LIVE AT FIVE: 11.16.12

Chamique Holdsclaw is 6-foot-2, 172 pounds. She was a three-time NCAA champion at the University of Tennessee and, during her 11 seasons of pro basketball, averaged nearly 17 points per game. And she is now wanted on an aggravated assault charge:

An arrest warrant was issued for former basketball star Chamique Holdsclaw on Thursday after a dispute with a woman allegedly turned violent, Atlanta police said.
Holdsclaw, 35, of Smyrna, was not in custody Thursday afternoon, according to jail records. The warrant is for aggravated assault, criminal damage to property and reckless conduct, police said. . . .
[Jennifer] Lacy, who is also a professional basketball player, said she drove to a friend’s house on Hemphill Avenue, at which time Holdsclaw got out of her car with a baseball bat and began smashing the windows in Lacy’s Range Rover, the report said.
After breaking the driver’s side window, a rear passenger’s window and the rear window, Holdsclaw produced a handgun, fired inside the SUV and fled the scene, the report said.

Holdsclaw’s Twitter profile describes her as a “mental health advocate,” and I suppose bashing in your ex-girlfriend’s car windows — with a few pistol shots thrown in for good measure — might be considered therapeutic in some sense. NTTAWWT.

I point this out because Amanda Marcotte says right-wingers have “a deep fear and loathing of female sexuality.” Yeah, if by “fear and loathing” you mean nightmares about a crazy 6-foot-2 lesbian chasing after me with a baseball bat and a pistol, I plead guilty.

UPDATE: Holdsclaw has turned herself into police and is being held in Fulton County Jail. So we’re safe. At least until she makes bail.

UPDATE II: Oh, my — this probably isn’t great publicity for the lesbian reality TV show Chamique Holdsclaw was co-producing:

Looking to capitalize on the reality TV craze while busting myths about lesbians, producers of “The Real Women of America” have cast a trailer with a diverse set of local women as its would-be stars.
With lofty goals to produce a “Real Housewives”-type franchise and expand into cities including New York, San Francisco, Miami and Dallas, among others, producers A.L. King, Tina Crittenden, India Alston and Chamique Holdsclaw are starting right here at home with a diverse group of locals.

Yeah, “busting myths about lesbians.” Also, busting out car windows.

Category: Crime, Gays, Sports

Thugs of a Feather: #Anonymous Supports Hamas Terrorists Against Israel

Posted on | November 15, 2012 | 152 Comments

Hamas terrorists in Gaza launched missile attacks against Israel, and now Israel is fighting back. From the comfort of their mothers’ basements, the cowardly “revolutionaries” of the Anonymous hacker conspiracy issued a manifesto accusing Israel of “barbaric, brutal and despicable treatment of the Palestinian people” and demand that the Israelis “cease and desist from your terror upon the innocent people of Palestine.”

Jessica Roy reports at the technology site BetaBeat:

Anonymous has already begun defacing multiple pro-Israel websites . . .
A Google doc, also being circulated by Anonymous, provides information about protests across the globe in response to the IDF’s military operations. A Facebook event for a protest at the New York Israeli Consulate on 42nd St. and 2nd Ave. already has over 1,000 people registered as attending.

Beginning early Thursday morning, the hacker group announced a mission to crash and deface websites belonging to the Israeli Defense Forces, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli websites belonging to security and financial corporations, according to Global Post.
On Twitter, an account linked to Anonymous called on followers to bring down more than 40 websites belonging to the Israeli government and military. The group is known for launching so-called “denial of service” attacks that overwhelm websites with traffic, causing them to crash. . . .
The hacker group posted a message on one website claiming to have taken down Israeli’s “top security and surveillance website.” The statement included a photo of what the group said were burning buildings in Gaza and said: “We Anonymous will not sit back and watch a cowardly Zionist State demolish innocent people’s lives.”

So if you ever doubted that Anonymous was a terrorist organization, they have now removed all reason for doubt.

Category: Israel, Terrorism

To the Amazon Shopper Who Bought the 4,000-Watt 196cc Power Generator

Posted on | November 15, 2012 | 9 Comments

Thanks! You paid $429.99 for that Champion Power Equipment product via our Amazon Associates links, which provided me a $30.10 commission. Shopping at Amazon is a win-win, with low prices for readers and blog revenue to help keep things cranking here. Instapundit occasionally reminds his readers how this works:

InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you shop through the Amazon links on this page . . . you support this blog at no cost to yourself. It’s much appreciated when you do!

That pretty much sums it up, but from time to time I like to provide more specific examples — from the monthly sales report — of how this works: A reader bought a $179 Kindle, and I got a $12.53 commission. Another reader bought Adobe Premiere video-editing software for $84.99, and I got a $6.30 commission.

For more than a year, I’ve been trying to get some reader to buy a $20,000 diamond ring via Amazon, because if I could just sell one . . .

Well, no takers on that deal yet, but it’s coming up on the holidays, and so I’ll encourage you to shop our Amazon links for great bargains.

Category: Amazon

BREAKING NEWS: The Economy Sucks

Posted on | November 15, 2012 | 23 Comments

The Drudge Report featured this headline stack today:

JOBLESS…
INFLATION…
POVERTY…
RECESSION…

None of this is exactly news to anyone who was really paying attention. Unfortunately, about 62.6 million Americans weren’t paying attention Nov. 6, so that the cause of this non-news — the disastrous failure of Obamanomics — will now be extended by four years. Danielle Saul comments:

[W]e as a country have conceded to the entitlement mentality, and it is already beginning to destroy our country. Jobless claims have risen 78k since the election pushing unemployment to 439k, the highest level since April 2011.

Danielle provides an extensive list of announced layoffs. Looks like it’s going to be an un-Merry Christmas for lots of folks. And even the 1% will have a little less holiday cheer: The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost more than 700 points since Obama was re-elected.

Maybe all those stupid young “Vagina Voters” can find some way to trade in their free contraceptives for cash.

UPDATE: The latest news:

Senate Democrats say deficit
package must include stimulus

In other words, a deal to reduce the deficit must, according to Democrats, include more deficit spending. The Lonely Conservative writes:

Why would any sane people think that more of the same will produce a different result? Geez, we may as well go over the financial cliff now and get it over with.

Also:

If Every Food Stamp Recipient Voted For Obama,
It Would Account For 75% Of His Total

So, between food stamps and contraceptives for “Vagina Voters,” Obama bought re-election by giving away “free” stuff paid for with money taken from taxpayers who voted against him.

Category: Economics

Obama Administration’s Benghazi Gambit: Protect Rice, Scapegoat CIA

Posted on | November 15, 2012 | 12 Comments

A suspiciously timely scoop:

CBS News has obtained the CIA talking points given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on Sept. 15 regarding the fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, four days earlier. CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan says the talking points, which were also given to members of the House intelligence committee, make no reference to terrorism being a likely factor in the assault, which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.
Rice . . . has been attacked by Republican lawmakers for saying . . . on Sept. 16 that all indications were the attack “began spontaneously” – suggesting it likely sprang from a protest against an anti-Muslim video found on the Internet. Protests of that nature had been seen in other Muslim nations in the days and weeks before the Benghazi attack.
“Available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault… There are indications that extremists participated,” read the CIA’s talking points.

Ed Morrissey observes:

It seems interesting this CBS scoop comes shortly before both the current and former directors of the CIA will testify as to what they know about the terrorist attack on our consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi. Why, it’s almost as if someone at the White House or State Department wanted to follow up on Barack Obama’s defense of Susan Rice during yesterday’s press conference and pre-empt any potential fallout from whatever Mike Morell and David Petraeus have to say today and tomorrow.

Extreme naïveté is necessary to believe anything the Obama administration says and extreme cynicism is necessary to pretend that the Obama administration is telling the truth. So, are the pro-Obama media naive fools or cynical hacks? We report. You decide.

Meanwhile, Jill Kelley has lost her “honorary consul general” privileges, whatever the heck that means.

Category: Barack Obama, Libya, Scandal

Paranoid Theory: ‘Karl Rove Was Out Raising Money to Keep Santorum Alive’

Posted on | November 15, 2012 | 53 Comments

James Yanke at Reaganite Republican links to an article at Business Insider in which Grace Wyler gives credence to a paranoid theory offered by evangelical leader David Lane:

Karl stepped on Rick Perry and then Newt Gingrich every chance he got — albeit with deceit and sophistication — and elevated Mitt Romney at strategic, crucial points along their way to the Republican nomination — Rove’s candidate.
As an example of how sophisticated Rove is…Karl Rove was out raising money to keep Santorum alive until they could kill Newt — Santorum basically ran for Governor of Iowa in 2011, visiting all 99 counties; Santorum, out of Iowa, had no organization, no money and no chance in 2012 to be the Republican nominee; he was only a stalking horse for Mitt Romney — Rove kept Santorum alive until he could kill Rick Perry first, and then Newt Gingrich.
It’s instructive to note that Santorum placed 3rd in the South Carolina Presidential Primary the third week of January, and placed 3rd again the next week in Florida — yet Rove [by encouraging GOP donors to donate Santorum] was able to parlay two third place finishes into a $1M shot of money to keep Santorum alive…this is political gamesmanship on a whole other level, plus access to unlimited money.

