This Was Probably Inevitable
Posted on | August 7, 2019 | 1 Comment
“Dark psychic forces,” you might say:
A group of supporters of 2020 White House hopeful and Marianne Williamson has put together an “occult task force” in support of the spiritual guru; however, her campaign is none too pleased about the move.
In an interview with the Washington Post, the anonymous individual heading up the “task force” told the Jeff-Bezos owned newspaper that 13 witches, chaos magicians, and energy workers performed “gestures” in an effort to get Williamson more speaking time during Tuesday’s Democrat presidential primary debate in Detriot, Michigan.
“The whole orb gang community is tapping into the power of memes to reflect back on, and multiply, the sort of pulsing undercurrents of our collective unconscious,” the person emailed the Post. According to the publication, Williamson supporters refer to themselves as the “orb gang,” who share memes of the candidate on social media.
Basing such a story on an anonymous email? Professional Journalism!
Leaving aside metaphysical speculation about weird occult phenomena, let’s talk real politics: The Democratic National Committee has set a deadline of Aug. 28 for presidential candidates to qualify for the next round of debates in September. One of the criteria is having 130,000 unique donors and, as of 8 p.m., Marianne Williamson was at 113,521. That means she needs to get 16,479 new donors in the next three weeks.
Even a contribution of one dollar counts toward that total.
The Hate They Create: Democrats Sow the Wind, and Reap the Whirlwind
Posted on | August 7, 2019 | Comments Off on The Hate They Create: Democrats Sow the Wind, and Reap the Whirlwind
Daniel Greenfield explains at Front Page:
Identity politics was born out of an effort by leftist activists to identify and mobilize potential supporters by breaking down a sense of national solidarity along the lines of group victimhood. Every act of terror breaks down national solidarity further and strengthens the appeals to race over nationality.
Lessons about tolerance, white privilege and racial consciousness don’t end racism. They spread it.
Keep in mind that America’s public school system is an institution wholly controlled by the Democrats, who collect millions in contributions annually from teachers unions. Because a college diploma is a prerequisite to employment by the public school system, the Left’s control of university campuses ensures that all teachers are indoctrinated with left-wing ideology. That’s why the K-12 curriculum is no longer about teaching children important facts and useful skills; rather, it is about training children to be “progressive” activists.
Public schools are now dedicated to teaching children to hate Christianity, to hate their parents, to hate capitalism — to hate America — and a crucial part of this curriculum is systematic indoctrination about race, gender and sexuality: White heterosexual males are evil!
Having been taught (at taxpayer expense) that their lives are worthless, young white males internalize a suicidal sense of self-hatred, and then everyone acts surprised when some pathetic young loser decides that it would be cool to end his life with a mass-murder rampage.
Next time one of these massacres happens, will anyone in the media mention the role of public education in turning boys into killers? No, of course not, because the media is part of the same system.
(Hat-tip: J.J. Sefton at AOSHQ.)
Police in Canada Arrest #WaxMyBalls Tranny Jonathan ‘Jessica’ Yaniv
Posted on | August 7, 2019 | 1 Comment
Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv (@trustednerd on Twitter) has become internationally notorious for his efforts to force women who run waxing services for women to do their thing on his . . . uh, thing.
Because of Canada’s “human rights” recognition of transgenderism, Yaniv has been able to claim he is a victim of illegal discrimination — a warning of what kind of insanity America would unleash if we similarly recognize transgender rights. Yaniv’s sick behavior, and his totalitarian project of silencing critics of transgender activism like Meghan Murphy, are suggestive of a psychopathic personality. There have also been accusations that Yaniv is a pedophile, and at least one young woman says she has reported to police that Yaniv engaged in inappropriate online conversations with her when she was a minor.
Attempts to end the Yaniv menace took an interesting new turn this week when, during an online video conversation with Blaire White, Jonathan/ “Jessica” brandished a stun gun:
Jessica Yaniv, a transgender B.C. woman whose complaints over being refused intimate waxing services sparked wide controversy, was arrested Monday, apparently for brandishing a prohibited weapon during an online debate.
Yaniv said officers showed up at her apartment in Langley, B.C., shortly after the YouTube debate on transgender activism ended. The officers asked her about a stun gun, she said.
“About three minutes after (the broadcast ended), I have RCMP showing up at my door and putting me into cuffs saying I have a prohibited weapon,” she said in an interview. . . .
The RCMP detachment in Langley confirmed an arrest and search of a home in the area but could not confirm specific details, charges, timelines or named individuals, said Cpl. Craig Van Herk.
He said the RCMP received information and based on it officers have “an open investigation, an active and ongoing investigation.”
