Quotulatiousness

October 5, 2019

Sultan Knish – Hillaryland must be the saddest place on earth

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I think it would be safe to say that Daniel Greenfield does not anticipate Hillary Clinton making a move to enter the Democratic primaries for the 2020 election, based on this:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the Intramural Fields at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona on 2 November 2016
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.

They say that Disneyland is the happiest place on earth, but Hillaryland must be the saddest.

What is Hillaryland? It’s a social network “aiming to connect all the people who’ve worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton during her more than 40 years of public service.” It’s run by “volunteers” and offers a plain white $15 Hillaryland tote bag which it claims that it’s selling “at cost” and “not for profit”.

How the mighty have fallen.

Once upon a time, Hillary and her people gaslit the country on the big issues. Now they’ve gone from Benghazi to trying to convince a declining handful of suckers that $15 is the cost price for a tote bag.

Hillaryland is the sad successor to Clintonworld networks like the Clinton Foundation which connected world leaders, foreign criminals and a prospective president. The alumni network is now a joke. The Clintons will never hold public office again. Hillaryland isn’t an alumni network, it’s a political leper colony run by “volunteers” too dumb to realize that the S.S. Slick Willy will never rise again.

Hillaryland promotes such promising ventures as Nasty Women Serve which holds an annual Hillary Rodham Clinton Day of Service. The highest level of service in Hillaryland is hosting a “house party” on November 8, which is National Hillary Day, also known as the day of Hillary’s downfall and defeat. The party will have, “in the true spirit of HRC — some Chardonnay” and will go on “until the wine runs out”.

Only Nazi war criminals in Argentina have sadder and more pathetic reunions than Hillary minions.

Nazis and potheads have 4/20 to get high. Hillary fans have 11/8 to get drunk on white wine. And both of them even blame the Russians for the defeat of their miserably corrupt murderous regimes.

And where’s Madame Fuhrer?

Hillary stopped by the Venice Biennale, the umbrella organization that includes the Venice Film Festival, allegedly a favorite stalking ground of old Clinton pal, Harvey Weinstein, to attend the exhibit of “HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails.”

For an hour, Hillary sat in a replica of the Oval Office pretending to read her own emails as part of an art project. To make her humiliation more complete, HILLARY was staged at the Despar Teatro Italia, a former theater turned into a supermarket. Confused shoppers watched a former American presidential contender pretending to be the President of the United States in an Italian supermarket.

There’s your chicken, your canned tomatoes and your pasta. Upstairs is a crazy lady who thinks she’s the President of the United States. Go easy on the chardonnay, you don’t want to end up like her.

Even Lady Macbeth went mad with more dignity than Hillary Clinton.

The Oval Office recreated in an Italian supermarket is only the second most famous piece of eponymous Hillary art. The National Museum of Women in the Arts also features a 6-foot-tall painting of a black fabric swatch named Hillary gifted to it by Heather and Tony Podesta. Heather and Tony have since split up. And Tony, a Hillarylander, got caught up in the Russia scandal and shut down his lobbying operation.

Sic transit gloria clintonmundi.

October 2, 2019

“When the next American Civil War starts…”

Filed under: Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

David Warren goes all soothsayery and predicts the course and outcome of a potential Red-versus-Blue armed conflict arising from the current Red-versus-Blue verbal conflict:

When the next American Civil War starts, I imagine it will look something like Hong Kong: a big melee spreading through all public spaces (I note that USA is bigger than Hong Kong). But there will be fairly limited casualties, at first, each of which will become the subject of unrestrained media outrage, until the media collapse under physical reprisals. Later, the better and better armed demonstrators, on both sides, will tactically “evolve.” The surveillance state itself will begin to disintegrate, and with it any hope of restoring public order, through agencies such as police, courts, and prisons. Things like border surveillance will be abandoned, with immediate consequences, but as the attraction of going to the States diminishes, no one will mind. More noticeably, the economy will break down. Because the American military was designed chiefly to defend against foreign powers, on a very large scale — and the threat will instead be domestic and scattered — the Army will be (at first) effectively neutralized. Isolated firefights between Democrat and Republican soldiers will escalate to firefights between ships and aeroplanes, but these will end fairly quickly as a Pentagon dictatorship seizes control. Within a year, I expect, though only a small part of their arsenal will prove useful, bullet-enforced curfews will restore relative peace to the streets. I don’t expect the death toll to be more than a few hundred thousand, at least from direct conflict as the guns come out. Interruptions of food supply, and the spread of disease, will cost much more — but possibly less (proportionately) than in the last Civil War, in which both sides were better organized.

That it will have spread to Canada, I cannot doubt, developing from the refugee crisis across “the world’s longest undefended border,” as snowflakes of all descriptions, by their millions, run for their lives, then resume their clashes up here. Mexico would also suffer from this “white flight,” except, the chaos from Mexican cartels’ energetic efforts to reclaim significant parts of Texas, California, and the Southwest, would have the paradoxical effect of ending the outbound refugee traffic there. For the most part, other foreign countries would avoid direct engagement. Instead, Islamist and Socialist regimes around the world would be busy consolidating their own local positions, sparking numerous “little wars” by their attempts at regional expansion. Each would be settled as the larger and more ruthless power won.

Still, I shouldn’t expect the anarchy to continue. Tyranny quickly fills a vacuum of authority (moral as well as material), and answers to the growing demand for safety. Nothing, of course, will be learnt from the adventure, and I should think that within a decade or less, resistance to the new President-for-Life will have all but evaporated.

Marston 3-Barrel Selectable Pocket Derringer

Filed under: History, Technology, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 18 Aug 2019

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William Marston was born in the UK in 1822 and emigrated to the US in the 1830s with his father, who was a gunsmith. William became a naturalized citizen in 1843, and in 1844 went to work for his father in the family business. He would later open his own shop, and became successful making a wide variety of firearms — mostly concealable pocket pistols — until his death in 1872.

This is one of his 3-barrel derringers, with a pretty neat auto-indexing system. This one is in .32 rimfire with 3″ barrels, although 4″ barrels and .22 rimfire versions were also made. Production began in 1858, but really picked up with the addition of an extractor in 1864. That improved model would see some 3300 examples made.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

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QotD: Senator Joe McCarthy

Filed under: Books, History, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’ve been reading M Stanton Evans’s excellent and scholarly Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies (published some 12 years ago) and marveling at the sheer extent of a shameless campaign of vilification, lies and sabotage to which McCarthy was subjected both during his brief public career as America’s number one “Red hunter” and ever afterwards, to the obvious extent that his name has become synonymous with a sinister and unprincipled persecution akin to witch trails. Ann Coulter has called Evans’s 600-plus pages tome, “the greatest book since the Bible”, and while I probably wouldn’t go to such an extent of praise, this book must surely rank as one of the best revisionist histories of recent times.

Pretty early on in the reading, it has occurred to me that the collusion between Democrat politicians, government departments and agencies, and liberal press to cover up the official sins of commission and omission, derail McCarthy’s investigations thereof, blacken his name, and destroy him personally and politically runs according to a very familiar script. It’s essentially what the progressive political and cultural elites have done to any number of conservative politicians and activists seen as a threat to their power and reputation. Donald Trump is merely the latest in a long and distinguished line.

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Marc Antony, I came here not to praise Donald but to see how the left is trying to bury him. Until reading Evans’s book, I have not quite realised how similar and similarly underhand, vicious and persistent the campaign against Joe McCarthy had been. The “Swamp” is real; it was real in the 1940s and 1950s, and it is just as real now and just as committed to destroying any outside threats to its continuing position and influence. This is not a conspiracy theory; this is simply how power structures work to protect and perpetuate themselves. The viciousness is a function not just of the unshakable self-belief in one’s intellectual and moral rightness and superiority but also of a certain form of snobbery directed by the members of the “in-crowd” – what once used to be known as the Liberal or the East Coast Establishment and now more broadly, among many other names and designations, as the “coastal elites” – against outsiders who don’t share their sophisticated social, educational or professional background. The Swamp managed in the end to defeat McCarthy and turn him in the historical and popular memory into one of the great villains of American history; the book is still open on Trump’s ultimate fate and legacy. None of this is to suggest that McCarthy or Trump are flawless human beings and faultless political figures; quite the contrary. But the campaigns of destruction they are subjected to ultimately have little to do with their specific failings and mistakes. It’s a total war.

Arthur Chrenkoff, “Before there was Trump, there was Joe McCarthy”, Daily Chrenk, 2019-09-30.

September 29, 2019

History Summarized: Mexico

Filed under: Americas, Europe, France, History, Humour, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 27 Sep 2019

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This video is quite serendipitous in timing — by complete coincidence, this is going live on September 27, the day of Mexico’s true political independence under the First Mexican Empire. This is the 11 year sequel to the more traditional Mexican Independence celebrations of September 16th, which marks Miguel Hidalgo’s proclamation of the “Cry of Dolores” and the start of the Mexican War of Independence. No joke, I only realized this when I was partway through researching the video. I do so much ancient history I’m not used to events having dates we can track to the day.

ANYWAY enjoy this look at Mexican History, here broken into three main acts, the Aztec Empire, the Colony of New Spain, and the Independent nation of Mexico.

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September 28, 2019

American politics as reality TV … maybe “reality” is a bit generous

Filed under: Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Catallaxy Files, John Comnenus guest-posts on The Trumpman Show of US politics:

Donald Trump addresses a rally in Nashville, TN in March 2017.
Photo released by the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

Politics is reality television, especially American politics where a cast of a dozen contest the primaries. Like a good reality television show, there are set events and episodes, such as debates and primaries, where the weaker contestants are gradually knocked out until one emerges to fight the other side for the ultimate prize – the Presidency.

Reality television shows typically assemble a cast of mismatched characters who bond together and feud amongst each other over tasks that are assigned by the script writers and star. They inject challenges into the cast to create tension and drama that changes the cast’s allegiances and relationships in a way that engages the audience and leads to a cast member(s) being removed from the show.

Donald Trump produced and starred in the highly successful reality television show, The Apprentice, for 11 years. I believe Donald Trump is the first politician to conduct politics as if it were a reality television show. Rudolph Guliani claims the Ukraine story, which blew up this week, was a trap laid for the Democrats who walked straight into it. Trump knew the cast of Democrat Congressmen and Presidential candidates couldn’t resist the challenge Trump injected into the cast.

Succeeding in reality television is about timing that creates the drama that engages the audience and gradually removes cast members. So why inject this Ukraine story now? I suspect Trump injected this script item into the Democrat Party cast now to ensure that he dramatically realigns the cast’s relationships and allegiances as they go into primary season. He wants to do this by removing the front runner. If I am right, Trump wants a viciously divided Democratic Party Convention that can barely stand the nominee the Party selects as the Democratic challenger to Donald Trump.

The Ukraine trap effectively knocks Biden out of the race – he can’t go to a debate with highly credible and growing allegations of corruption swirling around him. The Democrat establishment will ensure he retires for “health reasons” to avoid Democrat corruption dominating the next debate. So the 20%-25% of Democrats who previously supported Biden will need to cast their lot with another candidate. But who?

How the Federal Reserve Works: After the Great Recession

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 3 Apr 2018

In response to the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve has implemented some new instruments and policies – including quantitative easing, paying interest on reserves, and conducting repurchase (and reverse repurchase) agreements. In this video we cover how these tools work, and why they matter.

September 27, 2019

England’s constitution before the shiny new Supreme Court was created

Filed under: Britain, History, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Peter Hitchins provides a thumbnail sketch of the state of play before the Supreme Court was added to British constitutional arrangements:

Why did we never even have such a body until ten years ago? As we shall see, it would have been, and still is, a contradiction in terms. But in interesting times such as these, elephants fly, fishes walk, figs grow on thorns, and oxymorons inherit the earth.

The most powerful law court in the land was, by a curious paradox, not in the land at all, but based in tiny Luxembourg, across the Narrow Seas which have kept invaders from our door but are useless against bureaucratic takeovers by the European Union. There sits the European Court of Justice, which as long ago as 1990 established that it could tell British courts to overrule British Acts of Parliament when they conflict with E.U. law. It can carry on doing this until we eventually do leave the E.U., if we ever do.

These various messes came about because we are so old, and rely so much on convention and manners, that it is all too easy for unconventional and ill-mannered busybodies to come storming in with new ideas. England’s constitution was not planned and built, like America’s. Instead, it grew during a thousand years of freedom from invasion. Both are beautiful in their way. America’s fundamental law has the cold, orderly beauty of a classical temple. England’s has the warmer, more chaotic loveliness of an ancient forest. It seems to be wholly natural but, when examined closely, it shows many signs of careful cultivation and pruning. Our powers are not as separated as America’s, but slightly tangled. Still, it has worked well enough for us over time.

Any thinking person must admire both the American and the English constitutions as serious efforts in a world of chaos, despotism, and stupidity to apply human intelligence to the task of giving people ordered, peaceful, and free lives. They have a common origin in the miraculous Magna Carta, which Americans often revere more than modern Englishmen do. We in England have grown complacent about our liberty, and have become inclined to forget our great founding documents.

But the two constitutions are not the same, and in my view they are not compatible. For my whole life, until a few years ago, the very idea that England should have a Supreme Court was an absurdity. The Highest Court in England is the Crown in Parliament which, as I was once taught, had the power to do everything except turn a man into a woman. In these more gender-fluid times, that expression is not much used. But it contains the truth. Parliament can make any law and overturn any law, made by itself or by the courts.

That is why England (often to my regret) lacks a First Amendment and cannot have one unless we undergo a revolution. No law in England could possibly open with the words “Parliament shall make no law.” Our 1689 Bill of Rights, the model for the U.S. Bill of Rights a century later, tells the king what he cannot do and the courts what they cannot do. It grants me (as a Protestant) the right to have weapons for my defense. But while it draws its sword against arbitrary power, it puts a protective arm round Parliament.

A visual masterclass in trolling

Filed under: Media, Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

For all that Donald Trump is known for trolling his opponents on Twitter, he’s certainly not the only one, as these makeshift posters in Massachusetts illustrate:

The locals are outraged, but as Alaa Al-Ameri describes, they’re not quite sure how to safely express their fury:

Think of Posie Parker’s billboards quoting the dictionary definition of the word “woman”. The power of such acts comes from two things. First, they acknowledge – usually with irreducible simplicity – that something that went without saying a moment ago has suddenly become unsayable. Secondly, the outrage they provoke does not come from any epithet, caricature or insult, but rather from having the nerve to draw the viewer’s attention to an act of cognitive dissonance that we are all engaging in, but would rather not acknowledge.

The result is that those who attempt to explain why the act is offensive end up simply tying themselves in knots, while revealing that they have never given a moment’s thought to the position they find themselves defending. This seems to generate even more anger, with the inevitable online mob quickly joined by politicians, journalists and other public figures, eager to see that the heretic is made an example of.

At their best, these acts of public disobedience are examples of real-life Winston Smiths pointing out to the rest of us that “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”. Their persecutors, like his, are those who know and fear the truth of Smith’s next sentence: “If that is granted, all else follows.”

The example of perfectly crafted dissent that I’d like to submit here appears in this video from Massachusetts local TV news, showing some reactions to the fly-posting of white sheets of paper bearing the statement “Islam is right about women”. The reactions are deeply revealing. Nobody can clearly point out why they object to the statement – indeed, nobody seems to object to the statement at all on its face. Yet most seem to express offence at it – if a little unconvincingly.

The reason for their dilemma is obvious enough to anyone who has been paying attention. Western society has managed to convince itself (at least in public) that any statement criticising any aspect of Islam is, by definition, bigotry. As a result, Western societies have effectively decided to enforce Islamic restrictions on blasphemy, and called it “tolerance”.

The strain of conforming to this lie is evident in the fumbling attempts by the interviewees to explain their objections. Do they believe that Islam is right about women? If so, why the objection? Do they believe that Islam is wrong about women? If so, in what sense is the statement an attack on Islam or Muslims? Do they believe that the author of the poster is saying that “Islam is right about women”, but doing so ironically? In which case, the objection can only be that the author is guilty of a thoughtcrime by stating that “two and two make five” with insufficient sincerity. Or do they worry that they are guilty of thoughtcrime for noticing the irony?

How the Federal Reserve Worked: Before the Great Recession

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 13 Mar 2018

The Federal Reserve has massive influence over the United States and global economy. But how the Fed uses its tools to stimulate or shrink aggregate demand has changed since the Great Recession. We’ll start by covering how it was done prior to 2008.

September 25, 2019

The Money Multiplier

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 25 Jul 2017

When you deposit money into a bank, do you know what happens to it? It doesn’t simply sit there. Banks are actually allowed to loan out up to 90% of their deposits. For every $10 that you deposit, only $1 is required to stay put.

This practice is known as fractional reserve banking. Now, it’s fairly rare for a bank to only have 10% in reserves, and the number fluctuates. Since checkable deposits are part of the U.S. money supplies, fractional reserve banking, as you might have guessed, can have a big impact on these supplies.

This is where the money multiplier comes into play. The money multiplier itself is straightforward: it equals 1 divided by the reserve ratio. If reserves are at 10%, the minimum amount required by the Fed, then the money multiplier is 10. So if a bank has $1 million in checkable deposits, it has $10 million to work with for stuff like loans and reserves.

Now, typically, the money multiplier is more like 3, because banks can always hold more in reserves than the minimum 10%. When the money multiplier is higher, like during a boom, this gives the Fed more leverage to move M1 and M2 with a small change in reserves. But when the multiplier is lower, such as during a recession, the Fed has less leverage and must push harder to wield its indirect influence over M1 and M2.

Next up, we’ll take a closer look at how the Fed controls the money supply and how that has changed since the Great Recession.

September 23, 2019

M4 Sherman – The Workhorse of D-Day

Filed under: History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Real Engineering
Published on 21 Sep 2019

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Virtual Tour: Newly Renovated Cody Firearms Museum

Filed under: History, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 27 Jul 2019

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The Cody Firearms Museum has spent many months undergoing a complete renovation and rebuilding, and is now back fully open to the public. The new layout has not just improved visibility and put the guns in better display context, but it has actually increased the number of guns on display. When I last filmed at Cody, most of the really interesting unusual stuff was back in the vaults — but during filming this past week we had to take a remarkable number of guns out of displays to film. This is a great improvement — the Cody museum was always good, but this new design has made it the best firearms museum in the United States, in my opinion.

Visiting? The CFM is part of the 5-museum complex that is the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in beautiful Cody, Wyoming:

https://centerofthewest.org

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

QotD: Harry Truman’s second thoughts about the CIA

Filed under: Government, History, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… it got out of hand. The fella … the one that was in the White House after me never paid any attention to it, and it got out of hand. Why, they’ve got an organization over there in Virginia now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in many ways. And I think I’ve told you, one Pentagon is one too many.

Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don’t just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there’s nobody to keep track of what they’re up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they’ll have something to report on. They’ve become … it’s become a government all of its own and all secret. They don’t have to account to anybody.

That’s a very dangerous thing in a democratic society, and it’s got to be put a stop to. The people have got a right to know what those birds are up to. And if I was back in the White House, people would know. You see, the way a free government works, there’s got to be a housecleaning every now and again, and I don’t care what branch of the government is involved. Somebody has to keep an eye on things.

And when you can’t do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damn secret, why, then we’re on our way to something the Founding Fathers didn’t have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don’t mix. And if what happened at the Bay of Pigs doesn’t prove that, I don’t know what does. You have got to keep an eye on the military at all times, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s the birds in the Pentagon or the birds in the CIA.

Harry S. Truman, quoted by Jeff Deist, “Truman Was Right About the CIA”, Mises Wire, 2017-03-08.

September 20, 2019

QotD: Red Flag laws for politicians

Filed under: Humour, Law, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

You know what I’d like to see?

Red Flag laws for Congress.

Any Congresscritter says or does, something unConstitutional, anyone should be able to file a Red Flag violation and have that politician’s powers to write bills, attend sessions of Congress, vote, draw a taxpayer-funded paycheque, live in a mansion in Washington DC, or anything else tied to the job of being a Congresscritter immediately suspended.

There would be a hearing within fourteen days before a judge in their home district, where the Representative or Senator would be given the opportunity to show where in the Constitution what they said, or the law they proposed, or the action they did, was explicitly authorised, and if they can show that, their rights to all the goodies of being an elected representative of the People would be restored.

If they can’t, then they can sit at home for a year and twiddle their thumbs. Not allowed into the Capitol, no drawing a paycheque, no voting, no proposing bills, nothing added to their pension funds, zip, zero, NADA to do with being an elected official.

And their party doesn’t get to fill that slot. Their party doesn’t get to vote on their behalf. Their party doesn’t get to help them with re-election.

No, that Congresscritter, and the seat they occupy, goes into the penalty box for a year.

After a year, if their term in office hasn’t expired, they can take up their duties again.

Unless, and until, they mention violating the Constitution again, and someone files another Red Flag complaint.

Lawdog, “Sauce for the goose…”, The Lawdog Files, 2019-08-06.

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