Alt-American

Do you Kipple?

Posted on April 22, 2023 by Mike

Our friend KT—she of the much-beloved AoSHQ Saturday Pet and Gardening threads, among other fine and notable things—posts an excellent deep-dive analysis into one of the great Bard’s very best pomes.

Rudyard Kipling first published The Gods of the Copybook Headings in 1919, soon after the War To End All Wars. And it has been a decade since Bill Whittle slightly revised Kipling’s poem “for modern ears”, replacing “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” in the poem with The Gods of Wisdom and Virtue. He also replaced “The Gods of the Market Place” with The Gods of the Here and the Now.

The word choice of “The Gods of the Here and the Now” seems to me to be especially relevant to our culture and politics at the present moment. Some gods, especially the human ones, seem to fall out of favor in just a news cycle or two. Sometimes the descriptions of the non-human gods will be transformed in a news cycle or two.

So, what and who are the Gods of the Here and the Now, at this moment?

Safe to say that answering that question will automagickally provide the answers to a whole lot of other ones into the bargain. Read all of it. Then, from there, browse through my “Kipling” section, linked in Ye Olde CF Menuebarre up top yonder. There’s bound to be something in there that will be new to you, I’d bet. If you’re not a Kipling fan yet, then it’s high time you became one.

Gee, some wisdom, it turns out, truly IS eternal. Whodathunkit?

The ever-unpopular Ron DeSantis

Posted on April 22, 2023 by Mike

Looks like maybe Uniparty DC didn’t care for the cut of his jib.

D.C. Uniparty declares DeSantis Man Bad
“We don’t like his personality!” they seethe.

The Uniparty corporate media machine is launching a new series of attacks against Florida’s governor, after recent polls show that he may present the greatest threat to a second Biden term at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

During his time in Congress, Governor Ron DeSantis didn’t go out of his way to befriend Washington, D.C. Swamp Creatures, and unsurprisingly, that means he doesn’t have glowing reviews within The Swamp.

There appears to be a coordinated line of attacks going after the governor’s personality, which serves as an attempted distraction from his overwhelmingly supported record in office.

On Friday, D.C. establishment website Politico ran with the headline: “How to lose friends and alienate people, by Ron DeSantis.”

In the piece, former Swamp Creature rep Dave Trott (R-MI), who maintained a 49% (F) Heritage Action voting record, ranted to the corporate press that DeSantis does not like to schmooze with fellow lawmakers and their corporate lobbyist friends. Trott was infuriated by the fact that DeSantis did not appear interested in spending the time to get to intimately get to know the Washington, D.C. Beltway class.

On Thursday, The New York Times, a far-left blog based in Manhattan, ran a piece with similar themes.

Lots of recent stories have criticized DeSantis as too introverted, unwilling to talk to corporate media reporters, and uninterested in fashion. This Florida Man has the chutzpah to both ignore them and not care about what they think. The audacity!

Well, good, fine by me. All the more reason for Da Guv to stay where’s at, in Tallahassee, where he’s actually been able to do some good. And despite all the ongoing whoopjamboreehoo about an “imminent” announcement that he’s throwing his hat into the 2024 ring circle-jerk, I note once again, with great relief, that DeSantis still has yet to utter Word One about any such.

Keep it up exactly the way you’ve been doing, Ron. Let them fill your campaign war-chest with their money, sure. Let them blibber, babble, and “speculate” all they like. Let them wriggle, weasel, shuck and jive. Let them carry on with all the usual maneuvering and manipulation. But don’t let yourself be seduced by them, I beseech you. For many of us who support you fully and firmly now, that would be a deal-breaker for sure.

As FLA gov, DeSantis has accomplished many good and worthwhile things, taking the Culture War battle to The Enemy in a way that only a governor can. As president, he won’t be allowed to accomplish a gott-damned thing; assuredly, TPTB will see to that. So let them have it then, and straight to hell with them all. Lay down with such as they, and all any putative dissident will ever get up with is the blasted fleas.

If there ever is to be a genuine political counterrevolution, it must be launched from the State Houses, not the White House. In the end, even a man possessed of as gargantuan, as overwhelming a personality as Trump’s still couldn’t get it done, except as a strictly temporary thing. So why would any more modest soul even bother trying? Better to play a winnable game than to wastefully expend time and effort on a futile, preemptively-rigged one.

Progress, if you like

Posted on April 21, 2023 by Mike

What our doughty, indomitable US soldiers were fighting for all those years—UNEXPECTED!!!™

Really, what can one say but…OOF! Also: OUCH!

Swiped shamelessly from WRSA, with my hearty thanks.

Modern-day Tea Party

Posted on April 21, 2023 by Mike

A look at the historical roots of The Butt Light Rebellion.

