Fake impeachment proceedings

I was wondering why all the sound and fury about impeachment didn't seem to show any signs of leading to an actual vote on an impeachment inquiry. It's because all the activity is just kabuki meant to stir up excitement and distract the electorate, not actually investigate anything concerning Ukraine.

It's quite obvious what the Democrats are doing. They have not had a vote on the floor of the House to start a formal impeachment inquiry because if they were to have such a vote, under the House rules for impeachment, the Republicans would get subpoena power.

In order to avoid giving the Republicans subpoena power, they are doing impeachment lite with these six different committees who are claiming it's an impeachment inquiry, and they are trying to subpoena people and get documents without having an impeachment vote on the floor. That is why the White House said we are not going to cooperate with this kangaroo court.

The reason they don't dare give Republicans subpoena power is that the corruption of the Obama administration, particularly that which surrounded the then-Vice President and then-Secretary of State would be exposed and placed on the record.

Of course, Captain Underoos doesn't get it, and with his impeccable sense of timing, has concluded that his big moment has finally arrived at last. At this point, I think we can all agree that despite his copious flaws, the stoner-in-chief Obama actually proved to be a less horrific president than either McCain or Romney would have been.

Liars, grifters, and gay pirates

The title really says it all:

PRAGERU CHANNEL

The Candace Owens Show Featuring Rep. Dan Crenshaw

You're not going to conserve your country or your civilization with champions like these.

Mailvox: crushing in Indiana

An early and succinct report of last night's show in Indiana:

Drove 3 hours to attend the Hobart, Indiana show yesterday.
It. Was. Awesome.

When people put in this kind of effort to attend a Big Bear show and afterwards conclude the effort was well worth it, you know he's crushing it. On a not-entirely-unrelated note, if you haven't picked up a Signed, Limited Edition Collector's DVD with the Special, the Documentary, and additional footage yet, there are still 143 left.

I'm particularly pleased to hear this because the theatre in Hobart was the target of the most concentrated SJW attacks and it was the primary candidate for the Special.

So stop negotiating, champ

Well, he wasn't wrong. President Trump needs to stop listening to his "aides":

President Donald Trump erupted at aides in an F-bomb-laden rant a week before Christmas last year, fuming over headlines that announced he was giving up his campaign promise of making Mexico pay for a border wall – and instead handing the country a 10-figure check.

The administration had made a deal with America's neighbors to the south, one that Trump hated, that would send $10.6 billion to four countries. More than half would go to Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. But Mexico would collect $4.8 billion.

The money was meant to help governments tackle poverty, drug trafficking and other violence – the root causes of the illegal immigration wave the president campaigned against. But on December 18, 2018, the national news media he loves to hate framed it as a surrender.

'My f***ing friends are calling me,' the president yelled at aides who had convinced him to make the deal. 'This is the stupidest s**t you’ve ever done. Why the f**k would we do this?'

'I’m not getting $5 billion for the wall, and instead I’m paying Mexico $5 billion? What the f**k am I getting out of this?' he boomed.

It was incredibly stupid. But it's ultimately Trump's fault for caving constantly instead of following through on his threats. This is the problem with a negotiator. They never grasp that sometimes the best deal is no deal.

Giving up a major campaign promise "because Mexico won't cooperate" is entirely retarded. The US has the largest military in the world. Mexico doesn't need to cooperate; there are many other ways to keep invaders out than relying on the Mexicans to do it.

Diversity & Comics reviews Alt-Hero Volume One

It's a fair and detailed review of the six issues collected. I disagree, of course, with the idea that comics must be relentless BIF! - SOCK! - POW! action, as I see no problem with what is described here as "the talking head problem", or as we novelists refer to it, dialogue and character development. And while I understand that not everyone is interested in current events, I am, and it would be very strange indeed if a fictional battle between globalists and nationalists did not bear some resemblances to the real-world version.

Indeed, as some have noted, the events taking place in the Alt-Hero world have even been observed to have anticipated events taking place in the real one. I also found it interesting that D&C so strongly preferred the US-based story to the Europe-based one, as it's been my vague impression that a majority of AH fans tend to prefer the latter.

But regardless, I appreciate the review, which is one of the first to look at the entire volume one omnibus.

A game designer gets it

The designer of Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story has some excellent advice that sounds rather familiar:

Widdowson then puts forth four tactics, “never apologize,” cease any support for “people that engage in this behavior (on all sides),” minimize “engagement with these people,” and speak “with your wallets,” and states that these tactics are “the only way to stop this stuff from happening”:

“– Never apologize to the mob, if enough people stop doing the corporate non-apology, or the “I’m sorry, I’m woke now”-apology then the mob loses it’s power and the “game” stops being exciting for the hangers-on. An apology is a vindication, a self-defeat, a statement saying you acknowledge you did something worth an apology. Don’t do it.

– Stop supporting the people that engage in this behavior (on all sides), and stop supporting the companies that employ them. Money talks, eventually…

– Minimize engagement with these people. Starve them of attention; make them feel like they are screaming into a void of exactly 0 people that care. Remember, these people subsist purely on outrage, anger, and discomfort. You don’t have to. So if you really need to engage with these people though, make sure you do it in a way that benefits you. We’ve connected with some great fans and new customers thanks to this.

