Quotulatiousness

December 10, 2019

Warren Kinsella, the PPC, and “Operation Cactus”

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Kate at SDA linked to this interesting article by James Di Fiore on the Conservative Party’s contract with Warren Kinsella to smear Maxime Bernier and the PPC in the run-up to the Fall election:

If you were new to this country, or part of our sect of apathetic voters, there was a good chance you walked away from the election believing Bernier and his party were nothing but a bunch of racists who thought they finally found a home. From there, being branded the racist party in Canada, all the media had to do was either ignore the PPC, or only run negative stories, not wanting to be seen as an outlet giving positive coverage to what was deemed as obvious bigotry.

Enter Warren Kinsella.

I sometimes wonder how well-known Kinsella really is. Everyone in the Ottawa and Toronto bubble knows him. The media and party members know him. But he’s not exactly a household name, until now maybe. Kinsella, a throwback operative going back to the Chretien years, still manages to convince people to hire him, despite having a reputation of being hopelessly unsavoury, where the ends always justifies the means as long as you remind everyone along the way how great of a person you are.

Kinsella was hired by the Conservative Party of Canada to execute a campaign painting The People’s Party of Canada as a haven for bigotry and white nationalism. Secretly recorded by an employee, Kinsella was heard giving his team a pep talk on how to effectively destroy Bernier. He even tried to reinforce his motivational speech by bragging about falsely smearing three prominent politicians as racists when he knew they were not. He tries to catch himself by saying how easy it is to smear Bernier as a racist because, as Kinsella put it, “this guy actually is a racist.”

When a strong federal party hires a notoriously unethical operative to smear a new party as a gang of racists and bigots, it can be difficult to define your own brand. I asked Bernier if he thought there was a reason some racists did seem drawn to his party’s platform.

“It happened when Preston Manning started the Reform Party more than 25 years ago. People were saying that party was a racist party. The Conservative Party and Kinsella tried to do the same thing with us. That’s why I am looking at all my options to look at the legal procedures that we can do.”

Bernier might have a very strong case, especially now that Kinsella’s mask has been taken off by his own hand.

“The Conservative Party of Canada is morally and intellectually corrupt, and they proved that with their contract with Kinsella.”

It is still unknown how much the CPC and Kinsella impacted Bernier’s party, but it is reasonable to believe Kinsella was ultimately successful. On September 29th, at an event in Hamilton, several protestors accosted event attendees as they tried to get into the building at Mohawk College. The aggressiveness of the demonstrators was palpable as they screamed at seniors, calling them Nazis and preventing them from entering the building. Instances like this make Kinsella’s contract all the more mysterious. After all, his job, according to his own admission, was to activate Canadians against Bernier by stoking the flames of racial intolerance.

There are questions as to whether Kinsella’s fingerprints are on several other party missteps and controversies, including a rash of resignations earlier this year when former loyalists mysteriously began trashing the party publicly.

Operatives normally do not get caught bragging about having a track history of how their lies about other people’s bigotry have been successfully used to disrupt campaigns. In Bernier’s case, Kinsella, a self-proclaimed, lifelong fighter for racial justice, actually spent a career monetizing racial divisions he helped to stoke. When his shtick was exposed through his own accidental confessions, the hindsight view of Maxime Bernier became less blurry.

“NATO [reminds] me of the pre-reformation medieval church. Their stated objectives sound Godly and noble but their true purpose is to keep a bloated priesthood in luxury”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, France, Germany, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

NATO still exists, decades after the threat it was designed to counter dissolved. Tom Paine wonders why this is so:

The dismal science teaches us to distinguish between peoples’ stated preferences (often virtue-signalling lies) and their revealed preferences (how they spend their money). All NATO members say they believe in the alliance. Only four — the USA, the UK, Poland and Greece — meet their obligation to contribute more than 2% of their GDP. If you’re wondering, Greece has only accidentally met that target because of the catastrophic fall in its GDP.

Opinion polls and my own experience of the bitter, sneering anti-Americanism of my otherwise delightful continental chums suggest that as usual the revealed preference is the truth. The Germans and French would not go to war in defence of America or Britain if we were attacked. Britain was attacked, when the Falklands were invaded, and our “allies” and “friends” sold arms to our enemies and gave them all kinds of moral support. Remember the Welsh Guards (my grandfather’s old regiment) massacred by Exocets fired from Mirages? The USA has often gone to war since the alliance was formed and mostly only British warriors fought, died or were injured alongside theirs.

Germany, France and their freeloading friends have quite simply been taking the piss from the outset. They take the Americans (and us Inselaffen and rosbifs) for mugs. They plot to form an EU Army and regret that Brexit means they won’t be able to continue to rely on English-speakers as their cannon-fodder.

The continued existence of NATO has fuelled the epic paranoia of Russia’s military/intelligence apparatus. Desperate not to be decommissioned the generals and chekists have claimed that “the West” they grew up opposing is intrinsically hostile — rather than, in truth, insultingly indifferent — to Mother Russia. Their only “proof” of this nonsense was NATO.

[…]

NATO is yet another of many examples of the truism that, once a bureaucracy acquires a competence, it will never disband. It continues because it can. The political and economic ills that drove the creation of what is now called the EU have long since faded into history. But the plump parasites of its apparatus have repeatedly repurposed it. Britain is a paradise of social, ethnic and sexual equality compared to the days when the precursors of the Equalities Commission were formed but its staff will find imaginary evils by the thousand before they’ll return to productive labour. Marx would gasp at the generosity of Britain’s welfare state and marvel at the lifestyle of even the poorest Brit and yet trivial micro aggressions are enough to sustain the revolutionary fervour of Marxist academics desperate to live as idly and unproductively as the man himself.

In praise of Warren Gamaliel Harding

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

At Essays in Idleness, David Warren says nice things about an American president who rarely gets any love from historians:

Warren G. Harding, 14 June 1920.
Library of Congress control number 2016828156

Like most politicians, W. G. Harding was only semi-literate, yet well above the average. The Ivy League types are still querying his use of “normalcy,” which the Natted States president used during his election campaign of 1920. Harding himself ranks low in the polls of “Great American Presidents,” though he was quite popular until his death. That mistake, committed after a heart attack in San Francisco, anno 1923, was the first of several. It was discovered that his administration had been rather corrupt, and himself guilty of an adultery. One might say he was “impeached,” posthumously. Today, they impeach Republican presidents for breathing.

Warren Gamaliel Harding is naturally among my favourite presidents. This has something to do with his “return to normalcy.” For the better part of a decade, his countrymen had suffered under the ministrations of progressive Democrats, such as the unspeakable Woodrow Wilson, and from such foreign entanglements as the First World War. The federal budget was being blown to heck, and society was on the verge of the Jazz Age.

Harding, who stayed home in Marion, Ohio, for most of his presidential campaign — rather than “pressing the flesh” and risking the influenza — won by a landslide, promising: “Not heroics, but healing; … not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

Oh yes and, “not nostrums, but normalcy.”

The quote, which I have filched from the Wicked Paedia, is semi-literate throughout. Harding was a man who had an unhealthy relationship with a dictionary, and to his other sins, we must add an addiction to semi-colons. Still, “The Peeple” could guess what he meant. He wanted America to move backwards. He thought the whole country should forget about recent lunatic adventures, and return to her wonted calm.

Al Stewart wrote a song called “Warren Harding” (lyrics here):

Before the Lewis Gun was the McClean Automatic Rifle

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 18 Oct 2019

This is Lot 1158 in the upcoming October Morphy Extraordinary auction.

Samuel McClean was a medical doctor from Iowa who began tinkering with firearms designs in 1889, and formed the McClean Arms Company in 1896. He was an intelligent and talented designer, but never quite managed to get a gun good enough for military acceptance. His work included bolt actions rifles, self-loading shoulder rifles, machine guns, and self-loading cannons. By 1910 his company had gone bankrupt twice, and he was forced out by his investors. Isaac Newton Lewis was brought in, and turned McClean’s initial concepts into the ultimately-successful Lewis Machine gun.

However, McClean made one least attempt to produce his own gun after World War One. This is the McClean Automatic Rifle, and it was tested by the US Navy in 1919 – and rejected. This pattern uses an operating system similar to McClean’s early work, and thus also quite similar to the Lewis gun. Instead of two large locking lugs, however, it has several dozen small lugs in two rows on each side of the bolt. The gas piston is also huge by modern standards; over an inch in diameter. The gun is unfortunately missing its magazine Still, it is the only example of the type known to exist, and probably the only one ever manufactured.

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QotD: British breakfast – “Not a snack but a serious meal”

Filed under: Britain, Food, History, Quotations, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

First of all, then, breakfast. Ideally for nearly all British people, and in practice for most of them even now, this is not a snack but a serious meal. The hour at which people have their breakfast is of course governed by the time at which they go to work, but if they were free to choose, most people would like to have breakfast at nine o’clock. In principle the meal consists of three courses, one of which is a meat course. Traditionally it starts with porridge, which is made of coarse oatmeal, sodden and then boiled into a spongy mess: it is eaten always hot, with cold milk (better still, cream) poured over it, and sugar. Breakfast cereals, which are ready-cooked preparations of wheat or rice, taken cold with milk and sugar, are often eaten instead of porridge. After this comes either fish, usually salt fish, or meat in some form, or eggs in some form. The best and most characteristically British form of salt fish is the kipper, which is a herring split open and cured in wood-smoke until it is deep brown colour. Kippers are either grilled or fried. The usual breakfast meat dishes are either fried bacon, with or without fried eggs, grilled kidneys, fried pork sausages, or cold ham. British people favour a lean, mild type of bacon or ham, cured with sugar and nitre rather than with salt. At normal time it is not unusual to eat grilled beef steaks or mutton chops at breakfast, and there are still old-fashioned people who like to start the day with cold roast beef. In some parts of the country, for instance in East Anglia, it is usual to eat cheese at breakfast.

After the meat course comes bread, or more often toast, with butter and orange marmalade. It must be orange marmalade, though honey is a possible substitute. Other kinds of jam are seldom eaten at breakfast, and marmalade does not often appear at other times of [the] day. For the great bulk of British people, the invariable breakfast drink is tea. Coffee in Britain is almost always nasty, either in restaurants or in private houses; the majority of people, though they drink it fairly freely, are uninterested in it and do not know good coffee from bad. Of tea, on the other hand, they are extremely critical, and everyone has his favourite brand and his pet theory as to how it should be made. Tea is always drunk with milk, and it is usual to brew it very strong, about one spoonful of dry tea leaves being allowed for each cup. Most people prefer Indian to Chinese tea, and they like to put sugar in it. Here, however, one comes upon a class distinction, or more exactly a cultural distinction. Virtually all British working-people put sugar in their tea, and indeed will not drink tea without it. Unsweetened tea is an upper-class or middle-class habit, and even in those classes it tends to be associated with a Europeanised palate. If one made a list of the people in Britain who prefer wine to beer, one would probably find that it included most of the people who prefer tea without sugar.

After this solid breakfast – and even now, in a time of rationing, it is usual to eat a fairly large bulk of food, chiefly bread, at breakfast – it is natural that the midday meal should be somewhat lighter than it is in many other countries.

George Orwell, “British Cookery”, 1946. (Originally commissioned by the British Council, but refused by them and later published in abbreviated form.)

December 9, 2019

All the Guns on an M4 Sherman Tank (with Nicholas Moran, the Chieftain)

Filed under: History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Dec 2019

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Today Nicholas Moran (the Chieftain) and I are at DriveTanks.com courtesy of Wargaming.net, to show you around a World War Two Sherman tank and all its various armaments. We will discuss and shoot the bow machine gun, coaxial machine gun, commander’s hatch machine gun, antiaircraft .50 cal M2 machine gun, 76mm high velocity main gun, and the crew’s small arms, an M3 Grease Gun and a 1911 pistol.

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Detroit Lions struggle to score in low-voltage game against the Minnesota Vikings

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Looking to get back on track after last week’s disappointing trip to Seattle, the 8-4 Minnesota Vikings hosted divisional rivals the 3-8-1 Detroit Lions at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon. The Vikings were again without the services of star wide receiver Adam Thielen, who suffered a hamstring injury early in the last game against Detroit. The Lions started their backup quarterback, as starter Matthew Stafford has a back injury that needs time to heal. This might sound like a tough situation for the Lions, but backup quarterbacks have done well against the Vikings in earlier games this season.

