The Other McCain

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

Etymology As Prophecy

Posted on | October 21, 2012 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

The designated cat herder on Monday the 22nd is Bob Schieffer. Let’s just see what his surname is derived from in die alte sprache:

Adjektive/Adverbien (19 of 26)
 agley   also: agly  adv. (Scot.)  schief
 askance   also: askant  adv.  schief
 askew  adj.  adv.  schief
 aslant  adj.  adv.  schief
 aslope  adj.  adv.  schief
 awry  adj.  adv.  schief
 bevel  adj. [tech.]  schief
 beveledespAE / bevelledespBE  adj. [tech.]  schief
 biaswise  adj.   rare  schief
 cock-eyed  adj.  schief
 cockeyed  adj.  schief
 crooked  adj.  schief
 cross  adj.  schief
 inclined  adj.  schief
 inconsistent  adj.  schief
 leaning  adj.  schief
 lopsided  adj.  schief
 lopsidedly  adv.  schief
 oblique  adj.   also  [tech.]  schief
Category: Election 2012

@HatingBreitbart Shall Be Seen Alongside 2016 As Essential For Understanding The Obama Era

Posted on | October 21, 2012 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

An absolute must-see. And must-own.

My old Nokia N97 was immortalized about midway through the movie, where, after he was done addressing the Tax Day Tea Party in 2010, I asked him a question:

Other famous folks included, but not necessarily making the credits, were Da Tech Guy, Marooned in Marin. Dave Weigel is in there a bit, though his position is ambiguous on a good day. Also, some guy named Dan Riehl. Stacy says his voice is heard in the New Orleans party scene, but I missed that.

The new thing that I learned from the movie was the influence Orson Bean had on Breitbart; I had heard Andrew say that the Clarence Thomas hearings had affected his thinking, but his father-in-law seems to have impacted Breitbart’s transition to conservative stalwart, as well. But the movie isn’t really so much a biography of Andrew Breitbart as it is a summary of his actions while prosecuting his #War against the mainstream media. I personally attended and blogged considerable portions of the 2009-2010 events in the movie. Thus, it’s a fantastic summary of events to which I stood on the edge, observing closely.

Will there ever be another strange, inverted period in American history like the last four years? God forbid. We are witnessing the death of the Commie-infested media, and Andrew Breitbart played the role of its Jack Kevorkian. Someone was asking on Twitter if there will ever be another Breitbart, as though Andrew were some Arthurian figure. Responses:

  • No: Breitbart, MLK, George Washington, &c are all Highlander figures. “There can be only one”. But they do precipitate out of the solution that is history, as needed.
  • Yes: there is a Breitbart in each one of us, albeit a microscopic grain in the case of Lefty tools. That is, even the gimpiest Legacy media gimp, and I’ll throw out Chris Matthews for a name, probably still at least dreams of his pre-gimp days. Breitbart, while no military veteran, can be seen as having ‘supported and defended the Constitution of the United States against all enemies. . .domestic’.

And thus I salute this fine American.

 

Category: Andrew Breitbart

Your Honor, May I Direct the Court’s Attention to Exhibit J, Please?
UPDATE: Who Is ‘Forced to Engage’?

Posted on | October 21, 2012 | 9 Comments

Brett Kimberlin could have been sentenced to 230 years in federal prison

In the case of Walker v. Kimberlin, Exhibit J is an e-mail that Brett Kimberlin, acting as his own lawyer, sent to Aaron Walker’s attorney Dan Backer, stating in part:

I don’t know what kind of litigation you think this is but I see it as a form of harassment. You are trying to get discovery in a case that fails to state a valid legal claim, that is whole frivolous and malicious, and which,  if you proceed, will subject you to sanctions.
You have filed for default against people you haven’t served and who have no assets whatsoever. Ok let’s take this to the next step. You get default, then what? Get a hearing on damages? Go after their assets? They have none. So really you are just harassing them. You should really be ashamed of yourself for being party to such reprehensible conduct.
As I said, I have chosen December 15 because, inter alia, I am coopering with nthe FBI and other law enforcement officials regarding several issues involving your client and I believe that the resolution of those matters will have a bearing on this case.

Let’s point out a few things, shall we?

