Daily Meme Wars

I’ve been a bit sporadic about the meme wars lately, since not being on Twitter has tended to make me forget about social media entirely, but now that the holidays are over I’m getting back to the meme factory and will be sending memes like these out again on a daily basis.

Put them on Twitter, put them on Facebook, just put them out there, period. It’s a great way of effectively countering the constant propaganda pressure on ordinary news consumers. To get your daily meme wars in your morning email, sign up here. Because it’s easy to ignore an argument, especially if you’re a rhetoric-speaker, it’s much harder to ignore images such as the one below popping up in your timeline. Especially if you don’t know what it means.

The “secret society”

Seditious parties in the FBI may be hiding text messages, but they won’t be able to keep the FISA memo under wraps:

There is serious talk on Capitol Hill about the appointment of a second special counsel amid several new bombshell revelations swirling around the Trump/Russia probe. First, there are the allegations of shocking and substantial government surveillance abuses under President Obama outlined in the FISA abuse memo. Secondly, the FBI lost five months of key text messages between the anti-Trump/pro-Clinton FBI officials Peter Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page. And now there’s talk of a “secret society” of officials within the FBI that apparently met the day after the election of Donald J. Trump to plot against the president-elect….

According to Fox News, Nunes, Gowdy and Goodlatte are in the process of going through the steps necessary to release the four-page FISA memo and intend to see it released to the public by early February.

The FBI has demanded to see a copy of the memo, but so far — understandably —  the Intelligence Committee has declined to show them their hand. Republicans believe that publishing the memo will but pressure on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a second special counsel, Fox News reported.

Reps Gowdy and Ratcliffe (R-TX) were on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum” Monday night to talk about the latest developments.

Rep. Ratcliffe said that former FBI director James Comey needs to come back to Capitol Hill to testify again under oath on the question of when the decision to exonerate former secretary of State Hillary Clinton was made. The latest batch of text messages between Strzok and Page suggests that Comey was coordinating with Attorney General Lynch on the decision well ahead of his July 5 press conference.

“It’s really clear to me that the decision was made in May of 2016 — two months before the press conference,” Gowdy said. “Of course Loretta Lynch knew he wasn’t going to be charged. Everyone except the public knew that she was not going to be charged.”

“We knew that Strzok and Page had an intense anti-Trump bias and that’s okay so long as they check it at the door and do their job,” Ratcliffe said. “But we learned today in the thousands of text messages that we reviewed that perhaps they may not have done that.”

Ratcliffe went on to mention one particular text message that referenced a “secret society” at the Bureau. “We know about this insurance policy that was referenced in trying to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president,” he began. “We learned today about information in the immediate aftermath of his election that there may have been a ‘secret society’ of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI to include Page and Strzok that would be working against him.”

This goes well beyond basic criminality. We’re getting into serious sedition, high crimes, and treason territory here. And yes, this is definitely Storm-related. The FBI and NSA aren’t “accidentally losing” hundreds of text messages and emails because nothing is at stake.

The Conservative Treehouse explains the strategy called “the Big Ugly”, of which the aforementioned FISA memo is a key part of informing the public in a manner it can digest:

Nunes, Grassley and Goodlatte are working in concert, each with a specific attack strategy that targets the larger swamp defense. This week they began the three-pronged attack we call “THE BIG UGLY“.

The Big Ugly is the wrecking ball that will shatter the front line swamp defenses and allow the draining to begin. The plan for this strategy was developed almost a year ago after Nunes realized how the compartmented intelligence would be used to block sunlight.

ODNI Dan Coats, the man who declassified the original FISA court opinion, NSA Director Mike Rogers, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Asst. AG Rod Rosenstein have each played a significant role in preparing the landscape and armory for this conflict.

Congressional allies like Jim Jordan and Ron DeSantis will be working toward messaging and clearing the fog from the media.

It is not accidental that Ron DeSantis has asked Speaker Ryan to declassify everything…. only a week before Devin Nunes announces his request for the full house to see everything declassified and without redaction. These are Big Ugly cannon shots into the heart of deception.  The summary of the classified FISA-702 abuse, and the subsequent unmasking therein, lies at the heart of the strategy to use a four-page summary memo to inform the public of the historic issues.

So what comes next?

Bruce Charlton recommends calling out the liars:

As Vox Day has accurately stated, and as we all ought to know by now, SJWs Always Lie: which means that the mass media, government, bureaucracies and all large mainstream institutions Always Lie.

And Liars cannot be trusted: should not be trusted.

