There has been a lot of buzz over the last couple years about someone killing Donald Trump. CNN's Wolf Blitzer discussed what would happen if someone blew up the inauguration. A Missouri state legislator said she hoped it would happen. Twitter is (as you'd expect) a sewer of this sort of stuff. Chuck Schumer said that Trump was "really dumb" for taking on the CIA because they had lots of ways to get back at him.
And everyone seems to have forgotten that someone actually tried to assassinate The Donald.
Ah, the rarified atmosphere of calm, intellectual debate. More thoughts coming tomorrow, but in the meantime, here's Louis Armstrong with what was probably the first ever recorded assassination threat against Trump.
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Around the blogs
Rather than having to actually, you know, think and work, I'll highlight some posts that struck me as important and well worth your time.
OldNFO posts about how College is a waste for many kids and they would be much better off financially learning a high paying trade. The comments are all pack full of smart, too.
The Czar of Muscovy writes about how when an organization loudly trumpets what appears to be nothing short of lunacy, you should follow the money.
Speaking of lunacy, Lawrence Person writes on how the establishment simply can't get their heads around how Trump accomplishes what he does - even though it is as simple as simple. Smartest kids in class, right there.
Peter writes disturbingly about how the lunacy is being dialed up past 11 to 12 or beyond, and that a coup or assassination may be the logical outcome. Quite frankly, I don't expect the 50% of Americans who voted for Trump to go along quietly with this if it happens.
OldNFO posts about how College is a waste for many kids and they would be much better off financially learning a high paying trade. The comments are all pack full of smart, too.
The Czar of Muscovy writes about how when an organization loudly trumpets what appears to be nothing short of lunacy, you should follow the money.
Speaking of lunacy, Lawrence Person writes on how the establishment simply can't get their heads around how Trump accomplishes what he does - even though it is as simple as simple. Smartest kids in class, right there.
Peter writes disturbingly about how the lunacy is being dialed up past 11 to 12 or beyond, and that a coup or assassination may be the logical outcome. Quite frankly, I don't expect the 50% of Americans who voted for Trump to go along quietly with this if it happens.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
The Dogs of War vs. ISIS Jihadis
Dog 1, ISIS 0:
This moment of awesome is brought to you by a heads up from the Queen Of The World, who knows a thing or two about German Shepherds.
The hero Alsatian was accompanying the troops on a training exercise in the north of the country when their convoy of four vehicles came under fire from extremist militants.That's like opening a can of whoop-ass, only furrier.
One of the SAS cars was destroyed by a homemade bomb and the outnumbered forces were forced to split up and take cover.
With the ISIS fighters pinning the British troops down using two heavy mounted machine guns, an American soldier who was with the group released the snarling dog.
It charged at the attackers, dodging bullets before taking down one of the jihadis and ripping his neck and face.Good dog.
It then turned its attention to another extremist, savaging his arms and legs in a frenzied assault.
The jihadis, who are thought to have never seen an Alsatian before, fled the scene screaming, allowing the SAS team to call in air support.
The team then made their way to safety with the dog, who is now being treated by the troops as a hero.Ya think? Bravo Zulu Kilo Niner.
"A snarling Alsatian running at you is very frightening and probably not something the jihadis had encountered.This made me laugh out loud. I can just imagine what the dog was thinking in his doggie brain. Didja see what I did? Didja? Didja? Can I do it again? At least, that's what Wolfgang would be thinking.
"The dog did its job and returned to its handler worth its tail wagging."
This moment of awesome is brought to you by a heads up from the Queen Of The World, who knows a thing or two about German Shepherds.
John Stormer has died
Via Ann Althouse, we see that John Stormer is dead at 90:
Or you can read Stormer yourself, as a free download from the Internet Archive. The title comes from a very old quote: Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason. Pretty clever, that.
Rest in Peace
John A. Stormer, whose self-published 1964 book, “None Dare Call It Treason,” became a right-wing favorite despite being attacked as inaccurate in promulgating the notion that American government and institutions were full of Communist sympathizers, died on July 10 in Troy, Mo. He was 90.
...
Mr. Stormer’s book, published by his own Liberty Bell Press, tapped into a vein of conservative alarm that was still very much present in the early 1960s, even though the Red-baiting era of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy had faded in the 1950s.
The book landed in the year that the Republican Party nominated Barry M. Goldwater, the conservative Arizona senator, for the presidency, and Goldwater sympathizers latched onto it, buying up copies and distributing them at rallies and by other means. The far-right John Birch Society was among the groups spreading the book around.I hadn't know this yesterday when I posted a link to this old post of mine. In it, I excerpt what may be the finest summary of Stormer that I've seen:
Moldbug amplifies this battle, and then we'll get to the meat of the argument here:This post may be the best introduction to the Dark Enlightenment that I've done. You can, of course, read Moldbug directly, but he's pretty thick going. My post (and the post I link to at Foseti) spend some time to digest Moldbug for you.It is not that the American left was the tool of Moscow. In fact, it was the other way around. From day one, the Soviet Union was the pet experiment of the bien-pensants. It was Looking Backward in Cyrillic. It was the client state to end all client states.So a Puritan drive towards the perfectibility of mankind drives the entire political establishment - including Presidents like Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush - to support what on the face would be far left wing policy positions.
...
The theory of Russia as a client state of the American left helps us understand the behavior of the great Communist spies of the 1940s, Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. Essentially all significant institutions of today's transnational world community - the UN, the IMF, the World Bank - were designed by one of these gentlemen, whose role in passing American documents to Soviet military intelligence is now beyond dispute. John Stormer was right.
Or was he? The thing is that while, technically, Hiss and White were certainly Soviet agents, they hardly fit the profile of a traitor like Aldrich Ames. Hiss and White were at the top of their professions, respected and admired by everyone they knew. What motivation could they possibly have for treason? Why would men like these betray their country?
The obvious answer, in my opinion, is that they didn't see themselves as betraying their country. The idea that they were Russian tools would never have occurred to them. When you see a dog, a leash, and a man, your interpretation is that the man is walking the dog, even if the latter appears to be towing the former.
Hiss and White, in my opinion, believed - like many of their social and cultural background - that the US had nothing to fear from the Soviet Union. They saw themselves as using the Soviets, not the other way around, helping to induce the understandably paranoid Russian leadership to integrate themselves into the new global order.
Or you can read Stormer yourself, as a free download from the Internet Archive. The title comes from a very old quote: Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason. Pretty clever, that.
Rest in Peace
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Heavy Mental Music
This is a very different spin on "high and tight", but anything that has Bill Murray fixing martinis is a-OK in my book. Srlsy. And it is mid-July after all ...
Hey Bustah!
Hey Bustah!
Why NASA could never take us back to the Moon
ASM826's post yesterday looked back on the race to the Moon nostalgically, as a lost age of engineering and an opportunity squandered. I'm not so sure. The Moon race was an anomaly in American history, a massive engineering project divorced from financial return. The great projects from the 19th and 20th centuries all were focused on profit and growth - the Erie canal, the transcontinental railroad, the Interstate Highway system. Project Apollo stands out as the oddball.
There's no mystery about why we never went back. I wrote about this nine years ago.
I was 11 years old, and it was late. We simply weren't allowed to stay up that late - after 11:00. But this was no normal day. We all huddled around that old Black-and-White television set, watching a terrible picture that showed the first man on the moon. Dad was in Paris finishing his PhD research, and watched it projected on a huge screen at the Place de la Concorde. This was maybe the last time that an American's money was no good in Paris.
We haven't been back, since Gene Cernan climbed back aboard the LEM in December, 1972. Some folks think this is a crying shame. I used to be one of them. Now I recognize that there could not have been any other outcome. We've seen this before.
Between 1405 and 1433, the Chinese Ming dynasty sent a series of exploration voyages to southeast Asia, India, and even Africa. While the Portuguese under Prince Henry struggled down the western coast of Africa in their tiny caravels, huge Chinese treasure ships sailed to Calicut and Mogadishu.
And then they were gone, as if they had never been. Why?
The historian David Landes spends considerable time on this question in his indispensable The Wealth And Poverty Of Nations. The Chinese voyages differed in one critical way from those of Diaz and Columbus: the Chinese voyages were motivated by a desire to glorify the Middle Kingdom, while the European ones were motivated by the desire for filthy lucre:
Europe America, the opportunity of private initiative that characterized even such royal Government projects as the search for a sea route to the Indies low-cost way to orbit was a source of participatory funding and an assurance of rationality. Oops - that's your problem, right there.
The heroism of the Astronaut corps doesn't change the fact that NASA will not - and can not - ever do what Columbus did. If they want to make a difference, to make it possible for people to live in Space, they should declare that they will purchase X kilograms of orbital launch delivery at $Y per kilo, and get out of the way. Unlike the X-Prize and Spaceship-One, NASA's pecuniary calculus will always be a football game.
There's no mystery about why we never went back. I wrote about this nine years ago.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Jack Kennedy's Treasure Fleet
I was 11 years old, and it was late. We simply weren't allowed to stay up that late - after 11:00. But this was no normal day. We all huddled around that old Black-and-White television set, watching a terrible picture that showed the first man on the moon. Dad was in Paris finishing his PhD research, and watched it projected on a huge screen at the Place de la Concorde. This was maybe the last time that an American's money was no good in Paris.We haven't been back, since Gene Cernan climbed back aboard the LEM in December, 1972. Some folks think this is a crying shame. I used to be one of them. Now I recognize that there could not have been any other outcome. We've seen this before.
Between 1405 and 1433, the Chinese Ming dynasty sent a series of exploration voyages to southeast Asia, India, and even Africa. While the Portuguese under Prince Henry struggled down the western coast of Africa in their tiny caravels, huge Chinese treasure ships sailed to Calicut and Mogadishu.And then they were gone, as if they had never been. Why?
The historian David Landes spends considerable time on this question in his indispensable The Wealth And Poverty Of Nations. The Chinese voyages differed in one critical way from those of Diaz and Columbus: the Chinese voyages were motivated by a desire to glorify the Middle Kingdom, while the European ones were motivated by the desire for filthy lucre:
In the 1430s a new emperor reigned in Peking, one who "knew not Joseph." A new, Confucian crowd completed for influence, mandarins who scorned and distrusted commerce (for them, the only true source of wealth was agriculture) and detested the eunuchs who had planned and carried out the great voyages. For some decades, the two groups vied for influence, the balance shifting now one way, not the other. But fiscality and the higher Chinese morality were on the Confucian side. The maritime campaign had strained the empire's finances and weakened its authority over a population bled white by taxes and corvee levies.So why did we leave the Moon, never to return? Why is NASA wandering in the wilderness? Let's update Landes, shall we? In
[snip]
So, after some decades of tugging and hauling, of alternating celebration and commemoration on the one hand, of contumely and repudiation on the other, the decision was taken not only to cease from maritime exploration but to erase the very memory of what had gone before lest later generations be tempted to renew the folly.
[snip]
At the same time, [the Chinese] desire to overawe meant that costs far exceeded returns. These voyages reeked of extravagance. Whereas the first profits (the first whiff of pepper) and the promise of even greater ones to come were a powerful incentive to Western venturers, in China the pecuniary calculus said no.
[snip]
The vulnerability of the program - here today, gone tomorrow - was reinforced by its official character. In Europe, the opportunity of private initiative that characterized even such royal projects as the search for a sea route to the Indies was a source of participatory funding and an assurance of rationality. Nothing like that in China, where the Confucian state abhorred merchantile success.
The heroism of the Astronaut corps doesn't change the fact that NASA will not - and can not - ever do what Columbus did. If they want to make a difference, to make it possible for people to live in Space, they should declare that they will purchase X kilograms of orbital launch delivery at $Y per kilo, and get out of the way. Unlike the X-Prize and Spaceship-One, NASA's pecuniary calculus will always be a football game.
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Jacques Duphly - La Forqueray
Yesterday was Bastille Day, France's national holiday that celebrates the storming of the notorious Bastille Day prison in Paris in 1789. So what music for the day after Bastille Day? As it turns out, there's a bit of a mystery surrounding today's composer.
Jacques Duphly was a virtuoso harpsichordist in France under the last of the kings. One of his teachers seems to have been Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself, who later asked Duphly to contribute articles on harpsichord to Rousseau's Dictionary. He published four folios of compositions, and was considered one of the best harpsichord teachers in Paris.
But he disappeared from public life in 1768, when his last folio was published. Students even placed an advertisement in a newspaper asking if anyone knew where he was, but to no avail. Duphly died alone among his music library the day after the Bastille was stormed.
Jacques Duphly was a virtuoso harpsichordist in France under the last of the kings. One of his teachers seems to have been Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself, who later asked Duphly to contribute articles on harpsichord to Rousseau's Dictionary. He published four folios of compositions, and was considered one of the best harpsichord teachers in Paris.
But he disappeared from public life in 1768, when his last folio was published. Students even placed an advertisement in a newspaper asking if anyone knew where he was, but to no avail. Duphly died alone among his music library the day after the Bastille was stormed.
Saturday, July 14, 2018
Asleep At The Wheel - I Want a New Drug
This is, well, unusual. But it shows that crossover covers go back pretty far in Country music.
Friday, July 13, 2018
Now we see the gun laws that lefties object to
Specifically, felon in possession and firing a pistol at police:
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A Denver woman accused of shooting at officers during protests in North Dakota against the Dakota Access oil pipeline was sentenced Wednesday to four years and nine months in federal prison.
Red Fawn Fallis, 39, was accused of firing a handgun three times while resisting arrest on Oct. 27, 2016. No one was hurt. Fallis, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, denied intentionally trying to injure anyone and claimed not to remember firing the gun after being tackled by police.But since she is a loony leftie environmentalist, she should go free or something:
She pleaded guilty Jan. 22 to civil disorder and illegal possession of a gun by a convicted felon.
Upon hearing about Red Fawn Fallis Federal sentence of 57 mths for actions taken during the #NoDAPL movement, #WaterProtecters in a new #Stopline3 camp in northern #Mn, told us that #CampHealingSouls says #FreeRedFawn pic.twitter.com/HiebOEmb7V— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) July 12, 2018
All right, then.
The Pentagon is gonna Pentagon
Even if it will probably get a bunch of our guys killed.
Man, the Air Force will do anything to protect its dumb F-35.
Man, the Air Force will do anything to protect its dumb F-35.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Quote of the Day: Russian oil edition
Miguel looks at Trump's comments about the Germans building a pipeline to Russia and snarks:
The last time Germany spent that much to get Russian oil, it cost them 3.5 million troops.Heh.
New Taxidermist in town
LOL. But that antelope must have been shot by ASM826. I'm pretty east coast.
Although given all the deer around Castle Borepatch, maybe he could do a White Tail sporting an AR-15. It is Maryland, after all!
Although given all the deer around Castle Borepatch, maybe he could do a White Tail sporting an AR-15. It is Maryland, after all!
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
A Borepatch political endorsement
It wouldn't be the only horse's ass in the "World's Greatest Debate Society". The t-shirt (which is awesome and covered with awesomesauce) was made by the Queen Of The World.
Background on the printed pistols the Department of Justice just caved on
The big news in the shooting community is that the DoJ has caved on trying to restrict the dissemination of 3D printed firearms designs. For those who are interested, here are some old posts that provide some background on this.
When I ran across one of these, and their creator at a security conference. Interestingly, the Feds seem cooler with the technology than local politicians or law enforcement.
The futility of trying to keep the designs off the 'net. You'd think that people would understand this by now, but people who groove on controlling other people have to try.
What was the underlying law (ITAR) all about anyway? There's quite a history of this, and it shouldn't give confidence to the gun controllers.
The comments are all good in these posts as well. If you want to know more about the issue than a lot of people (and more than 99% of the media and gun grabbers - but I repeat myself) then you might want to give these a read.
When I ran across one of these, and their creator at a security conference. Interestingly, the Feds seem cooler with the technology than local politicians or law enforcement.
The futility of trying to keep the designs off the 'net. You'd think that people would understand this by now, but people who groove on controlling other people have to try.
What was the underlying law (ITAR) all about anyway? There's quite a history of this, and it shouldn't give confidence to the gun controllers.
The comments are all good in these posts as well. If you want to know more about the issue than a lot of people (and more than 99% of the media and gun grabbers - but I repeat myself) then you might want to give these a read.
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