The Other McCain

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

FMJRA 2.0: Relay Breakdown

Posted on | December 22, 2012 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Death Porn Media Victim Unexpectedly Negative About The Encounter

Obama’s Benghazi Fall Guys

‘He Was a Quiet Ewok, Kept to Himself a Lot. Kind of a Loner, I Guess You’d Say’

FMJRA 2.0: I Can’t Stay Long

Guns Don’t Kill People …

Criticism From a Friend: Can We Help Victims of Random Sarcasm Syndrome?

Rule Five Sunday: Night Flights

Furnishing Your Tidy Little Mind

Still Crazy, After All These Years

Patterico on Tommy Christopher and the ‘Wheelerization’ of Steven Crowder

I’d Always Taken ‘Valley of the Shadow’ As A Psalm 23 Reference

#Newtown: ‘Exotic Weapons’? Nope.

Is It ‘Metaphor’ to Suggest Erik Loomis Should Be Sodomized by Orangutangs? UPDATE: Is Professor ‘Head on a Stick’ Now Under State Police Protection?

Why the Creepy Little Weirdo Did It

Herbert Marcuse, Wile E. Coyote and the Auto-Beclownment of Erik Loomis, Ph.D.

LIVE AT FIVE: 12.19.12

University President Repudiates Professor’s Violent Anti-NRA Messages UPDATE: Associated Press Article Whitewashes Loomis Scandal

#Metaphor: Academics Sign Their Own Death Warrants by Defending Loomis

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

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

Leaders Are People With Followers

Don’t Get Too Fixated On The Raaaaace Card, Jonah

Professor Erik Loomis, Code Pink and the Media Hate America’s Gun Owners UPDATE: More Progressive Civility™

Gutfeld Hammers NYT’s Adolph Reed

Dana Loesch, Indentured Servant?

Top linkers this week:

  1. Lonely Conservative (8)
  2. Hogewash (6)

Everybody’s busy with preparations for Christmas or still hung over from Hanukkah, I guess. Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA will be Friday, December 28.

Category: FMJRA Award

Dana Loesch, Indentured Servant?

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 40 Comments

Rumbles of discontent at Breitbart.com, which I’d been hearing from various sources since spring, have finally erupted into actual news, as Dana Loesch has filed a federal lawsuit seeking (a) $75,000 and (b) to be released from her contactual obligations:

St. Louis talk radio host Dana Loesch, also a frequent guest on CNN, alleges in the suit filed in federal district court in St. Louis that the site is refusing to publish her work while “sabotag[ing] her attempts to labor in a similar fashion elsewhere through public misstatements and private threats to sue those who would otherwise employ Loesch.” . . .
Breitbart.com is “binding Loesch to what amounts to an indentured servitude in limbo,” she charges in the suit, which was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

More at the BuzzFeed. It’s unfortunate that matters came to such a pass, and I don’t want to get into the blame game in a situation where I don’t know both sides of the story.

As I said, I’ve heard “rumbles” about the Breitbart.com operation for several months, but having spent so long in the newspaper business — where every newsroom is a seething cauldron of frustrated ambition — it’s something I didn’t want to read too much into.

Dana Loesch is one of my favorite people in New Media, and I know she was one of Andrew’s favorite people. It’s just very sad to see things break down so badly so soon after Andrew’s death.

Click here to read the eight-page text of Dana’s lawsuit.

UPDATE: Now a Memeorandum thread. I’ve printed out the lawsuit and may have further comment after I read it.

UPDATE II: OK, now having skimmed over the lawsuit, the claim is that in October 2011, Breitbart.com failed to exercise its option to renew Dana’s contract for another year, so that her employment thereafter was on a month-to-month basis. In September of this year — perhaps having been offered better terms by another site — Dana gave a month’s notice of her intent to leave Breitbart.com, at which point management claimed that she was still contractually bound to the company, and threatened legal action against any company that hired Dana.

Four word come to minds: Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Without regard for contracts, it is just plain nuts for Breitbart.com to try to keep Dana if Dana wants to leave. What is this, the Mafia or something, where once you’re in, you’re in for life?

Frankly, I’ve never heard of anything like this before. It simply doesn’t make sense: If, as Dana alleges, Breitbart.com no longer wants to publish her writing, why would they prevent her from taking her work elsewhere? If her services are not valuable to them, why deny her the right to find another publisher who might value her services more?

Maybe management at Breitbart.com can explain this, or maybe I’m somehow misunderstanding the dispute, but what it looks like is, they’re trying to drive Dana Loesch off the Web altogether: She can neither write for Breitbart.com, nor write for anyone else.

How the hell can they do that in America?

UPDATE III: Linked by Doug Hagin at Daley Gator and by The Lonely Conservative. Continuing rumbles indicate that the situation with Dana Loesch may be part of a larger issue with the business model and the management philosophy at Breitbart.com: More like an old-style Hollywood studio system, oriented toward celebrity “star power,” so that if they can’t have Dana Loesch, nobody can have Dana Loesch. Or something like that, anyway.

David Martosko at the Daily Caller points out that, since Andrew died in March, “a coterie of friends of the company’s late namesake has continued to run the  company, most recently hiring a raft of conservative bloggers and reporters that  included former Washington Times staffer Kerry Picket and former Daily Caller  reporter Matthew Boyle.”

Knew they had hired Boyle, a young investigative reporter, but didn’t realize they’d also hired Picket, an ultra-aggressive Capitol Hill reporter. And, to show you how little attention I pay to these things anymore, I hadn’t seen this Dec. 10 story by Betsy Rothstein at Fishbowl DC, talking about Breitbart.com’s Stephen K. Bannon hiring up reporters by the bushel basket load, signing them up to four-year contracts:

Reporters around town being wooed for Breitbart.com include: Katie Pavlich of Townhall, Lachlan Markay of Heritage, Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner, Caroline May of The Daily Caller and Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard.
Some have described a cultish feel to the process, with phrases such as “This is the way Andrew would have wanted it” being bandied about in conversation.

So, if they’ve got all this cash to throw around for hot talent in D.C., why should they insist on keeping Dana Loesch sidelined?

To repeat: Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Category: Andrew Breitbart, Dana Loesch

Gutfeld Hammers NYT’s Adolph Reed

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Greg Gutfeld does a straightforward job of rebutting Adolph Reed. It’s a fairly obvious argument, but it builds nicely, and the conclusion is effectively delivered, for all you kind of know it’s coming:

via The Daley Gator

Category: Uncategorized

Professor Erik Loomis, Code Pink and the Media Hate America’s Gun Owners UPDATE: More Progressive Civility™

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 16 Comments

Code Pink protesters — including the group’s Marxist founder, Medea Benjamin — disrupted today’s press conference by National Rifle Association chairman Wayne LaPierre. Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has video. Meanwhile, as Alex Pappas of Daily Caller reports, influential members of the nation’s elite press corps were openly mocking LaPierre:

Who is Jonathan Weisman? Just another neutral, objective congressional reporter for the New York Times, that’s all.

Might as well get your news from Erik Loomis. (“Metaphor“!)

Here’s the full text of Wayne LaPierre’s speech. More at Memeorandum.

 

 

UPDATE: If there’s one thing America can always expect from progressives, it’s civil discourse about important policy issues:

 

Lots more Progressive Civility™ where that came from.

Linked at Hogewash — thanks!

UPDATE II: Oops! Neutral objective reporters caught on a hot microphone disparaging the NRA, praising Code Pink.

UPDATE III: Linked by American Glob — thanks!

UPDATE IV: Linked by the Lonely Conservative — thanks!

 


Category: Media Bias

Don’t Get Too Fixated On The Raaaaace Card, Jonah

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

I tried out Ricochet, which gave a free login to Goldberg at the NRO:

Just this week, in an essay for the New York Times, Adolph Reed attacked South Carolina governor Nikki Haley — the first female Indian-American governor in America — for appointing Representative Tim Scott to retiring senator Jim DeMint’s seat. Scott is a black man and a conservative Tea Party favorite.

So obviously, this is a very clever ploy to restore Jim Crow.

“Just as white Southern Democrats once used cynical manipulations — poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests — to get around the 15th Amendment,” Reed writes, “so modern-day Republicans have deployed blacks to undermine black interests.”

That’s it exactly. Indeed, that’s what the Tea Party was always about: undermining black interests.

When Herman Cain — another inconveniently black man — was the overwhelming preference among Tea Party activists for the Republican presidential nomination, a historian writing in the New York Times suggested that Cain could be seen as proof the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan lives on.

You know you’ve been pounding a square peg into a round hole for too long when you find yourself insinuating that a black man from Georgia represents the KKK tradition in contemporary politics.

But it’s really not about the card as such. Abstract a bit. The race card is just a cheap means to the end of amassing political power. If, indeed, the insertion of race/color/creed divisions loses its power generation capability, substitutes will be found. Class warfare for example.

The interesting question is how much longer conservatives can continue to hang out with the likes of a Tim Scott or a Herman Cain, or nominate Mia Love, and so forth, before the whole Racism Industrial Complex begins to crumble.

But who wants to listen to my pigment-deprived self?

Category: Uncategorized

Occupy Althouse? (The Zero-Sum Error)

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 19 Comments

There are times when you must choose between gratitude and resentment and, considering how rarely this blog gets linked by Ann Althouse, I’ve decided to be grateful that my thoughts on Professor Erik Loomis provided her and Meade with some laughs. Also, because her post linking my post got linked at Instapundit, I’ll be grateful for what bloggers know as the “Secondhand-o-lanche.” Nevertheless . . .

What’s up with people choosing to leave clever comments at Althouse’s blog, rather than to share their pithy witticisms with us?

Moneyrunner said…
It’s worth stating that there is a case to be made for the freedom of academics to take unpopular views. In Loomis’ case it becomes a matter of defending the right of academics to be outrageous assholes without consequences.
12/21/12 6:47 AM

Jim Treacher said…
What’s the big deal? It’s not like he put crosshairs symbols on a map.
12/21/12 7:27 AM

Astro said…
I’m guessing that 100 years from now, Prof. Erik Loomis will be regarded as an historical dildo.
12/21/12 8:46 AM

Jim Treacher? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Never mind. If Treacher wants to goldbrick on his Daily Caller gig by commenting at Althouse’s blog, that’s between him and Tucker, I guess

Good thing I’m not a lefty, or I’d call for an “Occupy Althouse” movement, to demand a more equitable redistribution of funny comments. This is where one is reminded again of the alternative between resentment and gratitude.

Our commenters aren’t chopped liver, after all, and what’s to stop other bloggers — Donald Douglas or Bob Belvedere, for example — from launching their own protest campaign against us?

“Comrades! We must resist the imperialist dominance of the blogospheric bourgeoisie that exploits the commenter proletariat!”

No, we’ve seen where that ideology leads: The HuffPo “killing fields,” with volunteer contributors rounded up in a digital veal pen, promised that their unpaid work will help advance the Progressive cause, only to see the People’s Democratic Republic of HuffPo shamelessly sold to the highest bidder by Arianna and her investors.

We’re not going down that road. We’re not even going to slow down as we pass the off-ramp that leads to that road.

It would be easy enough, I suppose, to find bloggers prone to a sour-grapes mentality, to convince them that success is a zero-sum game, to mobilize their petty resentments, to persuade them that the reason they don’t get more funny comments on their blogs is because Althouse is unfairly monopolizing funny comments.

But that would not only be false, it would be evil.

The spirit of generosity and gratitude can accomplish more in human affairs than can the spirit of selfishness and envy. And I suppose, since this is the Friday before Christmas — and most of you are reading this while goldbricking at your jobs prior to taking 11 days of paid holidays — I should remind you of this greatest gift, that God so loved the world as to give his only son. And the shepherds heard an angelic host, proclaiming, “Peace on Earth! Goodwill toward men!”

If you don’t get back here until Wednesday, Jan. 2 — like Treacher, goldbricking at your job again — Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!




 

UPDATE: This seems to be a good time to thank readers who have hit the tip jar in the past week: William in Bakersfield, James in North Carolina, Gregory in Elmhurst, Clare in Larchmont, William in Dallas, Cathryn in Oregon, Glenn in Tennessee, John in Annapolis, Charles in Oregon, Amelia in New Jersey, William in Owego and Dianna in San Jose.

Category: Ann Althouse, Christmas

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
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