Sixth place t with 1/3 vote – Joshuapundit–Dumb Debbie, The DNC And The Wrath Of The Bernistas
Non-Council Winners
First place with 2 votes!–Sultan Knish –Exploiting Dead Cops to Promote Their Killers submitted by The Daley Gator
Second place t with 1 2/3 votes –Heather MacDonald/ City Journal –Trump Is Right about Crime submitted by Stately McDaniel Manor
Second place t with 1 2/3 votes – David Solway/PJ Media – How to Defeat Terrorism submitted by The Watcher
Third place with 1 1/3 votes – Oren Cass/City Journal–Hillary’s Web Of Promises submitted by Bookworm Room
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –War On The Rocks – Germany Takes A Steely Look At The World submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –Sean Trende/real Clear Politics – Where the Race Stands — Post-RNC Edition submitted by The Glittering Eye
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –Kristen McQueary/Chicago Tribune – The truth of Donald Trump’s message: Black lives do matter submitted by The Watcher
Seventh place with 1/3 vote –Richard Viguerie/Breitbart –Richard Viguerie: ‘Ted Cruz Committed Political Suicide on National TV’ submitted by The Watcher
After forcing myself to watch BC’s speech last night, digesting it and sleeping on it, I have just one question to ask. Why would Bill Clinton, ever in his wildest dreams, think of cheating on such a dreamboat? – Kathleen Willey.
I know this question is premature with several months to go before the election, but I think it’s one worth considering.
In the event that Clinton loses in November, will President Obama pardon her?
If Hillary loses, the Democratic machine will be ripe for takeover with Sandernistas. Right now that machine is completely Clinton’s, as the DNC emails leaked by Wikileaks proves. But that machine would be wrecked by a Trump win in November, and the likely replacement would be with Bernie Sanders backers, many of whom also are Obama backers. It should be remembered that the Clinton machine and the Obama machine are completely separate entities, with the latter focused on governing. Once Obama leaves office his people will be freed to focus on shaping his party to cement and extend his legacy in the same way the Clinton machine has done. The Sandernistas will likely have an important role to play, at least for the first few years while Obama’s people get placed.
So what about Hillary?
A Trump win means there would be a likelihood of continued investigation into Clinton affairs abetted by the Sandernistas and Obama’s people whom Hillary has crossed. The indictment of Hillary which many on the Right (and I) have called for would become a strong possibility.
Would Obama as one of his last acts as President pardon her?
There is no love lost between Clinton and Obama. The two have had differing views and come from completely different circumstances. There is little cross-over between their machines, and so Obama would have the latitude he would need to simply let his time expire and leave his one-time nemesis to the GOP dogs.
On the other hand a pardon would help him pull allies from the Clinton camp that are worth having. The Clinton machine knows how to make money and peddle influence in ways that could prove useful to an ex-president. A pardon could endear him to those allies who, having lost their future with a failed Hillary, would be looking for new opportunities.
I quit Facebook completely in the Spring, leaving the account but locking down my profile so that even my FB “friends” can’t see my information. After several years on the platform I realized there was a reason why I’ve lost touch with most of the people I’ve known over the years, and those friendships that have stood the test of time don’t need software like Facebook to maintain them. Many of my friends are liberals who naively assume everyone on their friend list of hundreds thinks exactly as they do and will “like” their post on global warming, gun control or Hillary Clinton. They were then shocked when they learned that others didn’t subscribe to their philosophy, and the ensuing arguments that erupted in the threads usually when one friend of the poster who didn’t know the other friend of the poster, a complete stranger in other words, flamed him/her for daring to think differently, proving the medium is at best a near infinite number of virtual sandboxes with toddlers talking to themselves.
I’ve also shutdown my Twitter account. I never really liked the medium or really spent much time using it. I’ll admit I am old fashioned. One of the keys to good writing is thinking about what you are trying to say, then perfecting it in the editing process until it says what you intend clearly and concisely. Blogging challenged this methodology, but even here I am able to set a post aside and save as draft to come back to it, revise it after it’s been published or on rare occasions, pull it completely if I realize what I posted was a mistake.
Twitter is the antithesis of this process. It encourages people to share whatever thought crosses their mind no matter how half-baked, idiotic or rude. And let’s face it: there are few people out there whose thoughts are so important let alone interesting that they are worth reading. It seems that the best ones are when celebrities use Twitter to show how ignorant and clueless they are, such as when Playboy pinup Dani Mathers, who is famous for being blessed with a nice body, uses Twitter to show how ugly she is inside by mocking the body of an older woman. As a libertarian I’m also put off by a private company owning the medium and allowing it to be used by jihadis as a recruitment and communications tool, but banning conservative voices like Stacy McCain and Milo Yiannopoulos.
If you think you are not paying for the product, you are the product, and while I believe companies like Twitter and Facebook are free to do as they wish, I don’t want them to make money off of me. And for that reason I have completely avoided other social media sites like Snapchat, Photobucket or what have you. I collect photography as art and I have paid good money to own a photograph, so I don’t see why firms shouldn’t do the same. If a photo I take is in demand, then I should be compensated by something more than a “free” account. It’s the same reason I don’t fill out surveys at stores promising to enter me in a drawing to win a gift card. I value my time, and if a store wants my opinion on my “shopping experience” then they can pay for it with more than a contest entry.
The question comes up: Isn’t cutting oneself off from the social media stream isolating? There are few feelings as lonely as posting something on Facebook which is important to you that is completely ignored by everyone. It doesn’t matter whether your friendlist is in the double or triple digits, the “sandbox” nature of the media is revealed. You want to feel loved? Post a funny cat or baby video.
I got my first real PC in 1989. It came with a 2400 baud modem and I have been online ever since. I have found that being online is worthwhile, but it is not a substitute for human interaction. Skype, chats, emails – all of these help connect us to each other and are not bad. These interactions aren’t much different from a phone call. But Fb and Twitter aren’t meant to connect us to another person, they are meant to make money for their companies by pretending to give us an audience. And that’s how they differ from those older electronic mediums.
If you want an audience, become an actor. If you want human interaction, pick up the phone and call your best friend. But I’d recommend against wasting your time on social media.
*First place with 2 votes!–Bookworm Room – The Devil And Gun Control
Second place with 1 2/3 votes –Joshuapundit–A Message For France – And For Us
Third place with 1 1/3 votes –Stately McDaniel Manor – Time For A Little Paranoia?
Fourth place with 1 vote –Puma By Design – Casting call for extras, actors during Cleveland RNC violence
Fifth place t with 2/3 vote –VA Right! – Was McAuliffe’s Appointment of Roush to the Va Supreme Court Related to his Convict Voting Order?
Fifth place t with 2/3 vote –The Razor – Goth Inside
Fifth place t with 2/3 vote –The Glittering Eye –Can We Live With Terrorism?
Sixth place with 1/3 vote – The Daley Gator – Newt Gingrich is right about Sharia Law, and why he is short-sighted
Non-Council Winners
First place with 1 2/3 votes! –Gavin McInnes/Taki’s Magazine – Oops, We Started A Race War submitted by The Watcher
Second place with 1 1/3 votes – Captain Capitalism – Traits are No Substitutes for Accomplishments submitted by The Glittering Eye
Third place t with 1 vote –City Journal –The Fire Spreads submitted by Stately McDaniel Manor
Third place t with 1 vote –Intellectual Froglegs – Guilty As Hill submitted by Joshuapundit
Third place t with 1 vote –The College Fix–Professor rejects Marxism after traveling the globe: ‘Socialism doesn’t work’submitted by Bookworm Room
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –Jason Willick/The American Interest –The Make-Believe Supreme Court and the Coming Constitutional Crisis submitted by The Razor
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –The National Interest – Everything You Need to Know About Russia’s Lethal Tank Force submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
Fifth place t with 1/3 vote –Daniel Greenfield/Front Page Magazine –How the Media Covers Up Muslim and #BlackLivesMatter Terrorism submitted by Puma By Design
Fifth place t with 1/3 vote –Heat Street –Elizabeth Warren Has A Bullying Problem, But No One Cares because She’s Not A Mansubmitted by The Daley Gator
Although nothing that I say about it, or you say about it is going to stop people gunning down cops. Dead cops doesn’t fix dead innocents killed at the hands of cops. But Black Lives Matter has now made Blue Lives Matter. It’s 1969 all over again, just with crappy music and no moon shots.
Update: 7/19/16 - Another day another dead cop: “Kansas City, Kansas, police Captain Robert David Melton was killed in a shooting Tuesday afternoon.”
Taking just a short break from the depressing insanity that is passing for 2016…
Goth’s not dead (heh). As this WaPo article points out, the music-based Goth subculture continues to endure decades after its appearance in the early 1980s and heyday in the mid-90’s. “Goth seems to stay in people’s souls, even when they grow up and get jobs and have kids and stop dressing quite as outrageously as they once did. It is an outlook, a refuge, a dark corner made friendly by the presence of others.”
Music is a very personal thing. The song that moves you to tears is unlikely to have the same effect on others, and for those who missed the subculture in their youth it’s hard to understand how this song pretty much stops Time for any goth regardless of their age. For many, especially those of us on this side of the Atlantic, it was our first exposure to true Goth, and we were bitten.
Siouxie Sioux, the queen of goth, had a voice that could freeze the blood in your veins and then seconds later melt your gothic heart. Rest assured that when I visit Pompeii soon it will be difficult for me to keep her song “Cities in Dust” out of my mind.
Unless you’ve been exposed to the Cure it’s difficult to understand their enduring popularity. The Cure is touring this summer and continues selling out venues, pulling in young and old alike. Well, if the Mick Jagger can do it at 72, why can’t Robert Smith at 57?
As a goth I grew up with Top 40, album rock, and funk and while I still enjoy the occasional Rush song (or two), and can even appreciate early Michael Jackson and the groundbreaking Grandmaster Flash, the music that flickered like a candle in my darkest moments in my teens and twenties remains my go-to music decades later, when the world is darkest and everything seems pointless. After all Andrew Eldritch, Sisters of Mercy lead singer, understands.
Music captures a moment in a way photographs cannot. A photo may capture a scene, the light on a loved one’s face or a smile in her eyes, but music? Music can capture an entire 3 dimensional world complete with emotions, smells and tastes. To you the following is just some nice ambient sounds, to me it is the sunrise breaking through the fog in the mountains of Northern California after an overnight trip with my new love asleep in the seat beside me as we drive, the woman who walks beside me 25 years later.
The hair is gone, and if you met me in a local Tractor Supply you would think I was just another redneck buying chicken feed. But the music that comes out of my truck with NRA and Hillary For Prison stickers as I leave is more likely to be this than Kenny Chesney:
Yes, everyday is Halloween for some of us and even though we don’t look goth, rest assured that in our young hearts our jackets are black leather, our boots are Doc Martens, our hair is long, black and smells of clove cigarettes, and our faces are just a shade too pale.
Third place t with 2/3 votes –VA Right! – For Those Hoping for a Dump Trump Moment at the Convention – Watch the 2012 Roll Call
Third place t with 2/3 votes –Puma By Design – Leader of NBPP: Need Blacks to Migrate to Five Southern States; Form a Black Nation
Third place t with 2/3 votes –GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Prokhorovka
Non-Council Winners
First place with 2 votes! –Police Officer Jay Stalien–Facebook post re blacks and crimesubmitted by Bookworm Room
Second place with 1 2/3 votes – City Journal –America’s Worst President? submitted by Stately McDaniel Manor
Third place with 1 1/3 votes –Eli Lake/Bloomberg – The Palestinian Incentive Program for Killing Jews submitted by Joshuapundit
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –The Washington Times – One law for us, another for you submitted by Puma By Design
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –Elliot Abrams/Council On Foreign Relations – The Middle East Quartet’s New Report Misses the Point submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –Sultan Knish –Divest From Palestinesubmitted by The Daley Gator
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –Damon Linker/The Week – Race, justice, and America’s founding mistake submitted by The Glittering Eye
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –Michael Walsh/PJ Media – More Proof the Fix Was in at the FBI submitted by The Watcher
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes–Edmund Kozak/Lifezette The Cop-Hater in Chief submitted by The Watcher
A truck plowed into a crowd of Bastille Day revellers, running over hundreds before coming to a halt. The driver and an accomplice emerged, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” and opened fire. 77 are reported dead and hundreds injured. Police shot the driver dead but the accomplice escaped. The truck was filled with grenades and automatic weapons – all of which are illegal to possess in France (and by civilians in the USA too).
This is the second large-scale terror attack in France in less than a year. France has some of the strictest gun control laws on the planet, yet terrorists seem to have no difficulty in finding guns and grenades to use in their attacks.
Should we be surprised?
Right now there’s a heroin epidemic in my community, replacing the painkiller epidemic when pill-mills and shady prescribers and pharmacies were raided and closed. People in rural America are still dying using a completely illegal drug from a plant that is grown, whose resin is then processed, packaged, shipped and distributed from central and south Asia to rural North Carolina on the other side of the planet.
Prohibition never works. It didn’t work with alcohol in the US, it doesn’t work for drugs and it doesn’t work for guns in Europe. Yet that doesn’t stop otherwise intelligent people from wanting to ban guns in the US.
No one is complaining about the gun laws in France tonight. There are no terror euphemisms like “gun violence” being using to describe tonight’s events in Nice. But it’s important to keep this in mind for the next terror attack in the US, when the “T” word is avoided and the “gun violence” term is bandied about, along with the assumption that San Bernardino and the Pulse Nightclub attacks would have been prevented with European style gun controls.
Gun control in Europe hasn’t worked to stop terror attacks, and it won’t work here either.
The New York Times reports, almost disappointingly, that a Harvard study found no racial bias in police shootings. In fact in Houston blacks are less likely to be shot at then whites: “Using data from Houston, Texas where we have both officer-involved shootings and a randomly chosen set of potential interactions with police where lethal force may have been justified we find, in the raw data, that blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites. Hispanics are 8.5% less likely,” (Fryer 2016, pg. 5).
Well that blows the narrative to hell, which is why I didn’t learn that fact until I read the study myself.
Groups like Black Lives Matter formed and have thrived in an environment that assumes cops are hunting down law-abiding black folk. This study, while showing blacks are more 24% more likely to have a gun pointed at them than whites, inadvertently proves police restraint towards black people. A cop is more likely to point his gun at a black person, but he is more likely to shoot a white person. Is it time to start White Lives Matter? No, because from my perspective as a gun owner I question the need for drawing a firearm in the first place.
It’s worth exploring whether the police shootings that have aggravated racial tensions and divided America into pro-BLM and pro-LEO camps are necessary. Comparing cop shootings in the US to those abroad and even when accounting for the higher incidence of violent crime here, the numbers are sobering. In the first 24 days of 2015 there were as many cop shootings in the USA as there were in 24 years in the UK. There is room to wonder if this reliance on firepower is truly necessary and whether a new perspective and training of Law Enforcement would protect cops and civilians. But these changes have nothing to do with racism.
The Left from President Obama and Attorney General Lynch on down abetted by the liberal media have perpetrated the myth of crazed white cops gunning down black men. This study has proven the myth to be a vicious lie that contributed to the deaths of 5 Dallas cops a week ago. Sleep well race-baiter in chief Obama.
Hillary willfully put herself above the rules — again — and a president, campaign and party are all left twisting themselves into pretzels defending her.
Obama aimed to have no shadows, but the Clintons operate in shadows.
...
Comey’s verdict that Hillary was “negligent” was met with sighs rather than shock. We know who Hillary and Bill are now. We’ve been held hostage to their predilections and braided intrigues for a long time.
...
The Clintons work hard but don’t play by the rules. Imagine them in the White House with the benefit of low expectations.
——————-
The above are quotes from an article by Rush Limbaugh? Bill O’Reilly? Sean Hannity?
Nope. New York Times top house liberal Maureen Dowd.
*First place with 2 2/3 votes!–Hillary Clinton: You’ll Be Able To See It From There
Second place t with 1 2/3 votes –Bookworm Room – The 40th anniversary of the raid on Entebbe
Second place t with 1 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit–When Justice Just Is Not
Third place with 1 vote –Puma By Design – Marxist Private School in NYC Teaches White Children That They Are Born Racist.
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –The Glittering Eye –The Collapse of the Technocratic World Order
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –VA Right! – #Binary. Why I’m Blocking #NeverTrump and Anti Trump ‘Friends’ on Facebook
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Intervention Pendulum
Non-Council Winners
First place with 2 1/3 votes! –Kurt Schlichter – You Owe Them Nothing – Not Respect, Not Loyalty, Not Obedience submitted by Joshuapundit
Second place t with 1 1/3 votes –Michael Walsh/PJ Media – The Day the Rule of Law Died submitted by The Glittering Eye
Second place t with 1 1/3 votes –Wolf Howling–Hillary, The FBI & A Travesty Of Justicesubmitted by Bookworm Room
Third place with 1 vote –NRO –Washington’s Hollow Men submitted by Stately McDaniel Manor
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –Bearing Arms –Democrats looking to gut our Bill of Rightssubmitted by The Daley Gator
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes – Brigitte Gabriel – (video)Religion of Peace: A Brief History of Islam submitted by The Watcher
Fourth place t with 2/3 votes –Glenn Reynolds/USA Today – About that Clinton-Lynch accidental meeting submitted by The Watcher (hat tip, Puma By Design)
