The Other McCain

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

Is The U.S. Dollar Raaaaacist?

Posted on | August 21, 2012 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

Given the working definition of raaaaacism as ‘defying Obama’, one may be forced into an affirmative response:

The trend is for Romney fundraising to increase, whereas Obama’s appears to have crested. Power Line notes: “Not only that, [Romney’s] advantage will be increased by what seems to be a more efficient–i.e., cheaper–campaign operation.” Whereas #OccupyResoluteDesk’s campaign may be in some disarray. In other news, King George has been buying gold. Mere coincidence. Do not connect those dots.  As with the job numbers, and math in general, the dollar seems to be guilty of ‘hating a black man in the White House‘. Bad dollar: bad.

The usual DGCK warning applies. While not a kid, Todd Akin reminds us all that Bidenism is only acceptable if your name is Biden. And we have over two months to go. Fortunately, the Romney campaign seems to have a good understanding of the medium pace.

via Power Line

Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.21.12

Posted on | August 21, 2012 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Akin Takin’ Heat But Hasn’t Quit Yet

Not yet begun to fight?


Facing pressure from NRSC, Levin, Romney, Coulter and many others, GOP Senate nominee digs in

Obama Campaign: Unsustainable Burn Rate?
Spent $10 million more than campaign raised in July

Ethiopian PM Zenawi Dies, 57
Felled by infection, Zenawi improved economy, health and education while being criticized for abuses



POLITICS
Appeals Court Rules Alabama Can’t Check Students’ Immigration Status

A line of people waits to get seats at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals


Okays police checks of suspects’ papers, though

Romney, Ryan Turn Mediscare Attacks Back On Obama

Could GOP Convention Boost Stocks?



West Virginia Ranked As #1 Party School

NYC Cab Crackdown Does Fine

Curt Schilling Calls RI Governor Chafee ” A Dunce Of Epic Proportions”



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Up Slightly Before Eurodebt Crisis Meeting, US Stockpile Report; NYMEX $96.37, Brent $114.07
European Stocks Rise
Apple Sets Record For Company Value At $624 Billion
Aetna To Buy Coventry Healthcare
Facebook’s Ambition Collides With Harsh Market
What Does Groupon’s Collapse Mean For Tech Stocks? How About: Nothing
Corn Harvest Ahead Of Schedule
Vietnam Tycoon Arrest Unsettles Markets
Epic Battle Between Apple, Samsung Goes To Jury
UK To Get 4G This Year As T-Mobile, Orange Get Regulator’s Permission
Microsoft Office A Big Draw For Windows Tablets?
Walmart Offers $20 Discount On $100 iTunes Card
Windows Phone To Top Blackberry In US By Year’s End
Plants v. Zombies Shambles In Late Spring 2013
New Mario Game Is All About The Gold



SPORTS
Pale Hose Power Past Yankees, 9-6

Jeter ties Eddie Murray on hits list


Jeter has good game, but effort wasted as Sox bounce back from Royals sweep with four homers

Snakes Blown Out By Fish 12-3, Trade Drew To A’s For Prospect

The Rocket Returns

Flyers’ Hartnell Gets Six-Year Extension

WAC To Drop Football After 2012 Season

Royals Go Quietly In 5-1 Loss At Tampa Bay

Tracy Singles In 13th; Nats’ 5-4 Defeat Of Braves Opens Lead In NL East To Six Games



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Legendary Comic Phyllis Diller Dies, 95

Phyllis Diller, 1917-2012 RIP


Died peacefully in her sleep at home, surrounded by family.

Rosie O’Donnell Still Alive After Heart Attack

Tony Scott Had Inoperable Brain Cancer – Or Did He?

Jenifer Aniston – Hiding Her Engagement Ring?

Did Justin Timberlake And Jessica Biel Say “I Do” In Secret?

Taylor Swift & Conor Kennedy Smooching In Cape Cod



Wynonna’s Husband Has Leg Amputated After Horrific Motorcycle Crash

Hilary Swank, John Campisi Split

Deleted Scene From “The Avengers” – To Smash Or Not To Smash?

