The Other McCain

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

Thoughts on Teamwork

Posted on | March 6, 2013 | 11 Comments

Have you ever hit Da Tech Guy’s tip jar? I have and you should. Have you ever contributed to the Protein Wisdom monthly fund drive? I have and you should. And how about hitting Jimmie Bise’s tip jar? Are you some kind of Commie bolshevik pinko sympathizer, or are you gonna do something to help these guys in the fight?

Well, I could go on and on suggesting bloggers who could use your contributions. It is the general idea that matters. As I once remarked, the world is divided into two kinds of people: Good people, and sons of bitches who never hit a blogger’s tip jar.

The spectacle of “MalaysiaGate,” about which I have written much already and plan to write more soon, brings to mind the subject of generosity and cooperation. Cynical sarcasm is my stock in trade. I’d be shortchanging my own tip-jar hitters if I didn’t make wisecracks like this:

Brutal dictatorships are bad things, and so are Republican bloggers who score fat consulting contracts and don’t cut me in on the action.

The self-deprecating humor is sincere. If powerful Malaysian interests had been willing to pay $400,000 to obtain the services of a natural-born smartass, how quickly would I have cashed that check? Immediately. 

Let’s not kid anybody. Honesty is a virtue, and it would be dishonest to present myself as morally superior to Josh Treviño, Ben Domenech and their friends, simply because I have never sought the kind of reputation that would make my services valuable to the ruling regimes of foreign nations. My intentional clownishness is a way of preventing myself from ever being tempted with such an offer, and also to prevent becoming the kind of self-important Serious Person whose colleagues laugh at him behind his back as the pompous douchebag he really is.

Please, laugh at my face, not behind my back.

And my face is mighty damned laughable, we must admit.

Being the court jester is a fun gig, and involves little responsibility, but I try to do my part as a member of the team, understanding that my success is dependent on the team’s success, and membership on the roster requires that I do work that is of value to the team’s common project. And this is just a 350-word preamble to an excerpt from an e-mail I sent in reply to a friend who had written to me about the MalaysiaGate story:

Ambition is a good thing. No one would get out of bed in the morning unless they had some expectation that their day’s labor would advance their own well-being. But unless ambition is wedded to morality — a sense of honor and duty — it will inevitably become a purely selfish thing. The sense of rat-race competition, the insatiable desire to exceed the fame and fortune of one’s peers, creates the idea that “everybody does it,” and that the only difference between winners and losers is that losers are insufficiently ruthless.
Loyalty must be a two-way street, and success requires teamwork. The selfish hot dog, who attempts to monopolize all the prestige of an organization by derogating his potential rivals and denying them credit for their share of the work, is seeking rewards he has not truly earned. Afflicted with narcissism, however, such people generally have the view that they are entitled to all they can get their hands on, that their personal excellence is such that they are born to rule over others, rather than to serve in any humble or obscure station. From the perspective of that worldview, the backstabbing and cronyism and conflicts of interest are just the way of the world, and anyone who criticizes those who succeed by such methods is merely envious at having been beaten at a game they were too stupid to play well. . . .
I understand that I’m playing a team sport. My success is not an isolated achievement, and I owe much to the assistance of others. Having been helped, I am obligated as a matter of duty to help others.
Generosity is not merely a moral obligation, but is necessary to the success of any cooperative enterprise. However great our personal qualities, however tireless our labors, none of us can succeed without the willing assistance of others. And such assistance is hard to obtain unless people are recognized and rewarded for their help.

Cynthia Yockey just called to tell me she wants to come to CPAC, but needs money to hire someone to watch her ailing father — for whom Cynthia is sole caregiver — for two or three days. I didn’t have time to listen to all her problems, much less to solve them myself, but I told Cynthia, “Don’t worry about the money. We’ll take care of that.”

Please don’t make me a liar. Go hit Cynthia’s tip jar now and read her excellent story about Commies, too.

 

Category: Blogging, Cynthia Yockey

Hugo Chavez, Looter

Posted on | March 6, 2013 | 43 Comments

Weird that the New York Times would publish this:

The legacy of his 14-year “socialist revolution” is apparent across Venezuela: the decay, dysfunction and blight that afflict the economy and every state institution.
The endless debate about whether Mr. Chávez was a dictator or democrat — he was in fact a hybrid, an elected autocrat — distracted attention, at home and abroad, from the more prosaic issue of competence. Mr. Chávez was a brilliant politician and a disastrous ruler. He leaves Venezuela a ruin, and his death plunges its roughly 30 million citizens into profound uncertainty. . . .
The once mighty factories of Ciudad Guayana, an industrial hub by the Orinoco River that M.I.T. and Harvard architects planned in the 1960s, are rusting and wheezing, some shut, others at half-capacity. . . .
Underinvestment and ineptitude hit hydropower stations and the electricity grid, causing weekly blackouts that continue to darken cities, fry electrical equipment, silence machinery and require de facto rationing. . . .
Reckless money printing and fiscal policies triggered soaring inflation, so much so that the currency, the bolívar, lost 90 percent of its value since Mr. Chávez took office, and was devalued five times over a decade. In another delusion, the currency had been renamed “el bolívar fuerte,” the strong bolívar — an Orwellian touch.
Harassment of privately owned farms and chaotic administration of state-backed agricultural cooperatives hit food production, compelling extensive imports, which stacked up so fast thousands of tons rotted at the ports. Mr. Chávez called it “food sovereignty.”
Politicization and neglect crippled the state-run oil company PDVSA’s core task — drilling — so that production slumped. “It’s a pity no one took 20 minutes to explain macroeconomics to him with a pen and paper,” Baldo Sanso, a senior executive told me.

Read the whole thing. The Irish writer, Rory Carroll, is actually a man of the Left and seems to view Chavez’s failures as idiosyncratic and personal, rather than a necessary correllate of the dictator’s Marxist ideology. The belief that rich people are inherently evil, and poor people inherently virtuous, so that “social justice” requires that private wealth be expropriated in the name of “the people” — this is a harmful idea, a very bad idea.

Good people do not cherish such bad ideas. Good men do not become Marxist dictators. The entirety of Chavez’s vicious character could have been known to anyone who bothered to read a single chapter — “Why the Worst Get on Top” — of Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.

But why bother to read that much? You could summarize what Chavez so predictably did to Venezuela with a single word that Ayn Rand used to describe the left-wing politicians in Atlas Shrugged: “looters.”

Chavez was a looter, a bandit, a vandal incapable of building anything except a movement that destroyed everything.

We could say the same of others, much closer to home.

 

Category: Economics, Venezuela

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.06.13

Posted on | March 6, 2013 | 5 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Hugo Chavez Is Dead

He was on God's list.

Hundreds gather to mourn

Dies at age 58 after 14 years as Venezuela’s president

Syrian Refugees Reach One Million
Majority of refugees are in Jordan and Lebanon

L.A. Mayor’s Race Headed For Runoff
Garcetti, Greuel top vote-getters in primary, but neither wins majority



POLITICS
Senate Intelligence Committee Endorses Brennan

DCIA nominee John Brennan

DCIA nominee John Brennan

GOP still wants answers about Benghazi

White House, GOP Working Together On Budget Flexibility For DoD, VA, Possibly Other Departments

Flight Attendants Cry Foul As TSA Backs Down On Swiss Army Knives And Other “Weapons”

State’s Main Witness In Zimmerman Case Caught In Lie


Gov. Quinn’s $35.6 Billion Budget: One In Five Dollars Goes To Pensions

White House Cancels Tours, Blames Sequester

Rand Paul Slams AG Holder For Refusal To Rule Out Drone Strikes In U.S.

Sen. Coburn Urges USDA To Nix Wine Tasting Amid Sequester Warnings

Sen. Klobuchar Makes Herself Useful, Creates Bill To Legalize Unlocking Mobile Phones



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Crude Oil Jumps As Chavez’ Death Creates Uncertainty: NYMEX $91.08, Brent $112.04
U.S. Stock Futures Trade Higher After Record Close
Samsung Invests $112 Million In Japan’s Sharp
European Shares Extend Rally; Vodafone Jumps
Martha Stewart Defends J.C. Penney Deal In Macy’s Trial
Corn Drops A Second Time This Week As Snow Boosts U.S. Crop View
Top Outside Shareholder Demands Dell Open Its Books
HP, Dell Feeling The Heat From Shareholders
Cree Rolls Out Cheaper LED Bulbs
Beats Raises $60 Million To Spin Off Streaming Music Service
Roku 3 Enhances Remote, Improves Search
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 With Verizon LTE Coming Tomorrow
Apple Introduces Updated “Education Only” iMac For $1099
Google Play Marks Anniversary By Giving You Discounts
Microsoft Faces EU Fine For Not Giving Users Choice of Browsers
Lara Croft Is Back, But Not As You Know Her
Big Screens, Viral Media On Display At Microsoft’s TechFest



SPORTS
Thunder Hold Off Lakers’ Charge, 122-105

Westbrook leads OKC with 37

Westbrook leads OKC with 37

Oklahoma City wins season series


Blackhawks Extend Streak To 23 With Win Over Wild

Buckeyes Down Hoosiers 67-58


Blue Jackets Edge Oilers In Shootout, 4-3

Baseball Playoffs Moving To New Fox Cable Network In 2014

Nash Scores Two To Lead Rangers Over Flyers

Celtics Hold Off Sixers, 109-101

Soriano Makes Quick Work Of Spring Training Debut



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Taylor Swift Fights Back In Vanity Fair Interview

Not happy with Poehler and Fey

Not happy with Poehler and Fey

Quotes Katie Couric: “There’s a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women”
Amy Poehler Responds: “I’m Going To Hell…But For Other Reasons”

Holly Madison Welcomes A Daughter

Jon Stewart Taking Summer Hiatus From “Daily Show” To Direct Movie

Duchess Of Cambridge Hints It Might Be A Girl

Terence Howard: Oprah Sex Scene Was Like A Dream Come True

Carly Rae Jepson Kowtows To GLAAD, Cancels Boy Scout Jamboree Appearance

Lamar Odom Fighting Baby Mama For Custody

Bret Michaels Has Meltdown Over “Celebrity Apprentice” Elimination

Justin Bieber Shows Up Two Hours Late To London Concert, Gets Booed

Matt Lanter Set As Male Lead In CW’s “Oxygen”

Jay Baruchel, Alison Pill Cancel Engagement

Jennifer And Justin Will Say “I Do” In Hawaii

Les Moonves Says “Dexter” Ending After Season 8



FOREIGNERS
Chavez Mourned By Scum Around The World
Technical Problems Slow Kenya Vote Count
Norks Vow To Cancel 1953 Cease Fire
Malay Forces Kill 13, Hunt Gunmen After Sabah Assault
PRC Premier Wen: Pollution, Risk Downside Of “Blind Expansion”
Biden: Obama Not Bluffing On Iran
Cardinals Begin Pre-Conclave Talks



BLOGS & STUFF
Michelle Malkin: Oberlin College – Still Manufacturing Hate Crime Hoaxes After All These Years
NewsBusters: Krugman Whines “Quoting What I Said In The Past Is An Ad Hominem Attack”
Roger Noriega” Jimmy Carter Sends His Condolences To Hugo Chavez
Ed Driscoll: Hugo Chavez’ Socialist Symmetry In Saying Sayonara
Gateway Pundit: Jimmy Carter Mourns “Positive Legacies” Of Hugo Chavez
Twitchy: Sic Semper Tyrannis – Hugo Chavez Dead
Nick Gillespie: Rep. Serrano (D-NY) On Chavez – “A Leader Who Understood The Needs of The Poor”
Babalu: Chavez Is Dead, Let The Blame-Throwing And Divinization Begin
Yuval Levin: The 2014 Budget
James Pethokoukis: Paul Ryan Keeps Telling The GOP How Hard It Will Be To Balance The Budget. Why Won’t They Listen?
Patterico: White House – We Must Cancel All Tours Because Of Sequestration! Also, We’re Hiring
Bryan Preston: Memo Proves Administration Wants Sequester To Hurt Really Bad
Jihad Watch: Saudis To Teach “Correct Concept Of Jihad” In Schools
Jawa Report: All Your Drones Are Belong To Someone Else
Allahpundit: Also Not Invited To CPAC? Bob McDonnell
Power Line: Are Republicans Doing Better Than You Think?


Category: Live at Five

Should Mitt Romney Go To Detroit, Or Venezuela?

Posted on | March 5, 2013 | 14 Comments

by Smitty

Some wags want to draft Mitt Romney to re-habilitate Detroit from the joys of decades of Democrat party policy. However, a far more sizable executive job opening now awaits to the south: Venezuela. Eugene Robinson exemplifies the slack-jawed Lefty urge to suck up to something authoritarian.


Surprisingly, my German wife says that many in the former Commie zone of East Germany recall that era with fondness??!??! So we can expect the usual suspects to maintain their daffy stance:

Category: Venezuela

Go, Kira Davis!

Posted on | March 5, 2013 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

Somebody needs to rid us of these turbulent Bushes:

Mr. Priebus, in 2012 the GOP missed a HUGE opportunity to push out some more “diverse” faces to bring the message of liberty and smaller government to their communities. There is a sizable community of Black Republican/conservative bloggers who highlight that message every day. Many work in their spare time. Can you imagine what they would have been able to do for the GOP if there had even been a tiny amount of party dollars behind them?
We’ve already blown that opportunity but another one presents itself. As we begin to think about 2014 and 2016 we need to continue thinking about how we change our image. Exit polls showed that many minority voters liked Mitt Romney’s message but in the end did not feel comfortable voting for him because they didn’t “trust” him. We need to give them a reason to trust us.
I’m sorry, but throwing a rich white guy in front of a bunch of people who have been taught from kindergarten to distrust rich white guys is not going to cut it. I have a suggestion for a new strategy, and some people will not like it because it involves a few people getting out of the way and/or making room for new faces. Some people will have to decide if their status is more important to them than their country.

If I thought the GOP was interested in across-the-board reform, and not more interested in the party as such, I’d be more inclined to donate.

There may be some grand plan, some rationale, for what’s been going on the last couple of years. Hanlon’s Razor applies. But if the GOP has been incompetent, what a peculiar failure of imagination! Have the minds of all the GOP elites been so filled with Reagan quotes that there are no brain cells remaining to. . .carry out the basic capitalistic ideas that Reagan espoused?

This piece in The Hill strikes me as way too inside-baseball:

And for their efforts, Team Obama was roundly mocked. “Saturday Night Live” did a hilarious skit over the weekend that had the president trot out the Village People to show how deep the cuts would hurt. When they are laughing at you, Mr. President, you aren’t winning.

Read the whole thing. Here is the cheesy cold open clip. I did happen to watch it, and immediately was distracted, not merely by the typically inane SNL attempts at mockery, but the cast member in the dress whites. As a recovering squid, the non-attention to a proper uniform (What. Is. So. Hard. About. A. Square. Knot?) achieved a mission kill on me:

The GOP may be playing slightly better defense, but there is a substantial gap between fighting a running retreat and winning, despite the tone of The Hill. The little bit of crosswind that The Hill is talking about won’t be taken lightly by the White House, which is going to continue to attack, attack, attack, careless of whether anyone notices that frontal assaults are not exactly governing. The voters haven’t cared much in the past.

And then there is the Jeb Bush question. The blog won’t fault the guy for exercising his right to run for office, if he accepts the total lack of support from conservatives. Having invested so much of ourselves in the struggle to hold off the Progressive onslaught, and restore some capitalistic, representative flavor to our debt-addled government, the idea of Yet. Another. Bush. is a swift kick in the midriff.

If the task is to justify the Left’s attacks on conservatives as a sad pack of tools, manipulated by plutocrats, then I can’t think of a better way to go than “Jeb Bush 2016.” This is not an ad hominem attack on Jeb. He’s got as good a record as any, and a plethora of great qualities. Fine. I really don’t dislike the guy in the slightest. I’m just saying that Bush41 was in the Executive Branch from 1980 to 1992, and Bush42 from 2000-2008. If the United States of America is so thoroughly cratered that only a handful of families can produce Presidents, then the game is far beyond lost. We should just scrap the 22nd Amendment, and all of these oh-so-stressful campaigns and elections, and just call Obama ‘Pharaoh’.

So, full circle, I hope the GOP elites pulls its head out, and realized that the Obama is the end of Progress, and some other course is required. Our limited, federal, Constitutional government beckons, people.

via Sissy Willis and Insty

Category: Republicans

Atlantic Editor to Freelancer: ‘We Unfortunately Can’t Pay You for It …’

Posted on | March 5, 2013 | 20 Comments

Olga Khazan, global editor of The Atlantic, was a junior in high school on April 3, 2003. You may not recognize the significance of that date, even if you’re a longtime Atlantic reader. Evidently Ms. Khazan didn’t either, nor did she recognize the name Nate Thayer when she saw his byline on a story at NKNews.org about Dennis Rodman’s “basketball diplomacy” trip to North Korea.

Stick with me here, folks. This may seem tedious or trivial, but there’s a surprise ending that would make Paul Harvey smile.

Monday, Ms. Khazan e-mailed the edtor of NKNews, desiring Thayer’s contact information to solicit a similar piece from him:

Hi there — I’m the global editor for the Atlantic, and I’m trying to reach Nate Thayer to see if he’d be interested in repurposing his recent basketball diplomacy post on our site.
Could someone connect me with him, please?
thanks,
Olga Khazan

The editor made the connection, and a phone conversation ensued in which, Thayer says, “no specifics were really discussed, and she requested I email her,” which he did:

Hi Olga: What did you have in mind for length, storyline, deadline, and fees for the basketball diplomacy piece. Or any other specifics. I think we can work something out, but I want to make sure I have the time to do it properly to meet your deadline, so give me a shout back when you have the earliest chance.
best,
Nate Thayer

 Thayer received a brutal shock in Ms. Khazan’s reply:

Thanks for responding. Maybe by the end of the week? 1,200 words? We unfortunately can’t pay you for it, but we do reach 13 million readers a month. I understand if that’s not a workable arrangement for you, I just wanted to see if you were interested.
Thanks so much again for your time. A great piece!

Nate Thayer, a veteran professional journalist of substantial reputation, was insulted by this request that he write for free — merely for the glory of reaching those 13 million online readers — and a rather angry e-mail colloquy ensued between the insulted writer and the young woman who had insulted him.

Ms. Khazan, quite clueless about the man she was dealing with, tried to placate him and assure him how valuable the Atlantic‘s “platform” was to freelancers: “I completely understand your position, but our rate even for original, reported stories is $100. I am out of freelance money right now, I enjoyed your post, and I thought you’d be willing to summarize it for posting for a wider audience without doing any additional legwork.”

Finally, with the sort of diplomatic courtesy that requires gritted teeth and steely nerves, Thayer sliced the impudent whelp:

Hi Olga: No offense taken and no worries. I am sure you are aware of the changing, deteriorating condition of our profession and the difficulty for serious journalists to make a living through their work resulting in the decline of the quality of news in general. Ironically, a few years back I was offered a staff job with the Atlantic to write 6 articles a year for a retainer of $125,000, with the right to publish elsewhere in addition. The then editor, Michael Kelly, was killed while we were both in Iraq, and we both, as it were, moved on to different places. I don’t have a problem with exposure but I do with paying my bills.

Oh, wait . . .

MICHAEL KELLY, R.I.P.
April 3, 2003

 

And now you know . . . the rest of the story!

 

 

UPDATE: Jehuda the Rhetorican now has a new entry for his “Journalism Is Hard” category, and James Joyner explains why writing about policy and politics online pays peanuts:

This situation is, alas, partly enabled by people such as myself who have a day job studying and writing about public policy and are all to happy to publish their work gratis. It’s how we get our work out there.
And that’s why almost everyone writing short pieces for The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, National Interest, and other sites that publish foreign affairs commentary on a daily basis are professional academics, think tankers, or regularly employed journalists.

Exactly. One notices that arguably the most successful of conservative bloggers, Professor Glenn Reynolds, hasn’t quit his day job at the University of Tennessee Law School. Of course, the real money is in writing P.R. for authoritarian regimes . . .

Category: Journalism

Also Sprach Daniel Hannan

Posted on | March 5, 2013 | 6 Comments

by Smitty


Two months into our celebration of a century of Woodrow Wilson, one question is whether the people have been flogged enough to understand that the Progressive Project is played out? I’d say not. Sane analysis would likely conclude that ObamaCare was too big, too stupid, too flawed. Yet, rather than maneuver around that seamount, we’re bearing down on it.

Looking past the inevitable disaster, though, I remain optimistic.

Category: Uncategorized

Power Line Got That Backward

Posted on | March 5, 2013 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

Power Line points out that the Meteorologist-in-Chief is full of hooey, per this 13-word SOTU passage:

Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense.

But it’s not that this particular crap-shot to the dome is unusual. Even the famous

electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket

was delivered in the context of a discussion of cap-n-trade. What I’d like to see is an analysis of something, anything, on which this guy has been forthright, accurate, or at least honest about the reason that a prediction proved inaccurate.

The nicest thing I can say about this guy is that he reflects a fundamentally unserious country.

via Insty

Category: Barack Obama
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