The Other McCain

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

The Present Crisis

Posted on | November 26, 2019 | Comments Off on The Present Crisis

 

“The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards. And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence.
“It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”
— Sam Adams, 1771

That warning from one of our nation’s greatest Patriot forefathers is quoted in the final chapter of my good friend Robert Belvedere’s new book, On the Causes and Effects of the Present Crisis in America.

Bob was kind enough to send me not one, but two copies — one for my brother Kirby — and I must say that I am impressed. The Present Crisis is a valuable book in that it looks beyond the day-to-day partisan conflicts that consume so much of our attention, bringing into view the deeper and more fundamental roots of our social disorder. The author writes in a deliberately old-fashioned style, recalling the 18th-century English prose of our Founding Fathers such as Sam Adams. The failure of our education system to teach America’s young people their own history is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that almost no one under 40 today knows anything about Sam Adams except as a popular brand of beer.

It could be argued that no one man was more responsible for inspiring our War of Independence than Sam Adams, whom Winston Churchill (in his History of the English Speaking Peoples) identifies as the foremost of American radicals during the years when our colonial ancestors began to resent the British Crown’s encroachment of their liberties. The case that Adams made (unfortunately one little appreciated by our ignorant youth) is that the rights which Americans were willing to fight and die for were not intellectual abstractions, but rather an inheritance their English forebears had bequeathed to them, rights won “with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood.” It is this “fair Inheritance” which recent generations have voluntarily forfeited in pursuit of theoretical notions of “equality” and “social justice.” But I digress . . .

Bob Belvedere’s book is one that I’m sure our readers will want to buy, perhaps as a gift for a young person who needs to cure their ignorance.




 

Category: Books, History

Authorities: Remains of Aniah Blanchard Found; Two More Suspects Charged

Posted on | November 25, 2019 | 1 Comment

Aniah Blanchard (front center) with her family.

We reported earlier this month on the disappearance of Aniah Blanchard, a 19-year-old college student who was reportedly abducted in Auburn, Alabama, on Oct. 23. Blanchard is the step-daughter of UFC fighter Walt Harris, and on Nov. 7, police arrested suspect Ibraheem Yazeed, 29, who had fled to Pensacola, Florida. As I reported on Nov. 9 (“Why Wasn’t Ibraheem Yazid in Jail?”), the suspect had a lengthy record of violent crime and yet had been released on bail after a near-fatal attack on an elderly man in January. On the night she went missing, Aniah reportedly told a friend that she was going to meet a guy she had connected with via a dating app, and now police say they have recovered her remains about 30 miles from where she disappeared:

Human remains believed to be those of a missing Alabama college student were found today in Macon County, officials said.
“I can confirm that human remains have been found in Macon County and we have good reason to believe they are that of Aniah Blanchard,” Lee County District Attorney Brandon Hughes said.
Hughes also confirmed that a man named David Johnson Jr. was arrested in Montgomery on a charge of hindering prosecution. He is being held on $7,500 bond at the Montgomery County Jail.
“During the course of the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Aniah Blanchard, investigators obtained information regarding the possible location of a body,” a statement from Auburn police read.
“On November 25, 2019, at approximately 10:45 a.m., Auburn Police, along with members of the Task Force, Lee County DA’s Office, U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force, ALEA and Montgomery County Sheriff Office, responded to a wooded area in the 38,000 block of County Road 2 in Shorter, Alabama.
“After a brief search by Investigators they located what appeared to be human remains several feet into the woodline. A complete investigation is underway by ALEA and Auburn Police to determine the identity and how the victim came to be at that location. The examination will explore if the remains are those of Aniah Blanchard who went missing on October 24, 2019.
“The case remains under investigation by the Auburn Police Division.”
Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson said the remains were found in a rural area near New Hope Baptist Church. . . .
Also today, a suspect in the kidnapping of Blanchard, Antwain “Squirmy” Fisher, 35, had his first appearance in court.
Fisher is accused of helping Ibraheem Yazeed, 29, kidnap Blanchard by providing “material assistance to Yazeed by providing transportation to Yazeed, and disposing of evidence,’’ according to court records made public Monday. . . .
According to an affidavit by Auburn police Det. Josh Mixon, Blanchard was last seen by a family member the evening of Oct. 23 at a residence in the 1000 block of Alan Avenue in Auburn. . . .
Charging documents against Yazeed state that blood evidence was discovered in the passenger’s compartment of the vehicle and was “indicative of someone suffering a life-threatening injury.” The evidence was submitted to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences and confirmed to be that of Blanchard.
Video evidence from the convenience store at 1599 South College Street placed both Blanchard and Yazeed at the store during the same time. “This was the last time she was seen,” Mixon wrote. A witness later identified Yazeed as the individual.

More “violence against women” feminists will ignore, for some reason.




 

Category: Alabama, Violence Against Women

Is This the Kanye Factor?

Posted on | November 25, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Let’s not over-interpret these numbers:

A pair of recent polls show that 34 percent of black likely voters approve of President Donald Trump’s presidency, a stunning development that could have a massive impact on his re-election campaign in 2020.
A Rasmussen poll released Friday showed black likely voter approval of Trump at 34 percent. An Emerson Poll showed 34.5 percent approval by the same demographic.
“Boom,” wrote black author and Trump supporter Deneen Borelli on Twitter, calling the results “Democrats worst nightmare.”
The Trump campaign celebrated the news.
“It might shock Democrats that support for President Trump is rising with Black Americans but it shouldn’t,” Trump campaign Principal Deputy Communications Director Erin Perrine said to Breitbart News. “Blacks are more prosperous than ever because of President Trump with record-low unemployment and rising paychecks.”
The polling bump only bolstered the Trump campaign’s decision to launch a “Black Voices for Trump” political coalition in November.
“We’re going to campaign for every last African American vote in 2020,” Trump said in a speech, launching the group with black supporters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Perrine said the news would energize the coalition going into the president’s re-election effort for 2020.
“The Black Voices for Trump coalition will help get the facts and truth out there about the strength of America for Blacks under President Trump,” she said.

The Trump campaign has made a commitment to winning over black voters in 2020, an effort unprecedented in recent Republican campaign history, and we must keep in mind that it is not necessary for Trump to win a majority of black votes to have a huge impact. For decades, the GOP has suffered from an image problem on race issues, and too many Republican consultants have been averse to making a real effort to fix that problem. In district after district, state after state, election after election, Democrats just assumed that they would win 90-95% of the black vote, which enabled them to win offices in close elections where a majority of white voters went for the Republican candidate. If Trump can get to double digits — 12%-15% — with black voters in 2020, that would probably doom the Democrats in states like Florida and North Carolina. And having stronger black support will also help Trump with the kind of suburban white women who don’t want to be perceived as “racist” for voting Republican. Polls show increasing opposition to the Democrats’ impeachment witch-hunt, and it’s entirely possible — I mean, a long shot, but you can’t rule it out — that Trump could win a 1972-style landslide.

Keep in mind you have four white people — Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg — currently leading the polls among Democratic presidential candidates. The only black candidate with a chance, Kamala Harris, is at 4% nationally and has gone “all-in” on winning the Iowa caucuses. But three of the four most recent Iowa polls show Buttigieg leading, while Harris is in sixth place in the RCP average of Iowa polls. In other words, Iowa Democrats support the gay white mayor over the black female Senator, and do you think this makes black Democrats happy? You ain’t been paying attention to social media, then, because they’re angry as hell. Black Democrats hate Buttigieg.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that Kanye West, said to be a Trump supporter, released an album entitled “Follow God” that zoomed to the top of the charts. I mean, Democrats might be getting ready to nominate this gay white guy, and here the multi-platinum black rapper who (allegedly) supports Trump is throwing down some Jesus on the people?

All we can do is pray. And maybe you could hit my tip jar?





 

Category: Donald Trump, Polls

Climate Change Cult Update

Posted on | November 24, 2019 | 2 Comments

 

Our educational institutions, the major media, and every candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination are in unanimous agreement: Climate change is a “crisis” that requires drastic measures. We must do something — something very expensive, involving untold trillions of dollars of taxpayer money — and do it immediately, or else global warming will make Earth uninhabitable, a lifeless desert planet.

I have never believed this crap, but there are plenty of allegedly intelligent people who believe it with the certainty that a 17th-century Puritan believed in Original Sin, and so these zealots engage in all kinds of bizarre behavior, like giving money to the Pete Buttigieg campaign, or engaging in ridiculous protest stunts:

Spectators rushed the field to stage a climate change protest at halftime of Saturday’s Harvard-Yale game, delaying the start of the second half by nearly an hour and causing the game to finish in near-darkness.
The 136th edition of The Game between the Ivy League rivals went to halftime around 1:40 p.m. ET, and students from both schools occupied midfield after the Yale band finished performing.
Most protesters left after about an hour when they were escorted off by police, who then told about two dozen who remained they were under arrest. The field was ultimately cleared, and the game resumed at 2:48 p.m. ET.
However, the delay led to an issue for the game’s finish because the Yale Bowl lacks stadium lights, and sunset in New Haven, Connecticut, was set for 4:26 p.m. on Saturday.
The darkness problem was compounded as the game went to double overtime, but Yale ultimately got a stop to win 50-43 — and secure a share of the Ivy League title — at 4:38 p.m., before it became too dark to play.
In a statement, the Ivy League referred to the protest as “regrettable.” Yale said that while it “stands firmly for the right to free expression,” it had issues with how the protesters went about their demonstration.
“The exercise of free expression on campus is subject to general conditions, and we do not allow disruption of university events,” Yale said in its own statement.

File this under the category of “Things That Never Happen in Tuscaloosa.” You have to be rich to attend an Ivy League school — it’s $72,100 a year at Yale, $69,607 at Harvard — and only rich kids can afford the luxury of devoting their lives to idiot causes like “climate change.” And I will say, furthermore, that “climate change” is an obsession only for white people. The autistic Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg is the perfect poster child for this movement, which is whiter than a meeting of the Stephen Colbert Fan Club. Like, go down to West Baltimore and ask some of the brothers their opinions about climate change. That will be a rather short conversation ending with a suggestion that you “get the f–k outta my neighbhood, cracker.”

Speaking of people you wouldn’t want in your neighborhood . . .

 

You might be wondering what this weird scene has to do with climate change. You should ask Wes Siler (the guy on the left), because that’s his girlfriend Virginia McQueen on the right (next to their dog), and the guy in the middle is Kevin Hutzler, a researcher for Amazon Studios. Hutzler’s gay, so I don’t suppose he has any interest in Siler’s girlfriend, but maybe there’s an innocuous explanation behind this. Siler is a longtime outdoors writer, who once made a startling confession:

Scouts doesn’t dictate which god you have to believe in, just that you do need to believe in one. Anecdotally, I’ve seen more and more parents voice this as a reason why they haven’t encouraged their kids to participate in Scouting. In my own experience, it creates a dilemma for non-religious Scouts. The Scout Law requires Scouts to tell the truth, yet as an atheist, I lied through omission both when I attained the Eagle rank and when I became an Assistant Scoutmaster as an adult. 

Would you let your 12-year-old son go camping with Wes Siler? Probably not, but that still doesn’t explain the climate change angle:

 

How crazy can white liberals get? We now know the answer:

On Thursday, 38-year-old lifestyle columnist Wes Siler wrote on Outside Magazine’s website seemingly bragging about getting a vasectomy to stop global warming — “Getting one was, by far, the most powerful personal action I could take for our planet.” What a hero!
Captain Planet explained he’s “always struggled to combine the idea of personal responsibility with the overwhelming need for human society to address the threat posed by climate change,” hence going under the knife. “With a sudden focus on responsible decision-making, it no longer made sense to leave hypothetical future offspring up to chance,” he said.
After getting engaged, Siler saw wildfires in California and floods in the Mississippi River basin and worried this “might be the new normal” and that “the future might be worse than any of us currently fear.” That, and, “of course, the whole Donald Trump thing” made him question, “Is this a world we want to bring kids into? Is this a world it’s responsible to bring kids into?” . . .
Wanting to “make a meaningful impact” on global warming, Siler and his fiancée agreed not to have kids. He thought about giving up his 15 mpg pickup truck, but calculated “it’s nowhere near the carbon emissions I’ll save by skipping becoming a daddy.” He futher claimed, “Any other action we could take, even all the actions we could ever possibly add up together, pale in comparison” to remaining childless because “two people deciding to make fewer humans eliminates the entire cycle of consumption that would fuel that kid’s life.” . . .
Buying into the liberal fallacy that “there are simply too many humans on this planet,” Siles lectures that “it’s the human conflict created by dwindling resources needed to sustain the population that stands to really change life on this planet.” . . .
Because of all this, he finally made an appointment to get a vasectomy. “I was afraid of getting my scrotum operated on, but the procedure ended up being quicker and less invasive than most dental appointments,” Siler said candidly, as if selling the procedure. . . .
Calling forgoing children “the absolute biggest difference we can make,” he concluded, “We need fewer humans, and getting there voluntarily will be an awful lot less painful than doing it with war, famine, and natural disaster.”

Crazy? Yes. But should we encourage this? Absolutely!

Nothing could make me happier than knowing that my grandchildren (our fifth is due next month) will not have to share the planet with the offspring of pretentious white liberal creeps like Wes Siler.

So if white liberals stop having babies, then maybe my grandchildren will get into Harvard. Thanks a lot, Mister Sperm-Free Lifestyle!

Wait a minute. What’s this email in my inbox? Something from The Darwin Awards Committee? Hang on. Let me check . . .

Oh, we have a winner! Congratulations, Wes Siler!


 

Category: Global Warming, The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent

FMJRA 2.0: All About Chemistry

Posted on | November 23, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

A Work In Progress
Dark Brightness
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: The Things That We’ve Learnt Are No Longer Enough
EBL
A View From The Beach

Rule Five Sunday: Black Widow
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
EBL
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach

The Secret of Liberal ‘Success’
EBL

AG William Barr Tells The Truth, and Liberals Are Losing Their Minds
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.18.19
357 Magnum
EBL
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 11.20.19 (Morning Edition)
EBL
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 11.20.19 (Evening Edition)
EBL
Proof Positive

‘The Wheels of Justice Turn Slowly, But Grind Exceedingly Fine’
EBL

The Impeachment Carnival Is a Distraction From What Really Matters
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL
A View From The Beach

Billionaire Dictator Tom Steyer Has a ‘Solution’ for the Housing ‘Crisis’
First Street Journal
EBL

In The Mailbox: 11.21.19
EBL
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending November 22:

  1.  EBL (13)
  2.  A View From The Beach (6)
  3.  Proof Positive (5)

Thanks to everyone for all the linkagery!

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Black Friday Countdown

Try Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial
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Black Friday Countdown – Fire TV Edition Smart TVs – Starting at $99.99




Category: FMJRA Award

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | November 23, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Left-wing insanity? Let’s kill people because animals have rights:

An Ohio animal rights activist allegedly stabbed a woman in a church on Wednesday because she was wearing fur.
Police believe that Meredith Lowell, 35, stabbed the woman wearing fur boots based on a prior arrest in 2012, in which Lowell was charged with attempting to hire a hitman to kill a person wearing fur.
Around 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, a babysitter was dropping children off at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights for choir practice. Witnesses told police they heard a woman screaming before the babysitter fell to the ground due to a stab wound.
When police arrived at the church, they found the young woman lying on the ground surrounded by blood, clutching her left side. A man was pinning Lowell down to the floor nearby, waiting for police, according to the report.
Police Chief Annette Mecklenberg praised the church staff member who restrained Lowell, according to News 5 Cleveland. “They put their safety at risk. They were able to restrain her and hold her down until the police arrived,” Chief Mecklenburg said. “They are to be commended for their actions no doubt.”
Lowell stabbed the victim twice in her arm and once in her abdomen. Police said Thursday morning she was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Lowell remains in jail on a $1 million bond.
In 2012, Lowell allegedly posted several times on social media looking for someone willing to kill a person wearing fur.
“I would like to create an online community on Facebook which would allow me to find someone who is willing to kill someone who is wearing fur toward the end of October 2011 or early November 2011 or possibly January 2012 or February 2012 at the latest,” Lowell wrote, according to the indictment.
After multiple evaluations, psychologists determined Lowell was not competent to stand trial because of mental disease or defect.
An evaluation was completed to determine if Lowell posed a danger to herself or others. Prosecutors said she had passed a handwritten note to jail guards shortly after her 2012 arrest. The note stated that if Lowell were to be released, she would contract another hit man to kill a person wearing fur or even do the deed herself, according to prosecutors.
However, a forensic evaluation later determined that though she was not competent to stand trial, did not pose a risk to herself, the general public or to property.
Fast-forward to 2018, when Lowell reportedly stabbed a woman. Her motives were unknown. She was charged with felonious assault and released on a $5,000 bond. Her case was transferred to mental health court, specialized for individuals with documented mental health issues.

Why hasn’t this person been locked up permanently? Why does someone with a documented history of violence keep getting turned loose?

Also, where did the idea of “animal rights” come from? If you are familiar with the idea of rights, as a political concept, you can trace it back to English common law — Magna Carta and all that. Prior to the American Revolution, to speak of “rights” was to speak of an abstraction, a metaphysical ideal. It was only because a ragged Patriot army was able to withstand a seven-year war against the British Empire that we, as Americans, can definitely state what rights we possess. And animals? Where is their manifesto? When have the animals gathered in convention to declare their “rights,” and to defy anyone who would oppress them?

Idiots like Meredith Lowell have watched too many cartoons about happy bunnies and so forth. I blame Walt Disney for her insanity. Walt Disney didn’t mean to produce radical propaganda, but ever since Bambi, we’ve been going in the wrong direction on this issue.

(Hat-tip: KIrby McCain on Twitter.)


 

Category: Crime, Ohio

Devin Nunes Sues CNN and Daily Beast Over ‘Demonstrably False’ Stories

Posted on | November 23, 2019 | Comments Off on Devin Nunes Sues CNN and Daily Beast Over ‘Demonstrably False’ Stories

 

Breitbart News reports:

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) intends to file lawsuits against both CNN and the Daily Beast over fake hit pieces the outlets have published about him in recent days, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
Two pieces recently published in both outlets — one from Daily Beast earlier this week, and one from CNN published late Friday — alleged that the Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who is now indicted on unrelated charges, helped Nunes with a variety of matters when digging into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of Democrats.
The Daily Beast story, from Betsy Swan (formerly Woodruff), alleges that Parnas helped Nunes set up a variety of meetings on Ukraine matters. The CNN story, from Vicky Ward, goes even further, alleging that Nunes arranged a secret trip to Vienna and met there with Victor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor that former Vice President Joe Biden pushed to have fired when Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, the natural gas company paying Biden’s son Hunter Biden $83,000 per month. It is unclear at this time how much of these reports are blatantly false, but most of each of them appear to be inaccurate, according to sources familiar with the matter.
As such, Nunes is planning to sue both the Daily Beast and CNN over each story.
“These demonstrably false and scandalous stories published by the Daily Beast and CNN are the perfect example of defamation and reckless disregard for the truth,” Nunes told Breitbart News late Friday night. “Some political operative offered these fake stories to at least five different media outlets before finding someone irresponsible enough to publish them. I look forward to prosecuting these cases, including the media outlets, as well as the sources of their fake stories, to the fullest extent of the law. I intend to hold the Daily Beast and CNN accountable for their actions. They will find themselves in court soon after Thanksgiving.”

If you report a fact — e.g., person X met person Y in location Z on a certain date — based on what an unnamed source told you, and this “fact” turns out to be false, you’re going to have a difficult time explaining to a judge that this is not libel per se. This is just basic Journalism 101 stuff, and if the “secret trip to Vienna” did not actually happen, heads should roll at CNN and the Daily Beast. Here’s something else that young journalists ought to be taught: When a source offers you a story on the basis of anonymity, ask yourself what their motive is, and if this motive renders the offered information suspect. Even if a story is basically true — i.e., Parnas was trying to help expose the corrupt connections between Ukrainians and Democrats, so that Parnas and Nunes had reasons to cooperate — the specific facts alleged in your reporting must be provably true, or else you could be at risk of a libel case.


 

Category: CNN, Congress, Media Bias

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | November 22, 2019 | Comments Off on Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

by Smitty

Sometimes they put you in a bad position, and blame you for being there.

The end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the month: somebody comes up to you and needs data access.

You kinda know who this is; you’ve seen him around the office, but this request is really weird.

Your car keys are on the desk, so he doesn’t worry when you declare the need to use the restroom before “We get on that”.

True enough; a great roadtrip begins on an empty bladder. Thank god for the spare key under the frame.
—
via Darleen

Category: Friday Fiction
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