I Was Wrong. But Not As Wrong As Those With The Big Stick

     We here at Bloody Nib Manor are peaceful people. We like peace, love and happiness. And we want the same for the World. But when a poacher encroaches upon the estate  to steal our wild game or livestock we have no choice but to get out the shotgun, the hounds, and horse whip and search out those who have violated the sanctity of what is legally and morally ours and give them a sound thrashing despite the malefactor's pleading of poverty. After all, said malefactor receives from the State a monthly stipend that is about equal to the monthly income of the estate. And while we are not rich, we are not poor. He. or she, wants what we have. Not because he needs it- after all, how many people are making rabbit stew in Southern California to feed their starving children-- but because he or she wants it.
     And we have found that often such people are bullies of the worst sort. They beat their kids, wife, husband, brothers, sister, moms and dads just because they can do it an instill fear in those who depend upon them just because they can. They are like idiotic scientists who think, "Gee, if I can make a robot that is a better worker than a real human that would be a good thing despite the fact that my invention would throw many people out of work and drive them into poverty. And that would be a good thing because I did something that can be done and because I'll make a venture capitalist a whole lot of jack and I'll be hated by every wrench turner in the world."
     Now, to get down to brass tacks after this all too long introduction which is barely related to the point of this nonsense. Let us agree that the Assad family of Syria is a family of awful dictators and jerks. They are, as many leaders in Arab lands, not people you'd want to share grazing land with. In fact, to the average American, if an Assad patronized a certain Wal-Mart, said Wal-Mart would lose a lot of customers because that Wal-Mart would become known as the "Jerk Wal-Mart." Of course, "slipper people" would continue to patronize and steal from that location. But, you know "slipper people."
     So several years ago, during the "Arab Spring" the Syrian opposition (a group made up of about of as many groups as the average Democratic convention) decided that it would be a good thing to beg for guns and tanks from the West and make their pitch for an overthrow of the Assad regime. Of course, as is natural, Assad wanted to protect his pitch and started getting rough against those who wanted to overthrow him. Having sanctions placed against him by the West he started to improvise by dropping locally made bombs from helicopters, being a general bad-ass, and trying to destroy those who wanted to destroy him and his regime. And the West, being rather silly and short-sighted, and loving rebels (except in the case of the Confederates during the Civil War and the rebels in the Hungarian Revolution of the 1950s) decided to throw its support to the rebels despite what the rebels wanted or believed.
     The result was that the West ended up supporting a bunch of Islamic thugs and helped to spread the Isis ideology. After all, they were against the thug Assad and that was good. Until the Islamic militias and Isis got control of areas and the West found out that it was supporting thugs that were worse than Assad. Christians, Kurds (no great group of tolerance), Yazhidis and Muslim minorities have been killed and oppressed by the groups that the West has supported. Sites of historical Christian importance have been destroyed by the Islamic militias, whether by Isis or other groups. Syrians have been enslaved by the Mohammedan militias, whether Isis or not. Syrians have been killed by the Assad regime, and killed in spades by the Mohammedan militias.
     The West, while trying to remove the slow growing cancer of the Assad regime, has, in fact, lanced the tumor and allowed the poison to spread and metastasize into a more aggressive and faster spreading cancer.
     This writer, was, at first an anti-Assad thinker. But soon, after the State Department decided to support every damn "rebel" with an AK-47 saying that he was against Assad despite the fact that he was a Mohammedan supremacist of the worst sort, decided that Assad was a jerk and a creep, but he wasn't as much a jerk or creep as many of the groups who wanted to take down his regime.  Consider the fact that under the regimes of the Assads Christians, Yazhidis and minority Muslims were integrated into the larger Syrian society. Under the areas controlled by the Mohammedan rebels they are neither accepted nor protected. They are oppressed and persecuted.
     To paraphrase a saying from the 1950s, "Assad may be a jerk, But he's a better jerk than the alternative."
     Liberty and freedom are great and wonderful things to the West (at least until recently with all the SJW and "hate speech" nonsense), but one has to ask the question, "The freedom and liberty to do what? Be Nazis? Be Islamic supremacists? The right to oppress the other?" At worst Assad is a fascist of the Franco sort. His enemies are Mohammedan Nazis. What we are seeing in Syria is a Middle Eastern version of the Spanish Civil War, and for once, the Russians may be on the right side.
   

You Thinkin' For Me?

     For a lot of years a lot of feminists have been telling men that their idea of beauty was just all damn wrong. They have bitched that the cultural idea of beauty was based on male dominance and such nonsense, and that regular features were just too outre' to be believed in real life. And they always brought up the Barbie doll as an example of what men wanted and what women weren't.
     Well, to put a point on it, feminists are stupid, very stupid and foolish and destructive in this regard. Most of that crowd are overweight and/or lesbianish who would love nothing more to live in a crazy land of women and cats where men only appear to fix their roofs and plumbing.
      Mattel has recently released three new model Barbies. There is the regular Barbie that has been known for over fifty years, the tall Barbie, the short Barbie and the full figured Barbie. Some people have called the full-figured Barbie the Wal-Mart Barbie. Well, good for Mattel. This writer hopes that they make a lot of money, but he thinks that the full-figured Barbie will be the slowest seller.
     Now here's the deal. No man or boy that your faithful correspondent has known has ever said that his ideal woman was a Barbie woman. In fact, they hardly know Barbie. They do like seeing and or being with pretty or beautiful women with nice figures. But what they think beautiful and nice figured is subjective. They, do not think that Gravel Gertie is a beauty. They might like Gravel Gertie. They may love Gravel Gertie. They may marry Gravel Gertie and have a passel of Gravelettes. But they don't think that GG is a Miss Universe.
     And here comes the point, in short.  Who is it to tell you what you think is beautiful? No one has that right except you. If you think that Olivia Wilde or Catherine Zeta-Jones are great beauties, no one, feminist, or scholar of popular culture, has not right to tell you that those two women aren't beautiful to you and that Lena Dunham and Amy Shumer should be your beauties that person is an idiot and fascist.; There is a sense of aesthetics that goes on inside one's noggin that should be, and this writer means really SHOULD BE and WILL BE, that is one's own and not a potential victim of angry women who can't get a job because they majored womens' studies at the local UC instead of engineering, teaching or pottery.
     This writer knows what he thinks of as a beautiful woman and no amount of pounding upon him by a bunch of cat lovers and the media will make him change his mind.

Are You Going to Believe Your Lying Eyes Or Me?

