Flotsam and/or Jetsam

A fitting tribute

Posted on January 16, 2021January 16, 2021 by Mike Leave a comment

Last night I made mention of Bon Scott, wondering whether or not he actually did play bagpipes. Turns out he did. That’s pretty cool all right. But wait, it gets even cooler.

AC/DC’s Bon Scott may hold bagpipes in new statue
A STATUE honouring former AC/DC frontman Bon Scott, to be erected in his home town, will feature the Highway to Hell star clutching a set of bagpipes – even though the instrument only figured on one AC/DC track – it has been proposed.

Plans to erect the monument to the singer in Kirriemuir, Angus, have been held back after campaigners disagreed over whether the likeness should be holding the traditional instrument instead of a microphone.

While local charity DD8 Music has already commissioned an architect to design the £40,000 figure, organiser Graham Galloway has launched a public consultation to decide what the people of Kirriemuir want to see in the rockstar’s hands.

Mr Galloway said today: “We’ve had a few people saying they are unhappy that Bon’s statue design features him holding bagpipes.

“We chose this design as we felt it emphasised Bon’s Scottish roots – something he was very proud of.

“It was also a link back to Kirriemuir, where Bon’s father Chick played in the local pipe band and, of course, Bon’s first experiences in music were drumming in the Fremantle band as a boy.

In order to gauge public opinion, Mr Galloway set up an online poll and at present, 85 per cent of the town is demanding bagpipes be included on the statue.

If they do this, I may have to relocate to dear old Scotland. Being of Scots-Irish descent on my mom’s side—as are multitudes of other heritage Southrons—I got roots there my own self. The Kirriemuir statue won’t be the first memorial honoring Bon’s iconic stature, however.

Scott is already honoured in a Kirriemuir street name and with an engraved stone slab in the town’s Cumberland Close alongside those of other famous people from the village.

In February 2008, a bronze statue of Scott was unveiled at Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour in Western Australia, where the singer spent much of his life.

I love it.

Way too little, way too late

Posted on January 15, 2021January 16, 2021 by Mike 2 Comments

What the hell took you so long?

On Thursday night, Lou Dobbs reported that President Trump ordered the release of the Obamagate intelligence documents.

Lou Dobbs: President Trump is declassifying top-secret documents all related to Obamagate. That is the coordinated and years-long spying against a presidential candidate and ultimately the President of the United States and his administration, that of Donald J. Trump.

Yeh, yeh, whatevs.

On Tuesday, The Gateway Pundit got word that President Trump was going to declassify all of the Russian hoax investigation documents.

They previously reported that Deep State operatives, including people inside the White House and ostensibly on “his” side, were urging the president to keep the information from the public.

In fact, President Trump promised several times that he would release everything on the Russian hoax before he left office.

The Trump administration must now make sure these documents are released to the public.

For what? The time when such a move might actually have done some good is long behind us now. Or is there anybody out there stupid enough to imagine that Usurper Joe’s crack Injustice Dept team is going to SPRING INTO ACTION and get to the bottom of that steaming, flyblown pile of corruption?

It’s like this: Yes, they did it. Yes, we all know that they did it. And yes, they got away with it. Declassification, threatened by Trump many months ago but never followed through on for whatever incomprehensible reason, is as futilely masturbatory at this point as screaming about the ziggurat of solid evidence of election fraud in 2020 is, nothing but a chattering-class circle jerk.

The Obamagate/Russiagate/Ukrainegate/FBIgate/Laptopgate scams are way past their sell-by date—as stale and moldy as Earth Shoes, Mood Rings, and your deceased Aunt Maude’s orange shag carpet. Who cares about the Barrackorrhoids’ 2016 election jiggery-pokery anymore anyhow? After all, the self-same mountebanks just successfully stole another one outright in front of our faces. They got away with that, too.

Hold on, though, it gets even worse.

CNBC Washington Correspondent Wamon Javors reported on Thursday that President Trump has a slew of pardons ready to go as well as plans to appoint special counsels to investigate meth addict Hunter Biden and possibly the Dominion voting machines!

Great. That’ll go on for, what, four days tops before Usurper Joe is inaugurated and cancels the whole thing? But hey, maybe somebody could talk Honest Jim Comey into spearheading a new “investigation” based on Trump’s tardy document-dump. Anything’s possible, right? What the heck, if you’re gonna dream, dream big.

And maybe, just maybe, the horse really will learn to sing.

Autonomous County Project

Posted on January 13, 2021January 13, 2021 by Mike 2 Comments

TL proposes a way forward.

This is a post that has been put off and put off due to other more pressing issues literally as the nation hangs in the balance. A presidential election affects the entire nation and therefore the unresolved nature of it is vexing. Regardless whether the election is settled or not, the change from a corrupted and dysfunctional republic to an all out communist state run by the puppet master that is China is another thing.

The Autonomous County Project is something designed to combat the communist wave sweeping the nation. The Constitution embodies some particular ideals that are important for a free people to cling to, even if they pack the courts and turn the Supreme Court into a liberal lovefest, finding everything under the sun “constitutional.” That is where we are. It’s important for the individual to demand their rights, especially when they are being ignored by the establishment. The Constitution embodies those rights, but it cannot create them and cannot destroy them. It can either be an aid in securing them or a nonsensical piece of paper. The difference is up to the people.

The Autonomous County Project is something that was quickly becoming necessary even without the recent election. It was already clear that the people of a given state held vastly different viewpoints from others in that state based on where they lived. Urban populations all over the nation have different values and concerns than the rural population. That in every state, the laws passed by representatives of the urban population were able to disregard the views and beliefs those in the rural part of the state. These blue islands in a sea of red had been able to control the state and therefore the run of the legislature on a state and a national level. But that, in effect, is a democracy, not a republic. The Constitution was written for an overwhelmingly rural people, not considering that at some point the number of people in the cities would outnumber those in the whole rest of the state. They understood the nation from a rural perspective, because they derived their greatest revenue from crops and that requires rural land.

