Author: VD

US Attorney refuses to resign

This would appear to be a breach of standard protocol. One assumes he has a good reason for doing so:

Preet Bharara, a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, is refusing the Trump administration’s demand to resign, according to multiple reports Saturday.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday asked 46 attorneys appointed by former President Obama to submit their resignations, including Bharara.

“HOLDOVER: Bharara is not submitting his resignation, according to several ppl briefed – WH not responding to what they’ll do next,” the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman tweeted Saturday.

CNN’s Jake Tapper also reported that Bharara was refusing to resign.

I have no idea what would possess the man to take this stand now. Is he trying to stop an investigation? Is he trying to protect an investigation? There is simply not enough information to have an opinion at this time, especially given all of the darker rumors floating around.

Antifa targeting Ivan Throne

This is a direct result of Castalia House author Ivan Throne staring down dozens of hapless antifa by himself. This is how you know that Ivan is making a difference, merely by daring to stand in silent opposition to them in public.

Do you know why all of the SFWA stuff started in the first place, after I had been a member in good standing for nearly a decade without incident? It was because I dared to question the SF-SJW Narrative in passing, in a single paragraph of an otherwise unrelated paragraph, in public.

The mental pollution of feminism extends well beyond the question of great thinkers. Women do not write hard science fiction today because so few can hack the physics, so they either write romance novels in space about strong, beautiful, independent and intelligent but lonely women who finally fall in love with rugged men who love them just as they are, or stick to fantasy where they can make things up without getting hammered by critics holding triple Ph.D.s in molecular engineering, astrophysics and Chaucer.

That’s what launched the Nielsen Haydens’ eight-year campaign against me, which McRapey and many other SF-SJWs hastened to join. You can read that column, and 227 others, in the first volume of my Collected Columns, Innocence & Intellect, 2001-2005. And if you want to learn more about how Ivan Throne, a man who has overcome much more serious challenges than most of us have ever had to face in our lifetimes, possessed the fortitude to face down dozens of screaming, shrieking antifas, you should read The Nine Laws.

There is nothing antifa and the SJWs fear more than the evidence of public opposition, because it emboldens others. That is why they always try so hard to stamp it out as viciously, and in as threatening a manner, as possible. Because they know that men like Ivan and me neither fear nor respect them, and they are terrified that our lack of fear and respect will prove contagious as the Alt-Right grows.

Will the God-Emperor cuck on trade?

Tyler Durden suspects the globalist faction is winning in an ideological trade battle being waged inside the Trump administration:

Earlier this week, when we discussed Peter Navarro’s jarring op-ed in the WSJ in which he alleged that the persistent US trade deficit “would put US national security in jeopardy”, we said that “a better question than what is Navarro’s purpose by writing it, is why he is writing it, and does his use of a public forum like the WSJ mean that there is friction between him and Trump camp, especially since in recent weeks it appears that a core pillar of Trump’s trade policies, namely the border adjustability, appear to no longer be on the docket of actionable items.”

As it turns out, that was precisely the correct question, because as the FT reports, “a civil war has broken out within the White House over trade, leading to what one official called “a fiery meeting” in the Oval Office pitting economic nationalists close to Donald Trump against pro-trade moderates from Wall Street.”

More notably, the person at the center of this “civil war” is none other than Navarro, who as we expected is now said to be losing influence, and as a result he resorted to using the WSJ as a means to appeal directly to the general public. It may have been a prudent gamble: the WSJ op-ed may have helped Navarro salvage some of his credibility with Trump, according to the FT:

The officials and people dealing with the White House said Mr Navarro appeared to be losing influence in recent weeks. But during the recent Oval Office fight, Mr Trump appeared to side with the economic nationalists, one official said.

Facing off the “hardline group” of Navarro, and other “nationalists” such as Steve Bannon, is a a “faction” led by former Goldman COO Gary Cohn, a career globalist, who leads Mr Trump’s National Economic Council.

But what is just as important, is that if the FT is right, then allegations that Trump has “sold out” to his Goldman advisors may be premature: in fact, if anything, Trump appears to be playing off one camp, the “nationalists”, against its polar opposite, the “Goldman globalists”:

The battle over trade is emblematic of a broader fight on economic policy within the Trump’s administration. It comes ahead of a visit to Washington next week by Ms Merkel, the German chancellor, and amid preparations for a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Germany next week at which allies’ concerns over protectionism are likely to be high on the agenda.

While the White House was non-committal, providing the FT with the following brief statement:


“Gary Cohn and Peter Navarro are both valued members of the president’s economic team. They are working together to enact the president’s economic agenda, protect American workers and grow American businesses.”

… the “globalists” led by Cohn and others “have seized on Mr Navarro’s public comments — and widespread criticism by economists of his stand on trade deficits and other matters — to try and sideline him.”


That has led to discussions over moving Mr Navarro and the new National Trade Council he leads out of the White House and to the Commerce Department, headed by another Wall Street veteran, Wilbur Ross.

And, if the FT is correct, it appears that the Goldman-led faction is winning.

Can you spot the potential flaw in Durden’s reasoning. There is an alternative explanation. Isn’t it at least possible that the Financial Times is spinning things in Cohn’s favor for precisely the same reason it claims Navarro published his Wall Street Journal op/ed? It’s not as if the FT isn’t openly on the side of the globalists and free traders, after all.

And what are two things we know SJWs always do? They lie and they project. Aside from academia, what field is more SJW-converged than the media? I would not consider the FT to be either a reliable or an impartial source in this matter. You’d think people would have learned by now. Don’t ever count the God-Emperor out until he is actually, confirmably, undeniably, out.

The Grand Inquisitor cleans house

Attorney General Sessions asks all remaining Obama-appointed prosecutors to resign:

In a move that will likely provoke further media, and pundit, fury despite it being a routine act that is concurrent with every change in administration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has asked all remaining Obama-appointed U.S. Attorneys for their resignation.

Sarah Isgur Flores, Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice, released the following statement:

“As was the case in prior transitions, many of the United States Attorneys nominated by the previous administration already have left the Department of Justice. The Attorney General has now asked the remaining 46 presidentially appointed U.S. Attorneys to tender their resignations in order to ensure a uniform transition. Until the new U.S. Attorneys are confirmed, the dedicated career prosecutors in our U.S. Attorney’s Offices will continue the great work of the Department in investigating, prosecuting, and deterring the most violent offenders.”

Trump had previously asked the Obama-appointed U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, to stay on. In addition, the Obama-appointed U.S. attorney in Alexandria, Virginia, Dana Boente, is currently serving as acting deputy attorney general, and Trump has nominated the Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney for Maryland, Rod Rosenstein, for the deputy attorney general, Politico adds.

However, as NBC adds, Preet Bharara is one of the Attorneys asked to resigns, suggesting that something may have changed in the amicable realtionship between Trump and Bharara in the past few months.

The issue of removing U.S. attorneys at the change of administration has been a contentious one in past years. According to Politico, in 2007, President George W. Bush’s administration sought to defend his firing of eight U.S. attorneys by asserting that President Bill Clinton had fired all sitting U.S. attorneys in 1993 “in one fell swoop,” as a top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales put it. However, that was not true. In both the Clinton and Bush administrations, the vast majority of U.S. attorneys were replaced in the first year, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2007. The Clinton team asked for resignation letters in March, but also allowed many prosecutors to stay until their successors were confirmed.

Now we appear to be getting somewhere. Still not tired.

Various and sundry

  1. We have need of a research intern for a one-time job tracking down authors. If you’re seriously interested, email with RESEARCH in the subject. DONE
  2. We want to hire someone who is very knowledgeable about a) computer and video games, and b) role-playing games to write questions for our trivia games. We want about 1,000 of the former and 2,500 of the latter. If you’re seriously interested in one or the other, email with Q:VG or Q:RPG in the subject. We already have a lot of (a) thanks to the volunteers, but I just don’t have the time to finish off the list. For more information, reference this post. A word of warning: it’s more work that it looks like, so if you’re not borderline OCD, it’s probably not for you.
  3. A slightly longer excerpt from THE CORRODING EMPIRE, now on preorder at Amazon, has been posted at Castalia House.

The first number produced by the extrapolated algorithm was off by one-ten billionth. There were nine zeros behind the decimal point. It was a tiny error, all but impossible to detect unless one was looking specifically for it.

The second number was off by twice that. Two in ten billion. Or, rather, one in five billion. One might more reasonably fear being struck by lightning. On a cloudless day. Indoors.

And yet, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t the size of the error that mattered so much as the fact that it existed at all. Somehow, Geist concluded, even though it was impossible, the data set must have become garbled. Garbage in, garbage out. He had run the extrap-algo more than a million times in the past month, using it to check and and re-check Orland’s agro-surveys. But there was no denying it. Somewhere, somehow, something had introduced an unknown variability into the process, but whether it was to be found in the data or the equations, he did not know.

He spoke in the direction of the softly glowing pseudo-door.

“Dr. Orland,” he said, “Got a minute?”

The door evaporated, revealing an attractive young woman in custom blue-green shimmering Chrysoletts, sitting with her feet up on her multi-tiered desk. She was reading something which, judged by the guilty expression that flashed across her face, had nothing to do with biogenics.

On a related note, this Amazon search may amuse you. And on a completely different note:



Catholics against the Alt-Right

The Catholic opposition to the Alt-Right is every bit as feckless and dishonest as one would tend to expect from a fully converged institution:

Christopher Hale, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, argued that along with denouncing the extremism and bigotry central to white nationalism and the alt-right there should also be an effort to engage with people drawn to this movement. “We need to understand better as Catholics how did Steve Bannon and the alt-right come to be?” he said.

But keynote speaker Michael Sean Winters, a fellow at Catholic University’s Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies, highlighted the challenges of that approach. “The main difficulty in engaging the alt-right as if it were just another political movement is found precisely in its anti-democratic stance,” said Winters, also a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter. “Normally, when we as Catholics engage those with whom we disagree, both sides accept democratic norms to shape that engagement. The alt-right derides democracy and openly states its desire to undermine democracy.” Winters added:

Engage, but do so warily, and only when repeatedly noting the fact that the positions the alt-right espouses are not just wrong, but contemptuous of the means by which a liberal democracy sorts out the complexities of public policy, means that we value and celebrate, and which we accord to these provocateurs even if they wish not to accord them to anyone else. Winters pointed to the church’s intellectual and moral traditions as resources to contest the resurgence of white nationalism. “It is often joked that Catholic social doctrine is the ‘best kept secret’ in the Catholic church,” he said. “Let it be secret no more. The most sophisticated response to both these alt-right haters, and to the ever-present difficulties of democracy, is found in that doctrine. I often say and shall say again: There is no problem facing the political life of this country that is not leavened by an encounter with Catholic social doctrine.”

There is no panacea to eradicate the diseases of white nationalism and Islamophobia. The church’s manifold capacities—theological, pastoral and prophetic—will be required at different places and times. Catholics don’t all need to speak with the same voice or use the same tone. But the message should be unambiguous and urgent. The alt-right movement is built on an edifice of racism, social sin, and exclusion that must never be tolerated.

The idea that Catholics are great defenders of democracy and the will of the people is a lie worthy of Goebbels. It is a big lie; not only is it historically false, but it is categorically and observably false. Just yesterday, Mr. Bergoglio was reported to have come out against populism, which is nothing more than “the will of the people”, which is a truer form of democracy than the sham “democratic norms” that proscribe the will of an unelected, anti-democratic elite using ancient rituals and rhetoric as cover.

Note the appeal to “Catholic social doctrine”, which has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity or the Bible.

We are, of course, contemptuous of them, as we are contemptuous of all liars. If the Catholic Church sets itself against the truth, it will be destroyed for its faithlessness. Now, granted, neither these wormtongues nor the current Pope speak legitimately for all Catholics, they are merely converged pseudo-priests attempting to lead the faithful astray.

They will not engage with us, even warily, because they know we will expose their falsehoods and false teachings. “Social sin” is no more sin than “social justice” is justice. We don’t ask these wormtongues to tolerate us, we merely observe that they have no place in the Christian civilization they are attempting to destroy.

Clinton’s office covered for pedophile

No doubt this news will deeply shock everyone, especially those who are familiar with the term “Pizzagate”:

“Inspectors learned in conversations with Department employees…that in some cases superiors in [diplomatic security] and in senior levels of the State Department have prejudiced the commencement, course and outcome of [special investigations division] investigations,” the early draft said.

“Sources referred to [diplomatic security] sometimes circling the wagons to protect favored [diplomatic security] rising stars from criminal charges or from embarrassing revelations that could harm a promising career,” the draft continued.

“One case, which triggered outraged comment from several [special investigations division] sources, relates to allegations that a Regional Security Officer engaged in serious criminal conduct including sexual abuse of local embassy staff during a series of embassy postings. Sources also reported that a senior [diplomatic security] official successfully protected some agents on the Secretary’s Detail from investigations into misbehavior while on official trips,” the November 16 draft said.

It is unclear why this critical text was stripped from the report before the inspector general published it in February 2013.

Another passage that was removed from the public report suggests officials in Clinton’s office may have protected an ambassador from a child abuse investigation.

“Sources reported that a senior ‘7th Floor’ Department official ordered [diplomatic security] to stop the investigation of an ambassador accused of pedophilia, and another such senior official had [diplomatic security] stop an investigation of an ambassador-designate,” the draft reads.

The seventh floor is the location of the secretary of state’s office, as well as the offices of the deputy secretary and the undersecretaries, according to the State Department’s website. If any of these details were removed because of exculpatory information, this is never stated.

The same section of the final report, titled “Need for Independence,” makes no reference to the pedophilia allegations or the sexual abuse charges that were covered up by State Department staff.

Notice that these pedophilia allegations keep popping up around people associated with Hillary Clinton? And notice how “stopping the investigation” rather than “investigating” is always the absolute top priority whenever allegations are made?

Curiouser and curiouser.

UPDATE: 8 minutes from posting to the first paid pedo-defender. That must be a new record. Also, please note that if you quote a troll, your comment will be spammed along with his. Don’t come crying to me when your comments stop appearing as a result, you’ll know why.

I’m leaving the first one up as both an identifier and a time-stamp.

The only issue that matters

Immigration unseats a once-popular mayor:

Rutland Mayor Chris Louras, who endured months of withering criticism for his plan to bring Syrian refugees to the city, lost his reelection bid on Tuesday. In unofficial voting results, David Allaire, a city alderman and leading critic of the resettlement, trounced Louras, a 10-year mayoral incumbent, by a 776-vote margin, according to results cited by the Rutland Herald and WCAX-TV.

“I’m simply wishing him luck and I’m moving on,” Louras told Seven Days Tuesday night. He declined further comment, saying he would “not hazard a guess” as to what the election results say about Rutland’s support for refugees.

Allaire did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

While Louras campaigned on a series of issues, and touted a reduction in many categories of crime, along with an improved downtown business district, the refugee debate has dominated political life in Rutland for the past year.

Louras had beaten Allaire in two previous mayoral elections. town-meeting-day.png

A Rutland native, Louras reached out to refugee resettlement officials in late 2015 and hatched a proposal to bring 100 refugees from Syria and Iraq to the city, which has been losing population for decades. The mayor pitched the plan, without consulting the Board of Aldermen, as a humanitarian imperative and economic development initiative.

What is remarkable is how many politicians are so uncharacteristically willing to risk their careers for such a wildly unpopular cause. Is it because they are drinking the ideological (((Kool-Aid))) or are they being somehow incentivized to further the invasion of America?

The USA desperately needs negative immigration to reduce the societal stresses leading to balkanization, secession, and civil war. There is ZERO benefit to immigration at this point in time. None whatsoever. It does not “benefit the economy”. Every single pro-immigrant program, from student visas and H1B visas to anchor babies and family laws, needs to be shut down.

It is time for the God-Emperor to grasp the nettle, and unleash the full power of the executive branch on the reaction. The time for negotiations, sweet reason, and half-measures is past.

The hottest man in the world

It has been determined by Big Data, courtesy of Amazon. The hottest man in the world is a wealthy, chubby-chasing, Alpha Male cowboy with a secret baby.

You’re welcome, ladies.

And gentlemen, you no longer complain that you don’t know what women want. Put on a Stetson and take her out for an expensive pizza. Don’t forget the breadsticks.

H1B: the real cost-benefit

Why the H1B visa program should be shut down without delay:

A close look at H1BPays.com’s data shows that, as you move past the Googles and Microsofts of the IT world, H-1B salaries tend to cluster around the $65,000 to $75,000 level.  There is a reason for this.  If outsourcing companies pay their H-1B workers at least $60,000, the company is exempted from a number of regulations designed to prevent visa abuse.

But $60,000 is far below 2016 market rates for most tech jobs.

In 2014 (the last year we have good data), Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy used 21,695 visas, or more than 25 percent of all private-sector H-1B visas used that year. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Uber, for comparison, used only 1,763 visas, or 2 percent.

What’s the difference? Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, and Tata are all outsourcing companies. Their business model involves using H-1B visas to bring low-cost workers into the United States and then renting those workers to other companies. Their competitive advantage is price. That is, they make their money by renting their workers for less than companies would have to pay American workers.

 This is the real story of the H-1B visa. It is a tool used by companies to avoid hiring American workers, and avoid paying American wages. For every visa used by Google to hire a talented non-American for $126,000, ten Americans are replaced by outsourcing companies paying their H-1B workers $65,000.

That’s how you kill high tech in America. It’s time for the God-Emperor to shut the program down entirely. There is ABSOLUTELY zero need for it. Let Microsoft and Google move to India if they think they can get better coders there.