The Other McCain

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

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

Obama Ad: If Romney’s Extremities Get Any More Extremely Extreme, His Limbs Gonna Fly Off And Hit Somebody

Posted on | April 28, 2012 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

This Obama campaign ad is kind of a hoot:

I suppose the point here is to terrify the ‘hen-house’ with the notion that Mitt is some big, bad wolf. Thoughts:

  • Are women, in general, the kind of dupes implied by this ad, who can easily be driven about the chicken coop with plays to fear? Not the likes of the ladies who link this blog, that’s for sure.
  • How is, exactly, anything on the social conservative agenda even a little bit extreme, in relation to Shari’a Law?
  • This ad risks making Romney more appealing to SoCons than it does stir up trepidation among Independents.
  • What kind of loser is #OccupyResoluteDesk that, instead of making a positive case for the swell job he’s done the last 3 years, he has to focus on demonizing the opposition? I’m guessing the three dimensional sort:He's just a loser no matter how you look at him.

via Breitbart

Update: linked at The Lonely Conservative who has an extremely long post. Well, actually average-sized post on extremism.

Update II: Heh: “Da Preezy of the United Steezy“

Category: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney

Media Matters: Tax-Exempt Group’s Perverse Obsession With Fox News

Posted on | April 28, 2012 | 8 Comments

David Brock, founder of Media Matters for America, promotes his
anti-Fox News book in March C-SPAN “Book TV” appearance

What is the annual budget of Media Matters for America? Why is MMFA considered a tax-exempt charitable organization?

What “charitable” purpose is served by paying people to attack Fox News all day long, every day, 365 days a year? MMFA’s Web site has an entire category devoted to Fox News, and on a single day this week — Thursday, April 26 — they posted no fewer than 11 such items:

How can MMFA possibly defend its status as a 501(c)3 charity, when so much of its effort is devoted to criticizing a single entity? As I have mentioned before, Fox News accounts for barely 1/8th of the total national TV news audience. Ratings for March 30-April 4:

NBC Nightly News ………………. 7.9 million
ABC World News ………………… 6.8 million
CBS Evening News ………………. 5.8 million

Total “Big Three” evening news audience …. 20.5 million

Fox News Channel The O’Reilly Factor ……… 3.3 million

O’Reilly is the top-rated show on Fox, so his numbers represent the maximum estimate of Fox’s average audience. Add in MSNBC (about 1.1 million viewers for their highest-rated program, The Rachel Maddow Show) and CNN (about 600,000 for their highest-rated program, Anderson Cooper 360), and you get a combined national TV news audience (NBC, ABC, CBS, FNC, MSNBC, CNN) of 25.5 million, of which the Fox News Channel’s share is a mere 12.9 percent.

Why, then, is this multimillion-dollar “charity,” Media Matters, devoting such enormous attention to this one cable TV channel?

Providing employment to demented left-wing moonbats whose only “journalism” skill is their venomous hatred of Republicans?

Well, yeah, I guess that could be considered a charitable endeavor, but how does MSNBC manage to do it on a for-profit basis?

 


Category: Fox News, Media Bias

FMJRA 2.0: You’ve Been Around

Posted on | April 28, 2012 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Alabama Man Becomes Third Victim of ‘Justice for Trayvon’ Violence Trend UPDATE: Not a Hate Crime, Cops Say

‘Some Right-Wing Gloating About It’

FMJRA 2.0: Picking Up The Signal

Little Green Sheep: A Telling Update

Higher Education Bubblehead: Fisking Another BHO Weekly Address

From the ‘Too Good to Check’ File

Racist, Sexist Republicans Nominate Mia Love In Double-Negative Ritual

Want America To Fail? Heed Van Jones

Troll-ism

Rule 5 Sunday: Master Of Puppets

LIVE AT FIVE – 04.23.12

‘They Just Want the Money’

Governor Asterisk Update: Republican Who Endorsed Romney Trashes GOP

‘Civil Rights’ = Death Threats

Why ‘Modern Romance’ Is an Oxymoron

Sympathy For Those Who Raise Children Full-Time

LIVE AT FIVE – 04.24.12

Newt’s Delaware Delusion

Obama’s One Success

Two Cheers for Katy Conrad!

Closet-Case Democratic Party Official Infected Ex-Girlfriend With AIDS Virus?

Amazon Mother’s Day Jewelry Sale

New York Advocacy Group Plans ‘Very Gay Mother’s Day’ Event in Sex-Toy Shop

Gametes, Zygote, Embryo, Fetus …

Obama’s Problem? ‘Being So Bipartisan’!

Gingrich Gets Stomped by 30 Points in Delaware; Fourth in Pennsylvania

LIVE AT FIVE – 04.25.12

NYC Investigators Raid Fox News ‘Mole’

BREAKING: Newt Gingrich Will End Pathetic Shuffling Zombie Campaign

Very Well Put

So True, It’s Almost Scary

Late Night Talk Show Clown Not Too Funny, Despite Help From Fallon

First Arrest in Alleged ‘Justice for Trayvon’ Mob Attack in Mobile, Alabama

The Girl With the Ephesians Tattoo

‘Arab Spring’ Anniversary: Egypt Legalizes Sex With Dead Wives, Marriage at 14

Media’s Lack of Accountability Now Blamed on ‘Right-Wing Bloggers’?

Top Democrat Name-Checks ‘Koch Brothers’ in Fundraising Appeal

LIVE AT FIVE – 04.27.12

First Person Plural: The John Edwards Scandal and America’s Discredited Elite

#SaySomethingNiceAboutObama

Rock and Roll, and Other Subjects About Which Dan Collins Knows Nothing

Contemptible Attorney General Found In Contempt Of Congress

Amid a Steaming Heap of Predictable Liberal Snark, Two Important Sentences

The Pro From Poca Rides Into the Sunset

Top linkers this week:

  1. Lonely Conservative (13)
  2. Da Tech Guy (8)
  3. The Camp Of The Saints (7)
  4. (tied) Lisa Graas and The POH Diaries (5)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA will be Friday, May 5.

 

Category: FMJRA Award

“Weekend At Bin Laden’s”

Posted on | April 28, 2012 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Click for source:

Stop these 'shop games. Stop, or I will say 'stop' a fourth time!
I, for one, think that #OccupyResoluteDesk should stay in broken record mode about bin Laden. The more Obama and his sycophants natter on about the One True Accomplishment of this administration, the more solitary it looks, and the more stark the contrast with the rest of the unfolding disaster that is this administration.

Just keep [nsfw] pluckin’ that chicken, Barack: at least it’s not a dog.

Update: or, if you like:It's almost as though Barack was unserious, or something.

Update II: linked at Bob’s Blog.

Category: Barack Obama, humor

Students Walk Out After Anti-Bullying Speaker Dan Savage Calls Bible ‘Bulls–t’

Posted on | April 28, 2012 | 92 Comments

Two weeks ago, the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association sponsored a national conference for high school journalists in Seattle. They invited San Francisco-based sex-advice columnist Dan Savage as a speaker. Savage reportedly began his speech by announcing to the teenagers, “I hope you’re all using birth control,” and made lascivious comments about his “husband.”

More than 100 students reportedly walked out of the event after Savage, who founded the “It Gets Better” project — widely praised as part of the “anti-bullying” movement — used obscene language in attacking religious beliefs against homosexuality:

“People often point out that… they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans, that being gay is wrong,” Savage tells the crowd in a short video posted on Tumblr by a student attendee.
“We can learn to ignore the [expletive] in the Bible about gay people the same way we have learned to ignore the [expletive] in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation,” Savage said.
At this point, student Jenny Patterson yelled “That’s bull,” and walked out. As other students followed, Savage called them “pansies,” she said.
Patterson said she had put up with Savage’s cussing and “references to how good his husband looks in a Speedo and how he has to pry him off.” But his attacks on Catholics, Mormons, and Christians for their stance on homosexuality went too far.
“I didn’t come to hear someone preach to me about how wrong my beliefs are,” said Patterson, 17 . . . “I don’t know what the agenda was behind [Savage’s] session, but it was unnecessary.”

Here’s the video and notice how many of the students cheered and applauded when Savage called the Bible “bulls–t”:

Savage calls the Bible a “radical pro-slavery document,” thinking that this certainly makes him morally superior for his anti-Christian bigotry, but notice the student walking out at the 2:44 mark.

Ironically, Lisa Graas credits Savage with awarding “crown jewels.” Among other issues raised by this disturbing report:

  • Isn’t it time to admit that the “anti-bullying” movement is just another way to get gay-rights activism into public schools?
  • Can we also now admit that, insofar as the public education system is pro-gay, it must also be anti-Christian?
  • Why aren’t you home-schooling yet?

More from Karla Dial at Citizen Link and Todd Starnes at Fox News. Now a Memeorandum thread with commentary by Jawa Report and the Washington Examiner. Dan Savage and his “husband” were guests at last year’s “Gay Pride” Month reception at the White House, and Savage wore an “Evolve Already” button to the the event:

“I believe the president should evolve,” Savage told pool reporter Julie Mason from Politico at the reception to honor LGBT Pride Month. . . . “He says he’s evolving, I believe him.” Savage added, “I want to hurry him along.”

Since President Obama has invited Savage to the White House, perhaps someone should ask whether the president approves of Savage’s speech to the high school journalists. We know we’ll get an honest answer from Jay “I Never Lie” Carney.

BTW, Dan Savage: I stopped eating shellfish more than 20 years ago when I married a Seventh-Day Adventist. Don’t miss it at all.

Happy Sabbath!

UPDATE: Linked at Protein Wisdom, One Red Thread, Daley Gator and The Lonely Conservative — thanks! And also thanks to Bill Quick at Daily Pundit for resisting the urge to write a “searingly corrosive screed about religious bigotry, ignorance, hatred, and the thug life of homophobic high school fag beaters.” Jazz Shaw at Hot Air writes:

So you picked a raunchy sex advice columnist who publishes a column called “Savage Love” as your ambassador to help out at risk children. What could possibly go wrong?

More from the “Did You Know?” files: I played trombone in high school band and was a drama major in college. Obviously, I know nothing about “bullying” and am insensitive toward gays.

Perhaps schools should pay me to teach Advanced Bullying Survival Methods, such as: Drop out of the “gifted” program, develop a criminal attitude, and join a gang of adolescent hoodlums who will beat the crap out of anybody who lays a hand on you. Become one of the biggest dope dealers in high school. Learn how to play guitar. Also, if somebody calls you a “faggot,” overcompensate by becoming voraciously heterosexual.

UPDATE II: Linked by Donald Douglas at American Power.

For the benefit of the irony-impaired, I should admit that the proposed Advanced Bullying Survival Methods curriculum is intended as humor. Just because it worked for me doesn’t mean I would recommend it to anyone else.

The point of the joke: While I am not unsympathetic to victims of bullying, most kids either have the inner resourcefulness to figure out how to deal with it, or else they are hopeless losers anyway.

The current “anti-bullying” crusade is another one of those Ideas So Stupid Only Public School Teachers Could Think It Was Smart. Having gone to school in the 1960s and ’70s, I was a guinea pig in more than one of those “innovative” educational experiments, including an early attempt at a “gifted” program.

You know what any smart kid eventually figures out? Most of his teachers aren’t very smart. Putting an obviously mediocre teacher in charge of a “gifted” program? That’s really stupid.

I love education. It’s school I hate.

UPDATE III: Nice headline by Doug Powers:

Anti-bullying speaker teaches students all about irony

 


Category: Education, Gays, Religion, Sex
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