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June 22, 2017
In 2016 the Western political system had a stroke.
The American political system is operating in the curious condition of being an impaired state.It's not really thinking -- about China, Russia, Syria, Kurdistan. It's not really thinking about anything except half remembered slogans from 1968. Like a person afflicted by a stroke, it can't take a consistent view of external reality because it's regressing into atavisms by a loss of brain function. Impaired
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:56 AM | Your Say (1)
Fake News. At the same time of the political putsch, the mainstream media outlets,
in particular the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and the major networks, via broadcasts and social media, began an orchestrated campaign of defamation and delegitimization.The crazier and more diverse the media mythologies, the better. Melania Trump was a former call girl and illegal alien. Ivanka Trump was peddling her business wares from the West Wing. Jared Kushner was a profiteering collusionist. Steve Bannon was a racist, Sebastian Gorka an unrepentant Nazi. Baron Trump was a spoiled, autistic child. The late elder Trump had run a racist campaign for mayor. And on and on. Resistance & Regime Change: Any Means Necessary – Lies, Leaks, Violence | National Review
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:41 AM | Your Say (8)
June 20, 2017
Crime simply does not pay as well as politics or banking.
That may be the way to look at something like the Clinton Foundation and, coming soon, the Obama Foundation.These are not explicitly criminal organizations, but they certainly play outside the spirit of the laws. Obama is out of office and prohibited from running again, but he still controls the Democratic party. The Clintons would be in charge, if not for the fact that the voters took their under boss out in the Tuesday Night Massacre, otherwise known as the presidential election. Even so, the Clinton Family is still a player. Late Phase Capitalism | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:43 AM | Your Say (5)
June 19, 2017
Bodymore, Murderville”
Most whites have become habituated to the reality of life in this part of the world.Everyone, white and black, knows the reality on the street. The blacks with anything on the ball do exactly like the whites and that’s put distance between themselves and the black ghetto. That does not stop the Progressive maniacs from ranting about racism, but they do it from high up in the towers of their whites-only neighborhoods. As a result, no one hears them and so they can be ignored. The Killing Season | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:38 AM | Your Say (3)
New Blog Arriving Soon
Some have asked, "Gee whiz, Unca Gerard, where is that thar new blog you keeps a promisin'?" I am hoping for sometime tonight. Hoping. We've been having some issues getting this winged dinosaur landed.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:23 AM | Your Say (10)
June 18, 2017
Drink Tea
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:28 AM | Your Say (3)
We would love to cut a deal with the noble indigenous peoples across the Earth—
you can have your Navajo panties and aboriginal dot paintings and every last freaking burrito on the planet so long as you give us back our computers and cell phones and cars and indoor plumbing and electricity and air conditioners. Deal?Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (7)
If people go their separate ways such a divorce would be an astonishing defeat for the Left.
As late as 2016 it was possible to imagine an America led to a "progressive" future by Hillary Clinton;an EU guiding all of Europe to a similar destiny and the G20 taking the whole world to the same destination. Indeed everyone told they were fated to follow an Arc of History. Yet after Brexit, Trump and G-Zero it is no longer possible to visualize this outcome. A blue-red division would confirm the failure to create a "progressive" world. No conceivable rollback will ever put Humpty Dumpty together again. Opportunity
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:49 AM | Your Say (2)
June 17, 2017
Trump, Julius Caesar, and killing tyrants
The Roman lower classes, with whom Caesar was popular, became enraged that a small group of aristocrats had sacrificed Caesar. -- neoneoconPosted by gerardvanderleun at 7:28 PM | Your Say (1)
Execute Trump? Nah, You First.
