The Other McCain

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

It’s Morning in Vanuatu Again

Posted on | October 4, 2012 | 47 Comments

“How long, O Lord, how long? Where will it end?
“All I ever wanted out of this campaign was enough money to get out of the country and live for a year or two in peaceful squalor in a house with a big screen porch looking down on an empty white beach, with a good rich coral reef a few hundred yards out in the surf and no neighbors. . . .
“What worries me now . . . is the strong possibility that my involvement in politics has become so deep and twisted that I can no longer think rationally about that big screen porch above the beach except in terms of an appointment as Governor of American Samoa.”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Savor the moment. I’ve been up all night doing the Snoopy dance in the Gloat Zone. Ace says we should worry: The MSM’s already preparing the “Obama Comeback” narrative.

But I’m too grateful and happy to worry now. There is deliciousness everywhere this morning. Byron York serves it up:

Just seconds after the presidential debate ended here at the University of Denver Wednesday night, Mitt Romney’s advisers and surrogates rushed to the press room to take reporters’ questions and tout their man’s performance. They were eager, happy, and ready to talk because they believed their man scored a clear win in his first face-off with President Obama.
After a few minutes of interviews, and the arrival of still more Romney surrogates, some reporters looked around and asked: Are there any Democrats here? Where are the Obama advisers and surrogates eager to speak for the president?
It took a while for them to show up. And when they arrived, they were on the defensive from the get-go about the president’s performance. . . .

Read the whole thing. Last time I saw Byron was in Toledo, when the polls had Obama up 10 points in Ohio and everybody was on the verge of abandoning hope. This evening, I expect to see him in Fisherville, Virginia — 6 p.m., doors open at 4 p.m. — and imagine what a complete change in mood we’ll see! Imagine how everybody will be laughing about how Chris Matthews melted down:

Nobody — and I mean, nobody — expected such a one-sided ass-whupping. And let’s sober up enough to say, “Answered prayer”:

Really, when you see this kind of unanticipated miracle, it’s necessary to consider the possibility that this was not coincidental. With 33 days to go until Nov. 6, suddenly the sun is shining. My American Spectator column today:

How decisively did Mitt Romney win Wednesday night’s debate? All you had to do was watch the most pro-Obama network to see it. “I personally do not know who won this debate,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said as soon as the debate ended. She was obviously the only one who didn’t know.
When Maddow brought on her colleague Ed Schultz, he moaned that President Obama “created a problem for himself tonight on Social Security. He agreed with Mitt Romney.… I thought he was off his game.” Nor did the president’s performance send a thrill up the leg of Chris Matthews. “I don’t know what he was doing out there,” Matthews complained. “He had his head down. He was enduring the debate rather than fighting it.”
If ever there were a night when conservatives wanted to watch MSNBC, this was it — an all-you-can-eat buffet of schadenfreude, as one after another of the liberal network’s personalities tried to come to grips with what was perhaps the most one-sided presidential debate since JFK beat a shifty-looking Richard Nixon in 1960. “In terms of debate tactics, Romney was on the offense most of the night,” a glum Howard Fineman acknowledged, while a shell-shocked Chuck Todd admitted that the result “automatically elevates Romney as a credible alternative” and later added, in reference to the Obama camp’s post-debate mood: “They know they lost tonight.”
Everybody knew it. . . .

Please read the whole thing — and hit the freaking tip jar!

 





 

UPDATE: “Ride right through them, they’re demoralized as hell!”

 


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

LIVE AT FIVE: 10.04.12 [DEBATE HANGOVER EDITION]

Posted on | October 4, 2012 | 5 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
ROMNEY ADMINISTERS EPIC BEATDOWN TO OBAMA ON NATIONAL TV

Candid shot of Obama after debate (props to Bob Owens for this)

MSM, Secret Service helpless to stop thrashing as President stumbles through first debate
Even MSDNC, Democrat Party leaders know it


Turkey Strikes Back After Syrian Mortar Attack Kills Five
Loyalist positions shelled by Turkish Army, NATO ministers meeting: is intervention in the offing?


