Diogenes' Middle Finger Turns Five

This weekend marks the fifth anniversary of the beginning of this little venture called Diogenes Middle Finger.  And I can say again this year, it has been by far the best year yet. It was never an intention, nor a dream to ever receive the recognition or the honors from fellow bloggers that it has. I thank my many blog brothers and sisters.   

And thanks in part to our new found fame being labeled as  "Unamerican / Uncosmopolitan Despicable Hooligans" as we are called by John Kerry, and our ongoing feud with the Hilton Hotel Chain, our growth in readership has increased at an amazing pace. I thank You All who come here and spend time.

This will be the last celebration of it's kind here until year number 10, that's if we last that long, and avoid being scooped up be the Secret Service or interred in Re-education Camp. 

So I must take time to thank my regular commenters for you wit and serious discussions on my topics (and for your corrections of my sometime poor English ;) ) and especially to my sometime collaborator and friend, The Incomparable Earl of Taint. And a Thank You to Cardigan for the generous linkage and all the gang at IOTWR, as well as my many readers from Michelle's Mirror. 

  

I pledged two things at the start (1- give readers something different than the same stuff they see on 20 other blogs they may read before they come here  (2- make them wonder what they will find if they do come back. I feel I've succeeded on both counts.

Thank You All for making what I do here worth the time and effort. - Jan

Notorious RBG

Why Kagan and Ginsburg Should Have Recused Themselves From Gay Marriage Decision

Both Justices Recently Performed Gay Marriage Ceremonies

Federal law states: "Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." 

A repost from April 27,2015

Why Justice Kagan Should Recuse Herself, But Won't 

Just last September Justice Kagan officiated at a same-sex wedding.  That's just the latest of a long history of Kagan's LGBT activism.  Justice Kagan is hugely biased on LGBT issues (for obvious reasons) and should recuse herself, but I doubt she will.  She, as well as the 'Wise Latina" Justice Sotomayor were nominated for the court not because of their knowledge and wisdom in all things constitutional, but solely to advance minority agendas. 

Kagan has been committed to the radical campaign pushing acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism as “Civil Rights." Her unprecedented activism supporting that view as Dean of Harvard Law School calls into question her ability to judge fairly and impartially on same-sex “marriage”.   Working hand in hand with students to expel military recruiters in protest over the Armed Forces’ ban on homosexuals (a “moral injustice of the first order,” she wrote) is only the most obvious example of Kagan’s passionate dedication to this controversial and immoral agenda.

Even before her nomination to the Court, her enthusiastic and committed pro-homosexuality activism at Harvard (including her recruitment to the faculty of radical “gay” activist scholars like former ACLU lawyer William Rubenstein and elevation of radical out lesbian Professor Janet Halley) was highly significant for the making of the nation's next generation of Lawyers and Judges.

So going in, the "Same-Sex Marriage" forces have 3 solid votes, Kagan, Sotomayor and the senile old bat, Buzzy Ginsburg, who also has recently performed same sex marriages ceremonies, and who's record of twisted liberal logic and written dissenting opinion against the spirit of the Constitution is on record for all to see. That leaves only two votes needed to ensconce the LGBT agenda firmly into the fabric of the nation.  

And I doubt very seriously these same 3 Justices would ever see fit to rule assuring my right to self defense by legalizing my carry permit in all fifty states. 

Great Moments in History #24

1949 - George Orwell finishes his Classic Novel  of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, socialism, thoughtcrime and historical revisionism.

California and Mandatory Vaccination Laws

The "Everything Confederate Must Go" Comes to Town

I listened with interest to the radio this morning for what I knew was sure to come, it has come before in just such similar situations as we have presently......

"Local NAACP President Lloyd Thompson says it’s time for the monument to go. He says it’s a symbol of hate and stirs emotions of divisiveness. He’s asking parish leaders to come up with the funding to tear the structure down. 

But the monument and the land it sits on are owned by the Daughters of the Confederacy and that group has issued this statement: 

"The monument belongs to the Shreveport Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It is on the National Registry of Historical Sites and it will not be moved."

Parish Commissioners say it will cost $300,000 to take down the monument. Thompson is also asking that it be removed from the National Registry of Historic Sites."

This particular monument has special significance in Civil War History, and Southern Heritage. On the grounds of the Caddo Parish court house stands the monument erected in 1902 at the last Confederate Capital, near the spot the last Confederate flag was lowered over land after the end of the war.  

It has been a target of groups like the ACLU before, despite it's significance to American history, as well as a representation of a specific period of American Art history.

The Caddo Parish Confederate Monument is of statewide significance under Criterion A as one of four major Louisiana monuments representing what is known by historians as "the Cult of the Lost Cause." More specifically, these monuments are Louisiana's most important representations of the Memorial Period, or second phase (1883 to 1907), of the Civil War Commemorative Sculpture Movement. These monuments represent a significant physical reminder of the period: reflecting the introduction and presence of Civil War monument construction in Louisiana and the role women played in the memorial period. This is an example of Art as History. The Cult of the Lost Cause continued to dominate Southern cultural history in the early twentieth century, and is still alive and well today. - National Park Service - Registry of Historic Places

Regardless of what you views are of this chapter of American history, it is woven into our fabric. You can argue is was an unjust rebellion or justifiable uprising. But what remains as a reminder of it all is not to be destroyed because some opportunist fain offense at the images of America and it's past. If we start down roads such as this, some may not like where it leads..... 

New Democrat Voter Registration Application

You Knew It Was Coming: A PC Assault On the Classic Film "Gone With the Wind"

I've never had much respect for film critics, who are mostly failed writers, actors and directors, much  like the obnoxious late Roger Elbert. They are just flap-jawed flunkey's that produce nothing useful.  Film critics are like annoying barking dogs or someone who stands next to you in a art museum and insistently explains the meaning of a painting. 

So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that recent discussions of the Confederate Battle Flag and it's perceived racist connotations in today's modern world would also give the political correct film critic a wider opening to go after similar symbols of our traditions in their field of expertize. And Didn't take long at all....

NYP

"If the Confederate flag is finally going to be consigned to museums as an ugly symbol of racism, what about the beloved film offering the most iconic glimpse of that flag in American culture?

I’m talking, of course, about “Gone with the Wind,’’ which won a then-record eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 1939, and still ranks as the all-time North American box-office champ with $1.6 billion worth of tickets sold here when adjusted for inflation.

True, “Gone with the Wind’’ isn’t as blatantly and virulently racist as D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,’’ which was considered one of the greatest American movies as late as the early 1960s, but is now rarely screened, even in museums.

The more subtle racism of “Gone with the Wind’’ is in some ways more insidious, going to great lengths to enshrine the myth that the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery — an institution the film unabashedly romanticizes.

But what does it say about us as a nation if we continue to embrace a movie that, in the final analysis, stands for many of the same things as the Confederate flag that flutters so dramatically over the dead and wounded soldiers at the Atlanta train station just before the “GWTW’’ intermission...........

The studio sent “Gone with the Wind’’ back into theaters for its 75th anniversary in partnership with its sister company Turner Classic Movies in 2014, but I have a feeling the movie’s days as a cash cow are numbered. 

It’s showing on July 4 at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the museum’s salute to the 100th anniversary of Technicolor — and maybe that’s where this much-loved but undeniably racist artifact really belongs." -  Read More

The film critic, Mr Lumenick, may be considered brilliant in the world of  flap-jawed flunkey's, but misses an important point about the movie. Anyone who's read Margaret Mitchell's book "Gone With the Wind" recognizes immediately this is not a story about the civil war, but a fictional story set during the time of the civil war. And it was also not the days of making movies with explicit violence as is the hallmark of today's cinema. 
  
Perhaps, Mr.  Lumenick.  you would better service society by pointing your critical views at some of the films littered with unnecessary gratuitous violence that permeates modern film making and sometime influences young unstable minds to kill instead of salivating over the possible shunning of a masterfully made fictional piece from three generation ago.   

Make yourself useful for a change,  Mr Lumenick.

United Nations First Annual Meeting of the International Chicken Little "The Sky is Falling" Conference

Hilton Tops List of Most Hated Hotels; Diogenes’ Social Media Influence Blamed

via The Blog of Monte Cristo

Fox News – Social media analytics firm Crimson Hexagon decoded to take the biggest hotel brands in the U.S. to find out the most despised—and the most liked–hotel chain. Based on thousands of tweets over a nearly six-month period—Jan. 1 to June 14—the group analyzed posts about the hotel groups to determine if comments were positive, negative or neutral.

According to Business Insider, the chains were chosen based on size– focusing on ones that had a large number of rooms, employees, properties, and social media buzz.

The results may surprise some luxury hotel snobs. Radisson (62 percent) and Best Western (57 percent) got the highest overall percentages of positive feedback on Twitter. With just 4 percent negative feedback, Radisson also had the lowest negative feedback.

And when it came to the most hated, Hilton took the top spot, with 17 percent of all tweets reported as negative. By volume, Marriott is the most talked about hotel on social media with almost 90,000 mentions and was the second most hated place to stay, according to the study. 

Read more at FoxNews. Go Here for DMF-Hilton feud history.

 Cross Posted From The Blog of Monte Cristo

Barack Has a Few Friends Over For Dinner

Must Just Be Cold In There....

Historical Imagery in the Politics of the Moment

"I am quite cognizant of the appeal of “heritage not hate,” and I feel the power of it. It is too easy for liberals to exploit the crises and emotions related to them, and it is too easy to forget what was good about Southern values and to focus only on the bad......" 

"The states rights and tariffs arguments are entirely absent from Southern apologia until after the Civil War. In 1860 and before, no one in the South was using those topics to justify secession. Furthermore, in 1860 federal tariffs on Southern goods were lower than they had been since 1816." - Dr. Joel McDurmon via Donald Sensing

Wahoo

The Confederate battle flag, the ole "stars and bars," stands for all the things that a rebellion long ago asserted as its just cause. Yes, a few of those things -- particularly as they relate to resistance to urban, federal power, and to a "lost cause" literally memorialized over much of the country -- exert a certain gauzy and romantic attraction even today, even to me.

We are allowed a certain attachment to the traitors of the Confederacy -- who we dignify as "rebels" instead -- because in the binding of our national wounds we decided not demonize a people who, after all, were but a generation or two behind many northerners in their attitudes about slavery and racial supremacy. 

But there cannot be any doubt that today, in 2015, and for many decades now, most Americans perceive the Confederate battle flag to stand for white supremacy and slavery, without which there would have been no rebellion and no civil war.

This is an especially treacherous subject for politicians in the Republican Party, which has since 1970 or so tried to be both the "party of Lincoln" and the heir to the traditions of the Old South, some wonderful and worth preserving and, unfortunately, some deeply malign and simply unworthy. You see certain Republicans struggle with this when they point out that Democrats were the great segregationists back in the day. Loathe as I am to quote a tweet in the making of any argument, this from an apparently black conservative makes the point most eloquently:

"We can either be the party of Lincoln or the party of Confederacy.......But please don't insult my intelligence by acting as if we can be both." 

The Republican Party not only needs to end its support for the Confederate battle flag on those rare occasions when the controversy arises, but it must also stop justifying or defending any of the symbols and legacy of the Confederate States of America. There are far better ways to resist urban and federal power than by romanticizing a slave state, which conservatives have long understood when they correctly denounced liberals who defended the slavery of Communism as the mere failure of good intentions.

And if you need a lost cause, root for the Cubs........... 

(Conservative Wahoo)