In The Mailbox: 10.27.22 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | October 27, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.27.22 (Afternoon Edition)

Silicon Valley delenda est.
OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery box Episode #1882
A Bad American: Actions Have Consequences
EBL: Fetterman Flip Flops on Fracking and Fails, also, Republican Lee Zeldin attacks Gov. Hochul over rising crime in New York State
Twitchy: View Harpies Work Really Hard To Our-Racist Each Other During Two Minute Hate Against Herschel Walker, also, WaPo’s Impassioned Defense Of John Fetterman From “Ableist” Critics Hits Serious Snags
Louder With Crowder: Podcaster makes explosive claim about LeBron James cheating on his wife, forcing girls to sign NDAs, Fetterman campaign tries blaming closed captioning for disastrous debate, but the company hits back hard, and Fat-proud TikToker demands you love her belly
Vox Popoli: The Fruits of Empire, What Christian Men Should Know, Diversity Fails the Hellmouth, and The Empire Flees China
Gab News: Masculinity Will Save The World

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Wokeness Is The Acid Dissolving Christianity, also, European Court: Aborting Jesus At Mass A Sacred Right
American Greatness: The Commie Bridge Is Here in California, also, The Dangers of Peace in Ukraine
American Thinker: Biden Is Destroying Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Dengue epidemic straining Cuban hospital system near breaking point, On this day in 1962, Fidel Castro urged Nikita Khrushchev to launch nuclear first strike on the U.S., and Cuban dictatorship restores hotel damaged by Hurricane Ian, ignores over 100K damaged homes
BattleSwarm: More Harris County Graft To Democrats Uncovered
Behind The Black: Russian Progress freighter successfully launches to ISS, Orbit Fab, the company building gas stations in space, gets new investor, and Today’s blacklisted American: School officials in Florida and Michigan retaliate against parents for being involved in their kids’ schooling
Cafe Hayek: Greed Isn’t Spendable
CDR Salamander: The German Problem isn’t Getting Better it Seems
Chicago Boyz: This is Interesting
Da Tech Guy: Prager, Focus Groups, Mass Resistance, and Common Ground the Dems Abandoned, also, Thank Those Horrible No Good White European Cultures and The Doctors They Produced That You Haven’t Died from Pneumonia or Tuberculosis
Don Surber: Democrats spend $40 million to own elections, also, Saudi Arabia’s October surprise
First Street Journal: The economy being an electoral loser for the Democrats, now they’re pushing Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine!
Gates Of Vienna: Double Trouble: Dr. Mehmet Oz and Turkey, Requiem for a Culture, Part 2: The Battle Flag, and Giorgia Meloni: No More COVID Shutdowns
The Geller Report: CRISIS: Pennsylvania Democrat Officials Mailed Out 255,000 Ballots to Unverified Voters, Vaxxed Cardiologist Whose Father Died After Jab: Suspend mRNA Product NOW, and Soros-Backed Philly DA: ‘Crime Concerns Are Racist’
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, A Cosmic Keyhole, and Ableism
Hollywood In Toto: Halloween Ends Pays Stiff Price for Turning Its Back on Fans, U2’s Bono: Capitalism Crushes Poverty, Geraghty’s Gathering Five Storms Slyly Skewers Our Political Class, and Tim Robbins: ‘You Can’t Over-Regulate People’s Lives’
The Lid: The Dems Anti-Maga Obsession, also, Progressive House Members Seek To Appease Putin
Legal Insurrection: Cambridge University Under Fire for Teaching Gender-Neutral German, Congressional Progressive Caucus Retracts Letter Urging Biden to Use Diplomacy in Ukraine War After Outrage From the Left, NY Gov. Hochul Doesn’t Know Why Putting Criminals in Jail is ‘So Important’ to Challenger Lee Zeldin, and Jim Crow 2.0? Special K Goes Silent When Confronted With Record Early Voting in Georgia
Michelle Malkin: ‘-30-‘: An Ending, But Not the End
Nebraska Energy Observer: A Protest in Wolfsburg, and more
Outkick: AP Obsesses Over Race Due To ‘Lack’ Of Black Players In World Series, Aaron Rodgers Calls Out Teammates, Gets Called Out Right Back, Trans High School Volleyball Player Uses Vicious Spike Which Seriously Injured Female Opponent In ‘Highlight Reel’, Iowa Coach Takes Unprofessional Shots At The Media, and Kurt Warner Urges Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers To ‘Walk Away’
Power Line: $3.8 Trillion For…, Well, that was weird, and Has Portland Had Enough?
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Fetter(my good God), man!
Shark Tank: Hospitalized Rubio Canvasser Provides Video, Statement On Attack
Shot In The Dark: Berg’s Seventh Law Hall Of Fame, also, Same As It Ever Was
The Political Hat: Political Party Gets (Artificially) Intelligent
This Ain’t Hell: RFK’s grandson reveals “secret” Ukraine fighting, Ash Carter, Obama’s last SECDEF, dead at 68, and Darrell Brooks found guilty of 6 counts of 1st degree intentional homicide
Transterrestrial Musings: Off The Air
Victory Girls: Georgia Voter Turnout: So Much For Jim Crow 2.0, also, Fetterman Team Blames Tech For Bad Debate
Volokh Conspiracy: Bikini Barista Ban Violates Equal Protection Clause by Intentionally Discriminating Against Women Baristas
Watts Up With That: “Dream Big and Dare to Fail” Is Great High School Valedictory Advice but Terrible Energy Policy
Weasel Zippers: Dem Rep. Sharice Davids Asked If She Thinks Border Is Secure. Awkward Silence Ensues, Biden: “I Appreciate The Frustration Of The American People”, Migrant Caravans Are Preparing To Flood The US Border Ahead Of Midterms, and More From Fetterman’s Trainwreck Debate
The Federalist: Ohio Senate Candidate Tim Ryan Touted Plans To Eliminate Coal As ‘Amazing’, Democrats’ Gaslighting About Covid School Closures Won’t Work Because We Have Receipts, California Shows What Happens When Nobody Checks The Administrative State: Everything Burns Down, and Department Of Defense Says Military Enlistment Wouldn’t Be So Low If Women Could Just Kill More Babies
Mark Steyn: Sundowning Street, also, The Shrinking Horizon

