Diversity is no laughing matter, by Steve Sailer - The Unz Review
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As I pointed out last February when Biden appointed economist Lisa D. Cook to be the first black woman on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, Dr. Cook’s best known academic paper is largely an embarrassingly confused botch. She probably means well, but she’s really not all that smart. (In contrast to Cook, Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson struck me as probably at least at the judicial equivalent of the Mendoza Line in baseball — call it the Sotomayor Line).

The New York Times news section is highly incensed by Masters’ joke about affirmative action. Diversity is too sacred to be a laughing matter.

Blake Masters, a G.O.P. Senate Candidate, Links Fed Diversity to Economic Woes

The sarcastic barb from Mr. Masters, which was widely condemned, was in response to a report of increased diversity at the Federal Reserve.

By Maggie Astor
Aug. 29, 2022

Blake Masters, the Republican nominee challenging Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, suggested in a sarcastic Twitter post late Sunday that the nation’s economic struggles were connected to increased gender and racial diversity in Federal Reserve leadership.

He then dug in on Monday with a video in which he denounced “the Democrats’ diversity obsession” and described Vice President Kamala Harris as a beneficiary of an “affirmative action regime.”

“Finally a compelling explanation for why our economy is doing so well,” Mr. Masters wrote on Sunday in response to an Associated Press report that found there were, according to the news agency, “more female, Black and gay officials contributing to the central bank’s interest-rate decisions than at any time in its 109-year history.”

The post drew swift backlash, which Mr. Masters alluded to in a follow-up video Monday evening. “Well, this tweet made people mad,” he said, before adding that he didn’t care “if every single employee at the Fed is a Black lesbian as long as they’re hired for their competence” and that he had “never spoken to anyone who can say with a straight face that Kamala was somehow the most qualified candidate for that job.”

Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive political experience — including as a United States senator and the attorney general of California — before Joseph R. Biden Jr. chose her as his running mate. …

Some fellow conservatives echoed the sentiment of Mr. Masters’s initial tweet and criticized the focus on diversity at the Fed at a time of high inflation. A number of Republican candidates and elected officials have also disparaged efforts to promote diversity and combat bigotry more broadly, and Republican primary voters have rewarded some nominees who espouse racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic views.

Mr. Masters, a venture capitalist endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, has been particularly outspoken. Among other things, he has promoted what experts in extremism describe as a sanitized version of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory — claiming that Democrats are trying to bring more immigrants into the country in order to dilute the political power of native-born citizens — and characterized the United States’ gun violence problem as “people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other — very often, you know, Black people, frankly.”

 
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  1. Joseph R. Biden Jr.

    Translation: we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t, therefore we know more than you, therefore you shouldn’t question us when we say diversity is good.

    • Replies: @SafeNow
    @Some Guy


    Joseph R. Biden Jr.

    Translation: we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t, therefore we know more than you, therefore you shouldn’t question us when we say diversity is good.
     
    I have often observed the opposite phenomenon, i.e., using famous-person X’s nickname (actual or made-up) so as to imply that the writer is pals with X. “Hank Kissinger understands the nuances of foreign policy” implies I do lunch with the guy.

    Replies: @Bardon Kaldian

    , @R.G. Camara
    @Some Guy

    I get the sense its used here to try to give an obvious-dementia-addled figurehead some gravitas, as if really won the rigged 2020 election and he really is in charge, all in a careful DNC-instigated attempt at rebranding.

    Replies: @Some Guy

    , @Anon
    @Some Guy


    we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t

     

    But what does the R stand for? Rubens? Rube? Rungusman? Cash money pimpmasteR? "Just R"?

    Replies: @HFR, @Legba, @Meretricious, @Inquiring Mind

  2. After the reaction to his first tweet, he didn’t grovel, but doubled down. So rare. Time to stop groveling. I like this guy.

    • Replies: @Anonymous
    @Mike_from_SGV

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It's his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @AKAHorace, @Harry Baldwin, @Anon, @ChrisZ, @Buzz Mohawk, @James J. O'Meara, @Ed

    , @Polistra
    @Mike_from_SGV

    But does he have the sense to calibrate his reactions, without which he will never rise to higher office? Granted it didn't stop trump, but look at trump now.

    ATM it would appear that Masters and the NYT are almost perfect foils for one another, only one of them is extremely powerful and the other is not.

    Replies: @Cloudbuster, @bomag

    , @SFG
    @Mike_from_SGV

    I like him too, but isn’t he 8 points behind in the polls?

    His real value may be in making the idea of AA repeal acceptable. Maybe DeSantis or, heck, Haley or Pence can take it up.

    Replies: @DCThrowback, @Alec Leamas (working from home)

    , @Bugg
    @Mike_from_SGV

    NO APOLOGY!
    https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/47236179-dead-46c0-906b-4431409cfb5d

    , @AnotherDad
    @Mike_from_SGV


    After the reaction to his first tweet, he didn’t grovel, but doubled down. So rare. Time to stop groveling. I like this guy.
     
    Whether you like--smile at--Master's tweet or think "that's not funny!" would be an excellent separator for my "separate nations".

    I'd be happy to divide the country right now just based on that.
    , @Fungus Among Us
    @Mike_from_SGV


    He didn’t grovel, but doubled down.
     
    Trump, day 1: Mexico is sending us their rapists.

    New York Times: Screeeeeech sputter sputter point point

    Trump, day 2: Yeah, and they're sending us their murderers, too.

    Me: MAGA!

    .. and we all know how that turned out.

    Actally, how did that turn out, anyway? Serious question

  3. Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]…

    There — I’ve fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California — Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh…. we’re not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back…

    • Troll: R.G. Camara
    • Replies: @interesting
    @PhysicistDave

    Just like Stormy Daniels the left thinks these types of women are "empowering"

    , @Mr. Anon
    @PhysicistDave


    For everyone not from California — Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Kamala was just a slut.
     
    Just for entertaining Willie's willie, she got a part-time (probably n0-show) job pulling down six figures. Not bad work for a prostitute.

    Replies: @Jose, Can you See

    , @Fluesterwitz
    @PhysicistDave


    There — I’ve fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!
     
    Sure, but for the NYT, your version is not fit to print.

    Replies: @Dr. DoomNGloom

    , @Cutter
    @PhysicistDave

    She wasn't a slut. She was a whore.

    Or as Steve would say, an adventuress.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @PhysicistDave

    Kamala Harris is an affirmative action hire.

    And rather typical. Singling her out for opprobrium is . . .

    I'm not sure. Anyway negroes don't give a damn about me. It is not efficient to give a damn about them.

    , @R.G. Camara
    @PhysicistDave

    No less than Julius Caesar himself was rumored, as a young man, to have given his body up to a degenerate Greek king to help his political ambitions.

    Speaking of which, did you ever bother to Google how Caesar paid his army instead of spewing off ignorant b.s., you low-IQ bigoted anti-Catholic moron?

    Replies: @nebulafox, @PhysicistDave, @Mr. Anon

    , @SaneClownPosse
    @PhysicistDave

    Wonder if the VP candidate was picked by Biden after some hair sniffing.

    , @nebulafox
    @PhysicistDave

    It was all fine unless you got caught with a dead girl or a live boy, and your surname was not Kennedy.

    , @tommer
    @PhysicistDave

    She like Obama is only half black. like the duck says. They pretend their white and Asian heritage doesn't exist. Grifting racist cowards

  4. @PhysicistDave

    Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]...
     
    There -- I've fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California -- Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh.... we're not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back...

    Replies: @interesting, @Mr. Anon, @Fluesterwitz, @Cutter, @Emil Nikola Richard, @R.G. Camara, @SaneClownPosse, @nebulafox, @tommer

    Just like Stormy Daniels the left thinks these types of women are “empowering”

    • LOL: Bardon Kaldian
  5. Much like Steve’s previous article about this in the State Department, is there any evidence that the ‘competent’ appointees were doing a good job? Decades of junk economics and decades of a neocon agenda have meant that they may have been run by competent people but their agenda and purpose has been disastrous.

    I say let their cliques wither, it’s the only way out.

    • Agree: Almost Missouri
    • Replies: @Greta Handel
    @Altai

    Thanks.

    Punching up at its black ladies is no threat to the Establishment.

    , @Cloudbuster
    @Altai

    Competently pursuing bad ends is arguably worse for everyone else than incompetently pursuing bad ends.

    , @International Jew
    @Altai

    Besides fiddling with interest rates and the money supply, the Fed also plays a big role in bank regulation. So these AA hires can do a fair bit of damage if they manage to spread the curse of DIE through credit policy and hiring at the banks.

    Replies: @Anonymous

    , @Erik L
    @Altai

    We had several decades of low inflation and low unemployment. Those are the functions the Fed is supposed to maximize so one could argue that they did a good job on average. The economy might not be to your personal taste but those two items are difficult to argue with.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @AnotherDad

    , @James J. O'Meara
    @Altai

    I missed iSteve on the State Department, but it's been a sinecure for midwit WASP sons since forever. Like banks. (*) Remember "the best and the brightest"? A glance at the likes of Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, the Brothers Dulles, and above all "Jesus" Angleton is the best argument for bringing in the black and female team.

    I said the best argument; it's still a mistake to bring in even dumber people. But let's not mythologize these half-wits who brought us to today's mess.

    (*) A couple years ago Congress dragged some "heads" of banks to harangue them, and the whole table was old, fat, pasty White guys in bad grey suits. They couldn't find a young guy, a fit guy, even a tanned guy or one with a sharp suit. It looked like the Kefauver hearings.

    , @AnotherDad
    @Altai

    Altai, I agree with you that the supposedly "competent" people in the establishment are the problem, because their agenda is destructive.

    But Master's tweet is not about that. He is not saying, if only we had the establishments good-thinking, but uber competent, Harvard grads we wouldn't be in this mess.

    It is simply mocking their whole "diversity is our greatest strength" nonsense.

  6. @Mike_from_SGV
    After the reaction to his first tweet, he didn't grovel, but doubled down. So rare. Time to stop groveling. I like this guy.

    Replies: @Anonymous, @Polistra, @SFG, @Bugg, @AnotherDad, @Fungus Among Us

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It’s his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    • Agree: Polistra
    • Replies: @JimDandy
    @Anonymous

    Yeah, that coupled with his name make him seem like, I don't know, a villainous politician in a comic book, or maybe even something altogether inorganic, like Max Headroom.

    I'm willing to look past these things, however.

    Replies: @Hangnail Hans, @SaneClownPosse

    , @AKAHorace
    @Anonymous


    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It’s his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.
     
    So why does this matter. He has taken a brave position, who cares if he does not look like a superhero. There are plenty of people who look like alpha male chads who fold under pressure.

    Replies: @Danindc

    , @Harry Baldwin
    @Anonymous

    I recall a lot of leftists mocking the appearance of Kyle Rittenhouse, too--chubby, baby-faced, etc. There are a lot of heroes who don't look like the types central casting would send over.

    Replies: @Buzz Mohawk

    , @Anon
    @Anonymous

    Beats Joe 'the Gimp' Biden and 'Stormy' Harris by a mile. don't he?

    , @ChrisZ
    @Anonymous

    Masters is still pretty young, and his looks reflect it. Give him time to become a craggy Heston type in a few years.

    Whatever his appearance, though, his unapologetic response to “critics” is a good look.

    , @Buzz Mohawk
    @Anonymous

    That's funny. My thought was that he looks like my old high school friend who is now the dean of a business school. That friend climbed mountains with me and was no geek.

    Remember, Masters's whole point is not to select people based on what they look like.

    , @James J. O'Meara
    @Anonymous


    My only issue with [X[ is that he looks like a geek. It’s his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.
     
    You could paste that into almost any thread on Unz. It's Peak Unz.

    The Left has ideas, ideals, strategies.
    The Right: resentful nerds and jocks who peaked in junior year.

    https://youtu.be/C8vfDRBhzOo
    , @Ed
    @Anonymous

    Country is collapsing and you’re worried about how a man looks?

  7. @Altai
    Much like Steve's previous article about this in the State Department, is there any evidence that the 'competent' appointees were doing a good job? Decades of junk economics and decades of a neocon agenda have meant that they may have been run by competent people but their agenda and purpose has been disastrous.

    I say let their cliques wither, it's the only way out.

    Replies: @Greta Handel, @Cloudbuster, @International Jew, @Erik L, @James J. O'Meara, @AnotherDad

    Thanks.

    Punching up at its black ladies is no threat to the Establishment.

  8. When they’re boasting about, and reveling in, their precious diversity – why, that’s the perfect time to bring up their total incompetence.
    BTW how’s that mission to put an astronette on the Moon going? Now that we’ve engaged our greatest strength, a return to the Moon must surely be a trivial task.

    • Replies: @Jim Don Bob
    @Macumazahn


    BTW how’s that mission to put an astronette on the Moon going?
     
    About as well as yesterday's big SLS launch which had KH on hand (so to speak), but it turns out NASA never did a complete fueling test beforehand, so it got scrubbed at T-29.

    "I am very proud of this launch team," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a briefing after the scrub.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/warning-sign-nasa-never-finished-a-fueling-test-before-todays-sls-launch-attempt/

    Replies: @Old Prude

    , @Je Suis Omar Mateen
    @Macumazahn

    "BTW how’s that mission to put an astronette on the Moon going?"

    Ultra high-def screens in every US home will make it impossible this time. Plus everyone is familiar with state-of-the-art CGI so people will spot any fakery. The CGI used for the Mars dune buggy was absurdly outdated and laughable - it looked like a 1990s videogame running on an Intel 486DX-66 processor.

  9. @Anonymous
    @Mike_from_SGV

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It's his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @AKAHorace, @Harry Baldwin, @Anon, @ChrisZ, @Buzz Mohawk, @James J. O'Meara, @Ed

    Yeah, that coupled with his name make him seem like, I don’t know, a villainous politician in a comic book, or maybe even something altogether inorganic, like Max Headroom.

    I’m willing to look past these things, however.

    • Replies: @Hangnail Hans
    @JimDandy

    His name sounds more like a gay porn star's than that of a comic book villain.

    Hmm...possible crossover appeal?

    Let's ask Peter Thiel.

    , @SaneClownPosse
    @JimDandy

    When I saw the name Blake Masters, my first question was, is he related to Blythe Masters?

  10. My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek.

    Masters is Peter Thiel’s man. So is J.D. Vance. That might be better than being George Soros’s man or Peter Singer’s man or Charles Koch’s man.

    But keep in mind – he has a backer. He is not entirely his own man.

    This whole MAGA think might just be a case of exchanging one set of billionaire puppet-masters for another.

    • Replies: @Danindc
    @Mr. Anon

    This guy is different. It’s clear to people who have done their research or have good instincts.

    , @bomag
    @Mr. Anon

    Thanks.

    Some puppet masters are preferable to others.

    , @Giant Duck
    @Mr. Anon

    He seems to be the preferred candidate of billionaires. Or at least, different billionaires than the ones we usually hear about:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2022/06/30/winklevoss-twins-team-up-with-peter-thiel-to-support-arizona-senate-candidate-blake-masters/?sh=24df96814635

    , @SunBakedSuburb
    @Mr. Anon

    "He is not entirely his own man."

    None of them are. Donald Trump's association with Roy Cohn puts him in with the legacy of Meyer Lansky's organization which created the Mega Group of American Zionist billionaires. Trump's son in law, the rather creepy Jared Kushner, is an agent of Mega, as was Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates's buddy.

    , @Rob
    @Mr. Anon

    Realistically, we are going to have billionaires calling the shots. Soft socialism? Managerial class socialism? Will be billionaires. Heck, the Democratic Socialists of America exist to keep “radicals” voting for mainstream Democratic candidates.

    Trumpism? A senile conman, who — I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt — is a billionaire and his rich Democratic daughter and his unimpressive sons.

    Thielism? If you read his book, or just read Scott Alexander’s review of Thiel’s book, he sounds like a really bright, iconoclastic guy. He’s not an obvious fit for “MAGA,” but he’s a really good choice for a forward-looking American nationalism. Someone who is not really either party could break the 50-50 split the country is stuck with. Heck, at least Thiel understands the importance of meritocracy.

    Unlike Trump, Thiel understands the modern wealth-creating economy. Trump brought back incandescent bulbs. Why? When he was young and in the season of the rising sap, America had incandescent light bulbs, damnit! Tiel obviously is better at choosing people than Trump ever was.

    Thiel is probably bright enough that he can roll back some of the regulations and laws that keep us from building housing or anything else. Heck, as I understand it, SV’s tech money respects him, so SV could reorient around his team when Bidenism (really Democratic activists with no supervision. The chief executive is the head of the party proves a bust. Coincidentally, expensive rents benefit older money rentiers, maybe there’s lots of money in building, too? But, new money is buying housing too.

    Replies: @Prester John

    , @Autistocrates
    @Mr. Anon

    Well at least Thiel is a realist. Ultimately you need a few competent people like Masters or Vance in the Senate, and they can just corral these weird Trump backed Senators, who really just serve to be a warm body & a vote in an oppositional faction to cokehead Mitch.

    Btw, Thiel is close with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, he attended his events over the years. Thiel also was born in Germany but his family also lived in South Africa during the 1970s. Sure, Thiel is a billionaire who brushes shoulders with globalists, but I'd suggest listening to talks he's given. Maybe he's lying, however the views he expresses are about preserving Western civilization. Always good to be skeptical but its better him than a bunch of lolbertarians like the Kochs or these (((Private Equity))) types who don't care about anything other than preserving their loot.

    Replies: @Mr. Anon

  11. …Vice President Kamala Harris as a beneficiary of an “affirmative action regime.”

    Nevertheless, she’s more qualified at the moment than her boss. She should have been promoted last year.

    • Replies: @The Alarmist
    @Reg Cæsar

    And they tell us the GOP is a threat to democracy.

    , @G. Poulin
    @Reg Cæsar

    Her boss is more qualified on paper, but only on paper. He's been a big shot in government for long time, but he's been a complete idiot the entire time and everyone knows it. And now he's a senile idiot as well. Pretty sad that the Veep is now the more competent of the two, simply because she can get up off her back and stand upright unassisted when she wants to.

    Replies: @Meretricious, @Reg Cæsar

  12. @Anonymous
    @Mike_from_SGV

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It's his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @AKAHorace, @Harry Baldwin, @Anon, @ChrisZ, @Buzz Mohawk, @James J. O'Meara, @Ed

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It’s his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    So why does this matter. He has taken a brave position, who cares if he does not look like a superhero. There are plenty of people who look like alpha male chads who fold under pressure.

    • Replies: @Danindc
    @AKAHorace

    What are you people talking about? He looks like a Chad. And he has a beautiful wife and a bunch of kids.

  13. Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson struck me as probably at least at the judicial equivalent of the Mendoza Line in baseball — call it the Sotomayor Line).

    If you’ve ever read any of Sotomayor’s judicial opinions, you’ll know she’s borderline retarded. So yeah, she had better be the absolute lowest limit. There ain’t much left below it.

    OTOH, I’ve speculated before that what remains of the Republic may be better off with stupid rather than clever Dem appointments to the Supreme Court. Dumb or nonsensical opinions can just be ignored. Clever-but-wicked judges can do much more long term harm with diabolical casuistry.

  14. Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people – POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.

    Values do not inspire emotions in the masses like “oppressed” people do.

    This is why abortion is the only area where conservatives compete with liberals – conservatives seek to defend unborn babies not abtract values.

    • Replies: @bomag
    @Dream


    Values do not inspire emotions in the masses like “oppressed” people do.
     
    We shouldn't be ruled by emotions. That's a problem that needs fixing.

    A lot of "oppression" stories aren't true, so we have the added burden of being ruled by lies.
    , @PhysicistDave
    @Dream

    Dream wrote:


    Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people – POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.
     
    I don't understand why the GOP does not takes as its slogan something along the lines of: "The Republican Party-- the party that cares about the people who make America work."

    It has the virtue of basically being true: the GOP is now the party of the farmers, the truck drivers, the construction workers, the airplane mechanics, the small businessmen, etc.

    Perhaps the answer is simply that the people who run the GOP -- Turtle McConnell, Mitt Romney, the "donor class," etc. -- really rather dislike the people who make America work and would rather lose elections than appeal to such people.

    Replies: @ThreeCranes, @Bardon Kaldian, @Bill, @Dave from Oz

    , @Prester John
    @Dream

    I would argue that it's the exact opposite. It's the DEMOCRAT Party that worships "values and abstractions". The leadership takes their cue from Ivy academics and the like who constitute the party theoreticians. The Democrats feigned solidarity with the masses only masks cold, calculating mechanistic abstraction. The masses are mere specimens in a Petri dish; or, worse, equations on the blackboard of some Harvard economist training the next generation of Democrats.

  15. @PhysicistDave

    Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]...
     
    There -- I've fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California -- Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh.... we're not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back...

    Replies: @interesting, @Mr. Anon, @Fluesterwitz, @Cutter, @Emil Nikola Richard, @R.G. Camara, @SaneClownPosse, @nebulafox, @tommer

    For everyone not from California — Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    Just for entertaining Willie’s willie, she got a part-time (probably n0-show) job pulling down six figures. Not bad work for a prostitute.

    • Replies: @Jose, Can you See
    @Mr. Anon

    Make that a "No-show No-work" job.

  16. @Mike_from_SGV
    After the reaction to his first tweet, he didn't grovel, but doubled down. So rare. Time to stop groveling. I like this guy.

    Replies: @Anonymous, @Polistra, @SFG, @Bugg, @AnotherDad, @Fungus Among Us

    But does he have the sense to calibrate his reactions, without which he will never rise to higher office? Granted it didn’t stop trump, but look at trump now.

    ATM it would appear that Masters and the NYT are almost perfect foils for one another, only one of them is extremely powerful and the other is not.

    • Replies: @Cloudbuster
    @Polistra

    Our politics is full of people who have "calibrated' their reactions. Where has that gotten us?

    , @bomag
    @Polistra

    Then it's time to make him powerful.

    The internet was touted as giving everyone access to information, and a voice in political debates.

    But note how an ecosystem has evolved to crush dissent from the Narrative. One tweet from this guy, and drones are unleashed on him.

  17. @Some Guy

    Joseph R. Biden Jr.
     
    Translation: we know Joe Biden's full name, you don't, therefore we know more than you, therefore you shouldn't question us when we say diversity is good.

    Replies: @SafeNow, @R.G. Camara, @Anon

    Joseph R. Biden Jr.

    Translation: we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t, therefore we know more than you, therefore you shouldn’t question us when we say diversity is good.

    I have often observed the opposite phenomenon, i.e., using famous-person X’s nickname (actual or made-up) so as to imply that the writer is pals with X. “Hank Kissinger understands the nuances of foreign policy” implies I do lunch with the guy.

    • Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
    @SafeNow

    By the way, Kissinger....

    Some people are rooting for him just to see him alive at 100. Three figures, hurrrah!

    And then, when you live a few more years- 101,102,103... nobody cares.

    You're not interesting anymore.

    Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Papinian

  18. Meanwhile, lack of police interest in local feral negroes has forced Hollywood to be officially regarded as a dangerous, third world shithole.

    Stay away from Hollywood & Highland, if you want to live…

    https://urbanhollywood411.com/hollywood-walk-of-fame-shut-down-after-deadly-shooting/

    • Replies: @Ganderson
    @Anonymous

    Ry Cooder was on this long ago…

    https://youtu.be/eevAuAhIIyM

    , @Jim Don Bob
    @Anonymous

    And in Charm City:


    An Apple TV+ series filming in Baltimore stopped production Friday after several people threatened the producers and tried to extort money from them, Baltimore police said.

    A spokesperson for the Baltimore Police Department said the crew was filming around 4 PM in the downtown area when the producers were approached by several people. The group claimed if they didn�t stop filming they would come back and shoot someone, police said.

    However, they said no violence would occur if they were paid an unspecified amount. Producers decided to halt filming and seek a new location. Local news outlet The Baltimore Banner reported that drug dealers attempted to extort $50,000 from the production, which producers declined to pay.
     
    https://deadline.com/2022/08/lady-in-the-lake-apple-plus-series-forced-to-halt-production-after-extortion-threats-from-baltimore-locals-1235101762/

    Replies: @Fungus Among Us

    , @ForeverCARealist
    @Anonymous

    My kid was just there. Said it was a total dump and felt unsafe. She and her friends left quickly.

    You'd think these stupid liberals would keep something iconic like that looking nice, but then, they've somehow managed to make entire beautiful cities complete wrecks.

  19. I really can’t tell if ANYONE, including possibly the O/T Black Masters himself, actually gets what exactly the sarcastic remark there means. It’s not that anyone, smart or stupid, at the FED can help or hurt the economy. That’s not the point.

    The point is that the FED can’t do anything to help the economy. They are screwing around with a quarter or half a percentage of interest each month, but NOBODY can force interest rates up to actual Paul Volcker inflation-fighting rates, or LET them rise to natural rates for that matter. 2 very bad things would happen.

    1) The US Federal budget will be seen as a sham, as half of the tax income will need to go out for net interest.

    2) The stock market will crash, as people will have actual non-risky places to put their money.

    Those are bad, but if the rates don’t go up, inflation will stay high due to the value of the US dollar being diluted. That’s bad too.

    There’s no getting out of this one unscathed, AA woke FED or your grandfathers’ FED. It doesn’t matter who the Governors are. Did Black Masters understand this when writing his tweet? The left is too stupid to even care about that part.

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Oops, that'd be Blake, not Black, Masters, both times there! No, he's not black.

    Oh, and yes, he's been a stand-up guy for not groveling after that last attempt at making him do so (the deal about "frankly, black people ...").

    Replies: @fish

    , @Anonymous
    @Achmed E. Newman


    The point is that the FED can’t do anything to help the economy
     
    As Jerome Powell pointed out, they can do zilch, nada, nuttin’ about the supply side. And we need energy, particularly cheap energy. Cheap energy allows us to have a big chunk of the population working cushy jobs remotely on laptops, not vice versa.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

  20. @PhysicistDave

    Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]...
     
    There -- I've fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California -- Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh.... we're not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back...

    Replies: @interesting, @Mr. Anon, @Fluesterwitz, @Cutter, @Emil Nikola Richard, @R.G. Camara, @SaneClownPosse, @nebulafox, @tommer

    There — I’ve fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    Sure, but for the NYT, your version is not fit to print.

    • Replies: @Dr. DoomNGloom
    @Fluesterwitz



    There — I’ve fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!
     
    Sure, but for the NYT, your version is not fit to print.
     
    The motto should be "All the news that *fits*, we print"
  21. @Achmed E. Newman
    I really can't tell if ANYONE, including possibly the O/T Black Masters himself, actually gets what exactly the sarcastic remark there means. It's not that anyone, smart or stupid, at the FED can help or hurt the economy. That's not the point.

    The point is that the FED can't do anything to help the economy. They are screwing around with a quarter or half a percentage of interest each month, but NOBODY can force interest rates up to actual Paul Volcker inflation-fighting rates, or LET them rise to natural rates for that matter. 2 very bad things would happen.

    1) The US Federal budget will be seen as a sham, as half of the tax income will need to go out for net interest.

    2) The stock market will crash, as people will have actual non-risky places to put their money.

    Those are bad, but if the rates don't go up, inflation will stay high due to the value of the US dollar being diluted. That's bad too.

    There's no getting out of this one unscathed, AA woke FED or your grandfathers' FED. It doesn't matter who the Governors are. Did Black Masters understand this when writing his tweet? The left is too stupid to even care about that part.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Anonymous

    Oops, that’d be Blake, not Black, Masters, both times there! No, he’s not black.

    Oh, and yes, he’s been a stand-up guy for not groveling after that last attempt at making him do so (the deal about “frankly, black people …”).

    • Replies: @fish
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Oops, that’d be Blake, not Black, Masters, both times there! No, he’s not black.


    Yes......but you capitalized in both instances of “Black” and isn’t that the most important thing.

  22. racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic views.

    What’s the next -ist/-ic?

  23. Lisa Cook does not “mean well” Steve. This recent benefit of the doubt habit of yours in regards to negroes who would gladly take away your quality of life is sad. It doesn’t make you a good person to think so. It’s just your version on virtue signaling.

    Maggie Astor:

    • Agree: OilcanFloyd
    • Thanks: Charon
    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @Mike Tre

    I agree in general, Mike, but not in this case. This AA case probably is trying to do whatever worthless job she is in the FED to do - write papers on economics and help control the rates? Ha! As I wrote, it's useless - you could have Issac Newton in there discovering new theorems of Calculus, but the American financial system would still be doomed.

    That said, yes, Mr. Sailer likes to be polite. I don't, for people that are part of the destruction of American society. He still agrees with Affirmative Action, as far as I know. WTH??

    Replies: @The Problem with Midway, @Mike Tre

    , @Henry's Cat
    @Mike Tre

    Can we agree that Maggie Astor is eating well?

    Replies: @puttheforkdown

  24. submitted just for no reason, for your dining and dancing pleasure, ladies and gentlemen there’s nothing else really like it when you think about it….

    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?&q=yes+the+revealing+science+of+god+youtube&view=detail&mid=B736AD63CEF086413FFBB736AD63CEF086413FFB&form=VDQVAP&rvsmid=869C955E93B24E9E0828869C955E93B24E9E0828&ajaxhist=0

    of course, you have to actually think about it.

    • Replies: @Cloudbuster
    @The Germ Theory of Disease

    Wait. Yes is still around?

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease

  25. I saw that post and the reaction to it and all I could think about are my wife’s dumb relatives in Phoenix who think they are so smart and compassionate because they vote for democrats.

    They are the living epitome of Dunning-Kruger: Mother and daughter are school teachers, beta husband is an wage slave who is barely keeping his head above water and could only survive with help from rich grandma… To his credit, the son graduated from college and ran off to the east coast for a corporate job and is apparently getting paid pretty well on his own.

    My best example of the quality of their intellect is that they go to a “church” that regularly goes out in the desert and leaves water for the illegals trekking through. They’ll brag about how compassionate they are being, then, in the next breath, the schoolteachers will bitch about all of the illegal immigrant kids overwhelming the school system and overcrowding the classrooms and stretching the budget.

    But they are smugly convinced that the world is ruled by a bunch of eeeeeeevil white men, so no doubt they’ll eat this Masters video up as proof that he’s a mean ole racist. The MSM told them so, anyway.

    It’s not Barry Goldwater’s Arizona anymore. There is a large segment of the population who buys into this shit and is eager to hasten the transformation to East California.

    • Agree: usNthem
    • Thanks: Achmed E. Newman
    • Replies: @SFG
    @JR Ewing

    A lot of bright people buy into liberalism and, now, leftism. It’s taught at the hardest schools to get into. Sadly, conservatism doesn’t get a majority of the brightest people (and that’s been the way for a while-remember Buckley’s joke about the Boston phone book). Richard Hanania has talked about this.

    No, I’m not arguing for leftism-I’m saying intellectual fads can sucker in a lot of bright people, largely because making people around you like you is more important than being right most of the time. Especially if you are working in some planning office and people who deal with real life can clean up your mistakes.

    Replies: @JR Ewing, @Ganderson, @martin_2, @Ian Smith

    , @AceDeuce
    @JR Ewing


    It’s not Barry Goldwater’s Arizona anymore
     
    Hell, after Goldwater went senile and married that child bride, he wasn't Barry Goldwater anymore.
    Those people that made the place worth a crap are all dead.
    , @Muggles
    @JR Ewing


    It’s not Barry Goldwater’s Arizona anymore. There is a large segment of the population who buys into this shit and is eager to hasten the transformation to East California.
     
    Please keep them there. We don't need them/want them in Texas.

    Of course first they'd have to cross about 1500 miles of New Mexico and west Texas. Harsh country with very few EV plug in chargers.

    Try to convince them that Texas remains a barbaric place. Hard to find organic kale. And migrants who don't have energy related jobs (or military) are bussed quickly back east.

    Our quota of California refugees is already full this year.
  26. Diversity: The hill to DIE on.

  27. @Reg Cæsar

    ...Vice President Kamala Harris as a beneficiary of an “affirmative action regime.”
     
    Nevertheless, she's more qualified at the moment than her boss. She should have been promoted last year.

    Replies: @The Alarmist, @G. Poulin

    And they tell us the GOP is a threat to democracy.

  28. @Mr. Anon

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek.
     
    Masters is Peter Thiel's man. So is J.D. Vance. That might be better than being George Soros's man or Peter Singer's man or Charles Koch's man.

    But keep in mind - he has a backer. He is not entirely his own man.

    This whole MAGA think might just be a case of exchanging one set of billionaire puppet-masters for another.

    Replies: @Danindc, @bomag, @Giant Duck, @SunBakedSuburb, @Rob, @Autistocrates

    This guy is different. It’s clear to people who have done their research or have good instincts.

  29. @AKAHorace
    @Anonymous


    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It’s his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.
     
    So why does this matter. He has taken a brave position, who cares if he does not look like a superhero. There are plenty of people who look like alpha male chads who fold under pressure.

    Replies: @Danindc

    What are you people talking about? He looks like a Chad. And he has a beautiful wife and a bunch of kids.

  30. @Polistra
    @Mike_from_SGV

    But does he have the sense to calibrate his reactions, without which he will never rise to higher office? Granted it didn't stop trump, but look at trump now.

    ATM it would appear that Masters and the NYT are almost perfect foils for one another, only one of them is extremely powerful and the other is not.

    Replies: @Cloudbuster, @bomag

    Our politics is full of people who have “calibrated’ their reactions. Where has that gotten us?

  31. @Altai
    Much like Steve's previous article about this in the State Department, is there any evidence that the 'competent' appointees were doing a good job? Decades of junk economics and decades of a neocon agenda have meant that they may have been run by competent people but their agenda and purpose has been disastrous.

    I say let their cliques wither, it's the only way out.

    Replies: @Greta Handel, @Cloudbuster, @International Jew, @Erik L, @James J. O'Meara, @AnotherDad

    Competently pursuing bad ends is arguably worse for everyone else than incompetently pursuing bad ends.

    • Agree: Adam Smith
  32. @Polistra
    @Mike_from_SGV

    But does he have the sense to calibrate his reactions, without which he will never rise to higher office? Granted it didn't stop trump, but look at trump now.

    ATM it would appear that Masters and the NYT are almost perfect foils for one another, only one of them is extremely powerful and the other is not.

    Replies: @Cloudbuster, @bomag

    Then it’s time to make him powerful.

    The internet was touted as giving everyone access to information, and a voice in political debates.

    But note how an ecosystem has evolved to crush dissent from the Narrative. One tweet from this guy, and drones are unleashed on him.

  33. @Mr. Anon

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek.
     
    Masters is Peter Thiel's man. So is J.D. Vance. That might be better than being George Soros's man or Peter Singer's man or Charles Koch's man.

    But keep in mind - he has a backer. He is not entirely his own man.

    This whole MAGA think might just be a case of exchanging one set of billionaire puppet-masters for another.

    Replies: @Danindc, @bomag, @Giant Duck, @SunBakedSuburb, @Rob, @Autistocrates

    Thanks.

    Some puppet masters are preferable to others.

    • Agree: Hangnail Hans
  34. @Reg Cæsar

    ...Vice President Kamala Harris as a beneficiary of an “affirmative action regime.”
     
    Nevertheless, she's more qualified at the moment than her boss. She should have been promoted last year.

    Replies: @The Alarmist, @G. Poulin

    Her boss is more qualified on paper, but only on paper. He’s been a big shot in government for long time, but he’s been a complete idiot the entire time and everyone knows it. And now he’s a senile idiot as well. Pretty sad that the Veep is now the more competent of the two, simply because she can get up off her back and stand upright unassisted when she wants to.

    • Replies: @Meretricious
    @G. Poulin

    All you need to know about the politico/social parasite Joe Biden is that he was caught plagiarizing at a 3d-tier law school from which he graduated at the bottom of his class. He's Jacoby & Meyers material

    Replies: @JR Ewing

    , @Reg Cæsar
    @G. Poulin


    Pretty sad that the Veep is now the more competent of the two, simply because she can get up off her back...
     
    She's had a lot of experience getting up off her back.


    https://gumlet.assettype.com/freepressjournal/2020-08/de18d70a-5a18-4a4a-983b-914eab9f9146/081020_2113_1.jpg

    Replies: @usNthem

  35. @Dream
    Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people - POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.

    Values do not inspire emotions in the masses like "oppressed" people do.

    This is why abortion is the only area where conservatives compete with liberals - conservatives seek to defend unborn babies not abtract values.

    Replies: @bomag, @PhysicistDave, @Prester John

    Values do not inspire emotions in the masses like “oppressed” people do.

    We shouldn’t be ruled by emotions. That’s a problem that needs fixing.

    A lot of “oppression” stories aren’t true, so we have the added burden of being ruled by lies.

  36. @The Germ Theory of Disease
    submitted just for no reason, for your dining and dancing pleasure, ladies and gentlemen there's nothing else really like it when you think about it....


    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?&q=yes+the+revealing+science+of+god+youtube&view=detail&mid=B736AD63CEF086413FFBB736AD63CEF086413FFB&form=VDQVAP&rvsmid=869C955E93B24E9E0828869C955E93B24E9E0828&ajaxhist=0


    of course, you have to actually think about it.

    Replies: @Cloudbuster

    Wait. Yes is still around?

    • Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease
    @Cloudbuster

    "Wait. Yes is still around?"


    Yes is ALWAYS around my friend. Just like the Clash and the Ramones.

    In and around the lake,
    Mountains come out of the sky
    And they stand there....

    Replies: @Reg Cæsar

  37. @SafeNow
    @Some Guy


    Joseph R. Biden Jr.

    Translation: we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t, therefore we know more than you, therefore you shouldn’t question us when we say diversity is good.
     
    I have often observed the opposite phenomenon, i.e., using famous-person X’s nickname (actual or made-up) so as to imply that the writer is pals with X. “Hank Kissinger understands the nuances of foreign policy” implies I do lunch with the guy.

    Replies: @Bardon Kaldian

    By the way, Kissinger….

    Some people are rooting for him just to see him alive at 100. Three figures, hurrrah!

    And then, when you live a few more years- 101,102,103… nobody cares.

    You’re not interesting anymore.

    • Replies: @Steve Sailer
    @Bardon Kaldian

    But if Kissinger _never_ dies, well, that would be interesting, to say the least.

    Replies: @Bardon Kaldian

    , @Papinian
    @Bardon Kaldian

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sto_lat

    100 years, but then please die.

    Replies: @Bardon Kaldian

  38. Anonymous[145] • Disclaimer says:
    @Achmed E. Newman
    I really can't tell if ANYONE, including possibly the O/T Black Masters himself, actually gets what exactly the sarcastic remark there means. It's not that anyone, smart or stupid, at the FED can help or hurt the economy. That's not the point.

    The point is that the FED can't do anything to help the economy. They are screwing around with a quarter or half a percentage of interest each month, but NOBODY can force interest rates up to actual Paul Volcker inflation-fighting rates, or LET them rise to natural rates for that matter. 2 very bad things would happen.

    1) The US Federal budget will be seen as a sham, as half of the tax income will need to go out for net interest.

    2) The stock market will crash, as people will have actual non-risky places to put their money.

    Those are bad, but if the rates don't go up, inflation will stay high due to the value of the US dollar being diluted. That's bad too.

    There's no getting out of this one unscathed, AA woke FED or your grandfathers' FED. It doesn't matter who the Governors are. Did Black Masters understand this when writing his tweet? The left is too stupid to even care about that part.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Anonymous

    The point is that the FED can’t do anything to help the economy

    As Jerome Powell pointed out, they can do zilch, nada, nuttin’ about the supply side. And we need energy, particularly cheap energy. Cheap energy allows us to have a big chunk of the population working cushy jobs remotely on laptops, not vice versa.

    • Agree: Redneck farmer
    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @Anonymous

    Above all, we need SOUND MONEY. Without that, the Chinese will own all of the energy before too long.

  39. @JR Ewing
    I saw that post and the reaction to it and all I could think about are my wife's dumb relatives in Phoenix who think they are so smart and compassionate because they vote for democrats.

    They are the living epitome of Dunning-Kruger: Mother and daughter are school teachers, beta husband is an wage slave who is barely keeping his head above water and could only survive with help from rich grandma... To his credit, the son graduated from college and ran off to the east coast for a corporate job and is apparently getting paid pretty well on his own.

    My best example of the quality of their intellect is that they go to a "church" that regularly goes out in the desert and leaves water for the illegals trekking through. They'll brag about how compassionate they are being, then, in the next breath, the schoolteachers will bitch about all of the illegal immigrant kids overwhelming the school system and overcrowding the classrooms and stretching the budget.

    But they are smugly convinced that the world is ruled by a bunch of eeeeeeevil white men, so no doubt they'll eat this Masters video up as proof that he's a mean ole racist. The MSM told them so, anyway.

    It's not Barry Goldwater's Arizona anymore. There is a large segment of the population who buys into this shit and is eager to hasten the transformation to East California.

    Replies: @SFG, @AceDeuce, @Muggles

    A lot of bright people buy into liberalism and, now, leftism. It’s taught at the hardest schools to get into. Sadly, conservatism doesn’t get a majority of the brightest people (and that’s been the way for a while-remember Buckley’s joke about the Boston phone book). Richard Hanania has talked about this.

    No, I’m not arguing for leftism-I’m saying intellectual fads can sucker in a lot of bright people, largely because making people around you like you is more important than being right most of the time. Especially if you are working in some planning office and people who deal with real life can clean up your mistakes.

    • Thanks: JR Ewing
    • Replies: @JR Ewing
    @SFG

    Totally agree that leftism sucks in smart people, but that isn't the case here. These are not smart people, they just think they are.

    , @Ganderson
    @SFG

    I’ve made versions of this comment before: I live in a college town- 3 SPLACS, a dying hippie college and a BSU. My wife and I (she’s and old fashioned Democrat, which at the SPLAC she worked at for 20 years made her practically Hitler) are the dumbest people on our block; we’re the only adults without terminal degrees, indeed, neither of us have even a Masters. (And yes, to understate it, I’m way less impressed with a PhD than I was when we moved to town 30 some years ago)

    Yet all the smarties in town bought in to the Corona panic big time- masking, closing the campuses (campi?) testing, testing, testing, etc. In fact they still are going nuts - all the high schools around here are opening school with a mask requirement, as are all three SPLACS and the hippie college. Only the BSU is mask free.

    Our town council is seriously discussing reparations for BIPOCS, not sure who will qualify, I know having a grandmother who left Sweden penniless in 1893, and worked at a bunch of medial jobs won’t qualify me , not that it should). Meanwhile there’s been a hole in my street for more than a year. Maybe some of the reparees can come fix it. And, while the guy driving a Tesla with his mask on is a cliche, it’s a fairly common sight here in Looneyville.

    Again, old guy repeating himself alert: the people who run our governments at all levels are incompetents , sure, but what’s worse is they’re uninterested in the stuff government is supposed to do- ploughing, water and sewer, road repair, etc. Mayor Daley’s machine was corrupt, but at least the streets got ploughed and the garbage picked up.

    And one more thing; and the great Howie Carr points this out all the time- how many members of the fourth estate have ever covered a local crime story or a school committee meeting, or …. Crickets!

    Replies: @kaganovitch, @AnotherDad

    , @martin_2
    @SFG

    They can't be that bright if they really believe that all the races of man have the same average level of intelligence.

    Replies: @Alec Leamas (working from home)

    , @Ian Smith
    @SFG

    I’m shocked that intelligent people don’t want to be on the side of Lauren Boebart and Marjorie Taylor-Greene!

    Replies: @kaganovitch, @Ben tillman, @J.Ross

  40. The diversity the Federal Reserve needs is having people who aren’t economists, but produce goods and services outside of finance.

    • Agree: Charon
    • Replies: @epebble
    @Redneck farmer

    Actually, it takes tremendous talent to convince billions of people for years on end that pieces of paper you create (or bits on your computer) are equal in value to goods and services they produce. If you think about it, it is the greatest miracle or magic.

    Replies: @Muggles

  41. @Mike Tre
    Lisa Cook does not "mean well" Steve. This recent benefit of the doubt habit of yours in regards to negroes who would gladly take away your quality of life is sad. It doesn't make you a good person to think so. It's just your version on virtue signaling.

    Maggie Astor:

    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sioSUPa6O9s/hqdefault.jpg

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Henry's Cat

    I agree in general, Mike, but not in this case. This AA case probably is trying to do whatever worthless job she is in the FED to do – write papers on economics and help control the rates? Ha! As I wrote, it’s useless – you could have Issac Newton in there discovering new theorems of Calculus, but the American financial system would still be doomed.

    That said, yes, Mr. Sailer likes to be polite. I don’t, for people that are part of the destruction of American society. He still agrees with Affirmative Action, as far as I know. WTH??

    • Replies: @The Problem with Midway
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I believe that Sailer has supported affirmative action for police, and police only, on the grounds that most of a cop's job is keeping the diversity under control, which is probably easier when you've got some POCs in uniform. He has specifically opposed AA for firemen, for example.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @jsm

    , @Mike Tre
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I’m ok with polite. One can be polite without making false character assessments.

  42. @JR Ewing
    I saw that post and the reaction to it and all I could think about are my wife's dumb relatives in Phoenix who think they are so smart and compassionate because they vote for democrats.

    They are the living epitome of Dunning-Kruger: Mother and daughter are school teachers, beta husband is an wage slave who is barely keeping his head above water and could only survive with help from rich grandma... To his credit, the son graduated from college and ran off to the east coast for a corporate job and is apparently getting paid pretty well on his own.

    My best example of the quality of their intellect is that they go to a "church" that regularly goes out in the desert and leaves water for the illegals trekking through. They'll brag about how compassionate they are being, then, in the next breath, the schoolteachers will bitch about all of the illegal immigrant kids overwhelming the school system and overcrowding the classrooms and stretching the budget.

    But they are smugly convinced that the world is ruled by a bunch of eeeeeeevil white men, so no doubt they'll eat this Masters video up as proof that he's a mean ole racist. The MSM told them so, anyway.

    It's not Barry Goldwater's Arizona anymore. There is a large segment of the population who buys into this shit and is eager to hasten the transformation to East California.

    Replies: @SFG, @AceDeuce, @Muggles

    It’s not Barry Goldwater’s Arizona anymore

    Hell, after Goldwater went senile and married that child bride, he wasn’t Barry Goldwater anymore.
    Those people that made the place worth a crap are all dead.

  43. @PhysicistDave

    Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]...
     
    There -- I've fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California -- Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh.... we're not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back...

    Replies: @interesting, @Mr. Anon, @Fluesterwitz, @Cutter, @Emil Nikola Richard, @R.G. Camara, @SaneClownPosse, @nebulafox, @tommer

    She wasn’t a slut. She was a whore.

    Or as Steve would say, an adventuress.

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @Cutter

    I thought those were the same thing, with just a difference in dress code.

    Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Cutter, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Ralph L

  44. OT (or back to an old one):

    Big news in Houston this morning that they’ve found not one, but TWO cases of Monkeypox HMPXv in students in two local high schools on opposite sides of town, one a charter school and one a public high school in a fairly affluent suburb near me.

    I’m going to guess that these are both students who – as they say – are men who have sex with men, or probably more accurately, boys who have sex with men, but that’s entirely an educated guess.

    Used to be, gays used “repression” from their early years to eventually decide to run off to San Francisco or New York to find themselves and be free to enter the gay pathogen train. Now our enlightened education system encourages them to just go ahead and get it over with in high school.

    • Replies: @Bugg
    @JR Ewing

    Rumors abound that man about town in Texas, Beto O'Rourke, has contracted the dreaded monkeypox. Awaiting the convoluted nonsense explanation that does not involve attending a gay orgy.

    Replies: @Jim Don Bob

  45. @Dream
    Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people - POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.

    Values do not inspire emotions in the masses like "oppressed" people do.

    This is why abortion is the only area where conservatives compete with liberals - conservatives seek to defend unborn babies not abtract values.

    Replies: @bomag, @PhysicistDave, @Prester John

    Dream wrote:

    Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people – POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.

    I don’t understand why the GOP does not takes as its slogan something along the lines of: “The Republican Party– the party that cares about the people who make America work.”

    It has the virtue of basically being true: the GOP is now the party of the farmers, the truck drivers, the construction workers, the airplane mechanics, the small businessmen, etc.

    Perhaps the answer is simply that the people who run the GOP — Turtle McConnell, Mitt Romney, the “donor class,” etc. — really rather dislike the people who make America work and would rather lose elections than appeal to such people.

    • Agree: JR Ewing
    • Replies: @ThreeCranes
    @PhysicistDave

    Agree.

    Here's their take on what it takes to be an aircraft mechanic:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjsfs49SRbc

    , @Bardon Kaldian
    @PhysicistDave


    “The Republican Party– the party that cares about the people who make America work.”
     
    Because that would be quickly decoded as "white". Perhaps not 100%, but 95%+
    , @Bill
    @PhysicistDave

    But they do exactly what you are saying they don't. What they really don't do is govern in the interests of the people they relentlessly con.

    , @Dave from Oz
    @PhysicistDave

    Or more simply it could rebrand as the american workers party.

  46. @SFG
    @JR Ewing

    A lot of bright people buy into liberalism and, now, leftism. It’s taught at the hardest schools to get into. Sadly, conservatism doesn’t get a majority of the brightest people (and that’s been the way for a while-remember Buckley’s joke about the Boston phone book). Richard Hanania has talked about this.

    No, I’m not arguing for leftism-I’m saying intellectual fads can sucker in a lot of bright people, largely because making people around you like you is more important than being right most of the time. Especially if you are working in some planning office and people who deal with real life can clean up your mistakes.

    Replies: @JR Ewing, @Ganderson, @martin_2, @Ian Smith

    Totally agree that leftism sucks in smart people, but that isn’t the case here. These are not smart people, they just think they are.

  47. @Achmed E. Newman
    @Mike Tre

    I agree in general, Mike, but not in this case. This AA case probably is trying to do whatever worthless job she is in the FED to do - write papers on economics and help control the rates? Ha! As I wrote, it's useless - you could have Issac Newton in there discovering new theorems of Calculus, but the American financial system would still be doomed.

    That said, yes, Mr. Sailer likes to be polite. I don't, for people that are part of the destruction of American society. He still agrees with Affirmative Action, as far as I know. WTH??

    Replies: @The Problem with Midway, @Mike Tre

    I believe that Sailer has supported affirmative action for police, and police only, on the grounds that most of a cop’s job is keeping the diversity under control, which is probably easier when you’ve got some POCs in uniform. He has specifically opposed AA for firemen, for example.

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @The Problem with Midway

    That's still wrong, TPwM, but that's also not my impression. My recollection is that Mr. Sailer believes those basic DOAS deserve AA, but not anyone else. I agree with the "not anyone else" part, but not with the anyone at all. Wrong is wrong.

    Let's hear it right now. What's your position on AA, Steve?

    , @jsm
    @The Problem with Midway

    Steve has said, for Affirmative Action, what we oughta do is give Blacks the monopoly on marijuana stores.

  48. @Bardon Kaldian
    @SafeNow

    By the way, Kissinger....

    Some people are rooting for him just to see him alive at 100. Three figures, hurrrah!

    And then, when you live a few more years- 101,102,103... nobody cares.

    You're not interesting anymore.

    Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Papinian

    But if Kissinger _never_ dies, well, that would be interesting, to say the least.

    • Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
    @Steve Sailer

    Mencken had similar thoughts about Calvin Coolidge. He wrote (quoting from memory) that he had thought "old Cal would never die. He would somehow mummify himself in a sort of auto-geneous vacuum".

  49. @Steve Sailer
    @Bardon Kaldian

    But if Kissinger _never_ dies, well, that would be interesting, to say the least.

    Replies: @Bardon Kaldian

    Mencken had similar thoughts about Calvin Coolidge. He wrote (quoting from memory) that he had thought “old Cal would never die. He would somehow mummify himself in a sort of auto-geneous vacuum”.

  50. @Bardon Kaldian
    @SafeNow

    By the way, Kissinger....

    Some people are rooting for him just to see him alive at 100. Three figures, hurrrah!

    And then, when you live a few more years- 101,102,103... nobody cares.

    You're not interesting anymore.

    Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Papinian

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sto_lat

    100 years, but then please die.

    • Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
    @Papinian

    I haven't thought of it, but- since Kissinger is Jewish, it could be that he already is 100 years old, just he is not aware of it (lunar calendar) ....

    Replies: @kaganovitch

  51. @The Problem with Midway
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I believe that Sailer has supported affirmative action for police, and police only, on the grounds that most of a cop's job is keeping the diversity under control, which is probably easier when you've got some POCs in uniform. He has specifically opposed AA for firemen, for example.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @jsm

    That’s still wrong, TPwM, but that’s also not my impression. My recollection is that Mr. Sailer believes those basic DOAS deserve AA, but not anyone else. I agree with the “not anyone else” part, but not with the anyone at all. Wrong is wrong.

    Let’s hear it right now. What’s your position on AA, Steve?

  52. @Cutter
    @PhysicistDave

    She wasn't a slut. She was a whore.

    Or as Steve would say, an adventuress.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    I thought those were the same thing, with just a difference in dress code.

    • Replies: @R.G. Camara
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Whores get paid. Sluts work pro bono.

    , @Cutter
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Mr. R.G. Camara covered it. Turning tricks is an old profession.

    , @The Anti-Gnostic
    @Achmed E. Newman

    It gets weirder: Kamala can't dress. Not at all. Off-the-rack crap from Macy's. And when the photographer came by to "stage" her, she probably got mad and told him to keep moving.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Joe_Biden#/media/File:P20210720AS-3425-2_(51417135942)_(cropped).jpg

    Of course, part of her problem is a thick, Desi waist and stick legs from her mom's side. Still, a good tailor could do something.

    Replies: @anon, @epebble

    , @Ralph L
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Don't confuse slut and slattern, a woman who is negligent of her dress, not her morals.

  53. Among other things, he has promoted what experts in extremism describe as a sanitized version of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory.

    “Experts in extremism”? Aha… The usual NYT trope that invokes anonymous “experts” — those extremism experts we know and trust — so in case the rare case that a NYT reader might be skeptical, “don’t just take my word for it, people a lot smarter than me told me so.”

  54. Hurray for the Executive Branch: a child molester who’s lost his marbles and a grande horizontale who appears never to have had any.

    • LOL: R.G. Camara
  55. @Papinian
    @Bardon Kaldian

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sto_lat

    100 years, but then please die.

    Replies: @Bardon Kaldian

    I haven’t thought of it, but- since Kissinger is Jewish, it could be that he already is 100 years old, just he is not aware of it (lunar calendar) ….

    • Replies: @kaganovitch
    @Bardon Kaldian

    I haven’t thought of it, but- since Kissinger is Jewish, it could be that he already is 100 years old, just he is not aware of it (lunar calendar) ….

    Nah, lunar calendar doesn't work that way. It is reconciled with solar calendar by dint of seven leap months in a 19 year cycle. Thus years of age , depending on where you are in leap cycle, are never discrepant by more than a month or so.

    Replies: @Bardon Kaldian

  56. @PhysicistDave
    @Dream

    Dream wrote:


    Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people – POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.
     
    I don't understand why the GOP does not takes as its slogan something along the lines of: "The Republican Party-- the party that cares about the people who make America work."

    It has the virtue of basically being true: the GOP is now the party of the farmers, the truck drivers, the construction workers, the airplane mechanics, the small businessmen, etc.

    Perhaps the answer is simply that the people who run the GOP -- Turtle McConnell, Mitt Romney, the "donor class," etc. -- really rather dislike the people who make America work and would rather lose elections than appeal to such people.

    Replies: @ThreeCranes, @Bardon Kaldian, @Bill, @Dave from Oz

    Agree.

    Here’s their take on what it takes to be an aircraft mechanic:

  57. @JimDandy
    @Anonymous

    Yeah, that coupled with his name make him seem like, I don't know, a villainous politician in a comic book, or maybe even something altogether inorganic, like Max Headroom.

    I'm willing to look past these things, however.

    Replies: @Hangnail Hans, @SaneClownPosse

    His name sounds more like a gay porn star’s than that of a comic book villain.

    Hmm…possible crossover appeal?

    Let’s ask Peter Thiel.

    • Thanks: JimDandy
  58. @Anonymous
    Meanwhile, lack of police interest in local feral negroes has forced Hollywood to be officially regarded as a dangerous, third world shithole.

    Stay away from Hollywood & Highland, if you want to live…

    https://urbanhollywood411.com/hollywood-walk-of-fame-shut-down-after-deadly-shooting/

    Replies: @Ganderson, @Jim Don Bob, @ForeverCARealist

    Ry Cooder was on this long ago…

  59. @Some Guy

    Joseph R. Biden Jr.
     
    Translation: we know Joe Biden's full name, you don't, therefore we know more than you, therefore you shouldn't question us when we say diversity is good.

    Replies: @SafeNow, @R.G. Camara, @Anon

    I get the sense its used here to try to give an obvious-dementia-addled figurehead some gravitas, as if really won the rigged 2020 election and he really is in charge, all in a careful DNC-instigated attempt at rebranding.

    • Replies: @Some Guy
    @R.G. Camara

    It does make him sound younger to me, although perhaps only old people are still called "junior" nowadays?

  60. @Achmed E. Newman
    @Cutter

    I thought those were the same thing, with just a difference in dress code.

    Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Cutter, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Ralph L

    Whores get paid. Sluts work pro bono.

  61. …which was widely condemned,…

    Not just condemned. But widely condemned. So get your thinking right, people. Or else.

    It wasn’t just 38 people on Twitter; it may have been 138.

    • Replies: @John Milton’s Ghost
    @Patrick in SC

    Bots are people too!

  62. Kamala not only benefited from Willie Brown’s obvious influence (thanks to her being his mistress) and her double affirmative action boosts — minority and female — but also, it is rumored, because Willie wasn’t the only one enjoying her physical gifts behind closed doors.

    To be more blunt, Willie is rumored to be into the swinger/orgy lifestyle, and he passed our V.P. around at parties. Where she became quite popular among the Eyes Wide Shut set, because she was quite the enthusiastic hard-worker.

  63. @Anonymous
    @Achmed E. Newman


    The point is that the FED can’t do anything to help the economy
     
    As Jerome Powell pointed out, they can do zilch, nada, nuttin’ about the supply side. And we need energy, particularly cheap energy. Cheap energy allows us to have a big chunk of the population working cushy jobs remotely on laptops, not vice versa.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    Above all, we need SOUND MONEY. Without that, the Chinese will own all of the energy before too long.

  64. “News.”

    A number of Republican candidates and elected officials have also disparaged efforts to promote diversity and combat bigotry more broadly, and Republican primary voters have rewarded some nominees who espouse racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic views.

    And right on cue:

    Among other things, he has promoted what experts in extremism

    Experts say!

  65. @PhysicistDave

    Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]...
     
    There -- I've fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California -- Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh.... we're not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back...

    Replies: @interesting, @Mr. Anon, @Fluesterwitz, @Cutter, @Emil Nikola Richard, @R.G. Camara, @SaneClownPosse, @nebulafox, @tommer

    Kamala Harris is an affirmative action hire.

    And rather typical. Singling her out for opprobrium is . . .

    I’m not sure. Anyway negroes don’t give a damn about me. It is not efficient to give a damn about them.

  66. @Mike Tre
    Lisa Cook does not "mean well" Steve. This recent benefit of the doubt habit of yours in regards to negroes who would gladly take away your quality of life is sad. It doesn't make you a good person to think so. It's just your version on virtue signaling.

    Maggie Astor:

    https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sioSUPa6O9s/hqdefault.jpg

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Henry's Cat

    Can we agree that Maggie Astor is eating well?

    • LOL: Mike Tre
    • Replies: @puttheforkdown
    @Henry's Cat

    No, but we can agree something is wrong with her face. If she had been pretty, she would never have written a single leftist word in her lifetime - alternate universe Maggie would be too busy enjoying the male gaze. Alas.

  67. @Anonymous
    @Mike_from_SGV

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It's his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @AKAHorace, @Harry Baldwin, @Anon, @ChrisZ, @Buzz Mohawk, @James J. O'Meara, @Ed

    I recall a lot of leftists mocking the appearance of Kyle Rittenhouse, too–chubby, baby-faced, etc. There are a lot of heroes who don’t look like the types central casting would send over.

    • Replies: @Buzz Mohawk
    @Harry Baldwin

    Meanwhile, leftists are so good-looking...

    https://www.unz.com/article/why-are-woke-leftists-so-ugly/

  68. @Some Guy

    Joseph R. Biden Jr.
     
    Translation: we know Joe Biden's full name, you don't, therefore we know more than you, therefore you shouldn't question us when we say diversity is good.

    Replies: @SafeNow, @R.G. Camara, @Anon

    we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t

    But what does the R stand for? Rubens? Rube? Rungusman? Cash money pimpmasteR? “Just R”?

    • Replies: @HFR
    @Anon

    Maybe R stands for Rumplestiltskin.

    , @Legba
    @Anon

    Retard

    , @Meretricious
    @Anon

    Robinette--there's a very good article about Biden's family, here:

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/the-untold-history-of-the-biden-family

    , @Inquiring Mind
    @Anon

    Robinette.

    Is that an Irish Catholic version of having Hussein for your middle name?

    Replies: @Mark Grainger

  69. @Anonymous
    @Mike_from_SGV

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It's his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @AKAHorace, @Harry Baldwin, @Anon, @ChrisZ, @Buzz Mohawk, @James J. O'Meara, @Ed

    Beats Joe ‘the Gimp’ Biden and ‘Stormy’ Harris by a mile. don’t he?

  70. @SFG
    @JR Ewing

    A lot of bright people buy into liberalism and, now, leftism. It’s taught at the hardest schools to get into. Sadly, conservatism doesn’t get a majority of the brightest people (and that’s been the way for a while-remember Buckley’s joke about the Boston phone book). Richard Hanania has talked about this.

    No, I’m not arguing for leftism-I’m saying intellectual fads can sucker in a lot of bright people, largely because making people around you like you is more important than being right most of the time. Especially if you are working in some planning office and people who deal with real life can clean up your mistakes.

    Replies: @JR Ewing, @Ganderson, @martin_2, @Ian Smith

    I’ve made versions of this comment before: I live in a college town- 3 SPLACS, a dying hippie college and a BSU. My wife and I (she’s and old fashioned Democrat, which at the SPLAC she worked at for 20 years made her practically Hitler) are the dumbest people on our block; we’re the only adults without terminal degrees, indeed, neither of us have even a Masters. (And yes, to understate it, I’m way less impressed with a PhD than I was when we moved to town 30 some years ago)

    Yet all the smarties in town bought in to the Corona panic big time- masking, closing the campuses (campi?) testing, testing, testing, etc. In fact they still are going nuts – all the high schools around here are opening school with a mask requirement, as are all three SPLACS and the hippie college. Only the BSU is mask free.

    Our town council is seriously discussing reparations for BIPOCS, not sure who will qualify, I know having a grandmother who left Sweden penniless in 1893, and worked at a bunch of medial jobs won’t qualify me , not that it should). Meanwhile there’s been a hole in my street for more than a year. Maybe some of the reparees can come fix it. And, while the guy driving a Tesla with his mask on is a cliche, it’s a fairly common sight here in Looneyville.

    Again, old guy repeating himself alert: the people who run our governments at all levels are incompetents , sure, but what’s worse is they’re uninterested in the stuff government is supposed to do- ploughing, water and sewer, road repair, etc. Mayor Daley’s machine was corrupt, but at least the streets got ploughed and the garbage picked up.

    And one more thing; and the great Howie Carr points this out all the time- how many members of the fourth estate have ever covered a local crime story or a school committee meeting, or …. Crickets!

    • Thanks: Adam Smith
    • Replies: @kaganovitch
    @Ganderson

    Pardon my ignorance but what is a SPLAC?

    Replies: @Harry Baldwin

    , @AnotherDad
    @Ganderson

    Agree with kaganovitch. If your acronym isn't "WTF", write it out the first time.

    Ok, the acronym may be part of the style. I've used "the PNW" (the Pacific Northwest), like that to give a broader sense of place, then saying i'm lounging my ass here in the Seattle metropolis. But then the acronym should come up page one, on a quick bing.

    I did learn that the Latin American stock market index is down 2.81% right now. Still didn't know what a SPLAC is.

    Small pissant liberal arts college? Ok, got it "small private liberal arts college". Just put that in parentheses the first time and we're good. I'll play the quordle daily for my letter fun.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @ganderson

  71. This guy is nervy enough just to dare run against an astronaut and husband of a gun violence victim.

    • Replies: @J.Ross
    @International Jew

    You mean a shameless grifter who made atmospherically beyond literally every signal of treason and shamelessly surfed on the bodies of victims. Kelly wasn't elected from his own successes or claims: the woman he replaced allowed herself to become massively unpopular. Like Kelly is now.

    Replies: @International Jew

  72. @Achmed E. Newman
    @Cutter

    I thought those were the same thing, with just a difference in dress code.

    Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Cutter, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Ralph L

    Mr. R.G. Camara covered it. Turning tricks is an old profession.

  73. @Macumazahn
    When they're boasting about, and reveling in, their precious diversity - why, that's the perfect time to bring up their total incompetence.
    BTW how's that mission to put an astronette on the Moon going? Now that we've engaged our greatest strength, a return to the Moon must surely be a trivial task.

    Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Je Suis Omar Mateen

    BTW how’s that mission to put an astronette on the Moon going?

    About as well as yesterday’s big SLS launch which had KH on hand (so to speak), but it turns out NASA never did a complete fueling test beforehand, so it got scrubbed at T-29.

    “I am very proud of this launch team,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a briefing after the scrub.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/warning-sign-nasa-never-finished-a-fueling-test-before-todays-sls-launch-attempt/

    • Thanks: Old Prude
    • Replies: @Old Prude
    @Jim Don Bob

    Thanks for the link JDB. Very intersting and informative. Four failed wet-tests and they decided to go live? It seems the NASA suits knew things were risky, but decided to take a chance with the tax-payers' rocket because there were no astronauts on board.

  74. @The Problem with Midway
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I believe that Sailer has supported affirmative action for police, and police only, on the grounds that most of a cop's job is keeping the diversity under control, which is probably easier when you've got some POCs in uniform. He has specifically opposed AA for firemen, for example.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @jsm

    Steve has said, for Affirmative Action, what we oughta do is give Blacks the monopoly on marijuana stores.

  75. @Altai
    Much like Steve's previous article about this in the State Department, is there any evidence that the 'competent' appointees were doing a good job? Decades of junk economics and decades of a neocon agenda have meant that they may have been run by competent people but their agenda and purpose has been disastrous.

    I say let their cliques wither, it's the only way out.

    Replies: @Greta Handel, @Cloudbuster, @International Jew, @Erik L, @James J. O'Meara, @AnotherDad

    Besides fiddling with interest rates and the money supply, the Fed also plays a big role in bank regulation. So these AA hires can do a fair bit of damage if they manage to spread the curse of DIE through credit policy and hiring at the banks.

    • Replies: @Anonymous
    @International Jew

    Like they already do with 'ol Larry Fink?

  76. The obvious problem with Master’s joke is that the economy is, in fact, doing very well. At the moment the US economy is outperforming Europe and China by a wide margin. Even anecdotally, at least in New England – everyone seems to be spending money like it’s going out of style, construction is booming, employers can’t find enough workers to keep pace, wages are up, inflation has stalled out. Running on “economic struggles” in 2022 seems like a very stupid tactic.

    The fact that Trump’s immigration restrictions have indeed helped boost wages and reduce unemployment might be something Republicans want to mention. Instead everyone in the GOP takes the side of management and just whines about how “no one wants to work anymore”. God forbid a white working man might earn a living wage. The GOP is going to remove immigration restrictions as soon as they can, although no doubt it will be the “guest worker” version.

    • Agree: Bugg
    • Replies: @J.Ross
    @Peter Akuleyev

    The obvious problem with Master’s joke is that the economy is, in fact, doing very well.

    President Biden, your economy has all the popularity of a runaway steam train. How do you explain your three-eyed fish?

    , @YetAnotherAnon
    @Peter Akuleyev

    "At the moment the US economy is outperforming Europe and China by a wide margin."

    Outperforming Europe, yes, because Europe has decided (at the State Department's behest) to commit economic suicide in case Russia kills them, despite the fact Russia was perfectly happy selling them cheap energy.

    As that professor said, it's the third time in the last century that Germany has been utterly defeated by the US.

    It's going to be interesting when Merkel's Millions get laid off.

    China, not so much. Don't confuse what's happening on the markets with the real world. US male wages are at 1973 levels.

    "The trade deficit in the US narrowed by $5.3 billion to a six-month low of $79.6 billion in June 2022, compared to market forecasts of $80.1 billion."

    "China's trade surplus unexpectedly surged to a fresh record peak of USD 101.26 billion in July 2022 from USD 55.89 billion in the same month a year earlier, far above market forecasts of USD 90 billion, mainly boosted by a jump in exports."

    https://tradingeconomics.com/

    Replies: @Anonymous

    , @AnotherDad
    @Peter Akuleyev


    The obvious problem with Master’s joke is that the economy is, in fact, doing very well. At the moment the US economy is outperforming Europe and China by a wide margin. Even anecdotally, at least in New England – everyone seems to be spending money like it’s going out of style, construction is booming, employers can’t find enough workers to keep pace, wages are up, inflation has stalled out.
     
    I think you have a point--sort of a half-point. Because of all the money printing and the end of the pandemic looniness (obviously the Fauci is still out there and will be probably until we learn how to knock out all corona viruses) the economy is still chugging along.

    However, inflation has not "stalled out" by any means. It simply isn't running as hot as earlier in the year. The energy price pressure right after Putin's invasion has eased up--Russia is selling elsewhere, oil is fungible and gets shifted around, production is up. And China's winter Fauci stupidity has--I think--eased somewhat. (I really don't understand what's going on there.)

    What you're really describing with your "spending money hand over fist" is an inflation boom. People have $$$ from all the money printing, and people know that inflation is making the dollar worth less. And the pandemic response held things back for two years. So what are people doing ... spending. It is not illogical.
  77. OT
    shouldn’t we be getting back to my movie references
    even if you’ve had about enough of movie references
    what do you get when you call police officers murderers
    YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE

    The makers of a dramatic Apple TV+ thriller starring Natalie Portman were forced to suspend filming in Baltimore after local drug dealers threatened to shoot up the set unless they were paid \$50,000, according to reports.

    The Baltimore Police Department said residents of the area warned producers filming “Lady in the Lake” that they would “come back later this evening [and] shoot someone” if they continued their work on the 200 block of Park Avenue in the Bromo Arts District.

    https://nypost.com/2022/08/29/natalie-portmans-lady-in-the-lake-stops-baltimore-filming-after-shooting-threats/amp/

    • Replies: @kaganovitch
    @J.Ross

    Dude, I was on that yesterday and you left out the best part!
    https://www.unz.com/isteve/breaking-news-president-biden-reveals-that-emmett-till-is-dead/#comment-5517539

  78. @Anonymous
    @Mike_from_SGV

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It's his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @AKAHorace, @Harry Baldwin, @Anon, @ChrisZ, @Buzz Mohawk, @James J. O'Meara, @Ed

    Masters is still pretty young, and his looks reflect it. Give him time to become a craggy Heston type in a few years.

    Whatever his appearance, though, his unapologetic response to “critics” is a good look.

  79. @Peter Akuleyev
    The obvious problem with Master's joke is that the economy is, in fact, doing very well. At the moment the US economy is outperforming Europe and China by a wide margin. Even anecdotally, at least in New England - everyone seems to be spending money like it's going out of style, construction is booming, employers can't find enough workers to keep pace, wages are up, inflation has stalled out. Running on "economic struggles" in 2022 seems like a very stupid tactic.

    The fact that Trump's immigration restrictions have indeed helped boost wages and reduce unemployment might be something Republicans want to mention. Instead everyone in the GOP takes the side of management and just whines about how "no one wants to work anymore". God forbid a white working man might earn a living wage. The GOP is going to remove immigration restrictions as soon as they can, although no doubt it will be the "guest worker" version.

    Replies: @J.Ross, @YetAnotherAnon, @AnotherDad

    The obvious problem with Master’s joke is that the economy is, in fact, doing very well.

    President Biden, your economy has all the popularity of a runaway steam train. How do you explain your three-eyed fish?

  80. @Anonymous
    Meanwhile, lack of police interest in local feral negroes has forced Hollywood to be officially regarded as a dangerous, third world shithole.

    Stay away from Hollywood & Highland, if you want to live…

    https://urbanhollywood411.com/hollywood-walk-of-fame-shut-down-after-deadly-shooting/

    Replies: @Ganderson, @Jim Don Bob, @ForeverCARealist

    And in Charm City:

    An Apple TV+ series filming in Baltimore stopped production Friday after several people threatened the producers and tried to extort money from them, Baltimore police said.

    A spokesperson for the Baltimore Police Department said the crew was filming around 4 PM in the downtown area when the producers were approached by several people. The group claimed if they didn�t stop filming they would come back and shoot someone, police said.

    However, they said no violence would occur if they were paid an unspecified amount. Producers decided to halt filming and seek a new location. Local news outlet The Baltimore Banner reported that drug dealers attempted to extort \$50,000 from the production, which producers declined to pay.

    https://deadline.com/2022/08/lady-in-the-lake-apple-plus-series-forced-to-halt-production-after-extortion-threats-from-baltimore-locals-1235101762/

    • Replies: @Fungus Among Us
    @Jim Don Bob


    Baltimore Banner reported that drug dealers attempted
     
    "drug dealers" is Wokian for "black kids who've done something I disapprove of." If a white person shoots one, they're called "honor students" Or, if that's too ludicrous for even a Wokester, "aspiring rapper"
  81. Hope the rocket smaahes up

    • Replies: @Joe Stalin
    @Eddie the swarthy rat cellar


    Hope the rocket smaahes up
     
    It's rocket engines are used stuff from the defunct old Space Shuttles.

    The core stage uses four RS-25D engines, all of which have previously flown on Space Shuttle missions.
     
  82. @International Jew
    This guy is nervy enough just to dare run against an astronaut and husband of a gun violence victim.

    Replies: @J.Ross

    You mean a shameless grifter who made atmospherically beyond literally every signal of treason and shamelessly surfed on the bodies of victims. Kelly wasn’t elected from his own successes or claims: the woman he replaced allowed herself to become massively unpopular. Like Kelly is now.

    • Replies: @International Jew
    @J.Ross

    Come on man... That was a joke.

    Replies: @J.Ross

  83. @Anonymous
    @Mike_from_SGV

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It's his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @AKAHorace, @Harry Baldwin, @Anon, @ChrisZ, @Buzz Mohawk, @James J. O'Meara, @Ed

    That’s funny. My thought was that he looks like my old high school friend who is now the dean of a business school. That friend climbed mountains with me and was no geek.

    Remember, Masters’s whole point is not to select people based on what they look like.

  84. @Achmed E. Newman
    @Cutter

    I thought those were the same thing, with just a difference in dress code.

    Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Cutter, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Ralph L

    It gets weirder: Kamala can’t dress. Not at all. Off-the-rack crap from Macy’s. And when the photographer came by to “stage” her, she probably got mad and told him to keep moving.

    Of course, part of her problem is a thick, Desi waist and stick legs from her mom’s side. Still, a good tailor could do something.

    • Replies: @anon
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    Once they're beyond first term congressman, none of them dress themselves (unless that's part of their schtick, like Bernie Sanders).

    She has consultants, and has had them for years. Perhaps she doesn't want to offend poor women by wearing designer clothes. Maybe she's hoping some dumb male political opponent makes fun of her appearance (that makes her into a victim and brings in female supporters like moth to flame).

    The other issue there is she's having to pose straight on. There's a reason women do the 45 degree tilt pose, when given the choice.

    Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic

    , @epebble
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    But she stands out better than other women in that picture. So, on Relative Grading, she gets an A

    Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @The Anti-Gnostic

  85. @Anonymous
    Meanwhile, lack of police interest in local feral negroes has forced Hollywood to be officially regarded as a dangerous, third world shithole.

    Stay away from Hollywood & Highland, if you want to live…

    https://urbanhollywood411.com/hollywood-walk-of-fame-shut-down-after-deadly-shooting/

    Replies: @Ganderson, @Jim Don Bob, @ForeverCARealist

    My kid was just there. Said it was a total dump and felt unsafe. She and her friends left quickly.

    You’d think these stupid liberals would keep something iconic like that looking nice, but then, they’ve somehow managed to make entire beautiful cities complete wrecks.

    • Agree: bomag
  86. @Patrick in SC

    ...which was widely condemned,...
     
    Not just condemned. But widely condemned. So get your thinking right, people. Or else.

    It wasn't just 38 people on Twitter; it may have been 138.

    Replies: @John Milton’s Ghost

    Bots are people too!

    • LOL: Bardon Kaldian
  87. @Harry Baldwin
    @Anonymous

    I recall a lot of leftists mocking the appearance of Kyle Rittenhouse, too--chubby, baby-faced, etc. There are a lot of heroes who don't look like the types central casting would send over.

    Replies: @Buzz Mohawk

    Meanwhile, leftists are so good-looking…

    https://www.unz.com/article/why-are-woke-leftists-so-ugly/

  88. @Mr. Anon

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek.
     
    Masters is Peter Thiel's man. So is J.D. Vance. That might be better than being George Soros's man or Peter Singer's man or Charles Koch's man.

    But keep in mind - he has a backer. He is not entirely his own man.

    This whole MAGA think might just be a case of exchanging one set of billionaire puppet-masters for another.

    Replies: @Danindc, @bomag, @Giant Duck, @SunBakedSuburb, @Rob, @Autistocrates

    He seems to be the preferred candidate of billionaires. Or at least, different billionaires than the ones we usually hear about:

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2022/06/30/winklevoss-twins-team-up-with-peter-thiel-to-support-arizona-senate-candidate-blake-masters/?sh=24df96814635

  89. @Peter Akuleyev
    The obvious problem with Master's joke is that the economy is, in fact, doing very well. At the moment the US economy is outperforming Europe and China by a wide margin. Even anecdotally, at least in New England - everyone seems to be spending money like it's going out of style, construction is booming, employers can't find enough workers to keep pace, wages are up, inflation has stalled out. Running on "economic struggles" in 2022 seems like a very stupid tactic.

    The fact that Trump's immigration restrictions have indeed helped boost wages and reduce unemployment might be something Republicans want to mention. Instead everyone in the GOP takes the side of management and just whines about how "no one wants to work anymore". God forbid a white working man might earn a living wage. The GOP is going to remove immigration restrictions as soon as they can, although no doubt it will be the "guest worker" version.

    Replies: @J.Ross, @YetAnotherAnon, @AnotherDad

    “At the moment the US economy is outperforming Europe and China by a wide margin.”

    Outperforming Europe, yes, because Europe has decided (at the State Department’s behest) to commit economic suicide in case Russia kills them, despite the fact Russia was perfectly happy selling them cheap energy.

    As that professor said, it’s the third time in the last century that Germany has been utterly defeated by the US.

    It’s going to be interesting when Merkel’s Millions get laid off.

    China, not so much. Don’t confuse what’s happening on the markets with the real world. US male wages are at 1973 levels.

    “The trade deficit in the US narrowed by \$5.3 billion to a six-month low of \$79.6 billion in June 2022, compared to market forecasts of \$80.1 billion.”

    “China’s trade surplus unexpectedly surged to a fresh record peak of USD 101.26 billion in July 2022 from USD 55.89 billion in the same month a year earlier, far above market forecasts of USD 90 billion, mainly boosted by a jump in exports.”

    https://tradingeconomics.com/

    • Replies: @Anonymous
    @YetAnotherAnon


    China, not so much. Don’t confuse what’s happening on the markets with the real world. US male wages are at 1973 levels.
     
    Are 1973 levels good or bad?
  90. OT, but applicable to a “diversity” thread:

    It has now been two and a half weeks since Salman Rushdie was nearly killed at an anodyne panel discussion, in front of an audience of the great and good.

    Has there been even one word of follow-up since then? How is he doing? Did he really lose an eye?

    What about the would-be killer? Any police-blotter news about his arraignment or pending trial? (This is assuming the crime venue is not a Soros-DA jurisdiction.)

    It looks like the news is observing radio silence about the episode that was so “shocking” two weeks ago.

    I get it, of course (like everyone else here): the attacker is a Muslim, who shouldn’t be in this country to begin with; who’s nursing a foreign-born grudge from before he was born. He unhelpfully used a knife in the crime, so there’s no gun control angle to exploit.

    Add it all up and it’s a non-event—something like the massacre by “Paddock” in Las Vegas, which is going on five years now without any new developments. Whenever a potential narrative collapse threatens, the culture just goes mute—like a child who develops an hysterical inability to speak after witnessing something traumatic.

    Still, it’s a powerful force, and getting more potent. In Vegas, the victims were 50-plus “nobodies” in the eyes of the press, so the crime against them was easy to ignore, and forget. But Rushdie is a Somebody (TM) who does book panels at NY resorts and played himself on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”; you’d think it’d be harder to erase him. Indeed, the Ayatollahs couldn’t do it for 40 years; but it only took the American press 18 days.

    • Replies: @Veteran Aryan
    @ChrisZ


    Add it all up and it’s a non-event—something like the massacre by “Paddock” in Las Vegas, which is going on five years now without any new developments.
     
    Remember when Tucker Carlson vowed he wouldn't let the matter be dropped? I stopped watching after the last election, so I don't know if he's kept this vow.
    , @bomag
    @ChrisZ

    Reflects what we discuss here: gotta be a suffering Black, real or imagined, for the press to follow.

  91. @Mike_from_SGV
    After the reaction to his first tweet, he didn't grovel, but doubled down. So rare. Time to stop groveling. I like this guy.

    Replies: @Anonymous, @Polistra, @SFG, @Bugg, @AnotherDad, @Fungus Among Us

    I like him too, but isn’t he 8 points behind in the polls?

    His real value may be in making the idea of AA repeal acceptable. Maybe DeSantis or, heck, Haley or Pence can take it up.

    • Replies: @DCThrowback
    @SFG

    He's going to win.

    , @Alec Leamas (working from home)
    @SFG


    I like him too, but isn’t he 8 points behind in the polls?
     
    I think you need to understand that polling isn't a good-faith effort to account for the political preferences of the electorate anymore than the Press is an oppositional organ for truth telling or the academy is about educating youth and teaching them to reason for themselves.

    The point of showing Oz, Masters, Vance, etc. down by near double digits is to influence people to flock to the putative winner and to increase the fundraising of the formers' opponents.

    Replies: @Hypnotoad666

  92. @SFG
    @JR Ewing

    A lot of bright people buy into liberalism and, now, leftism. It’s taught at the hardest schools to get into. Sadly, conservatism doesn’t get a majority of the brightest people (and that’s been the way for a while-remember Buckley’s joke about the Boston phone book). Richard Hanania has talked about this.

    No, I’m not arguing for leftism-I’m saying intellectual fads can sucker in a lot of bright people, largely because making people around you like you is more important than being right most of the time. Especially if you are working in some planning office and people who deal with real life can clean up your mistakes.

    Replies: @JR Ewing, @Ganderson, @martin_2, @Ian Smith

    They can’t be that bright if they really believe that all the races of man have the same average level of intelligence.

    • Replies: @Alec Leamas (working from home)
    @martin_2


    They can’t be that bright if they really believe that all the races of man have the same average level of intelligence.
     
    Actually, they're bright enough to have amassed sufficient power to compel nearly everyone else to say it regardless of whether they believe it or not.

    As we speak the leaders of the right political movement are trying to use FACTS! and LOGIC! to convince people that women are female humans with XX chromosomes and female anatomy and failing at it while the opposite is being written into law.

    Unfortunately the United States' political culture only resembled a debating society while the poles of American politics were close together by virtue of a shared culture, history, and somewhat standardized religious beliefs where Buckley and Vidal cattily scratching at one another on National television was possible. Now the analogy would be Buckley smugly intoning some free market libertarian principle in his affected manner of speech before getting smashed in the face with a club and carted off to a secret place for reeducation.
  93. @PhysicistDave
    @Dream

    Dream wrote:


    Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people – POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.
     
    I don't understand why the GOP does not takes as its slogan something along the lines of: "The Republican Party-- the party that cares about the people who make America work."

    It has the virtue of basically being true: the GOP is now the party of the farmers, the truck drivers, the construction workers, the airplane mechanics, the small businessmen, etc.

    Perhaps the answer is simply that the people who run the GOP -- Turtle McConnell, Mitt Romney, the "donor class," etc. -- really rather dislike the people who make America work and would rather lose elections than appeal to such people.

    Replies: @ThreeCranes, @Bardon Kaldian, @Bill, @Dave from Oz

    “The Republican Party– the party that cares about the people who make America work.”

    Because that would be quickly decoded as “white”. Perhaps not 100%, but 95%+

  94. @Cloudbuster
    @The Germ Theory of Disease

    Wait. Yes is still around?

    Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease

    “Wait. Yes is still around?”

    Yes is ALWAYS around my friend. Just like the Clash and the Ramones.

    In and around the lake,
    Mountains come out of the sky
    And they stand there….

    • Agree: duncsbaby
    • Replies: @Reg Cæsar
    @The Germ Theory of Disease


    Yes is ALWAYS around my friend. Just like the Clash and the Ramones.
     
    None of the Ramones are still around. Although a late-1970s phenomenon, they beat almost all the 1960s and even 1950s groups at shuffling off the coil. The Kingston Trio (Punahou's most illustrious graduates) are all gone now, too. Barry Gibb, Joey Molland, Micky Dolenz, Dave Clark and Lenny Davidson, and, of course, Paul and Ringo are carrying on the memory of their groups.

    Happily, all the Rascals are still with us.

    A certain Kiwi may not be for too long, though:

    Lorde takes a dip in the Potomac River

    Replies: @Mark G.

  95. The lesbian regional Fed chief out in San Francisco wants us to know that she’s no longer “feeling the pain from inflation.” Of course life is pain-free when you can front-run your own jawboning

    • Agree: Achmed E. Newman
  96. anon[276] • Disclaimer says:
    @The Anti-Gnostic
    @Achmed E. Newman

    It gets weirder: Kamala can't dress. Not at all. Off-the-rack crap from Macy's. And when the photographer came by to "stage" her, she probably got mad and told him to keep moving.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Joe_Biden#/media/File:P20210720AS-3425-2_(51417135942)_(cropped).jpg

    Of course, part of her problem is a thick, Desi waist and stick legs from her mom's side. Still, a good tailor could do something.

    Replies: @anon, @epebble

    Once they’re beyond first term congressman, none of them dress themselves (unless that’s part of their schtick, like Bernie Sanders).

    She has consultants, and has had them for years. Perhaps she doesn’t want to offend poor women by wearing designer clothes. Maybe she’s hoping some dumb male political opponent makes fun of her appearance (that makes her into a victim and brings in female supporters like moth to flame).

    The other issue there is she’s having to pose straight on. There’s a reason women do the 45 degree tilt pose, when given the choice.

    • Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic
    @anon

    Surely she was given the choice.

    My guess is she really thinks she is sexsay. After all, Willie Brown--Willie Brown!--did her before passing her off to good old whats-his-name.

  97. @Altai
    Much like Steve's previous article about this in the State Department, is there any evidence that the 'competent' appointees were doing a good job? Decades of junk economics and decades of a neocon agenda have meant that they may have been run by competent people but their agenda and purpose has been disastrous.

    I say let their cliques wither, it's the only way out.

    Replies: @Greta Handel, @Cloudbuster, @International Jew, @Erik L, @James J. O'Meara, @AnotherDad

    We had several decades of low inflation and low unemployment. Those are the functions the Fed is supposed to maximize so one could argue that they did a good job on average. The economy might not be to your personal taste but those two items are difficult to argue with.

    • LOL: Achmed E. Newman
    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @Erik L

    Sorry, Erik, that was my first sarcastic LOL in a long time (never liked them). I apologize, but let me explain. If you believe the US Gov't BLS numbers on both these economic measures, I'm afraid that they've been fooling you. Shadow Stats has kept up with the real, much higher numbers.

    Peak Stupidity (you're looking at 'em) has a topic key Inflation with lots of examples of massive price changes over the last 2 decades, sometimes nearly 3 decades.

    I ran into another example just the other day - incandescent light bulbs may be a weird one, because they are not as in demand, but they are still sold. I got the 1,000 hr lifetime ones for $0.25 each 12 years back (to stock up - still got some). The same brand, GE I think or Sylvania, are 2 bucks each.

    Yeah, that's just one example, I know. How about roofing shingles, lumber, auto batteries, AAA/AA/C/D cell batteries, utility bills, insurance, standard and easy to compare food items like Campbell Soup, etc? We're all over this, and each time I do a calculation, incl. compounding, over 2-3 decades, I get 4-5% (occasionally only 3%, sometimes 5 and higher).

    4-5% doesn't sound terrible. It's not a good feeling to lose half of the savings you obtained through your life of labor in 14 1/3 or 17 1/2 years, respectively.

    SOUND MONEY OR BUST! As soon as American has sound money, I promise to stop commenting on this topic.

    Replies: @kaganovitch

    , @AnotherDad
    @Erik L


    We had several decades of low inflation and low unemployment. Those are the functions the Fed is supposed to maximize so one could argue that they did a good job on average. The economy might not be to your personal taste but those two items are difficult to argue with.
     
    A few huge factors:
    -- the rise of China as an efficient manufacturing center (and net saver)
    -- Moore's Law, technology products radically improving in perf/price; (note: there is always some goodness for any new technology as production scales up and the technology improves, but this was unprecedented)
    -- fracking--and end of the Soviet Union--keeping a lid on energy prices
    -- the Internet--and huge unprecedented efficiency of communications
    -- a historically best educated American generation running through its productive prime

    And yet with these huge tailwinds ... we the tech bubble/pop, the housing bubble/pop, massive money printing during the Great Recession and on then into overdrive during the Faucidemic.

    And ... through this unprecedented trade deficits and importation of capital--basically selling off American assets--companies, stocks, farmland, even residential real estate--to foreigners.

    It was actually epic mismanagement of America. Basically, only to the middle men types grabbing their cut with their grubby little paws and not giving a shit about the nation's future could this process be considered a "good job".

    If I sell your house out from under you. I can do a "good job" helping you throw a hell of a party. But ... morning will come.




  98. (In contrast to Cook, Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson struck me as probably at least at the judicial equivalent of the Mendoza Line in baseball — call it the Sotomayor Line).

    I think the issue with Sotomayor’s lower mental acuity relative to the Ginsburgs and Breyers of the Court’s left flank is that Sotomayor is less able to convincingly pettifog around the fact that the post-Warren Court’s Living Constitutionalism isn’t law and is really just the imposition of the opinions of the ruling classes by fiat. Breyer could write a bunch of opaque nonsense about why the Third Amendment means that we all have to hop on one leg for six minutes on Tuesdays, but he knows he’s spinning a spell that the ruling classes have to repeat to maintain the facade of Court legitimacy.

    Sotomayor, by contrast, is silly enough to quote Tennessee Coates in an opinion.

  99. @SFG
    @Mike_from_SGV

    I like him too, but isn’t he 8 points behind in the polls?

    His real value may be in making the idea of AA repeal acceptable. Maybe DeSantis or, heck, Haley or Pence can take it up.

    Replies: @DCThrowback, @Alec Leamas (working from home)

    He’s going to win.

  100. @martin_2
    @SFG

    They can't be that bright if they really believe that all the races of man have the same average level of intelligence.

    Replies: @Alec Leamas (working from home)

    They can’t be that bright if they really believe that all the races of man have the same average level of intelligence.

    Actually, they’re bright enough to have amassed sufficient power to compel nearly everyone else to say it regardless of whether they believe it or not.

    As we speak the leaders of the right political movement are trying to use FACTS! and LOGIC! to convince people that women are female humans with XX chromosomes and female anatomy and failing at it while the opposite is being written into law.

    Unfortunately the United States’ political culture only resembled a debating society while the poles of American politics were close together by virtue of a shared culture, history, and somewhat standardized religious beliefs where Buckley and Vidal cattily scratching at one another on National television was possible. Now the analogy would be Buckley smugly intoning some free market libertarian principle in his affected manner of speech before getting smashed in the face with a club and carted off to a secret place for reeducation.

    • Thanks: Achmed E. Newman
  101. @Redneck farmer
    The diversity the Federal Reserve needs is having people who aren't economists, but produce goods and services outside of finance.

    Replies: @epebble

    Actually, it takes tremendous talent to convince billions of people for years on end that pieces of paper you create (or bits on your computer) are equal in value to goods and services they produce. If you think about it, it is the greatest miracle or magic.

    • Replies: @Muggles
    @epebble


    Actually, it takes tremendous talent to convince billions of people for years on end that pieces of paper you create (or bits on your computer) are equal in value to goods and services they produce. If you think about it, it is the greatest miracle or magic.
     
    Re: the Fed creating fiat "money" out of thin air.

    Yes, valid point.

    However, two points:

    1. At least the Fed's fiats don't take trillions of kilowatts of scarce energy to become imaginary money, like say, crypto currencies. That's the Tulip Craze version of fiats.

    2. Fed fiats are "money" because the State says so. On all of its actual paper currency. "Good for all debts, public or private." So its main virtue is that the State will take its own fiats for its mandatory extortion payments. And you have to take it too (Gold Clauses no longer work).

    In all past regimes, the rulers had to specify what your taxes could be paid with. Eventually livestock and grain became too cumbersome. Gold and silver more convenient. FDR and the enormous size of the USA and its economic dominance post WWI, was able to eliminate Gold. Nixon finally killed off metals internationally, though every international bank wants to know how much physical Gold/Silver your country has stuffed away safely from El Supremo and his pals.

    Where I grew up decades ago, silver dollars circulated freely. That is money. The rest is blind faith that someone will take you "money" on faith, or sticks a gun in your face if you don't use it.

    Replies: @AnotherDad, @epebble

  102. @SFG
    @Mike_from_SGV

    I like him too, but isn’t he 8 points behind in the polls?

    His real value may be in making the idea of AA repeal acceptable. Maybe DeSantis or, heck, Haley or Pence can take it up.

    Replies: @DCThrowback, @Alec Leamas (working from home)

    I like him too, but isn’t he 8 points behind in the polls?

    I think you need to understand that polling isn’t a good-faith effort to account for the political preferences of the electorate anymore than the Press is an oppositional organ for truth telling or the academy is about educating youth and teaching them to reason for themselves.

    The point of showing Oz, Masters, Vance, etc. down by near double digits is to influence people to flock to the putative winner and to increase the fundraising of the formers’ opponents.

    • Agree: Hypnotoad666
    • Replies: @Hypnotoad666
    @Alec Leamas (working from home)


    The point of showing Oz, Masters, Vance, etc. down by near double digits is to influence people to flock to the putative winner and to increase the fundraising of the formers’ opponents.
     
    The same is true as to the alleged resurgence of Team Blue in advance of the midterms.
  103. @The Anti-Gnostic
    @Achmed E. Newman

    It gets weirder: Kamala can't dress. Not at all. Off-the-rack crap from Macy's. And when the photographer came by to "stage" her, she probably got mad and told him to keep moving.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Joe_Biden#/media/File:P20210720AS-3425-2_(51417135942)_(cropped).jpg

    Of course, part of her problem is a thick, Desi waist and stick legs from her mom's side. Still, a good tailor could do something.

    Replies: @anon, @epebble

    But she stands out better than other women in that picture. So, on Relative Grading, she gets an A

    • Replies: @Jim Don Bob
    @epebble

    I have never seen a picture of KH that makes me think, "Yeah, that looks like fun!" She's a solid 5 even dressed up. Of course Willie Brown was legally blind so maybe she had some other, uh, attractive qualities.

    , @The Anti-Gnostic
    @epebble

    Sure, because she's wearing a powder blue pantsuit fresh from Belk's in the center of the picture. She's a goofball who needs to be teaching the 1L research & writing course somewhere.

  104. @Fluesterwitz
    @PhysicistDave


    There — I’ve fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!
     
    Sure, but for the NYT, your version is not fit to print.

    Replies: @Dr. DoomNGloom

    There — I’ve fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    Sure, but for the NYT, your version is not fit to print.

    The motto should be “All the news that *fits*, we print”

  105. I wish this guy luck in making the direct connection between DIE and affirmative action, but it’s going to take a lot more people publicly referring to it in these terms. Language choice matters a lot, and the right should not allow people to get away with the anodyne “diversity” term and instead force them to admit it’s affirmative action.

    • Replies: @SFG
    @Arclight

    Agreed. Let’s hope he starts a trend!

    , @Meretricious
    @Arclight

    Talking about Negroes always involves "Euphemism Management"

    Replies: @Arclight

  106. My primary objection to normalizing gay marriage is that pressure on policy that supports the heteronormative nuclear family. Using the notion that this ideal cannot always be achieved is a helluva way to make sure the environment assures less success by undermining the social support.

    • Agree: JR Ewing
  107. @Arclight
    I wish this guy luck in making the direct connection between DIE and affirmative action, but it's going to take a lot more people publicly referring to it in these terms. Language choice matters a lot, and the right should not allow people to get away with the anodyne "diversity" term and instead force them to admit it's affirmative action.

    Replies: @SFG, @Meretricious

    Agreed. Let’s hope he starts a trend!

  108. @Henry's Cat
    @Mike Tre

    Can we agree that Maggie Astor is eating well?

    Replies: @puttheforkdown

    No, but we can agree something is wrong with her face. If she had been pretty, she would never have written a single leftist word in her lifetime – alternate universe Maggie would be too busy enjoying the male gaze. Alas.

  109. @Mike_from_SGV
    After the reaction to his first tweet, he didn't grovel, but doubled down. So rare. Time to stop groveling. I like this guy.

    Replies: @Anonymous, @Polistra, @SFG, @Bugg, @AnotherDad, @Fungus Among Us

  110. @Anon
    @Some Guy


    we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t

     

    But what does the R stand for? Rubens? Rube? Rungusman? Cash money pimpmasteR? "Just R"?

    Replies: @HFR, @Legba, @Meretricious, @Inquiring Mind

    Maybe R stands for Rumplestiltskin.

  111. @JR Ewing
    OT (or back to an old one):

    Big news in Houston this morning that they've found not one, but TWO cases of Monkeypox HMPXv in students in two local high schools on opposite sides of town, one a charter school and one a public high school in a fairly affluent suburb near me.

    I'm going to guess that these are both students who - as they say - are men who have sex with men, or probably more accurately, boys who have sex with men, but that's entirely an educated guess.

    Used to be, gays used "repression" from their early years to eventually decide to run off to San Francisco or New York to find themselves and be free to enter the gay pathogen train. Now our enlightened education system encourages them to just go ahead and get it over with in high school.

    Replies: @Bugg

    Rumors abound that man about town in Texas, Beto O’Rourke, has contracted the dreaded monkeypox. Awaiting the convoluted nonsense explanation that does not involve attending a gay orgy.

    • Replies: @Jim Don Bob
    @Bugg

    One post said he is on intravenous antibiotics which is pretty serious. He's an asshole poseur but I don't wish that on anyone.

  112. @Anon
    @Some Guy


    we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t

     

    But what does the R stand for? Rubens? Rube? Rungusman? Cash money pimpmasteR? "Just R"?

    Replies: @HFR, @Legba, @Meretricious, @Inquiring Mind

    Retard

  113. @Achmed E. Newman
    @Mike Tre

    I agree in general, Mike, but not in this case. This AA case probably is trying to do whatever worthless job she is in the FED to do - write papers on economics and help control the rates? Ha! As I wrote, it's useless - you could have Issac Newton in there discovering new theorems of Calculus, but the American financial system would still be doomed.

    That said, yes, Mr. Sailer likes to be polite. I don't, for people that are part of the destruction of American society. He still agrees with Affirmative Action, as far as I know. WTH??

    Replies: @The Problem with Midway, @Mike Tre

    I’m ok with polite. One can be polite without making false character assessments.

  114. @G. Poulin
    @Reg Cæsar

    Her boss is more qualified on paper, but only on paper. He's been a big shot in government for long time, but he's been a complete idiot the entire time and everyone knows it. And now he's a senile idiot as well. Pretty sad that the Veep is now the more competent of the two, simply because she can get up off her back and stand upright unassisted when she wants to.

    Replies: @Meretricious, @Reg Cæsar

    All you need to know about the politico/social parasite Joe Biden is that he was caught plagiarizing at a 3d-tier law school from which he graduated at the bottom of his class. He’s Jacoby & Meyers material

    • Replies: @JR Ewing
    @Meretricious

    The thing that got me two years ago was how the plagiarism stuff was never mentioned by the MSM. Not once that I can remember. It really wasn't an issue in 2008, either, when Obama picked him for veep.

    I remember being in junior high back in the 80's when it came out the first time and it was a huge scandal and he got run out of the race in a very inglorious way. Now it's just like, "SHRUG! BETTER THAN BAD ORANGE MAN!"

  115. @Arclight
    I wish this guy luck in making the direct connection between DIE and affirmative action, but it's going to take a lot more people publicly referring to it in these terms. Language choice matters a lot, and the right should not allow people to get away with the anodyne "diversity" term and instead force them to admit it's affirmative action.

    Replies: @SFG, @Meretricious

    Talking about Negroes always involves “Euphemism Management”

    • Replies: @Arclight
    @Meretricious

    True - the public engagement editor of our Gannett-owned local trash paper had a piece today talking about how too many 'youth' are being shot and/or killed for no good reason. Some of her points are actually reasonable, but there is absolutely no acknowledgement of the demographics of the victims in her piece or any of the news articles about them, although when names are released it's pretty obvious. Our insanely dumb culture feels the need to meticulously track and point out racial stats for all sorts of things unless it reflects poorly on sainted groups, in which they are suddenly rendered colorblind.

  116. @Anon
    @Some Guy


    we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t

     

    But what does the R stand for? Rubens? Rube? Rungusman? Cash money pimpmasteR? "Just R"?

    Replies: @HFR, @Legba, @Meretricious, @Inquiring Mind

    Robinette–there’s a very good article about Biden’s family, here:

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/the-untold-history-of-the-biden-family

  117. @Bardon Kaldian
    @Papinian

    I haven't thought of it, but- since Kissinger is Jewish, it could be that he already is 100 years old, just he is not aware of it (lunar calendar) ....

    Replies: @kaganovitch

    I haven’t thought of it, but- since Kissinger is Jewish, it could be that he already is 100 years old, just he is not aware of it (lunar calendar) ….

    Nah, lunar calendar doesn’t work that way. It is reconciled with solar calendar by dint of seven leap months in a 19 year cycle. Thus years of age , depending on where you are in leap cycle, are never discrepant by more than a month or so.

    • Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
    @kaganovitch

    You're probably right. I guess it's the same with Islamic calendar.

    So, after all, Heinz is not a centenarian- yet.

    Replies: @kaganovitch

  118. @Ganderson
    @SFG

    I’ve made versions of this comment before: I live in a college town- 3 SPLACS, a dying hippie college and a BSU. My wife and I (she’s and old fashioned Democrat, which at the SPLAC she worked at for 20 years made her practically Hitler) are the dumbest people on our block; we’re the only adults without terminal degrees, indeed, neither of us have even a Masters. (And yes, to understate it, I’m way less impressed with a PhD than I was when we moved to town 30 some years ago)

    Yet all the smarties in town bought in to the Corona panic big time- masking, closing the campuses (campi?) testing, testing, testing, etc. In fact they still are going nuts - all the high schools around here are opening school with a mask requirement, as are all three SPLACS and the hippie college. Only the BSU is mask free.

    Our town council is seriously discussing reparations for BIPOCS, not sure who will qualify, I know having a grandmother who left Sweden penniless in 1893, and worked at a bunch of medial jobs won’t qualify me , not that it should). Meanwhile there’s been a hole in my street for more than a year. Maybe some of the reparees can come fix it. And, while the guy driving a Tesla with his mask on is a cliche, it’s a fairly common sight here in Looneyville.

    Again, old guy repeating himself alert: the people who run our governments at all levels are incompetents , sure, but what’s worse is they’re uninterested in the stuff government is supposed to do- ploughing, water and sewer, road repair, etc. Mayor Daley’s machine was corrupt, but at least the streets got ploughed and the garbage picked up.

    And one more thing; and the great Howie Carr points this out all the time- how many members of the fourth estate have ever covered a local crime story or a school committee meeting, or …. Crickets!

    Replies: @kaganovitch, @AnotherDad

    Pardon my ignorance but what is a SPLAC?

    • Replies: @Harry Baldwin
    @kaganovitch

    Pardon my ignorance but what is a SPLAC?

    My ignorance as well. Why do posters here insist on throwing these abbreviations around like they're part of a normal vocabulary? I could spend a minute or two Googling it, but I figure if it's not important enough to you to make yourself clear, why should I make the effort?

    Replies: @kaganovitch

  119. @J.Ross
    OT
    shouldn't we be getting back to my movie references
    even if you've had about enough of movie references
    what do you get when you call police officers murderers
    YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE

    The makers of a dramatic Apple TV+ thriller starring Natalie Portman were forced to suspend filming in Baltimore after local drug dealers threatened to shoot up the set unless they were paid $50,000, according to reports.

    The Baltimore Police Department said residents of the area warned producers filming “Lady in the Lake” that they would “come back later this evening [and] shoot someone” if they continued their work on the 200 block of Park Avenue in the Bromo Arts District.
     
    https://nypost.com/2022/08/29/natalie-portmans-lady-in-the-lake-stops-baltimore-filming-after-shooting-threats/amp/

    Replies: @kaganovitch

  120. Say’s Law, that supply creates its own demand, or more accurately, that demand effectively consists of supply, is little appreciated by modern economists in thrall to the illusory social construction of the supply/demand binary. We need more nonbinary economists to help us get back to the golden age of economics!

  121. @kaganovitch
    @Bardon Kaldian

    I haven’t thought of it, but- since Kissinger is Jewish, it could be that he already is 100 years old, just he is not aware of it (lunar calendar) ….

    Nah, lunar calendar doesn't work that way. It is reconciled with solar calendar by dint of seven leap months in a 19 year cycle. Thus years of age , depending on where you are in leap cycle, are never discrepant by more than a month or so.

    Replies: @Bardon Kaldian

    You’re probably right. I guess it’s the same with Islamic calendar.

    So, after all, Heinz is not a centenarian- yet.

    • Replies: @kaganovitch
    @Bardon Kaldian

    As it happens it's not the same with the Islamic calendar which makes no attempt to reconcile the lunar and solar year. This is why Ramadan can be in summer or in winter, depending on the year. So if Kissinger had been Haroun rather than Heinz, he would be well into his second century by now.

  122. “experts in extremism”

    Are they looking into the WEF whose agents in Western governments are intentionally starving their economies of energy?

  123. @kaganovitch
    @Ganderson

    Pardon my ignorance but what is a SPLAC?

    Replies: @Harry Baldwin

    Pardon my ignorance but what is a SPLAC?

    My ignorance as well. Why do posters here insist on throwing these abbreviations around like they’re part of a normal vocabulary? I could spend a minute or two Googling it, but I figure if it’s not important enough to you to make yourself clear, why should I make the effort?

    • Agree: duncsbaby
    • Replies: @kaganovitch
    @Harry Baldwin

    I could spend a minute or two Googling it, but I figure if it’s not important enough to you to make yourself clear, why should I make the effort?

    All I get from google is the Southern Poverty Law Center. God forbid there should be 3 of them in the world, let alone in one city.

  124. @Mr. Anon

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek.
     
    Masters is Peter Thiel's man. So is J.D. Vance. That might be better than being George Soros's man or Peter Singer's man or Charles Koch's man.

    But keep in mind - he has a backer. He is not entirely his own man.

    This whole MAGA think might just be a case of exchanging one set of billionaire puppet-masters for another.

    Replies: @Danindc, @bomag, @Giant Duck, @SunBakedSuburb, @Rob, @Autistocrates

    “He is not entirely his own man.”

    None of them are. Donald Trump’s association with Roy Cohn puts him in with the legacy of Meyer Lansky’s organization which created the Mega Group of American Zionist billionaires. Trump’s son in law, the rather creepy Jared Kushner, is an agent of Mega, as was Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates’s buddy.

  125. @Macumazahn
    When they're boasting about, and reveling in, their precious diversity - why, that's the perfect time to bring up their total incompetence.
    BTW how's that mission to put an astronette on the Moon going? Now that we've engaged our greatest strength, a return to the Moon must surely be a trivial task.

    Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Je Suis Omar Mateen

    “BTW how’s that mission to put an astronette on the Moon going?”

    Ultra high-def screens in every US home will make it impossible this time. Plus everyone is familiar with state-of-the-art CGI so people will spot any fakery. The CGI used for the Mars dune buggy was absurdly outdated and laughable – it looked like a 1990s videogame running on an Intel 486DX-66 processor.

    • Agree: Je Suis Omar Mateen
  126. @Anon
    @Some Guy


    we know Joe Biden’s full name, you don’t

     

    But what does the R stand for? Rubens? Rube? Rungusman? Cash money pimpmasteR? "Just R"?

    Replies: @HFR, @Legba, @Meretricious, @Inquiring Mind

    Robinette.

    Is that an Irish Catholic version of having Hussein for your middle name?

    • Replies: @Mark Grainger
    @Inquiring Mind

    Robinette is originally a French Hugeunot name. Fairly common in Canada at one point. Distant cousins of Joe.

    https://heritagemississauga.com/whats-in-a-name-making-a-robinett-robinette-connection/


    J.J. was the most famous of the Canadian connection. Best defence lawyer of his time.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Josiah_Robinette

  127. @Altai
    Much like Steve's previous article about this in the State Department, is there any evidence that the 'competent' appointees were doing a good job? Decades of junk economics and decades of a neocon agenda have meant that they may have been run by competent people but their agenda and purpose has been disastrous.

    I say let their cliques wither, it's the only way out.

    Replies: @Greta Handel, @Cloudbuster, @International Jew, @Erik L, @James J. O'Meara, @AnotherDad

    I missed iSteve on the State Department, but it’s been a sinecure for midwit WASP sons since forever. Like banks. (*) Remember “the best and the brightest”? A glance at the likes of Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, the Brothers Dulles, and above all “Jesus” Angleton is the best argument for bringing in the black and female team.

    I said the best argument; it’s still a mistake to bring in even dumber people. But let’s not mythologize these half-wits who brought us to today’s mess.

    (*) A couple years ago Congress dragged some “heads” of banks to harangue them, and the whole table was old, fat, pasty White guys in bad grey suits. They couldn’t find a young guy, a fit guy, even a tanned guy or one with a sharp suit. It looked like the Kefauver hearings.

  128. @Anonymous
    @Mike_from_SGV

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It's his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @AKAHorace, @Harry Baldwin, @Anon, @ChrisZ, @Buzz Mohawk, @James J. O'Meara, @Ed

    My only issue with [X[ is that he looks like a geek. It’s his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    You could paste that into almost any thread on Unz. It’s Peak Unz.

    The Left has ideas, ideals, strategies.
    The Right: resentful nerds and jocks who peaked in junior year.

    • Agree: West reanimator
  129. @R.G. Camara
    @Some Guy

    I get the sense its used here to try to give an obvious-dementia-addled figurehead some gravitas, as if really won the rigged 2020 election and he really is in charge, all in a careful DNC-instigated attempt at rebranding.

    Replies: @Some Guy

    It does make him sound younger to me, although perhaps only old people are still called “junior” nowadays?

  130. While white countries are making adverts as diverse as possible, Nigeria is heading the other way.

    When I was looking up that story, I came across this other one:

    ‘Cannibal cut off his aunt’s head and used it to make pepper soup in Nigeria’

    • Replies: @Dube
    @Rob McX

    Paul Joseph Watson is a bold, keen reporter and deserves support. I want him to add a split second in his cuts between sections.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

  131. @Altai
    Much like Steve's previous article about this in the State Department, is there any evidence that the 'competent' appointees were doing a good job? Decades of junk economics and decades of a neocon agenda have meant that they may have been run by competent people but their agenda and purpose has been disastrous.

    I say let their cliques wither, it's the only way out.

    Replies: @Greta Handel, @Cloudbuster, @International Jew, @Erik L, @James J. O'Meara, @AnotherDad

    Altai, I agree with you that the supposedly “competent” people in the establishment are the problem, because their agenda is destructive.

    But Master’s tweet is not about that. He is not saying, if only we had the establishments good-thinking, but uber competent, Harvard grads we wouldn’t be in this mess.

    It is simply mocking their whole “diversity is our greatest strength” nonsense.

  132. I would vote for that man without question.

  133. @Eddie the swarthy rat cellar
    Hope the rocket smaahes up

    Replies: @Joe Stalin

    Hope the rocket smaahes up

    It’s rocket engines are used stuff from the defunct old Space Shuttles.

    The core stage uses four RS-25D engines, all of which have previously flown on Space Shuttle missions.

  134. @Ganderson
    @SFG

    I’ve made versions of this comment before: I live in a college town- 3 SPLACS, a dying hippie college and a BSU. My wife and I (she’s and old fashioned Democrat, which at the SPLAC she worked at for 20 years made her practically Hitler) are the dumbest people on our block; we’re the only adults without terminal degrees, indeed, neither of us have even a Masters. (And yes, to understate it, I’m way less impressed with a PhD than I was when we moved to town 30 some years ago)

    Yet all the smarties in town bought in to the Corona panic big time- masking, closing the campuses (campi?) testing, testing, testing, etc. In fact they still are going nuts - all the high schools around here are opening school with a mask requirement, as are all three SPLACS and the hippie college. Only the BSU is mask free.

    Our town council is seriously discussing reparations for BIPOCS, not sure who will qualify, I know having a grandmother who left Sweden penniless in 1893, and worked at a bunch of medial jobs won’t qualify me , not that it should). Meanwhile there’s been a hole in my street for more than a year. Maybe some of the reparees can come fix it. And, while the guy driving a Tesla with his mask on is a cliche, it’s a fairly common sight here in Looneyville.

    Again, old guy repeating himself alert: the people who run our governments at all levels are incompetents , sure, but what’s worse is they’re uninterested in the stuff government is supposed to do- ploughing, water and sewer, road repair, etc. Mayor Daley’s machine was corrupt, but at least the streets got ploughed and the garbage picked up.

    And one more thing; and the great Howie Carr points this out all the time- how many members of the fourth estate have ever covered a local crime story or a school committee meeting, or …. Crickets!

    Replies: @kaganovitch, @AnotherDad

    Agree with kaganovitch. If your acronym isn’t “WTF”, write it out the first time.

    Ok, the acronym may be part of the style. I’ve used “the PNW” (the Pacific Northwest), like that to give a broader sense of place, then saying i’m lounging my ass here in the Seattle metropolis. But then the acronym should come up page one, on a quick bing.

    I did learn that the Latin American stock market index is down 2.81% right now. Still didn’t know what a SPLAC is.

    Small pissant liberal arts college? Ok, got it “small private liberal arts college”. Just put that in parentheses the first time and we’re good. I’ll play the quordle daily for my letter fun.

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @AnotherDad

    What the fuck does "WTF" mean, AD?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt-fITvdivA

    This was a surprisingly good movie too!

    , @ganderson
    @AnotherDad

    Sorry, K-Vitch and Dad, I thought, no doubt because of the bubble I live in, that SPLAC was common knowledge. Small PISSANT Liberal Arts College works just fine, too! BSU is a Big State University.

  135. @Mr. Anon

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek.
     
    Masters is Peter Thiel's man. So is J.D. Vance. That might be better than being George Soros's man or Peter Singer's man or Charles Koch's man.

    But keep in mind - he has a backer. He is not entirely his own man.

    This whole MAGA think might just be a case of exchanging one set of billionaire puppet-masters for another.

    Replies: @Danindc, @bomag, @Giant Duck, @SunBakedSuburb, @Rob, @Autistocrates

    Realistically, we are going to have billionaires calling the shots. Soft socialism? Managerial class socialism? Will be billionaires. Heck, the Democratic Socialists of America exist to keep “radicals” voting for mainstream Democratic candidates.

    Trumpism? A senile conman, who — I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt — is a billionaire and his rich Democratic daughter and his unimpressive sons.

    Thielism? If you read his book, or just read Scott Alexander’s review of Thiel’s book, he sounds like a really bright, iconoclastic guy. He’s not an obvious fit for “MAGA,” but he’s a really good choice for a forward-looking American nationalism. Someone who is not really either party could break the 50-50 split the country is stuck with. Heck, at least Thiel understands the importance of meritocracy.

    Unlike Trump, Thiel understands the modern wealth-creating economy. Trump brought back incandescent bulbs. Why? When he was young and in the season of the rising sap, America had incandescent light bulbs, damnit! Tiel obviously is better at choosing people than Trump ever was.

    Thiel is probably bright enough that he can roll back some of the regulations and laws that keep us from building housing or anything else. Heck, as I understand it, SV’s tech money respects him, so SV could reorient around his team when Bidenism (really Democratic activists with no supervision. The chief executive is the head of the party proves a bust. Coincidentally, expensive rents benefit older money rentiers, maybe there’s lots of money in building, too? But, new money is buying housing too.

    • Replies: @Prester John
    @Rob

    Thiel is originally from Frankfurt and came to this country when he was one year old. Nevertheless, if enough candidates in his stable get elected, watch for Godwin's Law to kick in. Unfair? Yes? But it wouldn't surprise, considering the kind of people who constitute the opposition.

  136. “A number of Republican candidates and elected officials have also disparaged efforts to promote diversity and combat bigotry more broadly, and Republican primary voters have rewarded some nominees who espouse racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic views.

    “Mr. Masters, a venture capitalist endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, has been particularly outspoken. Among other things, he has promoted what experts in extremism describe as a sanitized version of the racist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory…”

    Steve always has to identify “things” like this as coming from the “news section,” because they are so obviously not news articles but op-eds.

    The problem, whereby “news” is reduced to leftwing talking points goes back at least to the so-called civil rights movement over 60 years ago. Then in 1993, “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr., the Episcopalian communist publisher of the new york times (who had succeeded his socialist but patriotic, Jewish war hero father one year earlier) announced that not accuracy but “diversity” was Job One at the times.

    As for Blake Masters, he’s not the problem, his party is. If the gop were a patriotic party, all of its pols would sound like Masters, and it would have eliminated aa and the u.s. civil rights act many years ago. Instead, when racial socialists attack them, they virtually always fold like a cheap suitcase. And they almost always support affirmative action, and other anti-White, racist policies, practices, and laws, which is why I consider the gop just as evil as the dems.

    Several years ago, a brilliant observer advised gopers to always refer to the dems as “the black party,” but if anything, the gopers, including President Trump, have gone in the opposite direction.

    https://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2019/07/affirmative-action-corrupts-diversity.html

    • Replies: @Reg Cæsar
    @Nicholas Stix

    A three-year-old story at your link is reminiscent of Vice President Johnson-- the first and least-known of the three. He also had an affair with his (late) wife's niece.

    https://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2019/07/man-allegedly-kills-his-wifes-niece-21.html

    But he didn't kill her. He just had her horsewhipped and sold downriver. Literally.

    , @J.Ross
    @Nicholas Stix

    Democrats are the Party of Hatred. Their every motive, mechanism, and effect is hate. They hate people who work for a living so they make life harder for this group. They hate people who sell non-luxury food so they persecute them. This also explains their conformism and sudden falling outs.

  137. @The Germ Theory of Disease
    @Cloudbuster

    "Wait. Yes is still around?"


    Yes is ALWAYS around my friend. Just like the Clash and the Ramones.

    In and around the lake,
    Mountains come out of the sky
    And they stand there....

    Replies: @Reg Cæsar

    Yes is ALWAYS around my friend. Just like the Clash and the Ramones.

    None of the Ramones are still around. Although a late-1970s phenomenon, they beat almost all the 1960s and even 1950s groups at shuffling off the coil. The Kingston Trio (Punahou’s most illustrious graduates) are all gone now, too. Barry Gibb, Joey Molland, Micky Dolenz, Dave Clark and Lenny Davidson, and, of course, Paul and Ringo are carrying on the memory of their groups.

    Happily, all the Rascals are still with us.

    A certain Kiwi may not be for too long, though:

    Lorde takes a dip in the Potomac River

    • Replies: @Mark G.
    @Reg Cæsar


    None of the Ramones are still around.

     

    I was a bass player in a punk rock band in the late seventies. The Ramones were our musical heroes. I left the band right before they went off to play at CBGB in New York. When they came back, they told me the Ramones were sitting there watching them while they were playing. They said it was quite intimidating to be playing in front of your musical heroes.

    Replies: @Steve Sailer

  138. @G. Poulin
    @Reg Cæsar

    Her boss is more qualified on paper, but only on paper. He's been a big shot in government for long time, but he's been a complete idiot the entire time and everyone knows it. And now he's a senile idiot as well. Pretty sad that the Veep is now the more competent of the two, simply because she can get up off her back and stand upright unassisted when she wants to.

    Replies: @Meretricious, @Reg Cæsar

    Pretty sad that the Veep is now the more competent of the two, simply because she can get up off her back…

    She’s had a lot of experience getting up off her back.

    • Replies: @usNthem
    @Reg Cæsar

    She was obviously channeling her “inner negro” back in those days…

  139. @Harry Baldwin
    @kaganovitch

    Pardon my ignorance but what is a SPLAC?

    My ignorance as well. Why do posters here insist on throwing these abbreviations around like they're part of a normal vocabulary? I could spend a minute or two Googling it, but I figure if it's not important enough to you to make yourself clear, why should I make the effort?

    Replies: @kaganovitch

    I could spend a minute or two Googling it, but I figure if it’s not important enough to you to make yourself clear, why should I make the effort?

    All I get from google is the Southern Poverty Law Center. God forbid there should be 3 of them in the world, let alone in one city.

  140. @Nicholas Stix
    "A number of Republican candidates and elected officials have also disparaged efforts to promote diversity and combat bigotry more broadly, and Republican primary voters have rewarded some nominees who espouse racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic views.

    "Mr. Masters, a venture capitalist endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, has been particularly outspoken. Among other things, he has promoted what experts in extremism describe as a sanitized version of the racist 'great replacement' conspiracy theory..."

    Steve always has to identify "things" like this as coming from the "news section," because they are so obviously not news articles but op-eds.

    The problem, whereby "news" is reduced to leftwing talking points goes back at least to the so-called civil rights movement over 60 years ago. Then in 1993, "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., the Episcopalian communist publisher of the new york times (who had succeeded his socialist but patriotic, Jewish war hero father one year earlier) announced that not accuracy but "diversity" was Job One at the times.

    As for Blake Masters, he's not the problem, his party is. If the gop were a patriotic party, all of its pols would sound like Masters, and it would have eliminated aa and the u.s. civil rights act many years ago. Instead, when racial socialists attack them, they virtually always fold like a cheap suitcase. And they almost always support affirmative action, and other anti-White, racist policies, practices, and laws, which is why I consider the gop just as evil as the dems.

    Several years ago, a brilliant observer advised gopers to always refer to the dems as "the black party," but if anything, the gopers, including President Trump, have gone in the opposite direction.

    https://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2019/07/affirmative-action-corrupts-diversity.html

    Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @J.Ross

    A three-year-old story at your link is reminiscent of Vice President Johnson– the first and least-known of the three. He also had an affair with his (late) wife’s niece.

    https://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2019/07/man-allegedly-kills-his-wifes-niece-21.html

    But he didn’t kill her. He just had her horsewhipped and sold downriver. Literally.

  141. @Achmed E. Newman
    @Cutter

    I thought those were the same thing, with just a difference in dress code.

    Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Cutter, @The Anti-Gnostic, @Ralph L

    Don’t confuse slut and slattern, a woman who is negligent of her dress, not her morals.

  142. Lisa Cook joined the fed this past May, right around the time they started getting inflation reined in. The disastrous Fed actions, where excessive inflation was created by over-expanding the money supply, were done earlier by a Cook-less Fed, with more Trump appointees and fewer Biden appointees

  143. @Bardon Kaldian
    @kaganovitch

    You're probably right. I guess it's the same with Islamic calendar.

    So, after all, Heinz is not a centenarian- yet.

    Replies: @kaganovitch

    As it happens it’s not the same with the Islamic calendar which makes no attempt to reconcile the lunar and solar year. This is why Ramadan can be in summer or in winter, depending on the year. So if Kissinger had been Haroun rather than Heinz, he would be well into his second century by now.

    • Thanks: Bardon Kaldian
  144. @Erik L
    @Altai

    We had several decades of low inflation and low unemployment. Those are the functions the Fed is supposed to maximize so one could argue that they did a good job on average. The economy might not be to your personal taste but those two items are difficult to argue with.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @AnotherDad

    Sorry, Erik, that was my first sarcastic LOL in a long time (never liked them). I apologize, but let me explain. If you believe the US Gov’t BLS numbers on both these economic measures, I’m afraid that they’ve been fooling you. Shadow Stats has kept up with the real, much higher numbers.

    Peak Stupidity (you’re looking at ’em) has a topic key Inflation with lots of examples of massive price changes over the last 2 decades, sometimes nearly 3 decades.

    I ran into another example just the other day – incandescent light bulbs may be a weird one, because they are not as in demand, but they are still sold. I got the 1,000 hr lifetime ones for \$0.25 each 12 years back (to stock up – still got some). The same brand, GE I think or Sylvania, are 2 bucks each.

    Yeah, that’s just one example, I know. How about roofing shingles, lumber, auto batteries, AAA/AA/C/D cell batteries, utility bills, insurance, standard and easy to compare food items like Campbell Soup, etc? We’re all over this, and each time I do a calculation, incl. compounding, over 2-3 decades, I get 4-5% (occasionally only 3%, sometimes 5 and higher).

    4-5% doesn’t sound terrible. It’s not a good feeling to lose half of the savings you obtained through your life of labor in 14 1/3 or 17 1/2 years, respectively.

    SOUND MONEY OR BUST! As soon as American has sound money, I promise to stop commenting on this topic.

    • Replies: @kaganovitch
    @Achmed E. Newman

    I ran into another example just the other day – incandescent light bulbs may be a weird one, because they are not as in demand, but they are still sold. I got the 1,000 hr lifetime ones for $0.25 each 12 years back (to stock up – still got some). The same brand, GE I think or Sylvania, are 2 bucks each.

    While I think your basic point is correct, incandescents are not a good example. They went from a staple with lots of competition to a specialty item with limited market only legal for some applications via the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (presumably the reason you were stocking up in the first place).

  145. @SFG
    @JR Ewing

    A lot of bright people buy into liberalism and, now, leftism. It’s taught at the hardest schools to get into. Sadly, conservatism doesn’t get a majority of the brightest people (and that’s been the way for a while-remember Buckley’s joke about the Boston phone book). Richard Hanania has talked about this.

    No, I’m not arguing for leftism-I’m saying intellectual fads can sucker in a lot of bright people, largely because making people around you like you is more important than being right most of the time. Especially if you are working in some planning office and people who deal with real life can clean up your mistakes.

    Replies: @JR Ewing, @Ganderson, @martin_2, @Ian Smith

    I’m shocked that intelligent people don’t want to be on the side of Lauren Boebart and Marjorie Taylor-Greene!

    • Replies: @kaganovitch
    @Ian Smith

    I’m shocked that intelligent people don’t want to be on the side of Lauren Boebart and Marjorie Taylor-Greene!

    Indeed, they would rather bask in the reflected glow of the intellectual firepower of Hank Johnson and Sheila Jackson-Lee.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    , @Ben tillman
    @Ian Smith

    Indeed. If you don’t want to be on their side, you’re awfully stupid.

    , @J.Ross
    @Ian Smith

    Intelligence and suggestibility are distinct -- suggestibility is not a synonym for stupid -- and we are at a cyclical maximum of smart people made dumb by education.

  146. @Alec Leamas (working from home)
    @SFG


    I like him too, but isn’t he 8 points behind in the polls?
     
    I think you need to understand that polling isn't a good-faith effort to account for the political preferences of the electorate anymore than the Press is an oppositional organ for truth telling or the academy is about educating youth and teaching them to reason for themselves.

    The point of showing Oz, Masters, Vance, etc. down by near double digits is to influence people to flock to the putative winner and to increase the fundraising of the formers' opponents.

    Replies: @Hypnotoad666

    The point of showing Oz, Masters, Vance, etc. down by near double digits is to influence people to flock to the putative winner and to increase the fundraising of the formers’ opponents.

    The same is true as to the alleged resurgence of Team Blue in advance of the midterms.

  147. @Meretricious
    @Arclight

    Talking about Negroes always involves "Euphemism Management"

    Replies: @Arclight

    True – the public engagement editor of our Gannett-owned local trash paper had a piece today talking about how too many ‘youth’ are being shot and/or killed for no good reason. Some of her points are actually reasonable, but there is absolutely no acknowledgement of the demographics of the victims in her piece or any of the news articles about them, although when names are released it’s pretty obvious. Our insanely dumb culture feels the need to meticulously track and point out racial stats for all sorts of things unless it reflects poorly on sainted groups, in which they are suddenly rendered colorblind.

  148. @International Jew
    @Altai

    Besides fiddling with interest rates and the money supply, the Fed also plays a big role in bank regulation. So these AA hires can do a fair bit of damage if they manage to spread the curse of DIE through credit policy and hiring at the banks.

    Replies: @Anonymous

    Like they already do with ‘ol Larry Fink?

  149. @AnotherDad
    @Ganderson

    Agree with kaganovitch. If your acronym isn't "WTF", write it out the first time.

    Ok, the acronym may be part of the style. I've used "the PNW" (the Pacific Northwest), like that to give a broader sense of place, then saying i'm lounging my ass here in the Seattle metropolis. But then the acronym should come up page one, on a quick bing.

    I did learn that the Latin American stock market index is down 2.81% right now. Still didn't know what a SPLAC is.

    Small pissant liberal arts college? Ok, got it "small private liberal arts college". Just put that in parentheses the first time and we're good. I'll play the quordle daily for my letter fun.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @ganderson

    What the fuck does “WTF” mean, AD?

    This was a surprisingly good movie too!

  150. @Reg Cæsar
    @G. Poulin


    Pretty sad that the Veep is now the more competent of the two, simply because she can get up off her back...
     
    She's had a lot of experience getting up off her back.


    https://gumlet.assettype.com/freepressjournal/2020-08/de18d70a-5a18-4a4a-983b-914eab9f9146/081020_2113_1.jpg

    Replies: @usNthem

    She was obviously channeling her “inner negro” back in those days…

  151. @AnotherDad
    @Ganderson

    Agree with kaganovitch. If your acronym isn't "WTF", write it out the first time.

    Ok, the acronym may be part of the style. I've used "the PNW" (the Pacific Northwest), like that to give a broader sense of place, then saying i'm lounging my ass here in the Seattle metropolis. But then the acronym should come up page one, on a quick bing.

    I did learn that the Latin American stock market index is down 2.81% right now. Still didn't know what a SPLAC is.

    Small pissant liberal arts college? Ok, got it "small private liberal arts college". Just put that in parentheses the first time and we're good. I'll play the quordle daily for my letter fun.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @ganderson

    Sorry, K-Vitch and Dad, I thought, no doubt because of the bubble I live in, that SPLAC was common knowledge. Small PISSANT Liberal Arts College works just fine, too! BSU is a Big State University.

    • Thanks: kaganovitch
  152. @JR Ewing
    I saw that post and the reaction to it and all I could think about are my wife's dumb relatives in Phoenix who think they are so smart and compassionate because they vote for democrats.

    They are the living epitome of Dunning-Kruger: Mother and daughter are school teachers, beta husband is an wage slave who is barely keeping his head above water and could only survive with help from rich grandma... To his credit, the son graduated from college and ran off to the east coast for a corporate job and is apparently getting paid pretty well on his own.

    My best example of the quality of their intellect is that they go to a "church" that regularly goes out in the desert and leaves water for the illegals trekking through. They'll brag about how compassionate they are being, then, in the next breath, the schoolteachers will bitch about all of the illegal immigrant kids overwhelming the school system and overcrowding the classrooms and stretching the budget.

    But they are smugly convinced that the world is ruled by a bunch of eeeeeeevil white men, so no doubt they'll eat this Masters video up as proof that he's a mean ole racist. The MSM told them so, anyway.

    It's not Barry Goldwater's Arizona anymore. There is a large segment of the population who buys into this shit and is eager to hasten the transformation to East California.

    Replies: @SFG, @AceDeuce, @Muggles

    It’s not Barry Goldwater’s Arizona anymore. There is a large segment of the population who buys into this shit and is eager to hasten the transformation to East California.

    Please keep them there. We don’t need them/want them in Texas.

    Of course first they’d have to cross about 1500 miles of New Mexico and west Texas. Harsh country with very few EV plug in chargers.

    Try to convince them that Texas remains a barbaric place. Hard to find organic kale. And migrants who don’t have energy related jobs (or military) are bussed quickly back east.

    Our quota of California refugees is already full this year.

  153. @PhysicistDave

    Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]...
     
    There -- I've fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California -- Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh.... we're not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back...

    Replies: @interesting, @Mr. Anon, @Fluesterwitz, @Cutter, @Emil Nikola Richard, @R.G. Camara, @SaneClownPosse, @nebulafox, @tommer

    No less than Julius Caesar himself was rumored, as a young man, to have given his body up to a degenerate Greek king to help his political ambitions.

    Speaking of which, did you ever bother to Google how Caesar paid his army instead of spewing off ignorant b.s., you low-IQ bigoted anti-Catholic moron?

    • Thanks: PhysicistDave
    • Replies: @nebulafox
    @R.G. Camara

    This was common political slander in ancient Rome. Octavian got the same treatment, as did Antony. There's no reason to suggest it was true.

    (Caesar seemed unusually... focused on womanizing. He went out of his way to bed aristocratic women who were related to his enemies. That might have partly a response to the slur: it was one of the very few things that could get Caesar to lose his temper. But by the time he was dictator, he wouldn't have needed to hide a male lover from the public. As the experience of the five times married Sulla, and later on the differing reactions to Trajan and Hadrian showed, the Romans didn't care what a man did as long as he remained a man in their eyes and obeyed social protocol with wives.)

    Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Jack D

    , @PhysicistDave
    @R.G. Camara

    My old friend R.G. Camara asked me:


    Speaking of which, did you ever bother to Google how Caesar paid his army instead of spewing off ignorant b.s., you low-IQ bigoted anti-Catholic moron?
     
    I never needed to, R.G. I already knew more about the subject than you do.

    Speaking of the Church, "Eppur si muove!"

    Take care, R.G.

    Replies: @R.G. Camara

    , @Mr. Anon
    @R.G. Camara


    No less than Julius Caesar himself was rumored, as a young man, to have given his body up to a degenerate Greek king to help his political ambitions.
     
    The "Queen of Bythnia":

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Bithynia

    "At a debate in the Senate, when Caesar recalled some benefits Rome had received from Nicomedes, Cicero interrupted him with "we all know what he gave you and what you gave him in return"."
     
    Caesar was a magnanimous dictator; he did not have Cicero killed. His operative, Marc Antony, was not so forgiving.

    In the words of Evil Spock: "I do not want to command the Enterprise, but if it should befall me, I suggest you remember that my operatives would avenge my death - and some of them... are Vulcans."

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708438/characters/nm0000559

    Replies: @nebulafox

  154. @ChrisZ
    OT, but applicable to a “diversity” thread:

    It has now been two and a half weeks since Salman Rushdie was nearly killed at an anodyne panel discussion, in front of an audience of the great and good.

    Has there been even one word of follow-up since then? How is he doing? Did he really lose an eye?

    What about the would-be killer? Any police-blotter news about his arraignment or pending trial? (This is assuming the crime venue is not a Soros-DA jurisdiction.)

    It looks like the news is observing radio silence about the episode that was so “shocking” two weeks ago.

    I get it, of course (like everyone else here): the attacker is a Muslim, who shouldn’t be in this country to begin with; who’s nursing a foreign-born grudge from before he was born. He unhelpfully used a knife in the crime, so there’s no gun control angle to exploit.

    Add it all up and it’s a non-event—something like the massacre by “Paddock” in Las Vegas, which is going on five years now without any new developments. Whenever a potential narrative collapse threatens, the culture just goes mute—like a child who develops an hysterical inability to speak after witnessing something traumatic.

    Still, it’s a powerful force, and getting more potent. In Vegas, the victims were 50-plus “nobodies” in the eyes of the press, so the crime against them was easy to ignore, and forget. But Rushdie is a Somebody (TM) who does book panels at NY resorts and played himself on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”; you’d think it’d be harder to erase him. Indeed, the Ayatollahs couldn’t do it for 40 years; but it only took the American press 18 days.

    Replies: @Veteran Aryan, @bomag

    Add it all up and it’s a non-event—something like the massacre by “Paddock” in Las Vegas, which is going on five years now without any new developments.

    Remember when Tucker Carlson vowed he wouldn’t let the matter be dropped? I stopped watching after the last election, so I don’t know if he’s kept this vow.

  155. Now the question is how much loot will Peter Kraut Donor Thiel fork out to Masters to bang on about the illegal alien invasion of the USA.

    Will Masters call for a complete and total halt to all legal immigration?

    Will Masters directly state that Biden, Kelly and the Democrat Party are using mass legal immigration and mass illegal immigration as demographic weapons to displace White Core Americans?

  156. @epebble
    @Redneck farmer

    Actually, it takes tremendous talent to convince billions of people for years on end that pieces of paper you create (or bits on your computer) are equal in value to goods and services they produce. If you think about it, it is the greatest miracle or magic.

    Replies: @Muggles

    Actually, it takes tremendous talent to convince billions of people for years on end that pieces of paper you create (or bits on your computer) are equal in value to goods and services they produce. If you think about it, it is the greatest miracle or magic.

    Re: the Fed creating fiat “money” out of thin air.

    Yes, valid point.

    However, two points:

    1. At least the Fed’s fiats don’t take trillions of kilowatts of scarce energy to become imaginary money, like say, crypto currencies. That’s the Tulip Craze version of fiats.

    2. Fed fiats are “money” because the State says so. On all of its actual paper currency. “Good for all debts, public or private.” So its main virtue is that the State will take its own fiats for its mandatory extortion payments. And you have to take it too (Gold Clauses no longer work).

    In all past regimes, the rulers had to specify what your taxes could be paid with. Eventually livestock and grain became too cumbersome. Gold and silver more convenient. FDR and the enormous size of the USA and its economic dominance post WWI, was able to eliminate Gold. Nixon finally killed off metals internationally, though every international bank wants to know how much physical Gold/Silver your country has stuffed away safely from El Supremo and his pals.

    Where I grew up decades ago, silver dollars circulated freely. That is money. The rest is blind faith that someone will take you “money” on faith, or sticks a gun in your face if you don’t use it.

    • Replies: @AnotherDad
    @Muggles


    1. At least the Fed’s fiats don’t take trillions of kilowatts of scarce energy to become imaginary money, like say, crypto currencies. That’s the Tulip Craze version of fiats.
     
    Spot on. You see stupid ... and then people do it again. And convince themselves they are the really smart people living in a brave new world.


    2. Fed fiats are “money” because the State says so. On all of its actual paper currency. “Good for all debts, public or private.” So its main virtue is that the State will take its own fiats for its mandatory extortion payments.
     
    Exactly. It's amazing people can not understand this most basic fact.

    Money is whatever the people with guns demand their taxes in.
    , @epebble
    @Muggles

    1. Crypto is sheer speculation. If they are crunching numbers, sometimes I feel they should at least compute digits of Pi or some other real number than nonsense hashes. Paper money is far better; though the infrastructure to operate it is quite substantial.

    2. Fed fiats are “money” because the State says so

    True, but fiat alone is not sufficient to maintain Sound Money. The world has over 200 Central Banks but only a dozen or, so currencies are considered Sound Money. Once upon a time we too (our ancestors) had Bad Money

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_currency_banknotes

  157. @PhysicistDave

    Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]...
     
    There -- I've fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California -- Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh.... we're not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back...

    Replies: @interesting, @Mr. Anon, @Fluesterwitz, @Cutter, @Emil Nikola Richard, @R.G. Camara, @SaneClownPosse, @nebulafox, @tommer

    Wonder if the VP candidate was picked by Biden after some hair sniffing.

  158. @Peter Akuleyev
    The obvious problem with Master's joke is that the economy is, in fact, doing very well. At the moment the US economy is outperforming Europe and China by a wide margin. Even anecdotally, at least in New England - everyone seems to be spending money like it's going out of style, construction is booming, employers can't find enough workers to keep pace, wages are up, inflation has stalled out. Running on "economic struggles" in 2022 seems like a very stupid tactic.

    The fact that Trump's immigration restrictions have indeed helped boost wages and reduce unemployment might be something Republicans want to mention. Instead everyone in the GOP takes the side of management and just whines about how "no one wants to work anymore". God forbid a white working man might earn a living wage. The GOP is going to remove immigration restrictions as soon as they can, although no doubt it will be the "guest worker" version.

    Replies: @J.Ross, @YetAnotherAnon, @AnotherDad

    The obvious problem with Master’s joke is that the economy is, in fact, doing very well. At the moment the US economy is outperforming Europe and China by a wide margin. Even anecdotally, at least in New England – everyone seems to be spending money like it’s going out of style, construction is booming, employers can’t find enough workers to keep pace, wages are up, inflation has stalled out.

    I think you have a point–sort of a half-point. Because of all the money printing and the end of the pandemic looniness (obviously the Fauci is still out there and will be probably until we learn how to knock out all corona viruses) the economy is still chugging along.

    However, inflation has not “stalled out” by any means. It simply isn’t running as hot as earlier in the year. The energy price pressure right after Putin’s invasion has eased up–Russia is selling elsewhere, oil is fungible and gets shifted around, production is up. And China’s winter Fauci stupidity has–I think–eased somewhat. (I really don’t understand what’s going on there.)

    What you’re really describing with your “spending money hand over fist” is an inflation boom. People have \$\$\$ from all the money printing, and people know that inflation is making the dollar worth less. And the pandemic response held things back for two years. So what are people doing … spending. It is not illogical.

  159. @JimDandy
    @Anonymous

    Yeah, that coupled with his name make him seem like, I don't know, a villainous politician in a comic book, or maybe even something altogether inorganic, like Max Headroom.

    I'm willing to look past these things, however.

    Replies: @Hangnail Hans, @SaneClownPosse

    When I saw the name Blake Masters, my first question was, is he related to Blythe Masters?

  160. @Muggles
    @epebble


    Actually, it takes tremendous talent to convince billions of people for years on end that pieces of paper you create (or bits on your computer) are equal in value to goods and services they produce. If you think about it, it is the greatest miracle or magic.
     
    Re: the Fed creating fiat "money" out of thin air.

    Yes, valid point.

    However, two points:

    1. At least the Fed's fiats don't take trillions of kilowatts of scarce energy to become imaginary money, like say, crypto currencies. That's the Tulip Craze version of fiats.

    2. Fed fiats are "money" because the State says so. On all of its actual paper currency. "Good for all debts, public or private." So its main virtue is that the State will take its own fiats for its mandatory extortion payments. And you have to take it too (Gold Clauses no longer work).

    In all past regimes, the rulers had to specify what your taxes could be paid with. Eventually livestock and grain became too cumbersome. Gold and silver more convenient. FDR and the enormous size of the USA and its economic dominance post WWI, was able to eliminate Gold. Nixon finally killed off metals internationally, though every international bank wants to know how much physical Gold/Silver your country has stuffed away safely from El Supremo and his pals.

    Where I grew up decades ago, silver dollars circulated freely. That is money. The rest is blind faith that someone will take you "money" on faith, or sticks a gun in your face if you don't use it.

    Replies: @AnotherDad, @epebble

    1. At least the Fed’s fiats don’t take trillions of kilowatts of scarce energy to become imaginary money, like say, crypto currencies. That’s the Tulip Craze version of fiats.

    Spot on. You see stupid … and then people do it again. And convince themselves they are the really smart people living in a brave new world.

    2. Fed fiats are “money” because the State says so. On all of its actual paper currency. “Good for all debts, public or private.” So its main virtue is that the State will take its own fiats for its mandatory extortion payments.

    Exactly. It’s amazing people can not understand this most basic fact.

    Money is whatever the people with guns demand their taxes in.

  161. @Achmed E. Newman
    @Erik L

    Sorry, Erik, that was my first sarcastic LOL in a long time (never liked them). I apologize, but let me explain. If you believe the US Gov't BLS numbers on both these economic measures, I'm afraid that they've been fooling you. Shadow Stats has kept up with the real, much higher numbers.

    Peak Stupidity (you're looking at 'em) has a topic key Inflation with lots of examples of massive price changes over the last 2 decades, sometimes nearly 3 decades.

    I ran into another example just the other day - incandescent light bulbs may be a weird one, because they are not as in demand, but they are still sold. I got the 1,000 hr lifetime ones for $0.25 each 12 years back (to stock up - still got some). The same brand, GE I think or Sylvania, are 2 bucks each.

    Yeah, that's just one example, I know. How about roofing shingles, lumber, auto batteries, AAA/AA/C/D cell batteries, utility bills, insurance, standard and easy to compare food items like Campbell Soup, etc? We're all over this, and each time I do a calculation, incl. compounding, over 2-3 decades, I get 4-5% (occasionally only 3%, sometimes 5 and higher).

    4-5% doesn't sound terrible. It's not a good feeling to lose half of the savings you obtained through your life of labor in 14 1/3 or 17 1/2 years, respectively.

    SOUND MONEY OR BUST! As soon as American has sound money, I promise to stop commenting on this topic.

    Replies: @kaganovitch

    I ran into another example just the other day – incandescent light bulbs may be a weird one, because they are not as in demand, but they are still sold. I got the 1,000 hr lifetime ones for \$0.25 each 12 years back (to stock up – still got some). The same brand, GE I think or Sylvania, are 2 bucks each.

    While I think your basic point is correct, incandescents are not a good example. They went from a staple with lots of competition to a specialty item with limited market only legal for some applications via the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (presumably the reason you were stocking up in the first place).

  162. @YetAnotherAnon
    @Peter Akuleyev

    "At the moment the US economy is outperforming Europe and China by a wide margin."

    Outperforming Europe, yes, because Europe has decided (at the State Department's behest) to commit economic suicide in case Russia kills them, despite the fact Russia was perfectly happy selling them cheap energy.

    As that professor said, it's the third time in the last century that Germany has been utterly defeated by the US.

    It's going to be interesting when Merkel's Millions get laid off.

    China, not so much. Don't confuse what's happening on the markets with the real world. US male wages are at 1973 levels.

    "The trade deficit in the US narrowed by $5.3 billion to a six-month low of $79.6 billion in June 2022, compared to market forecasts of $80.1 billion."

    "China's trade surplus unexpectedly surged to a fresh record peak of USD 101.26 billion in July 2022 from USD 55.89 billion in the same month a year earlier, far above market forecasts of USD 90 billion, mainly boosted by a jump in exports."

    https://tradingeconomics.com/

    Replies: @Anonymous

    China, not so much. Don’t confuse what’s happening on the markets with the real world. US male wages are at 1973 levels.

    Are 1973 levels good or bad?

  163. @Ian Smith
    @SFG

    I’m shocked that intelligent people don’t want to be on the side of Lauren Boebart and Marjorie Taylor-Greene!

    Replies: @kaganovitch, @Ben tillman, @J.Ross

    I’m shocked that intelligent people don’t want to be on the side of Lauren Boebart and Marjorie Taylor-Greene!

    Indeed, they would rather bask in the reflected glow of the intellectual firepower of Hank Johnson and Sheila Jackson-Lee.

    • Thanks: Polistra
    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @kaganovitch

    Don't forget Hank Johnson... or is he retired and living (very carefully) in Guam?

    I agree about the incandescents to some degree. Demand is not nearly the same, so the supply may be a niche thing at this point. Still, they are 8 times higher in price!

    Replies: @kaganovitch

  164. @Mike_from_SGV
    After the reaction to his first tweet, he didn't grovel, but doubled down. So rare. Time to stop groveling. I like this guy.

    Replies: @Anonymous, @Polistra, @SFG, @Bugg, @AnotherDad, @Fungus Among Us

    After the reaction to his first tweet, he didn’t grovel, but doubled down. So rare. Time to stop groveling. I like this guy.

    Whether you like–smile at–Master’s tweet or think “that’s not funny!” would be an excellent separator for my “separate nations”.

    I’d be happy to divide the country right now just based on that.

  165. @kaganovitch
    @Ian Smith

    I’m shocked that intelligent people don’t want to be on the side of Lauren Boebart and Marjorie Taylor-Greene!

    Indeed, they would rather bask in the reflected glow of the intellectual firepower of Hank Johnson and Sheila Jackson-Lee.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    Don’t forget Hank Johnson… or is he retired and living (very carefully) in Guam?

    I agree about the incandescents to some degree. Demand is not nearly the same, so the supply may be a niche thing at this point. Still, they are 8 times higher in price!

    • Replies: @kaganovitch
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Don’t forget Hank Johnson… or is he retired and living (very carefully) in Guam?

    Indeed, I cited him.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

  166. I’m not laughing. Events have conspired to bring me to a point of post Negro exhaustion. All I see now are locusts eating their way through our civilization.

  167. @Ian Smith
    @SFG

    I’m shocked that intelligent people don’t want to be on the side of Lauren Boebart and Marjorie Taylor-Greene!

    Replies: @kaganovitch, @Ben tillman, @J.Ross

    Indeed. If you don’t want to be on their side, you’re awfully stupid.

  168. @Mr. Anon

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek.
     
    Masters is Peter Thiel's man. So is J.D. Vance. That might be better than being George Soros's man or Peter Singer's man or Charles Koch's man.

    But keep in mind - he has a backer. He is not entirely his own man.

    This whole MAGA think might just be a case of exchanging one set of billionaire puppet-masters for another.

    Replies: @Danindc, @bomag, @Giant Duck, @SunBakedSuburb, @Rob, @Autistocrates

    Well at least Thiel is a realist. Ultimately you need a few competent people like Masters or Vance in the Senate, and they can just corral these weird Trump backed Senators, who really just serve to be a warm body & a vote in an oppositional faction to cokehead Mitch.

    Btw, Thiel is close with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, he attended his events over the years. Thiel also was born in Germany but his family also lived in South Africa during the 1970s. Sure, Thiel is a billionaire who brushes shoulders with globalists, but I’d suggest listening to talks he’s given. Maybe he’s lying, however the views he expresses are about preserving Western civilization. Always good to be skeptical but its better him than a bunch of lolbertarians like the Kochs or these (((Private Equity))) types who don’t care about anything other than preserving their loot.

    • Replies: @Mr. Anon
    @Autistocrates

    I agree with what you and others said. Thiel seems to be a thoughtful guy with some good instincts. I remember seeing a speech he gave in 2016 in support of Trump. He said that he didn't want America to be great again, he wanted it to be normal again, i.e., a normal country in which the government at least pays a little attention to the interests, well-being, and future of it's own people. I agree with that sentiment entirely. American Exceptionalism has been a kind of poison for this country; it has made this country megalomaniacal, even borderline insane. We, as a country, act like a drug addict jacked up on Cocaine, unaware of our limits and devoid of all sense.

    I'm just pointing out that he is a billionaire and quite possibly has agendas that might diverge from ours.

    Buyer beware.

  169. @Muggles
    @epebble


    Actually, it takes tremendous talent to convince billions of people for years on end that pieces of paper you create (or bits on your computer) are equal in value to goods and services they produce. If you think about it, it is the greatest miracle or magic.
     
    Re: the Fed creating fiat "money" out of thin air.

    Yes, valid point.

    However, two points:

    1. At least the Fed's fiats don't take trillions of kilowatts of scarce energy to become imaginary money, like say, crypto currencies. That's the Tulip Craze version of fiats.

    2. Fed fiats are "money" because the State says so. On all of its actual paper currency. "Good for all debts, public or private." So its main virtue is that the State will take its own fiats for its mandatory extortion payments. And you have to take it too (Gold Clauses no longer work).

    In all past regimes, the rulers had to specify what your taxes could be paid with. Eventually livestock and grain became too cumbersome. Gold and silver more convenient. FDR and the enormous size of the USA and its economic dominance post WWI, was able to eliminate Gold. Nixon finally killed off metals internationally, though every international bank wants to know how much physical Gold/Silver your country has stuffed away safely from El Supremo and his pals.

    Where I grew up decades ago, silver dollars circulated freely. That is money. The rest is blind faith that someone will take you "money" on faith, or sticks a gun in your face if you don't use it.

    Replies: @AnotherDad, @epebble

    1. Crypto is sheer speculation. If they are crunching numbers, sometimes I feel they should at least compute digits of Pi or some other real number than nonsense hashes. Paper money is far better; though the infrastructure to operate it is quite substantial.

    2. Fed fiats are “money” because the State says so

    True, but fiat alone is not sufficient to maintain Sound Money. The world has over 200 Central Banks but only a dozen or, so currencies are considered Sound Money. Once upon a time we too (our ancestors) had Bad Money

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_currency_banknotes

  170. @PhysicistDave
    @Dream

    Dream wrote:


    Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people – POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.
     
    I don't understand why the GOP does not takes as its slogan something along the lines of: "The Republican Party-- the party that cares about the people who make America work."

    It has the virtue of basically being true: the GOP is now the party of the farmers, the truck drivers, the construction workers, the airplane mechanics, the small businessmen, etc.

    Perhaps the answer is simply that the people who run the GOP -- Turtle McConnell, Mitt Romney, the "donor class," etc. -- really rather dislike the people who make America work and would rather lose elections than appeal to such people.

    Replies: @ThreeCranes, @Bardon Kaldian, @Bill, @Dave from Oz

    But they do exactly what you are saying they don’t. What they really don’t do is govern in the interests of the people they relentlessly con.

  171. @Ian Smith
    @SFG

    I’m shocked that intelligent people don’t want to be on the side of Lauren Boebart and Marjorie Taylor-Greene!

    Replies: @kaganovitch, @Ben tillman, @J.Ross

    Intelligence and suggestibility are distinct — suggestibility is not a synonym for stupid — and we are at a cyclical maximum of smart people made dumb by education.

  172. @Nicholas Stix
    "A number of Republican candidates and elected officials have also disparaged efforts to promote diversity and combat bigotry more broadly, and Republican primary voters have rewarded some nominees who espouse racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic views.

    "Mr. Masters, a venture capitalist endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, has been particularly outspoken. Among other things, he has promoted what experts in extremism describe as a sanitized version of the racist 'great replacement' conspiracy theory..."

    Steve always has to identify "things" like this as coming from the "news section," because they are so obviously not news articles but op-eds.

    The problem, whereby "news" is reduced to leftwing talking points goes back at least to the so-called civil rights movement over 60 years ago. Then in 1993, "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., the Episcopalian communist publisher of the new york times (who had succeeded his socialist but patriotic, Jewish war hero father one year earlier) announced that not accuracy but "diversity" was Job One at the times.

    As for Blake Masters, he's not the problem, his party is. If the gop were a patriotic party, all of its pols would sound like Masters, and it would have eliminated aa and the u.s. civil rights act many years ago. Instead, when racial socialists attack them, they virtually always fold like a cheap suitcase. And they almost always support affirmative action, and other anti-White, racist policies, practices, and laws, which is why I consider the gop just as evil as the dems.

    Several years ago, a brilliant observer advised gopers to always refer to the dems as "the black party," but if anything, the gopers, including President Trump, have gone in the opposite direction.

    https://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2019/07/affirmative-action-corrupts-diversity.html

    Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @J.Ross

    Democrats are the Party of Hatred. Their every motive, mechanism, and effect is hate. They hate people who work for a living so they make life harder for this group. They hate people who sell non-luxury food so they persecute them. This also explains their conformism and sudden falling outs.

  173. @Rob McX
    While white countries are making adverts as diverse as possible, Nigeria is heading the other way.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1ec-aXMeCY

    When I was looking up that story, I came across this other one:

    'Cannibal cut off his aunt's head and used it to make pepper soup in Nigeria'

    Replies: @Dube

    Paul Joseph Watson is a bold, keen reporter and deserves support. I want him to add a split second in his cuts between sections.

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @Dube

    YES! I had meant to write a post a few months about this kind of thing - I like the guy, but that's annoying in a couple of ways. The thing is that I could not find out who the guy was just from a picture of him and his voice, both just in my head. I needed him as my most familiar example. Mystery solved! Thanks, Rob McX.

    For crying out loud, how many seconds does that crap cut out, if that's even the point? Pauses are necessary.

  174. @Achmed E. Newman
    @kaganovitch

    Don't forget Hank Johnson... or is he retired and living (very carefully) in Guam?

    I agree about the incandescents to some degree. Demand is not nearly the same, so the supply may be a niche thing at this point. Still, they are 8 times higher in price!

    Replies: @kaganovitch

    Don’t forget Hank Johnson… or is he retired and living (very carefully) in Guam?

    Indeed, I cited him.

    • Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
    @kaganovitch

    oops! Right there, sorry.

  175. @epebble
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    But she stands out better than other women in that picture. So, on Relative Grading, she gets an A

    Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @The Anti-Gnostic

    I have never seen a picture of KH that makes me think, “Yeah, that looks like fun!” She’s a solid 5 even dressed up. Of course Willie Brown was legally blind so maybe she had some other, uh, attractive qualities.

  176. @Bugg
    @JR Ewing

    Rumors abound that man about town in Texas, Beto O'Rourke, has contracted the dreaded monkeypox. Awaiting the convoluted nonsense explanation that does not involve attending a gay orgy.

    Replies: @Jim Don Bob

    One post said he is on intravenous antibiotics which is pretty serious. He’s an asshole poseur but I don’t wish that on anyone.

  177. @Mike_from_SGV
    After the reaction to his first tweet, he didn't grovel, but doubled down. So rare. Time to stop groveling. I like this guy.

    Replies: @Anonymous, @Polistra, @SFG, @Bugg, @AnotherDad, @Fungus Among Us

    He didn’t grovel, but doubled down.

    Trump, day 1: Mexico is sending us their rapists.

    New York Times: Screeeeeech sputter sputter point point

    Trump, day 2: Yeah, and they’re sending us their murderers, too.

    Me: MAGA!

    .. and we all know how that turned out.

    Actally, how did that turn out, anyway? Serious question

  178. @anon
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    Once they're beyond first term congressman, none of them dress themselves (unless that's part of their schtick, like Bernie Sanders).

    She has consultants, and has had them for years. Perhaps she doesn't want to offend poor women by wearing designer clothes. Maybe she's hoping some dumb male political opponent makes fun of her appearance (that makes her into a victim and brings in female supporters like moth to flame).

    The other issue there is she's having to pose straight on. There's a reason women do the 45 degree tilt pose, when given the choice.

    Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic

    Surely she was given the choice.

    My guess is she really thinks she is sexsay. After all, Willie Brown–Willie Brown!–did her before passing her off to good old whats-his-name.

  179. @epebble
    @The Anti-Gnostic

    But she stands out better than other women in that picture. So, on Relative Grading, she gets an A

    Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @The Anti-Gnostic

    Sure, because she’s wearing a powder blue pantsuit fresh from Belk’s in the center of the picture. She’s a goofball who needs to be teaching the 1L research & writing course somewhere.

  180. @R.G. Camara
    @PhysicistDave

    No less than Julius Caesar himself was rumored, as a young man, to have given his body up to a degenerate Greek king to help his political ambitions.

    Speaking of which, did you ever bother to Google how Caesar paid his army instead of spewing off ignorant b.s., you low-IQ bigoted anti-Catholic moron?

    Replies: @nebulafox, @PhysicistDave, @Mr. Anon

    This was common political slander in ancient Rome. Octavian got the same treatment, as did Antony. There’s no reason to suggest it was true.

    (Caesar seemed unusually… focused on womanizing. He went out of his way to bed aristocratic women who were related to his enemies. That might have partly a response to the slur: it was one of the very few things that could get Caesar to lose his temper. But by the time he was dictator, he wouldn’t have needed to hide a male lover from the public. As the experience of the five times married Sulla, and later on the differing reactions to Trajan and Hadrian showed, the Romans didn’t care what a man did as long as he remained a man in their eyes and obeyed social protocol with wives.)

    • Agree: New Dealer
    • Replies: @R.G. Camara
    @nebulafox

    I'm not saying Caesar liked or preferred homo-sex, but I'm saying I could understand a person like Caesar allowing some degenerate to have at him if it helped him later. Many a "straight" Hollywood male star has been gay-for-roles with the degenerates running Hollywood, this is not something unthinkable.

    Caesar was famously able to charm everyone he met, even if he hated them with a passion, was disgusted by them, or was about to off them; he was very Bill Clinton in that regard. Caesar famously was captured by pirates when he was young and ransomed, and became incredibly popular among his captors, drinking and carousing with them and refusing to escape when he had the opportunity. But right after the ransom was paid and Caesar sent home, he returned with troops and coldly murdered the entire lot.

    So the idea of Caesar cavalierly offering his backside to the local king --if it paid dividends for him -- even if he disliked it --- was certainly something Caesar was capable of.

    Replies: @nebulafox

    , @Jack D
    @nebulafox

    Roman "historians" (who often wrote long after their subject were dead) were generally more concerned with making their work exciting and readable and making their heroes look good and their enemies look bad than with any thing so trivial as factual accuracy. By modern standards they were more "historical novelists" than neutral reporters of history. They would discern their subject's essential character (good or evil) and then make up stories to illustrate their character. Many of the famous stories like Nero fiddling while Rome burned probably have no basis in truth at all. Arguably the Gospels and the Old Testament are part of this same literary tradition. Essential truth was more important to these authors than factual truth.

    This is really an unbroken tradition to this day, stretching from Parson Weems's imaginative stories about Washington ("I cannot tell a lie") to the Steele Dossier.

    Replies: @nebulafox

  181. @PhysicistDave

    Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]...
     
    There -- I've fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California -- Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh.... we're not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back...

    Replies: @interesting, @Mr. Anon, @Fluesterwitz, @Cutter, @Emil Nikola Richard, @R.G. Camara, @SaneClownPosse, @nebulafox, @tommer

    It was all fine unless you got caught with a dead girl or a live boy, and your surname was not Kennedy.

    • LOL: Rob McX
  182. @kaganovitch
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Don’t forget Hank Johnson… or is he retired and living (very carefully) in Guam?

    Indeed, I cited him.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    oops! Right there, sorry.

  183. @Erik L
    @Altai

    We had several decades of low inflation and low unemployment. Those are the functions the Fed is supposed to maximize so one could argue that they did a good job on average. The economy might not be to your personal taste but those two items are difficult to argue with.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @AnotherDad

    We had several decades of low inflation and low unemployment. Those are the functions the Fed is supposed to maximize so one could argue that they did a good job on average. The economy might not be to your personal taste but those two items are difficult to argue with.

    A few huge factors:
    — the rise of China as an efficient manufacturing center (and net saver)
    — Moore’s Law, technology products radically improving in perf/price; (note: there is always some goodness for any new technology as production scales up and the technology improves, but this was unprecedented)
    — fracking–and end of the Soviet Union–keeping a lid on energy prices
    — the Internet–and huge unprecedented efficiency of communications
    — a historically best educated American generation running through its productive prime

    And yet with these huge tailwinds … we the tech bubble/pop, the housing bubble/pop, massive money printing during the Great Recession and on then into overdrive during the Faucidemic.

    And … through this unprecedented trade deficits and importation of capital–basically selling off American assets–companies, stocks, farmland, even residential real estate–to foreigners.

    It was actually epic mismanagement of America. Basically, only to the middle men types grabbing their cut with their grubby little paws and not giving a shit about the nation’s future could this process be considered a “good job”.

    If I sell your house out from under you. I can do a “good job” helping you throw a hell of a party. But … morning will come.

  184. @Dube
    @Rob McX

    Paul Joseph Watson is a bold, keen reporter and deserves support. I want him to add a split second in his cuts between sections.

    Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

    YES! I had meant to write a post a few months about this kind of thing – I like the guy, but that’s annoying in a couple of ways. The thing is that I could not find out who the guy was just from a picture of him and his voice, both just in my head. I needed him as my most familiar example. Mystery solved! Thanks, Rob McX.

    For crying out loud, how many seconds does that crap cut out, if that’s even the point? Pauses are necessary.

  185. @R.G. Camara
    @PhysicistDave

    No less than Julius Caesar himself was rumored, as a young man, to have given his body up to a degenerate Greek king to help his political ambitions.

    Speaking of which, did you ever bother to Google how Caesar paid his army instead of spewing off ignorant b.s., you low-IQ bigoted anti-Catholic moron?

    Replies: @nebulafox, @PhysicistDave, @Mr. Anon

    My old friend R.G. Camara asked me:

    Speaking of which, did you ever bother to Google how Caesar paid his army instead of spewing off ignorant b.s., you low-IQ bigoted anti-Catholic moron?

    I never needed to, R.G. I already knew more about the subject than you do.

    Speaking of the Church, “Eppur si muove!”

    Take care, R.G.

    • Troll: R.G. Camara
    • Replies: @R.G. Camara
    @PhysicistDave

    lmao. And now our resident low-IQ anti-Catholic bigot tries to pretend he knew "all along" how Caesar paid his troops, despite openly asking the question. Because of course he knows "more about the subject" than anyone else.

    He's such a super-smart boy -- but only in his own mind.

    Gamma confiremd.

    Replies: @PhysicistDave

  186. @nebulafox
    @R.G. Camara

    This was common political slander in ancient Rome. Octavian got the same treatment, as did Antony. There's no reason to suggest it was true.

    (Caesar seemed unusually... focused on womanizing. He went out of his way to bed aristocratic women who were related to his enemies. That might have partly a response to the slur: it was one of the very few things that could get Caesar to lose his temper. But by the time he was dictator, he wouldn't have needed to hide a male lover from the public. As the experience of the five times married Sulla, and later on the differing reactions to Trajan and Hadrian showed, the Romans didn't care what a man did as long as he remained a man in their eyes and obeyed social protocol with wives.)

    Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Jack D

    I’m not saying Caesar liked or preferred homo-sex, but I’m saying I could understand a person like Caesar allowing some degenerate to have at him if it helped him later. Many a “straight” Hollywood male star has been gay-for-roles with the degenerates running Hollywood, this is not something unthinkable.

    Caesar was famously able to charm everyone he met, even if he hated them with a passion, was disgusted by them, or was about to off them; he was very Bill Clinton in that regard. Caesar famously was captured by pirates when he was young and ransomed, and became incredibly popular among his captors, drinking and carousing with them and refusing to escape when he had the opportunity. But right after the ransom was paid and Caesar sent home, he returned with troops and coldly murdered the entire lot.

    So the idea of Caesar cavalierly offering his backside to the local king –if it paid dividends for him — even if he disliked it — was certainly something Caesar was capable of.

    • Replies: @nebulafox
    @R.G. Camara

    No, I get what you are saying. I just doubt that the stigma involved would have been worth the hassle for Caesar, and that like much from ancient history, this anecdote has to be taken with a massive pinch of salt. He probably was just a young man abroad for the first time who was enjoying the adventure away from Rome after his first military campaigns. The story of an effeminate, decadent Eastern monarch debauching the young arrogant dandy mixed with just what Caesar's political rivals intensely disliked about him ticks off too many juicy Roman stereotypes to not raise some red flags.

    It's also worth bearing in mind that in ancient Greek homosexuality, anal penetration was the domain of prostitutes and slaves, and theoretically not something you did with your eromenos. Least of all a young aristocrat from the most powerful state in the world, who is at your court as a guest and under the protection of xenia-something that the ancients took as sacred.

    >But right after the ransom was paid and Caesar sent home, he returned with troops and coldly murdered the entire lot.

    Good man.

  187. @PhysicistDave
    @R.G. Camara

    My old friend R.G. Camara asked me:


    Speaking of which, did you ever bother to Google how Caesar paid his army instead of spewing off ignorant b.s., you low-IQ bigoted anti-Catholic moron?
     
    I never needed to, R.G. I already knew more about the subject than you do.

    Speaking of the Church, "Eppur si muove!"

    Take care, R.G.

    Replies: @R.G. Camara

    lmao. And now our resident low-IQ anti-Catholic bigot tries to pretend he knew “all along” how Caesar paid his troops, despite openly asking the question. Because of course he knows “more about the subject” than anyone else.

    He’s such a super-smart boy — but only in his own mind.

    Gamma confiremd.

    • Thanks: PhysicistDave
    • Replies: @PhysicistDave
    @R.G. Camara

    My little buddy, R. G. Camara wrote to me:


    lmao. And now our resident low-IQ anti-Catholic bigot tries to pretend he knew “all along” how Caesar paid his troops, despite openly asking the question. Because of course he knows “more about the subject” than anyone else.

    He’s such a super-smart boy — but only in his own mind.
     
    Yep, little buddy, that's me -- your friendly neighborhood "low-IQ anti-Catholic bigot." My low IQ has been extremely helpful in earning my Ph.D. in physics from Stanford and in being co-inventor on multiple patents.

    Good thing I don't have a high IQ, eh?

    For anyone wondering why my pal R. G. and I are having these strange exchanges, long ago I pointed out in a casual remark that most Americans do not in fact believe in "transubstantiation" and that most of those who do are members of a specific religious denomination.

    Those two facts are quite obviously true, and R. G. has never, to my knowledge, denied that they are true.

    But for some reason, R. G. got really, really upset at my pointing out these quite obvious facts, and his knickers have been in a knot ever since.

    I find this very, very funny.

    I am afraid that R. G. does not.

    Eppur si muove, R.G. Eppur si muove.

    (Yes, yes, everyone, I know I should not be encouraging him. But I have a soft spot in my heart for little children. Of all ages.)
  188. @Autistocrates
    @Mr. Anon

    Well at least Thiel is a realist. Ultimately you need a few competent people like Masters or Vance in the Senate, and they can just corral these weird Trump backed Senators, who really just serve to be a warm body & a vote in an oppositional faction to cokehead Mitch.

    Btw, Thiel is close with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, he attended his events over the years. Thiel also was born in Germany but his family also lived in South Africa during the 1970s. Sure, Thiel is a billionaire who brushes shoulders with globalists, but I'd suggest listening to talks he's given. Maybe he's lying, however the views he expresses are about preserving Western civilization. Always good to be skeptical but its better him than a bunch of lolbertarians like the Kochs or these (((Private Equity))) types who don't care about anything other than preserving their loot.

    Replies: @Mr. Anon

    I agree with what you and others said. Thiel seems to be a thoughtful guy with some good instincts. I remember seeing a speech he gave in 2016 in support of Trump. He said that he didn’t want America to be great again, he wanted it to be normal again, i.e., a normal country in which the government at least pays a little attention to the interests, well-being, and future of it’s own people. I agree with that sentiment entirely. American Exceptionalism has been a kind of poison for this country; it has made this country megalomaniacal, even borderline insane. We, as a country, act like a drug addict jacked up on Cocaine, unaware of our limits and devoid of all sense.

    I’m just pointing out that he is a billionaire and quite possibly has agendas that might diverge from ours.

    Buyer beware.

  189. @Achmed E. Newman
    @Achmed E. Newman

    Oops, that'd be Blake, not Black, Masters, both times there! No, he's not black.

    Oh, and yes, he's been a stand-up guy for not groveling after that last attempt at making him do so (the deal about "frankly, black people ...").

    Replies: @fish

    Oops, that’d be Blake, not Black, Masters, both times there! No, he’s not black.

    Yes……but you capitalized in both instances of “Black” and isn’t that the most important thing.

  190. @Mr. Anon
    @PhysicistDave


    For everyone not from California — Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Kamala was just a slut.
     
    Just for entertaining Willie's willie, she got a part-time (probably n0-show) job pulling down six figures. Not bad work for a prostitute.

    Replies: @Jose, Can you See

    Make that a “No-show No-work” job.

  191. @R.G. Camara
    @PhysicistDave

    lmao. And now our resident low-IQ anti-Catholic bigot tries to pretend he knew "all along" how Caesar paid his troops, despite openly asking the question. Because of course he knows "more about the subject" than anyone else.

    He's such a super-smart boy -- but only in his own mind.

    Gamma confiremd.

    Replies: @PhysicistDave

    My little buddy, R. G. Camara wrote to me:

    lmao. And now our resident low-IQ anti-Catholic bigot tries to pretend he knew “all along” how Caesar paid his troops, despite openly asking the question. Because of course he knows “more about the subject” than anyone else.

    He’s such a super-smart boy — but only in his own mind.

    Yep, little buddy, that’s me — your friendly neighborhood “low-IQ anti-Catholic bigot.” My low IQ has been extremely helpful in earning my Ph.D. in physics from Stanford and in being co-inventor on multiple patents.

    Good thing I don’t have a high IQ, eh?

    For anyone wondering why my pal R. G. and I are having these strange exchanges, long ago I pointed out in a casual remark that most Americans do not in fact believe in “transubstantiation” and that most of those who do are members of a specific religious denomination.

    Those two facts are quite obviously true, and R. G. has never, to my knowledge, denied that they are true.

    But for some reason, R. G. got really, really upset at my pointing out these quite obvious facts, and his knickers have been in a knot ever since.

    I find this very, very funny.

    I am afraid that R. G. does not.

    Eppur si muove, R.G. Eppur si muove.

    (Yes, yes, everyone, I know I should not be encouraging him. But I have a soft spot in my heart for little children. Of all ages.)

  192. @R.G. Camara
    @PhysicistDave

    No less than Julius Caesar himself was rumored, as a young man, to have given his body up to a degenerate Greek king to help his political ambitions.

    Speaking of which, did you ever bother to Google how Caesar paid his army instead of spewing off ignorant b.s., you low-IQ bigoted anti-Catholic moron?

    Replies: @nebulafox, @PhysicistDave, @Mr. Anon

    No less than Julius Caesar himself was rumored, as a young man, to have given his body up to a degenerate Greek king to help his political ambitions.

    The “Queen of Bythnia”:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Bithynia

    “At a debate in the Senate, when Caesar recalled some benefits Rome had received from Nicomedes, Cicero interrupted him with “we all know what he gave you and what you gave him in return”.”

    Caesar was a magnanimous dictator; he did not have Cicero killed. His operative, Marc Antony, was not so forgiving.

    In the words of Evil Spock: “I do not want to command the Enterprise, but if it should befall me, I suggest you remember that my operatives would avenge my death – and some of them… are Vulcans.”

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708438/characters/nm0000559

    • Replies: @nebulafox
    @Mr. Anon

    It's hard to blame Antony after the way Cicero ripped into him, but Octavian (who, if we can believe Plutarch, would have rather seen Cicero live-something I actually find plausible) made them all look tame when it came to vengeance.

    An interesting analogue to the dichotomy between Julius Caesar and Augustus can be found in ancient Persia between Cyrus the Great and Darius I. Cyrus was noted for his military genius and his one-time magnanimity toward enemies, Darius for his political and administrative acumen, and his cold-blooded ruthlessness that abated once his power was secure. In these sorts of things, you either go all the way or not at all.

  193. @Meretricious
    @G. Poulin

    All you need to know about the politico/social parasite Joe Biden is that he was caught plagiarizing at a 3d-tier law school from which he graduated at the bottom of his class. He's Jacoby & Meyers material

    Replies: @JR Ewing

    The thing that got me two years ago was how the plagiarism stuff was never mentioned by the MSM. Not once that I can remember. It really wasn’t an issue in 2008, either, when Obama picked him for veep.

    I remember being in junior high back in the 80’s when it came out the first time and it was a huge scandal and he got run out of the race in a very inglorious way. Now it’s just like, “SHRUG! BETTER THAN BAD ORANGE MAN!”

    • Agree: bomag
  194. @Inquiring Mind
    @Anon

    Robinette.

    Is that an Irish Catholic version of having Hussein for your middle name?

    Replies: @Mark Grainger

    Robinette is originally a French Hugeunot name. Fairly common in Canada at one point. Distant cousins of Joe.

    https://heritagemississauga.com/whats-in-a-name-making-a-robinett-robinette-connection/

    J.J. was the most famous of the Canadian connection. Best defence lawyer of his time.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Josiah_Robinette

  195. @Reg Cæsar
    @The Germ Theory of Disease


    Yes is ALWAYS around my friend. Just like the Clash and the Ramones.
     
    None of the Ramones are still around. Although a late-1970s phenomenon, they beat almost all the 1960s and even 1950s groups at shuffling off the coil. The Kingston Trio (Punahou's most illustrious graduates) are all gone now, too. Barry Gibb, Joey Molland, Micky Dolenz, Dave Clark and Lenny Davidson, and, of course, Paul and Ringo are carrying on the memory of their groups.

    Happily, all the Rascals are still with us.

    A certain Kiwi may not be for too long, though:

    Lorde takes a dip in the Potomac River

    Replies: @Mark G.

    None of the Ramones are still around.

    I was a bass player in a punk rock band in the late seventies. The Ramones were our musical heroes. I left the band right before they went off to play at CBGB in New York. When they came back, they told me the Ramones were sitting there watching them while they were playing. They said it was quite intimidating to be playing in front of your musical heroes.

    • Replies: @Steve Sailer
    @Mark G.

    I've run into a few dozen celebrities in my lifetime and have generally behaved in a dignified manner: "Hello, Mr. Ewing," that kind of thing, as if I meet famous giant NBA stars every day. (I usually remember to call them Mr. or Ms. X). But running into Joey Ramone and his remarkably tiny mom eating ice cream cones on a street corner in a pleasant part of Greenwich Village in 1982 was embarrassing: "Oh my God, Joey, I'm your BIGGEST fan!!!"

    By the way, that gets me wondering how difficult it is to be a really tall celebrity famous for his tallness. Joey Ramone was 6'5", and quite a few of the other celebrities I've run into were NBA stars: Patrick Ewing, Bill Walton, Wilt Chamberlain, Horace Grant, and Dennis Rodman. In contrast, I'm a pretty big baseball fan, but I can only recall running into Steve Garvey (twice). And a couple of years ago Mike Sciosia, but only after he was pointed out to me.

    In 2000 or 2001, at the Los Angeles Auto Show, I walked past Tom Hanks who was the biggest movie star in the world at the time. But he, being a really good actor, was putting out vibes signaling that he was not the droid you were looking for, so I was already past him before I realized that the surprisingly tall guy with the baseball cap pulled low was the dominant movie star of the 1990s.

    In contrast, his wife, Rita Wilson, initiated a conversation with my wife.

    Replies: @Jack D, @Reg Cæsar

  196. @Mark G.
    @Reg Cæsar


    None of the Ramones are still around.

     

    I was a bass player in a punk rock band in the late seventies. The Ramones were our musical heroes. I left the band right before they went off to play at CBGB in New York. When they came back, they told me the Ramones were sitting there watching them while they were playing. They said it was quite intimidating to be playing in front of your musical heroes.

    Replies: @Steve Sailer

    I’ve run into a few dozen celebrities in my lifetime and have generally behaved in a dignified manner: “Hello, Mr. Ewing,” that kind of thing, as if I meet famous giant NBA stars every day. (I usually remember to call them Mr. or Ms. X). But running into Joey Ramone and his remarkably tiny mom eating ice cream cones on a street corner in a pleasant part of Greenwich Village in 1982 was embarrassing: “Oh my God, Joey, I’m your BIGGEST fan!!!”

    By the way, that gets me wondering how difficult it is to be a really tall celebrity famous for his tallness. Joey Ramone was 6’5″, and quite a few of the other celebrities I’ve run into were NBA stars: Patrick Ewing, Bill Walton, Wilt Chamberlain, Horace Grant, and Dennis Rodman. In contrast, I’m a pretty big baseball fan, but I can only recall running into Steve Garvey (twice). And a couple of years ago Mike Sciosia, but only after he was pointed out to me.

    In 2000 or 2001, at the Los Angeles Auto Show, I walked past Tom Hanks who was the biggest movie star in the world at the time. But he, being a really good actor, was putting out vibes signaling that he was not the droid you were looking for, so I was already past him before I realized that the surprisingly tall guy with the baseball cap pulled low was the dominant movie star of the 1990s.

    In contrast, his wife, Rita Wilson, initiated a conversation with my wife.

    • Replies: @Jack D
    @Steve Sailer

    I once ran into the late 7'7" Manute Bol on the street in NY - his belt buckle was about at my eye level. He also had inky black skin, being an unmixed Sudanese Dinka tribesman. Since he was about 2 or 3 heads taller than everyone else in the crowd, he really stood out.

    https://www.si.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_640/MTY4MTk4NDg1NDMzOTg0OTI1/079006089jpg.webp

    Replies: @Bugg

    , @Reg Cæsar
    @Steve Sailer

    A temp agency got me a food gig at the Metrodome one night. I went in the "employees" entrance-- right behind Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, who were in their prime. They were big.

  197. “experts in extremism”

    Naturally the Gray Hag pieced was written by a woman. Who else? But…who are these “experts in extremism?”

  198. @Rob
    @Mr. Anon

    Realistically, we are going to have billionaires calling the shots. Soft socialism? Managerial class socialism? Will be billionaires. Heck, the Democratic Socialists of America exist to keep “radicals” voting for mainstream Democratic candidates.

    Trumpism? A senile conman, who — I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt — is a billionaire and his rich Democratic daughter and his unimpressive sons.

    Thielism? If you read his book, or just read Scott Alexander’s review of Thiel’s book, he sounds like a really bright, iconoclastic guy. He’s not an obvious fit for “MAGA,” but he’s a really good choice for a forward-looking American nationalism. Someone who is not really either party could break the 50-50 split the country is stuck with. Heck, at least Thiel understands the importance of meritocracy.

    Unlike Trump, Thiel understands the modern wealth-creating economy. Trump brought back incandescent bulbs. Why? When he was young and in the season of the rising sap, America had incandescent light bulbs, damnit! Tiel obviously is better at choosing people than Trump ever was.

    Thiel is probably bright enough that he can roll back some of the regulations and laws that keep us from building housing or anything else. Heck, as I understand it, SV’s tech money respects him, so SV could reorient around his team when Bidenism (really Democratic activists with no supervision. The chief executive is the head of the party proves a bust. Coincidentally, expensive rents benefit older money rentiers, maybe there’s lots of money in building, too? But, new money is buying housing too.

    Replies: @Prester John

    Thiel is originally from Frankfurt and came to this country when he was one year old. Nevertheless, if enough candidates in his stable get elected, watch for Godwin’s Law to kick in. Unfair? Yes? But it wouldn’t surprise, considering the kind of people who constitute the opposition.

  199. @J.Ross
    @International Jew

    You mean a shameless grifter who made atmospherically beyond literally every signal of treason and shamelessly surfed on the bodies of victims. Kelly wasn't elected from his own successes or claims: the woman he replaced allowed herself to become massively unpopular. Like Kelly is now.

    Replies: @International Jew

    Come on man… That was a joke.

    • Replies: @J.Ross
    @International Jew

    A joke. A joke like Mark Kelly bringing rhe PRC flag into space instead of the US flag.

  200. @Dream
    Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people - POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.

    Values do not inspire emotions in the masses like "oppressed" people do.

    This is why abortion is the only area where conservatives compete with liberals - conservatives seek to defend unborn babies not abtract values.

    Replies: @bomag, @PhysicistDave, @Prester John

    I would argue that it’s the exact opposite. It’s the DEMOCRAT Party that worships “values and abstractions”. The leadership takes their cue from Ivy academics and the like who constitute the party theoreticians. The Democrats feigned solidarity with the masses only masks cold, calculating mechanistic abstraction. The masses are mere specimens in a Petri dish; or, worse, equations on the blackboard of some Harvard economist training the next generation of Democrats.

  201. @Steve Sailer
    @Mark G.

    I've run into a few dozen celebrities in my lifetime and have generally behaved in a dignified manner: "Hello, Mr. Ewing," that kind of thing, as if I meet famous giant NBA stars every day. (I usually remember to call them Mr. or Ms. X). But running into Joey Ramone and his remarkably tiny mom eating ice cream cones on a street corner in a pleasant part of Greenwich Village in 1982 was embarrassing: "Oh my God, Joey, I'm your BIGGEST fan!!!"

    By the way, that gets me wondering how difficult it is to be a really tall celebrity famous for his tallness. Joey Ramone was 6'5", and quite a few of the other celebrities I've run into were NBA stars: Patrick Ewing, Bill Walton, Wilt Chamberlain, Horace Grant, and Dennis Rodman. In contrast, I'm a pretty big baseball fan, but I can only recall running into Steve Garvey (twice). And a couple of years ago Mike Sciosia, but only after he was pointed out to me.

    In 2000 or 2001, at the Los Angeles Auto Show, I walked past Tom Hanks who was the biggest movie star in the world at the time. But he, being a really good actor, was putting out vibes signaling that he was not the droid you were looking for, so I was already past him before I realized that the surprisingly tall guy with the baseball cap pulled low was the dominant movie star of the 1990s.

    In contrast, his wife, Rita Wilson, initiated a conversation with my wife.

    Replies: @Jack D, @Reg Cæsar

    I once ran into the late 7’7″ Manute Bol on the street in NY – his belt buckle was about at my eye level. He also had inky black skin, being an unmixed Sudanese Dinka tribesman. Since he was about 2 or 3 heads taller than everyone else in the crowd, he really stood out.

    • Replies: @Bugg
    @Jack D

    Bol attended college with Chris Mullin's brother and they became friendly. One fine night the Mullins brought Bol to a Brooklyn bar called the Cuckoo's Nest on Flatbush Avenue that had ceiling fans. Bol is so tall they had to turn off the ceiling fans for his safety.

  202. @International Jew
    @J.Ross

    Come on man... That was a joke.

    Replies: @J.Ross

    A joke. A joke like Mark Kelly bringing rhe PRC flag into space instead of the US flag.

  203. @R.G. Camara
    @nebulafox

    I'm not saying Caesar liked or preferred homo-sex, but I'm saying I could understand a person like Caesar allowing some degenerate to have at him if it helped him later. Many a "straight" Hollywood male star has been gay-for-roles with the degenerates running Hollywood, this is not something unthinkable.

    Caesar was famously able to charm everyone he met, even if he hated them with a passion, was disgusted by them, or was about to off them; he was very Bill Clinton in that regard. Caesar famously was captured by pirates when he was young and ransomed, and became incredibly popular among his captors, drinking and carousing with them and refusing to escape when he had the opportunity. But right after the ransom was paid and Caesar sent home, he returned with troops and coldly murdered the entire lot.

    So the idea of Caesar cavalierly offering his backside to the local king --if it paid dividends for him -- even if he disliked it --- was certainly something Caesar was capable of.

    Replies: @nebulafox

    No, I get what you are saying. I just doubt that the stigma involved would have been worth the hassle for Caesar, and that like much from ancient history, this anecdote has to be taken with a massive pinch of salt. He probably was just a young man abroad for the first time who was enjoying the adventure away from Rome after his first military campaigns. The story of an effeminate, decadent Eastern monarch debauching the young arrogant dandy mixed with just what Caesar’s political rivals intensely disliked about him ticks off too many juicy Roman stereotypes to not raise some red flags.

    It’s also worth bearing in mind that in ancient Greek homosexuality, anal penetration was the domain of prostitutes and slaves, and theoretically not something you did with your eromenos. Least of all a young aristocrat from the most powerful state in the world, who is at your court as a guest and under the protection of xenia-something that the ancients took as sacred.

    >But right after the ransom was paid and Caesar sent home, he returned with troops and coldly murdered the entire lot.

    Good man.

  204. @Mr. Anon
    @R.G. Camara


    No less than Julius Caesar himself was rumored, as a young man, to have given his body up to a degenerate Greek king to help his political ambitions.
     
    The "Queen of Bythnia":

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Bithynia

    "At a debate in the Senate, when Caesar recalled some benefits Rome had received from Nicomedes, Cicero interrupted him with "we all know what he gave you and what you gave him in return"."
     
    Caesar was a magnanimous dictator; he did not have Cicero killed. His operative, Marc Antony, was not so forgiving.

    In the words of Evil Spock: "I do not want to command the Enterprise, but if it should befall me, I suggest you remember that my operatives would avenge my death - and some of them... are Vulcans."

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708438/characters/nm0000559

    Replies: @nebulafox

    It’s hard to blame Antony after the way Cicero ripped into him, but Octavian (who, if we can believe Plutarch, would have rather seen Cicero live-something I actually find plausible) made them all look tame when it came to vengeance.

    An interesting analogue to the dichotomy between Julius Caesar and Augustus can be found in ancient Persia between Cyrus the Great and Darius I. Cyrus was noted for his military genius and his one-time magnanimity toward enemies, Darius for his political and administrative acumen, and his cold-blooded ruthlessness that abated once his power was secure. In these sorts of things, you either go all the way or not at all.

  205. @Jim Don Bob
    @Macumazahn


    BTW how’s that mission to put an astronette on the Moon going?
     
    About as well as yesterday's big SLS launch which had KH on hand (so to speak), but it turns out NASA never did a complete fueling test beforehand, so it got scrubbed at T-29.

    "I am very proud of this launch team," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a briefing after the scrub.

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/warning-sign-nasa-never-finished-a-fueling-test-before-todays-sls-launch-attempt/

    Replies: @Old Prude

    Thanks for the link JDB. Very intersting and informative. Four failed wet-tests and they decided to go live? It seems the NASA suits knew things were risky, but decided to take a chance with the tax-payers’ rocket because there were no astronauts on board.

  206. @nebulafox
    @R.G. Camara

    This was common political slander in ancient Rome. Octavian got the same treatment, as did Antony. There's no reason to suggest it was true.

    (Caesar seemed unusually... focused on womanizing. He went out of his way to bed aristocratic women who were related to his enemies. That might have partly a response to the slur: it was one of the very few things that could get Caesar to lose his temper. But by the time he was dictator, he wouldn't have needed to hide a male lover from the public. As the experience of the five times married Sulla, and later on the differing reactions to Trajan and Hadrian showed, the Romans didn't care what a man did as long as he remained a man in their eyes and obeyed social protocol with wives.)

    Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Jack D

    Roman “historians” (who often wrote long after their subject were dead) were generally more concerned with making their work exciting and readable and making their heroes look good and their enemies look bad than with any thing so trivial as factual accuracy. By modern standards they were more “historical novelists” than neutral reporters of history. They would discern their subject’s essential character (good or evil) and then make up stories to illustrate their character. Many of the famous stories like Nero fiddling while Rome burned probably have no basis in truth at all. Arguably the Gospels and the Old Testament are part of this same literary tradition. Essential truth was more important to these authors than factual truth.

    This is really an unbroken tradition to this day, stretching from Parson Weems’s imaginative stories about Washington (“I cannot tell a lie”) to the Steele Dossier.

    • Replies: @nebulafox
    @Jack D

    >Roman “historians” (who often wrote long after their subject were dead) were generally more concerned with making their work exciting and readable and making their heroes look good and their enemies look bad than with any thing so trivial as factual accuracy.

    I think that's overly harsh. Particularly with ancient historians who were active participants in the events they covered, as several were, they couldn't have blatantly lied about events or contemporaries would have called them out.

    But it is true that ancient historians didn't work like modern ones at all. Even the blatantly un-allegorical, relatively modern/impartial Thucydides reconstructed his speeches. They need to be treated with caution as a result. If they are taken for what they are instead of presupposing them as modern, you can still learn a lot from them.

    >Arguably the Gospels and the Old Testament are part of this same literary tradition.

    The Gospels and to some extent, the latter works of the OT, yes. Although some of the later books in the Old Testament are deliberately anachronistic, the Jewish readers at the time would have understood them as such. Because education in the ancient world was so narrow compared to today, you could safely assume anyone who was literate would be able to understand your real point.

    The older books of the OT are more akin to the great South Asian or Homeric epics. They record orally transmitted legends, passed down through the centuries. The core of those stories probably do reflect some historical truth (Iliad: Bronze Age Collapse. Mahabharata: Aryan invasion of the subcontinent. Exodus: Egyptian occupation and slave raids into Canaan, where the proto-Jews were already ), but they are from time periods beyond our historical access and reflect all the problems with orally transmitted memory.

    Interesting, the Qu'ran belongs to the latter genre as well, despite coming centuries later. The conventional story of the Islamic conquests is an oral reconstruction. However, the length of time before writing was drastically shorter, so the reconstruction was probably more accurate.

    (I just take the Qu'ran at face value, absent hadith. The banal conclusion I've come to that Muhammad was as much a man of his time as Pope Gregory or Heraclius or innumerable others from rabbis in Judea to recently risen Buddhists in China were. It wasn't illogical to consider the apocalypse shortly at hand. In a weird way, for the Romans at least, it was the end of their world: and the legend of Heraclius marching into Jerusalem to await the "end of the world" came true in a sense.)

  207. French Muslim kills French/Israeli Jewish roommate. Media is portraying it as antisemitism, but I smell a deeper story here that Steve probably could get to the bottom of.

    The story:

    *Authorities claim that French Jew wasn’t killed for antisemitic reasons*
    Despite the government’s claim that the attack was not antisemitic, social media posts have displayed the alleged assassin burning the flag of Israel.

    A young Jewish man from Djerba, the late Eyal Haddad, was barbarically murdered in a town northeast of Paris by his Muslim neighbor about ten days ago. The victim’s body was found in the forest recently, following the killer’s confession that he murdered him because he was Jewish.

    https://jpost.com/diaspora/article-715899

    The reaction:

    Once again the French government have decreed that the murder of a French Jew was not antisemitic. The body was found in the forest, following the killer's confession that he murdered Eyal because he was Jewish. The alleged killer's social media shows him burning an Israeli flag.— Eve Barlow (@Eve_Barlow) August 30, 2022

  208. Masters’s reasoning is too sophisticated for the New York Times. The fact that they cannot follow what he is saying proves his point…

  209. @ChrisZ
    OT, but applicable to a “diversity” thread:

    It has now been two and a half weeks since Salman Rushdie was nearly killed at an anodyne panel discussion, in front of an audience of the great and good.

    Has there been even one word of follow-up since then? How is he doing? Did he really lose an eye?

    What about the would-be killer? Any police-blotter news about his arraignment or pending trial? (This is assuming the crime venue is not a Soros-DA jurisdiction.)

    It looks like the news is observing radio silence about the episode that was so “shocking” two weeks ago.

    I get it, of course (like everyone else here): the attacker is a Muslim, who shouldn’t be in this country to begin with; who’s nursing a foreign-born grudge from before he was born. He unhelpfully used a knife in the crime, so there’s no gun control angle to exploit.

    Add it all up and it’s a non-event—something like the massacre by “Paddock” in Las Vegas, which is going on five years now without any new developments. Whenever a potential narrative collapse threatens, the culture just goes mute—like a child who develops an hysterical inability to speak after witnessing something traumatic.

    Still, it’s a powerful force, and getting more potent. In Vegas, the victims were 50-plus “nobodies” in the eyes of the press, so the crime against them was easy to ignore, and forget. But Rushdie is a Somebody (TM) who does book panels at NY resorts and played himself on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”; you’d think it’d be harder to erase him. Indeed, the Ayatollahs couldn’t do it for 40 years; but it only took the American press 18 days.

    Replies: @Veteran Aryan, @bomag

    Reflects what we discuss here: gotta be a suffering Black, real or imagined, for the press to follow.

  210. It’s so obvious this is written by a lib. All they can do is call Blake a racist, homophobe, etc. Blake made it clear we should judge people on their merits, not on their genetalia, race, or any other identity politics BS. And yet that makes you a racist in this insane culture we have to live in.

    Looking forward to Blake winning his race. Will be a solid senator.

  211. @Jack D
    @Steve Sailer

    I once ran into the late 7'7" Manute Bol on the street in NY - his belt buckle was about at my eye level. He also had inky black skin, being an unmixed Sudanese Dinka tribesman. Since he was about 2 or 3 heads taller than everyone else in the crowd, he really stood out.

    https://www.si.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_640/MTY4MTk4NDg1NDMzOTg0OTI1/079006089jpg.webp

    Replies: @Bugg

    Bol attended college with Chris Mullin’s brother and they became friendly. One fine night the Mullins brought Bol to a Brooklyn bar called the Cuckoo’s Nest on Flatbush Avenue that had ceiling fans. Bol is so tall they had to turn off the ceiling fans for his safety.

  212. @Jim Don Bob
    @Anonymous

    And in Charm City:


    An Apple TV+ series filming in Baltimore stopped production Friday after several people threatened the producers and tried to extort money from them, Baltimore police said.

    A spokesperson for the Baltimore Police Department said the crew was filming around 4 PM in the downtown area when the producers were approached by several people. The group claimed if they didn�t stop filming they would come back and shoot someone, police said.

    However, they said no violence would occur if they were paid an unspecified amount. Producers decided to halt filming and seek a new location. Local news outlet The Baltimore Banner reported that drug dealers attempted to extort $50,000 from the production, which producers declined to pay.
     
    https://deadline.com/2022/08/lady-in-the-lake-apple-plus-series-forced-to-halt-production-after-extortion-threats-from-baltimore-locals-1235101762/

    Replies: @Fungus Among Us

    Baltimore Banner reported that drug dealers attempted

    “drug dealers” is Wokian for “black kids who’ve done something I disapprove of.” If a white person shoots one, they’re called “honor students” Or, if that’s too ludicrous for even a Wokester, “aspiring rapper”

  213. @Steve Sailer
    @Mark G.

    I've run into a few dozen celebrities in my lifetime and have generally behaved in a dignified manner: "Hello, Mr. Ewing," that kind of thing, as if I meet famous giant NBA stars every day. (I usually remember to call them Mr. or Ms. X). But running into Joey Ramone and his remarkably tiny mom eating ice cream cones on a street corner in a pleasant part of Greenwich Village in 1982 was embarrassing: "Oh my God, Joey, I'm your BIGGEST fan!!!"

    By the way, that gets me wondering how difficult it is to be a really tall celebrity famous for his tallness. Joey Ramone was 6'5", and quite a few of the other celebrities I've run into were NBA stars: Patrick Ewing, Bill Walton, Wilt Chamberlain, Horace Grant, and Dennis Rodman. In contrast, I'm a pretty big baseball fan, but I can only recall running into Steve Garvey (twice). And a couple of years ago Mike Sciosia, but only after he was pointed out to me.

    In 2000 or 2001, at the Los Angeles Auto Show, I walked past Tom Hanks who was the biggest movie star in the world at the time. But he, being a really good actor, was putting out vibes signaling that he was not the droid you were looking for, so I was already past him before I realized that the surprisingly tall guy with the baseball cap pulled low was the dominant movie star of the 1990s.

    In contrast, his wife, Rita Wilson, initiated a conversation with my wife.

    Replies: @Jack D, @Reg Cæsar

    A temp agency got me a food gig at the Metrodome one night. I went in the “employees” entrance– right behind Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, who were in their prime. They were big.

  214. @Anonymous
    @Mike_from_SGV

    My only issue with Masters is that he looks like a geek. It's his bone structure or something, and his lack of weight on his bones. He has that classic geek physiognomy you remember from school.

    Replies: @JimDandy, @AKAHorace, @Harry Baldwin, @Anon, @ChrisZ, @Buzz Mohawk, @James J. O'Meara, @Ed

    Country is collapsing and you’re worried about how a man looks?

  215. @Jack D
    @nebulafox

    Roman "historians" (who often wrote long after their subject were dead) were generally more concerned with making their work exciting and readable and making their heroes look good and their enemies look bad than with any thing so trivial as factual accuracy. By modern standards they were more "historical novelists" than neutral reporters of history. They would discern their subject's essential character (good or evil) and then make up stories to illustrate their character. Many of the famous stories like Nero fiddling while Rome burned probably have no basis in truth at all. Arguably the Gospels and the Old Testament are part of this same literary tradition. Essential truth was more important to these authors than factual truth.

    This is really an unbroken tradition to this day, stretching from Parson Weems's imaginative stories about Washington ("I cannot tell a lie") to the Steele Dossier.

    Replies: @nebulafox

    >Roman “historians” (who often wrote long after their subject were dead) were generally more concerned with making their work exciting and readable and making their heroes look good and their enemies look bad than with any thing so trivial as factual accuracy.

    I think that’s overly harsh. Particularly with ancient historians who were active participants in the events they covered, as several were, they couldn’t have blatantly lied about events or contemporaries would have called them out.

    But it is true that ancient historians didn’t work like modern ones at all. Even the blatantly un-allegorical, relatively modern/impartial Thucydides reconstructed his speeches. They need to be treated with caution as a result. If they are taken for what they are instead of presupposing them as modern, you can still learn a lot from them.

    >Arguably the Gospels and the Old Testament are part of this same literary tradition.

    The Gospels and to some extent, the latter works of the OT, yes. Although some of the later books in the Old Testament are deliberately anachronistic, the Jewish readers at the time would have understood them as such. Because education in the ancient world was so narrow compared to today, you could safely assume anyone who was literate would be able to understand your real point.

    The older books of the OT are more akin to the great South Asian or Homeric epics. They record orally transmitted legends, passed down through the centuries. The core of those stories probably do reflect some historical truth (Iliad: Bronze Age Collapse. Mahabharata: Aryan invasion of the subcontinent. Exodus: Egyptian occupation and slave raids into Canaan, where the proto-Jews were already ), but they are from time periods beyond our historical access and reflect all the problems with orally transmitted memory.

    Interesting, the Qu’ran belongs to the latter genre as well, despite coming centuries later. The conventional story of the Islamic conquests is an oral reconstruction. However, the length of time before writing was drastically shorter, so the reconstruction was probably more accurate.

    (I just take the Qu’ran at face value, absent hadith. The banal conclusion I’ve come to that Muhammad was as much a man of his time as Pope Gregory or Heraclius or innumerable others from rabbis in Judea to recently risen Buddhists in China were. It wasn’t illogical to consider the apocalypse shortly at hand. In a weird way, for the Romans at least, it was the end of their world: and the legend of Heraclius marching into Jerusalem to await the “end of the world” came true in a sense.)

  216. @PhysicistDave
    @Dream

    Dream wrote:


    Conservatives/Republicans will keep losing as long as worship values and abstractions. Liberals keep winning because they value people – POCs, gays, transgenders, drag queens.
     
    I don't understand why the GOP does not takes as its slogan something along the lines of: "The Republican Party-- the party that cares about the people who make America work."

    It has the virtue of basically being true: the GOP is now the party of the farmers, the truck drivers, the construction workers, the airplane mechanics, the small businessmen, etc.

    Perhaps the answer is simply that the people who run the GOP -- Turtle McConnell, Mitt Romney, the "donor class," etc. -- really rather dislike the people who make America work and would rather lose elections than appeal to such people.

    Replies: @ThreeCranes, @Bardon Kaldian, @Bill, @Dave from Oz

    Or more simply it could rebrand as the american workers party.

  217. @PhysicistDave

    Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive [sexual] experience [leading to her first political positions]...
     
    There -- I've fixed what the Gray Lady wrote!

    For everyone not from California -- Kamala got her start in politics by being the mistress of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the California Assembly and Grand Pooh-Bah of California politics, who appointed her to her first political positions.

    Willie, for all his faults, was at least an entertaining, bigger-then-life character.

    Kamala was just a slut.

    This is really one of the most bizarre and shocking stories in all of American political history.

    But Shhhh.... we're not supposed to talk about it.

    But just suppose that Dan Quayle or Fritz Mondale had gotten his start in politics lying on his back...

    Replies: @interesting, @Mr. Anon, @Fluesterwitz, @Cutter, @Emil Nikola Richard, @R.G. Camara, @SaneClownPosse, @nebulafox, @tommer

    She like Obama is only half black. like the duck says. They pretend their white and Asian heritage doesn’t exist. Grifting racist cowards

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PastClassics
The Shaping Event of Our Modern World
Talk TV sensationalists and axe-grinding ideologues have fallen for a myth of immigrant lawlessness.
Analyzing the History of a Controversial Movement
The Surprising Elements of Talmudic Judaism
How America was neoconned into World War IV