Classic Beauty: Pola Negri

What can you say about an actress who was independently famous in three countries?  Well, Pola Negri first became a household name in her native Poland as a stage actress, then in Germany as a movie star, and then became the first foreign actress to be hired in Hollywood — before Dietrich, Banky and all the other, perhaps more famous names.

Today, she seems to have been largely forgotten, but in her time she was not only famous, but infamous — not the least because she was the lover of (among many) Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino.

She also popularized the fashion of painted toenails, which no one had ever done before (except maybe prostitutes, which may have been why she was regarded as scandalous).

She also became fabulously wealthy — in 1922, her personal fortune was estimated (in today’s dollars) at just under $100 million.  Her house in Hollywood looked like the White House.

I don’t think the photos of the time did her justice, largely because of the clothing fashions of the 1920s were terrible.  And her acting style would today be called “histrionic” or “over-dramatic”, but that was the style back then in the silent movie era — and in any event, she was very definitely a product of her Polish upbringing, being passionate and over-the-top.

So what did she look like?

Here she is, snogging Chaplin:

…and giving ol’ Rudi Valentino the glad eye:

And here’s what she looked like in the 1940s, when clothing styles were better and the makeup less stagey:

Exquisite.

The Iron Lady

It’s been just over fifty years since Margaret Thatcher became BritPM, and ever since then the Left has been acting like rabid dogs towards her — once in power, doing what was necessary to reverse the tide of socialism that had essentially held Britain in its grasp since the post-WWII Attlee Labour Government and had led Britain right up to the edge of the abyss;  once out of power (stabbed in the back by the British Conservative Party’s equivalent of the RINO cabal in the U.S.), continuing to stab her over and over again;  and upon her death, vilifying her, spitting on her grave, rejoicing at her passing, and in general acting like the animals we all know they are and have always been.

So it’s been really good to see someone redressing the imbalance — in this case the brilliant publication TCW (The Conservative Woman) — in three fine articles, all written by Paul Horgan.  If you haven’t already seen them, go there now.

Fifty Years On:  Margaret Thatcher is still demonised by the left

If a lie is repeated long enough, it will become accepted by the less intellectually-endowed sections of the populace. We see this in the denial of the Holocaust. Some really awful people with a sick agenda know that their twisted beliefs are destroyed by accepting the truth of historic facts. So to further their immoral thinking, they will deny these events ever happened and were faked as part of some global conspiracy. The vindictively superstitious portions of our population will prefer the lie, especially after its repetition.

Here in the UK we are experiencing a similar phenomenon over the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, which started 40 years ago last month. Rather than a conspiracy to lie over this, numerous people who are separately working towards the same goal realise that it is vital that they distort the Thatcher years. Those vulnerable to their propaganda are people too young to have lived through them, or to have lived through the years prior to Mrs Thatcher’s premiership when this country was known as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ whose government ran out of money and could not borrow any more from its usual creditors.

Fifty Years On:  The big lies about Mrs Thatcher

There are two main lies. The first is that Mrs Thatcher destroyed the ‘post-war consensus’. The second is that her policies devastated communities, particularly in the North of England. Both are false. Here I discuss the first lie.

All Margaret Thatcher did was to take action based on the objective reality of the situation which was that a state-shackled economy needed liberation from the chaos that was causing the country to be ungovernable amidst accelerating economic collapse. All that is happening now is that the people who could not oppose her then are rewriting history now to brainwash anyone born after 1990.

Here I deal with the accusation that Thatcher’s policies devastated communities, when corporatist governance and incompetent planning were actually to blame.

The reform of the economy forms part of the second lie, accusing Thatcher of this devastation, particularly of those who depended on employment by state-run businesses. In fact, these communities were already devastated, and had been for years. The corporatist post-war consensus model was based on centralised economic planning, epitomised by the saying ‘the man from Whitehall knows best’. There had been calls for more central planning from the 1930s onwards by political and economic commentators and the planning started in earnest with the return of the Attlee government in 1945. It is therefore reasonable to believe that by the 1970s, whatever condition these state-dependent communities were in was as a direct consequence of state planning. However, it is clear that the planning did not include the contingency that these planned businesses on which the communities apparently utterly depended might not be able to sell to customers at a price the customers were willing to pay.

There was also the issue of the strikes, where customers, faced with unreliable supply, would take their business elsewhere. Working in an uneconomic coal-mine or loss-making steelworks was still hazardous and unpleasant, perhaps made more so by the lack of funds necessary to improve conditions, since all the money had to come from an increasingly-burdened taxpayer. The poor working men in these state businesses in this case were being subsidised to take part in a pointless, monotonous, and dangerous kind of work-based theme park, all according to a central plan made in Whitehall. It was a failure of state planning not to cater properly for change and innovation, but then all socialistic planning has that fault at its heart.

Fifty Years On:  Mrs Thatcher was polarising, not divisive

THE third big lie about Margaret Thatcher’s term in office is that she was a ‘divisive’ figure. This lie really started to be propagated in 2013 when it became the main narrative of the BBC and elsewhere after the Iron Lady died. What these media outlets probably meant was not ‘divisive’ but ‘polarising’. Margaret Thatcher presented a stark choice between consensus socialism and reformist capitalism. The voters chose the latter in decisive numbers in four General Elections. Despite unemployment, inflation and the miners’ strike, Britain still kept voting Conservative, keeping the party in power for a record-breaking 18 years.

If Margaret Thatcher had been divisive, the response of her opponents would surely have been to form a ‘popular front’, where differences amongst themselves would be forgotten in an anti-Conservative electoral alliance. In fact the precise reverse happened.

The excerpts above do not really do the articles justice;  they are there merely to whet your appetite.

Why did I do this?  Why talk about some long-dead British politician?  Just to remind everyone that Shakespeare was right:  “the evil that men do lives after them;  the good is oft interred with their bones.”

In Margaret Thatcher’s case, the good — the truth of the matter — is that she almost single-handedly saved Britain from ruin.  The “evil” is in fact how the Left has demonized her, and that evil does indeed live after her.

Not Revenge; A Reckoning

That lovely quote from the movie Tombstone  came to mind when I read that Kash Patel was confirmed as FBI Director by the Senate.

I hope, nay even expect that there’s going to be some kind of Mass Resignation Event among the Fibbie senior management — and there fucking well should be.

There has been a lot wrong with the various alphabet agencies who are nominally charged with looking after the American people, in that they seem to have misinterpreted their remit as “looking at” the American people, much in the way that an owl looks at a mouse.

The FBI has proven itself to be particularly at fault because they’ve gone after concerned parents, Catholics and who knows who else in a totally misdirected — and I use the word advisedly — identification of harmless folks like these as “enemies of the nation”.

How they might regard gun owners like myself we will not speak, because the actions of their vaunted SWAT teams speak for themselves.

So Kash, ol’ buddy, get in there and start rooting out the assholes — I’m pretty sure you know who they are — and don’t content yourself with just firing them;  prosecute all those worth prosecuting, just as they have unjustly done to otherwise-innocent people in the past.  (Ask the President how it feels.)

And while you’re there, shut down the stupid departments like Human Rights, not because the motives behind their creation were incorrect, but because the people managing them ended up using those motives as a pretext for harassing and indicting people in the most aggressive and venal manner.

It’s called “turning the tables”, and I can think of no worthier targets than the people who initiated and carried out those actions.  They have, in short, betrayed their public trust and caused the public to fear, loathe and despise them, and they deserve to be severely punished in consequence.

New Arrival

This is either good news, or terrible news.

Oy.  As if we didn’t already have enough Merchants Of Death around these parts;  now I’ll have to resist the lure of one of my all-time favorite Merchants Of Death, right next door to the Galleria Mall off the corner of the LBJ and Dallas North Tollway.

Not just gun lust, but old-timey gun lust, FFS.

Their new address:  5304 Alpha Rd, Dallas TX 75240.

Opening date:  TBA, but it’ll be soon.

Aaargh.  Now I can’t even deny my inner urges with the “But they’re too far away!”  excuse.

Vey ist mir.

Quote Of The Day

Talking about an “assault weapons” ban, said piece of shit having been sent to VAGov Youngkin for his signature:

“Nobody needs to go hunting with an AK-47.” — State Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D)

Well now, that kinda depends on what you’re hunting… dunnit?

I’m not up to speed on Virginia’s political composition nowadays, but I hope that Youngkin will veto said abhorrence toot sweet and not have it overridden.

And one last thought:

Lockless

Apparently Smith & Wesson are discontinuing the disgusting Clinton-era revolver locks.  Details here.

And about time, too.

I should point out that my own J-frame lightweight Mod 637 has a lock:

…but it has never suffered an “inadvertent” lock-up as a result of recoil, although Smith’s scandium-framed revolvers are reported to suffer occasionally from this malady when shooting heavy magnum loads.

Whatever;  maybe I should think about replacing the old backup with a new “no-lock” piece…

 

If I do, I’ll raffle my old 637 to my Readers who live in states where I can ship it to without having the godless ATF crawl up my ass.  Or I’ll just give it back to its original owner, with thanks.  Watch this space.


Next on the agenda:  getting Ruger to stop disfiguring their guns with that stupid “GUNS ARE DANGEROUS!!!!” billboard on the barrel.  (Fuck you, we all know that, you foul poltroons.)