Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Publick notice

Posted on June 3, 2020June 3, 2020 by Mike 2 Comments

Light posting will likely continue through the rest of the week, due to the onset of one damned thing after another that seems to constitute life at Totleigh Towers. Which is too bad, really, because at the moment I have about thirty open tabs in the Brave browser, just sitting there waiting for me to unleash my wrathful attention on ’em. This sudden tsunami of truly historical events of late threatens to drown Ye Olde Blogghoste in neglected blog-fodder here, I admit.

After a couple of days to mull it over, I’m thinking the best way to handle our new Daily Donnybrook open thread is to refresh it a couple times a week—putting up a new one, say, every Tuesday and Friday or Saturday. I’m definitely grateful to the folks who recommended doing it, if only for the sudden influx of BBQ recipes and the like in the comments; from that, it’s easy to envision this thing turning into something very damned useful indeed around this place.

Anyways, back when I can, as I can, folks. Oh, and here’s a neat little bit of arcana about that London Calling album cover some of y’all might not have heard about before:

It all began on the 20th September 1979. On that day, in Palladium club in New York took place the concert of a British rock group, The Clash. During the concert, the upset bassist wrecked his guitar on the scene, and the moment was captured on photography by Pennie Smith. Thanks to this photo, one of the most famous album covers in the history of rock came to existence.

The final version of the cover was designed by Ray Lowry. Pennie Smith at first didn’t want to allow the use of her photo, arguing that it’s blurry. Lowry convinced her that the lack of focus was in this case a good thing, as it made it more authentic and spontaneous.

London Calling cover quickly became famous all over the world. It was a pastiche, meaning a conscious reference to another piece. Lowry used composition and lettering similar to Elvis Presley’s earlier (RCA debut) album. It was a bit provocative, as Elvis was acclaimed back then as the king of rock and the less famous band The Clash was only about to begin another revolution in rock music, but in a way more hardcore version.

There’s a pic of the Simenon P-bass aftermath, too. It wound up in about the condition you’d expect, alas.

The Daily Donnybrook

Posted on June 1, 2020June 1, 2020 by Mike 27 Comments

Welcome to the first installment of 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…

Life: unsafe at any speed

Posted on May 20, 2020May 20, 2020 by Mike

A risk-averse society is a dying society.

We have a meme up at PragerU: “‘Until it’s safe’ means ‘never.'”

The pursuit of “safe” over virtually all other considerations is life-suppressing. This is true for your own individual life, and it is true for the life of a society.

I always give the following example: I have been taking visitors to Israel for decades, and for all those decades, people have called my radio show to say, “Dennis, I would so love to visit Israel, but I’m just going to wait until it’s safe.” And I’ve always told these people, “Then you’ll never go.” And sure enough, I’ve gone there over 20 times, and they never went.

I have never led my life on the basis of “until it’s safe.” I do not take ridiculous risks. I wear a seatbelt whenever I’m in a car because the chances are overwhelming that in a bad accident, a seatbelt can save my life. But I get into the car, which is not 100% safe.

You are not on earth to be safe. You are on earth to lead a full life. I don’t want my epitaph to be, “He led a safe life.” It’s like another epitaph I don’t want: “He experienced as little pain as possible.”

All of life confronts you with this question: Are you going to take risks or play it safe? If you play it safe, you don’t get married. If you play it safe, you don’t have kids. There are real risks in getting married; there are real risks in having children.

If you want to lead a good and full life, you cannot keep asking, “Is it safe?” Those at college promoting “safe spaces” are afraid of life, and they want to make you afraid of life.

We’re going crazy on the safe issue. It is making police states. That’s my worry: In the name of safety, many Americans are dropping all other considerations.

They’ve been meticulously trained to, over many decades, with the making of a police state foremost in the minds of the Planners.

Status quo ante

Posted on May 19, 2020May 19, 2020 by Mike

The more things change, the more they etc.

U.S.—Americans in some states are finally starting to feel normal again, now that stay-at-home orders are being lifted. Children are at the park again, adults are back at the bar, and the elderly continue to play bingo at 4 p.m. sharp on a daily basis.

But there’s one thing that has everybody feeling at a near-peak level of normal: conservatives are going to work while liberals stay at home and do nothing—just like always.

“We can now say with undeniable certainty that these are normal times,” explained social psychologist Ben O’Reilly as he handed a hippie a twenty-dollar bill. “Conservatives are once again doing all the hard work to keep the economy afloat, while liberals sit at home, pretend to be sick with the Coronavirus, and collect government paychecks. Congratulations America, you are back to normal!”

While some conservatives are upset that liberals get to stay home and mooch off of them, most say they don’t even care anymore.

“I just want to get back to work,” said Jared Renfro, an electrician from Wisconsin. “If liberals don’t want to work, hey, more power to them. I don’t mind paying their bills.” Renfro then polished his “Trump 2020” bumper sticker and hopped in his truck.

Well, it’s not as if all those gender-studies grads, government employees, and liberal-dweeb college professors were doing anything particularly useful anyway.

Update! IF EVEN ONE LIFE IS SAV…uhhh, wait a sec here.

LANSING, MI- Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan took her already excessive restrictions in her state in the fight against Covid-19 a step further this morning when she announced that any violations of the executive order may authorize the use of lethal force by law enforcement.

The Michigan Governor stated, “If you think you can just go out and buy a bag of charcoal, think again. Going out for unnecessary purchases and risking the spread of Covid-19 would be no different than going out and shooting a gun at random people. It’s time we accept the reality of the situation and treat such instances accordingly.”

Michigan has already been essentially under house arrest with a risk of jail or a $1,000 fine for residents who simply leave their homes. Entire sections of areas in Michigan grocery stores of items deemed “non-essential” have been roped off to satisfy Gretchen Whitmer’s brand of compassionate authoritarianism. Items like bug spray and outdoor supplies among many other goods are now forbidden to be purchased by Michigan residents.

Gov. Whitmer’s authorization of lethal force for violation of the order has completed the task of making her power and reach absolute, as no resident of Michigan is now safe from the prospect of being publicly executed by their Governor.

Although the measure admittedly may never be fully implemented, the Governor has described it as a necessary symbolic gesture to show how far she is willing to go to protect her loyal subjects.

The profoundly Kafka-esque nature of our current national absurdity has made distinguishing between satire and reality so tough that Reuters is barely even trying anymore.

Social media users are circulating an article with a headline that reads, “Whitmer authorizes lethal force to maintain state lockdown” ( here ). It refers to Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D).

The claim comes amid a series of demonstrations against coronavirus-related lockdowns across key electoral battleground states like Michigan ( here ).

The article has been flagged multiple times as part of Facebook’s efforts to curb misinformation related to the new coronavirus.

The claim is false. It stems from a satirical article on the website The People’s Cube. The article lists the author as “Chedoh, Kommissar of Viral Infections, Hero of Change, Prophet of the Future Truth”. Despite these red flags, some social media users believe the story is authentic, making comments like “You need to vote her out!” and “The Power all Democrats want”.

On March 24, Whitmer passed an executive order suspending non-essential activities across the state ( here ). On April 13, Whitmer issued another executive order to extend the lockdown measures until April 30 ( here ). Neither of the orders specified enforcement conditions aside from mentioning that, “Consistent with MCL 10.33 and MCL 30.405(3), a willful violation of this order is a misdemeanor”. Michigan is one of 42 states where governors have ordered residents to remain indoors except for necessary outings like grocery shopping or doctor’s visits, while closing schools, universities and non-essential businesses.

VERDICT
False: Michigan Governor Whitmer has not authorized “lethal force” to maintain lockdown measures meant to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. This claim comes from a satirical article.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact checking work here .

Oh, I believe I’ve read just about all I need to about your “work” at this point, guys.

No mas(k)

Posted on May 19, 2020May 19, 2020 by Mike

Remember what I said the other day about my personal feelings on the wearing of N95 masks for non-surgical purposes?

Yeah. About that.

Every Karen on Facebook is shaming her neighbors for not wearing a face mask. We are being told by governors that if we don’t wear masks we are selfish, horrible human beings with no souls who want Grandma to die a horrible death. Police are tackling people who don’t wear face masks properly in the subway. Grocery stores are throwing maskless people out and denying them service.

But now, there’s another doctor weighing in—besides Dr. Fauci, bonafide sex god and ruler of us all, who also said face masks are largely security theater and of no use to the healthy. Dr. Russell Blaylock, a neurosurgeon, has written an editorial saying that “masks pose serious risks to the healthy.”

First, Blaylock says, there is no scientific evidence that masks are effective against COVID-19 transmission. Pro-science people should care about this.

Beyond the lack of scientific data to support wearing a mask as a deterrent to a virus, Blaylock says the more pressing concern is what can and will happen to the wearer.

Now that we have established that there is no scientific evidence necessitating the wearing of a face mask for prevention, are there dangers to wearing a face mask, especially for long periods? Several studies have indeed found significant problems with wearing such a mask. This can vary from headaches, to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accumulation, to hypoxia, all the way to serious life-threatening complications.

Blaylock says studies have also shown that face masks impair oxygen intake dramatically, potentially leading to serious problems.

The importance of these findings is that a drop in oxygen levels (hypoxia) is associated with an impairment in immunity. Studies have shown that hypoxia can inhibit the type of main immune cells used to fight viral infections called the CD4+ T-lymphocyte.

This occurs because the hypoxia increases the level of a compound called hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), which inhibits T-lymphocytes and stimulates a powerful immune inhibitor cell called the Tregs. This sets the stage for contracting any infection, including COVID-19 and making the consequences of that infection much graver. In essence, your mask may very well put you at an increased risk of infections and if so, having a much worse outcome.

In other words, if you wear a face mask and contract some sickness, you will not be able to fight it off as effectively as if you had normal blood oxygen levels. The mask could make you sicker. It could also create a “deadly cytokine storm” in some.

That’s plenty good enough for me. Our state kommissar Comrade Cooper can issue whatever decrees he likes, but I’m content to leave the wearing of surgical masks to the pros, thenksveddymuch.

Class act

Posted on May 19, 2020May 19, 2020 by Mike

What a petty little punk-ass bitch.

The unveiling of presidents’ official White House portraits by their successor has been a long-held tradition—until now. Barack Obama is refusing to participate in the ceremony for the unveiling of his portrait, NBC News has learned.

“Republican presidents have done it for Democratic presidents, and vice versa,” noted NBC News. “Even when one of them ascended to the White House by defeating or sharply criticizing the other.”

True enough—Barack Obama hosted the ceremony of the unveiling of George W. Bush’s official White House portrait, despite Obama ascending to the office by being a harsh critic of the 43rd president. George W. Bush similarly hosted the ceremony of Clinton’s portrait unveiling. Bush had been a critic of Clinton’s during the 2000 campaign, promising to restore honor and dignity to the office, sullied by Clinton’s sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky. Bill Clinton hosted the ceremony for George H.W. Bush, whom he’d defeated in the 1992 election.

Obama has also broken the custom of refusing to criticize his successor publicly. His pride, however, is too big for him to participate in the ceremony during Trump’s tenure in the White House—a continuation of the rank partisanship espoused by Obama during his presidency.

Barack Obama has “no interest in participating in the post-presidency rite of passage” as Trump is in office, according to people familiar with the matter.

Fine by me; myself, I have no interest in ever seeing the slope-shouldered shitweasel’s smug mug anywhere near the White House he so sullied.

Stay home and sulk in one of your ill-gotten mansions for all me, ManBoy. We’ll ship your damned painting wherever the hell you specify, and you can just stand the thing in a corner of an unused broom closet or something. It would probably look GREAT under some boxes in the garage, I’m thinking.

Still blows my mind no end that this country elected such a witless stumblebum to the presidency in the first place, I swear it does.

Twice. We did it twice, ferchrissake.

Perfect game

Posted on May 17, 2020May 17, 2020 by Mike

A wonderful tale straight from the heart of America That Was.

BELLE VERNON, Pennsylvania—As Ron Necciai recalls, the first two batters both went down in strikes. The third guy got lucky—sort of. The ball got away from the catcher, who quickly got the batter out at first.

It was May 13, 1952, a cold, damp Tuesday night for 1,100 people at Shaw Stadium in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Necciai was pitching for the Bristol Twins, a Pittsburgh Pirate-affiliated Appalachian League farm team, against the Welch Miners.

The gangly 19-year-old from Gallatin, Pennsylvania, had no idea he would not leave the mound again that night. Nor did he know that his name and what he did in that game would be forever etched in baseball history books.

“The thing is, the game didn’t really stand out in any way when I was on the mound. I mean, I hit a guy, had a couple of walks and an error or two,” he told the Washington Examiner from his home, just eight miles south of the house he grew up in.

What the right-hander from a smoky coal town along the Monongahela River did not point out until prodded was that he struck out 27 batters in nine innings.

“I didn’t realize that 27 guys had struck out until after the game was over,” he recalled. “George Detore, who was the manager, came up to me and said, ‘Do you realize what you did?’ I said, ‘No. No. Why?’ And then he said, ‘Well, you struck out 27 batters.’ And always being a wise guy, I said, ‘So what? They’ve been playing this game for a hundred years. Somebody else did, too.’ Come to find nobody else ever did before or after.”

“I guess I lived a lifetime of baseball in one night,” said Necciai.

The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues called the 27-strikeout game “the greatest individual performance in the history of baseball.”

And he did it while battling a bleeding ulcer that had him throwing up blood in the dugout before the game and drinking glasses of milk between innings to drown the heat that was burning his insides.

It is a record that has never been broken.

His 1952 minor league season on the mound remains one of the most dominant ever. In his next start a few nights later, he struck out 24. He got called up to play for the Pittsburgh Pirates in August 1952 and played until the end of the season. By the time he was 22, he was done in by a torn rotator cuff, something doctors did not know how to repair back then.

There are no stats for the speed of his pitches since there were no radar guns back then. But the legendary Branch Rickey (the famed baseball executive who signed Jackie Robinson) measured it perfectly: “I’ve seen a lot of baseball in my time. There have been only two young pitchers I was certain were destined for greatness simply because they had the meanest fastball a batter can face. One of those boys was Dizzy Dean. The other is Ron Necciai. And Necciai is harder to hit.”

The author of this fine piece misses on only one particular, when he proposes that the real beauty of baseball is in its slow, languid pace. But to my way of thinking, the real beauty of the game is in one simple, unavoidable fact: the pitcher on the mound can stall and lollygag to his heart’s content; the batter can step out of the box to tap his cleats, tug his crotch, and generally fumblefart around as long he may like. But sooner or later, come hell or high water, the eternal truth remains: the pitcher is going to have to heave that pill, and the batter is going to have to either swing or take.

There is no way around it, none at all. The confrontation MUST be resolved, and WILL be resolved. Ain’t no passing the ball around well outside the lanes to run out the clock on a slim lead as in basketball; ain’t no snapping the ball for the quarterback to fall on, milking seconds as the resulting pileup gets sorted out. There is the pitcher, there is the batter, and the better man in that singular moment will eventually out, no matter what else may or may not happen.

And THAT, my friends, is what they call baseball.

Sad, sad, sad

Posted on May 9, 2020May 9, 2020 by Mike

Ho. Lee. CRAP.

It’s hard to believe now, as I write this, but just two months ago, when we were allowed to roam free, when we could board planes and alight from them and wander into rental cars and check into hotels — when we could chase down and replenish the beauty and wonder our very cells need to survive — I went to Los Angeles, where I was asked this question by Val Kilmer:

“Do you think South by Southwest will be canceled?”

But Val Kilmer no longer sounds like Val Kilmer, the movie star of the ’80s and ’90s who has mostly vanished from screens. He hasn’t since his tracheostomy. He can still squeeze air up through his windpipe, however, and past the hole that was cut into his throat and the tracheostomy tube, in a way that makes him somewhat understood — not very, but somewhat. The sound is something between a squeak and a voiceless roar. He says the fact that I can understand him is a result of the endless vocal exercises that he was trained to do when he went to Juilliard after high school, that he was taught to work his voice “like it was a trumpet.” He hated the authoritarian rule at Juilliard while he was there; he hated those stupid vocal exercises. Now look at him, still using his most beloved instrument when really, by all rights, it should be useless. See how it all turned out for the best?

All Val Kilmer’s stories are like that, told with that same dash of preordained kismet. He was traveling in Africa in 1994 when he decided to spend a morning exploring a bat cave; later that day, literally seriously that day, he was inspired to call his agent, who had been trying to contact Kilmer for weeks to see if he was interested in playing the role of Batman, now that Michael Keaton was hanging it up. Another story: In the days before he set eyes for the first time on his (now ex-) wife, Joanne Whalley, he dreamed that he met the woman he was destined for and woke up and immediately wrote a poem called, “We’ve Just Met but Marry Me Please.” Then right after that, he went to London, and while he was there, he saw a play, and Whalley was in it. He was so taken with her that he followed her to the pub after-party just so he could look at her. This was crazy even for him, so he made no move. But two years later, in 1987, she would be randomly coincidentally serendipitously cast opposite him in “Willow,” and they would end up married. So yes, he can talk, and it’s such a miracle that he has these abilities, because if you have enough faith, you’ll see how every part of your life is just a piece of a bigger part of your life, and nothing is an accident, and everything is good.

Tragic, just tragic, and strange as he’s always been, you can’t help but feel awful for the man. The pic accompanying the article is just…well, it’s just grotesque, frankly. Just wait till you see it; there’s almost no resemblance to the classic matinee-idol hunk you most likely remember. Remarkably, though, Kilmer seems to be maintaining a pretty positive attitude for a guy in his current straits. So that’s something.

Whatever else he may have been along the way, Val Kilmer is undeniably a gifted actor. Which is all the excuse I need to put up one of my verymost favorite scenes, from another of my verymost favorite westerns: Tombstone.

(Via WeirdDave)

More on Mia

Posted on May 1, 2020May 1, 2020 by Mike

The son of the artist involved reveals yet more on the shameful Land-O-Lakes brouhaha.

With the redesign, my father made Mia’s Native American connections more specific. He changed the beadwork designs on her dress by adding floral motifs that are common in Ojibwe art. He added two points of wooded shoreline to the lake that had often been depicted in the image’s background. It was a place any Red Lake tribal citizen would recognize as the Narrows, where Lower Red Lake and Upper Red Lake meet.

In my education booklet, “Rethinking Stereotypes,” I noted that communicating misinformation is an underlying function of stereotypes, including through visual images. One way that these images convey misinformation is in a passive, subliminal way that uses inaccurate depictions of tribal symbols, motifs, clothing and historical references. The other kind of stereotypical, misinforming imagery is more overt, with physical features caricatured and customs demeaned. “Through dominant language and art,” I wrote, “stereotypic imagery allows one to see, and believe, in an invented image, an invented race, based on generalizations.”

I provided a number of examples. Mia wasn’t one of them. Not because she was part of my father’s legacy as a commercial artist and I didn’t want to offend him. Mia simply didn’t fit the parameters of a stereotype. Maybe that’s why many Native American women on social media have made it clear that they didn’t agree with those who viewed her as a romanticized and/or sexually objectified stereotype. Instead, Mia seems to have stirred a sense of remembrance and place, one that they found reassuring about their existence as Native American women.

I don’t know why Land O’Lakes dropped Mia. In 2018, the company changed the image by cropping it to a head shot. That adjustment didn’t seem like a bow to culturally correct pressure. Perhaps her disappearance this year is about nothing more than chief executive Beth Ford’s explanation that Land O’Lakes is focusing on the company’s heritage as a farmer-owned cooperative founded in 1921. But questions remain.

Mia’s vanishing has prompted a social media meme: “They Got Rid of The Indian and Kept the Land.” That isn’t too far from the truth. Mia, the stereotype that wasn’t, leaves behind a landscape voided of identity and history. For those of us who are American Indian, it’s a history that is all too familiar.

The Lid blog sums it all up.

Excellent work, cancel culture. In your zeal to purge the world of racism, you have (what’s that word you use for it) ‘erased’ an actual piece of legitimate, iconic, and native-crated artwork.

And like everything else the left does, you did it ‘for our own good, or as Albert Camus once wrote. “The welfare of the people, in particular, has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.”

How long until you admit you’re just another stripe of totalitarians glibly burning down everything in society that doesn’t fit neatly into your narrow little world view.

They don’t check into a logo’s background before they call a logo bigoted, Just like the complaints about the Washington Redskins. The cancel culture calls the team logo racist. But the logo was “first designed in 1971 in close consultation with Native American leaders. Among those who unanimously approved and voiced praise for the logo was Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, a former President of the National Congress of American Indians and Chairman of the Blackfeet Nation. Years earlier, Mr. Wetzel had been deeply involved with U.S. President John F. Kennedy in the movement for civil liberties, civil rights, and economic freedom for all. In 2014, Mr. Wetzel’s son Don commented, “It needs to be said that an Indian from the State of Montana created the Redskins logo, and did it the right way. It represents the Red Nation, and it’s something to be proud of.”

Huh. Didn’t know that. But in the end none of this will matter to the SJW’s—for whom history is rewritable; facts are malleable according to political convenience; and truth is what Kryptonite is to Superman.

Giving the game away

Posted on April 30, 2020April 30, 2020 by Mike

Her Herness just comes right out and says it.

When Hillary Clinton endorsed Joe Biden on Tuesday, she urged him not to let the coronavirus crisis go to “waste,” hoping Biden would capitalize on it by guaranteeing abortion and pushing America in the direction of “universal health care” a.k.a. socialized medicine. Clinton ran against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Castro-was-great) in 2016 opposing Sanders’ Medicare for All socialized medicine plan, but it appears she has changed her tune — and Biden was chomping at the bit to agree with her.

“This is also a really high-stakes election,” Clinton began. “Every form of health care should continue to be available, including reproductive health care for every woman in this country [read ‘abortion’] and then it needs to be part of a much larger system that eventually — and quickly, I hope — gets us to universal health care. So I can only say ‘Amen’ to everything you’re saying.”

“But also to again enlist people that — this would be a terrible crisis to waste, as the old saying goes,” Clinton said. “We’ve learned a lot about what our absolute frailties are in our country when it comes to health justice and economic justice, so let’s be resolved that we’re going to solve those once you’re elected president.”

You gotta love that “old saying” sleight of hand. The hoary old saw goes all the way back to the dim, distant days of 2008, when it was coined by a decrepit, wizened old geezer whose name is forever lost in the mists of antiquity.

“I promise you that’s going to be my objective,” Biden replied.

Question for those foolish few who actually believed the calculated presentation of Senile Uncle Fingerbang as some kind of “moderate”: ARE YOU RETARDED OR WHAT??

In reality, though, HILLARY!™ is a bit behind the curve here.

When it comes to not “wasting” the crisis, the former veep is also ahead of Clinton. When Senate Democrats blocked the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus compromise bill and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed her alternative liberal wish list complete with Green New Deal standards on airplanes and voting “reforms” that would make the system vulnerable to the kinds of fraud that help Democrats, Biden was there cheering on the obstruction.

Echoing Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) — who said of coronavirus, “This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision” — and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) — who said Democrats were stalling extra funds for the Paycheck Protection Program because they feared “giving away leverage now without getting some of the priorities that we need” — Biden has called the coronavirus crisis a “wake up call” on climate change and an “opportunity” for “structural change” on voting and climate change.

The use of the Shanghai Sniffles as a means to get the Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) camel’s nose under the tent at last is by no means limited to just the above handful, mind:

“Neither Greenpeace, nor Greta Thunberg, nor any other individual or collective organization have achieved so much in favor of the health of the planet in such a short time…It is certainly not very good for the economy in general, but it is fantastic for the environment.” — Astrophysicist & Philosopher Martín López Corredoira

“One beneficiary will be the climate: after all, the world’s lungs are already breathing more easily thanks to the collapse of industrial production. Who is to say that this pandemic does not provide a turning point in world history.” – Oxford University Global History Professor Peter Frankopan on the coronavirus

We have an “incredible responsibility” to “actually converge the solutions — at least the financial solutions — to coronavirus to the financial solutions for climate. Because what we cannot afford to do is to jump out of the frying pan of COVID and into the raging fire of climate change.” — Former UN Climate Chief and UN Paris pact architect Christiana Figueres

“[The UN Sec. Gen. said] the pandemic could create an opportunity to rebuild the global economy along more sustainable lines.” – UN Secretary-General António Guterres as reported by Scientific American

And even that is only a small sample of the opportunistic Leftist whackos hoping to seize the opportunity presented to them by the lockdown blunder.

The climate activist community has been waiting for decades for this type of muscular government intervention in the economy and society. They have long sought to seize the opportunity to impose their world view, central planning and the banning of what they deem are non “climate-friendly” aspects of our lives and remake society in their image.

In short: If you like living under the coronavirus fears and government-mandated lockdowns, then you’ll love living your life under a “climate emergency”.

The climate movement may now be poised to plan and dictate a new “earth-friendly” world in the aftermath of the coronavirus. The climate activists quickly began to mobilize how to use the governments’ response to the coronavirus pandemic as a model for the climate scare.

Well, hey, remember the panic-ninny mantra: if even ONE LIFE is saved…!!

Satire…maybe

Posted on April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Mike

The only way to tell for sure these days is to double-check the URL of the post.

Judge Dismisses Sexual Assault Allegations Against Biden On Grounds That He Is Not A Republican
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden was cleared in federal court today of charges that some claimed were based upon credible allegations of sexual assault when the judge quickly realized that Joe Biden was not a Republican.

“Well, this looks pretty serious… let’s see who is on—wait a minute. He’s a Democrat! I can find no fault with him,” declared a fourth circuit federal judge hearing preliminary claims.

“It is well established in this court that Republicans are the ones who want to silence women and control their bodies. Haven’t you seen The Handmaid’s Tale?” the judge further added before banging down the gavel.

The bailiff immediately grabbed the female accuser by the collar and threw her up into the air out onto the sidewalk, just like in the cartoons.

No definitive word from the Bee on whether Boots Randolph’s “Yakety Sax” was playing at the time.

Update! To their enormous credit, Hollywood stars are standing tall to prove the consistency of their #MeToo, #BelieveAllThe Wymrynz beliefs when it comes to Senile Uncle Fingerbang.

