The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 03.22.18

Posted on | March 23, 2018 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.22.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
First Street Journal: Never Apologize If You Don’t Mean It
EBL: John Bolton Replacing H.R. McMaster As National Security Adviser
Twitchy: Ted Lieu Tries To Pull “Classified Info” Rank On Alan Dershowitz, Gets Slapped Down Hard
Louder With Crowder: Rand Paul Tweets About 2018 Omnibus Spending Bill, Finds Crapton Of Waste
NPR: Jennifer Palmieri Claims Hillary Ran “With Half Her Humanity Tied Behind Her Back” (h/t NeoWayland)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #77 – The Sacred Cows Episode
American Power: Conservative Amnesia
American Thinker: Amy Wax And Free Speech At Penn
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily New Confederates News
BattleSwarm: Congress Caves On Sanctuary Cities
CDR Salamander: Penny Wise? Pound Sand
Da Tech Guy: White Privilege Is A White Elephant, also, Musings On Ridicule
Don Surber: Why Creepy Uncle Joe Attacked Trump
Dustbury: How To Distract A Driver
Fausta: Peru – President PPK Resigns
The Geller Report: Muslim Migrant Screaming “Allahu Akbar” Rushes Angela Merkel, also, 100 French Intellectuals Warn About Islamic Totalitarianism
Hogewash: The Moon, 360 Degrees, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Joe For America: CitiBank Announces It’ll Force New Gun Control Rules On Its Customers
JustOneMinute: Corporate Fascism, But In A Good Cause!
Legal Insurrection: San Francisco Bans Fur Sales, also, Pence Family Shows Grace In Face Of John Oliver’s Childish Antics
Power Line: Anti-Semitic And Dumb As A Rock, also, The Senate’s Worst Boss?
Shark Tank: CNN In Center Of Controversy Again
Shot In The Dark: The Elephant In The Classroom
STUMP: McCabe’s Pension – Story Roundup, Pension Details, & A Little Bit Of Stats
The Political Hat: Woke Sexuality – Problematic DNA, Problematic Sperm, Problematic F**king
This Ain’t Hell: TSGT Phillip Dyer Saving The World, also, Arthur Jones The Illinois Nazi
Victory Girls: Ivanka Trump In A Lab Coast Triggers Hysteria
Weasel Zippers: Australian Nurses Forced To Announce Their “White Privilege” Before Treating Abos, also, Terrorist Attack At Travis AFB
Megan McArdle: Facebook Is America’s Scapegoat Du Jour
Mark Steyn: The Shadow Over Our Heads, also, Spoiling For A Fight


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Category: Linkagery

‘The Last Song Nearly Killed Me’

Posted on | March 22, 2018 | Comments Off on ‘The Last Song Nearly Killed Me’

 

On this date in 1963, the Beatles released their first album, Please Please Me, an event memorialized by the poet Philip Larkin:

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me)
Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.

The story of how that LP was recorded in a single 10-hour session is told in a fascinating article by Jordan Rutagh. The Beatles had already released two 45-rpm singles — “Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me” — which along with their B-sides (“Ask Me Why” and “P.S. I Love You”) gave them four songs already recorded. A 33-rpm vinyl album in those days typically featured 14 songs (seven on each side), so after “Please Please Me” went to No. 1 on the British charts and their label wanted to capitalize on this success by rushing an LP onto the market, the group needed to add 10 more songs to make the required total. The Liverpool-based quartet arrived at EMI’s London studio on the morning of Feb. 11, 1963, and by 10:45 a.m., the tape machine was rolling.

If you are familiar with the album, you know that there are really only three good songs on it. The title track was a sexual double-entendre, a plea for reciprocation the matter of what was then euphemistically called “heavy petting,” written cleverly enough that the censors couldn’t suppress it, but everybody knew why teenage girls went wild for it.

When the frenzy known as “Beatlemania” took hold in England that year, one newspaper assigned its classical music critic to analyze the group’s oeuvre. He obliged with a review that described the pentatonic structure of “Please Please Me,” and reading that review was the first time the song’s composers ever saw the word “pentatonic.”

It is often wrongly claimed that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were self-taught prodigies. In fact, Lennon as a boy had sung in the local Anglican church choir, and McCartney had been taught the basics of piano and trumpet by his father, who’d played in jazz bands. However, as songwriters, they’d mainly learned by imitating what they heard on their favorite rock, pop and country records. With no formal lessons in music theory, Lennon and McCartney lacked the vocabulary that permitted the highbrow critic to name such a thing as a pentatonic scale, but simply wrote and sang what they liked — and they did OK.

