The Other McCain

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

Iran Shot Down Plane Full of Canadians

Posted on | January 10, 2020 | 1 Comment

After attacking U.S. forces in Iraq Tuesday night, it appears, Iran was on such high alert they shot down a plane full of Canadians by mistake:

The Ukrainian flight that crashed just outside the Iranian capital of Tehran was struck by an anti-aircraft missile system, a Pentagon official, a senior U.S. intelligence official and an Iraqi intelligence official told Newsweek. None of the officials was authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737–800 en route from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airpot to Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport, stopped transmitting data Tuesday just minutes after takeoff and not long after Iran launched missiles at military bases housing U.S. and allied forces in neighboring Iraq. The aircraft is believed to have been struck by a Russia-built Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile system, known to NATO as Gauntlet, the three officials told Newsweek.
One Pentagon and one U.S. senior intelligence official told Newsweek that the Pentagon’s assessment is that the incident was accidental. Iran’s anti-aircraft systems were likely active following the country’s missile attack, which came in response to the U.S. killing last week of Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, sources said.

Question: Why were so many Canadians on that flight out of Tehran?

Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 crashed shortly after taking off from the Iranian capital Tehran on Wednesday, killing all 176 passengers and crew members on board.
The plane was bound for Kiev and many on board had a connecting flight to Toronto, Canada’s largest city and a transit hub.
Of those passengers, 63 were Canadians citizens. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that, all told, 138 people on that flight were en route to Canada. . . .
Canada is home to a large Iranian diaspora, with some 210,000 citizens of Iranian descent, according to the latest federal census.
The country is also a popular destination for Iranian graduate and postdoxtoral students to study and conduct research abroad, which is why many students were on the flight, returning to university following the winter break.
There is also no direct flight between Canada and Iran, and the Ukraine International Airlines flight from Tehran to Kiev and then to Toronto is popular because it is one of the most affordable options for the journey.

The media, trying to find some way to blame this on Trump, has seized upon the word “crossfire” as the mechanism of blame-shifting.



 

Category: Canada, Iran

Ayatollahs and Democrats

Posted on | January 9, 2020 | Comments Off on Ayatollahs and Democrats

The “We Hate America” Party strikes again:

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a War Powers Resolution supposedly directing President Donald Trump to stop any hostilities against Iran. This resolution — which Republicans have rightly condemned as “toothless” — does not have any binding authority and merely tells Trump the House disapproves of his strike to kill Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani.
The House approved the resolution, 224-194, with almost no Republican support, the Associated Press reported.
“The killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, as well as Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Iraqi bases, risks significant escalation in hostilities between the United States and Iran,” the resolution states. . . .
After the strike killed Soleimani, the Pentagon reported that intelligence linked the Quds Force leader to the siege on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and with a forthcoming attack on U.S. troops in the region. . . .
This piece of virtue-signaling seems particularly ill fated after Trump’s statement calling for deescalation on Wednesday.
Democrats are trying to condemn as a violation of Congress’s war powers a strike that killed a man responsible for much terrorism and the deaths of hundreds of U.S. troops in the region and that did not result in a war.

Nancy Pelosi is objectively pro-terrorism.



 

Category: Democrats

The Babylon Bee Is The Future Of Comedy, Not Dave Chappelle

Posted on | January 9, 2020 | Comments Off on The Babylon Bee Is The Future Of Comedy, Not Dave Chappelle

by Smitty

Stipulate that humans have dimensions of body, mind, and soul.

Nobody dissents on the first; most concur on the first two; all non-fools accept the trifecta.

Sandra Fluke explains
That humor, struck down, becomes
Far more powerful

If life can be said to have an “operating system”, then humor is the test cases that pretty much everybody writes. Except feminists.
It’s just that comedians have figured out how to get paid for humor. A career in humor, I’d venture, is ridiculously hard to pull off.

Thus, I’d fall well well short of disagreeing with a new holiday: “Dave Chappelle Crushes It on the First Amendment and Ends With a Big Announcement on ‘Dave Chappelle Day.’ Is This Comedy’s Great Hope?”

But the thing with Chappelle and most secular humor is that his material is 80% body, 20% mind, and that’s it. It’s one thing for our comedy test cases to probe reality and crash it all over the place.

But the third dimension, the soul, is where the Bee shines. A little hint of spiritual joy, and not just carnal pleasure and mental cleverness, gets at the real power of humor to renew the soul. To say “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” and shake that noise right off.

Chappelle and Gervais can match the secular world crude-for-crude, but they are ultimately of that world. As we continue to make America Great Again, the sustained laughter and true, enduring improvement shall have come from the Bee not just putting pin to gasbags in high places, but also having shown taste in the poking.

The trick is to mock the behavior, while leaving the subject intact. Hopefully, the butt of the joke decides to slim down, and not be such a honking big target of derision in the future.

Category: Uncategorized

The Biden Legacy

Posted on | January 9, 2020 | Comments Off on The Biden Legacy

 

When he wasn’t working tirelessly for the Ukrainian natural gas industry, Joe Biden’s son kept busy with cocaine and strippers:

Hunter Biden, the son of presidential candidate Joe Biden, is the “biological and legal father” of a child he fathered with an ex-stripper, an Arkansas judge ruled Tuesday, contradicting the younger Biden’s previous denials that he had any role in the pregnancy.
In an order establishing paternity, Independence County, Ark., Circuit Judge Holly Meyer noted that the results of DNA tests indicated Biden was the father “with near scientific certainty,” and instructed the Arkansas Department of Health to issue a birth certificate listing Biden as the father of 29-year-old Lunden Alexis Roberts‘ child.
Roberts, who The New York Post reported was a stripper at a Washington, D.C., club that Biden patronized, received “primary physical and legal custody” of the child. In previous filings, Roberts told the court that Hunter Biden “had no involvement in the child’s life since the child’s birth, never interacted with the child, never parented the child,” and “could not identify the child out of a photo lineup.”

Never name your daughter “Alexis.” Or “Crystal.” There are certain names that almost 100% guarantee a girl will end up as a stripper. But let’s get a little more background on Hunter’s baby mama:

The woman suing Hunter Biden for paternity was a stripper at a Washington, DC, club he frequented around the time he was dating his brother’s widow, sources told The Post.
Biden was repeatedly seen at the Mpire Club in the capital’s historic Dupont Circle neighborhood — where Lunden Alexis Roberts, the mother of his alleged love child, worked under the stage name “Dallas,” the sources said. . . .
Roberts worked there around the time she got pregnant — and when Hunter broke up with former sister-in-law Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother, the late Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, sources said. . . .

(You may have forgotten that Hunter banged his dead brother’s widow, but I think it’s important to remind you. The Iowa caucus is Feb. 3.)

The Mpire Club is about three blocks north of another DC strip joint, Archibald’s Gentlemen’s Club, where The Post previously revealed that workers suspected Hunter, who has a history of alcoholism and addiction, of smoking crack in a VIP room in late 2018.

(Smoking crack in a strip club — classy.)

In a New Yorker profile published on July 1, Hunter claimed he hadn’t been to a strip club in years before Page Six exclusively revealed his relationship with Hallie and details of a divorce filing against him by then-wife Kathleen Biden.
After the expose was published on March 1, 2017, Hunter said, “I went directly to a strip club. I said, ‘F–k them,’” according to the New Yorker.
That incident at Archibald’s — which came after Hunter’s most-recent admitted drug use, a crack binge during the fall of 2016 — occurred while he sat on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas-company Burisma. . . .
Robert’s former co-workers had only good things to say about the single mom, who’s a native of rural Batesville, Arkansas.
“She was really sweet,” the bartender said. . . .
Roberts graduated from Arkansas State University in 2014 and enrolled at George Washington University in DC to pursue a certificate program in Forensic Investigation.
She attended classes during the summer and fall semesters of 2015 but did not graduate, a university spokesman said.
Her mom, Kimberly Joan Roberts, was apparently unaware that her daughter had dropped out. On March 5, 2017, the mom told a friend on Facebook that her daughter “is in DC getting her masters in FBI CSI working for the FBI and CSI also.”

Getting her master’s and working for the FBI? No, ma’am, she’s shaking her money-maker naked on stage and getting knocked up by a crackhead. But there are worse crackheads in D.C. she could have gotten knocked up by, so the folks back in Batesville (population 10,268) might agree that she has done better than we’d expect of a girl named “Alexis.”



 

Category: Joe Biden, Scandal

Mexicans in Kansas

Posted on | January 9, 2020 | Comments Off on Mexicans in Kansas

 

Seven people killed in two separate crimes. Suspects are in custody:

Suspects in a mass shooting a Kansas City, Kansas, bar, and a recent triple homicide are now charged with capital murder and could face the death penalty, the Wyandotte County district attorney announced Wednesday.
Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree Sr. released the amended charges against three men in two separate cases during a news conference.
Dupree first addressed the mass shooting that killed four people and wounded five others Oct. 6 at the Tequila KC bar near 10th Street and Central Avenue.
Two men, Hugo Villanueva-Morales, 30, of Kansas City, Kansas, and Javier Alatorre, 24, of Kansas City, were initially charged with four counts of first-degree murder. The victims who died in the shooting were Everardo Meza, 29, Alfredo Calderon Jr, 29, Francisco Garcia Anaya, 34, and Martin Rodriguez-Gonzalez, 58.

(Not one gringo killed in this bar, not even by a stray shot?)

Alatorre was arrested quickly after the shooting. Villanueva-Morales fled to Mexico, where he was arrested and was recently brought back to the metro area to face charges. Both remain in the county jail.
Dupree said Wednesday that Villanueva-Moreales and Alatorre are now each charged with capital murder for the four deaths. . . .
The district attorney’s office also announced amended charges against Ismael Caballero in the deaths of a Kansas City, Kansas, mother and her two children. Their bodies were found in a burning home at 29 N. Mill St. on Dec. 30. Kansas City, Kansas, police were investigating the deaths as homicides but have not said how the three victims died.
Caballero, 31, is charged in district court with capital murder for the deaths of the two children, Amerikha Rodriguez, 14, and Jean Carlo Rodriguez, 10, and is charged with second-degree murder for the death of their 31-year-old mother, Yazmin Rodriguez-Santilla.

Is should not be necessary to explain the point here, but I will: Some places in the United States have a long history of Latino settlement, with communities stretching back for generations, even centuries. One is not surprised by the large Mexican-American populations in California, Arizona or Texas, and we’re accustomed to Cubans in Miami, Puerto Ricans in New York, etc. However, on does not think of Kansas City this way, so when the headlines inform us that three guys named Villanueva-Morales, Alatorre and Caballero are charged with killing a combined total of seven people named Meza, Calderon, Anaya, Rodriguez-Gonzalez, Rodriguez and Rodriguez-Santilla in Wyandotte County, Kansas — well, what the heck is going on here? It appears, for example, that two gunmen can open fire in a Kansas City bar without risk that any of their bullets will hit someone who was actually born in America.

As evidence that our immigration problem is absolutely out of control, this situation in Kansas City is rather conclusive, but notice that this criminal mayhem in Kansas is just “local news.” If some deranged “alt-right” white guy had shot four Mexicans in Kansas City, CNN would be providing around-the-clock updates, but because it’s Mexicans killing Mexicans, nobody at the networks seems to care.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)



 

Category: Crime, Immigration, Mexico, Missouri

The Cult of Climate ‘Science’

Posted on | January 8, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Ugly facts can never disprove their beautiful theory:

The signs at Glacier National Park warning that its signature glaciers would be gone by 2020 are being changed.
The signs in the Montana park were added more than a decade ago to reflect climate change forecasts at the time by the US Geological Survey, park spokeswoman Gina Kurzmen told CNN.
In 2017, the park was told by the agency that the complete melting off of the glaciers was no longer expected to take place so quickly due to changes in the forecast model, Kurzmen said. But tight maintenance budgets made it impossible for the park to immediately change the signs.
The most prominent placards, at St. Mary’s Visitor Center, were changed last year. Kurzmen says that park is still waiting for budget authorization to update signs at two other locations.
But the glacier warning isn’t being removed entirely, she told CNN. Instead, the new signs will say: “When they will completely disappear depends on how and when we act. One thing is consistent: the glaciers in the park are shrinking.”

Notice the slight hedge — “computer models indicate” — in the wording of the now-replaced sign. This kind of language is a deliberately deceptive propaganda tactic. To say “X indicates Y” is different than saying “X predicts Y” or “X proves Y,” but the average person is not likely to notice the difference, especially when he is incessantly bombarded with similar messages from every direction (repetition is a basic propaganda technique). Notice also how the source of this assertion is described: “Computer models indicate,” as if some impersonal machine had produced this prediction. These “models” must be objective, because machines can’t be biased, right? And yet these models were actually developed by human beings like Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann, who has made a habit of suing his critics in an effort to silence them.

“Computer models indicate” is one of those phrases like “according to scientists” which can be made to function as a form of argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate), a fallacy that anyone who has taken an introductory course in logic should recognize. Climate-change cultists are attempting to impress people with the authority of scientific “experts” and their supposedly infallible computer models.

Effective propaganda can completely overwhelm common-sense skepticism, causing people to believe the most wildly implausible claims. One obvious example is the “ancient astronauts” myth, most famously promoted by Eric von Däniken in his 1969 bestseller Chariots of the Gods. Supposedly, various ancient archaeological sites — the Egyptian pyramids, etc. — are so sophisticated in design that they could not possibly have been constructed by mere human beings using pre-modern technology; ergo, visitors from outer space must have been responsible. The History Channel series Ancient Aliens has become a running joke by using deceptive language, e.g., “Some scientists believe . . .”

The idea of space creatures arriving via UFOs to build Pyramids near the Nile is so ludicrous that every intelligent viewer laughs at the suggestion and yet there is an audience for Ancient Aliens. This suggests that our education system has failed so disastrously that many people can’t see through the methods by which the most absurd assertions are made to seem possible, as the narrator soberly intones: “We cannot be certain that Leonardo da Vinci was visited aliens, but . . .”

The flat assertion that the Montana glaciers would melt by 2020 was offered with scientific certainty, thus to make it seem “smart” to agree with the claims of the climate-change movement. We see a similar tactic used by transgender activists, who use pseudo-scientific jargon phrases and other propaganda tactics to advance their agenda. To agree with them is the sophisticated, enlightened and progressive thing to do, their rhetoric suggests, and next thing you know, people are allowing convicted sex offenders to perform for children at public libraries.

Cult mentalities can only flourish, of course, by excluding dissent. A major reason Jim Jones took his Peoples Temple to the Guyana jungle was to isolate them from opposing viewpoints; similarly David Koresh isolated his followers in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. The success of the climate-change cult can be attributed largely to our government-funded education system, which is controlled by left-wing Democrats to such an extent that middle-school students are subjected to propaganda videos like Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. Parents who object to this indoctrination will find themselves accused of being “anti-science,” in the same way they’re accused of “hate” for objecting to transgender propaganda in schools. Such accusations are a way of protecting the Left’s cult belief system (whether about “climate change” or “gender” or anything else) from dissent.

It was apparently a 2009 National Geographic article that first promoted the claim that the Montana glaciers would disappear by 2020:

Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist, warns that glaciers may be melting at an even faster rate than originally predicted, according to National Geographic. Fagre has been conducting research in the national park since the early 1980s.
In 2003, USGS garnered headlines by projecting a disappearance date of 2030 for the Montana glaciers. That was based on studies using 1992 temperature predictions from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Fagre’s current research reveals that temperatures in Glacier National Park have risen higher than was predicted in 1992. The Montana glaciers are now expected to be gone by 2020. And that will dramatically impact the park’s rare and sensitive plants and animals.

Do you see how phrases like “according to National Geographic” and “Fagre’s current research” function as arguments from authority here? The prestige of an important magazine and the “expert” qualifications of Fagre — “a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist . . . conducting research . . . since the early 1980s” — were invoked to suggest that no intelligent person could possibly disagree with this alarming prediction. 

You’re anti-science if you don’t accept the word of climate-change “experts,” and of course, we know that aliens built those Pyramids.



 

Category: Global Warming, Montana, Science

Democrats: Pro-Iran or Anti-American?

Posted on | January 8, 2020 | Comments Off on Democrats: Pro-Iran or Anti-American?

 

Nancy Pelosi wants a vote to express her love of America’s enemies:

The House will vote on a resolution limiting President Trump’s military actions toward Iran following his decision to launch a drone strike that killed a top Iranian commander, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday.
Pelosi told Democratic members in a letter that the House will introduce a vote on a “War Powers Resolution” mandating that the administration’s military hostilities with regard to Iran would cease within 30 days if no further congressional action is taken. . . .
Pelosi in the new letter called the administration’s decision a “provocative and disproportionate military airstrike” that she said endangered U.S. service members and diplomats.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer has some thoughts:

As someone who went toe-to-toe with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Afghanistan, I can assure you that Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani got exactly what he deserved when he perished in a U.S. drone strike. What he certainly doesn’t deserve is praise from Democrat lawmakers who would rather mourn a war criminal than credit President Trump for making the world safer.
As the leader of the IRGC’s Quds Force, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, Soleimani was among America’s most vociferous and aggressive foes. He was personally responsible for the deaths of thousands, including the killing and maiming of hundreds of American soldiers. . . .
As I saw firsthand, the IRGC has long promoted terrorist tactics against the United States, sowing chaos and destruction across the Middle East. My own interrogation of an IRGC terror enabler in 2003 revealed that the Iranian government was funding terrorist operations against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. These operations were being directed by Soleimani himself, yet previous administrations refused to act on intelligence that would have allowed us to take him out far sooner. . . .
This man was a terrorist in charge of an IRGC element that had been declared a terrorist organization. He was traveling, in violation of U.N. sanctions, to Iraq, with the apparent intent of inflicting harm on U.S. service members in the region. He was in a combat zone as a combatant in uniform — the legal basis to target him could not have been clearer, and the same goes for the moral justification.
Make no mistake, the targeted killing of Soleimani was not only justified but long overdue. Washington should have taken steps to eliminate this terrorist a long time ago.
The Democrats are politicizing this issue the way they’ve politicized every other issue since President Trump took office. They don’t even seem to care that they have to take the side of America’s enemies in order to criticize Donald Trump.

Let me add this: America’s enemies understand the value of their anti-American allies in the Democratic Party, whose love of “peace” makes it easier for terrorists to kill Americans and our allies. We know, for example, that John Kerry has been acting as an adviser to the Iranian regime, and met with Iranian diplomats in Paris in May 2018. If anyone is really serious about investigating foreign interference in U.S. elections, perhaps they should ask questions about why Iran decided to send a mob of “protesters” to attack the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.



 

Category: Aghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Nancy Pelosi

‘We’re Going to War, Bro’

Posted on | January 8, 2020 | Comments Off on ‘We’re Going to War, Bro’

 

If you know anything at all about the 82nd Airborne, you know that it’s an all-volunteer unit — an elite combat force. You don’t get there unless you want to fight America’s enemies, and so the troops view their deployment to the Middle East as an opportunity:

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (Reuters) — For many of the soldiers, it would be their first mission. They packed up ammunition and rifles, placed last-minute calls to loved ones, then turned in their cellphones. Some gave blood.
The 600 mostly young soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were headed for the Middle East, part of a group of some 3,500 U.S. paratroopers ordered to the region. Kuwait is the first stop for many. Their final destinations are classified.
“We’re going to war, bro,” one cheered, holding two thumbs up and sporting a grin under close-shorn red hair. . . .
The 82nd’s commander, U.S. Army Major General James Mingus, waded through the sea of camouflage-uniformed men and women as they prepared to leave the base near Fayetteville on Sunday. He shook hands with the troops, wishing them luck.
One soldier from Ashboro, Virginia, said he wasn’t surprised when the order came.
“I was just watching the news, seeing how things were going over there,” said the 27-year-old, one of several soldiers Reuters was allowed to interview on condition they not be named. “Then I got a text message from my sergeant saying ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ And that was it.” . . .
While members of the unit — considered the most mobile in the U.S. Army — are used to quick deployments, this was different, said Lieutenant Colonel Mike Burns, an Army spokesman.
“The guys are excited to go, but none of us know how long they’ll be gone,” Burns said. “That’s the toughest part.”
Soldiers were ordered not to bring cellphones, portable video games or any other devices that could be used to communicate with friends and family back home, out of concern that details of their movements could leak out.
“We’re an infantry brigade,” Burns said. “Our primary mission is ground fighting. This is as real as it gets.”

My son used to be in that brigade and he’s kind of bummed out that he’s missing this deployment. On his way back to Georgia after Christmas, he stopped by Fort Bragg to visit with his old platoon. He’s hoping that there’s no war and everybody gets back home safely. On the other hand, if any of Iran’s Shi’ite militia want to take on the best damned combat brigade in the whole world? Trust me, they’re ready, bro.



 

Category: Iran, Iraq, Military
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