The Other McCain

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

Let The 2016 Campaign Begin, With A Show Of ‘Support’ For Hillary

Posted on | January 24, 2013 | 17 Comments

by Smitty

The mighty Looking Spoon thinks that Hillary could be a stand-in for Omar Saeed al Sahaf:

To paraphrase Jean-Pierre McGarrigle:

“In an age of spin, Clinton offers feeling and authenticity. Her message is consistent–unshakeable, in fact, no matter the evidence–but she commands daily attention by her on-the-spot, invective-rich variations on the theme. Her lunatic counterfactual art is more appealing than the banal awfulness of the Reliable Sources. See is a Method Actress in a production that will close in a couple of days. She stands superior to truth.”

Via just a conservative girl,

And, finally, some theme music from ma Twitter feed:

I was gonna fix the security, but Ambassador died
I was gonna tell the American people, Ambassador died
I was gonna have Ms. Rice come clean, but talking points fried!
Ambassador died, Ambassador died, Ambassador died.
[To Congress] LaDaDaDaDaDa

I was gonna spring Nakoula from the can, cuz Ambassador died
I was gonna honor the other dead man, cuz Ambassador died
I was gonna ‘splain about the two ex-SEALs, and I know why!
Ambassador died, Ambassador died, Ambassador died.
{To Congress} LaDaDaDaDaDa

I was gonna ask me the Turkish envoy, cuz Ambassador died
I was gonna find me a Syrian gun-toy, cuz Ambassador died
I was gonna plumb me a Taliban death-ploy, and I know why!

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.24.13

Posted on | January 24, 2013 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

TOP NEWS
Emotional Hillary Angrily Denies Benghazi Coverup

“What difference does it make?”

“Nothing could be farther from the truth,” she insisted
Ayotte: So many questions that went unanswered

Norks Plan Nuclear Test Aimed At U.S.
Also, rockets.


Panetta’s Parting Gift: Lifting Ban On Women In Combat
Policy change calls for women to be serving in combat roles by January 2016



POLITICS
House Votes To Suspend Debt Limit

Speaker Boehner says it’s time to get serious about deficit reduction

Refuses to extend debt limit suspension unless Senate cuts a deal to cut deficit

AF General Welsh Calls Sexual Assault A “Cancer”

Union Membership Falls To Lowest Percentage In 76 Years

Boehner: Obama’s Goal Is To Annihilate The Republican Party

Some Female Vets Say The Time Has Come For Women In Combat Arms

LA Teacher Accused Of Sexually Abusing Up To 20 Kids

NRA’s LaPierre Says Obama Doesn’t Understand Gun Owners



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
U.S. Oil Prices Plunge After Seaway Pipeline Cuts Rates: NYMEX $95.23, Brent $112.80
PRC Manufacturing At Two-Year High
Asian Stocks Swing Between Gains, Loss; Japan Stocks Jump
Defense Department Cuts Spark Losses At General Dynamics
Logitech Swings To Third-Quarter Loss On Weak Global PC Market
Netflix Gets A Boost From New Streaming Customers
McDonald’s Expecting Decline In January Sales
US Airways 4Q Profit Doubles
Apple Plunges After Flat Earnings Report
Zelda, Mario Kart, other Favorites Coming To Wii U
Feds Bust Three For Widespread Gozi Virus
RIM Gains Momentum Ahead Of Blackberry 10 Launch
Facebook Overtakes Google Maps As Top Mobile App
Researchers Turn DNA Into Digital Storage Medium
Windows 8 To Mainstream Solid-State Drives?
THQ Dissolved In Bankruptcy, Assets Split Among Several Companies



SPORTS
Grizzlies Maul Lakers, 106-93

The Grizzlies’ Rudy Gay, left, and the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant (24) battle for a loose ball

Memphis sends the Lakers to their fourth straight loss

Tom Brady Fined $10K For Unnecessary Roughness Against Ravens

Lopez Leads Nyets Past Timbermutts 91-83

Gaborik’s Hat Trick Gives Rangers 4-3 Win In OT Against Bruins

Dick Vitale Rips Duke After Blowout Loss To Miami


Heat Outlast Raptors In 123-116 OT Win

Junior Seau’s Family Files Wrongful Death Suit Against NFL

Hofstra Loses On Half-Court Shot As Buzzer Sounds

NCAA Investigation Of Miami Flagged

Soriano Provides Needed Storyline For Nats Beat Reporters
A sports story about the difficulty of writing sports stories. Kill me now.



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Queen Of Soul Amused By Beyonce Lip-Sync Controversy

The Queen of Soul and some rapper’s wife

Celebs have mass Chris Crocker moment in support of Beyonce

SXSW Rejects Lohan/Schrader Flick “The Canyons” Over Quality Issues

Private Diaries Reveal Dark Secrets About Unspeakable Armenian Clan

Bieber’s Stoned Sex Romp With Nursing Student Drove Away Selena Gomez

Manti Te’o’s Real Girlfriend Speaks Out: He Was The Victim Of A Hoax

Taylor Swift Poses As Rapunzel For Disney

Paula Deen: How My Whole Family Got Fit

National Enquirer Claims Rachael Ray’s Husband Repeatedly Visited Manhattan Swinger’s Club Before – And After – His Marriage

Inigo Montoya T-Shirt Causes Stir On QANTAS Flight
Yes, people really are this dumb.



FOREIGNERS
PM Cameron Promises Britain More Freedom From The EU
Barak: Elections A Win For Social Justice Movement
Mali’s Army Accused Of Summary Executions By NGO
Indian Panel Pushes For New Laws After Fatal Gang Rape
Mexican Court Frees Frenchwoman In Kidnapping Case
Chavez Ally Morales Claims Ailing Venezuelan President Undergoing Physical Therapy
Russians Flee War-Ravaged Syria For Moscow
Philippines Takes PRC Island Dispute To UN Tribunal



BLOGS & STUFF
Elliott Abrams: Hillary Clinton’s Management Failure
Breitbart: Hillary On Libya – “What Difference Does It Make?”
Theo Spark: Hillary Clinton #Benghazi Hearings
Riehl World News: Idiot Liberal Blogger Dishonestly Defends Hillary, Falsely Attacks The Right
Weasel Zippers: Rand Paul Hammers Hillary Over Benghazi During Senate Hearing
NRO Corner: Benghazi – They Know We’re Stupid
Rush Limbaugh: The Cleansing Of Hillary Clinton’s Record
Twitchy: Salon Writer – Abortion Is Killing, And I’m Okay With That
Power Line: Unions’ Decline Continued In 2012
RightWingNews: 2/23/2013 Will be A Day Of Resistance
Stephen Kruiser: Forget Subtlety – Media Encouraging Executive Overreach For Second Term
Maggie’s Farm: The Left’s Unfinished Agenda
Gateway Pundit: Morsi Warns US Officials Of Jewish Media, Gets F-16s Anyway
Ed Driscoll: Blank Generation
Kori Schake: Flawed Diamond – A Vanity Project Posing As Anthropology




All My XXX’s Live in Texas

Posted on | January 23, 2013 | 73 Comments

The Lone Star State has become the Porn Star State:

When a friend told Hollie Toups that topless photos of her had been posted on an Internet pornography site, she felt horrified, but she didn’t feel alone: She recognized more than a dozen other South Texas women on the website, she said.
Last Friday, Ms. Toups and 16 other women filed a civil lawsuit in Texas state court against the site, Texxxan.com, alleging that their intimate photos were posted illegally and included information that made them easy to identify. They are seeking damages and to have the site closed down. . . .
Legal experts say they are seeing an increasing number of such lawsuits targeting so-called revenge porn, in which intimate images are posted online, often by jilted former lovers but also by computer repairmen or hackers who gain access to private photos. . . .
“I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’ve been exploited,” said Ms. Toups, a 32-year-old graduate student in criminal justice, who lives outside Houston. She said she had sent the photos years earlier to a former boyfriend, wasn’t sure how they had ended up on the Internet, and hasn’t sued the former boyfriend. She said the photos appeared on the website alongside a link to her Twitter account . . .

