The Other McCain

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

He’s Not the Jack of Spades

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 35 Comments

Ace of Spades gets uncomfortable when I praise him too enthusiastically, or maybe he’s just doing that aw-shucks-’tweren’t-nuthin’ humble thing.

Being a natural-born extrovert myself, I have no problem with praise, of which I think I get far too little, mainly because people don’t enjoy praising such an obvious egomaniacal showoff. A deficit of praise, however, creates a problem in the psychological feedback loop: If I’m kicking ass and taking names, and yet see no evidence to confirm this — if traffic does not increase, et cetera — I might begin to doubt my awesomeness. Such doubts can undermine morale, and nothing is more important to this kind of work than morale.

Years ago, while singing and playing in rock bands, I had to learn how to respond to fans who rushed up, eager to tell me how awesome I was.

Understand that “front man in a rock band” is not a line of work that attracts small egos. The mere fact that you are getting up on the stage ought to be sufficient evidence that you think you’re pretty doggone awesome.

I knew that if I had my chance,
That I could make those people dance,
And maybe they’d be happy for a while . . .

This is a modest expression of a large ambition. When that rock-and-roll dream grabs hold of your soul — I was about 15 or 16, a late-bloomer as such things go — you spend a lot of time dreaming about what it’s going to be like when the dream comes true. The very first taste of success, when you finally get your band out of the garage and onto a stage and actually do a good enough job that people applaud, is bound to be a memorable experience.

So when my band, Strange Talk, played a 1986 gig at a street festival in Austell, Georgia, and did not completely suck, I wasn’t quite mentally prepared to have girls come up to me after the set with that clinging starry-eyed “you-were-so-awesome” reaction.

This was welcome confirmation, of course. I’d always thought of myself as pretty doggone awesome, but after years of kicking around in haphazard collections of musicians with different tastes and abilities — usually led by an egomaniac metalhead lead guitarist who despised anything “commercial” — I’d finally put together a band with an eye toward doing things my way. Strange Talk was conceived as a dance-oriented pop-rock outfit, and if this vision wasn’t shared enthuiastically by all the members, the positive reaction to that street festival performance was confirmation that my concept had merit.

And we did not completely suck. Read more

Category: Ace of Spades

The Brilliance Of DC’s Metro Cannot Be Grasped By Reason

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

Jobs, man: jobs. As the video states, DC’s Metro is a magnet for escalator mechanics. The Metro is working hard, trying to maximize the number of people taking home a paycheck, and these unreasonable Reasoners are. . .throwing a wrench in the gears.

The other interesting point about Metro is one that you can’t observe without a ten yard penalty for Political Incorrectness: the stunning lack of diversity in the employees:

Ninety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black, with only six white women out of more than 3,000 drivers, according to Metro documents — a lack of diversity at one of the region’s largest employers that has led to an acknowledgment of failure in affirmative-action documents and spawned a series of lawsuits.

Part two of the Washington Times series on WMATA deals with escalator mechanics:

The mechanics tasked with maintaining the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s chronically broken escalators start at $81,000 a year. Bus driver pay goes as high as $114,000 for anyone with a driver’s license and a GED.
Yet despite an economy that has left people from all walks of life looking for work, Metro says it can’t find qualified job applicants.
The transit system’s failure to meet its personnel needs was largely responsible for the $88 million in overtime it paid in 2010. The overtime paid to some station managers exceeded their base salaries, and maintenance workers made as much as $100,000 in overtime alone, according to an analysis of the most recent records officials would provide.

Hmmm, that sounds enticing. . .
Thankfully, there is a union to keep the troops whipped into shape:

But Metro “has a policy in place that does not allow employees to speak to the media about safety, fraud, mismanagement or bad management,” Anthony Garland, the chief safety officer of Metro’s largest union, said in 2010, according to the union. “An employee’s federally protected right to speak to the media or any entity investigating safety, an accident, fraud, etc., must be respected.”

