The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Did We Watch the Same Speech?

Posted on | July 22, 2016 | 42 Comments

 

CLEVELAND
The hysterical reaction by many journalists to Donald Trump’s speech last night was further evidence of their absurd bias.

Donald Trump’s RNC Speech
Was a Terrifying Display of
Nightmarish Authoritarianism
— Peter Suderman, Reason

The Demagogue Rises
— Matthew Continetti, Free Beacon

Donald Trump’s Un-American Acceptance Speech
— Franklin Foer, Slate

Donald Trump’s Angry, Dark Speech
Caps Off a Disastrous RNC
— Joan Walsh, The Nation

What speech did they watch? Angry? Dark? Terrifying? This negative perception was entirely subjective, a product of irrational bias. The speech I watched here Thursday night was awesome:

Zak Hasanin was walking along a downtown sidewalk Thursday afternoon when he said, “Did you hear that? ‘America Was Never Great’?” He was quoting a slogan shouted by left-wing protesters near the Republican National Convention here. “Those people need to go to Africa. They don’t know how good they’ve got it.”
Hasanin’s family immigrated to America from Sudan when he was a child, and the 23-year-old recent graduate of North Carolina State University was angered at the anti-American protest slogan.
“How is this not great?” Hasanin said, gesturing at the scene on Euclid Avenue, where vendors were hawking Donald Trump T-shirts outside shops and restaurants crowded with delegates. “This is Cleveland. Anywhere in Africa, this would be the greatest city in the country.”
The hope of renewing American greatness was what brought Hasanin and thousands of other Republicans to Cleveland, and Thursday night Trump delivered what was without doubt the strongest speech of his campaign to date.
“America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics,” Trump said near the end of his hour-plus address to an enthusiastic crowd at Quicken Loans Arena. “Remember, all of the people telling you that you can’t have the country you want, are the same people telling you that I wouldn’t be standing here tonight.”
Indeed, in the past year, Trump’s success has confounded the cynics and critics who at first did not take his campaign seriously. The same doubters, including many conservative pundits, subsequently panicked when Trump’s populist campaign caught fire with primary voters who ignored the pundits and voted for the billionaire businessman who promised to put a stop to illegal immigration. Trump took special aim at “elites in media” who he said are “lining up behind the campaign of my opponent.”
Indeed, liberals reacted with alarm to Trump’s speech. Former MSNBC personality Melissa Harris-Perry walked out 10 minutes into his speech, declaring “I left early because I was afraid.” CNN personality Sally Kohn seemed traumatized, moaning on Twitter: “The problem is, this speech seems believable and convincing, especially in a vacuum. I’m scared.” On NBC, former Bush aide Nicolle Wallace announced, “The Republican Party that I worked for for two decades died in this room tonight.”
Of course, the GOP couldn’t beat Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012, and none of the regular Republican candidates could beat Trump for the nomination this year, so what were the chances that a Nicolle Wallace-approved Republican could have defeated Hillary Clinton this year? . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator. What frightens so many elitists about Donald Trump, I believe, is that his views represent the non-elite majority of Americans. Nicolle Wallace attended Cal-Berkeley (Class of ’94) and got her graduate degree at Northwestern University. She got hired by the Bush family in 1999, married a Bush staffer, and has spent her entire adult life among the Republican Party elite, looking down her snooty nose at the rest of us. Nicolle Wallace despises ordinary Americans quite as thoroughly as any liberal elitist despises ordinary Americans.

To hell with such establishment snobbery, and good riddance to Bushism.




 


Category: Donald Trump, Fear and Loathing at the Republican National Convention, Media Bias

He’s Not Hunter S. Thompson, But He’ll Do Just Fine

Posted on | July 22, 2016 | 4 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

Don Surber was kind enough to send me a galley copy of his Trump The Press. thus demonstrating that in some cases, friendship does outweigh political differences. I have to say, while I am none too enthusiastic about Donald Trump, Don’s book is a marvelous thumb in the eye of the punditry and the press, most of whom treated the Republican nominee as a bad joke who couldn’t possibly win the nomination – until he did. Austin Bay beat me to the punch and said a lot of the things I was going to say; he is entirely correct that Don’s book is an outstanding first history of the campaign, and a wonderfully easy read to boot. The Kindle edition hits the airwaves on Monday, but you can pre-order (at $2.99, it’s a hell of a good deal) or you can get the dead tree edition right now. Either way, you ought to read it.

It took me longer than I thought it would, but I did manage to finish Jean Larteguy’s The Praetorians, which is every bit as depressing a book as you’d expect, considering that it’s about a group of French paratroop officers at the tail end of the Algerian War. Things I’d forgotten since I originally read the book in the 1980s: the entire novel is told in flashbacks, there’s a horrifying scene between Captains Mahmoudi and Esclavier toward the end which is almost too perfect a metaphor for the political subplot of the book, and at least one character dies after losing his faith. Depressing, but worth reading.

Jennifer Pournelle’s Outies is arguably a better book than its prequel by her dad and Larry Niven, despite some whining by marginally literate reviewers. There are references throughout the book to not only the previous two Motie novels, but also King David’s Spaceship, which is very pertinent to the plot. Ms. Pournelle’s storytelling style is different from her father’s, and the characters aren’t as fully developed as they might have been had Niven been involved, but this tale of political skulduggery and anthropology on the fringe of the Second Empire is an interesting one, and I think it’s worth the money.

The Year’s Best Military And Adventure SF 2015 is the second such anthology released by Baen edited by David Ashfarirad, and while I didn’t catch the first one, this one’s pretty good. Many of the stories are from the David Drake tribute anthology Onward, Drake!, including Hank Davis’ sinister yet amusing “The Trouble With Telepaths”, but the other stories are mostly good. I would rate this as being every bit as good as the There Will Be War anthologies, except without the nonfiction parts.

Finally (speaking of David Drake), there’s a new RCN novel out, Death’s Bright Day, in which the dashing young naval officer Daniel Leary gets married – and promptly gets ordered out to solve a problem for…the Alliance’s Fifth Bureau? Fortunately – as usual – he has the help of the Galaxy’s Most Lethal Librarian, Signals Officer Adele Mundy, to say nothing of the crew of the Princess Cecile, and we get some more first-class brain candy to enjoy. Fully in the traditions of the RCN series!

Category: Books, Don Surber

In The Mailbox: 07.21.16

Posted on | July 21, 2016 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Today’s Muslim Horoscopes
EBL: @Nero Fiddles While Twitter Burns
Twitchy: Ten Times Democrats Gave The Nazi Salute Just Like Laura Ingraham


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Stop Speaking English, Foreign Appropriators
American Power: Juice Boxer Ezra Klein Afraid For The First Time In His Life
American Thinker: Trump’s Answer To Black-On-Cop Murder
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Crisis Of Character by Gary J. Byrne
Da Tech Guy: Ted Cruz In Cleveland – If The Choice Is Ambition Or Family, Family Wins
Don Surber: Why Should Anyone Care About These Opinions?
Dustbury: Out Of The Mass Market
Fred On Everything: A Different Take On China – Reflections From A Former Life
Jammie Wearing Fools: Judges And Juries Keep Acquitting The Cops #BlackLivesMatter Calls Racist
Joe For America: Kansas Eliminates Income Tax, Makes $85 Million, Sees Jobs Soar
JustOneMinute: I May Never Like Ted Cruz, But…
Pamela Geller: Devout Brazilian Muslims Declare Loyalty To ISIS In South America’s First Public Declaration, Weeks Ahead Of The Olympics
Shark Tank: Marco Rubio Praised By GOP While Ted Cruz Is Booed At The RNC
Shot In The Dark: Policies Matter
The Jawa Report: USG Declassifies Shocking 9/11 Details
The Lonely Conservative: Here’s A Video Of The Ted Cruz Speech Everyone Is Talking About
The Political Hat: The Ultimate Tool Of Third Grade White Supremacy? Brownies!
This Ain’t Hell: Combat & Anger – Making Excuses For Murderers
Weasel Zippers: Darwin Award – Protester Attempts To Set Flag On Fire, Ignites Himself And Other Protesters
Megan McArdle: Cruz And Trump Both Lost In Convention Face-Off


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Category: Linkagery

Tumblr Is ‘Basically Worthless’

Posted on | July 21, 2016 | 38 Comments

Every SJW feminist’s favorite social-media/blog platform is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year:

Yahoo is again marking down the value of Tumblr, the social network it purchased for $1.1 billion. In its second quarter earnings, Yahoo wrote down $394 million as a “goodwill impairment charge” and another $87 million as an intangible impairment charge. Last quarter, the company wrote down the value of its social platform by $230 million. “During the second quarter of 2016,” the earnings report reads, “we determined that there were indicators present to suggest that it is more likely than not that the fair value of the Tumblr reporting unit is less than its carrying amount.”

There is something deeply symbolic about this news. The CEO of Yahoo is a woman, Marissa Mayer, an alumna of elite Stanford University, and the dismal failure of Tumblr may put her out of a job:

Following another disappointing earnings report, the Tumblr losses could prove to be the final nail in the coffin of Mayer’s time at Yahoo.
As Quartz put it . . . “When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer bought Tumblr for a cool $US1 billion in 2013, she pledged ‘not to screw it up.’ (Three) years later, it’s become apparent that Yahoo has failed on that promise.”
Investors are waiting to hear about the company’s plans, after Yahoo’s board began soliciting bids from prospective buyers earlier this year.

Another triumph of social justice!




 

Category: Sex Trouble

#RNCinCLE Facts Are RAAAAACIST!

Posted on | July 20, 2016 | 63 Comments

 

CLEVELAND
A typically absurd three-day long “controversy”:

Rep. Steve King is still trying to explain what he meant with his comments earlier in the week in which he initially suggested that “white people” had done more for civilization than any other “subgroup” and later said he meant “Western civilization.”
The Iowa Republican, speaking at a Washington Post event on Wednesday, criticized media coverage of his remarks as lacking the proper context in which he had made them during a panel discussion on MSNBC.
Fellow panelist Charlie Pierce, of Esquire, had said on Monday: “If you’re really optimistic, you can say that this is the last time that old white people will command the Republican Party’s attention, its platform, its public face,” adding, “That hall is wired by loud, unhappy, dissatisfied white people.”
“Now, that’s disparaging a group of people, and ‘old white people’ — can you trade that language out by adding any other group in there as an adjective?” King said Wednesday. . . .
“And by the way, Charlie Pierce is not a young white guy,” King quipped.

The original spark between Pierce and King:

“This ‘old white people’ business does get a little tired, Charlie,” King said. “I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?”
Hayes asked: “Than white people?”
“Than, than Western civilization itself,” King said. “It’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That’s all of Western civilization.”

This is simply a fact of history. You can trace a line of Western culture through millennia from Mesopotamia to Greece to Rome, and then up to Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in the 1400s. From there, via various influences, you arrive at Philadelphia in 1776. This history is a matter of documented fact, not opinion or speculation, and Charles Pierce’s deliberately insulting sneers about “old white people” are what should be truly controversial, rather than anything King said in response.

Does “equality” mean that white people are required to ignore insults? This is the same distorted idea of “social justice” that feminists exploit to claim that they are victims of oppression. Rich girls who attend elite colleges are constantly shrieking about “male privilege” and demanding “safe spaces” to protect them against “microaggressions.”

The whole world must be tilted to one side to accommodate this victim mentality, and it’s the same way with race. Because nobody is ever allowed to say anything bad about any group other than white people, therefore everybody takes turns slagging white people (e.g., “The white race is the cancer of human history,” to quote Susan Sontag) as if no white person in the world ever did anything useful. Yet if anyone ever objects to this slander, as Congressman King did, suddenly it’s a huge controversy.

Just remember, there are 5 A’s in “RAAAAACISM!”





 

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Category: Fear and Loathing at the Republican National Convention

In The Mailbox: 07.20.16

Posted on | July 20, 2016 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
Louder With Crowder: The Top Five Reasons You Can NOT Vote Hillary Clinton
EBL: #FreeStacy #FreeMilo #F*ck Twitter
Michelle Malkin: Who Gets Absolute Moral Authority?
Twitchy: “Honestly, Go To Hell” -Lefty Media Outlets Attack Tiffany Trump’s Convention Speech


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Some Links & News For July 20
American Power: Geert Wilders Endorses Donald Trump At “Gays For Trump” RNC Party
American Thinker: Republican Primaries Stolen By Democrats
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Ice Station Nautilus by Rick Campbell
Da Tech Guy: Apparently $TWTR And @Safety Believe Feminists Are Weak And Fragile Women
Don Surber: Second Night Of RNC Was A Guilty Pleasure
Dustbury: There’s Always Someone More Useless
Fred On Everything: Jewish Decline And The Rise of China In The US
Jammie Wearing Fools: Ready for Hillary! Pennsylvania Democrat Delegate Shoots Her Husband
Joe For America: Sheriff Clarke Obliterates CNN Reporter On Anti-Police Rhetoric
JustOneMinute: Ted Cruz On Deck
Pamela Geller: LA Times Suggests Military Coup Against President Trump
Shark Tank: Immigration Reform Could Play Big Role In Congressional Race That’s Leaning Republican
Shot In The Dark: The Little Monetary Fund That Cried “Doom!”
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – Don’t Drink With White People
The Lonely Conservative: So, What Are You Doing For The RNC Trump Coronation?
The Political Hat: Perpetual College Living And The Marxist Dream
This Ain’t Hell: “Source” – Baton Rouge Murderer Caught The PTSD
Weasel Zippers: Trump Reportedly Will Purge Government Of Obama Appointees
Megan McArdle: Republicans Can’t Praise Trump, So They Bash Clinton


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Category: Linkagery

#RNCinCLE Legion of the Banned

Posted on | July 20, 2016 | 14 Comments

 

CLEVELAND
The biggest news out of the Republican National Convention today is that the media have finally solved “MelaniaGate,” as the woman responsible for writting Mrs. Trump’s speech Monday has explained how she accidentally lifted three lines from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech.

The media bias is out of control:

The liberal media’s determination to elect Hillary Clinton to the White House has become blatantly transparent in their coverage of the Republican National Convention here. Anyone who ever doubted that major network news operations are staffed with partisan Democrats needed only have observed the way allegedly “objective” reporters inflated Melania Trump’s opening-night speech into a phony scandal that absorbed hour after hour of coverage. The immediate reaction to Mrs. Trump’s speech was positive, but then someone pointed out uncanny similarities between three sentences in her speech and Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech at the Democratic National Convention. The media went into hysterics: “Plagiarism! Scandal!”
This rather minor incident was treated as The Biggest Story in American Political History. The morning shows on the networks — CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS, NBC and ABC — devoted a combined total of 130 minutes to covering “MelaniaGate,” according to an analysis by Mike Ciandella and Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center. CNN alone spent nearly 45 minutes talking about Mrs. Trump’s alleged plagiarism Tuesday morning, as if this was a matter of major national importance.
Why? The most obvious explanation is that the TV networks are run by Democrats who consider it their professional duty to provide negative coverage of Republicans. After a protester from the far-left group Code Pink attempted to stage a disruption Monday inside the Quicken Loans Arena, ABC New reporter Terry Moran claimed this incident was symbolic of what “a dark night” the convention had been. “Donald Trump has been a candidate whose approach has divided many people, drawn protesters,” Moran said, terming the lone protester’s act an illustration of “the kind of unsettled emotions that Donald Trump has sparked in many people around the country.” Of course, kooks from Code Pink — founded in 2002 by radical leftists Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin — have staged disruptive protests in all kinds of settings, but Terry Moran blamed their bizarre antics on Trump. . . .

You can read the rest at The American Spectator.

 

Dutch politician Geert Wilders speaks in Cleveland.

Last night, I went to the “Wake Up” party sponsored by LGBT for Trump and featuring Geert Wilders, Pamela Geller and Milo Yiannopoulis. The banning of Milo from Twitter is major news, and at the party I gave a few quotes to Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed about the Trump era:

Taking the scene in was Robert Stacy McCain, a longtime conservative activist and journalist who is in town covering the convention for the American Spectator, he said, and who has also been banned by Twitter. For McCain, this party was emblematic of the new order under Trump: a rejection of 2000s-era Republican moderate-conservative coalition politics.
“The failure of Bushism has made this happen,” McCain said. “You have gay libertarians and white nationalists, frankly, who are on the same side.”
“People who are marginalized on the right during the Bush years have sort of formed an ad hoc coalition,” McCain said.

Perhaps I should have added, “And it’s about damned time, too.”





 

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Category: Fear and Loathing at the Republican National Convention

In The Mailbox: 07.19.16

Posted on | July 19, 2016 | 11 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Resisting Arrest In Australia – “Get Your Hand Off My Penis!”
Michelle Malkin: Jamiel Shaw, Sr. – An American Patriot’s Voice At The RNC
Twitchy: Whoa – Alaska Delegation Challenges RNC’s Vote Count


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #10 – The Ghostbusters Episode
American Power: Patricia Smith – “I Blame Hillary Clinton Personally For The Death of My Son”
American Thinker: How Democrats Steal Elections
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – And After The Fire by Lauren Belfer
Da Tech Guy: Baldilocks – The Great Outing
Don Surber: Paul Ryan – The Next Eric Cantor?
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, #546
Fred On Everything: Walter Williams, Catholics, The Projects, And Schooling For Blacks – Something Is Wrong Somewhere
Jammie Wearing Fools: GQ “Journalist” On Pat Smith – “I Would Like To Beat Her To Death”
Joe For America: California Dumping Fresh Water Into The Ocean During Drought To Protect Bait Fish
JustOneMinute: Holding On For A Hero
Pamela Geller: RNC Live Coverage – Protesters Face Off, Throwing Bags Of Urine At Police
Shark Tank: Melania Trump’s Speech Destroys Anti-Immigrant Narrative
Shot In The Dark: Nope
STUMP: The Horrors Of Income Inequality – Numbers Check
The Jawa Report: Ministry Of Boobies – Die, Whitey! Die!
The Lonely Conservative: I Guess An Explanation Is Due
The Political Hat: Labor Secretary Calls Out The Brownshirts
This Ain’t Hell: It’s Called Principles
Weasel Zippers: Prosecutors Of Officers Accused In Freddie Gray Case Face Calls For Disbarment
Megan McArdle: Convention Ruckus Gives Republicans A Clear Choice


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