The Other McCain

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

Who Put the Bomp?

Posted on | October 13, 2022 | Comments Off on Who Put the Bomp?

What does a car made in Wolfsburg, Germany, have to do with a novelty hit from 1961? It’s a strange tale, with musical connections to Dolly Parton, the Mamas and Papas, a children’s cartoon and an iconic scene from a famous 1980s movie. It’s about a boy from Brooklyn.

Last weekend, I had my home office TV tuned to a football game, and a commercial came on that featured a song I remembered fondly from back in the day. “Make Your Own Kind of Music” was a Top 40 hit for “Mama Cass” Elliot in 1969, after she went solo following the breakup of the Mamas and Papas. The lyrics are an optimistic ode to individualism:

Nobody can tell ya
There’s only one song worth singing.
They may try and sell ya,
’Cause it hangs them up
To see someone like you.

But you gotta make your own kind of music,
Sing your own special song.
Make your own kind of music,
Even if nobody else sings along.

You’re gonna be nowhere,
The loneliest kind of lonely.
It may be rough going,
Just to do your thing’s the hardest thing to do.

Pardon the Sixties hipster talk about “hang ups” and “doing your thing,” but I always liked the message of that song and, from a musical perspective, I appreciated the emphatic triplets in the last line of the chorus. Do you want to see Mama Cass introduced by none other than Sammy Davis Jr. as “the most fantastic lady of the now sound”?

 

Mama Cass (née Ellen Naomi Cohen) was a wonderful entertainer, and that was a wonderful song, so when I heard “Make Your Own Kind of Music” on TV, I was prompted to Google it and learn more. When I began enthusiastically telling my brother Kirby what I’d discovered, he said, “I’m going start calling you Rabbit, ’cause you’re always going down these rabbit holes.” A compulsive researcher — I can’t help myself, folks, I was born that way — I was surprised to learn that this hit for Mama Cass was co-written by the same guy whose only hit record as a performer was “Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp Bomp Bomp)”:

 

Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?
Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?”
Who was that man?
I’d like to shake his hand.
He made my baby fall in love with me.

It was a humorous ode to doo-wop, as Wikipedia explains:

In this song, Mann sings about the frequent use of nonsense lyrics in doo-wop music, and how his girl fell in love with him after listening to several such songs.
Examples of the type of song referred to include the Marcels’ version of “Blue Moon” (in which they sing “Bomp bomp ba bomp, ba bomp ba bomp bomp” and “dip-de-dip-de-dip”) and The Edsels’ “Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong”, both of which charted earlier the same year.

Brooklyn native Barry Imberman, known professionally as Barry Mann, was just 22 when “Who Put the Bomp” reached No. 7 on the Billboard charts, but he was already a successful composer, having co-written hits with lyricists Mike Anthony, Hank Hunter and Howard Greenfield. The lyrics of “Who Put the Bomp” were written by a guy named Gerry Goffin, who with his wife Carole King became famous as half of the powerhouse Sixties songwriting duo Goffin-King (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Song Kind of Wonderful,” etc.). Paul McCartney and John Lennon once said their dream as songwriters was to be as big as Goffin-King.

The same year “Who Put the Bomp” was a hit, Barry Mann married lyricist Cynthia Weil (both of them were working in the Brill Building), and from their songwriting partnership came some of the most memorable hits of the next three decades. Remember I told you that this story involved an iconic scene from a famous ’80s movie?

 

Yes, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” performed by the Righteous Brothers (Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield) was co-written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, along with famed “Wall of Sound” producer Phil Spector. It’s been praised by critics as “one of the best records ever made” and “the ultimate pop record,” and in 1965 became the first No. 1 for the Mann-Weil team. A year later, they repeated the feat with “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration,” also by the Righteous Brothers. Mann and Weil also wrote hits for the Drifters (“On Broadway”), the Animals (“We Gotta Get Out of This Place”) and Paul Revere and the Raiders (“Kicks”). And, hey, didn’t I tell you Dolly Parton was involved in this story?

 

Yep — Dolly Parton won a Grammy in 1979 for “Here You Come Again,” written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who continued making hits into the 1980s. Who could ever forget this classic slow-dance love song featuring James Ingram that made the Top 10 in 1981?

 

Man, it just doesn’t get any better than that, does it? But wait a minute — remember I told you there was a children’s cartoon involved in this story? You see, a guy named Steven Spielberg found himself as executive producer for an animated feature based on the historic experience of Jewish immigrants to America. This movie about the “Mousekewitz” family was conceived as a musical, because Spielberg “said he wanted a ‘Heigh-Ho’ of his own (referring to the popular song from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs).” By now I think the reader can guess which songwriting team they brought in to deliver this tune.

 

Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight,
Someone’s thinking of me and loving me tonight.
Somewhere out there, someone’s saying a prayer,
That we’ll find one another
In that big somewhere out there.

Did I mention that “Somewhere Out There,” from the 1986 animated film An American Tail, won not one but two Grammy Awards? It wasn’t the squeaky-voice mouse version that did it, though. Instead, the producers brought in James Ingram and Linda Ronstadt to sing it as a duet over the final credits. “Somewhere Out There” made it to No. 2 on the charts.

 

Mann and Weil wrote so many wonderful songs, there’s not enough room to mention all of them, but I can’t omit the tune that producer Rick Beato called “the most complex pop song of all time”:

 

“Never Going to Let You Go,” which was a hit for Sergio Mendendez in 1983, changes key (from F-sharp to G minor) before the lyrics even begin. “I’d never seen a song that went through so many chord changes,” Beato says of his first effort to learn it. Keep in mind that Beato majored in music in college, got a master’s degree in jazz from the New England Conservatory of Music, and taught music theory for a living. In praising the complexity of “Never Gonna Let You Go,” Beato pays quite a tribute to The Man Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp Bomp Bomp.

Ah, but have you forgotten where this long trip down the musical rabbit hole began? I was watching TV and there was a commercial for a car made in Wolfsburg, Germany — the Volkswagen Tiguan:

 

That commercial, by the way, was directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, the daughter of Ron “Opie” Howard. Volkswagen is sending royalty checks to Barry Mann for the song he and his wife wrote in 1969. Not a bad deal for the boy from Brooklyn, who has truly made his own kind of music.

Now 83 years old, Barry Mann is still married to his 81-year-old wife and lyricist, Cynthia Weil, and the couple live in Beverly Hills.

Who was that man?
I’d like to shake his hand.
He made my baby fall in love with me.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Category: History, Music

In The Mailbox: 10.12.22

Posted on | October 12, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.12.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

The Democrats’ policies are the same: only the names have changed.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1868
EBL: When will Russian Troops revolt against Uncle Vlad and his Officers?, also, Alex Jones Is Having A Bad Day
Twitchy: AP Reports That NBC Interview With Fetterman “Draws Criticism”, also, Doctor Shamefully “Justifies” Castration Of Boys
Louder With Crowder: Hilarious girl fight breaks out at Morgan Wallen concert with all the slapping and hair pulling you’d imagine
Vox Popoli: What Winning Looks Like, A Malevolent Presence, What Comes Next, and French Government Isn’t Vaccinated

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Douthat On The Curse Of Vatican II, also, The Regime Debanks Kanye West
American Greatness: Joe Claims Hunter Is ‘on the Straight and Narrow,’, Tulsi Gabbard Formally Leaves Democratic Party, and Biden Treasury Department Investigating Ron DeSantis Over Migrant Flights
American Power: Huge Online Demand Reshapes California Community Colleges, also, Howard Stern Leaves His House For the First Time In Two Years to Have Dinner With His Swanky Hollywood Friends — and Then Complains He Was Afraid of Covid the Entire Time
American Thinker:  What’s Fueling the Record Sales of Guns in America?, A Take on Trump and Tulsi, and Will Walker Unseat Warnock?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Cubans take to the streets in five provinces as protests continue for a third consecutive night, Identity of another repressive agent of Cuban dictatorship is revealed, and Cuban evangelical pastor threatened with imprisonment for holding prayer services
BattleSwarm: Russia Hits Ukraine With Terror Missiles, Why Does Fort Worth ISD Want To Teach “Gender Identity” To Pre-K Children?, and Huge Ukrainian Offensive in Luhansk?
Behind The Black: New rocket startup focusing on new concepts to make upper stage reusable, Voting in Arizona in 2022, SpaceX fully stacks Starship/Superheavy in preparation for launch, and Pushback: Teacher suspended for not submitting to queer agenda immediately reinstated when hundreds protest at board meeting
Cafe Hayek: Most News Media are Overheated
CDR Salamander: Remember the Great Green Fleet?
Da Tech Guy: At least 24 Illinois county prosecutors have filed suit against pro-criminal SAFE-T Act, The Best Video on Confession I’ve Seen, If Your Live in the Western Hemisphere & Have Flush Toilets, Electricity & anything with Wheels…, and Five Assorted Thoughts Under the Fedora
Don Surber: Keep the IRS. Turn it on the Democrats, About that genocide of Indians, and Call the recession a recession already
First Street Journal: Some common sense from the county sheriffs, also, No surprise: fuel prices are beginning to rise again
Gates Of Vienna: Old Enough to be Drafted, All the Little Animals, Electoral Funeral in Berlin, and The Hard Land of the Winter
The Geller Report: Twitter is a Weapon, Not a Business, PAYPAL STOCK PLUNGES $6 BILLION, and Celebrities Who Say Nothing About Antisemitism From the Left Feign Outrage At Pro-Trump Kanye’s Tweets
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, NGC 5584, Breaking: Biden Administration to Obey a Law, and Don’t Know Much…um…Anatomy
Hollywood In Toto: Chris Pratt Is the New Tim Tebow, also, How Halloween III: Season of the Witch Took the Franchise’s Biggest Risk
The Lid: New Study Finds American College Students Extremely Biased and Out of Touch
Legal Insurrection: Recall Gascón Committee Taking L.A. County Registrar to Court, Just Stop Oil Protesters Wreak Havoc in London by Blocking Streets, Angry Citizens Confront Them, Nury Martinez Resigns From Los Angeles City Council After New Audio Reveals Her Using Vulgar Language Towards Jews, Armenians, and Legal Insurrection’s 14th Anniversary Fundraiser – Join Us In Getting To The Next Level
Michelle Malkin: In Support of a Young America First Scapegoat
Nebraska Energy Observer: O Canada – again, also, Vote integrity or Fraud
Outkick: Camera Guy Davante Adams Shoved Files Police Report, Olivia Dunne Keeps Dropping Joe Burrow Hints, LeBron James’ Show ‘The Shop’ Pulls Kanye West Episode Claiming He Used Hate Speech, and Jemele Hill Calls It Racist To Charge Davante Adams For Assaulting Someone
Power Line: Tulsi Gabbard quits Dems, Biden Reportedly Tried to Persuade Saudis to Delay Production Cut, FBI Offered Bribe to Bring Down Trump, and In the Chauvin appeal
Shark Tank: Taddeo Leading “Liar & Fake” Salazar By 1
Shot In The Dark: Big Brother Is Watching Your Profile, It’s Almost A Berg’s Law, and Finer Hour
The Political Hat: American Medical Association To The Attorney General: Silence Our Critics!, also, In California, Politicians Subsidize Unions & Unions Subsidize Politicians
This Ain’t Hell: Stacey Abrams in the news, Biden claims that he could “beat” Trump “again”, and General shocked at the “sexually demeaning and gender-based language” used by USMC drill sergeants
Transterrestrial Musings: The Covid Shots, The Harvard/UNC Oral Argument, Tulsi, and Shatner’s Grief
Victory Girls: Randi Weingarten Takes Trip to Ukraine, Nury Martinez: Los Angeles City Council, Cesspool of Democrat Racists, and Lloyd Austin – Support Ukraine “Through All Seasons”
Volokh Conspiracy: Yale Law School Dean’s “Message to Our Alumni on Free Speech”
Watts Up With That: Big Brother Says No to Gas Furnaces, What Caused the Energy Crisis We’re in Now? When Did It Start for Real?, and “From climate perspective, the war in Ukraine may be seen as a blessing”
Weasel Zippers: California School District Is Carrying Out Student Gender Transitions Without Notifying Parents, Least Popular President In Modern History Claims “Vast Majority” Like What He’s Done, Eric Holder Frets: Fascism Is Coming To America!, and Tulsi Gabbard To Campaign For GOP Senate Candidate After Leaving Democratic Party
The Federalist: The 1980s Called. They Want Their Foreign Policy Back And Republicans To Finally Wake Up, Michigan Is Hiding A Children’s Constitutional Right To Castration In Its Abortion Amendment, When Corporate America Pulls A PayPal, There’s No Escaping The Digital Gulag, and Mayorkas Knew The Migrant Whipping Story Was A Lie, But He Peddled It Anyway
Mark Steyn: Charleston/Carolina in the Morning, Buying the Farm, and Running on Fumes


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Category: Uncategorized

Ohio Voters Are Not Stupid, the Polls Are Mostly Bulls**t and Tim Ryan Is Losing

Posted on | October 12, 2022 | Comments Off on Ohio Voters Are Not Stupid, the Polls Are Mostly Bulls**t and Tim Ryan Is Losing

There was a debate Monday in the Ohio Senate race, which isn’t really a race, because Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan is going to lose, badly. The only suspense is the exact size of J.D. Vance’s winning margin.

Let’s be clear about one basic fact: Ohio is a Republican state.

There was a time, as recently as 2012, when the general popularity of Barack Obama (and the general unpopularity of Mitt Romney) made it seem that Ohio was a “swing” state. That time is now over, and it’s been over for long enough that the national media can no longer deny it.

In 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Ohio by an eight-point margin (51% to 43%, about 450,000 votes) and pundits were shocked. Obama had carried Ohio twice, by a three-point margin in 2012 against Romney, and by more than four points against John McCain in 2008. Even during the otherwise successful GOP election years of 2000 and 2004, Ohio had been “too close to call” late into Election Night both years, with Bush squeaking past Al Gore by a margin of about 160,000 voters in 2000 and edging John Kerry by less than 120,000 votes in 2004. Yet here was the endlessly “controversial” Trump not only beating Hillary in Ohio, but beating her by the biggest margin in recent history.

Part of the shock for the liberal media in 2016 was that polls in Ohio (like everywhere else) had so completely failed in their predictive capacity. As late as the Sunday before Election Day 2016, the Columbus Dispatch poll had Hillary leading 48% to 47%, and this was not even the worst Ohio poll in 2016. A month before the election, Monmouth had Hillary leading Trump by 2 points, and the CBS/YouGov poll had Hillary up by 4 points.

I repeat: Trump beat Hillary in Ohio by 8 points in 2016, and you might think such gross polling blunders might have caused pollsters to correct their methodology over the next four years. If you thought so, however, you would be wrong, because the pollster blew Ohio even worse in 2020!

Well do I remember being at my mother-in-law’s house in rural Ohio in late October 2020, in a county where Trump signs proliferated and there was scarcely a Biden sign to be seen, and trying to reconcile what I was seeing with my own eyes with the poll numbers I kept seeing:

Anyone can look at the results from 2016 and see that Trump racked up majorities of 2 to 1 or more in this part of Ohio — 72 percent in Morrow County, 71 percent in Crawford County, 67 percent in Knox County, 66 percent in Richland County, 64 percent in Marion County. In fact, Trump won 80 of Ohio’s 88 counties four years ago, defeating Hillary Clinton by an eight-point margin statewide.
If you believe the polls, Joe Biden is neck-and-neck with Trump in Ohio. Three recent polls (New York Times, Quinnipiac, Rasmussen) showed Biden with a one-point lead, and the current RealClearPolitics average of Ohio polls has Trump ahead with a margin of less than 1 percentage point. But nobody believes the polls, especially when the numbers are starkly contradicted by on-the-ground evidence like the proliferation of roadside Trump signs. . . .

Read the rest of that American Spectator column from October 2020, in case you’ve forgotten how dreadfully wrong about Ohio most pollsters were. Once again, Trump racked up an eight-point margin in the Buckeye State, stomping Biden in Ohio like Godzilla stomped Tokyo.

Will they never learn their lesson? Apparently not. On Tuesday, Instapundit linked to a Townhall article about Monday’s Ohio debate, where Ryan got completely owned by Vance:

In seeking to emphasize his claim that Vance does not support exceptions on abortion, Ryan engaged in a particular display of fear-mongering when it comes to the tragedy of rape victims and complications in pregnancy as part of “the chaos that we’re having now.”
Ryan went on to claim that “we read at least a couple of articles every week, of young people, underage girls who have been raped, or women who have had, uh, significant problems with their pregnancy, not be able to get help in the state. They gotta go to Indiana, they gotta go to Illinois, and that’s not good enough for JD Vance, he supports a national abortion ban, in which he wants women to have to get a passport and have to go to Canada.” The congressman then called for “some moderation on this issue” before painting his opponent as an “extremist,” something he would do throughout the night. . . .
Where [Vance] really hit back against Ryan, though, was by reminding that the alleged criminal in the case of a 10-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant as a result, was here illegally.
“But let’s talk about that case,” Vance mentioned. “Because why was a 10-year-old girl raped in our community, raped in our state in the first place? The thing the media and Congressman Ryan, they talk about this all the time, the thing they never mention is that poor girl was raped by an illegal alien, somebody that should’ve never been in this state in the first place.” Vance then turned towards Ryan to decry how “you voted so many times against border wall funding, so many times for amnesty, Tim. If you had done your job, she’d never have been raped in the first place.” As the buzzer rang to call time, Vance called on Ryan to “do your job on border security, don’t lecture me on positions I don’t actually have.”

Vance’s demeanor throughout that debate exuded calm strength, whereas Ryan looked weak and desperate, but then at the end of the Townhall article I caught this:

The race is considered to favor Vance, with forecasters rating it as “Lean Republican” or “Likely Republican.” Vance has a +1.4 lead in the polls, according to RealClearPolitics. 

What part of “the polls are all bullshit” do I have to explain here?

Ohioans, who voted against Joe Biden by an eight-point margin, have had to suffer through ruinous inflation and other disastrous consequences of Biden’s policies, and don’t you think they’re pissed off about it? Don’t you think Ohio voters are smart enough to see through Ryan’s phony “moderate” stance? And yet what are these poll numbers?

In September, Siena College had Ryan leading 46% to 43% — in a state that went for Trump by eight points? Are you freaking kidding me?

Well, guess what, boys and girls? That’s right — in October 2020, Sienna College did an Ohio poll for the New York Times and had Biden winning 45% to 44%. So if we consider that they missed by nine points in 2020, and they’ve got Ryan leading by three now, then Vance should win by six points. Except I think he’ll win by a much wider margin than that. The big question about Ohio is whether Vance will win by 10 points or more.

Certainly, Ryan deserves to lose by that much. Democrats seem to think the abortion issue is going to deliver them a midterm miracle, but unless they can somehow prove that J.D. Vance paid for Herschel Walker’s girlfriend’s abortion — c’mon, Democrats are really desperate — I don’t think Republicans need to sweat Ohio this year. Or 2024, either.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Category: Election, Ohio, Polls, Senate

In The Mailbox: 10.10.22

Posted on | October 12, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.10.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
A Bad American: Useful Idiot?
Director Blue: An Open Letter To Roger Waters & Joe Rogan 
357 Magnum: Electric Cars “Unexpectedly” Catch Fire
EBL: Angela Lansbury, RIP, GOP SENATE CANDIDATES SURGING TOWARDS MIDTERMS, and Maybe it is best to stay off Tinder
Twitchy: Glenn Greenwald Wrecks Ex-LTC Vindman For Calling Michael Tracey A Russian Agent, and Not Even MSNBC Can Ignore That Something Is Very Wrong With John Fetterman
Louder With Crowder: So I guess Madonna announced that she’s gay now, Neil deGrasse Tyson wants you to know that ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ isn’t sciencey enough for him, and Tulsi Gabbard DESTROYS Democrats, announces she’s leaving party she calls an ‘elitist cabal of warmongers’
Vox Popoli: Russia Blows Up Bridge to Crimea, They Really Think You’re Stupid, A Forward and Fragile Defense, and Tolstoy on Maupassant
Stoic Observations: The Martin Show

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: A Venezuelan Gang Crosses Biden’s Open Border, also, Reality Bites Back
American Greatness: All Rise for Aaron Judge’s Parents , Ukraine and the Malevolent Legacy of the Obama-Biden Administration, and Max Boot is a Woke Loser and Wrong About Everything
American Power: Crimea Bridge Explosion Disrupts Crucial Supply Route for Russian Forces, Paywalls Are Closing Off the Internet, and Democrats Mad They Might Lose Power to Censor
American Thinker: It’s the Far Left Who Are the Fascists, How Liberals Respond When You Try to Debate Them, and The Polls are Lying: Dems in Deep Trouble
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday, also, Animal’s Daily Liberty Doll News
Babalu Blog: BREAKING NEWS: Che Guevara is still dead, Russia will continue supplying Cuba with oil, food, other goods…and tourists too, Cuban government thug arrives in U.S. and requests asylum, and Cuban mother of boy with dengue fever blames government for epidemic
BattleSwarm: Ukraine Hits Train On Crimean Bridge, also, Kerch Strait Bridge Update: Russia’s Still Using It
Behind The Black: Engineers regain full control of CAPSTONE, SpaceX launches two Intelsat communications satellites, The dam is about to break on the COVID shots, and Alternatives to PayPal for supporting Behind the Black
Cafe Hayek: Even Ronald Reagan Couldn’t Use Protectionist Alchemy to Turn Engineered Scarcity Into Economic Abundance, Some Difficult Questions About Trade Policy, and Antitrust Is Bad Quality Intervention
CDR Salamander: The Anglo-Saxon War in the Hetmanate
Da Tech Guy: Could LGBT fit in the GOP?, Why are Democrats in Danger in Blue Areas?, Paypal Discovers Trust is a Social Currency Hard to Regain When Lost, and Report from Louisiana: Baseball is Life
Don Surber: Democrats get woke, go broke, Why the left went after sports, Celebrate Columbus Day, and Build bigger boondoggles
First Street Journal: Yes, actually, homicide rates can be brought down!, also, The silliness of political correctness
Gates Of Vienna: The Big Chill, The Assisted Suicide of the West, We’ll See You in Court, and No Germans Allowed!
The Geller Report: Is This America? Jan. 6 Prisoners Suffering the Horrors of the Gulag, Ask for Transfer to Gitmo, Trump Must Run, and Tulsi Gabbard Announces She’s Leaving Democratic Party, ‘An Elitist Cabal of Warmongers’
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Which Side Does He Think This Helps?, A Seyfert Galaxy, and One of the Last Sane Democrats Leaves
Hollywood In Toto: Bros Director Blasts Audiences for Film’s Box Office Failure, Joe Rogan Schools Rolling Stone Founder on Government Censorship, Hocus Pocus Earned Its Cult Status. Hocus Pocus 2? Not a Chance, and Stephen Lang Makes Old Man A Dialogue-Drenched Thriller
The Lid: Biden’s Using Tax Money To Pay Staffers To Help With Hunter Issues, An Italian-American’s Heartwarming Defense Of Columbus Day, and Federal Employees Are Trading Stock in Companies They Oversee
Legal Insurrection: PolitiFact Beclowns Itself With Pretzel Logic ‘Fact Check’ of Ohio GOP Senate Nominee J.D. Vance’s Latest Ad, Gay Palestinian Man Given Asylum in Israel Kidnapped and Beheaded in Palestinian Territory, PayPal Reverses Course on $2,500 ‘Misinformation’ Fines After Massive Pushback, and The New York Times Finally Notices California’s Bullet Train is a Bust
Nebraska Energy Observer: Change is good, Sunday Stuff, and Monday Questions
Outkick: Boston College Will Wear Special Uniforms Honoring 9/11 Hero, ESPN Keeps Forgetting The ‘Indians’ Are Now The ‘Guardians’, Crying Oklahoma Fan Could Become College Football’s Next Great Meme, and Iowa Coach Gets Snippy With Reporter Following Embarrassing Loss
Power Line: Florida: Covid Vaccines Are Dangerous to Young Men, Slow Minds Run Over at High Speed, Border disaster by the numbers, and A Ship of Fools
Shark Tank: Hernandez-Matz Says No Compromise On Abortion
Shot In The Dark: Flipped, Remember Back In The 80s?, That Brave Stance Thing, Slipped, and Sometimes A Bomb Is Just A Bomb
STUMP: Memorial: A Well-Deserved Nobel Peace Prize
The Political Hat: Spanish Lagoons Are People Too
This Ain’t Hell: Russian disinformation spreading on Internet, Gun Control laws getting kicked in the teeth, Veteran congressional candidate has details of her sexual assault leaked and published, and Wokeness is destroying discipline, cohesion, and war fighting capabilities in the military
Transterrestrial Musings: Celebrating The Wrong Italian, Space Investment, Climate Change, and Multiculturalism
Victory Girls: Michelle Obama: So “Vucking” Classy, Kamala Harris: Tongue-Tied Moron, Tone-Deaf Heathen, and The Elites Are Intentionally Destroying Your Children
Volokh Conspiracy: PayPal Still Threatens $2500 Fines for Promoting “Discriminatory” “Intolerance” (Even if Not “Misinformation”), also, Some Berkeley Law “Jew Free Zone” Updates
Watts Up With That: “Move Before I Pull My Gun Out”, “We Might Still have Time to Turn Things Around”, and Fed Up British Drivers Unglue Climate Protestors the Hard Way
Weasel Zippers: Biden Brags He Brought Gas Prices Down – The Reality Is Different, Former AG: Biden DOJ Weaponized Against Pro-Life Activists, VP Who Used To Jail People For Smoking Weed: “Nobody Should Have To Go To Jail For Smoking Weed”, and NC Dem Senate Nominee: Rioters Have “Legitimate Pain,” “It’s Not That Simple” To Tell Them Not To Riot
The Federalist: The Biggest Lie Of A Generation: A Life Online Is A Life Well Lived, How The Bravery Of Forgotten Martyrs Kept The Church Alive In The Soviet Union, Energy Inflation Isn’t An Accident, It’s A Planned Demolition, and How FDR Used Tax Dollars To Buy An Election
Mark Steyn:  Golly Golly Gone, Left Hanging: Randolph Scott and Ride Lonesome, The Great Reset, and Happy Holidays!

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Category: Linkagery

The Annual Admiral Of The Ocean Sea Appreciation Post

Posted on | October 11, 2022 | Comments Off on The Annual Admiral Of The Ocean Sea Appreciation Post

— by Wombat-socho

Well, actually, Stacy did a damn fine job already talking about Almirante Colombo and why he still triggers the uneducated wokies among us, so I’ll confine myself to posting some pertinent memes by folks on the Intertubes, recommending some books, and mourning a couple of folks who are no longer with us.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

Not sorry at all, really

Getting the bad news out of the way first, ornery blogger Grouchy Old Cripple died last week. Loyal Reader RH pointed out this post, which is a riposte to Vox Day’s seemingly unending mockery of the boomers, and fairly typical of Denny’s work. Since I don’t read the Red Star (Tribune) or the St. Paul Pioneer Press any more, I also missed the passing of Dr. Ronald Glasser, author of 365 Days, one of the 21 books I blogged about when I started reviewing books here at The Other McCain. It’s more than a little embarrassing that I lived not too far from Dr. Glasser when I was in Minnesota, and it never occurred to me to look him up and have him sign my copy of the book.

I’ve been rereading a lot of stuff lately, most notably Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and the BIll James Historical Baseball Abstract, but I did manage to squeeze in the first two volumes in the Mammon trilogy by Robert Kroese. In the hands of another author, in another time, this would have been a stirring tale of man’s heroic capture of an asteroid with enough wealth to make most of Earth fairly well off. Unfortunately, the hero of this story is no Delos D. Harriman or Laurie Jo Hansen, and the United States government is far more corrupt and thuggish than Heinlein or Pournelle thought possible. (Which, considering how dark Pournelle’s vision of the Feds is in High Justice, is saying quite a bit.) Kroese’s dark tale reads like the prequel to Stephenson’s Snow Crash, where things are falling apart because the money is worthless and the center is losing control. It was a depressing yet fascinating read; the first two books are available on Kindle Unlimited and the concluding volume is an inexpensive $4.99. Worth your time.

Now for an abbreviated Over The Transom.

Stoic Observations: Cultural Edification vs. Empowerment
Director Blue: An Illustrated Proletariat Poetry Reading 
A Bad American: Drag Queens Behind Pulpits?
357 Magnum: Electric Vehicles Vs. Salt Water
Gab News: GabPay – The PayPal Alternative

Back to the normal link posts tomorrow.

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Category: Books, Linkagery

Columbus and the Meaning of America

Posted on | October 10, 2022 | Comments Off on Columbus and the Meaning of America

“Twelve protesters were arrested and 18 police officers injured during an altercation Friday in Chicago’s Grant Park over a statue of Christopher Columbus. ‘Hundreds of protesters rallied, crowding around the Columbus statue while trying to tear it down. The statue was still vandalized and tagged with spray paint,’ according to Fox 32.”
— June 19, 2020

Sometime during the mob madness of 2020, I lost count of how many statues had been vandalized, but at least three statues of Christopher Columbus were among the targets of the “social justice” hooligans.

One may observe that this destructive impulse was not coincidental. Everything the Left ever does is destructive. The greatest “achievements” of the Left have historically been genocidal in nature, whether we are speaking of Stalin in Russia, Mao in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia or Mengistu in Ethiopia. Every left-wing radical leader as far back as the French Revolution has turned out to be a mass murderer, but we aren’t supposed to notice this trademark telos of radicalism. We are expected to think of these blood-soaked fanatics as idealists who, perhaps, got a little carried away with their idealism and thus killed millions of their countrymen. The fact that such “idealists” seizing power is always swiftly followed by the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — just a coincidence. “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

What did the mobs think they were accomplishing by toppling or defacing those statues of Christopher Columbus? What, if anything, did they actually know about the man and his achievements?

“Very little or nothing,” would answer both questions.

Ignorance and futile rage go hand-in-hand, and I doubt many of them could be inspired to actually research the life of Columbus.

“Read a book? Learn something? Are you kidding me, dude?”

Nevertheless we must recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s masterful 1942 biography, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, despite our knowledge that leftists don’t actually care about history, except insofar as they can hijack it and distort it to serve their own destructive agenda. They want to destroy Columbus because they want to destroy America. What is it about America that they hate so much?

Liberty, per se. By which I mean that the Left despises the sort of independent self-sufficiency — what we used to call “the pioneer spirit” — because independent people are not useful to the Left as prospective clients for their lunatic “share the wealth” schemes of economic redistribution. As I have sometimes felt the need to point out, Americans in 1776 did not issue a “Declaration of Equality,” but rather a “Declaration of Independence.” Our colonial forebears had, by necessity, learned to manage their own affairs without the assistance or supervisory instruction of the Crown. So when, after the end of the French and Indian Wars, the Crown sought to exert its authority over the colonies, this was viewed by Americans as an infringement of their liberty, or as they declared, “invasions on the rights of the people.”

The right to be left alone — to be spared the meddlesome interference of government in the day-to-day business of life — is what America is really all about, and the Left simply can’t stand this. It is wrong for you to be free from government interference, the Left believes. They crave the power to boss you around, to deprive you of your basic liberty, and this is why the Left in America, rather than desiring to overthrow the government, instead seeks to expand the authority of government, which they aim to control as an instrument of destroying liberty. And without liberty, it isn’t really America anymore, is it?

Columbus discovered America, and they can’t forgive him for that.




 

Category: History

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: My Favorite Celtic Death Goddess

Posted on | October 10, 2022 | Comments Off on Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: My Favorite Celtic Death Goddess

— compiled by Wombat-socho

It’s my birthday, so I’ll post what I want to, in this case Scathach, Guardian of the Gate of Shadows..
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Women belong in the kitchen. Men belong in the kitchen. Everybody belongs in the kitchen, because that’s where the food is!

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1862, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. 

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule 5 Protection, Life, & Property Friday, also the Saturday Gingermageddon. 

EBL: MAGA Biden – Where’s Hunter?, Pistol, Russian Women, Morbius, Busy Week For Elon Musk And It’s Only Tuesday, Loretta Lynn RIP, Ukrainian Warrior Women, The Most Wunderbar Time Of Year, Alessia Cara, and The Feast. 

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Samantha Allyson, Fish Pic Friday – Poe Nlpe, Thursday Tanlines, The Wednesday Wetness, The Devil, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Cheat? Who, Me? and  Palm Sunday.

A BAD AMERICAN: Best I’ve Seen All Week Plus Rule 5

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Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
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Category: Rule 5

‘Climate Change’ Is a Dangerous Cult

Posted on | October 9, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘Climate Change’ Is a Dangerous Cult

Say hello to Madeleine “Maddie” Budd, a 21-year-old English woman who dropped out of medical school to become a radical environmental activist. She has been arrested several times for her “activism.” Last September, she was arrested in London while engaging in a protest with the Extinction Rebellion group. In March, she was arrested for running onto the field during a Premier League soccer game between Arsenal and Liverpool, where she intended to glue her hands to the goalposts. In April, she was arrested on three separate occasions for taking part in “direct action” protests by a group called Just Stop Oil.

Maddie Budd’s turn to criminal activity — which is what “direct action” protests are — has dismayed her family, especially after her latest crime.

The eco-zealot seen in video pouring human excrement over a memorial to pandemic hero Captain Sir Tom Moore has been jailed ahead of her sentencing after pleading guilty to causing criminal damage in the ‘abhorrent act’.
Maddie Budd, 21, was arrested in London on Sunday over the attack at the memorial in Hatton, Derbyshire.
District Judge Louisa Cieciora said the starting point for sentencing following her guilty plea could be 18 months’ imprisonment.
She also today declined an application for bail ahead of the sentencing hearing, telling the court she has ‘substantial grounds’ to believe Budd would commit another offence.
Budd was remanded in custody while a pre-sentence report is carried out ahead of her sentencing on October 25.
Footage of the stunt, carried out for the pressure group End UK Private Jets, showed her drenching the monument — which honours the 100-year-old World War Two vet who raised £33million for the NHS during lockdown — in urine and faeces.
Prosecutor Jordan Pratt told Westminster Magistrates Court: ‘On September 30 the defendant attended a location in Hatton where there is a statue of Sir Captain Tom Moore.
‘The statue is situated in a public area next to a road. She approached the statue and poured a bucket of human faeces all over this statue.
‘She was wearing a white t-shirt which said “End UK Private Jets”. This act was filmed. It has already been seen by a number of people. This is an abhorrent act.
‘I need not remind the court of the impact that Tom Moore had. He was a figurehead who people rallied round to raise tens of millions of pounds walking round his garden at the height of the pandemic.’
Budd, of no fixed address, will attend her next hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court on October 25, she was remanded in custody in the meantime.
Ms Budd’s father told MailOnline on Sunday he was ‘ashamed of her’ and ‘sick with shock’ when he saw what she had done. . . .
The activist’s father, Jim Budd, 62, told MailOnline his daughter had ‘gone rogue’ after dropping out of medical school to become a full-time eco-warrior, giving up her career.
Father-of-six Mr Budd, an award-winning glazier, said he had felt sick when he saw the video of her defiling Captain Tom’s image. Mr Budd said he and his charity worker wife Harriet, 63, had messaged Budd after they realised what she had done but received no reply.
Speaking from their home near Kington on the England-Wales border, he told MailOnline close to tears: ‘The shock of this is hurting people and upsetting them.
‘I’m ashamed of her and what she has done. There has been a big public reaction for obvious reasons. I don’t think she understands what the hell she was unleashing.
‘She’s done something horrible without thinking of the consequences.’
He added: ‘I felt sick with shock when I saw it — I have sent her a text message but she has not replied.
‘It goes against all the things you install in your children — it is not normal behaviour. I’m extremely sad. The fact is she has sort of gone rogue.’
Until recently Maddie had been at medical school in Manchester ahead of an expected career with the NHS.
But she dropped out to devote all her time to protesting over climate change after developing an initial interest at a young age.
Her father added it was ‘understandable’ for the police to investigate what he called ‘an act of desecration’.
He said: ‘I can’t really apologise on her behalf. Sir Tom was clearly a national hero and the country resonated with his fantastic and amazing actions.
‘However shocking the future of climate change predictions are, I don’t think it was her duty to desecrate his memory in the way she has.
‘Her motivations are very real but misplaced. The fact is she has gone rogue, so to speak.
‘When people are young and vulnerable they can go down roads they would not do later in life. It is a horrible thing to have happened and people are obviously upset.
‘It is very hard to understand how young people can feel so threatened by climate change that they can carry out such extreme actions.
‘But I’m not making excuses for her. She has made a terrible mistake. We were horrified, it’s an ongoing worry.’

The man whose statue Maddie desecrated was an elderly veteran who became a national hero in England by raising money for the health service during the COVID-19 pandemic. Captain Tom Moore was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in July 2020. He died last year.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

“Climate change” is a political propaganda operation, not a genuine crisis. As an activist movement, it dates to the 1990s, when the Left found itself in need of some new “cause” to replace the “No Nukes” movement.

How many of y’all are old enough to remember “No Nukes”? In 1979, a bunch of rock music celebrities staged a concert that became an album and a documentary film intended to promote unilateral disarmament by the West in its Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union. The nuclear disarmament movement was always pro-Soviet and anti-American, and if it was not indeed a Communist Party front, certainly its goals were in line with Soviet policy. A friend of mine, Chris Cassone, knew several of the musicians involved in the “No Nukes” protests and speaks with emphatic disdain of the various rock celebrities who got themselves arrested in 1981 protesting the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California.

Once the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s, it took with it one of the Left’s big rallying points — opposition to the U.S. military, and especially the fear of nuclear war — and thus created a need for some new “cause” to unite the forces of anti-Americanism. Eventually, this gave rise to the movement to destroy American industry, especially oil and gas production, in the name of stopping “global warming.”

One of the telltale indicators that this was about politics, and not science, was when they made the switch from talking about “global warming” to talking about “climate change.” Do you know why that happened? First, because over the past 20 years or so, worldwide temperatures have stopped increasing; the infamous “hockey stick” projection — first published by Michael Mann in 1998 — simply hasn’t happened. Insofar as “experts” made date-certain predictions of near-term future catastrophes (this or that disastrous consequence would happen by 2010 or 2015 or 2020) all their prophecies turned out to be false. But the second reason that the phrase “global warming” was replaced with “climate change” was because there was an uncanny tendency for blizzards to strike whenever major conferences and speeches about the alleged crisis were scheduled in the winter. After several such incidents, the organizers of the “global warming” industry (which is what it had become by the early 21st century, an industry employing thousands of people) realized their public-relations problem. They couldn’t schedule any events about “global warming” between October and April without risking another laughable example of what became known as “The Gore Effect”:

The so-called Gore Effect happens when a global warming-related event, or appearance by the former vice president and climate change crusader, Al Gore, is marked by exceedingly cold weather or unseasonably winter weather.
For instance, in March, 2007, a Capitol Hill media briefing on the Senate’s new climate bill was cancelled due to a snowstorm.
On Oct. 22 [2008], Gore’s global warming speech at Harvard University coincided with near 125-year record-breaking low temperatures. And less than a week later, on Oct. 28, the British House of Commons held a marathon debate on global warming during London’s first October snowfall since 1922.

Because of this public-relations problem, the term “climate change” was substituted for “global warming” and, believe it or not, activists began arguing that excessively cold weather, including record-breaking snowfall, was also proof of “climate change.” Basically, any kind of weather could be claimed as evidence in support of their theory, which is so elastic that it is impossible to disprove it. And a theory which cannot be disproved is not science. It’s a quasi-religious cult.

One of the tactics of cults is to isolate their members, especially turning them against their own families. The estrangement between Maddie Budd and her family — she doesn’t even reply to her father’s text messages — is just further confirmation of what we already knew about the climate-change movement. The indoctrination and “echo chamber” tendency (where all dissent is silenced, and critics are demonized as enemies) are self-evident to any intelligent observer.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Category: Global Warming
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