Just FYI. Nothing serious, just a technical problem. It should be back up before 9 AM this morning. It’s neither an attack nor a billing issue.
UPDATE: 9:20 AM Eastern. We’re back up.
A meme, corrected
So, not the DNC and Team Clinton, but rather, the Obama administration, with a connection to Natalia Veselnitskaya.
The Russian lawyer who penetrated Donald Trump’s inner circle was initially cleared into the United States by the Justice Department under “extraordinary circumstances” before she embarked on a lobbying campaign last year that ensnared the president’s eldest son, members of Congress, journalists and State Department officials, according to court and Justice Department documents and interviews.
This revelation means it was the Obama Justice Department that enabled the newest and most intriguing figure in the Russia-Trump investigation to enter the country without a visa.
The fabrication of an anti-Trump attack
Remember, /pol/ is always right. Not only has Weaponized Autism demonstrated that the Russian Server story is bogus, they have identified the locus for the attack named “Tea Leaves”:
On October 31, 2016, Slate published an article titled “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?” This article described the work of Professor L. Jean Camp and her colleagues, all of whom had developed an interest in the activity of mail1.trump-email.com, an email-marketing server associated with the Trump Organization:
The computer scientists posited a logical hypothesis, which they set out to rigorously test: If the Russians were worming their way into the DNC, they might very well be attacking other entities central to the presidential campaign, including Donald Trump’s many servers. “We wanted to help defend both campaigns, because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election,” says one of the academics, who works at a university that asked him not to speak with reporters because of the sensitive nature of his work.
This professed altruism as a rationale for digital snooping may be hard to swallow given that Camp and her associates spend a great deal of time on Twitter launching unhinged attacks against President Trump, but pushing ahead, enter Tea Leaves:
In late July, one of these scientists—who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their data—found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves’ attention. But his discovery of the data was pure happenstance—a surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS lookups on his screen. “I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,” he wrote in his notes. He couldn’t quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue.
Tea Leaves is another piece of work in the “concerned and impartial researcher” department. Check out Tea Leaves on medium.com (@tea.leaves) play-acting as the innocently curious Lea Vestea (roughly a cyclic permutation on “Tea Leaves,” in case you missed it):
If you are a billionaire, do you have lesser people “take the fall” for you? We already saw a loyal Trump employee — who is a woman — used as a scapegoat in the scandal about Melania Trump plagiarizing a Michele Obama speech. After reading details of an under-reported story that seems to be just emerging — I predict that The Donald will do it again and yet again find a woman amongst his large organization to blame his own extremely risky actions upon.We were assured that known DNS experts vouched for the authenticity of the DNS logs. We were assured that nine computer scientists considered it nearly impossible for such logs to be forged or manipulated. And thus a virulent narrative was reinforced.
Now, I neither know anything nor care about DNS lookups or servers so long as my Internet is working. And I always assumed that this “Russian server scandal” was just another anti-Trump put-up job, just like the current non-scandal involving Donald Trump Jr. is. But there is one thing about this that is very interesting to me as a writer. There is a tremendous tell in that quote from Tea Leaves, who was commonly supposed to be a man all along. See if you can spot it. I mean, does that read like anything a man would ever write?
No, it most certainly does not….
This is called “missing the point”
The irony, it burns.
It’s sobering to consider the degree to which we have lost our knowledge of and connection to our American heritage. As a result, William B. Allen notes that we have been transitioning increasingly from a society of “independent yeomen” to a society of “wards of the state.” The challenge before us is to determine whether we can rediscover our heritage, and relearn the requirements for becoming good and free citizens while also reclaiming the sovereignty we have ceded to the state.
The first step toward recovery, after our recent celebration of the 241st anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, is to remind ourselves of its unique proposition that because we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, equality and our common commitment to the political implications of that equality—not race and blood—are the founding principles of our nation.
We’ve lost our knowledge of and connection to American heritage because many, if not most, US citizens are not Americans by any definition except paperwork. It shouldn’t be surprising that Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Mexicans, and Chinese never had any interest or ability to transform themselves into the independent yeomen who historically existed only in England prior to the establishment of the United States by predominantly English settlers.
