The Other McCain

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

Reasons Not to Have Sex

Posted on | August 13, 2012 | 20 Comments

You’re young. You’re sexy. You meet somebody else young and sexy. And next thing you know, you’ve got yourself a nearly incurable case of antibiotic-resistant Super-Clap:

Five years ago, the CDC said fluoroquinolones were no longer effective, but oral cephalosporins were still a common/easy treatment. Now injected ceftriaxone is the only recommended effective drug we have left. And it has to be given along with either azithromycin or doxycycline. . . .
Once gonorrhea becomes resistant to the last of our cephalosporin antibiotics — “its only a matter of time,” according to Dr. Gail Bolan, Director of STD Prevention at the CDC in todays announcement — we will have no treatment. Then when it gets into your bloodstream, it will be lethal.

Sex = death. Might as well start smoking cigarettes. It’s safer.

(Hat-tip: PJ Media.)

Category: Science, Sex

Memo for Oliver Willis

Posted on | August 13, 2012 | 19 Comments

Your make the intriguing assertion that it’s bad form for the press corps to tell the version of events favored by the campaign:

So it appears that the Romney campaign briefed multiple news outlets about the behind the scenes of how they hid Paul Ryan’s selection from the media. I’m not saying this isn’t a story, but the way this is being rolled out is pretty ridiculous.
All of these news outlets and several of their writers began tweeting out links to the story at midnight, which would indicate they were all under some kind of embargo. But they’re all basically telling the same story!
I feel like these guys all decided to embrace their inner Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum while writing this fanfic.
It’s also worth noting that with very few variations, this is the version of the story of how Romney selected Ryan that the campaign wants to be told.

Really? For the past four years (longer than that, actually, going back to fall 2007, during the Democratic primary campaign against  Hillary) the press corps has rather shamelessly covered Obama in exactly the way David Axelrod wants Obama covered. Bernie Goldberg wrote a book about it entitled A Slobbering Love Affair.

However, let a Republican campaign manage to control their own narrative — no matter how minor the subject — and you cry foul.

What you are clearly advocating is that the press must be relentlessly adversarial toward Republicans, even while your and your buddies at Media Matters denounce any news organization that takes an adversarial approach toward its reporting on Democrats. You are, in effect, expecting the media to operate according to Herbert Marcuse’s Marxist-Leninist redefinition of tolerance:

“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”

And the insulting thing about it is that you act as if the rest of us are too stupid to see what you’re doing. It is not my intention here to write an entire treatise on the causes and effects, the history and culture of liberal media bias. Frankly, I just don’t have time today. But your indignation at the coverage of the Ryan roll-out calls to mind something John Podhoretz observed:

So insulated are many, if not most, American liberals that they simply presume that which they despise is inherently despicable, and that what they fear is inherently fearful. As they gather in their echo chamber, all they hear are voices resounding with the monstrousness of redesigning Medicare and the parlousness of cutting the federal budget. They genuinely do not know that budget cutting is popular, even if only in theory, and that tens of millions of voters do understand the notion that the government is living far beyond its means.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll.) This “insulation” of which Podhoretz speaks is made possible by the dominance of liberalism not only in the news media, but also in the entertainment industry and in the educational establishment. It takes a real effort for anyone to see over the hedges of liberal belief that have been erected around us, and to understand that the world we behold on TV — in magazines, in movies, in history textbooks — is a warped funhouse-mirror reflection of the actual world.

The people who perpetuate these distortions of reality are enthralled by what Thomas Sowell called The Vision of the Anointed.

They believe themselves to be engaged in a worthy cause, the advancement of capital-p Progress, and they regard those who oppose them as unlightened or even malevolent.

Therefore, the anointed attempt to suppress knowledge of facts that don’t confirm their vision, and insist that we pay attention only to the narrative that they have carefully constructed. This is why Media Matters rails so persistently and obsessively about Fox News, and this is why liberals high-fived each other when Andrew Breitbart died, because the political success of liberalism is dependent on monopolistic control of the narrative.

You think we’re too stupid to see what you’re doing, and you demonize anyone who accurately describes what you’re doing, lest anyone pay attention to the little boy who points out that the Emperor has no clothes.

As to this specific occasion — major news organizations all telling the same story of the Ryan roll-out — is it not possible that the reason they’re all telling the same story is because the story is true? Must you rule out as self-evidently implausible the version of events told by the Romney campaign? Must members of the media presume that whatever Republicans say is false? Are Republicans so notoriously dishonest that even in so minor a matter as this, they must be lying, so that reporters must apply their investigative skills to learn the hidden (and presumably scandalous) Real Truth behind the lies?

What you seem to be asserting, Oliver Willis, is either:

A. Everything that Republicans say is false.

or

B. There is no such thing as objective truth, only whatever “truth” serves a particular political purpose.

We are not too stupid to see the implicit logic of your arguments, nor are we too stupid to understand why the Democrat-Media Complex is panicked by the Neutral Objective Fact that Paul Ryan is sexy.

 

Category: Media Bias

Maddow Left Sputtering By ‘L’ Word

Posted on | August 13, 2012 | 24 Comments

by Smitty

Say what you want about Rich Lowry, he did a splendid job against Keith Olbermann’s more masculine brother here. It turns out that Maddow just can’t handle the word ‘logic’:

I guess that in Maddow-land the selection of Ryan as VP means that Mitt Romney is open to attack for every vote Ryan has ever taken, in addition to every version of Ryan’s Roadmap, plus notes that Ryan passed back in homeroom, and so forth.

via Newsbusters

Update: shorter Daily Pundit: “Duh!” Yet I still cling to the notion of rational political dialog. Call me a romantic.

Category: Democrats, MSNBC

Paul Ryan in the American Spectator

Posted on | August 13, 2012 | 15 Comments

When you think about qualifications as vice president, the first thing you have to ask is, “Have they written for the American Spectator?”

Paul Ryan’s byline first appeared in the American Spectator in July 2009, and today he’s back with a column slamming Obama’s “you didn’t build that” rhetoric:

President Obama recently made a stunning remark about business owners in America’s free enterprise economy. After dismissing the hard work and ingenuity of successful individuals, the president said, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Who? Ultimately, the government.
Yet this was only the latest version of the president’s four-year disparagement of American entrepreneurialism. In 2008, then-candidate Obama said he intended to “spread the wealth around” — not his own wealth through voluntary transactions, of course, but the earnings belonging to American families through coercive redistribution. In April 2009, he claimed that the founding principles on which America was built are too weak to withstand 21st century pressures. He called our free economy a house built upon sand, destroyed when the financial storm of 2008 hit. America must be reconstructed, he asserted, upon a “new foundation” of “pillars” hewn from the solid rock of big government.
The agenda he promoted demonstrated in a practical way what his rhetoric meant. He pushed unprecedented stimulus spending, a government-driven health care overhaul, further distortions in the U.S. financial sector, an expensive cap-and-trade system to restrict American energy, and more. His transformative proposals were based on a vision of a government-centered society that conflicts with the foundational principles of freedom and equality rooted in our Declaration of Independence. To support his expansive new vision of government without limits, the administration sent Congress four massive annual budgets that called for crushing levels of debt. The Democrat-controlled Senate, cognizant of the political peril of voting for such reckless spending, taxes, and new debt, gave up on budgeting altogether. The U.S. Senate unanimously rejected Obama’s budgets, without passing any budget of its own for over three years.
The failed leadership and the dismal results from a president of such great promise have been disappointing. . . .

Read the whole thing.

And, by the way, while I am not a candidate for the vice-presidency — doggone that “vetting” process! — I am still a correspondent for the American Spectator, and have my own column there today.

Category: American Spectator, Election 2012, Paul Ryan

Sometimes You’re Chesley Sullenberger, Sometimes You’re Brandon Sparrow

Posted on | August 13, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty via (Dan Riehl)

Chesley, you’ll recall did something heroic and walked away from it. Brandon Sparrow, not so much:

A heroic pilot at the helm of a doomed plane full of skydivers made sure all of his passengers had jumped to safety before deftly crashing the aircraft in a backyard — where no one was injured
Brandon Sparrow, the brave pilot, was the only one killed in the horrific crash in Taylorville, Illinois, on Saturday morning.
Neighbors and authorities say Mr Sparrow’s efforts saved untold numbers of lives — as the plane went down in a crowded residential neighborhood.
‘It was either an act of God, or the pilot himself put the plane down in the back yard,’ Mayor Greg Brotherton told the State Journal-Register upon visiting the crash site.

Kipling comes to mind:

We’re most of us liars, we’re ‘arf of us thieves,
an’ the rest are as rank as can be,
But once in a while we can finish in style
(which I ‘ope it won’t ‘appen to me).

Truly, Sparrow finished in style. Heaven rest his soul.

Category: Uncategorized

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.13.12

Posted on | August 13, 2012 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Ryan & Obama Face Off In Iowa; Romney Takes The Bus To Florida

Speaks for itself, don't you think?


Ryan to visit State Fair, Obama to wave money under farmers’ noses

Egypt’s Mursi Orders Senior Military Commanders Into Retirement
Field Marshal Tantawi, armed forces chief of staff, and commanders of air force & navy get the boot




London Passes Olympic Baton To Rio
Pop stars, psychedelia, and stuff like that mark the closing ceremonies


POLITICS
Billy Graham Hospitalized With Infection

Billy Graham


93-year-old evangelist in stable condition with bronchitis

Gabrielle Giffords, Husband Moving Back To Tucson


Month-Long Caravan To Visit More Than 20 US Cities In Quest For End To Drug War

Sarah Palin Will Be In Tampa, But Won’t Be Speaking At RNC

US Media Discover Sikh Religion; Ignorance On Full Display

TSA Officers Allege Racial Profiling At Logan Airport

Social Security Surplus Dwarfed By Future Deficits


THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Rises Ahead Of US Sales Data; NYMEX $93.30, Brent $113.65
BP Sells Two Texas Natural Gas Plants To Eagle Rock Energy
Draghi’s Show Of Unity Cracks
Stocks, Copper Drop As Japan GDP Stokes Woes; Corn, Wheat Also Drop
HSBC Wins Court Fight To Evict Hong Kong Occupods
Curiosity’s New OS Upgrade Ready To Go Live
Motorola To Cut 4000 Jobs In Google Restructure
App.Net Raises $600K to Build An Ad-Free Alternative To Twitter
EA Expects Digital Sales To Pass Box Sales Soon
Google Appeases Hollywood, Angers Internet Freedom Watchers
B&N Cuts Nook Prices, Undercuts Kindle Fire



SPORTS
Ambrose Wins Duel With Keselowski At Watkins Glen

Ambrose holding a tight lead at the Finger Lakes 355


Oily track makes for slip-siding, bumper-banging excitement

Dolphins Release WR Chad Johnson After His Arrest For Domestic Violence

Tigers Forget Gloves, Lose To Rangers 8-3

Niese Gets Mets Past Braves, Despite Best Efforts Of Mets Bullpen To Blow It

Astros Can’t Complete Sweep, Fall To Brewers 5-3

Olympic Silliness Finally Over, And About Time Too

Nats’ Bats No Cure For Ailing Detwiler



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Katy Perry Sics Lawyers On Soon-To-Be-Ex Russell Brand

Russell Brand and his new GF


Katy not amused by Russell’s japes about marriages; lawyers impose gag order

Jennifer Aniston Engaged To Justin Theroux

Miley Cyrus Lands Recurring Role On “Two And A Half Men”

“High School Moms” Debuts

Spice Girls Reunite To Perform At Olympic Closing Ceremonies

Marilyn Manson Goes Through LAX Security With “F*** You” On Face

50 Cent Slams Kanye West’s Love For Unspeakable Armenian

Lorne Michaels Not Producing Oscars

Brangelina Wedding Rumors Flare Up, Cool Down Just As Quickly

Lindsay Lohan Raises Hell At Francesca Eastwood’s Birthday Party



FOREIGNERS
Iraq Gives Total Ultimatum On Kurdish Oil Deal
Over 300 Dead, 16,000 Homeless After Killer Quakes Whack Iran
Syrian Rebels Call For No-Fly Zones, Safe Havens
Australian Panel Calls For Deportation Of Asylum Seekers
Egypt: Hamas Likely Knew About Kerem Shalom Attack
Baba Ramdev Detained By Police, Anticorruption March Fails To Reach Parliament
Netanyahu: Threat From Iran Dwarfs All Others
Largest London Fire In Years Erupts At Recycling Center
Bo Xilai’s Case Tougher For CCP Than Wife’s Murder Trial
Lebanon Military Tribunal Charges Lawmaker With Syria-Linked Plot
Mumbai Police: Azad Maidan Violence Was Planned



