Kim Jong-un and Jim Jones

The New Neo Posted on by

Anyone else see a resemblance in the way they operate[d]?

The North Korean leader is operating on a much larger scale, of course. His weaponry is decidedly more advanced, as well. But both tried to instill in their followers a blind devotion, and both depended on blocking information from outside and replacing it with their own insular and paranoid reality. Both also made sure their subjects believed they were threatened by an outside world that was about to pounce on them, and that violence might be necessary—even a preemptive strike—to prevent or stop it.

Most people remember the Jonestown massacre/suicide. But few remember its details or even knew much about them at the time. You can refresh your memory here. You may be surprised at what you read.

Ransomware as a warning

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve seen quite a bit more MSM coverage in the British papers than the American ones about the recent Ransomware computer attack that threatened a great many businesses that use Microsoft. They were vulnerable because they had failed to update regularly enough, and because of revelations revealed by Wikileaks:

A statement from Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith on Sunday criticised the way governments store up information about security flaws in computer systems.

“We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world,” he wrote.

Media captionFirms must patch their systems before Monday morning, Europol chief warns…

He added: “The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up call.”

The organisation also said that many organisations had failed to keep their systems up to date, allowing the virus to spread.

Microsoft said it had released a Windows security update in March to tackle the problem involved in the latest attack, but many users were yet to run it…

…A UK security researcher known as “MalwareTech”, who helped to limit the ransomware attack, predicted “another one coming… quite likely on Monday”.

I was puzzled by this reference to updates. My updates happen automatically. But apparently, according to the article, for large systems such as those run by companies, updates are much more complex to perform, and only happen automatically if those entities pay extra.

Towards the end of the article you can find this tidbit:

MalwareTech, whose name was revealed in UK media to be 22-year-old Marcus Hutchins, was hailed as an “accidental hero” after registering a domain name to track the spread of the virus, which actually ended up halting it.

Hutchins seems a character sent from Central Casting. Is he real? You be the judge:

Marcus Hutchins has been credited with stopping the WannaCry ransomware attack from spreading across the globe by accidentally triggering a “kill switch”.

The self-taught 22-year-old took just a few hours to stop the breach, which had already spread to more than 200,000 victims – including the NHS – across 150 countries…

He is believed to stopped the attack from a small bedroom in his parents’ house. Last night, pictures emerged of his self-made IT hub, crammed with takeaway pizza boxes, video games and computer servers.

Oh, why not? Even though Hutchins sounds like someone invented by fabulist Steven Glass, why shouldn’t he be the real deal? The world has gotten that surreal.

Here’s some pizza supposedly consumed by Mr. Hutchins:

Trump’s unforced errors

The New Neo Posted on by

I want to talk about three recent articles. The first is by Jonah Goldberg, the second by Andrew C. McCarthy, and the third is by Michael Goodwin.

All three men are Republicans, but they occupy different positions on what I’ll call the Trump-approval spectrum. Goldberg is the most anti-Trump, McCarthy has taken a somewhat middle position, and Goodwin has been quite Trump-positive. However, they’re all saying much the same thing about him at the moment, albeit in different ways and with different emphases, and it’s a point with which I heartily concur: that Trump committed a series of unforced errors during the Comey firing and his handling of its aftermath, even though the firing itself was both lawful and arguably justified.

Some of these errors were in the firing process—the way Comey was informed, for example. Some of them were later, in miscues to Pence. Some of them involved tweets by Trump. Some may have involved rumored questions to Comey about loyalty (we’re not sure whether reports of this are accurate).

Some aspects of Trump’s behavior around the Comey incident have given at the very least the appearance of impropriety, and much of that behavior was unnecessary and counterproductive, although many of Trump’s biggest fans will justify, praise, and even take pleasure in some of the very aspects that are most problematic.

Goldberg puts his finger on at least part of what may be going on with Trump:

The response from the drivers of the permanent wagon circle, however, is to talk about how the media coverage of Comey’s firing is all overblown. There have been inaccuracies and hyperbole, to be sure. But serious people understand ”” even if they won’t say so on camera ”” that Trump has been throwing gasoline on a firestorm for no other reason than that’s what Trump does.

A scorpion bites, and Trump tweets out when he feels threatened. During the campaign I wrote about the Twitter mentality that seems to be ascendant:

In this particular election cycle of 2016, Twitter seems to dominate much more than before, and of course it is tailor-made for the strengths of Donald Trump. He has developed snarky one-liner put-downs and bragging to a fine art, and Twitter gives him the perfect platform for that, with a ready-made potential audience of many millions who are drawn to the game. …

Nearly everything [on Twitter] is irony or mockery, coming from what appears to be a very deep public cynicism, fed in turn by the constant cynicism and mockery. No one is really laudable any more. Elect a narcissistic con man? Why not? They’re all narcissistic con men, so let’s back the conny-ist and most narcissistic con man of all. And let’s laugh about it, and taunt the opposition. Integrity is for suckers, and only saps would believe that anyone smart has it. Except, paradoxically, the snarky, who show the depth of their integrity by the depth of their mocking cynicism.

It worked for him very well during the campaign season, didn’t it? And Trump’s biggest fans think it’s great, smart, and effective. Sometimes it actually is. Sometimes it is not. Here’s a not-untypical recent response from a Trump supporter (“Pancho”):

Trump NEEDS to tweet right now. It’s the only way to get his unfiltered message out to both his supporters and his haters. He loves to troll the MSM. It’s a joy to watch him work.

A joy? Not for me. Guess what? He’s not campaigning now. And, as Jonah Goldberg also adds, the skills needed during campaigns are not exactly the same as those needed for a presidency. In other words, what Trump supporters may find a great joy and what worked during the campaign may be counterproductive in a president, when the base doesn’t need as much shoring up, and anyway they can be shored up with actions and policy. A president needs to be effective, and a president such as Donald Trump—who has a host of enemies out to criticize even his most innocent and blameless moves—has to be able to avoid adding unnecessary fuel to the fire that’s already burning.

As Andrew McCarthy points out:

“Jumped the shark” is an overused expression straight out of 1970s situation comedy. It is the most charitable interpretation of the moment President Donald Trump pressed “Tweet” on Friday morning. After nearly four months of the once jaw-dropping novelty of presidential tweeting (the equivalent, in dog years and media exhaustion, of five sit-com seasons), the routine has grown stale, the former reality-TV star apparently out of “don’t touch that dial” ideas…

[The Comey-firing episode] is the latest in a series of depressing chapters. Most pressingly, it will be more difficult now for the president to recruit a highly respected, instantly credible law-enforcement pro ”” a Ray Kelly type, to my mind ”” to replace Comey.

And as Goodwin adds [emphasis mine]:

The president rarely makes it easy on the faithful [such as Goodwin], often testing his tribe through errant word and deed. Even on his best days, he manages to insert a hurdle or two or 10.

The James Comey affair is the perfect example. On substance, Trump made the absolute right call. Comey had to go, with his blunders on the Hillary Clinton case reason enough. And there were many others.

Yet being right isn’t enough in Washington, and being Trump raises the bar exponentially. The Democratic left and the media (I know, that’s redundant) get out of bed ready to pounce.

They don’t need facts to unleash their volcanic hatred of him. A juicy rumor and an anonymous source will suffice. Any mistake sparks talk of impeachment.

Some days, Trump gets the level of difficulty, telling Reuters about his first 100 days, “I thought it would be easier.”

Other days, he gets everything backward, making it hard for supporters to defend him and easy for opponents to attack. This is not merely annoying.

The exasperating pattern has been and remains the existential threat to Trump’s presidency, given his precarious public standing and his party’s narrow margin in Congress. He will not be able to deliver on his promises to revitalize the economy and rebuild the military unless he establishes wider support for his agenda and more trust in his judgment.

The Panchos of the internet may find it a “joy” to watch a master like Trump work. But it persuades no one who wasn’t already persuaded, and brings exasperation to followers such as Goodwin. If it continues, it will indeed threaten his presidency, as well as the Republican majority in Congress.

The truth is that Trump won not just because he attracted people who liked his proposals and in particular his in-your-face pugnacious style. He won because he attracted a lot of Republicans who held their noses and voted for him. His core of real support has never been large. Yes, the MSM is very much against him, and he must fight them. But he also must earn the respect and trust of those Republican nose-holders who gave him a chance, as well as the moderate Democrats who did likewise. More behavior from Trump that resembles some of these unforced errors during the Comey firing risks losing them, as well as people like Goodwin. Is it really worth the transient troll-like joy of some of his supporters?

Happy Mother’s Day!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of what has become my annual Mother’s Day post. It was written while my mother was still alive.]

Okay, who are these three dark beauties?

A hint: one of them is the very first picture you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo-neocon, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.

My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today—Mother’s Day—at ninety-eight years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.

Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.

The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.

Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.

We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).

My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.

I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.

So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?

Open marriage and happiness

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s the subject matter of this lengthy article that appeared recently in the Sunday magazine section of the NY Times. The author interviewed many couples who are in open marriages, and tried to describe what motivates them and how the arrangements are going for them. And although no open marriage is exactly the same as any other open marriage (the couples make up their own rules, such as whether the extra lovers will ever meet the other spouse), there are certain commonalities you might notice if, as I did, you manage to wade through the whole thing.

Open marriage has always seemed to me to be to be a recipe for marital disaster, but this article chronicles open marriages that profess to be successful. I believe the people interviewed are among the very few people who can compartmentalize and wall off feelings as primal as jealousy, and feel motivated to make the effort to wall off those feelings.

It’s not for me at all, and not for most people.

Open marriage also seems to require an unusual amount of intense talking about the relationship, and nearly continual verbal processing of feelings. It sounds like a great deal of work, much more so than a conventional marriage. Why would people want to take on that task? The author Susan Dominus doesn’t really tell us what might be the thing that’s different about these people that drives them towards it—she never mentions their religious beliefs or lack thereof, for example, although my guess would be that they would be markedly non-religious. They also seem strangely selfish, wanting what they want when they want it (and what they usually want is more variety, particularly sexually, to spice up their lives). But they also seem somewhat unselfish, at least in one way: they are willing to allow their spouses to be shared with another person.

The entire practice is a minefield. But the people featured in the article seem remarkably cool with it. What runs through their veins? And of course there is no dearth of couples therapists willing to work with such couples, not on ending the openness of the marriage, but on making the openness work, and smoothing over the psychological rough spots.

There’s also almost a complete ignoring of the issue of the effect on children, at least in the article. In it, children tend to be mentioned almost as an afterthought, and to be described as uniformly taking it all in stride. The question of what effect this arrangement will have on the psyches of the children of the couples doesn’t seem to be taken seriously, either by the open marriage practitioners in the article themselves or by author Dominus. And yet it’s my guess that the effect is profound, whether the children are talking about it or not.

This practice is described as “the new monogamy.” It’s many things—and I suppose, technically, it is “monogamy” in that its practitioners often remain married to only one person. But that’s quite a stretch for the definition of the word—something like calling atheism “the new religion.”

The fossil that looked like a statue

The New Neo Posted on by

Wow. Just wow:

At first glance the reassembled gray blocks look like a nine-foot-long sculpture of a dinosaur. A bony mosaic of armor coats its neck and back, and gray circles outline individual scales. Its neck gracefully curves to the left, as if reaching toward some tasty plant. But this is no lifelike sculpture. It’s an actual dinosaur, petrified from the snout to the hips.

Reforming Obamacare through the reconciliation process

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a primer on how the GOP could approach passing the AHCA through reconciliation.

If you think the process is complex, think again. It’s mega-complex.

I find it amusing, however, that part of the procedure involves something known as a “Byrd bath”:

Later in the process, as the reconciliation bill makes its way to the Senate floor, majority and minority leadership staff will gather for more formal discussions to assess which provisions qualify as “extraneous” under the “Byrd rule.” This process, informally known as the “Byrd bath,” allows for all sides to put their cases before the parliamentarian, who will normally provide more definitive guidance on how she would advise the chair to rule.

The following is completely parenthetical, but this post conjured up a long-buried memory from my youth. In our yard we had a bird bath. But no matter how much I wanted to, and no matter how hard I tried, I never saw a bird take a bath in it.

Just now, for the first time in my life, I wondered what we might have been doing wrong.

Ah, the internet! Google! Sure enough, in no time at all I found these 10 tips on how to attract birds to your birdbath. And sure enough, we were committing a host of errors. Ours was probably too high, didn’t have good footing for the birds, and in general didn’t follow most of the rules.

Trump and the tapes

The New Neo Posted on by

Chris Wallace is shocked, shocked:

Speaking with Shepard Smith Friday, the Fox News Sunday anchor offered his stunning take on the developments of the past week ”” from James Comey”˜s firing as Director of the FBI on Tuesday to Friday afternoon’s White House press briefing; a briefing in which, when asked by Jeff Mason of Reuters, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer did not deny the presence of recording devices in the Oval Office.

“When I heard that exchange today between Jeff Mason, White House reporter, and Sean Spicer speaking from the podium in the briefing room for the President of the United States, it took my breath away,” Wallace said.

Wallace continued:

“That was what in Watergate they called a non-denial denial. He was asked specifically, is there a recording device in the Oval Office of the President of the United States? He said, ”˜I have nothing for you on that.’ He could have said no. He could have said yes. He said I have nothing for you on that. That is a non-denial denial.”

When Shepard Smith asked Wallace the question about Oval Office tapings, he had phrased it this way:

This [Oval Office taping] was common practice, I guess, it seems, from all I can find out, Chris, the last time was really during Nixon’s administration—recording conversations.

Let me just pause for a moment and say how sick and tired I am of the news these days. I’m tired of having to remind people of how I’m not a Trump fan or a reflexive Trump-defender. I’m tired of having my energy be distracted and time wasted by things I consider unimportant and that the world seems to consider exceptionally important. And I’m especially tired of people like Shep Smith and Chris Wallace, journalists of long-standing who are supposed to be professionals, saying things without properly researching them.

If I wanted to hear two people gossiping about something, and saying how shocked they are by something that really isn’t especially shocking, I could go to any corner coffee shop and eavesdrop.

But enough about me.

We have no idea whether Trump did in fact tape this conversation with Comey, or whether it was an empty threat. If he did tape it, we also have no idea whether it is his “common practice” to do so. And I suppose it also depends what is meant by “common practice.” But White House tapings have been going on since before Nixon and after Nixon. You can find a number of articles about the phenomenon if you care to, such as for example this one at WGBH:

“Almost as soon as we had the technology to allow recorded conversations, FDR signed on in 1940,” Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, told NPR’s All Things Considered Friday. The Miller Center houses the recordings of six different presidents. The recordings can be heard in the Miller Center’s feature, “The Secret White House Tapes.”…

There are very few recordings from the Truman era, and only about 75 from Eisenhower…

But Truman and Eisenhower were from a different generation as Kennedy. He began recordings in earnest after he felt he received bad advice in the run up to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy was savvy about what was available to him and “so careful about how his image was portrayed,” Perry said.

Kennedy kept his recordings secret, appearing not to want even advisers or those on the phone to know…

Johnson ratcheted up the use of secret tapes and made it a staple of his White House. He added more technology; the technology got better; and he wanted to record as many meetings and phone calls as possible…

There is no law preventing secret White House recordings, and some kept it up ”” most notably Reagan.

“Reagan was presented with the option of continuing or not continuing the phone tapings in the Oval Office for national security purposes,” Politifact quotes Doyle referencing Michael Deaver, Reagan’s chief of staff. “And obviously tapings were a very controversial subject ever since the Nixon days. But Reagan could see the value of it, not so much for history but for accuracy … and readily agreed to continue the tapings.”…

There’s some evidence that George W. Bush recorded at least some video conferences…

[An author interviewing Obama relates] “As I was walking out of the Oval Office with Ben Rhodes [a foreign policy adviser to Obama],” Bowden said, “I said, Ben, you’re not going to believe this, but my recorder died in the middle of that somewhere.

” ‘Ah, don’t worry about it,’ he says, ‘we record everything in here. We’ll get you a transcript before you leave.’ And he did.”…

But Rhodes told NPR that while it was true the Obama White House recorded interviews with the media ”” a common practice among campaigns, too ”” it was out in the open…

“We obviously didn’t record private meetings.”

Now, put it all together and what do you get? Recordings of interviews with President Trump may have been made. This would be nowhere near as unprecedented or controversial as Smith and Wallace made it sound. The problematic aspect of it, to my way of thinking, was Trump’s use of the possible existence of the tape as a Twitter threat to challenge the veracity of Comey’s account of things. This is not “shocking,” however, in the sense that anyone who has observed Trump should know that’s the sort of thing he would do. His public posturing and threats feed into the worst fears of people who are genuinely disturbed by his tendencies towards impulsiveness, bullying, and perhaps even potentially to abuse of power. And all to what purpose?

Of course, it’s probably better to do it openly than clandestinely, if you’re going to do it at all. And Trump certainly seems to display it out in the open.

So what was it Chris Wallace was so all-fired stunned about? What was it that took his breath away? If it was that Trump might have recorded the conversations, that shouldn’t have surprised him. If it was that Spicer was not outright denying the existence of such a tape, that shouldn’t have surprised him, either, and yet it seems to have done so.

If Wallace’s surprise had been at Trump’s threatening Comey on Twitter with releasing such a recording (whether or not it exists), that shouldn’t have surprised him, either. Disturbed him, yes. Surprised him, no.

On the other hand, let’s say just for the sake of argument that the reports from the Comey camp about what transpired between Trump and Comey are lies to make Trump’s behavior look much worse than it was. How could those lies be countered? In other words, what recourse does a president have if he/she is being lied about? I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here; I’m just wondering.

Feminist scholars eat their own

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Ann Althouse.]

Feminism in academia has spiraled out of control, as evidenced by the brouhaha described in this piece by Vanderbilt professor Kelly Oliver, who found herself in the middle of a storm of rage for attempting a fairly mild defense of another feminist professor who had raised the ire of the pack.

Everyone on all sides of this issue is a woman. Everyone on all sides of this issue is a feminist. And everyone on all sides of this issue is a leftist. But the viciousness—and the number—of the attacks are as bad as anything the left lobs at the right. Perhaps worse. There’s no war like a civil war.

Its hard to summarize what the issues were, but I’ll try. The anger was sparked by an academic piece written by philosophy professor Rebecca Tuvel. Her crime? To claim that if transgender identities are valid (which she believes is the case), then to be philosophically consistent one would have to say that transracial identities (such as that of Rachel Dolezal) are also valid.

If you thought that this would be a fairly non-controversial position on the left—well, think again. Apparently it’s not okay to appropriate a different racial identity, even if you’re sincere and well-meaning. Duvel was the object of a torrent of abuse on social media as a result of what she had written about Dolezal’s racial identity. And Professor Oliver, who sought only to put the discussion on a more academic and civil footing, became a target as well for her pains.

You have to read the article to understand the extremity of the attacks. No summary does justice to the details.

But what interested me the most was that many of these feminist professors wrote to either Tuvel or Oliver saying that they privately supported them but were afraid to say so in public for fear of becoming targets themselves. Some of them even apologized for having joined in the abuse just for show.

Oliver writes:

Through every medium imaginable, senior feminist scholars were pressuring, even threatening, Tuvel that she wouldn’t get tenure and her career would be ruined if she didn’t retract her article.

Oliver seems shocked and surprised at all of this. She shouldn’t be. Has she never noticed what happened during the Soviet show trials? Is she unaware of the history of the Red Guards? Those historical events were of course much more serious and more violent than the incident Oliver describes, but the attack on Tuvel is a similar phenomenon in embryo, and that sort of thing is the left’s specialty. It also is a far less physical/lethal version of the Shirley Jackson story “The Lottery“—a group stoning of the designated sacrificial victim, who until recently had been a member of the group in good standing.

Chilling. Chilling. Chilling.

Trump continues to be Trump on Twitter

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump tweets:

“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press,” Trump tweeted. The remark is an extraordinary development in the ongoing feud between the President and the agencies investigating alleged ties between his campaign and Russia.

It would be “extraordinary” if it was anyone but Trump. With Trump, it’s business as usual, as we’ve come to expect it.

I’ve tired of reacting to everything Trump does as though it’s the end of the republic. This sort of tweet is Trump’s specialty, and will probably be a feature of his entire presidency. Whether such tweets are example of emotional impulsiveness, an abuse of power, a clever ploy to toy with the media, a valid complaint, or something else—feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Drudge/Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

I confess that I don’t read the Drudge Report all that often, although sometimes I do scan it for stories to write about. But I go there often enough to have become aware of the fact that, during the 2016 campaign, Drudge chose his headlines in a way that definitely leaned pro-Trump. In fact, he was one of the big internet sites that was in no small extent responsible for helping to popularize, nominate, and elect the man.

But in the last month or so when I’ve gone to Drudge I’ve noticed the links there trend more anti-Trump. What’s going on?

I Googled the topic and nearly all I got was this from February:

…[I]n the midst of the 2016 campaign, Drudge was freshly energized by Trump’s anti-establishment, populist candidacy; when the Washington establishment scoffed and snickered, Drudge was an early and eager adopter of Trumpism. And he has managed to maintain and even enhance his relevance, especially in the power precincts of Trumpworld…

[An unnamed person supposedly in the know] added: “Drudge is really very good at seeing trends and seeing where things are going much earlier than most people. A lot of other people got on top of the Trump phenomenon later, but Drudge was early in recognizing that ”˜Damn! This Trump message is really resonating across America!’”

The article then describes Drudge as having become somewhat critical of Trump, and very critical of the GOP in Congress, for not fulfilling populist campaign promises. That’s about it for any light shed on the subject. And this from early May describes Drudge expressing concern about Trump’s low poll numbers.

Anyone know what happened?

Caol Ila

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night, someone told me to have a sip of Caol Ila single-malt Scotch whisky. A tiny sip, because that person knew I’m not a drinker.

It was the single worst-tasting thing I’ve ever ingested into my wee body.

At first I thought it tasted like an old shoe.

But no; it tasted like an old tire.

No again. What it really tasted like was a barbecued old tire soaked in petroleum sauce.

Ever had it? Here’s a description at a website specializing in Scotch whisky:

Nose: Wet bog, a dominant peatiness that seems more like wet leaves, humus, and decaying fallen trees than smoke or sea. Very light oakiness underneath, with only a thin layer of malt serving as a vehicle for the peat…

The nose is a little off-putting for me, even though I enjoy peat. The muddiness and earthy quality of the peat seems “lower quality” to me than the peat of other Islay distilleries. However, that all changes on the tongue, where the peat gives way to a very tasty chocolate note. This continues through the finish, which has the strangest merging of boggy peat, strawberry jam, and chocolate fudge. Weird, but very satisfying. I would score this higher if the nose were either more clear and refined, or less peaty.

And that’s from someone who liked it.

I didn’t, to say the least. And I completely and utterly missed the entire strawberry jam and chocolate fudge part. It took me about an hour to totally shake that vile barbecued tire taste from my buds.

Never again.