282 Comments

  1. PieInTheSky

    Harris Surrenders in North Carolina, Withdraws Nearly $2 Million in Planned Ad Spend – or it is already in the bag and it is good to focus elsewhere

    • Swiss Servator

      It is odd, as in the public polling, it is still very close.

      • kinnath

        I said the other day to forget about the polls and just watch what the parties are doing. The Harris campaign is acting like it is in trouble. The Trump campaign is projecting lots of confidence.

      • Not Adahn

        That was my reaction in 2000. The Gore and Bush campaigns both had polling showing that Bush won FL, which is why Gore conceded.

  2. PieInTheSky

    Joe Biden calls Trump supporters ‘garbage’ in shock moment as Harris calls for unity at DC rally – meh seriously does anyone care? It is just politics.

    • SDF-7

      Nah — I seriously doubt anyone is really surprised or cares.

      But on the plus side — it got this running through my head while reading news this morning.

      • UnCivilServant

        Being insulted by Gropey Joe is just laughable at this point.

      • SDF-7

        SF’d the link there, our impeccably dressed rodent.

      • Pat

        But on the plus side — it got this running through my head while reading news this morning.

        I was expecting this.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Watching ABC spin how he wasn’t really talking about half the country, while they then take Trump’s words out of context (in the exact opposite direction) is just glorious.

        TMITE.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Maybe, maybe not but it exposes bootlickers

      “It was very obvious to me that there was an apostrophe at the end of “supporters'” there,” said Leonard. “He was referring to the garbage spewed by supporters, not simply the supporters themselves.”

      How you hear an apostrophe when the context is clear…I dunno.

      • Grumbletarian

        Maybe apostrophes are as audible as racist dogwhistles.

      • UnCivilServant

        Somehow I read that as ‘apostrophiles’ and got very confused.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Ted’s’ the expert, maybe he should write an article?

    • The Last American Hero

      He did it at the infamous Red Lighting speech, HRC did it at her Basket of Deplorables speech, and Obama did it during his Bitter Clingers speech.

  3. UnCivilServant

    Audit Alleges Boeing Charged Air Force Huge Markup for Aircraft Parts

    Oh, honey, that’s the government rate – it’s always above market, especially if you’re making a big purchase.

    • PieInTheSky

      we have a saying the fool is not the one who asks it is the one who pays.

      don’t hate the player hate the game.

      it is a seller’s market.

      • UnCivilServant

        That saying doesn’t make sense.

        You can hate both player and game, there is ample hate to go around.

        No, actually it’s not. With monopsony powers, the military has more leverage in the transaction over military airplane parts.

      • PieInTheSky

        That saying doesn’t make sense. – why does in not make sense? you can ask for however much you want if you are selling something and someone is willing to pay.

      • UnCivilServant

        Nobody* pays more than it is worth to them. Your saying assumes the transaction is always going to be fraudulent.

        *as an individual consumer spending their own money. A corrupt official spending other people’s money is a different beast and probably making some of that back.

      • PieInTheSky

        the military has more leverage in the transaction – well obviously it does not

      • PieInTheSky

        Nobody* pays more than it is worth to them. – if I buy a product for 500$ when I could have bought an identical product in the same day for 250, that is not a smart decision.

        Your saying assumes the transaction is always going to be fraudulent. – the saying does not apply to most transactions, just the ones where there was a clear massive overpay.

      • UnCivilServant

        Something must have gotten lost in translation, as it does not come across that way.

      • PieInTheSky

        well the moment one chooses to say a thing is hard to translate. But this was said in case of a situation that was considered an overpay.

    • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

      +1 $50000 toilet.

  4. PieInTheSky

    Job openings tumble more than expected to the lowest since January 2021 – less wage slavery, sounds like good news to me!

    • UnCivilServant

      More people on the dole, more starvation, you must be a globalist.

    • cavalier973

      AP had a story that said the lower jobs report was due to the hurricanes.

      They said that is was unfortunate that people will think the bad report will make people think that Biden’s policies caused it.

      They were heavily implying that even the weather was trying to help get Trump elected.

      • cavalier973

        Conspiracy Theory says that they used their weather control device in an attempt to suppress voting in the South, and it backfired.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        Climate Change is a YUGE Trump supporter!

      • Nephilium

        Well Trump is responsible for climate change, climate change causes hurricanes, so… there you go.

  5. PieInTheSky

    JD Vance To Go On Joe Rogan’s Podcast – prediction less fun than Tim Dillon.

  6. Rat on a train

    The Social Stigma Of Being A Trump Supporter Is Gone
    What if we call him a super-Nazi?

    • UnCivilServant

      So, like Red Son, but he landed in interwar Bavaria?

    • Nephilium

      You mean Homelander? They’re already making those comparisons in the Boys.

      • UnCivilServant

        Aphasia is a terrible affliction.

      • SDF-7

        Please — Homelander isn’t a Nazi… he’s just a psychopath. Superman without the moral core and annoyed by all the lesser beings around him.

        Of course, I tapped out of The Boys after Season 2 — maybe they made up some new stupid backstory for him… don’t know, don’t care.

      • Not Adahn

        He wasn’t hugged enough as a child.

    • rhywun

      The Social Stigma Of Being A Trump Supporter Is Gone

      If I had a Trump sign I’d love to put it out and see how long it lasts.

      • UnCivilServant

        There are a few in my area.

        Oh, and I’m seeing “No on Prop 1” signs as well. Nobody has a Harris or “Yes on 1” sign out.

      • Rat on a train

        There is one on my street. No evidence of the intolerant messing with it.

      • PieInTheSky

        you are not on one of the good streets then

      • Nephilium

        They’re all over around here. House across the street also put up a flat “Vote Republican” sign. The other text is “Lower Inflation; Secure Borders; Stronger Economy”.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        There are a couple in my neighborhood, but it is 20-1 Hairy/Balls.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        Also, my wife veto’d my “Presidents come and go, but the Wu-Tang is forever” sign.

      • rhywun

        On the bright side, the rheeing will be epic if what’s-her-name loses.

        Just have to probably avoid the likely rabbles.

      • Tonio

        Zwak, I was so tempted to get one of those Wu-Tang signs…

      • The Last American Hero

        We have the usual guy who puts a “Kenobi 2024 – Our Only Hope” sticker on his truck. He updates it every 4 years.

  7. SDF-7

    Joe Biden’s Migration Has Extracted Roughly 1 in 10 Nicaraguan Men

    Ah, the remittance economy… joy.

    See yesterday’s consensus: turn off the tap.

    • PieInTheSky

      sent em back and get the women instead

    • Strange Brew

      Headline 2028: Nicaragua economy decimated by America’s thirst for cheap labor. Aid to the nation soars to keep the Nicaraguan economy intact.
      It’s the grift that keeps on grifting.

    • rhywun

      Yep, it’s absolutely a collusion between businesses looking for cheap labor, commie ratfuckers down south looking for those remittances and also sending away some problematic folks, the NGOs who facilitate the whole racket, and the current administration and its pretensions toward “humanitarianism”.

  8. SDF-7

    Audit Alleges Boeing Charged Air Force Huge Markup for Aircraft Parts

    So what dark project was that being funneled to for the IC? Spy sats? Some stealth outfit? Because the old line of “You don’t really think they were paying $3000 for toilet seat covers!” from somewhere back in the day is leaping to mind…. Yeah, it could just be graft and corruption (heaven knows the military suppliers have their snouts deep, deep in the trough….) — but deniable slush funds seems more likely at that scale.

    • Bobarian LMD

      Sometimes its due to stupidity and graft in the military.

      1. Build an exacting spec for a toilet seat cover that no one makes and only a MIC company can produce.

      2. Ignore that a better, cheaper COTS (commercial Off the Shelf) solution exists.

      3. Company builds a machine to make the 600 seat covers for the 50 C5s in the inventory and prices in the cost of that machine, the pension for the worker who has to be trained to run the machine and the 600 seats, getting you to 3000 per.

  9. PieInTheSky

    Supreme Court rejects RFK Jr.’s bid to remove himself from ballots in swing states – well the courts should let the voter decide.

    • SDF-7

      I can 100 percent imagine Roberts just simply not wanting to get the Court into anything election related it doesn’t absolutely have to. He’s all about conflict avoidance.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        I kinda agree with him on this. Just as I don’t want the President to dictate what a court should decide, nor the legislature to tell me how many judges we need.

        We have the separation outline in the constitution, lets keep it.

      • trshmnstr

        I can 100 percent imagine Roberts just simply not wanting to get the Court into anything election related it doesn’t absolutely have to.

        This used to be called the Political Question Doctrine. It has been beaten to within an inch of its life, but it still draws breath when convenient for the leviathan.

      • Swiss Servator

        It does seem odd that someone says, “please take me off a ballot, I don’t wish to run.” and the State and the Courts say “Fuck off.”

      • The Last American Hero

        Michigan is the most egregious. RFK filed his request on time, and they told him to suck it. The other guy filed his a day late and they removed it.

        Guess which party controls the state, which party benefits from inconsistent treatment or adherence to the law, and which party is going to win in 2024?

  10. SDF-7

    Teri Garr Dead at 79

    I’m with Animal and others here yesterday — Assignment: Earth is the first thing I think of when I think of her — then her other roles. She was certainly a talent, RIP.

    Annoyingly, Apple doesn’t have Young Frankenstein available via any method… I’ve never actually watched it, and I should. Might have to resort to finding a DVD (BluRay would be better conceptually… but I’ve never tried getting it watchable over my LAN, if you know what I mean there….).

    • R.J.

      I looked last night. NOBODY has Young Frankenstein streaming. WTF kind of licensing hell is going on there?
      I have it on DVD as well, I will boot up the DVD player.

      • Bobarian LMD

        I’ve never actually watched it

        Russian spy confirmed.

        In 1974, when this movie came out, 9 year old Bobarian had no idea what it was and went to see it at a summer matinee. Because I liked monster movies.

        “Oh Crap!, It’s in black and white… Hey wait a minute, this is hilarious!”

        I saw it 3 times that week, and 5 times in that month.

      • invisible finger

        You didn’t look very hard. I’m streaming it on my roku right now.

      • cyto

        Roll, roll, roll in zee hay….

    • Rat on a train

      I would have taken her offer of a roll in the hay.

    • Pat

      BluRay would be better conceptually… but I’ve never tried getting it watchable over my LAN, if you know what I mean there

      If you’re stuck on the copy protection, MakeMKV with non-UHD, but “4k friendly” drives is your best bet. There’s custom firmware available for certain drives. Check their fora.

      • R.J.

        Someday you can teach me all those whippersnapper copy techniques.
        Time has gotten very compressed the past decade and left me no time whatsoever to expand my knowledge base.

      • Rat on a train

        I use k3b to archive and handbrake to transcode. Throw it on the NAS and let Plex serve it up.

      • Pat

        I’m not all that well versed on BluRay ripping either, I’m afraid. By the time DVD died I had already made the transition to a home media server and streaming. The UHD copy protection is a lot more robust than the old CSS protection on DVDs that was cracked with a week of release. Of course, there’s always the analog hole, but at the expense of full quality.

      • Rat on a train

        Bluray (AACS) encryption is more difficult than DVD (CSS). CSS can be brute forced at runtime. AACS requires code and keys.

      • trshmnstr

        This.

        This is how I got all my DVDs and Blu-Rays onto Plex. In fact, I have a stack to scan in when I have a moment.

        Pay attention to which drive models play nice with MakeMKV.

    • The Last American Hero

      It is an excellent film.

  11. Pope Jimbo

    Sorry for the early OT, but it is late here in Korea and I’m getting ready to turn in.

    Just need to share this gem of a story: Gwen Walz, cool headed and active political spouse, campaigns to the wire. The picture that accompanies the story is 100% proof that Gwen is calm cool and collected.

    Yet her campaign style differs vastly from her husband’s.
     
    Tim Walz is given to fiery speeches and colorful language when attacking Donald Trump and his allies — he recently called Elon Musk a “dipshit” — and has sometimes made damaging “misstatements” in the heat of the moment.
     
    Meanwhile, Gwen is cool headed and campaigns with the discipline of a seasoned teacher who has worked hard on her lesson plan. And she often shows up on the stump with a gift.

    Yes, Ms. “I love the smell of burning police stations” is so disciplined. Maybe she could teach King Walz to turn the page.

    • rhywun

      Kamala Harris got ‘a two-fer’ when she picked Tim Walz as her running mate, supporters say.

      *barf*

      Two commie ratfuckers for the price of one, no doubt.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I wonder how that 2fer is going now that they broke the story about King Walz’s Yellow Fever?

      • DrOtto

        The guy who constantly is running off to China has yellow fever, you don’t say?

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Someone hasn’t seen that turn the page clip. Those are top crazy eyes.

    • The Last American Hero

      Ermhoff could slap some sense into her.

  12. Pat

    Supreme Court rejects RFK Jr.’s bid to remove himself from ballots in swing states

    Who had compulsory candidacy on their 2024 bingo card?

    • cavalier973

      Our freedoms are being stolen, while we watch.

    • DrOtto

      This is a good movie pitch right here. Candidate runs for office, withdraws from race and gets elected anyway. We can call it President unElect. Can someone see if Danny Devito is available?

    • cavalier973

      Isaiah 3:6
      When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand:

  13. Pat

    Job openings tumble more than expected to the lowest since January 2021

    Well, to be fair, unemployment is like 3% and we’ve been at full employment since Biden’s masterful COVID recovery. This is precisely why we need more immigrants to fuel our booming economic expansion.

    • UnCivilServant

      What’s the workforce participation rate?

      • PieInTheSky

        98%

      • Rat on a train
      • rhywun

        Needs more information about the quality of the jobs. I’m hearing most of the recent gains are either low-wage or government work.

  14. Pope Jimbo

    FINALLY! Irrefutable proof of voter fraud! Even the MSM won’t try to refute the charges.

    NASHWAUK, Minn. (FOX 9) – A Minnesota woman is accused of voter fraud after she admitted she filled out her mom’s absentee ballot for Donald Trump after her mom died, according to criminal charges.
     
    Danielle Christine Miller, 50, of Nashwauk, Minnesota, is accused of felony voter fraud after she allegedly voted for her mother, who died in August, via absentee ballot.

    • PieInTheSky

      I say just declare the election for Kamala at this point.

    • Grumbletarian

      What they’ll never admit is how attempts like these would vanish if absentee ballots weren’t as readily available an option.

    • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

      Well played Madam.

    • Sean

      🙂

    • Tundra

      Nice story. Thanks, Holiness!

