There are people who seek to control and oppress us. Like the Rosicrucians who foresaw the loss of the Twin Towers in 1997. Can you believe it? I’ve read their drek for 20 years.

I’m just a lonely voice, like most of you. I tried to get on Philadelphia’s Dom Giordano radio show at WPHT this morning, but no luck.

He was fired up about conspiracy theories. He hung up on a guy who accused John Bolton of doing nothing to inhibit the U.N.’s Agenda 21. (He was right.) He did a peroration to the effect that he’s the last talk show guy anyone should go to with a conspiracy theory. (He was wrong.) He’s 100 percent opposed. To conspiracy theories. The callers’ problem is not that there’s an unexposed conspiracy but that they can’t tell the difference between conspiracy and lunacy. Dom’s error is that he refuses to comprehend ANY conspiracy, even the ones that work.

I told his screeners there are at least two kinds of conspiracies — crazy conspiracies, which can’t be true, and moderately successful conspiracies, which are not only true but a fact of life. There’s a way to distinguish between them without going nuclear.

But I missed the window. Giordano had moved on, and the screener came back on the line to tell me that. So I’ll forward this post to the show. In his favor, he generally answers. So the rest of this is for him and, more importantly, the rest of you. Because we do live in an age of conspiracy. Meaning, effective conspiracy.

Sorry, Dom. Ranting isn’t the rebuttal. People know things aren’t right.

The 9/11 Conspiracy Theories are crazy because too many people would have had to be involved with far more risk than reward. Air traffic controllers, building implosion experts, and all their hourly paid employees. And more, on and on. Where substitute planes were landed to hide the central plot of airliner shells sent as missiles into the Twin Towers. Blah blah blah.

Too elaborate? No. Not really. Too elaborate with no set of cascading incentives among like minded people.

Which is the mark of conspiracies that actually work for a time. Despite all Dom Giordano’s Manachaean distinctions between people who believe in conspiracies and those who don’t.

Unpleasant fact. There ARE conspiracies and many of them prosper for at least a while.

How do they differ from the crazy conspiracy theories? Follow the money and the power. They are not the work of secret societies. They do not engineer massive events. They operate mostly in the open. Their co-conspirators are not members of the elect sworn into a secret cabal. They’re just people who know which side their bread is buttered on.

Two examples of successful conspiracies. Global Warming hysteria. And passage of ObamaCare. Both were accomplished with amazing untruths and faked statistics. Which obviously involved complicity by hundreds if not thousands of people. The motives had nothing to do with the public welfare but private selfish ends. In both cases, the trusted people involved betrayed their trust and made themselves willing accomplices in propaganda, lies, and political arguments that had nothing to do with their real incentives.

To tell a real conspiracy from a crazy conspiracy, the route is simple: Follow the money and the power.

The Pope is on record opposing trickle down. Guess how most conspiracies begin and succeed. There’s no meeting populated by disciples wearing hoods. There’s just an atmosphere created in which the conspirators prosper, for their own private reasons, and the resistance to the conspiracy gets massacred in the media. uh, period. Everything is trickle down, from the media to the masses. End of mystery.

There was no secret cult of Global Warming which handed out marching orders and instructions about how to falsify data. There was just a loose agglomeration of lefty scientists whose careers were in thrall to other agreeable lefties, all of whom agreed that scientists should be in charge of a new age of reason, and Global Reason was their way to do it. Along the way, they forgot that the science which was their credential didn’t matter anymore, because if necessary they could just fake it. Why? Because the Global Warming hypothesis gave them grants, tenure, public attention, and a sense of personal importance. After all, they know better than anyone that science is a moving target. Genius today, joke tomorrow. When the next guy proves you’re a fool.

ObamaCare. An obvious conspiracy. With media help. My point about a loose affiliation of people with similar incentives and like minds. It was always a fraud. Massive income redistribution disguised as health reform. There were no orders from the White House to the media. Akin to the IRS scandal, Benghazi, and Fast & Furious. Any of which would have brought down a Republican presidency. Smoking guns weren’t necessary because the beneficiaries all understood what they had to gain and lose. Careers, lobbying fortunes, book contracts, and shameless network appearances in the future, which is orchestrated for the world by oh-so-friendly NBC.

Just this loose cascading conspiracy that made Brian Williams a celebrity for kissing Obama’s ass, and the same with all the mass media and magazine coverage, who leveraged Obama celebrity into career celebrity. Loose affiliations. Emphasis on the word “loose.”

All right. I’ll stop. There ARE conspiracies aplenty. They don’t all succeed. Some do.

Oh. You’re still puzzled by my top graphic. Sorry. Here’s a locus called Sinister Sites. Pay close attention to posts about St. John the Divine Cathedral in NY and the Georgia Guidestones.

Just a nod to a benefactor. The December issue of the New Criterion contained a long, literate defense of Dianna West’s American Betrayal, which was savagely attacked, repeatedly, by National Review’s Conrad Black.

Never had any use for Conrad Black. He’s a pompous, verbose bully and a frankly silly poseur. NR’s Andrew McCarthy said what had to be said, even if he couldn’t do it at National Review.

Worth everything to read it. Thank you, Barbara. She gave me the subscription. The magazine is a light in the darkness. Next up: Nordlinger on Music. Lesson No. 8,771 in humility for RFL. It’s so nice to read good writing. And you can hold the paper in your hands.

I’m keeping to myself today.

He was just talking to Mommy in the Out There. He said I was having a Greta Garbo day. I don’t know who that is, but I don’t like it. They watch that football and Mommy yells. Loud. The Boss watches things that have barking, screaming, and running too slow through the woods if you want to get away. They think I don’t see, but I do. I see everything.

And the Boss is not happy, which makes me not happy. He looks at things all day and he hurts. I feel it. I’m not somebody else. I’m Raebert. And my Boss hurts.

Who is Greta Garbo?

Not me. I’m Raebert and he doesn’t want me on his lap most times. It’s not right. Something’s not right.

I’m not happy. Is that wrong?

Sometimes you have to move the goalposts.

I thought it was lost, but it is found. Thanks to Lake.

Back up for a second. In what may be the greatest tribute I’ve ever received, Robert J. Davey used project management software to map every link in The Boomer Bible’s Intercolumn Reference (ICR) from a single verse in the Book of Willie, Chapter 25. It was the fifth verse.

Willie.25.5

I got fooled, I suppose, because I do so much these days on iPad, which cannot display a file of that size. It’s enormous.

I’m asking a favor of all of you. Open this file and save it on your own laptops and desktop computers. You don’t have to read it or study it or anything boring like that. But I don’t want it ever to disappear.

It was a prefiguring of the Internet, hyperlinks when modems were rated in terms like “300 baud.” It was a new kind of writing. Reviewers thought the ICR was a pretentious bit of self-indulgence.

But I wrote The Boomer Bible’s text as a database for the ICR, which I completed in about two months of constant work. When I was not working on it, meaning when I was sleeping, I was working on it nonetheless. For a brief period I had the whole book in my head, and I was trying to light it up.

Now you can see how it works, thanks again to Lake and company. This site has a live ICR, unthinkable in the days when I wrote it. Go take a look.

What is the shape of consciousness? Or should I say the ‘Face’ of consciousness? (Yeah, it’s iPad’s snapshot of the file discussed above.) Are we living yet? Maybe.

Sad, Sad, Sad. Sometimes it really does seem the whole world is Out of Control.

Courtesy of Drudge. The “sexiest man alive” is going to be promoting ObamaCare. Dingy little generic rock star with a thin voice and an imitative tongue. How gullible do they think we are?

I give you the “sexiest man alive.”

Honestly. Moves like Jagger? In his dreams. He’s a statue. Christina Aguilera would rather have which scalp on her belt? Adam Levine or Mick Jagger? I rest my case.

Schmuck. He and Obama deserve each other.

Alternative Spider-Man suits. Really?

I won’t dissemble. It’s called full flight. The news is just so completely awful that any sane person wants an escape. Ta da!

Movie Lists Galore. Don’t like the ones shown? Refresh.

What a word. Refresh. Would that we could.

Share your favorites. I know my audience. You know you love this stuff. Wallow in it. It’s the best we can do right now.

I’m not giving you a hard time. Let’s talk about something, anything, else.

Gay Math: “Graham” = “5” and “Norton” = “Percent.” QED.

I admit I was thinking of doing one. Part of my ‘New Media Watch’ responsibilities. There was an article linked at Hotair‘s Headlines segment that was spectimating about how many American men are actually gay. From the NYT, of course.

Since I’ve recently discovered that Hotair does allow and record comments on the articles linked in Headlines, I read the comments on the article, which reliably enough turned into a pissing contest between gay and anti-gay commenters, with time out for a commenter who announced he wasn’t interested in the topic. It took multiple additional comments from both camps to uncover the fact that he announced his uninterest because he wanted Allahpundit and Ed Morrissey to know just how uninterested he was generally in coverage of gay issues.

So. I was thinking of a post about it. The slim, young, dashing Harvard PhD named Seth Stephens-Davidowitz who wrote the NYT column was proposing the number 5 Percent. Which is also the number cited with regard to the independently (un)insured who have just been tossed onto the junk pile by ObamaCare. We have been subjected to a huge, tiresomely constant national trauma about gay marriage and hurt gay feelings for several years now. 5 Percent? How is it that they matter so much while the policyholders and their families who no longer have health insurance because of ObamaCare are only 5 percent? (btw this 5 percent is policies, not people. Waddya think? 45 million people affected, just three per policy?)

With me so far? For the record, I think 5 percent is a stretch as a guess about gay men, but if progressives believe that’s the number, they have some ‘splaining to do about why I have to hear about gay causes every damn day of my life while hardworking entrepreneurs who believed a flat-out presidential lie should just go suck eggs.

Why I went to Hotair Headlines to collect the column link and the 143 comments which proved people were exercised about the article and its implicit asseverations about the inherent nature of gayness. Excuse me. Homosexuality.

Only it wasn’t there. Hotair, in all its New Media hypertruthfulness, had deleted it from the Headlines page. Why? Obvious. The anti-gay sentiment that prevailed in the 143 comments (a very high number for a mere linked article) is/was embarrassing to the site.

I keep saying and will never stop saying that the New Media have no chance to end a corrupt game played by the MSM if they are also corrupt.

I’ll point out that I’m not allowed to comment at Hotair because they limit qualifying as a commenter to the maniacal ones who are prepared to queue up for the “This Friday, between noon and 12:05 pm” strictures they place on would-be contributors. And, still, this is what they get. A bunch of illiterates on both sides whose contribution is so icky that they go the 1984 route of erasing them from history. The gay post was a nonpost. Cool.

Or not. My suggestion to Hotair. Open your Comment section to the world. I’m happy to tell you when you’ve done well, as Allah and Ed frequently do. Surely, you must be often embarrassed by the rump who eviscerate the protected trolls. Why you rarely acknowledge your own Commenters unless they catch you in a factual error.

Note well: I’m sending this to the tip address of Hotair. [Tips@hotair.com] Any bets on whether I’ll hear anything back? And how many of you are willing to follow my lead? If New Media are as self serving as Mainstream Media, when will anything ever improve?

My wife may or may not be marooned up north in the far hinterlands of lower South Jersey. (Ever wonder where hobbits come from?) But I have escaped once again into the fantasies of the past, as is my wont.

She doesn’t recall, or even recollect, that I used to drive the entire length of the lawn on our little garden tractor. I was a veritable miniature farmer. ‘Back in the day.’ (Have I mentioned that that’s one of my most hated phrases of the decade, along with “body of work” as applied to football players?) Sorry. Body of work. I — forget it. Now it applies to running backs; it used to apply to artists and writers. Michelangelo had a body of work. Barry Sanders had a yardage total. But what do I know? I have so many different bodies of work you’d fall asleep listening to all the categories.

Where were we? Oh yeah. Probably, every guy has a memory of a movie he scouted on his own and showed his wife that she actually liked. Doesn’t happen often, does it? Here’s mine. Why? Because it’s a Snow Day, and because she actually trilled like a little girl, and then she cried, which she never ever does. Cry, I mean.

Three parts.

Yeah. This is the one I showed Lady Laird that knocked her socks off. The source of all my movie credibility.

P.S. Can’t help noticing that nobody’s commented on Michelle’s little tantrum. She can’t be that mad, can she?

…shaken hands with Castro? Nooooooo! The only go-to sites on the Obamas are outraged about a whole different soap opera, um, problem.

Can somebody please explain to me what’s so special about blondes? She’s got him dead to rights. He looks exactly like Mandela in the photo. His hand is so coy, not even touching. Somebody should definitely explain it to Michelle… before she blows a gasket, which is going to happen absolutely any f’ing second. Oh. Thank God. They’ve changed places. Michelle is now protecting The One from Blonde Contamination. I guess there IS a God… Too bad, God is now sulking and bored, as usual.

Everybody knows how much I personally luuuuuv Mandela. So pardon for me for taking time out to sympathize with the Queen of All Creation.

Coiffed and polished on the stump is one thing. Bug-eyed and Bugs-Bunnified as Secretary of State is another. What’s SHE like at 3 am? (The ghosts of Benghazi think they know. Cold, heartless, selfish, lying hare.) Hopefully, a marionette of the husband she love/hates. Madam Prez.

All right. This is complicated, but I’ll try to be clear and straightforward.

We have two issues that demonstrate the opportunity and the danger before us. Both lend themselves to Mother Nature metaphors, as befits life changing challenges. One is a hurricane. The other is an iceberg.

The hurricane is ObamaCare, still building at sea. So far, it has done the equivalent of knocking down houses in the Bahamas, a bad thing but still far from where most of us live. Some hope it will spend its fury before making landfall in the Continental U.S., but the smart money is on a slow, inevitable course toward devastating ruin — of health insurance, health care, and ultimately the economy as a whole and a considerable number of human lives.

The iceberg seems paltry in comparison, but it isn’t. The chief feature of an iceberg is that it is ever so much larger under the surface of the water than the part you can see above the water. The iceberg is immigration reform. It seems small compared to ObamaCare, but it isn’t.

Its importance is that it enables us to see the true nature of the leadership conservatives are presently being asked to trust in defeating the statist progressive regime of which ObamaCare is the catastrophic apotheosis.

What is plain to see is that Republican congressional and other leaders, including some governors and many pundits, are planning to do a deal on amnesty, confident that the slow unfolding of the ObamaCare Armageddon will provide political cover for defying the long expressed political will of their base, which is NOT to give amnesty to illegal aliens. John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Eric Kantor, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and who knows how many other so-called conservatives are perfectly willing to subvert the rule of law and ratify an effective invasion of the United States by a low-skilled underclass of non-English speaking immigrants well populated by felons, parasites on government largesse, and a demonstrated uninterest in assimilation.

Why? They think they can get away with it, despite the plummeting in the polls experienced by Marco Rubio when he pursued immigration reform in the belief that charisma could overcome the convictions formed by people’s personal experience. They think they can get away with it because ObamaCare will, by 2014 and 2016, so dominate the political landscape that lesser betrayals will no longer matter. That’s the visible part of the iceberg.

But there’s another why that speaks to the massive concealed body of ice under the surface. Why so blatantly and recklessly ignore the will of their own constituents? Because their most important loyalty is to the lobbyists who finance their political careers, not to the mere voters whom they count on to believe in their devotion to principle.

There are a lot of big businesses who want cheap immigrant labor. They are the contributors to the PACs and SuperPACs the ambitious need to go the next step in their political careers. Which means the Republican establishment is as hooked on crony capitalism as Obama and Company are. Only we’re not supposed to notice the difference because we need them to oppose — eventually, partially, slightly at least — the killer storm called ObamaCare.

Don’t be fooled. They’re card carrying members of America’s new political class too. If we can’t trust them on immigration legislation, we can’t trust them on anything. They can be bought and probably already have been. Current rumors are that union funds are financing PACs supporting Republican incumbents against tea party challengers.

Which means the Republican Party is already dead.

I remind you of the title: The Long Game. We need a new party, built from the grassroots of the tea parties. There is precedent:

The Whig Party was a political party active in the early 19th century in the United States. Four Presidents of the United States were members of the Whig Party. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s,[1] the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party. In particular, the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the Presidency and favored a program of modernization and economic protectionism. This name was chosen to echo the American Whigs of 1776, who fought for independence, and because “Whig” was then a widely recognized label of choice for people who identified as opposing tyranny.[2] The Whig Party counted among its members such national political luminaries as Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and their preeminent leader, Henry Clay of Kentucky. In addition to Harrison, the Whig Party also nominated war hero generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott.

In its two decades of existence, the Whig Party had two of its candidates, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, elected President. Both died in office. John Tyler succeeded to the Presidency after Harrison’s death but was expelled from the party. Millard Fillmore, who became President after Taylor’s death, was the last Whig to hold the nation’s highest office.

The party was ultimately destroyed by the question of whether to allow the expansion of slavery to the territories. With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction prevented the re-nomination of its own incumbent President Fillmore in the 1852 presidential election; instead, the party nominated General Winfield Scott. Most Whig party leaders thereupon quit politics (as Abraham Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties. The northern voter base mostly joined the new Republican Party. By the 1856 presidential election, the party was virtually defunct…

As it happens, the transition from Whigs to Republicans in terms of electing a president cost only two presidential elections. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, was elected in 1860. The rest, as they say, is history.

So the question becomes what trade are we willing to make for our children and grandchildren? Drive the moneychangers from the temple, or keep making loansharking deals with the moneychangers who salute the flag and kiss our particular babies?

I know. It comes down to how you feel about losing to Hillary in 2016. A hard, hard realization. Multiple questions to think about. Could we survive a Hillary presidency? Maybe. Her husband is still Bill, who knew how to compromise with the opposition because he valued success over ideology. You know Bill would be the ghost in the machine because Hillary herself is a cipher. If ObamaCare gets as bad as it inevitably will, maybe a Democrat IS the best bet to accomplish a bipartisan repeal and replace.

On the other hand, Bill could die at any time. Which would leave us with a know-it-all schoolmarm who doesn’t like or feel for most anyone, including and even especially the woman in the mirror.

Don’t know how I feel either. Talk to me. How long and patiently can you play the political game to save your children, your grandchildren and the Constitution from a humiliating, impoverishing fate?

Can you wait for 2024 to save your nation? Think about it.