The Other McCain

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

Brutal: New Rick Santorum TV Ad Compares Mitt Romney to Barack Obama

Posted on | April 2, 2012 | 27 Comments

According to Politico, this new TV ad is now running in Wisconsin and will soon be running in Pennsylvania:

UPDATE: This ad appears to be part of a general effort by the Santorum campaign to put the focus squarely on health care, as the candidate also publishes an op-ed column in USA Today:

As the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, we Americans need to remember that we have the freedom to make choices for ourselves. We, not our government, choose the food to eat, the clothes to wear, the ideas to believe. “ObamaCare” is the opposite of freedom. Under ObamaCare, the government, not the individual, has freedom. We can do better.
Just ask the Congressional Budget Office. It forecast that as many as 20 million Americans could lose their employer-provided health insurance under ObamaCare, and that premium costs will rise over the next decade.
ObamaCare – based on RomneyCare, the plan Massachusetts adopted when Mitt Romney was governor – tells insurance companies which benefits their policies must offer and what range of prices they could charge. It requires that individuals buy conforming policies, and cuts $500 billion from Medicare. The Independent Payment Advisory Board will limit what treatments doctors can prescribe. . . .

Read the rest.

 
 


Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012, Health Care, Mitt Romney, Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, Video, Wisconsin

‘A Portrait of a Dysfunctional Alliance That Was Doomed From the Start’

Posted on | April 2, 2012 | 8 Comments

Thus does Howard Kurtz describe the e-mails between Current TV and its recently fired superstar, Keith Olbermann:

The arguments escalated for months, with Olbermann directly appealing to the former vice president on three or four occasions, until relations had become so poisoned that, on Friday, Current fired Olbermann for breach of contract. He has vowed to take the matter to court and questioned the ethics of [Al] Gore and [Joel] Hyatt.
Some of the disputes are fundamental—such as missing days of work—and some sound petty, but they add up to a portrait of a dysfunctional alliance that was doomed from the start. Where Current management viewed Olbermann as a chronic complainer who had clashed with the bosses before leaving his previous jobs at MSNBC and ESPN, the liberal commentator came to believe that he had joined a rinky-dink operation, even if the channel was committed to paying him $50 million over five years.

Of course, both points of view are arguably true: Olbermann is a chronic complainer and Current TV is a rinky-dink operation.

It is also true, however, that communicating by e-mail is a poor substitute for sitting down face-to-face to discuss a problem. Even a phone call is a more humane means of communication. So the very fact that the “relationship” turned into a series of back-and-forth e-mails between network executives and Olbermann’s manager was probably a big part of the problem.

Also, as several people have pointed out, Olbermann’s status at Current seemed to go downhill once the network hired former CNN executive David Bohrman as their new president. That may be coincidental, or maybe not. If Olbermann was used to dealing directly with Gore and Hyatt, and suddenly he had to deal with Bohrman as the go-between, you could see how that might lead to trouble.

Category: Keith Olbermann

Stephanopoulos: ‘Van Hollen, How Will The Dems Reply To Ryan?’
Van Hollen: ‘George, We’ll Take Class Warfare For 45% On The Rich’

Posted on | April 2, 2012 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

UPDATE: regret autoplay faux pas. I blame Hugo Chavez. Click URLs to view clips.

You’ve really got to enjoy the panache with which Chris van Hollen tries to serve a polished Democ**t budget turd:
http://widget.newsinc.com/single.html

AEI explains the atrociousness of the Democ**t budget in detail. My question is, could this be a tell that Van Hollen is a Motörhead fan?

Note to Chris van Hollen: your party is a complete, utter, categorical joke on budgeting. Pretty much everything else, too. However, your reliance upon the stupidity of the American people to believe that the very wealthy (e.g. Congress members and their friends) would actually pay these murderous tax rates is an astounding kidney-load down the back. Thanks for the ‘rain’, man.

Bonus: Van Jones gets his nose tweaked by Ann Coulter. How funny it is to see a Commie try to make the freeloader argument. Just WTF was a ‘Green Jobs Czar’, anyway? And, past the nonsense, Socialism is the freeloader problem writ large.
http://widget.newsinc.com/single.html

Category: Budget, Democrats

A Comment On Comments, Served Up As A Post

Posted on | April 1, 2012 | 26 Comments

by Smitty

Breitbart has a post concerning their comment system. That’s not terribly notable, except that it’s the same one this blog has used for a year-ish. So maybe Stacy will give me a little credit for technology choices, and even ponder some of my other suggestions, for example, TweetDeck.

Third party comment systems like Disqus facilitate more comments by making it trivial to log in using Twitter or Facebook accounts. I commend the use of such systems to all bloggers who would like more comments on their posts. In fact, I’ll venture to the bulk of the WordPress blogs that you’re taking it on the chin. Blogger is a bit less tedious, for me, as it lets you log in with a Google account. I would share more of my vibrant wit with any number of WordPress blogs, but YetAnotherBleedingLogin has all the attractiveness of Arianna Huffington sporting a three alarm hangover.

Then again, you might consider fewer one-liners from me a feature.

Update: Daily Pundit wants inline (non-nested?) comments. I think you can set that, in fact.

Category: Blogging

I Had Never Really Felt Any Need to Learn to Speak Japanese — Until Now

Posted on | April 1, 2012 | 19 Comments

Maetenloch at AOSHQ posted this video, and suddenly I had a reason — no, wait, make that two reasons — to take an interest:

In unrelated news from the Pacific Rim: You know that stereotype about Chinese being lousy drivers? Totally false.

Category: China, Japan, Video

No Bowlder Man Than Dennis Walcott Ever Lived

Posted on | April 1, 2012 | 13 Comments

by Smitty via Hot Air

New York City Department of Education Chancellor Dennis Walcott has published a list of 50 words that should be expunged from standardized tests. Let us celebrate bowdlerization with a meditation on why Progressivism is cranial rectalitis at its finest using all 50 words/ideas that Walcott finds objectionable, in what is an excerpt from an internal memo:

The Orwellian abuse inflicted upon our culture at the hands of us Postmodern, Progressive–let’s just put it out there–Godless Commies, while actually worse than all of the alcohol, tobacco, and drugs assailing the culture, is a necessary evil to bring about Utopia. From birth (if we deem you fit, in our  Sanger-esque milieu), Progressives must mold formerly free people into our precise little geometric forms, even down to the level of bodily functions.

Truly, we Progressives are the scourge of liberty, but, then, what good has liberty ever done? No catastrophe can occur, for example, Hurricane Katrina, or even a tragic death like Trayvon Martin, without us mining it for propaganda value against the likes of George W. Bush or Rush Limbaugh, yet conservatism won’t die! Celebrities like Morgan Freeman or Janeane Garofalo are told to speak the stupidest things imaginable. Sean Penn defies the imagination. Truly, this is a higher form of humor.

The destruction of the family has, necessarily, meant the crushing of childhood. Children have to matriculate a course in sex and drugs and rock’n’roll just to survive kindergarten. Cigarettes are the least of their worries. Computers have invaded every corner of life. Kids are carrying Android phones to school. You do realize that Android is Linux based? The language used in the source code comments is a threat to the children! Fnord. Progressives celebrate divorce, its liberating effect upon feminists, and its helpfully destructive effect upon the family. The question becomes: how to make divorces uglier, to maximize the negative effect upon children?

The trick would be to mix Evolution into the equation. Tell the children that, by unfortunate accident, they were created by genetically inferior parents, but that the State can help them. While they will be afforded all the hedonistic outlet they can imagine, and then some, by the State. Continuous sexual gratification is, after all, part of the Third Bill of Rights. Not to be confused with reproduction, however. Parenthood, like all expensive gifts, vacations, and prizes, is something that must be rationed by the State, to make it ‘fair’. Running away is to be encouraged, both for its immediate deleterious effect on the family, and for the increased hopelessness it breeds. This drives mangled youth to be more malleable by the state.

Yet, homelessness must never be mentioned when there is a Democ**t in the Oval Office. Disease, homelessness, and loss of employment, and crime are only reported during conservative administrations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been infiltrated, and will only announce ‘shiny’ numbers. Also, since Republicans are the party of the rich, homes with swimming pools, hunting, and junk food are of high importance. A pulitzer to anyone snapping a photo of a Bush rigged for the bush, with a shotgun cradled, standing next to his tennis court, mowing down on pork rinds.

Crime of all sorts, of course, will continue to plague society until the entire patriarchal male/female/family model has been finally demolished. Death and disease can be minimized, but until Progressives gain full control, first through ObamaCare, then Single Payer after ObamaCare implodes like the bureaucratice singularity it was meant to be, we will have to continue blaming death and disease upon conservative values and capitalism. Why engage in gambling involving money, when you can do it with peoples’ lives? It is the height of Progressive pleasure, for example, to create scarcity through manipulating markets, to create fear at all times of year, not merely Halloween. Now that is some true crime.

In-depth discussions of sports that require prior knowledge are essential. Sports are the new religion, and thus an opiate for the masses. Sportsmanship, however, must be exposed as a fiction, so that the overpaid prima donnas in garish clothing can be vanguards of societal decay.

Nuclear weapons are a fine source of fear and anxiety, and should be used to generate angst, which can then be focused on conservatives. Occult topics, like vampires and werewolves, can add to the general malaise. Vampires have always had a hedonistic subtext about them, which makes them a good weapon for use to crank up crotch maintenance requirements amongst the godless youth. All forms of witchcraft, sorcery, etc. are in play. Parapsychology and all other non-traditional spiritual topics are fine tools for driving the youth towards a desirable nihilism, while pornography will continue to help degrade and devalue traditional symbols, harden average hearts, and diminish societal joy. Vermin (rats and roaches) are for prominent display, as they underscore the ultimate truth that the common people don’t deserve pretty things.

Poverty is a huge control mechanism, feeding as it does the root envy that drives class warfare. Capitalism makes you want to work your way to join the affluent. Class warfare brings the affluent to the poor. Rap Music, like rock’n’roll, is the anti-rational soundtrack for all that is Progressivism. Rhythm-heavy appeals to the flesh keep the sheep intellectually flocked up. Conflations of ‘love’ and ‘sex’ are encouraged.

Religion is good for Progress, insofar as it can provide fodder for guilt and permit the crushing of individuality under the aegis of nebulous “social justice.” Conversely, anybody feeling liberated from the State through their faith must be punished. The State will not have any other gods before it. So forget religious holidays and festivals (including but not limited to Christmas, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan, though Muslim observances are certainly permissible under the guise of multiculturalism.)

Terrorism, violence, war and bloodshed, traumatic material, and weapons (guns, knives, etc.) are all key tools for jacking up the anxiety level of people of all ages, and turning them into willing putty of the State. Television and video games are a great means of turning otherwise creative people into pudding heads.

Politics in everything, all the time, is what this is about. The control of the state must extend to everything, but slavery can only come up when attached to conservatives. Conversely, individualism must be crushed.

Be it known that the author achieved a self-creep-out while writing this.

Update: linked at The Camp of the Saints.

Category: Hot Air, Progressivism

Rick Santorum And The Traditional Justice System

Posted on | April 1, 2012 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

Jeffery Levin on Twitter points to The Hill, where Rick Santorum seems strangely unconvinced about the wisdom of a national conference on race in the era of Hope’n’Change:

The question. . .was posed to Santorum by talk radio host Laura Ingraham Monday.
“Absolutely not,” Santorum said. “This is either a very disturbed man or circumstances that we’re not aware of that may or may not come out of this case. Let the case play out, and let’s find out what the facts are. As I’ve said—I’ve condemned this. It looks to me as a heinous act. But you know what, let the process work. Let’s find out what’s really going on here. And let’s just focus on the people who are involved.”

In other words, crowd-sourcing our legal system is possibly not the swiftest idea. This whole ‘conversation on race’ piffle is merely a distractor from actual national issues. The propaganda nature of the idea of a ‘conversation on race’ is so blatantly obvious that the World’s Youngest Blogger can hardly halt himself from matching it bile for bile:

Fortunately, the sweater vest helped him hold it together.

As is often the case, Rick seems to have more backbone on the topic than the alternatives.

Update: linked by the Catholic Bandita

Update II: Daily Pundit is having none of Santorum.

Category: Racism, Rick Santorum

Dude, Did You Have to Diss Ann Coulter? Also: Obama Has ‘Certainly Been Massively Disappointing to Young People’

Posted on | April 1, 2012 | 17 Comments

Let’s face it: Ever since Ann Coulter volunteered as head cheerleader for Team Romney, some of Miss Coulter’s longtime conservative defenders have been under tremendous pressure to denounce her.

The problem is that nearly all the people who joined the anti-Coulter movement back in the day — and I’m looking at you, Ace of Spades — are also now on the “Roll Over for Romney” bandwagon. So while I defended her when she called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “raghead” and called John Edwards a “faggot,” I should probably be content to let Ace (and Sean Hackbarth, Ed Morrissey, Joy McCann, et al.) defend Miss Coulter now that she’s snuggling up with Mister Inevitability.

Nevertheless, I was irritated when I saw that Matt Lewis cited Ann Coulter as an example of a media “peacock” in a Daily Caller item he posted last week, even while Matt was making a point worth considering:

[On March 16], there was tremendous buzz about a picture of Rick Santorum sunbathing. I’m sure it got a lot of hits, but  it was completely irrelevant, and utterly vapid. I’m sure we probably ran it — we sort of had to. But can you imagine back in the old days if a reporter had  come to a grizzled, old newspaper editor with the idea of publishing that photo?  The old fella might have said, “Son, we’re not going to run that because it’s  not news. We’re not going to run that as long as I’m here. I don’t care if other  newspapers do — we’re not. Now get the hell out of my office!”
Today, that old guy is dead. Or retired — probably pushed out by some  upstart.

Having dealt with a few grizzled old newspaper editors in my day, I very well see the point Matt is trying to make. What is happening is that the news media are being democratized, for both good and ill, so that the readers get whatever the readers want, including society reporters turned strippers and NFL cheerleader sex scandals.

Yet I’ve always said that if I were ever put in charge of a newspaper, I’d run it like the NY Post: Lots of celebrities, scandals, sports and crime stories to pull in the readers, thus to pay the bills for the political coverage and the right-wing op-ed pages.

So if I were the grizzled old editor and some reporter brought me a picture of Rick Santorum sunbathing, my response would be: “What the hell is wrong with you, kid? I said I wanted Ann Romney bikini pictures! Now get to work on it, or you’re fired!”

Part of what’s wrong with the conservative movement — and maybe we can discuss this at “DoomCon 2012” — is a sense of insecurity that manifests itself as a craving for respectability.

This prudishly superficial concern with being “respectable” causes some conservatives to scurry for cover the minute Ann Coulter says “faggot” or Rush Limbaugh says “slut,” so that all liberals have to do is make a big deal about some silly little “gaffe” or “scandal” and they win.

Wake the hell up, conservatives: Are you going to let Politico and Media Matters pick your leaders and spokesmen for you? Remember Breitbart!

OK, so that’s my rant about that. Meanwhile, via the eminently respectable Washington Free Beacon, we have this delightful video:

Obama has “certainly been massively disappointing to young people,” says Stephen Marche of Esquire, a liberal magazine that features lots of pictures of nearly naked women.

Polls show Obama’s popularity among the young “started at 63 percent and I think it’s in the 30s now,” says Marche. “It just continues to fall.”

Good. Now go get me those Ann Romney bikini pictures.

Update: linked by Fishersville Mike.

Category: Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, Election 2012, Matt Lewis, Mitt Romney, R.S. McCain School of Journalism
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin