This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: “The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves”

  • Wienies, Every One of Them

    Incidents of violence and threats against the political right have escalated as the establishment media amp up its hate rhetoric against President Trump and his supporters.

    The morning after Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd compared media critics to racist segregationists and singled out Fox News as one of America’s biggest problems, a man in a “mentally agitated state,” and apparently upset over an officer involved shooting, intentionally crashed his vehicle into the studios of FOX 4 in Dallas, Texas.

    Besides Todd, many in the media, especially at far-left CNN have “othered” Fox News and presented the network as a unique danger to America.

    CNN’s Brian Stelter has gone so far as to spread conspiracy theories about Fox News controlling President Trump.

    I’ve been trying for some time to understand this utter hatred generated by Trump’s successful election. I do not recall ever seeing this kind of behavior, except during the Days of Rage in the 1970s (generated by the Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers). You might want to have a look at this blog post by someone who has tried to understand it himself but wasn’t around back then.

    Days of Rage

    Is there a real difference between the leftist/liberal violence of the 1970s and what is going on now? Yes and no. There is no way to find out how much of what happened in the 1970s was simply generated by the radical leftists like Abby Hoffman, Eldrige Cleaver and Wm. Ayers, who lived on a nice houseboat paid for by ultraliberal lawyers, and how much was just vandalism.

    The difference between now and back then, and even back in the early 1950s when those Puerto Ricanos tried to invade Congress and bump off Harry Truman, is that the minds of this current crop overgrown children have been drained of freedom of thought – thinking for themselves – and a good deal of this supposed “hatred” is bought and paid for, instead of springing from the genuine anger that brought those violent events into being in the middle of the 2oth century.

    Ayers, and Dorne, his armored car-robbing and murdering partner, were anarchists, not true leftists. They simply hated government and law and order in all their forms, and knew how to sucker idiots into going along with their plans.

    To say that CNN’s Stelter is as lame as you can get is an understatement. These 21st century “radicals”  can’t even make Maxine Waters look semi-civilized. I do not think they could have made it through the 1960s and 1970s.

    There is a fallacy about what is going on now that is intentionally dismissed by the media, and it is this kind of thing: a recent climate “protest” march, which was advertised ahead of time as having an estimated body count of hundreds of thousands, in actuality had a few dozens here and there, maybe 85 to 125 in some areas, but not the “hundreds of thousands” that were boasted about in their ads for the event. And because that failed as an event, the failure was not reported by the media. They find it necessary to either lie about what happened, or not report it at all.

    I do not believe for one microsecond that anyone currently working in the overpaid and pampered demesne of current media environs would be willing to give up their comforts and life styles to ride herd with real radicals like Cleaver and Ayers and Hoffman.  This makes them failures of a kind that would be sneered at by the men who dressed up as Indians and boarded British ships on December 16, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts, and tossed 342 chests of tea overboard to protest the Stamp Tax Act.

    Let  us hope that this failure continues to grow.

     

  • You Know There’s Something Wonky When…

     

    I wrote this a while back, but now, it’s even better, ’cause fake news gets better all the time.

    – you keep telling people you’re male/female and you’re straight, and they ask “Are you sure?”

    –  you realize that some day, you’ll be able to use longhand (cursive) writing as a secret code.

    – you wonder when in the blue-eyed world Common Sense took a vacation and didn’t tell you.

    – the minute another Earth-type planet is announced, you start wondering if you could move there.

    – the media people who use the suffix ‘-gate’ for every dumb idiot thing possible, including shutting down traffic lanes as a spiteful move, weren’t even alive when Richard Nixon got fired for his approval of the Watergate Hotel break-in.

    – people think it’s okay to let illegal immigrants on welfare into this country and give them stuff, while legal immigrants spend almost forever achieving citizenship and become role models without sponging off taxpayers.

    – you realize that your dog or cat is smarter and better educated than a lot of college grads you’ve met.

    –  you go to a movie theater, see a ‘Gun Free Zone’ sign and decide to go home and watch the movie on Netflix or Amazon instead.

    – people take selfies at accidents before they call emergency services, or they make up an offense that didn’t happen, call 911, and then get hammered for it instead of getting paid for it.

    – a pregnant woman about to deliver her baby can’t cross the street to her hospital because some conceited politician’s cavalcade of cars won’t let her.

    – criminals video themselves committing a crime and post it on YouTube, or people video the crime but don’t report it.

    – the tabloids at the checkout line have fewer stupid stories than your newspaper.

    – the only thing worth reading in your newspaper is the list of farmer’s market dates, the advice and horoscope columns,  and the comics.

    – you’d rather watch shows on the Antenna TV network than the current offerings. “Leave It To Beaver” doesn’t seem so dumb nowadays.

    – when the news comes on, you’ve already found more info online than the anchors have in front of them, and you know now that 3/4 of what they say is made up out of dust bunnies, soggy napkins and empty peanut butter jars.

    – you find a news story on a foreign news service that says US troops had mustard gas launched at them, but nothing on the stateside news, and nobody does anything about it. Instead, it’s mustard gas lobbed by our troops at the Bad Guys and it’s Trump’s fault.

    – the headline in the news, and two full minutes’ worth of media attention, is that a couple of overpaid so-so actors have decided to get a divorce because one of them can’t keep his pants zipped and his wick dry, but a gas or rocket attack on US troops gets 15 seconds of air time, if that.

    – the TV weather forecaster says there’s a storm on the way to your area but it will break up before it reaches you, and 15 minutes later there’s a downpour on your street, and the rain lasts all day; and then the “weather reporters” show up after the rain is gone and post videos of themselves in ditches while people are walking behind them on concrete with water 1/2 inch deep.

    – there are six different forecasts for the winter ahead, and you sincerely wish the weather people would just admit that they don’t really know.

    – it takes longer to get through the security check-ins at airports than it does to fly or drive to your destination.

    – some douchebag braindead media twit says it’s a good thing that a jihadist used explosives instead of guns in his efforts to kill people.

    – a bunch of stank ass hippies and hyper-rich gasbags think that the population on this planet should be reduced from +/- 7 billion to about 1 billion, but when you say ‘you first’, they give you horrified looks and sputter in protest.

    – you get an e-mail from your subscription service to an earthquake reporting group that says North Korea set off a nuke, creating a seismic event that registered 5.3M, with a 20 to 30 kiloton explosion, but it’s ignored by the media until they’re forced to acknowledge it.

    – you wake up one morning and realize that the Cold War Triad (USA, China, Russia/USSR) has been revived and the threat of nuclear war has raised its ugly head again, but this time it includes Iran, Syria, Turkey and maybe North Korea (maybe not), and now you wonder if your friends with the underground bunker are really as nutty as you thought they were.

    Those are just a few items. I’m sure you all have more.

  • 38 Simulated Combat Drops?? Yeah, We’re Dead!

    I love the first two movies in this bunch. “Alien” was a spook show, with more McGuffins than Hitchcock ever dreamed of. If you had a date with you, I’m sure that afterwards, you had some kind of reward for your effort.

    The second one, simply titled ‘Aliens’ put poor old Ripley right back into her worst nightmare in the company of Colonial Marines led by a greenhorn 2nd Lieutenant who had a record of 38 simulated combat drops (whoopee!), and a crusty, grumpy, sarcastic, cigar-chomping Sergeant Apone who would start his day with a cigar before breakfast. He was  played by Al Matthews, who had 13 years of Marine Corps AD life, a good portion of it in Vietnam. Now, he’s a musician and composer.

    https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/marine-infantry-life-aliens

    I’m just going to leave this here and let you Marines tell me if you think the assessment of the movie’s Colonial Marines is close to the mark.

    Do the Marines always get the junk the Army doesn’t want or like?

    Is there only one whiny private in a unit?

    Is every 2nd Lieutenant an idiot with a poker up his backside until he’s been shot at a bunch of times?

    Are all boot Hershey Bar Lieutenants so dumb they’d get lost in a shoebox, even with a map, a compass, and a flashlight?

    Are the pranks as harmless as the one in the movie?

    Do the Marines get the MREs that nobody else wants? That mealtime scene, where Drake asks ‘What is this?” referring to the yellow block on his tray, and Hicks, “It’s supposed to be cornbread. It’s good for you. Eat it.” I figure a full carton of MREs with fish that no one will eat would be an Army reject.

    Anything you want to add to that is fine by me.  There’s other stuff, too, but those are a start.

    If you haven’t seen those two movies, I have to ask “What planet are you from?”