But, one might say: “well, that’s how it works, the greater the population, the more weight in government.” But, it is not how it was supposed to work. There is one overlooked clause in the Constitution.

It’s a good, solid idea, and makes for interesting reading. But it puts the cart before the horse. No attempt at any kind of restoration will bear fruit unless and until our would-be masters are removed, the institutions corrupted by them unmade, the illegitimate power seized by them dissolved. Without all that, any effort to find a peaceful, non-violent way out of this awful situation can only be “interesting reading,” and nothing more.

The face of evil

Posted on January 13, 2021January 13, 2021 by Mike 1 Comment

Take a good, hard look at who they really are. Then act accordingly.

PBS principal counsel Michael Beller dreamed up big plans to punish his political opponents once Democrats are inaugurated in the White House.

“We go for all the Republican voters, and Homeland Security will take their children away,” Beller said in comments caught on tape and published by Project Veritas, comparing President Donald Trump to Hitler while saying the kids of Trump supporters should be sent to “re-education” or “enlightenment camps.”

“They’re [re-education camps] nice,” the tax-payer-funded attorney promised. “They have Sesame Street characters in the classrooms, and [the children] watch PBS all day.” Without them, Beller prophesied, the nation was breeding a new generation of evil, intolerant children who Beller demanded be subject to 20th-century-style internment.

“Kids who are growing up, knowing nothing but Trump for four years, you’ve got to wonder what they’re [Trump supporters’ children] going to be like. They’ll be raising a generation of intolerant, horrible people — horrible kids,” Beller said.

In the absence of a Biden win, Beller said prior to the November contest, then true patriots ought to “go to the White House and throw Molotov cocktails.”

Beller also celebrated COVID-19 outbreaks wreaking havoc in the homes of Trump-supporting deplorables, hoping the virus would kill off those who might dare vote for the incumbent president.

“What’s great is that COVID is spiking in all the red states right now. So that’s great … because either those people won’t come out to vote for Trump, you know the red states, or a lot of them [Trump supporters] are sick and dying,” Beller said. “Americans are so f-cking dumb. You know, most people are dumb.”

When it came to the nation’s capital, home of countless political elitists, Beller echoed the sentiment of members of the corrupt ruling class who possess nothing but disdain for those outside the Beltway. “It’s good to live in a place [D.C.] where people are educated and know stuff. Could you imagine if you lived in one of these other towns or states where everybody’s just … stupid?” Beller said.

“Unite” with fascist excrescences like these, in the interest of “healing our nation”? NEVER. I’ll see them all in Hell first. When it freezes.

Reminder: this pustule’s salary is paid with your tax dollars. Or was; after his rancid hate had been exposed to sunlight, PBS cut him loose with a quickness, in a transparent attempt to save face and keep the tax-money spigot a-flowing. Expect another insincere non-apology apology—the self-serving “I’m sorry I got caught” horseshit typical of every shitlib caught speaking his mind honestly—from the loathsome cockroach forthwith.

It would be nice to think this incident might render Beller permanently unemployable, so that he winds up homeless, disgraced, eventually starving to death on a cold, filthy sewer grate: a forgotten stewbum, wretched, friendless, and entirely miserable. But he won’t. He’s a lawyer, see. And no matter how slimy, how abhorrent, how just plain evil they may be, lawyers always seem to land on their feet somehow.

The Daily Donnybrook

Posted on January 8, 2021January 9, 2021 by Mike 68 Comments

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…

Size matters

Posted on January 6, 2021January 6, 2021 by Mike 5 Comments

Wait, whut?!?

John Dillermand has an extraordinary penis. So extraordinary, in fact, that it can perform rescue operations, etch murals, hoist a flag and even steal ice-cream from children.

The Danish equivalent of the BBC, DR, has a new animated series aimed at four- to eight-year-olds about John Dillermand, the man with the world’s longest penis who overcomes hardships and challenges with his record-breaking genitals.

Unsurprisingly, the series has provoked debate about what good children’s television should – and should not – contain.

Even more unsurprisingly, said “debate” revolves entirely around political correctness and shitlib shibboleths rather than how just plain fucked up the whole thing is.

Since premiering on Saturday, opponents have condemned the idea of a man who cannot control his penis. “Is this really the message we want to send to children while we are in the middle of a huge #MeToo wave?” wrote the Danish author Anne Lise Marstrand-Jørgensen.

Christian Groes, an associate professor and gender researcher at Roskilde University, said he believed the programme’s celebration of the power of male genitalia could only set equality back. “It’s perpetuating the standard idea of a patriarchal society and normalising ‘locker room culture’ … that’s been used to excuse a lot of bad behaviour from men. It’s meant to be funny – so it’s seen as harmless. But it’s not. And we’re teaching this to our kids.”

Worse still, it presents not just a male but his huge schlong specifically not as a terrifying, rape-addled fiend but as a superhero, which as we all know is COMPLETELY unacceptable.

Erla Heinesen Højsted, a clinical psychologist who works with families and children, said she believed the show’s opponents may be overthinking things. “John Dillermand talks to children and shares their way of thinking – and kids do find genitals funny,” she said.

Well hey, who doesn’t? Let him who is without sin cast the first etc. Now, who’s ready to learn something new? I know I am!

Højsted conceded the timing was poor and that a show about bodies might have considered depicting “difference and diversity” beyond an oversized diller (Danish slang for penis; dillermand literally means “penis-man”). “But this is categorically not a show about sex,” she said. “To pretend it is projects adult ideas on it.”

