Month: March 2019

Lazy Sunday VI: Progressivism, Part II

The Portly Politico68 Comments

Last week’s Lazy Sunday shared four of my pieces about the excesses and abuses of Leftist progressivism.  This week, I’m reheating three TPP classics for your Sunday morning consumption.  Enjoy!

1.) “Logic Breakdown and the Kavanaugh Hearings” – the meltdown of the Left was on full display during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.  Here you had a straight-as-an-arrow judge who had been through multiple confirmations without incident.  What most frustrated me about the Kavanaugh hearings was how women began reasoning this way:  “because something bad happened to me, Kavanaugh must have done something to Dr. Blasey-Ford.”  How can we have the presumption of innocence—and rational, impartial weighing of evidence—if people make such absurd, illogical leaps in their “reasoning”?

2.) “Sanctimonious Leftism” – this piece was about a smarmy letter from Rich Harwood of the Harwood Institute about how disgraced Virginia Governor Ralph Northam can redeem himself.  It basically boils down to a lot of “feel-good crap,” as my mom would say.  Who cares what Northam did at a party thirty-plus years ago?  His heinous views on post-birth infanticide should be ring way more alarm bells.  The black-face/Klan hood incident is a distraction, but it’s one that makes the Left feel virtuous and smug about its own perceived righteousness.  Remember, for the Left, killing babies is good, but wearing a costume is bad.

3.) “Academic Leftism’s Sour Grapes” – this piece detailed a disturbing, outright pro-socialist piece from a college professor, in which the prof urged his fellow academic socialists to abandon the academy and to get into the government—as if they don’t already dominate both.  The Left must have total domination of every aspect of society, as well as the levers of power in the government.  If they lose the government, they lose control, even if they still dominate in the media, academia, the culture, etc.

So there’s your weekly dose of warmed over Leftist insanity.  More to come (assuming my Internet gets fixed in a timely fashion).

Happy Sunday!

–TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Posts

Frontier Still Sucks

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Three weeks ago, I lost Internet access at home.  Two weeks ago, it was restored, after several angry phone calls and tardy technicians.

Well, Frontier’s gross incompetence strikes again.  I arrived home last night—after a very long week—to find my modem displaying the tell-tale, solid red “squiggly” line of death.  So here I am, back at school, churning out some blog posts before afternoon drama rehearsal, trying to drink from the sweet teet of Internet access while I can.

Fortunately, my scheduled appointment is Tuesday afternoon, so I won’t have to wait an entire week this time.  Unfortunately, Frontier’s track record in this regard is terrible.

I hand-wrote a four-page letter and taped it to the door of my town’s local Frontier office (it’s not so much an office as it is the server substation where the technicians gather during the week), pleading for their assistance.

Last time I lost my connection because someone unplugged the wrong jump cable there.  That error was compounded when the technical support folks online reconfigured my modem remotely.  After the on-site technician fixed the problem, the modem self-updated, and I lost connectivity again (about ten minutes after he left).  He came back, and the modem worked beautifully for two weeks.

I suspect the modem has somehow updated back to the incorrect configuration.  I imagine it will take them twenty minutes—tops—to fix the issue.  But it’s going to mean sitting around anxiously for four hours on Tuesday, hoping against hope that this time they’ll send someone on time.

Those Spectrum trucks can’t get to Lamar fast enough.

The Desperate Search for Meaning, Part II

The Portly Politico6 Comments

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece about a New Age healer involved in a scam selling “healing crystals” and the like, and the women she employed.  Those women worked for this con artist with slavish devotion.  It was chilling how this Instagram thot used spirtualistic gobbledygook to influence those around her.

A similar example of women espousing dangerous ideas floated across my transom earlier this week.  Super controversial blog Chateau Heartiste shared a Tweet from James Woods.  Woods’s tweet features a video of two loons involved in some kind of energy channeling activity.  The older lady is delivering a discourse on overpopulation, telling women that having children is “not a good way” because it’s bad for the environment.  She also claims that the Earth can only support about one billion people (despite evidence to the contrary—we’re doing well enough with seven billion).

Next to the old crone is a younger women, who periodically toots—watch the video, and you’ll see how accurate that verb is—“That’s true!”  It’s creepy in that kind of unsettling, horror movie kind of way, like a scene where a disembodied child’s voice sings a nursery rhyme.

What’s even creepier is the death-centric, anti-life ideology that’s being espoused here.  Gavin McInnes played another clip from this New Age witch on a recent podcast, and explained that the women’s arm motions are a form of channeling, which these women believe pulls cancerous energy strands from their bodies.

My issue isn’t the alternative medicine (the old lady also calls Western medicine bad):  I’m open to all sorts of novel approaches to handling physical and mental illnesses, as I’m intellectually humble enough to know there are many things we still don’t understand.

Rather, my concern is that more and more women are falling for some seriously deadly notions.  “Don’t have children, it’s bad for the environment” inevitably leads to “let’s import Third World peasant cultures to keep Social Security solvent.”  It also deprives women of children.

I’m all for women having careers and being treated fairly in the workplace, etc., but let’s face it:  most women, whether they admit it or not, want to have children.  Children are a huge source of satisfaction and delight for women.  For every high-performing, Type-A go-getter like Nikki Haley (who does have children) or Angela Merkel (who does not), you probably have a thousand women who are (or would be) happiest raising children.

But what do I know?  I’m just a man.

TBT: Gig Day!

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Today kicks off my school’s big annual Fine Arts Festival.  It’s a weekend of students showcasing their talents in dance, music, drama, and the visual arts, and it’s always a fun (and hectic) time.  Tonight is our big Spring Concert, which is the biggest concert in our program.  Based on what we have programmed, it’s going to be bonkers—in the best possible way.  I love over-the-top, melodramatic rockin’, and this concert will be dripping with it.

In honor of that—and because I’m exceptionally busy—today’s #TBT features the first throwback to a post on the WordPress version of this blog.  That post is “Gig Day!”

“Gig Day!” details my elaborate pre-show rituals, which really aren’t all that elaborate or ritualistic.  I mainly practice at the last minute, take inventory of my gear, and shower.  But, hey, that’s what makes the world go round.

I’ve been gigging much more this year, as I’ve dubbed 2019 “The Year of the Panther.”  It’s been fun (and mildly lucrative).

If you’d like to hear more of my music, you can visit www.tjcookmusic.com, or check me out on Spotify.  I’m also on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, CD Baby, Bandcamp, etc.

Rock on!

–TPP

Hungarian Border Wall is 100% Effective

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Pundit Dick Morris has a short piece on his website, DickMorris.com, about the Hungarian border fence.  It’s a quick read, but here are the key excerpts:

Along its 109-mile border with Serbia, Hungary has built a 13-foot-high fence featuring concertina wire (barbed wire in circles). It took six months to build (July-December of 2015) and cost $106 million. It was built by contractors and 900 Hungarian soldiers.

The fence consists of three rows of razor wire with a sturdier 11.5-foot-tall barrier inside….

And the Hungarian fence works! Before the barrier was built, in September of 2015, 138,396 migrants entered Hungary over the Serbian border. Within the first two weeks of November, the average daily flow had dropped to only 15 people.

Hungary and its populist-nationalist leader, President Viktor Orban, have faced a great deal of backlash and scorn from the progressive, bureaucratic autocrats of the European Union for their border control and immigration measures.  But Hungary is intent on keeping itself culturally Hungarian—it cannot effectively absorb the millions of potential migrants that began pouring into Europe from Syria and North Africa a few years ago.

President Orban is often cast as some latter-day Hitler, but he’s merely doing his job:  he’s putting the people of Hungary and their interests first, behind the interests of foreign vagabonds.

While researching this post, I learned that the European People’s Party—an umbrella party of “center-right” parties (as many outlets described it) running in the European Parliament’s elections this May—is barring Orban’s Fidesz Party from participating.  Apparently, part of their concern is that Orban’s Fidesz Party has posted humorous ads depicting George Soros and Jean-Claude Juncker (the Leftist super-villain billionaire and the President of the European Commission, respectively), suggesting the two are in cahoots to control Europe.

Well… aren’t they?  Isn’t the “center-right” European People’s Party supposed to represent a challenge to the Eurocrats (if anyone knows, I’m only asking semi-rhetorically)?

Two takeaways:

1.) Leave Viktor Orban alone.  He’s helped protect his country at a time when other European nations turn blind-eyes to Muslim rape gangs.

2.) The original point of this post:  President Trump can follow the Hungarian model and build an effective wall on the cheap.  Granted, we have more than 109 miles, but copy-paste that approach along our long border with Mexico, and could get the job done quickly and efficiently.

Open borders and progressive politics are the real dangers to liberty and prosperity, not an unabashed nationalist in Central Europe—or one in the United States.  Build the Wall, Drain the Swamp, and Leave the European Union!

Avenatti Arrested

The Portly Politico1 Comment

President Trump was vindicated Friday.  Yesterday, attorney Michael Avenatti—the attorney who represented porn star Stormy Daniels, making him a star among Democratic sycophants—was arrested on charges of extortion and fraud, and could face fifty years in prison.

I wrote yesterday that the end of the Mueller probe, with its lack of any charges of collusion or obstruction of justice against Trump, felt like the 2016 Election, Part II.  That sense of victory—and intense satisfaction—deepened with Avenatti’s arrest.

Here is a brief excerpt from that National Review breaking news piece linked above:

Avenatti worked “to extract more than $20 million in payments from a publicly traded company by threatening to use his ability to garner publicity to inflict substantial financial and reputational harm on the company if his demands were not met,” according to SDNY prosecutors. Those threats, which were made over the phone and in-person meetings with Nike’s attorneys, were recorded.

“A suit and tie does not mask that fact that, at its core, this was an old-fashioned shake down,” U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman said when announcing the charges Monday.

Democrats were trumpeting Avenatti as a presidential contender in 2020.  He began to believe the hype before deciding not to run (he probably realized he, unlike the president, actually had committed some heinous misdeeds).

Progressives make a huge deal about how they’re guardians of “principle” and “decorum” in the “Age of Trump,” yet they cling to whatever crass personality says mean things about the president the loudest.  They don’t even believe their own tripe.  Political victory is all that matters—by any means necessary.

That’s why substance-less hacks like Avenatti—or low-IQ race-baiters like “Auntie” Maxine Waters—are such darlings to the Left.  They promise to “impeach 45” and to uncover misdeeds, so they can do whatever they want (like encourage their supporters to commit violence against conservatives, as Congresswoman Waters did).

Trump did nothing wrong.  Avenatti tried to use his unearned media clout to shake-down a publicly-traded company for his own personal gain.

I fully expect the Dems will quickly throw away Avenatti now that he is no longer useful to their cause.  There’s a lesson there for us all:  revolutions eat their own.  But they’ll keep fabricating charges against President Trump.

Mueller Probe Complete, Trump Vindicated

The Portly Politico6 Comments

The long national nightmare is overThe long national nightmare is over—the Mueller probe/expensive government boondoggle/politically-motivated, Deep State witch hunt is finally complete, and President Trump is in the clear:  there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Now that the world finally knows what we all suspected for the past two years, the Left is in complete meltdown mode.  The mental gymnastics to which they’re resorting is humorous, but sad.  A key lesson to remember is that what the Left can’t achieve politically or socially, it will achieve through the courts (or violence).

For two years, the Left assumed that their inside man, Robert Mueller, and the rest of the Clintonian, globalist Deep State would produce (or, if need be, fabricate) the “evidence” needed to oust a duly-elected President of the United States.

Now, they’re magic wand has turned into a limp stick, incapable of conjuring up the fabled “collusion” the Left dreamed about for two long years.

President Trump emerges victorious.  It’s a huge blow to the Deep State, and almost like Part II of the 2016 election:  an outside figure, facing enormous odds and an entire media-government-business establishment arrayed against him, has won a hard-fought battle, even with the deck stacked against him.

There are still investigations in New York involving the perfidious and mendacious Michael Cohen, but those will, most likely, similarly yield nothing but bitter fruit for the Left—and more vindication for Trump.

In the meantime, it’s a great day to be on the Trumpian Right.  MAGA MAGA MAGA!

–TPP

P.S.—Here’s a great video c/o my younger brother:

Lazy Sunday V: Progressivism, Part I

The Portly Politico70 Comments

A number of my posts diagnose and analyze the impulses underpinning modern progressive Leftism.  This week’s Lazy Sunday will look back at some of those posts; stay tuned for Part II next Sunday.

One thing I’ve learned from studying Leftism is that (to paraphrase Nietzsche) if you stare into the abyss too long, the abyss stares back.  It becomes remarkably easy to adopt, without even realizing it, their tactics and hatred.  I imagine it’s like studying demonology:  what starts out as an attempt to learn the Enemy’s tactics can easily turn into something more sinister.

With that warning, it’s important to understand how the Left operates, and why it’s been able to win for so long.  Only by doing so can we begin to fight back effectively.

As such, here are some posts on progressive Leftism for Lazy Sunday V:

1.) “Progressivism and Political Violence” – this post was one of my first exploring the Left’s predilection for street-level violence (and, more wickedly, the use of official state violence) to achieve its ends.  My prediction was that, should the Left use nearly total political control (including the courts), it would not hesitate to resort more extensively to street thuggery, doxxing, and other nefarious methods to disrupt the lives of conservatives.  If you just read one essay this lazy Sunday, read “Progressivism and Political Violence.”

2.) “Progressivism and Political Violence II: Candace Owens and the Deficiency of Decorum” – a follow-up to “Progressivism and Political Violence,” this essay explores the idea of “decorum,” which the Establishment Right has used as an excuse to “fight” the Left with both hands tied behind its back.  My contention here is that these traditional restraints are breaking down, and we have to be willing to fight back, tooth and nail, if necessary.  They want us destroyed simply because we want to pursue our own way of life, and don’t unabashedly embrace theirs; we just want to be left alone.  Unfortunately, the Left won’t let us.

3.) “Secession Saturday” – speaking of the Left’s desire to destroy us, I’m increasingly reading commentators discuss the possibility of “peaceful separation.”  This post explores that idea (briefly) in the context of an essay from American Greatness by Christopher Roach.  Roach argued that, even if a peaceful separation of progressive Leftists and traditional conservatives is possible, the totalitarian Left would never allow it.  Case in point…

4.) “Totalitarian Leftism Strikes Back” – even science-fiction writing can’t catch a break.  Everything must be dominated by the Left, even—especially—culture.  The Left spent most of the twentieth century marching through the institutions of the West, taking control of the academy, the arts, entertainment, churches, etc., so that even when it lacks political power, it always dominates in the culture.

These posts are just the tip of the iceberg.  Stay tuned next Sunday for Part II.

Other Lazy Sunday Posts:

Out of Control Feds

The Portly Politico1 Comment

A benefit of writing this little blog is that I read (and, usually, skim) a great deal of material from all over the web, and come away knowing more than I otherwise would.  My hope is to take some of the flotsam and jetsam I come across and condense and give context to it.

Such was the situation with Jim Treacher, the pseudonym of Sean Medlock.  Treacher/Medlock is a lukewarm Never Trumper (from what I can gather) who writes for PJ Media.  Treacher wrote a piece earlier in the week about “conservative” website The Bulwark, which is unhinged neocon Bill Kristol‘s new pet project since The Weekly Standard was unceremoniously shuttered a few months ago.

That piece, “In What Sense is The Bulwark Conserving Conservatism,” is not the point of this post, but it is a disturbing read.  Treacher examines the self-righteous scribblings of Molly Jong-Fast, who covered CPAC for The Bulwark.  CPAC is the major event in conservative activism, and every year generates plenty of controversy between the warring factions of Conservatism, Inc.  Jong-Fast (hyphenated names make my skin crawl) basically spent the entire conference shuddering about how “anti-choice” the conference was, and making jokes about a group of conservatives wanting to limit the size and scope of the federal government.

What did you expect, baby?  CPAC isn’t a meeting of the D.C. Workers’ Soviet.  Yeesh.  Read the piece to get the full flavor for this foolishness.  It proves the claims from Dissident Right figures that modern “conservatism” doesn’t conserve anything, and yesterday’s Leftist utopia is today’s “conservative principle.”

Tough words to type, but in the case of Kristol and his ilk, terribly true.  Regardless, in the piece Treacher mentions in passing being struck by a State Department vehicle in 2010, which prevented his attendance at CPAC.

That took me down a frightening rabbit hole:  a State Department vehicle struck Treacher, who was in the crosswalk at the time.  The State Department agent driving the vehicle, Mike McGuinn, did not apologize to Treacher; indeed, Treacher was issued a ticket for jaywalking—while in his hospital bed!

Some key excerpts from The Daily Caller‘s piece about the incident:

An agent in the vehicle, Mike McGuinn, did not identify himself to Medlock at the scene, or apologize for running him down. Indeed, Washington, D.C., police drove to a local emergency room to serve Medlock with a jaywalking citation as he lay prostrate in a hospital bed, while a man who identified himself as “special agent” stood by watching and taking notes….

At the hospital, DC police officer John Muniz arrived to issue Medlock a $20 jaywalking ticket. Medlock was lying sedated on a gurney, so Muniz delivered the ticket to a Daily Caller colleague, who was at the hospital with Medlock. He looked embarrassed as he did so. Behind him stood a man dressed in a dark suit who identified himself as a “special agent.” He said nothing but wrote in a notebook.

Curiously, the ticket says that Medlock was struck at an intersection four blocks from where the accident actually took place. And it claims that Medlock was walking diagonally across the intersection at the time. In one of his strikingly short conversations with the Daily Caller, agent Mike McGuinn acknowledged that Medlock was not jaywalking at all, but walking “outside the crosswalk when the incident occurred.”

The question is: Did the federal agent driving the SUV, faced with potential liabilities from the accident, encourage local police to issue some sort – any sort – of citation to Medlock, to establish his culpability?

Three years later, Treacher wrote a piece for The Daily Caller detailing the State Department’s practice of hiring law enforcement personnel with checkered pasts.

Here we have a federal bureaucracy utterly indifferent to the lives of the citizens it ostensibly serves.  In Treacher’s case, I can’t tell if it’s malignant indifference, or rank incompetence.  Bureaucracies of all stripes try to avoid liability and controversy—they exist to protect and expand themselves, after all—but only the federal government could get away with running someone down in a crosswalk, ticketing that person, and never owning up to its mistake.

I wrote yesterday about the presence of Deep State, anti-Trump actors in the State Department, and of their collusion with the Obama administration’s Department of Justice.  If they have the gall to attempt the takedown of a duly-elected President, then imagine their contempt and disregard for us.

Now that the Mueller probe has ended (I think that’s the takeaway from the promise that there would be no more indictments), Deep State perfidy will only grow more sinister.  Gird your loins, President Trump.