Man, Dat Was One Bad Beat

Unlike most poker variants, stud hi-lo can be said to have an element of skill to it, but bad beats are still rampant. The three screengrabs below are from the 01.43 (London time) tournament on PokerStars, November 14, 2020.

Our Hero was sitting out this hand, but the guy next to him had rolled up 9s. You can usually expect to take down half the pot with such a monster, especially when filling up on sixth street. Alas, he was already beaten.

On the final table but hoping to improve, guess who made a prial of 3s on fifth street not realising he was behind? Fortunately, this time the other guy had the bad beat; I hit a house, he didn’t. Try that at hold ‘em!

I was busted out on a bad beat, aces against kings, the other bloke made two pair, but that wasn’t a bad finish considering.

White Privilege In Croydon

Considering so many shops and businesses are either working at reduced capacity or closed altogether, central Croydon was quite busy Saturday. Near Surrey Street, a homeless woman I have seen for many months was pitched in a doorway with all her worldly possessions. She is younger than me, probably quite a bit younger, but looks older with her rotten teeth, and as at 64 I am not in good shape, that says something.

I noticed she had a mobile phone. Well, she could hardly have a landline. She told me Crisis had given it to her. I asked her if she couldn’t get hostel accommodation or something, to which she replied the council would split them up, them being her and her husband. I asked about him, and she said he was on the other side of the road.

These two were not begging, at least not aggressively. I walked up to him and asked about their situation. Couldn’t they get housed together in some sort of apartment? He said they, meaning the council, were working on it. I asked him his name, and he said it was Phil. He was probably older than his wife but didn’t look so wretched; a beard can have that effect, and homeless men are not generally as tragic as homeless women.

Talking of the tragic, if it weren’t so tragic it would be comic that we are forever being told - on both sides of the Atlantic - about white privilege and something now called structural racism. Clearly Phil and his wife left their white privilege at, not at home, that is for certain.

Then there are the feminists who never cease reminding us about that other chimera, sexism. Earlier this year, Samira Ahmed was complaining she was paid “only” £440 for an episode of Newswatch while Jeremy Vine collected £3,000 per episode of his programme. What does that tell us about privilege? Primarily that it derives from money, though not necessarily from talent. If you have the connections you can be an unrepentant junkie and still wallow in privilege, but let’s not talk about Hunter Biden. What it does tell us about poverty and social exclusion is that it is an equal opportunity employer. 

Royal Flushes, Roundabouts And Swings

I play very little poker nowadays, and always for very small stakes, usually micro-stakes. As is apparent from the top left hand corner of each, the two screengrabs below are from pot limit Omaha hi lo games. They were played October 25 and October 29 respectively.

In the first, I had a royal flush draw but folded on the flop. If the diamond had been a 9, I might have continued; had it been a 10, queen or king, I would definitely have, but I reasoned that in the unlikely event of making a royal, I would much more likely end up winning ouly half the pot. Naturally, I was disappointed, but look what happened four days later. Had I called the flop, I would have made queens full, but look at the river card and the winning hand. Dude, what a fold! I cashed in both tournaments, taking bounties on the way, and with a bit of luck I was eleventh in the latter, busted out a few minutes short of five hours. It’s always better to be paid for your entertainment rather than pay for your education.

Forty Years Of Fuck

In 1965, the critic Kenneth Tynan famously used the dreaded F word (as it then was) on UK television. We learn herein that this was a deliberate, premeditated act. Although it caused a storm and even led to death threats against Tynan, this isolated incident pails into insignificance alongside the now infamous 1976 incident in which an obviously far from sober Bill Grundy provoked the Sex Pistols and their entourage on tea time TV.

Fast forward to the 1980s and the language becomes even more profane. We see how UK TV coped with American rap, a genre in which mother is half a word, and with films that were censored sometimes comically, with “eating pussy” being altered to “eating pineapple”, but such silliness did give us the charming euphemism “melon farmer” - melonfarmers dot co dot uk now being an anti-censorship website.

