Year: 2010

The Manchurian Maverick: John McCain Claims Bailout ‘Brainwash’ Victimhood

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“Barbara Espinosa must be doing a victory lap right now,” Da Tech Guy writes in reporting on how MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” battered John McCain today for claiming former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke  “misled” him into supporting the 2008 Wall Street bailout.

Remember that on Sept. 24, 2008 — the day Crazy Cousin John announced he would suspend his campaign and fly to D.C. to push for the bailout — my initial reaction was “Holy Crap! . . . This is insane.”  Two weeks later, many Republicans excoriated me for publishing an Oct. 7 American Spectator column entited, “How John McCain Lost,” that bluntly stated the obvious:

John McCain lost the election Sept. 24 and Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. Nothing that is likely to happen between now and Nov. 4 can change this outcome. . . .
[B]y siding with the president on an issue that voters identified as favoritism toward Wall Street, the Republican cemented in the public mind a message that Team Obama had been promoting for months: A vote for McCain would mean a third term for George W. Bush. . . .
It was McCain’s outspoken support for the unpopular bailout — a big-government intervention incompatible with conservative economic philosophy — that handed the election to Obama. The bailout failed as politics and, as evidenced by Monday’s selloff on Wall Street, it also failed as policy.

McCain has no one but himself to blame for his own failure of judgment, and his attempt to scapegoat others is pure political cowardice. If Bernanke and Paulson were liars, wasn’t it McCain’s responsibility as a statesman to inform himself of their untrustworthy character and to question their advice? It’s time to rid the U.S. Senate of the one man most responsible for the Obama presidency.

 Enjoy your retirement, cuz!

MORE READING:

J.D. HAYWORTH for U.S. SENATE

Day By Day And The Righteous Allusion

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by Smitty Day By Day makes a great historical allusion that merits mention. As a part of the Battle of the Bulge, the Siege of Bastogne had the fascists pinning down the 101st Airborne for a week. “When confronted with a written request from German General Luttwitz for surrender of Bastogne, [Brigadier General McAuliffe] replied ‘NUTS!'”

According to an article in the Daily Mail the reply was not “Nuts” but a four letter expletive that was changed for propaganda purposes for domestic consumption. But that was not the case, according to Vincent Vicari, McAuliffe’s personal aide who was there at the time. As quoted by Richard Pyle of the Associated Press December 12, 2004, Vicari said, “General Mac was the only general I ever knew who did not use profane language. ‘Nuts’ was part of his normal vocabulary.”

So, both the allusion to fascism and the polite response more or less map to the current situation, where the Tea Parties have left to Rahm Emmanuel the bulk of the “dirty” work.

Remember: If You Didn’t Vote for Obama, You’re a Dangerous Nut

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From my latest American Spectator column:

Accusing opponents of dangerous insanity has become so commonplace in the Age of Obama that such discourse is now taken for granted. Frank Rich devoted the entirety of his Sunday New York Times column to insinuating that the Tea Party movement is a paranoid aggregation motivated by “frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage,” and thereby complicit in the Feb. 18 crime of Andrew Joseph Stack III, who piloted his Piper airplane into an Internal Revenue Service office in Texas.
This rhetorical conflation of political protests and Stack’s kamikaze crash required Rich to overlook the quite specific grievances described by Stack in his profanity-strewn suicide note. Stack alluded to a “$10,000 helping of justice” — apparently a penalty for failure to file a tax return several years ago — and blamed his accountant and the IRS for a more recent audit involving $12,700 of his wife’s unreported income.
Along with his strictly personal ax-grinding against the IRS-CPA axis, Stack also ranted about “the vulgar, corrupt Catholic church,” “the monsters of organized religion,” “presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies,” the “rich” and “wealthy.” None of that bears meaningful resemblance to the politics of Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Glenn Beck or any of the other name-brand figures swept up in Frank Rich’s all-encompassing indictment of what he calls the “anti-government right.” . . .

Please read the whole thing.

UPDATE: It’s a target-rich environment, so to speak:

More at Memeorandum.

Logic May Be Off The Table In ObamaCare Discussions, But Still…

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by Smitty

NewsBusters points to a WaPo correction where the WaPo had hammered Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) for “posturing” by bringing a copy of the subject matter at hand to the health care summit.

That makes about as much sense as Yale’s craven refusal to publish the controversial Danish cartoon depictions of Muhammad in a book on the topic of the controversial Danish cartoon depictions of Muhammad.

Only in Lefty la-la land can bringing a copy of the subject of the meeting to the meeting, when the motive is clearly to speak intelligently to crucial points therein, be miscast in negative light somehow.

I call on Young 4 Eyes to help those of us still bound in chains of common sense grasp the intricate logic involved. Honest, fair minded people propounding a sound idea typically engage in critical discussions in welcoming tones. If you’re right, you argue your point. If you’re mistaken, you welcome correction. We all educate each other. Or am I mistaken in thinking it was supposed to be a dialogue?

VIDEO: Yet More Evidence That Frank Schaeffer Is Off His Meds Again

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Since being whacked upside the head with the Crazy Stick, Frank Schaeffer has descended into a cartoonish stereotype of prissy self-righteous liberalism.

One symptom of being whacked upside the head with the Crazy Stick is that victims talk in deranged run-on sentences:

“I’ve been looking at this phenomenon of the so-called ‘stalled’ Barack Obama presidency and, of course, we all have our own different views about it, but one thing I’m not hearing enough about, especially from white people — uh, people like me, 57-year-old white guy who used to be a Republican — is to admit and honestly address the fact that racism is a huge factor.”

Got that? Now, in order to save you the trouble of decoding this Crazy Stick gibberish, I’ll slightly edit the following excerpt of Schaeffer’s rant:

“The people running around saying [Obama is] not even American, that he’s the anti-Christ . . . some of them are not stupid, they don’t believe this stuff. . . . [W]hat they really want to be saying is, ‘We don’t want a black guy in the White House . . . We’d rather see the economy go down in flames than work with a black man.’ And since they can’t say that, they spout all this other B.S. But their own audience knows perfectly well what they’re saying, which is what Dick Cheney said at CPAC: ‘We want to make this guy a one-term president.’ He didn’t actually use the N-word, but you look between the lines and it’s there: ‘We don’t want this N in the White House’ . . .”

Dick Cheney is a Republican. Barack Obama is a Democrat. Maybe you don’t understand the nuanced complexities of politics, Frank, but as a general rule, Republicans want to defeat Democrats and vice-versa, without regard to the ethnicity of the partisan contestants.

It’s really that simple, Frank. The novelty of this particular Democratic president’s race may excite the delusions of Crazy Stick victims like yourself, but your paranoid telepathic “between the lines” psychobabble is unnecessary and harmful.

Don’t forget to take your meds, Frank. People are worried about you.

(Cross-posted at Hot Air Green Room.)

UPDATE: CPAC Director Lisa De Pasquale on Twitter:

I can’t believe I’m not in any of @rsmccain‘s photos http://theothermccain.com/2010/02/24/cpac-2010-bloggerazzi-photopalooza/

To which I replied:

@CPACnews I can’t believe I’m not in any of @rsmccain‘s photos [] http://bit.ly/aCEmXQ You’re not racist enough! 😉

At some point, these jokes start writing themselves.

UPDATE II: Speaking of guys named Frank who’ve been whacked with the Crazy Stick, a certain theater critic persists in the delusion that he’s a political commentator.

Rule 5 Sunday

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by Smitty

Rule 5 needs to start off with an apology. The simple appreciation of loveliness has escalated into something called the “Boob Wars”. Miscreants who have become bogged down in this completely unnecessary war of choice include:

Your humble Rule 5 aggregator has even been encouraged to Choose Sides! What these cheesers don’t even realize is that the whole war was won a priori by South Park character Kenny in the Major Boobage episode . Rule 5 Sunday officially frowns upon this wretched excess, and pleads for peace in our time.  Or something.

  • A Conservative Shemale mixes Russian cheerleaders and Susanna Hoffs to good effect.
  • The Manolo celebrated a men’s ice skating silver medalist.
  • Yankee Phil, in other Olympic news, photoblogs a date so strange as to be inexplicable.
    Topping this required a bacon post.
  • Fausta brings the cultural break, Monica Paz & Nestor La Vitola performing a tango.
  • Michael Yon mourned the passing of a Rule V badass, Robert L. Howard.
  • Instapundit admits defeat at the hands of Nude Women of Curling.
  • SI VIS PACEM brings a cultural moment with some William Adolph Bouguereau
  • Fishersville Mike has a bit of a walkabout and celebrates Miss West Virginia. He then recalled Johnny Cash. I’ll confess more of a Dick Dale fancy:


Both American icons.

That’s your Rule 5 Sunday post. Send updates and additions to Smitty.

11-Year-Old’s Mom Gets Upset About Middle School’s Online Dating Site

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You’ve got to admit this could get kind of creepy:

ELWOOD, Ind. – Most parents agree that matchmaking Web sites and surveys are games mainly adults should play, but some say Elwood Community Schools has been getting students in on the action.
Parent Michelle Everett says her 11-year-daughter recently brought home a survey from school. The survey is a fundraising tool used by the school corporation for the middle school drama club. Students pay a buck or two each and a computer matches compatible boys and girls in grades six through 10. The more they pay the more matches are found.
“I don’t believe that at 11 years old a school should be promoting opposite sex matching,” said Everett. “A tenth grader matched with a sixth grader? And the school promoting it and it’s inappropriate.” . . .
“When I started to read it and it said a list of the members of the opposite sex that are the most compatible for you, that you can buy the list. I thought ‘red flags, red flags’,” said Everett. . . .
“I think it is promoting kids to be with the opposite sex at a young age,” Everett said.

Of course, according to the rules of modern media, it’s impossible to have a story like this without expert commentary:

Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and Fox News contributor, agreed the fundraiser could have some negative consequences.
“It encourages adolescents to consider their relationships just as ‘adult’ as any other relationships typically kindled by ‘matchmaking,’” Ablow said. “This could certainly lead them to believe they are ready to engage in adult encounters.” . . .
“Adults creating a system that makes them ‘matchmakers’ for children is psychologically indefensible,” Ablow said.

How many alumni of Elwood Community Schools will one day make their national TV debut on Dateline NBC with Chris Hansen?