Van Herk would not confirm or deny the charges or the circumstances behind them or what Yaniv said was the reason for the RCMP’s return to her apartment.
Neighbours of Yaniv confirmed seeing her being taken away in handcuffs Monday and Yaniv did appear that day, side-by-side in a YouTube conversation with Blaire White, a U.S.-based transgender woman whose videos often deal with transgender issues.
During the heated YouTube debate, viewed by the Post, White harshly criticized Yaniv’s tactics, actions and appearance and Yaniv said she faces harassment and threats because of the prominence of her trans activism.
“I have to carry pepper spray with me because people are so freaking violent over here,” Yaniv said during the debate.
She then stood up from her seat in front of her computer, rummaged around inside her apartment for a moment before returning.
“I should not have to literally have something like this,” she said. “I don’t need to be scared in my own house.” She then held up a stun gun and zapped it towards the camera, emitting a flash and a crackle.
“Which is illegal in Canada. Just sayin,” she added.
A contemptuous attitude toward laws — taking pleasure in defying legal restrictions — is typical of sociopaths. Just sayin’ . . .
When Yaniv isn't busy petitioning for the permission to host naked child pool parties and asking 14yos for pictures of their used menstrual products, Yaniv is suing local beauty pageants. I bet you can guess why. #waxmyballs
My latest for @humanevents ->
https://t.co/rMReXVQmuj— Celine D. Ryan (@celinedryan) July 28, 2019
In The Mailbox: 08.07.19 (Morning Edition)
Posted on | August 7, 2019 | 1 Comment
— compiled by Wombat-socho
OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Welcome To The Panopticon
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #705 (and from last week, Episode #698)
EBL: The Scottish Play
Twitchy: Watch Weasel Joaquin Castro Squirm When MSNBC’s Willie Geist Backs Him Into An Accountability Corner
Louder With Crowder: Democratic Socialists Of America Demonstrate How To Become Human Weiners, also, Alleged Transgender Predator “Jessica” Yaniv Busted by RCMP
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Complete Lack Of Diversity In Downhill Mountain Biking
American Greatness: Trump Supporters Spend A Day Picking Up Trash In West Baltimore, also, Igniting Civil War
American Power: What’s Really Behind The “White Supremacy” Terrorism Scare
American Thinker: Democrats Are The Ones Who Have Been Inciting Violence Against Their Political Opponents
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Bad Advice News
Babalu Blog: Trump Freezes Venezuelan Assets In U.S., Rick Scott Calls For Naval Blockade Of Oil To Cuba
BattleSwarm: The Great Baltimore Cleanup
Camp of the Saints: On Tribes, Identity Politics, & Misfits
CDR Salamander: How Many Votes Does A Military Budget Buy?
Da Tech Guy: Five Unlinked Thoughts Under The Fedora, also, Report From Louisiana – Back To School
Don Surber: ABC Should Drop WSB-TV
Dustbury: Test Failed
First Street Journal: A Neo-Conservative At The Washington Post?
The Geller Report: Crushing Truth – Every American Mass Shooter In 2019, also, CNN’s Jake Tapper Yelps After Rashida Tlaib Rips Into Him
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Interesting Times In Hong Kong
Hollywood In Toto: Paul Rodriguez – A Closet Trump Supporter Who Rejects The Wall
Joe For America: Obama Calls For All-Out Gun Confiscation, Blames “White Supremacist” Trump For Mass Shootings
JustOneMinute: The Uneasy Compromise Of Campaign Finance Disclosure Is Ruptured
Legal Insurrection: Democrats Fundraising Off Dayton & El Paso Shootings, also, David Gibson Accuses Oberlin Of Dragging Out Litigation “Because They Know I’m Dying Of Cancer”
The PanAm Post: Should a College Degree Be Required For Those Wishing To Preside Over A Country?
