The Other McCain

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

A Political Platform That Sizzles

Posted on | March 20, 2012 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

And a little Dare of the Hog:


Interesting that Green feels about as underwhelmed with Santorum as this blog does with Romney; however, the editorial work done to make Senator John McCain interesting more than made up for the Rick bit.

Vote VodkaPundit:
Four pounds of bacon on the griddle, and a fifth in hand!

Update: linked at Daily Pundit

Category: VodkaPundit

LIVE AT FIVE – 03.20.12

Posted on | March 20, 2012 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Romney Pushes Hard For Win In Illinois Primary

Mitt Romney speaks at the University of Chicago

Bashes Santorum on economy as he struggles to overcome the “enthusiasm gap”

French Police Worry About Additional Attacks In Wake Of Toulouse Attack
Final toll four in shootings outside Jewish school


Justice Department To Investigate Trayvon Martin Killing
Unarmed teenager slain by neighborhood watch member



POLITICS
House GOP Budget Proposal Targets Taxes

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.)

Reduces tax brackets to two, trims unspecified deductions

Contrition Accomplished? SanFran Sheriif Mirkarimi Gets Three Years’ Probation For Domestic Abuse

Obama Raises $45 Million For Self, DNC In February


Video Of TSA Toddler Screening Ignites Fury

Zero Tolerance For Return Of New York Occupods

Idaho Senate Votes To Require Pre-Abortion Ultrasounds

Santorum: Issue Is Not Economy But Oppressive Government



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Drops From Three-Week High On Signs Supplies Are Rising
Apple’s Next Hot Release: The Dividend Check
Crowdsourcing, Kaspersky Crack DuQu Virus Coding
Treasuries Snap Nine-Day Decline as , Stocks Commodities Slip
Berkshire Stockholder Suit Over Sokol Insider Trading Tossed
Government Turns $25 Billion Profit On Mortgage Securities Bought Under TARP
Inflight Gadget Ban Under Review
Wendy’s Becomes #2 In Burger Biz, Knocks Off The King
Windows 8 Reportedly Set For October Debut
Mike Daisey Presents: This American Lie
NetZero Offers Free 4G Service
Fragmentation Wounds Android In Developer War
Free Apps Waste Your Batteries



SPORTS
Manning’s Choice Sparks Mixed Reactions Among Broncos Fans

A farewell to Tebowmania?

Fans concerned that team is passing up opportunities for Tebow in favor of fragile QB “one hit away from retirement”

Rangers Outpunch Devils For Playoff Berth

Mets Settle Financial Suit, Not Yet Out Of Financial Woods

Thibodeaux Fastest NBA Coach To 100 Wins As Bulls Rout Magic

Tarheels’ Point Guard Goes Under Knife

Celtics Slam Back, Rally To Beat Hawks 79-76


Tigers’ Cabrera Gets Stitches After Fielding Grounder With Face

Bruins Demolish Maple Leafs 8-0 For Season Sweep

Grizzlies To Sign Free Agent Gilbert Arenas

Nationals’ Lombardozzi Turning Heads At The Plate And In The Field



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Good News: Ashton Kutcher Being Fired Into Space

Ashton Kutcher

Bad News: He’ll be returning to Earth

Trump Slams Rosie O’Donnell

Bloodbath At Oprah Winfrey Network

Josh & Jessica Lucas Married – And Expecting!

What Have They Done To Demi Moore?


Pregnant Snooki To Appear In “Jersey Shore” Season 6

Jessica Alba To Release First Book

Lady Gaga: “I Do Not Intend To Speak To Anyone For A Very Long Time”



FOREIGNERS
France Launches Massive Manhunt For Jewish School Killer
The Parallel Universe Of Bashar Al-Assad
Bombings Across Iraq Kill 28
Gallows Humor Over Iranian Nukes Widespread In Israel
Pie In The Sky, Pyongyang Style
Sri Lanka Divided Over UN Resolution
Pak Urges US To Stop Drone Attacks
Accused Soldier Hazy About Night Of Slayings
Report On Ousted Chongqing Party Boss Shows CCP Efforts At Damage Control
Zimbabweans Caught Watching Arab Spring Video Face Ten Years In Prison



BLOGS & STUFF
Alice Schroeder: Buffett Message Is “Do As I Say, Not As I Do”
Lonely Conservative: Obama More Interested In Politics Than Governing, Blames Troubles On Fox News
American Thinker: US Wargaming Israeli Attack On Iran
Bristol Palin: Mr. President, When Should I Expect Your Call?
Don Surber: Bristol Calls Obama Out
NewsBusters: Surprise! CNN Legal Analyst Whacks Case Against ObamaCare Mandate As “Really Weak”
Jawa Report: Zawahiri’s Brother Freed By Egyptian Court
PJ Tatler: Russia Jumps The Shark In Syria
Hit&Run: Obama’s Daughter Vacations In Mexico, But Let’s Not Mention That – In Fact, Let’s Not Even Have Ever Discussed It
Weasel Zippers: Iranian Thugs Intimidate Dissidents During UNHRC Meeting
Maggie’s Notebook: The Bloody Irony Of Holder’s Anti-Gun Campaign
Jammie Wearing Fools: Maybe She’ll Take A Veteran On Her Next Vacation
Jihad Watch: Red Ken Livingstone Pledges To Make London A Beacon For Islam
Ed Driscoll: Don’t Cry For Me Syriana

Category: Live at Five

To the Reader Who Bought Two SeaGate External Hard Drives From Amazon

Posted on | March 19, 2012 | 3 Comments

Thanks! When I occasionally check the Amazon Associates sales report, I always find out we’ve sold some item I never even knew Amazon offered. So when I saw someone had bought the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 2 TB FireWire 800 USB 2.0 External Hard Drive for Mac STBC2000101 — two of them, at $168.98 each — my first thought was, “What the heck is this gizmo?”

Ultimately, I don’t even need to know. As long as you know what you want, Amazon will sell it to you, and when you shop through our Amazon Associates links, you get great low prices, free Super Saver shipping on most orders over $25, and I get a commission. I originally thought of Amazon as an online bookstore, and I’m pleased to see we’ve recently sold multiple copies of Andrew Breitbart’s book, Righteous Indignation — including the Kindle edition — but we’ve also sold stuff I never knew Amazon sold, including a two-month supply of Sensa Natural Weight-Loss products.

Lots of great bargains for you, lots of shameless profit opportunities for me — how perfectly capitalistic is that, huh? Obama hates it when you shop our Amazon links. And if Obama hates it, it must be good, so shop Amazon today!

Category: Amazon

A Whiter Shade Of GOPale

Posted on | March 19, 2012 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

And so it was that later
as McCotter told his tale
Smitty’s face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of GOPale

McCotter laments at length at Ricochet, and I excerpt:

“I want to shout, but I can’t hardly speak”
Presently, Rock-n-Roll Reaganites are in exile on Lame Street. Bored in the conservative media establishment’s cultural gutters; beset by crony capitalism’s billionaire beggars; and bewildered by the fervid hucksters of “Cliff’s Notes” Constitutionalism, Rock-n-Roll Reaganites possess the same prospects for a return to cultural relevance as does Alex P. Keaton’s alter ego’s flick, Poison Ivy.

In today’s twitter-splintered parlance: “WTF?”

“It’s all mesmerized, all that inside me”

To understand what went recently wrong, we must examine what went initially right, so to speak.

In 1980, the long simmering conservative movement boiled over with Reagan’s election. The only President who made a living in the arts (and served as an elected union leader), Reagan deftly melded his political and theatrical sensibilities and timing throughout his Presidency; and ensured conservatism retained the virtues that sustained it during its rise to political and cultural prominence. Creative, entrepreneurial, impish, rebellious and, above all, rooted in the shared experiences of Americans, conservatism was called the “counter-counter-culture” – a testament its clear and present threat and ultimate transcendence of the politically and culturally dominant liberalism.

“Headed for the overload”

But nothing undoes like excess. Insensate to the cultural counter-stroke that was the Baby-Boomer Bill Clinton’s Presidency, in the aftermath of the 1994 “Republican Revolution” and the 2004 Presidential re-election of George W. Bush, the GOP hubristically declared it had attained a “permanent majority.” This was akin to Keith Richards saying he was completely straight. Dismissive of the late Andrew Breitbart’s dictum that “culture is downstream from politics”; rapt with their power and perks; and absent inspiration and vision, the flush Republican “leadership” contented itself with living off the fumes of the Reagan Revolution and wallowing in the mire of pork barrel politics and lame managerial talking points. Good times.

Read the whole thing. I’m a tremendous fan of McCotter; I think he’s one of the straighter shooters in the Progressive Pride parade. The crux of his argument seems to be the intersection of “Cliff’s Notes” Constitutionalism and Rock-n-Roll Reaganites.

The article works well as a retrospective of sorts. McCotter begins with “the idea that conservatism was once hip is as hard to imagine as 4% unemployment rates and the Flock of Seagulls selling records. But, alas, ’tis true.” And now there is this chorus of “Cliff’s Notes” Constitutionalists who look at the debt, the deficit-sans-budget, and the GOP and, indeed, float a “WTF?”

And so we’re making up for the education deficit, on Twitter, in blogs, at Tea Party gatherings. Regan, for all his gifts, could no more unwind a century of Progressivism than he could cheat the Iron Law of Bureaucracy. The cancer that is Progressivism has struck back with a vengeance over the last decade.

One could lament, put on some Floyd, and commence to get potted. We could bicker and argue over ‘oo betrayed their Constitutional oath more than ‘oo. The only thing that really matters, Rep. McCotter, is liberty. Everything undertaken has to be about liberty. More concretely, the enumerated powers of the Constitution. Progressivism is not Constitutionally well-founded. All of these nanny-state safety net programs that are not proper federal tasks Really. Have. To. Go.

Like geriatric rockers owning up to their tiny todgers, the GOP elite needs to come clean about just how utterly filthy, immoral, and untrustworthy the government has become. The pig’s lips have rotted away, and will accept no more lipstick. Honesty is going to mean a few careers go under the bus. Deal with it. When history judges, it’s better to be in the Bonhoeffer column than the other one.

There is a general notion that this era is coming to a close, hopefully too violent on a grand scale. But we have to get past the nadir for the slope of liberty to become positive again.

Category: GOP, Thaddeus McCotter

Bristol Palin Blogs!

Posted on | March 19, 2012 | 29 Comments

by Smitty

And, instantly, becomes more important than “warmly conformly” Meghan McCain. See, Meghan: if you show some moral courage, despite life’s adversities, you too could eventually be worthy of respect.

via Haemet

See also Insty and The Camp of the Saints.

Update: linked at Daily Pundit

Category: Blogging

Is Newt’s Campaign Bankrupt?

Posted on | March 19, 2012 | 17 Comments

An article at National Journal about Obama’s $45 million February fundraising haul mentions a fact I’ve repeatedly emphasized:

Obama’s numbers soundly trumped his GOP rivals in  February fundraising. Mitt Romney brought in about $11.5 million,  whereas Rick Santorum and Ron Paul brought in roughly $9 million and  $3.3 million, respectively. Newt Gingrich has not released his February  totals yet.

If it was good news, we would have heard about it by now. Just got off the phone with the Federal Election Commission press office, which confirmed that the Feburary FEC reports are due Tuesday.

As of Jan. 31, the Gingrich campaign’s net balance — cash-on-hand of $1,788,590, minus debts of $1,726,085 — was just $62,505. February was an uninterrupted series of defeats for Gingrich. After losing Nevada Feb. 4, he was third in Colorado and fourth in Minnesota (Feb. 7), fourth in Maine (Feb. 11), then third in Arizona and fourth in Michigan (Feb. 28).

It is therefore likely that Newt’s financial situation in February deteriorated significantly from the less-than-ideal situation in January, when Gingrich raised just $5.5 million while spending $16.4 million.

What will we learn when the FEC posts the February reports tomorrow? We don’t know, but if the Gingrich campaign didn’t put the brakes on its  $16-million-a-month January “burn rate” soon enough, it’s likely the FEC report will show the campaign ended February with a negative balance — more debt than cash-on-hand.

The silence from Team Newt hints that the red ink might be very deep.

Category: Election 2012, Newt Gingrich

#Occupy Sympathizer Who Tweeted About Killing Cops: Meet Rusty Braxton

Posted on | March 19, 2012 | 12 Comments

As previously noted, when police shut down Saturday’s Occupy protest in New York, a Twitter user with the handle “smackema1” sent a message: “We wont make a difference if we dont kill a cop or 2.” After it was announced that a criminal investigation of the threat had been undertaken, the New York Daily News located the 23-year-old punk:

“I’m not a cop hater,” Rusty Braxton told the Daily News as the police continued to investigate Saturday’s ugly online remark.
“I don’t want any cops killed. They’re doing their job. They’re civil servants.”
Braxton, of Oviedo, Fla., sent the tweet from his hometown during Saturday’s six-month anniversary protest at Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park.
“We wont make a difference if we dont kill a cop or 2,” the restaurant manager wrote.
His Facebook page contains photographs of guns and he said in his Twitter feed that he has permits for a Mossberg shotgun and a Smith & Wesson pistol. . . .
He says he’s never been to New York or attended an Occupy protest.
But he admitted the actions of police sometimes makes him angry.
“When I see the police throw people down and push people, I get upset,” he said.

Oviedo is about 20 miles from downtown Orlando. Why this young Florida restaurant manager would be watching a livestream of the Occupy protests and urging violence against cops, I don’t know.

Braxton’s only previous criminal record was a juvenile dope bust. David Martosko of the Daily Caller had a Twitter exchange with Braxton and reports that Braxton’s account has since been deleted.

In his Twitter feed, Braxton’s spelling, grammar and punctuation were abysmal. So he’s a semi-literate dopehead who hates cops — which is to say, a typical product of the public-education system.

Category: #Occupy, Crime, Florida, New York

If Tyranny Moves Slowly Enough, Then Americans Might Not Notice

Posted on | March 19, 2012 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

Prof. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

HR 347 was recently signed into law by President Obama. This statute had wide support amongst both parties of Congress. In essence, it criminalizes disruptive behavior upon government grounds, at specially designated national events (Super Bowl, nominating conventions, etc.) and anywhere that Secret Service is protecting “any” person. Obviously, the goal of this law is to enhance the ability of the Secret Service to protect those persons it is charged to do so; but in extending this power, this law eviscerates the citizens’ rights to assemble and petition under the First Amendment.
The major flaw in this law is it vests too much discretion with the executive branch – Secret Service – in cordoning off public venues in order to carry out their protective services function. Ignore their dictates and become a criminal. This expanded authority will eventually run afoul of the First Amendment; the question remains if the First Amendment will be protected by the courts.

I submit that the issue here is that the federal government in general, and the Presidency in particular, has become too powerful. Separation of powers, inexorably and unexpectedly collapses upward to DC and inward to the Executive.

I’m sure that our GOP candidates will identify the need to reverse this decline in liberty, and equal protection under the law, and set about doing specific things to unwind the ills of the last century. Because it is as though we are engaged in a decades-long fight to the death to preserve the founding ideals of the country.

Redistribute Power, Not Wealth

Category: Progressivism
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