The Other McCain

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

Jeff Goldstein Isn’t Ready to Don His Saffron Robe and Chant, ‘Hare Mitt-nu’

Posted on | April 21, 2012 | 31 Comments

“Mother, do not wonder that my loyalty is growing weak. . . . I am sick and tired of the disaster and the fools that bring disaster upon us.”
— letter from a soldier in the 79th New York Infantry, 1863

Seedubya today was cracking cynical jests on Twitter, whence I derived the headline joke. Speaking of headlines and jokes . . .

Rick Perry endorses David Dewhurst
for Hutchison’s Senate seat

Not a joke, but quite laughable: Alleged populist sides with GOP Establishment against Tea Party-backed dynamo Ted Cruz?

Jeff Goldstein — who has been on a tear lately, as Mike Hendrix notes — decided there were some bridges that badly needed burning:

Crazy how all that online support that started out with Perry (and was simultaneously very vocal in its attacks on Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Santorum, et al.,) seems now to have solidified behind Romney.
I mean, who would have thought it, right? These people go to TEA Party conferences! On stipends! And are given speaking roles. To stand up for conservative principles.
So they have to be conservatives, no? I mean, they are our conservative leaders, if you judge by their online influence.

It’s almost as if certain people were peddling their asses like cell-block punks trying to hustle up the price of a carton of Newports.

NTTAWWT, just don’t kid yourself that the rest of us can’t see what you’re doing. Maybe this will all work out just like you’ve planned it, and on Nov. 7 you’ll be accepting congratulations on the key role you played in Romney’s glorious triumph.

My hunch — and hey, maybe it’s only a hunch — is that this is as tragic a miscalculation as your ride on the Rick Perry bandwagon turned out to be, and all you’ll get is a sore ass, with no Newports to show for it.

Coalition politics in a two-party system requires each of us to decide which compromises we will accept and on what terms, so I try not to be too judgmental or intolerant about such things. What genuinely annoys me is irresponsible incompetence in politics of the sort that permits people to advocate bad policies and strategies which fail, and yet those who bring about such predictable failures — “the fools that bring disaster” — suffer no loss of influence as a result.

Demoralization spreads in the ranks as the troops begin to realize the “leaders” are members of a sort of Old Boys Club, and that their leadership status has nothing to do with actual merit, except in terms of their superior ability to curry favor with fellow club members.

After a while of watching this, you start noticing little things:

Oh, that’s sweet. Even as @NewtGingrich campaign was drowning in debt, it found $12k to pay daughter’s company.

Little things like that you notice, and you remember when Newt was also peddling his ass. But now what’s he got to show for it?

A sore ass. And no Newports.

Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Protein Wisdom, Rick Perry

Us: ‘Nancy, Your Power Grab Looks Like Botched Plastic Surgery’ Pelosi: ‘Are You Serious? Are You Serious?’

Posted on | April 21, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

CNSNews has a long-standing admiration for Nancy Pelosi, dating back to asking if ObamaCare is Constitutional.
Now, CNSNews reports the Wicked Witch of the West seeks to revive the Sedition Act, in spirit, if not in practice.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday endorsed a movement announced by other congressional Democrats on Wednesday to ratify an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would allow Congress to regulate political speech when it is engaged in by corporations as opposed to individuals.
The First Amendment says in part: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”
Television and radio networks, newspapers, publishing houses, movie studios and think tanks, as well as political action committees, are usually organized as, or elements of, corporations.
Pelosi said the Democrats’ effort to amend the Constitution is part of a three-pronged strategy that also includes promoting the DISCLOSE Act, which would increase disclosure requirements for organizations running political ads, and “reducing the role of money in campaigns” (which some Democrats have said can be done through taxpayer funding of campaigns).

I’ve got this great idea, Nancy: let’s wait and read the SCOTUS opinions on your last steaming loaf of hooey before we even give you the time of day.

It is as though these proto-fascist Democrats realize that, lacking any basis in reason for their bankrupt ideas, they have to go fully Hugo Chavez to regain  enough control of the public discourse to retain their fading grip on power.

Keep up the pressure, people.

via Breitbart

Category: Nancy Pelosi

Little Green Sheep: A Telling Update

Posted on | April 21, 2012 | 54 Comments

Nothing is more predictable than the herd instinct. Despite their insistence that they make up their own minds, many people are in fact, as psychologists say, highly suggestible, and subject to peer pressure, so that if any trend becomes dominant within the particular herd with which they identify, the average person follows the trend without much conscious deliberation.

If herd membership is dependent on a shared set of political opinions, a shift in those shared opinions requires members either to join in the shift or else risk ostracism by the herd. To be abandoned or rejected by one’s herd is not an experience most herd-minded people seek — why else would they be in the herd in the first place? — and so they conform and follow along, believing all the while that they are thinking for themselves, rather than being influenced by others.

This morning a person I’d never heard of re-Tweeted to my attention a message from one of Charles Johnson’s LGF stooges to the effect that I am a “neo-Confederate wacko extraordinaire.”

Sigh.

Keep in mind that this was someone with 451 Twitter followers re-Tweeting a stale old message from someone with 109 Twitter followers. I’m reminded of an old joke about the flea who decided to rape an elephant. The elephant didn’t notice, but during the act a coconut fell from a tree and bonked the elephant on her head, causing her to groan, and the flea said, “Oh, yeah, baby, it’s good for ya, ain’t it?”

Being intensely curious both by nature and professional habit, however, I noticed that this particular flea had an actual name — Randall Gross — and when I clicked to see what sort of flea he was, I noticed that he’d linked his blog on his Twitter profile page. Of course, Little Green Footballs was listed on his blogroll, and when I checked Gross’s “About” page, I saw this curious paragraph:

I don’t hate liberals or democrats, I just pity them. It must suck to have devolved to the point where your political purpose and platforms are based minute-by-minute on the output of the 24 hour news cycle and a myths so distant from reality that it must recreate itself every five minutes. (Update 2010 — sadly this position and propensity has flipped since President Obama was elected. It is now the right that hangs on every news cycle looking for the latest minuscule point or position to become overly outraged about. The GOP has gone from being the Adult party in Washington to being hysterical children. Strange what a difference one election can make.)

Eh?

Beyond pointing out that he misspelled “miniscule,”* I wonder how it is that “one election” divested Republican of the status they had hitherto enjoyed of being “the Adult party” in Gross’s estimation. He would seem to be referring to what became the Tea Party uprising, the simplest defense of which was expressed by Jennifer Rubin in February 2009: “The opposition party must oppose.”

People whose understanding of politics is shallow, and who had become accustomed to supporting Republicans as the “in” party — the power-wielding authority in a (small-“d”) democratic polity — never really grasped the challenges that confronted the GOP after their successive defeats in 2006 and 2008. The collapse of the Bush-era Republican majority was a cataclysm which the party leadership did not anticipate, and for which they tried to evade responsibility. Explaining “what went wrong” was a process complicated by the defensiveness of the GOP elite (which did not wish to admit their own errors) and by the misleading analyses offered by the punditocracy.

If Republicans in 2009 were going to heed the counsels of, inter alia, David Brooks and Karl Rove, their response to the existential crisis would look a lot like the “centrist” candidacies of Dede Scozzafava, Charlie Crist and Mike Castle. But if, as Rubin said, “the opposition party must oppose,” the first order of business was to start raising hell: Throw a populist wrench into the machinery of the party Establishment that had brought about the disasters of 2006-08, and which was in early 2009 advocating a collaborative stance toward the newly-installed Democrat regime.

Randall Gross’s understanding of the political dynamic was, alas, even less inadequate than Charles Johnson’s. However zany, haphazard and misguided CJ’s shift from Right to Left between 2007 (when he first attempted to purge Pamela Geller from the conservative blogosphere) and 2009 (when Johnson finally “parted ways with the Right”), it was at least an opportunistic sellout in which Johnson struck his own bargains. Randall Gross was merely one of the witless dupes who drifted along in Charles’s erratic wake.

Anyway, it is amusing to see how, during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Gross’s outrage over the Reuters “faux-tography” incident led him to write a long post denouncing as “gullible sheep” those duped by the mainstream media. It seemingly never occurs to Gross that he (and Charles Johnson and whoever else is now left tending the pixels at LGF) was similarly duped into believing that the conservative response to the GOP’s electoral disasters of 2006-08 was something other than it was.

Randall Gross’s malleable qualities make him a perfect sheep in the Johnsonoid herd, as witness his efforts to provide fodder for the fashionable fanaticism in some samples from his recent Little Green Footballs output, wherein Gross:

  1. Invokes the magic totems of Southern Baptists and “wingnuts”;
  2. Denounces “anti-choice terrorists”;
  3. Abhors Rudy Giuliani’s status as an adviser to Serbian politicians; and
  4. Deplores the Catholic Church for its “opposition to birth control when the world population is quickly on path to 9 billion and Family planning is the only thing with any hope of stemming the tide of starvation, poverty, and misery that overpopulation brings.”




