The Other McCain

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

Obama’s Syrian Dilemma

Posted on | April 29, 2013 | 20 Comments

“Obama: Anatomy of a World Leader,” by Alex Gray (detail)

President Gutsy Call promised serious consequences if Syria’s Assad regime crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons against anti-government rebels. Now that there is clear evidence that Assad used chemical weapons? Well, it’s nuanced, Chuck Todd explains:

“I can tell you there is regret about that red line comment … I mean, they meant it. They do mean it on the chemical weapons. But saying it creates this political conversation. They didn’t want to go public last week that they had this early evidence yet. They weren’t ready. And yet they knew Congress was going to get this briefing and it was all going to get out, so they decided to go public with it last week because they felt they had no choice, that it was all going to start leaking out … But they’re not ready. There is no good answer.”

Frank J. assesses Obama’s miscalculation:

I guess he never actually thought Syria would use chemical weapons, thus he could sound tough threatening them and then never actually have to do anything.

Ed Morrissey rounds up the latest Syria news and weighs the options for the administration, but as I explained yesterday, there are no good options in Syria, unless you count as “good” the likelihood that Obama will suffer further disastrous embarrassments.

 

Category: Barack Obama, Syria

‘A History of Psychiatric Problems’

Posted on | April 29, 2013 | 41 Comments

The California math teacher was arrested last summer:

The charges against 36-year-old Amber Lee Failla include unlawful sexual intercourse, oral copulation with minors and contacting a minor with the intent to commit a sexual offense, according to Kern County Superior Court records. . . .
California City police said their investigation into Failla began when school officials heard about “alleged sexual misconduct” involving a teacher. Three male students, ranging in age from 14 to 17 years old, reported to police Failla had sexual encounters with them and “sexted” them nude photos, the department reported.
The students told investigators Failla would text them at different times to meet in her classroom when there was no class in session and engage in sex acts with, according to police.

Female teachers having sex with male students seems increasingly commonplace: The Mary Kay Letourneau Syndrome, we might call it. And as my friend Pete Da Tech Guy would say, it’s a good thing they aren’t Catholic priests, or this might be a real scandal.

The average high-school teacher salary in California is $66,197, so that “oral copulation with minors” is apparently a skill that taxpayers are willing to compensate quite well, at least when such services are provided by credentialed professionals.

And you’ll be glad to know that the California court system understands that Amber Lee Failla is the real victim here:

A high school teacher charged with eight felonies in connection with engaging in sex acts with students pleaded no contest Friday to a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse.
Amber Lee Failla faces a maximum of 16 months in prison at her May 7 sentencing, but prosecutor Marcus Cuper said the judge indicated Failla will be sentenced to a year in jail. . . .
Defense attorney Timothy Lemucchi said he also believes the plea deal is fair, especially in light of his client’s background.
“She has a history of psychiatric problems,” Lemucchi said.
Failla is bipolar, and Lemucchi said she was given a drug that has a side effect of making a person “hyperactively sexual.” Lemucchi said Failla was the recipient of poor medical treatment in that she wasn’t given a second drug to counteract those effects. . . .
“She’s pretty emotionally distraught,” Lemucchi said. “Fortunately her husband is her biggest supporter and is staying with her.”

In other words: She’s crazy and, in California, the rights of crazy people take precedence over every other consideration. The entire state “has a history of psychiatric problems” — I mean, they elected Jerry Brown governor, OK? — and if Amber Lee Failla’s particular brand of craziness involved “oral copulation with minors,” well, who are we to judge?

Isn’t this just an alternative lifestyle? And, hey, “her husband is her biggest supporter,” so if he doesn’t mind his wife providing blowjobs to teenage boys, why should we object?

Isn’t this covered by those “penumbras formed by emanations“? Couldn’t Justice Kennedy explain it as an “emerging awareness“?

Why are some people so judgmental?

I’m guessing a male teacher would have gotten a much stiffer sentence. And why was someone with a ‘history of psychiatric problems’ hired as a teacher?

More judgmentalism:

Who thought it was a good idea to put a ‘sexually hyperactive’ person around children?

The mentally ill are a protected category, and the teachers union that donated millions to elect Gov. Jerry Brown would never tolerate any teacher being forced out of her job merely because she had “a history of psychiatric problems.”

Amber Lee Failla is a victim. And she probably voted for Obama.

 

Category: California, Crime, Education, Labor Unions, Scandal, Sex

Have You Heard the One About the President Who Was a Miserable Failure?

Posted on | April 28, 2013 | 31 Comments

We could laugh at the jokes, but of course, the joke is really on us: This incompetent bumbler is in fact President of the United States!

