Archive for September, 2020
30 Sep 2020
Foxhunting author John Harris Anderson suggests:
For the next debate (if there is one), I suggest they choose a huntsman as the moderator and fit the candidates with shock collars. When one of them babbles, skirts, dwells, runs heel, or riots on the wrong scent…ZAP!
Thomas Neese (on the wrong side) replies:
You’ll need rat shot for Trump
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Actually, though the use of shock collars for training bird dogs is routine these days, I’ve never actually seen them used on fox hounds. However, it is perfectly true that obstreperous hounds who go off on deer and don’t listen do, from time to time, get peppered (at a long distance) with .22 rat shot (what we up North call: .22 bird shot).
30 Sep 2020
Andrea Widburg, writing at American Thinker, republished at Zero Hedge:
The short version of the debate is that Biden did well if one ignored that almost every other statement he made was a lie or fantasy; Trump dominated him, almost too aggressively; and Chris Wallace may have been the worst and most obviously biased moderator since Candy Crowley. Most significantly, though, Biden and Trump each made a critical point. Biden’s was a tacit admission that, if he is elected president, he will preside over the end of the filibuster, allowing Democrats to pack the courts and add two new Democrat-majority states. Trump’s point was that he’s holding damning evidence about the Democrats’ coup attempt.
RTWT
29 Sep 2020
St. Michael, Tepeyac Hill, Mexico City, Mexico.
Chambers Book of Days:
MICHAELMAS DAY
Michaelmas Day, the 29th of September, properly named the day of St. Michael and All Angels, is a great festival of the Church of Rome, and also observed as a feast by the Church of England. In England, it is one of the four quarterly terms, or quarter-days, on which rents are paid, and in that and other divisions of the United Kingdom, as well as perhaps in other countries, it is the day on which burgal magistracies and councils are re-elected. The only other remarkable thing connected with the day is a widely prevalent custom of marking it with a goose at dinner.
Michael is regarded in the Christian world as the chief of angels, or archangel. His history is obscure. In Scripture, he is mentioned five times, and always in a warlike character; namely, thrice by Daniel as fighting for the Jewish church against Persia; once by St. Jude as fighting With the devil about the body of Moses; and once by St. John as fighting at the head of his angelic troops against the dragon and his host. Probably, on the hint thus given by St. John the Romish church taught at an early period that Michael was employed, in command of the loyal angels of God, to overthrow and consign to the pit of perdition Lucifer and his rebellious associates—a legend which was at length embalmed in the sublimest poetry by Milton.
Sometimes Michael is represented as the sole arch-angel, sometimes as only the head of a fraternity of archangels, which includes likewise Gabriel, Raphael, and some others. He is usually represented in coat-armour, with a glory round his head, and a dart in his hand, trampling on the fallen Lucifer. He has even been furnished, like the human warriors of the middle ages, with a heraldic ensign—namely, a banner hanging from a cross. We obtain a curious idea of the religious notions of those ages, when we learn that the red velvet-covered buckler worn by Michael in his war with Lucifer used to be shewn in a church in Normandy down to 1607, when the bishop of Avranches at length forbade its being any longer exhibited.
Angels are held by the Church of Rome as capable of interceding for men; wherefore it is that prayers are addressed to them and a festival appointed in their honour. Wheatley, an expositor of the Book of Common Prayer, probably expresses the limited view of the subject which is entertained in the Church of England, when he says, that ‘I the feast of St. Michael and All Angels is observed that the people may know what blessings are derived from the ministry of angels.’
