The Other McCain : Page 1309 : "One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."

Politico has a pre-election postmortem on how McConnell beat back the tea party, although most of it will be familiar to you if you’ve been following the race even casually. . . .
Between McConnell’s easy ride to victory and Lindsey Graham’s trouble-free reelection campaign in South Carolina thus far, it’s worth asking just how vulnerable GOP incumbents are to tea-party primary challenges anymore. Philip Klein surveys the landscape and says, “Not very.”

So, all conservative grassroots enthusiasm is over, and there is now zero hope that the GOP can ever be more than Democrat Lite. And what are the chances that in November, people will stampede to the polls to vote for the Boring Old White Guy Party?

Not Saying It Was Aliens…

Posted on May 20, 2014Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

…which I guess could be construed as sort of a spoiler for John Barnes’ disappointing The Last President, which is the last of the Daybreak novels. I hated this novel for at least a dozen reasons, not the least of which is that Barnes pulls a diavolo ex machina out of his hat which (for me) just completely ruined the whole trilogy. Not that there weren’t enough other things in the plot to tick me off, mind you. Anyhow, if you enjoyed the first couple of Daybreak novels (Directive 51 and Daybreak Zero) you may or may not like the third one; if not, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Charles Gannon’s Fire with Fire got nominated for a Nebula Award by the SFWA but didn’t win; I refuse to speculate on whether this was because it’s a Baen product or whether it’s because Mr. Gannon is a white cismale oppressor. (Just kidding! Sort of.) Anyway, Gannon’s novel reads like a cross between technothriller and first contact novel, with coldsleep complicating the protagonist’s life and a shaky confederation of aliens ready to explode when humans show up on the galactic scene. Not a bad read; lives up to the standard set by his earlier collaboration with Eric Flint, 1635: The Papal Stakes. Gannon and Flint have a couple of other collaborations out, The Aethers of Mars being the more interesting to me with its echoes of Frank Chadwick’s Space 1889 RPG.

Speaking of the “Ring of Fire” novels, Flint and David Carrico’s 1636: The Devil’s Opera is a pretty good read, mixing a police procedural with opera and power politics in the suddenly-unstable United States of Europe.

Finally, I’m going to have to pick up a copy of the new Delta Green fiction anthology, Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies.

The Libyan Disaster

Posted on May 20, 2014Comments

Obama’s “Arab Spring” continues unraveling:

The revolt by Gen. Khalifa Hifter threatens to detonate the long volatile divisions among the multiple militias that dominate Libya amid the weakness of the central government and military. Hifter says he aims to crush Islamists he accuses of seizing control of the country and he appears to have the support of some militias from the eastern half of the country and the western Zintan region. . . .
In the other camp, parliament chief Nouri Abu Sahmein — an Islamist-leaning politician — ordered a powerful umbrella group of mainly Islamist militias known as “Libya’s Central Shield” to mobilize on Monday to defend against Hifter’s forces. The umbrella group is dominated by a militia from Libya’s third largest city, Misrata.

Walter Russell Mead:

Dozens have been killed, dozens more wounded, and the clashes between General Hifter’s forces and Islamist militias don’t seem to be winding down. The country is thoroughly fragmented, flirting with the failed state label.

Instapundit delivers the sarcastic verdict:

It was a war of choice, fought on the credit card, with no real understanding of the country targeted and no clear exit plan, complicated by astonishing incompetence in following up after the dictator was toppled.

Gosh, that sounds so familiar . . .

Dinesh D’Souza Pleads Guilty

Posted on May 20, 2014Comments

The conservative intellectual committed a particularly clumsy crime — an ill-disguised straw-donor scheme that violated federal campaign finance law — in an inexplicable attempt to aid a Republican candidate who never had a real chance to win. Whether or not Dinesh D’Souza was a target of selective prosecution, he was nonetheless guilty, and has now officially admitted he broke the law:

Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a campaign finance law violation, avoiding a trial that had been expected to begin the same day in a Manhattan federal court.
D’Souza, known for his biting criticism of President Barack Obama, pleaded guilty to one criminal count of making illegal contributions in the names of others. A second count concerning the making of false statements is expected to be dismissed once he is sentenced.
The plea came four months after Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara charged D’Souza with using “straw donors” to give funds in 2012 to Republican Wendy Long’s U.S. Senate campaign in New York. Long, who met D’Souza while they were students in the 1980s, lost to Democratic incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand.
“I knew that causing a campaign contribution to be made in the name of another was wrong and something the law forbids,” D’Souza, 53, told U.S. District Judge Berman on Tuesday. “I deeply regret my conduct.”

(Via Memeorandum.) Evading federal campaign finance law is rather easy to accomplish by entirely legal means, and even illegal “straw donor” schemes usually go undetected. But D’Souza is an intellectual, and as such, lacked the necessary “street smarts” either to find a legal loophole or to get away with a federal crime.

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Fremdschämen For Towson U.

Posted on May 20, 2014May 20, 2014Comments

by Smitty

Fremdschämen is when you watch someone else beclown themselves in a shameful way, yet express no awareness of their own debasement. See also LEO.

College Wins US Debate Championship By Repeating the [bigger digger trigger] Over and Over, Speaking Incomprehensibly

To paraphrase The Sage, a house with its head in a lightless location lodged shall have trouble standing.

The sad thing about these special snowflakes from Towson University, there in the People’s Republic of Maryland, is that they will probably continue to fail upward, and clog some political office over you before too long.

Oh Lord, please help us pass this Progressive kidney stone as soon as possible, so that there can be a return to rationality.

Alternative title to this post

“HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University now offering a degree in Dada, but you have to stay blissfully incognizant of it”

Sweet Revenge: @SarahPalinUSA on the Media’s Hillary Double Standard

Posted on May 20, 2014Comments

The ironic payback for Trig Trutherism: Now that liberals want to protect Hillary Clinton from scrutiny and criticism — especially questions about the 66-year-old former Secretary of State’s health — Sarah Palin is there to remind the media of how they treated her:

Hey! Hillary’s brain is off-limits! Leave her health records alone! Democrats are right — scouring records of a female candidate is just politics of personal destruction, and for the media to engage in it would be unfair, unethical, and absolutely UNPRECEDENTED. You can’t probe a woman like that because, well, it’s a war on women! . . .
Goodness, no one credible would print lies, continually harass a candidate’s doctor, disrupt local hospital staff, or even offer to pay locals to give “quotes” about her health records to be included in a “research book” by a public university professor (your tax dollars at work?) which the candidate’s attorney will need to respond to.

(Via Memeorandum.)

The @AmandaMarcotte Agenda

Posted on May 20, 2014May 20, 2014Comments

So, the New York Times does a feature article about “women’s empowerment conferences” — upscale corporate-sponsored events for career women — and Everybody’s Favorite Feminist™ Amanda Marcotte has “mixed feelings,” because “corporate sponsors have a way of quietly refocusing these kinds of conferences away from the nitty-gritty issues that face ordinary American women and toward elite women congratulating one another for getting increasingly richer.”

You hear that, Corporate Sponsors? Next time, be sure to invite Everybody’s Favorite Feminist™ as a speaker, so she can travel first-class and stay in a swanky resort hotel for a weekend and give a talk about “the nitty-gritty issues that face ordinary American women.”

Keepin’ it real, yo.