Commonwealth Edison Threatens To Pull Plug On Smart Grid
Fight with Illinois Commerce Commission threatens thousands of jobs, badly needed electrical upgrades



POLITICS
Romney Barrels Out Of First Debate On Offense

Obama and Romney meet for the first time at debate

Romney & Ryan heading for Virginia today, Florida later

House Panel: State Department Confirmed Libya Threats
Sensitive US Files Abandoned In Libya

Induction Of San Francisco’s New Catholic Archbishop Draws Cheers, Rebukes

FBI Using Social Media To Seek Massachusetts Terror Suspect

Is Joe Biden The GOP’s New Secret Weapon?

Detroit’s Top Cop Suspended Over Sex Scandal, Expected To Resign

Woman Busted For Riding Manatee In Florida

Military Absentee Ballot Requests Plummet From 2008

Miffed At Brown, Black Ministers Back Warren



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Brent Lurches Toward $109 After Steep Fall; Global Economy Still Crappy: NYMEX $88.37, Brent $108.57
3M Abandons Office Supplies Deal, Leaving Avery Looking For Buyer
Wall Street Edges Up Over ADP Job Numbers
HP Tanks As Whitman Sees More Pain Ahead
Draghi Awaits Call From Spain As Brinksmanship Keeps ECB Guessing
Houston Man Arrested, Charged With Selling Electronics To Russians
Monsanto Posts 4Q Loss On Reduced Seed Sales
Facebook To Charge For Promoting User Posts
Global Action Takes Down Tech Support Scam
Google Buying Face Recognition Firm Viewdle
Samsung Galaxy S III Sales Helped By iPhone 5, Patent Trial News
DIY Gun Project Misfires After 3D Printer Seized
Oracle On Track To Become Apple Of The Enterprise
Big Data Skills Gap Needs Filling, Says Tech Industry Commission



SPORTS
Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera Wins Triple Crown

Miguel Cabrera

First man to lead AL in batting average, home runs, and RBI since Red Sox’ Carl Yazstrzemski in 1967

A’s Trump Rangers To Win AL West

Gritty Yanks Avoid Collapse, Hang On To Win AL East

NBA Sets Anti-Flopping Rules, Union To File Grievance

Red Sox GM Cherington Plays Blame Game

Orioles Settle For Wild Card After Losing To Rays

Schumacher To Retire From Formula 1 Racing

Teddy Finally Wins, Ending 538-Game Losing Streak; Oh Yeah, Nats Beat Phillies 5-1



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Cruise/Holmes Divorce Details Leaked

Tom and Katie in happier days

Marriage was apparently over six months before the split

No Blood Today On “American Idol” Set

Lark Voorhies’ Mom Says She’s Battling Bipolar Disorder

Heidi Montag Headlining At Strip Club For $25K

Richard Belzer’s Trainwreck Interview: Molestation, Sodomy And Hitler

Jennie Garth: This Year Has Been A Rebirth

Kate Gosselin Says Her Marriage Would Have Ended Even Without The Reality Show

Reband Of Brothers: Jonas Brothers Reunite



FOREIGNERS
Iran Cracks Down On Moneychangers As Rial Continues To Fall
Riot Police Clash With Protesters As Iranians’ Discontent Grows
Landslide Buries 19 In PRC’s Yunnan Province
Top UK Universities Fall In Rankings
Brazilian MP Claims On Visit That Iranian Ties Don’t Mean Brazil Is Enemy To Israel
Nigerian Police Make Arrests In Mubi Student Massacre
Philippine Court Orders Arrest Of Former President Arroyo
Kayani Backs Any Baluchistan Solution “Within Constitution”
Activists Claim New Philippine Law Gags Netizens



BLOGS & STUFF
WyBlog: Why Does Obama Need His Own Illinois Lubyanka?
Power Line: It’s Over
Lonely Conservative: Presidential Debate 1 Wrapup – Romney Won
Legal Insurrection: Best Tweets Of The First Presidential Debate
Jim Geraghty: B.O. K-O’d
Allahpundit: Romney Wins – CBS, CNN Instapolls Show Crushing Obama Defeat
Breitbart: Politico Says Romney Up 4 In Tossup States
Twitchy: Undecided Voters In Focus Group Swing Sharply Toward Romney
AmSpecBlog: Stephanie Cutter Says Romney Must Apologize For Obama Race Tape
Villainous Company: In Libya, Press Doing Job “Too Hazardous” For Obama Administration
Weasel Zippers: Philadelphia Teacher Compares Romney T-Shirt To KKK White Sheet
Atlas Shrugs: Arson Jihad – Muslim Group Setting Europe’s Forests Ablaze
The Daily: Chipotle Manager Wide-Eyed For Mitt


SOTD: U Can’t Touch This

Category: Live at Five

MITT ROMNEY WINS FIRST DEBATE

Posted on | October 3, 2012 | 78 Comments

UPDATE 10:32 p.m. ET: Damn. Mitt won it straight-up. I’ve turned my TV to MSNBC to watch their reaction.

Rachel Maddow: “I personally do not know who won this debate.” This means . . . yeah, Mitt won. He beat the hell out of Obama.

Ed Schultz: “[Obama] created a problem for himself tonight on Social Security. He agreed with Mitt Romney. . . . I thought he was off his game.”

UPDATE 10:25 p.m. ET: Jim Lehrer babbling like an idiot about time running out. He wants Obama to get re-elected so ObamaCare will cover treatment for his senility.

UPDATE 10:22 p.m. ET: “Mr. President, you’re entitled to your own house and your own plane, but not your own facts.” Zing!

UPDATE 10:06 p.m. ET: They’ve been going back and forth about ObamaCare for 10 minutes. If you believe what Obama says — as opposed to the actual facts — then you’ll probably think he won this part of the debate. But if you believe what Obama says, you’re probably too stupid to read this anyway.

UPDATE 9:55 p.m. ET: More Twitter:

Instapundit is blogging a bit of the debate, and also links to the classic Vodkapundit drunkblogging.

UPDATE 9:45 p.m. ET: Been watching and Tweeting, so let me stick some of the Tweets in here:

Mitt just hit Obama on the Medicare issue. Obama hit back. Score it a draw, I think.

UPDATE 9:31 p.m. ET: Now they’re talking debts and deficits, and Obama’s worst broken promise: He claimed he’d cut the deficit in half and, instead, has doubled it.

UPDATE 9:20 p.m. ET: Obama and Romney are going back and forth on taxes. This is getting so good, I’m going to stop the frequent updates for a few minutes and just watch a while.

UPDATE 9:16 p.m. ET: Damn it, Obama keeps claiming to have given a “tax cut” to the middle class, but there was no rate reduction. Instead, he’s put in a series of tax credits, which are not the same as tax cuts.

UPDATE 9:13 p.m. ET: Romney gets a chance to hit back at Obama. Does pretty good, but gets a bit too “into the weeds” for my tastes.

UPDATE 9:11 p.m. ET: Obama comes back talking a lot of details, claiming Romney’s plan will “cost” money and have to be “paid for.” The government-centric point of view.

UPDATE 9:09 p.m. ET: Mitt opens with humorous anniversary congratulations, then goes into his 5-Point Plan for economic recovery. Having followed Mitt on the trail, I’ve heard this a zillion times, but for many of the 50 million people watching, it’s new.

UPDATE 9:07 p.m. ET: Obama opens with anniversary shout-out to Michelle. Then gets all into class warfare, blaming Bush, etc. He sucks.

EXPECT FURTHER UPDATES . . .

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

This verdict may shock some readers, seeing as how I’m publishing it a full hour before the debate actually begins.

Everybody’s playing the “expectations game” (notice Nate Silver trying to raise the ante for Romney) which, like a lot of what goes on in politics, is transparent bulls–t. Once you realize they’re trying to manipulate your perceptions, you should not be deceived, e.g.:

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is doing his part for team Obama to make sure that Mitt Romney’s performance at Wednesday evening’s debate is a disappointment, one that will surely lead to his losing the election in November.
On Tuesday morning’s Good Morning America, the former Clinton Administration staffer sternly warned that if Romney doesn’t exceed expectations in the debates, he’s finished.
Why? Because Romney is under “huge, huge” pressure, Stephanopoulos says. And “he’s behind right now,” so if he doesn’t overperform, he’ll be considered a failure.

Give that everyone else is at it, therefore, I’m getting out ahead of this psychological gamesmanship with the pre-emptive declaration of Romney’s unquestional triumph.

And so this is your official “Debate Thread.”

Bite me, Nate. And bite me, George.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II: Linked by the Lonely Conservative — thanks!

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

Shock Galeuters Poll: BHO Has 113% Of The Vote Going Into The Debate

Posted on | October 3, 2012 | 1 Comment

by Sissypuss the Blog Kitty

Sissypuss caught up with Galeuters pollster Baxter Thurston Corzineowski

Q: Can you help us get to the bottom of these incredible results?

A. Well, we asked David Axelrod what percentage of the vote he felt Obama had,” said Baxter “and Axelrod calmly said ‘Oh, about 90%’. See, it’s not lying if you feel like you’re passing on good information.

Q: What of the rest, then?

A: Given our dedication to fairness, we posed the same question to Matt Rhoades, Mitt’s campaign manager. Matt was on another call, too. We thought we heard somebody in the background ask ‘Is it true that Romney has been in 30 states in the last month?’. Rhoades said ‘Negative. 23. Hey, look, I gotta go.’

Q: That’s kinda far out.

A: Right, but it’s a straight shot from there.  90% – -23%= 113%.

Q: There is no escaping the bear-trap nature of your logic.

A: Hey, I thought it an odd number, too, but you have to go where the math takes you.

Q: With that grasp of figures, you should be doing budgeting for Reid, or managing QE3 or something.

A: Do you really think so? Thanks!

Q: Wasn’t a complement.

Category: Barack Obama

Don’t Know Where This Is, But The Feeling Is National

Posted on | October 3, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Category: Barack Obama

Douchebag Lawyer Defends Denial of Service (DDOS) Attacks as ‘Free Speech’

Posted on | October 3, 2012 | 12 Comments

At what point do those in the legal community who defend criminals — guaranteeing them their due-process rights, giving them “their day in court” — cross a line into advocating, endorsing or excusing the crimes committed by their clients?

Not a moot question, given how Jay Leiderman speaks of the actions of the “Anonymous” hackers he represents:

Take PayPal for example, just like Woolworth’s, people went to PayPal and said, I want to give a donation to WikiLeaks. In Woolworth’s they said, all I want to do is buy lunch, pay for my lunch, and then I’ll leave. People said I want to give a donation to WikiLeaks, I’ll take up my bandwidth to do that, then I’ll leave, you’ll make money, I’ll feel fulfilled, everyone’s fulfilled. PayPal will take donations for the Ku Klux Klan, other racists and questionable organizations, but they won’t process donations for WikiLeaks. All the PayPal protesters did was take up some bandwidth. In that sense, DDoS is absolutely speech, it should absolutely be recognized as such, protected as such, and the law should be changed. . . .
The government and people who write about tech tend to call it a “DDoS attack” but in certain circumstances it’s not a DDoS attack, but a DDoS protest. So the law should be narrowly drawn and what needs to be excised from that are the legitimate protests.

Let’s be clear about this: What “Anonymous” was engaged in was extortion and thuggery, not “protest.”

You can’t just say to a business, “Here, I’m holding up this hoop — jump through it, immediately, or I’ll shut down your business.”

Let’s also be clear about something else: It’s the Left who believes these thug tactics are legitimate, just like when they sent mobs to camp out in the front yards of bank executives, or to harass people attending last year’s AFP summit.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that Jay Leiderman has a highly selective sensibility as regards free speech. Leiderman is defending former “Anonymous” spokesman Barrett Brown — asserting, we suppose, Brown’s constitutional right to threaten FBI agents — and also representing Nadia Naffe against Patterico, who evidently doesn’t have a constitutional right to reproduce court documents relating to Naffe’s lawsuit against the Republican Party.

This is a legal manifestation 0f Herbert Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance” — only the Left has any “rights” worth defending.

UPDATE: Guess this is as good a place as any to quote an article Taylor Amerding wrote about Barrett Brown’s arrest:

Very few in the security community would comment on the arrest for the record, most saying they did not want the headache of becoming a target of Anonymous.
One of the few who did was Robert Stacy McCain, who wrote on his website, The Other McCain, that “a lot of the Anonymous people never trusted Barrett Brown, regarding him as an untrustworthy egomaniacal fame-seeker trying to cash in.”
“He did a TV interview with Michael Isikoff of NBC and announced a book deal with Gregg Housh, and did all of this while promoting himself as the official spokesman for Anonymous, whose members are … well, anonymous, and with good reason, because the cops would very much like to put a lot of them in prison,” McCain wrote.
McCain wrote that after the FBI raided Brown in March, but did not arrest him, other members of Anonymous suspected he might be cooperating with the agency. Of the latest video, he wrote: “Being a paranoid conspiracy theorist is not illegal, and Brown’s tinfoil-hat rantings about (various enemies) were just so much noise. But his threats to ‘destroy’ FBI agent Robert Smith? Yeah, the feds don’t take that kind of talk lightly.”

What stuns me is the timidity of “the security community” Amerding alleges here. Are people really afraid to comment on Brown’s arrest for fear of “becoming a target of Anonymous”?

This assumes that the members of Anonymous are so stupid they can’t see Barrett Brown for the reckless fool he is. Brown’s laughable foolishness is sufficiently self-evident that I have a hard time believing anyone could ever take him seriously, and I’ve never had any fear of reprisal for pointing it out.

Meanwhile, by way of playing catch-up with the Barrett Brown saga, his friends have published Brown’s letter from prison in which he vehemently denies having ever been a “spokesman” or “leader” of Anonymous, while continuing to rant about HB Gary, Aaron Barr, Jennifer Emick, and other such persons whom he accuses of involvement in a sinister conspiracy.

 

Category: Barrett Brown, Computers, Crime, Terrorism

What Hath Daily Caller Wrought?

Posted on | October 3, 2012 | 25 Comments

Slept late today because I figure I’ll be up late writing about tonight’s debate, and I didn’t participate in the Drudge-induced hype over yesterday’s Daily Caller/Sean Hannity release of a 2007 video, e.g., Allahpundit:

It’s the talk of Twitter and of our comment threads, so here’s a dedicated post to let your imaginations run wild.

Really? I was working on other things and didn’t much notice the hype, but Ace got gripped by it, really completely gripped by it — I mean, totally enthralled by it, madly obsessed with it — and so after sleeping late today, maybe I should say something about the EXCLUSIVE VIDEO which apparently was expected to shock the entire English-speaking world yesterday.

Meh.

 

 

A source informs me that some Romney campaign staffers actually got swept up in the speculation that this video was the silver bullet which would magically slay the Obama werewolf. And as usual in such matters, the event didn’t live up to the hype.

Let me here insert a bit of background — historical context, as it were — that might explain why I didn’t get too excited about the revelation of a 2007 video in which Obama gave a shout-out to Rev. Jeremiah Wright and otherwise said controversial things: I remember the 1990s.

During Bill Clinton’s first term, enormous efforts were expended by certain people to dig up The Real Truth about what went down in Arkansas during Clinton’s governorship.

The worst of it was the Mena Airport conspiracy theory: Allegedly, in order to protect a drug-smuggling operation based out of this small airport in rural Arkansas, several people had been murdered and, according to the conspiracy theorists, Clinton and his cronies were up to their necks in this massive corruption and cover-up.

Somebody produced a video about this, and the video became a sort of cult classic, particularly in Christian conservative circles. It appealed to a fairly widespread sentiment that Americans didn’t know everything they needed to know about the Clintons. After the suicide of Vince Foster, especially, there was a sense that all kinds of clandestine shenanigans were being covered up and ignored by the mainstream media. The Internet was still in its infancy back then, but even then there were sites devoted to “exposing” this Mena Airport scandal.

Was there ever anything to it? I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter, because that’s not the point.

THIS IS THE POINT: Whatever happened at Mena Airport happened before Clinton was president, you see, and once a guy gets elected president, you’re never going to take him down based on some previously unknown thing that happened before he was president.

Trust me when I say that there are plenty of people out there trying to contact reporters with The Real Truth About Barack Obama. At one point this past summer, I was prepared to fly to Chicago to meet with sources who had something serious that seemed to deserve checking out. Scheduling conflicts and other unexpected hassles prevented that trip from happening, which I sincerely regret — not only did I miss a chance to get paid for a lengthy print article, but I believe the article could have added significantly to public understanding of the corrupt environment in which Obama’s early political career was nutured.

Still, I never believed it was a “silver bullet” story, because you’re just not going to get that kind of story based on stuff that happened before Obama became president. Sean Hannity and others are correct in saying that Obama was never properly “vetted” by the media in 2008, but you cannot defeat Obama for re-election by attempting to “vet” him retroactively.

Public perception of presidents simply doesn’t work that way, and so this 2007 video was never going to be a “silver bullet,” no matter how much promotion Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity or Matt Drudge put behind it. Tucker went on Fox & Friends today to explain why the video matters:

Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson said on Fox and Friends this morning that the “very revealing” clip is an example of Obama using racially-charged rhetoric. . . .
Carlson explained that in his view, “Obama is telling a majority-black audience that the federal government doesn’t like them because they’re black. He is whipping up fear, and paranoia, and hatred.”

Right. Tell us something we didn’t already know. Ed Morrissey:

The larger point here is that the media has a double standard on race, and a double standard for Republicans.

Again: Tell us something we didn’t already know. I’m not discounting either the reality or the importance of this, but I hate seeing people buy into false hope that this EXCLUSIVE VIDEO!! — how do you spell “eleventy”? — or anything else like it could ever be the “silver bullet” that magically defeats Obama.

Here’s a SHOCKING REVELATION for you: The economy sucks.

Let’s see if we can’t win with that simple message, OK?

Category: Ace of Spades, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Conspiracy Theories, Election 2012, Racism, Scandal

How to Deal With Biased Media Liars (and Other Such Worthless Scalawags)

Posted on | October 3, 2012 | 33 Comments

“My God, Scarlett O’Hara! When I start out to cut somebody up, you don’t think I’d be satisfied with scratching him with the blunt side of my knife, do you? No, by God, I cut him to ribbons.”
— Tony Calvert, in Gone With the Wind

Well, that’s merely an analogy — a colorful literary allusion — and my concern for the First Amendment requires that I condemn anyone who might contemplate dealing with even the most dishonestly biased journalist in the manner by which hot-tempered young Calvert dispatched his villainous hellbound foe.

No, not even Chris Matthews.

“When I start out to cut somebody up,” therefore, I’m limited to such damage as can be done by words, but I’m pretty handy with a rhetorical knife. With that in mind — and thinking what might possibly pain the conscience of even the most shameless liberal hack — please read my latest column at The American Spectator.

And be sure to read it all the way to the end.

Category: American Spectator, Barack Obama, Debates, Election 2012, Media Bias, Mitt Romney
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