The Other McCain

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

The Great Conflation

Posted on | December 3, 2013 | 36 Comments

Just got through watching President Obama lying on TV, and the method of his dishonesty is what fascinates me. He (and other liberals) engage in a sort of rhetorical prestidigitation, whereby health insurance is conflated with health care. In other words, the Democrats would have you believe, if you don’t have insurance, you just get sick and die. But what they never mention is that most people are healthy, and the vast majority of Americans — whether healthy or sick — had health insurance before ObamaCare was enacted.

If you were part of the X-million who did not have health insurance (those numbers were always estimates, and there was serious disagreement about how many were in the supposedly pathetic legion of The Uninsured), that didn’t mean you were doomed to die a painful death without benefit of medical care.

Most people without health insurance were healthy young people. But by relentlessly hyping the allegedly widespread misery of The Uninsured, liberals  sought to justify a complex new federal regulatory apparatus that changed health insurance for everybody — including people who already had insurance with which they were satisfied.

The President therefore promised that everybody who already had insurance could keep it, and further promised that their rates would not go up as a result of the new law. But he lied.

Now, the President is attempting to convince us that everything is just hunky-dory. People who continue to oppose this law, the President would have us believe, are against health care — that is to say, he is conflating this legislation with health care per se, so that if you are against this particular law, you’re pro-cancer or something.

That’s right: Republicans want people to get sick and die, because illness and death are the only alternatives to the President’s policy.

And we all remember what life was like before ObamaCare: Everybody was either sick or dead, except greedy Republicans, who made lucrative profits from their investments in Death, Inc.

As I say, the method of his dishonesty is fascinating.

 

Category: Barack Obama, Health Care

The Left’s ObamaCare Desperation

Posted on | December 3, 2013 | 43 Comments

You know they’re desperate when they invoke “McCarthyism”:

When House Republicans unveiled a proposal in the fall aimed at avoiding a dead-end government shutdown over Obamacare, the conservative backlash was swift and brutal: they called it a surrender, a betrayal, an appeasement of the health care law they all abhor.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) decried it as “procedural chicanery” that would make House Republicans “complicit in the disaster that is Obamacare,” should they go along with it. FreedomWorks called it a “bait and switch to give the Senate a hall pass to fund Obamacare” and accused House GOP leaders of wanting to “cave and run.”
Since then the phenomenon has grown and taken hold in the 2014 primaries as Republicans accuse their opponents of privately harboring sympathies for Obamacare. . . .
In a way, the phenomenon is reminiscent of McCarthyism, named after Sen. Joe McCarthy, who in the 1950s accused U.S. government officials and others of secretly sympathizing with communism.

This is just crazy-talk which ignores the underlying political reality. Democrats rammed ObamaCare through Congress on a straight party-line vote in 2010, with Nancy Pelosi declaring “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” and, in the next election, Republicans scored a historic landslide victory. President Obama was re-elected last year in a campaign that basically ignored the new health-care legislation, which had not yet taken effect. When the policy did take effect, it was an unmitigated disaster — not merely because of the glitchy web site, but because millions of Americans had their policies canceled, contrary to what the president had repeatedly promised. Also, contrary to the promises made by Democrats, ObamaCare is causing health insurance rates to go up, not down.

The only people who really benefit from ObamaCare are those who did not previously have health insurance and are now going to get it free because of Medicaid expansion — but pretty much all of those people are from hard-core Democrat constituencies, whereas the key “swing voters” are the middle-class taxpayers getting cancellation notices or rate increases. And this is nothing like “McCarthyism.”

ObamaCare isn’t about some shadowy threat of foreign subversion, it’s about a bad domestic policy that is directly hurting the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans who are smart enough to realize that they’re getting the shaft because Democrats wanted to give away “free stuff” for which hardworking taxpayers will foot the bill.

As policy, this is bad for everybody. As politics, it’s bad for Democrats, and it’s only going to get worse. No wonder they’re desperate.

 


Category: Health Care

The Science Is Settled: Feminism Is Wrong

Posted on | December 3, 2013 | 36 Comments

Men and women are not the same:

By analyzing the MRIs of 949 people aged 8 to 22, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania found that male brains have more connections within each hemisphere, while female brains are more interconnected between hemispheres. . . .
By analyzing the subjects’ MRIs using diffusion imaging, the scientists explored the brains’ fiber pathways, the bundles of axons that act as highways routing information from one part of the mind to the other. After grouping the image by sex and inspecting the differences between the two aggregate “male” and “female” pictures, the researchers found that in men, fiber pathways run back and forth within each hemisphere, while in women they tend to zig-zag between the left, or “logical,” and right, or “creative,” sides of the brain. . . .

I’d quote more of the article, but it’s written by a woman and therefore cluttered up with a lot of silly irrelevant “creative” stuff.

This is something you learn to deal with as a news editor: It’s not that female writers can’t write straightforward just-the-facts journalism, but they tend to be better at feature-style writing — generally speaking, I hasten to add, because if you don’t add that qualifier, people will accuse you of stereotyping, which hurts women’s feelings, and we all know how they are about that, right? Anyway . . .

Contrary to the Archie Bunker stereotype of myself, I actually try to help female journalists and one way to help female journalists is to encourage them to WRITE MORE LIKE A MAN.

Ladies, don’t let yourself get trapped in the ghetto of “soft” journalism and, for God’s sake, avoid that awful Feminist Pundit racket.

There are women who get paid to be feminists. We call these people “Women’s Studies professors.” Writers who aspire to bring “the feminist perspective” to journalism are, without exception, tedious bores — and constantly angry. Why are they angry? Because their lives are miserable and their career opportunities are drastically curtailed by their self-selected niche. If all you ever wrote about was rape and abortion and income inequality, you’d probably be angry, too.

LADIES, DON’T DO THAT TO YOURSELVES!

Here’s a better role model for you: Christina Bellantoni, who just got named editor of Roll Call. Bellantoni was a Capitol Hill reporter for the Washington Times when I worked there, and never let herself get shoved off into the feature-writing ghetto. She does good work.

 

Category: Feminism, Journalism, Science

Ready for the Debt-Crisis Apocalypse?

Posted on | December 3, 2013 | 32 Comments

If you think doomsday preppers are crazy, you’re wrong:

Riots, massive unemployment, hyperinflation, savings accounts wiped out, financial markets in chaos — these are potential scenarios for America’s future, but exactly when and how the nation’s debt crisis will unravel is still a matter of speculation. Most economists doubt that the United States will soon experience the kind of catastrophic meltdown that struck Greece in recent years, but the U.S. national debt is now more than $17 trillion and growing, with no plans to pay it back. The national debt, which was about $11 trillion when President Obama took office, is now larger than America’s annual gross domestic product (GDP), and is expected to increase by about $700 billion in the next year.
Even though budget sequestration has slowed the rate of deficit spending, the federal government continues hemorrhaging red ink, and the national debt will be nearly $20 trillion by the time Obama leaves office in January 2017. America already has the ninth worst debt-to-GDP ratio in the world, and the piling up of unpaid debt cannot continue forever, says Murray Holland.
“The laws of economics are like the laws of physics — they can’t be changed by government action,” says Holland, a Texas business executive who has just published A Nation in the Red: The Government Debt Crisis and What We Can Do About It.
Attempts to defy the laws of economics have only made the nation’s fiscal problems worse, according to Holland. Even with White House forecasts that Murray considers “unrealistic” in their optimism — projecting annual economic growth rates at 5 percent or higher — the annual interest payments on the national debt would reach more than $1 trillion a year by 2022. Interest payments would then be the largest category in the federal budget, and that’s an optimistic scenario, which not only assumes robust economic growth, but also assumes that the government will continue to be able to borrow money at low interest rates. Both of those assumptions are almost certainly wrong, for reasons that Holland explains at length in A Nation in the Red. . . .

Please read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

 

 


Category: Economics

VIDEO: ‘ObamaCare … Just Doesn’t Work’

Posted on | December 3, 2013 | 34 Comments

Americans for Prosperity opened the 2014 campaign early, taking aim at vulnerable Democrats for their support of ObamaCare. This ad is aimed at North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan:

Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu is also targeted by the AFP ads, Politico reported when the ad campaign was announced in October:

Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, unveiled the Hagan ad at a press conference in Raleigh . . .
The organization devoted $1.7 million to North Carolina, and a little more than $500,000 to Louisiana, figures that reflect media market prices, Phillips said. Another $100,000 per state will be devoted to grassroots and social media efforts, he added.
“Both ads are unique, but the goal is the same: we want to make sure to hold both of these senators accountable over the long term for their votes that first passed Obamacare into law and now have upheld that law repeatedly,” he said.

AFP recently announced it was expanding its campaign to target Democrat Sen. Mark Begich as well as three vulnerable House incumbents, Democrat Reps. Patrick Murphy (FL-18), Joe Garcia (FL-26) and Ron Barber (AZ-2).

 


Category: Health Care

LIVE AT FIVESEVEN: 12.03.13

Posted on | December 3, 2013 | 9 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Kiev Protesters Gather At Parliament, Call For Revolution

Teenagers wave a Ukraine flag attached to an anti-police barricade near Parliament

Government braces for no-confidence vote


Biden Seeks To Soothe Anxious Japan
Reassuring Japanese leaders the US has their back in spat with PRC over Senkaku islands

Detroit Braces For Bankruptcy Ruling
Judge to rule today on whether Motor City can enter bankruptcy



POLITICS
Common Core Supporters To Obama Administration: Stop Helping

Education Secretary Arne Duncan: Why does he hate white women?

Administration’s cheerleading causing a backlash

Pentagon Floats Plan To Close CONUS Commissaries

Lawmakers Accuse FBI, IRS Of Stonewalling Inquiries Into Targeting Of Conservative Groups

Insurers Say Obamacare Site Producing Flawed Data

First Deadline Missed In Effort To Avoid January Shutdown

Administration Spends $600 Million On Rail Projects To Benefit Favored Companies

Plouffe Claims People Trust Obama, Despite The Polls

Conservative Group Hits Sen. Landrieu With Ad On Judicial Nominations

Supremes Won’t Stop New York’s Internet Tax



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Oil Continues Rising On Strong Manufacturing Data: NYMEX $94.15, Brent $111.46
Cyber Monday Sales Soar To Record
Wall Street Ends Lower As Mining Companies Slump
Global Shares Jittery Over US Stimulus
Hilton Could Raise Up To $2.4B In IPO
Mariano’s Owner Roundy’s Buys 11 Dominick’s Stores, Expands Presence In Chicago
Apple Buys Social Media Analysis Firm Topsy
Facebook Tweaks News Feed For More “High Quality” Content
Sony Says PS4 Global Sales Top 2.1 Million
FTC Signs Off On Nokia/Microsoft Deal
HP’s New Android Slate Tablets Sneak Onto Market Just After Curfew



SPORTS
Seahawks Serve Notice: Road To Super Bowl Goes Through CenturyLink

Seahawks QB Russell Wilson fuddles the Saints defense again

Seattle crushes New Orleans 34-7

A’s Trade For O’s Closer Johnson, Sign Pitcher Scott Kazmir

USC Reboots With Coach Sarkisian

Williams Lifts Jazz Past Rockets, 109-103

Jokinen Scores Twice In Third As Jets Whack Rangers 5-2

Blazers Cool Off Pacers, 106-102

Galcheniuk Breaks Tie, Habs Edge Devils 3-2

Pirates Sign Backup Catcher Chris Stewart From Yankees

Wild Wins It In A Minute, Blanks Flyers 2-0

Pelicans Beat Bulls In Triple OT

Kings Defense Hangs Tough In 3-2 Win Over Blues

#12 Connecticut Beats #15 Florida On Napier’s Buzzer-Beater

Nats Send Lombardozzi, Krol and Prospect Robbie Ray To Tigers For Doug Fister



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Amy Adams: I’m Not Getting Married Any Time Soon

Also, not pregnant

The December VF covergirl speaks

Was Paul Walker Street Racing Before Fatal Crash?

“Fifty Shades Of Grey” Adds Musician Rita Ora As Christian Grey’s Sister

George Clooney Says He Hasn’t Met The Love Of His Life Yet, Gets Dotty For W

Charlie Sheen Dating Porn Stars Again?

Joe Jonas Tells All


Josh Brolin/Diane Lane Divorce Final

Bad Ass Aniston! Jennifer Plots Edgy Makeover

NBC Adapting “The Wolfman” As A Series

100 Sandwiches Away From An Engagement Ring

Chris Hemsworth Flees Flash Floods On Movie Set

Maestro Opines On Unspeakable Armenian’s Selfies

Tommy Mottola, Thalia Renew Vows

Keanu Reeves’ Intimate Thanksgiving For Two

Manuscript About Posh Kindergartens Making The Rounds



FOREIGNERS
Nork Leader’s Power Broker Uncle Sacked
OECD Report Finds Australian Children Falling Behind
India #94 On Corruption Index; Afghanistan, Norks, Somalia Most Corrupt
Yanukovich Turns His Back On Kiev Turmoil, Heads For PRC
UN Names Bashar Al-Assad In War Crimes
Bangkok Police Remove Barriers To Reduce Tensions
New Pakistani Taliban Chief Returns Home To Lead Insurgency
Kurdistan PM Says Final Details Of Turkey Energy Deal Agreed
NATO: Karzai Failure To Sign Pact Means End Of Afghan Mission



BLOGS & STUFF
K-Bob’s Labor Of Love: Article Five Process
Proof Positive: Won’t Get Fooled Again and Quiptoon Du Jour
Dead Republican Party: What Obama Thinks Of Your Suffering And Hardship
Doug Powers: Trading Places – Obama Tries To Get Into Online Sales While Amazon Announces Package Delivery By Drone
Twitchy: “House” Actor Hugh Laurie Vividly Describes Obama’s Struggle With Affordable Care
American Thinker: Catholics And Communists
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: This Wacky Week, Fried Food Edition
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – OBAMA DID IT! WOOOOO!
Jammie Wearing Fools: Bloomberg Remained On Golf Course For Hours After Derailment
Pat Dollard: Glenn Back Destroys Progressive Republicans On Hannity
Protein Wisdom: A Pointed – Almost Rhetorical – Question From The Vilified Senate Conservatives Fund
Shot In The Dark: Can You Keep A Meaty-Smelling Secret?
The Jawa Report: Red On Red In Palestinian “Refugee Camp”
The Lonely Conservative: Justice Department Still Working To Keep Kids In Failing Schools
Megan McArdle: Obamacare’s New Goal – Stay Alive Until 2015


Category: Live at Five

One Week Until Bill Schmalfeldt’s Next Carroll County Circuit Court Hearing

Posted on | December 2, 2013 | 21 Comments

The day before Thanksgiving Day, I asked a simple question:

Why does it seem that the targets of Bill Schmalfeldt’s harassment overlap Brett Kimberlin’s enemies list with such exactitude?

It was Schmalfeldt’s harassment of the person he believes to be “Kimberlin Unmasked” that prompted that question, and “Kimberlin Unmasked” has continued the comic series “Oedipal Bill”:

Schmalfeldt paid little or no attention to “Kimberlin Unmasked” until Brett Kimberlin filed the Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., lawsuit, and it was amusing to watch Brett Kimberlin in court last week trying to explain his failure respond to an attorney’s motion asserting that Maryland courts have no jurisdiction over “Kimberlin Unmasked.”

Of course, Schmalfeldt has been convinced by his Team Kimberlin colleagues that not only is this Maryland lawsuit a shining example of legal brilliance, but that the federal RICO suit known as Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al., is destined to succeed. Meanwhile . . .

In Carroll County next Monday, Dec. 9, there will be a hearing on John Hoge’s petition for a six-month extension on his peace order against Bill Schmalfeldt. To say that Schmalfeldt has been making an ass of himself is an understatement: He posted a video of himself tearing up a court document in the case, posted pornographic photos onto which he had superimposed Hoge’s face and, as of 7 p.m. today, had sent 468 @ messages to Hoge on Twitter since Oct. 16, in violation of the peace order the judge granted in June.

Despite all facts, law and logic, however, Schmalfeldt continues boasting on Twitter about what dreadful humiliation and punishment he expects to inflict on Hoge in court next Monday, and seems to imagine that our amusement at his antics is un-Christian.

Saint Bill of the Blessed Butt Stuff is certainly a paragon of Christian moral virtue, as I’m sure Lee Stranahan’s family would agree.




 

 


Category: Bill Schmalfeldt, The Kimberlin Files

Slaves of the Progressive Cause

Posted on | December 2, 2013 | 43 Comments

Liberals are stupid. We know this. Samuel Johnson knew this, too:

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

If you’re smart, you can figure out how to get paid to write. If you’re stupid, you’ll be a liberal journalism intern like Charles Davis:

I was 21 years old when I took out my earring, combed my hair, and tried concealing my distaste for power and Washington, DC, in order to ask questions at press conferences. It was the summer of 2006, and I had just left college to work for a small, do-gooding nonprofit that covered Capitol Hill for public radio. . . .
What I did looked and felt like an entry-level job in the media. And I enjoyed it—I liked going up to any old white guy in a suit and asking him to explain in his own words why he’s destroying the country. I felt as if I had sort of made it, as much as an English major can. I wasn’t living at home, I got to carry a microphone, and my work was broadcast over the radio. To an outsider looking in, I almost looked like a respectable person.
The problem was I wasn’t being compensated for any of that work or my veneer of respectability. What I did every day might have appeared to be a job, but I was labeled an “intern,” meaning I got paid in experience and networking opportunities, not anything tangible. I made rent by taking a part-time job serving mediocre Mexican food across from the National Press Club . . . Periodic calls to Mommy and Daddy also helped. That was what was expected of me — I’m part of a generation conditioned to believe that if you just work for free hard enough and long enough, you can become president some day.
I was fortunate, all things considered. My labor was being exploited by a boss who took in $100,000 a year, but I was privileged enough that I could afford the exploitation for a few months, sort of. I had parents who could kick me some cash every now and then with only moderate-to-severe grief. And it hadn’t yet hit me that I had to pay back all those student loans.

Charles Davis — who now describes himself as “a writer and producer in Los Angeles” — may no longer write for free, but he is still a liberal, which means he is still stupid enough to think that the people who get paid to do what he did for free actually believe in the “idealistic” egalitarian goals that they espouse:

Paying people little to nothing because you can — a practice aided by the awfulness of the job market and the desperation of people trying to make it in “glamour” industries like journalism — is both exploitive and discriminatory, but many good liberals do not appear to recognize it as such, even as they decry that behavior elsewhere. . . .

(Uh, journalism is a “glamour” industry? Says who?)

Robert Reich served as labor secretary under Bill Clinton and is outspoken in his support for a living wage. . . .
His political advocacy group, Common Cause, is only one of the organizations he has a hand in that relies on free or near-free labor. In a recent listing, The American Prospect, a magazine founded by Reich and other veterans of the Clinton administration, announced it was looking for editorial interns to assist “with fact-checking and research.” The interns will be “encouraged to contribute editorially and participate in meetings in addition to pursuing their own projects.”
Sounds good, but, “This is a full-time internship and comes with a $100 weekly stipend,” according to the listing. That comes to about $2.50 an hour, or “not nothing” if you are a glass-half-full type. . . .

(Show of hands: Who would want to work for an organization founded by Robert Reich “and other veterans of the Clinton administration” at any price? Oh, look — nobody with a lick of sense raised their hand. Guess that’s why morons do it for free.)

The fellowship offered by Mother Jones is neither an internship nor an entry-level job . . . but the compensation could fool you: “Fellows receive a $1,000 monthly stipend.” Assuming a 40-hour workweek (many journalists work much longer hours than that), that means a fellow at Mother Jones earns less than $6 an hour in a state, California, that just decided to raise the minimum wage to $10. In San Francisco, where the magazine is based, $1,000 a month isn’t enough to pay for both food and shelter. . . .
After six months . . . a fellowship at Mother Jones can be extended the rest of the year at a rate of $1,400 a month. . . .
[T]he names at the top of the masthead are very comfortable. Editors Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery each make more than $167,000 a year, while chief operating officer Madeleine Buckingham makes $159,000.

(So the top three names on the masthead divvy up $493,000 between them. Multiply $1,400 a month times 12 and the annual salary of a Mother Jones “fellow” is $16,800, so that the combined salary of the top three Mother Jones honchos is equivalent to the annual salaries of 29.3 “fellows.” Nice work, if you can get it.)

But at the liberal online news magazine Salon, internships are not for those just starting out.
“Some professional experience is required,” says a listing for an editorial internship at Salon. If you get that job, you’ll be helping “research, report, write and produce our news and culture coverage,” which sounds a lot like a job. The position, based in New York City, is unpaid.
Though it does not pay its professionally experienced interns a dime, Salon (which has published my work in the past) has had the chutzpah to run a number of stories on the plight of unpaid workers, such as, “‘Intern Nation’: Are We Exploiting a Generation of Workers?” and “Unpaid and Sexually Harassed: The Latest Intern Injustice.” The company did not respond to a request for comment.

(The saddest part about this? Although it doesn’t pay its interns a red cent, Salon has still managed to lose millions of dollars a year, every year, since the days of 56K-baud dial-up modems. But, hey, stupid liberals get the “glamour” of working for nothing at a money-losing lefty blog whose star writer is Joan Walsh, so there’s that.)

The New Republic is another liberal outlet with a problematic labor record. Owned by a co-founder of Facebook worth more than $600 million, the magazine is currently hiring interns . . . Previous experience in journalism is “preferred, but not imperative.”
TNR used to advertise that its internships “are full-time, unpaid, and based in the DC office,” but that language was removed soon after the magazine became aware of this story. . . .

(Dishonest liberals trying to hide the truth? I’m shocked!)

TNR has the money to pay interns but doesn’t, likely because there is an established culture in the media world that treats working for free as the cost of admission. And when everyone else is doing it, why not? And so Harper’s is looking for interns to “work on a full-time, unpaid basis for three to five months” . . . and the Washington Monthly, which claims to be “thriving” thanks to “generous long-term support from foundations and donors,” is offering internships that are “unpaid and can be either part-time or full-time.” . . .

(And now, ladies and gentlemen, the call to action.)

So here’s a challenge to the liberal media: If you are in favor of a living wage and oppose discrimination against the poor, let’s see that reflected in your newsrooms, not just on your blogs. . . .It also just sets a bad example. If the bleeding hearts aren’t ashamed enough to pay their workers, why should anyone?

Charles, I’d like to give you some advice on how to stop being a complete chump, but the “About” page on your blog doesn’t list an e-mail address or a Twitter account. And so if somebody actually wanted to hire you, how would they get in touch with you? (Don’t worry, I just looked you up on Twitter.)

Also, there is no commercial nexus on your blog — no ads, no PayPal, no Amazon — and thus no way for you to make money from what you publish yourself, so that you are in effect paying yourself nothing for your own work, as if it were entirely worthless.

By contrast, as a shameless capitalist blogger, I’m going to suggest readers shop for fabulous savings at Amazon (from which I receive a small commission) and also include a PayPal “donate” button, so readers can pay me for the pleasure of mocking your stupidity.





 

This lesson will perhaps be more valuable to you, Charles Davis, than anything you learned via your internships. You’re welcome.

 

Category: Journalism, Liberals
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