My Boot Directory Has Gone South

I've been trying to resurrect it, but so far not so lucky. I've tried to fix it, starting with the simpler efforts like virus checks, to taking out my hd and installing it into a portable reader to check it's health (ok) to reinstalling windows XP with the repair facility.

At least now it gets as far as the windows home edition screen, where it quickly switches to a flash of blue with white words on it for a split second that I can't make pause to read. And then it reboots. On in finitum.

I'm trying to avoid using the repair function fixmbr on my partitioned harddrive cuz I'd hate to lose all my programs just like that. The warning sounds ominous. (Update: fixmbr done, but to no avail.) I've saved my data files, but programs and drivers are such a pain to reinstall when I can find all the disks that windows asks for.

My plea for help at Belmont Club resulted in the following advice:

Pascal,

I’m training to become a computer forensic examiner and I think this is a pretty good explanation on how to remove a boot sector virus: http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-a-Boot-Sector-Virus

Four things the wiki leaves out: 1) Depending on the os, it is possible to boot from a flash drive instead of a floppy; 2) you should be very wary of saving any executables but if you do, scan them for viruses; 3) There are third party wiping tools available including (free) dban from sourceforge.net; 4) your computer may have been compromised by removable media – scan all that you own for viruses.

You must consider all your internet passwords compromised. Reset them. Going forward, use firefox with the keyscrambling extension as your browser – everyone should. If you need help have someone post it here and I will try to give you a timely response. Good Luck.

-Veneto

I can't easily post at BC right now, so I'll respond to Veneto here in hopes he sees it.
I'm not certain my problem was caused by a virus. My virus checker hasn't found anything. I'm not certain if it CAN search the boot sector until it goes through the process of rebooting, and, of course, it's not been able to do that.

The thing about the fix at the link you sent me to is that it recommends doing a complete low level reformatting of the disk. Why not just throw the disk away and buy a new one? It would save one hell of a lot of time and grief.

The whole reason to save the harddrive would be to try and save what is on it and is still usable, no?

Taunting Us With Shadows On the Wall

Plato and later Hegel told us we’d see nothing but shadows cast on the wall. Plato warned of the Sophists who taught those who ruled how to get away with it. They’re still at it. It’s only their useful idiots who taunt us for not being able to name them.

"There Is No Such Thing As a Left or a Right"

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: up to man's ages-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motive, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course. -- from Ronald Reagan's 1964 stump speech.

These lines are probably familiar to many Americans of my age, though a good number may have forgotten them.

About twenty years later during President Reagan's first term, while riding in my car, I heard Mr. Reagan add a compelling visual image to these lines. What he said was that the false political spectrum of left and right was [I don't exactly recall, but I'll say he said it was] like a see-saw of a platform.

The Left would gain control, and they'd pile up programs on their side of the platform. The foundation beneath the platform would begin to sink from the weight of their efforts. This resulted in the platform being tilted noticeably. It made the voters feel uncomfortable. So the voters would turn to the Right to straighten things out. 

Well the right might try to prop up the left side a bit, and refill the foundation, but in doing so, they'd dig a hole under their side of the platform next. Those who gain power always have interests who want something back -- usually in the form of legislation that favors them or taxes their competitors -- for their support. Thus the weight of these efforts and favors repaid cause the platform to tip to the right this time. That sinking feeling leaves the voters uncomfortable again.

So the voters would then put the Left back into power. And the Left would begin to fill in the hole under the right, but pile up more programs on their side and drive their side of the platform even deeper into the foundation of America's liberties.

And so it would go on, back and forth, Left and Right, Left then Right. Pretty soon the citizens of this great nation would find themselves in a pit of despair; a pit dug by the machinations of those who built up the oppressive weight of government. Government has been built up incrementally, one law after another, ruling upon ruling, practice becoming entrenched policy. And it was all done under the guise of representing a left or a right side, but both headed in one direction -- into the pit of tyranny. All those vested interests would insist it stay that way. Worse, as they'd get even more demanding. It's always painted about fairness too. They were owed all that they'd "earned" for their efforts to gain "their people" power in the past.

At some point the vast majority of Americans will insist on climbing out of the hole dug for them by this political machine -- that single minded and ruthless incremental see-saw of power-seeking achieved by eating away at the foundation of our liberties. Taxes and regulations and busybodyness that is in no way justified in a nation dedicated to individual freedom.

Americans were passed a birthright containing the fresh air of freedom. It is what  our Founders had envisioned, and it is what our fathers fought to keep. And it's pretty much still been available to most Americans for around 200 years. If we do not stop the digging soon, somewhere along the way, Americans will demand to be let out of this pit. May God bless them then as He has in the past.

I think the Tea Party movement is the realization of Mr. Reagan's vision. We will no longer limit ourselves to the thinking that we must choose to accept a Left or a Right. We are seeking freedom from the tyranny of those tired old partisans who claim to working for our common good but are enthusiastically enslaving us and our posterity,

Savage: Home Invasion of America

"It's as if America were dying from an auto-immune disease."

Save this podcast of the Michael Savage Show to your mp3 player and listen. Just today, put aside your prejudices for the messenger, or that you cannot stand the man's voice, or you believe him to be self-promotional in the extreme. You need to hear it so you can relate the key elements of it for the benefit of those you care about.

The theme -- reflected in the title of this post -- of the first two thirds of the show is laid out in the first 38 minutes of this tape (Wednesday, September 15 2010). At about 21 minutes, Mr. Savage switches from a single horrific example to the national aspects of the crime. Listen up to about one hour and 15 minutes and you will be better prepared. Mr. Savage analogizes what is happening to America to a horrible home invasion of a few years ago. The trial for first -- an allegedly least -- of the fiends is only now transpiring. Listen how he relates the small home invasion and the police response to the current threat to the nation and the response of our leaders.

IMO, this segment is better than classic Michael Weiner. If he stuck to this sort of programming, he'd surely remain a favorite target of the left and the less bold on the right, but he'd also be the topmost of the talk-radio hosts -- the ultimate spit-n-the-eye of our decadent establishmentarians.

Sadly, nobody could do this well every day.

Dana Carvey or David Spade?

Is this MSNBC news reader really Dana Carvey or David Spade?

Or is this the product of their unholy union?

Now Demonstrating the Self-Satirizing

Dear Pascal;

I received the following comment from an in-law whom was conservative leaning in earlier days.

"the stuff(shit) you send is always misleading and half truths of theatrical garbage and that I do not have time for."

Had he told me that to my face, I'm sure I would have laughed. The last time I visited him he religiously watched AND taped the Daily Show*. Theatrical garbage and misleading half truths "that I do not have time for."

And tonight I read your post. I think that sort of dangerous nonsense parading as news helps explain my in-law.

Do you have any recommendations for breaking through his self-imposed barrier?

[* The Daily Show, features Jon Stewart mugging (lowest form of theatrics) for the camera as he delivers misleading half truths meant as satire. ]

Oh the irony! /s

I see why you wrote to me my friend.

I wish I had a good recommendation. That "self-imposed barrier" is made possible because of crap provided your in-law by the same old media whose nationalizing I warned about yesterday.

I keep trying to find new ways to express my own alarm so that people like you can help me come up with ways to break through. That is the primary reason why I've increased my output here. Writing, for me, comes neither easily nor joyously.

I pray that other readers have an answer for you. And maybe they'll cone up with one for me too.

Self-Satirizing? -- Maybe not

 "Because you don't watch TV, you need to know what your neighbor is watching." -- from memory of an Ad for TV Guide that appeared some time in the late '70s or early '80s.

My memory of that advertisement needs not to perfect for you to fully comprehend its implied warning.

"TV is influencing your life whether you watch it or not, so you need to know what that influence is." 

