The Other McCain

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

#CPAC2017: Seen on the Scene

Posted on | February 23, 2017 | 2 Comments

‘The Official Trump Truck’ is, as the president would say, yuuuge.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland
CPAC is like family reunion for bloggers. When I went down to breakfast Thursday morning, the first person I saw was Ed Morrissey of Hot Air.

 

After breakfast, I went outside for a post-meal smoke, which was where I ran into “Joe the Plumber” Wertzelbacher.

 

Of course, CPAC is not all about guys with gray beards hanging out together. Thousands of college students as well as glamorous television personalities also like to hang out with guys with gray beards.

 

Jesse Waters of Fox News doesn’t have a gray beard yet. He’s only 38, which was how old I was when I left Georgia in 1997 and moved to D.C. to work as an assistant editor for The Washington Times. Considering that this is my 12th consecutive CPAC, I keep running into people who were College Republicans when I first met them at CPAC, but who are now doing serious work in the world of politics and government.



 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Category: Fear and Loathing at CPAC 2017

#CPAC 2017: ‘The Deconstruction of the Administrative State’ — Steve Bannon

Posted on | February 23, 2017 | 1 Comment

 

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland
President Trump is “maniacally focused” on keeping the promises he made to America during his campaign, White House strategist Steve Bannon said Thursday during a panel with chief of staff Reince Priebus. That includes enforcing immigration law — “protecting the sovereignty of the United States,” as Priebus said — and an agenda of deregulation that Bannon called the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”

Bannon warned the audience in the Potomac Ballroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference to expect intensifying attacks on Trump the “corporatist, globalist media” that is opposed to the president’s agenda of economic nationalism. “If you think you are getting your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken,” said Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News. “We want you to have our backs . . . to hold us accountable for what we promised.”

Priebus attributed Trump’s victory last November to the New York real estate mogul’s authenticity. “What the American people were starving for was somebody real, somebody genuine,” said Priebus, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Priebus credited Trump for uniting the disparate factions of the GOP after a hard-fought primary campaign that began with 16 candidates seeking the nomination. Keeping the conservative movement connected to the Republican Party is the key to success in moving forward Trump’s agenda, Priebus said. “If the party and the movement are together, we can’t be stopped.”

 

Category: Fear and Loathing at CPAC 2017

In The Mailbox: 02.23.17

Posted on | February 23, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.23.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Sunlight The Best Disinfectant, Bill Maher?
Michelle Malkin: Fighting For The Falsely Accused
Twitchy: Space Cadet…Er, Feminist…Brianna Wu Trips All Over Her Own Smug Attack On Milo
Louder With Crowder: Women Freed From ISIS Celebrate, Remove & Burn Oppressive Veils


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Gay Marriage And The Chesterton Fence
American Power: President Trump Rolls Back Obama’s Perverted “Transgender” School Bathroom Mandates
American Thinker: How To Tell If News Is Really News
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Second Amendment News
BLACKFIVE: Do You Know This Man Or Voice?
Da Tech Guy: Voices Of CPAC 2017 – Joe On Life Beyond The Berlin Wall
Don Surber: The Story Huffington Post Doesn’t Want You To Read
Dustbury: Bucolic Romance
Fred On Everything: A Budget Without Russians – The Empire’s Nightmare
The Geller Report: Swedish Politicians Say Trump Was Right
Hogewash: Go Ahead. Make My Day.
Jammie Wearing Fools: Alan Colmes Dead At 66
Joe For America: James O’Keefe To “Destroy CNN” With Hundreds Of Hours Of Undercover Tapes
JustOneMinute: Good Advice
Power Line: CNN Says Oh-Oh
Shark Tank: GOP Draws First Blood Against Nelson In 2018 Senate Race
Shot In The Dark: We Shall Call Him “Bluto”
STUMP: Kentucky County Pensions – 60% Funded (And Decreasing) Is Awful
The Jawa Report: Totally Mischaracterized Gitmo Detainee Goes All Splodeydope
The Political Hat: Gender Bending – In The Schools, In Utero, In Opposition
This Ain’t Hell: University of Michigan’s No Whites Allowed Space, also, 72nd Anniversary Of Mount Suribachi Flag Raising
War Is Boring: Russia Sells Lethal Jet Fighters To UAE
Weasel Zippers: Mexico “Will Not Accept” Trump’s Immigration Plans, Threatens To Go To U.N., also, Trump Strips Funding For Illegal Aliens, Reallocates Money To Victims Of Their Crimes


Instant Gratification – Today’s Digital Deals
Bear Naked Granola Snacks – Save Up To 20%

Category: Linkagery

#CPAC2017: Joe the Plumber (@RealJTP) Talks Breitbart, Bannon, Trump

Posted on | February 23, 2017 | 1 Comment

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland
Joe Wurzelbacher was just a guy in Ohio in 2008, when he encountered Barack Obama on the campaign trail and asked him a question about taxes that catapulted “Joe the Plumber” to nationwide fame. Now, Joe works with Liberty Alliance and this morning I bumped into him outside CPAC and recorded a brief interview:

 

By the way, the Satanic forces of evil, otherwise known as the Democrat Party, are casting a witchcraft spell on Donald Trump tomorrow.

Obviously, Christians need to pray for the President’s protection:

Pray therefore the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer retain men captive and do injury to the Church.

Never doubt the power of  prayer.



 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Category: Fear and Loathing at CPAC 2017

#CPAC2017: Kellyanne Conway, Ted Cruz, Mark Levin, Dana Loesch, Steve Bannon

Posted on | February 23, 2017 | 2 Comments

 

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland
A big agenda of speakers today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, although the President doesn’t speak until Friday:

Just less than a year ago, Donald Trump decided to skip CPAC – a decision the organization said he would come to regret, since it “sends a clear message to conservatives.” The Trump campaign said he would be back in 2017, “hopefully as President of the United States.” (How many in the room in 2016 thought that would really happen?) Now comes this year’s CPAC, with Vice President Mike Pence and President Trump both in the speakers’ lineup. That’s just a hint of the extent to which the conservative movement has been adopted and co-opted by Team Trump. Conservatives – even those who insisted Trump was never one of them – have, for the most part, gone along with it. Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway have all been CPAC fixtures in the past. Now they will be CPAC rock stars, appearing on behalf of the leader of the conservative movement, the man in whose administration they serve.

Speaking of fixtures, last night I saw Evan Sayet and reminded him that it was CPAC ten years ago we met. That was Andrew Breitbart’s first time attending CPAC and it seems like just yesterday to me.

UPDATE: Kellyanne clobbered it:

Senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway gave a simple reason why she doesn’t label herself a “feminist” in her speech this morning at CPAC.
“It’s difficult for me to call myself a feminist,” she said, because modern feminism is “anti-male and pro-abortion. I am neither.”
Conway is a staunch pro-life activist who was the first woman to successfully run a presidential campaign. She was responding to a question about the pro-abortion Women’s March and Democrats claiming to speak on behalf of women. . . .
On the main stage, Conway discussed the importance of her four children in her life. The 50-year-old empowered Catholic mother irked feminists and leftists while running the Trump campaign.

My CPAC roommate Pete Da Tech Guy talked to Mrs. Conway last night. He gave her a cannoli. She loves cannoli.

UPDATE: Interview with Joe the Plumber.

 

Category: Fear and Loathing at CPAC 2017

In The Mailbox: 02.22.17

Posted on | February 22, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.22.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
First Street Journal: Why Can’t Every Illegal Immigrant Do Things The Way Adriano Espaillot Did?
EBL: Is It Time To Take The Keys From Grandpa?
Twitchy: Video Surfaces Of Bill Maher Condoning Sex Between Adult And 14-Year-Old
Louder With Crowder: Tucker Carlson Nukes #NotMyPresident Protester Who Claims Trump Is Anti-LGBT
According To Hoyt: If They Take Milo Down, You’re Next


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: On Milo
American Power: Marine Le Pen Wins Over Women Voters Who Feel Left Behind In France
American Thinker: The Left – False Premises And Suicidal Actions
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BLACKFIVE: Stolen by Carey Baldwin
Da Tech Guy: CPAC 2017 – First Interviews
Don Surber: Trump 2020 Is Happening
Dustbury: Four-Piece Spicy, With A Side Of TimBits
The Geller Report: Muslim Texas Pre-School Teacher Removed From Classroom After Tweeting “Kill Some Jews”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Jammie Wearing Fools: Illegal Alien Freed From Custody Kills Man Weeks Later
Joe For America: Trump Kills Another Welfare Freebie
Power Line: Remembering The Indispensable Man
Shark Tank: Florida Moves To Finally Ban Red-Light Cameras
Shot In The Dark: Today’s Chuckle
STUMP: Mortality Monday – Defamation Lawsuit About Mortality Rate Reporting
The Political Hat: Judge Not, O Person Of Pallor
This Ain’t Hell: It’s Not Like We Haven’t Been Warning About IAVA
War Is Boring: This Missile Scare Became Social Media Comedy
Weasel Zippers: California Bans Students From Traveling To “Anti-LGBT” States, also, These Senators Opposed Vouchers Backer DeVos But Send Their Kids To Fancypants Private Schools
Megan McArdle: How Not To Address Liberal Bias In Education


Instant Gratification – Today’s Digital Deals

Category: Linkagery

Fear and Loathing: CPAC Calls Me, and How Can I Answer the Call?

Posted on | February 22, 2017 | 1 Comment

 

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK:
Cynthia Yockey called last night from the Minneapolis airport, where her flight to Baltimore-Washington International had been rerouted due to weather problems in the Midwest. Blame global warming, and also heteropatriarchy, but why take time to assign blame now, eh?

No, right now I’m rattling the tip jar like a fear-crazed madman because I’d been hoping to get a check that didn’t show up and I’m about $450 short of what I’ll need to make this trip to CPAC, an event I’ve covered for 12 consecutive years. It’s not like my cash shortage wasn’t apparent by Saturday, but I was deep into another exploration of a radical feminist insanity, and so I procrastinated on posting my emergency appeal for contributions to the Shoe Leather Fund. Now, here I am, just hours before my planned departure to National Harbor on the banks of the Potomac, pleading in helpless desperation.

How do I keep getting myself into these predicaments? Like the time my car broke down on the way back from the 2012 Republican convention in Tampa, and found myself using the wifi in a McDonald’s to write a post called “Fear and Loathing in a 2004 KIA Optima.” Less than 24 hours earlier, I’d been watching Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech from a skybox, enjoying free beverages provided by coal industry lobbyists, but there I was in Ocala, broke and desperate. And yet the regular readers came through to get me back home. Or like the time I flew to Alaska in 2010 on a one-way ticket, with no idea whether I’d be able to pay for my return flight. Four days later, I was hanging out with Todd Palin in Wasilla, and it was contributions from readers that made it happen.

When the going gets weird, et cetera.

Preparing to depart from BWI Airport, circa 2011.

Readers have been crowd-funding these gonzo road trips since 2009, but since the exhaustion of the long 2012 campaign, I’ve mainly been content to work from home and babysit my grandsons. Speaking of which, I just heard 18-month-old Alexander getting into mischief. Hang on . . .

Changed his diaper, fed him lunch, gave him a bottle and laid him down in his crib for a nap. But that has nothing to do with CPAC, except that my daughter-in-law will be coming to pick him up in about an hour, and then drive me to National Harbor, so I’d like to be able to give her $20 for gas, and then five days amid the right-wing carnival called CPAC. My share of the hotel room, split four ways, will come to about $400, which means that if 20 readers hit the tip jar for $20, or if 40 readers hit the tip jar for $10, I’m covered there. Hotel meals run about $15, so that’s probably going to cost me another $100-$150, depending on how many receptions with free buffets I can talk my way into. As for beverages, well, a cup of coffee goes for about $3 at the hotel. Last week, this blog got nearly 60,000 page-views, and so each reader doesn’t have to give much — $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford — to make this trip happen.

Oh, Alexander’s not napping, which means I’ll have to wrap this up quick, with the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Thanks in advance, and God bless you.



 

UPDATE: Here’s my latest on the latest:

What happened to Milo Yiannopoulos this week illustrates many problems in 21st-century culture, including the way the Internet has created a dangerous mob mentality. Justice Clarence Thomas famously called his Senate confirmation ordeal a “high-tech lynching,” but advances in technology have shortened the rope, so to speak. In a span of 72 hours, Yiannopoulos was disinvited from speaking at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, lost a book contract with Simon & Schuster, and was compelled to resign from his job as tech editor of Breitbart News.
Milo’s sudden downfall was precipitated by his remarks about pedophilia and child molestation in an interview he did in January 2016 with a YouTube program called “Drunken Peasants.” Yiannopoulos has complained that his remarks were taken out of context, and so the context is important to consider. Yiannopoulos gained prominence for his writing about the so-called “GamerGate” controversy in 2014 and 2015. This included two September 2015 articles about Sarah (neé Nicholas) Nyberg, an anti-GamerGate activist who in 2005 had described himself as a “transsexual pedophile” with an attraction toward a young female relative.
During the “Drunken Peasants” interview, the hosts asked Yiannopoulos to address an accusation that his criticism of Nyberg was hypocritical, because Yiannopoulos himself had previously confessed that he first had sex with an adult at age 13. This led to a five-minute discussion in which Yiannopoulos, who is homosexual, made comments that he himself later recanted as “outrageous.” . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator. Thanks to Jerold, William and Daniel who’ve already hit the tip jar quite generously. My wife might even get a bouquet of roses if this trip goes well.

UPDATE II: Well, my daughter-in-law decided my son should drive me down instead, so my departure has been delayed, but that gives me time to thank more tip jar hitters: Roman, Cheryl, Randall, Daniel O., David, Dana, Robert, John K., Jeffrey and my good friend John Hoge.

 

Category: Fear and Loathing at CPAC 2017

To Milo or Not to Milo?

Posted on | February 21, 2017 | Comments Off on To Milo or Not to Milo?

That is the question. When the Milo Yiannopedophiliapoulos controversy erupted over the weekend, I was busy working on a 4,000-word post about a radical feminist that I didn’t finish until Monday. Then CPAC disinvited him Monday, and today Milo resigned from Breitbart, and all of this controversy went thermonuclear while I was too busy on other stuff (including babysitting my grandsons) to pay much attention.

Did I see the video? Well, I briefly glanced at it and saw a partial transcript. It seemed to me that Milo let himself be drawn into a discussion where the is/ought distinction became ambiguous. He spoke on the basis of his own experience, and voiced opinions about what actually does happen — e.g., teenage schoolboys and teachers — without necessarily saying what should happen, except to suggest that society has gone overboard in terms of public fear producing draconian punishments. For example, last week I noted the case of an 18-year-old boy who was required to register as a sex offender because of an online romance with a girl (a) he never met in person, but who (b) sent him pictures of herself in her underwear, and (c) did I mention she was 13?

OK, the circumstances require me to reiterate that I am against the whole “sexting” culture of online dating and so forth, and I am also against people taking selfies in their underwear (or less) and sending them to other people. Furthermore, I am against anything at all of that nature which might involve a 13-year-old. However, this particular case discussed by Lenore Skenazy at Reason seemed to be prosecutorial overkill, even though I concluded my own discussion of the case by emphasizing the law is the law, and ignorance of the law is no defense. The bottom line is, parents have to warn their kids about this stuff. End of story.

Having done a lot of work in my career to expose pro-pedophile activists — e.g., Judith Reisman and her 2002 book Harmful to Minors — I can scarcely be accused of being “soft” on this issue. The question comes down to what Jeff Goldstein calls intentionality. What was Milo’s purpose in saying what he said? Was he, as some have described it, “advocating” pedophilia? Was he making excuses for child molesters? That was not the impression I got, but as I say, I didn’t sit down and study the video.

What happened was that his hosts on the “Drunken Peasants” podcast asked Milo to react to someone accusing him of hypocrisy because (a) he had gone after Nicholas “Sarah” Nyberg over pedophilia allegations, and (b) he had said in an interview on the Joe Rogan show that he himself first had sex at age 12 or 13. That’s an apples-and-oranges situation, and Milo could have just brushed it off as a non sequitur. And in hindsight, I’m sure he wished he had brushed it off, but instead he let himself be drawn into a discussion that provided the dynamite with which his enemies subsequently exploded him. So, now what?

Milo issued a strong denial of the imputation that he was defending child molesters, and today held a press conference, and we shall see what the future holds. Ace of Spades wrote a lengthy piece about the “Social Media Scalp-Hunting Hurricane” that included this:

All that said, I do have an interest, and that interest is less about Milo than this same sick game of Pick the Day’s Hate Object and Destroy It.
Is it my scalp they’ll be coming for next week?
Who knows — maybe this very post you’re reading right now will be cited as the reason Ace Must Now Be Purged to Maintain the Purity of the Body of the Church of Twitter.

Exactly right. Who knows who will be the next victim of the Hate Machine? In the span of 72 hours, Milo lost a speaking gig at CPAC and his job at Breitbart and his book contract with Simon & Schuster, all because of an interview he did with some guys on a YouTube channel.

Geez Louise, the court of public opinion has become a lynch mob. As someone who once fought a two-week blog war to defend myself against bogus racism smears, my instinct is to defend anyone on Team Conservative against the Republican circular-firing squad mentality.

“Oh, no! Somebody said something controversial! Purge them!”

So, I’m glad I was busy when all this blew up into an online firestorm, because otherwise I might have been sucked into it. And I’ve got too many enemies already to risk pissing off more of my friends. But the people who were quick to purge Milo should keep in mind that you reap what you sow. If you ever find yourself facing a mob ready to destroy your life over some controversial quote — “I was taken out of context! I didn’t mean it that way!” — you’d better know who your friends are.

Jim Hoft observes that the #NeverTrump crowd’s fingerprints are all over the Milo takedown, and you can form your own opinion. Myself, I prefer to aim my guns downrange, and there’s plenty of targets there.

UPDATE: On Gab — you are following me on Gab, right? — I was accosted by someone who seems to be demanding 100% unanimity that Milo be treated as persona non grata, and who then scolded me for not acceding to this demand. So we’re in the “secondary boycott” phase of the controversy, where everyone is expected to choose sides. And I hate this kind of game, people telling me who I can and can’t be friends with. LGF’s Charles Johnson tried to do that to Pamela Geller back in 2007, and we see what happened to Charles. There is something to be said for minding your own business, and avoiding the temptation to play arbiter of ethics.



 

Category: CPAC
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin