GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

Snake-oil sales sharply down

Faux Jaux—a/k/a Pedo Peter—gets most righteously pWnED.


If the senile old crook had even the vaguest contact with actual, y’know, reality, that smack would have to smart a bit. Then again, of course, I must remind y’all of the essential truth of Mike’s Iron Law #149: No matter what the issue or context, it’s NEVER about what they’re telling you it is; ultimately, the real intention, goal, or agenda is only about more power and/or wealth for THEM, and less freedom for YOU.

In this case, a corollary: the damage, destruction, impoverishment, and general ruin wrought by shitlib policy is a feature, not a bug—by their lights, those results signify not failure, but near-total success. For the orcs of Mordor On The Potomac, their job isn’t what their subjects think it should be; certainly, their interests are not aligned with our own, but at 180-degree variance with them.

Hmmm. Looks like I have another MILs update to work on, I do believe.

Strange doin’s

Looking like the Friday Eyrie post is gonna be a little late, I fear. I was texting with a good friend of mine just now, and we got to talking about how bad girls are the only kind worth having, so I suggested that he and his wife Holli—DEFINITELY a bad girl, one of the best I know—ought to read my old Tough Chicks post, linked in the Greatest Hits section above. I clicked over to it myself, just to make sure it was still there and that the code wasn’t corrupted all to hell and gone, when what to my wondering eyes did appear but an unexpected mystery-glitch: the main text is in red all of a sudden, for no good reason I can see.

Went through all the other Menu Bar links and sure enough, every damned one of them is the same. So I’m trying to suss out what the devil might have brought on this sudden red-shift; I know for a fact it wasn’t that way a week or so ago when I made another addition to the Mike’s Iron Laws page, but damned if even that one ain’t all in red now too. Weird, weird, weird. So instead of completing the Eyrie post, I’m gonna spend the next cpl-three hours trying to chase down just what exactly might be going on with that, and correcting it.

Apologies for the Eyrie delay, but this is exactly the sort of thing that can keep me awake all night, lying there staring at the ceiling trying to figure it out. If you happen to click one of those Menu Bar page links and it looks different to you, be sure to let me in the comments, ‘kay? Back in a bit…

Update! PHEW! Fixed it, although I’m not quite sure how I did it, what the problem was, or why it popped up out of the blue like this. After Viewing Source in my preferred browser and closely inspecting the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mess the WP-functions script makes of the “head” HTML for an “a href” tag inadvertently left open or something—my prime initial suspect, since I have active-link text set up in the stylesheet to display in red—I dumped a few lines of superfluous-looking code from the “Give till it hurts” area, inside the “body” tag of the Single Page template, and hey, presto! All is back to normal and copacetic, near as I can make out. Probably tomorrow for the Eyrie, or perhaps early-early in the mawnin’.

The Empire strikes back!

Again, I mean.

Biden Lays a Booby Trap for a Republican President
The Biden administration is setting a booby trap in case a Republican wins the presidency in 2024.

Oh, I don’t think anyone, D卐M☭CRATs in particular, needs to worry overmuch about that—any Repuke that TPTB allows to be “elected” will assuredly be of the Mitt Milquetoast variety, count on it. A bona fide reform-minded maverick need not apply…ever again, until sweeping systemic change is forced, from the grassroots-bottom up.

On Friday, the White House unveiled a proposed rule that would make it even harder than in the past for an incoming Republican president to wrestle control of the left-leaning federal bureaucracy and actually implement the conservative policies promised to voters.

Of the 2.2 million federal civil workers, only 4,000 are presidential appointees. The rest stay in their jobs, from one administration to the next, protected by rules that make it nearly impossible to discipline or replace them.

They overwhelmingly favor the Left. A staggering 95% of unionized federal employees who donate to political candidates give to Democrats, according to Open Secrets. Only a tiny 5% support Republicans.

Some federal workers in high positions slow-walk or even derail a Republican president’s agenda — and get away with it.

Why bother to vote if the left-leaning deep state stays in charge no matter who wins the presidency?

Why indeed. I still look forward to the day when turnout for a national “election” is no more than ten or fifteen percent. A purely symbolic gesture, perhaps, but it will put the entire country on notice that the jig is well and truly up, and that honest Americans simply aren’t going to dance to their tune anymore.

The article insists on referring to “Republicans,” but eventually even the author, probably the one and only conservative still extant in NY politics, gets around to tacitly admitting that the real target here remains America’s Last President, a/k/a one Donald John Trump.

After Trump won in 2016, they went to town neutralizing him on almost every policy front, explains James Sherk, special assistant to the White House Domestic Policy Council under Trump.

