Rule 5 Sunday: A Death Goddess For Your Consideration

Posted on | February 15, 2021 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: A Death Goddess For Your Consideration

Perhaps death goddess isn’t the right term, but in Fate/Grand Order Scathach is the guardian of the Land of Shadows, a Celtic analog to Ereshkigal in Sumerian mythology, and everybody calls Eresh a death goddess, so…anyway, here she is in the kitchen fixing some chocolate for Valentine’s Day. Very dark chocolates. Very bitter.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Her chocolates, like her legendary spear, go straight to the heart.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick Of The Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1260, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

Animal Magnetism: Rule 5 Animal Farm Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Bridget Moynahan, Das Rheingold, News Of The World (Review), Ernani, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Mary Wilson RIP, Un Ballo In Maschera, Gina Carano, Akhnaten, Les Troyens, Die Walkure, and MAGA MMA.

A View From The Beach: Shamelessly Furiously MacGyvering – Levy Tran, ASMFC Seeks Striped Bass Advice, Fish Pic Friday – Taylor Harrell, Disney Princess Cancelled for Godwin’s Law Violation, Thursday Tanlines, Your Wednesday Wetness, Rockfish in the News, Because It’s Different When They Do It, Shaking, Motoring in Monday and Palm Sunday.

Proof Positive’s Vintage Babe of the Week is Genevieve Page.

Thanks to everyone for the luscious linkagery!

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
Shop Sex & Sensuality Gifts
a

Category: Rule 5

Get Up And Fight

Posted on | February 14, 2021 | Comments Off on Get Up And Fight

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

I’m not quite to Ace levels of rage yet, but I’m becoming increasingly pissed off at the defeatist moaners who think the Democrats have pulled off their October Revolution and it’s all over. “The Uniparty has won,” they whine. “There’s nothing we can do.” Yes, we should all sit quietly in our houses, waiting for the blue-caps to come along and haul us off to the Alaskan death camps for being associated with friends of the supporters of the badthinking White Supremacist RAAAAACIST homophobic Bad Orange Man.

FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

All the horrible things the Democrats want to do are definitely going to happen if you sit at home and moan about what a useless bunch of sellouts the Republicans are, or if you go off trying to make the Libertarians or the Populists a thing. The LP is not going to happen. They’ve been around all my life and all they’ve managed to accomplish is…nothing. The best-known, most successful libertarians have been Republicans like Ron Paul and his son Rand. As Colonel Schlichter points out, the infrastructure of the GOP is sitting right there waiting for Trump’s supporters to take over and use it to support America First candidates. There are a ton of local party organizations dying for lack of volunteers – and I don’t mean the worthless fucks who show up for the party caucuses and then vanish for the next four years. Get involved. Find your local GOP party organization, become a precinct officer and/or delegate, and get to work. Get your friends involved too. The more of you that are involved, the more impact you’re going to have and the more you can get done. It’s not that damn hard. If some autistic kid from 4chan can do it, you can too.
If there is no active local GOP party organization? Find your county or state party org and start building one. Uncle Bob produced a how-to guide for building your own political machine back when he was a Democrat, and while some of it is dated, the basics are still sound.

Too old/sick/overworked to help rebuild the GOP to be an America First party? Stop contributing to the national party organizations. Do your homework and find local candidates who support the MAGA agenda, or who at least are opposed to the left-wing Democrat Party crazy. Not One Red Cent was a good idea in the Tea Party days, and it’s an even better one now. Speaking of the Tea Party, don’t send money to PACs claiming to support the MAGA agenda. This is one of the things that killed the Tea Party movement – a bunch of grifters latching onto it and draining off vital cash & volunteers to support themselves. Support state and county party orgs and candidates instead. Talk to people. Get them active.

One of the big reasons for concentrating on the state and local GOP organizations, especially if you live in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, & Wisconsin, is to make sure the legislatures and state offices are firmly in the grasp of the GOP so that the kind of crap that was pulled last fall doesn’t happen again. Push your local state reps and senators on voting security, and if they show indications of being squishy on the issue, follow Don Surber’s advice – primary them and purge them. We have to root out the RINOs from the party at all levels, or we’re going to continue getting screwed by the likes of Liz Cheney, Ben Sasse, Nikki Haley, whose loyalties are to the traitors at the Chamber of Commerce first and us somewhere in 10,000th place. Hang their donations from corporate PACs around their necks and beat them on the ground – because as we all should know by now, money alone doesn’t win elections, and all of these people need to relearn that lesson. Especially the Murder Turtle.

Now get up and fight.

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Congress, Don Surber, Donald Trump, Republicans

FMJRA 2.0: Loser

Posted on | February 14, 2021 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Loser

— compiled by Wombat-socho

SOTD: For Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the DC Democrats.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Rule 5 Sunday: Hedley Lamarr Presents The Teutonic Titwillow, Lili von Shtupp!
Harsh Brutus
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Former GOP Staffer Arrested in Truly Disturbing Child Pornography Case
EBL
Dark Brightness

Catch-and-Release: Career Criminal Arrested in Deadly San Francisco Crash
The Pirate’s Cove
The Political Hat
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: White Collar Holler
Harsh Brutus
EBL
A View From The Beach

Catch-and-Release: How Liberals Destroyed Law and Order in California
Bacon Time
EBL
357 Magnum

‘Family Demands Answers’
Animal Magnetism
EBL
357 Magnum

YouTuber Wins Darwin Award
Bacon Time
Harsh Brutus
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.08.21
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

More Proof America Is Racist?
BattleSwarm Blog
Bacon Time
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.10.21
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

The Question of Motive
EBL
A View From The Beach

‘Fame Whore’ Update: Hurry Up, Guys, Julia Allison Is Available Again
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.11.21 (Morning Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

In The Mailbox: 02.12.21
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum
Proof Positive

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Join Amazon Prime Music – 30-day Free Trial
Kindle Unlimited Membership Plans
Try Prime Wardrobe

Category: FMJRA Award

N.Y. Times Doxxes Scott Alexander Because They Hate Free Speech

Posted on | February 14, 2021 | Comments Off on N.Y. Times Doxxes Scott Alexander Because They Hate Free Speech

Once upon a time — young people may imagine that I’m speaking of an antique, mythical era — liberals believed in the First Amendment.

Or at least, that’s what liberals said at the time.

Liberals once insisted that the First Amendment protected everything from the right of Communists to teach in public schools to the right of pornographers to produce films of women getting gang-raped. If you wanted to burn the flag? Cool — the First Amendment protected that “free speech,” too, according to liberals.

Liberals are still in favor of Communism, flag-burning and pornography (some things never change), but the kind of First Amendment absolutism that once characterized liberalism (e.g., the ACLU insisting Nazis had a right to march through Jewish neighborhoods) is long gone.

Destroying anonymity on the Internet for bloggers who stray outside the prescribed lines of acceptable opinion was a project undertaken last year by Cade Metz of the New York Times when he decided to dox the proprietor of Slate Star Codex (SSC). When Metz contacted the (inarguably brilliant) blogger known as Scott Alexander, the SSC proprietor immediately shuttered the blog and put up a post explaining what the New York Times was doing, i.e., trying to destroy his private life in order to punish him for allowing free discussion on his site.

Why? Because Slate Star Codex had become influential among certain computer geeks and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.

See, that’s the thing about Internet anonymity — you can create a blog or a Twitter account using a pseudonym to say whatever you want, and this probably won’t get you in trouble unless you are so good at it that you attract a following and having real influence on public opinion, in a way disapproved by the liberal Thought Police. People like Oliver Darcy of CNN work more or less full-time to dox conservatives, and this is to say nothing of the SPLC’s massive research staff, which specializes in what Laird Wilcox called the “links-and-ties” smear method.

After briefly summarizing some of the distortions in the New York Times attack on him, Scott Alexander says:

They further presented a more general case that I am six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-style linked to right-wing / pro-Trump figures in Silicon Valley like Peter Thiel. This is true — I can think of a friend of mine who also knows Peter Thiel. In fact, I met Peter Thiel once, kind of unexpectedly, at a party, long before Trump was in the news, and exchanged about two sentences of conversation with him (I don’t think he had the slightest idea who I was, nor was there any reason he should have). I have never personally met the other right-wing figures named in the article. I wrote a 30,000 word condemnation of one of them on my blog a few years ago, and we have since had some email exchanges about to what degree this was unfair. I received a sympathetic email from another of them about the Times article. Others I have had literally no contact with. Again, it would not surprise me if I was a few degrees of social separation from some of these people. I don’t feel like this means I have done anything wrong, and I assume most people are a few degrees of social separation away from a Republican or Trump supporter. I myself am a Democrat, voted Warren (IIRC) in the primary, and Biden in the general.

This “six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon” game of trying to portray someone as connected to people with whom they have no actual connection is, really, the essence of what the Left calls “McCarthyism.” The thing is, Joe McCarthy was fundamentally correct about Communist infiltration of the U.S. government, as M. Stanton Evans demonstrated. So it has never been my habit to accuse liberals of “McCarthyism,” which would wrongly imply my disapproval of Senator McCarthy. But I digress . . .

What is so wrongheaded about the “links-and-ties” smear is the way it attempts to blame people for things they didn’t say or do, because of their “association” (however casual) with others. For example, I first met Kevin DeAnna back around 2007 when he was a Leadership Institute staffer, and often showed up at libertarian events in D.C. At the time, there was a general disgust among right-wingers with the failures of the Bush administration, failures that were blamed on “neoconservatives,” and the organizational focus for many of those activists was the GOP presidential campaign of Ron Paul. I knew Kevin and, because the Thought Police had identified me as a dangerous Wrongthinker, there was a certain natural friendship. We’d see each other at events and chat briefly, but I honestly had no idea what Kevin was up to behind the scenes.

Then a couple of years ago, Kevin’s ex-girlfriend, Katie McHugh (someone I met a few times at CPAC) decided she was a liberal and started dumping emails and everything else into the lap of the SPLC, and I was like, “Whoa!” Kevin had gone off into some really crazy neo-Odinist pagan thing called “Wolves of Vinland,” among much else. The point of this long digression is that if Kevin Deanna had sought my advice, certainly I would have counseled against what he did, and yet my “association” with him could be used by dishonest smear artists to imply that I was somehow complicit in all Kevin’s ill-advised adventures.

This is what the New York Times is doing to Scott Alexander. Slate Star Codex became a hub for the so-called “Rationalist” community, some members of which are skeptical about the mindless “diversity is our strength” nonsense spewed by Social Justice Warriors (SJWs). Despite the fact that Scott had specifically condemned the self-declared “reactionary” faction of Rationalist community (e.g., Mencius Moldbug and Michael Anissimov), the Times nonetheless tries to depict Scott as sympathetic to (or at least, tolerant of) reactionary Rationalism.

This is not merely false, but completely dishonest.

It’s even more dishonest than if the SPLC tried to claim I was down for Kevin DeAnna’s “Wolves of Vinland” agenda, because while at least DeAnna I are both generally right-wing, Scott Alexander is a liberal who voted for Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 primaries. The main difference between Scott Alexander and the New York Times is that Scott believes “Reactionary” ideas are best countered by free discussion, whereas the New York Times is pursuing a Stalinist agenda of silencing dissent.

Here’s the thing: If your political beliefs cannot withstand criticism — if open discussion is an existential threat to your ideology — you cannot solve this problem by attempting to silence your critics. You can send a Solzhenitsyn to the gulag, but truth always ultimately wins.

Liberals seem determined to learn this lesson the hard way. “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

More at Instapundit.

UPDATE: I’m waiting for Ed Driscoll to declare that WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH MATTHEW YGLESIAS IS A VOICE OF SANITY, but in the meantime, I’ll quote Yglesias observing that the New York Times article “is structured as a kind of syllogism”:

Scott Alexander’s blog is popular with some influential Silicon Valley people.
Scott Alexander has done posts that espouse views on race or gender that progressives disapprove of.
THEREFORE, Silicon Valley is a hotbed of racism and sexism.

This is “specious,” as Yglesias says. What is really going on here? Perhaps it’s that Cade Metz, an old white guy who works for an organization where old white guys are now routinely getting purged by newsroom mobs of “woke” young staffers, feels that it is unfair for someone like Scott Alexander to be able to write without fear of SJW reprisal.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

In the comments over there, a troll is calling me — me! — a “cuckservative”! It’s not just the ignorance of this insult that disturbs me, but the ingratitude. There are people who actually know what harms I’ve suffered for daring to hold the right flank, as it were, for 20 years, and I would expect them to defend my honor, so that it would never be necessary for me to speak in my own defense. Who was it, after all, who finally flushed LGF’s Charles Johnson out into the open, huh? For that feat alone, you might suppose people would be eternally grateful to me, but I suppose one ought not expect gratitude in politics.

Category: New York Times

Impeachment 2.0 Farce Is Over

Posted on | February 13, 2021 | Comments Off on Impeachment 2.0 Farce Is Over

The Democrats spent the past week staging a Stalinist show trial in the Senate, which came to a predictable end today, when they failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority for conviction. Our President — you know, the guy who actually won the election — issued this statement:

This has been yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our Country. No president has ever gone through anything like it, and it continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few months ago.
I also want to convey my gratitude to the millions of decent, hardworking, law-abiding, God-and-Country loving citizens who have bravely supported these important principles in these very difficult and challenging times.
Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun. In the months ahead I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people. There has never been anything like it!
We have so much work ahead of us, and soon we will emerge with a vision for a bright, radiant, and limitless American future.
Together there is nothing we cannot accomplish.
We remain one People, one family, one glorious nation under God, and it’s our responsibility to preserve this magnificent inheritance for our children and for generations of Americans to come.
May God bless all of you, and may God forever bless the United States of America.

Here is a fact that should not be forgotten: 61% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen, and a majority of Americans don’t believe anyone should be punished for saying they believe it was stolen. What Democrats were doing in this impeachment was an attempt to criminalize dissent, to make it a “high crime and misdemeanor” for President Trump to say what most Republicans believe. If it’s “inciting insurrection” to say Democrats stole the election for Biden, then they’re going to have to put a lot of us in prison. And they might as well start with me.

Category: Donald Trump, Senate

The Lincoln Project Implodes

Posted on | February 13, 2021 | Comments Off on The Lincoln Project Implodes

Once the “useful idiots” of #NeverTrump were no longer useful to their Establishment benefactors — once Trump was vanquished, and the rationale of #NeverTrump was over — suddenly the “open secret” of John Weaver’s predatory homosexual behavior became newsworthy.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Everything is now collapsing in #NeverTrump land, where the real scandal was how the founders used the reported $90 million they collected as their own personal piggy bank, paying their own consulting firms far more than was ever spent on actual campaign operations.

The exit of creepy Steve Schmidt from the Lincoln Project was particularly weird. Schmidt has always exuded an aura of sadism, as if he were restraining an urge to inflict violence on others. During his numerous appearances on MSNBC, Schmidt’s unblinking emotionless stare — his “flat affect,” as a psychologist would say — seemed either a tough-guy pose calculated to intimidate others or, if genuine, the mannerisms of a cold-blooded killer. Steve Schmidt struck me as a man thoroughly convinced of his own inherent righteousness, and such personalities are dangerous. The apparent absence of self-doubt, a lack of awareness of one’s own flaws and weaknesses, is always a troubling trait.

From the Wikipedia entry on Schmidt:

Schmidt voiced his support for gay rights at a meeting of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican group. He said: “I just wanted to take a second to come by and pay my respect and the campaign’s respect to your organization and to your group. Your organization is an important one in the fabric of our party.”
Schmidt said about his lesbian sister and her life partner: “On a personal level, my sister and her partner are an important part of my life and our children’s life. I admire your group and your organization and I encourage you to keep fighting for what you believe in because the day is going to come.”

This is rather interesting, and perhaps relevant, now that Schmidt has made his Lincoln Project exit by telling a tale of being molested at summer camp and, bizarrely, announcing his conversion to Judaism.

And people said I was crazy?

Schmidt went from being de facto manager of a Republican presidential campaign at age 38 to being an ex-Republican pariah at age 50 and yet seems to think he can still count this in the “win” column by (a) telling his adolescent summer-camp story and (b) playing the Jew card.

See, if you criticize Schmidt — an ex-Catholic gentile — now he can turn around and accuse you of anti-Semitism. “Political strategist”!

Ed Driscoll has a rundown of the rats fleeing the Lincoln Project’s sinking ship, and I commend this brief summary from Professor Reynolds:

Remember, the Lincoln Project was supposedly a bastion of decency fighting against the depraved Donald Trump. Also, as with Harvey Weinstein, everyone knew and everyone kept quiet until the usefulness of keeping quiet ended. Because decency!

“Heh,” indeed.

From @politico, a headline that has been coming a long time: 'The Lincoln Project implodes amid infighting and scandal.' https://t.co/Yc6avMYOQR

— Byron York (@ByronYork) February 13, 2021

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! My colleagues John Hoge, Dianna Deeley and I discussed this (and much other news of the week) Saturday night on The Other Podcast.

Category: Republicans, Scandal

In The Mailbox: 02.12.21

Posted on | February 13, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.12.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

First peak of tax season is over, so I should be able to return to a somewhat normal schedule of posting these. Usual deadlines for the usual weekend linkagery.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.