Here in 21st century America, where we were once asked to tolerate alternative lifestyles, we are now required to celebrate them. Refusal to do so can result in an individual being effectively cancelled from participation in society. We are forced to bow in obedience to the woke monarchy. Well, Americans have had enough. And they are figuratively throwing Bud Light overboard as a statement of defiance to the woke ruling class.

Don’t forget, the original tea party extended beyond Boston Harbor. British ships carrying tea were also blocked at other US ports including Philadelphia and New York. The tea rebellion against Great Britain spread across the colonies, moving them closer to independence, just like the Bud Light Tea Party is a nationwide event in the battle to free us from woke tyranny.

In response to this beer boycott, America’s ruling class has been snarking that this all shows just how bigoted conservatives are, as if this is simply about Anheuser Busch hiring a cross-dressing man to become the face of their beer. No, it’s so much more than that.

It’s partly that people are fed up with the denigration of women – as if being a woman is nothing more than wearing lipstick, a dress and a handbag. But it’s more than that.

It’s also partly the fact that our ruling class despises the average American, as evidenced by the fact that the Bud Light marketing VP who hired Mulvaney was quite open about her contempt for Bud Light’s loyal customer base. But it’s more than that too.

As Dana Loesch notes, the rebellion against Bud Light is also about the erasure of women with such ugly terms as “menstruating people” and “chest feeders.” The rebellion against Bud Light is about the invasion of women’s private spaces by biological men.

To make another historical analogy, the massive backlash against Bud Light is akin to the Texian army at San Jacinto. After a long, humiliating retreat its soldiers suddenly found themselves in position to go on offense, screaming “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!” as they took revenge against Santa Anna’s army.

Now the battle cry might be “Remember Loudoun County! Remember Riley Gaines!”

In Amerika v2.0, the list of “a long train of abuses and usurpations…to reduce them under Absolute Despotism” is far too long to remember all of it, much less boil them down into a handful of pithy motivational slogans. But with the above two, Buck’s made a good start on it, at least. The important part, really, is that battle at last be well and truly joined, not what Our Side chooses to yell at The Enemy whilst running at his lines, sabers waved aloft, with blood in our eyes.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

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Treatment for an epidemic of evil

Posted on April 17, 2023April 17, 2023 by Mike

Kunstler offers a prescription.

Call the Exorcist
You might be among those who have noticed that the people in authority in our country appear increasingly insane. It ought to be self-evident that this is deeply disturbing, but I will explain anyway to allay any residual mystification. In a sane human society, authority is granted to those who are trustworthy. People earn trust by demonstrating their allegiance to reality. Things generally work better when the people running them maintain cordial relations with reality. Now, you understand why so many things don’t work in the USA.

What more subtle minds are asking these days is this: when does this insanity tip over into evil? Especially the insanity evinced in our authority figures. How about when someone positively denies reality in the act of doing harm. How about Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC. Ms. Walensky is, to this moment, still proffering mRNA Covid-19 “vaccines” for children despite the reality that reams of evidence exist showing these products to be harmful, even deadly — and, in particular, by the previously exacting standards of the CDC’s sister agency, the FDA, which hold that just a few demonstrated injuries will lead to a drug being withdrawn from medical practice. (Ms. Walensky is a medical doctor, by the way.)

The political Left these days is determined to promote sexual confusion as a crucial component of the common good. Politicians, agency officials, corporate executives, the chiefs of NGOs and public interest organizations all support public demonstrations of ignoble and sinister sexual acts, often involving the inversion of sexual roles between male and female.

If you object to this behavior, you may be subject to extreme punishment (loss of career) for “transphobia.” The Left is taunting America with exhibitions like this (notice the child in the background at center). Is it not clear that this is some sort of insult to decency? The Left wants the non-Left to respond with acts of violence so that the Left can proceed to disarm the non-Left and prevent any opposition to the Left’s more serious plans to abolish personal liberty, such as a Central Bank Digital Currency that can monitor all your spending, punish you for your economic choices, and confiscate your earnings. The Left does these things in the name, they say, of “our democracy.” It’s a lie, of course. Democracy is the last thing they really care about. They do it in the name of pushing everybody around because all they really care about is coercion and punishment (applied with maximum sadism).

Human religious lore has it that the figure of Satan is the Father of Lies. Satan is the personification of evil. The political Left and the vehicle it rides on, the Democratic Party, with phantom president “Joe Biden” in the driver’s seat, has become the Party of Satan. We are in the presence of evil. (Call them psychopaths, if you’re more comfortable with that.) Whether you are religious or not, the Left represents a force at war with reality, and it happens to be at war against the rest of us. You can’t negotiate with it. It lies always and everywhere about everything. It must be vanquished.

Annnnd bingo. By “vanquished,” we should mean precisely that: no quarter, no mercy asked or offered—and most emphatically, no flinching from use of any means required of us to put the Great Enemy down. No, it doesn’t mean he won’t sooner or later arise again to resume his war on all that’s good and decent; almost certainly, he will. But neither does that unpleasant reality in any way absolve us from doing our duty, from living up to our solemn obligation to act in our own defense.

In such an epochal struggle as this, lethargy, complacency, and denial are just as potentially lethal an enemy as the Satanic Left itself is. No, we don’t have to like it. But neither do we have to just blandly accept living with it; in fact, if we are to survive, we mustn’t. In The Fellowship Of The Ring, Tolkien said it best:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

And there you have it, ‘nuff said.

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With “friends” like these…

Posted on April 15, 2023April 15, 2023 by Mike

The NRA, The GOPe, all sorts of other ostensibly “conservative” outfits, like the Heritage Foundation among too many others—for many decades, Real Americans thought they could count on these organizations as at least lukewarm allies, if occasionally unreliable or even treacherous ones.

Well, guess what.

NRA was the first National Gun Control Organization
There are many in the gun community that are angry with Trump for the bump stock ban. I have never blamed Trump for the travesty that was the bump stock ban, because I don’t think that he is the one who sold out gun owners. Let’s be honest here- the NRA greenlighted the bump stock ban. This is nothing new, the NRA was pro gun control for most of its history.

In the 1920s, the National Revolver Association, the arm of the NRA responsible for handgun training, proposed regulations later adopted by nine states, requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon, five years additional prison time if the gun was used in a crime, a ban on gun sales to non-citizens, a one day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun, and that records of gun sales be made available to police. Florida becoming the 26th state to get rid of concealed weapons carry as a crime meant getting rid of that NRA proposal after 100 years.

During the 1930’s, the NRA helped shape the National Firearms Act of 1934. President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to make gun control a feature of the New Deal. The NRA assisted Roosevelt in drafting National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act, the first federal gun control laws. These laws placed heavy taxes and regulation requirements on firearms that were associated with crime, such as machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers. Gun sellers and owners were required to register with the federal government and felons were banned from owning weapons. Not only was the legislation unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in 1939, but Karl T. Frederick, the president of the NRA, testified before Congress stating, “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

After the assasination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald with an Italian military surplus rifle purchased from a NRA mail-order advertisement, NRA Executive Vice-President Franklin Orth agreed at a congressional hearing that mail-order sales should be banned stating, “We do think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.”

The NRA also supported California’s Mulford Act of 1967, which had banned carrying loaded weapons in public in response to the Black Panther Party’s impromptu march on the State Capitol to protest gun control legislation on May 2, 1967.

Then came 1968. The assassinations of JFK, jr and Martin Luther King prompted Congress to enact the Gun Control Act of 1968. The act brought back some proposed laws from 1934, to include minimum age and serial number requirements, and extended the gun ban to include the mentally ill and drug addicts. In addition, it restricted the shipping of guns across state lines to collectors and federally licensed dealers. The only part of the proposed law that was opposed by the NRA was a national gun registry. In an interview in American Rifleman, Franklin Orth stated that despite portions of the law appearing “unduly restrictive, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”

It wasn’t until a mini-revolt was staged at the 1977 NRA convention that there was a change in direction. A group of gun owners pushed back and deposed the old leaders in a move called the “Cincinnati Revolt.” Led by former NRA President Harlon Carter and Neal Knox, the revolt ended the tenure of Maxwell Rich as NRA executive vice president and introduced new bylaws. The Revolt at Cincinnati marked a huge change in direction for the NRA. The organization thereafter changed from “hunting, conservation, and marksmanship” and towards the defense of the right to keep and bear arms. The catalyst for this movement was that the NRA wanted to move its headquarters from Washington, DC to Colorado. The new headquarters in Colorado was to be an “Outdoors center” that was more about hunting and recreational shooting than it was the RKBA.

I became a member of the NRA about a decade later and remained an annual member, until I became a life member about 15 years later. I believed for years that the NRA was fighting the good fight for gun owners. It wasn’t.

The NRA was always influenced by a group of Fudds who supported hunting, but hated guns that weren’t for hunting. The bureaucrats who were a part of the NRA’s organization always tried to steer towards hunting, eventually caused the organization to morph into an organization that used the threat of Democrat gun bans for fundraising.

It’s taken quite a long time for Real Americans to awaken to the sad, sorry reality that they are in fact beset on all sides, to emphatically include the one they had thought of for years as their own. One hates to plummet all the way down into unleavened, constant cynicism about absolutely everything and everyone. But in times such as these, when all that was once considered reasonable has been redefined—intentionally, and with malice aforethought—as unreasonable, even intolerable, what else can one sensibly do?

