The Other McCain

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

Obama Hits MTV On Friday To Talk About His Second Term Agenda

Posted on | October 23, 2012 | 20 Comments

by Smitty

Breitbart links Hollywood Reporter with an important message from Empty-Vee:

The network announced on Tuesday that the president will be featured in a live, 30-minute special to air on Friday, Oct. 26 at 5 p.m. ET. As part of MTV’s “Power of 12” election campaign, Obama will answer questions from the audience on ASK OBAMA LIVE: An MTV Interview with the President, with viewers submitting their questions and concerns via MTV’s Facebook page.

This blog’s intrepid investigative reporter, Sissypuss, has obtained an a secret advanced look at the second term agenda that #OccupyResoluteDesk intends to debut:

Update: linked at Jackie Wellfonder

Category: Election 2012, Farce

Is ‘Jailhouse Lawyer’ Brett Kimberlin Heading to Grief in Virginia Case?

Posted on | October 23, 2012 | 5 Comments

Those who have read Mark Singer’s 1994 book Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin, know that while Kimberlin was imprisoned for his 1978 Indiana bombing spree, he became an adept “jailhouse lawyer,” who filed more than 100 legal actions on his own behalf, while also providing quasi-lawyerly assistance to some of his fellow inmates. But proceedings in the Virginia case of Walker v. Kimberlin, et al., indicate that Kimberlin is out of his league there.

William Hoge has obtained Kimberlin’s latest filing in the case and reports that it is “chock full of information that was under seal and that has been improperly incorporated into a public filing.”

The judge in the lawsuit brought by Aaron Walker will almost certainly learn of this impropriety, and it’s not likely the judge will be in a mood to do Kimberlin any favors when there is a key hearing in the case Friday in Manassas. A contempt of court finding is not out of the question.

UPDATE: A reminder that it was Walker’s May 17 post about how he said Kimberlin tried to “frame” him for a bogus assault charge that prompted renewed attention to Kimberlin’s activities. Eight days later, because of the concern about the threat to First Amendment rights, “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day” made this saga the top 8 threads at the blog aggregator Memeorandum.

Obviously, everybody’s now gripped by the two-week run-up to Election Day, but I’d urge you to visit Aaron’s “Allergic to Bull” blog and hit the tip jar to help fund his legal fight for justice.

Category: The Kimberlin Files

VIDEO: Romney Ad Highlights Debate

Posted on | October 23, 2012 | 1 Comment

It’s called “Highest Responsibility“:

Joe Scarborough and Bill Kristol agree that the debate Monday night did nothing to alter the trajectory of the race, even while Jonathan Chait disgraces himself with a public tantrum over the decisive trend toward Romney that his ideogical blinders prevent him from seeing.

Category: Uncategorized

Obscure Ex-Starlet @SophiaBush Sticks Her #LadyParts Out on Twitter, With Hilariously Predictable Results

Posted on | October 23, 2012 | 43 Comments

Civility™ is getting so complicated, I just can’t keep up with all the new rules, in the same way I have trouble keeping track of which former starlets actually count as “celebrities.”

Last night, after I filed my American Spectator column about the debate — strategically, a win for Romney — I was kind of randomly browsing Twitter and saw Michelle Malkin having a war with someone named Sophia Bush:

It went on for a while, raising the obvious question: “Who is Sophia Bush?” I mean, Malkin’s a New York Times bestselling author, a syndicated columnist, New Media entrepreneur, Fox News contributor — a genuine somebody — so why is she arguing with this person I never heard of?

It began, evidently, when the actress read a satirical article mocking Ann Romney and Tweeted it out, apparently not recognizing that the stupid quotes attributed to Mrs. Romney were not anything the GOP candidate’s wife had actually ever said. Republican women then started arguing back at Ms. Bush on Twitter, causing her to get all huffy and defensive, finally issuing this intensely stupid retort:

Her idiocy earned Ms. Bush a post at Malkin’s Twitchy site, but she apparently failed to study the First Law of Holes, and began digging again Monday during the debate:

With that, I think, Sophia went from the ridiculous to the sublime. It’s like political haiku or something. Transcendent gibberish. And of course, Twitchy blew her up again.

Let us pause, readers, to contemplate the sequence: Sophia apparently cannot make any political statement without invoking her vagina, but if you object to argumentum ab vagina, this proves you’re some kind of insensitive misogynistic cretin. She just talks, talks, talks about her genitals, and we’re suppose to act like this is enlightened, sophisticated, praiseworthy, courageous.

Well, no, it’s weird and offensive.

Imagine you’re at the shopping mall and some woman you never met walks up to you and starts blabbering about her vagina.

Call 911, right? This woman’s either a crack whore or some kind of mental case, but either way, her behavior is so profoundly abnormal she must be a danger to herself or others.

Yet, thanks to Eve Ensler and the feminist movement, women like Sophia Bush have been persuaded that constantly talking about their vaginas in public is not only healthy and normal, but that anyone who is offended is a crazy right-wing extremist. The world has been turned upside down, so that the values are exactly reversed, and the crazy vagina-talkers think themselves fit to lecture others about “respect” and “civility.”

Although tempted to invoke my scrotum to settle the argument — “How dare you disrespect the First Amendment rights of my scrotum?” — this is unnecessary, as my point is simply this: The Left routinely defies all traditional norms and societal values, while reserving to themselves the right to be as indignant as a Victorian prude should anyone speak to them discourteously. It’s really just a crude totalitarian power-game, an expression of Marcusean radicalism, “liberating tolerance,” and it takes a strong mind to resist being lured into that Humpty-Dumpty alternative universe where words mean whatever the Left says they mean.

Well, to hell with the niceties, you see: Raw mockery is what they deserve, and I’ll make damned sure they get all they deserve. So I went right to work on Sophia Bush:

Let’s see here: Thirty years old, was queen of the 1999 Rose Bowl Parade, made her acting debut in 2002, best known for a cable TV show (One Tree Hill) you never heard of before, as well as a couple of movies John Tucker Must Die (2006) and The Hitcher (2007) you likewise never heard of before. Won a few “Teen Choice Awards” when she was, in fact, in her mid-20s.

Sophia can’t seem to keep a man. She was briefly married to her TV co-star Chad Michael Murray in 2005, but that didn’t last six months. She dated another co-star, James Lafferty, and then another, Austin Nichols, only to be returned to the reject pile each time. Basically, it looks like any male actor cast in One Tree Hill was contractually obligated to bang Sophia Bush for a while.

Is it cruel to mock her like this? Yes, purposefully so. Yet there’s nothing personal about it — heck, I never even heard of her until last night — and it’s not really political, either.

There are plenty of women every bit as liberal as Sophia Bush who don’t make themselves obnoxious by lashing out at Republicans, blabbering about their vaginas and acting as if they were courageous First Amendment heroes deserving of admiration and praise. If she’s going to get up in Michelle Malkin’s face with that kind of crude act, she’s practically handing us an engraved invitation to mock her politics, her miserable B-list career and her pathetic vagina, too.

Shut your pie-hole, woman, or I’ll start talking about my scrotum again.

Category: Celebrities, Election 2012, Feminism, Michelle Malkin, Twitchy

LIVE AT FIVE: 10.23.12

Posted on | October 23, 2012 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Beeb Notices Europe Left Out Of Foreign Policy Debate

Obama and Romney throw down on furriners

BBC thinks Romney had the best night; “pivoting to President Peaceful”

Wisconsin Shooting Brings New Call For Gun Control
Unexpectedly!

