Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Misfire

Posted on February 22, 2020February 22, 2020 by Mike

Hrm.

John Bolton Admits Last-Minute Impeachment Leak Was A Publicity Stunt

Curiously, the rest of the article doesn’t quite seem to support its sensational headline.

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton admitted Wednesday that his testimony in President Donald Trump’s recent impeachment proceedings involving Ukraine would have had no impact on the trial’s outcome even after sections of his upcoming book leaked attempting to convict the president in its final days.

“People can argue about what I should have said and what I should have done,” Bolton said at Vanderbilt University Wednesday night during a forum with his predecessor Susan Rice, according to ABC News. “I will bet you a dollar right here and now my testimony would have made no difference to the ultimate outcome.”

“I sleep at night because I have followed my conscience,” Bolton added.

In the final days of the trial however, sections of Bolton’s upcoming book were leaked to the New York Times, featuring Bolton accusing Trump of tying the nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine with politically motivated investigations as Democrats alleged. The leak happened to come on the same day the book became available for online pre-order revealing the move as nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Bold mine. Now I don’t doubt for a moment that the move WAS a publicity stunt, mind. But the above hardly amounts to Bolton himself “admitting” to any such, openly and in plain language; his “confession” in the first ‘graph is pretty specific, and obviously refers to something else altogether, albeit related.

Bolton’s acknowledgment that his testimony wouldn’t have altered the outcome of Shampeachment could be construed as kind of a left-handed, backdoor way of admitting to the leak’s publicity-stunt nature, I suppose, however great a stretch that might be. And lord knows I am not in the least bothered by our side using hyperbole and misdirection as a means of attacking our enemies, just as they’ve always done to us. But such weapons must be wielded competently, craftily, to be most effective. And they ought not be wasted on an irrelevancy, a disgruntled, treacherous non-entity whose 15 minutes of (minor) fame already ticked away.

Could be there’s a case to be made for Bolton having actually confessed to perpetrating a “publicity stunt,” somewhere, somewhen. But if there is, I can’t find it in this brief article.

There walked a man

Posted on February 21, 2020February 21, 2020 by Mike

As big a fan as I’ve always been of the great Jimmy Stewart, there’s still a lot about him I didn’t know.

20 February 1966: Brigadier General James M. Stewart, United States Air Force Reserve, flew the last combat mission of his military career, a 12 hour, 50 minute “Arc Light” bombing mission over Vietnam, aboard Boeing B-52 Stratofortress of the 736th Bombardment Squadron, 454th Bombardment Wing. His bomber was a B-52F-65-BW, serial number 57-149, call sign GREEN TWO. It was the number two aircraft in a 30-airplane bomber stream.

Plenty more to the Stewart story, of which you should definitely read the all. I’ll just toss some more in for the heck of it.

Concerned that his celebrity status would keep him in “safe” assignments, Jimmy Stewart had repeatedly requested a combat assignment. His request was finally approved and he was assigned as operations officer of the 703rd Bombardment Squadron, 445th Bombardment Group, a B-24 Liberator unit soon to be sent to the war in Europe. Three weeks later, he was promoted to commanding officer of the 703rd.

The 445th Bombardment Group arrived in England on 23 November 1943, and after initial operational training, was stationed at RAF Tibenham, Norfolk, England. The unit flew its first combat mission on 13 December 1943, with Captain Stewart leading the high squadron of the group formation in an attack against enemy submarine pens at Kiel, Germany. On his second mission, Jimmy Stewart led the entire 445th Group.

Following World War II, Jimmy Stewart remained in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a Reserve Officer, and with the United States Air Force after it became a separate service in 1947. Colonel Stewart commanded Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Marietta, Georgia. In 1953, his wartime rank of colonel was made permanent, and on 23 July 1959, Jimmy Stewart was promoted to Brigadier General.

During his active duty periods, Colonel Stewart remained current as a pilot of Convair B-36 Peacemaker, Boeing B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress intercontinental bombers of the Strategic Air Command.

During his military service, Brigadier General James Maitland Stewart was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with one oak leaf cluster (two awards); the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters; the Distinguished Service Medal; and the Croix de Guerre avec Palme (France).

General Stewart retired from the U.S. Air Force on 1 June 1968 after 27 years of service.

More stuff I didn’t know:

In World War II, Jimmy Stewart answered the same patriotic call as many men and joined the military. Even though Stewart was a working actor at the time, he felt the call to duty like anyone else and made it his mission to serve America in its time of need. For Stewart it wasn’t just about gaining the accolades and attaboys, he genuinely wanted to serve his country, but that came at a price. By the end of World War II he was suffering from PTSD, something that affected him deeply while filming It’s A Wonderful Life.

By the end of World War II Stewart wasn’t doing well. Men serving with him at the time said that he was suffering from battle fatigue, not in the sense that he was afraid of going into battle, but that he was worried about losing men while performing missions over Europe. This kind of “endless stress” is what grounded him for good towards the end of the war.

Both Stewart and director Frank Capra were dealing with their own personal demons while they were filming It’s A Wonderful Life, but Stewart was certain that he didn’t know how to act anymore. Biographer Robert Matzen writes:

If you watch that performance by Stewart, there was a lot of rage in it and it’s an on-the-edge performance because that’s what those guys were feeling — they were scared that this wasn’t going to work. That the audience wasn’t going to buy it. Donna Reed (playing Stewart’s wife in the film) is one of the eyewitnesses who said, ‘This was not a happy set.’ These guys were very tense. They would go off and huddle say, ‘Should we try this? Should we try that?’ And it proceeded that way for months.

Stewart’s pain and stress is evident in every scene of the film, it’s likely why the film is so affecting.

Stewart died in 1997, bless his heart. They sure don’t make Hollywood celebs like they used to, eh? Then again, they don’t make Americans like they used to, either.

(First link via Insty)

Manufacturing victims

Posted on February 18, 2020February 18, 2020 by Mike

One of the ways the Left does it: redefining cowardice as courage, weakness as strength, and disgrace as nobility.

Perhaps it is time for us to face a few facts. The first is this: bullying is an inevitable result of the human condition. There is no real reason to think that this ugly aspect of our nature has manifested itself more in recent years than in any other period of human history. Yet it does seem to be the case that bullying is sending kids spiraling into depression, sometimes suicidal depression, at a much higher rate today than in the past. What does this tell us? Not that bullying is worse now, or more common, but that our children are less equipped to cope with it. And why is that? Well, there are probably several reasons, but one of them is certainly the fact that we are conditioning our kids to be victims.

We have built of this mythology of “the bigger person,” and told our children that the “bigger person” is the one who walks away from bullies, disengages, tells an adult. The “bigger person” is somehow the submissive one who slinks away and runs for cover. We tell our children that remaining silent in the face of a bully is “strong” and “courageous.” But somehow the strong, courageous, bigger child, who spends his childhood avoiding confrontation and retreating in the face of aggressors, never actually feels very strong, courageous, or big. He feels, rather, like a punchline. Because that is what we have told him to be.

I’d be willing to believe that, say, an MMA fighter who remains confidently silent in the face of some scrawny punk’s drunken taunting at a bar is truly being a bigger person. He could tear the other guy to shreds. He isn’t afraid. But he chooses the high road because the scrawny punk isn’t worth his time. Being the bigger person, taking the high road — these are things we do from a position of strength. If we do them because we’re scared, or intimidated, or just praying for the confrontation to be over, we are not on the high road. We are almost literally crawling away on our knees, hoping not to be noticed. Many children spend their formative years in this position. We congratulate them for their maturity while their self-image collapses.

Now, there is a problem with teaching our kids to stand up for themselves and give back what is dished to them. The problem is that every school in America has adopted the profoundly insane position that “it doesn’t matter who started it,” everyone involved in a fight or argument will get in trouble. What sort of system is that? Of course it matters who started it. If Jimmy is defending himself from Bobby, or responding to harassment from Bobby, how is it just or reasonable to punish both Jimmy and Bobby as if they are equally to blame? I understand it can be hard to adjudicate these things in a school setting, but that doesn’t give us an excuse to adopt a blanket policy of punishing children for refusing to bow in submission to bullies. Maybe this is why we are dealing with a so-called bullying epidemic: because we have given bullies free rein and taught our children to wilt in their presence like fragile tulips.

It’s less a bullying epidemic than it is a fragile tulip epidemic, if you ask me. Kind of a symbiosis type thing; you can’t really have the one without the other. And if your culture selects for fragile tulips, then fragile tulips ye shall have, anon and in plenty. It’s exactly as Bill says:

We teach them to be cowards. We reward them for being cowards. And then we wonder why we have so many screwed-up, miserable cowards.

If boys act like boys, we drug them until they behave like good little girls. What Walsh doesn’t quite pinpoint here is that by far the vast bulk of “bullying” issues revolve around boys and their behavior. And from a feminist point of view, boys are just nasty. Violent, testosterone-drenched rapists and murderers in the making, the only decent thing to do is at least force them to act like pacifist females, who are ever so much less threatening to feminist fantasies about dangerous men.

Unfortunately, as with so much else in our deranged culture, we have turned the raising of our men over to women. One should not, therefore, be surprised when women try to raise boys by forcing them to imitate girls.

Nor ought feminists to be complaining about how there aren’t any real men out there for women to marry—when feminists have brutalized all the manhood right out of them, leaving themselves with nothing but simpering eunuchs to choose from.

In defense of Trump’s Tweeting

Posted on February 15, 2020February 15, 2020 by Mike

Looks like I’m no longer the Lone Ranger on this.

(U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard) Grenell said, “It makes my job so much easier. We as diplomats have to be at the forefront of trying to solve problems. You don’t want to have a war. You want to avoid war, which means diplomats need to be able to talk. If you want to really solve problems, you better have diplomats who are really tough, diplomats who know how to push and know how to cajole. Because the alternative is to transfer the file over to the DOD. So, I like having a president who’s willing to be very tough. Look, we can also talk about whether or not the style of the president works. I think $400 billion in new defense promises for NATO members is one surefire way to point to the fact that the president’s style has worked.”

Well, yeah. For some, style trumps results; for some, the other way ’round. And then there are those of us who realize that, quite often, the style is what gets results. It’s certainly so in Trump’s case; his brashness, his bluntness, his cantankerousness are in no way obstacles or handicaps. They’re the very legs on which the race is run…and won.

“Daddy, how do airplanes fly?”

Posted on February 15, 2020February 15, 2020 by Mike

Correct answer: nobody really knows.

No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay In The Air

On a strictly mathematical level, engineers know how to design planes that will stay aloft. But equations don’t explain why aerodynamic lift occurs.

There are two competing theories that illuminate the forces and factors of lift. Both are incomplete explanations.

Aerodynamicists have recently tried to close the gaps in understanding. Still, no consensus exists.

In December 2003, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first flight of the Wright brothers, the New York Times ran a story entitled “Staying Aloft; What Does Keep Them Up There?” The point of the piece was a simple question: What keeps planes in the air? To answer it, the Times turned to John D. Anderson, Jr., curator of aerodynamics at the National Air and Space Museum and author of several textbooks in the field.

What Anderson said, however, is that there is actually no agreement on what generates the aerodynamic force known as lift. “There is no simple one-liner answer to this,” he told the Times. People give different answers to the question, some with “religious fervor.” More than 15 years after that pronouncement, there are still different accounts of what generates lift, each with its own substantial rank of zealous defenders. At this point in the history of flight, this situation is slightly puzzling. After all, the natural processes of evolution, working mindlessly, at random and without any understanding of physics, solved the mechanical problem of aerodynamic lift for soaring birds eons ago. Why should it be so hard for scientists to explain what keeps birds, and airliners, up in the air?

Even as extraordinarily broad and supple an intellect as Einstein’s couldn’t suss it all out:

In Germany, one of the scientists who applied themselves to the problem of lift was none other than Albert Einstein. In 1916 Einstein published a short piece in the journal Die Naturwissenschaften entitled “Elementary Theory of Water Waves and of Flight,” which sought to explain what accounted for the carrying capacity of the wings of flying machines and soaring birds. “There is a lot of obscurity surrounding these questions,” Einstein wrote. “Indeed, I must confess that I have never encountered a simple answer to them even in the specialist literature.”

Einstein then proceeded to give an explanation that assumed an incompressible, frictionless fluid—that is, an ideal fluid. Without mentioning Bernoulli by name, he gave an account that is consistent with Bernoulli’s principle by saying that fluid pressure is greater where its velocity is slower, and vice versa. To take advantage of these pressure differences, Einstein proposed an airfoil with a bulge on top such that the shape would increase airflow velocity above the bulge and thus decrease pressure there as well.

Einstein probably thought that his ideal-fluid analysis would apply equally well to real-world fluid flows. In 1917, on the basis of his theory, Einstein designed an airfoil that later came to be known as a cat’s-back wing because of its resemblance to the humped back of a stretching cat. He brought the design to aircraft manufacturer LVG (Luftverkehrsgesellschaft) in Berlin, which built a new flying machine around it. A test pilot reported that the craft waddled around in the air like “a pregnant duck.” Much later, in 1954, Einstein himself called his excursion into aeronautics a “youthful folly.” The individual who gave us radically new theories that penetrated both the smallest and the largest components of the universe nonetheless failed to make a positive contribution to the understanding of lift or to come up with a practical airfoil design.

Can’t recollect via whom I found this one; I suspect it was probably Insty, but a bit of searching around at his place didn’t turn it up. Whoever it was, my abjectest apology for failing to acknowledge the find with a return link. It’s a fascinating article all around, if you’re into the whole aviation thing. Which, y’know, I am.

Stolen valor—again

Posted on February 15, 2020February 15, 2020 by Mike

IE, just your typical Democrat-Socialist “war hero.”

When Mayor Pete Buttigieg talks about his military service, his opponents fall silent, the media fall in love, and his political prospects soar. Veterans roll their eyes.

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Mr. Buttigieg Sunday if President Trump “deserves some credit” for the strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. “No,” the candidate replied, “not until we know whether this was a good decision and how this decision was made.” He questioned whether “it was the right strategic move” and said his own judgment “is informed by the experience of having been on one of those planes headed into a war zone.”

But Mr. Buttigieg’s stint in the Navy isn’t as impressive as he makes it out to be. His 2019 memoir is called “Shortest Way Home,” an apt description of his military service. He entered the military through a little-used shortcut: direct commission in the reserves. The usual route to an officer’s commission includes four years at Annapolis or another military academy or months of intense training at Officer Candidate School. ROTC programs send prospective officers to far-flung summer training programs and require military drills during the academic year. Mr. Buttigieg skipped all that—no obstacle courses, no weapons training, no evaluation of his ability or willingness to lead. Paperwork, a health exam and a background check were all it took to make him a naval officer.

Mr. Buttigieg was assigned to a comfortable corner of military life, the Naval Station in Great Lakes, Ill. Paperwork and light exercise were the order of the day. “Working eight-hour days,” he writes, was “a relaxing contrast from my day job, and spending time with sailors from all walks of civilian life, was a healthy antidote to the all absorbing work I had in South Bend.” He calls it “a forced, but welcome, change of pace from the constant activity of being mayor.”