     

  • Nikki Haley Responds to Anonymous’s Op-ed

    Nikki Haley, whom we all know as an outspoken representative of the United States at the UN, one who neither minces words nor speaks in unclear euphemisms, has written a response to the op-ed piece penned by ‘Anonymous’ earlier this week for the New York Times.

    Nikki Haley is the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

    We have enough issues to deal with in the world, so it’s unfortunate to have to take time to write this, but I feel compelled to address the claims in the anonymous “resistance” op-ed published this week in the New York Times. The author might think he or she is doing a service to the country. I strongly disagree. What this “senior official in the Trump administration” has done, and is apparently intent on continuing to do, is a serious disservice — not just to the president but to the country.

    I, too, am a senior Trump administration official. I proudly serve in this administration, and I enthusiastically support most of its decisions and the direction it is taking the country. But I don’t agree with the president on everything. When there is disagreement, there is a right way and a wrong way to address it. I pick up the phone and call him or meet with him in person.

    Like my colleagues in the Cabinet and on the National Security Council, I have very open access to the president. He does not shut out his advisers, and he does not demand that everyone agree with him. I can talk to him most any time, and I frequently do. If I disagree with something and believe it is important enough to raise with the president, I do it. And he listens. Sometimes he changes course, sometimes he doesn’t. That’s the way the system should work. And the American people should be comfortable knowing that’s the way the system does work in this administration.

    [These officials have denied writing the Trump ‘resistance’ op-ed]

    Dissent is as American as apple pie. If you don’t like this president, you are free to say so, and people do that quite frequently and loudly. But in the spirit of civility that the anonymous author claims to support, every American should want to see this administration succeed. If it does, it’s a win for the American people.

    The entire article is here:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-i-challenge-the-president-i-do-it-directly-my-anonymous-colleague-should-have-too/2018/09/07/d453eaf6-b2ae-11e8-9a6a-565d92a3585d_story.html?utm_term=.0220af6593c3

    The final paragraph is as direct as one can get:

    To Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, I say: Step up and help the administration do great things for the country. If you disagree with some policies, make your case directly to the president. If that doesn’t work, and you are truly bothered by the direction of the administration, then resign on principle. There is no shame in that. But do not stay in your position and secretly undermine the president and the rest of our team. It is cowardly, it is anti-democratic, and it is a disservice to our country.

    ——Finis——

    I will add here that I continue to believe the so-called op-ed to be concocted by someone at the New York Times, based on the coincidental timing of its release following the review of Woodward’s non-fiction novel inaptly titled “Fear”.  I believe, and will stand by my belief, that these are simply attempts to cast aspersions on a U.S. President who has succeeded at bringing this country back to its status as an international leader, rather than let it continue to slide into oblivion.

    If, as Ms. Haley indicates may be, it is an Administration official, then s/he should have enough cojones to step up and say “I did that.”  Otherwise, I will continue to believe this is just another of the nonsensical schoolyard tricks by those whose disappointment at losing the 2016 election is painfully obvious.

    I may not agree with what “Anonymous” says but I will certainly defend to his right to say it. (Rev. version of Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s aphorism in her 1960 biography of Voltaire.) It is past time s/he stepped forward.

     

  • Corey Booker Does Not Know Spartacus

    Mr. Booker made a scene, which some of you may have witnessed if you were watching the hearings for Judge Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS appointment. As Mr. Kavanaugh was leaving under his own power, Booker jumped up and hollered something about ‘Spartacus’, demonstrating both his ignorance of history and his desperate need for attention.

    The Hill has a good article about this, and why it was so important to realize that Mr. Booker is now a genuine twit.  I have copied it to this post, but you can find it also at the link.

    From The Hill regarding Corey Booker’s “Spartacus” episode:

    http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/405685-the-spartacus-moment-in-senate-fuels-troubling-trend-of-theatrics

    It was a moment that would have made actor Kirk Douglas blush. During the hearings into the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, Cory Booker (D-N.J.) announced that he would defy the Senate Judiciary Committee by releasing a nonpublic “committee confidential” document, regardless of the consequences. “This is about the closest I’ll probably ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment,” he declared, recalling the memorable line spoken by Douglas in the 1960 film.

    First, and foremost, the key to having a “Spartacus moment” is not to declare your own Spartacus moment. Second, you actually have to expose yourself to a lethal threat. It turned out that the document in question already had been released and Booker was informed that it was public before the hearing. However, Booker was right on one point.

    The hearing procedures were questionable and this really was a Spartacus moment. It was just not the one Booker thought it was. He and other Senate Democrats have had a legitimate gripe about the unusually high percentage of material withheld from review and the unilateral use of “committee confidential” markings to control documents. It is troubling to have a largely unknown private lawyer removing hundreds of thousands of documents based on a privilege assertion that has not actually been formally made by the White House.

    Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also had a good point about the Democrats failing to ask for the release of documents and possibly engineering the confrontation in open committee. Yet, in the end, Democrats had the better case about the hearings being substantially different from past hearings in the method and the scope of withheld material. If Democrats had the better argument, it was lost in the atmospherics of the hearing. Indeed, for those lost in the theatrics, the story of Spartacus is instructive as suggested by Booker.

    In history, gladiator turned rebel Spartacus was pursued by not one but two Roman senators turned generals, Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, who wanted to be the next consul of Rome. The point of the war was not just defeating Spartacus and his gladiator army but to be the one credited with defeating him. Crassus succeeded and proclaimed his victory at Capua. Magnus, however, claimed the honor by reaching Rome first, illustrating the danger of Crassus stopping to crucify 6,000 prisoners on the road to Rome as a statement.

    The Kavanaugh hearings were like watching a contest to be consul of Rome. Booker and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who sat next to each other, are viewed as leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Like their Roman predecessors, they knew that whoever slayed or injured Kavanaugh would be a celebrated Democratic hero. Harris effectively accused Kavanaugh of perjury, collaboration against special counsel Robert Mueller, and other unsupported misdeeds. Not to be outdone, Booker jumped up to declare himself Spartacus.

    The problem is that someone actually did kill Spartacus. In this case, Kavanaugh walked from the hearing on his own power with a presumed Senate majority of support. It is certainly true that Republicans prevented access to information that might have undermined him, but neither Booker nor Harris made a convincing claim as future consul of the Democratic Party. One moment, however, did leave Booker looking a bit like a consul wannabe. In an uncharacteristic move for the usually mild mannered senator, Booker had a confrontation with reporter Byron Tau, who asked if his Spartacus moment was a political stunt. Tau said Booker told him he was “violating the Constitution by being in his way.”

    That comment was unlikely meant as a real threat, as it is neither within the character nor authority of the senator. Presumably, Booker was referring to the fact that he was on his way to a vote and the speech and debate clause under Article I states that members of both Houses of Congress “shall not be questioned in any other place” when going to and from Congress. However, this is meant to deter the government, not reporters, which is why there is an exception case of “treason, felony and breach of the peace.” Given the grilling over the uncertain constitutional interpretations of Kavanaugh and support of imperial presidential authority, it was a sharply discordant moment. If you are Spartacus, you should not be denouncing reporters like a Roman consul.

    Booker later went on television, trying to reinforce his Spartacus bona fides. He struggled to establish that he was actually breaking Senate rules by releasing other documents. He has now released more than 20 documents uncleared by the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was like claiming to be a retroactive Spartacus after the battle. That could subject Booker to admonishment after a Senate Ethics Committee investigation, still far short of staging crucifixions between on the way to Rome.

    Putting all of the theatrics aside, the Kavanaugh hearings left a troubling and damaging precedent for a process that already lacked substantive content. I have been a critic for years of the modern confirmation hearing, which is largely about senators rather than nominees. The hearings drained what little substance remained in the process. The unilateral denial of documents and theatrics of the opposition left the hearings as little more than a stunt by both parties. There was not a Spartacus to be found but, instead, an overabundance of would- be Roman consuls.

    Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

     

     

  • Watch yourself in Chick-fil-A

    CONTENT WARNING !

    https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/1037153805245272065

    You people better not want it your way, take what you get a be quiet about it. I need to hire this ex-employee and put him in charge of morale around here.

  • The US Navy’s ‘Fat Leonard’ Case Implodes

     

    With the close of the Navy’s first “Fat Leonard” court-martial trial, the defendant is going to the brig but he escaped the most serious charges and potentially jeopardized future federal fraud cases against a string of past and present sailors.

    https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/09/01/navys-fat-leonard-case-implodes/

    Cmdr. David Morales was found guilty of only two of the five charges he faced — conduct unbecoming an officer and failing to report foreign contacts on his security clearance renewal.

    “Someone stood up to Leonard Francis and he was found to be untruthful,” said Frank Spinner, a retired Air Force attorney who represented Morales during his court-martial trial. “There’s now a crack in the prosecution dike for the remaining defendants awaiting trial in San Diego.”

    According to this article from November 2017, 60 admirals were being scrutinized for involvement with Francis.  https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/11/06/more-than-60-admirals-being-looked-at-in-fat-leonard-probe-report-says/

    The Navy has 60 admirals? That sounds like an overload of brass to me. Modern times, I guess.

    So how much of what Fat Leonard said was simply to get out of being prosecuted further? Hmm…. Inquiring minds want to know. This is $35 million he overbilled the Navy. That’s your tax dollars and mine.  That could pay the cost of a lot of recruits being trained properly.

    And since the article indicates that the Thai SEAL team has prostitutes, were they on the Thai Navy’s payroll, or were they just TAD to Fat Leonard?

  • Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism

    Author: Mark Twain

    As I cannot claim any part in producing this illustrious take on this common, if misunderstood, behavior frequently referred to in a way that makes it a social solecism, I can only present Mr. Twain’s speech to you, in toto.  It is, in fact, as American as apple pie to address it. Perhaps Mr. Twain’s brief speech could be posted on bulletin boards everywhere to remind those on active duty that they are, in truth, not alone in this world.

    One evening in Paris in 1879, The Stomach Club, a society of American writers and artists, gathered to drink well, to eat a good dinner and hear an address by Mark Twain.  He was among friends and, according to the custom of the club, he delivered a humorous talk on a subject hardly ever mentioned in public in that day and age.  After the meeting, he preserved the manuscript among his papers.  It was finally printed in a pamphlet limited to 50 copies 64 years later.

    My gifted predecessor has warned you against the “social evil–adultery.”  In his able paper he exhausted that subject; he left absolutely nothing more to be said on it.  But I will continue his good work in the cause of morality by cautioning you against that species of recreation called self-abuse to which I perceive you are much addicted.  All great writers on health and morals, both ancient and modern, have struggled with this stately subject; this shows its dignity and importance.  Some of these writers have taken one side, some the other.

    Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, “Give me masturbation or give me death.”  Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, “To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor.  They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion.”  In another place this experienced observer has said, “There are times when I prefer it to sodomy.”

    Robinson Crusoe says, “I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art.”  Queen Elizabeth said, “It is the bulwark of virginity.”  Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, “A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush.”  The immortal Franklin has said, “Masturbation is the best policy.”

    Michelangelo and all of the other old masters–“old masters,” I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction–have used similar language.  Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, “Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse.”  Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time–“None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.”

    Such are the utterances of the most illustrious of the masters of this renowned science, and apologists for it.

    The name of those who decry it and oppose it is legion; they have made strong arguments and uttered bitter speeches against it–but there is not room to repeat them here in much detail.

    Brigham Young, an expert of incontestable authority, said, “As compared with the other thing, it is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”  Solomon said, “There is nothing to recommend it but its cheapness.”  Galen said, “It is shameful to degrade to such bestial uses that grand limb, that formidable member, which we votaries of Science dub the Major Maxillary–when they dub it at all–which is seldom,  It would be better to amputate the os frontis than to put it to such use.”

    The great statistician Smith, in his report to Parliament, says, “In my opinion, more children have been wasted in this way than any other.”  It cannot be denied that the high antiquity of this art entitles it to our respect; but at the same time, I think its harmfulness demands our condemnation.  Mr. Darwin was grieved to feel obliged to give up his theory that the monkey was the connecting link between man and the lower animals.  I think he was too hasty.  The monkey is the only animal, except man, that practices this science; hence, he is our brother; there is a bond of sympathy and relationship between us.  Give this ingenuous animal an audience of the proper kind and he will straightway put aside his other affairs and take a whet; and you will see by his contortions and his ecstatic expression that he takes an intelligent and human interest in his performance.

    The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable.  They are these: a disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke and tell indelicate stories–and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures.  The results of the habit are: loss of memory, loss of virility, loss of cheerfulness and loss of progeny.

    Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it.  As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it.  It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board.  It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence.  Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private–though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.

    My illustrious predecessor has taught you that all forms of the “social evil” are bad.  I would teach you that some of these forms are more to be avoided than others.  So, in concluding, I say, “If you must gamble your lives sexually, don’t play a lone hand too much.”  When you feel a revolutionary uprising in your system, get your Vendome Column down some other way–don’t jerk it down.