Category: Uncategorized

Slow learners

The AGW/CC crowd is still doubling down on their global warming theme, despite being literally trapped in the expanding ice.

Arctic tours ship MS MALMO with 16 passengers on board got stuck in ice on Sep 3 off Longyearbyen, Svalbard Archipelago, halfway between Norway and North Pole. The ship is on Arctic tour with Climate Change documentary film team, and tourists, concerned with Climate Change and melting Arctic ice. All 16 Climate Change warriors were evacuated by helicopter in challenging conditions, all are safe. 7 crew remains on board, waiting for Coast Guard ship assistance.

At this point, one begins to suspect that they won’t change their tune until they’re actually being hunted down by the wild polar bears roaming Los Angeles.

The Trayvon Hoax

I doubt it will surprise a single reader of the blog to discover that the late Trayvon Martin has been confirmed to have been a criminal thug rather than an innocent, Skittles-loving young man who was a good boy who dindu nuffin and was gwan to college when he was shot and killed.

To uncover this staggering fraud, Gilbert did what reporters used to do. He immersed himself in the milieu that produced Trayvon Martin. He mastered the patois of urban black Miami. He reviewed the thousands of text messages, tweets, Facebook and Instagram postings sent and received by Martin and his friends. He interviewed George Zimmerman and heard, from the only person who knew, Martin’s final words, words that revealed the cause of Martin’s tragic downward spiral.

Gilbert did some serious shoe leather reporting as well. He visited all the relevant Miami-area high schools, the neighborhoods where Martin and his friends hung out, the streets of Miami’s Little Haiti, and the town community where Martin died.

At the end of his research, Gilbert knew Trayvon Martin better than his parents did, literally. As their deposition revealed, they had no idea how Martin’s life had descended into a violent mix of street fighting, guns, drugs, burglary, and sex. Although both parents made good incomes, their separate lives created an abyss where a home should have been, and their once promising son fell straight to the bottom of it.

Unwilling to accept their own responsibility for his demise, they took the bait promised by the family attorneys and sweetened by the media and projected their guilt on to George Zimmerman. Although an Obama supporter and civil rights activist, the half-Hispanic Zimmerman proved to be just white enough to play the “racist” killer role in the unholy melodrama that followed.

 I blame the welfare state for destroying the black family. Democrats are the real racists. Vibrancy is our strength. I don’t see color, I judge an individual by the content of his character rather than the collection of his genetic code even when I haven’t met him and know nothing about him. The sad thing is that if only Trayvon’s parents had been married, middle-class African-Americans, this tragedy could have been averted….

Parliament suspended

The British Prime Minister is putting an end to the scheming of the Remain Parliament:

Boris Johnson will suspend Parliament tonight for five weeks amid Remainer fury at claims he could try to sabotage their No Deal law.

Downing Street confirmed prorogation will happen this evening even if – as expected – the PM loses his latest effort to force a snap election.

The move was condemned as a ‘disgrace’ by Labour, even though a rebel law ruling out No Deal by Halloween will be on the statute books by then.

It will spare Mr Johnson from having to give evidence to the powerful cross-party Liaison Committee on Wednesday – as well as preventing further rebellions designed to tie the government’s hands more tightly.

Mr Johnson is scrambling to find a way of sidestepping rebel legislation ordering him to beg the EU for an extension if no agreement has been agreed by October 19.

I don’t understand what all the need for the drama concerning the extension request is. If I was Boris Johnson, I would suspend Parliament, obey the law by dutifully requesting a one-day extension to November 1, 2019, announce the inevitable rejection of the request by the EU, then proceed with a general election and a No-Deal Brexit while the Remainers waste their time arguing that the one-day extension isn’t the specified 90120-day extension.

This isn’t that hard.

UPDATE: The poison dwarf, aka Speaker of the House of Commons, (((John Bercow))) is on his way out.

Commons Speaker jumps before he is pushed saying he will stand down amid huge Tory backlash at his handling of Brexit – but insists he won’t go until October 31 AFTER the UK’s departure is delayed. Speaker John Bercow has dramatically announced that he is standing down the the Commons next month. Mr Bercow was facing the Tories running a candidate against him at the election amid fury at Brexit handling. He had caused fury by bending House of Commons procedures so Remainer rebel law could be passed 

The first conspiracy theorist

I’ve been reading Machiavelli’s History of Florence and it is intriguing to note the very different way in which he describes the events known as the Sicilian Vespers. Infogalactic has the conventional account provided by Stephen Runciman.

The event takes its name from an insurrection which began at the start of Vespers, the sunset prayer marking the beginning of the night vigil on Easter Monday, 30 March 1282, at the Church of the Holy Spirit just outside Palermo. Beginning on that night, thousands of Sicily’s French inhabitants were massacred within six weeks. The events that started the uprising are not known for certain, but the various retellings have common elements. The only town in Sicily not to join the rebellion was a small village called Sperlinga, which protected French soldiers in a castle excavated in sandstone.

According to Steven Runciman, the Sicilians at the church were engaged in holiday festivities and a group of French officials came by to join in and began to drink. A sergeant named Drouet dragged a young married woman from the crowd, pestering her with his advances. Her husband then attacked Drouet with a knife, killing him. When the other Frenchmen tried to avenge their comrade, the Sicilian crowd fell upon them, killing them all. At that moment all the church bells in Palermo began to ring for Vespers. Runciman describes the mood of the night:

To the sound of the bells messengers ran through the city calling on the men of Palermo to rise against the oppressor. At once the streets were filled with angry armed men, crying “Death to the French” (“moranu li Franchiski” in Sicilian language). Every Frenchman they met was struck down. They poured into the inns frequented by the French and the houses where they dwelt, sparing neither man, woman nor child. Sicilian girls who had married Frenchmen perished with their husbands. The rioters broke into the Dominican and Franciscan convents; and all the foreign friars were dragged out and told to pronounce the word “ciciri”, whose sound the French tongue could never accurately reproduce. Anyone who failed the test was slain… By the next morning some two thousand French men and women lay dead; and the rebels were in complete control of the city.

According to Leonardo Bruni (1416), the Palermitans were holding a festival outside the city when the French came up to check for weapons, and on that pretext began to fondle the breasts of their women. This then began a riot. The French were attacked, first with rocks, then weapons, and all were killed. The news spread to other cities leading to revolt throughout Sicily. “By the time the furious anger at their insolence had drunk its fill of blood, the French had given up to the Sicilians not only their ill-gotten riches but their lives as well.”

There is also a third version of the events that is quite close to Runciman’s, varying only in the minor details. This story is part of the oral tradition on the island up to the present time. This oral tradition cannot be verified, but is of interest to sociologists. According to the legend, John of Procida was the mastermind behind the conspiracy. It seems that he was in contact with both Michael VIII Palaiologos and Peter III of Aragon. They were all three later excommunicated by Pope Martin IV in 1282.

Machiavelli’s account is very different, and connects it to a similar anti-French uprising in the Emilia-Romagna around the same time, both of which were inspired by a Aragonese-Papal plot against Charles of Anjou, the younger brother of King Louis IX of France.

At this time Adrian died, and Nicholas III, of the Orsini family, became pontiff. He was a bold, ambitious man; and being resolved at any event to diminish the power of Charles, induced the Emperor Rodolph to complain that he had a governor in Tuscany favorable to the Guelphic faction, who after the death of Manfred had been replaced by him. Charles yielded to the emperor and withdrew his governor, and the pope sent one of his nephews, a cardinal, as governor for the emperor, who, for the honor done him, restored Romagna to the church, which had been taken from her by his predecessors, and the pope made Bertoldo Orsino duke of Romagna. As Nicholas now thought himself powerful enough to oppose Charles, he deprived him of the office of senator, and made a decree that no one of royal race should ever be a senator in Rome. It was his intention to deprive Charles of Sicily, and to this end he entered into a secret negotiation with Peter, king of Aragon, which took effect in the following papacy….

To Nicholas succeeded Martin IV, of French origin and consequently favorable to the party of Charles, who sent him assistance against the rebellion of Romagna; and while they were encamped at Furli, Guido Bonatto, an astrologer, contrived that at an appointed moment the people should assail the forces of the king, and the plan succeeding, all the French were taken and slain. About this period was also carried into effect the plot of Pope Nicholas and Peter, king of Aragon, by which the Sicilians murdered all the French that were in that island; and Peter made himself sovereign of it, saying, that it belonged to him in the right of his wife Gostanza, daughter of Manfred.

Remember, the one thing upon which we can rely is that the official story is seldom the true one. And in most cases, that which is claimed to be spontaneous is nothing whatsoever of the kind.

