Cattiest of the Caturday Posts

I tuned into Tucker to get his take on Castrudeau’s imposition of martial law in Canada and his declaration that “all of your monies belong to me.” He did cover that eventually but his opening segment was devoted to a new book about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez written by editors of New York magazine. It’s called – and I’m not making this up - Take Up Space. I’m beginning to think that the Left really does not understand irony.

As you are not likely to purchase this charming little Valentine of a book yourself I’m dedicating my post today to Tucker’s take on the book length love letter to the arguably silliest member of Congress since Al Franken.

The closed captions aren’t working on YouTube; you can find them on the Fox News site but you’ll have to endure their ads.

It is news entertainment at its eviscerating best. The segment runs a clip of Sandy doing a Instagram post of herself demonstrating how she applies eyeshadow and lipstick (“I start small and work my way out”) while her running commentary reflects on how “it’s so hard to be taken seriously.” Again, the irony thing.

Here are just a couple of tease quotes from the book: 

“Ocasio-Cortez is the first person in history to live fully out loud while female. And the degradations of womenhood are personal to her.”

Thus providing proof of feminism’s failure: 55 years hence and she’s still whining about the same things Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan did.

She offered the reassuring warmth of Oprah; the fire and brimstone of Jonathan Edwards; the inspiration of John. F. Kennedy; the intimacy of an FDR fireside chat. It was exhausting and reassuring and scary and comforting and extremely weird.

That comment must have been inspired by her Instagram in which she takes questions from fans constituents while assembling an Ikea table for her new Washington D.C. condo.

Round hole, square peg, or vice versa

ot to be outdone by New York, the New Yorker did their own suck-up profile of little AOC in her first 3 years (it sure seems longer) in Congress.

“Honestly, it is a shit show,” she said. “It’s scandalizing, every single day. What is surprising to me is how it never stops being scandalizing”…said AOC without so much as a smidgen of irony, let alone self-awareness.

As Jeb Pleb posted on the YouTube video, “Don't feel too bad. I’m Canadian. Our AOC is prime minister.” Dead right: two would-be showgirls who landed on national stage long before they were ready for any sort of ‘prime’ time.

And that concludes perhaps my cattiest Caturday post.

Cattiest of the Caturday Posts

I tuned into Tucker to get his take on Castrudeau’s imposition of martial law in Canada and his declaration that “all of your monies belong to me.” He did cover that eventually but his opening segment was devoted to a new book about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez written by editors of New York magazine. It’s called – and I’m not making this up - Take Up Space. I’m beginning to think that the Left really does not understand irony.

As you are not likely to purchase this charming little Valentine of a book yourself I’m dedicating my post today to Tucker’s take on the book length love letter to the arguably silliest member of Congress since Al Franken.

The closed captions aren’t working on YouTube; you can find them on the Fox News site but you’ll have to endure their ads.

It is news entertainment at its eviscerating best. The segment runs a clip of Sandy doing a Instagram post of herself demonstrating how she applies eyeshadow and lipstick (“I start small and work my way out”) while her running commentary reflects on how “it’s so hard to be taken seriously.” Again, the irony thing.

Here are just a couple of tease quotes from the book: 

That comment must have been inspired by her Instagram in which she takes questions from fans constituents while assembling an Ikea table for her new Washington D.C. condo.

Round hole, square peg, or vice versa

ot to be outdone by New York, the New Yorker did their own suck-up profile of little AOC in her first 3 years (it sure seems longer) in Congress.

“Honestly, it is a shit show,” she said. “It’s scandalizing, every single day. What is surprising to me is how it never stops being scandalizing”…said AOC without so much as a smidgen of irony, let alone self-awareness.

As Jeb Pleb posted on the YouTube video, “Don't feel too bad. I’m Canadian. Our AOC is prime minister.” Dead right: two would-be showgirls who landed on national stage long before they were ready for any sort of ‘prime’ time.

And that concludes perhaps my cattiest Caturday post.

Putting the ‘Dem’ In Dementia

A week ago the government announced that the consumer price index rose 7.5% from a year ago, marking the fastest increase since February 1982 (which was a very bad year in case you don’t remember). Yesterday Biden went to Ohio where he touted his “growing” economy – if by “growing” he means inflation.

In the same visit he proposed $1 billion in funding for a “greening” clean up of the Great Lakes. Now, it’s hard to be opposed to cleaning up the Great Lakes, but timing-wise one might question the need to do so while inflation is running unchecked. Even a potato should know that pumping billions of Federal dollars into an overheated economy is not the best way to get inflation in check.

But Biden doesn’t now and never has known diddly-squat about economics, despite graduating “at the top of his class.” Nor has he had to as he has always been good at regurgitating whatever crap his staff hands him. His modest starting mental acuity and agility however continues to slip as whatever form of dementia he’s suffering from continues to take its toll. He spouts increasingly nonsensical gibberish that nobody – neither his staff, nor his media apologists – can defend. Although I note with amusement as well as despair how his beleaguered loyalists attempt to defend his insanity in the comment sections of lefty news outlets and blogs. The most popular “defense” is to blame Trump for all the troubles in Biden’s world. Clever.

Anyway, Biden has taken to blaming “supply chain problems” for the current out-of-control inflation. As he explained to NBC’s Lester Holt last week:

“The reason for the inflation is the supply chains were cut off, meaning that the products, for example, automobiles — the lack of computer chips to be able to build those automobiles so they could function; they need those computer chips. They were not available.”

Steven Rattner - former counselor to the Treasury secretary under Obama – takes exception, writing in an op-ed for the new York Times that the President mischaracterized the cause of the extreme inflation in the U.S., saying it was “simplistic and misleading,” nor unlike the Potato himself.

"For starters, the supply chains have not been ‘cut off,’ just stretched. And supply issues are by no means the root cause of our inflation. Blaming inflation on supply lines is like complaining about your sweater keeping you too warm after you’ve added several logs to the fireplace,"

According to the former Treasury staffer, the current supply issues are a result of an overstimulated economy.

Although Rattner acknowledged the pandemic has indeed stretched supply chains, he said the primary inflation source is rapid consumer demand, fueled in large part by unprecedented levels of government spending, including three stimulus payments.

On top of that, the pandemic has shifted what Americans are purchasing; as they continue to grapple with the virus, many Americans have shifted their spending to goods like cars, electronics and building materials for homes, rather than travel or entertainment. The Labor Department reported that spending on durable goods surged 25% in 2021, compared with 2020.

"It’s a classic economic case of ‘too much money chasing too few goods,’ resulting in both higher prices and, given the extreme surge in demand, shortages," he said. – Fox Business

“Overstimulated” as only a demented Democrat could do. So this report seems anything but surprising:

Democrats are joining with Republicans worried about President Joe Biden’s mental capacity in calling for a brain test of the chief executive.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey on the issue said that 43% of Democrats want Biden to take a cognitive test similar to the one former President Donald Trump took and passed in office. Some 47% of Democrats do not feel it’s necessary. – Washington Examiner

I think the 47% who don’t thing it’s necessary should be required to take a cognitive test also.

 

Ohhh, Canada!

It’s Throwback Thursday, let’s ride!

Trudeau voices support for farmers in India who blocked major highways to New Delhi for more than a year in 2021, saying at the time: “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest.”

That certainly didn’t age well Justine. Were you lying then or are you lying now?

Mind you, we are talking about the Canadian Prime Minister of little brain who thought this a good idea:

Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canada’s history, allowing the federal government to freeze assets, suspend the insurance of the Freedom Convoy protesters, and target crowdfunding platforms and cryptocurrency transactions under “terrorist financing” rules.

All that simply because a bunch of protestors peacefully parked their trucks and honked their horns in the general direction of Parliament. While that may sound like the very definition of “peaceful protest” to the rest of us, to Castrudeau it sounded like an insurrection mounted by a batch of fringe-group racists and misogynists, all of which required the invocation of wartime-like emergency powers.

