The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 08.27.21

Posted on | August 28, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.27.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How’s That Affordable Bail Working Out?
Doug Ross: Why Are They Hiding These Key COVID Stats From Us?
EBL: Remember The American Heroes Killed In Kabul Yesterday
Twitchy: “Time Is Not On Our Side”, also, Brit Hume Shares Gen. Milley’s 8/18 Transcript Explaining Why We REALLY Left Afghanistan The Way We Did 
Louder With Crowder: Bill & Hill In The Hamptons – Old Age Has Not Been Kind To Them
Vox Popoli: Boost, Dammit, Boost!
According To Hoyt: Refugees, also, A Snapshot
Monster Hunter Nation: Target Rich Environment 2 Is On Audible, also, WriterDojo Episode 2 – Hobby Vs. Business
Gab News: Gab Receives A Letter From Congress

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Waking up The Normies – Give It 100 Years
American Conservative: It’s Institutions, Not Individuals
American Greatness: Marine Commander Relieved Of Duty After Demanding Accountability From Military Leaders In Viral Video, also, Give Them Freedom Or Give Them Primaries
American Power: Dumping The Browser Tabs
American Thinker: Did The FDA Pull A Bait & Switch? also, How “Informed Consent” Became “Coercion Of The Uninformed”
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Freedom Of Association Friday
Babalu Blog: Dissident Pablo Moya Dela Dies From Abuse In Prison, also, Despite Its Collapsing Medical System, Cuba Continues To Export Medical Slave Brigades
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm for August 28
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, ULA Stops Selling Atlas V Launches, and Amazon Protests SpaceX’s Starlink Plan To The FCC
Cafe Hayek: Who’s (Ir)Responsible?
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: The Confirmation Of The Price of Cowardice For Those Who Allowed The Steal, also, Unfiltered Afghan Trips, Masks In Massachusetts, & Kamala Harris Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Will Biden Still Be President In October? also, DC Turned Afghanistan Into Vietnam
First Street Journal: Lies, Damned Lies, & Statistics, also, Tying Things Together
The Geller Report: RFK’s Assassin Sirhan Sirhan Released On Parole, also, Vast Majority Of 100,000 Incoming Afghans Rendered No Meaningful Assistance To US Forces
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, The Next Few Years
Hollywood In Toto: Candyman – BLM & Horror Forge Uneasy Alliance, also, Healing Garden Grows Passionate Fanbase
The Lid: Biden’s Dog Major Constantly Bit Secret Service Agents
Legal Insurrection: Leftists Trash SCOTUS As “Right Wing Extremists” After Eviction Moratorium Struck Down, also, Virginia GOP Sues To Remove McAuliffe From Ballot Over Failure To Sign Candidacy Declaration
Michelle Malkin:
Nebraska Energy Observer: Libertine Coxservatism
Outkick: Aaron Rodgers Sticks Up For Unvaxxed Teammates, also, Phil Rivers Wins First Game As Head Coach
Power Line: A Cry From The Heart, Update On LTC Scheller, and  Disney’s Shame
Shark Tank: Spalding Repeats Call For Wasserman-Schultz To Take “Cognitive Examination”
Shot In The Dark: Our New New Normal, also, I Get My Back Into My Living
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – The Fall Of Saigon And How It Might Have Been
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, A Marine Has Questions, and “Pineapple Express” Does What The Active Military Is Unable/Unwilling To Do
Transterrestrial Musings: Why Jews Vote Left, also, Biden’s Bagram Blunder
Victory Girls: Vice Magazine Asks Why So Many Marines Are Neo-Nazis
Volokh Conspiracy: Supremes Rule Against Revised CDC Eviction Moratorium
Weasel Zippers: Deadbeats Rejoice! Education Dept. Cancels Debt For 115,000 Students, also, Dem Rep Smith – All The Americans Who Want To Get Out Of Afghanistan Aren’t Getting Out
The Federalist: Israeli Study Shows Natural Immunity 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Jab, also, Joe Biden Has Been Derelict In His Duty, Is Unfit To Lead, And Should Be Impeached
Mark Steyn: Performance Art With No Performers

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Category: Linkagery

Biden’s Bagram Bungle

Posted on | August 27, 2021 | Comments Off on Biden’s Bagram Bungle

During yesterday’s press conference, Our Alleged President tried to argue with Peter Doocy. Biden wanted to argue that, because Trump negotiated a deal last year with the Taliban, everything currently going wrong in Afghanistan is Trump’s fault. Doocy wasn’t buying any of that, and in response, Biden seemed to collapse. As Jim Treacher says, “It would be funny if people weren’t dying.” But people are dying, and yet Biden’s “friends” in the Democrat/Media Complex seem to think this is just a regular political issue. What really counts, in their minds, is to prevent Republicans from “pouncing” and “seizing” on the issue; never mind 13 Marines getting blown up because of Biden’s incompetence.

