The Other McCain

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

THEY’RE CANCELLING BIG BUTTS?

Posted on | August 22, 2023 | Comments Off on THEY’RE CANCELLING BIG BUTTS?

‘Ain’t no beauty queens in this locality …’

Great minds think alike, and so when word got out that “Fat Bottomed Girls” is omitted from an updated version of Queen’s Greatest Hits, Ed Driscoll asked if “Sir-Mix-a-Lot [will] be able to escape the PC police?”

I like big butts and I cannot lie.
You other brothers can’t deny,
When a girl walks in
With an itty-bitty waist
And a round thing in your face . . .

Yeah, you know what I mean. “My homeboys tried to warn me,” etc. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, most conservatives made fun of Bill Clinton for hitting on a fat girl, but I was like, “Hmmm.” As a fellow Southerner, I could relate. Down home, some of us ol’ boys don’t mind a little cushion for the pushin’, IYKWIMAITYD.

You can keep your gaunt European supermodels, give me a gal who looks like she knows how to cook some biscuits and gravy. So what’s wrong with these “woke” corporate types taking over the music business and cancelling one of the most fun songs from the classic rock era?

Are you gonna take me home tonight?
Oh, down beside that red firelight?
Are you gonna let it all hang out?
Fat bottomed girls,
You make the rocking world go ’round!

It makes no sense, when the same “woke” brigades are trying to push feminist “body positivity” messages, that they’d cancel “Fat Bottomed Girls.” I reckon the idea is that, anything that men enjoy is inherently wrong, so that a song featuring men celebrating the “greatest treasure” of corpulent women must be bad. Well, honey, don’t you worry about it. Just have another plate of biscuits and gravy . . .



 

Category: Rule 5

In The Mailbox: 08.21.23 (Lost Weekend Edition)

Posted on | August 21, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.21.23 (Lost Weekend Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Finally out of the VA hospital, where I spent a long weekend having my legs bandaged/unbandaged/rebandaged while having intravenous antibiotics pumped into me. Staying the night in Vegas before heading home tomorrow morning.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: PG&E Says All Your Batteries Are Belong To Us, also, Woman Kills Sex Offender Invading Her Home
EBL: You’re Off To See The Wizard, Sorry Maui ?, Biden and the Democrats Are Just Not That Into You, The Misfits, and Russian Lunar Lander Crashed: Ceased Operation
Twitchy: Biden Tells Hawaiians How His First Wife & Daughter Died, Adam Kinzinger Calls Tucker Carlson “Traitor To The U.S.”, “Praise Allah!”, and Biden’s Reception On Maui Explains Why WH Was Hesitant To Go
Louder With Crowder: “Egg producer” Megyn Kelly under fire for Rachel Levine attack but not backing down, Kid Rock busted crushing a Bud Light after he started the boycott, Bradley Cooper target of social media outrage over prosthetic nose he wears in Leonard Bernstein biopic, and Canceled! Queen classic “Fat Bottomed Girls” gets removed from new music app (Updated)
Vox Popoli: Stop Playing Stupid, No, They Haven’t Always Died, Professionally Anti-Trump, Then They Came for Wranglerstar, The US Housing Crash Cometh, and Reality Defeats the NATO Narrative
Gab News: Gab Responds To NZ’s Censorship Demand, 

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Baldilocks: Memories Of The First Life Part II, The Two Death Penalties, and That Time I Was Confronted By An Asian

CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, also, The Road To The Fall Of Kabul
Don Surber: Oops, They Truthed Themselves

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

How Am I Related to Pocahontas?

Posted on | August 21, 2023 | Comments Off on How Am I Related to Pocahontas?

My ancestor Colonel Robert Bolling

Having traced the ancestry of my paternal grandmother Perlonia McCain (née Bolt) all the way back to Rollo the Viking — seriously, that’s what the Internet says — my son Jefferson also took a look at the ancestry of my maternal grandfather, Hermit Eiland Kirby, whose father was William Thomas Kirby. His father, William Terry Kirby, was born in 1810 in Union County, South Carolina. His father, James Ransom Kirby, was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in 1785; he lived past age 100 and died in Troup County, Georgia. James Ransom Kirby’s grandfather was John Kirby, born in Virginia in 1735. John Kirby married Jemima Bolling, whose great-grandfather was Colonel Robert Bolling, an early Virginia colonist prominent enough to have his own Wikipedia page.

