The Other McCain

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

Catastrophic Damage

Posted on | August 28, 2011 | 47 Comments

No, I’m not talking about Hurricane Irene, although the storm has turned cable TV news into an endless, boring hype-a-thon, which I consider catastrophic. Joe Biden went golfing before the storm hit, which I consider about the most useful thing Biden could do in any crisis.

Neither am I talking about the catastrophic damage that Irene did to the global-warming scaremongers by failing to live up to the pre-landfall hype. New York Times writer Justin Gillis gives away the game:

The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?

See? Like hurricane cheerleader James Wolcott, Gillis and other liberals wanted Irene to be a disastrous cataclysm of historic proportions — “Katrina Does Manhattan” — so they could claim it as evidence of their pet theory.  And this morning, a couple hours after the storm made landfall near Atlantic City, N.J., as I watched MSNBC, the anchorette was blabbing about the monster hurricane in an interview with a meteorologist who interrupted her to say: “Uh, tropical storm.”

The meterologist then explained that for Irene to be a Category 1 hurricane would require winds of 75 mph and . . . nope.

Irene may have been Category 1 before it came ashore, but it quickly dropped its windspeed after making landfall so that what hit New York City was, in fact, a mere tropical storm.

F–k you, global-warming hysterics.

But the catastrophic damage I’m talking about had nothing to do with Irene. Rather, I’m talking about the damage that Rick Perry’s presidential campaign is doing to the conservative blogosphere.

Last night, Ace of Spades unloaded both barrels at Pamela Geller and in the course of doing so, mentioned my name.

So I can’t really ignore it, can I?

It would appear that there never was a lot of love between Ace and Pamela, which is OK. Nobody requires bloggers actually to like each other. Geller’s side of the argument involves the accusation that Perry is soft on jihad, an accusation I had never previously heard. If it is true, it is a serious accusation, and seriously must Perry answer it.

Bottom line for me? I don’t care enough about the specifics of Perry’s record to get into an argument about it, and I deeply regret that two bloggers I like have gotten into a public personal war about it. They hate each other, but they’re both still my friends, and fights like this put me into an awkward position against my will. I don’t like when that happens.

When I first dubbed Perry the “Phantom Menace” — “The Sith Lord of Texas,” casting a shadow over the Ames Straw Poll — this wasn’t one of the negative consequences of his candidacy I anticipated, and a blog war between Ace and Pamela is perhaps a minor datum in the grand scheme of things, but also perhaps not entirely insignificant.

Go back to what first concerned me: Why would a Republican campaign go out of its way to “diss” the Iowa GOP in that manner? It is one thing for a candidate like Mitt Romney to de-emphasize Iowa, skip the straw poll and concentrate his efforts elsewhere. It was another thing — an unnecessarily provocative thing — for Perry’s campaign to deliberately upstage the Ames Straw Poll the way it did.

 And who was the primary victim of that gesture? Michele Bachmann.

Bachmann won the straw poll, thereby destroying Tim Pawlenty’s campaign, but no sooner had the Republican 2012 herd been thinned by the culling of its weakest candidate — Pawlenty was always weak — than Perry jumped in and vaulted to the front of the pack. This put Perry ahead of other candidates who had spent many months criss-crossing the country and shaking hands with folks at county GOP events and hustling up contributions $50 and $100 at a time.

OK, fine. Congratulations to Team Perry on their Instant Front-Runner status. But I again repeat that I’m getting bad vibes about this development. When all is said and done, my early sense of foreboding will either be vindicated or discredited. But this ugly feud between Ace and Pamela is another ill omen in my book.

What’s this really all about? Maybe it’s about Grover Norquist, as Robert Spencer writes at Jihad Watch:

Ace then turns to the Grover Norquist business. But here again, neither Ace nor the brains of the outfit, David Stein, deal with the fact that Norquist is clearly much closer to Perry than to other candidates. As I wrote here, “Perry and Grover Norquist held a joint press conference in March 2011. Perry appeared at a fund-raiser for Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform group. Also, Norquist actively campaigned for Perry back in 2009. Their association is longstanding: Perry was investigated by the Texas Ethics Commission in 2004 for allegations that the Governor illegally used campaign money to finance a trip to Bahamas; the point here is not the allegations, but the fact that along on the Bahamas trip at his own expense was Grover Norquist.

Ace pushes back against Spencer, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to sort through the evidence and referee the dispute. My larger point, to paraphrase what I said when Geller had it out with someone else a couple of months ago: If Pamela Geller says you’ve got a dhimmi problem, you’ve probably got a dhimmi problem.

And I’ve given Pamela the FMJRA award today, just for the raw hell of it.

Better the blessing than the curse, I say. Now, some old blues:


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Category: Ace of Spades, Atlas Shrugs, Election 2012, Rick Perry

Comments

  • Dan Collins

    You look better with your fedora on. ;-P

  • Dan Collins

    Both barrels, huh?  Good thing Pamela’s not a fembot, because . . .

  • https://plus.google.com/114041580398058374552/posts McGehee

    Maybe the list of categories on each post could be displayed right under the title, and a category “Blogger on Blogger” implemented for this subject matter?

    A separate Rule 34 version of that category would, of course, have to be created as well.

  • http://twitter.com/_scarymatt_ Matt Lewis

    Meh…except for journalists / pundits, when anyone disses Iowa Republicans regarding their early influence on primaries, and especially the mostly ignored Ames straw poll, Republicans like it.  Iowan whining about upstaging, etc, just makes them look like babies.

    Rick Perry: 1   Iowa: 0

    Iowa should be happy that Perry didn’t participate.  Based on post-Ames polling, he’d just have sapped enough support from Bachmann to give Ron Paul the win.

    In any case, no one besides Geller (and maybe Spencer?) hear the name Grover Norquist and think the most important or interesting thing about him has anything to do with Islam.

  • Huggy

    Perry is a prettier John Mccain. Back him at your own risk. 

  • Anonymous

    Rick Perry: 1   Iowa: 0

    OK, fine. We’ll see how this plays out.

  • Anonymous

    This isn’t a fight I started.

    It’s not a fight I wanted.

    Ace is my friend and Geller is my friend, and nothing disturbs me more than when my friends fight each other.

    I blame Rick Perry.

  • http://twitter.com/_scarymatt_ Matt Lewis

    Yep.  Hard to say if it’s a good long term move, though the next day, he did go there, so it’s not like he was actively trying to write off the state, unlike Romney.

    Hey, the primary campaign of the last guy to diss Iowa by staying out of the 2007 straw poll ended up successful (no matter what else you or I think about him).

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Well, I guess I’m ‘no one’.

    At best, Norquist is a Useful Idiot of the Mohammedins, as Discover The Networks reports.

    Any candidate who has a cozy relationship with this Dupe must be questioned, as it calls into question the candidate’s judgement.

  • http://twitter.com/_scarymatt_ Matt Lewis

    OK, fair enough.  I’ve only ever heard his name with respect to his role of tax scold.

    I read his entry at the link.  It doesn’t seem terribly awful, though a lot of it is certainly questionable (and I say this as someone who thinks Andrew McCarthy has the Islam thing about right, but maybe I’m just too desensitized by Irene).

    As far as questionable stuff, I’d think the Gardasil and that giant proposed transit thing would be a lot higher on the list of questions.  Maybe you’re right about Norquist, etc, on the merits, but I suspect that it’s not going to have a noticeable affect on the race.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    There may be any number of reasons not to back Perry, but “soft on Jihad” isn’t one of them.  Spencer makes a big deal over Aga Khan’s participation in some Perry-related things, but forgets to mention that he himself used Khan as an example of a truly moderate muslim around the same time.

    Norquist has always been pro-muslim, partly because he is married to one and partly because he sees them as a source of financing for conservatives and Republicans.  He does have some questionable associations, but he is NOT closer to Perry than to many other mainstream conservative Republicans.

    You don’t have to take sides – IF you want to put blinders on when someone is attacked falsely.  But I understand anyone who doesn’t want to offend Pamela Geller.  Fear is normal.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1619619953 Shawn Gillogly

    Sorry, but I’m w/ Ace on this one. Gellar misquoted both him AND the source of the dispute to try to make her argument (multiple times, which makes me doubt it was accidental). And that can be discerned by a simple check of the source material.

    And if you’re going to paint Perry through Norquist w/ the dhimmi brush, you have to paint EVERY GOP candidate besides… Huntsman…yeah, that great conservative, with it. Signing the no tax pledge is what Conservative candidates DO. And that’s with Norquist.

    I find it amusing that Perry can be close to both Dhimmi-dom and Dominionism at the same time. Perhaps it speaks of irrational attacks on BOTH sides? Nah.

    Misrepresenting arguments is something the LEFT does. It is not something Conservatives, who supposedly value the truth and objectivity, should be doing. Gellar lost any respect I may have had with her for this.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    There’s a whole bunch of things this guy has to answer for, including the two good points you bring up.

    I just believe that it doesn’t do us any good if we support someone who may get it domestically, but doesn’t when it comes to our enemies [I'd like to know what his thinking is on Red China and Putin's Russia, as well].

  • http://twitter.com/_scarymatt_ Matt Lewis

    Yes, foreign policy has to be considered.  It’s just so sad that a ham sandwich would be an improvement over the status quo.

    I wonder, in the scales of dhimmitude, how meeting with Andrew McCarthy affects the balance of judgment for Perry.  I’d be shocked if McCarthy couldn’t pass any “purity” test from Geller or Spencer.

  • Anonymous

    Perry should not be excoriated for believing that there are Moderate Muslims. He should be corrected for believing that Moderate Muslims make a positive difference to the 1400 Years War. Muslim out reach is a fools errand and other than the occasional tip off to the FBI, moderate Muslims are unable to serve as a counter balance to the more mainstream, more vocal and most importantly more ruthless Jihadists. Even worse they create a facade for the Islamists and their naive and not so naive apologists.

    Does this mean that Perry is a Dhimmi, no, does mean that Perry is being duped, YES. The whole concept of muslim outreach is dangerously blind, in part because it buys into the whole, people around the world are more alike than they are different meme. The notion that there are moderate muslims isn’t incorrect, it’s just not relevant.

    The origin of this current spat is not just the subject of Perry or whether or not he’s a dhimmi. Pam Geller didn’t like Ace before this as near as I can tell.
    Pamela Geller is a dedicated anti-jihadist and sees more clearly than most, the dangers that all forms of jihad, but especially stealth jihad pose to humanity.  This is a strength but has a downside, she doesn’t seem to understand that others don’t know what she knows, so she can only ascribe nefarious motives to people who are simply wrong.

  • daveinboca

    It’s Grover’s Palestinian wife that’s stirring up all this civil strife…!   I really don’t think Perry will allow the Obungler to outflank him on national security, which is the heart of this kerfluffle.

  • Anonymous

    I smell Romney’s sinister hand behind it all.  You know those devious Mormons, no telling what they get up to between raiding wagon trains and stealing Nevada elections…

  • http://www.serr8d.blogspot.com/ Serr8d

    I like Pam Geller on this one. She is the dedicated Dhimmi expert.

    And Ace? Isn’t he the clown who supported a box of RINOs last November, and complained bitterly that, by supporting so-called ‘unelectable’ candidates, we were actually helping Democrats? As if supporting the weak-spined RINOs did us any favors.

    He’s a lot to do to overcome that ‘losing more slowly’ egg running down his face. 

    Or is that something else ? )

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1619619953 Shawn Gillogly

    Yes and no. As Ace noted, if Perry was duped, so was Sherman himself, who vetted and OKed Agha in the first place, and then only flip-flopped, so it seems, after the fact on very dubious grounds.

    Not EVERY Muslim is a jihadist. There’s no hard evidence Agha is even a STEALTH jihadist, given everything he’s done has been open and aboveboard. Unless you want to believe the Fed is promoting jihads. And even Ron Paul wouldn’t go there. I want the Fed abolished too. But that’s not the reason why.

    This is a big kerfluffle about nothing. And if Geller didn’t misrepresent those she disagreed with, across-the-board, it wouldn’t have blown up. She didn’t “see more clearly.” She misquoted, repeatedly. Seeing clearly means accurately representing.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    So, you are saying it is okay Geller to misquote and selectively edit to mislead, and for Spencer to contradict himself, because you don’t like some of Ace’s endorsements?

    I don’t have to endorse everything Ace says or does to notice when he is telling the truth and others are not. 

  • Anonymous

    I don’t think we are going to get a candidate who is the whole package. The problem as I see it is the president has far fewer limitations on his capacity to go the wrong way on Islamism and implementing immigration policy. Who ever becomes president will require considerable guidance on some element of policy, put another way, when they start f**ki*g up we shall have to hammer them until they get their mind “right”.

  • Anonymous

    Anyone including moderate muslims who believe outreach is any part of the solution to the 1400 Years War is naive and being duped. I did not write that Khan or all other muslims are jihadists. Non Jihadists whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, give cover for stealth jihadists. They do this by being available to apologists to use as examples of Islam. While they are, they are not representative of Islam as a whole. They are not part of the solution.

     Just because Geller misquotes or even outright lies doesn’t mean she dose not see the dangers of Islam more clearly than most. I believe that Ace also sees more clearly than most regarding the danger that is Islam.

    The major quibble I have with what Ace wrote last night is his belief that if we can’t find some way to find accommodation by engaging and supporting Moderate Muslims, our only alternative is to amend our constitution so we can persecute muslims within our borders and then annihilate the rest with nuclear weapons. It isn’t required that we engage in fantasy outreach efforts to avoid that. 

  • John Klepper

    “Bill Clinton and his lackeys spent eight years assiduously endeavoring to be an honest broker in the Middle East. The distinctions between Israel and a murderous tyrant like Yasser Arafat eluded President Clinton’s highly refined sense of morality.And what did these policies bring? Blown up embassies, nearly sunk destroyers, an attack on the World Trade Center. None of these things brought a muscular response. In fairness to Clinton, his policies as always reflected the daily opinion polls – as a people, we hoped that if we left the region alone or successfully appeased it, the region could pursue its honor killings, subjugation of women, murder of homosexuals and occasional genocides without bothering us.
    …
    Others more acutely recognize the threat, but are hamstrung by their fealty to political correctness. If a major daily paper ever wrote an essay like this one, CAIR would pitch a fit. Writing pieces like this invariably brings angry rebukes from those who refuse to look into the abyss and would rather focus their considerable capacity for rage at less formidable targets than hundreds of millions of angry, dangerous people.
    But an abyss is what we face. And looking away won’t change a thing.”

    Ace is my favorite blogger. Without lying, I can say I have daydreamed about how I would present the Moron Nation with a couple hundred thousand dollars if I ever win the Powerball.  Ace would be writing a WFB movie too, for a couple hundred more thousand.  If and when.

    Seriously.

    But, I named my dog Barnett, after Dean Barnett, the great soxblog, who wrote the above.

    http://www.brainshavings.com/2006/08/islam-is-the-problem.html

  • http://dad29.blogspot.com dad29

    Texas is burning up with a drought; the damages down there are easily as significant as those in NC, NJ, and New England put together.

    So what’s the news?  Tanners told to leave, and NYC is a big deal.

    Uh-huh.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    I read the post by Mr. McCarthy [who I admire greatly] and I agree with what commentator Cata wrote over at The Corner:

    This sounds neutral to negative. I was waiting for this report with great interest and I am disappointed.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/272357/meeting-governor-perry-andrew-c-mccarthy#comment-225105

  • Anonymous

    You never get a candidate who’s the whole package. Never have, never will. Well, okay, maybe Calvin Coolidge, but he’s been gone a while.

  • http://www.serr8d.blogspot.com/ Serr8d

    That’s not how it went, and you know it.

    The comments stand. Oh, and from RCM’s link. Ace:

    I said “I think they mean it in a good way, I think they just mean you have nice jugs.”

    Just what an introverted small-dick guy would say when he felt threatened by an outgoing well-endowed woman, especially if he had had a few drinks and a few million blog hits.

    Next, he’ll call her a ‘whore’.

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  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    Congrats. I’ve been thinking pretty much the same damn thing.

  • http://twitter.com/mooseandskwerl Natasha

    I think it’s rather telling that even the cached copies of the school district’s Muslim studies curriculum suddenly vanished (though Geller has screencaps).

    “If Pamela Geller says you’ve got a dhimmi problem, you’ve probably got a dhimmi problem.” I’ll second that.

    As far as respect goes, it’s hard for me to muster any at all for a man who is introduced to a woman and says “You have nice jugs.”

  • Anonymous

    Clinton turned down, Sudan’s offer for us to take custody of Osama. He failed to grab that opportunity merely because he thought we had nothing to charge him with.

  • Anonymous

    Which is, quite frankly, the kind of reasoning I would have expected from a liberal, not from you. Ace and Pam are grownups, and responsible for their own actions.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    Maybe he was just being polite?

  • David R. Graham

    “If Pamela Geller says you’ve got a dhimmi problem, you’ve probably got a dhimmi problem.”

    Concur.

    Also, the internal of “global warming” is global population reduction, radical and rapid global population reduction.  At the heart of “Left-ism” and it ally Mohammedanism is murder, basically for the fun of it and for theft of assets, although unctuous rationales are adduced to hide the fact.  It’s a really megalomaniacal agenda with a really depressing end.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Wobat, not even Silent Cal was perfect: the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JWBYBMFNDIGHMCYRQKYCOTJDP4 Luke

    When Joe McCarthy said you had a Communist problem, you most likely had a Communist problem.

    Fat lot of good that did us.

    You regularly damn SPLC and race-baiters for engaging in exactly the same tactics that Ms. Geller is embracing. 
    We all know how this song ends.  If you’re truly her friend, you need to stage an intervention. 
    If you don’t have actual evidence, don’t make an accusation. 
    If people care enough to pay attention, doing so destroys any credibility you may have.  And any good you might have done up to that point.
    We’re talking bout a front-running candidate.  People are going to care.

    Is it possible there are some Verona-cable type things out there that she has access to?
    Sure it is.
    But the “evidence” she’s presented is nothing short of laughable *and* intellectually dishonest.

    Of course, my saying this probably makes me a “dhimmi” in her  eyes. 
    We’re engaged in a clash of civilizations.  Who has time for truth, justice, or the American way?

  • http://www.facebook.com/david.r.block David Block

    Sorry, the visits pointed out by Geller would have lost Perry the 2006 and 2010 Governor’s races-and he won them both. This would have been death to him then and that didn’t happen.

    I find this “discovery” as one of those “I question the timing” deals.

    Yes, I’m from Dallas-Fort Worth.

  • http://zillablog.marezilla.com Zilla of the Resistance

    Stacy, you need to read your comments section more often! I have been telling people about Rick Perry and islam for weeks now, and have been trolled and boycotted for it. I have lost friends over it, despite the fact that I provided a huge post filled with verifiable facts. Pamela, Daniel Greenfield, Robert Spencer and even little ole me, have been catching HELL because we expressed legitimate concerns about Rick Perry, who says “islam is a religion of peace”. Rick Perry’s fans are JUST LIKE Obamazombies in that they hold blind unquestioning allegiance to a guy simply because he is popular and they go all unhinged if anyone speaks of their guy in anything less than glowing reverence.  I don’t care how good a soundbite someone gives, ten years after we were murdered by the thousands for ISLAM on a sunny September morning, we cannot afford to keep putting the enablers of islamic supremacist conquest into the White House!
    No Quarter

    PS If you checked your emails you’d have known about the firestorm over this a LOT sooner.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    Perry and Romney: the Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter of the GOP, IYKWIMAITYD — NTTAWWT.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1619619953 Shawn Gillogly

    “Just because Geller misquotes or even outright lies doesn’t mean she
    dose not see the dangers of Islam more clearly than most. I believe that
    Ace also sees more clearly than most regarding the danger that is
    Islam.”

    The difference then is Ace told the truth and Geller didn’t. Why support someone who grossly and consistently misrepresented the facts to make an issue out of a non-issue? When Sherman did a 180 post-facto to attack Perry through Agha, it became clear what this was.

    I’m not saying Perry is all that and a box of chips: This is what we have PRIMARIES for. But “experts” need to have their facts checked just like everyone else does. And Geller’s in this instance do NOT pass muster. Not with regards to Perry, the curriculum, OR Ace.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1619619953 Shawn Gillogly

    Sorry, Serr8d, you did not read the entire quote, and thus failed to get the point.

    Geller attacked Ace, CLAIMING he said she had nice jugs. Ace, being backed into a corner on a sexual statement (as RCM has since conceded) and being an introvert (oh dear, yes HE conceded he’s an introvert), tried to deflect it. I think any honest man would admit there is no effective way to do so.

    Is a blogger responsible for what everyone says in the comments? Egads, I think our illustrious host would NOT want to go down that road. I mean, I used to screen my comments. But I’ve never gotten traffic like RCM, Geller, and Ace do. Nor will I.

    But it’s dirty pool to ambush someone with a comment like that. Especially when her REAL beef was Ace didn’t link her.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1619619953 Shawn Gillogly

    *sighs*

    Ace never said that. As RCM has noted. Geller CLAIMED he said that.

    And I’ll never have respect for a ‘woman’ who uses tactics like that to ambush those she has a disagreement with.

  • Anonymous

    Stacy, you need to read your comments section more often! I have been telling people about Rick Perry and islam for weeks now, and have been trolled and boycotted for it.

    Well, I do read the comments fairly regularly — or at least skim them several times a day. But there are only so many hours in the day, and getting bogged down into detailed policy specifics about any candidate’s record isn’t very helpful to general political news/current-events blogging. I’m not a policy wonk and have never pretended to be one. Especially when covering a campaign, I address policy only when it becomes an issue in the race.

    As Smitty would tell you regarding my knowledge of technology, I work on a need-to-know basis, and avoid the risk of overcrowding my brain with unnecessary information. Or, I should say, “additional unnecessary information,” as my brain is already jam-packed with useless trivia I’ve picked up along the way.

    So the controversy over Governor Perry’s position vis-a-vis Islam was not something I’d been aware of, until Geller and Ace got into this vicious argument. And even then, I might have tuned it out had it not been for the fact that Ace mentioned my name.

    One of the beauties of the blogosphere is that I can ignore the anti-jihad national-security beat most of the time, simply because other bloggers (Geller, My Pet Jawa, et al.) make a speciality of it. So when such a story pops up in the headlnes, I consult the specialists.

  • http://zillablog.marezilla.com Zilla of the Resistance

    Sounds reasonable to me! I’m bad at math, so I generally leave all the economic stuff to the bloggers who aren’t. ;)
    BTW, I linked to your post here:
    http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2011/08/it-rained.html

  • Mortimer Snerd

    Oh God no.  Not another maverick!

  • Mortimer Snerd

    I agree with RSM on this.  I followed a good bit of the mega-thread at AOSHQ, and found it somewhat disturbing.  I am not a huge Geller fan, but some of the attacks on her and those who sided with her were downright vicious, and there were several posters whose hateful, arrogant manner was especially repugnant.  Now, none of this necessarily reflects on Ace, himself, but I have to say that after a while I began to get a kind of LGF revisited, Killgore Trout is that you feeling about the whole thing.

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