Silence? All of the screeching and howling in the media hasn’t derailed the Donald but it’s far from quiet…
May 31, 2016 at 4:48 am
Lucius Severus Pertinax
“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be careful.”
May 30, 2016 at 10:46 pm
Tim Moyer
This is SO good! I’m thinking bumper stickers with this one.
May 30, 2016 at 10:48 pm
HB
Uh—how about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang instead of the Star Destroyer?
Moochelle could be driving with Paul “Lying” Ryan in the back seat givin’ a little man love to King Ozero.
Then pan down to the Cantina Bar Scean and it is all of Congress.
OT—you know that really the Empire/First Order is definitely modeled on the Nazi’s with all the pomp/show of the Storm troopers.
It seems that Lucas/Disney has certainly rehabilitated Nazism and has the SW Storm troopers, Vader, Ren, Maul etc at all the Disney Parks and all the people and little kids are hanging out with them and having fun…..even though those same characters slaughtered billions on entire planets and takeovers of other civilizations throughout their mythical galaxy.
Makes you wonder if little white/red/black swastika symbols started popping up in the Disney Parks…..who would be to blame?
May 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
B Woodman
HB,
I remember that the middle years of the scifi series Babylon 5 (B5) (the best scifi series EVER), there was a war and Nazi theme developed. So well written, directed, and acted, I still get shivers thinking on it.
May 31, 2016 at 7:00 am
Pamela
We know who the Shadows are, where’s Lyta Alexander and the Rangers
May 31, 2016 at 12:55 pm
Ed Woods
Psi Corps was solidly based in Nazi operation and culture.
May 30, 2016 at 11:56 pm
Delilah T
Happened with Farscape, too. The Sebaceans were the superior race, and the Peacekeepers were as militant as any bunch of Nazis. It was strange.
May 31, 2016 at 2:00 am
H_B
HB (Not to be confused with H_B, of course), that’s less an effect of Disney lauding fascist militarists than it is a general effect in the culture.
You may or may not have heard of the “alt-Right” recently. They’re a younger generation of people who didn’t grow up with even second-hand stories of WWII, the Holocaust, et cetera. You’ll find a lot of “alt-Right” members who will say openly racist things, laud Hitler and Nazism, and such. But the people who are doing this are not doing it because they believe in National Socialism or White Suremacy…
…They’re doing it because it’s the easiest way to get a rise out of people they find entirely too uptight about stories in history they see no day-to-day relevance for. It’s like an 18 year old throwing up “devil horns” hand signs at a Heavy Metal concert in the 1980s – they’re not serious about satanism, but they love the apoplexy it causes the older people that are constantly judging them.
You can take your pick whether Leftists are at root cause for this by diluting “Nazi” to generic PC-epithet or if this is just something that was bound to happen over time. But it’s a shift in perception that is here to stay.
May 31, 2016 at 6:57 am
GWB
about stories in history they see no day-to-day relevance for
And there is one of the biggest problems with the prog worldview. History has no relevance. It’s called the “arrogance of the present”. It’s why you hear “but this time socialism will get done right!”
May 31, 2016 at 8:05 am
WayneM
Of course it will for this version of Benevolent Leader is superior to all previous versions!!
May 31, 2016 at 1:40 pm
Old Codger
“devil horns” hand sign???
We got people just north of us (up in Austin, AKA “silicon gulch”) who flash that sign at athletic competitions all the time. As a rule it’s accompanied by the words “Hook-em Horns”. Back in the day (according to cousin who graduated from Texas A&M) it also denoted a homosexual discovered in the Corps of Cadets at A&M. Seems when they caught a skin-flute player they’d cut two fingers off their right hand and ship ’em to Austin. 😉
Yeah, speaking of shivers, I have never seen the phenomenon that is America 2016 presented more powerfully, more accurately, or more succinctly than Chris Muir just did in 11 movie prop cartoon lines…shivers for us, and I guarantee you, chills up the spines if they had any, of the “elite”.
May 30, 2016 at 11:36 pm
xdcpd085
Looks like the Soap Box and the Ballot Box, may yet be enough to preclude the use of the Cartridge Box.
For now……..
(maybe..)
May 31, 2016 at 9:05 am
B Woodman
But don’t put that Cartridge Box too far away. May need to grab it quick.
May 31, 2016 at 7:25 pm
interventor
Loaded magazines.
June 1, 2016 at 6:49 am
PaulS
An even handier “cartridge box”.
May 30, 2016 at 11:38 pm
eon
Most SF writers tend to pattern “evil empires” on the Nazis, simply because they’re easily identifiable villains who also had a thing about pomp, circumstance, and grand displays, all of which make for great “space opera”.
Sometimes they even pattern the heroes on them. In SW, the Jedi are a kinder, gentler sort of “ubermensch”, and in episode IV, that final award ceremony was straight out of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.
Probably the clearest examples of pure-out socialists (of the “proudly left” type) were in H.Beam Piper’s Paratime Police stories, notably “The Last Enemy”;
Piper left no doubt about his opinion of such wights;
There were five men at a table near them; they had come in before the stars had grown dim, and the waiters were just bringing their first dishes. Two were Assassins, and the other three were of a breed Verkan Vall had learned to recognize on any time-line—the arrogant, cocksure, ambitious, leftist politician, who knows what is best for everybody better than anybody else does, and who is convinced that he is inescapably right and that whoever differs with him is not only an ignoramus but a venal scoundrel as well.
Poul Anderson held similarly strong opinions about their ilk, most notably on display in one of his last novels , The Avatar. Which, please note, has absolutely nothing to do with the Gaia-worshiping James Cameron movie that “borrowed” its title.
On the other side, Dallas McCord “Mack” Reynolds was an unrepentant socialist, who nevertheless harbored strong suspicions about the motives of those who agreed with his philosophy, as well as those who preferred mysticism to objective facts in general. His suspicions are on display in practically all of his work, notably the “Dawnworlds” novels and the singleton, Computer War. I would submit that he came closer to being an Ayn Rand type Objectivist than a “true” socialist, no matter what he told John W. Campbell.
Jame Michener apparently didn’t think much of SF fans’ belief in democracy. As he put it in Space, most SF fans would be perfectly happy with a military dictatorship, as long as it stomped on people they didn’t like.
Of course, most progressives are OK with dictatorships, too. As long as they get to run them.
SF tends to be innately suspicious of anybody who claims to have all the answers. As Brian Aldiss put it in The Billion Year Spree;
SF holds that no matter how blazingly well-intentioned Doctor Frankenstein is, he tends to end up creating a monster every time.
clear ether
eon
May 31, 2016 at 12:13 am
SteveInCO
” most notably on display in one of his last novels , The Avatar. Which, please note, has absolutely nothing to do with the Gaia-worshiping James Cameron movie that “borrowed” its title.”
Wait. No. Can’t be. Hollywood NEVER, EVER makes an “adaptation” for a novel that has no resemblance to the novel.
(*cough” Starship Troopers *cough* , in case my sarcasm didn’t come through.)
May 31, 2016 at 1:57 am
Cliff H
Agree absolutely, Steve. Heinlein would have been appalled at the travesty made of a story that was so important to him that he interrupted “Stranger in a Strange Land” to write it. In his own words the action of “Starship Troopers” was just a hook to present his political views which the movie then went on to make a pseudo-fascist mockery of.
May 31, 2016 at 6:34 am
eon
Cameron did a fairly extensive job of ripping off Anderson, but the main source of the movie’s story wasn’t Anderson’s novella, it was his much earlier short story “Call Me Joe”;
Of course, Cameron got into a similar situation with Harlan Ellison over The Terminator, too.
In fact, Anderson’s Avatar had little in common with the movie but the title;
In the immeasurable past a mysterious alien race known as The Others left mankind a challenging legacy, a ‘gate’ to the unexplored reaches of the stars. Humanity has utilized the gate to painstakingly colonize the Phoebus star system but has left the rest of the galaxy unexplored. In the midst of turbulent political upheaval on Earth, the exploratory ship Emissary leaves through the gate on a voyage of discovery. When the Emissary returns ahead of schedule the Social Welfare Party on Earth impounds the ship and imprisons its crew – and forbids all future space exploration. Dan Broderson, an entrepreneur and adventurer, commandeers a commercial spaceship from his own company and travels to Earth to find the Emissary. He locates the ship, confounds its captors and rescues some of the explorers, including the first alien to visit the solar system. But Broderson has to flee through the gate unprepared, to become a wanderer among the stars in search of The Others. They alone have the knowledge that will enable his ship to return home.
