The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 08.29.22

Posted on | August 29, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.29.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Did a little work on Wombat’s Bookshelf yesterday and brought it up to date through the end of 2021, so if you missed any of the review posts last year or just need a quick guide to some worthwhile SF and history books, there you are.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

Meanwhile, in Reno…(from the r/Reno subreddit)

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Wisconsin Media Seems Confused About Self-Defense
Director Blue: SpyGate The Graphic Novel Chapter 9 – When Lisa Met Pete
EBL: Will Trump Get A Special Master?, also, When The Shiite Hits The Fan
Twitchy: Taylor Lorenz Has The Vapors Over Libs Of TikTok Again, also, Allow Democrat John Fetterman To Explain Why He Opposes Voter ID
Louder With Crowder: Mike Tyson shares why he turned from an ‘all-out liberal’ to a conservative, also, Jason Aldean’s wife makes joke about gender and being a tomboy
Vox Popoli: Very Correct Indeed, The Devil’s Pride, The Death of Davos Man, and Definitely Fake, Probably Gay
Stoic Observations: Bull, Boss, & Big Black

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Sanctions are the Briar Patch of our times, also, I get Suspicious when a Famous Jew converts to Catholicism – UPDATED
American Conservative: Tired Of The Trump Drama, also, American Babylon & The Kolakovic Moment
American Greatness: The Strangest Thing About ‘Semi-Fascist’ Trump, Lawyer: January 6 Clients Are Being Tortured, and Lindsey Graham Says There Will be Riots if Trump is Prosecuted
American Power: Washington State Patriotism, The Mar-a-Lago Affidavit: Is That All There Is?, and Student Loan Plan Will Feed Inflation, Hurt Dems Politically
American Thinker: The Raid on Mar-A-Lago: A Desperate Act by the Deep State, Conventional Wisdom is an Oxymoron, and The FBI: A Campaign Arm of the Democrat Party
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Charlie Crist picks running-mate who tweeted how Cubans ‘mourn’ the death of dictator Fidel Castro, Reports from Cuba: After milk and beef, bread disappears from the Cuban table, Farts and alloys: Florida Democrat for U.S. Senate Val Demings tries to campaign in Spanish, fails miserably, and Blockade Schmockade: All-purpose excuse for failure repeated ad nauseam for dupes in Cuba and abroad
BattleSwarm: The Crazy Smart Felon Who Lived In A Toys “R” Us, also, San Francisco Shop Owners Reach Their Breaking Point
Behind The Black: Federal court rejects lawsuit by Dish/Viasat against Starlink, SLS launch scrubbed, Today’s blacklisted American, and Quick space links
Cafe Hayek: Meaningful Jobs are Productive Jobs – Not Protected Jobs, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Scale of state”, and To Advocate Industrial Policy Is to Pose As a Fortuneteller
CDR Salamander: The Use and Misuse of our Military Attachés , also, The Eeyore Leadership Model for Our Navy
Da Tech Guy: MORE Navy manpower woes!!, Good News and Bad News for kids in DC, and As Van Morrison turns 77, here are his ten best albums
Don Surber: Now they admit we were right, Bill Maher’s laptop problem, and Lesbians served their purpose. Men take over LGBT
First Street Journal: If “Black Lives Matter,” why do black killers of white victims get more severe sentences than black killers of black victims even in very liberal cities?
Gates Of Vienna: Criminal Lunacy All Across the West, Stop Waiting For WW3, We’re From the Climate Police, and We’re Here to Help You, and Masks for Thee, But Not for Me
The Geller Report: 1,100 Scientists and Professionals Declare: ‘There Is No Climate Emergency’
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Don’t Panic!, and On the Bus? Or Under It?
Hollywood In Toto: Me Time Marks New Low for Modern Comedy, Tim Pool’s Only Ever Wanted Rockets Up iTunes Music Chart, and Rob Schneider: ‘Western Civilization Is Under Attack’
The Lid: Michigan Democrats Fought to Keep 26,000 Dead People ON Voting Rolls, Judge Said No Way
Legal Insurrection: Utah Sues Biden Over His Restoration of Two National Monuments, Politico Reveals IRS Leaks In Their Big “Scoop” That Republican Nikki Haley Is Getting Donations From Republicans, Operation Demoralize Is Back, and Critical Race Theory, Anti-Racist Math Pollutes Kentucky School District Teacher Training Materials
Nebraska Energy Observer: Change is good, also, Thoughts
Outkick: Rod Carew Confronted Rob Manfred on the State of Baseball, Northwestern’s Offensive Line Coach Trolls Nebraska In Brutal Fashion, Aaron Rodgers Tells Joe Rogan The NFL Sent In ‘Stooge’ To Enforce COVID Vaccine Policy, and Commanders RB Brian Robinson Shot ‘Multiple Times’ As Target Of Attempted Robbery
Power Line: King of the Wild Frontier, Jeffrey Epstein Didn’t Kill . . . Wait, What?, and Facing the Truth About Lockdowns
Shark Tank: Local Florida GOP Headquarters Vandalized By Anarchists, also, Rubio Calls Demings “Do-Nothing Congresswoman”
Shot In The Dark: Data Point, Fermented, and The Media’s Loving Embrace
STUMP: More on the Mystery Death Spike of CT and NC (that is totally bogus)
The Political Hat: Woke Indoctrination Of Children: Private Organizations; Public Schools
This Ain’t Hell: Media and “vets”, Survivor of communism warns Americans about socialism, Missing M240. Ooops., and Putin orders over 100K increase in military headcount
Transterrestrial Musings: The Space Industrial Base, Android Weirdness, and How The Middle Class Views Their Current Rulers
Victory Girls: Biden’s Unity Message: Republicans Are Semi-Fascists, Suddenly Elizabeth Warren Is Worried About Recession, and CO Dem Says U.S. Will Lose Right To Vote If Republicans Win
Volokh Conspiracy: The “Good Government Trilemma”: Why We Can’t Have Democracy, Accountability, and Big Government all at Once, also, “It’s Illegal for People Under 21 to Buy Canisters of Whipped Cream in NY”
Watts Up With That: The Science of Snowfall and Climate Snowjobs, also, The British Energy Horror Story
Weasel Zippers: Zuckerberg Says FBI Pressured Facebook To Censor Before 2020 Election, DNC Chair Defends Biden’s “Semi-Fascist” Smear As Example Of Biden Being “Consistent”, and Joe Rogan: “Vote Republican”
The Federalist: Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Rewards Loyal Democrats And Punishes Everyone Else, Shia LaBeouf’s Conversion Is The Story Of A Real Encounter With God, Arizona Supreme Court Smacks Down Democrats’ Election Takeover Ploy, and At Democrats’ Bidding, Google And Yelp Censor Searches For Life-Saving Pregnancy Centers
Mark Steyn: Up the Greek, Best Western: Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster in The Professionals, and The Transfiguration of Diana

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Category: Linkagery

Another Loser With a ‘Manifesto’

Posted on | August 29, 2022 | 1 Comment

Say hello to Ethan Miller, 20, of Bend, Oregon, and while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because he died of a self-inflicted gunshot after shooting up a Safeway supermarket Sunday. He shot four people, two of whom died, after posting a 56-page “manifesto.” Miller ranted about “the government, COVID lockdowns, technology, and women, [and] said in the rambling, oddly punctuated screed that he had an insatiable compulsion to kill”:

“I can’t wait to just send a Bullet into someone’s Brain,” Miller wrote in the first entry, on July 29. “This is going to be the Bloodiest and Most Gruesome Massacre in the History of Massacres! I want Blood, Guts, Brain Matter, and Pieces of Skull & Flesh to Paint the Walls and Floors. Then I wanna End my Life Here in the Most Violent Way Possible. By Eating the Barrel of My Shotgun then Blowing my Head Off & Evacuating my Brain with Buckshot.”

Two dead and two wounded? Definitely not “the Bloodiest and Most Gruesome Massacre in the History of Massacres,” and I’m sure we’ll get an explanation from police for why Miller’s massacre plan was even worse than his prose style. It appears he originally planned to attack a local high school on Sept. 8, but became impatient and attacked the Safeway instead. He was an unpopular creep in high school:

Akela Haverlandt, 21, lived a few houses away from Miller and attended Mountainview High with him. She graduated in 2019, a year before Miller did, but the two had a number of classes together, she said in a phone interview from Florida, where she now resides.
“He would get in tons and tons of fights at school,” Haverlandt told The Daily Beast on Monday. “I think he had this sort of rage. I mean, he was just super aggressive.”
Miller “wasn’t really liked” by others, and didn’t have very many friends, according to Haverlandt.
“People thought he was weird, or rude, or just creepy toward the girls,” she said. “… He would always message me and my friends saying, like, you’re so pretty… Kind of like a weird type of harassment situation. And he would message us and bother the shit out of us.”
One of Miller’s few friends at Mountainview High was a varsity athlete that Haverlandt dated for three years, she said. The former jock, Keenan Harpole, was arrested and charged in April with murder in the shooting death of a 19-year-old woman at Portland State University, where he was matriculating.
When Haverlandt first read Miller’s manifesto on Sunday, which has now been taken offline, she said she found it so disturbing she couldn’t sleep all night. Still, Haverlandt said it came as little surprise that Miller, of all people, would be IDed as the shooter.
“To read [it] was super crazy, but also like, ‘Wow, makes sense,’” she continued. “I wouldn’t think of anybody else in my grade or in that school that… would do that. He was so recognized for being violent, and constantly fighting with kids, and just causing problems.”

There was “little surprise” he was the shooter, because he was “recognized for being violent,” and yet nobody warned anybody.




 

Category: Crime, Oregon

NFL Pre-Season Injury Report

Posted on | August 29, 2022 | Comments Off on NFL Pre-Season Injury Report

Rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr.

Professional football is a hard-hitting sport, and every NFL team has suffered its share of pre-season injuries this year. The Carolina Panthers lost quarterback Sam Darnold to an ankle injury in Friday’s game against the Buffalo Bills, New England Patriots rookie wide receiver Tyquan Thornton suffered a broken collarbone, the Los Angeles Rams lost their top draft pick, offensive lineman Logan Bruss, to a serious knee injury, and the Washington Commanders will start the season without rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr., because of gunshot wounds:

Washington Commanders rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr. says his “surgery went well” after he was shot Sunday in Washington, DC, in what police say may have been an attempted robbery or carjacking.
Robinson shared the news in a brief message on his Instagram stories on Monday, writing, “Thanks for the prayers! God is Great!”
Robinson suffered two gunshot wounds to his lower extremities and was taken to a local hospital, Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson Dustin Sternbeck said. The shooting happened in the 1000 block of H Street NE, police said. Two suspects fled the scene and officers recovered a firearm nearby, Sternbeck said.

Robinson was a workhorse for the Alabama Crimson Tide last season, rushing for 1,343 yards on 271 carries and adding 296 yards as a receiver, totaling 16 touchdowns. In the championship playoff semifinals against Cincinnati in the Cotton Bowl, Robinson racked up 204 yards rushing, winning the game MVP trophy. He was apparently going to eat Sunday afternoon at Crab Boss, near world-famous Ben’s Chili Bowl on H Street, when he was accosted by two not-very-bright teenagers. Advice for young hoodlums: If you’re going to rob somebody, a 6-foot-1, 220-pound professional athlete might not be the easiest target:

“What has been reported to us is that [the suspects] may be between 15 and 17 years of age,” [Police Chief Robert] Contee said.
Robinson, 23, had just exited a location in the 1000 block of H Street NE at about 5:30 p.m. Sunday when the two armed teens approached him and tried to rob him, the police chief said.
“Our victim in this case began to struggle with one of the suspects, was able to actually wrestle a firearm away from one of the suspects, and he was shot twice by the second suspect,” he said. . . .
The teens ran from the area — a busy strip with several restaurants — and jumped into a car, which Contee said had been stolen two days earlier. D.C. police believe they found that car in Prince George’s County, in cooperation with county police.
The teens had tried to take Robinson’s Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, police said Sunday. The white luxury vehicle could be seen still parked on H Street later Sunday.

Brian Robinson worked hard to make it to the NFL, and if some punks think they’re going to steal his $90,000 sports car without a fight, they’ve got another think coming. But it’s a helluva sad day when an NFL player goes on injured reserve because of gunshot wounds.




 

Category: Crime, Football

Have We Reached Peak ‘Woke’ Yet?

Posted on | August 29, 2022 | 1 Comment

Sydney Sweeney is a young actress with enormous . . . talent. She has 14 million Instagram followers and is best known for her starring role on the HBO series Euphoria, for which she recently won an Emmy award.

Miss Sweeney was raised in rural Idaho in a religious family, and when her mother recently celebrated her 60th birthday, the party had a “hoedown” theme, with guests dressing in cowboy garb. But some fans, who also follow Miss Sweeney’s brother Instagram account, noticed that (a) Miss Sweeney’s father was wearing a pro-police “blue line” flag T-shirt and (b) some guests were wearing red “MAGA” style hats. The hats actually said, “Make 60 Great Again,” an obvious reference to her mother’s birthday, but what ensued was a big social-media firestorm, with left-wing political activists endeavoring to “cancel” Miss Sweeney because of her family’s apparent Republican sympathies.

Can we please stop this deranged “woke” witch-hunt mentality, in which we are expected to be outraged that white people in Idaho are voting Republican? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve seen any Idaho poll numbers lately, but unless the mob wants to “cancel” two-thirds of the population of Idaho, they need to shut up. Is it really so shocking that people who live in rural America generally have beliefs and attitudes that don’t match the preferences of urbanites? Please, forget about politics long enough to focus on Sydney Sweeney’s enormous . . . talent.




 

Category: Celebrities, Rule 5

Rule 5 Sunday: Raquel Welch

Posted on | August 29, 2022 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Couldn’t find any decent pics of Raquel Welch (nee Tejada) as a weather girl in LA. so here’s the next best thing, a publicity photo of her from the Hammer film One Million Years B.C.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Mmmm, deerskin.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1820, Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Man Test Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon. 

EBL: MAGA Redaction, Krakatoa, Emily Carey, Gabrielle Drake, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Rock & Roll High School, Louise Perry, Darya Drugina, and House Of The Dragon.

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: TV Turns Tatania Maslany Green, Fish Pic Friday – Anne Marie Down Under, Biden Announces Jubilee, Thursday Tanlines, Some Wednesday Wetness, York Bans Car Washing, Tattoo Tuesday, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Gone Fishin’ and Palm Sunday

Thanks to everyone for all the bodacious links!

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Category: Rule 5

What Time Is It?

Posted on | August 28, 2022 | Comments Off on What Time Is It?

Not long ago, I mentioned how Ace of Spades has for a while been referring to certain Republicans as believing it’s still 2003, i.e., they’re stuck in the obsolete politics of Bushism, incapable of dealing with the current reality. Ace makes the same point in referring to those who know What Time It Is, i.e., fully conscious of the current political reality.

Politico has an interview with Vanderbilt University history professor Nicole Hemmer, author of a new book called Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s. It should go without saying — because she is employed in academia — that Hemmer is a left-winger who vehemently hates all Republicans, but from the interview it seems that she at least notices some important points about the history she covers:

One of the biggest factors contributing to the fragility of Reaganism was the end of the Cold War. I think in some ways we’ve forgotten how much Reagan was a Cold War president and that the conditions of the Cold War shaped his rhetoric, shaped the policies that he preferred, and really were necessary for the kind of conservatism that he championed. When the Cold War ends, it loosens not just the motivation for conservatives to get involved internationally, but also the motivation for them to champion democracy, which they hold on to a little more lightly after Reagan leaves office.
There’s also a massive shift in terms of domestic politics. It had been a goal of conservatives for so long to capture the presidency, and then they had captured it [in 1980], and they didn’t get everything they wanted. They knew that was partly because they hadn’t won control of Congress at that point for something like 40 years. So there is a real refocusing on congressional politics, not just in opposition to Bill Clinton but in opposition to George H.W. Bush as well.

This is something that I think most conservatives simply haven’t factored into their understanding of Reagan, and the meaning of Reagan’s legacy. Nothing mattered to Reagan more than defeating Communism, which had been the focus of his politics ever since the late 1940s when, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, he found himself targeted by Communists who had taken over other film-industry unions. As president, Reagan was willing to compromise on domestic policy if it helped him increase his ability to confront the Soviets. This was why, for example, Reagan was willing to sign the 1986 amnesty bill, a necessary compromise that has been completely misunderstood by some Republicans. Cold War anti-Communism was the “glue” that held the Reagan coalition together and, without the existential threat of an aggressive nuclear-armed Soviet Union, the conservative movement lost focus after 1990. A lot of the Cold War hawks just weren’t down for the fight over domestic issues that came to the forefront of politics in the 1990s. For them, the 9/11 attacks were a godsend, putting international geopolitics back in the center of public policy, but the subsequent failure of the Global War on Terror — the unpopularity of fighting an endless “insurgency” in Iraq — left them embarrassed, though unrepentant.

But why bring up Liz Cheney at this point, eh? The larger point is that times change and politics change, and that nostalgia for the Good Old Days is not helpful as a guide to organizing one’s public policy priorities in the here and now. We must know What Time It Is, or else be defeated because of our obsolete goals and tactics. Meanwhile, in the Politico interview with Hemmer, I smiled when I read this part:

“Middle American radicals” is a term that was popularized by Sam Francis, who — spoiler alert — becomes a pretty out-and-out white nationalist by the 1990s, and who was an adviser to the Buchanan campaign. The idea was that there were these people in middle America — today, we often call it “the flyover states” — who were generally white, generally Christian of some stripe, and who had been radicalized by the politics of the second half of the 20th century. There was a sense that they were under threat, that they were no longer the dominant demographic, that they were losing power and losing control of politics. But now they were finally rearing up and fighting back.
It’s a lot like the Silent Majority that Richard Nixon talks about, but Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority was supposed to be the opposite of radical. They were supposed to be the reactionaries who were holding the center during a period of change and upheaval in the United States. The idea behind these Middle American Radicals was that no, actually, these are the people who want to radically remake American politics. Sam Francis, and later Pat Buchanan, really tapped into those folks.

Guys, I knew Sam Francis. Literally had beers with the guy, and have often thought that, on the night of the 2016 election, I could hear ghostly laughter coming from the general direction of the cemetery in Chattanooga where Sam Francis is buried. Somewhere in my bookshelves, there’s an autographed copy of Revolution From the Middle which, in hindsight, was either a roadmap for, or a prophecy of, the Trump revolution. Of course never in a million years could Sam Francis (who died in 2005) have imagined that Donald Trump would have been the man to inspire those “Middle American radicals” he talked about; that was Andrew Breitbart’s doing, when he arranged to have Trump speak at CPAC 2011. So that makes two visionary architects of the Trump revolution that I had beers with, literally. All successful political movements begin on the radical fringe, inspired by “extremists.” When Sam Adams started stirring up trouble in Boston? “Extremist”!

While nostalgia for the politics of yesteryear is generally misguided, nevertheless history offers inspiring examples of leaders who emerged in moments of crisis, men who knew What Time It Is and didn’t mind being called “extremists” for speaking the unpopular truth. Deo Vindice.




 

Category: History

FMJRA 2.0: Countdown To Looking Glass

Posted on | August 28, 2022 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Countdown To Looking Glass

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Another frustrating week with the Kansas City A’sSenators, as we lost both games against Oakland and three games at Atlanta. The only good thing was that none of the games were blowouts, which gives me some faint hope that we can beat the Yankees in at least one game on Tuesday.
I haven’t downloaded any of the Conelcast podcasts in a while, but if you enjoy electronic music you could do a lot worse than either checking out the podcasts or buying one of his older albums off Bandcamp.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.

Rule 5 Sunday: Yanet Garcia
Animal Magnetism
The DaleyGator
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL

Louise Perry Gets It
Nebraska Energy Observer
Okrahead
Proof Positive
EBL
357 Magnum

Julie Jaman, Mayor David Faber and the Transgender War Against Women
The Mad Irishman
The Pirate’s Cove
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Igneous
The DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
EBL

Professors of Politics
Okrahead
EBL

Killadelphia Update: Nearly 100 Shots Fired in Rec Center Drive-By Shooting
The First Street Journal
The DaleyGator
EBL

Ex-NFL Player’s Brother Charged With Fatal Shooting of Youth Football Coach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.22.22
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL
357 Magnum

Joe Biden Has Not Condemned This Atlanta ‘Hate Crime,’ For Some Reason 
Okrahead
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 08.23.22
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 08.24.22
Proof Positive
EBL
357 Magnum

Biden’s Illegal Boondoggle Giveaway
The DaleyGator
EBL

Suspect Charged for Hit-and-Run That Killed Three Outside Chicago Gay Bar
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.25.22
A View From The Beach
EBL
Proof Positive
357 Magnum

Politics and Friendship
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.26.22
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending August 27:

  1.  EBL (16)
  2.  (tied) 357 Magnum, A View From The Beach, and Proof Positive (6)
  3.  The DaleyGator (5)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: Linkagery

Affidavit, Laugh-idavit

Posted on | August 27, 2022 | 1 Comment

This “Rick Roll” joke by Jim Jordan’s staff, and the similar jest by my friend John Hoge, is really no laughing matter. The private home of the former President of the United States was raided by the FBI under the pretext of . . . well, what, exactly? It’s like what Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There’s no ‘there’ there.” Such an unprecedented action as the Mar-a-Lago raid, one might think, would only be undertaken with clear evidence of wrongdoing, but what this seems to be about is that some librarian at the National Archives in February complained about Trump possessing documents that the librarian wanted. Six months later, the raid happened, the idea being that Trump had “classified” or “top secret” material, so that the national security was imperiled. But if it was such a five-alarm emergency, why did they wait six months to do the raid?

Trump’s lawyers have pointed out that the affidavit raises more questions than it answers. Everything about this raid stinks of political motivation, and Margot Cleveland is probably pretty close to the target in saying that this was just a “get Trump” fishing expedition.




 

Category: Donald Trump
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