While the watershed - when properly observed - can filter out over-the-top swearing, live sport in the afternoon is a different matter, even if a little lip-reading is involved. Then came the Big Brother franchise and celebrity chefs.

In this excellent two part programme we hear from people who knew Kenneth Tynan, from the very much alive Johnny Rotten, the first man to use the C word on UK TV, many more and much more, including archive footage of Mary Whitehouse and more profanity than you dreamt possible. Jenny Bond is far from the first person to make the observation that the F word has been used so much it has lost its value to shock. And people who swear simply to cause outrage, we call them children. Whatever their age.

[I submitted the above review to IMDb on December 19, 2019 along with my ten out of ten rating. It wasn’t published. I submitted it again two days ago, and again it wasn’t published. It wasn’t rejected, just ignored. No one else has reviewed this documentary, and I would certainly have expected a few or maybe many people to have. I can only assume this is a new policy along with this absurd “wokeness”. Over the past year or so I’ve had a number of reviews rejected that would not have been rejected had I submitted them a couple of years earlier. Also, at least two of my reviews have been deleted. At any rate, this one is now being published here].

The Ghost Of Harold Covington

The recent, failed sovereign state of CHAZ in the Pacific Northwest would have been welcomed by the late Harold Covington, although it is doubtful if any of its citizens would have welcomed him.

Harold died two years ago this month. Unless you are of a certain age and/or have an interest in following the political fringe, you will probably not have heard of him, but until his untimely though not unexpected death at 64, Harold Armstead Covington was America’s and arguably the world’s leading National Socialist theorist. He wasn’t simply a Nazi but a white supremacist; as pointed out in a previous article, the two ideologies are not the same.

Harold though was the full ticket: he hated Jews with a passion, while blacks were beneath his contempt; apart from Barack Obama, he didn’t consider them at all.

It isn’t too difficult to find biographical material about Harold on-line, but bear in mind that this kind of hatred is generally a two-way street, so don’t expect to find anything objective about him written by Jews, especially those acknowledged smear merchants the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In his youth, Harold was a comic book Nazi, complete with swastikas, uniform, and Roman salute - the classic “Sieg Heil!”

While still a teenager, he joined the National Socialist White People’s Party, the successor to the American Nazi Party that was founded by the charismatic but sorely misguided Lincoln Rockwell, who was assassinated in 1967.

After a stint in the US Army and working on the permanent staff of the NSWPP, Harold moved to South Africa and then to Rhodesia where he claimed to have served with the Rhodesian Army. Some say he didn’t serve with Rhodesian forces at all. He probably did, but Harold was not averse to a little embellishment, whether about his political enemies or himself. What isn’t disputed is that he was deported from the country due to his political activities.

It probably came as a shock to Harold that the whites of South Africa and Rhodesia did not regard themselves as “racist”. Although Rhodesia was ruled by whites, there was no apartheid as such, and what isn’t generally known is that even South Africa had strong “race relations” laws.

On returning to the United States, Harold continued his political activities, running for Attorney General of his native North Carolina on the Republican ticket but as an open Nazi. Although he didn’t win, he picked up an impressive share of the votes. His tenure with the NSPA is best not mentioned, but it doesn’t show him in a bad light. After that, he travelled to the British Isles spending time in both England and the Irish Republic, where he married a woman who had two children, and soon added two of his own. He also made occasional trips to Northern Ireland where he developed a reluctant admiration for the IRA, not for their goals, but their methods. And he lived on the Isle Of Man for a while.

While in Britain, he was accused of founding the short-lived but violent Combat 18. This allegation came from Gerry Gable, a man for whom the truth is a distant stranger. There is no evidence that Harold was ever involved in any violent political action himself in the UK, or that he incited it, and when finally he returned home, he relocated to the Pacific Northwest where, having found his true vocation, he began proselytising to his kinfolk through the new medium.

Although he wasn’t flush with money, Harold appears to have secured some backing for his new outfit the Northwest Front, which included a regular podcast. His intention was to implement the Butler Plan, the brainchild of Richard Butler who died in 2004. Butler was a brilliant man, an aerospace engineer, but he was attracted to Christian Identity, a movement that might be described as the white equivalent of Islamism without the terrorism. Butler founded Aryan Nations, a so-called church, and his idea was to create a separate homeland for white Americans. Harold summed up his version of the Butler Plan succinctly as “We will Create a White Homeland in the Pacific Northwest”.

Harold was a scholar of history, and in his own way a profound intellect. His Northwest novels and non-fiction writings can be found at the Internet Archive. The former are also available in audio format, and were written largely to inspire his younger followers. The exception is his last novel, Give Me The Night, which he published under the pseudonym Martin Scanlan. This was written purely for pleasure.

Before the current wave of hysteria, Nazis were regarded as a curiosity by certain media outlets, something Harold eventually realised. Many years ago he was contacted by a producer or some such who wanted him to appear on a talk show. When he agreed, the guy asked him to turn up in swastikas and jackboots. Harold told him politely “We don’t do that sort of thing anymore”, or words to that effect. The guy said he would get back to him, but according to Harold, he never did. Clearly the new Wicked Harold had to be taken seriously unlike the Nazi clown of old; best not to give him what Margaret Thatcher called the oxygen of publicity. Who knows what impressionable minds he might corrupt?

Although Harold’s anti-Semitism was quite virulent, for an authoritarian he had some surprisingly Libertarian ideas. While homosexuality would not be tolerated in the new North American Republic, neither would the church as it exists. There would be freedom of religion, but no paid sinecures. His greatest Libertarian tendencies though manifested in his views of foreign policy. Like most of us of a certain age who lived through it, Harold was horrified by the 9/11 attacks, but had he rather than George W. Bush been running the country, there would have been no invasion of Iraq or any of the weapons of mass destruction nonsense that was to follow. He was totally opposed to American foreign policy in especially the Middle East, and to the excesses of the FBI.

Harold’s political enemies sought to portray him both as a clown who was not to be taken seriously, and as a greater threat to America than those who were actually destroying it. This cognitive dissonance can be found in all “anti-fascist” and far left “monitoring” groups. Since his death, his successor has continued to run the Northwest Front, but Harold is a hard act to follow. Harold was the kind of man who inspired fierce loyalty, and, whatever his politics, he was a good friend, including to many who never met him.

Though they rejoiced at his passing the same way they laughed at his life’s work, we saw with CHAZ a momentary vindication of his dream, albeit on an extremely small scale, because no sooner had they taken control of these six blocks of Seattle and declared their republic, what did these professed anti-racists do? They erected a “wall”, after condemning Donald Trump for years for doing the same thing, and then they segregated!

Yes, these anti-racists who were so offended by apartheid, Jim Crow, and legally enforced segregation, applied the principles of intersectionality relegating whites to the bottom of the food chain on account of their “oppressing” everyone else. In short, they have come full circle, from being outraged at segregation to being outraged at integration. This shouldn’t be so surprising, because some American universities have permitted or even encouraged segregation in some areas for years. What this does reveal though is that many of these left wing protesters don’t really understand what they are protesting against or lobbying for. Mark Dice and other pundits have demonstrated this by interviewing anti-Trump and similar protesters. Often they are unable to articulate even in general terms what it is that offends them.

The same thing cannot be said of Harold, and as he looks down from Valhalla, he will surely take an ironic pleasure in realising that if only for the briefest moment in time, his dream had come about, and it was his most vociferous enemies who enacted it.

Square One

This is not the first film to debunk the many lies and myths about the sexuality of Michael Jackson, but it does an excellent job. The man behind it, Danny Wu, adduces what he claims is another witness. In fact, this woman is not really a witness as such, rather she is someone who knew Jordan Chandler. However, the other witnesses and their evidence are more compelling.

It is very easy for anyone hearing the basics - Michael Jackson invited young boys into his bedroom, etc - to conclude he was indeed a paedophile. The reality is that he was simply extremely gullible, and, it might be argued, crassly stupid, to have continued with such “improper” associations after the 1993 case was resolved. If nothing else, his lawyers, friends and family would have been screaming in his ear to keep a professional distance from his young fans.

In addition to Jackson supporters, Wu shows footage of a then FBI agent who infiltrated NAMBLA, one of the most odious organisations ever established. NAMBLA member Victor Gutierrez published a book called Michael Jackson Was My Lover, a colossal piece of fiction. None of this is new, but Wu and his team do an excellent job putting these lies into their proper context.

The reality is that no one person or group of people can be held responsible for how the lies about Jackson grew and will very likely keep on growing. With the explosion of social media, any troll, malicious person or idiot can post anything he or equally often she likes, claim it is a verified fact, and how many of us know how to fact-check it? Celebrities alive and dead are constantly portrayed as monsters. The dead cannot defend themselves, but along with Wu, there are many people who are willing to defend Jackson a decade after his death. The prosaic truth is out there, for those who want to know it.

[The above is my review of Square One: Michael Jackson, originally titled simply Square One; it was rejected by IMDb, not the first time I have had a review of a Michael Jackson documentary rejected. Go figure].

February Is LGBT History Month

Did you know February was LGBT History Month? Here are a few &8220;achievements&8221; you won’t find on the Stonewall Calendar.

1327: Edward II, the bisexual King of England, is murdered at the behest of his wife Queen Isabella by having a red hot poker shoved up his anus.

1440: The homosexual serial killer of children Gilles de Rais is executed at Nantes in Brittany.

1533: In England, Henry VIII passes An Acte for the punishment of the vice of Buggerie – that punishment being death.

1646: Jan Creoli is executed for sodomy in (what is now) New York. He is believed to be the first person so executed in the future United States, but as this was his second offence and his victim was ten years old, don’t feel too sorry for him.

1779: Thomas Jefferson proposes reducing the penalty for homosexual sodomy from hanging to castration. This proposal is rejected by the Virginia Legislature.

1835: James Pratt and John Smith are hanged for consensual buggery, the last people to be executed in the UK for homosexual offences.

1895: The bisexual degenerate Oscar Wilde sues the Marquess Of Queensberry for criminal libel, but backs down when evidence of his homosexual liaisons are presented in court. He is subsequently sentenced to two years at hard labour, the vexatious author of his own misfortune.

1952: Mathematician Alan Turing is convicted of gross indecency with a teenager.

1962: Joe Orton and his “lover” Kenneth Halliwell are sentenced to six months in prison for defacing library books.

1967: Playwright and moral degenerate Joe Orton is battered to death by Kenneth Halliwell in their North London apartment. Halliwell then takes a fatal overdose.

1968: In New York, man-hating lesbian Valerie Solanas, who authored the SCUM Manifesto, shoots the homosexual visual artist Andy Warhol. In spite of nearly killing him, Solanas is released in 1971 and is treated like a victim of mental impairment instead of a psychopathic potential killer.

1974: Homosexual paedophiles in the UK form the Paedophile Information Exchange whose goal is to abolish the age of consent.

1977: The now long defunct homosexual newspaper Gay News and its editor are convicted of blasphemous libel after a trial at the Central Criminal Court.

1978: The North American Man/Boy Love Association is formed with the explicit intent of abolishing the age of consent. This is too much for even most radical homosexual organisations, who condemn it.

1981: Closet homosexual Wayne Williams is arrested. Although he is eventually tried for only two murders and convicted of both, he is believed to have been responsible for many more – the Atlanta Child Murders.

1982: Out homosexual Tom Robinson who wrote (Sing If You’re) Glad To Be Gay meets a woman name Sue Brearley at a party. She becomes Mrs Robinson, and he becomes a father!

1983: Homosexual activist and inveterate trouble-maker Peter Tatchell loses a safe Labour seat in a by-election, the so-called Battle of Bermondsey.

1985: The 14 year old Jason Swift dies during a “homosexual orgy”. His killers are convicted only of manslaughter.

1987: Dutch homosexual Edward Brongersma publishes the first volume of his major work Loving Boys.

1993: Leslie Bailey, one of the killers of schoolboy Jason Swift, is murdered in his cell at Whitemoor Prison.

1994: The twice married and divorced bisexual John Gacy is executed by lethal injection for murdering 33 young men and boys.
Former Editor of Gay News Denis Lemon dies of AIDS.
Later the same year, homosexual serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is murdered in prison.

1995: Hairdresser and homosexual serial killer Michael Lupo dies of AIDS in Frankland Prison.

1997: Quentin Crisp expresses his support for aborting homosexual babies!

Singer-songwriter George Michael is arrested in California for propositioning an undercover police officer. Michael subsequently “comes out”.

2000: Nine doctors and others publish a letter in the Daily Telegraph warning of the “Physical dangers of unnatural sex” and appealing against lowering the age of consent for homosexual acts to sixteen to protect teenage boys. Their warning falls on deaf ears.

2002: Not content with the British Parliament lowering the age of consent for perverted sex to sixteen, Peter Tatchell publishes a paper in which he calls for it to be lowered to fourteen.

2007: David Joy, a member of the by now long defunct Paedophile Information Exchange, is given an indeterminate sentence for downloading indecent images of children.

2012: At Lincoln, Nebraska, lesbian Charlie Rogers fakes a violent attack in her own home.

2018: Homosexual serial killer Dennis Nilsen dies from natural causes in Full Sutton Prison.

2019: In Chicago, the homosexual actor Jussie Smollett stages a ludicrous hate crime hoax. When exposed, he protests and continues to protest his innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt. The journalist Andy Ngô is the victim of a brutal attack by ANTIFA thugs in Portland, Oregon, which leaves him with bleeding on the brain, but in spite of his being both Oriental and homosexual, this horrendous attack is minimised and even justified by the usual social justice crowd.

2020: Out-homosexual and Democratic Party Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is booed by “queer activists” at a fund-raiser in San Francisco.

Its charismatic leader Vladimir Putin declares “same sex marriage” will never be allowed in Russia.

Has E. Jean Carroll Stolen Donald Trump’s DNA?

Last year, this demented hag claimed to have been raped by Donald Trump back in the 1990s, in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996, that was as specific as she could be regarding the time of this phantom rape, but she was very specific about where it happened: the lingerie department of a Bergdorf Goodman store in New York.

Her interview with an initially sympathetic Anderson Cooper soon turned to farce when she alluded to rape as “sexy” - that’s what most women think about it, we were told. Cooper was clearly embarrassed, but not as embarrassed as all but the most die-hard of true believers when they learned Carroll had plagiarised this claim from a 2012 American crime drama.

One would have expected that to be the end of the matter, but after Trump denied the allegation publicly, Carroll sued him for defamation. It doesn’t take too much nous to detect the hand of Gloria Allred here; if that pernicious shyster didn’t put Carroll up to it, then she probably inspired the move. Now, Carroll claims Trump’s DNA is on her dress, which she preserved, echoing the sordid “affair” with Monica Lewinsky and her Bill Clinton “memento”. This begs the question, could Trump’s DNA actually be on that dress, and the answer is yes.

This could be a plot by the Deep State, or more realistically, Carroll could have some sort of connection with someone close to Trump. If she came up with this scheme in the wake of his election, she would have had two and a half years to put it into action. That being said, Trump was already a billionaire in the 1990s, which means he almost certainly never went anywhere without a bodyguard, and his movements would have been fairly closely minuted by those around him. He has nothing to worry about, whatever the judge decides.