Exposing Epstein’s allies

The Director of the MIT Media Lab and NYT board member resigns:

Dozens of rich and influential men surrounded Jeffrey Epstein. They knew that what they were doing was wrong. That’s why they were so secretive about it.

Driving the news: In the aftermath of a blockbuster report from The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow — which details that MIT Media Lab’s director Joi Ito flew to Epstein’s private island twice and accepted more than $8 million of donations from him — Ito resigned on Saturday from MIT Media Lab, left his board seat with the New York Times Company, and resigned from the MacArthur Foundation.

  • Leon Black remains the chairman and CEO of private equity giant Apollo; he’s also the chairman of the board of the Museum of Modern Art. Black donated $5.5 million to the Media Lab at Epstein’s behest, on top of a $10 million donation that he made directly to Epstein’s own foundation in 2015.
  • Bill Gates donated $2 million to the Media Lab in October 2014; Ito claimed at the time that the gift was “directed by Jeffrey Epstein”. Gates asked that his name be kept out of any public discussion of the donation.
  • Reid Hoffman, the venture capitalist and founder of LinkedIn, hosted dinners for Epstein featuring the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. He also sits on the jury of the Media Lab’s Disobedience Award. (Epstein received an orb, which looks exactly like the Disobedience Award, for his service to the Lab.) When author and fellow juror Anand Giridharadas raised questions about the award’s ties to Epstein, Hoffman was the man who slapped him down.
  • Outside the Media Lab there are many other names. The UK’s Prince Andrew was close to Epstein both before and after Epstein’s conviction, as was lawyer Alan Dershowitz. There are multiple connections between Epstein and Harvard, including a “special connection” with Lawrence Summers. 

Naturally there are ties to Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, too.

Epstein’s enablers flew on his jets and visited his island and did multi-million-dollar deals with him even after he was convicted and jailed on a charge of soliciting underage girls for prostitution. Now they are starting to be held to account for their complicity.

None of these men are giving straight answers to questions about their involvement with Epstein.

Except, of course, for Donald Trump, because unlike the others, he has nothing to hide.

This pretty much summarizes it

I was asked my thoughts on the Baptist church, in which I was raised, on the Darkstream the other night, and this Babylon Bee article pretty much summarizes the full extent of my opinion on it:

Sources at Biloxi Seventh Baptist Church confirmed Tuesday that the entire church body is still pretending never to drink alcoholic beverages. Based on the church’s strong convictions, every member of the church is staunchly committed to pretend to abstain from alcohol while in the presence of other Baptists.

“It’s important to avoid the appearance of evil,” said church member Fred Myers. “That’s why I committed a long time ago to never let on that I love downing a few craft beers during a ball game on the weekends.” Myers always orders a Diet Coke when with his Baptist friends and family, though he’s been known to order a beer on tap as long as he’s in another state where no one can recognize him.

Other members of the church share the same commitment. Take Ethel Carver, 82. She credits her long life to her zealous dedication to the Lord, eating lots of fruits, vegetables, and casseroles, and pretending not to down two shots of whiskey before bed every night.

“Ever since I was a little girl, my parents raised me right, the Baptist way,” she said. “We don’t smoke, we don’t chew, we don’t drink alcohol unless no other Baptists are around. Just like the Bible says.”

Baptists and Southern Baptists chose the Churchian path back in 1880. Perhaps that didn’t matter as much then, when society was predominantly Christian. But it definitely matters now. Prohibition is a man-made dogma and has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity. But growing up amongst rampant Baptist hypocrisy did provide me with an effective anti-BS radar as well as an instinctive contempt for Bible-lawyering, as the ridiculous contortions involved in asserting that all the references to “wine” in the Bible actually refer to “non-alcoholic grape juice” made the divide between Christianity and Churchianity hard to miss, even for children.

Southern Baptists had worked at least three decades to secure legal prohibition. They saw the 18th Amendment as a culmination of their labor. They also had come to view prohibition advocacy as a defining mark of Baptist identity…. Since 1934, the SBC has adopted at least 35 statements opposing alcohol, the latest in 2006.

Now they see opposing racism, nationalism, identity politics, and patriotism as defining marks of Baptist identity. And they’ll oppose those things even less successfully than they opposed alcohol, which is why the Baptist identity will fade away over time in the same way that the Abecedarian and Episcopalian identities have.

Literal treason

Who on Earth would trust these treacherous weasels with any sort of “negotiations” with the European Union?

Senior MPs opposing a no-deal Brexit sought assurances from the EU that their bid for a three-month delay would be granted, it has emerged.

European leaders were sounded out before MPs, including the “rebel alliance”, passed a bill, which is expected to receive royal assent on Monday, forcing Boris Johnson to ask for an extension. However, those involved said there were no guarantees in a process that was changing by the day.

It comes as the rebels, including former Tories who have been thrown out of the party, prepare for a legal battle in case the prime minister attempts to defy a law forcing him to ask for an extension on 19 October. The UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October, but the new law would envisage a Brexit extension until the end of January 2020.

The sounding of EU leaders over an extension has angered Tory Brexiters. The Conservative MP and former cabinet minister David Jones said: “Senior EU figures gave private assurances to British MPs, as a consequence of which they supported the surrender bill. This confirms the level of EU interference in our internal affairs and makes the need for Brexit all the more pressing.”

No wonder they’re terrified of an election. It’s becoming abundantly clear that the Fixed Term Parliament law was passed specifically in order to prevent the British people from being able to replace an openly anti-democratic parliament like the current one.

Notice how the various national legislatures across Europe have gone from being popular and democratically elected to openly election-avoidant and anti-democratic. This is another indication of the social mood trend having peaked and reversed. We are winning, whether you recognize it or not yet.

Apparently, their treason didn’t do them much good, though.

France today said the EU will not agree a Brexit delay beyond October 31 amid claims Boris Johnson will defy the law and ‘sabotage’ an extension if he is unable to strike a deal with Brussels.

It’s important to remember that a national leader with the people behind him doesn’t have to follow the rules imposed by the bureaucracy. The so-called “law” is nothing but a mutually agreed-upon illusion, so once mutual agreement fails or the illusion evaporates, there is no more rule of law.

And the Prime Minister does appear to be playing for keeps. One can’t defy convention and then affect surprise when others do the same in response.

John Bercow’s role in blocking Brexit has sealed his fate as Commons Speaker, one of Boris Johnson’s most senior Ministers revealed yesterday. Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom today confirms for the first time that the Conservative Party will defy convention and put up a candidate against him in the next Election.

Just the first step

Marvel is deeply committed to giving you more of what you don’t want:

Marvel Studios executive producer Trinh Tran recently commented about Marvel’s Phase 4 and beyond plans noting “this is the first step to more diverse characters and franchises.”

Tran spoke with Inverse shortly after San Diego Comic-Con to discuss Phase 4 and its “visibility of women and superheroes of color.”

Tran stated, “Female representation, the diversity of it all, is very important because this is the world we live in.” She added, “There’s so many different people out there and in order for us to relate to them, we have to make movies that are different. We can’t always be about one race or gender. That’s not the way to connect with the world.”

Tran would then go on to explain she’s excited about the upcoming Black Widow and Shang-Chi film before noting these Phase 4 films are just the first step for Marvel Studios.

“This is the first step to more diverse characters and franchises. I am hoping for more down the line. We have so many characters in the Marvel Universe, it’s a matter of picking which one makes sense to the MCU.”

She adds:

“In thinking about the future of the MCU and how all those characters are gonna connect, diversity is crucial in our future.”

Tran then states, “I think we’re heading towards the right direction. Ten years ago when we started making these movies, you probably don’t see much of that.”

Arkhaven is going in precisely the opposite direction. Time will tell which was the right choice.

NFL Coach of the Year

We’re only one game – not one week, one game – into the NFL season and it’s already clear that Mike Tomlin deserves to be named Coach of the Year for having dealt successfully with Antonio Brown for nine years. This may actually be a more impressive coaching feat than Bill Belichick’s six Super Bowl victories, given that even a Super Bowl-winning coach like Jon Gruden couldn’t keep him in check for nine weeks.

Antonio Brown asked the Raiders to release him in an Instagram post shared Saturday morning.

The request comes shortly after news broke that Oakland had fined Brown $215,073.53 on Friday night for conduct detrimental to the team on Sept. 4, which Raiders voided the $29.125 million worth of guaranteed money in his deal, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. In addition to fining Brown for conduct and voiding the guaranteed money in his contract, the Raiders reportedly sent Brown a letter stating that he no longer will be entitled to termination pay if they release him.

Antonio Brown actually makes Terrell Owens look reasonable in retrospect.

UPDATE: After the Raiders wiped out more than $29 million in guaranteed money under Brown’s contract with the team, Brown asked to be released. And the Raiders have released him.

UPDATE: Antonio Brown is now a New England Patriot.