Draining the swamp means not only ejecting Trump from the presidency,but also bringing himself and everyone assisting in his agenda up on charges of treason. They must be convicted (there is little room to doubt their guilt). And then — upon receiving guilty verdicts — they must all be executed under the law. Impeachment Is No Longer Enough; Donald Trump Must Face Justice | HuffPost [Retreived from GoogleCache after it was expunged from the Huffington Post]
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:07 AM | Your Say (9)
June 16, 2017
A bee in her bonnet
At first it wasn't clear why the bees chose the blue Nissan car and he and a colleague were trying to determine whether this was just a temporary stop or a new nesting site. But as the bees moved to the inside of the bonnet, filling every nook and cranny, things got more serious. "They're building a lot of wax in there now, and of course once they start doing that, they're reluctant to leave it, because it's the start of building a house. They put a lot of effort into producing the wax," Coulson told Hull Daily Mail. "I've got a feeling this might be their chosen permanent home."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:13 AM | Your Say (17)
[Bumped] "They send one of ours to the hospital, we send two of theirs to the morgue."
Baseball Shooter a Big Wake-Up Call for the Left | Roger L. SimonRobespierre is alive and well in 2017 USA.
This pathetic character in Alexandria is, now was, the left's ungoverned id. By any means necessary -- that's for sure. They will undoubtedly try to shove him under the rug as quickly as possible, just one more aberrant individual to be forgotten, just one obscure Bernie volunteer gone bad. Sanders did his best to separate himself within minutes of the revelation. Yes, it's undoubtedly true that this was just one rotten apple, but it's also true that only five years ago Bernie was recommending Venezuela -- now ground zero for starvation, kidnapping and murder -- as a path for us to emulate.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 4:51 AM | Your Say (15)
June 15, 2017
Greatest antitheft device when the thieves are millenials:
Man leads Jeffco deputies on low-speed chase in stolen flatbed truck after unable to get out of 1st gear The driver - later identified as 29-year-old Randy Dewayne Vert - refused to stop and continued driving south on Center Point Parkway, Christian said. Vert was apparently unfamiliar with the complexities of a modern manual transmission.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:53 PM | Your Say (12)
The natural impulse of a political system in institutional crisis is to dig in.
NASA, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the university system and the United Nations rule us from the past. Public life has become a museum of memes from which nothing can escape without a mummy hand dragging the fugitive back into the darkened interior. It is perhaps no coincidence the two most popular leaders of the Western left, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, might credibly impersonate Boris Karloff. They are here to lead us back to 1968. Stuck
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:38 AM | Your Say (1)
June 14, 2017
The Japanese. Nuked Too Much... or Trying to Get Their Mouths Around Fujiyama Volcano Plate
Since we’d already become somewhat desensitized to the initially unsettling sensation of peeling strips of meat off the top of the shaft, we mercilessly crushed the egg, sending viscous, gooey liquid running down to the base of the meat rod.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:08 AM | Your Say (6)
The power of the press is a figment of the imagination -- humbug --
Oscar Diggs behind the curtain projecting the image of Oz the Great and Powerful!The Internet did not kill the power of the newspapers. It was suicide. And not just because most of them had Marxist editorials, editors, and reporters. Newspapers lost their sense of community -- and their credibility -- when the heirs to hometown publishers didn't want the paper, sold it to a chain for $1,000 per subscriber to a chain -- Gannett, Knight-Ridder, Thomson -- and moved on. Don Surber: Craigslist killed newspapers
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:16 AM | Your Say (10)
When terrorists enter your children’s school and begin to execute them...
will the gun ban (you favored) in school that prevented abiding staff and teachers from saving your child, come to mind as a good idea?If the answer to any or all of these and many more reasonable questions, is 'yes,' then you may be a delusional liberal, and likely a coward, and almost as big a threat to our nation as the terrorists who are at war with us." - Morgan K. Freeberg
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:54 AM | Your Say (5)
"Happy birthday, Mr. President...."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:35 AM | Your Say (0)
First truth which has been grounded into dust, must spring forth from the earth again.
At the present time . . .he who practices loving-kindness is esteemed and sought after, while he who champions the truth in word and in deed is persecuted and shunned.For men desire to base their affairs on everything except the one incorruptible truth which has been set down before us by God , and therefore these affairs have no permanent value . . . only when love and truth meet together, only when men come to understand that the highest act of loving-kindness is to bring men to know and practice the truth, only then will the marriage of love and truth produce that condition on earth in which everyone and everything will occupy the place which has been assigned to it by the will of God. Truth and Peace - Men Of The West
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:01 AM | Your Say (1)
June 13, 2017
What happened to Nuclear Winter?