You cannot rediscover a heritage that isn’t yours. You can’t become “American” by a sheer effort of will any more than you can become “Japanese” or “Jewish” that way, no matter how much you like football, sushi, or matzo ball soup. All you can do is decide what your society is to become and then do your best to make it that way. There is no going back in time, so the only possible direction is forward.
The Clinton comeback
I think we have to assume that Hillary Clinton is planning a comeback now that she has the GORILLA MINDSET.
Megan McArdle is astonishingly stupid
I’ve never had any respect for her; as someone who understands economics considerably better than she does, reading her articles have always been painful. But this is a new nadir for the woman:
On Monday, the New York Times published a jaw-dropping story, alleging that a 2016 meeting between a Russian attorney and Donald Trump’s son and son-in-law had been arranged to discuss dirt on Hillary Clinton that a Kremlin-connected lawyer might be willing to provide to the Trump campaign. Donald Trump Jr. had been informed via email that this compromising information was part of a Russian government operation to help his father win the presidency.
Facing an accusation like that, Donald Trump Jr. obviously didn’t want to sit around while the Times dribbled out information bolstering the speculation that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia. He rushed to confirm it himself, tweeting out the email chain. His response to being informed that Russia was trying to engineer the outcome of an American election, with efforts that included providing damaging information about Clinton? “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” Son-in-law Jared Kushner was cc’d on the email.
Is this illegal? Does getting oppo research from a foreign power count as an in-kind campaign contribution from a foreign national, one that might leave Jr. and Kushner vulnerable to criminal prosecution? I have no idea, because as we say on the interwebs, I am not a lawyer. Regardless of whether these actions turn out to be legal, it hardly ceases to be a problem if this somehow manages to squeak through some hole in our federal election laws. What they did is so obviously wrong that a 10-year-old child would know better.
Social media indicates that there are some people out there still trying to defend the Trump camp’s relationship with Russia, so it bears spelling out why this is, as the ethicists and public relations pros say, “not OK.”
Donald Trump is an American. He is an American who ran for office under a slogan of patriotic pride and love of country. People who love their country do not help rival powers intervene in their country’s elections, even if that intervention might have the lovely side effect of getting them elected. Countries gonna country, and spies gonna spy. But Americans running for American office must pick sides: the will of American voters or the influence of a foreign power. Hint: You choose your fellow Americans.
What happened at the meeting could ultimately be irrelevant. The sin to which Donald Trump Jr. has already confessed is egregious enough. A decent person would not give an audience to a foreign power promising to help tear down the opposition. A decent person certainly would not contemplate and suggest timing of any document release — which moves this revelation beyond merely “taking a meeting you shouldn’t have” and into the territory of “a presidential campaign actively coordinating with foreign agents.”
Even Trump supporters seem to be having trouble mustering much of a defense. There was a lot of irrelevant sputtering on social media this morning. One Trump apologist asked me: What about Aipac? (Unfortunately, Twitter offered no way to transmit my response: an astonished, incomprehending stare.) Others mounted standard complaints about leaks and sly implication. We are now past the point of anonymous sources and innuendo. Donald Trump Jr. showed us the primary sources, pleading guilty in the court of public opinion.
The president’s supporters have already retreated to what now looks to be their last rhetorical stand: to say that this isn’t collusion, but just politics. They get creative and postulate that this isn’t unlike what Clinton’s campaign would have done.
Here’s the reality: Once you are given the details of a Russian attempt to change the outcome of an American election, there is only one patriotic thing you can do, and that is to get on the phone to the FBI and say “I have some very disturbing news.” End of story.
Translation: Donald Trump Jr. is not a politician, did not do anything illegal, and did nothing more than what is generally known as “opposition research”. The source is totally irrelevant, as should be obvious considering the large number of US-Israeli dual nationals who would otherwise be entirely barred from any involvement in the U.S. political process.
And to claim that “Trump’s Defeated Defenders Can Only Whimper” is even more ridiculously stupid than the illogical argument she is making in the article itself. We’re not whimpering, we’re laughing at the desperation of the Never-Trumpers. Besides, we all know where tracking down the origins of this story is going to lead.
On a not-entirely-unrelated note, the Daily Meme Wars is now 1,500 strong. If you want to help force-multiply the memes, sign up here.
When evidence is not “evidence”
The media’s “fact-checkers” are no more reliable, or credible, than the very media whose reputation they are attempting to restore.
It’s important to remember that Band’s email was sent privately, with little expectation it would be aired publicly. On the one hand, that might indicate he would be more open about possible conflicts. But he was also feuding with Chelsea Clinton and so might have been inclined to exaggerate or embellish his concerns.
Even the email, at face value, does not justify the hyperbolic news coverage. There was no reference to foundation monies, just “resources.”
At the same time, the foundation, the family and the wedding planner deny the claim made in the email. This was a major social event with 450 guests, something that has to run on clockwork — at great cost. The wedding planner paid the bills and submitted one bill to the Clinton family.
We can’t really award Pinocchios here, since no specific person repeated this allegation. But we can fault the news reporting — and label this as a claim lacking any evidence. Readers (or their friends) who viewed this as the “last straw” about Clinton corruption need to be more careful consumers of the news.
No Evidence
In other words, documentary evidence is not evidence because “money” is a subset of “resources”. That’s an attempted bait-and-switch almost worthy of Richard Dawkins and midwit atheists who claim that documentary evidence and eyewitness evidence is not evidence because it is not scientific evidence.
Almost.
This demonstrates why the media’s rhetoric is so often ineffective. In this case, it is pseudo-dialectic based on a foundation of pedantry and deception.
EXCERPT: Swan Knight’s Son
This is an excerpt from Swan Knight’s Son, Moth & Cobweb Book 1. It is available for $4.99 and via Kindle Unlimited. It is also available in a hardcover edition as the first volume of The Green Knight’s Squire trilogy for $27.99.
Gil had fashioned himself a hiking stick by finding a likely length of wood and trimming off the twigs. As they hiked, Gil said, “Are you sure there is a need for knights?”
Ruff said, “Sure! Sure! Anyone can tell you. Ask anyone!”
Gil thought it actually might be a good idea to ask around. Gil looked at the long grass in the meadow, saw a rustle, and perceived it was a rabbit. He called the rabbit over, telling Ruff to stand a bit away.
The rabbit sat up on its hindquarters. “What can I do for you, my good sire?”
“Um. I am looking for a job.”
“Everyone is welcome in the warren! How are you at digging holes? Plenty of clover this time of year, the does are in heat, and no need to worry about the wolf. You see, you don’t need to outrun the wolf; you only need to outrun your brother.” The rabbit wore a smug look. “That is a saying we have! When danger comes, abandon your loved ones! So, will you join? The more among us, the merrier! The more targets for the hungry wolf, the better our chances to stay alive!”
“No, not a job as a bunny. I was thinking of being a knight. Have you heard that they have any openings? Um– within walking distance of Blowing Rock, North Carolina?”
The rabbit scratched his ear with his hind leg thoughtfully. “I heard something about knights over around Pisgah National Forest. Something in the wind. Winter knights and Summer knights getting ready for Michaelmas. But I think they were elfs. You know, the hidden people, the Night Folk.”
“Elfs? What can you tell me about them?”
The rabbit shivered. “Nothing. I mean, they steal human beings from the daylight world. Put the come-hither on them. Take you down into their warrens. More targets for the hungry mouths, so more chances to stay alive if you get me. A lot like rabbits, elfs. The more, the merrier.” The rabbit shivered again. “Say nothing! They have sharp ears and many spies.”
“Yeah, I think I met one.”
“They don’t like people talking about them. It is better to call them ‘the Good People’ or ‘the Kindly Folk’ or ‘The Rich Ones’ or something like that.”
Gil said, “Are they real? Where do they come from?”
The rabbit said, “Kindly and good and rich. Like I said. Don’t talk about them. As for knighthood, stupid idea. Knights wear metal for their fur, and they fight. Outmoded, outdated, old-fashioned idea. The latest and best way is to study how to run away!”
Another rabbit, this one smaller and with a nose that never stopped twitching, emerged from the grass just then. “Sire, I could not help but overhear the conversation. Knighthood is one of those theories whose days are past! Rabbits are forward-looking! It is not for nothing that we have such ears, to hear of all the latest trends in the newest thought! Running away is the new fashion!”
Other rabbit voices now came from the grasses. “Quite so! Everyone agrees,” said one, and another said, “Always listen to rabbits! We have the more recent and most profound ideas on all matters!” and a third, “A consensus has been reached! The debate is over!”
