Why are Bill and Melinda Gates getting divorced?

Some people think that the close quarters caused by the COVID lockdowns are responsible for the demise of Bill and Melinda Gates's marriage. Others point out that if you spell divorce backwards, you can see the letters COVID pretty clearly. And Bill Gates has defintely had an unhealthy obsession with COVID, and no, this is not only a rightwing conspiracy.

But I believe that it is a different obsession which caused his wife to leave him. It is his obsession with human feces. Everywhere Gates goes he carries a jar of poop with him. And in November of 2018, he gave a well publicized talk with his pet poop right there next to him in a glass jar, speculating about what sort of diseases might be residing within the mineral-rich substance.

"This small amount of feces," Gates said, brandishing the jar of excrement, "could contain as many as 200 trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion shigella bacteria and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs."

The audience had to appreciate that vivid description. And they were so grateful to be able to view Bill's actual stool sample. Visualizing human dung, as if it were something a person saw every day or two, can be a challenge. Good thing he was "brandishing" it, as NPR noted.

A prized sample from the Gates Foundation's ever-growing collection of human excrement.

People, this is not a molded foam poop emoji that someone like me might or might not have in their top desk drawer to relieve stress by squeezing. This is not even a picture of "Poop from Heaven" which one of my kids might or might not have drawn when he was six-and-a-half.

This is actual poop and it is inside a jar and you can see it. Not like the shoebox which I had in the garage because I was too lazy to come in the house and that my wife found later and didn't want to talk to me for a few days afterward.

By the way, speaking of wives in general. Women do not understand men's obsession with human dung and the production thereof. That is why I have to figure that Melinda finally cracked. Allegedly, she is some type of Catholic, and so when Pope Francis used the word coprophilia it must have struck home.

This theory could all be wrong. It might be that Melinda could no longer hide the fact that she prefers iPhones to the Microsoft POS phone that Bill got for her last Christmas, and this is a huge problem for him. But I still think it is more likely that Bill's obsession with literal Pieces Of Sh*t is a bigger problem for her. However maybe the two go together; this is the guy who got rich selling this stuff.

Benedict Option: For Christians with Expanding Brains

I just keep coming up blank for anything to say about the Benedict Option. Everything there is to say has been said by others. Recently there's been great stuff from Keith and Sam Rocha. Going back a little further there's me in 2016 and me in 2015, etc. Oh, also Keith in 2015. And of course Bruce Frohnen's in 2015.

Oh wait, here's another good one I did in 2015.

Right now, all I have left to say about the Benedict Option can be summed up by use of the expanding brain meme.

PS - Here's a prophetic post from Keith from 2014. But... I mean, here's the whole list, have at it, man.

"14 White Chefs Frolicking Blithely in a Field of Daisies"

Hat tip goes to Diane who posted this on Facebook.

What's your favorite article title?

Charles Krauthammer on Jonathan Gruber: "We're hearing the true voice of liberal arrogance"

Daily Caller has the scoop, but this video is a little longer one I found on Youtube.



Text from the Caller piece:

This is exactly what conservatives have been saying for four years, what we’re hearing now is the true voice of liberal arrogance. They believe this. They believe that the voters are stupid, as he said, and they believe that they know the right way, they have to lead the masses to the Promised Land, and they can only do it by deception. And that’s what he said openly: ‘We wanted to get the bill, we didn’t care about how we did it, so we lied about everything. We lied about if you can keep the plan, knowing that you can’t keep your plan. We lied about the fact this would be a transfer of wealth, a massive transfer of wealth.’ Because, as Gruber said, had they known that, it would never have passed. They lied about every aspect of this, and I think that is what has been charged all along.

And it is a scandal of the media that this has to be discovered in the sixth year of the presidency rather than talked about at the time, when it was obvious they were lying about all this. The idea of it being a transfer of wealth was known from the beginning. But they got away with it.

And now another video of Gruber has surfaced where he states that Obamacare passed because “the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.”

I hope Justice John Roberts is watching this drama unfold. Obviously he is numbered among the huddled masses of hapless, duped Americans. If Gruber brings the whole mess down then man, it could be beautiful to watch.

Gloria James Slamdunks Valet

Glug, glug, glug. Excerpt:

Sorel Rockfeller told police he was assaulted by Gloria James because she felt her car was taking too long to be delivered. The valet told authorities that he waited 30 minutes for her and when he went to give her the keys, she started cursing at him.

Gloria James then allegedly slapped the valet across the face with an open hand so hard that she fell to the ground. Several witnesses corroborated the account of the incident.

Police say that she smelled of alcohol and had bloodshot eyes when she was arrested.

After being transported to the Miami Beach police station, James told police that she didn't "trust your kind" and refused to cooperate.

What did Gloria mean by "your kind"? Did she mean police officers or non-millionaires? Unclear.

Yeah, Florida, that's the kind of thing she does. Sorry.

Get your hands off it

Whoa.

What bothers the elite so much about the Tea Party is that it is full of people who believe in the greatness of the nation and, from outside eyes, appear to be unapologetically nationalistic, a sin they had long since denounced. They are embarrassed of their kin. They view American nationalism as a sort of mental retardation, because the Euro-bigots have convinced them of it. Had they the backbone and clarity to argue the merits of Americanism, they would not have severed their manly parts in an effort to fit in.

Where these Americans view themselves as more enlightened than the middle-class working Joe, they invite into the void of estranged nationalism a sort of self-annihilation, a desire to squash Americanism into quasi-European world membership. They view patriotism as a disease and worldliness as a badge. They, who have been across the oceans and mixed with the peoples of other nations, return to America with a desire to remake themselves by remaking the nation. What's worse, they generally have the money and power to make the attempt.

Damn straight.

I still don't know what he's talking about

Rod Dreher replied to a comment I made to a recent post where he continues his perpetual theme of good conservatism (his) versus bad (mainstream) conservatism. But before I get to the comment, check out this line.

The thing that seems most cult-like to me about this degenerate form of conservatism is the irrepressible urge to denounce anyone who criticizes them, or even questions them, as being the Heretical Other, not just wrong, but despicable.

This seems to be projection par excellence on Rod's part. If you are not sure what I mean, please review Kathleen's excellent points here.

But my comment referenced Rod's discussion of the words elite, elitist, elitism. His first defense of a narrow use of the word is weak. I think every conservative would agree that the great literary works of dead white guys are far better than Maya Angelou's dreck, but this has nothing to do with the pejorative use of the word elitist when used by a conservative to describe, say, the leftist faculty of large universities or the 95% of mainstream network reporters and anchors who were in the tank for Barack Obama during the Presidential election.

To make his argument sound even more ridiculous, Rod then tries to equate being elite to being morally good, which is an extremely uncommon, if not practically non-existent, use of the word. He says:

We should all seek to be elitist in morality, in the sense that we should live up to high standards of truth, justice, charity and so forth.

To which I responded:

Rod, who in the world uses the term 'elitism' to mean moral seriousness and aspiring to perfection in the virtues? This is an example of why people like you and Joe (who?) Carter find yourself talking past mainstream conservatives frequently.

Rod, to his credit, sees my point, but then tilts once more toward the same strawmen.

I see your point, Pauli, but I think mine still stands. By rejecting arguments and criticism they disagree with as "elitist" on their face, without even trying to counter them rationally, these folks send the strong message that thinking is what snobs do, and to prove that you're One Of Us, you have to suspend your critical thinking and join the herd. This is the kind of thing that can both infuriate conservatives and break their hearts when they see black conservatives (for example) having to go through it, being called traitors to the group for questioning the consensus view. Note well that I'm talking about black conservatives whose arguments are not taken seriously enough to question by other blacks. They are prima facie traitors because they don't agree.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about in intra-conservative disputes. It plays to some of the worst elements of human nature: the "my tribe, right or wrong" impulse, which covers a lot of wrongdoing and sheer stupidity.

I'm not even going to deal with the first paragraph. This continuation of his post is rambling and devoid of examples which actually back up his assertions.

In a sense I agree entirely with his second paragraph, but I see Rod Dreher—author of Crunchy Conservatives—as the primary example of one trying to stir things up vis-à-vis "intra-conservative disputes". As I've mused aloud often to my readers and friends, these disputes are all pretty much a waste of time at this point. Let's put away the fiddles; Rome is on fire.

To sum up my targeted point: words mean something. We can say that America's founders were liberals, but we mean that in a different sense then when we say Senator John Kerry is a liberal. If I want to talk about a brain surgeon or a F-15 pilot being a member of an elite class, I mean something different than when I call Katie Couric an elite, and not just because her salary is twice that of a brain surgeon plus a few fighter pilots.

To the mainstream conservatives I'd only offer the suggestion that they should work on their communication skills with a focus on their vocabulary. Don't overuse a word lest they give liberals and picky people like Mr. Dreher and Mr. Carter a stick with which to swat you. Get a Thesaurus out and look up the word elite. You'll find a lot of the kind of synonyms you want—patrician, aristocrat, privileged class... snob. And my favorite, of course: haut monde. But at the same time be comforted that your argument is obviously sound since pointing out your lack of verbal skills appears to comprise most of their attack plan.