Career lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division flat out refused to challenge Yale University’s discrimination against Asian American applicants. Trump had to recruit lawyers from other divisions. After Joe Biden became president, the DOJ dropped the case. But the same career lawyers who refused to sue Yale made the losing argument in support of affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Career health officials like Dr. Deborah Birx circumvented Trump’s instructions to moderate COVID lockdowns. Environmental Protection Agency lawyers pursued cases against fossil fuel producers and withheld the information from Trump appointees.

Trump mandated in a 2020 executive order that new federal buildings be designed to please the public, which prefers classical designs. Instead, General Services Administration architects chose modern designs they like. Trump mentioned as an example the San Francisco Federal Building, the ugliest edifice in the city.

In October 2020, Trump issued an executive order that federal workers who make policy should be reclassified as at-will employees who can be terminated.

But before it could be implemented, Biden became president. He canceled it immediately, knowing the bureaucrats were on his side.

The rule announced Friday would slow a president’s ability to reinstate Trump’s order. Democrats in Congress are going further, pushing to eliminate the president’s authority to reclassify jobs altogether.

It goes on, including weaponization of the FBI against the president himself.

What I can’t quite figure out is why on earth Trump imagines that they won’t do the exact same thing to him all over again should his fantasy of returning to the White House as POTUS in 2024 somehow become reality.

The takeaway I’ll leave you with comes by way of a penetrating quote from the enigmatic Vivek Ramaswamy.

The New York Times announced, “Biden Administration Aims to Trump-Proof the Federal Work Force.”

Ramaswamy vows to go further than Trump, eliminating half or more of civil service positions. “Speaking as a CEO, if somebody works for you and you can’t fire them, they don’t work for you,” he said in a speech on Sept. 12.

Heh. True dat, Viv, and well said. Sorta like what I’ve always said: any “right” whose lawful exercise requires a permit, a license, or an official certification of any kind from the government isn’t actually a right at all—it’s a privilege.

Disillusioned, disabused, disenfranchised

Scales are beginning to fall from people’s eyes all over the place.

Maybe This Latest Blatant Ballot Box Stuffing Scandal Will Be the Last Straw
Whether it’s because they have no fear of consequence or because they really are that stupid, Democrat operatives regularly stuff ballot boxes in full view of cameras. The pattern is nauseatingly familiar at this point: First, Big Left’s candidate comes from behind to win an election with a handful of mail-in or absentee votes. Then, video, sworn testimony, and/or official complaints of ballot harvesting and ballot box stuffing emerge. The matter is referred to law enforcement, which opens an investigation.

And then…nothing.

In the film “2000 Mules,” rampant ballot harvesting — which is illegal in Georgia, one of the states featured in the film — was documented. The matter was referred to Ga. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whose office launched an investigation. “If Georgia’s investigation into organized ballot harvesting leads to actual arrests and punishment, it will be a great day for America,” I wrote at the time. “We are all weary of lengthy investigations that go nowhere and accomplish nothing, but perhaps this time will be different.”

LOL, it was no different. Raffensberger declined to proceed without one of the film’s producers, election integrity non-profit True the Vote, giving up the name of a confidential source, which they refused to do. One source — out of the mountains of data and evidence the group provided — was the excuse for halting the investigation. The last I heard, Raffensberger’s office was suing True the Vote. Meanwhile, more elections have occurred in the district without any arrests or serious addressing of the problem.

Now a new video is making waves in Connecticut, and once again, I’m hoping that this is finally the last straw that forces an actual enforcement action.

As the saying goes, hope is not a strategy, Athena dear, sorry. At this point, anybody who isn’t deeply, deeply cynical about “elections” in Amerika v2.0 simply isn’t paying attention. And no, cynicism isn’t a synonym for strategy either, but it’s a logical first step towards the anger that might conceivably lead to Real Americans getting off their duffs and devising one. So in the end you might be cynical, sure, but the question now is: are you cynical ENOUGH?

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To laugh, and to cry

Pretty funny one, if bitterly so, from Kurt Schlichter.

America Is Becoming a Joke

Becoming, Kurt?

The United States just lost an F-35 as part of its campaign to reduce itself from the greatest superpower in human history to a pitiful punchline. Ah, the magic of leftism – only it can make a great country like America ridiculous. From an inability to find its fighters to an unwillingness to defend its borders or prosecute criminals – with the exception of conservatives framed for the crime of conservativing – our country has become the Three Stooges without the dignity.