So when you believe that they are lying, you should say, preferably out-loud and clear, that you do not believe them.

This is the next step.

This is what the public, what people-in-general need to hear. They need to hear people saying what they know in their hearts to be true. In private, in public – this needs to be said.

When They lie, say it out-loud and in something as clear and simple as these words: I Don’t Believe It (or I Don’t Believe You).

It’s customary to remain silent and expect your silence to somehow convey a lack of agreement. But silence is what they are counting on! What discombobulates them is being forced to defend themselves, because SJWs have no ability to do so. Which, of course, is why they will usually resort to an attack, and everyone knows it, which is why most people remain silent.

But that is a mistake. All it does is convince them that you are a pushover and are incapable of resistance. Worse, they will use your silence to convince others that you agree with them when you are not around.

Another oopsie: NSA edition

It’s really remarkable how these Federal agencies keep accidentally erasing data that might prove incriminating.

Surveillance data the National Security Agency vowed to preserve related to pending lawsuits has been erased, and the agency did not take several precautions it told a federal court it would take to ensure the data did not get deleted, court filings reveal.

Court orders from 2007 have required the NSA to maintain the data related to certain surveillance efforts that were under scrutiny, after it was revealed President George W. Bush directed warrantless wiretapping among international communications following the 9/11 attacks. The NSA has provided updates to the court regarding how it has followed the orders.

But the NSA informed U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White that the agency did not keep content of internet communications seized from 2001 to 2007 under the Bush administration in a filing Thursday night, and in a submission last year, according to Politico. Additionally, the NSA said backup tapes were deleted in 2009, 2011, and 2016.

“The NSA sincerely regrets its failure to prevent the deletion of this data,” NSA’s deputy director of capabilities, referenced as “Elizabeth B.,” said in a declaration filed in the fall. “NSA senior management is fully aware of this failure, and the Agency is committed to taking swift action to respond to the loss of this data.”

Another NSA official revealed on Thursday the data had been erased during a large effort to create more space for new information.

They sincerely regret it. Sure they do. Sure they do. These jokers have absolutely no credibility anymore. I’ve always known that the US government was as corrupt as the average banana republic, but they used to do a better job of hiding that fact.

KABOOM!

Wow, you guys are unbelievable. Incredible. And generous. Will Cadigan’s Comic hit its $7,500 initial goal in just 149 minutes. Now let’s see who wants color….

Let’s take a non-binding poll. Which book do you favor?

  • Nick Cole (The End of the World as We Knew It)
  • Peter Grant (Rocky Mountain Retribution)
  • Lawdog (The Lawdog Files)
  • Rolf Nelson (The Stars Came Back)
  • Kai Wai Cheah (Flashpoint: Titan)
  • Rawle Nyanzi (Sword and Flower)
  • John C. Wright (Swan Knight’s Son)

Only express an opinion if you’ve backed, please.

UPDATE: The campaign passed 10k in three hours, eleven minutes. Looks like I’d better talk to the colorists.

Will Caligan’s Comic

This is an announcement for a special one-week campaign designed to provide work for Will Caligan, a military veteran, a Christian, and a comic artist who was swarmed by SJWs and lost his publishing arrangement due to his willingness to stand up for his beliefs about right and wrong. All of the funds raised will go to paying for the production of one or more comics illustrated by Will that will be published by Arkhaven. The graphic novel – or novels – will be based on novels chosen by the backers that have been contributed by various authors, and comics legend Chuck Dixon will be providing the adapted scripts for free. A Gold-rate team of colorists, Arklight Studios, will provide the colors for the cover at a steep discount.

50 percent of the revenues from any subsequent sale of the comics and graphic novels will go to Will and to the direct contributors to producing the comic. (The author whose work is selected, the colorists, etc.) This does not include me or the Arkhaven team. For more details about the campaign and to view the backing options, please visit Freestartr. And please spread the word, especially on Twitter.

Thanks to everyone who put this campaign together on very short notice.

  • Jon Del Arroz
  • Freestartr
  • Arklight Studios
  • Chuck Dixon
  • Nick Cole
  • John C. Wright
  • Peter Grant
  • Lawdog
  • Rolf Nelson
  • Kai Wai Cheah
  • Rawle Nyanzi
  • Team Arkhaven

And as a bonus, if you visit the campaign page, you can see one of the new Alt★Hero covers illustrated by Cliff Cosmic and colored by Arklight Studios.

Peter Grant shares his thoughts.

The press release from Short Fuse Media Group concerning the matter.

