The Other McCain

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

Axelrod Interviewed By Strolling Drone

Posted on | April 30, 2012 | 16 Comments

by Sissypuss the Blog Kitty

[Strolling Drone correspondent Sissypuss interviewed former Obama Administration political guru David Axelrod for its June 01, 2013 edition. This is a wide-ranging retrospective look at the Meltdown of 2012, the fallout from that, and what he’s been doing since he gave up politics in June 2012 for the other love of his life, rock’n’roll, and his band “Confiscated Guns & Subsidized Roses”]

Sissypuss:David, my man: how the heck are ya? You look like you have actually slept in the last few weeks.

Axelrod: Yeah, I’m glad I bailed when I did. Valerie Jarrett is still doing the Syd Barrettthing, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

S: Well, she wasout there, even before the Meltdown. But that kind of thing doesn’t just happen. What was your first sign that there was a problem?

A: I’d have to point to Sandra Fluke. We had laid set up the play as early as the January GOP debate. But when we handed the ball to Sandra Fluke, it all went sideways. We lost the tempo.S: Limbaugh. . .
All he had to do was keep the stonewalling going, and ride out the term. Easy as tears out of Boehner. A: Yeah, I still haven’t figured out whether Rush deliberately threw out some bait for us, of if he actually screwed up by calling Fluke the word that rhymes with mutt, and then just recovered masterfully. Either way, he’s a genius. [Deep breath] Wow, I can say that now.

Read more

Category: Barack Obama, Democrats, Farce

Five Academy Award-Winning Beauties Who Are Moms (Unlike Ashley Judd)

Posted on | April 29, 2012 | 46 Comments

When people think of factors involved in Hollywood success, motherhood probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.

Despite what the embittered rantings of childless pro-abortion fanatic Ashley Judd might lead you to believe, however, many of the world’s most famous actresses have shown that women can have glamour, a successful movie career, critical acclaim and be a mom, too.

5. MARION COTILLARD — The 36-year-old French actress won the Oscar in 2007 for her portrayal of singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. She and her boyfriend, actor/director Guillaume Canet, last year had a son named Marcel.

4. KATE WINSLET — After being nominated three previous times — for Titanic (1997), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Little Children (2006) — Winslet finally claimed her Best Actress award for The Reader in 2007. She had daughter Mia in 2000, with her first husband, director Jim Threapleton. After her divorce from Threapleton, she married director Sam Mendes, with whom she had son Joe in 2003.

3. JULIA ROBERTS — She was first nominated for her role in 1990’s Pretty Woman, but had to wait another decade to win Best Actress honors as Erin Brockovich in 2000. She and her husband, cameraman Daniel Moder, have three children, twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, born in 2004, and son Henry born in 2007.

2. REESE WITHERSPOON — Having gained widespread critical acclaim in Election (1999), Witherspoon won the Oscar for her feisty role as June Carter Cash in the 2005 biopic Walk The Line. She had two children — Ava, born in 1999, and Deacon, born in 2003 — with her first husband, actor Ryan Phillippe. Now 36, Witherspoon recently announced that she is expecting another child with her second husband, agent Jim Toth. And now, the No. 1 Academy Award-Winning Beauty Who Is a Mom (Unlike Ashley Judd . . . Read more

Category: Abortion, Celebrities, Contraceptive Culture, Feminism, Rule 5

Everybody Keeps Getting a Busy Signal at the Blogger Burnout Hotline Nowadays

Posted on | April 29, 2012 | 31 Comments

Professor William Jacobson laments Don Surber’s recent decision to quit blogging. It is probably just a coincidence that Don, one of the most valuable members of the conservative blogosphere since 2005, was never invited to speak at BlogCon. Instapundit grimly holds on.

UPDATE: Pat Austin is also grimly hanging on in Shreveport. She offers to chat over beer, and I’d love to take her up on the offer, as long as I don’t have to drive through Livonia.

UPDATE II (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers! Let us link each other, to beat back burnout banshee!

Category: Don Surber, Instapundit, Legal Insurrection

Ashley Judd Makes Cruel and Tasteless Jokes About Abortion in Political Video

Posted on | April 29, 2012 | 116 Comments

Barren middle-aged actress Ashley Judd in scene from
‘Rick Santorum Aborts Presidential Campaign’ video

When last we heard from bitter, childless, menopausal Ashley Judd, the over-the-hill ex-starlet gave us a feminist lecture about how she was being victimized by the oppressive gossip-blog patriarchy.

Last week, however, Judd joined forces with three more attractive actresses — fellow Hollywood liberals Michelle Trachtenberg, Katy Mixon and Eliza Coupe — in a video mocking Rick Santorum’s decision to end his presidential campaign by comparing it to an abortion:

“Oh, Mr. Santorum, take a seat. I understand you’d like to terminate your candidacy. . . . If you weren’t mature enough to carry your candidacy to term, you shouldn’t have engaged in the risky behavior that began it.”

Jennifer Hartline at Catholic Online is outraged:

The stars of the “choice” universe have gone way beyond their worn-out euphemisms and are now embracing shameless mockery. Ashley Judd and crew have made a video that mocks the act of killing babies in the womb. They mock the violence of stopping the heartbeat of a child. What a hilarious analogy they’ve drawn by comparing an abortion to Rick Santorum’s suspended Presidential campaign, if you’re someone who finds dead babies and wounded mothers hilarious. Apparently they do. . . .
So this is what we’ve come to? This is the present and future of “feminism” in America? Women openly mocking the deaths of their own children; deaths fought long and hard for; deaths campaigned and paid for; deaths celebrated as “freedom” and “rights” for women? I’d say that’s officially the bottom, folks. There’s nowhere lower to sink. That’s as pathetic and wicked as it gets.

It is customary, on certain feminist blogs, to include “trigger warnings” before discussion of topics such as sexual assault that may prompt emotional reactions caused by psychologically traumatic memories. Therefore, in consideration of the millions of women suffering from Post-Abortion Syndrome, I offer a “trigger warning” Read more

Category: Abortion, Celebrities, Election 2012, Feminism, Hollywood, Rick Santorum, Video

Boehner: Obama ‘Picking a Fight Where One Doesn’t Exist’ on Student Loans

Posted on | April 29, 2012 | 10 Comments

“No one wants student loan interest rates to go up,” House Speaker John Boehner told Candy Crowley in an interview aired today on CNN’s State of the Union. “For the president to politicize this for his own re-election is picking a fight where one doesn’t exist.”

Boehner pointed out that President Obama signed “the payroll tax cut, that included $4 billion worth of reductions in this same program,” and that the administration’s own budget proposal calls for reductions in the student-loan program. Here’s video:

Category: Barack Obama, CNN, Education, Election 2012, John Boehner

Administration’s Counter-Terrorism Chief Does Three Network Sunday Shows

Posted on | April 29, 2012 | 10 Comments

Coming up on the first anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, it will be victory-lap time on Fox News Sunday, CNN’s State of the Union and ABC’s This Week, with counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan as the guest. Andrew Malcolm writes:

You remember Brennan as the one rushed out to the White House briefing room the next day to provide the hungry media with their cherished tick-tock account of the commandos’ penetration into Pakistan and the slaying of the instigator of 9/11.
Unfortunately, so eager was the administration to tell its story quickly, that Brennan’s premature enunciation of the event contained numerous details later adjusted or contradicted, detracting from the anticipated accolades.
By now, however, most of the raid confusion is cleared. And everyone knows that the successful killing was mainly the result of Obama’s brave decision, although the SEALs, the stealth helicopter pilots and the Air Force electronic cloaking crews probably helped a little.
Oh, look, it’s an election year!

Sarcastic much? Allahpundit says you should skip the three-network BrennanFest in favor of Bob Schieffer’s lineup on Face the Nation:

CBS looks like the better bet for OBL coverage, though. They’ve got David Ignatius, whose new column argues that the Islamist trend in the Arab Spring has given Bin Laden the last laugh, and Peter Bergen, who interviewed OBL four years before 9/11 and has a new book on the manhunt for him out on Tuesday.

From that David Ignatius column:

Egypt is a case in point: This has been a year of mostly nonviolent democratic revolution. But it has brought to power some Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood groups that share common theological roots with bin Laden. And the al-Qaeda goal of driving the “apostate,” pro-American President Hosni Mubarak from power has been achieved. . . .
What we’re seeing now in Egypt is something that might be called electoral bin Ladenism. Take the group Gamaa Islamiya, which under its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, made the first unsuccessful attempt to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993. Today, the organization has formed a Salafist political party with the benign name Building and Development Party. This organization, which like al-Qaeda traces its roots to the Islamist theorist Sayyid Qutb, has 13 seats in the new Egyptian parliament.

You might also want to check William Jacobson’s argument: “Obama got Osama, but lost the Middle East.”

While you browse your local TV schedule for Sunday show times, a couple more points: CNN’s also has House Speaker John Boehner, while NBC’s Meet the Press goes straight to the presidential campaign, with Ed Gillespie for the Republicans and Robert Gibbs for the Democrats — plus Hilary Rosen and Rachel Maddow!

If any of these people make actual news, I’ll let you know.

Category: ABC, CBS, CNN, Election 2012, Fox News, John Boehner, NBC, Terrorism

My Son’s Not Brain Dead; That’s His Obama Impression

Posted on | April 29, 2012 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Via Daily Pundit and All American Blogger comes a creepy tale from Old Blighted of some ‘doctors’ who, for whatever reason, didn’t seem interested in doing their job:

The Mail reports that Stephen Thorpe, then 17, was placed in a medically-induced coma following a multi-car pileup that had already taken the life of his friend Matthew, who was driving the vehicle.
Although a team of four physicians insisted that his son was “brain-dead” following the wreck, Thorpe’s father enlisted the help of a general practitioner and a neurologist, who demonstrated that his son still had brain wave activity. The doctors agreed to bring him out of the coma, and five weeks later Thorpe left the hospital, having almost completely recovered.

This will be our ObamaCare future, when those without the resources find legitimate care will become pray for lazy doctors. Brave, brave new ObamaCare world.

Update: animals are getting into the act. Here, via American Power, a black bear does an impression of Obama’s popularity:

Update II: linked at The Daley Gator.

Category: Health Care

Ruh-Roh: Watchdog Warns of ‘Red Flags’ in Gingrich Campaign’s Financial Reports

Posted on | April 28, 2012 | 30 Comments

Newt Gingrich campaigns in Fort Myers, Fla., Jan. 30, 2012

Before we get to the news, let me make a disclaimer: Every time I criticize Newt Gingrich’s disastrous presidential campaign, some of Newt’s supporters get angry at me and seem to miss the point of my criticism. From my perspective, the person Gingrich’s admirers should be most angry at is Newt himself, because if you thought he was the best candidate, the mismanagement of his campaign is a grievous fault.

In my mind, however, the two phenomena are inseparable: Good candidates do not run bad campaigns. Trying to explain this point of view — that of someone who is a longtime student of campaign tactics and strategy — is difficult, because most people don’t look at the political process the way I do. Ali Akbar keeps bugging me about an idea for a book I once suggested, to be called Operatives, about the people behind the scenes of campaigns. Spend enough time with operatives, the hired guns whose job is win elections, and it changes the way you see politics.

All of that is sort of an apology in advance to Gingrich supporters for returning to a theme I’ve been pounding since Feb. 21 when, reacting to the release of Newt’s FEC report for January, I declared that his campaign’s “burn rate” was unsustainable. (For that matter, Mitt Romney’s burn rate in January was also unsustainable, but Romney began the year with cash reserves Newt didn’t have, and Mitt had much greater fundraising potential.) Gingrich’s failure to win in the weeks after South Carolina, especially his fourth-place finishes in Minnesota (Feb. 7) and Maine (Feb. 11), suggested a campaign that was much weaker than anyone might have gathered from watching TV coverage.

Then there were the reports that Newt spent a lot of time leading up to the Feb. 4 Nevada caucuses “dialing for dollars,” trying to raise money. Those reports didn’t make headlines; they were buried deep in longer articles (e.g. a Feb. 2 Washington Post story) but I noticed them and was puzzled. Given that Gingrich had out-raised Rick Santorum more than 10-to-1 in the third quarter of 2011 (Newt $9.8 million, Santorum $924,000), and Gingrich had raised $5.6 million to Santorum’s $4.5 million in January, this seemed bizarre. Why this evidence of financial desperation at Team Newt, while the Santorum campaign — which had raised far less money up to that point — showed no sign of a cash crunch?

Subsequent reports have clarified the picture: Gingrich’s contributions, which had surged before and immediately after his Jan. 21 win in the South Carolina primary, declined noticeably after he stumbled in the Jan. 23 debate in Tampa and the Jan. 26 debate in Jacksonville, then fell dramatically after he lost the Jan. 31 Florida primary by 14 points. We didn’t know that until after the February FEC reports were published March 20, but there was a telltale clue in the silence from Team Newt in early March. The Santorum campaign announced on Feb. 29 that they’d raised $9 million in February, and a few days later, Romney’s campaign said Mitt had raised $11 million in Febuary, but you could hear the crickets chirping at Gingrich HQ, as far as finances were concerned. So on Tuesday, March 13, I suggested two important questions:

Question 1: How much did Newt raise in February? Question 2: What was his campaign’s cash-on-hand and total debt as of March 1?

Something seemed very suspicious about the situation, and those who have closely examined the Gingrich campaign’s more recent FEC reports are now asking some troubling questions:

As the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich persevered despite no realistic prospect of victory, the former House speaker spent lavishly on the trappings of a more-successful, high-profile campaign, spending more on travel and security in March than Mitt Romney did, records show. . . .
Watchdogs said the fact that the numbers are so high raises questions about whether Mr. Gingrich might be profiting from the funds.
“Hopefully, the Federal Election Commission will do its job and, to the extent red flags are raised by these extraordinarily high travel fees, investigate,” said Paul S. Ryan, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center.
Campaigns are required to disclose the ultimate destination of campaign funds, not merely note they are “reimbursements” for unspecified expenses — a requirement that specialists say places the Gingrich campaign’s accounting at odds with federal law.
“It’s clearly illegal to convert funds to personal use, and the disclosure requirements are intended to enable enforcement … but we don’t have that disclosure,” Mr. Ryan said, noting that it would take an audit to determine whether Mr. Gingrich was profiting from the $271,000 he was paid. . . .
[Gingrich campaign spokesman R.C.] Hammond said the $1.1 million debt to Moby Dick Airways, reported as “incurred” during March, actually covered a longer time, despite the fact that the campaign has reported a running and steadily increasing tab with the airline each month.
If true, that practice has mischaracterized the campaign’s standing for months, making Mr. Gingrich seem more viable than he was early in the campaign and allowing the campaign to suddenly plunge deeply into debt later.
Mr. Ryan said such back-loading also violates FEC rules, which require goods and services to be recorded as debts or expenditures during the month the campaign benefited from them — “not when a bill is received.”

Read the whole story by Luke Rosiak at The Washington Times.

While I had suspected the Gingrich campaign of mismanagement, it hadn’t occurred to me that they might actually be violating federal law, and this suggestion that Newt himself was skimming the till — well, let’s hope that’s not true. Otherwise, the “Road to the White House” could become the “Road to Federal Prison.”

(Hat-tip: Lisa Graas on Twitter.)

Category: Election, Newt Gingrich
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