majority margins he needs. The country has seen what it is like for him to have both the Senate & House without a super majority, how the house democrats could stop reasonable legislation with the help of RINO never Trump. They flipped the house because this. Now they’ve seen the consequences of that. People are Angry. House will flip. He’ll get his super majority in both legislative bodies. He’ll get more seats on the SCOTUS. That kind of power is scary. Good news is he is not new to power. But I don’t know the hidden addenda.

                         2. I firmly believe Trump has great affection and appreciation for working stiffs. Too many of his actions convey that for me to believe he’s faking it; whatever else is said, nobody believes Trump is that good an actor.

                            On the gripping hand, as wealthy developer he has spent his life surrounded by glad-handing back-stabbers, men and women who smile in his face, tell him what they imagine he wants to hear and try to rob him blind. There are good reasons he seems to turn to the working stiff for straight answers on why a project isn’t meeting deadlines.

                            I can scarcely imagine him stifling observations during the cocktail parties that constitute the routine of political greasing, paying off union bosses and petty bureaucrats to get [stuff] done. More than once before running for president he expressed frustration over the practices encountered, as when he throw the fit over the costs of the UN Building reconstruction. Unlike most of us he has seen the inside of the sausage factory.

                            1. And TRUST me, having seen a smaller sausage factory, in publishing, one builds up quite a reservoir of bile from holding one’s tongue just to be allowed to continue doing business.

                      2. Given the Russian influence in that, and how much trouble Putin has been working to give Trump, there’s a good chance he would.

                         We just wouldn’t hear much about it.

                      3. Hmm, yes, he would. Because Ukraine and the money flow with the Bidens is tied up with the 2016 campaign attacks against him, and the alleged Russian interference.

             3. Which matters not a tinker’s damn. Hunter Biden broke the law, and his daddy helped cover it up. I’m sorry you approve of that.

                1. He’s a Democrat. Law doesnt apply

          2. That would make him the greatest President in the history of our country.

    2. Yikes, instead of “beacause” that should be “comma but”. Wow, totally wrong idea conveyed there.

    3. Appearances of Trump’s improprieties is all they got. With all their caterwauling and investigations, they haven’t actually found any.

       I saw one accusation that as a real estate developer Trump “skirted” the law. IIRC, the accused wasn’t pleased when I commented, “Oh, you mean he followed the law.” Which is all skirting means.

30. The Democrats aren’t children. They’re evil adults. They’re also TWANLOC. They think no more of the constitution than of yesterday’s newspaper.

    1. Less. At least the conservative right would use yesterday’s newspaper as birdcage bottom liner.

       1. Or to make a mulch and ground-cover to kill off weeds under the mulch.

    2. And it’s horrible to behold but we mUST NOT LOOK AWAY.

    3. Not children? Developmentally arrested, perhaps.

    4. I suspect toiler paper is more how they view the COTUS.

31. One thing people need to remember is that in the US, about 4 million people are born each year (sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less). That’s 4 million new people every year, just under 11,000 a day, who are not irretrievably wedded to the other side. Since it takes time for someone to be convinced to be a “true believer” and completely unpersuadable, that’s a pool of millions who are reachable, who can be persuaded if we can get to them with evidence and persuasive arguments.

    Don’t let the loud, vocal, “true believers” (even if they only “believe” that they can cynically use something they don’t really believe as a road to their own benefit) dissuade you. There are people who can be reached. So get out there and make your arguments. Make better arguments than the other side(s). And get those people into the camp of liberty rather than otherwise.

    1. Yar. But you need to wait a couple of years after they’re born before you can do much with them. Arguing with a three year old makes you wonder who’s smarter, you, or the three year old?

       1. That doesn’t actually change the point. Say there’s a five year window on average between when someone first becomes amenable to persuasion and when they are finally convinced unpersuadably to one point or another. That’s a “pool” of 20 million people that it is at least potentially possible to swing to your side, more than enough to turn the tide in any election. The highest margin for the popular vote for a presidential election was 1972, Nixon and McGovern, with Nixon receiving 17,995,488 more votes than McGovern.

          And yes, I recognized the humor but I am too wound up to just roll with it now.

       2. Heh. During counter-interrogation training one technique they taught was to become a 3 year old. You can’t reason with them, you can’t convince them what they say is untrue, even if the evidence is right in front of them. They will never change their story no matter how much (non-physical) persuasion you use. Driving your interrogator insane was a side benefit.

       3. I like to tell three year olds in stores that they are playing a game with the store. The store wants to make them want to buy things just because. But they and their parents win if they don’t buy things that they don’t already plan to buy.

          Not anti-consumer or anti-commerce; just teaching skepticism about advertising.

       4. And about 20 years to do a full change-out of the communists running those new humans’ education. THAT is the critical part.

    2. “Don’t let the loud, vocal, “true believers” … dissuade you.”

       If they were truly numerous, or believed their arguments stronger, they wouldn’t have to suppress opposition voices, would they?

32. “… made papier mache puppets and THOUGHT THIS WAS CLEVER DISCOURSE.”

    It is all about drawing the attention of the cameras. Gotta give the propagandists images to work with, else they can’t advance the narrative.

    Besides, how else you gonna justify those Masters degrees in being puppets?

    1. They brag of master degrees in puppetry, but you’re right my friend.

       1. Besides the absolutely delightful interview, which I must share for the delight of my friends, Jeremy Corbyn gets ripped apart in the most eloquent way possible here (at roughly 18 minutes in), and I learned that he doesn’t read.

          1. Worse, even when Corbyn does read he does not comprehend.

             A fate their schools would impose upon all of our children.

33. “their sense of the world froze with Saturday morning cartoons.”

    Worse, these were the kids who always were shocked when the Scoobies unveiled the villain of the week.

    1. Oh, yes.

34. “during the campaign no one hung “Butcher of Benghazi” or at least “liar of Benghazi” on Hillary’s misbegotten neck.”

    Dang it, Sarah — now you’ve got me imagining MSM reax if GOP rallies had featured giant papier mache Hillary bobble-heads!

    1. Consider the reax if Trump had delivered his post-election “victory” speech from a set identical to that of Barry’s Styrofoam columns. Maybe he ought use it for his convention speech accepting re-nomination.

       Except, unlike Barry, The Donald has actual achievements of which to boast.

    2. In that sense we probably SHOULD. Maybe they would finally get it’s not a special power.

    3. Those exist, y’know. Plastic, not paper mache. But Hillary bobbleheads exist. They even have one in a prison striped pantsuit.

       https://www.amazon.com/Hillary-Clinton-Striped-Pantsuit-Bobblehead/dp/B01N4WSJN0/ref=pd_cp_21_4/140-0778079-7318205?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01N4WSJN0&pd_rd_r=96d4af1e-153f-4654-abd8-2fa8cd4583d1&pd_rd_w=G6I5a&pd_rd_wg=2fLaJ&pf_rd_p=0e5324e1-c848-4872-bbd5-5be6baedf80e&pf_rd_r=85FEMYQ8V5DJCVWN80V1&psc=1&refRID=85FEMYQ8V5DJCVWN80V1

       1. Drat. Long link snuck in under the wire. Apologies.

35. “They announce if Trump is not convicted and removed by the Senate they will CONTINUE IMPEACHING HIM.”

    This should be a question asked of every candidate running for the House in 2020. If the GOP doesn’t force it they’re guilty (yet again) of campaign malpractice.

    Not that anybody will believe the Democrats’ demurrals about how “impeachment is a very, very serious matter and should be pursued only in the most egregious instances, blather blather blather …” — even as the MSM outlets report the brilliant, sensitive, thoughtful answers provided by their Elect the candidate … and how mean-spirited and paranoid are the Republicans for even suggesting Democrats would engage in such momentous actions for mere partisan benefit?

    1. As far as I’ve seen, the witchfinders have yet to come up with any damning evidence against Trump despite months of “investigation”, which has mostly resulted in a long string of “own goals” as their own crimes and manipulations have been exposed in the testimony.

       It’s also glaringly apparent that the brainiacs driving this have no concept that the club doesn’t care what hand is wielding it. And they have NO candidate clean enough to survive that, even with what’s publicly known about them right this minute.

36. And such an act of unbridled malice and insanity doesn’t get the majority of people to immediately shout “ARE YOU ACTUALLY INSANE? DO YOU KNOW WHAT COMES NEXT AFTER YOU DESTROY THE LAW OF THE LAND?”

    We know what happens:

    “Thomas More: …And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you–where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast–man’s laws, not God’s–and if you cut them down…d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”

37. I can’t believe I’m about to do this, but fair is fair and truth is truth, and frankly the lizard in the human suit is bad enough on her own, but that’s part of it.

    Within 72 hours of Benghazi’s outcome, I heard quiet discussions from people that had at least some access to those in the know that throughout the entire fiasco, Clinton was livid and trying to convince Obama to send backup, but he was refusing to do so (or rather, his handlers were refusing to do so). The theory as given was that Clinton knew this was political suicide of a personal sort for her options and potentially the administration in general, and the handlers were refusing partly because of that, but also because they couldn’t figure out a safe way out of it for the President.

    I truly think this was the source of the “what difference does it make” line. She had three things going on here – what her supporters would think, what Obama’s faithful would think, and what the Other Side thought. Of the three, the Other Side was least important, but throwing Obama under the bus by saying “Yeah, I tried to get extraction done but was overruled’ would have alienated a fair number of Obama supporters while not convincing a single one of the Other Side to change votes.

    As for the subject of the actual post, the problem is that sounding the alarm at a level that will actually be noticeable is extremely likely to kick off Civil War II: Electric Boogaloo. Anything short of that gets you dismissed as a kook, like everyone who’s been steadily doing so for the last 30-40 years.

    1. I won’t argue over whether she might have been in favor of sending back-up. But she was a proponent of the “it’s a video’s fault!” claim.

    2. There’s a lot of little bits of evidence that may indicate something weird is going on.

       Being thought a kook yesterday may not mean being thought a kook tomorrow.

       Common patterns in the past are a predictable map that is valid for some of the future. But not all the future. In particular, sometimes things behave in ways that are impossible to predict.

       I dunno. I really dunno.

    3. Whatever her stance was, breaking into laughter when questioned about it on a televised interview was unforgiveable.

       Maybe she should face the families of Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty and tell them what was so damned funny.

       I’m sure they’ll see the humor if she explains it to them. Everyone likes a good joke.

    4. I have heard from some guys who were in the area that we legitimately didn’t have anything that could have moved to the area in time to make a difference. Which us fine; it happens. Contrary to some people’s ideas, we really don’t have the entire Earth blanketed with assets, and there’s too much going on to be able to cover everything.

       That being said, *saying so* would have gone a long way. And not trying to blame a video maker (and never apologizing for trampling on his rights). People are willing to accept honest failure, and mistakes, IF people are willing to acknowledge them. She never has, and never will.

38. Look away, hell. I’m looking down my sights, waiting for the correct time to release the shot.

    I’m old enough to have watched the Dems go off the rails, then stagger back on (somewhat) under Carter, then go completely off. One thing that is relatively new is that the center of gravity of the Left is no longer the Democrat Party itself, but the Propaganda Press. They think they are unaccountable. I can think of several ways they can be brought to book…the least of which involves the revocation of broadcast licenses.

    1. Cable operators don’t need broadcast licenses, because they don’t use the airwaves. This is a *good* thing; limits the harm that government censors can do.

       1. Yes…but I see no public good that is served by having four Leftist broadcast TV networks. Likewise, White House press credentials need to be balanced. One liberal, one conservative. Two liberals, two conservatives.

          1. That gets you back into the pre-Reagan “balanced” opinion segment rules. There’s a reason why that was done away with. And why the left desperately wants to try and bring it back.

    2. The biggest problem is trying to figure out “WHO”.
       I haven’t been able to get a handle on that.

39. All indications is that people were left to die, rather than… I don’t know. Why didn’t we send help?

    So let’s outline a stupid-intel-op fanfic:

    Assume there was a valid ongoing reason why there was such a large CIA ops center in Benghazi, and then posit that the publicly acknowledged jobs of those CIA folks who ended up making that run from the annex to the main compound in full rattle that night, that of “collecting” loose weapons, especially handheld SAMs/MANPADS left all over the place by the “we came, we saw, he died” effort of the Dowager Countess, follows the basic “tell them part of the truth to cover the whole truth” paradigm. If one is collecting weapons, where might one be using those collected in the region?

    Say that there was a hot civil war in the region with previously deployed “red lines” the did nothing but embarrass The Barry One, and also say that the President-for-life-the-younger side of said civil war had all the Syrian airpower, and then note that the intel management in charge back at Langley all came of age back when supplying the Muj in Afghanistan against the Soviets was the main success story – might one look at all those free SAMs the CIA guys were collecting and start looking for people in opposition to Assad-II to maybe make some sort of a deal?

    And what if the wrong people were somehow disappointed in the course of said dealmaking? Might they express their disappointment kinetically when the Ambassador was publicly scheduled to show up for a ribbon-cutting or whatever like it was Amsterdam and not Benghazi?

40. I can’t look away, I study things and study these people.

    My current operating theory is that they’re cortisol and adrenaline addicts who need ever-increasing fixes. The wilder and more vigorous the response, the bigger the hit. And, they now have access to things like Twitter and You Tube…

41. Oops! Tempus fugited all to heck and I find I’ve nearly forgotten today’s carol.

    So it will be a twofer!

    1. Yes, boys, girls, and the hopelessly confused – two different interpretations of one of Christmas’ most jejune carols:

       Now if only I can find a cover by Japanese Taiko Drummers …

42. In today’s stupid search engine tricks….

    A friend asked me to find that story about the guy who saved up to buy the flour to bake bread, and made ten loaves– and his father came by and took all the bread, because his wives needed bread. So the guy never bothered to work and deny himself again, because it would just be taken away.

    I know we’ve discussed it here before, including folks offering scholarly papers about the effect. But danged if I can find it!

43. Pingback: BECAUSE WE HAVE TO FACE THE NAUSEATING TRUTH:  Don’t Look Away…. – The usa report

44. OK, so a friend posted an Philly Inquirer op-ed suggesting that the House pass articles of impeachment and then simply not send them to the Senate. My response:
    “LOL! Well, that would certainly indicate that they’re not serious about impeachment/conviction. If they were serious, they should at least follow the entire process.”
    Sarah, I have taken the “don’t look away” admonition to heart! Release the kraken!

45. One question: why should we not want blood in the streets? I would love to kill members of the party that destroyed Sarah Palin for not having an abortion.

    1. Because once you get to that you’ve lost control of the process, and the MOST likely result is a “man on a white horse” coming to stop it and a dictatorship.
       One question: DO YOU KNOW HISTORY? Or do you think this is a video game?

    2. DO NOT think that the rest of us aren’t as angry.
       But we are perhaps more concerned with getting through this without losing what remains of the republic.

       1. Sarah, YOU HAVE ALREADY LOST THE REPUBLIC. It’s been gone for 20 years and more, and you’ve been staring at the termite riddled shell and saying it won’t fall down around your ears.

          The only way you will see the republic standing again is to knock down the shell, dust off the blueprint, and rebuild it, this time with improved termite protections.

          Will it be easy? No. Will it be instant? No. And yes, you’re going to have to identify and deal with the termites stacked up in a trenchcoat a la Men In Black, trying to convince you they’re on your side.

          The difference is between certainty that the shell is falling, and the opportunity to try to rebuild. Don’t look away.

          1. Steve,
             You have no clue. You don’t know how much of the republic we still retain, never having lived elsewhere as a common person. TRUST me, enough remains that’s irreplaceable.
             I’m as angry as you guys. I’m not ready to live under National Socialism again. And that’s the best case scenario of boogaloo. Remember the young who will be the shock troops of necessity (we’re not up to it physically, sorry) are mostly left-indoctrinated. So most likely to be international socialism.
             The violations against the republic are violations and felt as such because the idea is still there and still honored. We hit boogaloo, it is gone. Probably for centuries.

             1. Steve needs to stop spending time in CA. The picture becomes skewed when one thinks that ‘so goes CA, so goes the nation’- which hasn’t been true for a couple decades. At this point CA goes “blablabla” and the rest of the country is going “HAH wtf”

                1. I don’t have to; I’ve got a dozen examples, complete with video, from right here in TX. Dallas, Austin, Houston, elsewhere.

             2. “Steve,You have no clue. You don’t know how much of the republic we still retain, never having lived elsewhere as a common person.”

                Ad hominem right out of the gate? How disappointing. And truly amusing having someone tell me that being the grandchild of AR farmers and a 5 and 10 store manageress, the child of an insurance manager and a schoolteacher/housewife, is somehow “never having lived elsewhere as a common person”. I have traveled at least as widely in this country as YOU have (Also somewhat outside and overseas. I can’t tout foreign birth as a virtue. Sue me.). And my travels haven’t been mostly to conventions and seminars, but into the workplace for weeks and months and even years at a time. I’ve supplemented that with reading and study, which I couldn’t even pretend was related to my career as a writer.

                Heck, I couldn’t even respond to this until it’s probably too late to do any good; I don’t set my own schedule or hours.

                “TRUST me,”

                Why, exactly? Especially after your opening.

                “enough remains that’s irreplaceable.”

                Really? Certainly there’s plenty of facade. However, the anger is because under the facade, the fundamental princiles have eroded away. Here, your argument that “oh, it’s better becauuse we’re aware” falls apart, because what we’re aware of is the double standard… and how nothing we SAY changes what’s getting done to us.

                Equal treatment under the law is a sick joke.

                Latest example: Antifa member cracks a man’s skull with a bike lock: 3-years probation. Iowa man burns pride flag: 16 years.

                Our elections are a fraud-riddled facade, and the more involved you get with working with them, the more true you realize it is. Ne Jersey and New York are giving illegal aliens drivers licenses. Bad enough that they aren’t having to meet the same standards as their American second class citizens, leading to the practice of insurance companies (like mine) upping their Uninsured Motorist requirements; Just how many of them voting do you think it will take to remove every Republican office holder from every district, just in those states, they are bused to? Never mind that those drivers licenses are “valid ID” in other states as well. Good for not only voting, but all the bennies they can sign up for. And yes, yes, I know the law states they aren’t eligible. That’s the facade. The reality, and you know it, is that our bureaucratic masters will piously proclaim “they had an ID; I suppose we should question it because they’re brown folks, you raaaaacist.”

                “Remember the young who will be the shock troops of necessity (we’re not up to it physically, sorry) are mostly left-indoctrinated. So most likely to be international socialism.”

                And with that, you’ve admitted we’re already at the last stage of Churchill: “There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

                Now, those are the reality that I can show countless more examples for. Where are yours?

       2. Once you go down the road of killing political opponents it’s very hard to stop. That, indeed, was the great wonder of the American War of Independence, that they stopped. And considering how long Jefferson continued to support the French Revolution, and its aftermath (including The Terror), I wonder if it wasn’t a nearer thing than many folk realize. We would easily have gone down that path ourselves.

          That’s one of the reasons I’m so big on the need to win the “culture war” far more than any bullets and bombs war.

46. I’ve always adhered to the concept that you should never start a fight unless you know how you want it to end. That includes all the fights I got into as a kid. Doesn’t mean you’re going to win the fight; just that you know what you’re doing if and when you do win it. it’s also why I’m against bloody revolution without a hard and fast statement of goals and intentions, and an organization dedicated to carrying them out if the opportunity drops in their laps.

    “We” are likely to win any open civil war with the Democrat-Progressive-Left. The problem is, just who are going to be the “We”? Are “we” going to simply clear the deck and start over with the same Constitution? Are “we” going to revise the Constitution with more restrictions on the government, or are “we” going to revise the Constitution to make “us” richer and more powerful? Who is “we” and “us”? The GOP? Which part? The elite masters running it already? The Tea Party? Aryan Nation? Westboro Baptist Church? The Hoydens? Someone else? Only a couple of those would be bearable, the others would be worse than what we currently have.

    1. Bah, meant to post this on today’s thread.

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