Sep 04 2021

Conversations

     There’s no way to predict in what direction a chat here at the Fortress of Crankitude will go. For example, recently the C.S.O. lamented the frequency of chicken in our dinner menu. Since that, she’s made a serious attempt to reduce the number of chicken occurrences per week. Knowing her proclivities as I do, I’ve made no attempt to redirect her. But this morning presented an opportunity for a little snark:

FWP: What do you have planned for dinner?
CSO: A salad.

FWP: Will it contain…chicken?
CSO: (surprised) Well, if you want. We have canned chicken, buffalo chicken strips, honey-barbecue chicken, or I could stop at the store after yoga and pick up a rotisserie chicken—

FWP: Never mind. Of course, there’s also pre-chicken.
CSO: Hard boiled eggs? I was planning to make egg salad for lunch.

FWP: Then go ahead with the egg salad. Though that does mean that the egg will come before the chicken, today at least.
CSO: (scowls)

     Yes, it is a silly household. What made you think otherwise?

Sep 04 2021

Self-Unmaskings

     Now and then, your enemy will blatantly reveal himself to you, as if daring you to do anything about it:

     Noted True Conservative Rick Wilson of the Noted True Conservative North American Man-Boy Lincoln Association comes out breathing fire against Texas’ terrible terrible abortion law, trying to organize a boycott against any corporation that merely exists in Texas.

     See, if you base a company in Texas, you’re forcing women to work in an anti-abortion state.

     Here’s a thread about those Before Times when Noted Conservative Rick Wilson pretended to be against abortion.

     I’ve said this a million times but it keeps being more true: Conservative, Inc. has always been leftwing. Always.

     They’ve always misled actual conservatives into accepting liberal policy. “This isn’t the hill to die on.” “The optics on this aren’t good.” “We can’t pass this kind of bill now! We have an election coming up next year!”

     (Note: We literally always have a big national election coming up this year or next year. It’s a two year cycle.)

     They’re venomously, viciously angry at you because their old bullshit isn’t working anymore and you won’t listen to them any longer.

     So they hate your guts.

     Once again, Ace strikes the jugular.

     But wait: there’s more! Just about every time I’ve labeled abortion “the sacrament of the Left,” Leftists have poured their vitriol onto me. Nevertheless, it is so. Here’s the proof:

     Leftists turned on the feminist hero and women’s rights crusader, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, after the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, refused to block the implementation of Texas’ “heartbeat bill” on September 1st, effectively banning most abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected….

     Key to the ruling was Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who sits in the seat [Associate Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg vacated when she died.

     “In retrospect, maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg should have stepped down from the Court in 2014,” one leftist commentator sneered.

     “Ruth Bader Ginsburg really, really should have stepped down,” another added. “When you are a leader of people, with their lives in your hands… you have to do what’s best for them, always. She didn’t.”

     When she was offered the opportunity to step down, she was 80 and Democrats had a comfortable majority in the Senate, allowing Obama to replace her with a dedicated liberal justice and without Republican input.

     “Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s categorical refusal to retire brought us here. So thanks you old dead white bitch,” sniffed a self-described “feminist” who later deleted her tweet.

     As our favorite Bookworm notes, abortion is far more important to the Left than the loss of American lives in Afghanistan:

     While my lefties are being pretty low-key, if you go to Twitchy, you’ll find post after post with leftists showing complete hysteria about the fact that one state is curtailing abortion. My favorite is Cori Bush who seems worried about homosexuals accidentally getting pregnant:

     I’m thinking about the Black, brown, low-income, queer, and young folks in Texas. The folks this abortion health care ban will disproportionately harm.

     Wealthy white folks will have the means to access abortion care. Our communities won’t.

     — Cori Bush (@CoriBush) September 1, 2021

     Whereas for the pseudo-conservatives of “Conservative, Inc,” there’s no such thing as “a hill to die on,” the Left will sacrifice any other issue and any number of lives and freedoms to protect the abortion sacrament. But then, sacrifice is what you do to uphold and defend a sacrament, isn’t it?

     There’s only so much one can say about this subject before succumbing to pointless repetition. However, the central point must not be missed: the commentators of “Conservative, Inc,” who are also called “NeverTrumpers,” are not friends to those of us who seek a return to Constitutional order and the norms of pre-World War II America. Something is more important to them than actual conservatism. It might be money. It might be acceptance by D.C. society. Or it might be their hope to be invited onto CNN or MSNBC as a “representative of the Right.” Whatever it is, it clearly outweighs the principles and values of the Right.

     Draw the moral, Gentle Reader. Don’t allow yourself to be misled by someone who has his eyes on a different prize.

Sep 03 2021

Fifty Years Ago…

     …a musical prodigy named Todd Rundgren decided to stretch his wings further than he ever had before. This was the result:

I wanted to write you…
     …a beautiful, beautiful song
I wanted to write you…
     …a beautiful, beautiful song
A beautiful song
The kind that makes your memory
go sailing through the window
Like in a movie
And fly away, a million miles into space
And look down
And look down on the lights of the world
Like people were as nice as the sight of it all
Just you

I wanted to sing you…
     …a beautiful, beautiful song
I wanted to sing you…
     …a beautiful, beautiful song
But you know what a cynic I am
And my voice isn’t that good anyway
So all I can do…
     …is rave on…

— Todd Rundgren —

Sep 03 2021

State Of Fear

     I apologize to the ghost of Michael Crichton for appropriating the title of one of his best novels for this piece. Sorry, Mike, but it just fits our milieu too well to pass up.

     The theme for a Liberty’s Torch piece often comes to me in the middle of reading something from another writer. In this case, the writer was Kurt Schlichter:

     Look, no one’s excited about the 25th Amendment putting Kamala Harris in office. The woman is as dumb as a post, which is a vile calumny to useful and honorable posts everywhere. But we can’t have the shaky, skeletal finger of a vacuum-skulled ninny hovering over the big red button. Our press may studiously ignore it, but our enemies see it and they are acting. The Taliban – or, as that goofy clown says, the “Tally-ban” – realized he would not do anything to stop them and we saw what that led to. The Chi Coms are elbowing Taiwan, saying “Hey, there’s your savior – wanna do this the easy way or the hard way?” And that fat Korean guy is firing up the old reactor again.

     There’s a lot of fear implicit in that paragraph. There’s also a question of overarching importance. Concerning the “presidency” of Joseph R. Biden, there are only two possibilities:

  1. He’s the one making the policy decisions for his Administration;
  2. He isn’t.

     That covers the whole Venn diagram, doesn’t it? Now for the question of overarching importance:

Which possibility do you fear more?

     The “big red button” image is a venerable, much-used one among those who seek to strike fear into the reader / listener / viewer. But there are other, more plausible things to be feared than a nuclear war. One high on my list is the possibility that the federal executive branch is no longer run, de facto, by the president. One higher still is that it’s no longer run by anyone.

     The Twentieth Century taught us to fear dictators: men in command of a mighty engine of oppression and violence, whose minions would go forth to commit whatever infamy he might order. We had a bunch of them to study, each with his own proclivities and record of depredations and slaughters. There are still some with us today. None of the recent ones have yet equaled the horrors of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or Idi Amin, but the century is young.

     Such men and their lunacies are greatly to be feared, doubt it not. But there is something more fearful still, and it might already be upon us: a multitude of dictators operating concurrently, all of them nameless and faceless, none of them accountable to anyone.

