The Other McCain

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

The Wheel Turns on SPLC’s Heidi Beirich

Posted on | January 3, 2019 | Comments Off on The Wheel Turns on SPLC’s Heidi Beirich

 

Exclusive news from PJMedia’s Tyler O’Neil:

In December 2018, a Baltimore lawyer filed a devastating lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and two of its employees. The SPLC targeted Glen Keith Allen over his former ties to the National Alliance (NA), a white nationalist group. In doing so, the liberal group allegedly violated laws and legal codes of conduct by receiving and then paying for stolen documents in violation of confidentiality agreements. The group went after Allen with the intent of getting him fired by the city of Baltimore and permanently destroying his future prospects. Allen’s suit claims that the SPLC should have its 501c3 tax-exempt status revoked, that it owes him restitution for racketeering, and that it should pay $6.5 million in damages. It also references Allen’s pro bono work on behalf of African-Americans and his mentorship of an African-American teen, powerfully rebutting claims that he is a racist. Allen told PJ Media he now regrets his NA support, and an African-American friend of his laughed at the idea of this lawyer being branded a racist.
Perhaps most importantly, the suit attacks the liberal group for undermining America’s tradition of free expression. In an August 2016 interview with The Washington Post cited in the lawsuit, SPLC Intelligence Project Director Heidi Beirich (a defendant in the case) claimed to have watched Allen “like a hawk” because he had “the worst ideas ever created.”
“This East Europe Communist thought-crime surveillance mentality is antithetical to fundamental American cultural and Constitutional principles protecting freedom of expression and association,” Allen wrote in the suit, which can be found on his website. His lawsuit uses concrete claims of lawbreaking and defamation to expose the SPLC’s Orwellian strategy of branding its opponents “hate groups” and orchestrating campaigns against them.
In August 2016, the SPLC published an article branding Allen a “neo-Nazi lawyer” and insinuating that this lawyer’s work for the city of Baltimore was racist. Beirich, the article’s author, smeared a small political party as racist and then published allegedly stolen documents protected by confidentiality agreements connecting Allen to the National Alliance.

(Hat-tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

This makes me smile because it was Heidi Beirich who first falsely labeled me a “white supremacist” in a failed effort to get me fired from my job at The Washington Times. Have I ever told that story in its entirety? No, and I’ve never sued them, either (just the same as I turned down the opportunity to sue Twitter for banning me three years ago).

Over the years, the SPLC’s smear against me has been endlessly recycled, despite its self-evident falsehood. Anyone who actually knows me knows that I am not a “white supremacist,” and if I were concealing a crypto-Nazi agenda, you might think there would be substantial evidence of this. The paucity of evidence — beyond guilt-by-association smears and what I’ve called the “Ransom Note Method” of assembling parts of disparate statements to create a sort of word-collage — is particularly remarkable, given that I’ve been an independent blogger for 11 years now. How can anyone believe that it is my desire to incite hatred or advocate racial oppression, when I’ve published so many thousands of posts here, with no editor to filter my entirely candid expressions, but never once written anything that would justify the “white supremacist” label?

You see that my silence was strategic. The First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment are highly related. Just as I have the right to free speech, I also have the right to remain silent, and cannot be compelled to answer my accusers. During my 2009 blog war against LGF’s Charles Johnson, I used this to my advantage, following the advice someone once gave me: “Don’t get down in the tall grass with them.” That is to say, if you are innocent, there is no need to make a point-by-point rebuttal of every bit of “evidence” put forward by your self-appointed prosecutors in the court of public opinion. Did you say this “offensive” thing or did you associate with this notorious person? “Objection your honor — irrelevant.”

The so-called “evidence” cited by these Thought Police apparatchiks doesn’t matter, because the actual accusation is that you are somehow a menace to public safety, that you harbor sentiments that make you dangerous, and that you advocate wrongful treatment of others.

 

It is not illegal to express opinions with which Heidi Beirich disagrees, nor is it illegal to befriend people Heidi Beirich dislikes. And yet, as an employee of the SPLC, Dr. Beirich seemed to believe that she was authorized to determine the limits of our personal liberty. Because no one has ever offered to pay me to write the full story of my career as a Thought Criminal, and because I have not (yet) felt any need to share every detail of that saga, Dr. Beirich never understood my jocular good cheer in response to being defamed and, on advice of my close personal friend Bert the Samoan Lawyer, I have been content to watch patiently as she has proceeded down her chosen path to her inevitable destruction.

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Two words for you, Dr. Beirich: Deo Vindice.



 

Category: Culture, Racism

YouTube Suspends Jordan Peterson’s Daughter @MikhailaAleksis

Posted on | January 3, 2019 | 1 Comment

A screenshot of Mikhaila Peterson taken from a YouTube video was removed due to a spurious DMCA complaint.

 

If the Left ever decides you’re an Enemy of Social Justice, they won’t stop at trying to destroy your life, they’ll also attempt to destroy the lives of your family members. This appears to be the case with Professor Jordan Peterson’s daughter Mikhaila, whose YouTube account just got a “first strike” suspension because . . . “spam and deceptive practices”?

This is obviously bogus, as bogus as Twitter’s claim that I was a participant in “targeted abuse,” and anyone who has followed the SJW jihad since #GamerGate understands what is really happening. YouTube is owned by Google, a company that is controlled by SJWs; the company fired James Damore and is being sued for allegedly prohibiting the hiring of white males. While the Cultural Marxists within the company are afraid to ban such a high-profile free speech advocate as Jordan Peterson, they figured they could get away with punishing his daughter, depriving her of advertising revenue and whatever other limitations this “first strike” suspension involves. The process whereby Google enforces its terms of services, however, is arbitrary and opaque. We don’t know which SJW apparatchik inside the company imposed this “first strike,” and there is no way the executives at Google (all of whom are major Democrat campaign contributors, by the way) will give an honest explanation.

 

Because I don’t like to publicize the tactics these monsters use, I’ve never discussed some of the ways my family members have been targeted by the Left, but trust me when I say that being an Enemy of Social Justice is quite a dangerous occupation, and that there is no known limit to the Left’s vindictive methods. There is a reason why I always say the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

Category: Culture

In The Mailbox: 01.02.19

Posted on | January 3, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Expecting The System To Protect You Is A Losing Proposition
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #481 – Christmas Edition, also, Episode #488
EBL: Daryl Dragon, The Captain Of “Captain & Tennille”, RIP
Twitchy: Democrats Vent Their Rage At Campaign Reporters Who Kneecapped Hillary In 2016
Louder With Crowder: Border Patrol Agent Has Harsh Truth About Southern Border

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: President Trump Still Committed To Syria Withdrawal, also, Spending Less Time On Twitter
American Thinker: The Truth About Democrat Morality
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: Your Obligatory 2020 Democratic Party Presidential Horse Race Roundup
CDR Salamander: For 2019, Everything Needs To Get Harder
Da Tech Guy: My 2018 Posts That You Might Not Have Noticed, also, Your Five Favorite Posts Of 2018 And An Special Honorable Mention
Don Surber: First #FakeNews Of 2019, also, Reasons Why They Hate Trump
Dustbury: Error Code Begins With WTF
First Street Journal: What Will Be The Low Skill Jobs Of the Future?
The Geller Report: Watch Muslim WaPo Reporter Chanting “Death To America”, Other Greatest Hits, also, Muslim Migrants In Sweden Sending Kids To School In Somalia To prevent “Westernization”
Hogewash: Something Positive About President Trump, also, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day
Hollywood In Toto: Rust Creek – Sly Feminism Sans Preaching
Joe For America: Woman Berates Flight Attendant For Calling Her “Miss” Instead Of “Doctor”
JustOneMinute: Mitt Is Back
Legal Insurrection: As Gov. Brown Leaves Office, He Blasts Rural Voters, Pardons Illegals Facing Deportation, also, Mitt Romney Casts A Pathetic Shadow
The PanAm Post: Beatriz Becerra – The MEP Fighting For Freedom In Nicaragua & Venezuela
Power Line: In Re Romney, also, Free Mumia?
Shark Tank: Matt Caldwell Reflects On 2018 & What Lies Ahead
Shot In The Dark:  Amateur Hour At Parkland
STUMP: Mortality With Meep – French Annuities & The Revolution, also, War & Peace – I AM DONE
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler Report – Probe New Horizons Sets Records For Most Distant Dick Pic Ever
This Ain’t Hell: Wednesday Feelgood Stories, also, The Army, Needing Recruits, Turns To Liberal-Dominated Cities
Victory Girls: Democrats Refuse To Budge On Border Security Funds
Volokh Conspiracy: The Ever-Shifting Definition Of “Assault Weapons”
Weasel Zippers: Sheila Jackson Lee Pushes Reparations Bill, also, Republicans Blast Romney For WaPo Op-Ed
Megan McArdle: What Connects Trumplike Figures Around The World? The Internet
Mark Steyn: Campaign 2020 Update


Amazon Warehouse Deals
New Year New You

Category: Linkagery

‘They Took a Wild Chance’

Posted on | January 2, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘They Took a Wild Chance’

 

Smitty has already commented on Willard’s embarrassing anti-Trump column, so I’ll refrain from further comment on that. What seems to have eluded the comprehension of Sen.-elect Romney and other #NeverTrump Republicans — looking at you, Jonah Goldberg — is that their insulting disdain for our President is rooted in their elitist loathing of the people who voted for him. That is to say, Mitt and Jonah aren’t just against Trump, personally, but they are against the 62.9 million Americans who elected him. Considering themselves to possess the authority of Platonic archons, our elite deny that the people are capable of self-government, and thus oppose their right to choose their own rulers.

Trump won because he got more votes in key states — including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan — than Hillary Clinton. Also, quite relevantly, Trump got more votes in 2016 than did the Republican presidential candidate in 2012. Compare the outcomes:

PENNSYLVANIA
2012 — Romney 2,680,434 (46.6%), Obama 2,990,274 (52.0%)
2016 — Trump 2,970,733 (48.2%), Clinton 2,926,441 (47.5%)

OHIO
2012 — Romney 2,661,437 (47.7%), Obama 2,827,709 (50.7%)
2016 — Trump 2,841,005 (51.7%), Clinton 2,394,164 (43.6%)

MICHIGAN
2012 — Romney 2,115,256 (44.7%), Obama 2,564,569 (54.2%)
2016 — Trump 2,279,543 (47.5%), Clinton 2,268,839 (47.3%)

In these three Northern industrial states, the GOP vote increased by a combined total of 734,084 votes. However you explain this result, you cannot deny the fact that Trump got more votes and he did so despite the furious attacks of the liberal media establishment, and despite the vocal opposition of the #NeverTrump Republican elite. How much better would Trump’s re-election prospects be if his GOP critics would stop whining and start helping? Their endless petty complaints, their childish butthurt tantrums, are giving aid and comfort to the Democrats, and perhaps deliberately so. And it never seems to occur to the #NeverTrump crowd to wonder what was in the minds of those voters who elected Trump. Who are these people, anyway? Karol Markowicz is a Republican who didn’t vote for Trump, but who isn’t #NeverTrump:

To understand what happened, I devoured reporting about Trump voters and sought to understand them.
I wasn’t some liberal, mind you. I had worked for years in Republican politics. Yet I hadn’t known any Trump primary voters. I didn’t know his fans, his base.
Reading their concerns was eye-opening. They weren’t stupid, and they weren’t hateful. Mainstream politicians had ignored them for so long that they took a wild chance on the reality-TV star from Queens.

(Hat-tip: Hogewash.) Quite simply, the political elite of both parties are out of touch with the American heartland, and Trump was able to appeal to voters who felt their interests had been neglected. The elite’s objection to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” nationalism is evidence that our political establishment cares more about their own prestige than they do about the American people. The elite are our enemies.



 

Category: Donald Trump

It’s the Degeneracy, Stupid

Posted on | January 2, 2019 | 1 Comment

Instapundit calls attention to a study showing a 5-point IQ decline between men born in 1975 and those born in 1991 — between Generation X and Millennials, in other words — and researchers blame this on increased childhood time spent on computers, smartphones and videogames. Ace follows this with research showing that too much screen time contributes to psychiatric disorders among children.

While I don’t deny the destructive influence of all these gadgets, I think this research underestimates the ways in which demographic decadence has contributed to the decline in IQ. The problems that Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein described in The Bell Curve are highly relevant to any such discussion. If effective contraceptives are widely available, and if there are social pressures on young women to pursue college education and professional careers, fewer highly intelligent women will become mothers, and those who do become mothers will have fewer children. If the smartest women have the fewest children (and this is the general trend that has developed over the past 50 years), then the overall average IQ of the population will decline. This is not an opinion, but a fact — the science is settled — and our policy-makers have been ignoring the dysgenic trend for too long. Instead, we have doubled-down on a rhetoric of “empowerment” for women that is anti-natalist in effect, if not also in intent. There are limits to what can be done, in a free society, to reverse the disastrous demographic trends that have afflicted the United States in the past half-century. However, when we witness evidence of degeneracy, we ought not to pretend that we don’t know what we’re actually seeing, or what is causing our society’s descent into idiocy.

Could saying this be considered . . . offensive?

Here’s the thing: If you’re smart enough to comprehend the preceding paragraph, then obviously you must be quite intelligent. Besides which, people who enjoy reading about politics and current events are quite generally above-average. (Stupid people just watch TV.) It should be obvious that I, as a conservative, would never advocate any policy that would infringe anyone’s constitutional liberty. But what has happened is that the elites who control our institutions of education and communication do not wish to permit a free discussion of these demographic realities. You cannot solve a problem you’re not allowed to discuss, and so we keep drifting toward catastrophe in eerie silence.

UPDATE: Of course, Mike Judge’s 2006 film Idiocracy might be helpful instruction, for those too stupid or lazy to read books.



 

Category: Culture, Education

Ah, The “Character” Issue

Posted on | January 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Ah, The “Character” Issue

by Smitty

Bruce Campbell’s political doppelgänger opened the pie hole in the WaPo.

One is instantly reminded why we didn’t really want this gasbag in 2012, and why his loss to #OccupiedResoluteDesk surprised no one outside of Utah:

The world needs American leadership, and it is in America’s interest to provide it. A world led by authoritarian regimes is a world — and an America — with less prosperity, less freedom, less peace.

To reassume our leadership in world politics, we must repair failings in our politics at home.

No mention whatsoever of Korea, USMCA, anything. I guess, other than running for the Senate, Mitt has been at choir practice the last two years or something.

Mitt is basically rehashing Jonah Goldberg’s recent handwringing. As I was saying on Twitter:

Willard Mitt,
A tedious git,
Who couldn’t quite deliver,
Then beat his feet,
To a Senate seat,
And showed the world he’s a “giver”. https://t.co/iTHAMFWtd2— I Came; I Saw; I Got Over Macho Grande (@smitty_one_each) January 2, 2019

In reply to His High-Minded-Principled-Failure, a pair of great articles have arrived at American Greatness that should be of help both to Jonah and Senator Milquetoast.

First, Victor Davis Hanson points out the exhaustion of our so-called “elite”:

In short, instead of being a meritocracy, they amount to a mediocracy, neither great nor awful, but mostly mediocre.

This mediocracy is akin to late 4th-century B.C. Athenian politicians, the last generation of the Roman Republic, the late 18th-century French aristocracy, or the British bipartisan elite of the mid-1930s—their reputations relying on the greater wisdom and accomplishment of an earlier generation, while they remain convinced that their own credentials and titles are synonymous with achievement, and clueless about radical political, economic, military, and social upheavals right under their noses.

Remember the “new normal”? Our economic czars had simply decided anemic economic growth was the best Americans could expect and that 3 percent annualized GDP growth was out of the realm of possibility. Big government incompetence combined with Wall Street buccaneerism had almost melted down the economy in 2008. Recent presidents had doubled the debt—twice.

Read the whole thing, especially where VDH points out the case the the mediocracy would need to make to unseat Trump. Yes, Mitt, he’s talking about your Pharisaic hide.

More Jonah- and Mitt-specific is Roger Kimball:

On the contrary, people supported him, first, because of what he promised to do and, second, because of what, over the past two years, he has accomplished. These accomplishments, from rolling back the regulatory state and scores of conservative judicial appointments, from moving our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem to resuscitating our military, working to end Obamacare, and fighting to keep our borders secure, are not morally neutral data points. They are evidences of a political vision and of promises made and kept. They are, in short, evidences of what sort of character Donald Trump is.

Personally, I Jonah is making the strongest possible argument he can honestly make while still getting paid for it. You can define “character” in a way that Barack Obama is a better President than Trump, because BHO only ever had one wife, never had tabloid headings about adultery, and is (apparently) a good father. As far as the media has reported it. This far: =>||<=.

Anybody who wants another Obama administration is likely to have another swing at one in 2020, when Michelle steps up to the plate. And, again, only a chump’s chump would really want Her Majesty in office, appointing foes as Ambassador to Arkanicidia. Don’t be a chump: support Trump.

But my answer to the whole “character” question is this:

What I think Voltaire and Rousseau miss, but we see in the Epistle of James, is that character & deed are related like velocity & position.

The sum of deeds over time is character; the derivative of character with respect to time is a specific deed.— I Came; I Saw; I Got Over Macho Grande (@smitty_one_each) December 30, 2018

via RedState,

also: The Last Refuge

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: > >

In The Mailbox: 01.01.19

Posted on | January 1, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: May You All Have A happy & Auspicious New Year
Twitchy: SNL Alum’s New Year’s Resolution Is To “Make Sure The Republican Party Dies”
Louder With Crowder: Alexandria Occasional-Cortex Goes Bananas When Called Out For Lying About The Bronx
Rod Dreher: Learning From The Spanish Civil War

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: What Happened To California’s “Bustling” Recreational Weed Market? also, The Montavilla Initiative
American Thinker: The Only Privilege In America Is Liberal Privilege
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday – And Goodbye, 2018! also, Happy 2019!
BattleSwarm: Why No New Housing Gets Built In San Francisco, also, Fleischman & Pie On The Gender Pay Gap Myth
Camp Of The Saints:
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, also, Ending 2018 With A Feh
Da Tech Guy: It’s a Bot World We’re Living In, also, What Transgender Athletes Will Do To High School Sports
Don Surber: You Are Mentally Ill, “Ma’am”, also, Steaming Her Way Onto The Trumpenfreude List
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, Worst Titles Of 2018
First Street Journal: Why Should We Be Surprised That A Movement Based On Mental Illness Yields Insane Results?
The Geller Report: Riding The Subway In Germany – Watch Arabs Assault Train Passengers In NYE Assault, also, UK Muslim Goes On NYE Rampage, Stabs Three
Hogewash: My Year In Review Stuff, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Ellen Barkin Wants Louis C.K. Raped & Shot
Joe For America: Sen. Graham Skewers Nancy Pelosi With Savage Open Letter, also, Kaepernick LOST – Players Stop Kneeling, NFL Ratings Rise Significantly
JustOneMinute: I Was Not Ready For This Football
Legal Insurrection: Elizabeth Warren’s “Dukakis Tank” Moment, also, Net Neutrality’s End Brought About Faster Internet
Michelle Malkin: Say His Name – RIP Corporal Ronil Singh
The PanAm Post: The Danger Of The Colombian Left, also, Bolsonaro And The Importance Of Cultural Change For Political Victory
Power Line: The Knights Of Columbus Respond To Senators Hirono and Harris, also, The Hypocrisy Of Nike
Shark Tank: Florida Republicans Slam Baseball’s Deal With Cuba
Shot In The Dark: Happy New Year
STUMP: Bye Bye 2018 – And The 80% Funding Myth Persists, also, Happy New Tax Year!
The Jawa Report: The Un-American Dream, also, Noooo! Not Dr. Hook!
The Political Hat: Happy New Year!
This Ain’t Hell: New Year’s Day Feelgood Stories, also, General Mattis’ Farewell Letter To Troops
Victory Girls: VG Person of The Year For 2018 – Melania Trump
Volokh Conspiracy: Court Stays Ruling Invalidating ACA Pending Appeal
Weasel Zippers: Trump Ushers In 2019 With Trumpian Tweet – “Calm Down & Enjoy The Ride”, also, Illegal Alien Arrested In Deadly TN Crash Charged With Criminally Negligent Homicide
Megan McArdle: The Latest Journalism Scandal Proves It – Partisan Writing Is One Way To Keep Journalists Honest
Mark Steyn: The American Media, Suckered Again, also, Ave Atque Vale 2018

Category: Linkagery

Re-Learning Crap

Posted on | January 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Re-Learning Crap

This morning Smitty called to wish me a Happy New Year, and our conversation continued until I went off on one of my veins-bulging on my neck rants about Jonah Goldberg. See, my friend Professor Paul Gottfried cited me today:

Recently American Spectator-columnist Robert Stacy McCain issued a blistering response to Jonah Goldberg’s latest efforts at refurbishing his “Never-Trump conservative” credentials. McCain points out that Goldberg keeps reprising the same attacks against Trump that he’s been making for more than two years. Goldberg goes after Chris Buskirk at the American Greatness website for dismissing his brand of “conservatism” and for indicating that Goldbergism may be outdated. Despite the fact that Goldberg’s fans continue to devour his offerings, his invectives seem to have become tiresomely repetitive. . . .

You can read the rest of that, and I’ll be happy to discuss it with you in the comments, but did I mention I was on the phone with Smitty this morning? Because after I’d exhausted myself ranting about whatever, Smitty was like, “Oh, by the way, we’re recombombulating the frammajamitz to import the new codeframe blahblahblah . . .”

Maybe that’s not a verbatim quote, but the point is that what he was actually calling me about this morning was not to listen to my rant, but to inform me that a Shiny New Upgrade was about to be activated. And so when I finally decided to blog something today, the toolbox was some awful effing thing I couldn’t recognize and have been barely able to use.

This is McCain’s Law of Technology: Just about the time you get the hang of Upgrade 2.0, the nerds who understand this crap will introduce Upgrade 3.0, which is allegedly an improvement, but instantly makes you nostalgic for whatever it was they just replaced.

Or, to put it more succinctly: Progress is the root of all evil.



 

Category: Politics
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