The Other McCain

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

Gunny Ermey Triggers The Vote

Posted on | February 16, 2012 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

The Second Amendment, and, by extension, Western Civilization, is at stake:

Trigger the Vote did a fine job here. Things have gone a long way toward the gutter when one actually notices the two kids swapping spit in the video are heterosexual. One is tempted to say ‘viva temptation’ at the sight of passion on display that could lead toward the continuation of society, and not some false, barren, gay future.

Category: humor, Video

Who Wants to See Tina Korbe’s Thighs?

Posted on | February 16, 2012 | 101 Comments

The title of this post is not a hypothetical question, because last week the aforesaid Miss Korbe joined her Hot Air colleague Ed Morrissey for a video interview with Rick Santorum, which I didn’t see until somebody brought it to my attention yesterday:

Our keen-eyed readers will note that at the 0:28 mark of the video, Miss Korbe gives a little tug at the hem of her skirt and, not to get all Melissa Clouthier about it or anything, some folks might say that’s kind of a telltale clue that your skirt’s too doggone short.

OK, so how this came to my attention: Tuesday I blogged about Melissa’s criticism of the dress and behavior of some young ladies at CPAC and, as I said, I wanted to be responsible without being too judgmental. That is to say, I hesitate to judge a lady’s morals merely because she feels obliged to follow contemporary fashion.

For example, I think tattoos and pierced bellybuttons are two of the tackiest things in the world, but I’m pretty sure not every woman with tattoos and a pierced bellybutton is a whore.

Most of them? Sure, but not all of them.

Similarly, short skirts and exposed cleavage do not necessarily signal that a woman is up for some action with any dude who’ll give her the price of another hit of methamphetamine. It is true that many hookers dress that way, but not every woman who dresses that way is a hooker.

Or even a Maine College Republican.

‘A Peep Show of Her Hoo-Ha’?

Anyway, my responsible-but-not-judgmental post was linked in a roundup on the CPAC decorum controversy at “Thoughts and Ramblings,” whose proprietor suggested that this was in response to a post he’d done earlier, in which he said, “Tina, you are a Catholic, try actually dressing like one,” and accused her of giving the Senator “a peep show of her hoo haa.” Read more

Category: CPAC, Hot Air, Rule 5

LIVE AT FIVESIX – 02.16.12

Posted on | February 16, 2012 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
U.S., EU Eye Risky Move To Cripple Iran’s Finances

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton

Is the West ready to kick Iran off the SWIFT network?

Congress Cuts A Deal
$150 billion extension of payroll tax cuts, Medicare doc fix, unemployment approved by conferees


Romney Weak With The White Working Class?
Santorum’s growing strength in polls coming from this vital group



POLITICS
Unions, HRC Put On The Hard Sell For Gay Marriage In Maryland

Delegate Emmitt Burns (D-Baltimore City)

Black Democrats not buying; resistance especially strong from black churches in PG County, Baltimore City

Oklahoma Senate Passes Personhood Act




Christie Defends Half-staff Honors For Houston

Gun Grabbers’ Boycott Of Starbucks Fizzles, Gun Owners’ “Buycott” Thrives

Most Of Elizabeth Warren’s Funding Coming From Out-of-State Donors

Joe Kennedy III Officially Announces Run For Congress

MN Senate Approves Voter ID Amendment



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Falls From Five-Week High After Greek Bailout Delayed
Gold Adds More Than $10 To End Slide
Euro, Global Stocks Fall On Greek Bailout Delays
Morgan Stanley, UBS May Face Moody’s Downgrades
Kellogg To Spend $2.7 Billion On Pringles
PRC To Pass India As Largest Gold Market, Council Predicts
Illinois Home Foreclosures Up 14% As Lenders Iron Out Paperwork SNAFUs
Apple Tweaks Apps Policy Under Pressure From Lawmakers
Lightsquared Blasts FCC For “Bureaucratic Irresponsibility”
Cisco To Challenge Microsoft Skype Deal In EU Court
Samsung Galaxy Note Bridges Gap Between Smartphones, Tablets
Facebook Launches Verified Accounts & Pseudonyms
“Twisted Metal” Blasts Into 21st Century
Clearwire 4Q Loss Widens On Interest Expense; Stock Price, Customer Base Up



SPORTS
Linsanity Rages On As Knicks Extend Streak To Seven

Jeremy Lin drives past Sacramento defenders during the second half

13 assists in a 100-85 blowout; bound for the All-Star Game?

18 Arrested In TCU Drug Bust Include Four Football Players

Sixers Defeated By Magic



ESPN Drops Jaworski From Monday Night Football

Butler Does It For Tired Clippers

Battle For Global Cricket Supremacy Thrown Wide Open

Suns: Nationals Forcing Us To Move From Hagerstown



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
George Clooney’s Big Surprises

George Clooney

Small paychecks, insomnia, bouts of loneliness

Taylor Armstrong Shtupping Her Married Attorney

Lil’ Wayne Slips GF MASSIVE Ring In Valentine’s Day Surprise

Kobe Bryant Smooches Estranged Wife Vanessa – Reconciliation In The Works?

Wills And Kate Become Ken & Barbie In Time For First Anniversary

Heart Attack Grill In Vegas Lives Up To Its Name

Aretha Franklin To Sing At Whitney Houston’s Funeral

Inside Rihanna’s Caribbean-Themed Birthday Bash

“The Vow” Earns $11.6 Million On Valentine’s Day



FOREIGNERS
Hundreds Dead In Hellish Honduras Prison Fire
Bangkok Blast Suspects Targeted Israeli Diplomats, Police Say
U.S. Says Iran Nuclear Claim Is Hype
Karzai Says Taliban Have Met His Envoys For Talks
Kim Jong-Un Leads 70th Birthday Celebrations For Late Father
Fake Video Showing Putin In The Dock Goes Viral



BLOGS & STUFF
Babalu: Chimichangamalangarepaorale
Allahpundit: Chimichanga-gate
Heartland Institute: Response To Forged, Stolen Documents
Lonely Conservative: OMB Director May Have Botched Legal Case For Obamacare; Also Can’t Answer Question On Balanced Budget
ZeroHedge: Farage On Greek Chaos – “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”
Jawa Report: Al-Qaeda Names New Leader For Iran
Rush Limbaugh: A Coordinated Contraceptive Attack
Legal Insurrection: Be (Not) Nice To Rick Day
PowerLine: Newt – In The Polls, It’s Deja Vu
Newsbusters: Joe Scarborough Says America Is Much More Conservative On Social Issues Than The Media Thinks
Gateway Pundit: Obama Warned In 2007 He’d Leave America Defenseless – Now He’s Cutting 80% Of Nuke Force
Weasel Zippers: Santorum Says Obama White House Full Of Elite Snobs
Pirate’s Cove: Shocking News – $4 Billion In “Green” Booty Flowed To Obama Donors

Category: Live at Five

NARAL Is Orgasmic That Women Can Get Birth Control Without A Copay. Drugs They May, You Know, Need? No’ So Much

Posted on | February 15, 2012 | 22 Comments

by Smitty

First of all, my wife’s name is not Jane Smith. But Mrs. The Other Smitty heard this ad and was genuinely offended. The text:

Jane Smith! Your prescription’s ready for pick-up at the pharmacy counter!
Thank you! That was fast. How much do I owe?
No charge. This is covered without a co-pay now.
Then a narrator says: “Thanks to President Obama, the 99 percent of American women who use birth control could now hear this same message. You see, we scored an important victory when the President stood up for our health care, and guaranteed insurance coverage of birth control at no cost. He’s making sure women of all faiths, no matter where they work, can get contraceptive coverage. But extremists in Congress are trying to change the policy by making it harder for women to get birth control with no co-pay. Call Congress at 202-225-3121 and tell them to stand with President Obama and not between a woman and her birth control.”

Scored a victory? As my wife points out, birth control is a lifestyle drug–not, for example, a chemotherapy drug. We can save the analysis for why birth control is so important for National Offend a Feminist Week. Maybe the woman is a troglodyte in Wisconsin, where the sperm sort of roam the bog (they say). Birth control could, hypothetically, be an important tool for minimizing trog reproduction.

The real objection here is the Lefty distortion of what is important, and the dishonest claim to have helped, when, overall, the Left exacerbates problems. When, ever has government queering a market helped matters? Rarely if ever, according to Sowell.

Update: via House of Eratosthenes, Senator Blunt is trying to redistribute power to employers, and the White House is having none of it. The Postmodern Left is all about redistributing money; power, no’ so much.

