"So, Jimmy Acosta got a judge to give him his WH press pass back, at least temporarily. Does anyone else remember the old days when President Obama banned Fox News *entirely* from his press conferences, and nobody said boo? Good times."
Good morning kids. Shortened work week as we head into the home stretch towards Thanksgiving and the start of the Christmas season. Let's dive right in. First up in politics, well at long last the attempted theft of the Florida and Georgia marquee races has failed and Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp have officially won. Bloated, blithering, blathering Bolshevik bobodon Stacey "Tank" Abrams exhibited the class, grace and dignity that Democrats are noted for by refusing to acknowledge that Brian Kemp is in fact the legitimate governor of Georgia. Meh, gey henge dich mit a tzucker schtrickel un hob'n'er ziessen toydt." Also of note, geriatric Lt. Uhura doppelganger Brenda Snipes has resigned as Broward County election supervisor, presumably to spend more time with her family. Just as she was getting her life turned around, too. Damn shame, that. In all seriousness, I hope that in his new term, Governor DeSantis does everything he can to dismantle the Broward's and Palm Beach Counties' corrupt Democrat-led election rigging enterprise. Along with the rule of a just and stable law - also on the ropes in our republic - free and fair elections are the glue that holds our society together. This kind of banana republic crime is poison.
In related news, it turns out that the Dems failed to swipe at least 5 seats in Florida's state legislature, and the final one is still in a recount. Also, RINO Mia Love is now holding onto a thin margin in her race in Utah (have heard nothing new on this as of this morning). Still, on the down side, Orange County, California which was once staunchly Republican has finally turned blue, owing to the mass influx of immigrants, legal and otherwise, to the region. The usual gang of moneyed leftists are trying to buy the Mississippi Senate seat vacated by Thad Cochran for Mike Espy in his runoff against Cindy Hyde-Smith, vapid, bucktoothed, bug-eyed dolt Loopy Ocasio-Fiasco proves yet again that she is utterly clueless about how our government works and is also part of a more and more open revolt against Nancy Palsi and the geriatric generation within the Democrat Party, a newly elected Tennessee Dem is a shining example of the detest her party has for Republicans and actual Americans, what will the GOP do with its time left as a lame duck, Kamala-Toe and her anti-American rant against ICE, Leftist mega-donors are already plotting strategery for 2020, and time for the House Freedom Caucus to declare independence. How, what, and why is open to interpretation on that one. And lastly, a lament about our nation that echoes my sentiments from last week (save it for cocktail hour).
On the Invasion front, the residents of Tijuana, Mexico are not thrilled to have the invaders in their midst and are loudly protesting them. Maybe Brenda Snipes can go there and steal the elections for the Democrats in 2020. In Mueller-gate, the President is giving acting AG Matt Whitaker total freedom to do whatever he needs/wants in regard to overseeing the witch hunt. The NRA and 2-A Foundation are suing Washington State over its ruling raising the legal age to purchase firearms to 21 and in First Amendment and Fake News news, Mark Levin raises a cromulent point about the Jm J Acosta decision and a look at the NeverTrumpers' attack on the Federalist Society from, appropriately enough, The Federalist website.
Moving to the international desk, a look at the Brexit fiasco, Macron's chutzpah, a Palestinian man who was refused a Muslim burial for the unforgivable crime of selling land to evil Jooz was given dispensation to be buried in a Jewish cemetery, and a report that Merkwurdige Merkel tried pressuring the president of Romania not to move their embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. I wonder where her father was during the war...
A couple of articles on defense from the Free Beacon, first on our reported lack of preparedness in the wake of evolving terror threats (does that include the Democrat Party?) and the desperately needed expansion and modernization of our armed forces is for sure imperiled by the new Democrat-controlled House.
Domestically, the president toured areas devastated by the California wildfire with Gavin Newsom and vowed to give full assistance to the region, he also took a swipe at DHS chief Kirstjen Nielsen who is supposedly about to get the chop, Kentucky has won the right to be right-to-work, the administration is rescinding Obama era SNAP non-work requirements, record low unemployment recorded in 10 of the 57 states, IBD calls for the privatization of the Postal Service, Jersey governor Phil Murphy is an incompetent, blame-shifting jerk (and thus perfectly suited for that job), on Amazon's decision to locate in DC and NYC, and Bernardo Sandersnista Emanuel Goldstein-izes Wal-Mart.
From hither and yon, Hollywood calls for a boycott of Georgia since the Dems failed to steal the governorship for the gap-toothed gargantua, the Cleveland Browns supposedly are looking at Condoleeza Rice as a potential head coach (that'll bring back the fans), oh joy, the Obamas are on their way to being billionaires (and they most certainly didn't build that), Daniel Greenfield on the Democrat airbrushing of history, with the rise of the new/old socialism the future of American Jewry is Orthodox, another look back at the Jonestown massacre 40 years on, the great Victor Davis Hanson on the all-seeing progressive synopticon, and lastly a feel good story - hundreds of mourners show up for the funeral of a veteran who had no family. Despite all the hate we see every day, there is still goodness in this world and it does a heart good to see it.
Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.
“What hurts the most is this wanton disregard for the public safety of the community, apparently for some sort of personal vendetta, I don’t know … but it’s definitely gonna be difficult. It just made a difficult job more difficult.” Garden City (MO) Police Chief Thomas Alber
Quote II
For example, the several hundred people who were arrested for felony rioting at the time of the President's inauguration have all been let go. But, on the other hand, there’s complete Unequal Justice in Charlottesville, at the Unite The Right Rally. People who were simply defending themselves are going to jail. The people who attacked them were being let off.
So, yes, we've reached the limits of American pluralism. Peter Brimelow
Quote III
When stupidity seems a sufficient explanation, there is no need for recourse to any more elaborate analysis. Michael M. Uhlmann
h/t Hrothgar
Quote IV
“Everything government touches turns to crap.” Ringo Starr
At least one person has died and 229 others have been injured as around 282,000 people protested against soaring fuel prices throughout France. Police used tear gas to stop demonstrators at the Champs-Elysees.
Starting from the early hours of Saturday, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of French cities to express their discontent with the policies of President Emmanuel Macron and the French government’s recent decision to raise fuel prices through additional taxes.
“Gasoline prices never stop rising. It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. Macron and his buddies just let… things go from bad to worse,” one protester told RT.
“Long story short, one of the kids wanted to see the counselor, and then two days later I was asked to leave the building and never come back,” he said during a school board hearing this Tuesday, according to station KMOV.
The school revealed to him that the student had told them he’d been “hurt” my Furkin’s remark, and according to KTVI, this “hurt” that Furkin allegedly delivered to the boy counted as an act of “bullying.”
Illegal immigrants cost the U.S. billions a year in health care costs that the illegals never pay for, a Forbes Mag. report says. And that is even though federal law supposedly prohibits this spending.
Federal law claims that no federal dollars can go to pay for health care for illegals. Unfortunately, this is a smoke screen because literally BILLIONS of our tax dollars go to fund medical care for illegals anyway.
Forbes magazine’s Chris Conover recent ran the numbers and came up with at least $18.5 billion of our tax dollars wasted on health care for illegal immigrants.
***
I'm guessing we all have had some crappy maybe even shitty jobs over the years. Probably none this shitty.
There’s One Reason America Refuses to Hold Saudi Arabia Responsible for Murder
The apparent extrajudicial execution of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey on Oct. 2, 2018 seemed like a watershed moment in the protracted push to hold the autocratic, theocratic Saudi regime accountable.
The moment seems to have passed. The recent U.S. elections have overshadowed the story, and neither Khashoggi’s murder nor U.S. relations to the Saudi government were election issues.
How is it possible that neither party took advantage of the controversy to stake out a position opposing such a criminal state? The answer is that Saudi Arabia is a linchpin of U.S. imperialism, and the American way of life makes it inevitable that we turn a blind eye to murder and crime from regimes like Saudi Arabia. Undoing that is something neither party intends to do.
Besides being a "Journalist", He was also an Islamic terrorism sympathizer.
Before killing himself with a drug intended for rapid and painless animal euthanasia, Richard A. Morrisett had endured a nightmare at the University of Texas in Austin. The 57-year-old tenured professor of pharmacology and toxicology was once a rising star in the College of Pharmacy – a man regarded as a first-rate research scientist and teacher during his 21 years at the state's flagship university. Morrisett's research offered new insights into alcohol-related brain disorders and alcoholism – an arcane area of research among neuroscientists. Some colleagues called him “brilliant.”
Morrisett's career, however, was destroyed by a single newspaper article. Published by the Austin American-Statesman, a metropolitan daily, the article dredged up an ugly episode from Morrisett's past – a domestic violence incident involving his girlfriend at the time.
Merely days after the death of the comic world’s superhero, Stan Lee, television host and political commentator Bill Maher has blamed him for creating a culture responsible for electing President Donald Trump.
Lee, who died on Monday at the age of 95, was the creator or co-creator of characters such as the Fantastic Four, Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, and the X-Men. How this led a generation to elect Trump is unclear from Maher’s post, titled “Adulting,” that he shared on his blog early Saturday.
“The guy who created Spider-Man and the Hulk has died, and America is in mourning,” he wrote in his post. “Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess.
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This is how your betters slobber over their desired Overlords.
November 18, 2017, Australian musician and songwriter Malcolm Young died age 64. Young was best known as a co-founder, rhythm guitarist, backing vocalist and songwriter for AC/DC. Except for a brief absence in 1988, he was with the band from its November 1973 beginning until retiring permanently in 2014. Young was born in 1953 in Glasgow before his family emigrated to Australia when he was 10. His family confirmed he was suffering from dementia in 2014. via thisdayinmusic.com
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November 18, 1962, Born on this day, Kirk Hammett, guitar, Metallica, (1991 UK No.5 single 'Enter Sandman', 1991 US & UK No.1 album 'Metallica'). via thisdayinmusic.com
“As individuals rack up DSCs, they would have both a permanent balance they’ve earned over their lifetime and a current balance. They could cash the points in for experiences, purchases with participating vendors, support for causes, and transfer points to others for special occasions,” Yang states on his website. “As their permanent balance gets higher, they might qualify for various perks like throwing a pitch at a local ballgame, an audience with their local Congressperson or meeting their state’s most civic-minded athlete or celebrity.”
Sounds like this candidate has been culturally misappropriating from the Commies of China.
TANUGGYI, Myanmar -- A hot air balloon packed with pyrotechnics exploded over a crowd during a popular festival in Myanmar, sending revelers running for cover.
The frightening scene unfolded Nov. 14 during the Tazaungdaing Festival of Lights, an annual celebration that marks the end of the wet season in Myanmar. According to local media reports, festival organizers invite participants to launch unmanned balloons full of fireworks to usher in a new season.
Notice: Posted with permission by The Ace Media Empire and AceCorp, LLC. ONT tips, drink chips and loose change to petmorons at gmail dot com. Or to the Twitter Thingy.
Today let's talk about getting a bigger bang than expected. Or a smaller bang than expected. Or pretty much any sort of bang other than expected.
Squib Loads and Barrel Blockages
Over the years, I have reloaded a lot of handgun and rifle ammunition, and have had a squib load block the barrel exactly once. When I pulled the trigger, I could tell the recoil and sound were completely wrong and fortunately didn't pull the trigger again. After making the gun safe I took a peek and could see the bullet resting peacefully about 1/4 inch from the end of the barrel just waiting to cause a disaster. Ruh Roh!
What had happened is this; I was load testing and measuring muzzle velocity in a series of cartridges with decreasing powder charges, and although still above the published minimum, this particular round didn't make it out of the barrel. Muzzle velocity = 0 feet per second. Test concluded.
And it can happen with commercial ammunition, too!
