Roundup
(1) No clean hands for the Biden White House in the genesis of the MAL raid. See also this.
(2) This is entertaining.
(3) One year after the ignominious Afghanistan withdrawal. Perhaps the only good thing about what happened is that it may have awakened the American people to what a disaster Joe Biden is. See also this.
(4) “Our democracy” needs a great reset. See also David Solway on the great reset itself.
(5) And it seems it’s time to have a great reset on the sexual revolution. But actually, it seems to me that it was always obvious that having women adopt a male sexual ethos was not going to end well.
On 1):
This could be huge, but certainly not surprising that the WH was involved. My only issue, given the explosive nature of this report, is that JtN never actually shows the memos they extensively quote from. I’d like to see a screencap, or better a link to pdfs of the memos. I’m becoming even cynical of right side reporting.
Of course, if there’s even a hint of truth here, the MSM will bury this faster than a dead polecat.
“it was always obvious that having women adopt a male sexual ethos was not going to end well”
This issue fits a pattern where the impressionable young are indoctrinated in the One Only Truth, while any dissenting voice is shouted down because only a small number of carefully curated Experts are allowed to speak on a topic.
Global Warming, sexual ethos, Covid, racial relations, immigration policy and many, many more.
How was free speech undermined in the US? I think this paper gives a full description. It does not address “why” but is excellent in explaining “how”.
https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/hate-speech-and-the-new-tyranny-over-the-mind
Similar presentation but as a podcast:
https://fedsoc.org/commentary/podcasts/deep-dive-episode-105-should-big-tech-platforms-be-viewpoint-neutral-should-the-government-care
physicsguy:
I think it’s correct to read all the news with a wary and critical eye.
Setting aside the previous court rulings on Presidential records for a moment. I’m struck at the notion that a President can claim “Executive Privilege” to various documents and then take them home, and then a successor can say “Nope, you can’t have Executive Privilege” and now it is a crime to take the documents home. Isn’t that classic, ex post facto? It seems remarkable so many on the left think this is a good thing.
On the sexual revolution, I never understood feminism as meaning the ability to have casual sex like a man. I can’t say I always agreed with feminism mantra, so maybe I don’t know what it really means, but I did once think feminism was a bit more noble than “I want to have carefree sex as often as men what to have it”. Indeed, many times, I felt it was the exact opposite, as in “men need to be taught that woman are more than an object for having sex”. I have noticed that many homosexuals seem to be of the mindset “I want to have sex as often as I can get it and I’m willing to screw anybody to get it”.
One had to assume that the WH initiated and authorized the whole thing.
However, if there were any doubts about the matter, the moment His Ignominiousness declared that the White House DID NOT KNOW anything about the MAL raid—that very moment—you KNEW for absolute sure that not only did the WH know but that “Biden” initiated, planned and deployed the whole scummy exercise.
That’s how these weasels operate.
(Think of it as just another instance of Obama’s very, very special sense of humor….)
I would not be a bit surprised if BO’s fingers weren’t in the mix.
On the sexual revolution, I never understood feminism as meaning the ability to have casual sex like a man.
‘Feminism’ is like ‘Murphy’s Law’ or ‘the Peter Principle’. It has a short-form and a long form definition. The short form is the habit of looking at human relations with the assumption that women have options and men have obligations. (We have this short form courtesy Dr. Helen Smith, aka Mrs. Glenn Reynolds).
For those not immersed in Catholic or evangelical subcultures, the problem with the breakdown in sexual mores during the post-war period (most salient during the period between 1965 and 1975) has been that the dynamic of interaction between young men and young women has diminished their capacity to form enduring bonds (the philosopher J. Budziszewski has compared it to tape losing its stick as you repeatedly pull it off a surface). This operates on men and women alike.
Each cohort seems less and less able to navigate situations which are dissatisfying in real time for one reason or another. They’re often addled by the notion that their situations are the problem rather than the problem being one embedded in the human condition. My parents’ contemporaries had a regard for appearances and a respect for inherited rules of thumb which contained any inclination they might have had to make a mess of their own lives and those of others. That seems completely absent among the young with whom I’m acquainted.
“men need to be taught that woman are more than an object for having sex”
Insert a real person as the subject of that sentence and see if it still makes sense to you; try a real person who came of age prior to 1965. As in “my father needed to be taught that women are more than an object for having sex”.
I have noticed that many homosexuals seem to be of the mindset “I want to have sex as often as I can get it and I’m willing to screw anybody to get it”.
I wouldn’t take the gay male subculture as indicative of anything going on in the larger society. It’s just a strange place.
special pleading by bezos,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/08/23/teen-sex-education-roe/
as if they really need lessons on the matter,
well possibly clockwork orange treatment,
https://www.city-journal.org/trump-derangement-wont-end-trump
Of course the hands in the Biden WH are dirty, it’s their especiality.
Too wordy. When people dispute that “Dick is a boy and Jane is a girl. All else follows.” they have demonstrated a fundamentally deep rejection of reality. Which at the least renders them unfit to vote.
Those Americans who voted for Joe Biden and continue to support him know what a disaster he is, the thing is they don’t care. Better to destroy America, then to allow it to continue to be governed by its Constitution.
From the linked article; “Historically, democracies don’t last long, because they quickly turn into tyrannies after passing through the parasitical stage.”
Which is why the democrats always mislabel America as a “democracy” rather than correctly as a Republic. They long ago implemented the “parasitical stage” with the goal of turning America into a tyranny of the elite managed by those who “know better”.
The erudite David Solway is always worth reading;
“We should make no mistake about this. The revolutionary project, whether denominated as the New World Order, the U.N.’s Agenda 2030, or the Davos-centered Great Reset—different terms for essentially the same impetus—under the influential leadership of Klaus Schwab is apocalyptic in its aims. It envisages a world in which the middle-class will have been expunged, the global census markedly winnowed, and a China-like social credit system introduced in which citizens will be under constant digital surveillance determining what they are allowed to possess, rent, use or spend.”
As evidence: “World Economic Forum Wants To Use AI To Automatically Censor Speech On The Internet”
https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/11/world-economic-forum-ai-censor-spech/
“Canada Announces ‘Digital Identity Program’ in Partnership With WEF”
https://www.legitgov.org/canada-announces-digital-identity-program-partnership-wef
“Central bank digital currency (CBDC)”
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/research/digital-currencies-and-fintech/projects/central-bank-digital-currency/
“So much of left-wing thought is it kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot”
The Pill and easy abortions resulted in young men having nothing to say about their baby’s future, which resulted in the unintended consequence of far too many young men deciding that… without ‘representation’ there can be no ‘taxation’.
“See ya Bitch!” became their default position.
Thomas Sowell relates that just before the Passage of the 1960s Civil Rights Act, out of wedlock births among blacks were less than among whites. Black out of wedlock births are now around 75%. No father, no male parental role model to inculcate respect for women.
trying to put the genie back in the bottle is hard,
https://www.jpost.com/science/article-714778?_ga=2.48398886.1841927453.1661295888-1453041550.1661295887
we have this to look forward to,
As a Canadian, David Solway is doubtless aware of another legislative change easily exploited by the architects of the Great Reset to cull the population: Canada’s legalization of euthanasia (otherwise known as Medical Assistance in Dying or MAID) in 2016. Amendments added in 2021 (during the pandemic, guess why) broadened eligibility for MAID. Further expansion of MAID: people with mental disorders will be offered the “service” beginning in 2023. (My take on that is that “mental disorders” will be redefined to include political or religious conservatism, or any other form of opposition to Turdoo).
Anyway, MAID made headlines this week when a Canadian soldier with PTSD was offered MAID by an employee of Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC). The VAC released a statement last week admitting to an incident ‘where medical assistance in dying was discussed inappropriately’ with the veteran. The department pledged that ‘appropriate administrative action will be taken’ after the veteran expressed outrage at the suggestion, according to a report in Global News.
