Category: Shoe Leather Fund

ROAD TRIP!

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No time now to explain where I’m going this evening, another one of those UNDISCLOSED LOCATION missions, but before I rattle the tip jar for the Shoe Leather Fund, let me update you on Wombat. Our fearless co-blogger, wielder of the Mighty Troll Hammer, was hospitalized last week as the result of a serious infection which caused complications with his blood sugar levels and blood pressure (“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Wombat Hospitalized, Could Use Your Help,” Oct. 29). He has now been transferred from the hospital to a “critical care facility” which, he explained to me in a phone call today, is what used to be called a nursing home. He’s apparently the youngest patient there, as they continue treating him with antibiotics and waiting for the infection to clear up. Wombat is now ambulatory, and wanted me to express his thanks to everyone who kicked in to his GoFundMe to help with his expenses. And speaking of expenses . . .

As much as I’d like to tell you where I’ll be this evening, I can’t, and I also can’t tell you why I can’t tell you, but by 3 p.m. today I hope to be on the road, and if y’all want to kick in a little — gasoline is $2.67 a gallon, cigarettes are about $6 a pack — it would help keep my wife happy. Because the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

NY Times Reporter and Senate Staffer Caught in Sex-for-Leaks Scandal

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Ali Watkins worked for Politico before joining the New York Times.

The former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee has been arrested after lying to the FBI about illegally leaking classified information to a young reporter he dated for three years. The arrest exposed James A. Wolfe as the source of multiple leaks of sensitive national security information — including details of the investigation of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page — to New York Times reporter Ali Watkins. Wolfe, 57, had been in a sexual relationship with Watkins, a 2014 Temple University graduate who previously worked for BuzzFeed and Politico before joining the Times late last year.

And after writing that lead paragraph in the Official Neutral Objective Journalism Style, now permit me to add: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Don’t ever lecture me about “journalism ethics,” you bastards.

All that “full disclosure” business about “conflicts of interest”? Trying to guilt-trip an honest man about a few free beers with Republican operatives who just happened to be useful sources? Not me, baby. I was never ashamed of smoking cigarettes with Herman Cain’s campaign director Mark Block or having beers and pizza with Rick Santorum and his finance director the weekend before the Iowa caucuses. You do whatever it takes to get the story, and there’s no shame in that. The whole point of Gonzo is to be more or less blatant about your biases, as if any reader of Hunter S. Thompson could be mistaken about his opinion of Hubert Humphrey, “a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler who should be put in a goddamn bottle and sent out with the Japanese current.”

So, no “ethics” lectures from you thieving bastards at the New York Times, or Politico, or BuzzFeed, or whoever is currently employing Dave Weigel and his various friends in Neutral Objective Journalism. Look, Dave’s a friend of mine, and I would never burn a friend. Good relationships are based on reciprocity and trust, and I owe Dave a few favors, so I would certainly never do anything to hurt my friend Dave.

Never mind all that. Veiled threats were never my style, but I know a thing or two about the behavioral patterns of herd animals, and the universal contempt for Our President among the left-wing hacks of the D.C. press corps is hardly a secret, unlike the classified information that James Wolfe was handing over to Ali Watkins in exchange for sucking his middle-aged penis. Heckuva job there, Miss Watkins.

You do whatever it takes to get the story, but none of my sources ever expected that from me, at least not in a literal sense. Yeah, I’ve written a few paragraphs of journalistic fellatio in my time, providing favorable coverage in an effort to butter up a source, but that’s the minor currency of informational commerce in Washington, D.C.

All I ever wanted out of this miserable racket was an appointment as the first U.S. ambassador to Vanuatu, an honorable ambition. A six-figure salary from the American taxpayers as a reward for my long years toiling in the field of Neutral Objective Journalism, and why should this diplomatic post in the South Pacific go to some deep-pocket GOP campaign donor, huh? Why not give it to the man with the keen political insight that enabled him to see that, once Herman Cain got taken out by his enemies, the man to beat as the “Anyone But Mitt” candidate was a former Pennsylvania Senator then languishing at sixth place in the polls? The Santorum Surge in late 2011 didn’t just happen by coincidence, my friends. No, there was a telephone conversation, where Santorum was in the Fort Worth airport between flights, and he promised me that gig in Vanuatu. If he tells you he didn’t, he’s lying, and my close personal friend Rick is a pious Catholic, so he would never lie. Whether he actually would have delivered me that coveted ambassadorship, had he won the White House in 2012, is another question altogether. But I digress . . .

My old friend Hogan Gidley‘s working at the White House now, and he’s not the only one of my buddies who’s moved up the political food chain since I left the campaign trail after the 2012 catastrophe. Now that I’ve finally got my driver’s license back, I could conceivably return to that miserable swamp in D.C. to do some shoe-leather work, maybe reporting on how this Wolfe-Watkins connection exposes the collusion, you might say, between the “fake news” media and the corrupt “Deep State.”

All I need now is a vehicle. Just a couple thousand dollars in the tip jar ought to be enough to get my hands on an old secondhand car.

Let me make a few phone calls, and we’ll see what happens. Just crowdfund me — $5 or $10, whatever you can afford — and in a week or two, I might take my old fedora off the rack and hit the road. Selah.



 

 

Tumblr Feminism: Is It Worth $3?

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As a digital property, Tumblr is “effectively worthless,” according to financial analysts. The site’s lack of commercial value, however, does not prevent it from being a major platform for the dissemination of feminist ideology. This quote from Gail Dines, for example, was liked and reblogged nearly 3,000 times, and no one inside this online echo chamber ever considered the possibility that Professor Dines is wrong.

The word “slut” means a promiscuous woman. There are very good reasons that promiscuity is stigmatized, not least among them that the slut’s behavior tends to cause men to disrespect women generally. When feminists are ranting about “harassment,” “misogyny,” “rape culture,” etc., does it never occur to them that men’s bad attitudes toward women might, in some sense, be a rational response to female misconduct? For example, if a young man observes women being praised and rewarded for promiscuity in the name of “empowerment” and “equality,” might he not conclude that all women are disloyal and untrustworthy?

 

If promiscuity is such an essential trait of women’s sexuality that feminists celebrate it as a basic “right,” why should the young man think that women he meets are capable of chastity or monogamy? If all women are constantly searching for their next casual hookup, and have no interest in long-term relationships — for this is what the feminist message of sexual “empowerment” implies — how do we expect the young man to behave toward women? No one can be permitted to criticize promiscuous women, according to Professor Dines, who promotes an amoral standard of “non-judgmentalism” which means that there can be no basis for praise or respect for chaste women.

Perhaps I could continue this discourse endlessly, but the main point I wish to emphasize is this: You should hit my tip jar today.

This blog is a capitalist enterprise, after all, and readers who believe the work I do has real value — as opposed to Tumblr, which is “essentially worthless” — have managed to pay me enough to keep toiling away at it for a decade now. Yesterday, I spent a few hours mining Tumblr in preparation for exposing a new lode of Third Wave feminist craziness, but was interrupted by the school shooting in Florida that seemed worthy of coverage as actual news. Feminists, predictably, declared that the Broward massacre was about “toxic masculinity.” While it is wise to avoid arguing about politics over the bodies of innocent children, no one expects wisdom from Democrats. Did you know that Hillary Clinton won Broward County by more than a 2-to-1 margin? But I digress . . .

Returning to the Tumblr mine today (while babysitting my 3-year-old grandson) I’m reminded of my late friend Andrew Breitbart’s famous adage: “Politics is downstream from culture.” This is why I keep digging up these bizarre and obscure characters on Tumblr:

When I started exploring radical feminism in 2014, one of the first phenomena I discovered was SJW Tumblrinas. Tumblr.com is to social media what syphilis is to bacteria — the absolute worst. When I mused here about why Tumblr is so indescribably wretched, a commenter observed that its format is so “user-friendly” that it takes zero skills, and thus attracts a user base characterized by below-average intelligence. . . .
My research into radical feminism focused largely on academia, quoting major feminist authors and Women’s Studies textbooks. What makes Tumblr valuable to such research is that it shows how Third-Wave gender theory — Feminism Is Queer, to invoke the title of Professor Mimi Marinucci’s textbook — is interpreted by the type of young feminists who consider themselves “social justice warriors” (SJWs). Tumblrinas express feminism as they understand it, which may not be what the typical Women’s Studies professor had in mind, but this is what feminism actually is, as it is disseminated into popular culture as a grassroots phenomenon among young women.

Dear reader, I’ve got a real doozy of a specimen in my sights. One of her messages on Tumblr about the evil homophobia of “straight people” got more than 60,000 notes. You could fill a college football stadium with such a crowd. Imagine what a stadium full of young SJW feminists would look like — a nightmare vision of Hell painted by Hieronymus Bosch. Given that they are so numerous, how do they affect our culture?



 

So how about $3 for a cup of coffee? There’s a lot of fun to be had doing this work, but there’s also a lot of tedious drudgery, screen-capping their SJW rants and archiving links so that the evidence under scrutiny doesn’t disappear when the Tumblrina panics after being exposed.

Somewhere in Hillsborough County, a plump Tumblrina with a pierced nose has no idea that anyone outside the digital feminist echo chamber has noticed her. Eight or 10 hours from now? Fun, fun, fun.

This fun will require hours of actual work, however, and $3 for a cup of coffee doesn’t seem too much to ask. Thanks in advance.

UPDATE: Your Homophobia Is a ‘Direct Threat’ of ‘Potential Violence,’ Says Queer Feminist.



 

$400 in 24 Hours (UPDATE: Thanks!)

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Not much time to explain this, but I’m rattling the tip jar today because I need $400 by Friday morning. My youngest daughter has a school trip coming up and I promised my wife I’d raise the $200 needed by Friday. Then the cable company — our Internet service provider — demanded more than $200 for that bill, and of course that’s also due Friday. As a pioneer of online crowdfunding, who managed to cover the entire 2012 presidential campaign thanks to tip-jar hitters, I had no problem assuring my wife: “Don’t worry. We got this.”

So if 50 readers gave $8 each, or if 25 readers gave $16 each, this would do the trick, but if 10 readers gave $40 each, that would be cool, too. Whatever you can spare would be appreciated, because it’s still true that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Thanks in advance, and Merry Christmas!



 

UPDATE: Wow! You guys surprised me! It didn’t take even 12 hours to exceed the goal. Today I went and worked with my son Jim on a roofing job, and when I checked the PayPal on my phone, I was shocked by the generosity of readers. And seeing that my friend Pete Da Tech Guy got laid off from his job, I hit his tip jar. Hope you guys will, too.

 

Emergency Tip-Jar Appeal

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Going gonzo on the campaign trail in Iowa, January 2012.

Y’know, sometimes, I can almost sympathize with the socialist Bernie Sanders/Occupy Wall Street crowd — almost, I say, because it is morally wrong to scapegoat “the rich” (however one defines that term) for the problems of the poor which, at the present moment, is defined as . . . me.

To skip ahead to the bottom line, I need $300 today, and have every reason to hope that the tip-jar hitters will come through, as always.

Reader-supported journalism — a fee-for-service arrangement between the reader and writer — is an honest sort of capitalist transaction, and if it requires me occasionally to rattle the tip jar like an epileptic on meth, this is a small price to pay for editorial independence. Continue reading Emergency Tip-Jar Appeal →

You Did It! Thank You!

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Daughter Reagan working on the thank-you card list.

Late Friday, I put up an appeal for $900 to enable our family to travel to our oldest daughter’s home for Thanksgiving. By Saturday afternoon, I could report to the family that we would meet that goal. Our youngest daughter, 13-year-old Reagan, has been assigned to send thank-you cards to folks who hit the tip jar during this weekend campaign.

“You should be thankful for this opportunity,” I told her. “This is a hands-on lesson in online fundraising. Capitalism works.”

One of my daughter’s friends is a huge Trump fan, and I explained to my daughter that I first met Donald Trump’s chief of staff Steve Bannon when I interviewed him in June 2011 about his Sarah Palin documentary.

“Steve’s a friend of mine,” I told my daughter. “When we go to the inauguration, maybe you can meet him.”

Last year, for her seventh-grade history project at school, my daughter did her presentation as — who else? — President Ronald Reagan.

 

My daughter has studied the history of Reagan’s career and presidency, including his famous 1981 inauguration speech in which he declared:

“It is time for us to realize that we’re too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”

That optimism — a refusal “to limit ourselves to small dreams” — is what has inspired me to believe that I could step out into thin air, as it were, and make blogging a career. Reader contributions to the Shoe Leather Fund have enabled me to keep going despite all obstacles and opposition. Who knows what adventures may await in the future? Thank you for your support, thank you for your prayers, and may God bless you.



 

 

Fear and Loathing: Three Days, $900, and It’s Morning in Vanuatu Again

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“How long, O Lord, how long? Where will it end?
“All I ever wanted out of this campaign was enough money to get out of the country and live for a year or two in peaceful squalor in a house with a big screen porch looking down on an empty white beach, with a good rich coral reef a few hundred yards out in the surf and no neighbors. . . .
“What worries me now . . . is the strong possibility that my involvement in politics has become so deep and twisted that I can no longer think rationally about that big screen porch above the beach except in terms of an appointment as Governor of American Samoa.”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Somewhere in the South Pacific, there is an island nation in need of an American ambassador, and who knows what might be possible? But that’s borrowing tomorrow’s trouble, and right now, I’ve got a more immediate need: $900 for a road trip to an undisclosed location.

Is there an explanation? Sure, and I’ll be glad to provide it, but first let me share a conversation that took place in the comments of Monday night’s post. Daniel Freeman offered this gloomy assessment:

Diversity + Proximity = War. The details vary throughout history; in our case, it turns out that all non-whites are tribal, so we can’t afford not to be.
Even when they aren’t violently racist, mere tribalistic nepotism is a powerful competitive advantage, to the point where our choices are to copy them, die out or kick them out.

War? Is America doomed to be destroyed by ethnic violence? Or is there still hope for our nation? This was my reply to Mr. Freeman:

It is still possible, I hope, for the American people to step back from the brink of the abyss toward which the past eight years have led us.
“It is history that teaches us to hope,” a great man once said.
“Never take counsel of your fears,” another great man said.
Strange as it seems, our new president may be the man who can heal the wounds our nation has recently suffered. The opportunity is there, and I dare to hope Mr. Trump will make the most of it.

Readers are free to Google those quotes and find the names of the great men who said them. Did I mention I’m trying to rattle the tip jar to raise $900 for a road trip? My wife and I will be heading south, the first time our three youngest children have gone on a long road trip with us, and I hope there will be time during this trip to visit the cemeteries in Randolph County, Alabama, where my family’s ancestors are buried. One of those ancestors, Winston Wood Bolt, was an illiterate farmboy who served in the 13th Alabama Infantry until he was captured in the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg when Archer’s Brigade was outflanked by the Iron Brigade.

 

Well, no need to dwell on the past, I suppose, when in the near future — by Monday, at the latest — Mrs. McCain expects me to have that $900 so we can visit our oldest daughter’s home for Thanksgiving. Our daughter and her husband live 1,100 miles away, near a Gulf Coast beach in a state that Donald Trump carried by a margin of 120,00 votes. Continue reading Fear and Loathing: Three Days, $900, and It’s Morning in Vanuatu Again →

Army Bob Takes a Bride

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Earlier this year, my son Bob and his girlfriend came to visit us for Easter. Bob has been in the Army since 2013 and, while stationed at Fort Bragg, met a lovely girl named Johanna who is an art student (she does video animation). While they were visiting, Bob invited Johanna to hike up to Black Rock, a peak on South Mountain along the Appalachian Trial that has been a favorite destination since Bob and his twin brother Jim were about 10 years old. It was a special occasion when Bob and Johanna hiked up and reached the scenic overlook, where he gave her a gift . . .

 

Yes, that’s an engagement ring on her finger. Bob popped the question, Johanna said yes, and they set the wedding for June 25.

Repeat: June 25. As in Saturday — tomorrow. [Sunday — see update]

 

The brevity of their engagement can be explained by saying that (a) Johanna is a fine Christian girl from a fine Christian family, so that (b) premarital cohabitation would be unacceptable, and (c) did I mention that married soldiers get a subsidy for off-base housing? Thank you, America, for promoting family values to our troops in such a direct way.

Our soldier is due for promotion at the end of this month, which means the couple soon will be Sergeant and Mrs. McCain. This makes the third of our six children to get married. Our oldest daughter Kennedy married her high-school sweetheart in 2010, while Bob’s twin brother Jim and his wife already have two sons. It’s a good kind of sibling rivalry.

Jim and Bob at Jim’s wedding.

Bob and Jim, age 5.

They were so inseparable (and almost indistinguishable) as boys my wife and I just called them “the boys,” as in, “Where are the boys? What trouble did the boys get into today?” For the first six years of the twins’ lives, our kids were “Kennedy and the boys.” Then came two more brothers and a baby sister, but Bob and Jim as “the boys” were a phenomenal tag-team of mischief. There was both teamwork and rivalry between them, and so when Jim married a lovely girl and provided us with two wonderful grandsons, it was like, “Gotta step up your game, Bob.”

 

Well done, soldier. Now, it’s time for the Old Man to do his part — rattling the hell out of the tip jar. Mrs. McCain expects me to foot the bill for our trip to North Carolina, three nights in a hotel, etc., and so I’m dusting of the Shoe Leather Fund, and requesting reader support for this 740-mile round-trip expedition. About $600 should suffice, so if 120 readers gave $5 each, or 60 readers gave $10 each, or 30 readers gave $20 each, this would enable me to tell my wife, “See? This blogging thing is a real job. The readers actually do care.”

Believe it or not, after all these years and the many miles I traveled on the Shoe Leather Fund, sometimes my wife occasionally doubts the power of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Thanks in advance. I’ll post wedding photos this weekend.

UPDATE 10:30 p.m.: Greetings from beautiful downtown Sanford, N.C.

About 20 minutes after we left home, my brother called to inform me that the wedding is Sunday, not Saturday, which goes to show you how out of the loop I am in terms of the planning operations.