During a November debate, Mr. Buttigieg proclaimed: “I have the experience of being commanded into a war zone by an American president.” The reality isn’t so grandiose.

Mr. Buttigieg spent some five months in Afghanistan, where he writes that he remained less busy than he’d been at City Hall, with “more time for reflection and reading than I was used to back home.” He writes that he would take “a laptop and a cigar up to the roof at midnight to pick up a Wi-Fi signal and patch via Skype into a staff meeting at home.” The closest he came to combat was ferrying other staffers around in an SUV: In his campaign kickoff speech last April he referred to “119 trips I took outside the wire, driving or guarding a vehicle.” That’s a strange thing to count. Combat sorties in an F-18 are carefully logged. Driving a car isn’t.

Them that did it don’t talk about it. Them that talk about it didn’t do it. That slight twist on a hoary old SpecWarrior truism will peel the mask off a braggadocious little REMF queef like Buttplug every time.

How the Trump admin went off the rails

Posted on February 15, 2020 by Mike

Personnel is policy.

Unlike a George Bush (either of them), Donald Trump arrived in Washington, D.C. with no connections to the DC policy establishment. In fact, he arrived after a bruising primary and general election that left him alienated from the GOP establishment. The GOP establishment might not have called his supporters “a basket of deplorables” but they nodded their heads and chuckled when they heard it. The same establishment had gotten rich and fat off illegal immigrant labor and outsourcing American jobs to wherever. They were used to keeping the GOP base in line with promises and crumbs (George W. Bush had GOP majorities for 6 of his 8 years, how much did they accomplish in regards to slowing illegal immigration or reducing abortion?) while delivering zero. When Trump arrived in Washington he was reliant upon the very same people who had opposed his election to staff his administration.

Some hard-core NeverTrumpers were hired in an attempt to placate factions in the GOP. Some cabinet secretaries, like, for instance, James Mattis and Rex Tillerson, pressed to retain Obama appointees or bring in registered Democrats with whom they had worked into senior policy positions. The head of the White House personnel office overseeing the hiring of political appointees went to an “end of the world party” when Trump dispatched Ted Cruz in Indiana. A guerrilla war was fought against the Administration by using the security clearance process to force out many of Trump’s most loyal followers.

Streiff then links to this piece, which fleshes things out a bit further.

In past administrations, a candidate’s allegiance to the president was vetted and considered a plus, if not a must. So why is the Trump White House filling any of these spots with people who have been openly (or privately) hostile to the president?

Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor summed up the absurdity of the situation on Fox News. “I think President Trump lost control of the whole appointment process in staffing the government shortly after the election,” he said. “He ended up appointing large numbers of people who subsequently brought in their friends, almost all of whom were opposed to Donald Trump and his agenda.”

Indeed, the appointment of never-Trumpers was aggressively championed and insisted upon by some senior Cabinet members. Some candidates were directly approved by the president himself, while others were proposed by White House political staffers as compromise picks with Cabinet secretaries. Many others slipped in because, despite their anti-Trump sentiments, they had not revealed — or were not asked about — their views in public. Some of the appointments appear to have been downright disastrous. Although many never-Trumpers hired early in the president’s term have departed, others have been elevated or reshuffled as new never-Trumpers continue to enter the administration’s ranks.

The permanent-bureaucracy insiders, in serving their own interests and safeguarding their sinecures, are keeping their eyes on the long term. Back to Strieff.

This, by the way, is not unique to Trump. Historically, party outsiders have failed or been co-opted by the system because, just like Trump, they arrive with a popular mandate but because they are outsiders, and threatening outsiders at that, the formal and informal levers of power are often out of their reach because they can’t put enough of their supporters in mid-level policy positions. When results don’t materialize, the reformer is turfed out by the voters and we all go back to the way it was.

Which, of course, is the desired outcome, the whole point. It’s the grimmest of ironies, and the neatest of tricks: the system has been so thoroughly rigged to serve the interests of its career players by thwarting any true outsider elected to clean out the rot—to “drain the swamp”—that it actually functions as a self-perpetuation mechanism, ensuring said outsider will be removed when he inevitably fails to get the job done.

Put another way, the Deep State ouroborus produces antibodies to counteract and flush away potential threats to its own continued existence and supremacy. Kinda daunting to think of FederalGovCo being so awesomely resilient, virtually immune to all but cosmetic, trifling reform or restriction. More daunting still, though, is the question of whether this systemic self-defense mechanism came into existence organically, just as a natural consequence of the gummint having metastasized far beyond its intended limits, or whether its establishment was the intentional, coordinated result of insider engineers who knew just what they were building, why they were building it, and how to build it right.

The latter scenario isn’t merely daunting but downright scary, in truth—because successfully animating such a monster would have required true genius on Dr Frankenstein’s part. A people who value Constitutionally-ordered liberty will need him to be something a good bit less than that if he’s ever to be defeated, his abominable creation laid to rest.

Still a ways to go

Posted on February 13, 2020February 13, 2020 by Mike

Welcome to the party and all, I guess. But see if you can pick out the part I’m more and more tired of.

You see, I was one of those Democrats who considered anyone who voted for Trump a racist. I thought they were horrible (yes, even deplorable) and worked very hard to eliminate their voices from my spaces by unfriending or blocking people who spoke about their support of him, however minor their comments. I watched a lot of MSNBC, was convinced that everything he had done was horrible, that he hated anyone who wasn’t a straight white man, and that he had no redeeming qualities.

But when I witnessed the amount of hate coming from the left in this small, niche knitting community, I started to question everything. I started making a proactive effort to break my echo chamber by listening to voices I thought I would disagree with. I wanted to understand their perspective, believing it would confirm that they were filled with hate for anyone who wasn’t like them.

That turned out not to be the case.

It’s pretty much your standard-issue recounting of a Lefty’s shock to learn that the bubble she’s been living in was filled all along with lies and propaganda, with nary a truth or hard fact allowed entry. Then:

I started to question everything. How many stories had I been sold that weren’t true? What if my perception of the other side is wrong? How is it possible that half the country is overtly racist? Is it possible that Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing, and had I been suffering from it for the past three years?

To ask it is to answer it, each and every one. Now to the meat of the thing, such as it is.

Once we got inside, the atmosphere was jubilant. It was more like attending a rock concert than a political rally. People were genuinely enjoying themselves. Some were even dancing to music being played over the loudspeakers. It was so different than any other political event I had ever attended. Even the energy around Barack Obama in 2008 didn’t feel like this.

I had attended an event with all the Democratic contenders just two days prior in exactly the same arena, and the contrast was stark. First, Trump completely filled the arena all the way up to the top. Even with every major Democratic candidate in attendance the other night, and the campaigns giving away free tickets, the Democrats did not do that. With Trump, every single person was unified around a singular goal. With the Democrats, the audience booed over candidates they didn’t like and got into literal shouting matches with each other. With Trump, there was a genuinely optimistic view of the future. With the Democrats, it was doom and gloom. With Trump, there was a genuine feeling of pride of being an American. With the Democrats, they emphasized that the country was a racist place from top to bottom.

Now, Trump is always going to present the best case he can. And yes, he lies. This is provable.

Oh, izzat so? Name one, then. Name just fucking ONE. No, I do NOT mean some spurious morsel of twipe you’ve been spoonfed, either taken out of context or manufactured from whole cloth by CNN or some other pack of balls-out bullshit artists. I mean one genuine, bona-fide, shame-the-devil lie. Go ahead, I’ll wait. But not for long.

No matter how deep or complete the conversion, they always, always, always say this. Hell, the NeverTrumpTard pseudo “Right” never seems to STOP saying it. But as “provable” as the claim is supposed to be, I have yet to see even ONE of the people so blandly making it offer any of that “proof” to back it up.

Note that my annoyance in no way equates to declaring that Trump never lies, or never has lied. Exaggeration and hyperbole? Stipulated. These are both an integral part of his personality and, I believe, tactics Trump deliberately employs when he thinks them useful. Still, though, even they aren’t LIES.

Now, this woman seems one hell of a lot more broad-minded, thoughtful, and reasonable than the overwhelming majority of her fellow Lefty lemmings, so hats off to her for that much at least. Maybe if she continues along the path of this first exploratory step, she’ll find her eyes opened further—her vision becoming clearer, her intellectual horizons broader. Eventually, perhaps she’ll recognize that ALL the bushwa she’s uncritically swallowed all these years for the deceitful manipulation it really is. Such is to be hoped, anyway. I will not speculate on how likely I think it might be.

Via Glenn, who says: “I love that it was the PC meanness of SJW types in the knitting community — yes — that opened her eyes.” Heh. Indeed.

Buttplug slammed, Biden objects

Posted on February 13, 2020February 13, 2020 by Mike

Wait, somebody’s still paying attention to a word confused Uncle Gropey says?

Joe Biden called Rush Limbaugh toxic after the conservative radio host said President Trump would “have fun” with the fact that Pete Buttigieg is gay.

“Look, you know, you saw — you just had on what Rush Limbaugh said,” the former vice president said Thursday on ABC’s The View. “I mean, my God. But it is part of the depravity of this administration. I mean, the idea that, you know, Pete and I are competitors, but this guy has honor, he has courage, he’s smart as hell.”

Biden, who like Buttigieg is a Democratic candidate for president, was reacting to a clip The View aired before his appearance in which Limbaugh suggested on his show Wednesday that Trump would try to target the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s sexuality on the campaign trail.

“They’re looking at Mayor Pete, 37-year-old gay guy, mayor of South Bend, loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage. And they’re saying, OK, how’s this going to look, 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband on stage next to ‘Mr. Man’ Donald Trump?” the host said. “What’s going to happen there? And they got to be looking at that, and they’ve got to be saying, that despite all the great progress and despite all the great wokeness, and despite all the great ground that’s been covered, America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president.”

I’m still rooting for Buttplug to win at all, y’know. As I keep saying, I simply can’t WAIT to see what happens on his first trip to Saudi Arabia on the arm of his First Whatever. And the mocking sneer on Putin’s face when President Buttplug minces out to greet him in his clingiest black cocktail dress and matching pumps is going to be even better than the one Vlad dismissed Barky with every time he was in a room with the slope-shouldered, jug-eared moron. Poor Vlad will probably bust a blood vessel from the tremendous strain of trying not to laugh in Buttplug’s face.

San Francisco priorities

Posted on February 13, 2020February 13, 2020 by Mike

James Woods is back to Tweeting again, and just won the Innarnets for the day with this one.

Where are the San Francisco police? Can’t they see the plastic straw on the sidewalk? pic.twitter.com/SxIrlOto9X

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) February 13, 2020

Some of the follow-on Tweets are pretty funny too.

Cutting L’il Mike down to size

Posted on February 12, 2020February 12, 2020 by Mike

Ever notice how sour, pinch-faced, full of rage, or just plain miserable the Democrat-Socialist clowndidates seem to be in every picture you see? Meanwhile, ever notice how much pure-tee fun Trump always seems to be having?

Mini Mike is a short ball (very) hitter. Tiny club head speed. KEEP AMERICA GREAT! https://t.co/5DUj16jtZf

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020

ZING!! As Bill says:

The funny part is that Bloombox’s paid surrogates can’t respond without making the real meaning totally clear.

“Hey, Trump says Mike has a little dick to go along with his little everything else!”

That’s a good response.

Trump should stop Tweeting? In a pig’s eye. The man is a true genius at this stuff: he needles, pokes, and provokes them; they go frothing bugfuck nuts over it; they can’t lay a finger on him in retaliation, and make fools of themselves trying. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. No matter which of their inadequacies, perennial failures, and third-raters the Democrat-Socialists offer up for November slaughter, Trump is gonna absolutely cut ’em to pieces. Very, very small ones.

Update! Speaking of L’il Mike.

Once upon a time in Virginia, a little emperor named Michael Bloomberg threw a gun control party, but gun rights advocates crashed it…bigly. And what a party it was.

Spoiler Alert: this story has a happy ending with Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign bus veering off into a political ditch at its final stop in Virginia on Sunday night.

Almost 200 Second Amendment supporters massed on the sidewalk outside Bloomberg’s brand new campaign office with signs and bullhorns to greet the Bloomberg ”Gun Violence Prevention Tour” when it pulled up in the overwhelmingly liberal Northern Virginia enclave of Arlington for an Second Amendment infringement gala.

The, uh, fly in the anti-gun punchbowl, however, was that our impromptu gun rights rally attendance was two to three times the number of the Bloomberg minions gathered inside.

The Bloomberg campaign’s plans was for several hours of rah-rah festivities including speeches that would lift the drifting Democrats to such dizzying heights of ecstasy about New York-style gun control that a single milk crate wouldn’t nearly be enough for Michael Bloomberg to stand on in order to be seen.

But, for many of the Bloombots attending, the event turned into a surprise party.

The first surprise: Michael Bloomberg was not on the bus when it arrived. The Little Emperor apparently chose to skip the occasion after the heavy anti-Bloomberg patriot pushback encountered at his stops in the Tidewater Virginia region late last week.

As best we could tell, the lack of a rear entrance to the Bloomberg campaign storefront likely played a role in the decision by the self-funded billionaire to bypass his own campaign event—which would have exposed him to the kind of sidewalk derision he doesn’t want the media to see.

Much, much more to the story, including my favorite part:

To add to the fun, some of our gun rights advocates were able to bamboozle their way past Bloomberg’s bouncers guarding the door to the campaign office grand opening.

Our “gun control” imposters then took to the stage and surprised the Bloombergians by commandeering the microphone to offer speeches—albeit brief ones—on “gun rights as a civil right” before being ushered out of the storefront to the cheers and high-fives from the our 2A crowd.

Heh. The 2A folks also got plaudits from the cops brought in to reassure the trembling, tearful gun-grabbers, including one officer who praised the spirited but entirely peaceable counter-demo as “the ‘gold standard’ in the use of the First Amendment.”

Hats off once more to the Virginia 2A folks, who do seem to have a real flair for making their case to TPTB unequivocally but also without violence, in civilized fashion. No, of course it won’t stop the gun-grabbers; it’s unlikely anything ever will. But that dismal reality doesn’t render events like this one entirely pointless, either. Hell, anytime a would-be dimestore dictator like L’il Mike is sent scurrying off with his tail between his stumpy legs counts as a win in my book.

JUSTICE FOR JUICY!

Posted on February 11, 2020February 11, 2020 by Mike

Again: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett was indicted Tuesday by a grand jury in Chicago after a special prosecutor re-investigated allegations he bogusly reported being the victim of a January 2019 hate-crime attack, officials said.

Smollett, 37, was indicted on six counts of disorderly conduct related to making four separate false reports to Chicago Police Department officers, claiming he was the victim of a hate crime while “knowing he was not the victim of a crime,” special prosecutor Dan Webb said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.

Webb was appointed by a Cook County judge to continue looking into the false allegations after the Cook County State’s Attorney Office dropped all charges against the actor.

He said his office has made arrangements with Smollett’s attorneys for the actor to voluntarily appear at an arraignment on Feb. 24 in the Criminal Division of Cook County Circuit Court. Webb’s investigation began Aug. 23, after Cook County Circuit Court Judge Michael Toomin appointed him special prosecutor.

Toomin directed Webb to launched an independent investigation to determine whether Smollett should be further prosecuted for the allegedly false reports he made to police and whether “any person or office involved in the Smollett case engaged in wrongdoing, including the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office or individuals in that office,” Webb’s statement reads.

That last bit sounds like it might turn out to be the most, umm, interesting part of this whole shitshow, I think.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes

Posted on February 11, 2020February 11, 2020 by Mike

Much as I do hate to come down on the side of Muzzrat primitives on anything, anytime, anywhere, I have to say that my sympathy for this obnoxious cooze is…limited. QUITE limited.

A 26-year-old British woman who has appeared on TV shows “First Dates” and “Ninja Warrior UK” was arrested for wearing a bikini in the Maldives — accusing three male cops of “sexually assaulting” her, according to reports.

Cecilia Jastrzembska was arrested after strolling past a mosque and a school on Maafushi, an island in the Maldives where it is illegal to wear bikinis except on designated beaches because of strict Muslim Sharia laws, the Sun of the UK reported.

Video of the incident shows Jastrzembska, who describes herself as a parliamentary adviser at the House of Commons, thrashing as she is being arrested.

“You are sexually assaulting me!” she yells at the three officers as her male friend tries to cover part of her body with a small towel.

“Anyone who gets in my personal space I’m going to have a problem with,” she is heard screaming.

Maldives Police Commissioner Mohamed Hameed later issued a public apology over the incident, saying it appeared to have been “badly handled,” and the woman was released after spending an hour and a half in custody Thursday.

Do note the following bit. It’s important.

“Tourists on local islands are requested to respect the community’s cultural sensitivities and local regulations by restricting the wearing of swimwear to certain areas of the island where local communities live,” police said, according to the UK’s Standard.

So even the Maldives Mooselimbs, who I am confident are awake to what the resort-area cash cow means to them, are reasonable enough to allow “swimwear” on their tourist beaches. That bespeaks a flexibility and restraint not exactly common in the Moslem world, wouldn’t you say? This Brit bimbelina, onthe other hand, chose to strut her luscious, scantily-clad little ass right past a fucking mosque. In broad daylight and full view of the local yokels, who apparently took issue with this brazen show of disrespect for local custom and law and called the cops.

She got what she had coming, if you ask me—little indeed of it, in fact, seeing as how she not only got herself sprung in less than two hours but also somehow garnered a near-groveling apology from the top cop himself, which I consider entirely unnecessary and undeserved. I cannot for the life of me see how the “incident” was “badly handled.” It was handled quite gently, compared to the deep, boiling kettle of fish this bint would have found herself steeping in in just about any other Moslem country you could name.

Tease the tiger and you might get bit. Offer affront to Moslems on their own turf with obvious intent to provoke, particularly if you’re a Western female, and you almost certainly won’t like what happens to you. If Brass-Balled Barbie managed to survive twenty-six years on this blue marble before learning that lesson with no more damage than she suffered, she ought to spend a significant portion of the rest of her life on her knees thanking God for it.

Video at the link, which is kinda-sorta worth a look. What, you thought I was kidding when I said her ass was luscious? Actually, the bit where her wispy little cuck of a boyfriend is halfheartedly trying to get past the cops to belatedly toss a blanket over Miss Thang as they wrassle her around and then haul her bad self off to the jug is pretty funny.

(Via Sarah Hoyt)

Californication

Posted on February 9, 2020February 9, 2020 by Mike

Lie down with Democrats, get up with flees.

Beset by high housing costs, crippling taxes, astronomical gas prices, wildfires, and rolling blackouts, Californians are heading for the exits. That’s sparking anxiety in places where these Golden State migrants are relocating. A mayoral candidate in Boise, Idaho, recently suggested building a wall to keep out Californians, who account for 60 percent of domestic migration into the growing state. The election of increasingly progressive candidates in Colorado sparked talk there of the “Californication” of the Centennial State.

Early last year, the Dallas News described the “California-ing” of North Texas, citing a study showing that 8,300 Californians move to the area yearly. Texas governor Greg Abbott launched a petition titled “Don’t California My Texas.”

Much of this anxiety revolves around fears that the migrants will transform the politics and culture of the places that they’re moving to—bringing an appetite for big, intrusive government. But a new survey suggests that, while plenty of people are looking to leave California, many are fleeing the state’s high costs and politics and may not be interested in voting for the same things in their new homes. The poll, by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, found that 52 percent of California residents are considering migrating. As these polls go, that’s exceptionally high, putting California in the same category as some other states with very unhappy residents. A recent poll in New Jersey, for instance, found that about 44 percent of its people are looking to depart, while 50 percent of Connecticut residents indicated a desire to leave the state in a 2014 Gallup poll, the highest figure among any state at that time.

The article goes on to suggest that common assumptions about who’s doing the fleeing from collapsing Red territories might be off, although the evidence I see around here says otherwise.

(Via Linda Fox)

Character flaws

Posted on February 9, 2020February 9, 2020 by Mike

Hate to have to do it and all, but I fear I’m gonna have to pick a few nits with the esteemed CBD’s premises here.

President Trump has many character traits that seem, at first glance, to be wonderful openings for his political opponents to make substantive inroads on his popularity with the 20% of the voters who are not firmly in one camp, and perhaps decrease the enthusiasm with which his base supports him.

Here is a partial list, in no particular order, and without vetting for accuracy. But any casual perusal of the raw sewage pouring out of the media will lend support to these tendencies.

He is undoubtedly thin-skinned,

Could be, could be. Alternative take, though, is that Trump does not suffer fools gladly, nor does he let an insult, slight, or treachery pass him by without returning the favor in spades. After seeing the deluge of pure shit he’s been indundated with the past three years, I’m okay with that myself. In fact, the more he bristles, bares the claws, and attacks, the happier I’ll be. If fighting back hard against any and all provocation is being thin-skinned—and perhaps it is—well, so be it.

Note too, though, that Trump was clever enough to entirely ignore the Shittpeachment farce in his SOTU last week, not mentioning it even once. In that case, he managed to suppress any reflexive tendency towards being thin-skinned at least enough to use forebearance to his own tactical advantage, which says a few encouraging things about him too.

is prone to exaggeration and hyperbole

Alternative take: is confident, a perennial salesman and self-promoter, and a self-made larger than life character.

uses odd grammatical constructions that seem ripe for parody

And that prevents his opponents from pinning him down, keeping them off-balance and uncertain.

has goofy hair

Hey, he’s 70 and still HAS hair. I just turned 60 and am quite frankly envious.

Is curiously uninterested in reining in a bloated federal budget

This is the one I have the hardest time disputing. On the other hand, the budget is Congress’s responsibility, not his; there just isn’t a hell of a lot he can do about it, even if he wanted to.

is a big fan of firing people, and on and on.

Another one I don’t have any problem with. Actually, in my opinion he hasn’t fired NEARLY enough people since taking office. Hopefully he gets himself good and busy with rectifying that after re-election.

I’m only needling CBD a little with this, but there is one complaint about Trump we hear constantly, mostly from people whose criticism is a lot less constructive than CBD’s and whose motives are questionable at best: his Tweeting. They claim Trump’s Twitter assaults are rude, vulgar, and a childish affront to the solemn dignity of his exalted position. They wish he would just cut it out already, relying instead on Enemedia to honestly vet and oversee his statements rather than bypassing them to communicate directly with the people via Twitter.

Stuff and nonsense. Taking to Twitter to both needle his adversaries and inform his supporters is simply Trump making good use of an extremely popular platform to reach as many people as possible, directly and without interference or manipulation by any self-appointed “gatekeepers.” FDR did pretty much the same thing:

The fireside chats were a series of evening radio addresses given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (known colloquially as “FDR”) between 1933 and 1944. Roosevelt spoke with familiarity to millions of Americans about the promulgation of the Emergency Banking Act in response to the banking crisis, the recession, New Deal initiatives, and the course of World War II. On radio, he was able to quell rumors and explain his policies. His tone and demeanor communicated self-assurance during times of despair and uncertainty. Roosevelt was regarded as an effective communicator on radio, and the fireside chats kept him in high public regard throughout his presidency. Their introduction was later described as a “revolutionary experiment with a nascent media platform.”

The series of chats was among the first 50 recordings made part of the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, which noted it as “an influential series of radio broadcasts in which Roosevelt utilized the media to present his programs and ideas directly to the public and thereby redefined the relationship between President Roosevelt and the American people in 1933.”

I just bet the tightassed fussbudgets of that era didn’t care much for FDR’s end-run around the gatekeepers, either. I noticed a huge irony in the above-quoted Wiki, boldfaced below:

It cannot misrepresent or misquote. It is far reaching and simultaneous in releasing messages given it for transmission to the nation or for international consumption.
— Stephen Early, FDR press secretary, on the value of radio

Roosevelt believed that his administration’s success depended upon a favorable dialogue with the electorate — possible only through methods of mass communication — and that this would allow him to take the initiative. The use of radio for direct appeals was perhaps the most important of FDR’s innovations in political communication. Roosevelt’s opponents had control of most newspapers in the 1930s and press reports were under their control and involved their editorial commentary. Historian Betty Houchin Winfield says, “He and his advisers worried that newspapers’ biases would affect the news columns and rightly so.” Historian Douglas B. Craig says that he “offered voters a chance to receive information unadulterated by newspaper proprietors’ bias” through the new medium of radio.

How very odd that the Left doesn’t seem nearly so concerned about media bias or its corrosive effects these days. In fact, having been in charge of Old Media for so long now, they take its power to drive the national debate as read, viewing any challenge to its waning might as the threat to them that it truly is. It’s no wonder they’re so put out by Trump’s “unpresidential” Tweeting, and petulantly demand that he knock it off.

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