Open thread 8/23/24
One of my very favorite poems. I chose this rendition because he also provides a good translation:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
One of my very favorite poems. I chose this rendition because he also provides a good translation:
Most of the Washington kakstocracy believe they rule us.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/3131217/most-swamp-managers-say-voters-dont-matter/
You should try another Scotsman’s take on the subject, inspired by the poem (or so Ian has said many times):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa6IrbDWJ2w
To Huxley:
On yesterday’s Open Thread you wrote “My GF picked a BnB in Guerneville not far from Bodega Bay. Not long after our arrival, we realized that Guerneville had become a Northern California outpost of the Castro in San Francisco, i.e. we were the only straight couple in Guerneville so far as we could tell.”
My wife and I had a similar experience. I wonder, did you stay at Fife’s Ranch, nka Dawn Ranch? We had no idea it was a gay resort. Nothing in the literature I saw (this was in the days before widespread use of the world wide web) noted that it was predominately gay. Our first inkling was at check-in when we were asked if we had any children with us. The owner stated emphatically that children were NOT ALLOWED at the pool. We soon found out why that was so, especially since it was a “Bear” weekend. Although we were booked for the entire weekend, we stayed only the first night, mostly because the cabin was freezing cold that first night, there was no heat, very little electricity (only one light), and the plumbing was in a sorry state. At our first winery stop, following that first sleepless night, a hostess at Davis Bynam asked where we were staying. “Fife’s”, we said. “But aren’t you married?” Learning of our predicament she got on the phone and made arrangements for us to stay at the Fountaingrove Round Barn in Santa Rosa, no easy task since it was a Russian River Wine Festival weekend. The Fountaingrove later burned to the ground in the 2017 fires. Sweet memories!
Most of the Washington kakstocracy believe they rule us.
I mean… they’re sorta right. The Deep State, the Swamp… whatever you want to call it, the unelected bureaucracy wields a great deal of power over our lives. They can create new laws at will under the aegis of “regulations” as long as they’re in an area that’s oestensibly in their purview. They’re almost completely shielded from accountability since it’s nearly impossible to fire most federal employees unless they commit crimes so blatant and heinous that they can’t be swept under the rug.
For the past 3 and a half years we’ve had a president who has been at least partially non compos mentis, and yet the federal government still ground on.
We’re not yet at Soviet Union levels of unaccountable bureaucratic tryranny and stupidity, but we don’t seem to be far off.
I have an interesting addendum to the story I told yesterday. I went downstairs for coffee this morning and the bartender from last night, a wonderful blue collar Hispanic woman, was coming into work. We stopped to chat and she asked me if I heard about the shooting at the diner last night. I had not. Somebody got shot at a diner not far from here, she said, and some of the people from the DNC were there. She joked, well, we know it wasn’t those ladies from last night because they were all wearing freedom from gun violence pins. We both laughed and went on our way. I come back to my desk and look up the story, and here it is:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-shot-while-leaving-white-palace-grill-with-dnc-attendees-inside-in-chicagos-south-loop/ar-AA1pjc09
And here is the money quote!
might as well wear a rabbit’s foot, weapons are illegal in chicago, yet the criminals still get them,
the government doesn’t really work in any way we understand things to be, because it would secure the border keep streets safe, keep the airlines and trains operating stuff like that,
I thought that Michael Caine was more of a sensible bloke in his dotage, but that ghost written novel is full of ‘woke’ tropes, and his reaction to the actual attack on taylor
swift attendees and the underreaction to the crackdown, makes me doubt that,
Harry Palmer is fine with Airstrip One, if the right people are running it, Unlike say Roger Daltrey he’s fine in the Village,
I don’t recall he signed on to the Hamas hootenany of distinguished grandees so there is that counting for him,
” . . . and I think that’s really meaningful,”
Oh it’s meaningful alright, it’s an outright contraindication.
like steyn says about those with the Free Tibet ribbons it don’t mean a thing,
DAs like Kim Foxx rather strenuously fail to prosecute prohibited possessors, and go after law abiding citizens instead, like the couple in St Louis,
In my youth I spent a few years in Scotland, and it got so I could understand my wee girlfriend’s Glasgow patois, but when she had a natter with her sister I was completely lost.
Combine this decision with a state or county AG that announces they won’t prosecute anyone seeking the right to vote and you have the perfect storm for fraud.
I wonder the reasoning– the state can require proof of citizenship to register to vote, but cannot require proof of citizenship for presidential voting, just a pinky swear.
Barret voted against, but the article doesn’t say whether it was Kavanaugh or Roberts that made the majority.
Clyde Barrow had three Browning Automatic Rifles and 100 loaded mags for the same when he was killed, all of which had been stolen from the US Government. Mabrey is an idiot.
Brian E:
It would be helpful if you provide a link, when you quote something. Thank you.
My wife and I had a similar experience. I wonder, did you stay at Fife’s Ranch, nka Dawn Ranch?
Steph:
My experience of Guerneville was back in 1995. I don’t *think* things had gone as far as “Bear” weekends then.
The gay movement had been rocked pretty hard by AIDs in the 80s and the AIDS cocktail was only starting to take hold in the mid-90s. Which is to say, gay flamboyance had been somewhat subdued.
About twenty years ago, I worked for a small office that was not far from Folsom Street in San Francisco. My boss was gay. I went in to get some work done on a Saturday during the Folsom Street Fair. I saw stuff I never, ever, ever, ever want to see again. And have tried for YEARS to erase from my memory cells.
Dax, the story is a mess, but here it is.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/supreme-court-rejects-gop-push-to-block-41k-arizona-voters-but-partly-oks-proof-of-citizenship-law/ar-AA1pgC2S?pqasv=&pqlth=0&assgl=99&sgcn=supreme+court+rejects+gop+push+to+block+41k+arizona+voters%2C+but+partly+oks+proof+of+citizenship+law&sgtpv=Top+Stories&smvpcn=4&swbcn=6&cvid=db69676fc95242e2b26c2bb77554cc4c&ocid=msedgntp&clckatsg=1&hsmssg=1
Re: “The Counterfeiters” (2007)
Wow. I was just looking for films with French audio and French subtitles, surprisingly hard to find, at my local library.
“The Counterfeiters” is based on a true story of a master counterfeiter, Jewish, who was caught and imprisoned, then after the Nazis took over, he was sent to a concentration camp.
However, he is recognized for his counterfeiting skills and is shanghaied into Operation Bernhard, a Nazi attempt during WW II to counterfeit the British pound and the American dollar in order to undermine the respective economies.
So the Jew and his team of other camp prisoners are granted special privileges (clean beds, better food, a phonograph, a ping-pong table, and relative freedom from abuse) in order to produce effective counterfeits.
It’s a fantastic film, which went well beyond my expectations, and the Counterfeiter is played superbly by Karl Markovics, whom I’ve never noticed before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Counterfeiters_(2007_film)
Brian E:
FYI — You can usually delete everything in a link past the first question mark. Your link could have been truncated to:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/supreme-court-rejects-gop-push-to-block-41k-arizona-voters-but-partly-oks-proof-of-citizenship-law/ar-AA1pgC2S
It’s good to do this for brevity, but also because most of the extra text is essentially personal information about you.
…or better yet, you could just embed the link within html anchor tags. As in:
<a href=”https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/supreme-court-rejects-gop-push-to-block-41k-arizona-voters-but-partly-oks-proof-of-citizenship-law/ar-AA1pgC2S”>some descriptive text here<a>
which then becomes
some descriptive text here
https://tinyurl.com/yaee7udh
P.S.–UFOs, NHIs, and the apparent tug of war between forces within DOD, the Intelligence Community, members of Congress, Aerospace Contractors, and interested members of the public, over how much, if any, UFO Disclosure can be allowed.
What David Grusch has said in interviews and testified–under oath–to Congress about, and what Lue Elizondo has said in his almost innumerable interviews over the last several years, at conference appearances, on TV and, now, written about in his new book, “Imminent,” has all been cleared to be publicly revealed by the Pentagon’s Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSA).
Perhaps the folks at DOPSA think that more Disclosure is better, or that letting a little disclosure take place works as a safety valve, which diminishes the chances of a far larger, much more disastrous “Catastrophic Disclosure” from occurring.
On the other hand, with regard to the UFO issue and NHIs, DOD spokesmen, and the former head of ARRO, Dr. Shaun Kirkpatrick, keep spouting the old “Party line”–which has admittedly worked for the past 80 years–and keep denying that UFOs and NHI’s are real.
In effect, they keep saying,“nothing to see here folks, move on.”
Meanwhile, some aroused and alarmed members of Congress are introducing and passing legislation which aims at getting at the truth about the UFO Phenomenon, and enabling Congress to reassert it’s oversight over what they have been told, by whistle blowers, are various highly secret, deeply buried, apparently rogue “Legacy” UFO crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs, which are apparently being pursued within some parts of government, and within some major aerospace companies; legislation which acknowledges and takes as real the existence of “Non Human Intelligence” and their “technologies of unknown origin.”
Another force which is also at play here is composed of the private citizens, and their various organizations, which–in efforts which have extended over a couple of generations, now–have tried, in their various ways, to push for UFO Disclosure.
Organized religion—in the form of the Vatican—with it’s thousands of years of archival material and experience—may also have “a dog in this fight.”
It’s quite a tug of war.
Robert Shaw day on TCM. “A Man for All Seasons” is due up after “Battle of the Bulge”.
Re: Hyperlinks
Personally I prefer the bare, truncated link. It’s quicker to paste and it’s easier to read.
I like to have some idea of where a link will take me. Sure, I can hover over an anchor, then squint to read the link in tiny script, but again it’s just more work and slows me down.
Basically I don’t bother with anchor links or tinyurl links. Nor will I click links without some human appeal for why I might want to click it.
interesting how shaw often played the villain as in battle of the bulge, Major Hassler was Skorzeny, without mentioning him for reasons we have elaborated on before, he was the villain in Robin Hood, the villain in the Sting, of course going back he was the steely eyed assassin from From Russia with Love, he had been considered as the Kurtz role in Apocalypse that ultimately went to Brando
of course he turned it down because of his ill health,
I think Brando’s role was kind of anti climactic in the sense that he couldn’t live up to the image that had been portrayed in the debriefs, as a leader of the Montagnards, which were played by Igorot tribesmen in the Phillipines he was supposed to evoke Robert Rheault, the rogue Green Beret officer, but also aspects of Tony Poe the chief operator with the Hmong, in the laotian plains
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13765387/fired-ibm-employee-diversity-targets-white-man-DEI.html
==
Corporate kakistocracy.
Donald J Trump from a time when there was still humor in the world.
https://twitter.com/DefiantLs/status/1827006262485086284
Hello. Can I just point out this black-humor tidbit? There’s apparently recently been a mass-stabbing incident in Solingen, Germany at a festival. The report is that some sort of immigrant-type person started stabbing people; there were three deaths on scene.
Now quite aside from the terrible nature of the attack as such, there is the additional bitter irony that Solingen is known traditionally from history as die Klingenstadt, which means literally Blade City (like Troy, New York is Collar City, and of course many other examples). That is, artisans there used to be known for making swords, shears, knives and such. While swords may be somewhat out of fashion, the knives still receive a good deal of attention.
Can you imagine the headlines now Brian?
TRUMP CAUGHT TRAFFICKING UNDERAGE CHILDREN
I did not know there were moose in Scotland… Do they also have squirrels, just out of curiosity?
😛
A more general comment:
Go to the first question mark, and delete everything past it. Now test it, and see if it still works — this is recommended, as sometimes you need something beyond the first link.
Youtube vids, for example, need the “v=xxx” part, but nothing more
(link for example)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W06g7gIfwRE
Anything after that is generally irrelevant.
I will note, if you want to zero in on a specific section, then you do need a bit more:
https://youtu.be/W06g7gIfwRE?t=263
The “t=nnn” is the timecode for what you are linking to. The link above came from the right click “copy url at current time” option on Youtube.
As huxley suggests, the rest of it is generally a tracking link, a “cookie”, if you will, and can usually be elided. It tells someone, somewhere, where you got the link from, e.g., usually who the heck it was that sent it to you.
I will always pare down a link to what I think is the actually needful part, test it, then post that part if it works.
You may not care, but, it’s good to understand when you’re handing out tracking information to others, so it’s an awareness decision and not one made from a lack of awareness.
😉