“Please Please Me” sounds incredibly corny and simple to us now, but in 1963 it was ground-breaking and innovative, a fresh new sound that was much different from anything previously heard in pop music. The Beatles’ producer, George Martin, was a classically-trained musician who had never recorded a rock band, but the way he mixed their sound made the drums cut through with tremendous clarity. It was Martin’s production skill that gave such emphasis to the beat in the Beatles.

For rock music fans, however, the title track is arguably only the third-best song on the Please Please Me album. It is eclipsed by the manic energy of “I Saw Her Standing There.” With McCartney on lead vocals, and playing a bass riff lifted from an old Chuck Berry tune, “I Saw Her Standing There” just flat-out rocks. Jordan Rutagh explains that the famous count-off at the start of the track — “One, two, three, FAW!” — was actually recorded on the ninth take. The first take ended up on the album, but Martin had them keep trying for a better version, which never worked out. After the band halted midway through the eighth take because Ringo had flubbed a drum part, Paul was becoming irritated. So he put some of his irritated energy into the count-off of the next take. Martin liked that so much, he spliced it onto the start of take one.

The process of repeated retakes and overdubs rapidly chewed up the studio time allotted to the Beatles’ sessions that day, and the band actually worked through their lunch break, rehearsing in an effort to get their sound together. To make matters more difficult, Lennon was suffering with a head cold that day and kept gobbling throat lozenges to prevent his voice from shutting down completely. By the time they finished recording their next-to-last tune of the day (the Burt Bacharach ballad “Baby It’s You”), it was 10 p.m., everybody was dead tired, and there was some question as to whether Lennon’s voice could hold up through their last number, a cover of a minor hit by the Isley Brothers. They had to get it right in one take and, wow, what a take it was!

Every after more than half a century, the savage intensity of “Twist and Shout” is still exciting. The simple three-chord riff (the same used in the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” and Richie Valens’ “La Bamba”) isn’t anything special, and the Isley Brothers’ version had only reached No. 17 on the U.S. charts in 1962. Compare that version to what the Beatles recorded in 1963, and the difference is remarkable, mainly because of the raw sound of Lennon’s voice. “The last song nearly killed me,” he later said of that late-night session, but what an incredible sound!

It’s one of the greatest rock-and-roll records of all time. Later that year, the Beatles were invited to headline the Royal Command Performance, with Queen Elizabeth in attendance. They played three songs, and then Lennon made a joke: “For our last number, I’d like to ask your help. Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry.” Of course, it was “Twist and Shout.”

 

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

 

Category: History, Music

California Democrat Is Unemployed

Posted on | March 22, 2018 | Comments Off on California Democrat Is Unemployed

 

Gregory Salcido is a Democrat. A member of the city council in the Los Angeles suburb of Pico Rivera, Salcido ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2002, but lost the primary. Salcido’s politics are relevant to the repeated controversies that have plagued his career as a history teacher at El Rancho High School. In 2005, a parent complained that Salcido had initiated a classroom discussion of masturbation. In 2010, Salcido was suspended after reportedly telling a student, “shut up Kelly before I kill you.” In 2012, Salcido was again in trouble for hitting a student and allegedly making fun of the boy’s obesity. These incidents could be regarded in hindsight as “red flags” warning that Salcido was headed toward the self-destruction he reached in January this year:

A Southern California high school teacher was caught on camera denigrating the intelligence of people serving in the US military.
In the videos, which were stealthily recorded in class by a student at El Rancho High in Pico Rivera, California, history teacher Gregory Salcido, 49, can be heard making a variety of unflattering remarks about service people, at one point calling them the ‘lowest of the low.’ . . .
In one of the clips, Salcido can be heard saying, ‘Think about the people who you know are over there. Your freakin’ stupid Uncle Louie or whatever. They’re dumb s***ts. They’re not like high-level thinkers. They’re not academic people. They’re not intellectual people.’
He then says that overseas service people are ‘the freakin’ lowest of our low. Not morally — I’m not saying they make bad moral decisions — they’re not talented people.’ . . .
‘The data is in, we don’t have a good military,’ Salcido says.
The 17-year-old high school senior who shot the videos . . . said that his brother and uncles were Marines who fought in Afghanistan, Desert Storm and Vietnam, and that Salcido’s comments were ‘so disrespectful.’

Now, the “disrespectful” anti-American teacher is unemployed:

A California school district fired a teacher on Tuesday following his viral rant where he called the military the “lowest of our low.”
The El Rancho Unified School District voted unanimously to fire history teacher and Pico Rivera councilman Gregory Salcido, reported Fox News.
“[Salcido’s] comments do not reflect what we stand for, who we are,” El Rancho board of education president Aurora Villon said. “The classroom should never be a place where students feel that they are picked at, bullied, intimidated.” . . .
Aside from making headlines, Salcido’s screed earned him attention from White House chief of staff John Kelly, who said the former teacher “ought to go to hell.”
“I just hope he enjoys the liberties and the lifestyle that we have fought for,” Kelly, who retired from the Marine Corps, told Fox News.

California Democrats hate America.

 

Category: California, Democrats, Education, Military

McCabe Targeted Sessions in ‘Coup’ Conspiracy by Obama-Era DOJ Officials

Posted on | March 22, 2018 | Comments Off on McCabe Targeted Sessions in ‘Coup’ Conspiracy by Obama-Era DOJ Officials

 

Fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe launched an investigation against Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year as part of a “coup” organized by Obama-era holdovers in the Department of Justice.

“We already know Andrew McCabe was one of the primary conspirators in the plot to illegally spy on, manufacture evidence against, and then impeach a duly elected president using Illegitimate criminally obtained FISA warrants as pseudo legal cover,” according to an analysis of the revelation that McCabe targeted Sessions in a “covertly launched a criminal case.” By taking out Sessions, the analyst alleges, McCabe hoped to replace the attorney general with fellow conspirator Sally Yates, who was acting attorney general before Trump fired her in January 2017.

In a 35-message analysis on Twitter, @NameRedacted7 explains that McCabe — along with former FBI director James Comey, rogue FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, former associate deputy attorney general Bruce Ohr, former assistant attorney general Peter Kadzik, and other Democrats in the Justice Department — were complicit in “spying on Team Trump” through illegally obtained FISA warrants. (“8 top DOJ and FBI officials under a cloud over roles in Clinton, Trump investigations.”) The conspirators then launched an effort to “frame” Sessions, which was part of a “staggering” attempt to “decapitate” the executive branch in “show trials,” according to @NameRedacted7.

McCabe was accused of mishandling the investigation of Hillary Clinton for her use of a illegal private email server to conduct official State Department business. “McCabe opened his politically motivated case” against Sessions in response to a letter from Democrat Sens. Patrick Leahy and Al Franken, who had attempted during confirmation hearings “to falsely paint [Sessions] as a Russian agent,” the analysis notes.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigation is likely to lead to the prosecution of McCabe and perhaps others, the analysis suggests. It has been reported that Horowitz will accuse McCabe of improper leaking to the press and deliberately misleading investigators.

The connection between McCabe and the phony “Russiagate” smear against Sessions shows how Democrat Party loyalists in the Justice Department used what Page and Strzok called an “insurance policy” in their attempt to sabotage the Trump administration.



 

Category: Corruption, Democrats

In The Mailbox: 03.21.18

Posted on | March 21, 2018 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.21.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #201
EBL: Governor Matt Bevin Speaks On Recent Violence
Twitchy: Josh Barro Schools Ezra Klein On Hillary, And Her Minions Are Pissed
Louder With Crowder: David Hogg, You Lying, Opportunistic, Insufferable Little Toe Rag
DC Whispers: Former FBI Director Goes On Record – “Comey, McCabe, & Brennan All Corrupt, And Everything Leads Back To Obama” (h/t NeoWayland)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: At The Pleasure Of The Police
American Power: Austin Bombing Suspect Identified, also, Ralph Peters Quits Fox News
American Thinker: John Brennan, Deep State Political Hack
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: NEWSFLASH – Austin Bomber Dead
CDR Salamander: You Had Me At ASWOC, Kathlene
Da Tech Guy: The Schooling Of David Hogg, also, Cause And Effect, Eric Reed Edition
Don Surber: Gay Mafia Attacks Its Own
Dustbury: Imagine What This Kid Used To Be Like
The Geller Report: Florida Woman Who Crashed Car Into Police Station Is Devout Muslima – Total Media Blackout, also, Obama Campaign Staffer Said Facebook Allowed Them To Harvest Masses Of Data
Hogewash: The Orion Nebula In Visible Light And Radio, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Joe For America: Seth Rich Investigator Victim Of Hit & Run, Shooting
JustOneMinute: As Much As I Hate Seeing A Nazi Win Something…
Legal Insurrection: Reuters Blames Trump For Canada’s Immigration Problems, also, Why Is India Financing Palestinian Terrorism?
Michelle Malkin: Document Drop – Another Fatal FBI Fumble In Florida
Power Line: Digitalships & Double Standards, also, Barking Mad
Shark Tank: Parkland School Faces More Threats
Shot In The Dark: Vast Conspiracy
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – NJ Wants To Be Number One
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – Rusty’s Monkey Missing, also, Austin Bomber Bombs Himself
The Political Hat: The Netherlands Accelerates Down The Slippery Euthanasia Slope
This Ain’t Hell: Salcido Canned, also, Busted Memes
Victory Girls: John McCain Whips Out The Derp
Weasel Zippers: Oakland Illegals Who Dodged ICE Sweep Thanks To Mayor Re-Arrested For New Crimes, also, Male Student At Providence College Threatened With Rape For Supporting Traditional Marriage
Megan McArdle: Killing Drug Dealers Won’t Stop The Opioid Epidemic
Mark Steyn: Of The Remenant Nedeth Nat Enquere, also, The Undocumented And The Over-Documented


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Category: Linkagery

Don’t Mess With the USA

Posted on | March 21, 2018 | 2 Comments

There are about 2,000 U.S. troops in eastern Syria controlling key oil fields in territory formerly held by ISIS. Having destroyed that Islamic terrorist organization, our troops have little to fear from Syria, or from Iran, or from Syria’s Russian allies:

A small US presence in an eastern town called Deir Ezzor has maintained an iron grip on the oil fields and even repelled an advance of hundreds of pro-Syrian government forces— including some Russian nationals believed to be mercenaries — in a massive battle that became a lopsided win for the US.
Russia has advanced weapons systems in Syria, pro-Syrian government militias have capable Russian equipment, and Iran has about 70,000 troops in the country. On paper, these forces could defeat or oust the US and the Syrian rebels it backs, but in reality it would likely be a losing battle, according to an expert.
“They have the ability to hurt US soldiers — it’s possible,” Tony Badran, a Syria expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider. But “if they do that,” he said, “they’ll absolutely be destroyed.”
In Badran’s view, even if Russia wanted a direct fight against the US military in Syria, something he and other experts seriously doubt, the forces aligned with Syria’s government don’t stand much of a chance.
“I think the cruise-missile attack in April showed, and the ongoing Israeli incursions show, the Russian position and their systems are quite vulnerable,” said Badran, referring to the US’s April 2017 strike on a Syrian airfield in response to a chemical-weapons attack in the country. Though Russia has stationed high-end air defenses in Syria to protect its assets, that did not stop the US when President Donald Trump’s administration decided to punish the Syrian air force with 59 cruise missiles.
Russia has just a few dozen jets in Syria, mostly suited for ground-attack roles with some air-supremacy fighters. The US has several large bases in the area from which it can launch a variety of strike and fighter aircraft, including the world’s greatest fighter jet, the F-22.

Hat-tip: Nebraska Energy Observer, which has previously noted how some Russian mercenaries in Syria were devastated after they attacked a group of anti-Assad rebels supported by by U.S. troops. Compare the current situation to what we confronted in Iraq circa 2005-2008.

In Iraq, an insurgency used terrorist tactics — including car bombs and IEDs — against the occupying U.S.-led coalition forces. In Syria, U.S. forces are on the side of the insurgents (rebels fighting Assad’s regime) and the local Syrians, who have survived the brutality of ISIS, want no part of any kind of Islamic extremism. While the situation could conceivably change, a rather small force of U.S. troops is currently able to control a key region in Syria simply because anyone who attacked them would suffer a devastating counter-attack backed by everything the U.S. military can bring to bear, up to and including bombing raids by B-52s.

UPDATE: One of our NATO “allies” can’t take a hint:

The Pentagon Monday leveled sharp criticism at a military offensive on northern Syria, which has displaced tens of thousands of Kurds, killed hundreds of civilians and is creating a humanitarian crisis, all while carefully not mentioning the country carrying out the offensive, Turkey.
“Civilian casualties, not getting humanitarian assistance, a growing humanitarian crisis. It’s gotta be stopped. It’s gotta be averted,” Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.
Pressed by a reporter from the Turkish Anadolu News Service about who specifically was to blame for the worsening situation in the North, Manning refused to name Turkey, a NATO ally, and simply called on all sides to stop. . . .
The US has complained to Turkey that its two-months-old offensive, which captured the city of Afrin over the weekend, is siphoning off Kurdish fighters from the fight against ISIS in the east to battle Turkish and Syrian rebel troops in the west.

On the one hand, we would like to remain on friendly terms with Turkey. On the other hand, there are limits to such friendship.

 

Category: Military, Russia, Syria, Turkey

Texas Bomber Identified

Posted on | March 21, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

“Nice kid from a great family”:

The suspected Austin serial bomber who apparently killed himself early Wednesday as authorities closed in on him was Pflugerville resident Mark A. Conditt, local and federal law enforcement sources told the American-Statesman and KVUE.
As the sun rose, neighbors of the 23-year-old, who was home-schooled growing up and went to Austin Community College, struggled to wrap their minds around the news that authorities were linking him to the bombings.
“I know this is a cliché but I just can’t imagine that,” said one neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and whose children grew up playing with Conditt on Pfluger Street. The neighbor described Conditt as a nice kid from a great family. . . .
Conditt received a degree from Austin Community College’s Northridge Campus and had worked at Crux Semiconductor in Austin as a “purchasing Agent/buyer/shipping and receiving,” according to a profile on a job recruiting website. He previously worked as a computer repair technician.
There are very few public social media posts under his name.
His mother, Danene Conditt, posted a picture in February 2013 to commemorate her son’s completing a high school-level education.
“I officially graduated Mark from High School on Friday. 1 down, 3 to go. He has 30 hrs of college credit too, but he’s thinking of taking some time to figure out what he wants to do….maybe a mission trip. Thanks to everyone for your support over the years.”
He and his father, Pat Conditt, purchased a Pflugerville property last year that is now valued at about $69,000. The neighbor said Mark Conditt had been living in that house, which he built with his father’s help.

PREVIOUSLY: Austin Bomber Reportedly Dead After Shootout in Round Rock

 

Category: Crime, Texas

Will Democrats Self-Destruct?

Posted on | March 21, 2018 | Comments Off on Will Democrats Self-Destruct?

 

When former Sex in the City actress Cynthia Nixon announced that she would challenge New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democrat Party primary, I was delighted. What could be more perfect, in a year when Republicans are defending their House majority in the midterm elections, than for a left-wing Democrat to attack an otherwise safe incumbent in an expensive primary battle in a deep “blue” state like New York? This couldn’t be more perfect for Republicans than if Paul Ryan, the Koch Brothers and a squad of Russian hackers had planned it.

In case you didn’t know it, Cynthia Nixon is a lesbian, and so is former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Are there any women in the New York Democrat Party who aren’t lesbians? Never mind. The point, from the Koch Brothers/Russian-hacker perspective, is for Democrats to tear each other apart over this primary in New York, and I’m happy to report that our plan is working perfectly:

Former Democratic New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn on Tuesday said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D.) Democratic challenger is a “unqualified lesbian.”
The remark from Quinn, an openly-gay supporter of Cuomo, came one day after former “Sex and the City” actress Cynthia Nixon announced she would challenge Cuomo in the 2018 Democratic primary. Quinn told the New York Post in an interview that Nixon was an “unqualified lesbian” before taking a shot at Nixon for endorsing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over her in the 2013 Democratic primary for mayor.
“I’m surprised by this race. It’s a flight of fancy on her part,” Quinn said of Nixon’s campaign announcement.
“Cynthia Nixon was opposed to having a qualified lesbian become mayor of New York City,” Quinn said. “Now she wants to be an unqualified lesbian to be the governor of New York. You have to be qualified and have experience. She isn’t qualified to be the governor.”
Quinn, who is also a CNN contributor, admitted she and the “Sex and the City” actress are both supporters of progressive positions, but she said there is more to running the state of New York than being a liberal celebrity.
“She’s an accomplished actress, a supporter of political causes and that’s a good thing. Participating in rallies is important,” Quinn said. “But she’s never run an organization. Being an actress and celebrity doesn’t make you qualified for public office. This is a time to move away from celebrity and toward progressive leadership.”

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Now what we need to happen:

  1. Cynthia Nixon must raise millions of dollars for her campaign, draining the pockets of liberal donors who might otherwise contribute to Democrat congressional campaigns.
  2. Every progressive kook in the country must give their 100% support to Nixon. It is especially important that feminists and the LGBT coalition must see Nixon’s campaign as a do-or-die grassroots effort to take control of their party away from corrupt corporate-funded “moderates” personified by Cuomo.
  3. Cuomo must defeat Nixon decisively, thus demoralizing her grassroots supporters and spreading the belief throughout the progressive community that the Democrats are not only a bunch of corrupt corporate-controlled stooges, but also patriarchal betrayers of gays and women.

You might be wondering, though: “What if Cynthia Nixon actually wins?” That would be even better — imagine the impact in blue-collar Midwestern “swing” districts of having a celebrity lesbian score a historic victory in the New York Democrat primary. Nothing could better serve to inspire a homophobic right-wing backlash in the Heartland.

Trust me, the Russian hackers and Koch operatives have thought of every possible scenario here. It’s a total win-win for the GOP.



 

Category: Democrats, Election, New York
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