This is insane in so many ways I don’t even know where to begin. It is obviously false to claim that Karl Rove raised a dime for Rick Santorum’s campaign. Nearly all of Santorum’s post-Iowa fundraising surge was in the form of online contributions from small donors.

So why on earth would David Lane say such a thing? In February, after Santorum won the trifecta — Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri — his underdog campaign caught the attenton of Annette Simmons, wife of Texas billionaire Harold Clark Simmons. Mrs. Simmons is a devout Christian who doesn’t pay much attention to politics, but news reports about Santorum’s strong Christian values appealed to her. So she told her husband that she was thinking about making a donation to Santorum. The Wall Street Journal reported March 23:

Mr. Simmons wondered about the prospects of the former Pennsylvania senator. He called his personal political muse, Republican strategist Karl Rove.
“Is he worth investing into his super PAC?” Mr. Simmons asked. He rose from his leather recliner in the den and stood at a bay window overlooking swans gliding on a lake encircled by 17,000 tulips. “Does he have a chance?”
“Yes, I wouldn’t count him out,” Mr. Rove said. Mr. Simmons’s wife, Annette, who was keen on Mr. Santorum, promptly donated $1 million to his super PAC, cash badly needed for an ad blitz ahead of the Super Tuesday primaries.

Keep in mind what the situation was in February: Michelle Bachmann had quit after Iowa, Perry quit two days before the Jan. 21 South Carolina primary, and Gingrich had gotten stomped by Romney in both Florida and Nevada. Then came Feb. 8, when Santorum won all three contests, while Gingrich placed third in Colorado and fourth (behind Ron Paul) in Minnesota (Newt didn’t make the ballot in Missouri).

So if any well-informed person were asked, “Does Santorum have a chance?” the obvious answer would be, “Yes, I wouldn’t count him out.” Yet this is twisted by David Lane — who backed Gingrich from start to finish — into a conspiratorial plot. Furthermore, the idea that Perry and Gingrich lost because Rove “stepped on [them] every chance he got” is blatantly counterfactual:

Perry self-destructed in two debates in Florida (Tampa Sept. 12, Orlando Sept. 22), and was never a viable contender thereafter. Whatever prospects there might have been for resurrecting the Texas governor’s campaign ended at the Nov. 9 debate in Michigan, when Perry forgot how to count to three: “Oops.” By all normal logic, Perry should have quit after his fifth-place showing in the Iowa caucuses, but instead let himself be persuaded to continue on to South Carolina, only to end up quitting the Thursday before the Saturday primary and endorsing Gingrich.
Gingrich was buried in Iowa by a blitz of Romney attack ads, recovered to win South Carolina, then buried against in Florida. As I have extensively documented, Gingrich’s campaign suffered from an unsustainable “burn rate.” Gingrich’s campaign went into the red in late January due to an ill-fated decision to attempt to fight Romney in the expensive Florida TV market and never recovered its financial balance. Newt reportedly spent the days before the Nevada primary desperately “dialing for dollars” (and thereby missed a scheduled appearance with the state’s popular Gov. Brian Sandoval) because of the campaign’s money troubles.

So, on the basis of a single datum — the Harold Simmons call to Karl Rove in February — David Lane has ginned up a conspiracy theory that falsely portrays Rick Santorum as a Rove-controlled stalking horse for the Romney campaign. Paranoia is not an ideology.

UPDATE: It is necessary, in order to understand how absurdly misguided David Lane’s paranoid theory is, to look at the vote totals in the three GOP contests that took place on Feb. 8:

MISSOURI PRIMARY:
RICK SANTORUM …. 55%
MITT ROMNEY ……… 25%
RON PAUL …………….. 12%

COLORADO CAUCUSES:
RICK SANTORUM …. 40%
MITT ROMNEY ……… 35%
NEWT GINGRICH …. 13%
RON PAUL …………….. 12%

MINNESOTA CAUCUSES:
RICK SANTORUM …. 45%
RON PAUL …………….. 27%
MITT ROMNEY ……… 17%
NEWT GINGRICH …. 11%

No intelligent person could look at those results and say that, as of Feb. 9, Newt Gingrich was better positioned than Rick Santorum to defeat Romney, and yet this is what David Lane wants you to believe: That somehow, as a result of Karl Rove’s Machiavellian scheming, Newt got cheated out of the nomination because Annette Simmons gave a million dollars to Santorum’s Super PAC in February.

UPDATE: Linked by Becca J. Lower — thanks!

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Election 2012, Fear. Loathing., Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum

2013: A Century Of Progress

Posted on | November 15, 2012 | 41 Comments

by Smitty

Conservatives should plan to mark the century since the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson on 17 January, 1913 with somber reminders of how bad the results of Progressivism have been. The 1910 census marked the end of the House of Representatives growing to represent the people. Thus, it is in danger of being the Lesser Senate. The 17th Amendment, of course, made Senators relatively more loyal to their parties than their States, and has turned the Senate into the Greater House. The Federal Reserve Act has flipped the cart and the horse, as DC borrows from the unborn to bribe the living. Meanwhile, the re-election rate for Congress is north of 95% since all this.

Thus, we have arrived, in the space of a century, at the door of a de facto aristocracy. 8 out of 10 of the richest counties voted for Obama, for all his re-election was substantially a class-warfare play. The rich Left team with the mob and crush the middle, and liberty. Does this explain the decline in voter turnout? While it may significantly be the case that conservatives bore some animus toward Romney for RomneyCare or even his faith, I submit that the larger problem may be the perception that our politics has become a farce dipped in debt:

#2016Resolutions The GOP can’t keep playing the Washington Generals to the Democrat’s Harlem Globetrotters.

— Chris Smith (@smitty_one_each) November 7, 2012

To what extent has the GOP played right along with all this? Substantially, I’d say. While there has been willingness to co-op fiscal conservative energy since Ross Perot in 1992, on through the Tea Parties in 2010, a cynic might say that Tea Partiers were merely a tool to regain power for the GOP. I used to be an apologist for Boehner and the boys, saying that they needed to see some staying power from Tea Partiers, some maturity, some professional commitment to reform. If that’s the case, then the GOP elite really should consider throwing the Tea Parties a bone, because the cynical model seems to have more predictive power. Senator John McCain has been given leave to bleat about Susan Rice as Secretary of State. Why bother? Is the point to spend whatever rounds remain in the magazine on small issues, so that there is nothing left for the coming Commie Supreme Court?

There doesn’t seem to be any soft landing for this. No telling what the Ryan Budget might have done, if implemented. We appear to be on a collision course with the wall. So that bites. The only good news is that we don’t have to spend time planning what to do to reform. We already have our 1787 Constitution. The challenge is locating the will to wrest some power from DC and return it to the people.

Expand the House so that it again Represents the people.
Return the Senate to being driven by the 57 States.
Reform the Federal Reserve, so that we aren’t engaging in taxation without representation against the unborn.

Never in the history of humankind, I’ll venture, has a society been more stared in the face by the answer to its problems, yet not quite seemed to see it. Read and heed Schlichter:

In 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army insurgents rose up against the American and South Vietnamese forces in the Tet Offensive. They were wiped out, yet seven years later they were in control of the country. There are lessons there for us conservatives.
Conservatives, as opposed to the Republicans who partially overlap them on the Venn diagram of American politics, need a strategy. Strategy differs from mere tactics – it is a synchronization of potential ways (think courses of action) and available means (think resources) to achieve a long term end. Tactics are the techniques supporting the strategy. The Tea Party/conservative revolt had effective tactics – rallies, town halls – but the movement’s decentralized nature, with groups springing up around the country, kept it from developing an effective, coherent strategy this year.

The whole thing is important. Should we treat the GOP as guilty until proven innocent in this case? I’m moving in that direction.

Progressivism Delenda Est

Update: linked at The Rio Norte Line

Category: Barack Obama

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The Other McCain

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

LIVE AT FIVE: 11.16.12

Women’s Basketball Star Revealed as Lesbian, Also Violently Crazy

Thugs of a Feather: #Anonymous Supports Hamas Terrorists Against Israel

To the Amazon Shopper Who Bought the 4,000-Watt 196cc Power Generator

BREAKING NEWS: The Economy Sucks

Obama Administration’s Benghazi Gambit: Protect Rice, Scapegoat CIA

Paranoid Theory: ‘Karl Rove Was Out Raising Money to Keep Santorum Alive’

2013: A Century Of Progress

Progressivism Delenda Est

THE FULL METAL JACKET REACH-AROUND AWARD

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