Disasters Near and Far

Unforgettable

Posted on January 5, 2025January 5, 2025 by Mike

Looking in the rearview with 20/20 hindsight, he wasn’t much of a President; certainly, his prosection of the War On (Some) Terror was inept, while the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and TSA bureaucracies was downright abominable. Similarly, his mischaracterization of Pisslam as “the religion of peace” was as idiotic as it was revolting. Especially insulting, that last, coming as it did mere days after the death, destruction, and disaster wreaked in the name of that same blood-soaked pseudoreligion.

But damned if he wasn’t the President we needed most in this singular moment.

#NeverForget

October 30th, 2001.

George W. Bush throws what might be the most memorable first pitch in baseball history.

Wearing a bulletproof vest, President Bush throwing a strike from the top of the mound was exactly what the country needed that day. pic.twitter.com/9V5DvjlU7w

— Matt Lisle (@CoachLisle)

September 11, 2019

I tuned in and watched as it happened, and like Dubya’s brief but rousing, note-perfect “I can hear you” remarks from the still-smoking rubble of 9/11, it was nothing short of awesome. More:

On October 30, 2001, at Game 3 of the World Series, President George W. Bush walked from the New York Yankees dugout to the pitcher’s mound to throw out the first pitch. The nation’s wounds from the September 11, 2001 terror attack were still raw. Bush, striding with purpose and conviction, was followed by cameras as he marched across the field. Later we would learn that he was wearing a bulletproof vest, but at that point in time we didn’t know.

Yankee Stadium, filled with many New Yorkers who had likely voted against Bush, roared with approval.

Bush took the mound, stared down at the catcher, reared back and threw a strike.

Yankee Stadium came undone.

It’s one of the most iconic sports moments of the 21st century, a time when all Americans, regardless of their race or politics,

Or gender! Mustn’t forget gender, damn your transphobic eyes!

came together to celebrate the common humanity of sports and the healing power of competition. The message on that night was clear: America was undaunted, we would not be defeated by terrorists. Games of sport, small as they might be in the larger geopolitical stakes, were important markers of America’s resilience and playing and attending them sent an important message: we would not let the terrorists win.

In the generation since that moment, Bush’s pitch has continued to reverberate throughout history.

As well it should—indeed, MUST, lest we break faith with the memory of the innocent thousands cruelly and wantonly slaughtered by 10th-century Muzzrat savages on that terrible morning.

(Via Ed)

Update! Just thought of a classic quote from…oh heck, who was it, Churchill, maybe? Can’t remember right now; it definitely sounds like something Churchill woulda said, anyhow. I read it someplace years and years ago and the basic meaning behind it stuck with me ever since, if not the exact wording. At any rate, it went something along the lines of “The statesman in time of war must grow to match the proportion of his appointed task. If he does not, he shall utterly fail his country, his people, and himself.”

Fits Shrubya the Chimperor (remember those? Bet ya do) to a fare-thee-well, seems to me: an essentially small, venal mediocrity who against all odds and expectations rose to the challenge in its immediate wake, then went back to being just another Deep State cock-a-roach afterwards.

Publick Notice

Posted on December 27, 2024December 27, 2024 by Mike

For some strange reason, I have been inundated with spam emails today—well over a thousand so far, and counting—forcing me to interrupt what of right ought to be prime blogging time so as to rid myself of the pestilential things.

Also, the MarsEdit v5.3 update dropped yestiddy, so naturally I hit “Download and install” with a quickness, only to find that the blasted thing refused to launch on the trusty iMac, who knows why. The Dock icon would bounce three (3) times in the ordinary manner, then come to a screeching halt and sit there still and lifeless as a dried-white dog turd on an Arizona blacktop in late July. Then the customary nag box popped up: “This software may not be compatible with your current MacOS version.” Which, I’d already checked that before I ever even ran the updater, of course.

Lather, rinse, repeat, far too many times for my own good, always with the same dismaying result. I firmly resisted deleting the ME Preferences file, seeing as how I’d expended a great deal of effort setting up a shitload of custom keystrokes and/or macros therein—probably the single MarsEdit feature I love most, and make use of constantly. I really, REALLY didn’t want to lose my heavily-customized ME setup only to have to do it all over again, as I figgered a clean-reinstall would require of me. Yessir, I was up a tree but good on this one.

After spending waaay too long last night searching the remotest nooks and crannies of the Mac-software Innarnuts for a full-version download of ME 5.2.6, the hassle-free version I’d been running for quite a while now, I finally (FINALLY!) found it at the venerable MacUpdate site, DL’d and decompressed the little beastie, dumped it into the Applications folder, and viola! Back to fair winds and following seas with the best third-party WP editor of all time for me, like I’ve long since come to rely on.

In the throes of last night’s grief and angst, I emailed my buddy Daniel of Red Sweater Software, the creator/purveyor/sole proprietor of MarsEdit, whereupon we back and forth’d for a spell trying to ascertain what the blue blazes might be going on here. He asked me to reinstall 5.3 and try it again, having done a little code-fu on it in the interim to get things straightened out for me. Naturally, I promised to do so tomorrow, and to let him know what happens with a full AAR.

