The Other McCain

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

Elegant Reporting in Appalachia

Posted on | January 10, 2014 | 29 Comments

Kevin D. Williamson of National Review traveled to Appalachia — his dateline is Owsley County, Ky. — to write about the kind of poverty no liberal ever describes as “social injustice”:

If the people here weren’t 98.5 percent white, we’d call it a reservation.

Williamson’s article is not merely good reporting, but it is also mighty fine writing. There is too little of this kind of work by conservative journalists. The quick stuff that gets Drudge hits and “moves the needle” politics-wise is the commodity most in demand, along with ponderous punditry and nerdy policy-wonk stuff. We get much less really high-quality writing on the Right because, when you get down to it, there simply is no incentive for it. The Koch brothers aren’t making grants for this kind of stuff:

Like its black urban counterparts, the Big White Ghetto suffers from a whole trainload of social problems, but the most significant among them may be adverse selection: Those who have the required work skills, the academic ability, or the simple desperate native enterprising grit to do so get the hell out as fast as they can, and they have been doing that for decades. As they go, businesses disappear, institutions fall into decline, social networks erode, and there is little or nothing left over for those who remain. It’s a classic economic death spiral: The quality of the available jobs is not enough to keep good workers, and the quality of the available workers is not enough to attract good jobs. These little towns located at remote wide spots in helical mountain roads are hard enough to get to if you have a good reason to be here. If you don’t have a good reason, you aren’t going to think of one.

This is a highly readable way of explaining a highly relevant point that occurs to any intelligent observer who has visited the forlorn and forgotten towns of the American heartland. Entire regions of this country have been undergoing a quiet demographic decline for five decades. Part of the problem — although no one ever dares mention it — is that the advent of the Pill, and with it the onset of the Contraceptive Culture, has deprived small towns and rural farms of their traditional source of vitality. It was always true that the ambitious and aspiring offspring of the heartland were attracted to the big cities. Prior to the 1960s, however, the folks left behind continued to breed large families and thus replenish the basic stock of human resources. And before the arrival of television, the people of the heartland also preserved their own distinct culture, the loss of which Williamson obliquely observes:

Appalachian places have evocative and unsentimental names denoting deep roots: Little Barren River, Coal Pit Road. The name “Cumberland” blankets Appalachian geography — the Cumberland Mountains, the Cumberland River, several Cumberland counties — in tribute to the Duke of Cumberland, who along with the Ulster Scots ancestors of the Appalachian settlers crushed the Young Pretender at the Battle of Culloden.

Culloden! Damn, how many school children in Appalachia know anything at all about Culloden, or even realize that their ancestors were those stout-hearted people, the Scots-Irish?

Politically correct noise about “multiculturalism” has been nothing but an excuse for pandering to politically preferred minorities. Descendants of the Ulster Scots — and for that matter, the descendants of German immigrants — are never given the kind of ethnic cheerleading that our allegedly “diverse” curricula reserve exclusively for non-whites. This was something I noticed nearly 20 years ago when, after researching the National Standards for U.S. History, I remarked that academics proposed to teach Georgia’s children everything about the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire and nothing about the Battle of Chickamauga.

Stripped of any understanding of their own cultural heritage, poor whites are doubly impoverished, and a sort of decadent shame takes hold of them, the moral analogue of the “economic death spiral” Williamson observes in Appalachia. What too often emerges to take the place of an intelligent and decent pride is an ignorant and utterly indecent hate.

This is something I also noticed 20 years ago as a newspaper reporter in north Georgia. If our academic superiors think they will eradicate racism through “enlightened” education, they haven’t paid much attention to the attitudes of young people, many of whom harbor an intensity of racial resentment that would astonish their departed forebears.

What is being lost, really, is the sensibility of bourgeois virtue, and Kevin Williamson captures that decline with lively eloquence:

“Well, you try paying that much for a case of pop,” says the irritated proprietor of a nearby café, who is curt with whoever is on the other end of the telephone but greets customers with the perfect manners that small-town restaurateurs reliably develop. I don’t think much of that overheard remark at the time, but it turns out that the local economy runs on black-market soda the way Baghdad ran on contraband crude during the days of sanctions.
It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum — are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases– reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices. . . .

