Believe it or Else

The fabulous Flatiron

Posted on October 28, 2023October 28, 2023 by Mike

A Big Apple architectural icon is getting a makeover.

Flatiron Building, Famous New York Landmark, to Be Converted to Condos
The triangular 22-story building, which has been vacant since 2019, may be among the highest profile office-to-residential conversions

New York City’s historic Flatiron Building is officially preparing for its new life as a home to condos.

Following an auction of the property earlier this year, The Brodsky Organization has most recently bought a stake in the landmarked building — which is owned by GFP Real Estate. The investment confirms that the building, which sits at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, will be converted into condos.

Sources confirmed Brodsky’s stake, as well as the “likely” conversion, to The Messenger. The deal was first reported by The Real Deal.

The triangular 22-story landmark located at 175 Fifth Avenue has a typical floorplan of 10,600 square feet, with a total square footage of 255,000 square feet, according to materials by GFP. At the May auction, GFP Chairman Jeffrey Gural estimated that the building would cost $100 million to renovate, in addition to the $161 million he dropped on the winning bid.

Sources involved in similar investment sales say that the conversion will be rather pricey. It’s estimated that the developer would have to charge about $1,600 per square foot to break even and closer to $3,000 a square foot to turn a profit. The triangular floor plan may also make for oddly shaped apartments.

After the gorgeous Chrysler building, I have to say the modestly mid-rise skyscraper once derided as Burnham’s Folly stands second on my personal most-beloved list. So much did I dig it, in fact, that on my frequent long afternoon strolls around Lower Manhattan I usually made sure to arrange the route so it would take me by the dear old Flatiron at least once. When I did, I always had to stop for a few minutes and just gaze up at the oddly-shaped old gal from across Fifth Ave, drinking in her unique grace and beauty from the ground floor entrance to the add-on penthouse floor at the tippy-top.

For reasons I don’t pretend to understand, though, I never did go in to check out the interior. Go figger. But just you have yourself a gander at this pic and then tell me she ain’t a bona fide masterpiece of the architect’s art.

Flatiron Building

Funny story about the Flatiron that isn’t all that well-known, related to me years ago by Chris Pfouts, who definitely knew a thing or two about a thing or two concerning the classic structures of two once-great American cities, New Orleans and NYC: it enjoys the singular distinction of being the only skyscraper anywhere that was actually, literally stolen.

See, during the era when the Flatiron was being built, the Mafia had a certain renown for stealing materials, tools, and various fixtures from any construction site their crews were hired to work on (which was all of ‘em) to be resold elsewhere. So brazen and out of control had this New York tradition become that, while the Flatiron site was being prepared, those Cosa Nostra crews started jacking every girder, beam, door, and tiedown bolt they got their hands on, just as soon as the stuff was delivered to the site for later assembly.

Some city official totted up the losses years later and determined that such a ridiculously large quantity of material had disappeared that, in effect, two (2) Flatiron buildings could have been built. Sadly, New York ended up with just the one.

I’m glad she’s coming back, if only as exorbitantly-priced condos. Even after having stood vacant for several years, tearing the Flatiron down to puke up yet another nondescript glass box in her place would be unthinkable. I’m thankful that the new owner has smarts and vision enough to realize that the old girl has life left in her still, and I hope he makes himself a swoon-inducing bundle from the undertaking. New York just wouldn’t be the same without her.

FINALLY

Posted on October 28, 2023October 28, 2023 by Mike

At last, Kuenstler has written a column that I can’t quibble with, complain about, or disagree with in even the smallest, most niggling way.

Our nation, under the leadership of “Joe Biden” (…iden…iden…iden…iden…), has deployed our mighty warships in the waters all around and amongst Israel’s adversaries. Hard to see how that couldn’t happen, our sacred duty and all. If called upon, they can probably do a lot of damage — though there is plenty of reason to believe that Iran has enough anti-ship cruise missiles to create a big problem for us. Heck, Iran has enough long range conventional guided missiles to turn Haifa and Tel Aviv into ashtrays. But then, five minutes later, the same would be true for Teheran and Damascus, only they’d be radioactive. And who knows what those swarms of moiling migrants in the US and Euroland might be inspired to do, when it comes to that?

Jihad is in the offing. Too many are itching to set it off. Now they’re just waiting for an excuse, a reason to ignite the fuses. The obvious excuse would be an Israeli military incursion into Gaza. That would git’er done, I’m sure. The Israelis must realize this. Despite prior expectations, though, and even given the thirst for vengeance, they might realize it’s unnecessary. They’ve done enough bombing in Gaza. They could neutralize the command network of Hamas pretty much the same way they got the Black September ringleaders of the Munich Olympics massacre, 1972 — a methodical hunt over years, decades. They don’t have to shout from the rooftops, either. Everyone will know.

There is the fate of the Gaza hostages to consider. It doesn’t look good. Given enough time, of course, they can be shuttled around geographically here, there, and everywhere and concealed for years. They have value. World opinion will turn on the hostage-takers, though you might argue that no longer matters. I rather expect that rescue operations are well-planned and some may be carried out. But, overall, many of these poor pawns are apt to be lost. Tragic is tragic.

If we manage to avoid World War Three, America has its own grave problem to consider, which is comprehensive collapse — of economic activity, the financial scaffold for it, and of civil order in a society under deadly stress. Most of this damage has been induced by our own political leaders. Now that the House of Representatives has been put in order, it’s time for that body to act expeditiously and relieve “Joe Biden” of his responsibilities…and then Ms. Harris…and then Messrs. Garland, Mayorkas, and Wray. Out with them, post haste, and begin the project to save our own country.