John Sexton examines a typical example, Ezra Klein, who promoted the “inevitable collapse” narrative in the New York Times. The idea is that, whatever the U.S. had done, or whoever was in the White House, the withdrawal from Afghanistan would have been chaotic and messy.

Klein perfectly illustrates a little-appreciated problem in politics, namely the fact that clever people can always come up with persuasive arguments in favor of bad policies. This is how scholastic debate competition works — a yes-or-no proposal is presented, and the two teams basically flip a coin to decide who’s going to argue for “yes” and who will argue for “no.” It doesn’t actually matter what the issue is, the point is to display one’s cleverness in the persuasive arts. After I first came to Washington almost 25 years ago, I quickly realized how foolish it was to confuse such cleverness with actual wisdom. Just because someone is highly articulate does not mean they are right. Anyone can read Andrea Dworkin, for example, and see that she is a very skillful writer, in the same way one must acknowledge that Adolf Hitler was a stirring orator. Both of them, however, were deranged hatemongers. Just because someone writes eloquent prose or is a mesmerizing public speaker, this does not make their ideas any better than if they were illiterate or tongue-tied.

When Biden took office, he had about 100 days before the May 1 date for U.S. withdrawal established by the Doha Agreement. But that ceasefire agreement was contingent on “the Taliban keep[ing] its commitments”:

In January 2021, there were 2,500 US soldiers still in Afghanistan. US President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said that the administration would review the withdrawal agreement. On April 14, 2021, the Biden administration said the US would not withdraw the remaining soldiers by 1 May, but would withdraw them by 11 September. On 8 July, Biden specified a US withdrawal date of 31 August. Other Western forces set their own withdrawal timetables.

In other words, Biden rejected the terms of the agreement that Trump had negotiated, and instead set his own timetable — September 11, a date chosen for its symbolic value. What Biden obviously had in mind was a speech on the 20th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks declaring the success of the U.S. withdrawal. Biden believed that the U.S.-friendly Afghan government would still be in power when this withdrawal took place but — surprise! — the Afghan National Army (ANA) collapsed rapidly after the U.S. shut down its operations at Bagram Air Base:

Retiring General Scott Miller is to blame for the bungled US exit from Afghanistan, a military expert who predicted the fall of the nation’s capital months ago has claimed.
Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, slammed military leadership, telling [the U.K. Daily Mail] he tried to warn the Pentagon of the swift advance of the Taliban towards Kabul in the weeks before they took the city but was ‘ignored’.
Roggio said President Joe Biden insisted on a reduced force of just 700 troops to both keep the US embassy in Kabul open and secure an airport to evacuate the rest of the 3,500 US soldiers, thousands of other Americans and Afghan allies.
As the US commander on the ground and facing the tight constraint, Miller chose Hamid Karzai International Airport in the middle of Kabul for the evacuation, telling US forces to abandon the nearby military airbase of Bagram outside the city.
Miller left Afghanistan in July and is due to retire from the military.
But his fateful decision came back to bite him when the Taliban swarmed into the capital within days, surrounding the airport and frustrating the evacuation of both Americans and allied Afghans, leaving many stranded and at risk of attack.
Roggio is livid that none of the US’s top generals, including Centcom commander General Kenneth McKenzie, appear to have questioned Miller’s plan, which he says was doomed to end in catastrophe.
‘Ultimately it’s Generals Miller and McKenzie to blame for the decision over Bagram,’ Roggio told DailyMail.com.
‘Miller was the ground commander at the time and proposed the plan, worked on it with Mackenzie, then they pushed it up.
‘The problem here is that no one stood up and said “this is insane.” No one had the vision to say if the Taliban is able to run through Kabul before we execute our withdrawal we’re going to be in a world of hurt.’
Roggio, who was embedded with Marines in Iraq and the Canadian armed forces in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2008, pointed the finger at Miller and his senior colleagues McKenzie, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, and defense secretary and former four star general Lloyd Austin, saying they all prioritized politics and fail to stand up to Biden.
‘Generals ultimately take orders. But at some point a general needs to stand up and say, “Sir, I can’t in good conscience execute that order because I believe it will put American lives at risk”,’ said Roggio. . . .
‘They never believed that Kabul was going to fall. They thought there would be time to get Americans out.
‘Because of that they piled on bad decision after bad decision: how they announced the withdrawal, how they limited themselves to Kabul airport and the embassy, closing Bagram. It all flowed from a complete failure to understand what was happening, while it was happening.
‘But just look at how quickly those estimates changed on the viability of the Afghan government. It went from 1-2 years to six months to weeks, all in the span of a month.’ . . .
Roggio estimated that in order to use the more secure Bagram airbase for evacuations rather than the metropolitan civil airport, Biden would have needed to commit at least 1,000 troops – an idea he said was dismissed as ‘dead on arrival’. . . .
In a press briefing last week Milley revealed the plan to abandon Bagram and use Kabul International for evacuations was devised by Miller – and let slip that the generals were acting on orders to reduce forces down to 700 troops.
‘If we were to keep both Bagram and the embassy going, that would be a significant number of military forces… that may have exceeded what we had, or stayed the same as what we had,’ the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman told reporters.
‘So you had to collapse one or the other. And the decision was made, the proposal was made, from CENTCOM commander [McKenzie] and the commander on the ground, Scottie Miller, to go ahead and collapse Bagram.
‘That was all briefed and approved and we estimated that the risk of going out of KIA [Karzai International Airport, Kabul], or the risk of going out of Bagram, were about the same, so going out of KIA was the better tactical solution… in accordance with getting the troops down to a 600, 700 number.’
Roggio said Milley’s statement was revealing – and was part of an effort to avoid blame for the bungled evacuation.

Bryan Preston has more on the Bagram bungle. This didn’t have to happen, certainly not the way it happened, but Biden wanted the symbolism of that 9/11 speech so badly, you see, that when the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan changed, he refused to accept the reality that our plans needed to change, too.

Now try to think ahead two weeks, and imagine what the situation in Afghanistan will be on Sept. 11. Gonna be a great speech, eh?




 

Category: Foreigners, Joe Biden, Military

In The Mailbox: 08.26.21

Posted on | August 26, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.26.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1455
357 Magnum: So How IS The Neocon Ideal Different From Colonialism?
EBL: ISIS Kills Over A Dozen Marines, Service Members, & Afghans In Terror Bombing
Twitchy: Cop Who Murdered Ashli Babbitt Claims He “Saved Countless Lives”, also, SMA Tweets About Diversity & Inclusion On This #WomensEqualityDay
Louder With Crowder: Reporter Bombs Bad Orange Woman Over Biden Laughing Off Americans Trapped In Kabul – “What’s So Funny?”
Vox Popoli: The Science Lied, also, When Gammas Rage

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Philia
American Conservative: Animal Farm Turns 75
American Greatness: It’s Time To Cut The Lame Woke Soldier Act, also, Afghan Christians Turn To Glenn Beck For Help After Being Snubbed By Boden’s State Department
American Thinker: Is Apple Gearing Up For Internet Control Red Chinese Style?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Biden Voters News
Babalu Blog: Cuban State Security Threatens To “Intercept Laritza Diversent In The US To Try Her In Cuba”, also, Havana Dictatorship Enacts Harsh New Regulations To Keep Slave Doctors From Defecting
BattleSwarm: Lawsuit Filed Over Austin’s Refusal To Enforce Homeless Camping Ban
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, Blue Origin Successfully Completes Another Unmanned Suborbital Flight With New Shepard
Cafe Hayek: Infant-Industry Protection Infantilizes
CDR Salamander: Kabul 2×2 Shotgun Wargaming
Da Tech Guy: Five Reasons Why Jersey Jack’s Next Machine Should Be The Chosen, also, The More Progressive The President, The Quicker & More Thoroughly The Military Gets Destroyed
Don Surber: Take Away Our Cars, You Take Away Our Liberty, also, NYT – Don’t Blame Biden For Biden’s Mess
First Street Journal: I Point At The Moon, They Stare At My Finger, also, Impeach Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd!
Fred On Everything: Do Jews Contain Microchips?
The Geller Report: Administration Officials Gave Taliban List Of American Citizens, Green Card Holders, & Afghan Allies, also, Hungarian General – Afghan Evacuee Caught Assembling Bomb On NATO Evacuation Flight
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, I Watched Joe Xiden Speak This Afternoon, and Not Just Clueless But Lawless Too
Hollywood In Toto: Spike Lee – Oscar Winner, #FakeNews Spreader, also, Can JP Sears Really Say That?
The Lid: Rasmussen Poll – Most Americans Don’t Believe The Biden Administration On Afghanistan
Legal Insurrection: Supremes Halt CDC’s Eviction Moratorium, also, New Michigan State Diversity Plan Requires Two “Equity & Inclusion” Classes To Graduate
Nebraska Energy Observer: I Know The Difference
Outkick: Rachel Nichols Tried To Keep Up With Wokeism & Still Got Canceled, also, UFC Champ Khabib Nurmagomedov Not A Big Fan Of MMA Ring Girls
Power Line: The Disaster Of Joe Biden In 90 Seconds, also, The Winkin’ Of Blinken
Shark Tank: Crist Accuses GOP Of Attacking The Right To Vote
Shot In The Dark: Open Letter To The “Withhold Treatment From The Unvaccinated” Crowd, also, Hear Me Out
The Political Hat: Quick Takes – Educational Equity In Action
This Ain’t Hell: Trapped In Afghanistan – Please Send Money, also, Four Marines Confirmed KIA In Kabul, Three WIA
Transterrestrial Musings: California Models To The Rescue!
Victory Girls: Kabul Bombings – Biden & Harris Have Blood On Their Hands
Volokh Conspiracy: Heckler’s Veto At SUNY Binghamton May Have Violated First Amendment
Weasel Zippers: CENTCOM Commander Accidentally Reveals U.S. Intel Is Sharing Information With The Taliban, also, Preachy Diner In Texas Forced To Close Three Weeks After Trolling Customers With Pro-Mask Sign
The Federalist: NM Governor Demands Average Mileage of 52 MPG – Her Car Gets 13, also, House Democrats Pass Bill To Steal Elections The Old-Fashioned Way
Mark Steyn: The Sound Of White Hands Clapping, also, Countdown In Kabul

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Category: Linkagery

BIDEN LIED, AMERICANS DIED

Posted on | August 26, 2021 | Comments Off on BIDEN LIED, AMERICANS DIED

Wonder how his media sycophants will spin this?

At least 12 U.S. troops were killed Thursday in Kabul, marking the largest single-day loss of life for American soldiers in Afghanistan in ten years.
“Two US officials say 11 Marines and a Navy medic were killed in the Afghanistan attacks,” the Associated Press reported Thursday afternoon.
Previously, the largest single-day loss of U.S. servicemen occurred while Joe Biden was Vice President under Barack Obama. On August 6, 2011, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter carrying 30 American servicemen, including 22 Navy SEALs, was shot down by Taliban fighters with a rocket-propelled grenade.
The suicide bombings on Thursday occurred outside of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport and the Baron Hotel attack. More than 60 Afghan civilians were also killed. Prior to the explosions, the Kabul Airport was in complete chaos as thousands of Americans, Afghans, and foreign nationals were attempting to flee the Taliban government.

Our Alleged President is expected to give a speech at 5 p.m. ET about this disaster. Don’t expect him to answer questions from the media. Instead he’ll walk out while Peter Doocy shouts questions at his back.

UPDATE: The doddering old fool actually did take questions, including one from Peter Doocy. Biden’s answer was basically to blame Trump.




 

Category: Foreigners, Joe Biden, Military, Terrorism

Coming This Fall: ‘That 70s Show 2.0’

Posted on | August 26, 2021 | Comments Off on Coming This Fall: ‘That 70s Show 2.0’

The Biden administration is desperately trying to spin its bug-out in Afghanistan as a “success,” or as Jim Treacher says, “Biden Sank the Ship and Now He’s Bragging About the Number of Lifeboats.” That is to say, the scramble to get Americans and their Afghan allies out of the country in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover is “successful” in terms of the total number of those evacuated, but this doesn’t change the underlying fact that Biden’s misguided policy has produced an utter catastrophe.

Despite such “success,” the situation is going from bad to worse.

U.S. Tells Stranded Americans
in Afghanistan to Avoid Airport

UK Warns of ‘Very Credible’ Intelligence
on ‘Imminent’ Kabul Attack

Those are a couple of Breitbart headlines and, just since I started writing this, news has broken of a “large explosion” near one of the gates at the airport in Kabul, so who knows what comes next?

One thing seems obvious: Dozens of Americans, and perhaps hundreds, will not be able to escape Afghanistan before next Tuesday’s deadline, and nearly all of those Americans are likely to be captured and held as hostages by the Taliban. There will then ensue an ordeal in which the Biden administration attempts to negotiate the release of American hostages in Afghanistan — a repeat of the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, except that it’s likely to be much worse, and last much longer.

You think Biden’s poll numbers are bad now? Just wait until the Taliban starts beheading American hostages on livestream videos.

Of course, it’s wrong to view a crisis like this from a perspective of partisan political advantage — but that is exactly what Biden and the Democrats have been doing all along. The reason Biden announced a total pullout by the end of August was that he envisioned a White House speech on 9/11 declaring a successful withdrawal from Afghanistan — a nice “optic” for the 20th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, with the friendly Kabul regime in power, and all U.S. troops out.

In other words, Biden and his advisers saw the Afghanistan withdrawal as an opportunity for a political “win,” but in planning for this, he and his aides failed to anticipate how quickly the Kabul regime would collapse, once they lost the assistance of U.S. military forces. So instead of keeping Bagram Air Base in operation — as a source of air support for the government — until the withdrawal was completed, instead they shut down Bagram early, thinking that the Kabul government would at least be able to hold back the Taliban until after Biden gave his big 9/11 speech. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “DOH!”

As bad as the situation has been so far in Afghanistan, it is a pale shadow of the monstrous situation that looms over the horizon. A month from now, Biden’s going to be face-to-face with a dark nightmare.




 

Category: Foreigners, Joe Biden, Terrorism

The Woman Who Killed #NeverTrump

Posted on | August 26, 2021 | Comments Off on The Woman Who Killed #NeverTrump

In June 2018, an article appeared in The American Spectator with the headline, “The Collapse of the Never-Trump Conservatives.” Written by Emerald Robinson, then chief White House correspondent for One America News (OAN) Network, and since with Newsmax, the article began thus:

With the installation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and a yet-to-be-named reliable replacement for the unreliable Anthony Kennedy, Donald Trump will have confirmed himself as the most consequential conservative president of the modern era (or a close second to Reagan if you’re nostalgic). This will be complete vindication for Trump supporters, which means it’s really the end for the so-called Never Trump conservatives. Of course, there have been so many humiliating defeats for that crowd that we are spoiled for choice. What was your favorite blunder, or blown prediction, which marked their ignominious end?
For some, it must have been in March when Bill Kristol, longtime editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, showed up in New Hampshire telling people he would run against President Trump in 2020. Or in April when the conservative website RedState was taken over and purged of writers who were “insufficiently supportive” of the president. Some go back to October 2017 when a Twitter spat broke out between Stephen Hayes and Brit Hume of Fox News over the Weekly Standard’s anti-Trump editorials. . . .

You can read the rest, and you might think it was just another magazine article. At the time, as my friend Donald Douglas pointed out, the response from Jonah Goldberg was a contemptuous dismissal, calling Robinson a “trollish, attention-seeking writer,” whose article was “gloating, smarmy, gleeful” and, of course, completely wrong. Everybody was doing just fine over there in NeverTrumpland, Jonah wanted us to believe, and perhaps they were, but six months later, the Weekly Standard was out of business, and many of Jonah’s Trump-hating friends were kicked to the curb. Goldberg himself was soon to be forced out at National Review, and in retrospect Emerald Robinson’s article was, to Never Trump, what Waterloo was to Napoleon Bonaparte.

She has now written a follow-up explaining how that happened. Rush Limbaugh read her article on his show, and this generated enough heat that Weekly Standard editor Stephen Hayes got booted off Fox News, and then the owners of the Weekly Standard began asking themselves, “What exactly is the purpose of this money-losing publication?”

Those who remember the 1990s and the first decade of this century will recall how closely the Weekly Standard and Fox News were once allied. So when Kristol’s publication began to defecate all over the Fox News audience — which is what their #NeverTrump stance amounted to — it was inevitable that a parting of the ways must eventually come, and when it did . . . ? Well, the big selling-point for the Weekly Standard was that they were “influential,” and an important element of their influence was that their writers — Kristol, Hayes, et al. — made regular appearances on Fox News. Once they got called out by Emerald Robinson (and her call-out was amplified by Rush Limbaugh) however, Fox News was forced to choose between (a) the network’s core audience, which solidly supported Trump, or (b) these pointed-headed neocon intellectuals who couldn’t park their bicycles straight.

“Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies . . .”

But there was something else going on at the time, which many of us either didn’t notice, or have since forgotten, but Ace of Spades remembers: Jim Swift, an obese former Hill staffer who spent six years working at the Weekly Standard, in 2018 launched a crusade to get Salena Zito fired from the Washington Examiner. This made no sense at all because (a) Zito was, and still is, a very popular reporter, and (b) the Examiner is owned by the same company that at the time owned the Weekly Standard, so that (c) Swift was trying to sabotage one of his own company’s star employees. The foolishness of Swift’s course of action, and the failure of his editors to rein him in, may have been a major reason why, instead of selling the Weekly Standard, the owners just fired the entire staff and shut it down. If Ace’s theory is right, then Swift — a talentless, no-neck blob of sweaty failure — may have had more to do with wrecking the #NeverTrump movement than anything else.

 

As it is, however, Ace’s theory is mostly speculative, even though the disgusting obesity of Jim Swift is a confirmed fact. He may not be ready to star in an episode of My 600-Pound Life yet, but he’s definitely looking like a high-risk candidate for Type II diabetes. For now, though, Emerald Robinson holds the title of Never Trump Slay Queen all to herself.




 

Category: Journalism

In The Mailbox: 08.25.21

Posted on | August 25, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.25.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

The future will not only be stupid, it will be more stupid than we can imagine.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Red Pilled Jew: Nemesis Checks The Time
357 Magnum: I Guess What’s Called For Is Another Strongly Worded Press Release
EBL: How Emerald Robinson Murdered The Weekly Standard
Twitchy: WH Cuts Off Biden’s Appalling Response To NBC Journo’s Question About Americans Stranded In Afghanistan
Louder With Crowder: SCOTUS Smacks Down Biden, “Remain In Mexico” Asylum Policy Is Back
Vox Popoli: Confucius Condemns Neoliberalism, also, The Next Domino
Stoic Observations: Sword & Sorcery In Afghanistan
Gab News: The No Vax Mandate Job Board

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: We Hate Our Government
American Conservative: Resuscitating Kipling, also, (Why) Is Uber Failing?
American Greatness: Hey, Biden Voters! also, Former SF Op Re. Mike Waltz Says State Dept. Checkpoint At Kabul Airport Has Turned Away American Citizens
American Power: The Last Neocons
American Thinker: Why We Succumb To Micro-Control Over Our Lives
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: New Ministry Of Truth Launched In Cuba, also, Another Canadian Diplomat In Cuba Felled By “Havana Syndrome”
BattleSwarm: Scenes From The Afghan Debacle
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American – Gets An Apology, also, Blue Origin BE-4 Engine Delayed Again
Cafe Hayek: Quiet This Panic
CDR Salamander: For Afghans, The Clock In Kabul Just Ran Out, also, Remember WESTPAC?
Da Tech Guy: An American Father, Report From Louisiana – Get Me Out Of Here! and The “Time Tax” Of Social Security
Don Surber: 5% Believe Afghanistan Is Going Very Well, also, Biden Negotiates With Terrorists
First Street Journal: It Ain’t Just Southern Rednecks Protesting Them #VaxxMandates
The Geller Report: Forensic Audit Of 2020 Election Moves Forward In PA, also, Sinema Refuses To Back $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Government Censorship
Hollywood In Toto: Dave Made A Maze Shows The Limits of Twee Storytelling, also, The Green Knight Is Everything A Cinematic Experience Should Be
The Lid: Two Congressmen Take Secret Kabul Trip, Say U.S. Won’t Get Everyone Out In Time
Legal Insurrection: Stanford Law Students Create Guide To Dismantle “Patriarchal Racial Colonial Capitalism”, also, CIA & Pentagon Officials “Furious & Disgusted” At Leaving Afghan Helpers Behind
Nebraska Energy Observer: Lupus Tenebrosis. Chapter 3
Outkick: Rachel Nichols Done At ESPN – Network Cancels Her Show, also, Cris Carter Doesn’t Think LeBron James Is Tough Enough To Play In The NFL
Power Line: Biden Agonistes, also, Former CA Senate Majority Leader (Democrat) Endorses Larry Elder
Shark Tank: DeSantis Regains Ground In new Quinnipiac Poll
Shot In The Dark: The Ultimate “White Privilege”, also, The Big Beat
The Political Hat: Out – Alien Greys, In – Alien Gringo Honky Cracker Whites
This Ain’t Hell: Skip Archer, Fake Vietnam POW, also, Noone Left Behind – Vets Rally To Assist
Transterrestrial Musings: Sweet, Sweet Connie [RIP]
Victory Girls: Matthew Dowd Thinks Biden Should Be Congratulated On Job Well Done In Afghanistan, also, California Students & Parents Trapped In Afghanistan
Volokh Conspiracy: Federal Judge Beaches Kraken, Orders Sanctions
Weasel Zippers: Nigel Farage – No Military Cooperation With U.S. Under Biden, Pentagon Spox Still Doesn’t Know How Many Americans Are In Afghanistan, and Biden Laughs As Reporter Asks About Stranded Americans In Afghanistan
The Federalist: Only 5% Of Those Evacuated From Kabul By U.S. Are Americans, also, “Trust Not In Princes” – Seven Reasons For Hope
Mark Steyn: Taliban Diversity, also, Charlie Watts Always Played The Right Thing

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R.I.P., Charlie Watts

Posted on | August 25, 2021 | Comments Off on R.I.P., Charlie Watts

The great rock-and-roll legends of our Baby Boomer youth are now marching like a parade toward the grave, and I ignore most of these routine obituaries, but I’ll make an exception for Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, arguably the most dapper man in rock-and-roll.

Watts was not originally a rocker, but instead was a youthful jazz enthusiast who was recruited in 1962 as the drummer for Alex Korner’s Blues Incorporated, a London group that over the years gave rise to many future stars of Britain’s blues-rock scene. From a working-class background, Watts was actually more bourgeois than Mick Jagger who, as the son of a school teacher, was more of the middle-class rebel. It took about six months for Jagger to persuade Watts to join the Rolling Stones in 1963, because this move required Watts to give up the steady paycheck he’d been earning as Korner’s drummer. While the Stones courted controversy as the “bad boy” alternative to the nice, polite Beatles, Watts was not into the decadent lifestyle that the Stones’ reputation would seem to require. He got married in 1964 and stayed married to the same woman for more than 50 years, and never had a substance abuse problem, except a few years in the mid-1980s when he started drinking more heavily, a phase he later attributed to a “mid-life crisis.”

It was during that mid-80s phase that Watts did something that contradicted his famously low-key personality. Mick and Keith Richards had been partying all night on tour, and Mick called Watts’ hotel room at 5 a.m. to shout, “Where’s my drummer?” About a half-hour later, Watts showed up at Mick’s room, dressed in a Saville Row suit, punched the singer in the face and told him, “Never call me your drummer again.” Keith had to intervene to soothe Watts’ injured pride.

Here is video — from a documentary directed by Martin Scorcese, of all people — showing the Stones playing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” in 2006, where the camera focuses on Charlie Watts the entire time:

 

Something to notice is that, while most rock drummers nowadays play “match grip” (both sticks held overhand), Watts played “traditional grip,” with the left stick held underhand. That can probably be attributed to Watts’ background as a jazz player, although Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham, who played match grip, was also influenced by jazz. The vast difference between Watts and Bonham is worth contemplation. Like the Stones, Zeppelin were very blues-influenced, but were much more into a psychedelic style, with extended instrumental solos, and Bonham’s drumming style was idiosyncratic. You noticed Bonham’s beats — listen to the final two minutes of “Stairway to Heaven,” for example, and hear those thundering syncopated tom-tom riffs — in a way that was seldom the case with Charlie Watts. Reliable and yet unobtrusive, the steady beat of the Greatest Rock and Roll Band — quite a career, one that lasted nearly 60 years. Not bad for a truck driver’s son from Wembley. R.I.P.




 

Category: Music
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