The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 05.23.19 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | May 24, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I’m going to be attending Balticon with friends I haven’t seen in a couple of years this weekend, so the linkagery may be sparse, delayed, or possibly even nonexistent, but we’ll see how my work ethic holds up.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Cyber Attacks Against Infrastructure – The New Battlefield
EBL: The End Of May?
Twitchy: Twitter Permanently Bans Krassenstein Brothers For Operating Fake Accounts, Purchasing Fake Interactions
Louder With Crowder: You Cannot Be Pro-Science And Pro-Abortion

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Supply & Demand Of Wage Growth
American Greatness: Federal Rats Are Fleeing The Sinking Collusion Ship
American Power: Theresa May Faces Pressure To Resign After Push For Second Brexit Referendum
American Thinker: The Democrats’ Alien Voting Strategy
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Stupid Idea News
Babalu Blog: The Cubanization Of Venezuela, also, Neglected School Building Collapses In Cuba, Five Kids Injured
BattleSwarm: Creepy Porn Lawyer Even Creepier
CDR Salamander: China Shows A Little Leg, also, Diversity Thursday
Da Tech Guy: Corporatism, Capitalism, & The Constitution, also, Mercy Lives Here
Don Surber: Americans Want The FBI Investigated
Dustbury: Remember Shopping?
The Geller Report: Watch Ilhan Omar Attack Conservative Christians On The House Floor, also, UK Muslim Parents Pelt LGBT Activists With Eggs
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, First Amendment News
Hollywood In Toto: Indy’s Last Crusade And The Search For A Higher Power
Joe For America: Top Democrat Elijah Cummings & Wife Involved In Pay-For-Play Scandal
JustOneMinute: They Did NOT Dazzle Us With Science!
Legal Insurrection: LA Wasting Money On Homeless Camp Cleanups, also, India’s Modi Headed For Landslide Victory
The PanAm Post: Key Chavista Reveals Electoral Fraud That Kept Maduro In Power, also, The Game Of Thrones Utopia
Power Line: Global Warming – It Can Do Anything! also, Will The Media Ever Pay A Price For Its Irresponsibility?
Shot In The Dark: Why Trump Will Win In 2020, Exhibit AOC-449
This Ain’t Hell: If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Could Ride, also, So The Cold War Isn’t Really Over Yet?
Victory Girls: Typhus, Sky-High Trash Plague Los Angeles
Volokh Conspiracy: Washington Supremes Rule States May Punish “Faithless Electors”
Weasel Zippers: Flashback – Media Drooling Over Michael Avenatti As “Savior Of The Republic”, also, Judge Rules To Unseal Records In Smollett Case
Mark Steyn: Talibanny Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree, also, Declassify Everything, Mr. President!


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Category: Linkagery

Conflicting Signals

Posted on | May 23, 2019 | 1 Comment

David Solway on the feminist education agenda for boys:

Recently, my wife Janice posted a video in her Fiamengo File series about an Ottawa school, Brookfield High, that had launched a ManUp campaign, complete with posters targeting males as prone to evil and females as innocent victims. “Judging from the displays,” she states, “Brookfield High goes out of its way to make girls feel welcome through positive messaging; boys, in contrast, are set apart to be lectured and shamed about male evil.”

This demonization of masculinity conflicts with the reality that any boy can see with his own two eyes: The cutest girls in school are attracted to the most masculine boys, and masculine not just in terms of physical traits, but also in terms of personality traits — confidence, assertiveness, “swagger.” Here we see a problem with what Rational Male author Rollo Tomassi calls the feminine-primary social order. Every observant man knows that there is a yawning chasm between (a) what women say they value most in a man and (b) the kind of man women actually go for. Listen to what women say, and you’d think they are magnetically attracted to “sensitive” guys. Watch what women actually do, and you can see that women obviously don’t actually care about “sensitivity.” Women want men who are tall and muscular and, ceteris parabus, rich, although no amount of money is going to make a short chubby guy sexy. As for the claim that women go for “sensitive” guys, anyone with two eyes and a brain knows this is nonsense. You don’t see throngs of lovestruck college girls chasing after guys who major in sociology or English literature (unless, of course, these guys are also tall, muscular and rich). No, it’s the jocks and frat boys who get the best action on campus, and if you pay attention to the choices women make, you’ll begin to suspect that their professed preference for “sensitive” men is the exact opposite of truth. That girl who was lecturing you about your need to be more “sensitive” will, with surprising regularity, end up falling head-over-heels for some selfish creep or dimwit brute who can’t even spell the word “sensitivity.”

In the same way that individual women often say one thing and do the opposite, so also will the educational system in a feminine-primary social order give confusing and misleading messages to boys and young men about how they should behave. Boys are bombarded with anti-male messages that label masculine behavior “toxic,” but they can see with their own eyes that women prefer masculine men, even the “toxic” ones! The gangster hoodlum is seldom without female companionship and, if he’s not killed by his gang’s rivals, the 25-year-old hoodlum will probably have sired three or four offspring with various girlfriends during the intervals between his jail sentences. This is relevant to the situation at Brookfield High School that caught Janice Fiamengo’s attention because, as her husband points out, there were comments on her video from students and former students at the school: “Brookfield was a horrible school . . . The school was filled with gang members.” In other words, the boys who caused trouble at Brookfield were not the kind of boys who were likely to be reformed by posters in the hallways.

You know what a useful masculine trait is? Stoicism, particularly as manifested in the ability to maintain a tactful silence. The wise young man, when confronted by obviously false messages from school administrators, will say nothing. He will follow the rules, and avoid drawing attention to himself by openly mocking the school’s official propaganda, but he will resist the pressure to parrot these false messages. He will not become one of the castrato choirboys singing this feminist tune, but instead will silently carry on about his business, as if he doesn’t even notice the tune they’re singing.

“What’s up with Josh?” his friends may ask when they notice him sitting quietly, reading a book by Sun Tzu or Machiavelli. He is intelligent and observant, and not generally shy about expressing himself, but he knows when to keep his mouth shut, and he also knows this: When your enemy seeks to provoke you, you should refuse to be provoked. Never permit the enemy to draw you into battle on a field of his own choosing, at the time that best suits him. Your enemy would not seek to provoke you into an attack here and now, if he did not think conditions were favorable to him.

Applying the maxims of military strategy to a situation like this anti-male propaganda campaign at Brookfield High, let’s make one thing clear: Feminists knew that boys would feel insulted by these hallway posters — that was the intended purpose, to insult boys. If you study feminist rhetoric, as I have, you realize that whenever you see a woman publicly declaiming against misogyny, toxic masculinity, rape culture, etc., she knows full well that men find this rhetoric insulting. Her anti-male rant on social media is intended to provoke hostile reactions from men, to make them lash out and say stupid things she can then screen-cap and show her feminist colleagues as evidence of male inferiority.

Don’t be that guy. Never argue with a feminist. Never let yourself be provoked into a hasty reaction that will discredit you (and do nothing to persuade her she’s wrong). Learn to remain silent in the face of such deliberate provocations, especially in any situation where your response could be used as a weapon against you. Because feminists now exercise hegemonic authority in our educational institutions, you can never hope to “win” an argument with a feminist on campus. Therefore, you should instead strive to avoid feminists on campus and, if you cannot completely ignore them, practice silent observation. If you’re in class and the discussion turns to some topic (e.g., abortion) where feminists feel obliged to comment, do not participate in the discussion, but watch and listen, making a mental checklist of your female classmates who are most vocal in expressing feminist ideology. These are women to be avoided. Never speak to feminists. Never associate with them. Ostracize them and advise your trusted friends to avoid them as well.

Feminism is a sort of incurable mental virus, causing women to develop a destructive rage toward males. Any woman exhibiting symptoms of this disorder should be socially quarantined. The young man who thinks it safe to interact with feminists, who believes they can be persuaded by rational argument, will become a target of destruction.



 

Category: The Red Pill

In The Mailbox: 05.23.19 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | May 23, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #628
EBL: Chernobyl – A Review
Twitchy: Sarah Sanders Reiterates Trump’s Message That He Won’t Work With Democrats Until Investigations End
Louder With Crowder: Ted Nugent – Raw, Unfiltered, And HIlarious!

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Cult Of Nice
American Greatness: A Government Coup By NASA’s Bureaucracy, also, Obama’s Other Intelligence Operation
American Power: Trump Walks Out On Pelosi & Schumer
American Thinker: Biden & The Millenials
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Deep State Holdovers Purge US Agency For Global Media Of Anti-Soros, Anti-Communist Trump Supporters
BattleSwarm: Democrats All In On Tranny Agenda
CDR Salamander: The Story Of The Afghanistan Graphs
Da Tech Guy: You Will Be Made Accountable For Your Voting Choices, also, The University Weapons System & Other Thoughts Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Cauliflower Is Too White For Democrats
Dustbury: Hard Water
First Street Journal: NYT Editors – The Peasants Are Revolting
The Geller Report: UK Orthodox Jews Mobilize For Tommy Robinson, also, NV Passes Bill To Give State’s Electoral Votes To Popular Vote Winner
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Jupiter’s Magnetic Field
Hollywood In Toto:  CAIR Slams Release of Aladdin In Age Of Trump
Joe For America: NM Governor Pulls National Guard From Border, Drug Shipments Surge 1700%
JustOneMinute: Read His Lips – No New Tax Returns
Legal Insurrection: Another Narrative Busted – Record Number Of Foster Children Adopted In Alabama, also, Feel The Bern – Gallup Poll Finds 40% Of Americans Support Socialism
Michelle Malkin: DUH! HUD Housing Should Put Americans First
The PanAm Post: Top FARC Leader Says It Was A Mistake To Lay Down Arms
Power Line: Impeachment Mania, also, Transformative Technology Needed?
Shot In The Dark: “Earthers”
The Political Hat: Rise Of The Urban Rat Overlords – NY, LA, & San Francisco
This Ain’t Hell: The VA Gets One Right. Sorta. also, The Other Stolen Valor
Victory Girls: American Taliban John Walker Lindh To Walk Free
Volokh Conspiracy: Court Throws Out Lawsuit Against Tor For Providing Anonymous Routing
Weasel Zippers: Republican Google Engineer Writes Open Letter About Company’s “Outrage Mobs” & “Witch Hunts” To Shut Down Conservative Thought, also, 70% Of Democrats Say Socialism Would Be Good For America
Megan McArdle: Here’s Why You shouldn’t Expect Impeachment Any Time Soon
Mark Steyn: Honey Traps & Money Traps, also, Investigation Without End

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Category: Linkagery

Sweet (Pro-Life) Home Alabama

Posted on | May 22, 2019 | 1 Comment

Professor Glenn Reynolds linked to my post examining the feminist rage over the Alabama law restricting abortion. In the comments, one reader drew attention to how few abortions are actually performed in Alabama — 6,063 in 2017, 6642 in 2016, 5899 in 2015. So, in a state with a population of 4.9 million, only about 6,000 abortions are performed annually. There are roughly 900,000 females of child-bearing age (15-44) in Alabama, so that each year, more than 99% of Alabama women don’t get abortions. Even if you think of the problem in terms of cumulative risk — i.e., the chance of any woman having an abortion at any time in her life — the abortion numbers are still very low in Alabama.

There are more than a million abortions a year in the United States, and the National Abortion Federation claims that about 35% of American women will have an abortion in their lifetime, but it seems obvious that Alabama’s women are not a significant contributor to that grisly statistic.

Numbers matter in politics. Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation indicate that the abortion rates are highest in New York (23 per 1,000 women ages 15-44 annually), and a few other liberal states (Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, etc.), while the abortion rate in Alabama (6 per 1,000) is some 70% lower than for women in New York. While it may be true that more than a third of U.S. women will have abortions in their lifetimes, that number is likely somewhere around 10% in Alabama.

In other words, about 90% of Alabama women have never had an abortion and never will. Actual difference between the behavior of women in different states — the more rural South versus the more urban North — reflect not only differences in socioeconomic conditions, but also differences in cultural attitudes. The South is more religious than the North, and this may explain a lot:

Alabama’s governor said Monday the new abortion ban she recently signed into law reflects the high value residents place on the “sanctity of life,” adding she doesn’t expect any fallout from the controversial measure on tourism or business recruitment.
Gov. Kay Ivey last week approved the most stringent abortion law in the nation— making performing an abortion a felony in nearly all cases unless necessary for the mother’s health. The law provides no exception for rape and incest. Asked about criticism the state has received— particularly over the lack of an exception for rape and incest— the Republican governor noted the bill was overwhelmingly approved by the Alabama Legislature without the exceptions.
“The Legislature has spoken,” she said. “It underscores the sanctity of life the people of Alabama value so highly.”

The governor of Alabama is a woman — a pro-life Republican woman. Liberal women elsewhere in the country, including journalists in New York and Washington, D.C., may find it mind-boggling that a woman would sign Alabama’s legislation and defend the law, but life in small-town Alabama isn’t life in Brooklyn or Dupont Circle. Numbers matter, culture matters, and the pro-abortion culture in liberal states has real consequences. Consider that the total fertility rate (TFR, average lifetime births per woman) in Alabama was 1.82 in 2017, whereas the TFR in New York was 1.65 and TFR in Massachusetts was 1.51. This means that Alabama women average about 10% more babies than New York women, and about 20% more babies than Massachusetts women.

Last week, it was reported that the U.S. birth rate is the lowest in more than 30 years, and the Associated Press quoted an expert:

If trends continue, experts said, the U.S. can expect labor shortages including in elder care when aging baby boomers need the most support.
“I keep expecting to see the birth rates go up and then they don’t,” said demographer Kenneth M. Johnson of University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy.
He estimates 5.7 million babies would have been born in the past decade if fertility rates hadn’t fallen from pre-recession levels.
“That’s a lot of empty kindergarten rooms,” said Johnson . . .

If you are a young person planning a career as a teacher, chances are you’ll have trouble finding work in Massachusetts or New York, and the scarcity of children being born in these liberal states may explain why Democrats support illegal immigration. New York needs to import people to substitute for the children liberal women aren’t having, whereas people in conservative states like Alabama, with higher birth rates, perceive illegal immigration as a threat to their own offspring.



 

Category: Abortion, Alabama, Culture

Guess Who Reviewed ‘Game of Thrones’ Finale for Salon-dot-Com?

Posted on | May 21, 2019 | 2 Comments

 

Did you guess Amanda Marcotte? Yes, while everyone else was grumbling about the rushed and illogical wrap-up of the HBO medieval fantasy, everybody’s least-favorite feminist was proclaiming it “nearly perfect.” According to Ms. Marcotte, Game of Thrones was successful because it rejected the “repressive values” of “chivalric tradition,” which had previously been used by “reactionary writers and thinkers . . . to justify their hostility to social progress and change”:

These chivalric tropes, which persist in both genre stories and high literature, are what the kids these days would call problematic. They equate able-bodiedness, masculinity and having the “right” bloodline to morality, and justify a might-makes-right attitude towards leadership. It’s not a surprise that medieval fantasy and fantasies about medieval society have long had a pull on the reactionary mind and supplied images and ideas that motivate actual fascists.

Marcotte pronounces Sansa Stark “the Nancy Pelosi of Westeros,” apparently intending that as a compliment. Anyway, the reason I was checking Salon-dot-com today was that it was reported last week the left-wing site has been sold to tech entrepreneurs Chris Richmond and Drew Schoentrup for a nominal price of $5 million. I say “nominal price,” because terms of “the deal would only require a $550,000 payment at closing. It said $100,000 would go to an escrow account and $500,000 was already paid as a deposit. The remaining $3.85 million would be a promissory note payable in two installments over two years.”

When Salon-dot-com went public in 1999, it was valued at $107 million, which means the publication has been losing $5 million a year, on average, for the past two decades. In other words, it was just a charity operation, a way for rich liberals to create “journalism” jobs for otherwise unemployable writers. For many years, their biggest “name” writer was Joan Walsh, who was editor-in-chief before she exited in 2015, a couple of years before she got canned by MSNBC. But the site has never done much in the way of actual news, and its greatest notoriety was from publishing Todd Nickerson’s pro-pedophilia arguments, which it subsequently deleted about the time the Left started denouncing Milo Yiannopoulos for making similar arguments.

More recently, Salon-dot-com published a list of “25 conservatives actually worth following on Twitter,” i.e., RINOs and other worthless anti-Trump feebs like Tim Miller and Christian Vanderbrouk.

How long will Salon-dot-com continue publishing? If their “burn rate” has been $5 million a year, which also happened to be the nominal sale price, doesn’t it seem likely that whatever staff remains at the site will be cut back sharply? Will Amanda Marcotte’s byline continue appearing?



 

Category: Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 05.21.19

Posted on | May 21, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.21.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: I Suppose This Father Is An Example Of Toxic Masculinity
EBL: Comey & Lynch Accuse Each Other Of Lying
Twitchy: Ed Krassenstein Tweets Pic Comparing Women To Guns, It Backfires Badly
Louder With Crowder: Dunkin Blasts Starbucks’ Politics – We Just Want To Sell You Coffee

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Pitfalls Of Casual Sex
American Greatness: Why Did Obama Allow Comey To Brief Trump On The Russian Prostitute Story?
American Thinker: What Promise-Keeping Looks Like
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Random Tidbits News
Babalu Blog: Cuban-American Family Names Spain’s Melia In Lawsuit Over Stolen Cuban Hotel
BattleSwarm: Illegal Alien Serial Killer Murders 11 Texans
CDR Salamander: OK, SECNAV, Show Us The Money
Da Tech Guy: Dem Rep Pramila Jayapal On Being A Democrat – No Faithful Catholic Need Apply, also, Ageism – The Forgotten Form Of Discrimination
Don Surber: Obama Empowered Pence
Dustbury: We Will Control The Horizontal
First Street Journal: Stanley Black & Decker Bringing Jobs Back To America
The Geller Report: Maryland School Fails Student For Refusing To Recite Islamic Prayer, also, SGT Derrick Miller Released From Leavenworth After Wrongful Imprisonment
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, When Labour Doesn’t Work
Hollywood In Toto: Hollywood, Media Collude To Belittle Meghan McCain
Joe For America: Never-Trump Romney Says He Read The Whole Mueller Report, No Evidence Of Obstruction
JustOneMinute: ESPN – Back To Sports
Legal Insurrection: Loretta Lynch Denies Telling Comey To Call Hillary Investigation A “Matter”, also, Gibson’s Bakery Vs. Oberlin College Trial Day 7
The PanAm Post: Maduro Turning Oil Tankers Into Warships To Evade US Blockade, also, If A Military Intervention Happened In Venezuela, What Would Happen The Next Day?
Power Line: Comey Vs. The World, also, Emails Show Deep State Conspiring Against Trump
Shot In The Dark: Shot In The Dark – Today’s News, Five Months Ago
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – No, Really, Surprise Money!
The Political Hat: The Irrational Animus Of Biological Reality
This Ain’t Hell: Air Guardsman Posed As CIA Agent, also, Straightening The Record
Victory Girls: AG Barr Tells Critics My Job Is To Protect The Presidency, Not The Officeholder
Volokh Conspiracy: Restrictions On Signs On Residential Property Violates First Amendment
Weasel Zippers: Pete Buttigieg Pitches Four Tax Hikes During Town Hall, also, Occasional Cortex Says Growing Cauliflower Is “Colonial Approach” To Vegetables
Mark Steyn: Cry “Treason” Again, also, Iconed Out

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 05.20.19

Posted on | May 20, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Don’t Believe The Polls – Australian Edition
EBL: Aussie Conservatives Win Election, Rejecting Climate Hysteria
Twitchy: Eric Swalwell Helps The Washington Free Beacon Make The Case Against Him Being POTUS
Louder With Crowder: Pete Buttigieg Thinks We Should Stop Honoring Thomas Jefferson

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Greens Sink Labor, also, Podcast #108 – The Dead Cat Episode
American Greatness: How The FBI Broke The Rules Using Christopher Steele, also, He Did It, Not Me!
American Power: Battleground Pennsylvania, also, India’s Untouchables
American Thinker: The Media At Their Lowest, also, Democrats – America’s Original Hate Group
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: After Sixty Years Of Socialism In Cuba, Once Majestic Havana Is Ruined, also, With “Alternative Foods” Running Low, Cuba’s Socialist Regime Looks For An Alternative To The Alternative
BattleSwarm: Texas Finally Bans Red Light Cameras, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, also, The Merchant Marine Isn’t Ready For War
Da Tech Guy: The True Leaders Of The Democrat Party, also, Am I The Only Anti-Jihadi Friend Of Geller & Spencer Who Likes The SI Burkini Message?
Don Surber: Comey’s Book Implicates Obama
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, Mama Don’t Allow
First Street Journal: I Take #ClimateAction
The Geller Report: Hundreds Of “Black Vest” Migrants Seize Terminal In Paris Airport – “France Does Not Belong To The French!”, also, Somali Mob Armed With Hammers Attacks Minneapolis Light Rail Passengers
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, The Helix Nebula In 3D
Hollywood In Toto: We Need A New “Body Snatchers” For Our Woke Age
Joe For America: Occasional Cortex Mocks & Taunts Christians While Botching Scripture Over Interest Rate Cap Bill
JustOneMinute: Abortion Polling
Legal Insurrection: Federal Judge Upholds Democrat Congressional Subpoena Of Trump’s Financial Records, also, Nancy Pelosi Now Claims Democrats Never Denied Border Crisis
The PanAm Post: Venezuela – Options On The Table
Power Line: Justin Amash, A Party Of One, also, Spy Vs. Spy Euphemism
Shot In The Dark: Stomping Their Impeccably-Shod Feet
STUMP: Public Finance Roundup
The Political Hat: Derp News
This Ain’t Hell: B-52 Resurrected From The Boneyard, also, Oh, Here We Go…
Victory Girls: Democrats Vote Unanimously In Favor Of Equality Act
Volokh Conspiracy: Does The Second Amendment Secure A Right To Carry Guns In Most Public Places?
Weasel Zippers: Jihadi Attacks In Europe Up Over 700% Since 2007, also, Justin Amash Gets Primary Opponent After Attack On Trump
Megan McArdle: Maybe George R.R. Martin Wouldn’t Know How To End Game of Thrones Either (Maybe? -WS)
Mark Steyn: He Fought The Law – And He Won, Eventually, also, Toe To Toe With Doris Day

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Category: Linkagery

A Politically Incorrect Journey

Posted on | May 20, 2019 | Comments Off on A Politically Incorrect Journey

Portrait of R. Emmett Tyrrell in The American Spectator office.

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia
Because I have a story to cover tonight in D.C., I decided to beat Washington’s notorious rush-hour traffic and drove down to the offices of The American Spectator in the historic Old Town section of Alexandria. Along the way, it occurred to me how much political incorrectness I encountered along my route. I drove down George Washington Parkway — named for a slave owner — and past CIA headquarters, a notorious bastion of American imperialist hegemony. Then down past Arlington, once home of Robert E. Lee and now site of the Marine Corps Memorial, another celebration of militant nationalism. I passed the Pentagon and then Ronald Reagan Airport — how right-wing can you get? But as I entered Alexandria, the landmarks became downright reactionary, as monuments to the British colonial era were embodied in the names of Princess Street, Queen Street, King Street and Royal Street. How is it that Antifa mobs aren’t demanding that these historic tributes to hereditary monarchy be renamed? If the memory of slavery is hateful enough to make General Lee persona non grata in the 21st century, why is it still acceptable to memorialize British royalty?

Well, let’s not give the Left any ideas, eh? These thoughts occurred to me as I walked two blocks to purchase beverages, as the young Spectator staffers had not been warned of my arrival and had thus not prepared for a thirsty political correspondent. Selecting a pale ale from Flying Dog, my official brand, I returned to the office to file this brief update.

The National Affairs Desk in the Spectator office.

The New York Times is miffed because President Trump pardoned California Republican Patrick Nolan after “The American Spectator, a right-leaning publication . . . last year published an article that urged Mr. Trump to pardon him.” What? We’re merely “right-leaning”? We lean so far we’re nearly perpendicular! If the Spectator wasn’t pissing off the New York Times, we’d consider ourselves a discredit to our legacy.

Anyway, the reason I’m in the D.C. area tonight is because Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson is having a townhall event in Washington. Recall that, when I traveled to South Carolina to cover her campaign visit there two months ago, I was the only reporter covering her campaign. Since then, however, she’s hit the 65,000-donor threshold necessary to qualify for the DNC debates next month in Miami, and continues attracting media attention, e.g., “Marianne Williamson Is a Lefty With Soul” (New York magazine) and “‘I’m for Capitalism with a Conscience,’ Says Williamson” (Bloomberg News). Meanwhile, by contrast, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand still hasn’t hit the 65,000-donor mark, and shook up her campaign staff last week to try to catch up with Williamson, whose claim to fame is being known as “Oprah’s spiritual guru.” Can I pick ’em, or what? Williamson’s event in Northwest D.C. starts at 7 p.m., so I’ll have to pack up and get rolling, which means there’s only enough time to remind you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

Category: American Spectator
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