Category: Uncategorized

They all knew

A woman’s expose of Brian Epstein in Vanity Fair was whitewashed back in 2003:

I got to work on all of it—and Epstein kept close tabs on me. He didn’t want to be seen to cooperate, but he’d do his best to control me. He phoned regularly. I wasn’t altogether surprised to be quickly summoned to the offices of the rich and powerful, sometimes before I’d even asked to meet with them.

James “Jimmy” Cayne, then the cigar-chomping CEO of Bear Stearns, not only phoned me up, he found the time in his busy day to give me a tour of the office. He was on his best behavior, talking up Epstein’s alleged supposed great brain, his value to the bank—never mind the fact that Epstein had had to leave it quickly in 1981; this Cayne put down to Epstein’s ambition “outgrowing” the place.

I also met with respected real estate developer Marshall Rose; the former Bear Stearns chairman Alan “Ace” Greenberg called me; so too did Leslie Wexner, the founder and CEO of The Limited, who trusted Epstein so much he had given Epstein carte blanche to insert himself into both Wexner’s family and business affairs, according to people who saw Epstein’s contract; they all chattered on about Epstein’s brilliantly creative mind, his intellectual prowess—a mental agility that, to put it bluntly, was simply not evident in the many phone conversations he had with me….

I worked through December 2002 like a dog. I worked with three fact-checkers, the magazine’s lawyer; I sifted through everything Epstein threw at me and defused it. We were getting ready to go to press. And then the bullet came. “Graydon’s taking out the women from the piece,” Doug Stumpf, my editor, told me.

I began to cry. It was so wrong. The family had been so brave. I thought about the mother, her fear of the dark, of the harm she feared might come to her daughters. And then I thought of all the rich, powerful men in suits ready to talk about Epstein’s “great mind.”

“Why?” I asked Graydon. “He’s sensitive about the young women” was his answer. “And we still get to run most of the piece.”

And then the guy got his wrist slapped four years later for multiple sex offenses that should have been enough to put him away for a long time.

The thing is, if a man has a brilliantly creative mind, an intelligent woman is not merely going to notice it, she’s going to be drawn to it. So, whatever it was that those very rich men saw in Epstein, I very much doubt that it was his intellect that made him so valuable to them.

Lawdog in audio

LawDog had the honor of representing law and order in the Texas town of Bugscuffle as a sheriff’s deputy, where he became notorious for, among other things, the famous Case of the Pink Gorilla Suit. In The LawDog Files, he chronicles his official encounters with everything from naked bikers, combative eco-warriors, suicidal drunks, respectful methheads, prison tattoo artists, and creepy children to six-foot chickens and lethal chihuahuas.

The LawDog Files range from the bittersweet to the explosively hilarious, as LawDog relates his unforgettable experiences in a laconic, self-deprecating manner that is funny in its own right. The audiobook is more than mere entertainment, it is an education in two English dialects, Police and Texas Country. And underlying the humor is an unmistakable sympathy for society’s less fortunate – and in most cases, significantly less intelligent – whose encounters with the law are an all-too-frequent affair.

Narrated by David. T. Williams, The Lawdog Files are 4 hours and 29 minutes of genuine Texas hilarity. You really have to listen to the audio sample. His voice is just about perfect for Lawdog.

Good sports

Your feel-good story of the day. It probably doesn’t hurt that he has what is very nearly a proper Minnesota name:

It all started after the last play of Sunday’s game, following the touchdown that thrilled Vikings fans and broke the Saints’ hearts. By NFL rule, an point-after touchdown attempt must be played after a touchdown, even if it comes with no time left and with no chance of that attempt affecting the outcome of the game. So after the Saints had already gone to the locker room and the Vikings had already taken the field to celebrate, the officials went into the tunnel and informed the Saints that the game wasn’t over and they had to put 11 players on the field for the point after.

Morstead, a punter, isn’t used to lining up on defense, but he was the first guy to volunteer to jog back onto the field. He wasn’t happy about it, but he had a job to do and he was going to do it. That impressed Vikings fans.

So Vikings fans, appreciating Morstead’s professionalism, took to social media and encouraged donations to What You Give Will Grow, Morstead’s charity for kids battling cancer. When Morstead heard about that he said that if donations topped $100,000, the charity would use the money for programs at Children’s Minnesota hospital, and that he’d personally go to Minnesota to deliver the check. As of Wednesday night, the $100,000 goal had been reached.

“Alright, Minnesota, you guys are officially ridiculous — $100,000 raised for the child life program at the children’s hospital in Minneapolis. I am totally blown away,” Morstead said in a Twitter video.

Of course, the proper spelling is Morstad…. In any event, it is a good cause and a great hospital. I was more impressed that he kept punting so well despite being observably injured.

It would have been funny, though, if Bill Belichick had been the coach. It wouldn’t have mattered to him that the game was over. If he saw an injured punter playing goal line defense, you know he’s going for two.

Winning: corporate tax edition

Say what you will about the God-Emperor, but his policies actually work as designed:

Apple just announced on Wednesday it will bring back hundreds of billions of dollars from overseas to fund investment in the U.S. and likely increase its capital returns.

“Apple, already the largest US taxpayer, anticipates repatriation tax payments of approximately $38 billion as required by recent changes to the tax law. A payment of that size would likely be the largest of its kind ever made,” the company said in the release.

Using the new 15.5 percent repatriation tax rate, the $38 billion tax payment disclosed by Apple means they are planning a $245 billion repatriation.

The tax overhaul, which President Donald Trump signed into law last month, also lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent.

After the repatriation tax payment, the company will have $207 billion left over from the move it can use for investments, acquisitions, stock buybacks or larger dividends. Apple said it plans more than $30 billion in capital expenditures in the U.S. during the next five years.

Apple had $252.3 billion in overseas cash as of the end of September quarter, according to SEC filings, so that means the company is paying tax on nearly all of that foreign cash.

$38 billion is a lot of money. And I note that it’s considerably more than the $21.6 billion the Department of Homeland Security said it would cost to build a big beautiful wall on the southern border.

Also, there are going to be some very sad European bankers and investment managers this morning. All those glorious fees gone in the blink of an eye. No wonder they hate the God-Emperor so much. It was very smart to make the repatriation fee even lower than the reduced corporate tax fee.

Cuckservative racists

Why do cuckservatives who reflexively cringe in fear and wet themselves every time a man demands they call him a woman, and angrily denounce even the softest criticism of a Black as racist, a Jew as anti-semitic, and a woman as sexist somehow believe it is perfectly acceptable to mock and deny the ethnic heritage of American Indians?

This behavior is really reprehensible on the part of Capn Cuckings, who is projecting as shamelessly as any SJW ever has.

Fraek
Vox is an American Indian. I’m sure he will be amused to learn that Capn Cummings thinks he is a white nationalist.

Capn Cummings
Yeah, he’s 12{97fd97520de31cde0b26d0c2f59922f7376b6ca8a53cb12ed2e4a6df0b8f3453} Cherokee

You know, we really don’t need proposed allies like these. No one does. First, that one comment would be enough to get him fired from Marvel or DC, or Short Fuse, for that matter, and I am reliably informed that there is No Place for such Behavior in the Comics Industry. Second, I am not Cherokee. Third, I am unquestionably an American Indian by both DNA and genealogy, as everyone who has ever met my family or even seen pictures of it can confirm. Have you ever noticed that absolutely none of my friends, family, or acquaintances have ever surfaced to contest anything I have ever said on the subject? Fourth, African-Americans are not pure Black and Ashkenazim are not pure Jews, so does he similarly deny their ethnic identities? And fifth, in what organization is this “Capn” a captain, the race police?

We live in a very strange time when we are supposed to unquestionably accept that a man is a woman just because he wears a skirt, a human female is a Yellow-Scaled Wingless Dragonkin just because she says so, two men, three women, or six goldfish are “married” just because five justices say so, but nevertheless feel free to insist that a mixed-race American Indian is not an Indian at all even when all the genetic science, legal precedents and genealogical documents support the assertion.