There are a couple of lessons here. First, pay attention to what the hell is going on while you're shooting. It is possible to become so focused on the target, and looking good for the range babes, that you lose sight of everything else. If something jams, or breaks, or sounds and feels different, stop pulling the trigger and investigate. If you're a new shooter and not quite sure what to do, put the gun down (pointed in a safe direction!!) and call over the RSO. Explain what you think is going on and let them help you. Second, be very careful when reloading. Things can go wrong even when you haven't done anything overtly retarded. I was trying to find a lower velocity accuracy node and while I was technically above the minimum published load, apparently the bullet didn't get the memo. If I hadn't realized what had happened, I could have turned an annoyance (tapping the bullet out later) into a big mess - ruining the barrel of a nice revolver, or worse.
How is This Even Possible?
Here's an extremely lucky cat who just used up eleven lives and is fortunate to have only ruined a barrel. Hands and fingers and eyeballs are much more difficult to replace. Did someone really pull the trigger that many times, even stopping to reload the gun, without realizing something was wrong?
And speaking of reloading...
Big Reloading No-No: Double Charge or Wrong Powder
Reloading can be fun and a rewarding part of shooting. For competitive shooters it can be a necessity, and for normal people it can be an economical way to shoot more and not be totally dependent on retail ammunition supply. It can also turn a fun day at the range into a complete nightmare if you are not absolutely focused on the job at hand while at the reloading bench. I'm pretty cautious by nature, and even more so while I'm reloading. Just as there are safety rules to follow while handling firearms, some must also be followed while reloading.
First, I allow zero distractions. Realizing my limited mental faculties do not permit me to do even two simple things at once, I don't watch TV or listen to the radio while I'm reloading. I don't even want anyone talking to me while I'm at the reloading bench, and will stop what I'm doing if a distraction presents itself. I pause at each step and check my work.
Can you Tell a Difference?
The biggest potential for excitement relates to powder. When I started reloading I was surprised to learn there are literally hundreds of types of gunpowder all burning at different rates. The unit of measure for gunpowder is the grain (gr) which is equal to 1/7000th of a pound. In some cases, a safe load can become unsafe when it varies by as little as a few tenths of one grain, so imagine the mayhem if you inadvertently doubled the amount of powder in a cartridge. One good way to avoid this is by selecting a powder in which the desired load cannot be doubled without overflowing the case (volumetrically greater than 50% of the case capacity). Hopefully the observant reloader will notice gunpowder spilling all over the place and make some adjustments. Another problem is forgetting the powder altogether - see squib, above - and I visually check the powder level in each case before seating the bullet.
Confusing on Purpose?
A mistake with potentially disastrous consequences is simply using the wrong powder, and it's easy to do if you're not paying attention. Pressures developed in modern cartridges can easily exceed 50,000 psi and selecting the incorrect powder, for example using a fast burning powder in place of a slow one, can easily exceed the design pressures of the gun and result in a catastrophic failure. The only way I know to help prevent this is to never keep more than one powder on the reloading bench at a time and always check and recheck the powder you have selected before beginning a reloading session.
This Is Not Bueno
Have any of the reloaders among us had an accident (or a scare) related to reloading? What happened and how would you recommend preventing it from happening again?
This week we have another submission from Neon Madman, who frankly at this point is just showing off!
This is the .54 Burnside cartridge, used in the Civil War carbine of the same name. Ambrose Burnside was a gunsmith and businessman who had resigned his military commission before the war to work full-time on his design for a breechloading carbine. This was not truly a self-contained cartridge, it still used an external percussion cap to ignite the black powder charge thru a small hole in the tapered end of the cartridge. The Burnside carbine was the third most popular in the war (after the Sharps carbine and the Spencer carbine). Reenactors can still shoot it today, using new cartridge cases sold by the good people at Dixie Gun Works.
After the war, Burnside went on to serve three terms as Governor of Rhode Island, a term as U.S. Senator, and was the first president of the National Rifle Association.
Thanks again for making all other entries inadequate, Neon Madman!
***This Old Cookbook***
Greatest Cookbook Ever
OK you clowns - buy a copy of the cookbook. If you already have one for your own bad self, then give one as a gift this season. Remember; it's only pennies per day, all proceeds go to charity, and if you don't buy a copy then bluebell will be sad.
Please note the new and improved gmail account MoronGunThread for sending in stories and pictures. Thanks for your patience and please let me know if you have any more trouble (with the email). Again, that's morongunthread at gmail dot com. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Food Thread: Subverting The Dominant Roasting Paradigm, One Microwaved Turkey At A Time
—CBD
Somebody has done it. You know it's true.
In reality, I'm pretty sure that it can be done. If I were to try, I would microwave the thing for about five minutes at a time, checking the internal temperature and then rotating it after every dose of microwave. It will undoubtedly heat very unevenly, so this is an important step.
My guess is that it would also give off a huge amount of moisture, so putting it into a container with a lip of some kind and then draining it periodically might be smart. I would reserve the liquid and make some sort of gravy with it. And when the internal temperature (checked in several different spots) reached a reasonable point, I would take it out, dry it off, and use a blow torch on it to brown the skin. Maybe even put it on the grill to get some crispiness.
So...who is going to try it? I'll toss in a two year Platinum membership with Troll-B-GonTM and ampersand utility for anyone who can provide documentary evidence of the cooking of a microwaved Thanksgiving turkey and it being consumed by human Morons.
Hah! You thought you could get away with not buying another copy? Not a chance.
Seriously, the cookbook is loads of fun, is actually quite useful, and 100% of the profit goes to worthy causes.
Click on the cover art (or the link on the main page sidebar) to go to the Amazon page. It's easy! Buy two!
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There is so much disinformation about food safety that sometimes people lose sight of the fact that lots of people have studied it for a very long time. One of my pet peeves is the constant drumbeat that declares ridiculous target temperatures for cooked food. For instance, The USDA dropped its recommended minimum for pork from an astoundingly awful 160 degrees to a still-overcooked 145 degrees. They are obviously assuming that American pork is riddled with trichinosis, but it really isn't. Sure, if you buy a pig from a local farmer who feeds table scraps to his pigs and lets them do what pigs do (be cannibalistic), then assuming trichinosis is reasonable. But commercial pork? Nope...it's pretty damned safe.
Oh...that 145 degrees? They want you to cook your steak to that temperature. What's the term for more than well-done?
It is a well-accepted fact that 100 percent of poultry products are contaminated with salmonella. You read right, 100 percent of the Thanksgiving turkeys carry salmonella. It is only the cooking to proper temperatures and the avoidance of cross contamination that stands between health and sickness.
Not quite, FSIS actually does a great job in reporting contamination levels of Salmonella in poultry, and shows that in turkey contamination is much lower (like only 1.7% positive in turkey). And campy is around the same.
I'm all for talking about food safety and risk reduction and using the holidays as a hook - but lets get the numbers right, avoid the fake news, and give people real risk information.
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Fermented foods are great! Yeah....it's not just beer and wine and booze; there are hundreds of other delicious things one can make using the power of yeast and bacteria. Here's a company [Hat Tip: redc1c4] that makes a nicely designed top for Mason jars in which you are making pickles or kimchi or whatever floats your boat. Obviously this can be done in a bunch of different ways, and the company itself is a bit too smug and hipsterish and touchy-feely for my taste, but the product is undeniably well designed.
How many of you do this stuff at home? I have made pickles, and a long time ago knew someone whose mother made the best kimchi in the world, but I almost always buy my fermented stuff (except for sourdough!).
Yes, I am proud of that loaf, and will be boring you with my sourdough exploits until I move on to something different.
******
She wanted to serve her guests mushroom-smothered steak, but she had no mushrooms and no time to buy them.
Her husband suggested, "Why don't you go pick some of the mushrooms that are growing wild down by the stream?
"No, some wild mushrooms are poisonous."
"Well, I see squirrels eating them and they're OK."
So she picked a bunch and washed, sliced and sauted them for her dinner.
Then she went out on the back porch and gave Spot, their dog, a double handful.
Spot ate every bite.
All morning long, she watched the dog.
The wild mushrooms hadn't affected him after a few hours, so she decided to use them.
The meal was a great success.
After everyone had finished, her daughter came in and whispered in her ear,
"Mum, Spot is dead."
Trying to keep her head about her, she left the room as quickly as possible, called the doctor and told him what had happened.
The doctor said, "That's bad, but I think we can take care of it. I'll call for an ambulance and I'll be there as quickly as I can. We'll give everyone enemas and we'll pump out their stomachs and everything will be fine. Just keep them calm."
Before long they started to hear the sirens as the ambulance tore down the road. The Paramedics and the doctor had their suitcases, syringes, and a stomach pump. One by one, they took each person into the bathroom, gave them an enema, and pumped out their stomach.
Well after midnight, after the last one was done the doctor came out and said, "Everything will be okay now," and with that he left.
The hosts and the guests were all weak and knackered sitting around the living room when the daughter came in and said to her mum.....
"I can't believe that guy!"
"What guy?"
"You know, that bastard who ran over Spot; He never even slowed down."
[Hat Tip: Blake]
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Brussels Sprouts are good...with bacon. Actually, they are great with bacon (as are all other foods), and reasonably good prepared in other ways. I think. I don't really know because bacon seems like the perfect ingredient to make them tasty, so why bother with anything else.
High heat, salt and pepper, some olive oil to get the browning started, lots of cut-up bacon, and you are good to go. This one of those foods that does not need multiple layers of flavor and lots of ingredients (in a pinch you can leave out the Brussels sprouts, the salt, the pepper and the olive oil).
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Pecan pie is something that I very rarely eat, but when I do it is a real pleasure. yes, they can be quite sweet, and sometimes they are too gloppy for their own good, but a well-executed pecan pie is a real treat. This year I will be adding chocolate, for no particular reason other than I have free will and a lot of chocolate, but mostly a lot of chocolate.
I looked at a fair number of recipes, and there is nothing out of the ordinary about chocolate in pecan pie, so I'm going to wing it. I did find this recipe for Maple Chocolate Pecan Pie, which seems a bit busy, but as long as you aren't using maple syrup on your French Toast, I'll allow it.
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Food and cooking tips, Haggis, young wild pigs, Scotch Eggs, thick and fluffy pita and good tomatoes that aren't square, pale pink and covered with Mestizo E.coli: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com. Any advocacy of French Toast with syrup will result in disciplinary action up to and including being nuked from orbit.
An Unequivical Lesson On How Not To Deal With Terrorism
—CBD
One of the goals of terrorist groups around the world is to provoke an overreaction from the government being attacked, and precipitating a backlash that weakens the target in the eyes of the world. Israel is no stranger to this, and has suffered that backlash no matter what its initial reaction. The UN in particular relishes terrorist attacks on Israel, because it can then trot out its tired old canards about disproportionate force and illegitimacy and a host of thinly veiled anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist arguments. They are followed by the same list of countries proclaiming their own moral superiority over Israel, while conveniently forgetting their own behaviors in response to terrorist attacks.
The unfortunate expectation is that no matter what Israel does in response to terrorism, or steps that it takes to prevent terrorist attacks will be seen by much of the world as inappropriate. So why bother trying to carefully titrate its response to the daily attacks on its land and people, whether by "lone Wolf" attacks at bus stops or concerted efforts to storm the border by thousands of rioters, or most dangerous, the launching of rocket attacks into Israeli cities?
What happens when Israel does not respond forcefully is exactly what just happened.
Israel’s defense minister Avigdor Lieberman resigned on November 14 in the wake of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas in Gaza. His resignation has now plunged Israeli politics into chaos as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must juggle what’s left of his fragile coalition government and is being pressured to appoint Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, as the new defense minister. Hamas, which has been challenging Israel with six months of protests and rocket fire from Gaza, has now achieved what it sees as a victory. Despite its inability to penetrate Israel’s defenses around Gaza, it may bring down the government.
The problem with Netanyahu's strategy is that after so many years, the pallies now know that what is inside the velvet glove is not an iron fist but a bowl of Jello. Until the people of Gaza are more afraid of Israel than they are their rulers, the attacks will continue, and Israelis will be killed. If Israel is to be vilified no matter what, then the rational response is to inflict maximum damage on its enemies until they lose the will or capacity to conduct terrorist attacks on Israel. If that means immediate artillery attacks on all rocket launch sites regardless of their locations? Then do it. If that means pushing back the border to provide more room for crowd control? Do it. If that means destroying all Hamas facilities no matter where they are? Do it.
Israel will be demonized no matter what. Why not get the best bang for that public-relations disaster buck?
This reminds me, obliquely, of Anatole France's famous quotation:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
When the elites live behind fences and guarded gates, and walk amongst us only when protected by police or private security (armed of course) or a complian judiciary, the laws mean very little to them. Hillary can have her personal Praetorians control the world around her, without respect for the Constitution, or for that matter most other laws.
Normals are at risk every time we express our political opinions, because the full weight of the lawless left will fall upon us, dispatched by the very people whose right to speak is protected by government or those very same thugs masquerading as "anti-fascists."
Good morning to all you 'rons, 'ettes, lurkers, and lurkettes, wine moms, frat bros, and everybody who's holding your beer. Welcome once again to the stately, prestigious, internationally acclaimed and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread, a weekly compendium of reviews, observations, and a continuing conversation on books, reading, and publishing by people who follow words with their fingers and whose lips move as they read. Unlike other AoSHQ comment threads, the Sunday Morning Book Thread is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Even if it's these (mildly NSFW) pants, a woefully misguided attempt at sexual liberation, but this was the 70s and everyone was messed up on drugs and also Eldridge Cleaver was a nut case even back then (h/t Hank Curmudgeon).
Pic Note
This pic has been on my hard drive for over a year and I forget where I got it from. Is it a still from some movie or TV show? I had to lighten it up a bit because the original is so dark, it's kind of hard to see. At least for my old eyes it is.
I remember some years ago when we went on vacation back east to visit Mrs. Muse's family. We spent one day at the home of her younger sister. It was a nice day, so we all were outside at the pool. The conversation turned into a discussion of family issues and memories and reminiscences that I knew nothing about. Bored, I went back into the house, looking for something to do. I thought, maybe I could grab something to read, to pass the time. So I went into the living room, but there wasn't a bookcase, nor any books lying on any of the couches. Then I went into the family room. No books. But there was a big-screen TV with a game console, in fact, there was a TV in almost every room of the house, but no books. Not even an old Reader's Digest in the bathroom. A couple of the TVs were on and blaring sound, even though we had all gone outside, so I switched them off. It's one of my pet peeves. Why is the TV on if no one is watching? Anyway, I was disappointed that I couldn't find anything to read, so I just gave up and went back outside. I just couldn't imagine a house without books. And even harder not to get all snooty about it.
Moron Recommendations
242 I've been reading Lumen by Ben Pastor (a pseudonym of Maria Verbena Volpi). Our hero, Martin Bora, is a young captain in German army intelligence in Poland during the very early days of WWII. He's not so much anti-Nazi as he is apathetic, much as he is not so much Catholic as apathetic. He's seen some bad stuff during the invasion but but this is, after all, war and will soon be over. The true depravity of Nazism has not revealed itself and Bora hopes to simply be left alone while he performs the honorable profession of an officer in the military.
All is well and good until a Polish abbess thought to be a saint who has stigmata, performs miracles, and prophesizes the future is murdered in her convent. Bora is the natural choice to investigate being Catholic and multilingual. He doesn't think much of her prophecies given that she had said that in five years, in 1944, Warsaw will be in flames when clearly the war will be long over by then. Still, she did prophesize that conquerors bearing flags with crosses would come from the west and be led by Round City (Rundstedt) and Ram (Bock) so she's not always wrong. She had prophesied that she would be killed through her name which may refer to the Latin motto she was obsessed with, Lumen Christi Adiuva Nos (Light of Christ, Succor Us). Absent any other leads, Bora follows this prophecy...
I'm quite enjoying this book but I'm a sucker for misunderstood prophecies like those of the witches in Macbeth. I hope the ending lives up to my expectations. This is a well written book filled with realistic characters set in an extraordinary time.
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Tyrannosaur Wrangler at October 28, 2018 11:36 AM (+y/Ru)
56 Per moron recommendation, I read Jon Ronson's book "The Psychopath Test". It delves into the world of psychiatry and mental health. Lot of scary stuff in it that will have you shaking your head in disbelief, such as: in England, if they think you are crazy but can be cured, they can hold you in a psych facility/prison until someone signs off on you being sane enough to return to society, but if you are deemed un-curable, then you serve time for whatever crime you commit and then are released back out into the public.
Just started Tucker Carlson's "Ship of Fools". I'm about half way through it. He really reams everyone's favorite cruise director, Bill Kristol.
Posted by: Darth Randall at November 11, 2018 09:28 AM (p0nVR)
...a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.
The power of indefinite incarceration Darth Randall mentions that the British Government gives to its psychiatric institutions is not something that happened recently. C.S. Lewis was complaining about it over 50 years ago. He argued such an end-run around the standard legal system was inherently unjust and gave too much power to ethically dubious doctors and scientists. In fact, one of the subplots in his novel That Hideous Strength concerned the small band of good guys springing from prison the husband of one of its members who had served his sentence, but then had been falsely declared mentally deficient so that he could be used for psychiatric experimentation.
The host of Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight offers a blistering critique of the new American ruling class, the elites of both parties, who have taken over the ship of state, leaving the rest of us, the citizen-passengers, to wonder: How do we put the country back on course?
Probably won't convince anyone who isn't already, but I'm thinking it'll be a fun read.
Another Controversial Book
And by "controversial", I mean offensive to the 21st century kultursmog of feminism, progressivism, and marxism. It wouldn't have been controversial 50 (or maybe even 30), years ago but it's controversial now because girl power.
What did Komisar claim in this seemingly innocuous book that has so traumatized our cultural elites?
That “mothers are biologically necessary for babies.”
She also claimed that a mother provides different benefits to a newborn child than a father, and that the absence of mothers can lead to developmental problems for the child later in life.
Komisar came to these conclusions after treating families for three decades, first as a clinical social worker and then an analyst.
“What I was seeing was an increase in children being diagnosed with ADHD and an increase in aggression in children, particularly in little boys, and an increase in depression in little girls. More youngsters were also being diagnosed with ‘social disorders’ whose symptoms resembled those of autism—‘having difficulty relating to other children, having difficulty with empathy.’”
She noticed that a common factor in all of these cases was absence of a mother on a daily basis in these children's lives. This WrongThink™ got Komisar's book
...welcomed on Christian radio and Fox & Friends, but shunned by NPR, and covered coldly by Good Morning America, whose interviewer (according to Komisar) told her before going on air, “I don’t believe in the premise of your book at all. I don't like your book.”
I would have liked to have seen that GMA segment. The interviewer probably sat there with her face all pinched wrinkled up like someone was holding a dog end under her nose.
Books By Morons
Longtime lurker River Cat writes:
I've been reading Ace's blog regularly for more than ten years now (just as a lurker), and since you've been noting books by morons, I thought I'd contact you and see if this moron could get a mention. Earlier this year I started a company called Little White Cabin (in Alabama) to publish books and music (my own at first, then when I get some publishing experience, other writers). My first book is a novel called The Book of Cain, available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
RC describes his debut novel as a coming-of-age story:
Richard Tyler is a “bad boy.” Seventeen, going on thirty-five. A dangerous predator with extraordinary fighting skills and a record of extreme violence. In a last-ditch effort to keep him out of prison, Doctor Lillian Last is brought in to do what no one else has accomplished. She must peel back the scales and scar tissue of his mysterious past to discover some redemptive goodness under the hard shell of the boy who calls himself “Cain.” It would take a miracle to find the truth. And when that miracle comes, the truth is an earthquake that shakes their world into a new and awesome form.
Chickamauga Antietam Charles, otherwise known as Chick, is an old man living in the Safe Haven homeless shelter. Lame and destitute, his only valuables are cached away in a secret pocket of his ancient pea coat. It is Christmas. He awakes to find he has been given a present by a stranger who passed through in the wee hours of the morning when all were asleep, save for one little girl who insists it was Santa. The gift is a lottery ticket. And when it hits, the others want him to share the wealth, but he has only one goal, and it obsesses him to his very marrow. He must go to Spain. To retrieve what was taken from him so many years ago—a theft that made him into the wreck he has been ever since. But to do it he must relive the sea story that started it all.
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Moron lurker Max, another escaped oaf, has asked me to mention his thriller, The Gods Who Walk Among Us:
Adam Azoulay scrapes out a meagre existence as a paparazzo in New York. One night he shoots video of an African president-for-life spending half his country’s GNP on jewelry for his mistress. The next day a non-profit charity run by a rich kid hires him to track down a reclusive human-rights icon who might’ve been in the video. When Adam discovers the icon has an ugly past, he learns that the world of human rights is one of secrets and even murder. The deeper he gets the more he must be stopped.
This novel is available as an ebook on Amazon and is on sale for $0.99 for the month of November.
Heh. On the book's Amazon page, Max says this about himself:
I am not a member of the paparazzi, but the main character in my book is. He's also a NYC lawyer, which I am too.
Walking around the streets of Manhattan, I've had over one hundred celebrity sightings: actors, musicians, even political figures. On a few occasions I may have unavoidably made eye contact, and the look of horror on their faces convinced me that, if worse ever came to worse, I might have a future as a paparazzo. This novel is a chronicle of that imaginary experience.
A couple of the Amazon reviews say this novel really works well as a satire of New York City and its upper-crust glitterati. Sort of like Bonfire of the Vanities meets The Big Sleep.
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Don't forget the AoSHQ reading group on Goodreads. It's meant to support horde writers and to talk about the great books that come up on the book thread. It's called AoSHQ Moron Horde and the link to it is here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/175335-aoshq-moron-horde.
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So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, insults, threats, ugly pants pics and moron library submissions may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.
What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.
Companies in the United Kingdom are now deciding if they will offer implanted security devices to certain employees.
A Swedish company, Biohax, is behind the implants. The company told U.K.’s Telegraph that it is in talks with several employers planning to offer the microchips to staff. The chips are intended to be used as a replacement for other security credentials.
Some believe such implants have a more sinister purpose.
The Moroccan Euphorbia resinifera plant produces a resin so spicy that it attains a whopping 16,000,000,000 on the Scoville scale, 10,000x hotter than a Carolina reaper chili.
The active ingredient in this resin is resiniferatoxin, AKA RTX, which has proven incredible promising in early animal trials for treating chronic pain. Dogs with joint pain are anesthetized and injected with RTX, which destroys their nerve endings and makes them incapable of sensing pain until the nerves regenerate, about 5 months later.
Following recent reports that two masked perpetrators were raising alarm in a town in West Virginia, police say they have reason to believe the troublemakers had just gotten wrecked.
The Milton Police Department reportedly received accounts of stumbling and disoriented raccoons at least twice in the last week, and locals worried the raccoons might have rabies. But those suspicions were wrong. The raccoons in question—including one who was identified by police as Dallas—had reportedly gotten wasted by eating some fermented crab apples.
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Don't listen to CBD, have turkey on Thanksgiving. And here is how to do it.....
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The first crime? Hazelnut. The second and third? Performing like a true Genius Award Winner.
A Toronto police officer who ate a marijuana-laced chocolate bar seized in a pot shop raid has pleaded guilty to attempting to obstruct justice.
Const. Vittorio Dominelli says he is remorseful and ashamed of his actions on the evening of Jan. 27.
Justice Mary Misener says Dominelli is a "complete idiot" for tampering with evidence.
Crown attorney Philip Perlmutter, who read out an agreed statement of facts in court, says Dominelli took three hazelnut chocolate bars infused with cannabis oil from the raid.
Perlmutter says Dominelli and another officer later ate one chocolate bar and became intoxicated in about 20 minutes, and eventually radioed for help.
Five Robeson County residents were given the gift of sight Monday.
The Lumberton Lions presented each of them, ages 6 to 57, with eSight, a device made in Canada that is worn over the eyes like glasses. The club spent $10,000 for each of the devices. The recipients paid nothing for a new outlook on life.
“I dreamed about these things. I didn’t know if they would come around. I can go back to college,” said Artie Stewart, who lost his eyesight to diabetes in 2011.
The 57-year-old plans to get a bachelor’s degree in Business.
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Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by The Official Vehicle of The ONT.
Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire and AceCorp, LLC.
Saturday Evening Movie Thread 11-17-2018 [Hosted By: TheJamesMadison]
—OregonMuse
Comparing Movies
One line of argument that I see with relative frequency stems from the conceit of comparing two movies against each other. Over time, I've grown to generally dislike the practice of comparing movies to each other. I find it to be of limited use, but many people consider it a valid way to critique a film.
The argument usually goes along the lines of something like this: Movie A did x this way. Movie B did x another way. Movie A was successful, so that means that because Movie B did not do x the same way as Movie A, then movie B is bad. An actual example could be someone saying that Aliens is a bad movie because it doesn't retain the horror elements of Alien. Seriously.
So, I've come up with two pairs of movies that compare and contrast quite well, but the relative merits of the films on their own are what drive their relative qualities. John Wick against John Wick Chapter 2 and Brazil against The Zero Theorem.
John Wick is a fun action vehicle with just enough plot and character to string along a series of very well made action sequences for about a hundred minutes. Its plot is spare: A former hitman loses his wife to cancer, her last give to him is a cute dog. A punk Russian mob boss's son steals the hitman's car and kills the dog. Said hitman proceeds to murder everyone.
Just the basic plot synopsis is so ridiculously simple to understand and so obviously manipulative with the use of the dog to make it entertaining on its own. It's the stuff of B-movie exploitation films from the 70s, but it's filmed very slickly, produced well, and the action sequences are almost balletic in their execution. It works because it understands the limits of its concept (the brotherhood of hitmen is kind of silly, so it doesn't do too much with it) and where its real strengths lie: those much ballyhooed action sequences.
I believe I'm in the minority opinion, however, about the sequel, John Wick Chapter 2. I found it interminable, slow, confused, and nearly unwatchable.
And, here's where my thesis comes into play, the sequel, in some important ways, is different from the original in key ways that undermine the effectiveness of the movie. It's not because the sequel does things differently than the original that I don't like it. The comparison to the original is really just informative.
John Wick's plot is super simple, as previously described, but John Wick Chapter 2's is shockingly byzantine. I've seen people say, "In the first one, he goes on a rampage because they kill his dog, but in the second they blew up his house!" And that's really not why John does what he does in the movie.
John goes on his second rampage because someone we've never heard of extracted a promise from John (a Marker, a metal disk with a bloody thumbprint inside) in order for John to retire, an exchange of a promise that allowed John to walk away from the hitman life. Note: this is all retconned onto the first movie. There's no hint that this is the situation in the first film, but whatever. John refuses to honor the Marker, new (old) bad guy blows up John's house, and then John goes to the owner of the hitman hotel (The Continental) to get advice. The owner tells him that John is going to break one of the commandments of the hitman underworld if he refuses the contract. So, John takes the job, goes after bad guy's sister, who apparently has a long history with John (this is now about 45 minutes into the film). She takes her own life, and then the bad guy's men try to kill John.
Finally, John goes on a rampage, almost halfway through the movie, and we've spent most of the running time up to that point with confusing world building, retconning of the first movie, and deeply emotional scenes with people we've never met before but are assured have long histories with John.
So, where does the comparison between the first and second movies become useful? John Wick Chapter 2's failures are its own. It does not fail or succeed because of anything that John Wick did. John Wick Chapter 2 fails because the story is a morass of needless detail that bog down an action movie in unearned sentimentality and curious plot mechanics, two things that were completely absent from the original.
Comparing the first movie to the second really just highlights the problems in the second. If John Wick Chapter 2 existed in a vacuum with no previous movie, it would have the exact same problems.
Brazil Goes Digital
Terry Gilliam is equal parts brilliant and frustrating. He has a wonderful comic mind that fit in very well with the rest of Monty Python, but he has almost no discipline when crafting stories. He tends to follow whatever interesting threads (usually visual and design based) while leaving other, more traditional, narrative elements flapping in the breeze. His movies are always messy to a certain extent, but contain differing amounts of wonderfulness within.
I think I fall in with most Terry Gilliam fans and call Brazil his best film (although there are certainly those who call Twelve Monkeys that). The movie is 1984 filtered through Kafka and Gilliam's own visual sensibilities (one of the working titles was actually 1984 1/2). Telling the story of Sam Lowry, a talented young bureaucrat with no ambition other than to live in his own head. He understands the systems and bureaucracies around him, but he has no desire to climb any ladder, content to dream of himself as a warrior in shining armor with wings saving a fantasy woman from monsters. It's only when he finds that fantasy woman in the real world that he decides to live fully in the real world in pursuit of her. He ends up running afoul of the whole system and receiving its wrath for crossing it at all.
The movie is really a deliriously joyful exploration of the humanity killing nature of bureaucracy.
The Zero Theorem shares some aesthetic similarities to Brazil, but little else and the two get compared to each other all the time. Made almost thirty years later, The Zero Theorem also takes place in a dystopian vision of the future where a loner who values his loneliness and tries to buck the system, however the comparisons between the two films really end there. And yet, nearly every review of the film brings up Brazil as though the two should be compared to one another.
First, The Zero Theorem is honestly just not a very good movie. It's interesting enough for a short time, but the central thesis about existential dread really wears thin across the entire runtime. The main character (Qohen Leth played by Christoph Waltz) was intentionally written in a way to distance him from the audience. He always refers to himself as "we". He's completely unconcerned with any material ends, repeatedly refusing to even eat pizza. His central concern, to work at home so he can wait by his phone for a call from an unknown entity that will provide him with purpose, is so oddball that it's hard to empathize with his plight.
The future vision itself is remarkable in its unremarkableness. The movie was made on the cheap for about $8 million in Romania, and the vision of the future includes little else than brightly colored clothes and screens everywhere (including a lot of 2013 era iPhones for some reason). The movie is also largely set on a single set of Qohen's home inside an abandoned church (the movie has its share of heavy-handed symbolism for sure).
So, why does Brazil come up so often in the conversation about The Zero Theorem? I think it's largely lazy thinking. The two movies share very shallow characteristics but almost nothing else. "Terry Gilliam drags us back to Brazil," says The Globe and Mail. "There's no going back to Brazil," declares IndieWire. "A dystopian delight but it lacks Brazil's genius" announces Metro.
Movies! Stand Alone!
The act of comparing one movie to another can be helpful in breaking down films, but how a movie stands in relation to another should be irrelevant to any individual movie's quality.
Is Aliens a different movie from Alien? Did the artists of the second movie chose to make a movie completely different from the original? Should that count against the second movie? Should the merits of the first movie have any bearing on the merits of the second?
Ideally, a critique of a movie should never address any other films. It should take the merits of the individual film on its own, discussing the filmmakers intentions and the successes of the efforts.
Now, I'm sure that there are those who would vehemently disagree. One man, whose reviews are half references to other movies no matter what, is Armond White. His reviews are bursting with notes about how this image in this film is referencing this other image in another film (half the time I haven't even heard of the other film). Take this paragraph from his review of Avengers Infinity War:
What academics call "narrativity" (employing memory and structural awareness in storytelling - the secret to John Boorman's Excalibur) here gets steamrolled by busyness and chronic fits of campy, facetious jokes between swashbuckling hunks Thor, Star-Lord, and erectile-dysfunction-sufferer the Hulk. The drawback to this - a lack of credible substance when characters pretend worry or ambivalence - is worse than Hollywood trashiness. The frantic comic-book mythology merely plays out the form's intrinsic commercialism, not cultural or historical beliefs. The Russo brothers' flippancy doesn't match the brio of Boorman's Arthurian masterpiece. In Excalibur, mythology represented historic human compulsions, resulting in a constantly moving sensual, kinetic, and visual panorama. (Visionary philologist Neil Jordan was billed as Boorman's "creative associate.")
I believe that Armond was trying to sell the idea that the two films (Avengers Infinity War and Excalibur) were both attempting similar things, or that the latter is a degradation of an idea represented by the former. However, the whole thing reads to me like he's saying, "Avengers is different than Excalibur, therefore I don't like Avengers." I find it wholly unpersuasive. It's not a mark against his taste in movies (which I largely don't share), just his technique in talking about film. If the point of his review is to convince me that Avengers Infinity War is trash, I don't think he does a good job doing that because he spends so little time actually talking about the movie itself. Hell, the first paragraph of his review is about Quentin Tarantino.
Take this final paragraph from Richard Brody's negative review of the same movie instead:
But that ending is also a narrative cheap shot, because it doesn't feel like an ending-it feels like the turning point of a movie that is about to enter its heroic final act (which, in this case, will instead be the sequel). The ground rules governing the film's superheroics are undefined and limitlessly malleable: infinite powers mean infinite dramatic possibilities, and none of the limitations by which real lives and choices are constructed and compelled. That's why, for all the colossal C.G.I. kinetics and pyrotechnics of the movie's massive battles and thudding fights, the stakes seem so low. Even the surprising deaths of beloved characters, for all their momentary power to disturb, feel cheap, because the powers of superheroism-amped up by the reversibility of time thanks to the time stone-make no result seem conclusive, no death seem final. The redemptive heroics that are doubtless forthcoming in the next episode are little to look forward to; they have the inevitability of the calendar.
I find this reasoning much more persuasive. It's not about how well the movie reflects the ethos of another movie from decades ago, but about the merits of the film itself. It talks about the low stakes of the universe and the lack of impact as a result. It brings up plot devices in the film (the time stone) that undermine any emotional grab of the film.
In the specific case of Avengers Infinity War, I find it to be an enjoyable adventure. A fun, pretty good movie, but if either of these two men were trying to convince me that it was less than that, White would fail and Brody would be more likely to succeed.
Movies I Saw This Week: Tess (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 4/4) Poster blurb: "Handsomely produced, impeccably acted, and emotionally compelling." [Netflix DVD] The Zero Theorem (Netflix Rating 2/5 | Quality Rating 1.5/4) "An unengaging, visually uninspiring misfire from Gilliam." [Netflix DVD] Dersu Uzala (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 4/4) "A marvelous curio from Kurosawa's filmography that highlights such a marvelous humanism." ["Library"] Green for Danger (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 3.5/4) "Full of wit and intelligence, it's a whodunit made with great craft." ["Library"] Captain Horatio Hornblower (Netflix Rating 3/5 | Quality Rating 2.5/4) "Adapted from three novels, and it feels it." ["Library"] Silver Bullet (Netflix Rating 2/5 | Quality Rating 1.5/4) "Poorly assembled with unnecessary distractions all over the place. I'm not even sure it would appeal to kids." ["Library"] Spotlight (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 3.5/4) "Absolutely engrossing film about the process of taking a bombshell story to print against incredible pressures." [Netflix Instant] We Need to Talk about Kevin (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 3.5/4) "A portrait of a woman who raised pure evil, and the guilt the pervades her because of it." [Amazon Prime] Allied (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 3.5/4) "Mature and intelligent spy tale that is so underrated." [Amazon Prime] You Were Never Really Here (Netflix Rating 4/5 | Quality Rating 3/4) "Incredibly well made, but it seems written with the purpose of keeping the audience at a distance, which blunts the film's impact." [Amazon Prime] Outlaw King (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 3.5/4) "Grungy and beautiful with strong performances and a great sweep." [Netflix Instant] Hold the Dark (Netflix Rating 5/5 | Quality Rating 3.5/4) "Jeremy Saulnier is fast becoming my favorite filmmaker of his generation." [Netflix Instant]
Contact
Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.
As always, the chess/dress pr0n thread is an open thread, so there is no such thing as an off-topic comment.
Easier Problem - White To Play (794)
Obviously, with his overwhelming material superiority, this position should be an easy win for White. And it is. But what is the FASTEST win White can force?
Goal: White can force a mate in 2
Hint: Restrict Black to one legal move, then Kaboom.
According to this article, Game #6 of the W. Ch. match between Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen was characterized by Fabi moving his knight around a lot. The score is tied 3-3.
Meanwhile, the online commenters were using computers to find forced mates that no human could possibly find OTB. I wonder how useful this really is.
I'm not going to do much commenting on this match other than to post links to other sources who actually know what they're talking about.
More Challenging Problem - White To Play (831)
Goal: Win by forcing an advantageous simplification
Hint: That pinned piece will be Black's downfall
7k/7p/1Rp2np1/1p6/5q2/7P/6P1/Q6K w - - 0 1
Dress Pr0n For The 'Ettes:
Great chat with Anne from @atlasobscura about the #19thc use of pina fibres in fashion, fine white fibres of the pineapple leaf. The cloth is still produced in the Philippines. The lustre produced is visible in this #1860s dress interspersed with lilac satin stripes @metmuseumpic.twitter.com/DPp6Td3NWu
Which, much to my embarrassment, I didn't find. My app did. I thought the answer was
1.Qb6 d6
2.Qd8#
But I had overlooked 1...Kb8 2.Nd6+ Kxa8 3.Qb7#
Which is still a win, but one move longer than the fastest.
More Challenging Problem - White To Play
7k/7p/1Rp2np1/1p6/5q2/7P/6P1/Q6K w - - 0 1
1.Rb7 c5
2.Rf7 Qd4
Nothing can stop the killer move Rf7. If 1...Kg8 then 2.Qa8+ Ne8 3.Qxe8+ Qf8 and either 4.Qxf8+ Kxf8 with a won endgame for White.
3.Qxd4 cxd4
4.Rxf6 and wins
Or there's a forced mate, but it's a ways out: 4.Qe6+ Kh8 5.Qe5+ Kg8 6. Qc7 Qf1+ 7.Kh2 Qf6 8.Qxh7+ Kf8 9.Rb8+ Qd8 10.Rxd8#
Hope to see you all next week!
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Note: that cryptic line of letters and numbers you see underneath each board diagram is a representation of the position in what is known as "Forsyth-Edwards Notation", or F.E.N. It's actually readable by humans. Most computer applications nowadays can read FEN, so those of you who may want to study the position, you can copy the line of FEN and paste into your chess app and it should automatically recreate the position on its display board. Or, Windows users can just "triple click" on it and the entire line will be highlighted so you can copy and paste it into your chess app.
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So that about wraps it up for this week. Chess thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to my yahoo address: OregonMuse little-a-in-a-circle yahoo dott com.
t’s been over 3 years since I left our hometown of Hobart, Tasmania, to travel around Australia. Although I sold my house and all my stuff, there was one thing that I just couldn’t leave behind.
My cat Willow.
The solution was simple. Road trip with my best friend!
Since May 2015 we have traveled over 70,000 km, seen forests, beaches, and deserts, and even took a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef together. Late last year we finally made it all the way around and even spent summer back in our hometown
According to the guards at Onomichi City Museum of Art, about a year after the black cat’s first attempt to enter the venue, another red cat adopted the same routine, and since then, they have been taking turns showing up at the front door at least two or three times a week.
This is one of our cats, Cinnamon. She’s the most chill cat I’ve ever met! We rescued her and her sister (Ginger) just over two years ago, and they’ve kept our laps warm (and hearts happy) ever since. In this picture, Cinnamon is recreating her favorite scene from the Matrix, hampered only by the fact that the lack of opposable thumbs prevents her from holding the spoon herself.- CatalogingJointly
I think all pet owners parents have heard the lament, "If I only had thumbs!"
Wonderful photo, thanks for sharing with us. Don't be afraid to send in a photo of Ginger.
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Hello
I very much enjoy your pet thread and your kind words on the Pet Morons.
I think I’m a lurker or something but here are my two poodles - brown standard and white moyen.
Super smart, clean, quiet, kid loving dogs who swim superbly with their webbed paws.
Enjoying the freedom of the north woods vs Madiganistan aka Illinois -Tailgunnersam
Wonderful looking pooches. Are they related? They look right at home at the lake. We appreciate the time you took to submit the photo.
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This is Ruby the red doberman. She is 2 years old, we have had her for almost 3 months now and have been introducing her to lots of new things like water, boats,trails,people.
Our previous Dobie (made the pet thread 18 months ago) liked the water and swimming but did not enjoy the boat, especially in motion.
This dog enjoyed the ride and a sunny October day on the lake.
Susan (long time lurker)
Ruby appears to be all skin and bones. Poor puppy could use a cookie. But she does look at home on the boat. Thanks for thinking of us here at the Pet Thread.
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This submission was sent in with the following Subject "SORRY, NOT SORRY". No other information provided. It appears this is quite the couch hog.
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Long time lurker here!
Here’s our service pupper in training, Rommel. He had a ruff day at obedience training!
Keep up the awesome work at Ace. It’s keeping this household laughing at the absurdity that is the Mid-Terms. I think we’re all going to need Psychiatric Service dogs if this keeps up!
What a cute puppy! How long did it take him to recoup and become hell on wheels? 10, 15 minutes? Best of luck with your campaign and the obedience training!
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This is little bits the cat dog. According to my vet he is a cheweenie, half chihuahua half dauchsund. He showed up one day in my driveway shortly after I lost my 20 year old cat Sassy. He was skin and bones and all I had was old cat food so I gave him that. To this day he won’t eat dog food, only cat food and he LOVES kittehs but HATES doggehs. Go figure. He now has 4 feline siblings that he takes great delight in tormenting. Love the pet thread!
Midaz
What an awesome story. It is amazing how certain animals show up in our lives at times. Thanks for the submission.
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Meet Kangie. This beautiful lady is always dressed and ready to attend the opera. Full black theater cape, white gloves and boots--check. She is quite a diva. She has even picked up notes from a few favorite arias and often sings (in a dramatic Wagnerian soprano voice) for her supper. If you can figure out how to resize and use her picture my nic is "corn and beans" although I lurk more than post. We all enjoy the Saturday Pet Morons feature and look forward to it each week here at our house. Thank you.
I'm not much of a computer guy but I can resize a neat PetMoron photo there "corn and beans". Sounds as if this kitteh has quite the personality. Thanks for sharing with the Horde.
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Attached is a 37 sec video file of one of my Bloodhounds (The Duchess of Marlborough) discussing how she was missing her BFF Scarlett O'Hara who was at the vet getting vaccinations. This is a brief clip out of 45 minutes of her trilling for Scarlett.
You have featured Duchess and Scarlett before.
I look forward to the Ace of Spades Pet Thread each week. I thought I was one of the few humans owned by dogs.
Thanks, Swim Mom
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My what a sad doggeh. I bet she was happy when her companion returned. Thanks for taking the time and effort to make a video and submitting it.
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Thanks to you who have submitted photos of your pets. The Pet Thread appreciates your patience.
Do you have some fun pet items, such as a story or photo you would like to share? You can submit your pet items to petmorons at gmail dot com.
If you send in a video it has to be a You Tube video for formatting purposes.
From the management and staff of the AoS Pet Thread a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
We'll see you next Saturday with another Pet Thread.
Saturday Gardening Thread before Thanksgiving [KT]
—Open Blogger
Happy Saturday, Gardeners and Friends of Gardeners! Are you going Over the River and Through the Woods this Thanksgiving, or staying home? Either way, I hope you have some time to enjoy some plants, or at least some places where plants grow when it's not too cold, hot, etc. Or maybe you can stay indoors and dream of next year. My Pinetree catalog came. Peppers on the cover this year. One is striped. Have you received any gardening catalogs yet?
Thinking of ways to use some of that garden produce for Thanksgiving dinner? Got some time off to observe nature a little?
The Horde and Friends Observe Nature, Gardens, etc.
RS sent in the following not long ago:
Greetings from a "Mostly Lurker, Rare Commenter,"
Not sure if what's attached falls in the "Gardening" wheelhouse, but a couple of weeks ago, my spouse and I spent a weekend hiking "Prairie State Park" in western Missouri. It preserves some of the last tallgrass prairie east of Kansas and is a delight.
Flower I.D., anyone?
Bison and elk roam freely and it's a preserve for prairie chickens, whitetail deer and other fauna. There's enough trail mileage to spend a long weekend with either a nice conventional campground or backpacker options.
Anyway, the flora is starting to die back, but there are still remnants of summer.
Care to I.D. this one?
Photos attached, including a panorama from a high point in the park.
Thanks for sending these photos and the details about this place, which I did not know existed.
Cumberland Astro checked in recently:
My garden is played out for the year - all I have left to do is cover
the strawberries in pine needles after we have our first significant freeze. Although there is nothing to show from the garden, nature is putting on a pretty good show in the woods just beyond the garden.
I've also attached a few pictures taken while walking around my mountaintop neighborhood outside of Chattanooga.
Thanks for sending these in. Lovely.
The Edible Garden
Here's a surprise from The Invisible Hand. Didn't think he was the farmer type.
Fall in San Clemente. Apples, Lemons and a lonely Avocado. And a table of fruit we're happy to share.
Not many apple varieties will grow in San Clemente. Not a lot of winter chill in San Clemente.
Meyer lemon?
New tree? Do you know which kind? Any of your neighbors have an avocado?
I see some other plants on that table, too . . .
We have some fans of fermenting garden produce in The Horde. There is now a study out suggesting that pickled foods may reduce anxiety.
Hillmire and his colleagues enlisted 710 college students at William & Mary to record how much fermented food they ate and any symptoms of neuroticism, anxiety or social phobia that they felt over the same period. The team found a link between the amount of fermented food subjects consumed and the level of social anxiety they felt. Particularly neurotic subjects saw a decrease in their symptoms of shyness and fear of social situations when they ate more fermented food.
Well. That's interesting. Kind of unsettling to think that your social confidence might be highly influenced by bacteria in your gut.
Because Thanksgiving is coming, here are "three ways to fall in love with fermented cranberries": Cranberry-orange relish, Raw carnberry-apple chutney and Pickled Cranberries. Not as sweet as most cranberrie recipes we're familiar with.
Pickled Cranberries before and after fermenting
There is quite a lot of information about cranberries, plus a video, before you get to the recipes, so keep scrolling.
We have discussed growing cranberries at home before. Not for everyone. There are also some cranberry substituted like Roselle and Natal Plum that can be grown in certain climates.
Good morning. This is the Saturday before Thanksgiving, so I thought it might be appropriate to look for things to be grateful for, even in tough circumstances. This may look like the Gardening Thread because of the blossoms pictured above, but a fruit orchard in Paradise, California made it through the fire because the farm family had put in a firebreak. Their home is gone, though. The photo above is related to their reasons for gratitude and hope.
It may seem strange to people in the East, where some officials seemed unprepared for snow, and where global warming seems to be manifesting as colder weather, but the Camp Fire in Northern California has been burning since November 8. It seems kind of unusual even to people in California. As of early this morning, the death toll was up to 71, with the number of missing listed at over a thousand. Yesterday that number was less than 700. Not sure why that number has been changing so much. But it is a scary number.
President Trump is visiting today. In very poor air quality. Even here, 300 miles away, our forecast yesterday was "hazy with patchy smoke". Schools are closed all over the Bay Area and in parts of the Valley so people will stay indoors. Breathing masks are being distributed in Sacramento, which is south of the fire. It's a good sign that the President is coming. Some of those whacko environmentalists are also coming around to the realization that normal people were right. Strict non-management of the forests did not save many spotted owls around Paradise.
The Woolsey Fire in Southern California is closer to being under control. There are some other fires still burning.
Anyway, back to finding things to be grateful for. Gerard Van der Leun lost his home in Paradise, along with most of his possessions. But three days ago, he wrote about something interesting he had observed in the reactions of the people of Chico, where he is staying with his mother. Ordinary people like a girl working for J.C Penny, members of the Elks Lodge, neighbors setting up tables with goods for fire refugees, bankers and pharmacists:
They all were leaving it all on the field everywhere in Chico. From Penny's in the Mall to the Birkenstocks Store downtown on Broadway. In big jobs, and in small jobs, there was a long train of people working at the top of their game no matter what their game was. It has been days of this now in Chico; days of there being no big jobs or small jobs but only the unremitting effort the people to help their fellow citizens no matter what.
And since none of the Acronym Agencies have really shown up yet, this has all been done without any real government organization. Instead, it has been like watching a spontaneous Humanitarian Olympics rise up out of the town itself; and once started it has become as self-organizing and self-sustaining as the fire itself. Today as I moved around Chico I saw a town, untouched itself by the flames, rise up to restore and rebuild the lives of their fellow citizens of Paradise; lives that the fire had stolen. And by the end of the day, you could feel, palpably feel, that Chico knew it would win. Chico was leaving it all on the field.
Tomorrow? Chico will do the same.
You might want to read some of Gerard's other posts. Maybe send him a little cash.
Hope you have a great weekend. Got anything planned? Getting in the mood for Thanksgiving yet?
Remember that this is the Thread before the Gardening Thread:
Happy Saturday, 'rons, 'ettes and lurkers. Let's take a peak at a few stories that are a bit different and didn't get their fair share of attention here at the AoSHQ this past week.
It's Friday's ONT, Vile Thread of Misery, To Thee We Cling
—WeirdDave
Here's something fun to do that I pull with my Commenwealth-born wife all the time. Whenever someone from the UK wins an Olympic event, I ask her innocently “Why are they playing “My Country 'tis of Thee”?
Tonight's thread title was inspired by R. M. Huffman who is, quite honestly, one of the most talented people to claim membership in the Horde. On a website full of talented and brilliant people (and Brent Cochran), he truly shines. Not only is he a physician, an accomplished artist, and a published author, he is also a poet of no mean skill whose poems, and I say this with all sincerity, compare favorably with those of Dr. Seuss. His latest effort recounts the trials of one Garmond, who only wanted to open a successful sidewalk cafe.
5 Dumb GOP Mistakes We Better Fix Before 2020. Good article, Kurt only makes two mistakes. He assumes that A) the GOP wants to hold a majority and B) if they do, that they'll actually do what they say.
Why Republicans Need To Self-Deport From Washington DC Self evident, and something that I would fix if I with writing a Constitution for a country that had just won its independence today: “All Congressmen and Senators shall maintain an office in their home district or state, and all Congressional functions and votes must be conducted from that physical location except in times of war or declared national emergency”. The Capital building should be ceremonial.
I read a lot, but I've never been a fan of audiobooks. I'd buy this one, although the 18th century Scottish accent would probably give me no end of trouble.
Talking up your own band a little bit to make it appear that you’re more popular than you are is a rite of passage for young acts. We’ve heard of plenty of bands that’ve exaggerated sales or live show numbers to land a gig or two, or talked themselves up to national media for some press attention. It comes with the territory, and it’s usually harmless.
But the Los Angeles band Threatin have taken that idea to a level previously thought unimaginable: the band was able to book an entire tour of Europe despite having no fanbase whatsoever, and it’s all in the process of crashing down around them.
More at the link, it's quite the story. If Hebrew ideation were popular in heavy metal circles, I'd say that the band should change its name to Chutzpah.
Remember The Cracking Glass Walkway From Last Week?
Apollo 16 command module pilot Ken Mattingly lost his wedding ring while orbiting the Moon. Nine days later, on their way back to Earth, they stopped 50,000 miles from the Moon for a spacewalk. Suddenly the ring floats by and lunar module pilot Charlie Duke is able to grab it. I would pay real money to know what the actual odds of that happening are.
How a Radial Engine Works
The radial engine is a reciprocating internal combustion engine configuration in which the cylinders radiate outward from a central crankcase like the spokes of a wheel. It resembles a stylized star when viewed from the front, and is called a "star engine" https://t.co/FAlgnx1fkEpic.twitter.com/NtcD5k8Inu
So the police in Dubai are looking to put hoverbikes on (over?) the road by 2020. I want one, anyone got $150K I can "borrow"? Story here, video below.
Tonight's ONT brought to you by 4-chan:
The Yahoo Group embarrassed the shit out of itself when a British girl asked it to “Come by and knock me up in the morning”.
In an earlier thread, I craftily tricked the cucks on this blog into admitting they liked musicals.
Musicals!
All I had to say was "I liked Little Shop of Horrors" and all the cucks decloaked.
They like following the strong leadership of a clearly more masculine male, such as myself.
You can now make fun of these simpering soybeans and ostracize them for admitting their weakness and love of soy-based entertainments.
You should maybe call their bosses and get them fired for permitting other men such wicked license with their wives.
I, of course, was lying the whole time. I don't even like music all that much, to be honest, except maybe the drums, which isn't cucky because it's hitting things with sticks.
The only music I could really get into would be some kind of rhythmic arrangement of bullets hitting tank armor with occasional sounds of axes chopping into oaks and boarskulls.
And to be honest, I don't really need the rhythm. Rhythm is for weaklings and betas who need the stricture of a time signature to order their useless moments, like a milk-sop little boy needs his mommy to tell him when it's time to make a sitting pee-pee.
I'm very disappointed with some of you outrageous-camp joyboys. To think that this blog would one day be a den of iniquity where "men" talked about their "passion" for "music" and "singing."
(In other words, if you want to continue talking about music, here's a thread where you can do that. Cucks.)
Surprise! Prominent Democrat Eric Swalwell Is Already Proposing a Mandatory Semi-Automatic Rifle "Buyback" Program -- Sell the Government Your Gun or Face Prosecution -- and Reminds Gun Owners That the All-Powerful Godstate Has Nukes
Remember, Democrats posed as moderates for this election.
And here we are.
A Democratic congressman has proposed outlawing "military-style semiautomatic assault weapons" and forcing existing owners to sell their weapons or face prosecution, a major departure from prior gun control proposals that typically exempt existing firearms.
In a USA Today op-ed entitled "Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters," Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., argued Thursday that prior proposals to ban assault weapons "would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come."
Swalwell proposes that the government should offer up to $1,000 for every weapon covered by a new ban, estimating that it would take $15 billion to buy back roughly 15 million weapons -- and "criminally prosecute any who choose to defy [the buyback] by keeping their weapons."
...
"There's something new and different about the surviving Parkland high schoolers' demands," he wrote. 'They dismiss the moral equivalence we've made for far too long regarding the Second Amendment. I've been guilty of it myself, telling constituents and reporters that 'we can protect the Second Amendment and protect lives.'"
Instead, he writes, "the right to live is supreme over any other."
He means the power of the Godstate is supreme over its human serfs, who are inconsequential.
And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they’re legit. I’m sure if we talked we could find common ground to protect our families and communities.
Well, I hope the TruCons who either openly agitated for Democrat control of the House or were passive-aggressive and cowardly in merely agitating for that without admitting their aims are happy with all this huge renaissance of True Conservatism they've given rise to.
The Florida Department of State last week asked federal prosecutors to investigate dates that were changed on official state election documents, the first voting "irregularities" it has flagged in the wake of the 2018 elections.
The concerns, which the department says can be tied to the Florida Democratic Party, center around date changes on forms used to fix vote-by-mail ballots sent with incorrect or missing information. Known as "cure affidavits," those documents used to fix mail ballots were due no later than 5 p.m. on Nov. 5 -- the day before the election. But affidavits released on Tuesday by the DOS show that documents from four different counties said the ballots could be returned by 5 p.m. on Thursday, which is not accurate.
Audio of a Florida Democratic Party caller leaving a voicemail message asking a Palm Beach County voter to fix their vote by mail ballot after Election Day, which is not allowed, was also sent to POLITICO separately. It was not part of the information turned over to federal prosecutors.
Now, I want you all to prepare for a shock.
Are you ready?
Good. Then let's begin.
Among the counties in question is Broward...
Whoa. I feel all disoriented and seizurey like Hillary Clinton powering through a lingering case of Standing For 20 Minutes.
...which emerged as the epicenter of controversy as three statewide races and three local legislative races went into recounts following the Nov. 6 elections. Republicans have pointed to embattled Broward Elections chief Brenda Snipes' record of past election gaffes in arguing that the largely Democratic country is tilted against them -- perhaps fraudulently so.
"No evidence." "No evidence." "No evidence."
Meanwhile, alleged downlow brother Corey Booker is claiming election fraud in Georgia based on an actual lack of any evidence, and the media just dutifully amplifies his unhinged claims.
No protests that such claims are undermining confidence in the nation's democracy, as we heard about correct, fact-based Republican claims about Broward.
Skip to 6:25 here for what Twitchy would call a BRUTAL TAKEDOWN if Ben Shapiro had said it on Twitter.
Trump: I'll Throw Acosta Out the Next Time He Acts Like a Child, Or I'll Just Walk Out Myself
—Ace of Spades
The judge made up some bullshit about a requirement of "due process" to cancel a hard pass, so Trump should just set up a tribunal, stocked with reliable people, who would evaluate "reporter" behavior and complaints from the White House about reporter behavior.
Then, "due process" satisfied -- until they Hawaiian judges discover a new Orange Man Bad penumbra and emanation in the Constitution.
Humanity is facing a long, cold winter which could see temperatures across the planet plunge to depressing lows.
That's the warning from a Nasa scientist who fears sunspot activity on the surface of our star has dropped so low that it could herald the arrival of a uniquely grim mini Ice Age.
'We see a cooling trend,' Martin Mlynczak of Nasa's Langley Research Center told Space Weather. 'High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy.
'If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.'
I forget who said it (apologies), but one of the greatest bits of snark ever written on this blog went something like this:
"If only there were some... external factor that could account for the variations in global temperature. Such a hypothetical external factor would have to be very large, though -- on the order of magnitude of our own Sun."
Shocker: Guy Who Shouted "Heil Hitler, Heil Trump" At a Fiddler on the Roof Performance Is Actually... An Anti-Trump Progressive Activist
—Ace of Spades
Yes, everyone pretty much thought this, though many of us did not say so because we'd be yelled at by the Very Smart People Who Are Wrong About Almost Everything.
I mean, this seemed like a FALSE FLAG from the get-go, but the Very Smart People Who Are Wrong About Almost Everything yell when people say almost-certainly correct things like "This sounds much more like a MAGA parody as imagined by a febrile progressive than an actual MAGA supporter," and want Republicans to assume that they are Garbage People like their progressive Twitter Palz say and pre-emptively denounce themselves.
Even though this was all pretty obvious.
But we couldn't say so. Because, all of the yelling.
The "conservatives" who are Very Smart People Who Are Wrong About Almost Everything would call you "conspiracy theorists."
And they sure do reject conspiracy theories, except for the Michael Avenatti Got Set Up by a Rightwing Subversive Conspiracy Theory, and of course the Trump's Server Secretly Plotted Foreign Collusion With the Alfa Bank Server Conspiracy Theory.
But other than those and five to twelve other anti-Republican/anti-Trump conspiracy theories they passionately believe in, with no evidence whatsoever -- they're totes against conspiracy theories.
Or let's put it the right way: They're against all the conspiracy theories that conflict with their fervently-believed partisan dogmas, and they're passionately in favor of all the conspiracy theories that support their fervently-believed partisan dogmas.
As I've said before: If Jack Dorsey and the other progressive men are telling me that transwomen are really women, and there's no difference between a trans and a woman -- then I would expect progressive men to have a policy of dating trans women.
Do they? Funny, they don't say so. Seems as though in their personal lives they do see a difference between a trans woman and a, you know, actual woman.
But in public speech? They lie, and the require others to lie, and they punish them if they do not lie.
This is very, very healthy. I can't think of any political systems built upon personal truths suppressed under public lies that turned into paranoid murder-states.
It's Official: Federal Judges Have Decided That There Are Special Rules In the Constitution That Say Trump Doesn't Have the Basic Powers All Other Presidents Have
The judge said the government could not say who initially decided to revoke Acosta’s hard pass. The White House had spelled out its reasons for revoking his credentials in a tweet from White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and in a statement after CNN filed its lawsuit. But the judge said those "belated efforts were hardly sufficient to satisfy due process."
The judge also found that Acosta suffered "irreparable harm," dismissing the government's argument that CNN could simply send other reporters to cover the White House in Acosta’s place.
The suit by CNN alleges that Acosta's First and Fifth Amendment rights were violated by suspending his hard pass. While the judge didn't rule on the underlying case, he signaled they were likely to prevail in their claims.
This is an emergency injunction, not a decision following a full trial, but the judge found a substantial likelihood that CNN would prevail on the merits (which is necessary finding for granting an injunction).
Good morning kids. Friday and the weekend is here at last. I'm searching all over for the equivalent of the flaming skull unequivocally proclaiming Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott as the winners of Florida's gubernatorial and Senate races respectively but all I get are either their own proclamations or confusion. From what I can gather Ron DeSantis has definitively won the auto recount with enough of margin to stave off a manual recount and the built-in Democrat cheat factor and Rick Scott has declared victory but not enough to stave off the latter meshugas. And to top it off, we still have flaming turds like Sherrod Brown and Hillary Clinton proclaiming that if "Tank" Abrams loses in Georgia then it was stolen by the GOP. Nice way to fire up another dozen or so James Hodgkinsons, jerks.
And while no one was watching, there are actually a couple more House seats in, of all places, California that Republicans won, or seemingly won, that are now being hijacked along with four other already stolen in races there and across the country, including the Wisconsin film-flamming of Scott Walker and Leah Vukmir.
The salient points in all of this are that something must be done starting like yesterday to fix this problem. Considering elections are the purview of individual states, I don't see what sort of legislation can be enacted to curb this. And of course, this is all a feature - an "insurance policy" if you will - in case the citizenry dare to go against the will and destiny of their betters and vote against them, so forget any sort of voting reform like abolishing early voting, Motor-Voter and provisional ballots etc. especially in areas already under Democrat-Leftist rule. The only way to really defeat this, while we still have a country, is to get out and vote en masse and overcome the cheat factor (which no doubt will increase con gusto if the attempted robberies fail in FL and GA). And that means that it is incumbent on the GOP to field candidates that have a pulse, let alone the temperament and mindset to fight and be on the right side of the issues. We knew that this was going to be problematic since the GOP is still in a struggle with the pro-Trump conservative base and politicians to control the party. And that situation is still in doubt.
The other crucial point is that it is now evident to anyone but the most clueless that the Democrat Party is now ramping up a very dangerous propaganda meme that any time they lose an election it is because it was stolen by the Republicans (i.e. white male Christian bigots and sons of slave owners and homophobes, etc.). So in their twisted worldview, stealing an election from a Republican is justified since the latter are evil and dangerous and stand in the way of progress. Just like it's okay to try and break into Tucker Carlson's house, abuse Ted Cruz and his wife at a restaurant, smash someone wearing a MAGA hat in the face with a bike lock or go shoot up Steve Scalise and others at a softball field. It's all part of "otherization" and declaring anyone who opposes them in the slightest as untermenschen that must be removed. Forget about the rule of law. Along with everything else we have seen vis a vis Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama, Judge Buch M. Danno and all the rest, that is out the window. A truckload of axle grease is being dumped on the already slippery slope we are sliding down on.
I suppose if I wanted to be positive about this, I could say that the fact that even after all they have done to this nation and the brains of several generations of youth that they still need to steal key elections to hold onto power might be a ray of hope. And that is why they want open borders and amnesty. They can bypass the messy and sometimes embarrassing fiasco of stealing elections and just steal our national identity overnight. As an aside, when you consider the fact that there are already perhaps 22-30 million illegal aliens already in this country, the fact that Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress had two whole years to grant them Amnesty and citizenship and probably turn Florida and Texas blue and instead went for Obamacare and Dodd-Fagg is a blunder of epic proportions. Call it hubris in that he and they believed Jon Meacham's drivel of "We Are All Socialists Now" but had they done that, it would have been lights out America right then and there.
In any case, in the near term, for sure the Democrats even as we speak going to go all out and try to goniff Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin for 2020. If I am a Republican governor and have a majority GOP state legislature I would be working my ass off now to thoroughly examine every aspect of the state's elector systems and personnel and preemptively pass laws and fire/hire people to mitigate as best as I can the Democrat thievery that is sure to come.
As a nation, we're collectively bobbing in the surf as it is and the question is is the tide finally receding or is there a massive wave coming in to finish us off? We shall see.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, Mike Espy takes blood money from thug dictators, Lindsay Graham-inator is threatening the Dems to investigate Hillary if they carry through with their promises of hammering Trump with subpoenas, and Adam Schiff will have a closed door briefing with Dem mega donors. About what, pray tell? In general political news, Shaun "Talcum X" King raises serious bucks, Loopy Ocasio-Fiasco is denying she's feuding with the top Dem brass but Marcia Fudge is challenging Nancy Palsi. None of this makes any difference; who leads that criminal enterprise is essentially arguing about switching deck chairs on the Titanic. Now that Ilhan Omar has won in Minnesota she can now put down the taqqiya sunrise and proudly proclaim her Joo-hatred, and Daniel Greenfield on anti-Trump faux Chassidim.
In fake news fakery and propaganda, journalists behind the scenes are miffed at JmJ Acosta, a truly shocking survey reveals that the media leans left (just "leans?!"), Democracy dies in trivia and this One America News outlet sounds interesting.
In Amnesty, Immigration and the Caravan Invasion news, even residents of Tijuana hate the invaders, watch as one of Nancy Palsi's spark-of-humanity animals opens fire on a traffic cop after being pulled over (a gun and a drivers license, hmm...), polls still show overwhelming support for dealing with illegal immigration (and that's how we lost the House) and the Border Patrol has caught 654 illegals at "outdated border infrastructure." Dang fences.
On the foreign affairs front, the administration has gone after 17 Saudis implicated in WaPo Khashoggi's death, after 22 years, the US finally goes from abstaining to voting "no" on the UN's Golan Heights resolution, Egypt's El-Sissi on the stomping out of the "Arab Spring," an Aussie pol pulls a cunning stunt, analysis of Israel's moves vis a vis avoiding a war in Gaza, and Britain is about to get Corbyn-ized good and hard. Also, Michael Ledeen on the continuing fiasco and failure of the CiA and 17 years and $6 trillion later, we're still fighting that war on terror. If only we knew where Terror was on the map we could nuke it. Thanks Dubya.
Domestically, the California wildfire has now killed 63 with 631 people missing (prayers up), this new crime/decriminalization bill is a stinker, a look at crony capitalism writ large with Amazon coming to New York, and Loopy Ocasio-Fiaso was actually right about opposing it albeit for the wrong reasons, and how Obamacare's Medicaid expansion screwed up the GOP in the midterms.
In indoctrination news, Detroit's school board is considering renaming the Ben Carson School because he's evil or something, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is quietly winning bigtime on Title IX campus kangaroo courts, USC bans an article on "female privilege" and the top 10 university Joo/Israel haters in academia. That sound you hear in the background is me and the minyan warming up the lighting machine...
In enviro-communism news, DC churches have been banned from passing out plastic straws with coffee, and from hither and yon, in femi-nazism it's a cold winter for white women plus Rabbi Fischer on the fall of Michael "Pimp Hand of Justice" Avenatti and finally, the man who escaped Jim Jones 40 years later.
BONUS: Cardboard membership privileges to the first commenter who identifies the eye transplant.
Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.
Y'know, every time I try to put something entertaining other than just links into the ONT, like gifs or videos or some such, I always hear a litany of bitching in the comments.
"I can't load these on my Motorola Razor. Wah!"
"They slow down my 1200 baud modem! Boo!"
"My Atari 800 can't run them! Sob!"
The pinnacle of 1987 technology utterly baffles some people, SMDH. As a result, I don't use as many of these elements as I other wise might, which is fine, but that means they pile up in my ONT content folder.
Well tonight we're clearing the decks. The content for the ONT is below the cut here. ***WARNING: MOST OF IT IS GIFS*** If the string stretched between the Dixie cups that you use for an ISP can't handle it, don't click. If your TS 1000 will be overburdened, don't click. Instead you're invited to go right up to the thread above this one, titled Bifurcated ONT - Comments, and join out nightly little booze kvetch. If, OTOH, you have a computer and internet connection from the present century and you do want to see the content, please feel free to open this thread up and enjoy. No comments here though, all comments will be taken upstairs. See y'all up there!
A federal judge ordered former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to answer five questions she has avoided for years about her use of a private email server to conduct official U.S. diplomatic business.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan on Wednesday gave Clinton 30 days to respond under oath to five questions.
These questions were all put to her nearly four years ago in a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit government watchdog Judicial Watch.
The five questions are:
1.) Who decided to create the clintonemail.com system?
2.) When was it created?
3.) Why was it created?
4.) Who set it up?
5.) When did it become operational?
So, is she going to claim under oath to a judge who seems suspicious of her that she created the server just so she could use one iPad or whatever bullshit reason she's offered before?
The judge added a bit more:
Sullivan also ordered Clinton to explain why, on Oct. 22, 2015, she told the House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi that virtually all of her emails "were in the State Department's system" and "if they want to see them, they would certainly have been able to do so."
The judge ordered Clinton to "identify the basis for this statement, including all facts on which you relied in support of the statement, how and when you became aware of these facts, and, if you were made aware of these facts by or through another person, identify the person who made you aware of these facts."
Lifezette notes that any person Clinton names as having been involved in the server will likely be asked follow-up questions by Judicial Watch.
Surprise! CNN and MSNBC Three-Hour Morning Shows Offer Combined Two Minutes of Coverage to Their Former Live-In Permanent Guest, Michael "Punch-Up" Avenatti
This is one hundred and five hours of a woman-championing apple.
This is sixty seven seconds of a woman-punching apple.
See the difference?
CNN's New Day and MSNBC’s Morning Joe, two programs with a combined six hours of air time, on Thursday managed a total of 67 seconds on the felony abuse arrest charges against Michael Avenatti. This is despite their previous fascination with the porn lawyer and Democratic antagonist to President Trump.
CNN's New Day offered a scant 27 seconds to the news. Co-host John Berman briefly explained, "Attorney Michael Avenatti strongly denies any wrongdoing after he was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence." Though Berman noted that "there are a lot of open questions" and "we need to get more information on the story," clearly the show's hosts weren't that interested.
MSNBC's Morning Joe only did slightly better, managing 44 seconds in a Willie Geist news brief...
Again, these shows are a combined six hours long. From March 17 through August 12, Morning Joe interviewed Avenatti 7 times. During the same period, CNN's New Day talked to him 13 times. Yet suddenly, news of the Democratic lawyer's arrest is uninteresting.
This is like doing a 12 hour Ken Burns biopic about John Wilkes Booth's acting career and then just ending it in an Animal House-type freeze frame, "Wilkes later had a short career as a ballistic political critic."
Here's what I think: I think the media, which pretends to be Totally Against Conspiracy Theories, is holding out hope that Michael "Slugger" Avenatti's conspiracy theory that a Bitch Rightwing Journalist Set Me Up is real:
First Mueller and now me. When we are fully exonerated I am coming for you Jacob Wohl aka Surefire.
Jacob Wohl is some nobody-ever-heard-of guy that suddenly figures prominently in leftwingers' conspiracy theories. Apparently he had something to do with that Mueller-sexual-harassment vapornews story? Maybe?
I have no idea. No one even knows who this guy is besides leftist conspiracy theorists and The Weekly Standard's "fact-check" guy.
Fortunately, we had AllahPundit, who pretends to be super-duper anti-conspiracy-theory if that conspiracy theory emanates from the right, give Avenatti's leftwing conspiracy theory a full and fair airing on "conservative" website HotAir, under the headline,
Was Avenatti set up?
Nice headline, hero!
In fairness, he does point out the answer is probably "No" (wouldn't want to be too dismissive of a leftwing conspiracy theory, thus the hedging; leftwing conspiracy theories remain a better class of conspiracy theory than those offered by the grubby, lumpenproletariat right), and notes that a domestic violence charge can only stem from an assault upon someone who's a wife, dating partner, etc. Hence, this Jacob Wohl Immanuel Goldstein subversive would have had to have persuaded/bribed a woman who could prove to police that she was one of Avenatti's sex partners to join him in the "set up."
Dat headline doh, huh?
Claims the right makes can be laughed away, but it's important to treat CNN Pals' no-evidence conspiracy theories as substantial, credible allegations worthy of being seriously entertained.
Oh, AllahPundit also joined in with his Leftwing Twitter Palz in treating this Trump statement...
"If you buy a box of cereal -- you have a voter ID," Trump continued. "They try to shame everybody by calling them racist, or calling them something, anything they can think of, when you say you want voter ID. But voter ID is a very important thing.”
... as a serious statement that cereal purchases require voter ID, rather than an amusing way to say "For pretty much every transaction you make in life, you have to present ID -- so stop pretending it's a major hardship to get it."
Everyone's said "if you buy a six pack of beer" or "if you buy a pack of cigarettes" you have to show ID, but Trump extended this hyperbolically to cereal purchases, and, well, Allah joins in with his very good Twitter Palz in saying "BUT THAT'S NOT TRUE!!!"
Again, this was the line that all the leftwingers were pushing, so it shouldn't be any surprise that the "conservative" blogger joined in.
I wonder what Pierre Omidyar thinks. Oh, don't tell me. I'm sure the Twitter Kidz will be relaying it momentarily.
But seriously -- we do have to take the innuendo of a Conspiracy So Vast to frame Michael Avenatti as a real thing that must be taken quite seriously.
More than a dozen people were arrested trying to illegally cross the border by the KKK, I mean, by the Border Patrol.
More than a dozen members of the migrant caravan were arrested Wednesday night along U.S.-Tijuana border, a border patrol source in the San Diego sector told Fox News.
A small group was arrested near the beach in an area called Playas de Tijuana. A large group was arrested in the mountains east of Otay Mesa, a San Diego community that straddles the Mexican border, the source said. All were arrested for trying to cross the border illegally, the source said.
Separately, a fight broke out Wednesday night in Tijuana between local Mexicans and Hondurans arriving in the caravan. The migrants complained that the locals were yelling: "Go home. We don't want you here!" Members of the caravan complained to reporters that local police made no attempt to break up the fight.
Video at the link. You can see these Future Americans sitting atop the border fence taunting the Border Patrol.
Carlson played video of several reporters and commentators playing down the caravan, including comedian Bill Maher who called President Trump "the racist Paul Revere [saying] 'the migrants are coming, the migrants are coming'."
With people now seen sitting atop the border fence near its end at the ocean in Tijuana, Carlson said, "what 'would' you call it?"
"This is a recurring theme on the left -- don't believe your own eyes, you're too dumb to believe your own senses. There is no illegal immigration crisis."
Carlson said Democrats "will tell you that on-a-loop until they take power."
But I don't think they're embarrassed. I think they believe there is virtue and good in denying reality, also known as "lying."
As one of CNN's several antifa apologists Chris Cuomo said, some punches are more virtuous than others, and so therefore some lies are virtuous too.
Deadline for Florida's Recount Passed at 3pm; Bill Nelson Filed Suit to Ignore the Law and Allow Democrats More Time to Manufacture Votes; Federal Judge Refuses His Request
A federal judge is refusing to suspend looming election recount deadlines in the battleground state of Florida.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker on Thursday rejected a request by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Democrats to give counties more time to finish recounts. All 67 counties are required to submit the results of a machine recount by 3 p.m.
Palm Beach County's election supervisor has already warned that the county will not be able to finish on time.
The Democrat plan here -- illegally changing the deadlines for voting (well, "curing" defective votes), etc., and then getting a liberal judge to invalidate the law -- is so obvious that even CNN understands the game:
VIDEO - CNN’s King on Fla. Recount: Dems Are Now Hoping Courts ‘Bend the Letter of the Law’ https://t.co/AubCHR3L0D
"The letter of the law." Like it's a minor thing. Sure, let's get all loosey-goosey about the set-in-stone laws about voting and vote-counting and vote-reporting.
That won't spark a civil war or anything.
And I'm sure the Democrats would be just jake if Republicans similarly wanted to ignore a few provisions of the voting law themselves.
Update, Via John Ekdahl: John Ekdahl has been giving me updates.
He says, despite what the news says about a judge denying a request for more time, that Palm Beach County has been given more time to finish their recount.
Update to the update: John says that Palm Beach missed the deadline, and they'll just have to submit the pre-recount numbers. He says he might have gotten confused about Palm Beach having been granted an extension -- maybe he was thinking about a lawsuit asking for that.
As for Broward, some good news:
Broward numbers are lower than first results: Numbers being sent to Tallahassee show 779-vote swing to Scott.
That's a swing, I take it, from their last bullshit numbers, after they added thousands and thousands of votes for Nelson and Gillum.
Another update: John says we're now going to get a hand recount but only for the Senate race. The governor's race is separated by too many votes for a hand recount.
So now we're going to see ballots manipulated on camera again.
Oh, wow.
So they got what they were trying for: Having lost the game, they faked the score to get a Fifth Quarter to play in.
After asking the nominee to head ICE, Ronald Vitello, about the KKK and what its motivations were, Harris began demanding to know if he saw connections between the KKK, a terrorist organization, and ICE, a federal law-enforcement agency.
"Are you aware of the perception of many about how the power and the discretion at ICE is being used to enforce the laws and do you see any parallels ..." she asked.
Vitiello interjected before Harris could name ICE and the KKK: "I do not see any parallels."
"That puts ICE in the same category as the KKK. Is that what you're asking me?" he said.
"No, I'm very specific in what I'm asking you. Are you aware of a perception that they way that they ..." Harris said.
"I see none," Vitiello said.
"Are you aware that there is a perception that ICE is administering its power in a way that is causing fear and intimidation, particularly among immigrants and specifically among immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America?" she asked.
Vitiello said he did not. Harris asked how he could be the head of an agency and not be aware of how some view it.
"It seems to me that you would understand that when you use words like the words you used just three short years ago, that that would contribute to that perception," Harris said. "And it's harmful then, it's harmful, in terms of the mission of the agency and the work of the individuals there. And it is harmful in terms of leading -- innocent people arriving at our border fleeing harm, it is harmful to them."
How Misguided Environmentalism Is To Blame For California’s Wildfires "When explaining to Mother Jones why the California Wine Country fires were so bad last October, fire ecologist Sasha Berleman said, 'We have 100 years of fire suppression that has led to this huge accumulation of fuel loads.'" But...But...But...Global Warming! [CBD]
Raceclown Toure: Now That We've Browbeaten White People Into Saying "People of Color," We're Gonna Browbeat Them Into Not Saying People of Color Anymore, Because Now That's Racist Too Well, fine, I never said People of Color because it's the sort of thing People of Stupid say, but I do find it interesting that the left spends almost all of its energy these days telling white people what they can and cannot say, and occasionally changing the New Rules arbitrarily just to keep the white devils guessing. I guess this is mostly a power-move against white liberals, who are the only people still playing the raceclowns' game. And do note, his admonition seems directed at white people -- he's not just generally saying, "I don't know if we should say People of Color any more..." It's just another SJW speech-police power-move.
Deranged Cuck AllahPundit Can't Even Post a Bullshit Post About a Magic Trick Without Dropping in a Trump Slam and Baiting Republicans About Losing the House A blow-off post about a magic trick. And this deranged obsessive depressive will later bemoan how leftists politicize everything. Why yes, deranged Leftists really do do that, don't they? Say, come to think of it, you seem to inject unfunny political trolling into all of your posts too, don't you? Hmm... Are you writing for Jimmy Kimmel now, by any chance? Ah I'm just kidding, you're not funny. I guess this is what happens when he's not free to high-five his leftist Twitter Palz all day long.
From Instapundit, Another Scientific Study Lends Credence to the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of Weight Gain/Weight Regulation After putting a group through a standard calorie-restriction diet which caused them to lose 10-14% of bodyweight, the study then divided them into three groups, one getting 20% of calories from carbohydrate, one 40%, and one group 60%. The group getting only 20% of calories from carbohydrate burned 250 extra calories per day, in line with the insulin-dependent model of weight gain. They did not lose extra weight because the study called for them to eat more to prevent additional weight gain, to offset additional calories burned. But had this protocol not been applied, they would have lost 250 calories' worth of weight per day (a little more than a pound every two weeks). And, importantly, that weight loss would have occurred after the easy first 10% of weight had been shed in the first part of the experiment.
What a Shock: PayPal Has Cut Off Yet Another Competitor to Tech Monopoly Platforms Is this all just a coincidence or are tech giants acting in concert to destroy all possible competitors? Bitchute was terminated by PayPal, one assumes, for failing to be heavy-handed with censorship like YouTube is now; but when YouTube itself was less heavy-handed, PayPal didn't attempt to deplatform YouTube. Twitter, too, used to be less heavy-handed, and yet there were no companies working to deplatform them. One begins to see a pattern that goes like this: the established tech giants establish a censorship guideline, which is taken by other companies, for no good reason, to be the required censorship guideline. Then anyone not conforming to the established tech giants' current censorship policies (and remember, these change all the time) are deplatformed by other tech giants. You can't say you're not acting in concert when you take Twitter's or YouTube's rules of the day (which can and do change) and then use that as your justification to exclude all competitors to YouTube and Twitter. You're just using their censorship-policies-of-the-month to justify always acting in YouTube's and Twitter's interest. You're just using their censorship policies as cover for eliminating their competitors. When YouTube and Twitter decide "No conservative speakers at all," will PayPal, MasterCard, and the rest then begin denying services to a conservative competitor start-up? We need congressional investigations into this, but it won't happen: The Democrats are all-in on censorship and harassing conservatives out of public life (including their jobs), and too many Republicans are simply paid off by Big Tech.
New York Magazine: Maybe It's Time for America to Split Up Hear, hear... This is why we need Trump to win in 2020. We have two choices: Either we win and they beg us to secede, in which case we're done with them forever, or they win, and they dominate us forever. (They won't let us secede, of course: they mean to "correct" us, preferably as against our will as possible, to increase the pain.)
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