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What to do, what to do

Posted on April 14, 2023April 14, 2023 by Mike

Seeing through the fakery, dealing with the aftereffects.

A Means of Control
I read an article in Forbes the other day about the collapse of the dollar. I’m not linking it, because it was ridiculous. The reason Forbes said that the dollar would not collapse, was because it’s based on the economic output of the United States, a country that has the largest economy in the world of $23 trillion. The stability of the dollar, it said, was why it was the world reserve currency and that alone kept it from collapsing. This article was written March 29, 2023, about two weeks ago. The only thing that could possibly cause a collapse, it said, was something dramatic like a world war. Ha ha.

I don’t know if that was just financial propaganda to prevent panic selling or what, but if it was meant as a serious article, it ignored the realities of the world that currently exists. Our $23 trillion economy, our GDP, is dwarfed by the $32 trillion we’re in debt. The dollar is no longer the world reserve currency and more countries are dumping the dollar every day. China is cashing in it’s notes as fast as it can.

The other leg of the financial stool supporting the dollar is its use as an intermediary between nations to purchase oil, the petrodollar, which has recently been nixed by the cooperation of Russia and China to purchase Russian oil with Chinese Yuan. Saudi Arabia, our closest ally in the Middle East, at least as far as oil goes, just made a deal to sell oil using the Yuan.

The only thing supporting the dollar is printing. The Fed no longer has to buy bonds to create money, it just keystrokes in a few more billion to the nations banks.

Buying metals is a good way to avoid this obvious catastrophe in the making, but as we have seen before, they can just make owning precious metals illegal. Then, only the well-connected and criminal politicians will own these metals. Hiding your stores will be a felony so when you go to use it, you can be identified and imprisoned.

As you can see, we’re in a vice and the people who have concocted it are intent on using it to squeeze any financial, medical or nutritional freedom out of your lives.

What to do?

Clearly, this is the separation I spoke of at the beginning. It’s now incumbent upon all of us who wish to remain unvaxxed, free to spend and free to eat what we want to start separating from the federal power in Washington. Local, local, local has been stressed many times and it’s for just this situation that it was preached.

TL goes on from there to offer several practical suggestions for how one might go about insulating and isolating oneself from the machinations and manipulations of an evil, tyrannical central government in a disintegrating nation, all of which seem to me to be soild, worthwhile policies to follow at any time, all the more so in these End ones.

Update! Dave Renegade is also readying himself for life apres le deluge.

I am living my life according to my belief that the economy has collapsed and the government is planning to start WWIII. That means the US dollar is worthless and I am buying supplies and other items necessary for this future.

I visit the local feed store in Murphy, NC on a regular basis. I have noticed a large increase in feed supplies (they are storing feed in the parking lot) over what has been stored in previous years. I also noticed that the volume of customers has increased to the point that parking is now like bumper cars. People park as they want regardless of whether they are blocking other cars/trucks in place. It was so bad yesterday, a small truck from Florida parked in back of my truck as he bought 14 trees. I bought 5 fruit trees and I estimate that they will sell 200 trees in less than two days.

I went to a nursery to look for more pecan trees. Any tree over 4 feet was over $100. The nursery’s parking lot was the busiest that I have ever seen.

I have bought a complete set of replacement fluids and filters for my tractor. I went to the Kubota dealership to do the same for my excavator. Imagine my surprise when this large dealership had to order hydraulic filters to complete my order.

Baby chicks are selling out at farm stores faster than Joe Biden can eat an ice cream cone.

I saw a message today that based on economic conditions, everyone should start acting like a “prepper”. The message should have said: Everyone who is over 50 should start acting as our grandparents. The rest can act as their great grandparents acted.

As reality is sinking in, I am glad to see that people are acting responsibly instead of cowering in fear. I do not know when we will stand up to the evil that has usurped our government but we can use this time wisely.

It looks more and more as if we may not really have to do much in the way of standing up to ‘em after all; as the impending collapse of TWAWKI (The World As We Knew It)™ continues apace, could be we can all just sit back pointing and laughing as it all comes crashing down around the ears of those who brought it about.

Steve McQueen, problem-solver

Posted on April 14, 2023April 14, 2023 by Mike

Gotta admire a guy who appeals courteously at first—then, when he can get no satisfaction with good manners, civility, and politesse, is man enough to take the bull by the horns and resolve the issue a bit more…um, dynamically.

He Did Ask Nicely
After Steve McQueen established himself as a bankable movie star, he purchased a mansion in Malibu, California. His next-door neighbor was Keith Moon, the drummer of the famous English rock band, The Who. Moon lived the partying lifestyle of many rockstars, which annoyed McQueen, particularly because the drummer would always leave his bathroom light on. The light faced Steve’s bedroom window, which affected his sleep.