The first question that arises from the mystery jet is not what happened – we can safely assume it was some manner of gross incompetence – but what the plane’s pronouns were. We had the spectacle of the Marine Corps high command dragging itself away from one of its drag shows to ask regular folks if they could pretty please give the jarheads a hand finding their wayward fighter. They couldn’t even spin this fiasco effectively and brag about how their not being able to detect the $100 million aircraft just goes to show how darn good our stealth tech is. No, instead it was just exactly what it sounded like. We can’t keep track of our jets. The only ones happy about it had to be the Navy, since this was a welcome respite from the mockery it earned smashing its destroyers into other boats. Our Army – with its colonels running sex kennels – used to recruit with slogans like “Be All You Can Be,” and now it would probably be better off with “We Suck Less Than That Other Service That Lost The Jet.”

Over on Capitol Hill, where the People’s House that you get sent to jail for peopling inside is located, we have the Republican Charlie Browns once again teeing up to kick the football held by the Democrat Lucys. Yeah, this time will be different! The GOP has only had the better part of a year to get ready for this debt ceiling thing and to plot out a course of action to get some concessions. But have they? Ha! Why win when you can lose?

And on the Senate side, our minority leader keeps freezing up like a Windows blue screen as everyone explains how it is perfectly normal for McConnell to stand there rebooting every time someone puts a mic in his mug. And, of course, there’s Chumley the Congressman insisting that the august institution conform to his desire to dress like a guy playing $2 blackjack hands at Circus Circus on a Monday morning.

We have a president who sounds both like English is his second language and that he’s gotten into the cooking sherry. We have a vice president who, if not for fractured cliches and bizarre cackling, would not be speaking at all. Biden takes the short stairs to get up to the short bus, which is what Air Force One now is. Hey, at least they haven’t lost it. Yet.

Heh. I especially like that “what the plane’s pronouns were” bit. He carries on in like vein from there, all of it good, juicy stuff. Best of all, he resists the urge to start up with the usual blibbering in the last two ‘graphs about how we’re gonna vote so hard we kick their sorry asses black, blue, and purple in the 2024 presidential “elections,” yo! Maybe Col Schlichter has at last outgrown all that airy-fairy horseshit.

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The Daily Donnybrook, and other fine things

Welcome to Ye Olde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. Do note that the official CF comments policy remains in effect here, as enumerated in the left sidebar. All new posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

Mike @Substack

New Eyrie posts go up on Mondays and Fridays, although the time of day may (and usually does) vary. Mike’s latest Eyrie offering is available for perusal here: How to fix it.

Please do consider subscribing; all subscribers receive an email notification whenever each new post goes live, and a paid sub is required to unlock commenting privileges.

Publick Notice

I’ve had a few queries about my snail-mail address for the sending of Fall Begathon contributions, from folks who don’t have any electronic means of doing such, or just don’t feel comfortable about using ‘em. No, I have no intention of posting my home address on the blog, for reasons which should be obvious. But if that applies to you, contact me via the thinly-disguised email addy under the “Correspondence” header over in the right sidebar and we’ll get it all worked out in suitable fashion.

Also, the response so far to the Little Richard poll has been lopsidedly in favor of me doing the post, so I’ll get cracking on putting that together soon as I’m able. Gonna be a pretty arduous task, honestly; there’s a lot to tell, and I can only hope I remember all of it. Sadly, after doing a bit of searching, my 2017 obit for the late, great Pat DiNizio seems to have vanished from internet history with nary a trace, thanks to the über-destructive Rooskie hack of the site around that time. Too many years of writing went up in smoke from that maleficent intrusion, which just annoys the living shit out of me.

Meeting Pat a week or two after the Little Richard shows—and utterly humiliating myself by not realizing who it was I was talking to and pretty much rudely blowing the man off, then having to crawl over and beseech forgiveness for my bare-knuckled arrogance and stupidity once I’d realized what I’d thoughtlessly done—was one of those unlooked-for offshoots I mentioned the other night, one of surprisingly many. Ah well, whatcha gonna do.

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Memezappopin’!

Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny pitcher-lovers.

BestWeCanDo

WantingCivilWar

Continue reading Memezappopin’!

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A gripping Gripen story

Told in a context I still don’t give three whoops in Hell about.

Everything You Need to Know About the Gripen, Sweden’s Dark Horse Jet That Could Help Ukraine
Ukraine’s antiquated air force might soon receive fighter jets from an unlikely source: Sweden.

Sweden, NATO’s newest member, is looking into transferring some of its home-built Gripen fighters as part of an effort to expand the capabilities of Ukraine’s military. The lesser-known jet is one of the few built in Europe and outside NATO, and is designed to defend the country single-handedly from enemy attack.

Like I said: don’t care. UkraineUkraineUKRAAAIIIIINNNNE!!! bushwa aside, let’s talk about the Saab Gripen itself, shall we?

