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Man arrested in terrorism probe told FBI he'd execute a US service member for ISIS
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Page 6: Politix
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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Did FBI and CIA have an agent provocateur who tried to entrap the Trump Organization in a Russia deal?
[American Thinker] Judicial Watch is hot on the trail of a potentially explosive revelation: that an agent who had previously worked for the FBI and CIA as an informant -- recruited by Andrew Weissmann in 1998! -- actively tried to set up a business deal between the Trump Organization and Russian interests, in order to implicate Trump with "collusion." In a press release, JW lays out the background of its new FOIA lawsuit seeking:
...all records of communications, including FBI 302 interview reports and offer agreements between former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and Felix Sater, a former Trump organization official who was recently confirmed to be an informant for the FBI and CIA. Sater reportedly pushed a Russian real estate deal in 2016 while working at the Trump organization.

Sater reportedly "began working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998, after he was caught in a stock-fraud scheme." It was Andrew Weissmann who, as supervising assistant U.S. attorney, signed the agreement that brought Sater on as a government informant. Federal prosecutors wrote a letter to Sater’s sentencing judge on August 27, 2009, in an effort to get him a lighter sentence: "Sater’s cooperation was of a depth and breadth rarely seen."

Sater also was reportedly a CIA informant in the mid-2000s for the CIA during his undercover work with Russian military and intelligence officers.

So, Andrew Weissmann, the real head of the Mueller probe and partisan supporter of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy so enthusiastic that he was at her "victory celebration" as the polls closed in 2016, a ruthless prosecutor with a checkered ethics track record, already had an asset in place in the Trump Organization by the time the Special Counsel was appointed and the team assembled. And that informant provided a lot of information to Weissmann’s team:
The Mueller report mentions Sater more than 100 times but fails to mention that he was an active undercover informant for the FBI/CIA for more than two decades. In 2017, Sater was the subject of two interviews conducted under a proffer agreement with Mueller’s office according to page 69, footnote 304 of Mueller’s report on his Russian collusion investigation.

And, according to JW’s investigator Micah Morrison:
Beginning in late 2015, Sater repeatedly tried to arrange for [Trump attorney Michael] Cohen and candidate Trump, as representatives of the Trump Organization, to travel to Russia to meet with Russian government officials and possible financing partners.

Though his proposal appears to have been rejected by the Trump campaign, Sater persisted. "Into the spring of 2016," the Mueller Report notes, "Sater and Cohen continued to discuss a trip to Moscow." Sater emails Cohen that he is trying to arrange a meeting between "the 2 big guys," Putin and Trump.

Sater’s re-emergence "suggests the possibility of a more sinister counter-narrative: that someone may have been trying to lure Trump into a trap‐a politically damaging entanglement with Moscow money," Morrison wrote.

Those discussions between the Trump Organization and Russian interests are the basis of much of the impeachment-mongering of the Democrats. If it turns out that those discussions were pushed by an agent of Andrew Weissmann well into 2016, then it certainly looks like a case of entrapment, pushed by a federal prosecutor devoted to the Democrats’ leading candidate for president.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 06:34 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  'Agent provocateur'...? There were very likely several, stumbling over one another no doubt. Some full-time, others part-time, to include the Ohr's and Carter Page.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 6:52 Comments || Top||

#2  Shitshow, Part 91.

This is mind-blowing:
The Mueller report mentions Sater more than 100 times but fails to mention that he was an active undercover informant for the FBI/CIA for more than two decades.
Posted by: Lex || 09/19/2019 8:35 Comments || Top||

#3  As to entrapment: of course Weissman, McCabe et al they were deliberately aiming to entrap Trump.

The man had nothing whatsoever to do with Russia or Russian business aside from a quasi-tourist trip in connection with a stupid beauty pageant.

No one in Russia had ever heard of the guy before he was nominated by the GOP in late 2016. In Russian real estate he is literally a non-entity. There never was or will be a Trump Tower in Moscow.

The whole collusion nonsense is beyond stupid. It's contemptible. Our intel agencies are run by shitheads who can't even see how foolish their cockamamie scheme was, and is. What a disgrace these people are.
Posted by: Lex || 09/19/2019 8:41 Comments || Top||

#4  The man had nothing whatsoever to do with Russia or Russian business aside from a quasi-tourist trip in connection with a stupid beauty pageant.

Classic 'cover for action'.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 9:37 Comments || Top||

#5  They all thought Hillary would win and this stuff would never be exposed. It only makes me wonder what else is buried in the Obama/Clinton legacy….
Posted by: 49 Pan || 09/19/2019 13:14 Comments || Top||


Nation's Murderous Psychopaths Undecided On Whether They'll Follow New Gun Laws
[Babylon Bee] WASHINGTON, D.C.‐Democrats such as Beto O’Rourke have proposed a number of new gun laws, such as universal background checks, a ban on magazines that hold more than ten bullets, and possibly even a "mandatory buyback" of some weapons such as AR-15s. While these laws are likely to be a headache for law-abiding gun owners, the nation’s murderous psychopaths aren’t quite certain how the laws will affect them.

"The background check sounds concerning," explained deranged murderer Steve Mason, known as "Murdering Steve" to his friends. "I would definitely fail it since I’m a well-known psychopath. But I’ve never actually purchased a gun through a gun-dealer; I just steal all my murder weapons. And so far no one has proposed a background check on theft, so I think I’m good."

Jake Foster, who is planning a shooting spree, expressed similar concerns about the ban on "high-capacity" magazines. "Having to do a shooting spree and reloading after every tenth shot does sound irritating," said Foster. "Despite the law, I might just use a high-capacity magazine anyway. I guess the question is whether I’m willing to deal with a possible fine on top of the multiple counts of murder."

One law murderous psychopaths did seem excited about was the AR-15 buyback. "If they offer a lot of money for my AR-15, it could be pretty worthwhile," said nutjob Craig McGee. "Then I can use that money to buy more guns just as lethal... but through the black market, of course. Gotta avoid those background checks."
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 02:11 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Murderous psychopaths approaching a school,intent on committing mass murder: "Oh,wait! We can't go in there with our guns! It's a gun free zone! Let's go somewhere else, like a gun range or a police office!"
/sarcasm
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 09/19/2019 11:45 Comments || Top||

#2  They also obviously don't stop to think how broken up Alyssa Milano will be if they shoot a bunch of kids.
Posted by: M. Murcek || 09/19/2019 14:39 Comments || Top||


Michelle Malkin: Corporate America at Center of Open Borders Inc.
[Breitbart] "Corporate America [is] right at the center of Open Borders Inc.," said Michelle Malkin, referring to a network of interests ‐ financial, ideological, and political ‐ invested in perpetuating the status quo of both legal and illegal immigration.

She joined Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak to discuss her latest book, Open Borders Inc.: Who’s Funding America’s Destruction?, ahead of a scheduled Thursday Senate vote on S. 386, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act.
Informally named the "country caps" bill, S. 386 would remove country-based limits on H-1B visa issuances.

"The hatred by the left and the Democrat Media Complex ... as Andrew Breitbart made so clear to people ‐ that nexus, and how they cooperate to foist false narratives. These caravans didn’t just start happening when Trump took office. In fact, for several years now, the media has not paid attention to it," Malkin said.

Various Catholic organizations are beneficiaries of contracts with the federal government to service refugees, noted Malkin.

"The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, of course, is the biggest bigfoot when it comes to lobbying for amnesty and an unlimited pipeline of refugees because they’re one of the nine holders of those exclusive, lucrative contracts for refugee resettlement," Malkin said. "The Catholics even have their own social justice arm of lawyers who are down at the border working with other NGOs and Soros-funded groups ... who are there to provide know-your-rights-seminars as soon as they greet people at the border."

Malkin added, "[There are] countless stories of people being coached to supply manufactured stories of persecution to game our asylum system. It’s amazing how this network all works together and how they’re all getting a cut of it."
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 02:03 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Sort of an aha moment when you have hundreds of illegals arrested at chicken processing plants, but none of the chicken processing company owners or officials are taken to task.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 7:08 Comments || Top||

#2  but none of the chicken processing company owners or officials are taken to task.

Tut tut, my good fellow. The laws are for the common folk, not people like us.
Posted by: SteveS || 09/19/2019 12:32 Comments || Top||

#3  It’s amazing how this network all works together and how they’re all getting a cut of it

Not really amazing at all. This is the logic of virtue-signaling: every party involved engages in rhetorical displays of Right Thinking - ritual gestures and public statements about "god's children," "diversity is our strength," and other BS - and each party gets a tangible material benefit.

It's basically a modern version of the papal indulgences of the middle ages.

Look at cui bono:

- BUSINESS gets cheap labor - and thanks to their SJW posture, they keep boycotters off their backs, journalists off the scent and legislators' and regulators' distracted from their abuse of employment laws;

- the CATHOLIC CHURCH gets a fresh wave of millions of docile, devout new parishioners who will not question the clergy or the hierarchy - either from the right or from the left - but will fill the pews and the schools to take the place of more sophisticated American Catholics who are disgusted with the pedophile scandals;

- HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITIES, PERFORMERS AND EXECS get to position themselves as pro-latino for a large and growing mass market audience for their crap products which are under siege now from digital channels;

- JOURNALISTS get a ready store of sob stories that can easily be manipulated into fake exposes of the sort that win prizes, regardless of their accuracy, from their own virtue-signaling awards organizations such as Pulitzer...

... and on and on.

Posted by: Lex || 09/19/2019 12:47 Comments || Top||

#4  But it's all short term thinking, Lex. Long term there going to be signs in Spanish: Anglos & dogs are not allowed.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 12:54 Comments || Top||


-Land of the Free
Virginia Colleges Use Racial Considerations in Admissions Process
[Breitbart] The Center for Equal Opportunity released a report earlier this month that shows colleges in Virginia, including those considered elites on the university landscape, are considering race in the admissions process.

The center’s research fellow, Althea Nagai, compiled the report focused on five public universities in the commonwealth: University of Virginia, William & Mary, Virginia Tech, James Madison University, and George Mason University.

"We uncovered a significant amount of discrimination, especially at the first two schools," the center said in a press release about the report.

"Over the years, CEO has obtained data, as we did here, from public colleges and universities through state freedom of information laws, analyzed what we found, and released dozens of studies of schools all over the country," the press release said.

The report was released in conjunction with the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project.

"Virginia’s public universities are perhaps the country’s most selective among those still allowed to use racial and ethnic preferences (California, for example, and a number of other states have banned such discrimination as a matter of state law)," the center said of its report.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 02:37 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  What's next, the discovery of US Army promotion board minority selection quotas ?
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 2:41 Comments || Top||

#2  So, how's the business of making silk purses out of sow's ears works out?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 4:01 Comments || Top||

#3  Here's how it's working out:

"Under-represented" minorities - which does not apply to Asians - are so sparsely represented among qualified applicants that highly selective US universities fill their de facto quotas (not fewer than 20% of entering students must be afr-amer & hispanic) with fakes.

The vast majority of afr-amers admitted are either upper middle-class and biracial, like Booker or Obama, or else children of wealthy Nigerian, other African, or West Indian doctors or PhDs, like Kamala Harris's dad.

So the affirmative action program itself is a fraud. It has nothing to do with "leveling the playing field" to offset the harm done to the descendants of American slaves. It's just an upper middle-class subsidy disguised as yet more virtue signaling.

Next, these upper middle-class beneficiaries of aff action often cannot compete as equals after they get admitted. Their dropout rates are usually many points higher than dropout rates for whites and Asians; their graduate school admissions test scores are far lower on average; and they heavily incline toward BS "studies" majors and shy away from rigorous majors.

Finally, the collapse of this model occurs at the graduate school level, where the aff action admits cluster at the bottom of the law school or med school class. At this point, they have to start competing as equals, and they fail in truly impressive numbers. They fail again in far higher than average numbers when it's time to pass professional certification tests, and they fail when they're starting out as lawyers or doctors.

The above is an almost perfect description of Obama's shambolic failed career as a lawyer. Even his signature "achievement" - winning a popularity contest among his classmates to be elected to a non-merit based Harvard Law Review editor spot - was bogus.

The guy couldn't produce a single article. He can't write at all. He lacks the brainpower to do the work. He is your poster child for aff action: all virtue signaling and "creased pants," and no substance.
Posted by: Lex || 09/19/2019 8:11 Comments || Top||

#4  The above is an almost perfect description of Obama's shambolic failed career as a lawyer. Even his signature "achievement" - winning a popularity contest among his classmates to be elected to a non-merit based Harvard Law Review editor spot - was bogus.

He was recruited at an early age. The items mentioned above were simply notional entries (pocket litter) for future missions and assignments. John Brennan has additional details.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 8:15 Comments || Top||

#5  Sportsball recruiting time already?
Posted by: swksvolFF || 09/19/2019 13:13 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
China Losing $97 Million a Day Due to Attacks on Saudi Arabia Oil Facilities
Hat tip to Rantburg's much missed Steve White.
[EpochTimes] Drone attacks on Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
’s oil facilities are costing China another $97 million a day as the largest customer of Saudi Arabia, and the world’s biggest crude oil importer.

The Sept. 14 attack by ten armed drones on state-owned Aramco’s Khurais oilfield was launched from over 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) away by Iran's Houthi sock puppets
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 09/19/2019 00:04 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Commies

#1  MM are really good at making friends and influencing people.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 0:59 Comments || Top||

#2  "...The Sept. 14 attack by ten armed drones on state-owned Aramco’s Khurais oilfield was launched from over 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) away by Iran's Houthi sock puppets

almost certainly wrong in that, although drones were used, the damage came from cruise missiles; also, likely they came from Iran or near Iran

Posted by: lord garth || 09/19/2019 7:47 Comments || Top||

#3  Question: When sales of US oil to China occur are they based on Brent or West Texas calculation?
Posted by: Chereting Pelosi1889 || 09/19/2019 8:07 Comments || Top||

#4  ...add that to pork and soybeans the ChiComs exempt from tariffs.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 09/19/2019 9:17 Comments || Top||

#5  oil and petroleum product sales to China from the US are priced at whatever the seller and buy agree to

The sales have increased since 2016 per this chart from the US EIA

I was unable to find a good source for average price of the exported oil.
Posted by: lord garth || 09/19/2019 9:46 Comments || Top||

#6  The headline makes me happy.
Posted by: ruprecht || 09/19/2019 13:06 Comments || Top||

#7  Are our refineries secure?
Posted by: Varmint Splat1454 || 09/19/2019 14:03 Comments || Top||

#8  I know our borders are not.
Posted by: Varmint Splat1454 || 09/19/2019 14:07 Comments || Top||

#9  Re #2: Were the drones there to help target the missiles?
Posted by: Slats Grath5177 || 09/19/2019 14:13 Comments || Top||

#10  Who benefitted from the drone strikes on SA oil fields? It is reported the Houthis have claimed credit. However, anybody that is a major oil producer probably benefits from the price of oil going up due to shortages in SA. However, haven't the Saudis gone a long way to repairing the damages.
Posted by: JohnQC || 09/19/2019 14:46 Comments || Top||

#11  Are our refineries secure?

Not from Drone and missile strikes.

They are, however, dispersed which makes it very hard to take a large chunk of them down at once.
Posted by: DarthVader || 09/19/2019 15:39 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Contesting the Progressives' Takeover of Vermont
[American Thinker] Recently, the state of Vermont announced that pension and health benefits for state employees and teachers are underfunded to the tune of $4.5 billion (in a tiny state of just 627,180 residents). Then, in protest against Trump administration rule changes, it diverted some $750,000 from state coffers (each year, indefinitely) to fund abortion services through Planned Parenthood rather than continue to accept federal subsidies which had been proffered since 1970.

Many Vermonters, like most Americans, are struggling to pay their property taxes. I live on land passed down to me from my great-great-great-great-grandfather, in a house I built by sawing timbers on the 6.5 acre lot, on a foundation I constructed with granite block. There is no mortgage -- and also no running water, no septic system, no plumbing or electric, and the driveway is impassable without four-wheel drive. But our real estate taxes are just under $2,500 annually, roughly equivalent to a $65,000, 30-year mortgage at current rates. Yet, in 30 years that phantom tax mortgage will not be paid off -- it will be massively larger.

Vermonters love their state, but most are struggling to afford to live here. Many are paying $10,000 or more annually in real estate taxes on family land, which is often in a "current use" conservation program -- but still the taxes escalate. Retirees sell up and live in RVs, "going mobile" to avoid taxes. Young people seek tiny houses to shrink what the Vermont government can siphon off from their incomes. But still the government bureaucracy swells, regardless of the underlying economy.

Vermont boasts the fifth highest property tax in the nation, but the 24th lowest median income, and the 19th lowest home values. In stark contrast, neighboring New Hampshire has the second highest real estate taxes -- but no sales tax, and the sixth highest median income in the nation. Meanwhile, Vermont offers the fourth largest amount of welfare benefits per capita in the nation, granting $42,350 annually in pre-tax equivalents:
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 06:56 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Democracy: three wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 8:35 Comments || Top||

#2  Democracy: a lynch mob is very democratic, unless you have a rope around your neck!
Posted by: magpie || 09/19/2019 11:08 Comments || Top||


Rush: Millions of Americans Are Seething ‐ a Trump Landslide Wouldn't Surprise Me
[Rush] You’re never going to see that reflected in news media. But I’m gonna tell you what I think is happening out there. And I go up and down on this. I think it consistently, but some days I really, really think it. Other days, it’s kind of not as intense. I think that there is, across a vast expanse of this country, I think that there are millions and millions and millions of Americans who are quietly seething, quietly enraged over everything that has gone on here since Trump was inaugurated.

The Mueller investigation, the false, phony claims of collusion that amounted to nothing. The media’s acting like, "Nothing happened. Okay. So we failed." They’re not even calculating the damage to their ongoing reputations and credibility. But it is blown to smithereens. And they keep building on that. They keep adding to. Here comes this phony baloney Kavanaugh thing where it is learned that an editor spiked the very bit of morsel evidence in the story that would have disqualified the story from running.

This stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum. People are I think ‐ well, I don’t want to put numbers on it. If Trump won 40 states, I don’t think I’d be surprised. I believe that America is still constituted by a majority of what I call normal people. I think they’re all outraged over this. They’re livid and they’re seething. But the media’s never gonna find ’em and the media’s never gonna report their attitudes. The media’s not looking for that.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 02:54 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  We need a large enough margin that they can't produce enough imaginary voters to win... Don't get Cocky, kid!
Posted by: magpie || 09/19/2019 11:11 Comments || Top||

#2  bad thing is , is that they are going too pull this bullshit every time a republican gets elected for now on. Also, I sure as hell know I'm one of the ones seething.
Posted by: chris || 09/19/2019 11:59 Comments || Top||

#3  One answer might be to label the Dem Party as an organized criminal cartel or a terrorist group.
Posted by: JohnQC || 09/19/2019 12:07 Comments || Top||

#4  Break the mandarinate, the rest will follow.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 12:11 Comments || Top||

#5  Focus like the proverbial laser on the battleground states and the battleground counties inside those states.

Turn out every single vote in Macomb County, MI; in central and southwestern Ohio; across "Pennsyltucky"; in Little Havana and central Florida; across Wisconsin.

Leave nothing to chance: in those states every single vote matters.
Posted by: Lex || 09/19/2019 12:51 Comments || Top||

#6  Push for paper ballots in all 50 states. Use Russian intrusion as the rational. Make shredding or losing a ballot a felony with 10 year minimum penalty.

Should have been done in the last election preparing for this one, but better late than never.
Posted by: ruprecht || 09/19/2019 13:09 Comments || Top||

#7  ^ This.
Love to hear the collusion theory as applied to hacking a paper ballot system.
Posted by: Lex || 09/19/2019 15:24 Comments || Top||

#8  It shall become imperative to find and prep a suitable Republican candidate for 2024, during the coming second term.
Posted by: Dron66046 || 09/19/2019 16:00 Comments || Top||


New York Times Changes Name To 'The Double Standard'
[Babylon Bee - Satire, Herb] Amid heavy criticism of recent hire Sarah Jeong to the editorial board of The New York Times, the newspaper announced Monday morning it would be changing its name to The Double Standard in order to better reflect the two sets of standards it uses to judge whether or not an offensive statement is racist.

The change took effect this morning, with the name serving as a helpful reminder for the wildly inconsistent benchmarks used to judge people of differing worldviews and races.

"See, we aggressively attack racism in all its forms all day long, but then we went and hired a woman who tweeted extremely racist things about white people," wrote James Bennet, Editorial Page Editor, in a piece for the Standard explaining the name change. "To top it all off, we defended her and said we knew about the tweets going in, excusing her racist comments as simply satire, or just fighting fire with fire or something."

"There was a lot of confusion over that whole thing. So we decided to just come right out and identify our ever-shifting double standard for readers right in the title of our esteemed paper."

The paper will also now include a helpful tag on each article, identifying whether or not the subject of a piece is being held to the set of standards the paper uses for liberals, or the much different set of standards the paper uses for conservatives, religious people, and "really anyone not on board with a far-left agenda."

At publishing time, the newly christened Double Standard had begun considering changing its name to The Quadruple Standard.
Posted by: Frank G || 09/19/2019 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Without double standards they wouldn’t have any at all.
Posted by: Uleck Spererong9442 || 09/19/2019 5:42 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Where have all the heroes gone?
[American Thinker] In a season of grotesque sexual misbehavior by (as always) men of the Left, one sorta wonders how it ever came to be. Not that long ago, the women of the Left assured us that Bill Clinton's misbehavior in the Oval Office was "just sex" and no big deal. It was a sixties attitude ‐ free love and get-out-of-our-bedrooms and such. In that spirit at least one female reporter volunteered a gratitudinous freebie to the then-president for his, uh, services to the cause.

No trace of that attitude attaches to #MeToo, the latest version of the Left's complex and contradictory approach to relations between the sexes. If the sixties attitude treated sex playfully (at least as re: Bill Clinton), #MeToo seems convinced that men are too dangerous for sex and must be punished for their maleness. To be sure, the Epstein revelations seemed to underscore the point about toxic masculinity. If you ever wondered what a toxic male looks like, look no farther than Jeff.

Into this alarming environment comes TV fare showcasing the idea that women aren't as good as men, but better. Computer hackers, car-jackers, detectives, doctors, lawyers, spaceship commanders ‐ all better than their male counterparts. And they can fight! Little bitty women with toothpick arms beat up whole gangs of muscular male brutes with square jaws and hairy bellies. In the next scene, these gals turn on the charm in scanty evening gowns as the guys line up panting.

I don't watch the comic book flicks where the female hero with exaggerated curves, dressed to bring these assets into unmissable relief, beats up the worst villains in the universe, but it's hard to escape the ads. Gotta be quick on the remote.

The point, among others, is that the male hero has all but disappeared from the cultural scene. For that matter, so have just ordinary guys who do what ordinary guys do, who laugh a lot and look on the sunny side, who aren't wimpy and weepy and angst-ridden. For the female-driven Left, only girls have complex personalities drawn with depth and (possible) insight, who bravely overcome abuse and march grimly on to set the example for the abused sisterhood coming up behind them.

If this is how progressives see the world, small wonder we normals (hat tip: Kurt) don't get it. Progs choose to hang out down in the dumps, moping about how unfair it all is, rather than focusing on the fun things, the funny things, the gorgeous things, the interesting things, the curious things, the sweet things, the awesome things. It's true that the world is full of evil, but this ought not shut down seeing the rest.

It's lefty despair that makes modern culture so unbearable. Despair drives lefties from one extreme to the other so that what they said in their youth contradicts what they say in their oldth. They are out of balance, and instead of swinging back toward the center, they go ever farther out, getting ever unhappier.

And completely unnecessary. You can't control much of what the world throws at you, but you can control your attitude toward it. For most of us, it is possible to choose to look on the sunny side, to keep that stiff upper lip, to opt for good cheer over blue funk. Seeing the human condition as both comedy and tragedy keeps us in balance and out of the Lefty Slough of Despond.

Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 06:31 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Where?
We're all reading Rantburg!
Posted by: Skidmark || 09/19/2019 8:15 Comments || Top||

#2  Watch Anime.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 8:21 Comments || Top||

#3  Watch Anime...
I started watching anime because the Orientals have different quirks than ours. Partly because it was entertaining to see the differences between cultures, but mostly because I was so totally tired of the Made For Snobbishly PC East/West Coast drones...
Posted by: magpie || 09/19/2019 10:41 Comments || Top||

#4  ^^About the third Sit-com where I was unamused or flat out annoyed at the lines that the laugh track signaled I was supposed to find hilarious was when I clicked the remote 'Off" ... permanently.
Posted by: magpie || 09/19/2019 10:45 Comments || Top||

#5  It was a sixties attitude ‐ free love and get-out-of-our-bedrooms and such. In that spirit at least one female reporter volunteered a gratitudinous freebie to the then-president for his, uh, services to the cause.

No trace of that attitude attaches to #MeToo, the latest version of the Left's complex and contradictory approach to relations between the sexes.


If you're in the Club, you can do what you want; if not, you're doomed. That's what the above tells us.

It's lefty despair that makes modern culture so unbearable. Despair drives lefties from one extreme to the other so that what they said in their youth contradicts what they say in their oldth

It's not despair.

They still think the future belongs to them.

It's hatred of anyone not in the Club and the desire to make them suffer.

For most of us, it is possible to choose to look on the sunny side, to keep that stiff upper lip, to opt for good cheer over blue funk.

That's fine, so long as it's not whistling past the graveyard, and if the "positivity" doesn't shade over into deluded passivity. Norman Vincent Peale will only take you so far.

Here's a test for people like the author. Would you go up to one of our troops in Afghanistan or Iraq and tell them "Just smile and everything will be fine!"?

For all their self-dramatizing gloom, the left is still winning or holding on most fronts.

Maybe the "despair" is actually energizing and justifying, and therefore a source of power?

Would the Right be more active and effective if we cultivated just a bit of that for ourselves?

Who can say?








Posted by: charger || 09/19/2019 11:23 Comments || Top||

#6  I started watching anime because my son needed to learn English, and ex-wife - who's used to be an English teacher - wasn't doing very well with him. So I remembered how I learned English and went to get him some comics. In the used book store I patronize comics were mixed with manga. I picked up Gintama, and fell in love. Grom Jr. fell in love too.

the Orientals have different quirks than ours

I like their quirks. They seem to have a firm grasp on gender roles.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 11:50 Comments || Top||

#7  The heroes have not gone anywhere. There are plenty of heroes. The Left just has to value heroism and look in the right places.
Posted by: JohnQC || 09/19/2019 12:19 Comments || Top||

#8  Tune out, switch off, drop out, embrace the OLD / TRADITIONAL culture.

Solzhenitsyn was right: the modern mass culture of the West is a "swamp of nonsense."

Tell the junk-woke culture to screw off. Scrap it, and go back to slow media, long novels, the old poems, the old music.

Culture is the new counter-culture.
Posted by: Lex || 09/19/2019 13:01 Comments || Top||

#9  The heroes are in the dungeons, battling monsters and the bosses, with the occasional treasures found.

Oh wait, it does sound a lot like the political process nowadays.

Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance || 09/19/2019 15:20 Comments || Top||

#10  Everyone should watch 'The Boys'. I think it's on Amazon but may be on some stream site too.

I think the liberal producers were going for a conservative-bashing tirade on the icons of Americanism and the esteem of the armed forces. But the direct archetypal parallel to liberal, media savvy 'hero' leaders that hits you is unmistakable. From a team of PR managed bullies and crazies posing as saviors of people, to their acts of incredible audacity covered and protected by legalities and the government.

It shows some maverick humans trying to expose them and kill them with conventional weapons, and that too presents a clear parallel to the conflict between the democrat crazies and an indignant part of the population fighting to keep the right to protect themselves, and not surrendering it to saviors with media halos around them.

Some right wingers rejected the show too soon, hence the bad reviews. I saw it through and found everyone from the Clintons to Obama, Pelosi and Kamala types in there.

Try it for repose if nothing.
Posted by: Dron66046 || 09/19/2019 15:45 Comments || Top||

#11  Watched it. The ending depressed me, but Karl Urban is awesome
Posted by: Frank G || 09/19/2019 19:34 Comments || Top||


VDH: President Trump's Total Culture War
[Townhall] Donald Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a Kulturkampf.

As a result, not even former President George W. Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump. For most of his time in office, Trump, his family, his friends and his businesses have been investigated, probed, dissected and constantly attacked.

In 2016 and early 2017, Barack Obama appointees in the FBI, CIA and Department of Justice tried to subvert the Trump campaign, interfere with his transition and, ultimately, abort his presidency. Now, congressional Democrats promise impeachment before the 2020 election.

The usual reason for such hatred is said to be Trump's unorthodox and combative take-no-prisoners style. Critics detest his crude and unfettered assertions, his lack of prior military or political experience, his attacks on the so-called bipartisan administrative state, and his intent to roll back the entire Obama-era effort of "fundamentally transforming" the country leftward.

Certainly, Trump's agenda of closing the border, using tariffs to overturn a half-century of Chinese mercantilism, and pulling back from optional overseas military interventions variously offends both Democrats and establishment Republicans.

Trump periodically and mercurially fires his top officials. He apparently does not care whether the departed write damning memoirs or join his opposition. He will soon appoint his fourth national security adviser within just three years.
Posted by: Besoeker || 09/19/2019 06:28 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:


Re-Engineering Humans: An Old Solution to Climate Change
h/t Instapundit
It's no coincidence that global warming took off as an issue just as the Soviet Union fell; it's top-down centralized government's last best hope of controlling the masses. And like other forms of totalitarian worldviews, it doubles as a religion as well, as Czech President Vaclav Klaus noted late last year:
    "I’m convinced that after years of studying the phenomenon, global warming is not the real issue of temperature," said Klaus, an economist by training. "That is the issue of a new ideology or a new religion. A religion of climate change or a religion of global warming. This is a religion which tells us that the people are responsible for the current, very small increase in temperatures. And they should be punished."

Of course, it's no fun for totalitarians unless they can punish people en masse. An article at Live Science titled, "Engineering Humans: A New Solution to Climate Change?" should leave all but the truest believers of "global warming/climate change/climate chaos/whatever it's called this week" more than a little terrified:
Sooner, or later (hopefully not too late) we'll have to go full MacDonough on these "people"
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 01:29 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:


The Southern Slave Economy Was Anti-Capitalistic
h/t Instapundit
The discussion around the political economy of slavery has been one of the central debates in the academic study of the Peculiar Institution in the Antebellum South. Traditionally, the Southern economy was considered non-capitalistic and pre-bourgeoise; a pre-industrialized economy that struggled to thrive due to the lack of incentives imposed by slave labor, the absence of a legal framework that stimulated the emergence of capitalism and a backward, agriculture-based economy.

...In other words, the South was an inefficient economy where the entrepreneurial search for profits typical of capitalist economies was secondary. Instead, a quasi-aristocratic class (the planters) acted like medieval landowners more concerned about their culture of honor, power, and appearances than maximizing profits.

This analysis was challenged by the publication in 1974 of the controversial work Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery. The authors, Nobel-awarded economist Robert W. Fogel and economic historian Stanley L. Engerman, applied novel econometric techniques to the study of slavery.

In a nutshell, Fogel and Engerman (F&E) concluded that:

i) slavery was economically profitable;

ii) slave labor was more efficient than free labor;

iii) planters behaved as modern entrepreneurs in a capitalist economy; and

iv) the South was not as underdeveloped as it had been suggested in comparison with the North.

In short, F&E suggested that the Southern economy was mostly capitalistic despite being largely based on slave labor. To what extent are these conclusions accurate?

...In any case, the level of coordination achieved by the market process when it comes to allocating human capital to its most productive uses cannot be attained in a slave economy. Furthermore, the lack of incentives under slavery kills the productive capacity of workers, reducing the overall efficiency. Therefore, F&E’s thesis on the superior efficiency of slave labor cannot be convincingly sustained.

...It cannot be denied that the South incorporated certain aspects of capitalism due to the fact that its economy largely depended on the demand for cotton that came from several parts of the world. However, the South lagged behind the North in terms of urbanization and economic and social development precisely because market capitalism did not seep through the channels of the Southern economy.

The Peculiar Institution was, without doubt, the main cause of the economic, political, and social backwardness in the Antebellum South.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 01:18 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The meaning of "efficient" is different in the original to the rebuttal.
Posted by: BernardZ || 09/19/2019 8:29 Comments || Top||

#2  The Peculiar Institution was, without doubt, the main cause of the economic, political, and social backwardness in the Antebellum South.

Probably didn't help that the Yankees destroyed what was there which didn't recover till WWII. Seems the rest of American after 1865 grew quite well economically without too much of a problem, thus making the contention that slavery made America more than bogus.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 09/19/2019 9:15 Comments || Top||

#3  This whole thesis - slavery = the highest expression of capitalism - is retarded.

Even the Marxist doctrine of history recognizes that there's no connection between slavery and capitalist competition and microeconomic models of how firms behave, models for ownership of the firm, investment models etc.

More crap scholarship of the sort that has degraded the social sciences and turned so much of academe into a joke.
Posted by: Lex || 09/19/2019 9:49 Comments || Top||


New York Times Racist Partisan Hackery EXPOSED, Reporter DELETES TWEETS
Posted by: DarthVader || 09/19/2019 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  New York Times Racist Partisan Hackery was exposed in their report on Sabra & Shatila massacres.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 1:05 Comments || Top||

#2  New York Times Shuts Down Spanish-Language Platform
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 1:13 Comments || Top||

#3  It goes much further back, g(r)omgoru. From the fall issue of the Jewish Review of Books: The Gray Lady and the Jewish State
Posted by: trailing wife || 09/19/2019 8:15 Comments || Top||

#4  OK, should've added "For Me" etc...
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 09/19/2019 8:22 Comments || Top||



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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
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Two weeks of WOT
Thu 2019-09-19
  Man arrested in terrorism probe told FBI he'd execute a US service member for ISIS
Wed 2019-09-18
  Half of Saudi Aramco production restored
Tue 2019-09-17
  Special Forces kill 14 Taliban militants; destroy multiple weapons caches in 3 provinces
Mon 2019-09-16
  Iran seizes another oil tanker in Strait of Hormuz as Gulf crisis erupts
Sun 2019-09-15
  Turkey orders arrest of 223 military personnel over suspected Gulen links: State media
Sat 2019-09-14
  Parliament to discuss removal of U.S. forces from Iraq in new session
Fri 2019-09-13
  Over 2,000 militants fled to Turkey from Idlib: Al-Watan
Thu 2019-09-12
  Illegal Alien Sentenced to Six Years for Having Enough Fentanyl to Kill Half a Million Americans
Wed 2019-09-11
  18 Years Ago...
Tue 2019-09-10
  Bolton FIRED!
Mon 2019-09-09
  Inner Harbor buildings evacuated in downtown Baltimore after vehicle found with 1,000 gallons of gasoline
Sun 2019-09-08
  Pakistan denies Indian president's request to use its airspace for overflight
Sat 2019-09-07
  Taliban loses deputy intelligence chief, dozens of militants in Farah city clash
Fri 2019-09-06
  Comrade Robert ''Bob'' Mugabe Finally Croaks at 95
Thu 2019-09-05
  Arrested Terrorist Admits Being Pak National, Says Many Waiting At Launching Pads

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