In Search of Texas

There's a lot of noise in the media these days about Texas. Is it some kind of neo-fascist Platonic Ideal, instantiated, Aristotle-style, in a landmass that's as big or bigger than a lot of lesser countries?

Or is it a place where the frontier, with its God, guns, church and country life, looms large? A place where people don't look too kindly at latte swilling coastal elites telling them to get with the program and ride the rainbow. Whatever the case, I took my dog for a walk after Morning Prayer and went in search of Texas. 

Hey, Look at This.

The Nepalese woman at the pick 'n steal accepted my money for a coffee, while a crew of Park Department workers played scratch card lottery. Some were black, some were white, some were Latino. They were having fun, loudly, at losing the lottery and the coffee tasted pretty good. Have to hand it to the Nepalese, they make damn good fighting knives and excellent coffee. Was that Texas?

Texas

On the way home, I passed 4 churches in the space of 4 blocks. Blue Destroyer used the entrance of one as a "convenience," he's a cow dog. Maybe that's Texas? Then I found a snake skin on the side of the road.

Satisfied with finally finding Texas, I went back to the Compound.

That is all.

LSP

Facebook Fraud

It's no secret that the media tends to function as the agitprop arm of The Party while pretending objectivity, but it's rare for one of its departments to get caught out in a really blatant lie. Like Facebook.

It seems billionaire socialist Mark Zuckerberg's influential trending news section was the creation of a crew of journalists, working out of the basement of the propaganda department's building in New York. The journalists, not Facesoviet's users, determined what stories were "trending" and these, shocked surprise, had a decidedly Party bias.

Who were these basement hacks? Ivy League lib elites, apparently:

The trending news section is run by people in their 20s and early 30s, most of whom graduated from Ivy League and private East Coast schools like Columbia University and NYU. They’ve previously worked at outlets like theNew York Daily News, Bloomberg, MSNBC, and the Guardian. Some former curators have left Facebook for jobs at organizations including the New Yorker, Mashable, and Sky Sports.

According to former team members interviewed by Gizmodo, this small group has the power to choose what stories make it onto the trending bar and, more importantly, what news sites each topic links out to. “We choose what’s trending,” said one. “There was no real standard for measuring what qualified as news and what didn’t. It was up to the news curator to decide.”

Socialist

As usual, Rod Dreher nails it: 

So East Coast elites were making invisible, unaccountable editorial decisions, while Facebook led its members to believe that they were unbiased, that “trending” was only a thing to do with what its users were actually reading.

It was a lie. Mark Zuckerberg is a fraud.

That progleft agitprop is promoted by billionaire socialists like Mark Zuckerberg and his crew of East Coast elite basement hacks, isn't surprising. That Facemonkey's fraudulent "trending" section is read by 600 million people? Terrifying.

You can read Dreher's excellent piece here. While you're at it, note his comments on the recent Times story about Texas and why the lib media  just don't get it.

Trending,

LSP

Love Texas

After Mass on Sunday, two church ladies were talking about a town notable. Some time ago, he'd gotten into the beer and decided to saddle up and charge around town. His wife called her friend, "Have you seen my husband?" and the friend replied, "Have you seen my horse?" She hadn't, then all became clear.

"Well look at this," said the friend, "Your jackass has just turned up on my horse." Apparently he liked nothing better than to ride around town. I asked a matriarch whether that was against the law, thinking to myself that I'd like nothing better than to ride around town. She looked at me, "I don't think anyone ever told him that."

Someone's written a clever article saying that Texas has become a "caricature of itself." Others might say that the Lone Star State is larger than life and twice as big, the map alone suggests it. For goodness sake, you could put a large chunk of England in the Panhandle alone. But what do I think?

A Typical Cowboy

I'd say that the spirit of the frontier isn't that far away from this state, especially when you're in the countryside; it wasn't so long ago that people rode their horses in this town. 

I'm in favor of that.

All for Texas,

LSP

Charity, Brethren

A big part of the famous LSP lifestyle involves getting into the rig, driving out into the countryside, and visiting the sick. Sometimes I take Blue Caritas; he can play with his dog pals while I look after pastoralia. But here's a serious thought, as you bite into your refreshing Obamka ice cream treat.

Yum

You can, and should, be as orthodox as the day is long. Go right ahead, memorize the Summa, have Gilson and Maritain at your fingertips, be able to parse scripture like Farrer and take on the error of our times like the fabled Chesterbelloc. 

Bad Deacon!

Good job, well done. But without love, it amounts to nothing and worse. The Apostle shoots in the X Ring, in his Epistle to the Corinthians:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

A clanging cymbal. There's a warning in that and while you finish off your delicious Obamka, say a prayer that priests and pastors are given the grace to live into the precepts of charity.

That doesn't mean, by the way, that Hillary shouldn't go to jail.

God bless,

LSP

Obamka, A Special Treat

Perhaps you're looking for that special Mother's Day treat. Look no further. Russia presents you with the "Obamka", or "Little Obama." In Russian, the diminutive suffix "ka" is used to express affection, or derision.

The ice cream treat features a hard shell of delicious milk chocolate around a white vanilla interior and a stick runs up its rear, enabling handlers to grip the Obamka firmly.

Obamka Licks Cone

Slavitska, which produces the popular ice cream novelty, insists any similarities between Obamka and the outgoing US President are imaginary:

“With different flavors and glazes, this [line of] ice cream will stand for the main races on our planet. Ice cream names need to be memorable. For those with a vivid imagination, various associations might come to mind, but this product is for children and is a long way from politics."

Obamka Eats Rainbow

Vicious rumors that Team LSP is sponsored by Slavitska are baseless, without foundation and entirely that, rumors.

Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin, has a vodka, Putinka, named after him.

здоровье!

LSP

They Were Seized With Madness And Danced

"If you watched a modern interpretative dance... you may well conclude the dancer was having some kind of seizure and perhaps suffering some pain or disease to cause such 
unnatural motions." (Via Adrienne's Catholic Corner)

We like to imagine, understandably, that liturgical dance is a modern phenomenon, brought on by the madness of our troubled age. But that's not true, otherwise normal Christians have been seized by dancing insanity in the past.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, dancing "plagues" gripped whole regions of Europe. Even convents were not immune:

Not long before the Strasbourg dancing epidemic, an equally strange compulsion had gripped a nunnery in the Spanish Netherlands. In 1491 several nuns were ‘possessed’ by devilish familiars which impelled them to race around like dogs, jump out of trees in imitation of birds or miaow and claw their way up tree trunks in the manner of cats. Such possession epidemics were by no means confined to nunneries, but nuns were disproportionately affected (Newman, 1998). Over the next 200 years, in nunneries everywhere from Rome to Paris, hundreds were plunged into states of frantic delirium during which they foamed, screamed and convulsed, sexually propositioned exorcists and priests, and confessed to having carnal relations with devils or Christ.

What causes this "dancing madness"? Is it Satan, mind-altering drugs, or a simple case of mental illness? Whatever the cause, the affliction has resurfaced in our own time. And remember...

Liturgical Dance is not awesome,

LSP 

Say a Prayer for Alberta

A raging forest fire in Alberta, covering over 300 square miles, has destroyed whole areas of Fort McMurray, causing Canadian authorities to evacuate some 90,000 citizens. 

According to the BBC, a 1,500 vehicle convoy of evacuees heading south to Edmonton and Calgary has had to be suspended due to 200 foot high flames on either side of the highway.

Scenes from the fire are apocalyptic and the RCMP estimates it will take another 4 days to evacuate people from the threatened area.

Say a prayer for Alberta; ask for rain.

LSP

Clown Mass & The Prancing Demon

Some clergypersons think that goofing off in a clown outfit will fill all those empty pews.

Perhaps they don't realize that clowns are sinister and frightening.

Satanism and witchcraft are on the rise in America.

Is there a correlation?

You be the judge, and in other news, Alex Jones has called Glenn Beck a "prancing demon." You can and should watch his epic rant of awesomeness here.

LSP

Don't be a Loser, Ride The Horse

It's been hard to ride lately on account of the floods but the waters have receded a bit, which means get on the horse. And that's what I did, after flying the flag at a cowboy church men's prayer breakfast. 

They're a good bunch of guys, the cowboys, with a pretty straight up kind of faith. Enlivened by that, I tacked up in the morning sunshine and rode out. Trace was eager enough and it was simply good to get out in the country on horseback. I find it clears the mind.

Gallop up The Hill

It's good exercise, too, provided you put some work into it, and we did, horse and rider, galloping along through the incredibly, for Texas, green countryside.

Ride over, I turned the herd out into their big pasture, where they can get up to mischief and eat lots of grass.

Trace

There's a satisfaction to all of this which is hard to put into words, but I will say this -- riding's good for mind, body and spirit. Unless you fall off and get killed, in which case it's a different story again.

With that in mind, stay on the horse,

LSP

The Vultures Are Circling

And not just over the Anglican Communion, they're going for The Old Harridan herself. Even the smuglib Huffpo gets it:

A Los Angeles Times article titled Clinton email probe enters new phase as FBI interviews loom highlights why Clinton’s campaign is stuck in political quicksand:

Federal prosecutors investigating the possible mishandling of classified materials on Hillary Clinton’s private email server have begun the process of setting up formal interviews with some of her longtime and closest aides, according to two people familiar with the probe, an indication that the inquiry is moving into its final phases.

Prosecutors also are expected to seek an interview with Clinton herself, though the timing remains unclear.

Yes, federal prosecutors will interview Hillary Clinton, in addition to her close associates.

At what point will establishment Democrats admit this fiasco is horrible for a general election?

Yes, federal prosecutors will interview Hillary Clinton. But here's Andrew Napolitano on the implications of that:

Perhaps she now recognizes how hard-pressed she will be to claim to the FBI or to a jury that she did not know that satellite photos of a North Korean nuclear facility or transcripts from wiretaps of Yemeni intelligence agents' cellphone calls or the itinerary of the late U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens in the days before his murder or true names of American undercover intelligence agents — all of which were in her emails — were state secrets.

Perhaps she knows now that this is not a game.

Perhaps she does. Kick out the JAMS.

LSP

Ascension

Listen up, you lot. It's the Feast of the Ascension today so you'd better get to Mass. Here's a prayer, and none of your newfangled nonsense, either:

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

It's also Cinco de Mayo and the commemoration of Mexico's great victory over the Frenchmen. I'd say that was cause enough for a double celebration.

God bless,

LSP

It's Bushcraft Wednesday!

So you're out there in the bush, using your craft, and you need an axe. In fact you need a battle tomahawk, but you can't climb into the Audi and run off to REI, or wherever, and buy one. That defeats the point, because Bushcraft is all about doing it yourself, without supermarkets, overpriced gear stores and Nanny State looking over your shoulder. So what do you do?

Forge a WAR-HAWK out of an old ball peen hammer. Here at the Compound, we're delighted to share this useful how-to video from Becker Forge.

Throw that Axe,

LSP