Posted on November 20, 2024 by neo
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Open thread 11/20/2024 — 57 Comments
Twofer:
“Let me be unequivocally clear. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. And a man cannot become a woman.”
2) Whistleblower: James Comey had FBI ‘honey pot’ spies infiltrate Trump’s 2016 campaign
Alleged off-the-books investigation predated FBI’s Russia collusion probe
ONce you see the SAME HEADLINES FOR THE SAME PROBLEM
you might realize that our leaders are following INTERNATIONAL communist coordination and minimally following the constituency they been lying to to gain GLOBAL power
Jews and homosexuals are no longer safe in Berlin and should hide their identity in certain neighborhoods, Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik has claimed.In a wide-ranging interview with Berliner Zeitung about security risks, anti-Semitic danger zones in Berlin, and the effects of austerity measures on police work, Slowik warned that the German capital has become less tolerant in areas with high Arab populations and the police have insufficient resources to tackle the problem.While she maintained that Berlin is “as safe as many other cities in Germany and safer than some other European capitals,” Slowik admitted
Anyone ever see the black pigeon pod cast where there is a wall of news people speaking and the dialogue they are saying is so close to each other they are saying the words at the same time… i think its 16 stations at once
There’s a meme floating around, having to do with passengers and pilots, being circulated by people who think it’s a devastating response to those who question the automatic acceptance of Experts and Authority. My response & discussion here:
who would have thought penzance would be aspirational, take austin or milley, as the modern incarnation of Colonel Blimp,
with Germany, it’s al hijra, a peculiar thing to do penance for mistreatment of the jews, they imported the most theologically antisemitic cohort this is the same for most of Western Europe,
Report to huxley et al:
Tried 2 guitars yesterday at GC: Epiphone, and a clearance Gibson going for $799. Liked them both, though the Gibson definitely had the better sound. No PRS available to try. One thing threw me off is that they all had size 10 strings where I use 9s, so the action felt way off to me but I knew it was the strings. Search goes on.
And in terms of politics, very interesting article at AT concerning Bergum as Interior. Makes a good case that maybe he’s really not the guy:
matt whitaker, the last bete noire, before gaetz, will be NATO ambassador,
Gilbert & Sullivan did satire well!
Something weird happened in Columbus OH over the weekend: thirteen people “marched” along the sidewalk in the Short North — an artsy neighborhood with galleries and such — dressed in black, with red skull masks, and carrying large black flags with large red swastikas on them.
I watched videos, and the whole event seemed…. weird.
My guess: Some idiot doing a”guerrilla film shoot” because he couldn’t get permission (or afford to get permission.)
What I found very interesting about it is that the about half the people who expressed righteous indignation over thirteen idiots, didn’t give a rat’s tuchus about the “demonstrations” at the OSU campus “in solidarity with the Palestinians” — that were full of swastikas and anti-Semitic signage and targeting Jews for particular hatred.
Over in the yahoo news comments section the left is all in on the ” Trump loves the uneducated” because of the talk about dismantling the Department of Education.
Every person living that graduated from High School prior to 1980 did so without a Federal Department of Education.
There was one brief version of DOE after the Civil War.The title “Pirates of Penzance” has a sort of lost joke; Penzance then was a popular beach resort for middle-class people, and so you’re obviously not going to find actual pirates there. Not sure what the American equivalent would be today; Pirates of Myrtle Beach, Pirates of Santa Monica? (I visit beaches frequently, since I live near them, but not resort towns, so I wouldn’t know.)
But there’s a second jab in the title, at American copyright law; Gilbert and Sullivan operas were frequently pirated, and so they opened “Pirates of Penzance” in America so that for once they could get a first crack at some of the money.
Just another open-thread comment about something I read someplace else.
A week ago, Jean Twenge wrote a substack essay entitled “Why more young men voted for Trump” (https://tinyurl.com/bdfy56ss).
It’s a quick read, and it’s based on data that’s probably as good as we can get.
The graphs are especially helpful.
Here’s the first paragraph:
“In an election full of surprises, one of the biggest was the voting shift among young men. They favored Biden by 15 points in 2020 but went for Trump by 13 points in 2024. That’s a swing of 28 percentage points, an extraordinarily large shift in a political landscape where races are often decided by a few percentage points.”
Niketas:
Very interesting. It’s funny — for the looooooongest time, I did not realize the “Penzance” was a real place. I mean it was just this year, when I started binge watching “Doc Marten.”
I hate Myrtle Beach, so I think “Pirates of Hilton Head” might be more apt. I don’t like Hilton Head either, but Myrtle Beach is soooooo…. crappy, except for nice beaches. Hilton Head is more upscale. And less crap-filled.
My aunt gave my sister a Christmas present of an album of the
D’Oyly Carte version of The Mikado. I liked it, so made a request of Gilbert and Sullivan for my birthday. My father got me albums of H.M.S. Pinafore, Princess Ida, Yeoman of the Guard, Pirates of Penzance, and Ruddigore. I played them a lot. Tom Lehrer and Gilbert and Sullivan gave me a good grounding in satirical songs.A neighbor who was a great punster was a big fan of Gilbert and Sullivan and the Marx Brothers. Great minds think a lot.
Niketas Choniates, Charles Dickens also had a big problem with American pirating. His making money of his readings in public must have been an attempt to deal with that pirating. His American Notes discussed this. He liked Boston, but did not like slavery nor did he like our copyright laws.
Prefer this version:
==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wrZiTX_zL8&t=136sI did not realize the “Penzance” was a real place. — Lee Also
There’s an old movie, starring Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon, that’s a zany comedy and the locale is the UK. At the end of the film there are some antics on the coast of Penzance. The actual filming location was the Point Lobos State Park not too far from where I live in CA. I’ve hiked there on a number of occasions. I have no idea how similar it is to the actual area of Penzance.
The Notorious Landlady (1962)
Seattle area recovering from a “bomb cyclone”. Won’t know about my own property damage until tomorrow. Issaquah-Hobart road which I need to use has about six miles blocked by downed trees.
Bomb cyclone
“ a rapidly developing severe storm in which barometric pressure at its center drops by at least 24 millibars over a 24-hour period at or north of 60? latitude”Breibart
“ Intense winds smashed the Pacific Northwest on Wednesday morning as a strengthening low-pressure storm system, known colloquially as a “bomb cyclone,” moved in from the Pacific Ocean leaving chaos and at least one person dead in its wake along with mass power outages.The rare storm system combines heavy rain with high wind to create what scientists call as an “atmospheric river.”
The phenomenon also known as “bombogenesis” could intensify so rapidly in the Pacific Northwest over the next 24-hours it has the potential to become a “triple-bomb” three times the strength of a regular bomb cyclone, according to the National Weather Service (NWS) in San Francisco.
The NWS has issued excessive rainfall risks starting running through to Friday because of the powerful storm expected to pummel northern California and the Pacific Northwest.
The Calm Before the Storm… Footage in Washington Shows the Eerie Calm Before Bomb Cyclone Descends”Last night I was with a medium small group of my newer friends for an event. It’s blessedly true that nearly all of my social groups stay away from politics. With most of these folks it becomes apparent that they are on the left, but there are a couple “conservatives” (for lack of a better word) here and there. And a few, where I just don’t know one way of the other.
When the question arose, “Who is the new leader of the US Senate?” No one knew, except for me, because they were all so depressed that they were staying away from any political news. I guess the last one or two uncertainties were resolved. Everyone in this group is on the left.
With all that in mind, I read this article this morning.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/11/now_that_trump_has_won_how_to_talk_to_your_liberal_friends.htmlIt’s a rather dark piece. The author has projections concerning the near future, and has some advice near the end. He describes a large minority of people who are so radicalized that he believes that they will cause great disruptions.
I’ve become more sensitized to impact of large sums of money supporting these activities on the left.
Aided and abetted by social media and rich liberal donors, Democrats will embark on a crusade to topple the orange man and strip power from or character assassinate any of his supporters. Their actions will make Occupy Wall Street, Seattle’s Chop (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) and Black Lives Matter look like a 1950s 4th of July parade on Main Street.
Yes, rich liberal donors. The more muscular and impactful aspects of these activities always seem to cost a lot of money. Without it, I suspect it would mostly wither away.
Very interesting discussion between Peter Robinson and Elon’s buddy, Peter Thiel, over at the Hoover Institution: https://www.hoover.org/research/apocalypse-now-peter-thiel-ancient-prophecies-and-modern-tech
I don’t recall hearing of the katechon before.
Artfldgr @10:15am,
Yes I have. Very informative.
David Foster @10:21am,
Great post and some really good comments. I think your third point is especially relevant to a nation of free individuals. Even experts need to keep their minds open to the possibility that the current paradigm (for example, it may be a hijacking situation where the hijackers intend to use the plane as an ICBM, the pilot himself may be a suicidal actor intent on taking the lives of the passengers…) is not the situation they trained for.
I had not seen that cartoon, but I found it idiotic on surface, without reading your take down or the comments. It’s such an immature, “cartoonish” interpretation of people who question authority.
The Boomer generation… They were all for sharing the wealth until they started to get some, then they became rabid capitalists.
They were all about questioning authority until they got political power, now it’s “step in line, peasants.”Forget who I heard say it, but I find it very apt and will use it often in reference to President DTJ: The Tribune of the Plebs.
Chases Eagles,
I hope you, your family and your property are safe!
when I looked for the wikipedia link, I got a flag on it as if it were unsafe,
those who have never seen the play, know those particular stanzas
of course the major general is the butt of the joke, considering how many wars the brits had been involved in by 1879, the last of which was the anglo zulu wars, Rorke’s Drift most infamously, the Second Afghan War, that both John Watson and Major Moran were a part of,
Aided and abetted by social media and rich liberal donors, Democrats will embark on a crusade to topple the orange man and strip power from or character assassinate any of his supporters. Their actions will make Occupy Wall Street, Seattle’s Chop (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) and Black Lives Matter look like a 1950s 4th of July parade on Main Street.
TommyJay:
Interesting article. Though I doubt it.
This isn’t 2016. The Woke movement is waning. The Dem leadership has shown itself weak and incompetent. Trans as Civil Rights 4.0 has fizzled and no one really believed it anyway. The legacy media has lied and lied and now even Democrats don’t believe it much.
I sense a tiredness and confusion on the left. There are no great leaders and no powerful voices coming up on that side. Meanwhile, we’ve got Trump, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson on ours.
The article is extrapolating in a straight line. I argue for cycles.
The article is extrapolating in a straight line. I argue for cycles.
Cycles, a swinging pendulum, an Overton Window, or whatever metaphor you like, it’s become pretty clear that the culture is shifting more towards sanity again. Obviously this won’t last forever, but we could be in for perhaps as long as a decade of correction if we’re lucky before the crazies take the wheel again.
@Niketas,
“Pirates of Palm Beach”?
I hope Chases Eagles and others in the Seattle area will be safe! And I hope the losses will be less than we had in NC. The “official” death count is now 103 from Hurricane Helene in the state, but we hear from people closely connected that missing people are being found, alas, dead.
huxley, TommyJay, Nonapod,
I wasn’t an adult in the ’60s, so I may not use the proper terminology, but there was a point when the hippies (counter culturists? anti-establishmentarians?) were winning. In the ’70s Nixon was toppled. Carter was elected. Inflation rose. Interest rates rose. A lot of the things the counter culturists advocated for; free love, recreational drug usage… were not making everyone’s lives better.
So when Reagan came along the second time the counter-culturists couldn’t get their ideas heard over Reagan and his acolytes.
I think we are at a similar point. Different things got us here (and some of the same things), but BLM, Occupy Wall Street, Defund the Police, legalize larceny, open borders… have worn out their welcome with the hoi polloi*.
*Checking to see if I spelled that properly I just learned some new Greek! The hoi oligoi are the elites.
Also Greek: “hoi” means “the”, so we have “the the many”, or “the the few”.
PNW bomb cyclone is an expensive and destructive inconvenience but is nothing compared to a hurricane. Usually we don’t get much warning. People aren’t being swept away by floods. Our floods involve salmon crossing the road.
Issaquah area happens to get hit hard by these due to geography. Narrow valley with steep Squak Mt on one side and steep Tiger Mt on the other creates a wind tunnel effect. There is a hang gliding place on Tiger Mt.
Here is a vid that shows the narrow valley:
https://youtu.be/t3tbvIDTPWMbut there was a point when the hippies (counter culturists? anti-establishmentarians?) were winning….
Rufus T. Firefly:
Yes, I was a hippie then and I bought into the whole Age of Aquarius trip. I figured by 2000 I would be living in “Yellow Submarine’s” Pepperland, if we hadn’t had a nuclear war or environmental collapse by then.
Then came Reagan, then various swings from conservative to progressive and back again. So I figure that’s the way things work, especially for a country as dynamic as the USA.
_________________________________________There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act.
It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be resisted by violence. This is the revolution of the new generation.
–Charles Reich, “The Greening of America” (1970)
Politics is downstream from culture.
–Andrew Breitbart (~2010)
I lived through the terrifying “bomb cyclone”, and was without power for at least five seconds.
In addition, there are so many downed trees blocking the roads that students are starting class two hours late.
That isn’t to say that some people weren’t inconvenienced and I read that one person died from a falling tree, but “bomb cyclone”, like “supermoon”, is a media hype word that should be retired.
huxley certainly has “cred” for me these post election days. Predictions and prognostications are interesting and can be useful, but one has to pay attention to who is correct, and who is wrong.
Some days ago here, I said that the falseness and disingenuousness of the media and the Harris campaign drove a significant number of voters over to Trump. I really want to believe that is true, but I haven’t quite been able to thoroughly convince myself of it. The friends I mention in my earlier comment prefer to stick their heads in the sand rather than reevaluate anything. They’re certainly not going to stop listening to NPR, or whatever.
A counter argument for the Trump win, is that Harris just stinks as a public speaker and as a likeable candidate. There is a connection between “likeable” and “genuine” so the falseness issue can still be a factor in this case. I’m really rather undecided whether we are witnessing a culture change or just the fortuitous outcome of another popularity contest. (Always the cynic??)
My unconfident prediction is that we will see some very significant “resistance” efforts. An interesting wrinkle is all this news recently about the Harris campaign blowing through $1.5B and super PACs another $1B on a lousy campaign. I would hope that many purse strings would tighten in the wake of that, however… There are these people like Abigail Disney and Laurene Powell Jobs, who I suspect are zealots and have immense wealth.
Chases Eagles, my sister who lives a few miles outside Olympia says they didn’t even feel a breeze, while nearby towns had 80 mph winds and power outages. She explains, as you did, that areas like hers that were protected by mountains or foothills did fine, while areas with valleys or coastlines that laid them open to wind currents were clobbered.
You’re funny about floods out there meaning salmon in the road! My sister has sent me photos of just such floods.
… if we hadn’t had a nuclear war or environmental collapse by then. — huxley
When I was a naive and impressionable teen, I read Diet for a Small Planet & one or two Barry Commoner books and largely bought into it. Who’s predictions were complete nonsense? Barry Commoner’s.
NASA makes surprising discovery at the end of our universe: ‘It shouldn’t exist‘
The telescope captured imagery of three 12.8-billion-year-old ‘Red Monster’ galaxies, one billion years older than the Big Bang, roughly the size of the Milky Way.
Re: Guitars
physicsguy:
The Epiphone Les Paul you linked is the next level above mine, so I’m sure it’s a fine guitar. The Gibson Les Paul for $799 discount looks incredible, especially considering its dealer’s price is $3K.
I hope you get a chance to try a PRS.
TommyJay:
I’m sure there will be resistance, but not at 2016 or 2020 levels. The lawfare people will be on the run and not the other way around. Trump has gotten smarter and he will be setting loose his hounds.
IMO current Dems and donors are not Long March fanatics, but virtue signalers and grifters. If the ride is over, they will pull back.
Note Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski, after shrieking Fascist! and Hitler! about Trump for several years now, have made their pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to talk to Trump.
Joe and Mika proclaim they will still “speak truth to power,” but the facts are that MSNBC’s ratings are crashing, it is up for sale and they are two privileged people about to lose their cushy salaries and influence.
Re: Diet for a Small Planet
TommyJay:
In my college commune the Diet for a Small Planet recipe for Walnut-Cheddar Loaf was our favorite.
If one bought into Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968) which argued that a billion or so people were likely to starve to death in the 70s, Diet for a Small Planet protein-complementarity recipes made sense.
As it happens Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution made a big difference in grain output and Ehrlich’s sensationalistic predictions fell by the wayside. Not that Ehrlich ever conceded more than that he got the time scale wrong.
We are all doomed!
Someday.
Karmi and others: Just a note to illustrate how China is very much in bed with the new Axis of Evil…
”The Chinese vessel Yi Peng 3 has been chased, intercepted, and boarded by Danish Navy vessel Y311 Soloven after the Chinese vessel destroyed 2 undersea telecom cables linking Finland-Germany and Sweden-Lithuania.
The vessel sailed from Russia & the captain is Russian.”
You may recall that a Chinese vessel leaving a Russian port last October intentionally dragged its anchor and destroyed a gas pipeline running between Finland and Estonia. Russia is trying to isolate Finland and the Baltics before invasion, and China is helping them do it.
huxley, Exactly.
Diet for a Small Planet was a reasonable book. The only caveat based on my memory is the degree to which a reader might think that a major diet change was necessary. I think they made the case, without hysteria, that we all need to get on board with eating less meat. But they also said that if one is going to eat meat, then you can at least choose poultry which is more efficient. They maybe oversold the premise, but the rest of it was generally solid.
mkent:
(Sarc alert, Opposite Day comment follows)
‘You obviously don’t understand that Russia is not a problem and that we should accept their actions regarding Ukraine and focus on China. We have endangered Russia by our meddling in Ukraine vis a vis the EU and NATO. Russia is no threat to Europe (which includes eastern Europe and the Baltics).’
China providing Russia cover for some gray warfare against NATO members?
Are we are shocked?
”Are we are shocked?”
I am. I am absolutely shocked that gambling is going on in this establishment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to collect my winnings. 🙂
Re Diet for a Small Planet:
I met Frances Moore Lappé, before she had written her book. I was helping out at an environmental information center in Berserkeley . It had some professors give weeknight classes: Paul Erlich and Marc Lappé, among others. Or maybe they were the only ones–I don’t remember.
While Marc Lappé was giving one of his classes, I was collating together some of our printed stuff. At one point a woman was observing me collating–maybe she was helping me, I don’t remember. I told her I really like Mark Lappé’s talks. She replied that Marc was her husband.
A year or two later, Diet for a Small Planet was published. It was a reasonable book. I still use its principle of complementing proteins, though not its recipes any more. (I like to read cookbooks, but very seldom use recipes from them.) Diet for a Small Planet certainly aged better than Paul Erlich’s predictions did.
Gringo:
Lovely story! Thanks.
World hunger was my big cause in the 70s. Frances Moore Lappé was one of my heroes. She never disappointed. Judging by wiki, she has done OK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Moore_Lapp%C3%A9
However, I eventually realized that there is more than enough food to feed the world.
That’s not the problem. It’s politics.
OT and all that…
I don’t want to overegg the pudding as the Brits say. But Trump’s path to the presidency this year is historic, if not mythic.
I still get annoyed with Trump, but good grief, the past eight years we have witnessed the Hero’s Journey played out before our eyes, with a nearly successful assassination attempt, no less.
Fight, fight, fight.
Joe Rogan confided someone told him that on Election Night Trump had been without sleep for 72 hours.
I believe it.
This man is in Joan of Arc territory. He has escaped being burned at the stake.
So far.
I pray for him.
@ TommyJay > “Some days ago here, I said that the falseness and disingenuousness of the media and the Harris campaign drove a significant number of voters over to Trump. I really want to believe that is true, but I haven’t quite been able to thoroughly convince myself of it.”
I confess to being astounded at the stats in this post.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14106501/democrat-voters-candidate-president-2028-election.html
“Kamala Harris lost big to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, but if the 2028 election were to be held today, a significant margin of Democrats would vote for her again.”41% in fact. Newson was second with 8%.
Lends some nuance to this post by Peter Heck.
https://notthebee.com/takes/media-knows-it-must-change-it-wont-change
“American media is a self-congratulatory ring of folks who get high smelling their own flatulence. It’s an echo chamber of elitism and highbrow condescension that promotes authors who arrogantly insult and demonize normal people and then sit around and try to figure out why normal people don’t like or trust them.”The regime media isn’t going to change (except temporarily and cosmetically) because their audience isn’t going to change; and the audience won’t change because they don’t realize their media lies to them. And the media will continue to lie to keep their audience.
If they don’t all go bankrupt first.
One of our sons recently appeared in a production of Pirates.
Their cast was so small he was a Pirate in act one and a Policeman in act two.The recital of credentials by the Major-General is the Victorian equivalent of our current DoD fixation on climate change, trans-rights, and DEI.
None of them are essential for military effectiveness — and the audiences knew it.At least the Victorian generals ended up knowing some math, geography, and history. Ours know either errors or nothing — the latter being less harmful.
AesopFan
I confess to being astounded at the stats in this post.
“Kamala Harris lost big to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, but if the 2028 election were to be held today, a significant margin of Democrats would vote for her again.”
41% in fact.
Don’t be astounded. These are yellow dog Democrats. If Donald Trump had run as a Democrat, they would have voted for him.
Good story and comment about Pirates of Penzance. In spite of knowing Modern Major General for decades, I had never considered the possibility that knowing all that stuff was similar to DEI/climate change etc. today. Irrelevant to what a Major General does.
“…And the media will continue to lie to keep their audience….”
Indeed.
Which is why I’m not quite sure I understand what the problem is here:“MSNBC staffers ‘in a panic’ as NBC-parent Comcast plans to spin off channel — and possibly change its name”
https://nypost.com/2024/11/20/media/msnbc-staffers-in-a-panic-as-nbc-parent-comcast-plans-to-spin-off-channel-and-possibly-change-its-name/Can’t they just continue making up shite no matter what name they go by?
I mean, who really cares what those clowns and jokers are called??
OTOH, I can imagine their preposterously extravagant salaries will take more than a bit of a hit.
(Gosh, maybe that’s what happens to you when you so fervently, CONSTANTLY try to destroy people’s lives??)And so…Payback Time!
AF, this one’s fer you….
“BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff brings touchdowns and Jewish teachings to predominantly Mormon school”—
https://ctrk.klclick1.com/l/01JD7586XT2TPQT76Y262P0FK3_16(Wonder if he also sings with the Tabernacle Choir…i.e., on off days…)
Huxley @ 10 PM
So well-put. You did early on predict his victory. I appreciate your positive outlook. I’m married to an optimist. We balance each other.
Twofer:
1) Elise Stefanik vows to take on ‘den of antisemitism’ and ‘apologist for Iran’ at the UN – have to hand it to the Republican party, they have some Top Notch women!
UN ambassador-designate Elise Stefanik has yet to take her seat at Turtle Bay. Yet she’s already blasting the world body, slamming it as a “den of antisemitism” in a blistering speech and vowing to confront its army of haters. More power to her!
2) Putin threatens to attack US bases in Poland just hours after unleashing ICBM in Ukraine for the first time – Can’t even beat Ukraine after almost 3 years. His military is in shambles—having to resort to WW I tactics and can’t even gain air superiority over a country that barely has an air force. NUKES? They’re probably in as bad of shape as the rest of the Russian military. Putin is desperate…fuk him and Russia!
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