How incompetent is the Biden administration? So incompetent it is now condemning its own border patrol and promising to “investigate” a complete BS Twitter panic over border agents “whipping” Haitian immigrants.
Why is this a problem? Because it tells EVEYONE in the federal government that they’ll be thrown under the bus just for doing their job. Oh, and it also encourages more Twitter panics by our deranged media.
Mike
MBunge,
Your analysis is correct but your wrong on it being a problem. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Exploiting weak people’s emotions and riling them into panics is the tool Progressives and Leftists are using to erode our liberties. Look at George Floyd. Kids in Cages. Mask mandates. White supremacy. The January 6th Insurrection.
There will always be news events; a confrontation between a felonious drug addict and the police, a disease outbreak, people trying to enter our country illegally… They use emotion to rile up useful idiots and then use the public outrage to gain more control.
Rinse, repeat.
The Biden administration is not incompetent at all. Like Obama’s, it is systematically achieving its goals, step by step.
“The Biden administration is not incompetent at all. Like Obama’s, it is systematically achieving its goals, step by step.”
You’re not wrong. Consider this analogy as well: under Obama a pro-DemParty activist group would sue a Giant Corp. Then Giant would be told by the relevant federal dept “pay them $1million, else we’ll sue you for $100million”. Voila, another Dem interest group funded.
The ineffective Repub pushback means that all Giant Corps jump to do Dem bidding. As we see, over and over.
“The Biden administration is not incompetent at all. Like Obama’s, it is systematically achieving its goals, step by step.”
A great comment Rufus. It is rather amazing to take an objective view and watch what is happening: Install a puppet as president through massive voting fraud. Then use the puppet as a means to initiate all the programs. The puppet can also distract from the real agenda by the comical bumbling that the puppet displays. Blatantly lie about everything, and keep repeating all the lies; no need to worry as the MSM is in their corner. An example: Raggedy Ann saying no need to be concerned with the vaccination status of all those streaming across the border as most of them will not be staying in the US, all the while shipping them all off to various US cities. Such a laughable lie, but never challenged.
They really have totally won, and continue to consolidate their power.
I highly recommend this 75-minute discussion/debate between Victor Davis Hanson and General H. R. McMaster. At first, Victor seems tired (no wonder; he’s keeping a brutal schedule); his glasses don’t fit, he rocks back and forth, but he comes roaring back. And he’s as sharp as ever, at one point calling McMaster out on using the subjunctive mood. Victor learned Greek in order to read the original text of the philosophers.
Angelo Codevilla has died. He was walking when he was struck by a drunk driver. We have lost a giant.
The CCP and Xi Can Do! for the world’s economy what their WuFlu started. But their high speed rains will run on time.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the driver has the proverbial book thrown at him or is let off with a warning to watch his liquor intake around the usual suspects.
OBloodyHell–
Trudeau (referred to by disenchanted Canadians as Turdoo) didn’t get the absolute parliamentary majority he’d hoped for. In addition: “Maryam Monsef, a member of the Prime Minister’s Liberal Party and Minister for Gender Equality, was defeated by Conservative candidate Michelle Ferreri in the riding (constituency) of Peterborough-Kawartha in Monday’s vote.” Monsef is of Afghan heritage (what can we look forward to with Biden’s newly imported Afghanis?) and made headlines a month ago by referring to the Taliban as ‘our brothers.’
“Along with losing his Minister for Gender Equality, Trudeau at this point has also lost Bernadette Jordan, now ex-minister for Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard and may very well lose Deb Schulte, the rural development minister.”
“They use emotion to rile up useful idiots and then use the public outrage to gain more control.”
But you can’t control people if your instruments of control, like law enforcement, are terrified of acting and reduced to ineffectiveness because no one wants to be involved with them. A police state needs policemen and, no matter how ruthless, they can’t be feckless idiots.
This isn’t some devious plan. This is media morons on Twitter freaking out and the Biden adminstration then responding to that freak out as if it were reality.
Mike
“Angelo Codevilla has died. He was walking when he was struck by a drunk driver. We have lost a giant …”
Now there’s a loss I actually feel. A man with a penetrating intellect who had accurately mapped out the sociopolitical battlefield terrain well in advance of most commentators.
There are several others who have since the 2016 election arisen; and the analytical/critical commentary abilities of conservatives in general has markedly improved since the turn of the century, but Codevilla – who I didn’t even know until several years ago – stood out.
Re Codevilla. A light for our dark times is extinguished.
DNW: precisely. Big loss. He brought an immigrant’s perspective to our national travails. His 2010 piece on the American ruling class is essential reading. And he had worked on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and with the IC, so he knew the system from the inside.
PA+Cat: my thoughts were trending in a more sinister direction. Breitbart. Scalia. Now Codevilla. Are we soon going to hear that Victor Davis Hanson has been killed in a freak raisin-processing accident? Tucker Carlson in a tragic fly-fishing mishap? Michael Anton impaled on a pair of tailor’s shears? The Left has a long history of engaging in wet work. As Richard Burton put it in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, they’re bastards. Clever bastards. Burton, as Alec Leamas: https://youtu.be/NmmWkJtuxz4?t=135.
Two men who died of natural causes (one of them an 80 year old diabetic) and a man hit by a car (something that happens thousands of time a year in this country).
Deco: you could be right. Nothing to see here. Or you could be wrong. Interesting comment over at Powerline:
“Charles McCarry, I think, would have suspected a case of ‘flyswatting.’ That’s the craft of killing inconvenient individuals with automobiles. And if you’ve been reading Codevilla, he was the very definition of an inconvenient individual.”
Been on a McCarry binge recently. Finished “Old Boys”, now working my way through “Second Sight”. Rather tough going. All that jumping around in time between Berlin, Prague, D.C., the Berkshires, Okinawa, Harvard Yard, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Xinjiang, Morocco, Central Asia–you can tell McCarry worked for National Geographic. In addition to the Outfit.
“Charles McCarry, I think, would have suspected a case of ‘flyswatting.’ That’s the craft of killing inconvenient individuals with automobiles. And if you’ve been reading Codevilla, he was the very definition of an inconvenient individual.”
He was a public intellectual whose work is already out there and whose life expectancy was less than 10 years. Admirable and interesting to be sure, but only indirectly a threat. That thesis would be more persuasive in re Andrew Breitbart or Tucker Carlson.
In re Andrew Breitbart, did his family contest the autopsy report?
Art Deco,
Regarding Andrew Breitbart, from what I recall his wife stated it was a heart attack and I don’t think she appreciated speculation on conspiracy theories regarding her husband’s death. It’s been quite some time, so I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but I recall hearing a direct statement from her, maybe a year after the death. She was explicit in the words she used and also, her demeanor was very direct. She seemed very confident in stating her husband’s death was not due to foul play.
Incidentally, she is the daughter of actor, bon vivant, raconteur and perpetual, ’60s, 70s and ’80s game show contestant, Orson Bean.
Re: Suspicious deaths…
You guys didn’t spend enough time on the Left when you were young. 🙂
Back then there was an ominous number of assassinations and odd deaths, which always hurt the Left … or so it seemed.
The only exception to the rule was George Wallace, who survived his assassination. The thinking of the conspiracy left was that Wallace threatened Nixon with a possible third-party run in 1972, and so was vulnerable to nefarious forces from the right, or simply Nixon. (I don’t know how realistic that was.)
Then there were all those witnesses to the JFK assassination who had died “suspiciously” in the years following.
Heck, some of them were suspicious, such as Lee Harvey Oswald’s Russian friend, George de Mohrenschildt, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound the day he received notice to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassination.
I gave up on a JFK conspiracy and lost interest in proving the others one way or the other. I suspect those deaths are what they appeared to be.
I’m not inclined to renew that curiosity from the Right. Though anyone so interested should not hesitate on my account to venture further.
Sometimes I’m surprised there aren’t more assassinations. How did Steve Jobs and Bill Gates not put hits out on each other? Was their security that good?
… and, to bring it full circle, Orson Bean died when he was struck by a car when out for a walk.
As one of the commenters in the thread there says, give it a few days and the celebrated 8chan Autists will have their CVs posted.
@Huxley:
An Imaginative Little Birdie tells me that Jobs even at his lowest point would have considered Gates to his second greatest asset. Could always rely on Bill to lack subtlety.
Plenty of other people in the trade would have been inclined to smack Gates around, but they couldn’t afford to get near him after he stole or otherwise sabotaged their main chances.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Orson Bean!
He was always fun to watch on “To Tell the Truth.” He also wrote a crazy book, “Me and the Orgone,” about his experience of Reichian therapy.
I just noticed him playing a small role as a Holocaust survivor in Denzel Washington’s second Equalizer movie.
Zaphod,
Those side by side photos are amusing!
huxley,
For someone who had a long career in the entertainment industry Orson Bean was incredibly grounded and openly conservative. In the few interviews I heard him give he sounded like a truly good human.
@ Hubert … and Zaphod
Hubert,
It’s strange that though quite different we all may be in tastes and attitudes and backgrounds, there is nonetheless some parallelism in interests among the men who visit Neo’s site.
One of these is the construction, functioning, and performance of mechanisms from almost every era.
I nearly fell over when I saw Zaphod’s reference to Hickcock45, and have to say I was pretty surprised by your own reference to Ian.
If anyone has an such an interest, they should make room for at least one additional YouTuber on their list: GunBlue490; an avuncular, temperate, yet no nonsense and extremely well-informed (from industry experience probably) source on the history and performance of these tools.
For what it is worth, I personally never had even a modest interest in firearms as a young adult. A simple 30-30 Winchester which I never gave any thought to outside of mid November was the extent of my interest in such subjects.
In fact, I viewed such fascinations as somewhat tawdry, déclassé, the domain of intellectually limited types who bowled and liked drag strip racing, and frankly, just kind of embarrassing. Kind of like an interest in military uniforms still strikes me today: as the domain of bespectacled fat boys who read comic books.
Then, slowly as I began in another context to become familiar with bearing ways and journals, buttress threads, cams, locking and release designs, and various styles of power or motion transmission, it became a completely different matter.
Not only automotive and aerospace engineering became enjoyable topics for review, but even – of all things – firearms.
Funny how that works.
Mid-Autumn Festival last night. You may have noticed a full moon. Lanterns, but alas no fireworks — been banned in Hong Kong ever since the Red Guards were on the rampage in ‘66.
Chowing down on a durian ice-cream moon-cake for my morning repast. To call it a mere breakfast would be to commit Lèse-majesté against the King of Fruits.
For those who have never had the good fortune to behold a Durian, this is what they look like:
Neo.
Trying to cruise the news on my phone, whose controls are three-quarters too small, I found myself looking at a couple of your pieces ca 2005. Has it been that long?
One had to do with Marty Peretz.
And a lot of discussion about “feelings” among the left instead of rational thought and fact-based conclusions. How prophetic. If you would, let me know when it’s a good day to buy a lottery ticket.
One quibble: There may be times when “feel” is used as synonym for “think” or “have concluded”. Perhaps there’s sometimes an overlay of “and it makes me feel good to conclude this”, or “there’s a kind of satisfaction in coming to this position”.
It may not be a matter of mean tweets are more important than energy independence. Or perhaps it is.
I am reminded that in high school–class of 62–some people would say to me, “You’re so logical.” Or “rational”. Don’t I have any feelings? I was puzzled, since high school, including classroom discussions, was not as far as I could tell, structured so that the difference would be evident or even come up at all. However it struck them, they thought there was something wrong with it. I suppose that’s the point; whether I did whatever it was or not, they thought I did and they thought it was odd, at the least.
@DNW:
Thanks for the link. I don’t have any mechanical abilities beyond basic bicycle mechanics. The evolution of firearms and the mechanisms involved fascinates me. I remember years ago coming across a multi-volume treatise on mechanisms by a Soviet Academician and being gobsmacked that there could be people who did nothing but study and classify such things.
Apart from the personal security, political and Man-in-full considerations surrounding firearm ownership, there must also be an element of Robert Pirsig’s Quality for many owners. Form pretty much has to follow function… and everything is there for a reason. There’s something compelling about machined parts which takes us back to flint-chipping maybe? Why should a bubbling brook sound so good? Why should fire be hypnotic? Because we’ve been human for a while now.
It’s a joy to handle fabricated items which are non-frivolous (this puts paid to mechanical watches until the next EMP or solar flare) and not Crap.
Zaphod,
That photo does not do the odor justice. What’s the saying, “when the durian falls the sarong drops?”
@RA:
Welcome to the Spectrum, Good Sir 🙂
@Rufus:
Frozen and chilled durian deserts are popular because they put half a lid on the ‘fragrance’.
And it’s not anything like the whiff of freshly-baked hot walnut bread at Dan Ryan’s, issit?
(Casual Reader: The Durian is believed to possess aphrodisiac properties.)
“When the Durian Falls, the Sarong goes UP.”
The Javanese might not bestir themselves much when work is concerned, but they don’t mess around when their blood is up.
A few years ago, did a week in a resort in Koh Samui. Had a ground floor suite with the usual outdoor seating area, daybed, etc. Thai girlfriend at the time spent about 15 minutes palpitating various clingwrapped lumps of durian flesh in the night market and discussing the finer points of their vintages and provenances with vendors before settling on a large evil-looking chunk of the stuff.
So we took this thing back to the hotel and parked it wrapped in extra protective layers of plastic bag outside the room. There’s no way you keep this bio weapon indoors.
Strange to say, that durian just got better and better as the week went by. Had to chuck it on day 5 or 6 but it really did mature like fine wine.
@ Zaphod > “Not confirmed, but certainly plausible:”
Talk about lying with impunity, this is acting with impudence — they really assigned exactly the same group of Feds as shown in an open-source photo, and then let them stand next to each other?
What kind of operational security is that??
“…it’s a weapon…”
Indeed, and last I heard banned by the Geneva Convention for unconventional warfare…, which they were forced to rebrand as “ABCD”.
(No doubt Rufus’s advice to keep it frozen—for as long as possible before deployment—is the safest way to defend against premature detonation.)
Having said all that—and looking at the bright side—it is considered incredibly healthy and lots of fun at parties—well, depending on one’s definition of “fun”—and is most likely one of the most “acquired” of “acquired tastes”…along with Iceland’s “hakarl” (fermented shark), a (fortunately) rare delicacy in most parts of the world, though the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans also excel in things fermented.
@BarryMeislin:
Not in a hurry to try fermented shark. I’ll beg off in the unlikely event that Frodi Midjord ever invites me to dinner.
Not to mention fermented fish gut sauces which are a thing in Thailand/Cambodia/Laos/Vietnam. Shades of Garum — which I’d like to try.
According to Wikipedia there was possibly even a kosher variant of Garum. More Cosmopolitan than Rootless back in the Hellenizing Day.
The Japanese are remarkably intolerant of any kind of foreign cuisine which is ‘Smelly’ or ‘Oily’. They do make an exception for Natto (fermented soybeans) which stinks to high heaven and is also offensively stringy and sticky and has a tendency to end up stuck to everything.
For the ultimate in Nasty Asian Food Smells, I give it to Stinky Bean Curd:
Under the right conditions — which is pretty much anytime there is a prevailing wind direction — you can smell vendors frying it a block away. And not a Manhattan Block… a real block. A classic HK winter evening sidewalk aroma along with roast chestnuts.
@AesopFan:
Re Opsec I think they’re just trolling Our for broad definition of ‘our’ Side. I mean what are we going to do anyway?
My somewhat contentious contention is that we should heap scorn and ridicule upon them whenever and wherever the opportunity arises. They have successfully inverted a whole slew of values and it’s up to us to flip the scale 180 degrees again.
Agree that natto is an—odd—outlier in Japanese cuisine….
(OTOH, maybe it’s related to Japanese culture in those far-off times of yore…i.e., before they learned that instituting across-the-board, respectful bow-bowing was far superior—from a “national”/cultural-self-preservation POV—to hack-hacking, stab-stabbing or choke-choking….)
…Speaking of “cuisine”, for general relief from all ailments—physical, medical, political, existential—I’d recommend ditching the runes and hitting the prunes. Hard….
An Armed Society is a Polite Society.
There’s a truth buried in stinky fermented soybeans though — the fact that one has to do all kinds of nasty things to them to make them digestible by humans should be enough warning to NPCs to go easy on the Soy. It’s a hop and a suspiciously androgynous skip from the Soy to the Poz.
Just old enough to have grown up when Prunes were prescribed whenever the rhubarb crop failed.
There’s always castor oil for the hard cases.
Must be a joke somewhere with punchline “We’re Runed!” — one of those things that could go either way.
Ah rhubarb…
That must be it. (I’ve heard it can cause contentiousness, even extreme contentiousness in some cases….)
One reason why it’s often ameliorated with strawberries…and tons of sugar.
BTW, boiling rhubarb in aluminum/aluminium pots (if such things still exist) is an excellent way to remove any and all stains in them. (Tomatoes work similarly.)
WRT castor oil (super-refined), it would seem to be a Putin-esque “remedy”…not to be tried at home (nor should rhubarb LEAVES be, for that matter….)—but then Russians, and Bulgarians for that matter, do tend to enjoy the hard stuff.
File under: “That’s the spirt”!
Note FWIW – I’m dropping off the grid for a short family visit.
Don’t eat too much rhubarb while I’m gone.
DNW: I didn’t grow up with firearms, although I did grow up in the Connecticut River valley, which was America’s original firearms-producing region (e.g. the Springfield Armory and Smith & Wesson in Massachusetts, Colt and Winchester in Connecticut). Took up shooting much later, after moving to the south.
I’ve been watching GunBlue490 for a while and enjoyed his video on the .257 Bob. His video on cleaning firearms is a classic. Judging by his accent and the terrain in his videos, I’m guessing he’s based in eastern Massachusetts or southern New Hampshire. Also seems to have a former connection with law enforcement. Definitely an old-school downeast Yankee with a workshop.
There have been some first-rate mechanical geniuses associated with firearms design. John Moses Browning, John Douglas Pedersen, and John Cantius Garand in this country, Dieudonne Saive in Belgium, the Mauser brothers in Germany, and Vladimir Fedorov and Fedor Tokarev in Russia/USSR.
Rufus:
}}} The January 6th “Insurrection”
You missed the scare quotes. Gotta have scare quotes.
}}} Trudeau (referred to by disenchanted Canadians as Turdoo) didn’t get the absolute parliamentary majority he’d hoped for.
MY point is he should not have even gotten re-elected. Even in a province and “district” (whatever Canada names the things) of total liberals, they should have elected someone else of a liberal bent. Not a jackwad idiot like Turdoo.
}}} (i.e., that might be a dollar sign too far)
Canadians are TOTAL $%^%&$ IMBECILES.
OK, Corrected. I even removed two. 😛
It is good that they lost SOME support, but under no circumstances is it anywhere near enough. Even WITH all the pansy-ass Vietnam beatfeets that they took in decades ago. 😛
It’s like fucking voting for Beto over Ted Cruz. You don’t have to like Cruz. You can even hate him. But you have to have the IQ of a gnat to vote for an obviously fake PoS like Beto.
}}} Been on a McCarry binge recently.
You may find the old Walter Matthau movie, “Hopscotch” entertaining.
}}} Plenty of other people in the trade would have been inclined to smack Gates around, but they couldn’t afford to get near him after he stole or otherwise sabotaged their main chances.
I have long maintained that Gates somehow obtained The Shadow’s Ring. You know, the one “with the power to cloud men’s minds”. No less than THREE times, companies set themselves up to be major rivals to M$ (and this does NOT include the idiocy surrounding Apple and the Mac and Scully). I mean EXACT rivals:
1 — WordPerfect bought Borland, which gave them a full office suite (including THE main spreadsheet of the day – Lotus 1-2-3) AND an array of languages (Turbo C was by far the best “c” out there). They bought DRI, which gave them a counter to MS-DOS. And they bought another piece of software (for the life of me, I can’t recall the name ATM) which allowed you full multitasking using DOS apps, which was much more efficient and effective than early Windows, pre-95.
The result? Dur Dur Dur Dur. Nothing. Never really did any kind of offensive to take them on and set themselves up as an alternative. The Ring had done its work!
2 — NOVELL buys the whole WP-Borland-DR thing, which gives them all that PLUS the primary network OS long before anyone had a network OS.
The result? Dur Dur Dur Dur. Nothing. Never really did any kind of offensive to take them on and set themselves up as an alternative. The Ring had done its work!
3 — Finally — IBM, which has a history of being marketing savvy, has a very critically acclaimed product, OS/2 Warp, which is getting lots of attention, is the equal of what w95 is supposed to be, even as w95 is languishing in development hell until it almost needs to be renamed w96!! The obvious smart thing to do, if you have IBM’s deep pockets, is to virtually give the thing away, just to get the market share that is M$’s. What do they do, instead? Charge developers $500 for their “Developer’s toolkit”… $500 in 1990s dollars, mind you. That’s like about $1000, now. Oh, yeah, IBM!!! Beat me, choke me, make me write stupid checks!
“Dur Dur Dur Dur… That Damned Ring!!
Add to this the stupidity of Scully not grasping the importance of market share to a technology company, which led to him not just letting M$ catch up to Apple’s utterly unassailable tech advantage, but also destroying the one hope they had for market share — which was Macintosh CLONES… which is what the “windows look and feel” lawsuit was really about — killing the clones. There were cheap Mac clones on the horizon at one point, in the late 1980s, and that’s when Apple sued M$ for the “similarity” between Windows and Mac. And the net effect was, of course, that all the clones just dried up, because it they were going to sue for “looking like the mac” to a huge company like M$, what would they do to something that looked “exactly like the mac” from a startup? Right.
The SMART thing to do would have been to offer the clone-makers access to previous ROM versions for the Mac. They would have opened the door to the low-end market, while still making people WANT to upgrade to the latest and greatest official Macs, if they could afford them. And all at no cost or risk to Apple — they could fully deny support of any kind to people who owned clones.
Dur Dur Dur. Microsoft wins again.
Then the final proof, of course, with Netscape, who literally steals a march on M$ and owns the browser market. OWNS it, lock, stock, and two smoking barrels.
M$ starts cheating, defacto paying OEMs to NOT install NS on their products, even though everyone with any sense wanted it instead of IE, which had flaws in its design that Netscape had eliminated two full years before… but people, being clueless and lazy, use IE instead of NS, and the browser share of NS slowly and steadily sinks.
Dur Dur Dur. Microsoft wins again.
Face it. Gates has The Shadow’s Ring.
Barry Meislin– Ah rhubarb…
That must be it. (I’ve heard it can cause contentiousness, even extreme contentiousness in some cases….)
When I was a kid, sportscasters often used “rhubarb” to refer to what would now be called an on-field basebrawl, particularly when the umps as well as the players got involved. Supposedly the use of “rhubarb” in baseball derived from its application in 1920s radio programs to imitate crowd noise: the actors would gather in the background away from the microphone, and say “rhubarb and rhubarb and rhubarb” over and over to simulate the sound of an unruly crowd. Last, some Allied fighter pilots in WWII used “rhubarb” to refer to strafing runs; it’s likely that they borrowed it from baseball.
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Freaking Trudeau stays in power.
Canadians are TOTAL $%^%$$&$ IMBECILES.
:-/
Amazing the colors found in Coleus these days.
But no Blue.
How incompetent is the Biden administration? So incompetent it is now condemning its own border patrol and promising to “investigate” a complete BS Twitter panic over border agents “whipping” Haitian immigrants.
Why is this a problem? Because it tells EVEYONE in the federal government that they’ll be thrown under the bus just for doing their job. Oh, and it also encourages more Twitter panics by our deranged media.
Mike
MBunge,
Your analysis is correct but your wrong on it being a problem. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Exploiting weak people’s emotions and riling them into panics is the tool Progressives and Leftists are using to erode our liberties. Look at George Floyd. Kids in Cages. Mask mandates. White supremacy. The January 6th Insurrection.
There will always be news events; a confrontation between a felonious drug addict and the police, a disease outbreak, people trying to enter our country illegally… They use emotion to rile up useful idiots and then use the public outrage to gain more control.
Rinse, repeat.
The Biden administration is not incompetent at all. Like Obama’s, it is systematically achieving its goals, step by step.
“The Biden administration is not incompetent at all. Like Obama’s, it is systematically achieving its goals, step by step.”
You’re not wrong. Consider this analogy as well: under Obama a pro-DemParty activist group would sue a Giant Corp. Then Giant would be told by the relevant federal dept “pay them $1million, else we’ll sue you for $100million”. Voila, another Dem interest group funded.
The ineffective Repub pushback means that all Giant Corps jump to do Dem bidding. As we see, over and over.
“The Biden administration is not incompetent at all. Like Obama’s, it is systematically achieving its goals, step by step.”
A great comment Rufus. It is rather amazing to take an objective view and watch what is happening: Install a puppet as president through massive voting fraud. Then use the puppet as a means to initiate all the programs. The puppet can also distract from the real agenda by the comical bumbling that the puppet displays. Blatantly lie about everything, and keep repeating all the lies; no need to worry as the MSM is in their corner. An example: Raggedy Ann saying no need to be concerned with the vaccination status of all those streaming across the border as most of them will not be staying in the US, all the while shipping them all off to various US cities. Such a laughable lie, but never challenged.
They really have totally won, and continue to consolidate their power.
I highly recommend this 75-minute discussion/debate between Victor Davis Hanson and General H. R. McMaster. At first, Victor seems tired (no wonder; he’s keeping a brutal schedule); his glasses don’t fit, he rocks back and forth, but he comes roaring back. And he’s as sharp as ever, at one point calling McMaster out on using the subjunctive mood. Victor learned Greek in order to read the original text of the philosophers.
Angelo Codevilla has died. He was walking when he was struck by a drunk driver. We have lost a giant.
The CCP and Xi Can Do! for the world’s economy what their WuFlu started. But their high speed rains will run on time.
https://redstate.com/setonmotley/2021/09/21/china-begins-to-realize-cronyism-and-big-tech-do-way-more-harm-than-good-n446013
Very bad news:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/angelo-codevilla-rip.php
Drunk driver, apparently. Emphasis on apparently.
Drunk driver, apparently. Emphasis on apparently.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the driver has the proverbial book thrown at him or is let off with a warning to watch his liquor intake around the usual suspects.
OBloodyHell–
Trudeau (referred to by disenchanted Canadians as Turdoo) didn’t get the absolute parliamentary majority he’d hoped for. In addition: “Maryam Monsef, a member of the Prime Minister’s Liberal Party and Minister for Gender Equality, was defeated by Conservative candidate Michelle Ferreri in the riding (constituency) of Peterborough-Kawartha in Monday’s vote.” Monsef is of Afghan heritage (what can we look forward to with Biden’s newly imported Afghanis?) and made headlines a month ago by referring to the Taliban as ‘our brothers.’
“Along with losing his Minister for Gender Equality, Trudeau at this point has also lost Bernadette Jordan, now ex-minister for Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard and may very well lose Deb Schulte, the rural development minister.”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/09/21/our-brothers-the-taliban-minister-loses-seat-in-canadian-snap-election/
First saw Angelo’s passing at AoSHq, very sad
“They use emotion to rile up useful idiots and then use the public outrage to gain more control.”
But you can’t control people if your instruments of control, like law enforcement, are terrified of acting and reduced to ineffectiveness because no one wants to be involved with them. A police state needs policemen and, no matter how ruthless, they can’t be feckless idiots.
This isn’t some devious plan. This is media morons on Twitter freaking out and the Biden adminstration then responding to that freak out as if it were reality.
Mike
Now there’s a loss I actually feel. A man with a penetrating intellect who had accurately mapped out the sociopolitical battlefield terrain well in advance of most commentators.
There are several others who have since the 2016 election arisen; and the analytical/critical commentary abilities of conservatives in general has markedly improved since the turn of the century, but Codevilla – who I didn’t even know until several years ago – stood out.
Re Codevilla. A light for our dark times is extinguished.
DNW: precisely. Big loss. He brought an immigrant’s perspective to our national travails. His 2010 piece on the American ruling class is essential reading. And he had worked on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and with the IC, so he knew the system from the inside.
PA+Cat: my thoughts were trending in a more sinister direction. Breitbart. Scalia. Now Codevilla. Are we soon going to hear that Victor Davis Hanson has been killed in a freak raisin-processing accident? Tucker Carlson in a tragic fly-fishing mishap? Michael Anton impaled on a pair of tailor’s shears? The Left has a long history of engaging in wet work. As Richard Burton put it in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, they’re bastards. Clever bastards. Burton, as Alec Leamas: https://youtu.be/NmmWkJtuxz4?t=135.
A great loss. RIP.
Similar train of thought as Hubert.
“…step by step…”
Yep:
https://www.newsmax.com/bernardkerik/dictatorship/2021/09/20/id/1037135/
With the pathetic Psaki confabulating constantly and the corrupt media proffering their usual pious protection.
As “Biden”—with “passionate intensity” and perhaps even more desperation—institutes what Victor Davis Hanson call the “Afghanistization of America”….
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/victor-davis-hanson-afghanistization-america
+
https://www.independentsentinel.com/buck-wild-crazy-illegals-have-free-plane-tickets-to-go-all-over-the-us/
https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/20/psaki-foreigners-entering-the-u-s-must-prove-vaccination-except-illegal-aliens/#.YUjcazpv-W8.twitter
Breitbart. Scalia. Now Codevilla.
Two men who died of natural causes (one of them an 80 year old diabetic) and a man hit by a car (something that happens thousands of time a year in this country).
“Afghanistization”, continued:
The Taliban or “Biden”?
YOU decide!
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/taliban-say-no-isis-al-qaeda-country-despite-string-isis-k-terror-attacks
– – – – – – –
Plus:
“The enemies of democracy use charges of ‘disinformation’ to silence their opponents”…Important? piece from former head of the ACLU:
https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1440163444292874245
Um, er, kindly disregard the “?” after “Important” (above).
– – – – –
Regarding…
“Canadians are TOTAL $%^%$$&$ IMBECILES.”
Well, um, uh, gosh, not “TOTAL” (i.e., that might be a dollar sign too far):
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-liberal-minister-who-called-taliban-her-brothers-loses-seat-in-kawartha?utm_campaign=64470
Deco: you could be right. Nothing to see here. Or you could be wrong. Interesting comment over at Powerline:
“Charles McCarry, I think, would have suspected a case of ‘flyswatting.’ That’s the craft of killing inconvenient individuals with automobiles. And if you’ve been reading Codevilla, he was the very definition of an inconvenient individual.”
Link: http://disq.us/p/2joeogk
Been on a McCarry binge recently. Finished “Old Boys”, now working my way through “Second Sight”. Rather tough going. All that jumping around in time between Berlin, Prague, D.C., the Berkshires, Okinawa, Harvard Yard, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Xinjiang, Morocco, Central Asia–you can tell McCarry worked for National Geographic. In addition to the Outfit.
“Charles McCarry, I think, would have suspected a case of ‘flyswatting.’ That’s the craft of killing inconvenient individuals with automobiles. And if you’ve been reading Codevilla, he was the very definition of an inconvenient individual.”
He was a public intellectual whose work is already out there and whose life expectancy was less than 10 years. Admirable and interesting to be sure, but only indirectly a threat. That thesis would be more persuasive in re Andrew Breitbart or Tucker Carlson.
In re Andrew Breitbart, did his family contest the autopsy report?
Art Deco,
Regarding Andrew Breitbart, from what I recall his wife stated it was a heart attack and I don’t think she appreciated speculation on conspiracy theories regarding her husband’s death. It’s been quite some time, so I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but I recall hearing a direct statement from her, maybe a year after the death. She was explicit in the words she used and also, her demeanor was very direct. She seemed very confident in stating her husband’s death was not due to foul play.
Incidentally, she is the daughter of actor, bon vivant, raconteur and perpetual, ’60s, 70s and ’80s game show contestant, Orson Bean.
Re: Suspicious deaths…
You guys didn’t spend enough time on the Left when you were young. 🙂
Back then there was an ominous number of assassinations and odd deaths, which always hurt the Left … or so it seemed.
JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrision.
The only exception to the rule was George Wallace, who survived his assassination. The thinking of the conspiracy left was that Wallace threatened Nixon with a possible third-party run in 1972, and so was vulnerable to nefarious forces from the right, or simply Nixon. (I don’t know how realistic that was.)
Then there were all those witnesses to the JFK assassination who had died “suspiciously” in the years following.
Heck, some of them were suspicious, such as Lee Harvey Oswald’s Russian friend, George de Mohrenschildt, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound the day he received notice to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassination.
I gave up on a JFK conspiracy and lost interest in proving the others one way or the other. I suspect those deaths are what they appeared to be.
I’m not inclined to renew that curiosity from the Right. Though anyone so interested should not hesitate on my account to venture further.
Sometimes I’m surprised there aren’t more assassinations. How did Steve Jobs and Bill Gates not put hits out on each other? Was their security that good?
… and, to bring it full circle, Orson Bean died when he was struck by a car when out for a walk.
Not confirmed, but certainly plausible:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/09/well-well-well-fbi-agents-identified.html
As one of the commenters in the thread there says, give it a few days and the celebrated 8chan Autists will have their CVs posted.
@Huxley:
An Imaginative Little Birdie tells me that Jobs even at his lowest point would have considered Gates to his second greatest asset. Could always rely on Bill to lack subtlety.
Plenty of other people in the trade would have been inclined to smack Gates around, but they couldn’t afford to get near him after he stole or otherwise sabotaged their main chances.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Orson Bean!
He was always fun to watch on “To Tell the Truth.” He also wrote a crazy book, “Me and the Orgone,” about his experience of Reichian therapy.
I just noticed him playing a small role as a Holocaust survivor in Denzel Washington’s second Equalizer movie.
Zaphod,
Those side by side photos are amusing!
huxley,
For someone who had a long career in the entertainment industry Orson Bean was incredibly grounded and openly conservative. In the few interviews I heard him give he sounded like a truly good human.
@ Hubert … and Zaphod
Hubert,
It’s strange that though quite different we all may be in tastes and attitudes and backgrounds, there is nonetheless some parallelism in interests among the men who visit Neo’s site.
One of these is the construction, functioning, and performance of mechanisms from almost every era.
I nearly fell over when I saw Zaphod’s reference to Hickcock45, and have to say I was pretty surprised by your own reference to Ian.
If anyone has an such an interest, they should make room for at least one additional YouTuber on their list: GunBlue490; an avuncular, temperate, yet no nonsense and extremely well-informed (from industry experience probably) source on the history and performance of these tools.
On the .257 Roberts, see,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdUN9xIFWik
For what it is worth, I personally never had even a modest interest in firearms as a young adult. A simple 30-30 Winchester which I never gave any thought to outside of mid November was the extent of my interest in such subjects.
In fact, I viewed such fascinations as somewhat tawdry, déclassé, the domain of intellectually limited types who bowled and liked drag strip racing, and frankly, just kind of embarrassing. Kind of like an interest in military uniforms still strikes me today: as the domain of bespectacled fat boys who read comic books.
Then, slowly as I began in another context to become familiar with bearing ways and journals, buttress threads, cams, locking and release designs, and various styles of power or motion transmission, it became a completely different matter.
Not only automotive and aerospace engineering became enjoyable topics for review, but even – of all things – firearms.
Funny how that works.
Mid-Autumn Festival last night. You may have noticed a full moon. Lanterns, but alas no fireworks — been banned in Hong Kong ever since the Red Guards were on the rampage in ‘66.
Chowing down on a durian ice-cream moon-cake for my morning repast. To call it a mere breakfast would be to commit Lèse-majesté against the King of Fruits.
For those who have never had the good fortune to behold a Durian, this is what they look like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian
It’s not just a fruit, it’s a weapon!
Neo.
Trying to cruise the news on my phone, whose controls are three-quarters too small, I found myself looking at a couple of your pieces ca 2005. Has it been that long?
One had to do with Marty Peretz.
And a lot of discussion about “feelings” among the left instead of rational thought and fact-based conclusions. How prophetic. If you would, let me know when it’s a good day to buy a lottery ticket.
One quibble: There may be times when “feel” is used as synonym for “think” or “have concluded”. Perhaps there’s sometimes an overlay of “and it makes me feel good to conclude this”, or “there’s a kind of satisfaction in coming to this position”.
It may not be a matter of mean tweets are more important than energy independence. Or perhaps it is.
I am reminded that in high school–class of 62–some people would say to me, “You’re so logical.” Or “rational”. Don’t I have any feelings? I was puzzled, since high school, including classroom discussions, was not as far as I could tell, structured so that the difference would be evident or even come up at all. However it struck them, they thought there was something wrong with it. I suppose that’s the point; whether I did whatever it was or not, they thought I did and they thought it was odd, at the least.
@DNW:
Thanks for the link. I don’t have any mechanical abilities beyond basic bicycle mechanics. The evolution of firearms and the mechanisms involved fascinates me. I remember years ago coming across a multi-volume treatise on mechanisms by a Soviet Academician and being gobsmacked that there could be people who did nothing but study and classify such things.
Apart from the personal security, political and Man-in-full considerations surrounding firearm ownership, there must also be an element of Robert Pirsig’s Quality for many owners. Form pretty much has to follow function… and everything is there for a reason. There’s something compelling about machined parts which takes us back to flint-chipping maybe? Why should a bubbling brook sound so good? Why should fire be hypnotic? Because we’ve been human for a while now.
It’s a joy to handle fabricated items which are non-frivolous (this puts paid to mechanical watches until the next EMP or solar flare) and not Crap.
Zaphod,
That photo does not do the odor justice. What’s the saying, “when the durian falls the sarong drops?”
@RA:
Welcome to the Spectrum, Good Sir 🙂
@Rufus:
Frozen and chilled durian deserts are popular because they put half a lid on the ‘fragrance’.
And it’s not anything like the whiff of freshly-baked hot walnut bread at Dan Ryan’s, issit?
(Casual Reader: The Durian is believed to possess aphrodisiac properties.)
“When the Durian Falls, the Sarong goes UP.”
The Javanese might not bestir themselves much when work is concerned, but they don’t mess around when their blood is up.
A few years ago, did a week in a resort in Koh Samui. Had a ground floor suite with the usual outdoor seating area, daybed, etc. Thai girlfriend at the time spent about 15 minutes palpitating various clingwrapped lumps of durian flesh in the night market and discussing the finer points of their vintages and provenances with vendors before settling on a large evil-looking chunk of the stuff.
So we took this thing back to the hotel and parked it wrapped in extra protective layers of plastic bag outside the room. There’s no way you keep this bio weapon indoors.
Strange to say, that durian just got better and better as the week went by. Had to chuck it on day 5 or 6 but it really did mature like fine wine.
@ Zaphod > “Not confirmed, but certainly plausible:”
Talk about lying with impunity, this is acting with impudence — they really assigned exactly the same group of Feds as shown in an open-source photo, and then let them stand next to each other?
What kind of operational security is that??
“…it’s a weapon…”
Indeed, and last I heard banned by the Geneva Convention for unconventional warfare…, which they were forced to rebrand as “ABCD”.
(No doubt Rufus’s advice to keep it frozen—for as long as possible before deployment—is the safest way to defend against premature detonation.)
Having said all that—and looking at the bright side—it is considered incredibly healthy and lots of fun at parties—well, depending on one’s definition of “fun”—and is most likely one of the most “acquired” of “acquired tastes”…along with Iceland’s “hakarl” (fermented shark), a (fortunately) rare delicacy in most parts of the world, though the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans also excel in things fermented.
@BarryMeislin:
Not in a hurry to try fermented shark. I’ll beg off in the unlikely event that Frodi Midjord ever invites me to dinner.
Not to mention fermented fish gut sauces which are a thing in Thailand/Cambodia/Laos/Vietnam. Shades of Garum — which I’d like to try.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum
According to Wikipedia there was possibly even a kosher variant of Garum. More Cosmopolitan than Rootless back in the Hellenizing Day.
The Japanese are remarkably intolerant of any kind of foreign cuisine which is ‘Smelly’ or ‘Oily’. They do make an exception for Natto (fermented soybeans) which stinks to high heaven and is also offensively stringy and sticky and has a tendency to end up stuck to everything.
For the ultimate in Nasty Asian Food Smells, I give it to Stinky Bean Curd:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinky_tofu
Under the right conditions — which is pretty much anytime there is a prevailing wind direction — you can smell vendors frying it a block away. And not a Manhattan Block… a real block. A classic HK winter evening sidewalk aroma along with roast chestnuts.
@AesopFan:
Re Opsec I think they’re just trolling Our for broad definition of ‘our’ Side. I mean what are we going to do anyway?
My somewhat contentious contention is that we should heap scorn and ridicule upon them whenever and wherever the opportunity arises. They have successfully inverted a whole slew of values and it’s up to us to flip the scale 180 degrees again.
Agree that natto is an—odd—outlier in Japanese cuisine….
(OTOH, maybe it’s related to Japanese culture in those far-off times of yore…i.e., before they learned that instituting across-the-board, respectful bow-bowing was far superior—from a “national”/cultural-self-preservation POV—to hack-hacking, stab-stabbing or choke-choking….)
…Speaking of “cuisine”, for general relief from all ailments—physical, medical, political, existential—I’d recommend ditching the runes and hitting the prunes. Hard….
An Armed Society is a Polite Society.
There’s a truth buried in stinky fermented soybeans though — the fact that one has to do all kinds of nasty things to them to make them digestible by humans should be enough warning to NPCs to go easy on the Soy. It’s a hop and a suspiciously androgynous skip from the Soy to the Poz.
Just old enough to have grown up when Prunes were prescribed whenever the rhubarb crop failed.
There’s always castor oil for the hard cases.
Must be a joke somewhere with punchline “We’re Runed!” — one of those things that could go either way.
Ah rhubarb…
That must be it. (I’ve heard it can cause contentiousness, even extreme contentiousness in some cases….)
One reason why it’s often ameliorated with strawberries…and tons of sugar.
BTW, boiling rhubarb in aluminum/aluminium pots (if such things still exist) is an excellent way to remove any and all stains in them. (Tomatoes work similarly.)
WRT castor oil (super-refined), it would seem to be a Putin-esque “remedy”…not to be tried at home (nor should rhubarb LEAVES be, for that matter….)—but then Russians, and Bulgarians for that matter, do tend to enjoy the hard stuff.
File under: “That’s the spirt”!
Note FWIW – I’m dropping off the grid for a short family visit.
Don’t eat too much rhubarb while I’m gone.
DNW: I didn’t grow up with firearms, although I did grow up in the Connecticut River valley, which was America’s original firearms-producing region (e.g. the Springfield Armory and Smith & Wesson in Massachusetts, Colt and Winchester in Connecticut). Took up shooting much later, after moving to the south.
I’ve been watching GunBlue490 for a while and enjoyed his video on the .257 Bob. His video on cleaning firearms is a classic. Judging by his accent and the terrain in his videos, I’m guessing he’s based in eastern Massachusetts or southern New Hampshire. Also seems to have a former connection with law enforcement. Definitely an old-school downeast Yankee with a workshop.
There have been some first-rate mechanical geniuses associated with firearms design. John Moses Browning, John Douglas Pedersen, and John Cantius Garand in this country, Dieudonne Saive in Belgium, the Mauser brothers in Germany, and Vladimir Fedorov and Fedor Tokarev in Russia/USSR.
Rufus:
}}} The January 6th “Insurrection”
You missed the scare quotes. Gotta have scare quotes.
}}} Trudeau (referred to by disenchanted Canadians as Turdoo) didn’t get the absolute parliamentary majority he’d hoped for.
MY point is he should not have even gotten re-elected. Even in a province and “district” (whatever Canada names the things) of total liberals, they should have elected someone else of a liberal bent. Not a jackwad idiot like Turdoo.
}}} (i.e., that might be a dollar sign too far)
Canadians are TOTAL $%^%&$ IMBECILES.
OK, Corrected. I even removed two. 😛
It is good that they lost SOME support, but under no circumstances is it anywhere near enough. Even WITH all the pansy-ass Vietnam beatfeets that they took in decades ago. 😛
It’s like fucking voting for Beto over Ted Cruz. You don’t have to like Cruz. You can even hate him. But you have to have the IQ of a gnat to vote for an obviously fake PoS like Beto.
}}} Been on a McCarry binge recently.
You may find the old Walter Matthau movie, “Hopscotch” entertaining.
}}} Plenty of other people in the trade would have been inclined to smack Gates around, but they couldn’t afford to get near him after he stole or otherwise sabotaged their main chances.
I have long maintained that Gates somehow obtained The Shadow’s Ring. You know, the one “with the power to cloud men’s minds”. No less than THREE times, companies set themselves up to be major rivals to M$ (and this does NOT include the idiocy surrounding Apple and the Mac and Scully). I mean EXACT rivals:
1 — WordPerfect bought Borland, which gave them a full office suite (including THE main spreadsheet of the day – Lotus 1-2-3) AND an array of languages (Turbo C was by far the best “c” out there). They bought DRI, which gave them a counter to MS-DOS. And they bought another piece of software (for the life of me, I can’t recall the name ATM) which allowed you full multitasking using DOS apps, which was much more efficient and effective than early Windows, pre-95.
The result? Dur Dur Dur Dur. Nothing. Never really did any kind of offensive to take them on and set themselves up as an alternative. The Ring had done its work!
2 — NOVELL buys the whole WP-Borland-DR thing, which gives them all that PLUS the primary network OS long before anyone had a network OS.
The result? Dur Dur Dur Dur. Nothing. Never really did any kind of offensive to take them on and set themselves up as an alternative. The Ring had done its work!
3 — Finally — IBM, which has a history of being marketing savvy, has a very critically acclaimed product, OS/2 Warp, which is getting lots of attention, is the equal of what w95 is supposed to be, even as w95 is languishing in development hell until it almost needs to be renamed w96!! The obvious smart thing to do, if you have IBM’s deep pockets, is to virtually give the thing away, just to get the market share that is M$’s. What do they do, instead? Charge developers $500 for their “Developer’s toolkit”… $500 in 1990s dollars, mind you. That’s like about $1000, now. Oh, yeah, IBM!!! Beat me, choke me, make me write stupid checks!
“Dur Dur Dur Dur… That Damned Ring!!
Add to this the stupidity of Scully not grasping the importance of market share to a technology company, which led to him not just letting M$ catch up to Apple’s utterly unassailable tech advantage, but also destroying the one hope they had for market share — which was Macintosh CLONES… which is what the “windows look and feel” lawsuit was really about — killing the clones. There were cheap Mac clones on the horizon at one point, in the late 1980s, and that’s when Apple sued M$ for the “similarity” between Windows and Mac. And the net effect was, of course, that all the clones just dried up, because it they were going to sue for “looking like the mac” to a huge company like M$, what would they do to something that looked “exactly like the mac” from a startup? Right.
The SMART thing to do would have been to offer the clone-makers access to previous ROM versions for the Mac. They would have opened the door to the low-end market, while still making people WANT to upgrade to the latest and greatest official Macs, if they could afford them. And all at no cost or risk to Apple — they could fully deny support of any kind to people who owned clones.
Dur Dur Dur. Microsoft wins again.
Then the final proof, of course, with Netscape, who literally steals a march on M$ and owns the browser market. OWNS it, lock, stock, and two smoking barrels.
M$ starts cheating, defacto paying OEMs to NOT install NS on their products, even though everyone with any sense wanted it instead of IE, which had flaws in its design that Netscape had eliminated two full years before… but people, being clueless and lazy, use IE instead of NS, and the browser share of NS slowly and steadily sinks.
Dur Dur Dur. Microsoft wins again.
Face it. Gates has The Shadow’s Ring.
Barry Meislin– Ah rhubarb…
That must be it. (I’ve heard it can cause contentiousness, even extreme contentiousness in some cases….)
When I was a kid, sportscasters often used “rhubarb” to refer to what would now be called an on-field basebrawl, particularly when the umps as well as the players got involved. Supposedly the use of “rhubarb” in baseball derived from its application in 1920s radio programs to imitate crowd noise: the actors would gather in the background away from the microphone, and say “rhubarb and rhubarb and rhubarb” over and over to simulate the sound of an unruly crowd. Last, some Allied fighter pilots in WWII used “rhubarb” to refer to strafing runs; it’s likely that they borrowed it from baseball.