Notice the contradiction: Hollie is stupid enough to send naked photos of herself to at least one of her (perhaps numerous) boyfriends, but Hollie is also smart enough to attend graduate school in Texas.

Talk about your Higher Education Bubble . . .

Hollie and her fellow “revenge porn” plaintiffs want you to think they’re victims of something besides their own stupidity:

Erica Johnstone, a San Francisco lawyer who has represented about a half-dozen victims of revenge porn sites, said that “the emotional toll on women can be devastating,” and includes depression and anxiety.
Ms. Toups said she at first became reclusive last summer, when she learned that her revealing photos had landed online. “I shut everyone off but my mom,” she said, adding that when people greeted her in public, she wondered, “Is it because they are polite or have seen me topless?”

It’s because you’re dumb, Hollie. And also because you’re a naughty girl.

See, here’s what this lawsuit is really about: These tramps are suing for the right to keep their promiscuity secret. They want to be able to send naked photos of themselves around the Internet — “Woo-hoo! Check me out!” — whenever it suits their fancy, but they imagine that somehow they can keep it from becoming general knowledge that they are the kind of girls who send naked photos of themselves around the Internet.

Hollie’s attorney makes this dubious legal principle clear:

The lead lawyer for the Texas plaintiffs, John Morgan of Beaumont, Texas, said he plans to sue the owners and operators of the porn site once he learns their identities.
“None of these women consented to having their photos used,” Mr. Morgan said, adding that all of his clients subsequently suffered bouts of depression. “This site has to be shut down.”

“None of these women consented to having their photos used” . . . how?

That’s the question, you see.  The women consented to having their photos “used” by whomever the chosen recipient was. And when they hit the “send” button on their computers, they consented to that usage, but are now suing because the implied contract between naked-photo sender and naked-photo recipient has been breached, and that the property which the sender in fact consented to share with the recipient was subsequently shared with others, and that the “revenge porn” site is now deriving profit from that breach of (implied) contact.

But how do we know that Hollie Toups or any of her fellow plaintiffs are telling the truth about how their naked photos got online?

Hollie Toups says she only sent her topless photos to only one of her ex-boyfriends, but are we just supposed to take her word for it? For all we know, she was sending those photos to prospective “sugar daddies.” Such arrangements are reportedly all the rage nowadays:

As college costs continue their stubborn rise, and with work harder to come by during an anemic economic recovery, some students are resorting to a rather unusual measure in order to pay their college bills.
“Sugar Daddies,” wealthy older men who provide financial support to younger women in exchange for sex and companionship, have seen a rise in popularity among college students struggling to find a way to pay tuition.
College student membership on SeekingArrangement.com, a website that matches sugar daddies and sugar babies, has increased by 58 percent from December 2011 to December 2012
“Currently, we have over 2 million members, 44 percent of which are college students,” Leroy Velasquez, public relations manager at SeekingArrangement.com, told ABC News. ”It’s very difficult to retain a part time or full-time job, especially when you have an academic life. With SeekingArrangement, we offer these types of relationships.”

Doing the math here — 44% of 2 million — that means there are 880,000 college girls currently seeking “sugar daddies” via the Internet, and who knows what kind of photos these girls are sending to their . . . uh, clients? Patrons? Benefactors?

Do I have any reason to believe that these Texas floozies were using their naked photos for such purposes? No. But I can’t rule it out, either.

Notice that I am trying to be as deliberately offensive as possible.

It’s not that I am entirely insensitive to the “emotional toll” suffered by these women, it’s just that I’m sick and tired of people trying to blame others for their own stupidity, then expecting everybody to view them as victims, when the answer to their problems is just common sense:

DON’T TAKE NAKED PHOTOS OF YOURSELF! DON’T LET YOUR BOYFRIENDS TAKE NAKED PHOTOS OF YOU!
STOP BEING SUCH DUMB SLUTS!

And stop expecting the rest of us to feel sorry for you.

 

The Other Democrats Wonder: Is Failure Linked To Being The Other Democrats?

