The Other McCain

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

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

LIVE AT FIVESIX: 12.20.12

Posted on | December 20, 2012 | Comments Off on LIVE AT FIVESIX: 12.20.12

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
House GOP Plans Vote On Fiscal Cliff Plan B

President Obama and Speaker Boehner

Reid already committed to defeat bill in Senate; Obama promises veto


Park Geun-Hye Becomes ROK’s First Female President
Calls for reconciliation after tight race

Obama Names Philly Police Commissioner To Gun Violence Discussion Group
Commissioner Ramsey a long-time proponent of tighter gun-control laws



POLITICS
The Case For Colleen Hanabusa

Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI)

Probably the most important being that she was the late Senator Inouye’s pick as his successor

Porked-Up Sandy Relief Bill Storms Into Senate

Obama Vows Fast Action In Push For Gun Control

Judge Robert Bork Dead At 85

Texas School District Attracts Attention For Armed Teacher Policy


Another Key Apple Patent Gets The Kibosh From Patent Office

Some Jerk From Chicago Named “Time” Person of The Year

Lame Duck Scott Brown Reverses Stance On Assault Weapon Ban

Senators Feinstein And McCain Condemn “Zero Dark Thirty”



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Rises On Diesel, Heating Oil Demand, Baseless Optimism Over Budget Talks: NYMEX $89.98, Brent $110.36
Bank Of Japan Loosens With Pledge To Address Inflation
Strike Looms At East Coast, Gulf Ports
Wall Street Falls As Budget Talks Sour, But Hope Remains
LIBOR Scandal May Have Cost Fannie And Freddie $3 Billion
GM To Buy Back 200 Million Shares From Treasury, Taxpayers Hosed Again
Fedex Earnings Fail To Deliver
IRS Commissioner Warns AMT Will Hit 100 Million Taxpayers If Not Patched
Videogame Maker THQ Files For Bankruptcy
US Expands Child Online Privacy Law To Cover Apps, Social Networks
Instagram, Facebook Stir Online Protests Over Privacy Policy Change
UK 4G Bidders Revealed
Tweet Archives Now Available On Twitter
Now Get Foursquare Recommendations From Facebook Friends
Windows 8, Blackberry 10 Won’t Win Any Smartphone Wars
Game Over: Thousands Of Sex Offenders Booted From Online Gaming Platforms



SPORTS
Clippers Thrash Hornets 93-77

Hornets center Robin Lopez, right, pulls in a rebound as the Clippers’ DeAndre Jordan watches

Victory over New Orleans extends Clippers’ win streak to 11

Angels Trade Kendrys Morales To M’s For Left-Hander Jason Vargas

Paul Pierce Scores 40 To Snap Celtics’ Skid

Hawks Cough Up 41 To Durant As Thunder Rolls

Knicks Bury Nyets In Garden, 100-86

Jets Ready To Rid Themselves Of Sanchez; Could Vick Be His Replacement?

Harden Leads Rockets To Blowout Of Sixers

Rendon, Giolito Headline “Baseball America” Top Ten Nats Prospects List



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Snooki Says Her Wild Past “Isn’t Such A Big Deal”

Snooki Pollizzi and son Lorenzo

Settling happily into life as mom

Tim Tebow, Camilla Belle Break Up

Miley Cyrus Grabs Stripper’s Butt During Raunchy Birthday Celebration

Sam Donaldson Busted For Drunk Driving

Taylor Swift & Mom Stock Up On Holiday Munchies

LiLo Blames Clogged Trailer Toilet On “Scary Movie 5” Producers

Ben Affleck Falls Out Of “Focus”

“Pumped Up Kicks” Yanked From LA Airwaves After Newtown Massacre

Rose MacGowan Cast In “Once Upon A Time” As Young Cora

Jessica Simpson Reveals Her Weight Watchers Body

Joss Whedon’s “S.H.I.E.L.D.” Pilot Enlists “Nashville” Actress Chloe Bennet



FOREIGNERS
PRC Arrests Almost 1000 Doomsday Cult Members
Narendra Modi Set For Record Third Term In Gujarat, Bolsters PM Prospects
Banghazi Report Forces Resignation Of Four State Dept. Officials
Russia Moves Forward On Law To Ban US Adoption Of Russian Children
It’s The Beginning Of The End For Al Assad
UN Halts Vaccine Work In Pakistan After Two More Killings
Politics, Laws Weigh On Islamic Finance In India
Entwistle Payout Raises Questions About Judgment Of BBC Trust, Says MP
Angry Protests Continue In Delhi Over Gang Rape



BLOGS & STUFF
The Looking Spoon: The Boehner/Obama Joint Christmas Card
Allahpundit: Oh Well, Boehner’s Plan B Already DOA In The Senate
NRO Corner: Boehner’s Gambit
Power Line: The Real Hagel Record
Washington Free Beacon: Rejecting Chuck Hagel
NRO: Newtown Answers
American Power: The Post-Newtown Witch Hunt
Legal Insurrection: It Being Necessary To Cut Through The Second Amendment Blather Before We Lose Our Rights…
Moe Lane: Market Reacts Predictably To Gun Control Threats
Gateway Pundit: Wal-Mart Runs Out Of Semi-Automatic Rifles
Weasel Zippers: Obama Says Climate Change Will Be Among Top Three Second-Term Priorities
Protein Wisdom: Barber Shop Conversation About Newtown Shootings Ends In Shots Fired At Customer
Clayton Cramer: Nice Collection Of Videos About The Problem Of Mental Health Care
Twitchy: Gun Rights Advocates Furious As Dick’s Sporting Goods Suspends Gun Sales
NewsBusters: NYT Editorial Celebrates Sole Black Senator As “Token”, Human Equivalent Of Poll Tax
Lonely Conservative: NYT Calls Senator Tim Scott “Token”

Category: Live at Five

#PiersMorganMovies The Fool Monty

Posted on | December 19, 2012 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Minor typo:

My ‘winner’:

Category: humor

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

Posted on | December 19, 2012 | 11 Comments

Professor Erik “Head on a Stick” Loomis has established a new precedent in Online Civil Discourse: Any epithet-strewn obscene rant full of violent language against political opponents is acceptable, as long as you explain that it is a Metaphor Right-Wing Morons Can’t Understand.

We thank our enlightened progressive overlords for this blessing.

It has furthermore been established that if you are engaged in metaphor, and sympathizers of your political opponent quote you in such a way as to suggest that your sentiments are deranged, menacing and offensive, this is a “witch hunt,” and anyone who calls attention to this is “orchestrating a campaign” against the user of metaphor.

Such is the essential syllogism of “Statement on Erik Loomis“:

[W]e must stand by Loomis’s side and speak up and out on his behalf, for he has become the target of a witch hunt, and as an untenured professor at the University of Rhode Island, he is vulnerable. Loomis needs our solidarity and support, and we must give it to him. . . .
Glenn Reynolds is now accusing Loomis of using “eliminationist rhetoric.”
Other conservative voices have joined in. The Daily Caller says Loomis “unleashed a flurry of profanity-ridden tweets demanding death for National Rifle Association executive Wayne LaPierre.” Townhall put Loomis’s tweets in the context of NRA members and leaders getting death threats. And just this morning, Michelle Malkin wrote at National Review Online [a column critical of Loomis] . . .
We do not expect any better of the orchestrators of this campaign—this is what they have done for many years, and doubtless will be doing for years to come. We do expect better of university administrators. Rather than standing behind a member of their faculty, the administration has sought to distance the university from Loomis. . . .

In other words, if Professor Wobbly-Gay-Lumberjack Dissertation fails to gain tenure at the University of Rhode Island, the haters win, and the academic right to use fucking bloody hate speech metaphor in Online Civil Discourse will be destroyed.

(Damn it, why did Ace of Spades have to take a vacation this week? How can this douchebag not receive the full-on AOSHQ treatment?)

Nevertheless, in order to show “our solidarity and support” for the unalienable right to employ violent obscene rants metaphor in Online Civil Discourse (and still get tenure at the University of Rhode Island), I will list the signatories to the “Statement on Erik Loomis“:

  1. Chris Bertram, University of Bristol
  2. Michael Bérubé, The Pennsylvania State University
  3. Henry Farrell, George Washington University
  4. Kieran Healy, Duke University
  5. Jon Mandle, SUNY Albany
  6. John Quiggin, University of Queensland
  7. Corey Robin, Brooklyn College
  8. Brian Weatherson, University of Michigan

Perhaps readers can offer appropriate suggestions for what should be done to these subversive Bolshevik intestinal parasites metaphors!

UPDATE: I’ll have to provide the dog-whistle translation for Professor William Jacobson’s eliminationist rhetoric here:

I don’t think Loomis should be fired

Instead, he should be castrated with pruning shears

but that doesn’t mean he should be free from criticism.

And by “criticism,” I mean “Birther lynch mob rage”

And he certainly is not a hero of anything.

Except to the Marxist traitors who voted for the Kenyan usurper!

He’s just a guy who

should have his eyes gouged out with rusty nails because he

wanted to deprive others of the rights he claims for himself.

Right-wing morons don’t understand metaphor, but our ears perk up quick when we hear that secret lynch-mob dog-whistle.





 

PREVIOUSLY:


Category: Education, Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Rhode Island

Obama’s Benghazi Fall Guys

Posted on | December 19, 2012 | 24 Comments

It took long enough, but President Gutsy Call finally located three State Department employees who don’t have enough political juice to protect them from getting blamed for the predictable failure of the administration’s Libya policy:

The A.P., quoting an unidentified administration official, said Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, and Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, had resigned. The third person, who was not identified, was an official with the department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs, The A.P. said.

You have to picture in your mind Obama’s advisors huddled with Hillary’s advisors, going over a list of State Department personnel, trying to figure out who doesn’t have a key Democratic Senator or an influential DNC contributor to defend them against this “under-the-bus” move.

So now we know who the three least-connected State Department employees were, thus providing Obama with the chance to say that he has now solved the problem that his policies caused. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Disinformation’s effort to deceive voters has succeeded remarkably, with 56% of the gullible sheep telling CNN they fell for that farcical Susan Rice dog-and-pony show.

The resignations of the “Benghazi Three” followed the publication of a report from the Libya Cover-Up Scapegoat Search Committee:

The report, posted Tuesday night on the State Department’s website, also identified “leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus.” It suggested 29 ways the department can improve its operations, but recommended no disciplinary action.
The Accountability Review Board’s report . . .

(“Accountability”! Like the kids says, “LOL.”)

. . . comes after more than three months of intense debate in Washington over who was behind the attack, what motivated the attackers and why U.S. authorities weren’t able to stop the violence, which took the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

It’s the standard Obama-era Jedi mind trick: Four Americans dead, don’t blame the President, nothing more to see here, move along.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! The professor obviously appreciates the way the passive voice magically relieves the important people from the burden of responsibility. Somebody got screwed over, but who did the screwing?

 


Category: Barack Obama, Libya

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

Posted on | December 19, 2012 | 55 Comments

University of Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis

An assistant history professor whose angry Twitter rants against the National Rifle Association caused an online controvery this week “does not speak on behalf of the University [of Rhode Island],” the institution’s president declared yesterday.

Erik Loomis, a progressive blogger who teaches history at URI, was widely criticized for messages he posted on his Twitter social-networking account, calling the NRA a “terrorist organization” and saying he wanted the gun-right group’s CEO’s “head on a stick.” Loomis’s obscenity-laced tirade, inspired by last week’s school shooting in Connecticut, was highlighted by the non-profit group Campus Reform.

“The University of Rhode Island does not condone acts or threats of violence,” university president Dr. David M. Dooley wrote in a message sent yesterday. “These remarks do not reflect the views of the institution and Erik Loomis does not speak on behalf of the University. The University is committed to fostering a safe, inclusive and equitable culture that aspires to promote positive change.”

Dooley’s repudiation of Loomis’s comments came in the wake of widespread attention from conservative bloggers to a series of Twitter messages the professor sent Friday after a mentally ill man killed 20 children and seven adults in Connecticut before committing suicide.

“Loomis not only blamed [the NRA’s Wayne] LaPierre for the shooting in Newtown, Conn., but Republicans everywhere,” Laura Byrne of Red Alert Politics wrote. “[Loomis] proceeded to send multiple tweets dropping the F-bomb directed at the GOP, LaPierre and the NRA . . . Loomis advocated immediately politicizing this heart-breaking tragedy in another vulgar tweet containing the f-word.”

After Campus Reform’s Oliver Darcy reported Monday on the professor’s online rant, Loomis mocked Darcy as a “David Horowitz wannabe,” a reference to the former 1960s New Left radical who has become a prominent conservative intellectual and frequent critic of academic leftism. Loomis ridiculed his critics as “right-wing morons” who were too stupid to understand his comments as a “metaphor.”

Darcy’s report on Loomis’s comments quickly attracted notice from leading bloggers, including University of Tennessee Law Professor Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds and Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection site, as well as American Thinker and others collected by the blog-aggregation site Memeorandum. Yet Loomis continued to treat the controversy as a joke, writing a sarcastic post at a liberal blog with the title, “Fame, I Wanna Live Forever,” remarking that “metaphor is really, really hard for conservatives to understand.”

However, as Loomis acknowledged, complaints about his violent rhetoric drew attention from Rhode Island State Police and required him to attend a meeting with a university dean. And his mocking attitude toward the controversy ended Tuesday after Michelle Malkin’s Twitchy site pointed out that Loomis had re-Tweeted an especially obnoxious message: “First f–ker to say the solution is for elementary school teachers to carry guns needs to get beaten to death.”

Twitchy also noted that in 2011, Loomis had condemned former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s use of “violent rhetoric.” Tuesday afternoon, Loomis deleted his Twitter account, and the University of Rhode Island president issued his statement — addressed to the “university community” — repudiating the professor’s messages.

After his remarks first provoked a public backlash this week, Loomis had claimed he was the victim of “right-wing intimidation.” Tuesday night, in a blog post that continued this theme, Professor Loomis was still attempting to shift responsibility for the controversy onto his critics: “I am too tired to post anything coherently. With the death threats, it’s been a bit crazy. I can assure all of you that I will not be intimidated.”

 

 

UPDATE: Professor Donald Douglas writes that, before Loomis deleted his Twitter account, it “was practically flooded with blood from all the violent tweets and retweets he’d been sending out. It looked literally as if he’d blown a gasket, losing complete control of his faculties. At that point it became no longer a free speech issue but a public safety issue.”

Indeed, Loomis seemed to be emotionally unbalanced.

UPDATE II: Erika Niedowski of the Associated Press writes a news article about dishonest one-sided whitewash of Professor Loomis’s demented and offensive comments. It is genuinely scandalous that Loomis is employed at taxpayer expense, but the AP evidently doesn’t want anyone to know what this deranged academic actually said.



 

UPDATE III: Michael Graham is “not a super-smart campus liberal like Erik Loomis” (and there is no lifetime tenure for talk-radio hosts).

Also, Easily Annoyed Law Blogger Is Easily Annoyed.

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Category: Education, Rhode Island
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