The Other McCain

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

To the Reader Who Bought the THD Electronics 30-Watt Rack Mount Amp

Posted on | July 17, 2011 | 9 Comments

Dude, thanks! I checked the Amazon Associates report and was stunned to find that someone had ordered a $1,625 guitar amp, thereby earning me a $65 commission. Once again, I’m amazed to earn a commission on a product I never even knew Amazon sold.

And since we’re talking musical instruments, how about . . .

Gretsch Chet Atkins “Country Gentleman” Guitar — The same model that George Harrison made famous with the Beatles, a real bargain at only $2,450!

Hofner CT Series Bass Guitar — Left-handed, just like the one that Paul McCartney used to play, a steal at $769!

Marshall 100-Watt 4-Channel All-Tube 2×12 Guitar Amp — Man, my ears are ringing just thinking about the awesome power you’ll crank out of this classic amp, all for the low, low price of $2,599!

You see I’ve come to a realization: If readers want to buy high-end musical equipment online, why shouldn’t they shop via my Amazon Associates links, so I get a 4% taste of the action? And then, when these readers become world-famous rock stars with platinum albums, Grammy Awards and sold-out concert tours, of course they’ll have glamorous groupies who will want diamond rings, pearl necklaces and mink coats — and they can buy all that here, too!

While I haven’t yet been able to find sex and drugs on Amazon, otherwise we’ve got you hooked up for the rock-and-roll lifestyle.

Maybe you’re not into that flashy upscale glitter scene, but that’s OK, because here’s the little secret: It doesn’t matter what you buy. Just click the links, search around through Amazon’s amazing selection and anything you buy during a visit to Amazon via one of the links at this blog will pay me a 4% commission.

So far I haven’t earned enough commissions to be shopping for a 7-carat diamond ring — only $118,195.37! — but once word gets around among big-time rock stars that The Other McCain is their one-stop source to buy bling for their groupies, I’m sure the money will come rolling in.

Category: Amazon

The Dark Night of Fascism

Posted on | July 17, 2011 | 21 Comments

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”
– William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

“There stands Jackson like a stone wall. Let us resolve to die here and we shall conquer.”
— Gen. Bernard Bee, July 21, 1861

Dan Collins called Thursday night and, among other things, we talked about how politically correct revisionist history has convinced young people that the past was a hateful and benighted era, furnished wall-to-wall with racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of oppression.

If you surveyed liberals and asked them, “What was the most evil time and place in human history?” they would almost certainly name Germany under Hitler, but America during the 1950s would be a close second.

Ann Coulter has written about the “Dark Night of Fascism” motif in liberal thought, whereby the entire decade of the 1950s is forever tainted by Sen. Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade. Thus the wholesome middle-class Mom-Baseball-and-Apple-Pie culture of the 1950s — the world depicted in Norman Rockwell paintings and “Ozzie and Harriet” on TV — is indicted as the breeding ground of oppression.  Read more

Category: Culture, Feminism, History, Intellectuals

Obama Wants ‘Largest Deal Possible’

Posted on | July 17, 2011 | 24 Comments

The president is obviously trying to turn the debt-ceiling negotiations into an opportunity to claim victory:

“I think there’s still time to get something big done,” [White House budget director Jack] Lew said. . . .
Lew said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that the president “made clear he wants the largest deal possible.”“He wants to do the most we can to reduce the deficit,” Lew said. “But he also said that if we can’t get the most done, then in addition to extending the debt we should do as much as we can.”
House Republicans are preparing to vote this week on allowing an increase in the government’s borrowing limit through 2012 as long as Congress approves a balanced-budget constitutional amendment.
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., called that proof that Republicans are willing to compromise and “hardly a radical idea” but the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said that bill doesn’t have the needed support in the Senate.
“This notion that we have to change the Constitution to do what we were elected to do is just plain wrong,” Durbin said. Both senators spoke on “Meet the Press.”
Lew, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” also did not like the idea.
“What these ideas do is say let’s kick the can down the road so that others will deal with it,” he said. “The challenge is for Washington now to do the job the American people sent us here to do.”

Three words: Bipartisan kabuki dance.

Making the debt-ceiling increase contingent on passing a balanced budget amendment is the kind of meaningless symbolic gesture that will deceive no one with enough intelligence and knowledge to actually comprehend what the current debate is about.

Republicans evidently don’t want us to forget their uncontested ownership of the “Stupid Party” label. Read more

Category: Barack Obama, Budget, Congress, Conservatism 101, Republicans

FMJRA 2.0: Sharp Dressed Man

Posted on | July 17, 2011 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

CA-36: Special Election Night HQ; UPDATE: Democrat Hahn Wins

VIDEO: Obama in His Own Words

GOP Freshmen Will Call for Congressional Investigation of Planned Parenthood

The Vicious Jackals Are Planning to Screw Us Over (But You Already Knew That)

Obama Declares Moral Bankruptcy: ‘No Social Security Checks Next Month!’

Cthulhu 2012

Tut Tut, Stacy: Let’s Not Stand Here Bickering And Arguing
Over ‘Oo Voted For ‘Oo

From the Undeceived to the Rube: My Second Notice of Your Previous Insult

Alan Colmes Whining About Boehner Showing Vertebrae

EU President Van Rompuy Continues Playing Whack-A-Mole, When Whack-A-Budget Is Needed

Note To The “Born This Way” Community

FMJRA 2.0: Crisis King

Rule 5 Sunday: Secret

How to Be the Best Dad Ever

‘Coulter, She’s Just a Show Person’

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.11.11

Dying on Deadline: Fear, Loathing and a Frank Confession of Professional Failure

Democrat Janice Hahn’s Mother Dies on Eve of CA-36 Special Election
UPDATE: Poll Shows ‘Obama Fatigue’?

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.12.11

Vadum: Obama Administration Gave ACORN More Than $500,000 This Year

‘An Emerging Awareness’

Internet Threatened By Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children And Rule 5, But Mostly USMC

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.13.11

A Fresh Hot Cup of Poverty!

Carly Fiorina Will Help John Cornyn Guarantee Republican Defeat in 2012

They Told Me If I Voted For McCain, Minorities Would Be Thrashed And Denied Justice, And They Were Right!

Justin Elliott’s Lefty Math Calculation: Gov. Rick Perry Is A Bad Confederate Man

All You Need To Know About Why McConnell’s Plan Is A Soup Sandwich

On My To-Do List For R&R:
The Undefeated

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.14.11

Jimmie Bise Jr. Is a Great Blogger

The Arroyo Is In Production

Can’t Resist

SARAH PALIN IS RIGHT!

Pro-Life Republicans Hail ‘Blueprint’ for Investigation of Planned Parenthood

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.15.11

Court: Accused Child Molester Has Right to Watch Kiddie Porn ‘Evidence’ in Jail

Sarah Palin Stimulates Economy, Boosts Employment, Annoys Liberal Media

Gingrich Advises GOP on ‘Bully’ Obama: Stop Negotiating and Start Legislating

Doesn’t Mercede Johnston Reminds You of That Line From ‘Gone With the Wind’?

Panic at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Religiosity In POTUS Candidates

The Next Time You Hear a Liberal Lecturing About the Need for ‘Civility’ …


You’re LATE!
The Aged P sends in a link to Stacy’s post last week on the risible atheist/feminist flibbertigibbet Rebecca Watson. I agree that the young Indian woman in the Aged P’s post is easily worth a dozen Rebecca Watsons, and you should go RTWT.


Top Linkers

  1. Lonely Conservative (14)
  2. The Pro From Poca (11)
  3. The Camp Of The Saints (8)
  4. Da Tech Guy (5)


Thanks to all of you for your linkagery! To be included in next week’s FMJRA (especially if you use Blogger, which does not do trackbacks) please e-mail your list of links to me at Wombat-socho with “FMJRA” or “Shameless Blogwhoring” in the subject line by July 22.

Category: FMJRA Award

Why Do These ‘Organized Political Extremist Groups’ Hate Jane Fonda?

Posted on | July 17, 2011 | 42 Comments

This is just so mysterious, isn’t it?

I was to have been on QVC today to introduce my book, “Prime Time,” about aging and the life cycle. The network said they got a lot of calls yesterday criticizing me for my opposition to the Vietnam War and threatening to boycott the show if I was allowed to appear. I am, to say the least, deeply disappointed that QVC caved to this kind of insane pressure by some well funded and organized political extremist groups. And that they did it without talking to me first. . . . Most people don’t buy into the far right lies. . . .
Bottom line, this has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! None of it is true. NONE OF IT! I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us . . .

UPDATE: Linked by POH Diaries — thanks!

Let me take the opportunity to say here that I don’t like boycotts. I dislike the “I Don’t Like Your Opinions So I’m Going to Get You Fired” approach to political debate. The Left has often used these tactics toward conservatives — every major talk radio host has experienced such efforts — and it’s wrong.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, and it would be wrong to endorse such tactics against leftists. I do not want to see conservatives imitate, e.g., Media Matters’ dishonest partisan jihad against Fox News. However, the obtrusive facts in this incident with Jane Fonda are:

  • Her insistence that those protesting to QVC are “well funded and organized,” so that she is being “Swiftboated,” as they say. But Fonda provides no evidence of any funding or organization behind these protests, which for all we know are entirely organic and spontaneous.
  • Her dishonest assertion that she is targeted by “right-wing lies.”

Jane Fonda’s outspoken support for America’s communist enemies, and her 1972 propaganda tour of North Vietnam, are simply facts of history:

In 1971 Fonda was the chief financier of VVAW’s Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI), which took place in Detroit from January 31 through February 2 of that year. The largest war crimes tribunal held in the U.S. during the Vietnam War, WSI featured a host of VVAW members who related gruesome stories of atrocities they claimed to have participated in or witnessed in Vietnam; they insisted that rape, torture and murder were standard practices for the American military. In reality, WSI was a continuation of the anti-U.S. war crimes propaganda campaign which had begun in Europe with KGB-sponsored events that were organized before the first American ground troops ever arrived in Vietnam. Several of the WSI discussion panel moderators were radical leaders who had previously met with top North Vietnamese and Vietcong representatives in Hanoi and Paris. Also present were leftist psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and clinicians, who pressured the witnesses to help end the war by publicly confessing their “crimes.”
In July-August 1972 Fonda made her infamous trip to North Vietnam. By this time, over 50,000 Americans had been killed in the war. While there, she posed for pictures on an anti-aircraft gun that had been used to shoot down American planes, and she volunteered to do a radio broadcast from Hanoi. She made approximately eight radio addresses, during which she told American pilots in the area:
“Use of these bombs or condoning the use of these bombs makes one a war criminal … Examine the reasons given to justify the murder you are being paid to commit … I don’t know what your officers tell you … but [your] weapons are illegal and that’s not just rhetoric … The men who are ordering you to use these weapons are war criminals according to international law, and in the past, in Germany and Japan, men who committed these kinds of crimes were tried and executed.”
Fonda also quoted Ho Chi Minh during some of these broadcasts. She referred to President Richard Nixon as a “new-type Hitler,” and advised South Vietnamese soldiers to desert: “You are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism.”
These radio addresses were aired repeatedly by the North Vietnamese Communists, for whom propaganda was a key tool of psychological warfare; they used the broacasts not only to hearten their own citizens, but also to undermine the American public’s will to go forward with the war, and to crush the morale of U.S. and allied forces. . . .

Fonda cannot in good conscience accuse her critics of lying. The facts are against her and, if she refuses to recant or apologize for her pro-communist activities, she at least ought to stop unfairly smearing her critics.

Category: Celebrities, History

Steyn Sounds Less Than Confident On Debt Talks. Wonder Why.

Posted on | July 17, 2011 | 4 Comments

by Smitty (via the WORM)

Mark Steyn really tries to put a positive spin on the debt negotiations, but I think some of his private opinion may be creeping through his journalistic detachment:

Nothing good is going to come from these ludicrously protracted negotiations over laughably meaningless accounting sleights-of-hand scheduled to kick in circa 2020. All the charade does is confirm to prudent analysts around the world that the depraved ruling class of the United States cannot self-correct, and, indeed, has no desire to.

If Nikki represents reality, then Mike is our government, desperately seeking an increase on the credit limit. In Swingers, Mike ended up with a girl. Mike was golden. He was money. In reality, some fools deny gold is money. Our task is to make sure those fools increase their distance from levers of power, where foolishness becomes threatening.

Category: Uncategorized

Reference For Obama’s Financial Record

Posted on | July 17, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Uncoverage posts a Paul Ryan article on the good President’s non-grasp of the totally unimportant topic of finance.
Sure is a good thing money doesn’t matter, as the article chronologically notes the milestones and running debt total for the current administration.
Fortunately, people remember nothing, and we can rely on an endless stream of shiny propaganda to keep peoples’ attention focused elsewhere.
I don’t know if Hot Air plans to publish a compilation of Obamaturisms, but it probably wouldn’t matter.

Category: Uncategorized

A Democrat, Re-Assessed

Posted on | July 17, 2011 | 45 Comments

One of my pet peeves during the Bush years were those conservative spokesmen — among them, Sean Hannity — who loved nothing better than to contrast today’s treacherous and unpatriotic Democrats with the allegedly good Democrats of The Good Old Days.

“FDR, Harry Truman and JFK!” goes this roll call of revered Democrats of yore, and certainly these men compare favorably to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, but there are three basic problems with conservative celebrations of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy:

  1. It no longer has political value. During the 1980s, especially, it was necessary for GOP spokesmen to tread lightly around the names of revered Democratic icons because they sought to appeal to so-called “Reagan Democrats.” Those voters were, generally, older working-class voters born in the 1920s and ’30s, who had voted straight-ticket Democrat all their lives until the McGovern debacle of 1972 created the “Democrats for Nixon” surge. Loyal Democrats had then returned to the fold to support Carter in 1976, but his administration was an utter disaster. And so Ronald Reagan (himself an ex-Democrat) was able to win over “Reagan Democrats” with rhetoric that included occasional praise for the Good Ol’ Democrats of Days Gone By. But most of those “Reagan Democrats” of who gave the Gipper such an overwhelming landslide in 1984 are now dead, or else they are complete converts to the GOP, deeply loyal Republicans who wouldn’t vote for a Democrat under any circumstance.
  2. It undermines partisan loyalty. Republicans never seem to understand this: The object of the game of politics is to persuade voters to support your party, period. All issues of policy or ideological principle aside, nothing is more important to winning elections than building party loyalty. Democrats are good at this, which is why their politicians are so fanatically partisan, without apology or embarrassment, because they have built solid party loyalty among their electoral constituencies, who hear the word “Republican” as a synonym for “scoundrel.” Many Republicans, on the other hand, seem to feel guilty about being Republicans, which is why at election time the GOP is always tucking its tail between its legs and pandering for support from undecided “swing” voters. Republicans lack the self-confidence to appeal to voters on the basis of outright partisanship, by pointing to the opposition and asking, “What honest person could ever vote for such a corrupt gang of lying jackals?” You cannot defeat your opponent by praising him, and praise for the Good Ol’ Democrats of Days Gone By is therefore counterproductive.
  3. It is not true. Contrary to what anyone may tell you, the Democratic Party was never really good, although perhaps it once was not nearly as bad as it is now. This is something you could learn by reading Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party. From the days of its co-founding by Aaron Burr, the dangerous man who made Tammany Hall into a legendary engine of political corruption, the Democratic Party has practiced vote fraud, pork-barreling, patronage and worse. To praise FDR is to praise a man whose nomination as president in 1932 was secured with the assistance of notorious gangsters like Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. To praise Harry Truman is to praise a tool of the vicious Pendergast machine that made Kansas City “a seething cauldron of crime, licensed and protected.” And to praise JFK . . .

Like Lincoln before him, John F. Kennedy was a controversial figure in life who underwent a magical transformation to secular sainthood when he fell victim to an assassin. In the decades since JFK’s death, we have learned much of Kennedy’s reckless sexual promiscuity, but his stewardship of the national interest is still shrouded in myth and obscured by a patina of “Camelot” glory. So it is with a smile that I read this by veteran foreign-affairs writer Thomas Ricks:

As I studied the Vietnam war over the last 14 months, I began to think that John F. Kennedy probably was the worst American president of the previous century.
In retrospect, he spent his 35 months in the White House stumbling from crisis to fiasco. He came into office and okayed the Bay of Pigs invasion. Then he went to a Vienna summit conference and got his clock cleaned by Khrushchev. That led to, among other things, the Cuban missile crisis and a whiff of nuclear apocalypse. . . .

Exactly so, and you should read the whole thing. Liberals have spent years praising JFK for his allegedly skillful handling of crises, but the fact is that nearly all the crises of the Kennedy administration were due to Kennedy’s own bungling. And it is high time that conservatives dare to tell the truth: JFK was just another bad Democrat, as are they all.

Category: Democrats, History
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