The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 05.20.20

Posted on | May 20, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #992
357 Magnum: Edenville Dam Collapse
EBL: Kate Brown – Crushing Freedom In Oregon
Twitchy: WH Press Secretary Kayleigh “Honey Badger” McEnany Dropkicks Chris Cuomo Over Hydroxychloroquine
Louder With Crowder: Dan Crenshaw – The Left Is Using COVID-19 To Restructure America
Vox Popoli: A Quiet End, also, The Corona-Chan Narrative Implodes

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Lady Karen Writers
American Conservative: Why Trump Will Likely Lose In November
American Greatness: VA Secretary Cleans Up Phony Media Narrative About Hydroxychloroquine Study
American Thinker: Obama’s De Facto Russian Collusion Co-Conspirators
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Today Is Cuban Independence Day
Baldilocks: Dreaming Of Next Year
BattleSwarm: Vice President MegaKaren?
Cafe Hayek: Reducing Spending > Raising Taxes
CDR Salamander: The Return Of An Old Red Friend
Da Tech Guy: Guess States Are Missing Those Trump Boom Tax Revenues
Don Surber: Put The Rubes In Charge
The Geller Report: VIDEO – Bald-Faced Liar Susan Rice Denies Knowing Anything About Unmasking, also, Gov. Coonface Klanrobe (NSDAP-VA) Ditches Beach Restrictions After Thousands Defy His Diktat
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Phone Calls With Foreigners
Hollywood In Toto: Union Bridge Asks Too Much Of Its Audience, also, How The Wrong Missy Bungles The Rom-Com Template
Legal Insurrection: Pelosi Tries To Make Fat-Shaming Great Again, also, Mika Demands To Speak To Twitter’s Manager About Trump’s Account
Michelle Malkin: Stop Training Saudi Arabia’s Jihad Pilots
The PanAm Post: 116 Countries Call For Independent Coronavirus Investigation In Red China
Power Line: Coronavirus In One State (Part 45), also, Ron DeSantis Has Had Enough
Shark Tank: Rep. Mast Appalled That Veterans’ Cemeteries Still Closed
Shot In The Dark: A Look Ahead To Government Healthcare
STUMP: Moneypalooza Monstrosity! The Positioning Of Asking For State Government Bailouts
The Political Hat: Open Season For Election Fraud In The Silver State
This Ain’t Hell: Mike Torres, Phony War Veteran, also, Navy Declares 100 Meter Standoff
Victory Girls: Governor Cuomo Must Answer For Nursing Home Deaths
Volokh Conspiracy: Trump’s Threat To Withhold Federal Funds From States Expanding Vote-By-Mail – A Growing Menace to Federalism & Separation Of Powers?
Weasel Zippers: Virus Lockdown Rioting In Chile, Martial Law Imposed, also, Kayleigh McEneny Levels Susan Rice Over Flynn Actions
Mark Steyn: The Woman Who Saved An Innocent Man

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Category: Linkagery

We Made It

Posted on | May 20, 2020 | 2 Comments

(Click photo to see full-size)

When we got to Hedgesville, we turned right and the GPS on Kirby’s phone said, “Continue west on West Virginia 9 for four miles.”

“Four miles!” my brother exclaimed.

What the heck had gotten into my head, to bring us so far out into the boondocks of Berkeley County, W.Va.? I blame Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner, who reported this week that the Longbranch Saloon and Grill in Hedgesville was actually serving beer. Sitting down in a bar and ordering a beer isn’t something you would normally think of as a special experience, but these are not normal times. After two months of COVID-19 lockdown, I was craving it. As soon as I saw Tim’s article, I resolved to follow up on his scoop and, also, do my part to help stimulate the economy. It was my duty as a patriotic American.

So I rattled the tip jar and we hit the road, Kirby driving because he is, after all, a professional driver. We got off I-81 at the Spring Mills exit and turned right, headed toward Hedgesville. I had glanced briefly at Google Maps and had a general idea that the Longbranch was out in the sticks, but how far out in the sticks it was didn’t fully register until we made that right turn at Hedgesville. “Four miles!”

Kirby began humming “Dueling Banjos” and making Deliverance jokes, which is very unkind, promoting harmful stereotypes of the Appalachian-American community. But the SPLC has never objected to hillbilly jokes, so I suppose it’s OK. Westward we rolled, and Kirby said, “Now I don’t want to hear your bitching about not having a signal.” But my phone still showed a connection until, after the appointed four miles, we turned left onto Baxter Road, at which point Kirby’s phone said, “GPS signal lost.”

Fortunately, it was only another mile to the Longbranch, and after a few winding curves, there it was on the right side of the road. So I got out of the car, walked up to the front door and . . . locked.

What? Had Tim lied to me? Then I remembered what Ace had said about Carney being one of those spineless #NeverTrump cucks, and I was just about ready to believe it. We’d driven a long way for this, however, and I wasn’t giving up so easy. So I walked around to the side of the building and heard voices coming from inside. Grabbing the knob on the side door, I turned and . . . open!

Looking inside, I saw this was the back of the kitchen, not an entrance for customers. “Hello? Anybody home?”

No answer. But I headed around back, trying to see if there was anyone around, and was just about to give up when a guy came out of the kitchen.

“Can I help you?”

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

+ – + – + – + – +

Wanted to give readers the first half of the story, because you hit the freaking tip jar, but right now I’m on deadline for a column tomorrow for The American Spectator, a column that has nothing to do with taverns in West Virginia, so in the morning, I’ll pick this up where I left off.

UPDATE: Click here for Part Two of the story.



 

Category: Shoe Leather Fund, West Virginia

The Big Yellow Button Has Returned

Posted on | May 20, 2020 | 3 Comments

 

Occasionally, when the need arises to rattle the tip jar, I supersize the PayPal contribution button, and today is such an occasion.

You see, we’ve been on COVID-19 lockdown here for more than two months, which means I haven’t been able to go out and enjoy a cold malt beverage since mid-March. And then I learned from investigative journalist Tim Carney that such an establishment is open within a 45-minute drive of my Undisclosed Location. This information made me very thirsty, for some reason. Obviously, I must engage in some old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting to follow up on Tim’s scoop.

IYKWIMAITYD.

The Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

Category: Shoe Leather Fund

‘Biological Leninism’

Posted on | May 20, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

Why has Stacey Abrams become a darling of the Democratic Party? Why is an otherwise obscure former state legislator a “rising star,” when her only accomplishment was (a) losing a gubernatorial election by more than 50,000 votes and (b) blaming her defeat on racist “suppression”?

A friend tipped me to one possible explanation — “Biological Leninism”:

So again, the genius of Leninism was in building a ruling class from scratch and making it cohesive by explicitly choosing people from low-status groups, ensuring they would be loyal to the party given they had much to lose. . . .
If you live in a free society, and your status is determined by your natural performance; then it follows that to build a cohesive Leninist ruling class you need to recruit those who have natural low-status. . . .
There’s a reason why there’s so many evil fat women in government. Where else would they be if government didn’t want them? They have nothing going on for them, except their membership in the Democratic party machine. The party gives them all they have, the same way the Communist party had given everything to that average peasant kid who became a middling bureaucrat in Moscow.

An interesting theory. Probably racist — “RAAAAACIST!” — but interesting. It may also explain why the wretched Gretchen Whitmer is on Joe Biden’s vice-presidential short list. No sane person would vote for her, but insanity has become a pandemic among Democrats.



 

Category: Democrats, Racism

Chelsey Coyer: American Hero

Posted on | May 20, 2020 | Comments Off on Chelsey Coyer: American Hero

 

Video of a news report about the reopening of a Texas beach has gone viral. The annual party on Bolivar Peninsula — “Go Topless Jeep Weekend” — was covered by Jordan James of Beaumont’s KBMT-TV, who managed to keep a straight face while interviewing Chelsey Coyer:

“We been in quarantine and like, I need to get out and party. Whoo!”

What made this an instant classic was when Chelsey said, “Wash them hands for 20 seconds and keep them clean with the Germ-X — totally!”

 

Now, it seems a bit cruel to point out that Chelsey apparently didn’t spend her time in quarantine riding her Peloton bike, nibbling on veggies. No, she’s a biscuits-and-gravy girl if ever I saw one. And if you watch the video, you’ll see lots of biscuits-and-gravy folks on the beach.

Say what you will about Texans, they eat good, and are evidently immune to fat-shaming. Everything really is bigger in Texas, I reckon.

You can’t keep Texans in quarantine forever, bless their hearts.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

UPDATE: This event — “Go Topless Jeep Weekend” — has grown increasingly rowdy. Last year, things got so out of control that some residents started a petition to ban the event. By the way, watching the news coverage, you’ll see that Bolivar Peninsula (named for 19th-century South American leader Simon Bolivar) is pronounced “BAH-luh-vur” by locals, whereas I would have pronounced it “BOE-luh-vahr.”

This issue of local pronunciation is common throughout the South, where names derived from Latin languages are given an Anglicized pronunciation. If you are a student of military history, for example, you know that the Georgia town of Resaca was named for Resaca de la Palma, scene of an America victory in the Mexican War. Resaca, Georgia, was the site of a 1864 Civil War battle and, reading about the battle in history books, I assumed the town name was pronounced “Ruh-SAH-cuh,” but when I moved to Gordon County as a sports editor in the late 1980s, I discovered that the locals pronounce it “Ruh-SACK-uh.” Similarly, you will find the locals in Lafayette, Georgia, pronouncing their town’s name with the emphasis on the second syllable, which isn’t how the French officer pronounced his name. Oh, and Taliaferro County, Georgia? Locals pronounced that as “Tolliver.”



 

Category: Texas

In The Mailbox: 05.19.20

Posted on | May 19, 2020 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Because Keeping Violent Criminals In Prison Is Unfair
EBL: Ken Osmond, RIP
Twitchy: Watch The Evolution As Christina Wilkie Has A Dawning Awareness Over New Donald Trump “News” Site
Louder With Crowder: MD Restaurant Has Social Distancing Solution – Bumper Tables, also, Hey Democrats, We Found The Real Nazis (It’s You)
Vox Popoli: Targeting Big Tech, also, Neil Gaiman Is A Massive Prick

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Killing Off The Soy Boys
American Conservative: Architects Of American Carnage
American Greatness: De Blasio Whines NYC Needs Billions Of Fed $ Or City “Won’t Come Back”, also, Flynn’s Attorney Seeks Order From Appeals Court
American Power: Red China & The Future Of The Dollar
American Thinker: Media In Panic Mode Over Latest Presidential Polls
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Risk Management News
Babalu Blog: Cuban State Security Arrests Dissident For Taking Pics Of Long Lines Outside Havana Store
Baldilocks: Trump, Hydroxychloroquine, & Hope
BattleSwarm: The Chieftain Talks About His Time In An M1 Abrams, also, Texas Now Running At 25-50% Freedom
Cafe Hayek: Quotation Of The Day
Da Tech Guy: Report From Louisiana – Closing The Classroom, also, The Golden Age Of Jounalism Wasn’t So Golden
Don Surber: Cavuto Takes The Vapors
First Street Journal: Justin Amash Quits Presidential Race After Figuring Out Something Everybody Else Knew
The Geller Report: CA Gov Newsom To Fire Police, Firemen & Medicos While Giving Millions To Illegals, also, New Damning Audio – Biden Pressuring Ukrainian President Poroshenko
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, The Cosmic Reef
Hollywood In Toto: Confessions Of A Right-Wing Film Critic, also, Pop Culture Recoils As Trumps Take Over
JustOneMinute: If They Don’t Indict, It’s Alright!
Legal Insurrection: Susan Rice’s Consciousness Of Guilt, also, Trump Gives WHO 30 Days To “Commit To Major Substantive Improvements” Or Lose Funding
The PanAm Post: Maduro’s Frontman Coordinates Gold Payments From Venezuela To Iran, also, How To Unfreeze The Post-Pandemic Economy
Power Line: Explosive Rice Memo Declassified, also, Was It Something I Asked?
Shark Tank: Marco Rubio Appointed Chairman Of Senate Intel Committee
Shot In The Dark: Densely Packed People
STUMP: MoneyPalooza Monstrosity! Looking At The Multiemployer Plan Provisions
The Political Hat: Masks & Moronicity
This Ain’t Hell: US Army Compared To Others – The Infographics Show, also,  The Flu Vs. COVID-19
Victory Girls: State AGs File Brief Supporting Dismissal Of Flynn Case
Volokh Conspiracy: What Is And Should Be The Role Of Administrative Agencies In Determining Constitutional Norms?
Weasel Zippers: House Democrats Vote To Give Illegals $16 Billion In Stimulus Checks, also, De Blasio Follows Through On Threat To Target Jews
Megan McArdle: We’re All Poorer Now; Nothing The Government Does Can Fix That
Mark Steyn: Hold The Mayo, also, The Rise Of The Public Health Mandarins

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Category: Linkagery

An Experiment That Failed

Posted on | May 19, 2020 | 3 Comments

 

Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by . . .

Will the people who sold us all that Sixties “peace and love” business ever admit that the road we’re traveling does not lead to Utopia? Is there nothing that can cause them to look back and say to themselves, “Y’know, everything was actually better when Eisenhower was president”?

In 1988, when Ronald Reagan was still president and MTV still played music videos, rock guitarist Melissa Etheridge was recording a video for her song, “Bring Me Some Water,” when she met Julie Cypher, who was working on the production crew. At the time, Etheridge was not yet “out” as a lesbian, and Cypher was married to actor Lou Diamond Phillips, who had recently soared to stardom in the 1987 Richie Valens biopic La Bamba. Nevertheless, a romantic affair commenced. Cypher divorced her husband and became Etheridge’s girlfriend. The celebrity couple officially “came out” together in 1993. Cypher gave birth to a daughter, Bailey, in 1997, and in 1998, a son Beckett was born. Both children were conceived via artificial insemination, and there was widespread public speculation as to the sperm donor, with the actor Brad Pitt being one of those rumored to have been the couple’s semen supplier.

To universal surprise, in a Rolling Stone cover story in February 2000, it was revealed that the sperm donor was David Crosby, the singer whose work with the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had defined the folk-rock sound of the 1960s and 70s. Why, of all people, would anyone choose this portly middle-aged drug addict as a sperm donor?

Did I mention that David Crosby was so damaged by his decades of substance abuse he had to undergo a liver transplant in 1994? But bad decision-making was more or less baked into the cake of the Etheridge-Cypher relationship. Mere months after being featured on the cover of the Rolling Stone as a sort of ideal of postmodern family life, the couple split. Cypher decided she wasn’t actually a lesbian and, four years after leaving Etheridge, she married a man. Etheridge, meanwhile, hooked up with Tammy Lynn Michaels who, in 2006, gave birth to twins, conceived with an anonymous sperm donor, but Etheridge and Michaels split in 2010, and Etheridge then moved on to marry Linda Wallem.

Well, what about the kids?

Melissa Etheridge has paid tribute to her son Beckett Cypher who has died following a battle with opioid addiction, aged 21.
Cypher, son to US grammy-winning star Etheridge and her former partner Julie Cypher, died on Wednesday.
Etheridge, best known for songs ‘Ain’t It Heavy’ and ‘Come To My Window,’ announced the news on her social media.
The 58 year-old wrote on Twitter: “My son Beckett, who was just 21, struggled to overcome his addiction and finally succumbed to it today.
“He will be missed by those who loved him, his family and friends.
“My heart is broken. I am grateful for those who have reached out with condolences and I feel their love and sincere grief.
“We struggle with what else we could have done to save him, and in the end we know he is out of the pain now.”

What sort of “pain” was Beckett Cypher in? Spoiled rich kid pain:

Melissa Etheridge’s son Beckett spent his final two months ‘on a bender’ in the luxury $3,500-a-month Denver apartment where he was found dead last week, DailyMailTV can reveal.
An exclusive DailyMailTV video shot nine weeks ago shows Beckett, who was 21, inside the stylish one-bedroom apartment shortly after he moved in.
Beckett, who is seen at the home with an unidentified friend, appeared to be high as he filmed himself pulling poses in the mirror and showing off his new space.
Another video shows him taking a hit of an unidentified substance from a large bong while a third includes footage of the large collection of modified guns he amassed.
Friends said Beckett often posted videos to social media of himself drinking ‘lean’ — a highly intoxicating mixture of codeine cough syrup and Sprite, which is also known as ‘purple drank’.
In addition to that, he was known for his regular use of the opioids Xanax and Percocet and, according to a friend who knew him from his time in Snow Mass, Colorado, was notorious for knocking on his neighbors’ doors late at night to ask for baking soda which can be used to turn cocaine into smokable crack.
Fishing guide Joe Kayafas, 38, who had been friends with Beckett for three years, told DailyMailTV: ‘I’ve known him since he came [to Snow Mass]. I don’t know if he was in college much at all — he was an animal.
‘He takes after his dad [singer David Crosby who is notorious for his drug use]. I’ve never seen people do that much drugs.
‘He did everything. He once showed me a bag with a thousand Xanax and he was like, you want some?
‘I like to party but I’m not into things like that. He was always on something pretty much.’ . . .
But according to Kayafas, drugs became all-consuming for Beckett and he became notorious in Snow Mass for the prodigious quantities he took — on several occasions taking an eight-ball of cocaine, which is three grams of the drug, every day for five days in a row.
He said: ‘I would just be watching him do lines of coke – one after another, after another, after another.
‘Not like most people when they party – it’s a social thing. But he was like hammer down. That’s all he really did: snowboarding and drugs, play video games and just sit there and zone out.’
Kayafas added: ‘I’ve never known him to do dope [heroin] or shoot anything. He was about pills and smoking stuff, eating, drinking or whatever.
‘I’ve seen him with Percocets which is another opioid. He would make cocktails — do coke and Xanax together. Scary shit. Uppers and downers, speedballing… That’s not good for you.
‘He would do an eight-ball of cocaine for himself every night of the week for five days and he would just keep buying.
‘I know people who sell drugs and they would be like, dude, he hits me up all the time.’ . . .
Beckett . . . lived a nomadic existence in his last two years, pinging between Colorado, Montana and Etheridge’s home in California.
Kayafas said much of his time was spent in hotels drinking lean, often accompanied by ‘call girls and random dudes’ or with Etheridge.
Jobs would come and go and he went through three trucks in three years — one of which was wrecked in a crash in Los Angeles in 2018.
His final two months were spent in Denver where according to Kayafas, he made money by dabbling in bitcoin trading.

A complete waste of life. One hesitates to blame this on Beckett’s dysfunctional family background, when it’s so much easier to blame the genetic legacy of notorious druggie sperm donor David Crosby. At any rate, all that Sixties hippie peace-and-love business has failed again. The Woodstock generation did not teach their children well, so to speak.



 

Category: Celebrities, Music

The Battle of Atillis Gym

Posted on | May 19, 2020 | 1 Comment

 

This may go down in history books as the 21st-century Concord Bridge:

A few hours after workouts began Monday morning at New Jersey’s Atilis Gym — which is making national headlines for its early reopening in defiance of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s coronavirus shutdown order — police showed up outside the Bellmawr business.
What happened next?
The large group of people outside the gym were angry and hostile, likely believing the officers showed up to shut down the gym, hand out tickets, or even make arrests. Amid the mostly unintelligible hollering, a few phrases rang out clearly:

“You have the right to refuse unconstitutional orders!”
“Freedom!”
“You swore an oath to protect our rights!”

Soon enough the crowd quieted down enough so that one of the officers was able to address them.
“We are and we’re only here for everybody’s safety today,” the officer began. “We planned for the worst, hoped for the best, and it seems like that’s what we have out here today. Formally, you are all in violation of the executive order.”
Then came the officer’s surprising follow-up statement: “On that note, have a good day. Everybody be safe.”

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

In other COVID-19 news, President Trump revealed he has been taking hydroxychloroquine as a precaution, and the media freaked out:

President Donald Trump on Monday confirmed at the White House that he was taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc as preventatives against the coronavirus.
“I happen to be taking it. I’m taking it. Hydroxychloroquine. Right now, yeah,” he said.
Trump said that he had been taking the medicine for about a week and a half.
“I’m taking the two, the zinc and the hydroxy, and all I can tell you is, so far I seem to be ok,” Trump said.
He said that a doctor and many others had sent him positive letters about the effectiveness of the drug.
“I’ve heard a lot of good stories and if it is not good, I will tell you right,” he said. “I’m not going to get hurt by it.”
The president spoke to reporters about the drug on Monday afternoon at a White House roundtable with restaurant owners.
“I’m still here,” he said, saying that he had “zero symptoms” from the drug or the virus.

Predictably, CNN gave air time to Trump’s enemies to tell lies:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to President Trump as “morbidly obese” during an appearance Monday night on CNN and said he shouldn’t be taking hydroxychloroquine to stave off coronavirus.
Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, made the remark in an appearance on “Anderson Cooper 360” during which she was asked about Mr. Trump’s taking the drug, which he’d revealed earlier in the day.
She said taking that drug was not a good idea for the president because of his “age group and in his, shall we say, weight group,” which she described as “morbidly obese.”
The 80-year-old speaker, who is second in the presidential succession line behind Vice President Mike Pence, said she would “rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists.”
To be considered “morbidly obese,” a technical term, a person would have to be 100 pounds over his ideal body weight and have a BMI of 40 or more, or 35 or more if he also has obesity-related health conditions, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
Those conditions would not seem to apply to Mr. Trump.
His body-mass index, according to a 2019 medical examination, is 30.4, which is considered “obese,” but not morbidly so.
At 6-foot-3, his 243-pound weight isn’t close to 100 pounds too much, and the same physical put him in “very good health overall” with a resting pulse rate of 70 and a blood pressure reading of 118/80 — all three figures well within normal range.

Ask around and see how many people over 60 are in such excellent health as President Trump. If he’s not as lean as a marathon runner, perhaps it’s because he has been too busy to go jogging lately. As to the Speaker’s assertion that hydroxychloroquine has “not been approved by scientists,” (a) the drug has been commonly prescribed for more than 70 years, and (b) many health-care workers, including nurses and doctors, are doing exactly what Trump is doing, using the hydroxy/zinc combination as preventative medicine during the pandemic. Also, as many people pointed out, if Trump is “morbidly obese,” what is Stacey Abrams?




 

Category: Donald Trump, Health Care, New Jersey
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