The Other McCain

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

About That Yellow Button …

Posted on | October 28, 2019 | Comments Off on About That Yellow Button …

There are good days and bad days in the life of a blogger, and some days are more productive than others. I’m happy to note that the month of October has been our most productive since August 2018, as measured by total number of posts per month, and overall traffic has also increased, thanks in part to a certain Naked Bisexual Democrat. But then there’s the aspect of blogging known as “monetization,” or rattling the tip jar.

The past two months, I’ve tried to refrain from rattling my own tip jar because my brother Kirby had a medical emergency, which required extraordinary fundraising efforts on his behalf. Thanks to the generosity of our readers, Kirby is now recuperating here, and has an appointment at the nearest Veterans Administration facility on Friday. Meanwhile, however, there has developed a shortage of funds in my account, and not only is the cable bill (which includes our Internet service) of more than $300 due on Wednesday, but there are also other payments I’ve neglected and it’s kind of hard to blog by candlelight, if you get my drift.


 

As I’ve sometimes explained on The Other Podcast with John Hoge, the basic idea here is crowdfunding — if enough people give relatively small amounts, it adds up, and with an average of around 7,000 visitors daily, those readers who contribute just $5, $10 or $20 on these occasions when I’m loudly rattling the tip jar can make a huge collective impact on the bottom line. And did I mention I have a beautiful wife?

 

Mrs. McCain sometimes gets irritated when I post that 1990 bikini photo of her, but a shortage of income from my blogging career is arguably more irritating, and I like to keep my wife happy. After all, an unhappy wife might hasten that “till death do us part” aspect of our vows. Not that my wife would kill me. Not literally. At least, probably not. She’s the praying, Bible-reading kind of wife, and I’m pretty sure she’s solid on “Thou shalt not kill,” but then again, “lead us not into temptation,” eh?


 

Anyway, “happy wife, happy life,” and your contributions will certainly make my wife happy, no matter how irritated she might be that I’ve posted that old bikini photo again. And that photo is quite modest, compared to photos of a certain California Democrat we’ve seen lately. But consider that a hint about the subject of my next American Spectator column which was inspired by a Kiplingesque comment from John Hoge. Even when the monetization aspect of blogging is not quite what it ideally should be, we try to have fun, because who doesn’t enjoy laughing at mentally ill (and sometimes naked) Democrats?

The Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

“Hit the freaking tip jar!”


 

Category: Shoe Leather Fund

‘Austere Religious Scholar’

Posted on | October 28, 2019 | 2 Comments

 

In the carnival of #FakeNews self-ownage, the hits just keep coming:

The Post’s obituary briefly acknowledges the circumstances of al-Baghdadi’s death before painting, at length, a rather sympathetic portrait of al-Baghdadi’s “canny pragmatism.” This is how the Post describes his background:

From his teens, he was fascinated with Islamic history and the intricacies of Islamic law. Acquaintances would remember him as a shy, nearsighted youth who liked soccer but preferred to spend his free time at the local mosque.
“He always had religious or other books attached on the back of his bike,” Tariq Hameed, an acquaintance from the same lower-middle-class neighborhood, told a Newsweek interviewer in 2014. The young Ibrahim disdained the Western clothes popular with Samarra’s young men, preferring the traditional prayer cap, beard and white dishdasha robe of the religiously devout, neighbors said.
He graduated from the University of Baghdad in 1996 and received a master’s degree in Koranic recitation from the Saddam University for Islamic Studies in 1999. Immersing himself in the arcane world of 7th-century religious codes, he grew increasingly conservative. Acquaintances remembered how the college-age Mr. Baghdadi took offense at the sight of men and women dancing in the same room during wedding celebrations.

It’s an odd thing, though: Al-Baghdadi was “austere” and couldn’t stand to see men and women dancing together. And yet:

Later, former hostages would reveal that Mr. Baghdadi also kept a number of personal sex slaves during his years as the Islamic State’s leader, including slain American hostage Kayla Mueller and a number of captured Yazidi women.

How austere can you get? On balance, I think Trump’s sendoff to al-Baghdadi was a heck of a lot more appropriate than the Post’s.

One is reminded — and not coincidentally — of how every time a black teenage hoodlum gets shot by a cop, the media treat us to stories about how this “honor student” (urban gang-bangers are always on the honor roll, it seems) was beloved by his family and enjoyed playing sports. These accounts are usually illustrated with a photo of the deceased perp as an eighth-grader, never the Facebook photos the teenage thug posted — brandishing pistols, smoking weed, flashing gang symbols, etc. The liberal ideology of the media evidently requires them under every circumstance to depict black people as innocent victims of “racism,” and this practice now seems to have been extended to all Muslims, including terrorist leaders who enslave and murder women. No Republican congressmen could ever expect such favorable coverage as the Washington Post accords to America’s worst enemies.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)


 

Category: Islam, Media Bias, Terrorism

Rule 5 Sunday: Ingrid Pitt

Posted on | October 28, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Halloween draws near, the time when everybody pulls out the horror films that have been gathering dust in the DVD rack all year. Seems appropriate to look back at one of the last great British film studios, Hammer Films, best known for some eye-popping movies about Dracula and other monsters, frequently featuring Peter Cushing & Christopher Lee and an assortment of babes you could really sink your teeth into. (sic) Perhaps the best known of those babes was Ingrid Pitt, seen here playing the title role in Countess Dracula, sadly out of print but available on Amazon Prime.* Other toothsome lasses from Hammer can be found at this highly useful website, A Field Guide To The Hammer House Of Horror Women.

My, what big…er, teeth, Countess! Yes, teeth!

Ninety Miles From Tyranny leads off this week with Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #783, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. At Redpill Jew, it’s Pretty Faces.

EBL’s thundering herd of nekkid bisexual Congresswomen and other heifers includes Nina Persson, HBO’s Watchmen, Katie Hill, Norah O’Donnell, False Idols, Ilfanesh Hadera, More Katie Hill, and Mona Lisa.

A View From The Beach serves up A Real Knockout – Paige VanZant, Decorum in Congress? Katie Hill, Hold My Beer and Bong and Watch This!, Fish Pic Friday – Heather Nicole, Beware the Wandering Frankenfish!, Tattoos or Tanlines for Thursday, Sofia Vergara Loses $80 k in Egg Fight, Far More Interesting than Trump’s Tax Returns, Chesapeake Bay Science Goes To Pot, Johnny B Good and Palm Sunday.

Proof Positive’s Vintage Babe of the Week is Catherine Deneuve, and at Animal Magnetism, it’s Hunting Season Totty Finale and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

Thanks to everyone for the luscious linkagery! Enjoy your Halloween, and we’ll see you again next week!

Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
Shop Sex & Sensuality Gifts

*I would like it to be known that I had to do some digging to find a sexy picture of Ms. Pitt that didn’t show her nipples through sheer fabric. The things I do for you people, I tell you. -ws

Category: Rule 5

Naked Bisexual Democrat Katie Hill Announces Resignation from Congress

Posted on | October 27, 2019 | 2 Comments

 

Bad news for me — I was getting awesome traffic out of this story:

Freshman Rep. Katie Hill is resigning from Congress after facing allegations of inappropriate sexual relationships with staffers in her office and on her congressional campaign, according to two Democratic sources.
“It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I believe it is the best thing for my constituents, my community and our country,” Hill wrote in a letter announcing the news after it was first reported by POLITICO.
“This is what needs to happen so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation,” she added.
Hill did not specify a resignation date in her letter but multiple people with knowledge of her plans said she could step aside as soon as Nov. 1.

Got that? She’s the victim of a “smear campaign” by an “abusive husband” and “hateful political operatives,” and never mind her drunkenness, her mental illness or her sexual affairs with staffers both male and female. Her constitutional rights as a crazy alcoholic bisexual are being infringed! Now she has to quit her $174,000-a-year job as a member of Congress and go back to California to smoke her bong naked.

See you around, cupcake. Have a nice life.

(Hat-tip: Donald Douglas on Twitter.)


 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Category: Congress, Democrats, Scandal

How Newsweek Became a Clickbait Farm

Posted on | October 27, 2019 | Comments Off on How Newsweek Became a Clickbait Farm

Daniel Tovrov tells the sad story of a once-great journal’s decline:

The system is a remnant of the International Business Times’ ownership of Newsweek, which began in 2013 and formally ended in 2018, though the outlets still share executives. Many senior editors at Newsweek were promoted from IBT’s click-addicted breaking-news or culture desks. IBT, launched in 2006, is a classic news aggregator, with reporters in the US and Bangalore, plus a UK edition, churning out a high volume of clickbait at the expense of original, quality reporting. Former writer Owen Davis told me the site’s attitude toward search engine optimization was like a “cargo cult mentality”: the staffers who performed the most impressive rain (or click) dance were the ones praised, promoted, and moved over to Newsweek each time Google downgraded IBT in 2016 and 2017. . . .
Newsweek has tended to hire young reporters, many of them fresh from college papers or internships. In the course of my reporting for this piece, at least ten senior staffers left or were let go, their salaries freed up while Newsweek continued to look for “News Fellows,” contract employees working forty-hour weeks for $15 per hour, the minimum wage in New York City. . . .
I worked at IBT in 2011 and 2012, the year before it bought Newsweek. I was twenty-four and thrilled. When I was hired, I was one of two reporters covering “world news.” My original contract stipulated that I had to bring in a minimum of ten thousand unique readers a month, an impossibly high number that my editor told me to ignore. The world, US, and business desks were meant to write “legitimate” stories that went on the front page, while a “Continuous News Desk,” later renamed “Breaking News,” spammed Google News and paid our salaries. Drafting off the BuzzFeed News model that had developed months earlier, Jeffrey Rothfeder, our Editor-in-Chief, said that the clickbait would bring in revenue while hard-news reporting would build our reputation. . . .
Until recently, a reporter could earn an extra $2,000 per month for stories that attracted six hundred thousand unique page views. Numerous current and former reporters told me that when interviewing for a job at Newsweek, editors told them not to worry about salaries between $35,000 and $45,000 — about $10,000 less than the average entry-level reporter position in New York City — because their bonuses would earn them an additional $24,000 per year. 
But the reality is that if you aren’t writing clickbait, the bonuses can be hard to get. And failing to get a traffic bonus, some said, puts a target on your back.
“The way the bonus was presented during my job interview was as a goal. It’s called a ‘bonus,’ after all. But as soon as I started, it became very clear that it was a minimum,” says Pereira. . . .

Read the rest. It’s simply madness to organize a newsroom as a clickbait operation, whatever the numerical goals may be. One would expect that a publication with a “brand” as venerable as Newsweek might draw a certain level of traffic just by doing . . . well, regular journalism.

Grant that establishing productivity goals is necessary to encourage employees to crank out a steady output of copy. When I started out in the newspaper business, it was expected that a staff writer would produce 10 or 12 stories per week. Basically two stories a day, and this was local news, where you were working from your own notes, rather than just aggregating and/or re-writing stuff you grabbed off the Internet, which is a lot of what national “reporters” now do. The basic Newsweek item nowadays is 400-500 words, and I don’t think it would be too much to expect an entry-level staff to crank out something like 12 or 15 such items like that a week. For those reporters assigned to cover important beats — the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, the White House, etc. — it would be difficult to expect more than six or eight stories a week, but whatever the number, it’s necessary to establish some sort of metric in terms of productivity. When you start measuring productivity purely in terms of traffic, however, you’ve surrendered your editorial independence.

Obviously, the BuzzFeed model — using clickbait to build traffic (and thus, to pay the bills with advertising revenue) in order to support a core news operation — is one that has been widely emulated by other online journalism sites. What seems to have happened at Newsweek, however, is that this formula created a journalistic caste system, reliant upon a faceless bunch of $15-an-hour kids cranking out clickbait under a relentless pressure to drive traffic or be fired.

It’s worth noting Newsweek‘s tragic history. Once part of the mighty Washington Post publishing empire, the magazine was run into bankruptcy under the editorship of pretentious liberal Jon Meacham, and was carrying $50 million in debt when it was sold in 2010 for $1 — one dollar — to the husband of California Democrat Rep. Jane Harman. Meacham had taken to publishing liberal nonsense like the 2009 cover story “Is Your Baby Racist?” A few months later, Newsweek was merged with Tina Brown’s Daily Beast to form what was instantly dubbed “The Weekly Newsbeast.” By the time Brown’s sugar daddy Barry Diller pulled the plug in 2012, it was reported that the combined Newsweek/Daily Beast operation was losing money at a pace of $35 million a year.

Their current status as a clickbait farm owned by a religious group that has been called a “cult” is pretty much a commentary on the decadent condition of the American journalism industry.


 

Category: Journalism

FMJRA 2.0: Too Late To Be Late Again

Posted on | October 27, 2019 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Too Late To Be Late Again

— compiled by Wombat-socho

FMJRA 2.0: Dance, Dance, Dance To The Radio
The Pirate’s Cove
EBL
A View From The Beach

Roll Tide!
EBL

Transgender Teen Charged With Murdering Father’s Fiancée in Alabama
EBL

Rule 5 Sunday: Roll Tide!
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
Proof Positive
EBL
A View From The Beach

‘You’re White, You Know‘
357 Magnum
EBL

Emily (a/k/a ‘Ross’) McFarland ‘Harbored Animosity’ Toward Victim, Police Say
EBL

‘Naked Democratic Congresswoman’
EBL
A View From The Beach

Trouble in ‘Red Pill’ Land
Sticks, Stories & Scotch
EBL

Pagan Idols Thrown in the Tiber River
357 Magnum
EBL

Canadian Pervert Jonathan ‘Jessica’ Yaniv Loses #WaxMyBalls Case in Tribunal
Bacon Time
EBL

In The Mailbox: 10.22.19 (Afternoon Edition)
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

In The Mailbox: 10.22.19 (Late Night Edition)
Proof Positive
EBL
A View From The Beach

More Red Pill Discourse
EBL

Naked Bisexual Democrat Update
EBL

In The Mailbox: 10.23.19
Proof Positive
EBL
A View From The Beach

UPDATE: Naked Bisexual Democrat Is Also a Mentally Ill Drunk (Allegedly)
EBL
A View From The Beach

Ace of Spades Is Our Churchill
EBL

Who Would Marry Dr. Frankenbaby?
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

UPDATE: Naked Bisexual Democrat’s Scandal Just Got Worse, Believe It or Not
Dark Brightness
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 10.24.19
Proof Positive
EBL

Harvard Radicals Boycott the Crimson
EBL

AOC: Fossil Fuels Are Racist or Something
EBL

Florida Man Raped 15-Year-Old Girl, Posted Videos to Internet, Police Say
EBL

Kathy Griffin: ‘Orchestrated Campaign’ by ‘Older White Men’ Against Her Career
EBL

In The Mailbox: 10.25.19
Proof Positive
EBL
A View From The Beach

Top linkers for the week ending Friday, October 25:

  1.  EBL (25)
  2.  A View From The Beach (8)
  3.  Proof Positive (6)

Thanks to everyone for all the linkagery!

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Amazon’s Halloween Store

Try Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial
Kindle Unlimited Membership Plans




Category: FMJRA Award

Al-Baghdadi ‘Died Like a Coward’

Posted on | October 27, 2019 | 1 Comment

Trump’s announcement this morning about the death of the ISIS leader:

Last night, the United States brought the world’s number one terrorist leader to justice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. He was the founder and leader of ISIS, the most ruthless and violent terror organization in the World. The United States has been searching for Baghdadi for many years. Capturing or killing Baghdadi has been the top national security priority of my Administration. U.S. Special Operations forces executed a dangerous and daring nighttime raid into Northwestern Syria to accomplish this mission.
No U.S. personnel were lost in the operation, while a large number of Baghdadi’s fighters and companions were killed with him. He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming. The compound had been cleared by this time, with people either surrendering or being shot and killed. Eleven young children were moved out of the house un-injured. The only ones remaining were Baghdadi in the tunnel, who had dragged three children with him to certain death. He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children. His body was mutilated by the blast, but test results gave certain and positive identification.
The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, panic and dread — terrified of the American Forces bearing down.
We were in the compound for approximately 2 hours, and after the mission was accomplished we took highly sensitive material and information from the raid.
Baghdadi’s demise demonstrates America’s relentless pursuit of terrorist leaders, and our commitment to the enduring and total defeat of ISIS!
The reach of America is long. As you know, last month we announced that we recently killed Hamza Bin Laden, the very violent son of Osama Bin Laden, who was saying very bad things.
He was the heir apparent to Al Qaeda. Terrorists who oppress and murder innocent people should never sleep soundly, knowing that we will completely destroy them. These savage monsters will not escape their fate — and they will not escape the final judgement of God.
Baghdadi has been on the run for many years, long before I took office. At my direction, as Commander-in-Chief, the United States obliterated his ‘caliphate’ in March of this year. Today’s events are another reminder that we will continue to pursue the remaining ISIS terrorists to their brutal end.
Baghdadi and the losers who worked with him — in some cases people who had no idea what they were getting into and how dangerous and unglamorous it was — killed many people. Their murder of innocent Americans Jim Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig, and Kayla Mueller were especially heinous. The shocking publicized murder of a Jordanian pilot who was burned alive in a cage for all to see, and the execution of Christians in Libya and Egypt, as well as the genocidal mass murder of Yazidis, rank ISIS among the most depraved organizations in history.
The forced religious conversions, the orange suits prior to many beheadings, all of which were openly displayed for the world — this was all Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s work. He was vicious and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward, running and crying. This raid was impeccable, and could only have taken place with the acknowledgement and help of certain other nations and people.
I want to thank the nations of Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and I also want to thank the Syrian Kurds for certain support they were able to give us. Thank you as well to the great intelligence professionals who helped make this very successful journey possible.
I want to thank the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines involved in last night’s operation. You are the very best there is anywhere in the world. I want to thank General Mark Milley and our Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I also want to thank our professionals who work in other agencies of the United States government and were critical to the mission’s success.
Last night was a great night for the United States and for the World. A brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship and death, was violently eliminated — he will never again harm another innocent man, woman or child. He died like a dog. He died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place.
God bless the United States of America!

 

Let’s be clear about something: ISIS became a powerful terrorist group as a direct result of Obama administration policy — first, there was the announced-in-advance withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and then there was the 2011 “Arab Spring.” This allowed al-Baghdadi’s group, which had been on the fringe of the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq, to find new opportunities in Syria, where Obama’s policy had incited a civil war as part of a CIA-backed project of overthrowing the Assad regime.

When we speak of the “Deep State” conspiracy against Trump within the U.S. intelligence community, we are talking about the people who advocated, endorsed and implemented these Obama-era policies. ISIS was running hog-wild in Syria when Trump was elected and now, less than three years later, the leader of ISIS has been killed.

We could get into the deeper roots of U.S. policy failures in the Middle East over the past 30 years, an analysis which would implicate both Bush administrations as well as Obama and Clinton. It was a bipartisan failure over many years that produced the dangerous chaos that Trump inherited, and the bureaucratic elites of the “Deep State” were horrified that this amateur outsider would be able to undo the policies they had implemented. And yet, despite every effort to sabotage his administration, Trump continues to gain victory after victory.

It is too soon to say whether Trump’s overall foreign policy will be judged by history as better than his predecessors, but it would be quite difficult for him to do worse than Obama did.

UPDATE: Well, this is new low in “fake news” — a Washington Post headline describes al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar,” as if U.S. Special Forces had killed a mild-mannered cleric.


 

Category: Donald Trump, Syria, Terrorism

Report: U.S. Special Operations Raid Kills ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Posted on | October 27, 2019 | Comments Off on Report: U.S. Special Operations Raid Kills ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

 

The identification is still tentative:

A “high value ISIS target” believed to be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed by U.S.-led forces in Idlib, Syria, a well-placed military source told Fox News on Saturday night.
The U.S. military cannot yet confirm the identity of the deceased target.
But at 9:23 p.m. Saturday, President Trump posted a Twitter message hinting at “very big” news.
Soon after, the White House issued a statement that major news would be announced from the White House at 9 a.m. Sunday.
Newsweek reported late Saturday that Baghdadi was killed during a special operations mission that President Trump approved about a week ago.
In September, an audio recording purportedly by Baghdadi included a call for members of the extremist group to use any means necessary to free Muslims who were being detained “by Crusaders and their Shiite followers.”
The U.S. had reportedly posted a bounty of $25 million for information leading to the capture of Baghdadi.

We got our money’s worth, apparently.


 

Category: Islam, Military, Syria, Terrorism
« go back — keep looking »