  • Aaron Walker has said that Kimberlin, among other things, tried to “frame” him for a bogus assault charge.
  • Kimberlin is an expert on “frivolous and malicious” legal actions, having filed more than 100 actions on his own behalf as a “jailhose lawyer” while he was imprisoned for the 1978 bombing spree in Indiana that earned him the sobriquet, “The Speedway Bomber.”
  • Kimberlin dares speak of “harassment,” when Kimberlin has sued blogger Seth Allen and threatened to sue journalist Mandy Nagy and blogger Patrick Frey for nothing other than the fact that they have written about Kimberlin’s notorious criminal history. Furthermore, Kimberlin has made spurious complaints in an attempt to get Frey fired from his job.
  • Kimberlin refers to (but does not name) his co-defendants, Neal Rauhauser and Ron Brynaert, asserting that they “have no assets whatsoever” — how does Kimberlin know this? How is it that he is privy to the financial condition of Rauhauser and Brynaert? And what business of Kimberlin’s what sort of motions Backer has filed against Rauhauser and Brynaert?

The alleged relationship between Kimberlin, Rauhauser and Brynaert is at the very heart of Walker’s case. Read more

Category: Shoe Leather Fund, The Kimberlin Files

Left Celebrates ‘Hating Breitbart’ Opening by Acting Like the A–holes They Are

Posted on | October 20, 2012 | 21 Comments

Tonight my co-blogger Smitty is going to see the new Andrew Marcus documentary Hating Breitbart for the first time. I’ve seen it twice — at the world premiere at the Republican convention in Tampa and at the D.C. preview showing Oct. 8.

Last night at the first commercial showing of the film in D.C., a fanatical Breitbart-hater named Ryan Clayton was reportedly ejected from the theater for disruptive behavior.

The bozo actually appears in the film. He’s a familiar type on the Left, the posturing “activist” who plays hero by Standing Up to Right-Wing Evil:  “Admire my courageous truth-telling!”

Such people don’t realize what tedious stereotypes they are. If Ryan Clayton had a line of trademark fragrances, it would be called “Sanctimony.”

Category: Andrew Breitbart, Movies

Democrat Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. Hospitalized Again for Mental Illness

Posted on | October 20, 2012 | 17 Comments

Unfortunately, liberalism isn’t listed in the DSM-IV:

U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is heading back to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. — and was reportedly en route Friday evening.
A source said the decision was made to have the the South Shore Democrat return to the famed clinic, where he spent four weeks this summer for bipolar depression. He had been staying at his home in Washington, D.C. since leaving Mayo.
A source who visited Jackson this week said, “Jesse wanted you to know he is finding it difficult to continue his treatment because the press is staking out his home and making access to his doctor, who is within a short walking distance from his home, incredibly hard.”
The source added that Jackson is trying “to stay focused and calm to enhance his treatment and is just following doctor’s orders.”

Who’s crazier: The congressman suffering from bipolar depression, or the Illinois voters who don’t mind re-electing a genuine nutjob, so long as he’s got a “D” beside his name?

Frankly, I think anyone who believes in Keynesianism needs to have their head checked. Maybe the Democrats can get a discount rate and go in for group therapy.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
You Don’t Have to Be Certifiably Insane
to Join Us — But It Helps!

Category: Chicago, Democrats, Illinois

EUSSR?

Posted on | October 20, 2012 | 22 Comments

by Smitty

Insty reminded me to write a post on this, via Hannan:

I guess you’re not supposed to note that they put the hammer and sickle atop the cross, at the same level as the muslim crescent, all of which, along with the yin-yang, superior to the star of David. And the notion that the symbols are distributed randomly within a five-pointed star shape (itself associated, inter alia, with Communism).

If the hammer and sickle are fit for this sort of thing, why are the Hindus not allowed a swastika in there? You can’t help but juxtapose this religious farce with the EU being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel committee in Oslo chose to ignore the multiple crises threatening the EU. Instead, it took the longer and bigger view, praising the EU’s historical role in promoting reconciliation and peace, and warning its collapse would see an ominous return to “extremism and nationalism”.
Announcing the decision, Thorbjørn Jagland, head of the Nobel committee, said: “The main message is that we need to keep in mind what we have achieved on this continent, and not let the continent go into disintegration again.” The alternative was “awful wars”, he warned bluntly.

What is it with Scandinavia and Quislings? When war does come, and these EUnuchs are feckless to halt it, I do hope they wave their Nobel Prize as they are offered on the altar of Ares.

Update: thank you, Instapundit.

Category: Europe

My Beer vs. Nate Silver’s Two Beers

Posted on | October 20, 2012 | 20 Comments

Politics is a lot like pro football — it’s always more interesting if you’ve got money riding on the outcome. I don’t know if Hugh Hewitt is much of a football fan, but if he’s a gambler and you’re an Obama supporter, Hugh’s talk of the “ongoing collapse of President Obama’s campaign” identifies Hewitt as an easy mark. (Make him give you a point-spread.)

On the other hand, if Hugh wanted to clean up by making sucker bets with Obamabots, Nate Silver looks like a gold-plated chump. Nate’s Incredible Genius Forecasting Model™ was giving better than 2-to-1 odds for Obama as of Friday, so that Hewitt could bet $100 against Silver’s $200, if either of them was willing to put his money where his mouth is.

Some friends and I have been having an e-mail conversation about Nate Silver, and one of my friends — with a graduate degree in political philosophy — name-checked Richard Rorty in the discussion. (Show-off!) This required a response from the Hayekian Public Intellectual™, and here’s what I wrote:

Rather than invoking Rorty, I think that the basic problem is Hayekian. Like economic “planners,” Silver succumbs to the illusion of expertise and is seduced by the apparent exactitude of data, so that the Forecasting Model becomes a sort of Five-Year Plan. Silver’s method fails to compensate for situations (not really that rare in politics) where unexpected events falsify the predictive value of polling. Remember that we are talking about the opinions of fallible human beings en masse, as opposed to the behavior of a select group of professional athletes, which is why Sabremetrics cannot be too much help in predicting how the polls will shift in response to events that could not have been anticipated:

  1.  The multilayered fuck-up in Benghazi.
  2. An utterly lopsided victory by Romney in the first debate.

If you’ll go look at the RCP national average, you will notice that Obama’s lead was already starting to slip a few days before the first debate. I interpret that as the first glimmerings of a Benghazi backlash, and Romney’s Godzilla-stomps-Tokyo act in the first debate (which exceeded the expectations of even Mitt’s most enthusiastic supporters) accelerated that trend. We don’t really know how far that trend may go, but the fact that Ryan made a campaign stop in Pittsburgh yesterday is kind of a hint that Team Mitt thinks it might go pretty damned far. I’m willing to say, “I don’t know,” and concede the possibility that Obama might yet find a way to pull out a win.
Nate, however, has the burden of expertise obtained through his statistical fluency, and he can’t just throw out an anecdotal gut hunch: “Hey, this Benghazi mess might turn into a sucking chest wound for Obama if he’s not careful,” or: “Watch out for that Romney in debate — he’s a crafty weasel.” Or even: “Hey, y’know, maybe swing voters in Iowa are a bunch of closet racists who have just been waiting for a plausible excuse not to like Obama any more.”
Finally, I will once more repeat: Polls are a lagging indicator. When a game-changing moment happens, it may take a week or two for the polls to fully reflect the extent of the shift. And the 90% refusal factor means that the margin of error could either (a) hide the magnitude of the shift, or (b) exaggerate the shift.
It’s Hayekian, as I say, because there is no reliable way for the “expert” to discern which data inputs are most accurate and which are anomalous outliers.
My gut-hunch is that Silver’s 70% confidence in Obama’s re-election is about 180 degrees opposite of the true state of the race. Silver is a statistician who trusts his data, however, and he has no reason to trust my gut-hunch. So all we can do is wait and see. But if Nate wants to give me 2-to-1 odds, I’d happily bet a beer against his two beers.
— RSM
P.S.: I still owe John Fund a beer because Christine O’Donnell lost, that no-good witch!

Just kidding about that “witch” thing, Christine. Nobody ever listens to my advice, so no hard feelings, OK?

Category: Election 2012, Polls

Don’t Get Cocky, But Do Note The Aroma Of Fear Wafting From The Left

Posted on | October 20, 2012 | 44 Comments

by Smitty

Two weeks is a long time in politics, but the Romney campaign seems to have done the homework.
Don’t be afraid to say a prayer for Mitt as he heads into the final debate. I don’t care who you are: that’s some stress.

via American Power

Update: welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Election 2012
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