News & Politics

And The Spygate’s Last Gleaming

by Mick Zano • December 9, 2021

Is Hillary or Trump going to jail? Yep, I failed to squeeze everything into last week’s installment of our ongoing Trump-Ukraine-Russia-Dossier saga (TURDs), because the sketchy links keep arriving at Discord headquarters at a truly dizzying pace. There’s so much, real and imagined, crammed into these two mega messes. On one side a top Mueller deputy prepares to release another Special Counsel director’s cut, and down in MAGAville we’re inching ever closer to Hillary-dossier culpability—which, if you haven’t heard, comes in the form of an aide who allegedly crafted the Dossier’s content. It appears my blogvesary and I are in agreement on some details, which is good for Poke and Zano but horrible for Team USA. After several years of debating these dueling scandals, we agree there’s significant smoke on both sides of this crapola. On the Trump-Russian collusion front, no actual conspiracy-fire existed and yet this doesn’t excuse Trump’s crime spree. We also agree that there’s a lot of smoke on the Spygate front, which includes a nonexistent FISA process (thanks Patriot Act), circular leaks by the intelligence community (thanks Patriot Act), nonstop mainstream media coverage of a conspiracy phantasm (thanks Rachel, et al), and a dud of a Dossier at the heart of this mess (thanks Hillary). The Steele Dossier really is ground zero of this schitznik, and it’s totally stinking up the joint. Sorry, that’s my friend Pokey’s job.

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by Mick Zano • December 2, 2021

For today’s schitznik, Pokey and Zano discuss Andrew Sullivan’s and David Frum’s recent articles on Trump-Russia collusion: Frum’s Atlantic article summarizes the damning allegations as uncovered by the Senate Intelligence report, and Sullivan pushes back on his Weekly Dish by citing the mainstream media’s endless and fruitless march toward a conspiracy conviction.

Pokey: Sullivan’s article was the best article you’ve sent me in a long time, and I essentially agree with everything …except for the misleading title. The term ‘hoax’ implies orchestration. Media Overkill, coordinated by the CIA, FBI, and the DOJ. I see little mention of the established coordination, but I do concede the facts of Trump’s deep character flaws and the very real Russian influence on his campaign. That’s a potent assessment, bridging gaps. I will acknowledge this—at this time I cannot imagine ever supporting the politics of Trump again. I’m proud of you, Zano. You are still capable of trans-consensus thought. You ain’t over the hill yet.

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by Mick Zano • November 21, 2021

Dear Pokey, for our two decades long debates, we’ve spent a lot of time—all of it, actually—covering the rightwing alternative narratives, which, at least thus far, never panned out. They end, year after year, ‘scandal’ after ‘scandal’, special counsel after special counsel, judge after Dredd, minus any relevant findings. Certainly, at least 90% of what you’ve been on about from Uranium One, to Benghazi to Stop the Steal ended …well, let’s just say, the primary ingredient turned out to be Foxal matter (Fecally Fortified Political Scat—an acronym that even makes its own farting sound). Why not start to question your news sources, or your own biases? What is your aversion to calling an Alex Jones an Alex Jones? Can we please finally discuss the elephant in the room? We are coming up on 20 years of blogging. Let’s look at some history.

[I’ll be Beck joke removed by a time-traveling California Governor.]

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by Mick Zano • November 13, 2021

Washington—In a fiery speech yesterday, President Biden made it clear that any premature attacks on Christmas during the upcoming holiday season would not be tolerated. “Be patient,” urged Biden, “At least wait until the Monday after Thanksgiving to start disrespecting our religious heritage and our country’s belief in Jesus Christ, Santa Claus, or any of Santa’s Merry Men. As the Sheriff on Nottingham once said, ‘Thou shallt not play holiday music in the department stores or display blinking lights before we eat turkey and watch football. We must first stuff our belly’s Friar-Tuck-style and then you can get back to consumerizing the meaning out of Christmas and/or mocking it outright.”

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by Mick Zano • November 5, 2021

This discussion on BLM and Critical Race Theory occurred on 10-29. Pokey will start us off today: BLM is an organization derived from Marxist ideology, as proudly acknowledged by its founders. After Marxists witnessed the real-world consequences of their ideology—as expressed by the tyrannical governments of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Communist China—Marxists changed their strategy. Instead of investing in armed revolution, they began infiltrating institutions of higher education; the Frankfurt School for one. These schools of thought continued developing into what is now Critical Race Theory.

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by Mick Zano • October 27, 2021

The following is a Covid discussion on insights into the pandemic. This original discussion between The Discord’s Mick Zano and Pokey McDores occurred on 10-24 with the aid of a Yiddish translator, a tv with closed captioning, and a chimpanzee named Frappy. Pokey will start us off:

In order to really understand this subject, we must begin at the origin. All Covid related issues must be viewed through the lens of its origin. Three months after the coronavirus was discovered, many science journals stated definitively that Covid developed naturally and did not come from a lab. We now know this premise is false. At the time, these false ‘scientific statements’ were used to justify the censoring of information that ran contrary to their narrative. All official medical spokespersons made public statements discrediting this theory and it has since surfaced many of these spokespersons were actually involved with the funding of experiments to enhance bat coronavirus so that it could infect humans.

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by Mick Zano • October 11, 2021

Here we go, kids! Mark your calendars. Hundreds of thousands of troops are currently refusing to get vaccinated, we have China poised to ‘reintegrate’ Taiwan, and we have global supply chains slowing to a crawl. Smoke ’em if you got ’em, unless they’re moored off the coast in a cargo ship. As for the pandemic, in a functional society the WHO would make the recommendations and we, as adults, would follow those guidelines. After all, you can’t be on a plane with TB, but where do you draw the constitutional line in these trying times? If you haven’t noticed, this is clearly not a functional society. I was against the vaccination mandate for precisely this reason: trust in the government is at an all time low and polarization is at an all time high. Am I vaccinated and did I want us to reach herd immunity? Yes. Did I think it was ever going to happen, or was worth the trouble? No. Are things as bad as 1860? Tough to say, because I was a very young blogger then, but I have been watching and reporting on this particularly malleable and potentially volatile demographic for decades. The GOP’s steady involution is kind of like reading Origin of Species backward. If huge swaths of our troops and police force refuse to get vaccinated, we have a problem. What do you do you do with these folks? I’ve been asking myself this very question for a long time. Of course, top republicans and the former president himself recommend getting vaccinated, but the monster the right-winger’s created, as predicted, has broken through the chains and is heading for the windmill again (which we now know causes cancer).

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by Mick Zano • September 14, 2021

Neo-liberalism, as best personified by Reagan and Thatcher, is officially dead. Amen. But I’m not here today to bitch about zombie politics, although I loved Trickle Z and 30 Days of Right. Lately, it’s this Maddow-level-green version of liberalism that is really getting my goat. The issue with identity politics and all of its joyous facets isn’t new, but our society’s culture-warrior rot runs far deeper than I imagined. Today, a dysfunctional progressive movement is not in its infancy but has reached its misinformative years, which at least matches the emotional maturity of the average canceler. Cancel is an infection across the industrialized west as highlighted by Canada’s well-established racism tribunals and Japan’s Olympic committee’s recent decision to banish anyone who farted in public since 1972. If you don’t want to read my blog for sensitivity reasons, fine, but please spare me the fines. Look, I both understand and predicted an overreaction to all the horrors of MAGAville—or Brexitville, or all of the current global nationalistic horrors abound—but such a response must be grounded in constitutional principles. There’s no wiggle room here. It certainly seems like some libs want to ditch our founding documents because “Jefferson owned slaves, man.” You’re cancelled. I identify as an Ubermensch, but the term ‘Superman’ is acceptable. Mensch is German for ‘people,’ so use the word ‘Superman’ at your linguistic, or cancel-vulnerable, peril.

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by Mick Zano • August 20, 2021

This post is a response to a James Fallows article over at The Atlantic. Fallows has published a series of articles comparing the fall of Rome to the US’s current trajectory. I called the US’s point of no return a couple of years ago here on The ‘Cord. Although Fallows started his US- deathwatch around that same time period, he falls short of any direct prediction surrounding our fate. He is still waiting for that point of no return—or some Ceaser crossing the rubicon moment—as if it’s still somewhere in the future. I think Fallows has the right idea, but I am not sure why he has to see a guy fiddling in front of a burning city to climb out onto this particular eschatological limb.

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by Mick Zano • August 16, 2021

My goal for this piece was to find an insightful article about this twenty-year plight. I failed. This is, in part, due to the hijacking of our search engines as a whole. Back in the day, one could search Aghanistan War or Taliban back to the table and actually get somewhere. Today, since the first 1,000 pages are sold to the highest bidder, you end up with: You want to buy a comfy afghan? and Towels? We have lots of towels! Great stuff. Ultimately, I settled on one article from nearly a decade ago that really nailed this schitznik …my own.

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