The Other McCain

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

Rule 5 Sunday: Merry Christmas!

Posted on | December 24, 2018 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

As we all know, our friends in Japan are somewhat confused about the history and practices of Western Civilization, and nowhere is this more evident than in anime, manga, and video games. For example, in the tremendously popular phone game Fate/Grand Order, many historical figures have been recreated as Heroic Spirits, who assist the player in completing the necessary tasks involved in averting the destruction of humanity, which is scheduled for midnight this next Tuesday. This is not to say that the Heroic Spirits are necessarily historically accurate, and a great example of this is the Emperor Nero, shown in last year’s Christmas event preparing to dispense presents to the deserving. Yes, she’s roleplaying as Santa Claus. No, I didn’t use this year’s ersatz Santas because I’m not into lolicon.

“I, the Emperor Nero, order that you have a Merry Saturnalia – I mean, Christmas!”

Ninety Miles From Tyranny has an exceptional Hot Pick Of The Late Night – Emily Ratajkowski! also, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #475, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. At Animal Magnetism, it’s Rule Five Mexican Standoff Friday and a summery Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL brings us Vintage Christmas Trees, Roma, Penny Marshall (RIP), Best Instagram Post Ever?, Emily Blunt, Julia Ioffe, and Vintage Christmas In New York.

A View From The Beach offers Representing Us in the Multiverse – Catriona Gray, Happy Solstice!, Girls Will Be Girls, At Least She’s an Equal Opportunity Offender, Woody Allen’s Jail Bait Comes Forward, I Think I know Why, Sounds Like Bull to Me, Of Course They Didn’t, #HerToo: Cybill Shepherd Claims Moonves Cancelled Show After Failed Folly and Rainy Day Russiagate.

Proof Positive has Friday Night Babes, Vintage Babes, and Dove Skin Undies covering the Sex in Advertising beat. At Dustbury, it’s Katarina Kresal and Agnes Milowska.

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious linkagery!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Sunday Morning Coming Down

Posted on | December 23, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule 5 Sunday: Eliza Dushku
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Distant Smile
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL

Are You Listening?
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.17.18
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach
EBL

‘Social Justice’ and the Death Gap
A View From The Beach
EBL

The Hate Twitter Won’t Ban
357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.18.18
Proof Positive
EBL

Woody Allen’s Jailbait Lover: ‘When Mia Was There, We’d Talk About Astrology, and Woody Was Forced to Listen’
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

The Only Good Commie…
EBL

BOOM! John McCain Aide Was BuzzFeed Source for Steele Dossier
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.19.18
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach
EBL

Violence Against Women Update
EBL

Violence Against Women Update
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.20.18
EBL
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach

Samuel Little: FBI Says Serial Killer Murdered at Least 34 Women
EBL

Teacher Pronounces Education Secretary DeVos ‘Completely Under-Qualified’
EBL

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge
EBL

The Gathering Darkness
A View From The Beach
EBL

The Devil’s in Alabama
EBL

Syria, Afghanistan, and the #NeverTrump Problem of Jonah Goldberg
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.21.18
Proof Positive
EBL

Can We Deport the NY Times, Please?
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending December 21:

  1.  EBL (21)
  2.  A View From The Beach (7)
  3.  Proof Positive (6)

Thanks to everyone for all the linkagery!


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Category: FMJRA Award

Socialist Disaster in Venezuela is Sending Economic Refugees into Prostitution

Posted on | December 23, 2018 | Comments Off on Socialist Disaster in Venezuela is Sending Economic Refugees into Prostitution

 

Nothing is more predictable than the destructive power of socialism:

Inflation in the crisis-stricken country of Venezuela is on track to hit 1.4 million percent by the end of 2018, according to the latest report from the International Monetary Fund.
The report, entitled “Outlook on the World Economy,” predicts that inflation will reach 1.4 million by December 31, 400,000 percent higher than what they forecast in June this year and over a hundred times faster than the estimate of 13,000 percent in January. . . .
In 2018, the Venezuelan economy shrunk by a staggering 18 percent, indicating a third consecutive year of double-digit decline that has led to the worst economic and humanitarian crisis in the entire region. . . .
Nicolás Maduro’s socialist dictatorship has responded to the economic catastrophe with a number of creative but ultimately ineffective solutions that has included seeking additional loans from allies such as Turkey, Russia, and China and creating its own national cryptocurrency known as the “Petro,” supposedly backed by the nation’s extensive oil and gold reserves.
Maduro’s solution to the hyperinflation crisis has involved repeatedly raising the country’s national minimum wage and taking five zeroes off of the Bolivar currency. . . .

It is impossible to exaggerate the extent of the man-made disaster in Venezuela. Thousands of people are fleeing to neighboring countries, including Colombia, where Fox News reports from one border town:

Both men and women are exposed to sex trafficking along the route from Venezuela to Colombia. According to several walkers, some women “chose” prostitution as a means to make money and earn rides along the way. And some heterosexual men “sell themselves on the gay market” for a little money.
Other women are manipulated or forced into giving “pimp types” their documents and identification cards, and are subsequently drawn into prostitution rings. That’s particularly the case in border areas, where many rebel and drug-trafficking groups operate. . . .
Girls as young as 14 line the Cucuta streets available “for hire,” earning around seven dollars “per service.”

Someone should ask socialist Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez if they are in favor of 14-year-old girls getting pimped out for $7 a trick, because that’s where socialism ultimately leads.



 

Category: Economics, Venezuela

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Anthony Halliday a/k/a ‘Stephanie Hayden’

Posted on | December 22, 2018 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous: Anthony Halliday a/k/a ‘Stephanie Hayden’

Not a woman: Anthony Halliday (left) as ‘Stephanie Hayden’ (right).

Anthony Halliday is an obese 45-year-old man who, in 2007, began “identifying” as a woman, calling himself “Stephanie Hayden.” Because so-called “self-identification” has obtained the protection of law in England, this has the effect of empowering deranged perverts like Halliday/“Hayden” to harass anyone who refuses to participate in their “gender” delusions. Earlier this year, Halliday/“Hayden” was granted a Gender Recognition Certificate, which means that anyone in England who doesn’t acknowledge his self-declared female identity is at risk of criminal punishment. This has made him/“her” a Grand Inquisitor:

Mr. Hayden regularly threatens gender identity disbelievers with civil or criminal lawsuits, or attempts to have them ousted from their careers.
In September 2018, Mr. Hayden attempted to get academics who don’t believe in gender identity ideology fired from Sussex University, denouncing the academic institution as a “temple of transgender hate.” . . .
That same month, Mr. Hayden joined Adrian Harrop and other transgender rights activists in a successful campaign to take down a billboard in Liverpool that showcased the Google definition of the word “woman” as “adult human female.” That billboard was a “symbol that makes transgender people feel unsafe,” Dr. Harrop complained. . . .
Still in September, when . . . award-winning comedy writer, Graham Linehan, engaged in critical analysis and debate on the topic of gender identity ideology on Twitter, Mr. Hayden allegedly posted details, including business addresses, of Mr. Linehan’s wife’s company. Mr. Linehan claimed in a Times interview that Mr. Hayden’s alleged doxxing of his wife was an attempt to silence him . . .
Mr. Linehan, believing Mr. Hayden to be a “dangerous troll,” posted on Twitter to his 672,000 followers Mr. Hayden’s aliases and examples of Mr. Hayden’s online activity . . .
In October 2018, Mr. Hayden responded by filing a complaint with law enforcement against Mr. Linehan for “transphobic harassment” . . .
Mr. Hayden’s case made history, becoming the first “deadnaming” case in a UK court. “A [Gender Recognition Certificate] holder has a right to confidentiality in respect of their previous gender identity. If a person acts in an official capacity and discloses such information it is actually a criminal offence under s.22 Gender Recognition Act 2004,” Mr. Hayden explained . . .
West Yorkshire Police issued Mr. Linehan a verbal warning not to contact Mr. Hayden. Mr. Hayden is proceeding against Mr. Linehan in a civil suit for harassment, defamation and misuse of private information.

Do you see what happens when we permit the rhetoric of “civil rights” to be hijacked by lunatics and perverts? Graham Linehan never sought to interfere with Halliday’s fetish of wearing women’s clothing and pretending to be a woman named “Stephanie.” Rather, it is the bullying behavior of “transgender activism” which brought Halliday/“Hayden” to public attention and prompted Linehan’s criticism.

 

Thanks to British laws on “gender recognition,” however, any criticism of transgender ideology is now treated as criminal “harassment,” and the law is being used to terrorize critics into silence. It’s like Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four being forced to say 2 + 2 = 5.

Americans should take notice of what is happening in England. If your state or local authorities attempt to impose transgender “equality” by law, your free-speech rights could soon be similarly infringed.



 

Category: Great Britain, The Transgender Cult

Can We Deport the NY Times, Please?

Posted on | December 22, 2018 | 1 Comment

It’s difficult to maintain my emotional equilibrium this morning, as my senses are assailed by woeful tidings from every direction. Go take a look at Ed Morrissey’s roundup of how the pull-out from Syria means that our Kurdish allies in the region are now totally screwed. This isn’t some whining #NeverTrump tantrum, but geopolitical realism and, even if we can trace it all back to the Obama-era meddling of the 2011 “Arab Spring” project, it’s a responsibility Trump inherited when he became president and abandoning allies is always bad business. Meanwhile . . .

 

The New York Times has published the most anti-American column imaginable on the subject of immigration, with this astonishing headline:

None of Us Deserve Citizenship

From that startling premise — that Americans, including New York Times readers, are undeserving of any protection by our own government — the writer Michelle Alexander continues her argument:

After all, none of us born here did anything to deserve our citizenship. On what moral grounds can we deny others rights, privileges and opportunities that we did not earn ourselves?
Jose Antonio Vargas’s powerful book “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen” wrestles with the moral, emotional and psychological dimensions of America’s perennial question: Who deserves citizenship? With remarkable sensitivity to the extraordinarily wide range of people whose lives are affected by our nation’s immigration policies, he writes from the perspective of someone who was brought to this country illegally at the age of 12 to live with his grandparents, leaving his mother in the Philippines. Ever since his grandfather confessed to him, at age 16, that “you are not supposed to be here,” he has battled deep feelings of unworthiness and has striven to earn the right to belong. . . .
It’s tempting to imagine that our position as gatekeepers is morally sound — since we’re frequently reminded that “all nations have a right to defend their borders” — but our relationship to those who are fleeing poverty and violence is morally complex. Not only does birthright citizenship bestow upon us a privileged status that we haven’t earned; our nation’s unparalleled wealth and power, as well as our actual borders, lack a sturdy moral foundation. But for slavery, genocide and colonization, we would not be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world — in fact, our nation would not even exist. This is not hyperbole; it’s history.

The word for this is sophistry, a tendentious argument that begins by assuming a conclusion (in this case, that the U.S. has no right to enforce its own immigration laws) and then scours around for any sort of “evidence” to throw into the balance of an appeal to emotion necessary to compel our acquiescence. If you reject Michelle Alexander’s argument, she implies, your opposition is proof of your blood-drenched guilt for “slavery, genocide and colonization.” She expects us to be so overcome by sympathy for Jose Antonio Vargas, author of a “powerful book,” that we ignore every practical consideration which might cause us to disagree with her open-borders stance. Every fact the could be introduced to the discussion as evidence in favor of strict border enforcement she simply waves away by asserting that “history” renders our national existence morally illegitimate. Because no one born in America has “earned” citizenship in a nation whose “unparalleled wealth and power” was wrongfully obtained, Ms. Alexander implies, therefore our “privileged status” means we have no right to defend our interests.

By the way, why is this “America’s perennial question”? Isn’t it because our decadent elite are deeply soaked in the kind of anti-American sentiment manifested in Ms. Alexander’s column? Hasn’t our intellectual class been tutored in Cultural Marxism by their university professors? Didn’t the prejudicial beliefs she cites as “history” originate as Soviet propaganda during the Cold War? Can’t we trace her arguments back to the work of CPUSA members Herbert Aptheker and Howard Zinn?

Using “history” to de-legitimize America, to turn our nation’s success into proof of our own evil, was a hallmark of Communist propaganda during those decades when, as Nikita Khrushchev boasted, the Soviet Union aimed to “bury” us, and it is remarkable how this kind of anti-American rhetoric has outlived the Soviet regime by more than 25 years.

Since Ms. Alexander wishes to recommend “powerful” books to her readers, I will respond by recommending Thomas Sowell’s powerful 1998 book, Conquests and Cultures: An International History. Sowell patiently explains why the kind of arguments made by Ms. Alexander are invalid, namely that “slavery, genocide and colonization” are worldwide phenomena, commonplace occurrences in human history, rather than a unique moral failing of America. If we examine history from this global perspective, certainly we cannot be made to feel ashamed of the remarkable success of the United States, and become more interested in preserving our heritage than in destroying it, which is what Michelle Alexander and her editors at the New York Times would have us do.

Nevertheless, since Ms. Alexander has asserted that no one, herself included, has a right to U.S. citizenship, what is to prevent President Trump from issuing an executive order to permanently exile her from the United States? Indeed, as liberals are eager to have us believe Trump is an authoritarian dictator, why couldn’t he draw up an “enemies list,” perhaps including the entire staff of the New York Times, and order them shipped to some foreign country, perhaps Syria. If no one “deserves” citizenship — a “privileged status” that protects us from arbitrary power — then Trump might use his dictatorial authority to rid the country of his critics. You don’t like ICE rounding up illegal aliens? OK, then, instead we’ll order ICE to start rounding up liberals. We’ll put them on a boat and ship them to Syria, and they can join the Kurdistani freedom fighters in the battle against ISIS, or Turkey, or whoever else they want to fight. It doesn’t matter, so long as we can get these liberals out of America, a country they so obviously hate. Good-bye, “privileged status”!



 

Category: Immigration, New York Times

In The Mailbox: 12.21.18

Posted on | December 22, 2018 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Winter Is Here
Twitchy: Headline Fail In Progress As The Hill Misidentifies Former Lawmaker Who Told Trump To “Sit On His Pointy Fence”
Louder With Crowder: Bill Burr & Joe Rogan Team Up Against Outrage Culture
According To Hoyt: The Super Stupendous Holiday Extravaganza Goes On!
Vox Popoli: God No Longer Blesses America
Slow Facts: Feel-Good Laws Are Getting Us Killed, And It’s Our Fault (via 357 Magnum)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Friday Hawt Chicks & Links – The #MeToo Edition
American Power: Syria Withdrawal & Push For Border Wall Demonstrate Trump’s “America First” Worldview, also, Sweden’s “Immigrant” Ghettos
American Thinker: Ted Cruz Is Right – Make El Chapo Pay For The Wall
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Mexican Standoff Friday
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For December 21
CDR Salamander: Operation Inherent Dissolve, also, Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Non-Tweets Under The Fedora For December 21
Don Surber: I Didn’t Vote For Jim Mattis
Dustbury: She Just Wants To Dance
The Geller Report: Over A Dozen Jihadis Arrested In Beheadings Of Young Female Tourists, also, Jihadi Who Murdered English Student Gets Mere 18 Months In Prison
Hogewash: Twenty Years Ago This Week, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Aquaman Proves DC (Still) No Match For Marvel
Joe For America: These Welfare Payout Stats Will Make Your Blood Boil
JustOneMinute: Government Down, SecDef Mattis Out
Legal Insurrection: Government Heads For Partial Shutdown As Congress Fails To Reach Spending Deal, also, Brenda Snipes To Get Her Day In Court January 7
The PanAm Post: From Millionaires To Beggars – Cristina Kirchner’s “Public Intellectuals”
Power Line: Death By Sanctuary State, also, The Trump Doctrine And 2020
Shark Tank: Justice Ginsburg Undergoes Surgery
Shot In The Dark: Don’t Mess With Fergus Falls
STUMP: Hindsight Is Hilarious
The Jawa Report: Merry Christmas, Jawas
The Political Hat: Modern Social Justice – Pre-Teen Drag Queen Dancing For Dollars At Adult Gay Bar
This Ain’t Hell: SecDef Mattis’ Resignation Letter, also, Marine Pilots Who Drew Sky Penises Allowed To Fly Again After Being Disciplined
Victory Girls: #TrumpShutdown – Will Senate Democrats Prevail & Cut Border Funding?
Volokh Conspiracy: SCOTUS Should Clarify 2A Test, also, Short Circuit – A Roundup Of Recent Federal Court Decisions
Weasel Zippers: Watch Bodycam Footage Of Police Shootout With Illegal Alien Protected From ICE By CA Sanctuary Laws Just Two Days Prior, also, SCOTUS Rejects Trump Bid To Enforce Asylum Crackdown
Megan McArdle: Fauxcahontas’ Generic Drug Plan Is More Placebo Than Cure
Mark Steyn: Fake Newsman Of The Year, also, As Ye Give, So Shall Ye Receive


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Category: Linkagery

Syria, Afghanistan, and the #NeverTrump Problem of Jonah Goldberg

Posted on | December 22, 2018 | 1 Comment

Glenn Reynolds has an excellent round-up of reaction to President Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and reduce the force in Afghanistan by half, which was apparently the reason that General James “Mad Dog” Mattis resigned as Secretary of Defense.

Ace headlines it, “Trump Has Succeeded Where George W. Bush Failed: He Has Turned the Anti-War Left Into Passionate Neocon Warhawks and Intervention-Adventurers,” and cites Dave Reaboi’s observation: “The left has no foreign enemies and wages no foreign wars. They only have domestic enemies and domestic wars. When they’re pretending they care about a foreign war, that only means they are contriving justification for waging the real war on their domestic enemies.”

Because the Left hates Trump no matter what Trump actually does, all of their oft-stated opposition to U.S. military interventions abroad were suddenly forgotten as soon as Trump declared he was pulling out. By the same token, the Left generally applauded Obama’s foreign interventions, just as they had insisted that everything Bill Clinton did in the field of foreign policy was a masterstroke of statesmanship. In other words, American leftists have no true principles; they are mere partisan cheerleaders for the Democrats and are therefore implacable enemies of any Republican who might obtain power. This is what the #NeverTrump crowd can’t seem to get through their heads; they seem to imagine that if one of their pet candidates had won the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, somehow this candidate — Rubio, or perhaps Jeb Bush — would have ridden a wave of bipartisan popularity to the White House. But knowing what we know about the Left, there is no reason to believe this. No doubt any candidate the Republicans might have nominated would have been smeared and demonized by the media and, in the end, defeated by Hillary Clinton. I would argue that Trump was the only Republican candidate who could have beaten Hillary. The GOP primary voters prevented the Republican establishment from having its way and, thus, prevented a repeat of the predictable losses that Republicans had suffered in 2012 (Romney), 2008 (McCain) and 1996 (Dole).

As I argued in September 2015, Trump was a game-changer because he was unpredictable in a way that reminded me of Fran Tarkenton:

Tarkenton’s legendary ability as a scrambling quarterback was every football coach’s worst nightmare. Never mind what play Tarkenton called in the huddle, or what scheme the defense deployed against him. Once he started scrambling, the playbook ceased to matter. He’d run all over the backfield, eluding the defensive linemen who tried to tackle him, until he found a receiver open downfield. Tarkenton’s improvisational style was unique and unpredictable, and he led the Minnesota Vikings to three Super Bowls by defying the norms of what an NFL quarterback should be.
What Tarkenton did to NFL defenses, Donald Trump is doing to the Republican Party. The bombastic billionaire routinely says things that, for any other candidate, would be campaign-destroying gaffes. With his larger-than-life celebrity persona, however, Trump keeps winning. His poll numbers seem immune to the factors that affect ordinary politicians, because Trump is neither ordinary nor a politician.

Nobody expected Trump to win Pennsylvania and Michigan, states no Republican presidential candidate had won since 1988, and yet he did it. Whatever else you say about that feat, you cannot deny that Trump proved the “experts” wrong — and they will never forgive him for that.

This brings me to the sad case of Jonah Goldberg who, having made his camp with the #NeverTrump crowd long ago, keeps doubling down. You might think that the collapse of the Weekly Standard (“So Much ‘Ahoy,’” Dec. 14) would have chastened Trump’s Republican enemies, but they refuse to learn from such examples. It is not merely that they despise Trump personally, but rather that they are elitists who harbor a haughty disdain toward the grubby sort of people who voted for Trump. The #NeverTrump Republicans concur in Hillary Clinton’s judgment that Trump’s supporters are “deplorables,” and never miss an opportunity to heap insults on these 62.9 million GOP voters.

Perhaps feeling the heat of populist resentment, Jonah Goldberg today published an interesting column that includes a lengthy examination of the term “neoconservative,” in which he takes some unnecessary jabs at various of his chosen enemies, e.g.:

And then there are the Joooooz. Outside of deranged comment sections and the swampy ecosystems of the “alt-right,” the sinister version of this theory is usually only hinted at or alluded to. Neocons only care about Israel is the Trojan horse that lets people get away with not saying the J-word. Those bagel-snarfing warmongers want real Americans to do their fighting for them. Pat Buchanan, when opposing the first Gulf War in 1992, listed only Jewish supporters of the war and then said they’d be sending “American kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown” to do the fighting. Subtle.

Why the need to beat that particular dead horse? Aside from any consideration of anti-Semitism, we have a demonstrable problem in our society, namely that the children of the policy-making (and policy-influencing) elite almost never serve in the military.  I’m pretty sure Jonah Goldberg does not wish to accuse Army veteran Kurt Schlichter of secretly being an anti-Semites, and yet Schlichter is as serious as anyone of the distortions created by the class divide between those who serve in the military and the influential elite who shape U.S. policy.

If Buchanan unfairly portrayed the Iraq hawks as agents of the “Israel lobby,” and if it was rude of him to note that Jews are (as the campus diversity-mongers might say) underrepresented in our military, this unfair rudeness is to be lamented. Yet there was, and is, a real problem at the root of such accusations, and it is wrong to imply, as Goldberg does, that every criticism of neoconservatism is a veiled expression of paranoid anti-Semitic bigotry. What about Paul Gottfried, a Jew who is among the most formidable spokesmen of the paleoconservative “alt-right”? If Gottfried is willing to defend Pat Buchanan, and to make many of the same arguments that Buchanan does, doesn’t that tend to invalidate the assertion that critics of neoconservatism are all secretly Jew-haters? And isn’t the real heart of the problem an issue addressed by none other than Norman Podhoretz in his 2009 book, Why Are Jews Liberals?

Look at the 2018 exit polls: 79% of Jewish voters are Democrats, a higher percentage than Hispanics (69%) and one factor which may kindle suspicion toward Jewish conservatives is the perception that they seek to remain on good terms with their liberal kinsmen, and thus to hold the more populist type of conservatives at arm’s length. It’s not just on foreign policy that this is apparent. At risk of over-generalizing, isn’t it true that most prominent Jewish conservatives are more aligned with the open-borders lobby than with the “build the wall” crowd? Aren’t Jewish conservatives more liberal on social issues like abortion and homosexuality? If so, wouldn’t these distinctions tend to exacerbate whatever actual anti-Semitism there is in the populist Right’s critique of neoconservatives? This is not a problem that I, as a righteous gentile and friend of Israel, can solve. I appreciate the valuable contributions of Jews to the conservative cause, but the Trump era has brought widespread attention to the deep divisions within the GOP’s “big tent” coalition, and it cannot be true that everything wrong with the Republican Party is the fault of pro-Trump populists. And then there’s this from Goldberg:

Which brings me to Chris Buskirk’s ridiculous manifesto of conservative liberation in response to the demise of The Weekly Standard. The editor of American Greatness, a journal whose tagline should be “Coming Up with Reasons Why Donald Trump’s Sh** Doesn’t Stink 24/7” opens with “Neoconservatism is dead, long live American conservatism” and then, amazingly, proceeds to get dumber. . . .
I’m not a fan of tu quoque arguments, but the idea that American Greatness has standing to position itself as an organ dedicated to larger principles and ideas is hilarious, given that the website’s only purpose is to attach itself like a remora to Donald Trump, a man who doesn’t even call himself a conservative, even for convenience, anymore. . . .

Wait, is that it? I mean, was Goldberg’s long diatribe in defense of neoconservatism really just a warm-up for venting his butthurt over those gloating about the Weekly Standard‘s demise? Can’t he see that National Review might suffer the same fate if it doesn’t relent in its #NeverTrump absolutism? Does it really make sense for him to double-down this way?

Eh, I could go on, but why bother? After 1,400 words I’m more dismayed than ever. Is it “hate speech” to wish everyone a Merry Christmas?

The Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Thanks in advance.



 

 

 

 

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Donald Trump

The Devil’s in Alabama

Posted on | December 21, 2018 | Comments Off on The Devil’s in Alabama

 

Yes, I know Charlie Daniels said the devil went down to Georgia, but that was years ago, and he’s been headed west since then:

An Alabama police department has been criticized for blaming recent violence on the community ‘rejecting god and embracing Satan’.
The post from the Opp Police Department comes as two gunshot killings in as many days in Covington County, located on the Alabama-Florida line.
It claimed recent area homicides had been perpetrated by young people who need ‘to stand up and be responsible leaders in our community’.
The post reads: ‘These murders have been done by our young people. This is happening because we have turned away from God and embraced Satan. We may have not meant to do so but, we have. It is time to ask for god’s help to stop this. It is time to be parents and raise our children, not have them raise us’.
The post calls on the community to support law enforcement and officers who have ‘to walk into dangerous situations and clean the mess’.
‘Bottom line, there are sheep, there are wolves and there are sheep dogs. Which group do you belong to?’
However the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation says police in the town of 6,500 people are wrongly promoting religion with the social media message.
The group said it is illegal for a government entity to endorse or criticize religious belief.

This isn’t about “belief.” If Satan is real, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in him or not, he’s still gonna get you. The way I figure it, the Devil must have left Georgia on I-85, gone down through Auburn and Tuskegee, then south on U.S. 29 through Troy before he hooked a left at Luverne and went down U.S. 331 until he got to Opp. And if folks in Covington County have “embraced” Old Scratch, there’s no helping ’em now. There’s only so much the Opp Police Department can do, I reckon.

UPDATE: I suppose some might criticize my calculation of Satan’s route to Covington County by pointing out that his trip could have been quicker if he had just taken I-85 all the way to Montgomery and from there headed south on U.S. 331, or taken I-65 to Evergreen and gone east on U.S. 84. However, considering how badly Auburn got whupped by Alabama this year, I’m pretty sure the Devil spent some time working his infernal arts in Auburn and, besides, does anyone imagine that Satan would risk getting caught in a traffic jam at Montgomery?

 

Category: Alabama
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