Awestruck

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That’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.

Humanity Ends. No one notices.

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The five year anniversary is upon us. Our doom is upon us!

I don’t know about any of you but I feel mighty busy and irritated for someone who’s been wiped out.

To be fair, the Swedish sex kitten didn’t herself say that we’d be dead by this date. The “top climate scientist” didn’t say it, either. The claim was that our doom is unstoppable at this point because we didn’t stop using fossil fuels.

We need to accept that the claim was true. No, I’m serious. If the species is going to be wiped out no matter what, then we can put an immediate end to all of this renewable energy nonsense, pointless carbon capture, and all the rest. None of it will make any difference any more, so we might as well enjoy our inevitable slide to doom.

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The incredible arrogance of the Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ cult

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The latest installment of Mike Walsh’s continuing series examining the scam of the century.

Having failed to destroy us with the Covid Hoax (even the loathsome Facebook nazis have given up on it), the Left has now moved “climate change” front and center as the international left’s preferred soul-sapping means of destruction. Based on the small (in the cosmic scheme of things), 140-year-old sample of randomly gathered temperature data, jealous and vengeful cultural Marxists have decided to extrapolate from cherry-picked, manipulated, and massaged data to convince a gullible and trusting public that the world is coming to an end any day now, unless we act now. Like sleazy used-care salesmen, they employ scare and pressure tactics in order to get you to work against your own best, self-preservative instincts and willingly destroy infrastructure, cripple food production, kill sea life, and incinerate forests.

The key to their successful sowing of confusion can be found in the Heisenberg Principle, which states: “we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy; the more we nail down the particle’s position, the less we know about its speed and vice versa.” In popular understanding, this term of physics is expressed thus: the act of observing a thing changes its behavior and the closer it is observed, the more its nature becomes unclear. Or, if you stare at the word “cat” long enough, you can convince yourself that “cat” is misspelled.

The same is true of the “science” of “climate change.” No one from the ancient Greeks to the mid-Victorians would have seriously entertained the notion of “man-made climate change” were it not for the relatively recent invention of rudimentary means of measuring temperature and forecasting the weather. Armed with this little bit of knowledge, we have now created — in our own minds — the dangerous thing called “climate change.” Take that, Aristotle!

The evidence-free assertion of man-made “climate change” is easily disproven without resorting to a shred of Heisenbergian data. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant (no matter what the man-made Environmental Protection Agency says) — unless, that is, you subscribe to the Leftist Suicide Cult theory that mankind itself is a pollutant. If you do, then there’s no help for you; seek psychiatric help. Further proof is provided by actual climate history, whose only constant state is one of continual change. In case you doubt that, pay a visit to any important art museum with a large landscape collection. Finally, look at the calendar, walk outside, note how the weather is pretty much exactly what you would expect in your region for this time of year and ask yourself: do I really believe we have only a few years to save the planet? Of course you don’t. The planet is doing just fine.

At which point Walsh embeds that classic George Carlin vid I’ve deployed here myself more than once, wherein Carlin dismisses the monumental arrogance behind the patently risible notion that we mere hoomons, rather than being a small, relatively recently-arrived part of the much-larger planetary ecology, are somehow outside of it, apart from it, in conflict with it, and now constitute a serious, credible threat to its continued existence. Following that, Walsh goes on to make an assertion that I myself have made over and again (which I’ll put in bold so’s you can’t miss it):

The simplest way to defeat the “climate change” hysterics would have been to ignore them, but they are relentless little devils who won’t stop until they are stopped. Unfortunately for the sane among us, they’ve enlisted those lovable scamps of the madcap Corporate Media to raise hysteria to such a fever pitch that a great many otherwise sensible people actually take a disturbed, saturnine child like Greta Thunberg seriously.

Well hey, any weapon in the armory, y’know, any tool in the box—whatever might be useful to them, they’re gonna use, and straight to hell with any- and everybody who might not like it. Credit the soulless, amoral monsters with this much, at least: they DO know how a war must be waged if one intends to win the damned thing. Not for-real shooting wars, of course, just their phony ones.

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Tucker on Twitter

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Episode 5 is another real sockdolager, to appropriate the colorfully descriptive words of renowned linguist Huckleberry Finn.


I think it safe to say that being dumped by Faux News is probably the best thing that ever could have happened to Tucker Carlson; the gloves are now officially off, and it’s a delight to watch it as it happens.

Update! Just in case you weren’t aware of it yet, here’s a backgrounder on what Tucker is talking about.