Seconded, wholeheartedly—every word of it, to the last detail. Well, except that nothing in the last two sentences—which demonstrate that poor old James is still eager to succumb to the usual unfounded over-optimism about the likelihood of even one item on his devoutly-to-be-wished list coming to pass, desirable as they would doubtless be—has a ghost of a chance of happening. I say again: this is NOT America as we once knew it, not in any way, shape, or form. This is Amerika v2.0, and the sooner we can all get our heads around that dismaying home truth, the sooner something useful might actually be done about it.

Of leashes, muzzles, and chains

Posted on October 28, 2023October 28, 2023 by Mike

Anybody surprised at all by this revoltin’ development? Anybody? Bueller…?

Israel Delays Ground Invasion Because US Is Unprepared to Defend Itself
Israel has been prepared to enter Gaza to eliminate Hamas, but the ground invasion keeps getting delayed. The reason why?

The US is unprepared to defend US military installations in the area.

This is pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. However, I am not sure that the Biden Administration isn’t just pressuring Israel to delay for other reasons as well, given their neverending expressions of concern for Gaza.

Israel has agreed, for now, to a request from the U.S. to get its air defenses in place to protect U.S. troops in the region ahead of an expected ground invasion of Gaza, U.S. and Israeli officials said.

The Pentagon is scrambling to deploy nearly a dozen air-defense systems to the region, including for U.S. troops serving in Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to protect them from missiles and rockets. U.S. officials have so far persuaded the Israelis to hold off until those pieces can be placed, as early as later this week.

Israel is also taking into account in its planning the effort to supply humanitarian aid to civilians inside Gaza, as well as diplomatic efforts to free more of the hostages held by Hamas, officials said.

The new excuse by the Biden Administration looks utterly pathetic because it is an admission that despite decades of having troops and assets in the region, our military is not prepared to defend our interests.

That is quite the reality if true, and quite the message to our enemies if either true or false.

WhoawhoawhoaWHOA there, big fella! Ixnay on the oosetalk-lay, if you please. Surely you must know that, according to the Progressivist catechism, Amerika v2.0 HAS no enemies, only “friends” who haven’t been appeased, bribed, beseeched, and groveled before sufficiently yet.

In fact, the word “enemies” itself is strictly verboten, reserved exclusively for domestic use to describe violent ÜberUltraMegaMAGA insurrectionists; non-“liberal” Whypeepuh; the traitor Trump and anyone who has ever spoken with, seen, and/or been closer than ten (10) statute miles from him bodily; all Republicans; and assorted Christians, Normals, rednecks, slope-browed ridgerunners, and cishet-binary Breeder freaks. In matters of foreign policy, this ugliest, most foul of epithets must never be uttered by more enlightened, evolved, sophisticated beings such as ourselves.

Fortunately, we have our Chinese friends to help guide us on the Path To Peace For All.

Tracking major warship movements in response to the developing situation in Gaza and beyond has been interesting. Most people have focused on the comings and goings of the US Navy in or towards the Eastern Mediterranean. Even the USN itself seems to have taken its eye off other potential flashpoints, as something has happened which never normally would: the most powerful naval force in the Gulf is Chinese.

Just fourteen days ago, US Navy movements were being passed off as ‘business as normal’. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Gerald R Ford was in the Mediterranean anyway. The Dwight D Eisenhower (Ike) carrier group deployment was planned anyway, just brought forward.

About ten days ago this changed. Ford’s stay in the Med was extended and it was stated that Ike was going to join the Ford. Two super-carriers in the same place – that’s big medicine. Articles were written noting this, by me among others. We armchair admirals also noted that the USS Bataan and USS Carter Hall, amphibious ships carrying the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) were dispatched from the Gulf to the Red Sea and the command-and-control ship Mount Whitney, complete with a 3* Admiral and his staff, was pulled off Nato duties and sent to take charge in the eastern Med. This could no longer be passed off as ‘planning adjustments’.

The only way to work out what’s going on is to take away the drinking straw through which you are looking at Gaza and zoom out, a long way out.

One thing jumps out straight away. The US Navy, for now at least, is not the preeminent naval force in the Gulf. That distinction now belongs to the 44th and 45th naval escort groups of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The two groups, one of which has just arrived to take over from the other, have a total of six ships. Two are Type 052D destroyers equipped with YJ-21 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missiles.

No worries; I’m sure they mean well, no harm done. Carry on, Most Puissant Lords and Masters. As you were.

Back when I was playing wargames a lot as a staff officer, we found that if a war with Iran was going to start, the Bab el Mandeb strait at the bottom of the Red Sea and/or the Eastern Med were likely places for the Iranians to start it. This is partly because it exposes the problems of having three US Combatant Commands converging, but mainly because it draws assets away from the root of the problem – Iran. And now we have attacks happening in both places, launched by Iranian-backed organisations in both cases. Suddenly there are not many assets left near the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran menaces all traffic in and out of the Gulf. It all looks a bit like the beginning of some of those Iran-vs-the-West wargames.

Large naval deployments affect oceans and continents way beyond the coastlines off which they sail. Experts in land power and followers of land wars sometimes forget this. One has to zoom way out and look at all of the moving parts to even have the first idea of what effect things like carrier strike groups may have and even then, don’t be surprised if you are wrong or if it changes.

Winston Churchill got this when he said, “a battleship exercises a vague general fear and menaces all points at once. It appears, and disappears, causing immediate reactions and perturbations on the other side”. There will be many conversations along these lines in the corridors of Washington DC and Whitehall – and it’s to be hoped that the planners remember that Churchill used this phrase to compel the deployment of Force Z, with its battleships without air cover, against the advice of the Admiralty. More than eight hundred British sailors paid the price.

As is perfectly typical of D卐M☭CRAT administrations going all the way back to loathsome cockroach Woodrow Wilson, the Chaos Party has a nasty little habit of involving the US in needless, futile Tar Baby Wars, mismanaging them ludicrously, then leaving the next Republican president to shoulder the burden of finding some way of extricating the nation from the gooey, sticky mess—reviling said Republican as a “warmonger” the whole while, natch.

American badass

Posted on October 26, 2023October 26, 2023 by Mike

That would be one Steve McQueen, as shown in this commercial for Honda’s all-time badass motocrosser, the almighty Elsinore CR250M.

Repops of that great orange and black Elsinore jersey McQueen sports in the vid can be had all day long for about 40-50 bucks, my lifelong friend and vintage-dirt-bike enthusiast Stan tells me. By contrast, Steve’s smoke-tinted helmet visor with the little rearview mirrors mounted on each side are rare as hens’ teeth, going for around 3-400 smacks when/if you’re fortunate enough to find one at all.

The video is a commercial McQueen made for Japanese TV, for which he got paid a cool million bucks. He actually ran the Elsinore Grand Prix (for which Honda’s first two-stroke MX bike was named) himself in 1970 under the hilarious nom de badass Harvey Mushman—no, really. Of that historic race, McQueen had this to say:

“When you’re runnin’ with the top ten, as I was, you’re really honkin’ on pretty good an’ what happpens is that with so many bikes choppin’ up the dirt the holes in the course get worse…deeper with each lap.

“I was comin’ out of a wash under a bridge with this road dip ahead and I just kinda took one of those big jumps where you’re sure you’re gonna make it but you don’t. And I didn’t. My bike nosed into the dip, which was, like, deep – and I went ass-over the bars into the crowd. Didn’t hurt anybody but me. My left foot was busted in six places.”

This wasn’t enough to stop him however, as he got back on the bike and finished the race, still finishing in the top ten!

What’d I tell ya? Badass!

Shaking in their boots, they are NOT

Posted on October 25, 2023October 25, 2023 by Mike

Yeah, they’re afraid of us and all our big, scary guns. Just keep telling yourself that while clicking your heels together three times and maybe it’ll come true.

It’s been a while since the term studied insult was common in American discourse. Yet the thing itself has been much with us these past few years, so it’s well to understand what the term signifies:

studied insult: An insult carefully designed to pertain to a particular person or group, such that the insulted one(s) cannot fail to take note of the offense.

The intention is to give offense to a specific person, and in a specific way. The British have long been celebrated for excellence in this field.

The question good-hearted people of every kind have been asking since January 20, 2021 is simple and plaintive: “How could they not have known this would happen?” The stolen elections of November 2020 were followed by one incredibly “stupid” policy after another. Surely the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch remember the high points:

Strangling the supply of oil and gas.

Opening wide the southern border.

Massive inflation of the currency.

Pansification of the military.

Involvement in Russia-Ukraine War.

Massive financial gifts to Iran.

Abandonment of $80 billion in weaponry to the Taliban.

Use of the DOJ and FBI as political tools.

De facto legalization of rioting, vandalism, vagrancy, and theft.

Sam Brinton, Karine Jean-Pierre, and “Rachel” Levine.

I could go on, of course. Every single thing in the list above was done deliberately, with full foreknowledge of its consequences. They were strokes intentionally delivered to achieve two effects:

To weaken the United States, whether politically, militarily, or economically;

To insult decent Americans so blatantly that there could be no doubt about it.

Many good-hearted people simply can’t believe that the Usurpers really meant to offend us so blatantly…that those were studied insults. But in fact they’d been planned since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in November 2016. Those barbs were intended to be blunt and brutal: We can do what we like to you, and there’s not one damn thing you can do about it.

I’m a fair hand with such things, and I tell you plainly: I could not have contrived more blatant, humiliating insults if I were given a decade to do it.

Francis has nailed it but good with this one, and Bayou Peter knows it.

I have to agree with Mr. Porretto. This is deliberate, in-your-face intimidation and triumphalism. “We got rid of Trump and his ilk, and now we’re in charge, and there’s nothing you can do about it!” That’s the message. That’s also why I, and many others, believe the 2024 elections will be a sham, and a fake, and a public lie. Having gone this far, the powers that be dare not see their handiwork overturned by another Trumpian revolution. They have to protect it, and themselves for having fostered and accomplished it: and that means we’ve probably seen the last free and fair elections in America for some time to come, until people get fed up enough to do something about the corruption and dishonesty that have come to rule the “old ways” of government.

Mr. Porretto asks, “What will we do on that day?” My question is, “When will that day come?” Either way, it’s not a comfortable thought. I’ve lived in disintegrating societies and nations in the Third World, and seen at first hand how many become casualties of the process – militarily, economically, socially, politically, culturally and in every other way imaginable. I think most of us will learn more about that in the not too distant future, because when the rot has set into a society as deeply as it has into ours, there’s a certain inevitability about the process. What’s more, unless the decent majority “screws their courage to the sticking place”, the end result is unlikely to be happy. The intimidation currently on display is designed to stop them doing that. Will it succeed? Or will it provoke them to say, “So far and no further!”?

Remains to be seen, I suppose, which we will soon enough. The one thing for sure is that, far from fearing us, all the evidence shows that in fact they despise us—that they hold us in complete contempt, and will go right on doing so until they’re given reason NOT to.

One of Jefferson’s most well-known apocryphal aphorisms sums up our condition more than adequately, as pithily and neatly as it’s ever been done: When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. Whether Jefferson ever actually said it—it’s almost certain that he didn’t—is pretty much moot, because of the overwhelming truth of it. That being so, which of those two sentences best describes Amerika v2.0 today?

Now the only question is, will 2024 be rigged? Do the votes matter anymore?

Posted on October 21, 2023October 21, 2023 by Barry

Good question from what is an accurate article IMO. At least here in NC I see the tide changing substantially. From a barely reddish state with a commie gov, to a hardcore super majority legislature and supreme court to match. Next up, getting a solid non rino republican governor and the turn around will be nearly complete.

When you’re climbing to the mountaintop the worst moments are just before you arrive.

WAYNE ROOT: FINALLY, Some Good News. “The Great Awakening” and “The Great American Divorce” are Converging. The Debate is Over. We Won!

The best thing about living in San Francisco?

Posted on October 21, 2023October 21, 2023 by Mike

It’s all the interesting, unusual, culturally-diverse people you meet there.

We all know that San Francisco has a terrible, awful, horrible, homeless problem with homeless people sleeping everywhere. One homeless man set up camp across from a Catholic grade school. It would have been a curiosity except for the signs he hung outside of his tent.

“Free fentanyl 4 new users” and “Meth for stolen items.”

Joseph Adam Moore served six years for unlawful sex with a 12-year-old girl and was accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl just a month after getting out of prison. But his probation deal did not include staying away from schools. So he camped directly across from Stella Maris Academy and began to host parties of stoners — much to the neighborhood’s dismay.

“Some of these people brought barbecues, a beach umbrella, and even a dune buggy that sat on the pavement,” said Nathaniel Weiner, a neighbor. “They’re ‘creating a Burning Man-style party’ in a quiet residential neighborhood where people are just trying to live their lives.’”

Note that I haven’t even used the word “police” in this piece. Apparently, the only law Moore is violating is the one about public camping. The cops are hamstrung by about a thousand rules and regulations regarding the treatment of the homeless; they can’t be forced to go anywhere or do anything; they can’t be forced into a mental health facility; they can’t even be forced to go into a shelter.

Dan Noyes, a reporter for ABC7 in San Francisco, had an enlightening interview with Mr. Moore.

Moore says he’s lived across the school for two years and that his signs offering free drugs are no joke. He told Noyes “he’s just passing on the drugs that other people give him, in exchange for blankets and supplies he provides.”

Moore: “So they bring me trash that they’ve scavenged, things that they think are valuable, or they give me some of the drugs that they have, which I don’t do.”

Noyes: “You’re exposing grade school kids to this? This is not right. You know that?”

Moore: “No, no, it’s shallow.”

Oh, absolutely. Wouldn’t EVER want to be perceived as “shallow,” you know. Or “unevolved,” or lacking in empathy for the “less fortunate” who have been “victimized” by our rapacious “capitalist” system. Why, that would be just awful. After all, a mentally-ill pedophile dope-slinger says so.

Jesus CHRIST, but this chick can RIDE!

Posted on October 21, 2023October 21, 2023 by Mike

Ahh, but let’s not forget the number of times she had to have busted her ass whilst learning how to do all this.

pic.twitter.com/mblAtP0k33

— ONT WTF (@OntWtf)

October 20, 2023

Amazing. The union between (wo)man and machine on display here is damned near total, and quite impressive. Take especial note of the scrupulously careful, almost gingerly way she places her feet on the rear pegs as she keeps the front wheel in the air throughout. Hats off to ya, ma’am.

Update! After re-watching it for about the tenth time, I realized there’s another party involved that deserves some kudos: whoever was behind the camera recording it. Always in focus and perfectly framed; steady-handed zoom-ins and -outs; never any shaking, wobbling, or losing track of the subject. This is some incredible stunt-riding and some top-notch lensmanship both, I’d say, a real two-fer.

The way forward, the way back, the past as prelude

Posted on October 21, 2023October 21, 2023 by Mike

The problem with this kind of thinking can be summed up by the parts I’ll put in boldface.

Things are going a little sideways now, wouldn’t you agree? The world is not coming to an end, exactly, but our arrangements in it are breaking up all at once, threatening to wreck everyday life for a whole lot more people than just the poor mutts on the margins. The endless insults to common decency and common sense by the vicious governing blob that runs things don’t help, either. The main question du jour: when things break really badly, will they break against that vicious blob hard enough to make it stop?

This blob — a weird cabal alien to our heritage — is composed of people with names and duties, and institutions too. They have already lost their credibility, their authority, and their legitimacy. The problem is that they haven’t lost their power to wreck our country. Exposed and disgraced as they are, they still occupy the seats of command, still twiddle the dials on the control console, still enjoy a foolish illusion of invulnerability.

I’m in favor of wholesale impeachment of these top people as the best way to go, first, to pry their hands off the levers of power, and second, use the process of impeachment to move public sentiment to a firmly anti-blob position.

See what I’m talking about? Those two statements are self-evidently contradictory. If they still occupy the seats of command—and they assuredly do—how the hell do you propose to successfully impeach them, then? Do you seriously expect a system under their control to right itself just because you have your lawyers ask their lawyers, nicely and politely, to cut out the shenanigans and skullduggery? Even if that miracle somehow does happen, who’s going to make it stick? Or, in Stalin’s famous (and possibly apocryphal) formulation, how many divisions has the Pope?

Yes, their assumption of invulnerability is in fact a foolish illusion, but not because they’re afraid of being impeached. It’s the same old story, though: the Second Amendment has no power against tyranny if Our Side has preemptively foresworn to see that’s it enforced—ie, to ever do anything with all those guns but keep them safely locked in gun safes or closets no matter what…exactly as the rabid opponents of the 2A have mandated. They did that for a reason, and so far it’s worked out quite well indeed for them.

There’s more to Kuenstler’s piece, of course, lots of it good. But in the end he’s self-stymied by some too-familiar habits of thought and emotion: the hopeless faith that, in a rigged game wherein the rules are arbitrary and favor one side over the other, appeals to the umpire might still somehow save the day. That, despite a veritable Everest of indisputable evidence to the contrary that stacks up higher each and every day, there’s still something of honesty and probity left in the crooks and grifters at the helm of the ship of (Super)state. That, in people visibly, demonstrably evil to their very marrow, there is nevertheless some good in them somewhere that might somehow be brought forth, if we can only appeal to it vehemently enough.

Would that it were so. Alas, it is not. The number of decent men in the US Congress can be counted on one’s fingers without resort to one’s toes; much as I do appreciate them, Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz will never be able to impeach anybody all by themselves. As to dismantling Foggy Bottom, fuhgeddabouddit, ain’t gonna happen without gunplay.

Not that pointing out the mal- and mis-feasance rife throughout FederalGovCo isn’t a worthwhile endeavor, mind; in fact, it’s a vital step in the whole long slog. I repeat: a process, not an event. But at some point cold, hard steel (or lead) must come into play, and all the pleas in the world for comity and gentlemanly restraint aren’t going to change that.

Netanyahu heeds the advice of Jew-hating Obama stay-behind agents

Posted on October 19, 2023October 19, 2023 by Mike

In a shockingly UNEXPECTED!™ development, Israel throws another combatus-interruptus “war.”

Is Israel’s biggest danger from the Biden White House?

Not the biggest, no. A serious threat and a deadly enemy, of course, but not quite the biggest of ‘em.

Renowned journalist and Middle East expert Caroline Glick says Israel is now facing dangers from a quarter no one anticipated: the Biden administration.

During yesterday’s broadcast of “The Caroline Glick Show“ on JNS TV, Glick outlined how her own sources described what’s been happening behind the scenes.

Speaking from her home in Israel, Glick said, “We are in danger of losing…sovereign control over our military.”

She then presented what sources told her really happened when secretary of state Tony Blinken met with Israel’s war cabinet on Monday.

“From what came out of the meeting, Tony Blinken wasn’t trying to help Israel at all. What he was doing was demanding that Israel enable resupply to Gaza, the euphemism of which is ‘humanitarian aid.’” She continued to say that Blinken threatened to withhold American war materiel from Israel, such as bunker buster bombs and regular ordinance.

And Israel didn’t just decide to invite Biden. His administration demanded that Israel invite him, she said, adding, “I don’t know; ask his presidential campaign.”

What Glick described about Blinken’s demands amounted to extortion: if Israel didn’t open up a humanitarian corridor — i.e., allow Hamas to be resupplied — the U.S. wouldn’t provide the bunker buster bombs and the ordinance for Israel’s fighter jets. Without those things, IDF ground forces would likely be slaughtered like the victims of October 7.

Adding insult to injury, Glick’s sources said the U.S. told Israel they weren’t allowed to “open up a war” with Lebanon despite being bombed from Hezb’allah in the north.

In a rare emotional monologue, she pointed out what we’ve known all along: the United States has been arming and funding the enemies of Israel. (Glick doesn’t gloss over Obama’s contribution to this mess, either.)

Nor should she, nor should anybody else, since Bathhouse Barry is almost certainly the puppetmaster pulling the “Biden” marionette’s strings and making him dance.

In tomorrow’s Eyrie post, which I worked on yesterday but haven’t quite finished with yet, I put it this way:

No, Gaza is not our fight, I get that. Most Americans are fed up with Forever Wars launched solely for the enrichment of ProPols and their military-industrial-complex partners in crime, thus understandably have no taste for getting ensnared in yet another one of those tar-baby traps. It’s up to Israel to deal with this, which they’re eminently capable of doing so long as they’re fully and firmly aware that they must—that this time, their genocidal foes have left them with no other option—and if they’re allowed to do so unburdened by interference and armchair-quarterbacking from dissembling, vacuous Western political entities and personages who loathe them. So stipulated.

Looks like poor old Charlie Brown has been fooled into another try at kicking that damned football yet again, with the predictable result. The subhuman cutthroats of Hamas, flush with this latest victory, will survive to carry on with their campaign of genocidal murder, shielded by their semi-secret allies in the ruling US junta. What a hideous, unfunny joke it all is.

My heart, it breaks for them

Posted on October 18, 2023 by Mike

Awwww, the poor widdle dear.

NYU Law Students Say Classmate Losing Job Offer Over Pro-Hamas Statement Is ‘Violence’
Ryna Workman said ‘Israel bears full responsibility’ for Hamas attacks that have killed thousands

Wails the oppressed, put-upon snowflake upon receiving her first lesson in what the word “responsibility” means.

New York University law students are rallying behind a student who lost a spot at a white-shoe law firm for defending Hamas, saying the firm’s decision to rescind their offer constitutes “violence.”

The Chicago-based Winston & Strawn withdrew its offer of employment to Ryna Workman after the nonbinary NYU student issued a statement claiming “Israel bears full responsibility” for the terrorist attacks that have left more than 1,300 dead, including at least 30 Americans. The firm’s decision is just one instance of “systemic, concentrated violence” Workman has experienced since issuing her anti-Israel pronouncement, according to a letter of support obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

You keep using that word, “violence.” I do not think it means what you think it means. Here’s hoping you find out real soon.

There’s a pic at the link; the fat, melanin-enriched shitwit looks about like you’d expect she would, although she probably considers herself victimized yet again when the article dropped the apostrophe from “R’yna.” Via Ace, who also includes a truly jaw-slackening slice of moronicity from loathsome flatus Bill Kristol.

Bill Kristol @BillKristol

I came to D.C. to work in the Reagan Administration because (to oversimplify) it was pro-Constitution, pro-U.S. global leadership, pro-military, pro-Israel, pro-democratic capitalism, and pro-American dream. And that’s why I now support the Biden Administration and Democrats.

Great Scott, he seems to be serious! With Kristol, it can be hard to know for sure. It’s mortifying to think how many times I approvingly quoted, excerpted, and linked this sleazy, slithery reptile’s Weekly Standard pieces right here at Ye Olde Colde Furye Blogge in the aftermath of 9/11. Ace follows up with an inside story.

Bill Kristol called Claremont writer and former Trump NSA spokesman Michael Anton a Nazi in print. A source who was present in the room for the incident tells me that both were guests at a dinner party, and Bill Kristol came up to Anton with a smile and with his hand extended for a shake. As if they were Best Budz who were just having a play-fight on the internet for clicks and giggles.

Anton refused to shake his hand, and told him why.

So, per my source, Bill Kristol is the kind of man who either 1, slurs people as Nazis even though he knows for a fact they are not Nazis, just to get some more donations from the AWFL Wine O’Clock Wendys who make up his Democrat donor base, or 2, is perfectly willing to shake the hand of a man he actually believes is a Nazi so as not to bring down the vibes of the swank DC insider dinner party he’s intending.

You choose! I’m not here to bias you towards either conclusion. Personally I favor un-offered choice 3, that Bill Kristol is a very fat, small, cowardly weakling and sexually-ambiguous Gollum whose testosterone levels would allow him to enter “women’s” sports, and then come in last place, because seriously, this is one short obese red-faced pudge of a “man.”

Option Three has my vote too. Although upon reflection, ain’t no reason it can’t be all three of ‘em. None of them says anything at all good about Kristol, which at this point can’t come as any big surprise.

Demography is destiny

Posted on October 17, 2023October 17, 2023 by Mike

An oldie-but-goodie Steyn rerun which, once again, is every bit as relevant today as it was when it first ran in 2009. Probably more so, in fact.

“Israel is unfashionable,” a Continental foreign minister said to me a decade back. “But maybe Israel will change, and then fashions will change.” Fashions do change. But however Israel changes, this fashion won’t. The shift of most (non-American) Western opinion against the Jewish state that began in the 1970s was, as my Continental politician had it, simply a reflection of casting: Israel was no longer the underdog but the overdog, and why would that appeal to a post-war polytechnic Euro-Left unburdened by Holocaust guilt?

Fair enough. Fashions change. But the new Judenhass is not a fashion, simply a stark reality that will metastasize in the years ahead and leave Israel isolated in the international “community” in ways that will make the first decade of this century seem like the good old days.

A few months after the curtailed Holocaust Day tour, I found myself in that particular corner of Tower Hamlets for the first time in years. Specifically, on Cable Street—the scene of a famous battle in 1936, when Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, in a crude exercise of political muscle, determined to march through the heart of Jewish East London. They were turned back by a mob of local Jews, Irish Catholic dockers, and Communist agitators, all standing under the Spanish Civil War slogan: “No Pasaran.” They shall not pass.

From “No Pasaran” to “If you go any further, you’ll die” is a story not primarily of anti-Semitism but of unprecedented demographic transformation. Beyond the fashionable “anti-Zionism” of the Euro-Left is a starker reality: The demographic energy not just in Lionel Bart’s East End but in almost every Western European country is “Asian.” Which is to say, Muslim. A recent government statistical survey reported that the United Kingdom’s Muslim population is increasing ten times faster than the general population. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and many other Continental cities from Scandinavia to the Côte d’Azur will reach majority Muslim status in the next few years.

Brussels has a Socialist mayor, which isn’t that surprising, but he presides over a caucus a majority of whose members are Muslim, which might yet surprise those who think we’re dealing with some slow, gradual, way-off-in-the-future process here. But so goes Christendom at the dawn of the third millennium: the ruling party of the capital city of the European Union is mostly Muslim.

There are generally two responses to this trend: The first is that it’s like a cast change in Cats or, perhaps more precisely, David Merrick’s all-black production of Hello, Dolly! Carol Channing and her pasty prancing waiters are replaced by Pearl Bailey and her ebony chorus, but otherwise the show is unchanged. Same set, same words, same arrangements: France will still be France, Germany Germany, Belgium Belgium.

The second response is that the Islamicization of Europe entails certain consequences, and it might be worth exploring what these might be. There are already many points of cultural friction—from British banks’ abolition of children’s “piggy banks” to the enjoining of public doughnut consumption by Brussels police during Ramadan.

And yet on one issue there is remarkable comity between the aging ethnic Europeans and their young surging Muslim populations: A famous poll a couple of years back found that 59 per cent of Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace.

Proviong yet again that the more things change, the more they stay the same. But will the West learn the lesson at long, long last? Not bloody likely, alas.

The Muslim world has spent decades peddling the notion that the reason a vast oil-rich region stretching thousands of miles is politically deformed and mired in grim psychoses is all because of a tiny strip of turf barely wider than my New Hampshire township. It will make an ever more convenient scapegoat for the problems of a far vaster territory from the mountains of Morne to the Urals. There was a fair bit of this in the days after 9/11. As Richard Ingrams wrote on the following weekend in the London Observer: “Who will dare to damn Israel?”

Well, take a number and get in line. The dust had barely settled on the London Tube bombings before a reader named Derrick Green sent me a congratulatory e-mail: “I bet you Jewish supremacists think it is Christmas come early, don’t you? Incredibly, you are now going to get your own way even more than you did before, and the British people are going to be dragged into more wars for Israel.”

So it will go. British, European, and even American troops will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a bomb will go off in Madrid or Hamburg or Manchester, and there will be nothing left to blame except Israeli “disproportion.” For the remnants of European Jewry, the already discernible migration of French Jews to Quebec, Florida, and elsewhere will accelerate. There are about 150,000 Jews in London today—it’s the thirteenth biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately one million Muslims. The highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category. By 2025, there will be Jews in Israel, and Jews in America, but not in many other places. Even as the legitimacy of a Jewish state is rejected, the Jewish diaspora—the Jewish presence in the wider world—will shrivel.

And then, to modify Richard Ingrams, who will dare not to damn Israel?

The joke about Mandatory Palestine was that it was the twice-promised land. But isn’t that Europe, too? And perhaps Russia and maybe Canada, a little ways down the line? Two cultures jostling within the same piece of real estate. Not long ago, I found myself watching the video of another “pro-Palestinian” protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, “Run, run, you cowards!” and “Allahu akbar!”

You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would understand: In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.

And so it has come to pass. If you wonder where this all might be headed, you need only look to the name of London’s sitting mayor for a clue.

COINKYDINK!!!

Posted on October 14, 2023October 14, 2023 by Mike

Okay, bear with me a sec on this, if you will. In this past Thursday’s Walt Garrison obit, we have this:

Garrison’s pro football career started before the NFL merger. So both the Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs drafted him in 1966. The Cowboys gave him a convertible and a horse trailer as his signing bonus.

Bold mine, because what should turn up in the comments earlier today but this:

The horse trailer was manufactured by my father’s company: Miley Trailer Company, Fort Worth.

Walt supported a golf tournament recently. When he arrived the folks directing the supporters (mostly ex-Cowboys) to their parking area the attendant commented that Walt didn’t appear to be dressed for golf… His reply was “hell no! I’m here for the PARTY!”…. He was a blast to be around that day.

Now see, there are all kinds of reasons why this makes me giggle like a little schoolgirl upon finding a pony under the tree on Christmas morn. First, a little more backstory.

Yesterday, I received a user-registration request for one SmileyFtW, which got me wondering right away; see, years ago a mechanic at the old H-D shop on S Tryon named Smiley rebuilt my 71 FRLH Shovelhead motor gratis after it had shit the bed not long after I bought it from said shop. HM! I wondered. Could this possibly be Smiley the mechanic, a good friend of mine since the late 70s? What are the odds?

Now bear in mind, several years back I had heard from another Harley-mechanic friend of mine that Smiley, poor fella, was in a bad way; he’d closed his own independent Harley shop and was in the hospital, laid low by some rare form of cancer or other, not doing too well at all. So no, it didn’t seem at all likely that this SmileyFtW personage was my Smiley.

Then the comment was left, and I looked a little closer at CF User Smiley’s nick, noticing that it didn’t say “FTW” (Fuck The World, in the time-honored biker parlance), but rather “FtW,” with a lower-case “T,” doubtless adding up to Ft Worth.

S Miley, of Fort Worth, home of the Dallas Cowboys as well as the venerable Miley Trailer Company.

I ask again: what are the odds?

My ex used to ride me now and then thusly: “Why don’t you just shut that stupid website down? It doesn’t do you a damned bit of good, nobody cares, you don’t really make any money off it. It’s a waste of time. Just shut the damned thing down already!”

This latest crazy-wild slice of cosmic serendipity, from a line 22 years long of eerily similar incidents, that’s why. Though it may seem like much ado about very little to normal people, I don’t see it as a waste of time at ALL, and straight to hell with what money it does or does not make me. Many, many thanks to you, Smiley, for making my day like you did.

D-D-Doubling down

Posted on October 14, 2023October 14, 2023 by Mike

Wherein Robert Spencer comes up with the most clever party-affiliation identifier for Alex Sandy From the Bronx Westchester yet conceived of.

Everything You Need to Know About the Israeli Occupation (That Is, Everything the Left Won’t Tell You)
There would be peace in the Middle East if Israel just ended its occupation, right?

That’s what the Squad wants you to think, anyway. The statements of the three primary members of this winsome leftist House coalition on the Hamas massacres in Israel had the distinct odor of canned talking points. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Make Mine A Double) issued a statement that said, “I condemn Hamas’ attack in the strongest possible terms.” That was a good start, but she then turned on a dime to blame it all on Israel: “No child and family should ever endure this kind of violence and fear, and this violence will not solve the ongoing oppression and occupation in the region.” Ongoing oppression and occupation, see? If Israel would just ease up on the poor Palestinians, Hamas jihadis would all open restaurants and shops, and peace would dawn upon the region.

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA! I see what you did there, Robert; “Double” as in bartender terminology, or as in “bodacious Double-D hoo-ha’s”? Well done, buddy, well done indeed. Anyways. Onwards, to more serious matters.

So all three are in agreement: Israel’s occupation is the problem. It’s a shame that we don’t have any real journalists today, because someone should ask the same question to all three of them: “If Israel is occupying Palestinian land, can you please explain the basis in international law for Palestinian ownership of this land?” They all likely assume that there was a previous Palestinian state that the Israelis occupied and destroyed, but in reality, there has never been a Palestinian state of any kind, ever, at any point in history. There has been a region known as “Palestine” since 134AD, when the Romans applied that name to the land that had previously been known as Judea, that is, land of the Jews. But “Palestine” was akin to “Staten Island” — it was only the name of a region, never of a people or a nation.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire had sovereignty over the territory that is now Israel and the supposedly occupied land as well. The Ottoman Empire was, however, known by this time as “The Sick Man of Europe.” In the early 1920s, just before the empire fell altogether, it conceded control of Palestine and the land that came to be known as Transjordan and now as Jordan to the League of Nations. On July 24, 1922, the League granted administrative control over these territories to Britain with specific instructions to create a “national home for the Jewish people.”

Britain immediately turned over 77% of the Mandate to the Arabs to create Jordan but remained generally committed to establishing a Jewish national home in the remainder. This was known as the Mandate for Palestine. Sometimes Leftists point to it as the Palestinian state that supposedly predated Israel, but this claim relies on the ignorance of the fact that this British territory had been explicitly set aside for Jewish settlement; nine years before the founding of the modern state of Israel, a 1939 flag of “Palestine” sports a star of David.

When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, it immediately had to fight a war for its survival against the surrounding Arab nations that had vowed to destroy it. Then there was finally an occupation — in fact, two: Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria (which it renamed the West Bank). Israel won back those territories in the Six-Day War of 1967, but that was actually ending an occupation, not starting one: the only international law governing sovereignty over those territories stipulated that they were to be part of a national home for the Jewish people.

So from whom was the land stolen? Not from the Ottomans, who had ceded it to the League of Nations. Not from the league, which had granted administrative powers over it to the British. Not from the British, who only had it in order to help create a Jewish state there. And not from the Palestinians, who didn’t even exist until the 1960s, when the KGB and Yasir Arafat bestowed Palestinian nationality upon a group of Levantine Arabs as a rhetorical weapon to use against Israel.

And there you have it: the whole ball of wax, wrapped up so neatly and concisely even a shitlib Sooperdoopergenius© should be able to comprehend it. Please do note I said should, not will.

Heroes

Posted on October 11, 2023October 11, 2023 by Mike

Though the term has been cheapened on these shores after having been spewed across the entire landscape like water from a firehose, in some places it still has meaning. The Nir Am kibbutz would definitely be one of those places.

Israeli Woman Who Helped Save a Kibbutz: ‘I’m Not a Hero, I Wasn’t There by Myself’
‘I hope you won’t have too much to do,’ Inbal Lieberman was told when she first took the post of security coordinator for Nir Am less than a year ago

Inbal Lieberman doesn’t want to be everybody’s heroine. She refuses to grant interviews, rebuffing the attention. She would like to remove the crown placed on her head by the masses online. Like many others living in the vicinity of Gaza, Lieberman just wants a little peace of mind and a safe space to grieve.

Last Saturday, she and her colleagues in Kibbutz Nir Am’s guard detail saved hundreds of people, but they too knew people who were killed by invading Hamas forces in the neighboring communities. The hundreds of calls and texts reaching her at her hotel in Tel Aviv contrasted starkly with her state of mind.

During the first hours of the ongoing war, while Liebstein (head of the Sha’ar Hanegev regional council Ophir, from whom came the pull quote in italics above—M) was meeting death trying to defend other people in the area, Lieberman encountered the test of a lifetime. At 6:30 A.M., as rocket sirens wailed, everybody in the kibbutz – seasoned in these matters – ran for shelter. Lieberman also went into a shelter, but then she heard other noises. Unusual ones.

Ofer Lieberman, her father, is a different kind of parent. Unlike others, he evades the expectation that he will hail his daughter. He finds it more comfortable to reconstruct the event as he experienced it. “The electricity went out because of the rockets and she ordered that the power not be restored so nobody could open the gates to the kibbutz,” he says. “The security detail had woken up and she took the decision to arm them and place them in positions.”

And so it was done. Like in the mythological stories of early Zionism, Lieberman and 11 other kibbutz members stood guard and waited.

Like in any of those mythological stories, the precise details of her heroism were inflated. Social media messages reported “25 terrorists killed” while actually one had been killed and one wounded. But for three hours, Lieberman and the security detail fought from positions within the kibbutz and with militants some dozens of meters away from the entrance.

Other kibbutz members could hear the whole thing from their shelters. Her father, though, though left the safe room for the kitchen at the height of the battle to fry an omelette. “She called us at some point, asking for a sandwich,” her father explains. “So I left the shelter, made her an omelette sandwich and brought it to her.”

You see what I mean about heroes, I’m sure. Lieberman père and jeune fille both qualify as such, eminently. Cross-dressers and Nee-grows who collapse into paroxysms of hysterical grief claiming “genocide” anytime someone looks at them disapprovingly for, respectively, public acts of pedophilia and looting/burning of entire cities assuredly do NOT.

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