FMJRA 2.0: On The Floors Of Tokyo

CLEVELAND
Well, my five-day stay in this fair city has come to an end, and now it’s time for me to return home. My train ticket on the Capitol Limited is paid for, but there’s cab fare to the station, and I’d like to grab a bite to eat before I go. My wife wanted me to bring home souvenirs for the kids, and I bought a couple of T-shirts before realizing how depleted Ye Old Bank Account had become — a typical miscalculation.

Was there any Big Story here in Cleveland? Was the Republican National Convention anything more than a pre-scripted TV show? Is there any Final Wisdom to be found in all this?

On the bright side, terrorists didn’t blow us all to smithereens, thanks to the massive police presence in Cleveland. The biggest disruption of the whole week was Ted Cruz’s speech Wednesday, and also, Communist protesters burning the American flag, but what would a Republican convention be without a few Commies burning a flag? It’s predictable, as predictable as the blatant bias of the media.

Also predictable: Me rattling the tip jar. Anything readers can give — $5 or $10 or $20 — would be appreciated because, as always, the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

PREVIOUSLY:

July 22: Did We Watch the Same Speech?
July 20: #RNCinCLE Facts Are RAAAAACIST!
June 20: Legion of the Banned
July 19: COMMIES!
July 19: No More Bushes
July 19: The Heat Is On the Street

Category: Fear and Loathing at the Republican National Convention

In The Mailbox: 07.22.16

Posted on | July 22, 2016 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.22.16

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Munchen Madness
Twitchy: Elderly White Woman Mocked After Declaring Tim Kaine “Woke”
Moe Lane: Hey, Do You Want To See The Luke Cage Trailer? Say “Yes, Moe.”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: It’s All Men’s Fault. Again.
American Power: Hacked Democrat E-Mails Reveal Hillary Plan To Attack Sanders’ Religion
American Thinker: Time Will Vindicate Ted Cruz
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Little Girl Gone by Gerry Schmitt
Da Tech Guy: The Trumpvention – The Real Issues Are Not Going Away
Don Surber: It’s Trump’s Party Now
Dustbury: It’s Weaponized!
Fred On Everything: White Nationalists And Practicality, If Any
Jammie Wearing Fools: Laura Ingraham Salutes The Sturmtrumpers
Joe For America: Muslim Journalist Says France Deserved The Nice Attacks Because They’re Islamophobic
JustOneMinute: Trump’s Speech
Pamela Geller: Mass Shooting At Munich Mall, Several Dead, ISIS Celebrates On Social Media
Shark Tank: FL-4 Republican Candidate John Rutherford May Have A Sanctuary City Problem
Shot In The Dark: 10:15 Thursday Night
STUMP: Happy Friday! An 80% Funding Mythbusting Hero – Take A Bow, David Crane!
The Jawa Report: Totally Un-Islamic Asian Youth Stabs Infidel Women For Dressing Slutty
The Lonely Conservative: Gone Fishin’
The Political Hat: Donald Trump And The GOP Establishment
This Ain’t Hell: Ever Wondered What This Administration Would Do If U.S. Forces Were Attacked?
Weasel Zippers: Virginia Supreme Court Strikes Down McAuliffe’s Attempt To Restore Felons’ Voting Rights
Megan McArdle: Two Views – The Key To Saving The Republican Party

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Category: Linkagery

MUNICH TERRORIST KILLS 9 PEOPLE UPDATE: Gunman Was 18-Year-Old German-Born Son of Iranian Immigrants

Posted on | July 22, 2016 | 44 Comments

UPDATE 9:05 p.m. EDT: Sky News reports:

“The perpetrator was an 18-year-old German-Iranian from Munich,” police chief Hubertus Andrae told reporters after the massacre.
“The motive or explanation for this crime is completely unclear.”

Yeah, it’s “unclear” why this young Muslim committed a massacre.

PREVIOUSLY (2:21 p.m. EDT)

Multiple people are reportedly dead after a gunman opened fire in a shopping mall in Munich, Germany. Police are searching for the suspect.

UPDATE 2:50 p.m. EDT: More details from Reuters:

The Bavarian Interior Ministry said three people were dead, NTV television reported. A Munich police spokeswoman said multiple people were killed or wounded.
“We believe we are dealing with a shooting rampage,” the spokeswoman said.
More than one gunman was believed to be involved and no one had been arrested, she said.
“We believe there was more than one perpetrator. The first reports came at 6 p.m., the shooting apparently began at a McDonald’s in the shopping center. There are still people in the shopping center. We are trying to get the people out and take care of them.”

Early reports on such events are always confusing, and often wrong. Right now, it is being reported that there were at least three gunmen, but we must be patient and wait for the facts to be sorted out.

UPDATE 3:20 p.m. EDT: The Daily Mail:

Munich is in lockdown tonight as at least six people have been killed and 10 injured in a shooting rampage involving three gunmen.
A major police operation is ongoing around the city’s Olympic Park, with the force warning people to stay in their homes and avoid public spaces as they admitted they don’t know where the gunmen are.
Terrified shoppers were seen running for their lives from the Munich Olympia Shopping Centre, in the district of Moosach, after hearing gunshots.
Witnesses said that the gunman screamed ‘I’m German’ and ‘Scheiss Auslander’ (s*** foreigners) before shooting.

This report is not confirmed, but if true, it would indicate some kind of nationalist anti-Muslim motive. We await more information.

NEW: Video shows shooting outside #Munich McDonald's in apparent terror attack https://t.co/oZS1Cw2vux pic.twitter.com/hI4bHrGfo5

— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 22, 2016

#UPDATE 'At least 6 dead' in #Munich shooting, police source says, 3 armed suspects at large https://t.co/0cuR0THbN2 pic.twitter.com/dhXknZ7KH5

— AFP news agency (@AFP) July 22, 2016

UPDATE 4:40 p.m. EDT: The death toll now reportedly stand at eight. There were reportedly three gunmen, one of whom shot himself. However, we know nothing about who the shooters are, and can only speculate about a motive.

UPDATE 6:40 p.m. EDT: The latest from the Guardian:

According to local media, the ninth dead person is believed by police to be one of the killers. His body was found 45 minutes ago on a green stretch near the Olympia shopping centre; 1km away from the scene of the crime.
The veteran police reporter Oliver Bendixen told Tagesthemen that the body found was believed to be that of the perpetrator who opened fire in front of the McDonald’s restaurant.

The identity of the shooter is unknown, and nothing has been confirmed as to the motives for this attack. Linked at American Power — thanks!

Category: Germany, Terrorism

Did We Watch the Same Speech?

Posted on | July 22, 2016 | 42 Comments

CLEVELAND
The hysterical reaction by many journalists to Donald Trump’s speech last night was further evidence of their absurd bias.

Donald Trump’s RNC Speech
Was a Terrifying Display of
Nightmarish Authoritarianism
— Peter Suderman, Reason

The Demagogue Rises
— Matthew Continetti, Free Beacon

Donald Trump’s Un-American Acceptance Speech
— Franklin Foer, Slate

Donald Trump’s Angry, Dark Speech
Caps Off a Disastrous RNC
— Joan Walsh, The Nation

What speech did they watch? Angry? Dark? Terrifying? This negative perception was entirely subjective, a product of irrational bias. The speech I watched here Thursday night was awesome:

Zak Hasanin was walking along a downtown sidewalk Thursday afternoon when he said, “Did you hear that? ‘America Was Never Great’?” He was quoting a slogan shouted by left-wing protesters near the Republican National Convention here. “Those people need to go to Africa. They don’t know how good they’ve got it.”
Hasanin’s family immigrated to America from Sudan when he was a child, and the 23-year-old recent graduate of North Carolina State University was angered at the anti-American protest slogan.
“How is this not great?” Hasanin said, gesturing at the scene on Euclid Avenue, where vendors were hawking Donald Trump T-shirts outside shops and restaurants crowded with delegates. “This is Cleveland. Anywhere in Africa, this would be the greatest city in the country.”
The hope of renewing American greatness was what brought Hasanin and thousands of other Republicans to Cleveland, and Thursday night Trump delivered what was without doubt the strongest speech of his campaign to date.
“America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics,” Trump said near the end of his hour-plus address to an enthusiastic crowd at Quicken Loans Arena. “Remember, all of the people telling you that you can’t have the country you want, are the same people telling you that I wouldn’t be standing here tonight.”
Indeed, in the past year, Trump’s success has confounded the cynics and critics who at first did not take his campaign seriously. The same doubters, including many conservative pundits, subsequently panicked when Trump’s populist campaign caught fire with primary voters who ignored the pundits and voted for the billionaire businessman who promised to put a stop to illegal immigration. Trump took special aim at “elites in media” who he said are “lining up behind the campaign of my opponent.”
Indeed, liberals reacted with alarm to Trump’s speech. Former MSNBC personality Melissa Harris-Perry walked out 10 minutes into his speech, declaring “I left early because I was afraid.” CNN personality Sally Kohn seemed traumatized, moaning on Twitter: “The problem is, this speech seems believable and convincing, especially in a vacuum. I’m scared.” On NBC, former Bush aide Nicolle Wallace announced, “The Republican Party that I worked for for two decades died in this room tonight.”
Of course, the GOP couldn’t beat Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012, and none of the regular Republican candidates could beat Trump for the nomination this year, so what were the chances that a Nicolle Wallace-approved Republican could have defeated Hillary Clinton this year? . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator. What frightens so many elitists about Donald Trump, I believe, is that his views represent the non-elite majority of Americans. Nicolle Wallace attended Cal-Berkeley (Class of ’94) and got her graduate degree at Northwestern University. She got hired by the Bush family in 1999, married a Bush staffer, and has spent her entire adult life among the Republican Party elite, looking down her snooty nose at the rest of us. Nicolle Wallace despises ordinary Americans quite as thoroughly as any liberal elitist despises ordinary Americans.

To hell with such establishment snobbery, and good riddance to Bushism.

Category: Donald Trump, Fear and Loathing at the Republican National Convention, Media Bias

He’s Not Hunter S. Thompson, But He’ll Do Just Fine

Posted on | July 22, 2016 | 4 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

Don Surber was kind enough to send me a galley copy of his Trump The Press. thus demonstrating that in some cases, friendship does outweigh political differences. I have to say, while I am none too enthusiastic about Donald Trump, Don’s book is a marvelous thumb in the eye of the punditry and the press, most of whom treated the Republican nominee as a bad joke who couldn’t possibly win the nomination – until he did. Austin Bay beat me to the punch and said a lot of the things I was going to say; he is entirely correct that Don’s book is an outstanding first history of the campaign, and a wonderfully easy read to boot. The Kindle edition hits the airwaves on Monday, but you can pre-order (at $2.99, it’s a hell of a good deal) or you can get the dead tree edition right now. Either way, you ought to read it.

It took me longer than I thought it would, but I did manage to finish Jean Larteguy’s The Praetorians, which is every bit as depressing a book as you’d expect, considering that it’s about a group of French paratroop officers at the tail end of the Algerian War. Things I’d forgotten since I originally read the book in the 1980s: the entire novel is told in flashbacks, there’s a horrifying scene between Captains Mahmoudi and Esclavier toward the end which is almost too perfect a metaphor for the political subplot of the book, and at least one character dies after losing his faith. Depressing, but worth reading.

Jennifer Pournelle’s Outies is arguably a better book than its prequel by her dad and Larry Niven, despite some whining by marginally literate reviewers. There are references throughout the book to not only the previous two Motie novels, but also King David’s Spaceship, which is very pertinent to the plot. Ms. Pournelle’s storytelling style is different from her father’s, and the characters aren’t as fully developed as they might have been had Niven been involved, but this tale of political skulduggery and anthropology on the fringe of the Second Empire is an interesting one, and I think it’s worth the money.

The Year’s Best Military And Adventure SF 2015 is the second such anthology released by Baen edited by David Ashfarirad, and while I didn’t catch the first one, this one’s pretty good. Many of the stories are from the David Drake tribute anthology Onward, Drake!, including Hank Davis’ sinister yet amusing “The Trouble With Telepaths”, but the other stories are mostly good. I would rate this as being every bit as good as the There Will Be War anthologies, except without the nonfiction parts.

Finally (speaking of David Drake), there’s a new RCN novel out, Death’s Bright Day, in which the dashing young naval officer Daniel Leary gets married – and promptly gets ordered out to solve a problem for…the Alliance’s Fifth Bureau? Fortunately – as usual – he has the help of the Galaxy’s Most Lethal Librarian, Signals Officer Adele Mundy, to say nothing of the crew of the Princess Cecile, and we get some more first-class brain candy to enjoy. Fully in the traditions of the RCN series!

Category: Books, Don Surber

In The Mailbox: 07.21.16

Posted on | July 21, 2016 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: Today’s Muslim Horoscopes
EBL: @Nero Fiddles While Twitter Burns
Twitchy: Ten Times Democrats Gave The Nazi Salute Just Like Laura Ingraham

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Stop Speaking English, Foreign Appropriators
American Power: Juice Boxer Ezra Klein Afraid For The First Time In His Life
American Thinker: Trump’s Answer To Black-On-Cop Murder
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – Crisis Of Character by Gary J. Byrne
Da Tech Guy: Ted Cruz In Cleveland – If The Choice Is Ambition Or Family, Family Wins
Don Surber: Why Should Anyone Care About These Opinions?
Dustbury: Out Of The Mass Market
Fred On Everything: A Different Take On China – Reflections From A Former Life
Jammie Wearing Fools: Judges And Juries Keep Acquitting The Cops #BlackLivesMatter Calls Racist
Joe For America: Kansas Eliminates Income Tax, Makes $85 Million, Sees Jobs Soar
JustOneMinute: I May Never Like Ted Cruz, But…
Pamela Geller: Devout Brazilian Muslims Declare Loyalty To ISIS In South America’s First Public Declaration, Weeks Ahead Of The Olympics
Shark Tank: Marco Rubio Praised By GOP While Ted Cruz Is Booed At The RNC
Shot In The Dark: Policies Matter
The Jawa Report: USG Declassifies Shocking 9/11 Details
The Lonely Conservative: Here’s A Video Of The Ted Cruz Speech Everyone Is Talking About
The Political Hat: The Ultimate Tool Of Third Grade White Supremacy? Brownies!
This Ain’t Hell: Combat & Anger – Making Excuses For Murderers
Weasel Zippers: Darwin Award – Protester Attempts To Set Flag On Fire, Ignites Himself And Other Protesters
Megan McArdle: Cruz And Trump Both Lost In Convention Face-Off

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Category: Linkagery

Tumblr Is ‘Basically Worthless’

Posted on | July 21, 2016 | 38 Comments

Every SJW feminist’s favorite social-media/blog platform is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year:

Yahoo is again marking down the value of Tumblr, the social network it purchased for $1.1 billion. In its second quarter earnings, Yahoo wrote down $394 million as a “goodwill impairment charge” and another $87 million as an intangible impairment charge. Last quarter, the company wrote down the value of its social platform by $230 million. “During the second quarter of 2016,” the earnings report reads, “we determined that there were indicators present to suggest that it is more likely than not that the fair value of the Tumblr reporting unit is less than its carrying amount.”

Yahoo declares Tumblr basically worthless, writing off $482M of the $1.1 billion purchase price, on top of $230M writeoff last qtr. $YHOO

— Vindu Goel (@vindugoel) July 18, 2016

There is something deeply symbolic about this news. The CEO of Yahoo is a woman, Marissa Mayer, an alumna of elite Stanford University, and the dismal failure of Tumblr may put her out of a job:

Following another disappointing earnings report, the Tumblr losses could prove to be the final nail in the coffin of Mayer’s time at Yahoo.
As Quartz put it . . . “When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer bought Tumblr for a cool $US1 billion in 2013, she pledged ‘not to screw it up.’ (Three) years later, it’s become apparent that Yahoo has failed on that promise.”
Investors are waiting to hear about the company’s plans, after Yahoo’s board began soliciting bids from prospective buyers earlier this year.

Another triumph of social justice!

Category: Sex Trouble

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FMJRA 2.0: On The Floors Of Tokyo

Homeward! (The Great Tip-Jar Rattle)

In The Mailbox: 07.22.16

MUNICH TERRORIST KILLS 9 PEOPLE UPDATE: Gunman Was 18-Year-Old German-Born Son of Iranian Immigrants

Did We Watch the Same Speech?

He’s Not Hunter S. Thompson, But He’ll Do Just Fine

In The Mailbox: 07.21.16

Tumblr Is ‘Basically Worthless’

THE FULL METAL JACKET REACH-AROUND AWARD

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

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