Nepos With Attitude (12-23-22)

Virtual Pilgrim comments:

Luke said he talks about what is, rather than what should be. I totally agree. Dennis Prager is fond of saying “race doesn’t matter.” It’s literally his number one point when talking about conservatism. What he is really saying is race SHOULD NOT matter. In the real world, race DOES matter. Prager is an ideologue presenting opinions about the world he wishes existed, and so he’s trying to speak that world into existence by convincing as many people as possible that race doesn’t matter. It’s a very weird situation because other times, he speaks in practical terms. For example, he says that he doesn’t care what you believe but only what you do. Then shows his true colors when he wrote his recent article asserting that Holocaust deniers should go to hell. One could be the most generous and wonderful person and hold a view skeptical of the official narrative about the Holocaust, and yet, Dennis Prager will hold you in such contempt will condemn you to burn in hell for eternity.

Luke failed to spread his seed and so is spreading ideas to compensate.

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Did The CIA Have A Hand In The Murder Of JFK?

Tucker Carlson claims a source told his show that the CIA had a hand in this murder.

This is absurd.

As Vincent Bugliosi wrote in his 2007 book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy:

For years, conspiracy theorists have written books about the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement in the assassination of JFK. And as conspiracy theorist E. Martin Schotz, a mathematician and practicing psychiatrist, puts it, “I and other ordinary citizens know, know for a fact , that there was a conspiracy [to murder Kennedy] and that it was organized at the highest levels of the CIA.” 1 The fact that Schotz and his fellow conspiracy theorists haven’t been able to come up with any evidence connecting the CIA to the assassination or Oswald has not troubled them in the least. In their opinion, they have been able to come up with motive (JFK’s refusal to give air support to the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion, his allegedly being soft, in the eyes of some, on Communism, his aim to cut the CIA budget by 20 percent by 1966, 2 etc.), means , and opportunity , which, as mentioned earlier, is not coming up with any hard evidence at all.
Whatever the CIA’s short laundry list of dissatisfactions (some merely illusory, some real) with Kennedy, as I discuss later in the anti-Castro Cuban exile section of this book, Kennedy was highly disturbed with the CIA for its incompetence and its having misled him on the probable success of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Perhaps the most famous alleged quote from Kennedy about his animus toward the CIA after the Bay of Pigs debacle was that he wanted “to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” But in the two and a half years after the attempted invasion he never did anything remotely close to this, and it is not known to whom he supposedly said these words. The New York Times only said that Kennedy made this statement “to one of the highest officials of his administration.” 3
The reality is that the relationship between Kennedy and the CIA, though strained by the Bay of Pigs debacle, was not nearly as bad and combustible as conspiracy theorists would want people to believe. And as we shall see, and most important on the issue of motive, the period of difficult relations was apparently short-lived. *
We know that no one has ever come up with any evidence of any kind that the CIA decided to kill Kennedy, and got Oswald or anyone else to do the job for it. Indeed, despite the admitted problems Kennedy had with the CIA over the Bay of Pigs invasion, William Colby, who was a ranking official in the CIA during the period of the assassination and went on to become CIA director, would later write, “The fact of the matter is that the CIA could not have had a better friend in a President than John F. Kennedy. He understood the Agency and used it effectively, exploiting its intellectual abilities to help him analyze a complex world, and its paramilitary and covert political talents to react to it in a low key way.” 4
And in 1996, the CIA released a study titled “Getting to Know the President, CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, 1952–1992,” by the CIA deputy director for intelligence, John L. Helgerson. On a one-year assignment, Helgerson interviewed “former presidents, CIA directors, and numerous others involved” in the nine presidencies covered by the subject period to ascertain the CIA’s relationship with the various presidents. On the issue so dear to conspiracy theorists—the CIA’s alleged animosity for Kennedy, and hence, its motive to kill him—it is very noteworthy that Helgerson’s study reported that “the [CIA’s] relationship with Kennedy was not only a distinct improvement over the more formal relationship with Eisenhower, but would only rarely be matched in future administrations. ” And alluding, by implication, to the strained period with Kennedy following the Bay of Pigs invasion in April of 1961, the report goes on to say that “in November 1961, Allen Dulles had been replaced by John McCone, who served Kennedy as DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] for almost two years. In the early part of this period, McCone succeeded in rebuilding the Agency’s relationship with Kennedy. McCone saw Kennedy frequently, and the President—more than any other before or since—would telephone even lower level Agency officers for information or assistance.”
…Since it has been established beyond all doubt that Oswald killed Kennedy, the conspiracy theorists who propound the idea of the CIA being behind Oswald’s act are necessarily starting out in a very deep hole before they even take their first breath of air. This is so because Oswald was a Marxist, and a Marxist being in league with U.S. intelligence just doesn’t ring true. More specifically, why would a passionate pro-Castro follower like Oswald want to join forces with the very U.S. intelligence agency—the CIA—that Oswald knew was behind the Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Castro, his hero? The conspiracy theorists realize, of course, the difficulty of knitting these conflicting threads together, and try to get around the problem by saying that Oswald was only “posing as a pro-Castro sympathizer.” In other words, Oswald was really a rightist who was only acting like a leftist. “Oswald’s actual political orientation was extreme right wing,” said New Orleans DA Jim Garrison. “Oswald would have been more at home with Mein Kampf than Das Kapital .” 20 “Oswald was an American agent posing as a Marxist,” says conspiracy theorist James DiEugenio. 21 But this contention cannot seriously and rationally be made. To believe it, one would have to disbelieve not only all of Oswald’s words, including those uttered when he was only a teenager, but all of his conduct, as well as the impressions (many given under oath) of the considerable number of people who knew Oswald personally and spoke of his being a confirmed and passionate Marxist. In other words, one would have to believe that year in and year out for almost a decade, Oswald was putting on an Academy Award–winning performance, fooling everyone, including his family and wife, by the virtuosity of his acting skills.
In its final report, the HSCA took the Warren Commission to task for what it characterized as a virtual lack of investigation of the CIA, which itself was one of the federal agencies investigating the assassination. “Testifying before the Commission,” the HSCA Report says, “CIA Director John A. McCone indicated that ‘Oswald was not an agent, employee, or informant of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Agency never contacted him, interviewed him, talked with him, or solicited any reports or information from him, or communicated with him directly or in any other manner…Oswald was never associated or connected directly or indirectly in any way whatsoever with the Agency.’ McCone’s testimony was corroborated by Deputy Director Richard M. Helms.” 22 Helms had told the Warren Commission, “I had all of our records searched to see if there had been any contacts at any time prior to President Kennedy’s assassination by anyone in the Central Intelligence Agency with Lee Harvey Oswald. We checked our card files and our personnel files and all our records. Now, this check turned out to be negative.” 23
The HSCA Report then goes on to say, “The record reflects that once these assurances had been received, no further efforts were made by the Warren Commission to pursue the matter.” 24 But this simply is not true. Although the HSCA can take justifiable credit in investigating the CIA more than the Warren Commission did, the starting point for any investigation of the CIA, and the principal way to investigate it, would be to look at its entire internal file. If the people responsible for preparing the HSCA Report had bothered to read the very next page in the above-quoted joint testimony by McCone and Helms before the Warren Commission, they would have learned that the Warren Commission did, in fact, do this precise thing.