An “oversized diller.” Am I a bad person for finding that hilarious? Yes, there’s a still from the show’s inaugural episode included, although the depiction of this heroic Übercock might not conform to your expectations. It seems to be wearing some kind of stripey sweater, in fact. Either that, or Dillermand’s Dillywand sports some amazing tattoo work.

Ehh, no matter. Go get ’em, Penisman! Only you can save us now.

(Via MisHum)

Can’t stop the steal!

Posted on January 6, 2021January 6, 2021 by Mike 9 Comments

Current featured headlines at Liberty Daily:

We’ve Been Here Before: Georgia County Calls it a Night — Will Resume Counting in the Morning

Alert! Fulton County, Georgia BLOCKING Credentialed Election Monitors

Ho hum, same old same old. It’s all getting kinda boring at this point.

Laying down the law

Posted on January 5, 2021January 6, 2021 by Mike Leave a comment

They ain’t playing in Clay County, Fla.

Trust me, you don’t want to miss a word of this one, folks. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again: no matter how many cops like this guy there might be out there, we will never, ever have near enough of ’em.

Update! On the other hand.

A Black Lives Matter supporter attacked a Trump supporter this evening in Washington, leaving her face bruised and bloody. When other Trump supporters demonstrating for the president’s reelection struggle stepped in to protect the victim and request that the police arrest her assailant, the police responded by pepper spraying the entire group.

The DC Metro Police have repeatedly proven that the Blue Lives Matter movement must readjust their sights away from city cops. City cops are a different breed, they will cowardly follow the orders of Democrat mayors and stand down while cities burn, but they will quickly step into attack their own supporters.

Why defend them? Why pretend they are valiant heroes running into the Twin Towers?

GP reports on the only logical response:

A pro-Trump Marine went off on the DC Police after officers maced Stop the Steal protesters the night before Wednesday’s big rally.

Police have been using a very heavy hand with Trump supporters to protect the Antifa and Black Lives Matter militants who are gathered in BLM Plaza.

“You lost both sides of support. We had your f***ing back, but we ain’t got your back no more!” the man shouts.

Just as we can never have enough cops like that Florida sheriff, in certain parts of the country we are badly oversupplied with, y’know, the other kind.

Unpleasantness: coming

Posted on January 4, 2021January 4, 2021 by Mike Leave a comment

After months of unchecked—officially sanctioned, more like—pAntiFa/BLM rioting, looting, and burning, looks like law and order may be making an unlooked-for and highly selective comeback.

DC mayor calls in National Guard ahead of pro-Trump protests

Because of course she is.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bracing for possible violence, the nation’s capital has mobilized the National Guard ahead of planned protests by President Donald Trump’s supporters in connection with the congressional vote expected Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden’s election ~~victory~~ theft.

Fixed it for ya, shitlib assholes.

Trump’s supporters are planning to rally Tuesday and Wednesday, seeking to bolster the president’s unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. “There are people intent on coming to our city armed,” D.C. Acting Police Chief Robert Contee said Monday.

A pro-Trump rally in December ended in violence as hundreds of Trump supporters, wearing the signature black and yellow of the Proud Boys faction, sought out confrontations with a collective of local activists attempting to bar them from Black Lives Matter Plaza, an area near the White House.

On Monday, Metropolitan Police Department officers arrested the leader of the Proud Boys, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, 36, after he arrived in Washington ahead of this week’s protests. Tarrio was accused of burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn down from a historic Black church in downtown Washington during the December protests.

Shoulda torched Old Glory instead, nobody woulda said a word.

Now with downtown D.C. businesses boarding up their windows, Mayor Muriel Bowser has requested a limited National Guard deployment to help bolster the Metropolitan Police Department. During a press conference on Monday, Bowser asked that local area residents stay away from downtown D.C., and avoid confrontations with anyone who is “looking for a fight.” But, she warned, “we will not allow people to incite violence, intimidate our residents or cause destruction in our city.”

Elected officials damned well ought to be intimidated—every minute of their day, every single day, until a proper fear of We The People has been re-instilled in them again, after which it becomes a permanent condition for them. Otherwise, we wind up here:

When you see that justice is measured, not by due process, but by compulsion; when you see that in order to invoke your first amendment right to speech, you need to obtain permission from the same voices who rebuke the constitution; when you see that justice is determined by those who leverage, not in law, but in politics; when you see that men get power over individual liberty by graft and by scheme, and your representatives don’t protect you against them, but protect themselves against you; when you see corruption holding influence and individual liberty so easily dispatched and nullified; you may well know that your freedom too is soon to perish…

SOON to? Regarding Sundance’s mention of the 1st Amendment, I’ll repeat what I’ve so often said about the 2nd: anything you must beg government’s permission for is by definition no longer a right, regardless of what the Constitution might have to say about the matter. It has been reduced to a mere privilege, which can be revoked at the government’s whim.

Can you blame ’em?

Posted on January 4, 2021January 4, 2021 by Mike 12 Comments

Can’t say as I do.

U.S. health care workers are first in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine — but an alarming number across the country are refusing to do so.

Earlier this week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine disclosed that about 60 percent of the nursing home workers in his state have so far chosen not to get vaccinated.

More than half of New York City’s EMS workers have shown skepticism, The Post reported last month.

And now California and Texas are experiencing a high rate of health care worker refusals, according to reports.

An estimated 50 percent of frontline workers in Riverside County in the Golden State opted against the drug, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing public health officials.

More than half of the hospital workers at California’s St. Elizabeth Community Hospital that were eligible to receive the vaccine did not, the newspaper.

And in the Lone Star State, a doctor at Houston Memorial Medical Center told NPR earlier this month that half the nurses in the facility would not get the vaccine, citing political reasons.