So what is the much-vaunted Department of Justice doing, anyway? The DOJ wrote in a Tuesday letter to a Wilmington court that Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two tax offenses, and “has agreed to enter a Pretrial Diversion Agreement” for lying on a gun application and possessing an illegal firearm.

To summarize, Hunter Biden is accused of foreign influence peddling and taking (and coordinating) bribes for himself, his uncle, and his powerful father to the tune of millions of dollars. He (and his father, who was then vice president) are accused of working to shut down an investigation into a Ukrainian oligarch’s oil company by getting the prosecutor fired. And today, the DOJ accepted a guilty plea on what The Washington Post calls “two minor tax crimes,” and admitted to the basic facts around the gun case, agreeing to enter “diversion programs” and serve two years probation.

At long last, Hunter Biden is in the clear. He has answered for his crimes, and his father has shown his commitment to the rule of law and the principle that no man is above the law. It’s all over.

At least that’s what Hunter’s legal team reportedly thinks, according to CBS. And it fits with congressional Democrats’ long-running claims that there’s nothing to see here, and even if there is it’s already been investigated and it’s fine, so let’s move on.

Tuesday’s plea deal is the equivalent of taking a watering can to a house fire and calling yourself a firefighter. They will do that anyway, of course. Far from a sign of justice to come, expect today’s ruling to serve as a cudgel for Biden partisans across the DOJ and the corporate media to hit outraged (and out-of-power) Republicans with. Justice served, indeed.

Stuff and nonsense. The Repukes won’t require any cudgeling, since they’ll be perfectly happy to follow their D卐M☭CRAT caporegimes’ lead here, as always—maybe puff and blow a little bit for the Enemedia cameras on how this whitewash proves that IMPARTIAL JUSTICE!!!™ is still alive, well, and functional in Amerika v2.0, just to keep up appearances—right before they quietly help their partners in crime sweep the whole sordid mess under the rug, never to be mentioned publicly again.

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Not a chance

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A typically spot-on Anton column I somehow missed when it first appeared, via our esteemed comrade-in-blogarms JJ Sefton.

They Can’t Let Him Back In
The people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again. In fact, they made this clear in 2020, in a series of public statements. Simply for quoting their words in an essay for The American Mind, I was mercilessly mocked and attacked. But they were quite clear. Trump won’t be president at noon, Jan. 20, 2021, even if we have to use the military to drag him out of there.

If the regime felt that strongly back then, imagine how they feel now. But you don’t have to imagine. They tell you every day. Liz Cheney, Trump’s personal Javert, has said that the 45th president is literally the greatest threat facing America today—greater than China, than our crashing economy, than our unraveling civil society.

That’s rhetoric, of course, but it isn’t merely that. It’s safer, and generally more accurate, to assume that your adversaries mean what they say. If you doubt this, ask yourself: When was the last time they acted more moderately than they talk?

Indeed so. Michael soldiers bravely on at some length from there, all of which you’re gonna want to make time to read and digest. He walks us through Shitlib Plan A, B, C, and so on, to wind up the festivities with their Plan F, which concluding ‘graphs I simply can’t resist putting up here.

Which leaves Plan F, which they have already sketched in broad outlines. I don’t know exactly what form it will take, but they have made clear that “under no circumstance” can Trump be allowed to take office again. Among the “circumstances” covered by the word “no” would seem to be an Electoral College majority, or a tie followed by a House vote in Trump’s favor.

What happens then? Well, in the words of the “Transition Integrity Project,” a Soros-network-linked collection of regime hacks who in 2020 gamed out their strategy for preventing a Trump second term, the contest would become “a street fight, not a legal battle.” Again, their words, not mine. But allow me to translate: The 2020 summer riots, but orders of magnitude larger, not to be called off until their people are secure in the White House.

On Sept. 20, 1911, the RMS Olympic—sistership of the ill-fated Titanic—collided with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke, despite both vessels traveling at low speeds, in visual contact with one another for 80 minutes. “It was,” writes maritime historian John Maxtone-Graham, “one of those incredible convergences, in full daylight on a calm sea within sight of land, where two normally operated vessels steamed blithely to a point of impact as though mesmerized.”

Our sea isn’t calm, nor are our vessels normally operated. But we do seem headed for a point of impact, with the field of vision before us as clear as it was on that day. And the regime isn’t changing course. It must want this—or else is so high on its own supply that it can’t see what it is doing.

Rest assured, if what I fear might happen, happens, we will be blamed for it. And the fire next time will make their reaction to Jan. 6 look like a marshmallow roast. I don’t know which possibility is scarier: that they haven’t thought any of this through, or that they have.

Precisely so, but you should have no doubt that they’re gonna do it anyway. These megalomaniacal jackwagons seem not to be worried terribly about the powderkeg they risk igniting thereby, which speaks volumes about whether or not they’re really “afraid” of us.

Real Americans, therefore, must see to it that they get their “streetfight” in a way they don’t anticipate but won’t soon forget—to the very hilt of the knife, as a reminder that they damned well ought to be afraid of us. Otherwise, the very concept of liberty is done for, and ourselves along with it.

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Bitter, hate-filled, and miserable

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Insight into the thinking of a modern city-dweller. It all started with Educated Hillbilly’s response to a hateful Tweet from someone calling herself Molly McGhee.


And from there, EH is off and running.

I’ve seen enough to get a fix on this gal and I’ve seen her type a million times. And they’re a dime a dozen in the writing world. They almost always go into the arts…never the sciences. Because your intelligence can be measured in the sciences. Writing is subjective.

Molly here grew up poor, TN I believe she said, but she mentions “poor” & “the south” about a million times. She’s making a point here. That she has the authority to speak on these topics & tell the liberal NY writing society that they’re correct to hate rural white poors.

She absolutely hates her parents, hates having to grow up in & around all that poor, all that filth, all their ignorance. Imagine knowing you’re better than everyone else & having to share a school bus with them. A lunch table. A class room. The rage builds for 18 years.

Make no mistake I would bet Molly here has a mildly above average IQ & was probably in a[n] underfunded school system. Most rural schools get the left overs after the cities take all the money.

I would also bet my IQ is much much higher & my aptitude testing probably blows hers out of the water. But I digress…She knows better than this filth. She knows she’s destined for better things than her ignorant father.

And slamming her father & where she’s from is her ticket into the world she so desperately wants to be a part of. The world she looks at from behind the glass for so so long. She wants to be accepted, to be one of them, to be on the other side of the glass looking out not in.

Make no mistake, she hates her parents & where she grew up. But she can use them now that she’s free. Away from home, in college, with that scholarship she worked so hard for to escape that hell hole. She’s among her people now. Free of the unwashed.

It probably started organically, a comment here a slam there & next thing she knows the cool kids from NY old money families are hanging on her every word of hate for her home & father. She’s telling them everything they’ve always believed & they cant get enough.

She enthralls them with tails of her ignorant father. With every telling he gets slower, more racist. His house becomes a broken down mobile home, then a shack. He’s probably drooling by her senior year.

Every negative feeling & thought she’s ever had about where she’s from gets her praise from her peers. She’s made it, she’s arrived. She’s accepted. She’s one of them…

But what happed you ask? Why is she so angry & full of rage & hate now? She got what she wanted? She made it, she’s in NY. A professor. Around her kind all day. A published author. How can someone get their wish at 28 & still be so bitter, hate filled & angry?

She’s 28, deeply in debt & unhappy. Life wasn’t supposed to be this way. She did the thing. She followed the playbook. She made it. She arrived. Is this really it?

Yes Molly…it is.

There are 2 big age moments in your life.

  1. When you realize you’re no longer a kid & your “youth” is in the past. (28-32)
  2. And when you realize you’re old & there is more life behind you than in front of you. (45-55)

Obviously the ages vary on the person, but she’s hit #1.

There’s more yet, and it’s perceptive, thoughtful, and entirely damning. Note that at no point does EH lapse into the kind of vituperation, insult, and frothy-mouthed personal invective that is the stock in trade of McGhee and her tiresome ilk. At the end, EH even offers her some quite worthwhile advice, although we all know perfectly well that the irremediably dysfunctional bint will never so much as even consider lowering herself to pay heed to his wise words.

Thus does she seal her unhappy fate as a lonely, fearful woman aging ever more swiftly beyond her sell-buy date, trapped in a cramped, poorly-maintained apartment, with only the thirty or forty cats living there with her for comfort and companionship.

It all rings true to me, I must say. During my own NYC years, almost all of the women I knew who had come to New York from other places were a lot like the pathetic Ms McGhee, and weren’t at all shy about reciting the exact same litany of complaint against the places and people where they’d grown up that she does. Nearly without exception, they weren’t running to NYC as I had done, motivated by eagerness and excitement at the prospect of taking up residence in the greatest city on Earth, but running away from their places of origin and the hordes of Neanderthal revanchists who dwell there.

A handful of my young female friends had just cause to be fleeing; they’d been molested or otherwise abused by someone close to them, or they worked in fields that were centered in NYC and hoped to advance their careers by relocating to the central hub of their chosen profession: fashion modeling or design, say, or certain sub-branches of the entertainment industry. These women tended to be cheerful, easy-going sorts, some managing to maintain their overall positivity even as the Big Apple soul-devouring machine slowly ground them into hamburger, demonstrating for them just what a tough ladder they’d chosen to try and climb.

But the majority were exactly the type of whiny, self-seeking neurotics that Ms McGhee appears to be—people whose self-esteem derives almost exclusively from looking down their noses at others, sniffily derogating them as stupid, unevolved losers. They never seem to learn the lesson my dad had drilled into me years before: when you spend all your time running away from something, happiness can be an extremely difficult quarry to catch.

HAPPY JUMETEEMF!

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Doc 0 unravels this specious joke of a “national holiday.“

One reason Juneteenth isn’t catching on organically with the general public is that it’s obviously a politicized partisan “holiday,” not a celebration where all Americans are invited to join hands and rejoice in a great achievement. That’s what it should be, but it isn’t. 

The rest of our political culture loudly insists every day that no “victory” has been won against slavery or racism. We’re told they are the founding sins of America, for which there will never be atonement or forgiveness. We’re told “white supremacy” remains a systemic problem. 

If anything, our hysterical racial grievance industry and the ruling Democrat Party say racism and white supremacy are getting WORSE. We’re all supposed to feel perpetually guilty and submissive to endless demands for reparations. So what great victory does Juneteenth celebrate?

The Democrat Party is wholly dedicated to stoking racial grievances for political and financial gain – the man in the White House is infamous for yelling “they’re gonna put y’all back in CHAINZZ” – so the new federal holiday is naturally viewed with skepticism. Context matters. 

Persuading more states to commemorate Juneteenth would have been a better way to go, but as we know, the totalitarian Left has no patience for representative government. It had to be imposed top-down after the George Floyd riots – a flex of power, not persuasion. 

And now look at what we’ve got: a bloodbath. Juneteenth murder sprees. The long, slow work of creating a more harmonious nation, of putting racism and grievances behind us instead of nuclear-weaponizing them, would have produced a better holiday. 

Americans know the calendar is being chopped up into more identity-grievance days and months, pushed on them with corporate and government power instead of fellowship. True holidays spring from goodwill: from people seeing the best in others and offering it from themselves. 

If you want to plant a new holiday and have everyone feel comfortable beneath its spreading branches, you need the fertile soil of goodwill, a sense that everyone is invited but no one is commanded. Too much of our political culture is barren of that soil right now.

“Too much”? ALL of it, I’d say; as the Left’s radicalization and hostility towards even the mildest of dissent continues to metastasize, it was inevitable, really. Read the whole thing, as per usual with the incomparable John Hayward’s stuff.

MLK Day, Jumeteemf—what next? How many holidays, celebrations, and forelock-tugging acknowledgments, how much more groveling, obsequious foot-bathing will it take, prithee tell, before American Blaques are at long last placated—their inchoate rage diminished, their hatred attenuated? Is there no point at which even “too much” will be considered enough?

Never mind, no need to answer that. I think we all know well enough by now, thenkyewveddymuch.

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Be ye not sparing in thine outrage

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Lord knows, there’s plenty enough reason for it to go around nowadays.

Daniel Penny’s Indictment Deserves The Level Of Outrage Trump’s Got
U.S. Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny was reportedly indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on Wednesday for defending New York City subway passengers from an erratic and threatening homeless man.

The incident in question occurred on May 21, when Jordan Neely — who had been arrested 44 times for “criminal conduct” and, at the time, “had an outstanding warrant for felony assault” — began threatening and getting violent with NYC subway passengers. During the episode, Neely allegedly kept repeating the phrases, “I’m going to kill you,” “I’m prepared to go to jail for life,” and “I’m willing to die.”

In response, Penny and two of his fellow passengers attempted to restrain Neely, which involved the former placing the latter in a headlock. Neely ultimately died during the encounter, with NYC’s medical examiner ruling the death a homicide.

According to sources who spoke with Fox News, Penny is being indicted “on one count each of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree manslaughter.” If convicted of the latter charge, Penny could face five to 15 years in prison.

Not surprising, nor will I be when he’s convicted, sentenced harshly, and packed on off to durance vile. After all, in Amerika v2.0 no truly good deed goes unpunished. Tells one all one should ever need to know about its demented and deformed system of “justice”; its hideously warped mores and values; and its juvenile obsession with a wholly-contrived “racism” which exists only in the Left’s own fevered imagination.

On their own merits, the Penny and Trump indictments symbolize the increasing weaponization of law enforcement agencies against anyone who refuses to bend the knee to leftism. But unlike the reaction to the DOJ’s targeting of Trump, the overall response to Penny’s indictment has been mum by comparison.

While it’s understandable for a presidential primary contender to generate a larger following than a former Marine, it’s precisely for this reason that Penny’s unjust prosecution should be shouted from the rooftops. Unlike Trump, a guy like Penny likely doesn’t possess the financial or legal resources necessary to engage in a prolonged legal fight against a system that’s rigged against him. And it’s for this reason that all conservatives and common-sense Americans must rally to his defense.

A conviction of Penny would further entrench Democrats’ attempts to criminalize self-defense and give leeway to leftist prosecutors seeking to charge any citizen not “down” for their Marxist revolution. Yes, the DOJ’s targeting of Trump is horrific. But so is the immoral prosecution of Daniel Penny.

If they can do it to Penny, they can — and will — do it to anyone else.

“Can”? “Will”? Nuh uh. Howzabout…ARE, along with DID, and HAVE BEEN, for entirely too long now. Until you’re red-pilled enough to be able to make that crucial distinction, there can be no realistic hope of ever fixing this. Either wise up, and nut up, or kwitcherbitchin’.

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Strung up, strung out

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Yet another excellent Quora digest edition drops into my email inbox.

Why does Billy Gibbons use 7-43 guitar strings? It seems odd.

Billy uses 7–38.

Billy used to use 11s & 12s because he thought that’s what all the blues guys did: Big string = Big sound

He was in the green room of a gig with B.B. King and BB wanted to see Billy’s axe. BB was noodling with Billy’s guitar and asked Billy why he was running such heavy strings? Billy said, “I thought that’s how all you blues guys got your tone.” BB said, “Why do you want to work so hard?” I think Billy dropped down to 9s almost immediately and eventually worked his way down to 7s and 8s, which is what a lot of the classic music of the 50s, 60s, and 70s was done with.

7’s will teach you about control PDQ because they respond so easily. If you want to sound super-tight on 9s or 10s go play on 7s and 8s for while.

.007s? Dang, I don’t think I ever have played with strings that light; in fact, I don’t recall being aware that they even made ‘em that light. My uncle started me out on .008s, a jazz set of his preferred Black Diamonds with the wrapped G (as a snot-nosed punk kid already gravitating heavily towards rock and roll, I didn’t like that worth a damn, believe me; wrapped third strings on electric guitars is definitely a jazzbo thing). Then, once I’d mastered the essential chords, scales, and runs, followed by guitar adaptions of a few old songs, most of which Murray had transposed and committed to staff paper himself (Sweet Georgia Brown*, I remember ye fondly, old girl!), I went out on my own hook from there.

POINTLESS CF DIGRESSION™: I still have one of those jumbo-sized plastic totes crammed full of Murray’s old sheet-music transcriptions in climate-controlled storage over in my friend Wendy’s living room, safely tucked away between her two (2) pianos. It’s all promised to my friend Jeremy, a great player in his own right, who damned near collapsed in stunned but delighted disbelief when I first showed him that plastic-tub treasure trove and spent an evening pawing through it with him. Jeremy took guitar lessons from me back when I was still willing to take on students; he’s probably the best pure musician I’ve ever known, and I’m happy indeed to turn over all that 24-karat musical history to him, knowing as I do how much he’ll love it, and what good care he’ll take of it.

Anyhoo, when I began playing professionally, I had to change strings before every show, either in the green room or at the hotel. I could count on breaking at least one any night I got lazy and didn’t—usually the D or B, don’t know why that would have been. And believe me, I tried like hell to figure it out. It was annoying as hell, but then again all the onstage angst and aggro was easily avoided just by the simple expedient of changing the blasted things.

Uncle Murray, by contrast, only replaced his strings once in a blue moon; he’d boil ‘em when they started to feel limp and flaccid, then put ‘em back on for another year’s worth of abuse. Murray and I never discussed the way I went through strings; I figure he would have been genuinely horrified at the needless waste, the grotesque profligacy of any nephew of his buying strings not by the pack, but by the case. Why, the very idea! Surely he’d taught me better than THAT!

I DO know that Stevie Ray Vaughn famously used strings so painfully heavy they more closely resembled low-register piano strings, or perhaps telephone-pole guy wires. Don’t know how in the world he managed to play the way he did—bending notes with no apparent effort, fingers zooming wildly all over the fretboard like honeybees in a field of wildflowers—on strings that big, night after night after night, for years. But then, that’s why he’s Stevie Ray Vaughan, and I, y’know…ain’t.

My own calluses, laboriously created by set after set of comparatively wimpy D’Addario Jazz/Rock .011 to .049s, are still there, and I haven’t picked up a guitar since 2017. Hell, I can still feel the lip-callus you get from trumpet-playing when I run my tongue across my upper lip; apparently, they never do go away completely. The calluses on Stevie Ray’s left-hand fingertips, then, must have been something to see indeed. By the time he died, his fingertips must have been rutted as deeply as a New Mexico desert valley after a sudden monsoon.

.007 to .038 gauge strings, Gibbons? Ya fuckin’ pussy.

Update! Having mentioned Jeremy up there, please enjoy one of my all-time favorite songs from his surf band nonpareil, the Aqualads.

Great band, great tune. Written by the late, lamented Bob Nelson, may he forever rest in peace.

* I keep thinking of stuff I want to add to this post, so I put in a link to Django Reinhardt and Stephan Grappelli’s version of SGB, just because they were two of Murray’s favorites.

Eyrie up!

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The Monday Substack, “Reinventing the Republic,” has now been posted. This installment discusses the Five Ws as related not to a principle of journalism, but to the hijacking of a once-free nation by Progressivists, and to the Constitution they’ve defiled and discarded. To wit:

The Constitution is no more than a document—mere words on paper, expressing certain ideals that, until relatively recently, most Americans claimed to revere. It has no power of its own, no practical or corporeal means of enforcing the ideals it proposes. Reasonable, aware Americans ought not to expect it to; they are the ones charged with the duty of protecting and enforcing it, not vice the versa. It cannot defend itself, it must be defended.

This is tacitly confirmed by the simple fact that many, many of us have sworn an oath to do precisely that: upon enlisting in the military, joining the police force, or accepting elected office as what used to be called a “public servant.” Every last one of them swore that oath completely aware of what it meant, as should those of us who did NOT swear any oath. OUR duty is to see to it that those who did, most especially the elected officials, are held rigorously to account for fulfilling it. Ignoring, shirking, or otherwise failing to uphold this solemn and sacred responsibility, then, cannot fairly be taken as an indication that the Constitution has failed us, but rather that we have failed the Constitution.

Until that solemn and sacred duty is reaffirmed, taken seriously, and fully and firmly upheld, all efforts undertaken by freedom-oriented Americans who prefer properly limited government—“election” campaigns, peaceful protest, indignant op-eds, lawfare—will continue to be frustrated. Said Americans will have no hope whatever of prevailing in the gloomy twilight of the eternal struggle against tyranny and despotism.

I’m right, and you know I am. Go ye and read all of it—no subscription necessary to read, paid sub required to comment, y’all know the drill.

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How many Epsteins have there been?

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FederalGovCo: murdering politically-inconvenient prisoners in their cells and absurdly claiming their deaths were actually “suicides” since 1995.

Last January, Tucker Carlson featured a segment that challenged the theory that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. He was not alone. Many doubt the official narrative. What the doubters don’t realize is how the press used the cover-up of a 1995 brutal prison homicide to facilitate the cover-up of Epstein’s (very likely) homicide.

On August 21, 1995, Kenneth Michael Trentadue was found dead in his allegedly suicide-proof cell at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City. Pieces of his skull were missing in three different places. There were deep bruises underneath his arms, including bruises shaped like a person’s fingertips running along his biceps. His knuckles were deeply bruised and swollen.

According to the government, Trentadue’s appalling injuries resulted from his hanging himself in that “suicide-proof” cell during a 24-minute interval between bed checks. The FBI and the DOJ successfully made their suicide fantasy the accepted narrative about Trentadue’s death.

