The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Attack of the science deniers

The progressive war on science

Worth a look to restore balance.

A lie masking another lie

‘Hands up, don’t shoot’: an ignoble lie for the ages

The Associated Press explored this disconnect between the ongoing “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” narrative with the facts presented at the inquiry. 

“Even if you don’t find that it’s true, it’s a valid rallying cry,” protester Taylor Gruenloh told the AP. “It’s just a metaphor.”

“This is not about one boy getting shot in the street, but about the hundreds just like him who have received the same callous and racially-influenced treatment,” Oakland demonstrator Gabe Johnson, identified as “a middle school teacher” by the AP, insisted. 

“So ultimately, no, it doesn’t matter at all if somehow we can say for sure whether this one young man really said these words or had his hands up.”

But that's just another lie.

The whole thing is a lie.

Probably a success for criminals, though.

Especially the criminals who plague black neighborhoods.

A culture of lies

And here a news network's coverage is nothing but a lie.

CNN is lying about rioters, calling them "peaceful protesters"

Civil disobedience does not happen at night. 

No matter when the grand jury decision was announced, people who are engaged in peaceful protest take out their signs and march down the street in broad daylight.

Peaceful protesters don’t wear creepy anarchist masks or even bandannas to cover their faces. 

They are protesting with a clear conscience and are happy to have anyone know their identity.

Peaceful protesters do not dress like they are about to knock over a convenience store because they are not about to knock over a convenience store.

From day one, CNN has twisted the Ferguson story. 

The network decided early on that an injustice had been done, contrary facts aside. 

When the grand jury decided not to indict, CNN was primed for outrage, because there was no way officer Darren Wilson could have acted appropriately.

The network helped stir up a nation to the point of violence. 

Yet, since the protesters must always be on the side of angels, CNN lies about the destruction that follows.

It’s rare you see the liberal media’s dishonesty in such stark terms, but CNN can’t control the pictures. 

If you wanted to know what was really happening this week, all you had to do was press the mute button.

Why the groveling to China?

Because he so desperately wanted those awful trade and emissions treaties?

Sure, it would be silly for America to make relations with China unnecessarily harsh by making as much flap about Tibet as America has made about Ukraine.

It has been equally silly to make quite that much flap about Ukraine.

But why go so far as to endorse the Chinese conquest?

Obama & Genocide

And the persecution of Falun Gong?

Organ pillaging from live FG prisoners?

Stupid prosecutors?

"If the glove doesn't fit you must acquit."

I used to have a nice pair of leather driving gloves I used for shooting at the range.

Not a chance in hell I could have gotten them on over another pair of latex gloves.

Fuhrman was asked whether he had ever in his life uttered the word "nigger."

Is there anyone above the age of thirty or so in America, of any race, who has not?

The defense had already accused him of planting evidence in a racist plot to frame OJ.

American blacks overwhelming believed that claim, though no evidence at all was ever produced to prove it.

The defense badgered Fuhrman mercilessly and provoked him into lying.

They had him on tape saying "nigger," though not in connection with the OJ case and some time in the past.

They made even some of white America somehow believe that sole fact should be accepted by the jury, even if not by themselves, as making a racist plot to frame OJ likely enough to provide, all by itself, reasonable doubt of his guilt.

The left had suggested a racist frame all along, as I recall.

Of course they did.

However trivial both the question and the lie in a sane world, it was not trivial in that trial.

Fuhrman was later convicted of perjury.

OJ was acquitted.

Has America changed since 1995?

Maybe not so much, except perhaps the liberal racist view is more popular, at least in the general media, as we see in the Ferguson affair.

O.J., Obama, and Race in America

Doubly political grand jury.

Justice Scalia Explains What Was Wrong With The Ferguson Grand Jury

Liberals ignore that in the normal case of which Scalia wrote the prosecutor has already had his chance to exercise discretion and decline to seek indictment if the totality of evidence makes ultimate conviction, in his view, unlikely or even, if it should happen, unjust.

Political interference denied officials in Ferguson that option.

Since the prosecutor was not allowed to exercise discretion based on the totality of evidence, officials there let the grand jury play that role.

What the liberals and race hustlers are not saying is they wanted a show trial that would drag on for months, drawing enormous public interest to their flood of hate propaganda about police, about the criminal justice system, and about American white people.

When the grand jury refused to indict the wheels got knocked off their propaganda juggernaut.

Sometimes reality is so bad even Ann Coulter can't manage to deform it much in her constant and often totally mendacious campaign of hate directed at liberals.

Weird title.

Liberals willing to fight to the last drop of black blood

A step in the right direction

City Passes Historic Retail Workers Bill Of Rights

Schumer for president?

Senator Schumer: Labor's share of profit should be core of 2016 Democratic agenda

Maybe.

Racist feminazi liar

I got banned from KOS for calling her that.

Or maybe it was "racist feminazi bitch."

Fair and accurate, either way.

Marshalling forces for justice

Note the praise is for his agenda achievements.

That's perfectly in order, considering.

Shows how wrong anyone would be who thinks the role of judges is to be impartial as regards political agendas, cool and faithful bureaucrats of the law.

Cool and faithful defenders of the Constitution, full of integrity and revered for refusal to descend into the fray.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Now there's restraint

PB finally addresses Ferguson

The Unspoken Truth of Ferguson

About that grand jury procedure in Mo

Progressive Mythography

A lot of nonsense and propaganda in this piece.

But a lot worth looking at specifically about grand juries and this particular one.

Children of Occupy

If I recall correctly, at no time did boy Brown raise his hands in a gesture of surrender or say "Don't shoot."

AP on "Hands up, don't shoot"

Rape Culture

City of Life and Death

Nothing compares with it for grim horror but the camp scenes in Schindler's List.

And nothing compares with it at all for its depiction of the fate of the "comfort women."

Friday, November 28, 2014

O about Officer Wilson

Pete King Wants Obama To Say 'One Good Word About Officer Wilson'

It is interesting to consider why he is unlikely ever to do that.

Meanwhile, the real Cory Booker stands up.

Maybe.

After Ferguson, Cory Booker Tweets Rodney King Column He Penned At 22

To repeat, those cops should have been convicted.

But he was still full of shit at 22.

Happy Thanksgiving from the fans of Howard Zinn at C&L

Awkward Thanksgiving Conversation La Cucaracha cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz

C&L continues their tradition of Thanksgiving Day racist attacks on white people and on American history.

TPM joins them and supplies their revised "national myth" in which America is founded in greed, racism, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and assorted other inexpiable crimes against humanity.

And they helpfully explain why they want to do this, "[A] nation’s foundational mythology determines its self-image and deeply affects the behavior of its government and citizenry."

In a nutshell, these are crimes of which Americans today should be deeply ashamed, for which they should be guilt-ridden, and because of which they should absolutely relinquish their power and wealth to their accusers, including complete control of their country.

Got it?

It’s Long Past Time To Update The Thanksgiving Myth

Faux concern for the working class.

Talk is cheap.

Ask KOS about their support for job-killing, wage-killing immigration and the trade and climate deals with China.

Walmart low wage protests

C&L report a faux 'shocking revelation'

How Robert McCulloch Hoodwinked The Ferguson Grand Jury

Recall Brown was not shot in the back and was not fleeing when shot.

So, a mistake about the law that was not relevant, anyway, and was corrected before decision.

Heather at C&L calls this a "racist tirade"

Rudy Giuliani Continues Racist Tirade Over Michael Brown Killing

Not a tirade. Not racist.

C&L is by no means alone in attacking RG.

Not a single word in rebuttal of his claims.

Everything is absolutely smear.

Not to mention classic projection.

Rudy Giuliani Uses Ferguson To Take His Race Baiting To Whole New Level

Sure, he's a bit out there.

But nowhere near as far, say, as Rev. Al in the other direction.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Just another "Shaft"

A blacksploitation movie.

Hollywood loves them.

Django Unchained

Truly worth a nobel, if it's as good as they say

Off switch for pain

A walk on the dark side

About forty years ago I subscribed to the Atlantic.

It was liberal then, but not so radical as it is today.

This is racist hate literature and an endorsement of black hatred and black violence.

The "congenital racism" of America of which he writes - of white America, of course - is nothing compared to the congenital racism of black Americans such as himself, and for which he has not one word to spare.

That it appears in the Atlantic tells you a lot about the thinking of the "white power structure" that is making this writer wealthy and famous.

The author himself still does not understand what happened in the Gates incident and insists it was proof of enduring and pervasive white racism.

Violence works

And yet his perceptions about Obama and his likening of O to Leon Blum are apt.

What he refuses to see is that, just as even a large community of Christians, if short of a majority, does not suffice to make a country Christian, even a significant presence of anti-Semitism does not make a county anti-Semitic.

Likewise, the white racism that endures in America is far from enough to justify saying, of the white population as a whole, that it is racist.

I doubt we will ever read any article by him considering whether the percentage of blacks in America who hate and are bigoted about whites is high enough to justify saying that the black community in America as a whole is racist.

As I write this on Thanksgiving morning I am listening on Amazon Music to Ahmad Jamal's Saturday Morning.

Helps break the mood.

Salon this morning is absolutely full of black writers dumping on America and on Obama.

If it weren't for that they would have more than one article attacking white America for genocide of the Native Americans and denouncing Thanksgiving.

Also lots of articles full of feminist diatribes against men and the white males of the Republican Party.

Exactly two articles on class issues.

Not exactly Wilson, Taft, TR, FDR, or even LBJ liberals, are they?

Actually, these people hate almost everything those progressives stood for and took for granted.

The only things they still value in progressivism are the civil rights agenda that came late and in truth has long been achieved, and the welfarist - not the unionist - agenda.

Which is most important?

Judge by what they yell about.

Secretly, he's one of us

Recall that O repudiated not only Jeremiah Wright but the entire civil rights establishment, an entire generation of black leaders from Jesse Jackson to the Black Caucus.

He said the country had changed and they just could not or would not see it.

In substance if not in these words, he said their claims or beliefs that the country was still full of and dominated by white racism were not only wrong but very wrong and impediments to further black progress.

In effect if not in these words, he said black leadership and black people need to stop scapegoating whites for everything wrong in their lives and move on.

Without, of course, absurdly insisting there is no white racism at all, or that it never causes actual harm to blacks individually or collectively.

After his personal repudiation, Rev Wright gave an interview in which he claimed in substance that Obama was just lying to America, disguising himself to get into the White House.

Other black leaders took the same line.

Yesterday afternoon on MSNBC XM radio I listened as a girl host discussed with a member of the Black Caucus the gap between O's public comments on the events at Ferguson from the killing of boy Brown to the demonstrations and riots after the non-indictment and the reaction of the Black Caucus.

From the outset, while expressing the deepest sympathy for the Brown family and insisting people have a protected and inviolable constitutional right to demonstrate that the forces of the government must scrupulously honor, O had called for calm and restraint, insisting demonstrations be lawful and peaceful.

Though far from blunt, O had insisted on the need for law and order, denounced violence and crime, insisted on positive and lawful political action, and repeated his view that while there is in fact white racism and it sometimes affects law enforcement and creates injustice this is not the usual case.

As for the readiness of black communities to see injustice and racism in law enforcement when it is not there - a readiness he has displayed on occasion himself -, he again attributed that to the legacy of slavery and past racial oppression, characterizing is as a misperception that he and his AG would take action to help correct, while also acting to further ensure law enforcement actually is fair.

In contrast, like pretty much the whole of the liberal and black leadership, punditocracy, and media, the BC has been shouting bigoted denunciations of white racism, individual, murderous, and institutional, since the killing hit the news.

Its reaction to the non-indictment was to furiously condemn persistent and widespread white racism and injustice in the law enforcement system, continuing its constant and groundless insistence that Brown was in fact murdered by Officer Wilson because, of course, Wilson is a racist.

And its reaction to the demonstrations and violence has been to justify them and even not at all subtly threaten more of the same.

The BC rep on the radio show explained the difference between the view taken by O and the view taken by the BC in exactly the same way that Jeremiah Wright had explained his repudiation.

In a nutshell, secretly, he's one of us.

That, of course, is the view taken at Breitbart and lots of conservative venues that paint O as indistinguishable from Wright or even Farrakhan.

And by no means only by white people.

I must say this surprised me.

Black Milwaukee sheriff on O on the Ferguson riots

PS.

Not that everybody who sounds somewhat like O on these matters is sincere or really saying the same thing.

Brendan on Cory Booker

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Liberal anti-colonialism

Roosevelt, though perfectly OK with Stalin, could not imagine anything worse than being ruled as a French colony.

A view many others must have shared.

We refused to help the French against the Reds in Indochina, after the war, but later had no scruples in taking on the whole weight of the fight against Uncle Ho, ourselves.

Our policy for such a long time has been arrogant and stupid.

De Gaulle sent a note to Washington claiming he sought to "re-establish the independence and greatness of France that is necessary for the equilibrium of the world."

He had the strangest notion he ought to align himself and France with Russia to preserve independence from America and Britain.

He seems often to have expressed contempt and enmity for England and America as great as he felt for Germany.

Neither stupidity nor arrogance in policy making has ever been uniquely American.

Reading Fenby, The General.

Got milk? Get rid of it!

Milk study in Sweden

Fermented milk good, the straight thing not good at all.

Bad for bones, bad for Type II diabetes, bad for general aging.

Some say we should skip it, altogether.

On BBC radio just now the study's author confessed he has quit drinking milk because of the study, though he used to drink 2 or 3 glasses a day.

He says one observational study is far from conclusive, however.

Scientists in the pay of the dairy industry take a much dimmer view of the study even than that.

You would think they were Republicans and he Obama.

Letting the chip on his shoulder run his mouth? Maybe so. But maybe not so much as all that.

Obama lectures America about the justified anger towards law enforcement in minority communities

This is how Breitbart and much of the right would have us understand what is happening:

As the black leaders involved find it more awkward to justify this latest outburst of minority hate and lawlessness by pointing to the Brown shooting they are changing the subject.

With every day that passes it becomes more painfully obvious that whites have not accepted and are not going to accept that demonstrations demanding justice in the specific matter of the Ferguson shooting are warranted or in the least credible, much less weeks of violence, looting, and destruction of property.

With every day that passes it becomes more painfully obvious that such demands were from the beginning a false flag, just like Tsarist pogroms motivated by nothing but hate appealing for pseudo-justification to phony, lying excuses like Jewish ritual sacrifice of Christian children.

So the usual suspects, joined by O himself, have changed the story and now depict all those demonstrations and crimes in and around Ferguson and lately even in other cities as the result of justified outrage for - ritual sacrifices committed elsewhere than in Ferguson, in other cities, on other occasions, in other times.

We are watching and listening as the chief law enforcement officer of the land, not the AG but the President of the United States, gives speeches in justification and excuse for the racist delusions and hatreds that have for weeks moved people to crime.

He sounds now, at the end of his presidency, like those liberals who refused to denounce Jeremiah Wright, Black Liberation Theology, or even Louis Farrakhan, and unlike the Obama of those days who make a special, nationally broadcast speech to assure white America that he was not like Wright and Farrakhan, or even like Jesse Jackson, and his feelings about race and attitude toward white people were quite different.

Two years left and no more elections to face, we get to see the real Obama, and he's not what we thought but what we were warned.

But read the actual quoted remarks of the president and judge for yourself.

That's just not what he's doing.

He's not echoing Jeremiah Wright shouting "God damn America," or Al Sharpton at his most furious and vicious, much less Louis Farrakhan.

I'm not saying there is no chip on his shoulder or that he is not, like all the rest of us, scarred and askew regarding matters of race.

We all have really sore corns on that foot.

But it just does not appear he has passed over to the dark side.

Absolutely not.

He still seems much more, and much more sincerely, Martin Luther King than Malcolm X.

And if we want to see the day when blacks don't pile out onto the street in an outburst of violence based on racial hatred and "perceptions" the president disagreed with and correctly labeled the root of the problem we had better think hard about what he has recommended be done to try to correct them.

I posted this at Breitbart.

You are reading these remarks as though they were by Jeremiah Wright or Rev Al in his worst Tawana Brawley days.

I don't see that.

He is saying the demonstrations and violence are based on a perception inherited from an earlier age of widespread injustice in law enforcement that is today mostly wrong, though of course some unfairness remains.

And that measures need to be taken to make people feel the system is fair, as well as to correct such unfairness as continues to exist.

Well, if the last weeks are any indication, he's sure as hell got that right, no? 

Without flat out calling the black people of Ferguson racists who hate whites and are bigoted against the police, he is addressing that very problem in a way that stands a chance of helping.

He is not suggesting anyone do a single thing that does not make good sense, all the more so in the wake of these horrific events.

Yes, he seems sometimes to have a racial chip on his shoulder that makes him personally too quick to see racism in whites when it just isn't there, including in the behavior of law enforcement.

Remember the Gates incident?

All the same, is he really much quicker to wrongly see racism than whites looking at blacks, black leaders, and even at him?

If I am reading him correctly - and Lord knows I don't read minds all that well, so I may not be - he is the same guy we voted for and the guy I was glad to vote for, even on this ultra-sensitive matter of race.

And if I am reading him right he is a lot less irresponsible, unjust, inflammatory, or inflamed than any number of black or liberal writers who have been launching into furious tirades since the Ferguson shooting first occurred about white racism, white racist cop murderers, the murder of boy Brown, institutional racism, and blah, blah, blah.

The Congressional Black Caucus and the whole gamut of the US civil rights establishment is taking that same anti-white, racist line.

He's just not one of those people.

He drew a line between himself and them in 2008 and it's not at all clear we have enough reason to say he has crossed it to join them on their side.

Not at all.

And, by the way, the immigration thing he did was a good and fair thing to do, however we may (and I do) deplore the way it was done.

Only a crackpot or the usual American nitwit wants to deport everybody here illegally.

Amnesty?

Would that name be less damning if the congress had signed on?

PS. I contacted the White House on the Internet again today to say "good work" and to tell O I'd vote for him again.

This is maybe the third or fourth time I have done that, over the years.

I'm thinking he gets way too much hate mail to be good for anyone's mental health.

PS

The best way to diminish the severity of hatred and mistrust of whites and police in black neighborhoods is to put a stop to the constant hate propaganda of the left and of the established black leadership. 

Of those O makes no criticism beyond what is implied by his remarks on "perceptions," as cited above.

That not only lets down the whites of this country but goes far to explain why the internet has exploded, since Ferguson, with white anger at him in comments and posts that - mistakenly, I think - attribute to him the same hateful and racist attitudes we still see in Al Sharpton and the Civil Rights establishment on their most pig-headed and bigoted days.

What? Winter, again?

Every year the news is full of stories of weather interfering with holiday travel from Thanksgiving through New Years.

Yup.

Winter, again.

Just like last year.

Thanksgiving travelers bedeviled by bad weather

This is how it works. Attack of the race-baiters.

Rename Squaw Island, Indians demand

First you make them back down over silly, little things it doesn't seem worthwhile or even dignified to resist.

But then they're on the slippery slope toward the big stuff.

This is only a surprise because we are so far from our frontier society roots

Hiker Photographed Bear Before It Killed Him

Unlike animals in comics, cartoons, or Disney films, real animals are dangerous and sometimes outright deadly.

And that is why people carried firearms or other weapons when moving about in the North American wilderness.

The idea that you can hike safely from Georgia to Maine along forest trails is rather a new and rather questionable notion.

Racism

When people who have no idea who you are and know nothing about you, have not the least idea of anything about you, hate you solely because of the color of your skin, isn't that racism?

When those people impute all sorts of terrible things to you, both crimes and atrocities of centuries ago and evils of today, solely because of the color of your skin, and shame you and blame you and hate you, and even propose to punish you or demand reparations from you on their account, isn't that racism?

Well, then?

Thanksgiving storm

Winter storm Cato

Not more than an inch expected in Pittsburgh and surrounding communities over the next 48 hours, says The Weather Channel.

Eighteen to twenty-four inches expected in pretty much all of Massachusetts, including Worcester, where I was born and lived the first twenty-some years of my life.

Knew I left for a reason.

It's not actually much colder up there than here, if at all, because of the influence of the Gulf Stream on that side of the mountains.

But it's a lot snowier and hurricanes have more impact.

What about that Chef's Salad?

FDA to require consumers be given nutritional information

Even the popcorn stand.

Even booze.

Portion sizes for some very popular foods have about doubled in the last twenty years, with the calorie load of a typical order rising more or less that same amount.

Portion distortion

Enter, an epidemic of obesity at all ages, accompanied by epidemic Type II diabetes and other health problems directly traceable to weight.

This is by no means only an American problem, but this is a step toward an American solution.

The rules will take effect a year from now, and in the meantime will face a slew of legal and political challenges.

Expect the right to shout "Totalitarianism! Dictatorship!"

The Heritage Foundation yesterday described the new rules as "A shocking power grab that ignored the plain language of the law," says The Times.

But not everybody on the right feels quite that way.

This morning on his show Joe Scarborough seemed on board.

Menu labeling became a legal requirement as part of the Obamacare package in 2010, aka The Affordable Care Act.

The FDA has been working on final regulations since then, held up constantly by fierce opposition from pizza chains and theaters.

Almost there, now.

By the way, Tom Harkin, who was involved in drafting this part of the ACA, says the regulations "closely mirror our intent."

7 changes to expect with the new calorie label law

By the way, the average woman should eat around 2,000 calories a day to maintain a healthy weight and stay healthy, all around.

For men, kick that up to about 2,200 calories.

Per day, not per meal.

Think of that when you're considering a Whopper (650 calories), small fries (238 calories), and Pepsi (140 calories) for lunch (1,028 calories, total).

Maybe you should have their Caesar with grilled chicken and dressing (450 calories) and maybe a roll.

And instead of their cinnamon roll for breakfast (300 calories) you might settle for an English Muffin (140 calories).

Guess it depends on what you plan to have for supper.

Or after supper.

Just a thought.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Bullshit makes the world go around

Half the world is insufferably stupid and the other half fantastically deluded or pretending to be.

Yes, I am thinking of religion, morals, and their offspring, political ideology.

Of these fantasies, some are more benign than others.

How different the world would be if the Buddhists had successfully proselytized Saudi Arabia before the birth of Mohammed, for example.

How much safer, less violent, and less cruel.

On the other hand, the notion that polytheism is less violent than monotheism is not true of all cases.

The religion of the Aztecs, for instance, was far more bloody than the Catholicism of the Spaniards who put an end to Aztec violence.

About the arrival of Catholicism being something of a rescue for the Native Americans of the region Mel Gibson was quite right.

Though of course he said that as a Catholic believer who thinks of missionaries as saints, martyrs, and heroes.

I was just thinking of all that horror the Spanish stopped.

As the attacks on his movie made clear, neither of us complies with the PC thought police on this point.

Interesting, isn't it, the hypocrisy of 20th Century liberals who denounce the 19th Century liberals for their conviction of the cultural superiority of the West even as they do their level best to foist their feminist and gay rights agendas on the entire world?

Rev Al returns to his roots

Have a lovely holiday.

Ferguson smolders

As for Wilson, all this can't be warming his heart toward American black people, liberals, or Democrats.

Even Fox news is running opinion pieces that assume Wilson's deed was a racist murder despite the balance of the evidence and deplore the decision of the grand jury as a miscarriage of justice.

They perpetuate the racist fantasies that have burned down the town.

The uprisings of 1968

In America, the leadership was dominated by idiot revolutionists but the demonstrators, such as myself, were draft age canon-fodder who just wanted no part of the Vietnam War.

It seems that it was different in France, where French youth had no such worries but filled the streets for genuinely leftist reasons.

Very odd that so many should have been so stupid.

Wikipedia on May 68 in France

The New York Times was and remains nostalgic and very impressed.

Paris, 68

Who is more likely to go in for concentration camps?

Americans who think like or listen to Bill Maher?

Or Muslim fans of ISIS?

Just saying.


She was always both a nitwit and a fraud, like any modern liberal.

Or any religious liberal.

When people find out they were raised in a religion of hate, be it Islam, the phony religion of the Nation of Islam, or any other, what they should do is leave that religion and spare it nothing when called upon to judge.


I know it's hard and family can be a real problem, since the people you love may be wed to the lies and hate you are trying to escape.

But there it is.

Nobody on the left would deny for a second that if you are raised by Klansmen or Nazis then as soon as you see those ideologies of hate for what they are you should abandon and even oppose them.

And that's exactly how liberals, gays, feminists, and others on the left feel to this day about Christian moral teaching regarding sex.

But Islam?

Criticism not allowed, friends.

Not for one nanosecond

Does she consider that the grand jury might be right and her bigoted judgment from Day One might have been wrong.

Not a chance.

And Salon is just the place to give her a megaphone to shout her hate and her endorsement of the criminal mobs of Ferguson.

Brittney Cooper at Salon

Go ahead, ask some more white people what they think of the race problem in America.

It's the same at Common Dreams and at most liberal sites.

Absolute certainty that Wilson was guilty and his exoneration is just another racist atrocity in the white racist hell that America is for black people and other "people of color."

The Guardian and BBC News feel the same way.

Why do Americans hate the media, again?

Against DC globalist dogma

Bacevich

These five dogmas are false, he says.

I never believed any of them.

* The presence of U.S. forces in the Islamic world contributes to regional stability and enhances American influence.

* The Persian Gulf constitutes a vital U.S. national security interest.

* Egypt and Saudi Arabia are valued and valuable American allies.

* The interests of the United States and Israel align.

* Terrorism poses an existential threat that the United States must defeat.

I think I have disbelieved all interventionist claims about US vital interests since Vietnam, or anyway since Cap Weinberger explained at the Oxford Union that the US has vital interests at stake everywhere in the world, without exception.

Against American globalismo

Pat Buchanan wisely seizes the opportunity to not write about Ferguson, writing instead and cogently about the wages of interventionism in the Maghreb and the Levant.

Buchanan

Joe Scarborough this morning was calling for much more aggressive and energetic action by America to clean up the ever worse mess caused by previous aggressive and energetic action by America.

Obtuse, if you ask me.

About that feminism thing. How's that working out with Islam?

Erdogan

Annoying to feminists as his remarks surely were, this reaction was driven by hate rather than sense.

Lawyer and women's rights activist Hulya Gulbahar said Erdogan's comments were in violation of Turkey's constitution, Turkish laws and international conventions on gender equality and didn't help efforts to stem high incidences of violence against women in Turkey.

"Such comments by state officials which disregard equality between men and women play an important role in the rise of violence against women," Gulbahar said. 

Pshaw.

"Such comments aim to make women's presence in public life — from politics to arts, from science to sports — debatable."

Erdogan, a devout Muslim, often courts controversy with divisive public comments. 

He has previously angered women's groups by stating that women should bear at least three children and by attempting to outlaw abortion and adultery.

Yet another unsurprise

Most Police Shootings Don't End With Prosecutions

You are supposed to believe that most should end in prosecutions.

That is the expectation at this liberal site.

I don't doubt that more should.

But most?

Most likely should not.

Like the one in Ferguson.

Still more unsurprises.

All over the web, liberal and Democratic sites are endorsing the line that this has been a terrible miscarriage of justice and Watson murdered Brown, despite the grand jury.

The rabble extend way up into high places, in this country.

I don't remember.

Did the liberals insist that O J was framed, back in the day?

For the record, I thought the cops should have been convicted in the Rodney King case.

"That's how we were trained" is no more valid an excuse for a cop than it was for the einsatzgruppen or the guards at Auschwitz.

The police do commit crimes for which they are never punished, as do others, and that is disturbing.

Police cameras should help, but police crime can no more be eliminated than crimes by humans in general, or any other specific group of humans.

All the same, in this particular case nothing supports the idea this particular cop was in the wrong but racial bigotry against whites, hatred of cops by criminals and their families, and liberal class bigotry against whites of the lower orders.

What will these events teach white America?

The same things they always have taught white America.

American blacks hate white Americans so furiously they occasionally break out into senseless and devastating violence.

So if you're white don't live among black Americans.

Don't send your kids to school with black kids.

Don't shop or visit or go anywhere lots of blacks are likely to be.

Don't trust black people not to do you in as soon as they think they safely can, in whatever ways they think they safely can.

Don't expect to have black friends or anything like an open and honest relationship with blacks at work or elsewhere.

They will cut you down screaming they can't help themselves, they can't endure it that you hate them so much.

Democrats, be glad the grand jury held off until after the election, no doubt at the behest of the Democratic prosecutor, or the Republican wave would have been even higher.

Absolutely no surprises here. Move along.

Ferguson: No indictment

Far from being strong enough to support a conviction, the evidence did not even measure up to the much less demanding standard of supporting an indictment.

Obama speaks

He supported law and order without enthusiasm though not quite without conviction while suggesting with his entire demeanor that the decision was unjust and he was among those "disappointed and even angry."

His focus was on the need for change, and it was obvious the change he thought necessary was relief from white racism.

He spent much time on urging the police of Ferguson to exercise restraint, carefully distinguishing those who are violent from those exercising understandable and lawful protest of this grand jury decision.

He observed that the police are essential and necessary, especially for crime ridden black neighborhoods, but promised progress and change in getting rid of bad apples and otherwise making law enforcement "more fair."

He did not scold the black community for jumping to conclusions like mirror images of white racist trash in the bad old days of the deep South and behaving like thugs and criminals.

Instead, his view is that police need to earn the trust and respect of the black community.

Unbelievably but not at all surprisingly, a hundred and fifty years later he invoked the legacy of slavery and said outright that black "mistrust" of white police is "understandable."

He urged the AG and federal agencies to work with states and cities on reforming the police to make them better, more racially representative, more deserving of the trust of the communities they police, and so on.

Apart from his unenthusiastic rejections of violence and looting, he had not one word to say in criticism of the acts or attitudes of the black community throughout this entire, wholly unsurprising display of black hatred of whites.

Riots, businesses trashed, building burned in Ferguson

[Update.

All the same, this is excessive.

John Hayward at Human Events on Ferguson

/Update.]

Morning Joe's chief topic for the ride to work seemed to be events in Iraq and Syria.

PS.

If both the grand jury refused to indict and AG Holder's Justice Department can't find enough to proceed for a civil rights violation you would think Holder and his boss both just might be open to the thought that the grand jury got it right and they had it wrong from the start, just like the black protesters and rioters and criminals of Ferguson.

Doesn't look it, though.

Perhaps they justify their own refusal to be guided by the evidence with the thought that sometimes the guy is guilty but you just can't prove it.

Quite true.

But how do they know the guy is guilty?

Oh, right.

He's white.

Update, 11/25.

Maybe I've been misreading him or maybe O is becoming more nuanced and cool-headed as the days pass.

He no longer seems to be channeling Rev Al in his worst days.

Not at all.

Monday, November 24, 2014

"France has not lost the war"

An astute French critic once described the author of Les Miserables, famous for his self esteem, as "a lunatic who thinks he's Victor Hugo."

That would be an apt way to describe the general, "a lunatic who thinks he's Charles De Gaulle."

Fenby's biography is very insightful.

De Gaulle dreamed he was a masculine Joan of Arc, a savior of France.

1940 created circumstances in which a man thus deluded could, by dint of unshakable conviction, become the man he dreamt he was.

Reading The General.

Post election bullshit

CATO says Corbett wasn't conservative enough and alienated his base

He was way too conservative and alienated everybody but rich people and hillbilly conservatives with his giant tax cuts and his defunding of education, public transport, and more.

CATO says his skinflint Obamacare deal with Washington earned him no votes and lost him a good many.

Phooey.

Giuliani is right on the facts, of course.

Giuliani won't back down

But mostly I'm posting this so you can see the picture of him TPM selected to head its post.

Tyson is a racist jackass and I gather he seriously annoyed Rudy G.

Short, worth a look.

Sensible precautions

US, world, looking past Ebola to the next big bug

What's wrong with Americans?

Jesus. Why take this crap?

Top Iranian Negotiator ‘Frequently Shouts’ at Kerry, Western Officials

USA Today

Because the O administration is ready to swallow all that and much, much more to be able to come out with a deal that looks like they have averted the danger of Iran getting The Bomb.

This morning the news says the American delegation (led by John Kerry, personally) is going to seek an extension of the negotiations beyond the supposed absolutely final, no-kidding, ultimate and last deadline imposed on Iran, in order to avoid admitting failure.

War or not war?

Some Western opinionists claim that with no deal Israel will ignore US cautions and attack Iran's nuclear sites.

That, they think, will spark a war that the US will feel (be?) obliged to join on the Israeli side.

And while this administration would not act militarily to stop Iran getting nukes, though the official position is that military action is on the table in case Iran does not at last comply with Western demands, I frankly can't see O refusing to protect Israel, no matter what Israel does to provoke Iran.

Talks extended 7 months at American request

We'll see how this goes.

A GOP investigation of Benghazi clears the admnistration

AP reports

A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

But nobody ever believed any of that but conservatives in tinfoil hats.

In contrast, the following is more broadly relevant, I think.

I had more than suspected bad faith, personally, and I am not sure this is wholly satisfactory.

There is room to suspect she and they cherry-picked the explanation they wanted.

Whether they did or not, the administration and the Democrats behaved disgracefully in viciously condemning and illegally punishing, through egregious abuse of power, the maker of an internet video for his protected free expression.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory, the report found. 

That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inaccurately assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest. 

But it was intelligence analysts, not political appointees, who made the wrong call, the committee found. 

The report did not conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

The impartial observer as the standard of morality

The decisions of an impartial observer in cases of unavoidable conflict of interest, if indifferent, cannot provide the rule of right action because, not being partial he has no basis for a decision unless given a rule.

"Toss a coin" is nobody's idea of the fundamental rule of morality.

And how could his own mere impartiality provide reason to think his interference could make things better?

You say he will maximize utility among those affected?

But now you have given him a rule.

You have told him both to decide and how to decide.

And even if you had not (though I repeat you have) why would his manner of deciding be the rule for morality?

And wouldn't any parent tell you that is not the way to decide such cases; you must instead scrupulously observe the rule of equality?

Friday, November 21, 2014

Well, that's not my anti-realism, nor my error theory.

Moral anti-realism

See the earlier posts labeled "amoralism."

Red flag, red tie

Republicans could struggle to roll back immigration changes

While they're doing that and the China environment deal they won't be attacking O-care, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and so on, and so on, and so on.

"You got nuthin'"

Officer Wilson

They don't have enough to indict him.

They don't even have enough to fire him.

But to appease the racist rage of the black people of Ferguson, incensed about the death of a young thug whose mother is also a criminal, they are desperate to get rid of him.

The same vicious left supports them as always does.

Cop killer blacks they always defend.

White cops who kill blacks they always try to destroy.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Buffalo winter

Interpol stuck on I-90 40+ hours

Interpol stuck on I-90 for 50+ hours

I'm alienated, already. But he'll do, and probably better than Hillary.

Jim Webb Announces Exploratory Committee For Presidential Run

He's an Annapolis graduate proud of his Vietnam service record as a marine 1LT awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts, and that creates a big gap between him and me.

Wikipedia

I seriously doubt we'd hit it off.

On the other hand, he appears to be to Hillary's left on working class issues and this story hints he may be less Hawkish than both Hillary and Pocahontas, all of which is to the good.

But he won't get the single women's vote and he won't seem a rock star to the young.

And he would only grudgingly get non-white support.

He sounds way too comfortable in his white skin and too inclined to run a campaign that's friendly to whites.

I don't know where he is on issues related to sex, but he doesn't seem offhand to be just what the LGBT gang were hoping for, either.

He has a liberal rating of 85% from the ADA, and you have to wonder where he lost that 15%.

Still, he seems as openly hostile to Wall Street interests as Pocahontas and would likely have considerably broader appeal than she or Hillary to white males and maybe both males in general and whites in general.

Too bad about that war record.

And while we're on the topic of annoying things about Democrats, this morning the wife left a news report for me to look at about how Obamacare defunded Medicare Advantage Plans to help cover subsidies for coverage through the exchanges, resulting in higher premiums, deductibles, and copays for seniors.

Exactly as the Republicans spent hours and hours on Fox telling seniors would happen if Obamacare passed.

This was a serious blow to a lot of people with nothing but time to watch news and vote, and understandably they did not like it one whit.

Just pointing that out in case you believed the lying liberal propaganda that senior opposition to O and the Democrats is about racism.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

No, it's pretty much their own fault


Phooey.

The party's agenda, its propaganda, and its outlook are increasingly captive to people who have little loyalty to and don't much like the white working class that was the corner-stone of the New Deal coalition.

In fact, the Democrats generally make no bones about it and not only tolerate but encourage hatred of those same whites.

The trade deal with China, the eco-deal with China, the rejection of the Canada pipeline, the big effort to legalize millions of illegals and open up the country to more low wage immigration, and repeated "rush to judgment" White House and Democrat support for racist attacks on whites falsely accused of racist crimes all are among only the latest moves to put the party in direct opposition to its New Deal base.

So far have things gone that when party leaders refer to their base these days no one thinks they are talking about labor, anymore, not even labor leaders or union members.

Everyone knows they are talking about racial and sexual minorities, some of the latter incredibly miniscule, single women, and special interest groups like the environmentalist pressure groups, many of whom the Democrats have regularly sought to please by egregiously sacrificing the interests of the working class as a whole, or anyway the white working class.

And it hasn't done the Democrats any good that no bankers or financial whiz-bangers went to jail for creating the disaster of 2008 and all of the gains of the recovery since, like most of the gains since Bill Clinton, have gone exclusively to make the upper 1% even more fabulously wealthy.

Obama is not the cause of all this, though the periodically visible and at all times unquestionable racial chip on his shoulder has not helped at all and he and his advisers, Al Sharpton especially included, are at fault for that.

And, anyway, this is not what the party folks think is the problem, and they are not spending time thinking how to win back the working class.

Any more than the conservatives understood that it was their control of the Republican Party that lost the election of 2012 for Mitt Romney and continues to limit the ability of the GOP to get a majority during presidential years.

And take a look at this, from Atrios.


But he's not writing about the label, "liberal," which is far from meaning what it used to mean to a whole lot of people, anyway.

What he's really recommending is that Democrats make a lot more of their support for working-class friendly positions so people will perceive them as friends of the little guy.

Get it?

Some Democrats understand the party needs those white working class votes back.

Labeling themselves with a word they and their enemies together have poisoned over the decades, "liberal," would actually hurt in that effort.

Update.

Just as conservatives would rather see the Republicans lose than drop their cause, to repeal over a century of progressivism, today's liberals feel the same way about the Democrats and their cause.

Or, rather, causes, I should say, since they are numerous and, to be fair, include but do not prioritize the interests of the American white working class.

Far from it!

They are themselves captives of the racist elements of their coalition whose politics are an expression of resentment, mistrust, and hatred of white people.

The Democrats, the pipeline, the unions, and the eco-activists

Dems say No to the pipeline

From the story,

Traditional blue-collar labor unions, though, desperately sought the pipeline’s approval, saying it was a test of whether the Democratic Party could be trusted on jobs.

“The majority of Democrats in the Senate and the White House just don’t get it, even though the recent election results surely should have sunk in by now. They have lost their way, their purpose and their base,” said Laborers’ International Union of North America President Terry O’Sullivan.

Mika this morning did not think much of this move, though some Democrat guests defended it.

About that deal with China

WSJ

When all else fails, try the coercive baloney

In the churches, liberal propaganda will rely both on God's will and on morality.

The Moral Issue of Climate Change

13 degrees at 0553 hrs EDT at my house

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The Beautiful and the Damned

Casual anti-Semitism, casual contempt for women, though it's certainly not misogyny.

Or perhaps I read him too harshly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Keep it in your pants

S Africa to spend $2bn on Aids drugs

6 of 54 millions are infected.

The world's largest AIDS epidemic.

Death of a fine actor

Japanese actor Ken Takakura dies

I remember his face and that he was very good, but not what I've seen him in.

It's still winter in the 'burg.

16 degrees, again.

8:06 pm, EDT.

Is he sincere, though unfashionable? Or is this smoke disguising simple opposition to Ocare, despite his claims to the contrary?

Turley joins GOP against O

Turley is indeed a liberal.

On the whole, unflinching constitutional rectitude would undermine pretty much everything based on equal protection and absolutely everything based on incorporation.

And then we might all have to take another look at the constitutional righteousness of major progressive achievements from Social Security right up through Medicare and Medicaid all the way up to Ocare.

O is pushing things too far, I agree.

But T is playing a dangerous game, for a liberal.

Scarborough demands McCaskill condemn threats to Wilson and his family. And she does.

Scarborough vs McCaskill

From the story,

McCaskill pointed out that even if Wilson is acquitted by the grand jury, he may face federal civil rights charges later on. 

Everything coming from the FBI and other involved federales says not.

She then began to explain why the black community's "rush to judgment" in the case against Wilson was understandable when Scarborough cut in.

As well he should have done.

But her responses to his demands concerning the threats are just what they should have been, apart from the "goes without saying" dodge.

That means left to herself she was going to leave any condemnation of those threats unsaid so as not to displease black voters of the Democratic Party base, as the White House may yet, as Al Sharpton may yet, and as Holder may yet.

Except if they leave such condemnations unspoken it will be an outrage and very likely because they personally share the "black community's" racist "rush to judgment" in the case, and not merely to avoid displeasing black voters.

We have seen O react like a true race man several times, as though he was a twin of Reverend Al or maybe Reverend Wright, when that racial chip on the shoulder has just gotten too heavy to carry without blurting out, even for him.

Remember the Gates affair?

When every white liberal in the country was egging O on, in the spirit of Rev. Al?

Anyway, what makes this interesting to the folks at TPM is that Scarborough is quite distressed, even angry (he "rages," they say) about the threats.

People have publicly put a price on the policeman's head and the heads of family members.

They clearly disapprove of his ire.

Winter begins in Pittsburgh

16 degrees in my driveway this morning.

Roads, sidewalks, bridges, and lawns coated with snow.

When I got to the city I was interested to note they had put down sand.

They haven't used sand on the roads since I got here in 1975, as I recall.

The strategy there and in the 'burbs has been to alternately lay down salt and scrape the roads down to the blacktop.

If the strategy is shifting to putting sand in the snow and not scraping down to the black top drivers will need to stop relying on their all weather radials and start using snow tires in winter.

Been a very long time since I used snow tires in winter.

The liberals preparing to side with rioters, murderers, and criminals?

Well, at the very least to endorse the view they have taken from the beginning that this was by no means a cop acting in self-defense but a racist white cop murdering an innocent, unarmed black teenager.

And to insist the authorities have lied, covered up the crime, and justified once again black hatred.

Liberals and black activists are already saying that, all over the net, in preparation for the crimes they intend to condone and justify, if not personally commit.

Getting ready for Ferguson

Governor activates NGs

The order came hours after dozens of protesters demanded the indictment of Wilson, marching and chanting through the business district of Clayton, where the county government and prosecutor’s office are located.

The protest, taking place as wintry temperatures dipped into the the low 20s, marked the second consecutive day of demonstrations as the region and country await a decision from the grand jury.

Protesters have spent weeks planning acts of civil disobedience to take place if Wilson is not indicted — an outcome that is widely expected.

Gun sales are way up.

He was right then, and is wrong now

O in February, 2013, explaining why he could not do what he is now about to do.

“The problem is, is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed.”

Obama on immigration reform by executive fiat

It's flat unconstitutional, and executive constitutional disobedience is the most dangerous and undesirable kind.

If there's anything the Framers never ever wanted to see in America it's a runaway chief executive.

Even what he did about "dreamers" was unconstitutional and deplorable on that account, I think.

On Morning Joe today even Mika B was clearly not supportive of O's flip-flop on this.

As for the politics of the thing, speculation by guests on the show was that he is actually personally angry at the Republicans, as well he might be after all these years of abuse - some of it perfectly deserved but most of it not at all.

The thought is that with two years left and no shot at the office again he's ready to cross lines and spoiling for a fight.

Also, the prospect of Ted Cruz getting into the White House in 2016 with radical Republican majorities in both houses, taking Obamacare apart and them sharpening the knives for the Great Society and the New Deal, does not move him to back off.

On the contrary, it was suggested that he has no alternative, given how badly the Democrats will need enthusiastic support from Hispanics in 2016.

Letting it slide would cost the Democrats too many minority voters without winning any white voters, is the thought.

In other words, what's in his mind is still the Democrats' motivate minority voters and to hell with the white voters strategy.

That approach supposes he can win enough minority votes in this way to make up for the white votes this will actually lose for the Democrats.

What happened two weeks ago indicates maybe not.

Though it could be still his least bad move, I suppose.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Makes you want to learn Latin

Carpe diem.

Haven't read Horace in a very long time.

To his coy mistress.

To the virgins.

Liberal-endorsed racist rioters and cop killers

FBI warns, be on the lookout across the country.

Where is Tom Wolfe when you need him?

Why not "cunt riot"?

Because "cunt" is derogatory, demeaning, misogynist, and sexist despite (because of?) D H Lawrence while "pussy" is liberating and empowering despite (or because of?) Ian Fleming.

Women, what with all that hormonal stuff going on, make no sense at all, and this is their idea.

So why ask why?

But, as I have noted before, the ability to make people accept egregious idiocy as sensible or even profound is a valuable proof to all concerned of who has power.

Hence the reasons they give for marching us to war are almost always unspeakably stupid.

Another PC lie from BBC

36 million slaves in the world, today.

Except not.

It's a lie, and the pussy rioters at BBC are happy to help, as they frankly explain.

The report defines slaves as people subject to forced labour, debt bondage, trafficking, sexual exploitation for money and forced or servile marriage.

It uses slavery in a modern sense of the term, rather than as a reference to the broadly outlawed traditional practice where people were held in bondage and treated as another person's property.

Who controls language controls values.

Numerous lefty sites have echoed the story that, in good modern feminist form, assimilates arranged marriages to sexual trafficking and, oh yes, slavery.

Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette were married by parental arrangement when just entering puberty.

Marie actually wore the pants in their early years, including sexually, so maybe that tells us who was the slave of whom.

Or were both slaves of their parents and the system?

Well, metaphorically, maybe.

But surely no more than anyone else.

And remember Fiddler on the Roof?

If you don't yet loathe lawyers, well, just watch an episode or two of this

How to Get Away with Murder

An engrossing script, convincing acting, and an absolutely horrific representation of what lawyers do and how they view what they do.

Remember the story of Hillary's successful defense of a rapist thug by intentionally making the jury believe the victim was indiscriminately promiscuous, though she had neither the least idea nor the least concern whether such beliefs would be true, and in fact they were not?

Her strategy was referred to, as I recall, as basically "slut shaming."

Republicans retailed the story as further proof, if that could possibly be needed, that Hillary is an unscrupulous, ambitious woman who will let nothing stand between her and success.

That caught on for a while and then a number of irate and obtuse lawyers were moved to defend her by insisting that's the job, that's how the system works, that's what lawyers do.

Earth to lawyers. Yes, we got that.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

This has got to stop

Martin Salia, doctor critically ill with Ebola, is flown from Sierra Leone to U.S.

He is a citizen of Sierra Leone with permanent residency in the US and an American wife.

Update.

He has died.

So, of all those sick with Ebola and treated in the US, two out of three blacks have died, but no whites and no Asians.

Farrakhan must be right, eh?

Also unconstitutional?

Congress writes the budget and decides what money can be spent for what.

Not the president.

Needless to say, liberals are thrilled.

Like runaway Supremes, the filibuster, and democracy itself, the imperial presidency is only a problem if it works for the right and only of value if it works for the left.

Obama Is About to Make the World's Biggest Pledge to Help Poor Countries Fight Climate Change

Just another bone for Ted Cruz to gnaw on.

No, it was Negro Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Cretans, Mesopotamians, or Greeks. Or all of them together.

Muslims discovered America

Joke's on you, Bill


The wife and I pulled the D lever in PA and it made not a whit of difference.

The only contested election on our ballots was for governor and the Dem won that one in a 2 to 1 landslide.

Truth to tell, our votes have never made a difference and never will.

Not since either of us began voting decades ago.

Not in any contest or with regard to any ballot question.

Ever.

Get used to it.

Update, later that same day.

Facticity.

Look it up.

The past is not of our choosing.

Neither is the present.

Neither are our bodies or our very selves.

And we have no fulcrum big enough to move the world.

Well, not as much as we flatter ourselves.

"My name is Ozymandias . .  . "

Anyway, a little closer to the point, these are not the parties or the issues I would have wanted to face.

But historically speaking it could have been a lot worse.

And as far as I can tell they will be, for Americans, again.

As we have seen in recent decades, rising tides need not lift all boats.

In coming times, for ordinary people, America is going to be a lot more
like Brazil.

And voters will not be able to stop it.

Talk about an irrelevant charade.

On the other hand

On second thought, it could be the radicals like Cruz will use the same methods no matter what the issue.

So maybe if O throws them issues like immigration and the Chinese treaties to waste their energies on he can protect Obamacare, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, etc.

He will have things that are very, very important to them to trade with.

But the selection of issues, essentially racial and anti-American, is unfortunate and will hurt the Democrats in the next election.

Just part of the increasing alienation of white America from the party of FDR, brought about by the heirs of 1968.

Why GOP’s “amnesty” freakout is a horrifying omen

Nobody can really know how this might play out, either way.

A big thing very wrong with Hillary

Hillary’s Sheldon Adelson

Did this happen? Quite a display of feminazi power, eh?

Dear Comet, Please Kill Us

He didn't dare to call them bitches.

Dreher, I mean.

Gee, why don't people vote for Democrats?

I just can't understand it.

The argument of the president's lawyers is more odious than I thought

It's not based on the pardon power but on prosecutorial discretion stretched to the point of being a license to refuse to enforce laws at his own option.

The Great Immigration Betrayal

Racist America

In living memory these were children's schoolyard rhymes.

Eenie meanie miney moe.
Catch a nigger by the toe.
If he hollers let him go.
Out pops y o u.

And

Pink, pink, you stink
Like a nigger in the sink.

Not for many decades, though.

The shoe is on the other foot, and officially, elite sanctioned race hatred is hatred of whites by non-whites, especially blacks.

A review of liberal blogs still looking at the elections shows a rising fury at white people, male white people, old white people, and just plain white people.

The hatred in the hearts of these people is what's wrong with the Democratic Party and the liberal movement, so of course they can't see it.

Screaming their racism is so important to these people that they are cheering O for his AG nominee and his impending unconstitutional move on immigration and with their usual despicable projection denouncing the rising opposition to both for racism.

As for the polite voices of establishment liberals, well, here's one of those.

Talk about unintended, even oblivious irony.

When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 4

China

American policy toward China is as absurd as possible, the very opposite of what it should be.

While maintaining alliances against that country that cause constant friction and perpetuate Cold War enmity we sacrifice much to make it richer and more powerful compared to ourselves and all its neighbors.

Reading Fenby

De Gaulle's feelings [about France] went beyond simple pride.

He vaunted nationalism as the 'most generous and disinterested of feelings' and quoted approvingly the saying of the militant polemicist Paul Deroulade, that 'the man who does not love his mother more than other mothers and his own country more than other countries loves neither his mother nor his country.'

The General.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

The best beards look like something out of Duck Dynasty

Beards

Tired of my Van Dyke, I'm letting the rest grow back.

I'm returning to a full beard.

But I've never really gone for the serious length.

Perhaps my beard is too thin for that.

But who can deny the longer the better?

Friday, November 14, 2014

Was FDR really that stupid?

How could anyone have been so delusional about the Russian tyrant by then already drenched in so much blood?

A fresh start

[Per Kissinger] “America’s favorable geography and vast resources facilitated a perception that foreign policy was an optional activity.” 

Because U.S. principles are assumed to be universal, the inclination to cooperate is assumed to be at least generally latent. 

Hence Franklin Roosevelt’s reported assurances to his former ambassador to Moscow, William Bullitt: “I think if I give [Stalin] everything that I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige , he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace.”

This is the mind that decided we needed to fight in Europe and dragged the nation into it?

And to this day liberals revere FDR for that.

Damn him for that

Liberals ought to damn Wilson for getting us into The Great War and FDR for getting us into its sequel, World War Two, even more than they damn LBJ for getting us into Vietnam (though actually it was JFK, but never mind).

But they don't.

How Roosevelt Wrangled His Party — And America — Into World War II

In fact they keep praising Roosevelt for dragging a totally unwilling country into that war.

Try to imagine them praising LBJ for using the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, very nearly a total hoax, to stampede the country into war.

Wikipedia amusingly reports this topic with transparent and utterly conventional - and utterly lefty (see the parts about Franco and the Spanish Civil War) - pro-war bias.

US Neutrality Acts

And yet, we entered WW2 too late to really save the Jews.

Not too late to save Joe Stalin, though.

Nor to impose on Germany a peace far more draconian than anything even the craziest Frenchman had wanted to write into Versailles, a treaty that since then American liberals have labelled too harsh and anti-German, frequently blaming it (and the French) for the rise of Hitler and ultimately for World War Two.

Why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Roosevelt and Churchill confer, map out short- and long-term goals

When this meeting happened we were officially neutral and Roosevelt had been blatantly ignoring the letter and intent of US neutrality legislation for some time.

Not a peep out of him or Churchill about the nations of Eastern Europe under Stalin's heel thanks to his nonaggression pact with Hitler.

Unless I missed something, and I don't think I did, there was never a hint from Roosevelt, Churchill, or the liberal supporters of war that Stalin was also an aggressor and a monster and at that time had long been a much bloodier and horrific tyrant.

Obama's "climate deal" is a plot to make China richer and more powerful than America

Democratic presidents keep proposing plans that would do nothing significant about global warming - assuming there is really anything that needs to be or could be done - but would seriously hurt the American economy and in equal measure advantage economies of China, India, and other currently comparatively poor countries.

One might note at the same time that such a policy would tremendously advantage those American plutocrats and American financial interests that have so heavily invested in China, India, or elsewhere in what used to be called "The Third World" that they have plenty to gain by a policy that intentionally hurts America to the advantage of those countries.

Plutocrats and huge financial interests that are part of the American Big Money Elites whose influence on American politics by way of their near total control of the major American parties far exceeds that of mere voters.

Sooner or later it might occur to somebody to mention that perhaps this is not a coincidence but is in fact the whole point of the exercise.

The US-China Climate Change Deal Is Terrible; Fortunately, It Doesn't Matter

I have said it before but it bears repeating.

A patriotic policy would seek to preserve American economic and military preeminence, particularly with regard to so potentially dangerous and certainly hostile a power as China, for as long as possible, at least by fair means if not by foul.

The policy of the Democrats in this matter and this deal by Barack Obama in particular are flat out contrary not only to the economic interests of the American 99% but also the national security interests of the United States, and ought to be denounced accordingly.

PS.

In case anyone wonders why the American liberals would be so hot for a treaty that is so obviously contrary to the interests of nearly every American the answer is that protecting or advancing the interests of the American 99% is not their concern and has not been since at least as far back as Bill Clinton's first free trade deal.

Their concern is primarily for the interests of the global 99%, these days, and in this matter of global warming treaties as well as in anything affecting trade and immigration policy what is truly uppermost in their minds is how to advantage the global 99% at whatever cost to the American 99%.

And while that concern is mitigated by their need to look better to the American 99% than the Republicans during election cycles it is certainly not overcome or even much interfered with.

Ask anyone.

The American left from the most ordinary liberals through the reddest radicals are all cosmopolitans, now, and none of them national.

An attitude we see as well behind liberal globalist interventionism, economic, political, and military.

It isn't only the political right that wants to sacrifice American wealth and power to global interests at the cost of Americans.

It's everybody, though occasions differ, as do methods and manner.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

De Gaulle

The General, Jonathan Fenby.

Explaining his refusal to take cover when German shells were falling around him in 1944, he told an official: 'I have a providential mission to fulfill. I think nothing will happen to me. If it does, I will have been mistaken.'

Even GW thought as much.

Nothing quite like a conviction of divine election to elevate your self-esteem to the height of the job.

For France, De Gaulle was a fortunate lunatic.

When we consider Stalin and Mao and so many others, we see how fortunate.

He was a madman who made much of the world share his delusion that even after 1940 France was a great power.

And he made many of those who were not in the least fooled play along, or at least tolerate his play-acting.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Discretion is better than candor

For a while, when I was in grad school at Duquesne, I lived on campus and sometimes had lunch in the caf with a nun who was getting a master's in English.

We were interestingly simpatico as regards our literary tastes, easily understanding each other's explanations why we liked the novels of author X or didn't care for those of Y.

But she was an ardent Democrat during a period of my life in which I only voted at all because another Democrat offered me a six pack to vote for Bill Clinton.

That was a bit later, I think.

Anyway, the thing is she once remarked with evident, innocent enthusiasm all over her face that she hoped Jesse Jackson would be nominated by her party, and asked my view.

Young fool that I was - I remained a young fool unusually late in life - I blurted the truth that I thought that idea a terrible mistake and that he wouldn't have a prayer of winning.

Clearly distressed, she asked if I meant America was not ready for a black president, a euphemistic way of asking if I thought America too racist.

No, I explained, it wasn't that.

It was that Jackson seemed such an uneducated, ignorant thug with the sound and look of the ghetto criminal all over him.

And that was the last of our charming lunches.

But it was the truth.

In contrast, Obama is smart as a whip, excellently well schooled, and has nothing of the ghetto or the thug about him.

And if anything he's more articulate than most presidents have been, and perhaps usually more comfortable in front of crowds or cameras than anyone since JFK.

Jackson, I may have mentioned to that nun, always sounded like a man talking through a mouthfull of mashed potatoes.

Winter

The Farmer's Almanac says winter this year will be cold, snowy, and long.

For Pittsburgh, this year, winter starts with a freeze tonight and snow tomorrow, and the same every night and every day through the weekend.

No, not astronomical winter, not calendar winter.

Meteorological winter.

OK, this is not on O, it's on Putin

Advancing gleefully, enthusiastically deeper into Cold War II.

Russia's bombers to conduct regular patrols, ranging from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico

But if we demand why he answers with a question of his own, why do we need to put NATO naval forces in the Baltic States, air force units in the ex-Soviet breakaway stans, etc.

The supporters of race hatred strike again

FBI Pushed MLK to Kill Himself Over Threatened Sex Stories

Liberals periodically publish this story in screaming headlines and prose of breathless outrage.

Again.

And again.

And again.

The moral is always just what you would imagine.