Archive for the ‘under the fedora’ Category

Saw a tweet by old friend Erick Erickson that jumped out at me

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Nothing is more inconvenient for leftists on television that a person who critiques Donald Trump regularly but still intends to vote for him.


A close second are regular attacks on jews in NY by Blacks who do not support Donald Trump in any way shape or form

The fact that black people are responsible for this “dramatic increase” cannot be denied, but as Ace of Spades points out, the media keep trying to blame Trump for these crimes committed in Democrat-controlled cities by people who certainly don’t seem like MAGA-hat types.

Consider this “argument” by Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast:

“New York is reeling from a wave of anti-Semitic attacks, and speaking as a Jewish parent who lives in Brooklyn, I can tell you that it’s terrifying.
It is also confusing. The vast majority of anti-Semitic attacks in this country are carried out by right-wing white supremacists. But most of the recent New York-area attacks have been carried out by people of color expressing very different grievances, or none at all. So is this the same phenomenon, or a different one? Hate, yes, but what kind of hate?
The answer is not simple. The recent street violence and acts of terror are based, in part, on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories similar to those on the Right. And yet, it is dangerous and misleading to see this as the same phenomenon, because the social contexts, the dynamics of race, and the relationships to power are all quite different. . . .

See? Michaelson is a liberal, and therefore “the dynamics of race” must be considered, as if a machete-wielding black psycho in New York deserves sympathy in a way that, say, Dylan Roof does not. In fact, he claims, “it is dangerous and misleading” not to employ a double standard:

Perhaps the left will shortly argue that these attackers while black opponents of Donald Trump define themselves as White Supremacists? That argument is a lot more convenient that dealing the with reality on the ground.


A while back I wrote about the anti-anti’s who tended to side against America’s enemies because they hated the anti-communists more than they hated communists. Victor Davis Hanson has found an inconvenient version of this meme just in time for election 2020:

Many who voted for Trump were quite aware that Trump’s rhetoric often bothered them. They now weigh that discomfort against his achievements and the shrill Democratic alternative — and find the latter far scarier. Few on the left ever contemplate the effect on the general public of the 24/7, 360-degree pure hatred of Trump on network and cable news, public TV and radio, and late-night TV talk shows, as well as print media. The silent disdain many people have for the progressive media nexus is especially potent when the haters so often fit a stereotypical profile in the public mind: counterfeit elite as defined by education, zip codes, careers, or supposed cultural influence; smug in their parrot-like group-speak and accustomed to deference.

This paradox was brought home to me not long ago when I asked an unlikely Trump minority supporter why in the world he would vote against his family’s and community’s political heritage. He answered at once, with simply, “I hate the people who hate him.”

Translated, I think that means we often are missing a cultural element to Trump Agonistes, exacerbated by the latest toxic impeachment episode.

That’s got to be very inconvenient for the left come November.


Speaking of inconvenient facts for the media there are few things more inconvenient to the media’s narrative than this one.

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13 hours vs 13 minutes, talk about an inconvenient number.


Finally one of the problems with making predictions and decisions about the future based on iffy data is that when they don’t come true you might be left with some inconvenient signs:

The centerpiece of the visitor center at St. Mary near the east boundary is a large three-dimensional diorama showing lights going out as the glaciers disappear. Visitors press a button to see the diorama lit up like a Christmas tree in 1850, then showing fewer and fewer lights until the diorama goes completely dark. As recently as September 2018 the diorama displayed a sign saying GNP’s glaciers were expected to disappear completely by 2020.

But at some point during this past winter (as the visitor center was closed to the public), workers replaced the diorama’s ‘gone by 2020’ engraving with a new sign indicating the glaciers will disappear in “future generations.”

As Rush Limbaugh taught Al Gore with his Goremageddon clock you don’t make predictions about the future within a time span when they can be proven false because it might turn out to be a tad inconvenient.

If you want to know why people don’t give “Moderate” Muslims the benefit of the doubt this is why

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It wasn’t long ago when such a piece would be too fringe even for the Guardian.


I think this tweet is the single best political justification for the media/left’s actions on Trump that I’ve read

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if you are the party out of power looking to regain it the last thing you want is for the people being “the happiest they’ve ever been” when your foes are in charge.


At the Doug Ross Journal (where I found the above tweet) I saw something that jumped out at me.

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It turns out this isn’t a new story:

The U.S. can now ship rice to China for the first time ever, signaling a win for President Donald Trump in his efforts to reshape the trade relationship just after talks between the nations broke down Wednesday.
Officials from the nations finalized a protocol to allow for the first-ever American shipments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday in a statement. China is the world’s biggest rice consumer, importer and producer.

That’s from 2017 and this is from Feb

While there’s no guarantee, farmers and millers are increasingly optimistic because the Chinese ban has been lifted, a handful of U.S. rice mills have been cleared for export, and China is looking to make the Trump administration happy with commodity purchases.
It was in December that China took a major step toward making that happen, changing its customs regs and officially lifting its ban on U.S. rice. Separately, China has now officially cleared seven of the 34 U.S. rice mills that USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has asked China to certify under the country’s sanitary and phytosanitary regulations, U.S. industry and government officials tell Agri-Pulse. The remaining mills are still under Chinese consideration, sources say.

Oddly I don’t remember reading it before. Remember Media Bias isn’t just what gets reported, it’s what gets promoted.


Apparently a judge in Michigan believes it’s discrimination when a catholic priest decides not to enable her in a state of mortal sin to commit further mortal sin.

Judge Sara Smolenski, the chief judge of Michigan’s 63rd District Court, received a call from the priest at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, requesting she not attend communion.
“This is not about me against the priest, and it’s not really me against the church,” Smolenski told CNN. “This feels like selective discrimination. Why choose gay people, and why now?”
Smolenski, 62, said that the Rev. Scott Nolan, the priest at St. Stephen for approximately three years, called her on November 23 and told her, “‘It was good to see you in church on Sunday. Because you and Linda are married in the state of Michigan, I’d like you to respect the church and not come to communion.’”

Actually given the Pope we have the idea of a church actually enforcing the rules of the church might actually be newsworthy.


Finally thanks to my injury I was able to watch the entire Patriots game this weekend and see them one guy keeping his balance on an onside kick away from a shot at yet another miracle comeback.

It’s a testament to what Brady has done in the past that when they managed to score the 2nd of the three scores they needed for a chance that even with under a minute to go and no time outs kicking the ball that you could hear double in the voices of the announcers in a game that should have been over and feel fear in the stadium after Edelman caught that touchdown, but in reality the Texan response was classic Patriot defense by a former Pats defensive coordinator, leave the other team just enough space and just enough time to get close but still lose.

If the Democrats / Media had treated Donald Trump like both a regular candidate, and a regular president right from the start, they would not be in the pickle or the bubble they are in today.

Thinking of the rise of Islam in general and the London stabbing in particular, you have to go to the mid 30’s to find European governments in general and England in particular so wedded to the idea of appeasement in the face of a foe willing to supplement or destroy them.

The social costs of the normalization and/or legalization of Pot were as obvious as the social costs the normalization of porn which were, in my opinion, a feature rather than a bug to those who have pushed these results.

When I look at Universities taking big money from those who have made it their mission to bring down American society and destroy education I understand the old communist saying about capitalists selling them the ropes to hang them.

Finally, the most amazing thing about the New England Patriots record this season is that, thanks to Nick Folk emergency surgery, as of today they have field twice as many different kickers this season (4) as they have from 1996 till last year (2).

The fuss about Molly Hemmingway saying aloud on the air what everyone in the room already knows, namely that the so called “Whistleblower”  Eric Ciaramella is a perfect symbol for the culture the left has given us. The inability to speak aloud the truth, particularly truth that everyone knows, is the hallmark of repression. He has become the media’s Voldemort media (he who must not be named).

We have have won the cold war but I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the Communists won the peace.


One of the aspects of the Voldemort media are the choices to be made. The entire Jeffrey Epstein / ABC /CBS coverup and the firing of someone who they thought was an actual whistleblower has become that which must not be talked about. What I find really interesting is the supposed motive:

ABC was exposed this week for killing a story about Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged pedophile ring, which anchor Amy Robach claimed was due to an upcoming interview the network had with the royal family.

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As a practical matter the amount of stories you would get out of exposing Epstein, particularity in 2016 before the metoo movement and the subsequent number of eyeballs online and ratings on the air that such a story would produce would undoubtedly eclipse the value of an interview with the British Royal Family or even future interview that might be denied the network. I would think that Robach would have been able to make that case with ease.

This tells me that even years later Robach doesn’t see the truth, namely that protecting the friends of the Clinton’s who were expected to be back in the White House trumped everything else in that election year, but to acknowledge that truth is more than some can bear.


Speaking of dealing with truth, stumbled onto James Stewart’s long New Yorker piece from 2002 about Rick Rescorla who died getting folks out of the World Trade Center and re-read it. The final paragraph says a lot:

“What she doesn’t understand is that she knew him for four or five years. She knew a sixty-two-year-old man with cancer. I knew him as a hundred-and-eighty-pound, six-foot-one piece of human machinery that would not quit, that did not know defeat, that would not back off one inch. In the middle of the greatest battle of Vietnam, he was singing to the troops, saying we’re going to rip them a new asshole, when everyone else was worrying about dying. If he had come out of that building and someone died who he hadn’t tried to save, he would have had to commit suicide.
“I’ve tried to tell Susan this, in a way, but she’s not ready yet for the truth. In the next weeks or months, I’ll get her down here, and we’ll take a  walk along the ocean, and I’ll explain these things. You see, for Rick Rescorla, this was a natural death. People like Rick, they don’t die old men. They aren’t destined for that and it isn’t right for them to do so. It just isn’t right, by God, for them to become feeble, old, and helpless sons of bitches. There are certain men born in this world, and they’re supposed to die setting an example for the rest of the weak bastards we’re surrounded with.”

There was a time in our country, a time in my memory where every school boy would know who Rick Rescorla was and dream of being him. Thanks to having a father born in 1921 who served in the pacific I was regularly exposed to men like this and taught to revere them. Not anymore Once or twice a year men like this are spoken of fondly but today our schools and the media which shapes society would condemn Rick Rescorla as a man seething with toxic masculinity and white privilege.

God help us those who do when they need such men again, and they will.


In San Francisco a mural of Greta Thunberg is going up so that all can look upon her stern gaze and repent. At Front Page Magazine Jason Hill a Philosophy professor at DePaul has penned an open letter to this media proclaimed hero:

First, we did not rob you of your childhood or of your dreams. You are the legatee of a magnificent technological civilization which my generation and the one before it and several others preceding it all the way to the Industrial Revolution and the Renaissance, bequeathed to you. That growth-driven, capitalist technological civilization has created the conditions for you to harangue us over our betrayal. It is a civilization that eradicated diseases such as small pox from the word, and that lifted millions out of abject poverty in a universe you think is dying and decaying. It assured you a life expectancy that exceeded that of your ancestors. Most likely by focusing on economic growth which you demonize, and scientific advancement, that civilization will further enhance a robust quality of life and health for your descendants.


Here is a hard truth to ponder, Greta: if the great producers of this world whom you excoriate were to withdraw their productivity, wealth and talents—in short—their minds from the world today, your generation would simply perish. Why? Because as children you have done nothing as yet, with your lives besides being born. This is what we expect of children until such time as they can be producers by learning from their elders. You are understandably social and ecological ballast. You are not yet cognitively advanced to replicate the structures of survival of which you are the beneficiaries.

Greta Thunberg is a useful idiot which is why our cultural betters given the choice of her or Rick Rescorla their hero will always go for the former. Men like Rescorla did not play the idiot for others.


I laughed when I saw this story at the Daily Sun:

Sex robot factory ‘looks like Westworld’ after producing ‘hyper-realistic’ dolls
EXCLUSIVE: Silicone Lovers told Daily Star Online it is using a workshop that mirrors fictional HBO hit Westworld to produce sex robots with advanced human-like technology

The mirth comes from three things that instantly came to mind.

  1. Odds are if you can afford such a robot (as opposed to a lower end one that goes for say 2-10 grand) you’re likely rich enough to be able to attract a real woman. But I’m sure the prices will eventually drop so that every incel can have one.
  2. These will never be “hyper-realistic” until they can say no and enforce that statement.
  3. I don’t care how realistic these things are, until they are self cleaning and self disinfecting you couldn’t pay me enough to try one let alone own one.

Some advice for the ladies, if you discover your date has one of these in his apartment or house, run, this guy is a loser.