No-Nonsense Lyudmila
Thought about saving this one for Memezapoppin’! later on, but it’s so damned good it deserves its own spot out front right friggin’ NOW.
As well they might, and in fact should.
Category: Flotsam and/or Jetsam
Catchall for whatever doesn’t fit elsewhere
“Unprovoked”
Yeah right, you Jew-hating, Israel-baiting, Mullah-fellating dick with ears.
Trump Isn’t Starting a War, He’s Ending One
As of this writing, the United States and Israel have begun what I can only assume to be the first round of military strikes on Iran. I also assume that the eventual goal is regime change, effected by the United States, but driven by the Iranian people. And I’m not alone. Over the past few days, the so-called “think” tanks are falling all over themselves to be the first to prophesy a quagmire, a “trap,” a “forever war,” and Iraq 3.0.The dregs at Foreign Policy took a break from clamoring for a post-American world order to demand we not bomb Iran precisely to more quickly usher in said order. At Powerline blog, John Hinderaker gleefully straddles the fence as only he can by declaring his hope that Trump bombs the mullahs with the goal of regime change… and in the same sentence, expresses doubt that this will be accomplished. And if you’re willing to waste the brain cells, you can guess what ol’ Tucker’s position on it is.
But the absolute worst take must be from John Daniel Davison over at The Federalist. John’s main point is that if we allegedly “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear abilities with Operation Midnight Hammer, than why do we need to now bomb Iran again to prevent them from acquiring nuclear capabilities?
Um, well, because Iran is trying to rebuild them. As we knew they would. And if we keep bombing only their nuclear facilities, they will simply keep rebuilding them until the next Democrat gets elected president and we stop sending bombs and start sending pallets of cash again. So there’s that.
John writes, “At a certain point, it begins to look like the Trump administration is fishing for a reason to strike Iran. Sorry, but that’s not good enough.”
Fishing for a reason?
I’ll give you a few reasons, John. You tell me if they’re “good enough.”
- On November 4, 1979, the Iranian government took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
- The Iranian government helped create, fund, and arm Hezbollah and Hamas.
- On April 18, 1983, Hezbollah bombed the American embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people.
- On October 23, 1983, Iranian-backed terrorists bombed the American and French barracks in Beirut, killing 307 people.
- Over the next decade, Iranian-backed terrorists hijacked several planes, including TWA flight 847, which resulted in the killing of an American sailor.
- On July 22, 1985, Hezbollah bombed a synagogue, a Jewish nursing home, and a kindergarten in Copenhagen.
- On March 17, 1992, Hezbollah bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people.
- On July 18, 1994, Hezbollah bombed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.
- On June 25, 1996, Iranian-backed terrorists bombed Khobar Towers, killing 19 American servicemen.
- Iran provided training and expertise to al-Qaeda to commit the 1998 embassy bombings
That’s just the first half; he has plenty more, all of ’em good. And even the full 20 the author lists are by no stretch all of ’em. Bottom line? Simply this.
To be sure, there is risk involved. To our soldiers. To the anti-regime Iranian civilians. To a postwar possibility that the regime survives intact. But there is greater risk in blowing this one golden opportunity to end this war once and for all, so that the next four generations of our soldiers don’t have to deal with it.
With our perfect hindsight, we can continue to fill our diapers with our unvanquishable anxieties about George Bush and Colin Powell and missing WMDs and losing the post-9/11 goodwill of the French and losing the hearts and minds of Afghan goatherds… and in the process, we would have given the ayatollahs another 47 years, with all the Democrat surrenders, pallets of cash, and worthless pieces of paper about nuclear disarmament that they will entail.
Trump chose not to do that. His decision is risky, but it carries the moral fortitude of being indisputably on the right side of history. The dice have been rolled. We can get behind our leader, our troops, and the fight for a world free from Islamic terrorism. Or we can go see what Michael Moore is up to.
In Trump’s decision to strike Iran, he hasn’t started a “forever war.” He’s attempting to end one. Nothing good would have c(o)me had we retreated. The Iranian-led war of terror against the West would have resume(d), more confident and more brazen. The world would be a worse place, and a lot more innocent people are going to die. That’s not an opinion. That’s an indisputable fact.
