Author: VD

Podestagate

Is it… is it beginning?

Tony Podesta stepping down from lobbying giant amid Mueller probe

Podesta announced his decision during a firm-wide meeting Monday morning and is alerting clients of his impending departure. Democratic power lobbyist Tony Podesta, founder of the Podesta Group, is stepping down from the firm that bears his name after coming under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Podesta announced his decision during a firm-wide meeting Monday morning and is alerting clients of his impending departure.

Podesta is handing over full operational and financial control to longtime firm CEO Kimberley Fritts, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the meeting. Fritts and a senior group of the Podesta team will be launching a new firm in the next one or two days. Sources said the transition has been in the works for the past several months.

Curiouser and curiouser… but /pol/ is always right.

We knew the switch in the narrative from Trump/Russia to Clinton/Russia would take a little time. We had them drop the Uranium One article exactly one week before we would make the first arrests. Couple of days later, we dropped the dossier info. We needed to hammer the train. The first arrests will be Manafort and Tony Podesta. These guys are not the real target, they are just soldiers. The real targets are Hillary, Holder, Rosenstein, and John Podesta. We would love to expose Obama as well but Pres Trump is adamant about protecting former Presidents. Even if they are corrupt pieces of shit, he believes in the dignity of the office. He feels that ruining the legacy of a President will do nothing but hurt our country. This is why both Bush’s., Bill Clinton, Obama, and even LBJ will be spared. The rest of the JFK files released will not include the essential information implicating LBJ and Bush Sr.

This is it. The final moves will take place over the next 4 weeks. They could have let this go. Honestly, Pres Trump wanted to get on with Making America Great Again. Period. But Hillary and the DNC just couldn’t let it go. They asked for this. They kept making up shit and now they’re going to pay. If they kept their heads low and faded in to obscurity, we would not have gone this route. They have no one to blame but themselves.

Keep in mind that was posted two days ago. Who was the first arrest? Who looks to be the second one? Anyhow, we’ll see.

UPDATE: Smells rather like… pizza?

Records show that alleged child molester Kevin Spacey flew on the infamous ‘Lolita Express’ – the private jet owned by pedophile Jeffrey Epstein – along with former President Bill Clinton. The revelation has resurfaced in the aftermath of claims by actor Anthony Rapp that Spacey sexually assaulted him when he was a 14-year-old boy after a party at Spacey’s apartment in 1986 when Spacey, then 24, picked up Rapp, placed him on his bed and climbed on top of him.

Which reminds me

Hey, Legal Legion of Evil. Are any of you licensed to practice in New Hampshire or know anyone good there? If so, shoot me an email.

Average global IQ = 86

The blank slatists and civic nationalists are in for a nightmarish disappointment if these global IQ figures are even remotely correct.

The World’s IQ = 86. Test results of 550,492 individuals in 123 countries.

Every test, either “school near” as those designed for PISA or “school far” as designed for intelligence testing, are subject to the same concerns about sampling, measurement invariance, individual item analysis, and the appropriateness of summary statistics. Why the difference in public response to these two different points on the assessment spectrum? Perhaps it is as simple as noting that in scholastic attainment there is always room to do better (or to blame the quality of schooling) whereas in intelligence testing there is an implication of an immutable restriction, unfairly revealed by tricky questions of doubtful validity.

Perhaps it is a matter of publicity. PISA has the money for brochures, briefing papers, press conferences, meetings with government officials. Richard Lynn put his list together in his study, and came up with results that many were happy to bury.

106.02 CHINA
100.46 GERMANY
 96.99 USA
 92.79 ISRAEL
 88.51 MEXICO
 83.04 JORDAN

I suspect the 8-point decline I calculated in the USA hasn’t fully shown up in these tests yet, although the initial decline is clear in the way it is declining faster than the European norms. Anyhow, as incomplete as the data presently is, it suffices to put the lie to more than one dubious IQ-related narrative.

Alt★Hero press release

This was sent out to over 200 journalists. I very much doubt any of them will actually do anything with it, but it might inspire an angry tweet or two like the last one did.

Alt★Hero Celebrates Record Crowdfunding

After reaching its initial funding goal in only four hours, a new right-wing comics series, Alt★Hero, concluded its historic crowdfunding campaign by reaching the $245,000 mark. 2,190 backers signed on to help the alternative superhero series wage cultural war on the social justice-converged comic duopoly of Marvel and DC Comics.

Alt★Hero is being written by prolific Marvel and DC Comics veteran writer Chuck Dixon and six-time Hugo Award Finalist Vox Day. It will be published by Castalia House, Finland’s leading independent publisher.

The series is the creation of game designer Day, who is best known for being a member of GamerGate and publishing the political philosophy bestsellers SJWs Always Lie and SJWs Always Double Down. Alt★Hero features unconventional villains such as Captain Europa of the Global Justice Initiative and controversial heroes such as Michael Martel, a vigilante who drops off criminal undocumented immigrants at the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, and Rebel, an Southern girl whose superhero outfit incorporates the Confederate battle flag.

The breakout star of the campaign, however, has been Dynamique, a chain-smoking French model whose indifference to current events is only surpassed by her pragmatism.

“This is only the beginning,” said Alt★Hero creator Vox Day, who is writing six volumes of the series as well as co-designing the role-playing game. “Fans and retailers alike despise how Marvel and DC are trashing characters they have cherished for generations. That is why it’s not going to be too long before you’re going to start seeing Alt★Hero games, and eventually, movies.”

“I have an entire year’s worth of continuity funded to build a cast of characters in a brand new universe. Very inspiring, Very exciting,” said industry legend Chuck Dixon, the longtime Batman writer and co-creator of Bane, who is writing the first six volumes of the Alt★Hero series Avalon as well as a standalone novel entitled Avalon: Vendetta. “The city of Avalon is already a very real place in my mind. I think readers are going to enjoy visiting.”

“Astonishing demand,” added journalist Mike Cernovich on Twitter in response to the news that Alt★Hero had shattered the previous record for a new comic being crowdfunded.

In reaching 978 percent of its original $25,000 goal, the Alt★Hero crowdfunding campaign was the most successful in history for a new comics launch, and is the 22nd most-funded of the 10,553 historic comics-related crowdfunding campaigns.

Thanks again to all of you who made this possible. It really is just the beginning of a cultural revolution.

UPDATE: Who said there was no media coverage? The Springfield Daily has the honor of being the first mainstream media organization to cover Alt★Hero.

Never cross the God-Emperor

From Peter King’s increasingly NFL-free MMQB column:

2015: Megyn Kelly, proving to be a tough and formidable moderator in a Republican Primary debate, asks the question of all presidential-debate questions to Donald Trump, about why he has called women he didn’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, disgusting animals.”

2016: In an interview with Kelly on FOX five months before the election, Trump tells Kelly in another headline-maker that if he does not win in November, “I will consider it to be a total and complete waste of time, energy and money.”

2017: Kelly hosts a segment on the “Today” show about how to dress your dog for Halloween.

Keep that in mind when Robert Mueller announces his long-anticipated indictments today.

UPDATE: The Russian investigation appears to be the nothingest of nothingburgers.

The former chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been told to surrender to authorities on charges including tax fraud, according to people familiar with the matter.


UPDATE: Or perhaps not. But it’s looking more Deep Swampy than anything:

Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were told to surrender to face charges including conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to launder money. Other charges are being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.

Kevin Spacey accused

Kevin Spacey has not merely been outed as gay, but has also been accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy:

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Rapp is publicly alleging for the first time that in 1986, Spacey befriended Rapp while they both performed on Broadway shows, invited Rapp over to his apartment for a party, and, at the end of the night, picked Rapp up, placed him on his bed, and climbed on top of him, making a sexual advance. According to public records, Spacey was 26. Rapp was 14.

The walls surrounding the filth of Hollywood are crumbling.

As it happens, there is even a scene in Precious Sons that calls to mind Rapp’s encounter with Spacey, in which Ed Harris’s character drunkenly mistakes his son (played by Rapp) for someone else, climbs on top of him, and makes a sexual advance.

Oh, FFS. Burn both Hollywood and Broadway to the ground and then salt the Earth.

Time’s up!

https://freestartr.com/contact/

This is exactly the sort of insidious social justice preaching you will not be seeing in Alt★Hero. The campaign officially ends at six seconds after midnight GMT time (8 PM Eastern), so this is your last chance to acquire the backer’s edition hardcovers or be able to say that you were one of the original backers.

$245,865

Thanks to all 2,191 of you who backed the Alt★Hero launch. This is merely the beginning. The final number will actually be modestly higher, as Freestartr support goes through its emails and we also have two “incoming” backers that were previously arranged, but I would say that reaching 978 percent of the original goal is, as Mike Cernovich observed, “astounding demand.” We will do our best to exceed your expectations as you have exceeded ours.

If you are an existing backer, and, for some reason, would like to increase your backing, you can do so by contacting Freestartr support tonight. They’re still making the modifications requested by email, which is why the final number keeps changing slightly. However, we cannot accept any new backers.

NFL Week 8

Although they started slow, it was an easy win for the Vikes in London. 6-2 going into the bye week. And, as usual, the Vikings all stood for the anthem.

Build your own platforms

Then keep the SJWs out of them. Stop trying to play nice. Stop trying to hide what you think. Stop trying to work within their system. If you’re creative and you’re talented, then stand up to them and fight them openly. Build your own platform, foxnews them, take half their collective audience away from them, and hit them where they aren’t expecting it. This chronicle of the ideological corruption of Hollywood explains why moderation and accommodation will never work.

“The blacklist of people on the left grew out of a defacto blacklist of people on the right within the industry,” recalls Orson. “There was communist directors, members of The Party, who only would cast you if you were also a member of The Party, or they were trying to woo you as a member of The Party. A lot of rightwing actors…were really furious at them. So when the Cold War happened…these rightwing actors, who had been seething for years about the way the communists were infiltrating the Hollywood business and were infiltrating the unions too, took their revenge. I don’t think that story’s ever been written because it’s not attractive for the Left.”

Orson isn’t alone in remembering this lost history.

“Morrie Ryskind, who was a Pulitzer Prize winner, couldn’t get a job because he didn’t think exactly like these fellows,” recalled John Wayne.

After testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a “friendly witness”, the extraordinarily talented Morrie never received another offer from a studio again – and neither did other screenwriters that testified against communism in Hollywood. When the “official” blacklist era ended, liberals continued where they left off – freezing out conservatives…to far better effect.

“I think there’s a reverse blacklist, even today,” said director and Hollywood Ten member Edward Dmytryk in Hollywood on Trial, a 1976 documentary about the blacklist. “I think that the liberals who are riding high, are going in the opposite direction. I think some of the fellas back then, who were on the reactionary side, are having a tough time getting jobs now.”

This greylist has been fully institutionalized. “The Writers Guild of America, my union, is at a minimum 99 percent leftist liberal and, like me, socialist,” said screenwriter and MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell in 2003. In the wake of the blacklist era, the left gained complete control of La La Land using a tactic they now vilify on the big screen. In a sense, it’s a weird tribute to Morrie Ryskind, John Wayne, Cecile B. DeMille and the others concerned about how the far-left storytellers could use movies to rewrite history.

“Being not a communist is grounds for dismissal now,” says Gavin McInnes about being a right-winger in showbiz. The co-founder of Vice Magazine, Gavin is unquestionably one of the funniest people on the planet. From the founding of Vice in 1994 until he left in 2008, its comedic voice was his voice – and it was one that comedians wished to emulate. “Their brand of humor is what I would do if there were no ‘standards and practices’ on TV,” said Jimmy Kimmel about Vice during Gavin’s helm.

After leaving the magazine due to creative differences with his partners – he came up against Hollywood’s liberal enforcers. “Jimmy Miller is Dennis Miller’s brother. He’s one of the biggest managers in comedy. He managed Will Ferrell, Jim Carey. He took a real shining to me after I left Vice,” says Gavin. “Things were going great. And then he found out I was right wing. He didn’t ‘X’ me per se, but it’s exactly like being known as a pedophile…no one likes a pedophile.” (Jimmy Miller did not respond to a request for comment.) Since the election of Trump, even with his star on the rise among the right and a new show on CRTV, his entertainment peers have become even more intolerant. “I’ve lost 100{7a570d310fd04ee61246b4469264ca1004967a98be813fe63aaa5d2057987204} of my friends that are in comedy. I’ve lost 100{7a570d310fd04ee61246b4469264ca1004967a98be813fe63aaa5d2057987204} of my celebrity friends.”

This ploy keeping Hollywood a liberal bastion is subtle, but extraordinarily effective – smoke out right-wingers and their sympathizers, spread the word of their apostasy, freeze them out, repeat. This process is seen in every crevice of Tinseltown, and it quietly teaches a lesson to all watching.

Chris Roberts didn’t need the game companies to finance Star Citizen. Neither do we. PewDiePie doesn’t need YouTube or Disney. Pretty soon, we won’t need Hollywood to make our movies either. There is no place for us in their sandbox. Fine. Who wants to play in that disease-infested filth anyhow? Let us build our own instead.

After two generations of being pummeled by La La Land, the newly constituted right is punching back with a force that has Tinseltown scrambling.

Damn right we are.

But where the old right was content with closing their wallets to Hollywood, the new right thinks stopping there is the stuff of cucks. This politically incorrect movement has galvanized in a way that was unheard of just a few years ago. Instead of the Kum Ba Yah rallies of yesterday’s Tea Party, this new right prefers a more active approach. They bombard film reviews with negative grades, inundate show sponsors with calls to drop their advertising, and hit the most hate-filled celebrities with a flurry of boycott campaigns usually only seen coming from the left.

No longer afraid to be called racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, or xenophobes – because they know they’ll be branded these no matter what – the new right is going directly after their perceived enemy, rejecting traditional content, creating their own entertainment, and organizing on a scale that should make Hollywood take pause in their daily putdowns. Social norms are no longer barriers, and some are even willing to flout the law…all to even the playing field.

The death cult in comics

The estimable John C. Wright explains why Marvel and DC Comics are pursuing their present course:

What is happening is that the leaders at SJW Marvel would prefer to put Politically Correct nonsense and crap into bookstores for sale than real stories penned by good writers about heroic topics.

They do not know why. To them it looks like financial suicide.

I submit to your candid judgment that if you look at a man’s financial motives, you are not seeing the whole man. Man seeks money to buy bread, but man does not live by bread alone. No culture in the history of the world ever existed without rites and rituals and sacrifice to hidden powers greater than human life. For the communist East, that power was the material dialectic of history, a sort of science flavored goddess, who demanded the bloody sacrifice of world wars, gulags, mass starvation, and endless executions. In the democratic West, the greater power was God, and, to a lesser degree, the ideals of freedom. God demands righteousness; democracy demands civic virtue and the self sacrifice of soldiers and sailors.

Now, no honest Christian would burn a pinch of incense to Caesar, and call him a god, for any amount of money. Not even the threat of death stirs the heart of the martyr.

SJW Marvel look at themselves as martyrs.

They think their goddess, history, will reward them with victory over their enemies, the conservatives, who are the sole source of all greed and evil in the world. All they need do is burn, degrade, and insult the beloved heroes of comics, and turn them all into minorities. The loss of review means nothing to them. They do not want our money.

They want the reward of righteousness without being righteous. They want to be martyrs without paying the cost in blood. Political correctness allows them to do this. All they need do it take an industry and ruin it in the name of PC.

The destruction is deliberate. They regard it as a sacrifice. This is a death cult.

The retailers, on the other hand, signed up for no such sacred mission and they are extremely unhappy with it.

An exchange between direct market retailers and Marvel Comics editors became heated in the closing minutes of Marvel’s Retailer-Only panel at New York Comic Con 2017, starting after a unidentified retailer expressed concern about Marvel’s lenticular variants not selling well in his store.

Marvel executive editors Tom Brevoort and Nick Lowe fielded the question, thanking the obviously upset retailer for his feedback. However, the retailer cut Lowe short to express his distaste for Marvel’s recent trend of replacing or altering its existing characters.

The retailer specifically cited examples such as characters that don’t reflect the ethnicity, gender, or sexuality of their predecessors – specifically expressing his distaste for Iceman “kissing other men,” and Thor “becoming a woman.” The retailer’s complaints sparked an outcry among the other retailers present in the room, some echoing his frustration, with multiple attendees raising their voices to speak over each other.

The original speaker called for “creating new characters and not messing with the old guys. The old guys are solid,” while a second said that Marvel has “never replaced its characters like this.”

Lowe pointed out that the changing nature of the identities of characters was engrained in Marvel’s history, pointing out examples from James Rhodes to Frog Thor. The retailer responded that Marvel has “never replaced them all at once before,” going on to say that he has had Marvel Cinematic Universe fans come into his store to find Avengers comic books only to leave “when they see that Thor is a woman and Captain America is a black man.”

And what’s more, the social justice cancer has spread to the Marvel movies now.

The rot of Marvel Comics has finally crept into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not just the rot of Social Justice — the rot of mediocrity.

On paper the movie sounds awesome. Thor, the God of Thunder, must defend Asgard and the Nine Realms from Hela, the all-powerful Goddess of Death. However, he is stranded on the planet of Sakaar on the other side of the galaxy. Surviving a brutal gladiatorial arena, Thor gathers allies and makes his way home to prevent Ragnarok, the prophesized destruction of Asgard.

In execution, it was as stale as week-old popcorn. With a basic plot, forgettable dialogue and limp characters, I struggled to remain engaged with the movie, much less care about the story. The heart of the problem lies with the movie’s poor craftsmanship and its rejection of the mythic.

Well, that’s certainly interesting, don’t you think? I don’t know about you, but I love the smell of opportunity in the morning.