Short Fuse Media Group, LLC. was founded on the principles of uniting all PEOPLE and embracing diversity.

In order to maintain those principles, the decision has been made from our senior staff to sever ties with Will Caligan and Alpha Dog Studios, effective immediately as a result of comments that were made by Will that were deemed to be offensive by members of the indie comic book community as well as the LGBT Community.

Short Fuse Media Group, LLC. would like to formally apologize to the members of the indie comic book community, the LGBT Community and especially the current (and prior) members/talent of our roster who are also a part of the LGBT community for the length of time that it took to fully understand the scope of what had taken place and act on this accordingly as again, we support and respect all PEOPLE from ALL walks of life.

Sure they do. Sure they do.

That sounds convincing

The FBI resorts to an old police standby. “Gee, turns out that all the body cams and car cameras mysteriously failed simultaneously when our officers shot that unarmed little girl 37 times”:

The Justice Department has turned over to Congress additional text messages involving an FBI agent who was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team following the discovery of derogatory comments about President Donald Trump.

But the department also said in a letter to lawmakers that its record of messages sent to and from the agent, Peter Strzok, was incomplete because the FBI, for technical reasons, had been unable to preserve and retrieve about five months’ worth of communications.

New text messages highlighted in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray by Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, are from the spring and summer of 2016 and involve discussion of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. They reference Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s decision to accept the FBI’s conclusion in that case and a draft statement that former FBI Director James Comey had prepared in anticipation of closing out the Clinton investigation without criminal charges.

The FBI declined to comment Sunday.

Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent who also worked the Clinton email case, was reassigned last summer from the team investigating ties between Russia and Trump’s Republican presidential campaign after Mueller learned he had exchanged politically charged text messages — many anti-Trump in nature — with an FBI lawyer also detailed to the group. The lawyer, Lisa Page, left Mueller’s team before the text messages were discovered.

The Justice Department last month produced for reporters and Congress hundreds of text messages that the two had traded before becoming part of the Mueller investigation. Many focused on their observations of the 2016 election and included discussions in often colorful language of their personal feelings about Trump, Clinton and other public figures. Some Republican lawmakers have contended the communication reveals the FBI and the Mueller team to be politically tainted and biased against Trump — assertions Wray has flatly rejected.

In addition to the communications already made public, the Justice Department on Friday provided Johnson’s committee with 384 pages of text messages, according to a letter from the Wisconsin lawmaker that was obtained by The Associated Press.

But, according to the letter, the FBI told the department that its system for retaining text messages sent and received on bureau phones had failed to preserve communications between Strzok and Page over a five-month period between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017. May 17 was the date that Mueller was appointed as special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.

The explanation for the gap was “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities.”

I think I’m going to have to remember that excuse. Why don’t you have any receipts for that deduction? Well, it was misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades. Hey, Windows 10, what are you going to do?

The fall of the academy

How very embarrassing! The bitter little gamma that I repeatedly corrected back in 2016 concerning his inability to correctly grasp Aristotelian rhetoric turns out to be a philosophy professor. That certainly explains why “he seems to have a basic knowledge of the technical aspects without understanding their basic purpose or how they can be utilized.”

Long-time Mad Genius Club readers are familiar with Camestros — often dubbed Cameltoe, by those who’ve dickered with the man in the comments sections of various libertarian and conservative SF/F author blogs — mainly for his outsized ego, and a penchant for assuming he is several orders of magnitude more intelligent than not only the host(s) of the blogs he trolls, but also the comment participants to boot.

Put simply, Felapton is the proverbial pouting basement genius — because the universe is not sufficiently moved by his Brobdingnagian intellect.

Small wonder, then, that Camestros Felapton is actually Toby Meadows, a philosophy-slash-humanities PhD presently employed at the University of Queensland, Australia. Also, Toby Meadows is the spouse of Australian SF/F gadfly and left-wing political activist Foz Meadows.

Foz Meadows is the woman who falsely accused me of being a National Socialist at Black Gate and then at Amazing Stories. Quite the pair of midwits, they are.

Oh dear. In addition to violating Facebook’s name policy, Camestros appears to have violated his university’s code of conduct. “Staff must not engage in conduct that amounts to or may be perceived as harassment.” He has certainly engaged in conduct that amounts to harassment with regards to me. Just look up his many, many references to “Vox Day” on either his blog or File 770. There are hundreds.

Camestros claims he is not Toby Meadows. Unfortunately, he lies far too often to simply take his word for it. Fortunately, there is an easy way to determine whether he is or not, which is to let the university investigate the truth of the matter.