Colonel Bolling’s first wife was Jane Rolfe, whose father, Thomas Rolfe, was the only child of John Rolfe and Pocahontas. If I were dishonest — like certain Democratic politicians — I might tell you I was a descendant of Pocahontas, but this is not the case. Jane Rolfe Bolling died in 1676 after giving birth to the couple’s only child, John Bolling. Colonel Bolling later remarried, this time to Anne Stith, who gave birth to seven children, including Stith Bolling, whose son Alexander Bolling was the father of Jemima Bolling Kirby. So while my ancestor was once married to the granddaughter of Pocahontas, I am not descended from her.

Nevertheless, the descendants of Pocahontas, through Colonel Bolling’s son John, are my cousins, a branch of the family known to genealogists as “the Red Bollings,” a lineage that includes Woodrow Wilson’s second wife Edith. My own branch, known as the “White Bollings,” includes Robert E. Lee’s wife, who was the great-granddaughter of Stith Bolling’s older brother, Robert Bolling Jr. All of this is pretty cool, but then I learned that another descendant of Colonel Robert Bolling is this guy . . .

Ain’t it a small world, cousin? Not kidding at all.

When I related these findings to my youngest daughter Reagan, she was indignant: “We’re cousins of both John McCain and George Bush? We’re getting nothing out of it! This nepotism thing isn’t working for us.”

No, but we’re still more Native American than Elizabeth Warren.



 

Category: Family, History

Music Cue: ‘Immigrant Song’

Posted on | August 20, 2023 | Comments Off on Music Cue: ‘Immigrant Song’

My ancestor, Rollo the Viking

Genealogy is fun, although I’m not entirely sure that online sources are reliable. At any rate, my son Jefferson texted me today about some of the research I’d done. It seems his girlfriend’s family can trace their ancestry to William the Conqueror, and here I’d gotten no further back than the Revolutionary War. But I conveyed to Jefferson some of what I had, and he got to work, tracing the ancestry of my grandmother Perlonia McCain (née Bolt) through the Eastwood line through the Thorpe family to the Robbins family of New Jersey and thus to the Potter family of Connecticut. Go back several generations in the Potter line in England and (according to the online records, at least) when you reach the 12th century, the family name is actually Poitiers. Could it be true that my distant ancestors were Norman crusaders who became rulers of Antioch?

That’s what the online genealogy says, anyway, and from these Norman crusaders the Poitiers, the line traces all the way back to Rollo (Hrólfr in Old Norse), the Viking warrior who conquered Normandy. And . . .

Wait a minute, William the Conqueror was also a descendant of Rollo, which means that my son’s girlfriend is a distant cousin! Forget “Immigrant Song.” This is more like “Dueling Banjos,” IYKWIMAITYD.



 

Category: Family, History

21st-Century Digital Stalinism

Posted on | August 19, 2023 | Comments Off on 21st-Century Digital Stalinism

BEFORE: Josef Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, 1937

AFTER: Nikolai who?

Of all the sinister aspects of the Soviet Union — secret police, famine, mass murders — perhaps nothing was ultimately more frightening than the way the Communists literally erased history. After Trotsky was purged, Soviet propagandists began airbrushing the former Bolshevik leader from historic photographs, so that his role in the Russian revolution, and his leadership of the Red Army during the ensuing civil war, was made to disappear. It was this aspect of Stalinism — the absolute control of information, including the rewriting of history to suit the needs of the Communist leadership — that George Orwell depicted so memorably in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which envisioned a Soviet-style future in England. Our own Stalinist regime is now in charge:

A new report revealed Wikipedia’s permissive role in the concerted effort to protect President Joe Biden by blocking Americans from reading politically-negative information tied to his embattled son. According to data entries reviewed by independent journalist Lee Fang, Wikipedia allowed special consultants “hired” by Hunter Biden to manipulate the “Hunter Biden” page with “stealth edits.” Wikipedia, a site funded by leftist billionaire George Soros, seemingly stood idly by as entries tying Hunter to damning bribery scandals were edited “without any fingerprints.”
As reported by Fang, Hunter ordered FTI Consulting, a crisis management public relations firm, in 2014 to help him and his dad save face by keeping Americans from accessing the Bidens’ ties to shady business dealings on Wikipedia. In one email, Hunter advised Ryan Toohey, then an advisor at FTI, that Eric Schwerin, a business partner of the Bidens, would be making “additional edits.” According to Fang, “Toohey, emails from Hunter’s laptop show, confirmed that his company would get to work.”
According to Fang, Hunter also inexplicably pushed to delete the ties between the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy, a company he worked for, highlighting instead his board memberships at non-profits. Shortly thereafter, countless anonymous users in Wikipedia followed suit and proceeded to “airbrush” negative references on Hunter’s page.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Even though I use Wikipedia frequently, I’ve noticed how the editors nowadays add “wokeness” wherever possible. Just the other day, for instance, I noticed that the biography of Zelda Fitzgerald — the Jazz Age socialite who married F. Scott Fitzgerald — has been updated to include all kinds of stuff about her father’s role in upholding white supremacy in Alabama. Given the place and time, and the fact that her father was a justice on the state Supreme Court, this isn’t very remarkable, but I suppose the Wikipedia editors want to “cancel” Zelda (for whom a road in Montgomery is named), the way Albany, N.Y., has canceled Philip Schuyler.

The Left’s rewriting of the past, however, is not confined to defaming the dead, but also in altering more recent facts, such as trying to erase the facts about Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign dealings. It’s very Soviet-like — whatever the Party says is true, must become true, and if any fact should contradict the Party line, well, it will soon cease to be a fact.



 

Category: Joe Biden

On ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’

Posted on | August 19, 2023 | Comments Off on On ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’

After 10 days of reading endless commentary about Oliver Anthony’s viral hit “Rich Men North of Richmond,” I finally decided to watch the YouTube video and see for myself: Red-bearded young man with a muscular voice picking a Gretsch dobro and singing the blues about “what the world’s gotten to,” and how it feels to be “livin’ in the new world with an old soul.” Brother, don’t I know! Been feeling it all my life, but it’s my choice to play the clown, to act as if I’m undamaged and undaunted by the evil directed against me: “Never let ’em see you sweat.”

My four sons have each had their share of struggles, but you won’t find them complaining about it, because that’s not who we are. Victory requires no apology. Be a winner, and make it look easy, leaving others so mystified by your success as to make them envious. They weren’t even awake when you were burning the midnight oil, nor have they heard of your many failures — because you didn’t complain about them — and so they’re like Ferris Bueller’s sister: “What makes him so g–damn special? … Why does he get to ditch, when everyone else has to go?”

There’s a certain Stoic quality to this approach, which I consider an effective rebellion against a world in which everybody seems to be competing constantly in the Oppression Olympics. The victimhood mentality has so infused our culture that we consider people admirable only insofar as they have suffered, which is why Elizabeth Warren had to invent a fictitious “Native American” biography to justify her tenure at Harvard. Well, how about this: Fuck Harvard.

Fuck the entire Ivy League and everything it symbolizes, including its endless sermonizing about the glories of “diversity.”

When I first heard that the singer of “Rich Men North of Richmond” (whose real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford) was from Farmville, Virginia, my eyes lit up in recognition. The town is about two-thirds of the way from Petersburg to Appomattox, and it was 10 miles east of Farmville, at the Battle of Sailor’s Creek, that Grant’s army pounced on two corps of Lee’s army, with nearly 8,000 Confederates killed, wounded or captured in a single stroke, just three days before the final surrender.

That bit of military history must be well-known to locals, and I’d bet money that Lunsford is, like me, a descendant of Confederate soldiers, conscious of his ancestry, and conflicted as to what duty requires in a world that has no sense of what duty even means — “livin’ in the new world with an old soul,” indeed. Just try to live an honest life, stay out of trouble, do the best you can for your family, and don’t lose your soul trying to keep up with the Joneses. We’re winning, baby.