As I’ve said before here of Daniel, such prompt, friendly, hands-on customer service/tech support is a rara avis indeed nowadays, in any field of endeavor. After all, it ain’t as if the poor fella doesn’t have more than enough to occupy his time, his mind, and his hands already—during Christmas week, no less (or Hanukkah, as the case may be, having never had occasion to inquire of his religious affiliation, if any). Red Sweater Software, see, is by way of being a sideline for him, something he does more for personal enjoyment than anything else; he works a full time day-job in addition to dreaming up, creating, and de-bugging all kinds of cool software applications, bless his no doubt exhausted, stressed-out heart.

Once more, my utmost gratitude goes out to Daniel, for all he does.

Update! Jeezum H CROW, sixty more spam emails over the transom while I was putting this post together. What the actual fuck…?!?

Kaczynski Vs Luigi Babe: a comparison

Posted on December 20, 2024December 20, 2024 by Mike

An intriguing idea, one I hadn’t ever thought of myself before. From the NYT, of all unlikely places.

The Unabomber’s Influence Is Deeper and More Dangerous Than We Know
I published a novel about the Unabomber this year, and during a book tour stop in Seattle, a high school teacher raised his hand and asked me what he could tell his students about Ted Kaczynski, because he was a hero to so many of them. The question stopped me cold, reminding me that Mr. Kaczynski’s influence is deeper and more widespread than most people realize.

The same feeling of cold unease returned this week when I read news reports that Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, Brian Thompson, had posted a favorable review of the Unabomber’s manifesto online. The similarities didn’t end there. The meticulous planning and use of symbolism in the crime reminded me of Mr. Kaczynski, who spent years choosing his targets, designing disguises (even gluing false soles to the bottoms of his shoes) and leaving messages for investigators. The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” written on the bullet casings found by Mr. Thompson’s body were an eerie echo of the “FC” for Freedom Club that Mr. Kaczynski carved into his bombs. The fact that Mr. Mangione allegedly made his own gun and carried a copy of his own manifesto reinforced the similarities.

There is, of course, still much we don’t know about Mr. Mangione: a full picture of who he is, and what factors shaped him and motivated him. But the teacher’s suggestion that the Unabomber was a hero to some of his students pointed to a larger truth. To many young people living in a system of extreme economic disparity, in a world they believe is on the verge of ecological collapse, the Unabomber represents a dark, growing ideological desperation. To them, his ruthlessly intellectualized turn to violence can seem justified.

At some point before much more time has passed, Our Side will have to get over its girlish squeamishness regarding this purported “ruthlessly intellectualized turn to violence” being utterly unthinkable, amoral, and completely out of bounds, I’m afraid. That’s owing to one very simple reason which ought to be obvious: if we don’t rise to the challenge and match the Leftist enemy blow for blow and then some, then we must inevitably lose to them. And as all of us should know full well by now, losing to the Left means losing absolutely everything.

You definitely want to read all of this one, it’s quite good. Never thought I’d hear myself say that about a NYT article, but there you are. Strange days indeed, sure to get stranger still as time marches ever on.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: the “Luigi Babe” reference in the post title hails from my own voluminous memory archive—just another of my ceaseless attempts to amuse myself which constitute one of the primary reasons this h’yar blog exists in the first place. Hey, even if none of y’all get a laugh out of it, I do. As is said of the Hokey Pokey, that’s what it’s all about.

See, Luigi Babe (as he insisted everyone call him) was this irritatingly ubiquitious show promoter, self-styled raconteur, and all-around hipster douchebag back in my NYC days. He was unfailingly chatty, touchy-feely, faux friendly, cloying, and utterly oblivious as to how vanishingly few, if any, of his fellow scenesters actually liked him even just a little bit.

When I was host/DJ/barman of a popular weekly rockabilly night* at what was bona fide Downtown scene-maker Deb Parker’s arguably least-successful venture, Babyland, Luigi Babe would show up every Thursday night, to everyone else’s profound chagrin.

If I’m lying, I’m flying: the minute Luigi Babe made his Grande Entrance into Babyland (or anyplace else, really)—clad in his trademark vintage gabardine suit with matching fedora and ascot, an immaculately-drawn pencil-thin moustache adorning his upper lip, flourishing his affected cigarette-holder in one hand like a scepter, carrying himself as if he were the dashing reincarnation of Clark Gable and/or Errol Flynn, the fleshly exemplar of what people mean by the word smarm—you’d see ten or twenty other regulars get up from their booths and beat feet for the exit with alacrity, often as not abandoning a table-full of overly pricy cocktails untouched in the urgency of making good their post-haste escape. Jackets, handsome cardigan sweaters, gloves, purses, you name it, who cares? These were but material objects, no more; unlike the precious time lost enduring the dread Luigi Babe’s presence, they could be replaced.

No shit, the dust cloud those fleeing bar patrons left in their wake would’ve shamed even the Roadrunner speeding away from Wile E Coyote. MEEP MEEP!

* Yclept the Chicken Shack, which moniker would go on to earn me a subtly cheeky nod from no less august a personage than the great Max Weinberg, at a Conan O’Brien show taping—yet another of those incredible stories I really gotta tell y’all sometime

Dysfunction, all the way down

Posted on December 19, 2024December 19, 2024 by Mike

I don’t usually write about these events, but in this latest case I will make an exception by way of making a broader point.

