Unlikely, But Not Impossible So Remain Vigilant

Glenn Greenwald, one of the few remaining classic liberals plying the trade of journalism – Matt Taibbi being the only other I can think of offhand – eviscerates the MSM for their lack of intellectual honesty. In a Substack article he notes how Biden, in a reversal of a Trump decision, has lifted sanctions hence allowing Putin to pursue one of his key goals: a new Russian natural gas pipeline to Germany. And he notes, in an endless replaying of the “What If Trump Had Done That” game that rather than praising the move the media would have ramped up the Trump-is-a-Russian-agent trope again.

That the Kremlin had taken over American political institutions through its blackmail control of former President Donald Trump was a media conspiracy theory as pervasive as it was deranged. This once-exciting script was excavated from the CIA’s Cold War basement, dusted off by their operatives, and then kicked off by the intelligence community’s purposeful dissemination of the now-debunked Steele Dossier. And once this fairy tale was launched, there were seemingly no limits on the depths to which media figures would sink to promote it.

Never mind that it was never more than a fabulist’s version of The Life Of Trump i.e. fake news. Greenwald notes that contrary to the Trump-as-Russian-Agent premise it was actually Obama, and now Biden, who have accommodated Moscow’s whims, not Trump.

And he wonders about a profession that has such a reckless disregard for facts and truth that they would run this sort of speculative garbage as “news” during an election year.

“Unlikely but possible” – the Media’s standard for news

MSNBC’s host Chris Hayes earnestly interviewed New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait about the latter’s 2018 cover story speculating that Trump may have been groomed as a Russian intelligence asset since 1987. “Unlikely but possible” declared the on-screen cable graphic as Hayes spoke, summarizing the media’s Trump-era renunciation of all standards of rationality and evidence for disseminating unhinged conspiracies to their audience, at great profit for themselves but great harm to everything and everyone else.

Good grief MSM, have you no shame? (Rhetorical) Greenwald goes on to explain a few facts to the reality impaired.

In the world of reality, the exact opposite was happening. When it came to actual vital Russian interests — as opposed to the symbolic gestures hyped by the liberal cable and op-ed page circus — Trump and his administration were confronting and undermining the Kremlin in ways Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, had…steadfastly refused to do.

Indeed, the foreign policy trait relentlessly attributed to Trump in support of the media’s Cold War conspiracy theory — namely, an aversion to confronting Putin — was, in reality, an overarching and explicit belief of President Obama’s foreign policy, not President Trump’s. During the 2012 presidential election, Obama and the Democratic Party famously and repeatedly mocked GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s warnings about the threat posed by Russia as a “relic of the Cold War.”

After detailing the ways the Trump foreign policy implicitly thwarted Russia in contrast to the ways the Obama, and now Biden, administrations catered to their desires, Greenwald concludes:

Just imagine what would be happening right now if it were Trump, rather than Biden, who just handed Putin his underwater natural gas pipeline just days after Russian hackers allegedly caused serious gas shortages in the U.S. Jingoistic op-eds would fill the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post warning of Kremlin control of the U.S.; CNN and MSNBC would convene panel after panel of their former FBI and CIA operatives to accuse Trump of treason for subordinating U.S. interests to Russian interests; Rachel Maddow would be on the verge of righteous and indignant tears as she devoted her 20-minute monologue to decrying the tragedy that we were all living under Putin’s rule; and Nancy Pelosi would be holding a press conference to spread more innuendo about Putin’s blackmail control over Trump while demanding a DOJ investigation.

For five years, the bulk of the U.S. media pushed and endorsed a demented, dangerous conspiracy theory about the world’s second-largest nuclear power that not only lacked evidence but was negated by every relevant event. As I documented in late 2016 and then again in 2018, there is a stronger basis for claiming that Obama was significantly more accommodating of Putin than Trump ever was. And after just four months in office, the same is true of Biden. But for a media devoted to an agenda rather than truth, the inexorable destruction of their conspiracy theory does not matter.

Welcome to the world of 2021, where a lot of things are quite unlikely but will continued to be touted as  possible.

It’s unlikely that your cat will transmogrify into a marinated chicken, but it’s possible so remain vigilant.

“Incompetent, Lazy and Obsessed With Fashion”– Excellent Qualifications

I wanted to do a Fashion Friday post. It’s just that there is so little to work with in this White House – an observation that holds true regardless of the subject or topic.

First I checked out Dr. Jilly’s whereabouts this week. All I came up with were a dozen stories about how she said that Kamala Harris can “go f–k” herself after Kami was mean to Joey during last year’s presidential debates. Not exactly news, or fashion.

Then there were multiple stories about her bespoke Valentino bag sporting the likeness of her two ill-trained German shepherds, Major and Champ. The leather studded handbag ($2,200 without the custom painting) was also adorned with a large white letter J.

