Do the Bartman
Somehow — and I don’t profess to know how — the Chicago Cubs won the World Series last week. The game itself was utterly absurd, packed with virtually every insane occurrence that can occur in the game of baseball — but isn’t it always? That’s part of the wonder of baseball. Against all odds, it still manages to be full of surprises, even long after we should have seen everything there is to see. For my part, I’ve never seen a wild pitch score two runs before. I’ve also never seen a bunt call as bizarre as the one Joe Maddon put on in the ninth inning, a call so bad it makes one wonder if the game really is rigged for maximum drama. Unlike elections, however, baseball would be too difficult to gimmick, what with the unknown ball position and all.
One might ask, not unreasonably, why I’m writing about baseball on a site about libertarianism. I might respond, also not unreasonably, that this is a lesson in property rights; specifically, it’s my blog and I’ll write what I please.
I know that’s a crap answer. And you know me — I won’t leave it there. So I’m happy to say I’ve found some Last Week in Weird-worthy content in the World Series anyhow! It turns out that a number of viewers were triggered by a "KKK" sign on display at the ironically-named Progressive Field during the game. Mediaite has a fun piece up collecting tweets from twits and making fun of them; the letter "K" is a baseball abbreviation for a strikeout, and it’s tradition to hold up a "K" for every strikeout a pitcher has. When the pitcher has three strikeouts, well, there’s going to be a "KKK" sign that the poor saps who’ve fallen victim to the Social Justice War are going to read sinister intent into.
Thing is, there’s a comedy twist to this whole silly affair. It turns out that Mediaite itself was pushing the KKK sign fiasco, and stealth-edited the story to blame the whole thing on the dupes who picked up their phony story:
Naughty, naughty, you incorrigible hacks. "Some Twitterers Thought There Was a KKK Sign at the World Series" indeed.
Enough of them. Back to being chuffed that the Cubs finally won the Series. Now that it’s next year, though, what will we moan about? I’m sure we’ll figure something out. For now, I’ll leave the last word to Joe Posnanski:
This beautiful and boring and riveting and flawed game of baseball, invented by nobody and everybody, taught to children by Civil War soldiers, national pastime when America was ascending, symbol of hope for integration before Birmingham and "I Have A Dream," this game of messy labor fights and various scandals but also of Henry Aaron and triples and hot dogs smeared with mustard, this game, even now, in the CGI world of 2016, this game can still grab us by the hearts.
Martinez nubbed a ground ball to Kris Bryant who smiled as he fielded it and threw across the diamond for the Cubs’ championship. And Jeff Garlin, along with countless others across America, shouted "Oh my God!" Because it’s baseball.
Ooo eee ooo ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang
Malik Obama told the witch doctor he was supporting Trump. And then the witch doctor he placed a curse on Malik Obama.
Local leaders and close relatives of Mr. Obama, whose father was born in Kenya and who is seen as a source of immense national pride, met to place a curse on Malik Obama. Threats of violence have been made against the family apostate.
"We have decided to curse him," said James Otieno, a clan elder. "He is not one of us here because he is eating with the enemy. Why can he disown Obama, who is respected around the globe? Obama’s presidency has helped this village."
Journalism!
As any fule kno, curses are absolutely a real thing. Why, I once knew a baseball team that had a curse, and it took a hundred and eight years to break it! So since curses are completely real and that, the serious journalists at the Washington Times probably should have bothered to ask what kind of curse we’re talking about. What’s the point of harassing people halfway around the world if you’re not even going to bother with the details? I mean, other than smearing a political candidate you’re being paid to smear. I sure hope this isn’t the kind of curse that kills people who get close to you and learn your nasty secrets — Hillary Clinton has a curse like that, and it might claim Anthony Weiner any day now!
Some local residents have threatened violence against Malik Obama, regardless of who wins on Tuesday. They said Malik hadn’t been back to Kogelo since he left for Las Vegas.
"We no longer need him in this village," said Erick Onyango, a taxi driver. "When he comes back from the U.S., we might be forced to attack him. He should live with Trump after elections because he has been supporting him."
More violent behavior from those horrible Trump supporters. When will it ever end?
No way am I embedding this video
On the subject of weird occult behavior, Wikileaks revealed last week that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta received an invitation to a "spirit cooking" dinner with a woman called Marina Abramovic. What’s a spirit cooking dinner, you ask? Paul Joseph Watson explains:
Spirit cooking refers to "a sacrament in the religion of Thelema which was founded by Aleister Crowley" and involves an occult performance during which menstrual blood, breast milk, urine and sperm are used to create a "painting".
According to Marina Abramovic, if the ritual is performed in an art gallery, it is merely art, but if the ritual is performed privately, then it represents an intimate spiritual ceremony.
Well, there’s lovely. The Wikileaks e-mail was rather less clear on the subject of whether or not you and I paid for this, but suffice it to say your humble narrator is now imbued with a far greater desire to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.
What would John McAfee do?
There’s your Libertarian Party vice-presidential candidate, Willie Weld, publicly endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. Remember the LP convention? Remember the scene Gary Johnson kicked up because some people dared to doubt Weld’s libertarian credentials? Austin Petersen does. I’m hard pressed to determine if the joke is on Gary, or if Gary was in on it from the get-go, but all pretense has been abandoned: Weld is, and always was, just trying to siphon votes away from Donald Trump for Clinton’s benefit.
I’m here vouching for Mrs. Clinton, and I think it’s high time somebody did…
I have a lot to say about Mrs. Clinton that has not been said by others and I think needs to be said. I’ve known her for 40 years. I know her well personally. I know her well professionally. I know her to be a person of high moral character [sic], a reliable person [sic], and an honest person [sic], however so much Mr. Trump may rant and rave to the contrary. So I’m happy to say that. And people can make their own choices…
In the final days of this very close race, every citizen must be aware of the power and responsibility of each individual vote. This is not the time to cast a jocular or feel-good vote for a man whom you may have briefly found entertaining. Donald Trump should not, cannot, and must not be elected President of the United States.
By which you mean "vote Libertarian," right, Willie? Oh.
Possibly to its credit — and possibly not — the LP at least tried to spin this obvious betrayal as a strong condemnation of Donald Trump that was just misinterpreted by us boobs as an endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Weld then told Rachel Maddow that he "do[es] not agree with that [press] release." Aren’t you goofballs glad the Libertarian Party nominated somebody "electable?"
Oh, and just one other thing:
Camerota asked Weld if he thought that he and Johnson were drawing votes from Clinton and could end up tossing the race to Trump, but he argued that he was confident they were pulling moderate Republican voters away from Trump.
"My appeal is to Republican voters: ‘Think twice before you vote for Trump," [improper quoting sic] he said.
Aces.
Whoops missus!
Last week’s assurance that the government definitely was not constructing autonomous murder robots may have made us feel better in the short term, but that sense of well-being was undermined only a few short days later, when the manned murder-craft the feds swear they’ll stick to accidentally bombed Michigan. Hey, it happens! Just one of those things!
Officials say a mechanical failure is believed to have caused the release of six training bombs and a training missile from a military plane over Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula…
The training weapons were on a plane heading to Camp Grayling from Selfridge Air National Guard Base in suburban Detroit when they fell off.
They "fell off?" What, were they just resting on top of the plane? I know I left a sandwich on top of the car when I left work once, but come on. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a hair more attention to detail when we’re dealing with canned murder that I paid billions of dollars for. How much you want to bet the solution to this problem is going to be that we have to pay yet more billions of dollars? Oh hello!
Little white lies
I’ve been telling you for ages now that political correctness is destroying your brains, and that, in particular, those people trapped in the lunatic social experiments masquerading as universities are most at risk of zombie brain melt. Surprising exactly nobody, I was right all along. It turns out that professor Duke Pesta — who, confusingly, teaches at the University of Wisconsin — has been surveying his students for eleven years now, and has determined that the overwhelming majority of his students have no knowledge of American history whatsoever, but have a deep conviction that slavery was invented in America, practiced exclusively by white Americans, and never practiced anywhere else.
What’s more, he began to observe a shift in his students’ quiz responses in the early 2000s. Before that time, Pesta described his students as "often historically ignorant, but not politicized." Since the early 2000s, Pesta has found that "many students come to college preprogrammed in certain ways."
"They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets," Pesta said. "Most alarmingly, they know nothing about the fraught history of Marxist ideology and communist governments over the last century, but often reductively define socialism as ‘fairness.’"
Pesta also noted that, early on, his students’ "blissful ignorance was accompanied by a basic humility about what they did not know." But over time he said he increasingly saw "a sense of moral superiority in not knowing anything about our ‘racist and sexist’ history and our ‘biased’ institutions."
On the one hand, all professor Pesta’s years of work have determined is the obvious truth accessible to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. On the other hand, it’s always nice to have documentation!
I do what I want
I know you’ve all seen this — Tom Woods totally stole my thunder by showing it around — but it’s hilarious, so I’m posting it here anyhow. Filmmaker Ami Horowitz recently asked a bunch of white lefties in Berkeley why voter ID laws are racist. Then he went to Harlem and asked a bunch of black people what they thought of the stories he collected. The result? Comedy gold!
No, but, seriously
Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of Hillary Clinton, has just pardoned sixty thousand convicted felons — a number expected to be large enough to swing Virginia to Clinton. Of course, there’s no way to make sure those felons will vote the way they’re supposed to, right? Right?
Those who received McAuliffe’s letter [of pardon] also got voter registration forms with pre-paid return postage. No others in Virginia received such a service.
When TheDCNF pointed out that 60,000 could tip an election, [Virginia Board of Elections vice-chairman Clara Belle] Wheeler said "I am acutely and chronically aware of that." She also noted that McAuliffe has explicitly asked felons to vote for Clinton. [emphasis added]
If you’re one of the 30% of Americans who still subscribe to the bizarre fantasy that these elections are in any way honest, you really need to be taking a long, hard look at why you believe impossible fairy tales. The elections are a sham. They are a fraud. At least show a modicum of self-respect and refuse to participate in this mockery.