The Other McCain

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

The Big Yellow Button Has Returned

Posted on | May 20, 2020 | 3 Comments

 

Occasionally, when the need arises to rattle the tip jar, I supersize the PayPal contribution button, and today is such an occasion.

You see, we’ve been on COVID-19 lockdown here for more than two months, which means I haven’t been able to go out and enjoy a cold malt beverage since mid-March. And then I learned from investigative journalist Tim Carney that such an establishment is open within a 45-minute drive of my Undisclosed Location. This information made me very thirsty, for some reason. Obviously, I must engage in some old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting to follow up on Tim’s scoop.

IYKWIMAITYD.

The Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

Category: Shoe Leather Fund

‘Biological Leninism’

Posted on | May 20, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Why has Stacey Abrams become a darling of the Democratic Party? Why is an otherwise obscure former state legislator a “rising star,” when her only accomplishment was (a) losing a gubernatorial election by more than 50,000 votes and (b) blaming her defeat on racist “suppression”?

A friend tipped me to one possible explanation — “Biological Leninism”:

So again, the genius of Leninism was in building a ruling class from scratch and making it cohesive by explicitly choosing people from low-status groups, ensuring they would be loyal to the party given they had much to lose. . . .
If you live in a free society, and your status is determined by your natural performance; then it follows that to build a cohesive Leninist ruling class you need to recruit those who have natural low-status. . . .
There’s a reason why there’s so many evil fat women in government. Where else would they be if government didn’t want them? They have nothing going on for them, except their membership in the Democratic party machine. The party gives them all they have, the same way the Communist party had given everything to that average peasant kid who became a middling bureaucrat in Moscow.

An interesting theory. Probably racist — “RAAAAACIST!” — but interesting. It may also explain why the wretched Gretchen Whitmer is on Joe Biden’s vice-presidential short list. No sane person would vote for her, but insanity has become a pandemic among Democrats.



 

Category: Democrats, Racism

Chelsey Coyer: American Hero

Posted on | May 20, 2020 | Comments Off on Chelsey Coyer: American Hero

 

Video of a news report about the reopening of a Texas beach has gone viral. The annual party on Bolivar Peninsula — “Go Topless Jeep Weekend” — was covered by Jordan James of Beaumont’s KBMT-TV, who managed to keep a straight face while interviewing Chelsey Coyer:

“We been in quarantine and like, I need to get out and party. Whoo!”

What made this an instant classic was when Chelsey said, “Wash them hands for 20 seconds and keep them clean with the Germ-X — totally!”

 

Now, it seems a bit cruel to point out that Chelsey apparently didn’t spend her time in quarantine riding her Peloton bike, nibbling on veggies. No, she’s a biscuits-and-gravy girl if ever I saw one. And if you watch the video, you’ll see lots of biscuits-and-gravy folks on the beach.

Say what you will about Texans, they eat good, and are evidently immune to fat-shaming. Everything really is bigger in Texas, I reckon.

You can’t keep Texans in quarantine forever, bless their hearts.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

UPDATE: This event — “Go Topless Jeep Weekend” — has grown increasingly rowdy. Last year, things got so out of control that some residents started a petition to ban the event. By the way, watching the news coverage, you’ll see that Bolivar Peninsula (named for 19th-century South American leader Simon Bolivar) is pronounced “BAH-luh-vur” by locals, whereas I would have pronounced it “BOE-luh-vahr.”

This issue of local pronunciation is common throughout the South, where names derived from Latin languages are given an Anglicized pronunciation. If you are a student of military history, for example, you know that the Georgia town of Resaca was named for Resaca de la Palma, scene of an America victory in the Mexican War. Resaca, Georgia, was the site of a 1864 Civil War battle and, reading about the battle in history books, I assumed the town name was pronounced “Ruh-SAH-cuh,” but when I moved to Gordon County as a sports editor in the late 1980s, I discovered that the locals pronounce it “Ruh-SACK-uh.” Similarly, you will find the locals in Lafayette, Georgia, pronouncing their town’s name with the emphasis on the second syllable, which isn’t how the French officer pronounced his name. Oh, and Taliaferro County, Georgia? Locals pronounced that as “Tolliver.”



 

Category: Texas

In The Mailbox: 05.19.20

Posted on | May 19, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Because Keeping Violent Criminals In Prison Is Unfair
EBL: Ken Osmond, RIP
Twitchy: Watch The Evolution As Christina Wilkie Has A Dawning Awareness Over New Donald Trump “News” Site
Louder With Crowder: MD Restaurant Has Social Distancing Solution – Bumper Tables, also, Hey Democrats, We Found The Real Nazis (It’s You)
Vox Popoli: Targeting Big Tech, also, Neil Gaiman Is A Massive Prick

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Killing Off The Soy Boys
American Conservative: Architects Of American Carnage
American Greatness: De Blasio Whines NYC Needs Billions Of Fed $ Or City “Won’t Come Back”, also, Flynn’s Attorney Seeks Order From Appeals Court
American Power: Red China & The Future Of The Dollar
American Thinker: Media In Panic Mode Over Latest Presidential Polls
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Risk Management News
Babalu Blog: Cuban State Security Arrests Dissident For Taking Pics Of Long Lines Outside Havana Store
Baldilocks: Trump, Hydroxychloroquine, & Hope
BattleSwarm: The Chieftain Talks About His Time In An M1 Abrams, also, Texas Now Running At 25-50% Freedom
Cafe Hayek: Quotation Of The Day
Da Tech Guy: Report From Louisiana – Closing The Classroom, also, The Golden Age Of Jounalism Wasn’t So Golden
Don Surber: Cavuto Takes The Vapors
First Street Journal: Justin Amash Quits Presidential Race After Figuring Out Something Everybody Else Knew
The Geller Report: CA Gov Newsom To Fire Police, Firemen & Medicos While Giving Millions To Illegals, also, New Damning Audio – Biden Pressuring Ukrainian President Poroshenko
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, The Cosmic Reef
Hollywood In Toto: Confessions Of A Right-Wing Film Critic, also, Pop Culture Recoils As Trumps Take Over
JustOneMinute: If They Don’t Indict, It’s Alright!
Legal Insurrection: Susan Rice’s Consciousness Of Guilt, also, Trump Gives WHO 30 Days To “Commit To Major Substantive Improvements” Or Lose Funding
The PanAm Post: Maduro’s Frontman Coordinates Gold Payments From Venezuela To Iran, also, How To Unfreeze The Post-Pandemic Economy
Power Line: Explosive Rice Memo Declassified, also, Was It Something I Asked?
Shark Tank: Marco Rubio Appointed Chairman Of Senate Intel Committee
Shot In The Dark: Densely Packed People
STUMP: MoneyPalooza Monstrosity! Looking At The Multiemployer Plan Provisions
The Political Hat: Masks & Moronicity
This Ain’t Hell: US Army Compared To Others – The Infographics Show, also,  The Flu Vs. COVID-19
Victory Girls: State AGs File Brief Supporting Dismissal Of Flynn Case
Volokh Conspiracy: What Is And Should Be The Role Of Administrative Agencies In Determining Constitutional Norms?
Weasel Zippers: House Democrats Vote To Give Illegals $16 Billion In Stimulus Checks, also, De Blasio Follows Through On Threat To Target Jews
Megan McArdle: We’re All Poorer Now; Nothing The Government Does Can Fix That
Mark Steyn: Hold The Mayo, also, The Rise Of The Public Health Mandarins

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Category: Linkagery

An Experiment That Failed

Posted on | May 19, 2020 | 3 Comments

 

Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by . . .

Will the people who sold us all that Sixties “peace and love” business ever admit that the road we’re traveling does not lead to Utopia? Is there nothing that can cause them to look back and say to themselves, “Y’know, everything was actually better when Eisenhower was president”?

In 1988, when Ronald Reagan was still president and MTV still played music videos, rock guitarist Melissa Etheridge was recording a video for her song, “Bring Me Some Water,” when she met Julie Cypher, who was working on the production crew. At the time, Etheridge was not yet “out” as a lesbian, and Cypher was married to actor Lou Diamond Phillips, who had recently soared to stardom in the 1987 Richie Valens biopic La Bamba. Nevertheless, a romantic affair commenced. Cypher divorced her husband and became Etheridge’s girlfriend. The celebrity couple officially “came out” together in 1993. Cypher gave birth to a daughter, Bailey, in 1997, and in 1998, a son Beckett was born. Both children were conceived via artificial insemination, and there was widespread public speculation as to the sperm donor, with the actor Brad Pitt being one of those rumored to have been the couple’s semen supplier.

To universal surprise, in a Rolling Stone cover story in February 2000, it was revealed that the sperm donor was David Crosby, the singer whose work with the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had defined the folk-rock sound of the 1960s and 70s. Why, of all people, would anyone choose this portly middle-aged drug addict as a sperm donor?

Did I mention that David Crosby was so damaged by his decades of substance abuse he had to undergo a liver transplant in 1994? But bad decision-making was more or less baked into the cake of the Etheridge-Cypher relationship. Mere months after being featured on the cover of the Rolling Stone as a sort of ideal of postmodern family life, the couple split. Cypher decided she wasn’t actually a lesbian and, four years after leaving Etheridge, she married a man. Etheridge, meanwhile, hooked up with Tammy Lynn Michaels who, in 2006, gave birth to twins, conceived with an anonymous sperm donor, but Etheridge and Michaels split in 2010, and Etheridge then moved on to marry Linda Wallem.

Well, what about the kids?

Melissa Etheridge has paid tribute to her son Beckett Cypher who has died following a battle with opioid addiction, aged 21.
Cypher, son to US grammy-winning star Etheridge and her former partner Julie Cypher, died on Wednesday.
Etheridge, best known for songs ‘Ain’t It Heavy’ and ‘Come To My Window,’ announced the news on her social media.
The 58 year-old wrote on Twitter: “My son Beckett, who was just 21, struggled to overcome his addiction and finally succumbed to it today.
“He will be missed by those who loved him, his family and friends.
“My heart is broken. I am grateful for those who have reached out with condolences and I feel their love and sincere grief.
“We struggle with what else we could have done to save him, and in the end we know he is out of the pain now.”

What sort of “pain” was Beckett Cypher in? Spoiled rich kid pain:

Melissa Etheridge’s son Beckett spent his final two months ‘on a bender’ in the luxury $3,500-a-month Denver apartment where he was found dead last week, DailyMailTV can reveal.
An exclusive DailyMailTV video shot nine weeks ago shows Beckett, who was 21, inside the stylish one-bedroom apartment shortly after he moved in.
Beckett, who is seen at the home with an unidentified friend, appeared to be high as he filmed himself pulling poses in the mirror and showing off his new space.
Another video shows him taking a hit of an unidentified substance from a large bong while a third includes footage of the large collection of modified guns he amassed.
Friends said Beckett often posted videos to social media of himself drinking ‘lean’ — a highly intoxicating mixture of codeine cough syrup and Sprite, which is also known as ‘purple drank’.
In addition to that, he was known for his regular use of the opioids Xanax and Percocet and, according to a friend who knew him from his time in Snow Mass, Colorado, was notorious for knocking on his neighbors’ doors late at night to ask for baking soda which can be used to turn cocaine into smokable crack.
Fishing guide Joe Kayafas, 38, who had been friends with Beckett for three years, told DailyMailTV: ‘I’ve known him since he came [to Snow Mass]. I don’t know if he was in college much at all — he was an animal.
‘He takes after his dad [singer David Crosby who is notorious for his drug use]. I’ve never seen people do that much drugs.
‘He did everything. He once showed me a bag with a thousand Xanax and he was like, you want some?
‘I like to party but I’m not into things like that. He was always on something pretty much.’ . . .
But according to Kayafas, drugs became all-consuming for Beckett and he became notorious in Snow Mass for the prodigious quantities he took — on several occasions taking an eight-ball of cocaine, which is three grams of the drug, every day for five days in a row.
He said: ‘I would just be watching him do lines of coke – one after another, after another, after another.
‘Not like most people when they party – it’s a social thing. But he was like hammer down. That’s all he really did: snowboarding and drugs, play video games and just sit there and zone out.’
Kayafas added: ‘I’ve never known him to do dope [heroin] or shoot anything. He was about pills and smoking stuff, eating, drinking or whatever.
‘I’ve seen him with Percocets which is another opioid. He would make cocktails — do coke and Xanax together. Scary shit. Uppers and downers, speedballing… That’s not good for you.
‘He would do an eight-ball of cocaine for himself every night of the week for five days and he would just keep buying.
‘I know people who sell drugs and they would be like, dude, he hits me up all the time.’ . . .
Beckett . . . lived a nomadic existence in his last two years, pinging between Colorado, Montana and Etheridge’s home in California.
Kayafas said much of his time was spent in hotels drinking lean, often accompanied by ‘call girls and random dudes’ or with Etheridge.
Jobs would come and go and he went through three trucks in three years — one of which was wrecked in a crash in Los Angeles in 2018.
His final two months were spent in Denver where according to Kayafas, he made money by dabbling in bitcoin trading.

A complete waste of life. One hesitates to blame this on Beckett’s dysfunctional family background, when it’s so much easier to blame the genetic legacy of notorious druggie sperm donor David Crosby. At any rate, all that Sixties hippie peace-and-love business has failed again. The Woodstock generation did not teach their children well, so to speak.



 

Category: Celebrities, Music

The Battle of Atillis Gym

Posted on | May 19, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

This may go down in history books as the 21st-century Concord Bridge:

A few hours after workouts began Monday morning at New Jersey’s Atilis Gym — which is making national headlines for its early reopening in defiance of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s coronavirus shutdown order — police showed up outside the Bellmawr business.
What happened next?
The large group of people outside the gym were angry and hostile, likely believing the officers showed up to shut down the gym, hand out tickets, or even make arrests. Amid the mostly unintelligible hollering, a few phrases rang out clearly:

“You have the right to refuse unconstitutional orders!”
“Freedom!”
“You swore an oath to protect our rights!”

Soon enough the crowd quieted down enough so that one of the officers was able to address them.
“We are and we’re only here for everybody’s safety today,” the officer began. “We planned for the worst, hoped for the best, and it seems like that’s what we have out here today. Formally, you are all in violation of the executive order.”
Then came the officer’s surprising follow-up statement: “On that note, have a good day. Everybody be safe.”

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

In other COVID-19 news, President Trump revealed he has been taking hydroxychloroquine as a precaution, and the media freaked out:

President Donald Trump on Monday confirmed at the White House that he was taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc as preventatives against the coronavirus.
“I happen to be taking it. I’m taking it. Hydroxychloroquine. Right now, yeah,” he said.
Trump said that he had been taking the medicine for about a week and a half.
“I’m taking the two, the zinc and the hydroxy, and all I can tell you is, so far I seem to be ok,” Trump said.
He said that a doctor and many others had sent him positive letters about the effectiveness of the drug.
“I’ve heard a lot of good stories and if it is not good, I will tell you right,” he said. “I’m not going to get hurt by it.”
The president spoke to reporters about the drug on Monday afternoon at a White House roundtable with restaurant owners.
“I’m still here,” he said, saying that he had “zero symptoms” from the drug or the virus.

Predictably, CNN gave air time to Trump’s enemies to tell lies:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to President Trump as “morbidly obese” during an appearance Monday night on CNN and said he shouldn’t be taking hydroxychloroquine to stave off coronavirus.
Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, made the remark in an appearance on “Anderson Cooper 360” during which she was asked about Mr. Trump’s taking the drug, which he’d revealed earlier in the day.
She said taking that drug was not a good idea for the president because of his “age group and in his, shall we say, weight group,” which she described as “morbidly obese.”
The 80-year-old speaker, who is second in the presidential succession line behind Vice President Mike Pence, said she would “rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists.”
To be considered “morbidly obese,” a technical term, a person would have to be 100 pounds over his ideal body weight and have a BMI of 40 or more, or 35 or more if he also has obesity-related health conditions, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
Those conditions would not seem to apply to Mr. Trump.
His body-mass index, according to a 2019 medical examination, is 30.4, which is considered “obese,” but not morbidly so.
At 6-foot-3, his 243-pound weight isn’t close to 100 pounds too much, and the same physical put him in “very good health overall” with a resting pulse rate of 70 and a blood pressure reading of 118/80 — all three figures well within normal range.

Ask around and see how many people over 60 are in such excellent health as President Trump. If he’s not as lean as a marathon runner, perhaps it’s because he has been too busy to go jogging lately. As to the Speaker’s assertion that hydroxychloroquine has “not been approved by scientists,” (a) the drug has been commonly prescribed for more than 70 years, and (b) many health-care workers, including nurses and doctors, are doing exactly what Trump is doing, using the hydroxy/zinc combination as preventative medicine during the pandemic. Also, as many people pointed out, if Trump is “morbidly obese,” what is Stacey Abrams?




 

Category: Donald Trump, Health Care, New Jersey

In The Mailbox: 05.18.20

Posted on | May 19, 2020 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Cops Wouldn’t Lie To Get A Warrant…Would They?
EBL: Phyllis George & Fred Willard, RIP
Twitchy: Jill Filipovic Attempts To Rewrite #MeToo History, Gets It All Wrong
Louder With Crowder: Mike Rowe – COVID-19 Has Exposed How Expensive & Unnecessary College Is

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Our Mothers Are Only Worried That People May Die, also, Podcast #143 – The Stupidity Episode
American Conservative: Time To Break Up The FBI?
American Greatness: John Brennan & The Plot To Subvert An American Election, also, Morning Greatness – No Spike In Coronavirus Cases For States Ending Lockdowns
American Power: Reopening Las Vegas, also, Fearmonger Fauci
American Thinker: Unmasking The Illegalities Of The Obama Administration, also, Flynn Judge Ignores SCOTUS & The Constitution
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Pope John Paul II Was Born 100 Years Ago Today
BattleSwarm: Joe Rogan On Biden And Leftist Hate For Liberals, also, BidenWatch For May 18
Cafe Hayek: “Socialize Medical Care”? also, The Value Of The Price System Is Priceless
Camp of the Saints: US Soft Fascist Hardening – On The Permanent Emergency State
CDR Salamander: Post-COVID-19 Red China With Dean Cheng On Midrats, also, Why Listen To Jim Webb?
Da Tech Guy: My Wuhan Virus Regimen, also, Masks Dehumanize Us
Don Surber: No, Everyone In Wisconsin Will Not Die Of Coronavirus, also, Bring On The Next Hoax, Democrats
The Geller Report: Ramadan In India – Muslims Poison Sole Water Supply For Karnataka State, also, NYC Mayor De Blasio Floats Fences To Keep New Yorkers Off Beaches
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Unmasked Intelligence
Hollywood In Toto: Surrogates Has Never Been More Relevant, also, What My Hero Academia Learned That Birds Of Prey Forgot
JustOneMinute: Sunday Guest Post
Legal Insurrection: Surprise! Mask-Shamers In WH Press Corps Turn Out To Be Hypocrites, also, Red China Openly Backing Democrats In November
The PanAm Post: Militarized Mexico Starting To Look Like Venezuela, also, Sinaloa Cartel Threatens To “Blow Up” Mexican Newspaper For Criticizing AMLO
Power Line: Obama’s Treasury Department Spied On Trump Associates, also, Rural America Rebels Against The Madness
Shark Tank: Progressive Perelman Fixes Bayonets Against Wasserman-Schultz
Shot In The Dark: Government By Slogan
STUMP: Moneypalooza Monstrosity! Looking At The SALT Cap Provisions
This Ain’t Hell: Holding Russian Collusion Hoaxers Accountable, also, Trans Waiver In The Navy
Victory Girls: Tax For Thee, Not For Me, Says AOC
Volokh Conspiracy: Lawsuit Against Fox News Claims Cable TV Not Protected By The First Amendment
Weasel Zippers: Schumer Whines That Trump Is Picking On Red China Over WuFlu, also, Andrew Cuomo Washes His Hands – “Older People Are Going To Die No Matter What”
Mark Steyn: It Happened Here, also, With A Song In My Heart (But Nowhere Else)

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Category: Linkagery

Trust the Health Experts!

Posted on | May 18, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Last week, I was shocked to hear that Los Angeles was planning to be on coronavirus lockdown until August. Even if that was your plan, why would you announce more than two months of onerous restrictions so far in advance? Just extend it by two weeks now, see what happens and, if the number of new cases doesn’t meet your target, keep adding two-week extensions until you’re satisfied with the numbers. But no — August!

Trying to process this information was difficult, and then yesterday, Instapundit informed me that the person in charge of coronavirus policy Los Angeles is a former high-school principal who got a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from Brandeis. “Doctor Ferrer” is not a medical doctor, and has no real scientific expertise. She got her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a major in “Community Studies.” A few years ago, when she served as executive director of Boston’s Public Health Commission, “Doctor Ferrer” was featured in a CBS News program as an expert in — wait for it — teen dating violence.

Is she really the person you want running your epidemiology operations?

This business of credentialed “experts” claiming authority to run our lives has become intolerable, and the promotion of such phony expertise has become a disgrace to the profession of journalism:

Everyone in the media was horrified last month when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced he would begin reopening the state’s economy. An April 21 headline in The Week denounced Kemp’s reckless “experiment,” and on April 22, MSNBC bemoaned the Republican governor’s “dangerous gamble.” Dana Milbank of the Washington Post declared: “Public health experts fear coronavirus will burn through Georgia like nothing has since William Tecumseh Sherman.” The Atlantic’s Amanda Mull went so far as to call Kemp’s move an “experiment in human sacrifice.” Yet perhaps the most memorable media condemnation of Kemp was from Ron Fournier, former Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, who proclaimed on Twitter: “Mark this day. Because two and three weeks from now, the Georgia death toll is blood on his hands. And as Georgians move around the country, they’ll spread more death and economic destruction.”
Well, everyone did mark the day and, after Fournier’s “two or three weeks” elapsed, they called attention to how badly wrong his prediction had been. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

Category: American Spectator, California, Georgia, Health Care
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