The 15-year-old girl who killed two people and wounded six others when she opened fire at her Wisconsin Christian school had been in therapy over her troubled home life with her parents — who repeatedly divorced and remarried, court records show.

Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the deadly mass shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison on Monday, was at times yanked between her parents’ homes every two or three days when they were separated, according to records obtained by the Washington Post.

Her mother and father, Mellissa and Jeff Rupnow, first married in 2011, two years after they had Natalie, who had recently started using the first name Samantha.

They divorced in 2014 and shared custody of Natalie, who they agreed would live primarily with her mother.

The couple then remarried three years later in 2017 — just to get divorced for a second time another three years after that, in 2020.

This time, they more evenly split custody of their daughter, with Natalie spending two days with her father, then two days with her mother, followed by three days with her father again in a schedule that would alternate weekly, the DC paper reported.

They married for a third time shortly thereafter — but by April 2021 were splitting up again.

A judge granted the divorce a month later but noted that “parties [were] admonished concerning remarriage,” according to court documents.

In July 2022, a mediator ruled that the couple would again share custody of Natalie but she would live primarily with her father.

By that time, Natalie, just 12 years old, was going to therapy sessions that were meant to help determine which parent she would spend her weeks with, according to court records.

There’s more awfulness yet, all of it as dysfunctional as dysfunctional gets, but the above ought to make for a good enough start. With an upbringing as unstable as that, and as common as such familial instability has come to be nowadays, the real wonder is that more of these poor waifs aren’t picking up a piece and going all “I Don’t Like Mondays” on the rest of the world. The closer is about as stinging a wry jab as I think I’ve ever seen.

Merely meat

Posted on December 17, 2024December 17, 2024 by Mike

A short but pungent rip from our old chum Baron Bodissey.

Italian Women: Don’t Be Uncovered Meat
The late “Australian” imam Sheikh Hilaly became notorious for saying: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it…whose fault is it? The cats or the uncovered meat?” According to him, an unveiled woman is like “uncovered meat”, and deserves whatever might happen to her.

In the following video, a group of “Italian” culture-enrichers attempts to explain the uncovered meat principle to a young woman who catches their collective eye.

Said video manages to be several unpalatable things at once: sick-making, enraging, beggaring belief, chilling, blood-curdling, just for openers. Bitch all you like about (((Dem JooJooJooJOOOOZ!!!))); supposed “genocide” of Paleosimians; Israeli injustice and unwarranted aggression; the USS Liberty incident; the Pollard scandal; Netanyahu being worse than Literally Hitler©; who are/are not our “natural” MidEast allies, &c, I don’t give a fast, furious fuck; one of these things is still NOT like the other, period fucking DOT. Certainly, I cannot recall any Israelis—in any nation anywhere at any time, EVER—behaving like bestial troglodytes in so crude a fashion.

That such an obscene predation could transpire in contemporary times, in a public space, in a Western nation, in broad fucking daylight ferchrissakes, only makes matters worse. That it could be shrugged off as Just The Way Things Are, No Big Deal puts the cherry on the sundae.

Then again, it must be acknowledged that Italy has always been pretty rough sledding for comely, unchaperoned young signorinas.

Unpleasant as the situation must have been for that poor girl, this infamous 1951 photo nonetheless seems fairly tame, innocent almost, compared to what the Muzzrat thugs in the aforementioned vid do. Too, we know for sure and certain that the lead Muzzie antagonist is in no way joking, exaggerating, or just showing off for his likewise high-spirited co-religionists—not a bit of it. The proferred warnings-cum-threats (promises, more like) are real, credible, and in deadly earnest, down to the last syllable.

Disgusting as it may look to present-day eyes, with the 1951 pic it could safely be assumed that running a gauntlet of catcalls, wolf-whistles, loud teeth-sucking noises, and kissy-faces would be the worst it was gonna get for the woman, the absolute limit. Having her clothes ripped off, being thrown to the sidewalk on her back, held down and gangbanged by a succession of excessively cologned, fashionably attired, impeccably coiffed Italian guys, though? No way!

In that time, even in that place, a pinch on the ass or a swift titty-grope as she walked by would’ve been thought by most to be way over the line of decency, propriety, and acceptable behavior, richly deserving of stern rebuke. Once the gropee’s father, uncles, and/or brothers got wind of it, the culprit could expect a thorough, enthusiastic mass ass-whupping to quickly ensue, if they didn’t just kill him outright. Said perp would also be expected to shut up and take his beating like a man, lest such shameful complaining and/or whinging earn him an encore after he healed up from Round Uno.

However, as has been well-established across Europe by now, with the Moslem “youths” in the vid purely-verbal intimidation is but the opening gambit, a prelude to much darker things soon to come.

After all, should this woman decline to heed the kindly advice of young Abdul-Abdel-Abdullah and his devout crew, appearing again sans veil after being duly instructed in what the Koranic Dress Code requires of females, then the only conclusion to be drawn by the Righteous is that the obstinate infidel-whore is in fact ASKING for it—that she in fact WANTS to be gang-raped to death, no?

