The Other McCain

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

Twenty Percent Plus One

Posted on | March 29, 2012 | 146 Comments

Rusty Weiss puts my plight in perspective:

Two in 10 or 17 per cent of men aged 25 to 54 — traditionally the backbone of the workforce — are unemployed.

Yeah: I am now also unemployed — an ex-blogger.

Congratulations, Tabitha. I quit.

Category: Uncategorized

Newt Ally Says We’re Doomed

Posted on | March 29, 2012 | 19 Comments

Alexander Burns of Politico interviews longtime Newt Gingrich aide Rick Tyler, who is now in charge of the pro-Newt super PAC:

“Because I think ultimately, [Gingrich will] be proven right and if Mitt Romney is the nominee we will lose in the fall,” Tyler said. . . .
Romney has “pursued the politics of personal destruction.”
“You cannot win the presidency that way and you cannot win majorities that way,” the Gingrich booster said. “Our chances now of beating Barack Obama are dramatically diminished and our chances of winning the U.S. Senate are dramatically diminished.”

Meanwhile, I wonder, what will be the effect of Mitt Romney’s campaign on the fate of Scott Walker? We know that negative advertising depresses turnout, and Team Mitt is doing everything they can to stigmatize, demoralize and discourage Rick Santorum’s supporters.

Why do I suspect this bodes ill for Walker?

Category: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Wisconsin

LIVE AT FIVE (CDT) – 03.29.12

Posted on | March 29, 2012 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Supremes: Is ObamaCare All Or Nothing?

Paul Clement, attorney for the 26 states suing to strike down PPACA

Justices wrestling with question of whether declaring mandate unconstitutional takes out all of Obamacare

Secretary General Pushes Syria Plan In Baghdad
Meets regional leaders at Arab League summit

Pope Benedict Calls For More Freedom In Cuba
Calls for end to US embargo as well



POLITICS
Poll: Santorum Losing Ground To Romney In Pennsylvania

Rick Santorum signs a supporter's shirt in Sparta, Wisconsin

Lead shrinks to 30-28

Romney Goes On Leno, Cracks Wise (Just A Little)

Rubio Endorses Romney, Bush The Elder To Endorse Today




NYPD Sued Over Patrols Inside Apartment Buildings

Rep. Bobby Rush Makes Pointless & Stupid Gesture, Is Escorted Off Floor Of House

VP Biden Attacks Romney On Taxes, Outsourcing

California School Board Rejects Parent Takeover Bid

House Kills Bipartisan Budget And White House Budget Proposal As Well



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Trades Near One-Week Low On Stockpile Surge, Talk Of Reserve Release
US Stocks Pull Back For Fifth Day In Seven
Vegans Whine To Starbucks About Food Coloring In Frappachinos
Treasuries Stay Lower Before $29 Billion 7-Year Auction
Foxconn Buys Into Sharp
US Durable Goods Orders Up 2.2%
Hasidic High School Tells Students To Get Off Facebook Or Get Kicked Out Of School
AT&T Promises Biggest Launch Ever For Lumia 900 WinPhone
Apple CEO Visits Foxconn Plant In PRC
iPad Mini To Take On Samsung Note?
House Kills Facebook Password Protection Amendment



SPORTS
Ailing Knicks Clobber Magic

Carmelo Anthony scores 25

Knicks climb above .500 for first time since January, rout Magic 108-86 without injured Stoudemire, Lin

Flaming Out: Calgary Close To Elimination After 3-0 Loss To Kings

Don Nelson Gets The Call To NBA Hall Of Fame

Luol Deng Scores 22 As Bulls Dominate Hawks

Rangers Rally To Complete Season Sweep Of Jets

Ryder Lifts Stars Over Oilers In 3-1 Win

NFL Owners Extend Playoff OT Rules To Regular Season

Smith To Make Changes To Bristol Track After Taking Input From Fans

Nationals Roster: Still Under Construction

Xavier Nady In The Mix For Nationals



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Peter Facinelli Files For Divorce

Jennie Garth and s2bx hubby Peter Facinelli

Jennie Garth: I Tried To Save Our Marriage

Megan Fox Pregnant With First Child

Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana Split Up


Rihanna Scotches Ashton Kutcher Romance Rumors

Martina Navratilova First To Get The Boot From DWTS

Amandla Stenberg Responds To Racist “Hunger Games” Tweet Kerfluffle

Will Ferrell To Return For “Anchorman 2”

Peter Cook Returns Ex Christie Brinkley’s Fire



FOREIGNERS
Spanish General Strike Tests Tolerance For Austerity, Reforms
Turkey Seeks To Seal Preferred-Trade Deal With Iran
PRC: Nork Rocket Launch “Inappropriate”
Mali: ECOWAS Threatens Force
Israeli Borders On High Alert For “Global March To Jerusalem”
Strauss-Kahn Called Women “Luggage” In Texts Planning Sex Parties
Pakistan: A Summit Of Generals
Sikh Activists Protest As Gutless Government Defers Killer’s Hanging
Japan Executes First Three Convicts Since 2010



BLOGS & STUFF
Ed Driscoll: Couple Who Fled Home After Spike Lee Tweet Hire Law Firm
Legal Insurrection: Sourcing Narrative “Facts” In The Martin case
Sister Toldjah: Teachable Moment – Rep. Bobby Rush, Other Legislators Wear Trayvon Hoodies
Protein Wisdom: A Brief Aside, For Those Who Are Going Weak In The Knees Re The Trayvon Martin Political Theater
Washington Free Beacon: Scalia Likens Reading Obamacare Act To “Cruel And Unusual Punishment”
Ramesh Ponnuru: Lithwick’s Clouded Vision Of The Court
Powerline: Sense And Severability
Weasel Zippers: Marco Rubio Endorses Romney
Via Meadia: More Attacks On Jews In France
Jawa Report: Toulouse Terrorist’s Father Threatens To Sue France

Category: Live at Five

‘Those Festering Stereotypes’

Posted on | March 28, 2012 | 8 Comments

Karen Finney, hatemonger:

“[Republican politicians] reinforce and validate old stereotypes that associate the poor and welfare as criminal behavior with African-Americans and people of color, calling us lazy, undeserving recipients of public assistance. In the case of Trayvon, those festering stereotypes had lethal consequences.”

Right: Trayvon was killed by a Democrat, who was undoubtedly influenced by those Republican politicians. BTW, have you got your resumé in at CNN, Karen? Because they may be looking for a new morning anchor, and you could hardly be worse than the one they’ve got.

Category: MSNBC

NEWT MET SECRETLY WITH MITT BEFORE LOUISIANA PRIMARY

Posted on | March 28, 2012 | 31 Comments

In an exclusive story that would appear to undermine Newt Gingrich’s claims of opposing Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee, Ralph Z. Hallow of the Washington Times reports:

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich recently met in secret with GOP rival Mitt Romney at the former Massachusetts governor’s hotel in New Orleans, according to a Gingrich admirer close to the former Georgia congressman’s campaign.
Mr. Gingrich did not deny the meeting in his response to questions from The Washington Times, but did deny he had cut any deal to end his struggling presidential bid.
The two Republican rivals met at 7 a.m. Saturday, the morning of the Louisiana primary that would turn out to be another in a series of dismal defeats for Mr. Gingrich . . .
He explicitly said there was no understanding that Mr. Romney’s big donors would help retire the Georgian’s campaign debts of more than $1 million or that Mr. Romney had offered him a position in the next GOP administration in exchange for dropping out. . . .

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: CBS News:

Despite praising Gingrich, [Sheldon] Adelson, the Las Vegas casino mogul, said Gingrich is “at the end of his line,” partly because he is unable to obtain the 1144 delegates necessary to secure the nomination.
“‘Cause, I mean, mathematically he can’t get anywhere near the numbers and it’s not — is unlikely to be a brokered convention,” Adelson said in a video posted on JewishJournal.com.
Adelson and his wife, Miriam, gave $16.5 million to a pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future.

Category: Election 2012, Louisiana, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich

@Soledad_OBrien’s Unpopularity Destroys Morning Ratings for CNN

Posted on | March 28, 2012 | 36 Comments

Soledad O’Brien, America’s least-popular cable TV news personality

Executives at CNN must be in shock at the catatrophic implosion of their morning lineup, as Starting Point With Soledad O’Brien (7-9 a.m. weekdays) recorded the cable network’s lowest ratings for that time slot in more than a decade. Fewer than 100,000 adults 25-54 tuned in to O’Brien’s program on an average day, according to the latest quarterly Nielsen numbers.

Inside Cable News called the CNN morning numbers “brutal,” and “an epic ratings collapse,” further adding: “CNN cannot continue to hemorrhage viewers like this much longer without taking drastic corrective action.” While industry observers were amazed by O’Brien’s uprecedented unpopularity, the outspoken liberal host’s historically low ratings were a cause for vengeful celebration by conservatives like the Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher:

Every day, @Soledad_OBrien‘s ratings are worse than the last. That means every time you see her, it’s the worst day of her life.

O’Brien inspired widespread mockery from conservatives earlier this month when she embarrassed herself in an attempt to argue with Breitbart.com editor Joel Pollak, whose site exposed President Obama’s ties to the late Professor Derrick Bell, an academic radical notorious for promoting so-called “critical race theory.”

Update (Smitty): linked by Don Surber:

Soledad O’Brien’s unpopularity is symptomatic of how out-of-touch CNN is. The network lost its credibility with conservatives, who are the core audience for cable TV news. MSNBC at least can get frat boy libs to tune in at night. CNN? It has to stick TVs in dental offices, airports and gas chambers to get people to watch. If I were about to be executed, I would say, hurry up. Wolf Blitzer is coming back on.

 


Category: CNN

Could The SCOTUS Prove Worse Than Nancy Pelosi?

Posted on | March 28, 2012 | 24 Comments

by Smitty

Big Government links SCOTUSblog, and then BG concludes, emphasis mine:

Apparently, both Justices Scalia and Kennedy didn’t trust that Congress might be able to work out a new law that was actually Constitutional; Kennedy stated that asking Congress to do its job would be unrealistic unless the Court was speaking about “the hypothetical Congress.”
This, of course, is what the Obama Administration had in mind the entire time they were constructing a nearly 3,000 page bill. Nobody in Congress knew what was in it; the American public doesn’t know what’s in it; and now the Supreme Court seems wary of determining just what’s in it. If the Supreme Court rules the individual mandate constitutional, it won’t do so because the mandate is actually constitutional – it will do so because it believes that its coequal branch of government, Congress, must be forced to uphold its own constitutional duty and take an axe to this thicket of complexity. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen.

In software terms, that seems like saying: “Well, the SQL Injection compromised the LAMP stack out in the DMZ, so we might as well give the attackers the rest of the network, too.”

A few quick points:

  • ObamaCare is an anti-American, un-Constitutional pile of hooey.
  • Its passage represented, at all points, such a dereliction of duty that any member of the House who voted ‘Yes’ on it, and hasn’t already been impeached at the ballot box by their constituents, merits impeachment. Also, any ideological tool on the Court that somehow writes an anti-Constitutional dissent in favor of ObamaCare merits impeachment; they must have been telling a ‘Made in Zambiniland’ form of truth when they testified before Congress.*
  • The SCOTUS should tell the 113th Congress to review the job the 111th Congress so disastrously punted. Also, Federalist 62, especially the part where Madison said It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. Surely, Madison wrote that precisely with creeps like the Wicked Witch of the West in mind. Turning Nancy’s ObamaCare abortion into something that doesn’t suck with an unholy vacuum is not the task of the SCOTUS.

Protein Wisdom sounds an ominous note here:

Again, to the left — the ideological ruling class left, as opposed to the useful idiots they keep about screeching for “social justice” in lieu of having to actually reach into pocket and pay for such things voluntarily — this battle was never over health care. That was but the facade. This was an attempt to fundamentally redefine the relationship between citizen and government. It was an attempt to build on the already flimsy sham that was Wickard in order to assert federal control over every aspect of our lives — and to do so while (perversely) claiming a Constitutional basis for doing so.
If it fails, we shouldn’t rejoice so much as begin asking how we ever got this close to living under soft tyranny in a country built on a foundation meant to protect us from what has become — and will remain — a predatory federal authority always looking for ways to expand.
And it seems that’s the case regardless of which Party establishment holds office.
The battle to retake the US is only beginning. And the truth is, it may already be lost.

Yes, the pre-Progressive Age America is indeed lost. Indeed, it may be that the Federal government has become as odious as the Parliament we held the Revolution to escape. May our second, pro-Constitutional revolution remain peaceful.

Update: linked by That Mr. G Guy.

*OK, clearly I’m spun up about this. We wouldn’t want an environment where the merest dissent triggers impeachment. However, as the Administration’s Solicitor General correctly points out, this is a Special Case. 😉

Update II: POH Diaries links, reporting that Nancy Pelosi is as certain of the outcome of the SCOTUS review as she is about the contents of her legislative progeny.

Category: Health Care, Supreme Court

BlogCon 2012: Learn Podcasting With @FingersMalloy and @EdMorrissey!

Posted on | March 28, 2012 | 28 Comments

That’s right, folks: BlogCon 2012 — April 20-21 at the fabulous Hilton Center City in Charlotte, N.C. — will feature a lunchtime podcasting seminar with my close personal friends Fingers Malloy and Ed Morrissey!

All of your favorite bloggers will be in Charlotte for this once-in-a-lifetime New Media extravaganza. RSVP now to make sure you don’t miss it.

Meanwhile, there seems to be some misunderstanding . . .

What can I say? I checked the list and my name’s not on it. Three weeks ago, when I tried to mend fences with Tabitha at the Breitbart memorial event in D.C., she chewed me out and made it clear that she resented the fact that I would even dare speak to her.

It appears that Tabitha and I agree on exactly two things:

  1. She has always hated my guts; and
  2. It’s all my fault.

Which might make an interesting seminar topic — “Effective Methods for Humiliating Bloggers You Hate” — but that’s more of a general theme, really, and Tabitha’s unexplained three-year vendetta against me is something I’ll probably never be able to figure out.

At any rate, my persona non grata status is entirely my fault. Smitty will be at BlogCon, along with many more of my close personal friends, who will all have fun laughing at me behind my back.

BlogCon 2012: Don’t miss it!

Category: Blogging
« 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