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Category: Linkagery

Why Democrats Can’t Take the ‘L’

Posted on | October 27, 2022 | Comments Off on Why Democrats Can’t Take the ‘L’

When your Senate candidate suffers a debilitating stroke, to such an extent that he can’t communicate coherently, what do you do? Well, if you’re Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself), you pretend that this devastating setback isn’t really devastating, that somehow Pennsylvania voters won’t notice, or won’t care, that John Fetterman is like the monster in Young Frankenstein: “He’s got a rotten brain!”

Noah Rothman offers this excellent explanation:

The sunk-costs fallacy describes a tendency to devote ever more resources to a lost cause rather than simply take the loss. And for Fetterman’s media boosters, some of whom sunk so much reputational capital into the idea that the Senate candidate was up to the job, Tuesday night’s debate was a big loss. But rather than concede that fact, their crusade continued with the fury of an addict chasing a high.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

If you look at the situation Democrats are facing, it makes sense that they’re desperate to salvage their investments in Fetterman. There were three states — Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania — where Democrats believed they had a reasonable chance to flip a Senate seat from “R” to “D,” thus countering their likely losses elsewhere, in order to sustain Chuck Schumer’s razor-thin majority. But Ron Johnson appears to have weathered the storm in Wisconsin, and Tim Ryan has flopped in Ohio, leaving Pennsylvania as the Last Best Hope for Schumer.

The contest to fill the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey seemed winnable, in part because Democrats felt that the Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz was unqualified, damaged by a bruising GOP primary, and tainted by the endorsement of Donald Trump. Fetterman had a certain sort of “Regular Guy” persona that might appeal to some blue-collar voters who had gone for Trump, and so Democrats poured tens of millions of dollars into his campaign. But then, four days before the May primary, Fetterman’s campaign announced that he had suffered a stroke, reportedly caused by a heart problem that Fetterman had not previously disclosed. Exactly when the stroke happened, I’m not sure, but it was announced the Friday (May 13) before the primary on Tuesday (May 17), and the way the media reported it, you would have thought that they were interviewing Fetterman, when in fact they were quoting press statements issued by the campaign:

Fetterman says his wife Gisele spotted the symptoms and got him to the hospital where they removed the clot, reversed the stroke, and got his heart under control.
Fetterman says doctors believe he didn’t “suffer any cognitive damage” and that he’s “feeling much better.” . . .
“I’m well on my way to a full recovery. So I have a lot to be thankful for. They’re keeping me here for now for observation, but I should be out of here sometime soon. The doctors have assured me that I’ll be able to get back on the trail, but first I need to take a minute, get some rest, and recover. There’s so much at stake in this race, and I’m going to be ready for the hard fight ahead.”

See? “Fetterman says” — but to whom did he say these things? These weren’t actual quotes from an interview with Fetterman, who was undergoing surgery at a hospital at the time he allegedly “said” all this.

The media deliberately misled the public about the severity of Fetterman’s condition, which so damaged his capacity for speech that, if he’s not capable of forming coherent sentences now, after months of recovery, he sure as hell was in no shape to be giving these glib quotes to the media in May, when he was at death’s door.

There must be a word for this — ah, yes, “disinformation,” they call it.

So the media, by acting as stenographers for Fetterman’s campaign, were engaged in a cover-up, an attempt to conceal the true gravity of the candidate’s condition. And then when they couldn’t hide it anymore — when the televised debate showed everybody that Fetterman’s basically a walking vegetable — they went into denial mode, trying to pretend that he didn’t really do so bad, all things considered. Ironically, even Chuck Schumer seems to be living inside that bubble:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was caught on a hot mic telling President Biden Thursday that Democrats are “in danger” in at least one Senate race and admitting that the party is “going downhill” in the closely-watched Georgia contest.
“That seat, we’re, we’re in danger in that seat,” Schumer could be heard telling the president on the tarmac at Syracuse Hancock International Airport. It’s unclear to which seat Schumer was referring.
“But you know, it looks like the debate didn’t hurt too much in Pennsylvania as of today, so that’s good … basically, we’re picking up steam in Nevada,” Schumer continued, referencing Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman’s poor showing in his first and only debate with GOP opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Biden could be seen crossing his fingers as Schumer delivered his assessment that Fetterman’s debate performance didn’t end his chances. The president exchanged some words with Schumer as well but it was unclear what he was saying.
Seconds later, Schumer updated Biden on the state of play in the Peach State, where the latest average of polls from RealClearPolitics shows Republican Herschel Walker leading incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock by 0.6 percentage points.
“The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia. It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker,” a shocked-sounding Schumer told the president.

Indeed, things are “going downhill in Georgia,” but Schumer’s claim that “the debate didn’t hurt” Fetterman must be considered merely a repetition of the “spin” coming out of the media.

Just 12 more days, and we’ll see about that.

Category: Election, Pennsylvania, Senate

‘Adrenochrome-Rich Young Girls’

Posted on | October 27, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘Adrenochrome-Rich Young Girls’

“There’s only one source for this stuff,” Raoul Duke tells Doctor Gonzo in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, when his Samoan attorney offers him adrenochrome. “The adrenaline glands from a living human body. . . . It’s no good if you get it out of a corpse.”

Thompson insisted that Fear and Loathing was a novel, a work of fiction, although it is loosely based on two separate trips to Vegas he made with the notorious radical lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta. There’s a long story behind the inspiration, but the point is that what Thompson wrote about the origins of adrenochrome — that it involved murdering people to harvest their adrenaline glands — was false, a literary device he created for the sake of the novel, in the same way he invented the teenage runaway “Lucy,” whom Doctor Gonzo savagely molested.

OK, I don’t know that “Lucy” was entirely fictional. Oscar Acosta was a dangerous character, and in the doped-out hippie era in which Fear and Loathing was conceived, there were plenty of stray adolescents who’d do just about anything for their next high. So we can’t rule out the possibility that Oscar Acosta did sexually exploit an aspiring teenage artist at some point during his and Thompson’s Vegas escapade. However, people weren’t being murdered in 1970 for the sake of extracting adrenochrome from their organs, but this wild detail from Fear and Loathing somehow became newsworthy a few years ago because of QAnon.

It was alleged (if anyone actually takes wild tales from the fringes of the Internet seriously enough to call them “allegations”) that the depraved Hollywood elite were murdering children in Satanic rituals to use them as sources of adrenochrome. This claim was utterly crazy, of course. However depraved the Hollywood elite may be –and there’s no sinister misdeed of which I would doubt them capable — and even if they’ve turned to adrenochrome in search of psychedelic thrills, there’s no need to murder children to get it. After this crazy QAnon conspiracy theory surfaced, some reporter at the Daily Beast felt compelled to investigate and found that, while the FDA has not approved adrenochrome for medical use, it’s available to researchers for as little as $55 per dose.

What does this have to do with Joe Biden sniffing little girls?

Nothing, actually, but Ace of Spades started having fun with the adrenochrome conspiracy theory while mocking Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller’s fawning feature article about what a swell guy Biden is in one-on-one personal contact situations:

[Miller’s AP article] Still, Biden insists that time be built into his schedule so he can interact with people at his events — such encounters seem to energize him…

[Ace] I know, Zeke. It’s called “adrenochrome.” It’s what he’s sniffing for.
It excites all his tumescent glands.

… There can occasionally be awkward moments, too, such as when a presidential quip lands poorly, that in today’s partisan environment are often broadcast online by his political rivals.

Just his rivals. Only his rivals notice that he frequently speaks in cthonic tongues unknown to surface-dwelling man or begins to wander around in strange patterns as if he’s trying to communicate with invisible bees about where the closest adrenochrome-filled flower can be found. …

But [Biden’s “awkward moments”] are outnumbered by the positive interactions that have defined Biden’s career and tested the stamina of his aides.
“He outlasts us,” White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon told The Associated Press of Biden’s penchant for spending 30 minutes, an hour, sometimes longer shaking hands.

Wow, he spends a full half hour shaking hands, sniffing hair, rubbing his pelvis into the hindquarters of adrenochrome-rich young girls.

Classic AOSHQ humor there and he explains:

I’m making the joke not because I believe in any of that, but because 1, I think it’s kind of funny to just joke about “adrenochrome-rich children,” because 2, pearl-clutching faggots like Jake Tapper will freak out if you make Forbidden Jokes and I like upsetting pearl-clutching faggots like Jake Tapper.
Not to ruin the joke by explaining the joke, but a big part of humor is trying to find out what you’re Not Allowed to Joke About and then joking about it.

Which is what Hunter S. Thompson was doing, really. The idea of Lucy, a teenage religious freak from Montana who specializes in Barbra Streisand portraits, getting brutally banged by a gigantic Samoan high on adrenochrome — this was a Forbidden Joke in literature in 1971, although perhaps less so than today, because statutory rape was more-or-less commonplace during the Swinging Sixties Peace-and-Love Scene, which ended shortly after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas went to press, as radical feminists didn’t think statutory rape was very funny.

Was it really fiction, though? We’ll never know, because Oscar Acosta went missing shortly after Thompson’s novel was published, and Thompson never commented on the “Lucy” scenario before his death in 2005, but if “Lucy” was based on an actual person, she’d be about 70 years old now. Maybe the drugs permanently scrambled her memory of the savagery she endured in Las Vegas, and she probably has no idea that the fat Chicano who molested her in the Flamingo Hotel was anybody important. If she’s still alive, “Lucy” is probably a kindly old grandma, living in a cabin in Montana, and voting Republican.

Because the truth is always stranger than fiction . . .

Category: Ace of Spades, Conspiracy Theories, Fear. Loathing.

A Widespread Mental Disorder

Posted on | October 26, 2022 | 1 Comment

Look at that headline. Notice something strange? I call your attention to the phrase “Fetterman Supporters.” Who are these people? And while we’re at it — “Undecided Voters,” really? After watching that idiot (who was already an idiot, even before suffering a debilitating neurological trauma) babble incoherently on national TV, who could possibly still be “undecided” about whether Fetterman is fit for office?

WRAP: The toughest moments to watch from the Fetterman/Oz debate pic.twitter.com/Qea29oKlIE

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 26, 2022

This is what blind partisanship does to people. No matter who the Democrats nominate for any important office, that person is going to get 80% of the vote in Philadelphia. Hillary Clinton got 83% of the vote in Philadelphia and, while we’re on the topic of brain-damaged imbeciles, Joe Biden got 81% of the vote in Philadelphia. And because Philadelphia accounts for about 11% of the statewide vote in Pennsylvania, this lopsided 4-to-1 Democrat majority in Philadelphia almost always results in Democrats winning every statewide election in Pennsylvania.

In the 2018 midterms, about 5 million votes were cast in Pennsylvania. If the same number of votes are cast in this year’s election, and Fetterman gets at least 40% of the vote — which he certainly will — that will mean that 2 million citizens of Pennsylvania watched that debate, saw with their own two eyes the unmistakable evidence that Fetterman is mentally damaged, and voted for him anyway! Which tells you that Fetterman is far from alone in being mentally damaged. Nearly half the people in Pennsylvania are also suffering from neurological defects.

They’re called “Democrats.”

I have noticed that all those insisting that Fetterman won last night's debate are not tweeting clips of Fetterman from last night's debate.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 26, 2022

Category: Debates, Democrats, Pennsylvania, Senate

In The Mailbox: 10.25.22

Posted on | October 25, 2022 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: School Employees Let Armed Gunmen Enter the Building
EBL: GOING ON THE VIEW -Ted Cruz Goes Where Other Men Dare Not Enter, What Happened To Hu?, and NY Supremes Reverse Democrats’ Insane Covid Vacination Policy–Orders Back Pay for Fired Workers
Twitchy: Fetterman Freezes When Confronted With Past Fracking Comments, also, Sarah Jeong Annoyed By Wypipo Complaining About Crime
Louder With Crowder: ‘Fear never crossed my mind’
Vox Popoli: Bypassing NATO, How We Got Here, Suddenly Live, and Xi is in Complete Control
Stoic Observations: Opting Out Of Race

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Whatever Happened to the Antiwar Left?, also, The Left’s Taxpayer-Funded Voter Registration Machine
American Greatness: J6 Prosecutors Redouble Retaliation and Revenge, also, DeSantis Leads Crist Among Hispanic Voters
American Thinker: The 2022 Election is the Opening Salvo in the Repudiation of America’s Elites, The Real Reason Woman Who Killed Firefighter Went Uncharged, and Why Biden Went Far Left
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Iowa Gun Rights News
Babalu Blog: Cuba Archive publishes report exposing complicity between PAHO and Cuba’s dictatorship, ‘Rejection and mistrust’: Cuban dissidents react to U.S. humanitarian aid, and Food shortages and spiraling inflation bring Cuba to the brink of famine
BattleSwarm: Reminder: Texas Early Voting Started Yesterday, also, Cartels Buying Weapons From Mexican Military
Behind The Black: Researchers figure out how to make the Starlink constellation a GPS-type constellation, ISS dodges space junk from Russia’s November 2021 anti-satellite test, Red China’s Long March 5B rocket with new space station module is now at launchpad, and Pushback: Nationwide group fights university blacklisting of those who refuse COVID shots
Cafe Hayek: Note the Irony
CDR Salamander: Close Air Support Comes at You Fast…From Both Perspectives
Chicago Boyz: Isn’t It Simpler to Speak of Bourgeois Norms?
Da Tech Guy: Another front in the Boss Madigan scandals is something for Illinois voters to remember on Election Day, Any GOP Candidate Who Does Not Work This Into an Ad this cycle AND next is a fool, Report from Louisiana – Low Water, and A wake-up call in Red China
Don Surber: Biden’s war is in trouble, Republicans divorce the Chamber of Commerce ahead of the wave election, and Media misled Democrats
First Street Journal: What part of live and let live do the LGBTQ activists not understand?, also, Killadelphia: Black Lives Don’t Matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer * Updated! *
Gates Of Vienna: Raped and Thrown Down a Mineshaft, An Emergency in the Emergency Services, Score One For the Prophet, and The Diet of Worms
The Geller Report: NY Supremes reinstate all fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay, says the state violated rights
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Ganymede’s Shadow, and You Say That As If It Were A Bad Thing
Hollywood In Toto: The Original Stepfather Should Be a Halloween Tradition, Terrifier 2 Flips Bloody Bird to Woke Horror, and Avatar Sequel Ramps Up Pro-Environmental Messaging (Already)
The Lid: Biden’s Dementia Seems To Be Worsening
Legal Insurrection: Government Lab in Maryland Plans on Blending Monkeypox Strains, U. of Pittsburgh Student Govt Board Demand Resources to Survive Without Roe, 2016 Loser Hillary Clinton Warns GOP has Plan to Steal 2024 Election, and Biden is Bringing America to the Brink of a Diesel Fuel Supply Crisis
Nebraska Energy Observer: Americans and the Media, also, Amen!
Outkick: Podcaster Accuses LeBron James Of Cheating On His Wife, Brittney Griner’s Appeal Of 9-Year Prison Sentence Denied In Russian Court, LeBron James Plays The Victim Card, New York Yankees Haven’t Won a Pennant Since Brian Cashman Called Them a ‘Fully Operational Death Star’, and NBA Wants To Remind You That It Encourages Respect
Power Line: Ramirez strikes again, The Daily Chart: Americans to News Media—You Suck, and The Costs of Covid Shutdowns, Part 2
Shark Tank: Former Crist Colleagues Endorse DeSantis
Shot In The Dark: Twenty Years Ago Today, also, How’s The Campaign Going?
The Political Hat: Intangible License — Fungible Freedom, also, Oceans Are People Too According To Science
This Ain’t Hell: College employee/student thinks American flag is a “symbol of hatred”, State legislatures overturning their state’s fraudulent electoral votes? Why the horror!, and Divine Wind on this day
Transterrestrial Musings:
Victory Girls: Ted Cruz Says Appearance On The View Was “Ridiculous Fun”, also, Midterms 2022: North Carolina Senate Race
Volokh Conspiracy: Cleveland Police Use of Force Reports Are Generally Public Records, Available to the Public
Watts Up With That: Europe Importing $35.77 Billion of Solar Panels – And they Still Have an Energy Crisis, also, Goldman Sachs’ Jeff Currie: ‘$3.8 Trillion of Investment in Renewables Moved Fossil Fuels from 82% to 81% of Overall Energy Consumption’ in 10 Years
Weasel Zippers: AP Says “Child Mutilation” Is Now “Gender-Affirming Surgery”, Democrats Snub Sanctions On Iran For Human Rights Abuses, Florida Dem Senate Nominee Val Demings Says It’s Harder To Be a Politician Than a Police Officer, and Pelosi’s Genius Way To Stop Inflation: Don’t Talk About It
The Federalist: It’s Time To Save Literature From The Woke Publishing Industry, Meet The Chinese ‘Taylor Swift’, Judge Strikes Biden DOJ’s ‘Burdensome’ Bully Tactics Against Opponents Of Trans Surgeries For Kids, and Democrats: The Only Way To Save Democracy Is One-Party Rule
Mark Steyn: (I’ve Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo, New Boss, Same Old Same Old, and The Absence of Normality

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Category: Linkagery

St. Crispin’s Day: ‘If We Are Mark’d to Die, We Are Enough to Do Our Country Loss’

Posted on | October 25, 2022 | 1 Comment

Great victories in warfare require great risk. Even if a commander has the numerical odds in his favor, the fortunes of war are always uncertain, and there is therefore danger in undertaking any offensive operation. Certainly, history affords many examples of battles where the attacking force had every advantage, and yet the troops in the vanguard suffered shocking casualties, as in Operation Overlord, where the Americans had to fight like hell to gain a foothold at Omaha Beach, to say nothing of the paratroopers killed in the airborne operations that preceded the D-Day landings. A wise commander must be reasonably cautious, but he cannot be too risk-averse, or else he would never take the calculated gambles necessary to obtain victory. Indeed, in the example of D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower had to roll the dice to order the landings under less-than-ideal weather conditions, or else postpone the invasion.

Speaking of military expeditions to northern France, Henry V’s adventures in 1415 demonstrated a courage that rings through the ages. It was on this day — October 25, St. Crispin’s Day — that Henry’s English army, outnumbered 2-to-1 by the French, achieved their memorable victory at Agincourt. The king’s famous pre-battle soliloquy by Shakespeare deserves a repetition on this occasion:

WESTMORLAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

KING. What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin, Westmorland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

“The fewer men, the greater share of honour” — that’s the spirit! The English yeomanry did themselves proud on that St. Crispin’s Day:

The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. The list of casualties, one historian has noted, “read like a roll call of the military and political leaders of the past generation”. Among them were 90–120 great lords and bannerets killed, including three dukes (Alençon, Bar and Brabant), nine counts (Blâmont, Dreux, Fauquembergue, Grandpré, Marle, Nevers, Roucy, Vaucourt, Vaudémont) and one viscount (Puisaye), also an archbishop. . . . According to the heralds, 3,069 knights and squires were killed, while at least 2,600 more corpses were found without coats of arms to identify them. Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility was annihilated.

The number of French killed was equal to the entire size of Henry’s army! The French never really recovered the prestige they lost at Agincourt, and why this great defeat? Because Henry was willing to take the risk of fighting against the odds. Therefore truly, Oct. 25 “shall ne’er go by . . . to the ending of the world,” that we do not stop to recall the courageous feats of King Henry V and his “band of brothers.”

Category: History

Ted Cruz Schools ‘The View’

Posted on | October 25, 2022 | 1 Comment

Your reminder that Ted Cruz was a national debating champ, and got degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called out The View on Monday for alleged hypocrisy, claiming the hosts don’t pressure Democratic election deniers to explain themselves while routinely doing so to Republicans. He cited 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams as examples.
“There are a lot of folks in the media that try to, any time a Republican is in front of a TV camera, try to say, ‘The election was fair and square and legitimate.’ You know who y’all don’t do that to? You don’t do it to Hillary Clinton, who stood up and said, ‘Trump stole the election.’ Or Stacey Abrams, who said that the election was stolen. They sat here and said it was illegitimate,” Cruz unleashed on the hosts.
“And it was,” host Whoopi Goldberg told him.
“We may not like when Republicans win, but we don’t go, and we don’t storm,” she claimed.
A shocked Cruz asked, “Did I miss an entire year of Antifa riots where cities across this country were burning?”
“I don’t know what an Antifa riot is,” Goldberg responded.
“Your position is the Left doesn’t engage in violence? Really?” the senator asked.
An aggravated Goldberg then said, “You just accused us of doing something we didn’t do.”
“You were fine with [Clinton] saying it was illegitimate,” Cruz continued, pulling out notes of Clinton and Abrams’s statements on the program.

What was beautiful about this was that, while Cruz had gone to the trouble of bringing prepared notes, so he could quote verbatim, the hostesses were seemingly unprepared for his arguments.

“I don’t know what an Antifa riot is.”

The phrase to describe this is “willful ignorance.” If I said to you, for example, “I don’t know what a racist is,” you would either doubt my sincerity or be dismayed by my ignorance. The phenomenon Cruz termed “an entire year of Antifa riots” has been widely criticized and is the subject of a recent book, Fiery But Mostly Peaceful: The 2020 Riots and the Gaslighting of America by Julio Rojas. So, what are we to presume when Whoopi Goldberg says, “I don’t know what an Antifa riot is”?

Either she is lying — what, you didn’t notice when Antifa took over several city blocks in Seattle as an “autonomous zone”? — or else she has deliberately avoided any media that is critical of Antifa. Neither interpretation is flattering to Goldberg who, as the co-host of a daily show devoted to politics, ought to be reading widely as preparation for her job.

The phrase “Antifa riot” should not mystify her, any more than the phrase “structural racism” should not mystify any conservative in journalism. While I don’t own a copy of Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Anti-Racist or Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, I’m familiar enough with their arguments that I would not be caught flatfooted if, in a televised debate, a liberal cited these authors and their arguments.

In point of fact, Antifa violence didn’t begin in 2020, but had been going on for years, as for example the 2017 Berkeley riot, which came just weeks after Antifa rioted in D.C. during Trump’s inauguration.

“I don’t know what an Antifa riot is” — well, if you don’t, ma’am, it would behoove you to find out. Or else be thought an idiot.

Category: Media Bias, Ted Cruz

In The Mailbox: 10.24.22

Posted on | October 24, 2022 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Counting of ballots has begun in Nye County (a pox on early voting and mail-in ballots, seriously) which gets me out of the house a few days a week and gives me some extra pocket money for the next few weeks.
Silicon Valley delenda est.