McQueen asked Moon more than numerous times to be mindful of turning off the bathroom light, and Moon continued to ignore his pleas. McQueen grabbed a shotgun one night, leaned out the window, and shot the light out.

I’d think that would do it, yeah. Heck, if I was Moon I’d be hesitant to go in that bathroom at all anymore after that, knowing I was putting myself in line of fire of a man eagle-eyed and steady-handed enough to ace a shot like that—in the dark, angry and stressed out, whilst hanging out a window. At the very least, I’d be content from then on to piss in a Solo cup in some other room, whether lit or endarkened, and toss it out the nearest window, rather than take a chance on replacing the bulb. With some folks, if you want to go on living it’s always sound policy not to make an enemy of them unnecessarily.

It may not seem obvious at first blush, but those were better days. With the current pussified crop of actors and rock and rollers, both aggrieved parties would no doubt put on their most fetching little black cocktail dresses, get together knee-to-knee over a nice chai latte, and have themselves a good, cleansing cry over the whole unnerving episode.

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Musk ain’t having any

Posted on April 12, 2023April 12, 2023 by Mike

I swear, my boy Elon just keeps getting more red-pilled every day, seems like.

BBC Journo Quits Musk Interview After Elon Pushes Back On ‘Hateful Content,’ ‘Misinformation’
Twitter CEO and African-American billionaire Elon Musk yesterday sat down with BBC “journalist” James Clayton for an interview, where the two had a now-viral argument over Twitter’s alleged rise in “hateful content,” as well as Twitter’s COVID “misinformation” policy changes.

During their conversation, Clayton, without any evidence to back himself up, claimed that Musk’s acquisition of the company has resulted in “a rise in hateful content.”

“Content you don’t like or hateful, describe a hateful thing?” Musk asked.

Clayton replied, “I mean you know just content that will elicit a reaction, something I mean something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist, those kinds of things.”

“So you think if something is slightly sexist it should be banned?” Musk retorted. “No, I’m not saying anything,” said Clayton.

“I’m asking for examples. Can you name one example?” Musk said. “Honestly I honestly–” Clayton began before Musk interjected: “Can you name a single example?”

“I’ll tell you why,” the BBC wordsmith said. “Because I don’t actually use that feed anymore because I don’t particularly like it. Actually, a lot of people are quite similar.”

At this point, the journalist cited his lack of interest in Twitter’s “For You” feed as his reason for being unable to cite a single example of hate speech. Musk, unimpressed, ultimately accused the reporter of lying.

Musk replied, “Wait a second, you said you’ve seen more hateful content, but you can’t name a single example, not even one.”

“I’m not sure I used that feed for the last three or four weeks,” Clayton said. “Then how did you see the hateful content?” said Musk.

“Really!?” Clayton cried. “Yes, because you can’t give a single example of hateful content not even one tweet, and yet you’ve claimed the hateful content was high. That’s a false,” Musk explained.

“No,” replied Clayton. “You just lied,” Musk said.

Eventually, Clayton abruptly left the interview, leaving Musk alone to field questions from the audience.

Just as well, really; Elon was WAY more likely to field some halfway-intelligent questions from the audience than he ever would have from a hack propagandist like the “journalist” he handily cut up into pieces-parts. Well done, sir, and good on ya. Now do NPR, while you’re taking care of the light work. Oh wait, he just did.

Elon Musk Reaches Limit, Calls For Defunding NPR: “What hypocrites”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk is calling for defunding NPR after the broadcaster had a meltdown and quit Twitter because Musk is calling them ‘State-affiliated media and Government-funded Media.’ NPR said it will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds.

NPR cited Twitter’s decision to first label the network “state-affiliated media,” the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries for making this extraordinary decision. Twitter drives impressions to NPR and after the broadcaster had to institute layoffs you would think they would be thanking Musk.

Musk fired back saying:

“NPR literally said “Federal funding is essential to public radio” on their own website (now taken down).

“What hypocrites!

“Defund NPR.”

Okay, I think I may have just ejaculated in my pants a little bit here.

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The Passion of the Christ—updated with PONIES!!

Posted on April 11, 2023April 11, 2023 by Mike

Some intriguing facts and behind-the-scenes backstory about the movie, from guess where.

Mel Gibson warned actor Jim Caviezel that playing the character of Christ was going to be very difficult and that if he accepted, he most likely would be marginalized by Hollywood.

Caviezel asked for a day to think about it and his response to Mel who was funding and directing the movie was: “I think we have to make it, even if it is difficult. And something else, my initials are J.C., and I am 33 years old. “I didn’t realize that until now.”

Mel responded with “You’re really scaring me you know.”

During filming, Jim Caviezel who plays the part of Jesus lost 45 pounds, he was struck by lightning, he was accidentally struck twice during the scourging scene leaving a deep 14-inch scar, he dislocated his shoulder when the cross was dropped into the hole with him on the cross. He then suffered pneumonia and hypothermia from being nearly naked with only a loin cloth on the cross for endless hours. The crucifixion scene alone took 5 weeks of the 2 months of shooting.

His body was so stressed and exhausted from playing the role that he had to undergo two open heart surgeries after the filming production.

Jim explained, “I didn’t want people to see me. I just want them to see Jesus. Conversions will happen through that.”

Almost like a clairvoyant prediction many amazing things happened.

Pedro Sarubbi, who played Barabbas, felt that it was not Caviezel who was looking at him, but Jesus Christ himself, as he played that role he said of Caviezel, “His eyes had no hatred or resentment towards me, only mercy and love.”

Luca Lionello, the artist who played Judas, was an avowed atheist before shooting began. He eventually converted, and baptized his children.

One of the main technicians working on the film was a Muslim converted to Christianity.

Some producers said they saw actors dressed in white they didn’t recognize during one of the filming sessions, and when they reviewed the recordings they realized they couldn’t see them in that footage.

The Passion of the Christ is the highest grossing US religious as well as the highest R-rated film of all time, with $370.8 million! Worldwide, it grossed $611 million.

More importantly, it has reached 100’s of millions of people around the world.

Mel Gibson paid $30 million out of his own pocket for the production of the film because no studio would take on the project.

Never saw the film myself, but I remember the huge controversy generated by it well enough.

Update! Unrelated, but here’s another Quora Digest find. I may have to look into some psychological counseling at some point, to help me cope with this unhealthy addiction to their stuff I’m developing. But this is another good ‘un too, so there’s that.

There is an old pony in a big pen by the barn. He has no real purpose. No kids ride him, he is not a companion to another old horse.

We have no history together. He came into my life by happenstance. There are no fond, warm fuzzy memories. I owe him nothing. But he’s polite and kind, and nickers to me as I come out the door in the morning.

He eats a princely sum of special food, and has a premium round bale of irrigated grass that the other horses can only dream of. His water is fresh, and warmed in the winter. I’ve gone out there late at night to make sure he has food, and he’s the first thing I attend to after morning coffee.

Why? Why not send him to the sale where ‘someone’ will want him? At 40 cents a pound, he’d be worth a nice steak dinner and drinks in town. They’ll load him on a truck with 30 other old ponies and horses, and somewhere down that line, if he doesn’t fall from his bad knee and get trampled in the transport, he will become dog food.

There’s a bum calf in our scale house on this cold frosty night. He’s little and scrawny, with poop stuck to his butt, and a bit of a runny nose. There’s a heater in there keeping the temp above freezing. In the morning I’ll make him a bottle of warm milk replacer and try to convince him to eat some of the pony’s special food. Bob will clean his little house and put down fresh bedding. It would be easier to have left him in the field with the 500 bigger, stronger calves, to steal milk from the occasional tolerant cow, to eventually freeze to death and feed the coyotes that lurk about the herd for just such an opportunity.

There is a wild kitten in the barn who most likely jumped off a utility truck a while back. We’ve been leaving food just for him, and making sure the heated water bowl is full, so he doesn’t have to go outside and perch precariously on the horse waterer to drink.

I guess we sound like saps, the old cowboy and I. Sort of wimpy and un-ranch like.

I guess we are. But at our age, with certain infirmities starting to creep into our daily routines, and the realization that we are not perfect, we are thinking that kindness is a virtue and care is our purpose.

Care of not just the healthy robust animals that make money and pay the bills, but care of everything we are capable of caring for – those creatures that, like us, are in need of a bit more attention to get through the day.

We didn’t go about seeking these creatures- they came to us and landed here not of their own choosing, or ours. But here they are, and off I go to town to a business that provides enough to buy the expensive milk replacer, premium hay, and special pony food.

There may be some karma in all this, or maybe not, but in the end we’ll know we did the best we could for those that needed us.

Peace. Really, I mean it.

And the same to you, ma’am, with all my heart and soul.

Beautiful, no? A lovely, scenic pic of the pony is attached also. Maybe this addiction isn’t so unhealthy after all, I’m thinkin’.

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A good man

Posted on April 9, 2023April 9, 2023 by Mike

Penn Jillette tells the compelling story of an encounter with one such—with no nonsense, no evasion or dissembling, just straight up, no chaser.

Watch the whole thing; it is truly fascinating to watch Jillette—who is a brilliant man, a great entertainer, and a devout atheist (I see no contradiction in those last two words, since in my view atheism is just as surely a matter of faith as religion itself is)—wrestle with the implications of the encounter.

Via Francis, whose post you should read in its entirety and carefully contemplate as well.

Update! A hilarious Penn Jillette story, one of many highlighting the aforementioned genius of the man.

In July 1999, Jillette was granted U.S. Patent 5,920,923 for the “Jill-Jet”, a hot-tub jet specially angled for allowing a woman to masturbate against the water stream. The patent expired in September 2018. He has credited Debbie Harry of Blondie for suggesting the idea, as the two of them were once in a hot tub and Harry made a remark about changing the jets for a woman’s pleasure. Jillette liked the idea enough to pursue a patent application at the USPTO under the patent title “Hydro-therapeutic Stimulator”.

The abstract of the patent explains that a “discharge nozzle is located within the tub and connected to the outlet, mounted to the seat so that the discharged water from the circulation pump automatically aligns with and is directed to stimulation points (e.g., the clitoris) of the female user when the female user sits in the seat.” An article in the June 2006 issue of Playboy shed additional light on the invention. Originally, it was to be called the “ClitJet”; however, he stated that “Jill-Jet” was more suitable because it included his name in the title.

On the Penn Radio show, telling the listeners about the photo shoot for the Playboy article, Jillette mentioned that he has a Jill-Jet installed in a tub in his house, and that several of his female friends and friends’ female spouses enjoy it a lot, but he is not aware of any other installations of a water jet in such a configuration anywhere else.

Heh. Love him or hate him, you gotta admit that’s some truly funny shit right there.

Who says there’s never any good news anymore?

Posted on April 9, 2023April 9, 2023 by Mike

Greg Abbott is by no means perfect, just as Donald Trump, you, me, nor any of the rest of us fallen-hoomon types passing through this mortal plane aren’t either. He’s for sure done some things as Texas Governor I haven’t agreed with, and then again some that I emphatically have. This would definitely be one of the latter.

BREAKING: Texas Governor Greg Abbott To Pardon Sgt. Daniel Perry
Texas Governor Greg Abbott is standing up for Americans’ right to self-defense.

He just released a statement saying that he has recommended Sgt. Daniel Perry be pardoned to the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

He also urged them to expedite its review of the case.

Abbott said, “Unlike the President or some other states, the Texas Constitution limits the Governor’s pardon authority to only act on a recommendation by the Board Of Pardons and Paroles. Texas law DOES allow the Governor to request the Board of Pardons and Paroles to determine if a person should be granted a pardon. I have made that request and instructed the board to expedite its review. I look forward to approving the Board’s pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk.”

As background, Army soldier Daniel Perry was found guilty of murder by a Travis County jury.

Prosecuted by yet another Soros DA, natch. Too bad nobody’s thought to off his worthless ass yet, but maybe someday it might yet happen—on which frabjous occasion the world will surely become a much better place for it.

Perry shot and killed an armed BLM-Antifa protester Garrett Foster in July 2020.

SGT Perry shot the BurnLootMurder/pAntiFa scumbag after said scumbag had pointed an AR15 directly at him, making it a FAFO-level Righteous Shoot™ all the way as far as I’m concerned. Good on Perry for returning a deserving waste of flesh to room temperature in response to a direct, credible threat against his own life, and good on Perry for having the cojones to stand up for the God-given right to do just that. As for the room-temp scumbag, piss on him; may he burn in Hell for a thousand years.

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Days of yore

Posted on April 6, 2023 by Mike

Peters reminisces about a better time, now forever lost.

When We Didn’t Drive Devices
It has been more than 20 years since the day after which Americans got used to being handled like felonious cattle at airports. Stand here, don’t go there. Off with your shoes. Open your purse. Spread your legs. Those born after that day have no memory of what it was like to just get on a plane – sometimes, at the last minute – and fly to your destination without having to do more than show a boarding pass to the stewardess – as opposed to the “flight attendant” – at the gate.

Well, a day may come when people no longer remember what it was like to drive a car – as opposed to a device.

A car was a machine, first of all. It had a thing called an engine – and these were often radically different, car to car. But all of them were the same in that they burned liquid energy stored in a tank.

One of the really neat things about this liquid energy was its portability and stability. You transferred about 15-20 gallons of this liquid – they called it “gasoline” and “diesel” – into the car’s tank, which only took a few minutes to do and the car was ready to drive for hundreds of miles.

Unlike the way things are now, you didn’t have to wait all the time in order to get going. So you could just go – pretty much anywhere and whenever you felt like it. Almost like flying was, a long time ago – when it was possible to catch a flight, the saying went, on the spur of the moment and without having to show up at the airport an hour or two before the scheduled departure time and wait for the flight.

Because you could just go – by car, in those days – you never had to plan. Life had a spontaneity you may never fully appreciate. If you just felt like driving somewhere, you could – no matter how much gas or diesel you didn’t have in the tank. Even if there was almost none. We were able to do this because there were gas stations – where diesel was also usually available – all over and almost always within range. It was only a small hassle if you ran out of gas on the way to the station because it was possible to carry a small can or plastic jug of liquid fuel from the station to wherever you left the car and pour it into the tank and then drive to the station, where the tank could be filled in about five minutes or even less.

And a lot more cheaply than at today’s exorbitant Biden prices, too. Some truly drool-inspiring photos included with this one as well, folks, so check it out.

Get Woke, go…

Posted on April 5, 2023April 5, 2023 by Mike

Well, not broke, exactly. Somehow, that never seems to happen. But still.

Country Music Mega-Star Travis Tritt Drops Anheuser-Busch Products From His Tour
With Bud Light going ultra-woke by embracing transvestite Dylan Mulvaney as their new spokesman, conservatives across the spectrum have spoken out and threatened a boycott.

Country music mega-star Travis Tritt is one of them. He has removed all products of Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, from his tour’s hospitality rider.

For the uninitiated, which I’m guessing would be most non-showbiz types, that “hospitality rider” business simply means that there will no longer be any Anheuser-Busch products chilling down in big buckets of ice in Tritt’s backstage Green Room. I’d like it a lot better if he’d announced that, henceforth, there would be no A-B pisswater beer being sold at his shows, but of course he doesn’t have control over that; no artist, however “mega” a star he may be, does. Kudos to Tritt anyhow, for doing what little he can to slap back at the cringing, cowardly rumpswabs at Anheuser-Busch. Calls for a celebratory embed, I do believe.

The old Charlie Daniels chestnut, of course, capably done justice to by Tritt, who’s a damned fine guitarist. I’ve been known to pull that one out of the hat now and then my own self, back in my pickin’ and grinnin’ days.

Update! Kid Rock goes Tritt one better.

pic.twitter.com/dSmCGySoul

— KidRock (@KidRock)

April 4, 2023

TELL it, Grampa.

(Via GP)

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And THEN what?

Posted on April 5, 2023April 5, 2023 by Mike

VDH, bless his poor old heart, recites a long litany of stuff we knew already.

Indict One—And All?
Were the opposition to match tit-for-tat these Democratic means, then the republic would not survive.

Ummm, Victor ol’ buddy ol’ pal, hate to have to be the one to break this to ya and all, but…IT DIDN’T.

It is the revolutionary Left that attacks institutions deemed unhelpful for its current political agenda—one that rarely warrants 50 percent public approval—whether that effort is defined by threats of ending the filibuster, scrapping the Electoral College, adding two more states, packing the court, or radically changing balloting laws and customs to turn elections into a 70 percent no-show of voters on Election Day.

And so on and so forth, etc etc fucking etc. We know what they’ve done, we know why they did it, we know what they’re liable to do next, we know what they hope to accomplish by it; in sum, we know all anyone should ever need to know about them. Happily, Bayou Peter understands the pointless futility of these endless recapitulations—that the only pertinent question at this late date is what, if anything, is to be done about it.

It’s a persuasive argument. If conservative and middle America were to say “So far and no further”, the progressive left would erupt in demonstrations, violence and anarchy, seeking to impose their will by intimidation. Sadly, a great many Americans would be cowed by such uprisings, and prefer to back down rather than risk what might come from such confrontations.

Of course, the only way forward – the only way to stop such progressive machinations – is to accept that risk, and stop them in their tracks. That means accepting the necessity to answer in kind: to meet provocation with resistance, to answer violence with violence. There’s no other way to do it. Gandhi’s non-violent solution worked in India, in a colonial situation, but he wasn’t facing an opponent that welcomed violence and embraced it as a political and social strategy. We are.

Christians, in particular, are going to have to harden their hearts in this regard. It’s very easy to say that we should turn the other cheek, as Christ commanded: but in this case, if we do that, they’ll rip it off, along with the first cheek we turned. The progressive left knows no other approach except intimidation and dominance. Anything less is seen as weakness. That’s why they’ve made so much progress, and they have every intention of continuing their progress until all resistance is at an end.

It’s time to stop them…if necessary, by using their own tactics against them. To begin with, that can be to use the same legal tactics against them that they’ve used against us. If they take that to the next level, well, we can do that too—and we must, or be steamrollered by those with everything at stake and absolutely no inhibitions of conscience.

Precisely, indubitably so. I’ll say this much: if stooping to adopting their own tactics is the absolute worst thing we have to do to end this, we can count ourselves fortunate indeed. Evergreen rerun:

That one ain’t ever getting old. Would that there might come a day when we can all look fondly back on it as no longer immediately relevant, just another well-written and skillfully-acted scene from a fine old movie—as a piece of classic cinema, not an imperative, a most urgent call to arms.

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