Donald Rumsfeld, R.I.P.
Donald Rumsfeld, R.I.P.
He goes now into the great known-unknown
Whatever else you want to say about Donald Rumsfeld, who died yesterday at 88, he left us with a perfect litmus test for intelligence: If you don't understand what he’s saying here, or if you pretend not to understand it in order to avoid conceding a point to an opponent, you have failed the test.
This is precisely right. Far too many people don’t know what they don’t know. If you’re not smart enough to get this, you’re one of those people.
I’m pretty sure Rummy would also be amused by all the outright communists who are rejoicing today at his death. He wouldn’t want it any other way.
So, What Else Is Going On?
If you’re a lib, you’re not going to listen to a white guy like me tell you to stop saying “Latinx.” But how about a genuine Mexican?
“For the majority of people who are wondering why ‘Latinx’ is being used by some people in the media, don’t blame the real Latinos, we didn’t make it up. It was made up by the transgender lobby because Spanish is a gendered language, which is simply an expression of nature, and we they can’t allow that insult to their political agenda.”
Read the whole thing. And you’re not allowed to disagree with any of it, because a brown person is saying it. Hey, don’t blame me, I didn’t make the rules.
Bill Cosby’s welcome home party is gonna be so awkward. You just know he’ll insist on getting behind the bar.
When your enemy tells you who he is, believe him.
And America just smiles and nods. “Yes, Xi. Whatever you say, Xi. Please don’t bash our heads in, Xi.”
The Chinese Communist Party is not our friend. Western “news” outlets that grovel to China are not acting in your best interests. Anybody who tries to silence you for speaking out about China’s crimes against the human race is your enemy.
Sorry if that hurts your feelings, libs, but I just spent a year on lockdown, in fear for my life and the lives of my loved ones. All because of these lying, genocidal commies. So I’m not feeling too conciliatory.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you break into the Capitol Building and then climb through a broken window to get into the House chamber, you run a high risk of getting shot. That’s why it almost never happens, and I hope it ever happens again.
That said, Ashli Babbitt’s survivors deserve to know the name of the man who shot her. “Cockburn” at The Spectator theorizes that the shooter was a member of Mike Pence’s Secret Service detail, not a Capitol Police officer, which might explain why he still hasn’t been identified. I know a thing or two about government agents protecting their own, no matter who else suffers for it, so I join the call to identify the shooter. The shooting itself was justified, but this wall of silence about it is not.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I understand why it’s so compelling to some people. Secretive institutions just fuel it. They love the conspiracy theories because then they have some cover: “Oh, you’re going to listen to those kooks?”
She threw a fit again, and it worked again:
Now that Nikole Hannah-Jones has invaded yet another host organism and defeated its immune system, the host has nothing to worry about.
I wouldn’t want to be one of the four trustees who voted against her. They’re about to get doxxed.
Remember what Mom and Dad always told you about taking candy from strangers? You know what they said about strange men in vans? Well, the president of the United States wants you to forget all that.
This sums up the Democratic Party, huh? “Vote for us and we’ll give you free $#!+.” Except nothing is ever really free.
Crime is skyrocketing? Gas prices are through the roof? The border is flooded with illegal immigrants because Biden invited them here? Forget it, have a cup of chocolate chocolate chip!
Notice they’re not actually letting him drive. It’s never a good day when Grandpa Joe finds out where they hid his keys.
Working for Kamala Harris doesn’t sound like much fun. I’m glad my paycheck doesn’t depend on making excuses for a politician, particularly one this inept and erratic. You know things are bad when even Politico isn’t covering for her anymore…
Harris flack Symone Sanders has pushed back against the anonymous complaints, saying: “We are not making rainbows and bunnies all day.” I should hope not, considering how bunnies are made.
Although come to think of it, that is how Kamala got her start in politics. Just ask Willie Brown.
Kamala needs to show real leadership, like Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot:
That’s how you do it: When you screw up, it’s everybody else’s fault for daring to criticize you even though you’re black/female/gay/what have you.
Maybe Lightfoot’s policies wouldn’t keep failing if all of you ingrates weren’t so racist and sexist and homophobic. Ever think about that? Huh?
They miss him so much. They don’t know what to do without him.
You’re reading this right now, so I assume you don’t live in New York City.
Yeah, it doesn’t look like Times Square is using too much electricity, does it? The problem is Grandma running the dishwasher with the AC on. Just collapse with heatstroke on a pile of dirty plates, you selfish peasants. Where do you think you are, a first-world country?
As with all failures in Democrat-controlled areas, the “real” problem is actually a Democratic Party agenda item. In this case, global warming. Because as we all know, there was no such thing as summertime before we started driving cars.
German sex workers are protesting for the reopening of their brothels, which have been closed because of COVID-19. They’ve been having the wurst time.1
“I remember sitting there once, high on E, writing notes for Terminator, and I was struck by Sting’s song, that ‘I hope the Russians love their children too.’ And I thought, ‘You know what? The idea of a nuclear war is just so antithetical to life itself.’ That’s where the kid came from.”
— James Cameron in The Ringer’s oral history of Terminator 2, which came out 30 years ago this week
Although, wait, hang on… The song “Russians” was on Sting’s first solo album in 1985, a year after The Terminator came out. How could that song have inspired the movie’s idea of a future destroyed by nuclear war?
Or is Cameron talking about writing T2? Because if so, he’d already established John Connor and the dystopian Skynet-ruled future in the first movie. He didn’t get the idea from some melodramatic Sting song about the Cold War.
Well, if Cameron was using ecstasy as a work drug, it makes sense that his memory is all jumbled up. Regular use of MDMA might also explain some of Cameron’s other aberrant behavior, like his aggressive hostility and his fantasies of the world being destroyed by global warming. Drug-induced brain damage might also be the reason he hasn’t made a good movie in 30 years.
Some other fun tidbits from that T2 oral history:
When Arnold first read the script, Cameron had to convince him to do it even though the T-800 doesn’t kill anybody
Linda Hamilton only agreed to do the movie if Sarah Connor had gone insane since the first film, to which Cameron replied, “All right, well, you’re going to get my version of nuts”
Billy Idol was considered for the role of the T-1000, but a serious motorcycle accident in early 1990 took him out of the running
When casting director Mali Finn discovered Edward Furlong at a Boys Club in Pasadena, she stared at him so intently that he thought she might be a pedophile
Joe Morton was embarrassed that Hamilton was in so much better shape than he was
For the scene where the T-1000, disguised as John’s foster mother, murders John’s foster father, Xander Berkeley had to “sword-swallow” a dulled aluminum blade and then sit sprawled on that kitchen floor for hours in a pool of milk and fake blood that Cameron swirled up himself
Schwarzenegger distills Cameron’s directorial technique: “Everyone is kind of scared on set… He just screams at everybody”
Dang, now I need to watch T2 again. It’s been at least a month!
If you don’t know who Taylor Lorenz is, this won’t amuse you. But if you do, it’s hilarious.
I’m 1,279 days sober and most booze ads don’t affect me anymore, but this one went straight to my lizard brain:
I’m not going to start drinking again, but I’ll be damned if Bill Pullman doesn’t sell that mediocre beer. And he didn’t even need to fight any space aliens, just a Chinese virus.
Pullman makes a better fake president than Martin Sheen, William Devane, and Barack Obama put together.
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I still have a soft spot in my heart for draft Busch. Rarely drink it, but I still have that soft spot. Bud. not so much.
I worked in a world of multilevel security and one of my favorite sayings was you don't know what you don't know. It held a lot of explanatory power. Whether it was a known or unknown unknown, that meant you didn't know what it actually was. While the unknown unknown was the worst, the known unknown could still be a problem