Mr. Miller's Great Replacement Theory, Revisited.

MayorOfStatenIslandToo

FiveBoroughsVille

Zohran Mamdani is the new mayor of New York City.

A member of Mr. Trump's administration responds:

...Stephen Miller, the powerful and ultra-hardline White House deputy chief of staff, who has spearheaded Trump’ anti-immigration crackdown, posted a screenshot from New York City government website to imply that the Uganda-born Mamdani’s win had been brought about by immigrant votes.

“Almost 50% of New Yorkers live in family households with at least one immigrant,” the post read...

Yes, you read that right.

It's no longer the 'theory' that super-fine folks who look and think like the good Mr. Miller will be replaced by immigrants directly. Instead, the new 'theory' is that they will be replaced by people who look and think like their family members who are the actual immigrants.

Or some such ridiculously illogical thing.

Especially in a country of immigrants.

Sheesh.


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Pudge And The Giraffe.

HeyBeantown!

DifferentBreedsVille

We only went to one Vancouver Canadians game at Nat Bailey Stadium last summer and my scorecard says we did not see Trey Yesavage make one of his four starts in Lotusland  in the middle of his meteoric rise from rookie league ball to the big leagues.

So, apropos of pretty much nothing at all, late one afternoon last week I was talking with a friend, a fellow old guy science-geek type, and we came to the conclusion that the last time we had seen a rookie who had been called up late in the season so dominate the play-offs was Ken Dryden back in 1971.

With this shared bit of historical wisdom that, to the best of our knowledge, had not been jammed down our throats by any of the 37,000 sports shows and/or branded content foisted on Canadians of all stripes by the Rogers Family Empire throughout the Blue Jays World Series run, we patted ourselves on the the back and headed for home.

Unfortunately, while Yesavage did get five outs and the hold in a relief appearance during Saturday night's Game 7, he also give up that 8th inning homer to Max Muncy which took a little shine off that rose.

However...

This got me thinking laterally in the most digressive, tangential way possible, as is often my want.

Which brings me to the connection between Carlton Fisk and Mr. Dryden.

First, here's an account of my not so close encounter with Mr. Fisk during his last season in the Big Leagues, which is more than thirty years ago now:

...I saw Carlton Fisk, for real, in 1993.

Which was a time when both baseball and American exceptionalism still meant a lot to me.

And on that particular day Fisk was toiling near the end of his career for the Chicago White Sox warming up a guy named Jeff Schwarz in the right field bullpen of Oakland Alameda County Coliseum.

Truth be told, I was actually more interested in Mr. Schwarz that day because, after 11 years in the minors as a draft and follow straight out of highschool, Schwarz was finally getting his first shot in the show. To put that in perspective, Schwarz made more in meal money in that, his only full season in the big-leagues, than he made in all of 1992 when he was toiled for the Vancouver Canadians.

How do I know this?

Because Schwarz told me so himself later that very afternoon as we sat in the bar of the Oakland Airport Hilton where Goose Gossage was holding court a scant six feet away.

Another interesting thing about Schwarz was the fact that he liked to loosen-up by long-tossing with both his right and left hands.

I never did find out what a crusty old customer like Carlton Fisk, who by then had been in the majors for more than 20 years and had caught more games than anyone else in baseball history, thought about Mr. Schwarz' feats of ambulatory ambidextriosity.

I do, however, know that Pudge hated watching himself on T.V.

In particular he said he never, ever, watched video of himself hitting that walk-off shot in Fenway Park during the 1975 World Series.

Why?

Because, Fisk said, he had his own memories of that moment and he didn't want the eye of the camera to turn them into something they were not...

So what, you may be asking yourself, does this have to do with Mr. Dryden?

Well, soon after he died earlier this fall,  Mike Boone had Steve Paikin and Bruce Dowbiggin on his podcast to talk about the former Cornell University goaltender, and one of the things they discussed was how Dryden refused to watch old videos of his games and highlights.

Dryden's explanation, as told to Dowbiggin:

"I have an image in my head of what I looked like, sounded like, and played like back then and I want that to be what stays with me."

Imagine that!


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Apparently, it was Greasy Phil who first called Dryden the 'Thieving Giraffe', although the future senator was also known as the Octopus and the Four Storey Goalie.

And here's an even crazier thing that also came up on Toronto Mike's very independent podcast...Dryden was originally drafted by Boston Bruins in 1964 but they traded his rights to the Canadiens when he did the then blasphemous thing and went off to the Ivy League to get an education while he went 76-4-1 at Cornell, back in the days when the world still allowed ties...