Emily Ratajkowski: “Men who hurt women can no longer be placed in positions of power.”

Amy Shumer: “We will win. A vote for Biden is a vote saying ‘Women don’t matter.’ Let’s stay together. Let’s fight. Let’s keep showing up.”

Ellen DeGenerate: “This tweet is for Ms Reade. You put yourself through so much and I want you to know it wasn’t in vain. You started a movement and we’ll see it through. If they won’t listen to our voices, then they’ll listen to our vote,” she tweeted.

Jim Carrey: “Real American heroism. Ms Reade risked everything to tell the truth about this privileged Biden goon. Avenge her in November.”

There’s lots more, as unexpected as they are welcome, demonstrating once and for all that…uhhh…that…

WHOAWHOAWHOAWHOA!! Hold on there, gang. My apologies, but I seem to have inadvertently subsituted the names “Biden” and “Ms Reade” for “Kavanaugh” and “Christine Ballsey-Fraud.” Sorry, I really don’t know how that might have happened.

(Via Stephen Green)

The eternal debate

Posted on April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

You geezers like me will remember the forever-burning question of Beatles or Stones; you young ‘uns, if any, won’t. But Mick Jagger has just settled it for all of us. First, though, we’ll let Sir Paul (harrumph) get what licks he can in.

Paul McCartney, 77, says it’s clearly The Beatles.

In an interview with Howard Stern on his Sirius-XM radio show last week, McCartney said “I love the Stones but The Beatles were better.”

“Their stuff is rooted in the blues, whereas we had a lot more influences. Keith [Richards] once said to me, ‘You were lucky man. You had four singers in your band. We got one.’”

McCartney, who sang and played bass and piano for the group, and wrote dozens of the group’s songs, said The Stones sometimes copied The Beatles. “We started to notice that whatever we did the Stones sort of did it shortly thereafter,” he said.

“We went to America and had huge success, then the Stones went to America,” he said. “We did Sergeant Pepper and the Stones did a psychedelic album. There was a lot of that.”

Well, okay then. Now do understand, I loved the early Beatles stuff, and I still do. I can just remember my dad getting me out of bed to watch their first Ed Sullivan appearance when I was all of four years old, and I was enthralled. In fact, it was only when the Beatles went off the pop rails into the mondo-weirdo psychedelic ditch that they lost me. But let’s see what Jagger has to say.

Appearing on Zane Lowe’s Apple Music show on Friday, Jagger said there was “obviously no competition” between the two, adding about McCartney, “He is a sweetheart. I’m a politician.”

“The big difference, though, is that The Rolling Stones is a big concert band in other decades and other areas when The Beatles never even did an arena tour,” Jagger said. “They broke up before the touring business started for real… They did that [Shea] stadium gig [in 1965]. But the Stones went on.”

“We started stadium gigs in the 1970s and are still doing them now,” Jagger said. “That’s the real big difference between these two bands. One band is unbelievably luckily still playing in stadiums and then the other band doesn’t exist.”

Yeah, there’s that. Actually, I never have cared all that much for the Stones, although it’s basically less a question of who’s the better band than it is of whether you prefer rock to pop. Nonetheless, I do love me some Keef. And Charlie Watts still ranks as one of the greatest rock & roll drummers ever.

I may have mentioned before here that my beloved mother-in-law in NYC insisted on flying me and my late wife up to see the Stones on the Meadowlands date of their 2006 tour; neither Christiana nor I were very enthusiastic about the proposition, sharing an opinion of the Stones which could be summed up most pithily as: meh. But Xenia, who had seen the Stones their very first time in the States, stood firm. And BOY, was I glad she did. The show featured the Stones with the Uptown Horns, Chuck Leavell, and a whole slew of other top-flight guest artists as well. I admit it was truly one of the best shows I ever saw in my entire life.

Jagger in particular was a thing of wonder to behold. He ran—not walked or jogged, literally RAN—from one end of the huge stage to the other and back again…for more than two friggin’ hours. Nonstop. While, umm, “singing.” As I told the ladies, I couldn’t have done that shit when I was thirty, and he would have been, what, in his late 60s at the time? Incredible.

But longevity ain’t the only weight on the Stones’ side of the scale. Hate to get so personal and all, but with rock and roll royalty, this is the sort of thing that matters. This is who Paul married:

Just to be downright cruel about it, certain ungentlemanly scoundrels once referred to her as “the dog with Wings.” Ahem.

Now have yourself a gander at the one-time Mrs Mick:

Uhh, YEAH.

All things considered, though, the Beatles/Stones debate is made forever moot for me, nothing more than small potatoes, by a whole ‘nother, far more weighty consideration. See, even the Beatles and the Stones at one time or another hied themselves to Graceland to genuflect in justified awe and pay due obeisance to the once and forever King. And friends, there can only ever be just one.

Argument settled, sez I.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

A first

Posted on April 25, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

Namely, the first time I’ve ever endorsed Microsoft’s view on just about anything.

Microsoft has settled the great space debate, and sided with everyone who believes one space after a period is correct, not two. The software giant has started to update Microsoft Word to highlight two spaces after a period (a full stop for you Brits) as an error, and to offer a correction to one space. Microsoft recently started testing this change with the desktop version of Word, offering suggestions through the Editor capabilities of the app.

Much of the debate around one space or two has been fueled by the halcyon days of the typewriter. Typewriters used monospaced fonts to allocate the same amount of horizontal spacing to every character. Narrow characters like “i” got the same amount of space as “m,” so the extra space after the “.” was needed to make it more apparent that sentences had ended. Word and many other similar apps make fonts proportional, so two spaces is no longer necessary.

That hasn’t stopped the battle over one space or two from raging on for decades, however. A study on the hotly contested issue supposedly handed the victory to the two-spacers back in 2018, but many questioned the research and it clearly wasn’t enough to convince Microsoft. Expect to see the new changes in Word roll out to everyone in the coming months. Congratulations, fellow one-spacers.

The biggest problem I have with double-spacing is that the people who actually use it are wildly inconsistent. There are a handful of sites I regularly troll for blog-fodder (American Thinker comes to mind) whose articles are double-spaced…mostly. But in just about every double-spaced article you find out there, it’s a stylistic guideline honored more in the breach. Which means I either have to leave the thing as it stands—inconsistent and sloppy-looking, which irks the living hell out of me—or eyeball the excerpt closely and correct all that irritating laxity myself.

Which of course I do. Of course, I also occasionally (okay, frequently) miss something myself, sometimes spotting it later when I go back to check the post again. In such cases, I usually have no qualm whatsoever about making the correction, which is a felony-level infraction of the long-standing blogger protocol which dictates that publishing a post is analagous to engraving it into a stone tablet. Of course, I give not a single damn about that; spelling or grammatical errors, typos, even muddled phrasing are all subject to adjustment if and when I catch ’em. I make no apologies for that. My blog, my rules, dammit.

The third-party posting software I use has a setting that auto-saves and auto-publishes periodically, which I didn’t even know about until relatively recently. This meant that posts would be uploaded and published on the site prematurely, before I had even finished writing them. Throw in my habit of starting a post, getting partway through it and leaving the window open as a reminder to finish the thing eventually—you would not even BELIEVE the number of incomplete and now-abandoned posts I have still sitting in my posting app—and then coming back to it hours or even days later, and it adds up to a serious potential for confusion and disaster.

Trivial matters all, to be sure. But maybe Microsoft’s decision to walk away from the archaic double-space standard will lighten my burden at least somewhat.

Hope and despair

Posted on April 25, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

A little tough love.

Listen. You were always going to suffer and die. Everyone in your family was always going to suffer and die. Everyone you know was always going to suffer and die. All your earthly efforts were going to come to nought, your country and culture — and, least we forget, “the economy” — were going to degenerate and disappear, and the sun was going to expand into a red giant and consume the earth as though it had never existed. All that was always going to happen, and you knew it all along, or would have if you had been paying attention.

If you are in despair now but weren’t before, you’re an idiot. You do realize this game you signed up for is called mortal life, right? Did someone not explain that to you? Were you expecting something different? I don’t know anything about your situation, but I know it hasn’t fundamentally changed. You were born on death row. Don’t you think that should have made you a little tougher than this?

As for the all the dupes and caitiffs and hypocrites and quislings you suddenly find yourself surrounded by — I hate to break it to you, but they were already like that. All you’re seeing now is what their true colors were all along. That’s what the word apocalypse actually means, you know: Revelation. Revealing. Uncovering. The green field coming off like a lid. For just a second, you get a glimpse of all the men behind all the curtains in the world. The whited sepulchers may have looked nicer before they were opened, but they were full of dead men’s bones all along.

You should have come to terms with death and suffering and evil a hell of a long time ago, but if you somehow haven’t gotten around to it yet, well, now’s your chance to do so. (Or not. Distraction is always an option, of course. I hear porn sites are offering premium memberships for free.)

Shall I close by saying that God loves you and everything’s going to be all right? Fine. God loves you, and everything’s going to be all right. Just keep in mind that God has loved everyone who has ever lived on this earth, and that “everything being all right,” by God’s standards, is evidently consistent with every imaginable human tragedy. Go read Candide sometime. Or the Book of Job. Or any history book, really. God’s love offers no assurance at all against the kinds of things you’re probably scared of. In the end, I’m afraid there’s just no substitute for learning not to be scared of them. And there are only two ways of doing that.

Good stuff; read it all.

I’ve long been amused, since way before the recent farcical hysteria, by news reports or those scolding seat-belt commercials making specious claims about “lives saved” or “deaths prevented.” Sorry, no. In all of human history, there has never been a single death “prevented,” nor a single life “saved.” There have been deaths averted, lives spared, yes. But that’s a strictly temporary reprieve, a postponing of the inevitable fate that faces us all.

In the long run, there ain’t no long run. It turns out that life really is nasty, brutish, and short after all. Deal with it.

Now let’s get to the hope, by which I mean tonight’s Feel Good Story Of The Week.

A Florida kennel at an animal shelter is empty for the first time in history since all of its dogs were adopted.

Volunteers at the Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control cheered in front of empty dog cages in celebration.

According to the organization, the kennel is just one out of three at the facility, which usually houses strays and overflows from the adoption kennel. It is also the first one to have been emptied completely.

Happy tidings indeed. If that story don’t make you feel a little bit better about things,then I’m afraid I just can’t help you.

(Via WRSA and Larwyn)

Stand update! A small victory.

HOUSTON, Texas — Harris County law enforcement officials backed down as the owner of the Federal American Grill decided to re-open his restaurant on the city’s west side despite orders directing restaurants to be closed except for curbside orders. Multiple law enforcement agencies in Houston said they were not responsible for enforcing the ordinance.

“We’ve complied 100 percent until now,” Brice told the Houston Chronicle. “What I don’t like is that the government is picking and choosing which businesses win or lose. They are sinking the economy. We have to stand our ground and get people back to work.”

After he announced the re-opening of his restaurant for dining-in, customers flocked to his side. Brice said he is only seating up to 30 percent of his capacity in order to maintain social distancing.

Sounds sensible enough to me. Good on Houston LEOs too, for upholding their oaths and ignoring unlawful orders. TL Davis, while somber and realistic, remains guardedly optimistic:

This is communism in the 21st Century. This is what we have allowed to take over capitalism and individual freedom. Part of that is something Ted Nugent spoke about on Glenn Beck. Hunters, people who enjoy traipsing through the countryside to down, butcher and eat their food from nature, vote in the single digits, i.e., less than 10%. While I am no big fan of the vote at this point, where there is no actual representation due to the dilution of the Permanent Reapportionment Act of 1929 that froze congressional representatives at 435, it’s the only current defense against communism short of civil unrest. If hunters voted at 90%, as they should be by now, it would change the entire dynamics of every rural state in the Union and maybe some of those on the fringes of it.

While I believe we have suffered from the ongoing communist agenda promoted since Woodrow Wilson, there are ways to counter and perhaps eradicate it from American life, but a few people would have to recognize this pandemic for the blessings it offers and spend a lot more time trying to point out those blessings.

He goes on to list and analyze some of them, winding up thusly:

While we now have the tools to rectify a lot of damage done over the years, there is no assurance that these points will be made. They certainly won’t be made by the current media. Our stated goal at 12 Round Enterprises is to expose these actions even prior to the pandemic. We can take it back, we can change America forever. Or, we can lose again, only this time, it’s for all the marbles.

That’s about the size of it, yeah. After long decades of passively watching as our liberty was incrementally taken from us, we suddenly find ourselves confronting a true now-or-never, do-or-die moment. Choose wisely and hope’s flame will continue to flicker, until the next challenge confronts us. Choose poorly and the final darkness will envelop us, once and for all.

Freedom fighter update! Comrade Sundance gives us the straight izvestia.

A review of controlled social media shows various acts of civilian rebellion are being met with police arrests, detention and incarceration.

Some states have released inmates to make room to jail rebellious soccer moms and subversive members of churches who are non compliant with the dictates of their local command and control authority.

According to the national Lügenpresse proximity alerts have been sounding in/around west coast beaches as well as multiple parks in the northeastern unified control zones. As a result, additional enforcement personnel have been dispatched to these hot spots to avoid any outbreak of spontaneous liberty.

Compliance, while increasingly tenuous, is being maintained.

