The Other McCain

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

Rule 5 Sunday: Natasha Romanova Redux

Posted on | July 12, 2021 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Natasha Romanova Redux

— compiled by Wombat-socho

So the new Black Widow movie is out, and it looks pretty good, but since I’m not driving 200 miles to pay $20 so I can watch Scarlett Johanson’s butt* on the big screen, I’ll have to wait until it’s available on some streaming platform I can afford. Also, a minor quibble – I have grown used to seeing Ms. Romanova in the black SHIELD uniform over the years, and that white Arctic uniform just doesn’t look that good on her. Here we have cosplayer Kalinka Fox in a more traditional view of one of SHIELD’s finest assets.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1407, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. 

Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Albertan Independence Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: MAGA DeSantis, Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella, Betty Gilpin, Noah Cyrus, Michael Avenatti, Salome, No Sudden Move, Julie London, Capriccio, Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, Ariadne Auf Naxos, The Tomorrow War, Elektra, Evil, Der Rosenkavalier, Vanessa Williams, Amy McDonald, and Independence Day. 

A View From The Beach: Lindsey Harrod, Fish Pic Friday – Kelly Young, Election 2020: While Waiting on Elsa, Trucking into Thursday, NYT Dreads Patriotism, Flags and Pickup Trucks, Rule 5 Star Makes WuFlu News, The Wednesday Wetness, Some Tuesday Tanlines, The Monday Morning Eye Opener, Cave Women Found Not Guilty in Decline of Elephants, 2020 Election – July 4, 2021 Edition and Happy Fourth of July!

Brian Noggle: Ruth Hall

*To say nothing of her many other attractive features.

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious linkagery!

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Category: Rule 5

In Defense of R.E. Lee

Posted on | July 11, 2021 | Comments Off on In Defense of R.E. Lee

Some have asked my opinion on the recent iconoclastic travesty of the savage vandal horde, but I have refrained from commenting directly on such matters for fear I might speak too sincerely. You may take yesterday’s Civil War history thread — including my recommendation of  Douglas Southall Freeman’s four-volume R.E. Lee, A Biography and his three-volume Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command — as sufficient comment. However, there is more to be said on the subject, and I find it from a remarkable source. During the 1990s, Christopher Caldwell wrote something that pissed me off so much I marked him down as a despicable cur. I’ve since forgotten what that was about, but his name had lodged in my memory so that I was pleasantly surprised when (hat-tip to Gail Heriot at Instapundit), I saw Caldwell’s remarkable article in The Claremont Review about the recent assaults on Lee’s memory, an article I highly recommend, despite some unfortunate errors about the War (e.g., the Confederacy indeed manufactured artillery, at the Tredegar works in Richmond, at the Noble iron works in Rome, Georgia, and elsewhere). Caldwell is certainly correct here:

Whereas earlier Americans understood slavery primarily as a problem of liberty, today’s Americans understand it primarily as a problem of race. It seemed for several generations that the end of slavery had removed the only obstacle to honoring both sides of the Civil War. But in the newest generation, the persistence of American racial prejudice can be a reason to honor neither.

Read the whole thing. This whole mess makes me sick. If Virginians today would dishonor Lee, in truth they dishonor only themselves.




 

Category: History

Death at Chuck E. Cheese

Posted on | July 11, 2021 | Comments Off on Death at Chuck E. Cheese

Google “fight + Chuck E. Cheese” and look at the results:

Hair-pulling, screaming brawl
breaks out at Chuck E. Cheese’s
— Miami Herald, Oct. 4, 2016

Women brawl in front of kids
party at Chuck E. Cheese’s
— New York Post, Dec. 19, 2017

Brawl at Chuck E. Cheese sends
three adults, one child to hospital
— WCPO-TV Cincinnati, April 28, 2019

Video of Sunday brawl at Beaumont
Chuck E. Cheese shared on social media
— KBMT-TV, Beaumont, Texas, Jan. 20, 2020

Police release body camera video during fight
in Mayfield Heights Chuck E. Cheese
— WJW-TV Cleveland, April 26, 2021

That is only a small sample of headlines from the past five years, and how weird is it that adults would be fighting at a pizza place best known as a location for little kids to celebrate their birthdays?

Who are these people? What kind of example are parents setting for their children, when they can’t even go to a birthday party without the occasion turning into an amateur UFC cage match? But it gets worse:

A Davenport woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison Friday for fatally shooting another woman in a Chuck E. Cheese.
Treshonda M. Pollion, 25, was originally charged with first-degree murder, but in April she accepted a plea deal and pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. The plea deal included a mandatory sentence of 10 years.
Pollion was arrested on Oct. 25 for shooting Eloise Chairs, 29, after the two women allegedly got into a fistfight sparked by an argument about a game card.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more senseless crime than this one,” Scott County Judge John Telleen said during the sentencing hearing. . . .
Davenport officers were dispatched around 7:38 p.m. Oct. 25 to Chuck E. Cheese, 903 E. Kimberly Road, where they found Chairs with a gunshot wound. Chairs was transported to Genesis Medical Center East, Davenport, where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Investigators said a number of witnesses described an argument among Chairs and others at the restaurant, sparked by a game card.
After the initial argument ended, a second altercation started between Chairs, Pollion and a witness. A Chuck E. Cheese manager tried breaking up the fight when Pollion and Chairs allegedly exchanged punches.
A witness who first argued with Chairs said she saw Pollion with a gun in her hand and heard Chairs warn others Pollion had a gun. Investigators said a single shot was fired during another altercation between Chairs and Pollion.

This line about an argument “sparked by a card game” didn’t make sense to me, so I dug a bit deeper and found more details:

Chairs had become involved in an argument with a mother after her son’s card game was taken by another child, her family told WQAD.
The other mother’s friend — identified as Pollion — allegedly took out a gun and shot Chairs in the shoulder, hitting a major artery.

So a kid steals your kid’s deck of Uno cards or whatever, and next thing you know, it’s shootout time at Chuck E. Cheese? But wait a minute — why is mom packing heat at Chuck E. Cheese? While I am a staunch defender of Second Amendment rights, what is going on in Davenport, Iowa, that a woman feels the need to be armed at a kid’s birthday party?

Perhaps I need to attend a seminar with Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo so I can understand the “systemic racism” angle in all this.




 

Category: Crime

FMJRA 2.0: Shotgun Blues

Posted on | July 10, 2021 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Shotgun Blues

— compiled by Wombat-socho

SOTD
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

If Facebook were doing the job they ought to be doing.

Rule 5 Sunday: Agent Carter
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL
Animal Magnetism

@Timcast vs. the Journalistic ‘Midwits’
EBL

The Other Podcast Rides Again
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Never Call Retreat
A View From The Beach
EBL

Khaled Awad Update: Student Visa for Egyptian Who Stabbed Massachusetts Rabbi; Roommates Say He Hated Jews
357 Magnum
EBL

Harmful Extremist Content’? Why Does Facebook Want You to Be ‘Concerned’?
Transterrestrial Musings
357 Magnum
EBL

July 4: Why I Am a Populist
Nebraska Energy Observer
A View From The Beach
EBL

72 Shot in Chicago This Weekend
First Street Journal
EBL

‘Light Fuse and Get Away’
357 Magnum
EBL

Some Civil War Reading With Added Pulp
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.06.21 (Morning Edition)
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

‘Gun Violence’ Propaganda
Dark Brightness
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

Andrew Cuomo’s Weirdo Daughter
Dark Brightness
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.07.21 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

Late Night With In The Mailbox: 07.07.21
357 Magnum
EBL

The Ghost of Andrew Breitbart
Proof Positive
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.08.21
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

CNN’s ‘Hero’ Voter Is a Felon
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.09.21
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending July 9:

  1.  EBL (19)
  2.  357 Magnum (10)
  3.  (tied) A View From The Beach & Proof Positive (8 each)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

Civil War History: Kibbitzing

Posted on | July 10, 2021 | Comments Off on Civil War History: Kibbitzing

Last weekend, our faithful Wombat offered some suggestions for reading about the history of the War Between the States, and while I certainly endorse his recommendations generally, I must take issue with at least one of his comments specifically:

I am frankly unsure why Douglas Southall Freeman has the reputation he does. I tried reading Lee’s Lieutenants when I was younger, and compared to Bruce Catton, I found him turgid and prolix, on a par with the detail-obsessed official histories of the Army in WW2 that were nearly unreadable with their insistence on detailing what every single company of every single division was doing in (for example) the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest. Still, he had quite a reputation back in the day, and you can stick this, too, on your Kindle, and not throw out your back trying to lift the 400+ pages of the original edition.

If Freeman seems “detail-obsessed,” it’s because he had undertaken the demanding task of establishing the actual facts — in terms of troop strength, unit movements, command decisions, etc. — about Lee’s campaigns in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Somebody had to do the work of going through the Official Records of the war, augmenting these documents with on-the-ground studies of the battlefields, consulting the memoirs and other accounts from key participants, to write the definitive history of events.

Freeman’s monumental four-volume R.E. Lee, A Biography, won the 1935 Pulitzer Prize, and his three-volume Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, published 1942-44, “shows how armies actually work” and “had a great influence on American military leaders and strategists,” to quote Wikipedia. Of Freeman’s work generally, let me make two solid points in his favor: First, that nearly all Civil War historians thereafter — including both Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote — were obliged to acknowledge their reliance on his work, and second, that so far as I am aware, no one has ever found a single error of fact in Freeman’s work.

As to other works, certainly Bruce Catton is the most readable of Civil War historians. Catton’s prose style, and his story-telling method, is a perfect model of narrative for any aspiring writer. I’ve re-read his Army of the Potomac trilogy so many times I’ve lost count. Sometime in the mid-1980s, I picked this up in a one-volume edition and was hooked immediately. Let any would-be writer consider how Catton begins the first volume, Mr. Lincoln’s Army, with the tale of an obscure figure, Col. Herman Haupt, taking a rowboat out to a ship docked at Alexandria, Virginia, where he fetches Gen. George McClellan to inform him about developments near Bull Run, where Stonewall Jackson has just landed on Gen. John Pope’s supply lines. As an example of feature writing — what we call the “anecdotal lead” — what Catton does here is perfect.

He has a complex story to tell, but instead of starting from the beginning and proceeding chronologically, Catton instead brings us into the story midway, at a crisis point in McClellan’s career, introducing us to the protagonist as a character in this historic drama, and then goes about the business of showing us the military problem that McClellan was called upon to solve. He does all this in such a way that even if you knew nothing at all about Civil War-era tactics and strategy when you picked up his book, by the time you reach the scene of the climax at Antietam, everything is entirely understandable. Catton’s prose style is clear and simple but also elegant, if you have an eye for such things, so that the reader finds himself drawn into the story with the excitement of reading a good mystery novel. Some of my Confederate friends have criticized me for preferring Catton, an unapologetic Yankee, to the Southerner Shelby Foote, but this preference involves no disrespect for Foote who, it should be noted, acknowledged his own debt to Catton’s work.

All of this is important to me personally, because it has something to do with how I acquired a notorious reputation as a “neo-Confederate” thanks to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich. When I first gained Internet access circa 1995 — in the age of dial-up modems and Usenet groups — there were a couple of places where Civil War history was discussed in open forums. These became the online terrain of conflict because certain damned Yankees (among them Mark Pitcavage, later with the ADL) sought out every opportunity to turn discussion of even the most mundane matters of military history into an occasion to denounce the South for slavery and treason. Older readers will recall that the 1990 Ken Burns documentary on PBS had helped revive public interest in Civil War history leading up to the 125th anniversary of the war, and part of the effect of that was to attract a lot of liberal academics (Pitcavage was then a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State) to pay attention to an area of history they might otherwise have ignored. This resulted in a politicization of history which has echoes to this day in the controversy over Critical Race Theory. Part of the reason for this was (a) in 1994, Republicans led by Newt Gingrich won control of Congress, and (b) in 1995, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City federal building.

After the OKC bombing, Pitcavage made himself into an “expert” on radical militias (McVeigh was on the fringe of the militia movement) and seemed to think that Southerners defending their ancestors in Civil War history forums on the Internet were would-be right-wing terrorists. And by God, I was not going to be insulted by any damned Yankee Ph.D.

You may consult some of my acquaintances from that era — I’ll offer Jeff Quinton, George Kalas and Gary Waltrip as witnesses — who can testify what Southerners were dealing with in those discussions, and refute any accusation that my involvement was inspired by “white supremacy” or any other manifestation of dangerous extremism.

All of this got dragged into Heidi Beirich’s crusade to smear Southerners quite generally with the taint of RAAAAACISM! Now that the SPLC has ruined its credibility by reckless employment of the “hate group” label against innocent conservative organizations, many would consider my own experience as one of Beirich’s targets as trivial, but I assure you it was very serious — and quite damaging — when I was at The Washington Times and the SPLC was coming after me circa 2003-2006.

It is just such libelous and insulting smears, part of a high-handed moralistic style of politics, that incited the Civil War. If you have read Catton’s The Coming Fury, you know he begins that story at the 1860 Democratic convention, where William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama is the leader of those determined to split the party, a decision that ultimately resulted in Abraham Lincoln’s election, and thus, the war.

How was it that the hotheaded Yancey obtained such power? Wasn’t it because of the insulting Yankee propaganda that had been circulated so widely during the previous decade, fomenting in the minds of many Southerners an attitude of rage? Among those in attendance at the 1860 Democratic convention was Richard Taylor of Louisiana, whose father Zachary Taylor had been the last Whig president of the United States. The younger Taylor was opposed to the radicals led by Yancey, and sought a compromise approach that might have averted the party split, but the hotheads carried the day. Well, what was the sequel? Yancey eventually made himself so obnoxious in the Confederate Congress that Ben Hill of Georgia conked him on the head with a glass inkstand, and Yancey died a couple months later at age 49. Meanwhile, the moderate Taylor found himself called to service as commander of Louisiana’s troops, served with distinction under Stonewall Jackson in the Valley campaign of 1862, and later commanded Confederate forces in the West.

Taylor’s memoir, Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War is, from a literary standpoint, the best autobiographical account of that conflict, and one can read Taylor’s droll observations about the people and passions involved. Taylor was certainly not an admirer of the extremists (on either side) who fomented the deadly crisis, and this is perhaps the best lesson we can draw from that history.

The irresponsible rhetoric of politicians and journalists may incite a crisis that responsible people are required to solve, even though they strove to avert the crisis. When you behold the self-righteous demagoguery on CNN nowadays, ask yourself, what have any of those influential politicians and celebrity media millionaires ever done, personally, about the social problems they denounce in such lurid terms?

God forbid such propaganda should overwhelm the good common sense of the American people, and we repeat the tragedies of history.




 

Category: History

CNN ‘Stepped Up,’ Covered Avenatti Prison Sentence, MSNBC Didn’t

Posted on | July 10, 2021 | Comments Off on CNN ‘Stepped Up,’ Covered Avenatti Prison Sentence, MSNBC Didn’t

Credit where credit is due — the Media Research Center’s Curtis Houck notes that CNN covered the story of former Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti being sentenced to prison on extortion charges, while MSNBC continued to ignore Avenatti’s downfall. So CNN (where Avenatti made 122 appearances during his 2018 heyday as an anti-Trump hero) has more journalistic integrity than MSNBC (where Avenatti made 108 appearances). To describe a media organization as being “better than MSNBC” is to damn them with faint praise, of course. Still, it’s a tiny glimmer of encouragement that Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer show some measure of penance for their network’s shameful role in publicizing an obvious sleazeball like Avenatti, merely because he said bad things about Donald Trump. MSNBC appears to be without shame.




 

Category: CNN, MSNBC

In The Mailbox: 07.09.21

Posted on | July 10, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.09.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts. 
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Today’s secret word is “elephant”. Baka.

 

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The Insanity Being Spewed By “Health Officers”
Red Pilled Jew: Unsettling Connections
EBL: Betty Gilpin
Twitchy: Iowahawk Ties The Viral Elephant Enema Video To Columbia U’s MFA Film Program
Louder With Crowder: JP Sears Illustrates Proper Technique For When Biden Sends Government “Door To Door”
Vox Popoli: Banks Not Tanks, also, The Destruction Of Literature
According To Hoyt: READ IT AND BE BRAVE, also, Everything All The Time
Monster Hunter Nation: The Family Business – New Mike Kupari Novel
Stoic Observations: Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Democracy & Communism Are Natural Bedfellows
American Conservative: A Coup Against The Constitution?
American Greatness: No Relief For Lego Man Or Other January 6 Detainees, also, Kamala Harris Announces DNC Will Spend $25 Million To Fight Voter Integrity
American Power: Biden Defends Afghanistan Withdrawal, also, White House Defends Hunter Biden’s Art Swindle
American Thinker: Three Hard Facts That Doom Woke Public Schooling
Animal Magnetism: Rule 5 Alberta Independence Friday
Babalu Blog: Russians Flock To Cuba’s Apartheid Resorts As Plague Rages, But Total Number Of Tourists Down 91%
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For July 9
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, NASA Tells Scientists SLS Won’t Be Ready For At Least A Decade
Cafe Hayek: I Anti-Trust These People
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: The Invisible Moors, Per DaTechGuy’s Third Law Of Media Outrage
Don Surber: Voter Reform Is Winning, also, Despite Media, Americans Blame Corona-chan On Red China
First Street Journal: More Poor Journalism From The Lexington Herald-Leader, also, For Some In Philadelphia, An “Anti-Racist Media System” Means A Propaganda System
Fred On Everything: New Mayan Discoveries Revolutionize Theories Of Mesoamerican Origins
The Geller Report: New Evidence Indicates Enough Illegal Votes In Georgia To Tip 2020 Results, also, Texas Judge Requires Sharia Oversight To Prevail In Divorce Case
Hogewash: History Vs, The Narrative, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Hollywood Reporter Repeats Lies About January 6, also, Amazon’s The Boys Curses Tucker Carlson, Mocks Mike Lindell
The Lid: Like The Vietnamese, Afghans Won’t Choose Their Future
Legal Insurrection: History Prof Under Attack From Peers for Opposing 1619 Project School Curriculum, also, Judge Withdraws Opinion In Boston ZIP Code Quota Plan Case – “I’ve Been Misled”
Nebraska Energy Observer: Friday Compendium
Outkick: NBA’s Need to Skew Ratings Shows Woke Damage Remains, also, Shaq Loses His Pants During Final Turner Broadcast of The Season
Power Line: Biden’s Decline Continues Apace, also, Thoughts From The Ammo Line
Shark Tank: Nikki Fried Urges Florida Supremes To Take Up Local Gun Law Case
Shot In The Dark: A “Good Field” On Which To Die, also, A Bit Of A Reach
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – Contra Aid
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, Eric Graham, Phony Air Force PJ
Transterrestrial Musings: Fake Meat & Hydroponics, also, We Demand A Collectivist Space Program
Victory Girls: Cuomo – Pandemic Was “A Tremendous Personal Benefit”
Volokh Conspiracy: The First Amendment And Treating Social Media Platforms As Common Carriers
Weasel Zippers: Soros-Funded Groups Call On Biden To Ignore Red China’s Abuses, Fight Climate Change Instead, also, Biden Forgets Name Of His Own HHS Secretary
The Federalist: New Evidence Shows Enough Illegal Votes In Georgia To Tip 2020 Results, also, Why The White house Is Probably Behind The Tucker Carlson/NSA Email Scandal
Mark Steyn: We Have Met The Enemy Part XI, also, Hell Hath No Fury Like A Deep State Scorned

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Category: Linkagery

CNN’s ‘Hero’ Voter Is a Felon

Posted on | July 9, 2021 | Comments Off on CNN’s ‘Hero’ Voter Is a Felon

On “Super Tuesday” last year, CNN celebrated a Houston voter, Hervis Rogers, who stood in line for hours to vote in the Democratic primary:

“I figured like it was my duty to vote. I wanted to get my vote in to voice my opinion. And I wasn’t going to let nothing stop me. So I waited it out,” Hervis Rogers told CNN’s Ed Lavandera early Wednesday morning after casting his ballot at a polling center located at Texas Southern University, a historically black college in Houston.
Asked how long he had waited for to vote, Rogers said: “About six hours. A little bit over six hours.”
Rogers was among scores of voters who experienced long lines at some polling centers in Texas, where the state has shut down hundreds of polling sites in the last decade, contributing to the long lines at some of the remaining locations.

Notice that long lines at polling places are a crucial part of the liberal media’s “voter suppression” narrative, insinuating that this is some sinister conspiracy by Republican racists. Not even CNN, however, bothered to explain why those evil Texas racists would be “suppressing” votes in a Democratic primary, but CNN’s audience wouldn’t recognize sound logic if they ever saw it, which they seldom do. At any rate, what about this Hervis Rogers, who was so proud to do his “duty” by voting for Democrats? Have you got your shocked face ready?

Hervis Rogers is a convicted felon, who was on probation at the time he voted for Democrats last year — twice, once in the primary and then again in November — and Rogers was arrested this week for illegally voting, which is also a felony in Texas. Now, ask yourself this question: If convicted felons are prohibited from voting, then how was it that Hervis Rogers was on the list of registered voters in Houston?

If convicted felons were permitted to vote illegally in Houston, what about Atlanta? Milwaukee? Phoenix? Philadelphia? The point here, see, is that making sure election laws are enforced is a job of local officials, but because Democrats control all the election offices in major cities, we have no idea how many people are voting illegally in those cities, because Democrats have no interest in actually enforcing election laws.




 

Category: CNN, Crime, Election, Texas
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