The Other McCain

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

California Democrat Wants Navy to Name Ship for Gay-Rights Martyr Harvey Milk

Posted on | April 25, 2012 | 39 Comments

Navy Times via the Quinton Report:

An upcoming addition to the Navy’s fleet may be the USS Harvey Milk if Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., and other San Diego gay rights leaders have their way about it.
The GLBT Historic Task Force of San Diego County and Filner sent letters to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last week asking for Harvey Milk to be considered as a name for a submarine, carrier or other appropriate vessel, according to a PR Newswire press release.
Milk, a late civil rights icon, was a Navy veteran who served aboard the submarine rescue ship Kittiwake as a diving officer during the Korean War.

“Civil rights icon”? Like he was at Selma or something? Never mind.

Jeff Quinton points out that at least Milk was a veteran, unlike some other proposed namesakes for Navy ships: USS Gabby Giffords?

Category: Gays, Military, Quinton Report

Ironic Payback for Philly Democrat

Posted on | April 25, 2012 | 15 Comments

Pennsylvania State Rep. Babette Josephs

Does the name Babette Josephs ring a bell? You may remember last month Josephs, a Democratic Pennsylvania state legislator from Philadelphia, harshly criticized Republicans, especially GOP women who supported a bill to require ultrasounds before abortions:

Josephs’ remarks came at a political rally sponsored by the Lancaster County Democratic Committee, in which she accused Republicans in control of the state Senate and state House of turning Pennsylvania into a “laboratory for the right-wing. They’re trying all these experiments on us.”
Then, she took specific aim at women lawmakers who co-sponsored the ultrasound bill, asking rhetorically, “I do not understand how a woman in this Legislature can say to herself: ‘I’m not capable of making my own health decisions… but I can get elected and make them for somebody else.’
“What is wrong with these women? What are they thinking about?” Josephs continued. “Are they women? Or are they men with breasts.”

That earned Josephs a lot hostile attention from conservatives: Steven Ertelt at Life News, Tina Korbe at Hot Air, Sister Toldjah, Weasel Zippers, Helen Whalen Cohen at Townhall and Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner. As a 27-year incumbent from a solidly Democratic district, Josephs might have thought she was invincible, and certainly she had no need to worry about “right-wing” Republicans.

Josephs failed to realize that she was vulnerable on her left flank. In yesterday’s Democratic primary, she lost to a challenger, her own former campaign treasurer, Brian Sims. So the Democrat who called pro-life GOP women “men with breasts” was defeated by a man who becomes — can you guess? — “the Commonwealth’s first openly-gay legislator.”

Category: Abortion, Democrats, Election, Feminism, Gays, Pennsylvania

Very Well Put

Posted on | April 25, 2012 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

The entire “progressive” edifice is a Potemkin village, a Hollywood set, that looks formidable from the exterior. But in reality, there’s no there there, except the liberal fascists’ standard naked will to power by any means necessary. Because their tactics are always the same (smear, bully, intimidate, whine, and complain), they’re something of a humorless bore, really, although a dangerous humorless bore — a fanatic constantly in search of force majeure.

Reached for quote by Sissypuss the Blog Kitty, Debby Wasserman-Schultz, asked about the Potemkin village metaphor, explained: “Shut up.”
I don’t see how the Progressive Titanic remains afloat until November, at this progressive flooding rate.

via Insty

Update: linked by The Lonely Conservative

Category: Progressivism

BREAKING: Newt Gingrich Will End Pathetic Shuffling Zombie Campaign

Posted on | April 25, 2012 | 30 Comments

Seems like just the other day “sources close to the campaign” were saying Newt would go all the way to Tampa, but now — probably just about the time their paychecks started bouncing — “two sources close to Gingrich tell CNN” otherwise.

UPDATE: While everybody’s busy scripting their Downfall video parodies, here are more details from inside the bunker:

Newt Gingrich plans to formally leave the Republican presidential race next Tuesday, senior campaign aides told Fox News, after struggling for months to turn around his sagging bid for the White House. . . .
Gingrich’s exit is a stark turnaround from his public posture just a few months back, when in December he confidently declared following his rise in national polls that [he was] “going to be the nominee.”

Oct. 18: “Second look at Gingrich?” Yeah, that was brilliant. Also, “campaign insiders” talking about a “road forward” with a campaign that was more than $4 million in debt? Genuises!

UPDATE II: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

Last night provided a moment to Newt Gingrich that Rick Santorum managed to avoid. Santorum withdrew before a potentially embarrassing loss in Pennsylvania, keeping his credibility intact after a surprisingly successful run . . . Gingrich couldn’t take the hint and insisted that the race would change now that he had Romney all to himself.

Am I the only one who remembers the Feb. 4 Vegas press conference?

Gingrich then explained that his senior staff had “frankly spent the last four days laying out a campaign for the next four months” — the strategy, Gingrich said, would net him an equal amount of delegates as Mitt Romney by the April 3 Texas primary.

Unfortunately, the overpaid idiots on Gingrich’s “senior staff” had failed to check the date: Because of court hassles over a redistricting fight, everybody in Texas already knew their primary would be postponed. Nevertheless, according to his own campaign’s delegate calculus — which they rolled out with a flourish after Gingrich’s debacle in the Nevada caucuses — Newt’s “path to the nomination” became null and void on Super Tuesday, March 6, when he lost Tennessee and Oklahoma.

After Gingrich lost Alabama and Mississippi on March 13, anybody with an IQ above room temperature could see it was over. Yet even on the eve of the March 24 Louisiana primary, Gingrich and his campaign entourage were still rolling around in a 10-car motorcade.

What part of “stayed too long at the dance” was not already obvious? And when Newt himself admitted April 8 that his campaign was in debt to the tune of $4 million . . . Hell, who could take seriously any talk of a “road forward” from there?

UPDATE III: Since we’re strolling down Memory Lane here, let’s remember that Gingrich’s campaign imploded on the launch pad back in June, after it was discovered that the candidate and his third wife were cruising the Aegean.

That luxury vacation was one Newt and Calista “insisted upon taking against the advice of his top political staff,” a move that followed “one of the most diastrous campaign launches in recent memory,” as the Washington Post put it. That came after the horrible embarrassment over Gingrich’s line of credit at Tiffany:

Gingrich misunderstood the financial disclosure rules for presidential candidates and mistakenly believed it would never have to become public, according to three current and former campaign advisers.

How the hell can a campaign expect hard-working people to donate $25 or $50 or to do volunteer work when the candidate is living large like that? And when it was subsequently revealed that Gingrich had collected big money from Freddie Mac — one of the major villains in the mortgage bubble — you might have thought people would have wised up to the bogusness of Newt’s rhetoric. Yet he managed to keep the hustle going all the way to April, because some folks refused to admit that they’d been scammed.

RECENTLY:

Category: Election 2012, Newt Gingrich

NYC Investigators Raid Fox News ‘Mole’

Posted on | April 25, 2012 | 14 Comments

For some reason, I never got around to blogging about Joe Muto, who was earning $60,000 a year as an associate producer for “The O’Reilly Factor” when he agreed — for the reported sum of $5,000 — to become a “mole” inside Fox News for Nick Denton’s Gawker blog. Among other things, Muto described the network’s Fox Nation blog as “an unholy mashup of the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post and a Klan meeting.”

It took every bit of 24 hours from the time of his first Gawker “mole” post for Fox executives to discover Muto’s identity and fire him. And now Muto may be facing criminal charges:

A “polite” crew from the District Attorney’s office served Fox Mole Joe Muto with a search warrant at 6:30 this morning, Mr. Muto said on Twitter.
Officers took his iPhone, laptop and old notebooks, he wrote, adding that, according to the warrant, he is being investigated for charges including grand larceny.

Muto used the occasion to to sling more snark at Fox, which prompted some helpful advice from FishbowlNY’s Chris O’Shea:

Uh, maybe — and we could be wrong here — the time to shut-up is after police raid your apartment.

No point trying to teach a punk like Joe Muto. In my experience, gossipy backstabbing malcontents who think they’re smarter than everyone else aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are, because no one could possibly be as smart as they think they are.

 

Category: Crime, Fox News, New York

International Intrigue Surrounds Harvard University Graduate Student Bo Guagua

Posted on | April 25, 2012 | 1 Comment

Livin’ La Vida Guagua: Son of ChiCom official partied down in England

In February, 41-year-old British businessman Neil Heywood died in China. Gu Kailai, wife of provincial Communist Party official Bo Xilai, reportedly confessed to Heywood’s murder:

According to Mr Wang, Mr Heywood, a fixer with decades of experience in China and a family friend of Mr Bo and his wife, was held down in a hotel room in Chongqing and forced to drink cyanide. Subsequently, Mrs Gu allegedly confessed to the crime. “Gu said ‘I did it’ three times to Wang,” a diplomatic source with knowledge of Wang’s account said. “It was a gruesome scene, Heywood spat the cyanide out and they had to give him more.”
In recent weeks, a series of allegations about the alleged crime have begun circulating freely, an odd phenomenon in a country as closed and censored as China, prompting speculation that the Communist Party was trying to smear Mr Bo and his wife ahead of the announcement of the findings of an investigation.
Mr Heywood, Mrs Gu and her son, Bo Guagua, are said to have had a close relationship until a quarrel over an “economic” matter, according to the Chinese government. At the time of his death, Mr Heywood was thought to be raising money for an £80 million shopping centre dedicated to British luxury goods.

Following this so far? OK, so the son of the Gu Kailai and Bo Xilai is a graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Bo Guagua has been the subject of much gossip. The New York Times reported last week:

After a pampered childhood in the walled compounds of the Chinese capital, he was sent off for schooling in England, where he developed a reputation as an academically indifferent bon vivant with a weakness for European sports cars, first-class air travel, equestrian sports and the tango. . . .
“If you’re discreet, they look the other way,” the former government employee said. “But Guagua’s behavior was striking by the standards; urinating against a fence at Oxford, kissing foreign girls — it all goes down bad in China.” . . .
American officials say he arrived in a red Ferrari last year to pick up the American ambassador to China’s daughter for a date. Classmates at Harvard say they have seen him driving around in a Porsche.

Hmmm. OK, so now the alleged ChiCom party boy has seen fit to issue a statement to the Harvard Crimson:

Recently, there has been increasing attention from the press on my private life. As a result of these speculations, I feel responsible to the public to provide an account of the facts. I am deeply concerned about the events surrounding my family, but I have no comments to make regarding the ongoing investigation. . . .
My tuition and living expenses at Harrow School, University of Oxford and Harvard University were funded exclusively by two sources — scholarships earned independently, and my mother’s generosity from the savings she earned from her years as a successful lawyer and writer. . . .
During my time at Oxford, it is true that I participated in ‘Bops,’ a type of common Oxford social event, many of which are themed. These events are a regular feature of social life at Oxford and most students take part in these college-wide activities. . . .
I have never driven a Ferrari. I have also not been to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing since 1998 (when I obtained a previous U.S. Visa), nor have I ever been to the U.S. Ambassador’s Residence in China.

What’s the truth here? Dunno.

Just saw the story via Memeorandum and found it intriguing. Wish I could find the “higher education bubble” angle, or maybe land a screenplay deal for what would certainly make a blockbuster movie.

 

Category: China, Corruption, Education, Great Britain, Scandal

When Brevity Breeds Ambiguity

Posted on | April 25, 2012 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

It’s 0220. Mrs. Other Smitty just returned from a trip, and we’re trying to get settled. Here is a message on Twitter from somebody whose initials are DM:

Now, I’ve met the lady in question, and so I’m relatively less creeped out by DM, than, say, DWS.

Let me be clear:

  • RSM and I are not swapping love notes.
  • The non-swappable, non-existent love notes will not be delivered to Debbie M.
  • Initials and acronyms can and will be used to comic effect.

That is all.

Category: Blogging, humor

Obama’s Problem? ‘Being So Bipartisan’!

Posted on | April 25, 2012 | 10 Comments

Last night, as for nearly every night in recent months, I was struggling to find an answer to the question that has been haunting so many Americans: Where did President Obama go wrong?

I mean, Peggy Joseph said he was going to make her mortage payments and everything, and David Brooks promised — based on a careful examination of Obama’s pants creases — that this man had the perfect temperament for the job. Some had said he ranked up there with the greatest of all time. And yet, strangely enough, so many of my fellow Americans seem to have been disappointed in his presidency.

This has perplexed me for weeks on end, until last night, when I saw this quote at The Lonely Conservative: 

“[P]art of the problem with the president was by being so bipartisan and trying to not, you know, try to be one country about everything, he let his opponents set him up.”

Yes! That’s it exactly! And if there is anyone in America who knows all about being bipartisan, it’s Van Jones:

Category: Barack Obama, The Lonely Conservative
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