The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 03.02.22

Posted on | March 3, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.02.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

If I had any brains, I’d be in bed and asleep now after getting home from Las Vegas, where I laid over for an extra day after spending the previous night in Henderson on the back end of the See Confinement And Die Tour. But we all know the answer to that one.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
McG’s Tally Book: When You’re Chasin’ The Crown, And You Just Get Bogged Down – Ukraine
357 Magnum: Winston Churchill’s Ministry Of Destruction
EBL: Inventing Anna, also, Oksana Gulenko Sings The Ukrainian National Anthem
Twitchy: “This Is Hardly Berating”, also, “Which Is Such A Ron Klain Answer”
Louder With Crowder: Ben Shapiro Gives The SOTU Response The GOP Should Have
Vox Popoli: Chicoms Call Out U.S. Hypocrisy, Bold Move, Cotton, and The Empire Of Lies
Gab News: The Speech That Broke The Internet

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Screaming Girl Handwaving Club, also, The Leg Openers That Defined The Nineties
American Conservative: Democrats Face The Fate Of The Whigs, also, How Not To Think About Ukraine
American Greatness: The Suicide Of A January 6 Defendant, also, The Crowded Road To Kyiv
American Power: In Dramatic Shift, Germany Begins Military Rearmament, also, Petraeus – “I Can’t Overestimate How Difficult A Position He & His Forces Are In”
American Thinker: Ukraine To Putin – Never Again, also, Dinner With Libs
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday, also, Animal’s Daily Mandate News
Babalu Blog: Mexico Paid $1.5 Million For Its Medical Students To Study In Cuba, also, Communist Showgirls
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For February 25, also, Battle For Kiev Begins
Behind The Black: First Delivery Of New Starlink Terminals Arrives In Ukraine, The Democrats Now Prove There Never Was Any Science Behind Their Mandates, and ULA Successfully Launches NOAA Weathersat
Cafe Hayek: Wow! SNL Dares To Question Covidians!
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, You Want A Cyber World War? This Is How You Get One, and The Map Tells The Story
Da Tech Guy: A Sign Of Hope From Rome, Five Biden, Putin, & Trudeau Thoughts Under The Fedora, and The Germans Get On Board
Don Surber: How To Save CNN, Importing Illegals Backfires On Democrats, and Putin’s Winter War
First Street Journal: Los Gringos Estan Locos!, also, Philly Continues The Tyranny
Gates Of Vienna: The Clock Is Ticking For Eric Zemmour, Rationing Begins In Germany, and Welcome To EUkraine
The Geller Report: Special Counsel Finds Zuck’s Election Money Violated Wisconsin Bribery Laws, Arizona Senate Study Shows 200k 2020 Ballots With Mismatched Signatures Counted, and 62% Of Voters Say Putin Wouldn’t Have Invaded Ukraine If Trump Was President
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, Programming Note, and Biden’s Speech
Hollywood In Toto: Desperate Hour Abandons Naomi Watts & Good Taste, Yes, Some Kind Of Wonderful Is Better Than Pretty In Pink, and Is This The Most Revealing SNL Sketch Of The COVID Era?
The Lid: John F. Kerry* Is A Narcissist Who Doesn’t Care About Dead Ukrainians, also, 1619 Project Author Doesn’t Know Geology Either
Legal Insurrection: Glenn Youngkin Releases Report On Efforts To Fight CRT, Harvard Closes Campus Police Station, and UMass-Boston Math & Science Profs Come Out Against DIE Policies
Michelle Malkin: AFPAC Vs. America Last GOP
Nebraska Energy Observer: One Wonders…, Random Observations, and Sunday Matinee
Outkick: MLBPA Rejects MLB’s Final Offer Before Deadline – Opening Day Canceled, Idiot Student Expelled After Taunting Hoops Player, and Bryce Harper Trolls Hard With Epic Instagram Post
Power Line: U.S. v. Tou Thao – The Verdicts, We Are Not A Serious Country (4), and On Energy – The Sino-Russian One-Two Punch
Shark Tank: Moskowitz Frontrunner To Replace Deutch, also, Ingoglia Pressed On Florida’s Trash Incinerators
Shot In The Dark: How Badly Is The DFL Polling For Mid-Terms? also, Vlad All Over, or, The Fog Of War
STUMP: Mortality Angle Of The Russo-Ukrainian Conflict – Bad Even Before The War
The Political Hat: What Are Preteen Students In Minneapolis Learning? also, Trudeau – As Foretold In The Prophecy 
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, DOJ To Halt Initiative Cracking Down On Chicom Spying, and Two More Accounted For
Transterrestrial Musings: Ukraine & Space, Mriya, and No Matter How Bad You Think It Is
Victory Girls: Psaki – Sun & Wind Will Rescue America From Russian Oil, Some Subversive Thoughts On Ukraine, and Blue On Blue
Volokh Conspiracy: Offer Asylum To Russian Troops Who Surrender, also, 5th Circuit Blocks Navy From Enforcing Jab Mandate On Religious Objectors
Weasel Zippers: Pelosi Thinks Americans Have A Low Opinion Of Biden Because They’re Ignorant, American Imports Of Russian Oil Literally Funding Putin’s Warmongering, and Adam Kinzinger Falls For “Samuel Hyde” Internet Prank
The Federalist: Stop Letting Russian-Funded “Green” Groups Dictate Our Energy Policy, The Biden Voters Owe The Rest of Us An Apology, and The Russian Collusion Hoax Lives On At MSNBC
Mark Steyn: Freedom Worth Honking For, Strange Love – Gene Tierney & The Riddle Of Laura, and Of Coronations & Confiscations
* Who, by the way, served in Vietnam. (h/t Rush Limbaugh)

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Infamous Race Hustler Uses Ukraine War to — You Guessed It — Hustle Race

Posted on | March 2, 2022 | Comments Off on Infamous Race Hustler Uses Ukraine War to — You Guessed It — Hustle Race

The brilliance of Critical Race Theory is that it enables practitioners to see racism literally everywhere:

Left-wing New York Times reporter and controversial 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones was slammed online after accusing journalists covering the Russian invasion into Ukraine of “racialized analysis and language” in their reporting, indicating their “sympathy” for white victims of conflict and refugees in particular while claiming Europe is a fictional continent intended to separate it from non-“civilized” nations.
On Sunday, Hannah-Jones, author of the debunked New York Times 1619 Project, called on fellow journalists to “look internally” regarding acknowledging their racial biases in their coverage of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Every journalist covering Ukraine should really, really look internally. This is why I say we should stop pretending we have objectivity and in instead acknowledge our biases so that we can report against them,” she wrote. “Many of us see the racialized analysis and language.”
She added, “And honestly, these admissions of shock that this is happening in a European country are ahistorical and also serve to justify the lack of sympathy for other invasions, other occupations and other refugee crisis involving peoples not considered white.”
Later in the day, Hannah-Jones called the European continent a “geopolitical fiction” intended to separate it from Asia and which led to the “alarm” over an invasion of people who “are like us.” 
“What if I told you Europe is not a continent by defintion, but a geopolitical fiction to separate it from Asia and so the alarm about a European, or civilized, or First World nation being invaded is a dog whistle to tell us we should care because they are like us,” she asked.
In a follow-up tweet, she claimed that Ukrainians being invaded was worthy of concern but not because they “appear white” — a claim not seen made.
“To be clear: We should care about Ukraine. But not because it is European, or the people appear white, or they are ‘civilized’ and not ‘impoverished,’” she wrote. “All people deserve to be free and to be welcomed when their countries are at war.”

Would you like me to tell you the most perfect thing here? The author of this Breitbart article is (((Joshua Klein))). You know that this race-hustling stuff has become a losing game for the Left when you see Jews calling it out. And while we’re on the subject of ethnic politics, why do you think there was such a shift of Latino voters to the GOP in 2020? It’s because they are likewise getting fed up with this BLM/CRT nonsense.

Keep in mind that it’s not as if prejudice against Jews and Latinos doesn’t exist in America, or in the Republican Party for that matter. It’s just that sensible people, whatever their ethnicity or position within the Universal Oppression Matrix, can recognize a scam as obvious as the one being foisted upon us by such “intellectuals” as Nikole Hannah-Jones.

At a time when we’re teetering on the brink of World War III, nobody wants to listen to this kind of blatant race-hustling.




 

Category: Racism, Ukraine

War and the Meaning of Nationhood

Posted on | March 1, 2022 | Comments Off on War and the Meaning of Nationhood

Once upon a time (he says, as if speaking of a mythical ancient past, but in fact speaking of his own youth) students were taught to think deeply about the nature of government, what constitutes a nation-state, and what purpose such a geopolitical entity is intended to serve. This is (or at least once was) the first lesson of political philosophy, and this teaching was developed in historic context, through the study of early empires, Greek city-states, etc. One cannot understand government, in its present forms, without contemplating the origin of the nation-state, which derived from earlier kingdoms, and every kingdom can be traced back through the mists of distant time to some tribal warlord or barbarian raider whose name, if we know it at all, we know only because his feats were celebrated in songs that survived long enough to be committed to writing. Hence, the legend of King Arthur, who might have been a local chieftain who defended some part of the island against Saxon raiders in the so-called Dark Ages after the Romans evacuated Britain.

Whether or not King Arthur actually existed, he almost certainly bore little resemblance to any of the Hollywood versions of his legend, but this is irrelevant to political science. The point, as we were instructed in our youth, is that the nation-state is forged by military power, of whom the earliest kings of any particular nation were the leaders. Originating in the violent exercise of military power, then, the state claims a monopoly on the use of force, which it wields both to defend itself against foreign threats, and to maintain peaceful order among its subjects.

We are prone, in peaceful times, to forget this basic lesson of political science, and surely the Ukrainians weren’t thinking about it when they elected the popular comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy as their president.

When I saw the protest poster above — “If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no more Ukraine!!!” — it immediately carried me back to those classrooms where my teachers remarked on the origins of nationhood in war. Various intellectuals have sneered at this over the years, dismissing the eminence of European royalty by depicting them (however truthfully) as the descendants of savage warlords. We are supposed to be so much more sophisticated than our ancestors that we are not awed by legends and myths, you see. Yet is it not the case that our own national capital is named for a Virginia farmer who, being appointed general of the Continental Army, organized victory over the British and then became our first president? So the unity of military power and political authority was maintained even in our representative government.

“We the People,” etc., but there would be no United States and no Constitution were it not for the military victory that established our national independence. And as we behold Ukraine, fighting for its existence against Russian aggression, we are reminded of this truth.

Everyone is now praising Zelenskyy as a latter-day Churchill, after he drew a standing ovation from the European Parliament, but he must either find some way to organize victory, or else perish under the Russian boot, and accomplishing this would seem to require a miracle.

Once upon a time (he says, again speaking of his own youth as if it were an antique legend) American boys were taught about historic heroes, and urged to emulate their example — Davy Crockett at the Alamo, Alvin York in the Argonne Forest, and so on — because our elders, having recently won a World War, and being then engaged in what one of our presidents called the “long twilight struggle” against Communism, were conscious that their sons might be called upon to fight for our country.

We too easily forget all this, but then we look to Ukraine, and we know that if by some miracle they survive, they will never forget.




 

Category: History, Ukraine

The Science™ Is Actually The Politics™

Posted on | March 1, 2022 | Comments Off on The Science™ Is Actually The Politics™

Ace of Spades remarks, “Quelle coincidence,” at the polling memo from Impact Research (which “has helped elect Democratic candidates at all levels”) advising Democratic candidates on how to pivot away from their ill-advised “COVID Zero” maximum-lockdown stance on the pandemic. The obvious proof that these lockdowns were never “necessitated” (to use the phrase of Biden’s pollsters) is the experience of Florida, which has been wide-open since the summer of 2020 with no apparent harm, compared to the Democrat-controlled states.

Keep in mind that every Democrat in Congress supported the Biden administration’s policy of firing millions of workers (including nurses) if they did not comply with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. And every Democratic governor and mayor was on the pro-lockdown side of the argument. What the polling memo tells Democrats, basically, is to pretend that none of this ever happened and hope voters forget.

Exit question: Are voters as stupid as Democrats think they are?




 

Category: Democrats, Polls, Science

Our Feeble-Minded Commander-in-Chief

Posted on | February 28, 2022 | Comments Off on Our Feeble-Minded Commander-in-Chief

We are so doomed:

ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos said Sunday on “This Week” that a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows 54% of Americans do not believe President Joe Biden is mentally sharp during his interview with White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
Stephanopoulos said, “The president is approaching his State of the Union in a pretty difficult political position right now, 37% approval rating, Democrats trailing badly in the midterm polling. A majority in our recent poll out this morning even question the president’s mental capacity. How is he going to turn that around on Tuesday night? And how much has his State of the Union been changed by this war in Ukraine?”
Psaki said, “You know, George, from covering State of the Unions for some time, that it is about delivering a message to the public at a moment in time. And if you look back when President Obama gave his first State of the Union, it was during the worst financial crisis in a generation. When President Bush gave his first State of the Union, it was shortly after 9/11. Leaders lead during crises. That’s exactly what President Biden is doing. He’ll speak to that, but he’s also going to speak about his optimism about what’s ahead and what we all have to look forward to.”

If you’re also optimistic about “what we all have to look forward to,” then your brain must have turned completely to mush, too.




 

Category: ABC, Joe Biden

Listen to the Experts!

Posted on | February 27, 2022 | Comments Off on Listen to the Experts!

Far be it from me to say that Lyle Goldstein’s analysis is wrong.

Indeed, the possibility that Ukraine could become the site of an Iraq/Afghanistan-style “insurgency” does seem unlikely. But things that seem unlikely happen all the time, and we cannot rule anything out, just because the odds are daunting. Putin is rattling his nuclear saber now, and there is talk of negotiations, but the ground combat situation in Ukraine is still confused. Four days into the Russian invasion — it’s about 10 p.m. Sunday in Ukraine as I write this — Ukrainian resistance is still fierce and effective, and the Russians have failed to take Kyiv. On the other hand, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, the city is now “encircled” by Russian forces — i.e., the invaders control all the routes into the city. Kyiv is now besieged, in other words, and such affairs do not usually end well for the defenders. Western talk of sending military aid to Ukraine is thus rather belated, if there is no feasible way to deliver these materials to the Ukrainians now holed up in their capital.

We know that the Biden administration had intelligence warning of a Russian invasion weeks or months in advance, and the question is, what did the administration do about that warning, besides beg China to intercede with Putin? The Biden administration has made America helpless to deter aggression; the Afghanistan debacle demonstrated that we can’t even protect our own interests. What help can we offer Ukraine?

“Thoughts and prayers” — it’s all we’ve got left.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Joe Biden, Russia, Ukraine

The Blessings of St. Javelin

Posted on | February 27, 2022 | Comments Off on The Blessings of St. Javelin

This image of a saint wielding an FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile has become an iconic symbol of the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. When you see video of destroyed Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers, chances are it was a Javelin that did the damage.

The Javelin is quite a sophisticated weapon, so much so that a single missile costs more than $80,000. It is a “fire-and-forget” weapon; once the target is acquired through the sighting system, the missile locks onto the target and as soon as it is fired, the crew can run for cover or change their position. However, because of the missile’s “soft launch” technology, the location of the Javelin crew is not revealed to the enemy forces, who may not even know what hit them, much less where it came from. Besides which, when one of your tanks gets blown up by an armor-piercing missile, your first thought is probably, “Let’s get the hell out of here,” rather than attempting to mount a counterattack.

You’ve seen news about the Russians being “bogged down” because of “unexpectedly” strong Ukrainian opposition? St. Javelin, baby!

Coffee or Die spoke with Medal of Honor recipient Clint Romesha about javelins, and their use in conventional warfare. . . .
“Now if you could put one guy up on the side of a hill with six f–king Javelin missiles, you’re stopping an entire company of tanks with one guy,” Romesha said. “They don’t even know where that sh– is coming from.
He explained that Javelins have a soft launch, so there’s no smoke trail to show where they are being launched from, nor a dirt cloud kicked up by missile backblast. . . .
Romesha also pointed out a Javelin rarely misses. He said it’s one of the best “fire and forget” launchers that can be used against armor. Lockheed Martin, the producer of Javelin missiles, boasts a 94% hit rate on targets with a firing range anywhere from 65 – 4,000 meters.

Basically, if the crew gets a good “lock” on the target, this sucker will hit it at a range of two miles or more. When President Zelensky says he needs “ammunition” to defend his country, it’s more Javelins he needs the most urgently, and the Biden administration will have to answer for why it didn’t supply Ukraine more of these weapons in the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion. By the way, some of my conservative friends have noted that in Ukraine’s war against Russia, liberals have finally discovered a “nationalism” they can endorse. And given the role played by the Javelin in Ukraine’s resistance, perhaps some liberals will reconsider their habit of whining about the “military-industrial complex.” Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin, routinely portrayed as villains by “anti-war” liberals, turn out to be the source of Putin’s worst nightmares.




 

Category: Military, Russia, Ukraine

What a Real President Looks Like

Posted on | February 26, 2022 | Comments Off on What a Real President Looks Like

Either way it goes, he’ll be a historic figure:

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that he is still in the capital of Kyiv (Kiev) in a video purporting to show the leader from the streets of the embattled city in the early hours of Saturday morning after reportedly shutting down a plea from the Biden administration to flee.
Addressing apparent rumours of an evacuation from Kyiv amid a Russian assault, Zelensky posted a video on his official Twitter account to claim that this was fake news and that he is still on the ground of the Ukrainian capital.
“I’m here in the ground, we will not lay down our arms. We will defend our state because our weapon is our truth. Our truth is that this is our land, our country, and our children. And we will defend all this,” the president said according to a translation from state news agency Ukrinform.

Zelensky’s video came just hours after the Associated Press reported that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden had called on Zelensky to evacuate the city.
According to the news agency, citing a “senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation”, the Ukrainian president replied by saying “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Specifically, he needs anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, but the essential point is that the Ukrainians are still fighting:

Ukraine’s outgunned forces held the capital of Kyiv for the third day on Saturday as battles continued in cities across the country, while a defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told citizens to defend the country. . . .
Russia’s invasion has not progressed as fast as Moscow would have expected, say Western intelligence officials.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russia has yet to gain control of Ukrainian airspace “greatly reducing the effectiveness of the Russian Air Force.”
Russia has also faced “acute logistical difficulties and strong Ukrainian resistance,” slowing the speed of the Russian advance, the UK ministry said in a Saturday intelligence update shared on Twitter.
But it stressed that the bulk of Russian forces are now only 18.6 miles from the center of Kyiv, warning that casualties are “likely to be heavy and greater than anticipated or acknowledged by the Kremlin.”

Every day Kyiv hangs on, the worse Russia’s problems become.




 

Category: Russia, Ukraine
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