The Other McCain

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

‘We Need Reinforcements’

Posted on | July 7, 2013 | 38 Comments

Robert E. Lee once famously paid tribute to the fighting ability of Texans: “I rely on Texas regiments in all tight places, and fear I have to call upon them too often. They have fought grandly, nobly.” During the Battle of the Wilderness, when it seemed the Confederate line could not hold, Lee rode his horse into the midst of the fighting to rally his troops. His soldiers urged him to go back, but Lee would not leave until reinforcements arrived. Learning that the fresh troops were from Texas, the general declared: “Texans always move them!” And so they did.

It was therefore somewhat confusing to learn last week that, in the fight to save innocent unborn lives in Texas, the forces of evil were so numerous and vocal as to discourage Christians:

The battle over the bill has attracted nationwide attention to Austin. During confrontations between supporters and opponents of the legislation at the state capitol last week, a group of anti-abortion protesters began singing the Christian hymn “Amazing Grace.” They were heckled by pro-abortion activists who chanted “Hail, Satan.” It was reported last week that a group called Grassroots Campaigns was offering to pay abortion supporters between $1,300 and $2,200 a month to participate in “our Pro Choice Campaign in Austin.”
One abortion opponent said he was exhausted by the “spiritual warfare” over the abortion bill.
“I have never seen the left do more spiritual warfare than I have so far this week,” Thomas Umstattd Jr. wrote at his blog. “Those of us who have been at the Capitol are worn out. I am weary to my bones. We need reinforcements.”

Will pro-life reinforcements turn out Monday at the Capitol? The reputation and honor of Texas is at stake in this spiritual warfare.

 

Category: Abortion, Texas

The World’s Youngest Blogger Gets His Vanilla Shake On

Posted on | July 7, 2013 | 14 Comments

Category: World's Youngest Blogger

Maryland Democrat Leads Key Group: Criminal Perverts for Martin O’Malley

Posted on | July 7, 2013 | 70 Comments

Scott Markle is registered as a Democrat and as a sex offender.

“A Carroll County man faces up to 20 years in federal prison after being charged with possession of child pornography. 51 year old Scott Wade Markle made a brief appearance Friday in Carroll County District Court on a separate charge of failing to notify authorities of a change of address. That’s because Markle is already on Maryland’s Sex Offender Registry.”
— WBBF-TV, Baltimore

Not all Maryland Democrats are criminal perverts, but child pornography enthusiast Scott Markle is trying his darnedest:

Since 2005, Markle has given state political contributions to Martin O’Malley, Sue Hecht, Ann Darin, Frank Rammes, the Carroll County Democratic Central Committee, and the Democratic State Central Committee of Maryland. He also gave in 2008 to a federal account belonging to the Democratic State Central Committee. Online filing information on fec.gov shows that he listed his employer as Warnken, LLC. That is the law firm of law professor, and Democratic Party donor, Byron Warnken. In 2009, Markle was called as a witness for a plaintiff who was suing Warnken. The case was dismissed. The online case search information lacks any details of the circumstances surrounding that suit and I won’t speculate. Markle’s LinkedIn profile shows him as a legal assistant at Warnken LLC but that profile doesn’t appear to be active. The July 2012 contribution to the State Central Committee lists Markle as an employee at Catoctin Counseling Center and a 2012 profile in the Baltimore Sun on the remodeling of the Markle-Courpas home in Westminster says that he is an administrator at their Westminster office. Among other services, Catoctin provides counseling services for children and adolescents.

What kind of “counseling” would Markle — convicted of federal child pornography charges in 2005 — give to “children and adolescents”?

VOTE DEMOCRAT AND DROP YOUR PANTS

To sum things up, Scott Markle and his wife Corynne Courpas are long-time Democratic party activists in Carroll County. They’ve attended five national conventions together and both served on the county central committee. Markle has also served multiple terms as an officer of the county’s Democratic Club. They’ve both donated to Democratic candidates for the past few cycles, including Martin O’Malley.

Markle’s enthusiasm for dirty pictures of kids apparently wasn’t cured by his previous conviction, so it looks like he’ll be going back to the place where Maryland Democrats belong: Federal prison.

 

Category: Crime, Democrats, Maryland

Is John Kerry’s Yacht Named ‘Failure’?

Posted on | July 7, 2013 | 44 Comments

Things are going badly in Egypt, although it’s hard to say just how bad they’re going. The latest trouble sign:

[The office of interim President Adly Mansour] said pro-reform leader Mohamed ElBaradei had been named as interim prime minister but later backtracked on the decision saying consultations were continuing. A politician close to ElBaradei said the reversal was due to objections by an ultraconservative Islamist party with which the new administration wants to cooperate.

So, the liberal ElBaradei is unacceptable, but an “ultraconservative Islamist party” is OK — in fact, the Islamists get to veto the liberal?

When it was believed that ElBaradei had been appointed as interim prime minister, a Muslim Brotherood member said:

[El-Baradei’s] enthusiastic support for the military coup and arrests of our leaders has shown that he does not really believe in democracy… This appointment and the military coup that brought him to power will take Egypt back to the Mubarak era.

Exactly what was so bad about “the Mubarak era”? Never mind: The Muslim Brotherhood hated Mubarak, and they had their chance to run the show during Morsi’s government, and the fact that implementing sharia law isn’t really good for the economy or anything else . . .

Well, never mind any of that, you see. BLAME THE JEWS!

If Egypt goes from bad to worse — and what are the odds, eh? — no one can blame John Kerry, although he courageously stands ready to take credit if somehow things turn out all right:

“Over the days since the unrest in Egypt intensified, Secretary Kerry has been in constant contact with the national security team, regional partners, and his counterparts. In addition to participating in a secure call with the National Security Council today to review the very fluid situation in Egypt, he has been in hourly touch with Ambassador Patterson and in the last two days he has also spoken with Mohamed Elbaradei, Qatari Foreign Minister al-Attiyah, Omani Sultan Qaboos, Emirati Foreign Minister bin Zayed, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu.”

Excellent cell-phone reception off the coast of Nantucket, I’m told.

In case you’ve been busy this week and missed all the Egyptian drama, Gene Hackett has a thorough summary at ViralRead.

 


Category: Egypt

When Did Failing Upward Become An American Tradition?

Posted on | July 7, 2013 | 17 Comments

by Smitty

Heritage reports that (presumably blue) cities and states will be dumping employee healthcare costs onto the federal health care exchanges:

Both Chicago and Detroit have explored using the exchanges to reduce massive budget shortfalls, and it could set an example for others. Bloomberg quotes one expert from the Rockefeller Institute of Government: “We can expect other cities to pick up on this.… I expect [employee dumping] to mushroom.”
The incentives for cities—or even states—to dump their workers onto exchanges are significant. Bloomberg notes that reducing retiree health costs could save Detroit approximately $150 million per year—at a time when the city faces a $386 million budget deficit and $17 billion in long-term debt.

Read the whole thing.

Unless these shell games result in improved health and thus lower costs (doubtful), it’s not clear how just deciding those costs are not part of a city or state’s budget actually obviates those costs.

Here is a real opportunity for the GOP to rebuke “the reality-based party” by pointing out to voters that going on a permanent bender is not exactly reality, and last only until the credit card melts.

Category: Democrats, Health Care

The Dishonest Liar From Phonyville

Posted on | July 6, 2013 | 62 Comments

Was there ever a time that honest people did not despise John Kerry? He first came to public attention more than 40 years ago, lying about his service in Vietnam, and he has been lying about everything — every single thing — ever since. So this headline kinda set me off:

Experts: John Kerry’s credibility
could sink with boat flap


John Kerry got away with his lying for years simply because he was a member of Congress from Massachusetts, a state that hasn’t elected an honest politician in half a century or more. Most states send their criminals to prison. Massachusetts sends theirs to the Senate.

Years of experience in dishonesty are, of course, quite valuable in the office of Secretary of State, where Kerry’s predecessor wasn’t exactly an exemplar of integrity, and so the question is: Is it possible that a liar as skilled as John Kerry is overqualified for this gig?

 

Category: Democrats

On Another Plane, Everyone Is High-Fiving George Orwell Over Affirmative Action

Posted on | July 6, 2013 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

Legal Insurrection points to the abject farce of Affirmative action. First, the Daily Caller:

This fall, the Supreme Court faces an even bigger test of its determination to support equality when it hears Schuette v. Michigan Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, a case challenging the right of a state (in this case, Michigan) to pass a constitutional ban on race preferences, or affirmative action, in its public institutions.

Professor Jacobson summarizes:

That’s right folks, the Supreme Court will decide whether prohibiting racism is, in effect, racist.
I have bemoaned the pernicious effects of race-based preferences here many times. The Schuette case demonstrates how the racial preference industry has turned everything on its head.
To be non-racist will get you accused of being racist.

Let this be a further lesson, as if one were needed: homo bureaucratus in general, and the Raaaaacism Industrial Complex in particular, are going to cling bitterly to their parasitic grip on phoney-baloney jobs. In defense of these cretins, it beats finding real work.

Just note their imperviousness to common sense, and willingness to argue that “up is the new down” rather than confess the vacuousness of their existence. After all, Affirmative Action is an importan vote-buying scheme. Why would anyone sacrifice power, even if dirty?

Orwell, you nailed it, buddy.

Category: Michigan, Racism

Are We Paranoid Enough Yet? FEMA’s Russia ‘Protocols’ Raise Serious Questions

Posted on | July 6, 2013 | 92 Comments

Oct. 8, 2012: Russia’s EMERCOM Minister Vladimir Puchkov (left)
and U.S. Deputy Administrator for National Preparedness and Protection,
Timothy Manning, sign the protocol of a bilateral meeting in Vladivostok, Russia.

Have FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security signed a deal that would permit as many as 15,000 Russian troops to be deployed in the United States to deal with an unspecified emergency?

This was not a question that I expected to be researching when I woke up today and decided to get back in the groove as Editor in Chief at ViralRead after the Fourth of July holiday. But then I checked the site stats and found that the top story and the top referrer were these items:

Obama’s DHS Requests 15,000 Russian Troops
— Lisa Jennings, ViralRead

What’s With The 15,000 Russian
Troops Requested By DHS?
— The Lonely Conservative

Well, well — what’s up with that, indeed? The most obvious explanations would seem to be either:

• One of our writers has bought into a fringe conspiracy theory;
or
• It’s time to start stockpiling ammo and freeze-dried food, before the black helicopters show up to take us to FEMA camps.

This required me to do some research, because if either of these explanations is true, there’s a problem. The credibility of ViralRead could be jeopardized if there’s nothing to a story like this, but if there is something to the story, why isn’t it being covered by mainstream news organizations? And, after doing some research, I found out that this is exactly the problem: While I cannot say for sure you shouldn’t be stockpiling ammo, neither can I cite any official source on the content of these U.S.-Russia emergency agreements, and the regular media don’t seem to have paid any attention at all to these agreements.

Let’s start with what we can learn from official sources, which frankly isn’t much. From the FEMA site, Oct. 25, 2012:

Deputy Administrator leads U.S. delegation
to annual meeting with Russia
By Jess Bratton, International Affairs Division
FEMA’s Deputy Administrator led an interagency delegation to Vladivostok, Russia, for the third annual meeting of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Working Group on Emergency Situations and the 16th annual meeting of the Joint U.S.-Russia Committee on Cooperation in Emergency Management, Oct. 8.
Presentations were made by members of both delegations on subjects including cooperation in the forecasting and monitoring of natural hazards, the production of a Russian documentary on volunteer firefighting in the United States, exchanges and cooperation between institutions of higher education preparing students for careers in Emergency Management, and the provision of psychological support to disaster survivors.
The meetings concluded with Deputy Administrator Manning and EMERCOM Minister Vladimir Puchkov formally signing a protocol of the meeting and adopting the 2012-2014 joint work plan that detailed plans for conducting a host of cooperative activities and exchanges.
FEMA led delegation participated in the sixth meeting of the Senior Disaster Management Officials Forum of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum hosted by EMERCOM of Russia and was attended by delegations of the 21 member economies and other international organizations, Oct. 9-10. The forum concluded with an agreement to explore mechanisms for enhanced exchange of information among the emergency managers for the member economies; collaboration on monitoring and forecasting of natural hazards; strengthening the resiliency of supply chains in the region; promoting business continuity of operations; and disaster risk reduction in the Asia-Pacific region.

Thanks for that vague and bland report, Jess Bratton. (Question: What is Jess Bratton’s salary? What sort of educational requirements are necessary to get a job cranking out dull press releases like this for the FEMA Web site?) The problem here is that we have Jess Bratton’s report summarizing this Vladivostok meeting, including the news off Manning and Puchkov “formally signing a protocol,” but we do not have the text of the actually protocol itself.

Hey, Jess Bratton: Do you know how to upload a PDF document? Or is that kind of stuff above your pay-grade?

We might call this “pseudo-transparency”: The U.S.-Russia emergency preparedness meetings are not secret, but neither does the administration go out of its way to make widely available to the public the official business transacted therein. We get a bland press-release summary, but we don’t get the official document, and this not-exactly-transparent process provides the basis of suspicion.

Next official source is a press release by the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters, June 26, 2013:

Several documents signed during joint work
of Russian Emergency Ministry and FEMA
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and the USA Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are going to exchange experts during joint rescue operations in major disasters. This is provided by a protocol of the fourth meeting of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Working Group on Emergency Situations and seventeenth meeting of Joint U.S.-Russia Cooperation Committee on Emergency Situations, which took place in Washington on 25 June.
The document provides for expert cooperation in disaster response operations and to study the latest practices.
In addition, the parties approved of U.S.-Russian cooperation in this field in 2013-2014, which envisages exchange of experience including in monitoring and forecasting emergency situations, training of rescuers, development of mine-rescuing and provision of security at mass events.
At the end of the meeting the parties expressed their satisfaction with the level of cooperation between the Russian Federation and the United States in the area of emergency prevention and response and agreed to develop it in order to respond efficiently to all kinds of disasters.

Here, so far as I can tell, the “official sources” trail goes cold, because apparently Jess Bratton was on vacation or something and the FEMA Web site doesn’t say a word about this meeting. Go search their site.

From the Russian source, we have news of yet another “protocol” agreement that involves “exchang[ing] experts during joint rescue operations in major disasters” and “U.S.-Russian cooperation . . . in 2013-2014” to include “provision of security at mass events.”

Not a word in there about 15,000 Russian troops, though.

Where did that come from? So far as I can tell (and this is linked in Lisa Jennings’ ViralRead article) the earliest mention of this is at a site called the European Union Times on June 27:

An unsettling report prepared by the Emergencies Ministry (EMERCOM) circulating in the Kremlin today on the just completed talks between Russia and the United States in Washington D.C. says that the Obama regime has requested at least 15,000 Russian troops trained in disaster relief and “crowd functions” [i.e. riot control] be pre-positioned to respond to FEMA Region III during an unspecified “upcoming” disaster.
According to this report, this unprecedented request was made directly to Minister Vladimir Puchkov by US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Director Janet Napolitano who said these Russian troops would work “directly and jointly” with her Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), part of whose mission is to secure the continuity of the US government in the event of natural disasters or war. . . .

That article is bullshit, so far as I can tell. It links to a seemingly legitimate Russian news site’s report about the U.S.-Russian meeting, but that article says nothing at all about a report “circulating in the Kremlin” or Janet Napolitano requesting 15,000 Russian troops.  The EU Times (bullshit) article also says this:

FEMA Region III, the area Russian troops are being requested for, includes Washington D.C. and the surrounding States of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, “strongly suggesting” that the Obama regime has lost confidence in its own military being able to secure its survival should it be called upon to do so.

We have zero official sources for this, and good luck finding any mainstream news organization — Associated Press, Washington Post, Reuters, etc. — that has even taken notice of the June 25 U.S.-Russian meeting which (a) we know actually happened, based on a statement from the Russian agency, but which (b) apparently wasn’t considered important enough to merit a press release from FEMA.

By the way, how can I be so sure this EU Times story is bullshit? Because if you keep reading, it goes off into a bunch of paranoid stuff about Edward Snowden and Michael Hastings, a problem that I tried to warn people about weeks ago (see “Hope, Fear and Michael Hastings,” The American Spectator, June 21).

You’ve got emotionally disturbed hysterics like Glenn Greenwald deliberately stoking the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of paranoia — and being treated like serious journalists for so doing — yet it is impossible to say that any particular far-fetched fear is unfounded, because what we were promised would be “the most transparent administration in history” is in fact so opaque that everything they do looks like a conspiratorial cover-up.

(Incidentally, the White House press office still has not replied to my requests for information about the Benghazi attack.)

Fear and Loathing have become so pervasive, as I noted last week, that some people are starting to take Barrett Brown seriously. In this kind of paranoid environment, it becomes difficult for people to distinguish real threats from imaginary dangers. If a Web site says Janet Napolitano has requested 15,000 Russian troops to defend the D.C. region because “the Obama regime has lost confidence in its own military being able to secure its survival” — well, yeah, it sounds crazy, but how do we know it’s not actually true? Crazier things happen every day in the Obama Age.

Look, let me connect the dots here: Serious people in the world of national security suspect that the whole Benghazi charade — Susan Rice and the YouTube video cover story — was intended to conceal the ugly truth about what the U.S. did to help overthrow Gaddhafi.

There are reasons to believe that the State Department set up its own independent operation to provide U.S. arms to Libyan “rebels,” some of whom turned out to be al-Qaeda-connected Islamic extremists. It is suspected that the CIA was operating out of the Benghazi consulate in an effort either to get these weapons back, or else “neutralize” the jihadis whom the U.S. had armed. Basically, the CIA was trying to help the State Department cover its ass, and instead the terrorists decided to strike first — a knockout blow against the U.S. presence in Benghazi, crippling the attempt to disarm the “rebels.”

A lot of that is conjecture, but as I say, there are Serious People who suspect this is the true story behind the Benghazi attack and subsequent cover-up, which is otherwise utterly inexplicable. When you have an administration as shady as this one, it is not at all surprising to find that paranoia flourishes. Meanwhile . . .

Wherever the tale of Janet Napolitano and the 15,000 Russian soldiers originated, it soon started circulating around the Internet and by July 1 showed up at Alex Jones’ InfoWars site with the headline, “Russian Forces to Provide ‘Security’ At US Events.” That article didn’t mention the 15,000 number, but it apparently caused enough of a stir that FEMA actually was forced to deny it:

The top US emergency response agency moved to quell a flurry of Internet-driven speculation this week that Russian security teams could be deployed at large public events in the United States, saying the two countries will not swap security guards or soldiers under a long-running partnership agreement.
There will be “no exchange of security or military personnel” under a recently renewed partnership between the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry, a FEMA spokesman told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
“The agreement continues information-sharing meetings and observation opportunities with first responders and emergency managers,” the spokesman said.

OK, so now you have an official FEMA denial, which might soothe your fears if (a) FEMA would publish the “protocols” they signed with their Russian counterparts, and (b) it weren’t for the fact that this administration constantly lies about everything.

Looking at Lisa Jennings’ article at ViralRead now, obviously it needs an update to clarify the facts, but that’s OK. There are ways to report a story like that — where the accuracy is unknown and the sources are dubious — with the appropriate skepticism. And I’ve reached out to a source on Capitol Hill to see if I can find out exactly what Congress knows about FEMA’s deal with the Russians.

This story does indeed raise serious questions: Why has FEMA allowed this practice of “pseudo-transparency” to continue to the point that it becomes necessary for the agency to officially deny Internet rumors like this? Is there any reason why FEMA could not have published the text of its protocol agreements with Russia? And if these protocols could have been published, why weren’t they? Why did it take more than two weeks after the Vladivostok meeting last October for FEMA to publish a press release about it?  And why has FEMA still not published anything on its Web site about its June 25 meeting with the Russians in Washington?

If they say “sequester,” I’m gonna punch somebody in the face.

Because I’ve just spent four hours today chasing down this crazy story, and I still haven’t heard back about Benghazi, assholes.

 

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Russia
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