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!

West or Not-West

The Northern League is finally confronting the mass invasion of Europe and the most important chart in the world:

An Italian politician has called for his countrymen to decide whether they wish to preserve the ‘white race’ in the face of mass migration to Europe.

Politician Attilio Fontana, from the Northern League, said Italy had a stark choice to make over immigration – propelling the contentious topic to the front and centre of the general election campaign.

‘We have to decide if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society continues to exist or if it will be wiped out,’ Fontana said, the League’s candidate to govern the northern Lombardy region.

It was ‘not a question of being xenophobic or racist, but a question of being logical or rational,’ he said in remarks made on Sunday.

Unfortunately, Fontana backed down a bit under media pressure, which is always a mistake. People have to stop denying that their position is xenophobic, racist, or whatever else the globalist media calls it. The characterizations are purely rhetorical and are totally meaningless from a dialectical perspective. All that matters is that the statement is true. The defenders of the West need to stop apologizing for defending their civilization. The West cannot and will not survive if it is populated by the South or the East; it will no longer be the West. Stop allowing the critics to pretend otherwise.

The correct response would have been: “Why do you wish to destroy Italy? Why do you wish to destroy the European nations? Why do you seek to destroy Western civilization?” Instead of constantly playing defense, force them to try to deny that they are doing what they are doing when the evidence is everywhere, right in front of everyone.

If Congolese or Chinese or penguins from the South Pole can truly become Westerners and maintain Western civilization, let them prove that they can do so in their own countries first. Civilization is not a game and the entire world will suffer greatly from the transformation of the West into the Not-West. Because what we are presently enduring is the Great Retardation of the West and the literal dumbing-down of the entire planet.

EVS follows up

Ethan gave me the chance to speak my piece, so I’ll leave him with the last word for now. However, I will respond to one of his commenters.

James Robins
I don’t get vox man. I mean comparing yourself to Gaiman? Nobody is haruki murakami, hes a great writer. But vox? Come on lol.

It’s pretty simple. I am a better novelist than Neil Gaiman by almost every reasonable measure. Anyone who has read a sufficient variety of both our novels will recognize that pretty easily. Gaiman writes a variant of the same book with the same sort of characters almost every time. Even his Sandman is a Gary Stu of sorts. I have much wider literary range and can write everything from haunting shorts that could almost pass for modern Maupassant to murder mysteries to epic military fantasy. I don’t write myself into my books and I can even successfully pull off the “you genuinely think he’s dead but actually he isn’t” trick without cheating or magic or medical science or anything but pure literary sleight of hand.

George Martin can’t do that despite repeated attempts. Gaiman can’t do it either. And as for Murakami, I have been writing a literary novel inspired by his style for years, although since I am not Japanese, it is more likely to feature a wedding than a suicide. I have no idea when it will be finished, if ever, but I think I might be able to pull it off. And if I can’t get even reasonably close, then I won’t publish it.

I admire Tanith Lee. I admire JRR Tolkien. I admire John C. Wright. I admire China Mieville. I admire Alan Moore. I admire Umberto Eco. The only thing I admire about Gaiman’s writing is his ability to give everything the flavor of a fairy tale. That’s not nothing, it’s actually pretty cool, but it’s very far from the most significant thing. Sure, he sells a lot more books, but then, Dan Brown and Katie Price sell even more and I don’t have any respect for either of their literary abilities.

Anyhow, there is no need to pay any attention to my opinion. Read the reviews of the Arts of Dark and Light instead. Better yet, read the books and decide for yourself.

  • This book contains strong traces of DNA from Umberto Eco and Neal Stephenson but it stands on its own as a fantastically monstrous creature.
  • A Throne of Bones, for me at least, shines like a beacon in this literary twilight.
  • One of the best Fantasy novels I’ve read in the past ten years.
  • Better then GOT. I read a lot of fiction. Vox’s writing skill is superb.
  • I’d put it on par with Tolkien in terms of epic fantasy.
  • I am a big time Tolkien and George Martin fan. Vox’s Selenoth has wiggled its way between Middle Earth and Westeros.
  • Comparisons with Martin are much more useful, and there I agree, Day comes out ahead.
  • Vox Day has catapulted himself into the storied and rarefied rank of writers that sits just below The Master himself. That’s right, I went there. I just said that Vox Day has written a book that is nearly as good as J. R. R. Tolkien’s work.
  • Easily the best epic fantasy series out today.
  • It is the best fantasy book of the past 50 years.

Since we’re on the subject, a bit of Selenoth-related news. Because Kindle Unlimited is becoming increasingly important, we’re going to release a new version of the series specifically formatted for KU. It will be EXACTLY the same text, but divided into more readily digestible 50k to 60k chunks and released under the series name LEGIONS OF BLOOD & BONE.

And yes, I’m still working on A SEA OF SKULLS. And yes, it will be out this year. It will be worth the wait. I think I can safely promise you that. I’m not interested in just getting it out, I am attempting to further raise my writing game.

Amazon’s next market

I refuse to use any of these smart, voice-activated devices or to have one in my home. It astonishes me that anyone does:

Amazon wants to put a camera and microphone in your bedroom with the UK launch of its latest Echo home device. The camera on the £119.99 ($129) Echo Spot, which doubles up as a ‘smart alarm’, will probably be facing directly at the user’s bed.  The device, which is already available in the US has such sophisticated microphones it can hear people talking from across the room – even if music is playing.

However, there remain privacy concerns over using such a device in the home. Amazon devices have previously activated when they’re not wanted meaning this small device could turn into a potential spy.

Five years from now, I’m sure we’ll all be shocked when Amazon unveils that it is adding adult channels to all of its streaming services, with a library bigger than all of its rivals combined.