Indeed it is—ALL of it.
Update! Gratifying details.
Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86
They did not bomb Iran. They waited for Iran’s entire leadership to sit down in the same room and then they bombed Iran.Months of intelligence. Thousands of hours of surveillance and signal intercepts. One variable: the moment the Supreme Leader, the President, and senior military command gathered in a single location at the same time.
That moment was 8:15 this morning. Daylight. Every previous Israeli strike on Iran came at night. June 2025 launched in darkness. October 2024 after midnight. Iran’s entire air defense doctrine is built around the assumption that Israel attacks in the dark. Israel attacked in broad daylight because the target was not infrastructure. The target was a meeting.
Reuters confirms strikes targeted Khamenei and Pezeshkian. CNN confirms months of joint US-Israeli planning. Israeli officials confirmed the strike hit the location where Iran’s top officials were gathered. Whether Khamenei was moved before the strike or extracted after is the most consequential unknown on the planet right now. If before, someone inside Tehran’s inner circle told Jerusalem when and where the meeting would happen. If after, the strikes hit the room and he survived. Both scenarios are catastrophic for the regime.
I’m all good wid dat.
Fiscal rape
BRM finds out what Noo Yawk Shitty is really all about, the hard way.
YIKES! So basically, the usurious taxation nearly doubles the bill for a single night’s stay, then. Roll ’em, Pete:
What’s next – a charge for breathing city air? Another tax for using water to flush the toilet? One gets the feeling one is being financially raped to benefit the city. In that case, why go there at all?
A hell of a question, that, one each of must answer for himself. I loved living there back in the 90s, those were some of the best days of my life. Then again, that NYC was a very different place than the one we’re saddled with today.
Flogging a long-dead horse
Of course, we’d all like to see at least SOME of the pedophile tycoons, ProPols, British roayls, and showbiz movers/shakers get theirs for having their bosom chum Jeffrey Epstein procure underage girls for them to use as their personal playtoys. Who wouldn’t, really?
Nonetheless, I also gotta say: GET THE FUCK OVER IT AWREADY, WILLYA? The fact of the matter is, the Epstein/pedo scandal ship sailed years ago. Epstein himself is a mouldering corpse; any punishment he will ever have to face was dealt out when he descended into Hell after his phonus-balonus “suicide,” however unsatisfying that denouement might be for some of us. Most of Epstein’s young female victims have refused to testify or even be interviewed about an experience which for them is part of a dim and distant, if horrifying, past.
In sum, anything that was ever going to happen regarding l’affaire Epstein already has.
So for Christ’s sweet sake, just let it go. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty other things to get one’s hackles up about…many of them of far greater import than the Epstein thing, believe it or not. To be perfectly honest, I ‘m just about sick unto death of hearing folks scream and holler Epstein, Epstein, Epstein all the livelong day, as if that ever got anybody anything worth having. Find a more productive outlet for your time and energy, that’s my advice.
Oh, and before I forget: (((***JooJooJooJOOOOOOOOOOZ!!!***)))
Historical illiteracy: it’s a Thing
Okay, I gotta admit, this made me laugh.
Dunno if they’re supposed to resemble Zeros or not, but what they look more like to me is FW 190s, excepting the prop spinner. The accompanying textplanation:
Yes, it’s Bluto’s (John Belushi) now iconic gaffe in “Animal House” come true: “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” Those are German planes on the cover of Michael J. Clark’s history book for young readers about the sneak attack that brought the U.S. into World War II.
Just think about all of the careless, irresponsible boobs, including the author and the cover artist, who had to breach the ethical values of competence, diligence and respect for that book to be published and put on the market. How many must it have been? Then you can add to that List of Shame our pathetic, ruinous education system, which has produced such a nation of dolts that not even a humble secretary or passing clerk had the knowledge to point out, when they saw the book as it made its way through production, “Uh, aren’t those German planes?” Anyone who did, thus preventing this epic embarrassment, might have received a promotion or a bonus. Or at least someone would have bought him or her a nice lunch.
