So, Justine Finally Landed …

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The unfortunate Justine Sacco, whose Friday tweet inspired the hashtag #HasJustineLandedYet, went into full grovel mode:

Today Sacco spoke to ABC News, saying, “My greatest concern was this statement reach South Africa first.” After sending her statement to South African newspaper The Star, Sacco shared the following apology:
“Words cannot express how sorry I am, and how necessary it is for me to apologize to the people of South Africa, who I have offended due to a needless and careless tweet,” Sacco said. “There is an AIDS crisis taking place in this country, that we read about in America, but do not live with or face on a continuous basis. Unfortunately, it is terribly easy to be cavalier about an epidemic that one has never witnessed firsthand.
“For being insensitive to this crisis — which does not discriminate by race, gender or sexual orientation, but which terrifies us all uniformly — and to the millions of people living with the virus, I am ashamed.
“This is my father’s country, and I was born here. I cherish my ties to South Africa and my frequent visits, but I am in anguish knowing that my remarks have caused pain to so many people here; my family, friends and fellow South Africans. I am very sorry for the pain I caused.”

As Ace accurately observed Friday, Sacco is a liberal, and her joke was actually a self-deprecating reference to white privilege. No one can deny that it was tasteless and, as she says, “insensitive,” but it scarcely justified her public crucifixion. Her apology, while no doubt sincere, is also a signifier: “I get it! I’m a liberal, too!”

But her liberalism (like all liberalism) is misguided, assuming as it does that the problem of AIDS in Africa (or any similar social problem) results from a shortage of caring. This is a species of Magic Thinking: “We could solve this problem, if only we cared enough.” And from this delusion, we get a lot of empty gestures that do nothing to solve problems, but make people feel good about themselves.

Thomas Sowell wrote an entire book about this, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy — a book that no liberal has ever bothered to read, because if they bothered to read it, they wouldn’t be liberals anymore.

If you think that every problem of black people can be explained by racism, or that every problem of gay people can be explained by homophobia, certain conclusions are inherent in those premises, no matter how you construct your syllogism. One example is the way in which we monitor speech for “proof” that others secretly harbor forbidden sentiments, and immediately pounce upon anything that looks like such “proof,” like Justine’s tweet:

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS.
Just kidding. I’m white!”

Twelve words, and let’s get her fired from her job for making a bad joke on Twitter, as if getting her fired will purge the world of racism and thereby end AIDS in Africa. The Daily Mail reports.

The PR executive who was summarily dismissed after her racist Tweet sparked a revolt on social media has apologised – as her own father called her a ‘f****** idiot’.
Justine Sacco said that she was ‘ashamed’ over her actions and said she had been ‘cavalier’ in making her tasteless joke about the AIDS crisis in Africa.
But her father, who has not been publicly named, was more forthright and said that what she did was ‘unforgivable’.
He also apparently backed the campaign to name and shame his daughter as, in an ironic twist, it emerged he moved his family from Cape Town to the US in 1994 to escape racism at the end of Apartheid. . . .
Losing her job as a communications director could also mean losing her US work visa -potentially forcing her to leave America.

Well, I’m sure we’re all glad Justine’s father called her a “f**king idiot,” but did you notice something about that article?

So pervasive is what Sowell called The Vision of the Anointed that most people didn’t even notice this dishonest assumption. To say her tweet was “offensive” is one thing, but to label it “racist” is to assume to know Sacco’s intent when, as seems evident, her actual intent was anti-racist: “Sacco is a young, professional, New York woman. Chances are about 99.9% that she’s a BuzzFeed-loving, Obama-voting, MSNBC addict.”

If anything, Sacco’s tweet betokened the arrogance of a young liberal who assumes that all her friends (and she had fewer than 200 Twitter followers before Friday) understand she is not racist, whereas if she were a Fox-watching, Limbaugh-listening conservative Republican, she would understand that she is constantly suspected of secretly hating everyone who is not rich, white and heterosexual. Remember when Rush Limbaugh got kicked off ESPN? Even I have forgotten exactly what he said, but it was something about a black quarterback and the lesson was obvious: No Republican is ever allowed to criticize a black person, which has worked out rather nicely for Democrats since 2008, eh?

Apologies for contradicting bad ideas are never going fix any problem, especially not problems caused by liberalism itself.

NAACP investigating sheriff who
refused to lower flag for Mandela’s death

The Thought Police are always watching, aren’t they?

 

 

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! I liked this from the comments:

There was a time when even the Left considered Lord of the Flies a cautionary tale. Now they treat it like an instruction manual.

And finally someone got the allusion!

Ah yes, If the author of Justine were alive today he most certainly would be heading a modern media organization rather than staging his plays inside an insane asylum.

 


Special Snowflake Syndrome

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A frightening report from the front lines of the Culture War:

Amy (not her real name) sat in my office and wiped her streaming tears on her sleeve, refusing the scratchy tissues I’d offered. “I’m thinking about just applying for a Ph.D. program after I graduate because I have no idea what I want to do.” Amy had mild depression growing up, and it worsened during freshman year of college when she moved from her parents’ house to her dorm. It became increasingly difficult to balance school, socializing, laundry, and a part-time job. She finally had to dump the part-time job, was still unable to do laundry, and often stayed up until 2 a.m. trying to complete homework because she didn’t know how to manage her time without her parents keeping track of her schedule.
I suggested finding a job after graduation, even if it’s only temporary. She cried harder at this idea. “So, becoming an adult is just really scary for you?” I asked. “Yes,” she sniffled. Amy is 30 years old.
Her case is becoming the norm for twenty- to thirtysomethings I see in my office as a psychotherapist. I’ve had at least 100 college and grad students like Amy crying on my couch because breaching adulthood is too overwhelming.

Key phrase: “Amy had mild depression growing up.”

Re-written: “Amy was diagnosed with mild depression growing up.”

That is to say, Amy was introduced to therapeutic culture at an early age, because she grew up in an affluent society that can afford for its more privileged youth to get thousands of dollars worth of psychiatric treatment to deal with their feelings. Does anyone ever stop to wonder what became of such people before the rise of the psychotherapy industry in the 20th century?

What happens is that people become defined by their diagnoses, so that sometimes you meet someone at a reception who tells you, within the first five minutes of your introduction, that they suffer from depression, bipolar disorder, ADD or whatever.

To digress: Why don’t we ever meet any really interesting nuts? I mean, it might be interesting to meet someone at a cocktail party who says, “Yes, I’ve been diagnosed with sado-masochistic compulsions stemming from an unresolved Electra Complex.”

But old-fashioned Freudian categories are out of fashion, so you never meet anyone who describes themselves as being in the throes of an oral fixation or nymphomania or something like that. Neither, for that matter, does anyone ever describe themselves as a psychopath or a lunatic — “Hi, I’m Phil and I’m certifiably insane” — but instead these people usually confess to suffering from mood disorders which, to the contemporary way of thinking, means that they are sympathetic victims, rather than outright kooks.

Ever since Prozac started making headlines back in the 1990s, I’ve been dubious about the “brain chemistry” approach to treating mood disorders with SSRIs, because of a common-sense skepticism toward the claims of scientific “experts.” Is it really a smart idea to be loading people up on complex chemicals with all kinds of potential long-term effects? I mean, how many people who start on anti-depressants in their teens or 20s ever actually get well?

That is to say, shouldn’t the goal of psychiatric treatment be to get patients to the point where they don’t need treatment any more?

And yet I can’t remember anyone ever saying, “Yes, I was diagnosed with chronic depression, but I took these pills for six months and it went away, so now I don’t need the pills anymore and I’m as cheerful as a songbird all the time.” But I digress . . .

Encouraging kids to think of themselves as suffering from mental illness, e.g., Amy’s “mild depression,” is great for the pill merchants, but I’m not sure it’s really good for the kids. Helplessness is a learned condition, and if you start telling kids that they are helpless victims of their moods and feelings, well, maybe they’ll believe you. And if they are truly helpless . . .

“[T]herapeutic morality encourages a permanent suspension of the moral sense. There is a close connection, in turn, between the erosion of moral responsibility and the waning capacity for self-help . . . between the elimination of culpability and the elimination of competence.”
– Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)

Describing the problems he sees with young people, psychotherapist Brooke Donatone writes that “the ability to address hardships is lacking in many members of this generation” who have had too much parental assistance and supervision:

The researchers suggest that intrusive parenting interferes with the development of autonomy and competence. So helicopter parenting leads to increased dependence and decreased ability to complete tasks without parental supervision. . . .
Rates of depression are soaring among millennials in college. A 2012 study by the American College Counseling Association reported a 16 percent increase in mental-health visits since 2000 and a significant increase in crisis response over the past five years.  . . .
If parents are navigating every minor situation for their kids, kids never learn to deal with conflict on their own. . . .
Amy, like many millennials, was groomed to be an academic overachiever, but she became, in reality, an emotional under-achiever. Amy did not have enough coping skills to navigate normal life stressors — how do I get my laundry and my homework done in the same day; how do I tell my roommate not to watch TV without headphones at 3 a.m.? — without her parents’ constant advice or help. . . .

Why is this happening? I blame the American micro-family, the two-income suburban household with one or two children. The parents are college-educated and expect — no, demand — that their children follow in their footsteps, without regard to the child’s own aptitudes or interests. This kind of high-pressure parenting is basically impossible with larger families, and the child with multiple siblings must necessarily rely more on his own resources.

High-achieving professionals quite naturally expect that their children should be able to replicate their success, but investing such hopes in just one or two kids puts unrealistic pressures on them, and fails to consider the problem of deviation to the norm.

The more exceptional a parent’s success, the less likely that their children will be able to match or exceed it. If you’re a Harvard-educated neurobiologist, the temptation to treat your child as a hothouse flower in an effort to make the child an even more exceptional achiever is likely to yield disappointment, simply because most kids — even those who inherit tremendous potential and who are provided with every advantage — aren’t exceptional.

Who are Amy’s parents? I’ll bet they’re well-educated, successful and affluent and are horribly disappointed in her. She’s 30 years old and says she has “no idea” what she wants to do, but I’ve got news for her: You’re already doing it, Amy. It’s called “failure.”

Lot of that going around lately.

 

Obama to #SouthSudan: Good Luck

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If you expected any determined U.S. action to end this civil war, my condolences on your Nobel Peace Prize disappointment:

“This conflict can only be resolved peacefully through negotiations. Any effort to seize power through the use of military force will result in the end of longstanding support from the United States and the international community.”

This is just noise, which any rebel leader or armed tribal mob will scornfully ignore, if they even bother to notice because, contrary to the president’s assertion, conflicts often are revolved violently through the use of military force, and without regard to a lot of diplomatic chatter from “the international community.” The man with a gun in his hand generally only stops fighting when confronted with superior force, and there is nothing in Obama’s statement that indicates any effort by the U.S. in that direction.

So we’re sitting this one out, I guess. Turning our attention away from irrelevant noise, let’s talk about what matters, i.e., the war:

Former South Sudan Vice-President Riek Machar has said rebel troops have captured the key oil-producing state of Unity and control much of the country.
Mr Machar also confirmed to the BBC that the forces fighting the government were under his command.
The country has been in turmoil since President Salva Kiir accused Mr Machar a week ago of attempting a coup. . . .

(Which, of course, he was.)

Mr Machar, whose claim to control Unity could not be independently verified, told the BBC that a senior military commander, Gen James Koang, had gone over to the rebels earlier in the week.
However, government forces say Gen Koang defected alone and did not take any troops with him.
Unity, a state on the border with Sudan, produces much of South Sudan’s oil, which accounts for more than 95% of the country’s economy.
Mr Machar added that he was prepared to negotiate with the government if politicians arrested this week were released and transferred to a neutral country such as Ethiopia.
Mr Kiir also agreed to negotiations after meeting African mediators on Friday.
But government troops are currently trying to retake Bor, in one of the most volatile regions in the country.
Troops backed by helicopter gunships were advancing on the town, army spokesman Philip Aguer told AFP news agency.

More talk, talk, talk:

The African Union called on Saturday for an immediate ceasefire in South Sudan, where U.N. staff say hundreds of people have been killed in nearly a week of fighting.
In a statement, it described the killing of U.N. peacekeepers and civilians at a U.N. camp as a war crime.
Fighting that began on Sunday in the capital Juba has swiftly spread to other parts of the country, fuelled by ethnic divisions between the main Nuer and Dinka tribal groups.
The African Union said in a statement that its chairwoman, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma “calls for an immediate humanitarian truce for the Christmas season, as a sign of a commitment by all concerned to the well-being of the people of South Sudan”.

The New York Times provides background:

Like many conflicts in this tenuous nation, the fighting has taken on an ethnic dimension, human rights workers say. Mr. Machar, the former vice president removed over the summer when Mr. Kiir summarily dismissed his entire cabinet, is a Nuer. The president belongs to the majority Dinka ethnic group.
In the capital, South Sudanese forces have targeted members of the Nuer ethnic group, killing many and detaining others, including soldiers, lawmakers and students, rights workers and refuge seekers say.
But outside the capital, in Jonglei State, the reverse has occurred as well, with Nuer militiamen targeting Dinka, descending on United Nations compounds where thousands of civilians have fled for safety and carrying out attacks on oil facilities that have resulted in what the Security Council called “the heavy loss of life” among workers.
“We are deeply concerned that ethnically based attacks on all sides will lead to revenge attacks and more violence,” Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
Other observers have said that politics, not ethnicity, are driving the conflict.
“It is a power struggle,” said Zacharia Diing Akol, an analyst at the Sudd Institute in Juba. “Ethnicity is an afterthought.”

UPDATE: A young Heritage staffer works weekend:

 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Fred Reed Encounters Maureen Dowd; Demolition Ensues

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by Smitty

Reed mostly predates the blogging phenomenon. While this is not National Offend a Feminist Week, I think Stacy will permit our loyal readers a little taste of a first-rate spleen dump (emphasis mine):

Listen, Corn Flower. Let’s think over this business of obsolete men. Reflect. You live in New York, in which every building was designed and built by men. You perhaps use the subway, designed, built, and maintained by men. You travel at in a car, invented, designed, and built by men—a vehicle that you don’t understand (what is a cam lobe?) and couldn’t maintain (have you ever changed a tire? Could you even find the tires?), and you do this on roads designed, built, and maintained by men. You fly in aircraft designed, built, and maintained by men, which you do not understand (what, Moon Pie, is a high-bypass turbofan?)

In short, as you run from convention to convention, peeing on hydrants, you depend utterly on men to keep you fed (via tractors designed by men, guided by GPS invented, designed, and launched by men, on farms run by men), and comfy (air conditioning invented…but need I repeat myself?)

I do not want to be unjust. It is not in my nature. While men may be obsolete (unless you want to eat) I cannot say, Apple Cheeks, that feminists are obsolete. They are not. Obsoleteness implies having passed through a period of usefulness.

I do get tired of your hissing and fizzing about the noble sex to which I belong. Mercy, I cry. It is not my fault that Michael Douglas didn’t marry you. He didn’t marry me either, but I don’t hate men because of it. (In fact I am grateful to him, and doubtless he to me).

Read the whole righteous thing.

FMJRA 2.0: Painkiller

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— compiled by Wombat-socho

Family Values as a Math Problem

Rule 5 Monday

Is Phil Robertson Wrong?

Homophobia: Pathology or Tautology?

The #PajamaBoy Thing, Also: Bizarre Holiday Ad Targets Gays for ObamaCare

MSNBC OMFG: @ChrisLHayes and Guest @RichardKimNYC Talk About Butt Sex

You Stay Classy, LGF

Baseball Plans to Ban … Baseball?

America-Hating Commie Punk Wanted to Kill Librarian, Had Molotov Cocktails

18-Year-Old Beats, Rapes 85-Year-Old Nun Who Was ‘Advocate of Nonviolence’

Brett Kimberlin’s Conspiracy Theory and Other Recent Legal Proceedings

This Is Not News: Carl Herold and His ‘Domestic Partner’ Charles Dunnavant

LIVE AT FIVE: 12.19.13

World’s Youngest Blogger: Of Course #IStandWithPhil. Because #Obvious

If @PiersMorgan Hates America So Much, Why Won’t He Just Leave the Country?

Homegrown Jihadi Caught in Bomb Plot; GOP-Hating Kid Is School Shooter

‘Emerging Awareness’ Update: Remember the Texas Polygamy Teen Sex Cult?

Why Are Huffington Post’s ‘Gay Voices’ Columnists Fixated on Underage Sex?

Textbook by Bill Ayers ‘Required Reading’ for Freshmen at Marquette University

Obama’s Millionaire ‘Green’ Ambassador to Finland Mocks Critics in Holiday Card

FMJRA 2.0: Day Late & A Dollar Short

Thanks to the Reader Who Bought the LG Electronics 32-Inch LED TV from Amazon

The Atheist Creep Lawrence Krauss

A ‘Gay App’ for 12-Year-Olds, and Hey, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Patch: AOL’s Expensive Failure

In The Mailbox: 12.16.13

Russia Reverting to Totalitarianism?

EPA Climate-Change Expert Admits ‘Historic’ Fraud for $900,000

Reann Murphy, 9, Murdered in Ohio, Body Found Dumped in Trash Bin UPDATE: ‘Diminished Mental Capacity’

Alabama Tea Party Leader Compares ObamaCare to ‘Lord of the Rings’

LIVE AT FIVE: 12.17.13

‘Nobody Matters Less to Our Society Than Young Black Women. Nobody.’

It’s a @CharlieSheen Christmas, Bitch!

‘We’re Still Kinda Stunned’

Obama: Less Popular Than Syphilis

Haters Gonna Hate, Deniers Gonna Deny

LIVE AT FIVE: 12.18.13

Sen. McCain And Intellectual Integrity: Let His Carcass Caucus With Democrats

Hillary Clinton: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

Harvard Genius Caught in Stupid Hoax

After ObamaCare

Today’s Ray Of Hope

Thanks to the Reader Who Bought ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’ From Our Amazon Links!

Anarchy in Africa: U.S., U.K. Evacuate as South Sudan Spirals Out of Control UPDATE: Rebels Hit U.N. Mission

Quick #SouthSudan Update

#SouthSudan Update: Obama Urges Calm, Reconciliation, Sends Small U.S. Force

A Brett Kimberlin Christmas: Unexpected Gifts From My Fellow Defendants

Knife-Wielding Rape Suspect Says the Voices in His Head Were Rather Specific

Normally, I Don’t Support the Animal Rights Movement, However…

In The Mailbox: 12.20.13

Top linkers this week:

  1. Rick’s Rants (46)
  2. Batshit Crazy News (46, includes 14 EBL links)
  3. Dead Citizens Rights Society (34, includes 1 DeRP link)
  4. Regular Right Guy (16)
  5. A View From The Beach (7)
  6. Zion’s Trumpet (6)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! In order to save my wrists for the Extremely Important Rule 5 post, I am deprecating all links to a particular post from the same blog after the first. So, for example, you can link multiple posts here in the same post on your blog, and those are all good. However, doing a string of posts on your blog that all link the same post here at The Other McCain – even if it is the Rule 5 Sunday post – means that after the first one, the rest of the links won’t be counted in the weekly standings. Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA is noon on Saturday, December 28.


Shop Amazon – Free One-Day Shipping on Last Minute Gift Ideas

In Which @AceOfSpadesHQ Expresses an Unexpected Distaste for Blood

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Just in case you missed The Big Thing on Twitter, a P.R. person named Justine Sacco was about to depart for a holiday trip when she decided to share with her 100 or so Twitter followers this joke:

“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS.
Just kidding. I’m white!”

This is, as Ace of Spades pointed out, a familiar sort of ironic liberal hipster humor: Sacco was mocking white privilege, get it?

But then a funny thing happened, and by “funny,” of course I mean, sadistically cruel. About three hours later, Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed jumped on Sacco with this comment:

Kaczynski has more than 100,000 followers, and whatever controversy had previously attended Sacco’s joke turned into an uncontrollable firestorm. Then, evidently, BuzzFeed assigned a reporter to “report” on the conflagration that BuzzFeed had itself done so much to ignite. I mean, when you call something “the worst tweet of all of time” . . .

Without regard to the tastefulness of Sacco’s joke — which was, as I say, a liberal kind of joke — since when did “Let’s Get Somebody Fired for Christmas” become a popular sport?

Of course, there are those who have made the obvious and ironic point that Sacco works in the field of public relations and therefore should have known better than to go “edgy” with her online humor, but on the other hand, I kinda noticed Kaczynski is enthusiastic about “marriage equality,” and maybe this was about political ax-grinding: “How dare you joke about AIDS, you hetero woman!”

Maybe? Just throwing that out there, because we have been reminded in recent days that some varieties of special pleading are treated as a universal crusade for Social Justice: It’s not enough that gay people should be zealous for gay rights. Everyone must as zealous as GLAAD, or else you risk a diagnosis of homophobia.

Bullshit.

Anyway, for all I know, Andrew Kaczynski’s straight, but I’m sick of the expectation that We’re All Down for the Gay Agenda Now.

The larger point that Ace was making is, whence this unseemly gusto for destroying random nobodies on the Internet? And I’m sure maybe you think you catch a whiff of hypocrisy, because some of us don’t mind throwing a few elbows online.

Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, anyone?

But there was a rationale there. Ms. Passey had posted a preposterously egotistical self-description that began:

I am a very high-quality woman. I know that sounds arrogant, but let’s consider the facts . . .

That was 2006 and Ace’s reaction is still funny as hell today, which is an important point, the difference between:

  1. Making fun of somebody; and
  2. Trying to get somebody fired from their job.

And there was also the matter of equivalence: Ms. Passey was a blogger and Ace is a blogger, so this was one blogger using his own blog to criticize another blogger whereas by contrast, Andrew Kaczynski was wielding the BuzzFeed flamethrower against a lady with 100 Twitter followers because she made a dumb joke.

Twelve words! A joke on Twitter and, hey, let’s get her fired.

Have I been wantonly cruel to people online? Sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever barbecued somebody merely for 12 words on Twitter.

Most of my digital hate crimes have been aimed at feminists, which is so much fun because they never really expect it. By which I mean that my typical target is a 20-something Women’s Studies major who only recently escaped the campus cocoon and is employed in a workplace where the tenets of feminist ideology are just taken for granted. Kill babies because patriarchy!

Also (and maybe I’m the only one who’s noticed this) feminists are accustomed to having their cake and eating it, too. On the one hand, women are entirely equal to men in every way, but on the other hand, how dare you say mean things to a girl?

Feminism is not only a dangerous and misguided ideology, it’s also a scam, a hustle, a racket — a dishonest attempt to gain personal advantage by disguising selfishness as humanitarian philanthropy: Generating quota hires and professional sinecures for women from which they can never be fired, no matter how incompetent they are, because that would be sexist discrimination. And don’t you even dare talk back to these wicked little entitled monsters.

Heads, she wins. Tails, you’re a brutal misogynist.

When people begin declaring that it is immoral to disagree with them — which is what feminists mean when they hurl the epithet “sexist” at their critics — excuse me for thinking I hear, in the distance, the sound of hobnailed boots marching on broken glass.

Totalitarians nowadays speak the language of “fairness,” and these distaff brownshirts can expect no courtesy from me.

Sonny Bunch at Free Beacon rounded up some of the more bloodthirsty remarks aimed at Justine Sacco, none of which I endorse, unless someone could produce evidence that Justine Sacco supports Planned Parenthood, in which case, to hell with her — she should have her eyes jabbed out with rusty knives and rabid jackals should feast upon her bloated festering corpse.

Hahaha, just kidding — satire!

UPDATE: John Nolte at Breitbart:

Sacco is a young, professional, New York woman. Chances are about 99.9% that she’s a BuzzFeed-loving, Obama-voting, MSNBC addict.
Which leads to the most important question…
Why Sacco?
Why did BuzzFeed and others gin up a journalistic assassination squad to hit some nobody named Justine Sacco? . . .
Is this group now so addicted to the taste of bloody scalps that no one is safe — that any obscure citizen with only 174 Twitter followers can have their social media door broken into and lives ruined by the likes of BuzzFeed: Speech Detectives?
Or maybe it is something else.

It could be pointed out that Sacco was employed by IAC, the same company that owns The Daily Beast, which is sort of generally a competitor to BuzzFeed, which would provide an incentive. Or maybe somebody at BuzzFeed just hated Sacco for personal reasons. On the other hand, it may have been entirely random.

 


Bill Whittle Meets Black Sabbath

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by Smitty

Bill Whittle retains his restrained pose here during The End of the Beginning:
. . .which title is the same as the opening cut for the latest Black Sabbath record:

Is this the end of the beginning?
Or the beginning of the end?
Losing control or are you winning?
Is your life real or just pretend?

Reanimation of the sequence
Rewind the future to the past.
To find the source of the solution;
The system has to be recast.

The demolition of the entire American economy seems to be the goal of this Administration. What makes Black Sabbath an especially useful choice for a soundtrack is the sort of slow, plodding, methodical swath of acoustic destruction they bring.

“Methodical swath” is precisely how I’d characterize what Obama has achieved: he has blown money in the multi-trillion dollar range, and there has been seemingly nothing that could stop him. No amount of protest, parliamentary effort, elections, history, math, or common sense can do more than delay President Shiv-a Country.

It’s so bad, we have the spectacle of Paul Ryan serving up a total steamer of a budget with a toss of his head and a “Well, best we could do” attitude. Has there ever, ONCE, been a historical case of a spending cut occurring as planned in a future year? Because it’s as though Ryan is on board with “If you like your spending cut, you can keep your spending cut,” where ‘keep’ means ‘just keep pushing that noise into the future’.

What’s desperately needed is the leadership and the will to say “Enough” and articulate reform platform that says “The collapse has gone on for long enough; here is a new course.”

#SouthSudan 3 U.S. Troops Wounded as Rebels Fire on Transport Plane UPDATE: Four U.S. Casualties; Rebels Claim Overthrow of Oil Region Capital

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Damn. Just . . . damn.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Rebel fire hit two U.S. military aircraft responding to the outbreak in violence in South Sudan on Saturday, wounding three U.S. service members and heavily damaging at least one of the aircraft, officials said. …
The U.S. military aircraft were heading to Bor, the capital of the state of Jonglei and scene of some of the nation’s worst violence over the last week. One American service member was reported to be in critical condition. Officials said after the aircraft took incoming fire, they turned around and headed to Kampala, Uganda. From there the service members were flown on to Nairobi, Kenya for medical treatment, the officials said. . . .
It was not immediately known what the U.S. aircraft were doing in Bor. One official said it appeared the aircraft were Ospreys, the type of aircraft that can fly like a helicopter and a plane.
Officials at the U.S. military’s Africa Command did not immediately answer phone calls or emails on Saturday.
South Sudan’s military spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer, said that government troops are not in control of Bor, so the attack on the U.S. aircraft has to be blamed on renegade soldiers, he said.

Some of my Army son’s buddies from Fort Bragg may be in the middle of this nightmare, and it just horrifies me to think of the parents of these wounded soldiers being notified that their sons got shot because some idiot “rebel” in South Sudan decided to shoot at Americans who are only there to try to save lives.

Well, when it was announced Thursday that President Obama was sending 45 troops to South Sudan, my first comment was that I would have been more comfortable if he had sent 450. But maybe even 4,500 wouldn’t be enough, and maybe there’s no hope at all.

UPDATE: Reports from the U.S. Embassy in South Sudan:

Long story short, if there are U.S. personnel in Bor, they’re stuck there until the situation gets under control and, frankly, it looks like the situation is rapidly heading in the other direction.

UPDATE II: Sorting through the online reports:

The Associated Press reports:

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Gunfire hit a U.S. military aircraft trying to evacuate American citizens in a remote region of South Sudan that on Saturday became a battle ground between the country’s military and renegade troops, officials said. Four U.S. service members were wounded in the attack in the same region that gunfire downed a U.N. helicopter the day before.
The U.S. military aircraft was about to land in Bor, the capital of the state of Jonglei and scene of some of the nation’s worst violence over the last week, when it was hit. One American service member was reported to be in critical condition.
The U.S. military’s Africa Command said the aircraft was “participating in a mission to evacuate American citizens in Bor.” A South Sudan official said violence against civilians there has resulted in bodies “sprinkled all over town.” . . .
Two officials told The Associated Press that after the aircraft took incoming fire, they turned around and flew to Kampala, Uganda. From there the service members were flown to Nairobi, Kenya for medical treatment.

If these were V-22 Osprey, then the wounded troops are most likely Marines. Meanwhile, there is this troubling report:

The commander fourth division of South Sudan’s army in oil-producing Unity state has declared that he has deposed the governor and that his forces are no longer loyal to President Salva Kiir.
Speaking over state and private radio stations on Saturday morning Commander James Koang Chuol said he had overthrown Unity state’s acting governor, Joseph Nguen Monytuel, after he was involved in plot to assassinate him.
Koang said that the fourth division’s tank unit tried to kill him at around 7pm on Friday evening, after they were ordered to do so by governor Monytuel at the behest of senior members of the military in Juba.
Addressing the people of Unity state, Koang orderd, the state’s ministers to remain in their homes but called on civil servants to continue working as normal.
The fourth division commander said South Sudan’s president, vice president and the former caretaker governor of Unity state had fueled the fighting that has spread through the country since it began in the capital, Juba on 15 December.

Because that report comes from a Khartoum-based source, I’m taking it with a grain of salt. In a breaking news situation like this, first reports are always confused, and it’s impossible for me to tell if this is just anti-Kiir propaganda.

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