Frankenfreude

I, like many others, have been enjoying the torment and embarrassment of “Senator” Al Franken. There are few more disgusting and reprehensible people than he and he deserves every atom discomfort afflicting him. Please, Minnesotans, don’t vote for this guy next time.

Having said that, it has to be said that the reaction to the picture of him “sexually assaulting” or “sexually harassing” super-sexy Leeann Tweeden is overdone. It’s obviously a joke, whether Tweeden was in on it or not. A poor joke, yes; a bad idea for a joke, yep; but an attempt at humor. It helps to remember that Franken was at the time, a comedian. Obviously not a very good one.

He stinks at two jobs – comedian and senator.

Which brings me to a second thought. In our new, hyperpuritan* atmosphere the late, great Benny Hill would likely be Public Enemy #1. His leering, bald-faced, though impotent, sexual innuendo is clearly verboten these days. Plus, the various dolls prancing about on his show would be considered persona non grata with our modern self-appointed feminist-driven cultural commissars.

Along that same line I expect that Plautus, handfuls of Elizabethan and Restoration Comedy playwrights, along with innumerable French scribes, not to mention packs of more modern stage authors who tossed around sex just to shock, would seem to be destined for the new bonfires of vanities.

I’ll wind up on another point, this one on the current slaughter of various Hollywood and TV bulls. Here’s a typical story we’re hearing pert near every day. Something dawned on me as I read this piece.

This producer, now being read out of Hollywood’s more respectable environs (snort!), may not be so willing to simply go away.

It’s possible that a lot of these mighty entertainment titans aren’t going to go quietly into exile or retirement. They could easily start their own production companies and compete against the hypocritical pansies that fired them… Hollywood isn’t the monolithic, closely controlled business it used to be and new IP distribution models like Amazon, Netflix, etc., will allow them to bypass the PC gatekeepers and feed straight to an audience.

Content is desperately needed to feed the insatiable fires of consumers, especially youth. Many of these accused are very good at program and movie making. Short of pedophilia, necrophilia or murder, a lot of potential viewers are willing to look the other way in return for a little entertainment.

*By “hyperpuritan” I mean no disrespect to the original Puritans, a complicated but sincere people who are treated unjustly by pop history (and a number of professional historians as well).

Nice Broadcast License You Have There…

Once again the chattering classes (and weak-kneed Republicans) are atwitter that Donald Trump has threatened to do something unseemly. This time to NBC, putatively for peddling some fake news. Basically he paraphrased the old Mafiosi threat, “Nice broadcast license you have there. It would be ashamed if something happened to it.”

The reaction has been essentially that Donald Trump is taking away NBC’s First Amendment rights, blah, blah, blah.

That’s not actually true.

It’s important to understand that NBC owns and operates several (lucrative)stations in the top TV markets (???). Therefore it has to maintain broadcast licenses in its own name.

However, most people watch NBC affiliates, that is, stations owned by others. These other owners are free to drop their affiliation, according to contracts, of course.

The simple fact is that Pres. Trump cannot take away the broadcast licenses of those stations owned by NBC, much less the affiliates.

The removal of those broadcast licenses would require the FCC to take action. Prompting the FCC to take action would not so much be at the behest of the president but rather complaints lodged against those stations by viewers.

Of course removing broadcast licenses en masse would be very unusual. So unusual that it is essentially inconceivable.

Pres. Trump knows this, I think.

I believe what he is up to is that he’s sending a signal.

Look at it another way. The most important and valuable asset NBC’s owned and operated stations have are the public airwaves they use (but don’t own). And as such users they are supposed to serve the public — all the public not just the Democratic Party and coastal elites. This little detail has been long forgotten or taken for granted.

Looking at it from a fresh angle — it’s unlikely that the news operations of those NBC stations have any Trump voters working at them, at least, not in the editorial end. I work in the media industry, though not mainstream news media. I can tell you from experience that the MSM does not hire Republicans or open conservatives. The books written on this phenomenon are now legion.

Considering that at least 1/3 of the country is made up of Trump voters, how is it in the public interest when a user of a public asset leans strongly against at least 1/3 of the country? One-third of the owners of those assets and has done so for decades?

The same is true of the other networks, save Fox.

If NBC were what it has long pretended to be, an unbiased transmitter of information, it would have plenty of Trump voters working at it. The same would be true of the other big networks. But that’s simply not the case. You’d think if they were honest they’d be embarrassed at being so one-sided.

But if they were little (or nothing) more than partisans they’d be satisfied at their domination and seeking to maintain it.

Something needs to be done about the broadcast media being little more than an information transmission belt for the Democratic Party.

It is important to understand that this only affects the publicly-owned airwaves. For cable news operations and newspapers, they are privately-owned, utilizing private networks and should be sheltered from government interference. Ironically, liberals want to bring cable operations under the eye of the FCC. That should be strongly resisted.

One final note, notice that Trump hasn’t threatened to use the government against newspapers — they don’t make use of publicly-owned assets either. His threats against them have been civil (libel) laws.

Midnight History Thieves

Notice how all of the jurisdictions removing Confederate statues are doing this in the middle of the night, when on one is around to protest?

Yet they are so sure of themselves with their announcement the next day about removing the “hurtful” statue. (Hey, removing them is ‘hurtful’ to me but I guess I don’t count.)

Sometimes they act like the statue magically materialized in the public square or it’s three-dimensinal graffiti. No one put it there. No one ever had any reason to put it there, beyond hatefulness of course.

Yeah, those people “back then,” put it there. They were evil and crazy people. They only hated. Luckily, we’ve progressed so much since then.

So much so that we can simply erase that bad history. Just like it never happened, except in so far as it can be used guilt Americans (especially white males and Southerners) and condemn America.

That’s part of the left’s plan — to detach people from their traditions and history. By doing that, people become rootless, easily manipulated. Deep down most people want and need some kind of traditions and history to guide them — either through what to do or what not to do (Santayana).

Eliminate the past or rewrite it to your content and the present is far more controllable by those in charge. Heads can be filled with propaganda and mush while entertained with new traditions such as Earth Day, MLK Day (no store sales, please), Giving Tuesday and Kwanzaa.

Defacing

I was putting together a bloggie with this thought in mind but the inimitable VDH beat me to it and says it much better.

The predictable behavior of the left gets more and more obvious as it gets increasingly brazen and deranged. Like conquerors (or coup participants) they wish to exterminate all signs of their predecessors.

The one difference here is that the left hasn’t been a conqueror in the traditional sense. Their foes are still in the field, even occupying major political offices, yet the left increasingly tries to write their opponents out of history and society — as if they don’t exist.

So What Happened to Scalise?

Here’s a great example how the meme is carefully crafted and nourished.

Tuesday morning WTOP radio had Politico’s Kyle Cheney on for a short interview about Rep. Steve Scalise calling into a Republican conference call. I remind you that Scalise was nearly killed by a crazed leftie several weeks ago. I need to remind you that because Cheney didn’t do that.

He expounded how Scalise’s fellow Republicans were happy to hear him doing so well and how Scalise may need to relearn how to walk. A casual listener might have wondered why Scalise was “recovering” or what from. Maybe it was car accident?

Yet, WTOP can’t mention Charlottesville without repeatedly reminding the listener that “white supremacists” or “white nationalists” or “white racists,” etc., were violent or rioted, leading to the death of Heather Heyer.

WTOP, as the rest of the MSM does, repeats one thing ad nauseum, while carefully skirting the facts in another case. It’s like those cheap TV commercials that repeat the phone number endlessly, “That meme again, Republicans and conservatives bad, Democrats, liberals and their allies pure as the driven snow… Remember, that meme again, Republicans and conservatives bad, Democrats, liberals and their allies pure as the driven snow…”

And, of course, WTOP continuously repeats the DNC talking point that the whole country is outraged at Trump’s response at Charlottesville. With the MSM and its echo chamber and self-reinforcing news filter, there is not the slightest possibility that anyone, anywhere (that’s not a neo-Nazi racist, that is), could possibly think the president was right to cast blame onto both sides. Then they run a clip from Sen. Tim Kaine that runs down Trump. That’s followed by a list of Republicans distancing themselves from Trump.

No story deviates from the meme in the slightest — it’s Trump and the Nazis vs. civilization. Just as the DNC crafted it.

Best Legs – Journalism-wise That Is

When I first heard about the mess down in Charlottesville, I said to myself, I bet this story has better legs than the attempted mass murder of Republican politicians and their staffers several weeks ago.

So far doesn’t look like I’ll lose my money.

A few thoughts…

Funny how quickly this story was labeled “terrorism” (8.6 seconds by my watch) but a guy shooting people or wielding a knife, yelling “Allahu akbar!” somehow must require months of deep investigation before it can be considered “terrorism.” And in the end it still might be dismissed as “workplace” violence. (How often do you see crimes categorized by the local rather than the nature of the act? Only when it suits lefties…)

It seems that the Charlottesville town government tried to prevent the “Alt-Right” from having their protest but may have approved the counterprotest. This sounds strange to normal people – a counterprotest without the protest it is countering – but in the liberal mind it makes perfect sense. It’s a warped form of virtue signaling. Liberals are often against things that don’t exist… but a great effort needs to be mustered to stamp them out!

Interestingly we’re now hearing that the local and state authorities, including our execrable governor former Clinton bagman Terry McAwful, were ordered to stay put as the bused in professional protesters, anarchists and the fascist “Anti-Fa” movement, and a few local provocateurs, made their move to create a story about violent right-wingers.

And, to some extent, that’s how the story has been played: Violent right-wingers attacking harmless counterprotesters though none of the videos posted so far show anything but lefties instigating conflict with the dimwitted “Alt-Right” meatheads.

“Alt-Right” is heard more about on the left than the “right.”

Lessee, it took about 20 minutes (by my watch) before the Dept. of Justice decided it needed to get a piece of the action and investigate “Civil Rights Violations.” By the way they were describing, they weren’t referring to the civil rights of the original protesters, whose rights were slightly violated, but rather those of the counterprotesters. I guess it is like someone demanding satisfaction after breaking their hand while breaking the jaw of someone else with their fist.

And that brings us to the “car attack,” a newly minted phrase from the MSM. So a knucklehead may have run someone over on purpose. Okee-doke, try him and let’s move on. We don’t need some kind of national spectacle where the left does nothing but beat its moral breast and a few Republicans try to hop on-board and share some of the limelight.

Martin Cothran makes some excellent observations in “Why Liberals Need David Duke.”

Cothran is especially pointed on the bizarre Cultural Revolution Theatre of liberal complaints that Trump didn’t tweet fast enough nor voice sufficient condemnation of the original protesters for exercising their rights.

The watching Republicans scurry to try to get on the right side of the cameras was embarrassing.

I don’t remember anyone getting the same treatment when Republicans were shot.

You do remember that story, don’t you? You better remember it since the MSM has already forgotten it and won’t remind anyone of that embarrassing incident…

One final note – history.

This whole frewfraw started over the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue that’s been in a Charlottesville park for, well, seemingly forever.

It’s part of the left’s campaign to expunge or rewrite parts of history of which it disapproves of. To the left history is a tool, rather a club, to be used to get its way, support its climb to totalitarian power.

To most everyone else history is agnostic. It is what it is, but not the left. For them it has to politicized, as everything else is politicized for deployment in service of its mission.

Recently, also in Virginia, practically down the street from me, Jeb Stuart High School was suddenly renamed by the school board. Well, not actually renamed yet, the board didn’t have another name handy. This happened after some liberals squawked, one complaining that her property values were plummeting were brought down by the name (this in an area that has seen asset appreciation drive homes to some of the highest in the United States). The board turned on a dime though the increasingly liberal area still had enough old-timers to keep the issue evenly divided.

No surprise that the board is packed with professional educational and community types, few of whom have ever been employed in the private sector, and those that have been are inevitably lawyers, activists or contractors/consultants to the federal government.

They are the creatures of the ever-expanding swamp that will consume us all.

The question becomes, under the coming liberal dictatorship, will it be possible to teach any history at all. Or will their be spots where no-longer-existing people and historical characters, erased from history, exist as phantoms that heroic folks battle and overcome.

In such a time will copies of Panzer General be hunted down? In such war sims will it any longer be possible to play as Confederates, Germans, Japanese or even, Mongolians, Romans or Crusaders? Any grouping disfavored by the cultural commissars?

Where’d That Story Go?

You remember that big to-do a couple of months ago? A libtard tried to murder several Republican Congressmen and their staffers as they played baseball? Being a libtard with a gun he, of course, failed and was killed but, still, he wounded several including one, Rep. Steve Scalise, grievously.

It was big news for, oh, about 72 hours.

At that point the liberal MSM decided to change the story, even going so far as to start a disinformation campaign to blame conservatives and Republicans. The Washington Post twisted itself into a pretzel trying to blame talk radio back in the deranged liberal’s hometown. The New York Times, still in the grips of Palin Derangement Syndrome 8 years after, tried to blame Sarah Palin because, um, Palin once ran an ad with some crosshairs or targets or some gun thing on it and… uh… crazed liberals like the nut in Arizona that shot Gabby Giffords and the latest liberal nut shot people so… um… Palin caused it!

Amazingly the employees of the New York Times consider themselves intellectually superior to the fellow countrymen.

Anyway, after those two efforts at disinformation and simple, blatant deception and lying, the story, embarrassing to Democrats and the socialist movement, had to be sent down the Memory Hole and the Russian Collusion story reprised ad infinitum.

Imagine that, an attempt to murder a large group of politicians, and the story disappears in not even a week.

But then those politicians were of the wrong party.

You know had the maniac been a “Tea Party” “Extremist” Republican/conservative we’d still be hearing about the story. The first question out of the mouth of every reporter upon encountering any Republican politician would be, “Do you condemn the shooter and all extremist rhetoric that you and your political allies speak in?”

Did you see one single Democrat asked that question recently?

Had it been a Republican we’d have been treated to an unending series of programs, specials, demands for “education” and “dialog,” calls for more gun control and speech-suppression laws, etc.

Googlekrieg

The Google firing of James Damore could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe.

Damore had done nothing wrong beyond stating his opinion (much of it based on what is scientifically/medically known general genetically-oriented differences between the sexes). He was not incompetent. He did not harass anyone (though he himself, as a white male, was being harassed by Google cultural commissars) nor threaten anyone. He merely offered a different perspective from the increasingly extreme hyperleft perspective of Google management.

Shockingly, Google has insisted and continues to insist, that it believes in “diversity”of opinion. The company’s inability to see how it is 180 degrees wrong is a premier example of the innate lack of self-awareness of the modern liberal. That it permeates a whole company and its culture is rather frightening.

A lot of people have countered that Google is a “private” company and thus can fire anyone it wants for any reason it wants. Actually, it’s a publicly-held company. I’m a part owner. If you have a 401k with any tech fund in it odds are that you too are an owner. I certainly didn’t approve this company cultural fascism.

If Google were really a privately held company – a single or small number of owners, all of whom agree that employees need to all have the same political opinion, then I’d buy the right to fire employees they don’t like.

The problem with that approach, however, is that liberals have spent the last five decades arguing vociferously against that point. They have pushed government and legal interference into every nook and cranny of the business world, even against single-owner businesses; those that are really “private.”

They’ve forced small groups to admit members who are antithetical to that group’s mission. All in the name of “justice.”

It’s also been said that California’s famous labor laws expressly forbid firing people for political beliefs. The laws were, of course, written to protect commies and similar types but they can be protect all.

In addition, Google is a federal contractor and clearly has run up against federal discrimination laws. Remember Grove City? Take a penny, you’re in for a pound.

On the legal front Google doesn’t have even a leg to stand on.

It is possible that any Google lawsuit could end up in the court of an idiot judge. We’ve recently encountered judges who disregard what the law clearly says but they dislike; judges who feel free to rewrite laws to what they want.

We’re seeing more and more of this “No conservatives need apply” from liberals in the business world. It should surprise no one that all of their arguing about justice and nondiscrimination for decades was just a convenient stalking horse. Once they began to populate the corporate nest they, like the Cuckoo Bird, push out anyone not like them. With them it has always been about accruing power.

Another Story You Haven’t Heard About

Gotta give the MSM credit, they are consistent – they never do any stories that reflect badly upon the Obama administration or Democrats in general.

Here’s another story you haven’t heard anything about on the MSM, though you know all about that Russian dressing Donald Trump once had at a restaurant in 2007…

Hey, remember when the “unmasking” of CIA employee Valerie Plame was practically a Constitutional crisis during the W. Bush years but somehow massive unmasking of American citizens by Samantha Power, Susan Rice, John Brennan, Ben Rhodes and likely other Obama minions doesn’t seem to be worth reporting?

Scary Mooch

And we’re not talking about Michelle “Mooch” Obama, either!

I’m talking about Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci and his superstrange interaction with The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza.

Why would he approach a sworn enemy of Republicans and Trump; a paid-in-full member of Journolist and a leading progressive/socialist/Democratic Party MSM plant for a bitch session? That’s like George Patton contacting, say, Gen. Wilhelm Keitel, to ask if anyone had leaked any secret Allied invasion plans to him then whine about Omar Bradley getting the D-Day job…

Did he really think Ryan Lizza was going to tell him who the leaker was? That shows spectacularly poor judgment and/or a naivete bordering on diehard belief in the Tooth Fairy.

Amateur hour. How could such a fool get the job?

I know there is a hardcore nut of conservatives cheering him on this bizarre behavior because they so want to see someone let-er rip.

But, folks, this wasn’t the case.

He just looked like a foolish drunk… and sucked up to the enemy. He gained nothing and looked the fool to everyone not a hardcore conservative.

And a lot of conservatives in Washington, D.C. (and there are a few) are appalled and now want to give The Mooch a wide berth. With his type of people it’s just a matter of time before you become a target. These guys always crash and burn, ultimately without any allies because they burned them all.

Speaking of crashing and burning, apparently The Mooch’s wife wants a divorce. I don’t know anything about these two beyond what I’ve read. They sound like another bizarro couple – similar to Roger and Ann Stone. You’ll know what I mean if you recognize those names.

Unless this guy actually learns on the job, it well not end in anything less than an embarrassment.