Gil said, “But rabbits always run away. Always have. Isn’t that like your thing you are famous for? How is that new?”
But then the two rabbits he could see froze, ears high, motionless as statues. In the near distance was a thrumming noise of a rabbit rapping his hindleg against the ground, their warning signal. The two visible rabbits bounded away with astonishing speed and were gone, and no rustle was heard from the grass.
Gil looked up and saw a wolf across the meadow, grinning. Gil beckoned him over. The wolf, tongue lolling, came trotting closer but slowed warily and stopped several yards away. The wolf sat down on his haunches.
“Well, you have a strange smell about you,” said the wolf, “A scent not of this world. You look like a Son of Adam, but I think you are a Son of someone else.”
“Who?” asked Gil. “Whose son am I?”
“Cut off all your fine silver hair, and give it to me, and perhaps I will tell.”
Gil said curtly, “No.”
The wolf stood up, and his ears flattened. “You do not know where my pack is or how you are surrounded, do you?”
Gil said, “Pardon my manners, Brother Wolf. Your request took me by surprise. I am not able to cut off all my hair at this time to present to you, for I promised some to my friend, a wren who is using it to line her nest. Please tell me why you want it.”
The wolf sat on his haunches again, green eyes glinting like flames. “You are well spoken, Brother Man-cub. But it would be rude of me to tell you the secret of your own hair that grows on your own head.”
Gil said, “What if I cut a handful of it and present it to you as a gift?”
The glitter in the wolf’s eyes changed, growing less dangerous but more greedy. “That would be noble courtesy indeed, Brother Man-cub.”
Gil drew his knife and cut off a tail of hair from behind his ear. He opened his fingers, and the strands floated down to the grass just before him. The wolf stood up and started to step forward but then paused, as if measuring the distance between the knife still in Gil’s hand and himself. He looked then at the silver hair on the grass, then at Gil’s eyes, and then back at the knife.
Gil said, “What, pray tell, is the matter, Brother Wolf?”
“You still have your knife in your hand, Brother Man-cub.”
“So? It would be discourteous not to offer my hair to your pack mates as well. Have them come out of hiding and show themselves, and we will exchange gifts and secrets of noble worth.”
The wolf said, “No, not so, my packmates—which are many in number, and ferocious fighters—would deem it untoward to impose on a generous heart like yours.”
Gil said, “Come, Brother Wolf. Please take these strands of hair as a gift.”
The wolf stepped slowly and warily toward the spot at Gil’s feet where the hair lay gleaming. Very gingerly, watching Gil and Gil’s knifehand with both eyes, the wolf lowered his head and gently took the hairs between his teeth.
Gil tightened his grip on his knife. It was a tiny, almost invisible motion, but the wolf froze. His head was still down, and he was very close to Gil, but not in any position to spring.
“True courtesy,” said Gil softly, “would be truly satisfied if we both performed as we said. Have you no gift to offer in return?”
The wolf’s eyes were locked on the knife, whose blade gleamed brightly.
The wolf spoke in a husky whisper, moving his lips but not his teeth. “Ask me three questions if you please. That will be my gift.”
“Thank you,” said Gil.
“You are most welcome.”
“Whose son am I?”
“I know not.”
“But you said–”
“The scent of death is upon you, which marks you as a Son of Eve and Adam. Yet also the scent of the mists of otherworld around you, which follows the Sons of Titania and Oberon. Yet you are not of one nor of the other, neither of the Day-born nor the Night-kin. You are one of the Twilight Folk. You are a son of Moth. Your family is called Moth.”
“That does not tell me much, Brother Wolf.”
“You did not give me much hair, Brother Man.”
“What makes my hair precious?”
“Long ago, were men who were my brothers, wolves who walked on two legs and who walked through the wood as warily and swiftly as do I. They worshiped many spirits, including the great wolf spirit. They danced the Ghost Dance, to turn the bullets of the white men away. Those who had hair like yours to weave into their ghost shirts had charmed lives, and the weapon they most feared, the weapon with no dreams, would not bite them. So it is for you: you will not die by firearms.”
“What? Am I bulletproof?”
“Ask your third question, kindly and gracious brother, for I must be away!”
“Uh, sure, uh. What about knighthood as a career? Are there any jobs open?”
“For that profession?” and now the wolf made a low and ugly chuckle in its throat. Then, the wolf recited:
And ever and anon the wolf would steal
The children and devour, but now and then,
Her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat
To human sucklings; and the children, housed
In her foul den, there at their meat would growl,
And mock their foster-mother on four feet,
Till, straightened, they grew up to wolf-like men,
Worse than the wolves.
Jewish double-talk in action
This is an amusing example of a Jewish commentator attempting to simultaneously cry Holocaust, defend his tribe, and attack the other 7.688 billion people on the planet, and who, in doing so, winds up as looking like a medieval stereotype of a perfidious Jew attempting to whitewash the evil deeds of his wicked co-tribalist.
Instead of defending George Soros from Hungary’s anti-Semitism, he has taken a page out of the alt-right playbook. His bottom line? Some Jews just aren’t worth protecting.
Benjamin Netanyahu is the self-appointed protector of world Jewry. And as such, he views his role not only as prime minister of Israel, but as the spokesperson for Jews across the world. On Saturday, Netanyahu played that role when the Israeli government called on the Hungarian government to halt an ad campaign against Hungarian-born Jewish-American financier George Soros, claiming it was fueling anti-Semitism across the country.
Just a day later, however, Netanyahu ordered the Foreign Ministry to retract the statement, resorting instead to attacking Soros, a known critic of Israel’s policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians. The clarification, issued by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon, deploys similar tropes to the ones used against Soros by the Hungarian government:
Israel deplores any expression of anti-Semitism in any country and stands with Jewish communities everywhere in confronting this hatred. This was the sole purpose of the statement issued by Israel’s ambassador to Hungary…In no way was the statement meant to delegitimize criticism of George Soros, who continuously undermines Israel’s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.
The reaction in Israel was immediate. Meretz leader Zehava Galon sharply criticized Netanyahu, accusing him of “supporting global anti-Semitism,” and backed calls by Hungarian Jews for Netanyahu to cancel his visit to Hungary next week. Some of the reactions by the Israeli Right simply doubled down on Netanyahu’s decision. Take right-wing commentator Shimon Riklin, who on Sunday tweeted: “Want to understand part of the anti-Semitism of the 30s in Europe? Look at George Soros who is trying to educate the goyim over and over again, telling them what to think.”
The astounding thing about Netanyahu’s implicit support for Hungary’s anti-Semitism is not that it comes from the most powerful Jewish figure in the world.
The absolute and incontrovertible fact is that some Jews are not worth protecting. Some Jews are murderous homosexual cannibals. Some Jews are traitors and cultural Marxists. Some Jews rape children. Some Jews suck the penises of little boys and infect them with venereal diseases. And some Jews fund movements intended to overturn civilized societies and destroy Western civilization.
Do ALL of these evil individuals merit protecting? If you genuinely think so, if you truly believe that the mere possession of certain DNA sequences suffices to justify any and all actions on the part of the individual concerned, you are not only racist, you are so irretrievably and unmistakably wicked that the tender mercy of a Zyklon B gas chamber is far too merciful for you.
I think far too well of the Jewish people to believe that most of them, let alone all of them, subscribe to this evil, and arguably insane, logic. Christianity is not a free pass. Judaism is not a free pass. Genetics are not a free pass. Nothing is a free pass. In the end, we ALL must answer for our deeds, regardless of our genetics or our beliefs. Whether you are a Christian or a godless Objectivist, you understand that it is the individual who is responsible for his actions.
Netanyahu did very well to condemn George Soros although it is a pity that he didn’t mention that Soros continually attempts to undermine other democratically elected governments than Israel’s as well. In any event, the most inadvertently insightful aspect of the article is here.
Soros is the cosmopolitan, liberal, Upper West Side Jew who looks at the increasingly fascistic trends in the Jewish state and “wants nothing to do with it,” as he himself once put it. The frightening part is that there is very little daylight between the way this Jew is viewed by far-right Zionists (and in many ways classic Zionism, too) and the alt-right.
That is because far-right Zionists are the Israeli expression of the Alt-Right, which will take a different form in every different nation. The Alt-Right is inevitable, in Israel as elsewhere, because the 75-year pendulum is finally swinging back and nationalism is on the rise.
Babymetal with X-Japan
This is a great song and an amazing video. See if you can figure out what is so cool about it.