His unexpected good fortune — more than 20 million YouTube views and a place atop all the music download sites — has not spoiled Lunsford. He wrote a long Facebook post explaining he’s turned down multimillion-dollar offers from the music industry because he doesn’t aspire to that kind of life. Because the Left has been trying to attack him personally — to sabotage his blue-collar reputation — Lunsford felt the need to explain how it is he owns acreage in Dinwiddie County: “In 2019, I paid $97,500 for the property and still owe about $60,000 on it. I am living in a 27′ camper with a tarp on the roof that I got off of craigslist for $750.” So there you go, lefties — satisfied now? In point of fact, Lunford’s status as a property owner is testimony to the continued vitality of the American Dream. A high-school dropout, by working blue-collar jobs and living a thrifty life, was able to become a land owner when he was only 27, an age at which a lot of college-educated kids are still living in crappy apartments and complaining about their student loan debts. How it must burn them up, all those sociology majors, to see this redneck boy catapulted to the top of the Spotify charts, and yet financially self-sufficient enough that he can say, “No, thanks,” to the record companies trying to sign him to multimillion-dollar deals. Winning, baby.

“Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.”
— Stonewall Jackson

How do we apply this tactical advice to our current situation? That’s the question we must ponder, as old souls living in the new world.



 

Category: Music

‘Democracy’ Ruins Everything

Posted on | August 18, 2023 | Comments Off on ‘Democracy’ Ruins Everything

Last year, my son Jefferson was studying the Punic Wars — Hannibal, Cannae and all that — and in discussing it with me, remarked that at the time, slaves were about half the population of the city of Rome. These were white slaves, however, and the Roman Empire collapsed long ago, so there’s no “critical theory” or “systemic racism” angle to be exploited for political gain, which is why most people never contemplate the condition of Roman slaves. Of course, considering the general decline of education in this country, most Americans know next to nothing about ancient Rome, and in particular don’t understand the path by which Rome went from a Republic to an Empire. Julius Caesar was aligned with what was called the Populares (democratic) party in Roman politics, whereas Cicero was a leader of the Optimates (aristocratic) party. It was on behalf of “the people,” therefore, that Caesar assumed the dictatorship and, after his assassination led to civil war, it was Caesar’s ally Mark Antony who insisted on Cicero’s assassination.

Some scholarly readers will protest against my drastic oversimplification of this history — necessary for the sake of brevity — but my point is that (a) ancient Rome was not a democracy, and (b) it was the populares who, by their opposition to the senatorial voices of aristocratic tradition, helped pave the way toward the destruction of the Republic and the tyranny of imperial power. “Democracy” ruins everything.

The reason I put “democracy” inside scare-quotes is because the word has so many different meanings as to have almost no meaning at all, as Orwell famously observed: “In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning.” But in general it refers to a demand for equality, particularly in terms of representation in government, but also in economic terms — many people vote for Democrats simply because they hate and envy the rich, and expect Democrats to pursue policies to punish the rich (for the sake of equality), which is why you hear Joe Biden frequently inveighing against billionaires. Never mind that Biden himself is quite wealthy, or that billionaires are major contributors to the Democratic Party. The resentment of wealth, and a desire to punish the rich, have for decades been at the heart of the Democratic Party’s electoral appeal, so that this is what “democracy” really means to many Americans.

All of this is preamble to a discussion about what’s wrong with education in America. My friends know never to get me started on this subject because I can rant for hours about it. Instapundit today linked to a discussion of the subject by an anonymous Substacker, who discusses education in the context of fighting against a system of “managerial neoliberalism,” and uses that phrase in such a way as to indicate to the cognoscenti that the author is familiar with the work of Sam Francis.

Ah, my fellow Thought Criminals are everywhere nowadays! But to continue with the idea of how “democracy” ruins everything, my points is that the democratization of education — “equal opportunity,” subsidized by the taxpayers — is the true root of the problem. Once upon a time, young people were likely to get only so much education as their parents could afford to give them. Even when “free” public schools became the norm, it was not until well into the 20th century that a majority of Americans obtained a high-school diploma. Prior to the advent of the Welfare State (implemented via the New Deal) children of the poor often had to go to work to support their families. Such was the case for my wife’s maternal grandfather, whose father died when he was still quite young. There were no child labor laws to obstruct the boy in pursuing work, and this was sufficiently commonplace that he was far from the only 12-year-old working full-time in his West Virginia community.

Thanks to “democracy,” however, now we have school systems that spend $21,000 per student annually — and none of the students can do math or reading at grade level. But enough about Baltimore . . .

What is the purpose of education? This is where people have become badly confused. Supposedly, education is about obtaining the credentials necessary to a successful career — to make money, in other words — but this is almost exactly backward from what education was originally. Education was originally an aristocratic pursuit; as only the wealthy could afford to hire tutors, or to send their children to an academy, education belonged almost exclusively to the offspring of the well-to-do. The successful businessman or the prosperous farmer would pay to send his son to college, so that he might obtain some of the refinements of knowledge suitable to a gentleman, particularly in terms of preparing the young man for his role as a social and political leader of his community.

Many of America’s early leaders — e.g., Benjamin Franklin — had little or no formal education, but were autodidacts. What law school did Abraham Lincoln attend? None. He became a lawyer by “reading law” in a local attorney’s office. He never even got a high school diploma!

The influence of “democracy” on American education is simple: More schooling, less learning. Never before in human history have so many idiots obtained master’s degrees — thanks, “democracy”!

As I said, however, once I get started on this subject, I can rant for hours, but my daughter just informed me that she’d like me to stop typing — clickety-clack, clickety-clack — so that she can take a relaxing bath and go to bed without the noisy disturbance from my nearby office. So the readers will have to hash it out in the comments, and I’ll return to the topic again on some evening when my daughter isn’t around.



 

Category: Education

How Do We Manage Compromise?

Posted on | August 16, 2023 | Comments Off on How Do We Manage Compromise?

by Smitty

Kurt Schilchter is one of the true thought leaders on the right.
He posed a serious question, and I, rudely, answered with another.

As is universally the case, the better answer is straight out of the Bible.
We’ve been looking at the Saul/David divide in Sunday School in I Samuel.
If one can generalize from Saul to the tyrannical Left, and David to the patriotic Right, some insights obtain:

  • Saul cannot be reached, despite literal decades of effort. Pray without ceasing (absolutely) but know that the bad guy gets a vote, and it is often cast in favor of tragedy over repentance.
  • Honoring the Lord remains the overarching priority. You cannot achieve good ends through evil means. The Left has laundered evil through the law; but good in man’s eyes isn’t justification in the Lord’s. A grey area here is the mail-in ballots. They are a trap. Election security is thrown to the wind. The GOP is not making an issue of this, or promising reform. This is an indicator.
  • Violence happens. David holds on as long as he can, then flees for his life. Preparedness is key to success.
  • Violence is not met with violence. No one–no one–would have blamed David for snuffing Saul either of the clear times that David could have ended the drama. David’s insight was that whatever means were used aginst Saul would be the New Rules that would be applied to him as king.
  • Vengeance is the Lord’s. As a daily excercise, pray for President Biden, VP Harris, and all of the other degenerates on the Left. It is theraputic for you to hold up their humanity in prayer, with sincerity. You are arguably better than they. Sure. But if God is 1, then you and I are so far out to the right of the decimal as to render such comparisons moot. So let’s ge over our flesh and be assured that, even if they skate under the sun, they will meet the Judge Eternal, who heedeth not CNN.

After a good, prayerful soul-purge, we can tone down the hormones and calmly consider the situation.

The country has jacked around. Has for [you pick the number] of years.

We are on the cusp of finding out.

Finding out whether that “American Exceptionalism” means shag-all. Not that the country was bullet-proof. The 1st Amendment leaves plenty of roomm for lying and gaslighting and mal-education to take a toll. Exceptionalism means that, having thrown a runtime exception, the country’s founding principles are sunk deep enough to puke out the godless Commie falsehoods and restore the Republic. Or not.

Who’s leading this recovery?

You are.

The recovery starts with *NOT* externalizing the work, and seeking the correct name for the ballot to sink a sling-stone into the forehead of the Deep State Goliath. That’s not how this works.

While Trump affords some distraction, and hormonal release for some, I have yet to hear a coherent reform plan from him. Stipulating that he prevails next year, it doesn’t matter if he jails half the government and treat the U.S. Code like Maui: if you don’t fundamentally alter the context, then you shall have obtained passing entertainment at best.

So: who follows the 2024 nominee? On what course? These are the needed discussions.

I don’t know either, but I do know that, if we’re not deeply in prayer regarding them, then all of the social media hue and cry is so much flatus. I’ll define compromise as: “Being willing to ease the rudder, without yielding on the eventual course to steer.” Know the Way.

Category: Uncategorized
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