The Other McCain

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

Jonah Goldberg, Professional Loser?

Posted on | January 17, 2013 | 115 Comments

“We lost. We are losers. . . . Our operatives are incompetent and we live in a dream world.”
— Rob Long of National Review, in an interview with Joe Hagan of New York magazine during a Caribbean cruise in November

Has National Review, an institution founded in opposition to liberalism, become part of the problem it was intended to solve? This thought has occurred to me with increasing frequency in recent years.

Last January, immediately after Rick Santorum’s stunning upset victory in the Iowa caucuses, I attended a debate-night event in Manchester, New Hampshire hosted by National Review and was stunned at their cheerful acquiescence in The Inevitability of Mitt Romney. The primary campaign had just begun, and it took another three months for Romney to lock up the nomination, yet the NR crowd were ready and willing to applaud the coronation of the GOP Establishment choice.

This apparent unwillingness to fight tough battles against long odds disturbed me then, and at Christmas, I was further disturbed to read the New York magazine account of National Review‘s post-election Caribbean cruise, which I summarized thus:

[A]n article you should read in its entirety, if you want to be thoroughly depressed about the uselessness of our conservative elite: Wonks, pundits, pollsters and consultants on a free tropical vacation paid for by elderly magazine subscribers who, we presume, were grateful to be in the intellectual presence of the presumed heirs of Bill Buckley.

Unless you consider pre-emptive surrender to be a clever strategy, there is clearly something wrong when a political movement’s flagship institution shows such a willing acceptance of defeat.

The problem is not merely that National Review was aboard the Romney bandwagon early, nor that Romney was subsequently defeated, but rather that no one at National Review seems ashamed of themselves for their roles in helping to bring about this disaster. If they are leaders of the conservative movement, and if the conservative movement has failed — which it quite obviously has, or otherwise Obama would not be ruling by executive fiat — where is the accountability?

While I’m not saying that Rich Lowry must commit seppuku, why is there no admission by anyone at National Review that they have failed the movement they presumed to lead? A contemplation of these dark thoughts was inspired by Jonah Goldberg’s latest column:

[The conservative] movement has an unhealthy share of hucksters eager to make money from stirring rage, paranoia, and an ill-defined sense of betrayal with little concern for the real political success that can come only with persuading the unconverted.
A conservative journalist or activist can now make a decent living while never once bothering to persuade a liberal. Telling people only what they want to hear has become a vocation. Worse, it’s possible to be a rank-and-file conservative without once being exposed to a good liberal argument.

OK, a few questions immediately come to mind:

  • Who are these “hucksters”? If they are merely “stirring rage, paranoia, and an ill-defined sense of betrayal” for their own selfish purposes, they must be eliminated. Name names, please.
  • How much of this “bothering to persuade a liberal” has Jonah Goldberg done? Where is this legion of converts to conservatism — the Goldbergites, as it were — to whom he may point as evidence of his successful persuasion?
  • To which “good liberal argument” do we need to be exposed? Because the very fact that an argument is liberal would seem to me sufficient evidence that it is wrong, and so I’m having trouble with the concept of arguments that are both liberal and “good.”

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding Jonah’s argument. Maybe I’m just a huckster “stirring rage, paranoia, and an ill-defined sense of betrayal.” However, Goldberg seems to be on more solid ground here:

To listen to many grassroots conservatives, the GOP establishment is a cabal of weak-kneed sellouts who regularly light votive candles to a poster of liberal Republican icon Nelson Rockefeller.
This is not only not true, it’s a destructive myth. . . .
It’s not that the GOP isn’t conservative enough, it’s that it isn’t tactically smart or persuasive enough to move the rest of the nation in a more conservative direction.

Because Goldberg is insufficiently explicit — he won’t name the “hucksters” — it is only by inference that we may deduce that this is a reference to the embarrassingly ineffective “Dump Boehner” movement that sought to unseat the Republican Speaker of the House. And if that’s the case, I agree: Boehner and the House GOP aren’t the problem. The real problem is the gross ineptitude of Senate Republicans, whose warped political judgment was manifested in the May 2009 decision of NRSC Chairman John Cornyn to back Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio, and which has been further evidenced in their multiple blunders of the 2010 and 2012 campaigns. But I digress . . .

While Goldberg’s vague jab at “hucksters” is likely aimed at those who organized the “Dump Boehner” movement, perhaps it is also retroactive excuse-making for National Review‘s Romney bandwagon trip that so disturbed me last January in New Hampshire. The unwillingness of the NR crowd to consider Santorum as a viable alternative to Romney bugged me then, and it still bugs me now.

Look at the exit polls: In Ohio, Romney got only 81% of the conservative vote, while Obama got 88% of the liberal vote. Thirty-five percent of Ohio voters called themselves conservative, as compared to 22% who identified as liberal. If Romney had gotten a larger share of the conservative vote, he would have won Ohio. Now, here are the truly frightening numbers: Obama got 44% of the Catholic vote in Ohio, and 29% of the evangelical (or “born again”) Protestant vote.

Is Jonah Goldberg willing to admit what seems obvious to me, namely that nominating a moderate Mormon contributed to the weakening of GOP support among conservative Christians? Isn’t it possible that an adamantly pro-life Catholic would have done better?

Understand that this isn’t an argument about “purity.” It’s an argument about competence: How do you win in politics?

The fact that the Romney campaign failed to win a sufficient share of conservative voters cannot be blamed on “hucksters.”

Scapegoating and blame-shifting are not attributes of responsible leadership, and if National Review claims to be leading a movement, shouldn’t the recent electoral catastrophe cause them to reflect on their own role in this defeat?

Losing makes me angry. It enrages me. Defeat is a humiliation that insults my sense of personal honor. And what I’m hearing from Jonah Goldberg and his National Review colleagues does not convey a similar feeling of outrage. They have been beaten, embarrassed and publicly shamed, and yet they don’t seem even slightly bothered by their current status as ineffectual laughingstocks, objects of scorn and ridicule.

Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you . . . a loser.

The National Review Institute Summit will convene Jan. 25 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC., and while I deny any intention to stir up rage, paranoia and so forth, I sure hope some pissed-off conservatives will show up and ask tough questions of those who claim to be the rightful heirs of Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan.

Oh — did I mention Joe Scarborough will be there?

 


Category: Jonah Goldberg

Dear Texas: Please Secede Now

Posted on | January 17, 2013 | 31 Comments

That’s my spontaneous reaction to the declaration of corrupt New York Democrat Charles Rangel about the gun control issue:

New York is different and more progressive than a lot of areas in other states, and some of the Southern areas have cultures that we have to overcome.

President Obama has issued 23 executive orders, which Mark Levin declares are “un-American” and “fascistic,” and Texas Gov. Rick Perry says:

“The Second Amendment to the Constitution is a basic right of free people and cannot be nor will it be abridged by the executive power of this or any other president.”

Hell, yeah. So when are you Texans going to secede, so all us freedom-loving Americans can move to Texas and escape the fascistic power of corrupt dishonest “progressives” like Charlie Rangel? Because I’m thinking maybe they’ll think twice about the need to “overcome” an independent Republic of Texas with a population of 26 million.

Category: Constitution, Texas

The Iranian Navy On A Med Cruise?

Posted on | January 17, 2013 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

A Russian site has the best detail:

Iran will deploy a fleet of warships to the Mediterranean Sea, Navy chief Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said on Wednesday.
“The Navy’s 24th fleet of warships will patrol the north of the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, Bab-el-Mandeb, the Red Sea, Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea for three months and will even sail as far as southeastern Asian countries,” Sayyari was quoted by Press TV as saying.

Roughly the same information was to be gleaned from Stratfor. Some digging around brought up this YouTube clip, which benefits from going full screen:
The Order of Battle is everything they purportedly have, and by no means breaks out the actual deployed ships. The 24th Fleet may not amount to terribly much, as most of their Order of Battle doesn’t look to have significant endurance. However, as David vs. Goliath reminds us, it doesn’t actually take much to wreck somebody’s day. The USS Cole attack was conducted by just a few dedicated tangoes in some sort of zodiac.

Can’t think of why the Iranians would want to be in the Mediterranean. Not much going on in, say, Syria. And nobody remembers the last time there was interest in getting arms into the Gaza Strip, or something. Nope. Probably just a quick run into Lebanon for some of that tasty cuisine, I expect. Poor Bibi Netanyahu, stuck trying to stay awake in these boring times.

Were things to get down to fisticuffs, a U.S. Navy battlegroup might make short work of these Iranians, but the likelihood of that isn’t too high. Sure, posturing happens, but I wouldn’t expect the ROE approved by this Administration to get much past tea and crumpets with the bad guys, and that before Benghazi filled everybody in the military with confidence that, when the fertilizer hits the air circulator, #OccupyResoluteDesk has their backs.

So, nice and boring. One hopes.

via Red__Rover

Category: Iran

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.17.13

Posted on | January 17, 2013 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Obama’s Gun Control Measures Face A Tough Road In Congress

An example of what the NYT doesn’t know about gun laws.

House GOP rejects proposals, Senate Democrats lukewarm
Related: Dismantling The Mouthbreather In Chief’s Gun Policies



US, Other Nations Ground Dreamliners Over Fire Risk
FAA orders planes grounded over battery issue, foreign airlines follow suit

Algerian Army Surrounds Jihadi Kidnappers In Desert
Jihadis claim attack, kidnapping a retaliation for French involvement in Mali



POLITICS
Oregon Sheriff: Unconstitutional Gun Control Laws Won’t Be Enforced

Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller

Won’t allow Federal officials to enforce laws in his county, either.

Pro-Life Movement: Winning Battles, Losing The War?

Gov. Patrick’s Tax Plan Gets Mixed Reviews


Obama Finds His New Chief Of Staff (Another White Guy)

Christie Can’t Win Votes For Sandy From Some He Backed

This Year’s GOP Freshmen Likely To Be As Difficult For Boehner As 2010 Class

ACLU Sues Over Philly Cops’ Consistent (And Wrongful) Arrest Of Videotapers

Democrats, Trayvon Martin’s Mom Launch Doomed Effort To Repeal “Stand Your Ground” Law



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Hovers Above $93 On Inventory Reports, Bolstered By Weak Dollar: NYMEX $93.48, Brent $110.67
JP Morgan Chase Board Cuts Dimon’s Bonus To $10.5 Million After Whale Fiasco
New Rules Aim To Protect Homeowners From Disclosure
Fed’s Beige Book Indicates US Economy Picking Up
Silver Lake And Partners Near $15 Billion Financing For Dell LBO
Germany Bringing Home The Gold – From NY Fed
EBay Narrowly Beats 4Q Estimates
Multiple Power Plant Workstations Slammed By Malware
Developer Outsourced Own Job To PRC To Watch Cat Videos, Surf Reddit
Facebook Tests Voice Calls With Messenger App On iPhone
Blackberry 10 Training Program Has Over 1600 Businesses Registered
Temple Run 2 Swings Onto App Store
“Phablets” Not Going Away As IHS Predicts Shipments To Double In 2013
Leap Motion Signs Exclusive Deal With Best Buy



SPORTS
LeBron James Hits Two Milestones In Rout Of Warriors

20K points, 5K assists

Warriors get crushed 92-75


Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend Apparently Doesn’t Exist


Reversing Course, Chip Kelly Leaves Ducks To Coach Eagles

Son Rises For Rivers As Celtics Fall To Hornets 90-78

Mavericks Turn Back Rally, Get Fourth Win Against Rockets 105-100

Rangers Sign All-Star Pitcher Matt Harrison To Five Years/$55 Million

Hawks Dominate Hyets, End Their Winning Streak At Seven

Yu Darvish Gets A Personal Catcher

Nationals Send Michael Morse To Seattle In Three-Way Trade; What Did The Nats Get?



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Michael Lohan Accuses Wife Of Pimping Lindsay Out…

Michael and Lindsay Lohan

…or did he?


“Different Strokes” Star Conrad Bain Dead At 89


Nicole Kidman On Sex Scenes, $cientology, And Saying No To Studios

Unspeakable Armenian Would Love To Be Divorced

Baby Boy On The Way For Kara DioGuardi

Tiger Woods Trying To Win Back Ex-Wife Elin

LeAnn Rimes Talks Infidelity, Treatment, And Her Ex

Brent Musberger Is Pissed At ESPN

Sundance Snubs “The Canyons”

MGM Wants “Hot Tub Time Machine” Sequel



FOREIGNERS
On First Overseas Trip, PM Abe Seeks To Strengthen SE Asia Ties Amid Tensions With PRC
Imam Qadri Calls On President Zardari To Negotiate
Car Bombs In Iraq Kill 15
Accountability Bureau Chief Tells Pakistan’s Supreme Court Not Enough Evidence To Arrest PM
Torrential Rains Paralyze Jakarta
Netanyahu Responds To Obama: Only Israelis Can Determine Israel’s Best Interests
India-Pakistan Truce Takes Hold In Kashmir
Obama’s Dig Against Netanyahu Could Backfire
Court Dismisses Pussy Riot Member’s Deferral Plea
PM Cameron Gets Grilled On Europe In Commons



BLOGS & STUFF
Hit & Run: How Does The Sandy Hook Massacre Demonstrate The Need For Gun Controls That Have Nothing To Do With It?
AmSpecBlog: Obama, Grace, And Heaven
Protein Wisdom: “Political Sphere Reacts To Obama Gun Violence Proposals”
The Hill: Rubio Slams Obama On New Gun Proposals
JustOneMinute: Sloppy (But Scary!) Gun Reporting At NYT
Power Line: Rick Perry Comments On Obama’s Gun Control Proposals
Gateway Pundit: Perry – The Political Left Using The Massacre Of Children To Advance Their Agenda Disgusts Me
Israel Matzav: Rand Paul – Obama Arrogant And Presumptuous About Israel
Weasel Zippers: NRA Tells Gun Owners It’s Planning “The Fight Of The Century” Against Obama
NRO Corner: Your Move, Harry Reid
Allahpundit: Rand Paul To Introduce Bill Nullifying Obama’s Executive Orders On Guns
Legal Insurrection: Repugnant And Cowardly
Beltway Confidential: Did Greens Suffer Because They Confused Conservatism With Fealty To Business?
Ed Morrissey: Whole Foods CEO – Obamacare “More Like Fascism”

Category: Live at Five

Neal Rauhauser’s Very Bad Week

Posted on | January 16, 2013 | 5 Comments

Exactly why left-wing lawyer Jay Leiderman felt it necessary to denounce Neal Rauhauser, I’m not sure. Perhaps it has something to do with the apparent suspicion among members of Anonymous that Neal Rauhauser is a paid federal informant:

For now we give you a phone call between Kelly Hallissey and Neal Rauhauser and two calls between Tom Ryan and Chet Uber. The story is confusing and complicated because there is lots of internal drama. But in this case this is about people who are at least in part getting paid by the government, to do … well that you should find out yourself.

That’s merely a suspicion, of course, but the e-mail communications between Rauhauser and the FBI certainly got my attention Sunday:

How all this fits together, I don’t know yet. but I was intrigued by the publication of an e-mail from January 2012 — a year ago —  in which Rauhauser is asked to meet with two FBI agents. Within two months of that date, the LulzSec raids went down. Hmmm . . .

As a law-abiding citizen, I am all in favor of people helping the FBI arrest criminal hackers, but the hackers at Anonymous may feel differently. Considering that one of the files posted by Anonymous includes Neal Rauhauser’s admission that he was “Carlito2000,” who helped prokoke the meltdown that sent former Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown to federal prison . . . Well, that’s probably just a coincidence, huh?

Neal’s involvement in all this hacker stuff is mystifying: Was Neal working with Anonymous in their occasionally criminal activity? Or was Neal working with the feds to help bust the criminal hackers? Was he playing both ends against the middle? Who knows?

It could be a dangerous game either way. You double-cross the feds, you go to prison. You double-cross the hackers . . .

I’m reminded of an old punk-rock song by the Jim Carroll Band:

Brian got busted on a narco rap.
He beat the rap by rattin’ on some bikers.
He said, hey, I know it’s dangerous,
but it sure beats Riker’s.
But the next day he got offed
by the very same bikers

“Governments are increasingly seeking to better understand and control social networking environments . . .”
— Fred Cohen, Ph.D., “Influence Operations”

Category: Crime

The World’s Youngest Blogger: What Not To Hair

Posted on | January 16, 2013 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

Category: World's Youngest Blogger

Slow-Mo Walkback Beginning? Sheepish Silence From Anti-Steubenville Media

Posted on | January 16, 2013 | 16 Comments

‘Occupy Steubenville’ protesters, Jan. 5

“Protestors descended on Steubenville, Ohio [Jan. 5] to demonstrate their opposition to the possible cover-up of the alleged rape of a 16-year-old high school student by members of the Steubenville High School football team. …
“Occupy Steubenville, as the rally came to be called throughout social media, was the second such protest in as many weeks, and it was organized by the hacker collective known as Anonymous and an offshoot group known as KnightSec.”
— Jeff Stone, International Business Times, Jan. 5, “Occupy Steubenville Protesters Descend On Ohio Town To Demonstrate For Rape Victims, Call For Football Coach’s Job”

Some of you may remember the “Send the Body to Glenn Beck” uproar in 2009 after a Census worker was reportedly lynched in Kentucky and the Left jumped to the conclusion (with help from an anonymous Justice Department “source”) that this was some kind of Tea Party/right-wing talk radio/Michelle Bachmann-inspired hate crime.

Everybody was making lots of noise about the case, until I went to Kentucky and began reporting from the scene, where no reasonably well-informed person believed the “anti-government” theory of the crime. An embarrassed silence took hold and. by the time the truth came out — that Bill Sparkman had committed suicide and staged it to look like murder — the Left pretended that they’d never heard of Clay County, Kentucky.

Something similar seems to be happening, now that Lee Stranahan has gone to Steubenville, Ohio, and begun slowly dismantling the “Rape Crew” mythology that the media have helped propagate.

A week or two ago, reporters were breathlessly hyping the idea that what happened in Steubenville on the night of Aug. 11-12 was symptomatic of an American “rape culture” of which the Big Red football program was typical. It was suggested that the victim had been gang-raped multiple times, used as a “rape toy” with the tactic acquiesence of the entire community of Steubenville, where the corrupt police were involved in a conspiratorial cover-up to protect the guilty.

Uh . . . no.

What evidently happened, according to court testimony that Stranahan has carefully compiled, is that a 16-year-old girl was molested by two 16-year-old boys while she was so drunk that she was “unconscious and incapable of giving consent,” as her attorney told Fox News. Allegedly, I must emphasize: The two accused teenagers won’t stand trial until next month and are, of course, presumed innocent in the meantime.

So what happened to all the media who gave saturation coverage to this story a week or two ago, during the “Occupy Steubenville” protests? Where is the clarification of all those stories that conveyed the impression that this Ohio town was Rapeville, U.S.A.?

If you listen closely enough, you can hear the crickets chirping.

Here’s a guess: Reporters have started figuring out that their sources for the conspiracy-theory gang-rape version of events — Alexandria Goddard, Anonymous, LocalLeaks — lack credibility. Stranahan’s item headlined “LocalLeaks Corrected: The Basic Story Wrong” shows the extent of the errors, many of which were echoed by unskeptical reporters. But the facts don’t check out and so, rather than running stories with headlines like, “Hey, Y’Know, We Kinda Got Carried Away With That Gang-Rape Story,” instead the media are just being quiet.

Suspiciously quiet. And now I notice that even Alexandria Goddard herself is starting to walk it back (sorry, no link):

When I first started writing about the Steubenville case, there was one thing that bothered me the absolute most.  It was not that law enforcement did a shoddy job — I never claimed that, and will never make that claim. I know many of the officers at Steubenville PD and they are very fine and upstanding men. What bothered me greatly was the number of bystanders (as evidenced by social media) who stood by and did nothing. The complete and utter lack of empathy of anyone that night bothered me greatly.

Wait just a damned minute here — Goddard ginned up a firestorm, was accused of libeling a Steubenville student who wasn’t charged in the case and has since been accused of using LocalLeaks as a vehicle to publicize gossip she doesn’t want her name attached to, all of which had the effect of stoking the conspiratorial cover-up theory, and now she wants to say that she never impugned local law enforcement?

Go read some of the reporting Lee Stranahan has done:

Understand what Lee is doing here: Using his blog as a sort of notebook, laying out the facts piece by piece, while preparing to put together the complex narrative account of the Steubenville story. Meanwhile, however, Stranahan emphasizes the need for restraint:

I have no interest in trying the case in public. We haven’t heard from the defense and we’re only heard a little from the prosecution in the Probable Cause hearing. Let’s let the case play out. Let’s not rush to judgment.

Exactly. We don’t have all the facts yet, and therefore should not presume to know things that we do not actually know.

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Crime, Ohio

‘Streisand Effect’: Scientology Imploding?

Posted on | January 16, 2013 | 26 Comments

One of the principles of the New Media age is that attempts to suppress the truth tend to backfire, generating greater interest in the hidden truth. The so-called “Streisand Effect” may now be invoked in the wake of Monday’s debacle in which The Atlantic published a ludicrously over-the-top “advertorial” for Scientology and was forced to remove it and apologize after reader complaints. (More at MediaGazer.)

It was widely speculated that Scientology’s motive in buying the “sponsored content” at The Atlantic was to hold back a wave of negative coverage. In 2011, Janet Reitman published Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, and now Lawrence Wright has published Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. The niece of Scientology’s leader is about to publish Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape. But the attention created by the “sponsored content” controversy has now provided a hook for journalists to report more about the internal divisions inside the Scientology cult. Alex Klein at BuzzFeed:

The Church of Scientology International (CSI) headquarters in Los Angeles says that it has built 34 of these cathedrals worldwide since 2003, with 60 more underway. . . .
Across the country, donors and high-ranking executives say that the aggressive fundraising and construction scheme is used to enrich the central church at the expense of the rank-and- file, helping to grow the Scientology war chest to over a billion dollars. Two former members, Mike Rinder and Mark Elliott, went so far as to call the project a “real-estate scam.” To some of these defectors, the structures are metaphors for the religion itself: garish on the outside, empty on the inside. The irony is that the very expansion that Scientology lauds as its renaissance is actually a symbol of internal dissent and decline. . . .

Read the whole thing, because Klein makes an important point:

Back in the ’70s, the famously litigious church had time to fight publicly with the novelist William S. Burroughs, himself a Scientology defector — or, in the ’90s, with Time magazine. Today, going after every Cruise-bashing blog post would be impossible.

Exactly. There was a time when the cult could sue a few critics and thereby intimidate everybody else. But the Internet makes it impossible to silence the truth, and the truth is not Scientology’s friend.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 

 


Category: Journalism, Religion
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