     Have you ever heard Muslims talk about Christianity and wondered what kind of loco weed they had been smoking? They talk about our Faith with a sense of confidence as if they had read the Bible annually despite the fact that they've never touched the Good Book. And they say the silliest things. They say that the Trinity that Christians believe in is made up of God the Father, God the Son and the Virgin Mary. Actually they don't say those exact words. They say that Christians believe that believe the Trinity is made up of Allah, Jesus and Mary. They say that Jesus was never crucified and that right before the crucifixion Jesus pulled a great sleight of hand by somehow substituting Judas or some such body onto the cross moments before the nails were driven in. They do say that Our Lord was a prophet, but a prophet on a lower level than the Arabian merchant known as Mohammed.
     Now, admittedly, most Christians (and non-Mohammedans and a lot of Mohammedans) don't know much about the Koran. But when Christians argue against Islam they use what amount of the Koran they do know, along with the various hadiths. Mohammedans don't use the New Testament to argue against Christianity. They use a version of Christianity outlined in Mohammed's rantings known as the Koran. So what Mohammedans know about Christianity is based on what Mohammed knew about Christianity. And that wasn't much.
      Let us, for the sake of argument, make an analogy with the Star Wars movies. Christians are people who have seen the Star Wars movies. Mohammedans are people who have never seen the movies basing their knowledge of the films on a report by a man who never saw the movies. Their original source is a man who never ran across an orthodox Christian in his life. His only contact with anything that could be remotely called Christian was small pockets of gnostic and heretical Christians. In other words, he had based his knowledge of Star Wars on a group of people who saw Jar-Jar Binks as the movies. Then, after meeting with this crowd of Binksists he leaves them and never mentions Star Wars for some twenty-odd years. And after that period of time he starts writing his visions and mentions Star Wars and how he knows the films very well. This is what Mohammedans base their knowledge of our Faith upon. They don't care about what you believe. They care about what Mohammed believed that you believe. They know much less about Christianity than than the most hard-line Orthodox Jew does about Christianity or the most uneducated true Christian does about Temple Judaism. The Old Testament is part of the Christian Bible. Orthodox Jews know what Christians truly think, in faith, because they try to protect themselves from what they consider blood libel. Mohammedans only read the Koran: the rantings of an Arab trader, who lived off a wealthy older woman for years, with a taste for young flesh and violence.
     Now, here's the thing. When one is faced with a Mohammedan who is trying to explain to a Christian what that Christian believes, the Christian has to keep in mind that one is being faced with a person who one is faced with a person who is reading Cliff's Notes written by a guy who has never read the books.
     And to refute the Mohammed nonsense all one has to do is ask the Mohammedan is where Mohammed received his authority to be a prophet. The Islamic will reply that it's predicted in the Old Testament (which it isn't). And then all one has to say to our friendly Omar is, but you, and the Koran, say that the Old Testament is corrupt. In other words, your prophet's authority is based on a text that your prophet said was corrupt. Maybe you should rethink your religious beliefs.

Where's Your Kippa, Brother?

     Recently in France there have been attacks on Jewish men wearing kippas (yarmulkes to you and me).
     The reaction by some Jewish rabbis is France is to urge Jewish men not to wear kippas in public and wear ball caps instead.
     This is a silly and stupid reaction. It surrenders to the bad.
     Instead they, and all Jews and those who care about Jews, should have said, and still say, "Wear your kippa. And non-Jews who care about Jews should wear kippas even if one is a Catholic, Protestant or atheist. Then the Orcs won't know who to stab. And then they'll know that they are out-numbered."

What's It Like?

     As long time readers of the Bloody Nib are quite aware, we, the denizens of Bloody Nib Manor are multi-racial. The ever-lovely Lady Nib is of Japanese heritage and this writer is a whitey-bird. And readers of this mess are aware that Bloody Nib Manor, while being in actuality a manor, is on a small piece of property in a community that is mostly Mexican and Mexican-American. There is also a good proportion of Asians; mostly senior citizens from China or Korea. And there is a small Hindu temple at the end of the lane. In other words, the shire is multi-cultural in a way that would make the average rich liberal busybody swoon with joy, but he wouldn't want to live here. There are too many street merchants selling tamales out of shopping carts on a Sunday morning and announcing their presence at 10:00 in the morning by shouting, "TaaaaMaaaaLeees!" at the top of their lungs and weekend birthday parties with giant bounce houses and loud mariachi music and cases of Corona for said liberal to feel comfortable. Add to this the fact that said liberal would be in a minority (as is your faithful correspondent) and would find out that his dream of multi-culturalism is something much better for the poor and working class than for him. And who can blame the poor dope? Nobody really wants to be awoken at 3:00 in the morning by gunshots outside or by a Honda boombox on wheels shattering the windows with loud music, no matter their race or ethicity. But said liberal thinks it's great. For you. Not for him. After all, somebody has to live in a big house in a white neighborhood and tell us all what to do. Multi-culturalism to our favorite progressive is a mix of tourism and a missionary activity; it's something he visits and wants to promote. He's worried about the little pink babies being too pink (not his baby, though), and the little brown babies being too brown.
     What it really comes down to is a sense of reverse racism excited by guilt. But he's not going to go the Schweitzer route by moving in among those he feels need his help and work to "bring them up." He wants those who he considered benighted to be "brought up" by others. Those others being the white working class who are struggling to get and who has enough problems paying the rent in a "nice" neighborhood. Because, in the progressive white man's world a white working man is racist because he wants to self segregate because he wants to be with people to be with people like himself. He wants to wake up and hear the neighbor playing something stupid like "Free Bird" on the radio instead of NWA or Los Tigres del Norte. And our liberal friend, since a lot of his white "lessers" think he's an idiot and a damn busy-body, spends a lot of time telling minorities that the "Man" (meaning every white man except the wealthy liberal man despite the fact that the wealthy liberal man is paying the El Salvadorean nanny and the Mexican gardener minimum wage with no benefits) is holding the minority down.And the minorities buy this nonsense, especially African-Americans, heretofore to be called Blacks.
     Since the election of our President, a multi-cultural man in blood and heritage, but a man who seems to adhere to the "one drop" rule and who identifies as Black, the relations between whites and Blacks have gotten worse. It is not because of any more animus by whites against Blacks than there was before the coronation of The One. It is because the Administration, under the direction of the of Mr. Obama, has deigned to spotlight and overblow every and any incident of white on black violence, whether said incident be a crime or a righteous police situation. And the media, being the liberal lickspittles that they are, have not only gone along with the Presidential narrative of hostility of whites against Blacks, they have promoted it, pushed it and have looked for any instance of racism that they could find.
     Take, for example, Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC. She is a bi-racial woman; half white and half Black. She has, as well as being an angry feminist (in other words, a socialist wearing panties), is a race hustler. She, like our Dear Leader, identifies as Black. And, like The One, her childhood was about as like that of the average Black person as a Kardashian's was as to a West Virginia hillbilly. She grew up in an educated and well-heeled family. And, as an angry commentator, she makes a very good living; much better than the average honkey or Black. She's not driving a ten year-old Chevy at the end of her shift to a neighborhood of dead lawns and old mattresses leaning up against telephone poles. There's no one selling tamales or bean pies on her street on a weekend morning. She is, in fact, not oppressed. She is, in reality, among the One Percent that she rants against. She is wealthy. Not Internet baron wealthy. But she is wealthy by the measurement (this writer refuses to use the word "metric" for anything but the measurement of solid objects) of most Americans, no matter their race of ethnicity. But, poor thing, sees herself as oppressed because of her skin color.
     Recently Ms. Harris-Perry decided to go on a rant about Star Wars. First of all, forget the idiocy of going on a rant against a silly movie. That's a secondary matter and just shows that the society as a whole has somehow confused popular culture with reality. Harris-Perry ranted against Stars Wars because she thinks that it's a racist series of film. Darth Vader is black and is voiced by a Black man and he's a villain. But once, for a moment, Darth Vader becomes a good guy and his helmet and mask are removed, it shows that he is a white man with a white man's voice. Ergo, the implication by Harris-Perry is that in the Star Wars world Black is bad and white is good. She, of course, neglects the fact that the Imperial Stormtroopers are all white. The rant by Harris-Perry is just an ill-thought out and angry tirade by a woman who is a priviledged Black woman who wants to, to put it in the vulgar patois, "get down with the peeps" for whatever reason. Perhaps her priviledged childhood, like our white liberal, makes her feel guilty for her having won the birth lottery.
      And, finally to get to the point of this all too-long post, one finds one's self wondering if Harris-Perry, upon waking up in the morning and staggering into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth, looks in the mirror she thinks to herself, "I'm Black" instead of thinking "Hey! Where'd that pimple come from?" If so, it's very, very sad.

The Problem With Journalism is Journalists

    This past couple of days a "journalist" writing for the New York Daily News Tried to equate the male murderer in the San Bernardino shootings with one of his victims.
    The writer, a woman who's last name is Stasi (which is also the name of the old East German secret service and enforcement arm) wrote an ill-thought article about how Farook was a hater, but he wasn't any more of a hater than one of his victims; a man named Thalesinos.
     Here's her bitch. Thalesinos was a Messianic Jew and, thus, thought faith in Our Lord and Saviour was the only way to salvation. He did not think that Islam was the way to salvation. In fact, he may have even thought Islam evil and anti-Christ. And he tried, as best he could,l to bring people of all religions and races to faith in Christ through argument and conversation. For this reason Ms. Stasi thought Mr. Thalesinos a man of hate.
     Farook, on the other hand, was a devout Mohammedan of the violent type. His wife was the same type. They apparently hated non-Mohammedans to the point that they would murder them even when said infidels held a baby shower to give gifts to their brat-child.
     Mr. Thalesinos never killed any one. He probably never even thought about it. Mr. Farook and his hag-wife killed many people. But Ms Stasi sees them the same because she went to journalism school. Journalism schools are cesspools of nonsense which are more concerned about their scions winning a prize for being "out there" and "combative" than reporting the damn news.
     This writer finds himself nostalgic for the days when there were no journalists except in French weeklies and the newspapers employed reporters who were basically high school graduates who could write what they saw.

This and That

     As long-time readers of this blog are well aware, your faithful correspondent, as well as being the lord of Nib Manor, is also a craftsman (this done to pay the gardeners and stable-men; being a lord just doesn't pay the way it did since the five percents went the way of the dodo) at a company in the aerospace-defense industry. For some years the company has engaged the services of an outside security firm to prevent the theft of material and the protection of the cars in the parking lot. In other words, the company has security guards who usually sit in a little booth and either listen to police band radio dreaming of their day to catch a hardened criminal of the John Dillinger/Pretty Boy Floyd type, or watching porn on their laptop computers. And they are a varied bunch.
     Recently one of said guardians of property has announced to the night shift in the shop that he is no longer a he. He is a she, and he is undergoing a "transition" from being a young man to a young woman. He has gone so far, in this insanity, that he has had breast implants and has had to buy a large uniform shirt to contain said silicone bags. The reaction of the shift was, "Well, okay. Good luck with that." That was enough for the shift. The shift, being almost to a man, conservative, really don't think that there is such a thing as a "tran-sexual"; there are only men who want to look like women for one reason or another. And they don't want to hear about "transitioning" when some lady/boy wants to talk about it. The, among the night shift without security guard, opinion of the young fellow's decision was either, "This is very sad", or "The kid's a freak." But no one said that to the kid.
     Now be aware that machinists are usually a pretty rough bunch and are not slow to hurl insults, as well as ball-pein hammers, at one another at the drop of a hat. In the case of Victor/Victoria they kept their opinions away from him for two reasons. They felt sorry for him and hoped that he'd wise up in some way, and because they were afraid if they expressed their true opinions to him they would be set up by an LGBT rights group and sued out of their 401(k)s for some sort of sexual discrimination. They don't worry about being called "haters". They worry about losing their retirements because they are "haters."
     It's a strange and passing thing when a bunch of men who have been through the military, gang warfare, illegal border crossings or sometimes even prison will back down from calling silliness and stupidity silliness and stupidity. But the legal system has managed to squeal the freedom of expression for these guys. It's not the threat of prison or publicity that will shut these guys down. It's the ought of losing what they have worked for so many years for. Ain't modern life great?
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     Recently a professor from  Pfizer College in Southern California, a professor of "secular studies" and an almost professional atheist who gets a lot of press because he constantly slams Christianity, admitted something interesting. When asked why, despite being a liberal man who supports feminism and human rights of all sorts (including "gay rights"), he didn't criticize Islam in the same way that he does Christianity (please know that this writer does not know if he criticizes Judaism; he's a secular Jew, but may be one of those dopes who thinks of Jews as only an ethnic group and not a monotheistic religion that Muslims particularly hate). He stated that the reason that he bags on the Jesus crowd and not the ass raising crowd is because he is afraid of Muslims. He is afraid that if he criticizes Islam the way that he does Christianity one of the enlightened tribe of Allah will find out his home address and kill him or his family or both. He also said that he is grateful that Christians and Mormons are so long suffering as to put up with his tearing them down and that the reason that he lives the life that he does is because of Christianity. In other words, he admits that the Christian society protects him, but at the same time Christians are fools. He's like the guy in the lifeboat drilling a hole in the bottom of the boat that is keeping him from being shark bait all the while claiming that he has a better lifeboat that is no where to be found.
     So much for higher education and the wisdom of college professors.

I've Got a Typewriter, Not a Gun!

     One of the wonders that we here at Bloody Nib Manor have noticed over the years is the idea that "journalists" some how think that they are exempt from the stories that they cover. It is almost as if because they call themselves "journalist" that they can escape from bad things. They have, after all, a higher calling, than the rest of us. If you do not believe this writer, just ask a "journalist" who is covering a riot and ask him or her if he or she expects to possibly be beaned with a brick on the noggin while covering the story. Of course, the person will say, "I'm pretty special because because I'm wearing a Day-Glo vest that has Press written on the front and back, so that gives me protection." Then the guy get popped with on the skull with a 32 oz. can of Schlitz and he cries about the squelching of the press and free expression and how the "oppressive cops" should have protected him from his own stupidity. After all, everyone loves a "journalist", don't they?
     It would all be a bad joke if the "journalist" crowd didn't take this all so sincerely. They actually believe that if they wear a vest with the word Press printed on it will save them from bad things. They are, after all, a special class of human. They studied journalism in the local junior college. They have a microphone and/or a laptop top file their stories. They are super special and no one should point a brick or a gun their way. In other words, they are silly people with the mentality of three year olds.
      They forget that many great newspaper men (in to man man these all were men) lost their lives in wars that they reported upon. The most famous example was Ernie Pyle who was shot by a Jap sniper during WWII. He didn't expect his Corona Three and his war correspondents' badge to protect him. He took the risk of reporting from the front lines. But then, Pyle was a "reporter" and not a "journalist".  And he knew who he supported instead of giving equal weight to the evil and the good.
     The modern war journalist see himself in a special class who supports no one but "the truth" in a situation where there really is no truth. The truth comes out fifty years after the initial report. But our modern journalist see a US soldier kick a dead Afghani who minutes before tried to kill said soldier the said soldier is a war criminal because he kicked a dead man. And then, minutes later, said journalist will be pitching a bitch because the Taliban is shooting at HIM despite the fact that he is a "journalist" and has the trick vest to prove it, and is only interested in the Truth.
     Listen, feller or lady, if you're going to go into a war zone it really doesn't much matter that you a "journalist." You're bullet bait.

How's That Working Out?

     We here at Bloody Nib Manor have almost infinite patience. This is evinced by the fact that this writer and the ever Lovely Lady Nib have been married more than forty years despite the fact that your faithful correspondent is no prize, and also we have lived in the same house for over thirty years watching the neighborhood decline almost into the state of a Mexican village paying homage to a caudillo nicknamed Sombrero Oro.
     But, to be truthful, we, like many other Americans, have lost patience with Barak Obama. In fact, we began to lose our tolerance for the man when he gave his first inaugural address. But, while hoping that he would wise up and grow into the role of a statesman and leader for the United States, we were pretty sure that he wouldn't and that his success would only metastasize into an overweening pride and self-assurance that he is all-wise and that he directs the arc of history (arc from where to where?--- that is the question, Horatio) for the betterment of the world, and, incidentally, the United States. To be blunt and crude, he was, and is, to the populace of the Manor, a combination of a Special Olympics president (everyone is a winner!) and an affirmative action president. In other words, if he didn't break too much of the china or crystal we'd grant him some leeway. He's broken all too much dinnerware in the past six years and we find ourselves getting pretty damn tired of eating off Chinet plates and drinking champagne out of out of Dixie cups.
     Now, it's pretty easy for conservatives to slam Mr. Obama. It's about as easy as tripping a bratty three-year-old running down a sidewalk. And actually, it's more fun though less effective. Tripping a toddler who has the intention of running out into the street in the path of a steam roller saves a rotten kid. Criticizing the president, no matter what one's C.V. are results in ---- nothing. The man is, to use the title of Eric Hoffer's book, A True Believer. And what he believes in is nothing greater than himself. He believes in himself in the same way that a sociopath does while ruining a company so he can sell off the components make make more money while throwing many men and women out of work. He really seems to believe that he is greater than the nation that he is supposed to lead. He is greater than the traditions (though crumbling they have become) of the nation. He is greater than the evidences of history (when one directs the arc of history that means that history means nothing). He is greater than the Constitution. He is just plain damn great. Maybe even greater than Jesus Christ, or according to some people, greater than the awful Arab Mohammed. Well, everyone is entitled to their madness. Except when one's madness is forced upon other people. In this case, the American people.
     Really, the man should have made his career in academia as an instructor or professor where he could dazzle guilt-ridden coeds and beta males with his "genius." There he could gas on and on and on and only infect and effect, at the most, a few thousand people instead of ruining things for millions and changing the course of the nation.
     Let us take a look at a few instances of the madness that Our Dear Leader has foisted upon us:
     The President said that he was going to Reset our relations with Russia. He's done so. But not in the way that he thought. Obama has talked and talked and talked apparently with the understanding that talk solves problems. Meanwhile, Putin, the awful bastard that he is, has acted making Obama and the United States look like weak sisters or sissy boys. Putin is riding a Clydesdale. Obama is playing with his My Little Pony toys.
     The President, being the multi-racial and internationalist that he is, has decided that massive illergal immigration from Latin America is a good thing. It will make us a more "diverse" and "stronger" nation. The result? More people who don't peak English on state aid, welfare, food stamps and taking jobs that Americans would like to at an honest wage being supported by "old stock" Americans. In other words, Americans and legal immigrants are slaves to those who have broken the law.
     The President, more than any other President in your faithful correspondent's memory, has worked to excite racial animus between whites and blacks. Every time a black kid or man is shot by a cop El Jefe comments about it and blames institutional racism. But if black cops shoot a white guy it's crickets. Blacks killing blacks equals silence. Because, to our dear leader, whites in power are evil while all blacks are innocent victims of the heritage of slavery despite the fact that none of his ancestors had been enslaved by the white devil.
     Our dear President prefers for the nation to accept Muslim "refugees" from the Middle East more than he does Christian Middle East refugees despite the fact that any person with a lick of logic knows that there is no such thing as a Muslim "refugee" from the Middle East. What one has are a bunch of young men and women of the Mohammedan faith who are no being persecuted by ISIS. They are really what ISIS wants. They are economic refugees looking for an easy life with a lot of the long green. And they, who claim that they are fleeing "oppression",  have no intention of becoming Americans. They want to be Muslims in the United States. Christians from the Middle East, are escaping persecution, and they have shown themselves, historically, more than willing to assimilate into the traditional American life. But, Obama, while not in fact (as many people believe) is not a real Muslim, he is, in fact, by his actions, an operational Muslim.
     The President is protected by men with guns. We, also, are protected by men with guns. The difference is that the men who protect Obama are only seconds away from him in the case of an emergency. We, on the other hand, have to wait for an average of something like ten minutes in order for our "protectors" to get to us. He has guns around him every minute of his day and will have until the day he dies. But he doesn't want you to have a gun because you're potentially damn crazy and/or dangerous. His life depends on seconds. Yours depends on ten minutes.
     The President is an operational idiot with dangerous delusions. You, dear reader, are not.
      How's that working out for you?

When Kings Aren't Bad

     While we here at Bloody Nib Manor are of the minor nobility (very minor --  just above the point of being called Lordet and Ladyet by the hoi polloi, which puts us just a step up from the owner of a gin mill in a devout Mormon community) we do believe in the democratic form of government. To be more clear, we believe in a democratic form of government for us and out nation and other nations like ours. In other words, for Anglosphere nations, Europe (excluding Greece {as odd as it may seem since Greece is considered the birthplace of democracy, but the place was ruined by the Ottoman occupation}) or Turkey, Japan, Taiwan and Korea. And sometimes we wonder about Taiwan. This writer's ancestors fought to overthrow George III and the ever lovely Lady Nib's mother, the Shoguness Masako, grew up in Japan during the reign of the Emperor Hirohito and was wise enough to haul her freight to these blessed shores where she had the opportunity vote for and then bitch about her national leaders instead of being a happy kitty with an Emperor who wasn't too smart and blaming fate, or the Sun Goddess having a progeny who wanted to be some sort of Asian Napoleon.
     This isn't to say that the democratic form of government is a perfect form of government. Nothing that man does, especially in governance and culture is perfect. But for a certain segment of the world population, a very small proportion, democratic forms of government work well. And those governments usually have a history of a strong middle class or yeomanry which protects its rights and meets its obligations. Democratic forms of government, to be successful, depend on a sense among a large part of the population that the government really doesn't matter much and the the purpose of a government is to keep another person from grazing his cattle on one's land, fixing the roads, maintaining a platoon of Bluebottles to fight crime and keeping horny teenagers from coupling on the bandstand in the park during the middle of the day. A proper democratic form of government depends on self-reliance, but in recent years (meaning that past 70) the sense and expectation upon the rock-ribbed Yankee or the quick to fight Southerner, the cowboy and farmer, has been replaced by a government granting a sense of entitlement to every damn body and the replacement of the voice of the voter by the long green of Big Business, the Panicky Press and the Academic A**holes who make up the triad that seems to run the nation because the yeoman class have given up because they are tired of being called "mean", "uncaring", "racists", et al. If things were as they should be dueling would have never been outlawed and this bunch of anti-democratic gangsters would have found out that their money, megaphones or degrees didn't mean much when facing the muzzle of a dueling pistol. Only men of honor are willing to die for their beliefs. Just look at how many children of politicians or CEOs  or politicians or CEOs, movie stars and professional athletes joined the military after 9/11. One? Two? This bunch of moneyed thugs expected you and your kids to do the fighting so they and their kids could live lives you can't imagine as a yeoman. But that is our own fault because we've allowed ourselves to be seduced by sheer stupidity and have allowed ourselves to be mesmerized by the glittering ball that they swing in front of us instead of cutting the string.
     But this writer has badly digressed, and digressed badly. And for this he apologizes.
     In referring back to the first paragraph of this missive, your faithful correspondent maintains that there are nations, that, for some reason, do not do well with democratic forms of government. They really do better with a monarchy for some reason. They are nations in which the populace look to a king or a queen for their benefice and well being and authority. They are people, who in fact and no matter what their age, require a Nanny and sub-Nannies for the direction of their lives. If they find themselves without a Nanny they really don't know what to do and once the Nanny is taken away, for whatever reason, they act like sh*thouse squirrels. In other words, they are children while the classical democratic form of governance is populated by men and women of old stone.
     Some nations require kings to thrive. Some nations require kings and queens to survive. It may be that the trail from monarchy to a form of democracy is an evolutionary process. Who knows. But know for sure that it is not something that can be imposed by fiat in a very short period of time. It took India over one hundred years to go from a group of kingships to being the largest democratic nation in the world; as imperfect as it is.
     When we look at the Middle East we find ourselves looking at some nations that have been gifted, by force, with democracy, and have fallen into complete theocratic idiocy (which makes one wonder what liberals mean when they talk about the "arc of history"; an arc from where and where to?).
     Here are a couple of videos showing Iraq in the 1960s and Afghanistan in the 1950s and 1960s. Life looked better then. And then both nations had kings:
     Iraq in the 1950s
     Afghanistan in the 1950s
     And then things were a lot better for women, as well as everyone else except the bitching class.

What Happened to My Marmite?

     Let us imagine that you, dear reader, are the owner of a vast estate not unlike the Bloody Nib estate, though perhaps not quite as vast. Of course, any civilized person would much rather, if he can afford the upkeep and taxes and payroll to the staff, live on a vast estate with lakes, rolling green hills, a manor house and fat happy tenant farmers and their families, as well as a local pub from the Georgian era with tobacco darkened rafters and locally brew ale, than live in a city cheek by jowl with every damn body, whether rich or poor. After all, cities are Satan's petri dish while the countryside, riddled with secrets and sins better not mentioned as it is, at least has the clean air and traditional sense of yeomanry that never lets those weaknesses fester into gangrenous conditions.
     Now let us further (or is it farther) consider that over the years some of one's staff have left the employ of the estate for some reason (death, shame, going to the City to try to be the next Lily Langtry, or impressed by the Navy) and one finds one's self having to hire new help for several positions. In a moment of madness, which is not unusual for the nobility, one decides to hire help from not only outside the county, but outside the country; one may have the opportunity to to learn a foreign language (that is the madness of the idea; why learn another language when one knows English) and, besides, foreigners can be colorful in their own odd way. So one hires several staff from an un-named foreign country. And they do well. One is happy with their work. They respect the rules and traditions of the estate. They are learning English. They are almost about to become Protestants; Anglicans in fact.
     Then one morning one awakes on a Monday morning feeling a bit worse for wear after a night spent with a little too much Latakia pipe tobacco, port and trying to read a translation of Marcel Proust, and one stumbles into the kitchen and staff area only to find that there are many more people there than you remembered being there last year. And they all look and speak like the people one has hired within the last year. Confused, as one usually is in one's most sober moments, one asks, "Who are these people? Where did they come from. Why are they here?" And the most new hires, holding their hands clasped together and looking at one as if they were cocker spaniels that had been beaten with saps, say, "They are our cousins. They need work. They are very poor." To which one replies, "I'm sorry to hear that, but I cannot afford to employ these people. I'm barely able to employ you." To which the new hires say, "Our cousins will work for other people. Please let them live here for a while." By this time one has a thundering headache and just wants everyone to shut up. Instead of answering the plea one just turns away and staggers up to the library for a brandy and soda and the comfort of reading the Naval Register.
     A month later, after recovering from a day of fox hunting (age plays Hell with one) one goes down to the breakfast room to find one's ladywife and one's dear children sitting at the table giving the hairy eyeball to what a a previously unknown servant has put before them. When one looks at the offering one sees something that looks like sheep lungs, an unidentifiable vegetable, sauce that is more like motor oil than Marmite, and a chutney made of something instead of proper marmalade for one's bread, which, coincidentally is not proper bread, but a form of flatbread. When one quizzes the servant about what is going on the servant replies, "It's what we eat for breakfast in our country, my lord (or lady, as the case may be)." To which one replies, "I don't give a damn what you eat in your country. You are here. You are at the Manor. I want a proper Manor breakfast, demmit!" Upon which said footman slinks away and goes to the kitchen. Then a few minutes later the cook comes up breathing fire and damnation. But the problem is that one doesn't recognize the cook as the cook that one has known. Tillie had been the cook at the Manor for over twenty years and now one was faced with a woman one had never seen before named a name that one cannot pronounce, but she said to call her "Debbie". And said "Debbie" declares that the only proper breakfast is the plate of offal that one finds one's self facing on the Wedgewood and that anything else is poison for both the body and the soul. To which one, stands up and tells Debbie that a proper breakfast is eggs, ham, bacon or salmon, pancakes or waffles, toast or biscuits with plenty of marmalade and Marmite. To which "Debbie" stomps down back to the kitchen and makes the worst Manor type breakfast ever experienced since the Norman Invasion when the first Lord Nib had to eat a half boiled piece of beef before being defeating at Scarborough Bridge; a case of the trots prevented him from being beheaded by a Norman knight.
     Another month goes by. One comes back from a meeting of the House of Lords and Dudes only to find that all the Louis XIV furniture has been replaced by cheap American Southwestern furniture, dusty carpets and cushions and items that look like they were bought at a Middle Eastern bizarre. When one asks one's ladywife what has happened she says that she doesn't know. It was something that just happened in the blink of an eye. And, to tell the worst, she states that not only have the original group of staff stopped attending St. Gizmo's Church, they have established several other houses of worship ranging from Papist to pagan. When one calls the butler for an explanation the butler says, "This is their way, M'lord (or M'lady, as the case may be), and the vicar says that we should conform to their ways instead of them conform to our way." To which one replies, "Well, the vicar is an idiot and everyone knows that he is an idiot. His job is to say the Liturgy and Morning Prayer. Not have opinions. For the love of God, Bunter! He's the third son! Please call all the staff to assemble before the Manor."
     So Bunter calls the staff to assemble before the Manor and one finds that while one's staff, at the best of times, had been eight people working between the Manor house and the grounds, now one found one's self faced with a staff of eighty; 90% whom one did not know and who were not of the Manor, the county or the nation. And co-incidentally, the idiot vicar shows up on his bicycle and says, "Isn't it a wonderful thing, M'lord (or M'lady as case may be). The world before us. We are the world!" To which you reply, being the sensible person that you reply, " You must be joking, vicar." And then said idiot vicar says, "Not at all, M'lord. Father McGuffin at Saints Peter and Paul and pastor Gawith at the Church of What's Happening Now both agree with me. As do the Commons." To which one can only answer, "You must all be as idiotic as your younger brother, who is a drooling creature who spends his time masturbating to photographs of Miley Cyrus' tongue." And he answers, offendedly, "You, sir, are not a Christian and not a gentleman." And one can only reply, "This bunch of louts are living on my land and off my money. They are not living at your church or your friend's churches and you are not paying for their upkeep. I herewith urge my unwanted employees to go live with you and your cohorts. I'm tired of eating offal, I'm tired of sitting in crappy chairs and couches. I'm tired of not drinking a martini in the evening in fear of offending a savage. This crowd is heading your way. Put away your port and Communion wine, vicar. It's all on you." To which said vicar replies, "That is not fair, M'lord." And one can only reply, "Life isn't fair, vicar. You can try to make it fair. But my job is to look after me and my own and preserve a sense of Western Euopean for the good of my family, staff and tenant farmers. Good luck, dude."
     But, of course, the latter half of the last paragraph will not happen in either the U.S., Great Britain or in Europe.
     Ain't life great? Just one damn adventure after another.

Whistles

     Recently I've read four novels about the Bow Street Runners during the Regency period in Great Britain.
     For those not in the know, the Bow Street Ruuners were the police officers in Greater London before the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in London.
     In three of the four novels the Runners were described as blowing their police whistles to call for help.
     The fact of the matter is that the Bow Street Runners and the Metropolitan Police did not use whistles until the 1880s when the force adopted the Metropolitan whistle made by Acme Whistle, Before that the police used a rattle type contraption to call for help. The rattle, perhaps, was heard a quarter mile away. The Acme whistle was heard over more than a mile away.
     Bow Street, since it was really made up of a bunch of "thief-takers" probably didn't use anything to call for help because there were so few of them for many years. They certainly didn't use whistles.

Writin'? Wha's dat?

     How does one, these days of seemingly every lasting youth with women of 60 having breasts that a twenty year old woman would envy, and 70 year old man have a head of hair that would make a twenty year old Bulgar wonder if he was going bald, know that one is old and past his or her cash in date? The answer is simple: If one, while writing, indents the first sentence of a paragraph. If you do that you might as well start making payments on a grave near your Civil War ancestors simply because, according to modern usage, you are about as modern as Blackjack Pershing chasing Moros in the Philippines or Gordon in the Sudan.
     Apparently White and Strunk and Fowler have been replaced by the linguistic and stylistic niceties dictated by Microsoft, Apple, et al. In other words, the style of the great English language has been taken over by mouth breathing nerds. What a shame! Keep your typewriter and use it!

