When men were men, and sheep were scared

Bayou Peter kicks things off thusly:

As part of my research for a forthcoming book, I’ve been reading up about the history of dueling in New Orleans during the 18th and 19th centuries. I came across this very unusual account.

“Unusual,” he says. “Unusual,” forsooth! Just get a load of this, it leaves “unusual” in the dust.

M. Augustin … who afterward became a district judge and general of the Louisiana Legion, was the victor in several … encounters in which the temper of the period caused him to be engaged. One in particular is noteworthy on account of the part it played in an extraordinary freak of fortune. Alexander Grailhe was the offending party, though the insult (or rather provocation, for gentlemen seldom insulted) would in this day be of scant concern. But some cause of action was present, and each was sure that a deadly meeting would certainly follow. They rode together in a carriage with ladies, who, after the duel, commented on their mutual affability during the entire trip, which only serves to show how delicately adjusted was the code of etiquette—especially in the presence of ladies.

They fought at The Oaks, and as soon as the weapons had been crossed and the impressive “Allez, Messieurs,” pronounced, Grailhe, who was high-strung and hot-blooded—doubly so under the stress of what he regarded as a grievous provocation—lost his temper and furiously charged his antagonist. Augustin, on the contrary, was cool, collected, and agile, parrying each savage thrust, until by a temps d’arrêt (sudden pause), judiciously interpolated into a vicious lunge of Grailhe’s, he pierced him through the chest. Grailhe, with one of his lungs perforated, remained for a long time hovering between life and death, and when at last he did come out of his room, he was bowed like an octogenarian.

It was now only a question of time for the wounded man, as an internal abscess had formed where it could not be reached, —surgery then was not what it is now,— and the doctors despaired of saving him. Some time after he had been up and about, a quarrel with Col. Mandeville de Marigny resulted in his challenging that distinguished citizen. This duel was also fought at The Oaks, but as Grailhe was too weak to do himself justice with a sword, the weapons chosen were pistols at fifteen paces, each to have two shots, advance five paces, and fire at will. At the first shot, fired simultaneously, the unfortunate man fell forward, pierced by his adversary’s bullet, which had entered the exact place of his former and yet unhealed wound. Marigny, with pistol in hand and as placid as a marble statue, advanced to the utmost limit marked out, when Grailhe, who was suffering greatly, exclaimed: “Fire again; you have another shot.”

With grave dignity Marigny raised his pistol above his head and fired into the air, saying with frigid politeness: “I never strike a fallen foe.”

More dead than alive, the stricken duelist was carried home by his friends and consigned to the care of his physician; but instead of sinking rapidly, as was expected, he really began to mend, and by the following morning was much improved. The ball had penetrated to the abscess which had threatened his life, and made an exit for its poisonous accumulations. Some time afterward he walked out of his room as erect as ever, and soon regained his health and stately bearing.

YOWZA! I don’t think even “bizarre” quite meets the case here—downright otherworldly, I’d call it.

From MAGA to MEGA

The Jeddak of Jeddaks gets positively jiggy with it.

Trump’s agenda is not compatible with American decline. Trump wants America to thrive. He wants America to be strong.

Just as a weak country must weaken its allies, a strong country can afford to strengthen them.

This would be a complete break with decades of implicit US foreign policy.

Trump has said repeatedly that he wants Europe to pull its weight in NATO, meeting the 2% GDP threshold that all member states are theoretically expected to fulfill, but which almost none of them actually do. Being a businessman, he frames this in financial terms: why should America pick up the tab for Europe’s defence? Which is certainly an urgent matter, given the disastrous state of America’s national debt. But this has inevitable geopolitical consequences. A remilitarized Europe that can actually defend itself is a Europe that is no longer at the mercy of the American military.

Making Europe Great Again isn’t solely a matter of investing more in European militaries. Such an agenda reaches into everything. Arabs and Africans need to be remigrated, in vast numbers. The rainbow parades need to stop: a continent of prancing sodomites is not a continent that can defend itself. And, of course, the economy must be revived: the overly intrusive regulatory fetters must be peeled off and set on fire, in order to make it possible for Europeans to once again exercise that famous, world-shaking creativity. People talk about “American ingenuity”, and Americans are ingenious, but this is only because Americans are a subspecies of European.

Extending MAGA to MEGA is not a matter of charity. The interconnectivity of the world makes MEGA essential to MAGA, and vice versa. The vampire strategy of ruling by weakening the imperial dependencies a little faster than they weaken the imperial core just results in the whole system getting weaker, which is a problem when your opponents are pursuing the opposite strategy domestically.

MEGA is also domestically important. The people running Europe are loyalists of the US deep state. As one example, the EU has been used as a way for the American deep state to try and do an end run around the US Constitution and reintroduce internet censorship, particularly on X, via the back door: the Eurocrats and their tame courts are quite happy to help them with this. There’s also a symbiotic relationship between Eurocrats and their left-wing American counterpart in the deep state: leftist policies are implemented in European political laboratories, which are subsidized by the American economy; their ‘successes’ are then cited as reason to bring these same policies home to America. If Trump is serious about dismantling his enemies at home, he also needs to crush their allies abroad.

This absolutely magisterial piece is a long ‘un indeed, of which you will most definitely want to read the all, folks.

Yes, it’s always been this way

Conflict and strife with Pisslam is a forever kind of thing.

Remembering Why the U.S. Navy Was Formed: To Combat Islamic Terror
During a recent mosque sermon at the North Hudson Islamic Center in New Jersey, a CAIR official, Ayman Aishat, made a seemingly startling claim:

We live in America, the United States of America. Brothers and sisters, those who do not know history, not too long ago, the USA was paying the jizya to the Ottoman Caliph.

Could this be?

First, let us define jizya. In brief (full discussion here), it is the monetary tribute that conquered or cowed infidels pay their Islamic overlords in exchange for peace, according to Koran 9:29:

Fight those among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah, nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth [Islam], until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.

And yes, Aishat is correct: once upon a time, in its fledgling youth, the United States succumbed to paying jizya to appease Muslim terrorists. That story is instructive — not least as it includes the genesis of the U.S. Navy.

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the Muslims of North Africa (“Barbary”) thrived on enslaving Europeans. According to the conservative estimate of American professor Robert Davis, “between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.” (With countless European women selling for the price of an onion, little wonder by the late 1700s, European observers noted how “the inhabitants of Algiers have a rather white complexion.”)

As Barbary slaving was a seafaring venture, nearly no part of Europe was untouched. From 1627 to 1633, Lundy, an island off the west coast of Britain, was actually occupied by the pirates, whence they pillaged England at will. In 1627 they raided Denmark and even far-off Iceland, hauling a total of some 800 slaves.

Such raids were accompanied by the trademark hate. One English captive writing around 1614 noted that the Muslim pirates “abhor the ringing of the [church] bells being contrary to their Prophet’s command,” and so destroyed them whenever they could. In 1631, nearly the entire fishing village of Baltimore in Ireland was raided, and “237 persons, men, women, and children, even those in the cradle” were seized.

By the late eighteenth century, Barbary’s strength relative to Europe had plummeted, and the Muslims could no longer raid the European coastline for slaves — certainly not on the scale of previous centuries — so its full energy was spent on raiding non-Muslim merchant vessels. European powers responded by buying peace through tribute, which the Muslims accepted as jizya.

Fresh and fair meat appeared on the horizon once the newly born United States broke free of Great Britain and was therefore no longer protected by the latter’s jizya payments. In 1785, Muslim pirates from Algiers captured two American vessels, the Maria and Dauphin. They enslaved and paraded the sailors through the streets to jeers and whistles. Considering the horrific ways Christian slaves were treated in Barbary — sadistically tortured, pressured to convert, and sodomized, as described in the writings of missionaries, redeemers, and others (e.g., John Foxe, Fr. Dan, Fr. Jerome Maurand, Robert Playfair; see pp. 279-283) — when the Dauphin’s Captain O’Brian later wrote to Thomas Jefferson that “our sufferings are beyond our expression or your conception,” he was not exaggerating.

And the rest, as the saying goes, is history. Note Washington’s pithy take:

In such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary? Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.

As we all ought to know well enough after ~250 years of continual Muzzrat depredation against the US, the only rational, realistic choice has to be Option B. Remember, too, the “…shores of Tripoli” bit in the very first line of the Marine Corps Hymn. It’s in there for a very good reason, y’know.

Rolling abortion

The late, unlamented Supervee.

The little engine that couldn’t: A short saga of the Super Vee
When it comes to motorcycles, I like the odd ducks.

I prefer ducks that are actually capable of moving under their own power, but maybe that’s just me.

I’m no match, though, for Paul and Joel at American Cycle Fabrication. You might remember Paul as the man who had those $35 Harleys we wrote about. Recently, I meandered by to see what the boys were up to and what curiosities I could turn up. I walked in the door, and sitting on a bench was the mother lode: a Super Vee.

Nothing gets me going like an abstruse piece of motorcycle equipment, so when I saw this engine parked there, I started pushing people and parts out of my way so I could snap a few photos. You see, I’ve heard of Super Vees, but I’d never actually seen one live and in color. The particular one I saw was a third-generation, the final design ever offered for sale — and the rarest. Approximately 45 were ever sold.

Now as a rowdy, uncut stripling, I read all the biker rags religiously: Iron Horse, my all-time fave under David Snow (CAUTION: Fakeberg link) and my dear departed friend Chris Pfouts; Outlaw Biker, for whom I would later toil thanklessly; American Iron, for whom my tight Pittsburgh brother Mike Seate ditto; Easyriders, the granpappy of ‘em all, and entirely righteous back before it began to suck dead donkey dicks (in its glory days, ER once ran a pic of the illustrious Traci Lords [link is related, just scroll down] on the cover, under the preposterous nom de slut “Suzy Softail,” IIRC); Biker Lifestyle, an also-ran publication about which there really ain’t a whole lot to say other than they always seemed to run more titty-pics than any of the aforementioned rags; last and probably least, Steve Iorio’s Supercycle, which eventually became little more than a vehicle for pimping Iorio’s useless PoS Supervee doorstops.

A pic of the monstrosity in its natural habitat: to wit, propped up on a workbench surrounded by the tools with which the poor schlub who got suckered into buying it would attempt to ascertain why the &^%@#%)*!!! it wouldn’t run.

The rest of the sordid story.

So what is a Super Vee?
In 1983, Harley was not selling whole engines to custom bike builders. Steve Iorio, who owned an outfit called Nostalgia Cycle, wasn’t really digging that situation, so the Super Vee concept was born. The idea was to create an engine using cheap, easily available small-block Chevy parts, that could power a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. By 1985, the engines were released for sale. Iorio was so bold as to suggest that he was going to unseat Harley and put them out of business. He felt Harley was putting the screws to the workin’ joe, and the Super Vee was the common man’s way to fight back: Engine parts could be had reliably and very affordably from any GM dealership or aftermarket auto parts house.

Articles published in Supercycle Magazine as early as 1983 helped get the project off the ground. The engine, though primitive, got rave reviews. Nostalgia Cycle even had a phone number customers could call and hear a Super Vee running! Heady stuff for the 1980s. Nostalgia put together a video (which is pretty funny) extolling the virtues of the new mill. Take a peek. (Bonus points for the first reader to count how many times the narrator says “American.”)

Everything seemed hunky dory, but there were a few problems. First, did you notice in that video that you never hear the engine settle into an idle? That seems a bit strange, right? Secondly, Supercycle was published by the same guy who owned Nostalgia Cycle, Steve Iorio. Steve had dabbled quite a bit in the motorcycle industry. Those initials may be familiar to some — he used to produce springers under the company name SIE, and hung out with Dick Allen, a motorcycle legend in his own right.

Ol’ Steve also went by a few aliases, including “Steve Nelson.” In fact, you can read a lovely article the Los Angeles Times wrote about him — using his fake name! The biggest, most glaring problem with Iorio was his character. The biggest, most glaring problem about the Super Vee was its near-universal reputation of being a complete piece of shit.

For those of you who have never purchased a crate engine, let me fill you in on how the process works. You buy the engine, and sometimes you have to install an ignition and a carb. That’s about it. Install it, and hit the starter button.

The Super Vee was different. It did not run well, if at all. Mating Harley-esque cases to a General Motors rotating assembly presented problems. Critical engine parts didn’t always receive enough oil, yet most Super Vees puked plenty outside the engine. In many cases, engines required some disassembly and some additional machining. Many of the engines required an overhaul simply because of awful quality control during manufacture.

The gruesome saga of Iorio’s exorbitantly overpriced bastard-baby carries on from there; it’s a truly gripping read for any dyed in the wool gearhead-type weirdo, past or present. Won’t do much to bolster one’s naive, childlike faith in the fundamental decency of humanity, I’m afraid. But hey, dem’s da breaks, laddie-buck.

Update! Another aspect of the Iorio melodrama I thought might be worth a mention: I also spent a fair few simoleons on Nostalgia Cycle parts for my trusty old Shovelhead FLH over the decade or so I owned and rode her, mostly at swap meets and such-like dens of iniquity.

I quickly learned that those Nostalgia Cycle (universally reviled amongst my fellow CLT-area scooter trash as “Nostalgia Psycho”) geegaws and gimcracks were without exception El Cheapo crap: flimsy, soft-rubber handlebar bushings; bolt-ons which couldn’t be bolted on thanks to mis-aligned mounting holes; “stainless steel” engine hardware dress-up kits that were neither stainless nor steel; points that didn’t fire, plugs that didn’t spark, filters that didn’t filter, external oil hard-lines without any holes drilled in ‘em; “high flow” oil pumps with no pump gear, etc. etc.

The chrome on all those fancy-shmancy covers—battery, nose cone, breather, primary, drive chain, coil, &c—would begin to blister, flake, and/or peel within no more than two (2) days of the first time it got wet. I was never much of a chrome-cover guy myself—I was more inclined to remove all that shit, box it up, and store it in the remotest corner of the garage. I vastly preferred the lean, mean, bare-knuckle brawler look, as exemplified by my stripped-nekkid, hellaciously fast, screamin’ demon 06 Sporty:

Custom Hot Rod Flatz paint in Desert Sand (hand-sprayed at the shop by Goose, hand-striped and -lettered by the legendary Eddie Brown, Fender motor-mount bottle opener by yrs truly); wrapped header-pipes; no front or rear belt cover; not a single extraneous piece of chrome anywhere that wasn’t factory-installed—what can I say? Except that I surely do miss that sweet, nasty little bitch.

Anyways. Every last bit of Nostalgia Psycho’s teetotal junk, mind, was made from pure Chineseum© in an era when such foreign-parts profanations were strictly verboten—taboo to any self-respecting Milwaukee Iron aficionado, for which unthinking sacrilege the Harley Gods would surely smite down the blasphemer with a quickness. Suffice it to say, after getting bitten like that a cpl-three times, my days of throwing money down the Nostalgia sewer drain were O-V-E-R over.

Updated update! Awright, awright, awright, quitcher crying, ya sissy-Marys; more righteous photos of my beautiful, decidedly non-shiny Sporty below the fold. Although I’ve described her verbally/textually here before, I don’t believe I ever did post any pics, for whatever bizarre reason.

Continue reading “Rolling abortion”

Two more excellent Trump picks

In terms of personnel, he’s gotten off to a much better start than he did in 2016.

Trump picks Democrat-turned-Republican Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence
President-elect Donald Trump continued to fill out his national security team Wednesday, announcing that former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard will be his nominee for director of national intelligence.

“I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community, championing our Constitutional Rights, and securing Peace through Strength,” said Trump of Gabbard, who had previously been rumored to be considered for defense secretary and CIA director.

That’s one, now for Numero Dos.

Trump nominates Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general in surprise pick
“It is my Great Honor to announce that Congressman Matt Gaetz, of Florida, is hereby nominated to be The Attorney General of the United States,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social announcement.

“Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department. On the House Judiciary Committee, which performs oversight of DOJ, Matt played a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and exposing alarming and systemic Government Corruption and Weaponization. He is a Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law,” the Truth statement read.

Well, here’s hoping, at any rate. Senate Republicrats, on the other hand, seem determined to go right on dancing to Yertle McTurtle’s (Uniparty-Knifeinback) sour tune.

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) has been elected the next GOP leader in the Senate, ushering in a new generation of leadership after nearly two decades of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) running the conference.

A majority of GOP senators supported Thune, currently the Senate minority whip, in a secret ballot held weeks before Republicans take control of the Senate. He received 29 votes on the second ballot Wednesday, compared to 24 for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) was eliminated in the first round of voting after receiving the fewest votes.

“I want to thank my colleagues who placed their faith in me to serve as leader, and those who were supporting another candidate,” Thune said in a press conference after his election. “I promise to be a leader who serves the entire Republican Conference.”

The leadership election marks a monumental changing of the guard. McConnell, who announced his retirement from leadership in February, is the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, having risen to the post in 2007.

Bold mine. And a bigger part of the problem you ain’t ever gonna see.

Here we go again

Kudos and a big fat “attaboy” to Trump lawyer Mike Davis for putting it straight, no chaser.


Your “Show more” workaround:

“I DARE YOU to try to continue your lawfare against President Trump […] We’re not messing around this time and we will put your fatass in prison for conspiracy against rights.”

This. This right HERE, friends. Puts me in mind of a tasty meme I’ve been sitting on for a while now:

To quote my knuckle-tattoos: BANG, ZOOM!

Alas, there are those out there who will insist that we must “take the high road,” that we “not descend to their level,” all the same old codswallop. Ever wonder why Our Side has been losing to the Enemy for so long we can hardly even remember what winning feels like? Very simple, very easy: because Their Side plays hardball—remorselessly, unapologetically, continually—while Our Side plays soft NO-ball.

Ace offers a somewhat different, more pragmatic take:

For context: I think James started this war of words by claiming she was getting ready to prosecute Trump through is presidency.

Which itself is more evidence that all of her charges are bogus.

Here’s the trouble: Trump seems to be on the verge of the New York Court of Appeals overturning this charge. The judges were extremely skeptical of all aspects of James’ felonious prosecution.

But government paper-pushers protect each other. If the Court feels that Trump is threatening a fellow bureaucrat, they can decline to overturn the charges, or just suspend them until Trump’s out of office.

Yelling and blustering like the drunk guy in a bar feels good but it’s usually not the best strategy.

Don’t get me wrong; I do agree that Tish James is behaving illegally and is using her power to punish a political opponent. And indeed, she admitted as much in her campaign.

And it would be justice to do the same thing to her.

But it’s not wise to threaten her openly as the justices debate the charges. Especially when you’re on the verge of a huge vindication.

If you think liberal justices are going to just say “Well, they’re both doing it, there’s no harm here,” then you have a different understanding of partisan liberal Democrats than I do.

He may have a point, and it may even be a good one. Be that as it may, though, I contend that Davis’s approach is the way to go: hit ’em HARD, hit ‘em often; make ‘em cry, bring the pain down on ’em again and again and again until they beg you to stop. Then hit ‘em again, even harder. Never let up, never show ‘em an ounce of mercy. God forgives; we, on the other hand, do NOT. As Juanny Mav McLame confirmed for us so many times over so many years, treating with them as if they were honorable, decent folks is nothing but a mug’s game.

Contra our ol’ buddy Ace, I think it’s far more likely that the NY Court of Appeals is holding a moistened finger aloft, testing which way the wind is blowing—hence the rumors of abandoning the lawfare campaign against Trump. The reason for this sudden volte-face is patently obvious: FEAR, period fucking dot.

As has always been inevitable, the Left/D卐M☭CRATs/whatever spent the last five-ten years pushing way too far, way too hard, way too fast. Tuesday may have slammed on the pernicious Letitia James’s brakes for the nonce, but the accelerator pedal has assuredly been neither removed nor disconnected.

Trump’s overwhelming landslide victory this week of right ought to be viewed not as just a run-of-the-mill, politics-as-usual “election” win, but as an actual, by-God uprising. That point should be, MUST be, driven home like a stake through a vampire’s heart, so that the Goosesteppin’ Left won’t ever dare forget. Nothing less will suffice.

At the risk of becoming tiresome, I’ll make with the sagacious words of history’s greatest cavalryman Bedford Forrest once again: Get ‘em skeered, and keep the skeer on ‘em. It really is the only way. We try to make nice with the cloven-hoofed devils of the Left at our tremendous peril…a grievous unforced error we will, as usual, very much regret ere the end.

Peanut’s revenge

Speaking to us from beyond the grave.


Can there be any serious doubt about what’s going on here? I THINK NOT. Thank you, Peanut!

(Via Ace)

Didn’t see THIS one coming

Bill “The meaning of the word IS” Clinton, telling the God’s honest truth without somebody holding a loaded pistol against his temple, about anything at all? If you’d told me thirty years ago this day would come, I’da laughed in your face and said you were an escapee from the Ha-Ha Hotel, on the lam from the boys with the butterfly nets and those odd jackets with the straps that buckle at the back. I mean, just…just…WOW.


“Show more” workaround:

“And the only time Yasser Arafat didn’t tell me the truth was when he promised me he was gonna accept the peace deal that we had worked out, which would have given the Palestinians a state on 96% of the West Bank and 4% of Israel, and they got to choose where the 4% of Israel was. So they would have the effect of the same land of all the West Bank. They would have a capital in East Jerusalem.

 I can hardly talk about this…. And they would have equal access all day every day to the security towers that Israel maintained all through the West Bank up to the Golan Heights.

All this was offered, including, I will say it again, a capital in East Jerusalem and 2 of the 4 quadrants of the old city of Jerusalem, confirmed by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and his cabinet. And they said no. 

And I think part of it is that Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians. They wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable. 

Well, I got news for them, they were there first before their faith existed.

They were there. In the time of King David, in the southern most tribes, Hadjardia and Samaria.”

The truth, the whole truth, and nuttin’ but the truth. From the mouth of a Clinton, yet. Man alive, “unexpected” doesn’t even BEGIN to cover it.

Whither the Renaissance Man?

CF friend KT—she of Saturday Pet Thread renown, among other notable things—hips us to an intriguing VDH column. Sefton linked it earlier this week, but I let it get by me somehow.

We Are in Need of Renaissance People
The songwriter, actor, country/western singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicopter pilot, accomplished rugby player and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristofferson, recently died at 88.

Americans may have known him best for writing smash hits like “Me and Bobby McGee” and “For the Good Times,” his wide-ranging, star-acting roles in A Star is Born and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, his numerous solo albums, especially with then-spouse and singer Rita Coolidge, and the country group super-quartet he formed with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson.

In other words, Kristofferson was a rare Renaissance man who could do it all in an age of increasingly narrow specialization and expertise.

At certain times throughout history at particular locales, we have seen such singular people from all walks of life.

Classical Athens produced polymaths like Aristotle—tutor to Alexander the Great, logician, student of music, art, and literature, educator, think-tank founder, biologist, philosopher, and scientist. Later Greeks like Archimedes and Ptolemy, as men of action, mastered six or seven disciplines and applied their abstract knowledge in ways that made life easier for those around them.

But we associate the idea of a “Renaissance man” mostly with Florence, Italy, between the 15th and 16th centuries. In that brief 100 years, the Florentine Republic hosted multi-talented geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci—master painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer, and inventor—best known for the Mona Lisa and Last Supper.

The American Revolution was a similar embryo of Renaissance men. Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most famous example of unchecked abstract and pragmatic genius displayed in almost every facet of late 18th– and early 19th-century life—main author of the Declaration of Independence, third U.S. President, founder of the University of Virginia, inventor, agronomist, architect, and diplomat.

But Benjamin Franklin may best approximate the model of the Florentine Renaissance holistic brilliance—journalist, publisher, printer, author, politician, diplomat, inventor, scientist, and philosopher.

And here’s where it gets really interesting.

The best American example of the current age is the controversial Elon Musk, a truly Renaissance figure who has revolutionized at least half a dozen entire fields.

Huh. Much as I’ve come to like and admire him, I hadn’t thought about Elon as a modern-day Renaissance Man before, but now that VDH brought it up it seems obvious. Onwards.

No one prior had broken the Big Three auto monopoly of GM, Ford, and Chrysler.

Musk did just that. He exploded all three companies’ dominance with his successful creation of the first viable electric vehicle, Tesla, whose comfort, drivability, reliability, safety, and power rivaled or exceeded the models of all his competitors.

His spin-off battery storage and solar panel companies allowed thousands of families to go off the grid and stay self-sufficient in power usage.

Musk’s revolutionary Starlink internet system—a mere five years old—provides global online service to over 100 countries. Through its some 7,000 satellites, Starlink brings internet service to remote residents far more effectively and cheaply than do their own governments. When natural disasters overwhelm utilities or war disrupts the normality of peace, all look to Musk to restore online reconnections to the outside world.

Musk, almost singlehandedly, transformed the U.S. space program from a NASA 60-year-old government monopoly to an arena of fervent private-public competition. His Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) created a rocket and spacecraft program that has kept the U.S. preeminent in space exploration and reliable satellite launches. When NASA and old aerospace companies falter, the government looks to Musk to bail them out.

Musk, at great personal cost, radically transformed the old Twitter—poorly managed, censorious of ideas and expressions not deemed progressive, and mired in scandal for partnering with the FBI to silence news deemed possibly injurious to Democratic candidates and left-wing campaigns.

His new X replacement is an unfettered platform for free expression. And the more the left abhors their loss of the monopolistic old Twitter’s ideological clearing house, and vows to flee X and start their own new left-wing, censorious Twitters, the more they stay on X.

There’s more yet, and it’s…well, like I said, it’s intriguing.

SIDE NOTE: I haven’t looked in on Hanson for a goodish while—nor American Greatness itself, for whom he used to write a regular column, and perhaps still does—but for many years practically every piece he published was linked and excerpted approvingly here at CF; in particular, his post-9/11 output looking into the Moslem supremacist threat and how the West might most successfully deal with it was reliably excellent—very insightful, well-written, and steeped in the historical perspective. I see now he has his own website, The Blade Of Perseus, which I didn’t know about before. Duly bookmarked and blogrolled.

Update! Just checked and yep, looks like Hanson is still posting over at AmGreat. A little taste of another good piece, this one with an overly optimistic title.

Try a Little Honesty About Israel
Rather than admitting their own role in igniting the Middle East, Biden and Harris now blame the victims of their own incendiary foreign policy.

Honesty? From these congenital liars?!? *snort* Yeah, as if. That’ll be the day.

It was the terrorists of Hamas who surprise attacked and murdered 1,200 Israeli civilians during peace and a Jewish holiday.

Their slaughtering torturing, raping, and hostage-taking revealed a level of precivilization barbarism rarely seen in the modern era.

Israel was simultaneously targeted by rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah that would eventually number over 20,000.

It did not respond to the bloodbath with a full-scale invasion of Gaza until October 27, some three weeks after the slaughtering.

During that interim, for most of the Muslim world and both U.S. Muslim communities and on American campuses, there was rejoicing at the news of slaughtered Jews.

After it all, Biden-Harris lifted sanctions on a hostile Iran, giving it $100 billion in oil windfalls. It begged Iran to reenter the disastrous Iran deal. It abandoned the Abraham Accords. It lifted the terrorist designation from the terrorist Houthis. It restored fungible aid to the Hamas tunnel builders. It gave new aid to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

Israel’s enemies got the Biden message: attack the Jewish state and perhaps Americans for the first time in a half-century may not really mind that much.

And so they did in unison.

 And will go right on doing so, unless and until we finally pay heed to LeMay’s sagacious advice.

Curtislemay1 2x.

Read all of that Hanson piece at AG, folks, and expect to see more of the man ‘round these h’yar parts henceforth. I have been remiss, now I intend to make it up to y’all. What the hey, it’s the least I can do.

Lost America

GREAT piece on the opening-credits sequences of those classic old 70s sitcoms.

Opening credit sequences are a lost art these days. “Lost” because the ritual of collective TV watching is a thing of the past with no real place here in the streaming era. And yes, once upon a time, Network TV watching was a ritual. Like a formal State dinner with seventeen different kinds of spoons and a new glass for each course, Network TV viewing came with a set of rules and an irresistable order. All over America families gathered around the TV set at the appointed time, tuned our sets to the proper channel and waited for the opening notes of the songs we all knew by heart, excited to spend half another hour with characters we’d come to think of as friends.

There was something gratifying too about the idea that all across the country millions of our fellow Americans were doing the same exact thing at the same exact moment. If you are of a certain age, you probably have a memory of getting up during a commercial break on a warm night, maybe to let the dog out, and hearing the sound of the same commercial you were just watching coming from your neighbor’s open window. There was something special about that sense of shared culture, all of us participating at the same time, no matter where or who we were…city mouse and country mouse…doctors, lawyers, electricians and plumbers. There was an irresistable allure to being a part of something magical that would only happen once and then never again.

Streaming TV viewing, by contrast, is a solitary act with no real sense of time or place and where nobody knows your name. By the time a popular 70’s show entered syndication, a committed fan would have watched the series opener one hundred times or more. But memorable credit sequences are more rare now, a function of their incompatibility with the churn-and-burn binge-viewing nature of the streaming model. Easier to just click the “skip” button, or “next episode”, and get on with it.

Instant gratification saves time, certainly, but in the process something is lost that perhaps should not have been. There is value in waiting. Part of what makes Christmas so special is the month long run-up that precedes it. There is also something captivating and mysterious about the idea of being treated to a show. To the knowledge that we can’t speed things up at a whim. That we can’t just skip to the good stuff. It is satisfying in a way that the wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am rhythm of streaming will never be able to deliver. And it’s hard not to wonder if the old ways of network TV might not have been good for us in some critical way we can no longer recall.

Sit down, relax…be still. Someone else is in charge for the next 26 minutes and you can’t skip ahead. You are not in control. If the episode ends in a cliffhanger, you’re going to have to wait a week to find out what happens. And that’s OK.

Everything moves faster now. And while it may be an article of faith at Wharton Business School that the customer is always right, there is no immutable law that says the customer will always be happier, or even better off, once they get it.

“Sometimes you wanna go…where everybody knows your name…and they’re always glad you came…”

The above closing line, of course, comes from perhaps my personal favorite of all the shows featured in the post’s embedded videos:

Cheers, Taxi, KRP, Kotter, M*A*S*H—they’re all here, folks, and it’s one hell of a great ride. No true child of the American 70s will want to miss this one, and definitely shouldn’t.

(Via Stephen Green)

Update! The comments-section discussion betwixt myself and Barry compels me to append a typical, wonderfully silly cab-depot exchange featuring Andy Kauffman as Latka Gravas and the incomparable Christopher Lloyd as the Reverend Jim Ignatowski in Taxi.

Heh. LOVE that show. What kinda disturbs me is that, what with all the things that have slipped from my increasingly unreliable memory over recent years, I can still recall both Kaufman’s and Llloyd’s characters full names without batting an eye.

History lesson

Our boozum chum, frequent commenter, and esteemed CF Lifer hhluce provides us with a real gem of an educational post centering on a Fredrick Douglass speech which includes some enduring words of wisdom which, IIRC, currently live on in our Notable Quotes section at right. hh’s post was good enough that, rather than excerpt and link it here, I decided to just repost in its entirety at my Substack hang as a bonus Eyrie edition. Do check it out, you won’t regret it.

Civics lesson

A brief tutorial for pig-ignorant shitlibs. Not that they’re listening, or care.

No, the Electoral College Is Not a Relic of Slavery
Consistent with federalist principles, the Constitution gives the states control over our presidential elections, providing a check on majoritarianism.

Since the 2000 presidential election, the left has worked to undermine the legitimacy of the Electoral College, labeling it a relic of slavery. No doubt, if Donald Trump returns to the White House while again losing the popular vote, these attacks will be renewed with fervor. In fact, it has already begun as commentators denounce the undemocratic nature of the system. Just last month, the New York Times published a piece trashing the Constitution and asserting that the Electoral College’s only purpose was to protect slavery. These critiques are based on misconceptions and hostility toward the very structure of our Constitution.

The History
Our method of electing the president came about through compromise. The framers agreed upon a system that ensured the states had a say in choosing the president. The Constitution gives each state a share of electors, and the states decide for themselves how to select those electors.

At the time of the constitutional convention, popular elections would have favored the North because the North’s population of free persons would have outstripped the South’s. This dynamic is why the South pushed for a system that proportioned the electoral vote based on population, including slaves.

But nothing in the Electoral College system inherently favored slavery. You could have had an Electoral College system that did not count slaves as part of the population for the purpose of distributing electors. Thus, it was the counting of slaves in proportioning electors via the infamous “three-fifths clause” that protected slavery.

In fact, even if slavery had never existed, the states would never have agreed to a method of electing the president that stripped them of having a say in the matter. Protecting state sovereignty and ensuring less populous states had influence were key features of the compromise. Therefore, slavery may have been one of several reasons for the compromise, but it certainly was not the reason.

The Merits
The way state delegations elect the chief executive may have been the product of compromise, but that does not detract from the merits of the system, which include geographic representation and respect for state sovereignty. This is true even if you believe the Electoral College is a part of slavery’s legacy.

In a national election, in a country as large and diverse as ours, representation based on geographic segments of the population is far superior to the mob rule of a purely popular vote. We are not a monolithic society. Life and perspectives vary based on location. This is especially true when you consider the differences between state governments, which attract different types of people.

America is an enormous nation, and a system based solely on the popular vote would allow densely populated cities to dominate. This dynamic is particularly problematic when one considers that urban populations often want to impose their culture and policy preferences on others, whereas rural populations generally want to be left alone. Just think about how Democrats want virtually everything to be regulated nationally by the feds.

But regardless of this left-versus-right paradigm, it is simply better to give the different geographic elements of the nation and the states a voice on national matters to somewhat lessen the ability of the majority to steamroll political minorities.

Of course, “The Merits” are precisely why the Goosesteppin’ Left wants the EC—one of the most meritorious and ingenious innovations devised by the Founders to help stave off the rise of the “democracy” they correctly abjured as “mob rule”—tossed onto the ash-heap of History. With the lamentable 17th Amendment fully and firmly in place, the Electoral College is effectively the (former) Republic’s last desperate, flickering hope; once it’s been done away with, the disassembling of America That Was (ie, America as Founded) will be achieved, and its “fundamental transformation” into a tyrrannous shitrapy will be complete at last.

Lots more yet at the link, every last syllable of it fine, fine stuff. CF Lifers will be quite familiar with the subject material, no doubt, but you’ll enjoy reading the whole thing nonetheless, if only as a refresher-course. Lord knows they ain’t teaching this stuff in government schools anymore, and there’s a reason for it—a nefarious, unlovely, disturbing reason, to be sure.

Historical illiteracy: it’s not just for the Left anymore

Man alive, obsessive JOOJOOJOOOOOphobia sure does lead some of us who really ought to know better into some pretty odd places, intellectually speaking.

No, Churchill Was Not the Villain
The historian Darryl Cooper has argued in an interview on Tucker Carlson’s show that Winston Churchill “was the chief villain of World War II,” which would be both interesting and indeed shocking were his thesis not based on such staggering ignorance and disregard for historical fact that it is safe to disregard completely.

Cooper’s first argument was that Churchill “was primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did, something other than an invasion of Poland.” Yet in the moment that Adolf Hitler invaded Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg at dawn on May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill was not even prime minister. Unless Mr. Cooper is arguing that from his position as First Lord of the Admiralty—the head of Britain’s navy—Churchill was somehow able to force Hitler to unleash Blitzkrieg in the West, his first argument falls to the ground.

Hitler had planned his surprise attack through the Ardennes—the “Sickle-cut” maneuver—with senior generals such as Erich von Manstein, Erwin Rommel, and Gerd von Rundstedt several months before the attack took place. They bear responsibility “for that war becoming what it did,” not Churchill. Furthermore, they also bear full responsibility for the unprovoked invasion of neighboring Poland itself, about which Cooper and Carlson were silent.

In April 1939, when Churchill was not even in the cabinet, the British government guaranteed Poland’s security, so Hitler had no right to be surprised when Britain went to war with Germany when he flagrantly disregarded that guarantee.

Cooper’s next egregious error was to blame Operation Barbarossa on Hitler’s perception of a threat from Stalin, or a Soviet plan to capture Romanian oilfields, completely ignoring the genuine reason, which was the Nazi demand for Lebensraum—”living space” in Eastern Europe, especially in Belarus and Ukraine. One wonders whether Cooper has ever read Mein Kampf, in which Hitler’s ultimate intentions were made plain. Elsewhere in the interview he makes the outlandish claim that Hitler “no longer thought of Russia as an international Communist movement,” which contradicts all the evidence of Hitler’s public and private statements prior to unleashing Barbarossa.

Cooper next claimed that the millions of Soviet prisoners of war who died in German captivity did so because the Nazi leadership “had no plans for POWs,” ignoring the obvious fact, well supported by the sources, that in fact the deaths of millions of Soviet POWs were the deliberate Nazi plan for what to do with them.

Cooper goes on to castigate Churchill for not accepting Hitler’s peace proposals during the Phoney War from October 1939 to May 1940, stating that Hitler “didn’t want to fight France or Britain.” Yet by then he had invaded Poland, and had no intention of disgorging it, so the original casus bellum remained.

“The war was over and the Germans won by the fall of 1940,” Cooper states. Not so. The Germans had indeed forced the British from the Continent at Dunkirk by June 1940, but it is to Churchill’s everlasting and untarnishable glory that he kept Britain in the war until Nazi evil was extirpated. The war at sea was continuing, as was the war on the North African littoral. Greece came into the conflict in April 1941, drawing German forces south two months before Barbarossa. The battle was lost by Britain, true, but the war was far from won by Hitler.

Cooper’s wailing that Churchill rejected Hitler’s peace offers also fails to take into account the fact that had Britain made an ignoble peace in 1940, Hitler would have been able to concentrate all his forces on the East in his invasion of Russia in June 1941. Instead, he was forced to keep 30 percent of the Luftwaffe and considerable land forces in the western part of Europe. It was perhaps Churchill’s greatest act of statesmanship, that of a hero rather than “the chief villain of World War II.”

When Cooper blames Churchill for “demonizing [Neville] Chamberlain” in 1940, he is presumably ignorant of the fact that Churchill in fact asked Chamberlain to join his War Cabinet, where he worked closely and cordially with him, and then gave one of his greatest speeches as his eulogy to Chamberlain in November 1940.

“Churchill wanted a war,” claimed Cooper. “He wanted to fight Germany.” Not so. From the moment Hitler came to power in Germany, Churchill warned of the threat the Nazis posed to world peace, and how weak the West was militarily, but his solution was to rearm, not to monger war. He had fought in the trenches in the Great War and had lost too many friends in it to want another war, but he was willing to undergo it if the only alternatives were disgrace and dishonor.

Cooper then alleged, again without any evidence, that Churchill wanted war because “the long-term interests of the British Empire were threatened by the rise of a power like Germany.” Again, not so. All senior British policymakers recognized that the threats to the Empire came from Japan in the Far East, Fascist Italy in northeast Africa, and Russia in the Near East. Germany had no contiguous borders with the British Empire anywhere. A glance at a map would have shown Cooper that.

Cooper gave what Carlson called “the wryest smile I’ve ever seen” when he answered Carlson’s naïve question as to “What was [Churchill]’s motive?” in wanting to fight World War II. The true reason was that Churchill knew he needed to extirpate Nazism, but according to Cooper it was because “Churchill’s got a long and complicated history” that needed “redemption” because “Churchill was humiliated by his performance in the First World War.”

This ludicrous piece of cod psychology simply does not stand up. Churchill’s performance in World War I included being the man who got the Royal Navy ready for the war, who transported the entire British Expeditionary Force to France without the loss of a man in August 1914, who defended Antwerp during a crucial period that October, who undertook 30 trench raids in no man’s land as a lieutenant colonel, and who was the minister of munitions who provided the British Army with much of the weaponry necessary to win in 1918. The idea that the Gallipoli disaster, for which Churchill was ultimately though not solely responsible, made him feel a need for “redemption” a quarter of a century later is hogwash.

Cooper then describes Churchill as “a psychopath,” which surely says more about his own state of mind than Churchill’s. He goes on to make the accusation that Churchill “was a drunk,” which he was not, although he certainly drank a lot. Churchill could hold his liquor, and there was only one occasion during World War II when he was drunk, an astonishing achievement considering the pressure he was under.

I’ve not the vaguest clue what could have possessed Tucker the C to have this assclown on for an interview and treat with him as if he were actually a sane, sensible sort whose ahistorical revisionism was worth taking at all seriously, but I very much hope he gets over whatever it is and starts to feel better real soon.

Perhaps the single most crotch-chafing aspect of this spectacular, wide-spectrum self-beclownment—the Platonic ideal of what political pundits are talking about when they call some foolishness or other an “unforced error”—is the smear-fodder it hands, gratis, to salivating shitlibs, who will assuredly not let any moss grow on them before jumping in with both feet to take fullest advantage of the golden opportunity gratuitously provided them by Tucker, his out-there interviewee, and likeminded Jewphobic nitwits.

Not that I, you, or anybody else gives a fat rat’s patoot about what those “people” think, about anything. But still. To wit:

The shameful Nazi apologism of the Very Online right
Tucker Carlson’s chat with Darryl Cooper was a new low for the crank right.

Forget that toothless crackhead who says he had sex with Barack Obama. Never mind the lowlife pimp who cosplays as a lifestyle guru, Andrew Tate. This week Tucker Carlson scraped even lower in the barrel of cranks to find a guest for his chat show on X. He had on Darryl Cooper, a historian, podcaster and – wait for it – apologist for Adolf Hitler. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve now reached the ‘Were the Nazis really the bad guys?’ stage of contrarian online blather.

Tucker’s chat with Cooper has caused a storm. As well it might. Also known as ‘Martyr Made’, Mr Cooper is a notorious historical revisionist. He has huge beef with Winston Churchill. Churchill, not Hitler, was the true villain of the Second World War, he says. He’s a giddy promoter of the myth that Hitler made a peace offer in 1940 but Churchill rejected it and insisted on plunging the world into war. Hitler the peacenik – who saw that coming down the pipeline of online bollocks?

What Cooper told Carlson was insane. Churchill was a ‘psychopath’ kept in power by Zionist interests, he said. As for all those poor Jews in the camps – they ‘ended up dead’ because the stretched Nazis lacked the time and resources to care for them, he insisted. Depicting the Nazis’ industrialised slaughter of the Jews of Europe as an accident, just a sad, regrettable byproduct of their being too busy, is sick. It’s a species of Holocaust denial. That Carlson nodded along to such rancid revisionism is shameful.

For the true measure of Cooper, consider what he said in a recent post on X, since deleted. Paris under the Nazis, he tweeted, was ‘infinitely preferable in virtually every way’ to the Paris of the Olympics opening ceremony. To drive home his fascistic point, he put a photo of Hitler and his henchmen surveying the spoils of Paris next to a screenshot of that plump drag queen who formed the centrepiece of the Last Supper pisstake at the opening ceremony. Look, I hated the opening ceremony, but – I can’t believe this needs to be said – Paris of 2024 is preferable in every way to the Paris that was conquered by the marauding inhuman racists of the Nazi regime. This is where we’re at, folks: having to explain that a drag queen on your TV is less bad than a Jew-murdering machine taking over your country.

And this, mind, not from a wild-eyed Leftard, but the more-or-less moderate Brandon O’Neill.

Be that as it may, the inexplicable Carlson/Cooper lovefest suggests a question or three. Namely: Have the asswipes both Left and Right really dragged Western Civ to the point where it must only be one or the other? That—Roosevelt, Churchill, and presumably De Gaulle having been stricken from eligibility in the “heroes” category because the (Not) Smart Set has re-evaluated them as WW2’s Worst Monsters—we’re reduced to a binary choice between either Hitler or *gulp* Stalin? Either it’s Nazi thugs marching or Manwoman degenerates prancing down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, no in-between option to be found anywhere along that wide, history-steeped thoroughfare? SRSLY, people?!?

Thanks a pantload for this stellar contribution to the public discourse, Tucker. New category for annoying twaddle such as this: Dem pesky ((((JOOOOOOOZ!!!))))

They’re under your bed!

Let’s see: the JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations; the Bolshevik Revolution; WW2 and the (((Holocaust))) Hoax; the wars in Korea and Vietnam; the 9/11 and 10/7 attacks; FauxVid, pAntiFa, BLM; the current Gaza Genocide—is there NOTHING the Mossad, Israel, and omnipotent Global Jewry hasn’t done, NO atrocious crime against humanity they didn’t perpetrate and then fob the blame off onto others for, the shifty sumbitches?

And now this horseshit. WAKE UP, AMERICA!!!

The Palestinian Flag: As Inauthentic as the Palestinian People
The Palestine flag itself is an indication of the fact that the Palestinians are a newly-minted ethnicity — invented, in fact, by the KGB and Yasir Arafat in the 1960s to be a weapon against Israel. Before it was the flag of Palestine, the flag was the banner of the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz, which was established in 1916 and absorbed into Saudi Arabia in 1925. In 1924, it also became the flag of the Sharifian Caliphate, which occupied much the same territory as the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz in what is now Western Saudi Arabia and lasted until 1931.

The Hejaz is in Arabia — not “Palestine.” The designer of the flag was not a Palestinian, as there were no Palestinians as such in those days, but an English Colonel named Mark Sykes.

What is known today as the flag of Palestine was never actually the flag of Palestine at all. The name “Palestine” historically refers to a region that was so named by the Romans after they expelled the Jews in 134AD. The Romans took this name from that of the Philistines, the Israelites’ Biblical enemies, who had long since died out. But Palestine for the Romans (and everyone else) was just the name of a region, not of a people, and it had no flag.

Nor do we see this people or its flag throughout history. There was never an independent Palestinian state, and Arabs in the area never flew this flag. A 1939 world atlas shows a flag of Palestine, that is, British Mandate Palestine. The British held the area not as a British colony, but for the express purpose of creating there a Jewish national home, in the Jews’ ancient homeland. Inconveniently for the historical revisionists who rule the public discourse today, the 1939 flag of Mandatory Palestine shows a banner featuring a star of David.

The Palestine Liberation Organization adopted the current Palestinian flag as its own only in 1964, the same year that it changed its name to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, in recognition of the newly created nationality it was supposedly dedicated to “liberating.” There was no Palestinian nationality before the 1960s, when it was invented in order to reposition what was then universally known as the Arab/Israeli conflict. Up to the invention of “Palestinians,” the Israelis were the tiny, besieged people amidst a huge number of hostile Arabs; after that invention, the “Palestinians” themselves became the tiny, besieged people against the big, bad Israelis.

Lies, all just JOOO LIES!™ If you don’t believe me, ask any historically-illiterate, hooknosed-Jew-hating idiot near you, he’ll happily tell you alllll about it—extensively, at great length, again and again, until you get sick and tired of hearing him drone on and on and on.

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