The Other McCain

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

MUSIC VIDEO: ‘You Didn’t Build That’

Posted on | September 17, 2012 | 8 Comments

Two words: HI-LARIOUS!

Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012, humor, Music, Video

‘There Has Been a Campaign of Disinformation and Smears’

Posted on | September 17, 2012 | 2 Comments

That’s a quote from a man who is being hounded for his role in the production of the video that did not cause any riots or murders, no matter what that idiot Susan Rice tries to tell you. Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugged has the worldwide exclusive:

Joseph Nassralla of Way TV and Media for Christ has contacted me to issue a statement about his role in producing the film “Innocence of Muslims.” The last time I saw Nassralla, he had come to our Summer Night for Civil Rights in June in California, and before that I saw him at our September 11, 2011 rally. But now he is being hunted like an animal because of the media’s relentless campaign to destroy and target innocent civilians whom they believe have been critical of Islam. Nassralla is currently in hiding after multiple death threats from Muslims, because of his purported role in producing this video. Now, for the first time, Nassralla has revealed to me the inside story of the making of “Innocence of Muslims.” . . .

Go read the whole thing at Atlas Shrugs.

Category: Atlas Shrugs, Islam

Spot the Error

Posted on | September 17, 2012 | 12 Comments

Something here offends me:

The weird ecstasy of the media-political complex at the convention in Charlotte … was the first sign that its attachment to President Obama, always fawning, had become morbid.
In spite of the anemic economy and a real unemployment rate above 11 percent, the high priests of pontificating liberalism were giddy with euphoria. The Democrats “put on a nearly flawless convention,” Paul Begala opined, and it was soon all but incontrovertibly established that, come November, the president — beautiful, magical, and lovable as he was — would vanquish his boring opponent.
The media savants sympathized with the delirium of Charlotte because they worship at the same altar and feed at the same trough. . . .
The closeness of mainstream journalists to President Obama has debauched their integrity.

Paul Begala is one of those guys, like George Stephanopoulos and Chris Matthews, who turned a career as a Democrat Party operative into a career as a TV personality. He is not and never has been a reporter, but only a commentator, and a highly partisan commentator at that.

The fact that Begala appears on a TV network no more makes him a journalist than starring in war movies makes Tom Hanks a military hero.

Al Sharpton? Not a journalist. Karl Rove? Not a journalist.

Please stop confusing the two phenomena. Thank you.

 

Category: Media Bias

Department of Unfortunate Analogies

Posted on | September 17, 2012 | 19 Comments

Perhaps you remember a fellow named Todd Akin. You may wish you could forget having ever heard the name, but I think you probably remember.

Think back to the morning of Sunday, Aug. 19. The Republican National Convention was still eight days away, and Isaac wasn’t even a tropical depression yet. And then came the episode that Michelle Malkin called “the Todd Akin mess.” I’ve been in a tropical depression ever since.

If Mitt Romney can get his campaign back on track — please, O merciful Lord! — the Akin episode will be forgotten as sideshow, a blip, a footnote. On the other hand, if Team Mitt can’t pull out of this media-induced spiral, we’ll look back at Aug. 19 as the Day It All Went Wrong.

The less said about this, the better, for now. So imagine my shock when I clicked over to Memeorandum and saw this:

Todd Akin’s Wife Compares GOP
Abandonment to Rape, Tyranny

It’s like a toothache, isn’t it?

Category: Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption, Election 2012, Missouri, Republicans, Senate

The ‘Accuse the Accusers’ Strategy: Attempting to Explain Social Engineering

Posted on | September 17, 2012 | 14 Comments

If I told you what inspired this, you wouldn’t believe it. Remember that on May 17, I was planning to go cover the G-8 Summit when I saw a blog post by Aaron Walker that caused me to change my mind: This was a story more interesting and newsworthy than whatever I might have reported from Camp David.

So it stunned me to find myself unjustly accused, even though I knew very well how this routinely happens to people who are targeted by what I’ve referred to as the Kimberlin-Rauhauser Axis. Having recovered from the shock, and restrained my temper, I sent the person an e-mail, which I share with readers in order to give them an insight into the motives and methods of these devious bastards:

Overlooking any offense that I might take . . . I think you have misunderstood entirely what is happening, and how you – entering the play in the penultimate scene of the second act – are confusing people, in assistance of a cause with which I am reasonably certain you are not sympathetic.
Since May 17, I have been covering a story that is both interesting and newsworthy. This is not a story about me, or you, or Ali Akbar. It is not a story about Patrick Frey or Aaron Walker or Mandy Nagy. This is a story about Brett Kimberlin, and about Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser.
Very early in my reporting on this story, I was warned about Rauhauser’s “social engineering,” by which means he uses online communications to manipulate people’s perceptions for his own purposes. At the time, I thought I understood what was meant by the phrase “social engineering,” but looking back after four months, I realize that Rauhauser’s arsenal of methods is far more complex than I could have imagined in May.
Had you been on this story as long and as deep as I’ve been on it, you would see quite clearly the relevance of this – Rauhauser’s manipulations – to the attacks on Ali Akbar and others, myself included. When you first contacted me with these outrageous accusations, I was angry, but when I learned the substance of your suspicions and had time to reflect, I relaxed a bit: Rauhauser again!
Exactly how Neal did this, I don’t know. Rauhauser is adept at exploring networks, accumulating information, and then soliciting unwitting assistance in attacks on his targets from their friends and acquaintances. These methods sow conflict and suspicion around Neal’s targeted enemies, and thus undermine their effectiveness as opponents. I’ve watched Rauhauser do this to many people, as part of a larger strategy I’ve described as “accuse the accusers,” and am not the least surprised to see the same methods used against me.
As I say, it’s difficult to explain this to someone who hasn’t had the opportunity to study it in depth over time. “Accuse the accusers” serves three simultaneous purposes:

  1. To distract – As is well documented, Rauhauser has been acting as an agent of Brett Kimberlin since last year, and when Aaron Walker’s 28,000-word account called new attention to Kimberlin’s activities, Neal began working to change the subject, to make the story about Kimberlin’s “enemies,” and not about Kimberlin himself.
  2. To discredit – Negative information about Neal’s targets (in this case, Walker, his associates and allies) is acquired through research, and incorporated into a narrative calculated to undermine the target’s credibility. It is often the case that fact and fiction are intermixed, connected by an interpretive framework that is tendentiously pejorative.
  3. To defend – Anyone who arrives at the story once Rauhauser has begun accusing the accusers is immediately confronted with a confusing welter of information, and the confusion serves the purpose of defending the client Kimberlin and his agent Rauhauser. Unless you were present to witness the story from its actual beginning (i.e., Kimberlin’s “lawfare” harassment of Walker), you will fail to realize that the attacks on Walker’s allies (including Ali Akbar) were part of the accuse-the-accusers strategy, and are thus a deliberate distraction.

Perhaps you see, without my pointing it out, the purely utilitarian purpose of this method from a legal standpoint, in the context of “lawfare” that involves civil litigation and criminal charges. In any such conflict, the accuse-the-accusers strategy allows Kimberlin and Rauhauser to claim that any legal complaint against them is an act of retaliation. “So-and-so is doing this because I exposed his wrongdoing.” This is quite explicitly what Kimberlin has done to Aaron Walker, and the intricate overlapping of accusations and counter-accusations has deeply confused many journalists who have tried to report the story. Accustomed to the idea of “balance,” even reporters who are deeply skeptical of Kimberlin feel obligated to solicit “his side” of the story, which results in their publishing his profoundly dishonest narrative of events. It’s like being assigned to cover the Tate-LaBianca murders and giving equal time to Charles Manson: “The Evil Pigs Who Deserved to Die.”
Ali was “doxed” by Rauhauser, and the accusations were made against the National Bloggers Club, for just such purposes as I have described. The fact that some conservatives have joined in the “just-asking-questions” campaign against Ali, or the legitimacy of their curiosity, do not change the fact that the strategic purpose of this attack is the defense of Kimberlin. Once you understand this motive, and understand Rauhauser’s methods, the accusations against their targets – Walker, Frey, Ali, whoever – can be clearly seen as deliberate distractions.
Part of the success of this “accuse the accusers” strategy is explained by the fact that people take such things personally. If you accuse me of lying, I become angry at your accusation and retaliate with counter-accusations. You then solicit assistance from your friends, demanding that they rally to your support in the conflict, and I do likewise, each of us demanding that neutral parties choose sides in the dispute: “You cannot be friends with him, because he has attacked me unjustly.” Thus divisions are created, each of us is isolated from potential allies, and this benefits … whom?
Having watched this occur with other of Neal’s targets, I’ve determined that I will not be lured into that trap of letting emotional reaction override my rational understanding of what is happening. The problem with getting people to understand this phenomenon is that it is so complex, confusing and crazy that when you describe it, people who haven’t actually seen it in action think you’ve lost your mind. Yet there are now enough witnesses to the workings of the accuse-the-accusers strategy and Rauhauser’s social-engineering methods that I describe all this to you with confidence, and will publish this e-mail at my own blog, so that others may be forewarned.
One last thing, [–]: Once you or your friends become involved in a conflict with Neal Rauhauser, beware of “coincidences,” and be skeptical of any accusation made against your friends, whatever the source or whatever “evidence” is offered in support of the accusation. People have been manipulated without their knowledge, and you may ask The Lonely Conservative what evil deceptions have been practiced in this regard. Or perhaps you can ask Barrett Brown how it was that he was incited to the dangerous madness that got him arrested last week.
Sincerely,
— RSM

Please understand that I’ve watched this happen, and seen people allow themselves to be manipulated, and do not wish to blame the victims, as it were: There are people angry at me whom I have not wronged, but who did not realize that they were being deceived, and my attempts to alert them to the deception were (of course) rejected as self-justification. It’s absolutely amazing to witness, and until it happens to you, it’s impossible to know how the targets feel.

OK, this isn’t the worst I’ve ever had to deal with, and to repeat: I am not deceived. I am not distracted. And I sure as hell ain’t afraid.

Category: The Kimberlin Files

#Eastwooding Eastwood

Posted on | September 17, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Imitation is both sincere and funny in this case. While going for laughs, this has the effect of carrying the meme forward into #OccupyResoluteDesk’s current foreign policy non-triumphs:

via The Blaze

Category: Barack Obama, humor

Prediction: Public Sector Strike In WI

Posted on | September 17, 2012 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Reasoning:

  1. The Chicago teachers strike is ongoing.
  2. Dane County Judge Juan Colas, in the biggest judicial WTF since Justice Roberts let fly with his ObamaCare decision, “returns the law to its status before Walker signed his law in March 2011“
  3. ???
  4. Electoral profit!

Note that ‘reason’ encounters a Left-wing singularity right around #3 above. These strikes make precious little sense, unless you figure that they may be a faux crisis ginned up for #OccupyResoluteDesk to solve. Maybe something can be done about the Troglopundit, too. Midnight visit by brownshirts? They’ll need plenty of lighting for the bog, though.

At any rate, the completely weird reversal of a decision from the WI Supreme Court makes no sense unless it’s a tile in a bigger mural. It’s sort of a Checkov’s Gun situation. If I’m wrong, you can see me at CPAC for a cup of coffee.

Update: noted. . .


And so they all get sick, and have doctors write them notes. Nah, that’s inconceivable!

Category: Barack Obama, Illinois, Wisconsin

The Disgrace That Is Susan Rice

Posted on | September 17, 2012 | 27 Comments

The position of Ambassador to the United Nations has been held by such distiguished persons as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and John Bolton. This is what’s so outrageous about the idiocy of Susan Rice:

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi last week was not premeditated, directly contradicting top Libyan officials who say the attack was planned in advance.
“Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo,” Rice told [Jake Tapper] this morning on “This Week.”
“In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated,” Rice said, referring to protests in Egypt Tuesday over a film that depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud. Protesters in Cairo breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy, tearing apart an American flag.
“We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to – or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo,” Rice said. “And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons… And it then evolved from there.”

Was the Egyptian protest also “spontaneous”? Could we suppose, hypothetically, that radical elements in the Islamic world are capable of coordinating activities on a certain date known in advance — say, for example, September 11?

The fathomless nitwittery is thickly layered: Rice’s continued insistence that this was all about a “very offensive video”; her post hoc propter hoc explanation of the Benghazi attack as a reaction to the Cairo riot; and then her claim that some “extremists . .. with heavier weapons” just decided to drop in at Benghazi — “Surprise! Sorry we’re late. Did you miss us?” — to add their RPGs and machine guns to the festive atmosphere of what was otherwise a spontaneous peaceful protest.

Perhaps we should consult an expert on affairs in Libya?

Consulate Attack Preplanned, Libya’s President Says
— NPR

Libyan president: ‘No doubt’ attack ‘preplanned’
— Politico

Libya’s Mohamed Yousef el-Magariaf: Attack
On U.S. Embassy Was ‘Planned — Definitely,
It Was Planned by Foreigners…’
— American Power

(Via Memeorandum.) Kinda emphatic, the contradiction:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Was this a long-planned attack, as far as you know? Or what — what do you know about that?
MOHAMED YOUSEF EL-MAGARIAF: The way these perpetrators acted and moved, I think we — and they’re choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration, I think we have no — this leaves us with no doubt that this has preplanned, determined — predetermined.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And you believe that this was the work of al Qaeda and you believe that it was led by foreigners. Is that — is that what you are telling us?
MOHAMED YOUSEF EL-MAGARIAF: It was planned — definitely, it was planned by foreigners, by people who– who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their — since their arrival.

Rice’s idiotic explanation that the U.S. Ambassador and three other Americans were killed in Libya because of a YouTube clip and a copycat “spontaneous” protest inspired by Egypt blithely ignores the specifics of the situation in Benghazi prior to the deadly attack. Before anyone ever heard of this stupid video, before anything happened in Cairo, U.S. officials in Libya were warned:

Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.
Jamal Mabrouk, a member of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander had a meeting about the economy and security.
He said they told the diplomats that the security situation wasn’t good for international business.
“The situation is frightening, it scares us,” Mabrouk said they told the U.S. officials.

If that’s what Mabrouk and his comrade told U.S. officials on Sept. 8, and if the Libyan president says the attack was “definitely . . . planned by foreigners,” how can Susan Rice so confidently declare that the violence was not “premeditated”?

Answer: Because Susan Rice is an idiot.

 

Category: Libya, United Nations
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