Open Thread, Sunday 23 June 2013

Posted on June 23, 2013 by GruntOfMonteCristo

a.baa-koala-to
NSA Koala says “We’re all ears, America.”

About GruntOfMonteCristo

Fearless and Devout Catholic Christian First, Loving Husband and Father Second, Pissed-Off Patriot Third, Rocket Engineer Dork Last.
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51 Responses to Open Thread, Sunday 23 June 2013

  2. solaratov says:
    June 23, 2013 at 7:26 am

    Because it’s there……….

    👿

    Reply
  3. solaratov says:
    June 23, 2013 at 7:39 am

    On Conformity, Death and Double Standards
    Derek Hunter | Jun 23, 2013

    A 33-year-old man died this week in a fiery car crash in the early morning hours in Los Angeles. A tragedy, as it is when anyone dies before their time. But this man’s name was Michael Hastings, and his death set off a week of media praise and adulation about his all-too-short life that is telling in more ways than anything the subject of it ever exposed.

    Hastings didn’t cure cancer, he didn’t invent anything that makes life better, he wrote words. Michael Hastings was a journalist. And if there is one thing journalists love more than anything else it’s heaping praise, especially posthumously, on other journalists.

    It’s a vanity rarely seen outside of journalism (the exception being Hollywood), when someone dies they are praised in a way most of the praisers would like to eventually be praised themselves. It’s a sick sort of preemptive self-obituary for the narcissistic class.

    I must state here that this is in no way an attack on Michael Hastings, a man I didn’t know and whose work I only vaguely realized I was familiar with after reading of his death. Nor is it an attack on his family or friends who mourn his passing. It’s no one’s business how people cope with a loved one’s loss and I have empathy for the hell they’re going through now.

    But I’ve gone through this before, losing a friend long before his time, and I’m struck by the dissimilarity in how many of these same people, and many in this same profession, struck a decidedly converse tone then compared to now.

    My friend’s name was Andrew Breitbart, and while he was a decade older than Hastings, his death was no more sudden and no less tragic. But the reaction to it was dramatically different because Andrew committed the ultimate sin today’s dominant media culture – he refused to conform.

    Calling it liberal media bias is too easy, and too small. For all their talk of “rebels” and “speaking truth to power,” the one thing the media culture values more than anything is conformity. Not Conformity of clothes, of hairstyles, tattoos or anything superficial, but the most dangerous and damaging type – conformity of thought.

    Not to belittle the work of Hastings, but the thing most cited about him by those marking his passing this week is that he wrote a story that “brought down” a General. He wrote a story for Rolling Stone that led to the resignation of General Stanley McCrystal, the then commanding General of allied forces in Afghanistan. It was a big story at the time, hyped by the media as a massive scoop, but most people would be hard-pressed to tell you any of the details even if you offered them a lot of money to do it.

    When Andrew died, not only did he leave behind a wife and four young children, he left behind an empire in the making and a revolution still evolving. He brought to fruition what Matt Drudge started and the bloggers who debunked the CBS News fraud of the forged George W. Bush National Guard documents furthered – he made Internet journalism, citizen journalism, real.

    Andrew Breitbart saw the media conformity of thought and the suppression of information that accompanied it and gave it the finger. Hastings have been called “fearless” by many, and maybe in some way he was, but he didn’t buck the media majority group-think, he fed it. Andrew built his own megaphone and shared it with others who’d heard their voices and stories muffled by the uniformity of what those who decided what constituted “news” wanted.

    Without the work of Michael Hastings, Stanley McCrystal may still be in charge in Afghanistan, or he may have retired or been forced to resign eventually anyway. Whatever the alternate reality would be, it wouldn’t be all that different than it is now.

    Without Andrew Breitbart, ACORN would still be enabling criminal activity because the investigation by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles would’ve been just a series of videos in a cobwebbed corner of the Internet. We would be unaware of the multi-billion dollar fraud that is Pigford. A perverted Congressman from New York would still be tweeting only God knows what to women across the country on our dime. Most importantly, countless stories of abuse, corruption and lies would have gone unnoticed simply because they didn’t conform with the desires of the self-appointed gatekeepers of what matters.

    Andrew Breitbart broke the mental monopoly that was news, he forced the door open and held it so others could come through too. For empowering untold numbers of individuals, his death was greeted with glee from the stalwarts of the old way.

    Matt Taibbi, a despicable waste of human flesh, wrote a glowing memorial of Hastings the day after news of his death broke. It was filled with praise for a man he admits he didn’t know well, but that didn’t stop him from writing, “For him it was all about getting the story, and at the terribly young age of 33 he was obviously already a master at that.”

    Taibbi was a fan of Hastings because he agreed with Hastings. Not as a result of anything Hastings wrote, but in the concept before it was written. They were of the Left. When leftists “speak truth to power” it’s because they weren’t being “Left enough.”

    On the other hand, Taibbi published a piece at 3:10 pm the day Andrew Breitbart died, before many of his friends had even heard the news of his death, entitled, “Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche.” Less than 24 hours after the man was gone, this vapid partisan ended his opening paragraph with “I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead.”

    Andrew committed the sin of joining the elitist country club of journalism without swallowing the red pill of thought conformity people like Taibbi demand from fellow “free thinkers.” Maybe it’s Taibbi’s lack of hairline, maybe it’s the fear that comes from living on the verge of being discovered as a fraud, whatever the case, he’s not alone.

    In Andrew’s New York Times obituary entitled, “Andrew Breitbart, Conservative Blogger, Dies at 43,” they described him as “Part performance artist, part polemicist, he used his network of Web sites and their legions of followers to bring conservative media red meat.” Hastings, on the other hand, was immortalized by the Times Public Editor as “a fearless disturber of the peace who believed not in playing along with those in power, but in radical truth-telling.”

    A person’s truth that conforms with yours is a hero, one that stray from the conformity plantation and you’re clown.

    Fellow gatekeepers Slate.com ran a reaction piece to Taibbi’s flaccid keyboard vomit asking the real important question, “When Did Douche Become An Insult?” They also employ former “Think Progress” blogger Matt Yglesias who, upon hearing of Hastings’ crash tweeted, “Oh god. Michael Hastings. How Awful.” Maybe he knew him, maybe he didn’t. But on the day of Breitbart’s death he tweeted, “Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBrietbart dead.”

    Both were young, both had families and friends, but only one strayed from the media plantation of sameness, so his death “improved” the world.

    Taibbi and Yglesias aren’t alone, they aren’t unique, they’re actually quite pedestrian in both thought and “talent.” But they “think properly,” which is all that matters to them and their ilk. We don’t know what Hastings would have become, and thanks to a single flaming car crash in the wee hours of a California morning, we never will. But we do know what Andrew Breitbart has become – an inspiration, an ideal, a big middle finger to the group-think people who would dance on grave of a father of four before it was even bug because the truth he exposed was contrary to what they want people to believe.

    Time will reveal the true, lasting impact of Michael Hastings, but time and all the magazines, websites network newscasts and every other form of media won’t be able to hide from the fact that Andrew Breitbart existed. That is his legacy, and that, in the minds of mind-herders, is the greatest sin of all in the eyes of the ultimate conformists.

    Reply
  4. GruntOfMonteCristo says:
    June 23, 2013 at 10:48 am

    Diogenes: “The Brits are scared shitless over their muslim invaders, and are just hastening the day their necks are bent for the sword.”
    http://suckersonparade.blogspot.com/2013/06/another-beheading-in-england.html

    Reply
    • barnslayer says:
      June 23, 2013 at 4:22 pm

      Yep. Blame the drones (I still think the drone reports are B.S.) and blame Israel while you’re at it. This just shows moslems kill because they are…. moslems.

      Reply
  6. Knight4GFC says:
    June 23, 2013 at 4:53 pm

    Amnesty: Danger, danger, Will Robinson! Calling all Tea Partiers!
    http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/mobile/mobile-article/56088

    Reply
    • texan59 says:
      June 23, 2013 at 5:51 pm

      While I applaud our good guv for signing these bills, I wonder what the actual effect will be since Big Sis will have some serious leeway. IMHO, I’m afraid the real world application will be akin to that proverbial lipstick on the swine. But at least it’s gotta be better than what the folks on either coast can be subject to.

      Reply
      • Knight4GFC says:
        June 23, 2013 at 6:01 pm

        “But at least it’s gotta be better than what the folks on either coast can be subject to”. Yeah… at least he’s doing something. I wish I could say my guv was doing something similar. Instead he’s doing the opposite, being that he’s one of Obama’s wack jobs.

        Reply
        • texan59 says:
          June 23, 2013 at 6:05 pm

          “……….being that he’s one of Obama’s wack jobs.”

          As are most that even come from our party. Look at what’s become of Kasich, Scott, Brewer and Kristie-Kreme. 👿

          Reply
    • texan59 says:
      June 23, 2013 at 5:45 pm

      Thus far, I have forgone any type of tattoo. I may well have this put on a very visible part of my un-besmirched body. 👿

      Reply
  11. texan59 says:
    June 23, 2013 at 5:40 pm

    Mrs. T got a new present this weekend. We are both soooo excited!

    Reply
    • texan59 says:
      June 23, 2013 at 6:13 pm

      This’ll be all fun and games til they turn it on us. 👿

      Reply
      • Knight4GFC says:
        June 23, 2013 at 6:26 pm

        Speaking of which, hey Tex, do you have any experience with citizen’s band radios? Or ham operating? In today’s America, where the all intrusive gubmint is tracking and tuning in to the likes of us, would something like CB’s be of any service, being that its hard to control, and cannot be shut down via satellite shutdown, like phones and other forms of communications? What’s yer opinion?

        Reply
        • GruntOfMonteCristo says:
          June 23, 2013 at 7:49 pm

          I bet Harvey has an opinion about this, being a licensed ham radio jockey. I personally think everyone needs to have 2-way radios, either handheld or vehicle CBs or something else.

          Reply
        • texan59 says:
          June 24, 2013 at 1:47 am

          I have nada experience with these products. There is a club around our area, but I haven’t had the time, nor inclination thus far. Although, it would probably be a good idea.

          Reply
        • barnslayer says:
          June 24, 2013 at 4:44 am

          I used a ham radio a few times at the summer camp I worked at. We once got a good bounce and talked to a guy in Australia (we were in upstate NY). I’m guessing CB’s and ham radios would be real easy to jam, listen in and locate. If they were able to do it in WW2 it’s probably easier now.
          Knowing this, resistance groups kept transmissions short to hamstring the locators. They knew they were under surveillance so they broadcast in code messages. “Wounds my heart with a monotonous languor”. Like anything else that might be useful, the gov’t requires licenses for this stuff. I think it’s fairly easy to sidestep that issue.

          Reply
        • Knight4GFC says:
          June 24, 2013 at 5:31 am

          Thanks you guys for the input. We used to use CB’s some years back, a whole lot. I think we may be getting back to them real soon. Especially, once we get the boat back in the water. A good SSB system has a pretty decent reach.

          Reply
  14. Knight4GFC says:
    June 23, 2013 at 6:12 pm

    Colorado Baker Faces Heat for Religious Expression

    “In this case, the attorney general of Colorado issued a formal complaint at the behest of the ACLU. The case is expected to go before Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission. The complaint urges Phillips to “cease and desist” his activity. Phillips could face fines of $500 and up to a year in jail”.

    http://conservativepapers.com/news/2013/06/22/colorado-baker-faces-heat-for-religious-expression/#.UcfGaZ16djo

    Reply
    • Knight4GFC says:
      June 23, 2013 at 6:22 pm

      “Phillips refuses to compromise and remains determined to stand up for his religious views. ‘If it came to that point, we would close down the bakery before we would compromise our beliefs, so that may be what it comes to,'”. Personally, I so back this man… ALL THE WAY, because this is about one of the main roots of the problem we face with the deteriorating morals and principles of a FAMILY… of this NATION. A properly working governed country works off of these morals and principles. You break the family (which we are systematically doing, beginning with abortion), the nation, in turn, will follow. GOD, FAMILY, and COUNTRY, in that order. 4GFC!

      Reply

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