The Other McCain

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

Max Boot Is an Idiot

Posted on | April 10, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Tucker Carlson opened his show Tuesday night by taking aim at one of the most overrated neocon gasbags in Washington:

“Here’s a helpful hint about how your government works. We’re full of helpful hints on this show. If you ever see consensus forming in Washington, run — something awful is about to happen. For decades you’ll remember, there was total consensus that our trade deals could not be better. They helped everyone. Meanwhile, as they were telling you that, America’s manufacturing sector died and huge parts of the middle class died along with it. There was bipartisan consense on the Iraq War and the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction we would supposedly find there, but didn’t. A few years later, there was consensus on banking regulations; that was just before the financial crisis hit. There was still more consensus on the creation of an all-seeing surveillance state that was supposed to somehow help you, but that is now scanning your face and reading your texts. There wasn’t much debate in Washington about any of those policies. There should have been.
“So it is with some skepticism that we note a new consensus forming here, this one about our southern border. ‘It may look bad down there,’ they’re telling us, “but calm down! It’s fine! Everything’s just fine!’ That’s the new word from Max Boot. Boot is a columnist for Jeff Bezos’s newspaper, but more than that, Boot is the living repository of every warmed-over cliché, every silly half-truth, every stale scrap of stupid conventional wisdom the buffoons who run this place have thought up recently. So here’s the latest — this is from Boot’s appearance on CNN last night.

MAX BOOT ON CNN: “I’m ready to declare a national emergency. The national emergency is not on the southern border, it’s in Washington, D.C., with a president who is lawless and out of control.”

“Who is this guy? Well, Max Boot calls himself a foreign policy expert. That’s a title that doesn’t actually mean anything, but in practice, it allows Boot to agitate for more counter-productive foreign wars. In the years since 9/11, Max Boot has demanded military intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran and North Korea, and likely many other places. He’s called for the U.S. to topple the Saudi monarchy, and of course, like so many neocons, Boot fell headlong into the Russia conspiracy for more than two excruciating years. It’s hard to think of anyone in this country more discredited than Max Boot. Going to him for foreign policy advice is like giving Jeffrey Dahmer a cooking show — he’d be the last person you’d ask. So of course, Max Boot now has gigs at CNN, the Washington Post and the Council on Foreign Relations, because that’s how Washington really works. The key is, never apologize, never admit fault, no matter what. Watch Max Boot explain that the idea of toppling the Libyan government — which was deranged — was in fact brilliant. We just didn’t do it right.”

MAX BOOT, 2014: “We did a great job of overthrowing Gadhafi, but did nothing to secure the country afterwards, and there was, I might add, a similar lack of planning for our pull-out in the case of Iraq, where there was very little sense of what would happen after U.S. troops left in 2010. We can’t think about these as being kind of quick in-and-out engagements — we send some troops, kill some people and then come back home to a victory parade. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.”

“Boot didn’t explain how exactly it does work. He didn’t need to explain. Everyone knows his assumption is the same as permanent Washington’s core assumption — military occupation is always the right answer, no matter what the question is. Sending somebody else’s kids to a foreign country is always and everywhere the right thing to do. When Donald Trump pledged to pull Americans out of Syria, Max Boot went crazy, just on principle, because no troops can ever leave, ever.”

MAX BOOT, DECEMBER 2018: “There is nobody who knows anything about the situation in Syria who recommends doing this. … This is a Christmas gift to America’s enemies. This will help ISIS, this will help Russia, this will help Iran, this will help Bashar Assad and this will hurt Israel and our Kurdish allies.”

“What did Max Boot not say? What do you notice about that? Well, he never explained how keeping Americans in Syria would help the United States. Why didn’t he mention it? Because he doesn’t care. Nobody in Washington cares, and maybe that’s why you never hear anyone ask questions about our current military commitments.”

You can watch the whole thing on video:

 

By the way, do you realize how small CNN’s audience is? Monday night, Tucker Carlson’s audience on Fox News was 2.9 million, while the 8 p.m. hour on CNN got barely 800,000 viewers. The Fox audience is more than three times larger than CNN, and in fact, CNN’s audience is also smaller than Nickelodeon, HGTV and the Discovery ID true-crime channel. Fox News is Number One in primetime cable ratings; CNN is 15th.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Several of the commenters have complained that the headline is too obvious, but it’s important to have it stated plainly for the sake of Google searches and future historians who may wonder, “What the f–k went wrong with the Republican Party during the first decade of the 21st century?” The answer: Max Boot, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, quite generally.



 

Category: CNN, Fox News

Jeffrey Toobin Is Scum

Posted on | April 9, 2019 | Comments Off on Jeffrey Toobin Is Scum

 

In the sidebar, Ace of Spades reminds us that CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is an immoral scumbag who cheated on his wife with the 20-something daughter of his colleague Jeff Greenfield. When his young paramour got pregnant, Toobin pressured her to get an abortion, but she had the baby and a DNA test proved Toobin was the father.

This was far from the only example of Toobin’s dishonesty and utter lack of moral character — he pilfered files from the independent counsel’s office back in the 1980s — but of course, no good person would work for CNN, and perhaps Toobin is not worse than, say, Don Lemon. At any rate, Toobin scraped the bottom again Monday:

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN chief legal analyst, said outgoing DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will forever be known as “the woman who put children in cages” and she will “get what she deserves.”

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: You know what? I don’t know. And I think the problem is that, you know, the laws allow people to seek asylum in the United States across the border; and they’re seeking it in great numbers.
But Kirstjen Nielsen, I think, is a great example of what happens when you go to work for Donald Trump. He is the great reputation killer. I mean, here’s this woman who, you know, was a reasonably admired bureaucrat. And for the rest of her life — for the rest of her life — people will look at her and think, “Oh, that’s the woman who put children in cages. That’s the woman who broke up families across the border.”
And you know what? They’ll be right. Because she implemented that policy. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, sort of created it, but she implemented it. And, you know, she’s going to get what she deserves.

 

This is arguably libelous. The claim that children were put in “cages” originated with left-wingers recycling photos from 2014 — during the Obama administration — and the influx of Central American “refugees” trying to exploit a loophole in U.S. immigration law created an unprecedented crisis at the border, for which Nielsen was not to blame.

Leaving aside this dishonest smear by the scummy Toobin, the real news in this story is that Nielsen, who is plenty tough, was not tough enough to keep Trump happy, so that her resignation probably signals a crackdown on the border so severe that it will make the past year’s “children in cages” episode seem like a picnic by comparison.



 

Category: CNN, Immigration

In The Mailbox: 04.09.19

Posted on | April 9, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: OMG!!! Radiation!!!
EBL: Prosperity & Growth
Twitchy: Guardians Of Truth Fall All Over Themselves To Put Out Obama’s Family Separation Fire
Louder With Crowder: Theresa May’s Fascist Message To Social Media Companies Is Chilling

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Same People Behind Iraq War Lies Pushed Russian Collusion
American Thinker: The Destruction of Citizen Cain
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Taxation Is Theft News
Babalu Blog: Press Ignored Decades Of Cuban Human Rights Protests, Fawns Over Regime-Approved “Animal Rights” Protest, also,  Cuban Baseball Player Slave Labor Deal Nixed By Trump
BattleSwarm: MS-13 Threatens Middle School, also, The Inevitability Of Autonomous Drone Swarms In Combat
CDR Salamander: A Quarter-Century Waiting For The Salamander Strategic Reset
Da Tech Guy: We Have Our Own Heroes’ Journey To Fulfill, also, Lenten Reflections – Hidden Treasures
Don Surber: NY Wants Job Losses, also, Secret Service Glad Alles Is Gone
Dustbury: Home Of The Back Door Man
First Street Journal: Pete Buttigieg Introduces Religion To The 2020 Campaign
The Geller Report: Prison Sentence Upheld For UK Mom Who Complained Mosque’s Call To Prayer Was Too Loud, also, Third Nigerian Church Leader Kidnapped By Muslims In Two Weeks
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Joltin’ Joe
Joe For America: Chelsea Handler Whines Trump’s Victory In 2016 Drove Her To Drug Use
Legal Insurrection: AG Barr Says Mueller Declined To Review Summary, Redacted Version Will Come Out In A Week, also, LIVE – Israeli Election Results 2019
The PanAm Post: Now That I’m A “Russian Troll”, also, Bernie Sanders’ Marxist Rallying Cries
Power Line: Trump Rising, also, At The Noor Trial (5)
Shot In The Dark: Hate To Break You The News, Shells…
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – BLAH BLAH BLAH
The Political Hat: In The UK, Blindness Is Free
This Ain’t Hell: New Lighter Ammo Being Tested, also, The Last Of Doolittle’s Raiders
Victory Girls: Dear Occasional Cortex, The Definition Of Code Switching Is Pandering
Volokh Conspiracy: Anti-Libel Injunctions And The Criminal Libel Connection
Weasel Zippers: 2020 Democrats Defend MS-13 Against Tough Rhetoric To Attack Trump, also, Ilhan Omar Has Unique Description Of 9/11 – “Some People Did Something”
Mark Steyn: Heather Has Two Imams, also, Live Around The Planet

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Category: Linkagery

Democrat Congressman Calls Chicago Police ‘The Sworn Enemy of Black People’

Posted on | April 9, 2019 | Comments Off on Democrat Congressman Calls Chicago Police ‘The Sworn Enemy of Black People’

 

Democrats hate cops:

Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush blasted the Chicago police union over the weekend as “the sworn enemy of black people,” pushing back at the controversy surrounding prosecutor Kim Foxx and her office’s handling of the Jussie Smollett case.
During a press conference on Saturday, Rush, D-Ill., tore into Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police after members of the union participated in protests demanding Cook County State’s Attorney Foxx resign from her post.
“The FOP is the sworn enemy of black people, the sworn enemy of black people,” Rush said Saturday. “The FOP has always taken the position that black people can be shot down in the street by members of the Chicago Police Department, and suffer no consequences.”
He added: “Let’s be clear: Kim Foxx, her battle, is with the FOP and all of their cohorts.”
Rush’s comments came after hundreds of protesters, including members of the police union, gathered outside Foxx’s office last week. . . .
The union, though, told The Tribune Saturday that Rush’s comments were “ignorant, offensive, malicious and false.”
“These outrageous and irresponsible comments have demeaned each and every Chicago Police Officer, regardless of their race,” the union reportedly said.
Foxx has come under fire over her office’s decision to dismiss charges against Smollett following accusations he faked a hate crime.

So far this year, 100 people have been murdered in Chicago, and three-quarters of the victims were black. According to CDC data, from 2013 to 2017, Cook County, Illinois — which includes Chicago — had more homicides than 44 entire states. In fact, Cook County, with a population of 5.2 million, had nearly as many homicides (3,394) during that period as the entire state of Ohio, which has more than twice the population (11.7 million) and had 3,444 homicides. Who is killing all these people in Chicago? Is it racist cops? Is it deranged Trump supporters?

CNN headline: “Chicago’s first warm weekend of 2019 ends with 24 shootings and 5 murders.” Racism! Blame cops!



 

Category: Chicago, Crime

In The Mailbox: 04.08.19

Posted on | April 9, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.08.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Kristjen Nielsen Out At Homeland Security
Twitchy: Congrats To Matt Yglesias, Who Just Admitted How Progressives Lie About Trump’s Tax Cuts
Louder With Crowder: Britain’s NHS Forces Elderly To Go Blind To Save Money, also, Another Child Sex Offender Discovered At Houston Library’s “Drag Queen Story Time”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Who Will You Choose To Marry? also, You People Are Morons
American Greatness: Democrats Will Regret Not Walking Away When They Could
American Thinker: Trump Is Popping In the Polls
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Mexico Deports Over 100 Refugees Back To Cuba While Allowing Central American Migrants To Remain, also, The Polar Bears – Forgotten American Soldiers Who Died Fighting Soviet Communism
BattleSwarm: Video Gaming As A Career, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, also, What About The Naval Reserve?
Da Tech Guy: Unplanned Features Abby Johnson As Saul, also, Black Americans, Freedom, & Gratitude
Don Surber: Trump Dinner Draws Only Ten Protesters, also, Oh, Now Democrats Need Us
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, Stick Several Forks In It
First Street Journal: The Libertarian Party Should Be Strong, But It’s Run By Idiots, also, Now The NYT Is Pushing For Involvement In Libya
The Geller Report: Pope Francis Praises Multiculturalism, also, Maryland Jihadi Planned Mass Murder By Ramming Crowds At National Harbor With Truck
Hogewash: Collusion? What Collusion? also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Liberal Film Critics Lose It Over The Best Of Enemies, also, Gary Sinise Makes It An Even 100 USO Tours
Joe For America: Is Obama Running A Shadow Government? also, President Calls For “Treasonous” Coup Plotters To Face Justice
JustOneMinute: Darn, They Held That Tiger
Legal Insurrection: Chicago Prosecutor Kim Foxx Blames Criticism Of Smollett Decision On Racism, also, Sad! Fauxcahontas Polling In Third – In Massachusetts
The PanAm Post: State Dept Spox Berates PanAm Post, also, Mexico’s Lopez Obrador Is As Popular As He Is Disastrous
Power Line: Voters Say On Illegal Immigration, The Democrats Are Nuts, also, At The Noor Trial (2)
Shot In The Dark: CRISIS AVERTED!
The Political Hat: The Healthcare Crisis Goes Silly
This Ain’t Hell: India Now Has ASAT Missiles, also, Missing In America Project Buries 42 “Unclaimed” Veterans In Florida & Texas
Victory Girls: Obama Could Save Biden – So Where Is He? also, Censorship Wars Using Jargon
Volokh Conspiracy: The Death of Section 230
Weasel Zippers: Atheism Becomes Largest “Religion” In America, also,  Dem Rep Schiff Spreads Debunked Lie About Trump, Charlottesville Nazis
Mark Steyn: The Matrix, also, Some Enchanted Evening

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Category: Linkagery

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Insanity Inspired by Racist Clown Meme

Posted on | April 8, 2019 | 2 Comments

 

OK, this will require a bit of set-up: “Honkler the Clown” is an account that might legitimately be called “hate,” although supporters would probably call it “red-pilled,” i.e., cutting through propaganda to expose reality. But we don’t have to do a deep-dive into the ideological content of “Honkler the Clown” right now; the point is, the account uses clown imagery to advance an “alt-right” message, and this enraged a YouTuber named Bri Washington, a/k/a “Lil Lunchbox,” an obese mixed-race young woman who identifies as a clown:

“I’m ready to go to war. I’m ready to go to motherf–ing war.
You’re not going to take a symbol of happiness and acceptance
and multiculturalism and turn it into something racist
and anti-Semitic and homophobic and transphobic.
You’re not going to do that on my watch.”

 

“Nurse! Thorazine, stat!”

Why isn’t this person locked up in a padded cell? What kind of person goes to war — “motherf–ing war”! — over such things? Even if you dismiss this as just “Internet drama,” some attention-seeking woman desperate for relevance and video subscribers, isn’t that pathological?

What does it say about this woman that she would spend her time ranting on YouTube in clown makeup for an audience of barely 600 subscribers?

Beyond that craziness, however, is the insanity of how “progressives” have reacted to the “Honkler the Clown” account. Jared Holt, the guy credited with getting Alex Jones de-platformed, wrote this:

Online personalities in far-right and white nationalist online circles are attempting to attribute racism and anti-Semitism to an image of cartoon character Pepe the Frog depicted poorly drawn and as a clown . . .
The clown render of Pepe the Frog, which KnowYourMeme researchers have identified as being known as “Honk Honk” or “Honkler,” began spreading across the internet last year. In recent months, the meme has gained a foothold in the far-right and is bleeding into racist propaganda. . . .
On February 11, users on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” forum board launched “operation honk,” a campaign with the mission of spreading the character across the internet and boosting its popularity, and then returning the character back to 4chan where it could be associated with racism.

Dude, don’t you see that you’re being trolled?

The obvious purpose of the “Honkler” meme was to get “hate”-watchers like Jared Holt to invest their credibility in claiming that clowns are a symbol of racism — an obvious absurdity — and thereby destroy their own credibility. If everything is racist, nothing is racist, see?

By trolling the “hate”-watchers into beclowning themselves this way, the trolls seek to obscure the difference between actually dangerous beliefs and the ordinary attitudes of ordinary people. If you were an anti-Semite trying to mainstream such views, what could be more perfect than getting your enemies to make ridiculous claims: “CLOWNS ARE RACIST!”

 

It’s like the Jussie Smollett hoax, OK? It’s a self-inflicted wound. If you want the threat of racism to be taken seriously, you don’t run around shouting “RACISM!” at everything and everybody, and you don’t foster a paranoid climate of fear that causes people to freak out over things that are trivial or marginal. Furthermore, if you were serious about fighting “hate,” you wouldn’t engage in the kind of partisan smear-mongering operation that is constantly trying to point the finger at Republicans as purveyors of “hate.” That was how the SPLC destroyed its credibility, expanding its definition of “hate groups” in order to exaggerate the sense of menace by including mainstream conservative groups for the obvious purpose of enabling guilt-by-association smears against Republicans.

Running around applying the “far-right white nationalist” label so promiscuously as to smear all 62.9 million Trump voters? Not smart.

Tim Pool analyzes the “Honkler the Clown” meme:

 

People need to calm down. Stop panicking over Internet drama. That thing on the Internet you’re “ready to go to motherf–ing war” about? Guarantee you that 99.9% of people have no idea it exists.



 

Category: Racism

Rule 5 Sunday: Satellite Girl

Posted on | April 8, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I’m starting to really hate WordPress. I had this post completely finished, and then it booted me out and destroyed the entire post in the process. Anyway, go watch Satellite Girl and Milk Cow, and enjoy this pic of ROK actress Jung Yu-mi, who voices Satellite Girl.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #580, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns.

Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Seattle’s Downhill Slide Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Melanie Hamrick, Ashley Bratcher, Bingbing Fan, National Tweed Day, Annie Starke, Spring Is Here, and Vintage Hollywood.

A View From The Beach:  Sorry I Missed It!, A Friend Will Help You Move . . ., Go Get Crabs!, Belexit?, Oh No! Not Avocados!, Our Bags are Packed, We’re Ready to Go, I Belize, A Wonderful Bird is the Pelican. . ., Still Fishin?, Still Fishin’,  Still Fishin’, Still Fishin’, Gone Fishin!, Proving Her Point . . ., and You Don’t Have to Be a Genius to Wear Clothes

Proof Positive: Mindy Robinson and Polly Walters

Dustbury: Bijou Phillips and Rena Takeda.

Thanks for all the luscious linkagery!


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Category: Rule 5

More Stupid Criminal News

Posted on | April 7, 2019 | Comments Off on More Stupid Criminal News

 

The stupidity is piling up high in Oklahoma, folks:

A 69-year-old Alva man, and co-owner of a number of vape shops and a medical marijuana business in the state, appeared in Oklahoma City federal court Thursday on a charge of allegedly trying to hire someone to kill a former employee and one-time lover, and her new boyfriend, according to a criminal complaint.
Vernon Brock made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge Thursday on one count of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire. Brock was remanded into the custody of the U.S. Marshals and due back in court April 10 for a preliminary and detention hearing.
“We don’t have any comment on the charge,” said Ky Corley, Brock’s business attorney, when reached by phone. Corley is listed as the registered agent for Brock’s medical marijuana company, Pure Country Medical Cannabis. . . .
Brock was arrested Wednesday afternoon by Woods County Sheriff’s deputies and FBI special agents during a traffic stop near Alva, after he allegedly handed off a $5,000 check to a business associate in Harper, Kansas. Brock believed the man was lining up a hit man. The business associate was working with the FBI, according to court documents. . . .
Brock is the co-owner of Big E Vapor Shops, which has 17 stores in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, including one in Stillwater, according to its website. Court filings allege Brock approached a Kansas business associate about a month ago, asking him to find someone to murder an Oklahoma City woman and her boyfriend . . . The woman is a former vape shop employee and was previously in a relationship with Brock.
The woman, according to an affidavit, has worked off and on for Brock for six years and said she had sex with him under threat of not being paid, and didn’t believe Brock wanted a relationship but wanted the ability to have sex with her whenever he wanted.

Let’s be clear: Anyone who ever tries to hire a “hit man” will find himself in a recorded conversation with an undercover cop or an informant. Everybody who has watched true-crime TV has seen these hidden-camera “sting” videos. It takes a phenomenally stupid person to believe that you’re going to be the one person who gets away with such a crime, in the same way that stupid guys who think they’re talking to a horny teenager online are always shocked when they show up for their rendezvous only to discover that the horny teenager was actually an undercover cop.

We should be grateful criminals are so stupid. Imagine how much more evil there would be in the world if criminals got away with this stuff.

Category: Crime, Oklahoma
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