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crime and punishment media and media people

Antifa in Popular Ontology

Jimmy Kimmel, Antifa

What do Jimmy Kimmel and the late J. Edgar Hoover have in common?

A kink for women’s dresswear?

Nope. Both denied the existence of major criminal organizations. 

Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1924 to 1972, refused to affirm that the Mafia crime syndicate existed. Repeatedly, over the years.

Rumors that he was being blackmailed by the Mafia itself, over his own cross-dressing kinks (the mob allegedly had photos), is not affirmed by major historians, who say his denial-of-the-facts was just politics. 

So when we encounter those rejecting the reality of Antifa, take them with a grain of salt. Truth is, Antifa has a long history. It had a beginning; it spread; it fell into disarray; it was revived (or mimicked) by young radicals wanting an excuse to commit violence against “fascists” — which proved, of course, to be anyone they disagree with. We see them today on the streets of major cities at night, black masks and their proclivity to beat up heretics to their variant of communism/anarchism/nihilism.

But comedian and ABC talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel derides such observations. 

“There is no Antifa. This is an entirely imaginary organization,” he cackled, likening any claim for Antifa’s existence to announcing the capture of fictional creatures such as the Decepticons or the Chupacabra.

But Chupacabra didn’t beat Andy Ngo within an inch of his life; Decepticons have not been caught on camera throwing bricks.

Many other talking heads have made similar denials — despite the demonstrated fact that Antifa is well funded and that funding is directed by somebody.

Even a “grassroots” organization informally managed counts as an existing entity; just because a group looks more like a network than a corporate entity with an HR department doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

Philosophers might call these denials “ontic negative claims” — “ontic” as in ontology as in the Philosophy of Being. While I’m uncertain of many things, I am certain of this: Antifa exists and Jimmy Kimmel is no ontologist.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Cato

He said that those who were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.

Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (c. 46 – 120) quoting Cato the Elder, Roman Apophthegms.

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Today

The Dreyfus Affair

On October 15, 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was arrested for spying. In December he was convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment, and sent to Devil’s Island in French Guiana.

In 1896, new information came to light that would exonerate the 35-year-old Frenchman of Jewish descent, thus beginning a scandal that divided Third Republic France and brought anti-Semitism into the spotlight of European moral criticism.

Categories
defense & war general freedom international affairs

China’s Long Reach

China, war, invasion, land, internet

“Is China preparing for war?” CBS’s Scott Pelley asked General Tim Haugh last Sunday on 60 Minutes. 

“There was no other reason to target those systems. There’s no advantage to be gained economically. There was no foreign intelligence-collection value,” replied the general. “The only value would be for use in a crisis or a conflict.”

Systems? The segment featured Chinese infiltration into the computer system controlling electricity and the water supply for Littleton, a town of 10,000 residents in Massachusetts.

Littleton’s manager, Nick Lawler, pointed to how disastrous losing control of the computer system could become, noting that with that control an evil force — in this case, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — “can poison the water.”

Literally as well as figuratively.

Once head of the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, Haugh explained that the CCP is “certainly attempting every single day to be able to target telecommunications, to be able to target critical infrastructure.”

Even in little bitty Littleton. Talk about “unrestricted warfare”!

We have known for years that China’s Communists were tyrants; responsible for arguably a hundred million deaths due to murder, torture and starvation; subjugating Tibet; harvesting organs from political prisoners; placing more than a million Uyghurs in concentration camps; canceling all political rights in Hong Kong. These totalitarians also threaten to invade Taiwan and lay claim, ridiculously, to 90 percent of the South China Sea . . . which they are policing. 

Then we discovered the Chinese had opened police stations in the United States and other countries to harass and silence Chinese dissidents who had managed to escape to our shores. 

Now, it is hardly a surprise that the CCP has intruded into our electrical grids and water systems, while buying up farmland near American military bases.

Xi Jinping and the Chicoms are far worse than our rivals. While a far starker problem for those living in Asia, we are not safe from the Chinese State. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

John Brown

This is a beautiful country.

John Brown, last words (December 2, 1859), as quoted in John Brown and his Men (1894) by Richard Josiah Hinton, p. 397.
Categories
Today

Against the Coercive Acts

On October 14, 1774, the First Continental Congress denounced the British Parliament’s Intolerable Acts and demanded British concessions.

Called the “Coercive Acts” in Great Britain, the Intolerable Acts were a series of five punitive programs directed against the American colonies after the Boston Tea Party. Opposition to them led to armed conflict in April 1775 and to a Declaration of Independence in July 1776.

Categories
budgets & spending cuts national politics & policies partisanship

How Massive a Mistake?

Chuck Schumer, AOC, CR, budget, power

When the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, the volumes were large-sized — around 8.5 x 11 inches, like a textbook.

When Democrats produced oversized pseudo-replicas of the 900-page policy blueprint as visual props to mock Republicans during the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, they made the tomes much, much larger, as if hauled off a monastery shelf.

Why? Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow on August 19, and Pennsylvania Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta on August 20 — and others each night — sought to symbolize its “weighty” and “extreme” nature.

The giant scale of the replicas amplified the visual gag, with McMorrow quipping about it being “heavy” as she dragged it out.

That is how seriously Democrats said they were taking Project 2025.

So when Donald Trump got elected, and the document’s author, Russ Vought, took on his current position as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget on February 7 — sworn in by the left’s very noirest of bêtes noir, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — you might think that Democrats would be very careful dealing with anything Vought touched.

Like scuttling the Continuing Resolution at the beginning of the month, thereby shutting down the federal government. For lack of funding.

As covered yesterday in a Weekend Update on this site, Vought’s axe, poised to gut the EPA or Treasury, was at the ready, sharpened to make substantial and semi-permanent cuts to many departments.

The Democrats’ nightmare come true.

So, why did they blunder into it?

Smart money has it that the party, made unpopular by its far left, is now running scared of that very same far left. Senator Chuck Schumer (D.-NY), once a dealmaker, now cowers like a schoolboy before a possible 2028 challenge from AOC, the Squad’s top brand and a Bernie bro.

Democratic leadership couldn’t risk containing the political ambitions of the leftist radicals in the party.

A breathtaking moment, especially if Vought truly plies his Project 2025-branded axe. Those monastery-sized tomes, brandished like holy relics to smite Trump, a year ago, now stand as tombstones for the Democrats’ own strategy. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Doris Lessing

An individual may be told she, he, is to die, and will accept it. For the species will go on. Her or his children will die, and even absurdly and arbitrarily — but the species will go on. But that a whole species, or race, will cease, or drastically change — no, that cannot be taken in, accepted, not without a total revolution of the deepest self.

Doris Lessing on the slated role of the Giants on Earth, in her novel Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta (1979), p. 38.

Categories
Today

A Bad Day for the Templars

At dawn on Friday the 13th, in October of 1307 — a date that lent weight to triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13 — King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the words: “Dieu n’est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume” — “God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom.”

These “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon,” most commonly known as the Knights Templar, figure heavily in the literature of Grand Conspiracies, and in the lore of heresy and the occult.

Categories
Update

Ought Implies Can, Vought Implies Will

As repeatedly noticed on This Is Common Sense, politicians tend to treat Congress’s failures to come to agreements on federal government spending as a sort of game, where the most intransigent Player at the Game of Chicken wins. If you hold out for massive spending, refusing to fund government at lesser levels, you eventually get what you want: increased spending.

But early on Donald Trump suggested that he might treat this failure to reach a Continuing Resolution differently. Now, in The Daily Caller, the new plan is explained:

Trump depicted him as the Grim Reaper. His neighbors think he wants to cause “maximum trauma.” Senate Leader John Thune told Democrats to brace for impact.

And those who know Russ Vought best say, good. Democrats should be scared. Because if unleashed, Trump’s two-time Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought has a swift and thorough plan to downsize the government that he has been preparing for years.

Reagan Reese, “Democrats Are Terrified Of Trump’s Shutdown Slasher — And They Should Be,” The Daily Caller (October 6, 2025).

It was the president himself who first mentioned Mr. Vought, in a Truth Social post on October 2nd:

I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.
I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.

President Donald Trump, Truth Social (October 2, 2025).

Russ Vought is an old Tea Party figure, serious about cutting government, says The Daily Caller.

Ned Ryun, the CEO of American Majority and a long-time friend of Vought’s, told the Caller that Vought has been preparing for this moment for years. He’s an official Americans should be thankful for, Ryun added, explaining that he believes if Vought is allowed to fulfill his plan it will be a pivotal moment in American history.

“Not sure how many other moments we will get like this, and I truly believe if Trump fully empowers Russ, this could potentially be the beginning of the end of the administrative state,” Ryun told the Caller.

Those close to Vought all emphasized one thing above all when talking about the OMB Director: his humility. When this term is up and Vought’s work is over, Bovard told the Caller he won’t be bragging to the press, cashing in or looking for work on K Street.

And for now, he is focused on finishing the job and winning the game.

op cit.

On October 10, the White House notified over 4,100 federal workers of imminent layoffs via Reductions in Force (RIFs), the largest single-day action yet. The reductions affect

Treasury1,446Broad operational slowdowns in tax processing and financial oversight.
Homeland Security (incl. CISA)~800Reduced cybersecurity monitoring and border operations support.
Commerce~450Delays in trade enforcement and economic data collection.
Education~350Paused student loan processing and grant reviews.
Energy~300Canceled emissions-reduction projects and carbon capture tech funding.
Housing & Urban Development (HUD)~250Halted community planning, property inspections, and FHA loan approvals.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)~200Suspended environmental monitoring and permitting.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)~150 (across 9 departments)Disruptions in disease tracking; some terminations blamed on “coding errors” in RIF lists.

Is it worth noting that OMB Director Russ Vought is widely recognized as one of the principal architects and a key author of Project 2025, much demonized by Democrats at their 2024 presidential “nominating” convention.

Democrats can thus hardly complain that they did not see big cuts coming. So why did they risk it all by not going along with the latest CR?