Well, let’s see now. Government “health” officials have lied about the Shamdemic from the beginning, and are still lying about it. The “vaccine” itself is an entirely new mRNA type, a significant departure from vaccines as traditionally conceived and understood. Its potential harmful effects—hell, even how it works, when it does at all—are closer to guesswork and assumption than hard science. Its long-term effects are unknown, and unknowable. Unlike other vaccines, the CDC admits that “At the moment I don’t believe we have the evidence of any of the vaccines to be confident that it’s going to prevent people from actually getting the infection and therefore being able to pass it on“—which is kinda what actual vaccines are, y’know, FOR.

Apart from the rush to market of this “vaccine”; inadequate testing; the government’s established record of deceit and manipulation; and the number of people keeling over dead after being “vaccinated,” there’s also the simple fact that people under 80 who don’t suffer from a serious disease or chronic condition have a near-100% chance of surviving THE VIRUS THE VIRUS THE VIRUS!™ without any “vaccine” anyway. Far as I’m concerned, anybody intent on forcing this one on me better bring plenty of help, as well as some stout cargo straps to hold me down. Because I ain’t gonna be taking it willingly.

Annus horribilis: that was the year that was

Posted on December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 by Mike

Look back in anger.

This year has been strange in many ways, but one bit of weirdness that has gone unnoticed is the paucity of predictions for the coming year. For as long as anyone reading this has been alive, this time of year has featured both year in review content and predictions content. This year both have been limited. Maybe the awfulness of 2020 is keeping people from thinking much about it. The wild unpredictability we have seen has probably made forecasters squeamish about predicting anything.

Y’know, now that ZMan brings it up I’ve noticed the same myself, although I didn’t really think too much about it. He sizes up a few his own predictions from last year:

The Light of Lagos was pretty much a dud last year. The omens got some of the Democrat primary right, but not enough to claim a victory. Biden did struggle and Warren flamed out early. Buttigieg did better in Iowa than most expected, but Sanders was the story until the party rigged the system to install Biden. No one predicted Biden would win the nomination and no one ever imagined that buffoon as president, so the omens can be forgiven for missing that one.

The impeachment fiasco played out as predicted, but that was easy money, so no victory lap there either. The real shocker is in how the whole thing was thrown down the memory hole so quickly. No one talks about it. It’s like how someone gets crazy drunk at a party and makes a fool of himself. The next day there is some ribbing from friends, but then it is forgotten. The Democrats danced around with a lampshade on their heads and after it was over, everyone forgot about it.

Now, the big hit was the Barr stuff. It is amazing how so many people thought something would happen with that charade for so long. When Trump brought Barr in it seemed like something would happen, but it quickly became clear that it was just another coverup. Barr was brought in to make sure the truth of the FBI corruption never saw the light of day. You have to wonder if Trump was too stupid to see what was happening or that he signed off on it, despite his tweets.

Of course, the big miss was the Covid panic and how it has been used to turn much of America into a penal colony. No one predicted it, because such a thing seemed implausible just a year ago. It really is shocking to think about how much has changed in just 12 months. This time last year people were planning vacations, walking around with no curfew, having people over to their homes. If someone had predicted this, they would have been dismissed as a crazy person.

Yup. Those loony “conspiracy theories” don’t look quite so loony when they’ve become mundane reality, just how we all live now, do they? All in all, the situation brings to mind Hemingway’s famous response when asked how he went bankrupt: Gradually, then all at once.

That’s the way these things usually go, although it may feel otherwise sometimes. The subtext here, like it or not, is our slow national devolution into tyranny. As with Carl Sandburg’s fog, tyranny creeps in on little cat feet, quiet and little-noticed. At the end-stage of its establishment, its confusticated victims are left wondering what the hell hit ’em. The difference is that tyranny never just “sits…on silent haunches, and then moves on.” It lingers, constantly expanding: strangling, draining, devouring all within its grasp.

The only rights tyranny acknowledges are exclusively its own, and without limit. All claims made by its subjects asserting rights of their own are of no interest or import, spurious impositions unworthy of serious discussion. Tyranny will be moved not a whit by appeals to reason, justice, or mercy. It doesn’t repent, relent, reconsider, or admit error. Nor does it ever just go away on its own, peaceably, which would amount to a tacit admission of error. To be rid of it, tyranny must be driven off by force, which takes quite a bit of doing. It’s an arduous process, by no means quick, convenient, or painless. But it’s the only option.

Should the effort to overthrow tyranny and restore liberty prove successful, it will by no means be irreversible; the very idea that victory even could be permanent must be vigorously shunned. Such complacency is extremely dangerous, and is the surest way to hasten tyranny’s return. Against tyranny, vigilance must be rigorously maintained; disregard is precursor to defeat.

Fake but accurate

Posted on December 31, 2020December 31, 2020 by Mike

Too, TOO accurate. But if this way of expressing the idea doesn’t suit ya and you’re on friendly terms with any old-school country types, just ask ’em what they mean when they speak of somebody having been “corncobbed.” Same thing, really.

Swiped from the ONT.

When she’s right…

Posted on December 28, 2020December 28, 2020 by Mike

…the girl is RIGHT.

IMPORTANT THREAD 👇

Many people scoff at my progressive ideas and predictions.

But eventually, they *always* come true.

So I thought I’d start compiling a list of every time I was ahead of the curve…

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) December 18, 2020

Gorillapundit helpfully converted a few of her followup Tweets to plain text:

TITANIA’S PREDICTIONS

On 22 December 2018, I called for biological sex to be removed from birth certificates.
On 17 December 2020, the New England Journal of Medicine concurred.

On 1 October 2019, I suggested that young women should be encouraged to travel alone in rural Pakistan.
On 12 October 2019, Forbes Magazine concurred.

On 19 September 2018, I criticised Julie Andrews (aka Mary Poppins) for chimney soot blackface.
On 28 January 2019, the New York Times concurred.

And so they all did. A couple more:

On 6 June 2019, I demanded an option to mute white males.
On 14 July 2020, Instagram concurred.

On 21 December 2018, I wrote an article to endorse fighting with relatives during the holiday season.
On 28 November 2019, the Nation concurred.

Titiana must have some sort of weird magical prognosticative power or something, bless her heart. For his own part, GP continues with a “Woke Or Joke?” meme compendium that’s sure to leave almost anyone totally stumped.

Sign o’ the times

Posted on December 28, 2020December 28, 2020 by Mike

See if you notice anything, ummm, odd in this article about thankfully-now-banned Murder Toys. I’ll boldface certain passages to help out.

7 Absurdly Dangerous Toys That Your Parents And Grandparents Probably Got For Christmas
From a science kit that contained uranium to a toy gun that generated fireballs, these dangerous toys would launch a thousand lawsuits if they were released today.

Every generation looks back on its childhood toys with nostalgia. But the consumer products of yesteryear weren’t always up to today’s safety standards. On the contrary, the seven dangerous toys listed here show just how much times have changed.

Well, that last part’s true, at least. But maybe not in quite the way the author seems to think.

From 12-inch lawn darts that pierced the skulls of at least a dozen kids to “toy” guns now considered actual firearms in several American states, these toys from the past doubled as deadly weapons.

Older generations may bemoan increasing safety measures. But the waning popularity (or outright banning) of the seven toys listed below have undeniably saved countless lives.

Believe it or not, your parents played with these toys — and somehow survived to chuckle about it.

Okay, pal, which is it: “dozens,” or “countless”? Because one of those things is NOT like the other.

He goes on to wring his delicate hands over the “More than a dozen” kids who strangled to death after getting themselves tangled up in some poorly-designed mini-hammocks. That uranium-enriched science kit apparently had no deaths at all to raise its body count, and there are no hard numbers cited for any of the rest of the 7 Deadly Threats either. Which leaves the author’s ban-happy conclusion regarding these “vintage throwback to a less responsible time” open to debate, shall we say.

As for the other banned toys on this list, it’s certainly for the best that they’re no longer for sale.

Don’t get me wrong: a child’s life lost due to a damned toy—regardless of whether the thing was poorly thought-out, defective, or incorrectly used—is certainly a wrenching, soul-scarring thing, a tragedy I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Every parent whose child’s life ends too soon, from ANY cause, deserves our sympathy.

But government bans using such a small percentage of fatalities or injuries as justification should raise some serious questions in the minds of every one of us. There are larger issues at stake, involving who we are and what kind of country we wish to live in, and those questions merit careful consideration in their own right. Smugly dismissing the never-ending debate over freedom, self-determination, and government overreach as no more than a quaint artifact from “a less responsible time” just ain’t gonna cut it.

They Live Lie

Posted on December 28, 2020December 28, 2020 by Mike

John updates Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave for the modern era, putting the cherry on top with some truly painful puns and a canny reference to John Carpenter’s classic film They Live.

The bad news is, to one extent or another, we’re all prisoners of the cave. We see misperceptions in our daily life, either of our own construct or as constructed for us.

Who would construct misperceptions for us?

Lots of people. Here are a few examples:

Harry Truman, on August 6, 1945, said: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.” Well, sure. It was a militarily important city. And farms were militarily important because they made food that people might eat. And schools were militarily important because they educated children that could fight us. But that would be like saying, “San Francisco, an important American Army base.” (Note: I’m not saying I disagree with the decision, just that Truman’s statement was shady as a Netflix® show about dancing children.)

Operation Northwoods: Essentially a plan from the Pentagon for our military to stage terrorist attacks in the United States while pretending to be Cubans as a justification to attack Cuba. Really. Here’s the Wikipedia® on that (LINK). Not Alex Jones. Wikipedia™.

The CIA performed illegal mind control experiments on American and Canadian civilians. Here’s the Wikipedia (LINK). Most of the documents were burned, so there’s no telling how many people were impacted. When I first heard of this, my response was that it was impossible. Nope. They did it.

Let’s pull the media in, too. The New York Times® “reporter” Walter Duranty wrote stories that there was no mass starvation in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, despite knowing that millions were being starved to death on purpose. Duranty got a Pulitzer Prize™ for his lies – a prize that has never been rescinded. I wrote about that starvation here (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver Medals).

I could do dozens more where the government, academia, industry, or unions lied and most people believed them. I’ve written about those again and again – the 1960’s Harvard Sugar Study, anyone (High Carbs, Harvard, Insurance, And Avoiding Doctors)? If it was just statements from politicians that were lies that most of us believed? I don’t have enough electrons on my computer to store all of those.

Essentially, unless I get up and go outside of the cave I’m in, I’m sitting and watching those shadows on the wall. But when I do get up and go outside of that cave, I learn amazing things – all those things that are glossed over in history classes, and generally not easy to find, though they’re (for today) clearly documented on even Left-leaning sites like Wikipedia®.

Fifteen year old me wanted to believe in the government, wanted to believe that the press wasn’t hopelessly corrupt. Me in 2020 has seen too much.

If you haven’t seen the movie They Live, there is a scene where the protagonist tries to help his friend stop staring at the shadows on the wall of the cave. In the movie, there are sunglasses you can wear to see a different reality. The clip below from the movie, with Rowdy Roddy Piper playing the protagonist, and Keith David playing his reluctant friend who really, really doesn’t want to put on the glasses (some NSFW dialog):

Since I always just loved the flick—and Rowdy Roddy, and what the heck, Keith David too—I’m more than happy to endorse Wilder’s example by using the sincerest form of flattery.