The only person who wasn’t fooled was Kenneth Trentadue’s brother, Jessie Trentadue, a trial lawyer in Salt Lake City who kept challenging the government’s lies. What he could not figure out was what triggered the violent assault. That issue was addressed in the Rohrabacher Report, which examined the many controversies surrounding the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. It turns out it may have been a case of mistaken identity:

Bank robber Richard Guthrie claimed that he would soon be revealing information that would blow the lid off the Oklahoma City bombing case. The next day, he was found dead, hanging in his cell, purportedly a suicide. This suspicious “suicide” mirrored the similar death of Kenneth Trentadue, another prisoner, who may have been tangentially and incorrectly linked to the Oklahoma City bombing. The death of these two prisoners, who happened to be very similar in appearance, is more than disturbing. (Emphasis added.)

According to the FBI, Richard Guthrie was a member of the Midwest Bank robbers gang that reportedly shared stolen monies with Timothy McVeigh to help fund the Oklahoma City bombing. Trentadue may have been beaten to death by prison guards because they mistook him for Guthrie.

There’s more to this gruesome story, all of it revolting, appalling, and just scary as all hell. Even more sobering is that, in all likelihood, such atrocities possibly date back to well before 1995; in fact, knowing the kind of government we have long had and the nature of the monsters working within it—particularly in the ludicrously-misnomered Department of “Justice”—I think it a dead certainty that they do.

The most sobering aspect of all? Another dead cert: the longer we sit on our fat, comfy asses and just docilely put up with it, the worse it will get—and the more extreme the measures taken to correct it will have to be, until “Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out” is not merely an amusing slogan and/or CF post category, but becomes something more along the lines of a mandate, even a way of life.

Speaking of post categories, I think it’s high time I updated the “Life in the O!gulag” category with a new name: “Life (and/or death) in the Amerikan gulag.”

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No case to be made

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Like I said the other night, the whole blasted shitshow is just a scam.

We might not like it, and our allies might and should get nervous about it, but under our system the President has absolute authority to declassify material AND to take it home as personal records. Beaten into us at the State Department was the knowledge that our ability to classify material, and I shamefully admit that I classified a lot, comes FROM and ONLY from the President. He can override any classification. The President can grab a binder of the most “sensitive” material, and read it out at a press conference; politically not wise, but legal. The famous Bill Clinton “sock drawer” case emphasized that: an Obama-appointed judge ruled that Clinton had the authority to declassify AND take home as his personal records ANY material produced by the Executive branch. No exceptions. Full stop. The President, in our structure, DOES NOT COME UNDER the authority of some faceless bureaucrat in a government archives office.

I find tiring to hear that the Trump case differs from those of Pence and Biden because they “immediately” returned to the archives the classified material once that material was found in their possession. First, we don’t know if that’s true in the Pence case, and it’s certainly not true in the Biden case; second, most important, neither man had the authority to take classified (documents) to his home or his office. The cases, in other words, are different because neither Biden nor Pence was President at the time they took the classified material! Biden had been taking material for decades. Neither had the authority to declassify and remove classified documents. In Biden’s case, it seems about 100 percent certain that he shared still-classified material with his crack-addled son who used it to “write” papers about Ukraine and European politics for clients. 

Has Trump handled this in the best way possible? You decide. I think, maybe, he could have handled the request from the archives office to return documents in a better, less confrontational way, while still saying, “No. Those are my papers.” Maybe. Maybe.

Now, you will rightly note, that what I just wrote naively assumes that the request was well-intentioned. It, of course, was not. It was a trap to persecute Biden’s main political rival, and along with the bogus charges filed by local Democrat DAs, to tie up Trump in an endless legal siege, cripple him politically and financially, and–very important–distract from the growing evidence of the criminality of the Biden family. 

The attack on Trump also has sucked the air out of the Republican primary process. How can, say, DeSantis get a word in when all we talk about is Trump, Trump, Trump? How can we get anybody to focus on the blatant criminality of the Bidens, when we all focus on the irrelevant debate over what is or is not classified?  

We have become a banana republic with nuclear weapons. My apology to banana republics; they, at least, provide us bananas.

Heh. True, dat. Great to see you back after your extended hiatus from blogging, Lewis. You were definitely missed, buddy.

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Celebrate Jumeteemf ‘n’ sheeitz!

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So how’s that Jumeteemf business working out for y’all? NOT TOO GOOOOIT, DEY BE GETTIN’ ALL SHOTTED ‘N’ SHEEITZ.

20 shot, 1 dead in Chicago-area mall as violence mars Juneteenth holiday weekend around US
This Juneteenth holiday weekend has been marred by violent crime throughout the states, but especially so in blue metropolitans like Chicago.

Over in Chicago, in fact, a crowded, 300+ late Saturday night celebration specifically for Juneteenth turned into a violent affair with 20 shot, one of them fatally.

“Battalion Chief Joe Ostrander with the Tri-State Fire Protection District said the shooting took place about 12:30 a.m. [Sunday morning] on Route 83 near Honeysuckle Rose Lane. A large group was gathered in a strip mall parking lot for a Juneteenth celebration that turned violent, witnesses said,” according to station WLS.

“Fire officials said at least 10 were shot. A DuPage County Sheriff’s Office official said later Sunday morning that 20 had been shot, one fatally,” the station reported.
According to witness Markeshia Avery, things weren’t supposed to be like this.

“It was supposed to be like a Juneteenth celebration; we just started hearing shooting, so we dropped down until they stopped. They just kept going. After that, we literally scattered away,” she said.

“We just heard gunshots; at first it was one, but then it was a whole bunch of gunshots. After then we started running like, ‘yo.’ I looked at my friend, and we took off, running like crazy,” another witness, Zaviar Sheikh, added.

Meanwhile, over in St. Louis, Missouri, ten juveniles were shot, one of them fatally, during a shooting early Sunday morning.

Next up is Washington state, where five people were shot, two fatally, near a music festival, according to Kyle Foreman, the public information officer with the Grant County Sheriff’s Office.

Then there’s Pennsylvania, where two state troopers were shot, one of them fatally, during a shoot-out Saturday afternoon.

And finally, in California, eight people were shot, two critically, during a house pool party around midnight.

Gee, imagine my surprise. But hey, whatcha gonna do, right? As my utmost favorite Rick James of all possible Rick Jameses in the multiverse, Dave Chappelle, put it:

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How to wage a Culture War

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Enforced over-familiarity breeds contempt.

Rage Against the Pride Machine: We Don’t Hate You, We Are Just Tired of Having Rainbows Thrust Down Our Heretofore Tolerant Gullets
For those of you patriots who aren’t familiar with me, I am a former New York City liberal. I say this for two reasons: 1) it gives me an insight many don’t have, which I will soon discuss; and, 2) I deserve to be mocked incessantly for my folly. Please fire away in the comments, it keeps me humble.

Though I now lean right, I still DO NOT CARE how others live their lives. If a man wants to wear a dress, have at it. Gay marriage? I don’t care.

My point is, I am as LGBT-friendly a person as you will find.

That said, can we stop gavaging “gay” down everyone’s throat?

We do not care what you LGBT types do when the lights are off, and that was the goal, right?

Umm, no, not precisely. Despite their usual disingenuous disclaimers in the beginning, what it was was a first step. Which is how the now-typical progression/escalation gets them from Point A to Point XXX. Thus:

The gay movement went from “Stay out of our bedrooms,” which I found a reasonable request, to “If you straight guys won’t boink a trans dudette, you’re a bigot” to “Let us chop off your 15-year-old son’s penis or you’ll be arrested, you domestic terrorist.” Then you screech at us for “hating” you if we don’t deliver our kids to the “Zygote-friendly Drag Night” where they can watch attention-starved yet talent-free men in dresses shake their waxed asses and then beg for dollar bills.

And there you have it. But fret not, Kev knows the score here.

As a former teen-aged, punk-rockish, blue-haired, cranky, eyeliner-wearing crosspatch myself, I know how you operate. I also know how you recruit. You do it the same way the skinheads do it, as well as cults and midwestern-Detroit punk-rock types in the 1980s. You look for sad loners, weak people, damaged souls, and bitter failures to pull into your cult. You also target kids from bad or broken homes. In short, you’re a bunch of predators.

It all comes down to victimhood. You can’t attack people unless you convince yourself they have victimized you, and that you are “literally” fighting for your existence. That is why you pretend we — the monsters on the right — are trying to “genocide” you, even though we walk past you in the thrift store without a second glance.

The truth is you abhor us even more when we ignore you. In a sad, pathetic way you need us, but we don’t need you. That really steams your clams.

The truth is that most of us don’t care how the Pride community lives — as requested — but that was never the plan. The radical, emotionally-crippled harpies from the Gaystapo never intended to live peacefully amongst us. They will always push their narrative against us then cry victim when we get sick of being force-fed a huge breakfast bowl of Raisin Tran and eventually push back.

But tell me, what is your next move?

Whatever it ends up being, just assume it will be the most disgusting, offensive, reprehensible affront to common decency and common sense they think they can get away with at the time and you won’t go far wrong. Then just sit back and wait for the next step down that ol’ slippery slope—which won’t be long in coming, and will be even worse.

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