The Other McCain

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

An Entirely Random Observation About Etiquette and Dead Jew-Haters

Posted on | July 20, 2013 | 82 Comments

There are occasions when good taste requires that polite people say absolutely nothing about the latest news. Just in case such an occasion should ever occur (he says, in an entirely random and coincidental way), you should be prepared. It is important never to say the name of the recently deceased Jew-hating liberal hag, because that would not be polite. So I must sharply admonish Jeff Dunetz, who seems to have forgotten the requirements of decorum and propriety, and who also posted this memorably tasteless video:

 

One should always be polite and respectful, and never mention the name of evil Jew-hating liberal bitches who rot in Hell.


 

Category: Liberals

FMJRA 2.0: As Falls Wichita…

Posted on | July 20, 2013 | 15 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Mega-Dittos, @RushLimbaugh! Credit Where Credit Is Due and More Questions

Verdict in Florida, Violence in Oakland, Insanity in Media, Ignorance Everywhere

Miami-Dade Schools Could Have Saved Trayvon Martin’s Life by Arresting Him

‘The Greater Good’: Heretical Facts vs. the Myth of St. Trayvon of the Blessed Hoodie

Just Another Law-Abiding Citizen of Beautiful Downtown Realville

Rule 5 Monday

Can Anyone Verify These Disturbing Allegations About Trayvon’s Family?

Maniac Rights? “Democracy Now” Whitewashes Barrett Brown’s Crimes

‘Protest,’ Riots, To-may-to, To-mah-to

Kook City, USA: Awaiting Verdict, Maybe Riots, as #Zimmerman Jury Deliberates

L.A. Times Columnist @RobinAbcarian Watches CNN, Tells You How She Feels

FMJRA 2.0: Low Sun

Hmmm. #Zimmerman Jury Asks For Clarification On Manslaughter?

#Zimmerman ACQUITTED: Not Guilty UPDATE: #Trayvon in ‘Amerikkka’?

#Zimmerman Coda: @dminor85

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.15.13

“Sometimes When We Torch” #ALSharptonHitSongs H/T @N_Fatale

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.16.13

When You’re Doubled Over In Agony, Your Guts Are ‘Sploding And #ObamaCare Has Broken Our Medical System, Watch This

Inspired by MSNBC

#ZimmermanTipLine He Fronted ‘Blue Oyster Culture Club’ On Their ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, Godzilla?’ Tour

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.17.13

Representin’ Ewok and the Signifyin’ Jive

Politician of Unknown Partisan Affiliation Is a Notorious Serial Sexual Harasser

Angela Corey Should Be Fired, Disbarred, Imprisoned and Sued Into Bankruptcy

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.18.13

Brett Kimberlin’s Enemies List Expands to Include His Estranged Wife: ‘She’s Nuts!’

Former Disney Child Starlet News

Deranged Cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt Continues His Obsessive Cyberstalking

‘One Takes Fun Where One Finds It’

LIVE AT FIVENINE: 07.19.2013

And Then, Inexplicably, the Villain Decides to Deliver an Arrogant Lecture …

Also, You’re Not Cynical Enough

Kudos to 90 Miles From Tyranny, who reached 1 million hits this week by conscientiously applying these classic rules.

Top linkers this week:

  1. Rick’s Crazed World (29, some the hard way)
  2. Zion’s Trumpet (11)
  3. DaleyGator (8)
  4. Regular Right Guy (5)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Links for next week’s FMJRA are due next Friday, July 26.


Category: FMJRA Award

Also, You’re Not Cynical Enough

Posted on | July 19, 2013 | 21 Comments

The two most important questions in any contract are:

  1. What’s in it for me?
    and
  2. What’s in it for them?

Caveat emptor. Honesty is the best policy, but you have the right to remain silent. In other words, if somebody offers you a deal and you don’t like the offer, just walk away. You don’t owe them an explanation of why you rejected their offer. “No thanks, I’ll look elsewhere.”

In any negotiated contract, the other guy is always trying to maximize his profit opportunity, trying to get you to sell too low or buy too high. He knows at the outset of the negotiation what is his minimum price to sell (or maximum price to buy), and the question that you have to ask yourself is, “Can I get a better price elsewhere?”

Wages are prices, and your job is always a contracted purchase: You will exchange X amount of labor for Y amount of money.

If you don’t like your job, just quit — no harm, no foul — and seek employment elsewhere. Nobody can force you to be underpaid or mistreated, unless you’re a crack whore with a sadistic pimp, and yet  many people don’t think of their jobs as market transactions.

They do not understand that their labor, their knowledge, their experience and skills are commodities for which there is a demand, so that they can always shop around for the best deal. Instead, people buy into the leftist idea of “workers’ rights” and, rather than just quitting a job they’re unhappy with and looking for a better job, they become disgruntled and start thinking in terms of revenge.

The counterfactual unreality of “worker rights” is to blame, for example, in all lawsuits alleging workplace discrimination. Hey, if you’re working someplace where unfairness and mistreatment are commonplace, just quit and find a job you like better. And if your boss asks you why you’re quitting, you can explain it to him — or not. Remember, you have the right to remain silent. Maybe you can privately explain to your friends (if they ask) that your former boss is a jerk and the company routinely mistreats its employees, but that’s your call.

There are some organizations and individuals I respect, and some I don’t. It’s a free country. Nobody can force me to work for assholes.

Anyway, my sarcastic Twitter response to the Leadership Institute’s Director of Digital Communications Abigail Alger might be wrongly interpreted, if I didn’t explain it. LI is an excellent organization and Abby is a wonderful person, and it is not their fault that (a) I just happened to see that Tweet, and (b) the solicitation of “advice on Twitter to your fellow activists” hit me the wrong way.

Could I explain why it hit me the wrong way? Sure I could, but I have the right to remain silent, and if you make a habit of offering advice for free, nobody’s ever going to pay you for it.

Looking down the staff roster at LI, I see many familiar names, including Josiah Ryan, Gabriella Hoffman and Danielle Saul, and I’m sure they’re just really grateful that I’ve name-checked them here, while Abby’s wondering, “What the hell’s his problem?”

Ask me at a happy hour in Arlington sometime. You’re buying.

 

Category: How This Here Internet Thingy Works, R.S. McCain School of Journalism

And Then, Inexplicably, the Villain Decides to Deliver an Arrogant Lecture …

Posted on | July 19, 2013 | 70 Comments

. . . a lecture just long enough to allow the seemingly doomed underdog hero to reach his 9-mm pistol and blast that son of bitch. Hero says sarcastic tough-guy line. Hero is embraced by vulnerable female lead amid wreckage. Roll credits over pop-music theme.

At some point, intelligent people grow up and get tired of seeing that same childishly simplistic action-hero movie over and over. But there is always a fresh crop of 13-old-boys in the multiplex theater too dumb to wonder why the Arrogant Villain always has a British accent, or why the Underdog Hero always has a Loyal Black Sidekick, and so forth.

Cinematic fantasy has a didactic function and the “lessons” that pop culture teaches impressionable young minds are mostly wrong.

Real life isn’t like the movies, and one of the things that Hollywood hero fantasies do best is to teach young people that they are inadequate and their own ordinary lives are so tedious and insignificant as to be essentially without meaning or purpose.

Your life is not exciting. You are not muscular and handsome. You are not combating evil and injustice. You are a loser and nobody likes you.

Watching too much crap like that — whether at the movies, on DVD or on TV — tends to deform the mind and warp the personality of young people too inexperienced and ignorant to understand that they are consuming a product whose producers are deliberately manipulating their perceptions, based on a canny assessment of their prejudices and psychological insecurities. Peter Suderman pulls back the curtain on the process to reveal the hidden mechanism:

If you’ve gone to the movies recently, you may have felt a strangely familiar feeling: You’ve seen this movie before. Not this exact movie, but some of these exact story beats: the hero dressed down by his mentor in the first 15 minutes (Star Trek Into Darkness, Battleship); the villain who gets caught on purpose (The Dark Knight, The Avengers, Skyfall, Star Trek Into Darkness); the moment of hopelessness and disarray a half-hour before the movie ends (Olympus Has Fallen, Oblivion, 21 Jump Street, Fast & Furious 6).
It’s not déjà vu. Summer movies are often described as formulaic. But what few people know is that there is actually a formula — one that lays out, on a page-by-page basis, exactly what should happen when in a screenplay. It’s as if a mad scientist has discovered a secret process for making a perfect, or at least perfectly conventional, summer blockbuster.
The formula didn’t come from a mad scientist. Instead it came from a screenplay guidebook, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s.
When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. The book offered something previous screenplay guru tomes didn’t. Instead of a broad overview of how a screen story fits together, his book broke down the three-act structure into a detailed “beat sheet”: 15 key story “beats” — pivotal events that have to happen — and then gave each of those beats a name and a screenplay page number. Given that each page of a screenplay is expected to equal a minute of film, this makes Snyder’s guide essentially a minute-to-minute movie formula. . . .