Fascinating stuff, brilliantly written — read the whole thing.

 

Category: Culture, History, Journalism

The @Maddow Method: MSNBC’s Televised Left-Wing Blog Show

Posted on | January 10, 2014 | 12 Comments

Let’s check the transcript, shall we?

. . . this Koch brothers-affiliated group . . .
. . . these Koch brothers-affiliated state groups . . .
. . . the Koch brothers-connected Florida group . . .
That’s the Koch brothers group . . .
The same Koch brothers group . . .
. . . this Koch brothers-affiliated group . . .
. . . the Koch brothers-affiliated group . . .

Having repeated seven times during this seven-minute segment that the Florida Foundation for Government Accountability (FFGA) is a “Koch brothers group,” Rachel Maddow must be pretty certain about this connection, right? I mean, that’s the main point of the segment, so it must thoroughly documented, right? Wrong:

Given that Koch has zero relationship with FFGA, Maddow based her claims on the fact that Koch has donated risibly small amounts — $40,000 over eight years — to the State Policy Network, and FFGA, which advocated for the Florida law, is a member of the State Policy Network. . . .
So Rachel Maddow’s entire segment was one big lie. Her central premise, that the Florida welfare statute was an initiative of the Koch brothers, was false, and she knew it. She made the whole thing up to fool the low-IQ viewers who form MSNBC’s base.

The actual policy issue at hand — mandatory drug-testing for welfare recipients — might be interesting in its own right, but that’s not enough to qualify it for a seven-minute segment on Maddow’s prime-time show. No, the point of the segment was that the evil right-wing billionaire Koch brothers were responsible for this policy. Except they’re not. However, this idea of a ginormous nationwide conspiracy funded by the Kochs is all the rage among left-wing bloggers and so that’s the story — a lie.

Live long enough, and you’ll notice that the left-wing bogeymen change from time to time. In the 1990s, it was the Religious Right, and then it was Halliburton and next it was Karl Rove and now it’s the Koch Brothers. But the Left always has to have such a bogeyman, and there is a premium on “investigative journalism” that connects (or, at least, appears to connect) the various dots of the conspiracy.

And what you find is that left-wing blogs like Think Progress are now providing this “investigative” function, which then gets regurgitated by liberal news organizations that show zero skepticism toward any claim that makes Republicans look bad.

Ace exposes Maddow’s “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” act:

Many large corporations donate to the State Policy Network — companies like Verizon.
Among the companies that donate to the State Policy Network, and therefore are champions of drug testing for people on welfare? MSNBC’s parent company Comcast.
So Rachel Maddow’s report could just have easily have been “MSNBC Leads Charge for Drug Tests for People on Welfare.”

In other words, if the only dots you’re trying to connect are Koch brothers dots, you must first resolve to ignore all other dots. And if the only viewers you care about are Democrats who seek televised left-wing blogging, you’re not going to get many viewers.

It’s not good TV.

With 616,000 viewers at 9 p.m. ET, Maddow was MSNBC’s fourth-highest rated program Monday. The network’s highest-rated show Monday was Hardball with Chris Matthews at 7 p.m. ET, which got 782,000 viewers. Maddow’s ratings are suffering in large measure because MSNBC executives got the bright idea to put another televised blog show, All In With Chris Hayes, into the premium 8 p.m. ET slot. Hayes got an anemic 600,000 viewers Monday, less than Matthews, less than Maddow, and also less than MSNBC’s 5 p.m. Ed Schultz show (629,000) and 6 p.m. Al Sharpton show (667,000). Let’s face it: If your ratings are lower than Al Sharpton’s, your show must really suck.

The Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple has more on Maddow’s Koch lies. See also Legal Insurrection, Just One Minute and Gateway Pundit.

 

Category: MSNBC

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.10.14

Posted on | January 10, 2014 | 10 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Indian Diplomat Indicted

Former Deputy Consul Devyani Khobragade

Confusion as to diplomat’s whereabouts after visa fraud charges brought; did she return to India or stay in Manhattan?

West Virginia Declares Emergency After Chemical Spill
100,000 West Virginians warned not to use tap water

Christie Fires Aide After NJ Bridge Scandal
Prosecutor launching probe



POLITICS
Obama Announces “Promise Zones” To Tackle Poverty

“I will work with anybody…” Except Republicans, of course.

Even the Socialists are calling this phony

President Spins Revolving Door Again, Names Lobbyist To Energy Post

Insane Clown Posse Sues FBI

Obama Donor Leading DOJ Investigation Of IRS

Nancy Pelosi: Don’t Call It Obamacare

Embarrassing Air Force Revelation Caps Hagel Tour

Reid’s Tactics Bear Bitter Fruit As Jobless Benefits Expansion Stalls In Senate

Swearing Toddler In “Thug Cycle” Video Taken Into Protective Custody By Omaha Police



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Rebounds From Eight-Month Low On Bargain Hunting, South Sudan War: NYMEX $92.40, Brent $106.68
Stocks End Mixed As Retailers Give Weaker Outlook
Asian Markets Mixed On PRC Trade Data
New Mortgage Rules Aim To Prevent Risky Loans
Sears Declines After Posting 4Q Loss
Weekly Jobless Benefit Claims Drop To 330K
Google Linking Of GMail To Social Network Raises Concerns
Speakers Boycott RSA Conference Over NSA Links
GoPro To Launch Extreme Sports Network On XBox Network
Futuristic “Smart Homes” Not So Far Away, But Do We Want Them?
WWE Lays Smackdown On CES, Announces Creation Of Netflix-Like WWE Network



SPORTS

Dan Le Batard Loses Hall Of Fame Vote After Deadspin Controversy

Short-Handed Knicks Bump Off The Heat

Williams Leads Kings Past Bruins

Jay Gruden Hired As Redskins Coach

Kwan: Gold Lives Up To Her Name With Strong Short Program

Original Nat Jamey Carroll Returns To Washington



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Work Slows On Lindsay Lohan’s Reality Show

“Difficult to work with”?

Hassles pile up

Tupac Shakur Musical Sets Broadway Plans

Gerard Butler In Talks For “Point Break” Remake

Alexa Vega’s Romantic Mexico Wedding

Bruce Willis Set For Brazil Hostage Movie “Captive”

Zoe Saldana To Star In NBC Miniseries “Rosemary’s Baby”

Emma Watson Falls For Star Rugby Player


McCartney, Ozzy, Elton John And Rod Stewart Miss Out On Nominations As Bowie Scoops Two

Kate Upton Gets Photographed In Space

“12 Years A Slave” Star New Darling Of The Fashion World

Farrah Abraham Admits “My Sex Tape Ruined My Life”



FOREIGNERS
Draghi Denies Eurozone Sinking Into Japanese Deflation
Monica Spear Slaying: Stolen Camera Led To Seven Arrests
South Sudan: Government Forces Close In On Bantiu
Karzai Not Expected To Meet US Deadline On Security Deal
US Condemns “Provocative” PRC Edict On South China Sea Fisheries
Pakistan’s Top Anti-Terror Cop Killed By Car Bomb
Tunisian PM Quits Amid Mounting Unrest
Deadlocked Bangladesh Swears In Contested Parliament
Population Swap Idea Angers Israel’s Arab Minority



BLOGS & STUFF
Proof Positive: Chris Christie Says “If You Like Your Traffic Gridlock, You Can Keep Your Traffic Gridlock”
First Street Journal: John Kerry And The Middle East Peace Process
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Common Core And Google’s Bottom Line
Doug Powers: More Heads Have Rolled Over “Bridgegate” Than Benghazi, The IRS Scandal, And The Botched Obamacare Rollout Combined
Twitchy: MSNBC Launching Version Of “The Five”? Larry Elder Has The Photo “Scoop”
Ed Morrissey: Jefferson And The Nuns
American Power: Atlas 2.0 – Pamela Geller’s New Digs
American Thinker: The Holder Effect
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, January 9
Jammie Wearing Fools: Missing Teen Caleb Jacoby, Son Of Boston Globe Columnist, Found Safe In New York
JustOneMinute: Rachel Maddow Versus The Facts
Pat Dollard: Democrats Blame Big Business For Botched Obamacare Rollout
Protein Wisdom: Another One Of Those Republicans We Had To Elect To Win Back Power Sends Money To Democrat’s Campaign
Shot In The Dark: Why’s Johnny So Depressed?
The Jawa Report: Jihad Jamie Gets Eight Years
The Lonely Conservative: Obama Fired Contractor Who Refused To Fake Number Of Jobs Lost Due To Policies
This Ain’t Hell: Gates Approved, Then Rescinded, Peralta’s Medal Of Honor
Megan McArdle: Marriage Makes You Rich And Stupid


Deadline to submit links for this weekend’s FMJRA is tomorrow at noon.
DO IT.


Category: Live at Five

Unspeakable Depravity: Woman Helped Her Husband Rape 15-Year-Old Girl

Posted on | January 9, 2014 | 20 Comments

Misty Machinshok couldn’t get pregnant, so . . .

Police say Misty Machinshok didn’t merely know her husband was raping a teen girl.
She helped him concoct a plan to do it and coached her through her first time in an attempt to get her pregnant – because Mrs. Machinshok herself can’t have children, court documents allege.
When the baby was born, the Machinshoks planned to adopt it for their own, police said.
Police on Tuesday charged Mrs. Machinshok, 32, of 154 Park Ave., with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit rape, sexual assault, indecent assault, endangering the welfare of a minor and corruption of minors.
Her husband, Gary L. Machinshok, 28, of the same address, was arrested in October on charges alleging he repeatedly forced a 15-year-old girl to have sex with him, calling her into his room and forcing himself on her as her siblings slept and while her mother was out for the night.
The girl told police Mr. Machinshok threatened to sexually assault her younger sister if she didn’t comply, court documents allege.
In November, police charged Mr. Machinshok with fondling a 12-year-old while they lay on a couch. He was also accused of walking into the bathroom while the girl was showering and trying to open the curtains, as well as frequently walking around the house naked.
The charges filed Tuesday, however, represent the first time Mrs. Machinshok has been accused of participating in her husband’s activities.
The 15-year-old girl later told police that Mrs. Machinshok was not only aware Mr. Machinshok had been raping her, but that she was present the first time it happened.
“She said that (Mrs. Machinshok) assisted her and told her what to do, and also watched as Gary Machinshok had sex with her,” according to the police affidavit, filed in court by Wilkes-Barre police Detective Ronald Foy.

Just a woman helping her pervert husband rape a 15-year-old girl. Nothing to see here. Move along.

 

Category: Crime, Sex

Obama’s IRS Scandal Cover-Up

Posted on | January 9, 2014 | 91 Comments

OK, now it’s time to begin impeachment proceedings:

The Justice Department selected an avowed political supporter of President Obama to lead the criminal probe into the IRS targeting of tea party groups, according to top Republicans who said Wednesday that the move has ruined the entire investigation.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, and regulatory affairs subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said they have discovered that the head of the investigation is Barbara Kay Bosserman, a trial lawyer in the Justice Department who donated more than $6,000 to Mr. Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, as well as several hundred dollars to the national Democratic Party.
“The department has created a startling conflict of interest,” Mr. Issa and Mr. Jordan said in a letter sent Wednesday and reviewed by The Washington Times. “It is unbelievable that the department would choose such an individual to examine the federal government’s systematic targeting and harassment of organizations opposed to the president’s policies.”

The fake investigation led by a hack loyalist is a classic cover-up move. The Justice Department is now clearly part of a widespread pattern of corruption in the administration, Eric Holder’s resignation is long overdue, and upholding the rule of law requires that Congress open an impeachment inquiry immediately.

Via Memeorandum, with more at Breitbart News, MichelleMalkin.com, Newsbusters, Weasel Zippers and the Free Beacon.

 

Category: Corruption, Fear. Loathing., Scandal

‘Love,’ Celebrity Style

Posted on | January 9, 2014 | 26 Comments

Having never watched the TV show Burn Notice, I previously had no idea who Seth Peterson is. However, the 43-year-old actor has recently abandoned his 39-year-old wife — who is seven months pregnant with their third child — for a 23-year-old nobody named Miranda Doerfler.

Any 23-year-old woman who would have an affair with a 43-year-old married father is a woman every bit as despicable as the man who would pursue such an affair. Seth and Miranda therefore deserve each other, and here’s to hoping nothing good happens to them, ever.

 

Category: Celebrities, Sex

In The Mailbox, 01.09.14

Posted on | January 9, 2014 | 13 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Not sure whether I’m actually sick or just dealing poorly with the cold.


OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: President Obama Finally Takes Responsibility For The Abysmal State Of The American Economy
First Street Journal: Ecopocrisy – Do As I Say, Not As I Do!
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Obama Donor’s Nonprofit Gets Big Government Cash
Michelle Malkin: Common Core And The EduTech Abyss
Twitchy: Sarah Palin Responds To Roger Ailes Quote Explaining Why Fox News Hired Her


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Polygamy, The Next Frontier After Homosexual Marriage
American Thinker: Putting The Chill On Discipline
Blackfive: Legion And Carhartt Take Care Of Those Who Care For The Fallen
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: 34 Republican Congressmen Are Clearly Racists
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – Infographic! (From A Real Survey)
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, January 8
Jammie Wearing Fools: The Fix Is In – “Justice” Department Appoints Obama Donor To Lead Probe Into Obama’s IRS Scandal
JustOneMinute: Chris Christie Takes Center Stage
Pat Dollard: Democrat Senator Udall Asked His State To Lie About The Number Of Insurance Policies Cancelled By Obamacare
Protein Wisdom: Who Is Doing Healthcare Better Than ObamaCare? The Left’s Whipping Boy, Walmart
Shot In The Dark: Chanting Points Memo – The Rainbow Maria
The Jawa Report: The Kids Aren’t Alright
The Lonely Conservative: Al Qaeda Now Controls More Territory Than It Ever Has
This Ain’t Hell: Levin Won’t Support COLA Fix For Vets If It Means Closing Welfare Loopholes
Megan McArdle: For Small Businesses, Small Matters


Category: Linkagery

Concealed Carry (IYKWIMAITYD)

Posted on | January 8, 2014 | 51 Comments

Is that a pistol in your vagina or are you just happy to see me?

A domestic dispute over space aliens escalated Saturday morning when a lingerie-clad New Mexico woman allegedly pointed a silver handgun at her boyfriend, a weapon she retrieved from her vagina, where it had been placed while the accused was performing a sex act, police allege.
To make matters more strange, the arrested woman is the most recent ex-wife of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy, author of “The Road” and “No Country for Old Men.”
As detailed in a probable cause statement, Jennifer McCarthy, a 48-year-old artist, argued about space aliens with her 53-year-old beau, whose name was redacted from the document released by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office. . . .
McCarthy’s boyfriend told investigators that following the argument McCarthy departed her Aventura Road residence. Upon returning to the home, he told deputies, McCarthy went into her bedroom and later emerged “wearing lingerie and a silver handgun in her vagina.” . . .
After removing the gun from her vagina, McCarthy pointed it at her boyfriend’s head, investigators charge.

Hat-tip: Bob Belvedere on Twitter. This might be a good place to advertise Deep Discounts on Used Products. IYKWIMAITYD.

 

Category: Crime
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