Power Line: WaPo Glibly Dismisses Mental Illness As Cause Of Mass Shootings, also, A Do-Over At The NYT
Shark Tank: Florida’s Daily Political Read For 8/6
Shot In The Dark: Comrades In Caricature
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Yadda Yadda Yadda
The Political Hat: The Wane of Monoculturalism
This Ain’t Hell: What A Tangled Web – Act II Scene 3, also, US/Uruguay Tit For Tat
Victory Girls: Red Flag Laws & Due Process Concerns
Volokh Conspiracy: Sarah Palin’s Libel Case Against The NY Times Can Go Forward
Weasel Zippers: Leftards Protest At Injured Mitch McConnell’s House, Encourage People To Stab Him In The Heart, also, Kamala Harris Suggests She’d Send Cops To Homes To Confiscate Firearms
Megan McArdle: If Conservatives Want To Keep Their Guns, They’re Going To Have To Find A Way To Stop Mass Shootings
Mark Steyn: Shaving Away Profits
DaTechGuy 2.0
Posted on | August 7, 2019 | 1 Comment
Longtime blog buddy Pete Da Tech Guy is rattling the tip jar to fund a site upgrade, and I just threw in a few bucks, because I owe him. Pete and I go back nearly 10 years. During the Great LGF Blog War of September 2009, when Charles Johnson decided to “expose” me as a racist — a long, long story — Da Tech Guy came to my defense, even though we’d never met. When you’re in the middle of a fight for survival like that, you can only pray for deliverance and thank God for every shot fired in your defense.
A few months later, when Scott Brown ran for the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, I took a train to Boston and Pete drove down from Fitchburg to pick me up at the station and — ZOOM! — off we went on the campaign trail for the one of the wildest weeks of my life. We ended that week in a ballroom for the Brown victory party, at which Pamela Geller and Ace of Spades joined us in the front row of the press section, with the mainstream media assigned to the rear rows.
It was during that trip that I first began wearing a fedora, borrowing one from Pete, and so I owe him for that sartorial trademark, too.
Anyway, Professor Glenn Reynolds hit Pete’s tip jar last night, and so I felt obliged to do my part in helping fund his upgrade.
Dayton Mass Murderer Had More Red Flags Than a May Day Parade in Beijing
Posted on | August 6, 2019 | 1 Comment
While the media have spent the past 72 hours screeching about “white supremacy” and blaming Donald Trump for the El Paso massacre, the facts emerging about the mass murderer in Dayton, Ohio, have presented a classic case of missed warning signs of dangerous craziness:
The man who killed nine people Sunday morning in Dayton’s Oregon District was once kicked out of Bellbrook High School for making a list of girls he wanted to kill, the Dayton Daily News learned in interviews with former classmates and school administrators.
Connor Betts, 24, was shot and killed by Dayton police, ending a brief yet deadly rampage in which he killed his sister, eight others and injured 27. . . .
“This isn’t a mystery to me,” said one middle school classmate. “I’m furious.”
The classmate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the shooter once said he fantasized about tying her up and slitting her throat. The fetish was so macabre that even the shooter admitted he was scared of his thoughts, the woman recalled him saying.
“He knew it wasn’t normal,” the woman said about the decade-old conversation. “He and I talked at length about him getting help.”
The woman said she and her parents told Bellbrook police about the bizarre admission, but the woman said she felt she wasn’t taken seriously, despite the would-be shooter including her on a hit list. . . .
“I think this is less of a hate crime and more of an ‘I hate everybody’ crime,” [former high-school classmate Demoy] Howell said. “I honestly feel more comfortable now knowing that he’s gone.”
More about the killer’s high-school “hit list”:
High school classmates of the gunman who killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, say he was suspended for compiling a “hit list” of those he wanted to kill and a “rape list” of girls he wanted to sexually assault.
The accounts by two former classmates emerged after police said there was nothing in the background of 24-year-old Connor Betts that would have prevented him from purchasing the .223-caliber rifle with extended ammunition magazines that he used to open fire outside a crowded bar. Police on patrol in the entertainment district fatally shot him less than a minute later.
Both former classmates told The Associated Press that Betts was suspended during their junior year at suburban Bellbrook High School after a hit list was found scrawled in a school bathroom. That followed an earlier suspension after Betts came to school with a list of female students he wanted to sexually assault, according to the two classmates, a man and a woman who are both now 24 and spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern they might face harassment.
“There was a kill list and a rape list, and my name was on the rape list,” said the female classmate.
A former cheerleader, the woman said she didn’t really know Betts and was surprised when a police officer called her cellphone during her freshman year to tell her that her name was included on a list of potential targets.
“The officer said he wouldn’t be at school for a while,” she said. “But after some time passed he was back, walking the halls. They didn’t give us any warning that he was returning to school.” . . .
The discovery of the hit list early in 2012 sparked a police investigation, and roughly one-third of Bellbrook students skipped school out of fear, according to an article in the Dayton Daily News.
As investigators attempt to piece together why a 24-year-old man opened fire outside a popular Dayton bar, people from his past point to hit lists, violent threats and a fascination with shootings that they now say were clearly red flags. . . .
“He would have known that his actions were deplorable,” Adelia Johnson, 24, said about the man she dated earlier this year.
The pair met in a psychology class at Sinclair Community College in Dayton and bonded over their shared struggle with mental illness, she said.
They began dating this spring — a brief relationship punctuated by peculiar moments that at first Johnson shrugged off.
On one date, he took her to shoot a rifle. He often brought up mass murders when they spent time together, Johnson told “Today.”
Johnson said that he performed with an extreme heavy metal band known for sexually violent lyrics.
On their first date, she said, he showed her body camera video from a mass shooting at a synagogue. Another time, he asked her to accompany him as he tried to drop off an anonymous letter to an ex-girlfriend. The letter’s message — “You can’t escape your past” — unnerved her, she said.
His fixation on the ex, Johnson said, “was the final red flag.”
“All of the other ones,” she said, “those could be written off as something else.”
She ended the relationship through a text message and said she told friends she was scared by his actions.
Oh, they “bonded over their shared struggle with mental illness.” Because no sane person would have dated this scary weirdo:
The Ohio madman who slaughtered nine people and wounded at least two dozen others in Dayton’s nightlife district had heard menacing voices in his head since he was young, and talked about “dark, evil things,” his ex-girlfriend said.
Connor Betts, 24, was a serious and reserved kid who struggled with hallucinations, Lyndsi Doll, who dated Betts seven years ago, told the Washington Post Monday.
During their high school years, Betts had told Doll he’d long suffered from psychosis and feared developing schizophrenia.
“He would cry to me sometimes,” Doll recalled, “saying how he’s afraid of himself and afraid he was going to hurt someone one day. It’s haunting now.” . . .
Her friends had warned her about his aggressiveness in previous relationships — pushing one ex-girlfriend into a roaring river and screaming at another while pinning her against a wall, she shared.
Despite that, she grew to trust him, and the pair bonded over their shared mental health struggles. Doll had suffered from anxiety and depression, she said.
As time went on, though, Doll started to realize that Betts was in desperate need of professional help, and talked often about “dark, evil” things he was hearing in his head, she told the paper.
So, this makes at least two girls he dated with whom he “bonded over their shared mental health struggles.” Every crazy girl in Dayton, Ohio, was magnetically attracted to this psychotic freak, I guess.
Did I mention he was pro-Antifa and a registered Democrat who expressed support of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?
And there are millions of these Bernie voters out there.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Off the Shelf
Posted on | August 6, 2019 | Comments Off on Off the Shelf
— by Wombat-socho
Cash being a bit low of late, everything that follows is from the Clark County Library (and hopefully in your local library as well) or the Kindle Owners Lending Library, which is another reason to shell out for Amazon Prime if you haven’t already.
Probably the pick of the litter is Brad Torgersen’s second novel, A Star-Wheeled Sky, which is set far in the future after mankind has escaped Earth in STL colony transports, many of which have settled the various planets of the Waywork, an alien relic that permits FTL travel between the various systems it connects. From the colonies, Starstates grow, and two of them – an oligarchy with some freedom and a brutal totalitarian regime – are locked in a war that is slowly grinding the oligarchy down. Suddenly, a new Waypoint appears, and both sides scramble to claim what turns out to be a beautiful new Earthlike world, with an enigmatic alien pyramid, the wreck of a colony transport, and an apparently immortal woman with an ominous message. It’s a fascinating tale well told, with adventure, desperate improvisations, and interesting characters on both sides. Recommended.
It used to be common that most anthologies had a handful of good stories, a lot of filler, and at least a couple of clunkers. I don’t know whether the slow death of SF magazines is the cause, but for some reason, the anthologies I’ve been seeing lately don’t seem to have any clunkers, and for that matter, there’s not as much filler as there used to be. Case in point: The Change, edited by S. M. Stirling and set in the Emberverse series that begins with Dies The Fire. So if you didn’t like those, you won’t like this, and as the late Steven den Beste used to say, DWL.* On the other hand, if you did like the Emberverse stories…well, you probably read this already. Me, I didn’t happen across it until I’d already finished The Sky-Blue Wolves, so The Change gave me a serious feeling of deja vu since I’d already met a lot of the characters in these stories back while I was reading the novels. At any rate, there’s some good stories in here by John Birmingham, John Barnes, and some other folks, and no clunkers.
The other example is Michael Williamson’s Forged In Blood, the tale of a sword forged in ancient Japan and the people who bear it. It’s listed as a book in the Freehold series, which isn’t entirely accurate since the first two-thirds of the stories take place on Earth, not Grainne, but that’s a minor quibble. There are some excellent, excellent stories in here by Larry Correia, Mike Massa (do NOT miss this one, set in the Russo-Japanese War), Tom Kratman, Kacey Ezell, and other outstanding writers from the combat SF subgenre. Good stuff.
I’ve been following the Ring of Fire/Grantsville series by Eric Flint and a cast of thousands** since they came out, skipping a few that didn’t seem interesting and trying my best to stay current. This last month I read two books set in 1636, The Kremlin Games and The Viennese Waltz. The former is about Bernie Zeppi, one of the Grantsville kids who’s at loose ends after 1632’s Battle of the Crapper – he doesn’t really have any useful skills, and he has a mild case of what they used to call “battle fatigue”. Luckily for him, the Tsar of All The Russias wants Grantsville’s tech, and he wants it bad, and that’s how Bernie winds up in Moscow trying to drag Russia into the 19th century when a lot of it isn’t sure it wants to leave the 16th. Hijinkery, war with the Poles, and a revolt by the boyars makes life excessively interesting, but Bernie and the Tsar manage to survive and even light the lamp of freedom in a country mired in serfdom. The latter, on the other hand…well, it makes me wish I hadn’t skipped The Barbie Consortium, because a lot of the main characters in The Viennese Waltz are members of said consortium, and while I like economics porn along with the subplot of trying to force early Renaissance Austria into the Steam Age before the Turks come back, I would have liked to know those characters better. The main problem is that the current Emperor of Austria-Hungary’s dad sold off a lot of patents on uptime tech to nobles, nobody has any faith in Austrian marks despite their being backed by real silver, King Albrecht (Wallenstein) of Bohemia is right next door with his Protestant army, and did I mention the schism in the Catholic Church between the former Cardinal Borja (now an antipope) and Pope Urban VIII? Lots of skulduggery, economic/financial porn, and scandalous uptime fashions having unexpected effects. Fun read.
The war pitting the Four Horsemen mercenary companies (and their handful of alien allies) against the Mercenary Guild led by the Veetanho General Peepo comes to a head in A Pale Dawn and concludes in Alabaster Noon. It’s almost impossible to do a decent plot summery for both of them without spoilers, but I will say that A Pale Dawn, which covers the Four Horsemen invasion (and liberation) of Earth doesn’t quite go as planned, and sets up the final novel in the series in such a way that I skipped the three intervening novels in the series and went right for Alabaster Noon, which made a few things that happened in the final look a bit like dei ex machina. I guess I’ll spend the next three months going back and filling in the gaps.
Finally, I am taking a stab at Tolstoy’s classic War And Peace, which is… yuge. And dense. I expect to be working on this one for a while, but if nothing else the first few chapters have convinced me that Russian culture hasn’t changed a whole lot since the 18th century, except they didn’t speak so much French and German in the 20th century. For those of you who haven’t heard of the book before, it’s a sprawling novel about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, told from the Russian side, and there’s a LOT of detail about how Russian high society was in those days. So far it’s been pretty interesting.
Thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links last month and/or hit the tip jar. If there’s a book you want me to review, you can loan it to me on Kindle, buy me a copy, or hit the tip jar with a request that I buy and review it. I endeavour to give satisfaction, as Jeeves used to say.
*Don’t Write Letters.
**I know, I know, it’s actually just a dozen or so folks.
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‘Aiyona Hunt’ Is Not a Woman
Posted on | August 6, 2019 | 1 Comment
The man calling himself “Aiyona Hunt” (@Aiyonahunt01 on Twitter) has repeatedly succeeded in getting Twitter support staff to suspend the accounts of feminists who have complained about his sick misogynistic behavior. Of course, “Aiyona” (a) enjoys using the women’s restroom, (b) likes wearing high heels and (c) calls himself a “lesbian.” These are symptomatic of perverse fetishism, and yet there are many progressives who want to make such dangerous perversion a basis of “civil rights.”
This kind of behavior is not even about “gender identity.” This is about a deranged pervert trying to exploit “social justice” as a weapon to force unwilling women to participate in his sick sexual fantasies. As you might expect, lesbians are not amused by “Aiyona”:
I genuinely f–king hate these men. I really do. I’m so tired of this s–t. This predatory, fetishistic, f–king freak is so g–damn vile and disgusting and just pure f–king evil and he makes me wanna vomit. People really do hate women. Like, they really really f–king hate women and lesbians so much that this bulls–t has gone this f–king far. I feel like we’re just screaming into the void at this point. And the worst part is, any amount of backlash these f–king freaks get will come back to hurt *us* a thousand times worse than it will ever hurt them. We’re getting blamed for this s–t. Meanwhile we’re the ones they’re hurting the most. I’m so f–king tired, yall. So, so f–king tired.
To which all sane people must say, “Amen.”