Ba-dah-BOOM!

 

 


Category: Barack Obama

Syria: Another Casualty of ‘Hope’

Posted on | April 28, 2013 | 28 Comments

Reading a long New York Times article about the prevalence of Islamic extremism among Syrian rebels fighting the Assad regime in a two-year civil war, I was struck by this paragraph:

The religious agenda of the combatants sets them apart from many civilian activists, protesters and aid workers who had hoped the uprising would create a civil, democratic Syria.

Ah, yes, these idealists “had hoped” to turn Syria into Stockholm and, as usual, their unrealistic hopes were compelled to yield to the reality of human nature. Creating “a civil, democratic Syria” would require a populace with some tradition compatible with that goal — and that such people care enough about their goal to fight and die for it — and it appears that these qualities are, alas, in short supply in Syria:

“Some of the more extremist opposition is very scary from an American perspective, and that presents us with all sorts of problems,” said Ari Ratner, a fellow at the Truman National Security Project and former Middle East adviser in the Obama State Department. “We have no illusions about the prospect of engaging with the Assad regime — it must still go — but we are also very reticent to support the more hard-line rebels.” . . .
“My sense is that there are no seculars,” said Elizabeth O’Bagy, of the Institute for the Study of War, who has made numerous trips to Syria in recent months to interview rebel commanders.

You can read the entire 1,456-word article and find not a single word of encouragement to those who hoped for “a civil, democratic Syria.” The Assad regime — backed by the Shi’ite fanatics in Iran — is likely to give way to a similarly fanatical regime dominated by Sunni extremists aligned with al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

If delusions that the “Arab Spring” would result in a more peaceful (or at least, more pro-American) Middle East were not already thoroughly discredited by previous events, the hopeless mess in Syria ought to put an exclamation point on this obvious conclusion.

And yet amid all this broiling trouble, our leaders in Washington propose to eliminate eight combat brigades from the Army.

Because . . . Hope.

We might well adapt to current circumstances an infamous saying of Josef Stalin: How many divisions does Hope have?

 

Category: Military, Syria

World’s Youngest Blogger: What Are These Congressional Clowns Doing?

Posted on | April 27, 2013 | 12 Comments


Is Rubio’s “la pandilla de los ocho” a good idea? Have there been any good ideas in Congress in my 21 long months since launch?

Oh, well, whaddaya gonna do? Eat; drink; be merry, and brace for economic shock as these clowns run us all hard aground.

Category: World's Youngest Blogger

FEATURE: McCain Jauntily Raked Again

Posted on | April 27, 2013 | 22 Comments

by Smitty

The bad news is that the Wombat has had an extended stay in a Minnesota. He tries to claim it was something medical, and I guess being buried in anime groupies can have medical implications. Regardless of the actual details, we bid him Godspeed in recovery.

This week’s FMJRA celebrates at least one of your masthead names breaking 20k follows on Twitter. While, on the one hand, this is the least useful accomplishment imaginable, everybody should follow my 20,000th follower:


Oh, and guess who’s still poking along back around 19k?

Again, this milestone is of no specific merit, except as an occasion to heap abuse about Robert Stacy McCain’s head and shoulders.

At any rate, it’s time to quit fannying about and let the good links roll:

‘We Got Him’

The #BlockedByDavidSirota Club: Membership Is Growing Rapidly!

A Picture That Will Warm Your Heart

EVIL SHALL NOT PROSPER

The Blair-Glass ‘Sleeper Cell’ — British Tabloid Fabricates a Phony Scoop

Why Did Fox News and Townhall Scrub the Todd Starnes ‘Saudi National’ Story?

Blame Bush: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Does!

Paul Ryan Intern Adam Savader Arrested

Terrorists Fear Him

VIDEO: Terrorist Floyd Corkins Tells FBI He Used SPLC ‘Hate’ List to Find Target

Why Is This Idiot on National TV?

Army Plans to Cut Eight Brigades by 2017

BREAKING: Cable TV News Airheads Screwed Up a Major Story, Again

Category: FMJRA Award

Where Were You in 2002?

Posted on | April 27, 2013 | 32 Comments

In congratulating the Overlawyered blog on moving under the Cato Institute umbrella, Professor Bainbridge used the phrase “take the Boeing,” which in turn prompted Glenn Reynolds to flashbacks on the origins of that phrase in the misty dawn of the blogospheric age when the commercial value of the medium was scarcely understood. And, of course, the adaptation/imitation of the medium by major commercial operations has limited the readership space of the original blogosphere — i.e., individual online writer/commentators connected in informal networks or communities of sites.

This network/community concept seems to have been lost by (or, more likely, was never known to) newer arrivals in the ‘sphere. The idea that each of us is contributing to a common project is not just some kind of “Stone Soup” idealism, but is in fact the only way to build any genuinely meaningful alternative to that pathetic exercise in groupthink we call the Mainstream Media. Bloggers who don’t help build the alternative can complain about the MSM “borg” all they want; they aren’t really making a difference. There are two ways in which bloggers actually help sabotage the blogosphere:

  • Turn your blog into a series of lectures. “Here, let me tell you How to Save the World, because you pitiful mortals are obviously in need of my Superior Wisdom.” It’s one thing to go off on the occasional rant, but if that’s all your blog is about — sermons and lectures, as if you are the Oracle to whom readers turn in need of your delphic prophecies — then you’re doing the wrong thing. No one wants to read that crap.
  • Never link another blogger. It’s weird that some bloggers would rather link a story in the New York Times or the Washington Post than to link a fellow blogger. Why this is, I don’t know. Sometimes it seems like everybody has the same idea: Grab an MSM headline off Drudge, link it, include a brief blockquote and add some political snark. Not only does this effectively surrender content control to Drudge — so that bloggers are merely replicating the headline selection there — but nobody’s snark ever goes beyond their own readership, because no blogger ever quotes another blogger.

Ace of Spades once did a mini-rant — which I can’t find now — about whether your site is a portal or a destination. That is to say, is the reader coming to your site to find links to interesting material (portal) or strictly to read what you have to say (destination)?

The problem is that if every blogger starts thinking of his own site as a destination, then the site’s value as a portal — directing readers to interesting material elsewhere — is necessarily diminished or eliminated. And if this destination mentality takes hold at all the larger sites, then there will be few opportunities for new bloggers to join the community, and fewer incentives for smaller bloggers to participate in the conversation, because nobody with any significant readership will ever link them. What will eventually happen, in such a scenario, is that the independent blogosphere will wither and die from neglect, and be replaced by a corporate simulacrum.

Which is already happening, to an extent. This was what John Hawkins was talking about two years ago as “The Slow, Painful Coming Death Of The Independent, Conservative Blogosphere” (with sequels here and here). Despite the fact that there have been notable successes in recent years — e.g., William Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection has not only succeeded, but has produced a promising spinoff, College Insurrection — the fact is that the original idea of the blogosphere as an informal network of independent sites is being lost, not because independent bloggers are “taking the Boeing,” but because so many newer arrivals in the ‘sphere never even bothered with the concept of collaboration.

Well, this kind of rant could go on forever, but you didn’t come here for my delphic prophecies, eh?

 

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And, in case you didn’t realize it, the Instawife has a new book out entitled, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream — and Why It Matters, and which you should buy because if it becomes a bestseller, that’s one less spot available for a liberal book on the New York Times bestseller list.

Sometimes, life really is a zero-sum equation . . .

 


Category: Blogging

Still No Confirmation of ‘Sleeper Cell’ Connection in Boston Marathon Bombing

Posted on | April 27, 2013 | 17 Comments

On April 21, Chris Bucktin and Andy Lines wrote a story at the British Mirror tabloid about the Boston bombing investigation:

Boston bombers: FBI hunting
12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked
to brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

The FBI was last night hunting a 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to the Boston marathon bomb brothers. . . .
A source close to the investigation said: “We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone. The devices used to detonate the two bombs were highly sophisticated and not the kind of thing people learn from Google.
“They were too advanced. Someone gave the brothers the skills and it is now our job to find out just who they were. Agents think the sleeper cell has up to a dozen members and has been waiting several years for their day to come.”

I immediately called into question the authenticity of that scoop: How was it that these two British tabloid writers were able to get a “source close to the investigation” to give them this shocking revelation as an exclusive, a scoop that none of the veteran U.S. reporters covering the story were able to match? And, if Bucktin and Lines had such excellent sources, why was the rest of that story composed of stuff that anyone could have compiled from other media sources, including a quote cribbed from the New York Times?

The Mirror‘s “exclusive” got banner headline treatment at the Drudge Report and zoomed to the top of the Memeorandum aggregation. Six days later, there still hasn’t been anything — not one legitimate news article — that has confirmed this “sleeper cell” angle that the Mirror claimed to have gotten from a “source close to the investigation.” In other words, this looks like a case of outright journalistic fraud in the manner of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass.

Doesn’t anyone else care about this apparent fabrication?

 


Category: Journalism, Terrorism
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