Jim Geraghty responds to actual WaPo column headline.

The real problem for Democrats is that “smug” isn’t really their strategy; it’s how they emotionally react to their conclusion that their viewpoint is better, more moral, smarter, wiser, fairer, more sensitive, more compassionate, and so on than the opposition. It’s not a campaign issue; it’s a character issue.

Undoubtedly the wittiest man on the Internet.

Guy Fawkes arrested in the cellar of Parliament with the explosives.

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason, and plot;
There is no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!’

Early in the morning of November 5, Guy Fawkes crept, torch in hand, into the cellar beneath the House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster. In that cellar, he and his fellow conspirators had previously placed a cache of 1800 pounds ((36 barrels, or 800 kg) of gunpowder. Just as he was about to ignite the barrels, blowing himself and the House of Lords to Kingdom Come, the torch was snatched from his hand by a man named Peter Heywood.

Fawkes was arrested and taken before the privy council where he remained defiant. When asked by one of the Scottish lords what he had intended to do with so much gunpowder, Fawkes answered him, “To blow you Scotch beggars back to your own native mountains!”

So went the attempted Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

The intention of the plotters was to use the explosion, timed to coincide with the opening of Parliament, to kill King James I and eliminate much of the ruling Protestant aristocracy. They also intended to kidnap the royal children, then raise the standard of revolt in the Midlands with the object of restoring the freedom to practice Catholicism in England.

Dr. Mercury, at Maggie’s Farm, is on the side of Gunpowder Treason, and serves up a nice video excerpt from James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta (2005).

General Al Gray, 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps

Via viral email yesterday:

The Commandant of the Marine Corps was General Al Gray, a crusty old “Field Marine.” He loved his Marines and often slipped into the mess hall wearing a faded old field jacket without any rank or insignia on it. He would go through the chow line just like a private (In this way, he was assured of being given the same rations that the lowest enlisted man received. And, woe be it to the mess officer if the food was found to be “unfit in quality or quantity”). Upon becoming Commandant, General Gray was expected to do a great deal of “formal entertaining”…fancy dinner parties in full dress blue uniform. Now, the General would rather have been in the field eating cold “C-rats” around a fighting hole with a bunch of young “hard charging” Marines. But the General knew his duty and as a Marine he was determined to do it to the best of his ability. During these formal parties, a detachment of highly polished Marines from “Eighth and Eye” (Marine Barracks located at 8th and I Streets in Washington, D.C., home of the Silent Drill Team) were detailed to assume the position of “parade rest” at various intervals around the ballroom where the festivities were being held. At some point during one of these affairs, a very refined, blue-haired lady picked up a tray of pastries and went around the room offering confections to the guests. When she noticed these Marines in dress blues, standing like sculptures all around the room, she was moved with admiration. She knew that several of these men were fresh from our victory in Kuwait. She made a beeline for the closest Lance Corporal, drew near him and asked, “Would you like some pastry young man?” The young Marine snapped to “attention” and replied, “I don’t eat that shit, Ma’am.” Just as quickly, he resumed the position of” parade rest.” His gaze remained fixed on some distant point throughout the exchange. The fancy lady was completely taken aback! She blinked, her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open. So startled was she that she immediately began to doubt what she had heard. In a quivering voice she asked, “W-W-What did you say?” The Marine snapped back to the position of “attention” (like the arm of a mousetrap smacking its wooden base). Then he said, “I don’t eat that shit, Ma’am.” And just as smartly as before, back to the position of “parade rest” he went. This time, there was no doubt. The fancy lady immediately became incensed and felt insulted. After all, here she was an important lady, taking the time to offer something nice to this enlisted man (well below her station in life), and he had the nerve to say THAT to HER! She exclaimed, “Well! I never…!” The lady remembered that she had met that military man in charge of all these “soldiers” earlier. She spotted General Gray from across the room. He had a cigar clenched between his teeth and a camouflaged canteen cup full of bourbon in his left hand. He was talking to a group of 1st and 2nd Lieutenants.

So blue haired lady went straight over to the Commandant and interrupted. “General, I offered some pastry to that young man over there, and do you know what he told me?” General Gray cocked his eyebrow, took the cigar out of his mouth and said, “Well, no Ma’am, I don’t.” The lady took in a deep breath, confident that she was adequately expressing with her body language her considerable rage and indignation. As she wagged her head in cadence with her words, and she paused between each word for effect, he said,” I – don’t – eat – that – shit – Ma’am!” The lieutenants were in a state of near apoplexy.

A couple of them choked back chuckles, and turned their heads to avoid having their smirks detected. The next thought that most of them had was, “God, I hope it wasn’t one of MY Marines!” and the color left their faces. General Gray wrinkled his brow, cut his eyes in the direction of the lieutenants, put his free hand to his chin and muttered a subdued, “Hmmm. Which one did you say it was Ma’am?,” the General asked.

“That tall sturdy one right over there near the window, General,” the woman said with smug satisfaction. One of the lieutenants began to look sick and put a hand on the wall for support. General Gray, seemed deep in thought, hand still to his chin, wrinkled brow. Suddenly, he looked up and his expression changed to one indicating he had made a decision. He looked the fancy lady right in the eyes and said, “Well, fuck him! Don’t give him any.”

Hat tip to Henry Bernatonis.

Tomb of Sharaf al-Dawla, Uqaylid ruler of Mosul, 1052

Not everybody is as enamored of multiculturalism as the burghers of Birmingham.

Reports from a variety of sources are confirming that the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIS) has dynamited the mausoleum of Sharaf al-Dawla, the earliest of six surviving muquarnas-domed tombs.

The destruction of the Sharaf al-Dawla mausoleum is part of a consistent program of elimination of Shiite and Yezidi cultural monuments.

Hyperallergic:

The destruction of the Shia Shrine of Imam al-Daur shows that the Islamic State appears to continues to be intent on and capable of waging genocidal wars on multiple fronts. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova stated that “intentional targeting and systematic destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq is reaching unprecedented levels” and insisted that “cultural cleansing underway in Iraq must stop.”

Gillian Wearing, A Real Birmingham Family, 2014, Library of Birmingham

Ikon Gallery commissioned and raised £150,000 in funding from a variety of public and private sources for a monument sculpted over four years by Turner-Prize-winner Gillean Wearing for installation in front of the Library of Birmingham.

Titled “A Real Birmingham Family,” the life-sized bronze sculpture was unveiled last Thursday. The statues are of two real, mixed race, unwed female Birmingham residents, Roma and Emma Jones, with their sons Kyan and Shaye. Emma is depicted 8 months pregnant with her second son Isaac.

The Jones sisters were chosen specifically to represent the 21st Century Birmingham family.

“A nuclear family is one reality but it is one of many and this work celebrates the idea that what constitutes a family should not be fixed.” said sculptor Gillian Wearing.

“Being mixed race, we feel at home here as it’s so diverse and multicultural. As a result, we believe the mixed-race population in Brum will only increase.” said the Jones sisters.

Birmingham Post

Daily Mail

Telegraph

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Monuments are not typically erected, of course, to living people, but obviously the Jones sisters qualify for one on the basis of being photogenic representatives of multiculturalism (what used to be called miscegenation) and unwed motherhood.

Birmingham’s community of fashion, of course, in celebrating the Jones sisters and their bastards is really celebrating the death and replacement of the white Anglo-Saxon British nation by a new racially mixed Britain composed of persons of color and the death of Christianity and European Civilization and its multicultural replacement.

The BBC reports on an odd rural Chinese practice.

Eleven people have been arrested in eastern China for allegedly stealing women’s corpses for use in “ghost marriages”, it’s been reported.

They’re accused of exhuming a woman’s body from a village in Shandong province and selling it on the black market, the South China Morning Post reports. The “ghost marriage” ritual requires bachelors who have died to be buried next to a woman’s body “so that he won’t be alone in the afterlife”, the website says. It’s an increasingly rare practice in modern China, and now mainly happens in rural areas.

One of the accused was shown on Shandong’s local state TV channel saying a corpse could be sold for between 16,000 and 20,000 yuan ($2,600-$3,300; £1,600-£2,000), and that bodies are only valuable if they have been recently buried. “A body buried for years is worthless,” he says.

Full article.

Via Fred Lapides.