LIVE AT FIVE: 12.30.14

On Thursday, December 4, the Convention of States Project sponsored the breakfast session at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in Washington, D.C. Convention of States Project legal board member, nationally syndicated radio talk show host, and Constitutional expert, Mark Levin, spoke on behalf of Article V and the project.

I was just watching The Daily Ledger on One America News Network and was intrigued by a guest who seemed to think that, with 3 states having applied for a Convention, and the results of the November mid-terms being what they were, the remaining 31 States needed for the magic 34 might be obtainable in 2015.

This is deeply interesting. As an opinion, I’m about 60% in favor of an Article V convention. The Vichy GOP are useless, and that’s the good news about the status quo. But I 40% think the Article V skeptics are quite correct: the enterprise is fraught with peril. I do happen to think that Farris and the Convention of States folks are putting in the time and playing it straight.

This is going to be a topic to follow up on at CPAC 2015, indeed.

Category: Constitution, CPAC

How to Win Wars

Posted on | December 29, 2014 | 258 Comments

Once, during Stonewall Jackson’s famous 1862 campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, some Union cavalry charged the rear guard of Jackson’s column and were nearly annihilated by a deadly volley of infantry fire. The officer who reported this action to Jackson was Col. John Mercer Patton (an ancestor of the famed WWII General George S. Patton). In conveying his report to Jackson, the colonel expressed “regret” at the enemy’s heavy losses. After he had finished hearing Patton’s report, Jackson asked him: “Colonel, why do you say you saw those Federal soldiers fall with regret?”

The colonel said he admired the courage and vigor the foe had shown, and felt a natural sympathy for such brave soldiers.

“No, shoot them all,” Jackson replied. “I do not wish them to be brave.”

That story, from R.L. Dabney’s famous biography of Jackson, came to mind today when I saw a story in the New York Times:

Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, sought help this summer in solving an urgent problem for the American military: What makes the Islamic State so dangerous?
Trying to decipher this complex enemy — a hybrid terrorist organization and a conventional army — is such a conundrum that General Nagata assembled an unofficial brain trust outside the traditional realms of expertise within the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence agencies, in search of fresh ideas and inspiration. . . .
“We do not understand the movement, and until we do, we are not going to defeat it,” he said, according to the confidential minutes of a conference call he held with the experts. “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.” . . .
This month, Lisa Monaco, Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, said the increasing effort by the Islamic State to branch out to countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and Libya “is a huge area of concern.” About 1,000 foreign fighters flock to Iraq and Syria every month, American intelligence officials say, most to join arms with ISIS. . . .

Good! Let every jihadi son of a bitch on the planet join ISIS, so that we can give every one of them a one-way ticket to Hell.

It has never been the case that the United States lacked the weaponry or manpower necessary to destroy our enemies. The problem in regard to Islamic terrorism has been (a) locating the enemy, and (b) maintaining the political will to keep fighting the enemy until he is defeated. Whatever the number of bloodthirsty fanatics in the Islamic world, the number is not infinite. If we kill every one of them we find, eventually the enemy will run out of volunteers for martyrdom.

Do these generals not study our own history? The Union was in peril of losing the Civil War until Lincoln put U.S. Grant in charge, because Grant understood war in the same simple terms as Stonewall Jackson and every other great commander in history. There is no such thing as an enemy who cannot be defeated, if you have able leadership, adequate resources and a determination to keep fighting until the enemy is destroyed.

All of us remember that chart from our grade-school history book, where the resources of the Union and Confederacy were compared — population, industrial capacity, railroad mileage, etc. Yet none of the North’s advantages seemed to make much difference for the first couple of years of the war, as the South won a stunning series of victories in the Virginia theater that seemed to offset the Union’s victories in the West. Even after Grant took Vicksburg and the South suffered a bloody defeat at Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee was still able to detach one of his army corps, sending Longstreet to reinforce Bragg in Georgia to defeat Rosencrans at Chickamauga in September 1863.

Despite the North’s advantages, after more than two years of war it was still by no means certain that the South could be defeated, until Lincoln made the decision to put Grant in overall command — and that made all the difference in the world. Grant appointed W.T. Sherman to take over in the West, where Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston’s army in North Georgia defended the key city of Atlanta, while Grant himself went East to supervise the campaign against Lee’s army in Virginia. Grant and Sherman met at a hotel in Cincinatti to coordinate their strategy in March 1864, and Sherman later summarized the result of that meeting simply: “We finally settled on a plan. He was to go for Lee, and I was to go for Joe Johnston. That was his plan.”

Very simple, and yet from the moment that meeting ended, only 13 months elapsed before Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

Here we are, 150 years later, and our generals believe that the key to defeating ISIS is to “understand the idea” behind ISIS?

Let me suggest instead that we make ISIS understand our idea: We’re going to start killing those sons of bitches, and we will keep killing them until there aren’t any more sons of bitches left to kill.

Problem solved.

Dear General Nagata: Is your job to understand our enemies, or is your job to KILL our enemies? http://t.co/W6t1ZUfFPs

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

.@smitty_one_each 1. Locate enemy. 2. Kill enemy. 3. Over beers afterward, perhaps attempt to understand enemy. 4. More beer.

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

Complex problems sometimes have simple solutions. Stop worrying about the problem and start finding the solution.

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

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Category: History, Military, Terrorism

Ah, So: Normalize Relations With Cuba, Import A Few Legions Of Doctors

Posted on | December 29, 2014 | 24 Comments

by Smitty

Over at Hot Air, Morrissey points out what a despicable [redacted] liar Harry Reid is/was during ObamaCare’s quest for stillbirth:

The “doc fix” dodge had been going on for some time, but Reid took it to a new level in order to fool the CBO into scoring ObamaCare as deficit-neutral. He submitted the Senate-written bill with the cuts to the CBO while winning AMA endorsement with a separate and temporary suspension of those cuts that the CBO didn’t get to see. That and the “temporary” Medicaid reimbursement rates have kept up the pretense of deficit neutrality ever since while pushing off the day of reckoning … until now.

Would that his embalming fluid were mislaid, so that Harry Reid could dry up and blow away. Do read the whole article as this week will see some major cuts to entitlement funding kick in. The groin.
While reading the Hot Air post aloud to Mrs. Other Smitty, she pointed out the related problem that a lot of these high-speed health plans require a specimen of the increasingly rare Primary Care Physician species:

A survey this year by The Physicians Foundation found that 81 percent of doctors describe themselves as either over-extended or at full capacity, and 44 percent said they planned to cut back on the number of patients they see, retire, work part-time or close their practice to new patients.

At the same time, insurance companies have routinely limited the number of doctors and providers on their plans as a way to cut costs. The result has further restricted some patients’ ability to get appointments quickly.

One purpose of the new health law was connecting patients, many of whom never had insurance before, with primary care doctors to prevent them from landing in the emergency room when they are sicker and their care is more expensive. Yet nearly 1 in 5 Americans lives in a region designated as having a shortage of primary care physicians, and the number of doctors entering the field isn’t expected to keep pace with demand.

The Association of American Medical Colleges projects the shortage will grow to about 66,000 in little more than a decade as fewer residency slots are available and as more medical students choose higher-paying specialty areas.

If only. . .there were some. . .handy location which happened to be chock-a-block with docs that would jump, say, a 90 mile stretch of water just to see some patients. Such a place would have to be crankin’ out the Marcus Welbys to compensate for the U.S. physician shortfall, though: you’d need at least as many as can be found in Cuba.

Certainly, swiping Cuba’s doctors could trigger a crisis for the Castro regime. However, we’re talking about Barack here. Standard operating procedure: someone else’s problem (SOP/SEP). Too, having a bunch of Spanish-speaking doctors, raised in an authoritarian system, treat the rest of your new Executive Amnesty citizens is sure going to help the Libertarian vote, isn’t it?

Anyway, you read it here first: normalizing Cuba relations is just the latest defibrillation effort for BHO’s dying signature legislative abortion.

Category: Barack Obama, Cuba, Health Care, Hot Air

Obviously, You Need More Feminist Lectures From Miriam Mogilevsky

Posted on | December 29, 2014 | 125 Comments

Last week I remarked:

The cult of “consciousness raising” . . . means that every college sophomore who has taken a couple of Women’s Studies classes believes she possesses a moral and intellectual superiority that qualifies her to tutor us about how women are oppressed by the patriarchy.
This attitude of arrogant condescension, this presumption that feminists possess a sort of gnosis that endows them with superior insight, is what makes them so obnoxious when communicating in their accustomed modes — the Lecture, the Screed and the Rant.

I wrote that before I’d ever heard of Miriam Mogilevsky, otherwise I might have called this “The Miriam Mogilevsky Principle.”

Ms. Mogilevsky is a recent graduate of Northwestern University who is younger than my oldest daughter. My daughter graduated college summa cum laude in 2011 and, unlike Ms. Mogilevsky, has (a) a husband and (b) a job. Whereas my daughter’s job involves teaching reading and writing to the children of Haitian immigrants, Ms. Mogilevsky considers it her job to lecture adults about what terrible misogynists we all are. Here are a few of her recent lectures at DailyDot.com:

The 4 rules guys should follow
when they get rejected on Tinder
Rejection is inevitable, but this helpful guide
will make dealing with it a little easier.
— Sept. 8

How to talk about the Ray Rice
scandal without being a total jerk
Here’s how to cover the issue correctly.
— Sept. 18

Should we outlaw catcalling?
Street harassment is an epidemic, but
here’s why the police won’t solve anything.
— Sept. 23

Stop calling Amanda Bynes ‘crazy’
I don’t know anything about Amanda Bynes’
mental state, and neither do you.
— Oct. 10

How to disagree on Twitter
Despite what you may have heard, it’s possible
to have a calm discussion in 140 characters or less.
— Oct. 31

4 better ways to prevent rape
than blaming victims
Don Lemon wanted to know what Bill Cosby’s
alleged victims could have done to stop him.
Here’s some better questions.
— Nov. 20

How Rolling Stone failed rape survivors
Rolling Stone’s University of Virginia
fiasco is bad news for everyone.
— Dec. 8

As you can see, Ms. Mogilevsky is an expert on everything, and her career consists of offering unsolicited advice to the rest of us, because we are so hopelessly stupid we wouldn’t know how to tie our own shoelaces if we didn’t have her to lecture us about everything. Ms. Mogilevsky’s two usual modes of discourse are, “Let me tell you what to think” and “Let me tell you what you are permitted to say.”

Exactly when did Americans vote to elect Miriam Mogilevsky our National Arbiter of Correct Thought? Who else was on the ballot? Were there no actual adults nominated for this position or were only graduate students at Columbia University eligible? The selection process is mysterious, but clearly someone thought the world was in desperate need of Ms. Mogilevsky’s precocious and all-encompassing wisdom, because otherwise how to explain this?

4 ways feminism can
make you better in bed
Consent isn’t the only thing that’s sexy in bed.
— Sept. 30

Damn, y’all, we’ve been doing it wrong for thousands of years and we never would have known it, if Miriam Mogilevsky hadn’t told us.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! He says “This sort of mockery and failure-shaming is precisely the correct response,” and that’s my New Year’s resolution: To be precisely correct. Also, please hit the freaking tip jar!

Category: Feminism

Learning How to Use Tools

Posted on | December 29, 2014 | 21 Comments

“The Internet has created a huge megaphone. That’s great, but it often creates so much noise that the people on the receiving end can’t hear anything.”
— Jake Brewer, manager at Change.org

Let me try an analogy here: The library is full of books, and there is a rack full of magazines at the grocery store checkout line. People don’t complain about the “noise” from print media because it is not interactive, it doesn’t jump out at you on your smartphone, on your laptop, in your social media feed. Technology is just a tool. The complaints people make about online media are not necessarily inherent to the technology. Rather, it’s how we use these tools that causes problems.

Educated people know how to go to the library and find the book they want. Obnoxious idiots publish stupid books — “Snooki” from MTV’s Jersey Shore, for example — but educated people ignore that “noise” and instead seek out books that contain useful knowledge. By the same token, the multiplex theater at your local shopping mall shows lots of stupid movies, but you read the reviews, watch the previews and only buy tickets to the movies that seem worthwhile to you.

Educated people also know how to use online technology to find what they want. We filter out the “noise,” and choose from among the various tools — the Drudge Report is a tool, Twitter is a tool, Google News is a tool — to acquire the information we need.

When Jake Brewer complains about “noise” on the Internet, he doesn’t mean that he is unable to find what he wants online. No, he is an educated person, very sophisticated in his use of Internet tools, and has no problem accessing the information he seeks. What Jake Brewer is complaining about is that the online audience he wants to reach with his message — whom he presumes to be less educated and less sophisticated than himself — is distracted by “noise,” which he defines as information less important than the message Jake Brewer is sending.

Guess what, Jake? It’s called democracy. Idiots who spend all day sending each other cute puppy videos on Facebook? Democracy.

Let’s go back a few years, Jake. It was Jan. 21, 2009, and Barack Obama had just been inaugurated as our 44th President.

I’m sitting a couple blocks north of the White House and the buzz around here is intense. Still.
The sense that we are in the middle of a massively-historical moment is palpable, and there’s a lot of talk about yesterday’s inauguration ushering in new era for our country. To be honest, I’m as taken up as anyone with the hopeful possibilities that 2009 and beyond can bring.
I hear “new era,” and I immediately start thinking about what those words can mean. My deep, personal hope is that this new era will be defined by the decision of our country to move boldly into the clean energy future we must achieve.
I’m even more hopeful after hearing these ideas inserted so prominently into President Obama’s inaugural address. . . .
We need to act. Now. And just as we came together in record numbers to vote new elected officials into office, the young people of this country WILL act.

http://www.PowerShift09.org

Our response is bold. It is equal to this historic moment. It is audaciously hopeful, and infused with the energy and vitality of an entire generation of Americans ready to turn good intentions and rhetoric into reality.
37 days after President Obama lost the “-elect,” we are going to bring 10,000 young people to Washington to hold our elected officials accountable for rebuilding our economy and reclaiming our future through bold climate and clean energy policy.
And whether this was your first election or your twentieth, we need you to be here with us. Or at the least, we need you to support us.
Power Shift ’09 will be one of the “Where Were You Moments” of our generation. You can join us in DC starting February 27th for four days of learning, connection, music, inspiration, and the largest lobby day on climate and clean energy Capitol Hill has ever seen. . . .

That was your Huffington Post column, Jake. What you were hustling then as PowerShift09.org now re-directs to WeArePowerShift.org, “a grassroots-driven online community that seeks to empower and serve as a hub for the youth climate movement.” At the lower right-hand corner of that page, we learn this is a “Project of Energy Action Coalition,” and here are all the “green” groups in that coalition. So, what was that “Power Shift ’09” conference you were hustling, Jake?

The first Power Shift Conference took place from November 2 to 5 in 2007 with between 5,000 and 6,000 students and young people in attendance. . . . The event was also attended by a number of keynote speakers which included Al Gore. The main aim of the first conference was to urge elected officials to pass legislation which would include . . .

The creation of a 5 million-strong Clean Energy Job Corps
The reduction of greenhouse gases to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, which scientists say is the baseline for mitigating the worst effects of global warming
A moratorium on new coal plants and divestment from fossil fuel and highway subsidies.

On February 27 to March 2, 2009, the second American Power Shift Conference took place. Similarly to the first summit, it included workshops, panel discussions, and speakers focusing on addressing climate change and environmental justice. This time, keynote speakers included Van Jones, Bill McKibben of 350.org, Ralph Nader, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

OK, Jake: How much were you paid to promote that “Power Shift” conference on Huffington Post, and who paid you to promote it?

People get paid good money to hustle stuff on the Internet. Some of my best friends make their living that way, Jake, but none of my best friends would ever take a dime to hustle that phony “climate change and environmental justice” bullshit.

So I was reading that story at the New Yorker about the “King of Clickbait . . . Emerson Spartz, an Internet-media entrepreneur in Chicago,” and I came across your quote, Jake, the one about how the Internet “creates so much noise that the people on the receiving end can’t hear anything,” and it pissed me off. Who the fuck is this douchebag, who gets paid money to create noise on the Internet, complaining about “noise” from other people that drowns out the noise he is paid to create?

Hi, @jakebrewer! I'm from the Internet, and I've been appointed to tell you what a ginormous douchebag you are.

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

No, @jakebrewer. You were quoted in a New Yorker article. http://t.co/3MreOSOwaE And the Internet decided you are a ginormous douchebag.

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

The Internet is a powerful tool, and it told me that Jake Brewer is a ginormous douchebag who hustles “climate change” bullshit.

And the Internet couldn’t find Jake’s apology for that.

UPDATE: Really amazing, what the Internet can tell you.

.@ScotsFyre Perhaps you're ready for some amnesty-loving open-borders advocacy at HuffPo? http://t.co/jQ3rnt0mhp @jakebrewer

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

Here is @JakeBrewer's group, Define American, endorsing Obama's illegal amnesty last month. http://t.co/ACQkFc6hh5 @ScotsFyre #tcot

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) December 29, 2014

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Category: Environmentalism

But He’s Not a Catholic Priest

Posted on | December 29, 2014 | 28 Comments

Whenever a news story about sexual abuse by a public school teacher makes headlines, Pete Da Tech Guy is always quick to point out that the major media doesn’t see a trend — a pattern of systemic abuse — because the suspect is not a Catholic priest. Sexual abuse is only a newsworthy trend when the suspect is a religious leader:

He was a world-famous medicine man, a traditional healer and spiritual leader. Followers would travel long distances to this tiny hamlet on the Great Plains to be in his presence and pray in the darkness with him in a sacred sweat lodge.
But Charles Chipps Sr., a medicine man on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation, had a dark secret, federal prosecutors say.
For years, they allege, Chipps sexually abused and raped girls, including some of his own daughters and granddaughters; many of the alleged victims were younger than 12 and several were as young as 5. A girl from Colorado whose aunt brought her to meet Chipps for spiritual guidance committed suicide after revealing the abuse she allegedly suffered.
The sexual abuse of children has long been regarded as a rampant if largely unspoken problem on Native American reservations . . . But Chipps’s case, as described in court testimony, is among the most shocking — entailing allegations that a respected elder sexually abused at least six girls. . . .

Read the whole thing. Not a Catholic priest, so it’s not a trend.

Category: Crime