Read the whole thing and understand this: The secret to not being manipulated is knowing that people are trying to manipulate you.

 

 

UPDATE: Y’know, I often include these Amazon book recommendations at the end of blog posts not merely because I get a small commission on each sale, but because a blog post is scarcely sufficient to explain some of the underlying ideas behind what I’m writing about. Notice that one of the recommendations is the 2004 book Andrew Breitbart co-wrote with Mark Ebner, Hollywood Interrupted, a scathing examination of the corrosive impact of celebrity culture. Andrew and I used to argue occasionally about which was the worse cesspool full of dishonest amoral selfish backstabbers, D.C. or Hollywood.

To-may-to,  or to-mah-to? But because Andrew Breitbart actually knew Bill Maher, he always won the argument.

There is no worse human being on the planet than Bill Maher.

Charles Manson is not a worse human being than Bill Maher.

Also recommended is Neil Postman’s brilliant 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman was a man of the Left who hated Ronald Reagan and capitalism, not necessarily in that order. But his insights about the nature of television as a medium are essential. Postman was a disciple of Marshall McLuhan, who famously said, “The medium is the message,” and if you don’t know what that means — how the inherent nature of television exercises an influence distinct from its content — you really need to read that book. And you might also want to read the 2003 obituary of Neil Postman in the U.K. Guardian. Just sayin’ . . .

Finally, there is High Concept, about the sordid life of a Hollywood “success” story, Don Simpson:

[T]he short, insanely foolish life of producer Don Simpson (Flashdance, Top Gun, Bad Boys) stands as a larger indictment of Hollywood, and it’s hard to argue with him. For one thing, Simpson helped create Tom Cruise, Richard Gere, Will Smith, and Eddie Murphy, and his loud, high-concept, low-IQ school of filmmaking helped launch Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, and Bruce Willis to new heights (or depths).

Here’s a little clue: The price of Don Simpson’s drug habit was once estimated in excess of a half-million dollars a year. This was just “business expenses.” And did I mention the hookers?

Most people simply cannot imagine what kind of twisted freaks produce the entertainment they see on TV and in movies.

These depraved weirdos are not your moral superiors — unless you’re Bill Maher, in which case everyone is your moral superior.

 

Category: Culture, Movies

LIVE AT FIVENINE: 07.19.2013

Posted on | July 19, 2013 | 11 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Detroit Files For Bankruptcy

Not even Robocop can save them now

Files Chapter 9; largest US city to ever declare bankruptcy

Rudd Surprises With Hardline Boat Plan
Aussie PM orders no asylum for illegals in boats; refugees to be shunted to Papua

Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Released
Out pending appeal after less than a day in prison



POLITICS
Florida Governor Says No To Demands For “Stand Your Ground” Session

Rick Scott greets protesters at the Capitol

Listens to protesters for an hour, but has no intention of moving to repeal or modify self-defense law

Senate Approves McCarthy For EPA, Perez For Labor

Chicago Public Schools Confirms More Than 2,000 Layoffs Coming

Filner Scandals Cast Shadow On San Diego’s Recovery

Wikileaker Will Face Charges Of Aiding The Enemy

IRS Official Testifies Political Appointee’s Office Involved In Tea Party Screening

Military Communities Brace For Hardship As Defense Furloughs Take Effect

Treasury IG Decries “Unprecedented” Treatment By Democrats At Hearing

Crazy Cousin John To Block New Term For CJCS



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Declining Stockpiles Push Brent To $109, WTI Approaches Parity: NYMEX $108.59, Brent $109.05
Dow, S&P 500 Set Record Highs On Bernanke, Upbeat Earnings
Google Shares Drop As Shift To Mobile Curbs Ad Prices
Detroit Bankruptcy Could Hit Millions Of Retirees
Moody’s Withdraws US Downgrade Threat
Florida’s Unemployment Rate Remains Flat At 7.1%
Google, Microsoft Earnings Disappoint
Apple Buys Locationary, A Startup Building A Wikipedia For Locations
Make It Stop: Verizon’s Edge Update Program Just As Bad As AT&T’s
Nokia Revenues Slide 24% But Uptick In Lumia Sales Offers Hope
Halfbrick Wants To Watch It All Burn With “Colossatron: Massive World Threat”



SPORTS
NBA Expected To Approve Bobcats’ Reflagging As Charlotte Hornets

Old Hornets’ logo

Buzz City


Six Current Players Join O’Bannon’s Lawsuit Against NCAA


Kings Sign Captain Dustin Brown To Eight-Year Deal


For Nyets’ Prokhorov, $183 Million Is No Big Deal

Rangers Getting Closer To Garza Deal

Rhythmic Gymnastics Hit With Scandal

Electronic Arts Loses License To Make NCAA Games

Charles Barkley: I Agree With Zimmerman Verdict

Josh Brent Retires From NFL

Danica Patrick Shows Off Her Grip On Leno

Washington Nationals Storylines To Follow In Second Half



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Selena Gomez Talks About Her Breakup With Justin Bieber

Selena Gomez

“I was way stressed out,” she tells Ryan Seacrest

“Game Of Thrones”, SNL, “Behind The Candelabra” Lead Emmy Race

Two Gay Actors Break Up

Farrah Abraham: “Wait, Who’s Trayvon Martin?”

George Clooney Pursued Eva Longoria Before Breakup With Stacy Keibler

“Glee” Takes Two-Week Break While Producers Rewrite Cory Monteith’s Storyline

Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult Dating Again

Lea Michele – Controlling Cory Monteith In Life And Death

Tiger’s Ex Elin Nordegren Thinks Lindsey Is A Good Influence On Him

Mike Tyson Performs One Act Play For HBO Special

Co$ Bosses Accuse Detractors Of “Pushing Myths”

Catherine Zeta-Jones Doesn’t Want To Talk About Oral Sex



FOREIGNERS
Italy’s Interior Minister Survives Deportation Row
Suicide Bomber Kills 20 At Iraq Sunni Mosque
Home Secretary May Reveals Diplomacy Affected Litvinenko Inquest
Cambodian Opposition Leader Makes Jubilant Return
Corruption Protesters Clash With Police In Madrid
Police Arrest Two Men Over Blasts At British Mosques
Morsi’s Supporters Rally; No Sign of Compromise



BLOGS & STUFF
Valley Of The Shadow: Two Reporters Who Want To See LA Burn
First Street Journal: I’m Sure It’s Just A Coincidence That Democrats Have Been Running Detroit For Eons
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Detroit Beats LA To Finish Line, Loses To Stockton And San Bernardino
Steven Crowder: Pure Detroit!
Via Meadia: Obama To Detroit – Drop Dead
Mary Katherine Ham: Barkley – “Zimmerman May Have Profiled, But I Agree With The Verdict”
Protein Wisdom: Finders Keepers
American Power: Federal Investigators Demand Hold On Zimmerman Trial Evidence
Breitbart: “Let’s Go Mess Up Hollywood For Trayvon”
Twitchy: Epic – James Woods Shreds “Sh*t Rag” Rolling Stone
Legal Insurrection: Mass. State Trooper Releases Tsarnaev Capture Photos In Response To RS Cover
Hit & Run: Police Photographer Who released Tsarnaev Photos Reportedly Relieved Of Duty
NRO Corner: Three Texas Planned Parenthood Clinics To Close
Jamme Wearing Fools: Dingy Harry Blames Fires Caused By Lightning Strikes On So-Called Climate Change


It’s Friday. Links are due for the FMJRA by midnight tonight. DO IT.


Category: Live at Five

‘One Takes Fun Where One Finds It’

Posted on | July 19, 2013 | 14 Comments

Remember when people told us that the Internet was a magical instrument that would enlighten the masses? Those “visionaries” of the Information Age failed to perceive what would be the result of granting worldwide communication access to stupid people: Trolls.

Trolls are stupid. Otherwise, they would not be trolls. Ken White is not stupid. Otherwise, he would not be a successful blogger.

So guess what predictably simple mistake a stupid troll makes when sending an obscenity-crammed e-mail Ken White?

