The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 08.30.19 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | August 31, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
A View From The Beach: The Lion Has Died
357 Magnum: A Media Outlet Talking About Responsibility?
EBL: Residents Of Florida, Flee!
Twitchy: Bret Stephens Under Fire For New Column On “Jews As Bedbugs”
Louder With Crowder: These Lesbians Are Also Non-Binary And Desperately Want You To Care
According To Hoyt: Remove The Pants On Fire From Your Head!
Monster Hunter Nation: This Week On The Internet
Vox Popoli: Science Fiction Is Dead, also, Boris Drops A Bomb On Parliament

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: The Political Class Is “Exhausted”
American Power: “I’ve Never Before Heard Of This ‘Eve Fairbanks’ Creature”
American Thinker: The Character Assassination Of Amy Wax And Her Response
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Cato’s Letters Friday
Babalu Blog: Cubans Whose Artwork Was Stolen By The Castro Regime Now Have A Path To Restitution
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For August 30
Camp of the Saints: Williamson, The Democrats, & The Narcissistic Impulse
CDR Salamander: The Moran Defenestration IG Report Is Out, also, Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: The Biggest Danger To A Christian’s Soul
Don Surber: Prosecute Comey
Dustbury: Left Hanging
First Street Journal: Real ID & Voting
The Geller Report: Second Elderly NYC Jew Stoned By Black Youths, also, Ilhan Omar Runs Away When Reporter Confronts Her With Affair Rumors
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, One Can Hope
Hollywood In Toto: Will & Grace Star Won’t Work With Trump Supporters
Joe For America: Trump’s Personal Assistant Fired For Leaking To Press
JustOneMinute: Taxing Wealth One Way Or The Other
Legal Insurrection: James Comey Was The Bad Guy In The “Russia Collusion” Story, also, University of Kansas Faculty Wants “Bastion of Bigotry” Chick-Fil-A Booted From Campus
The PanAm Post: FARC Returns To Doing What It Does Best – Terrorizing The Colombian People
Power Line: Biden Has No Chance, also, Thoughts From The Ammo Line
Shot In The Dark: Eggs
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – Wealth & Poverty
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, How The Army Tried To Avoid Telling The Truth About Women In Ranger Training
Victory Girls: Former Canadian PM Hopes Hurricane Dorian Destroys Mar-El-Lago
Volokh Conspiracy: Federal Court Rules State Judges Can’t Profit From Fines & Fees Imposed On Defendants In Cases Before Them
Weasel Zippers: Trump Drops A Message (And Maybe More) On Iran, also, Aussie University To Lower Engineering Entry Standard For Women
Megan McArdle: Chicago Kept Saying It Would Pay For Pensions Later. Well, It’s Later
Mark Steyn: Live Around The Planet, also, Non-Playmate Of The Month

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 08.30.19 (Early Edition)

Posted on | August 30, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Aren’t Cops Trained To Ask For ID?
EBL: Jessi Combs, RIP
Twitchy: Notice Anything Familiar About Occasional Cortex’ New Green Deal Art?
Louder With Crowder: Feminist Blames “Whiteness” For Friends Abandoning Her. That’s Not It.

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: #MeToo – The Left’s Ultimate Plan For Relationships
American Greatness: Dan Crenshaw, The “Principled Conservative” Who Wasn’t
American Power: Kim Strassel, Resistance
American Thinker: Michael Mann’s Tree-Ring Circus
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Random Notes News
Babalu Blog: With Hurricane Dorian Heading For Florida, Here’s What They’re Saying In Miami
BattleSwarm: Leftists Lie About (Spins Dial) Tea Party Racism
Camp of the Saints: “A Major Watershed In History”
CDR Salamander: A Breach of Faith – The Navy Must Fix The Way It Pays Mobilized Reservists
Da Tech Guy: Collective Guilt Is An Alien Concept In Our Constitutional System, also, Could The Luck-Less Colts Pursue Brady After This Season?
Don Surber: Clinton’s China Expert Says Trump Won
Dustbury: Unwanted Garment
First Street Journal: Treating Their Employees Like Dogs
The Geller Report: Iranian Womens’ Activist, 20, Gets 15 Years In Prison For “Spreading Prostitution” By Taking Off Hijab, also, Judge Orders Release Of Records That May Prove Saudi Royals’ Ties To 9/11 Hijackers
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day (With Johnny Atsign!), also, Don’t Know Much About History
Hollywood In Toto: Tone-Deaf Offers A Rare Break From Horror Tropes, also, Here’s How Liberal Celebrities Can Regain Our Trust
Joe For America: Biden Family Corruption Scandal Explodes
Legal Insurrection: US Navy Sinks Obama’s Climate Change Task Force, also, DOJ IG Slams Comey For Violation of Justice, FBI Policies On Memo Dissemination, Handling, & Retention
The PanAm Post: Cuba & The Latin American Left
Power Line: Ilhan Omar – The Deep Meaning of “No Comment”, also, Identity Politics As A Substitute For Family Ties
Protein Wisdom: Financial Status Update
Shark Tank: Florida’s Political Weathermen Are Out In Full Swing
Shot In The Dark: As If On Cue
This Ain’t Hell: Iran Fails Again, also, Coasties To The Rescue!
Victory Girls: Kirsten Gillibrand Sneaks Out The Back Door In Defeat
Volokh Conspiracy: “A Narrative Summary Describing…How The Taxpayer Shares California’s Values With Regard To Womens’ Reproductive Rights”
Weasel Zippers: Gidley Says Schumer Flat Out Lying On Diverted FEMA Money, also, Rep. Omar Calls For UN To Intervene In US Southern Border Crisis
Mark Steyn: A Human Right To Babysit, also, The Return Of Biden’s Mojo

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Category: Linkagery

A Farewell To Analog

Posted on | August 29, 2019 | 1 Comment

— by Wombat-socho

I grew up with Astounding/Analog SF, which for many years was the science fiction magazine, and am old enough to remember the end of John W. Campbell’s tenure as editor there. ASF and Campbell (and to a lesser extent, his successor Ben Bova) shaped my tastes in SF, as they did for so many other readers, and Campbell’s imprint on the genre as a whole is undeniable.

For the magazine he rescued from obscurity and built into the best SF magazine of the Golden Age to take a public shit on his memory like this is cowardly and vile. It is, perhaps, understandable in the wake of this year’s winner’s ignorant yawp about what a horrible person Campbell was by [CURRENT YEAR] standards, and the wretched soyboy Trevor Quachri’s desire to please people who cannot be pleased, but that makes it no less cowardly and vile. No, John W. Campbell Jr. probably wouldn’t be welcome in SFWA or at Worldcon these days, but I doubt Mary Kowal would have been welcome in the field back in the 1930s and 40s either, not least because her writing is terrible and not worth a penny a word on publication.

I have not had a subscription to Analog since the 1980s, shortly after Stanley Schmidt replaced Bova, and I needed the money more for other things (like a family). I wasn’t impressed by the few issues I saw, and I gather from the declining publication frequency and subscription numbers that I’m not the only one. There are still some good authors being published there, but most of the fiction is the kind of depressing crap I turned to SF to get away from. After this, I’m not touching anything having to do with Analog. The magazine and its current editor can die in a fire as far as I’m concerned.

On a happier note, Hans Schantz informs me that a number of conservative and libertarian authors have books for sale this weekend for 99 cents in honor of Dragon*Con. Your irascible neighborhood wombat says check it out!

As for me, I’ve been rereading some of the older Monster Hunter International novels: Monster Hunter Vendetta, wherein Owen Pitt is targeted for kidnapping and sacrifice by a bunch of necromancers working for the Old Ones, and Julie’s childhood playmate Mr. Trash Bags saves the day, and Monster Hunter Alpha, where Earl Harbinger goes to meet an ancient enemy in Copper Lake, Wisconsin, only to find himself having to team up with said enemy to prevent an outbreak of werewolves – and worse – from taking the little mining town as a springboard to apocalypse. Not going to lie, I enjoyed these a lot more the second time around, because some of the characters in them play much bigger roles in subsequent MHI books. Also reread Sharpe’s Rifles, Sharpe’s Eagle, and Sharpe’s Company by Bernard Cornwell, which are great adventure stories set in the Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon’s armies, and chock-full of historical goodness as well. Pity they didn’t stick with the Sean Bean-inspired covers.





Category: Books, Zeitgeist

IG Report Confirms Comey’s ‘Deep State’ Conspiracy Against Trump

Posted on | August 29, 2019 | Comments Off on IG Report Confirms Comey’s ‘Deep State’ Conspiracy Against Trump

Everybody was jumping up and down about this today, while I was working on something else. Aaron Klein at Breitbart reports:

A report released on Thursday by the Justice Department’s inspector general provides new context to disgraced former FBI Director James Comey’s infamous classified briefing to then President-elect Donald Trump about “salacious” material inside the anti-Trump dossier.
The IG report relates that prior to the briefing, FBI members on Comey’s team discussed the need to memorialize the exchanges between Comey and Trump during the private January 6, 2017 briefing in Trump Tower just in case Trump made statements relevant to the agency’s Russia probe. In other words, they plotted to stealthily use statements Trump said to Comey in a private briefing to inform their Russia collusion investigation.
The IG further relates that Comey went on to do just that. He had a laptop waiting for him in the car, where he immediately began memorializing the private talk. He also immediately provided a “quick download” of the Trump briefing to members of the FBI’s Russia collusion team via a secured video conference.
Until now, Comey and other former Obama administration officials presented the unusual briefing as a courtesy to Trump to warn him about the news media possibly publically releasing embarrassing claims about the newly elected president.  Questions have been raised on the need to include the dossier’s wild and unsubstantiated charges in the classified briefings. It is not the usual job of the intelligence community to warn politicians about possible pending negative publicity.
The IG report, based on interviews with Comey and other FBI “witnesses”, documents that prior to Comey’s briefing the FBI discussed utilizing Comey’s classified private talk with Trump to inform the controversial Russia collusion probe.

In other words, Comey treated the President-elect as a criminal suspect. And some people act like it was an outrage that Trump fired him?



 

Category: MuellerGate

Do You #BelieveWomen?

Posted on | August 29, 2019 | Comments Off on Do You #BelieveWomen?

If you consider yourself to be a feminist, why? Whatever explanation you offer, I would hope you’d reconsider. Whatever the situation might have been in 1968 when the Women’s Liberation Movement (as it was then called) emerged from the ranks of the New Left, the balance of power between men and women now is definitely not systemic oppression of women. We’re not living in a “patriarchy” when 40% of children are born to unmarried women, and a majority of university students are female. Certainly my daughters have greater career opportunities than did my grandmother, yet the claims of universal victimhood and collective oppression are now heard more loudly than ever. How to explain this? Feminism is a totalitarian movement to destroy civilizations as we know it, and the more power a totalitarian movement gets, the more power they crave. There is no logical stopping point for the demands of a totalitarian. You give Hitler the Sudetenland, and next he’ll annex the rest of Czechoslovakia and invade Poland. So the more our society seeks to appease feminists, they angrier feminists become, and the more insane the demands they make. Feminism is an anti-male hate movement, and no man is safe from its destructive power. However, the men most vulnerable to this destruction are those who consider themselves “enlightened” and “sensitive,” and who naïvely believe that their support for “equality” will prevent them from becoming targets of feminist wrath.

Consider the case of Jonathan Kaiman, a young journalist who was Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, and was elected in 2017 as president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC). And then #MeToo happened. In January 2018, a girl he’d hooked up with one night in 2013 wrote a blog post in which she described their encounter as, well, not entirely consensual on her part:

After an evening out drinking and flirting, [Laura] Tucker drove Kaiman on her scooter back to her apartment. There, she wrote, they mutually and consensually undressed and got into bed. . . .
Tucker wrote that while making out in bed with Kaiman, she had a change of heart, so she stood up and said she didn’t want to continue. . . .

You can read the rest. Evidently, Kaiman persuaded her to resume their encounter, but she says it made her feel “gross” and, once Tucker did her #MeToo hit-piece on Kaiman, another woman came forward to say that she, too, had a less-than-entirely-consensual encounter with him. The result was the destruction of Kaiman’s once-promising career.

Feminists insist there should be only one side of these stories. If a woman says a man sexually assaulted her, we must #BelieveWomen and forget everything we know about human nature. If a woman goes out drinking with a guy, then she takes him back to her apartment, what do we presume the intended outcome to be? A case like this could never be prosecuted as rape in a court of law, but thanks to #MeToo and its #BelieveWomen principle, any man who has ever had sex with a woman is a potential target for destruction. All your ex-girlfriend has to do is write a Facebook post claiming that you somehow victimized her and — BOOM! — your reputation is permanently destroyed.

It doesn’t matter what actually happened between Kaiman and Tucker. The point is we don’t know — we can never know — what actually happened in this kind of he-said/she-said situation. There’s no evidence, no DNA, no video, etc., by which we might determine who is telling the truth, and therefore it was wrong for Laura Tucker to go public with her complaint about how her hookup with Kaiman made her feel “gross.”

Try to imagine being a young man in such a climate, where feminism has become a system fully weaponized to prevent men from having sex — or destroying them if they somehow evade this prohibition. It’s truly frightening, and Adam Piggott comments:

Men need to change their behavior. This is the only acceptable solution because it keeps the power in our own hands. If you’re just going to sit around and hope that women collectively wake up then you’ve never witnessed a woman on a power trip, and this is very much bigger than that. . . .
No, we have to change our behavior and here’s what we have to do:
No hooking up. . . .
If women are determined to make meaningless sexual encounters radioactive then men have to position themselves accordingly. . . .

Read the whole thing. It’s gotten scary out there for young guys. My two youngest sons are college students, and I hope they’ll be careful.



 

Category: Sex Trouble

The Smear Machine Fails (Again)

Posted on | August 29, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Will they never learn from their mistakes?

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell lives a secret double life performing as a drag queen in New Jersey gay bars, a source tells me. While there have long been rumors that O’Donnell enjoys dressing up in women’s clothing, evidence of his transvestite fetish has been difficult to obtain. Yet my source assures me that such evidence exists, and as for gossip about O’Donnell’s addiction to the rare narcotic Ibogaine … Well, has O’Donnell ever denied it?
You could justify reporting almost anything by the nonexistent “journalism ethics” of Lawrence O’Donnell. On live TV Tuesday night, the MSNBC host told his audience that Donald Trump had obtained loans from Deutsche Bank co-signed by “Russian billionaires with ties to Vladimir Putin.” The basis for this claim, according to O’Donnell, was “a single source close to Deutsche Bank.” O’Donnell then added an interesting caveat: “If true … ”
Yes, of course. It would be a big scoop, if true. And my exclusive reporting that O’Donnell spends his Saturday nights in drag cabaret shows, wearing high heels and fishnet stockings while twerking to Lady Gaga songs? A major bombshell, if true. As it is, however, I hesitate to vouch for my source’s assertion that the MSNBC host is an Ibogaine-addicted transvestite. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.



 

Category: MSNBC

In The Mailbox: 08.28.19

Posted on | August 28, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #726
EBL: Dave Chappelle – Sticks & Stones
Twitchy: Beta’s Campaign Ejected Breitbart Reporter To Ensure Black Students Felt Safe
Louder With Crowder: April Ryan Says Trump Wanting To Nuke Hurricanes Is Racist

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #119 – The “Personal Transformation” Episode
American Greatness: Big Tech Censors Strike Again
American Power: Michelle Malkin – Open Borders, Inc. (Already #1 on Amazon!)
American Thinker: Red China & The 2020 Election
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Three Major Cruise Lines Hit With Fines For Trafficking In Stolen Cuban Property
BattleSwarm: Dave Chappelle vs. Social Justice Warriors
CDR Salamander: NNN – A New Acronym The Navy Does Not Need
Da Tech Guy: Three Reasons Why The Left Might Be Better Off With A Trump SCOTUS Appointment Now Vs. Later
Don Surber: Why Their Recession Won’t Stop Trump
Dustbury: Tru To You
The Geller Report: NAACP President Tells Reporter “I Don’t Talk To F*cking Jews”, also, Iraqi Migrant Security Guard Jailed For Raping Little Girl
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Don’t Know Much About History
Hollywood In Toto: Sebastian Maniscalsco Triggers VMAs, Woke Journalists
Joe For America: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Says America Is Ready For Reparations Because Of Trump’s Attitude
Legal Insurrection: Sen. Gillibrand Ends Her Pathetic Candidacy, also, Brexit Shock – Boris Johnson Moves To Prorogue Parliament
Michelle Malkin: Get Off The Sidelines – #StandWithICE
The PanAm Post: New Measures To Reduce Influx of Venezuelan Refugees, also, Venezuela – A Ticking Time Bomb For Latin America
Power Line: No U.S. Warming Since 2005, also, Paul Sperry – The Waiting Game
Shark Tank: Andrew Pollack Bashes New Partisan Gun-Grabbing Peace Plan
Shot In The Dark: How To Win “Prog” Friends And Influence Virtue-Signaling People
STUMP: Are Public Pensions In A Crisis? Bonds & Bailouts
This Ain’t Hell: Judge Orders Convicted Valor Thieves To Write Out Names Of 6,756 Killed In Iraq & Afghanistan, also, AF MSGT Allowed To Stay In After Investigation Into White Nationalist Ties
Victory Girls: Queen Elizabeth Greenlights Brexit, also, Ilhan Omar – Divorce, Distractions & Denials
Volokh Conspiracy: No Qualified Immunity For Kim Davis
Weasel Zippers: Sanders Praises Socialism In Red China, also, WaPo Newsroom Infested With Cockroaches
Mark Steyn: Ding! Dong! The Witch Is Dead, also, Proroguish Charmer

Michelle Malkin’s Open Borders Inc.
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Category: Linkagery

The Final Frontier: Lesbian Astronaut Becomes First Criminal in Space

Posted on | August 28, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Remind me of this when Women’s History Month arrives next year:

Decorated NASA astronaut Anne McClain is accused of stealing her estranged wife’s identity and improperly accessing her bank account while McClain was on a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station — likely the first crime ever committed in space.
The wife, Summer Worden, a former Air Force intelligence officer who lives in Kansas, and McClain have been locked in an ugly divorce since 2018 that includes a nasty parenting dispute over Worden’s 6-year-old son, whom McClain was helping to raise before their split, the New York Times reported. Worden never consented to McClain adopting the boy, who was a year old when they met in 2014.
McClain was supposed to be part of NASA’s first all-female spacewalk in March before it was canceled for a lack of properly fitting spacesuits.
Though Worden filed for divorce in 2018, McClain continued to ask her highly detailed questions about her financial life, Worden claims. That led Worden to have her bank check into who had recently accessed her bank account, and the bank found access from a NASA computer network, according to reports.
“I was shocked and appalled at the audacity by her to think that she could get away with that, and I was very disheartened that I couldn’t keep anything private,” Worden told NBC News.
McClain, in an under-oath interview with NASA’s inspector general, said she accessed the bank account from space to make sure Worden had enough money to pay the bills as she always has, using a password she’s had for some time.
“She strenuously denies that she did anything improper,” said her lawyer, Rusty Hardin, who said the astronaut “is totally cooperating.”

The jokes just write themselves.

Beyond the obvious jokes, have you ever read Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff? In selecting America’s first astronauts, NASA administered all kinds of psychological tests, even though they were choosing from a pool of military pilots, officers who had to meet the highest standards of discipline merely to be wearing the uniform of their country. Having a stable marriage was a prerequisite, in that era of traditional family values, and at one point John Glenn had a showdown with some of his fellow astronauts who were engaged in extramarital affairs.

What would John Glenn say about this ridiculous Space Dyke drama? We are living in a decadent and corrupt age, and the fact that there is a former Air Force intelligence officer involved in this bizarre story ought to raise questions about policy at the Department of Defense.

Well, I’m sure podcast partner John Hoge will have something to say about this. He’s building space robots for NASA, you know.



 

Category: Crime, Gays
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