Call Me Racist. I Don't Care Anymore

     For the past few months your faithful correspondent has been reading news accounts about poor, benighted "refugees" from North Africa and parts of the Middle East basically invading the shores of Europe. Usually these people have arrived in fairly large boats or small ships, and by the time the boat or ship is noticed it is about five to ten miles off the shores or Greece, Italy, Sicily, France or Spain. And, with no exception, the boat is out of fuel and the people have no food or water. Europeans, being the saps and nice people they are, usually pull the boats to shore, place the "refugees" in camps of some sort and the "refugees" escape the camps and try to get to the interior of Europe or to Great Britain; and then, the Europeans, being the saps and nice people they are, place the people into other camps, from which the "refugees" escape and try to blend into the neighborhoods of their cohorts in Birmingham or Paris or Tournai and are soon sucking off the government teat and demanding that the natives destroy their pig statues on the front lawn, or that bacon not be sold at the local Tesco because it's not halal. (Thank you the spirit of John Owen for helping me to write such a long sentence, but one that is much shorter than any of yours were).
     Now let us understand that this writer considers the only true refugees from the Middle East or North Africa to be Christian refugees. The others are economic refugees in the same way that Mexican or Central American illegal aliens are not looking for a sort of freedom or liberty, but they are looking to make money to send home. And be it known that this writer sympathizes with economic refugees. But the problems of their nations are their problems and not our problems. They have votes, they have guns, they can revolt. Their economic problem is not our problem and the economic problems of a crappy life in Libya or Syria is not Europe's problem.
     If the Europeans had any damn sense, once a boat of poor benighted Somalis or Syrians was spotted off the shores of a European nation were the Coast Guards of said nation would speed out to the boat, lash the boat to the Coast Guard ship and then start towing it back to where the boat came from while throwing bread and water to the people on the boat. And once within ten miles of the place of origin a ten gallon can of gas or diesel would be thrown to the boat and the boat cut loose.
     What the European elite (and the elite only think of their own well-being and not the well-being of their nations, as do the American elite; Hey! Cheap gardeners, nannies and maids) don't realize is that they are sowing the seeds of the destructions of their own nations. They seem to think that if they will identify themselves with the modern version of the sans-coulottes in they and their families will be spared the guillotine of Islamism while everyone else gets the chop before they do.
     Consider the fact that there are several European nations, as well as Great Britain, that have official state churches supported by the government; Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland. And that several other countries are considered by default to be Roman Catholic: Spain, France, Italy. With every entry of a Muslim, and these nations are all too eager to accept every Musselman that can stand, the nation becomes less Christian. Let's face the fact that most European nations are barely Christian. But there is, by the scent of an earlier Christian society, something that still influences those nations with a Christian ethos despite the nonsense of same sex marriage. Heretofore Europe has abandoned the Faith because of an evil Germanic and French existentialism. But the abandonment is to the aggressive Islam what an abandoned house is to a house wrecker: something to be knocked down and replaced by something worse.
     The real question is this: Is your nation worth being a nation? Is your culture worth saving? Life's often a rotten bitch sometimes and occasionally one has to do things that seem cruel or uncaring to survive. And sometimes the thing that seemed to be cruel and hard against another person is really the best thing for that person.
     But, hey! What does this writer know? He's just a racist white guy.

Wha?

     Be it known that your faithful correspondent and his lovely wife do love and appreciate antiquities. To us antiquities are physical remnants of times past. We often think as literature and music as the marks of a civilization, but, in fact, the physical remains of a civilization reflect the lives of the common man better than do literature or song. We have such works as Ovid reflecting a sort of Roman life, but Pompeii and its remains or the catacombs of Rome much better reflect the lives and concerns of the average Roman of the time.
     Having said that, let it be known that we here at Bloody Nib Manor value the lives of people over the preservation of antiquities.
     This week the UN and a couple of other historicists have pitched a bitch about ISIS destroying some antiquities in Palmyra. Heretofore these eggheads have been pretty silent about about the killings and rapes of innocent Christians, Yezhidis and Muslims prepretrated  by ISIS. In other words, they are more concerned about pieces of rock, stone, gold, silver and wood than they are about human lives. They are, in a sense, the worst of the Hebrews who built the Golden Calf (and if they did find the Golden Calf they would worship it). This bunch of egghead idiots are more concerned about a statue being destroyed than the lives of many people being destroyed. In a real world, and not a world infected with academicism, these fools would be sent to an island far, far away where they can practice their mental masturbation without having the rest of us listen to their nonsense. They say that you are killing the world by firing up a Camel straight while they are saving the world by saving a bloody statue while a Christian girl is raped and then killed by a barbarian.
     God help us all for putting up with this nonsense.

Free Speech

     We here at Bloody Nib Manor often find ourselves pondering (when we aren't verbally abusing the maids or kicking the gardeners in the bum) what Progressives mean when they say that they are Progressive. What are they Progressing from? What are they Progressing to? And do they mean that while they are on this journey of Progresseivism does that mean that they expect us to Progress with them? Good luck on that, comrade.
     After, when not cleaning his elephant rifle or sleeping off a VSOP indulgence, your faithful correspondent has given some thought to this matter. The only answer that he can give is that Progressives are progressing from freedom to totalitarianism. In other words, a march from 2015 to 1984 or from Jolity Farm to Animal Farm.
     Consider the matter of freedom of speech. One can not even use the word "midget" without some height deprived person jumping up in an attempt to punch one in the button. One wonders when old re-runs of McHale's Navy will be banned because the sailors on the program used the word "nip" instead of Japanese or John Wayne's WW II movies being banned because of the use of the word "Jap."
     It's all silly and stupid and a brouhaha created by people who have nothing better with their lives than bitch about what other people say or think. These people, in a real world where men and women worked for livings instead of sat at desks and pretended to be "thinkers", would be working in coal mines, machine shops, at drafting tables or at sewing machines instead of sitting around and trying to figure out a new bitch to pitch about. Luxury creates one of two things; a defense of luxury or a denigration of luxury because of some sort of misplaced identification with the unwashed masses. The latter really aren't interested in bringing up the polis. They'd rather pull down the uppers. After all, it's easier, as evinced by ISIS, Red China and Soviet Russia, that it's much easier to pull down that build.
     The Progressive leisure class wants a My Little Pony world. And they are more than willing to have you sacrifice your rights in order for them to have their silly dream. The Progressives want not only your money and time, they want your words and thoughts. And they will lie cheat and steal to be "honest" and "compassionate."
      Read this:
     http://www.wsj.com/articles/even-speech-we-hate-should-be-free-1440165276

Men In Hats -- Why Should Men Wear Hats

     Any of those readers who are not long time readers of The Bloody Nib may find themselves wondering about last Sunday's post about the fedora hat and ask themselves why would Lord Nib write about something as minor and, in fact, old fashioned, as men's hats while most of the time his writes about political and cultural issues. Hats seem so, for want of a better phrase, out of it.
     But long time readers are aware that this writer and all the inhabitants of Bloody Nib Manor are conservative and value tradition. The cat still plays with balls of yarn and sniffs catnip instead of doing YouTube things such as building Lego castles or attacking coyotes.
     So the question is: why hats? Specifically, why men in hats?
     This writer is of the opinion that outside the house or office or church a man should wear a hat. There are three main reasons.
     The first is protection. In areas where there is snow and freezing men where hats to keep their noggins warm. In very sunny climates men wear hats to keep the sun off their faces. Nowadays, in climates between the two extremes men have lot the habit of wearing a hat for some strange reason. But the fact of the matter is that in any climate a hat offers protection. A mild climate is mild for only short-lived organisms. It is not mild for humans. A 72 degree day at the beach is as oppressive to one's body as a 100 degree day in the desert. Living in a neighborhood in which many Chinese and Korean senior citizens live this writer has noticed that the Asian seniors always where hats or caps while outside and they look much younger than their Hispanic cohorts, who do not wear hats. Wearing a hat (a real hat and not a cap or a visor) offers protection against premature aging of the skin by the sun and from skin cancer from over-exposure to the sun.
      The second is public self-identification. The hat one chooses, if one has chosen one's hat wisely, reflects one's personality. A homburg identifies one as a swell. A trilby identifies one as a rakish swell. A fedora identifies one as a serious man. A pork pie identifies one as a bit of a goof. A cowboy identifies one as either an adventurer, a South westerner or a poser. An eight panel cap meant that one was a working man or a golfer. A straw boater or panama hat means that it's summer. A beret means one identifies one as an outsider. Baseball caps, are to the the hat wearer, an anathema; baseball caps should be limited to baseball players or waist gunners on World War Two bombers. Navy sailors, in the past, wore either Dixie cup caps or flat caps, Marines and soldiers wore either garrison or overseas caps. Convicts wore flat, stripped skullcaps. One's dress, in a sense, identifies oneself, or as one would like to present oneself as, and since people usually look at one's mug, the hat over the mug is the first thing one sees. The important thing is that the serious hat wearer should always keep in mind that the man wears the hat or the cap. The man, while choosing the hat to reflect his personality, is not a slave to the hat. The hat doesn't wear the man. A hat doesn't make the man. An Hasidic Jew wearing a black Stetson with a Montana crown will never be a Yiddish cowboy unless he leaves Brooklyn and goes to Wyoming, mounts a horse and rounds up some cattle. And a Baptist Texan boy, despite wearing a black Bosolino fedora will never be mistaken for a member of the Tribe. Your hat should be you. Not what you want to be. What you want to be comes from within and works out; not from what's on your noggin and hoping that it works in.
     Thirdly is tradition. For thousands of years men have worn hats for the above two reasons. Greek and Roman freed slaves wore liberty caps to identify themselves as free men. Slaves weren't allowed to wear hats or caps unless they were working in the fields on hot days. Hats separated one's public life from one's private life. When the Quakers, upon meeting Charles II, refused to take off their hats before him because they felt that removing one's hat was only a thing to be done at home or in church. The tricorn is identified with the American Revolution, the bicorn with the British navy during the age of sail. Up until the late 1950s a hat was a part of a man's wardrobe. This writer's grandfather wore an eight panel cap for many years, his father spent a lot of money, for him, for a fedora, as a young man. And both of these men lived for many years in southern California where many people think that hats are silliness.. But these people often come down with skin cancer on their ears or are mistaken for a boxboy at a supermarket when they are a lawyer at the supermarket.
     Concerning women's hats? Who knows? Chinese and Korean women in the area near Bloody Nib Manor favor huge visors, while Japanese women prefer straw hats with large brims. Hispanic women seem not to wear hats. And white trash women seem to like baseball caps for some reason. This writer has always thought a portrait hat, whether straw or felt, very nice for any woman.

Men in Hats -- Fedora Edition

     When one thinks of a hard-boiled detective, a soft-boiled detective, a gangster, a plain-clothes cop between the '20s and the '50s, a well-dressed middle class man or man on the skids one often thinks of the fedora topping the noggin of the man. Occasionally the eight-paneled cap (to be addressed in another post) comes to mind, but the fedora is the iconic hat for the period of time from the 1920s to the middle of the 20th century. It was the man's man hat that showed that the wearer was not a man to be messed with because he may have a sap in his back pocket or a pair of fists that had callused knuckles caused by the contact of hand to face.
     Oddly, the fedora, like the trilby, was named after a work of fiction and first popularized by a woman. Trilby was a character in the novel Trilby by George DuMaurier. When the novel was made into a stage play the actress playing Trilby wore a hat that is the basis of the current trilby hat. The fedora hat was first worn by the actress Sarah Bernhardt while performing in a play entitled Fedora. It was a very new thing in the 1890s when the most popular felt hat worn among those outside the working class were the top hat, the bowler and the Homburg.
     So what is a fedora? Basically, it's a felt hat (either fur felt or junk felt) with a a crown of about 4 1/2 tall with a black grosgrain hatband of about 1 1/2 wide, and a brim about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 wide. The typical American style has a teardrop shaped dent on the top, a pinch in the from and the front of the brimmed snapped down and the back snapped up. Typically Americans and Italians wear fedoras well and the English wear them badly. The typical Englishman wore the hat with the brim flat all around as if they were still wearing a boater. The American style had a bit of snap to it. It was, at one time, to America what the Digger hat was to Australians -- a source of national pride for some and embarrassment to others.
     To this writer there are only three colors of fedora that are proper (ignoring Hasidic Jews, which will be addressed later in this post). Those colors are gray, dark gray and olive. The brown fedora worn by Indiana Jones in the pulp movies is a freak that has gained some popularity in culture. But it really is not good as a color because about the only clothes it can be worn with and look decent  are work clothes and a brown suit. Grey, dark grey and olive go with anything from a camp shirt and jeans to a Brooks Brothers suit. The hat in those colors is infinitely adaptable. The hat is almost a chameleon. It makes a sinister man look more sinister and a kind man look more kind, a tough guy look tough and a mild man look tough.
     Modern Hasidic Jewish men often wear black fedoras, but Hasidic men usually wear black suits and the color of the hat is more an expression of their faith than of personality or fashion. A black fedora is a somber thing almost like the Victorian undertaker's veiled silk hat.
     Over the years since the 1950s various hat makers have come out with fedoras ranging in color from snow white to sapphire blue, ruby red, emerald green (which usually comes out a few weeks before St. Patrick's Day) and anything in between. It would not surprise this writer if a hat maker has not come out with a rainbow colored fedora for the homosexual contingent. And in recent years various fashion houses catering to the hoi-polloi have tried to make the fedora popular by having under-dressed, overly worked out young men wearing fashions that seem to come from the imaginations of a typhoid fevered adolescent wear fedoras of silly colors and often not fedoras at all -- just trilbys called fedoras.
     And that is where the fashionistas make their mistake. In fact, that is wear all modern hat makers make their mistake. They imply that the hat makes the man or completes the man. They imply that the hat wears the man, when, in fact, the man wears and makes the hat. A mild man may wear a snap brimmed fedora and look tough, but by wearing the hat the mild man does not become a tough guy but shows the world that he has an inner toughness that has always been there.
    Be it known that this writer has never owned a fedora. He's still awaiting the day when he can afford to buy one that will last his lifetime. But his father, the late Baron, owned a fedora, and despite the fact that he was the kindest and gentlest man imaginable, he looked like a tough guy when he wore it; and he could be a very tough guy when crossed.
      So, if you're a man, consider yourself in a fedora. Maybe even buy a Borsolino if you've got the money. You have to look at your mug in a mirror and your personality and decided if you're fedora material. You may be a natural trilby or porkpie wearer. If you're a woman, despite the Bernhardt thing, a fedora really isn't for you unless you're working at a dig in the Valley of the Kings.

What's With This Guy?

     As those of you who have met your faithful correspondent are well aware, we here at Bloody Nib Manor tend toward the conservative end of the political spectrum. This does not mean that Republicans are automatically welcomed at the Manor while Democrats are thrown off the porch and the dogs set after the rascals (the dogs are often set on Republicans, too), but it does mean that tradition in both lifestyle and governance mean something within these hallowed walls; novelty is a game for the silly young who usually come to their senses when they find themselves paying for hats for the horses that pull gypsy caravans or are expected to allow squatters live in the billiards room.
     This writer did not watch or listen to the two debates of those aspiring to become the Republican candidate for President of this great nation. It is much too soon to pay attention to this nonsense. In a sensible world all this nonsense would not start until about April of 2016. But thanks to the odious Bill Clinton campaigning has become a year-round and year after year activity among the political class. They are always campaigning, even when they get elected to the office that they have fooled their constituents to vote themselves into. They want not only political office, they want the love of the voters. They explain, dissemble, pose, preen and lie to win love because to them love means votes and votes means that they have a job that really has no true responsibility to any one person or small group of people. They can't be fired without much difficulty because if the voter loves them they are in like Flynn.
     But yours is knowledgeable about Donald Trump. How can one not be. The man is a wet robot megaphone touting his greatness. In the movie Austen Powers there was a character named Mini-Me. Donald Trump is Maxi-Me. One wonders if, when he wakes up in the morning and after brushing and gargling he sings out, "Me-me-me" like an opera singer finding the note, or perhaps pretending to be a comic Mexican by saying, "Aye-aye-aye."
      The man is, to be much cruder than your faithful correspondent would like to be, "an ass-clown." He's rich. But being rich doesn't equate with wisdom. He pretends to be a sort of a "man of the people" despite the fact that he was born wealthy. He claims to have come back from bankruptcy without acknowledging that the wealthy, because of their reputations, come back from bankruptcy much more easily than a working man can. Trump has shown no sense of service to the nation or the society before he decided that he wanted to be king; and the word "king" is the correct word. He doesn't want to be president. He wants to be king. He wants to be a king before the institution of the Magna Carta, a Shogun, a Czar or a Caeser. He wants to dictate and have others jump in the same way that his factota jump at his various businesses when he passes gas. He seems to think that running a nation based on the Constitution is akin to running a business based on owning slums, casinos and building self-aggrandizing buildings that really have no real use for the real world.
     Trump has said a lot of things that have resonated with the populace i.e., illegal immigration. But any idiot can say the same things. This writer has heard the same gas from his barber or at the local pub years ago. Does that mean that this writer would support his barber or the neighboring drunk in their runs for president? Well, actually, he might since these men were humble hard-working men who understood the Constitution better than their elected representatives and wanted the best for the nation. But Donald Trump wants the best for Donald Trump. He really doesn't care about we here at the Manor or you or anyone else. He cares about himself and getting publicity for himself. His politics in the past has been as crazy as a (please excuse the vulgarity) a shit-house rat -- he's been a conservative, a reactionary, a liberal and a radical. And it's all based on which way he sees the wind blowing. He's a big wet finger stuck in the wind trying to be the wind. We forgets the Biblical saying that "the wind listeth where is blowing." We tries to make the wind blow toward him. If, tomorrow, a pol came out that most Americans said that they loved illegal immigration because they got their lawns mowed cheap, hotel service was cheap because of cheap maids and that aluminum wheels were cheap because of illegal immigrant machine operators, Donald Trump would have a couple named Jaqui (pronounced "Yakee") and Ishmael on the dais with him touting the value that illegal immigrants have for the nation.
     So why is Donald Trump pretending to run for President? Who knows? Maybe it's some sort of father issue. Maybe he really is so delusional that he thinks that the United States is a business. Maybe it's because he wants to think that the nation loves him instead of thinking that he's a jerk. Maybe it's because his ego of the sort that Zeus would envy. Just keep in mind this: the man is an echo of popularism and has the same substance of an echo shouted into a canyon.
     And if this fool keeps up with his foolishness to the point of running on a third party ticket the next president will have to thank him for getting elected. And Trump will laugh all the way to the bank.
     Aw, to hell, with it. It's Miller time.

Who You Callin' Honky, Cracker?

       The recent emphasis on race in America has done this great nation no good. It has made things worse. Very worse.
      The "dialogue" on race in the media and the Internet makes the same mistake as psychology; that talking about a "problem" will solve the "problem" when, in fact, it usually makes it worse. Talk therapy is valuable -- for the psychologist, who gets paid a lot of money per hour of "work" and really has no interest in "curing" his or her patient. For no one else is talk therapy valuable. The patient becomes an incessant talker of his or her problems with any damn one and the source of the patient's "problems" are constantly barraged by demands that the person admit that he or she is just a big jerk and who has ruined the "patient's" life by not giving him or her an extra Jello cup in the summer of 1984. And once that the source of emotional and psychological pain finally grudgingly admits (just to shut up the "patient") that yes, the "patient" didn't get an extra Jello cup on a summer's day in 1984, then starts the barrage of questions, "Why?" And if the answer is, "Because you were a rotten brat that day" or "You were late to the picnic" or "You stole Suzie's Jello cup." And then the "patient's" questions become nothing but "Why, why why" until the source of pain says, "I just didn't like you much then. But I like you now. So, shut the hell up." And then a relationship between the "patient" and the "source", which was friendly, or at least civil, before the shrink got involved, turns into a "patient" who is angry over past sins and always will be so and a "source" that is exasperated and eventually hostile towards the "patient" because he or she is just damn tired and really wants nothing to do with the "patient."
     This writer admits that it's a bad analogy, but your faithful correspondent is not a professional writer and thinker, but he thinks that the analogy works.
     Now, consider extending the analogy a bit. The "patient" has a friend who may be a member of your family or clan. This friend has heard the bitches of the "patient." All of a sudden the friend is attacking you in worse terms than the patient. The only way you can satisfy this friend is to fall on your sword after willing your fortune to the "patient" along with a bit to the friend. In other words, you've become a really bad guy (or gal) and you begin to think that all the world hates you except for maybe your mother and crazy aunt.
     This is much the situation, with all this "race dialogue". A person of European ancestry is held in contempt and and expected to feel guilt for the sins of one's ancestors against black people even if one's ancestors did not come to the shores of this blessed country 1880, fifteen years after slavery was abolished. A Jew living in Brooklyn whose ancestors came to the U.S. from a Polish shetl is held to the same sense of responsibility for the slavery of black people as is the descendant of a slave owner in the South. It's odd, because neither of them owned slaves, but for some reason they are expected to feel guilty for something that their ancestors had done or not done. They are supposed to feel guilty, to put it short, because they aren't black or Hispanic. And the worst finger waggers are other European-Americans, whether Christian or Jewish. The sense of guilt that the race mongers have made them feel grows exponentially in their hearts to the point that they hate their own and they are more problematic than the initial complainers in that one finds one's self fighting on two fronts, one of which is part of one's own community. If one says that the fellow travelers are "race traitors" one is labelled with the name, once again, of "racist." If one ignores them one is accused of "shutting down" the conversation. What can one do? Arguing results in "Why? Why? Why?" Ignoring the bitching results in being passive-aggressive.
     One, as an American of European ancestry, finds one's self, in the same position as Japan today. In previous posts this writer has posited that Japan is to Asia what England is to Europe; both part and not part of a larger continent. And Japan, like England and European-Americans find themselves blamed and condemned for things that happened long ago and the present generation is supposed to reperate and apologize for things that they have had nothing to do with. All three are supposed to ignore bad behaviour by minorities as a payment for "past sins."
     The only thing one can say in response for Europeans and European-Americans can do to fight the charges of the evil of the whiteys have done over the years is to demand that those who are saying that those descended from a people originated from west of the Caucus Mountains and north of the Med is to say, "Okay. We're bad. We're really bad and stone evil. And since we're so bad and evil you should probably stop using anything that we've discovered or invented because those things will probably corrupt you. Get rid of your car. Trash your TV and cell phone and computer. Don't have your kids vaccinated. Throw out your guns and gas heaters and water systems. Quit keeping your money in the bank. All those things are European or European-American things and thus, no good. We'll keep all those things for ourselves because they're bad. Good luck, brother." And the same should go in spades for the fellow travelers. After all, they want to be "down with the people."