Stupes, dupes, and dopes from political Wonderland
Kim Dotcom has a good idea, Bracken comes up with an even better one.
If they came through Mexico, with Mexico’s blessing, we are only responsible for returning them to Mexico. Want this to stop? Make MEXICO support them. Their Guatemala border will be sealed tight in 24 hours, and then country after country the same will happen back to Ecuador,…
— Matt Bracken (@Matt_Bracken48)
Endorsed, with mucho enthusiasm.
1Andrew Malcolm says can his sorry, diversity-hire ass. Seconded, wholeheartedly.
Secy Austin’s Blunder Was Arrogance or Stupidity – Either Way, He Needs to Go
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who presides over 1.4 million U.S. military volunteers, left his Pentagon post without notice or authorization and kept his absence a secret for almost a week. That’s called AWOL, even if you’re in charge.Austin was a four-star general with 41 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, there is no question about his character or devotion to the service of his country.
There is, however, now a serious question about his intelligence, integrity, and, most importantly, his judgment. Colleagues describe the veteran as an intensely private person.
Sorry, you give up privacy when you take on an appointed job that’s high up in the chain of presidential succession, leading the men and women volunteers who comprise our national defense.
How’s he going to prosecute the next Bowe Bergdahl who leaves his guard post without notice and his fellow troops vulnerable?
He can’t.
He wouldn’t anyway, because he won’t want to, anymore than his ideological confrere Bathhouse Barry Soetero did. Which, regardless of his presumably honorable service wearing the nation’s military uniform, DOES call his character into question, like it or not. Right along with his (nonexistent) intelligence, integrity, and judgment.
Now that he got caught and caused a serious political uproar, we’re told his unexplained absence involved the discovery, removal of, and complications from prostate cancer. That’s a shame. But it’s an explanation, not an excuse.
No one wants to hear such news. No one wants to get shot at, as Austin was. But he kept his diagnosis, operation, surgical complications, and residence in an Intensive Care Unit a secret, even from his second in command, the president, and those gossipy toads in Congress.
That may be very human. Given his privacy penchant and the sensitivity of such a diagnosis for a man, especially one in a masculine warrior culture, that’s understandable. But it’s also quite unacceptable.
Well yeah, to normal, sane Americans who don’t despise their country and wish to see it weakened and ruined like his putative boss, Pedo Peter, does. So yes, he certainly “needs to go”—but he won’t. The unkindest cut of all is that, in America That Was, a “man” like him would never have been installed in the first damned place.
4
1Oh for the love of…
The Thrill Of Word-Policing
Come, dear reader. Let us visit the publication now laughingly referred to as Scientific American. In particular, an “analysis” piece by Juan P Madrid, in which we’re told,The language of astronomy is needlessly violent and inaccurate.
Dr Madrid, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, begins his attempt to persuade with a tale of poetic drama:
This summer, a team of students and I were enjoying breathtaking views of the night sky while we collected data using telescopes at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas. One night, when we were outside on a telescope catwalk…one of my students amazed me with her interpretation of the fate of Andromeda, the galaxy closest to our Milky Way. In describing how these two galaxies will merge a few billion years from now, she said they will experience “a giant galactic hug.”
I know. The very stuff of amazement. Brings a tear to the eye.
The kindness, but also the accuracy, of the language my student used was in sharp contrast to the standard description we use in astronomy to explain the final destiny of Andromeda and the Milky Way: “a collision.”
Apparently, the word collision is, for Dr Madrid, much too brutal and masculine when referring to the unstoppable convergence of two galaxies, and the subsequent merging of the supermassive black holes at their centres – an event that will entail the sling-shotting of countless stars and their orbiting planets, and which may release energy equivalent to around 100 million supernova explosions, and subsequently be detectable halfway across the universe.
A mere hug, you see. All that kindness.
A galactic hug is scientifically truthful, and it’s led me to believe that astronomers should reconsider the language we use.
Here, Dr Madrid’s own use of language – specifically, the word reconsider – is somewhat misleading and just a little coy. The reconsidering he has in mind would of course be enforced by those suitably enlightened, much like the author himself – as hinted at with enthusiasm later in the piece:
Referees, editors, and editorial boards can step up to…stop the use of violent, misogynistic language that is now pervasive.
So, not so much a reconsidering, then, as a coerced neuroticism. A mandatory affectation, on which career progress may very much depend. But hey, where’s the fun in being a pretentious and neurotic scold if you don’t have the power to make others jump through hoops?
Jeez-O-PETE, but what a fucking loony-toony-maroony. Improbable as it may seem, these self-styled SooperDooperGenii© never cease to amaze: forever coming up with new ways of bringing saner, more sensible sorts to a dead screeching halt, scratching their heads in awed stupefaction at yet another wondrous exhibition of rampant, pointless imbecility. No matter how extreme, how over-the-top SPECTACULAR the previous ludicrous record-setter was, they nevertheless contrive to raise the bar of Teh Schtoopid with each successive outing. It’s damned nigh miraculous, really.
And to think: within about a week, no more, another Halfwit Hall O’ Fame hopeful will come staggering along to make this week’s tromping of one’s own dick nonpareil look like weak beer in comparison.
Dr Madrid being an astronomer and college prof and all, you’d think a well-above-average level of intelligence would surely have been required just to land the job at all, much less keep it for more than, say, three or four hours. And yet.
22So you think you want to be a fireman, eh kid?
