The Other McCain

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

If Trump’s Not #Winning, Why Does Biden Want to Silence Giuliani?

Posted on | September 29, 2019 | 2 Comments

What a poker player would call a “tell”:

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign requested in a letter on Sunday that major news networks not invite President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani anymore, after Giuliani spent the morning on a series of talk shows aggressively highlighting what he called Biden’s apparently corrupt dealings in Ukraine and China.
The Biden campaign wrote to NBC News, CBS News, Fox News and CNN to voice “grave concern that you continue to book Rudy Giuliani on your air to spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump,” according to The Daily Beast, which first reported the existence of the letter.
The memo, drafted by Biden aides Kate Bedingfield and Anita Dunn, continued: “While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough. By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”

If what Giuliani is saying about Biden and Ukraine is just “unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies,” wouldn’t it be easy for Biden to prove that? But no — they want him silenced. Don’t be surprised if networks comply with Biden’s demand. “Democrat operatives with bylines,” etc.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!



 

Category: Donald Trump, Joe Biden

Impeachment Mania!

Posted on | September 29, 2019 | 1 Comment

Top of this morning’s headline stack at The Drudge Report:

Pelosi 'heartbroken, prayerful' as impeachment moves forward...
First House Republican backs inquiry...
Signs of discomfort in defense of president...
REPORT: Mulvaney on shaky ground...
LEAK: White House restricted access to Trump calls with Putin, Saudi crown prince...
GERALDO: Entire Presidency Defined By Snitches And Rats And Backstabbers...
Embarrassing Leaks Led to Clampdown on Phone Records...
Blowup over calls with Mexican, Australian leaders led to greater secrecy...
How Rudy ended up in the middle...
Was Not Working Alone...
For Trump, high-velocity threat like none he's ever faced...
PAPER: Embracing President Pence might be party's best play...
America digs in...
Politics taking physical, emotional toll...

Is there any fact that could convince the Democrats to desist? Have they become so maniacally obsessed that they are beyond reason?

UPDATE: I am astonished that the comments turned into a Drudge-bashing festival, which certainly was not what I intended. I don’t agree with those who contend Drudge is anti-Trump, although perhaps his assistant(s) might be. My hunch is that Drudge looks upon impeachment (and “scandal” generally) as good for his traffic. Besides, if you think that impeachment is apt to prove disastrous for Democrats (as I do), wouldn’t it actually be your duty as a right-wing journalist to encourage them to pursue this mania? So if Drudge’s choice of headlines seems anti-Trump lately, is that possibly misleading? And deliberately so?



 

Category: Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Ukraine

FMJRA 2.0: Alien Turned Human

Posted on | September 28, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Welcome to ‘Bizarre Hell-World’
EBL

Please Hit Kirby’s Tip Jar
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Crazee Horse
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL

Guy Gets Laid, Feminists Get Angry
The Pirate’s Cove
357 Magnum
EBL

A Great Football Saturday
EBL

Rule 5 Sunday: Cecile Haussernot
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
EBL

Climate Cult Goes Mad: ‘How Dare You!’
EBL

In The Mailbox: 09.23.19
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Accomplices of Evil
Bacon Time
EBL

Trump Country
EBL

Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine!
Dark Brightness
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 09.24.19
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Queer Theory Pedophilia Jeopardy
EBL

Impeachment Madness
The Pirate’s Cove
EBL

Evil Monsters Dox Bill Pulte
Locomotive Breath
EBL

In The Mailbox: 09.25.19
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Democrats ‘Careening from Impeachment Theory to Impeachment Theory’
Locomotive Breath
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 09.26.19
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Why the Ukrainian ‘Nothingburger’?
A View From The Beach
EBL

What Is a Man?
EBL

Aaron Calvin and the SJW Boomerang
EBL

In The Mailbox: 09.27.19
Proof Positive
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending September 27:

  1.  EBL (22)
  2.  A View From The Beach (9)
  3.  Proof Positive (5)

Thanks to everyone for the linkagery!

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The Anti-Dog Tank & Other Stories




Category: FMJRA Award

Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | September 28, 2019 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous

 

Last week, feminist writer Sofia Barrett-Ibarria wrote an article for Vice headlined, “How Serial Killer Aileen Wuornos Became a Cult Hero.” This caused an uproar, and not merely because making heroes of serial killers is a bad idea. The article included this paragraph:

“I think part of her appeal to me personally, in this cultural moment, is that Aileen Wuornos was a woman that men feared,” said Bailey. Wournos’ memory offers hope that terrible men like Jeffrey Epstein, Brett Kavanaugh, and countless others will ultimately get what they deserve. “A prostitute hunting men instead of being hunted is a deeply comforting story.”

Lumping in a justice of the Supreme Court with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein with the suggestion that “what they deserve” is to be murdered? After this raised an outcry, editors re-wrote the paragraph:

As reports of powerful men who abuse vulnerable women continue to surface, it’s hard to deny that survivors are craving stories of revenge — stories where victims not only live to survive the abuse, but fight back. “I think part of her appeal to me personally, in this cultural moment, is that Aileen Wuornos was a woman that men feared,” said Bailey. At a time when we are constantly inundated with stories like that of Jeffrey Epstein and Brett Kavanaugh, her story is an example of men facing repercussions for their actions. “A prostitute hunting men instead of being hunted is a deeply comforting story.”

This is still deeply wrong — Kavanaugh was the victim of a partisan smear, and there is exactly zero evidence that he ever abused anyone.

The real problem with the article, however, is that the underlying theme is morally reprehensible. I am willing to believe that the first man Wuornos killed, a convicted rapist named Richard Mallory, may have attacked her, but he was shot multiple times. How many times do you have to shoot someone in a self-defense situation? Normally, we would be astonished to find “progressives” making a pro-Second Amendment argument, but in the case of Aileen Wuornos, the pistol-wielding prostitute becomes a “cult hero,” and never mind the absence of evidence in support of her story of being attacked by Mallory. The other men murdered by Wuornos were less easily demonized. Peter Siems, for example, was a 65-year-old retiree who devoted himself to Christian ministry; Charles Humphries was a retired Air Force officer. It would appear that the motive was robbery in most of these cases, although it is difficult to determine any rational motive in the case of someone like Wuornos, who was diagnosed as a psychopath by the psychiatrists employed to determine her fitness to stand trial.

Aileen Wuornos, in prison interviews before her 2002 execution.

Yet this murderous psychopath is celebrated (as in the “I’m With Her” T-shirt) by leftists who certainly would not have applauded her had they lived in central Florida in late 1990 after police announced they were hunting a serial killer, a report that terrified residents. Decent people recoil from the claim that a “prostitute hunting men” was somehow justified in killing seven men — most of whom perhaps were guilty of nothing more than offering a ride to a hitchhiker — because of the abuse she had suffered from others. But feminism!

“It’s really easy for society to paint women and other oppressed people as villains when they react in unhinged ways that are often violent, but it’s important to look at how capitalism, cis heterosexist patriarchy, and misogyny really put her in many of the positions she was in that made her murder,” [lesbian activist Dani] Love said. “She was a victim of so many structural oppressions. Sex workers in her field lack protection, which allows violence to happen. Sex workers cannot go to the police for help because they are directly connected to the oppression of so many marginalized groups who often are sex workers: women, black and other people of color, LGBT people.”

Let us stipulate, arguendo, that Wuornos could fairly be described as a “victim of so many structural oppressions.” Was she the only such victim? Had a committee of victims appointed her their avenging angel? Did Wuornos herself articulate any such understanding of her crimes? Or is it rather the case that her latter-day admirers have projected onto Wuornos an interpretation of their own manufacture? Yet this political interpretation is preferred by “progressives” over the ugly truth of who Aileen Wuornos was, and how she became such a monstrous killer. In 2014, I traced her biography briefly:

The other day, I saw a TV documentary about serial killer Aileen Wuornos: She started having incestuous sex with her brother when she was 9 and he was 10. By age 11, Aileen was selling sex to neighborhood boys for pocket change and cigarettes. She got pregnant at 13 and gave the baby up for adoption.
At 15, Aileen’s behavior was so out of control that her grandparents kicked her out of their home and thereafter she supported herself as a prostitute, while also accumulating a criminal rap sheet that included charges like DUI, disorderly conduct, car theft, assault, forgery, armed robbery and resisting arrest. Somewhere along the way, she also became a lesbian and by 1987 she was living with her lover, Tyria Moore.
By then in her early 30s, Wuornos supported the couple by prostitution. In 1989, Wuornos and Moore went on a murder spree, killing seven Florida men in less than a year. Moore agreed to testify against Wuornos in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
So, yeah, if pedophiles want to argue that “consensual” child sex is harmless, maybe they should ask Aileen Wuornos about that. Except she’s been dead for nearly a dozen years. She was 46 in October 2002, when the state of Florida put her down like a dog.

The same “progressive” movement which now wants to make a “cult hero” of Aileen Wuornos has, at various times, supported the abolition of age of consent laws, and argued that children should be included in the “sexual liberation” they so vociferously advocate. But we cannot expect the Left to make logical connections between causes and consequences, because otherwise they wouldn’t be the Left, would they?

And so they celebrate a serial killer, and falsely impugn Brett Kavanaugh, and we can only hope that when some impressionable fool acts on the Left’s rhetoric, no innocent people with suffer.



 

Category: Crime, Progressivism

Other Times, Other Wars

Posted on | September 28, 2019 | Comments Off on Other Times, Other Wars

— by Wombat-socho

I have a raft of new SF to plow through in the next couple of weeks, so I need to clear the decks and deal with the stuff I’ve been reading since the last book post.

“Yes, young man, I knew L. Ron Hubbard. Pretty good writer before he turned to crime.”

I was reliably assured by the late Jerry Pournelle that this was not, in fact, said by Robert Heinlein to brush off an overeager Scientologist, since Heinlein and Hubbard were close friends, but it does sum up how a lot of people feel about the founder of Dianetics and Scientology, and seems as good a place as any to start talking about Hubbard’s first and most controversial SF novel, Final Blackout. Serialized in Astounding in 1940, Final Blackout describes a World War II that follows the same bloody path as World War I…only worse. By the time we begin to follow the Lieutenant and his little band of survivors, seventy years of chemical, biological and atomic weapons have ruined Europe, leaving only scattered, fortified farmsteads and equally scattered bands of infantrymen skirmishing for the dwindling stocks of food. There’s no industrial base to speak of, no coherent governments, and no purpose for the remnants of the B.E.F. but survival…until a staff officer from G.H.Q. arrives to recall the Lieutenant and his skeletal Fourth Brigade. This is when the novel shifts into gear – instead of being a mere tale of survival, it becomes one of political maneuvering, isolated staff and inexperienced garrison troops against a veteran officer and his unkillable remnant. The book was quite controversial at the time, catching flak from leftists who hated that the British Communist party were the obvious villains, and from the right for casting the United States in a less than heroic light. Hubbard was wrong about the course of the war, of course; the generals had in fact learned from the last war, and so had the politicians. There were no weapons of mass destruction used in Europe, and even in Asia the Japanese didn’t dare unleash their stocks of chemical weapons. Nobody since has written a novel like Final Blackout; the closest approximations are General Sir John Hackett’s The Third World War, in which the war ends with a very limited nuclear exchange, and the role-playing game Twilight: 2000, but even in the latter, where nuclear and chemical weapons are used in greater quantities, things haven’t fallen apart quite as badly as they have in the Lieutenant’s Europe.

I first read Hubbard’s other memorable Golden Age novel, To The Stars, back in the days when teenagers were allowed back in the Library of Congress stacks unaccompanied, which was fortunate for me since this was during the period when the Church of Scientology was pretending that Hubbard had never written any SF and all his books were long out of print. Serialized in the February and March 1950 issues of Astounding, To The Stars tells the tale of Alan Corday, a recently graduated tenth-class engineer trying to make his way to Mars and a well-paying position with the Duke of Mars. Unfortunately, Corday is bankrupt, and can’t find a ship captain willing to let him work his passage; even more unfortunately, he finds a bar occupied by the company of The Hound of Heaven, whose captain is playing a strange melody on a piano, a melody that draws Corday in. All too soon, Corday finds himself aboard the Hound on the “long passage”, being unwillingly trained to stand watch on the bridge and make repairs to the ship as it burns its way to the Centauri Suns at just short of light-speed. By the time the Hound finally returns to Earth, the fiance he was forced to leave behind is a senile old woman, revolution and war have completely changed society – and he realizes he no longer has any home besides the Hound. These days, such a book would have easily expanded to doorstop size, but Hubbard’s taut style and economical writing covey his grim message easily enough.

Finally, some history. Eric Nevala-Lee’s Astounding is a fascinating combination of biographies and history of science fiction – not merely the genre itself but the fandom around it from John W. Campbell’s birth to the death of Robert Heinlein in 1988. In addition to Heinlein, the book also follows the careers of Isaac Asimov and L. Ron Hubbard, and can’t help touching on the careers of other writers affected by Campbell such as Lester Del Rey, A.E. van Vogt, L. Sprague DeCamp, and a cast of literally hundreds. It is unsparing in its examinations of the (ample) personal defects of all four men; Hubbard in particular comes off as a liar, abusive husband, and mountebank even before embarking on his career of evil with Scientology. On the other hand, it seems very clear that without Campbell, Astounding as we know it would not have existed, and the careers of Asimov and Heinlein (at the very least) would have been considerably different. I might even go so far as to say that without Campbell, science fiction as we know it wouldn’t exist; his competitors at Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy came into existence so that other publishers could get in on the action. This is a worthy successor to Sam Moskowitz’ Seekers of Tomorrow, sadly out of print, which combines biography and bibliographies for twenty-one authors of the Golden Age.

Next time around, I hope to have finished R.F. Kuang’s The Dragon Republic and Neil Stephenson’s Fall.

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Category: Books

In The Mailbox: 09.27.19

Posted on | September 28, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Knowledge Buffet: Race Is A Hoax To Distract From Class & Ethnicity
357 Magnum: Everybody Is A First Responder
EBL: Imagine…
Twitchy: Former Des Moines Register Reporter Aaron Calvin Plays The Victim In Buzzfeed Interview
Louder With Crowder: Aussie PM Scolds People Exploiting Childrens’ Fear
According To Hoyt: The Hatred Of Good
Monster Hunter Nation: And To Think Authors Were Once Gullible Enough To Think these Bossy Assholes Mattered
Vox Popoli: All Conservatives Are C*cks, also, Human Shield Fail

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Friday Hawt Chicks & Links -The How Dare You Edition
American Greatness: Trump Has The Bad Guys Surrounded In Ukraine, also, To Hell With The Elites
American Power: Laura Ingraham On The Democrats’ Impeachment Hysteria
American Thinker: Trump Derangement Syndrome Will Consume The Democratic Party
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Oblivious Friday
Babalu Blog: Escaped Cuban Doctors Tell How Castro Regime Sold Them As Slaves, Forced Them To Falsify Records
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For September 27
Cafe Hayek: Quotation of The Day
CDR Salamander: Goodbye To The Blueberries
Da Tech Guy: Relationship Math Made Easy
Don Surber: Obama Is Behind Impeachment Push
First Street Journal: Just Say No To The UN
The Geller Report: “This Was A Setup” – Soros Funded Ukraine Whistleblower, also, Inside Torture Chambers At Nigerian Islamic School
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Nothingburger Or Schiff Sandwich?
Hollywood In Toto: Warner Won’t Defend Joker, Free Speech, also, Judy Shows The Little Girl Crushed By La La Land
Joe For America: “Whistleblower” Turns Out To be Anti-Trump CIA Officer
JustOneMinute: Slow News Day
Legal Insurrection: Hillary Still Bitter Over 2016 Loss, also, The “Whistleblower Complaint” Isn’t A Whistleblower Complaint, It’s A Closing Argument
The PanAm Post: Lopez Obrador Wants To Be Hugo Chavez, But He Can’t
Power Line: Was The “Whistleblower” Part Of A Plan? also, Are The Democrats Overplaying Their Hand?
Shark Tank: Rooney, Democrats Vote Against Trump’s Emergency Border Declaration
Shot In The Dark: Contract Law
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – Resolved, That The Womens’ Movement Has Been Disastrous
This Ain’t Hell: Pearl Harbor Survivors Association Holds Final Meeting, also, Valor Friday
Victory Girls: Former ICE Director Homan Schools Rep. Pramila Jayapal
Volokh Conspiracy: When Is It Acceptable Media Practice To Surface Old Social Media Posts?
Weasel Zippers: Former ICE Chief Clashes With Democrats Over Detention Practices, also, Former NSA Chief Of Staff Suggests Whistleblower Had Help From Congressional Democrats In Drafting Complaint
Megan McArdle: Here’s What Needs To Happen For Republicans To Get On Board With Impeachment
Mark Steyn: Hunted Biden

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Category: Linkagery

Aaron Calvin and the SJW Boomerang

Posted on | September 27, 2019 | 1 Comment

It never fails: The people who are most insistent on destroying people for breaches of social-justice protocols are themselves “problematic”:

Carol Hunter, the executive editor of the Des Moines Register, published a statement Thursday night announcing that the paper had fired reporter Aaron Calvin. . . .
Calvin is the reporter who wrote a profile of an Iowa man named Carson King. After King’s beer sign went viral, he raised over a million dollars for a local children’s hospital. In putting together the profile of King, Calvin uncovered two racist tweets King had published about 8 years ago when he was just sixteen. King immediately apologized publicly but Anheuser-Busch distanced itself from him . . .
The Register published the story including a reference to the old tweets and received an angry backlash from readers who argued that the tweets had nothing to do with the substance of the story. Part of that backlash included people digging into reporter Aaron Calvin’s old tweets, which also contained his use of the n-word and some ugly comments about the police. . . .
The problem, of course, is that reporter Aaron Calvin didn’t decide to publish the information about the tweets on his own. So whatever fallout Carson King experienced wasn’t the fault of Aaron Calvin acting on his own. Hunter admits editors were involved in the decision making about what to publish but claims that Anheuser-Busch decided to distance itself from King without being contacted by the Register about his old tweets. . . .
So the Register uncovered the tweets, contacted King about them and then, somehow, Anheuser-Busch dropped King all in the space of a few hours without anyone notifying them? That’s a hell of a coincidence.

A lot of conservatives are trying hard not to gloat about Aaron Calvin’s firing, saying they don’t want to participate in “cancel culture.”

Well, pardon my French, but fuck that noise. We know the reason why Aaron Calvin decided to go digging around into Carson King’s Twitter archives for evidence of Wrongthink: Calvin, a former BuzzFeed employee, is a progressive social-justice warrior (SJW) and he suspected that King, a beer-drinking white male from the Midwest, was probably a Republican. This was a blue-on-red attack, motivated by partisan malice, and so if that came boomeranging back on Calvin, good.

It’s like when a “male feminist” type gets destroyed by the #MeToo mob. Normally, I’d be willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to any guy caught in a “he-said/she-said” situation where his ex-girlfriend is asserting, without any real evidence, that he engaged in some not-entirely-consensual behavior while they were dating. But when that happens to a male feminist? Burn him at the stake, I say. Any man who, for example, applauded the attack on Brett Kavanaugh has thereby forfeited any claim to due-process protections, as far as I’m concerned.

The Left wanted to change the rules? Fine — enjoy your moral high ground, until we get a chance to force you to play by your New Rules.

War to the knife, knife to the hilt.

 



 

Category: Media Bias

What Is a Man?

Posted on | September 27, 2019 | 1 Comment

Contemporary culture has become so dominated by feminist thought that many people have come to think of women as the default “human,” and thus condemn men as “defective women,” Suzanne Venker argues.

This is largely a result of our extraordinary affluence as a society, where people in the culture-making elite take for granted the needs at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy. If you don’t have to worry about food, clothing and shelter, and if war and violent crime are distant enough as to pose no threat to your safety, then it’s possible to think that masculine traits are no longer essential. The journalist or academic dining in a Boston cafe doesn’t think about the manpower involved in providing her meal. Somebody had to pick that arugula, load it in a truck, drive the truck to a produce company, so on and so forth until it arrived on the cafe table as a salad, but as in the famous story of “I, Pencil,” the consumer never has to think about all the labor involved in getting her meal on the table. And if your experience in life has sheltered you from the reality of life among the laboring classes, as is true for almost everyone in the culture-making elite, it is easy to underestimate the value of masculinity.

For the woman raised in the more affluent sectors of our society — the college-educated journalist or academic — the manly virtues may seem superfluous. If she has absorbed the precepts of feminist ideology (either through a Gender Studies course, or by secondhand osmosis in a culture suffused with feminist thinking), she takes for granted that equality is the highest ideal, and that any deviation from that ideal is oppression, for which men are automatically to blame. Thus, as Venker remarks, such women are apt to make nitpicking complaints about men failing to measure up to the standard of equality, in terms of doing housework or performing “emotional labor” in relationships. It does not occur to such a woman, in the air-conditioned comfort of her existence, that a man might have inherent value as a man, and so she condemns him according to a feminist standard that necessarily undervalues masculinity.

The past few days, I’ve been re-reading The Robert E. Lee Reader by Stanley Horn, and I recall that in my youth, Lee’s character was held up as a model of the Christian gentleman that every boy should strive to emulate. When Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg was repulsed, and the defeated survivors came staggering back from their bloody ordeal, Lee told them: “It’s all my fault.” He took full responsibility for the failure, and offered his resignation in a letter to Jefferson Davis.

Many Americans have forgotten what war is, just as we have forgotten what it is like to live without the comforts our affluence provides. And so it is that authentic manhood has become undervalued. One wonders what will happen to such people if they ever confront the kind of crisis in which the masculine values are their only hope of survival.



 

Category: Sex Trouble
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