BLOGS & STUFF
Joshuapundit: Romney And Ryan Strike Back At Obama’s Medicare Tactics On “60 Minutes”
Jammie Wearing Fools: Politico Hack Whines About Romney Choosing Schieffer For Interview
American Power: Fake Journalist Joan Walsh Attacks Paul Ryan As “Randian Poseur”
Power Line: MSM On Ryan Pick – “Women And Minorities Hardest Hit”
Moe Lane: Politico Lies About Romney-Ryan Wisconsin Turnout. Yes, You’re Shocked.
Scared Monkeys: A Tale Of Two Campaigns
American Thinker: Romney Campaign Raises $3.5 Million In First 24 Hours After Ryan Pick
Legal Insurrection: This Is What 2012 Looks Like
Jihad Watch: Muslim Brotherhood Consolidates Power, Ousts Military Chiefs
Israel Matzav: Ryan A Defense Hawk
NewsBusters: Wasserman-Schultz Claims She Has No Idea Of Political Affiliation Of People Behind Ad Blaming Romney For Woman’s Death

Category: Live at Five

Rule 5 Sunday: Outskirts

Posted on | August 12, 2012 | 14 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Standard disclaimer: some of the following links are to photographs liable to cause unfavorable reactions from wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, fellow workers, bosses, Gender Studies majors, and other people in a position to make your life miserable or otherwise pollute your purity of essence. Discretion is advised.


We welcome new blogger A Fool’s Game to Rule 5 Sunday; he offers some vintage pinup action as his debut. The POH Diaries goes Olympic with some UK beach volleyball pix, while Laughing Conservative’s attentions are on Ireland’s Georgia Salpa. First Street Journal gets their Irish up at ESPN for omitting Melissa Seidemann from the (nude) pix of the American womens’ water polo team; IMNSHO also has a selection of Olympic beauties. Randy’s Roundtable breaks for Catrinel Menghia and Aubrie Lemon, while Fishersville Mike ponders the inability of the Charleston (WV) press to understand Rule 5. Speaking of the news, Reaganite Republican deems Fox’s Diane Macedo red hot! The Rio Norte Line introduces us to Dutch TV babe Sylvie van der Vaart, while First Street Journal’s regular Rule 5 post is all about Army women on the close combat course. Three Beers Later presents Miranda Lambert and Danica Patrick being bad; also, some important advice in this economy.


EBL looks at Kim Glass of the womens’ volleyball team, a vintage pinup before & after, shooter Corey Cogdell, Rita Hayworth with a rifle, Marilyn Monroe, and Brigitte Bardot with Pablo Picasso.


For some reason (perhaps the Yellow Sign?) A View From The Beach deprives us of our accustomed cavegirls; in their place, there’s tax refugee Laetitia Casta, Betty Davis Eyes, Hot Summer Night, Sextape, Gibson Gives In, Trust But Verify (with Olympic content), and a new version of soccer from Brazil.


Soylent Green leads off with Jenna Jameson‘s endorsement of Mitt Romney and her consequent smackdown of 0bots on Twitter. Then follows a vintage Monday Motivationer, Tuesday Titillation, Monica Apor providing Humpday Hawt, Overnight Underboob Awesome, a secret prize, Friday Corsetcare: The Sequel, Overnight Awesome with Ana, and more Geisy wearing less.


El Opinador Compulsivo has Sherlyn Chopra, Sofia Vergara, Kaley Cuoco, Erica Hosseini, Jacqueline Bisset, Drew Barrymore, scenes from the car wash, the creek, and a jungle resort.


This week at The Camp Of The Saints, it’s Genevieve Debra Morton and Rashida Jones; Dustbury brings us Denisse Guerrero and Heather Locklear. Proof Positive has Elisabetta Canalis as his Friday Night Babe, Marilyn Monroe for his Vintage Babe, a 49ers cheerleader, and for the Sex in Advertising segment, Victoria’s Secret.


The DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes this week are Tori Praver (on a Rule 5 journey!), Saki Yamaguchi, Abbie Cornish, Nanami Norishima, Marcella Matos, and Lee Hyo Ri.


Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline for next week’s Rule 5 Sunday is Saturday, August 18; please send all links to the
Rule 5 Wombat mailbox.

Category: Rule 5

#VotingForObamaBidenIsLike Saying Managed Liberty Is Superior To, You Know, Liberty Liberty

Posted on | August 12, 2012 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

And I had to stop, because I can’t imagine topping this effort:

Category: Barack Obama, humor
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