THE TAOS TATLER.

The story changes daily.

No one except the Pelosis seem to have any idea what happened that infamous early Friday morning in San Francisco, when Nancy’s husband’s Paul had his head cracked open with a hammer by a drug-addled nut job. And the Pelosis’s account of it keeps permutating, with law enforcement obligingly doing same.

We will probably not glean the truth what occured that morning until Speaker Nancy wields far less power than she does now (which could actually begin happening next week). In any event, a kind reader continues sending your Tatler the latest speculations on what took place. This one is particularly good, pointing out the ever increasing contradictions concomitant with the ever increasing accounts what happened.

Some excerpts:

I think if we were more careful, though, the most we’d be entitled to say would be Mr DePape was apparently in the home possibly demanding to see the Speaker — exactly how he got in isn’t explained, and this is the first mystery. The Speaker is third in line for the US presidency, as well as quite wealthy. We would expect a state-of-the-art security system, likely with cameras outside if not inside as well.

***

L:et’s move to the second level of hinky.

‘House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s elderly husband made a desperate 911 call early Friday from a bathroom in their multimillion-dollar San Francisco mansion, likely saving him from the deranged man who beat him with a hammer, authorities said.’

Wait a moment. In this version, a deranged maniac has just invaded the Pelosi home, threatening 82-year-old Paul with a hammer — and quick-thinking Paul, remembering his Boy Scout training, asks to use the bathroom? As I envision a home invasion and the sort of deranged maniac who’d do such a thing, his answer would be along the line of “bleep bleep bleep, motherbleep, bleep bleep, get on the floor!” No bathroom pass would be forthcoming, no matter how urgent the call.

Nevertheless, according to this narrative, the deranged maniac allows Paul his bathroom break, whereupon the plucky guy picks up his cell phone that had been on the charger.

And so it goes, one inconsistency follows another. One must really read the whole thing in order to take to take in the sheer magnitude of the ludicrousness of it all.

We willl close with one of the many outlandish tweets posted about this incident, which owing to the ever increasing fabrications issued by Team Nancy, really doesn’t seem so outlandish at all.

At this point, with the continuing hilarity of the past few days, that tweet is evincing in your Tatler the feeling of cold, rational truth.

With thanks to WJT.

UPDATE: hoo, boy, it gets even zanier.

.UPDATE 2: and zanier and zanier.

Better to bury it in landfills, just as we did 50 years ago.

Of all people, after decades of claiming otherwise, Greenpeace has finally fessed up not only is there no benefit from recycling plastics, it is actually harmful to the environment. This, as reported by the excellent John Tierney at City Journal.

Unfortunately, as Tierney writes, Greenpeace being Greenpeace their proposed solution is even worse than the failed recycling programs we’ve been putting with for so many years.  “It proposes finally to ‘end the age of plastic’ by ‘phasing out single-use plastics’ through a ‘Global Plastics Treaty.’ This is a preposterous goal—imagine ‘phasing out’ disposable syringes . . .”

The best part of Tierney’s piece though is his rhetorically asking why environmentalists worldwide are so hell bent on making our lives miserable. His answer is novel but entirely believable.

The best explanation I’ve come up with is that plastic bans are a revival of the sumptuary laws formerly imposed on the lower classes by monarchs, nobles, and clergy. Those laws forbade commoners from owning certain kinds of clothes, jewelry, furnishings, and other products. The restrictions consistently failed to achieve their ostensible purpose of reducing “unnecessary” spending, but sumptuary laws endured until the Enlightenment because they reinforced ruling-class power and status. An English countess could display her superiority by wearing a dress with silver stripes that were illegal for women of lower rank. Spanish prelates and Portuguese monarchs proclaimed their moral virtue and political authority by forbidding the masses from owning clothes, curtains, and tablecloths made of silk.

California’s law forbidding hotels from offering disposable plastic toiletries is a gratuitous annoyance for travelers who’d like a little bottle of shampoo, but it enables the state’s politicians and environmental groups to exercise power and pretend to be saviors of the planet. The pretense is so ridiculous that even Greenpeace will eventually abandon it—but once again, that could take a few decades. The rest of us can start today.

Indeed we can and it can be done. Here in Taos the enviros pushed through a regulation requiring supermarkets to use paper bags instead of plastic. Wisely, however, it was given a six-month trial, at the end of which the vast majority of residents were so fed up with paper bags ripping and bottoming out, especially during rain storms, they clamored and got their plastic bags back. This user and undoubtedly many others actually recycle those plastic bags by using them as waste basket liners–just as we did before they were banned. That won’t satisfy Greenpeace of course, nothing will, but it works just fine for this writer.

He doesn’t pull his punches.

That establishment is right to regard him as a threat. For its guardians require strict conformity in dispensing their twisted gospel of “diversity” if they are to maintain their power and perquisites. Open the door just a little, let just a little sunlight in, and pow! The magic spell that made it seem OK to say that men are women, that “climate change” is a threat to humanity, that COVID is a peril on the same plane as the Black Death, or that BLM and Antifa were justified in burning down our cities—suddenly that spell is broken, and so is the hold over the narrative that these new guardians of conformity had enforced.

The second thing to bear in mind is that the establishment will not sit idly by as Elon Musk challenges their narrative. Everything about Musk is an insult to the coddled, low-testosterone consensus that has been ruining America this last decade through the promulgation of its dependency agenda.

Kimball has no equal in social commentary.

Bickerstaff inherited some antiques a while ago, among them a New England tall clock (above) made by an anonymous maker in the 1850s or possibly much earlier. After some pricey repairs and cleaning of the works by a superb clockmaker in Los Alamos, it now keeps extraordinarily good time, requiring at most a miniscule adjustment every couple of months or so.

Inscribed in pencil on the inside of the door giving access to the pendulum and weights, there are several names with dates, presumably those of the clock’s former owners. One of them, more clearly written than the others, is “John C. Carleton Vershire Vt Feb 14 1857.” Naturally, an Internet search had to made of the fellow, which didn’t revealed that he was a farmer, fought in the Civil War and likely was taken prisoner at Harpers Ferry.

There was however one wonderful find concerning Mr Carleton, located on the University of Vermont website (unable to copy link). Bickerstaff decided it had to be shared, which he does below.

The left has far greater facility with anti-Semitism, as well sending phony-baloney hate mail to their own.

The media will play this incident up to the hilt until the fraud is revealed. It will then disappear without a trace.

After elegantly explaining the causes of food price inflation (previous post), the president now shares his expertise on guns and ammunition.

Running on empty. The people at Kellogg’s will not be pleased.

Bickerstaff used to believe our commander-in-chief’s minders spoon fed him every remark he made in public. Not anymore: while most people at this point in the Biden presidency will not suggest members of the White House inner circle of possessing staggering intellects, most will grant these yo-yos do possess sufficient cognitive skills to not suggest their boss utter such idiocies as seen and heard above, in competition with the drool.

No, the President’s decline has advanced so far his minders pretty much have to let him go it on his own when circumstances dictate it absolutely essential he spew some words out in front of an audience. Even if they were to give him a crib sheet of verbiage chosen not to get him into trouble, it is unlikely he is capable of taking even the most basic talking points from it.

As a result, the President’s oral abilities are similar to those ambulatory, directionless and mindless. One could almost feel sorry for the man were it not for the horrifying fact one of the fingers on the button will be his. God have mercy on us all.

Thanks to FWIW.

Your Tatler watched a corker of a picture last night, 1957’s Sweet Smell of Success, starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, both of whom give the performances of their careers. One notable feature of this picture is there is not a single character with whom one may empathize, they are all simply awful people, but somehow utterly compelling as well, which obviously owes to the superlative acting of their creators.

Another marvelous feature of this movie that is at once grim and beautiful is the gorgeous photography by the legendary cameraman, James Wong Howe. You could probably turn the sound all the way down and still get thrills from just the watching, but then, in addition to the beautifully taut dialog, you would also miss Elmer Bernstein’s wonderfully fraught score.

Looking back at the New York of 1957, and your Tatler thinking of his post of a couple of days ago, it becomes obvious when watching this picture there was as much sleaze in the City 65 years ago as there was four years ago when your correspondent fled. The only defense he can muster when making this admission is to suggest the New York of 1957 offered a better class of sleaze.

***

A postscript: some of the scenes in Sweet Smell of Success were shot in the legendary 21 Club, which perished during the idiotic COVID shutdown, along with many other fine and wonderful New York institutions.

21 held particular appeal for your Tatler. Whenever his Hollywood grandfather had business in New York, upon arrival he would usually head straight to Jack & Charlie’s (as it was known then), he, like so many other theater and movie people, regarding that splendid speakeasy as his base. What a sad and pointless loss.

(The companion question to the one above so far remains free from controversy.)

From Breitbart:

ROME — The editors of the Wall Street Journal have published a searing indictment of Pope Francis, insisting he has undermined the Church’s moral authority by pandering to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The case in point is the Vatican’s renewal Saturday of its secret agreement with the CCP on the appointment of bishops in the country, which since its inception in 2018 has resulted in the ordination of just 6 bishops, despite some 36 vacant episcopal sees.

***

Pope Francis, “who is so critical of the U.S. and capitalism, is silent on China,” the essay asserts . . . Indeed, during his nearly eight years as pope, Francis has carefully avoided doing or saying anything that could be construed as criticism of Chinese leadership, including the CCP’s crackdown on Christian churches, its brutal suppression of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and its horrific genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

Just who does this man serve? It seems he revels in being the contrarian, taking the opposite tack of that expected of a pontiff.

Bickerstaff is tempted to ask another well known question, this one posed by Henry II. He will however leave off, lest he receive an unwanted visit from the authorities.

With thanks to GWR.

Relating to the post below, which concerns make-believe Catholic universities, a reader has sent Bickerstaff a link to a piece that concerns make-believe Catholic personages. Written by Fr. Jerry Pokorsky in Catholic Culture, it starts off with a bang by citing Luke 18: 9-14.

(Note: Bickerstaff takes the liberty of  quoting from the King James Version rather than the modern translation Fr. Pokorsky uses. It was the only Bible he read up until becoming a Catholic and he simply cannot bring himself to part with it.)

And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

After those ringing and damning words, what better phoney-baloney Catholic for Fr. Pokorsky to start with then our Pharisee in Chief,

President Joe Biden

President Biden has announced that if Democrats win the House and Senate in the midterm elections this November (2022), the first bill he would send to Congress would codify the so-called abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade.

• He promised he will be “appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe.”
• He rescinded the pro-life Mexico City Policy, which ensured that foreign aid would not go to organizations that perform or refer for abortions.
• The Washington Post called Joe Biden a “president who has been called the most pro-transgender in history.”
• Retired Archbishop Chaput said Biden “is not in communion with the Catholic faith.” The archbishop added that “any priest who now provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy.” Biden attends Mass, receives Communion, has met with the Pope, and has received Communion at papal Masses.

While hardly necessary, but just the same  adding splendid emphasis to our President’s hypocrisy, Fr. Pokorsky then adds simply,

“Joe Biden identifies as a devout Catholic.”

The good Father then gives us several more pretend Catholics, all of whom will be familiar to readers of this blog.

You best read the whole thing.

With thanks to GWR.