The Other McCain

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

That Was Crazier Than A Stacy McCain Road Trip

Posted on | December 25, 2010 | 29 Comments

by Smitty

I got no business being online, having arisen yesterday morning around 0800. Got all the duffel bags loaded into the truck (old school working party-style) around 1300 Christmas Eve and bussed over to the Air Force Base in Kuwait. Another working party unloaded truck, and whisked the duffel bags onto three pallets for for shipment. We boarded the C-17 in late afternoon, and got it underway for Bagram.

A little motivation hanging within the C-17

The load of sailors occupied rows of seats five abreast facing forward, and seats along the sides facing the centerline.

The bag pallets live in the back of the cargo bay

We arrived in Bagram around 0100 Christmas morning. We had to break down the baggage pallets and get the bags moved to another staging area. Slightly below freezing temperatures. In a briefing room, the NAVCENT forward staff collected our official orders and welcomed us to the area.
“Are you sick of hearing ‘huuu-aw’?” asked the Master Chief. (‘Hurry Up And Wait’, the Army mantra.) A chorus of agreement from the room. “Tough shit. You’re going to hear it a lot more.”
The briefings died down around 0230, and we took time to applaud one of our own, who, it turns out, was arriving to be the new NAVCENT Admin Officer.
Oh, and we had a 0700 muster for our brief flight southeast to Kabul proper. No point in trying to locate a place to sleep. So we went to the USO, where the WiFi was notional, the computer room a sauna, and an atrocious Eminem flick was playing.
The galley (dining facility or DFAC in Army-speak) opened at 0530, so I wandered through the dim, weird world of Conex boxes and temporary shelters for some entirely predictable military chow.
Seven o’clock rolled around, and we were moving the duffel bags to a new staging pallet for a trip on a Kentucky ANG C-130.
I called my sponsor on DSN, and he allowed that getting a ride across town from Kabul International to our current location on Christmas was going to be tough.
We got in around 0830, and the joint nature of the area was brought home by a company of French infrantry occupying the terminal. It later turned out that they were standing by to greet the French SECDEF.
A supply corps Lieutenant, possessed of nearly Stacy McCain-esque persistence, managed to finagle a couple of cars to fetch him, me, two others, and our crap. Details are murky, and I’m not sure I want to know.
Thus, after a solid 24 hours of travel, we made it to Kabul.
I would like to thank a special someone who really made all this possible:

Category: Uncategorized

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas …

Posted on | December 24, 2010 | 12 Comments

. . . from The Other McCain, a message for you, no need to explain:

Category: Christmas, Family, Video

Talking Points? What Talking Points?

Posted on | December 24, 2010 | 5 Comments

Breitbart via The Vail Spot via Instapundit:

Worst. Congress. Evah!

UPDATE: Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters:

To give readers an idea just how parroted this concept was, a Google News search of “most productive Congress” yields over one thousand results. . . .
Obama was sworn in with the unemployment rate at 7.4 percent and 11.4 million Americans out of work.
Today, as the President and his fellow Democrats pat themselves on the back – with the assistance of the media, of course! – unemployment stands at 9.8 percent with 15.1 million people jobless.

Now a Memeorandum thread.


Category: Media Bias

Hey, Do You Remember That Smokin’ Hot Blonde Chick From ‘That ’70s Show’?

Posted on | December 24, 2010 | 16 Comments

Lisa Robin Kelly played Eric’s sexy older sister Laurie Forman when That ’70s Show debuted in 1998. Kelly had been acting in various small TV and movie roles since 1994, but finally became a star on the popular Fox sitcom. 

During the 2001 season, however, Laurie Forman disappeared (leaving to attend beauty school was the plot line) and did not return until 2003. Then Kelly was replaced in the part by another actress and . . .

Well, whatever happened to Lisa Robin Kelly? Read more

Category: Celebrities

‘Cult of Degenerates’

Posted on | December 24, 2010 | 20 Comments

“Though his little LGF like cult of degenerates, ‘Men’s’ movement sissies and neo-nazis, (sorry, I mean ‘neo-Confederates’) probably don’t because like any gathering of losers who invest their lives in some guy they take his word as gospel. And Stacy McCain is, among other things, a liar.”
— Rob Taylor, “Stacy McCain Knows I Didn’t Compare Him to John Wayne Gacy,” Greenville Dragnet

He has published an e-mail exchange we had Dec. 8, after I had seen the article attacking me that Taylor published at NewsReal. Go read the whole thing, and if anyone has any reasonable questions, I’ll be glad to answer them, but I’m pretty sure you’ll spot Taylor for the embittered third-rate ax-grinder he is.

Taylor’s comparison of this blog to Little Green Footballs is . . . well, laughable, yes, but also most interesting. In making the comparison, Taylor reveals that his grievance against me goes back more than a year.

Taylor links to a post he published in Sept. 27, 2009 (in the immediate aftermath of the Great LGF Flame War) titled: “Hate Mail! Neo-Confederate Stacy McCain Groupie Calls Me Depraved Chickenhawk“:

The supreme irony of this current round of the Little Green Pogrom is that all the people who sat idly by while Charles Johnson slandered some very good people are suddenly finding themselves the target of Johnson’s hate cult. Perhaps unwilling to build the bridges they burned while tacitly supporting Johnson’s outrageous attacks, many of those people are looking for allies in all the wrong places. Case in point, Robert Stacy McCain . . .

You can read all of that, too, for all I care. I don’t remember ever having seen that post before. Why? Because when it was published, I’d already declared my intention to go to Kentucky to report on the death of Census worker Bill Sparkman.

By late September 2009, I’d finished saying what I had to say about LGF and — thanks to contributors to the Shoe Leather Fund — begun doing what I like best, exclusive reporting. And barely a week after I returned from Kentucky, I started covering the Doug Hoffman campaign in NY-23. All the bitterness engendered by Charles Johson’s attack on me receded in the rear-view mirror, and I was blissfully unaware of the existence of an avowed enemy named Rob Taylor.

Flash-forward, then, to October 2010, when Taylor made his first contribution to NewsReal and provokes a flame war with Amy Miller. He immediately associated her with “the ‘sex offender advocacy’ movement.” Responding to this attack, Miller replied:

“[S]top trying to divine the intent behind my question by impugning my intellectual integrity and arbitrarily throwing me in with a man you clearly despise.”

In that one sentence, Miller nailed Taylor’s modus operandi. He imagines himself capable of divining the intent of others, he impugns their integrity, and then categorizes and labels them.

Name-calling and guilt-by-association are no substitute for argument. The blogosphere is not the Oxford Union, and just about everyone commits logical fallacies and/or rhetorical abuses that would be scored as a foul by a high-school forensics contest judge. (Being a connoisseur of invective myself, I recognize this for what it is: If you’re going to cut a man, eviscerate him, I say.) 

However, the Marquis of Queensbury Rules don’t apply in a bar brawl. If the guy you just sucker-punched turns out to be a Hell’s Angel — and if a couple dozen of his biker buddies are hanging out at the bar with him — there’s only one person to blame when you get stomped half to death.

Taylor had evidently been burning with resentment toward me since September 2009, and my dust-up with Jill Filipovic over the Assange case afforded him the opportunity to attack.

Like I said, “Nobody’s fault but mine.”

Taylor’s well-deserved insignificance would have made that attack useless if he’d done it from his own blog, so instead he used David Horowitz’s NewsReal blog as the vehicle of his vengeance.

Rule 4 (“Make Some Enemies“) probably needs to be updated with a codicil: “Choose your enemies wisely.”

Chlanna nan con thigibh a so’s gheibh sibh feoil!

UPDATE: Someone called attention to a passage in Taylor’s response to me (where he quotes an e-mail he sent that I never bothered to open), asking if I have “ever read Anton LaVey’s essay on misogyny? It posits that misogynists are all closeted homosexuals who hate women because secretly they desire the attention of men and can’t compete with the women, especially one who is overtly sexual. . . . I have a similar theory about rape apologists I call the Tennessee Williams syndrome. That said, I’m married so your wasting your time.”

Hello? He’s gay-baiting me? And quoting Anton LaVey as his authority? Is he or is he not calling me (a) misogynist, (b) rape apologist and (c) closeted homosexual?

Category: Blogging, Rule 4

LIVE AT FIVE – 12.24.10

Posted on | December 24, 2010 | Comments Off on LIVE AT FIVE – 12.24.10

TOP NEWS
ROK Conscripts Report For Duty Amid Heightened Tensions With Norks

Jaehwan Lee, 19, will be joining the ROK Army after this semester

Draft evasion still cause for ostracism in South Korea

Who’ll Stop The Rain?
California gets two days to dig out and dry out before rain returns Christmas night



Salazar Reneges On Wilderness Deal
New policy allows land managers to designate Federal lands as protected wilderness without Congressional approval; Utahns outraged



POLITICS
Chicago Election Board: The Rahm Stays On The Ballot

Rahm Emanuel, presumptive future mayor of Chicago

Board holds that Emanuel retained residence in Chicago even though he moved to Washington in 2009

Emanuel In, Meeks Out

Obama Set To Shuffle White House Staff

Six Things The 111th Congress Got Done

TSA Now On The Lookout For Your Thermos



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Dow Jones Closes At Two-Year High In Thin Trading; S&P 500 Slips
Jo-Ann Stores Bought For $1.6 Billion
Expedia Sides With Orbitz In Dispute With American Airlines, Hides AA Flights
Saving The Cherokee Language? There’s An App For That
“DC Universe Online” Coming To PCs And PlayStations Next Month
FCC Net Neutrality Rules “Clear”? Yeah, Right



SPORTS
Roethlisberger, Steelers Crush Panthers 27-3

Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger

Steelers still on track for division title

LeBron Hints Contraction Might Be Good For NBA

SDSU Thumps Navy 35-14; First Bowl Win For Aztecs Since 1519 1969




NJ Devils Fire MacLean, Bring Lemaire Out Of Retirement

Gillette Drops Tiger, Others From Endorsement Deal



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Paltrow: Dating Brad Pitt And Ben Affleck “Was Strange”

Gwyneth Paltrow

Not nearly as strange as her role in “Country Strong”.

Kelsey Grammer Seeks To Protect Pension & Business Accounts From Camille

Dina Lohan: Lindsay’s Accuser “Full Of BS”

Stephen Baldwin: Costner Robbed Me In Gulf Disaster Scam

Demi Lovato Settles With Dancer She Used As Punching Bag

“Jersey Shore”‘s Pauly D Getting Own Spinoff

Sterger: Favre Asked Me For Sex Video



FOREIGNERS
Ivory Coast Power Struggle Deepens; TV Broadcasting Affected
Mail Bombs Target Embassies In Rome
Russian Legislators Studying New START Treaty
Cuba Tries To Ease Worries About Economic Change



BLOGS & STUFF
Manolo’s Shoe Blog: “Country Strong” – Tragic Accident Or Terrorism?
Hit & Run: Pat Robertson Wants To Legalize Decriminalize Pot
Theo Spark: Anarchists Responsible For Rome Bombings?
Wall Street Journal: Taxes And The Top Percentile Myth
Don Surber: WSJ Spanks A Pulitzer Winner
Marginal Revolution: U.S. Medical Schools Pressuring NY Hospitals To Reject Caribbean Med Students?


— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

‘Merry Christmas’ From Herman Cain

Posted on | December 24, 2010 | 7 Comments

Thanks to Citizens4Cain for this video. You can join their online grassroots army on Facebook or Twitter.

Category: Christmas, Election 2012, Herman Cain

What Happened to SiteMeter.com?

Posted on | December 23, 2010 | 13 Comments

It just freakin’ disappeared. No notice. No warning. And no clue how we’ll ever replace it if this is something more than a temporary glitch. Pray for the speedy return of the World’s Best Little Blogger Gadget.

UPDATE: It’s back up again, after being offline for something like three hours. Apologies for the panic.

Category: Blogging
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