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Lionel Messi, Kanye West & Autistic Overlords (12-21-22)

02:00 Messi & Ye, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=146549
11:00 Israel’s dumb culture, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=146547
13:00 The Atlantic: WHY IS MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE LIKE THIS?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=146541
32:00 Marc B Shapiro: Rise of Reform and the Rabbinic Response, https://torahinmotion.org/tim-torah/the-rise-of-reform-and-the-rabbinic-response-part-11
55:00 A political discussion with my brother

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Is Soccer Boring?

Not to me.

Here are some comments on Steve Sailer’s site:

* Messi and the Argentine team had felt disrespected by Van Gaal and the Dutch team’s attitude and comments before the game, and especially by the latter’s height-ist style of play and tactics. The Dutch of course the tallest country in the world. While Argentina was one of the shortest teams in the World Cup and known for their diminutive stars Maradona and Messi.

“Long ball” is the style of soccer where teams make long high passes in the air and tall forwards use their height advantage to head the ball or gain possession against shorter defenders.

“‘Just tall people and long balls’ – Messi tears into Van Gaal for saying Dutch play good football after World Cup loss”

* Why do Americans (no one else says this) always go on about soccer being boring? I watched soccer seriously for the first time in my life this world cup, and it was much more exciting than rugby (which is what we play in my country).

One of the things I’m liking about soccer compared to rugby is that soccer feels 3d while rugby feels 1d. What I mean by this is that in rugby, the game either moves towards one side’s try line or towards the other side’s try line. All other directions are barely explored. But in soccer, the game seems to move all over the pitch, including in the air. Rugby feels like game on rails compared to soccer.

Another thing I like about soccer is what soccer players look like. Soccer plays look like normal dudes, while rugby players look like intimidating elite athletes. Soccer is similar to cricket in this respect. Cricket players tend to look like normal guys you would see down at the pub. And soccer players tend to look like edgy youths you might see fooling around outside a bar.