Well, these are all controversial topics toward which people might have differing attitudes. What must be explained, however, is why Gross is nowadays so ostentatiously interested in these particular subjects — Baptists, “wingnuts,” “choice,” Serbia, “overpopulation” — that were almost certainly of no interest to him five or six years ago.

Obviously these subjects concern Gross now for the same reason Lebanon concerned him in 2006 — they are fashionable topics with the herd — which is the same reason that he suddenly took an interest in me. Having poked one of his fellow Little Green Sheep who libeled me yesterday, I’m the Enemy of the Day, cast in the role of Emmanuel Goldstein in Big (Ponytailed) Brother’s re-enactment of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Charles Johnson Internet Center for Mediocre Conformity has attracted many inept dullards over the years. Those who are willing to bend their ideas to fit whatever species of fanaticism strikes CJ’s whimsical interests are always welcome at LGF, and only those who have the intelligence to detect falsehood and the courage to fight for firm principle will ever find themselves consigned to the Legion of the Banned.

Standing up against the herd instinct is not conducive to popularity. If what you crave is the admiration of the ignorant, the undiscerning and the dishonorable, nothing is easier than to follow the herd, striving to make yourself conspicuous as a compliant follower.

As the price of his membership in the herd, Randall Gross is willing to show solidarity with the vicious liar Daniel Vergara, and to justify this most dishonorable alliance by telling himself that I deserve to be defamed, in that I am a “neo-Confederate wacko extraordinaire.”

Very well. Let fools think what they will.

Let them choose other such fools as their friends, and never pause to wonder why this unthinking course of action seems acceptable to them. But these fools are sadly deluded if they think they deserve from me any explanation for my own course of action — any excuse, apology or friendly word of warning — as I watch them scurry along, resembling sheep rather less than they do a much smaller species of mammal.

No point praying for the godless lemmings, as they hurtle toward the cliff.

UPDATE: Speaking of throwing a populist wrench into the Republican machinery, the latest update from Professor Glenn Reynolds:

TEA PARTY FORCES ORRIN HATCH INTO PRIMARY. That’s huge. More here.

These “neo-Confederate wackos” are everywhere nowadays.

UPDATE II: Dave Weigel reports on the Battle of Bull Run Sandy, Utah:

The Tea Party movement is alive in Utah. With representatives from FreedomWorks in the audience, delegates at the Utah Republican Convention managed to force Sen. Orrin Hatch into a June 26 primary. He got 59.2 percent of their votes against Dan Liljenquist, a 38-year-old state senator. Hatch needed 60 percent to avoid the primary. He couldn’t do it. In two rounds of voting, he went from 2,243 votes to 2,313 votes. If he’d gotten 32 more votes, he would have wrapped this up.

Thirty-two votes! Allahpundit writes:

59.1 percent sounds hopeless for Liljenquist if it’s an accurate reflection of Republican voters in Utah, but there’s bound to be a burst of tea-party enthusiasm for him now that he and Richard Mourdock are the last best chance to tilt the GOP further right at the federal level.

Oh, hell, yes. Dan Liljenquist just became a hero to millions of people who never heard his name before today. GO GIVE HIM MONEY NOW!

——
* Duly noting that “minuscule” is the older and original (and probably racist) spelling of the word.

Category: Charles Johnson, Media Bias, Tea Party

FMJRA 2.0: Picking Up The Signal

Posted on | April 21, 2012 | 7 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Drip, Drip, Drip: “Mormon Mitt” Meme Keeps Popping Up In Mainstream Media

Maslow And The Conversation On Race

If An Academic Says It, That Makes It OK

No, Whoopi, Rosen Said Precisely What She Was To Say

LIVE AT FIVE – 04.13.12

If The Strategy Was Always Propaganda, Why Is A Charging Instrument That Sounds Like The Squawk Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask A Surprise?

GOOD NEWS!

Lena Dunham, Sandra Fluke, Joy McCann

Gabby Doesn’t Dig Beta Males

Warning: Brain-Bleach Shortage!

It Could Conceivably Be Worse

Whatever You Do, Don’t Tell Canada: Muslim Women Have Boobies!

Helping Instapundit See The Sense In What We’re Doing Right Now

Barack Obama Deploys The ‘F’ Word

Misandry, Misogyny and Mrs. Romney

Santelli To Liesman: You Can’t Drink Yourself To Sobriety

Can Anyone Help Parse Dick Cheney’s Opinion Of Barack Obama?

What Happens in Cartagena …

Turbo-Tax Tim Does 3 Sunday Shows UPDATE: Geithner Praises Obama’s ‘Incredibly Effective’ Economic Policies

Clarifying Friday’s Trayvon Martin Post

Warning: No Betas Need Apply

First in War, First in Peace, First on the List of Britain’s All-Time Enemies

LIVE AT FIVE – 04.16.12

RAAAAACISM!

‘I Believed at the Time That the Documents Were Genuine and I’ve Never Ceased Believing That They Are Genuine’

Ain’t I Done Told Ya So? (Part III)

Right On, Michael Zak

‘International Solidarity Movement’ Protester Is Welcomed in Israel

Liz Benjamin: ‘Generally Snarky’

Narrative Arc: Second-Guessing Palin, Santorum’s Story and Romney’s Doom

Boortz Blames ‘Rabid Shrew’ Tea Party Mom for Bob Beckel’s F-Bomb Eruption UPDATE: Boortz Says ‘I Was Wrong’

Romney Booster Jen Rubin Getting Worried About ‘Mormon Mitt’ Meme?

Working the Refs: Axelrod Attacks Gallup; Romney Slams Pro-Obama Media Bias

Illegal Alien Steals 5-Year-Old’s Identity; Mother Will Testify at Hearing Today

A. Bernard Archer and Barack Obama

CNN’s Jack Cafferty: ‘Lingering Questions About Mormonism … Odd and Insular’

LIVE AT FIVE – 04.18.12

The Year I Was Born: 1959

‘We’re Here! We’re Queer! And Now, Unfortunately, We’re Unemployed!’

What I Needed Today …

The 1866 Civil Rights Act

OPRA: Only Problematic in
Republican Administrations

LIVE AT FIVEEIGHT – 04.19.12

Boehlert vs. ‘Neocons’? (Nudge, Nudge)

Two Scoops Of Hooey

Progressivisim Is The Ultimate Comb-Over

LIVE AT FIVESIX

Calling A Policy ‘Smart’ Does Not Impart Intelligence

Hey, @Jack: Smear-Troll @Dan_Verg_ Commits Libel With Fraudulent Tweet

‘It’s Only Ever An Issue If…’

Top linkers this week:

  1. The Guy Who Named The Blogosphere (10)
  2. (tied) The Lonely Conservative and The Camp Of The Saints (9)
  3. (tied) Don Surber, DaleyGator, and The Conservatory (7)
  4. Da Tech Guy (6)
  5. Dyspepsia Generation (5)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline for next week’s FMJRA will be Friday, April 27.

Category: FMJRA Award

For ‘Debased’ Values Of ‘Self-Respecting’

Posted on | April 21, 2012 | 3 Comments

by Smitty


The rampant idiocy on display for even a short clip like this is astounding.
“. . .Mitt Romney doesn’t even know if he’d sign a bill promising us equal pay for equal work. . .”

  1. Rarely does a bill focus on a single topic. To say you’d sign any bill, unread, is both stupid and a feature of our modern Congresses.
  2. In capitalism, meritocracy rules. If a woman is a superior performer, and hits a glass ceiling, then why is she not
    • finding a more enlightened employer, or
    • starting her own business?
  3. Legislation is not reality. The notion that Congress is a factory for reality, and its utterances are:
    • magically Constitutional, and
    • control the world beyond the beltway

    really gets at the heart of Boxer’s lunacy.

Get bent, Barbara. Thanks for nothing, California, for returning this fool to blight our government.

via Bluegrass Pundit

Category: California

Eat Cat Too

Posted on | April 21, 2012 | 22 Comments

by Smitty

Just in case #OccupyResoluteDesk runs low on on his usual four-footed fare, this blog would like to offer a suggested backup plan, via Angus and the boys:

The opening lines: “Dog eat dog / eat cat, too” are great. So much fun in six three-letter words. I suppose there is some jape about metaphorical cannibalism and BHO in here. And maybe a Benny Hill variation, if you wish.

What’s interesting about the whole doggone situation is:

  • This really can’t help BHO’s Middle Eastern popularity at all.
  • The sheer quantity of abuse directed at BHO on this silly topic could indicate some sort of tipping point. Previously, the usual Hollywood suspects would have popped up to tell us how raaaaacist we are for daring to question Teh One.
  • We’ve still got half a year until the election. Given the mix of legitimate and silly lines of argument against BHO, and the likelihood that ObamaCare, Fast & Furious, the various other executive branch scandals (take your pick) and the rest are only going to worsen over the summer, one begins to wonder the exact date for the announcement of the medical condition requiring retirement.

 

Category: Barack Obama

Mitch Daniels Reacts To This Morning’s Comb-Over Post

Posted on | April 20, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

Indiana Governor and The Other McCain reader (?) Mitch Daniels usedAt least I'm not as bald as Smitty, said Mitch. body language to emphasize the proper configuration of the comb-over, whether adorning a conservative or progressive noggin.
It’s OK, Mitch: nobody thinks the less of you because you’ve vast tracts of. . .forehead.
Just go cue ball already, man.

Then again, via Insty, maybe there’s hope.

Category: Indiana

FEC Reports: Gingrich Campaign Ended March With More Than $4.3 Million Debt UPDATE: ‘State of Confusion’ Over Gingrich’s North Carolina Schedule

Posted on | April 20, 2012 | 15 Comments

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign finished March with debts of more than $4.3 million, according to his report released to the Federal Election Commisssion today.

Gingrich’s monthly fundraising fell by 35% in March, declining to $1.7 million from the $2.6 million he raised in February, but his campaign’s spending declined more slowly, to $2.0 million from the February total of $2.9 million. Gingrich’s campaign had finished February with about $1.55 million campaign debt, slightly more than its cash on hand total. The campaign’s debt at the end of March, however, exceeded its cash on hand by more than $3 million.

For the second consecutive month, Gingrich raised less than either of the three other Republican candidates, including Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who raised about $2.6 million in March.

Rick Santorum raised slightly more than $5 million in March, but spent about $5.8 million, finishing the month with about $185,000 more in debt ($2 milllion) than cash on hand ($1.8 million). Santorum suspended his campaign April 10, a week after losing the April 3 Wisconsin primary.

Gingrich has said he will continue campaigning, but on Friday the former House speaker suddenly canceled appearances in North Carolina scheduled for next week. His campaign spokesman said Friday that Gingrich will remain in the race and keep his Secret Service protection, which reportedly costs taxpayer more than $40,000 a day. “He’s still a candidate,” Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond told the New York Times. “The nomination is not over.”

Mitt Romney, now the presumptive Republican nominee, raised more than $13 million in March, spent about $10.3 million, and finished the month with about $10 million cash on hand and no debt.

President Obama’s re-election campaign, meanwhile, raised $35 million in March and spent only $15.6 million, ending the month with a total of $104 million cash on hand.

UPDATE: Elicia Dover of ABC News reports a “state of confusion” in the Gingrich campaign about the candidate’s North Carolina schedule:

Two people close to the Gingrich campaign told ABC News they were contacted and told all of Gingrich’s North Carolina stops had been canceled, although R.C. Hammond, communications director for the campaign, said there was a “communication glitch.”
“There was confusion, but we will maintain our North Carolina schedule next week,” Hammond said.
One person close to the campaign said the stops were certainly canceled, then resumed after news reports left looming suspicion, even among his own staff, that Gingrich was suspending his campaign. . . .
Hammond denied the stops were resumed purely to extinguish speculation Gingrich was dropping out.

UPDATE II: Linked by Allahpundit at Hot Air. Thanks.

UPDATE III: R.C. Hammond tells CBS News that Newt sees “a sign that we need to keep scrapping, keep fighting.” CBS notes that Gingrich’s “Winning Our Future” super-PAC got its last $5 million check from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson on March 21, three days before the Louisiana primary, where Gingrich placed a distant third.

UPDATE IV: Alex Moe of NBC News reports that Gingrich has been spending most of his time in Delaware, which holds its primary Tuesday, and quotes “a source close to the Gingrich campaign” as saying: “Tuesday is a big day. … Newt is just waiting to see what happens on Tuesday.”

What will happen Tuesday is, Newt will lose.

By the way, Newt’s campaign was the last to file its FEC report Friday. Ron Paul’s report was posted about 12:30 p.m., Mitt Romney’s about 2:30 p.m., and Rick Santorum about 4:45 p.m. The Gingrich campaign’s report didn’t go online until after 8 p.m., which almost guaranteed that it wouldn’t be reported in Saturday’s papers.

UPDATE V: There is probably some kind of literary metaphor in this report from ABC News:

The campaign’s list of debts and obligations is long, but Gingrich owes the most money to Moby Dick Airways Ltd., a private charter company based in Sterling, Virginia.

“Call me Ishmael.”

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Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul
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