US Bank Stadium, home of the Minnesota Vikings by “www78”
“Viking Stadium” by www78 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

The Minnesota defence seemed to be a bit more like its traditional self, batting down two passes on the Lions’ first possession and sacking quarterback David Blough to force a punt, but the high-scoring Vikings offence seemed … somewhat underpowered. Although the score was 17-0 at the half, the Vikings should have been up a few more scores but for just enough miscues to derail drives outside the red zone. Defensive end Danielle Hunter got some attention from the broadcast team as the first of his three sacks put him up to 50 in his career, and he’s the youngest player to get 50 sacks in the NFL.

The Vikings defence kept the Lions out of the end zone until less than three minutes remained in regulation time, playing the dreaded “prevent” to avoid giving up long pass plays. Judd Zulgad was hoping to see some improvement over the Seattle game, but says this game really didn’t show it:

The only thing worse than the Lions might have been the fact the crowd of 66,776 fans was subjected to the look-at-me officiating work of referee Walt Anderson and his crew. A game after Clete Blakeman’s crew threw an NFL season-low four flags on Monday in Seattle, Anderson and Co. called nine penalties in the first half and 12 in the game.

The problem with this game was is it came at a time when you would like to see which direction a team is trending, Sunday provided no clarity when it comes to the Vikings. The Vikings weren’t alone. The Green Bay Packers (10-3) remained a game ahead of the Vikings (9-4) in the NFC North after beating a terrible Washington team (3-10) at Lambeau Field.

The Vikings should get a better test next Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers simply because it’s a road game. The Chargers entered Sunday’s game against another bottom-feeder, Jacksonville, with a 4-8 record. The next real test for the Vikings should be in Week 16 against the Packers in a Monday night game at U.S. Bank Stadium.

Entering Sunday, the Vikings had beaten seven teams with records below .500 and only one (Oakland) with a .500 record. Their four losses had come against teams with winning records (Green Bay, Chicago, Kansas City and Seattle).

That’s part of the reason why it’s extremely difficult to see the Vikings being capable of making a Super Bowl run and impossible to do so if they end up as a wild card team and have to win three times on the road. The Vikings’ too-easy-victory on Sunday did nothing to change that feeling.

And finally, the Buy/Sell recommendations from Ted Glover’s post-game Stock Market Report at the Daily Norseman:

Buy: The defensive effort today. I was kind of concerned heading into this game. Rookie David Blough put over 280 yards passing on the Bears defense last week, and Mike Zimmer has a maddening habit of playing a fairly vanilla defense to start a game, allowing young QB’s like Brandon Allen of the Broncos to light up the VIkes like a Christmas tree. Today, the defense set the tone, blitzing and hurrying Blough from the first series, and completely stonewalling a top 10 NFL offense until the game was well decided.

Sell: Offensive penalty on 4th and 1 from the Lions four. In the second quarter the Vikings had a nice drive going, moving from their 35 to the Detroit four. On 4th and one, Mike Zimmer decided to go for it, and Dalvin Cook appeared to get two yards and a first down, setting up a first and goal. But the offense wasn’t set, they were called for an illegal procedure penalty, and Minnesota had to settle for a field goal. Against a better team on a different day, that could have been potentially huge.

Buy: Two minute drive to end the half. After the Prater missed knuckleball, the Vikes took over on their 35 with 1:06 and two timeouts left before halftime. What ensued is what I would argue might be the best two minute drive of the Zimmer era. A combination of great play calling, exceptional use of timeouts, and perfect execution on a big play got the Vikings close to the end zone:

Again, note the great protection for Cousins. It was a great throw, great catch, and two plays later Dalvin Cook walked in, giving Minnesota a 17-0 lead into the locker room.

Sell: Not stepping on the gas pedal to open the second half. Yet, the Vikings didn’t really do anything with that momentum coming out of the half. It seemed like Minnesota went into ‘kill the clock mode’ as opposed to ‘go for the throat’ mode, and part of me understands it. You have a big lead, the Lions have shown zero life on offense, and Minnesota was in complete control of the game. Yet we’ve seen first hand how tenuous 17…or 20…point leads can be.

A weird bounce, a turnover, or a busted play could completely turn the game around, and now what was a game you had in the bag is very much NOT in the bag. For example, on the Vikes first drive, a makeable third and five went to waste when Cousins threw a deep, low percentage pass to Alexander Hollins. Punt. On their second drive, the third and seven call was a run to the left by Dalvin Cook that went for no gain. Punt. The defense remained stout throughout, and the Lions got nothing going until the game was pretty much over, so it wasn’t a big deal. Still, for as much as Mike Zimmer preaches the importance of closing the first half with points and bookending that with points to open the second half, the lack of urgency there was weird.

Buy: Benching Rhodes to start the game. I like the move to bench Xavier Rhodes early in the game. The stat sheet says Rhodes started, but it looked like Mike Hughes started in his place, and played a good part of the first half. Rhodes did play, and it seemed like he responded. I liked it because it sent a message to the defense that they needed to play better, and it appears that the defense got the message loud and clear, as they played as well as they have in two months.

Sell: Walt Coleman’s officiating crew. What a joke of a crew. Their inability to correctly call the most basic of plays is balanced out by their penchant for throwing a flag just as the game is getting into a rhythm. Ticky tack penalties, a blown call that caused Zimmer to throw a challenge flag to overturn, when the side judge was literally looking at the drop happen? It was just a terribly called game.

Buy: This was a boring game. No, it won’t be the NFL Game of the Week, and yeah, it was kind of a snoozefest, but it’s a win. And it’s nine wins for the Vikings on the year, and one game closer to a playoff spot. I’ll happily take it.

Sell: Exciting losses are better. I would rather watch a boring win than sit through an exciting loss, like we saw happen between the 49ers and Saints.

Policing London – The Fall of Jonathan Wild – Extra History – #2

Filed under: Britain, History, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published 7 Dec 2019

Jonathan Wild had the whole crime system figured out. A man of justice by day, and leader of a criminal empire by night. But that is when Jack Sheppard came into his life. Jack Sheppard was a talented thief but an even more talented escape artist. And one of the last criminals in London who refused to bend the knee to Jonathan Wild. This was unacceptable. Jonathan Wild became obsessed. But obsessions can be dangerous. Every prison escape causes Sheppard’s popularity amongst the people, sick and tired of corruption, to grow. And the consequences may be deadly.

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Nikki Haley, 2024?

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

Ted Campbell looks at the US political scene and wonders if Nikki Haley will be the President after the 2024 federal election:

President Donald Trump and Ambassador Nikki Haley at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, 24 September, 2018.
Official White House photograph by Shealah Craighead via Wikimedia Commons.

Following on from my previous post, I suspect that former Governor (South Carolina) and US Ambassador (to the United Nations) Nikki Haley might be President-elect of the United States five years from now. She is, right now, I think, the wholly unofficial but very clear voice of the post-Trump Republicans. She shares many of the Trumpian aims but she will campaign with a much different mixture of grit and grace, as the title of her recent book (campaign manifesto?) suggests.

It also seems pretty obvious to me, and to some other observers, that Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada have decided that they can win a majority in (probably) 2021 by appealing even more strongly to the Laurentian Elites and thereby securing a half dozen more seats in each of Greater Vancouver and in urban Quebec and another dozen in (mainly) South-Western Ontario.

[…]

I think that Ambassador Haley’s comments are a shot across Canada’s bows made on behalf of the American establishment, not just Donald Trump. I suspect her remarks were very carefully crafted and even blessed by influential leaders in government, academe and in the huge array of think tanks in which America’s “government in waiting” resides. She is not speaking for Donald Trump; he can (likely will) speak for himself in his own, inimitable, bullying style. She is speaking for a larger, more permanent establishment, the “deep” administrative state that guards America’s permanent, vital interests.

Canadians need to pay attention. Nikki Haley matters; she (or someone very like her) is the future and she (or that similar someone) is the future to which we must accommodate ourselves for the 2020s and into the 2030s. We must remain a steadfast, trusted member of the US-led West. We, under Mackenzie-King and Louis St Laurent and John Diefenbaker, helped to build the US-led West, we even helped to lead it. Pierre Trudeau wanted to change Canada; he did, but not as much as he wished. His own Liberal ministers would not follow him all the way. Justin Trudeau is following in his father’s deeply flawed strategic footsteps which aim to make Canada irrelevant. He has a much tamer (weaker) cabinet allowing him and Chrystia Freeland to push Canada towards a strategic place where our country will be politically isolated, largely friendless and poor.

Liberals, by which, in the 2020s, I mean Conservatives, must speak out and offer Canadians a better, principled strategic vision which aims to secure our sovereignty, our prosperity and a respectable, responsible, leadership role ~ what Paul Martin called a role of pride and influence ~ in the world. Otherwise, Canada’s very sovereignty is in peril. If, as I expect, Donald Trump is re-elected next year and is then followed in 2024 by another, albeit “kinder, gentler” Trumpian, (which I believe is very likely because I think the Democratic Party in the USA will shatter after the 2020 election and will not be a real force again for a decade or more) then Canada must adapt. The importance of our bilateral relationship with America is to all other things as ten is to one.

Why do Mosquitoes Prefer some people to others? | James May’s Q&A | Head Squeeze

Filed under: Environment, Health — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

BBC Earth Lab
Published 26 Apr 2013

James May imparts some very interesting facts on mosquitoes. So why do they prefer some people to others?
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Welcome to BBC Earth Lab! Here we answer all your curious questions about science in the world around you (and further afield too).

QotD: The Brown M&M’s clause

Filed under: Business, Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It was David Lee Roth who ruined personal-appearance contracts for all time with his Brown M&M’s Clause in the ’80s. The story sounds apocryphal but it’s true: Any promoter hiring Van Halen for a concert was required to supply M&M’s in the band’s dressing room but “ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES.”

In later years Roth would claim that this was not an example of spoiled rock star entitlement but a way to make sure that concert promoters read the entire contract and took care of other, more important provisions. I was actually buying this — promoters can be forgetful and dense at all levels of the business — until the Smoking Gun website tracked down the famous M&M’s rider so that we could read the rest of it. In order to “present to your customers the finest in contemporary entertainment,” Van Halen also needed two dozen English muffins, but not just any English muffins — they had to be Thomas brand English muffins — plus two cases of beer delivered precisely at 6 p.m., two more cases (one Budweiser and one Heineken) delivered to the stage manager at 7 p.m., different food menus for even and odd days, and, just to keep you on your toes in the implements department, “all forks must have four prongs.” Backstage the band also needed one case of Budweiser, four cases of Schlitz Malt Liquor (really?), one half case of Tab (perhaps even more shocking than the malt liquor), three fifths of Jack Daniels Black Label, two fifths of Stolichnaya, one pint of Southern Comfort, two bottles of Blue Nun white wine (whoever that was should lose his rock-star cred forever), three packs of Marlboros (these riders are for one day — is that guy dead yet?), and — the mind boggles — “one large tube of KY Jelly.”

The rider ran to eleven pages and is, in fact, ridiculously demanding. (“Any caterer not providing adequate condiments, utensils or ice will be subject to a $100.00 fine.”)

Joe Bob Briggs, “Travel by Luxury Donkey Cart”, Taki’s Magazine, 2019-10-10.

December 8, 2019

The Road to Moscow – German Invasion Plans – WW2 – 067 – December 7, 1940

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Greece, History, Italy, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 7 Dec 2019

Wilhelm Canaris once again disturbs Hitlers plans to drag Spain into the war, as the Germans finalize their plan for the Invasion of the Soviet Union which is scheduled for the summer of 1941. Meanwhile, the Greek counter-offensive into Albania loses steam and the Pope objects to the German T-4 euthanasia program.

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World War Two
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Political evolution in action – “The predator approaching is a Donald Trumptruck”

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

At Essays in Idleness, David Warren explores the notion of a “no-brainer”:

The definition of a “no-brainer,” is a decision that requires no brains. Gentle reader will imagine what happens when decisions are made in that way. Or maybe he can’t, in which case I will imagine it for him. The results will be unforeseeable, if prompt; except by those using their brains to foresee them.

This is a problem with the zombie, or collective method of governing a country, or governing anything. It relies on luck. Sometimes, very rarely, it will get lucky. But the luck never lasts.

Perhaps one might observe there is no such thing as a “no-brainer,” even among fish swimming in a school. It is physiologically impossible, even for a human, to act without engaging his grey matter.

Let us take a decision that might be made by either — say, fish in the ocean, or a school of liberal-progressives. It is the principle, “Whenever encountering an obstacle, turn Left.” (Or the alternative no-brainer is possible: “Turn Right.”) No turning signal is necessary, for the rest of the school has been programmed the same way. Still, they must see the obstacle, and turn. This involves a dim intellectual process. It need not be applauded, however.

Let us posit our obstacle is a whale; and that we are its diet. It is large, so we can see it from a distance, or were equipped to detect it in some other way. Instinct kicks in, and we turn. “Left, left!” goes the collective signal. The whale’s advantage is that, with even less thought, he can make his own adjustment of course. It’s easy, because experience has taught him which way we will turn. We do so, and in a moment, we are all gobbled down.

The life of a sprat may be hard, perhaps; but it is mercifully brief.

Or let’s say we are Democrats, in caucus. The predator approaching is a Donald Trumptruck. We can see it coming a mile away; there is no subtlety at all in the creature. And yet we always get run over.

History Summarized: Florence

Filed under: Architecture, Europe, History, Humour, Italy — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 6 Dec 2019

Get 3 months of Audible for just $6.95 a month. That’s more than half off the regular price. Visit http://www.audible.com/overlysarcastic or text overlysarcastic to 500 500.

Can’t start a Renaissance without building a few *Domes* — You’ve seen the memes, now learn the history behind the magnificent city of Florence!

It may sound like sacrilege, but many years ago, Florence was the first Italian city that little Blue had a cartoonishly-overblown obsession for — move over, Venice. In fact, Florentine history is basically THE reason I ever started caring about History in the first place. So I hope that you find this exquisite chapter in world history as enjoyable as I do.

SOURCES & Further Reading:
Death in Florence — Paul Strathern https://www.audible.com/pd/Death-in-F…
Florence: The Biography of A City — Christopher Hibbert
Be Like The Fox: Machiavelli In His World — Erica Benner

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The “Church of Atheism” doesn’t get charitable status … this time

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh on the recent court decision on the Church of Atheism’s attempt to qualify as a church — and receive the tax benefits — under Revenue Canada’s rules:

“The Descent of the Modernists”, by E.J. Pace, first appearing in his book Christian Cartoons, published in 1922.
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Last week the Federal Court of Appeal upheld Revenue Canada’s rejection of an application for charitable status made by a “Church of Atheism” tucked away in Ontario’s Lanark Highlands. The idea of making a gesture like this has probably occurred to every atheist who looks around at a world of tax-exempt churches and wonders why his kind is excluded from the gravy train. (Clergymen pay tax on their income, but they have access to a generous residential deduction, and any professional expenses covered by the church go untaxed.)

The fact is that the “Church’s” efforts were a bit amateurish and confused. But they may, like a doomed military reconnaissance, have revealed weaknesses in the anomalous exclusion of atheists from religious tax exemptions.

These weaknesses cannot be any big secret. You probably remember the Supreme Court’s Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay decision of 2015 — that’s the case in which the Quebec Court of Appeal had ruled that a statue of Christ with an electrically illuminated Sacred Heart was “devoid of religious connotation.” The Supreme Court, perhaps suppressing a chuckle or two, proceeded to unanimously overturn the Quebec ruling and expound the concept that the Canadian state has a Charter-based “duty of religious neutrality” (except, of course, where the constitution explicitly specifies otherwise, as with Catholic schools). Government, the SCC insisted, “must neither favour nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non-belief.”

Given that this is our law, what can be the problem with a “Church of Atheism”? Good question! Justice Marianne Rivoalen, writing on behalf of a three-judge Federal Court panel, confirmed the general point that there is a state duty of religious neutrality; in fact, even Revenue Canada, acting as the respondent, conceded this.

But the court simply ruled, without any logical elucidation, that “the Minister (of Revenue)’s refusal to register the appellant as a charitable organization does not interfere in a manner that is more than trivial or insubstantial with the appellant’s members’ ability to practise their atheistic beliefs. The appellant can continue to carry out its purpose and its activities without charitable registration.”

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