The Other McCain

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

DNC Endorses State-Sanctioned Sodomy

Posted on | July 31, 2012 | 33 Comments

The Party of Official Perversity:

A plank supporting same-sex marriage will be included as part of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) draft platform, according to an exclusive report at the Washington Blade, which notes it was a unanimous decision.

Fire, brimstone and further updates expected . . .

UPDATE: We are supposed to believe — indeed, the “respectable Republican” types often argue quite vociferously — that only ignorant hateful bigots oppose same-sex marriage. But there are fundamental issues at stake, as I explained in November 2008:

Before he was purged from the bench, former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore made a remarkable and lamentably unappreciated contribution to American jurisprudence.
Concurring in the 2002 case of Ex Parte H.H., a custody dispute involving a lesbian mother, Moore demonstrated that homosexuality had no protected status in the Anglo-American common-law tradition, that indeed such behavior had been proscribed for centuries as “a crime against nature,” and that Alabama courts had consistently condemned homosexual acts as “illegal under the laws of this state and immoral in the eyes of most of its citizens.”
One does not have to share this abhorrence of homosexuality to agree that Moore’s concurrence — copiously studded with court precedents and citations of Blackstone’s Commentaries, 16th-century British jurist Sir Christopher Wray and even the Justinian Code — accurately summarized the legal foundation of the case against gay rights. . . .

Read the whole thing. You may blithely shrug, “To hell with the Anglo-American common-law tradition,” but such a dismissive attitude is a large step down a very slippery slope: Ideas Have Consquences.

UPDATE II: Not directly related, but it’s encouraging to see that Mitt Romney’s (hetero)sex(ual) appeal is still driving ’em crazy.

 

Category: Democrats, Election 2012, Gays, Marriage

The GOP School of Media Relations

Posted on | July 31, 2012 | 44 Comments

Pioneered by Ron Ziegler during the Nixon Administration, the Republican Party policy of contemptuous mistreatment of the press corps produces yet another predictable “success” :

WARSAW — A Mitt Romney aide told reporters to “shove it” Tuesday morning after the American press corps here shouted questions at the presidential candidate.
As Romney was walking away from Pilsudski Square toward his vehicle, reporters asked him about his string of gaffes and whether he had any comment for Palestinians, some of whom took offense at the Republican’s suggestion Monday in Jerusalem that Israel’s economy is superior because of cultural advantages Israelis enjoy. Romney ignored the questions and got in his car.
But his traveling press secretary was furious.
“Kiss my ass; this is a holy site for the Polish people,” said aide Rick Gorka. “Show some respect.”
Gorka then told a reporter to “shove it.”

This Ziegler-style hostility toward reporters was something I experienced during the 2008 campaign. No publication on the planet had been more hostile to the Clintons than The American Spectator, yet when I showed up on the campaign trail to cover Hillary’s primary campaign, the reception I got was surprisingly cordial.

Twice I covered impromptu post-event “availabilities” (i.e., press conferences) with the candidate, including one in Shepherdstown, W.Va., where I sat in the front row less than 10 feet from Hillary while she took questions from a press corps that kept asking variations on the question, “When are you going to quit?”

When I subsequently went out on the trail to cover John McCain, by contrast, there were no press conferences, and when Sarah Palin was added to the ticket, she was kept within a protective “bubble.” In fact, McCain campaign staffers at times tried to cordon off reporters in a pen, so as to prevent them even from interviewing people attending campaign rallies.

This is what GOP operatives like to call “message discipline,” and it has the predictable effect of entirely alienating the press corps.

Suppose that you are a correspondent who is following around a candidate at considerable expense to your news organization. Your bosses expect that you’re going to provide them with actual news, and hopefully something exclusive. Instead, you go to three events a day at which the candidate gives the same basic stump speech over and over. There’s never a press conference, never a minute of unscripted access to the candidate, and the campaign staffers are under orders never to tell you anything useful in terms of actual news that might distract from the pre-approved Message of the Day.

Wouldn’t that piss you off? And especially if your editors had sent you all the way to Warsaw, Poland, for such a dog-and-pony show?

How many times have I explained to my friends — many of whom are in fact Republican operatives — why this approach doesn’t work? Hundreds. Yet the same Ziegler-style policy continues to be Standard Operating Procedure, because you will never meet a Republican operative who doesn’t consider himself an authoritative expert on media relations, and they will heed no advice from actual journalists.

UPDATE: In checking back on my 2008 campaign covered, I found my American Spectator article about Hillary’s appearance in Shepherdstown, which was the day after she’d lost North Carolina and barely squeaked past Obama in Indiana:

Hillary’s supporters cheered and chanted her name at the West Virginia event, but reporters pounced at a post-rally press conference, suggesting it might be time for her to strike the tent. Does her vow to keep fighting, asked one network TV reporter, mean that Clinton will continue her campaign all the way until the vote on the convention floor in Denver?
“I’m staying in this race until there’s a nominee, and I obviously am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee,” she answered. “So we will continue to contest these elections and move forward.”
The reporter fired back with a follow-up question: “But what do you say to those Democrats who fear that you’re putting the Democratic Party’s chances at risk by…continuing to stay in?”
Such questions caused Rush Limbaugh (who claimed that his “Operation Chaos” delivered Hillary’s margin of victory in Indiana) to wonder why the “Drive-By Media” were so concerned with the Democratic Party’s chances in November.
“All of these media types are demanding that Hillary drop out of the race now . . . and the Drive-Bys are saying, ‘Get out of the race to save the party.’ Now, what’s the party got to do with the media? I ask rhetorically, of course,” Limbaugh told his listeners after watching TV coverage of the Shepherdstown press conference.

The reporter shouting hostile questions was Mark Knoller of CBS News, an obnoxious slob, the Michael Moore of the White House press corps. Knoller’s presumption of speaking on behalf of “those Democrats” was scarcely presumptuous, of course. And the fact that Hillary was willing to stand there in front of all those cameras and answer Knoller’s pushy questions was quite a contrast to the inherently defensive way the McCain campaign kept the press at arm’s length.

UPDATE II: Bill Quick insists that I’ve got it “bass-ackwards,” which is the typical response I get from my friends when I try to explain the GOP’s media-relations problem. The undeniable fact of liberal bias has become such a gigantic obstacle in the minds of Republicans that it induces a sort of mental paralysis, so that they are incapable of thinking of reporters as human beings, as individuals.

This was what infuriated me when Melissa Clouthier declared, “A journalist is a wild animal with an appetite for conservative meat and should be interacted with that way — always.”

Really? The entire press corps — including, inter alia, Byron York and Carl Cameron, to say nothing of myself — is to be condemned pre-emptively and categorically as sub-human monsters? Do you suppose that such a contemptuous attitude can be hidden? Or, if you give the “wild animals” of the press credit for having the intuition to detect that you despise their very existence, do you suppose that they will respond to your hostility by giving you better coverage than they otherwise would?

When I objected to Melissa’s all-encompassing condemnation of the newsman’s trade (“Conservatives Against Journalism,” June 26, 2010), this made me a villain. The fact that I’ve been in the news business since 1986 doesn’t qualify me as knowing anything about “media strategy.” My assertion to the contrary — and in contradiction to the Ron Ziegler approach to press relations that is standard thinking among Republicans — was viewed not only as a personal insult toward Melissa, but toward every Republican who shared her opinions.

Look: Reporters are human beings, and human beings respond to incentives. You are never going to encourage reporters to provide fair coverage if, in the carrot-and-stick calculus of incentives, they know they’re going to get the stick every time, no matter what they report. Neither are you going to be able to establish any kind of working relationship with people unless you (a) treat them as individuals, and (b) deal with them on a basis of honesty.

The campaign has a job: To get the candidate elected.

The press has a job: To cover the campaign.

Insofar as liberal bias makes this working relationship difficult for Republicans, it is because some reporters (wrongly and unfairly) view their job as making sure the Republican doesn’t get elected.

OK, so how about this? When the campaign perceives that certain reporters — as individuals — are blatantly engaged in hostile partisanship, they address their complaints in an informal setting toward the offending reporter in an honest and professional manner.

“Hey, c’mon, Mark, what’s with all the gotcha questions, huh? Are you working for CBS News or are you working for the Obama campaign?”

There are some reporters who are beyond shame in their biased attitudes, “having their conscience seared with a hot iron,” as it were. But I believe that some lingering sentiment of fairness — some tiny spark of humanity — probably still exists even in the depraved souls of such creatures as Mark Knoller. The alternative to such a belief would require us to abandon any hope that the pervasive wretchedness of the American press can ever be even mildly reformed, to surrender forever any effort at getting any actual truth from the media.

Call me a fool for believing that an optimistic attitude is better than the helpless passivity that pessimism inspires. As a great man once said, “It is history that teaches us to hope.”

UPDATE III: John Hinderaker takes note of the “hypercritical” nature of coverage of Romney’s foreign trip, and Romney himself has now weighed in on the subject of media bias:

Asked about his missteps in an interview with Fox News’ Carl Cameron before he left Poland on Tuesday, Romney accused reporters of trivializing the substance of his trip and trying to divert attention from President Obama’s stewardship of the economy.
“And I realize that there will be some in the Fourth Estate, or whichever estate, who are far more interested in finding something to write about that is unrelated to the economy, to geopolitics, to the threat of war, to the reality of conflict in Afghanistan today, to a nuclearization of Iran,” Romney said, according to a transcript of the interview that aired on Tuesday morning. “They’ll instead try and find anything else to divert from the fact that these last four years have been tough years for our country.”

This is both true and newsworthy. And an honest, direct, but not overtly hostile confrontation between Romney and those in the press corps who are actively engaged in attempting to sabotage his campaign is long overdue. Reporters are under no obligation to be absolutely neutral, but they are under an obligation to be honest.

Bob Dylan once said that, I think.

UPDATE IV: To attempt to bring this argument to some sort of conclusion — I’ve got some actual reporting to do today, and can’t dwell much longer on this — let me say that what bugs me about the Republican tendency to use media bias as an excuse for failure.

If media bias were really such an insuperable obstacle to GOP success, no Republican would ever be elected anywhere. Obviously, some Republicans are able to run effective campaigns and perhaps even occasionally garner press coverage that isn’t entirely negative.

By using media bias as an all-purpose scapegoat for Republican failure, GOP politicians and campaign operatives prevent anyone (including themselves) from asking whether Republicans themselves may be partly responsible for their hostile relations with the media.

It’s sort of like the embittered guy who, after a divorce, places all the blame for the breakup on his ex-wife. Then he re-marries, and that marriage also ends in divorce, and once again, to hear him tell the story, it’s all his ex-wife’s fault. So he’s 0-for-2, and wants you to believe that this is just bad luck: He coincidentally got stuck with two bad wives.

When you hear a woe-is-me story like that, isn’t your gut-hunch suspicion that maybe this guy has problems of his own? In fact, don’t you think that his insistence on placing the blame on his ex-wives is a symptom of that problem, namely his inability to accept responsibility for his own personal failures and shortcomings?

Therfore, when I see a candidate as wretched as the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, who employs in key positions such faithless backstabbers as Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace, and then I hear Republicans whining about media bias — no, I’m sorry, I ain’t buying that.

Blame the loser who lost the election.

 

Category: Election 2012, Media Bias, Mitt Romney

In Which I Forgive @TheRealRoseanne Her Unrelenting Ignorance

Posted on | July 31, 2012 | 39 Comments

by Smitty

As the son of a son of a sailor, I gave a decade active, and a decade more in the reserves, to my country. Actually more, but I’ll keep it simple. Grew up on the edge of foodstamps; moved all over the West Coast; didn’t really get to know my father until I was 16, and he was on his final shore tour. And I’m fortunate. I at least got to know my dad, and no one in the family has left body parts in some odd corner of the planet.

Also, I don’t do guilt. I rejoice in your exercise of free speech. Quite a blessing, isn’t it?

I’d just like you to know, Roseanne, as you toss off random bits of condescension on Twitter, that far nobler folk than you are out there ensuring that Americans can ply a porcine pie-hole with prosciuotto. In fact, it’s a point of honor to defend the liberty of Americans to maximize their God-given talents, or to be useless sacks of rancid crap.

May you one day mature to the point of grasping this.

Forgiving you in liberty, Roseanne,

Chris

via Twitchy

Category: Culture

Politico Story On Maine Leaves One Wondering: Why Dodge Andrew Ian?

Posted on | July 31, 2012 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Seriously. Anyone who’s paid attention in the blogs or at CPAC the last couple of years has met Andrew Ian Dodge. Which was why I saw a Politico bit on Olympia Snowe with this teaser:

Snowe has been at odds with Summers since he refused to endorse the 33-year Capitol Hill veteran over a prospective tea party challenger when she was still considering running for reelection.

Only. . .the Politico story wasn’t about Dodge, but someone I’d never heard of, Scott D’Amboise. Shock. Dismay. Blog post. Go get ’em, Ian!

Dodge for Senate

Alongside a superior job as a Senator, I’ve got a cup of coffee says he can make Harry Reid wet himself.

via The Corner

Category: Maine

The Times, They Are A-Faking

Posted on | July 31, 2012 | 8 Comments

Imagine you’re a handsome young up-and-coming journalist with a Columbia University neuroscience degree.

Imagine you write for prestigious publications — the Wall Street Journal, Wired, the New Yorker — and land a book deal that seems destined to make you the next Malcolm Gladwell.

Imagine your third book starts with a chapter about Bob Dylan.

Imagine you decide to just make up some quotes from Dylan.

Imagine you get caught.

Imagine you get fired.

Advice to journalists: Don’t make up stuff about Dylan. Make up stuff about Sarah Palin. “Nobody will ever fire you for that,” said Joe Maginniss.

Yeah, I just made up that quote. Sue me.

Category: Journalism

LIVE AT FIVE: 07.31.12

Posted on | July 31, 2012 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Inside Aleppo: Rebels Kill Loyalist Armor…

An Aleppo family flees past a rebel soldier in a doorway

…as civilians flee Loyalist artillery bombardment

Holmes Charged With 24 Counts Of Murder
Could be a year before Aurora shooting perp starts trial; courtroom full of victims and families


Ted Cruz Poised For Texas Triumph
Stench of defeat lies heavy on Dewhurst camp



POLITICS
Five ATF Officials Singled Out In House Report On “Fast & Furious”

The Attorney General

Two more reports to follow, outlining failures at DOJ

Democrats To Back Gay Marriage In Platform For First Time

McCain Defends Palin After Cheney Criticism


Senate GOP Uses Filibuster To Block Judge Appointment

Army Sergeant Acquitted Of Negligent Homicide In Soldier’s Suicide

Battle Over Sequestration Heads To Campaign Trail

Mitt Romney’s “Jewish Culture” Remarks Offend Palestinians
Grauniad fails to note that nobody in GOP cares



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Prices Drop As Natural Gas Prices Continue Climb; NYMEX $89.92, Brent $106.20
Small Farmers Struggle As Drought Kills Vegetables
Euro Stocks Fall, Euro Pares Gains As Earnings Disappoint
Corn Prices Hit Record As Crops Shrivel
Chrysler Earns $436 Million In Second Quarter
Fed Expected To Take Small Easing Step
Post Office Nears Default On $5 Billion Pension Payment To Treasury
Jury Selected In Apple V. Samsung Patent Case
Microsoft Confirms Surface Tablet To Ship 10/26
Taiwan University Sues Apple Over Siri Patents
Bing Improves Facebook Integration With Friend Tagging
HTC Abandons ROK To Samsung, LG



SPORTS
Dustin Pedroia Pulls Red Sox Together
Pulling together (Video)
Buchholz goes eight, Pedroia jacks two-run homer to break tie as Tigers lose third straight game 7-3

Cubs Trade Three For Prospects

Mets Rally Last, Make Hairston’s Homers Hold Up In 8-7 Win Over Giants

Blue Jays Trade Snider, Thames For Bullpen Help

Astros Bullpen Melts Down In 8-7 Loss To Brewers

A’s Edge Rays In 15-Inning Marathon

…And Then Stuff Happened At The Olympics



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Emma Stone To Star In New Cameron Crowe Movie

Emma Stone

Sony bought the script for the as-yet untitled movie

Bristol Palin Returning To “Dancing With The Stars”

Kristen Stewart Moves Out Of House She Shared With Rob Pattinson

Adrienne Maloof From “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” To Divorce

Bret Michaels Calls Off Engagement

Elizabeth Berkley Welcomes Son Sky Cole

$400K Hamps Heaven For Ivy

Nick Jonas, Pharrell Williams In Talks To Join “American Idol”

Delusional Fan Threatens Sheryl Crow

Olivia Munn Battles Anxiety As Acting Career Takes Off



FOREIGNERS
PRC Rejects US Report On Religious Freedom
India’s Power Grid Fails For Second Day
Typhoon Dumps Torrents Of Rain On Philippines; 7 Dead, 20K Displaced
UN Visits North Korea After Heavy Rains, Flooding Devastate Country
Romney Hails US-Polish Ties In Visit To Warsaw
Aussie Police Find Massive Haul Of Drugs In Pots
Turkish FM Says Intervention In Syria Possible
US Faces Dilemma In South China Sea Response
Peru Overtakes Colombia As Top Cocaine Producer
More Than 200 Weapons Handed Over In Tajikistan Amnesty Deal



BLOGS & STUFF
Power Line: The Most Striking Thing About Mitt Romney’s Trip…
Brietbart: How AP & NPR Lied About Romney’s “Jewish Donor” Speech, Using Palestinian Propaganda
Legal Insurrection: If Mitt Had Talked About Palestinians They Way Obama Spoke About Pennsylvanians
Right Angles: Newsweak’s Cover For Next Week?
Ed Morrissey: Newsweek Claims That Heartless Vampire Capitalist Is Now A Wimp?
Rush Limbaugh: Pathetic Liberals At Newsweek Recycle Wimp Cover, And Drag Me Into It This Time
Lonely Conservative: Is Wall Street Rallying Because It Expects A Romney Win?
Jawa Report: IOC Will Allow Saudi To Compete In Hijab
American Thinker: New Book Alleges Obama Delayed OBL Strike Three Times On Valerie Jarrett’s Advice
Blackfive: Killing Bin Laden – The 4th Time’s A Charm?
Kevin Williamson: DEA Gone Wild
Protein Wisdom: What Life Is Like In Post-Constitutional America, #14
Weasel Zippers: DNC Panders To Far-Left Base, Makes Gay Marriage Official Plank Of Party Platform
GayPatriot: Another Symbolic Gesture To Scare Up Gay Votes And Cash
Clayton Cramer: New Black Panthers In The News Again
Moe Lane: You Know, Anyone Harry Reid Hates This Badly (And PROFANELY)…
Fire Andrea Mitchell: ABC’s Latest Faux Conspiracy
Beltway Confidential: Obama Defends His Negative Campaigning
Newsbusters: Mitch McConnell Says The NYT Monopoly Is Over

Category: Live at Five

SHOCKING: Justice Department Accused of Failing to Pursue Sex Traffickers

Posted on | July 31, 2012 | 8 Comments

An article in the August issue of Townhall magazine describes disturbing failures by the Department of Justice in investigations of human traffickers, including cases involving the sex slavery of minors. FBI informant Brandon Darby said he and human trafficking expert Dottie Laster “presented dozens of cases to the FBI,” but that the agency failed to investigate the cases.

“Many of the cases involved minors who were being forced to have sex with adults for monetary reasons under the threat of violence from human traffickers,” Darby writes in the article entitled, “FBI Informants Speak Out: Eric Holder’s DOJ Is Ignoring Child Sex-Trafficking Victims.”

“We felt assured by our research that it was a matter of law and a matter of internal policy that the FBI had to investigate and act on cases where minors were identified as being involved,” Darby writes. “But the majority of the cases . . . never turned into investigations for the FBI –even the ones involving children that the FBI was mandated to act on.”

Darby writes that an FBI Special Agent with whom he and Laster worked to initiate investigations of such cases was subsequently transferred.

Category: Corruption, Crime

If Obama’s Lost the Secular Humanists …

Posted on | July 30, 2012 | 13 Comments

. . . this could be the last straw:

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is praying for drought relief in the midwest farmlands, but what he’s getting in return is criticism from environmentalists for not linking the dryness to climate change and from atheists for actually praying.
“I get on my knees everyday and I’m saying an extra prayer right now,” Vilsack said. “If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it.”
Vilsack’s comments were met with condemnation from Tom Flynn, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, who said the cabinet official should not be asking for divine intervention.
“It sends the wrong message to distraught farmers when the Agriculture secretary suggests that the best response is to pray,” Flynn said.
“For a cabinet official to recommend prayer as a solution or call attention to his own devotions may violate the Constitution’s prohibition against establishment of religion. Most important, though, is that prayer doesn’t work. But if you want to test the power of prayer yourself, consider this. Apparently Secretary Vilsack’s been praying for rain every day; how’s that working out?”

On the other hand, by alienating the Democrat Party’s crucial secular humanist constituency, Secretary Vilsack may have answered our prayers: “Please, dear God, not another four years of Obama!”

Category: Barack Obama, Religion
« 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