The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 09.13.17

Posted on | September 14, 2017 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Hillary Clinton Continues On Her Healing Book Tour
Twitchy: What Happened? This Brutal Recap Of Election Night Is What Happened, And It’s Glorious
Louder With Crowder: Chainsaw-Wielding Nun Helps Miami-Dade With Hurricane Cleanup


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Fighting The Wrong War
American Power: Mexican Pride! also, Jeremy Rabkin & John Yoo, Striking Power
American Thinker: Why The Democrats Oppose Economic Freedom
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: Clinton Corruption Update For September 13, 2017
Bring The HEAT: Marine Corps AAV Immolates In California With Fifteen Marines Inside
Da Tech Guy: Stop Taxpayer Funding Of Abortion In Massachusetts, also, After Irma (Updated)
Don Surber: Democrats Too Politically Correct To See Their Problem
Dustbury: I Believe He Can Be Saved
The Geller Report: Facebook Doubles “Hate Speech” Sharia Police, Introduces “Tougher Rules”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Jammie Wearing Fools: Contractors Say Clinton’s State Department Silenced Them On Benghazi Security Lapses
Joe For America: Cleveland Rocks – Indians Set American League Record With 21st Straight Win
JustOneMinute: Wha’ Happened – Quotes From Beyond The Grave
Power Line: The Franken Factor, also, Democratic Party Smears Justice Gorsuch As A Bigot
Shark Tank: Antifa Group Defends Their Violence, Claims Self-Defense
Shot In The Dark: Telegraphing The Punch
STUMP: Soda Tax Follies – Choices Have Consequences
The Jawa Report: As-Sahab Media Can S*** It, also, Where’s Rusty? Never Tell Me The Odds Edition
The Political Hat: Devshirme Of Britain
This Ain’t Hell: Phil Haberman, GI Jerk, also, General Kelly Responds To Gutierrez
Weasel Zippers: Awans Allegedly Funneled Dems’ Data To Secret Server, Falsified Evidence To Cover It Up, also, NYC Muslim College Student Who Lied About Trump Supporters Subway Attack Pleads Guilty To Hoax
Megan McArdle: The Latest (Dim, Distant) Hope For Healthcare Reform
Mark Steyn: The Language Of Losing, also, Hillary Goes Looking For The Real Killers


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Category: Linkagery

Hillary’s Delusional Reading of Classics

Posted on | September 13, 2017 | 3 Comments

 

Everyone is stunned by the self-deceptions and blame-shifting in Hillary Clinton’s campaign memoir What Happened, and Ace of Spades aggregates several of the most mind-blowing excerpts.

Most notably, as British socialist writer James Heartfield observes, Hillary claims that George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is about the importance of trusting “our leaders, the press, experts” — a 180-degree reversal of Orwell’s actual meaning. A free society requires a citizenry distrustful of power, and not predisposed to accept whatever beliefs officially-approved “experts” advocate. Independent minds must be skeptical, for example, of the suggestion that we should reorganize our healthcare system according to what “leaders” and “experts” tell us.

Only her arrogance — imagining herself as the expert leader who deserves our unquestioning trust — could lead Hillary to reverse the lesson of a classic anti-totalitarian novel like Nineteen Eighty-Four.

However, Hillary also misinterprets Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. This is a book that I have repeatedly recommended as a guide to understanding the kind of people who are attracted to radical ideologies like feminism:

. . . especially Part 2 (“Potential Converts”) and sections IV (“The Role of the Undesirables in Human Affairs”) and VI (“Misfits”). What Hoffer writes about the influence of “the inferior elements in a nation” (p. 24) and the “incurably frustrated” who have “an unfulfilled craving for creative work” (p 47) applies to many of the angry young men and unhappy young women who rush to join the mob of disgruntled “progressives.”