Soccer commentators are also interesting. There seems to be many different types of soccer commentator. My favourite is the intelligent sounding English guy. This is the accent of the men who built the modern world. I think it’s cool that they’re also commenting on the game I’m watching.

* In part because soccer games are usually rather boring to watch,

Translation: “because I didn’t grow up in a soccer culture playing and watching soccer, I find watching soccer to be boring.”

People aren’t objective about their subjective tastes.

“I find X to be boring” is always going to be a far more objective statement about these things than the broad brush statement “X is boring.”

If billions are watching, odds are most of them don’t find it boring, no matter your opinions on the matter.

I mean I find baseball and golf to be excruciatingly boring to watch, yet people watch. No doubt they appreciate things about those sports that I don’t.

soccer highlights can be exciting in contrast.

You can flip this around for instance a lot of people in Europe and Asia were hooked on the NFL highlight reels back in the 1980s and found them very exciting, only to be very disappointed when they watched a full length NFL game, live, which lasted three hours for only 11 minutes of actual play, which they found to be very boring to watch and not at all as exciting as the highlights.

So it really is all about what you are acculturated to, for the most part; unless you make an effort to really learn something new, you are always going to be using the wrong “metric” to appreciate something that is otherwise foreign to you. But people want to pretend that they are being objective about these things, even though they almost never are.

* Van Gaal was (is?) a super-manager (perhaps top 10 ever?) who is widely thought to dislike South American players. Di Maria (star for Argentina) played under him in 2015 and he was widely understood to have underplayed and generally misused Di Maria to the detriment of Di Maria’s career. Similar stories for many comparable players including Diego Forlan, hero of Uruguay and very well respected player by any account. It’s Van Gaal’s long time pattern.

So the Argentina versus Netherlands match was an opportunity for payback. Many people on the ARG team had been personally slighted (Di Maria as their flag bearer) but not in some esoteric fashion. Their careers suffered by a jerk boss. ARG also saw themselves as defending South American soccer, as you can see by Messi’s “breaking composure” and being very publicly mean/petty with Van Gaal. For Argentina it was a triumphant settling of bad blood.

Of course it was a great moment to see Van Gaal publicly refuted with the best contention at all, a World Cup.

* I remember Paul Zimmerman telling a rather dumbfounded interviewer that football had gone from a white game, which meant a strength game, to a black game, which meant a speed game. When the interviewer asked him to elaborate, Zimmerman basically told him to **** off.

* The Messi autism angle is pretty interesting. He apparently is on the spectrum which explains some of his seemingly aloof, borderline mean spirited behavior. It likely helps his game. Does autism benefit athletes in other sports? One would think autism might benefit a golfer or a pitcher in baseball.

Between Messi and Ye, it has been quite a month for autiste overlords.

The Messi autism angle is pretty interesting. He apparently is on the spectrum which explains some of his seemingly aloof, borderline mean spirited behavior. It likely helps his game. Does autism benefit athletes in other sports? One would think autism might benefit a golfer or a pitcher in baseball.

Between Messi and Ye, it has been quite a month for autiste overlords.

Due to changing sensibilities, we are unlikely going to see Christian Bale in a Rain Man/ I Am Sam type role anytime soon. Messi gives a glimpse as to how Bale might play that role. His inability to walk around the goalie is quite funny.

* I wonder if there is an element of sour grapes with some Americans since American Football has not been taken up anywhere else…

“I wonder if there is an element of sour grapes with some [Australians] since [Aussie rules] Football has not been taken up anywhere else…”

“I wonder if there is an element of sour grapes with some [Irishmen] since [hurling] has not been taken up anywhere else…”

“I wonder if there is an element of sour grapes with some [Florentines] since [calcio storico] has not been taken up anywhere else…”

“I wonder if there is an element of sour grapes with some [Finns] since [pesäpallo] has not been taken up anywhere else…”

“I wonder if there is an element of sour grapes with some [Japanese] since [sumo wrestling] has not been taken up anywhere else…”

“I wonder if there is an element of sour grapes with some [Russians] since [face-slapping] has not been taken up anywhere else…”

“I wonder if there is an element of sour grapes with some [Afghans] since [bacha bāzī] has not been taken up anywhere else…”

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Israel’s Dumb Culture

Steve Sailer writes: “I’m reminded of how Israel doesn’t score that highly on tests, which likely has something to do with the ancient Zionist policy of de-intellectualizing Israeli Jews, that the new Jews forged in Israel weren’t just going to be scholars and merchants, they’d also be farmers and soldiers. So, Israel has wound up with a slightly dumbed down culture (one in which, for example, Mizrahi pop culture tastes are considered more desirable than snobbish Ashkenazi tastes) and correspondingly mediocre test scores.”

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