The Other McCain

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

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | June 26, 2015 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

“I found your problem,” the plumber held forth his hand, palm up. Opening, the crystals vaporized on meeting the air.
“And where were these. . .crystals?” asked the wizard.
“Under the charcoal clogging the drain in the middle of the figure in the corner.”
“Show me.”
The crystals billowed by the time the plumber got to the middle of the pentagram. The wizard threw the knife straight for the heart, as the spell required.
The knife bounced off the chainmail under the plumber’s shirt, and he turned: “Fool! Last night I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express!”

via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction

In The Mailbox: 06.25.15 (Late SCOTUScare Gnashing Of Teeth Edition)

Posted on | June 26, 2015 | 7 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
A View from the Beach: JSF Ski Jump Takeoff
EBL: Democrat Racists
Michelle Malkin: Holy Hypocrisy And Hot Air
Twitchy: Gawker Calls Bristol Palin’s Pregnancy Announcement “A Great Argument For Abortion”


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Donald Trump Under Fire For “Mexican Rapist” Comment, Doubles Down
American Thinker: Keep The Confederate Flag Flying
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Secrets Of State by Matthew Palmer
Conservatives4Palin: The Politics of the Sudden Crusade Against the Confederate Flag
Don Surber: Numbers Backfire On Race-Baiting
Jammie Wearing Fools: Barack “Get In Their Faces” Obama Can’t Handle Being Heckled By Transgender Illegal In “His” House
Joe For America: America Is Showing Its Redneck, And It’s Outstanding!
JustOneMinute: So What About That Confederate Battle Flag?
Pamela Geller: Ramadan In China – At Least 18 Killed In Jihadi Attack On Police HQ
Protein Wisdom: The Rule Of Law Is Dead, Long Live The Rule Of Philosopher Kings
Shot In The Dark: Hipster Gets Vapors, Throws Snit
STUMP: Public Pensions – Go Tell The Actuaries
The Gateway Pundit: Top Democrat, Who May Serve Prison Time For His Role In IRS Scandal, Calls On Congress To End Investigation
The Jawa Report: Attention Twitter User @aljunoob3, aljunoob-media.com
The Lonely Conservative: SCOTUS Message – If You’re Going To Violate The Law Go Big
This Ain’t Hell: Fireworks And Veterans
Weasel Zippers: At VA Hospital In Tampa, Rats Falling Through The Ceiling And Roaches In Patients’ Food
Megan McArdle: Insurance May Not Save Lives, But It Saves Money
Mark Steyn: The Robed Regents Have Pronounced!


Terrible Swift Sword (Centennial History of the Civil War Book 2)

Category: Linkagery

Feminist Tumblr: Spot the Error

Posted on | June 26, 2015 | 19 Comments

Hint: Collectivism!

“The only proof that I, as a feminist, do not hate men, should be the fact that I don’t kill, rape and beat them. The mere fact that I only rebel against my oppressor with my words, should be enough to show that I have compassion and are not motivated by hatred
“While men kill, rape and beat women, on a systematic, social, economical and cultural level, but people still doubt if they hate us, so much that any rebellion against them must surely be hatred.
“Maybe men are telling us something we don’t know? Maybe we should hate you, and that is why you cannot fathom that our words are not motivated by hatred.”

Another feminist then added:

“Why do men rape, murder, beat us, but never have to say they don’t hate women?”

Men (collectively) do these terrible things to women (collectively) “on a systematic, social, economical and cultural level.” This got more than 16,000 notes in a month on Tumblr. and reminds me of a Pink Floyd song, “Us and Them.”

How is it that collective hatred masquerades as “progressive”? Why is individual responsibility so hard to understand?





 

Category: Sex Trouble

Elections Matter, But They Don’t Really “Matter” Matter, Do They?

Posted on | June 25, 2015 | 45 Comments

by Smitty

. . .or: “Roberts: your prone position in infamy is assured.”

So, conservatives: are we whipped? The only silver lining I can see is that Her Majesty can’t use SCOTUScare as a rallying cry leading up to her coronation. If the threat of a JEB nomination and a repeat of 1992 weren’t so dire, any of this might seem meaningful.

Increasingly, it seems like a Convention of States, or bust.

Category: Uncategorized

You Want To Whine About Being Offended?
Here, Let Me Give You Something To Whine About

Posted on | June 25, 2015 | 108 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


Apropos of Stacy’s post on the attempt to shove the Confederate flag down the memory hole, Michael Z. Williamson and his friends have some suggestions for a replacement flag guaranteed to offend just about everybody, but especially the members of the pro-slavery, pro-segregation Democratic party.

Also, some clever fellow has introduced a petition to strip former Senator and Klansman Robert Byrd’s name from everything.

If you want to actually buy a Confederate flag, if for no better reason than Amazon, Wal-Mart, Mitt Romney and other bien pensants think you shouldn’t have one, Cooter (Ben Jones) can fix you up. Or you can examine the fine selection at the Ruffin Flag Company of Georgia.

On the other hand, Comrade, if you prefer Officially Approved Symbols, Amazon can fix you up with merchandise commemorating that great (National) Socialist regime led by Chancellor Hitler. Meanwhile, Walmart can fix you up with iconography of that racist murdererrevolutionary hero Che Guevara!

Mychal Massie has an opinion on the subject, and so does Zo Rachel. Also also, Allen West has some surprising news regarding the slain Charleston pastor’s opinion of the flag.


Apologies for the lack of linkagery this morning, but I spent most of the morning and afternoon at the VA here in Las Vegas dealing with some unexpected bleeding. All’s well, and things should be back to normal tomorrow.


The Coming Fury (Centennial History of the Civil War)

Category: Allen West, Culture, Linkagery, Racism

A Dangerous Precedent

Posted on | June 24, 2015 | 155 Comments

The rush to ban display and sale of the Confederate flag in the wake of last week’s shooting in Charleston should cause concern for any person intelligent enough to understand how such precedents, once established, are often used to justify further aggression by Cultural Marxists.

They often argue by analogy, saying This Offensive Thing is exactly like That Historic Atrocity in order to justify the suppression of anything that can be deemed “offensive.” In confrontations with the Cultural Marxist, therefore, we are never arguing merely about the point in controversy — e.g., gay marriage or the Confederate flag — but we are always aware that ceding the immediate point will embolden them to some further demand because, after all, Progress must always march forward.

Whatever it is the Left is arguing against will predictably be compared to the Holocaust — or slavery, or “McCarthyism” — and disagreeing with the Left thereby makes you a Nazi Who Wants to Kill Six Million Jews.

We have to beware of ceding ground to this kind of sophistic argument, because progressives always find in each victory some “principle” that they will then leverage in arguing for their next demand. The Confederate flag is offensive and therefore must be banned and, once we acquiesce to that demand, what will be demanded next? Will feminists demand that Gone With the Wind be censored because of Rhett Butler’s “marital rape” of Scarlett? Certainly the same people who demand that the Confederate flag be prohibited as contraband will not prevent the suppression of Gone With the Wind. And exactly how much of American culture could be similarly banned? Where is the ultimate limit of this censorship? What about the pin-up girls painted on the side of World War II bombers? What about depictions of homosexuals in movies and literature? Will LGBT activists censor The Silence of the Lambs because of the negative portrayal of the transvestite killer “Buffalo Bill”?

“Oh, Stacy, you’re just being alarmist,” you may say.

Dismiss my concerns as the special-pleading of a Southerner, and tell me that I’m making a silly “slippery slope” argument. Disregard the reality that there is a slope in our culture, and that we do seem to be sliding down it at an accelerating pace. Go back 20 or 30 years, and try to think how few people in 1985 or 1995 imagined the point in the Culture War at which we find ourselves now. Certainly two or three decades ago I did not foresee, inter alia, ObamaCare or same-sex marriage, nor could I have imagined then the state of U.S. foreign policy now.

Really: Suppose that in 1990, someone had told you two years into the presidency of George H.W. Bush that the governor of Arkansas would defeat him in the next election, eventually being impeached for having sex with a White House intern, and yet survive that scandal. Imagine, in 1990, if anyone had told you that the Arkansas governor’s wife would someday be elected senator from New York — ?!?!? — then be appointed as Secretary of State by the man who had defeated her for the Democratic nomination to be president in 2008. What would you have said if someone had told you all that in June 1990?

You’re crazy! That could never happen!

And no one then would have imagined that Wal-Mart in 2015 would be prohibiting the sale of the Confederate flag, either.

Well, I doubt I’ll be alive in 2040, but I shudder to think what kind of America my children and grandchildren will be living in, 25 years from now, if things keep going in the direction they’re going now, at an ever-accelerating speed. Conservatives must either pick a fight we can win, or else make up our minds that the next time progressive pick a fight — no matter what it is about — we’re going defeat them at all hazards. Every time progressives win, they become stronger and America becomes weaker. Unless we can find some way to counterattack and force the Left to fight on the defensive, there will be no stopping this cultural and political avalanche short of tyranny or anarchy.

 

Category: Culture

In The Mailbox: 06.23.15

Posted on | June 23, 2015 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


If you see a post on another blog you think ought to be linked, or have one of your own you want hyped, e-mail the link to me.


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Don’t Focus On The Perpetrators Of Heinous Acts
Doug Powers: Ted Cruz’ AP Halo Looks A Lot Different From Obama’s AP Halo
Twitchy: Chris Hayes Has A Suggestion On What Should Replace The Confederate Flag, And It’s Just As Dumb As You’d Expect
Stacey Dash: 33,400 Reasons Why Obama Can’t Recognize Hollywood’s Gun Hypocrisy


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Democrat Governor Ronnie Musgrove Refused To Take Down Mississippi’s Confederate State Flag In 2001
American Thinker: Liberal Democrats Don’t Like The Military Or Support National Security
BLACKFIVE: Range 15 Final Update
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin Speaks Out On Shameful House GOP Leadership, ObamaTrade
Don Surber: Raisin Case Shows The Futility Of The Courts
Jammie Wearing Fools: Black Blogger “Mr. Talented” Found Hanging In NYC, Wanted To Start Civil War
Joe For America: NYC Cops Attacked By Crowd
JustOneMinute: Ongoing Evidence Of My Ineducability
Pamela Geller: German Police Arrest Al Jazeera Journalist In Berlin
Protein Wisdom: When POTUS Deliberately Trolls The American People
Shot In The Dark: Dear Karl Rove
STUMP: Down With The Struggle – Survey Of Current Dumbassery
The Gateway Pundit: Walmart Still Selling Che Guevara Items Glorifying Racist Communist Thug
The Jawa Report: Imperial Good News – Jihadists Khaled Sharrouf And Mohamed Elomar Droned
The Lonely Conservative: Power Outage
This Ain’t Hell: MG Pittard Accused Of Steering Contracts To Classmates
Weasel Zippers: Hillary Clinton Refusing To Talk About ’92 Clinton-Gore Confederate Flag Campaign Button
Megan McArdle: Amazon Pays Writers To Keep Readers’ Attention
Mark Steyn: Danish Pastry Past Sell-By Date


Shop Amazon Fashion – 30-50% Bridal Lingerie

Category: Linkagery

Media Synchronicity and Confederate Thoughts on an Era of Elite Corruption

Posted on | June 23, 2015 | 57 Comments

Confederate, Confederate, Confederate, Confederate — the word is all over the headlines today, which was nothing that would have seemed a logical consequence of Dylann Roof’s shooting spree last week in South Carolina. What has happened, we may surmise, is that some activists, politicians and journalists reached an unofficial consensus that this was one of those “Do Something” moments we see from time to time: “This terrible tragedy requires that we Do Something!”

You notice there is no obvious cause-and-effect connection between the triggering event (Roof’s mass murder in Charleston) and the media-orchestrated reaction (the demand to remove the Confederate flag from a monument at the state capitol). Dylann Roof’s Internet “manifesto” contained this paragraph:

The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?

“OMG! Google and Wikipedia inspired a hate crime!” said nobody.

What the media zoomed in on was “Council of Conservative Citizens,”and why? Because the media are partisan Democrats and the CCC can be linked to Republicans. “OMG! Republicans inspired a hate crime!”

It’s that simple, really. Andrew Breitbart used the phrase “Democrat-Media Complex” to describe this problem, wherein allegedly objective journalists operate as de facto partisan propagandists and decisions about news are actually decisions about politics.

This synchronization between the news media and the Democrat Party, which has been a problem for decades, became far worse in the 21st century, because (a) Democrats went into all-out panic mode during the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency, and (b) George Soros and others funded the development of an interlocking series of “progressive” non-profit organizations, including Media Matters, to shift American politics leftward. Because nearly everyone in the major media is a partisan Democrat — honestly, what percentage of people employed by CNN or the New York Times have ever voted Republican? — the Bush era was a nightmare to them. In the minds of these “objective” journalists, they have a professional and moral obligation to make sure that no Republican is ever again elected President of the United States.

Of course, they don’t think about this in such direct terms, because they never actually have to think about it at all. In the newsroom at NBC or the Washington Post or any other “mainstream” news organization (where 90% of journalists always vote Democrat), this kind of bias is so ubiquitous that no one thinks of it as bias.

They don’t even think, really — their leftist reactions are an autonomous reflex, like blinking or respiration. Go ask them why they’re liberals, and they can’t really explain it. As a matter of fact, they may not even realize they are liberals, because in a room full of Bolsheviks or Maoists, the democratic socialist is a “moderate” of sorts, and America’s newsrooms are increasingly staffed by totalitarian fanatics.

This reality — that the major news media have become partisan organizations producing Democrat Party propaganda — is the necessary background to understanding both the Charleston massacre and the reaction to the massacre. Go read the entirety of Dylann Roof’s manifesto and notice that not once does he mention the Confederate flag. So the connection between Roof’s crimes and the Confederate flag is certainly not as clear-cut as the media would have you believe. However, notice something else: Why did Dylann Roof turn to the Council of Conservative Citizens for information about black-on-white crime?

Oh, he was watching media coverage of the Trayvon Martin story and became curious. And do you suppose that any major news organization — CNN, ABC, New York Times, Associated Press, etc. — has ever produced any in-depth examination of black-on-white crime in America? No.

Why not? Some questions are never answered because some questions are never asked, you see. It is possible to imagine how a responsible news organization could have produced a report about race and crime in America that would have turned up in the Google search that Dylann Roof did. It is possible that such a report might have directed Roof’s attention to authors like Thomas Sowell (The Quest for Cosmic Justice) and Shelby Steele (White Guilt) to seek an understanding of these issues in ways that don’t provoke irrational spasms of hatred.

There are many things we could imagine, including public schools that actually teach history and political science, but we can only imagine them because the political leadership of the Republican Party lacks imagination. The GOP is run by corrupt and selfish people whose only concern is to enhance their own power and prestige, and how to leverage their power and prestige to obtain cash.

Karl Rove cares about exactly one thing: “When do I get paid?”

That’s the real bottom line. Whereas the Democrat Party is run by people who actually share the same beliefs as the people who vote for the Democrat Party, the GOP is run by people who do not remotely give a fuck about GOP voters. Karl Rove hates Republican voters. All elite GOP operatives share a profound disdain for the party’s grassroots electoral base. Mitch McConnell? Isn’t it obvious how much he is ashamed of the people in Kentucky who elected him to the Senate?

The GOP is the Party of Money, and the guys who pay big money to control the Republican Party hire people like Karl Rove whose only concern is how to get paid more money. As a result, there is a very short-sighted concern with the day-to-day poll numbers and more or less trivial “message” items, so that there is no larger vision, no deeper interest in the problems affecting the lives of the American people, and then here you have a drug-addicted dropout like Dylann Roof who goes in search of background about the Trayvon Martin story and what he finds is a dangerous “racial awareness” rather than political enlightenment. Consider this line from Roof’s manifesto:

To take a saying from my favorite film, “Even if my life is worth less than a speck of dirt, I want to use it for the good of society.”

According to Mother Jones magazine, this is “a reference to the 2011 ultra-violent Japanese crime drama, Himizu“:

The movie, adapted from a popular manga by director Sion Sono, is set in tsunami-hit Japan in 2011, and follows the story of two teenagers — unloved, unwanted — struggling to survive amid the chaos wrought by the earthquake, and corruption. It’s a twisted and dark coming-of-age story (at some points a romance) . . .

How strange that a young white man in South Carolina should find inspiration for mass murder from such a source, when he might otherwise have been directed to a far more appropriate source.

“The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.”

So wrote Gen. Robert E. Lee in a September 1870 letter to his former staffer, Lt. Col. Charles Marshall. When we consider how many reasons Lee might have had to despair, and see that he instead sought to encourage hope, how can anyone who would claim inspiration from the general’s honorable example permit himself to lose hope? Bishop A.M. Randolph once observed of Lee:

“As a thinker and a man of intellectual powers little has been said of him, and, yet, intellectual power, associated with moral purity, are the true springs of greatness. General Lee was a thinker of broad sympathies, deep insight, and of philosophical grasp, which would have made him, had his vocation called him to the field of literature, one of the wisest writers of his time.”

Those “broad sympathies” certainly had no resonance in the depraved mind of Dylann Roof, who quite likely never knew anything of the “intellectual power” and “moral purity” of Lee. What we now behold is an entire generation of young Americans — North and South, white and black — who have been deprived of a legacy to which they are rightful heirs. They have been systematically cheated of their patrimony by a process of corruption that has affected every aspect of our culture.

Our schools teach nothing of value, the news media is full of shallow propaganda, and the popular entertainment produced by Hollywood is a sewer of immorality. Nowhere can the troubled youth find inspiration toward the kind of courageous patience, Christian faith and manly determination that Robert E. Lee exemplified.

Does anyone in the Republican Party understand this? I fear not, but as Stonewall Jackson said, “Never take counsel of your fears.”

Remain calm amid crisis. Heed not the voice of discouragement. News that Jeb Bush is leading Republican presidential polls for 2016 prompted Ace of Spades to mutter that he is “really running out of hope,” and who isn’t? Recent years have wrought so much destruction in our society and culture that many have lost both reason and faith. President Obama promised Hope and Change, but has instead produced a tsunami of hateful savagery, degenerate perversion and frantic insanity. Every day, the headlines bring us news of some bizarre outrage.

The intellectual, cultural and political elite of American society are determined to destroy American society, and the influence of this decadent elite now pervades every institution of our culture. Certainly, any intelligent observer must be pessimistic about the future of a nation that has been cursed with such depraved and wicked “leaders.”

We must nevertheless resist the temptation to despair. We must each determine to do as much as we can to resist this onslaught of satanic perversity, to expose the cowardice and corruption of those dishonest Republican “leaders” who are paid by the party’s money men to assist Democrats in the destruction of our civilization. We live in a dark, disturbed and depressing age, yet we cannot take counsel of our fears, nor can we forget the history that teaches us to hope.

If you ever begin to weaken, pray to God for more strength.

If you ever begin to fear, pray to God for more courage.





 

Category: Culture, History, Intellectuals, Media Bias, Racism
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