Early Storm Drops Two Feet Of Snow On Northern California Mountains
Storm brings badly needed rain to lower altitudes



POLITICS
Lawsuit Puts Texas School Finance System On Trial

Lawyers for Texas’ school districts

Attorneys for school districts claim state funding system “hopelessly broken”

Schieffer Gets High Marks For Debate Moderation

“Horses And Bayonets” Crack Goes Viral

Russell Means, American Indian Movement Activist, Dies At 72

Ohio’s Vote Fraud Billboards Come Down After Sponsor Insists On Anonymity

Funding Fight On If California’s Proposition 30 Fails

George McGovern’s Lasting Imprint On American Politics

Factcheck.Org Busts Obama’s Drilling Denials



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Brent Hits Six-Week Low Despite Mideast Tensions: NYMEX $88.83, Brent $109.75
Yahoo Earnings Top Estimates
Asian Stocks Drop, Led By Utilities; Yen Briefly Hits 80 Before Falling Back
Temporaries Sue Walmart, Staffing Agencies
Gold Rebounds As Stocks Recover, Dollar Retreats
Treasuries Drift Lower Before Debate, Fed
DeMarco Shrinks Fannie & Freddie Without Any Help From Congress
Apple Responds To Android Threat With U-Turn On iPad Mini
Fault Encryption Leaves Some Android Apps Vulnerable, Report Says
Microsoft’s 32GB Surface Tablet Sells Out In UK
Remains Of Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios Go On Auction Block
Consumers Flock To Buy New $249 Google Chromebook



SPORTS
Giants Rout Cardinals 9-0 For NL Pennant

Tony Cruz strikes out

Third straight beating administered to St. Louis puts SanFran in World Series against well-rested Tigers


Lions Defense Keeps Bears In Check, But Not Enough To Avoid 13-7 Loss

UCI Agrees To Strip Armstrong’s Titles

Struggling Panthers Fire GM Marty Hurney

Power Rankings: Surviving Kansas Could Be Key For Keselowski

Packers’ Woodson Out For Six Weeks With Busted Collarbone

Mavericks’ Nowitzki Sidelined By Knee Surgery



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Michael Lohan Seeks Conservatorship For Lindsay

Lindsay and father Michael Lohan

Claims whole family needs therapy; kids unanimously want him to just go away

Justin Timberlake Calls Wedding Day “Magical”

The GQ&A: Emily Van Camp From “Revenge”

Kat Von D And Deadmau5: Hand-Holding Honeys

Heidi Montag And Spencer Pratt’s “Crazy” Night Out In Vegas

Taylor Swift Dishes On Her New Album “Red”, Among Other Things

The CW’s “Arrow” Gets Full-Season Pickup

Exclusive First Look At Ben Kingsley As “Iron Man 3” Villain The Mandarin

Chevy Chase Apologizes For Saying “N*gger” On “Community” Set As Series Remains At Standstill



FOREIGNERS
Syrian Civil War Spills Over Into Lebanon
BBC Takes Harsh Look At Its Jimmy Savile Sex Scandal
Emir Of Qatar’s Visit To Gaza Draws Protests From Palestinian Authority, Israel
Italian Court Holds Scientists Guilty Of Manslaughter In Earthquake Warning Case
ROK Fails To Block Activists From Sending Propaganda North
Japan’s Justice Minister To Resign Over Past Ties To Yakuza
Muslim/Buddhist Violence Erupts Again In Burma’s Rakhine State
Pussy Riot Members Sent To Gulags
Backbench Demand For EU Veto Thwarts Cameron’s Bid To Set The Agenda
UK’s Mirror Newspaper Group Also Tagged For Phone Hacking



BLOGS & STUFF
WyBlog: Newark Enacts “Union-Only” Construction Ordinance For All Projects, Public And Private
Hit & Run: CNN Post-Debate Poll Gives Slight Edge To Obama
American Power: “Horses And Bayonets”
Bill Kristol: President Romney
Power Line: CNN Poll Confirms That Romney Won By Not Losing
Breitbart: Wisconsin Senator’s Son Beaten To A Pulp By Anti-Romney Thugs
GayPatriot: Looks Like Wisconsin Democrats Got Some “Differentiating” To Do
National Review Online: Nate Silver’s Flawed Model
Lonely Conservative: Please Tell Me These Women Aren’t Teachers #FOWARD
Director Blue: It’s Magic! Biden’s Brother Wins $100 Million Federal Contract To Build Homes In Iraq
Atlas Shrugs: Nigerian Muslims Attacks Churches, Kill At Least 31

Category: Live at Five

Another Sad Installment in the Series: ‘Why the Hell Is Chris Matthews on TV?’

Posted on | October 23, 2012 | 18 Comments

My usual habit after debates has been to switch to MSNBC and see what their reaction is. I know that the Fox News crew is always cheerleading for the GOP, so I find it more useful to gauge reaction at the liberal network, especially the wildly unstable barometer Chris Matthews.

As lurid comedy, the guy’s irresistible, and I simply can’t imagine any other reason why they keep paying this clown. Last night, however, Matthews unleashed a bizarre rant that genuinely shocked me:

“I think they hate Obama. They want him out of the White House more than they want to destroy al Qaeda. Their No. 1 enemy in the world right now, on the right, is their hatred, hatred for Obama. And we can go into that about the white working class in the South and looking at these numbers we’re getting the last couple days about racial hatred in many cases … this isn’t about being a better president, they want to get rid of this president.”
— Chris Matthews, Oct. 22, 2012

Look, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes and Lawrence O’Donnell are all strident left-wing fanatics, but I will nevertheless grant that they are also fundamentally serious people who care about facts. On the other hand, there is Chris Matthews, whose tortured emotionalism must be an embarrassment even to his ideological allies. He makes Ed Schultz seem a paragon of rationality by comparison.

Why do the executives at NBC insist on inflicting this laughable imbecile on their viewers — and paying him $5 million a year?

Category: Debates, Election 2012, MSNBC

FINAL 2012 DEBATE: ‘FOREIGNERS’

Posted on | October 22, 2012 | 45 Comments

UPDATE 11:09 p.m. ET: Well, I’ve got to write something longer than 140 characters for the American Spectator tomorrow, so I’ll leave you with this:

A couple of hours until deadline. I need more coffee.

UPDATE 10:33 p.m. ET: Really, I don’t hate foreigners. I just hate listening to debates about foreigners.

Did Obama win this one? If you like Obama (and hate America), yeah, it was a walkover. I’m watching the MSNBC after-show, BTW.

UPDATE 10:12 p.m. ET: Forgive me for not doing more original blog content during this debate. My 19-year-old son got in a car wreck (he’s OK, and it wasn’t his fault), which meant my wife had to go to the hospital, so I had to fix my own chicken nuggets for dinner. Anyway, he’s more snark from my Twitter feed:

When I’m ambassador to Vanuatu, I’ll never have to fix my own chicken nuggets. Or blog presidential debates, for that matter.

UPDATE 9:52 p.m. ET: More snark:

We’re somewhere near the halfway mark and, unless I’m mistaken, Obama’s losing the debate with his arrogant college-professor act, lecturing Americans as if we were a bunch of idiots.

UPDATE 9:40 p.m. ET: Some of my Twitter snark:

Why? Because I’m too lazy to write it twice, that’s why.

UPDATE 9:22 p.m. ET: Obama just boasted of his “steady, thoughtful leadership.” Ambassador Stevens could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE 9:18 p.m. ET: You see how hard Obama is straining to pretend that he’s an expert, and Mitt’s a clueless moron.

UPDATE 9:12 p.m. ET: Obama lays out the Howard Dean/Michael Moore/Roseanne Barr critique of Bush-era foreign policy. As if it were relevant.

UPDATE 9:10 p.m. ET: Mitt aims his words specifically at the “Muslim world” and “jihadists.” Specificity has been lacking lately, eh?

UPDATE 9:08 p.m. ET: Obama wants to “make friends around the world.” And … how’s that workin’ out for ya, buddy?

UPDATE 9:05 p.m. ET: First question: “What would you do about the crisis in Vanuatu?”

No, just kidding. It’s Libya, of course.

EXPECT FURTHER UPDATES . . .

* * * PREVIOUSLY (8:30 p.m. ET) * * *

Thank God, tonight’s debate is the last of this presidential campaign. Republicans endured 20 debates during the primary campaign, and we’re ready to stop debating and start stabbing out Chris Matthews’ eyeballs with sharp sticks voting.

So, yeah, I’ll be liveblogging, kinda, and also snarking it up on Twitter. I’m sure VodkaPundit will be drunkblogging. And our good friends at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity will have a livestream at their Watchdog.Org site.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has highlights of Bob Schieffer’s most biased debate moments. I actually kind of like Schieffer, who is a liberal, but an old-fashioned kind of liberal, as opposed to these smart-alecky Ezra Klein types. The debate starts at 9 p.m. ET, and I’ll be watching the MSNBC post-debate show, because I’m still able to resist the stab-his-eyeballs-out urge toward Chris Matthews.

Just barely, though.

UPDATE II: Here’s the thing: I hate discussions of foreign policy.

Hate it. Because foreign policy is really simple, yet the intellectuals and “experts” get paid to pretend we need their advice. This is all just expert rent-seeking, you see.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Americans and foreigners. And there are three kinds of foreigners:

  1. Enemies who want to kill us;
  2. Allies who want to help us kill our enemies; and
  3. A bunch of irrelevant people who don’t really need a “policy.”

Simple, as I say, and once you’ve got the basics of who’s who figured out, everything else is obvious. Yet there are “specialists” with advanced degrees from prestigious universities who need jobs telling us what to think, and I get so tired of hearing these know-it-alls, I want to stab out their eyeballs with sharp sticks.

Category: Barack Obama, Debates, Election 2012, Foreigners, Mitt Romney

McKay Coppins, Concern Troll

Posted on | October 22, 2012 | 11 Comments

Every newsroom is a seething cauldron of frustrated ambition. It’s been that way forever, and is true everywhere.

Nobody goes into the news business with the goal of being the headline writer on the obituary page, but somebody’s got to do it, and the phenomenon of the “disgruntled staffer” is not really interesting unless the guy shows up for work one day with a high-powered rifle, four or five clips of ammo, and a grim determination to finally get his name on the front page.

It was in this light that I read McKay Coppins’s BuzzFeed article today about “disgruntled staffers” at Breitbart.com.

To make a long story short: So what?

There’s nothing in this article that was really news to me. I know nearly everyone at Breitbart.com, and like all of them — just for example, I was hanging out with Andrew at the 2007 YAF West Coast conference where he first met Alex Marlow — and if some of them don’t like other . . . again, so what?

Is there some rule that everybody in a news operation must like each other? Or that the staff writers must always agree with the editorial choices of management? If so, nobody ever told me about it, and I’ve been in the news business since 1986.

In other words, whatever your opinion of the internal quarrels of the Breitbart.com staff — who’s right or wrong, who’s good or bad — it’s really just the typical grumbling common to all news operations.

The same backstage rivalry goes on every day at Fox News or CNN or the Iowa Hog Farmers Gazette.

And what McKay Coppins has done is to exploit that for profit at BuzzFeed, playing “concern troll,” as if he admired Andrew Breitbart and shared Breitbart’s goals or ideals. He didn’t.

Finally, to my friends at Breitbart: If you don’t like your job or you don’t like your boss, you can always quit.

If you feel that your value to the organization is insufficiently appreciated, the smart thing to do is to offer your resignation and seek employment elsewhere. I’ve often reflected with amusement that, when I resigned from The Washington Times in 2008 — after they hired a guy from the Post to replace the retiring Wes Pruden — they were willing to let me walk away.

Since then, they’ve gone through three editors, massive layoffs, a disastrously expensive blunder of a Web site re-design and, when last I heard, were about to hire their fourth editor in as many years.

Me? I’m a correspondent for The American Spectator and run a blog that averages more than a quarter-million hits a month.

That may not seem like much, but it ain’t failure, and is much better than the misfortune of folks who got laid off in the staff-cutting bloodbaths that followed my departure from the Times.

Moral of the story: If you think the guys running the operation don’t know what they’re doing, get out while the getting’s good. Otherwise, shut up and do your job.

And don’t ever tell McKay Coppins jack shit, either way.

Category: Andrew Breitbart, Journalism
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