Mike Williams, Sage of Quay, and the Memoirs of Billy Shears

Below the fold here is a video that is between Mike Williams, Jay Weidner, James Delingpole and Williams Ramsey, on the “Beatles Conspiracy”. The video is 4:35, that is, four hours and thirty-five minutes. Nonetheless, I expect all of you to drop everything and take half your day and watch it.

Actually, for my purposes here, you can go to 2:02:47, where Mike Williams begins to talk about the changes that “Paul” underwent from 1966 to 1968 or 69, which is why I am bringing the video and Williams to light here. In the brief interval after 2:02:47, Mike will hold up pictures of “Paul” McCartney claiming that the pictures are of a different person than the original.

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Anderson Cooper: Two men and a funeral

The work below this opening paragraph is from 2016, and I have edited it to remove some outside references that seemed appropriate at the time but do not now. The short shrift of it is that socialite Gloria Vanderbilt was said to have had two sons, last names taken from their father, Wyatt Cooper. They were Anderson, and Carter. The latter was said to have jumped off the balcony of their 14th floor Manhattan apartment in 1988, leaving but one.

I was listening to an interview with Anderson the other day, and I don’t know with whom. He’s a very smooth man, a good interview, but I was taken aback when asked about the Mom, Gloria. He was blunt to a fault about her, talking about her boyfriends as she aged, one having perfected the skill of cunnilingus. That was gross, as anyone can imagine the man performing the act as raising his head and being covered in cobwebs. Gloria (2024-2019) was the son of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880-1925), whose primary occupation was listed as “equestrian”. These people, including the two sons, were indeed to the manor born.

I am convinced that there are, to this day, two Anderson Coopers, one of whom I call “serious”. the other “Fredo”. I’ll explain all of that below. Just know that if you are watching Jeopardy on TV, and they are having their annual journalists contest, and if there is a Cooper there, it is Fredo.

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Three Jews Three

Note to readers about what follows below the fold: This blog has been around for a long time, since 2006. There are thousands of posts, most mine. At one time I fantasized that I could create a stable of writers for new content, but none could hold on for long before burnout or boredom. It is just me. But there has been some very good writing here over the years, and so I have here a rich archive. I don’t need to put up something new every day, and that solves the problem I have of repetitiveness. All I need do is comb what is already here, and rerun it. Below is a 2017 piece by Tyrone McCloskey. He wrote it in response of a piece I had written about my admiration for the Jews I have known in my life.
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Two Books: “Unreliable” by Csaba Szabo, and “Unreadable” by Dr. Mark Bailey

The following is taken from Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, the one in which he warned us of the “military-industrial complex” that has long since engulfed us. These words are about science.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

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On Boys Don’t Cry, and a royal Miles Mathis f-bomb rant

Back in March I received an email from a person asking to be kept anonymous. In it he was inquisitive of a piece written by Fauxlex called Framing John Lotter: The Fake Murder of Brandon Teena. It was based on the 1999 movie Boys Don’t Cry starring Hillary Swank (pictured above with her doppelgänger, Matt Damon), Chloë Sevigny and Peter Sarsgaard and others. Swank played Teena Brandon, who in the movie is Brandon Teena, a transvestite, or woman passing as a man. In 1993 Brandon is murdered by John Lotter (Sarsgaard) and Tom Nissen (played by Brandon Sexton III). Lotter was accused of the murder of Brandon and two others, Lisa Lambert, and Phillip DeVine, and is sentenced to death, in large part based on the testimony of Nissen, who would later confess that he, and not Lotter, had killed the three victims.

At the time I suggested to Fauxlex that even as we agreed that the murders were fake, and that Brandon (played in the movie by Swank) was played in real life by a woman, Barbra Kramer, still living in a town in Nebraska, that Lotter and Nissen could not possibly be in jail. I was able to match the real-life Brandon Teena photo to a to the living woman who in real life was supposed to be Brandon Teena. (Fauxlex made this connection before I did.) So much time has passed, and I do not have the private emails, but I never said publicly to Fauxlex that I doubted that Lotter and Nissen were in jail. He went after me in public for disagreeing with him, as is his wont.

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33 reasons to be happy, the climate movement is dying

I meant to include this with the last post, but forgot. It is a list of 33 reasons to rejoice that the Climate Change movement is on the ropes. Some of them strike me as significant, such as 1,6,9,11,16,19 and 32. The rest are marginal. The Mann v. Steyn outcome is cause for celebration, even schadenfreude, but is not over yet. Greta Thunberg is really just growing up some, moving on to new targets for her angst. Maybe someday she’ll be a conservative. The rest could be said to be retrenching, I fear. This ain’t over, not with all the money and power behind it, and we all know, here at least, that Trump is just a sock puppet. I like what I see coming from him on climate and energy, don’t understand tariffs or why he is moving on them, and deportations seemed designed to enrage the left. I know in my heart of hearts that he is as phony as Al Gore’s climate angst.

Each of the 33 is linked, so have fun if you have time.

Over 30 items here: Evidence that the climate scam is collapsing

Skip the sunscreen. Wear blinders.

Below the fold you will find what was said to be Kurt Vonnegut’s 1997 commencement address to undergrads at MIT. It begins, after an opening quote, with the words “Wear sunscreen.” It closes with “But trust me on the sunscreen.” It is clever and even contains good advice, like “Do one thing every day that scares you” and “Keep your old love letters, throw away your bank statements.”

The original piece, published in June of 1997 in the Chicago Tribune, was unsigned. Mary Schmich of the Tribune later claimed authorship. The whole thing was weird, as the piece went viral as a real Vonnegut commencement address. It seemed unprofessional to allow it to go unsigned and to print it without Vonnegut’s approval. The Tribune is a high profile outlet, so that practical jokes are beneath it. But only later did we learn that Vonnegut had never spoken at MIT. Schmich then tried to contact him to explain the situation, and when they finally spoke he said it was “spooky.”

“Two questions: Why use Vonnegut? And why sunscreen?

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“I tried to pray, nothing happened.”

I am reading a book, The Recovering, Intoxication and its Aftermath, by Leslie Jamison. When it came I did not remember that I had ordered it. I thought had ordered a book about how scientific papers had all become corrupt, and when this one came, I thought that was it. It was not. The one I ordered, Unreliable, by Csaba Szabo, is frightfully boring, so I am stuck now with two bad books … I’ll hang on with the Recovering, if only because I know the ending of Unreliable.

Books by recovering alcoholics can be tedious, self-involved, and boring. But I read a few pages in, and liked that she was talking about famous writers like Faulkner, Hemingway, and others who were also famous drunks. My own take is that these men, along with my own favorite, Edward Abbey, were crooked to begin with, so that both drinking and writing suited them fine. I seek no meaning in the fact that they drank, only the fact that they wrote. The same internal force that made them write might also have driven them to drink, but so what? That does not begin to explain all of the great writers who were not drunks.

Sidenote: This morning as I read she recounted reading the Stephen King book that became the Apollo 11 movie, The Shining. She’s not aware that with “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, Stanley Kubrick, and not Stephen King, is using the word “All” to take the place of “Apollo 11”, where Kubrick was deeply immersed.

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Collateral Gammage

Former Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end Ray Seals has reportedly passed away at age 59. Quietly. Too quietly.

There is, oddly, no specific date of death, no cause of death, no obituary with details. According to Sports Illustrated, “his friend” Nini Marie confirmed the news on social media.” That’s it. Just… confirmed.

One anagram of “Nini Marie” is:

“I Am In Rein”

A strange little phrase—perhaps meaningless. Or perhaps a coded signature. Especially when we remember the story of Ray’s cousin:

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Slippin’ out the back, Jack

At last count, Manhattan Contrarian’s five (and counting) posts on the JFK assassination have drawn 559 comments, though it the 80/20 rue applies, most have come from two or three sources.

My older brother told me, with awe, that Theodore Roosevelt had been shot while standing on a podium speaking, and still stood tall and finished his speech. With all due respect, Steve, that’s a crock. 1) If shot, or shot at, he would have hid behind the podium and there would have been a pile of bodies to shield him from further harm, and 2) he wasn’t shot (or shot at) anyway. That’s just presidential mythology, like San Juan Hill.

There’s a bit of popular mythology that says that in olden days presidents did not have tight security. They did, just like now. It’s not just presidents, but kings and queens, princes, dukes and archdukes. Security has been around longer than our country or colonies, and they know how to do it.

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