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Believe It Or Not...

 

...There Are Things More Important To Canada Than The Fate Of The Blue Jays.


And, would 'a thunk that one of those things would be happening in the province of wild roses.

The following is from the invaluable David Climenhaga's latest:

When Thomas Lukaszuk said he could bring Elections Alberta pro-Canada petition forms signed by 300,000 Albertans in the three months allowed by the United Conservative Party’s “citizen initiative” legislation, there were many who said it couldn’t be done...

{snip}

...And yesterday, Mr. Lukaszuk and his supporters delivered 61 boxes containing petition sheets with 456,365 signatures to Elections Alberta’s modest headquarters in an Edmonton industrial park. That’s almost certainly enough to ensure Elections Alberta can validate enough to reach the 294,000 required by the law...

What's it all about Alfie?

Well, apparently, it's a concerted effort to beat the separatists at their own rigged game.

Imagine that!

****

And now on to a much more pressing matter, at least for the moment...

Given that the Hawk is already there, isn't it about time Dave Steib was ushered into the Hall of Fame?

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A Couple Of Things...

NotNecessarilyTheBest
ButTheBestICanDoVille


A couple of things for a busy day job Monday...

It turns out there just might be one good tech baron out there who is most definitely not trying to take over all the means of production - Jimmy Wales...

Locally, in Lotusland, the city is considering a proposal for a massive box in the sky at Yukon and Broadway on a lot so skinny, our Eastside bungalow would hardly fit. The folks at CityHallWatch are on that one...

Enjoy the falling colours and the temporary respite from the rain today everybody!



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One Republic Swims Against The Current.

TheyGaveTheirHeart
ToAGalwayGirlVille

The Republic of Ireland has a new president.

Her name is Catherine Connolly and she is an unabashed progressive and peacenik who believes in both empathy and compassion:

...As a teenager, Connolly became active in her community, volunteering with two Catholic lay organisations - the Legion of Mary and the Order of Malta.

This involved bringing meals-on-wheels to elderly people and cleaning their homes.

"The joke was that I was out saving the world and not doing the housework at home," she recently told podcaster Síle Seoige...

{snip}

...The mother of two was in her early 40s when she entered elected politics in 1999.

She recalls being encouraged to stand for the Labour Party by the outgoing President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins and his wife.

Her main reason for getting involved was an ambition to address Ireland's housing shortage which she has described as the "defining social crisis of our time".

Connolly served 17 years as councillor in Galway, including a one-year term as mayor of her native city...

{snippety}

...Connolly is an outspoken critic of Israel's actions in Gaza and has vowed to use her presidency to be a "voice for peace" in an increasingly uncertain world.

She opposes the increasing militarisation of Europe and has warned against a "building consensus" to weaken Ireland's policy of military neutrality.

She told BBC Talkback that when she canvassed voters, Gaza was "top of the list of their concerns" and was raised more often than any other issue, including Irish unity...

****

Lawyers, Guns and Money front pager Eric Loomis has a couple of thoughts:

One of the most remarkable political stories in my life is the transformation of Ireland from the most church dominated and one of the most conservative nations in western Europe to a secular nation with no time for the world’s bullshit...

{snip}

...The Irish remind me of the many ex-Mormons I have known in my life (this happens when you are from the West) who have been lied to their whole lives, know it, are angry about it, and have no time for your nonsense. Given how the Catholic Church treated the Irish people over the centuries and the sexual exploitation of children endemic to it, it’s like a national waking up and a determination to never go back to the old ways...

Interesting perspective from Mr. Loomis, and many Irish folks may actually agree with it.

However, given her own history, Ms. Connolly herself might not. 

Although, it is entirely possible  that Ms. Connolly might just take a wee bit of liberation with her brand of catholic theology.

Which would be a good thing I reckon.

________

Earworm in the sub-header?....This (from the place where. apparently, everyone is a buskateer)!

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Ruthless Dictator Speaks Truth To (His Own Warmongering) Power.

Pressure
PushingDownOnHeVille


Vladimir Putin, responding to his own bought-paid-for-media's questions about how Russia will respond to new American sanctions against its oiligarchy (sic):

...“No self-respecting country ever does anything under pressure.” ...

Sure thing.

Go tell it to the people of Kyiv Mr. Putin.


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Earworm in the sub-header?...This!


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It's Still The Best Thing About Blogging.

HaloscanKilled

TheCommentStarVille


Social media pretty much ended it.

But.

On the little blogs, where the posters actually pay attention and where there are no algorithms to be found, the comments are still the best thing about the whole deal.

To wit - Jodi Patterson recently posted about her efforts, engaged in on the OpEd pages of the Victoria TimesColonist, to discredit the notion that the best way to deal with the social crisis of the unhoused is to ditch all this 'compassion first' business and instead inject a little 'order first' into the deal.

The post itself is very much worth the read.

However, what I would like to do here, specifically, is draw your attention to the comment of some fellow named 'Danneau' who got right to the heart of the matter:

A proposal: Think in terms of all the time, money, thought and effort expended over the last half-century in destroying social safety nets, in disenfranchising and dispossessing a large part of the population, in misinforming and distracting anyone subject to swallowing the narrative and in building a whole infrastructure in both physical and legal structures to prevent effective resistance to the above, and you will have an idea of the resources necessary to address these questions, the time, the funds, the re-education, the legal re-jigging, the attitude adjustment, the patience, the tolerance, the intelligence and the fortitude to mend our whole civilization. As long as politicians are left to govern without consequence and independently of the informed consent of the population, we will flounder with mere attempts to look good for the next election cycle, and the results will be dire.

Enough said?


_____

Earworm in the subheader?....This.

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HST Fridays...Leni Of The Dakotas.

PointingTowardRushmoreInBavaria
WarIsPeaceVille

From the media chop-shop known as 'Axios', circa 2025:

The most expensive political ad campaign of the year is being run by the Department of Homeland Security.

Why it matters: DHS disputes that its ads are political. But it has spent at least $51 million this year on ads thanking President Trump for securing the border, according to AdImpact...

{snip}

• The DHS ads promote Trump's mass deportation agenda in a series of direct-to-camera videos starring the face of the policy, Secretary Kristi Noem.
• They're part of a $200 million fast-tracked contract pushing self-deportation...

{snip}

• "President Trump" is the most mentioned phrase across all the ads.
• Three ads say: "Thank you, President Donald J. Trump for securing our border and putting America first."
• Another says: "President Trump has a clear message for those that are in our country illegally. Leave now..."

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — part of DHS — has spent an additional $10 million on a recruitment ad campaign, airing nationally and in several big city media markets....

From the super-fine media sane-washing operation known as 'Politico, circa 2020:

...In 2018, (Kristi Noem) told the Argus Leader, a South Dakota newspaper, that Mount Rushmore came up during her first visit to the Oval Office, when she was a candidate for governor.

"He said, ‘Kristi, come on over here. Shake my hand,’" Noem said. "I shook his hand, and I said, ‘Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.’ And he goes, ‘Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?’"

Noem said she started laughing, but added: "He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious."...

From the Woody Creek Colorado media mad-house known as 'Owl Farm', circa 2003:

"...We're the Nazis in this game, and I don't like it. I'm embarrassed and I'm pissed off.

Yeah.

I mean to say something and I think a lot of people in this country agree with me...'

Hunter Thompson speaking to KDNK Radio in Roaring Fork 

January 2003

From the original Ms. Riefenstahl, who discovered the face for her own, not so private, Bavarian Mount Rushmore after at a rousing 'rally' in 1932:

"...With indescribable joy, deeply moved and filled with burning gratitude, we share with you, my Führer, your and Germany's greatest victory, the entry of German troops into Paris. You exceed anything human imagination has the power to conceive, achieving deeds without parallel in the history of mankind..."

A telegram to A. Hitler from L. Riefenstahl, June 14, 1940

The day Nazis occupied Paris.

From the original Ms. Riefenstahl, revisioning a wee bit of Nobel Peace Prize-free history a few years later:

"...Everyone thought the war was over, and in that spirit I sent the cable to Hitler (in June of 1940)..."

L. Riefenstahl declaring that war is peace

Imagine that.

.

My Evening Ride...

...Road Hockey Sky!


Which takes me back to a red brick lined school ground, superblades, bleach bottle plastic goalie masks, runny noses, and RC Cola from the corner store.


______
And, just in case you missed it, Beer is writing pretty regularly again...Which is a good thing.


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Cue The Gloria Gaynor...

Saving

CanuckistanMikitaVille



In an opinion piece titled 'Can Canada Survive Donald Trump' for Bloomberg News, Francis Wilkinson writes.

...In the household of North America, one inhabitant has taken the momentous decision to empower a lie-based political movement led by a career fraudster — long after his authoritarian ambitions and violent means were laid bare. Whether this act of political suicide evolves as a murder-suicide is of more than passing interest to the US’s northern domestic partner.

The consequences of US failure cannot be contained within US borders. As a direct result, African children who were alive on Jan. 19 are dead today. Summary executions, without even a pretense of law, have become US policy in the Caribbean Sea. Putin continues slaughtering Ukrainians while cashing dividends from a shrewd political investment. China is better-positioned for power.

Canada’s precarious state is not the direst consequence of US political degradation. But it’s an all-but-impossible one to rectify. Joined at the hip to the US, Canada can only hope that Trump doesn’t continue to hold its trade hostage, or spill authoritarian values and violence over the border...

 

Personally, I like the slightly more 'collective'  Cake version of the tune made famous by the incomparable Ms. Gaynor...

______

Mr. Wilkinson's piece is good, deep and well researched... Essentially, his thesis is that our best chance of surviving, intact, is that the US itself does not completely collapse under the weight of the current authoritarian regime.

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My Morning Ride...

 

Fall-O-Rama!


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Just a thought, unresearched for the moment....As we increasingly have these cool nights that warm up to almost summer temperatures in October, I feel like Bay Area weather has shifted north to Lotusland.


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HST Fridays...History Is Hard To Know.

 

There's a lot of talk these days, some might call it hype for the merch machine, twenty years down the road, about re-investigating the good Docktor's demise.

Personally, I'm not sure there's much there, there.

Then again, as reader Lew E and I discussed on the thread to last week's post, and as HST himself once wrote....

...History is hard to know because of all the hired bullsh*t...

Fear and Loathing, The First Part, 1971

Not to mention the hangers on and the ten percenters.

Sod the streets at once!

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Just Around The Corner...

AllOurBehaviours
'RTheirsVille


Commenting on the last post about the AI Business Bubble, reader TB mentioned that what Mr. Orwell once envisaged about the year that 'Born In The USA' was released* is now just around the corner.

I, only half in jest, responded by saying that we might, ourselves, have already gone around said corner.

And then I read this, by Christian Hetzner writing in Fortune (web archive link):

George Orwell’s 1984 warned of a future where Big Brother watches every move. Today, modern technology is making that vision a reality, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison—the world’s second-richest person—sees a growing opportunity for his company to help authorities analyze real-time data from millions of surveillance cameras.

“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week...

Upshot?

I no longer have any jests to give whatsoever.


______

*But not this....version.

Tip 'O The Toque to Eric Loomis writing at that WZevon monikered blog


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Unit Economics On The Soles Of Their Shoes.

AllOfTheirTechBubbles
'RUsVille


From Cory Doctorow's latest on the AI business:

...This isn't like the early days of the web, or Amazon, or any of those other big winners that lost money before becoming profitable. Those were all propositions with excellent "unit economics" – they got cheaper with every successive technological generation, and the more customers they added, the more profitable they became. AI companies have – in the memorable phraseology of Ed Zitron – "dogshit unit-economics." Each generation of AI has been vastly more expensive than the previous one, and each new AI customer makes the AI companies lose more money...

Doctorow goes on to make a convincing case that the already massive AI bubble is expanding so fast that the best thing we can hope for is that it bursts as soon as possible.

In other words, if folks like Mess'rs Doctorow and Zitron are right,  the crash is coming and the only thing still up for debate is how bad it's going to be.

And then there is the matter of how fast the libertarian tech lords who now rule us will start screaming about the need for a bailout bigger than Jupiter and all of its moons.

Or some such Mars means nothing to us now-type thing.

______

Earworm in the header?...This!


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HST Fridays - Their Difficulty With Pants.

CrookedIsAs
CrookedWasVille



This was then:

"...Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning..."

Hunter Thompson, 1994

This is now:

...The charges (against the former FBI Director) were filed in the eastern district of Virginia only after Erik Siebert was forced out as US attorney (by Donald Trump) for reportedly finding no grounds to indict (James) Comey...

{snip}

...Trump has spent the hours since Comey’s indictment was announced insulting him on Truth Social, calling him “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” Thursday night and “A DIRTY COP” Friday morning...

The Guardian, 2025

That is all.


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