LIVE AT FIVE: 05.22.14

When I’m in the car, I like to listen to the “Classic Hits” radio station — basically, rock-and-roll from the 1970s, which was the pinnacle, as far as I’m concerned. Amid all the great music from that great era, however, there are some songs that make you scratch your head in mystification: “How did that lame crap ever become a hit?”

But hey, it was the ’70s and we were all high, y’know.

Nobody had more lame-crap hits than Steve Miller Band, and don’t get me wrong: I liked Steve Miller back in the day, and still enjoy listening to his hits, but from the standpoint of songcraft, the guy sucked. The closest he ever got to writing lyrics that made any sense at all was “Take the Money and Run,” but that song is a celebration of murder and robbery, so it kind of proves the point.

Here’s the way I figure Steve Miller operated as a songwriter: He would come up with a nifty little guitar riff, and then a catch-phrase to be repeated in the chorus. Once he had the guitar riff and the chorus, he would be like, “Yeah, OK, gotta write some verses now.”

This is where the whole thing always went to hell. You can go through the song catalog of the Steve Miller Band and good luck finding more than one or two songs where the lyrics of the verses have a damn thing to do with the chorus — or with anything else, really.

Even in his biggest hit, “The Joker,” the lyrics are total nonsense, and don’t even get me started on “Jungle Love.” The guy obviously wasn’t even trying to write lyrics. He just sang whatever the hell came into his head — any words that rhymed would do — and nobody seemed to care, because the albums kept selling.

While it’s hard to say that there was ever a worse song than “Jungle Love,” however, the prototypical stupid Steve Miller Band hit, which actually made it to No. 1 in 1976, was “Rock’n Me”:

Well I’ve been lookin’ real hard
And I’m tryin’ to find a job
But it just keeps gettin’ tougher every day
But I got to do my part cause I know in my heart
I got to please my sweet baby, yeah

Well, I ain’t superstitious
And I don’t get suspicious
But my woman is a friend of mine
And I know that it’s true that all the things that I do
Will come back to me in my sweet time

So keep on rockin’ me baby
Keep on a rockin’ me baby
Keep on a rockin’ me baby
Keep on a rockin’ me baby

I went from Phoenix, Arizona
All the way to Tacoma
Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.
Northern California where the girls are warm
So I could be with my sweet baby, yeah

Keep on a rockin’ me baby . . .

Et cetera. I mean, c’mon: “Northern California where the girls are warm”? What the hell does that even mean, Steve? But from such ridiculous nothingness, the man crafted a career!

And just in case you’re wondering, the B-side of the single of “Rock’n Me” was a song entitled, “Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma Ma.”

Category: Music

So What If The #VA Scandal Is Just #ObamaCare Meets #Benghazi?

Posted on | May 21, 2014 | 25 Comments

by Smitty

Americans in general and veterans in particular are far too spun up about the VA scandal. This has led to at least one scurrilous photo-bumming incident already. And why? What difference, at this point, do these veterans make? The WSJ gets it all wrong:

The recent revelations about the Department of Veterans Affairs point to serious problems. But the root of the scandal is not what self-serving bureaucrats failed to do or tried to cover up; it is a federal budget that prevents us from meeting even the national needs on which our polarized political parties can agree.
Whatever the disagreements about the long wars of the past decades, Democrats and Republicans agree that we must fully honor the debt we have incurred to the tiny fraction of the population that does the fighting for the rest of us. Yes, the budget for the VA has risen sharply since 2002. But the number of returning veterans has risen even faster. Many live with grievous wounds from which they would have succumbed in previous conflicts. Many others struggle with the multiple effects of repeated deployments. Aging Vietnam-era patients require more care, and new responsibilities such as coping with Agent Orange add to the VA’s burden.

Aw, c’mon: these veterans, in the main, don’t even vote correctly! And now that ObamaCare is sucking the lifeblood right out of the American healthcare system, these veterans are just a doubly useless load on a Constitutional system that has been fundamentally transformed since the 2008 election.

If these veterans aren’t given the the Doherty & Woods Special, then their block of votes could become an embarrassment for Her Majesty’s 2016 Coronation event.

Besides: American voters gave #OccupyResoluteDesk a pass in 2012. We knew him for an incompetent boob all four years leading up to Benghazi. We knew that ObamaCare was going to make the Titanic seem a minor bathtub incident by comparison.

We have begged to have our warriors treated dishonorably by a completely honor-free rodeo clown, and he hasn’t shown a smidgen of hesitation in delivering.

So. Just. Screw. Us. To. The. Wall.

Because history is going to wonder if we aren’t kind of into this stuff.

Category: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election, Health Care, Libya

Girl, 14, Met 27-Year-Old Man Online, Hid Him in Her Closet for Five Days

Posted on | May 21, 2014 | 36 Comments

Creepiest crime story of the week:

A North Carolina man has been arrested after police say he spent five days hiding in a 14-year-old girl’s closet and sexually assaulting her at night.
Jarred Ashley Workman, 27, of Iredell County, was charged with 11 counts of statutory rape and five counts of statutory sex offense, according to WCNC.
Authorities said Workman chatted with the teen on social media for about a month before deciding to meet up in the woods near the girl’s home.
The teen invited Workman to stay at her home, where she lived with her parents, on April 27, according to WTVR.
The suspect managed to stay there for five days, allegedly sexually assaulting the teen at night while her parents were asleep.

Here’s the really creepy part: The girl’s mother didn’t find him in the closet until the fifth day, so if Workman had been willing to leave after three or four nights with the girl, he might never have been caught. But of course, a perp like this isn’t the kind of person who calculates risk on any rational scale, so he had to push his luck.

Also, somebody’s 14-year-old daughter just got seriously grounded.

Category: Crime, Sex

Obama the Angry

Posted on | May 21, 2014 | 37 Comments

First it was Benghazi, then it was the IRS, and now it’s the VA. Ace of Spades describes the Obama Scandal Reaction Method:

Always he says the same things:
1. He’s “mad. Or “angry.” Or “madder than hell.” Or even “apopleptic.” Obama vows he’s much, much angrier than you are — “no one is angrier than I am” — despite having no appearances of actual anger. Rather like a very controlled, uptight WASP Hulk.
2. He vows to “get to the bottom of this.” He says this in a way to suggest that he, personally, will be getting to the bottom of this. Of course he doesn’t. Within a week he’s playing golf and parcheesi with the White House motor pool.
3. Despite pronouncing this newest scandal extraordinary, he then demands that we… allow the routine, ordinary Bureaucratic Process to fix everything.
“Putting something in the process” is standard Bureaucratic jargon meaning that “nothing is being done and go f*** yourself raw.”

Media sonambulism makes it possible for him to get away with this.

Category: Barack Obama, Scandal

In The Mailbox: 05.21.14

Posted on | May 21, 2014 | 11 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Dead Republican Party: Moneychangers In The Temple
Michelle Malkin: Michelle Obama’s Control-Freak Lunch Program
Doug Powers: Bang For Taxpayers’ Buck – GM Has Recalled More Cars This Year Than They Sold In The Last Five
Twitchy: White Leftist To Black Conservative – “My Pleasure, House Nigger”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Veterans Administration Scandal Explodes
American Thinker: Unions Minus Coercion Equal Nothing
BLACKFIVE: Counterproductive 2nd Amendment Exercise
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Towson Debate Team Earns Its Participation Trophy
Conservatives4Palin: The Media Continue To Ignore Obama’s IRS Scandals
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, May 20
Jammie Wearing Fools: What Obama Will Read About Between Fundraisers – More VA Whistleblowers Coming Forward
Joe For America: Earwax-Eating Dem – “We’ve Proved That Communism Works”
JustOneMinute: When You’ve Lost The Times…
Pat Dollard: Aspiring Congressman Clay Aiken On The VA Scandal – “I Haven’t Paid Attention”
Protein Wisdom: The Narcissistic Creed
Shot In The Dark: Of Convenience, Part II
The Jawa Report: Everyone Wave Buh-Bye To Abu Hamza El-Masri
The Lonely Conservative: Remington Arms Moving Two Production Lines Out Of New York
This Ain’t Hell: Operation American Spring – Epic Fail
Weasel Zippers: Notre Dame Refuses Recognition To Pro-Traditional Marriage Student Group
Megan McArdle: Green Cars Won’t Save The Planet

Category: Linkagery

#RapeCulture Eggs and Omelettes

Posted on | May 21, 2014 | 32 Comments

Last night I linked A.J. Delgado’s item about the suspicious nature of the rape “epidemic” on college campuses. This phenomenon contradicts common sense: Overall, rates of violent crime (including rape) in the United States are on a downward trajectory, and universities have undertaken extraordinary programs to raise awareness (for both men and women) to prevent rape. However, the reported incidence of rape has actually increased on campuses, and Delgado asks: “Did all the bad guys suddenly decide to enroll in universities?”

This trend makes no sense, you see, and this strange trend calls for scrutiny of the individual cases that comprise the trend. Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection notes a case at Columbia University, where a male student-athlete has filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that his due-process rights were violated when the university punished him for alleged “sexual misconduct” that was never reported as a crime. The lawsuit describes a one-night hook-up between the student-athlete and a female student in her Columbia dorm room on May 12, 2013, and alleges:

Several weeks into the Fall 2013 semester and nearly five (5) months after the one night of sexual activity, Jane Doe decided to report the Evening of May 12 as “non-consensual” sexual activity. No contemporaneous report was ever made nor was any police report was ever filed by Jane Doe in connection with her sexual activity with Plaintiff John Doe; no visit to a medical care facility was ever made by Jane Doe in connection with such sexual activity either; and indeed, no allegation of improper sexual behavior was made by Jane Doe for nearly five (5) months after the one night of sexual activity with John Doe. Notwithstanding the foregoing, and further notwithstanding a paucity of direct evidence, including an unforgiveable lack of administrative continuity and simple, practical good sense during the investigatory process, Defendant Columbia found John Doe guilty of sexual misconduct in having non-consensual sex with Jane Doe and has issued Plaintiff John Doe an order of suspension from Columbia University until Fall 2015.

Here’s the important thing: We don’t know, and in fact cannot know, what actually happened on May 12, 2013, because the only witnesses to the sexual activity were the two people involved.

As usual in such cases, it’s “he-said/she-said,” with no evidence or testimony beyond the competing claims of a woman who says it was rape and a man who says it was consensual. We can, perhaps, deduce a belief one way or the other based on circumstances, but we can never really know — and yet the student-athlete was suspended on the basis of this university disciplinary procedure, where the rights of the accused and standards of evidence are not the same as in a criminal court. He was, in effect, found guilty without trial.

This is simply wrong. If the guy committed rape, he should be prosecuted as a criminal, and if the accuser was unwilling to pursue criminal prosecution, then the university cannot let its disciplinary process function as a pseudo-court where students are judged “guilty” of heinous crimes for which they never actually stood trial.

If incidents like this Columbia University case are typical of what is driving the campus rape “epidemic” trend — and I don’t claim to have done enough analysis to say that it is so — then we have a very serious problem: Colleges have become Darkness at Noon, like the Moscow “show trials” of the 1930s, where a political agenda incites a prosecutorial zeal that tramples the innocent under foot.

There is an old (and extremely cynical) phrase that was used by Soviet apologists to defend the inhumanities perpetrated by the Communists: “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.” That is to say, the murderous nature of the Bolshevik regime was excusable to admirers of the Soviets, because the victims (eggs) were killed (broken) to create a socialist order (the omelette).

Knowing what we know about feminists and their agenda — which demonizes men and stigmatizes heterosexuality — what political purpose is served by the proliferation of “sexual misconduct” accusations on campus, especially when the statistics are inflated by the inclusion of cases where no criminal charge was ever made?

The accused are just “eggs,” broken in the process of making this feminist “omelette,” which has a suspiciously totalitarian flavor.

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Category: Crime, Education, Legal Insurrection, Sex

Like Fish Don’t Notice Water

Posted on | May 21, 2014 | 29 Comments

CNN President Jeff Zucker declares his network won’t “be shamed into” covering a congressional investigation of the Benghazi scandal, as he claims the pressure to cover Benghazi comes from “others who have political beliefs that want to try to have temper tantrums.”

Mocking CNN’s bizarre and monomaniacal devotion to the story of a disappeared jet, Grover Norquist wondered what would happen if the Malaysian plane were to land in Benghazi. OK, so . . . forget about politics. What does Zucker’s bias mean for CNN’s ratings?

First Night of CNN Primetime Changes
Land Network in Third Place
CNN took third place among cable news networks [Monday] night after making significant primetime changes, including the removal of live programming at 9PM. The new lineup lost to both FOX News Channel and MSNBC during the 8PM, 9PM and 10PM hours.

Here are the numbers:

8 p.m. ET
Fox: The O’Reilly Factor ….. 2,019,000
MSNBC: Chris Hayes ………… 639,000
CNN: AC360 …………………… 274,000

9 p.m. ET
Fox: The Kelly File ………….. 1,787,000
MSNBC: Rachel Maddow …….. 720,000
CNN: Parts Unknown …………. 281,000

10 p.m. ET
Fox: Hannity ………………….. 1,383,000
MSNBC: The Last Word ……… 531,000
CNN: Tonight …………………… 304,000

Averaged over prime time (8-11 p.m.), the three major cable news networks had a combined audience Monday of 2.7 million viewers, and here are the percentage shares:

Fox ……………… 65%
MSNBC …………. 24%
CNN …………….. 11%

Now, let us stipulate that politics is not the only factor that influences cable TV news ratings. However, the news junkie — the kind of person who prefers cable news as a prime-time viewing habit — is also usually a political junkie. Because of a general perception that most news media have a liberal bias, Fox News dominates cable news ratings by delivering news and commentary from a standpoint that is decidedly not liberal. In a distant second place, MSNBC caters to an audience of left-wing news junkies whose political appetites are not satisfied by a half-hour of biased news nightly on the Big Three broadcast networks. And CNN . . .

Jeff Zucker’s network is a fucking asterisk, is what they are — an irrelevant afterthought in the TV new business, of interest only as an example of how not to operate a cable news franchise.

The most obvious play for CNN would be to try to peel off some of the conservative viewers — two-thirds of the cable-news audience — who are now regularly watching Fox. One can easily imagine how this could be done. If Zucker can’t imagine it, he should drop me an e-mail and I’d offer a few suggestions, but of course that’s not going to happen because, as Zucker’s Benghazi comments show, he thinks he’s such a goddamned Harvard-educated genius that nobody can tell him anything.

Therefore, CNN continues failing.

Everyone in the organization, from Zucker on down the line, should feel a profound sense of shame for how they’ve squandered CNN’s advantage as the pioneer in the industry, failing to adapt to changing circumstances as they’ve drifted down to the ratings cellar, where they sit day after day, hoping for the Big Event — the breaking-news story that will make people switch over for continuous coverage. It’s a pathetic waste of resources, a disgrace and a failure for which no excuses should be accepted.

Many years ago, not long after I became an ex-Democrat, I explained the problem simply: Most people in the news media don’t notice liberal bias for the same reason fish don’t notice water — it’s everywhere all around them and it’s all they’ve ever known.

Insofar as CNN is failing because of its liberal bias, Jeff Zucker isn’t the solution to the problem, he’s part of the problem.

Category: CNN, Libya, Scandal

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The Other McCain

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

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.22.14

Dumb Songs of Classic Rock

So What If The #VA Scandal Is Just #ObamaCare Meets #Benghazi?

So. Just. Screw. Us. To. The. Wall.

Girl, 14, Met 27-Year-Old Man Online, Hid Him in Her Closet for Five Days

Obama the Angry

In The Mailbox: 05.21.14

#RapeCulture Eggs and Omelettes

Like Fish Don’t Notice Water

THE FULL METAL JACKET REACH-AROUND AWARD

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