HALF-FULL REPORT 06/02/23
Cleese’s reaction reported by the NY Post: ‘Monty Python’ Star John Cleese Has ‘No Intention’ Of Cutting Controversial ‘Life Of Brian’ Scene.
Yes, that’s the only way to deal with woketards, tell them to eff off. The really good news here is that Cleese is far from alone. Countless millions have had enough of the whole Rainbow Mafia-Tranny-Pride-LGBTQWTF woke tyranny shtick and are voting with their wallets against it.
As of Wednesday (5/31): Bud Light Parent Anheuser-Busch Sees $27 Billion Gone, Shares Near Bear Market. This won’t stop – Bud Light is toast, and so may be A-B because nothing it’s doing is working to float their sinking ship.
Could this be the fate of Woke Fascism across the board? Well, maybe. Read on, jump right in, let’s have an enjoyably provocative time in this HFR!
THE FAIRY TALE CASTLE OF SEGOVIA
This is Spain’s most famous and beloved castle, high on a rocky promontory above the city of Segovia some 60 miles northwest of Madrid. The site of a Celtic settlement, Roman trading post, and Arab wooden fort, when the Reconquista of the Christian knights removed the Islamic invaders from their land in the early 1200s, the building of the idyllic fairy tale castle you see began.
For centuries it was the palace residence of the Kings and Queens of Castille. It was here, on December 13, 1474, that Isabella, daughter of King John II, was enthroned as the Queen of Castille. When her husband Ferdinand, whom she married in 1469, became King of Aragon in 1475, they jointly ruled a unified Spain. As we learned in our early school years, it was Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille who sponsored Columbus’ discovery of the Americas in 1492.
Today, the Castle of Segovia is a World Heritage Site, serving as a museum of the history of Castille and National Archive of Spain. Immaculately preserved and maintained, it’s a thrilling experience to explore. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #266 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 06/01/23
To Infinity and Beyond
The SCOTUS defined navigable waters of the USA this week in a blow to the EPA. Navigable now means “navigable” and not “anything with a drop of water.” Once again, federal agencies tell us that the ends (their absolute power over everyone and everything) justify their means, and Clarence Thomas sets them straight.
The House approved a new federal debt limit agreement that continues to blow the federal debt to the moon and avoids making federal expenditures a central issue during the 2024 election cycle.
The debt represents dollars printed into circulation, and conditions will likely remain inflationary. Perhaps catastrophically inflationary as time unfolds. Interest rates are being pushed up to counter inflation, and the IRS is increasing tax collection activity dramatically. One or more of the 87,000 new, woke IRS agents might be knocking on your door soon.
But don't worry, wokesters mostly hate white baby boomers. Just identify as somebody else.
Problems are emerging from boycotts of woke brands. The brands are losing money, and shareholder lawsuits challenging fiduciary duty abandonment are arising. As of yesterday, ten major insurance companies are out of the UN climate accords. That's ten out of thirty. Insurance companies are recognizing the ESG agenda exposes them to overwhelming antitrust litigation.
The GDI, or gross domestic income metric, indicates that we have been in a recession all year. The GDP does not yet reflect this, as the metric is skewed by accelerating government expenditures. Consumer sentiment reflects a recession and adds to the nationwide anxiety about woke entitlement.
This week's number one song on several charts calls out Target for Targeting the Kids. Pedophilia is proving to be a woke bridge too far, even among many that insist it takes a village.
Come on over to Skye's Links and take a look...
NYC MAYOR ERIC ADAMS’ STUNNING PATRIOTIC MEMORIAL DAY SPEECH
New York City Mayor Eric Adams gave a completely unexpected Memorial Day speech denouncing socialism and Communism and bemoaning the lack of patriotism from the nation’s young.
Referencing Thomas Jefferson (a mistake, according to the radical left), Adams spoke of the famous “Tree of Liberty.”
“You water the tree of freedom with your blood,” Adams said. “We sit under the shade of that tree of freedom protected from the hot rays of socialism and communism and destruction that’s playing out across the globe.”
Adams referred to himself as a “thirty-eight percenter,” recalling a poll from last year that showed just 38% of Americans were “extremely proud” of the United States. He spoke proudly of our Pledge of Allegiance:
“Just as I start the day, every child should start the day with that hope and that true Pledge,” he said.
A 22-year veteran of the NYPD, Adams’s speech was not universally applauded — as you might expect. New York’s Woke Left exploded.
COMBATING THE CENSORSHIP INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
It’s been nearly six months since the first installment of the Twitter Files—the journalistic effort by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, and many others to expose the myriad channels by which the U.S government cooperated with Twitter on content moderation and censorship—was first published.
For six months, not much of consequence has happened, either in Washington or the mainstream media, in response. Those who owe us mea culpas have not provided them, tending instead to attack the individual reporters or ignore their findings.
Why? Because not many commentators understand the interconnected tendrils of a single censorship apparatus. Michael Shellenberger and his colleagues Alex Gutentag and Matt Taibbi are now undertaking a monumental attempt at defining that apparatus: they call it the Censorship Industrial Complex.
Shellenberger and Gutentag are two of the few journalists who not only take the reality of increased government censorship efforts seriously but also consider it a systemic, unified, and global threat, as opposed to a few discreet but regrettable extensions of U.S. political power.
THE TERRACE OF INFINITY
Over a thousand feet on a mountain ledge above Amalfi on the Mediterranean, you’ll find the Terrazzo dell'lnfinito, considered by poets for centuries the most beautiful view in the world. It is part of the magnificent gardens of the 11th century Villa Cimbrone, in the hilltop town of Ravello, built by the Romans in the 5th century.
The Sorrentine Peninsula is a finger of land south of Naples sticking out into the Med’s Tyrrhanean Sea, off the tip of which is the legendary island of Capri. The main town of Sorrento is on the north side facing Naples and Mount Vesuvius. But it is the steep southern shore of the Amalfi Coast that is our planet’s most spectacularly scenic drive with its ancient ports of Amalfi and Positano.
Exploring this magical part of the world is an ultimate “bucket list” experience. And to top it off, on the way down from Naples, you get to visit Pompeii, the excavated Roman city buried and preserved by the ash of Vesuvius in 79 AD. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #115 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
MCCARTHY CAVES IN A GIANT LOSS FOR THE GOP AND AMERICA
Kevin McCarthy trumpeted a debt-ceiling deal Sunday. His one dealbreaker should have been his promise to defund President Biden’s massive $80 billion to turbocharge an already weaponized IRS.
This was the totemic centerpiece of his pitch to become speaker. It was the most memorable promise of the Republicans’ midterm campaign to win back the House. “Our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” McCarthy vowed. “You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you.”
Sure enough, the House voted 221-210 to repeal the extra IRS funding. “Promises made,” the newly minted speaker said Jan. 9, banging the gavel on the first bill of the Republican-controlled House.
What about promises kept? Fuhgeddaboudit.
WHY ARE OUR GOVERNMENT, CORPORATIONS, AND POPULAR CULTURE COLLUDING IN MASS SUICIDE?
[In this compendium of current Leftist insanity, VDH asks: “Why are our government, corporations, and popular culture colluding in mass suicide—to the delight of our enemies like Communist China?” But he has no answer. Do you agree that the answer was given 20 years ago in “Beyond Treason”? That all the passions of the Left are frenzies of masochism, that the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy-appeasement?]
The Left is waging a full-fledged cultural revolution against traditional America. And the Maoist results are often as absurd as they are terrifying.
Corporate America has joined this cultural revolution hysteria. Companies are apparently now hellbent on destroying their brands, profits, and net worth.
Anheuser-Busch has destroyed its best-selling Bud Light brand. Disney has rebranded its films, amusement parks, and television with billion-dollar losses in Disney stock, subscribers, and viewers. A woke CNN has all but destroyed its once-global audience. It now has fewer viewers than certain popular podcasts.
All these implosions are not just shocking but surreal. Why are our government, corporations, and popular culture colluding in mass suicide?
THE STONE TURTLE OF GENGHIS KHAN
800 hundred years ago in 1221, Genghis Khan established the capital of the Mongol Empire he created at a place called Karakorum in the grasslands of central Mongolia. It became a city of palaces, temples, and mansions of the Mongol nobility, a place of fabulous wealth that left Marco Polo in awe when he visited in in the 1270s.
When Mongol rule over China ended a hundred years later, the Chinese rulers of the Ming Dynasty ordered Karakorum razed to the ground with all evidence of its existence obliterated. All that was left was this solitary stone turtle lying in mute witness to the glories of what was here once and is no more. Known as the Stone Turtle of Genghis Khan, it’s all there is for you to try and imagine the magnificence of the past amidst what is now an empty wilderness. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #149 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
BEYOND TREASON
Yanomamo mother and baby
[This Monday’s Archive, “Beyond Treason,” was originally published on July 30, 2003. Written just a few months after TTP’s inception, it is my first statement explaining the pathology of the liberal – in today’s parlance, progressive or woke – mind. Please consider commenting on the Forum as to what extent it remains explanatory now, almost 20 years later. I’m really eager to learn what you think.]
TTP, July 30, 2003
Reading Ann Coulter’s new book, Treason is a lot of fun. But let’s go beyond all the fun and outrage and cut to the chase. Coulter is fabuloso at explaining what aid and comfort three generations of liberals and Democrats have given to any and every anti-American cause and group on the planet, but she is at a total loss to explain why.
Further, America is hardly the only thing liberals are treasonous towards. Calling someone a traitor to their country doesn’t explain why they are a traitor to their race, their culture, their civilization, and their species.
We thus need a deeper understanding of what motivates liberals that goes far beyond simply hurling epithets of treason and traitor at them.
For such understanding, we need to travel to the Amazon. Among the Yanomamo and other tribes deep in the Amazon rain forests, it is an accepted practice that when a woman gives birth, she tearfully proclaims her child to be ugly.