  15. PieInTheSky

    Locating Ourselves in the History of Socialism

    https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/locating-ourselves-in-the-history-of-socialism

    Ihad a strange, flattering discovery recently, which is that I’m on Wikipedia’s list of historical socialists in its “Socialism in the United States” category . On the one hand, this felt like a great honor. To be listed alongside such greats as Eugene Debs, Phil Ochs, Emma Goldman, Pete Seeger, and Angela Davis! ! On the other hand, even as someone fairly well-versed in socialism I hadn’t heard of a bunch of people on the list (e.g. Abern, Bisbane, Lum) so a fair number of these are figures forgotten by all except serious scholars of obscure parts of the left. And the list is clearly a bit scattershot (John Reed but not Adolph Reed? Hasan Piker but not Michael Albert? No Barbara Smith or Robin Kelley?), which makes you wonder who on Earth selected these particular names. As much as I love Wikipedia, the verdicts of its hive mind can feel a bit arbitrary.

    We therefore urgently need a powerful socialist movement. We need thinkers, activists, candidates, union organizers. We need many more climate activists right now. We need a force that can fight back against the dark, violent, threatening politics of the right, and that can articulate a vision for a robust social democracy where people take care of each other rather than living in a perpetual war of all against all, with a small coterie of billionaires ruling over the rest of us, deciding what we see and what we will discuss. We must build and build quickly.

    Looking at the list of historic socialists is an inspiring place to start. These are people who worked under even more challenging conditions (Jim Crow, for instance, or the Pinkerton era of labor repression). They pressed forward with a vision for a more egalitarian and humane world. They thought deeply and they committed themselves to action.

    • UnCivilServant

      Ideally, we’d be on the ‘last gasps of a dying ideology’ and sweep it into the dustbin of history where it belongs.

      Somehow morons still cling to it.

    • Pat

      It’s eerie to find yourself listed alongside deceased historical figures, because it makes you realize that you, just like them, are a person who found themselves thrust into a particular political context at a particular moment in time, and you, just like them, will ultimately end up dead.

      Fingers crossed.

      • juris imprudent

        Young Nathan is going to be with us a while, unless something unfortunate happens to him, like he finds a brain.

    • rhywun

      We need many more climate activists right now.

      Nice admission that the klimate krisis is really just a bullshit commie power grab.

  16. PieInTheSky

    European Central Bank
    @ecb
    If you destroy nature, you destroy the economy.

    To fulfil our mandate of keeping prices stable and banks safe and sound, we must take nature into account, says Executive Board member @FrankElderson
    at the COP16 biodiversity conference.

    https://x.com/ecb/status/1851008532742844570

    the Federal Reserve would do well to be more mindful of Nature

  17. Sean

    https://x.com/TonySeruga/status/1851409121385595006

    The fakest bitch in Fakertown.

    GPS—31,834 mobile devices at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. for a Kamala Harris rally.

    91% have attended 3 or more Harris rallies.

    Interesting, just over 11,000 were from Atlanta, Georgia, followed by 6,500 from California.

    Using our Antifa/BLM/Pro-Palestinian overlays, 6,122 were linked to 3 or more Antifa/BLM/Pro-Palestinian protests/riots.

    • dbleagle

      “Preaching at the Ellipse” sung to the tune of Smoking in the Boys Room.

    • cyto

      I have deep suspicions about these “statistics”.

      GPS doesn’t work like that. You can’t just “get” GPS devices in an area.

      That would be like getting AM radios in an area. They are receivers.

      • slumbrew

        I have similar doubts – is “GPS” shorthand for “location data from phones?”. If so, where is that data coming from?

        This is like the “we have traced phones from Matthew Crooks house to a building the FBI has offices in” – where did _that_ data come from? What was the methodology for correlating travel? It stinks of BS.

      • Sean

        No idea.

        I assumed it was device IDs from pinging cell towers/IMSI catchers.

        *shrug*

      • slumbrew

        IMEI numbers from the local cell towers is somewhat plausible – but AFAIK you can’t just pay the phone companies for that data.

  18. UnCivilServant

    Every other time I try to load glibs I’m getting a DNS error. Not sure if it’s just a load balancing problem at work, or what – it’s not the proxy since that tells you outright it’s banned.

  19. PieInTheSky

    The Rabbit Hole
    @TheRabbitHole84
    From a 2021 Interview:
    – Interviewer: Do you have any plans to visit the border?
    – Kamala Harris: We’ve been to the border.
    – Interviewer: You haven’t been to the border
    – Kamala Harris: And I haven’t been to Europe. I don’t understand the point you’re making.

    https://x.com/TheRabbitHole84/status/1851550636220764500

  20. Pat

    What’s Kamala’s problem with black men?

    There’s a candidate in the US presidential election who seems to think black men are tragic dopeheads. And who frets over black men’s sexism. And who worries that black folk are susceptible to the manipulative tactics of foreign actors. Probably as a consequence of all that weed they’re smoking. It must be Donald Trump, right, the man branded a racist menace by America’s coastal-dwelling, opinion-making classes? Actually, it’s Kamala Harris.
    _
    What is Team Kamala’s problem with black men? Something’s up. Even the Nation thinks her appeals to black male voters have ‘miss[ed] the mark’. They’ve done more than that – they’ve depicted black men as a singular blob whose most pressing needs include the right to partake in some Mary Jane and the prising open of their lazy eyes to the scourge of their own sexist thinking. If you want to see racial stereotyping of African Americans, forget Trump – check out Harris.

    • Ownbestenemy

      I suspect because they are the slowest to come around to “THE NARRATIVE”

    • PieInTheSky

      it is racis…. ehm… sexis… transp… hmmm

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Kamala Harris providing every black man in America with a 500 pound white woman wearing a Dallas cowboys jersey who waits in the car everywhere they go will secure her this election— Devan Costa (@DevanCosta) October 15, 2024

    • invisible finger

      American black men are the ones most affected economically by the shitshow at the border.

      Also, it’s the house negro looking down on the field negroes. The left likes to talk about racism so you won’t notice their classism.

  21. R C Dean

    “Harris Surrenders in North Carolina, Withdraws Nearly $2 Million in Planned Ad Spend”

    Or the FEMA voter suppression op following the hurricane worked well enough they have NC in the bag.

    • cavalier973

      Through Saturday, nearly 863,000 voters had cast ballots during the first three days of the in-person early voting period. That’s an increase of 2.4 percent over 2020, when nearly 843,000 voters had cast ballots after three days of in-person voting. In 2020, more voters voted absentee ballots because of the COVID-19 pandemic.</em

      https://www.ncsbe.gov/news/press-releases/2024/10/20/north-carolina-tops-1-million-votes-cast

      More Republicans have voted early in 2024 than did in 2020:

      https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/politics/early-voting-trends-2024-2020-visuals-dg/index.html

      • Ownbestenemy

        Question is are we seeing a reverse where the Dem voters flood the election centers on Tuesday? I am still of the mind too many rural communities are being hammered by the past four years and they are engaged. More so than in the previous several election cycles. Siphon on another 10% of the black and Latino communities votes and I am not sure Harris can make up the difference. Guess that might be where the extra days of receiving ballots comes into play.

      • UnCivilServant

        I don’t see the sort of enthusiasm that would get the Dem base to vote in person when they couldn’t be arsed to vote by mail.

        I do expect a lot of cheating by desperate operatives.

      • The Last American Hero

        Nostradamus has a quatrain on this for anyone who bothers looking it up:

        “And lo the hour will come when the Orange one will seem to have his day,
        yet the harvest will be bountiful,
        defeat for he and the deplorables is at hand,
        and he will fall to the sound of a cackling hyena.”

    • Sean

      lulz

    • mindyourbusiness

      I was thinking, “very old meat or very new cheese”.

      Wrong Oscar.

      • Bobarian LMD

        We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars?

    • The Other Kevin

      Today, we are all Trashy.

  22. Pope Jimbo

    Personal Ray of Sunshine:

    The wife and I have been taking a mini-vacation in Jeju Island (South Korea) for the last week. Today her sister flew in to visit us. After picking her up, Mrs. Holiness decided we should visit a Scenic Wonderland before returning to the hotel.

    When we got to the SW we discovered that it was overrun with several buses of genuine Korean Girl’s High School Field Trips (no this is not going the way that you all hope it is). Mrs. Holiness and her sister were among the slower people at the SW. I would range off to catch the obscure Scenic Vantage Points.

    At one point, I was catching up with Mrs. Holiness and her sister and had to work my way through a big clump of 17 year-old Korean ladies. As I was wending my way through, there was a lot of giggling. There was also a lot of Korean chatter between the gals. (I have no idea what they were saying. All my Korean, I learned from Korean Marines in ’88 and there are light years between they way they talk and the young gals I met yesterday).

    I knew it must be good because Mrs. Holiness and Her Sister both made a couple glances over their shoulders and then tried pulling their heads in like a turtle.

    Finally the bravest Young Korean Gal piped up and told me “Excuse me, we love your hair”.

    Before Global Warming started turning my hair gray, I would have thought she was commenting on the glorious red color of my hair. Nowdays, I realized that she was giving me compliments on my Righteous Rat Tail. Even though I was coerced into cutting off my Japan Beard, the rattail remained.

    TONS of giggling from my new found Cult of Personality.

    I tried to get Mrs. Holiness and Her Sister to stop and help me chat with these super intelligent and perceptive girls. Surprisingly, they had both put on an uncharacteristic burst of speed and were out of earshot (or so they claimed later).

    At this point, I had a choice to make. I could linger and try to get a picture of me and my new friends and my rattail. Or I could attempt to hitchhike all the way back to our hotel on my own. Since I was wearing long pants (and not my short-shorts) I decided that the odds of a getting a lift as a foreigner were pretty slim and I hustled to catch up.

    When we got back to the car, I did force Mrs. Holiness and Her Sister to acknowledge that I am Korean Catnip.

    Still, I’m haunted that I made the wrong choice.

    • PieInTheSky

      you should join a Kpop boyband

      • Pope Jimbo

        There were 5 very cute girls who decided to do some K-Pop dance moves in front of a Scenic Vista while their buddies filmed.

        I had to go full Lizard Eye (where the eye Mrs. Holiness can see stares strait ahead, while the other eye swivels independently to Male Gaze at the cuties).

        When we were flying out of Gimpo airport to Jeju (yes, the Koreans changed the English spelling of Kimpo to Gimpo*) the airport was stuffed with Korean Boys High School Field Trips. Unfortunately for Mrs. Holiness, 30 boys between 6 and 18 don’t dance around jiggling. They spend all their times punching and pushing each other and generally horsing around.

        * And they wonder why TOK hasn’t visited.

      • The Other Kevin

        While my sensitive nature is to be deeply offended, I would soldier on in order to enlighten the cute K-Pop girls of Korea.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        Korean girls, the apex of the hot/crazy matrix.

    • Tundra

      Ooof.

  23. juris imprudent

    Alex and Suthen in particular, I’ll still write something up (because I have more to say), but this covers some of what I’ve been talking about as pertains to the Enlightenment.

    By every known measure, the Enlightenment inaugurated an unparalleled improvement of the human condition. But a penalty was to be paid: the critical impulse lacked a logical stopping place, an end of history of the kind that the Hegelians and Marxists promised. The monarchies and the old nobility were overthrown, representative democracy expanded the suffrage to all citizens, universal literacy and education were achieved, and free markets and science generated undreamed-of wealth and vastly enriched lives—yet still the criticism continued its inexorable assault on social relations.

    Whole thing is a good read.

    • Pat

      Liberalism sought to solve the problem of meaning by privatizing it. Individuals were free to believe whatever they wished, so long as it remained within the law. But this could only be a provisional expedient. The massive weight of the culture pressed against traditional sources of shared meaning, grinding them down. One was free to believe that the sun orbited the earth, but not if one wished to be taken seriously. The same became true of Christianity and religion in general. To be enlightened—or “modern”—came to mean disenchantment, skepticism, the impossibility of settled belief. Marx’s “fast-frozen relations” had aroused powerful feelings of belonging; for these, liberalism substituted the cold scalpel of the statistician and the bureaucrat.

      Having severed all connection to the absolute, the entire project seemed to hang, magically, in midair. Liberalism made claims to universality—but on what basis? Most liberal ideals, like humanism, were secularized versions of Christian virtues—how could they survive the repudiation of the original?

      That’s basically the last 2 centuries in a nutshell.

      • R C Dean

        “Individuals were free to believe whatever they wished, so long as it remained within the law.”

        Of course, what the law is ultimately depends on what people believe, so . . . .

      • cyto

        Meh. Don’t waste your time reading that.

        The enlightenment is dead and buried (unless Trump wins and somehow miraculously ferrets out the deep state)

    • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

      With out reading the article (will get too it later) does it define how the monarchy and old nobility would have done that would not have allowed this?

      Follow up question; is the “unparalleled improvement of the human condition” worth less knowing what was coming post-enlightenment thinking?

      • trshmnstr

        is the “unparalleled improvement of the human condition” worth less knowing what was coming post-enlightenment thinking?

        One must have a moral framework to be able to answer that question.

        It’s really weird, and akin to one of neitsche’s flaws in thinking, to say “everything has been unmoored from its moral foundation” out one side of the mouth and then appeal to supposedly transcendental, universal moral sentiments out the other side of the mouth.

        The human condition improved? By what standard? I can think of some ways to measure such things, but they’re all ultimately arbitrary if not tethered to a moral foundation.

        Fewer deaths? So what, life is meaningless. Egalitarianism? So what, innate human dignity is a backwards Christian concept. More trinkets and leisure? So what, people’s mental health has declined while trinkets have increased.

        The dirty secret of the enlightenment is that it only works as a reactionary philosophy. It collapses in on itself when robbed of the worldview it’s reacting against.

      • juris imprudent

        This article does not answer that, but Nisbet’s Twilight of Authority (which I am re-reading already) does.

        Institutions aren’t attacked when they are healthy and functioning, they come under attack when they have already lost authority and/or credibility. We tend to have the association backwards – thinking the institution is weakened by the attack, whereas he says it is the weakness that invites the attack.

        The follow-up question is going to depend on how far we fall, isn’t it?

      • juris imprudent

        Trshy – I don’t think Nietzsche was a universalist, least of all in terms of moral sentiments. He referred frequently to pre-Christian Roman morality as an exemplar but not as definitive or universal.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        The follow up question isn’t how far will we fall, that is, frankly, uninteresting. The follow up questions is; what caused the schlorosis of those institutions? And was it preventable or, if not, something we shouldn’t worry about?

      • juris imprudent

        I am beginning to think that institutions are part of a perpetual cycle which includes decay and being swept away, so no – it is not preventable. It is the human condition, just as we are born, grow, mature, decay and die.