Had anyone been paying attention this would have come as no surprise. Check out this video from 2013 that Breitbart has resurfaced in which Trudeau expresses envy and admiration of China’s autocratic methods.

“There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China,” Trudeau responded. “Because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and saying ‘We need to go greenest fastest, we need to start, you know, investing in solar.‘”

As we all know, the end always justifies the means to Leftists. Justin should get together with like-minded Tom Friedman; together they could take their love for communist autocracy act on the road. You do remember Friedman’s likewise wistful yearning that the U.S. could be more like China’s autocracy don’t you? In 2009 he wrote in his New York Times column:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.

At least Tom acknowledged there were “drawbacks” to repressive authoritarian government.

But that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for an Enlightened Dictator to show us the way.  He – and weak minded sock puppets like Castrudeau - yearn for the type of power to shape the world to their image and likeness. That is precisely what makes them so dangerous.

This is the most monumentally stupid, monumentally arrogant, and monumentally misguided decision by a prime minister since 1867…

When Black Lives Matter flooded the streets, Trudeau not only met with them, he went into the streets and joined in on the their American-inspired protest. He gave them a knee and bowed his head. But he would not meet with the truckers. He would not talk to their representatives. There was certainly no kneeling.

He rhetorically abused the citizens in the protest. He suggested they were racists and misogynists and that they hold “unacceptable views.”…

The most egregious, polarizing agent in this entire protest has been the leader of the country. – National Post

As someone pointed out at Instapundit:

“Justin Trudeau is doing to Canada what Barack Obama did to America: stoke the flames of dissent and cultural attacks on citizens.”

The Chinese prefer us divided and with our institutions weakened and discredited. It’s just a shame we have so many among us who are happy to deliver that result.

Truth. But we have far too many citizens who wish to ignore the truth which is right there in front of their faces and choose to believe China is just a cute, harmless little Teddy bear.

And speaking of harmless little Teddy bears reminds me that today marks the first anniversary of Rush Limbaugh’s passing.

Our favorite harmless, loveable little fuzz-ball.

Like Andrew Breitbart he is fondly remembered and sorely missed.

R.I.P. P.J. O’Rourke

R.I.P. P.J. O’Rourke, who died yesterday at 74. He was a clever and entertaining writer who started out as the typical 60’s hippie into drugs, sex and rock and roll. But like many of us he got hijacked by taxes when he started making decent money as a Gonzo journalist for National Lampoon. He became Rolling Stone’s token conservative voice and was considered “conservative” for much of his career but later in life he converted to libertarianism. He had strong opinions, but his deeply held beliefs continued to evolve.

I’m still a bit irked with him for not supporting Trump – not because he had an ideological objection to his platform but because of his opinion of him as a person. I confess, I once thought like P.J.: if a person didn’t measure up to my moral standards and value system I vowed not to vote for them regardless of their promises. But that was before it became apparent that America, and the world, stood at a tipping point. At that point a flawed candidate headed down the correct path was far superior to another liberal/progressive dragging us towards serfdom.

But that doesn’t lessen in any way the sheer genius of O’Rourke’s contribution to political commentary. His iconic work, released in 1991 still contains tidbits of political insight for the ages, including this oft quoted gem:

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

In fact, Parliament of Whores contains many observations still applicable today:

“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.”

“As soon as children discover that the world isn’t nice, they want to make it nicer. And wouldn’t a world where everybody shares everything be nice? But kids are broke — so they want to make the world nicer with your money.”

“Many reporters, when they go to work in the nation’s capital, begin thinking of themselves as participants in the political process instead of glorified stenographers.”

And this insightful gem:

“The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.”

Based on that last observation alone I would have thought that O’Rourke would have supported Trump, the outsider who came to drain the swamp. But since he considered Trump  to be a narcissistic “sociopath” he voted for Hillary instead.

In 1998’s Eat The Rich O’Rourke still had many pithy observations to file :

“If we want the whole world to be rich, we need to start loving wealth. In the difference between poverty and plenty, the problem is the poverty, not the difference. Wealth is good.”

“Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else.”

“Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking.”

The latter is the basis for Democrats’ belief that the pie is only so big so the only thing we can do is slice it up and pass it out differently. So when someone comes along and says hey, we can make the pie bigger! Hell, we can even create more pies!! (e.g. Trump) Democrats recoil in horror. True conservatives cheer them on: apparently born-again Libertarians do not.

Pi: it’s infinite

And finally we have from 1994’s All The Trouble In The World  my personal favorite quote from all P.J’s prolific works:

"Everybody wants to save the world but nobody wants to help mom with the dishes."

 

So while Putin plays cat and mouse with President Potato Head and Hillary pretends she knows nothing about wiping computers with a cloth (or something) and even less about cyber-spying let us pause and mark the passing of a true American. Whether you agreed with him or not he was always entertaining. The country could use a lot more of that.

I’m Not The Problem, You’re The Problem

After spouting the Russia! Russia! Russia! narrative for years silence has fallen on all the Congressional loudmouths. MSM outlets too have mostly gone silent on the latest news to emerge from the long drawn out Durham Report. They have no comment on the findings that Clinton and Company deployed internet spies. In other words, Trump really was spied on.

That would be illegal of course, but a hurdle corruptocrats can easily get over around.

For the record, the New York Times did pipe up to contend that “these reports have previously been debunked.” Conveniently that debunking was also done by the New York Times.

The Wall Street Journal breaks it down.

Durham says techies linked to the Clinton campaign had access to White House and Trump Tower internet data.

Special Counsel John Durham continues to unravel the Trump-Russia “collusion” story, and his latest court disclosure contains startling information. According to a Friday court filing, the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign effort to compile dirt on Donald Trump reached into protected White House communications.

In a new legal filing, the special counsel says a tech company that had access to Trump's internet communications shared that data with operatives working for the Clinton campaign in 2016

The indictment revealed that Mr. Sussmann worked with “Tech Executive-1,” who has been identified as Rodney Joffe, formerly of Neustar Inc. The indictment says Mr. Joffe used his companies, as well as researchers at a U.S. university, to access internet data, which he used to gather information about Mr. Trump’s communications.

Mr. Durham says Mr. Joffe’s “goal” was to create an “inference” and “narrative” about Mr. Trump that would “please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at [Perkins Coie] and the Clinton Campaign.”

The smug face of a woman who believes she is above the law

The filing explains that Mr. Joffe’s employer “had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided [internet services]” to the White House. Mr. Joffe’s team also was monitoring internet traffic related to Trump Tower, and Mr. Trump’s apartment on Central Park West.

White House communications are supposed to be secure, and the notion that any contractor—much less one with ties to a presidential campaign—could access them is alarming enough. The implication that the data was exploited for a political purpose is a scandal that requires investigation under oath.

Read the whole thing, pay-wall is suspended at the link

When we can no longer trust the FBI, CIA – or any of our National intelligence Agencies – we should not be surprised when “freedom” comes under fire by the tyrants running the gameboard. Canada’s Pretty Boy Droid tyrannically moves to enforce an Emergency Act against protesting truckers by taking away their rights and treating them like terrorists (just like January 6th!) is just an example. He’s just doing his globalist part to deal with this right wing “Freedom Problem.”

May God have mercy on the freedom loving people of the world, as we have now been deemed the problem.

I’m not the problem…

First Super Bowl By Millennials For Millennials

Forget the game and the all-Black (Eminem identifies as Black) halftime ‘show,’ I could  write a book about the Super Bowl commercials. But what’s the point? They were certainly not targeting me. The Rams and the Bengals were both coached by Millennials who have taken over from the Old Guard. The game’s ad-spots were likewise created by Millennials for Millennials.

Their market research now includes new age data mining that reveals that old Boomers like me are not likely to invest in cryto-currencies - even though I did rather like Crypto platform eToro’s CGI ad.

A cryto-investor murmuration over a Post-Post Modern City

Nor are we likely to go to theatres to see the 110th installment in movie franchises like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And I’m far less likely to purchase a “carb-free” beer than, oh say, a skinny post-grad coed. Nor do I plan to purchase a CueHealth device, cleverly called “Cue,” that conducts Covid tests from the comfort of your own home. It will be Millennials and Gen-Zeers who have one of these babies sitting next to their Alexa.

And Google’s Pixel 6 camera with Real Tone? This product was aimed at an even narrower demographic: brown and black Millennials/GenZees. “Real Tone” being an algorithm that “highlights the nuances of diverse (read: black and brown) skin tones” - it’s clearly not marketing to honkies. Note they assume their target audience is too dim to suss out Google’s message on their own so they spell it out: “The ad seeks to draw attention to the lack of image equity in camera technologies that have not always accurately worked on all skin tones.”

The “your camera is racist” pitch is not directed at old white guys

And speaking of the minority demographic: There was one (and only one) commercial that did not have a minority in it – Weather-Tec. How dare they! - and then place an American flag in the last few frames. Deeply regrettable. And a very fine product line, including undersink mats to save your cabinet from leaks.

Verizon hired lame Jim Carry to reprise his lame Cable Guy persona. I’m not sure what the point was as I was too distracted by how strangely the man’s rubber face has aged: hard edged, deeply grooved and far creepier than funny.

I did love that E-trade reprised their talking babies – of course one of them was black.

And although I missed it, probably during a real beer run, Budweiser did bring back the Clydesdale. Maybe it’s just me but I found this particular Millennial version of sentiment more disturbing than uplifting. But like I said, it’s probably just me, on account of my being an irrelevant, out of touch old Boomer.

What it lacked in creativity it made up for in virtue signaling, given that the Vet administering to the fallen stead was a black female.

There were a zillion more ads to choose from, half of which were lame, woke and pandering and the other half which were just lame. But since it’s both Mutt-day and Valentine’s Day I would suggest you not waste your time checking them out.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day!

We’re Going To The Super Bowl!

I know most of you won’t be watching the Super Bowl today and that’s fine. But we’ll be watching here at Casa MOTUS. You see, it’s a long tradition – watching as a former Detroit Lion performs magnificently and leads a new team to triumphant victory.

This time around it’s former Lion quarterback Matthew Stafford who will, quite possibly, lead the Rams offense to a Super Bowl championship in his first year as their QB. While I don’t relish giving LA officials any reason to celebrate their pathetic city, I’m here to tell you that Matthew Stafford deserves a Super Bowl ring.

He was Detroit's No. 1 pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, played hurt for his first two seasons before emerging as a reliable QB and a class act. He played for the Lions for 12 seasons, 12 long, dismal seasons like nearly every other Lions season in memory - the Lions have one playoff win since 1957, and now own the NFL's longest playoff win drought at 30 years.

The last time the Lions were #1 the Super Bowl didn’t even exist

The Lions have never been to a Super Bowl and never will, according to Raj, as long as they are owned by the Ford (yes, that Ford) family. The franchise is run more like a vanity business - existing more for ego gratification than success; as a result winning isn’t everything, in fact, it isn’t even a priority.

It’s worse than the curse of the goat

The team has repeatedly chewed up good athletes and spit them out, wasting their talents on perpetually mediocre teams with one or two good players because ownership never spends the sort of money needed to assemble a really good team.  As a result they go through infrastructure ‘rebuilding seasons’ every few years but never actually Build Back Better™. Their non-winning strategy  has either wasted or destroyed many a good athlete (e.g. Barry Sanders).

1999: they gave Barry Sanders a mural, but never a ring

This is the best any life-long Lions fan can hope for: to see one of their favorite Lions lead another team to victory. So while diehard Lions fans find us deplorable, we true loyalists have sworn our allegiance to Matthew Stafford who proved himself both loyal and true during his 12 years with the Lions. We’re not abandoning him now.

Even if he wears a different jersey and lives 3 time zones away.

And if you have no interest in football whatsoever this is for you:

HONK HONK!!