The Other McCain

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

Leaders Are People With Followers

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 47 Comments

by Smitty

So the House GOP broke on Plan B. This is telling, emphasis mine:

Upstairs by the House floor, which was now closed after Boehner’s announcement, a handful of senior members discussed the whip count. They decided to go out for drinks near Union Station, in order to avoid their colleagues who’d be hanging at the Capitol Hill Club on the House side. “I don’t want to talk to the people who ruined this, at least right now,” a retiring House member told me. “They don’t get it.” Another senior member told me that Boehner was always going to struggle with the whip count since most House conservatives have little interest in seeing the speaker strike any kind of deal. “Boehner was trying to play chess and the caucus was playing checkers,” he said, sighing. “Boehner is willing to lose a pawn for a queen. I’m not sure about the rest.”
Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, a conservative with libertarian leanings, was stunned. As he walked back to his office, he said the episode was unfortunate, even though he was planning to vote against the measure. For the past month, since House leaders booted him off the budget committee, he has been railing against Boehner for his management style. But even Amash wondered whether the House GOP was making the right move. “Too many people in there were arguing that this thing is a tax increase, and I don’t think that’s what Boehner was trying to do,” he said. As much as he disagrees with Boehner’s approach, even he regretted how the speaker’s plan was killed.

If you’re in a military situation, and everyone is under the UCMJ, then the authoritarian mode is far more workable. You can toss out the “Because I said so” argument, and toss malingerers under the bus.

It isn’t clear in politics that you can play it that way. There is nothing whatsoever in the Fiscal Cliff debate that is of a national security nature. Boehner really ought to have been playing chess, and not poker. Truly, the seeds of most evils are planted with cards held close to the chest. Thus, if Boehner is unhappy with the results, Boehner can blame Boehner. This country has been producing chips from nowhere and piling them on the table for these decades, and the table is collapsing under the weight of the idiocy.

It is, in fact, time to return to chess, with all the pieces on the table in plain view. The Republican Party, if interested in turning around both its and the country’s decline, ought to consider a full reform platform, and start selling it to voters for the 2014 election. Something that admits that the last century of collapse into a single Progressive uber-State is a pair of deuces that thinks itself a royal flush. Something that builds upon ideas, e.g. Barnett’s Bill of Federalism, that redistribute power, not wealth.

The Republican Party has to be more than Gasping Obama Patsies to make a difference.

Via amyvrwc

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 


Category: Budget

LIVE AT FIVESIX: 12.21.12

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Boehner Cancels Plan B Vote In Face Of Conservative Revolt

Speaker of the House John Boehner

NYT misses opportunity to blame Norquist, Tea Party for this

Putin Defends Russian Syria Policy
Condemns US for toppling Qaddafi and leaving Libya in chaos

Cory Booker Explores 2014 Senate Run
Not eager to tangle with popular Christie for governor’s chair



POLITICS
Defense Bill Emerges From Conference Committee, Draws Varied Reactions

Look! A helicopter!

Bipartisan agreement between Senate and House likely to be signed by Obama despite grumbling and threats

Indicted State Chemist’s E-Mails Reveal Close Personal Ties To Prosecutors

Judge Hears Arguments, Defers Judgment On Oakland Pot Dispensary Case


Jake Tapper Moves To CNN As Washington Bureau Chief

Marine Pleads Guilty To Urinating On Taliban Corpse

Anti-NRA Campaigners Go After Hotels Offering NRA Member Discounts

Sen. Ayotte Expresses Concern With Hagel’s Positions On Iran, Israel

Congressmen Call For National Travel Boycott Of Mexico Over Jailed Marine



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Crude Oil Drops As Fiscal Cliff Optimism Fades: NYMEX $89.41, Brent $109.78
NYSE Agrees To Sell Itself To Futures Exchange ICE
Wishing On A Weak Yen Seen As LDP Returns To Power In Japan
Third Quarter GDP Revised Up As Jobless Claims Increase
S&P Downgrades Cyprus On Default Fears
Parliamentary Commission Calls From Breakup Of UK Banks
Existing Home Sales Jump To Three-Year High
Moody’s Warns It May Join S&P In Downgrading US
Nokia, RIM Settle Wi-Fi Patent Dispute
Instagram Does An About-Face
Apple Kills A Kickstarter Project
Facebook Testing Pay-To-Message Feature
Google Sells Motorola Set-Top Box Business For $2.35 Billion
Brazilian “iphone” Runs Android
FCC Approves AT&T 4G Spectrum Grab



SPORTS
NHL Moves Closer To Cancelling Season

Deputy NHL commissioner Bill Daly

But…but…Bill Daly tells Hockey Night In Canada Radio there’s going to be a season!

Quick Start Helps LeBron James, Heat Put Mavericks Away Early

Jabari Parker Picks Duke

BYU Rides Defense To Win In Poinsettia Bowl

Rangers Sign A.J. Pierczynski To One-Year Deal


Hickson Scores 18 Points With 18 Rebounds As Blazers Beat Nuggets 101-93

Cubs Sign Edwin Jackson: Four Years, $52 Million

Tom Gorzelanny Signs Two-Year Deal With Brewers



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
LeAnn Rimes Sings On “X Factor” Despite Illness

LeAnn Rimes

Sick, or drunk?

Former Olympian Admits To Double Life As $600/Hour Call Girl

Simon Cowell Confirms He’s Dating Carmen Electra

Five Things You Don’t Know About Miss Universe 2012 Olivia Culpo

Justin Bieber Threatened With Philippines Ban After Ridiculing Manny Pacquiao

Unspeakable Armenian Complains Instagram’s New Policy Could Destroy Her “Career”

Katherine Heigl Excited Over Adoption Of Daughter Adelaide

Rapper Fat Joe Pleads Guilty To Tax Evasion Charges



FOREIGNERS
Vladimir Putin Holds Marathon Annual Press Conference
Egypt’s Chief Prosecutor Retracts His Resignation
Jordan Warns Jihadis Are Hijacking Syrian Revolution; Israel, Jordan Could Be Next Targets
Narendra Modi To Be Sworn In As Gujarat Chief Minister On Boxing Day
UN Sanctions Two Iranian Companies For Running Guns To Syria
UNSC Authorizes Intervention Against Malian Jihadis
PRC Ships Enter Disputed Waters For First Time Since LDP Regains Power In Japan
As Election Nears, Likud Party Revels In UN, US Censure Of Settlements



BLOGS & STUFF
Doug Powers: Taxpayers Will Lose Around $14 Billion In Selloff Of GM Stock
Weekly Standard Blog: Harry Reid’s Plain On The Fiscal Cliff – “We Are Not Going To Do Anything”
Power Line: Plan B Fails; GOP Moves Closer To Political Cliff
Lonely Conservative: Millionaire Tax Portion Of Plan B Shelved For Lack Of Support From GOP
NRO Corner: Gays, Cuban-Americans, Hezbollah Victims – Everybody Hates Chuck Hagel
Alan Dershowitz: Hagel – The Wrong Man
Gateway Pundit: Former SC Governor Mark Sanford Plans Run For House, May Face Ex-Wife In Primary
Jihad Watch: Muslim Neighbors Of Toulouse Mass Murderer Acclaim Him As “Hero, A Martyr Of Islam”
American Thinker: New Political Reality – Independents No Longer Decide National Elections
Protein Wisdom: Ann Coulter Makes Herself Useful
NRO Corner: Maple Syrup Mystery Solved


Remember, today’s the deadline to get your links in for tomorrow’s FMJRA.

Category: Live at Five

Again, Cassone, On Newtown

Posted on | December 20, 2012 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

We need a word for that awkward point,
When one enounters art,
And says, “Da best in da flippin’ joint!
Tell, me: How’d it start?”

The artist’s face, it then grows dark,
And with a lowered eye,
Replies, “Blood down in the park,
That deserved not so to die.”

Oh that we could enjoy beauty,
But with a lower price,
For with the living lays duty,
To dodge diabiolical dice,

And honor those less fortunate,
For reasons we grasp not,
Perishing in moments turbulent,
In sudden, hellish shot.

We need a word for that awkward point. Pre-catharsis? Take in this touching tribute:

Category: Chris Cassone

Viral Video Idea, Only Minor Damage To Robert Stacy McCain Required

Posted on | December 20, 2012 | 23 Comments

by Smitty

Via Slashdot, we have a review of the new Windows:
Based upon that review (lengthy, but consistently good throughout), if we set up a camera, gave RSM a writing deadline, and a computer running Windows 8, my gut is that the resulting meltdown would be one for the ages. I guess if they wanted to shank Windows 8 any further, they would have needed Congress to code it.

While more or less good with Windows, myself, especially with VBA macro coding in MS Office (I should crank out an O’Reilly book) I really only use it on the job. It’s all Linux and OSX these days. If I haven’t got a command-line interface and some reasonable scriptability, it’s dead to me.

Category: Uncategorized

A Constitutional Right to Donkey Sex?

Posted on | December 20, 2012 | 21 Comments

Lisa Graas remembers how Rick Santorum was ridiculed for saying that the same logic that justifies gay marriage as a “right” could also justify legalized bestiality. Many at the time mocked Santorum as a bigoted yahoo. Yet the Republican presidential hopeful was merely expressing what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had warned of when, in dissenting from the court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, he criticized the thin and hasty logic by which his colleagues overturned their own 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick precedent:

State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices.

Scalia’s dissent — which everyone should read — derided the court’s majority decision for creating a hitherto unknown “emerging awareness” doctrine for laws governing sexual behavior. Who can predict with any confidence where “emerging awareness” might lead?

We may be farther down the slippery slope toward legalized bestiality than most people suspect. In September, Carlos Romero was arrested in Marion County, Florida, and charged with having sex with a female miniature donkey named Doodle. His lawyers are arguing that the Florida law against sex with animals violates Romero’s rights:

In the motion filed in Marion County court on Dec. 6, the assistant public defenders handling Romero’s case — Joshua Wyatt, Scott Schmidt and Joshua Lukman — wrote that the statute infringes upon Romero’s due process rights and violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.

Of course, the 14th Amendment — the universal solvent of judicial activism!  Tracy Clark Flory at Salon is apparently OK with that:

They’re specifically targeting the language of Florida’s anti-bestiality law, which does not require proof that an animal has been harmed or “of the sexual activity being non-consensual,” or even of penetrative sexual contact.
The attorneys write, “Therefore, the only possible rational basis for the statute is a moral objection to sexual acts considered deviant or downright ‘disgusting.’” And that, they argue, is unconstitutional: “The personal morals of the majority, whether based on religion or traditions, cannot be used as a reason to deprive a person of their personal liberties.”
If, however, “the statute were to require sexual conduct with animals to be nonconsensual or to cause injury in order to be a crime, then perhaps the State would have a rational basis and legitimate state interest in enforcement,” they write.
It may be an opportunistic defense, sure, but it also brings up some interesting, if squirm-worthy, questions: Why should bestiality be illegal? Is it because it’s socially unacceptable or because it causes harm to animals? If it’s the latter, is it OK for people to have sexual contact with animals in cases where the animal isn’t harmed?

You can say whatever you want. Just don’t say you weren’t warned.

Category: Crime, Culture, Florida, Supreme Court

The Creepy Little Weirdo’s Mom

Posted on | December 20, 2012 | 16 Comments

The Washington Post notices that most folks in Newtown, Connecticut, don’t see the murderer’s mother as a victim worth mourning:

Police said that before he attacked the schoolhouse, [the creepy little weirdo] pumped four bullets into his mother’s head as she lay in bed. . . .
“I am feeling that there is more anger toward the mother than there is toward the son,” said Lisa Sheridan, a Newtown parent.
“Why would a woman who had a son like this, who clearly had serious issues, keep assault rifles in the house and teach him how to shoot them?” she said. “To deal with that, there’s a feeling here that we’re just going to focus on the 26 innocent people who died at the school.” . . .
Nancy Lanza apparently broke no laws and suffered a violent, tragic death. People who knew her . . . see her as a victim like any of the others.
But for some, how to refer to her — and what to think of her — is a subject of much conversation. While some call her the first victim, many think she bears at least some of the blame.
“Maybe somewhere there is a deep thought that the shooter’s mother could be responsible for leaving the guns available,” said Himansu Patel, the Newtown Convenience and Deli owner, who decided to leave Nancy Lanza out of his memorial to the victims. . . .
Much remains unknown about [the creepy little weirdo] and his mother. But everyone here knows that Nancy, 52, was the legally registered owner of the powerful .223-caliber, military-style Bushmaster rifle that was used in the nation’s second-deadliest mass shooting. And they have heard that federal investigators have determined that mother and son visited numerous shooting ranges together.
It is also known that [the creepy little weirdo] had psychological or emotional problems that made the most basic elements of daily life — such as school and social settings — challenging for him. The state medical examiner said he had been advised that [the creepy little weirdo] had Asperger’s syndrome, a developmental disorder that is not associated with violence.
Those facts have left questions hanging over Newtown. Did Nancy Lanza do enough to try to keep her guns out of her son’s hands? Should she have helped a young man with psychological problems learn how to shoot?

Notice, by the way, the Post isn’t calling the Bushmaster an “assault weapon” (because it’s not), but instead — in keeping with the media’s misguided “exotic weapons” narrative — is calling it “the powerful .223-caliber, military-style Bushmaster rifle .”

Focusing on the weapons as the demonized villain of the tale, rather that looking at the complex human factors involved in this horrible atrocity, is much easier and, in terms of Democrat Party politics, certainly convenient. But the politics of convenience seldom solves problems.

Category: Connecticut, Crime

‘Candyass Blogger’ Update: Free Speech Absolutists Who Banned Mr. Althouse UPDATE: ‘These Are Historical Dildos’

Posted on | December 20, 2012 | 49 Comments

The defense of Professor Erik “I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK” Loomis is becoming somewhat of a cause célèbre for the progressive community online and in academia. I’m actually working on a much longer piece about this ongoing controversy, based on my own vast experience in saying stupidly offensive stuff that pisses people off. Meanwhile . . .

Essential to the progressive pro-Loomis project is promoting a narrative in which (a) Loomis is the victim of deliberate misrepresentation, and (b) the full context of the controversy is obscured. This is the bogus narrative presented by Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Education:

Critics of Loomis have been quick to describe the tweet as literal. The blog  American Thinker wrote, under the headline “Professor  Calls for Murder of NRA President,” the following: “A professor at a  taxpayer-supported state university has called for the murder of the president  of the NRA. Apparently the carnage in Newtown, Connecticut was not enough  slaughter to satisfy the blood lust of Erik Loomis….” At National Review  Online, the headline was “The  Post-Newtown Witch Hunt: Anti-gun champions of nonviolence urge violent death on  NRA members.” Other bloggers have taken to attacking  Loomis’s scholarship (which focuses on environmental and labor history).

Now, if you are aware of what Loomis actually did, you know it wasn’t just one Tweet (“head on a stick”) that got him in hot water.

As Professor Donald Douglas has explained, before Loomis deleted his Twitter account, it “was practically flooded with blood from all the violent tweets and retweets he’d been sending out.” Unless you consider Tweeting “Fuck the NRA” and re-Tweeting messages about “fuckers” deserving to be “beaten to death” to be appropriate forms of expression for an assistant professor of history, this meltdown was . . . well, arguably problematic.

When I said that the mentally ill should be in institutions, public universities weren’t the kind of institutions I had in mind.

Leaving aside whatever personal psychiatric issues may afflict The Ranting Professor — and if a nut like Loomis can legally buy a gun, maybe we do need new laws — Jaschik’s link to “attacking Loomis’s scholarship” is to the guest blog Badger Pundit wrote late Tuesday night.

To Jaschik, apparently, to “attack” someone’s scholarship is to quote their dissertation and describe its contents. Whose fault is it that Erik Loomis, Ph.D., studied the historic significance of anal sodomy in logging camps and the proletarian symbolism of “Everest’s testicles”?

It this a dissertation or a Monty Python skit?

Well, enough with the random sarcasm. It is interesting to note that the chief proprietor at Lawyers, Guns & Money, where Erik Loomis blogs when he’s not pondering the genitalia of early 20th-century I.W.W. members or gibbering like a madman on Twitter, banned Ann Althouse’s significant other in March 2011, inspiring her to brand Professor Robert Farley a “candyass blogger.”

So the operative principle is clear: (A) it would be a crime against human liberty for Erik Loomis to be denied tenure at the University of Rhode Island merely because he’s a demented kook, and (B) no fair trying to talk back to Commissar Farley and the LG&M politburo.

“Intimidation,” anyone?

UPDATE: From comments on Dr. Loomis’s latest opus:

RedWood says:
December 20, 2012 at 10:42 am
Again LOOMIS was the one going on and on (and on) about anal sex in his dissertation, and tweeted that he gets very excited talking about dildos to his teenage students. Who is the one with issues again?

Erik Loomis says:
December 20, 2012 at 10:44 am
To be clear, these are historical dildos we talked about. Actually read about to be specific. I can provide you some readings if you’d like to learn.

Uh, spare us the footnote citations, Professor . . .

(Hat-tip: Badger Pundit on Twitter.)

Category: Ann Althouse, Education

Unexpectedly, Last Year’s Super Committee Is This Year’s Coal In The Stocking

Posted on | December 20, 2012 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

Grand Old Partisan, aka Michael Zak, was pointing out on Twitter a post of his from September of last year:

Republicans may assume that the role of the Joint Committee will be limited and subordinate to Congress as a whole, but Democrats are planning otherwise. In her press conference yesterday, Nancy Pelosi gave a glimpse of the horrors to come:
“[President Obama’s $447 billion job] bill is paid for. How it will ultimately be paid for will be up to the Table of 12.” That’s right, the Democrat leadership says that this decision will be up to just twelve people. not the entire Congress. Democrats intend to use the Committee to bypass Congress, just as Obama has said many times that he would like to do.
The Democrats play hardball, all the time.

Read it all, and his book, as well.

I’ve not been blogging as much, working on a bit of prose myself. But if you’ve followed my Twitter feed at all, you’ve probably figured out that:

  • I’m not enthusiastic about trying to build any of the other fringe parties into a national level outfit to compete with the Progressives,
  • rather, a hostile takeover from within the GOP wing of the Progressives by truly reform-minded patriots has the greatest likelihood of eventual success.

Dean Clancy gives the John Boehner efforts two cheers:

Mr. Boehner’s “Plan B” is to move a bill through the House that extends all current income-tax rates for everyone except those earning more than $1,000,000 a year, plus some other provisions listed below. Amendments are also likely to be made in order. The votes could come as early as tomorrow.

That’s all swell and spiffy, Mr. Speaker. But What. Is. The. Real. Reform. Plan?

If not the Ryan Budget, then, what? It’s fine do sport a salmon tie an drop Plan B like a dead fish on the President’s doorstep, but so, what? We need more leadership from the Republicans than just coloring within the Progressive lines.

Screw all this noise. Show up at CPAC in March with a comprehensive reform package that gives me something to cheer for. Comprehensive reform across the board, of the sort that makes Progressives, entrenched federal bureaucrats and crony capitalists weep and gnash their teeth. Give us a different course for the ship of state to steer, and the sad results of last month won’t be repeated.

Category: Uncategorized
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