According to the report, the veteran called VAC seeking support for PTSD when the employee brought up medical assistance in dying, or euthanasia, unprompted. The veteran was reportedly shocked by the suggestion. His family told Global News that the soldier had been making positive progress in his physical and mental rehabilitation and that he felt betrayed by an agency that is tasked with assisting veterans. The veteran’s ordeal has since raised fears that the exchange may not have been an isolated incident, leading to questions about how often the agency has offered or discussed MAID with those suffering from PTSD.
https://nypost.com/2022/08/22/canadian-soldier-with-ptsd-outraged-when-va-suggested-euthanasia/
tucker noted that in another case, where someone complaining of an ear infection was euthanized
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2022/08/22/just-cant-quit-him-david-frums-sad-thread-claiming-trump-russia-hoax-was-totally-not-a-hoax-would-make-blueanon-proud/
its good to be royal consort,
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/08/23/paul-pelosi-pleads-guilty-to-dui-gets-no-additional-jail-time/
Geoffrey Britain:
You write:
Those are not the figures Sowell cites. He said (and I don’t have time to look it up right now) that post-slavery but prior to the 1960s Civil Rights legislation and in particular the establishment of welfare payments for children without fathers in the home, the marriage rates for black people were not only much higher than at present, but at times they were higher than white rates of marriage.
But unwed births were not lower for blacks even back then; here are the statistics for that:
Now of course the rates for both races are even higher; that article was written in the mid-90s. And the white rate now is higher than the black rate was then.
The article ascribes the rise in unwed births for both races as being only slightly connected to the welfare system or unemployment among black men, and argues that it had to do with increased abortion and contraception availability having the effect of decreasing the pressure for the “shotgun” marriage. My point is that whatever the reason for the huge increase, at the beginning the black rate of unwed childbirth was already higher than the white rate.
In addition, although there are certainly many young men whose sexual contact with young women result in an unwanted pregnancy, and certainly some percentage of those men would like to have something to say about their baby’s future and would like the baby to be born, a great many men want nothing to do with those babies and would prefer the woman has an abortion. It is often the woman insisting on bearing the child, although of course sometimes it is the woman insisting on having the abortion against the would-be father’s will.
However, what makes you think that didn’t happen prior to the pill and legalized abortion? Abortion was widely available illegally and many women had illegal abortions, sometimes over and over, and sometimes without the man even being aware that the woman was pregnant in the first place. The reality of human biology is such that a woman can keep such a secret and the man will not know, or she can even be married and have an affair and conceive a child by another man and the husband will not know unless the child looks so markedly different that it is obvious (or unless for some reason a DNA test is taken).
“See ya, bitch” comes for a lot of different reasons, sometimes including the one you cite and sometimes for something quite at variance with it. One reason is, of course, that easy availability of sex has made some of them more cavalier about not getting married; another is that men are more disadvantaged financially in divorce than they used to be and that can act as a disincentive to getting married in the first place.
By the way, when I was in law school – prior to Roe – unwed fathers had no rights at all. I wrote a paper while in law school advocating rights for unwed fathers.
Art Deco:
Of course prior to 1965 there were men who thought women were just objects for sex. There were even old-fashioned names for them: cad, roue, bounder, Casanova, philanderer, debaucher, Don Juan – and I haven’t even exhausted the list. However, I would agree they were not as common as now. And their distaff equivalent existed, too, although not as common as now.
neo, thank you for the corrective info. In the YouTube video interview with Thomas Sowell that I watched, I conflated out of wedlock births with marriage rates, my mistake. However in that video he did not say that prior to the Civil Rights Act “at times” black marriage rates we’re higher than for whites. He unequivocally stated that black marriage rates were higher than were white marriage rates. In the video I saw he looked quite aged and perhaps that led to that unqualified statement. In any case, I stand corrected and in fact agree with the larger points you made.
At this point the only person who I think is doing a decent job of covering neo-Watergate is nate the lawyer with his videos
Here
Here
and Here
If I understood what he’s saying the case is simply possessing the material and it makes no different if it’s classified or not. However the thing he pointed out is that it’s pretty normal for a former president to retain documents so in my opinion stooping to a robbery like this is beyond the pale. (Hence why I call this worse than Watergate.)
Sex revolution link gives me “Error 1003 Ray ID: 73f7ebe696eb5f8f • 2022-08-24 00:20:19 UTC
Direct IP access not allowed”
Thomas Sowell relates that just before the Passage of the 1960s Civil Rights Act, out of wedlock births among blacks were less than among whites.
What he said was that from 1900 to 1960, the share of black youth living in conventional families (a stock datum) increased some. As for the flow datum, about 15% of black births in 1960 were to unwed mothers, v. < 2% to non-blacks.
Abortion was widely available illegally and many women had illegal abortions,
I’ve seen an estimate that there were 96,000 illegal abortions in 1966 and 1.7 million legal abortions 15 years later. Problem of a different scale.
In time Harris will be just another head on the Stone Gateway.
The fact that the White House denied any knowledge of the raid, but did not make any statement critical of or questioning the propriety of the raid-i.e.-“We did not have any knowledge of this action, and we question whether this unprecedented action with regard to a former president is an appropriate means of resolving a dispute regarding presidential documents; however we will wait for the facts to be revealed…blah blah blah” is the tell. They knew. Of course they knew.
They are lying. We know they are lying. They know we know they are lying. They don’t care.
The raid in and of itself should have provoked enough outrage to banish any follow-up other than firings and/or indictments of the participants. It didn’t. The revelation that Biden’s people set this up will have about as much traction as the revelation that Hilary paid for the Dossier.
If anybody is really interested in the sexual revolution talk, try Louise Perry’s book:
https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Sexual-Revolution/dp/1509549986
English philosopher Nina Power has also written an interesting take on the 21st century state of men:
https://www.amazon.com/What-Men-Want-Masculinity-Discontents-ebook/dp/B08WZM16B2
It’s also important to place the whole discussion within the context of the population implosion facing almost all of the developed world (and China). One of the things most dispiriting is that the modern consumer economy is responsible for so much of the physical, tangible improvements in global existence and we’re going to be running out of the consumers who make it possible in the next few decades. There are things we could do 20 years ago and things we can do today that we may lack the physical and financial ability to do 20 years from now. And everybody in charge knows it and they’re all hoping they just die before the iceberg really hits.
Mike
From (2)
he [the conservative American novelist] must come to grips with the greatest American literary creation of the 20th century, Doc Savage.
Ha! Which Doc? The “let’s kill all the evil shits” Doc, or the later “all human life is precious” Doc?
Doc Savage was brought to the big screen in 1975 not very successfully (haven’t seen it) and screenwriter Shane Black has been trying to do a version of it for decades. It might actually be in production with Dwayne Johnson as Doc.
It’s also important to place the whole discussion within the context of the population implosion facing almost all of the developed world (and China). — MBunge
It’s certainly a big big deal. I saw a nice set of graphs a couple years ago of the age distribution in China over perhaps 70 or 80 years. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but it was clear that the one child law did its damage.
A couple weeks ago, I spent a day with an inlaw family of mine with 4 young kids. Quite an eye opener.
Good news
https://t.me/The_Library_II/84203
Dwayne johnson has the brawn but not the brain
https://ap2hyc.com/2016/05/who-is-doc-savage/
Jason statham is probably too old
HW Crocker III isn’t anywhere near as funny as he thinks he is.
Feminism got its current impetus back in the Sixties and Seventies when male feelings of sexual entitlement were in full flood, therefore some feminists assumed that the freedom they thought would involve appropriating traditional male attitudes towards sex. Is that consumerist, hedonistic, or functional attitude towards sex at odds with the deeper desires of the feminine psyche, or have plenty of women been able to adopt and live out male desires and fantasies?
I certainly don’t know.
Allen drury whose prescient take ive noted before certainly was prescient in the way he saw the left metastasize so was charles mccarry
Thanks for that Miguel c.
The thing I looked at wasn’t dated. I don’t think a new Doc Savage is ever going to happen. Pity.
Besides shane blacks last two outings were unimpressive iron man 3 and the predator (he forgot the plot he did 30 some years earlier)
While pronouns and insurrection are prioritu the enemy plans
https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2022/08/taliban-circulates-video-of-haqqanis-plotting-2010-suicide-raid-against-u-s-troops.php
Re: Doc Savage…
Ooo. Right up my alley.
I scratch the Savage itch with Audible audiobooks.
I didn’t realize Superman’s “Fortress of Solitude” was a straight rip-off from Doc’s “Fortress of Solitude.” (Not a bad place to start with Doc, actually.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_of_Solitude
Shame he hasn’t been brought to the screen effectively. Then again, maybe that’s for the best, considering how woke everything has to be these days.
Doc Savage wasn’t woke.
Ron ely was reasonable close in image although the script was terrible in 1975
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/20/notre-dame-cathedral-fire-rebuild-medieval-carpenters-guledon
Art Deco:
They have no idea how many illegal abortions there were. No idea whatsover. It’s not necessarily the sort of thing that most people will talk about except to people they know and trust.
I was fortunate enough to have not had an unwanted pregnancy and never had to face the decision personally. But the majority of the women I knew had unwanted pregnancies, and had illegal abortions. These are not women who were especially atypical or unusual in any other way. Most of them ended up having children and being married, later on.
That said, I would assume that legalization increased the number of abortions. It just makes sense that it would. But I believe it is impossible to compare numbers before and after.
Gerard vanderleun:
I’m not sure why you’re getting an error message. The link works for me.
“But the majority of the women I knew had unwanted pregnancies, and had illegal abortions.“
Anecdotes are not data. It’s not unreasonable to question that 96,000 number but even if the reality is 3x larger, that’s still vastly less than the million+ abortions a year the U.S. had for decades after Roe.
They have no idea how many illegal abortions there were. No idea whatsover.
I suspect they have models. The models can be disputed.
But the majority of the women I knew had unwanted pregnancies, and had illegal abortions.
I think you had an odd circle of friends, neo. Even when abortion had no restrictions placed on it and was quite prevalent, perhaps 20% of a all pregnancies ended by surgical abortion. That’s sorted over every sector of the population. A sample limited to people in the midst of post-baccalaureate schooling is going to be the sector least infected with problems which are generated by an excess of living in the moment.
My mother was a seven sisters graduate about 20 years your senior. She knew nothing of abortion in her social circle.
My young womanhood was before Roe. Nowhere near the majority of women I knew got pregnant, much less had abortions.
Kate:
You may not have known.
I only found out later, and only because people decided to confide in me about things that had happened thirty years or so earlier. It comes up sometimes in conversation even now – people I’ve known for many years suddenly mention they had an illegal abortion back in ’66 or something like that. Quite a few of them got pregnant while using IUDs, by the way.
Learning all of this rather surprised me; I had had no idea that abortions were so common among the people I knew, who were not especially unusual in any way I could see. That is why I no longer think that most people know how common abortions were or were not back then.
Art Deco:
I didn’t have an odd circle of friends at all. Please also see my above comment, to Kate.
I am not even necessarily talking about good friends. I have come to the conclusion that illegal abortions were far more common than estimated.
People did not ordinarily talk about it back then, and certainly not 20 years earlier. A lot of this I learned later, sometimes much later, and probably only because people tend to confide in me.
Ben Shapiro gets it. https://jewishworldreview.com/0822/shapiro082422.php3
The Left’s quest to eliminate the constitution and impose a tyrannical federal government exposes all manner of mental and moral shortcomings of its cheerleaders. Besides the clear absence of humility, there’s the obvious question — what would they think of such a government run by Trump or some other enemy?
Normal people understand that the best rules are those that are tolerable for those who have lost. Normal people realize that winning isn’t forever. The famous quote from Man for All Seasons about the devil and benefit of law applies. Sooner or later the devil will turn round on you.
But we already know the Left doesn’t think that far ahead. See e.g. the sad state of the filibuster. Or the natural consequences of demonizing police. Or electing radical prosecutors. Or paying people large sums not to work. Or spending recklessly and producing inflation. Or transforming a military until it can’t function. Or having a CDC that focuses on gun control and global warming rather than a future pandemic. The list is endless. These folks can’t or won’t see beyond today and their raw, juvenile thirsts and appetites.
Question: what accounts for this consistent defect of the left, this failure to look ahead at obvious consequences?
It seems there are both mental and moral defects involved.
I didn’t have an odd circle of friends at all.
Not buying.
Adding to the anecdotes (does anyone have actual data??).
Friends circle A – young adulthood pre-Roe (when I was a Baptist): so far no one has confided in me that they had a (then illegal) abortion. The one girl in our HS, that I know of, who got pregnant married her baby daddy.
Insufficient data points; I have only a few close friends from that era, but I am pretty sure they didn’t have any abortions before (or after) marriage.
Circle B – young married woman overlapping Roe’s “formative” years (after joining the LDS Church): I was assigned to visit with and emotionally support a pregnant single sister; she was living with an older single woman who often “fostered” girls until they had their babies, who were then adopted out through LDS Social Services (they don’t do that now for the same reason Catholic adoption agencies closed). Another good friend was an adoptive mother through the same system. That at least two large churches could have national prenatal care & adoption agencies indicates to me that a LOT of women did NOT choose abortions at that time.
Later, I was good friends with a number of women, who would have been prime candidates for Planned Parenthoods abattoirs.
Circle C: – post-Roe, most of them my age at the time:
Number One, was divorced and already had 3 kids, and there were indications the baby would have developmental problems, which she did, and was never able to walk; the most touching story I know is how her older brothers took exceedingly tender and loving care of her, pulling her to our house to play with our boys in their little red wagon.
Number Two is the woman’s daughter, who depended on some promises that weren’t kept; she married her former HS sweetheart after the baby was born, who doted on both of them.
Number Three was my next-door-neighbor, mother of our kids closest friends, whose doctor encouraged her & her husband to abort her #5 because the baby was going to be mentally deficient, and warned her that she would never carry another child to term; they chose not to, and have raised him to adulthood, along with the 2 perfectly healthy children born afterwards.
Number Four was my other next-door-neighbor, who had no problems with her first-born, but was on 24/7 bed-rest with the next two for the full nine months. Our ward did housekeeping and child-care, supplementing their extended family’s assistance. Both babies were fine.
Number Five was a computer programming student of mine who serially married at least 3 men that I know of, just to get their babies; kind of an odd ambition, but she wanted the kids more than the husbands. She was a darn good programmer, so I hope she got enough jobs to take care of them.
Circle D: my children’s generation in the Nineties:
Number Six was a tragic case of a young woman who married Mister Perfect, but he turned out to be violently abusive; she gave her baby to adoptive parents.
Number Seven was another sweet girl in that same generation, who liked the guy just enough, but didn’t want to live with him; her family helped raise her baby with her.
I have known several more women who raised both legitimate (divorced) and illegitimate children in circumstances that are poster-pictures for the disadvantaged, marginalized, or minorities who are the target of the abortion fanatics. They struggled to get by, but all of them loved their kids and did the best they could for them.
Post-script: one very best friend was the oldest of 11 kids (several sets of twins), and another good neighbor was the mother of 10 (also multiple twins), and neither thought they had too many people in their families. But hey, that was Utah.
Addendum: in college in Texas, I had a significant (although not top billing) role in “Zorba,” the musical. The director hired a colleague with Greek heritage and better singing and dancing credentials to assist; that person told me I couldn’t put enough pathos into my performance because I had never had an abortion.
Craziest acting advice I’ve ever been given.
I was surprised in a longer-term learning group during grad school to discover 2 group mates had abortions in their histories…1 male and 1 female.
He had paid for an old girlfriend’s and she had hers after a guy walked when she suggested she “thought” she was pregnant.
Both post-Roe…so legal and medical but she was long beyond feeling ok… haunted is a better word. He was still guilty because he knew he had forced the issue with an envelope full of cash.
I think they’re more common than we’d like to believe.