At Amazon, Harry Turtledove, Guns of the South.
Friday, November 20, 2020
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipeligo
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1: An Experiment in Literary Investigation.
And also Volume 2 is available.
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Between Freedom and Communism
This is really essential and should be assigned widely in high school and college classes.
At the Epoch Times, "Election Fallout Reveals Battle Between Freedom and Communism: A choice that transcends the political right and left":
From the Editorial Board
— Epoch Times Opinion (@EpochOpinion) November 15, 2020
When the founders of @EpochTimes fled a #Communist regime to come to America, they never expected that this great nation would one day become the focal point of the battle between #Communism and #Freedom. https://t.co/x6matWenl0
When the founders of our newspaper fled a communist regime to come to America, they never expected that this great nation would one day become the focal point of the battle between communism and freedom.Many Americans believe communism is an abstract concept, something that only affects faraway nations, without realizing that it has already arrived at our doorstep.
Communism has spread in America under names such as socialism, progressivism, liberalism, neo-Marxism, and so on, in a slow process over decades of systematic subversion by first the Soviet Union, and now the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
This cumulative battle for the future of America—and with it, the rest of the world—is now coming to a head in the U.S. presidential election.
This is a conflict that transcends partisanship and party affiliation.
Belief in God has always been fundamental to America. The early colonists fled here so that they could practice their religion freely. This nation was founded on the belief that we are all created equal by God and endowed by the Creator with our rights. The U.S. motto is “In God we trust.”
Belief in God and the principles derived from that belief are the fundamental reasons why the United States can enjoy freedom, democracy, and prosperity, and why the United States has become the nation it is today.
In this great tradition, voting is a sacred duty in which each citizen may take responsibility for who governs. This year, a record number of Americans voted to choose their next leader.
We have since learned that this process has been subverted. Numerous credible allegations of voter fraud have emerged, pointing to a systematic effort to change the outcome of the election.
The far-left and the communist devil behind it—the same force that Karl Marx once described as haunting Europe—are using lies, fraud, and manipulation in an attempt to deprive the people of their rights and freedoms.
One of the two major U.S. parties, the Democratic Party, is no longer the political party it used to be. Over the decades, it has gradually been infiltrated by the same Marxist ideology that has created the most brutal and repressive communist regimes in history.
Communist ideology, including socialism and its associated ideas, is not a normal ideology. It is the ideology that has caused the unnatural deaths of at least 100 million people.
The communist ideology uses seemingly righteous concepts, such as “equality” and “political correctness,” to confuse people. Its ideology has infiltrated all fields in our society, including education, media, and art. It unscrupulously destroys everything that is traditional, including faith, religion, morality, culture, family, art, education, law, and so on, and leads people to fall into moral depravity.
This is the ideology of totalitarianism, one that drives once-thriving nations such as Venezuela into the abyss and that was able to destroy 5,000 years of culture in China, where people went from a belief in the divine to a devotion to the state.
It is the systematic undoing of all that is good that humankind stands for. It stands diametrically opposed to goodness, fairness, truth, and compassion.
This not only has undermined people’s spirits and their righteous faith in God, but has dragged the American people and all of mankind to the brink of danger.
A Choice Between Good and Evil This is a conflict that transcends party lines, a battle between whether we as Americans can stay true to our founding principles and follow God’s will, or whether we will be subjected to forces that seek to control and destroy our most fundamental rights.
This is not something we say lightly; because our newspaper’s founders lived through communist totalitarianism, they understand its destructive force.
As a media organization, we are independent and don’t take positions on political issues or candidates, but rather stand for truth and justice.
America has now come to the brink of falling into a communist abyss...
Keep reading.
Monday, November 16, 2020
Leftists Crushed at Failure of the 'Emerging Democratic Coalition' to Emerge
Radical leftists will never learn.
Sunday, November 15, 2020
With Trench Warfare Deepening, Parties Face Unsettled Electoral Map
This is good.
At NYT, "Voters delivered a convincing victory for Joe Biden, but a split decision for the two parties. Now Democrats and Republicans face perhaps the most up-for-grabs electoral landscape in a generation":
WASHINGTON — America’s two major parties had hoped the 2020 presidential election would render a decisive judgment on the country’s political trajectory. But after a race that broke records for voter turnout and campaign spending, neither Democrats nor Republicans have achieved a dominant upper hand. Instead, the election delivered a split decision, ousting President Trump but narrowing the Democratic majority in the House and perhaps preserving the Republican majority in the Senate. As Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepares to take office and preside over a closely divided government, leaders in both camps are acknowledging that voters seem to have issued not a mandate for the left or the right but a muddled plea to move on from Trump-style chaos. With 306 electoral college votes and the most popular votes of any presidential candidate in history, Mr. Biden attained a victory that was paramount to many Democrats, who saw a second Trump term as nothing less than a threat to democracy. Yet on the electoral landscape, both parties find themselves stretched thin and battling on new fronts, with their traditional strongholds increasingly under siege. Indeed, Democrats and Republicans are facing perhaps the most unsettled and up-for-grabs electoral map the country has seen in a generation, since the parties were still fighting over California in the late 1980s. This competition has denied either from being able to claim broad majorities and prompted a series of election cycles, which could be repeated in 2022, in which any gains Democrats make in the country’s booming cities and states are at least partly offset by growing Republican strength in rural areas. The election also represented a continuation of this trench warfare between two parties that are increasingly defined by their activist flanks and limited to only incremental advances. “We are more divided than any other time in my lifetime,” said Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee chair, whose first job in politics was on Richard M. Nixon’s 1968 campaign. “But usually when we’re at parity we’re bunched up in the middle — now we’ve got parity but with extreme polarity.” Mr. Biden and the Democrats viewed this election as an opportunity to deliver a crushing repudiation to Republicans and the movement known as Trumpism, while Mr. Trump and his allies saw the chance to cement a durable governing coalition led by the far right...
RTWT.
Thursday, November 12, 2020
'My Digital Landscape'
I'm shaking my head.
Over at Legal Insurrection, blogger Leslie Eastman is upset with the mainstream media. See, "My digital landscape is changing post election."
What, is she the right-blogger version of Rip Van Winkle, just waking up after four years and sees she doesn't like the leftist press? Pfft.
I changed my "digital landscape" years ago, and especially in 2016 when Trump won. And now she's mad at Fox News? I rarely watch it. Bret Baer drives me crazy. Neil Cavuto's a clown. They booted Shepard Smith a while back, and that barely made any difference in the leftist drift at the network.
She along with millions of other right-wing voters are mad at Fox News and any outlets that don't parrot the MAGA line. So, they're bellowing about how they're never going to watch Fox News again! (*Eye-roll*)
Look, I've said it a million times: Know your enemy. If conservatives further segregate themselves in an information bubble it will only exacerbate existing divides. We'll keep drifting toward two nations, and political violence will become more and more acceptable. A lot of folks don't care, okay? Then quit blogging and fighting about it all the time, because it's useless. Just pack up now to Idaho. Get your supplies, provisions, and ammo. Hunker down and wait for the new millennium.
I'm not doing that. Not yet. I'll worry about moving to the hinterland when I retire.
I read and blog mainstream articles all the time. I actually like reading the L.A. Times and the N.Y. Times. If you're open minded, there's lots of cool stuff. Here's a good piece on Dave Grohl keeping it real during the pandemic, "Dave Grohl, 10-Year-Old Nandi Bushell and One Very Epic Drum Battle."
You didn’t need to know every note of Nirvana’s angst-rock classic “In Bloom” to marvel at the spectacle of a little girl drumming along to the song in perfect synchronization last November, her face scrawled over with joy and passion.
The internet is an open playing field for regular people performing impressive feats, and over a couple of years, Nandi Bushell, a resident of Ipswich, England, had attracted a solid audience by expressively covering famous songs by a genre-diverse range of artists including the White Stripes, Billie Eilish and Anderson .Paak. Sometimes her father, John, and brother, Thomas, accompanied her, but Bushell was the star, combining technical virtuosity with bright-eyed showmanship (and some enthusiastic yelling). The sight of Bushell wailing away immediately impressed Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer who played “In Bloom” on the band’s 1991 breakthrough album, “Nevermind.” Grohl is not a social media user, and he only learned about the viral clip when the album’s producer, Butch Vig, sent it to him. “I watched it in amazement, not only because she was nailing all of the parts, but the way that she would scream when she did her drum rolls,” Grohl said in a recent video interview. “There’s something about seeing the joy and energy of a kid in love with an instrument. She just seemed like a force of nature.”*****
Not everything's politics. Leftist take to politics in place of religion. Conservatives need to avoid that like the plague. Just read widely, fitting your tastes. Watch Newsmax on YouTube, where streaming is no charge.
And everybody should be reading Instapundit daily. I should be reading over there more often, frankly, as well as AoSHQ. And don't quit Fox. I mean, don't quit Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. They're great. If it wasn't for them, there'd be absolutely no conservative programming on prime-time network television in this country. If you don't support them, you're hibernating. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. Sheesh, just flip the channel and watch something else if you can't stand Martha MacCallum.
And everybody's saying they're quitting Twitter to go to Parler? Why? I mean, what's so great about it? And Gab? Great place for neo-Nazis to gather, but not for me.
Besides, nobodies over there anyway. All the mainstream journalists are on Twitter. I follow them. (A lot of them.) Not because I like them, but because they might have some information I need. Frankly, I hate them, but they're useful. It's transactional. Don't get emotional about these things. If I'm booted off Twitter, then I won't use a short-message service. And Facebook? It's a lost cause. I quit using it the day after Trump won in 2016. I couldn't take it anymore. It was HATE, HATE, HATE nonstop. I can do without. I'm starting to post links to Facebook again, for the hell of it. But I don't linger. I don't read the comments. Fuck 'em, and I'm talking about people on both sides who act like spoiled children. It's pathetic and ridiculous. People need to grow up and get a grip. Don't transmogrify into that which you hate.
I set my Twitter page to private (send a follower request there, if you want to see my tweets). And I took my personal information off my Blogger profile. I'm still employed at my college, and after the last 12 years of blogging, and tweeting, and teaching my college classes, I've decided to finally go incognito a bit. They will try to cancel you. Leftists will come after you at your place of employment. Far-left cadres on the job will undermine you and try to get you fired. I'm a tenure professor, and I still have to take all these precautions. I should've started blogging under a pseudonym in 2006, but I was stupid. I thought I'd be some be blog professor and build some scholarly readership, or some bullshit. Nobody cares about that. It's all political warfare all the time. Every institution of American life is infected with critical race theory ideology and you need to protect your family. California's going to decriminalize mushrooms. Don't get me wrong, I'm up for a good psilocybin trip just like the next guy, but what about the children?!! Well, leftists don't care about your kids. They're out to destroy the nuclear family and they're doing a bang-up job of it. Get out of California while you still can.
California's a beautiful but bad state. I'm stuck here until I retire, so I'm just gonna chill and not get steamed up about it.
Anyway, read and watch what you want. Don't let folks on either side dictate your choices, and if they do, fuck 'em.
More later...
'But as someone pointed out earlier, with AOC being blamed, justifiably, by many Democrats for her party’s poor performance, she has to change the subject. And changing the subject from abject failures, to internal enemies, is also a classic part of leftism in action...'
"B--, b--, but, ... they didn't run any Facebook ads! Its' campaign malpractice!"
Heh, he's right. Changing the subject.
It's Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "LISTS AND PUNISHMENTS ARE THE WHOLE POINT OF BEING A LEFTIST; THE REST IS JUST WINDOW-DRESSING: AOC & Co.’s loathsome plan to keep lists of pro-Trumpies."
The Most Extensive Psychological Warfare Operation in History
Roosh:
You're about to face the most extensive psychological warfare operation in history. Every controlled institution in the world, many thousands of them, will present Biden as President of the United States. Don't let them demoralize you or take away the truth you know.
— Roosh (@rooshv) November 7, 2020
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Megan Kelley: 'Pennsylvania is my favorite challenge' (VIDEO)
This video is incredible.
She's not about to set unrealistic expectations, and I agree that a lot of the challenges are long shots, but keep listening to the part about Joe Biden and his hilarious cluelessness and his ridiculously laughable calls for "unity."
At Newmax, which should be one of your main information pickup stations starting now.
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Fighting Election Results, Trump Employs a New Weapon: The Government
I know most Trump supporters hate the New York Times, but if you want to beat your enemy, you need to know him. And sometimes the Old Gray Lady serves it up for us on a platter.
I love this piece:
President Trump has been marshaling his administration and pressuring his Republican allies into acting as if the election outcome was still uncertain, even as the rest of the world has increasingly moved to accept President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.https://t.co/j7XzTa3VK5
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — President Trump, facing the prospect of leaving the White House in defeat in just 70 days, is harnessing the power of the federal government to resist the results of an election that he lost, something that no sitting president has done in American history.
In the latest sign of defiance, the president’s senior cabinet secretary fueled concerns on Tuesday that Mr. Trump would resist handing over power to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. after legal challenges to the vote. “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.
Mr. Trump’s attorney general has at the same time authorized investigations into supposed vote fraud, his general services administrator has refused to give Mr. Biden’s team access to transition offices and resources guaranteed under law and the White House is preparing a budget for next year as if Mr. Trump will be around to present it.
The president has also embarked on a shake-up of his administration, firing Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper as well as the heads of three other agencies while installing loyalists in key positions at the National Security Agency and the Pentagon. Allies expect more to come, including the possible dismissals of the directors of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.
But the rest of the world increasingly moved to accept Mr. Biden’s victory and prepared to work with him despite Mr. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the results. Speaking with journalists, Mr. Biden called the president’s actions since Election Day “an embarrassment” that will not serve him well in the long run. “How can I say this tactfully?” Mr. Biden said. “It will not help the president’s legacy.”
The standoff left the United States in the position of the kind of country whose weak democratic processes it often criticizes. Rather than congratulating Mr. Biden and inviting him to the White House, as his predecessors traditionally have done after an election changed party control, Mr. Trump has been marshaling his administration and pressuring his Republican allies into acting as if the outcome were still uncertain, either out of faint hope of actually overturning the results or at least creating a narrative to explain his loss.
The president’s efforts to discredit with false claims both the election results and the incoming Biden administration is in many ways the culmination of four years of stocking the government with pliant appointees while undermining the credibility of other institutions in American life, including intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities, the news media, technology companies, the federal government more broadly and now election officials in states across four time zones.
Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has tried to condition much of the American public not to believe anyone other than him, with evident success. Although the evidence shows there was no widespread conspiracy to steal the election in multiple states that Mr. Trump has invented, at least one poll showed that many supporters accept his claims. Seventy percent of Republicans surveyed by Politico and Morning Consult said they did not believe the election was free and fair.
“What we have seen in the last week from the president more closely resembles the tactics of the kind of authoritarian leaders we follow,” said Michael J. Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that tracks democracy around the world. “I never would have imagined seeing something like this in America.”
Mr. Abramowitz doubted there was much danger of Mr. Trump overturning the election. “But by convincing a large part of the population that there was widespread fraud, he is seeding a myth that could endure for years and contribute to an erosion of public confidence in our electoral system,” he said.
Mr. Biden has proceeded without waiting for Mr. Trump’s concession and spoke on Tuesday with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Ireland.
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