The hose that runs from the fire hydrant to the fire truck is called supply line. Most supply line is 3 inches or more in diameter, and in Central Florida, it’s usually 5 inches. (Orlando uses 4 inch, but that is because they typically have fire hydrants that are close together).
First, a bit of engineering.
The reason for this is hydrodynamics and friction loss. The average water main pressure is about 65 psi. At 1,000 gallons per minute, a 3 inch hose loses 80 pounds of pressure every 100 feet of hose length due to friction between the moving water and the hose itself, while a 4 inch diameter hose loses 20 pounds of pressure, and a 5 inch hose loses only 8 pounds. That means, if you want longer hose lays with high flow, the larger the diameter of your supply line, the better.
There is a lot of math involved in being the driver of a fire engine. You need to be able to calculate your friction losses in your head, rapidly, and remember that the lives of the guys in the burning building depend on you getting it correct. When you are flowing 2,000 gallons per minute through half a dozen different hose lines at 2 in the morning at a burning strip mall isn’t the time to realize that you are math deficient.
5 inch supply line has what is called a “sexless coupling” meaning that there is no male or female end, the couplings are interchangeable (butbutbut WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER 872+ GENDERS?!?—M). This allows you to start laying from either the fire to the hydrant, called a reverse lay, or from the hydrant to the fire, called a forward lay. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but we won’t talk about that in this post.
My fire truck carried 1200 feet of 5 inch diameter supply line. That means with standard hydrant pressure, I could get a bit more than 800 gallons per minute into my engine without having to put another fire engine at the hydrant to boost pressure.
A whole bunch more fascinating stuff regarding what-all you need to know but almost certainly don’t when it comes to how fires are fought nowadays is included in this must-read post from Divemedic. Even if you never cared anything about being a fireman when you grew up—I didn’t, I admit, nor about being a cowboy, although being an astronaut did sound pretty cool—this stuff is just too good to miss out on reading, and you shouldn’t. There’s a video too, just for additional incentive to go check it out.
Back when I was working at the H-D shop, my boss Goose wanted desperately to be a fireman, but after failing the dummy-drag test three times he finally had to give it up as a lost cause. Goose practiced and strength-trained for months and months—and being a former USMC F4 mechanic, you know he wasn’t lacking in either intelligence or iron-willed determination—but in the end he’s a small, slight fella and those damned dummies are damned heavy. In fact, I think the dummy actually outweighed him by about twenty-thirty pounds.
At any rate, from hearing Goose talk about it, I probably know more than the average bear about what it takes to be a fireman, but even so DM still covers things I never heard about before.
Stupid-ass Leftard nigger shits, falls back in it.
Deadspin reporter blasted by mom of young Kansas City Chiefs fan he falsely shamed for wearing ‘blackface’: ‘He is Native American’
The mother of a young football fan who wore a headdress and painted his face red and black to a Kansas City Chiefs game has blasted Deadspin for accusing him of “doubling up” on racism against black and Native communities — noting that her son is himself Native American.Holden Armenta became an unexpected focus of an article by senior writer Carron Phillips that focused on a photo of the boy standing sideways, suggesting he was wearing blackface with no mention of the red side.
“The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress,” read the headline, which accused the boy of “doubling up on the racism.”
Phillips, a former New York Daily News reporter, also slammed Holden’s Native American headdress and his “Tomahawk Chop” gesture, claiming the boy “found a way to hate Black people and Native Americans at the same time.”
“It takes a lot to disrespect two groups of people at once,” Phillips wrote in the article, which has since been tagged with a community note on X branding it “purposely deceiving.”
No link to Phillips’ original hit-job here, because fuck that noise.
The boy’s outraged mother, Shannon Armenta, shared numerous images of her son getting a warm reception at the game — while suggesting Deadspin focused on a photo that hid the fact that half her son’s face was painted red.
“This has nothing to do with the NFL,” she wrote, suggesting the photo was picked purely “to create division”
“He is Native American — just stop already,” she wrote of her son.
In fact, Holden’s grandfather, Raul Armenta, sits on the board of the Chumash Tribe in Santa Ynez, California, according to the Post Millennial.
Raul is listed as a “business committee member” who was first elected to the board in 2016 on the tribe’s website.
Oooooops. Sorry, Karen, no bonus PC points for you, I’m afraid. Deadspin’s token darkie’s spectacular self-beclownment notwithstanding, shitlibs are rallying behind their latest Courageously Courageous Hero™ by doubling down on dumbass, to the surprise of precisely zero (0) sane, sensible humans.
“The right picked this up and said, ‘Sue Deadspin, bankrupt Deadspin.’ And I can’t help but laugh at the center of this, I can’t help but laugh at the idea that they want them sued for one racism, while the kid is still in full racist garb,” Le Batard said. “The only part of him that’s not intentionally, kind of, racist is the black part! The rest is team colors and he’s going for just being a fan, but the racism is already in there, just not the kind the right is picking up and flogging Deadspin with over a five-year-old kid. Like, the stupidity of this is remarkable.”
Unsurprisingly, Le Batard’s take ruffled some feathers, especially at Outkick, where Bobby Burack authored a post titled “Update: Dan Le Batard defends Deadspin for lying about Chiefs kid wearing Blackface.” The post, which suggested the kid in question’s family could sue Le Batard, would have been ridiculous enough considering the Meadowlark Media co-founder wasn’t defending Deadspin so much as he was mocking the right’s outrage despite his belief that the costume was still racist in nature. But that was before Burack took to social media to produce the a “gotcha” moment: a picture of Le Batard wearing black and red face paint while dressed as the professional wrestler Kane.
Lawsuits all around, I’m thinking, which hopefully will at the very least bankrupt Deadspin, thereby depriving Karen Phillips of gainful employment and forcing him into a field of endeavor more suited to his abilities, such as cleaning hotel rooms or manning a drive-thru window in Keokuk or something.
11Robert Spencer asks: How far will Biden regime wonks go in lying to the American people? A: Just as far as they think they need to. CORRECTION: It isn’t “wonks,” Robert; it’s “hacks.” Or, if you prefer something with more letters to ensure greater accuracy, “lowlife villainous knob-polishing wads of scum.”
The whole world has been watching for nearly three years now as Old Joe Biden grows progressively feebler. On Saturday, at the Veterans Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery, he appeared visibly confused and had to be told by a polite and deferential military officer to go stand beside alleged Vice President Kamala Harris.
That was just the latest in an ever-lengthening series of obvious signs that the putative Commander-In-Chief, who will be 81 years old in less than a week, is in the grip of a severe and likely irreversible mental and physical decline. On Aug. 31, NPR noted that Old Joe “has been avoiding climbing up the sometimes-wobbly 18-foot staircase that is trucked over to the plane’s upper door. More often than not, he is using a much shorter and sturdier set of stairs that fold out from the belly of the plane.”
But the problem wasn’t that the stairs were wobbly. The problem was that the rapidly deteriorating kleptocrat was too weak to navigate them: “Biden, 80, has stumbled on the tall stairs more than once. The short stairs have the distinct advantage of moving most of Biden’s ascent into Air Force One out of public view. But for those who have noticed the shift, it also draws attention to one of Biden’s greatest political liabilities as he seeks reelection: his age.”
Indeed. But now one of Old Joe’s wonks, Mitch Landrieu, a man who has the lofty title of “White House infrastructure coordinator,” is here to tell us not to believe our lying eyes.
Landrieu, whose grandfather must have been one of those guys who sold miracle patent medicine out of the back of a covered wagon and then high-tailed it out of town before anyone realized that it didn’t work, said:
For those of you that think the president might be too old or doesn’t have enough energy or whatever it is that you all think, This guy gets up early. He stays up late. We have made trips, if not every week, sometimes twice a week and three times a week. And we have done it over and over again and there’s nothing new here. What’s wonderful about it is how relentless that it is and how many places that we have been.
As if that weren’t laid on thick enough, Landrieu added: “The guy is, like, he’s a beast.”
Oh, he’s a beast for sure and certain. A lying, corrupt, senile, greedy, grubby, kiddy-diddling beast.
211995 Interview with Roger Ailes.
Trump 2020 is basically the same as Trump 1995, and Trump is liked and admired by the average Joe, which is why he won in 2016 and won by a landslide in 2020. He will win again in 2024, the question being – will we allow a 2nd coup to occur?
You cannot listen to this interview, now nearly 30 years old, without recognizing the genuine American character this man has. Not if your honest anyway.
11BIDEN: “The Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the Union soldier and says, ‘He’s a lying, dog-faced pony soldier!’ Well, there’s a lot of lying, dog-faced pony soldiers out there about global warming!” pic.twitter.com/d98IdhKLRA
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch)
As Nick Arama notes, nobody has ever managed to locate the movie Jaux is rambling on about in the John Wayne filmography. But never mind that right now; maybe it was Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, or Lash LaRue. Anyways, after this dismal culmination of an aeonic mess of mumblemouthed mish-mash, meandering malapropism, and addle-pated confustication, Too Old Jaux’s handlers had finally seen enough to belatedly bestir themselves and give the babbling buffoon the old heave-haux:
WATCH: Joe Biden’s staff cuts off a rambling Joe Biden mid-sentence and abruptly ends his news conference.
I have never seen this occur with any other president. pic.twitter.com/LqvW2VsESH
— Andrew @ Don’t Walk, RUN! (@DontWalkRUN)
Utterly hilarious, if you ask me. Couldn’t happen to a nicer asshole.
2As Half-Black Jeebus once said: “Never underestimate Jaux’s ability to fuck things up.”
Joe Biden has reportedly used several pseudonyms during his vice presidency, preventing members of Congress from identifying him in correspondence involving Ukrainian energy company Burisma, Ukraine foreign policy, and his son Hunter Biden.
On Thursday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer demanded the National Archives turn over any document or communication containing any of Joe Biden’s aliases, “including but not limited to Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware.”
In addition to requesting any document with a Biden pseudonym, the committee also requested all drafts of Biden’s speech that was delivered to the Ukrainian parliament on Dec. 9, 2015 and unrestricted access to any documents or correspondence involving Hunter Biden and his former business associates, Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer.
The idea behind Buyem’s using fake names for correspondence involving his myriad illegal influence-peddling scams was to enable him to dodge prospective FOIA requests, apparently. Fear not, though, the Deep State is fully onboard with helping Too Old Jaux and his Organized Crime Family keep the lid on things.
New documents containing Biden’s aliases could provide groundbreaking information regarding the alleged Biden bribery scandal, but the archive’s compliance with congressional requests remains precarious.
Other federal agencies, particularly the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), have purposely and illegally hid key information from Congress related to the alleged Biden bribery scandal. For example, the FBI attempted to withhold from Congress an FD-1023 document. The document detailed a testimony from a “highly credible,” confidential human source, who alleged that Hunter and Joe Biden received $5 million each from Burisma executive Mykola Zlochevsky in exchange for influence over U.S. foreign policy.
