The Other McCain

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

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

Why the Ukrainian ‘Nothingburger’?

Posted on | September 26, 2019 | Comments Off on Why the Ukrainian ‘Nothingburger’?

 

The release today of the so-called “whistleblower” complaint alleging wrongdoing by President Trump was a deluxe nothingburger with a side order of fantasy fries. Coming after the Trump administration released a transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, we read through the complaint and learn . . . nothing.

That is, we learn nothing tangible that implicates Trump in wrongdoing, since the source of the complaint is passing along hearsay. Reported to be a CIA official, the whistleblower actually had no direct knowledge of the Trump-Zelensky conversation, and former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz suggests that House Democrat staffers assisted in writing the complaint:

Fleitz first points out that the whistleblower’s intent is clearly political based on the language in the given text and that he/she should never have had knowledge of the July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky.
“As a former CIA analyst and former NSC official who edited transcripts of POTUS phone calls with foreign leaders, here are my thoughts on the whistleblower complaint which was just released,” begins Fleitz. “This is not an intelligence matter. It is a policy matter and a complaint about differences over policy. Presidential phone calls are not an intelligence concern. The fact that IC officers transcribe these calls does not give the IC IG jurisdiction over these calls. It appears that rules restricting access and knowledge of these sensitive calls was breached. This official was not on this call, not on the approved [dissemination] list and should not have been briefed on the call.”
Fleitz goes on to say that the “whistleblower” clearly had help in authoring the report and wondered if he spoke to House Intelligence Committee members beforehand.
“The way this complaint was written suggested the author had a lot of help. I know from my work on the House Intel Commitee staff that many whistleblowers go directly to the intel oversight committees. Did this whistleblower first meet with House Intel committee members?” ponders Fleitz. “It is therefore important that Congress find out where this complaint came from. What did House and Senate intel committee dem members and staff know about it and when? Did they help orchestrate this complaint?”
“My view is that this whistleblower complaint is too convenient and too perfect to come from a typical whistleblower,” he continues. “Were other IC [intelligence community] officers involved? Where outside groups opposed to the president involved?”

The provenance of this complaint is suspicious, and it appears that Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff knew key details of it in August.

This has “Deep State” fingerprints all over — partisan bureaucrats acting to undermine the administration’s policy goals. If such activity is permitted, then no matter who is elected president, the same policies (i.e., those preferred by the bureaucracy) will continue. Elections become meaningless, Americans who want a change in policy are left with no effective recourse, and it becomes impossible to enact real reform.

If we can assume, then, that this CIA whistleblower was acting in concert with Schiff and/or other House Democrat, what was their purpose? Was this nothingburger of a “scandal” just another wild episode partisanship run amok? Or was there a strategic purpose to this Ukraine episode?

Could this have been a spoiling attack (“A tactical maneuver employed to seriously impair a hostile attack while the enemy is in the process of forming or assembling for an attack”)? We know that Attorney General Barr is investigating the origins of the “Russian collusion” hoax, which may implicate many current and former officials in a conspiracy against the 2016 Trump campaign. So in order to distract from and undermine the credibility of that investigation, Schiff and his friends manufacture this Ukrainian narrative. This may also have involved a desire to inoculate Biden against corruption accusations, so that anyone in the media asking questions about Biden’s sons shady business associations would be seen as doing Trump’s bidding. In all honesty, I doubt House Democrats will go forward with impeachment proceedings. They don’t have a case, and they know it. What they are doing is generating a series of manufactured “scandals” to serve their narrow partisan political objectives, to smear Trump in advance of 2020.



 

Category: Donald Trump, Ukraine

In The Mailbox: 09.26.19

Posted on | September 26, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.26.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: What Is CrowdStrike?
Twitchy: Tom Homan Nukes House Democrats On Border Security Again, And Uses Obama To Do It
Louder With Crowder: Adam Schiff Reads From Ukraine “Transcript” – Which He Pulled Out Of His Ass

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: “UkraineGate” Is About The Russian Hack That Wasn’t
American Power: Cowardly Aaron Calvin
American Thinker: When Hillary Clinton Colluded With Ukraine
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Better Earth News
Babalu Blog: Rightful Owner Of Havana Airport Sues American Airlines For Trafficking In Stolen Property
BattleSwarm: The Nothingburger Of Nothingburgerton
Camp of the Saints: #ImpeachTrump – Beware Of Watergate II
Cafe Hayek: The Power Of The Economic Way of Thinking
CDR Salamander: Behold The Dawn Of The “Second Century Fighters”?
Da Tech Guy: Climate Change Alarmism Is Hurting A Lot Of Children, also, California Crime, Impeachment, & The 86th Revolution Comeback Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Deflecting Trump’s Iranian Success
The Geller Report: Ten Syrian Muslims Disguised As Ukrainian Volleyballers Arrested In Greece, also, Buttigieg’s Organizing Director Is A Big Fan Of Louis Farrakhan
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, A Triplet Of Black Holes
Hollywood In Toto: How Hollywood Sold Its Soul For Obamacare
Joe For America: Clinton/Biden Treaty With Ukraine REQUIRES Trump Ask For Investigative Assistance From Ukraine
JustOneMinute: Today Is The Whistleblower Complaint Day
Legal Insurrection: Rep. Schiff Begins Hearing With Fake Quotes From Trump, Ukrainian Transcript, also, Baylor U. Sending “Equity Officer” To Investigate Conservative Group Hosting Ben Shapiro
The PanAm Post: Pseudo-Progressivism
Power Line: Kim Strassel – “Media Got This All So Wrong”, also, Democrats Play Dumb
Shark Tank: Senate Democrats Block Rick Scott’s Venezuela TPS Amendment
Shot In The Dark: Not As Live As You’d Hope
STUMP: Visualizing The Financial State Of The States
The Political Hat: Transgenderism – Mandatory Hysterectomy, Defunded Rape-Relief Shelter, & Wax The Scrotum
This Ain’t Hell: Atheists Demand Removal Of Bible – UPDATE, also, Coasties Net $165 Million In Cocaine
Victory Girls: It’s Raining Cash At The RNC – Thanks, Democrats!
Volokh Conspiracy: Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s “Canards Of Contemporary Legal Analysis”
Weasel Zippers: Schiff Gets Slapped For Lying About Transcript, Backpedals Claiming It Was “Parody”, also, Occasional Cortex Admits Call For Impeachment Is About President’s Policies


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Category: Linkagery

Democrats ‘Careening from Impeachment Theory to Impeachment Theory’

Posted on | September 25, 2019 | Comments Off on Democrats ‘Careening from Impeachment Theory to Impeachment Theory’

House Republican Conference chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming:

“We have watched now, ever since President Trump was elected, the House Democrats have been careening from impeachment theory to impeachment theory. They’ve careened from target to target for a while,” Cheney said. “Ten days or so ago they were focused on impeaching [Supreme Court Justice Brett] Kavanaugh. Now they’re back to focusing on President Trump.”
“What we see repeatedly is a complete lack of focus on [and] concern about evidence and facts,” she continued. “What Speaker Pelosi did yesterday really was the worst we’ve seen yet, where she announced an impeachment inquiry without any evidence, without seeing the transcript of the phone call at issue, without seeing any details from the supposed whistleblower.”
“When you think about what that does, both from the perspective of our constitutional obligation and from the perspective of our national security, it ought to give every American grave concerns that they are dealing with this in a way that is absolutely such a flagrant disregard of their constitutional responsibility,” Cheney added.

 

A key point in the transcript of the call was that President Trump was urging the Ukrainian president to investigate the role played by the firm Crowdstrike in the 2016 election campaign:

After the Department of Justice released the call transcript between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Wednesday morning, officials also reconfirmed U.S. Attorney John Durham is looking into Ukraine’s role and potential interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating,” DOJ Spokesperson Kerri Kopek released in a statement.
According to the transcript, President Trump was concerned about Ukraine’s role and asked Zelensky to get to the bottom of what happened.
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike…I guess you have one of your wealthy people…The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation,” Trump said on the call. “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

Crowdstrike is the company Democrats brought in to investigate the hacking of their servers, and the company has a Ukrainian connection. John Solomon reported in The Hill four months ago:

In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country’s president to help.
In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly’s office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Chalupa later tried to arrange for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to comment on Manafort’s Russian ties on a U.S. visit during the 2016 campaign, the ambassador said.
Chaly says that, at the time of the contacts in 2016, the embassy knew Chalupa primarily as a Ukrainian American activist and learned only later of her ties to the DNC. He says the embassy considered her requests an inappropriate solicitation of interference in the U.S. election.

Now, from the Observer in January 2017:

In addition to the Chalupas [Alexandra and her sister Andrea], the co-founder and CTO of Crowdstrike, the cyber security firm that the DNC hired to investigate the alleged hacks, Dmitri Alperovitch, also serves as a senior fellow to the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, which is an openly anti-Russian organization partly . The Atlantic Council is funded by Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, who also happens to be one of the most prolific donors to the Clinton Foundation. The DNC denied multiple requests from the FBI to access their servers, effectively forcing the FBI to rely on CrowdStrike’s assessment of the hacks.

Lots of dots here worth connecting, you see.



 

Category: Congress, Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Ukraine

In The Mailbox: 09.25.19

Posted on | September 25, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.25.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #754
357 Magnum: Is Generation Z This Stupid?
EBL: So Who’s Behind The Kneecapping Of Joe Biden?
Twitchy: Russian Asset/2020 Hopeful Tulsi Gabbard Sees No “Compelling Case” In Call Transcript
Louder With Crowder: Man Raises $1 Million For Charity, Des Moines Register Ruins It Over Old Tweets

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Bring Out Your NPCs
American Greatness: If You Can’t Sell Your Hysteria To Adults, Try The Kids
American Power: The Unbearable Whiteness Of Climate Protest
American Thinker: The Realities Of Impeachment
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Trump Blasts Socialism At The UN, Calls Maduro A Cuban Puppet
BattleSwarm: Democrats Get Ready To Throw Br’er Trump In The Briar Patch
Camp of the Saints: Who Really Won WW2? also, Hunter Is Not The Hunted, Joe Is
Cafe Hayek: Scales On My Eyes?
Da Tech Guy: Nancy’s Charge, or, The “It’s Our Last Shot For 2020” Impeachment Inquiry
Don Surber: Ukraine Is Another Sharpiegate
The Geller Report: Democrats Wrote To Ukraine In May 2018 Demanding It Investigate Trump, also, Pakistani Government, Clerics Make Burkas Mandatory For Schoolgirls Because So Many Are Raped
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Everything Is Proceeding As I Have Foreseen
Hollywood In Toto: How CBS’ Evil Rights A Spiritual TV Wrong
Joe For America: Massive Food Stamp Fraud Operation Smashed By “Operation Stampede”
JustOneMinute: Hey Dude, Where’s My Formal Impeachment Inquiry?
Legal Insurrection: Flashback – Biden Brags About Getting Ukrainian Prosecutor Investigating Son Hunter Fired, also, Judge Nixes Oberlin College’s Request To Go Fishing In Gibson Bakery Clerk’s Facebook Account
Michelle Malkin: Impeach Amnesty Ana, TV’s Foulest Open Borders Windbag
The PanAm Post: Maduro’s Regime Establishes Itself As A Cocaine Producer
Power Line: Transcript Shows No Wrongdoing By President Trump, also, Bernie Sanders Unplugged
Shark Tank: House Democrats Including Wassermann Schultz Call For Impeachment
Shot In The Dark: Kudos
The Political Hat: Human-Primate Chimerae – The First Step Toward Immanentizing Catgirls
This Ain’t Hell: FL Lawmakers Seek To Expand Stolen Valor Laws, also, Feds Nab Fugitive In $1 Billion Ponzi Scheme Targeting Vets
Victory Girls: Comrade Bernie’s United Socialist States Of America
Volokh Conspiracy: Trump, Ukraine, And Congress’ Power Of The Purse
Weasel Zippers: Dems Did What They’re Accusing Trump Of, also, After Trump Calls Their Bluff On Ukraine Transcript, Leftists Rush To Move Goalposts
Megan McArdle: The Irony In Democrats’ Impeachment Position
Mark Steyn: Mark On The Ann & Phelim Scoop

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Category: Linkagery

Evil Monsters Dox Bill Pulte

Posted on | September 25, 2019 | Comments Off on Evil Monsters Dox Bill Pulte

 

If you don’t know who Bill Pulte is, he’s the Michigan businessman who has become famous for promoting charitable causes on Twitter, often giving thousands of dollars of his own money to help people in need, as in the case of Lena Ramon, an Iraq war veteran and mother of two who got a $20,000 new car and $10,000 in cash from Pulte:

 

Why would anyone hate Bill Pulte or wish him harm? One word: Politics.

Because President Trump re-tweeted Pulte, and because Pulte praised the President on “Fox and Friends,” the Left decided that Pulte is a bad guy, and Trump-haters began harassing him online. Yesterday, Pulte and his wife got “doxed” — there private information was published online by left-wing hackers, resulting in the kind of threats and other mischief that victims of doxing typically suffer. (In 2013, I got doxed and SWATted by a man who was subsequently sentenced to federal prison.)

Law enforcement has been notified, and let’s hope that the perpetrators are soon in custody. The lesson here is that good people often suffer more on account of their virtues than bad people suffer for their vices. If you are doing the right thing, often it will inspire envy and hatred from others, and you will find yourself targeted by wicked people who cannot stand to see good people doing the right thing.

God bless Bill Pulte, and please remember him in your prayers.

P.S.: If you read this, Mr. Pulte, my brother Kirby could use some help.



 

Category: Culture

Impeachment Madness

Posted on | September 25, 2019 | 1 Comment

Democrats surrender to their Crazy Caucus:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump on Tuesday, yielding to mounting pressure from fellow Democrats and plunging a deeply divided nation into an election-year clash between Congress and the commander in chief.
The probe focuses partly on whether Trump abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government to undermine Democratic foe Joe Biden and help his own reelection. Pelosi said such actions would mark a “betrayal of his oath of office” and declared, “No one is above the law.”
The impeachment inquiry, after months of investigations by House Democrats of the Trump administration, sets up the party’s most direct and consequential confrontation with the president, injects deep uncertainty into the 2020 election campaign and tests anew the nation’s constitutional system of checks and balances.
Trump, who thrives on combat, has all but dared Democrats to take this step, confident that the specter of impeachment led by the opposition party will bolster rather than diminish his political support.
Meeting with world leaders at the United Nations, he previewed his defense in an all-caps tweet: “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!”

Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post supplies useful context:

It got almost no attention, but in May, CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as “strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine,” the Democratic senators declared, “We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump,” before demanding Lutsenko “reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.”
So, it’s okay for Democratic senators to encourage Ukraine to investigate Trump, but it’s not okay for the president to allegedly encourage Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden?
And then there is Joe Biden. In 2016, the then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine if the government did not fire the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. According to the New York Times, “Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden … who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.” The Post reports that it is “unclear how seriously Shokin — who was under fire by U.S. and European officials for not taking a more aggressive posture toward corruption overall — was scrutinizing Burisma when he was forced out.” But what is clear is that Biden bragged about getting him fired, declaring last year: “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a b–. He got fired.”
This weekend, Biden told reporters, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” That is flatly untrue. Hunter admitted in an interview with the New Yorker that his father expressed concern about the Burisma post at least once: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’” Moreover, the New Yorker reports that, “In December, 2015, as Joe Biden prepared to return to Ukraine, his aides braced for renewed scrutiny of Hunter’s relationship with Burisma. Amos Hochstein, the Obama Administration’s special envoy for energy policy, raised the matter with Biden.” That same month, the New York Times published an article about how Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine undermined the vice president’s anti-corruption message, which quoted a Biden spokesman saying it had no impact.
So, Biden was fully aware of his son’s involvement with Burisma when he pressured Ukraine to fire the prosecutor in 2016.

In other words, Democrats think the president should be impeached for doing something in Ukraine that’s OK when Democrats do it? I can’t imagine that Americans are too stupid to see this, but then again, I couldn’t imagine 65 million people voting for Hillary, either.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

Category: Donald Trump

Queer Theory Pedophilia Jeopardy

Posted on | September 24, 2019 | Comments Off on Queer Theory Pedophilia Jeopardy

One of the points I’ve repeatedly made about Third Wave feminism over the past five years is about Judith Butler’s role in popularizing a particular view of “gender.” In doing so, I dug deeply into the sources cited in Butler’s Gender Trouble, which is almost universally assigned as a required text in university Women’s Studies programs. Butler’s opaque academic jargon serves to conceal her authorial purpose, but when you start investigating her sources, you recognize that she is advocating extreme perversion. As I pointed out just the other day, for example, Michel Foucault advocated the abolition of age-of-consent laws. Another of Butler’s key sources was Gayle Rubin, who favorably cited the pedophile group NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) in opposition to laws against child pornography. Once you recognize this, the Third Wave feminist academic project of “Queer Theory” takes on a sinister significance, and for years, I’ve felt like I was shouting into the void on this subject. Does nobody else get it? Does no one care?

Say hello to Derrick Jensen, radical environmentalist and founding member of Deep Green Resistance (DGR). Part of DGR’s ideology is radical feminism of the Second Wave variety (e.g., Andrea Dworkin) and so it is that Jensen is an outspoken critic of Queer Theory. Here he is speaking at an event in Oregon in March 2018, when he begins citing the connections between Queer Theory and pedophilia.

 

This is remarkable — Jensen, indisputably a man of the Left, taking direct aim at one of the academic Left’s pet ideologies. And perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that Jensen’s book Anarchism and the Politics of Violation, which had been slated for publication last fall, got cancelled because he “dared to critique queer theory.”

(Hat-tip: Greg Tolan on Twitter.)



 

Category: Gays, Sex Trouble
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