That’s really…tacky

She also appeared with the mythical Fauci-man, hawking vaccines for children. Unfortunately she looked rather frumpy in her attempt to dress like VP Kamala, who is now both hers and Joey’s BFF.

I note that both of the good doctors, although fully vaccinated, showed up for their gig masked. It’s hard to keep track of their messaging when they keep changing keys between virtue signaling and making the country free again.

So I switched over to VP Kamala, hoping for a bit of fashion. Good luck there, as she dresses from a closet of dark suits and shells that she mixes up from time to time with a piece of neck jewelry. No matter what she dons she always looks essentially the same, which is to say boring from a fashion point of view.

It’s a special skill to make the red white and blue boring

But I do note that the VPOTUS is keeping herself busy with everything other than visiting the border that she’s allegedly been put in charge of fixing. Last week for example she spent her time discussing Central America’s corrupt justice system:

VP Harris meets with Guatemalan justice leaders before visit (if I might humbly suggest to the VP, justice begins at home), rebuking yet more racial straw men:

Vice President Harris denounces efforts to restrict Asian American, Pacific Islander voter rights, and talking to the Jordanian King about peace in the Middle East:

Kamala Harris, not Biden, called king of Jordan to discuss Gaza ceasefire (Joey had already put a lid on it for the day).

I did noted that the knives and claws are beginning to come for the VP, with several stories about her deeply unlikable personality, bland political appearances and penchant for keeping an “enemies list” providing media fodder.

I don’t know, she looks like a lot of fun to me

Vice President Kamala Harris keeps track of journalists and political players she feels don’t “appreciate her life experience” — and the feeling is mutual — as television producers have become hesitant to book her because she is “so uninteresting,” according to a report.

It’s no wonder she can’t keep staff; she bores them to death. Either that or, as Sarah Hoyt put it, “I heard from someone who worked for her she’s incompetent, lazy and obsessed with fashion.”

There Is Just As Much Horse Sense As Ever, But The Horses Have Most Of It.

Newspapers from really small towns can still be quite delightful, which is why I still subscribe to the Leelanau Enterprise where all the news is parochial, all sports regional and all politics local. They still have space for human interest stories and local history, unvarnished and largely unretouched by politically correct sensibilities. Stories such as this from a local book, “A Port Oneida Collection: Images, Oral History, Maps,”  which chronicles the history of the Charles and Hattie Olsen Farm. The excerpt continues from an earlier installment and picks up with a 1978 letter from the Olsen’s daughter, Virginia, to one of her granddaughters. It’s titled simply and matter-of-factly, Stroke doesn’t stop work on Olsen Farm.

The Charles & Hattie Olsen Farm, 1948. Most of these buildings are now, unfortunately, gone. However, you can visit the site any time; see the house, barn, and root cellar; and imagine the rest of what is shown in this photo and described in the text of this chapter. Photo courtesy of Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear Online Archive

The stories are told plain and straight forward, like your own grandmother or grandfather would have unemotionally related the joys and sorrows of a hard life. But beyond the matter-of-fact historical telling of her parents’ declining health there is this small gem, a daughter’s memory of her father – who had suffered several strokes – and his horses.

One of the very oddest things was when he was able, we would push his wheelchair to the back fence and his horses could be down in the pasture and without calling them, they would come up to the fence and nuzzle his hand as long as he was out. The horses, Babe and Nell, did other things that were quite remarkable. Several times in later years, especially while hauling out manure, Dad wouldn’t notice his foot under the wheel, the horses would always look and wait till he moved his feet before they would go. Another time he had a slight stoke and fell under one of the horses’ feet. That horse stood on three feet till a neighbor found him and freed Dad. So many times they saved his life that when he died, Orvald kept them and fed them till they died.

 

"There is just as much horse sense as ever, but the horses have most of it."

For your mental health I recommend reading only really small town newspapers these days; everything else will leave you wondering if mankind really does deserve animals.

If you have gained the trust of a horse, you have won a friend for life.

Five Years On: Still In Search of “A Small Happiness”

Every now and again I will go to the deep vaults of dead and forgotten posts to see what was going on in history on this date. Today turned up this this somewhat dated yet still relevant post about ‘a small happiness’. I decided to make it an easy morning by reposting it for you to read with your early morning coffee while I drag my butt out of bed and drive downriver to get some bedding plants from the cheap nurseries before they are completely out of stock.

Originally posted May 19, 2016. How were we to know that those were the good old days?

 

  Did you see the Wall Street Journal article yesterday about Starbucks new app? Raj was in it! They spelled his name wrong, of course:

For Sathyarajkumar Krishnasamy, 49, an engineer, finally seeing his properly spelled name on a cup has been a breakthrough. In Starbucks stores, he had tried everything from providing his nickname, “Raj,” which sometimes came out as “Rodge,”

One hot black grande for “Rodge”!

to telling baristas to identify him simply as “number 10.” The accuracy of the app, says Mr. Krishnasamy, is “a small happiness.”

Butt that was the whole point of the story: how Starbucks new app – which prints out a sticker with your name on it  – eliminates the barista’s hand in misspelling your name in new and quirky ways:

Eugenia Leu misses the days when the baristas at her local Starbucks used to bungle her name.

The 36-year-old resident of San Mateo, Calif., recalls how she used to identify herself at the counter and then wait for the hand-scrawled translation to appear on her cup. She liked the anticipation of not knowing what it might say and then finding it boldly—and wrongly—marked “Ugena”

The new app lets you enter your own name which automatically prints out for the barista to paste on your cup. Efficient. Of course the new robot app, which eliminates the need to hire expensive baristas who can spell as well as make coffee, takes a lot of the fun out of the Starbucks coffee experience. For instance, there are now fewer clues for the “guess what your server majored in before becoming a full-time barista” game. Here are some of my best guesses based on previous, documented, misspellings:

Double major: Womyn’s Studies and LGBT Studies (yeah, it’s a real major)

[[trigger warning on this next one!]]

Not sure, butt definitely NOT Womyn’s Studies – unless they were being ironic

English – Linguistics; or Drama

English – as a second language

Of course the new app may have its own charms thanks, I’m guessing, to the auto-correct feature:

I’m thinking a new game that might be fun to play would be “guess the person’s coffee order based on their name.” Here’s a couple to get you started:

Grande White chocolate mocha for (Ex) POTUS:

Short Vanilla Latte for Hillary (with a Scotch chaser):

Café Americano for Trump, Venti:

Bernie never goes to Starbucks because many people can’t afford to buy coffee from the capitalist pigs.

I never go to Starbucks either because I’m one of those people who hasn’t had a raise in 8 years, so I don’t know if this new app is going to be a big thing or not. Butt Raj, who does visit occasionally, advises that “the seeing of your name” – or a reasonable facsimile thereof – on your cup is indeed  a “small happiness.”

And really, what more can any of us expect from life other than a small happiness from time to time?

Here we are 5 years hence and I find it requires a lot more than your name – and a lot more coffee – to deliver even a small happiness in these trying times.

 

This small happiness is on me. Enjoy!

If You’re So Rich Why Aren’t You Smart?

NOTICE: Again many of us (including me) cannot see or use the comment system. Some people are reporting Disqus doing beta-testing and screwing up comments on several sites. Apparently some of you are capable of getting in the comment system as I see comments in my Disqus moderations panel but many more of (us) are not. Hopefully it will resolve itself, but no promises.

 

Remember when all the same people who excused Bill Clinton’s bad behavior towards women (Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey to name a few) in the 90s donned pussy hats from 2016-2020 to protest the alleged misogynist behavior of Donald J. Trump?

All those powerful writers, lawyers, activists, politicians, academics – and more importantly, celebrities -  who call themselves feminists firmly supported their matinee idol president. Gloria Steinem even went so far as to write an essay excusing Bill’s “bad behavior” that was published in America’s then newspaper of record.

The New York Times published Gloria Steinem’s essay defending Clinton in March 1998

And Gloria was still huddling with the feminists at the 2018 Women’s March, only this time to dethrone a President she didn’t approve of for the same alleged crime that she had vigorously defended President Clinton for 20 years earlier.

Mazar, Steinem, Madonna and Amy Schumer – exemplary feminists all

“Even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb, and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took ‘no’ for an answer.” – Gloria Steinem, NYT, 1998

They never managed to get Trump out of office with their cat-calling; that required a fraudulent election. But the framework they constructed in order to entrap Trump has managed to snare more than a few of their own icons: Al Franken, Mark Helperin, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor to name just a few.

And all of a sudden it seemed the Left had learned how to rein in this monster they created.

They did manage to maneuver Old Joe through the Tara Reade allegations by ‘triangulating’ the insistence that we “believe all women” around to “believe the women we tell you to believe.” And then all of a sudden something else pops up: Bill Gates Proves Money Can’t Buy Morals. Not just an icon of leftist-tom-foolery, but one of it’s major benefactors gets snared.

Turns out that Bill Gates is a sleazeball, and the Microsoft board was investigating him before his departure in March 2020.

And according to the New York Times, Bill Gates had a habit of hiding behind his rich and nerdy image while trying to pick up women after his marriage. And not just any women – Microsoft employees.

And to top off this sleaze shower, now come the reports of things Bill Gates allegedly said to Jeffrey Epstein. Yes, THAT Jeffrey Epstein.

Gates used the gatherings at Epstein’s $77 million New York townhouse as an escape from what he told Epstein was a “toxic” marriage, a topic both men found humorous, a person who attended the meetings told The Daily Beast.”

The billionaire met Epstein dozens of times starting in 2011 and continuing through to 2014 mostly at the financier’s Manhattan home—a substantially higher number than has been previously reported. Their conversations took place years before Bill and Melinda Gates announced this month that they were splitting up.”

Gates, in turn, encouraged Epstein to rehabilitate his image in the media following his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and discussed Epstein becoming involved with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”

Should be fun to follow the divorce proceedings. While it’s sort of hard not to side with Melinda it’s still important to remember that she is half of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As Daniel Greenfield explained in The Love Song of Bill and Melinda they both think they’re smarter than God and that with all their money they alone can solve the world’s two biggest problems: global warming and gender equity. Mr. Green sees these dual causes as perfect for the two of them to virtue signal their hypocrisy.

A cockeyed optimist might hope for a wake-up call in which Bill and Melinda finally realize that they can’t run their own lives, or Microsoft, and so they probably shouldn’t be running the world.

When they said we’d be working for geeks someday I didn’t really figure it would be these two

Certain Restrictions May Apply

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. – Voltaire

America: Land of the Free*

Uncle Joey said we might be able to remove our face masks by the 4th of July!

However there will be a few new restrictions this year. Specifically, American-Left Groupthink (ALG)® is no longer optional. In fact, the approved ALG® must be affixed to your persona whenever you venture out in public. Needless to say that includes your (private) email and (private) Facebook along with any and all public appearances on Twitter, Gab, hosted Podcasts, etc.. If you refuse to comply, there will be consequences: American Airlines Investigating Pilot After Woke Mob Reported Him for Opposing Critical Race Theory.

From The Dallas Morning News story:

American Airlines is investigating one of its pilots after social media users urged the company to review his posts and podcasts criticizing Carroll ISD’s proposed diversity and inclusion initiative and its supporters.

Guy Midkiff, 62, is a Southlake resident who has been a pilot at American for 32 years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“We are troubled by the allegations made and have launched an investigation into the matter,” an American Airlines representative said Wednesday in an email.

Does he not know that CRT is now accepted leftist dogma? So let’s have no more of that “thinking for yourself” nonsense that conservatives are so fond of promoting. After all, we’re all in this together, right?

Goodness, there are a lot of pale-faced sock puppets out there!

All other thoughts and opinions are subject to ALG® review, deletion, blacklisting, debunking and censure. After such review and correction you may be free to move about the country again as long as you continue to wear your ALG® and maintain proper social distance from those who do not.

*Certain restrictions may apply

We Can’t Make Life Fair But We Can Make It Mediocre

“If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.” – Thomas Sowell

Big news from America’s declining medical system, the Medical College Admission Test® just got a lot harder for some people to pass – and a lot easier for others: American Medical Association Embraces Critical Race Theory, Rejects Meritocracy.

What could go wrong?    

The American Medical Association (AMA), the largest national organization representing physicians and medical students in the United States, says it will set aside its long-held concept of meritocracy in favor of “racial justice” and “health equity.”

In an 86-page strategic plan released May 11, the AMA set out a three-year road map detailing how the advocacy group will use its influence to dismantle “structural and institutional racism” and advance “social and racial justice” in America’s health care system.

According to its plan, the AMA will be following a host of strategies, including implementing “racial and social justice” throughout the AMA enterprise culture, systems, policies, and practices; expanding medical education to include critical race theory; and pushing toward “racial healing, reconciliation, and transformation” regarding the organization’s own “racially discriminatory” past.

The AMA also makes clear that it now rejects the concepts of “equality” and “meritocracy,” which have been goals in the fields of medical science and medical care.

If nothing else it certainly gives new meaning to the expression “someone has to graduate at the bottom of the class.”

Q. What do you call the person who graduated at the bottom of his medical class?

A. Doctor.

I don’t care if Big Cola wants to go woke, or Disney, or even the NFL; I can certainly live without them. But one might think that even idiotic woke progressives might be able to see the wisdom of keeping “meritocracy” alive and well in the field of medicine. In fact, before the world was woke I might even have expected them to see that their insistence on getting rid of “equality” and “meritocracy” in favor of “racial justice” is blatantly racist as it’s basic premise assumes the “privileged” white race are superior and all other races require a “little boost” to bring them aboard.

So what do you say we ditch that great old trope about American Exceptionalism and settle in for some nice, fair mediocrity. We don’t want to mess up the curve now do we?

Because we can’t really make life fair, but we sure can make it a lot more mediocre.