        The only thing we might be able to do is be aware of this and plan for something to come – plant the seeds and nurture the immature institution until the old one makes room.

      • Pat

        I am beginning to think that institutions are part of a perpetual cycle which includes decay and being swept away

        That seems beyond question. What’s unique about the post-Enlightenment era is trying to craft a basis for either existing or new institutions in the absence of any broad moral, ethical, or civic consensus, which almost definitionally can’t exist when you’ve deputized the atomized individual to construct his own subjective values from scratch. The utterly depraved, insatiable state violence we experienced during the 20th century was a shortcut around that problem by simply brute forcing a social consensus where none existed. Perhaps brutality is the last universal truth.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        As I wrote below:

        Seeing the complete freakout in Europe over what are essentially milquetoast center-right parties coming into power, I think this might be a different thing, which has bearing on Juris’ question up above. Namely that what we are seeing is the push back against the Enlightenment by the forces that want nobility, with or without oblige. And those who are pushing back, the middle and working classes, are dependent on it and what it brings. That, indeed, they have a shared morality and want to keep it that way.

        In other words, the Enlightenment did not fail, in fact it is showing its resilience in the face of the direct challenge by its greatest foe. And that foe did not arise to to the “natural endgame” but was always there as people, through no mechanism of said Enlightenment, move into an aristocracy.

    • cavalier973

      Eh.

      I wonder if the Enlightenment is responsible for all that good stuff, or if it was a group of guys who managed to jump in front of a parade that had already started.

      The Frontier, in my opinion, had a far greater effect on increasing people’s liberty than a bunch of documents and laws. The ability to get up and get out from under oppressive regimes limited the regimes’ ability to increase control, and I see the dramatic rise in US FrdGov power following the closing of the Frontier.

      • Pat

        Bear in mind the Enlightenment was not a uniquely North American phenomenon, and if anything had less of an impact here due to the distance between the colonies and their paterlands. In Europe, the dissolution of both monarchy and Christianity – the two institutions that had been the source of both formal civic order and informal social order for a thousand years since the collapse of the western Roman empire – was culmination of one epoch, and the birth of another.

      • The Last American Hero

        Yes and no. European history after the sack of Rome is one giant series of wars, with short bits of peace in between to breed more troops. Your social order could be real upset when the new guy comes over the hill, burns your village, and dictates that you will now follow his religion, only to have the king retake the territory 4 years later and change things back.

      • Pat

        I didn’t mean to imply there was peace, only a certain order tied to the institutions that the Enlightenment toppled. By the time the Enlightenment started kicking into gear in the early 1700s, monarchical nation states were fairly mature and feudalism was mostly gone. But even if you found yourself with a new king by way of conquest, you knew the basic hierarchy; and you could be pretty sure it was divinely appointed. The institutions weren’t remarkably different. And then in the span of around 3/4 of a century, hot on the heels of the American revolution casting off even the relatively liberal monarchy of Britain from across an ocean, the streets of Paris are running red with the blood of aristocrats, to say nothing of Louis XVI, the church has no legal authority, having been placed under the control of the new Republic, and with that goes most of its moral authority, in light of the divine right of kings being shown to be a charade. It’d be a century and a quarter before another change quite that drastic took place with the Russian revolution, and then the rest of that century was spent grappling with the results of this new secular materialist world order and its implications for the administration of society.

  24. Atreides

    Joe Biden calls Trump supporters ‘garbage’ in shock moment as Harris calls for unity at DC rally.

    They have been pretending for years that Trump is a Nazi, which can only mean that his followers must be Nazis also.
    But, suddenly, they’re pretending that Ol’ Uncle Joe wouldn’t call Trump supporters “garbage?

    • Atreides

      * mix and match HTML tags to taste.

      • Nephilium

        Blink tags for life!

  25. Suthenboy

    The narcissism of the political class and their contempt for the citizenry keeps coming out plain and clear when they think no one is listening.

    Pols and apparatchiks: “Fuck those pieces of shit. They are just smelly tax cattle. Let them eat shit.”
    Tax cattle: “Hey, did you just say….”
    Media lickspittles: “No no no, that’s not what they meant!”

    Yes, it is.

      • Drake

        Yes. He what have been perfect at Foggy Bottom.

  26. The Other Kevin

    Banjos, love the GIF’s this month. They make me happy.

  27. Ownbestenemy

    Guess we will know what direction we go full steam ahead if the Uniparty pulls this off. All in concert is the last 30 years of death and destruction around the world. Obama, Clinton, Bush(well his daughter is the only one publicly on board), and Cheney.

    • juris imprudent

      The uniparty will survive another Trump administration with no problem. It’s only four years, and this may be the only group of Americans that actually knows how to play a long game.

      • Ownbestenemy

        True. I also think..why try so hard here? Trump isn’t going to get done what he wants. Vance may be a threat but they have 4 years to taint him and tie him to Trump

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        Because the “uniparty” is made up of individuals, each of whom could pay the price of a Trump admin. Thus they react as individuals and not as a whole.

        Remember, it isn’t some Doctor Evil in his layer directing it, Soros notwithstanding. It is a class, very dispersed and each and everyone of them vulnerable. No one wants to be the slow antelope that satiates the lion while the herd moves on.

      • Pat

        I also think..why try so hard here? Trump isn’t going to get done what he wants.

        As should be blindingly obvious, it is not, and has never been, about Trump’s policies. He ran the first time on a ’90s DNC platform, minus the abortion bullshit, and governed like a milquetoast ’80s beltway Republican. There’s not one goddamn thing in Trump’s entire policy ouvre that meaningfully differentiates him from any mainstream candidate in the last 40 years. Any generic Republican is, naturally, going to be called a Nazi. That’s as predictable as planetary motion. But the visceral, lingering, pathological, assassination-inspiring, foaming at the mouth, seething hatred for the man as a human being is unique.

        So given Trump’s policies being somewhere between Clinton and the first Bush, and his execution being somewhere between Carter and Ford, what accounts for the histrionic chimp-out that’s coming up on a fucking decade old now? It’s that he shit on the sense of entitlement and nobility of a class of people with no other claim to distinction, and that his election was effectuated by the lowlife peons that same class of people hold beneath contempt. Even if he wins, in which case they’ll find a stooge that’s a better shot and put the matter to rest, so to speak, the damage he’ll have done to their aristocracy is irreversible. Not in the sense that it will end their aristocracy, but in the sense that it will have forced them to drop the masks and embrace rule by violence and repression without the edifice of their intellectual and moral superiority being reflected in the will of the proles.

      • Aloysious

        Pat, I think, hits the bullseye.

        I distinctly remember Postrel’s snotty comment about Trump being a vulgarian, the implication being that makes him beneath contempt.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        Seeing the complete freakout in Europe over what are essentially milquetoast center-right parties coming into power, I think this might be a different thing, which has bearing on Juris’ question up above. Namely that what we are seeing is the push back against the Enlightenment by the forces that want nobility, with or without oblige. And those who are pushing back, the middle and working classes, are dependent on it and what it brings. That, indeed, they have a shared morality and want to keep it that way.

        In other words, the Enlightenment did not fail, in fact it is showing its resilience in the face of the direct challenge by its greatest foe. And that foe did not arise to to the “natural endgame” but was always there as people, through no mechanism of said Enlightenment, move into an aristocracy.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        Did not arise FROM

        I hate having to remember a Gold comment when kicked out of the system.

  28. Not Adahn

    A thuusand puunds for an advent calendar?

  29. DEG

    NH Secretary of State releases new voter registration numbers.

    I found the trend over the last few years interesting, especially given the huge Democrat get-out-the-vote effort in 2022 which targeted unregistered voters.

    Also note split ticket voting is very common in NH.

    • Ted S.

      How many of them changed parties to vote Nikki (she’s the worst) Haley in the primary?

      • The Other Kevin

        That’s a good question, and that makes me wonder about the stats we’re seeing about Republican turnout for early voting.

      • Ownbestenemy

        I contemplated that given that Dems were in the free and clear given how they setup their primary for Biden to switch party for the primary. However, the aftermath of the selection of Harris might have soured them to go back to Dems for the general election or otherwise not even vote. I think the Dems misplayed the hand here badly.

      • DEG

        How many of them changed parties to vote Nikki (she’s the worst) Haley in the primary?

        You can look at the numbers and figure it out. Since this is easier than the bug at work I’m trying to triage, I’ll walk you through the numbers for the Presidential primary.

        Peak Democrat registration post-2021 purge is May 2023.

        Republican, Democrat, and undeclared registrations all drop in the next data point of August 2023.

        The deadline for changing parties for party affiliated voters for the NH Presidential primary was in October 2023.

        The data point after August 2023 is November 2023. There is a roughly 8,000 voter drop in Democrat registrations between August 2023 and November 2023. There is a roughly 6,000 voter drop in Republican registrations between those data poinst. Undeclared registrations stay about the same time. What do you think the number is of Democrats that reregistered as Republicans for the presidential primary is given these numbers?

        The deadline for changing parties for party for the state primary was in June 2024 if you want to run a similar analysis on the numbers for the state primary.

      • DEG

        One thing I skipped in my analysis is I didn’t look at undeclared voters. They can change affiliation at the polls on primary day. They also have the option to go back to undeclared after voting.

        Note a drop of roughly 20,000 undeclared voters between December 2023 and March 2024 and an increase of roughly 37,000 Republican registrations at the same time. Democrats drop slightly, but that is irrelevant for figuring whether or not Democrats switched to Republicans for the Presidential primary because you can’t do that at the polls. If you are a registered Democrat, you need to switch in October before the primary.

        For the window including the state primary in September, there is a drop in undeclared registrations and increases in both Republican and Democrat registrations.

  30. Atreides

    Rogan Says Harris Interview Was Scrapped Because She’d Only Sit Down for an Hour

    The “cope and seethe“ reaction to this has been something to behold.
    I’m sure that none of you were surprised to see lefties wanting all of the benefit of something, without having to do the work required to earn that benefit. They wanted that sweet view count without having to do the work that Trump did to earn that view count.

    • Drake

      She wanted to schedule an hour, show up late, and leave early. What they did to Brett Baier and it was still a disaster.

      • Atreides

        Very true. It’s so much deflection. Don’t look at how poorly our candidate is at speaking in public. Look at what a meanie Joe Rogan is for not changing everything about his show to meet our demands.

      • Muzzled Woodchipper

        My favorite part in all of this is that it’s a non-mainstream media source that’s dictating terms here.

        It’s my fucking show. If you want the views, you will adhere to my format or get fucked. No way on earth does mainstream media do that.

        Rogan is the current king of all media. That he is holding firm against the machine, and likely to win that battle.

        This is awesome.

    • Ownbestenemy

      I especially like that shitstain Vindamin claiming that Rogan must bow to the Veep and travel to her.

      • juris imprudent

        Vindamin knows how to bow and scrape.

      • ZWAK, doktor of BRAIN SCIENCE!

        Shitstain? Wouldn’t that be a call for the

        (puts on glasses)

        Vindaloo?

      • cyto

        Remember, the big tip off that Trump had to be impeached was that a junior advisor told him what to say on a call to Ukraine and the President of the United States didn’t follow the script.

    • The Other Kevin

      Some people are theorizing that she wants to have her own location so she can wear an earpiece and get fed her answers. I doubt that she’s relying on an earpiece, because if she was you’d think she would at least be fed decent answers.

      Although, the Dems managed to replace Biden with one of the only candidates worse than him, so maybe I’m wrong.

      • cavalier973

        I imagine that her team is made up of tweenie-boppers who live in a bubble.

      • The Other Kevin

        It has crossed my mind that those tweenie-boppers are telling her she’s doing a great job with those interviews.

  31. Not Adahn

    I finally got around to Peaky Blinders S3. I’m assuming that the producers told Gaite Jansen, “we’re going to make you look as hot as possible. It’s up to you to bring the crazy level to compensate.”

    • The Last American Hero

      Is that the one with the orgy? Because that’s where I shut the show off.

      • Not Adahn

        If it is, I haven’t gotten that far.

        Tommy’s skull got crushed and his domestic staff is disrespecting him ’cause he’s jumped-up gypsy trash.

    • UnCivilServant

      Dammit I came here to link the story from another site.

      • PieInTheSky

        should you not be working instead of visiting multiple sites?

      • UnCivilServant

        I’m in a meeting. I can multitask.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    Strike back

    U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday Ukraine should strike back if North Korean troops crossed into Ukraine, adding he was concerned by the presence of North Korean troops in the Kursk region in Russia.
    “I am concerned about it,” Biden said when asked about North Korean troops being present in the Kursk region.
    “If they cross into Ukraine, yes,” Biden said when asked if the Ukrainians should strike back.

    He wants them to invade North Korea? They’ve got enough on their plate, I’d say.

    • The Last American Hero

      Look fat, I’ve already tried to start a war with one nuclear power, so I can damn well start a war with two. Get me those fuckin aviators.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      They are only a few inches apart on the map.

  33. The Other Kevin

    While the Biden “garbage” comment probably won’t change too many minds, keep in mind that Biden made those remarks around the time Kamala was having her big rally in DC. I’m seeing zero stories about that rally. It’s no longer a coincidence that Biden, who doesn’t speak publicly often, keeps speaking at the same time as Kamala.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Ya that was interesting timing considering he even mentioned he didn’t want to take the lime-light away from her big DC speech. Yet, there he was…

  34. Common Tater

    “Incendiary devices damaged and destroyed hundreds of ballots at a drop box in Vancouver, Washington, and damaged three ballots at a box in Portland, Oregon, in what federal, state and local officials have decried as an attack on democracy before a heated Election Day….

    Surveillance images captured a Volvo pulling up to the drop box in Portland just before security personnel nearby discovered a fire inside the box, Portland Police Bureau spokesperson Mike Benner has said.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14019627/ballots-saved-burned-drop-box-washington.html

    Swedish election interference?

    • Common Tater

      “Devices marked with the words ‘Free Gaza’ were left behind at ballot boxes that were set ablaze in the Pacific Northwest on Monday, investigators revealed.

      Detectives were working to determine whether the arsonist was a pro-Palestinian activist or just using the divisive conflict to inflame tensions ahead of the election, law enforcement sources told the New York Times

      Police described the fires in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington as a ‘direct attack on American democracy.’

      Investigators have released an image of a black Volvo S-60 with its front license plate removed that they are trying to locate. A suspect has not been named.”

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14017481/ballot-box-fire-oregon-washington-free-gaza-palestine.html

    • The Last American Hero

      It’s WA, so meh, but that district is one of the redder ones in the state.

      Amazing that the collection boxes in Tacoma and Seattle are safe as can be.

  35. PieInTheSky

    The tax poem

    https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/miscellaneous/the-tax-poem

    Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table at which he’s fed.

    Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes are the rule.

    Tax his work, Tax his pay, He works for peanuts anyway!

    Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat. Tax his ties, Tax his shirt, Tax his work, Tax his dirt.

    Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he tries to think.

    Tax his cigars, Tax his beers, If he cries tax his tears.

    Tax his car, Tax his gas, Find other ways to tax his ass.

    Tax all he has, Then let him know, That you won’t be done till he has no dough.

    When he screams and hollers, Then tax him some more, Tax him till he’s good and sore.

    Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in which he’s laid.

    Put these words Upon his tomb, ‘Taxes drove me to my doom…’

    When he’s gone, Do not relax, Its time to apply the inheritance tax.

  36. Common Tater

    “onald Trump ‘jumped’ on a blonde 6′ 1′ pageant queen, ‘grabbing her body everywhere’ after inviting her up to a suite at his New York hotel for ‘a private talk’, the woman has claimed exclusively to DailyMail.com.

    And it was only because of her height and strength that Beatrice Keul could fight off the former president, who is now hoping for a second term in the White House.

    ‘I think my size saved me,’ Keul said of the 1993 incident in the Plaza Hotel, which Trump owned at the time.

    Keul, 53, is coming forward now because she discovered all the documentation for her trip from her home in Zurich, Switzerland sitting in a box when she prepared to move.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13983755/beauty-queen-beatrice-keul-donald-trump-groped-plaza-hotel.html

    Charlemagne grabbed by ass in 812.

    • Pat

      They’ve got him this time for sure!

    • cavalier973

      They will probably find that Trump was somewhere else on the date she claims this happened.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Oh DailyFail. How anyone takes that rag seriously amazes me.

    • Sean

      Sounds legit.

      🙄

    • The Last American Hero

      They’ve already shown that Epstein wasn’t living in the place she claimed he was living in at the time of the bullshit incident, so the story is already horseshit.

      • DEG

        This looks like a different woman.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Ya this is a new “hey I remember now!” woman.

  37. PieInTheSky

    MyopicEeyore
    @MyopicEeyore
    In the 1980s, Gore Vidal and Midge Decter had a feud. It’s worth revisiting bc it highlights the last gasp of WASP backlash at Ellis Islanders (and their takeover of NY). Let’s dive in!

    https://x.com/MyopicEeyore/status/1850238028553314815

    The feud began with Midge Decter’s 1980 article, “The Boys on the Beach.” Published in Commentary, edited by her husband Norman Podhoretz, it described Decter’s observations of gay men and the gay subculture on Fire Island . Decter and her family summered there, as did many gay men from NY. While relations were cordial at first, they gradually broke down as gays began to outnumber straight families …Promiscuity and hedonism, the drug and alcohol abuse of the latter fueling the former … And self destructive tendencies …

    Gore Vidal read Decter’s piece in its entirety, and didn’t like it. He responded in “Some Jews & the Gays,” a review essay published in The Nation in 1981 … The piece is probably one of Vidal’s best, by turns hilarious, accurate, and mean spirited …As Decter generalizes gay behavior and anxieties, Vidal generalizes Jewish behavior and anxieties. His response has little to do with gaydom, and more to do w social register New Yorker vs ellis island New Yorker, the former having been displaced by the latter by the 1980s in NYs… Mocks Decter’s inability to comprehend hairless Nordic men bc she’s never been with one who hasn’t had back hair …

    • juris imprudent

      Buckley was write about Vidal. That is all.

      • PieInTheSky

        I am no expert but is that not “Buckley wrote” ?

      • juris imprudent

        Brain fart of the first rank there!

        Not what he wrote, but what he said. LMAO

    • cavalier973

      I thought it stayed mainly in the plain

      • Not Adahn

        On the plane. And they moved the airport to Valencia.

      • LCDR_Fish

        One of the cartoonists I support had a post saying that they got… 174 liters per square meter. I don’t know how that calculates to inches/hour.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        Sounds like a real pain.

      • R C Dean

        A cubic liter is 10 cm on a side. A square meter is 100 cm on a side. It takes 100 cubic liters to have one liter per square meter, so this is 17.4 total cm per square meter, or 6.85 total inches of rain over 8 hours (per the story), for about 7/8 of an inch per hour.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    Frankenstein coalition

    Trump is finding help for his effort in the church, with some white evangelical pastors leaning heavily into politics in recent months — calling Harris a “Jezebel spirit,” a reference to the Bible’s archetypal wicked woman — and espousing machismo from the pulpit and online. Mark Driscoll, the celebrity Scottsdale, Arizona, pastor, recently told his online followers that there “is something fundamentally broken and effeminate in a man who wants his government to provide for him.

    Rather than proselytizing to the cultural elite — as the late Tim Keller, once considered the next Billy Graham, pursued young professionals in Manhattan — they are espousing a “negative world missiology,” leaning heavily on some voters’ misgivings about transgenderism and gay marriage.

    The effort, as Josh Howerton, the Dallas-based pastor of Lakepointe Church, put it, is to transition the church from “kinda feminine vibes to ‘get the men and build the families.’”

    How can Trump possibly appeal to “evangelicals” and Barstool SportsBros at the same time?

    Apparently this person is unfamiliar with the notion of “big tent” Republicanism. Also, if you’re not promising multiple groups the same slice of a fixed pie, they might be more likely to co-operate with you and each other.

    • juris imprudent

      is something fundamentally broken and effeminate in a man who wants his government to provide for him

      It was Julia, and not Julio, that featured in that Obama narrative.

    • trshmnstr

      Rather than proselytizing to the cultural elite — as the late Tim Keller, once considered the next Billy Graham, pursued young professionals in Manhattan

      Tim Keller was, in many ways, a lapdog of the establishment. I think he was a genuine believer who got caught up in the optimistic lies of the ruling class. His “third way” approach to social engagement wasn’t particularly wrong, but it was rather ineffective. He often, in his latter years, exposed his biases by abandoning the “third way” and joining the left in tone policing Christians. He was a big promulgater of “love” as enablement and of pursuing the emotionally fuzzy issues at the expense of Truth.

      Billy Graham, he was not.

  39. The Late P Brooks

    There is a risk in this strategy. Each time Trump talks about Arnold Palmer’s penis or waffles on abortion to cater to the Barstool crowd, he exposes himself to some possible defection among the faithful — or at least voters staying home.

    Maybe those “churchgoers” are more tolerant (or pragmatic) than fanatical Democrat splinter groups.

    • juris imprudent

      Almost like they have some concept of forgiveness for trespasses, instead of screeching hostility for every perceived slight?

    • cavalier973

      It’s also possible that church-goers can remember stuff that happened more than fifteen minutes ago.

      Like, Trump appointed the members of the Supreme Court that actually overturned Roe versus Wade.

      That’s huge.

      Maybe they also understand they dealing with the abortion issue state-by-state is preferable to having the Federal imposition of abortion on all the states.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      What waffles on abortion? He’s said it’s an issue for the states and he would veto federal legislation. It’s only a waffle if you think everything needs to be a federal law.

      • Not Adahn

        Mmmmm. Abortion waffles.

      • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

        Coming soon the the Planned Parenthood Cafe.

  40. juris imprudent

    Relevant to my earlier link.

    If you’re a classicist you might prefer the title Motus In Fine Velocior, which means things accelerate at the end. Which was the old way to say Gradually Then Suddenly.
    .
    The collapse that interests us today is Western Christianity. We had the Gradually. A case can be made we’re now, or soon will be, in the Suddenly.

    • Tundra

      Really good, thanks.

  41. Not Adahn

    Me: Can you confirm the receipt of the PO?

    Them: No we haven’t received it.

    Me: It was sent to [email address] at [this time two weeks ago].

    Them: Oh yeah, he got it. We’ll start processing it.

    WTabsoluteF? Don’t these assholes want to book sales before the end of the year?

    • UnCivilServant

      “We found out we won’t get bonuses this year, so we want it on the next.”

  42. The Late P Brooks

    Crimes against the Crown

    A California judge on Tuesday sentenced David DePape, the man who broke into the home of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, and attacked her husband with a hammer, to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

    DePape, 44, had previously been sentenced to 30 years in prison for federal crimes connected to the Oct. 28, 2022, attack in the upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.

    ——-

    “It’s my intention that Mr. DePape will never get out of prison, he can never be paroled,” San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman said.

    Push some random commuter under a subway train, you might get a few years. Attack a member on the Mandarinate…

    • Not Adahn

      All citizens are equal…

      • EvilSheldon

        “You come at the king, you best not miss…”

    • rhywun

      All the sketchiness around that incident got swept under the rug, I guess.

    • JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

      Oh now the Dems get serious about illegal alien violence.

  43. rhywun

    LOL I just got the same letter from the so-called “Center for Voter Information Electing Democrats” that someone else got yesterday.

    My questions were different and it was for the House critters.

    “Supporting Small Business Programs”
    “Incentivizing Outsourcing”
    “Keeping Manufacturing Jobs in America”

    Guess which candidate shines?

    • UnCivilServant

      What manufacturing? It’s already been outsourced.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Am I missing something…incentiving outsourcing while keeping manufacturing jobs in America?

    • Sean

      😉

  44. The Late P Brooks

    “Recognizing the seriousness of his crimes and the danger to democracy that Mr. DePape posed he is now being held accountable and will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.”

    “Danger to democracy” is the new “consorting with Satan”.

    • Pat

      Paul Pelosi being a citizen who holds no elected office, what the absolute fuck would him getting jacked in the head with a hammer have to do with democracy?

    • Grummun

      Since it has been 100% secularized, why should Christians care? They should object to the trashy costumes before complaining about any spiritual issues.

      • LCDR_Fish

        We got the day off for All Saints Day (1 Nov) when I lived in the Philippines.

      • Pat

        I was gonna say, the better question is whether non-Christians should participate. Won’t be long before some Christian scold is telling Christians they shouldn’t participate in Easter because it’s all about bunny rabbits and colored eggs.

      • trshmnstr

        Won’t be long before some Christian scold is telling Christians they shouldn’t participate in Easter because it’s all about bunny rabbits and colored eggs.

        I’ve met those lunatics. I’ve also met the ones who say we shouldn’t celebrate Easter or Christmas because they’re repackaging of pagan holidays. As if that’s some sort of disqualifier.

  45. The Late P Brooks

    Impropriety

    The Florida federal judge who dismissed the criminal classified documents case against former President Donald Trump on Tuesday rejected a request that she step off the case of a man charged with trying to assassinate Trump at his golf course in September.

    Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump, wrote in an order that none of the arguments cited by the defendant, Ryan Routh, justified recusing herself in the case in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach.

    “Defendant cites a series of factors which he believes, when viewed in their totality, create an appearance of partiality,” Cannon wrote. “None warrants recusal, whether examined individually or together.”

    “I have no ‘relationship to the alleged victim’ in any reasonable sense of this phrase,” Cannon said.

    She’ll sentence him to life without parole.

    • juris imprudent

      Or she’ll look at the performance of the govt and prosecutor and dismiss?

    • cyto

      Weird that he have the same judge handle attempted murder and mishandling of classified materials.

      You would never use the same defense attorney for those cases. You’d think we would specialize our judges.

      • trshmnstr

        You’d think we would specialize our judges.

        Often, attempts to do so are broken up.

        WD Texas for patents, for example

        ED Texas was the OG patent court, but SCOTUS busted that up.

  46. The Other Kevin

    Just heard from the youngest kid. She dropped off her husband at the ship for a few weeks of underway, then when she got back home some guy tried to get into her car in the parking lot. She had seen him nearby and made sure her doors were locked. She was smart enough to drive back to the base and call the cops, and she’s meeting with them now. Talk about bad timing.

    • slumbrew

      JFC – glad to hear she stayed aware of her environment & that she’s OK.

    • DEG

      Yikes.

      Glad she’s OK.

    • Sean

      Yikes!

    • LCDR_Fish

      Was that in Everett or is the carrier down near Bremerton? I don’t know much about the Silver Lake area, but Everett wasn’t great. Most folks lived further out from the base (I lived in Mukilteo right near where HE is now).

  47. cyto

    New reporting on the conspiracy to interfere in the 2020 election.

    https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1851272985900167456?s=19

    New item for me…. CIA director approved the disinformation campaign about the Biden laptop.

    Direct interference in an election by the CIA. And a cover-up of bribery of a high government official by the CIA.

    • PieInTheSky

      it was ages ago you clinger. Who cares. Live in the now.

      • Pat

        MoveOn, if you will.

    • The Other Kevin

      This is why a lot of us are nervous of the “We can’t let Trump win” talk. There are people fighting to keep themselves out of jail.

    • The Other Kevin

      ‘Kamala’s Administration sued Virginia and is now arguing to the US Supreme Court that non-citizens must remain on the voter rolls.’

      We were told by the Dems that the SAVE act was not needed because it’s illegal for non-citizens to vote. Lying POS’s.

    • Ted S.

      Shitty QB, too.

      • R C Dean

        Looks to me like that’s only a 23 inch blade if you include the handle. Which isn’t how blades are measured.

  48. The Late P Brooks

    Last desperate push

    While both presidential candidates have been trying to woo the working class, their views on unions and labor law and regulations could hardly be farther apart. Harris has said she will strengthen unions, including by passing the PRO Act which would make it easier for workers to organize. As president, Donald Trump sought to weaken unions, going as far as stripping federal employee unions of power and voicing support for Right to Work laws, which allow workers to opt out of paying union dues.

    While the Biden administration enacted rules to expand overtime to millions more workers, Trump in public remarks has admitted as a business owner, he hated paying overtime and would hire more people to avoid having to do so, a comment the AFL-CIO has highlighted as part of its voter outreach.

    With such a contrast, it’s no surprise that most major labor unions were quick to endorse Harris after she entered the race in July. However, there are some notable exceptions, including the Teamsters. Its leadership declined to make an endorsement following an internal survey that found members prefer Trump over Harris by a 2-to-1 margin, and meetings with both candidates that left union leaders unsatisfied. After the non-endorsement, many of the Teamsters’ regional and local branches announced their own endorsements of Harris.

    Trump will ban unions.

    • Rat on a train

      he hated paying overtime and would hire more people to avoid having to do so
      The monster. Existing employees own those hours.

      • R C Dean

        “He hired more people” may not be the killshot they think it is.

      • UnCivilServant

        In the olden days that would be called “fully staffed.”