Category: Abortion, Uncategorized

Santorum Conquers the World?

Posted on | February 15, 2012 | 33 Comments

When I wrote about “Santorum’s Second Surge” Monday, there were not yet any poll numbers available to substantiate my perception that he had scored a critical breakthrough with last Tuesday’s hat-trick triple win over Mitt Romney.

Now, as Tina Korbe says, “Good news just keeps coming for former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum” — and not merely because he’s getting interviewed by bloggers in skirts short enough to require a lecture from Melissa Clouthier, but let’s not go there, OK? One unfortunate digression per day is my limit.

Santorum now leads Romney by 5.4 points — 33.7% to 28.3% — in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls, and the latest Rasmussen survey hwas Santorum ahead by a whopping 12 points, 39-27, while Newt Gingrich has faded to a distant third.

When you start looking at it state-by-state, the polls are even more encouraging: Leading all four of the most recent polls in Michigan, including a PPP poll that shows Santorum ahead by 15 points and an “Inside Michigan” poll that has him up by 10. As Tina in the Short Skirt notes, Santorum is also closing the gap on Romney in Arizona.

The really big news, however, is that Santorum now leads Romney 36-29 in a Quinnipiac poll of Ohio.

Freaking huge, man. If Santorum wins Michigan — Romney’s home state — on Feb.28 and then follows up with a Super Tuesday win March 6 in Ohio, that’s going to change the whole race. Those are big states with lots of delegates, and if Santorum wins those, he’s going to win a lot of other places, too.

Why? Because Romney would have to spend a lot of money for ads to try to defend his aura “inevitability” and, as Zeke Miller points out, Romney’s fundraising capacity is not infinite:

Over 82 percent of Romney’s haul from individuals in 2011 came in donations greater than $1000 . . . And as Rick Santorum stays in the game with a growing pool of small donors — to whom he can return for another $20 or $100 when the millions they’ve given him runs out — Romney’s campaign has launched an intense, late scramble for the cash to fend off his conservative challenger.

Well, how ’bout that? Small donors like you — folks who have given Rick Santorum $25, $50 or $100 — are collectively more powerful than the GOP Establishment guys who have ponied up thousands each. And if you haven’t contributed yet, what are you waiting for?

UPDATE: Before letting myself get distracted today — and not just by short skirts and post-punk musical allusions — I intended to post the newest ad by Rick Santorum:

That’s pretty clever: Pre-emptively warning voters about Romney’s (so far successful) tactic of burying his rivals with multi-million-dollar negative ad blitzes, so that when Team Mitt attempts to repeat that tactic, Romney’s negative ads become the subject of news coverage. Now Santorum just has to raise enough money to run that ad in every state.

UPDATE II: From a Santorum campaign press release, here’s the script of the ad they call “Rombo”:

Visual: Series of shots of a Romney trying to fire a mud gun in the direction of a Rick Santorum cutout. As the spot progresses the Romney character becomes increasingly frustrated with his inability to hit Rick Santorum with his mud-firing gun. The final visual show the gun backfiring, and covering Romney in his own mud.

Voice Over: “Mitt Romney’s negative attack machine is back on full throttle. This time Romney’s firing his mud at Rick Santorum. Romney and his Super PAC have spent a staggering 20 million brutally attacking fellow Republicans. Why? Because Romney’s trying to hide from his big government Romneycare, and his support for job killing cap and trade.

(Type on Screen): Romney Advisor Admits Romneycare Was Blueprint for Obamacare.

Voice Over: And in the end Mitt Romney’s ugly attacks are going to backfire.

(Type on Screen): Romney’s Negative Ads Could Cost Him With Voters.

Rick Santorum: “I’m Rick Santorum and I approve this message.”

The press release quotes Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley:

“At this point, Mitt Romney’s act is old, tired and wearing thin with voters. In every primary state, Gov. Romney’s strategy has been the same: hide from his own record and instead, unleash his well-funded DC attack machine to destroy his opponent. I think it’s very telling that Gov. Romney refuses to talk about his own record and why someone should vote for him and instead chooses to tear down Rick Santorum.
“Maybe Gov. Romney feels entitled to the Republican nomination but regardless, his actions and those of his SuperPAC are sad and desperate. The American people deserve more than the negative, false and misleading attacks Mitt Romney is dishing out. The choice is clear and the people are rejecting a candidate like Mitt Romney who only wants to attack his opponent, but one like Rick Santorum who focuses on building up all Americans and restoring this country to greatness.”


Category: Election 2012, Hot Air, Polls, Rick Santorum

Obscure Musical Allusion Blog Post Title Sweepstakes: Joy Division, for the Win!

Posted on | February 15, 2012 | 30 Comments

“It’s like being assigned to cover a psychotic breakdown, so that the challenge as a journalist is to report accurately all the paranoid gibberish, the bizarre hallucinations and delusions of grandeur.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Jan. 11, 2012

“But there is no point in haggling any longer with this. The time has come to get full bore into heavy Gonzo Journalism, and this time we have no choice but to push it all the way out to the limit. The phone is ringing again and I can hear Crouse downstairs trying to put them off. . . .
“Only a lunatic would do this kind of work . . . Where is the meaning? That light at the end of the tunnel?
“Crouse is yelling again. They want more copy. . . . Those halfwit sons of bitches should subscribe to a wire service . . . a whole grab-bag of weird news; just rip it off the top and print whatever comes up. Just the other day the AP wire had a story about a man from Arkansas who entered some kind of contest and won a two-week vacation — all expenses paid — wherever he wanted to go. Anyplace in the world: Mongolia, Easter Island, the Turkish Riviera . . . but his choice was Salt Lake City, and that’s where he went.
“Is this man a registered voter? Has he come to grips with the issues? Has he bathed in the blood of the lamb?”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Allusion is one of those literary devices with which I have a love-hate relationship: I love to employ allusions, but recognize that such references may be wasted in our subliterate postmodern culture, and I’m occasionally annoyed when some hipster smartass drops an allusion to something sufficiently obscure that I have to look it up.

We’ll get to Bob Belvedere in a minute, but first let me explain that sometimes allusions can serve the useful purpose of reminding us of our ignorance. Stupidity is incurable, but ignorance can be remediated, and an intelligent person should have enough pride to feel the sting when confronted with evidence of his ignorance.

Having partied my way through college, I emerged with an eclectic hodgepodge of an education, full of gaps representing classes I’d skipped or where I’d done only enough work to slide by with a C. And so, in my early to mid-20s, I began to recognize the vast depth and breadth of my own ignorance. One of the clues to this problem was when I’d pick up a magazine like The New Republic or Vanity Fair and, in the middle of an article, see a word like “Burkean” or “Tocquevillean.”

Now, I had enough of an education to know that there were such persons as Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville, and that these were important authors of influential works. And I was certainly fluent enough as a reader to deduce from contextual clues what the writers meant by phrases like “Burkean critique” or “Tocquevillean self-governance.” But I’d never actually read Reflections on the Revolution in France or Democracy in America, so that these allusions in magazine articles were picking at the scabs, as it were, of my wounded intellectual pride.

Eventually, I was prodded into pursuing a course of intense auto-didacticism, remediating my ignorance to such a degree that some friends have praised my “encyclopedic” knowledge of such things — praise that perhaps goes too far, but certainly reflects how hard I’ve worked over the years to fill in the gaps of my education. (Indeed, I’ve even been called a “Hayekian intellectual”!)

One of my most unusual encounters with such an allusion was the Police song, “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”:

It’s no use. He sees her.
He starts to shake and cough.
Just like the old man in
That book by Nabokov.

Again, I was sufficiently educated to have some sense of who Vladimir Nabokov was and, given the obvious contextual clues, understood that this was a reference to Lolita.

However, I’d never actually read the book, and this smartass allusion — damned British New Wave punks! — was enough to make me go out and buy the book, just so I could say I’d read it.

Well, surprise, surprise! Nabokov’s most famous (perhaps infamous) novel is a quite challenging piece of work, embedded with all manner of allusions and symbols that I frankly didn’t understand. The key clue of Lolita‘s inverted murder mystery — “Waterproof!” — completely eluded my recognition, and I failed even to comprehend how the novel functions as a sort of devious satire.

This made me feel stupid. And I don’t like feeling stupid.

Eventually, however, I encountered The Annotated Lolita, with an introduction and extensive footnotes by Alfred Appel Jr, who had been one of Nabokov’s college students. Suddenly the meaning of all those obscure references was revealed, and I felt slightly smarter (and much less ignorant).

Longtime readers will have by now noticed my fondness for the works of Hunter S. Thompson, which is a double-edged sword. If you love the legendary Gonzo journalist and also like this blog, this is clearly a compliment to my work. But I realize that some may disdain me as offering a cheap imitation of Thompsonesque writing, and I also realize that there are some people who hate Thompson.

Pearls. Swine. Et cetera.

The fact that Thompson was himself attempting to emulate his own literary heroes — including Fitzgerald and Hemingway and, to a lesser degree, Norman Mailer — is generally overlooked. What was original in Thompson has to be understood in light of those influences, but I didn’t start this post with the idea of conducting a Gonzo Journalism Seminar and we’re already past the 700-word mark, so I’ll avoid that digression.

My point in bringing up Hunter S. Thompson was that there are a lot of people who “know” his work in the sense that I once “knew” Burke, Tocqueville and Nabokov: They are familiar with his name and know him by reputation, but have never taken the time to fully acquaint themselves with his work or really understand what he was all about.

It is my hope, of course, that my frequent references to Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 have caused a few of you actually to buy the book, because I insist that you can’t really understand what’s going on in this year’s Republican presidential primary campaign unless you go back and see what Thompson wrote about the 1972 Democratic campaign. Were I asked to teach a college course on political journalism, that book would certainly be on the syllabus, because what Thompson did was absolutely some of the most honest and insightful writing ever published about politics.

Also, it’s funny as hell. Read more

Category: Books, Camp of the Saints, Election 2012, Fear. Loathing., Music, Shoe Leather Fund, Vanuatu

Obama’s Contraceptive Disinformation

Posted on | February 15, 2012 | 37 Comments

Some readers may wonder why I haven’t published anything about the battle over mandatory contraceptive coverage under ObamaCare. Basically, it’s because every time I try to do it, I tend to write a couple of thousand words before discarding the draft.

However, yesterday I was CC’d on an e-mail that some crazy woman sent to multiple recipients at National Review. Given that I’ve never had anything to do with National Review, my inclusion on the CC list was somewhat mysterious, but the entirety of the crazy woman’s message was in the subject line:

Good to know that you agree that Muslim employers can impose Shari’a restrictions on their employees, dumbass

Crazy, right? No one who actually understands the issue would make such a comparison. This issue isn’t about employers imposing anything on anybody. It’s about whether the federal government can mandate certain types of insurance coverage for private employers, even to the point of requiring Catholic organizations to pay for insurance that includes full coverage — no deductible, no co-pay — for contraception, sterilization and abortifacient “morning after” drugs.

In this battle, the defense of Catholic organizations is actually a libertarian position, and the only people who could possibly take the side of the Obama administration are . . . well, crazy people, or perhaps well-meaning people who have been deliberately misinformed about the issue.

Believe it or not, a CBS News poll claims that 61 percent of self-described Catholics support the Obama administration, and that the crazy, ignorant and misinformed are an actual majority of Americans. A few headlines:

Reid to Allow Vote on Rescinding
Contraception Rule
— National Journal

Birth Control Amendment ‘Dangerous,’
Obama Spokesman Says
— Huffington Post

Palin on contraception flap:
“An un-American act”
— Real Clear Politics

Can we at least admit that there is an important difference between (a) not covering something on a health insurance policy, and (b) “denying” something or “imposing” something? And are people too stupid to understand that having government mandate certain types of coverage represents a gigantic intrusion into the insurance marketplace?

But if I let myself get worked up about this, I’ll spend a couple of hours on it and end up with another unpublished 2,000-word draft, so I’ll just quit now.

Category: Abortion, Barack Obama, Catholics, Contraceptive Culture

They Told Me If I Voted McCain That Clueless Gits Would Run Amok, And They Were Right!

Posted on | February 15, 2012 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Via The Blaze, #OccupyResoluteDesk is all about the excuses:Via The Lonely Conservative, after three years of this goat rope, Obama’s losers still mis-underestimated the deficit by 4/5 of a trillion dollars.

Sure makes me glad that Barack successfully kept Sarah Palin away from levers of power.

Category: Barack Obama, The Lonely Conservative, Uncategorized
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