We’re really got to elect Mitt Romney, so that Brian Williams can again sustain outrage at this sort of story.

via Breitbart

Category: Uncategorized

Misandry, Misogyny and Mrs. Romney

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 19 Comments

Ann Romney and her patriarchal oppressors, circa 1976

Cassandra at Villanous Company does her Alpha Female bitch-goddess workout on James Taranto, who had the temerity to offer a sympathetic view of young male existence in the post-feminist society:

At the same time, there is good reason for males (men as well as boys) to be more fearful of sex than females. Contemporary reproductive technology and law place all the burden for unwanted pregnancy on them. Between the pill and abortion, women have complete control over the reproductive process. They can avoid or end any unwanted pregnancy, and the man involved has no say in the matter. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the U.S. Supreme Court went so far as to hold that a married woman has the constitutional right to abort her husband’s child without even telling him. . . .
This is a serious problem with worrying economic and social implications. No amount of feminist happy talk about “choice” or Bennett-like bluster about “manning up” is going to solve it.

Cassandra is greatly annoyed by Taranto’s sympathy for the young devils and, somehow, this gets aggregated at Memeorandum along with a post by Darleen Click talking back to left-wing “Vagina Warriors,” among them the predictably ridiculous Amanda Marcotte:

[Ann] Romney has a secret weapon up her sleeve: Housewife Romanticization. She knows the feminine mystique still runs strong in this country, and that there’s a strong tradition of idiotic platitudes about the greatness of housewives that exist to conceal very real concerns about inequality and female dependency, concerns that were raised in the 60s and haven’t ever been completely killed off despite heavy use of meaningless platitudes.

With feminists like Marcotte, using the vagina in a biologically normal way (penis + gametes = zygote = infant) is horrifying. They can endorse anything sexual except holy matrimony and traditional motherhood. Their reaction to Ann Romney (five kids) is the same as their reaction to Sarah Palin (five kids) or Karen Santorum (seven kids), and nothing can match their infinite contempt for Michelle Duggar (19 kids).

Indeed, “the personal is political” for Marcotte and her ilk: The mere existence of non-feminist women is an affront to their sensibilities. And you get the idea their sensibilities are so profoundly warped by neurotic insecurities that it takes an enormous effort for them to maintain any semblance of sanity.

As for what inspired Cassandra to go off on Taranto, I’m not sure. Maybe my pot-stirring post yesterday put him on her radar screen. At any rate, the great thing about being a married man is that you only have to worry about keeping one woman happy — or at least happy enough that she doesn’t knife you to death in your sleep. Mrs. Other McCain just shared with me a joke her friend posted on Facebook:

“One day a long time ago, there was a woman who did not whine, nag or bitch. But that was a long time ago, and it was only for one day.”

Indeed.

UPDATE: Bob Belvedere recounts his arguments with Joy McCann in “The Tragedy Of ‘Conservative Feminism’” — the scare-quotes necessary to denote the oxymoron.

Category: Family, Feminism, Mitt Romney, Mrs. Other McCain

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

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 23 Comments

Before blogging about this, I first checked Five Feet of Fury to see if the One Good Canadian, Kathy Shaidle, had weighed in. Because she obviously should, and if she had, I would have been obliged to link and quote her. How she could have missed this one, I don’t know.

Canadians are in an uproar — one might even say they’ve gotten their panties in a wad — because of the photo above, taken by a 24-year-old university student in British Columbia:

Sooraya Graham produced the image and presented it earlier this year for a class assignment as part of her fine arts degree at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. . . .

Some politically correct student busybodies were offended by the photo and removed it from display without securing anyone’s permission.

“I have a lot to express,” Graham said in an interview Thursday, explaining she wanted to remind people that Muslim women wear undergarments too.
“Even though some people want to silence those thoughts or make them go away, we live in Canada where as long as we’re not hurting another individual we have that right to express ourselves.”

Ah, but some Canadians are more equal than others, Sooraya, and one must always keep in mind the tender sensitivities of the easily offended bien-pensants. OK, now readers should brace themselves for the classic Paul Harvey now-you-know-the-rest-of-the-story plot twist:

Graham said her intention had been to “humanize” women who wear the niqab, which covers a woman’s entire head except for her eyes, by showing one doing a simple act that many women can relate to. . . .
Graham said her own decision to wear Islamic dress is aimed at being modest and garnering respect for her voice over her looks. Her friend, who is pictured in the photo, wears different variations to reflect her own feelings.

Whoa! The photographer is herself a Muslim who wears traditional garb and the woman pictured in the photo is her friend!

Canadians need a Jeff Goldstein discourse on “intentionalism.” But the story would not be complete without this hint of “creeping sharia”:

Since the incident was made public, an education centre in Kamloops funded by the Saudi Arabian Embassy has gone public with its opposition as well, Graham said.

Thus we have Saudi-funded organizations attempting to regulate the portrayal of Islamic culture in Canadian society: Perfect.

(Hat-tip: The Daily Beast.)

UPDATE: Because I’m an information omnivore, I sometimes forget where I get stuff. Checking my e-mail just now, I realized the Daily Beast item was sent to me — with the note, “How’d you miss this one?” — by a contributor to National Review, who shall remain anonymous, lest he get the Derbyshire treatment merely for being my acquaintance, much less for taking notice of this exemplary failure of multiculturalism.

By the way, in case you missed it: National Review “Derbed” another contributor, University of Illinois professor emeritus Robert Weissberg, for his unauthorized association with Thought Criminals.

The floggings will increase until morale improves!

UPDATE II: CBC has more on the Saudi angle:

But the Saudi Education Centre in Kamloops, which is funded by the Saudi Arabian government and provides support to Saudi students and their families, is taking issue with the photo.
“The artist didn’t approach the artwork let’s say in a very professional way that can state and can clarify the information and clarify the idea behind the picture,” said centre president Trad Bahabri.
Bahabri said he thinks text explaining the photo’s meaning is needed.
“I’m pretty sure many people misinterpret and many people misunderstand it. I can guarantee that,” he said.

Here’s Ezra Levant’s video commentary:

(Hat-tip: Lloyd S. on Twitter.)

Category: Canada, Feminism, Islam, Saudi Arabia, Sex

Barack Obama Deploys The ‘F’ Word

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty


Transcript comes from here.

#OccupyResoluteDesk Smitty
One of the fundamental challenges of our time is building an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules. How do you propose to judge, much less build, ‘fairness’, sir?
And as many Americans rush to file their taxes this weekend, it’s worth pointing out that we’ve got a tax system that doesn’t always uphold the principle of everyone doing their part. Why is it anyone’s job to judge who ‘does their part’? Where is your reference for this? How do you assign yourself the task of judging it? Just who are you?
Now, this is not just about fairness.  This is also about growth.  It’s about being able to make the investments we need to strengthen our economy and create jobs.  And it’s about whether we as a country are willing to pay for those investments. Growth? More of what your policies have delivered these three years, i.e. ‘shrinkage’ values of growth? How can the government be said to invest? Isn’t investment a private sector action undertaken for profit? Maybe you could show that government positions are ‘jobs’, and government spending is ‘growth’ first.
In a perfect world, of course, none of us would have to pay any taxes. We’d have no deficits to pay down.  And we’d have all the resources we needed to invest in things like schools and roads and a strong military and new sources of energy – investments that have always bolstered our economy and strengthened the middle class. Even Jesus of Nazareth paid His taxes. What good is this rhetorical toss-off here? Investments pay dividends. What school actually pays no-kidding financial dividends directly, ever? We’ve got to call your bluff on your cheap rhetorical conflations until you cut that noise out.
But we live in the real world, with real choices and real consequences. Right now, we’ve got significant deficits to close.  We’ve got serious investments to make to keep our economy growing.  And we can’t afford to keep spending more money on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans who don’t need them and didn’t even ask for them. When have you, ever, lived in the real, capitalistic world of America, sir? Ever? When? What we’ve got to do to keep the economy growing is go after your Leviathan welfare state with hammer and sicklepliers and a blowtorch
Warren Buffett is one of the wealthiest men in the world.  But he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.  That’s just the way the system is set up.  In fact, one in four millionaires pays a lower tax rate than millions of hardworking middle-class households. Ah, the Alinsky personalization and polarization. I love the smell of your radical Community Organizer nonsense in the morning. It smells like Communism. Wait, I don’t love that smell; it’s vomit inducing.

Anyway, the weather is far too nice to dwell on more Obama piffle. Let another blogger pick up the Fisk.

via The Blaze

Update: linked by The Lonely Conservative

Category: Barack Obama

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

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

Current U.S. policy comes into sharp focus if you presume that the intent is economic slavery for all. Instapundit points to the WaPoo, where Sheila Bair is on about loaning $10 Million to everybody as a means of ‘fixing’ income inequality.

Sweet, sweet fascism: taking your Creator-granted liberty, packaging it, and returning it with more strings attached than a parachute factory. Even without the explicit loaning of such funds, as snarkily suggested by Bair, this cynical swap of freedom of action in exchange for (supposed) freedom from want is the heart of the Progressive crack we’ve publicly smoked for the last century. “Zimbabwe” Ben Bernanke inflates the currency, the stock market goes up, and #OccupyResoluteDesk’s poll numbers improve (oh, wait).

Call it our economic perpetual motion machine. $10 million? Why not $100? The long term goal of Progressivism is reduction of all to state slavery. Bonus points for loudly claiming to care about women, minorities, nature, fairness, and anything else with emotional appeal along the way. Liberty, you see, was vastly overrated.

Update: Daily Pundit links, piles on snark.

Category: Instapundit, Progressivism

It Could Conceivably Be Worse

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 49 Comments

My post-primary depression has been hard to shake. Not even dancing up and down on Hilary Rosen cheered me up much.

But it could be worse. I could a North Korean rocket scientist.

I mean, think about that: You’re a freaking rocket scientist. But you’re in North Korea, arguably the worst totalitarian nightmare since the reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Nevertheless, your rocket-science skills made you one of the most important people in North Korea.

Until your rocket blew up.

Sucks to be you, huh?

As bad as it would be to be a North Korean rocket scientist, it might actually be more humiliating to be a North Carolina Democrat:

Jay Parmley, North Carolina’s Democratic Party executive director, has  been accused of sexual harassment by Adriadn Ortega, a former communications  staffer for the state party, according to a report by the J.W.P. Civitas  Institute.
An email chain The Daily Caller previously  obtained didn’t name the alleged perpetrator or the victim, but confirmed  the existence of the alleged sexual harassment, a financial settlement paid to  the victim and that Parmley and the victim had signed non-disclosure agreements.  Civitas has since reported the names of those involved.
On his Twitter account, Parmley describes himself as an “all around good guy  and a Democrat!”

IYKWIMAITYD.

Anyway, I’m bummed out by the end of the primary campaign, but are we really Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption?

Ace of Spades doesn’t think so. He thinks Obama’s failures are so transparently obvious that even Peggy Joseph has probably wised up by now. On the other hand, Ace once believed Rick Perry was going all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, so we should keep that in mind.

What about William Tucker of the American Spectator?

Call me crazy, but I think Mitt Romney has more than an even chance of winning this election against Barack Obama.

OK, then — I’m calling you crazy.

Still, I should look on the bright side: If even smart guys like Ace and William Tucker can convince themselves that Mitt Romney actually has a legit chance at winning in November, then lots of other people probably believe the same thing. So I can write about the general-election campaign pretending that I believe it, too. And then on  Nov. 7, after everybody’s naive dreams of a Romney victory have come crashing down like a North Korean rocket, I can say: “Chumps! Ain’t I done told you so?”

As long as I’ve got something to look forward to . . .

BTW, a belated Happy 59th Birthday to Charles Johnson.

 


Category: Election 2012

Gabby Doesn’t Dig Beta Males

Posted on | April 13, 2012 | 23 Comments

“Beta males greatly contrast manly men. They are weak, defenseless, and overtly emotional. They are uninspiring and deprived. And more importantly, they are subservient to women.
“Unfortunately, these emasculated males have pervaded society.”
— Gabby Hoffman, “It’s Raining Beta Men: Why Emasculation is a Curse, Not a Blessing”

Category: Feminism
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