A history book? SRSLY?!? Just hilarity heaped upon hilarity, really, as far as the eye can see. I do believe this Clark feller’s cover artist probably needs to seek other employment for which he is better suited, lest all the pointing and laughing leave him disillusioned and depressed.
(Via Ed Driscoll)
Braggadocious
Sorry, but this isn’t nearly as impressive a qualification as she seems to think it is.
Democrat Oregon Governor Tina Kotek took to social media during Lesbian Visibility Week to tout her status as one of only two openly lesbian governors in U.S. history. In her message, Kotek praised Oregon’s “diversity” and identity politics-driven leadership, but it’s clear that her focus on identity over real issues highlights a growing trend in left-wing governance. While President Trump focused on policies that strengthen America, Kotek’s liberal agenda continues to prioritize divisive identity politics, leaving behind real solutions for her state.
Of course, and as usual. But hey, the important thing to remember here is that she’s a lesbian, amIright?
The future is here!
Or at Hill AF Base, at any rate.
America Airlifts Its Nuclear Future as Pentagon Delivers Microreactor in Historic C-17 Mission
A C-17 Globemaster III lifted off from March Air Reserve Base in California on Sunday carrying cargo that would have seemed like science fiction a generation ago: a next-generation nuclear reactor, bound for testing in Utah. The reactor was flown to Hill Air Force Base in Utah and is expected to be transported to the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab in Orangeville for testing and evaluation, marking a turning point in America’s race to reclaim energy dominance.The airlift wasn’t just a logistics operation. It was a declaration that the United States intends to win the advanced nuclear race while China builds Generation IV reactors and the rest of the developed world stumbles through energy crises of their own making. President Donald Trump’s executive order to modernize America’s nuclear energy infrastructure and strengthen U.S. national security set this moment in motion, and the Department of War wasted no time executing the mission.
The reactor being transported is part of a collaboration between the Pentagon and Valar Atomics, a California-based startup founded by 25-year-old Isaiah Taylor. The company’s Ward 250 reactor represents a fundamentally different approach to nuclear power: small, transportable, factory-built units that can be deployed wherever they’re needed rather than massive installations that take decades to construct. For military installations that currently depend on vulnerable civilian power grids or diesel generators, the implications are profound.
For the military, reliance on diesel generators when deployed and local electric grids here at home is widely viewed as a significant national security threat. Every forward operating base running on fuel convoys is a target. Every domestic installation tied to the civilian grid is one cyberattack away from going dark. The microreactor solution eliminates both vulnerabilities. These units can be transported by C-17, set up at remote locations, and provide reliable power independent of supply lines or grid infrastructure.
Lots of very intriguing, very enheartening stuff in this one, folks. Bottom line:
The image of a nuclear reactor loaded into a C-17 represents more than technological capability. It represents a shift in how America approaches both energy and national security. For too long, those domains were treated as separate concerns, managed by bureaucracies more interested in process than results. The Trump administration’s executive orders and the military’s execution of programs like Janus reflect a different calculation: that energy security and military readiness are inseparable, and that restoring American dominance in both requires breaking old patterns.
Whether Valar Atomics ultimately succeeds or another company takes the lead matters less than the broader trajectory. The reactor sitting in Utah for testing is proof that America can still move quickly when leadership decides that winning matters more than managing decline. The question now is whether that momentum continues or whether it gets buried under the same regulatory and political obstacles that have paralyzed American energy development for half a century.
Time will tell, as ever. Either way, it’s good to know that SecWar Hegseth is working on it for us in accordance with the tasking set forth by President Trump, with eyes set firmly on the road ahead and not the dim and distant past.
These kids today
They’ve taken a SERIOUS wrong turn somewhere along the line, the mincing little queefs.
The Least Laid Generation in History: Gen Z Is Ghosting Sex — and the Implications Are Huge
It’s not just sex: Alcohol consumption has dropped by 54%, with youth (18 to 34) drinking falling ANOTHER 9% just between 2023 and 2025.Maybe that’s not coincidental. Perhaps there’s a causal link (as famed philosopher Jimmy Buffett suggested). Maybe, just like peanut butter and jelly are complementary products, sex and alcohol are, too.
Back in 1991, more than half — 54.1% of all high school students — were sexually active. (The other 45.9% lied about it.) By 2007, the number fell to 47.8%. Four years later, it dropped again to 43%. By 2017, it was just 39.5%.
As of 2023, it’s 31.6%.
What’s going on with kids today, with their wild, out-of-control abstinence and crazy teetotalling?!
Can’t say as I blame ’em, really. Beer and/or hard likker taste about like unwashed butthole smells, frankly, and modern “women” are kinda scary: mean, eternally pissed off at any and everything, and extremely loud about it. Fat as hell, too.
Trump’s best hire?
Can only be the remarkable Marco Rubio for SecState. He just went to Munich and demonstrated why.
Rubio on Fire! We Won’t Be ‘Polite and Orderly Caretakers of the West’s Managed Decline’
Rubio told European leaders that the post–Cold War era is over, that the “euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, ‘the end of history;’ that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order – an overused term – would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.”He said that this idea was foolish and “ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history.”
While championing the Donald Trump administration’s America-First foreign policy, he also reaffirmed the bond between our nations, saying that the Western Hemisphere may be our home, but we’re a child of Europe, and we share history, culture, and heritage. “We belong together,” he said.
But he also made it clear that the world has reached a turning point and course correction is required. Europe must save itself because, “we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.”
“The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life,” he said. “And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.”
Rubio also spoke of how “we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations,” and how we must reform global institutions. He used the United Nations as an example, explaining that it has potential to be a “tool for good” but right now, it’s basically useless.
Great, GREAT stuff from the man Trump blithely dismissed as “Little Marco,” hurled right into the teeth of the dying Eurolion in his very den. At this point, I’m happy to say that Trump was all wet on that one; as he has shown again and again during his tenure at State, Marco Rubio is anything BUT “little.”
2
1No, daddy, NO!
Not the genital cuffs AGAIN!
Cynical Publius
@CynicalPubliusRE: Vance Getting Booed at the Winter Olympics
So a bunch of Eurotards from Europe’s fashion capital booed our Vice President and Second Lady at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony.
Democrats, of course, are thrilled by this because they too hate America. I, of course, could not care less.
But let me tell you what is really going on.
The USA is Europe’s Daddy, and has been for 80 years. Europe is the stumblebum adult male child in his 30s living on Daddy’s couch. He can’t hold a job, all of his relationships are disasters and he depends on Daddy for all sustenance and protection.
One day Daddy gets fed up with Sonny’s unwillingness to pay his own way. Daddy is also pissed because Sonny does not support free speech or free markets, and because Sonny fails to protect himself from Muslims who beat him up in the street daily. Daddy finally says:
“ENOUGH! You are on your own. Get out of my house. No, I will NOT lend you more money.”
So Sonny has to finally stand on his own two feet and he resents it. So the next time Sonny sees Daddy, he boos him.
That’s what happened in Milan.
It’s always about envy, resentment, and feelings of inadequacy with these delinquent brats.
“The end of democracy”
Isn’t everything?
Hi everyone declaring Don Lemon’s arrest the end of democracy… and I say “everyone” because not a single one of you did anything but cheer real fascism against real journalists…
BTW, a few years later the fascist state of CA and the fascist DA Kamala Harris (yes, THAT Kamala)… pic.twitter.com/hwhFayLwBN
— John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte (@NolteNC)
“Show more,” I defy thee!
Hi everyone declaring Don Lemon’s arrest the end of democracy… and I say “everyone” because not a single one of you did anything but cheer real fascism against real journalists…
BTW, a few years later the fascist state of CA and the fascist DA Kamala Harris (yes, THAT Kamala) were forced to drop their fascist charges. All of them.
You’re all hypocrites. You have no principles. Have a nice weekend. Cry more.
Love that Parthian shot at the very end there. “Cry more,” indeed. Heh.
(Via Insty)
War, peace, all that
The Jeddak of Jeddaks expounds on…well, pretty much everything, basically.
The Caracasian Cut
Regime decapitation and the consequences of competenceWe might ask, in the spirit of an augur inquiring after the flight of a dove at daybreak, a circling hawk at high noon, or the cold gaze of a crow in the gloaming, what is the meaning of the Caracas raid? We do not need to assume that the meaning we look for in this action is intentional, though we should not rule this out, either; what matters is how the act will manifest symbolically, how it will be interpreted in the minds of onlookers, which it will do regardless of intention.
The superficial import of the action is clear enough. America has seized control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the largest in the world, and at a stroke applies crippling pressure to the economies of China, Iran, and Cuba (who were Venezuela’s best grey-market customers), as well as to the economies of its adversary Russia and its wayward sibling Canada (both of which depend for their prosperity upon high oil prices). Both China and Russia have been deprived of a key New World ally, and thus the Monroe Doctrine is reasserted, and foreign powers pushed out of Washington’s sphere of influence. A hostile communist government has been decapitated, opening the way for the millions of Venezuelans displaced by Bolivarian tyranny, refugees whose presence has destabilized Venezuela’s neighbours for many years now, to return home.
Trump’s declaration that America now owns Venezuela’s oil feels a bit premature. Can one really claim control, without boots on the ground? I confess that it is not at all clear to me exactly how this is all supposed to work. Perhaps it is meant to function through pure intimidation: whoever ends up assuming power in Venezuela, they will know that if they don’t do as they’re told, they might be next, and perhaps will not be given the grace of an arrest and a show trial but simply executed without warning by drone; meanwhile, America offers itself as the sole legitimate customer for Venezuela’s sole marketable product, while providing its oil industry engineers to rebuild (and assume control of) infrastructure fallen into disrepair following Chavez’ nationalization and subsequent decades of neglect and mismanagement. Trump holds out one hand in an offer of assistance and mutual benefit, while holding back his other curled in a mailed fist, a threat made plausible by the fact that he just punched them hard in the mouth.
Still, all of this is nothing more than realpolitik, the hard edges of power in the material world.
The real meaning, the symbolic importance, lies deeper. It is not measured in dollars or barrels of oil. It is a message.
Over the last several months of military buildup in the Caribbean, many have issued dire predictions of the inevitable boondoggle that would result if the US allowed itself to be drawn into an invasion and occupation of Venezuela. A repeat of Iraq and Afghanistan, or worse yet Vietnam, an ugly guerrilla war in the steaming tropical jungle that would drain American blood, treasure, and will into the fetid third world swamp in tragicomic counterpoint to MAGA’s promise to drain the swamp at home. There was excellent reason for this cynicism. Every military adventure of the GWOT has been a debacle. Trust is as thin as ragged tissue paper.
Calmer heads pointed out that there was little prospect of an invasion: the forces being assembled in the Caribbean could land at most a few thousand troops, enough for a punitive expedition but hardly sufficient for an occupation. The plan, therefore, was clearly something other than an occupation, though exactly what it was no one could say for sure. My personal guess was that they were simply intending to squeeze the Venezuelan communists to death, enforcing the embargo on oil exports by interdicting contraband tankers flying under the false flags of countries they weren’t actually registered in, and watching from a safe distance as the unpaid military and unfed people turned on one another like starving jackals behind their besieged walls. Ugly, with an immense human cost, but effective.
I certainly never expected them to simply descend like Odin with the Wild Hunt and snatch the country’s president in a lightning raid.
Neither, of course, did anyone else expect such an audacious manoeuvre. Which was the point.
This being a characteristically superb piece in the grand old John Carter style, you’ll definitely want to read it all.
Update! Okay, after scanning through the piece again, I realized just how profoundly remiss of me it would be not to include this delicious bit.
This is the same American military that spent twenty fruitless years fighting to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, climaxing with a humiliating route from Kabul in which billions of dollars of military equipment were abandoned to the very Taliban that the military fought so hard to replace the Taliban with.
It is the same American military that, until just a year ago, was struggling to fill its ranks, because the warrior class had concluded that it was not a military worth belonging to, that a government which held them in such contempt was not a government worth fighting for.
Only one thing changed: a year ago, when Trump won the election, the American state was decapitated.
Because Trump won the election, he could fire the fat bureaucrat Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defence, and appoint in his place the energetic, muscular young Hegseth as Secretary of War. Because Hegseth was the Secretary of War, he could begin eliminating the dross of the Cancelled Years and refocus the American military on its actual mission.
It turned out to be that simple. Change the leadership, replace the dance troupe of hollow men and men in dresses that has cavorted through the halls of power for far too long with platoons of competent men, and allow the competent men to do what they know how to do, without interference from politicians, lawyers, and ideologues. Just point them in the right direction and get out of their way.
OOOF! That one’s gonna hurt all the right people in all the right ways, for all the right reasons.
11
11Who ever said crime doesn’t pay?
Couldn’t prove it by übercorrupt ProPol Faux Jaux Bribem, that’s for sure.
Biden’s ‘extravagant’ pension is largest of any president in history – and even more than what he earned as prez
Former President Joe Biden’s long career in politics allowed him to retire with the largest taxpayer-funded pension of any ex-prez in US history — $417,000, or more than his presidential salary, an expert says.Biden, 83, was in line to rake in the massive amount from two pension funds in his first year as former president, according to an analysis by National Taxpayer Union Foundation Vice President Demian Brady.
“It’s pretty unusual, historically unusual, to have such a large pension amount,” Brady told The Post.
The hefty estimated annual sum is double what Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, has received in retirement pay after leaving the White House and $17,000 more than Biden’s $400,000-per-year presidential salary.
It also reflects Biden’s “unique situation” as a former senator, vice president and president, a career path that has allowed him to take advantage of a “loophole” letting him tap into multiple taxpayer-backed retirement funds, Brady said.
Biden, who once described himself as “one of the poorest members” of Congress, is able to collect the lucrative payouts by double-dipping in benefits established under the Former Presidents Act of 1958 as well as the Civil Service Retirement System for ex-senators.
Fucking crook. What a scumbag, eh? Far from being a lucrative career choice, being a ProPol ought to be legally sanctioned as a Federal felony, punishable by firing squad. There really should be a bounty on the shit-slurping oxygen thieves; in a more perfect world, they’d be hunted for sport, the pelts redeemable at any local bank for your choice of a toaster oven, a handsome Atlanta Braves baseball cap, or These Magic Beans™.
Not Too Old Jaux though, right? I must say he was worth every penny, if only for the entertainment value: hilarious pratfalls, incoherent mumbling, and losing control of his bowels during a grip-n-grin with British royalty.
Der Bingle
A Christmas story for the ages, one that exemplifies courage, character, and unswerving commitment to the non-negotiable demands of personal honor, patriotic duty, and obligation.
Late in Bing Crosby’s life, his nephew Howard asked him a casual question while they were out playing golf together.
“What was the single most difficult thing you ever had to do in your career?”
Howard expected Hollywood stories. Maybe gossip about a demanding director. Perhaps… pic.twitter.com/KGKfTgAVmu— Farm Girl Carrie 👩🌾 (@FarmGirlCarrie)
“Show more,” my saggy, baggy ass.
Late in Bing Crosby’s life, his nephew Howard asked him a casual question while they were out playing golf together.
“What was the single most difficult thing you ever had to do in your career?”
Howard expected Hollywood stories. Maybe gossip about a demanding director. Perhaps the pressure of a high-stakes film production or a struggle with studio executives.Bing didn’t have to think about it at all.
December 1944. Northern France. The war in Europe was grinding toward its bloody conclusion.Bing Crosby was on a USO tour, performing for American GIs and British soldiers far from home during the coldest, darkest days of winter.
That night, they set up an open-air stage in a field.Fifteen thousand soldiers gathered to watch. Bing was joined by Dinah Shore and the Andrews Sisters.
They sang, they joked, they made the men laugh and holler—a brief moment of joy in the middle of a war zone.
Then came the closing number.
“White Christmas.”The song had already become an anthem for homesick soldiers since its release in 1942. It played constantly on Armed Forces Radio. Men who hadn’t seen their families in years, who didn’t know if they ever would again, heard those opening notes and thought of snow-covered streets and Christmas trees and the homes they’d left behind.
As Bing began to sing, he looked out at the audience. Fifteen thousand men were crying. He had to finish the song. He had to maintain his composure and his vocal control while 15,000 soldiers wept in front of him. He told his nephew it was the toughest thing he ever had to do in his entire career.
What made Bing Crosby’s USO performances different from his Hollywood appearances were the small choices he made. He refused to wear his toupee. He hated the thing—called it a “scalp doily”-and wore it only when absolutely necessary for films.
But entertaining troops was different. “If I’m entertaining troops,” he said, “I’m not going to wear anything phony like a toupee. Forget it.”
He also insisted that officers and brass could not sit in the front rows. Those seats were reserved for enlisted men. The soldiers who would be on the front lines. The men who faced the greatest danger.
A few days after that performance in the field, those same soldiers were sent into combat. The Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, 1944. It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II.
The Germans launched a surprise offensive through the Ardennes Forest in a desperate attempt to split the Allied lines. Many of the men who had wept listening to “White Christmas” in that field in France never came home.
Bing Crosby tried to enlist when the war began. He was told he was too old. General George C. Marshall, the Army’s chief of staff, told him directly:
“Look, Bing, we don’t need you in the front lines. We need you raising money for the war effort.” He wasn’t just an entertainer to them. He was a piece of home. Bing never forgot it. 🙏♥️
Leftists who viscerally hate anything that reminds them of what America once was have smeared Bing Crosby as a nasty, hateful racist, bully, and two-bit tyrant who viciously ran roughshod over others and used his wife and children as punching bags—a distorted, unidimensional portrait which disgracefully omits the man’s finer qualities.
2
1In praise of…pit bulls?
These excellent but overly-maligned doggehs are due some, that’s for sure. But, as those of us who have had pitties before already know, almost all of what the congenitally dishonest, pig ignorant “they” say about the breed isn’t remotely true.
The Jews of the Canine World
Pit bulls have been unfairly stereotyped as genetically dangerous monsters. Sound familiar?I’ve always loved dogs that look like pit bulls: wide and smiling faces, goofy expressions, broad chests, sturdy bodies, short coats, enthusiastic tails. I grew up not knowing about dog fighting, or about this breed’s vicious reputation. My terror was reserved for German shepherds (my equally frightened little brother tremulously called them “sheffers”), with their pointy, mean faces and loud barks. There were some territorial ones in the yards in my Providence, Rhode Island, neighborhood.
But after moving to New York, I came to understand that pit bulls are hated. My little East Village copy shop, where we got Josie’s bat mitzvah invitations, has a big, short-coated, wide-chested, flat-faced dog behind the counter. His name is Curtis. He comes when you call and accepts head-pats with dignity. But when I asked the owner, Santo, what kind of dog Curtis was, he hesitated. “He’s a mix,” Santo said. “Terrier, other things … pit bull.” He clearly was reluctant to say those two words. He thought I’d recoil.
You know what people say about pit bulls: Violence is in their genes. They have double rows of teeth. Their jaws can unhinge like a snake’s. Their jaws lock after they bite. They don’t feel pain the way other dogs do. In 1987, U.S. News and World Report called them “the most dangerous dog in America,” able to “chomp through chain-link fences.” The Guardian called pit bulls “dogs of war who can bite through concrete.” Time called them “time bombs on legs” and started a story on them with a quote from The Hound of the Baskervilles:
Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish, be conceived than that dark form and savage face.
A friend had her family dog genetically tested, and when she discovered it had some pit bull lineage, she gave it away. Her kids sobbed. But what if the dog just lost it one day? That’s what pit bulls do, right?
None of this, of course, is true. Bronwen Dickey’s fascinating new book Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon charts the evolution of pit bull stereotyping. (It begins with a quote from André Gide: “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.”) In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, pit bulls were considered the family-friendliest dogs. Dogs that looked like them served in the Battle of Gettysburg and in Normandy. One accompanied Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family in their covered-wagon journey across the prairie. Helen Keller owned and adored one. Another (named Votes!) accompanied suffragist Virginia Watrous on the campaign trail in 1915. Still another starred in the “His Master’s Voice” campaign for RCA and another in the “Our Gang” kiddie comedies. Dickey observes that pit bulls were then seen as “quintessentially American: good-natured, brave, resilient, and dependable.” But within a few decades, they’d become DNA-driven vicious beasts, “biologically hardwired to kill.”
My first dog was a pittie, as was my last, along with a few others in between—the last one being just the sweetest ol’ girl ever to walk on four legs and shit in the backyard and tremble like a leaf in a gale during thunderstorms: the late, great Cookie (Monster). A photo of my dear, departed friend: 
Pretty girl, no? When I took her to the Gastonia, NC animal shelter to be put down at not quite 16 years of age, after the attendants had put her in the little cart and wheeled her off and inside to do the dirty deed I sat out in the parking lot and cried like a disgruntled infant for well over two hours. I still can hardly believe my darling pupster is gone, and I miss her still.
33Comments policy
NOTE: In order to comment, you must be registered and approved as a CF user. Since so many user-registrations are attempted by spam-bots for their own nefarious purposes, YOUR REGISTRATION MAY BE ERRONEOUSLY DENIED.
If you are in fact a legit hooman bean desirous of registering yourself a CF user name so as to be able to comment only to find yourself caught up as collateral damage in one of my irregularly (un)scheduled sweeps for hinky registration attempts, please shoot me a kite at the email addy over in the right sidebar and let me know so’s I can get ya fixed up manually.
ALSO NOTE: You MUST use a valid, legit email address in order to successfully register, the new anti-spam software I installed last night requires it. My thanks to Barry for all his help sorting this mess out last night.
Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site and may be deleted, ridiculed, maliciously edited for purposes of mockery, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. The CF comments section is pretty free-form and rough and tumble; tolerance level for rowdiness and misbehavior is fairly high here, but is NOT without limit.
Management is under no obligation whatever to allow the comments section to be taken over and ruined by trolls, Leftists, and/or other oxygen thieves, and will take any measures deemed necessary to prevent such. Conduct yourself with the merest modicum of decorum, courtesy, and respect and you'll be fine. Pick pointless squabbles with other commenters, fling provocative personal insults, issue threats, or annoy the host (me) and...you won't.
Should you find yourself sanctioned after running afoul of the CF comments policy as stated and feel you have been wronged, please download and complete the Butthurt Report form below in quadruplicate; retain one copy for your personal records and send the others to the email address posted in the right sidebar.
Please refrain from whining, sniveling, and/or bursting into tears and waving your chubby fists around in frustrated rage, lest you suffer an aneurysm or stroke unnecessarily. Your completed form will be reviewed and your complaint addressed whenever management feels like getting around to it. Thank you.
"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world." ‐Henry Chinaski
Subscribe to CF!
Shameless begging
If you enjoy the site, please consider donating:
Correspondence
Email addy: mike-at-this-url dot etc
All e-mails assumed to be legitimate fodder for publication, scorn, ridicule, or other public mockery unless specified as private by the senderAllied territory
Alternatives to shitlib social media:- MeWe (Fakebook)
- Gab Free Speech social media (Twatter)
- Mike's Gab page
- Duck Duck Go (search engine)
- Rumble (YouTube)
Click to embiggen
Notable Quotes
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution
Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums
"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
—Daniel Webster
“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
—Charles Bukowski
“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa
“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel
"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton
"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing
"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
—Etienne de la Boiete
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic
"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar
"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams
"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass
"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan
"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril
"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
—Bill Whittle
RSS feed
- Entries
- Comments
Copyright © 2026