Possibly the longest fistfight sequence in all of moviedom, but for me it never gets old. Back to John for the payoff.

Leaving the cave is scary, and it’s difficult. And I absolutely don’t promise that understanding reality a little bit better will make you happy – it’s very likely to have the opposite effect. But it will bring you one step closer to the truth.

Maybe you and I can finally figure out what those shadows really are.

Let’s go see what’s outside.

By all means, let’s. Admittedly, there’s plenty of the real, the bad, and the scary out there, sort of offsetting the beauty and grace. But in the end, the truth is the only thing that can set us free. And by now we all ought to have learned that the chances of ever getting even the smallest morsel of truth from Ruling Class reprobates who have for so long fed us nothing but falsehood hovers somewhere betwixt None whatsoever and You can’t be serious.

The Daily Donnybrook

Posted on December 26, 2020January 9, 2021 by Mike

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…

The power of Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2020December 24, 2020 by Mike

You might be surprised when you learn where the following comes from.

Christmas is such a unique idea that most non-Christians accept it, and I think sometimes envy it. If Christmas is the anniversary of the appearance of the Lord of the Universe in the form of a helpless baby, it’s quite a day. It’s a startling idea, and the theologians, who sometimes love logic more than they love God, find it uncomfortable. But if God did do it, He had a tremendous insight.
People are afraid of God and standing in His very bright light. But everyone has seen babies and almost everyone likes them. So, if God wanted to be loved as well as feared, He moved correctly here. And if He wanted to know people, as well as rule them, He moved correctly, because a baby growing up learns all there is to know about people.
If God wanted to be intimately a part of Man, He moved correctly. For the experience of birth and familyhood is our most intimate and precious experience.
So, it comes beyond logic. It’s what a bishop I used to know called a kind of divine insanity. It is either all falsehood or it is the truest thing in the world. It is the story of the great innocence of God the baby. God in the power of Man. And it is such a dramatic shot toward the heart, that if it is not true, for Christians, nothing is true.
So even if you did not get your shopping all done, and you were swamped with the commercialism and frenzy, be at peace. And even if you are the deacon having to arrange the extra seating for all the Christmas Christians that you won’t see until Easter, be at peace. The story stands.
It’s all right that so many Christians are touched only once a year by this incomparable story. Because some final quiet Christmas morning, the touch will take.

Lovely sentiments, from a unique angle. Ready for the Big Reveal, then? Here it comes.

Of all the great and small events of 1991, the death of CBS News’ “60 Minutes” co-host Harry Reasoner probably rates near the bottom in the amount of attention afforded it by the public.
When Harry died, I recalled a commentary he did when he worked for ABC News in the early 1970s. The commentary was an unlikely one for a man of his position. Most people believe that news people, particularly those at the network level, rarely think of much beyond current events and their own careers. But Harry was different, and his easy-going manner allowed him to address subjects others might approach with more difficulty.
On Christmas Eve, 1973, in the midst of growing turmoil over the Watergate scandal, a troubled economy, wars and rumors of wars in the Middle East and uncertainty over the future of U.S.-Soviet relations, Harry delivered the following commentary…

Not only a journo, a 60 MINUTES journo at that. Go ahead, pick your chin up off your chest as Cal Thomas takes us on home.

Christmas has a power over those who observe it, and those who do not, that is unlike any other holiday or event. The other 364 days of the year we can be caught up in affairs of world-shaking significance, but on Christmas it is as if all systems shut down and we are given a chance to focus on something of greater significance than the headlines or the vacuous babble of television. Perhaps for some this Christmas, the touch will take.

I imagine so. I’ll take it as my cue to excerpt one of my own Christmas posts of yore.

Most of my pleasures in life somehow seem to involve loud noises. The sound of a full-auto .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun rapidly slinging a ton of lead, the “tink” of the shattered shards bouncing off steel targets: ecstasy. The full-throated roar of a finely-tuned, straight-piped, and hot-rodded Harley as you wind it up way too high in second gear and blast like a bullet down a city street or country lane: instant penile tumescence. The sound of a viciously-attacked electric guitar settling deeply into an open A-chord coming through a cranked-up old Fender or Marshall Plexi amp, razoring through your skull as the amp’s tubes simply scream for mercy and the bass and drums thump you in the chest actually disrupting your heart rhythm, and pink-haired nose-pierced vixens and tattooed greasy-haired half-thugs bump into you on the way to the front row: nothin’ more fun than that. The halfwit roar of a house party reaching its peak, with shouted conversations and loud music and shattering glass forming a near-symphonic crescendo: nothing like it but more of it; bring it on. These are a few of my favorite things. After all these years of hard living, I seem to have turned into a lumpen sort of Mr Rogers Antichrist, the direct opposite of the calm demeanor and dulcet soothing pablum presented by ol’ Fred. Eardrum damage, permanent hearing loss, and general angst, with a thrumming undertone of perpetually-imminent knucklehead violence, seem to go with the territory in the seedy environs of Mr Hendrix’s Neighborhood. Even the cockroaches make an unusually loud crunch when you crush ’em.
But Christmas is different. When I was in New York, I thought Christmas was just the greatest. At Christmas I just feel, I dunno, lighter somehow.
And now I’m back again in the most citified part of a generally-countrified region, and I can drive past farms all lit up at night with decorations and candles and such, or I can cruise around my neighborhood with the heat turned up and the radio turned down and poke gentle fun at the gaudiness and tackiness of the electric Santas and neon reindeer perched on the roofs or mock-grazing in the yards. And I love every bit of it. I do, so help me.
Breathes there a man with soul so dead that he doesn’t feel at least a little thrill when George Bailey stands on that snow-swept bridge with his mouth bleeding and his hair and clothing all askew and yells “Whaddya know about that! Merry Christmas!”? Or can keep himself from choking up just a little when Harry walks in smiling and toasts “To my brother George: the richest man in town”? Come on, guys, we’re all men here (even the women, in a sense); you can admit it – there’s no shame in it as far as I’m concerned.
And then there’s Christmas Day itself. On Christmas Day I will be running around between my dear departed dad’s side of the family, my mom’s, and my girlfriend’s. Thank heaven her parents never divorced, I’ll say that. I’ll get to see relatives I don’t see all that much of anymore, some of whom I loathe but most of whom I love very much indeed. I’ll eat way too much and receive unanticipated gifts I scarcely deserve, some from people who don’t even know me all that well anymore but thought to get me something anyway. Oh, the greed. Oh, the stinking and uniquely American avarice. Bah, humbug. And at some point, usually during the drive from my dad’s people to my mom’s (which is a route that takes me through some countryside that is always beautiful no matter how badly the developers try to screw it up, and they’ve labored mightily to in the past several years, believe me), I’ll hear Perry Como or Nat King Cole or Bing Crosby or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing one of those tired old chestnuts that we all pretend to be so sick of on the car radio, and the frost on the fields and pasture-land out the window will fairly gleam in the sunlight, and the cows’ and horses’ breath will steam out from their big dumb nostrils, and this certain farmhouse on a hill that my mom always just loved will have its giant Christmas tree lit up in the huge picture window that fronts the road. And then that enveloping quietness will settle deep in my chest where what passes for my soul lives, and I’ll be completely at peace for a moment. For that I’m most profoundly grateful to all things Christmas, because without the entire sum total of the harried millions in New York rushing about like mad worker bees, and the tacky holiday displays in my neighborhood, and the endless TV commercials exhorting us to buy buy buy, and the piped-in music, and the old movies we’ve all seen a million times, and the ever-controversial Baby Jesus manger displays financed probably unconstitutionally with city-government money—without all that, this blessed spiritual convergence of peace and quiet would never happen for us.

And now, looking back over that passage in light of recent events, I don’t believe we can do without it, nor afford to ever lose it.

Turnabout is fair play

Posted on December 24, 2020December 24, 2020 by Mike

Let the remoras and leeches of government share our pain. At all levels, in every way, in full measure.

In late September, Congress passed a bill to keep the government funded at current levels through this Friday. Trump has refused to sign the comprehensive funding bill tied to providing new $600 stimulus checks to qualifying Americans. It’s clear that they don’t have much time to resolve their disagreements and pass a law President Trump will support.

Most likely, they will pass another extension, but Trump has already signaled he would rather use a pocket veto and let the next president handle the issue than sign a bill he can’t support. Such a standoff risks a government shutdown if a solution cannot be passed and signed.

President Trump has had three shutdowns in his term as president, the longest being 35 days between December 2018 and January 2019 over the issue of funding for the border wall. That shutdown forced about 800,000 federal government workers to go on furlough without pay. If an extension is not passed to avoid a shutdown, thousands of government workers considered nonessential would again be furloughed or forced to work without pay until the shutdown ends.

Government leaders love to say how they experience our pain for the lockdowns generated in many Democrat controlled states and cities during the COVID Pandemic restrictions. Many Americans have lost jobs; some have lost their businesses. Government workers can talk as though they understand, but they’ve had no cuts in salary or their retirement plans. They have been insulated from the consequences of their own actions.

When have they ever NOT been? In truth, our Masters go to extraordinary lengths to ensure they’re protected, and always will be.

It’s a wonderful…

Posted on December 24, 2020December 24, 2020 by Mike

…WAR MOVIE?!?

I have watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” every Christmas I can remember, but the holiday classic film took on a whole new meaning for me this year.

I knew that the film had been released in 1946, just after both actor Jimmy Stewart and director Frank Capra had returned from war, but I only learned recently the impact that the war had on the finished product.

The movie was Capra’s idea, and he knew from the start that he wanted Stewart to play the iconic role of George Bailey. But Stewart, an Army Air Corps squadron commander who was grounded by PTSD after 20 combat missions over Europe in a B-24, wanted to do a comedy.

Stewart told reporters when he returned to Hollywood that the world had seen enough death and misery, and when Capra approached him with the story of a family man nearly driven to suicide, he balked and left the meeting.

But Stewart, who at the time was sharing an apartment with fellow veteran Henry Fonda, wasn’t getting any other offers. He eventually agreed to take the role.

Army veteran Alex Plitsas told the Daily Caller that it was only after returning from Iraq that he truly understood Stewart’s performance in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“I was able to understand the movie and [Stewart’s] performance in particular much better after coming home from Iraq. It’s as much of a war film as ‘Die Hard’ is a Christmas movie,” Plitsas said, adding, “Jimmy Stewart’s performance in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ during the throes of Post Traumatic Stress (PTS) is recognizable to many veterans. PTS was referred to as “shell shock” back then and wasn’t really spoken about nor was there good treatment available. Stewart appeared to use acting as therapy to get through it, and it’s visible in his performance.”

Intriguing stuff for sure. I thought I knew just about all there was to know about IAWL, but I didn’t know this.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

Update! Don’t believe I’ve ever embedded anything from another of my all-time Christmas faves here, so this seems like a fine time to do it.

BE ADVISED: Only the 1947 original version, in black and white, is acceptable. Do NOT allow yourself to be taken in by any sorry-assed remakes or washed-out “colorized” atrocities. Edmund Gwenn. Maureen O’Hara. John Payne. Natalie Wood. Black. And. White. The genuine item. Nothing else will do.

You have been warned.

Highbrows going low

Posted on December 23, 2020December 23, 2020 by Mike

The rich are different from you or I. Except when they ain’t.

The by-product of New York-area real estate demand isn’t just limited to staggering price tags. It also tends to create cachet with areas that other, less intense markets might consider just plain peculiar. Case-in-point: Montauk Shores, a trailer park with million-dollar listings, billionaire residents, and a parking lot filled with six-figure cars. A stone’s throw from Andy Warhol’s beach getaway and Dick Cavett’s famous estate and situated along Ditch Plains Beach, Montauk Shores —“the park,” as it’s familiarly known throughout the Hamptons—got its start as a modest campground for surfers and beach bunnies, becoming a co-operatively owned mobile home condominium park in 1976, before its recent reinvention as a real estate juggernaut.

Peter and Lois Moore, husband-and-wife brokers with The Corcoran Group, have had several exclusive listings in Montauk Shores over the years, so AD caught up with them to discuss property trends in what has become a heated real estate enclave. “About seven or eight years ago, these trailers became rather popular, and the waterfront lots came to be acquired by high-net-worth individuals,” Peter explains. For units along the water, the Moores say to expect a seven-figure price tag, while lots a few rows inland tend to hover between a half-million to a million. “It’s been a steady climb,” Peter says. “We have seen more consistency in pricing on an upward curve than we have in other residential areas.” Because of its proximity to the beach, the units have been subject to another only-in-the-Hamptons real estate trend. “Oftentimes, they’re second homes for buyers who don’t stay in them; they just use them as beach cabanas,” Peter explains.

7 figures? Okay, I come from a long line of confirmed trailer trash on my mom’s side. I have friends who have lived in trailer parks, and have whiled away many a pleasant hour hanging out in their homes. I have lived in a trailer park my own self.

Suffice it to say, then, that I have no problem whatsoever with the mobile-home lifestyle. So I feel qualified to state with perfect confidence that the article’s accompanying photo shows what is definitely a very nice trailer park—EXTREMELY nice, probably the nicest I’ve ever seen. Neat, well-kept, organized, clean. No sign of the decay, neglect, and chaotic clutter common to such places.

The first trailer I lived in had been my mom’s years before, a custom job she purchased when my folks split up in 1979. She sited the trailer on land bought by her folks way back in 1937, around eight-ten acres that my grandparents farmed right up until my grandpa dropped dead of a heart attack on his way home from an all-night poker game, in 1976. After living there for several years, my mom moved into the renovated farmhouse that still shares the family plot with that old trailer, which her sister and brother-in-law took over in their turn. They happily lived there for the rest of their lives. My aunt Sarah went first, her old man Rabbit (actually Hubert, which he just hated) succumbing to his overwhelming grief shortly after.

The old trailer sat empty for several years after that, gradually going to hell just as all houses will when left to sit unoccupied for long periods. Then, when my own marriage blew up in my face, I moved in. After I’d been in the place a few months, I was struck with the idea of getting hold of some iron pipe and fabricating a submarine periscope, to be mounted up on the rusty roof just for giggles. Unfortunately, I never did it. My uncle Larry bought the house and land from my mom and stepdad years back. An old WestPac Navy man, he moved his Filipino wife and her young ‘uns in, and they live there still. One of his stepsons is in my mom’s old trailer now, having done extensive renovations and repairs with assistance from his American wife, who’s a dab hand at projects of that nature.

I’m perfectly fine with trailers. But I don’t care HOW nice the trailer (or the park it sits in) is, or how much family history is wrapped up in it, trailers are basically just cheap tin cans—flimsy, cramped domiciles shaped exactly like your standard box of saltines. Not very many people move into a trailer intending to stay there forever. The things are only built to last for around twenty years or so anyway. After that, the place will start to cave in around your ears, with leaky roofs, drafty windows, holes in the floors, sagging cabinets, and such-like suddenly cropping up as if they were on a strict schedule.

Standard trailer doors are nothing but two thin layers of aluminum over a styrofoam core. Any healthy pre-teen could easily kick his way through one without straining himself, and I’m sure plenty of them have. The fixtures are all cut to odd-ball sizes and dimensions, and you can’t just trot on off to Lowes when you need to replace a window or a sink. There are mobile-home stores expressly dealing in that stuff, at surprisingly high prices, too.

A trailer is NEVER an “investment.” Not even close. It’s a product with a depreciation rate higher than a three-owner Yugo’s, one which appeals exclusively to the niche-est of niche markets. A trailer is typically either A) a temporary stand-in for the real house you hope to step up to later; B) a crash pad for bottom-of-the-societal-barrel types to get roaring drunk in on weekends, and/or cook meth in; or C) a place where destitute older people go to die. Also scattered in amongst the aforementioned categories are miscellaneous misfits, ne’er do wells, and recently-paroled convicts. Then you have the uncharacterizable weirdos who can never quite shake off the nagging feeling that they wound up there by mistake—like, say, myself. Those last often think of themselves as being IN the trailer park, but not OF the trailer park. It’s a comforting thought, but they’re probably wrong.

“Half a million to a million” for a trailer? Proof positive that some people have more money than sense…but at those rates, not for long. Maybe a nice, long visit from a true trailer-park maven like Ricky might wise those spendthrifts up to a thing or two.

(Via Bill)

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Comments policy

Categories

Archives

2A/3 Percenters

Alt-American

Big Dogs

Essayists

Journalists

Mil

Nuttin’ But News

Odds Bodkins

Overseas/Non-US

Portals

Pure Bloggery

The Funny Pages

Subscribe to CF!

Shameless begging

Notable Quotes

Neutral territory

Rss feed

Contact