Simultaneous to the targeting of the rebels, armed behavior modification coaches (local police) have taken positions around Blue state public parks and beaches to identify, separate and arrest targeted provocateurs and subversives attempting to express liberty against the interests of the COVID-19 ministry.

He has pictures from the front lines too, including this:

27-Year-Old San Diego Woman Faces 90 Days in Prison for Organizing Anti-Lockdown Protest https://t.co/5oWFMC4CsK via @gatewaypundit

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) April 25, 2020

Disgusting, abominable, intolerable, and as un-American as it’s possible to imagine. The mind reels. I’ve read dystopian sci-fi and PAW fiction that was easier to swallow than this is.

Bait and switch

Posted on April 25, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

Uncle Gropey might be about to join Albert “Arnold The Pig” AlGore, Bolshevik Bernie, and HILLARY!™ in the official ranks of Those Who Will Never Be President.

While the mainstream media has mostly kept a lid on this story, the sexual assault allegations by Tara Reade against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden aren’t going away soon. As PJM’s Rick Moran reported earlier this week, the D.C. police are treating the allegations as an “active and ongoing” investigation. Many liberals are turning a blind eye to the story, but there are some who have a vested interest in keeping this story alive and front and center: Bernie Bros.

In fact, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders’ former campaign press secretary, who has been a vocal critic of Biden, suggested in an interview with The Atlantic that the allegations might just thwart Biden’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

Gray told Emma Green that the Democratic primary is far from over. “The Democratic Party would like us to believe [we’re now in the general election season], and they behaved that way even before Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. But we are, in fact, still in a Democratic-primary season. Biden is only the presumptive nominee,” she said, before adding, “And there’s all kinds of whispers and rumors about whether or not something might happen at the convention, which might mean Joe Biden isn’t even the nominee.”

Try as Enemedia might to insert their fingers into their ears and loudly sing tra-la-la I can’t heeaaar you until it all goes away, Reade’s accusation is entirely credible, with far more evidence to support it than was ever the case back when the self-same rectal polyps were defaming poor Brett Kavanaugh.

OF COURSE Gropey did it; a leap of faith as gargantuan as Evel Knievel’s ill-fated Snake River Canyon fiasco would be required to believe otherwise, given his long history of sniffing, nuzzling, feeling up, and just generally forcing his unwanted attentions on every appalled female within his reach, whatever the victim’s age. How much that really matters to high-level Democrat-Socialist Party conspirators is another thing entirely.

Gray suggests that Democrat voters were conned into believing that Joe Biden was the most electable candidate while Reade’s allegations were ignored for over a year. A new report from The Intercept published on Friday says that new evidence supports the credibility of Tara Reade’s allegations against Biden.

I think it’s clear, based on Gray’s comments in her interview, that Bernie Bros who are not happy about Biden being the presumptive nominee are going to make sure the Tara Reade allegations don’t get swept under the rug, in the hopes that they can pull off getting a different candidate on the ballot. While this is highly unlikely, in my opinion, I’m inclined to believe that there are enough Bernie Sanders supporters who will do anything they can to thwart Biden’s nomination. Even without the Tara Reade allegations, there’s enough for Democrats to be concerned about. Biden has an enthusiasm gap that is likely not going to change, and his cognitive decline will likely become a huge liability in the fall.

Throw in Uncle Gropey’s rapidly-escalating cognitive dysfunction and there ain’t gonna be enough popcorn in the world for this shitshow.

Are they sick, or just sadistic?

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Your tax dollars at “work.”

Feds Were Buying Cats from Chinese Wet Markets, Fed Them to American Cats for Research: Report

Wait, what?!?

Do you find your stomach turning when you think of the treatment and handling of domestic animals, and the apparent disregard for sanitation, at China’s now-infamous wet markets?

According to one report, you may have been providing those markets financial assistance for many years.

A March 2019 report from the White Coat Waste Project — a watchdog group that wants to “drain the swamp” by ending federal spending on projects that use dogs, monkeys, cats and other animals as guinea pigs — revealed that U.S. taxpayer funding went to these repulsive centers for death and disease.

And it gets worse.

According to the the report, U.S. government researchers had been conducting “kitten cannibalism” experiments — spending taxpayer dollars to buy cats and other animals from Chinese wet markets and then feeding their tissue to kittens in the U.S.

Well hey, it’s right there in the Constitution, you know.

The practice had apparently gone on for some time, too.

“Since 1982, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has conducted, and continues to perform, toxoplasmosis experiments on cats,” the report said.

“The currently approved protocol for this project calls for up to 100 kittens to be bred each year at ARS’s Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory (APDL) in Beltsville, Maryland. At eight weeks old, the kittens are fed raw meat infected with the Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite, and their feces is collected for up to 3 weeks so experimenters can harvest oocysts (eggs) for use in food safety experiments. These healthy kittens — who briefly pass the parasite’s eggs and become immune within weeks — are then killed and incinerated by USDA because they are no longer useful.”

That’s where the wet markets come in.

Now, I am not a scientist, a doctor, or a veterinarian, and can lay no claim to expertise about such things. Nonetheless, I have to ask: dude, what the fucking actual fuck???

Two ways of being an American?

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Nope.

Yesterday we published two seemingly unrelated news articles. Yet the story they tell when placed next to each other and viewed in the same gaze with clear eyes is one every American should hear and ponder.

First, we reported on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The darling of the “just left of Marx” camp, in an interview with Vice, stated that once the economic lockdowns are lifted, Americans should simply refuse to go back to work. Here’s what she said:

“When we have this discussion about ‘going back’ or ‘reopening,’ I think a lot of people should just say, ‘No. We’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to 70 hour weeks just so we could put food on the table and not even feel any semblance of security in our lives.'”

Americans should refuse to go back to work, she says. “No. We’re not going back to that,” we should say.

Back to what? To the greatest and most prosperous economic times humans have ever known. The highest wages and the lowest unemployment for all groups. Companies fighting each other to pay people more for their skills and services. The least amount of financial suffering of our lifetimes. An economic situation that should have caused any of us with a modicum of self-awareness, knowledge of history, and honor to say out loud every day, “Thank you, God, for this time in which I live.”+

That’s what AOC says we should refuse to go back to. The best we’ve ever had it. Because it wasn’t enough. The government should be giving us more, more, more — without us having to lift a finger. We deserve it. We are entitled to it.

That’s one way of being an American.

No, that’s one way of being UN-American, however gratingly Sandy from Westchester might protest otherwise.

Next, we reported on factory workers at a company called Braskem America in Pennsylvania. More than 40 employees made the collective decision in March to leave their families and live at the factory for 28 days, where they would eat, sleep, and take turns working 12-hour shifts to produce protective equipment for healthcare workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic. They clocked out yesterday after their month-long shift.

