Thursday, December 10, 2020

Swalwell, Leaker vs Whistle Blower

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/swill-this.php

The Democrat/MSM complex is highly skilled in "spin" ... from the subtle to the very obvious. 

Again, I can’t talk too much about the details of the case even though others may have violated their oath I’m not going to violate mine, but the Axios story made it absolutely clear that no information was ever shared, except, Jim, the people who did share classified information were the people who leaked this story. And to do that against a critic of the president, they may think that they’re going to silence me. They are not going to silence me but what they are going to do is they are going to make others think twice when they are asked to sit down and provide defensive information about people like this.

The Democrat/MSM complex is a lesson in mendacity. If this came out against a Republican, the "Whistleblower" would be a courageous saint"!

Imagine living in a country where supposed "law enforcement" organizations spy on political opponents and then attempt to prosecute them.

That is the "country" (lawless territory" that "live" (masked and locked down) in. 


Chuck Yeager Passes

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/341894780/pilot-chuck-yeager-dies-at-97-had-the-right-stuff-and-then-some?ft=nprml&f=1001

The passing of a great man and pilot after a long life well lived. I loved his autobiography that I read and owned in paperback and I sincerely hope did not get "pruned" in our move from Rochester. 




Tuesday, December 8, 2020

VDH: The Scars of 2020

 https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/06/the-scars-of-2020/?utm_source=Hoover+Daily+Report&utm_campaign=8e317065ea-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_12_07_07_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_21b1edff3c-8e317065ea-73866665

VDH is always good -- he has predicted this for a long time, as have I. Neither he nor I predicted it would be a largely fake "pandemic" (not the virus, but the response to the virus) that lit the fuse, but so it was. 

Well worth your time, my favorite paragraph: 

In other words, as is the case in former Third World countries, America’s criminal justice system became warped. Now there was good and bad looting, permissible and outlawed arson, correct and incorrect resisting of arrest, and quarantine-violating mass rallying and mass rallying that is exempt from lockdowns. Carving out a swath of autonomy for rioters and looters in downtown Seattle proved legal; had a row of restaurants and bars done the same to be allowed to serve the people, they would have been fined, closed, and likely jailed.

For the left, "They may be criminals, but they are OUR criminals"! 

After The Trust Is Gone

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/fact-checking-the-ga-fact-check.php

As I continue my reading of Anna Karenina, the issue of "trust" looms large. Prince Stepan "Stiva" Arkadyevich Oblonsky is the classic middle aged husband, tired of his wife, having an affair with a younger woman. Once the affair is discovered, the wife's (Princess Darya "Dolly" Alexandrovna Oblonskaya) trust in the marriage  is gone, but in the interest of the children, and her being convinced by others that "this is just how it is", the damaged marriage goes on. 

This is the outcome the Democrats are hoping the nation is willing to accept. Much like Hillary with Bill, even after years of known affairs, "other considerations" (power) demand the lie be continued. The 1960 election was handled this way ... the fraud was accepted as "the way things have to be". For Republicans, the acceptance of cheating is a mix of a desire for stability, greed for their investments, and of course wishful thinking that "maybe it isn't as bad as we know it is ... we still have a country". Accepting Original Sin, and the hope of God's intervention, makes us slow to anger. 

There is always a certain amount of fraud in human systems, as I blogged on in 2008 on the Madoff scandal in finance.   Galbraith called this "the Bezzle":

So, we have a crash, and when we have a crash, what John Kenneth Galbraith called "the Bezzle" comes out. Guys like Madoff (or Enron for that matter) and a whole bunch of others do GREAT as long as everything goes up. If things go down, the loss of the "shady billions" makes the bad situation worse much as it made the good situation SEEM better on the way up. The money Madoff "had" was double counted -- he claimed to have it, and all his investors thought they had it as well. Really, like the value of over inflated homes and stocks, it only existed as long as the confidence was there. That is why they call a lot of swindles "confidence games".

Now, the confidence is fast being unwound from the worldwide financial and business systems, and we have an incoming president that is a complete blank slate -- Bzero. Fed funds rate at zero, short term treasuries at zero -- how many zeros are we going to go for here?

In the world financial system, we "covered the Bezzle" with massive debt and largely hidden iflation, but that is a story for another day. 

Like the ongoing marital affair, or the Ponzi scheme, people "want to believe in what looks good to them". Even when it becomes obvious, even to themselves, they are afraid of what will happen if it "comes out", and they wishfully hope that will be "never".  In "Anna", Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, Anna's husband is a great literary example of this -- ignoring the obvious, and then working hard to keep it from being known. 

Some of us lost confidence, or rather had complete confidence as Tolstoy did, that a core feature of humanity is wishful thinking coupled with our fallen mendacity, meaning we are always "flirting with disaster" on scales large and small. In this case, the future of our nation. 







So now we know. 

Republicans have been the witting and unwitting partners in the sham of American "elections" certainly since 1960, but really since long before -- Boss Tweed, Mayor Daley, and countless others. The faithless Democrats have maintained that "election fraud never happens" and fight  any attempts to insure that it didn't/doesn’t happen tooth and nail. In fact they continue to create new anenues for mail in “voting” to encourage it. The Bezzle is a core of their operation. Nobody really knows what will happen if/when the Beale comes out of the election system, but Democrats certainly fear what will happen, as they know it is there, and they know it is big. 

It desperately needs to be faced, even if that means a national divorce, war, a massive international crisis, or whatever "bad unknown". Like death, it is reality, and reality always wins. 

Monday, December 7, 2020

Ellen/Elliot Page, Victor Victoria

 https://www.dailywire.com/news/klavan-for-the-vast-majority-gender-difference-is-a-joy

What struck me — and I think a lot of people — about actress Ellen Page’s announcement that she was now a man named Elliot was the po-faced self-seriousness with which the media accepted the lunacy. She’s a man, but she’s queer, but she’s with a woman, because she’s a lesbian, only she’s a man lesbian. Right-ho! Let’s get to work changing the credits on her old films because this is leftism, after all, and history itself has to be erased and rewritten to reflect the current nonsense.

Got that? A gay woman, married to a woman has decided she is a man.  

It reminds me of 1982's "Victor Victoria" ... a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. 

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire was really rather sane compared to our demise. 

Douthat does a more intellectual expose on our "Decadent Society" in his book, but Ellen/Elliot pretty much covers it ... if not. see pics below. The left is the "male" Pennsylvania health secretary, the right is Ellen/Elliott.


Thinking this is not serious? Increasingly. the trans folk are pushing to make "misgendering" a hate crime. How is that for serious? Consider that at least one site believes there are 33 genders.

So if the two above commit a crime, the left goes in with the girls and the right goes in with the guys. Hope "he" is tougher than "he" looks. 

Ah, the "woke" ... they are so intelligent that they can't figure out what bathroom to use. 

What Is Election Fraud Bringing ?

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/apocalypse-now-2.php

Is it the Apocalypse yet? "The Horror" is shocking and terrible, and it will be faced. 



The film is based on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", a book form of what happens when the civilized meets the uncivilized. 

What really happens to man without the strictures of culture, order, religion, rules, morality?  Is it what Rousseau and Marx assert? "Heaven on Earth"? "The end of history"? No more wretched subjugation to civilization, God, morality - pure freedom and pure pleasure? The "triumph of the will"? 

That is what "the left" thinks they believe. The sad truth is that to the extent the left wins, the result is death, totalitarianism, power being the only coin of the realm, and "truth" doesn't get to speak at all until it defeats the "power" in battle. We are in that battle now. Ironically. we don't even really know our "left from our right"

We have been calling the darkness down since at least Roe. The small stack of tiny little inoculated arms hacked off referenced in the clip was enough to drive Colonel Kurtz to madness. Or was he enlightened to the reality of Vietnam? What price will be exacted for the killing of 60 million little lives at the twin altars of pleasure and convenience? 

As Lincoln said in his 2nd inaugural:

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Is Colonel Kurtz  right that the civilized have no right to judge the elemental? Often times, when elemental self evident natural law arrives, much like "The Unforgiven", we may not like it that much.



We had a “Republic for which we stood”, now we have a Thugocracy. Will we stand?

“Good” Ideas Must Be Mandatory! Anna Karenina Today

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/mask-jacobinism-runs-rampant.php




The linked article is about mask shaming and its use to deny freedom of association. Trust me, at least in on strange mind, there is a relationship. 

The picture indicates to me that it is hard for a "normal male"  (evil in these "woke" times)  not to notice pretty women confident in their femininity. Are conservative women in general are more attractive? Kristi Noem comes to mind, but a glance at the winning Republican congresswomen this cycle seems to indicate something of a general rule.

Yes, I know there are many physically attractive leftist women, however it seems that often their physical attractiveness is overshadowed by their screeching demands for fealty to their political beliefs, which are  in direct opposition to their exploiting their physical beauty while declaring at least male appreciation of such to be sexist. The fake is inherently unattractive when exposed. 

I'm finally reading Anna Karenina. I read a lot, but very little fiction, and even less romance. Psychology, culture, and especially the interplay between our physical and spiritual nature, are however of significant interest, and in those areas, Anna just kept showing up as a "must read" - it is easy to see why. 

A paragraph that struck me is: 

Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women. In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

It appears that there is something like "human nature" that demands a class structure, and generally the pride/arrogance of the upper class.There can be the occasional just and moral king, but that is the exception.  There are similarities to the classes in Anna to the classes today. The lower class maps to at least the upper class imagination of the "deplorables". The upper class is much like today's "woke elite". The biggest difference is that the upper class  in 1878 Russia was not yet using the power of government to overtly oppress the lower class by removing their devotion to religion, morality, family and community, as the soon to come Communist party would quickly do. 

As I'm fond of saying as a computer scientist devoted to binary, "there are two classes, those who divide the world into two classes, and those who don't". 

In a more or less free and "natural" society people "sort" by a complex set of factors, some "good", some "bad" ... we won't go into that complexity here. The point is that it really isn't binary, there is lot more complexity than "two". 

As a culture shifts toward totalitarianism, it becomes more and more binary and the binary categories become  more and more mandatory -- as in the ideas that are declared to be "good" -- eg wearing/not wearing a mask, celebrating various sexual preferences, genders, etc, or not celebrating such, fealty to "The Party" (Democrat, globalist, woke, etc), or "deplorable", etc. 

The list goes on and becomes both more and more oppressive and foundational. Everything becomes political, and everything is mandatory -- thus in the mind of the oppressors, "good". 

"We are all in this together ... wear a mask".  



 

Friday, December 4, 2020

Does Starship Size Matter?

 Definitely worthy of being filed under complete waste of time -- better than watching MSM though!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTPwbVqU6lc 




Thursday, December 3, 2020

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription

 http://www.framingthedialogue.com/archives/cancel-your-own-goddam-subscription/

I returned to this book that  I had read but failed to review in 2014. I've always loved WFBs initials (same as mine) and have had to fight the sin of envy for his intellect, life experiences, friends (including Ronald Reagan, Art Buchwald, Charlton Heston, Tom Selleck and a host of others. 

As the linked review  points out, it is a good read. For me, it was a "wayback machine", igniting my first interest in conservative political thought as a counterpoint to the malaise of the Carter years. One of my early rather wordy blog entries here. (yes I used to be even MORE wordy, amazing though that seems). 

Mostly I just sat back and enjoyed the book for it's pleasure. I was struck by a great example of "fake thinking". On 232, Eric Alterman (still around as a professor at CUNY) proffers a completely fabricated supposed interchange between WFB and a "quivering college student" who asked "have you ever experienced" poverty? Alterman composed WFB's fictional reply: " Why yes, my yacht experienced an unfortunate shortage of stuffed goose recently between Nassau and the Bahamas". 

Buckleys reply is reason enough to read the book. For one thing, he doesn't know what "stuffed goose" tastes like ... if one is writing fiction as Alterman clearly was, it may as well have been Foie Gras!

Although fictional, I suspect the anecdote as likely been repeated so much that many, likely including Alterman believe it to be true. Somewhat like the fiction of Reagan sleeping staff meetings (why? He was the boss! Anybody that has experienced staff meetings knows that they are a great way to cure insomnia. When you are not the one in charge, you bear it best as you can. If you are ... "I just realized I need to be on an important call", we will take this up later". 

Reading the book caused me to hunt up
an old Firing Line ... both the book and the link are well worth your time. 


Ten Years For Ten Stitches

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/the-case-of-stephanie-mohr.php

A young single female police officer gets 10 years for 10 ten stitches to a suspect because she "released her police dog early". The "incident" was 5 years previous, the FBI went after her after a WaPo article, and railroaded a conviction and ridiculously long sentence. 

Read it and weep. It is a testament to human courage that we have any police at all!