Michael Stuart Kelly

President Trump is killing it again--this time at Mount Rushmore. One of my favorite things about President Trump is not so much what he says, as what he does. In the case of statue toppling and defacing. President Trump is countering with action. In this speech, he announced he will soon be signing an Executive Order to create a vast outdoor park as a monument to American giants of the past. This outdoor park will be filled with statues of American heroes, including black ones. Let the idiots try to topple those statues because they are racist. The general comments from Trump supporters is this was his greatest speech to date. In my opinion, it was one among several greatest. Michael

Morricone in Denmark with a little Clint and Sergio I am charmed beyond belief by the following video of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra playing "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly." Seeing all these ultra-cultured Nordic Danes being conducted by the lady Japanese-born American conductor with hillbilly name, Sarah Hicks, in the theme for a Spaghetti Western caused a post-modern wheel to spin like a fractal of multi-colored fragments in my head and dazzled me with reflection of reflections of reflections--but in an integrative way, not in the dismembering way of normal post-modern crap. This is the way to put odd things together that normally don't belong together. This... Also, I got to pondering the trajectory of how art comes into being from humble beginnings. Many roads led to this concert. I riffed off that theme in my head for one such path. We started out with hammy dime-novel cowboy and gunslinger stories of the 1800s, which later turned into pulp fiction. That turned into the schlock Westerns of Hollywood for decades. Right as that was going away, Leone took it up in Italy and turned it into vicarious-level storytelling that elevated the American West frontier with well-chiseled mythological archetypes and went universal. That spread through the culture of the world like a virus and morphed and grew. Now we have a sophisticated European symphony orchestra not only playing the theme song, but embracing the aesthetics. There is even a bound man hanging by his neck from the roof inside the concert hall in horse opera justice style and a gigantic Clint Eastwood two-toned black-and-white silhouette in the back of the audience looking like a Wild-West version of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Oh yeah... and Ennio Morricone is a goddam genius... What a trip. I love it. Michael

Peter, I love these blasts from the past of yours. You did several really long ones recently, so it's going to take a day or several to read them and comment. They are fascinating, though. We get to argue with O-Land people 15 years ago or so as if we were arguing today with them. It's a time warp. How cool is that? Michael

There are large parts of the video below that could have been taken straight out of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Tim even went so far as to say that the greatest force in human history that has taken humans out of poverty is capitalism and that communism creates poverty wherever it is tried. Oddly enough, there is not all that much about the Evergreen issue. Here's another "oddly enough." President Trump has been successfully baiting the left to reveal their true foundation, authoritarianism and gross disregard for human life, ever since the campaign for the primaries. So the conversion of Tim Pool, especially his sidekick, Adam, is indirectly due to President Trump. He didn't teach them how to see. All he did was make the bad guys with smokescreens get rid of their smoke and let whoever wants to see see. Tim & Co. like to see with their own eyes, and they are seeing violence against innocents, attacks against freedom of speech, gangs, deceptive propaganda floated as news as the regular policy of news agencies, and on and on and on--all perpetrated by the left. So they started looking at other things, too, like what causes wealth to come into being? Without reading Ayn Rand (or at least mentioning her), they are drifting right into her core ideas. I get really irritated at times that the fearless leaders in O-Land blank this out just because when the word "Trump" appears before them, they salivate like Pavlov's dogs hearing a bell. It not only makes them salivate. It makes them turn off their brains. Michael

Jon, What symbol got deleted? I just went to the Goodable twitter account and here is a screenshot of what I saw: I'm including the screenshot in case they actually do change something, but, if you are referring to the heart, I am not detecting a symbol change. Is there another symbol that got deleted? That's a serious question, not a gotcha. Michael

Brant, I get tickled by this form of argument. It goes like this. Person A: XXX doesn't exist and the idiots who claim it does are dopes. Person B: Here is an example of XXX that has existed for a long time. Person A: That one doesn't count. btw - I own the Objectivism Research CD-ROM, so I looked up greed. There are way too many appearances of the word "greed" in Rand's published works to cite. Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and We the Living are full of examples, as are her newspaper articles, essays, journal entries and letters. (Anthem didn't pop up, though. ) Here is a typical example I picked at random. It's from The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. III, No. 4, November 19, 1973, "The Energy Crisis--Part II" The way anti-Randians, progressives, etc., would read a statement like this is to infer that, to Rand, greed is not "a real and deadly motive." That means (to them) that greed is OK (to her) as a motive. Michael

I was just reading over some of the founding documents of the USA. I noticed the following quote from the end of The Declaration of Independence. Opps... I think I got ahead of myself... Michael

Ellen, You are opening a curiosity itch in me. I might dig into Yarvin sooner than I intended (and, groan, push aside some other things for a bit to make space). But this excerpt you posted of the 1902 book along with Yarvin's comments reminded me of a video I just saw with Steven Crowder and David Barton. It is fashionable in our corner of the world to crap on David Barton because he is so pro-Christian when he talks about history, but, the fact is, he has a massive collection of original American history documents and other related items. Not only that, he is extremely familiar with them. He actually reads them (or, probably, at times has his staff read them and give him summaries and quotes). In this video, which I know is not your favorite form of consuming information, I learned something extremely interesting about black history and Barton illustrated his points by showing original documents and publications. I will summarize it from memory (leaving out Crowder's humor, which was not up to his usual par) as I don't have time for more right now. This means I will leave out names of documents and books. I may even be leaving out something important or getting it wrong somehow (although I doubt it). Later I might clean up the transcript Google provides so you can read it (reading it raw is impossible for getting a correct understanding), but don't hold your breath. In short my impression goes like this. 1. Many, many blacks were important to American history since the beginning--and slavery was not fundamental to their importance. 2. A lot of these blacks were pretty famous at the time they lived and after. They were prominent in the culture. There were even books about them or that made reference to them. (Note, I stopped to look up one of the books just as an example with a Wikipedia link: The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons: To Which is Added a Brief Survey of the Conditions and Prospects of Colored Americans by by William Cooper Nell. This included an introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe and was published in 1855 by Robert F. Wallcut. In other words, this was published before the Civil War.) 3. Before Woodrow Wilson became president, he wrote history books where he stripped out most all famous blacks or denigrated them (and blacks in general). After he became president, he promoted his view of history with his own books to back it all up and shoved them into the education system with the big hand of the government. The main future books on history used in American schools were based on Wilson's books. 4. Thus, to modern people, it looks like slavery was the be-all and end-all of black history in America until the Civil War, which makes for a much better victimization story than the horrible one that was reality. But this view actually insults blacks as a race because it is premised on a position that there were no black achievers except for one or two until White America fought with itself to release the incompetent blacks--meaning the entire race. This was the view of the progressive's favorite president who literally shoved a revisionist history about blacks into the American education system that endured for decades and decades. 5. So it is not racist America that modern black historians are correcting nor are these modern historians the first to write published books about famous black people who were forgotten for over a century. It is the racist efforts and actions they are correcting of a powerful progressive (President Woodrow Wilson) and his cohorts since the beginning of last century . Even with Barton's emphasis and over-emphasis on American Christianity in history, I find these efforts to be extremely valuable. So I make room in my mind for Barton to have his own defects and slants without throwing out all the good stuff he does. If reading Yarvin is something like this, that is, it allows for reframing popular core stories based on original documents in context, even if the author has noticeable flaws and biases, I am interested. Definitely. Michael

Jon, Just for the reader, here is a bolded headline to that link and some excerpts: Epstein Confidante Maxwell Arrested In New Hampshire [Updated] Here is the indictment if anyone is interested. Also, a video right out of the oven of the official press conference about Maxwell's arrest. This case shows AG Bill Barr's method of working. Re investigations, he's a plodder and keeps a tight ship on leaks. When the time comes he and his staff believe they have an air-tight case, they clean the path (like getting rid of Berman through political channels), then swoop in and arrest bad guys who have no idea what hit them. I bet there are a lot of Deep Staters who are observing this very process and, suddenly as their arrogance turns into bile and goes down their throats with a big-ass gulp, are contemplating a move to another country that has no extradition treaty. And, as you keep reminding readers, the people who disparaged as a conspiracy theory and a sign of warped non-Objectivist epistemology the idea that elites controlled other elites through pedophilia-connected blackmail are silent about this. Reality doesn't fit the story they keep telling themselves where they are the superior good guys. From their words and deeds, they are protectors of science and reason and defenders of decent people of prominence who don't deserve to be smeared. That's the story they tell themselves. In reality, as the investigations are now proving and later prosecutions and jail will prove, many of their public heroes are pedophiles and have been blackmailed for years because of it. Some way to do philosophy and epistemology if it blinds people that much, huh? Let's just say I'm enjoying the show. Michael

When Tucker rocks, he rocks hard. In this video he came for business, not bullshit. I agree with 100% of everything he said just now. Michael

Here is some icing on that cake. Michael

Ellen, Here is a follow-up. Scholar forced to resign over study that found police shootings not biased against blacks The lefties will be taking out all non-aligned professors they can get away with by using crowd-sourced mobs to uncover online and published material by the target going back years and decades that offends them, and, if offense can't be found, presents scholarly cases by the target against their lefty agendas. Then they will spin that. Before, at staff meetings, was the nudge--for professors to hire. Now that the left has some power in the universities, here comes the shove--on the professors themselves and right out the door. This is a more sophisticated form of witch trial and burning at the stake. But it's just as evil as that was. Michael

Hahahahahahaha... Seattle Police Dismantle CHOP After Protesters Threaten Mayor's $7 Million House Mayor Jenny Durkan is a total idiot. When the heat came to her house, now she's scared and her principles were the first thing she sacrificed as she sent in the guns. I guess her summer of love came to an untimely end. LOLOL... Michael

But I won't. Michael

This has to go in Trump Humor. Dream on, you anti-Trumper idiots. When you start doing things like this and hope to win an election, your own senility is in question... LOL... btw - On a not-so-funny level, I am starting to believe someone told Matt Drudge something like the following: "We took out your bud Andrew Breitbart in his prime. If you don't stop, you may get an early heart attack of your own." And Drudge said, "Well, fuck it, then." Michael

Facebook just did this to Tim Pool's sidekick because he's not well known, but his video was going viral. All he said was he was now going to vote for Trump whereas before he was not. The video took off. Facebook deleted it. Facebook is really asking for it. Michael

Tread lightly. That's the second warning. Michael

T, I don't think that is important to the humor (although I appreciate the info ). Exaggeration is one of the main ways humor works. And that photo (for those who are not technically aware) is really funny when contrasted to a bandana. Michael

Mark, LOL... I see it was the Scientology thing. I didn't remember because of the big-ass "MrSwig" rather than William Swig. Also, I didn't engage because I have no wish to debate about someone turning Objectivism into Scientology through ARI or how there is nothing useful at all in Scientology and things like that. This is how I understood his appearance. It was probably not the intention, but it was how I perceived it back then. It reminded me of the climate change dudes William brought over to teach us OL Neanderthals about the true truthy science of it all. And it reminded me of the days when people claimed there was nothing but evil in Islam because Mohammad was a pedophile and so on--and it's all in the Qu'ran at that. I don't get intellectual stimulation from that level of discourse btw - William Swig responded to me on Facebook, where I commented on his meme about Rand and Nixon. (And, we "liked" each other and became Facebook friends, of course. Group hug. ) Here is what he said: Like I said, I think I'm going to like this guy. I hope he comes around OL. But that's up to him. Michael

D, You're not tracking correctly what I wrote. I'm done. Michael

D, Tread lightly. Are you a fucking mindreader now? I said I'm going to read his stuff, that it's on my list of things to get to, and you call me dishonest? What's wrong with you? Stop it. btw - I will speculate publicly on any goddam thing I want to speculate on. It's my forum. Once again, what is wrong with you? Don't you have a clue? Just a thought. After I get to something by him (other than skimming his blog), I am certainly not going to discuss anything about it with you. Michael

William, President Trump certainly knows how to read the hell out of contracts and laws. Michael

Here's some really weird news about O-Land. There is a Facebook group called Ayn Rand. It leans hard ARI, which means it leans anti-Trump. A guy I never knew before named William Swig posted the following meme there. He created it. They banned him from the group. He posted a quote by Ayn Rand and did not take it out of context, yet they banned him for it. Actually, it's a shortened and paraphrased quote from a Q&A from Rand's Ford Hall Forum Lecture: "Censorship: Local and Express." It is in Ayn Rand Answers. Here is the direct quote from Rand as published in that book: "... even though Nixon’s behavior has been contemptible—he’s not the most corrupt president, but he’s probably the most contemptible—I’d still vote for him over George McGovern or Ted Kennedy." btw - I think I'm going to like this Swig guy. He pisses off the right people. Here is his Facebook account. And here is another meme by him. Michael

Heh. I got this from Michael Hurd. Michael

I did not expect this at all out of Bill O'Reilly. I like him, but I never considered him a person who would go full-on attack against the companies of elitists with warmongering histories. I bet this has an impact on the riots, too. Mercedes Benz is a big sponsor of news shows and social media news. I don't think it will like the impact of Bill O'Reilly's outrage against it ideologically and the ripples this will cause. There is more here: Bill O'Reilly: How Dare Mercedes-Benz Boycott American Companies For Political Speech After Building Hitler's Tanks Go Bill! Talk about coming back with a bang. Michael