Doesn’t sound much like the movie, does it? After all, the movie was mainly an indictment of civilization for…existing.
cheers
eon
May 31, 2016 at 10:58 am
H_B
I’ve never bothered to watch that movie. …I already saw Ferngully.
May 31, 2016 at 9:17 am
interventor
Heinlein wrote Starship Trooper as a parody. Hellywood made it a parody of a parody.
May 31, 2016 at 11:40 pm
Redleg
What is your basis for saying that Starship Troopers is a parody?
May 31, 2016 at 7:02 am
GWB
One note on the pomp and circumstance, eon: the Romans did it too. They probably did it even better than the NAZIs. So, when you see that sort of thing in a story, ponder whether you can see a difference in the story. Because it makes all the difference what sort of totalitarian empire they worship. 😉
May 31, 2016 at 9:18 am
interventor
At least, the Romans kept laws loose.
May 31, 2016 at 4:29 pm
John Greer
No, they kept the laws minimal.
What laws they did have they enforced with great prejudice.
May 31, 2016 at 9:57 am
eon
Rome wasn’t really all that “totalitarian”, no matter what Hollywood says.
In his excellent historical book, Gunpowder- Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive that Changed the World, Jack Kelly observes that at the height of the Sung Dynasty in ancient China, their capital, Kaifeng, had three times the population of Rome at its peak. True enough as far as it goes.
He overlooks one important difference. A Roman citizen bowed to no one, not even the First Consul. Even in the later empire, Emperors did not realistically expect much obeisance except insofar as they earned it, usually on the battlefield. Those who insisted upon it otherwise rarely lasted long. (See Caligula, Nero, etc.)
In China’s long history, anyone who failed to bow as someone of higher rank, caste or status passed by could generally count on being beheaded on the spot by the higher one’s guards. In fact, “bowing” is a ceremonial version of exposing your neck to the headsman’s chopper. It literally says “I am ready to die if it is your pleasure to take my life”.
By comparison, the Western military hand salute is a remnant of raising your helmet visor so someone you meet can see your face and recognize you. Far from being based on medieval knighthood, as is commonly taught in elementary schools today, it dates to ancient Greece, due to the way the common Corinthian helmet was built. (The Boetian gave better coverage, but the Corinthian was more comfortable in hot weather.) It started, and continues, as a gesture between more-or-less equals, other than rank.
Throughout China’s history, the country has been ruled by an oligarchy based on a bureaucracy required originally by the need to regulate irrigation. See “hydraulic state”; Egypt and ancient Persia are two more examples. This system maintains no matter what the rulers call themselves; Emperors, eunuchs, mandarins… or Communists.
All technological development has always been at the service of the State. That’s why gunpowder, invented in China, was used first for magical “effects” by magicians and charlatans to amuse and con the rulers. Even when its capacity for destruction was discovered in the mid- 11th Century AD, the “thunderclap” bombs, “thundercrash” bombs, rockets, and then cannon, were used by the government to control both the “three kinds of barbarians” (including European traders) and internal dissent. Nationalization of industry was the Chinese way long before anyone ever heard of Marx, Lenin, or Mao.
There was no impetus for anyone to use black powder’s power to “rise in society”, as James Burke says in Connections, because in a rigidly stratified, bureaucratically-controlled culture, there was no way to rise in status. It says a lot that a best-selling book of the Ming period was titled “Dreaming of the Capital While the Rice is Cooking”. (!)
During the Opium Wars in the mid-19th Century, one Chinese scholar bewailed, “Why are they (the Europeans) small and yet strong? Why are we large and yet weak?”
My answer would have been,
“Because of your constant insistence upon social systems which exalt those who rule, and denigrate any other, even or especially if they show evidence of intelligence and innovation. You cannot progress if you deal with anyone who has a new idea by beheading them or shooting them. And you especially cannot innovate if you cling to the belief that the State- the Emperor, the Empress, or the Chairman- are more important than the individual.”
That was a mistake Rome never made, even in the later Empire. It’s not a coincidence that Chinese armies were all conscripts, except for the commanding nobles appointed by the Emperor precisely because they were nobles. By comparison, even at the end, the Roman legions were composed mainly of volunteer enlistees at all ranks.
It’s true Rome ruled by terror. The old story that a man could travel the Appian Way from one end to the other with a pouch full of gold without being robbed was perfectly true for the period prior to the 4th Century AD. Because robbers, etc., knew that bothering travelers was a good way to end up captured and crucified by the nearest stationed legion.
But that was true for any traveler, not just Roman citizens. Similarly, killing travelers anywhere in the Empire, local internecine conflicts, etc., were likely to result in a legion arriving, rounding up everybody who even might be involved, and executing one out of every ten. As a warning to the rest to knock it off, pronto.
(This is the true meaning of “decimate”, BTW; to kill one-tenth of. Those who use it to mean utter destruction, like journalists, are demonstrating their ignorance of both history and proper grammar.)
The message was clear; “Fucking with Rome, even indirectly, is hazardous to your health”.
This was the true meaning of the Pax Romana. I would argue that it was less totalitarian than utilitarian. Unlike in China, most Roman rulers did not indulge in cruelty just for the sake of appearances. They left that to the Coliseum. Those who didn’t, i.e. Nero, Caligula, and etc., didn’t last long.
That’s the difference between a totalitarian empire and one that’s more-or-less “democratic”. The latter is somewhat self-correcting, and changes through innovation.
The former, the totalitarian one, never really does either one. And even suggesting it generally gets you an appointment with the headsman.
cheers
eon
May 31, 2016 at 1:15 pm
H_B
People forget (or never realized) that Rome gave us the modern concept of “citizen“. You didn’t have to be born to that nation, you could adopt its ways and be recognized as a Citizen of Rome.
May 31, 2016 at 6:43 pm
Delilah T
The difference between China and Rome was that the Praetorian Guard decided who would be Emperor. (The Latin word ‘dictator’ is used incorrectly today, and the use of Caesar only began with Gaius Iulius Caesar, but came to mean ’emperor’ .) If the choice the Praetorian Guard made did not work out, they literally bumped him off and installed someone else. Caligula was assassinated by them. He ruled less than four years. Marcus Aurelius, on the other hand, had 19 years and Antoninus Pius had 23.
In China, the ’emperor’ was dynastic in nature. It was not a dynastic succession in Rome.
We’re seeing people attempting to inflict dynastic succession on us in this country, which is exactly NOT what Washington or any of the others wanted. Examples: Kennedys, Clintons, Bush, Daley (Chicago) Cuomo (New York).
Yes, I consider shrillary’s attempt an example of dynastic succession. And it sucks, because she’s the greediest of a greedy bunch.
May 31, 2016 at 8:54 pm
eon
Really not that much of a difference. In China, the emperor may have been the Son of Heaven, but the court eunuchs and later the mandarins could and did send him to Heaven if it was expedient to do so. As in;
1. Emperor goes mad. (Frequent; the “life-extending elixirs” and “potency elixirs” the court physician/magicians came up with often contained things like mercury and belladonna. Several emperors were poisoned because they became literally mad as hatters.)
2. Emperor fails to produce a viable heir. (Replaced by second or third cousin with more “vitality” ASAP.)
3. Emperor engages in unwise “adventures”. (If Kublai Khan had been a Sung emperor rather than a Mongol conqueror, he wouldn’t have survived the first failed invasion of Japan; the court eunuchs would have seen to that.)
4. Emperor looks too closely at the royal tax and account records. (By far the single most common CoD among emperors. And Egyptian pharaohs, too, for that matter; see “Tutankhamen”.)
The eunuchs and later the mandarins were as much kingmakers as any Praetorian Guard detachment ever was. And unlike the later Byzantine rulers, the Chinese weren’t interested in hiring a “Varangian Guard”.
cheers
eon
May 31, 2016 at 10:54 am
CB
The Day the Earth Stood Still is a great example of how Big Entertainment can screw up a sequel. In the first movie Aliens are concerned that Humanity has discovered Nuclear energy and will soon take it’s warlike ways to outer space.
In the sequel Aliens are concerned that humanity is polluting the Earth and is causing global warming therefore Earth must be destroyed. Why a race of Aliens give a hoot about a tiny backwater planet is never explained.
May 31, 2016 at 3:50 pm
eon
In the remake (one of the most effe’d-up “reimaginings” Hollywood ever did), Klatu (Keanu “I Am In Fact Made Entirely of Wood”Reeves) tells Professor Barnhard (John “Dead Parrot Sketch” Cleese) that if humans are allowed to continue existing, the Earth will no longer be livable. But eliminate the human race, and Earth will be available for colonization. By his people- but like him, they require major genetic modification to live in our environment. Which his robot (now revealed to be a nanite swarm) is busy dismantling.
In other words, very little of this movie makes much if any sense. I have an especial dislike of the lady scientist, who seems never to have graduated med school. Complains “we don’t have a sample of his blood, we don’t know what will help or hurt him”, after he was shot. There was a serious blood splash on the faceplate of her “moon suit”. Take. A. Sample. And. Analyze. It. Dumbass.
Ditto the lady SecDef. Gets multiple units trashed by ordering them to go CQB- with everything from Abrams to Paladins. at some point, the OIC general should have told higher, “either get this idiot out of here or relieve me of command; I am no longer going to permit my personnel to be killed by her incompetence.”
On one side, blithering idiots. On the other, an interstellar eco-Nazi.
The best thing about the movie was the DVD release that included a DVD of the original 1951, digitally remastered from the original uncut stdio 70mm master print. It’s the best complete version of the original I’ve ever seen.
The remake DVD makes a good coaster for your beverage of choice while watching the original. Other than that it has little to recommend it. It isn’t even bad enough to be good, like Plan 9 From Outer Space.
It’s just a waste of an hour and three-quarters.
clear ether
eon
May 31, 2016 at 12:59 pm
Ed Woods
I keep that Piper quote about the five men in my “ready” file for quotes. It’s a good’n.
May 31, 2016 at 12:02 am
Pete231
I’m rather partial to David Weber and his Honor Harrington series. Give me a treecat any day as my personal back up. And, Honor does not suffer fools or progs gladly. She even has an M1911 .45 ACP as a favorite sidearm. The Lady knows what having the edge is all about…..
She turned out to be the best duelist in the empire, as well with that pistol. Seems to me she had two, handmade, because the weapon itself had been obsolete for centuries. Her ammo was also handmade, all contained in a boxed case. I believe that was mentioned when she insulted the senator in the Senate chamber. Killed his ass even when the coward cheated and shot her in the back.
May 31, 2016 at 12:12 am
Delilah T
P.S. Chris, I do appreciate the opening scroll, but no fanfare? Awww!
Speaking of Nazis, think about this for a moment. Edward VIII was crowned King of England, etc., in 1936 after his father George V died. Wallis Simpson, a divorced/remarried woman from Baltimore, had a public open affair with Edward. She was a Nazi sympathizer and he wasn’t far behind her. She had him so wound around her ankles that he insisted on marrying her. She divorced her 2nd husband to marry the King. (They did eventually meet Hitler in person. There is a photo of them shaking hands with him.)
Edward was told that if he wanted to marry her, he would have to abdicate the throne. So he did just that, in December 1936 (I’m summarizing.) and became the Duke of Windsor. His brother Albert assumed the throne as George VI.
The Windsors went to live in France, but during the War were sent to the Bahamas where he was the governor. This was done to keep them from causing trouble.
If, somehow, Edward had married Simpson and stayed on the throne (a morganatic marriage), considering that he was a Nazi sympathizer, how do you think the War would have gone?
You have to ask whose hand was in this?
Before you answer that, please understand that I don’t believe in coincidences.
I find it even more strange that the ‘feel good’ PC stuff is failing here and in the Eurozones and vigilantism is taking over. In Austria, the far-right candidate lost the election by a very small margin.
I don’t believe in coincidences. Period.
Chris, can we ladies have some Zed with or w/o shirt? Tah!
May 31, 2016 at 2:03 am
Cliff H
It must be noted that in the years prior to the Nazis moving militarily against their neighbors in Europe a great many notable people all over the world saw Hitler as the savior of Germany. He was even voted Time magazine’s man of the year at one point. Joseph Kennedy was a big fan.
The opinions of people towards Hitler before he showed his true colors really have no bearing on how they thought of him or the Nazis after the invasion of Poland. That would be like saying you have exactly the same opinion of Barrack Obama today as you had of him when he was an obscure Illinois state senator.
May 31, 2016 at 2:36 am
Pete in NC
IIRC, Edward was still in favor of making peace with Hitler after the invasion of France (post Poland); British officers (including Churchill) were trying to figure out how to keep him in the dark about battle plans, knowing he and Wallis were buddy-buddy with several high ranking Nazis.
May 31, 2016 at 6:59 am
eon
Correct. Also, Rudolf Hess’ seemingly bizarre one-way trip to Scotland in a Bf-110 was intended to land him at an airstrip at the Duke of Hamilton’s estate. (He got lost, ran out of gas, and had to bail out.)
The Duke of Hamilton was a close associate of… yes, the Duke of Windsor. So close that Churchill had his security people watching him to see who he was palling around with. Which may explain how Hess ended up in custody and in London so fast.
cheers
eon
May 31, 2016 at 7:06 am
GWB
That would be like saying you have exactly the same opinion of Barrack Obama today as you had of him when he was an obscure Illinois state senator.
Ironically, I do. Oh, it’s different in terms of what I thought he could actually get away with, but I always saw this. The key is whether you were paying attention. The folks who were pro-NAZI before the war simply weren’t paying attention, or were trying hard to ignore what they knew because some other element commanded their admiration, and they didn’t want something as simple as the facts to get in the way.
May 31, 2016 at 10:01 am
eon
Well, so do I. I thought he was a gibbering leftwing dingbat then. Nothing I’ve seen since then has caused me to change my estimate of The Lightworker.
Or his facilitators.
clear ether
eon
May 31, 2016 at 4:48 pm
John Greer
Meaning, of course, that proper character assessment it the key to judging _any_candidate for any office, and why so many candidates make it their job to keep us in the dark for just that reason.
But my feelings of contempt and revulsion for B Hussein Obama really *HAVEN’T* changed since the 2004 Democratic convention. I have a fairly good built-in bogometer and it pegged the first time I ever heard him talk.
May 31, 2016 at 7:44 am
Delilah T
Hitler took advantage of the gullibility of people who saw his ability (groomed by his mentor Dietrick Eckhart) to pull Germany together out of the grinding inflation and financial mess of the Depression as the road to salvation.
What they didn’t see was the snake under the cover of it, waiting to strike. As GWB says, ‘the key is whether or not you were paying attention’. (BZ for that!) And most people weren’t. The lowest common denominator worked for Hitler and for that train spotting slacker who will soon be leaving the Oval Office to play lousy rounds of golf.
May 31, 2016 at 9:22 am
interventor
FBI read all Simpson’s mail going to Bahamas.
May 31, 2016 at 6:49 pm
Delilah T
Edward VIII was quoted as saying that he wished Hitler had won the war so that Stalin could be defeated – not an exact quote on my part, but words to that effect.
May 31, 2016 at 1:05 am
pyrodice
“As if a million graveyards cried out, and were suddenly silenced!”
May 31, 2016 at 1:36 am
Trey M.
I finally caught up to the current comic! I started reading about two or three weeks ago, and these are golden! Keep up the good work, Mr. Muir!
May 31, 2016 at 1:50 am
H_B
“We’ll have to destroy them ship-to-ship. Get the SJWs to their fighters.”
May 31, 2016 at 4:22 am
Bill G
SJWs to fight? More like “SJWs, call your lawyers and initiate all possible lawfare”.
Obfuscate, obfuscate, and keep trying to get him to dance to the music.
May 31, 2016 at 8:10 am
WayneM
SJWs can be violent. Luckily, they hate guns so their tactics are melee at best.
May 31, 2016 at 8:59 pm
eon
“Jason, I see you don’t carry a gun. So I reckon you always hire it done.”
-Cole Thornton (John Wayne) to Bart Jason (Edward Asner) in El Dorado (1967).
They only dislike guns that aren’t in the hands of their “hired guns”.
clear ether
eon
May 31, 2016 at 8:38 am
Chris Muir
i might steal this,hb.
May 31, 2016 at 10:50 am
H_B
Go right ahead. It was a tossup between this and “Hillary is as clumsy as she is stupid. General, prepare Black Lives Matter for a surface attack.” – but that scene didn’t turn out so well in the end.
And as above, it’s “H_B“, not “HB”; I’m a Human Being =D.
May 31, 2016 at 12:45 pm
B Woodman
And here all along I thought it stood for Human Bean.
;-))
You know, I’ve read every book that Donald has written and watched every speech that I could find. I really don’t believe that his ego was involved in his decision to run. I honestly believe that the man is a patriot who loves this nation, knows it’s problems, and saw that he was in a position to do something about them.
Look at what this run might cost him… His reputation attacked, his political contacts necessary to his business success alienated, his name on the target list of every politician with a little bit of power…
Not just here, but worldwide.
If Ma Barker is elected, he knows that he will be attacked by every alphabet agency in the USA from the IRS to the TSA.
He had a lot to lose, personally, yet he decided to run anyway.
Good man. Patriot. We need him as President.
Agreement with everything you said except this: “I really don’t believe that his ego was involved in his decision to run.”
He chooses to run IN SPITE OF all of the costs and risks you mention, which he surely anticipated, and I attribute a very LARGE part of knowingly accepting them to his YUGE ego.
And that’s a good thing. The very same thing that we can hope will be a very powerful (if ancillary) motivator to continue to WIN (domestically, internationally, monetarily, culturally) when he is doing as the CEO of the USA. “Good man. Patriot. We need him as President.” Absofuckinglutely.
May 31, 2016 at 4:28 am
Bill G
So Donny Boy has the electoral votes for the Republican side.
Bernout is getting shriller and shriller as Cankles shouts “Damn the FBI Investigation Torpedoes, Full Superdelegate Collecting Speed Ahead” and has the Green Party to fall back to.
The Libertarian Party has a pair of ex-Republicans as candidates.
The Farce is strong in this election season.
May 31, 2016 at 6:51 am
eon
Well, Her Shrillness has another secret weapon. All the “protesters” from BLM, National Council of La Raza, etc.
They are now openly threatening to murder DT if he wins. Of course, they’re also openly threatening to murder anybody and everybody who doesn’t fill their entire bucket list of demands, too.
Remember, Hitler promised in 1932 that he would bring an end to the violence in the streets if he was appointed Reichskanzler. And once he was, the violence did abate slightly- he ordered his Brownshirts to concentrate on the Jews and Communists rather than just beating up and killing people more-or-less at random.
I’m waiting for Shrillary to make the same “promise”. Of course, BLM and La Raza are expecting a big payoff if she wins.
La Raza may get exactly what they want. Namely, Reconquista. See the novels Systemic Shock, Single Combat, and Wild Country by Dean Ing for how this might work.
BLM should remember what Ernst Rohm, Gregor Strasser, and etc. got on “The Night of the Long Knives”.
Shrillary is as heavily into Total Destruction and Revolutionary Vengeance, Seventies SDS/Weather Underground/McGovern style, as they are.
What she is absolutely not into is sharing power. With anybody.
Getting rid of the Southwest and all those effing “reactionaries”? OK by her.
Letting other people have even a voice in Her Utopia, never mind a veto over her Apotheosis? No. Effing.Way.
When dealing with a megalomaniac, even their allies have to know what the limits are.
clear ether
eon
May 31, 2016 at 7:48 am
Delilah T
But eon, dahlin’, shrillary doesn’t want Utopia. She wants Dystopia, that place where she gets to sit on the Cloud Throne and watch, up above it all while the rest of us are down here rolling around in the mud.
I think, instead, that her Cloud Throne should be deflated so that she lands in the mud and gets splashed with it.
Not to pick nits, mon soeur, but Utopia, as Sir Thomas described it, is exactly what she, and all progs, want. It is a nightmarish place where no one owns anything, not even the clothes on their backs, and everything is fodder for redistribution by the state, even children. It is Hillary’s dream, with her, as you say, on the Cloud Throne.
May 31, 2016 at 6:55 pm
Delilah T
My bad, Mr. B. By ‘Utopia’, I meant the sterile world of Aldous Huxley, where children are started in petri dishes and morons are intentionally bred into existence. What I meant by Dystopia is the clean, shiny surface but underneath, it’s Soylent Green.
Or maybe we’re talking about the same thing, but from different angles.
So your suggesting that we should knock Elysium out of orbit pre-emptively?
May 31, 2016 at 6:55 pm
Delilah T
Damned straight!
May 31, 2016 at 9:02 pm
H_B
Wrong analogy. “Elysium” is US, with the entire 3rd world attempting to get in.
May 31, 2016 at 7:12 am
Pamela
Someone knows and has proof of what happened the night VF died and the Benghazi murders. You can only keep patching so much before it cracks and falls apart. The fractures are already there, time to split them.
See how far they are willing to go, then take them down.
Based on the Clintons track record, anyone who knew what happened the night VF died probably joined him shortly thereafter. Suicide by rifle. From 500 yards. In the back of the head. Or something like that.
May 31, 2016 at 9:42 am
John D. Egbert
So true. The most dangerous existence in the world is “Close Associate of the Clintons.” As of several years ago the body count was 46 Oh, so convenient accidents/fatal illnesses/suicides/etc. How far can YOU stretch coincidence?
May 31, 2016 at 7:56 pm
Pamela
My Dad told me about this truth serum that was developed decades ago. It helped clear a few people who were up on murder and treason charges. One little problem with the stuff.
About six months after receiving the drug, the person was struck by a massive internal hemorrhage. Seems the drug caused the blood vessels to wear away from the inside out.
They stopped using it.
Be interesting to see if it would work on a few select people.
Make for an interesting election.
After all, what difference does the truth make after all this time.
May 31, 2016 at 7:51 am
Delilah T
There’s a very wide difference between Anarchy and Rebellion.
This is one of the best articles yet on why Trump is WINNING…very well written and logical…
1. PC
2. Immigration
3. Decline of the middle class
4. Rampant Globalism
5. Coarsening of the Political Culture.
ON POINT 100%…it makes me laugh when leftys call Trump a reality TV star…so WTF has President 4Putt been the last 8 years…hell, he’s spent more time on late nite TV and silly talk shows like “The View” than any President…hell, I bet he would love a TV gig when he leaves the White House…or be a commentator on MSNBC….
Great cartoon Chris…hope all goes well at home….waiting on this year’s fund raiser….in 3…..2….1…..
May 31, 2016 at 10:00 am
Barbara Skolaut
**snork**
You nailed it, Chris. 😀
May 31, 2016 at 11:13 am
CB
I saw one of the Republican elites on TV trying to explain Trump to the unwashed masses. He said that Trump supporters believe everything that Donald says… In the past this same elite also said that the elderly only go to the doctor to socialize with other patients in the waiting room.
I know that Trump will not get everything done he says he will. If he just gets a major part of it done I’ll be happy.
As for his comment about the elderly? I hate going to the doctor. My parents did too. To quote my dad ” Those damn doctors are always finding something new that’s wrong with you that can’t be fixed easy.”
Doctors are a lot like the mechanics at a car dealeship — remove and replace with OEM parts. $$$
May 31, 2016 at 2:03 pm
Old Codger
The biggest reason the left wants to disarm us is because they realize that the ratio of “indians” to “chiefs”always favors the “indians”.
But lacking arms does not preclude revolution; it merely makes it tougher. Sufficient numbers of sufficiently motivated peasants – even UNARMED peasants – can overthrow ANY government. As they said down in Chile, “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” The people united will never be defeated!
I had an idea for a chant during a demonstration. You have two groups. One group chants “We, the people” over and over in rhythm while another group chants “The people united will never be defeated!
I’ve figured out a way to do it antiphonally that should drive the message home. While one Group is chanting “We” the other group is chanting “The People”. While the 1st group is chanting “The People” the 2nd group is chanting “united”
When the 1st group starts back with “We, the people” again, the 2nd group finished the above “Shall never be defeated!”
It even works in Spanish (albeit with a somewhat different rhythm) with Group 1 chanting “Nosotros, El Pueblo” twice to every complete cycle of group 2 chanting “El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!”
May 31, 2016 at 7:07 pm
Delilah T
Sitting Bull won.
May 31, 2016 at 2:07 pm
Old Codger
Talked to a SAPD cop this morning who told me he would never obey orders to disarm the public. He also said that none of his colleagues would be part of such a detail, either.
In my book that’s a good thing. A VERY good thing!
May 31, 2016 at 2:17 pm
Erik
Trump save free speech? You mean the guy who threatens to sue people who say mean things about him?
May 31, 2016 at 3:58 pm
eon
The unchallenged slur is one of the basic weapons in the progressive playbook, along with the lawsuit to stop things they don’t like, ranging from “community policing” to building power plants.
By telling them “prove it in front of a judge or get out your checkbook”, DT uses their own methods against them.
The Varda says “Use a greater force against itself”.
(IMHO, Battle Beyond The Stars was better than Episode IV and V put together.)
cheers
eon
May 31, 2016 at 8:01 pm
Pamela
Well it’s not like any of his dalliances have come out and said he has a short comings,,,
Now that in my book would be considered inappropriate for public consumption
May 31, 2016 at 11:01 pm
interventor
First amendment refers to government, not slanders, libelers, and other liberal liars.
May 31, 2016 at 7:05 pm
Delilah T
I have told someone who was bitching about Trump and how much she detests him as well as shrillary, that I do not care WHO she votes for. She can vote for herself. But I DO care that she gets off her butt and votes, IF ONLY for herself.
We need something besides panem et circenses.
May 31, 2016 at 10:11 pm
NotYetInACamp
Without reading the previous comments,
Excellent.
This hits directly on the evil empire.
Truth has taken out the Death Star of PC and disabled all similar evil empire weapons.
The American rebels, inclusive, have been striking back to restore good and empowerment for individuals and to make America Free once again so that it can once again be great.
The good shall spread and prevail. It always does when truth and proper righteousness prevails.
Those who do not join the effort must realize that the raft, lifeboat, and/or warship will reach a point where it will not go back due to important priorities and duties. There is a war going on, you know.
They are on their own to vote as their principles and beliefs demand.
Further to Petercat’s comment and my agreement upthread as to the risk Trump has knowingly assumed in elbowing and convincing his way to the nomination:
“His reputation attacked, his political contacts necessary to his business success alienated, his name on the target list of every politician with a little bit of power…not just here, but worldwide.”
To that let’s add that pompous pimple Beck, who has had his “show” suspended for giving his tacit on-air approval to some no-name twit writer calling for Trump’s “removal…very bad things”, essentially fomenting assassination to get some attention; him I understand, the world is full of anonymous wackjobs…but for Beck to give him national exposure and AGREEMENT to killing off the peoples’ choice because HE didn’t choose him?
Beck says he hates the Hillzabeast, that she’s the worst, but she’s not and do you know why? Because just like as someone said above that anyone with too much knowledge of or is a “close associate” of the Clintons is in grave and mortal danger, Beck would literally call for the head of someone who has called out his pompous pimple ass and has the backing of a huge tidal wave of support therefore making him irrelevant and pissing him off?
Beck might hate Hillary, but it’s a self-hate thing, because that little piece of shit IS Hillary.
He should be glad nobody cares about offing his slimy self…because he’s irrelevant, and nobody fucking cares. Hope his “show” and he are gone for good.
June 1, 2016 at 7:40 am
PaulS
“some no-name twit writer”
Not really, has written many entertaining thrillers, and is quite successful at it.
Now the twit part, I’d have to concur in light of what he reportedly did, a big faux pas, or hopefully just a black op to expose Beck4sale, which might actually make sense.
May 31, 2016 at 11:52 pm
capn
Well said Chris.
This one goes into my ‘Toons with bite folder.
91 Comments
Even better than usual. That is a lot.
Silence? All of the screeching and howling in the media hasn’t derailed the Donald but it’s far from quiet…
“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be careful.”
This is SO good! I’m thinking bumper stickers with this one.
Uh—how about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang instead of the Star Destroyer?
Moochelle could be driving with Paul “Lying” Ryan in the back seat givin’ a little man love to King Ozero.
Then pan down to the Cantina Bar Scean and it is all of Congress.
OT—you know that really the Empire/First Order is definitely modeled on the Nazi’s with all the pomp/show of the Storm troopers.
It seems that Lucas/Disney has certainly rehabilitated Nazism and has the SW Storm troopers, Vader, Ren, Maul etc at all the Disney Parks and all the people and little kids are hanging out with them and having fun…..even though those same characters slaughtered billions on entire planets and takeovers of other civilizations throughout their mythical galaxy.
Makes you wonder if little white/red/black swastika symbols started popping up in the Disney Parks…..who would be to blame?
HB,
I remember that the middle years of the scifi series Babylon 5 (B5) (the best scifi series EVER), there was a war and Nazi theme developed. So well written, directed, and acted, I still get shivers thinking on it.
We know who the Shadows are, where’s Lyta Alexander and the Rangers
Psi Corps was solidly based in Nazi operation and culture.
Happened with Farscape, too. The Sebaceans were the superior race, and the Peacekeepers were as militant as any bunch of Nazis. It was strange.
HB (Not to be confused with H_B, of course), that’s less an effect of Disney lauding fascist militarists than it is a general effect in the culture.
You may or may not have heard of the “alt-Right” recently. They’re a younger generation of people who didn’t grow up with even second-hand stories of WWII, the Holocaust, et cetera. You’ll find a lot of “alt-Right” members who will say openly racist things, laud Hitler and Nazism, and such. But the people who are doing this are not doing it because they believe in National Socialism or White Suremacy…
…They’re doing it because it’s the easiest way to get a rise out of people they find entirely too uptight about stories in history they see no day-to-day relevance for. It’s like an 18 year old throwing up “devil horns” hand signs at a Heavy Metal concert in the 1980s – they’re not serious about satanism, but they love the apoplexy it causes the older people that are constantly judging them.
You can take your pick whether Leftists are at root cause for this by diluting “Nazi” to generic PC-epithet or if this is just something that was bound to happen over time. But it’s a shift in perception that is here to stay.
And there is one of the biggest problems with the prog worldview. History has no relevance. It’s called the “arrogance of the present”. It’s why you hear “but this time socialism will get done right!”
Of course it will for this version of Benevolent Leader is superior to all previous versions!!
“devil horns” hand sign???
We got people just north of us (up in Austin, AKA “silicon gulch”) who flash that sign at athletic competitions all the time. As a rule it’s accompanied by the words “Hook-em Horns”. Back in the day (according to cousin who graduated from Texas A&M) it also denoted a homosexual discovered in the Corps of Cadets at A&M. Seems when they caught a skin-flute player they’d cut two fingers off their right hand and ship ’em to Austin. 😉
Yeah, speaking of shivers, I have never seen the phenomenon that is America 2016 presented more powerfully, more accurately, or more succinctly than Chris Muir just did in 11 movie prop cartoon lines…shivers for us, and I guarantee you, chills up the spines if they had any, of the “elite”.
Looks like the Soap Box and the Ballot Box, may yet be enough to preclude the use of the Cartridge Box.
For now……..
(maybe..)
But don’t put that Cartridge Box too far away. May need to grab it quick.
Loaded magazines.
An even handier “cartridge box”.
Most SF writers tend to pattern “evil empires” on the Nazis, simply because they’re easily identifiable villains who also had a thing about pomp, circumstance, and grand displays, all of which make for great “space opera”.
Sometimes they even pattern the heroes on them. In SW, the Jedi are a kinder, gentler sort of “ubermensch”, and in episode IV, that final award ceremony was straight out of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.
Probably the clearest examples of pure-out socialists (of the “proudly left” type) were in H.Beam Piper’s Paratime Police stories, notably “The Last Enemy”;
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18800/18800-h/18800-h.htm
Piper left no doubt about his opinion of such wights;
Poul Anderson held similarly strong opinions about their ilk, most notably on display in one of his last novels , The Avatar. Which, please note, has absolutely nothing to do with the Gaia-worshiping James Cameron movie that “borrowed” its title.
On the other side, Dallas McCord “Mack” Reynolds was an unrepentant socialist, who nevertheless harbored strong suspicions about the motives of those who agreed with his philosophy, as well as those who preferred mysticism to objective facts in general. His suspicions are on display in practically all of his work, notably the “Dawnworlds” novels and the singleton, Computer War. I would submit that he came closer to being an Ayn Rand type Objectivist than a “true” socialist, no matter what he told John W. Campbell.
Jame Michener apparently didn’t think much of SF fans’ belief in democracy. As he put it in Space, most SF fans would be perfectly happy with a military dictatorship, as long as it stomped on people they didn’t like.
Of course, most progressives are OK with dictatorships, too. As long as they get to run them.
SF tends to be innately suspicious of anybody who claims to have all the answers. As Brian Aldiss put it in The Billion Year Spree;
clear ether
eon
” most notably on display in one of his last novels , The Avatar. Which, please note, has absolutely nothing to do with the Gaia-worshiping James Cameron movie that “borrowed” its title.”
Wait. No. Can’t be. Hollywood NEVER, EVER makes an “adaptation” for a novel that has no resemblance to the novel.
(*cough” Starship Troopers *cough* , in case my sarcasm didn’t come through.)
Agree absolutely, Steve. Heinlein would have been appalled at the travesty made of a story that was so important to him that he interrupted “Stranger in a Strange Land” to write it. In his own words the action of “Starship Troopers” was just a hook to present his political views which the movie then went on to make a pseudo-fascist mockery of.
Cameron did a fairly extensive job of ripping off Anderson, but the main source of the movie’s story wasn’t Anderson’s novella, it was his much earlier short story “Call Me Joe”;
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5390226/did-james-cameron-rip-off-poul-andersons-novella
Of course, Cameron got into a similar situation with Harlan Ellison over The Terminator, too.
In fact, Anderson’s Avatar had little in common with the movie but the title;
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1234701.The_Avatar
Doesn’t sound much like the movie, does it? After all, the movie was mainly an indictment of civilization for…existing.
cheers
eon
I’ve never bothered to watch that movie. …I already saw Ferngully.
Heinlein wrote Starship Trooper as a parody. Hellywood made it a parody of a parody.
What is your basis for saying that Starship Troopers is a parody?
One note on the pomp and circumstance, eon: the Romans did it too. They probably did it even better than the NAZIs. So, when you see that sort of thing in a story, ponder whether you can see a difference in the story. Because it makes all the difference what sort of totalitarian empire they worship. 😉
At least, the Romans kept laws loose.
No, they kept the laws minimal.
What laws they did have they enforced with great prejudice.
Rome wasn’t really all that “totalitarian”, no matter what Hollywood says.
In his excellent historical book, Gunpowder- Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive that Changed the World, Jack Kelly observes that at the height of the Sung Dynasty in ancient China, their capital, Kaifeng, had three times the population of Rome at its peak. True enough as far as it goes.
He overlooks one important difference. A Roman citizen bowed to no one, not even the First Consul. Even in the later empire, Emperors did not realistically expect much obeisance except insofar as they earned it, usually on the battlefield. Those who insisted upon it otherwise rarely lasted long. (See Caligula, Nero, etc.)
In China’s long history, anyone who failed to bow as someone of higher rank, caste or status passed by could generally count on being beheaded on the spot by the higher one’s guards. In fact, “bowing” is a ceremonial version of exposing your neck to the headsman’s chopper. It literally says “I am ready to die if it is your pleasure to take my life”.
By comparison, the Western military hand salute is a remnant of raising your helmet visor so someone you meet can see your face and recognize you. Far from being based on medieval knighthood, as is commonly taught in elementary schools today, it dates to ancient Greece, due to the way the common Corinthian helmet was built. (The Boetian gave better coverage, but the Corinthian was more comfortable in hot weather.) It started, and continues, as a gesture between more-or-less equals, other than rank.
Throughout China’s history, the country has been ruled by an oligarchy based on a bureaucracy required originally by the need to regulate irrigation. See “hydraulic state”; Egypt and ancient Persia are two more examples. This system maintains no matter what the rulers call themselves; Emperors, eunuchs, mandarins… or Communists.
All technological development has always been at the service of the State. That’s why gunpowder, invented in China, was used first for magical “effects” by magicians and charlatans to amuse and con the rulers. Even when its capacity for destruction was discovered in the mid- 11th Century AD, the “thunderclap” bombs, “thundercrash” bombs, rockets, and then cannon, were used by the government to control both the “three kinds of barbarians” (including European traders) and internal dissent. Nationalization of industry was the Chinese way long before anyone ever heard of Marx, Lenin, or Mao.
There was no impetus for anyone to use black powder’s power to “rise in society”, as James Burke says in Connections, because in a rigidly stratified, bureaucratically-controlled culture, there was no way to rise in status. It says a lot that a best-selling book of the Ming period was titled “Dreaming of the Capital While the Rice is Cooking”. (!)
During the Opium Wars in the mid-19th Century, one Chinese scholar bewailed, “Why are they (the Europeans) small and yet strong? Why are we large and yet weak?”
My answer would have been,
“Because of your constant insistence upon social systems which exalt those who rule, and denigrate any other, even or especially if they show evidence of intelligence and innovation. You cannot progress if you deal with anyone who has a new idea by beheading them or shooting them. And you especially cannot innovate if you cling to the belief that the State- the Emperor, the Empress, or the Chairman- are more important than the individual.”
That was a mistake Rome never made, even in the later Empire. It’s not a coincidence that Chinese armies were all conscripts, except for the commanding nobles appointed by the Emperor precisely because they were nobles. By comparison, even at the end, the Roman legions were composed mainly of volunteer enlistees at all ranks.
It’s true Rome ruled by terror. The old story that a man could travel the Appian Way from one end to the other with a pouch full of gold without being robbed was perfectly true for the period prior to the 4th Century AD. Because robbers, etc., knew that bothering travelers was a good way to end up captured and crucified by the nearest stationed legion.
But that was true for any traveler, not just Roman citizens. Similarly, killing travelers anywhere in the Empire, local internecine conflicts, etc., were likely to result in a legion arriving, rounding up everybody who even might be involved, and executing one out of every ten. As a warning to the rest to knock it off, pronto.
(This is the true meaning of “decimate”, BTW; to kill one-tenth of. Those who use it to mean utter destruction, like journalists, are demonstrating their ignorance of both history and proper grammar.)
The message was clear; “Fucking with Rome, even indirectly, is hazardous to your health”.
This was the true meaning of the Pax Romana. I would argue that it was less totalitarian than utilitarian. Unlike in China, most Roman rulers did not indulge in cruelty just for the sake of appearances. They left that to the Coliseum. Those who didn’t, i.e. Nero, Caligula, and etc., didn’t last long.
That’s the difference between a totalitarian empire and one that’s more-or-less “democratic”. The latter is somewhat self-correcting, and changes through innovation.
The former, the totalitarian one, never really does either one. And even suggesting it generally gets you an appointment with the headsman.
cheers
eon
People forget (or never realized) that Rome gave us the modern concept of “citizen“. You didn’t have to be born to that nation, you could adopt its ways and be recognized as a Citizen of Rome.
The difference between China and Rome was that the Praetorian Guard decided who would be Emperor. (The Latin word ‘dictator’ is used incorrectly today, and the use of Caesar only began with Gaius Iulius Caesar, but came to mean ’emperor’ .) If the choice the Praetorian Guard made did not work out, they literally bumped him off and installed someone else. Caligula was assassinated by them. He ruled less than four years. Marcus Aurelius, on the other hand, had 19 years and Antoninus Pius had 23.
In China, the ’emperor’ was dynastic in nature. It was not a dynastic succession in Rome.
We’re seeing people attempting to inflict dynastic succession on us in this country, which is exactly NOT what Washington or any of the others wanted. Examples: Kennedys, Clintons, Bush, Daley (Chicago) Cuomo (New York).
Yes, I consider shrillary’s attempt an example of dynastic succession. And it sucks, because she’s the greediest of a greedy bunch.
Really not that much of a difference. In China, the emperor may have been the Son of Heaven, but the court eunuchs and later the mandarins could and did send him to Heaven if it was expedient to do so. As in;
1. Emperor goes mad. (Frequent; the “life-extending elixirs” and “potency elixirs” the court physician/magicians came up with often contained things like mercury and belladonna. Several emperors were poisoned because they became literally mad as hatters.)
2. Emperor fails to produce a viable heir. (Replaced by second or third cousin with more “vitality” ASAP.)
3. Emperor engages in unwise “adventures”. (If Kublai Khan had been a Sung emperor rather than a Mongol conqueror, he wouldn’t have survived the first failed invasion of Japan; the court eunuchs would have seen to that.)
4. Emperor looks too closely at the royal tax and account records. (By far the single most common CoD among emperors. And Egyptian pharaohs, too, for that matter; see “Tutankhamen”.)
The eunuchs and later the mandarins were as much kingmakers as any Praetorian Guard detachment ever was. And unlike the later Byzantine rulers, the Chinese weren’t interested in hiring a “Varangian Guard”.
cheers
eon
The Day the Earth Stood Still is a great example of how Big Entertainment can screw up a sequel. In the first movie Aliens are concerned that Humanity has discovered Nuclear energy and will soon take it’s warlike ways to outer space.
In the sequel Aliens are concerned that humanity is polluting the Earth and is causing global warming therefore Earth must be destroyed. Why a race of Aliens give a hoot about a tiny backwater planet is never explained.
In the remake (one of the most effe’d-up “reimaginings” Hollywood ever did), Klatu (Keanu “I Am In Fact Made Entirely of Wood”Reeves) tells Professor Barnhard (John “Dead Parrot Sketch” Cleese) that if humans are allowed to continue existing, the Earth will no longer be livable. But eliminate the human race, and Earth will be available for colonization. By his people- but like him, they require major genetic modification to live in our environment. Which his robot (now revealed to be a nanite swarm) is busy dismantling.
In other words, very little of this movie makes much if any sense. I have an especial dislike of the lady scientist, who seems never to have graduated med school. Complains “we don’t have a sample of his blood, we don’t know what will help or hurt him”, after he was shot. There was a serious blood splash on the faceplate of her “moon suit”. Take. A. Sample. And. Analyze. It. Dumbass.
Ditto the lady SecDef. Gets multiple units trashed by ordering them to go CQB- with everything from Abrams to Paladins. at some point, the OIC general should have told higher, “either get this idiot out of here or relieve me of command; I am no longer going to permit my personnel to be killed by her incompetence.”
On one side, blithering idiots. On the other, an interstellar eco-Nazi.
The best thing about the movie was the DVD release that included a DVD of the original 1951, digitally remastered from the original uncut stdio 70mm master print. It’s the best complete version of the original I’ve ever seen.
The remake DVD makes a good coaster for your beverage of choice while watching the original. Other than that it has little to recommend it. It isn’t even bad enough to be good, like Plan 9 From Outer Space.
It’s just a waste of an hour and three-quarters.
clear ether
eon
I keep that Piper quote about the five men in my “ready” file for quotes. It’s a good’n.
I’m rather partial to David Weber and his Honor Harrington series. Give me a treecat any day as my personal back up. And, Honor does not suffer fools or progs gladly. She even has an M1911 .45 ACP as a favorite sidearm. The Lady knows what having the edge is all about…..
She turned out to be the best duelist in the empire, as well with that pistol. Seems to me she had two, handmade, because the weapon itself had been obsolete for centuries. Her ammo was also handmade, all contained in a boxed case. I believe that was mentioned when she insulted the senator in the Senate chamber. Killed his ass even when the coward cheated and shot her in the back.
P.S. Chris, I do appreciate the opening scroll, but no fanfare? Awww!
Speaking of Nazis, think about this for a moment. Edward VIII was crowned King of England, etc., in 1936 after his father George V died. Wallis Simpson, a divorced/remarried woman from Baltimore, had a public open affair with Edward. She was a Nazi sympathizer and he wasn’t far behind her. She had him so wound around her ankles that he insisted on marrying her. She divorced her 2nd husband to marry the King. (They did eventually meet Hitler in person. There is a photo of them shaking hands with him.)
Edward was told that if he wanted to marry her, he would have to abdicate the throne. So he did just that, in December 1936 (I’m summarizing.) and became the Duke of Windsor. His brother Albert assumed the throne as George VI.
The Windsors went to live in France, but during the War were sent to the Bahamas where he was the governor. This was done to keep them from causing trouble.
If, somehow, Edward had married Simpson and stayed on the throne (a morganatic marriage), considering that he was a Nazi sympathizer, how do you think the War would have gone?
You have to ask whose hand was in this?
Before you answer that, please understand that I don’t believe in coincidences.
I find it even more strange that the ‘feel good’ PC stuff is failing here and in the Eurozones and vigilantism is taking over. In Austria, the far-right candidate lost the election by a very small margin.
I don’t believe in coincidences. Period.
Chris, can we ladies have some Zed with or w/o shirt? Tah!
It must be noted that in the years prior to the Nazis moving militarily against their neighbors in Europe a great many notable people all over the world saw Hitler as the savior of Germany. He was even voted Time magazine’s man of the year at one point. Joseph Kennedy was a big fan.
The opinions of people towards Hitler before he showed his true colors really have no bearing on how they thought of him or the Nazis after the invasion of Poland. That would be like saying you have exactly the same opinion of Barrack Obama today as you had of him when he was an obscure Illinois state senator.
IIRC, Edward was still in favor of making peace with Hitler after the invasion of France (post Poland); British officers (including Churchill) were trying to figure out how to keep him in the dark about battle plans, knowing he and Wallis were buddy-buddy with several high ranking Nazis.
Correct. Also, Rudolf Hess’ seemingly bizarre one-way trip to Scotland in a Bf-110 was intended to land him at an airstrip at the Duke of Hamilton’s estate. (He got lost, ran out of gas, and had to bail out.)
The Duke of Hamilton was a close associate of… yes, the Duke of Windsor. So close that Churchill had his security people watching him to see who he was palling around with. Which may explain how Hess ended up in custody and in London so fast.
cheers
eon
Ironically, I do. Oh, it’s different in terms of what I thought he could actually get away with, but I always saw this. The key is whether you were paying attention. The folks who were pro-NAZI before the war simply weren’t paying attention, or were trying hard to ignore what they knew because some other element commanded their admiration, and they didn’t want something as simple as the facts to get in the way.
Well, so do I. I thought he was a gibbering leftwing dingbat then. Nothing I’ve seen since then has caused me to change my estimate of The Lightworker.
Or his facilitators.
clear ether
eon
Meaning, of course, that proper character assessment it the key to judging _any_candidate for any office, and why so many candidates make it their job to keep us in the dark for just that reason.
But my feelings of contempt and revulsion for B Hussein Obama really *HAVEN’T* changed since the 2004 Democratic convention. I have a fairly good built-in bogometer and it pegged the first time I ever heard him talk.
Hitler took advantage of the gullibility of people who saw his ability (groomed by his mentor Dietrick Eckhart) to pull Germany together out of the grinding inflation and financial mess of the Depression as the road to salvation.
What they didn’t see was the snake under the cover of it, waiting to strike. As GWB says, ‘the key is whether or not you were paying attention’. (BZ for that!) And most people weren’t. The lowest common denominator worked for Hitler and for that train spotting slacker who will soon be leaving the Oval Office to play lousy rounds of golf.
FBI read all Simpson’s mail going to Bahamas.
Edward VIII was quoted as saying that he wished Hitler had won the war so that Stalin could be defeated – not an exact quote on my part, but words to that effect.
“As if a million graveyards cried out, and were suddenly silenced!”
I finally caught up to the current comic! I started reading about two or three weeks ago, and these are golden! Keep up the good work, Mr. Muir!
“We’ll have to destroy them ship-to-ship. Get the SJWs to their fighters.”
SJWs to fight? More like “SJWs, call your lawyers and initiate all possible lawfare”.
Obfuscate, obfuscate, and keep trying to get him to dance to the music.
SJWs can be violent. Luckily, they hate guns so their tactics are melee at best.
“Jason, I see you don’t carry a gun. So I reckon you always hire it done.”
-Cole Thornton (John Wayne) to Bart Jason (Edward Asner) in El Dorado (1967).
They only dislike guns that aren’t in the hands of their “hired guns”.
clear ether
eon
i might steal this,hb.
Go right ahead. It was a tossup between this and “Hillary is as clumsy as she is stupid. General, prepare Black Lives Matter for a surface attack.” – but that scene didn’t turn out so well in the end.
And as above, it’s “H_B“, not “HB”; I’m a Human Being =D.
And here all along I thought it stood for Human Bean.
;-))
Chris, out of the park brother.
You know, I’ve read every book that Donald has written and watched every speech that I could find. I really don’t believe that his ego was involved in his decision to run. I honestly believe that the man is a patriot who loves this nation, knows it’s problems, and saw that he was in a position to do something about them.
Look at what this run might cost him… His reputation attacked, his political contacts necessary to his business success alienated, his name on the target list of every politician with a little bit of power…
Not just here, but worldwide.
If Ma Barker is elected, he knows that he will be attacked by every alphabet agency in the USA from the IRS to the TSA.
He had a lot to lose, personally, yet he decided to run anyway.
Good man. Patriot. We need him as President.
Agreement with everything you said except this: “I really don’t believe that his ego was involved in his decision to run.”
He chooses to run IN SPITE OF all of the costs and risks you mention, which he surely anticipated, and I attribute a very LARGE part of knowingly accepting them to his YUGE ego.
And that’s a good thing. The very same thing that we can hope will be a very powerful (if ancillary) motivator to continue to WIN (domestically, internationally, monetarily, culturally) when he is doing as the CEO of the USA. “Good man. Patriot. We need him as President.” Absofuckinglutely.
So Donny Boy has the electoral votes for the Republican side.
Bernout is getting shriller and shriller as Cankles shouts “Damn the FBI Investigation Torpedoes, Full Superdelegate Collecting Speed Ahead” and has the Green Party to fall back to.
The Libertarian Party has a pair of ex-Republicans as candidates.
The Farce is strong in this election season.
Well, Her Shrillness has another secret weapon. All the “protesters” from BLM, National Council of La Raza, etc.
They are now openly threatening to murder DT if he wins. Of course, they’re also openly threatening to murder anybody and everybody who doesn’t fill their entire bucket list of demands, too.
Remember, Hitler promised in 1932 that he would bring an end to the violence in the streets if he was appointed Reichskanzler. And once he was, the violence did abate slightly- he ordered his Brownshirts to concentrate on the Jews and Communists rather than just beating up and killing people more-or-less at random.
I’m waiting for Shrillary to make the same “promise”. Of course, BLM and La Raza are expecting a big payoff if she wins.
La Raza may get exactly what they want. Namely, Reconquista. See the novels Systemic Shock, Single Combat, and Wild Country by Dean Ing for how this might work.
BLM should remember what Ernst Rohm, Gregor Strasser, and etc. got on “The Night of the Long Knives”.
Shrillary is as heavily into Total Destruction and Revolutionary Vengeance, Seventies SDS/Weather Underground/McGovern style, as they are.
What she is absolutely not into is sharing power. With anybody.
Getting rid of the Southwest and all those effing “reactionaries”? OK by her.
Letting other people have even a voice in Her Utopia, never mind a veto over her Apotheosis? No. Effing.Way.
When dealing with a megalomaniac, even their allies have to know what the limits are.
clear ether
eon
But eon, dahlin’, shrillary doesn’t want Utopia. She wants Dystopia, that place where she gets to sit on the Cloud Throne and watch, up above it all while the rest of us are down here rolling around in the mud.
I think, instead, that her Cloud Throne should be deflated so that she lands in the mud and gets splashed with it.
Not to pick nits, mon soeur, but Utopia, as Sir Thomas described it, is exactly what she, and all progs, want. It is a nightmarish place where no one owns anything, not even the clothes on their backs, and everything is fodder for redistribution by the state, even children. It is Hillary’s dream, with her, as you say, on the Cloud Throne.
My bad, Mr. B. By ‘Utopia’, I meant the sterile world of Aldous Huxley, where children are started in petri dishes and morons are intentionally bred into existence. What I meant by Dystopia is the clean, shiny surface but underneath, it’s Soylent Green.
Or maybe we’re talking about the same thing, but from different angles.
So your suggesting that we should knock Elysium out of orbit pre-emptively?
Damned straight!
Wrong analogy. “Elysium” is US, with the entire 3rd world attempting to get in.
Someone knows and has proof of what happened the night VF died and the Benghazi murders. You can only keep patching so much before it cracks and falls apart. The fractures are already there, time to split them.
See how far they are willing to go, then take them down.
Based on the Clintons track record, anyone who knew what happened the night VF died probably joined him shortly thereafter. Suicide by rifle. From 500 yards. In the back of the head. Or something like that.
So true. The most dangerous existence in the world is “Close Associate of the Clintons.” As of several years ago the body count was 46 Oh, so convenient accidents/fatal illnesses/suicides/etc. How far can YOU stretch coincidence?
My Dad told me about this truth serum that was developed decades ago. It helped clear a few people who were up on murder and treason charges. One little problem with the stuff.
About six months after receiving the drug, the person was struck by a massive internal hemorrhage. Seems the drug caused the blood vessels to wear away from the inside out.
They stopped using it.
Be interesting to see if it would work on a few select people.
Make for an interesting election.
After all, what difference does the truth make after all this time.
There’s a very wide difference between Anarchy and Rebellion.
Sir,
You surpass yourself. Well said.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/5-reasons-trump-dominating-american-politics-16384
This is one of the best articles yet on why Trump is WINNING…very well written and logical…
1. PC
2. Immigration
3. Decline of the middle class
4. Rampant Globalism
5. Coarsening of the Political Culture.
ON POINT 100%…it makes me laugh when leftys call Trump a reality TV star…so WTF has President 4Putt been the last 8 years…hell, he’s spent more time on late nite TV and silly talk shows like “The View” than any President…hell, I bet he would love a TV gig when he leaves the White House…or be a commentator on MSNBC….
Great cartoon Chris…hope all goes well at home….waiting on this year’s fund raiser….in 3…..2….1…..
**snork**
You nailed it, Chris. 😀
I saw one of the Republican elites on TV trying to explain Trump to the unwashed masses. He said that Trump supporters believe everything that Donald says… In the past this same elite also said that the elderly only go to the doctor to socialize with other patients in the waiting room.
I know that Trump will not get everything done he says he will. If he just gets a major part of it done I’ll be happy.
As for his comment about the elderly? I hate going to the doctor. My parents did too. To quote my dad ” Those damn doctors are always finding something new that’s wrong with you that can’t be fixed easy.”
Doctors are a lot like the mechanics at a car dealeship — remove and replace with OEM parts. $$$
The biggest reason the left wants to disarm us is because they realize that the ratio of “indians” to “chiefs”always favors the “indians”.
But lacking arms does not preclude revolution; it merely makes it tougher. Sufficient numbers of sufficiently motivated peasants – even UNARMED peasants – can overthrow ANY government. As they said down in Chile, “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” The people united will never be defeated!
I had an idea for a chant during a demonstration. You have two groups. One group chants “We, the people” over and over in rhythm while another group chants “The people united will never be defeated!
I’ve figured out a way to do it antiphonally that should drive the message home. While one Group is chanting “We” the other group is chanting “The People”. While the 1st group is chanting “The People” the 2nd group is chanting “united”
When the 1st group starts back with “We, the people” again, the 2nd group finished the above “Shall never be defeated!”
It even works in Spanish (albeit with a somewhat different rhythm) with Group 1 chanting “Nosotros, El Pueblo” twice to every complete cycle of group 2 chanting “El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!”
Sitting Bull won.
Talked to a SAPD cop this morning who told me he would never obey orders to disarm the public. He also said that none of his colleagues would be part of such a detail, either.
In my book that’s a good thing. A VERY good thing!
Trump save free speech? You mean the guy who threatens to sue people who say mean things about him?
The unchallenged slur is one of the basic weapons in the progressive playbook, along with the lawsuit to stop things they don’t like, ranging from “community policing” to building power plants.
By telling them “prove it in front of a judge or get out your checkbook”, DT uses their own methods against them.
The Varda says “Use a greater force against itself”.
(IMHO, Battle Beyond The Stars was better than Episode IV and V put together.)
cheers
eon
Well it’s not like any of his dalliances have come out and said he has a short comings,,,
Now that in my book would be considered inappropriate for public consumption
First amendment refers to government, not slanders, libelers, and other liberal liars.
I have told someone who was bitching about Trump and how much she detests him as well as shrillary, that I do not care WHO she votes for. She can vote for herself. But I DO care that she gets off her butt and votes, IF ONLY for herself.
We need something besides panem et circenses.
Without reading the previous comments,
Excellent.
This hits directly on the evil empire.
Truth has taken out the Death Star of PC and disabled all similar evil empire weapons.
The American rebels, inclusive, have been striking back to restore good and empowerment for individuals and to make America Free once again so that it can once again be great.
The good shall spread and prevail. It always does when truth and proper righteousness prevails.
Those who do not join the effort must realize that the raft, lifeboat, and/or warship will reach a point where it will not go back due to important priorities and duties. There is a war going on, you know.
They are on their own to vote as their principles and beliefs demand.
Further to Petercat’s comment and my agreement upthread as to the risk Trump has knowingly assumed in elbowing and convincing his way to the nomination:
“His reputation attacked, his political contacts necessary to his business success alienated, his name on the target list of every politician with a little bit of power…not just here, but worldwide.”
To that let’s add that pompous pimple Beck, who has had his “show” suspended for giving his tacit on-air approval to some no-name twit writer calling for Trump’s “removal…very bad things”, essentially fomenting assassination to get some attention; him I understand, the world is full of anonymous wackjobs…but for Beck to give him national exposure and AGREEMENT to killing off the peoples’ choice because HE didn’t choose him?
Beck says he hates the Hillzabeast, that she’s the worst, but she’s not and do you know why? Because just like as someone said above that anyone with too much knowledge of or is a “close associate” of the Clintons is in grave and mortal danger, Beck would literally call for the head of someone who has called out his pompous pimple ass and has the backing of a huge tidal wave of support therefore making him irrelevant and pissing him off?
Beck might hate Hillary, but it’s a self-hate thing, because that little piece of shit IS Hillary.
He should be glad nobody cares about offing his slimy self…because he’s irrelevant, and nobody fucking cares. Hope his “show” and he are gone for good.
“some no-name twit writer”
Not really, has written many entertaining thrillers, and is quite successful at it.
Now the twit part, I’d have to concur in light of what he reportedly did, a big faux pas, or hopefully just a black op to expose Beck4sale, which might actually make sense.
Well said Chris.
This one goes into my ‘Toons with bite folder.
Bravo Zulu
I hope all is well with you and family.