Being familiar with Hoffer’s ideas — The True Believer is sitting on my desk even now — it was mind-boggling to read Hillary’s warped view:

During the campaign, Bill and I both went back and reread The True Believer, Eric Hoffer’s 1951 explanation of the psychology behind fanaticism and mass movements, and I shared it with my senior staff. On the campaign trail, I offered ideas that I believed would address many of the underlying causes of discontent and help make life better for all Americans. But I couldn’t — and wouldn’t — compete to stoke people’s rage and resentment. I think that’s dangerous. It helps leaders who want to take advantage of that rage to hurt people rather than help them. Besides, it’s just not how I’m wired.

Really? A campaign that denounced Republican voters as “deplorables,” led by a candidate who promised among other things to destroy the jobs of coal miners (helping “make life better,” you see), who irresponsibly incited a phony campus “rape culture” hysteria and endorsed the racial violence of “Black Lives Matters,” was not about stoking rage?

It is easy to condemn the populism of Donald Trump (or Bernie Sanders) as a demagogic appeal to ressentiment, but populism flourishes only because elites are out of touch with the needs and interests of ordinary Americans. This is true in both Democrat and Republican parties, but because the educational system and the news media are both controlled by Democrat partisans, it is possible for someone like Hillary Clinton to exist within a liberal bubble where the grievances expressed by the populist Left seem legitimate in a way that the grievances of the populist Right do not. When she was sharing Eric Hoffer’s book “with my senior staff,” did Hillary ever suggest that its critique of fanaticism applied to them or to her own supporters? Isn’t it true that Hillary had her own True Believers, and that the Clinton campaign sought to harness the mentality of a “mass movement” — #ImWithHer — to win the election?

“Inside a cult, the only people who matter are Us, and your identity as one of Us requires you to buy into whatever ideology defines the cult. If you are not willing to constantly prove your loyalty to Us, you might be exiled and ostracized from the cult, becoming one of Them — and this, to the cult member, is a fate worse than death.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, May 19, 2016

There was always a creepy totalitarian vibe surrounding the Hillary campaign, including a paranoid mentality that has expressed itself, since the election, as a search for scapegoats (“Bernie bros”) and conspiracies (Russian hackers) to explain how it was that The Maximum Leader was wrongly deprived of the victory she deserved. Indeed, one could invoke the works of Orwell and Hoffer to analyze the 2016 campaign, but the lessons are not flattering to Hillary. “SJWs Always Project,” as Vox Day says, and Hillary’s psychological projections are illustrative of What Happened, and more importantly Why It Happened.

 

 

Category: Hillary Clinton

The Scary Trump/Reagan Resemblance

Posted on | September 13, 2017 | Comments Off on The Scary Trump/Reagan Resemblance

by Smitty

Shapiro at NRO gives Trump the Full Freud. Read the whole thing, but note this:

The civil war that’s likely to occur over Trump, then, isn’t over Trumpism. It’s just about him. Those who wish to harness the power of Trump — the id of the movement — are mistaken if they think they can. The id and ego of the movement are one. And that means that wherever Trump leads, the movement will follow. That’s why Trump’s intellectual heresies in the eyes of both Bannon and Ryan will be frequent, but his emotional heresies in the eyes of the base will be minimal.

I’ve been vaguely OK with Trump so far. I realize him for a troll and a ratings whore, at least superficially. The antics won the election. There are also any number of vaguely positive things going on beneath the smoke screen. I want Trump to succeed in Making America Great Again (whatever that means at any given moment), in the same way I wanted Obama’s effort to “fundamentally transform” America to fail. The former seems vaguely good; the latter certainly sucked.

Peering past the wreckage scattered all over the countryside of all who try to shoot down the Orange Baron, one wonders: what are we doing after 2024? 1988 saw Bush41, a decent American and Deep Stater, relieve Reagan at the helm. Sensing that Bush41 was not cut of the same cloth, conservatives (and I was one) revolted, supporting Perot. Ross lacked the benefit of the Internet to get his proto-Tea Party to coalesce. We got Ahab. Fortunately, Trump spared us Jezebel.

Unfortunately, the ideological void of Reagan has never been filled. Despite personal regard for Mike Pence, I’m far from confident that he has any fire in the belly to pick up wherever Trump leaves off on the “drain the swamp” effort.

No, the fear gnaws: after Trump, we get the next Ahab. A Progressive, internationalist, anti-American twit whose idea of a vision is whatever Brussels is doing.

The only positive note I can end on here is that I’ve been pretty much wrong with every prediction I’ve ever offered. Or, as Instapundit notes, we might opt for an alternate culture.

Category: Donald Trump

In The Mailbox: 09.12.17

Posted on | September 12, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.12.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: How Is Democratic Senator Bob Menendez’ Corruption Trial Going?
Twitchy: Here’s How ESPN Is Handling Jemele Hill’s “White Supremacist” Smears
Louder With Crowder: American College Of Pediatricians Says Letting Children Transition Is Child Abuse


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Hipster-Free Zone
American Power: Is America Still A Nation Of Ideas?
American Thinker: Your Beliefs Are No Longer Allowed
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Royal Loser News
BattleSwarm: Texas Gas Shortage Ends
BLACKFIVE: Marcia Clark, Snap Judgment
Bring The HEAT: Old School Approaches
Da Tech Guy: About The Weather, Man, also, Religion Is Alive And Well In Asia
Don Surber: “Chappaquiddick” – The Movie
Dustbury: Greens Gone Wild
The Geller Report: Pamela Geller To Speak At Milo’s Berkeley “Free Speech Week”
Hogewash: Well, That Was Quick, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Jammie Wearing Fools: Oops! Ted Cruz “Likes” A Porn Video On Twitter
Joe For America: Southern Poverty Law Center Classifies Veterans As Hate Group
JustOneMinute: Russians Help Swing Idaho To Trump!
Power Line: Victim Of The SPLC, also, ESPN Anchor Rails Against “White Supremacist” Trump
Shot In The Dark: When They Say “Voter Fraud Is Not An Issue”…
STUMP: Hey Amazon, Come To Hartford!
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – Run For Your Lives!, also, Attention Twitter Luser @habanalat23
The Political Hat: Fighting The Confederacy With Witchcraft
This Ain’t Hell: What About These Buffalo Soldiers’ Statues? also, Jerry Pournelle Passes
Weasel Zippers: Amazon, Walmart Slash Hillary’s Book 40% Before Tuesday Release, also, Cleveland State U Washes Away Students’ 9/11 Chalk Memorial
Megan McArdle: DC Needs Amazon, But Amazon Can Do Better
Mark Steyn: Live Around The Planet, also, What Changed?


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Category: Linkagery

Fear and Loathing at Logan International: Massachusetts Is Depraved and Decadent

Posted on | September 12, 2017 | 1 Comment

Bulletin-board flyer welcomes LGBTQIA+ students at UMass Amherst.

BOSTON LOGAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
My flight back home was delayed by an hour and Pete Da Tech Guy got me here pretty quickly driving against the flow of rush-hour traffic out of Boston, so there’s time to relate a little of what we saw Monday during our visit to the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts.

We arrived as the sun was slanting low, and I had put in a call to Jason Ross, chairman of the statewide College Republicans alliance, whom Pete had interviewed Friday in Lexington. Could Jason get me in touch with the UMass CRs? He provided me with contact information for the chapter president, Alex Gerty, but when I called her, she was busy and instead connected me to the chapter vice-president, Carly Bishop. Meanwhile, Pete called my attention to the flyers pinned up on the bulletin board outside the dining hall.

 

 

 

 

So if you’re a socialist, a Muslim, a QTPOC (queer or trans person of color) or a Democrat, there are lots of activities for you at UMass.

On the other hand . . . well, not so much.

To be white, Christian or heterosexual on any college campus nowadays is to be a demonized minority, under suspicion as a source of hate, and if you happen also to be Republican, you probably don’t want to mention this to anyone, especially in Massachusetts, where only 11% of voters are registered as Republicans. Massachusetts is so liberal wicked that taxpayer funding for abortion is protected by the state constitution.

Or at least, that was what the Massachusetts supreme court ruled in 1981, so that pro-life activists hoping to defund Planned Parenthood must first get an amendment to the state constitution passed, and are circulating a petition to get the issue on the ballot. Killing babies is government work in this state, where every member of Congress is a Democrat, and transgender Brianna Wu is running a primary challenge to Democrat incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch who, somehow, isn’t liberal enough to suit the deranged SJW formerly known as John Flynt.

Everywhere on the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts, we saw gigantic banners proclaiming: “Hate Has No Home at UMass.”

 

In case you don’t understand, “hate” is a synonym for Republican in the minds of the UMass administration and faculty. Any child in Massachusetts who somehow avoids being aborted at taxpayer expense will nevertheless be politically indoctrinated at taxpayer expense, so that the very existence of College Republicans at UMass is rather miraculous.

Well, I’ll have to tell the rest of this story later, because they’re about to call boarding for Flight 1713 at Gate A19, and I’ve got to finish my beverage, pack up the laptop and get in line. As always, I ask readers to remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

 

 

Category: Abortion, Education, Fear. Loathing., Massachusetts

The Creepy Munchausen Moms Who Promote Childhood Transgenderism

Posted on | September 12, 2017 | 4 Comments

“In September 2015, Vanessa and JR Ford sent a group email to announce that their 4-year-old, whom their family and friends knew as their son, would be starting prekindergarten that year as ‘her true self’ — a girl named Ellie.”
— New York Times, Jan. 31, 2017

We can’t click fast-forward on the story and see what kind of life “Ellie” Ford will be living in 15 or 20 years, nor can we click the rewind button and go back to examine the circumstances that led to such a weird decision. Vanessa Ford’s narrative of how she knew that her son’s “true self” was a girl named “Ellie” is a tendentious rationalization, reflecting her own prejudices in favor of the transgender agenda. She is exploiting her own child in order to elicit sympathy for herself:

Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy is a pattern in which a parent “fabricates, exaggerates, or induces mental or physical health problems” in their child “usually to gain attention or sympathy from others.”

The liberal media are eager to assist these Munchausen moms. Vanessa Ford has been featured in The Washington Post as well as in Katie Couric’s National Geographic series “Gender Revolution.”

Celebrated as courageous heroes exemplifying the virtues of tolerance and diversity, the Munchausen moms of transgender children are never subjected to skeptical inquiry. Liberal journalists never seem to ask the obvious questions about the bizarre publicity-seeking behavior involved in this creepy crusade, nor is anyone in the mainstream media likely to give a fair hearing to critics of the transgender agenda. As a result, there is a symbiotic relationship between the Munchausen moms (who crave sympathy and attention) and the media, whose biases obligate them to provide that attention with utterly one-sided coverage.

 

The cult mentality of the transgender movement is exacerbated by the media’s celebratory treatment of such people, based on the belief that anyone critical of the transgender agenda must be an ignorant bigot motivated by “hate.” Common-sense objections are silenced and marginalized, because critics of transgenderism are treated as disreputable, whereas the attention-seeking mother who decides to raise her 4-year-old son as a “girl” named Ellie basks in media praise.

Like I keep saying, people need to wake the hell up.



 

RECENTLY:

 

Category: The Transgender Cult

Texas Attorney ‘Resigns’ from Firm After Rape Comment About Betsy DeVos

Posted on | September 12, 2017 | Comments Off on Texas Attorney ‘Resigns’ from Firm After Rape Comment About Betsy DeVos

 

The Eternal Genius of the Liberal Mind:

A Round Rock attorney resigned after posting a controversial tweet Friday that caused a firestorm on Twitter.
The tweet, which was posted by Robert Ranco, a partner with the Carlson Law Firm, read, “I’m not wishing for it…but I’d be ok if #BetsyDevos was sexually assaulted. #SexualAssault #TitleIX.”
The tweet caught the eyes of national news outlets like the Washington Times and Breitbart, as well as Twitter users who snapped screenshots before the account was locked and then deleted.
Law firm managing partner Craig Carlson announced in a statement Monday that Ranco resigned.
“I considered the health of everyone in our organization, promised my partners and my employees that we would act according to the values of our firm, and sat down to speak with Mr. Ranco,” Carlson said.
Carlson stated that with over 75 percent of employees of whom are women, anyone in the company “advocating or even expressing apathy towards sexual assault” would not be accepted. Carlson said Ranco took full responsibility of the tweet.
“As a man of faith, believer in forgiveness, and longtime friend, it is my sincere hope that Rob with learn from this experience and go on to have a very successful career,” Carlson ends the statement.

What would inspire Ranco to post such a disgusting thing? It’s the echo-chamber effect produced by liberal media. If all you knew about politics is what you absorbed through CNN, MSNBC, Huffington Post, the New York Times and other left-wing sources, you would hate DeVos, too. The way such sources presented DeVos’s proposal to roll back the Obama-era Title IX policy, it would be easy for someone inside the liberal echo chamber to believe that DeVos is a bad person promoting bad policies that will expose college students to a greater danger of sexual assault.

Robert Ranco probably never read The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities by K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. Nor is it likely that Ranco was familiar with the issues raised by Emily Yoffe in her recent three-part series at The Atlantic:

Each of these articles raises serious questions about the Obama administration decision to require universities to implement policies that amounted to a campus kangaroo-court system that abrogated due-process rights. In many cases, these policies appeared to inspire false accusations of rape while depriving the accused of adequate means of defending themselves. The University of Virginia gang-rape hoax promoted by Rolling Stone‘s 2014 article exemplified the witch-hunt hysteria that the infamous 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter incited, and more than 100 students have sued their universities over the mishandling of what the students claim were false sexual assault accusations.

None of this seems to have penetrated the minds of liberals who bought into the campus “rape culture” narrative — the “1-in-5” myth, etc. — and this is why Ranco would imagine that it was acceptable to say vile things about Betsy DeVos. The #StopBetsy hashtag promoted by feminists last week was full of deranged and irresponsible claims.

To put it bluntly, Democrats have turned rape into a partisan issue, and the liberal media are deliberately promoting propaganda that demonizes Betsy DeVos for contradicting their narrative. It is unfortunate that Robert Ranco had to lose his job as a result of his buying into this propaganda narrative, but perhaps now he will have some sense of what evils a climate of witch-hunt hysteria can unleash.



 

 

Category: Media Bias, Sex Trouble

Late Night With Rule 5 Monday:
Kate Upton Goes To Houston

Posted on | September 12, 2017 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Apologies for the lateness of the post – it was a rough weekend here at the Desert Outpost even though the weather was unexpectedly pleasant. I was somewhat tempted to follow up on last week’s news of the Great Kate Upton Trade with news of the sudden phenomenon of “Astros Girl”, a/k/a Terann Hilow, but I wouldn’t be practicing the Neutral Objective Journalism this site is famous for if I didn’t say that based on her talents, Ms. Hilow is going to have to demonstrate considerable hustle and work on her fundamentals if she’s going to expect promotion from the single-A minor leagues of Instagram and YouTube into the major leagues where the Kate Uptons of this world are playing. So for this week’s appetizer, we’re going with a casual pic (from that fine British newspaper the Daily Mail) of Ms. Upton enjoying the Astros at play.

Just another Astros fan enjoying the game

Ninety Miles From Tyranny leads off with Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns, while Animal Magnetism chips in with Rule Five Social Media Stupidity Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL’s herd this week includes Coming Out In Hollywood Rule 5, Dragon Con, Diana Rigg and Cake’s “Short Skirt/Long Jacket”, Hurricane Hotties, Cave Girl Mixing, Hurricane Irma Rule 5, Margarita Levieva, and Ziva Rodann.

A View From The Beach graces us with Candice Boucher, Fish Pic Friday – Marlin, How Middle Class People Pay for Rich People’s Cars, “Weird Fishes”, Taylor Swift Stiff Arms the SJWs, Unintended Consequences or Not?, Louisiana Judge Gives California Embryonic Citizenship, Happy Labor Day!, Burning Man Ends With Burning Man, Massive Salmon Breakout Nets Fishing Binge, and Texas Open to Knives, Swords and Spears.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Anna Kendrick, his Vintage Babe is Diana Barrymore, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Guess. At Dustbury, it’s Rosa Blasi and Dee Dee Sharp.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!
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Category: Rule 5
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