 With that same thought in mind, I recommend that you watch the following video (h/t Wretchard) for its jaw-dropping bias and stupidity -- and warning. I initially thought this was a skit on SNL or The Daily Show.


[The above video was terminated by youtube, its original address http://www.youtube.com/v/J_JtHwK7Yys. Being prepared for when YouTube might remove it, I left here the key words to Google: "Morning Joe refuses to interview pastor." I subsequently found it at LiveLeak]

Most troubling: I have heard words from extended family members that echoed those uttered by the moron (Donnie?) who dominates that last segment of the clip from MSNBC.

If ever there was an unfair, one-side-censored fight for the minds of the American people, I don't believe I've seen one that was worse -- yet.

MSNBC has definitely earned its lowest of the low ratings, but it does not mean that others are not parroting what they are saying due to feeds from other less off-the-wall sources. That they are still broadcasting and paying high salaries to these nuts is proof enough that they are being heavily subsidized at a loss by GE and Microsoft at whatever level each is on the hook to pitch in. Where Corporate Statism is helped in its advance by tax law, it isn't a long way from the existence of MSNBC to an overt creation of and direct Govt payments for an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. [In later years Pascal Fervor began using Agency of Lies because he saw that we were not an Orwellian world quite yet, and felt it best that he speak the truth while he still could. He also used the acronym SKUNCs instead of RINOs for much the same reason.-- ed.]

I am speaking out as I have never done before, and take a pounding as a result. The overall pounding will be worse down the road if I don't speak up now.

Before We Were Dehumanized

We had to be given a clever vision of our origins that was disparate from God before our Conditioners could dehumanize the bulk of us.

Who could forget the ape-inspired scene after having seen it? Zarathustra indeed.


I hope you enjoy the following trailer despite my regrets over how I was once greatly influenced by the original film. The trailer is for a documentary that shows us who the creative but useful idiots were and how they did it.

Authoritarian Auto-destruct

Authoritarian adj:

1. of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority.
2. of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people.

I am convinced some of you elected officials are not yourself authoritarian. The question you need to consider after November 2 is "will I stop being the tool of authoritarians?"

At the moment of your most bitter defeat in November, during Congress' lame-duck session:

• Will you entrench in power further those who have used you thus far to gain power over decent, hard-working fellow Americans?
• Will you tear down the last vestiges in the American Constitution that restrain government excess?
• Will you permit the ruthless to drive you into auto-destruct mode and kill the American republic for them?
• Or will you come to your senses and rebel against those who've shed their facade of creeping socialism so they can rush headlong to seize tyrannical powers?

Many of you have been made promises by those who claim to be your leaders and benefactors. You know from working with your leaders how they are two-faced liars. Will you proudly remain useful idiots and thus prove you are also stupid? Do you not know that it is far safer for you to trust the American people to treat you as former sinners begging to be forgiven?

One more thing. Many on the Right do not trust the Republican Party to behave like true conservatives. The GOP leadership has compromised itself with Statists in their ranks. It was Statists (allegedly on the Right) whose government growing failures helped bring into power the last two Leftist Congresses headed by the hated Pelosi and Reid, as well as ushering in the most Leftist President in American history.

If you give in to the power grab of the current "leaders" who will attempt to exploit your bitterness at having lost your Congressional seat, have no doubt that they will seek to harm you after they get what they want. First of all, because you are former leaders, you will be a potential threat to their leadership. Second and third, you know what they did to twist your arm and you know what grasping scheming creatures they really are. Thus you --  even more than those other useful idiots (on the Right) -- will remain a threat to those who have risen to authority.

So

• Start thinking today about rebelling against the Statist agenda. 
• Plan to resist the temptations and the coercion to force the Statist will on America during the lame duck period. 

Again, resist the temptation to aid the authoritarians with your own self-destruction. Real Americans will forever be in your debt, and I am certain if you also turn to God and ask His forgiveness for previously being so blind and deaf, He will forgive you too.

Wisely Learn from Others' Mistakes

In How to Fight Them, Michael Ledeen offers three suggestions on how to turn back the Islamist threat to America without using the courts because "we want to maintain our 1st Amendment rights."

His second and third suggestions were clever non-standard issue, calling for us to use immigration law in the manner that we have in the past, and to prosecute for financial limitations and rules that many Islamic movement leaders appear to be violating.

But it was his first suggestion, "to openly contest their odious doctrines and practices," that has already ignited Americans who feel betrayed by our dhimmi if not kafir politicians.  It was where Ledeen referred to actions of the French though, that prompted me to add my 2 cents.

"Indeed, we should emulate the French and forbid women to cover themselves in public."

The French are about to go further than that. They are taking the position that those who practice in-your-face Islam are acting as a political party whose agenda is to install Sharia in France via fait-accompli.

For more about that, go here (h/t Selwyn Duke):

I'm Being Censored at PJM...

...or at least so it seems.

I frequently post at Belmont Club, a blog that became syndicated at Pajamas Media a few years ago. I sometimes do more posting there than here.

But lately I've been forced to email Wretchard, sometimes several times for the same comment stream, to free my post from the spam queue. It's been happening over the last several weeks roughly 3 out of every 4 submissions. Despite Wretchard's agreeableness and rapid response when he's around, it's more than troubling that my comment is delayed -- sometimes for hours -- and thus made untimely. It also creates referencing difficulties. When Wretchard finally frees it, it's introduced to the comment stream late, but in its time-stamp order. That messes up the numbering of the comments. It screws up everybody else who has already referred to a comment that appeared after mine before mine has been inserted.

But it's even worse at other PJM sites where my comments NEVER show up at all. There I don't have the long history I have with Wretchard, nor even the email address of the author.

For instance, when I attempted introduce this highly relevant item A Tool for Beating the Ministry of Lies at this PJM post by Charlie Martin, Glenn Beck Rally: How Big Was the Crowd?, it never showed up at all despite several attempts. If it were not for a reader of this blog, a link to my contribution would never have appeared there. As it was, it did not show up until very late in that comment stream (107 out of 115 unique threads, with almost 400 total comments). That means it was not seen by many others who could have seen it had it been permitted timely admission. Thus, whomever at PJM has put my name on the do-not-publish list prevented my work from reaching more eyes.

That, by hook (sloppiness) or by crook (deliberate but unannounced), is censorship folks. 

Now, this morning, I attempted to contribute to Michael Ledeen's thoughts on Islamists, How to Fight Them. As happened when I tried to post about the Glen Beck Rally, I didn't get the "your comment is awaiting moderation" that I used to get at most PJM sites. So it aroused my concerns that the following important bit of information would not get a chance to appear there.

Here it is my so far aborted entry:

"Indeed, we should emulate the French and forbid women to cover themselves in public."

The French are about to go further than that. They are taking the position that those who practice in-your-face Islam are acting as a political party whose agenda is to install Sharia in France via fait-accompli.

For more about that, go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1fG2oO2X8s

I do not know or understand why I'm having this difficulty, as I'm no troll. Thus I thought you should know I'm having this difficulty.

I have added this comment to my "Be Wary" keyword list. Be wary of PJM as they seem to have something in common with The New York Times: They print all the news they deem fit for print.

Statist Tools: Restricting the Rational

Two examples how rational, comparative argument has become restricted:

1. Those who invoke Godwin's Law for the purposes of censorship. They've expanded Godwin's observation from implying that "listing key points of an issue has been exhausted" to declaring that "there has been a breach of what may be considered a legitimate argument." It is a fact that Hitler and his NAZIs started off as less outrageous and increased their powers incrementally. When some group begins to follow a path similar to Hitler's, and reports of such behavior is forbidden, rational argument has become restricted simply by barring the introduction of such comparative evidence.

2. Those who reflexively shut down their brains when something sounds conspiratorial. The repeated airing of absurd conspiracy theories (a persistent campaign by Michael Medved) serves as a preventative to rational discussion of plausible conspiracies. An excessive parade of the former type, of groaners easily ridiculed, sets up in the reflexive thought "not another one" whenever a latter type appears. Statists are thorough and operating in plain sight if one would only recognize it. The upshot of it all is that in most cases, the person who introduces a conspiracy is dismissed as paranoid or simply nuts. Yet it is a fact that the Roman republic was undermined by contractual conspiracies between powerful men who, it turned out to be, were mortal enemies of each other. They are known to us as the First and Second Triumvirates.

Avoiding comparisons of what transpires now with what transpired then is evidence of either the irrational or of self-restricted rationality.  Where it is self-restricted, we are either witnessing reflexive action or the willful practice of double-think.  Whatever the cause, rational thought has been dimished.

That MSM and fellow travelers did not do that to Hillary Clinton when she introduced the phrase vast right-wing conspiracy tells you all you need to know.  Progressives and their conditioned idiots legitimize "attacking a conspiracy nut" selectively.

Bottom line: The charge of “conspiracy theory” presumes that there is no possibility of any such thing, which, given history, is obviously ridiculous. Thus, the exclusion of real evidence, review and discussion of conspiracies is itself irrational.

How MSM Blasts Gore For Inspiring EcoTerrorist James Lee

* * * C R I C K E T S * * *

Restoring Rationality To Argument

As I've been rereading CS Lewis' The Abolition of Man, I began to recognize how our Conditioners have removed rational thought from so much in our lives.

I wasn't thinking of that when media, having played down the size of the 8/28 Rally, spurred to build the scaling tool last Saturday afternoon to shine a light on their lies.

But since then I thought about what I had done, and it dawned on me I had something even more important to share. I had worked to introduce rationality to my argument, and its something that is woefully missing from so much we see in media.

Comparing quantitative sizes of objects to aid argument is literally rational. And because what I did can be duplicated, everybody who does knows I'm telling the truth. It's real value to my efforts to increase honest discourse and reduce the dishonest is in its duplicability.

And we know that the media has the tools to do exactly what I did, but they didn't. Why? Because then they couldn't lie about the size of the crowd. Oh they could try; but then others would come along and try to duplicate it, and thus their lie would be exposed. That would make their lie explicit. This way, their lie is only implicit -- but still a lie with which they've been trying to wiggle out of with really stupid density figures.

More than just math.

But rational argument is more than just math. When we compare attitudes or agendas, and gauge where their leaning or heading, we are engaging in rational thought. CS Lewis, in the first of his lectures in The Abolition of Man, the chapter titled Men Without Chests, he told of the new direction in methods that had been taught the next generation of teachers. Most striking was how the next generation of students would deliberately be taught to throw out the hard earned lessons of the past, and to think of each old problem entirely anew. They would be denied learning of the history of the past so that they could no longer compare the results of what worked and what did not work.

In that course of events were buried deliberate efforts to destroy access to knowledge that allows us to be fully rational.

What are you going to do about trying to remedy that horrible scheme?

Well, I'll tell you what I have done. The last three days are the beginning of a series in which I've striven to point out where rational argument can be reintroduced. One of these was in the line wherein I strongly recommend restoring balance to our judgment. We often hear about the loss of our American meritocracy. Well duh! We can bring it back by giving credit where it is due and pointing out where the shortcomings are, and stop worrying about hurt feelings. Better hurt feeling than someone die because no one dared caution them that they were headed off a cliff. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

And by all means, if you see someone misleading another, and it's not to teach the lesson that a mild misdirection will provide, then speak up and warn the misled subject even if you forgo berating the misleader.

"What I'm talking about today is our need to think twice before will succumb to our earnest desire to project our decency on they who are not (do unto others as thou would have done to thee) so as to better balance that with our need to reward and withhold reward based on merit. For where we are too lax in assuring there is balance, we should not be surprised to find ourselves up to our eyeballs in a muck that is the consequences of demerit after demerit overlooked."

And What If That Soul Is Really Lost?

Yesterday's post, The Battle for a Human Soul, may have been overly optimistic.

In the final paragraph of his otherwise disparaging report on the 8/28 Rally, the editor/writer Clive Crook unexpectedly displayed what appeared to be a shred of common human decency. As I remarked then, I saw in that a spark of hope. Quite a number of others felt likewise. So many felt that way in fact, that I think we affected Richard Hernandez (Wretchard) enough to soften his initially jaundiced view of that man's comments.

And then I awoke this morning with a nagging feeling that the editor/writer with whom I was siding may have been taunting us. I was now more inclined toward Wretchard's original feelings.

You see, even the most wretched of members of the American country class have a tendency to project their own general (more or less) decency on members of the ruling class and their operatives.

What I'm talking about today is our need to think twice before will succumb to our earnest desire to project in that manner (do unto others as thou would have done to thee) so as to better balance that with our need to reward and withhold reward based on merit. For where we are too lax in maintaining the balance, we should not be surprised to find ourselves up to our eyeballs in a muck that is the consequences of demerit after demerit overlooked.

Here is what I wrote to Wretchard with a few new insights added. Please forgive me if I left in some things that I've already mentioned above:

Dear Wretchard,

I now think that your initial instinctive wariness concerning the attitude of Mr. Crook may have been correct.

I’ve had second thoughts about what I posted yesterday wherein I agreed with the others and with your own reconsideration of Crook’s comments at the end of his commentary on the Restoring Honor Rally. This is even though I wrote The Battle for a Human Soul.

1. The Sound of Music scene in the convent cemetary, where the von Trapps have been discovered by the boy interest of his oldest daughter, now Hitler Youth, Rolfe.
2. Rolfe has not yet blown the whistle, confused by the mixed signals in his head.
3. Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) is hoping that he can convince Rolfe to look the other way.
4. At the point where the Captain thinks is right, he tells Rolfe “you’re not one of them; you’ll never be one of them.”
5. That triggers something the NAZI indoctrinators anticipated, because it’s there that Rolfe blows the whistle.

The writers of the Sound of Music still had the NAZI era fresh in their brains. They knew the behavior of “the people Hitler had been waiting for. ” Our contemporary world of conservatives does not remember that as well as you do Wretchard. This could be because of your grittier experiences that many of us here lack. I'm convinced you've witnessed more darkness of the human soul than most.

CS Lewis spoke in 1943 of Conditioners. "The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists."

Mr. Crook could be like Rolfe there. The Conditioners have been indoctrinating him for quite some time. We are witness to the contradictions going off in his head.

But I fear it is far worse, where your original take on his words was focused. Mr. Crook may well have been mocking the sensibilities behind “Restoring Honor” (an element in your initial skepticism?) by telling that tale of the cafe denizens acting mean toward the little girl. Because that fits the purposes of the Conditioners. If tomorrow Mr. Crook turns again to please those for whom he employs his pen, he will find a way to dash the hopes of many not only here at Belmont Club. And another chunk of our country class will be dispirited.

Oh yes -- being mean fits the behavior of the now gloating and brazen Ruling Class. They aim to be much worse yet.

Yes, I think the inner party may still treat him harshly for showing a momentary spark of human decency. It would serve them well to make an example of Mr. Crook. He's only a tool, like old Winston was portrayed. He's not inner party material from the looks of him.

We BCers may be making the same mistake we in the country class tend to make too often. Viz.: Projecting our own decency, our humanity, onto our adversaries.

So what if that soul is really lost?

So nothing can be done. For then Mr. Crook is already lost, like that likable boy Rolfe, and unlike the husband of CS Lewis' heroine in That Hideous Strength (Lewis' novel which runs parallel to The Abolition of Man).

For then what Mr. Crook had written yesterday was not his own human decency slipping out, it was a ploy, a mocking of us who saw a spark of hope in what looked like his struggle to shuck all the postmodernist dreck that's been pumped into him.

We just let him go and use this example as a warning to others who might be tempted to go join his Conditioners.

The Battle for a Human Soul

The soul in my title refers to that of a writer and editor in establishment media who displayed a moment of kindness. I think I too well understand the nature of the beasts who aim to rule us. Where I see a spark of humanity in the writer, they see weakness. So, in way, what this man may endure could be a blessing or a curse, depending upon how he values his own worth.

Some will surely accuse me of making a leap here. If it is a leap, I have good reason to believe it isn't all that far of one.  That is because I am informed by warnings: those written by some in the past, and those exhibited by the behavior of many on the contemporary scene.

Wretchard wrote today of Clive Crook's disparaging of the Restoring Honor Rally. Judging from the reaction in Mr. Cook's publication, The Atlantic, to hear of such disparaging is why they read that publication.

However, what I noticed at the end, and for which many other Belmont Club members also noticed, was that Mr Crook seemed to soften his opinion of those who attended the rally. Not only that. Mr. Crook spoke less than approvingly of the kind of people who read The Atlantic. In his closing paragraph we see:

This afternoon, walking back to my home in predominantly white North-West DC, I paused for a bite to eat in the predominantly white Dupont Circle area, in a cafe whose clientele was predominantly white. There, I did see something mean. A family wearing "Restoring Honor" T-shirts walked by outside, and a little girl tripped over and hurt herself. The couple at the next table laughed.

The prospects for that man -- or any man in his position -- are now less than certain. As one BC member put, we will see what else he writes in the days to come. However, I think he has cast his dice and his fate is on a different track than others are willing to ascribe. It could be a good path, and I hope it is, but the given the nature of the beasts, well -- I hope I am wrong in the dire nature of what follows.

I’m with those who think that Mr. Crook has now varied from the narrative.

Let us hope — no pray — that things have not yet gone so far that he may be forced to endure experiences similar to that of outer party member Winston Smith. Mr. Crook showed a hint of humanity toward that little girl and more than a touch of hostility towards well-healed party members. Sentimentality is not tolerated, unforgivable by the inner party.

It would not matter to Mr. Crook’s fate were he to return to the narrative in the coming weeks. The inner party would not see his performance as Wretchard initially did — as an intentional ambiguity, and thus fitting in with “duckspeak.” They will see it as we hope it was.

So Mr Crook has nothing to regain but his humanity at this point. Again, let us pray that he continues in this new view in the coming weeks. He'd be on our side. We need more humans, not Progs, reinvigorating decency back into our culture.

A Tool for Beating the Ministry of Lies

The following is meant as a public service, and one that anyone can duplicate were they to wish to do so. (And yes, I did not write Ministry of Truth, because sarcasm does penetrate the thick hide of the abuse-full and idiotic propagandists.) [Editor's note: In later years Pascal Fervor began using Agency of Lies because he saw that we were not an Orwellian world quite yet, and felt it best that he speak the truth while he still could. He also used the acronym SKUNCs instead of RINOs for much the same reason. He liked Agency because Ministry sounds too British and the propagandists so labeled wear American and not British disguise.]

I'm tired of the news media lying as to crowd sizes in Washington. So I took another well-known site -- Michigan Stadium -- that I could capture from Google Maps accompanied with its scaling abilities.

Michigan Stadium will seat 110 thousand people. That means approximately the same number will fill a similar area (despite the angle) in a standing-room-only situation such as rallies that use the area between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington monument.

The scales shown for both photos below -- in case you can't read them too easily -- is 200 feet for the short scale, and 100 meters for the long scale.

Then I cut up the picture of Michigan stadium to layout a rectangle that holds that 110,000. I also included some additional white space so that the whole rectangle might approximately encompass an eighth of a million. Then let us, for the sake of the argument, just call the rectangle 100,000 SRO people.

Readers can cut up the rectangle to fit the spaces and easily do the rest of the math. To Hell with the MFM: the way they lie to us daily, clearly anyone who can perform simple arithmetic they hold beneath contempt. Your intelligence proves you're not in their bizarre Postmodern world.

If this proves useful in dispelling MFM lies, then I fear that the powers that be will corrupt or otherwise ban this Google Maps feature. So better you see this today while you still can.

Here is a photo of today's Restoring Honor Rally. (update# 2: 2011/09/05 -- original yahoo link has "disappeared" -- imagine that? Our Statist media sending work down their memory hole. For ref this is the old link. I found a replacement today (h/t Vicki McClure Davidson), saved a copy, and replaced the defunct one with it.)

**Update #1**
Adaptive Curmudgeon had kind words to say about this post when he noted Journalists And The Math That Scares Them.

I smell a rat.

A GDP downrating taken now will have the MSM Agency of Lies* playing it as old news -- "just a revision."

It might be interesting if not revealing to go back and check out what other bad news happened on the day they announced the old numbers. Bad numbers then could have been too much to bear.

But here might be their other motive: by releasing the lower numbers now, late, they can release 3rd quarter numbers just before the elections to show that GDP is a bit higher then than it would otherwise be.

Look for the Agency of Lies celebrating a relatively improved GDP just before the elections. Don't let your neighbors be gulled.

[*Editor's note: In later years Pascal Fervor began referring to American media as the Agency of Lies because he saw that we were not an Orwellian world quite yet, and felt it best that he speak the truth while he still could. He also used the acronym SKUNCs instead of RINOs for much the same reason.]

Sarcasm? Surely You Jest

I was just reading another blog post. It could have been any post nowadays.

It facetiously referred to some media moron as "our moral superior."

We are in trouble when a significant portion of our population will see that not as sarcasm, but as legitimate opinion.

We are in grave danger when the person to whom you referred takes your "compliment" to heart, thinking you recognize their innate superiority.  He knew it all along, and now he thinks "the world is coming to its senses."

When the sting of sarcasm becomes this blunted, the intent of the wielder that confused, better stock up on commodities of all sort.

People get upset over my seeming lack of subtlety. "Why is a smart fellow like you so blunt?" Because there are already too many who placate those who are dangerous to human life. Proto-monsters who are never told where they are heading will surely develop into full-blown monsters, and they'll feel good about themselves the whole time. After they've gone too far in their decline, sarcasm simply does not work on them, nor on their supplicants.

Unless you think that one more complimentary message received by your enemy will send him off a cliff, my recommendation to all is to begin to lessen your use of sarcasm, and practice speaking more frankly. Too often your facetious message will not get through.
 

They Hate God Because They Hate Themselves

Andrew Klavan blogged a reluctant critique today of a Christopher Hitchens review of two books on Anti-Semitism. I say reluctant, because Klavan liked a good deal of Mr. Hitchens' review.

What Mr. Klavan found foolish -- rightly in my lights -- was the other author's insistence on placing the blame for the world's most resilient persecution on religion itself.

I recommend reading the whole thing, but I will excerpt Mr. Klavan's concluding lines: 

"...it seems clear to me that the people who feel they hate Jews actually hate God.

And they hate God because, in the light of His goodness, they hate themselves.”

The God of the universe is the exact opposite of misanthropy. The God of misanthropy is Sustainability.

Press a Greeny a bit and you’ll hear: “This planet has too many people.”

God and his promise and his moral code contradicts all those who believe in the Malthusian moral imperative. They find that intolerable.

By hook or by crook, they are determined to reduce the number of people on this planet. In a world dominated by such pessimists, it is totally logical that all of His people are marked for persecution.


Related posts:

• At the Core of the Judeo-Christian Ethos: What Animates Its Critics
• God Asked Abe to Offer Ike, Nothing More