Named after the mythological griffin, the Gripen is the latest in a long line of Swedish designed and built fighters. As a neutral country, Sweden has traditionally avoided buying many major weapons systems from the United States, NATO, and the old Soviet bloc. This has necessitated building its own fighters, which also means opportunities to export those fighters abroad.

Gripen is a single-seat, single-engine fighter jet optimized expressly for Sweden. It has a slender profile, delta-shaped wings, and large canards just below the cockpit. The older Gripen C, which is the model most likely to go to Ukraine, uses the Volvo RM12 afterburning turbofan engine, reducing dependence on foreign suppliers.

Overall the Gripen is very similar to an American F-16C Fighting Falcon fighter. Both are 49 feet long, have the same 500-mile combat radius, same Mach 2 top speed, and same 50,000-foot service ceiling. In terms of performance, the Gripen is like an F-16 with a slightly lighter weapons load.

One major advantage for the Gripen is that it is cheap to fly. A Gripen C jet costs an average of $9,922 an hour to fly (adjusted for inflation), which is far cheaper than other western jets. The F-16C, by comparison, costs $26,927 an hour, while the F-35 costs $41,986 an hour.

While this might seem like an inconsequential number compared to a plane’s unit cost, it adds up, and over decades the cost per flight-hour can far exceed the cost of the plane itself. Over 8,000 hours of flight—the estimated life cycle of both planes—a Gripen will cost an additional $79.2 million, while the F-35 will cost a staggering $335 million. This is a major consideration for countries with smaller budgets like Ukraine.

Yep, the relatively-small (only 17 feet longer than the venerable P51 Mustang) Gripen is definitely a badass jet, with the added advantage of being a real looker as well:

SAAB GRIPEN

See what I mean? Makes the Turducken look like the sickly, overpriced boondoggle it is, far as I’m concerned.

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“Justice” is SERVED!

And in Amerika v2.0, it’s a dish best not swallowed at all.

More than two and a half years after the gravest threat to democracy of our lifetime — and maybe of all time — Jan. 6 agitator Ray Epps has finally been charged. See? Justice is being served.

According to court documents, Epps was charged with a sole misdemeanor count of “Disorderly or Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds” via an “information,” as opposed to an indictment, which NBC news says suggests “he plans to enter a plea deal.”

In other words, we’ll finally be able to rest — safe and sound and smug — knowing all the Tucker Carlson-fueled conspiracies about Epps being an FBI source or informant have been put to bed. Case closed. He was a wee bit disorderly. Let it go.

So why are rabid right-wingers foaming at the mouth and unable to accept the DOJ charges and media write-ups at face value? These are trusted institutions with an unblemished track record of ethics, honesty, and equal justice under the law. Turn off the Fox News and Truth Social already, and get your facts straight.

For instance, why are ultra-MAGA Republicans still asking about the multiple clips of Epps on both Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, rallying protesters to make their way from Trump’s speech not only up toward Capitol Hill but “into the Capitol”? Those conspiracists just can’t get over the fact that the demonstrators within earshot booed his suggestion and pegged him as a “Fed! Fed! Fed!” But what would they know? They’re insurrectionists.

And why are election deniers still bringing up that text Epps sent his nephew after the riot? “I was in front with a few others. I also orchestrated it.” He walked that back a while ago, remember? He was just “boasting to [his] nephew.” Never mind what he was boasting about.

On that note, Republicans can give it a rest already with the Proud Boys comparisons. So some guy who wasn’t even in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, will serve a 22-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy and “terrorism” while ringleading Epps gets a disorderly conduct misdemeanor no-no and probably a plea deal — what’s your point?!

How many times do the media need to tell you people Ray Epps isn’t a fed before you get it through your thick skulls? It’s a CONSPIRACY. Nothing to see here.

Yep, just another heaping, steaming platter of pure FederalGovCo/Praetorian Media bullshit, as fetid and rank-tasting as it always is. Don’t swallow it, not one morsel of it.

Ahh, but Ray “Fedboi” Epps was but a small part of the larger Pelosi/FBI op that day.

FBI lost count of how many paid informants were at Capitol on Jan. 6, and later performed audit to figure out exact number: ex-official
The FBI had so many paid informants at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that it lost track of the number and had to perform a later audit to determine exactly how many “Confidential Human Sources” run by different FBI field offices were present that day, a former assistant director of the bureau has told lawmakers.

At least one informant was communicating with his FBI handler as he entered the Capitol, according to Steven D’Antuono, formerly in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office.

D’Antuono has testified behind closed doors to the House Judiciary Committee that his office was aware before the riot that some of their informants would attend a “Stop the Steal” rally thrown by former President Donald Trump, but he only learned after the fact that informants run by other field offices also were present, along with others who had participated of their own accord.

One paid informant from the Kansas City field office was at the Capitol as the crowd surged inside and allegedly was in communication with his FBI handler “while they were in the crowd, I think, saying that they were going in,” according to the former bureau brass.

Not one of whom will ever get anything worse in the way of punishment than the pre-arranged slap on the wrist received by “Fedboi” Epps, of course. The bottom line remains the same:

44,000 hours of surveillance tape showing at worst stupid fools – unarmed and peaceful if not a little bit rowdy stupid fools – being led in and escorted slowly around by Capitol PD themselves after the latter opened the doors for them, and then exiting in a generally orderly fashion. The only fatalities were Ashli Babbitt, shot execution style by now-promoted and feted Capitol cop Michael Byrd, and Roseanne Boyland, brutally beaten to death by some of the “paid informants” that D’Antuono lost track off.

Not exactly storming the Bastille, is it? Meh, the Bastille stormed us.

It did at that—ran roughshod all the hell over what little was left of America That Was, all the while shouting at Real Americans the elites’ eternal cry: Let ‘em eat cake! The historically-correct response can only be: Off with their heads!

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The Being Oliver Anthony conundrum

DM has a post up on the latest doin’s Oliver-wise.

Is economically illiterate. He cancelled his show because he won’t do it unless he is paid $120,000, with the venue only charging $25 a ticket.

Don’t buy Cotton Eyed Joe tickets for $99 apiece. Sure as hell don’t buy tickets for VIP passes for whatever bulls–t prices they’re on. Don’t pay $100 for a ticket. If we’ve got to cancel the venue and play somewhere else, we will

Unfortunately this kind of economic self sabotage is common:

  • Complains about poverty
  • Doesn’t understand money
  • Demands $120,000 for a 60 min performance
  • Cancels the performance he agreed to do because he thinks ticket price is too high

The venue only holds 1,500 people. Oliver’s take costs the venue $80 for each ticket, assuming that the show is sold out. He moved the concert to a larger venue (Knoxville Convention Center) which holds 10,000 people. Now his take costs $12 per ticket. The rest of the costs of the venue, as well as profit for the venue, have to come from the other $13.

Do you think he learned about economy of scale? Or does he still not understand how money works?

There’s even more to it than just that, as I pointed out in a comment over there:

Mike Hendrix · September 19, 2023 at 4:03 pm

While I very much doubt Oliver is unaware of what his asking price might be, his booking agent/manager/whatever will be the one setting that, on a whatever-the-market-will-bear basis. 120k per gig is a pretty sweet payday for a mid-level-venue artist, no matter how you slice it.

Back in Dec 92, my band played a three-night stand, two shows a night, at Tramps in NYC opening for Little Richard, billed as a “60th birthday celebration.” I became good friends with Richard over those three nights, who was absolutely thrilled with us–even going so far as to give my manager and myself his home phone number so’s a European tour as support act for Richard could be arranged.

I know for a fact Richard made 60k per night for those three nights. And that was Little Freakin’ Richard, the Architect of Rock and Roll (as he called himself), who by then had been one of the biggest stars in the rock and roll firmament for more than forty years. No Johnny Come Lately, one-hit-wonder flash in the pan, he. The shows were all sold out, SRO crowds each show, each night.

I also know a thing or two about venue expenses that people not in the biz may not. One of the bigger outlays for any venue is for security; the number of security personnel required for any given show is set not by the venue owner but by their insurer. Other staff–bartenders, waitresses, doormen, stage management, sound engineers, lighting techs, etc all add up pretty quickly, and that’s before you even get to things like building rent/mortgage, property taxes, various licenses, electricity bill, liquor and beer, cups and glasses, etc etc.

If the venue had agreed to anything less than 100 bucks a ticket, they’d’ve almost certainly lost their ass on the booking. Do that on the regular and you’ll be well on the way to going under, becoming a FORMER venue. Y’know, like Tramps is today.

And even that doesn’t begin to cover every expense involved here: the venue cleanup-crew; toilet paper for the ladies’ room; bar tools like shaker cups, strainers, speed-pour bottle tops, swizzle sticks, and such; brooms, mops, mop buckets, and bar towels; trash bins; ice machines; audience seating; and so on and on and on.

Many mid-level venues (ie, 1500 to 3000 seaters; think House Of Blues or the Agora chain, say), in addition to the house sound system, provide what’s called a backline—guitar amps, bass amp, and/or drum kit—for their shows, free of charge to the artist. If a certain band has a keyboard player, just imagine what it costs to rent a grand piano or Hammond B3 organ and have a crew load, deliver, unload, and rassle that heavy-ass monster into position onstage!

Trust me, it ain’t cheap. NONE of it is; taken altogether it all adds up to a pretty daunting list, most of those costs incurred before you’ve even opened the doors for your first show.

The sad fact is that live-music venues are on extremely shaky financial ground from Day One of their usually-truncated existence. Just think for a moment of all the venues you used to know and love that are long gone now, wherever you may be. Here in CLT alone, I can think of quite a few: PB Scott’s; Kidnappers; Tremont Music Hall; the Pterodactyl; Park Elevator (where I once rode my old Shovelhead FLH—apehangers, suicide shift, drag pipes and all—through a tiny loading-dock door onto the stage to kick off our set); the 1313 Club; the Alley Cat…the list goes on and on.

Although I do get his Quixotic horror at ticket prices, Oliver should have taken the money without complaint, and stiff-armed the living hell out of anybody who dared to even ask him about what he was making. Accuse him of being a sell-out if you will, but as some performer in the early days of the punk era (can’t remember who, sorry) once famously put it: “I don’t understand all this talk about selling out. You’re an artist, you’re TRYING to sell!” The definitive line on that subject comes from Metallica ex-bassist Jason Newstead, during a 1998 interview on eMpTV’s Behind The Music: “Yes, we sell out—we sell out every seat in the house, every time we play.”

Heh. ‘Nuff said. It occurs to me that sometime I really oughta do a post recounting the wild tale of those Little Richard shows at Tramps, maybe. Believe me, it’s one hellaciously good story, which led to all sorts of unlooked-for offshoots and bizarre developments, both for the BPs and myself personally. Then again, could be that it’s just too much inside-baseball type stuff for most non-showbiz types to have any real interest in. We’ll see about that, I suppose.

Update! Much as it annoys me sometimes, ya still can’t help but love WP. No sooner had I typed in and posted that last ‘graph above than it hit me that it might be fun to do a poll, so as to bring y’all readers into the mix here. I knew there were poll plugins available for WP, so I found one and installed it right quick, then set up our first-ever CF reader-opinion poll. Exciting, no?

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Little Richard poll

Should Mike do a post on the BPs' Tramps shows with Little Richard?

If 'Other' is filled, checked answers are ignored.

Vote early, vote often. For those of you who don’t give a shit one way or another about any Little Richard guff, the poll plugin is supposed to provide secure and anonymous voting, so you can vote “Hell no, fuck that noise, you bastige” without fear of catching any blog-retribution flak from Your Humble Host. If I’m not mistaken, your choices aren’t limited to the prefab three responses you see in the poll box; custom answers are enabled, just speak your piece in the “Other—please specify” field at the bottom. Hopefully, it will all work and not break the damned layout or anything.

Oh frabjous day update! Callooh callay—that first “HELLS YEAH!” response was me testing the plugin, seems to work as advertised. Have fun, folks.

Well I’ll be danged update! Just came across a good pic of Little Richard onstage from the Tramps show, as well as a NYT day-of-show interview with Da Man himself. Good stuff if you ask me, which admittedly you didn’t.

Informational update! To the fellow who has kindly asked for an email address in the poll above so’s he can make arrangements for a snail-mail contribution to Ye Aulde Fundraiser, the addy is over in the right sidebar near the top: mike-at-this-url dot com. Thanks, buddy!

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An idea whose time will never come again

In Monday’s Eyrie post, I ran down the easiest imaginable solution to correcting the recurring issues with our national “elections.” To repeat:

Indeed they do, but the REAL cure is simpler even than that: ditch ALL electronic voting machines and return to paper ballots, hand counted in full, unobstructed view of official representatives from all and every political party with candidates running for office. Contra Simplicius’ first ‘graph above*, if that means We Duh Peepul must wait for the results a little longer than we’ve become accustomed to because hand-counting all those hard-copy ballots takes a little more time, well, so be it then.

The essential point to be made here, I think, is that the count does not stop until all the (legitimate) votes are tallied. No self-evidently shady “pauses” after the polling places have closed because the toilet down the hall has sprung a minor leak, followed by a wee-hours stealth-resumption while no one is looking. You cast your vote on Election Day, on paper, dip your thumb into a jug of indelible purple ink ø Iraq, and then the votes are counted publicly, openly, without the kind of manipulation and mucking about we bore supine witness to in 2020. Period fucking dot, end of fucking story, problem fucking solved.

In case you were thinking there was even a snowball’s chance of such an idea ever being implemented in Amerika v2.0: Don’t. Just. Don’t. Because like so many other good and desirable things, it never will be. Instead, we’re going to move as fast and as far as possible in the exact opposite direction.

Key battleground state launches ‘automatic voter registration’ ahead of 2024
Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Tuesday that he will implement “automatic voter registration” ahead of the 2024 election.

The governor rolled out his plan on National Voter Registration Day to “streamline” the voter registration process, which he argues will “save taxpayers time and money,” according to an announcement video. Shapiro’s plan will automatically enroll Pennsylvanians in the voting system, unless the individual opts out, when receiving an identification card or driver’s license at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

“From now on, when you get or renew your driver’s license or an ID card at the DMV, you’ll be registered to vote unless you choose not to,” Shapiro said in the video. “I made a commitment when I was campaigning for this office that we would bring automatic voter registration in Pennsylvania and break down the barriers for legal, eligible voters. This is a key step to make our elections more secure, adding important levels of verification to the voter registration process.”

It will do no such thing, Goobernor, and you know damned well it won’t; if it would, you’d fight to your very last breath against doing it. Making elections more secure and “adding important levels of verification” is the absolute last thing you and your fellow PTB scumfucks want to see happen. As for “breaking down the barriers for legal, eligible voters,” there are NO such barriers anymore, and you damned well know that too.

No, what this D卐M☭CRAT rectal polyp actually wants to do is break down the last few remaining barriers (if any) for illegal, ineligible voters. Once that’s done, it’ll be celebratory “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!” banners—in “Transgender’ rainbow colors, natch—flying from the State House and D卐M☭CRAT Party HQ, with smiles, handshakes, backslaps, and flutes of champagne all around.

(Via Bill)

3
1

Hamtramck Moslems are at it again

And I love it.

A Pride flag ban sparks accusations of betrayal in tiny Michigan city
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — This city of 28,000 was once so Polish it was dubbed “Little Warsaw.” But in recent decades, an influx of immigrants gave Hamtramck new character. Bengali and Arabic joined English on signs at City Hall. Yemeni and Bangladeshi mosques, restaurants and shops proliferated.

And last year, a Muslim who emigrated from Yemen as a teenager became mayor — the city’s first leader in nearly a century with no Polish roots — alongside what is believed to be the nation’s only all-Muslim city council.

Many residents in this tiny enclave just north of downtown Detroit saw these changes as a sign of the Hamtramck’s progressiveness. The Muslim community that had previously experienced discrimination, including voter intimidation and resistance to mosques’ public call to prayer, had finally taken its seats at the table.

Yet the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that made Hamtramck something of a model is being put severely to the test. In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.

“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”

All together now: WAAAAAAHHH!!! Nota bene this next part, y’all, it’s important.

The council’s unanimous vote in the middle of Pride Month seemed intentional to Stackpoole and others, though the resolution banned not only the rainbow flag but all flags except for the U.S., state, city and POW/MIA banners. Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, defends the action as one of neutrality, saying no group should be able to promote a political agenda on city property.

Emphasis mine, in both excerpted sections, and entirely dispositive. So to translate from the WaPo shitlib-ese hysterics, then: This “ban” affects city-government buildings only, which is no more than appropriate; individuals remain perfectly free to fly any flag they like from their homes, places of business, and personal conveyances without falling afoul of this ban-that-isn’t-really-a-ban-at-all.

Ahh, but does it get even better, you ask? Why yes. Yes, it does.

Anyone who thought the controversy might soon go away was mistaken. The tension surfaced again in early September when the mayor and council balked at marching next to the Hamtramck Queer Alliance in the Labor Day parade.

“Basically, they wanted to destroy our image in front of our supporters by making us look like we were leading the queer group with all those flags flying behind us,” Ghalib said in a statement afterward. He’d managed to arrange a ride in a white SUV at the front of the parade, several spots removed from his concern.

The Labor Day Festival committee also issued a statement last week, saying the event was organized to celebrate “the diversity that makes Hamtramck unique. We are saddened to hear that Mayor Ghalib has expressed a complaint about being in the parade in proximity to a rainbow flag or a display of LGBTQ+ pride.”

As for Hansknecht, who walked in the parade holding the alliance’s bright yellow banner — “two square miles, for all of us,” it proclaimed — the incident only reinforced what he’d believed from the start.

The flag ban, he said, “has always been about being anti-queer rather than the neutrality they claimed.”

Aw, cry me a river, cupcake. I note that you DID carry your precious banner along the entire parade route without incident of any kind. I think it safe to assume that this hyper-sensitive bint was screaming the most offensive and confrontational epithets (s)he could come up with every last step of the way, too, at every innocuous spectator that looked the least bit like one of those goddamned cis-het Normie oppressors to shim/zhir.

Ghalib, with whom I enjoyed a very cordial email exchange on this topic back in June, was perfectly correct in his clear-eyed assertion that the freaks ’n’ geeks’ sole interest in demanding he march alongside the HQA was to humiliate him—to claim a victory for themselves and then rub his face all in it. Open-mindedness and tolerance is no longer enough for these miserable wretches, oh no; you will be forced to march in their parades, bake intentionally-offensive cakes for them, give your children over to them, and enthusiastically applaud them on demand. It’s like this:

Insanity

Call it The Way Of The Leftist, maybe. I must say, though, that I am thoroughly enjoying the sudden implosion of the post-9/11 alliance-of-convenience betwixt American Progtards and mainstream Moslems, whose primordial “religion” puts them squarely at odds with every tenet of the shitlib catechism. I’ve long insisted such a schism was inevitable, and I was correct all along about that, too.

1
1

Hey, did somebody misplace a Turducken?

It would seem so, yeah.

Search for missing F-35 Lightning II fighter jet continues after pilot ejects during ‘mishap’
U.S. military officials are searching for a missing F-35 jet after a “mishap” caused its pilot to eject on Sunday afternoon.

Joint Base Charleston said on Facebook that the aircraft was a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II belonging to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort. The pilot ejected safely and was transported to a local medical center.

The base is working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to help locate the missing aircraft. Emergency response teams have been deployed to find the jet.

“Based on the jet’s last-known position and in coordination with the FAA, we are focusing our attention north of JB Charleston, around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion,” Joint Base Charleston said in a statement on Facebook.

Anyone with information about the jet’s whereabouts is urged to contact JB Charleston Base Defense Operations Center at 843-963-3600.

That strange sound you hear is hilarity, ensuing. For his part, BCE has a question.

Let me get this straight…
An 80 million dollar aircraft
Known as the “Flying Turducken” or “The Turd”
80 fucking million dollars, and they don’t even have the fucking thing LoJacked!?!
My car is fucking LoJacked FFS.

Not only that, but as I recollect, commercial airliners; boats/ships of a certain size both civilian and military; tractor-trailer rigs; and even most cars nowadays are all equipped with some sort of locator-beacon/tracking device or another. Have been for years, in fact. Yet somehow, a fully-tricked-out, state of the art, next-generation air-superiority fighter—supposedly the very best Amerika v2.0 can design, build, and deploy, the very tippy-top of the top of the line—ISN’T?

Naah, not sketchy AT. ALL. Now look, everybody, over there: SQUIRREL!!!

1

“Rep. Jamie Raskin: ‘It’ll Be the End of the Republican Party’ if Biden Impeachment Proceeds”

Actually, Congresscritter, with such an incredible preponderance of credible evidence of “treason, bribery, high crimes and” etc, it’s WAY more likely to be the end of their treacherous, collaborationist Party if they don’t.

Try to follow the logic train here, such as there is one.

Via HuffPost (emphasis added):

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) move to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden could backfire badly.

“I can’t tell you the number of Democrats who’ve come up to me today to say, ‘Let them do the impeachment, it will be the end of the Republican Party,’” Raskin said on MSNBC on Tuesday night.

Raskin said those lawmakers predicted that the impeachment proceedings “will end up in complete defeat and humiliation” for the Republicans.

McCarthy’s move comes after Republicans in the House have made accusations of corruption against Biden for months, but have so far failed to produce any evidence*.

*cough-cough* BULLSHIT *cough-cough*

Continuing via HuffPost:

Raskin said he’s against the inquiry for a simple reason.

“I’ve got a little bit too much respect and love for the Constitution just to let them go down that road without at least pointing out that the constitutional standard is treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said. “And they don’t have evidence of any wrongdoing at all.”

He said House Republicans have thousands of documents obtained via subpoena and dozens of hours of witness interviews.

“But far from proving their claims, it all disproves their claims,” he said. “It all shows that nobody’s laid a glove on Joe Biden and he wasn’t involved in any of Hunter Biden’s business activities. And so, that’s really the end of the case.”

So to recap: Raskin is sure that Republicans impeaching Biden will somehow end in “complete defeat and humiliation” for his political opponents, whom his party has repeatedly claimed are an existential threat to Democracy™ itself. Yet he opposes allowing the inquiry to proceed out of “respect for the Constitution,” even though his party just recently impeached the former president twice on arguably more dubious grounds than the coming Biden impeachment.

That all checks out.

Insofar as anything these stinking Swamp critters say ever checks out, yeah, I suppose it does.

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