The Other McCain

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

Calling A Policy ‘Smart’ Does Not Impart Intelligence

Posted on | April 20, 2012 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

Are California’s marijuana dispensaries putting out some great product, or what?

Smart growth on steroids, or the radical densification policy of California, was the subject of my recent commentary in The Wall Street Journal — “California Declares War on Suburbia”. Regional transportation plans in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Los Angeles area and the San Diego area seek to force the vast majority of new residents in future decades into multi-family housing. Under the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction law (Assembly Bill 32) and its companion urban planning law (Senate Bill 375), it will be nearly impossible to build new detached housing. This is despite the fact that 80 percent additions to the housing stock in California’s major metropolitan areas was detached between 2000 and 2010.

Read the whole Orwellian thing.

My guess is that California’s powers-that-snort have determined that having privacy encourages subversive thoughts of liberty, maturity, and independence among residents. What a failed state.

Also, what an opportunity. Our country, if American Exceptionalism is more than a mere catchphrase, is going to demonstrate for the world and history how to face the music on failed policy, peacefully eject a failed political class, and restore a vital, capitalistic economy. Or perish in the effort.

Update: linked at The Daley Gator and Daily Pundit.

Category: California

Progressivism Is the Ultimate Comb-Over

Posted on | April 20, 2012 | 14 Comments

by Smitty

Althouse links the NYT:

Shaving your balding head is like breaking up with someone before he or she can break up with you. Or like marching into your boss’s office and saying: “You can’t fire me. I quit.”
After all, nothing screams “gradual decline” like thinning or retreating hair. It’s a constant voice of anxiety whining, “It’s only going to get worse!” But with a shaved head, it can’t get any worse. There’s no voice of anxiety. You’ve already gone ahead and chosen the nuclear option.
We men already are facing way too many gradual declines without adding baldness to the mix. Compared with the women in our lives, we’re fading in nearly every category: educational achievement, income growth and general necessity. For years we’ve no longer been needed (at least not in person) even to make a baby.

I guess if you’re some narcissist, it could be that big of a deal. My hair was ever a disaster, even when full. It was nearly a relief when enough cowardly follicles abandoned ship to just say “Begone with the rest this useless #OccupyCranium lot.”

What sort of absurdities will you entertain to avoid reality? Full-on bouts of Trump-ism? This nonsense?

Having an asinine hairdo is like having asinine political leaders who can’t pass a budget, much less balance one. Sure, through a triumph of the will, you can pretend reality is non-existent. You can fake it, as though no one can see through your wretched toupée, your cooked numbers on unemployment and inflation. You can pretend that the bankruptcy of your failed social welfare state isn’t poking out through the endless smoke and mirrors, or that status as the world’s reserve currency is a license to inflate the currency at will.

To paraphrase Einstein: insanity is combing the same thing over and over, expecting adequacy. Or you can just man up, face reality, and let your skull fun free. Courage. Find it.

Aside: Paul Ryan, I hate you in the most loving way possible. 🙂

Update: linky-love from The Camp of the Saints, The Daley Gator, and Dyspepsia Generation.

Category: Culture

Drip, Drip, Drip: ‘Mormon Mitt’ Meme Keeps Popping Up in Mainstream Media

Posted on | April 20, 2012 | 153 Comments

OK, maybe it’s stretching the definition of “mainstream” to include the Daily Beast and MSNBC, but the predicted eruptions of the “Mormon Mitt” meme keep occurring with increasing frequency.

Notice how Newsweek/Daily Beast reporter Ben Jacobs hands a cue to Montana’s Democrat Gov. Brian Schweitzer:

While discussing swing states, Schweitzer said Romney would have a “tall order to position Hispanics to vote for him,” and I replied that was mildly ironic since Mitt’s father was born in Mexico, giving the clan a nominal claim to being Hispanic. Schweitzer replied that it is “kinda ironic given that his family came from a polygamy commune in Mexico, but then he’d have to talk about his family coming from a polygamy commune in Mexico, given the gender discrepancy.” Women, he said, are “not great fans of polygamy, 86 percent were not great fans of polygamy. I am not alleging by any stretch that Romney is a polygamist and approves of [the] polygamy lifestyle, but his father was born into [a] polygamy commune in Mexico.”
Romney’s father, George — who served as governor of Michigan and was a member of the Nixon cabinet and also a presidential candidate — was born in Mexico in 1907 to a family of American Mormons who fled to Mexico when the United States government cracked down on the practice of polygamy. George Romney’s parents were in a monogamous marriage, but Mexico was the last bastion for the practice of plural marriage in the Church of Latter Day Saints.

Jacobs just casually mentions — oh, by the way, how ironic! — Romney’s father being born in Mexico, and this automatically triggers Schweitzer to start in on a rant about a “polygamy commune,” and to then further contextualize this in terms of what percentage of women voters disapprove of polygamy. This rant then provides an excuse for Jacobs to relate the biographical/historical facts.

Completely coincidental, you see. Just a reporter doing his job.

Meanwhile, on MSNBC, Martin Bashir delivered a sermon Thursday:

It’s now time to clear the air and on Wednesday’s broadcast we brought you a spirited discussion about Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith and one pastor’s view that Mormonism is both theologically heretical and a cult.
Today, we wanted to focus on what Mormonism says about lying and the reason is quite simple — Mr. Romney seems to be having some trouble telling the truth . . .
Which brings us to the moral codes of Mormonism that Mr. Romney claims to live by. In section 63 and verse 17 of the Doctrine and Covenants of the Mormon Church we find this: “All liars, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
And from the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2:34, we find this: “Woe unto the liar, for he shall be thrust down to hell.” Given what the Book of Mormon is clearly saying, Mr. Romney has but two choices — he can either keep lying and potentially win the White House but bring eternal damnation upon himself, or he can start telling the truth.

Now, the video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As you can see, Bashir calls Romney “Mitt the Mendacious” three times. The crudeness of Bashir’s rhetorical method is enough to make Allahpundit pine for “the relative subtlety and understated good taste of Keith Olbermann.” Bashir also reminds MSNBC viewers that on Wednesday, he interviewed Pastor Robert Jeffress, the Southern Baptist who endorsed Romney despite Jeffress’s continued insistence that Mormonism is a heretical cult.

What Bashir is doing is something I explained two weeks ago: Using evangelicals as a “hook” to bring up Romney’s Mormonism. This is a familiar theme that mainstream reporters have been working on ever since the 2008 campaign. The supposed anti-Mormon prejudices of evangelical Christians that were much talked about in terms of Romney’s difficulties in GOP primaries will now be reinterpreted as an excuse to talk about Mitt’s Mormonism for the general election campaign.

It’s a great two-birds-with-one-stone-stone trick for liberals: “Look how bigoted these holy rollers are and — hey, by the way — did you notice that Romney’s religion is kinda weird and has a history of polygamy, violence and racism? Also, coming up next, we have an exclusive interview with an ex-Mormon woman who has written a book that says the church is horribly sexist . . .”

There will be no end to this, and those who are sanguine about Romney’s election chances — Ace seems positively giddy these days — may be naive in thinking the media’s steady drip, drip, drip about Mormonism will not hurt Mitt with independents.

Three words: “Low-information voters.”

The kind of people who never vote in primaries and seldom vote in mid-terms, but who feel it their patriotic duty to vote in presidential elections, are notoriously disengaged from politics on a day-to-day basis. They don’t pay much attention to the news, and have only a superificial knowledge of issues and ideologies. They usually show up in poll data as “don’t know/don’t care/undecided.”

What will these voters know about Mitt Romney by Nov. 6? They’ll know he’s rich, and they’ll know he’s Mormon.

What the media are doing now is establishing a pretext for future in-depth coverage of the history, beliefs and practices of LDS. When the “low-information voters” start paying attention, what they will learn about Mormonism from the media will be . . .

Well, it won’t be anything that makes independent “swing” voters want to go storming to the polls to vote for Romney, that’s for sure.

Remember George Allen’s 2006 campaign? Liberals spent months laying down the background of Allen’s alleged “neo-Confederate” connections, with articles in the New Republic and other outlets, so that when he said “macaca,” it was like he had hit a trip-wire that exploded a mine and set off a massive ambush.

They’re now doing the same to Romney with the “Mormon Mitt” meme: Establishing the map-grid coordinates, as it were, so that when the signal flare goes up, everybody is aiming at the same target and Romney is helplessly trapped in the media kill-zone. They’ve got Romney zeroed in already: When he attempts to “distance” himself from whatever out-of-the-mainstream Mormon belief he’s accused of holding, his denial will then be used as evidence that he is just an insincere panderer with no core principles. If Mitt complains that he is the victim of religious bigotry, they’ll mock him as a whining crybaby.

All of this is perfectly predictable, you see: It is foreshadowed already, and the fact that they held back until after they were sure Romney had the nomination locked up — once Mitt won Wisconsin — was a clear clue of their ultimate intention. Yesterday, it was announced that Mitt would give the commencement address at Liberty University. Look how the New York Times played it:

Mitt Romney will deliver the commencement address at Liberty University, the evangelical institution founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Va.
Mr. Romney’s campaign said the university invited him to speak to the approximately 48,000 people expected to attend the graduation ceremony on May 12.
Virginia is a swing state, but for Mr. Romney, this invitation offers a chance to shore up one of his weaknesses within his base, as many evangelicals remain wary of his Mormon faith.
Jerry Falwell Jr., the university’s chancellor, said in a statement that “we are delighted” that Mr. Romney would be speaking, and he compared the visit to those of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the elder George Bush in 1990. However, the decision has already sparked controversy among students and alumni of Liberty University, with nearly 300 people commenting on the institution’s Facebook announcement within two hours of its posting.
“I am so disappointed in my university for their choice in commencement speaker Romney. You have lost a potential grad student,” wrote Paige Farmer. “It is shameful that you would allow him a stage for political gain. What could a Mormon possibly have to share with Christians?”

You can see it coming a mile away, folks. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

UPDATE (Wombat-socho): INSTALANCHE!

UPDATE II: Linked by Bob Belvedere at the Camp of the Saints, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, The Conservatory, Andrew J. Patrick, Daley Gator, Da Tech Guy, John Schroeder, The Crawdad Hole and by His Vorpal Sword, who awards me the “Golden Buttplug.” Uh, thanks, I guess.

 

 

RECENTLY:


Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, MSNBC, Newsweek, Religion

LIVE AT FIVESIX – 04.20.12

Posted on | April 20, 2012 | 11 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Marijuana Rally In Trouble At Colorado University

U. Colorado Chancellor Phil DiStefano

University administrators trying fertilizer and free concerts to stamp out annual flash-mob pot rally

New Poll Shows Hollande’s Lead Narrowing
Down to 4 points in first-round balloting; gap widens in second round

George Clooney On Obama Team
Not really news, I know





POLITICS
GOP Pushes Small Business Tax Cut Through Divided House

Eric Cantor addresses the media

President already threatening veto in the unlikely event the cut passes the Senate

GOP Holds Advantage In Arkansas Congressional Races


Illinois Lawmakers Skeptical Of Quinn’s Proposals To Cut Medicaid, Add $1 To Cigarette Tax

One Hail Of A Change

Romney To Speak At Liberty University Commencement

Bachmann: Obama Waving “A Tar Baby”

Secret Service Closes Case On Nugent Remarks



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Approaches $103 Amid Uneven US Recovery
Microsoft Revenues Beat Forecasts, But Bing, XBox Disappoint
Emerging Powers Line Up To Hand IMF Billions
Starbucks De-Bugs Menu Offerings
Nikkei Index Falls For Third Straight Week
Short Sales Pick Up In Housing Market
Goldman Sachs Facing New Insider Trading Probe
Obama Oil Margin Plan Could Increase Price Swings
Apple, Google, Intel Fail In Bid To Dismiss Anti-Poaching Lawsuit
All Eyes Turn To Windows 8
Mobile Data Service Fees Help Bolster Profit At Verizon
Diablo III Open Beta This Weekend
Ron Paul Video Game In The Works



SPORTS
Happy Birthday! Fenway Park Turns 100

Opening Day, 1912

Good for another fifty years?

Dwight Howard To Have Season-Ending Back Surgery

Heat Top Bulls 83-72 In A Very Physical Game

Playoff Rookie Holtby Saves The Day For Caps

Granderson Belts Three Dingers As Yankees Edge Twins 7-6

Coyotes Put Blackhawks On The Brink With Third OT Win

Devils Blank Panthers 4-0, Even Series

Jackson’s Inconsistency Rears Its Ugly Head In 11-4 Loss



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
The Band’s Levon Helm Dies, 71

The Band at Woodstock: Danko, Helm, Manuel, Hudson and Robertson

Levon Helm, 1940-2012, RIP

“Dark Shadows” Actor Jonathan Frid Dies, 87

Lindsay Lohan In Nightclub Fight Sequel

Jennifer Morrison Dyes Her Hair

Lionsgate Picks Francis Lawrence To Direct “Hunger Games” Sequel

“American Horror Story” New Locale Revealed

Penelope Cruz Eye Rejoining Hubby Javier Bardem On “The Counselor”



FOREIGNERS
The “Missile Woman” Behind India’s New ICBM
French Foreign Minister Says World Must Prepare For Failure Of Syrian Peace Plan
Heywood Case: PRC “Began Murder Coverup Immediately”
Sudan Declares War On South Sudan
Philippines Says New PRC Ship’s Presence Aggravates Scarborough Shoals Row
Jewish Life Slowly Returns To Poland
EU Set To Suspend Most Burma Sanctions
SecDef Reveals PRC Helped Norks With Missile
Mali’s Ex-Leader Toure Flees To Senegal
Saakashvili: “Let’s Recruit Lavrov As Tourist Agent, He Advertises Georgia Well”



BLOGS & STUFF
Victor Davis Hanson: Obama Administration Close To A Breakdown?
Weasel Zippers: Confirmed – Secret Service Supervisor Who Oversaw Hookergate Used His Job To Treat Women As Objects
Beltway Confidential: White House Accuses Congress Of Politicizing Hookergate
Hit & Run: Ron Paul Roundup
Patterico: Tommy Christopher Whines – Saying Obama Isn’t Working Is RAAAAACIST!*
Daily Caller: Carney Won’t Bite On Dog Chow Story
Protein Wisdom: When Nancy Pelosi Speaks…
Catholic League: The Campaign Against Jon Stewart Begins
WaPo’s Reliable Source: How Ted Nugent Created A Political Firestorm
CNN: Ted Nugent Should Be In Jail
Gateway Pundit: Montana Governor Claims Latinos Won’t Vote For Romney Because Of Roots In Polygamist Commune
National Review: The Questionable Prosecution Of John Edwards
Power Line: Obama Losing On Keystone
Mark Steyn: It Takes Two To Tango


*Spelling corrected from original

Category: Live at Five

Two Scoops Of Hooey

Posted on | April 19, 2012 | 21 Comments

by Smitty

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

—Samuel Johnson

Raaaaacism is the last refuge of the Progressive jackwagon.

—Smitty

I cannot think of anything more racist than mentioning the heritage of a candidate in a political attack. We have so many extrinsic factors to consider, including education and previous professional records. To attack any candidate based upon intrinsic factors such as gender or race is the depth of falsehood.
Althouse points to Michael Barone saying:

Anyway, ticket-balancing is not the only successful approach, as Bill Clinton understood. When he clinched the Democratic nomination in 1992 as a Southern moderate, it was widely assumed he would pick a Northern liberal, as Jimmy Carter had.
Instead, he chose a fellow Southern Baptist of his own generation with a reputation for moderation and congressional experience in national security issues, Al Gore. They were from adjoining Southern states, and when the ticket was announced they met on the bridge between West Memphis, Ark., and Memphis, Tenn.
This unbalanced ticket won two elections, carrying six of 14 Southern states in both 1992 and 1996. Democratic nominees from Massachusetts, both with Southern running mates, carried none in 1988 and 2004.
A similar approach for Mitt Romney would be what opponents might call a double-vanilla ticket, with another white male as vice presidential nominee.

Given the propensity for the Left to engage in pure fiction already this year, Barone’s theory is likely to unfold.

The Barone quote offers an initial response, as well: Romney is every bit as diverse or more than Bill Clinton. Furthermore, #OccupyResoluteDesk healed our racial divide, except where he chose to multiply it, no? It’s not as though Romney can nominate the first special-needs VP; BHO already did that.

The other obvious response to the Lefty noise machine is “What? I couldn’t hear you over the crashing economy.”
I cannot wait for the ordeal of this campaign to be over.

Update: linked at POH Diaries

Category: Democrats, Election 2012

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

Posted on | April 19, 2012 | 17 Comments

Ed Schultz and Eric Boehlert on MSNBC

Two weeks ago, Jeff Dunetz took note of M.J. Rosenberg’s departure from Media Matters (which I blogged about April 8 and April 10), and it’s kind of funny how sometimes when you pull a dangling thread, the whole sweater starts to unravel.

Was Dunetz onto something? Was Rosenberg merely the thread dangling from a Media Matters sweater knitted of unsavory views? Ben Shapiro decided to keep tugging at that shoddy fabric:

Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert, one of the faces of the organization, has a dicey record when it comes to Israel and the Jews. . . .
In 2002, he wrote a piece for Salon.com in which he lamented the fate of Professor Sami Al-Arian, former North American head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This is the same Al-Arian who proclaimed, “God cursed those who are sons of Israel … Those people, God made monkeys and pigs … Let us damn America, let us damn Israel, let us damn them and their allies until death.” When Al-Arian was suspended from his teaching post at Florida Atlantic University, Boehlert defended Al-Arian as an “innocent professor.”
As for mainstream media coverage of Israel – which is almost universally skewed against Israel – Boehlert thinks that the media coverage isn’t anti-Israel enough. “I don’t think it’s a surprise to suggest the Middle East conflict is essentially told through the eyes of Israel,” Boehlert said in 2006. . . .

Read the whole thing, and permit me to take the unusual (for me) step of counseling caution here. Anti-Semitism is quite nearly the most deadly accusation one can level in American politics, and ought not be applied haphazardly to every critic of Israel or every critic of U.S. Mideast policy. My own views being sufficiently ultra-Zionist to have earned me second place in Sully’s 2009 “Malkin Awards” competition, I do not insist that everyone of good faith must share my opinions.

Bibi Netanyahu? A squishy moderate!

Both coalition politics and successful governance require us to tolerate a range of opinions on any given issue. If we denounced as Jew-haters every critic of Bush-era foreign policy, we would be required to condemn, inter alia, the late Robert Novak.

Our precocious friend Ben Shapiro correctly says that Boehlert once offered a “drumbeat” of commentary that “the press was too favorable to the Jewish State.” In this, Boehlert echoed a common theme of the anti-war Left during the Bush 43 era. Read more

Category: Democrats, Israel, Liberals, Media Bias, Progressivism

Roxanne Doesn’t Have To Turn On The Red Lights. She Does Anyway; Dad Didn’t Teach Her Otherwise

Posted on | April 19, 2012 | 29 Comments

by Smitty

No, I don’t mean Roxeanne de Luca specifically. Or prostitution in the Secret Service sense. I mean, emphasis mine:

Now, let’s cut through the drivel: play-acting at being married with someone to whom you have not committed will delay that commitment, or finding the person you really want to commit to. Acting like someone’s wife, when that person has not wed you in front of his family and friends, will just make you feel like you’re in a perpetual audition — because you’re in a perpetual audition. Not to go all Ayn Rand, but you wouldn’t take that from an employer (it would be “hire me, enough already, or I’ll find another job”); why do you take that from a man?

Show me these famous live-in women, and the males perpetuating these arrangements, and I’ll show you some kids playing grown-up.

Irrespective of age, that male is a boy, not a man. Men just don’t use women as protein receptacles. Bill Clinton, I mean you. How many women who eschew marriage had a father (i.e. mature man) in their life?

All I can say is that the World’s Youngest Blogger will be raised to understand that sexuality is not a video game. Have lots of women friends; treat them like sisters. But don’t go trading protein with them as a dog in the street. You might get Cowelled. Wait until the will of the Almighty has been revealed, marry, and enjoy life.

Should I be blessed with a daughter, on the other hand, she’ll be taught to look to the Almighty for self-actualization. No other human can provide such. Dad can only build a daughter up; not even he can do that.

This ‘living together’ noise cannot be mocked too much as yet another aspect of the Postmodern assault on everything of value in our culture. Behaviors that lead to success are mocked, while those that lead to failure are celebrated.

Category: Culture, Marriage, Roxeanne de Luca

That Amazing Right Wing!

Posted on | April 19, 2012 | 8 Comments

Is there anything it can’t do? Not according to Jay Parmley, who was recently forced to resign as executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party after being accused of sexually harassing a 26-year-old male staffer.

Parmley, who served less than a year at the helm of the party, denied harassing any employee and blamed right-wing political enemies for “spreading a false and misleading story.”
“Even though I have not done anything wrong, it is clear to me that I need to move on,” Parmley wrote in his resignation letter. “I refuse to be a distraction.”

Unfortunately for North Carolina Democrats (a) the distraction continues because (b) it wasn’t “right-wing political enemies” Parmley got frisky with. No, that would be his fellow Democrat:

The sexual harassment allegations are detailed in a Dec. 8 letter from Adriadn Ortega, a former party staffer, to then-Executive Director Jay Parmley. Ortega claimed he was “fired in retaliation for my complaints of sexual harassment” and asked for a severance equal to his annual pay and health care coverage for a year.
His allegations match those detailed in a complaint filed Jan. 31 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission obtained by The N&O. The EEOC complaint stated that Ortega tracked the alleged harassment in a notebook. . . .
In the letter, Ortega says Parmley:
• Frequently gave him unwanted shoulder rubs despite verbal objections.
• Pointed to his crotch area and asked how his crotch looked in his pants.
• On July 28, detailed his past sexual activities.
• On July 29, showed Ortega a picture of a penis.
• On Sept. 6, caressed Ortega’s leg as they drove back from a Democratic convention kick-off in Charlotte.

These are mere allegations, of course. But it should be obvious that young Mr. Ortega either (a) didn’t find Jay Parmley attractive, or (b) failed to understand that homosexuality is now considered compulsory by North Carolina Democrats.

DEMOCRATS: THE GAY PARTY
Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That!

Category: Democrats, Gays, North Carolina, Scandal, Sex
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