But it is more than reprehensible, it is downright tragic to see Americans mock mixed-race American Indians and deny the existence of their Indian heritage when their own country has been under mass invasion by the Third World for more than 50 years and is already not much more than half-white. Note that just three generations will be sufficient for Capn Cuckings’s great-grandchildren to be as little “white” as he claims that I am “Cherokee”.

Disabled veteran fired by SJWs

SJWs don’t care who you are if you violate their narrative.

Will Caligan, a Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran suffering Gulf War Syndrome, is out of a job. What caused him to lose it is one more weight on the scale that is tipping America toward total insanity. Caligan is a talented comics artist who contracted with Short Fuse Media Group to produce comic books. If you have followed any of my investigations into #Comicsgate you would know that the comics industry has been completely taken over by rabid alt-left types who spent their days devising ways to destroy beloved characters by “diversifying” them into an approved SJW mold. Caligan, a conservative Christian, had little chance of survival in that environment. One hint of wrongthink could spell curtains for any artist, writer or producer in today’s comics climate. In Caligan’s case, he made the catastrophic mistake of voicing his opinion about a pop culture story about a straight man rebuffing a kiss from a transwoman….

Caligan contacted Sean Mack, his boss at Short Fuse Media Group, who seemed to take the whole thing in stride at first, writing in a communication, “If it’s not this, it would be for something else. Don’t stress over it. I’m good and we’re dealing with it head on. I have your back!” He quickly changed his tune with no explanation — presumably after being threatened by rabid SJWs and facing too much pressure by the lynch mob — and cut ties with Caligan. “I’m going to have to put some distance between us until you can change the perception people have of you,” wrote Mack.

I’ve been asked to see if there is anything we can do as a comics publisher to help the guy out, and I’m looking into the situation. I’ll do a Periscope in half an hour if I manage to pull a few things together.

UPDATE: All right, I talked to Will and a few others and here is what we’re going to do. On Monday, we’re going to launch a special one-week Freestartr. Freestartr has reduced their usual fee to support the campaign and all of the funds are going to be used to hire Will, a colorist, and a cover artist to do as many comics as their normal rates allow, and to cover the cost of printing them. The comics will be based on the books(s) of one of the Castalia authors, to be chosen by the backers from a list that will be made public on Monday. So far, Nick Cole, Peter Grant, Lawdog, Rolf Nelson, Kai Wai Cheah, and John C. Wright have all made books available at no charge; if you’re a Castalia author who is interested in supporting this project, email me and let me know that you’re in and with which books. The scripts will be adapted from the books for free by Chuck Dixon and me.

Arkhaven will publish the comics in print and digital editions which will be provided to the backers as per the campaign rewards and 50 percent of any subsequent sales will be split between Will, the contributors, and the backer-selected author(s). Arkhaven will take care of all the setup and layout costs.

More details to come this weekend. I don’t know Will, but I agreed to pitch in because he is a Christian and a veteran and I think it is is important to demonstrate to the SJWs and those they have successfully intimidated know that their victims are not going to be forgotten or left behind.

UPDATE: Moira Greyland also graciously offered her support for this project. GAH! (shudders uncontrollably for 15 seconds) While I appreciate her gesture, we will not even consider doing a graphic novel adaptation of The Last Closet, for reasons that anyone who has read it will understand.

Trump was right… again

A Peace Corps volunteer confirms that the choice facing the West is a simple one between inside plumbing and shit in the streets:

Three weeks after college, I flew to Senegal, West Africa, to run a community center in a rural town.  Life was placid, with no danger, except to your health.  That danger was considerable, because it was, in the words of the Peace Corps doctor, “a fecalized environment.”

In plain English: s— is everywhere.  People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust – onto you, your clothes, your food, the water.  He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water.  Human feces carries parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a few decades later, liberals would be pushing the lie that Western civilization is no better than a third-world country.  Or would teach two generations of our kids that loving your own culture and wanting to preserve it are racism.

Last time I was in Paris, I saw a beautiful African woman in a grand boubou have her child defecate on the sidewalk next to Notre Dame Cathedral.  The French police officer, ten steps from her, turned his head not to see.

I have seen.  I am not turning my head and pretending unpleasant things are not true.

Senegal was not a hellhole.  Very poor people can lead happy, meaningful lives in their own cultures’ terms.  But they are not our terms.  The excrement is the least of it.  Our basic ideas of human relations, right and wrong, are incompatible.

They have to go back. And we should send those who would welcome them along with them.

Mailvox: your mileage WILL vary

Baseball Savant emails about his daughter’s inarguably flawless taste in epic fantasy literature:

I know I’ve e-mailed you this but my 14-year old daughter has read the Lord of the Rings trilogy 3x and the Hobbit countless times. She loves them. She basically has them memorized. She collects them if she sees copies with a different cover. It’s crazy.

She read Throne of Bones in a week. After, she read Lord of the Rings again. So I asked her, how does Vox compare to Tolkien.

She hesitated and then said….”Hmmmm, I think Vox got him.”

What I really like about Throne of Bones is that it sucks you in so fast. The beginning pages with the painting! Whoa. Loved it.

That’s very flattering, of course, and I’m delighted to hear it, but honestly, it would be hard for me to disagree more. Here is how I rank some random authors on a broad and indistinct range of criteria I have not fully articulated. In some cases, it’s based more on their peak, in others, on their average. There is no particular rhyme or reason in this regard; even the greatest novelists have their occasional clunkers.

10/10: Immortals
Tolkien, Eco, Tolstoy, Murakami, Hesse, Maupassant, Poe, Wodehouse

9/10: First-Rate
Lewis, Tanith Lee, Dostoevsky, Adams, Gibson, Herbert, Mieville, Stephenson, Balzac, Calvino, Douglas Adams, Lovecraft, Fitzgerald, Soseki

8/10: Second-Rate
Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, Heinlein, Clarke, Barbara Hambly, Arthur C. Clarke, Pratchett, Keillor, Simmons, Zelazny, Howard

7/10: Third-Rate
Robert Anton Wilson, Katherine Kurtz, Ann McCaffrey, Raymond Feist, Eriksen, George RR Martin, Eddings, Card, Poul Anderson

6/10: Fourth-Rate
Gaiman, Asimov, Anthony, Bujold

At my very best, which is to say with ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT, I’d give myself an 8 to date. But I’d regard a 7 as perfectly reasonable, depending upon your tastes. And yes, I can explain each of these ratings in detail, but I’m not going to do so here.


MAILVOX: Just read your recent posts on Gaiman, was curious which book or two you would recommend starting with China Mieville? I have read about his work here and there and it seemed intriguing but never got around to it, am interested now upon seeing that you admire his writing.

I would read The City and the City, followed by Kraken, and then, assuming you enjoyed both of those, read his best, which is Embassytown.

Me-So was right!

I stand corrected. Apparently Japan has had the ability to invade California all along:

With its official operational date fast approaching, Japan’s first Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade kicked off the bilateral Iron Fist 2018 exercise on Friday with an opening ceremony alongside its Marine Corps hosts. It wasn’t a time for long speeches.

Over the next month, 350 soldiers with the Japan Ground Self Defense Force will train closely with Marines to hone skills that will run the gamut from amphibious reconnaissance and fire-and-maneuver assaults to close-air support and staff planning. They will fire mortars and artillery, land on beaches aboard rubber boats and assault craft and attack and defend “friendly” land from foes in various training scenarios.

The soldiers are members of Western Army Infantry Regiment, a light infantry force that Japan has tasked with creating the first brigade of sea soldiers – with the goal to be ready by April 1, 2018 – that can conduct amphibious operations ultimately as part of a broader “dynamic joint defense force.”

This year’s Iron Fist exercise – it runs from Jan. 12 to Feb. 12 – marks the 13th iteration of the annual training that focuses on amphibious operations, with I Marine Expeditionary Force as a primary host.

Time to dust off those old Japanese internment camps. Well done, Michelle!