NBC Lands Michael J. Fox’s Family Comedy



FOREIGNERS
Pussy Riot And The Militant Godless
Jihadis Hit Chairman Of JCS’ Plane, Gen. Dempsey Unhurt
Ecuador’s President Warns UK Against Embassy Raid To Snatch Assange
Obama Warns Syria Against Using WMD
Kurdish Separatists Deny Responsibility For Car Bomb On Syria/Turkey Border
Philippine Interior Secretary’s Body Recovered From Crash Site
No Mine Firings As South Africa Mourns
Iran Unveils Upgrade To Tactical Missile; Announces Intent To Build Own Fighters
Russia, PRC Warn West Against Syria Intervention
25 Killed In Venezuela Prison Riot, Dozens Wounded



BLOGS & STUFF
WyBlog: Survey Says Women Drink More After Marriage, And It’s The Husband’s Fault
Legal Insurrection: PPP Finds Akin Still Leads McCaskill – Troll Poll?
NRO Campaign Spot: Cornyn To Akin – “Carefully Consider What Is Best.” Hint, Hint, Nudge, Nudge.
American Power: “I Would Be Thinking About What’s In The Best Interests Of The Party”
Pirate’s Cove: The Akin Issue – Don’t Drop Out
Ann Coulter: If Akin Loves His Country, He Will Step Aside
Lonely Conservative: President Thin Skin Loathes Romeny, Didn’t Want To Golf With Boehner
Ramesh Ponnuru: The Case For Talent
Power Line: Romney Flush With Cash, Poised For Stretch Run
Newsbusters: DU, Kossacks Go Berserk Over Newsweek Cover
Wake Up America: Paul Krugman Gets Busted For Lying To His Readers About Obamacare
Zombie: Where Our $500 Million Went – Solyndra Tubes Used As Modern Art

Category: Live at Five

Objectively, Todd Akin Is Doomed

Posted on | August 20, 2012 | 29 Comments

Got offline for a few hours during which, among other things, I discussed the Todd Akin situation by phone with a couple of people. A point I made: This isn’t “Macaca” — it’s not as if the Left ginned up a controversy over a ridiculous bit of nothing. And another point: Compared to this, Trent Lott’s 100th birthday tribute to Strom Thurmond was a minor kerfuffle.

While you discuss that amongst yourselves — and Charles Johnson does his obligatory “Neoconfederate Racist Hate Blogger R.S. McCain Defends Strom Thurmond” post — let’s see what Allahpundit has to say at Hot Air:

[I]t’s important that people like Hannity, Coulter, and the boss emeritus are leaning on this guy too, not just Romney and Reince Priebus. Without pressure from all-stars on the right, he can dig in and turn it into a “weak-ass establishment RINOs are selling me out to the Democrats” populist attack on D.C. Republicans.

I’m not saying Todd Akin is a bad person, nor am I urging a zero-tolerance policy on gaffes for all GOP candidates. Todd Akin is, to a great degree, a victim of circumstance. In some other year, perhaps, Akin could have apologized and moved on. Not this year.

Back in March, the Democrat seized on FlukeGate as Exhibit A in their “Republican War on Women” argument, which forced the GOP to invest enormous effort in turning the conversation back to the issues — the economy, jobs, deficits, etc. — where they were prepared to fight the fall campaign.

And then, out of the clear blue sky, Todd Akin punts it.

It was like the point man in the infantry patrol who hits the trip wire that detonates the mine in the enemy ambush.  Suddenly the entire platoon finds itself pinned down under carefully aimed small-arms fire from camouflaed emplacements, while mortars and artillery come pouring in on pre-determined grid coordinates.

The Democrats and their media allies had all their arguments and talking points ready to roll, having rehearsed the whole drill five months ago during FlukeGate. Suddenly, everything Mitt Romney ever said about abortion and everything Paul Ryan ever said about abortion is legtimate, relevant and newsworthy.

Ouf of a clear blue fucking sky.

An unforced error by a candidate in a red state should have been an easy Senate pickup for the Republicans not only puts that pickup in jeopardy, but in fact forces the GOP to re-do all the work they’ve done for the past five months to try to focus the fall campaign squarely on the issues where they can and should clobber the Democrats. Spare me the complaints about the unfairness of it, and don’t try to play the True Conservative card on me.

This isn’t about ideology, it’s about basic political competence — or the lack thereof — and a candidate whose ambition led him into a high-stakes game that he clearly wasn’t prepared to play. Nobody put a gun to Todd Akin’s head and forced him to run for Senate, and surely all the uproar this past spring about an alleged Republican “War on Women” should have been ample warning to GOP candidates to be very careful around such issues.

Never mind. Hindsight remorse is as irrelevant as my opinion or your opinion, because we’re talking facts here, and the fact is there’s no way Akin survives this — no way at all. The elders and wise men of the Republican Party will have him out of there within 24 hours, and probably a lot less than that. By lunchtime Tuesday the question will be who will replace Akin on the ticket.

He is doomed beyond all hope of redemption, no matter what, and now the obligatory Sean Hannity interview:

UPDATE: Mark Levin says it would be a “mistake” for Akin to stay in. If he’s lost Mark Levin . . .

BTW, I’m rather dumbfounded by the number of people on Twitter who see this differently. I was not hasty to jump in on this. By the time I first blogged about it today, Crossroads GPS had pulled out and there were already 23 Memeorandum threads on the “legitimate rape” uproar. It is clear that this is a non-survivable situation for Akin, and if he can’t see that yet, the wise men and elders of the GOP will make sure he sees it soon enough.

Category: Election 2012, Missouri, Senate

Report: Republican Todd Akin Will Withdraw From Missouri Senate Race

Posted on | August 20, 2012 | 104 Comments

Ace of Spades reports that both Erick Erickson and Richard Grinnell are saying on Twitter that Akin will exit the campaign.

The furor over Akin’s remarks about “legitimate rape” — as Michelle Malkin calls it, “The Todd Akin Mess” — currently accounts for the top 23 threads on Memeorandum.

UPDATE: This horrible botch can be blamed squarely on the Missouri GOP Establishment, which lined up behind Akin against Tea Party-backed — and Sarah Palin-endorsed — candidate Sarah Steelman in the primary two weeks ago.

Mike Rathbone at Hot Air: “Hey, I Voted for Steelman.” More than 60 percent of Missouri GOP  primary voters voted for either Steelman or businessman John Brunner.

UPDATE II: National Review is calling for Akin to “step aside” and the terrible thing, from a Republican standpoint, is how unnecessary this disaster was. It was an unforced error in an easily winnable race against an unpopular Democrat incumbent, and it was caused by the predictably timid Republican impulse to back the “safe” candidate who, as in so many previous instances, proved to be not really safe after all.

Damn.

I can tolerate a lot of things in politics, but I despise incompetence.

UPDATE III: Aside from biological nonsense — claiming women can’t get pregnant as a result of rape — Akin’s fundamental problem is that he was arguing the wrong point.

Whenever supporters of abortion start throwing up arguments based on exceptions, the proper response is to point out that well over 90 percent of abortions have nothing whatsoever to do with such exceptions, but are strictly a matter of choice: post-conception birth control. And the pre-Roe history demonstrated that permitting abortion under specific exceptions resulted in those exceptions being abused. The rape exception resulted in false accusations of rape, and the “health” exception resulted in doctors fictionalizing health risks, including false determinations of mental health risks.

If we can ever come to a consensus as a society that abortion is a homicidal act that ought to be against the law, then we might start having a productive conversation about ending it. However, so long as we have “respectable” people who advocate abortion as a good thing — indeed, as a pseudo-sacred constitutional “right” — no meaningful discussion is possible.

The “respectable” people who advocate abortion are paid for their advocacy, and have an articulate elite to echo their viewpoint, while those who speak on behalf of the sanctity of life — well, we’ve got dumbass Republicans like Todd Akin, you see.

UPDATE IV: Some blowback in the comments, and understandable confusion: OK, Akin is one of the “good guys,” granted — but this isn’t about moral virtue or ideological purity, it’s about winning a Senate election in Missouri.

Nor is this a matter of what my opinion is about what should happen. I’m trying to discern what will happen. Having covered a few elections (and a few gaffes) in my time, I’m telling you  (a) Akin’s error is likely beyond recovery at this point, and (b) the same GOP impulse toward “safety” that helped Akin win the primary will likely now result in his being forced out of the race.

Crossroads GPS just pulled its ads out of the Missouri Senate race. Wake up and smell the Karl Rove.

UPDATE V: Ace updates with the Hannity interview and also Ann Coulter calling for Akin to quit. It is what it is: Beyond recovery.

Category: Abortion, Election 2012, Missouri, Senate

‘Because Truth Is an Absolute Defense’

Posted on | August 20, 2012 | 14 Comments

The quoted phrase from the Moore v. Hoff ruling should be drilled into the head of every blogger, as it was drilled into my head years ago as a beginning reporter. How many times did my editors tell me, “Get your facts right, and they can’t touch you”?

An editor has a moral obligation to defend at all hazards a reporter who is telling the truth, which is why the first three rules of journalism are accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.

The principles that apply to newspaper reporting should apply equally to blogger Johnny Northside (who reportedly had only 500 readers per day). Get your facts wrong and you’ve got a problem, but nobody can successfully sue you for writing the truth. And plaintiffs who try to claim “harassment” or “tortious infererence” because they know they can’t win a libel case are a menace to the First Amendment.

This is why I became so enraged by the attempts of Brett Kimberlin to silence his critics with “harassment” claims and other legalistic nonsense, and it’s why I have long since tired of Neal Rauhauser’s cowardly efforts to conceal his malicious acts — the “Gaped Crusader”! — with sockpuppet accounts and other deceptions.

Put your name on it, you gutless punk, or shut the hell up.

UPDATE: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) has introduced anti-SLAPP legislation that would protect journalists (including bloggers) from nuisance suits. The Rhetorican suggests it should be called “The Kimberlin Law.”

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instpundit readers!

 





 


Category: Journalism

The Truth Goes Viral Again: Progressive Labor Leader Speaks Explicitly About Occupy Movement’s Communist Goals

Posted on | August 20, 2012 | 30 Comments

Leadership Institute intern Danielle Saul got video inside an Occupy DC meeting Sunday where union activist Mike Golash said:

“Progressive Labor is a revolutionary communist organization. Its objective is to make revolution in the United States, overthrow the capitalist system and build communism. . . . An organization has to be built which can bring down capitalism . . . a disciplined organization made up, not of a few people, but of millions and millions of people, can bring down capitalism.”

Hat tip to Danielle’s mom, Ginny Saul. How did I get scooped by Matthew Boyle of the Daily Caller on this, huh? Greedy capitalists!

UPDATE: Just interviewed Danielle Saul by phone. “There were three of us” who produced the video, Danielle said, naming Andrew McCaughey and Nicolas Tomboulides as her collaborators. Danielle explained that the Occupy DC meeting Sunday brought together various constituent groups involved in planning protests next month to mark the one-year anniversary of the Occupy movement.

Mike Golash was speaking on behalf of the Progressive Labor Party, a Maoist group which (if memory serves) was instrumental in fomenting the 1969 split in Students for a Democratic Society that led to the formation of the Weather Underground.

After Danielle sent out the video on Twitter late last night, she was contacted immediately by Boyle of the Daily Caller. When Danielle’s mom woke up early this morning, the video was already being played on Fox News, which amazed Danielle: “Who would have thought that it would have  gotten on Fox News?”

Who would have thought it? A guy I used to know, that’s who.

UPDATE II: A quick glance at Wikipedia clarifies the role that Progressive Labor played in the SDS split:

[The so-called “Weatherman” manifesto] had been written by an 11-member committee that included Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn and John Jacobs, and represented the position of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) wing of SDS, most of which later turned into the Weather Underground Organization. The New Left Notes issue was full of the language of the Old Left of the 1930s; and was thus impenetrable and irrelevant to the majority of SDSers.
Once it became clear that the Worker Student Alliance (WSA) faction was the largest contingent with a majority of the delegates, the convention quickly fell into disarray, as the RYM and allied groups moved to expel Progressive Labor (PL) members and the WSA faction of SDS. The Black Panther representatives attacked PL and at the same time proved itself inclined towards sexism by advocating “pussy power.” The entire convention fell into something approaching chaos, or worse, farce.
The RYM and the National Office faction, led by Bernardine Dohrn, led a breakaway meeting from which PL and WSA members were barred. This group then voted by about 500 to 100 to expel PL from SDS, and then walked out of the conference hall with that 500.

This was a necessary clarification, and also an interesting history lesson. I had remembered that Progressive Labor was involved in the collapse of SDS, but had forgotten that the Maoists were, in fact, the target of the purge led by the RYM, also known as the “action faction,” which subsequently became the Weather Underground terrorist cell.

UPDATE III: The Progressive Labor Party is still in operation, more than 50 years after it was formed in 1961 by dissidents from the Communist Party USA who charged that CPUSA leader Gus Hall had taken “the capitalist road.” PL promoted conspiracy theories of JFK’s assassination as an “apparently well-planned execution,” and organized early protests against the Vietnam War. PLP’s Web site nowadays features headlines such as these:

Capitalism Equals Mass Racist Murder and War

Mexico: Building International
Unity and Communist Solidarity

Dark Knight Rises: Batman Spews
Anti-Communism to Save Capitalism

UPDATE IV: Linked by William J. Hoge and Walla Walla Tea Party Patriots — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE V: A Memeorandum thread with further commentary by Weasel Zippers, The Lonely Conservative and Gateway Pundit.

 

 


Category: #Occupy, Video

Memo to Code Pink: Perhaps You Have Misunderstood the ‘Pussy Riot’ Concept

Posted on | August 20, 2012 | 14 Comments

“. . . the last remains of social order will speedily perish, and society will be overwhelmed in savage anarchy.”

Pussy Riot is an all-female Russian rock band whose members were sentenced to prison for a protest against Vladimir Putin. It is my theory that Glenn Reynolds keeps writing about their case not merely because of his principled commitment to free speech, but also because he likes writing “Pussy Riot” in headlines. And speaking of irresistible headlines:

Respect Women! Dress Up
Like a Vagina for Equal Rights!

Indeed, Medea Benjamin and her crew of left-wing harpies at Code Pink seem to have conceptual difficulties:

This was Saturday at the “We Are Woman” rally in D.C. which — judging from photos included in the Twitchy roundup report — looked kinda loose and floppy. The “We Are Woman” Web page has biographies of the event organizers, a few of which I excerpt briefly:

  • Wendy Cartwright cites Hillary Clinton and Rosa Parks as her role models. . . . Wendy is an active participant in numerous organizations in Florida including as a member and supporter of Occupy Tampa and Planned Parenthood. . . .
  • Jessica DelBalzo became involved in reproductive rights activism as a high school student. Now she is a single mom living in Flemington, NJ with a daughter and son who inspire her continued fight for women’s rights. . . . She writes openly about her positive abortion experience and encourages other women to do the same.
  • Emmy Rivera grew up watching the Civil, and Women’s Rights movements march across her TV in the 70s. She discovered she was Pro Choice after becoming pregnant the age of 16. While her choice was to keep the baby, as a struggling single mother, she was grateful to have Planned Parenthood to turn to for affordable birth control after her son was born.
  • Jessica Wainfor . . . is currently a . . . full time student at the University of Rhode Island majoring in Human Development and minoring in Gender and Women’s Studies while also working as a full time preschool teacher.

You get the general idea, eh? These are women who, as Ann Coulter observed in Godless, regard abortion as a holy sacrament and view abortion clinics as sacred temples. To them, the most important right in the Constitution isn’t actually in the Constitution, but rather can be found in the “penumbras, formed by emanations” which — having remained invisible for the first 176 years of the Republic — were first discovered and described in 1965 by Justice William O. Douglas in his infamous majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut.

 To such disordered minds (I speak of the “We Are Woman” rally organizers, not Justice Douglas, although he seems to have been somewhat delusional himself) are nowadays entrusted “women’s rights.” That this movement has relegated itself to the kook fringe is self-evident, not merely by the meager attendance at their rally, but also by their embrace of Code Pink. Advice Goddess Amy Alkon:

Pssst! Ladies! Of all the ways to demand respect for women, dressing up like a giant vagina probably isn’t one of them.

Probably not.

 

Category: Feminism

Todd Akin And Amendment 2.5

Posted on | August 20, 2012 | 61 Comments

by Smitty

One of those people you really don’t want to upset, Dana Loesch, is truly hacked off at those assailing Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin:

Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin appeared on a local St. Louis television show (below) and discussed his thoughts on abortion, even in the instance of rape or incest, which accounts for less than 1% of abortions received. (More.)

Progressive backlash from Roman Polanski fans and deniers of Occupy rapes was immediate.

Read the whole thing, as I’m not bringing forward the reference URLs.

It looks like the Left has another Alinsky Rule 12 play underway. Unlike the failed Sandra Fluke attack on Rush Limbaugh, the fiscal conservative/social conservative overlap is a better place to drive the wedge. Sadly, some nominally conservative people subscribe to SCOTUS Amendment 2.5:

Well regulated worshippers being necessary to the Progress of Hell, the right of the women to abort the children they bear of shall not be infringed.

Abortion has got to be about the sweetest lie Satan has devised. If we’re each body, mind and soul, and a society is composed of men and women arranged in families, then note the contradiction afoot. Here is an argument that purports to be about liberty of the woman, but is really about the anarchy of the body. Men and families appear nowhere in the argument about abortion. Pregnancy is some present-tense condition, free of historical context. And the ‘right’ to snuff a life is free of future impact.

This is not mature liberty for the mind; this is slavery to the crotch. The Left continually makes an emotional appeal to the body, and proudly labels itself pro-freedom, while crushing the minds of Americans with anti-intellectual arguments. Sex is wonderful, but it is ultimately the means to the end of continuing humanity. How does one purport to care about women when sex-selective abortion actively targets women? Todd Akin, himself, is treated to a 65-year late abortion by the Left for offering an argument pertaining to 1% of abortions. Disagree with him if you like; offer counter-arguments. Suggest alternative policies. But crush the man in the manner seen on Twitter? Wow, Obama has really be a healer, hasn’t he?

Of two abortions with which I’ve some familiarity, both involved a context. Four victims: two women, two humans of unknown gender. In both cases, there was significant sin involved. (Can I say ‘sin’? Are we allowed to discuss right and wrong, as though anyone is still accountable for their misdeeds to the Almighty?) And so sin was piled on sin, and there was abortion. I found out much, much later in both cases. Forgive those involved? Yes. Is it true that they’re economically better off for all that? Who knows? That’s all counterfactual. Their souls? Hopefully they’ve prayed for forgiveness. (This is the sort of thing that goes unspoken, un-alluded, even in jest. I’m unsure either woman even knows that I know.)

And so I’m supposedly the evil guy for saying that abortion is wrong, because I’ve never been directly involved with this sort of pagan act. Look how it divides! Those who are enslaved by it are doomed to defend abortion, all the way to their own grave, like the grave they dug for the unborn. If you offer an intellectual objection to the evil, then you get the emotional “You don’t understand” reply. On the contrary: Planned Parenthood doesn’t understand the teleological point of manhood, womanhood, and families.

All I can tell you, as a man, is that I have stood there while my son was born, cut the cord, and heard his first wail of life. That any man is so stunted of mind and soul that he’d share his essence with some latrodectus woman who would devour his essence is disgusting. The arguments in favor of abortion are a sad brick in the wall of the mausoleum of our culture. God have mercy on these people, and heal their blighted souls, and may the lousy ideas of the abortion proponents return to hell.

Update: Lawyers, Guns and Money takes a dishonest swipe at Stacy McCain while evading the central point of this post. Losers.

Update II: linked at The Camp of the Saints.

Category: Abortion, Culture
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin