Rule 5 Sunday: Loungewear.

Posted on | September 30, 2024 | 1 Comment

I forgot to mention this in the FMJRA, your usual source for all things Senators, but Pete Da Tech Guy has asked me to inform the commentariat that the Cubs are available for the upcoming 1974 season in our Dynasty Baseball league. The Cubs finished 57-105, eleven games ahead of the hapless Dodgers, so they’ll get to draft second.
If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember this hilarious Wendy’s commercial poking fun at the lack of choice in the former Soviet Union. Fortunately, our ladies’ choices in loungewear are considerably more attractive and varied. This pic comes to us courtesy of Rule 5 Texan on X.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Very nice.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule 5 Campaign Speech Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, The MLF Of Norway, MAGA Surge, Big Night, Matlock, A Serious Man, Becky Foster, Blood Simple, The Julie Andrews Show, MAGA Danica Patrick, Everyone Should Avoid Olivia Nuzzi, Hotel Cocaine, Munich Oktoberfest 2024, and The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Ekaterina Enokaeva, Fish Pic Friday – Laura Longnecker, Most Americans Expect Another Assassination Attempt, Mayor Adams Indicted, Tattoo Thursday, The Wednesday Wetness, Routh Letter Admits Assassination Attempt, Offers Bounty, Tuesday Tanlines, Oprah Plumps for Kamala, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Are Snakeheads Enjoying Some Midsummer Delight?, Who Elected Jill Biden?, and Palm Sunday.

FLAPPR: T.I.T.S. for September 27

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Wait Until Next Year

Posted on | September 29, 2024 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Wait Until Next Year

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The season ended with the Pirates sweeping the Senators at Three Rivers, finally putting the season out of its misery. We finished last in the Beta Division of the American League at 67-95, six games behind the A’s but still ahead of the O’s and Royals, who finished at 62-100. This is actually the second-best season we’ve had so far if you exclude the short 1969 season when we were 60-66, but after last year’s 91-71 finish we were hoping to at least break .500.

In other news, a distressing notice from our friends at Flappr.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Time to compile the keepers list (it’ll be short)

STOP DOING THIS!
The Daley Gator
Flappr
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: One Last Series
The Daley Gator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: Moving Indoors
Animal Magnetism
Flappr
A View From The Beach
EBL

The Slow Death of Kamala’s ‘Joy’
Flappr
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Sports, Politics and War: Morale Matters
The Daley Gator
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 09.27.24 (Returning From The Secret City Edition)
EBL
357 Magnum

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Category: FMJRA Award

Media Mourns Loss of Terrorist Leader

Posted on | September 28, 2024 | 1 Comment

After much blowback — were college interns working the weekend copy desk? — Associated Press has changed that headline, but what was the logic? How does the journalistic “mainstream” reach a point where a bloodthirsty Jew-hater like Hassan Nasrallah gets such a fond send-off from AP? Dig the euphemism in the lead paragraph, where Hezbollah is described as a “Lebanese militant group” when, in fact, they are a gang of Islamic terrorist thugs sponsored by Iran which, to their credit, the AP more or less admits farther down in the story:

An astute strategist, the 64-year-old Nasrallah reshaped Hezbollah into an archenemy of Israel, cementing alliances with Shiite religious leaders in Iran and Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas.
Under his leadership, Hezbollah fought wars against Israel and took part in the conflict in neighboring Syria, helping tip the balance of power in favor of President Bashar Assad.
Idolized by his Lebanese Shiite followers and respected by millions of others across the Arab and Islamic world, Nasrallah held the title of sayyid, an honorific meant to signify the Shiite cleric’s lineage dating back to the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
A fiery orator viewed as an extremist in the United States and much of the West, he was also considered a pragmatist compared to the militants who dominated Hezbollah after its founding in 1982, during Lebanon’s civil war.

You know who else was “fiery orator viewed as an extremist in the United States and much of the West”? A guy named Adolf Hitler. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Anyway, Nasrallah is dead, as are other top Hezbollah leaders including Ali Karaki. Bibi Netanyahu is Israel’s Michael Corleone, settling all the family business. Can you imagine being a junior “militant” in Hezbollah and learning that you’ve gotten promoted because the guy above you in the terrorist hierarchy just got killed?

Netanyahu just declared “we are winning” at his UN speech.

Shortly after, he gave the green light to strike Hezbollah’s headquarters. pic.twitter.com/T4KeHHjpgO

— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) September 27, 2024

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Category: Israel, Lebanon, Terrorism

In The Mailbox: 09.27.24 (Returning From The Secret City Edition)

Posted on | September 28, 2024 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.27.24 (Returning From The Secret City Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
The week I spent at Oak Ridge TN was educational, informative, interesting, and unfortunately I was hideously jet-lagged and short on sleep for about half of it. That having been said, if you’re in the neighborhood, you should absolutely visit the K-25 Museum, which is chock-full of cool Manhattan Project information and spiffy exhibits.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

“I picked a bad week to give up booze and smoking.”

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: A $12 Billion Jobs Program For Particle Physicists, Self-Defense Is Legal In Michigan, Good Guys 5 Bad Guys 0, Fecesbook & The CDC Conspired To Limit Speech, and What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?
EBL: Tropical Storm Helene Brings The Rain, also, MAGA Surge
Twitchy: Democrat Congresswoman’s Crazy Video Provides More Proof We Need Term Limits, Giorgia Meloni Wrecks “Little Macron” After He Stupidly Picks A Fight With Her, and Kamala Ran To The Border And Suddenly Believes It Shouldn’t Be Wide Open
Louder With Crowder: CNN discovers blue state parents pass their hate down to their kids while red state parents don’t, also, Democrat Rep insists the entire purpose of the DOJ is to go after Donald Trump & “Christian Nationalists”
Vox Popoli: A Futile Warning, Russia Changes Nuke Doctrine, I May Have Been Wrong, Reads Like Victory, and So Much for “Self Defense”
According To Hoyt: Things You Don’t Know You Need, Pebbles And Votes, and The Finite Pie
Upstream Reviews: The Princess Seeks Her Fortune, Nightfall In Middle-Earth, The Icarus Twin, A Loving Homage To 40 Years Of Transformers, and The Romanov Rescue,
Defending The Wood Perilous: Babes In Regencyland, also, Gypsie Princess Effie’s Diary #11
Stoic Observations: The Major Leagues Vs. Congress, Family 171, and Wogs Of The Future,
Postcards From Barsoom: To Shatter Men’s Souls,
Flappr: Big TD’s Football Blog Week 3
Ammo.com: Gun Deaths In America

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For September 27
CDR Salamander: 20th & 21st Century Lessons With Chinese Characteristics, How Do You Say “Frog Soup” In Mandarin? There’s Already A War In Lebanon, Podcast #2, This Is What Your Navy With Accountancy In Primacy Looks Like, Diversity Thursday, and Fullbore Friday
Dana Loesch: Last Week In Legal – Pop Culture Edition, FCC’s Carr Says Soros Could Kick Conservatives Off Radio Stations, School Suspends Kid For Laying Out Cans In The Shape Of A Gun, Thursday Evening Culture, and The War On Warhammer
Don Surber: The cheat goes on, Who approved indicting Diddy? Does Trump pay them to endorse Kamala-dee-dah? Trump is not alone, and The least shocking endorsement of them all
Glenn Reynolds: Criminalizing Science Fraud,
Hans Schantz: September 2024 Based Book Projects,
michele catalano: Betting It All Away,
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Are You Racist? Notes From A Cluttered Mind, Totem Polls, Humpday Shrapnel, Of Mice & Mens, and Mental Sorbet 3
STUMP: The Week In Meep, IgNobel 2024 Winner, Taxing Tuesday – SALTy Trump, Cancer Watch,
The Political Hat: Artificial Leg Muscles Mean One Thing: Catgirls Who Can Run, Dance, And Skip, When Optional Indoctrination Is Mandatory, and Free to Choose Friday, Revisited (Part 5)

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Category: Linkagery

Sports, Politics and War: Morale Matters

Posted on | September 26, 2024 | Comments Off on Sports, Politics and War: Morale Matters

The benefits of having a readership full of nerds is that sometimes they can teach you things, as in this comment on yesterday’s post:

Obscure wargaming reference here. In the old Avalon Hill Game called Kingmaker — a simulation of the Wars of the Roses — one of the most annoying random event cards is “Defeatism Rife”. Worse than “Plague!” and less amusing then “The King Goes Hunting”. No matter how powerful your faction is, you suddenly lose the ability to leverage your offices, bishoprics, and mercenaries. Your winning faction with an military power of 540 is now a weak 40 for a Turn.
In life, defeatism is similar. I love it — in my enemies and rivals. They defeat themselves before I even move against them. That is why despair is a sin — the Sin of Sloth IIRC.

One is reminded of the old adage that England’s wars were won on the playing fields of Eton, by which it was meant that the education system of British leadership caste was such as to instill in young men the attitudes necessary to victory. The old “stiff upper lip” disposition of British officers, the quality of calm amid crisis, the dogged persistence in the face of daunting odds and discouraging setbacks — “the playing fields of Eton” taught those qualities, somehow. If there is any cause to be pessimistic about America’s future, certainly the state of our education system is at the top of the list, because there is no effort to create leadership of that character. Indeed, our education system is run by people who lack patriotism and clearly do not wish to make our nation stronger. How could “gender theory” lectures contribute to such a project?

Whenever the topic turns to tactics and strategy in politics, we naturally borrow our metaphors from sports and warfare, both of which involve competition between rival teams, in which victory requires cooperation — good teamwork — by the winning side. One of the surest harbingers of failure in any such endeavor is when team members cannot restrain their selfish ambitions and suppress their personal pride in the way necessary for successful team cooperation. Think of the numerous humiliations that George S. Patton had to endure — e.g., being sidelined because of controversy over his slapping a soldier he regarded as a cowardly malingerer — before finally getting his chance at military glory. Or think about the “Wilderness Years” of Churchill, when he was frozen out of the Cabinet while Baldwin and Chamberlain pursued a disastrous policy of appeasement. Being able to keep up the fight — to maintain one’s morale — amid such discouragement is the stuff of greatness.

(Shameless Capitalism Alert: You can buy Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm and Their Finest Hour via our Amazon Affiliates link. What the heck, why not buy the entire six-volume set of Churchill’s World War II history? While you’re at it, go pick up the old 1976 “Kingmaker” game set from Avalon Hill. As always, when you purchase products through our Amazon Affiliates links, we receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks!)

In any long conflict, history teaches, the leader who emerges victorious at the end usually is someone who was relatively obscure when the conflict began. Prior to the American Civil War, U.S. Grant was certainly not the kind of figure anyone would have expected to end the war as top army commander, and when World War II began, Dwight Eisenhower was not a household name. The lesson history teaches is that men destined for greatness often have to “wait their turn,” to persevere through adversity and overcome disadvantages, in order to find their opportunity.

Carolina Panthers fans were celebrating Sunday after veteran quarterback Andy Dalton threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns to lead their team to their first victory of the season — in fact, their first win since last December. The Panthers had the worst record in the NFL last year (2-15) as No. 1 draft pick quarterback Bryce Young struggled in his rookie season and, by “struggled,” I mean failed. After back-to-back defeats to open this season, Carolina head coach Dave Canales benched Young and brought in Dalton, a 36-year-old who has bounced around the league since his glory days with the Cincinnati Bengals more than a decade ago. Dalton hadn’t done much during stints with Dallas, Chicago and New Orleans, and most NFL fans had figured he was nearing retirement while riding the bench behind the rookie QB Young in Carolina. Would replacing Young with Dalton make a difference for the Panthers, who seemed so lacking in overall talent? I didn’t expect any such thing, but what Andy Dalton did against the Raiders on Sunday was a clinic, a showcase of football excellence that seemed to lift the entire team to new heights. I still don’t think Carolina has a snowball’s chance in hell of making the playoffs, but for one day, Andy Dalton was Hercules in cleats, a demigod hero. (I should be writing scripts for NFL Films.)

That’s the kind of saga that inspires us to hope at times when our situation seems hopeless. There was no reason Panthers fans should have expected that, after more than 15 years in the league, Andy Dalton should suddenly recapture his former Pro Bowl form to spark an upset over the Raiders, and yet that’s what happened. The lession — never get demoralized. Don’t let the “Defeatism Rife” card defeat you.

Also from the comments on yesterday’s post, we were reminded of William Jacobson’s warning against “Operation Demoralize”:

Don’t let them demoralize you, and don’t be part of the discouraging chorus of Eeyores, spreading pessimism about the election.

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Category: History, Politics

STOP DOING THIS!

Posted on | September 25, 2024 | Comments Off on STOP DOING THIS!

Look, I don’t want to name any names or call anybody out, but I am sick and tired of the defeatist negativity that crops up in the comments every time I blog about the election. Whenever I point to hopeful signs about November (as I did on Tuesday), the comments fill up with a chorus of doomsayers, declaring that there’s no way that any Republican can ever win anywhere because the Democrats are certain to steal the election. It’s “rigged” to the point of 100% certainty, proclaim the chorus of Eeyores, who always see the glass as half-empty and never let a glint of optimistic sunshine penetrate their preferred gloom of hopelessness. STOP IT!

This struck me when I looked at the comments not only here, but over at my American Spectator column. There are some people who appear to be temperamentally averse to good news, and feel compelled to share their discouragement with everyone — Apostles of Defeatism, so to speak.

What got me about such comments on my American Spectator column is that some of them implied that I had not considered the possibility of Democrats cheating, when in fact I’d included no fewer than three such references, including a specific mention of “ballot harvesting.” What’s the point of writing, if people are not even going to pay attention to what you write? “Oh, here’s a headline suggesting Trump could win — let me jump in the comments to rain on everybody’s parade.”

Do these commenters not realize that, as co-author of Donkey Cons, I wrote an entire chapter about the Democratic Party’s long and sordid history of election fraud? Must I flaunt my credentials as having somewhat more expertise in politics than the average guy on his sofa yelling at the TV news? Or are my rhetorical skills insufficient to convey the impression that I know what I’m talking about?

If you are among the (evidentaly) few who actually bothered to read my American Spectator column in its entirety, you see that it hinges on the predictive value of polling: Examining how closely polls (both individually and collectively) predicted past election results, and using this data to estimate the final result based on the prior track record.

Producing such an analysis is made easier, as I said in my column, with the tools provided by Real Clear Politics. Anyone who really cares enough to investigate this issue can do it, but it does take some effort — apparently more effort than most big-time journalists are willing to do, or they’d be hitting the panic button at CNN and MSNBC by what such research reveals about Kamala Harris’s chances in November.

Let’s take one battleground state, Michigan, as an example. According to the RCP average as of Tuesday, Michigan is Harris +1.8, but on the same date in 2020, Biden was +5.2 in Michigan and, because his final official margin of victory was 2.8 points, this gives us a measurement of predictive value — a 3.4-point swing, so that if the RCP average has Harris +1.8, the predictive value is Trump +1.6.

As I explained in my column, you can do this not only with RCP averages, but with specific pollsters. For example, the Marist poll has Harris +5 in Michigan now. But in September 2020, when Marist was polling for NBC News, they had Biden +8, which is 5.2 points higher than Biden’s final margin, meaning that the Harris +5 result by Marist has the predictive value of a narrow Trump victory in Michigan.

Guess what? If you go back into the 2016 and 2020 results, nationally or state-by-state, you’ll have a hard time finding polls that don’t overstate the Democratic vote, sometimes by mind-boggling margins. Practically all public pollsters err in the same direction, and I don’t think this is a coincidence. They’re not polling to find public opinion; they’re polling to influence public opinion. Most polls are literally political propaganda for Democrats — disinformation! — and Democrats know this as well as anyone, which is why they’re doing their own “internal” polls, which tell a very different story than what most public pollsters are telling us.

Harris’s path to 270 Electoral College is very narrow, primarily because of how badly she’s doing in Pennsylvania. With 19 Electoral College votes, Pennsylvania is the largest battleground state and the RCP average on Tuesday had it Harris +0.6; on the same date in 2020, RCP had Biden +4.3 in Pennsylvania. Because he only won the state by 1.2 points, the current Harris result has the predictive value of Trump +3.1.

DONALD TRUMP IS WINNING PENNSYLVANIA!

Shut up, you damned Eeyores! I can picture you poring over the RCP average trying to find a gray cloud to darken the horizon. “What about this Quinnipiac poll showing Harris +5 in Pennsylvania?” Picture my grin as I tell you that, in 2020, Quinnipiac had Biden +13 in Pennsylvania.

Thirteen points! Any Quinnipiac poll showing Kamala Harris with less than a double-digit lead is, in fact, predicting a Trump victory.

Those of you who are addicted to pessimism — discouragement junkies, seeking your daily fix of gloom — will have to look elsewhere to satify your craving. It’s all sunshine and flowers here, baby.

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Category: Election, Polls

The Slow Death of Kamala’s ‘Joy’

Posted on | September 24, 2024 | Comments Off on The Slow Death of Kamala’s ‘Joy’

Notice something about that picture of Vice President Kamala Harris? She’s wearing sneakers. Is this supposed to be some kind of message? At age 59, she is the candidate of youth, or something? In a campaign short on substance and long on symbolism, we can be certain that having the candidate onstage in a pair of Chuck Taylors is not mere coincidence.

Maybe the fashion editors at Vogue or Cosmo can fill us in on Kamala’s footwear choices, but my point is that the Harris campaign has spent the first two months of its existence inside a bubble of media-generated unreality. Remember how the trained seals of journalism mindlessly repeated the “joy” theme of the Democratic National Convention? Remember all the talk about the sudden groundswell of “energy” and “enthusiasm” once Joe quit and Kamala stepped in?

“Kamala Is Underperforming,” as I explained 10 days ago, and that reality is starting to become apparent even to her sycophants in the media. Worry lines have begun to furrow the foreheads of CNN and MSNBC personalities as they contemplate such signs as the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll showing the race a dead heat between Harris and Trump. This is not good news for Harris, because if the race is a tie nationally and we know that Democrats always do better in the popular vote than in the Electoral College, a tie in the polls almost certainly augurs a Republican victory in November.

So I went back to the well of “underperforming” Kamala:

Nobody wants Kamala Harris to win this election more than do her celebrity media friends, who are willing to forfeit their credibility to drag her across the finish line. ABC News, whose blatantly one-sided “fact-checking” during Harris’s debate with Donald Trump was widely criticized, has seen its ratings tumble in the aftermath.
What’s remarkable is not just the absolute shamelessness of the media’s pro-Democrat bias — they’re so far in the tank for her, their “news coverage” is just an endless campaign ad for Harris — but the fact that it doesn’t seem to be helping. The one story they’re not reporting is the most important of all: Kamala Harris is losing this election.
Don’t take my word for it. Go look at where Harris stands in the polls today, and then compare her numbers to what the polls showed for Joe Biden on the same day in his 2020 race against Trump, and for Hillary Clinton in her 2016 race against Trump. In both of those previous two elections, most polls were slanted in favor of the Democratic candidates, so that Trump did better in the final official vote tallies than he did in the polls. This track record of error in favor of Democrats provides the proverbial “grain of salt” with which everyone should consume public polling.
Fortunately, Tom Bevan, Carl Cannon and the rest of the crew at RealClearPolitics (RCP) have made it easy for anyone to compare current presidential poll numbers to those in 2020 and 2016. These comparisons show Harris to be underperforming Biden and Clinton to such an extent that a Trump victory in November is the most likely outcome. . . .

Read the rest of my column in The American Spectator. It’s more than 2,500 words, but I think it’s worth the effort.

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Category: American Spectator, Kamala Harris, Polls

Rule 5 Sunday: Moving Indoors

Posted on | September 23, 2024 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Moving Indoors

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Even in Las Vegas, it’s getting cool enough outside so wet T-shirt contests need to start moving indoor to the bars from the pools. This week’s appetizer courtesy of kbdabear on X.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.