160 Comments
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Anthony Lucido's avatar

The fact that incredibly guilty Mumia was convicted nearly A HALF CENTURY ago for first degree murder and is still getting three squares on the public dime when he should have "ridden the lightning" by 1983 is infuriating.

"Liberate Luigi!"

Tony Petroski's avatar

"Ridden the Lightning."

Ain't that a ride at Pigeon Forge?

Max Cossack's avatar

I thought it was EuroDisney.

Anthony Lucido's avatar

Max, you didn't hear? EuroDisney was declared "Incredibly Haram!" by the ICC, the IPCC and the mayor of London and shuttered. It's now a mosque with a Typhoon Lagoon.

Max Cossack's avatar

If they get their way, every building ever built will become a mosque.

Anthony Lucido's avatar

Except the Obama library. Even the global caliphate's architectural steering committee has standards.

Max Cossack's avatar

They can always knock it down, like they have done so many times to so many historic monuments. This might be the first time I agree with them.

Joe Redfield's avatar

Haven't you heard? The grotesque building bearing BO's name in Hyde Park is not a library, but is officially named the "Obama Center." Why? Because there is no evidence that BO ever wrote anything longer than his name(and that illegibly) and it would embarrass even Democrats to call a building with no books in it a 'library'.

Ralph Fluchel's avatar

Obama's mosque ... er ... library looks like it came out of some post-apocalyptic movies I have seen. But it fits: a hideous monument to a hideous president. Let it serve as a reminder and a warning to all of us long after Barack and Michelle are gone.

Clark Carter's avatar

Standing out as an ugly building in Chicago is like standing out as a hot young lady on a French Riviera beach - you've beaten some tough competition.

Robert Dodd's avatar

Palmer's Bar in Minneapolis, a dive with which we both have some familiarity, I believe, is now a mosque. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Max Cossack's avatar

A depressing reality.

Susan Vass's avatar

At CC4 Uffda Phil gifted us with a beautiful book on the History of Palmer's Bar. Next time you visit us, I will show it to you. AG

Clark Carter's avatar

It started in Constantinople.

Shall we organize a protest march to free Constantinople?

Tracy Thompson's avatar

Istanbul was Constantinople

Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople

Been a long time gone, Constantinople

Why did Constantinople get the works?

That's nobody's business but the Turks

Anthony Lucido's avatar

You must be thinking of the Mall of America.

And it's called the Somali Soonami. (You have to be under seven years old and Medicaid eligible to ride.)

Tracy Thompson's avatar

In order to arrive at the Mall of America from the depths of Minneapolis, there is a light rail convenience known as the "Somali Trolley" that can be boarded at probably no expense if you know the ropes.

Max Cossack's avatar

If there were ropes one could just duck under them.

Clark Carter's avatar

My friends in Wisconsin know it as the "muggers' Express". I will set them right.

On a serious note, few years back I was talking to a young lady in Denmark, SC, who had grown up in Frogtown, Minneapolis. She could not believe the homeless camping off Hiawatha.

Cas's avatar

Know the ropes and the capitalists who sell them to you.

Tony Petroski's avatar

I've been on the Somali Soonami...scary, especially when you are upside-down near the ceiling of the Mall and realize the operator of the ride is wearing a burka.

Urey Patrick's avatar

I agree with you on all points except this one:

"Socialists and communists really do believe that the end justifies the means. After all, their end is a perfect society, without war, bigotry, alienation, relative poverty or any of the other evils human beings have been suffering since the last Ice Age."

The end is control. The perfect society is the one where they and their ilk control everything, and do not answer for anything. Justification for why they 'should' control will vary across the manifold sins of hubris and self-aggrandizement characteristic of elitist experts smarter and more caring than members of the unwashed masses, but that they will control does not vary. Human suffering is irrelevant. The end justifies the means is a deflection from the truth.

Max Cossack's avatar

That's interesting. Thanks!

I see what you are describing as the self-worship of idolatry.

You are certainly characterizing the leaders accurately. How about the followers? The leaders you describe have certainly been capable of creating mass movements.

Urey Patrick's avatar

Basically, the followers are dupes, often willing dupes, even aware. Look at the followers who subsequently ended up victims of Stalin's show trials, and agreed they were guilty!! Not all of the followers are so inextricably self-deluded... but the awakening is usually too late because preventing or subverting any such awakening is one of the most critical "ends" justifying the means... but not one to talk about all that much. The aberration is Islam because belief is required as an act of faith, mandated by the irrefutable words of Allah direct from God's mouth to the elitist's ears who thus require control of the masses, but don't give a tinker's dam for their actual welfare. Elitist control is God's will. Other than that wrinkle, it is all the same ... socialism, Communism, fascism, Islam....

MT Geoff-Debbie's avatar

The three classes in tyrannies are the nomenklatura, the apparatchiki and the baizuo. The three blend into one another and it's often hard to tell where people fall. The nomenklatura devise the tyranny and enjoy the goodies the most. The apparatchiki carry out the tyranny upon the baizuo and develop the practical means of stifling the baizuo and the lower apparatchiki. The baizuo cheer all this on, believing themselves to be the beneficiaries of the policies that impoverish and stifle them.

Max Cossack's avatar

The Chinese love to make fun of our western baizuo.

Urey Patrick's avatar

And now I have new words to use!! Thank you

MT Geoff-Debbie's avatar

I am a serial offender in the "make them look up funny words" type.

Urey Patrick's avatar

Hahaha … I like you!! 😁

L. E. Joiner's avatar

How do you pronounce 'baizuo'?

John Calderwood's avatar

If Stalin only knew... Of course, Stalin mostly did know, and didn't care whether he knew or not. The best way to keep the masses quiet is to prune the prominent. It cows more people per act, and removes a potential rival.

The One's avatar

I worked with a Jewish engineer from Kiev. He said his parents were true Communist party believers and were very disappointed when Stalin sent them to live on Sakhalin Island, where he grew up.

Mike Mellor's avatar

Control being a synonym for power.

Steve's avatar

The Kingdom...without The King.

Tony Petroski's avatar

It's always fun to see a new posting by Max Cossack. And, to celebrate, I'm posting the lyrics from a fitting musical piece, this one written by Minnesota's-own Prince.

"Here comes the story of the Hurricane.

The man the authorities came to blame.

For somethin' that he never done.

Put in a prison cell, but one time he coulda been

the champion of the world."

Or if hip hop ain't your thing, what about Johnny Cash?

"The judge said son what is your alibi?

If you were somewhere else, then you won't have to die.

I said not a word, though it meant my life,

for I'd been in the arms of my best friend's wife."

Johnny's innocent man was nobly protecting the love of his life.

I know somebody who probably wasn't protecting the love of his life.

O.J. Simpson. The Simpson jury acquitted him but somehow the Left never took up his cause..."Free O.J." "The Juice" is a great example of what Max wrote: "Often the evidence for guilt was so overwhelming and so dispositive that the defense’s only option was to claim that it came from a racist frame-up. Beyond just proving the case, his job included having to fight through nonstop vilification about what a tool of racism he was."

Max. Another fine posting and I can't wait to read your take on Officer Chauvin.

Tim Hurlocker's avatar

Our slogan should be, "Free Derek Chauvin!"

Max Cossack's avatar

Absolutely. Or "Save Derek Chauvin!"

Joe Redfield's avatar

As history "The Ballad of the Hurricane" is pure bunk, which is too bad because as music, it's one of the best things Dylan ever did(or at least it's my favorite, which is not the same thing).

L. E. Joiner's avatar

Mixes up Cash and Lefty.

MT Geoff-Debbie's avatar

I don't know if I saw all the comments so I will risk a Kilroy here.

There is something worse, far worse, than putting the Peletiers and the Rosenbergs and the Davises above the law.

It's putting the innocent beneath the law. It was terrible in the 1930s with the Scottsboro Boys, it was terrible in the 1990s with the LAPD4, it was terrible in the last ten years with lawfare directed against Donald Trump and his allies.

The worst current case is, of course, the MPD4. Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and Alexander Kueng all acted responsibly and within policy during the arrest and the medical crisis that ended with the death of George Floyd. Derek Chauvin is still in federal prison and bears scars from an attack by an inmate -- he had accepted the federal plea under coercion and because confinement in a federal prison was supposed to be safer for him. The others have been released but I think they are all on supervised release. They all still carry convictions. They've been paupered. They cannot get decent professional employment.

There are not enough camels to provide enough fleas for the armpits of those who have persecuted these innocent men and who continue, to this very hour, to make their crimes worse by continuing to claim these men are guilty. The top two are Medaria Arradondo, the police chief who threw all four men under the bus before any investigation began, and Keith Ellison. There are at least twenty others -- the pro malo attorneys, Judge Cahill and the jurors, the appellate judges, and probably some others I don't know about.

Susan Vass's avatar

Ah, I love "pro malo" attorneys. Excellent! As always...AG

L. E. Joiner's avatar

Free the MPD4! And compensate them for the harm done to them!

Brian Miller's avatar

One of the great things about DJT is that he excels at making clear the distinctions between reality and the insane. For example, whether the government of USA should priorities the needs of its citizens over the desires of those who are here illegally.

Leftists don't recognize reality. This is not disputable. Marxism gets a bad rap because it hasn't been done 'correctly'. Murderers are really murderers, they're crusaders against an unjust system. etc, etc...

Random thought: shouldn't Minnesota be renamed 'TransiMania'? (with apologies to the fine people in Transylvania). The leaders love to trans kids, and they're maniacal in opposition to reality.

Susan Vass's avatar

Eventually, Brian, they are going to come up against a dilemma -- IF they manage to kill all their babies even unto the 9th month and for any reason whatsoever, as their law reads -- eventually they will run out of children to transition. Sad. AG

Dennis Nicholls's avatar

That's why they need illegal aliens.

Clark Carter's avatar

Sir, you'd have liked my speech at the first Commenter-Con. It was on the subject of your second paragraph. In my experience, ignoring reality hurts - but that doesn't seem to stop leftists.

Susan Vass's avatar

It was a great speech, and with the memory issues of our demographic, I think you should give it again at CC5 should that happen (and we hope it will). AG

Clark Carter's avatar

With the memory issues of my personal demographic, I hope I can find the copy Tony sent me. If we can make it, I was thinking of giving the second half of my last speech - the tanker yanking years.

Steve's avatar

"Leftists don't recognize reality. This is not disputable. Marxism gets a bad rap because it hasn't been done 'correctly'. Murderers are really murderers, they're crusaders against an unjust system. etc, etc.."

"They didn't do it the wrong way, they didn't do it the right way, they did it the only way."

Bill Whittle What We Saw: An Empire Of Terror

Brian Miller's avatar

Wait! Are you suggesting it's a death cult? I'm Shocked!

Susan Vass's avatar

"WE are the GREATEST humans we have ever known! Since we are the brightest and best, we don't need no stinkin' babies who will never be as awesome as we are, anyway. Everyone should be gay, trans, or sterilized and then the gross and tedious business of raising the next inferior generation of humans will be eliminated. Ewwww... diapers, spit-up, RESPONSIBILITY. Who needs it? Gaia can return to its natural state as an empty planet." The Left

Cas's avatar

I once started reading a book about what the world would be like without human beings. I'm slow in that I got two or three pages into the book when it hit me: Who would be around to care? I stopped reading.

L. E. Joiner's avatar

The dogs. The dogs would care.

CharlesMartel3's avatar

Don't forget Screwey P Newton, darling of the left.

Tony Petroski's avatar

Hey there Hammer.

The darling boy of the Left: Che Guevara, psychopathic killer.

Max Cossack's avatar

But Che did look pretty on a tee shirt in his beret.

Tony Petroski's avatar

Che was really cute. And he had great hair just like Luigi Mangione.

Now that I think of it..."Free Luigi!"

Tracy Thompson's avatar

There is a tee shirt available with a picture of AOC in a beret. The wording reads "She Guevera".

Tony Petroski's avatar

Oooh....I want one of those.

Trace...keep this to yourself but...I secretly want to date AOC.

I fear AOC has done permanent damage to her brand with that dead-head non-performance in Munich. Dumb blondes now look down upon her.

Tracy Thompson's avatar

You stated on another site this morning that you wanted to date Rashida Tlaib. Aren't you spreading yourself a little thin? Ever hear the term "glutton for punishment"?

L. E. Joiner's avatar

She would talk you to death, inanely.

Cas's avatar

I met a kid at Starbuck's wearing a Che-T. I asked him if he knew anything about the guy pictured on his chest. True to form he said, "No." So I recited a few of Che's greatest hits, only scratching the the surface as there are many.

Never saw the Che-T on that kid after that.

Tim Hurlocker's avatar

Max, you forgot OJ Simpson! But your point is otherwise well made. Mao's cult obedience slogans ("This is final answer") are alive and well in America but only recognizable by those standing outside the cultish bubble. To people inside the bubble, the slogans are facts.

Miguel Garcia's avatar

A recent TIFA comes to mind: “The science is settled.” Deployed to justify the censorship of everything true, whether about climate or pandemics.

Lucy Hair's avatar

And such a perversion of science itself. I’ve mentioned before on this site and on PowerlineBlog how I feel about that. The worst thing about it is that I have known many scientists, physicists even, who bought into the climate change theme without asking the most fundamental questions about it!!

Tracy Thompson's avatar

Once the science is "settled", further questions will not be allowed. 😬

Eugene Kriegsmann's avatar

The year I taught at King County Juvenile Detention in Seattle taught me one really simple lesson, you can always tell that a perp is lying because his lips are moving. The ability of Conduct Disorder (check the DSM to get the definition of this diagnosis) to lie convincingly is truly remarkable. I found that they would only tell the truth if a lie didn't immediately come to mind. So, yeah, I fully agree with you on the Mumia thing, guilty as charged. The same can be said for a major portion of the political left. Their leaders may well fit the definition of Conduct Disorder as well. The rest of them are just useful idiots. Unfortunately, on the right we have a number as well, the further right you go the more likely you are to find them. Can you say the names Candace and Tucker!

Susan Vass's avatar

Ah, dear Eugene, we had one foster child who was a pathological liar to the extent that even if he didn't NEED the lie, he would pick the lie over the truth anyway. To keep in practice? To make himself more interesting? We never figured it out, but eventually had to just cut the cord when my BP went into the stratosphere trying to deal with him. We have lost track of him, but wherever he is, he is lying. As you say, he was GOOD at it, too. If he said you were wearing a yellow shirt that you knew perfectly well was blue, but you might wonder, "Could he be right? Is this really yellow after all?" That good. So sad. AG

Eugene Kriegsmann's avatar

That is tragic I had a student in my last few years who was born in Russia and adopted by an American family. Like you, they had to cut the cord after he had been in my class for a year. We talked almost everyday. I tried to support them, but it was obvious that he was a much bigger problem than they were able to deal with, probably than any individual family would be able to deal with. There were a lot of such kids brought into the country through adoption who were severely damaged prenatally through drugs and alcohol. In Juvy they were a whole different thing. You had to count every pencil you handed out during class when they were returned. You could not carry anything on your person that was either a weapon, like a small Swiss Army knife, or had real value. I remember when Colson suddenly claimed to have undergone conversion in prison following his conviction in the Watergate mess. I am amazed that anyone gave it any credence. Not that it wasn't possible in his case, but it was such a common ploy among inmates to claim such seeing of the light. The most hardened criminal kids I worked with could play the game so well that it was very easy to believe that they were telling the truth. They weren't, and it was a very embittering experience in learning how completely dishonest they were. Thank you for sharing your experience. I know it must have been incredibly painful to accept the truth and act on it.

Max Cossack's avatar

There are always two parts, aren't there?

1) Accept the truth;

2) Act on it.

MLP's avatar

Convincing the populace that the truth is a lie and vice versa is the primary goal of leftism. When you've become adept at that, you can make the people believe ANYTHING.

This is what 'woke' is all about. If the state can convince the people that a man can be a woman can be a man, the state's ability to manipulate perceived reality allows it to do whatever it wants, to whomever it wants. That's real power.

Once that power is achieved, 'guilt' or 'innocence' and the very perception of 'crime' will be reduced to 'what serves the state and what does not'.

"Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. Anything more than this comes from the evil one." Matthew 5:37

The prince of lies controls these people and that's why progressivism is a death cult.

Max Cossack's avatar

As Dalrymple wrote,

"the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better."

That final phrase sums it up. "The less it corresponds to reality the better."

MLP's avatar

Have you read Disinformation, by General Ion Pacepa? He was the head of Soviet propaganda through much of the Cold War. The book blew my mind so painfully I have yet to finish it. He invented "liberation theology" among other left wing abominations.

Ralph Fluchel's avatar

Well, there is disinformation and there is disinformation. The Left invented actual disinformation: it is a body of compete lies. Then there is the so-called "right wing" disinformation as claimed by Leftists, which is usually actual truth.

Sure, there are some right-wing lies, but they are a tiny fraction compared to the lies of Communism.

Susan Vass's avatar

Not only can a man be a woman or -- my favorite -- a non-binary whose "gender" changes daily, possibly hourly -- BUT if that fake woman should wear a little face diaper alone in "their" car, and stand exactly six feet from the person ahead of them in line at Walmart, they will NEVER get an air-borne virus! If we started listing all the lies we've been told just over the last ten years, Max would set a new record for comments! AG

Max Cossack's avatar

Is that a proposal?

Dan Cooksey's avatar

I'm waiting for Susan's answer.

MLP's avatar

the lies are bad enough but it's how many of our fellow citizens BELIEVE them that breaks my heart.

Ralph Fluchel's avatar

I'm afraid our our indoctrination ... I mean ... education system has a lot to do with that, MLP.

Ralph Fluchel's avatar

AG, I don't know if it's a record, but Max is doing pretty well on comments today.

Dennis Nicholls's avatar

I can't believe that my alma mater, UC Santa Cruz, keeps Angela Davis on the faculty. I will never give them a penny when they contact me for "alumni donations".

https://campusdirectory.ucsc.edu/cd_detail?uid=aydavis

Max Cossack's avatar

One more crackpot went unnoticed there.

As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet:

GRAVEDIGGER Cannot you tell that? Every fool can

tell that. It was that very day that young Hamlet

was born—he that is mad, and sent into England.

HAMLET Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

GRAVEDIGGER Why, because he was mad. He shall

recover his wits there. Or if he do not, ’tis no great

matter there.

HAMLET Why?

GRAVEDIGGER ’Twill not be seen in him there. There

the men are as mad as he.

Dennis Nicholls's avatar

I've read that Shakespeare put a lot of then-contemporary social and political commentary in his plays.

Max Cossack's avatar

Actually, having read that entry, I think it deserves an entire post all by itself. If our ring master Steve H won't write it, maybe I should.

Anthony Lucido's avatar

There is so much fodder within that entry, it could be a series. I especially liked the "History of Consciousness Department." How very Izvestian.

I wonder if there is a Department of Persistent Vegetative Statism.

I like to believe that Bill Ayers once said that with the possible exception of Lenin, there was no greater champion of the oppressed than Angela Davis.

Max Cossack's avatar

So many questions. For example, why do they follow patriarchal Latin grammar and call her professor "Emerita"? Has their consciousness failed them again? So many nits to pick, including the wit of the entry's author(ess).

Anthony Lucido's avatar

I'm pretty sure they just misspelled emetic.

Susan Vass's avatar

Oh Em Gee, you guys! An alumnus of The Fighting Banana Slugs? Awesome! AG

Dennis Nicholls's avatar

And to think that Victor Davis Hanson and I both graduated from UCSC in 1975.

Mike Doherty's avatar

Maybe the lefties have a better sense of the innocence of time: consider Joanne Chesimard who escaped to Cuba and Bernadine Dorn and Bill Ayes who taught at Universities.

Unwoke in Idaho's avatar

I think that’s the innocent significance of the persistent passage of time.

Max Cossack's avatar

Does that mean something like, "If I wait long enough, my supporters can tell enough lies to cover up how guilty I am"?

Tracy Thompson's avatar

I won't be burdened by what has been. Now I get it.

Mike Doherty's avatar

Admittedly, I was rushing to post the thought and my brain did a Kamala word salad. After its drafting I knew that this group of commentors would discern my meaning...and properly decipher it's construction. But please accept my heartfelt apologies for introducing Kamala in this comment section. As a famed attorney, she would have supported leniency for these criminals, likely labelling all of their actions as misdemeanors.

Mel Lacey's avatar

Sorry Mike, that's four syllables. Way beyond the ability of her 11 remaining functioning brain cells to comprehend and write/label.

Ol' Mel

Miguel Garcia's avatar

The chaos the left inflicts is the point, because the resulting turmoil is an opportunity to grab power.

Susan Vass's avatar

Very true and very sad. AG

Miguel Garcia's avatar

Yes, ma'am, though the demoralization is also part of the psyop. There are few things they fear more than the happy warrior(s). Limbaugh, Trump, Shapiro, and Kirk, for example.

Unwoke in Idaho's avatar

Pretty depressing stuff Max.

Jackson74's avatar

I’m looking forward to Friday’s post.

Susan Vass's avatar

Good! See you tomorrow! AG

alexander.helphand's avatar

What a great column. Who use to say that was written with a pen warmed in hell. On the other hand little lies like no your bum doesn't look too big in that or you look wonderful, when she doesn't are the small change of life to make things easier. But Clarence Darrow that fine man even shorted his lawyer who got him off for that bribery case. wouldn't pay the whole bill. What a great week so far . Anthony Lucido, being hysterical. Steven Heyward being profound and now you picking apart every left crime. And tomorrow AG

Cas's avatar

"What's a leader without followers?" An innovator.

Mark Robia's avatar

Marcuse and Davis were both at UC San Diego when I was a empty headed undergraduate. I still remember her harangues in the plaza as I walked to class or the library. I actually bought a copy of The Little Red book from one of her posse and read some of it. I threw it away years ago and never became a true believer I am happy to say.

Dennis Nicholls's avatar

I bought one of the classic Little Red Books with the plastic jacket back circa 1970. I keep it in the guest bathroom as a joke. The page marker thread is on the page about "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun".