The Other McCain

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

Whatever Happened to … ?

Posted on | November 8, 2020 | Comments Off on Whatever Happened to … ?

. . . Jonah Goldberg, for example.

Most days now, I don’t even realize he exists, unless Ace goes off on him, and then I’m like, “Oh, he’s still around?”

One of the things we have gained from the Trump era is the knowledge that some people were never really on our side. They were conservatism’s fair-weather friends, and when the going got tough, they jumped over to the other side. Because “principles”! Well, damn you, sir, and damn your “principles,” whatever they may be. We don’t really care.

Some of the #NeverTrump crowd were people who never mattered anyway. Who had ever heard of the “expert” Tom Nichols before 2016? He was an obscurity before Trump came along, and being anti-Trump gave him a certain amount of relevance for a while. If we are now going to be compelled to endure four years of Biden-Harris, we can at least comfort ourselves with the knowledge that Tom Nichols will henceforth cease to be relevant, not that he was ever actually relevant. He was pseudo-relevant for a while, but now? Sayonara, Tom.

Our gain from this is immeasurable, and their loss is complete.

If the Republican Establishment is under the illusion that they can go back to business as usual, they are due for a disillusionment.

The 71 million Americans who voted to re-elect President Trump are not all hard-core America First populists. Most of them are just regular Republicans, the same people who pulled the lever for Mitt Romney in 2012, and will vote for whoever the GOP nominates in 2024.

What will make a difference, however, is that the #NeverTrump crowd has discredited themselves. They have permanently forfeited their influence with the Republican grassroots. Three years from now, when the GOP primary field is taking shape, no Republican voter is going to be seeking advice from the likes of Rick Wilson or Jennifer Rubin.

By the way — I mention this because it’s important — there were some conservatives who weren’t all-in for Trump in 2016 who nevertheless later realized that the #NeverTrump movement was over, and they came around quickly, doing yeoman’s work in the Russian “collusion” struggle, the Brett Kavanaugh nomination fight, and so on down the line. There shall be no penalty to those people. We absolve them of them of their previous errors, whereas those who stayed on the #NeverTrump bus all the way to 2020 have forever discredited themselves.

As my co-blogger Smitty pointed out yesterday, Trump will not just go away quietly next January, if Biden is inaugurated. Who do you think is going to be the featured speaker at CPAC next year? Maybe you should ask Matt Schlapp that question. I think I can guess the answer.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is all about “archiving these Trump sycophants” as proof of their “complicity,” as if Democrats have plans to punish dissenters, but we’re not paranoid, are we?




 

 

Category: Election

FMJRA 2.0: Midnite Snack

Posted on | November 8, 2020 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Midnite Snack

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Apologies for the lack of linkagery yesterday (and the extreme lateness of this post) but after three weeks processing mail-in ballots for the Nye County Election Board, I was a tired, cranky mess and took the day off. Regular linkagery will resume next week despite an expedition to Las Vegas for medical tests and the usual Veterans’ Day pillaging of restaurants. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Rule 5 Sunday: Honor Blackman
Animal Magnetism
Bacon Time
A View From The Beach
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
Proof Positive
EBL

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled
Dark Brightness
Z Patriot
DC Daily Journal
Swamp Hermit
Power Line
EBL

‘Bond. James Bond.’
The Pirate’s Cove
EBL

Damn It, Iowa — No Hope Allowed!
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Albedo 0.39
A View From The Beach
EBL

Election Eve Prediction Time
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.02.20 (Election Eve Doomed Beyond All Hope Of Redemption Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

TRUMP WINS! TRUMP WINS!
A View From The Beach
EBL

Make Birthdays Great Again
EBL

Cop Shoots White Guy Named ‘Kevin’
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.04.20 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.04.20 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Sheriff Bob Wins Re-Election
EBL

Post-Election Hangover Syndrome
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.05.20
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Georgia on My Mind
EBL

Rapper Killed by ‘Systemic Racism’ and Semiautomatic Pistol Fire, But Mainly …
EBL

Woman Dies of Patriarchal Oppression and Police Gunfire, But Mainly …
EBL

Poised on the Brink of the Abyss
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending November 6:

  1.  EBL (19)
  2.  A View From The Beach (10)
  3.  Proof Positive (5)

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Category: FMJRA Award

Ol’ Pierre Delecto Is Consistent

Posted on | November 7, 2020 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

Category: Uncategorized

Poised on the Brink of the Abyss

Posted on | November 7, 2020 | 3 Comments

If you have not yet subscribed to The American Spectator, I’ll urge you to do so now, so that you’ll get our upcoming print edition in which I spend more than 3,000 words contemplating the prospects of another civil war in America. Permit me to say what should not need to be said, namely that I am against civil war. This seems so obvious that I didn’t bother saying so explicitly in my first draft, which was an omission I’ve corrected in my first revision. (Oh, these editors and their quibbles!)

Authorial intention is a subject on which I could perhaps deliver a lecture. My friend Jeff Goldstein made “intentionalism” the subject of a running series of blog posts back in the day when controversy arose over Rush Limbaugh’s comment that his hope for the Obama administration was that it would fail. Why that should be controversial, I don’t know; what’s the point of politics, if you endorse the opponent’s agenda? But liberals are not rational or else they wouldn’t be liberals, and so there was a storm of indignation — including from some Republicans — when Rush said bluntly of Obama, “I hope he fails.” But I digress . . .

You should subscribe to The American Spectator, as I say, not only because you get wonderful goodies for just $69.99 a year — less than $6 a month! — but also so you can have the exquisite pleasure of owning a copy of our next issue with more than 3,000 words of me ruminating in print about the chances of another civil war in America.

What inspired this, mainly, was Tim Pool on YouTube. While I am not generally a fan of political video, much preferring the written word as a means of communication, Tim is an exception. His audience is larger than most daytime shows on CNN, and it’s easy to see why. The guy is extremely smart and has a knack for finding the important inflection points amid the daily headline noise. For months now, Tim has been talking to his audience about the potential of civil war, even while acknowledging that most people will think he’s crazy for bringing up the topic. Back during the late 1990s, I recall how some people saw America drifting toward a conflict like the one that devastated the former Yugoslavia. The 1992 Los Angeles riots, the Branch Davidian showdown at Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing — it was a scary time.

Back then, at various events, warnings about civil war were being issued by guys who knew what they were talking about — grizzled veterans of the various post-colonial struggles in Third World places like Algeria, Vietnam and what used to be called Rhodesia. The Cold War era had been an age of guerrilla warfare in lots of “hot spots” around the globe, and there was a certain authority behind the pronouncements of danger when they came from such sources as a scarred Afrikaner veteran who had fought Castro’s troops in Angola. We have had a bit too much peace lately, which is why talk of civil war now sounds like lunacy, but we can’t afford to take these things lightly. One of the strange things about such historical disasters is how, in retrospect, the allegedly intolerable state of affairs that preceded the outbreak of war was mild in comparison to what happened once the shooting started. Go back to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 and ask yourself what was so wrong in Europe as to necessitate four years of carnage and everything that followed in the aftermath of World War I.

Ever heard of the Pottawatomie massacre? Five people were murdered in that 1856 incident, part of the struggle over “Bleeding Kansas” that shocked Americans at the time. Over a period of about three months after that massacre, about 30 more people were killed in Kansas, and this outbreak of guerrilla warfare on the frontier was viewed at the time as a grievous tragedy. Yet in the war that followed, the death of a few dozen men was a minor detail of outpost skirmishes. Most Americans today know absolutely nothing about, for example, the Battle of South Mountain in September 1862, in which 750 men were killed and a little more than 3,000 wounded. Now think of some of the police shootings that have sparked Black Lives Matter protests, and compare those cases to the wholesale death that might result if civil war were to break out.

It’s simply unthinkable, yet there is a danger in not thinking about it. The ordinary peaceful means of government — debates and elections, legislation and lawsuits, regulation and taxation — might induce emotional stress when hyped up by cable-TV news anchors, or the incessant chatter on Twitter, but this is a minor annoyance in comparison to the alternative of armed conflict. Contemplating this subject led me to recall what happened in that Bloody Cornfield. In something less than three hours, about 8,000 men were killed or wounded there, and the fighting was so intense it seems miraculous anyone could have survived it. Yet my great-grandfather somehow made it out alive, and so here I am, urging you to subscribe to The American Spectator.




 

 

Category: American Spectator

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

Posted on | November 7, 2020 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

First and foremost: #StopTheSteal. We do not deserve to have the Left piss down our back and tell us it’s raining.

In the alternative case, we’re in better shape than 2008. The leadership vacuum that crippled the Tea Parties is filled by Trump.

A fully weaponized, free range Trump is going to destroy the Left. Watch him:

  1. barnstorm the country for two years
  2. rally Tea Parties and local Republican Parties to staff the elections with plenty of observers
  3. run for the House in his Florida district
  4. become Speaker of the House
  5. with a veto-override majority
  6. and then proceed to un-jack our election laws

#Winning

UPDATE: Welcome, Powerline readers! Contrary to what Mr. Hayward said, however, this post was written by co-blogger Smitty.

Category: Uncategorized

Woman Dies of Patriarchal Oppression and Police Gunfire, But Mainly …

Posted on | November 7, 2020 | Comments Off on Woman Dies of Patriarchal Oppression and Police Gunfire, But Mainly …

. . . yeah, it was the gunfire that killed her. Makell Meyerin, 31, was armed with a Beretta .45-caliber carbine when she was shot dead by police in Gurnee, Illinois, about 40 miles north of Chicago, in May 2018. The officers were acting within their authority:

Two Gurnee police officers “acted reasonably and appropriately” in a May 23 confrontation on Route 41 that ended with the officers shooting a woman armed with a military-style rifle, according to a statement released late Friday by Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Nerheim.
Gurnee Police Department Sgt. Jon Ward and Officer Benjamin Bozer “believed that their lives, the lives of their fellow officers, and the lives of the citizens present in the area were in danger of imminent death or great bodily harm” during a standoff with 31-year-old Makell Meyerin of Antioch, Nerheim said in the statement.
According to Nerheim, the results of an investigation by the Lake County Major Crime Task Force and reviewed by his office found that Meyerin “ignored repeated requests from the police to remain calm and to drop her gun” and “multiple officers heard her ‘rack’ her gun in order to prepare it for firing” before she leveled the rifle toward the officers.
“It was only then that they fired their guns to eliminate this threat. It should also be noted that once the threat ceased, they immediately stopped firing their weapons and took steps to aid Ms. Meyerin,” Nerheim wrote. “Her gun, a Beretta Cx5 Storm tactical carbine rifle, had one live shell in the chamber. The magazine contained (five) live rounds. The selector switch was in the ‘fire’ position.”
The report added that Meyerin was transported to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, where she was pronounced dead at 2:33 p.m., about an hour after Gurnee officers responded to a call about a suspicious car near Chittenden Park in a residential area on the village’s east side.

You can watch the police bodycam video of the incident:

 

What the video doesn’t explain is what happened before police were called to the “suspicious” vehicle, where Meyerin and her boyfriend were both passed out at a stop sign. They had been on a drug binge for weeks, and earlier that day were involved in another incident:

The first crime scene started in Antioch. Early Wednesday morning, investigators say they got reports of suspicious vehicle with a male driver and female passenger.
Covelli said, “The information they had is somebody was going door-to-door soliciting asking for money.”
When Antioch officers tried to conduct a traffic stop, the male driver refused and instead rammed the police squad car and sped away. But that’s not all.
“A witness reported that there were shots fired from the offending vehicle,” Covelli said.
[T]he car was later found at a residence in unincorporated Antioch where an eight-hour standoff took place before a man and woman were taken in for questioning.
Covelli said the man was not involved, but owned the car used in the incident.
The woman was the third passenger in the car.
As for the other two?
“They were able to flee the unincorporated Antioch residence prior to police officers arriving,” Covelli said. “The two of them subsequently entered a Toyota Prius. The Prius is owned by a relative of the male.” . . .
That white Prius was later spotted Wednesday afternoon in Gurnee where officers were called to respond to two unconscious people inside the car. Those two people have been identified as Meyerin and Jordan J. Huff, who rammed the police car earlier in the day.
Covelli said the Prius was stopped at a stop sign near the intersection of Harper and Gould for an extended period of time, forcing drivers to go around.
When paramedics arrived, they attempted to engage with the female driver, but she drove away with the unconscious man inside. She crashed into a Gurnee fire truck and crashed again at Chittenden Park near Route 41.
Meyerin then ran away leaving the male unconscious inside the car.
“He had symptoms very similar to overdose type symptoms,” said Covelli.
Authorities later found Meyerin standing in the southbound lanes of Route 41 waving a long barrel firearm . . .

More information from the report by the State’s Attorney:

Mr Huff stated that on May 23, 2018, he was with Makell Meyerin and another female in Antioch. He stated that Ms. Meyerin “hustled” a male for money. The three of them drove away in a Volkswagen. Moments later, the police attempted to stop their car. Mr. Huff, the driver, would not stop and was able to successfully elude the police. Upon arriving at Mr. Huff’s Antioch residence, the three individuals fled on foot.
According to Mr. Huff, he later met with Ms. Meyerin and went to Mr. Huff’s mother’s home. Huff and Meyerin took Huff’s uncle’s Prius.
Mr. Huff and Ms Meyerin drove to a Waukegan Motel. Mr. Huff and Ms. Meyerin began to ingest a number of different drugs. After taking those drugs, Mr. Huff stated he had no recollection of what occurred after that point.
Mr. Huff did say that he and Ms. Meyerin had been doing drugs for the last few days. He added that Ms. Meyerin had recently been suicidal.
Mr. Huff said that he only saw the long gun after he and Ms. Meyerin had gotten into the Prius.
Linda Meyerin is the mother of Makell Meyerin. Linda stated that she spoke to her daughter Makell by phone on the morning of May 23, 2018. Makell called Linda and stated that “somebody set up Jordan. I’ve gotta help him. I’m gone. I mean I’m dead.” Makell added that Linda would “see her on the news.”
According to Linda, Makell also asked whether the police had shown up looking for her. Makell did not tell Linda any other information. Makell then hung up the phone.
Linda then gave a little more background about Makell. Makell had been a heroin addict since she was 14 years old. A boyfriend had gotten her addicted to the drug. Makell was in and out of jail on a variety of offenses. When she would be arrested she would get clean. More recently, when she would be released from jail, she would re-unite with Jordan Huff and relapse into drug usage.
Makell’s brother Cory also indicated that Makell and Mr. Huff had been on a drug binge for the last several weeks in the Antioch area.

So she was “hustling” for drugs with her boyfriend, eluding police, ramming other vehicles, brandishing firearms — a menace to society.

If she had been black, I’m sure you probably would have seen her on CNN, with her relatives crying on camera about what a wonderful person she was while the civil-rights lawyer demanded justice. Then there would have been a “mostly peaceful protest” with arson and looting.

But she was white, and nobody cares. Just another dead junkie.




 

 

Category: Crime, Illinois

Rapper Killed by ‘Systemic Racism’ and Semiautomatic Pistol Fire, But Mainly …

Posted on | November 6, 2020 | 2 Comments

. . . yeah, it was the pistols that killed him:

A well-known rapper was one of the people killed in a shooting outside an Atlanta hookah lounge early Friday morning.
The shooting happened around 4 a.m. outside of the Monaco Hookah Lounge on Trinity Avenue near Forsyth Street.
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Dayvon Bennett, aka King Von and two others were shot and later died as a result of their injuries.
Investigators said Bennett and a group of men went to the downtown Atlanta location after leaving the Opium Nightclub where two men approached them in the parking lot and an argument began.
Police told FOX 5’s Emilie Ikeda the dispute became physical between two large groups of people. Guns were drawn, and the groups started shooting at each other, despite an APD patrol car parked in their line of sight, according to police.
“One of them was actually in his patrol car with his blue lights on, so visibility was there, but again the incident happened, so we’re hopeful that with the GBI assistance we can get to the bottom of everything,” said Deputy Chief Timothy Peek with Atlanta Police.
Two off-duty uniformed officers were working at the Monaco Hookah Lounge.
One of the off-duty officers along with an on-duty officer who was patrolling the area attempted to intervene, but Peek said the situation “continued to escalate with them being there.”
He confirmed both officers fired at the groups. It has not been determined if the officers struck any of the five people, but Peek said it is highly likely.
According to APD, Bennett was shot during the initial shootout between the two groups prior to police responding and attempting to stop the shooting. Bennett was not located at the scene, but arrived at a hospital shortly after the shooting, via private vehicle.

Here’s a question: Why was Chicago native Dayvon Bennett, a/k/a “King Von” in Atlanta? Because in addition to being a “well-known rapper,” he was a gangster, and between the police and rival gangsters gunning for him, his hometown was too dangerous for him. But of course, this young victim of “systemic racism” was not to blame for the criminal violence that surrounded him his entire life, up until he got shot to death.

Did I say “gangster”? Bennett’s grandfather was the co-founder of Chicago’s Black Gangster Disciples. Bennett was in and out of jail from the time he was a teenager. At 19, he was charged with first-degree murder, but “witnesses failed to testify” and he walked free in 2017. Two years later, Bennett was charged with attempted murder in Atlanta:

The attempted murder case against well-known rapper Lil Durk will be moving forward. That was the ruling of a Fulton County judge Friday.
The rapper, whose given name is Durk Derrick Bank, faces several felony charges in connection to a shooting at The Varsity including attempted murder.
Banks and his co-defendant, King Von, whose given name is Devon Bennett, huddled together in a Fulton County courtroom Friday for a probable cause hearing. Prosecutors said the two men robbed and shot a man outside popular Atlanta drive-in on February 5.
Prosecutors told the judge Alexander Witherspoon was shot outside the restaurant and his Jeep Cherokee and $30,000 in cash were stolen in a robbery. But attorneys for the rappers implied Witherspoon had a gun and their clients were defending themselves. . . .
Atlanta Police Detective Jeffrey Churchill said his department talked with two witnesses on the scene and secured surveillance tape from several Midtown businesses which showed the shooting. . . .
A Chicago police captain flew in for the hearing he told the court both were documented members of the notorious Black Disciples. Both are charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and street gang activities among other charges.

Somehow, despite police having surveillance video of the robbery, Bennett and his gangster accomplice were out on the street where, coincidentally, they ended up in a gunfight outside a club at 4 a.m.

But I’m sure “systemic racism” must be to blame . . .




 

Category: Crime, Georgia

Georgia on My Mind

Posted on | November 6, 2020 | Comments Off on Georgia on My Mind

Last night Wombat and I were texting and I told him I was trying to ignore this development in my native state:

Biden has taken a narrow lead over Trump in Georgia, a state Trump must carry to maintain a pathway to an electoral college win and that no Democrat has carried since 1992, on the strength of absentee ballots.
As of 6 a.m., Biden was leading by 1,096 votes out of nearly 4.9 million cast.
The state’s most populous and Democratic-leaning counties of Fulton, DeKalb and Chatham finished counting absentee ballots on Thursday, helping Biden overcome Trump’s lead.
But the vote-counting is not yet complete. There are 8,899 requested overseas and military ballots that may arrive by the Friday deadline, plus provisional ballots left to count.
As of late Thursday, 14,097 were still outstanding statewide, according to the secretary of state’s office.
The narrow margin makes a recount of the presidential vote increasingly likely in Georgia, according to Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voter information system manager. In Georgia, candidates can request a recount if the margin is 0.5 percent or below, and they must do so within two business days of the statewide certification of results, which is set to take place by Nov. 20.

“Finished counting” = manufactured fraudulent.

The extending of deadlines and the obviously suspicious delays in “counting” are a formula for fraud. The evidence that Atlanta has become to Georgia what Chicago is to Illinois cannot be ignored by Republicans. On Wednesday morning, it appeared that Trump had won the state with a solid margin, yet it was still within the margin of theft, with Democrats in Atlanta (and Savannah) alerted to how many “extra” votes they needed to fabricate in order to steal the state for Biden.

Oh, also, they managed to manufacture enough votes for the Democratic Senate candidate Ossoff to push that into runoff territory. So I’m trying not to watch cable news today. Or this week, really. Just pretend the election is over. Maintain my sanity. “Self care is not selfish.”




 

Category: Election, Georgia
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