The Other McCain

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

False-Flag Troll, IRL

Posted on | October 13, 2012 | 58 Comments

I can pretty much guarantee that this man photographed at a Romney rally in Lancaster, Ohio, is not in fact a Republican, but rather is a plant sent out by the Democrats as a dirty trick.

  • Clue #1: Wearing a “Romney/Ryan” sticker on the back of his T-shirt. Nobody does this. Nobody.
  • Clue #2: It’s kind of chilly in Ohio this time of year, and the guy’s wearing only a T-shirt, while those around him are wearing coats.

My guess is that this guy also wore a coat when he entered the rally, then stationed himself toward the back of the crowd (in front of the riser where the press photographers are stationed) and then removed his coat to expose the T-shirt, with the explicit purpose of having it photographed.

. . . aaanndd, Clue #3: No name? A press photographer is going to take a picture like this and make no effort to ID the guy? Nuh-uh.

Speaking of which: I decided to go over to the American Spectator blog last night and write a lengthy explanation of exactly why the vicious creep James Pogue can go straight to hell.

Finally: We had an unfortunate incident in which a commenter got smacked by Wombat’s Troll Hammer for some things the commenter was saying about Mormonism. This was an unfortunate incident, I say, because the commenter was in fact a tip-jar hitter, who generously contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund to support last month’s Ohio trip. And so I’ve urged Wombat to restore the commenter’s privileges, after making a polite explanation of the problem.

This is as good a place as any, perhaps, to reiterate the policy: I have neither the time nor interest to monitor comments for off-topic or offensive content. Thus, Wombat is the designated Troll-Smasher, and the policy is whatever Wombat says it is. So if you’re in the comments having an argument and Wombat says to knock it off, please comply.

We are at the GAME FACES stage of the campaign, folks. Election Day is barely three weeks away, and we can expect the Leftists to be out in force with all sorts of false-flag/concern-troll antics, so Wombat is apt to on hair-trigger alert, ready to smash the hell out of anything that looks even vaguely trollish. Ergo, Wombat’s warnings should be taken quite seriously, lest we have any further unfortunate incidents.

Also, at some point this upcoming week, my plan is to go off on a long campaign-trail trip that might go all the way to Election Day, so now would be a good time to contribute to the Shoe Leather Fund, as it usually takes three or four business days for the cash to get from the tip jar to my bank account. Thanks for your patience and generosity.

Polls are quite encouraging for Romney (Nate Silver continues his slo-mo walkback with the Forecasting Model) which means that the end of our Long National Nightmare may now be within sight.

 

Once we get to Nov. 7, we can go back to snarking at celebrity meltdowns and all the other fun stuff that makes America great. But meantime . . .

GAME FACES.




 

UPDATE: Speaking of game faces, I got so distracted yesterday I forgot to link Friday’s column at The American Spectator:

Vice President Joe Biden took Americans on a one-way trip to Malarkey-ville [Thursday] night, with a weirdly aggressive debate performance in which, according to one count, he interrupted his Republican rival 86 times. Even many of those who generally approved of what Democrat spinners referred to as Biden’s “happy warrior” act expressed concern that the vice president was, to quote CNN’s Gloria Borger, “condescending at times” toward Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.
Make that “condescending at all times,” and you may have a consensus that would include even the debate’s liberal moderator, Martha Raddatz of ABC News. Biden’s behavior resembled the hypomanic phase of bipolar disorder, as he grinned incongruously or faked laughter in reaction to Ryan’s answers, rudely scoffed at the Republican’s policy proposals as “bluster” and “loose talk,” and bulldozed past whatever feeble attempts Raddatz made to halt his repeated filibusters.
Arrogant? Overbearing? Angry? If those are your ideal qualities in a vice president, Biden’s your man. . . .

Please read the whole thing.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And the professor is right:

Whenever the Dems are in trouble, they start this sort of thing. They’re in trouble now. Expect the bylined Democratic operatives formerly known as journalists to help as much as they can.

UPDATE III: Thanks to the commenter who pointed this out:

Another Hate Hoax? Democrat Worker
Attacked Denver Campaign Office


Category: Election 2012, Shoe Leather Fund

FMJRA 2.0: From The Jaws Of Victory

Posted on | October 13, 2012 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Having recovered from last night’s abrupt departure of the Nationals from the post-season, on with the return of linky-love to those who loved us this past week.

Liberals Beginning to Realize They’ve Overestimated Obama’s Popularity?

PAUL RYAN SCORES CRUSHING VICTORY OVER BIDEN IN DEBATE

A Different Spin On Obama’s Denver Clock-Cleaning

@hardball_chris ‘Pecksniff’ Matthews Goes After Welch’s Calling BS On BLS

Epistemic Closure Redux: The Campaign, the Debate and the Jobs Report

Why Do Democrats Like Elizabeth Warren Hate Science?

Obama Meltdown Beginning? Plus: Romney Campaign on ‘$5 Trillion’ Lie

Is ‘Full-Figured’ an Insult?

Another Republican Lie!

New Shotgun Shells Found To Pump Into Zombie ObamaCare?

FMJRA 2.0: Columbus Day Warmup Edition

Clownish Nobel Economist Tries To Defend Warmongering Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Stomped By Girl

As Predicted: Now That Obama Is Losing, Democrats Play the Mormon Card

‘THE MANTLE OF LEADERSHIP’ —
Text of Mitt Romney’s Speech at VMI

Movie Rated ‘R’ for Scene in Which Breitbart Rapes the Media Narrative

The Tears of Unfathomable Sadness

@Gabby_Hoffman Wonders Whether Her Brain Also Counts as a ‘Lady Part’

Expect the Unexpected: Why Liberals Suddenly Melted Down After the Debate

Mini-Jobs Blow

LIVE AT FIVE: 10.10.12

Will Ryan Hold Biden Accountable?

Obama Official on Vote-Fraud Scheme: ‘This Is So Funny. It’s Cool Though.’

The Libya Question: What Did Obama Know and When Did He Know It?

The ‘Dilbert’ Factor in Libya

Administration ‘Completely Wrong’ About Libya, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Admits, But ‘That Doesn’t Mean It Was False’

Sex and Sammiches

That Winning Combination

Benghazi Breakdown: Team Obama, Liberals Now in Full Freak-Out Mode

‘All Is Proceeding as I Have Foreseen’

LIVE AT FIVE: 10.12.12

Further Proof That Chicks Dig Mitt UPDATE: @Tawny_Kitaen, Too? OMG!

Four Score And Five Interruptions Ago. . .

Top linkers this week:

  1. (tied) Hogewash, Lonely Conservative, and Daley Gator (8)
  2. The Camp of the Saints (7)
  3. GayPatriot (6)
  4. DailyPundit (5)

There were a number of folks who just missed the cutoff by one or two posts. Maybe next week?

Speaking of next week, if you’re using Blogger or some other platform WordPress hates, please e-mail me your links no later than Friday, October 19th for inclusion in next week’s FMJRA. Thanks to everyone for the linkagery!

Category: FMJRA Award

The Obama-Clinton “Prisoner’s Dilemma”

Posted on | October 13, 2012 | 56 Comments

by Smitty

While they have a senior-subordinate relationship, at that altitude, Obama and Clinton are more like peers, especially in the broader scope of the Democrat Party, where Barack is hoping Bill will loan enough luster to Obama to somehow win re-election. Thus, Benghazi-quiddick (we should limit the -gate suffix on scandals lacking a death toll) resembles the classic game theory example The Prisoner’s Dilemma:

Two men are arrested, but the police do not have enough information for a conviction. The police separate the two men, and offer both the same deal: if one testifies against his partner (defects/betrays), and the other remains silent (cooperates with/assists his partner), the betrayer goes free and the one that remains silent gets a one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both are sentenced to only one month in jail on a minor charge. If each ‘rats out’ the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose either to betray or remain silent; the decision of each is kept secret from his partner. What should they do? If it is assumed that each player is only concerned with lessening his own time in jail, the game becomes a non-zero sum game where the two players may either assist or betray the other. The sole concern of the prisoners seems to be increasing his own reward. The interesting symmetry of this problem is that the optimal decision for each is to betray the other, even though they would be better off if they both cooperated.

Here, we have two public figures who both look negligent over a tragedy. And they hold grudges against each other going back. They can both get hammered together, or can try to minimize their damage by pinning blame on the other.

Clinton absorbs Obama accuses
Clinton accuses In this variant, Clinton steps up and takes responsibility for failures as Secretary of State, scuttling her 2016 hopes, with the idea of saving Obama’s re-election.
I’ll point you to Kevin DuJan at HillBuzz for that analysis.		 If they both escalates the accusatory posturing, then the bleeding may not stop until both are completely ruined.
Yet, accusations are their stock in trade. They just have to do it subtly.
Obama absorbs They both stand there and take the hit. Re-election now, and possible election in 2016 for Hillary only happens if the electorate enjoys some truly raging outburst of amnesia.
Unlikely in Internet Age, thank you, Al Gore.
Taking responsibility is something you make your opposition do. Never apologize, never explain. Which outs both of them as lousy leaders.		 Obama steps up and admits how badly he tubed Benghazi-quiddick, in order to save Hillary’s 2016 presidential hopes.

The bad news about this ‘game’ is that the price of admission is four human sacrifices. Those deaths were tragic for the four, and their families. The shame for the United States, and the increased boldness of our enemies, is far worse. Then there is the damage done to the validity, the basic confidence the people have in our government, brought on by the shameless deceits of the Obama Administration.

No good can come of the Obama-Clinton game. Beyond the entertainment value, the best we can hope for is minimal collateral damage.

More at Granite Grok, and Roger Simon analyzes the electoral impact and the general pulse of the Left.

via Breitbart

Update: thank you for linking, Instapundit, Hogewash, Victory Girls, and Dinocrat.

Update II: linked at God’s Own Crunk. Also, for those who dislike the labeling in the table, please feel free to offer an improved version somewhere on this vast internet. Otherwise, my guess is you’re firing for effect. In the wrong direction.

Update III: more at Daily Pundit:

Some people think Barack Obama is cold and calculating. I don’t. I think he’s a tangled ball of twisted emotions, primary among which are fear and hatred. Some part of him might understand that he’ll damage himself by trying to damage the Clintons, but I just don’t think he’ll be able to help himself.

Getting inside that noggin isn’t the least bit interesting to me. I just want to see BHO distanced from levers of power.

Category: Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Uncategorized

Michael Brutsch, Troll Behind Reddit’s ‘Jailbait’ and ‘Creepshots’ Sections

Posted on | October 13, 2012 | 16 Comments

A couple of quick points up front:

  • I’ve never used Reddit, and had no idea that it rivaled Twitter and Facebook in terms of viral online distribution.
  • Adrian Chen and Gawker are vile scum.

Nevertheless, there is a car-wreck-on-the-highway factor in Chen’s article about Michael “Violentacrez” Brutsch that makes you stare with ghastly fascination at this seamy underside of the Web. Perhaps the grimmest part is when Brutsch begs for mercy:

When I called Brutsch that Wednesday afternoon and told him I knew who he was . . . he pleaded with me in an affectless monotone not to reveal his name.
“My wife is disabled. I got a home and a mortgage, and if this hits the fan, I believe this will affect negatively on my employment,” he said. “I do my job, go home watch TV, and go on the internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time.” . . .
The problem was, he explained, that if his identity got out, his many enemies would start attaching lies to his name because they simply don’t like his views. They would say he was a child pornographer, when all he had done was spearhead the distribution of thousands of legal photos of underage girls. . . .They would Google-bomb his name and the word “pedophile” along with his publicly-traded company’s name. . . .
He needed to keep his anonymity to protect his ability to express things many people think but hardly anyone says. With Violentacrez, “I got the freedom to talk about my personal life, my personal feelings… I’m sure there’s more than one person in this building who’s a pervert,” he said, referring his office building.
He asked a number of times if there was anything he could do to keep me from outing him.

This is the stage of Kübler-Ross called “bargaining.” And as Dr. Phil might say, “How’s that workin’ out for ya, Mike?”

Of course, Chen had made up his mind to “dox” Brutsch, a 49-year-old resident of Arlington, Texas, before he ever contacted him, and you’d have to be a sadist to enjoy reading Brutsch’s desperate attempt to avoid the consequences of his exposure, despite the fact that Brutsch is a vile sociopathic monster undeserving of sympathy.

What do I mean by “vile sociopathic monster”? Brutsch created (and was a sort of online cheerleader for) some of the worst possible stuff on Reddit, most especially the “Jailbait” section:

His speciality is distributing images of scantily-clad underage girls . . .
Violentacrez decided to create a safe space for people sexually attracted to underage girls to share their photo stashes. . . .
Jailbait was the online equivalent of systematized street harassment. Users posted snapshots of tween and teenage girls, often in bikinis and skirts. Many of these were lifted from their Facebook accounts and thrown in front of Jailbait’s 20,000 horny subscribers.
Violentacrez and his fellow moderators worked hard to make sure every girl on jailbait was underage, diligently deleting any photos whose subjects seemed older than 16 or 17. Violentacrez himself posted hundreds of photos. Jailbait became one of Reddit’s most popular subreddits, generating millions of pageviews a month. “Jailbait” was for a time the second biggest search term bringing traffic to Reddit . . .

Yeeeesshh. “Millions of pageviews a month.”

His name is Michael Brutsch — that’s B-R-U-T-S-C-H — and he lives in Arlington, Texas, and if he should suffer brutal violence at the hands of a mob of enraged parents who descend on his home, brandishing baseball bats and tire irons, well, that would probably be illegal.

Far be it from me to condone reckless vigilantism.

In his defense, perhaps, some might protest that this was all just harmless online fun, and that IRL (in real life), Brutsch is an honest, decent, responsible, law-abiding citizen. However . . .

In 2010, Violentacrez hosted a legendary “Ask Me Anything” thread” . . . He was asked what was the creepiest thing he’d done “IRL” . . . . “That’d be a tough call,” Violentacrez wrote, “Perhaps oral sex with my 19-year-old stepdaughter.” It was completely consensual, he claimed in the post, and went on to brag about how awesome it had been in graphic detail.
This happened over ten years ago, Violentacrez claimed. When his then-wife, the girl’s mother, found out, she “got mad, then got over it,” Violentacrez wrote.

OK, either (a) he was lying, or else (b) he’s a complete monster. And even if he was lying, what kind of monster would tell such a lie?

Chen says he was tipped to to Brutsch’s identity by “a former online friend . . . [who] had become disgusted with his obsession with underage girls.” Brutsch was responsible for a lot of other offensive content at Reddit, but “Jailbait . . . apparently sprung from a sincere interest.”

An “obsession with underage girls”? A “sincere interest”? And Brutsch — again, that’s B-R-U-T-S-C-H, of Arlington, Texas — boasted “in graphic detail” about the “awesome” sex he had with his stepdaughter?

Probably nothing to it. Just harmless Internet shenanigans.

On the other hand, lots of folks in Texas have guns. Maybe some of those gun-toting Texans will notice the part of Chen’s article excerpted by Britton Peele of the Dallas Morning News:

The Gawker story contains quotes from both Brutsch and others who have interacted with him, including one user who once visited him while on business in Arlington. ”He’s a really a good guy,” she said. “He has the manners of a Southern gentleman. A bunch of neighborhood kids were over playing at his house.”

Reckon he has a “sincere interest” in those “neighborhood kids”?

B-R-U-T-S-C-H . . .

Category: Uncategorized

NMA Animators Rock The VP Debate

Posted on | October 13, 2012 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

This is laugh out loud funny:

The real loser here is SNL, who simply cannot top this. Add being funny to the list of jobs that Progress has outsourced to China.

via The Blaze

Category: Election 2012, humor, Video

World’s Youngest Blogger: Not That Ryan Isn’t Tough, But I Could Take Joey B.

Posted on | October 12, 2012 | 16 Comments

And, as for Ms. Raddatz. . .

Category: World's Youngest Blogger

Four Score And Five Interruptions Ago. . .

Posted on | October 12, 2012 | 14 Comments

by Smitty

Four score and five interruptions ago our zany uncle brought forth on this continent a new indignation, conceived in contempt for liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created to serve the state.

Now we are engaged in a soft civil war, testing whether that indignation, or any indignation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great debate-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a blog post for he who here gave 90 minutes of his life that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should blog this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave man, living not dead, who struggled here, has consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what he did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which he who fought that gasbag has thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from this honored candidate we take increased devotion to that cause for which he gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that this candidate shall not have felt like he died, devoured by a vast, shark-like maw,  in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

via Breitbart

Update: good linkage from Stacy on the Right, The Daley Gator, and the American Catholic

Category: GOP

Further Proof That Chicks Dig Mitt UPDATE: @Tawny_Kitaen, Too? OMG!

Posted on | October 12, 2012 | 49 Comments

The so-called “gender gap” is caused by ugly women who feel rejected by successful men, whereas the really smart, sexy, confident chicks are wild about the Mittser:

Four years ago, Lindsay Lohan referred to Obama’s Presidential victory as “amazing,” but cut to 2012, and it seems the “Mean Girls” star has had a serious change of heart.
“I think unemployment is very important for now, so as of now I think (my vote) is Mitt Romney,” Lohan told reporters, including FOX411’s Pop Tarts, at the Mr. Pink Ginseng Drink Launch Party Los Angeles on Thursday night.
Lohan also hinted at mysterious underlying motives for supporting the GOP candidate and turning her back on Obama under wraps. . . .
“It’s a long story, but you’re going to have to wait for that,” she remarked . . .
Last month, the troubled actress went as far as to tweet the President requesting he “cut taxes for those who need it: middle-class families, small businesses” as well as “those that are listed on Forbes as ‘millionaires’.”

(Via Memeorandum.) Of course, I understand that some readers may be puzzled by this: Hitherto, this blog has treated Lindsay Lohan as just another celebrity bimbo, a troubled starlet whose personal foibles (and impressive cleavage) were fodder for humorous jibes. This is admittedly true — but she just endorsed Mitt Romney, so now she’s our celebrity bimbo, and that makes all the difference in the world.

We love you, Lindsay, and we hope you’ll help persuade other sexy starlets to see the light. “Rule 5: Hollywood Hotties for Mitt”!

Readers may want to hit my tip-jar, so I can get some on-the-scene coverage of this Important New Development in the 2012 campaign. IYKWIMAITYD.

 




 

UPDATE: Folks, I think we’ve got a trend happening:

Udpdate II (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Celebrities, Election 2012, Hollywood, Mitt Romney, Rule 5
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