The Other McCain

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

From The ‘You Really Must Be Having Me On’ Department

Posted on | February 20, 2012 | 24 Comments

by Smitty

At The Onion, it was a joke in bad taste. My threshold for sacrilege is kind of high. But to read in WND that:

At the forefront of the controversy are the Wycliffe Bible Translators, the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Frontiers, all of which are producing Bible translations that remove or modify terms which they have deemed offensive to Muslims.
That’s right: Muslim-friendly Bibles.
Included in the controversial development is the removal of any references to God as “Father,” to Jesus as the “Son” or “the Son of God.” One example of such a change can be seen in an Arabic version of the Gospel of Matthew produced and promoted by Frontiers and SIL. It changes Matthew 28:19 from this:
“baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”
to this:
“cleanse them by water in the name of Allah, his Messiah and his Holy Spirit.”
A large number of such Muslim-sensitive translations already are published and well-circulated in several Muslim-majority nations such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia.

There may be a middle ground, in that for some hypothetical Southeast Asian language, centuries of Arabic exposure mean that a local translation of God may be ‘Allah’. Understood. On the other hand, if Jesus had lacked guts, he’d have joined the Pharisees, not engendered the emergence of Christianity.

You can expect such tweaked Bibles to find no market whatsoever in the U.S. Of course, I’m one of those who doesn’t find any translation newer than 1611 terribly compelling.

via Bill Quick

Category: Religion

Professor Jacobson, Maybe We Should Both Start Blogging About Sports …

Posted on | February 19, 2012 | 40 Comments

. . . or movies or food or something besides politics, because right now we are diametrically opposite and neutralizing each other:

Should the race come down to Santorum or Romney, I’d have to think about it, as shocking as that may sound given my criticisms of Romney. That’s not so much a vote of confidence in Romney, as it is an uneasiness with Santorum.

Your opposition to Santorum is somewhat less staunch than my opposition to Gingrich. I said bluntly several weeks ago that, if the fight for the nomination comes down to Newt vs. Mitt, I’m for Mitt.

Newt Gingrich simply has too much baggage, and to nominate the twice-divorced Gingrich would be to throw away the “family values” argument altogether. (See Jeffrey Bell on the importance of social issues to the GOP.) But weren’t you paying attention, Professor, to what a godawful mess of a campaign Newt ran in Nevada? Don’t you find it troubling that Gingrich hasn’t been able to get better results despite his enormous fundraising advantage ($12.6 million to $2.2 million through Dec. 31) over Santorum? (Maybe it’s that Tiffany’s bill, eh?)

Whatever my problems with Romney, and they are legion, he has at least stuck with his first wife and run a competent campaign.

Anyway, your blog’s hostility toward Santorum is effectively canceling out my blog’s hostility toward Gingrich, so maybe we should both find something else to blog about — celebrity gossip, perhaps — until this damned primary campaign is over.

Category: Election 2012, Legal Insurrection, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum

Insta-RINO?

Posted on | February 19, 2012 | 29 Comments

Has Glenn Reynolds joined the “Roll Over for Romney” movement?

Back in 2008, the social-cons were all-in for Romney, to the point where Hugh Hewitt’s take became a running tagline (“You know who this is good for? Mitt Romney!”) that’s still used by by bloggers from time to time. Now, not so much. So what changed about Romney since 2008 to make him un-conservative?

Hugh Hewitt, “social conservative”? He’s a Nixonian. But I was under the impression that the real reason Hugh was pro-Romney was because he was hustling a Romney book.

I was part of the ABM (Anybody But McCain) Movement in 2008 and, like a lot of us ABMers, I was at first a Fredhead until that fizzled, then jumped aboard the Romney bandwagon as the last, best hope for stopping Cousin Crapweasel. Then Mitt quit at CPAC 2008, virtually guaranteeing Maverick’s nomination, at which point I swore a vow to vote Libertarian rather than to vote for That Backstabbing Son of a Bitch Who Got the Republican Nomination. (There is a reason, after all, that this blog is called The Other McCain.)

My opposition to Romney this year is less vehement than my implacable opposition to John McCain four years ago. Some of my friends are Romney supporters. But I hate this “It’s His Turn” stuff that the GOP Establishment keeps trying to run — endlessly replaying the Dole 1996 campaign — and I would rather have a candidate chosen by actual Republican voters in competitive primaries than to have one “anointed” in advance by the Establishment.

Also, there is an archipelago of volcanic islands in the South Pacific in desperate need of my diplomatic expertise . . .

RICK SANTORUM for PRESIDENT
The Only Candidate Who Cares About Vanuatu,
Crucial Linch-Pin of the South Pacific™

Category: Election 2012, Instapundit, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Vanuatu

Are We Really Just Too Stupid To Merit Free Elections Anymore?

Posted on | February 19, 2012 | 19 Comments

by Smitty

A Montana case on corporate spending on campaigns is exhuming the hoary specter of the Citizens United ruling:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, also supported the delay, but said that the case “will give the Court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United [v. Federal Election Commission] should continue to hold sway.”

Didn’t Whitman and Fiorina show in California in 2010 that throwing boatloads of cash at an election may not work?

Or, if formerly pre-emptive favorite Mitt Romney’s SuperPAC carpet bombing were really effective, wouldn’t he be, you know, a pre-emptive favorite for the GOP nomination right now?

Shag it all: let these corporations spend whatever, and let the informed voters figure out who’s worth the vote, and who is simply a venom bucket.

All of these recent attempts at federal over-reach are troubling in two ways:

  • Managed speech is not free speech, and the stronger the precedent for managing speech, the more dissent-crushing will occur.
  • Even more subtle than the attack on freedom of expression is the attack on the notion of liberty. Ginsburg and Breyer (or Sotomayor or Kagan, for that matter) support the notion of liberty? Or are they advocates for the nanny state that would eliminate liberty in the name of Holy Progress? Who am I kidding: of course they’re nanny-staters.

I would that this post were a trifle reactionary, and that the SCOTUS did not pose a threat to liberty. This blog will accept a little finger-pointing and mumblings of “tinfoil hat” in exchange for communicating the knowledge that people are paying attention back to those enemies of liberty.

via Legal Insurrection

Category: Legal Insurrection, Supreme Court

Don’t Let The Garb Distract You. The Bigotry Is Really About His Name.

Posted on | February 19, 2012 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Won’t someone end the H8 against people named Chris!

Upon reflection, The Chaser here encapsulates Sasha Baron Cohen’s humor in two minutes, without demeaning his unwitting costars or the audience.

via House of Eratosthenes

Category: humor

Rule 5 Sunday: Secret World

Posted on | February 19, 2012 | 17 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Laughing Conservative leads off with some Rule 5 that’s as gorgeous as she is unpronounceable. Ladies and gentlemen, Domenika Szijartoova. Elsewhere, Postaldog gives us a reason to watch the LPGA with Natalie Gulbis, the Eye of Polyphemus is on Anne Hathaway, and Reaganite Resistance wonders if Alma Riquelme is proof that Paraguay is the new Venezuela. Well, they do say una Guarani se vale a los seis otros…and then there’s Taylor Swift, thanks to Fishersville Mike. First Street Journal starts their Rule 5 linkagery with the women of the IDF, and Jake Finnegan’s Burkalesque Babe this week is Behati Prinsloo. Dustbury was in somewhat of a musical mood, with links for Adele and Porcelain Black. Randy’s Roundtable midweek tarts are Esti Ginzburg and Kim Smith. Also, Kate Upton! As a look at the future of CPAC, Three Beers Later presents this disturbing look at the Rise of the Second-Tier Bloggers.


Soylent Green’s Monday Motivationer was Ginger Jolie, followed by Mariana Diarco on Tuesday, Nikki Mitchell on Humpday. Corsetation Fascination ensued on Friday, and then there was some overnight awesomeness, and last but certainly not least, Julia Stiles.


A View From The Beach started off with Halle Berry as Catwoman, had just another day in the office after that, some Valentine’s Day pinups, another Valentine’s Day post, and something about putting Carla Bruni on a pedestal.


El Opinador Compulsivo checks in this week with Avril Lavigne, Kaley Cuoco, Sara Forestier, a trifecta of Opiladies, and some low-tech 3D. On the beefcake side, it’s Newman & Eastwood, Bronson, Belmondo, and Delon.


Proof Positive last week was (almost) all Kate Upton (almost) all the time! Okay, he did actually have an Adriana Lima link as well as Vintage Babe Jeanne Crain. Over at The Camp Of The Saints, Bob went with Valentina Lodovini, the ever-popular Rule 5 News, Helena Noguerra, and some Valentine’s Day Ladies.


DaleyGator’s DaleyBabes last week included Tanyka Renee, Sophia Myles, Leianna Kai, Ani Lorak, Jenny Kume, and a naked drunk chick in a low-speed chase. Also, Asian Babe Thursday and Ebony Tuesday!


Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline for next week’s Rule 5 Sunday will be Saturday, February 25. Links need to go to the
Rule 5 Wombat mailbox, not my usual box linked at the top of the post.

Category: Rule 5

Notes on an Unfinished Letter of Apology (Or, Does Ed Morrissey Torture Cats?)

Posted on | February 19, 2012 | 91 Comments

“Television, naturally enough, is biased toward compelling visual imagery, and in almost all cases the charms of a human face take precedence over the capabilities of a human voice. It is not essential that a TV newsreader grasp the meaning of what is being reported . . . What is essential is that the viewers like looking at their faces. To put it bluntly, as far as TV is concerned, in the United States there is not one sixty-year-old woman capable of being a newsreader. Viewers, it would appear, are not captivated by their faces. It is the teller, and not what is told, that matters here.”
— Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (1994)

“As for my own personal feelings, who cares? While I’m often accused of unfairly hurting other people’s feelings, no one ever seems to care about my feelings. I’ve long ceased to expect anything except insults from anyone, and those expectations are seldom disappointed.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 29, 2011

When the draft of the e-mail passed the 3,000-word mark, and was still clearly not half-finished, I gave it up. What had begun as a mea culpa had metamorphosed into a treatise explaining the entire history of my engagement with conservative New Media, and what the past 15 years had taught me about the apportionment of status, prestige and influence within the universe of political communication.

But why should I burden anyone with all that? Ed Morrissey has neither time to read such a thing, nor any interest in discovering why I view things the way I view them. It would have been an arrogant imposition to foist upon him that document — which surely would have neared 10,000 words if completed — with any expectation that he would actually enjoy reading it, or that the anecdotes and observations might inspire him to exclaim, “Oh, now I understand!”

So never mind all that crap, and I’ll just apologize. Read more

Category: Blogging, Ed Morrissey, Hot Air

Is Troglopundit A Stealth Kennedy?

Posted on | February 19, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

In a rare moment of unseriousness, I noted the resemblance between swamp-man Burri and Joe Kennedy III. Yet this Week in Automotivators features Lancelot du Bog seeming to hint at some deeper coincidence than the superficial.

There might be time later to ponder the hidden message here, but right now the black helicopters are coming in to swoop me up.

Category: Troglopundit
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