The Other McCain

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

Fundraising Idea: RINO Scalps

Posted on | April 4, 2015 | 32 Comments

by Smitty via Hot Air

USA Today:

“The grass roots in Arizona want McCain to retire or be replaced by a conservative in the primary next year,” said Ken Cuccinelli, the former Virginia attorney general who now is president of the Senate Conservatives Fund.

Glad that Cuccinelli continues to do the good work of recovering this country from Progressivism. Further down the article:

Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., who represents a conservative East Valley district, appears to be these groups’ top choice, but Salmon has not publicly made any move to suggest he would seriously consider taking on McCain. Most political watchers in Arizona are not expecting him to run.

State Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City, has said she is contemplating a U.S. Senate campaign, and supporters have started a PAC to encourage her to run. However, national groups have yet to embrace her.

This blog will plant itself firmly in the “Anyone but The IFNAG“. Request everybody link and spread this post. Let’s nationalize the AZ Senate race, and let the warhorse know it’s Long Since Time For The Pasture. Maybe the various PACs for these candidates can sell commemorative RINO scalps as a fundraiser. Conservatives around the country would contribute to retiring the old fart, I reckon.

Category: John McCain, Politics, Republicans

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | April 3, 2015 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

“God has an email address?” asked Ernest, looking skyward.
“Wut?” mumbled dad.
“It’s an @ symbol in the sky,” but it was too far for Ernest’s finger to click.
Dad warmed to the moment on their camping trip. “You can think of prayer as God’s in-box.”
“He sure must get Him some spam.”
“Yeah, but, see, when it’s all your creation, even the frustrating bits about pallets of riches hung up in customs are all good.”
“So, if I sent God a prayer-email about getting a new XBox for Christmas, you think that He might forward that to you?”

via Darleen Click

Category: Friday Fiction, humor

‘Recovery’ in the Obama Age

Posted on | April 3, 2015 | 31 Comments

Democrats discovered they can reduce the official unemployment rate by driving people out of the work force altogether:

The number of Americans 16 years and older who did not participate in the labor force–meaning they neither had a job nor actively sought one in the last four weeks–rose from 92,898,000 in February to 93,175,000 in March, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That is the first time the number of Americans out of the labor force has exceeded 93 million.
Also from February to March, the labor force participation rate dropped from 62.8 percent to 62.7 percent, matching a 37-year low.
Five times in the last twelve months, the participation rate has been as low as 62.8 percent; but March’s 62.7 percent, which matches the participation rate seen in September and December of 2014, is the lowest since February of 1978.

(Via Memeorandum.)

 

Category: Economics

Who Are These Creepazoids?

Posted on | April 3, 2015 | 25 Comments

Nine times out of 10, the stuff I read on feminist blogs is either so intellectually dishonest as to inspire laughter — or indignation that anyone, man or woman, could take it seriously. Feminist writing generally ranges from the melodramatic to the paranoid to the hateful to the deliberately deceptive, and 90 percent of it I can debunk, dismiss or ridicule, depending on my mood and the gravity of the feminist error.

McCain’s Law of Feminism

There are three kinds of feminism:

1. Feminism that is wrong;
2. Feminism that is crazy;
and
3. Feminism that is both wrong and crazy.

When in doubt, it’s usually Number Three.

Despite the predictable craziness and wrongness of feminism, there are nonetheless legitimate sources of grievance, and today I read a woman’s account of a creepazoid’s pickup attempt on the streets of London. This wasn’t your typical problem, i.e., The Beta With Bad Game, a 21st-century parable of male failure I’ve heard or witnessed over and over again. It wasn’t just that this loser had no lines, no style and no social awareness. Rather, he was aggressive to the point of menacing:

A man approached me as I was about to walk into a supermarket. He came very close, invading my personal space. He wasn’t what you would call intimidating; he was average build and a little taller than 5’6. Even still, alarm bells started to ring. He asked for my name, so I gave a fake one. . . .
He asked about what I did for a living, where I studied, what I studied, what food I liked, if I was a local to the area. Throughout the whole conversation I kept my answers short, looked down and kept attempting to back away.

HELLO? DON’T EVER DO THIS, GUYS!

It’s like these dudes have been raised by wolves or something. Lacking social awareness, they don’t recognize their own deficiency. They can’t read signals and don’t know how to deal with rejection.

Look, I don’t want to give away any closely guarded secrets here, but the Cold Hit — the unsolicited approach to a total stranger — is one of the most difficult feats of romantic pursuit. Knowing that the odds are overwhelmingly against success, if you make such a play, you do so with the expectation of rejection. You get shot down, you apologize for the intrusion and move on. And you are never — let me repeat, never — going to pull off the Cold Hit the way that dude played it. If that’s the best you can do, don’t even bother leaving the house.

“He came very close, invading my personal space . . . alarm bells started to ring.” Is there some sort of Creepazoid Academy where these losers learn these bad moves? Did this guy watch a training video, “How to Act Like a Psychopath”? But wait, you haven’t heard the worst of it yet:

Naturally, when I backed away he stepped closer, once again invading my personal space. As expected he asked for my number, telling me he’d miss-call me, which meant he would call me then and there to check that I had given him the correct number. It meant I couldn’t give a fake number without him being aware. When I finally mustered up the strength to escape go into the shop I’d been was heading into and escape, he said, “You’re not confident,” and “We’ll work on that”.  I was floored.

HELLO? DON’T EVER DO THIS, GUYS!

Idiots this clueless need to be locked up somewhere. Again, I don’t want to give away any closely guarded secrets, but you don’t walk up to a total stranger and demand her phone number as if it were your God-given right to have it. If the “How to Act Like a Psychopath” training video you watched at the Creepazoid Academy said you could win with bad moves like this, guess what? THEY LIED TO YOU.

Some of these “Pickup Artist” idiots like Julien Blanc — an ugly pustule on the backside of humanity — actually get paid to give Bad Advice to Losers, because losers are (a) desperate for advice and (b) too clueless to tell the difference between good advice and bad advice.

It’s difficult to sympathize with any loser who’d pay Julien Blanc a nickel for his advice, but when you see stories of guys making these creepazoid moves, you see why there is no shortage of opportunities to defraud these desperate losers of their money.

What we are witnessing, I believe, is the consequences of a breakdown in the social order. Rates of divorce and illegitimacy have been spiraling upwards for decades, producing many millions of young men who have grown up with the civilizing influence of loving families, without decent male role models, without the advice, discipline and example that fathers should provide young men. Our education system has only worsened these problems. Adults have abandoned their proper authority, so that young people are influenced more by peer pressure than by the responsible expectations of the adults who supervise them. Young people are allowed to wallow in the mire of their own childish impulses, rather than being required to strive for respectability.

It’s like Lord of the Flies, and these uncivilized brutes are never taught even the most basic rudiments of common courtesy, much less the charming manners appropriate to gentlemen.

Whatever else we might say about the creepazoid loser whose approach set alarm bells ringing for this woman in London, he was unspeakably rude. Yet we live in a culture where rudeness is celebrated on TV every night, and the degradation of manners has become so ubiquitous that people no longer have the courage to resist the floodtide of barbarism.

 “Get away from me, you weirdo, before I call the cops.”

Really: You’re standing in front of a supermarket in broad daylight, and an annoying stranger decides he’s got a right to demand your phone number? Humiliate that son of a bitch.

Maybe the decline of civilization has reached the point where this kind of creepazoid act is commonplace and women feel they must tolerate the menacing behavior of barbarous scum. Alas, the feminist offers a misleading explanation:

This is rape culture in action. The notion that my body is to be objectified wherever I am; that men are entitled to it if they want and that to say no is put yourself in danger. I know this because, out of my own experience and of the experiences of those close to me, those who say no to these men are verbally abused, followed home, and/or assaulted.

You can read the rest of that. It’s both crazy and wrong, but the problem is that so few adults are willing teach what’s sane and right.

 

Category: Sex Trouble

Death Toll 147 After Muslim Terrorists Target Christians at University in Kenya

Posted on | April 3, 2015 | 30 Comments

The latest atrocity in the global jihad:

Up to 150 people have been murdered by masked al-Shabaab terrorists who stormed a Kenyan university and shot and beheaded Christians in the worst attack in the country in 17 years.
The group raided the Garissa University College campus shortly after 5am local time yesterday, overwhelming guards and murdering people they suspected of being a Christian.
The death toll rose to 147 last night and the 13-hour siege ended. A total of 79 were injured and 587 were led to safety.
Most of those killed were students but two police officers, one soldier and two watchmen are among the dead. . . .
The attack is believed to be the worst terrorist attack on Kenyan soil since the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998 which killed more than 200 people.
The terrorists stuck mid-way through Holy Week, the most solemn period in the Christian calendar. Last night, the Christian students were planning to celebrate the Last Supper in preparation for Good Friday.

(Via Memeorandum.) Islamic violence continues daily around the world. Most of this violent savagery goes unnoticed by the major U.S. media. Pamela Geller is one of the few sources who monitors the global jihad regularly. A few of her recent headlines:

UNHRC Confirms 200 Kidnapped Christian Girls
in Nigeria Murdered by Devout Muslim Group

Muslim mob attacks Sikh Temple in the UK

Two New York Muslim Women Arrested in Bomb Plot

No Insurance Available for Jewish Kindergartens in Belgium

Wait — what was that last headline?

A Belgian insurance company has refused to insure a Jewish kindergarten in Brussels.
The company claimed the risk of a terror attack on the European Jewish Association-run institution was too high.
EJA General Director Rabbi Menachem Margolin called on all European governments and heads of European Union institutions to provide security to all Jewish institutions that would satisfy insurance companies, and establish an alternative insurance mechanism that would secure any institution that might fall victim to anti-Semitic attacks.

Read the whole thing. This is both insane and unnecessary.

Sixty years after the Allies defeated Hitler, why should European Jews have to live with this kind of fear every day? Why should Christian students in Kenya have to fear being shot or beheaded by a gang of bloodthirsty Muslim fanatics? And why should Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative have to fight court battles — and media smear tactics — to run its advertisements in Philadelphia?

On Wednesday SEPTA buses first began rolling with ads the transit agency was forced to run after losing a legal battle on First Amendment grounds.
“Islamic Jew-hatred: It’s in the Qu’ran,” state the ads, which feature a picture of Hitler.
Eighty-four articulated buses operating out of three depots will carry the ads, SEPTA said.
That message doesn’t sit well with local Muslims.
“That’s wrong,” said Amira Muhammed, 30, of Northeast Philly, of the ad, after she got off a Route 33 bus carrying the new advertisement. “That’s not in the Koran. It says we have to respect other religions.”
Muhammed was shocked to learn that SEPTA lost a legal battle with the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which paid $30,000 for ad space, and that SEPTA is required to run the advertisements.
“What we need to do is go in front of City Hall and say that this needs to stop,” she said.

You can’t stop the truth, Ms. Muhammed. The Koran does advocate violence against Jews, against Christians, against everyone who refuses to bow down to the hateful doctrines of the ignorant murderous “Prophet” for whom you are named.

How Irrational Is ‘Islamophobia’?

The truth is not “hate” and facts are not a “phobia.” Some people just don’t want you to know the truth about Islam and its founder.

“Muhammad was a bloodthirsty polygamous warlord
and also the prophet of a religion that
commands the murder of non-believers.”

All honest and intelligent Americans know this to be true. It is simply a fact of history, and anyone who doesn’t know the truth can read Robert Spencer’s books The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and The Truth About Muhammad. You can read Brigitte Gabrielle’s Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America. You can read Pamela Geller’s Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. No one has an excuse to be ignorant of the truth, nor should any American ever be afraid to speak the truth.

What we need is more courage. I just gave a donation to the American Freedom Defense Initiative and I hope others will do the same.

“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself . . . she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, 1786

 

Category: Atlas Shrugs, Islam, Kenya, Terrorism

How Irrational Is ‘Islamophobia’?

Posted on | April 2, 2015 | 30 Comments

A few headlines today at the Drudge Report:

MUSLIMS TO OUTNUMBER
CHRISTIANS ‘IN 50 YEARS’

REBELS CAPTURE PRESIDENTIAL PALACE IN YEMEN…

Al-Qaida storms jail, frees 300 inmates…

This morning, I quoted a young Canadian feminist blogger who denounced “Islamophobia” as racial prejudice and “baseless hatred” that causes “the suffering of countless victims.” Meanwhile, there is this breaking news:

Two New York City women inspired by ISIS were arrested Thursday for allegedly plotting to set off a bomb, authorities said.
Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, allegedly conspired to prepare an explosive device they planned to detonate in a terror attack in the U.S., according to court documents.
Velentzas and Siddiqui were roommates from Queens. They are expected to appear in federal court in Brooklyn later Thursday afternoon. . . .
“Arrests were made by the JTTF and the NYPD in a national security investigation early this morning in New York City,” John Miller of the NYPD said.

Another headline via Memeorandum:

Al-Shabaab ‘holding many Christians alive’
amid attack on Kenyan university

A “phobia” is by definition an irrational fear, but there is nothing irrational about the fear inspired by Muslim violence.

 They Want to Kill Us All

UPDATE: More breaking news:

What is irrational is any attempt to appease these monsters.




 

Category: Islam, Kenya, Terrorism, Yemen

‘Islamophobia … Baseless Hatred’?

Posted on | April 2, 2015 | 28 Comments

An astonishing phenomenon of the 21st century is the perversely ironic way in which the Information Age has actually increased ignorance. With all the knowledge in the world just a quick Google search away, many people have somehow managed to seal themselves off inside cocoons of confirmation bias, where they only encounter narratives that fit their preconceived personal prejudices. It is not simply a matter of people avoiding opposing opinions, but of filtering out facts in such a way that their worldview becomes wholly unrealistic. Paranoid hostility flourishes inside these online bubbles where kooks cluster, affirming their shared delusions and piling up “evidence” to “prove” their false beliefs to each other. It was while making my rounds in the online lunatic asylum that is Feminist Tumblr that I encountered this 157-word rant:

Islam, like all other religions/ideologies, should remain an open ground for criticism, but to say that Islamophobia is absolutely not related to racial persecution and racism in any way is an oversimplification.
Anyone on this earth could be a Muslim, but it’s the brown and black ones that being attacked and killed for being associated with Islam. Anyone could have some kind of tie to Islam, the ideologies presented in Islam, but it’s the brown men and women, the kids with “Middle Eastern” names, the Sikhs wearing turbans, Hindus wearing traditional attire that are being called “terrorists” at the highest frequency.
Ask an Islamophobic assailant why he hit a Sikh man with his car and he’ll tell you he did it because he hates Islam, he hates terrorists.
Islamophobia has criminalized the brown body, to say that it has nothing to do with racism would be to overlook the suffering of countless victims of such baseless hatred.

Stipulate that concerns about radical Islam do create a certain level of suspicion that is ethnic in nature, and that people may wrongly suspect a Hindu or a Sikh — or a Christian, for that matter — of being Muslim.

Anyone can ask Ali Akbar (a half-Arab/half-black Southern Baptist from Texas) about this kind of confusion. For that matter, you can ask Raheem Kassam, the spokesman for the U.K. Independence Party, who is the child of Pakistani Muslim immigrants, but who is himself a thoroughly secular young Englishman.

This raises the question of whether “Islamophobia” actually exists. The term “phobia” denotes an irrational fear, yet the history of recent decades offers enough rational basis for concern to make the word “Islamophobia” inherently problematic. One may perhaps distinguish between two phenomena — a vigilant concern about dangerous radicalism, on the one hand, and a simple-minded bigotry on the other — but making that distinction does nothing more than to say, “Ignorant people are ignorant.” To say that fair-minded and educated people should condemn ignorant prejudice isn’t controversial. What is controversial is to assert that “Islamophobia” is a more important problem than the actual dangers posed by radical Islam.

The flat statement that “Islamophobia has criminalized the brown body” is a falsehood, and to then throw in “the suffering of countless victims of . . . baseless hatred” as the emotional freight of an argument requires us to ask, “Are the ‘victims’ truly ‘countless’? Where is the evidence of this ‘suffering’?” In order to sustain such claims, it will not do to cite a list of incidents or anecdotes. No one disputes the fact that ignorant hateful people do ignorant hateful things.

What is in dispute is whether “Islamophobia” — specifically, the concern about Islamic terrorism — has generated such a spree of anti-Muslim violence and harassment as to produce “countless victims.”

FACT: Anti-Jewish hate crimes are four times more common than anti-Muslim crimes in the United States.

According to the FBI, Jews were the targets in about 60% of religious-bias incidents in 2013, the most recent year for which complete data is available. By comparison to the 625 anti-Jewish crimes, Muslims were targeted in 135 incidents (13.7%), and Catholics were the third-most commonly targeted group, accounting for 6.1% of such incidents.

Facts matter. We cannot let ourselves to be misled by propaganda, whatever the source or nature of that propaganda may be. When we know the facts, our skeptical curiosity ought to be aroused whenever we encounter tendentious claims. Who is it, we must ask, that deries the “countless victims” of “Islamophobia”?

Here is the profile of the Tumblr blogger who wrote that 157-word rant: Zanab, Nineteen, Female, Ontario, Canada. No rational person desiring information on hate crimes would deliberately seek out the expertise of a Canadian teenager, yet inside the online ideological bubbles of the Information Age, no one bothers to contradict this girl’s claims. If not for my habit of patrolling the weird universe of Feminist Tumblr, you might have no idea how these poisonous seeds of dangerous disinformation are being sown.





 

Category: Islam, Terrorism

BREAKING: Lefties Flock At Poultry Farm, Say Chickens Refusing Event Support ‘A Bigoted Bunch Of Peckers’

Posted on | April 1, 2015 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

Old McDonald had a farm, but it turned out that “E – I – E – I – O” was just so much anti-consonant dog whistle. The trouble began last summer, when Old McDonald brought in some new hens from Amish country, but only hatched recently, when local pagans demanded support for their “Flying Freak Flag Farm” event.
Suddenly, it fell to Mac to explain that these hens had a more traditional notion of getting laid than that.
“Bring them out unto us, that we may know them,” demanded the protesters.
But Mac noted that these pious hens were not scheduled to be plucked for some time to come, and suggested that the protesters go pluck themselves. The protesters, torn between fauxtrage and arousal, finally broke into song:

BONUS: No one seemed to get this gag at the time =>

pic via @hoosierclinger

Category: humor
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