All this in fucking ITALY, I remind you. Not Yemen, not Saudi Arabia, not Mogadishu, not Tehran. ITALY, gawd help us all.

Over There and in Amerika v2.0 alike, the filthy blaggards responsible for inflicting this plague of unassimilable tenth-century wharf rats on us have a hell of a lot to answer for. We can but hope and pray that before very much longer, those fiends will be called to account for their monstrous perfidy.

Happy Pearl Harbor Day!

Posted on December 7, 2024December 7, 2024 by Mike

SO, here’s where we’re at 83 years on: “Great” Britain, France, and Germany have all been overrun by Mooselimbs, without ever bothering to put up a fight. The FUSA has been overrun by pretty much everybody, including the ChiComs, who already effectively owned it lock, stock, and barrel anyway. Japan, after looking for a few years there like they’d be the Far Eastern nation that was gonna end up owning everything and everybody, is now a floundering economic and military basket case whose young men have been so cowed, beaten down, and feminized they can’t even be bothered to chase pussy anymore.

The Dutch? Same-same. Spain is well on its way to becoming Andalusia v2.0, just another brick in the global-caliphate wall. The Eyeties? Who cares. Does that country still even exist?

Korea is still scarred by a fiercely-enforced DMZ separating its two (2) halves after the Chinks stepped in and dealt the Yanks a solid ass-whupping which ran them back across the Yalu and out of Korea altogether. After almost two (2) decades of pointless war Vietnam was reunified, which all involved parties seem to regret.

Russia is having tremendous difficulty kicking ass and taking names against an adjoining former-USSR shitrapy around one-sixteenth its size which has been saddled with a corrupt government led by a midget robbing both his own nation and the FUSA blind.

Meanwhile, the FUSAn central goobermint is under the iron-fisted control of a shadowy cabal of authoritarian incompetents whose identities We Duh Sheepul will never know, not that most of us seem to care all that much one way or the other as long as we still have Netflix and Super Bowl Sunday to placate us. Said cabal installed as its frontman “President” a hilariously inept, barely-ambulatory, shameless, astoundingly corrupt, unintelligent career conman so far advanced into the final stages of dementia he has repeatedly gotten confused about where he is, why he’s there, how he got there, who brought him, who he’s supposed to be talking to, why certain ex-people who died years ago aren’t there, etc etc.

Then his own criminal organization masquerading as a political party elbowed him out and anointed as his replacement a visibly drunk, embarrassingly inarticulate, cackling old whore that nobody but NOBODY liked at all. Thankfully, an irrepressible, rambunctious, fun-loving outsider promising vengeance against the Swamp critters who have tormented him and his family incessantly for nigh on a decade kicked the day-drinking whore’s ass so hard she ended up wearing it as a hat, crushing her well beyond the margin of fraud which had sufficed to install the previous two (2) “Presidents” at the very least.

Now tell me again who won WW2, please. Hell, for the matter of it, can anybody truthfully be said to have won it? From where I’m sitting, it’s beginning to look like EVERYBODY lost.

Kilt a-borning

Posted on November 30, 2024November 30, 2024 by Mike

Dammit, Amazon delivered my nice new Thunderbolt cable this afternoon and it turns out it’s the wrong blasted one, I can’t use it. Consequently, my file transfer/monitor swap project is dead in the water until further notice.

Not Amazon’s fault in any way, mind; my dumb ass ordered the wrong one all unawares. After a bit of educational research into the whole T-bolt contretemps, I discovered that everything after Thunderbolt 3 (it’s up to v5 now, yet another thing I didn’t know) is basically just a beefier, higher speed-capable cord with male USB C jacks, whereas the ports on both the iMac and the MacBook, being older models, are strictly and exclusively the practically extinct, tragically unhip, and embarrassingly passé Thunderlizard 2.

Somewhat surprising that Apple, notorious for being zealously protective of the uniqueness, backwards-incompatability, and fits-specified-Macs-ONLY-ness of their proprietary parts, pieces, and accessories, would turn to bog-standard USB-C for its more recent Thunderbolt iterations. Where’s the money in that, man? Only way Jobs woulda ever shot himself in his bank balance’s foot, so to speak, via a gratuitously profit-shrinking move like this was if Bill Gates was holding a pistol to his head.

After wading through page after depressingly Tbolt 2-bereft page on Amazon, the WalMart app on my phone, and eBay* desperately seeking Thunderbolt 2 cables that weren’t chest-clutchingly overpriced, I was dismayed to find the barest handful of them, the cheapest of which was on eBay: out of Cullifornya, price just above 35 smackeroos with an additional seven bucks tacked on for shipping courtesy of USPS, estimated delivery in about 2 or 3 weeks, as opposed to the two days’ wait with which Amazon has spoiled me absolutely rotten.

The rest of the T-bolt 2’s on offer ranged anywhere from sixty fucking dollars all the way up to a hundred and a half (!)—this, mind, when garden variety USB-C cables can be had all day long for under ten bucks most anywhere, either online or at a brick ’n’ mortar Best Buy outlet near you, assuming it hasn’t gone belly up as of yet. There were Thunderbolt 2 hubs for sale as well, at the low, low fire sale price of just 300 to 400 US dollars. Don’t delay, folks; with prices slashed this low, these little beauties aren’t going to be around for long, they’re just flying off the shelves. Stock is limited, so better hurry on out right away and take advantage of these once in a lifetime bargains before it’s too late!

Jeez O Pete, what a crazy world. Somebody oughta sell tickets.

* Years back a great little website yclept Small Dog Electronics was my first stop for stuff like this. The prices were reasonable, the shipping times were fast, and having spoken to them on the phone multiple times regarding certain memory chips I was thinking about buying and installing, I know firsthand that the customer service was friendly, knowledgeable, and altogether helpful. Need to check and see if they’re still extant, I sure hope so

Update! Well howzabout that: Small Dog IS still around, bless their solid-gold hearts. That just restored a little luster to what hadn’t been much of a day up till now. Although it looks like T-bolt 2 cables are mighty thin on the ground over there too, alas.

Infuriating update! God DAMMIT, the above Raising Arizona embed is supposed to start at precisely 1:43. After a great deal of bootless mucking about trying to get things set properly, fucking YewToob STILL absitively, posolutely refuses to cooperate for some incomprehensible reason. If the vid jacks you around by starting either way before or way after 1:43, I hereby advise you to hoist a middle digit at YT by clicking in the progress bar at the specified time-stamp your own bad self. You must grab the bull by the horns, step up to the plate, seize the day, and boldly take control of your own destiny, Glasshoppah.

Well, unless you want to scope the entire riotous clip. Which, if you’ve never seen the Cohen Brothers’ masterpiece all the way through before, you really want to do anyhow. Myself, I’ve seen the movie so many times I can reel off almost every word of dialogue from memory. Yet even so, sorting through clip after clip trying to find the above one (took some doing, actually; the others either didn’t include the lines I wanted at all or cut Glenn off just before the “Someone oughta sell tickets,” exchange with Hi, which is the very thing I was looking for in the first place) gave me a yen to watch the whole thing beginning to end again.

RA is one of a handful of movies I simply can’t get enough of. It never gets old, it never lets me down or fails to hold my interest. Each and every time I’ve watched it I’ve picked up on some little something that had gotten by me before, seems like. Top-notch cinematography, lighting, direction, and editing; fast pace; perfect casting; talented performers with the skills, experience, and self-assurance to make best possible use of the brilliant dialogue; unusual, haunting, and unforgettable music; engaging characters who come off as real, complex human beings; an unconventional story told in an unconventional way: every person of intelligence, discernment, and a functioning sense of humor in the civilized world agrees it’s one of the finest movies ever made, and there’s a reason for that.

Raising Arizona, along with just about every other Cohen Bros production, is a 24k showpiece, an object lesson in not just how a great film is made, but in how great a film can be. It’s not in any way overstating the case to call this extraordinary movie no less than one of the verymost outstanding examples of the cinematic art ever, really and truly.

“Sustainable”

Posted on November 26, 2024 by Mike

…ain’t.

Thyssenkrupp to cut 11,000 jobs at steel division in major corporate shakeup
DUESSELDORF, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Thyssenkrupp’s (TKAG.DE), opens new tab steel business plans to cut some 40% of its workforce over the coming years, it announced on Monday in the latest painful overhaul of a German industrial giant, with workers promising fierce resistance.

Germany’s largest steelmaker, a division of Thyssenkrupp AG, is under pressure from cheaper Asian competitors, high power prices and a weakening global economy, leading to operating losses in four of the past five years.

Not to be making light of German suffering or anything, but one can’t help but wonder if the following might have anything to do with those high power prices I put in bold above.

The German government knew shutting down nuclear plants during the Ukraine war energy crisis was a bad idea but did it anyway, and the Green party minister may have been been deceived by his own people to make sure the closures went ahead, a magazine that sued the government to get internal documents released claims.

Germany ordered the closure of its final three nuclear power plants in 2022, the culmination of a years-long process to transition towards ‘renewables’, which ironically left the nation scrabbling for hydrocarbons like brown coal, gas, and LNG. This confirms long-held “suspicions” of government lies, the conservative opposition says.

Bold mine again, and dispositive, it would seem. But nah, must be a coinkydink or something, I suppose.

Seagoing disgrace

Posted on November 24, 2024 by Mike

Thank God we still have the most powerful, STRAC, well-equipped and -trained, effectively invulnerable military in the world. Right?

RIIIIIGHT?!?

Ummm…yeah, about all that.

Prayers up

Posted on November 22, 2024November 22, 2024 by Mike

And best wishes for a speedy recovery for our dear friend Gretchen, cherished spouse of our brother-from-another-mother Big Country, which good woman is currently languishing in hospital durance vile for a mysterious, sudden-onset affliction of unknown provenance. If you’re the praying type, please do send one up for Gretch yourself. What the hey, it don’t cost anything and can’t hurt, right?

Rolling abortion

Posted on November 19, 2024November 20, 2024 by Mike

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” →

Just the facts, man

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Mike

Thomas Sowell has a few which shitlibs would very much prefer you not be reminded of.

Nowhere was the effect of the white liberalism of the 1960s on the social evolution of black culture more devastating than in the disintegration of the black family.

The raw facts are these: As of 1960, 51 percent of black females between the ages of 15 and 44 were married and…

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell)

November 17, 2024

“Show more…” workaround:

The raw facts are these: As of 1960, 51 percent of black females between the ages of 15 and 44 were married and living with their husbands, another 20 percent were divorced, widowed, or separated, and only 28 percent had never been married. Twenty years later, only 31 percent of black women in these age brackets were married and living with their husbands, while 48 percent had never married.

By 1994, an absolute majority—56 percent—of black women in these age brackets were never married and only 25 percent were married and living with their husbands.186 Accordingly, while two-thirds of black children were living with both parents in 1960, only one-third were by 1994. While only 22 percent of black children were born to unmarried women in 1960, 70 percent were by 1994.

White liberals, instead of comparing what has happened to the black family since the liberal welfare state policies of the 1960s were put into practice, compare black families to white families and conclude that the higher rates of broken homes and unwed motherhood among blacks are due to “a legacy of slavery.” But why the large-scale disintegration of the black family should have begun a hundred years after slavery is left unexplained.

VERRRY mysterious, no?

Can you say “weaponization of government,” boys and girls?

Posted on November 8, 2024November 9, 2024 by Mike

I knew you could.

EXCLUSIVE: FEMA Official Ordered Relief Workers To Skip Houses With Trump Signs
Whistleblower: ‘It’s almost unbelievable to think that somebody in the federal government would think that’s okay’

Pshaw. To YOU, maybe. Me, the only thing I find surprising is that you’re surprised—that ANYBODY would be.

A federal disaster relief official ordered workers to bypass the homes of Donald Trump’s supporters as they surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Milton in Florida, according to internal correspondence obtained by The Daily Wire and confirmed by multiple federal employees.

A FEMA supervisor told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, internal messages viewed by The Daily Wire reveal. The supervisor, Marn’i Washington, relayed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, multiple government employees told The Daily Wire.

The government employees told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped from the end of October and into November due to the guidance, meaning they were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance. Images shared with The Daily Wire show that houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote in the government system messages such as: “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”

It is unclear whether the same guidance was issued elsewhere in the country. The employees were part of a Department of Homeland Security surge capacity force team, meaning they volunteered from other DHS agencies to help an understaffed FEMA as it dealt with a second major hurricane in a span of just a few weeks.

The guidance came as the Biden administration was criticized over its sluggish response to Hurricane Helene in rural areas across the country. In Roan Mountain, Tennessee, for example, locals told The Daily Wire it took nearly two weeks for FEMA to show up. The town is located in Carter County, which voted 81% for Trump on Tuesday.

HOME TRUTH: This is who they are, it’s what they do. Get your head around that, or get clobbered by it. Search for a better, more palatable option all you like, but there ain’t any.

Infuriating update! After reading Ace’s post on this same topic, it occurred to me that I really needed to include this bit here, if only in fairness to the fine folks at FEMA. See, it’s not as if the morally-handicapped degenerate responsible for this mind-blowing indecency wasn’t duly punished. Not a-tall. From the original article, which was updated after the above post with an official statement from FEMA. To wit:

After publication of this story, a FEMA spokesperson told The Daily Wire it was “deeply disturbed” and “horrified” by the employee’s actions, and that it has “taken extreme actions to correct this situation.”

“We are horrified that this took place and therefore have taken extreme actions to correct this situation and have ensured that the matter was addressed at all levels. Helping people is what we do best and our workforce across the agency will continue to serve survivors for as long as it takes.”

Bold mine. So what, you might wonder, does FEMA consider “extreme actions” in this instance of bureau-rat arrogance run completely amok, then? What does this spokesbeing mean by “addressed at all levels,” you ask? Was the vicious BiQ (Bitch in Question—M) reprimanded? Forced to undergo in-house “counseling?” Suspended without pay? Fired? Arrested, fined, imprisoned? Put to death? What, what, what, what?!?

Oh, just this.

The employees say that Washington has not been punished for the guidance, but has been shifted to another county in Florida.

WOW, they really brought the hammer down but good on this wayward but fundamentally decent, caring “public servant,” didn’t they? Poor dear, I do hope she’s okay after being punished so harshly for her “mistake.”

Fuck me runnin’. In the spleen, with a rubbing-alcohol soaked cattle prod set on Incinerate.

I repeat: You don’t hate these FederalGovCo shitbags NEARLY enough. You can’t, it’s unpossible.

Updated update! Ron the Great isn’t what you’d call entirely happy about this petty, vindictive bureau-shite.

The blatant weaponization of government by partisan activists in the federal bureaucracy is yet another reason why the Biden-Harris administration is in its final days.

At my direction, the Division of Emergency Management is launching an investigation into the federal… https://t.co/3uFpE62vxb

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis)

November 8, 2024

“Show more” cirumvention.

At my direction, the Division of Emergency Management is launching an investigation into the federal government’s targeted discrimination of Floridians who support Donald Trump.

New leadership is on the way in DC, and I’m optimistic that these partisan bureaucrats will be fired.

Here’s hoping your optimism turns out to be justified, Gov; after so many years of watching them come to naught at the federal level, I can’t honestly say I have a hell of a lot of faith in government “investigations” anymore.

Frankly, it would suit me better if half the goddamned goobermint was summarily flogged, ridden on a rail, splashed about in the Potomac, dragged behind a pickup down Pennsylvania Ave, and flayed alive at high noon tomorrow on the Washington Mall. This twice-yearly whoopjamboreehoo—call it the People’s House Cleaning Carnival, say—would close out with an open-to-the-public pissing-upon of whatever is left of the miserable worms.

After the beatings are done and the meat wagons have been loaded and are headed on back to the county morgue, we’ll throw an open-bar BBQ blowout on the White House lawn (real Eastern NC BBQ, that would be: smoked oinker doused to taste with Texas Pete, not that ketchup-slathered brisket glop which lesser breeds without the Law embarrass themselves by calling “barbecue”—either Sun Drop or draft beer to wash it down; any fool who requests Pepsi, Mountain Dew (shudder), or some nasty energy drink that tastes worse than the sweat off a hippie’s unwashed scrotum-sac will receive one (1) complimentary throat punch for being a blaspheming dorksnort), a daylong par-TAY which will include many popular attractions such as:

Live music performed by bands who are actually, y’know, good
The Globe Of Death
A Coney Island-style freakshow tent
Another tent with smoking-hot strippers
Dunk-A-Senator booths; feature dunk-ee appearance by the Right Honorable (???) Lindsey Graham at five PM, don’t dare miss it
A big-ass dance floor
A fireworks show when darkness has fallen
Funnel cake
Tilt-A-Whirl!
Demolition Derby, open to all—run whatcha brung, first come, first served; helmets, goggles, gloves, and other safety equipment for drivers will NOT be provided; bring your own, or don’t—it’s your ass, pal, we can’t be assed about it one way or the other. What do we look like, anyhow, your fuckin’ mama or sumpin’?
All-female hot dog-fellating contest; age 18-32 ONLY, valid proof of age must be submitted to a registrar at the sign-up table. Nathan’s Bun-Length Franks are contest standard-issue; footlong dogs are also available by request; any contestant who so requests will have extra-credit points added to her score immediately, for showing proper competitive spirit, aspiration, will to win, and spunky, fun-loving attitude

Approved participants must remove any/all shirts, brassieres, vests, two-piece swimsuit uppers, tube tops, robes, or other waist-up garment of any kind before her scheduled time-slot to mount the stage; clean, never-used cardboard containers with each individual contestant’s name written legibly in black Sharpie on the top will be arranged backstage for convenient storage of shucked clothing until such time as contestant is ready to cover up her fun-bags again
BOTH nipples shall remain fully exposed and open to easy view throughout the event, even if a contestant has been defeated or disqualified and has left the stage. Rule of thumb: whenever the entrant is inside the roped-off contestants’ area, contest rules require her to let them puppies breathe
Any premature, unsanctioned concealment of either both or one (1) of contestant’s nipples—even partially, even inadvertently, accidentally, or unwittingly—shall constitute sufficient grounds for disqualification if, and only if, the infraction was personally witnessed by a contest official, who, at his or her own discretion, may or may not report the infraction for further action; third-party verbal reports will be disregarded as unconfirmed
Luscious, good-looking babes ONLY, please; plug-uglies, manatees, withered old hags, and scary, brick-faced bull daggers need NOT apply
Bonus points will be awarded to minimally freckled, well-built, juggalicious redheads by our contest judges
A car show: rat rods welcome; no trailer queens; vandalism and/or mechanical sabotage of foreign makes, irrespective of vintage and/or condition, will be not just tolerated but actively encouraged
Absolutely NO (0) mimes, clowns, jugglers, cutesy arts ’n’ crafts peddlers, annoyingly persistent, piss-drunk-by-noon caricature artists, evangelical vegans, or unfunny standup comics allowed—we mean it, don’t even try

This hellacious hullaballoo is intended pour encourager les autres, as per usual. This incredible event, offering something for all ages, interests, backgrounds, and tastes, is shaping up to be one for the record books, folks, an entertainment extravaganza not to be missed. Get here anyway you must—fly, drive, spit on your ass and slide, crawl on your face over broken glass—just make sure you DO get here!

THERE. Now if that wildly eclectic bill of fare isn’t rambunctious enough to make DC’s last surviving bureau-rats take to their heels and flee to more congenial environs, then I’ll cheerfully eat my hat.

Worst President EVAR

Posted on October 26, 2024October 26, 2024 by Mike

Reviewing the most deplorable in a very big basket of ‘em.

Woodrow Wilson made democracy unsafe for the world
Let’s stop kidding ourselves. The U.S. role in World War I had disastrous consequences.

Wilson was narrowly re-elected in 1916 based on a campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war.” But Wilson had massively violated neutrality by providing armaments and money to the Allied powers that had been fighting Germany since 1914. In his war speech to Congress, Wilson hailed the U.S. government as “one of the champions of the rights of mankind” and proclaimed that “the world must be made safe for democracy.”

American soldiers fought bravely and helped turn the tide on the Western Front in late 1918. But the cost was far higher than Americans anticipated. More than a hundred thousand American soldiers died in the third bloodiest war in U.S. history. Another half million Americans perished from the Spanish flu epidemic spurred and spread by the war.

In his speech to Congress, Wilson declared, “We have no quarrel with the German people” and feel “sympathy and friendship” towards them. But his administration speedily commenced demonizing the “Huns.” One Army recruiting poster portrayed German troops as an ape ravaging a half-naked damsel beneath an appeal to “Destroy this mad brute.”

Wilson acted as if the congressional declaration of war against Germany was also a declaration of war against the Constitution. Harvard professor Irving Babbitt commented in 1924: “Wilson, in the pursuit of his scheme for world service, was led to make light of the constitutional checks on his authority and to reach out almost automatically for unlimited power.” Wilson even urged Congress to set up detention camps to quarantine “alien enemies.”

Wilson unleashed ruthless censorship of any criticism. Anyone who spoke publicly against military conscription was likely to get slammed with federal espionage or sedition charges. Possessing a pamphlet entitled Long Live the Constitution of the United States earned six months in jail for a Pennsylvania malcontent. Censorship was buttressed by fanatic propaganda campaigns led by the Committee on Public Information, a federal agency whose shameless motto was “faith in democracy… faith in fact.”

The war enabled the American equivalent of the Taliban to triumph on the home front. Prohibition advocates “indignantly insisted that… any kind of opposition to prohibition was sinister and subversively pro-German,” noted William Ross, author of World War 1 and the American Constitution. Even before the 18th Amendment (which banned alcohol consumption) was ratified, Wilson banned beer sales as a wartime measure. Prohibition was a public health disaster; the rate of alcoholism tripled during the 1920s. To punish lawbreakers, the federal government added poisons to industrial alcohol that was often converted into drinkable hooch; ten thousand people were killed as a result. Professor Deborah Blum, the author of The Poisoner’s Handbook, noted that “an official sense of higher purpose kept the poisoning program in place.”

The war provided the pretext for unprecedented federal domination of the economy. Washington promised that “food will win the war” and farmers vastly increased their plantings. Price supports and government credits for foreign buyers sent crop prices and land prices skyrocketing. However, when the credits ended in 1920, prices and land values plunged, spurring massive bankruptcies across rural America. This spurred perennial political discontent that helped lead to a federal takeover of agriculture by the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s.

And the rest, as they say, is history. As Glenn mordantly reminds us: Well, worst President so far.

Can you say “War on Men,” boys and girls?

Posted on October 12, 2024October 12, 2024 by Mike

I knew you could.

Perhaps it’s a predictable irony that in an election cycle that could realistically deliver the first female president, so much of the commentary has been about men. Or rather, not about men exactly, but about “masculinity.” Because somehow, in 2024, we still find ourselves unable to talk about men and boys without using masculinity as the basic frame of reference.

The electorate is faced with a choice, the story goes, between two models for masculinity. Toxic versus positive. In response to the vein-popping, furious, felon model of the right, the left is offering us a more morally upstanding and expansive “positive masculinity.”

“Positive masculinity” has been around for a while. Most likely coined in early 2000s by psychologists as a way of working with male patients in therapy… Masculinity has had an unfairly bad rap, its proponents argue, becoming permanently shackled to the word “toxic.” Positive masculinity is an attempt to rebrand and reinstate it for the next generation, often with the claim that unlike the insecure posturing of the shirt-ripping strongmen, this is in fact “real” manhood.

The model is not a radical departure. Positive masculinity still draws on all the old trappings and anxieties of traditional manliness, the same belief that there is such a thing as a “real man” and the same fears of falling short. As its political standard-bearer, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, is still required to constantly prove his masculine credentials.

Sorry and all, but that’s ‘cause Tampon Timmeh the Pillsbury Doughpyrsynz’s© “masculine credentials” straddle the line, reverse-cowgirl style, betwixt “laughable” and “nonexistent.” Whatever no-ball, cringing caricature of American manhood the preposterous Harris/Doughboy campaign plans to portray as “masculinity,” their dumpy, thoroughly emasculated Veep candidate is sadly lacking in anything resembling it. Case in point:

Something’s missing from this pheasant hunt in this video…. Something key. pic.twitter.com/M31KpCYX7x

— Brittany (@bccover)

October 12, 2024

Jeezum M Crow. It’s a dead cert that not one of these phony-ass punks has ever hunted pheasant—or owned a shotgun, for the matter of it—in his/her/its entire life. The paid actors/stunt hunter stand-ins all look like they just dragged a credit card through the Mordor On The Potomac (or possibly Minneapolistan) Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shop to gear themselves up with a brand new Serious Outdoorspyrsynz!™ costume for the filming of this pathetic, wholly-fraudulent joke of a campaign ad. I love what one X wag had to say in response to the question implied above: What’s missing in this video? A: Testosterone. Good one, pal.

NOTE: Link is to the Ace place, not to the original NYT article. I would never subject you good people to the horror of an NYT link, no way.

Update! Ed Driscoll reels off another knee-slapper.

OLD AND BUSTED: “Can I get me a hunting license here?”

—John Kerry, October 2004.

Heh. Indeed, Ed.

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