John Maddox, editor of Nature, repeatedly criticized its claims; within a year, Stephen Schneider, one of the leading figures in the climate model, began to speak of "nuclear autumn." It just didn't have the same ring. A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a "year without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it happened. Raconteur Report: Aliens Cause Global Warming by Michael Crichton
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:35 PM | Your Say (5)
If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus.
I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks.Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. - - Woodpile Report
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:16 PM | Your Say (1)
Joe Biden’s niece dodges jail after $100K credit card scam
She walks on a major felony? Of course she did. And who believes she'll keep her end of the deal? In her defense, we're assured she's "a very complicated girl who has a lot of feelings and a lot of issues." Oh ... okay. That explains everything. Hugs from all the little people. Woodpile ReportPosted by gerardvanderleun at 9:15 AM | Your Say (1)
Why is English so weirdly different from other languages?
There is exactly one language on Earth whose present tense requires a special ending only in the third‑person singular.I’m writing in it. I talk, you talk, he/she talk-s – why just that? The present‑tense verbs of a normal language have either no endings or a bunch of different ones (Spanish: hablo, hablas, habla). And try naming another language where you have to slip do into sentences to negate or question something. Do you find that difficult? | Aeon Essays
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:41 AM | Your Say (6)
The “incident” is the mass shooting by a Muslim fanatic at an Orlando homosexual club that resulted in hundreds wounded and 49 dead.
A year ago, the life force of 49 carbon based life forms ceased somewhere on planet earth.Memorial services were planned comewhere to let Hate know that he or she, the sex and gender preference of Hate is unknown, that it was not going to win, whatever winning means, in the context of a war against an abstract concept. Media operations have posted stories about the triggering incident along with images of the faithful shaking their fist at Hate, which they appear to hate a lot, but in the good way, not the hateful way. The “incident” is the mass shooting by a Muslim fanatic at an Orlando homosexual club that resulted in hundreds wounded and 49 dead. Reading the Progressive media, you would not know that. The Irrationality Of It All | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:28 AM | Your Say (2)
What Happens if You Accidentally Damage or Destroy a Priceless Work of Art in a Museum?
Consider the case of Nick Flynn, a man who in 2006 tripped over his shoelace while walking around the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and knocked over three 17th century vases worth about £175,000 (~$225,000).
Flynn noted of the experience,I snagged my shoelace, missed the step and crash, bang, wallop. There were a million pieces of high quality Qing ceramics lying around underneath me… Although [I knew] the vase would break I didn’t imagine it would be loose and crash into the other two. I’m sure I only hit the first one and that must have flown across the windowsill and hit the next one, which then hit the other, like a set of dominos. I can say with my hand on my heart that it was not deliberate … it was just my Norman Wisdom moment, just one of those unbelievably unlucky things that can sometimes happen.--TIFO
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:14 AM | Your Say (2)
June 12, 2017
“Why did we give this bunch of clowns so very much power over our nation and our lives?”
But as the mass of voters became larger, more diverse, and less elite, those who considered themselves the best and brightest looked to transform government into something run not by those deplorable unwashed voters but by a more congenial group. As Hamburger says, “They have gradually moved legislative power out of Congress and into administrative agencies — to be exercised, in more genteel ways, by persons like … themselves.”a title="Unelected bureaucrats are running our lives" href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/12/unelected-bureaucrats-running-our-lives-glenn-reynolds-column/102750080/">Unelected bureaucrats are running our lives
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:51 PM | Your Say (3)
BUY NOW: $18,750.00
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:45 PM | Your Say (3)
General Lee Speaks: Had it Figured Out
If America attacks North Korea, or Russia, or China, we will read of it the day after. The central government, and only the central government, decides. | Fred On EverythingPosted by gerardvanderleun at 12:54 PM | Your Say (2)
June 10, 2017
The Whites of Their Eyes Are Getting Very Easy to See
It doesn’t care if you agree with it on 99.9% of the issues. It will still hang you from a lamppost in Portland or Berkeley because of that 0.1%. If you doubt that, look at how many Communists survived Stalin and Mao. Or how Joe Lieberman went from the vice presidential nominee to a right-wing extremist because he believed that terrorism was a bad thing or how Joe Manchin is an honorary Republican because he does controversial things like vote to approve a president’s cabinet nominees. There’s no room in the Democrat Party for democrats. There sure as hell isn’t any for Republicans. Sultan Knish: The Plot Against Democracy
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:10 PM | Your Say (9)
DAD AD
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:07 AM | Your Say (16)
June 9, 2017
Window gazing is best done with music in the background.
Window gazing slows the pace of a frantic life – it’s not a speed-based activity. . . .Window gazing is best done in front of a window that can be opened, so that after your mind has been opened by the provocations of solitude, you can expand the experience by hearing the sound of rain, by smelling the perfume of the air, by feeling the touch of the bold, cold breath of Mother Nature. . . . -- Looking out - Looking in . . . -Fulghum
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:51 AM | Your Say (12)
June 8, 2017
The whole Antifa movement seems to have fallen apart after that event.
Then the little guy with the goofy haircut decked the Antifa girl at that Berkeley riot.Everything about her world made sense right up until she took a right cross to the puss and fell to the ground. All she had to do was show up in the right outfit and all the bad people would go away. Then, her bluff was called. The bad man was not intimidated. She no longer had moral authority over him. Her after action comments strongly suggest she had some sort of epiphany on the way to the ground. The thing is though, the whole Antifa movement seems to have fallen apart after that event. Poor old Gavin McInness is begging them to show up at his events, but all he’s getting is some cranky coeds and a few old hippies. In one of life’s many ironies, the anti-fascists had to manufacture fascists to fight and now the alleged fascists are forced to invent anti-fascist that they can fight.The Glass Jaw | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:10 PM | Your Say (13)
Does a better example of evil exist, where people profit and parasite off of a naive and innocent people,
than modern day liberal arts and humanities colleges? The bad are so good at enslaving the stupid in this case I almost feel compelled to applaud them. They not only convince the stupid that the good are their enemy, but they also: 1. Convince the stupid they're entitled to free everything 2. Convince the stupid that nothing is ever their fault. 3. Convince the stupid they're smart. 4. Convince the stupid to enslave themselves to the state and (where I tip my hat to the bad) 5. Convince the stupid to borrow $150,000, financially crippling themselves forever, to pay for these worthless degrees.Captain Capitalism: The Case for Evil
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:27 PM | Your Say (5)
"I Have Seen My Death": The First X-Ray Photograph
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:03 PM | Your Say (0)
Billion Dollar Blues: How has the Murdochs’ fortune faired since O’Reilly was fired at FNC?
Less than two months after O’Reilly’s departure, the Murdoch family fortune has declined substantially,as investors unsure of Fox News’ future have scrambled to escape what some think is a very slowly sinking ship. According to an analysis by Forbes of the Murdochs’ fortune, the family’s net worth is estimated to have declined by more than $1 billion since April 1. Forbes reports the decline is largely due to falling stock price of 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News. On March 28, just a few weeks before O’Reilly was dismissed, the share price of 21st Century Fox was $32.44. On Friday, it was trading around $27.93, a decline of 13.9 percent. About 70 percent of the Murdoch fortune is invested in 21st Century Fox stock. — the answer is incredible – TheBlaze
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 1:54 PM | Your Say (0)
The Drama Queen Director and "The Door and the Grandfather Clock"
Then Comey found himself alone with the dreaded president. Comey's dramatic memo writing talents emerge:When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, "I want to talk about Mike Flynn." Flynn had resigned the previous day. The President began by saying Flynn hadn't done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President. ... After he had spoken for a few minutes about leaks, Reince Priebus leaned in through the door by the grandfather clock and I could see a group of people waiting behind him. The President waved at him to close the door, saying he would be done shortly. The door closed..... The President returned briefly to the problem of leaks. I then got up and left out the door by the grandfather clock, making my way through the large group of people waiting there, including Mr. Priebus and the Vice President. -- James Comey's prepared testimony - CNNPolitics.com
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 12:50 PM | Your Say (5)
June 6, 2017
As they say in the crime business, it is all fun and games until the bodies start to drop on your side.
That means the good guys better start to learn how to use the rules to their advantage.
They are entering into the phase of the game where tactics matter as much, if not more than, ideology. They’ve picked the fight and now it is time to fight. In the context of this culture war, it means waking up every day thinking about how to ruin someone on the other team. It means turning the weight of the orthodoxy against itself. Tactics and Money | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:42 PM | Your Say (4)
Here's my current plan...
The ancient software that runs American Digest seems to have taken itself into an assisted living enclave when it is being tended by the kind hosts at Hosting Matters. We are working to make it fully functional but may have to pull the plug and bring in a less ancient and more current software.In the meantime things can go wrong. Currently your comments are being recorded backstage but fail to publish in the public blog. Sigh. As President Trump remarked on the election eve: "Complicated business, folks."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:01 PM | Your Say (11)
The fact is that when Corporations go Progressive they tend to start to treat their customers like groups rather than people.
The thing is that pandering to vocal groups rather than dealing with your real customers doesn’t end well.
Especially for a company that’s selling something to the consumer. Trying to send endless virtue signals in the end will only be an attempt at feeding the insatiable. Because for those people there’s always more. Trying to be right with them when they are predisposed to think of your company as suspect at the very least and evil incarnate at worst is just chumming the water for the sharks. -- -Progressive Corporate Cultures? | The Arts Mechanical
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:58 PM | Your Say (0)
The current culture in the US is one of a carrion bird,
feeding on the remains of that created by better men.Those who rail against implicit whiteness and conjure specters of klansmen at the mere mention of dairy products enjoy the fruits of those they hate whenever they adjust the thermostat and enjoy the luxury of vehicular or air travel. What is lacking from this lifestyle and worldview is sustainability. So you want a counter-culture? – The Virginia Freeman's Society
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:54 PM | Your Say (2)
American Digest Currently Semi-FUBAR
The ancient software that runs American Digest seems to have taken itself into an assisted living enclave when it is being tended by the kind hosts at Hosting Matters. We are working to make it fully functional but may have to pull the plug and bring in a less ancient and more current software.In the meantime things can go wrong. Currently your comments are being recorded backstage but fail to publish in the public blog. Sigh. As President Trump remarked on the election eve: "Complicated business folks."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:26 AM | Your Say (1)
The problem is not "the extreme Islamist ideology", the problem is Islam.
Period.The West will continue to suffer these attacks so long as Muslims are permitted to reside in the West. There is a reason why Western nations periodically expelled troublesome minorities, and they will have to do so again if they prefer peaceful societies to diverse ones. The West will either embrace Reconquista 2.0 or it will cease to exist. Vox Popoli
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:25 AM | Your Say (4)
June 5, 2017
You know what it's all about.
Takin' the pistol out and puttin' it back in your pocket.Whippin' your way through traffic, talkin' in the dark. You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a good girl. You know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you've heard the deep-pitched voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in a boggy creek. And you're pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. You heard the muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly. You've seen the lusty Lord Donald stick a knife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades have been wrapped in white linen. Bob Dylan - Nobel Lecture
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:09 PM | Your Say (2)
“Due to the press of other events in my life, I was unable to watch the concert.
Afternoon naps just don’t take themselves.I know from past experience, however, that you can always count on pop performers to take a stand in favor of love and beauty and transgendered bathrooms. From what I’ve read they didn’t let the home team down. I’d like to further refine a suggestion I made earlier. I think just one of the performers should get a Je Suis Charlie tattoo of the Prophet. It should, however, be prominently displayed. This would be a clear gesture of defiance and courage. The Mayor of London should be photographed hugging the tat bearer. All those Muslims who claim that they’re against terrorism could also be shown hugging the tat bearer. This would reassure all of us that Muslims don’t harbor views that are antithetical to western civ and transgendered bathrooms. My earlier suggestion was that all the performers should get the tat, but, on further reflection, I think just one performer should be the designated tat bearer. It should be considered a great honor, like winning a Grammy or MTV award. Clearly, the first tat bearer should be Ariana Grande. After she gets assassinated by some madman who is no way representative of Islam, there should be another benefit concert. At that concert, the next tat bearer will be announced and will proudly show her Je Suis Charlie tat to the audience. Monster ratings and the record sales of both the current and past tat bearer will go through the roof. Not that commercial considerations would be any part of this.” KA-CHING!
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 10:24 AM | Your Say (1)
Man of the West
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:05 AM | Your Say (9)
Lucy always pulls away the football and Mr. Islam always brings down the machete.
Islam is peaceful. Just ask Rafiqi Islam, a loving husband,who told his wife that he had a present for her, blindfolded her to make it a surprise and then cut off her fingers. Then the rest of the Islam family mopped up the blood, while Mr. Islam threw her fingers into the trash, and after a few hours took her to the hospital where they warned her to tell the doctors that she had an accident. The proximate cause of this event was that Mrs. Islam wanted to continue her education and Mr. Islam being a good Emirati Muslim was not so fond of the idea. Sultan Knish: Breaking Up With Mr. Islam
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:29 AM | Your Say (2)
"For me, this is just amazing. You created a sensation out of nothing," Putin said.
"And out of this sensation, you turned it into a weapon of war against the current president. Well, this is, you know, you're just, you people are so creative over there. Good job. Your lives must be boring." -- Putin and Megyn Kelly /a>Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:27 AM | Your Say (3)
June 4, 2017
It just dawned on me at the worst possible moment
that having two females staying at your house means it is perfectly possible to run through an entire roll of toilet paper in less than 12 hours.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:31 PM | Your Say (12)
"Intelligence officers have identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in Britain as potential terrorist attackers ...
The British police simply don't have enough men to watch an insurgent army of this size and have had to cancel famous public events like the Changing of the Guards to release police from duties like crowd security or road closures. "The sad truth about the Government’s decision to deploy up to 5,000 troops on British streets is that it is an admission of failure," wrote Robert Verkaik. In particular it is a failure to anticipate the threat and provide enough resources to maintain the required superiority which makes the civilities possible.... May's plan to regulate the Internet has the advantage of being easier to implement than watching 23,000 Jihadis. When you can't do what you should then you do what you can. The West is in the 3 Stooges phase of terrorism policy. If Larry can't hit Moe, he hits Curley Joe. Sad Descent
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:38 PM | Your Say (7)
Covfefe def.
The equivalent of dangling a shiny toy in front of the Media to divert their attention from potentially important stories.Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:18 PM | Your Say (1)
The Iron Law of Institutions is:
the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself.Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution. A Tiny Revolution: Democrats And The Iron Law Of Institutions
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 7:10 AM | Your Say (2)
June 2, 2017
Okay that’s pretty good NY Post, I’ll give it you this time
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 5:15 PM | Your Say (11)
"Sad." - to put this in modern Trumpian vernacular.
As a mid-30s age conservative I have often disagreed with 90 percent of the content of this paper, but that hasn't stooped me from loving it out of the sheer literary and intellectual quality. That aura is slipping. Some devilish, penny-saving, top-down, "cutting-edge" algorithm seems to be dragging this paper into the pop-up ad, cheapo swamp of modern online journalism; valuing shiny click-bait multi-media, and poll-tested, echo-chamber-friendly, OBVIOUS content, over brave, individualistic, ORIGINAL, human brilliance. The purging of the public-editor is just another brick in the wall. The Public Editor Signs Off - The New York Times
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:48 PM | Your Say (2)
The great puzzle of the Progressive epoch is that
they have never been more than 20% of the white population, but they have dominated American life since the Civil War.
Alawites are just 12% of the Syrian population, yet they run the country. An organized and dedicated minority can punch well above its weight, if the majority is disorganized or unwilling to enforce its majority privileges. For this to happen for five generations speaks the power of fanaticism when expressed as a group behavioral trait.Do They Know? | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:53 AM | Your Say (1)
Last seen driving an old van with "Free Candy" spray painted on the side.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:48 AM | Your Say (5)
Listen well: to be a sports mascot is to wear a hair shirt.
After a while, donning the costume comes with mental consequences. Trapped within the padded, poorly ventilated headpiece of every mascot is a madman waiting to come alive. The mascot’s dream is to shed his sweaty cocoon and “be himself,” as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. We saw this most recently in the case of Mr. Met, who this week offered a lewd gesture to a fan. (It wasn’t the “middle finger,” apparently; Mr. Met, having an even number of digits, is anatomically incapable of that motion.) When Mascots Go Mad
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:44 AM | Your Say (1)
June 1, 2017
BASTA!
When I was a child, I would sometimes get worked up about something or something else; and it would go on for a time while I became more and more and more agitateduntil my father would grab my arm, stare at me with his piercing Hirst eyes under their bushy brows and say “BASTA!” Enough. For America – that time came when a comedian became a jester-barbarian to act out for her horde the parody of a great evil. So now, through my also-piercing eyes under my own less-bushy brows I channel my father as I too say, “BASTA!” From Us, On Distant Shores – Enough! | Joel D. Hirst's Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:19 PM | Your Say (1)
I don’t find atheists or atheism all that interesting.
Most of it is just a pose from people who demand the right to say controversial things, but have nothing controversial to say.
They are meta-rebels. These are people who talk about being rebellious and subversive, but never dare color outside the lines. Entertainers are fond of this style of edginess as it safely allows them to flatter their audience’s own egotistic need to see themselves as an avant-garde. Every modern TV comic falls into this category.On Atheism | The Z Blog
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:10 PM | Your Say (9)
So in addition to getting the Public Editor out of the way,
the NYT is filtering out the contributions of readers who might push back against the distortions, omissions, and fake news.That's pretty interesting, considering that Sulzberger's staff memo also justified eliminating the Public Editor on the ground that readers were performing the role of keeping the NYT principled and honest. Althouse: "New York Times picks an AI moderator over a Public Editor."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:04 PM | Your Say (1)
I was not expecting to hold my biology class in a public park last week.
But then the chief of our college police department told me she could not protect me on campus.Protestors were searching cars for an unspecified individual—likely me—and her officers had been told to stand down, against her judgment, by the college president.Racially charged, anarchic protests have engulfed Evergreen State College, a small, public liberal-arts institution where I have taught since 2003.The Campus Mob Came for Me - and You, Professor, Could Be Next
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 3:35 PM | Your Say (4)
Every Trump malapropism and gaffe raises the invidious comparison: if he's so stupid then how about the people he beat?
One can always explain a loss to Napoleon.
But how does one justify a loss to a person regarded as a moron? One can lose to a genius without shame; it's harder to avoid mortification at being worsted by covfefe. And Hillary lost to covfefe. - - Absence of fact
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 11:11 AM | Your Say (7)
A Great Time to Buy Used… But Not Because They’re Cheap [Bumped]
It will run beautifully for about ten years. Just a bit longer than those $500/month payments we were making. Then, some very expensive thing will fail, and you will be faced with a bill that’s not worth paying — or which you can’t pay. How many of you have $5,000 available for a car repair? Keeping in mind this is cash due when services are rendered, not financed at low interest, either. Meanwhile, the just-a-few-years-older cars without all that stuff can be kept going almost indefinitely — because almost anything that breaks or wears out can be fixed for a within-reason price. These are the “sweet spot” vehicles made from — roughly speaking — the early-mid 1990s through the early 2000s. | The American Spectator
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 9:35 AM | Your Say (19)
Ex-president Obama was right all along about gender inequality:
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 8:22 AM | Your Say (3)
Memo to Not-So-Secret Service: Hire James Comey. He Can Perceive "Intent."
Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017
It is always unfortunate when people make statements that could be perceived as threats,” the agency said in a statement, according to ABC News. “We don’t have the luxury of knowing a person’s intent. Each alleged or perceived threat has to be investigated thoroughly which taxes Secret Service manpower and resources that could be utilized elsewhere.”ADT to Pull Advertising from CNN After Kathy Griffin 'Beheading' PhotoFile under: "Do your job and make some examples."
Posted by gerardvanderleun at 6:31 AM | Your Say (0)