     That is what a federal executive branch run by no one, Congress indisposed to attempt to discipline it, would mean to Americans.

     Of course, with many dictators operating at the same time, each would have only a modest sphere to which to dictate. Each might wield authority over some particular activity or condition. Why, one might dispatch and control the military, while another reigns over the schools. A third might rule on matters of health, while a fourth decides who may and may not fly, board a train, or take a bus. Then a fifth, possibly in collaboration with the others, might see to the suppression of dissidents.

     That, plus even more numerous “sub-dictators” free to implement policy as they see fit and be damned to anyone’s conceptions of rights or Constitutional constraints, is what I fear most. For it guarantees endless, variegated oppressions, plus the chaos characteristic of civil war: Samuel Francis’s concept of anarcho-tyranny painted in the brightest colors.

     Kurt Schlichter says “Biden must go.” I cannot argue the point. But what if Biden isn’t in charge? What if no one is? How could we know – and what could we do about it were we to discover it?

     A single, isolable dictator can be targeted and destroyed far more easily than a diffuse engine of tyranny with thousands or millions of components, none of which can be confidently named. To those who have scoffed at the “deep state” we in the Right have decried: Take heed. For whatever your particular occupation, avocation, pastime, or personal pleasure, there’s a federal micro-dictator whose hegemony it is – and he’s far more likely to find you than you are to find him.

     But do have a nice day.

Sep 01 2021

If Strong Language Upsets You,…

DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK.

I’ve noticed the same sudden silence of the “You are so STUPID to back Trump!” crowd. After months of haranguing me and the rest of their social feed, it’s like they had been Raptured.

Gone. MIA. Quieter than a kidnap victim with a K-Bar to her throat.

Gee, I wonder why?

Sep 01 2021

To Other Indie Writers: A Warning

     The scamsters are restless.

     A couple of evenings ago, I received a voicemail from a “Neil” who said he represents a company called ReadersMagnet. He said something boilerplate-ish about the “potential” of my book Innocents (first red flag) and suggested that his company could assist me in getting it to the attention of thousands of new readers (second red flag).

     It had been a while since I was last approached by such an outfit, and I’d never heard of this one. Rather than return Neil’s call during business hours, I did a Google search for ReadersMagnet. I discovered that it’s just one more organization that strives to exploit the hopes of indie writers for a mass audience. The pitch is largely undistinguished: “publishing services” and “marketing packages,” each of which comes at a substantial price (third red flag). A number of other indies reported having had very negative experiences with them as well. So tote it up as one more predatory organization, about as likely to get an indie writer a mass audience as I am to wake up next to Angelina Jolie.

     Remember the Prime Directive:

Money should always flow to the writer.

     Anyone who tries to shove his hand into your pocket while assuring you that he can “help you” is up to no good. Come to think of it, that applies to governments and their minions as well, doesn’t it?

Sep 01 2021

Outrages To Be Watched For

     You may already have read about this story:

     As previously reported, Rebecca Firlit, a Chicago mother, said that a Cook County judge took away her parental rights for not getting the COVID vaccine – the judge then reversed the order after his decision garnered media attention.

     The 39-year-old mother said that the Illinois judge asked her whether or not she had gotten the COVID vaccine during an August 10 hearing.

     She responded by saying that she had not due to prior bad reactions with vaccines.

     Cook County Judge James Shapiro then stripped the mother of all her parenting time with her son.

     Now, Cook County, Illinois is America’s capital of legislative and judicial corruption. Nothing that could happen there could surprise me. But this Shapiro character has made a suggestion-in-passing to other left-inclined “jurists,” and we should not be surprised if they act upon it. In my best fake Rod Serling voice:

Imagine, if you will, a world in which Family Court judges can deprive parents of their parental rights for disagreeing with the “authorities” – or with the judge – about prophylactic medical treatments such as vaccinations – not when choosing them for their children, but for themselves.

     Family Courts are extra-constitutional. Their judges routinely ignore the Constitution and its constraints and get away with it. Stephen Baskerville has documented hundreds of such cases. He wrote about some of the most egregious in his book Taken Into Custody. It’s not unthinkable that activist judges might see Shapiro’s ruling as a signpost to be guided by.

     But do get a good night’s sleep.

Sep 01 2021

Because We All Need To Be Blessed Now And Then

The wanderer has far to go
Humble must he constant be
Where the paths of wisdom lead
Distant is the shadow of the setting sun.

Bless the daytime
Bless the night
Bless the sun which gives us light
Bless the thunder
Bless the rain
Bless all those who cause us pain.

Yellow stars may lead the way
All diversions lead astray
While his resolution holds
Fortune and good will will surely follow him.

Bless the free man
Bless the slave
Bless the hero in his grave
Bless the soldier
Bless the saint
Bless all those whose hearts grow faint.

– David Cousins –

     And may God bless and keep you all!

Sep 01 2021

What’s Up With Scott Adams?

I have enjoyed the Dilbert cartoons over the years. The cartoons have appealed to all of us who have been in the bowels of large companies/organizations, whether public or private, nonprofit or – allegedly – for profit. They are quirky, absurdist, and strangely appealing to the Everyman that lives with arbitrary rules, unfair employment practices, and seeing the underpinnings of the Peter Principle put into action.

Lately, however, Mr. Adams has wandered into scary territory – his podcast excusing and attempting to brush over Biden and his administration’s cluelessly incompetent yet airily self-congratulatory actions in the Afghanistan debacle is disturbing. Rather like seeing that kindly old uncle morph into super-villain right before your eyes.

It’s all the general’s fault? No. Like it or not, a leader needs to take the responsibility for failure. It does not have to be the end of a career – look at the Bay of Pigs disaster – JFK owned it, and didn’t spread the blame around.

Now, privately, he may have unleashed some whoop-a$$, but publicly, he took responsibility for the decision.

Not only is Biden incapable of accepting that the withdrawal failed, he is mentally incapable of handling the complexities of the overall process, and the analysis of where it all broke down.

Incompetent leadership doesn’t happen spontaneously. It occurs for several reasons:

  • Those in charge may not recognize who is a good leader – if all a person has to do is tick off boxes to be sent to the next level, that will weed out many competent people who are not of the ‘correct’ demographic or linked to favored others.
  • Short-term results will often act against the overall good of the organization, but are the metrics upon which promotion is built. This breeds ethical shortcuts, accounting tricks, bluster and B$, and favors the “Bungee Boss”
  • These types of organizations provide a long-term job only for the most passive, deceitful, lazy, and demoralized people. Anyone with spunk, initiative, and high moral standards leaves ASAP. Such people will essentially sell their soul for the promise of a continued paycheck. I don’t scorn them – I deeply pity them. Many of them have, through their own lack of character, spent themselves into HAVING to accept the deeply dysfunctional and corrupt environment as a norm. This leads to psychic distortions that cannot fathom leaving the quasi-safe environment for another job.

This leads me to Dilbert. I used to enjoy the comic. I had endured a few workplaces like that (for far longer than I wanted to), and the reality that I lived was reflected in the daily Dilbert. Misery loves company.

Why is Adams still drawing and writing Dilbert? He has been out of that environment for many years. What does it do to your soul to relive that experience, over and over again for all these years?

He could take chances – he could create another comic, this one dealing with the life of an independent business man, who has to deal with making payroll for himself and those who work for him, handling crazy government regulations and paperwork, spending time with the family who ask about “your little business” and ask for freebies, and other aspects of entrepreneurial life. I would think such a comic would appeal to his base, who may yearn for such an alternative to their own life. But, more importantly, it would give Adams a way to step away from his current focus on the most soul-deadening period in his own life.

His mindset is still that of a guy without options; someone who is a hopeless tool of others. He identifies with Biden, who is well and truly stuck. Not the guy I’d take political advice from. When he talked about the generals, whose only response to unrealistic demands to Get the Military OUT! was to ‘slow-walk’ their actions, it hit me:

That’s the typical Dilbert response.

Now, for a cartoon the was oddly prescient.

Sep 01 2021

A Comment On Commentary

     Back in the heyday of blogging, everyone and his halfwit Uncle Herman had a blog. There were, at peak, over 50 million such sites. Most, of course, were of no broad consequence: little was posted there, and most of that was worthless. However, they gave their “proprietors” a sense that they could be listened to – that their lives and opinions might matter to others.

     Since then blogging has experienced a “consolidation.” Over 95% of those sites have closed, de jure or de facto. Yes, there are a lot of people on “social media” sites who once maintained blogs, but that’s not the same thing. Posting on Facebook or Minds doesn’t have the same potential for a global audience. Indeed, that’s built into the experience.

     Yet among the blogs that survive, only a tiny fraction of them are worth a thinking American’s time and attention. That’s my opinion, of course; but opinion is the greater part of what I write here. Hopefully it’s what brings you here, because we the Co-Conspirators of Liberty’s Torch don’t have much else to offer.

     This is really a special case of a general question:

Why Express Yourself?

     In particular, why go to the time and trouble to:

  1. Establish – possibly pay for – a blog;
  2. Master the software that manages it;
  3. Take time from your daily doings to write something for it;
  4. Post that something where others can see it;
  5. Read the reactions and possibly react to them?

     Think about that for a few seconds while I fetch more coffee.

***

     Hey, don’t look at me. Everyone knows I’m certifiable. A genuine, hairy-eyed bomb-throwing anarchist who thinks he knows something about the dynamic of power and those who love it above all else. Besides, I like to run on at the mouth keyboard. (It’s all that’s left to me after driving all my friends and acquaintances to earplugs these past seventy years.) Seventeen full-length novels and innumerable…okay, wait a sec…113 short stories should testify more than adequately to that. So my reasons for doing this crap should be considered off-axis.

     A thought on earplugs. Some forty years ago, when I was learning to fly – yes, yes, in an airplane – my instructor taught me something about earplugs: they help you to hear what you want to hear. Good earplugs are like noise-canceling headphones: they mute those sounds you’d rather not hear but let the rest through. That’s a much more valuable thing than merely imposing a condition of silence, especially for the pilot of a light aircraft.

     But of course, want and need express two different concepts. While people will argue endlessly about “what you need to know,” virtually all of us have a sense for it, at least for ourselves. If we’re sensible, we look for what we need before we turn to what we want.

     This applies to the reading of blogs quite as much as to anything else.

     What do blogs offer?

  • Some are informational: they (claim to) purvey facts. Whether you find those facts accurately reported and important determines whether you patronize that blog. A subdivision of informational blogging consists of aggregators: blogs that mainly round up (or provide links to) the offerings of other sources.
  • Some are instructional: they provide lessons in some subject that can be conveyed through the blogging medium. There aren’t as many of those as of the other sorts, but some are quite popular.
  • Some are analytical: they provide analyses of events – usually current events – that they proprietor believes will illuminate the forces behind those events.
  • Some are evangelical: They exhort the reader to look at this or that phenomenon in a certain way, or to form a certain opinion about the motives and causes behind a particular pattern of events. This is the essence of the “op-ed” blog. However, religious blogs, which promote a particular creed, also conform to this pattern.
  • Some are entertaining: they tell stories, or jokes, or offer recordings or videos whose point is merely to divert and amuse the reader.
  • And of course, some are marketing and sales blogs: they try to sell you goods and / or services.

     There are, of course, blogs that combine two or more of the above characteristics. Liberty’s Torch is one such.

     My highly astute Gentle Readers will surely have noticed that I’ve omitted a category: some blogs are self-indulgences. They exist solely to give their proprietor a place to vent, or some similar self-gratifying activity. Quite a lot of blogs that purport to perform one of the other functions are really just self-indulgences.

     You can find blogs of every sort in our sidebar, including a couple of the self-indulgent variety. (They amuse me. That’s all you need to know.) Which ones you prefer, whether you found them here or elsewhere, tells you what sort of material you seek on the Web. You might consider asking yourself whether you need or want what they purvey. That would tell you even more.

***

     It’s the “evangelical” or “op-ed” blog that piqued my attention this morning. I read widely, and am frequently struck by the obviousness of the opinions some supposedly intelligent op-ed bloggers provide. Quite a few of them hammer the reader with stuff he already knows, and conclusions about causes and motives that would be plain even to a microcephalic. One in particular, which commands the respect of a great many of my blogging colleagues, seems to me to be one such.

     Now, that difference of opinion might proceed from a difference in perspective. Some people do need to be brutally slapped across the face with the obvious. I’ve known a few such. I’ve even done some of the slapping, though I usually leave that chore to other people. So it might come down to audience selection…or taste.

     But just after I’d read the “highly respected” commentator of whom I spoke – and said to myself “Can there really be anyone of driving age who doesn’t already know all this?” – I read another, shorter piece, from a capable and intelligent man who possesses a frequently overlooked and underappreciated skill: the talent for asking the right question. His question was simply this:


We now know what we must do.
How the BLEEP! do we get started?

     His few hundred words struck me as the essence of penetration.

     Again, it might come down to a difference in audience selection, or personal taste, or – dare I say it? – the writer’s assessment of the acuity and intelligence of his readers. A writer who believes himself to be incomparably more observant and penetrating than his readers would be likely to “write down” to them. A writer who holds / expects his readers to be as observant and penetrating as he would not.

     I prefer the latter sort. The former set my teeth on edge.

***

     A final thought: The power of the “printed word” to move the reader arises from many factors. Thomas Paine, arguably the most important hortatory writer of his day, had mastered the rhythms and resonances of the English language to a degree few since him have equaled. Ayn Rand, an equally important hortatory writer, didn’t possess Paine’s stylistic grace, but did make use of another technique to great advantage: the fictional narrative. Both wrote about moral-ethical imperatives, and both were widely influential – but it is the storyteller who has the greater influence today, because he proves his insights in an entertaining format, with heroes whom the reader can admire.

     “There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story,” says Tyrion Lannister in the Game of Thrones finale, and he was absolutely correct. That’s why the much maligned Mainstream Media have something to teach us. It’s also why the Left has put so much effort into defaming traditional, heroic and Western-values-oriented fiction and denying it to today’s readers, especially young readers. He who shapes the dominant narrative will prevail in the struggle over the direction of the culture and its politics.

     It’s not enough to possess the facts. It’s not enough to grasp the causes behind the events of the day. It’s not even enough to write about them in a graceful and compelling fashion. You must unite your understanding with characters and personalities. Whether real or fictional, people need heroes. When we lack heroes to admire and strive to emulate, the deepest and strongest wellsprings of our passions remain sealed away.

     “Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love… true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.” – Hub McCall as played by Robert Duvall in Secondhand Lions

     I leave the implications and their consequences to my Gentle Readers.

Aug 31 2021

Afghanistan: A Retrospective

     We were so sure of ourselves.