I couldn’t help but notice that every one of these workers appears to be male (extremely problematic lack of gender equity!). And may I hazard a guess that most of these men were raised to be men.

They lived in a factory. For a month. Doing factory work in 12-hour shifts. They agreed on it unanimously.

I wonder, did they each have an in-depth consultation with a union rep first? Did they demand quadruple-time “hazard pay”? Did they insist on more benefits, more accommodations, some equity, shorter work-weeks, and an extra paid month off next year as a “human right”? Did they require that the owner of the factory reduce his income a certain percentage before they’d do the work?

I don’t know these men, but I have a hunch that instead of all that, what they said was something like, “Alright, boys. We can help a lot of people and get some sweet overtime in the process. Let’s man up and take care of business.”

That’s another way of being an American.

In truth, theirs is the ONLY way. Or the only RIGHT way, at least. Whatever Juggs McMouthbreather might or might not believe herself to be, every peurile syllable out of her mouth proclaims that she has no concept whatever of what it means to be a real American, and likely never will.

(Via Insty)

A sane Democrat (no, really!) breaks ranks

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Good on ya, Congressman, and welcome aboard.

Georgia Democrat Vernon Jones said Thursday that the way his party has treated him since he endorsed President Donald Trump is proof that “they are the bigots they claim to hate.”

“The way the Democrat Party has treated me this past week has made one thing clear: they are the bigots they claim to hate and I won’t be silent about it,” Jones tweeted along with a video of local news coverage of his resignation from the state House.

Jones received immediate backlash from within his own party after he announced his support for Trump, saying that the president had done great things for the black community.

“I’m a Georgia State Representative and lifelong Democrat. But in this election, I’ll be casting my vote for @realdonaldtrump,” Jones tweeted just last week, adding, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Party left me.”

He threw in a Reagan quote too? No wonder the plantation overseers flipped out with rage on him.

“I’m sick and tired of me and my family being attacked and harassed by the Democrat Party for putting my country before my party,” Jones said in a statement released Wednesday and first obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

After the usual Democrat-Socialist shitfling over his sudden lapse into reason and rationality, Jones announced his intention to resign from office. Happily, he thought it over and decided to stick another thumb into their eye instead.

State Rep. Vernon Jones backtracked Thursday on plans to resign from his General Assembly seat, a day after announcing he would step down in the wake of fierce criticism for his endorsement of President Donald Trump’s reelection bid.

Jones, D-Lithonia, said on Twitter he decided to reverse course after receiving “overwhelming support and outcry” following his resignation decision Wednesday morning.

“That was emotional and that was motivational,” Vernon said, shortly before noting he will remain in the primary to hold his state House seat.

“Turn the lights off, I have left the plantation,” Jones said in a statement announcing his resignation Wednesday. “Someone else can occupy that suite.”

Again: good on ya, sir.

In recent comments, Jones criticized the Democratic Party as a stifling influence on conservative black Americans. He also hailed Trump’s economic record, his support for historic black colleges and universities, and for signing legislation to release low-level federal prisoners.

Jones has also lashed out against Democratic lawmakers for their stances on immigration, noting he prefers the crackdown approach Trump takes on illegal border crossings.

In a radio interview Wednesday morning, Jones said he plans to remain a Democrat despite the fact his statements of late have met with intense criticism from Georgia Democratic leaders.

“What are they going to do, spank me?” Jones said on The Rashad Richey Morning Show. “I don’t care what the Democratic Party is going to do.”

Nor should you. Nor should anybody, really.

Smoke ’em if ya got ’em

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Man, I’ve been waiting a long, long time for something like this.

French researchers are planning to trial whether nicotine patches will help prevent – or lessen the effects of – the deadly coronavirus.

Evidence is beginning to show the proportion of smokers infected with coronavirus is much lower than the rates in the general population.

Scientists are now questioning whether nicotine could stop the virus from infecting cells, or if it may prevent the immune system overreacting to the infection.

Doctors at a major hospital in Paris – who also found low rates of smoking among the infected – are now planning to give nicotine patches to COVID-19 patients.

They will also give them to frontline workers to see if the stimulant has any effect on preventing the spread of the virus, according to reports.

It comes after world-famous artist David Hockney last week said he believes smoking could protect people against the deadly coronavirus.

MailOnline looked at the science and found he may have been onto something, with one researcher saying there was ‘bizarrely strong’ evidence it could be true.

One study in China, where the pandemic began, showed only 6.5 per cent of COVID-19 patients were smokers, compared to 26.6 per cent of the population.

Another study, by the Centers for Disease Control in the US, found just 1.3 per cent of hospitalised patients were smokers – compared to 14 per cent of America.

And research by hospitals in Paris found that smokers were under-represented in both inpatients and outpatients, suggesting that any protective effect could affect anyone, not just those hospitalised by their illness.

‘Our cross-sectional study strongly suggests that those who smoke every day are much less likely to develop a symptomatic or severe infection with Sars-CoV-2 compared with the general population,’ the study reads.

‘The effect is significant. It divides the risk by five for ambulatory patients and by four for those admitted to hospital. We rarely see this in medicine.’

The team says it is not advocating that anyone start smoking because cigarettes have fatal health risks.

Well, naturally not. But why take any chances?

Another factor here in the States might be that we smokers have been “social distancing” for years now, if not by our own choice. As pariahs, societal lepers despised and cast out to slink away, in all kinds of weather, to our ever-shrinking “Smoking zone” ghettos, we’ve long been accustomed to decent folks keeping themselves far out of the way of our filth, our stench, all the revolting physical infirmities and deformations caused by our weak, sinful natures. Our exile has turned out to be a shield.

So not only has smoking, by being that which has not (yet) killed us, possibly made us stronger somehow, it also seems God has seen fit to bless smokers with some sort of mysterious Wuhan Woo Woo-inhibiting genetic quirk carried by our precious nicotine. O, Irony!

Hey, I’ll take it.

Must there always be a Harvard?

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Mike

Duh.

Woah.

I just noticed the bizarre cover image used for the Harvard Magazine article.

It shows a sad homeschool child imprisoned in a house while the other kids are outside playing.

Notice the house is made of books, one of them being the Bible 😱👻 pic.twitter.com/IZfaVuIA0G

— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) April 18, 2020

This is the part where I’d ordinarily toss off a snide comment or two, but I just can’t even.

Author Erin O’Donnell cited Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor with Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, to make the case for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling as a practice, arguing that the burden should be on parents to prove that they could educate their children in a manner approved by the state.

lolgetfucked, brainiac. Probably oughta have the nurse wipe the drool off your bib before you go making any more demands, seems to me.

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