R.S. McCain ("The Other McCain") Achieves Ten Million Hits

Robert Stacy McCain's blog, "The Other McCain," achieved Ten Million Hits today.  That clearly places "The Other McCain" into the pantheon of greatest conservative blogs.

McCain has shown himself to be skilled at organization and delegation, as the success of his blog rests partially on the work of capable volunteers, primarily his right hand man, Smitty.  This has freed McCain to work on "shoe leather" reporting, visiting people and places to get breaking news stories from the source, and to provide original reporting of same, often with photos and videos.

McCain, an experienced professional journalist, has run his blog like a small newspaper, with him as the star reporter.  McCain has appeared at many critical political events (most recently some of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests) and interviewed people at the scene, including some well known personalities like Todd Palin and Andrew Breitbart.

Achieving even one million hits on one's blog is no easy feat.  Saber Point is finally approaching one million hits (right now, 982,396, as recorded by StatCounter, my oldest recording tool).  And, it only took six years!  I think McCain first achieved that mark in less than a year.

Congratulations to Robert Stacy McCain.

Leftist Suppression of Conservative Speech

Apparently a liberal/left individual named Brett Kimberlin, along with his operatives, has been making life hell for some conservative bloggers.   Brett Kimberlin has his very own Wikepedia page and it is far from flattering.  See it here.

If my understanding is correct, Kimberlin was convicted of drug trafficking, perjury and domestic terrorism by planting a series of bombs, one of which maimed a Vietnam veteran.  Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in prison but was released (on parole, I assume).  Upon his release he tried to re-invent himself as a liberal social activist, starting non-profit organizations and receiving donations from the public (mostly liberals, I would guess).  A conservative blogger, one Aaron Walker, got wind of these nonprofits and figured Kimberlin was running a scam (an opinion shared by Ed Barnes of Fox News), so he wrote about Kimberlin's criminal past.  Kimberlin promptly sued him.  A judge, apparently no fan of the First Amendment, ordered Walker to stop writing about Kimberlin and even jailed Walker for a few days in what appears to be a transparent abuse of Walker's Constitutional rights.

Kimberlin reportedly taught himself to file lawsuits (without an attorney) while in prison, and has filed over 100 lawsuits to harass his enemies, in what he himself has called "lawfare."  Lawfare is the abuse of the system, using the courts as a weapon to cost the target many hours of time, large amounts of money in legal fees, and great anxiety.  

This practice is called "vexatious litigation," the filing of numerous, frivolous lawsuits that are without legal merit, but nevertheless are highly damaging to the one served.  And, going into court is always a crapshoot, because the integrity, skill and biases of judges vary widely.

That's bad enough, but other practices that bloggers are reporting, allegedly from Kimberlin and his comrades, are these:

1.  Calling the target's employer and either complaining or threatening them or both, sometimes resulting in the target losing his or her job.  

2.  Making false calls to the police, pretending to be from the target's household, claiming that violence has occurred in the household, and to send help.  In at least one case, the police sent a SWAT team to the targeted blogger's house and they entered with guns drawn.  This malicious and fraudulent act has been labeled "SWAT-ing."  

I do not know if Kimberlin & Co. had anything to do with the SWAT-ing of the blogger in question, but apparently, there is suspicion that Kimberlin & Co was involved.  Ruthless suppression of conservative free speech is, of course, not limited to any single leftist.  There appears to be a growing trend, particularly now that liberal (or "progressive") fortunes are on the wane.

Admittedly, my knowledge of the subject matter is limited.  To learn more, consult Robert Stacy McCain and Michelle Malkin, who have written about it extensively and courageously.  To me, Bret Kimberlin is about as important and as relevant as a cockroach.  I don't care who he is or how he may be bilking foolish liberals out of donations to his non-profits.  I do care, however, that illegal and malicious activity may be occurring to freeze free speech and to intimidate conservatives.  We cannot and will not stand for this.

Update:  Donald Douglas at American Power has more details on this case in a post today, "Bloggers Mobilize to Protect Freedom of Speech."

D-DAY REMEMBERED: 68 YEARS AGO TODAY

I created this image from an actual modern photograph of Omaha Beach, with overlaid figures of actual American soldiers who landed there 68 years ago today. D-Day was one of the bloodiest and costliest battles in American war history. We should never forget those who died there.

The Scott Walker Victory and Progressive Reaction

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin defeated the leftist attempt to remove him from office.  He won the recall election, leaving public sector unions holding the bill for the $21 million they wasted on the attempt.

Liberals and leftists immediately launched a flurry of death threats on Twitter, Ed Schultz, a very liberal TV talk host on MSNBC, had tears in his eyes as he opined that Governor Walker "could very well be indicted in the coming days."  Indicted for what? Schultz didn't say.  Apparently, it is illegal in Schultzville to defeat Democrats in elections.

Rachel Maddow was visibly dejected and depressed but did her best to hide it.

When Walker's Democrat opponent Tom Barrett conceded the race last night, an enraged woman slapped him in the face.  Apparently Barrett didn't understand that denial of reality makes reality go away.

A Democrat interviewed on camera was sobbing like a little girl, claiming "Democracy died tonight" in the Walker campaign.

IT IS UTTERLY AMAZING to me how many Americans live in fantasy land.  They want free goodies and have an enormous sense of entitlement.  The world owes them a living and the government is their collection agency.  The only factors that decide how much a person is paid are (1) what he needs and (2) what he wants. His needs and and wants must be supplied by the government.  There is no concept in his juvenile brain of getting paid what he is worth in the free market.  There is no connection between personal productivity and reward.

Yesterday's vote in Wisconsin shows that more and more people are beginning to "get it."

Welcome to Realville.

Allen West on the American Gene Pool

Bill Clinton Supports Obama...OR DOES HE?? (Photoshop)

Democrat Media Trying Hard to Deflect Unpleasant Truths

Update:  On June 7, 2012 Rush Limbaugh covered this very same topic with essentially the same arguments that I make below.

Back in the day when Fidel Castro was taking over Cuba, people on the right asserted that Castro was a communist.  The Democrat media (which consists of the great majority of major newspapers and television networks) denied that Fidel was a commie.  He and his band of murdering thugs were merely "agrarian reformers."

Agrarian reformers.  Yeah right.

Now we have a president whose mother was a radical leftist and whose childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a card-carrying Communist:

 ....through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his “poetry” and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just “Frank.”

Various sources state that Ann Dunham was a communist sympathizer and Obama's father was a Marxist.  I have not found sufficient source material to verify this.  However, Obama's association with communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are well publicized and well known.  (Frank Marshall Davis was a close friend of Bill Ayers' father.)  Obama's socialist activism, however, has largely been ignored by the mainstream press.  For instance:

Obama’s socialist backing goes back at least to 1996, when he received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for an Illinois state senate seat. Later, the Chicago DSA newsletter reported that Obama, as a state senator, showed up to eulogize Saul Mendelson, one of the “champions” of “Chicago’s democratic left” and a long-time socialist activist. Obama’s stint as a “community organizer” in Chicago has gotten some attention, but his relationship with the DSA socialists, who groomed and backed him, has been generally ignored.

However, no matter how well documented Obama's socialist and Communist ties, the mainstream media continues to deflect public attention away from these facts, to deny that they are true, and to cover them up. The Associated Press writes:

But to many historians and political scientists - and to actual socialists as well - the persistent claim that Obama is a socialist lacks credence.

He's widely seen as a pragmatist within the Democratic Party mainstream who's had ample success raising campaign funds from wealthy Wall Street capitalists. Even some of his strongest critics acknowledge that his administration hasn't sought one of the classic forms of socialism - government control of the nation's means of production.

So we see that the new term for "agrarian reformer" is "Democratic pragmatist."  Pragmatism my foot.  There is nothing pragmatic about Obama's policies, which are ruining the economy.

The last line in the AP statement above is particularly ludicrous.  The Socialist strategy has always been a gradual usurpation on the way to controlling the means of production, as well as a Gramscian "march through the institutions" and a slow poisoning of America's culture and soul, to kill resistance imperceptibly (e.g. as in the "boil the frog" analogy), but kill it nevertheless.  An out-and-out grab or even an expressed desire for such an outcome would put the Democratic Party out of business for years, if not permanently.  Even Obama isn't that stupid.

But he has made a serious effort to take control of the automobile industry and the financial sector, not to mention an out-and-out grab of the health care industry.  His carbon-credits "cap and trade" scheme would have redistributed billions in wealth from the productive to the non-productive, a key Socialist goal, albeit disguised as a way to combat [non-existent] global warming.

Yes, Obama is definitely a socialist.  Or worse.  That's a fact that not even the highly biased Associated Press can cover up.

Democratic Disaster in Wisconsin? Scott Walker and the Recall Vote

Republican Scott Walker was elected Governor of Wisconsin to stop the budget hemmorhage.  To do that he had to get some rather mild restraints placed on the state's government employee unions.  The result was a balanced budget for the first time in many months.

The red ink stopped.  However, liberals and Democrats were not amused, not to mention the greedy state employee unions who got used to the perks and benefits that union blackmail can bring.  So they launched a movement to recall Governor Walker for doing the job he was elected to do.

Tomorrow, June 5, 2012, the voters of Wisconsin will decide to keep or oust Governor Walker and return to out-of-control state spending so that fat-cat union operatives can continue living at a level considerably higher than their true economic worth.

Polls show Walker in the lead, but it is always dangerous to predict the outcome of a race that has been close for many months.  However, Jonathan Tobin of Commentary seems inclined to believe that Walker will survive the Unions' vengeful scheme.  He writes:

The immediate problem in Wisconsin for liberals is not so much that Walker has persuaded a majority of voters that he is right — though there is clear evidence he has made headway despite the avalanche of criticism he got in the mainstream media — but that even many of those inclined to side with the Democrats have been convinced the left is dead wrong. The recall election is rightly perceived as nothing more than a form of payback for the drubbing the unions got in the legislature last year, and that has left a bitter taste in many voters’ mouths. If Walker survives tomorrow, the consequences will not only mean he will be strengthened, but that Democrats will emerge looking both petty and weak.

Whatever the outcome, it may be a bellwether for the national elections in November.   For that reason, tomorrow's election in Wisconsin is both highly important and very interesting.

Read Tobin's article here.

Fantasy Islam vs. Real Islam (from the Brussels Journal)

Oh Yes, Let's Import a Few Million More Like This

There is a great article at the Brussels Journal today Fantasy Islam vs Real Islam.  It discusses the questions that an interviewer posed to Geert Wilders and then analyzes the assumptions and premises behind those questions.

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who truly understands Islam and why it should be kept out of the West.  He is hated, not only by Muslims, but by liberals and leftists who, like the barbarians they protect, are the sworn enemies of western civilization.

Not surprisingly, Wilders has been marked for murder by various Islamic leaders for telling the unpleasant truth about their totalitairan, despotic ideology.  He has been shunned, insulted and opposed by the liberals and leftists whose Islamic illusions he has disabused.

The Brussels article describes the argument today between Real Islam and Fantasy Islam.  Real Islam is the kind that wants to replace western democracy with Islamic sharia law, where gays are hanged and adulteresses stoned and thieves have their hands sawed off in the public square.  Fantasy Islam is one that portrays the religion as very tolerant (at least in centuries past) and seeks to deflect criticisms of it through "moral equivalency" arguments.  In the past, they say, the Jews and the Catholics invaded other nations or peoples and forced their religion on them, so Islam is no worse or no different.

Such arguments are really self-destructive and irrelevant.  Neither Cathrolics nor Jews are invading anyone today, nor quoting their religious texts as justification, and they most certainly are not flying planes into skyscrapers, machine gunning people in train stations, planting bombs on subway trains or murdering school children.  Muslims are doing (or have recently done) all of those things -- not in spite of their religion, but because of it.

The proponents of Fantasy Islam should ask themselves, when the Real Islam shows up and slices off your head, will you be any less dead?  Will you accept your own death more willingly knowing that, in centuries past, Jews and Catholics probably murdered someone too?

Vince Guaraldi at the Piano: Derrick Bang's Book on a Great Pianist

I am reading Derrick Bang's recent book, "Vince Guaraldi at the Piano." I met Derrick online when he contacted me over my posts about Guaraldi, a personal hero of mine as well as Derrick's.

 Derrick's book is quite compelling, describing the exciting San Francisco jazz scene of the 1950's and Vince Guaraldi's place in it. Vince Guaraldi is well known for his hit tune "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" as well as his association with Charles Schultz and the comic cartoons of "Peanuts." Guaraldi supplied the original jazz accompaniment to "Peanuts" cartoons and television specials.

Vince was taken from us too soon when he died at the age of 47 from an aortic aneurysm, often incorrectly described as a heart attack. He had just played the last set of his life at Butterfield's nightclub in Menlo Park, California, when he took a break to relax in his nearby motel room. It was there that the aneurysm burst and Vince died instantly, without even a chance to have a last word or say goodbye. The date was February 6, 1976.

Intrigued by his music, I yearned to learn more about this enigmatic jazz musician. I visited his grave near San Francisco where he is buried in a common grave with his mother, Carmella. I visited the site of Butterfield's in Menlo Park and the motel next door where he died (the building that was Butterfield's was torn down some months after my visit).

Thanks to Derrick, I am learning a lot more about the life and career of Vince Guaraldi (known as "Dr Funk" among his fellow musicians). Derrick Bang's book "Vince Guaraldi at the Piano" was based on many interviews with the musicians with whom Vince played music, as well as access to newspaper clippings and other family records. He was allowed to peruse Carmella's diary and newspaper clippings of her son, and thus able to string together the disparate facts of Guaraldi's life and career. Derrick was also able to obtain photographs of Vince from throughout his life, from childhood on, from family members, singers and former band mates.

Vince Guaraldi at the Piano

There is a photograph of a young, clean-cut, tuxedoed Guaraldi with his lovely bride, Shirley, in 1953. Other photos show him performing with famous jazz musicians like Carl Tjader.

One of Guaraldi's former girlfriends told me that I have a "man-crush" on Vince Guaraldi, and she is no doubt right, but there is nothing gay about it. I love many men and women whom I never met and never will meet in this life. They inspire me with their creativity and passion for life, their courage, their heroism, their example.

Vince Guaraldi is one of them.    Not just because of his great music, but because he was a little guy with small hands and short fingers who should never have been a piano player, but who refused to quit.  Derrick Bang likens Vince to Charlie Brown, the Peanuts character who was one of life's perpetual losers.  Charlie never won a baseball game, never got the little red-haired girl he secretly loved, who only got rocks instead of candy in his Halloween sack, never received a card on Valentine's Day.

But Charlie never quit, never stopped trying.  Vince was like that.  He learned to use his small hands on the keyboard in highly effective ways and it worked.  He overcame many discouragements, firings and failures, determined to make an important mark on the music world.  He succeeded, and no doubt would have extended his fame and musical creations greatly but for his sudden death at a young age.

I feel that Vince's untimely death was a great cosmic injustice, and I feel like arguing his case before the Court of Heaven.  Then I remember it will do no good.  Heaven has its own ways and purposes and we can only accept what it decrees.  Still, there's a part of my mind that wants to fight about it.

Now I have to dislodge my kitty cat from my lap and get outside where I can light up a cigar and continue reading Derrick's great little book.  What can you do?  You can listen to the sampling of his music below and perhaps gain insight into my admiration for Vince Guaraldi.