     What I originally thought would be a straight-up “justice / vengeance” mission for the 9/11 atrocities:

  1. Invade in force;
  2. Locate, close with, and destroy the al Qaeda / Taliban forces;
  3. Go home;

     …turned into yet another exercise in “nation building.” Whose idea was it? Unknown. But someone had to think the United States could succeed where the British and Soviet Empires had failed. Apparently someone was wrong.

     The reason for the debacle of the past few weeks is that Step #2 above was not prosecuted to completion. We permitted the Taliban to retreat to safe territories, to rebuild and rearm, and to come surging forth as American forces drew down. Clearly, the American effort in Afghanistan destroyed neither the Taliban’s will to fight nor its capacity to fight. Worse, rather than do what we could to repatriate American civilians and rescue cooperative Afghans, the feckless Usurpers currently in control of the federal government decided to drop their pants, bend over, and invite the Taliban to do what they like.

     While the Usurpers deserve full “credit” for the disastrous withdrawal and the loss of lives – present and future – it entails, let’s not be blinded by partisanry. This was a twenty-year debacle that enveloped three previous administrations. Only one – that of President Donald Trump – saw our continuing presence in Afghanistan as the pointless, fruitless exercise it was.

     And so, after twenty years of bloodshed and expenditure, the War in Afghanistan, originally known as Operation Enduring Freedom, has succeeded in replacing the Taliban by…a bigger, better armed Taliban.

***

     Concerning the withdrawal itself, the most telling of all peripheral phenomena is the unwillingness of the Departments of State and Defense to admit to what’s happened and what’s currently going on. The extent of the disaster, the sheer number of stranded Americans, the immense wealth of weaponry abandoned, and the appalling unwillingness of our remaining forces at HKIA Airport to cooperate with private efforts to rescue the American civilians still there have left their spokesmen unable to speak. Hearken to Nina Bookout:

     The Pentagon really doesn’t want us asking about Americans left in Afghanistan. By 3:30 pm Eastern time tomorrow, there pullout of our troops and diplomats will be complete. That does NOT include Americans nor the Afghan SIV’s. They will be left behind to fend for themselves….

     But please whatever you do, do NOT question our betters at the Pentagon! When asked about the exact number of Americans left behind, Pentagon spot John Kirby told the reporter to ask the folks at the State Department. Guess what? The LAST time the State Department held a briefing was on August 27th.

     We don’t know exact numbers, but by golly we used our plans to do all those fabulous evacuations in the last two weeks, so dammit, Please clap!

     State and Defense are claiming to know nothing and evading questions for a simple tactical reason: Sources on the ground in Kabul and at the HKIA airport are providing near-real-time reports on the situation there. Thus, State and Defense can’t tell us their preferred self-protecting lies. Any lie they could tell us would fall apart when challenged by evidence. The safest course, when you can’t face the truth and can’t lie credibly, is to keep silent.

     Note that Usurper-in-Chief Biden won’t answer questions, either.

***

     To close, Selwyn Duke at The New American has produced a scathing evaluation of the withdrawal disaster as of today. His gut punch:

     The Afghanistan withdrawal reflects either world-record incompetence or pure, unadulterated evil — or both. In fact, often ignored is that malevolence and incompetence to a degree go hand-in-hand. For bad people will rationalize their actions — bend reality for themselves — and when you do this habitually, year after year, you can lose touch with reality. You often then can’t find it even when you want to.

     Whether Joe Biden has been “in touch with reality” to any detectable degree these past two years is dubious. Nevertheless he is the face of the Usurper Administration. His handlers ought to prop him up well enough to take the odium for Afghanistan…not that he or they would do so willingly. It’s all President Trump’s fault don’t y’know. We say so, and you folks who say otherwise are just racists and terrorists-in-waiting anyway, so sit down and shut up.

     Any decent American, regardless of his political leanings or affiliation, should be deeply ashamed of what has occurred, and volcanically angry at the “leaders” who permitted it. We may rest assured that those “leaders” will never admit to error. Politicians and their “advisors” never do that, as it would be hazardous to their careers. But what about the many figures in the media and punditry that promoted the Usurpers during the 2020 campaign season and have praised and defended them ever since? What are the odds that we’ll ever get a muttered, qualified mea culpa from any of them?

     I know not what course others may take, but as for me, I shan’t hold my breath while I wait.

     Time to pray.

Aug 30 2021

What We Can And What We Can’t

     At this morning’s Mass, our pastor, Monsignor Christopher Heller, reminded us in his homily of the reception that Mother Teresa of Calcutta received when she castigated the First World – the United States most emphatically included – for “sleeping soundly at night when there are people with nothing to eat.” It was unfriendly, to say the least. Especially here in the U.S., the most charitable nation in human history. But no one likes to be criticized, as Father Chris said (and we all know perfectly well).

     That includes Mother Teresa.

     Mother Teresa was a giant of compassion and selfless labor for the sake of others. There can be no criticism of that. However, to be maximally generous about it, she wasn’t economically well informed. She seems not to have known about the enormity of the problem of want, on a global scale.

     There are almost eight billion people alive on Earth today. The nations of the First World sum to a little more than a billion. If we were to take complete responsibility for the well-being of the other seven billion – placing the improvement of their immediate well-being above all other considerations – we could not even raise them to the level of the average American poor person. Not even by liquidating the entirety of our capital and distributing it uniformly among the peoples of the world – and after that, of course, nothing more would be produced. We would return to the savage conditions of the Neanderthals.

     Yes, First Worlders are better off than others. But how much better off? Yes, we have an abundance of food, clothing, shelter, and fuels. The margin we possess beyond what we pay for those things pays for our discretionary activities and our luxuries. But the margin falls well short of what it would take to remove the chains of poverty from all the rest of the world.

     I mentioned this to Father Chris. He was rather surprised by it; he’s not a devotee of economics, and I am. We concluded that while a given goal might be highly desirable…we might all agree on it, yearn for it, and work to bring it nearer…that’s far from a guarantee that it’s currently achievable.

     This is a part of what the great Thomas Sowell has called “the tragic vision.” He laid it out in stark contrast with what he called the vision of the anointed:

The Tragic Vision The Vision Of The Anointed
Human capability Severely and inherently limited for all Vast…for the anointed
Social possibilities Trade-offs that leave many “unmet needs” Solutions to problems
Social causation Systemic Deliberate
Freedom Exemption from the power of others Ability to achieve goals
Justice Process rules with just characteristics Equalized chances or results
Knowledge Consists largely of the unarticulated experiences of the many Consists largely of the articulated intelligence of the more educated few
Specialization Highly desirable Highly questionable
Motivation Incentives Dispositions
Process costs Crucial Incidental
Preferred decision-making mechanism Systemic processes that convey the experiences and revealed preferences of the many Deliberate plans that utilize the special talents and more advanced views of the few
Kinds of decisions preferred Incremental Categorical

     That’s quite an indictment of the “anointed.” It points up the great failing in the thinking of even those among the bien-pensants whose intentions are simon-pure and whose attitude towards others who disagree is merely that we’re misinformed. Not to be too blunt about it, they assume that any desirable outcome they can conceive is achievable…and possibly morally mandatory.

     But it is not so. It has never been so. Likely it never will be. Therein lies the tragedy to which Sowell alludes with the phrase “the tragic vision:” Our wants exceed our means and probably always will.

     That does not free the Christian from his part of the Christian mission: to love his neighbor as he loves himself. But it does allow that not all the people of the world, with all their miseries – many of which are artificial, often imposed by governments – must be counted among his neighbors.

     All the great inroads against human poverty have come from individual innovators, who might have had only their own profit in mind. Yet the “Green Revolution,” the movable-type printing press, the rotating magnetic field, and the process of fractional distillation are responsible for a greater degree of alleviation of human misery than the efforts of all the philanthropists known to history.

     The engineer’s mantra is “If it ain’t broke, don’t ‘fix’ it.” Surely we should “fix” what “broken things” we can. But we must also be humble enough to recognize that some “broken things” are beyond our power to fix. Not every saint in the hagiographies was sufficiently economically aware to know that…though we could reasonably expect them to understand human limitations. After all, it’s a tenet of our creed.

Aug 30 2021

The Elite Have Thrown Down the Hammer

Kah-mah-la has delivered a smackdown to the proles that infest the Non-Elites in the Not-the-Coast.

“Christmas has come early for Washington’s enemies. Literally. Kackling Kamala Harris was dispatched to Singapore to assure our allies that the hyperpower was not a complete laughingstock. Instead, she told her hosts that it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas is as kaput as the Karzai International gift shop:

‘If you want to have Christmas toys for your children, it might now be might be the time to start buying them, because the delay may be many, many months,’ she said.

Oh, my. Why would that be?

‘The climate crisis is fueling a lot of this. When we look at the stronger typhoons that have disrupted shipping lanes and sea level rise, which threatens port infrastructure as an example. So these are the many issues that are causing these disruptions.’“

Get that? If you Plastic-Jesus-Worshippers (IRL, known as Christians) plan to buy your children (who, in a Just World, would be taken from their mouth-breathing biological owners to live with Truly Deserving Elites) any tacky presents to commemorate the alleged “birth” of that Baby Sky-God, you BETTER get started now. Because she knows that ALL them will be coming from China, and she would hate to see the supply chain stressed because those Awful People (tradmark pending) wait until they can afford them.

Challenge accepted.

I urge ALL Americans (and any other Freedom-Loving People who happen to live elsewhere) to strictly limit their purchases this year to American-made gifts. That would be the ones on this list – caution, many of the links don’t work well – that may improve as we get closer to Christmas), as well as those made by American craftspeople and sold locally. Yes, hit up the Christmas Craft Sales this year.

LL Bean – well-made, durable. I’m still wearing a 30-year old turtleneck – and, unlike those sold in Walmart, it DIDN’T shrink or stretch over that time.

Weathertech – Come on – you know you want that Cup-Fone holder!

Little Tykes – these folks, located in Hudson, OH (I’ve visited the place), have cornered the market on colorful, durable, appealing toys for the under 5 crowd. But, there are also toys for the older kids, including RC-vehicles, mini-trampolines, and backyard playsets (very nicely crafted, both that same durable plastic, and wood, too).

Liberty Flatware (not silverware, but stainless steel type) – what we’uns in the Flyover Country use when we’re not barbequeing.

My Pillow – don’t care what you think about Mike Lindell, but his products are Made in America. You know you’ll need a pillow sometime this year, why not try this one?

Original Mattress – made right in NC. Goes nicely with your My Pillow.

Kitchen Aid – although some of the products are made in other countries, including China, the principal product that we think of when we hear that name is the Tabletop Mixer – made in Greenville, OH. They are not cheap, but they are virtually indestructible, and the interchangability of the tools enables you to replace multiple items on your counter. I own one, my handy-in-the-kitchen daughter has one, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Multiple American Toy Manufacturers – everything from the Lincoln Logs of your childhood, to Slinkies.

Not American-Made, but made in England – Raspberry Pi computers. It’s not only a functional computer, but a learning experience, as well. I’ve owned 2 (3 B+ kit, and now 4). I’m planning to buy yet another to run my network in Lorain – they are cheap (base computer kit, less than $100), and, even with all the bells and whistles, seldom run more than $200-$300 total.

Vernier science probes and systems – made by a former Cleveland schools teacher, produced in Portland, OR (don’t hold that against them). Durable, able to be used from Elementary through College, and a good choice for a Home-schooler or Home-School network/pod. Good video instruction on setup and use, the lab books are a good add-on, and, if you get stuck in the learning process, shoot me an email, and I’ll be happy to send links/advice on how to get out of that loop.

While I do think many tech toys are over-rated, when it comes to science equipment, or tools to access online learning, you can’t beat Pi and Vernier. Worth the money – I’m still using equipment I bought in the 1980s. And, Vernier supports their legacy hardware still.

That’s just a short list of some of my favorites. Put your own suggestions in the comments.

Aug 29 2021

The Last Of The Really Fluffy Towels

     I’m too sick of, with, and from current events to write about them. Sorry, Gentle Readers. Co-Conspirators Linda and the Colonel are doing enough of that, so please enjoy (?) their emissions while I flush the static out of my head.

     My sovereign remedy for “world is too much with me” syndrome is to retreat to writing fiction. However, in the aftermath of In Vino I’ve been drawing a blank. (Reviews badly needed. Hint! Hint!) It’s frustrating – what good is a writer who isn’t writing? – but there’s little to be done about it. My Muse, at least, is uninterested in my heartfelt pleas to get off her ass and can’t be bribed with dog biscuits.

     Still, there are ways to goose a story out of an idle writer. One of them is to pose him a challenge: “Bet you can’t write a story around this!” Such a challenge is responsible for the novelette “A Place of Our Own” in The Athene Academy Collection, and thus partly responsible for the whole Futanari Saga. So I decided to try challenging myself, in this fashion:

  1. Pick a really inane phrase;
  2. Make it the title of a story to be written;
  3. And get to work, hero!

     What follows is the result. Enjoy… if that’s the right word.

***

The Last Of The Really Fluffy Towels

     Alex Smith dried himself as best he could, scowled at the sandpaper texture of the burlap towel, wrapped it around his waist and cinched it, and headed to the bedroom to garb himself for the day. Maura looked up from her book. Her expression was curious, as if he’d done something not to be expected, possibly even unprecedented.
     Well, she doesn’t really know me yet.
     He smiled. “What’s the matter?”
     She shook her head minutely. “Oh, nothing.”
     “You’ve already seen me in all my Neanderthal glory, haven’t you?”
     She grimaced. “Of course. I was just wondering…no, forget it.”
     “Oh no!” he said. “Now you’ve piqued my curiosity. What was the look about?”
     “When I looked at you?”
     “Yeah, that look.”
     She hesitated. Her expression suggested that she’d taken a mouthful of something nasty.
     “Come on,” he said. “I know we’ve only been together for a night and a morning, but still…!”
     Her eyebrows rose. “Still what?”
     “Well, still you can trust that I won’t explode if you have something critical to say, can’t you?”
     “Yeah.” She looked a little away. “It was the towel.”
     “Hm?”
     “It was just…”
     “Yesssss…?”
     “You don’t have to, you know, conceal yourself from me,” she said. “As you’ve already observed, I have seen you naked.”
     “Oh.” He looked down at himself. “Habit, I suppose.”
     “You said you’d been alone here for years,” she said.
     “I have. So?”
     “So who’ve you been concealing yourself from?”
     He winced.
     Good point.
     “Well, yes,” he said after a moment. “But I wasn’t born here. I had parents and sisters. I got it drilled into me pretty early that it was unacceptable to parade around the house naked.”
     “Yeah,” she said. “I get it. But it’s not necessary now. And those towels…how can you stand to have one wrapped tight around you like that?”
     “Oh. Yeah, it is kinda scratchy.”
     Doesn’t dry very well, either.
     “So feel free to, ah, relieve yourself of it,” she said. She set her book aside, pulled back the bedcovers, rose and ambled toward him. “I like looking at you.”
     He admired her petite, trim form afresh as she put her fingers to where he’d cinched the towel at his waist, gently pulled it away, and let it fall to the floor. “And I don’t like the idea of Oscar and his side boys—” She glanced pointedly at his genitals “—of whom I’ve already grown fond, getting all scratched up for no good reason.”
     He grinned and took her hands. “You win.” He kissed her gently. “Would it have been an issue if the towel were nice and soft?”
     She made a who-knows gesture. “Less of one, I guess. I mean, I’d still like to look at you.”
     “Thank you.” He kissed her again. “May I offer you breakfast? I have a couple of soy cakes that aren’t too old, and an ounce or so of corn syrup for them.”
     “Okay. But,” she said with a mock-severe look, “I forbid you to eat your breakfast naked.”
     “Oh? Why is that?”
     “Because the splendor of you would impede my ability to savor so luxurious a repast.”
     He laughed and went to the closet for his robe.

#

     They sat at his tiny dinette table lingering over the meager meal, doing their best to prolong it into something worthy of the name. The thought irritated Alex briefly. He had nothing else to eat in the apartment. The emptiness of his cupboard griped him more than it would have had Maura not chosen to stay the night. If it weren’t that his new ration card was scheduled to arrive that morning, the little soy cake would be the last thing he would eat that day.
     “Alex?”
     He looked up from his plate. “Yes, dear?”
     “I know someone.”
     Her deliberate, gently emphasized full stop immediately piqued his interest.
     “Always good to know…people,” he said. “What brings whoever it is to mind?”
     She locked eyes with him. “Towels.”
     “Oh.” He carefully returned his gaze to his plate. “Who runs it?”
     She shook her head. “Not like that,” she said. “It’s just someone I know. His name is Phil Marsden.” She looked away. “He’s pretty old.”
     The unspoken word trader seemed to hang around her like a cloak of mist.
     Old people are getting to be few and a long way between.
     “Do you think he might need something?” he said.
     She shrugged. “Who doesn’t, these days?” But her eyes and voice said of course.
     And the regime has just cut rations for anyone over sixty to half of the standard allotment.
     “Well,” he said as casually as he could manage, “if there’s some way we can help him, I certainly wouldn’t be averse to it.”
     The entrance monitor chimed the tone that indicates that a delivery had just come through the slot. Alex stabbed the last fragment of his soy cake, mopped up the drops of syrup that remained, stuffed it into his mouth, chewed laboriously, and rose. “Two seconds.”
     A small brown envelope that lay on the floor behind the door. He stooped to pick it up. The return address announced the arrival of his coming week’s ration card.
     Thank God.
     He returned to the kitchenette and made to reseat himself.
     Maura said “Alex…”
     He froze, half seated. “Yes?”
     “I often don’t go all the way through my ration allotment in the course of the week.”
     “Really?” he said.
     But they hardly keep. The soy cakes were less than four days old and they were already almost too tough to eat.
     She didn’t need to say what she was doing with the uneaten portion, and he didn’t need to guess.
     She’s been giving whatever she doesn’t eat to Marsden.
     He glanced at the envelope that contained his new ration card, still clutched in his hand.
     “I think…” he said, and faltered.
     “Yes?”
     “I think we can help Mr. Marsden,” he said. “Do you think he might be able to help, ah, someone else?”
     She smiled. “Why don’t we pay him a visit and find out?”
#

     Phil Marsden was very tall, and very old. Alex estimated him to be about six feet four and in his early eighties, if not older still. He was emaciated, no longer able to fill out his clothes. His tunic hung from his shoulders like a tent. His trousers were held up by an elastic belt drawn frighteningly tight. But even if the spareness of his figure could be ignored or explained, his skeletal hands and arms and his skull-like face could not.
     He’s starving to death. Whatever Maura has denied herself to give him, it hasn’t been nearly enough.
     He was acutely aware of the fresh ration card in his pocket. A radical thought came unbidden and unwelcome.
     If he were careful, he could stretch my card and what Maura can spare into two weeks’ nutrition.
     Wait a minute: what would I eat?
     Yet the thought would not leave him alone.
     “I haven’t got much left,” the old man was saying. “Just my clothes, that love seat in the corner, and what my wife left behind when she passed. But it’s all on the table.”
     “Mr. Marsden,” Maura murmured, “did Mrs. Marsden maintain two sets of bath towels, by any chance?”
     Marsden’s eyes lit with a knowing light. “As a matter of fact, she did. I always wondered why. We didn’t need two sets. Just to wash one regularly every Saturday, which she did.” He rose from his battered leather armchair. “Get it for you if you’re interested.”
     “We are,” Maura said.”
     Ninety seconds later Marsden had trotted out a pair of large, fluffy bath sheets in a delicate pink. Alex fought back the urge to grab them and flee.
     Maura flashed an inquiring look at Alex.
     He hesitated, then nodded.
     “I can see that even with what I’ve been saving for you, you’re not getting enough to eat,” Maura said. “Would you consider a ration card—a standard allotment ration card—to be worth one of those towel sets?”
     Marsden tried to hem and haw and dicker, but he couldn’t keep the naked lust for calories out of his eyes.
     “Mr. Marsden,” Maura said, “it’s our one and only offer.”
     Marsden’s resistance crumbled. He held out the bath sheets like an offering of alms. Alex took them and handed the old man his new ration card.
     “Thank you,” Marsden whispered.
     Alex nodded. He and Maura made their exit.
#

     “I can’t go without eating for a whole week,” Alex said.
     “You won’t have to,” Maura said. She fondled the bath sheet in her lap and hummed with pleasure. “I can get by on half rations. You’ll get the rest.”
     Alex started to reply, checked himself.
     I guess we’re an item.
     The towel in his hands was the softest, fluffiest piece of fabric he’d ever encountered. The loops of terry stood out at least a half inch from the base weave. He could imagine having it wrapped around him after a shower, thirstily soaking up the moisture that lingered on his skin, and shivered with anticipation.
     Probably the last of its kind anywhere in the city.
     I’ll be pretty damned hungry after seven days on half rations, but I’ll live. Then it’ll be back to the previous regimen.
     It’ll be worth it.
     “All right,” he said. “I suppose you’ll want to keep one of these at your place.”
     “I would,” Maura said, “but it was your ration card we traded for them. So only if it’s all right with you. Or,” she said with a sudden lilt, “I could do my showering here.”
     He summoned his gallantry.
     “You could,” he said. “You’d be very welcome, always assuming the city doesn’t clamp restrictions on water usage. But even so, go ahead and take one home. I only need one, and we’ll get by well enough on one if you ever decide to stay the night again.”
     She smiled brightly. “Thank you, Alex.”
     He was in the process of framing a courtly demurrer when the apartment door burst open.
     The shattered doorframe revealed Alex’s worst nightmare: two large Community Monitors in full armor, including the blast-hardened full-face shields that guarded their identities while allowing them a hundred eighty degrees of outward vision. The two strode in, stun batons at the ready, to confront Alex and Maura.
     “Citizen,” the one poised before Alex droned, “a local informant has reported observing you entering this dwelling in possession of luxury textile goods unavailable from the government’s dispensaries.” He indicated the towel in Alex’s lap. “That was not acquired recently. Was it an inheritance?”
     Alex fought to control his shaking. “It was.”
     The Monitor snatched the towel from him and tossed it well behind him. “Then if, without looking at it, you can describe it accurately in all particulars, you will be permitted to keep it.”
     Alex darted a glance at Maura. The Monitor that stood before her had done the same.
     The end of a stun baton rose to prod the underside of his jaw. “Well, citizen?”
     Alex could only manage a quavering croak.
     “We’ll be confiscating them, then.” The Monitor turned and picked up the bath sheets. He and his partner marched out of the apartment, leaving it open and utterly violable.
     Alex turned eyes of woe to Maura. She appeared perfectly composed, far better in command of herself than was he.
     “I couldn’t—”
     She held up a hand.
     “I know. It’s all right.”
     He nodded, face crimson with humiliation and shame.
     They won’t turn them in for destruction. They’ll keep one each.
     “Alex?” she said. “Come stay with me tonight.”
     “You would have me, after this?”
     “Of course.” Her eyes were sad but understanding. “Everyone knows how unwise it is to resist them.”
     He rose. “Give me a minute.”
     He went to his bedroom, pulled a fresh shirt and a change of underwear out of his tiny bureau, stuffed them into a brown paper bag, and returned to the little living room. She rose as he approached.
     “Let’s go,” she said.
     He nodded, and they left.

==<O>==

Aug 29 2021

Ingredients of the vaccines.

Jon Rappoport[1] provides a helpful link to a Centers for Disease Control webinar[2] that lists the ingredients in only the vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. I was curious and checked it out as I’d not seen any such list before:

Ingredients included in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines

Pfizer-BioNTech

Description
mRNA nucleoside-modified mRNA encoding the viral spike (S) glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2
Lipids 2[(polyethylene glycol)-2000]-N,Nditetradecylacetamide
1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine
cholesterol
(4-hydroxybutyl)azanediyl)bis(hexane-6,1-diyl)bis(2-hexyldecanoate)
Salts, sugars, buffers potassium chloride
monobasic potassium phosphate
sodium chloride
dibasic sodium phosphate dihydrate
sucrose

Moderna

Description
mRNA nucleoside-modified mRNA encoding the viral spike (S) glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2
Lipids PEG2000-DMG: 1,2-dimyristoyl-rac-glycerol, methoxypolyethylene glycol
1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine
cholesterol
SM-102: heptadecan-9-yl 8-((2-hydroxyethyl) (6-oxo-6-(undecyloxy) hexyl) amino) octanoate
Salts, sugars, buffers Tromethamine
Tromethamine hydrochloride
Acetic acid
Sodium acetate
sucrose

That all looks like an exercise in injecting Super Glue and jalapeno sauce in one’s very own muscles but maybe that’s just me. Anyway, the Health Desk site states, “No WHO authorized vaccines produced by Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, CanSino, Sinovac, Sputnik V, or Janssen contain graphene oxide. The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine has not yet published a list of its ingredients in a peer-reviewed or open access publication.”[3] So that’s a good thing. If you go for the experimental “vaccine” at least you don’t register on Air Force magnetometers.

Mr. Rappoport quotes from a 4/11/21 Cayman Chemical Company Safety Data Sheet (SDS) warning that SM-102 is “For research use only, not for human or veterinary use.” The SDS was revised four months later and now states that the product with the tradename SM-102 “is for research use – Not for human or veterinary diagnostic or therapeutic use.”[4] Rappoport elaborates on the danger to humans posed by a product with such an alarming SDS.

However, my general hostility to these “vaccines” that actually enter your cells and cause the production of the covid-19 spike protein notwithstanding, I wondered how a product with such an SDS could find its way into Moderna’s vaccine. Reading further I saw that section 3 of the SDS, “Composition/information on ingredients,” applies to a mixture of this chemical[5] (10%) and chloroform (90%) and it states that the dangerous component is the chloroform and that SM-102 itself is a “nonhazardous [addition].”

A 5/19/21 Cayman Press Release indicates that its SM-102 product is a research use only (RUO) product “intended only for in vitro [test tube experimentation] or animal (exploratory or preclinical) use.” However, it emphasizes that chloroform is a common solvent with several known serious hazards but that “Neither the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (RTECS), or [sic] the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) Classification and Labelling Inventory list [sic] any hazards associated with SM-102.“[6]

So it appears that it’s the mixture with chloroform that’s so hazardous and that the actual chemical is one of four completely innocuous lipids used to provide a coating for the completely innocuous mRNA poison active component that allows it to enter the cell itself. As I understand it, much experimentation was done to find the precise mix of the four lipids that, when blasted at the mRNA and each other, create the requisite layer of scum fat for the mRNA to be able to invade enter the victim’s target’s peon’s patient’s very own cells.

Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit if that doesn’t sound like a damn good idea.

Notes
[1] “Shocker: Why is this substance in the Moderna COVID vaccine?” By Jon Rappoport, Jon Rappoport’s Blog, 5/19/21.
[2] “COVID-19 Vaccines: Update on Allergic Reactions, Contraindications, and Precautions.” Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity (COCA) Webinar, Centers for Disease Control, 12/30/20, p.20.
[3] “How do we know graphene oxide isn’t used in COVID-19 mRNA vaccines?” By Health Desk, 8/4/21.
[4] “Safety Data Sheet acc. to OSHA HCS.” Cayman Chemical Company, 8/11/21, p. 1.
[5] 8-[(2-hydroxyethyl)[6-oxo-6-(undecyloxy)hexyl]amino]-octanoic acid, 1-octylnonyl ester is the Cayman rendering of the formal name of SM-102. It differs from the name for the chemical shown after “SM-102” in the table in the text above. I assume this is all the same chemical with the CAS number 2089251-47-6. I’m aware that there are sometimes different ways of spelling out the names of chemical formulas. The product description language is consistent with what is listed in the CDC document, to wit, “Formulations containing SM-102 have been used in the development of lipid nanoparticles for delivery of mRNA-based vaccines.”
[6] “SM-102 for Research Use Only (RUO).” Cayman Chemical Company, Press Release, 5/19/21 (emphasis in original).

Aug 28 2021

It Works for Me

The Declaration of Independence, 2.0

Put your 2 cents in the comments.

Aug 28 2021

Anonymity – A BAD Idea

With very few exceptions, bloggers, writers, and commenters should post under their REAL Names.

Why?

Because:

  • It’s self-evidently untrue that you are speaking “Truth to Power” or “Ready to Lead the Revolution”, if you fear a simple test like putting your signature/name to your opinions.
  • The more anonymous the poster, the likelier he/she is to inflate his/her words with bombastic hyperbole.
  • Seeing the pile-on that follows the unnamed opinion, others fear the consequences of openly disagreeing with the Left. Your example gives the others courage.
  • It’s hard to call people names for simply – and non-aggressively – stating their opinions. And, when we know that others will be able to put our face to those opinions, we tend to tone down the hostility and aggression.
  • The anons could be anyone, or even a bot. When a name is attached, it lends credibility.

I was influenced to go on record with my real name by Francis Porretto, who wrote a post arguing for the practice (I don’t remember where I saw it). Even though, at the time, I was employed by a school system, I decided to begin digitally putting my ‘signature’ on my posts. I’ve never had reason to regret it.

Aug 28 2021

An Eye-Opener For My Saturday

     Even though I’m “retired” – from wage labor, that is – I continue to treat the weekends differently from the rest of the week. I reserve them for rest and recreation, the occasional domestic disaster (and a house built from a random collection of leftover components has them rather often) notwithstanding. I’ll admit that it’s mostly a habit, as, apart from religious observances, there are no compelling demands on my “schedule.” Still, a week with no rhythm to it doesn’t strike me as workable in any sense.

     That makes an early-Saturday-morning eruption of bile a most unfortunate thing.

     Anyone who’s ever been involved in politics even at its extreme periphery gets fundraising email. It’s inevitable. There are companies out there that do nothing but scan the World Wide Web for sites that appear to have a political orientation, collect email addresses for them, and sell the results to the major parties and well-heeled interest groups. Normally I simply delete them. It’s pure self-preservation: donate to anyone or any organization, for any reason, and your name and address go on a “milch cows” list of persons known to have responded positively to a fundraising appeal. Those are high-priced lists. For your privacy and sanity, it’s vital to stay off them.

     But every now and then, one such raises my neck hair, and I feel an irresistible urge to respond. No, not with money; after the above, you should know better. But with a few words of my own.

     Here’s a snippet from the one I opened at 5:15 AM today:

Friend,
We just got some bad news. Your status on our team is unclear and UNCONFIRMED.
This is wrong, right? To immediately update your commitment to the Conservative Movement, click here.
Let us tell you again why we need you on our team:
Right now, Marco and his opponent sit NECK AND NECK in the polls. News outlets are calling this a “DEAD HEAT.” Friend, we have a whole race ahead of us and we are starting TIED. That’s a clear indicator that we have a long road ahead of us.
Moreover, not only are we TIED but Marco’s opponent just hauled in over $4 million last quarter and is spending insane amounts of money EVERY DAY in an effort to destroy conservatives in Florida.
We NEED to know, Friend, if you are still with us.
We need you to upgrade your patriot status from UNCONFIRMED to CONFIRMED & ALL IN.

     The rest is merely a request for a monetary donation to the Marco-Rubio Senatorial campaign

     I approve of Marco Rubio, albeit only in that I’d rather have him occupying a Senate seat than whatever Democrat miscreant might replace him. But the strident / rah-rah tone of the email flicked me on the raw. I decided to reply as follows:

Dear Whoever You Are:

     You say you want to know why I’m “unconfirmed.” I shall answer your question with a few questions of my own.

     Why, when the Republican Party held the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress, did it do practically nothing to support President Trump’s America-First agenda?
     Why did the Republican Party not immediately close ranks behind President Trump when it became glaringly obvious that the November 2020 presidential election was stolen?
     Why have several members of the Republican Party, including at least one U.S. Senator, been allowed to denounce President Trump for his now-proven assertion that the election was stolen – without even being chastised by party leadership?
     Why has the Republican Party not defended President Trump, the most effective president in the past seventy years, from the scurrilous attempts of the Biden Administration to blame its multiple failures on him?
     And why has the Republican Party been so spinelessly compliant with the Usurpers who have stolen the federal government from us?

     Perhaps my questions will serve to answer yours.

Sincerely,
Francis W. Porretto

     I don’t expect a response. But it did help to settle my stomach, with a wee bit of assistance from about a pound of yogurt.

Aug 27 2021

The Meat, The Potatoes, And Just A Drop Of Gravy

     You can read innumerable columnists’ fulminations about the atrocity in Afghanistan at hundreds of other sites. Perhaps thousands; I’m disinclined to count into the four digits. (Not enough jelly beans.) So here at Liberty’s Torch you’ll get…well, at least some material of other kinds. We like to think of ourselves as the Waldorf Salad of commentators. You know: eccentric, flavorful, and utterly unsuitable before a meal of anything but McDonald’s Chicken Tenders or Kraft Mac’N’Cheese. But enough of food metaphors. (You probably had enough of them upon reading the title of this piece.)

     In his remembrance of the late Charlie Watts, drummer for the Rolling Stones these past six decades, Mike Hendrix strikes the jugular:

     In all pop music, the Thing, the essential, crucial Thing, is to not overplay, to not burden a good tune with a lot of extraneous self-indulgence. Every talented professional will get his chance to show off his chops and shine a little, in every set he plays. But the REAL pros know that when you throw in everything but the kitchen sink in every damned song, you dull the impact of your sharpest material. First rule of showbiz, taught to me by my dad, my uncle, my early-childhood piano teacher, my church-choir director and high-school band director (same guy), and pretty much every musical mentor I’ve ever had: always, always, ALWAYS leave your audience wanting more. ALWAYS. Playing with discipline and restraint rather than letting it all hang out and flop around all over the place is one of the ways you do it.

     Self-indulgence has been a recurring theme for me, these past few years. It’s an important, almost ubiquitous feature of all the arts, particularly the performing arts. The late Joseph Sobran once said, in a remembrance of Sir Alec Guinness, that the majority of “great” actors are over-actors. Their highest priority is ensuring that the viewer notice them. They deliberately put emphasizing their presence ahead of portraying the character.

     Alec Guinness never did that. Indeed, he was famed for his ability to disappear into a role, such that the viewer would forget who was playing the character for the duration of the performance. Consider the incomparably different characters he portrayed in The Man in the White Suit, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Tunes of Glory, and The Bridge on the River Kwai. Or consider Guinness’s portrayal of eight greatly different characters in a single movie: his tour-de-force Kind Hearts and Coronets. Except for Peter Sellers, I can’t name another actor who’s even attempted anything that difficult.

     Guinness didn’t place himself above his art. For him, getting the audience to see the character rather than the actor was paramount. There aren’t many actors, “great” or otherwise, of whom we could say the same.

     But “virtuoso” performers almost always place themselves before their art. They want you to notice them – to be awed by their skills. It’s not good for the art, but it does get them the plaudits of the fans.

     My preference has always been for the artist who sees himself as a servant to his art. He’s not there for adulation. He’s there to tell the story / sing the song / portray the character, and that’s what he does. It’s a form of the work ethic that’s sadly undervalued in our mee-meee-meeeee-look-at-ME era.

     Rather than beat this all the way into the magma layer, I’ll close with a few words from an artist who worked with words and stories: the late Ursula Le Guin:

     Music will not save us, Otto Egorin had said. Not you, or me, or her, the big, golden-voiced woman who had no children and wanted none; not Lehmann who sang the song; not Schubert who had written it and was a hundred years dead. What good is music? None, Gaye thought, and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and factories and Leaders, music says, “You are irrelevant;” and, arrogant and gentle as a god, to the suffering man it says only, “Listen.” For being saved is not the point. Music says nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down all the shelters, the houses that men build for themselves, that they may see the sky.

     [From “An die Musik” in Le Guin’s Orsinian Tales.]

     Or perhaps you would prefer Fountain’s way of putting it:

     “It is in the food.”

     And so it is and must always be.

Aug 26 2021

Too Good Not To Share

     If you don’t yet subscribe to The Babylon Bee, here’s a tiny taste of what you’re missing:

     That publication is staffed by a gaggle of BLEEP!ing geniuses. The comedy industry should take lessons from them. Especially the blatantly unfunny ones on late-night television. But I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

Load more