Two Things

1 — The entire Left has come to the decision that “The future of the United States is MAGA now”.

No shit, fuckwits.  Lest we forget, the acronym stands for:  Make America Great Again.  I know you assholes tried to turn it into an epithet or insult, but you failed — as a recent election may have showed you.  Most citizens want America to be great again;  why do you not?

2 — Still to the Left:  yeah, it was during an election campaign and rhetoric tends to heat up when that’s happening.  But the election is over and sanity has returned — or should have, anyway.

But just an FYI:  the “garbage” schtick is well past its sell-by date;  so if any of you assholes refer to me by that epithet from this point, I’m going to punch you right in the fucking face.

I hope I’ve made myself clear.

Nominations

As FuturePOTUS Trump is announcing his various Cabinet picks, I think you can judge how well they’re going to do in their new jobs by the level of hysteria that the Left has greeted their nominations, one by one.

By “well”, of course, I mean the degree to which they are going to root out and eliminate the DEI and Commie assholes from their fiefdoms.  Here are a few, as I write this:

Matt Gaetz: Attorney-General
Pete Hegseth:  SecDefense
Marco Rubio:  SecState
Tulsi Gabbard:  DNI
Kristi Noem:  DHS
Elise Stefanik:  UN Ambassador
Mike Huckabee:  Ambassador to Israel
Lee Zeldin:  EPA
Mike Waltz:  NSA  (note the spelling, it’s not that Walz)
Jim Ratcliff:  CIA
Tom Homan:  Border Czar
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy:  DOGE (Gummint Efficiency, a non-government post)

There are a couple of names in there that made me wrinkle my brow somewhat, but I think they should work out okay.

And I know that this shouldn’t be a factor, but all the ladies thus far nominated are total hotties.  Noem, Gabbard and Stefanik?  Do a search on their pics — no wait, let me do it for you:

What would make me chortle like a well-fed baby would be if Trump doesn’t announce a replacement head for the Dept. of Education, “as I’m abolishing the entire department on Day One”.  (Ditto a couple others, come to think of it.)

I don’t know for a fact, but I would imagine that there are an awful lot of resumes being refreshed and printed out in Washington D.C. round about now.  And that’s a good thing.

JBT

Nice to see that the Fibbies are making jackbooted hay while the sun still shines (before the darkness falls over their little empire courtesy of Trump AG nominee Matt Gaetz):

The New York Post reported Wednesday that “the FBI seized Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan’s phone and electronics early Wednesday morning — just a week after the election-betting platform successfully predicted President-elect Donald Trump’s win.” The raid was as theatrical and histrionic as the raid on Mar-a-Lago was: “The 26-year-old entrepreneur was woken up at 6:00 a.m. in his Soho home by law U.S. enforcement officers who demanded his phone and electronics.” Why show up at 6 a.m.? Why demand Coplan’s phone and electronics? Whatever this was about, was it really necessary to treat Shayne Coplan as if he were armed and dangerous? 

Apparently, the answer is yes, because Polymarket had the audacity to represent accurately the electoral groundswell for Trump. The Post quoted a source calling the raid “grand political theater at its worst,” and adding sensibly: “They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things. Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons.” 

Even worse, the feds didn’t even tell Coplan what it was all about. He was “not provided any reason for the incident, but the source said they expect it is political retribution since Polymarket accurately predicted Trump’s win – not traditional polls.” The raid is likely a prelude to more political persecution: “The government is likely trying to accuse Polymarket of market manipulation and rigging its polls in favor of Trump.”

Here’s a thought for FutureAG Gaetz:  Day One of your tenure, find out who originated the idea for this raid, who authorized it, who went on it, then fire all of them without benefits and nuke their pension.

Don’t even ask me what I really think about this.

Common Thread

Getting a little sick of all the “look at the Left exploding, aren’t they a bunch of fuckwits” videos and such.  They sucked (and still do), they lost, they don’t deserve our attention, fuck ’em, time to move forward.

Like Oz commentator John Anderson has done with Victor Davis Hanson in this podcast.  Now go and spend a couple hours to a) see how a real interviewer approaches a topic and b) bask in the clear wisdom and analysis of VDH.

By the way — and this next isn’t a political interview — go and watch Rick Beato talking with maestro keyboardist Rick Wakeman of Strawbs, Yes, etc.  As with Anderson, Beato only asks a few questions — I think it’s fewer than half a dozen over the entire 90-minute interview — as Wakeman walks us through recording techniques, musical history and how Yes put their wonderfully-complex songs together.

And finally, even if you aren’t at all interested in Formula 1 racing, spend some time as former team principal Otmar Szafnauer (American, not German) shows his considerable managerial capabilities in an interview with some guys I’ve never heard of, but who also give the interviewee the extreme courtesy of asking only a few questions, not interrupting his answers, and basically giving the audience the benefit of his insight.

It’s a common thread running through all three, and I don’t want to hear any bleats of the foul “tl;dr” genre.  Knowledge isn’t gained from bumper stickers, but from knowledgeable people giving us the benefit of their wisdom and experience.  And the more time we give them to share with us, the deeper our understanding becomes and the more our lives are enriched.

I happen to know a great deal about all three topics, and I still learned a whole lot from all three interviews.

You’re welcome.

Added Snoopery?

I started reading this article in the DM  more for entertainment value than any other reason:

I do not have a TV license as I only watch Netflix and Amazon. However, I’ve heard I will now need to buy a license. Is this true?

I know, I know:  the premise of the question is puzzling to my Murkin Readers, in that the very concept of a “TV license” is unfamiliar not to say abhorrent.  But leaving that aside for the moment, I found my amusement turning into something else altogether as I started reading the answer:

The general rule is that under UK law you need to have a current TV license if you, or anyone within your house, flat or premises, watches live television on any channel or service, record television programs as they are being broadcast live or watch anything on BBC iPlayer.

So when you tune in to watch ‘on demand’ television, such as Netflix, Amazon and other similar streaming services, no TV license is needed.

This is because here you are not watching ‘live’ programs – i.e. shows that are being broadcast when you watch or record them but, instead, choosing from a catalogue of options.

So far. so good (well no, not at all good, but whatever).  Here’s where I started to feel a familiar itch in the old trigger finger:

What you have heard about relates to Netflix, the US streaming giant which has 17.1 million UK subscribers and has launched a new service where it broadcasts ‘live’ events – for example the former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul boxing match being broadcast on Friday.

This is therefore ‘live’ television, meaning if you watch this, or any other Netflix live event, as it is broadcast, or even if you record it to watch later, you fall squarely into the territory of needing a TV license.

To clarify, you can continue to watch Netflix without a TV license if you chose not to watch the live events.

Which begs  raises the question:  how EXACTLY does the BBC licensing Stasi know whether you’re watching a movie or a live show?

It seems quite a simple deduction that that the answer is twofold:  either Netflix is sharing the viewing choices of the subscribers with the BBC, or the BBC is able somehow to monitor the channel feed, whether terrestrial or wireless.  Either answer is fucking terrible.

I should point out that the only way the BBC can enforce this ridiculous license fee nonsense is because Brits are largely disarmed.  If some Lizenzinspektor  came to the average Texan’s door and started with the strong-arm bullshit, there’d soon be murders.

And just so we know what this is all about:

The standard TV licence now costs £169.50 per year.  If you are required to have a license but fail to buy one, you risk being fined up to £1,000, plus any legal costs and compensation you may be ordered to pay. 

Let’s hear it for the Surveillance Society.