– Speak with your wallets, if you see a large company bend the knee to the mob, stop giving them your money at all. You don’t need the next AAA  EA/Activision/whoever published game, but they certainly need your money. You guys have 100% of the power. Never, ever forget that you determine actual success regardless of what those in “power” redefine that word to mean.”

Minimizing engagement and voting with your wallet are the two most important points. The evil power of the Devil Mouse would be significantly reduced if idiot conservatives would simply stop going to Disneyland and buying tickets to Disney-produced movies. Hollywood would be significantly less able to influence minds all over the planet if the people it hates would stop paying for its increasingly horrendous products.

No wonder they harbor such contempt for the men and women of the West. Far too many of us not only materially support, but actually pride ourselves on, destroying our own interests and our own societies.

No-evidence debunked disinformation propaganda

We haven't seen the Democrats this publicly shook since they claimed Pizzagate was "debunked" about thirty seconds after news of it broke:

Democrats say the State Department watchdog used a closed-door briefing on Wednesday to give them "conspiracy theories" tied to Ukraine, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and former Vice President Joe Biden.

"It's essentially a packet of propaganda and disinformation and spreading conspiracy theories. Those conspiracy theories have been widely debunked and discredited," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters after an hourlong briefing with State Department Inspector General Steve Linick.

The closed-door, hour-long briefing was part of a hastily assembled meeting requested by the State Department watchdog.

Ahead of the meeting, there had been speculation that it could be tied to a whistleblower complaint about President Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukraine's president, which is at the forefront of the impeachment probe.

Instead, Democrats say the packet of documents handed over by the State Department watchdog mentions Biden and his son Hunter Biden, Yovanovitch and CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that investigated breaches at the DNC in the lead up to the 2016 election.

"They appear to contain long-debunked theories and false statements about the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and one of President Trump's political opponents," said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), whose staff attended the briefing.... A Democratic source familiar with the briefing said that the documents came from the White House to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The paperwork was organized in multiple Trump Hotel folders and included together in an envelope labeled "White House."

"Those folders contained notes from interviews that took place at Rudy Giuliani's NYC office with various Ukrainians about debunked conspiracies related to Ukraine. This was just another attempt by the White House to peddle Rudy Giuliani conspiracy theories," the source added.

Republicans have doubled down on calls for an investigation into Biden's role in the ouster of a Ukraine prosecutor in 2016, despite no evidence of wrongdoing.

The media seems to think that if it just says the magic words often enough, the problem goes away. We already know that Creepy Joe lied. We already know that his adulterous, crackhead son who banged his brother's widow was being paid ludicrous sums of money for doing nothing by the Ukrainians.

The word "debunked" clearly no longer means what it used to mean. But what level of truth can you reasonably expect from people who also claim that "man" means "woman", "cat" means "dog", and the number six means "purple".

SFWA member arrested for child porn

SFWA member and convicted child molester Ed Kramer has gotten himself in legal trouble again:

Former owner and co-founder of Dragon Con, Edward E. Kramer, was charged with possession of child pornography again. This comes after an investigation into Kramer et al for attempting to hack the court’s computers.

According to WSB-TV Atlanta, Kramer had a warrant issued against him on Monday, September 30th, 2019 for having multiple pictures of child pornography.

The warrant was issued after investigators began scouring Kramer’s computer and found that he and a private investigator, TJ Ward, attempted to hack into a county’s computers because another judge – Kathryn Schrader – suspected a prosecutor of monitoring her computer. Kramer, Ward, and Schrader were apparently all working together to hack into the county’s systems, but the trio’s plot was foiled when a wiretap and additional investigators began investigating Kramer, Ward, and Schrader, as detailed in a separate report by WSB-TV from back in mid-September.

Kramer's fellow SFWA members, including the current president, tried to pretend he wasn't a member the last time he was in the news, back in 2014. But, then as now, he was merely inactive, which meant that he hadn't paid his dues while he was in prison; he was still listed in the online member's directory.

To the best of my knowledge, he has still not been expelled from the organization, which has a long and sordid history of defending him.

This is pure essence of Gamma

SullyRob goes full gamma-rage because he didn't get the attention he craved.

This is probably the last time vox will let me post here, I tried being nice to him for a while and that never got me anywhere with him or anywhere else on this blog. So since he refused to ever engage with me when I tried being respectful to him in the past. I see no reason to exit gracefully.

Gamma meltdown. Quelle surprise. Anyhow, comments are now locked-down, as per usual.

Ware the omega

I've talked about the importance of keeping gammas out of your organizations, but omegas are certainly capable of posing a problem as well:

A deaf computer scientist slaughtered four of his colleagues in a knife rampage at the police headquarters in Paris today.

The attacker, believed to be a 45-year-old who had worked for Paris police for 20 years, was shot dead in the courtyard after murdering his colleagues with a ceramic knife.

At least one of the dead is a policewoman and witnesses described a 'panic' in the building as the attack unfolded at Thursday lunchtime.

The motive for the bloodbath is not yet clear but investigators suspect it was caused by a workplace row.

Union officials said there had been 'tensions' between the man and his supervisor and described the attack as a 'moment of madness'.

Colleagues described the knifeman as a trusted, long-serving employee who had full security clearance and had never caused problems before.

It also tends to raise the question of relying upon the police to protect you from criminals with guns when they can't even defend themselves from one deaf nerd with a kitchen knife.

Falsifying a theory

There was an idea in the early 20th century that the so-called liberation of women was going to significantly improve human society. After all, they made up half the human race! Surely unlocking all that untapped potential couldn't help but have incredibly positive results, right? As it turned out, that isn't exactly what happened.

With Intersectionality ascending to an unquestionable dogma lately, the establishment press has come to believe that it is immensely important to find out what young women of color have on their minds. They must have come up with some incredibly great ideas during their 400 years of marginalization.

So, the media have increasingly turned over their platforms to young women of color.

And what messages do they have for us?

After having read hundreds of their op-eds and the like over the past few years, I’ve discovered that the No. 1 topic young woman-of-color journalists want us to listen to them talk about is…their hair.

They definitely have a lot to say about their hair.

Why?

Well, first of all, because they are young women. Looking nice is very important to young ladies and it takes up a lot of space in their brains.

Forget the anti-suffragists. If most of the early suffragists had any idea how utterly humiliating the consequences of their grand cause have turned out to be, they never would have pursued it in the first place.

But it's not a bad thing for young women to look nice and be concerned about looking nice. Quite to the contrary, looking nice is extremely helpful when it comes to accomplishing the only two things young women absolutely must do for the good of their society and their species, which is get married and have children.

The future belongs to those who show up for it.

Relentless satanry

It never, ever, stops. Devil Mouse Wars is very pleased to announce its first gay pairing:

In a recent interview with the Coffee With Kenobi podcast, Star Wars Resistance producer Justin Ridge confirmed that Orka and Flix, a pair of alien starship-parts salesmen featured in the Star Wars Resistance cartoon, are the first openly gay couple on screen in the Star Wars mythos.

This exciting "news" comes just after the announced ret-conning and reduction of Emperor Palpatane with the revelation of the real power behind the Empire:

Star Wars has revealed the woman who was actually keeping the Empire together all those years, despite its incompetent leader: Imperial Minister Pitina Voor.

Every fan is going to want to know the woman born Pitina Mar-Mas Voor, twenty-five years before Sheev Palpatine began his rise to power. Married to a lame duck bureaucrat in the Empire's ruling class of competing officers and governors, Pitina saw history repeating itself. That below all the bravado, intimidation, and posturing... the expansion of the Empire through brute force was killing it even as it spread (running out of both soldiers and money). And Pitina just might have led the Galactic Empire to total success, if not for once crucial weakness: Emperor Palpatine had absolutely no idea how to lead.

To the SJW, creativity and story-telling means replacing normal people with homosexuals, white people with black people, and men with women. So brave. Thank you for this.

Red Bernie is done

First Creepy Joe went down. Now Red Bernie has been medically disqualified.

Bernie Sanders’ campaign said Wednesday that the Democratic presidential candidate had a heart procedure for a blocked artery and was canceling events and appearances “until further notice.”

The 78-year-old Sanders was in Las Vegas when, according to a campaign statement, he experienced chest discomfort during a campaign event Tuesday and sought medical evaluation. Two stents were “successfully inserted” and that Sanders “is conversing and in good spirits,” according to the campaign....

He is one of three candidates over age 70 in the Democratic primary, which has spurred debate over whether the party should rally behind a new generation of political leaders, and President Donald Trump is 73. Sanders’ health issue is certain to revive that discussion in the weeks before the next presidential debate this month.

The Democratic establishment wants to unite the factions behind Injun' Elizabeth as soon as possible, so the 78-year-old Sanders is not going to get the pass on his medical issues the way Hillary Clinton did on hers in 2016. Sanders won't go away willingly, and he'll try to stick it out, but it's inevitable now.

Diversity & Comics reviews Cyberfrog

Jon Del Arroz reviews the long-awaited Cyberfrog, and in the process, demonstrates that one man's cucking is another man's opportunity. It's amusing to see idiots trying to claim that a brand still belongs to someone who literally fled from it.

As for the review itself, it appears to be in line with the general consensus. Very good art, very mediocre writing. This is not exactly a surprise; Image Comics proved, a long time ago and rather conclusively, that it's as foolish to have the illustrators do the writing as it is to have the writers do the illustrating.

Castalia Deluxe

A reader emails concerning his interest in the new Castalia Deluxe line we are currently in the process of creating:

I am interested in the Castalia House leather bound books you have been proposing. My commitment is firm.

After growing up with reading being a prominent pastime, I had become post-literate myself. I had stopped reading for fun or leisure for over a decade.

Why? Because, increasingly, nearly everything that was readily accessible or recommended to me was subverted, converged, perverted, plain wrong, incompetent, amounted to nothing more than propaganda, was revisionist garbage, etc., etc. I had not finished a book in years that did not leave me feeling distorted, disgusted, or contributed to my mounting nihilism in some way. The same has been true for movies, TV, and pop culture generally which I have also abandoned. The odds were too good it would be utter *@!$.

Castalia House has been a welcome relief to my literary drought. Since I discovered you and Castalia House, aside from my professional and academic duties, I have read more in the last few months than I have in years. It’s not just the books Castalia publishes, but also Castalia’s blog, your blog, and the other resources you have exposed me to that has allowed me to reliably track down things worth reading. Things that leave me with a sense of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

A Throne of Bones was excellent. (Looking forward to A Sea of Skulls). David Eddings’s The Belgariad series was an effortless, enjoyable read. A History of France by John Julius Norwich wasn’t revisionist garbage. I am about to crack the first volume in my 1910 edition of Charles Oman’s The History of England.

Thank you for Castalia House and all you do. Keep up the good work.

P.S. Sometimes the presence of gatekeepers make people aware there's a gate. Despite my growing disdain for Jordan Peterson, I took notice of his interview with Milo. I wondered what had changed because, for lack of a better phrase, one was authorized and the other wasn't. When I watched the interview, Peterson reminded me you existed with his “Say hi to Vox for me” line. I quickly realized what had changed is Jordanetics was published. Jordanetics clearly articulated why I had developed such disdain for Peterson. This led me to Castalia House, Vox Popoli, and the Darkstream.

So, thanks, Jordan.

For those who aren't aware, over the last week I've been working on expanding the concept of the requested deluxe leatherbound Castalia Junior Classics to an entire line of high-quality Castalia Deluxe books in the vein of Easton Press and Franklin Mint. The interest in this has been unexpectedly high, even among the presumably post-literate video crowd, and the project is looking extremely viable due to the way in which it builds directly on what we're already doing at Castalia House.

The current plan is to offer a 50/month subscription to Castalia Deluxe, which will provide six books per year to the subscriber, delivered every other month. These subscriber books will NOT be limited editions, but they may have some features that the regular Deluxe books do not, such as gilded page edges and bookmark ribbons. The Castalia Junior Classics will NOT be part of the subscription, but both the regular hardcover and Deluxe editions will be available for sale.

We will offer a discount on non-subscription Deluxe books to subscribers, probably on the order of 5 or 10 dollars per book. We MAY also offer free shipping if we can ship a purchased book with a regular subscription shipment.

The first two books we will send to subscribers will be The Missionaries and Summa Elvetica & Other Stories. And in answer to some more of the frequently asked questions I've been getting:

Where do I sign up for the Deluxe subscription?
You don't yet. We still have to decide how we want to set this up exactly, most likely through the Arkhaven store, and confirm that all the numbers add up correctly. But if you are seriously interested - by which I mean an 85 percent chance you believe you will sign up for a subscription if and when it becomes available - email me now with CASTALIA DELUXE in the subject.

How do I get the Castalia Junior Classics?
Through the crowdfunding campaign that is expected to begin in 2-3 weeks. The Junior Classics are NOT a part of this subscription program. The only connection is that we stumbled upon the idea of a new product line as part of figuring out how to offer a Deluxe edition of them.

Are you only going to be offering Castalia House books in Castalia Deluxe?
No. We're just starting the Deluxe line with books we already publish because that is one less issue to sort out at the start. We're trying to keep the degree of difficulty to a reasonable minimum. In addition to some of the usual classics, we want to publish great reference works of history, science, and philosophy. For example, I'd particularly like to bring back the first edition of The Cambridge Medieval History.

Will A THRONE OF BONES/AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND be available as part of the Deluxe subscription?
Yes, they will probably be included in the first year. We need to re-layout AWAKE, otherwise it would replace SUMMA as the second subscription book. And beginning with a monstrosity like ATOB would not be minimizing the degree of difficulty.

Will large books like ATOB cost more for subscribers?
No. Some books will cost us more, some will cost us less. This may affect the retail price, but will not affect the subscriptions.

Is the paper for the Deluxe editions going to be acid-free?
Yes, the paper is acid-free and meets ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 standards for archival quality paper.

Will you be publishing THERE WILL BE WAR in Deluxe editions?
Absolutely. They're very near the top of the list.

I'm an author. Will you publish a Deluxe edition of my book?
That depends. Is your name "Nick Cole" or "William Gibson" or "Arturo Perez-Reverte"?

Will the Deluxe editions ship outside the USA?
Yes, although it is POSSIBLE that an international surcharge to cover shipping will be required for the subscription shipments.


UPDATE: the initial response has been enthusiastic.

Count me in for $50 a month! I find your literary curation absolutely invaluable. This year alone you've been the driving force behind me digging into Richard Adams, Hesse, Wodehouse, Umberto Eco, William Gibson, Owen Stanley, Quigley, Norwich, Van Creveld and more. It's been an incredibly rewarding and transformative process.

A shadow over Minneapolis

The latest conspiracy news out of /pol/ points at the military-industrial complex in... Minnesota, of all places:

Last week at work I traced a massive subcontractors mysterious source to someone who is currently running for President.

The company produces nothing, I found it because we gained access to an area of this company that no one has been given access to before by a new employee not fully in the know. What we found were 165 items each individually valued at over $1,000,000 missing, all ordered in quarter 1 of 2019.

Our audit further lead us to investigate quietly and trace back over $10 Billion of undelivered, but paid for, Navy equipment and materials, and it all goes through the same subcontractor.

The subcontractor is fully owned by a shell company which shares a physical location with it but with two different street address, which are actually on two different street because it is a corner facility, very smart. During this process of tracking the missing items we went to the subcontractors facility to find it........completely empty. The two companies have a single office with some desks in it and over 400,000 square feet of empty warehouse in the middle of nowhere West Georgia.

Further tracking the shell company we found that it is owned by another shell company, which in turn is owned by a company which owns 5 luxury car dealerships, a big four professional American Sports Franchise, a VERY liberal movie studio, all of which have been noted as being unprofitable, and this single Navy Contractor.

The family that owns this company has a current Senator and a Current Presidential Candidate in it.

Translation: Amy Klobuchar, the Pohlad family, the Minnesota Twins, and River Road Entertainment, which produced 12 Years a Slave and Brokeback Mountain, among others.

I have to admit, it's a little bit bizarre to read about this, especially in light of the way I could still probably drive River Road, which connects the North campus to the South campus of the private school I attended, while wearing a blindfold.

But it certainly stinks of Deep State satanry. Do what they tell you to do, say what they want you to say, and even if all the world will not be yours, you'll be very well compensated for your obedience. And it also explains why, despite spending more money on the military than most of the countries in the world combined, the US military keeps falling further behind the Russian military in terms of deployable technologies.

Signs of the Storm

We can see that the Democrats and the media are in full panic mode with the desperation of their toothless attacks on the God-Emperor. What we don't know is why. It may be due to the way in which the Obama administration is being shown to have colluded with various foreign governments while it engaged in illegal spying on the Trump campaign.

As Democrats ramp up their impeachment efforts against President Trump, Fox News contributor Dan Bongino said the party is starting to panic at the possibility of being linked to illegal spying, as the Department of Justice inspector general prepares to release his report on the matter.

"It's never going to stop. I mean, the republic is dying a slow death," he said Monday on "Fox & Friends." "We're on life support here... They're panicking because the IG report's about to come out, which is about to expose a massive government spying operation against Donald Trump.

"Here's the key takeaway -- in collusion with foreign governments," Bongino continued. "That's why they're panicking. And they're panicking because... what the Obama administration did is 1,000 times worse than what they're alleging Donald Trump did."

The fact that a senior Twitter executive has been exposed as British military intelligence isn't going to make it harder for the American public to believe that these various agents of the Deep State committed treason. Gordon McMillan, Twitter's Head of Editorial for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, is a reserve captain in the 77th Brigade, the British Army's psyops unit.

The 77th Brigade uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, as well as podcasts, data analysis and audience research to wage what the head of the UK military, General Nick Carter, describes as “information warfare”.

Carter says the 77th Brigade is giving the British military “the capability to compete in the war of narratives at the tactical level”; to shape perceptions of conflict. Some soldiers who have served with the unit say they have been engaged in operations intended to change the behaviour of target audiences.... The 77th Brigade's headquarters is located west of London. It brought together a number of existing military units such as the Media Operations Group and the 15 Psychological Operations Group.

The British army’s website describes the 77th Brigade as “an agent of change” which aims to “challenge the difficulties of modern warfare using non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of the opposing forces and adversaries”.

We learn more and more about the corruption of the USA every day. This is why President Trump's popularity is steadily growing.

They tried, they failed

SJWs tried to stir up a swarm in Sandpoint, Idaho to stop the Big Bear's show. They failed completely:

Alt-right comedian Owen Benjamin comes to the Panida
· SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

By Zach Hagadone

Owen Benjamin is coming to the Panida Theater for a “Date Night Comedy Show” on Monday, Sept. 30. The 39-year-old New York native is also a classically trained pianist, but he’s bringing with him much more baggage than a microphone and sheet music.

Once an up-and-coming stand-up, in recent years he has been shunned by the entertainment industry, barred from venues around the country and established himself as a darling of the alt-right.

Asked if she was familiar with the mass of controversy trailing behind Benjamin, Panida Executive Director Patricia Walker said “just a little bit.”

“I didn’t come across whatever the hugely controversial stuff was,” she added, noting that Benjamin rented the theater — he was not booked by the Panida. “We don’t censor; we’re here for the entire community, but we don’t allow hate speech and he was all in favor of that. People can vote with their money.”

Pariah status didn’t come immediately to Benjamin, who landed a supporting role in The House Bunny in 2008. The same year, he and Christina Ricci — with whom he starred in the rom-com All’s Faire in Love — announced they were getting married, though the engagement ended after a few months. Benjamin appeared on Comedy Central Presents in 2010, acted in three seasons of the TBS comedy Sullivan & Son from 2012-2014, appeared on Inside Amy Schumer in 2014 and was a frequent guest on The Jay Leno Show and Fallon, among others. He has toured with Vince Vaughn and also had a part in the Adam Sandler flick Jack and Jill.

Yet, Benjamin’s mainstream success effectively came to an end in October 2017, when he called NPR host Jesse Thorn a “child abuser” for giving his 3-year-old the choice to identify as male or female.

Crushing and carrying on. One SJW after another. We don't want their authorization. We don't need it.

Red meat is good for you

What were the chances the "food pyramid" and the scientists who told you to eat sugar and white bread all day to lose weight were going to be correct about the dangers of red meat?

New research that claims red and processed meat is probably not harmful to our health has caused controversy among experts who maintain people should cut down.

The World Health Organization has classified red and processed meats as cancer-causing. Public health bodies worldwide urge people to limit their intake of red and processed meat to reduce their cancer risk. The NHS advises that people who eat 90g of meat a day – equivalent to three thin slices of roast meat – should cut down to 70g.

Aside from public health, calls are multiplying for people to cut back on meat consumption because of the climate emergency and the greenhouse gas emissions that come from animal farming.

But the 14-member international team led by Bradley Johnston an associate professor of community health at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, concluded that those who like meat should not stop on health grounds. “Based on the research, we cannot say with any certainty that eating red or processed meat causes cancer, diabetes or heart disease,” he said.

If you have any doubts about the legitimacy of the study, keep in mind that the critics are whining about the way the study was "wrong to exclude environmental concerns about damage to the planet."

What does that have to do with personal health?

Babymetal goes Indian

This is actually my favorite so far of their new songs off Metal Galaxy. Kano is no Yui, but she appears to work with Su and Moa better than the other two girls they've tried. And this new Indian theme, in combination with their shows with The Hu, makes me suspect that Koba-metal is actually attempting to conquer the world.

Henry Haller is a gamma

A fellow Hesse fan reaches a conclusion:

I've been reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse and something occurred to me. I first intended to ask what sociosexual rank you think Harry Haller inhabits, but then I got to this passage and started laughing outside the sauna:

For long during this night's walk I had reflected upon the significance of my relation to music, and not for the first time recognized this appealing and fatal relation as the destiny of the entire German spirit. In the German spirit the matriarchal link with nature rules in the form of the hegemony of music to an extent unknown in any other people. We intellectuals instead of opposing ourselves to this tendency like men, and rendering obedience to the spirit, the Logos, the Word, and gaining a hearing for it, are all dreaming of a speech without words that utters the inexpressible and gives form to the formless. 

Instead of playing his part as truly and honestly as he could, the German intellectual has constantly rebelled against the word and against reason and courted music, in wonderful creation of sound and wonderful beauties of feeling and mood that were never pressed home to reality, has left the greater part of its practical gifts to decay. None of us intellectuals is at home in reality. We are strangers to it and hostile. That is why the part played by intellect even in our own German reality, in our history and politics and public opinion, has been so lamentable a one. Well, I had often pondered all this, not without an intense longing sometimes to turn to and do something real for once, to be seriously and responsibly active instead of occupying myself forever with nothing but aesthetics and intellectual and artistic pursuits. It always ended, however, in resignation, in surrender to destiny. 

The generals and captains of industry were quite right. there was nothing to be made of us intellectuals. We were a superfluous, irresponsible lot of talented chatterboxes for whom reality had no meaning.

I wish I would have read Steppenwolf years and years ago because I think that passage would have helped me as much back then as it did today. At that passage I realized that it's a book written by a German for the German people to help us understand ourselves. Occasionally someone asks you if it would be a good idea to move back to his own ancestral homeland. It may be a good idea, but it's equally good to start by reading one's own people's literature because it was written for you yourself as one of those people.

A German girl I met on vacation about four years ago recommended that I read Steppenwolf, I think now because she recognized me as being truly German and as such would benefit from it like other Germans have. I plan now on diving into Goethe, as my grandfather told me a long time ago that "Goethe is the German Shakespeare."

I've always felt that it was a bit ironic that the band that recorded "Born to be Wild" called themselves Steppenwolf since if they had remained true to the novel, the song would have been named "Born to be Mild".

And "a superfluous, irresponsible lot of talented chatterboxes for whom reality had no meaning" is a fairly accurate description of the average intellectual today, except, of course, for the bit about talent.

Mailvox: convergence creeps in

A reader emails about convergence creeping in at Project Gutenberg:

For some time now, I've been a volunteer at Distributed Proofreaders (DP), which is the main site providing public domain e-books for Project Gutenberg. I had hoped this project would be somewhat immune to convergence as its mission is to preserve any and all works of literature in the public domain.

However, today the CEO of Project Gutenberg, Gregory Newby, published a notice in the forums for Distributed Proofreaders:

We recently updated the website with information about submitting public domain works to Project Gutenberg. There are two notable changes. The more important change, to me, is to firmly write that PG only accepts works in the public domain in the US. Historically, we've added a reasonable quantity of copyrighted works (perhaps a few %). But now, we send copyrighted submissions to http://self.gutenberg.org .. this change isn't impactful to DP, since DP, also works exclusively with public domain works (with very few exceptions). The rationale for being firm about PD-only is twofold. Mainly, because there are many ways a contemporary author can distribute his or her works on the Internet (in the olden days, PG was one of few eBook outlets that would accept contemporary works for free, unlimited redistribution). Secondarily, because we were never very good at it: we don't offer many services to authors, including the ability to post improvements, different formats, get stats on their readers, etc.

The other notable change is more impactful for DP, though still rarely an issue. This is to be more explicit about not wanting items that are hate speech or predecessors to hate speech, or items that are pornographic and obscene.

Hate speech or "predecessors to hate speech"? The latter is a new one for me. Fortunately, there was a speedy and overwhelming backlash... this time.

After a large outcry by the volunteers at Distributed Proofreading, the CEO of Project Gutenberg was essentially forced to walk back his decision and remove the language banning "hate speech" from the Gutenberg terms & conditions. He's now pledged to uphold an open collection policy.

He needs to be forced out anyhow, though. Because he's shown that he's more than willing to cuck, given that he already did so without even coming under any external pressure.

Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney is out

And the reviews are already up:

Former DC Comics artist Ethan Van Sciver crowd-funded his Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney comic book to the tune of millions of dollars, and while fans paid a hefty price tag for the comic, unfortunately, it fails to deliver.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney comes up short in terms of story, as it comes across as pretty boring, dull and confusing -- and just when it starts to get good, it ends.

I say not surprisingly because this comic book reminds me of something put out in the early days of Image Comics when the Marvel Comics artists left and formed their own company in the 90s. While all of the Image founders were stellar artists, they weren't exactly the best writers (i.e. Todd McFarlane on Spawn; Liefeld, really, on anything). I think the same applies here to Ethan Van Sciver.

Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney read as more of an extended prelude with Bendis-style exposition and little action; there is no conflict for the first 16 pages, which is basically an entire comic book these days. The comic read to me as if it was a cliff-noted version of an extended story that we were already supposed to know about.

Psychoanalysis as pedocover

I've always believed that Freud and Freudianism were pure and unmitigated nonsense. But, as it happens, both the man and his pseudoscience were actually a good deal worse than I had ever imagined.

Freud, having stumbled upon the widespread reality of child abuse among his mostly Jewish clientele, covered it up with the theory that all little girls desire their fathers’ penis and all little boys dream of screwing their mothers — and named his theory after a Gentile myth....

Denial means projection: to protect the dirty secret of child abuse in Jewish families—including his own—, Freud projected an imaginary repressed infantile perversion on all mankind. Projection, in turn, means inversion: Freud’s close disciple Otto Rank claimed that Jews had a more primitive, and therefore more healthy sexuality than Gentiles (Rank, “The Essence of Judaism,” 1905). Freudians and Freudo-Marxists have systematically denounced Christian civilization as suffering from sexual repression. According to Wilhelm Reich, anti-Semitism is itself a symptom of sexual frustration, and could be cured by sexual liberation (The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 1934)—an improvement from Leo Pinsker’s theory that Judeophobia was a “hereditary” and “incurable” “disease transmitted for two thousand years.” In order to understand the psychological background of this Reichian messianic mission to cure the Christian West, and in order to see more clearly the projective nature of the psychoanalytical theory of repression, it is helpful to know the personal story of Wilhelm Reich, which reads as a caricature of Freud’s: At ten years old, when he realized that his mother was having an affair with his tutor, the young Wilhelm thought of blackmailing his mother into having sex with him. Eventually, he confided in his father about his mother’s adultery. In 1910, after a period of beatings from his father, his mother committed suicide, for which Reich blamed himself.

One of the most puzzling aspects of Jews’ relationship with their host nations is its ambivalence—patterned on biblical “history”: within Jewish thinking, saving the nations and destroying them are not two sides of the same coin, but one and the same, because what nations are supposed to be cured of is their very identity (their gods, in biblical terms). According to Andrew Heinze, author of Jews and the American Soul, Jews have shaped “American ideas about the mind and soul” with the preoccupation “to purge the evils they associated with Christian civilization.” It really started with Freud. In September 1909, invited to give a series of lectures in New England, Freud jokingly asked his companions, Sandor Ferenczi and Carl Jung: “Don‘t they know we’re bringing them the plague?” An extraordinary statement for a medical doctor pretending to have found a “cure” for neurosis. And a prophetic one: Freudism became a justification for a sexual “liberation” that can be seen in retrospect as a massive sexual abuse of the youth.

Sexual repression is not the problem. And the "sexual liberation" that is sought is nothing less than societal approval for incestuous child rape. Forget the Chinese, forget the Nazis, at this point I would take Quetzalcoatl-worshipping Aztecs over the Freudians and their devil dreams of Babel 2.0. By their fruits, ye shall know them.

And just to make things worse, if you actually trouble to read Keynes's General Theory, you'll soon discover that its all-important "animal spirits" are nothing more than Freud applied to economics. What this implies about the foundation of the global macroeconomic perspective of the last eighty years I leave it to the reader to conclude on his own.

Enter the Big Bear

I had an idea for Owen's tour entrance. And it quite literally rocked. But, I have to confess, Coddington's idea proved to be considerably more effective, given the enthusiasm of the Bears. I mean, that's not a comedy show. That's a freaking rock concert!

Why China is on the rise

The rise of Xi Jinping to supreme leadership may explain the recent and dramatic shift against China on the part of the Learned Elders of Wye. Given its proven value as a predictive model, the entire Wikileaks report on Xi by an academic acquaintance from his youth is well worth reading.

23. Xi knows how very corrupt China is and is repulsed by the all-encompassing commercialization of Chinese society, with its attendant nouveau riche, official corruption, loss of values, dignity, and self-respect, and such "moral evils" as drugs and prostitution, the professor stated. The professor speculated that if Xi were to become the Party General Secretary, he would likely aggressively attempt to address these evils, perhaps at the expense of the new moneyed class. 

And that is exactly what Xi has done, with a serious commitment to an anti-corruption campaign that has taken many by surprise. It may astonish Western readers to know that the Chinese government is now extremely popular with the people. Unlike the Western countries, in which various corporations and other organizations are reliably deemed to big to fail - which really means they are too corrupt to be permitted to fail - Xi has led a magnificently ruthless campaign against corruption in China on a scale that is absolutely unthinkable in the West.

To put it in perspective, imagine if President Trump had had both Hilary Clinton and Bill Clinton arrested and jailed, as well as two Supreme Court justices, two-thirds of the DNC, half the RNC, and numerous FBI, CIA, and IRS employees. That's effectively what Xi has already done since 2012.

Upon taking office, Xi vowed to crack down on "tigers and flies", that is, high-level officials and local civil servants alike. Most of the officials investigated were removed from office and faced accusations of bribery and abuse of power, although the range of alleged abuses varied widely. As of 2016, the campaign has 'netted' over 120 high-ranking officials, including about a dozen high-ranking military officers, several senior executives of state-owned companies, and four national leaders. More than 100,000 people have been indicted for corruption. The campaign is part of a much wider drive to clean up malfeasance within party ranks and shore up party unity. It has become an emblematic feature of Xi Jinping's political brand.

Now THAT is what actually draining the swamp looks like. The greatest political mind of the 20th century, Lee Kuan Yew, described Xi as "a man of great breadth" and said he would "put him in the Nelson Mandela class of persons." While there are certainly reasons to doubt the assumption that the 21st century will be the Chinese century, the fact that 1.6 billion people now have a leader of this reported rectitude and capability should not be discounted.

I've admired Xi since he publicly shot down Mark Zuckerberg's public attempt to put him on the spot by asking Xi to name his child in 2015. This is clearly not a man who permits himself to be manipulated by anyone, for any reason.

NFL Week 4

This is what they call "crushing"

The sold-out show in Portland went extremely well. I talked to both the Big Bear as well as the director of the documentary and they said the energy of the crowd was off the charts; the director said it felt more like a rock concert than a comedy show.

A quote from one attendee: "I NEVER get star struck, but...holy hell he's good!"

From another: "Thank you, Owen! What a great show last night. The excitement in the air was electric. It was awesome to see such a large turn-out in support of having a good time. Nobody is having more fun than us."

Next stop: Idaho!

Bowties on the historical battlefield

Conservatives have always been spineless and without principle:

It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation.

What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted?

Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always, when about to enter a protest, very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip.

No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.
- Robert Lewis Dabney, 1871

Whenever someone is issuing dire warnings about how the Left will not like the consequences of their latest political monstrosity, you can be sure that a conservative is speaking, just as you can be certain that he will furiously denounce and disavow anyone who actually attempts to deliver those consequences.

Mailvox: "a bastion of sanity"

A reader emails:

"A post-literate age." This term resonated with me the moment you uttered it. I’m now seeing it almost daily.

The requests to ‘dumb down’ the language are approaching comedic, and I currently operate at government levels. I was asked to explain the difference between ‘woman’ and ‘women’ just last week.

In response to one recent request, I (in totally undisciplined irritation) asked if they’d prefer the document produced in brown paper and crayon. I try to be patient, but it’s getting harder.

Once again, your blog is a bastion of sanity.

We are living in the Crazy Years. It falls to us to build fortresses and monasteries of sanity. It is our responsibility to preserve knowledge and truth. It is our honor to stand up for that which is rather than that which someone feels it should be. And it is our responsibility to show up for the future, in order to ensure that the insane do not inherit the Earth.

The clueless and short-sighted elite

Peter Turchin explains that the US elite is working off of inaccurate and misleading social models:

Last year I had an interesting conversation with someone I’ll call the Washington Insider. She asked me why my structural-demographic model predicted rising instability in the USA, probably peaking with a major outbreak of political violence in the 2020s. I started giving the explanation based on the three main forces: popular immiseration, intra-elite competition, and state fragility. But I didn’t get far because she asked me, what immiseration? What are you talking about? We’ve never lived better than today. Global poverty is declining, child mortality is declining, violence is declining. We have access to the level of technology that is miraculous compared to what previous generations had. Just look at the massive data gathered together by Max Rosen, or read Steven Pinker’s books to be impressed with how good things are.

There are three biases that help sustain this rosy view. First, the focus on global issues. But the decrease of poverty in China (which is what drives declining global poverty, because Chinese population is so huge), or the drop in child mortality in Africa, is irrelevant to the working America. People everywhere compare themselves not to some distant places, but to the standard of living they experienced in their parents home. And the majority of American population sees that in many important ways they are worse off than their parents (as we will see below).

Second, the Washington Insider talks to other members of the 1 percent, and to some in the top 10 percent. The top-income segments of the American population have done fabulously in the last decades, thank you very much.

Third, many economic statistics have to be taken with a grain of salt. Government agencies are often under substantial political pressure to put a positive spin on the statistics they publish. Many economists work hard to please the economic elites and other powers-that-be, because that’s how you get ahead in that profession. Fortunately, there are enough “heterodox” economists who provide us with alternative views. This all doesn’t mean that statistics are worse than “damn lies”; on the contrary, one cannot make sense about where we are headed without statistics. The point here is that one needs to understand why different statistics may give us different answers.

This is more than a little reminiscent of the Boomer cluelessness that simply can't grasp the significance of a rise in tuition from 500/semester to 15,000/semester when wages have not risen. Not a single American cares about the rising Chinese standard of living when his own has declined, and declined significantly in comparison with his parents.

What we've witnessed over the last 50 years is the mass transfer of American wealth and property title from the middle classes to the elite of the US elite. These indicates that revolution is coming, sooner or later, in one way or another. Right now, the average citizen is content with Taco Bell and Netflix... but Netflix is becoming less entertaining with every season that passes.

The problem, of course, is one of labor oversupply.

The American economy has been operating under the conditions of labor oversupply since roughly the 1970s. The main causes were immigration, the entry of massive numbers of baby boomers and women into the labor force, the export of jobs overseas.
- Peter Turchin