Category Archives: Slander Files

Catalogueing the ongoing, systematic slander of conservatives, individually and as a group, by the Big Left and its minions.

Clear, Present

Posted on by
9

SCENE: Mitch BERG is mowing his lawn.  He stops to clear some crud from around the blades as Avery LIBRELLE slowly walks up behind him, picking up a flattened pop cup from the sidewalk.  LIBRELLE gets behind BERG and throws it at him.  It catches the air and planes away from BERG, who notices the sound of it flopping to the ground.

LIBRELLE:  Merg!   Get the hell out of public!

BERG:  (Shakes head wearily)  Hey, Avery.  What, now?

LIBRELLE:  We’re shutting you down!

BERG:  I’m mowing my lawn.  On my own property.   Why so violent?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, yeah?  What about when the Tea Partiers yelled at us progressives during the Town Hall meetings in 2009?

BERG:  Individuals expressed anger – but not violence – at events intended to be public dialogues.  No GOP leadership called for violence against the opposition…

LIBRELLE:  I am the Resistance!  I am going to attack you, because Trump is literally Hitler.    So get off your lawn before I kill you!

BERG:  Seems a little drastic  (Resumes clearing blade).

LIBRELLE:  Besides, you need to know…

BERG: You know I have surveillance cameras on my yard, and our entire interaction has been taped, right?

LIBRELLE:   DON”T YOU DARE!  YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TAPE ME!  HOW DARE YOU! (Turns and runs).

BERG:  (Shakes head, restarts mower)

And SCENE

The Second Bull Run Of The Second American Civil War

Posted on by
7

The Atlantic hired, and then fired, Kevin Williamson – perhaps America’s best political journalist, and one of the best interviewees I’ve ever had in a decade and a half of doing the NARN.

Andrew McCarthy has thoughts on the subject.

My thoughts?

I’ve observed for years that one of the greatest side-effects of Urban Progressive Privilege is a complete inability to “debate” anyone who’s not part of their club – because they have no concept of cognitive dissonance when it comes to politics or any area of life touched by politics (and politics touches every area of their life.

Differ with an blind date’s politics?  Ghost ’em!

Differ with a fellow student’s politics?  Shame them!

Disagree with a co-workers’s politics?  Slander, ostracize and try to destroy them!

Irreconcilable

Posted on by
8

There are times I wonder if this isn’t the right answer.

UPDATE:  Clearly, I wrote this before looking at the map.  While the article makes sense, clearly the author thinks all northerners look alike.  The idea of the Dakotas, Montana and Idaho siding with New England is as risible as Rebecca Otto’s candidacy.

My two cents?   It’s not just two nations (Dems aren’t the only ones fighting the last war).  Short of dividing up by counties (which would be much more politically accurate), I could see several options:

  • Two nations .- with the West Coat, New England, the Mid-Atlantic and Chicago existing as an archipelago of liunacy
  • Three nations – a Japan and China-aligned West Coast, a New England/Mid-Atlantic nation that’d join the EU, and the rest of the country.
  • Four nations:  the above, with the former confederacy (less Texas, perhaps) forming a socially-conservative nation and the remainder a libertarian-conservative agricultural and petroleum based nation.

But again, it’s all hypothetical.

Or is it?

For Ye But Not For We

Posted on by
Reply

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Northam beat Gillespie for governor of Virginia.  The New York Times notes it was a racially charged campaign and that Gillespie dragged in the Confederacy.  Not one single word about the Confederate pick-up ad run for Northam.  Masterful job of projection – accusing Republicans of doing something they’re not doing, while completely ignoring  Democrats who actually are doing it.
Joe Doakes

Almost worth a new corollary to Berg’s Seventh Law.

Damned If You Don’t

Posted on by
36

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Every day, new claims of sexual harassment against powerful men. Some are admitted and therefore true. Some are denied and may be true, may not be. All are possible only because powerful men spent time alone with women not their wives. Which brings us back to Vice President Mike Pence, who got a ton of grief for practicing the defensive policies necessary to avoid false claims of sexual harassment and avoid the temptation to engage in it. I assume an apology will shortly be forthcoming.

Joe Doakes

Of course it will be…

When Did You Stop Beating All Of Mankind?

Posted on by
Reply

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

America was great in the 50’s.

There were no Muslims in the 50’s.

To make America great again, we must be rid of Muslims.

Trump’s MAGA hat is secret code for genocide.

Teens who wear it are brain-washed haters.

America will never be great again.

Yes, Liberals actually believe that. They saw it on MSNBC, read it on Slate and heard Nancy Pelosi say it so it must be true.

That’s why kids wearing MAGA hats is a crisis.  Article quotes some Muslim soccer mom who’s threatened by the fashion fad, and rebutted by a 14-year-old kid who says “I don’t think of how my hat will offend people.  That’s silly.  I wear what I want because I want to,” which is the ESSENCE of freedom in America.  Too bad you don’t understand it, lady.

Joe doakes

Red America is living with LIvia Soprano. cultu

Animals

Posted on by
10

I’ve told the story before; one of the most illuminating lessons I’ve ever gotten on human nature was from my 11th grade history teacher, Mr. Dudley Butts – who was perhaps the most “Big Lebowski”-ish football head coach I’ve ever met.

He’d been drafted during the Vietnam War; he was proud to point out that he’d been stationed in Washington DC, and the Viet Cong never attacked the Capitol on his watch; mission accomplished.

And he told us that during basic training, as they were doing any of the things that mimicked killing people – at the rifle range, while doing bayonet drills and hand-to-hand combat practice – the drill sergeants never referred to their targets as humans.  They were always collections of not-quite-human memes; “gooks” and “charlies” and “slopes” and so on.  It took him a while to realize this wasn’t just the mark of a bunch of bigots with sergeant stripes; there was a method to it.  It was much easier to train people who’d spent 18 years of their lives being taught “thou shalt not kill” to kill if you taught them to kill something that wasn’t really human.

Likewise, the theory goes, it’s easier to convince people you’re right if you get them to believe that your opponent isnt’ operating from rationalism or intelligence; in short, to get them to believe they’re not really human.

I’ve personally fought this over the years by trying to get people who disagree together over a beer and a cigar and to see each other as hiuman beings rather than collections of stereotypes.

But the problem is worse than it’s ever been; Big Left actively dehumanizes conservatives, flyoverlanders, and anyone Not LIke Them.

Wanting to kill someone because of his politics is now sort of passé. So is the chilling habit of calibrating empathy for the dead on the basis of their perceived ideology. The now-fired vice president and senior legal counsel at CBS Hayley Geftman-Gold posted her feelings after the Las Vegas massacre: “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”

When Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson tried to assassinate Republican legislators during a baseball practice game, and almost killed Republican majority whip Steven Scalise, MSNBC host Joy Reid seemed to all but suggest that Scalise had deserved to be killed, given his conservative politics. She tweeted: “Rep. #Scalise was shot by a white man with a violent background, and saved by a black lesbian police officer, and yet . . . ” And then she followed that outburst with a list of Scalise’s conservative agenda items, such as his vote for a GOP House bill on health care, that apparently were meant to minimize the horror of his near-death. Reid’s commentary was not unusual; the Washington Post reported recently on liberal anger that a recovering Scalise was honored by being asked to throw out the first pitch at a Washington baseball game. His opposition to Obamacare and support for the Second Amendment should evidently have disqualified him from receiving sympathy for his near-fatal shooting.

There are times when I think it’s high time this nation called a divorce lawyer.  Those times are getting more and more frequent.

PS:  For those who say “Hey, Republicans do it too!”?      Republicans on the fringe certainly do.  Republicans in the mainstream do not.   Saying they do marks one as unserious.  And while being serious is overrated, being unserious is rated utterly correctly.

 

It’s Not About Saving Lives. It’s Never About Saving Lives. It’ll Never Be About Saving Lives

Posted on by
9

Holler if you’ve had this argument:

YOU:   So that’s what I think.

THEM:  Well, some people think that’s wrong.

YOU:  You’re using “some” nameless people as your credibility?  Name them!

THEM:  (Chasing shiny object)

Senator Diane Feinstein – who was for gun control back when it was cool, and still is – gave an “inadvertent” slip this past week during a debate on “bump stocks” that pretty well spells out what gun control (AKA “Gun Safety”, “Gun Violence Prevention”) is actually about.

Preventing crime?  Preventing murders?  Curbing spectacular spree crimes?

“No, he passed background checks registering for handguns and other weapons on multiple occasions,” Feinstein told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”…“Regulations aren’t going to do it,” Feinstein said on the need for a law over an ATF rule. “We need a law. It can’t be changed by another president.”

So – banning guns, accessories and types doesn’t affect crime, or save a single life.

So why have it?

“America is a gun-happy country. And I think there are many of us in growing numbers that don’t want a gun-happy country,” said DiFi.

So it’s about controlling all those other people.

Of course, this isn’t a mystery to anyone who’s followed this issue; the real enemy, to Senator Feinswine, isn’t the criminal (whose activities foster the dependence, bureaucracy and authoritarianism that keeps her in power).

It’s you – the law-abiding gun owner.  You are the enemy.

Berg’s 18th Law Is In Effect

Posted on by
54

The shooting in Vegas was an atrocity. But it hasn’t been 48 hours.

Until 48 hours have passed, you’re better off getting your news from the crazy lady at the bus stop than the MSM.

Given the targets, it’s every bit as likely this attack was spawned by “Punch A Nazi” entitlement as anything.

(And if it was? Watch this be the least-publicized spree killing in history. Or watch for the Big Left to blame “Punch A Nazi” on Trump)

Doing The Legal Rain Dance

Posted on by
8

For years, the “Southern Poverty Law Center” has been slandering perfectly legitimate conservative organizations, smearing them as “hate groups”.

The practice hit home a few years back, when they called the “Taxpayers League of Minnesota” a “hate group”. Their “hate” was, apparently, manifested by getting lawmakers to pledge not to raise taxes – because taxes, apparently, are love.

Most slandered people can’t fight back, as I found out myself a few years back; it’s expensive, courts err very sharply on the side of free speech (which is a good thing in the great scheme of things, of course), and even if you “win” in court, the judge can rule that a retraction and apology will suffice (as I myself was told in 2012 by a lawyer, who told me I had a very strong defamation case against an online stalker – provided I came up with a $20K retainer and accepted the fact that there was a very strong chance of a legal victory with no financial payback whatsoever).  B

But with all that aside, it’s good to see someone  taking it to the fake watchdog group

On Tuesday, D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM) filed a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the charity navigation organization GuideStar, and Amazon for defamation, religious discrimination, and trafficking in falsehood. The SPLC listed DJKM as a “hate group,” while GuideStar also categorized it in those terms, and Amazon kept the ministry off of its charity donation program, Amazon Smile.

“We embarked today on a journey to right a terrible wrong,” Dr. Frank Wright, president and CEO at DJKM, said in a statement Tuesday. “Those who knowingly label Christian ministries as ‘hate’ groups, solely for subscribing to the historic Christian faith, are either woefully uninformed or willfully deceitful. In the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center, our lawsuit alleges the latter.”

The SPLC has labeled DJKM an “anti-LGBT hate group” for its opposition to same-sex marriage and transgenderism.

I’m hoping Kennedy wins and wins huge.

If I can find a place to donate to the legal fund, I’ll post it after I donate.

To Everyone Looking For “Denunciations”

Posted on by
46

The other day, a “progressive” – a onetime prog-blogger, who seems to have gone to intellectual seed just a bit – snarked at me on social media; “I haven’t seen your resounding denunciation of the Nazis”.    (A lesser light who started his political life well in the “To Seed” camp asked me a parallel question – “Did you ever vote for David Duke?”).

You’d think you progs would be more aware of the history of rhetoric like “did you denounce them with satisfactory fervor? Hm? No? What does THAT tell us?” Orwell wrote a book about it. Stalin held show trials over it. Millions disappeared from this earth over it. (Did you ever denounce that? Send the cite, please).

But what the heck. Let’s put it on the record.

If you’re member of any group that inflicts violence – literal or rhetorical – on people over their race, religion, preference, worldview or other aspecf of humanity?  Klan, Nazi, “Anti”-Fa or Philly fan?

Go to hell.

And if you are one of those sanctimonious virtue-signalers who theatrically demand (“when did you stop beating your wife?”) show-trial denunciations?

You go to hell too.  I’m not saying you’re a totalitarian.  Merely that totalitarians need lots of people like you to have a chance of taking over a society.

That should take care of it.

We, The People

Posted on by
16

To:  “David Smalley”
From:  Mitch Berg, irascible peasant
Re:  Your article on, ahem, “Patheos”.

Mr. Smalley,

I”m not going to bother dispensing with the bulk of your “seminar caller”-stule, utterly and intensely illogical assault on “gun culture”.

But there is one line that I want to call out, by way of accelerating its demise from conversations among the smart people.  It’s this oldie-but-goodie:

So even today, with the 2nd Amendment in full effect, we don’t have the rights to be “armed as well as our government.”
Secondly, what if you were? I could hand you 50 M-16s, give you 1000 illegal bombs, steal you a couple of tanks, and smuggle in some bazookas, and even let you fully train 500 of your closest friends.
If the government wants your shit, they’re going to take it.
You still wouldn’t be a match for even a single battalion of the United States Marine Corps. Not to mention the Air Force, Army, Navy, National Guard, Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and Seals.
So stop acting like your little AR-15 is going to stop tyranny.

This makes perfect sense, Mr. “Smalley”, since as we know the military – especially the “combat arms” people – infantry, armor, artillery, combat engineers and cavalry,, as well as special forces – are drawn from families with two parents who have masters degrees in poli sci from Oberlin, work for social justice non-profits, shop at Whole Foods, drive Subarus, listen to NPR and practice vegan lifestyles.

Right?

Wrong.

The families – fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins – of those soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, and generally by extension those troops themselves – are drawn from the caste of our society that owns guns, for ideological as much as practical reasons.

It’s culturally almost impossible to separate the “gun culture” and our military.  :

Your little cultural genocide tale  only exists in lefty fantasy.

That is all.

All The Lies The Democrats Demand Be Printed

Posted on by
47

The NYTimes lied about Republicans, guns, Sarah Palin, and pretty much everyone in their editorial about the Hodgekinson attack – down to making up facts from thin air 

Davie French unravels the Times’ depraved attack on truth:

Let’s be blunt. In its zeal to create moral equivalencies and maintain a particular narrative about the past, the Times flat-out lied. There is simply no “link to political incitement” in Loughner’s murderous acts. The man was a paranoid schizophrenic who first got angry at Gabby Giffords years before Palin published her map.

This is, of course, part of an ongoing pattern of slandering everyone to the right of Martin O’Malley:

Let’s not forget, this is the same editorial board that, one year ago, laid blame on Republican Christian politicians for an Orlando terrorist attack by a confessed Islamic jihadist. Omar Mateen swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but the Times editors believed (again, without any evidence) that he was inspired in part by Republican objections to granting men access to women’s restrooms. The editorial board should retract its editorial and apologize.

And would someone – Pat Kessler?  Bob Collins?  Erik Black?  Cat Richert? Nina Totenberg? – finally let slip the dogs of our mainstream media’s vaunted “fact-check” industry?  We’ve got a chain of howlers here:

In addition to lying about Palin, the Times couldn’t resist yet another nonsensical attack on gun rights — claiming that “studies” have shown that armed citizens would “probably” kill or wound innocent bystanders in the effort to stop the killer. Which studies? In fact, we have considerable real-world experience showing that armed citizens can stop mass shootings without harming innocent civilians.

We do, indeed.

As Dennis Prager says, the Second Civil War has been underway for some time, now.  Until Wednesday, it largely wasn’t a shooting war.

French also notes how Sarah Palin likely has a decent defamation case against the Times, even though she’s a public figure.  I hope she does.  I’ll contribute.

Hate Crime

Posted on by
47

Big Left has been warning us that there’s a wave of ideological hate crime just around the corner, and that  you gotta watch out for those crazy right-wingers.

It’s a Berg’s Seventh Law occurrence, of course.

A gunman attacked a Republican congressional baseball practice this morning.  His mission?  “Kill as many Republicans as possible”.

Shortly after the shooting Wednesday morning at a congressional baseball practice, Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) told NBC News that it appeared the “gunman was there to kill as many Republican members as possible.” Walker, who was at the practice for the upcoming annual congressional baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia, confirmed he was “shaken but okay.”

“Punch a Nazi”.

“Anti-Fa”.

Hello, Liberals – when so much of your side is awash in demented hatred (the real thing, not the “disagreement with our narrative is hate” thing that so many of you jabber about), and given the instability wrapped in entitlement that so many people on your side have, what do you think is going to happen?

Be careful out there, Real Americans.  It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.

UPDATE:  While Berg’s 19th Law is still in effect (“Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident.  It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts”), the shooter’s Facebook page indicates he is a Sanders supporter.

UPDATE 2:  The WaPo has ID’ed the shooter as a 66 year old Illinois man.

UPDATE 3:  As usual, many on the left are acting like poo-flinging baboons.

UPDATE 4:  James Hodgkinson is the name, and this is from his Facebook page:

Apparnetly “& Co” is “All Republicans”.

Clearly, we need universal background checks for Democrat voters buying guns.

I Thought About Doing An “Avery Librelle” Dramatization…

Posted on by
8

…of a smug, entitled, East-Coast fop “analyzing” the blue-collar white people who put Donald Trump in office – the line “Shut up, you worthless sister-boinking Budweiser-drinking white trash” Avery explained” croxsed my mind – but in the end, I figured this piece in (where else) Slate by (who else?) Isaac Chotiner parodied itself far beyond my feeble talents.

Shot:

If there is one thing everyone should be able to agree on about the past seven months, it is that the white working class can no longer be described as “forgotten.” Beaten-down? Racist? Mistreated? Angry? Victimized? Sure. We have read and heard the white working class described in all of those ways. But the election of Donald Trump has ensured that we are discussing this group ad nauseam.

Chaser:

I spoke recently by phone with [author Joan Williams], who is also a distinguished professor of law at University of California Hastings College of the Law. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed Trump’s view of his own voters, the role of racism in class resentments, and whether there is any way to avoid being “condescending” to Trump’s supporters.

 

Go head, read it.  And as you do, just note – that sound you’re hearing is Donald Trump measuring the drapes for his second term.

Lie First, Lie Always: The Anti-Gun Amateur Hour

Posted on by
10

Earlier this morning at the House Public Safety Committee hearings on the “Stand your Ground” billl, a “pro-bill” testifier erupted in a caracature of a pro-Trump, white supremacist tirade; at one point, he reportedly said it was time for gun owners to return to “lynching” people.

Then he got up and walked out.

He’s utterly unknown to Minnesota’s close-knit 2nd Amendment activist community.

The moment I saw the photo (a screen grab from video),  that voice in my head that monitors stereotypes screamed “Carlton graduate and non-profiteer paid to be a false-flagger”.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

“He” registered for the event as “Ross Koon”

And, sure enough, searching for “Russ Koon” leads you to a Facebook profile.

And here’s his publicly-visible post:

So he misrepresented himself about being a pro-gunner, and his “testimony” was a “satirical” sham designed to defame people he pretty much hates.

That’s pretty much the whole story, right?

Of course not.  Anti-gun ghoul Joan Peterson tweeted instantly:

Coincidence that the doyenne of Minnesota criminal-safety is right there ready to go with a tweet in support of this bit of “satire?”

But that’s just a clenched old liberal exercising her penchant for overheated hypberbole – right?

Of course not.   Mr. Koons’ pro-criminal-safety pedigree goes back a ways.  Turns out Mr. Koon’s mother is one Mary Koon.  And Mary Koon is a pastor at ultra-liberal Oak Grove Presbyterian Church, and publicly lists as her “likes”…

…Moms Want Action.

(“But” you might say, “that doesn’t make her a member!”.  Perhaps.  On the other hand, it’s pretty much all you need to do to be counted as a member, so we’ll run with it).

So let’s sum it up:

  • The scion of one of Minnesota’s white, privileged “elite” liberal families lied about his personal beliefs, in order to…
  • Slander gun owners in front of the legislature, and did it…
  • …with the obvious, full knowledge of Minnesota’s anti-gun/pro-criminal-safety “elite”.

This was just the most egregious episode in a hearing where the anti-gunners essentially beclowned themselves, treating the hearings like a private flash mob.

Keep up the good work, Reverend Bence!

(Thanks to the crew from MNGOC for all the research on this post)

UPDATE:  From a witness:

He didn’t immediately leave the building. I watched him get hugs and attaboys from several of the anti-gunners present, including the lady in charge of handing out red Everytown shirts.

This was no random happenstance.

That “Epidemic” Of White Supremacy

Posted on by
5

An arrest was made in connection with a series of “hate graffiti” incidents in Nassau County, New York:

According to authorities, Jasskirat Saini, 20, of Central Park Road, was arrested at 12:38 p.m. for multiple bias incidents at Nassau Community College. Police say Saini drew two swastikas on the exterior wall of Building H and “KKK” on the floor of F Building Cluster 225 before his arrest on Tuesday.

Police had been responding to the campus for instances of swastikas drawn on buildings since October. Most of the swastikas were found drawn in men’s bathrooms in the various buildings around campus.

As the “Garden City Patch” is part of the left-leaning “Patch” chain of community “news” sites, one may assume that had Mr. Saini had even the most tenuous link to the GOP, much less Donald Trump, it’d have gotten mentioned.   That doesn’t necessarily mean that Mr. Saini was a Democrat who was hoaxing the media to create the fraudulent impression that Nassau County was a hotbed of racism.

No.  Of course not.  Perish the thought.

Mark My Words

Posted on by
11

Someday, when there is a post-cold-war style reckoning with the past crimes of the American media – and I realize this may be more an “afterlife” kind of thing – the ongoing effort by the American media to slander people not like them, politically speaking, will be an entire wing in the museum.

Let’s allow up front that in a nation of 320 million people there will be loonies of every description afoot, and that not everyone deals with frustration, bigotry or hatred well or constructively.

With that out of the way?

There is no wave of Trump-inspired hatred in this country.  The media is, er, trumping up a series of:

…into a “story”, and spinning it into a largely fictional narrative.

Why?

To wag the dog.  To try to create the movement that they’re reporting on.  To try to do for hate what they did for Armenian valley girls and Flava Flav.

Will it work?

Well, their efforts didn’t give us an Empress President HIllary.  But that may have been a lucky break.

And “luck” isn’t a plan.

Holiday Season Open Letter To Minnesota / National Public Radio

Posted on by
7

To:  National Public Radio (cc: Minnesota Public Radio)
From:  Mitch Berg; not really a pollyanna
Re:  The Season For The Wheezin’

Dear various PRs,

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving.  And like every week after every Thanksgiving, I know what that means, especially vis-a-vis Public Radio programming.

To listen to your broadcasts, we are on the precipice of a national mental health plague, something Americans only survive with the aid of therapy, drinking or an endless slathering on of (wry, fashionable-understated) cynicism.   A time of year where all ceremony is onerous, all family members are insane or intolerable, all travel is wearing, all human interaction is a layer of plastic fakery over a rotten, frothing core of anxiety and desperation.

That’s right – the Holiday season.

Public radio programming will be clogged with with newscasters droning on about seasonal mental health afflictions; with “entertainers” jabbering about the only kind of get-togethers any of them seem to have – ugly, dysfunctional ones; with obscure writers and artists elevated (?) to radio commentators, testifying to the ordeal we’re all about to go through.

Point taken, Public Radio – the upper-middle-class, over-miseducated, secular (wildly-disproportionally secular-jewish) crowd is exquisitely bored with the whole thing.

But might I suggest you poke your collective (heh) nose outside your Subaru-driving, Oberlin/Bard/Saint Olaf-educated, Whole-Foods-shopping, free-range-alpaca-wearing, urban-liberal-privilege-wallowing, Israel-divesting, coffee-shop-music-loving, prematurely gray, bumper-sticker-clad Obama-shilling bubble and take note that for a whole lot of people, perhaps the majority, the holidays aren’t about mindless personal drama, and bring us some measure of joy?

I mean, fine – you’ll joke about how pathetic you find it.  That’s fine – and nothing new!

Just saying – perhaps you can put down the bottle and take your head out of the oven and look around a bit?

That is all.

Wag The Pigs

Posted on by
8

You want a lot of publicity for very very very little effort?

Put on a white pointy robe and yell “Make America Great Again!”

David Harsanyi points out what a lot of us on the right already know: the “Alt-Right” is to 2016 what the “Vast Rightwing Conspiracy” was to 1995, and the “War on Women” was to 2012;  a smear, pushed with relentless dedication by a media that were basically Democrat operatives with bylines, to smear the Democrats’ opponents by associating them with the a convenient, if barely extant, boogeyman.  It was something that Saul Alinsky called “framing”, and that anyone who’s studied psychological abuse calls “Gaslighting”.

David Harsanyi points out the facts on what is, to borrow a phrase, “fake news”:

Every major cable news network had a discussion about the importance of the [National Policy Institute – the place where the “crowd” yelled “Hail Trump”]. But here’s a little nugget from the NPR piece that asserts the election has given this “once fringe movement a jolt”: “About 300 people — split nearly evenly between conference attendees and protesters of the conference outside — were on hand at the downtown D.C. event.”

300 people – 150 of them attendees?

150 people go to the big game warehouse in Roseville to play Warhammer every weekend with no media coverage.

Four times that many people turn out in maroon shirts at the Legislature every time some liberal bobblehead tries to introduce a gun grab bill.

There are bowling leagues with more people and political clout than the National Policy Institute.

About 300 people? Some jolt. To put that into context, there were well over 300 people at thousands of churches and temples across the Washington area this weekend praying for peace on Earth. In this country, you could pull together 300 people for a meeting about anything, actually. Thousands of UFO enthusiasts got together in the Arizona desert last year in hopes of not being mass abducted by space aliens.

A few years ago, I attended the Socialist convention in Chicago, where at least a thousand activists gathered to discuss how to end economic freedom. Since then, 43 percent of Democrat primary goers have given this extreme movement a jolt, I guess.

In a nation of a third of a billion people, there should be a lot more crazies than that.  And who knows; if CNN and the NYTimes wave enough cameras around looking for boogeymen, then that’s exactly what we’ll get.  You create a media market for something, you’ll get…something.

Devils Of Our Nature

Posted on by
7

I hate to indulige in schadenfreude.

Part of it is because I’m a pretty emphathetic guy.  I put myself in others’ shoes pretty easily.

Part of it is that while I don’t believe in karma, I do believe what goes around comes around.

However, hearing about the psychic trauma some “blue-staters” are feeling over this past weeks, I’m rapidly giving into my worse nature and saying “Good.  Suffer, you vacuous hamsters.  If your well-being is so wrapped around a presidential election that it affects your mental health, you should really not participate”.

“But Mitch – isn’t that an unfair caricature?”

Sorry, but no – it’s not.

What A Difference Eight Years Makes

Posted on by
4

2008:  Discussion of secession from the union (by Texas, were the sentiment is pretty strong) or from oppressive an alienating state governments (inland and northern California) are “treason” and a call for a return to slavery.

2016:  Calls for secession are all the liberal rage.

I say keep it up.  You may never get seceded (although good riddance, California), but you’ll give me the impetus I need to revive one of my old online larks into a full fledged book.