Crack's Big Hits (Hot Takes)

 

DOUGLAS MURRAY IS AN ASSHOLE: Rebel Against the Cult of the Expert 

   

 IT'S NOT VERY "SPIRITUAL" OF INDIA TO BLAME PAKISTAN FOR A "TERRORIST" ATTACK: India and Pakistan accuse each other of attacks, tourists flee 

   

AMERICAN MADE: Source: Houthi missile shot down by Arrow after US THAAD missed for 2nd time this week

AMERICA FIRST: Detroit automakers fuming after Trump’s first trade deal gives preferential treatment to imported U.K. cars over their own 

   

 HOPE I DIE BEFORE I GET OLD: The Who retiring as Pete Townsend says 'Everyone needs to know the truth'

 

NOTHING RACIAL - OR REPELLENT - ABOUT THIS ADMINISTRATION: First Afrikaners granted refugee status due to arrive in U.S. 

   

 BUT NINE INCH NAILS WILL NEVER BE GOOD: Al Jourgensen Shares Honest Opinion on Trent Reznor's Success as Industrial Musician: 'He's on the Cover of Rolling Stone, and We're Still Slogging in the Trenches' 

   

 THAT MEANS SHE'S A BAD DOCTOR: RFK Jr.: Casey Means ‘walked away from traditional medicine because she was not curing patients’ 

   

 LET'S GIVE THE GUY A SHOT: New Pope Has Creole Roots in New Orleans 

   

 AMERICAN VALUES: “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College”

TRUMP'S A BUFFOON: FACT FOCUS: Trump claims the US subsidizes Canada. Experts say the numbers don’t add up 

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 THE BLUES AND THE LIMITS OF FREE SPEECH: KANYE WEST'S 'HEIL HITLER' REMOVED FROM ALL STREAMING PLATFORMS

News: Royalty Lies, Religion's Crazy, And The Poor Just Die By The Thousands

One of King Charles's charities is forced to pay back £110,000 after a 'Indian clinic' is axed

"There is a crisis in Christianity. The churches have discredited themselves with spiritual and moral inadequacies. While Jesus exemplified simplicity, Church leaders ‘anoint’ and join crooked politicians in indulging in obscene opulence and encourage poverty creation. A returned Jesus would thrash such leaders the way He beat traders in Jerusalem roughly 2000 years ago. Faking commemorating His birth, they are the reason for the crisis in Christianity-the loss of credibility."

Pakistan bans New Year’s Eve celebrations in solidarity with Gaza

Running Away From Your Troubles Was NOT An Option

I've been screaming about white fraud for so long - and since nobody cared about it when I have - they couldn't even get me to roll my eyes over the Mandela funeral fake-hand-sign guy. It's gotten to be so bad, unless I see a white person working with my own two eyes, I just assume they're living off money earned from slavery:

   Beyond Beale’s individual fate, his case raises larger questions about how he was able to get away with his admitted fraud for so long, according to federal and congressional investigators. Two new reports by the EPA inspector general’s office conclude that top officials at the agency “enabled” Beale by failing to verify any of his phony cover stories about CIA work, and failing to check on hundreds of thousands of dollars paid him in undeserved bonuses and travel expenses -- including first-class trips to London where he stayed at five-star hotels and racked up thousands in bills for limos and taxis.

Until he retired in April after learning he was under federal investigation, Beale, an NYU grad with a masters from Princeton, was earning a salary and bonuses of $206,000 a year, making him the highest paid official at the EPA. He earned more money than Gina McCarthy, the agency’s administrator and, for years, his immediate boss, according to agency documents.

In September, Beale, who served as a “senior policy adviser” in the agency’s Office of Air and Radiation, pled guilty to defrauding the U.S. government out of nearly $900,000 since 2000. Beale perpetrated his fraud largely by failing to show up at the EPA for months at a time, including one 18-month stretch starting in June 2011 when he did “absolutely no work,” as Kern, Beale’s lawyer, acknowledged in his court filing.

To explain his long absences, Beale told agency officials -- including McCarthy -- that he was engaged in intelligence work for the CIA, either at agency headquarters or in Pakistan. At one point he claimed to be urgently needed in Pakistan because the Taliban was torturing his CIA replacement, according to Sullivan.

“Due to recent events that you have probably read about, I am in Pakistan,” he wrote McCarthy in a Dec. 18, 2010 email. “Got the call Thurs and left Fri. Hope to be back for Christmas ….Ho, ho, ho.”

In fact, Beale had no relationship with the CIA at all. Sullivan, the EPA investigator, said he confirmed Beale didn’t even have a security clearance. He spent much of the time he was purportedly working for the CIA at his Northern Virginia home riding bikes, doing housework and reading books, or at a vacation house on Cape Cod.

“He’s never been to Langley (the CIA’s Virginia headquarters),” said Sullivan. “The CIA has no record of him ever walking through the door.”

Nor was that Beale’s only deception, according to court documents. In 2008, Beale didn’t show up at the EPA for six months, telling his boss that he was part of a special multi-agency election-year project relating to “candidate security.” He billed the government $57,000 for five trips to California that were made purely “for personal reasons,” his lawyer acknowledged. (His parents lived there.) He also claimed to be suffering from malaria that he got while serving in Vietnam. According to his lawyer’s filing, he didn’t have malaria and never served in Vietnam. He told the story to EPA officials so he could get special handicap parking at a garage near EPA headquarters.

White people used to know how to run an operation,...

 

She Was A Woman. She Wrecked The Joint. Cheer Her.

 

I watched Bhutto last night and - once Arianna Huffington showed up - I thought the same thing:

Benazir Bhutto: The Cult 

The documentary about Benazir Bhutto titled Bhutto is nothing short of a silly hagiography. It is only surprising that Tariq Ali agreed to be part of the charade, although his old friendship with her during her time in the UK explains (and justifies) the lapse. To be fair to Ali, he did not shy away from criticizing her second term in office. 

The documentary comes clearly in response to a cult about Bhutto in Western capitals, especially Washington and London. Bhutto was not a remarkable politician and nor were her achievements in office (unless we count her achievements in terms of the damage she has caused in Pakistan and beyond). Western circles are always desperate for a royal family story, and the Bhuttos provide one.

Yep, throw in cultish thinking and we Americans are becoming pretty predictable,...