The FD-1023 also alleges that Zlochevsky kept 17 audio recordings — 15 with Hunter Biden and two with Joe Biden — as an “insurance policy.” However, the FBI does not appear to have tried locating the audio recording, let alone investigating the allegations in the FD-1023.
Unfortunately, like the FBI, the National Archives is not a benign, bipartisan record-keeping agency. The archives fought with former President Trump over classified records within only a few months of his leaving office. Despite Trump having the presidential power to declassify documents, the archival dispute resulted in a ruthless FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and countless federal charges against the former president.
Meanwhile, the archives permitted Joe Biden to keep classified documents from his tenure as vice president in his Delaware home, his garage, and a busy, unsecured office building — despite not having any power to declassify documents as vice president.
The archives also infamously slapped “harmful content” warnings on the U.S. Constitution and other founding documents, further revealing the agency’s radical political ideations.
Federal agencies do not often withhold information from Congress outright. Instead, they use underhanded tactics that allow them to appear compliant with federal law but still thwart congressional oversight.
Because OF COURSE they do. Hey, that’s just how the Swampy sausage gets made, don’tchaknow.
41Yep, I’ve fallen waaay down into another of those darned Innarnuts rabbit-holes, this trip sparked by a conversation with my brother about John Carpenter’s unforgettable allegorical film They Live and its superstar protagonist, the late great Rowdy Roddy Piper. From the Piper website’s “official” bio:
As best as we can tell, Roderick George Toombs was born. Rumor has it that it happened in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada-allegedly in a war time house on Victoria Avenue. For those not acquainted with Saskatoon, it’s one of the coldest places on earth, reaching 100 below with windchill. That may explain why Roddy hit the ground running-he just wanted to keep warm! At 6 years old, he began studying the bagpipes, moving to different places but always playing with a pipe band. By the time he was 14, Roddy was considered an impresario of the bagpipes, and was invited to play at prestigious events such as the Rose Bowl, and at Lorne Greene’s house. Being a big fan of “Bonanza”, Roddy was crushed to find out that Greene had no cattle but had a poodle. By the time he was 15, Rod won the 167 lb Amateur wrestling championship, and was a star boxer at the Landsdown Boxing Club in Toronto; near the Landsdown subway station where at the time you would have found Roddy looking to stay warm at night.
At 15, Roddy had his first professional wrestling match. He had never seen a pro match, but his amateur coach was a pro referee when it came in to town. Another wrestler missed a plane and Roddy’s coach told him that “I can get you 25 dollars,” Roddy immediately took it. Roddy’s pipe band was so happy for him that they played Roddy into the arena. As Roddy was being piped into the arena, the announcer only knew his first name as “Roddy” and having to continue the announcement he announced “Ladies and Gentlemen, here comes Roddy the Piper!”
Roddy jumped in the ring and in front of him stood 320 pounds of Nordic Viking: Larry “The Axe” Hennig, who beat Roddy in 10 seconds by busting his nose and eye open, setting one of many records of Roddy’s: shortest match in the history of the arena. With this match, Roddy Piper was born and began a full-time wrestling career at the age of 15- A permanent record, as it is illegal now.
Roddy’s mentors– or fathers as he called them, were some great fighters, such as the toughest man in the world– Judo Gene Labell, Mad Dog Vachon, Muhammad Ali, and even the great Lou Thez, just to name a few. Roddy was smuggled in the back of a truck with a ring in it into the United States of America and never stopped fighting.
When Roddy Piper was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005, by 16 time World Champion Ric Flair, Flair said “Roddy is the greatest entertainer in Wrestling History, bar none”. “Rowdy” Roddy Piper is the last of the real deal gunslingers of Pro Wrestling. Recently, the WWE named Rowdy Roddy Piper the greatest Villain in the history of Professional Wrestling.
According to Vince McMahon, you never know what the Hot Rod has under his kilt, nor what he is going to do next! Maybe Vince had a point, as in the height and prime of his wrestling career, Roddy Piper quit the WWE and did a movie with John Carpenter called THEY LIVE! which 26 years later is hotter than when it first premiered as the #1 film at the box office.
Like Vince McMahon said, you never know what the Hot Rod’s going to do next. In addition to appearing on “it’s always sunny in Philadelphia”, Rod hosts a podcast, a youtube channel, appears in feature films, one man shows, commercials, and now appears in his very own graphic novel! It takes a loyal Pit Crew to keep the Hot Rod running! Try to keep up!
Piper, unfortunately, passed away a few years back, leaving us at way too young an age.
On July 24, 2015, Piper appeared as a guest on The Rich Eisen Show. He had trouble collecting his thoughts and staying focused, often rambling and not answering Eisen’s questions.
Six days later on July 30, 2015, Piper died in his sleep at the age of 61 at his summer residence in Hollywood, California. His death certificate cites a cardiopulmonary arrest caused by hypertension, listing a pulmonary embolism as a contributing factor; TMZ reported this as a heart attack caused by the embolism. Piper’s long-time friend Bruce Prichard revealed on his podcast that he received a voicemail from Piper the night of his death. In the message, Piper indicated that he had not been feeling well and that he would be going to sleep it off. Hulk Hogan later revealed that Piper had left him a voice mail that he discovered following his death in which Piper said that he was “walking with Jesus”.
News of his death broke minutes before the Hall of Heroes dinner to cap off the Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends FanFest in Charlotte, North Carolina, where about 600 current and former wrestling personalities and fans had gathered. He received a ten-bell salute after the planned salute to fellow former professional wrestler Dusty Rhodes, who had died the previous month. Another ten-bell salute was given at the beginning of the August 3, 2015, episode of Raw.
WWE CEO Vince McMahon said, “Roddy Piper was one of the most entertaining, controversial and bombastic performers ever in WWE, beloved by millions of fans around the world. I extend my deepest condolences to his family.” Film director John Carpenter said, “Devastated to hear the news of my friend Roddy Piper’s passing today. He was a great wrestler, a masterful entertainer and a good friend.”
In an HBO Real Sports interview conducted by Piper in 2003, he had predicted that he was “not going to make 65” because of his poor health, and that he made his 2003 return to WWE because he could not access his pension fund until reaching the age of 65.
Piper was cremated and his ashes laid to rest at Crescent Grove Cemetery in Tigard, Oregon.
A little over a year ago, I did a CF post on They Live featuring movie trivia and Piper quotes both from and about the film. I have to admit, I never had much use for either Vince McMahon or his WWF/WWE/whatever the fuck it might be called now, but for many years was a HUGE fan of Eric Bischoff’s WCW, even attending one of their early Slamboree! events at the old CLT Coliseum after the BPs’ manager Mike Evans pulled strings with some of his old Coliseum contacts to get us in and even backstage after the show*. That being so, most of my exposure to Piper was via the WCW professional rasslin’ organization during his brief stint there.
Piper joined World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in the fall of 1996. He made his surprise WCW debut as a fan favorite at the Halloween Havoc pay-per-view in October to insult the nWo leader and the World Heavyweight Champion Hollywood Hogan. On the November 18 episode of Nitro, Piper revealed that Eric Bischoff was a member of the nWo, which ended with the nWo members attacking him. on the December 9 episode of Nitro, Piper told Flair that he didn’t need the Four Horsemen’s help in beating Hogan and he was going to do it on his own. Piper defeated Hogan with his signature sleeper hold in the non-title main event of the company’s flagship pay-per-view Starrcade, which earned him a title shot against Hogan for the World Heavyweight Championship at SuperBrawl VII, where Piper was defeated. On the March 10, 1997, episode of Nitro, Piper and his family joined forces with Ric Flair and The Four Horsemen in their battle with the nWo. At Uncensored, Piper competed in a triangle elimination match where he captained a team of Horsemen Chris Benoit, Steve McMichael and Jeff Jarrett against the nWo and WCW’s team of Lex Luger, Steiner Brothers and The Giant. His team lost the match. On the March 31 episode of Nitro, Piper and Flair agreed to team up and stand side by side to fight. Piper moved on to feud with other members of nWo. At Slamboree, Piper, Flair and Kevin Greene defeated nWo members Scott Hall, Kevin Nash and Syxx in a six-man tag team match. The following month, at The Great American Bash pay-per-view, Piper and Flair unsuccessfully challenged The Outsiders for the World Tag Team Championship. On the June 23 episode of Nitro, Flair and the Four Horsemen turned on Piper and attacked him. This led to a match between Piper and Flair at Bash at the Beach, which Piper won.
Piper took a hiatus from television before making his return to WCW on the September 8 episode of Nitro, where he was appointed the new on-air Commissioner of WCW, which reduced his in-ring work. He briefly resumed his feud with Hulk Hogan, beating him in a steel cage match at Halloween Havoc. on the March 23, 1998, episode of Nitro, Piper and Randy Savage battled to a no contest. On the March 30 episode of Nitro, Piper defeated Hogan by disqualification. At the 1998 Spring Stampede pay-per-view, Piper teamed with The Giant in a loss to Hogan and Nash in a Baseball Bat on a Pole match. At Slamboree, Piper served as the special guest referee in a match between Randy Savage and Bret Hart, which Hart won but the following night on Nitro, Piper changed his decision and declared Savage as the winner by disqualification. At The Great American Bash, Piper and Savage lost to Hogan and Hart in a tag team match by submission. After the match, Piper wrestled Savage in the next match, which Piper defeated Savage by submission. On the September 7 episode of Nitro, Piper and Diamond Dallas Page defeated Sting and Lex Luger by disqualification. Piper teamed with Diamond Dallas Page and The Warrior as Team WCW in a WarGames match at Fall Brawl for an opportunity at the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at the following month’s Halloween Havoc. Page won the match for his team. On the September 14 episode of Nitro, Piper confronted Bret Hart.
Ahh, those were the days. As big a fan of Roddy’s as I always was—and I assure you, I was—reading further into the Piper Wiki page I stumbled across something I hadn’t known before (in bold):
In his autobiography, Toombs (Rowdy Roddy’s nom de real life was Roderick George Toombs—M) claimed to be a cousin of Bret Hart, which would make him a relative of the Hart wrestling family. This fact was once used as a trivia question on Raw. Hart also revealed that Toombs was the only wrestler to visit him in the hospital after his stroke. Bruce Hart has stated that they were second cousins.
Boy, talk about your Rasslin’ Royal Families, eh? Rest ye well, Rowdy Roddy Piper; you are sorely missed, and will never be forgotten.
*Yes, Roddy appeared that night, teaming up with Ric Flair and Kevin Greene to crush three NWO stalwarts: Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Syxx
21I’ve said several times that, after the tampering/rigging/fraud debacles of ’20 and ’22, the only interest I’ll have in national “elections” going forward will be for their entertainment value, nothing more. Which, for 2024, is already looking as if it might turn out to be much higher than anticipated.
Good news, everyone! Mitt Romney (D, but R when necessary-Utah) has a plan for victory in the 2024 presidential race. That plan involves forcing Trump out of the field of candidates. Romney outlined his pathway to victory in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. While bemoaning the fact that Trump will likely be the nominee, Romney holds out hope that The Donald can be defeated, provided the race is narrowed down to two contenders before Trump “sews up” the nomination. For that to happen, the mega-donors and influencers in the GOP must convince those candidates who do not have a realistic chance of winning to drop out of the race.
HA! To rejigger that great Morpheus line just a wee mite: Mitt, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
He concedes that this may be easier said than done, but the risk of having expendable candidates in the race is just too high:
There are incentives for no-hope candidates to overstay their prospects. Coming in behind first place may grease another run in four years or have market value of its own: Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum got paying gigs. And as former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu has observed, “It is fun running for president if you know you cannot win.”
Left to their own inclinations, expect several of the contenders to stay in the race for a long time. They will split the non-Trump vote, giving him the prize. A plurality is all that is needed for winner-take-all primaries.
Romney suggests a drop-dead date of Monday, Feb. 26. That is the first business day after the contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada. He goes so far as to suggest that donors to lower-tier candidates extract a pledge from them that they will drop out if their prospects are dim after the fateful Monday.
Keep in mind that this is the same guy who was singing the praises of hot dogs just last week. And a man who has not shown his face at a single state or county GOP convention since he ran for Senate. I should know. I’ve been to more of them than he has.
Man, talk about your no-hopers—if ever there was one, it would have to be Mittens Romneycare, whose only real rival in terms of manifestly-doomed pResidential runs was recently-anointed grifter and pedophile Faux Jaux Bribem. As for Too Old Jaux, just a wweek or so ago his handlers announced his intention to conduct his “campaign” for re-“election” from his sarcophagus in the palatial basement of his Delaware home mansion palace, being far too frail and decrepit to actually come outside and attempt to move around any without the risk of falling and breaking his hip yet again.
Which jacks the entertainment value straight up to Everest-level heights.
1One of my personal-fave Schubert compositions is his “Five German dances in C Major, D90”—a lilting confection showcasing all the lovely, melodic tunefulness for which the incomparable Franz Schubert is so justly renowned. But that isn’t the main reason I’m embedding this next vid of the piece; no, that would be for the delightful way the conductor, Matthias Foremny, umm, conducts himself in front of the orchestra.
Folks, that there is the living embodiment of what we mean by the phrase “a man who truly enjoys his work.” His illimitable passion; his zest; his pure heart-swelling glee comes through in every goofy facial expression, every broad smile. The way he stands nearly stock-still for extended periods, then suddenly starts leaping about, gesticulating frantically, as if someone had slipped a live scorpion down the front of his trousers, waving and grimacing, is just too damned funny. You gotta love it…which, I most certainly do. Maestro Foremni, I am definitely a fan, sir.
Teh Experts™ had one job. ONE fucking job.
Nebraska solar farm crippled by hail, underscoring power source’s fragility
A recent major hail storm in western Nebraska took an entire solar farm out of commission, forcing the local community to turn back to traditional power sources, local officials said.The so-called Community Solar Project – a 4.4 megawatt solar field comprised of 14,000 solar panels and located in Scottsbluff, Nebraska – is not currently operating and will remain offline until repairs are completed, the Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) confirmed to Fox News Digital. NPPD, the state-owned public utility, and energy firm GenPro Energy Solutions developed the project in 2020.
“The solar complex was destroyed by hail,” Scottsbluff City Manager Kevin Spencer said in an interview. “They’re assessing the damage, but it certainly looks destroyed to me.”
“I don’t think we’re ready to give up on solar power,” Spencer added. “It was our understanding that these solar panels were at least hail resistant. This hail was extreme, you know, the size and probably the speed of it. So, I don’t know that we would give up on it just yet.”
Because OF COURSE the stupid prick doesn’t, and won’t. A never-say-die, damn-the facts obstinacy goes hand-in-glove with being a shitlib, don’tchaknow. Like beans and cornbread, one might say.
The problem is, of course, that “extreme” and/or “unusual” are NOT synonyms for “never.” So when one lays thousands of square feet of thin, flimsy glass panels on their backs on a flat, open field with no trees or other vegetation to shield all that expensive fragility from the vagaries of outraged nature, any intelligent soul would have to expect certain dire consequences. To wit:
Building a solar array in an area prone to hail is like building a house in the flood pool of a lake. It’s going to be damaged by weather eventually.
Ace has a favorite line about there being no knowledge gained in the second kick from a mule. As Scottsbluff prepares to rebuild its demolished solar array, it would be helpful if anyone there understood that they’ve already received the first kick from the mule.
Oh, they don’t, and they never will. It’s Agenda Über Alles with these Sooperdoopergenii™, and it’s always gonna be. If a few million flyover rubes have to suffer without power and a/c in the dead of summer to help out with the full realization of The Plan, well, hey, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Eggs and omelets, right?
2You’ll never in a million years guess who the author of this brilliantly-conceived and -written piece is. I mean, never.
The quaint conceit of imagining what would have happened if some important or unimportant event had settled itself differently has become so fashionable that I am encouraged to enter upon an absurd speculation. What would have happened if Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg?
Once a great victory is won it dominates not only the future but the past. All the chains of consequence clink out as if they never could stop. The hopes that were shattered, the passions that were quelled, the sacrifices that were ineffectual are all swept out of the land of reality. Still it may amuse an idle hour, and perhaps serve as a corrective to undue complacency, if at this moment in the twentieth century—so rich in assurance and prosperity, so calm and buoyant—we meditate for a spell upon the debt we owe to those Confederate soldiers who by a deathless feat of arms broke the Union front at Gettysburg and laid open a fair future to the world.
It always amuses historians and philosophers to pick out the tiny things, the sharp agate points, on which the ponderous balance of destiny turns; and certainly the details of the famous Confederate victory of Gettysburg furnish a fertile theme. There can be at this date no conceivable doubt that Pickett’s charge would have been defeated if Stuart with his encircling cavalry had not arrived in the rear of the Union position at the supreme moment. Stuart might have been arrested in his decisive swoop if any one of twenty commonplace incidents had occurred.
If, for instance, General Meade had organized his lines of communication with posts for defence against raids, or if he had used his cavalry to scout upon his flanks, he would have received a timely warning. If General Warren had only thought of sending a battalion to hold Little Round Top the rapid advance of the masses of Confederate cavalry must have been detected. If only President Davis’s letter to General Lee, captured by Captain Dahlgren, revealing the Confederacy plans had reached Meade a few hours earlier, he might have escaped Lee’s clutches.
Anything, we repeat, might have prevented Lee’s magnificent combinations from synchronizing and, if so, Pickett’s repulse was sure. Gettysburg would have been a great Northern victory. It might have well been a final victory. Lee might, indeed, have made a successful retreat from the field. The Confederacy, with its skilful generals and fierce armies, might have another year, or even two, but once defeated decisively at Gettysburg, its doom was inevitable. The fall of Vicksburg, which happened only two days after Lee’s immortal triumph, would in itself by opening the Mississippi to the river fleets of the Union, have cut the Secessionist States almost in half. Without wishing to dogmatize, we feel we are on solid ground in saying that the Southern States could not have survived the loss of a great battle in Pennsylvania and the almost simultaneous bursting open of the Mississippi
However, all went well. Once again by the narrowest of margins the compulsive pinch of military genius and soldierly valor produced a perfect result. The panic which engulfed the whole left of Meade’s massive army has never been made a reproach against the Yankee troops. Everyone knows they were stout fellows. But defeat is defeat, and rout is ruin. Three days only were required after the cannon at Gettysburg had ceased to thunder before General Lee fixed his headquarters in Washington. We need not here dwell upon the ludicrous features of the hurried flight to New York of all the politicians, place hunters, contractors, sentimentalists and their retinues, which was so successfully accomplished. It is more agreeable to remember how Lincoln, “greatly falling with a falling State,” preserved the poise and dignity of a nation. Never did his rugged yet sublime common sense render a finer service to his countrymen. He was never greater than in the hour of fatal defeat.
But, of course, there is no doubt whatever that the mere military victory which Lee gained at Gettysburg would not by itself have altered the history of the world. The loss of Washington would not have affected the immense numerical preponderance of the Union States. The advanced situation of their capital and its fall would have exposed them to a grave injury, would no doubt have considerably prolonged the war; but standing by itself this military episode, dazzling though it may be, could not have prevented the ultimate victory of the North. It is in the political sphere that we have to look to find the explanation of the triumphs begun upon the battlefield.
Curiously enough, Lee furnishes an almost unique example of a regular and professional soldier who achieved the highest excellence both as a general and as a statesman. His ascendancy throughout the Confederate States on the morrow of his Gettysburg victory threw Jefferson Davis and his civil government irresistibly, indeed almost unconsciously, into the shade. The beloved and victorious commander, arriving in the capital of his mighty antagonists, found there the title deeds which enabled him to pronounce the grand decrees of peace. Thus it happened that the guns of Gettysburg fired virtually the last shots in the American Civil War.
…If Lee after his triumphal entry into Washington had merely been the soldier, his achievements would have ended on the battlefield. It was his august declaration that the victorious Confederacy would pursue no policy towards the African negroes, which was not in harmony with the moral conceptions of Western Europe, that opened the high roads along which we are now marching so prosperously.
But even this famous gesture might have failed if it had not been caught up and implemented by the practical genius and trained parliamentary aptitudes of Gladstone. There is practically no doubt at this stage that the basic principle upon which the colour question in the Southern States of America has been so happily settled owed its origin mainly to Gladstonian ingenuity and to the long statecraft of Britain in dealing with alien and more primitive populations. There was not only the need to declare the new fundamental relationship between master and servant, but the creation for the liberated slaves of institutions suited to their own cultural development and capable of affording them a different yet honourable status in a common wealth, destined eventually to become almost world-wide.
Let us only think what would have happened supposing the liberation of the slaves had at that time been followed immediately by some idiotic assertion of racial equality, and even by attempts to graft white democratic institutions upon the simple, gifted African race belonging to a much earlier chapter in human history. We might have seen the whole of the Southern States invaded by gangs of carpet-bagging politicians exploiting the ignorant and untutored coloured vote against the white inhabitants and bringing the time-honoured forms of parliamentary government into unmerited disrepute. We might have seen the sorry farce of black legislatures attempting to govern their former masters. Upon the rebound from this there must inevitably have been a strong reassertion of local white supremacy. By one device or another the franchises accorded to the negroes would have been taken from them. The constitutional principles of the Republic would have been proclaimed, only to be evaded or subverted; and many a warm-hearted philanthropist would have found his sojourn in the South no better than “A Fool’s Errand.”
Read on to find out who the author of this sagaciously prescient essay is, then go grab a look at the fascinating backstory of how it came to be written in the first place, including a piercing prefatory quote from no lesser a light than Shelby Foote his own self. From the previously mentioned backstory article, a shimmering vision of a nascent Utopia is proposed, in stark juxtaposition with something a good deal…less felicitous, shall we say.
The reader is invited to see, from that surprisingly utopian perspective, our own world as both dystopian and implausible. The narrator mentions Jan Bloch’s once-famous book, The Future of War, which predicted with what proved remarkably accurate military detail the devastation that would attend war between major European states. But Bloch drew from this prediction the conclusion that such a war would never happen. (The author) asks: Suppose it had? A prostrate Europe might have descended into depression, unemployment, Bolshevism and fascism. Why, today in Britain the income tax might even be 25%! (In actuality, of course, all those things happened.)
Parenthetical aside in the penultimate sentence courtesy of moi, so as to preserve the secret of our mystery-author’s identity and thereby avert spoiling the surprise for you folks.
Taken for all in all, the whole thing is dispiriting enough to call to mind the wise words of John Greenleaf Whittier from his “Maud Muller” pome:
Of all sad words of tongue and pen
The saddest are these, “It might have been.”
Le sigh. Ah well, as I said yesterday, it all went the way it went—and so, here we all are. Whether that’s for better or for worse, I leave to the reader to determine.
Be sure to read both these fine works in their entirety, and in the order I linked ‘em. I won’t go quite so far as to say you’ll enjoy them, necessarily; in fact, parts of the first piece are almost painful to read, for reasons which I’ll refrain from going into now because spoilers again, but which will quickly become apparent. That said, both are thought-provoking and conversation-inspiring enough that I think you’ll find them very rewarding nonetheless.
1That’s my visceral response to what I think just might be one of the most well-written and -constructed, punchy, and just plain fun to read paragraphs I ever did see, by our good friend and colleague Fran Porretto. Dig, if you will:
Gentle Reader, if you’ve never reflected on the penchant political columnists possess for bending, folding, stapling, and mutilating our sacred language into shapes unimagined by the greatest origamists in human history, now would not be a bad time to start. And for a bonus dollop of illumination: that phrase “would not be a bad time to start” is called a periphrasis. It’s a technique for using negatives to convey a positive suggestion. Paradoxically, this underscores the positive notion. It has the side benefit of making the user sound like W. Somerset Maugham.
See what he did there? A judiciously light dusting of alliteration early on; a reference to “our sacred language,” which I do NOT consider at all hyperbolic or over the top, as I do that “sacred democracy” twipe being thrown around WAY too often nowadays; a direct slap at “journalistic” manipulation via a metaphor so colorful and bright it dazzles; the paradoxically entertaining and educational “bonus dollop of illumination”; lastly, a sly Somerset Maugham reference, which I hope to God I will never come to think of as a bad thing.
That’s the penultimate (well, give or take) ‘graph of a brief post on Doublespeak which is richly deserving of your time and attention, from whence I gleaned a truly rollicking Spencer piece I had til now overlooked. To wit:
Imagine this scenario: a wildly unpopular and manifestly incapable president is running, however haltingly, for reelection. Initially he seemed like a lock, but then he encountered an unexpected challenge from a scion of an old American political family, a man who defies all the conventional categorization of political candidates and has set the establishment on its ear by challenging not only the superannuated corruptocrat in the White House but many of that establishment’s most cherished assumptions.
It would make a great novel, but it’s real life, and it’s an exhilarating reminder that America is still a republic, still a place where the elites can be challenged at all, however entrenched they may appear to be. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has not only challenged the elites, he has frightened them to the core, and that’s wonderful to see. The latest indication of how much of a threat they consider him to be comes from the Los Angeles Times, always a reliable organ for far-Left propaganda. The Left Coast Times is so scared of RFK Jr. that on Monday, it proclaimed, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a threat to your health — and our democracy.”
Now, this is absurd on its face and an insult to the intelligence of the handful of remaining Los Angeles Times readers. The Left has now become so divorced from reality that Times writer Michael Hiltzik would have us believe that a contested Democrat party primary is bad for “our democracy.” But a full-out coronation of Old Joe to serve another four years as the figurehead for the shadowy individuals who are really running things? Why, that would be “our democracy” personified. One candidate, inevitable outcome? Good democracy! Two candidates, unclear outcome? Bad democracy!
For the millionth time, we don’t have a “democracy,” we have a republic. But the key point here is that, once again, Leftists have confirmed the fact that when they talk about “our democracy,” they don’t actually mean anything democratic at all. They are referring not to any kind of democracy, but to their own hegemony. The only “democracy” that involves one candidate receiving the forced adulation of the masses and reelection by acclimation from all those who don’t want to end up in the gulag is the type that is practiced in states such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea.
The North Koreans will happily explain to you how the personality cult of Kim Jong Un is the very embodiment of the popular will and thus the quintessential expression of “democracy,” and that’s what Michael Hiltzik and the Los Angeles Times have in mind for the folks at home. “Democracy” means we all learn to love Old Joe, or whomever the elites decide ultimately to replace him with. It doesn’t mean that we actually have a choice between different candidates, unless those candidates all have elite approval, and RFK Jr. decidedly does not.
Nobody out there ought to be holding their breath waiting for me to endorse RFKjr, lest they end up purple-faced, suffocating, and deeply disappointed. That said, I do enjoy the fact that—as one Donald John Trump also did not so long ago—he gives the creeping fantods to a whole bunch of people I despise from the very depths of my gizzard.
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"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
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