Posted on | January 23, 2013 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

Byron York:

The bottom line is that RNC members know something is terribly wrong. Some point out that chairman Reince Priebus — who is expected to be re-elected in an uncontested ballot Friday — cannot come before the committee and say, “We were out-spent” or “We couldn’t match the resources of the other side.” The party’s problem is more fundamental than that — simply put, Republicans have either a basic identity problem or an equally basic competence problem — and demands more fundamental answers.

Read the whole thing, as the RNC gathers in Charlotte for navel gazing, and, one hopes, repentance.

If anybody down there reads this post, please relay to the homies that Hispanic outreach is great. More solid get-out-the-vote efforts are fine. But they are peripheral to the ongoing collapse of our Republic into a failed state.

The GOP can’t out-spendthrift the Democrats, and has no business playing that game any more.

It’s also time to quit with the equestrian nice-nice, and answer the Democrat propaganda with firm, unflinching directness. Step into Twitter for smaller examples of telling these Lefties what’s what, while keeping it family friendly. It can be done, but it takes some thought to engage without veering into f-bomb territory. This GOP is about one Dole/McCain/Romney aristocratic milquetoast away from ceasing to function, as far as I can tell.

Speaker Boehner’s “No Budget No Pay” act is a step in the right direction.

Delivering remarks on the House floor today, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) urged support for the No Budget, No Pay Act (H.R. 325) that will force Senate Democrats to finally pass a budget, which they have refused to do in almost four years. In his remarks, Speaker Boehner reiterated that the No Budget, No Pay Act is just a first step toward a long-term plan that balances the budget over the next 10 years, and addresses the fiscal crisis that threatens our economy and future generations.

Can you guys cut a little YouTube clip and explain why we can’t do that in five years? A sober little “No Speaker, No Cry” video would really help.

Balancing the budget over the next 10 years means that we save the future for our kids and our grandkids. It also means that we strengthen programs like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid that can’t continue to exist in their current form without some kind of controls.

Fortunately, the sunrise is not dependent upon our Congress, or the future truly would be in jeopardy. How about a more long-term plan to privatize these vote-buying schemes? This would help the GOP not sound so much like The Other Democrats.

SWAT Hoax? Moody Air Force Base Locked Down After Fake 911 Call

Posted on | January 23, 2013 | 3 Comments

Moody Air Force Base was put on security lockdown today after an apparent hoax call sent sheriff’s deputies to investigate a false report of an armed threat at the base near the south Georgia town of Valdosta.

According to WCTV-TV, the report of “a situation involving an active shooter” resulted in a lockdown at the base that lasted for nearly two hours. Deputies from the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department were “dispatched to Moody AFB after a 911 call, they were told there was a supposed active shooter on the base,” WCTV reported, but the report turned out to be “unfounded.” The lockdown ended before 3 p.m. ET.

A sergeant in the office of public affairs at Moody told me in a brief telephone interview that “a threat was reported that never existed” — which sounds like SWATting, a potentially deadly kind of hoax in which false 911 calls are used to intimidate or harass individuals.

Several celebrities, most recently Kim Kardashian, have been targeted by SWATtings. Members of Congress last year called on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the use of SWATting as a terrorist tactic against political bloggers.

Liberal Blogger: ‘How Dare You Smear Hillary by Quoting Her Accurately!’

Posted on | January 23, 2013 | 68 Comments

Sen. Ron Johnson asked a question about Benghazi and Hillary Clinton said this: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

I’m not making this up. You can check the transcript or watch the video. She said it. But it is so wrong for anyone to quote that sentence:

But, of course, the ripped-from-context quote is “What difference, at this point, does it make?” It’s already being seized on by National Review and Fox News and The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard and Glenn Beck’s Blaze and Michelle Malkin’s Twitchy and the Free Beacon and, of course, Breitbart. There’s already a popular hashtag, #whatdifferencedoesitmake. . . .
Will the wingers be able to turn this decontextualized soundbite into a deceptive sign of Secretary Clinton’s indifference?
This is an Andrew Breitbart/James O’Keefe tactic, but its use is not limited to O’Keefe and the carriers of the Breitbart torch — this is a mainstream GOP tactic.

Quoting what a Democrat says is a tactic! An Andrew Breitbart/James O’Keefe tactic! A mainstream GOP tactic!

The point seems to be: Anything that is bad for Democrats is wrong. These unfair “tactics” include (a) direct quotes, (b) facts and (c) math.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 


Hillary Gets Bitchy on Benghazi: ‘What Difference, at This Point, Does It Make?’

Posted on | January 23, 2013 | 20 Comments

Kinda half-watched this morning’s Senate Benghazi hearings, mainly wondering what was up with those big ugly glasses Hillary was wearing. My favorite part was when she got irritated with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who was trying to pin her down on why the administration spent so long pushing the bogus “protest” talking points:

SEN. JOHNSON: Yeah. The point I’m making is a very simple phone call to these individuals I think would have ascertained immediately that there was no protest prior to this. I mean, this attack started at 9:40 p.m., Benghazi time, and it was an assault . . . Why wasn’t that known? And again, I appreciate the fact of the transparency of this — of this hearing, but why weren’t we transparent at that point in time?
SEC. CLINTON: Well, first of all, Senator, I would say that once the assault happened and once we got our people rescued and out, our most immediate concern was, number one, taking care of their injuries . .. getting them into Frankfurt, Ramstein . . . to get taken care of, the FBI going over immediately to start talking to them — we did not think it was appropriate for us to talk to them before the FBI conducted their interviews, so — and we did not — I think this is accurate, sir — I certainly did not know of any reports that contradicted the IC talking points at the time that Ambassador Rice went on the TV shows.
And, you know, I just want to say that, you know, people have accused Ambassador Rice and the administration of, you know, misleading Americans. I can say, trying to be in the middle of this and understanding what was going on, nothing could be further from the truth. Was information developing? Was the situation fluid? Would we reach conclusions later that weren’t reached initially? And I appreciate the –
SEN. JOHNSON: But Madam Secretary, do you disagree with me that a simple phone call to those evacuees to determine what happened wouldn’t have — wouldn’t have ascertained immediately that there was no protest?
I mean, that was — that was a piece of information that could have been easily, easily obtained –
SEC. CLINTON: Well, but Senator, again –
SEN. JOHNSON: — within hours, if not days.
SEC. CLINTON: Senator, I — you know, when you’re in these positions, the last thing you want to do is interfere with any other process going on. . . . Now, we have no doubt they were terrorists, they were militants, they attacked us, they killed our people, but what was going on and why they were doing what they were doing is still — is still unknown.
SEN. JOHNSON: No, no, no, no, I’m — I — again, we were misled that there were supposedly protests and then something sprang out of that, an assault sprang out of that. And that was easily ascertained that that was not the fact –
SEC. CLINTON: But could — but, you know –
SEN. JOHNSON: — and the American people could have known that within days, and they didn’t know that.
SEC. CLINTON: And — with all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans.
SEN. JOHNSON: I understand.
SEC. CLINTON: Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.

Ed Morrissey retorts:

Well, gosh, I can think of a few reasons why it matters. First, it mattered enough for the Obama administration to send Susan Rice to five different Sunday talk shows to insist that the sacking was a spontaneous demonstration of anger over a months-old YouTube video, while saying that there was “no evidence” that it was a terrorist attack. On one of those appearances, the president of Libya told US audiences the exact opposite — that it was the work of terrorists and that they had a pretty good idea of who they were. If it didn’t matter, what was Susan Rice doing when she tried pushing that meme, which the White House had to abandon within days as leaks within State and CIA made plain that there was no demonstration?
It also matters because Barack Obama at the time had been bragging about crippling al-Qaeda while on the campaign trail. That false narrative made it seem as though State and our intel community couldn’t have possibly known that the sacking would have occurred, and got blindsided by a grassroots reaction to the video. Instead, it turned out to be a planned terrorist action about which the US embassy in Libya had warned State for months, repeatedly requesting more security.

Ed, remember (a) it’s only a “scandal” if Republicans do it, and (b) only “humorless, angry opponents of the President” care about Benghazi.

How to Avoid Journalistic Hindenburgs

Posted on | January 23, 2013 | 17 Comments

“I’m the managing editor of Culture11 (www.culture11.com), a new online magazine/social network that was started by Bill Bennett, David Kuo, Steve Forbes, et al. Today is our first day and rather than trying to get attention using traditional media, we’ve decided to announce our launch by reaching out to our friends.
“With your help, we can make Culture11 something truly extraordinary — an online destination that has the editorial excellence of a great magazine, the thrill of a terrific conversation, and the comfort of a supportive community all rolled into one.”

Joe Carter, e-mail, August 2008

“Ponder the yawning chasm between David Kuo and ‘the next Cameron Crowes and Hunter Thompsons.’ It’s as if one day Kenny G announced he was looking for ‘the next Ramones.’
“Personnel is policy. Imagine Hunter S. Thompson walking into the offices of Culture11, wearing his Acapulco shirt and aviator shades, reeking of gin, with a head full of mescaline and a satchel full of felonies. David Kuo would call the cops.”

Robert Stacy McCain, “Good-bye, Culture11,” Jan. 30, 2009

Some people go unscathed from disaster to disaster. Perhaps the most eminent survivor of the Culture11 catastrophe was Conor Friedersdorf, now employed at a Scientology-funded magazine called The Atlantic, bashing Rush Limbaugh and arguing for legalized marijuana.

Joe Carter, the former Mike Huckabee campaign staffer who bought into David Kuo’s lunatic idea that Culture11 would be like “Rolling Stone in the ’70s,” ended up at First Things. Peter Suderman is a senior editor at Reason. James Poulos went on to Ricochet.

Others were not so lucky: Kuo, the Republican hack who burned through a reported million dollars of start-up capital in six months at Culture11, has disappeared from public view. Although I had been solicited to write for Culture11 — originally named “Liberty Wire” — I avoided that Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst trip after reading a New Republic item:

David Kuo . . . a former Special Assistant to President Bush and author of tell-all Bush indictment Tempting Faith, is going to be the CEO.

As soon as I learned Kuo was involved, I e-mailed back to the young staffer who had solicited my contribution, telling her:

  1. Under no circumstance would I ever consent to write for any project connected to David Kuo; and
  2. She’d be smart to get the hell out of there immediately.

Personnel is policy. Kuo has never been associated with anything but failure. He couldn’t make a profit on the snow-cone concession in Hell.

Memories of the Cutlture11 debacle are fresh in my mind today because part of the start-up money Kuo pissed away on his doomed vanity project (the smoldering digital crater is a “404,” so that not even the archives remain) was an investment by Steve Forbes. And another Forbes-funded venture is making news, not in a good way:

Over the weekend, professional golfer Phil Mickelson complained about tax increases (including state income taxes in California) that he said had pushed his marginal rate to 63 percent: “I’ve got to make some decisions on what to do.” That incited a scolding from Syracuse University professor Len Burman, who said Mickelson should “stop whining” because he was so “lucky” to be one of the world’s highest-earning athletes.
What is perhaps surprising is that Burman published his attack on Mickelson’s “whining” at Forbes.
Forbes was once a leading advocate of free-market economic policy . . .
Yet in recent years, the online version of Forbes has become increasingly notorious as a hive of strident left-wing opinion. . . .
What happened to Forbes? Two words: Lewis Dvorkin.
A former AOL executive, Dvorkin got funding from Forbes in 2009 to start a Web site, True/Slant, that lasted a little more than a year before it was taken over by Forbes in a deal that brought Dvorkin into the company with the title of Chief Product Officer. . . . Dvorkin’s July 2010 deal also brought under the Forbes online umbrella several of True/Slant’s left-wing staff and contributors, including [Steve] Zwick, [Rick] Ungar and, apparently, Professor Len Burman.
My friend Jim Lakely at the Heartland Institute is dismayed that Phil Mickelson apologized after his scolding from Burman. I’m more dismayed that Dvorkin’s left-wing takeover at Forbes has proven the truth of O’Sullivan’s First Law, formulated by former National Review editor John O’Sullivan: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”

Maybe Forbes should hire David Kuo. I’m sure he’s available.

 

« go backkeep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin