Quote Of The Year

Yep, that sums it all up.

Something Happens To Some Guys

Yep, it's another MONAtastic report from the MSM.

Actually, checking out a few reports about this incident, it looks like no one has anything else, so it might be that the police just aren't releasing any information. But that doesn't let the MSM off the hook. Hey, aren't these the people who keep yabbering about the public's (made up) 'right to know'? Everything that MI-5 do, could do or might have done should be public property, but the state concealing the truth about gang war in our nation's capital? That seems fair enough!

Plus, back in the day, wasn't there once a weird sub-culture in journalism that believed in actually tracking down their own sources, rather than needing an information IV from the state?

Like I keep saying, they should only charge half price for the newspapers, since you only ever get half the story.

(Hat Tip as ever to Lurker, Master MONA Spotter)

Kenny Everett Is Dead!

Say what you like about Cameron, but at least he's clamped down on those evil extremists!

Of course, Al was only joking about killing people who disagree with his views. Which is a perfectly normal thing to do, and especially for someone who wants to run the country.

As ever, let's check the scorecard here: talking about murdering political opponents is satire, but writing critical letters, discussing adoption policy or handing out leaflets? Now, that's serious!

These guys: they're all about the equality.

True, this case hardly qualifies as a real threat, but it's a hell of a lot closer to a threat than some guy handing out leaflets. Hey, I'm a free speech maximalist, so I say 'have at it'! These loonies are entitled to joke about murdering their opponents, and we're entitled to ask what it says about their ideology that they think homicidal fantasies are the height of hilarity.

See, this is why 'respectable conservatism' is a bust. Not just because the people lecturing the rest of us keep outing themselves as nasty twerps, but more profoundly because it implies conservatives can and should reach some kind of Munich-style détente with people who are fundamentally unappeasable.

Duncan, Perez Hilton and the rest of these loons aren't advancing an argument or making a point. They're just trying to shout down any dissenting voices. They're nasty, thuggish morons and no conservative worthy of the name should seek the respect of these low-lifes.

Zimbabwe South On Course And On Schedule

Who'd have thunk it? Another liberal icon turns out to be a scumbag.

Shocka! Libs Find Nuance In Racism

NNW with more on the Mysterious Mystery of the Mailers of No Appearance.

You know, I'm pretty sure papers should all be half-price. After all, you only ever get half the story. Still, I'm thinking we are now in a position to rule out any involvement by militant Buddhists.

Wasn't That The Point?

Laban does a compare and contrast on two Seventies icons, and finds the one with the silver spoon upbringing escaped more or less intact, while the Ordinary Jolene sank. And?

Half the point of the counter-culture was for rich kids to ram home their status by showing how it insulated them from the consequences of behaviours that would be disastrous for normal people. Drug addiction, single parenthood and voting Labour are all perfect examples of the destructive lunacy these people proselytised, even as they used their money to go into plush rehab units, hire nannies or move to Devon.

It was the nylon bell-bottom wearing equivalent of all those trustafarians who denounce cheap flights today. Another way to embrace all the worst aspects of leftism, while still being able to sneer at the lower orders.

Latest Score From The Culture Wars

Parliament passing mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes = a despicable attack on judicial independence

The head of an independent investigatory agency attacking a number of citizens even before his agency has properly started its investigation = the very epitome of an independent tribunal

It's Getting Hard To Be An Extremist

The Tories have finally realised they need to do something about run-away government spending. See? That's the type of insight you get when you're super smart.

Hey, some folks were saying that years ago. Of course, back then The Dave and pals were denouncing anyone who called for restraint as an Eighties throwback who needed to get hip to the beat. Joining Labour on the trip to economic Neverland was proof of their savvy political skills (unlike us losers).

Now it's all gone horribly wrong, the Cameroonatics would like us to acknowledge their genius in boldly predicting an implosion that's already happening and adopting the very policies the jettisoning of which was only months ago proof of The Dave's near-godly status.

On the plus side, I hear Cameron reckons the Blues are a deep cert for the Cup this year.

Happy Lenin's Birthday Everybody!

You know, if a murderous thug had persuaded UKIP to hold a celebration of British culture that just happened to coincide with Hitler's birthday, I think it would get noticed. The lefty equivalent? Not so much.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs Are Dead

There are various things you can take from the results of Alice Miles' binging on sodium penthol, but the main thing that hit me was this: yes, liberals are as gutless as we always thought. Senior Labour MPs would have opposed Brown, but his people might have briefed against them and they couldn't stand nasty things to be said about them, so they stood aside and let the country be handed over to Hamish McQueeg. Of course!

Quote Of The Day

James Lileks on the culture wars:

Every new movement gains its authority by inhabiting and supplanting the authority of the previous movement. It only pretends to deny the legitimacy of the previous idea’s authority. Modern art is all about insisting that THIS IS NOT A PIPE right up to the point where it owns the pipe, at which point it is most certainly a pipe, and the most important pipe ever.

As I Was Saying...

Proof of the stopped clock hypothesis: while the rest of the MSM was busily redbranding Hillsborough as a series of unfortunate events, the Guardian (!!) had a pretty good run-down of just why this is still a live issue on Merseyside, all the more effective for the way it bends over backwards not to ram home any of the loopier issues (seriously, only 3 out of 42 ambulances made it there? What could have happened? An attack by a giant ambulance-eating monster? Or something else)?

That's the flip-side of it all. Almost from the moment it happened, a conga line of sleazy idiots have been claiming to be Jesus on the Cross, boldly standing up for the important principle of.... what, exactly? That, say, a public body facing serious charges should be allowed to issue false press releases without consequence? That's an important principle of British law?

To ask it is to answer it. The Hillsborough grave dancers aren't defending any important principle, in fact, they're happy to trash the basics of British justice, just as long as some Scousers get killed.

Unlike certain David Camerons I could mention, I'm a real conservative, so I think morons should have the right to free speech just as much as anyone else. Hey, like I said before, it's good to have these people tell us who they are. But let's not pretend there's anything virtuous or bold about what they believe. Buying tickets for the South Yorkshire Police Evidence BBQ pretty much kills that line. These people are bloodthirsty bigots and they enjoy seeing people die. Well, whatever. Just don't tell me they're principled.

20th Anniversary Of Something Happening To Some Folks

I've always been sceptical of mass displays of emotion. A mob is a mob, whatever particular form of mass hysteria they're experiencing at a particular time. Still, the whole Hillsborough thing has reminded me of the flip-side of that, the way the whole ceremonial, feel your pain, let's all hold hands side of things can become a displacement activity to deflect from having to deal with the real issues.

Just as the more 9-11 memorials there were, the more it seemed the Twin Towers must have been struck by a meteor, so there's been a strangely passive quality to the MSM's Hillsborough coverage. True, I understand that for several second during the BBC's ten hour Hillsborough marathon, it was possible to hear Sports Minister Andy Burnham being heckled by people chanting 'Justice for Hillsborough' but what form that justice would take, and why they didn't think they had had it already, who could tell? No one dependent on the MSM, that's for sure.

That's why I bit down on the urge to write an obscene comment to this post. Given the MSM's coverage, DV's reaction is fair enough - the only thing I'd say to him is this: given what a bang up job the MSM has done on reporting the grievances of Ulster Protestants, why exactly would you trust them to report fairly on what motivates Hillsborough protesters?

No, that's not a demand that broadcasters get deep into the details of the Gate Tape and the 3.15 cut-off every time they cover Hillsborough, but there's something utterly repellent in this determination to bury serious issues under a ten foot layer of psychobabble.

'Atlas Shrugged' As A Reality Show

This makes perfect sense to me. It's illegal for employers to refuse to hire people it's illegal to employ? Of course! Ayn Rand got there first:

Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws.

Well, That, And The MURDER

The BBC: classy as ever.

I'm kind of thinking it was the whole 'gunning down an innocent woman' thing that took the shine off his career. Then again, who says liberals are elitist trash?

The victim, Lana Clarkson, was an out-of-work actress who was earning a living as a hostess at a Hollywood nightclub, so it's not like she was a huge loss.

Actually, I added that last bit, but only that last bit. The good news is that I'm guessing this means that next time a Beeboid gets killed, we'll be able to call them a 'former human, earning a living as a fluffer for murderous celebutards'.

UPDATE:

By way of contrast, this.

Mailers of No Appearance

Got to admit, I've never liked the whole idea of the Joke Police checking e-mail accounts for all the obvious reasons, but there's more to it than that. This case shows the other problem with PC. If these folks are who I think they are - and I think you know who I mean - jokes are the least of it. They hate Jews, and everyone knows it, but leftists would die in a ditch rather than admit that.

This is why we keep seeing anglo professors on TV, telling us what members of the Religion of Peace would say, if only they were on in place of said professor. Every time normal people get the chance to hear the RoP speak for itself, they realise that the left has been lying about Islam for years.

Why Won't You Fascists Respect Them Like You Should?

It's a mystery where the kids get it from.

And Another Thing...

I'm probably the last person in the world to notice this, but not only is there a common theme running through the list of smears planned by McBride, but it's also a completely absurd line of attack. After twelve years of ministers employing their Labradors as press officers and claiming they live in a cornflake packet, being ruled by a bunch of pervs would be a definite improvement.

It's got so bad that even the Shagopocalypse of the Major Years now looks like a lost Golden Age of political integrity. At least they only screwed the public one at a time.

Vitally Important Newsflash

...when people have real problems to deal with, they're less likely to waste money on fantasy ones.

Liberals: Always The Weak Horse

Atheists are enraged! - as only they can be - by the news that the NHS spends up to £40 million pa on hospital chaplains. They think that if people want to spew nonsense at the seriously ill, they should go and become proper psychiatrists.

And no, that isn't just me going for a cheap shot. Key point:

The researchers accept many people believe the drugs do work for them, but argue that could be a placebo effect - people feel better simply because they are taking a medication which they think will help them.

Hmmm.... do you think this 'placebo effect' could apply anywhere else?

More to the point, in so far as the placebo effect is a well-known phenomenon, in what sense of the word is the NSS's crusade against religion in hospitals based on actual science?

Still, while the NSS campaigns for the comforting of the sick and dying to be carried out only where said comforting can be demonstrated to show observable improvements in the degree of comfortage, I can't help feeling they're missing a lot else.

When most people think of faith-based lunacy, they're probably not thinking of some Priest performing the last rites. Nope, they're probably thinking something like this.

I don't have the objective data to back this up, but I'm pretty sure these people are nuts. So where is the NSS? Nope - they're tied up staking out some OAPs bed, investigating a case of Class A Communion With Intent.

McBride Screwed, MSM Not Looking Too Good Either

File this one under 'Delusions of Relevance':

Despite having no journalistic training, Paul Staines has become one of the government’s most powerful critics under the pseudonym Guido Fawkes.

Yowser! Just think what Guido could have done if he was a properly-credentialed member of the Cult of Professional Journalists. He too could have been filing vacuous puff pieces from the Westminister Village, instead of performing actual journalism.

Besides, everyone knows you need proper training to produce high-kwality reportage like this:

[Tim Montgomerie] admits that sometimes the blogging pioneers - untroubled by fears of libel and unchecked by subeditors or lawyers - also get it "badly wrong".

Here's one for the philosophers: is it ironic, or just stupid, that every time highly-trained, professional journalists report on those untrustworthy bloggers, they make the same bogus claim? For the avoidance of doubt, a libel is a libel whether written on the net, printed by the MSM, crotched crocheted into a quilt or urinated into a snowdrift.

Guido doesn't just expose the absurdity of journalism's claim to be a profession, he also exposes the myth that the MSM would just love to turn the heat up on politicians but, gosh darn it, newsrooms just don't have the time or the bodies to do it these days. Apparently, it turns out that finding out what's happening, then writing about it, doesn't take a sack of gold and a cast of thousands after all.

UPDATE

Spellink is hard!

AA + PC = ****

See, this is what I was on about here. I defy anyone to explain how she got her job without using the phrase 'affirmative action'. Consider the likely response to a male MP who came out with something like this:

Miss Smith said: 'When you put in a claim and you put in a receipt on which there are a number of items, people can pick out one of them and say, Why did you claim for that? but that is because you put in the whole of the receipt.'

Yep, she accidentally forgot to cross out the bits she wasn't claiming for and unfortunately pocketed a whole bunch of cash, and anyone who says otherwise is a Nazi.

Robbery For The People

Say what you like about 'The One Show' but in its own unique combination of stupidity and even more stupidity it's has a certain liberals-on-scopalamine quality. Take yesterday's first item: a jolly sermon on the happy side of the state seizing other people's property.

It was all about government legislation allowing councils to seize empty properties.

Cunningly, the average house price was quoted to 'prove' how hard it was to get on the housing ladder. In other words, the BBC used a measure that includes everything from flats to mansions to prove we need Big Government to give out free houses. More specifically, we need Big Government to seize houses from people who aren't using them properly and give them to smackheads oppressed victims of the system.

We saw a boarded-up house on an inner-city street in Manchester and had interviews with local residents, who all agreed the house should be seized, then over to Scallytopia for an interview with the World's Most Articulate Scouser, who agreed that, yes, seizing someone else's house and giving it to him was a Good Thing. What we didn't hear, ever, was any dissenting voices.

In fact, watching that report, you wouldn't even have guessed that these powers allow the government to seize perfectly lovely semis in the suburbs, or that homelessness wasn't simply a matter of rich people using up all the houses, let alone any more sophisticated arguments against it all.

Maybe it was inevitable that there was no one there to point out that allowing the government to seize private property just because they think you're not using it properly is totalitarian insanity, but they didn't even engage with the practical absurdities of it all.

If the state really wants to encourage people to redevelop derelict housing, maybe it could do something about a tax system that does all but sneak in and vandalise the place at night? Ditto, if councils are so good at redeveloping derelict housing stock, why are so many of their own properties permanently wrecked? But no: that would involve engaging with the topic, rather than indulging in mindless boosterism for the Mugabeisation of our nation's housing stock.

(Not to go off at a tangent, but since when was it decided that it was a great feat for councils to successfully renovate properties, armed only with enormous wodges of other people's cash? Seriously, let me bleed taxpayers dry and I'll build you a castle. It's no big.)

Quote Of The Day

Rick McGinnis on liberal sofistikeytes and their love affair with Third World awfulness:

India might be overpopulated, but I fail to see how what goes on there is somehow exempt from the judgment of a rational, enlightened person concerned with basic humanity. Police brutality, mob violence, child labour, brutal and systemic tolerance of poverty - real poverty, and not the 5000 calorie version we see here - is criminal and awful, and we should be able to judge a society that's defined by it, and allow ourselves to respect our discomfort when it's used as colourful scene-setting, instead of downgrading it to the status of the merely quaint by aestheticizing it with words like "gaudy" and "sensory overload."

Class War Update: Libs Shocked, Appalled To Be Treated Like Ordinary People

Yes, indeed: it's the Peterloo Massacre de nos jours. Who could have imagined such a thing happening in this country? Well, apart from footy fans, obviously. This sort of thing is routine in the Beautiful Game. The away fans here got an extra two hours to savour their triumph.

See, this is what happens when you've got socialists who don't actually know any normal people.

Then again, even that is conceding too much to these loonies. Let's not let them define down deviancy here. As Ross points out, even the supposedly peaceful protesters were intending to use force of mass to prevent innocent people going about their business. Equally, for all that they were supposedly opposed to the 'tiny minority of violent extremists' (hmmm... where have I heard that before), they had no trouble marching with them, providing cover for them, and hindering police attempts to deal with them. Oh yeah, that and writing long articles that, by any objective measure, support them.

Hey, if Carol Thatcher's 'golliwog' comment could be shown to be constitute support for violent thuggery as openly as the average liberal freak's comments about the G20 riot do, even conservatives would have agreed with her firing.

After all, the thuggery is not some late afterthought. Even these nutters know they can never win democratically. Their protests-that-are-actually-riots are an attempt to intimidate sane people into thinking that they must have some kind of point after all. It's a goofy vision, but also an inherently fascist one. They claim the right to dictate to everyone else through sheer force of will.

What the G20 riot really reveals is the left's determination to have its cake and eat it. If these freaks succeed in smashing up the town, that proves that our society is weak and corrupt, and deserves to be overthrown by the vanguard of the new order. If they fail utterly, it proves our society is a fascist dictatorship, and deserves to be overthrown by the vanguard of the new order. It's perfect catch-22 - but only if you let liberals set the terms of the debate.

As ever, it comes down to culture war. The same people who jabber endlessly about right-wing hate speech want us to believe that the spoilt brat products of absurd privilege harassing real people constitutes the epitome of democracy. It isn't and it never did, and a less spineless conservative movement would call them out on this.

Another Reason Why I Could Never Be A LIbertarian

Like NNW, I actually think this isn't such a bad idea. Still, it took me a while to work out just what it is that's annoying me so much about the reaction to this plan.

Basically, it's the humbuggery of it all. Libertarians have spent every waking moment since September 11 fantasising about the shadow government using terrorism as an excuse to create a unaccountable paramilitary state, complete with torture chambers, death squads and mind control satellites. Now we have an initiative that's the complete opposite of all that, a plan that involves training up people in how they can use their pre-existing skills to defend their own communities and that just proves how evil the nasty old statists are.

What it all boils down to is reaching out to the guy running a hairdressing supplies business and telling him that if some bloke claims to be setting up a new shop and wants to order one pair of scissors, one razor, one tub of gel and 2500 litres of hydrogen peroxide, dial this number. That's it. This kind of local, grass roots initiative is the very thing that normally sends libertarians weak at the knees.

As NNW points out, this plan is quite in order with the British way of waging war. To add to his examples, consider the trawlermen whose skills (and boats) played a vital role minesweeping in WWII.

But no: the self-same people who've been telling us that, gosh darn it, they do hate terrorists too, but they're a little concerned about freedom, turn out to oppose counter-terrorism even when no black helicopters are involved. I guess that's what you get when 70% of your ideology rests on the ability put sneer quotes round everything.

Lost Without Trace

Could the BBC's slobbering love affair with The One get any more ludicrous?

That's not to say the Obamamessiah doesn't have his own...uh...style:







The BBC: the Special Olympics of journalism.

UPDATE:

Even the Guardian is mocking the Obamamessiah now, and then there's this:



UPDATE II:

Oh yeah - here's the video that inspired that Guardian article:

Your Police Service: Working Hard To Eliminate That Last Bit Of Public Support

With Extra 'Made-Up Charge' goodness.

Femiloon Bar Mitzvah Ends Badly

Hey, who'd have thunk surgery could be dangerous?

Anyone want to guess at the percentage of femiloons who hate plastic surgery but think abortion is the best thing evah? 80%? 90%?

I'm sure there are plenty of folks who are pro-abortion who nevertheless are repelled by the femiloon's determination to cast a serious operation as some kind of rite of passage.

Motorbiker Of No Appearance

I've got to admit to certain admiration for the guy who wrote this - it's quite an achievement to produce 131 words on a topic and include no useful content whatsoever. Must be one of these 'shop related homicides'.

(and a dip of the throttle - as ever - to Lurker for finding it)

There's Never A Flying House Round When You Need One

The case of that 20-something chef accused of rape by a vengeful femiloon is truly terrifying. Can you imagine waking up next to a 45 year old lawyer? As I understand it, he first realised he was in trouble when she told him 'I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too'.

Of course, the fact the jury came back with a not guilty verdict after 45 minutes does raise an important question: what the hell were they discussing for the other 44 minutes? Whether counsel for the prosecution was on the other bus or what?

Then again, never mind the jury: what thought process convinced the CPS that this case was a runner? Isn't the whole point of an independent prosecutor that there has to be an actual case before charges can be bought?

Ah nope - apparently the case was handled by two 'rape specialists' - so in the femiloon-infested Bizarro World of the public sector an independent prosecutor means a pair of Milli Tants. What could go wrong? Oh right: 45 minutes.

Hmmm.... doesn't this all kind of imply the 'rape specialists' are kind of rubbish at their jobs? Doubtless, they will be fired ASAP. Well, either that, or their job involves green lighting any old rubbish, in which case I ask - again - where's Universal Shami when real rights are being denied?

Yes, I'm serious: an independent prosecuting authority is a vital safeguard against governmental persecution. The government ordering the CPS to suspend their normal criteria for prosecution really is an abuse of power - a real one, not just a made up one no one noticed until 1997 - so how come the usual suspects can't drag themselves away from defending the mad bomber to speak out for actual citizens?

....

Yep, I think the clue is in the question there.

Meanwhile, the femiloons are struggling with the difficult concept of 'evidence'. Also, the whole 'free press' thing.

Hey, I'm guessing that if the public is sceptical of many rape claims that might have less to do with the media reporting stuff that, y'know, actually happened, and more with femiloons all but claiming that even if the complainant is a card-carrying wackjob, the man should be found guilty anyway, or the rapists will have won. Still, nice to see them outing themselves as the man-hating loons we always knew they were.

Maybe I'm being too harsh? Maybe they're just over-enthusiastic? Except... how come they're more enraged by pretendey rapes invented by a fantasist than the police hobbling the investigation into a real rape?

So, for those of you keeping score at home, here it is: made up rapes = enraged femiloons, police running interference for an actual rapist = zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Never mind the bigotry and the dishonesty: their biggest problem is that they are completely nutso.

All of which leads to another important issue here. Here we have a lawyer who doesn't actually understand the law, so are we still misogynists if we think the silly hag should be fired? Ditto, the rape not so specialists at the CPS. For that matter, what about the charmers at the 'F Word'? Doesn't the....

Ah no: I've just read the bit at the bottom of their 'convict him anyway' page. Their blog is a 'safe and friendly space for feminists and feminist allies'... where they can accuse innocent men of rape. Now, isn't that just modern life in microcosm? Feminazi hag demons give full vent to their unhinged ideology but anyone who argues with them is oppressing them (ker-ching!).

This is why the country's so screwed up. Thanks to years of affirmative action and PC companies have been forced to hire useless loonies and everyone has to pretend they're anything other than dead weight. Really, given the choice, who the hell would hire the Wicked Witch of Winchester?