Amongst Catholics, Michael, or, as he has been named, St. Michael, is invoked as ‘a most glorious and warlike prince,’ chief officer of paradise,’ I captain of God’s hosts,’ receiver of souls,’ ‘the vanquisher of evil spirits,’ and ‘the admirable general.’ It may also be remarked, that in the Sarum missal, there is a mass to St. Raphael, as the protector of pilgrims and travellers, and a skilful worker with medicine; likewise an office for the continual intercession of St. Gabriel and all the heavenly militia. Protestant writers trace a connection between the ancient notion of tutelar genii and the Catholic doctrine respecting angels, the one being, they say, ingrafted on the other. …
It will be learned, with some surprise, that these notions of presiding angels and saints are what have led to the custom of choosing magistracies on the 29th of September. The history of the middle ages is full of curious illogical relations, and this is one of them. Local rulers were esteemed as in some respects analogous to tutelar angels, in as far as they presided over and protected the people. It was therefore thought proper to choose them on the day of St. Michael and All Angels. The idea must have been extensively prevalent, for the custom of electing magistrates on this day is very extensive,
‘September, when by custom (right divine)
Geese are ordained to bleed at Michael’s shrine’
says Churchill. This is also an ancient practice, and still generally kept up, as the appearance of the stage-coaches on their way to large towns at this season of the year amply testifies. In Blount’s Tenures, it is noted in the tenth year of Edward IV, that John de la Hay was bound to pay to William Barnaby, Lord of Lastres, in the county of Hereford, for a parcel of the demesne lands, one goose fit for the lord’s dinner, on the feast of St. Michael the archangel. Queen Elizabeth is said to have been eating her Michaelmas goose when she received the joyful tidings of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The custom appears to have originated in a practice among the rural tenantry of bringing a good stubble goose at Michaelmas to the landlord, when paying their rent, with a view to making him lenient. In the poems of George Gascoigne, 1575, is the following passage:
And when the tenants come to pay their quarter’s rent,
They bring some fowl at Midsummer, a dish of fish in Lent,
At Christmas a capon, at Michaelmas a goose,
And somewhat else at New-year’s tide, for fear their lease fly loose.’
We may suppose that the selection of a goose for a present to the landlord at Michaelmas would be ruled by the bird being then at its perfection, in consequence of the benefit derived from stubble-feeding. It is easy to see how a general custom of having a goose for dinner on Michaelmas Day might arise from the multitude of these presents, as land-lords would of course, in most cases, have a few to spare for their friends. It seems at length to have become a superstition, that eating of goose at Michaelmas insured easy circumstances for the ensuing year. In the British Apollo, 1709, the following piece of dialogue occurs:
‘Q: Yet my wife would persuade me (as I am a sinner)
To have a fat goose on St. Michael for dinner:
And then all the year round, I pray you would mind it,
I shall not want money—oh, grant I may find it!
Now several there are that believe this is true,
Yet the reason of this is desired from you.
A: We think you’re so far from the having of more,
That the price of the goose you have less than before:
The custom came up from the tenants presenting
Their landlords with geese, to incline their relenting
On following payments, &c
——————–
In contemporary Pennsylvania:
Goose Day was unofficially started in 1786 in Pennsylvania in the Juniata River Valley, and has officially been celebrated in Mifflin County since 1973, and Juniata County since 1976. It stemmed from Michaelmas, a Christian holiday celebrating the archangel Michael, and a day when geese are often eaten. In 1786 a Dutchman named Andrew Pontius hired an Englishman named Archibald Hunter. In their contract it said that accounts would be settled each year on September 29. When the day came, Hunter showed up at Pontius’ door with not only his accounts, but with a goose under his arm. As Pontius was confused, Hunter explained to him how the goose signified good luck for the following year, and how in England he had celebrated Michaelmas. Goose Day became popular in the Juniata River Valley and eventually became an established day in the two aforementioned counties. Festivals take place in those counties on the day, and events happen on the week surrounding it.
Many restaurants out here will serve goose on September 29th.
28 Sep 2020
Monster Hunter Nation:
The more complicated the regulatory burden, the more smaller companies can’t compete. Make the laws complicated enough and the only companies that stay in business are the ones who can afford to pay for twenty guys like me. (my last regular accounting job paid extremely well, and nearly everything I did was jump through government mandated hoops, filling out government mandated paperwork which nobody in the government would probably ever read)
Trump has those resources. I bet he’s got a room full of accountants, and their leader is probably a grizzled old CPA with an eye patch and a raven who sits on his shoulder. The raven also has an eye patch and an accounting degree. This man has wrestled bears, and he’s going to take advantage of every tax break in the US Code for his client, and do so gleefully, knowing that many of those laws were signed by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
On the other side, you know damned good and well that the IRS has sent their most fearsome auditor against him. This man sold his soul to the devil, and then fined the devil for failing to list that soul as a depreciable asset. When he shows up to audit your company, he appears a flash of fire and brimstone, as a Finnish death metal band plays his theme song. He is an auditor bereft of mercy, compassion, or pity, and beneath his leathery wings serve a legion of IRS goblins, who will crawl into every nook and cranny of the Trump Corporation’s P&L looking for errors, and if a mouse so much as shits a turd large enough to unbalance that ledger, there will be hell to pay.â€
RTWT
HT: Karen L. Myers.
28 Sep 2020
A Jeep Wrangler wound up dangling from a cliff on a Southern California bike trail after somebody drove it up there at night and had to abandon it and walk out.
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The Ford Motor Company graciously offered to rescue it, and to document the rescue to use in some unaccountable way or other. One has the feeling that Ford Broncos would be involved.
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No Bronco, no helicopter! A team from the local off-road club turned up with winches, straps, shackles and more Wranglers and saved the day.
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The Drive did us all a big favor, they interviewed the driver and his brother and found out how it got there in the first place.
There’s only one question that still needs to be answered. How the hell did the Wrangler get up there in the first place?
Wonder no more. The Drive has the answer after tracking down and speaking with Car Internet’s most buzzed-about missing man this week: the Jeep’s owner, a local man named Ricky Barba. As you might’ve guessed, it all started with an ill-advised joyride to show off his rig. But there’s no way Barba could’ve known his misadventure would end up garnered nationwide attention from news stations, social media users and even corporate bigwigs.
And yes, what Barba did was dumb, incredibly dangerous, and wildly irresponsible. He could’ve easily died up there, or someone could’ve lost their life in the recovery effort. And we’re not even talking about the damage done to the bike trail, or the potential to start a brush fire at the height of fire season. Do not off-road by yourselves, after dark, in a place where it’s not allowed. Barba is incredibly lucky that he and his Jeep are still in one piece. There are saints out there in the constellation of off-road recovery Facebook groups, but you can’t count on them to save your bacon.
Anyway, the way Barba tells it, the whole thing started around a barbecue grill. He and his brother had dinner Sunday night, after which they decided around to go for a short off-road drive in Barba’s Wrangler around 7 p.m. A crucial detail is that sunset is at 6:45 p.m. in Los Angeles these days—wheeling alone is never a great idea, and that’s triply true after dark. Still, the brothers took off for a nearby recreational area in the wrinkled hills just south of Loma Linda, California, where he said they’d made memories with their late father years before.
Another key point relayed by Barba: He wasn’t driving. It was apparently his brother behind the wheel.
“So, [my brother] had never driven a Jeep,” Ricky explained. “He was like ‘Let me drive your Jeep’ because I’ve been trying to get him to buy one, so that’s how it started.”
An eager off-road newbie, a darkening sky, and someone else’s Jeep. You can see where this is going.
Now, this area is a network of rolling hills—”mountains” is overstating it, though there are definitely some long, steep dropoffs in places—along the south edge of the San Bernardino Valley, and it’s a hotspot for off-roaders. However, past a certain point it’s not fit for four-wheeling. A network of backroads winds from one side to the other, changing in elevation and winnowing down to single-track hiking and biking trails like Razor Ridge, where the Jeep eventually became terribly and utterly stuck.
Even though Barba and his brother had been there before, the clock wasn’t on their side this time. It was really getting dark, and a series of wrong turns landed them on one narrow trail after another. Unlike them at the time, you can probably see where this is going.
“We ended up driving farther and farther and farther, and he liked the way it handled so he’d say ‘Let me try this, let me try this.'”
Despite what the photos might lead you to believe, the Barba brothers didn’t make it that far. According to Jorgie Maldonado, a member of the Jalados 4×4 group that successfully recovered the Jeep, it was only 15 minutes from the dirt road in nearby Reche Canyon to the stuck Wrangler. …
Another clarification from Barba is that he and his brother initially made it across that knife-edged ridge in the now-famous photo. But when they got to the other side, they couldn’t see over the crest and decided to try and back up. If your head is spinning right now, you’re not alone
“How we crossed it, I don’t know. Obviously, we’re talking about heights, there was no moon, there were no lights. Only our headlights,” Barba told us.
Via Google Maps
It was during that doomed attempt to reverse back across the ridge that they veered off the narrow path to the east, putting the passenger side—where Barba was sitting—on a downhill slant.
“We were able to jump out and he was able to put it in park. If we would’ve went down, we would’ve been dead.”
The thing is, though, Barba says he did fall down, which made the situation even more complicated.
“I fell off the cliff, [my brother] called 9-1-1 for them to come and rescue me at that point, [but] that didn’t happen. ..
Finally, they ditched the Wrangler and left the area in the wee hours of Monday morning. Ricky claims they returned in the following days to secure the rig, which explains why later photos show a strap around its front bumper tied to a stake in the ground.
HT: Karen L. Myers.
28 Sep 2020
No embed available. Click on image to go to video. Read the Coulter column first.
Last May 30th, bar owner and Marine Corps veteran Jacob Gardner, in the course of defending his father and his property, ran afoul of BLM protestors. Two protesters knocked him to the ground and began grappling with him. He fired two warning shots and they retreated, but another protester named James Scurlock put him in a chokehold from behind. Gardner shot Scurlock who then died. Scurlock had been engaged previously in vandalizing businesses and had an extensive criminal record.
An open-and-shut case of self defense, you’ll say. Right! Well, not in democrat-controlled cities like Omaha.
Scurlock’s family complained, a couple of sexually-deviant state senators demanded Gardner be indicted, and democrat district attorney Don Kleine obliged. Gardner was charged by a grand jury on September 15th with Manslaughter, attempted first-degree assault, making terroristic threats, and felony use of weapon. He faced a potential 95 years in prison. On September 20th, the day Gardner was scheduled to surrender to police, he killed himself.
Moral: Whites guilty of self defense in democrat political strongholds with large black populations are going to get the kind of justice that we have heard so much about occurring a century ago to blacks in the Deep South. The only answer I can see is just don’t live, work, or do business in such locations.
Read Ann Coulter on the Jake Gardner tragedy.
27 Sep 2020
Attic red-figured kylix painting attributed to Makron and signed by Hieron as potter.
Christie’s SALE 18865
Antiquities
New York|13 October 2020
LOT42 –SOLD TO BENEFIT THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART
AN ATTIC RED-FIGURED KYLIX
ATTRIBUTED TO MAKRON AS PAINTER, SIGNED BY HIERON AS POTTER, CIRCA 490-480 B.C.
Estimate
USD 1,200,000 – USD 1,800,000
Christie’s Magazine speculates that this one may set a new record price for a Greek vase.
This Attic red-figured kylix — attributed to the painter Makron and of ‘outstanding provenance’ — could be about to eclipse a landmark figure set 20 years ago, says Harry Seymour
The year 490 BC was a memorable one for the people of Athens: 10,000 of the city’s soldiers crushed the much larger Persian army of Darius the Great; work commenced on the first Temple of Athena Parthenos on the Acropolis; and the modern marathon was born when a messenger with good news supposedly ran 26 miles to the city before dropping dead.
It is also thought to be the year in which an artist known as Makron began his decade-long career painting ceramics in the Kerameikos — the potters’ quarter — in Athens.
‘He soon established himself as one of the best painters of his generation,’ says G. Max Bernheimer, international head of Antiquities at Christie’s. ‘And this Attic red-figured wine cup — offered on 13 October at Christie’s in New York — is the best example by the fabled artist to come to auction in decades.’
Makron worked in a relatively new style known as ‘red-figure’, which involved creating shapes from negative space against a painted background. Details were then added with a brush and slip. This technique replaced the predominant ‘black-figure’ style, which required detail to be incised into painted figures, and made portraying pictorial depth tricky.
Makron’s name survives today thanks to a single signed work, a skyphos now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which features the words ‘Makron drew me’ painted on one handle.
The underside of one of the cup’s handles was inscribed by the potter with the words, ‘Hieron made me’
In the 20th century, however, a further 350 ceramics (including this one) were attributed to Makron by the Oxford University professor Sir John Beazley (1885-1970). Beazley catalogued thousands of Greek vases by studying each painter’s style in minute detail. In the case of Makron, his characters feature distinctive round heads with flat tops and drapery folds drawn with great finesse.
Today, nearly all of Makron’s vases are housed in major institutions, including the Met, the Louvre, the British Museum and the Getty. According to Bernheimer, ‘Hardly any are left in private hands, which makes this one all the more desirable to collectors.’
RTWT
26 Sep 2020
“Homeless” (Left-wing weasel word for bums and winos) in Venice Beach.)
Freelance writer Amy Alkon does not like guns, but finds that liberal democrat policies may very well oblige her to become a gun owner.
I never wanted a gun. In fact, I wanted to never own one—until around noon on Thursday, August 20th.
Since the late 1990s, I’ve lived in Venice, California, renting a one-bedroom Craftsman house a mile from the ocean that someone built out of a Sears-catalog kit 100 years ago. I’m a science-based syndicated columnist and author, currently working all hours to complete a book that keeps trying to kill me. Luckily, I’m writing it in this cute little old lady of a house on my sweet Venice block.
Whenever it seems I’m pointlessly pushing words around the page, I’ll step out the front door and take in the sunny stretch of palm trees, cacti, and bougainvillea. I’ll spot a hummingbird, wave to my neighbor with his parrot on his shoulder, or maybe watch Joey the Aggressive Squirrel, my wee dog’s taunting nemesis. These brief distractions uncouple me from looming suspicions that I’m an incompetent dullard no one will want to read, and I often go back in, emotionally restored, and pound out a coherent and even reader-worthy paragraph. …
[A]bout a week and a half into August, a VW Vanagon Westfalia (circa 1987, tricked out with solar panels on top) appeared in front of my house and stayed there. A white woman, about 40, with long magenta-dyed hair, was living in the van with a big leather-muzzled Rottweiler. The dog was prone to barking jags, and the woman didn’t just close the van’s sliding door when she got in and out; she often slammed it so hard that it shook my little wooden house. …
here was door slamming all day and sometimes at night—a deliberate ritual to show me she was in control. She could disturb my work, my peace of mind, and my sleep whenever she felt like it.
I was frustrated and upset, but I wasn’t afraid—until August 14th. A tall, rough-looking white guy roared up on a shiny Harley, parked it in front of the van, and got in. Soon afterward, another dude got in, too.
The noise and abuse intensified, with the van’s occupants making it clear it was punishment for me calling the police about the noise. Throughout the day, the guy would turn on his motorcycle, get back in the van, and just leave the thing idling on the street for 10 minutes at a time. The Harley’s unmuffled open exhaust woke the neighbor’s new baby and disturbed everybody on my block, many of whom are working remotely from home.
I climbed on the base of my fence to ask the guy, seated in the van, to please be respectful—turn off the motorcycle when he wasn’t riding it. He said nothing, but got out and hand-revved the bike to amp up the noise and pump out exhaust fumes. I put a towel under my door to block the fumes, which helped not at all. I came out again to ask him to please stop. His only response: “Show me your tits.â€
The cops came out repeatedly, answering not just my calls but those of my neighbors. Time after time, the police apologized for the fact that they couldn’t do anything to alleviate the abuse, explaining that they’d been neutered by the mayor, with the support of our local city councilman, Mike Bonin. …
The biker guy turned out to be a violent felon, early-released from prison on August 14th—the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside, 70-some miles south-east of L.A. He’d been sentenced to remain in prison until October, but got popped ahead of time because of the pandemic, and came straight to my street.
I looked up his record. This 38-year-old man had so many violent felonies and restraining orders, I remarked to a friend, “How does one even find the time?†Even more disturbingly, in addition to an arrest for assaulting a police officer, I found a restraining order filed against him by a 60-year-old woman, whom I suspected could be his mother. Yes, exactly the sort of “neighbor†we’re all hoping for.
One morning, about a week after his arrival, I sat down at my computer and discovered it was feces o’clock (approximately 6am Pacific Time). The stench of human waste was wafting in from the sidewalk, which apparently was doubling as a toilet. I had become afraid to go out my locked gate, even to get the mail from the box just on the other side, so I got up on my kitchen step stool and leaned over the fence to hose off the sidewalk.
The felon, irate to be awakened by the rather normal neighborhood sound of a person using a garden house, flew out of the van in a rage. My gate is steel-frame, covered by wood planks, and six feet high like the rest of my fence, but it is still terrifying to have a man pounding on it with both fists and yelling “You bitch! I’ll get you, bitch!†Terrified, I dropped the hose, screamed, “I’m calling 911,†and ran inside. …
An hour and a half after I’d called 911, officers arrived. And it was then—noon, on Thursday, August 20th that I had an upsetting revelation: We citizens can no longer rely on the police to show up. And then the thought hit me: I need to get a gun.
You’ve got to love the irony. It’s the Democrats who push for gun control, yet it’s the Democrats in power in my city who are leaving me with no choice but to arm myself.
The truth is I shouldn’t have a gun. I’m a boob when I’m afraid. I lose all mental and physical capacity. I know, if you get a gun, you’re supposed to practice at a gun range regularly, and I would. Still, in a heated situation, I have my doubts that I could even find the “safety,†a term I know only from watching TV and movie crime dramas.
I emailed two libertarian lady friends with guns—subj: “Jenny From The Glockâ€â€”to ask for advice, and talked to some of the cops, too. The consensus: I’d do best with some Little House on the Prairie-type shotgun that sprayed buckshot, giving me the best chance, in a home invasion, of hitting someone other than myself.
The next morning, a sound from outside startled me. The guy was vandalizing my gate. This time, the police came, and one of the cops somehow succeeded in getting the couple to move the van down the street a bit, away from my house. This was a relief, but not a solution. There was further vandalism of my gate the next day.
The police told me they’d need me to file a restraining order to give them any power of enforcement. Assuming the judge approved it, they could finally make the guy move off our block, and they could arrest him if he came near me—assuming he didn’t kill me and take off on his bike before the overtaxed LAPD could get a cruiser out my way.
I was terrified to get a restraining order, because it would give the guy my name and other personal information while likely angering him further and putting me at increased risk of harm. It could also tie me up with days or weeks of paperwork and possible court appearances. But I had become a prisoner behind my gate, afraid to take out the trash, walk my tiny dog, or mail a letter. I was a stressed-out wreck, constantly on edge. I scared our poor sweet postman who delivers packages at odd hours, screaming in terror two nights in a row when a box thudded over my fence onto the pavement. This was no way to live, and thanks to Mayor Garcetti, it seemed that the only way to enable the LAPD to protect my block was to file for an order of protection, effectively turning myself into bait.
I called Legal Aid, and a compassionate young lawyer, Jenny N., helped me on the phone for about four hours over two days. I spent another six hours filling out 50 pages of restraining-order paperwork and making corrections to the parts that Jenny said I’d gotten wrong or omitted. It was unpaid work at a time when I had looming deadlines and was short on money—but what was my alternative? People suggested I move.
HT: Bird Dog.
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