(Hint: Your tax dollars at work.)

 

Category: Blogging

Deranged Cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt Continues His Obsessive Cyberstalking

Posted on | July 19, 2013 | 48 Comments

Bill Schmalfeldt: Born to rant. (Image via Thomas Anderson at Vimeo)

“All that is necessary to discredit Bill Schmalfeldt is to quote Bill Schmalfeldt. The vile creep got banned from Daily Kos for his grossly offensive writings about anal sodomy. Schmalfeldt’s penchant for obscene defamation . . . includes describing his own ex-wife — the mother of his children, whom Schmalfeldt divorced in 1988 — as a ‘meth-abusing serial adultress.’
“You may ask, how would such a person choose to honor the memory of his recently deceased mother? By accusing his ex-wife of ‘sucking Stranny Balls’ and ‘sucking Stranny dick,’ calling her an ‘adulterous slut’ and a ‘lower form of life,’ and also describing one of Lee Stranahan’s female friends as a ‘throbbing hemorrhoid’ and a ‘cunt.’“
— Robert Stacy McCain, March 9, 2012

It would be possible — and certainly highly desirable — to forget that such a reprehensible madman as Bill Schmalfeldt exists, if he did not continue making himself a public nuisance online.

Thursday, after a day of incessant Twitter ranting — much of it directed at Aaron Walker — Schmalfeldt deliberately published Walker’s home address and phone number at the anti-Breitbart site nobody should ever link. Schmalfeldt published this information while mocking Walker’s recent Howard County, Maryland, criminal harassment complaint against Schmalfeldt.

Just in case you ever entertain the thought that Bill Schmalfeldt might be sane, remember this: When accused of criminal harassment, Schmalfeldt’s reaction is . . . more harassment.

And this happened barely a month after a Maryland judge granted John Hoge’s peace order against Schmalfeldt. It’s as if he is incapable of learning anything, or is unable to restrain his insane urges to lash out at the targets of his obsessive rage.

UPDATE: It’s amazing that people think that, because they get away with something for a while, they’ll continue getting away with it forever. Two different Twitter accounts have been engaged in tag-team harassment of Aaron Worthing and John Hoge, as if no one could possibly find evidence indicating that this behavior was orchestrated by, funded by and/or pursued on behalf of Brett Kimberlin.

Does this look like evidence to you? It sure does to me. We’ll see if Bill Schmalfeldt can explain it next time he’s in court.

UPDATE II: Probably I shouldn’t link this — I denounce myself in advance — but CAUTION: NSFW.




 

 


Category: Bill Schmalfeldt

Former Disney Child Starlet News

Posted on | July 18, 2013 | 27 Comments

Post-Disney Deviance Syndrome deserves scrutiny as a cultural phenomenon. As a parent, it seems like one minute your children are watching some cutesy little kiddie sitcom on Disney Channel and then — fast-forward — topless photos, DUIs, rehab and nervous breakdowns.

Lindsay Lohan’s Getting $2 Million From Oprah

Britney Spears — My New Las Vegas Show Is Real Hip!

Selena Gomez Talks Justin Bieber
Breakup: I Was “Way Stressed Out”

Do you see the pattern? You could probably do a gossip site — DisneyStarletBreakdowns.com — devoted to nothing else. It’s as if they’re all getting career advice from the same sociopathic managers: “Ditch that squeaky-clean ‘wholesome’ image, kid. What you need is a drug habit, a mental illness and a series of ex-boyfriends.”

Or maybe ex-girlfriends. And if obtaining a sordid reputation is necessary to overcome whatever taint of “nice girl” might be left over from your Disney child-star career, to completely alienate and offend the Mom-and-Dad crowd …

MILEY CYRUS, CELEBRITY LESBIAN!

Or not. But she didn’t exactly go out of her way to deny those rumors, and she’s been acting so skanky the past couple of years it’s not like any normal guy would want to marry her and have a family, so why not flip her middle finger in Middle America’s face, eh? And if that doesn’t do the trick, there’s always . . .

WHO WANTS TO SEE HANNAH MONTANA’S NIPPLES?

You stay classy, ex-Disney starlets. I have no problem playing this for cheap clicks while laughing at your silly gestures, but you’ve actually got to live that life, and I’m pretty sure it’s not really funny at all.

 

Category: Celebrities
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin