The Other McCain

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

One Of The Best Pages On The Net

Posted on | January 19, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

The topic of deconstruction came up last night. Deconstruction is to art what Postmodernism is to Philosophy, and Progressivism is to our politics: a nihilistic effort to destroy reason, the Enlightenment, and our Constitution. Hence the record here on the blog that I regularly pump as many metaphorical shotgun shells into the whole zombie effort against Western civilization as I possibly can.

Around 20 years ago and $10 trillion dollars ago, when the threat was less apparent, Chip Morningstar served up a humdinger of an essay:

Randy and I were scheduled to speak on the second day of the conference. This was fortunate because it gave us the opportunity to recalibrate our presentation based on the first day’s proceedings, during which we discovered that we had grossly mischaracterized the audience by assuming that it would be like the crowd from the first conference. I spent most of that first day furiously scribbling notes. People kept saying the most remarkable things using the most remarkable language, which I found I needed to put down in writing because the words would disappear from my brain within seconds if I didn’t. Are you familiar with the experience of having memories of your dreams fade within a few minutes of waking? It was like that, and I think for much the same reason. Dreams have a logic and structure all their own, falling apart into unmemorable pieces that make no sense when subjected to the scrutiny of the conscious mind. So it was with many of the academics who got up to speak. The things they said were largely incomprehensible. There was much talk about deconstruction and signifiers and arguments about whether cyberspace was or was not “narrative”. There was much quotation from Baudrillard, Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Saussure, and the like, every single word of which was impenetrable. I’d never before had the experience of being quite this baffled by things other people were saying. I’ve attended lectures on quantum physics, group theory, cardiology, and contract law, all fields about which I know nothing and all of which have their own specialized jargon and notational conventions. None of those lectures were as opaque as anything these academics said. But I captured on my notepad an astonishing collection of phrases and a sense of the overall tone of the event.

We retreated back to Palo Alto that evening for a quick rewrite. The first order of business was to excise various little bits of phraseology that we now realized were likely to be perceived as Politically Incorrect. Mind you, the fundamental thesis of our presentation was Politically Incorrect, but we wanted people to get upset about the actual content rather than the form in which it was presented. Then we set about attempting to add something that would be an adequate response to the postmodern lit crit-speak we had been inundated with that day. Since we had no idea what any of it meant (or even if it actually meant anything at all), I simply cut-and-pasted from my notes. The next day I stood up in front of the room and opened our presentation with the following:

The essential paradigm of cyberspace is creating partially situated identities out of actual or potential social reality in terms of canonical forms of human contact, thus renormalizing the phenomenology of narrative space and requiring the naturalization of the intersubjective cognitive strategy, and thereby resolving the dialectics of metaphorical thoughts, each problematic to the other, collectively redefining and reifying the paradigm of the parable of the model of the metaphor.

After this encounter, Morningstar goes back and tries to puzzle out what, if anything, Deconstruction means. He offers, as an example of the form, “John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual.”

It’s a bit lengthy, but humorous and well worth your time. Read it, and join the fight against these nihilistic zombies.

Category: humor, Progressivism

Fear & Loathing: Breakfast of Champions UPDATE: Rick Santorum Wins Iowa; Perry Will Quit and Endorse Gingrich

Posted on | January 19, 2012 | 40 Comments

The National Affairs Desk at McDonald’s in Greenville, S.C.,
11:10 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2012

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.
My 13-year-old son Jefferson and I got back here at 2:30 a.m, and woke up Ali Akbar, in whose hotel room we’re crashing through Saturday. The topics of discussion were (a) the Republican primary and (b) why Tabitha Hale hates me. But we didn’t talk long, because I was so dead tired that despite a day spent guzzling coffee I soon fell asleep.

Wednesday was one of those days when I wish I’d stuck with that forklift-driving job I had before I got into the news business. We set out early for the scheduled Newt Gingrich press conference in Columbia that didn’t happen.

After blogging about that debacle, we headed back on the road to Rock Hill, where Mitt Romney was scheduled for a 3:15 p.m. rally at Winthrop University. We got there in time, but Mitt was late — it was 3:44 p.m. before they finally introduced the singer who would perform the national anthem. We didn’t stick around to hear Mitt because we were due in Spartanburg for a Rick Santorum town-hall event at 5 p.m.

Do a Google Map search for directions from Rock Hill to Spartanburg and imagine, dear reader, what feats of vehicular prowess were required to drive that route in barely an hour. Somewhere between McConnells and Jonesville, we were just one special-effects stunt away from remaking Smokey and the Bandit.

Alas, there were no open drawbridges to jump. Read more

Category: Election, Fear and Loathing in South Carolina, Shoe Leather Fund, South Carolina

Couple Of Points On The Race Card

Posted on | January 19, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Da Tech Guy wonders why the race card went unplayed in the case of Herman Cain.
If you flip it over, the Race Card says “Property of the National Socialist Democrat Workers Party”.
Conservatives, therefore, cannot play the card.
If conservatives try to play the card, cast as, say, a ‘hi tech lynching‘, they quickly get shouted down.
If the conservative under attack is rich, he is assumed guilty anyway: calls for, you know, trial by jury, facing accusers, and innocence until proven guilty merely underscore the evil of the rich conservative. Those are Constitutional notions. Besides, as the Central Scrutinizer noted, the Constitution is being modified in order to accomodate the future. Or at least Ezra Klein.

Category: Da Tech Guy, Herman Cain

LIVE AT FIVESEVEN – 01.18.12

Posted on | January 19, 2012 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Lawmakers Withdraw Support Of Anti-Piracy Bills

Home page of minecraft.net yesterday

Online protest strips away Congressional support for SOPA, PIPA

Poll: Majority Of Independent Voters Soured On Obama



Hanford Nuke Site Faces Cleanup Challenges, Delays
Treatment plant for fifty years’ radioactive sludge behind schedule, over budget, and may not work



POLITICS
NBC Poll: Gingrich Closes In On Romney In S.C.

Mitt connecting with S.C. voters

Mitt 37. Newt 30, RON PAUL! 11, Santorum 10

Obama Caves To Greens, Rejects Pipeline; GOP Says They’ll Press The Issue




Former Dane County Exec To Challenge Walker

Jerry Brown’s State Of State Speech Puts Emphasis On Big Projects

House Votes Against Raise in Debt Limit

Is Ron Paul Losing Voters To Stephen Colbert?



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Kodak Files For Chapter 11
European Shares Up On Technicals, Greek Bond Talks
Japan Would Consider Supporting IMF On Europe
Harvard Business Grads Express Doubt Over U.S. Economy
Oil Up On Economic News, Natural Gas Down On Warm Weather
More Sharing Comes To Facebook With New Apps
AT&T’s New Pricing: More Data For More Money
iPhone Wins Back Android Losses
Lightsquared Claims GPS Tests Were Rigged



SPORTS
Billups’ Last-Second 3-Pointer Lifts Clippers Over Mavericks

Billups shoots - he scores!

Last-second shot gives Clippers fourth win in five games

Rangers, Darvish Sign: Six Years, Sixty Million

Knicks In Crisis After Falling To Suns 91-88



Toews Scores Two As Hawks Stomp Sabres 6-2

Nick Young Scores 22 In Second Half As Wizards Stun Thunder 105-102

Ovechkin Nets 19th, Caps Blank Habs

Strauss Dismissal Leaves England Reeling Against Pakistan

Nationals Get Two Early Games On ESPN



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Mark Wahlberg, Cover Boy

Mark Wahlberg

Profiling the two-time Oscar nominee

It’s Official – Angelina Jolie’s Pregnant!

Cindy Crawford’s Daughter Kaia Makes Modeling Debut

Emily Maynard Is The New Bachelorette

Snooki Without Makeup


Moviegoers Complain Silent Movie Has No Dialogue

Ryan Seacrest Launching TV Network With Mark Cuban

Rooney Mara Dating Charlie McDowell

“Wives” Was A Train Wreck



FOREIGNERS
Cruise Ship Search Resumes, 21 Still Missing
Iran Warns Region About “Dangerous” Stance On Hormuz Strait
In Syria, World Inaction Fuels Civil War
Pakistani Court Postpones Gilani Case To Hear Immunity Argument
Egypt’s Military Government Suppresses Revolutionaries (Audio)
Hungary Disagrees With EU Concerns On Judges
Putin Berates Billionaires, U.S. On Campaign Trail
Falklands Oil Could Triple U.K. Reserves



BLOGS & STUFF
WyBlog: Barry’s Going To Disney World!
Dana Loesch: ABC Lands Gingrich Ex-Wife Interview, Civil War Erupts Over Air Date
Pat Dollard: Newt’s Daughters Push Back At ABC Interview
Legal Insurrection: Who Was “Undisciplined” In 1994?
Weasel Zippers: Jimmy Carter – Newt Has That Subtlety Of Racism
AmSpecBlog: The SOPA/PIPA Fight
Atlas Shrugs: Geller Endorses Gingrich
Big Hollywood: Hollywood Moguls Shut Off Cash Spigot Over White House SOPA Stance
Daily Caller: Obama Pollstar Calls Herman Cain Racist On Camera, Then Denies He Did It
Don Surber: Police Charge Occupod With Lynhcing


SOTD: ME262

Category: Live at Five

Obama Forgets

Posted on | January 18, 2012 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

via email:

Dear [American],
In just one week, President Obama will deliver his State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress and the nation.
The President always seems to conveniently forget in his speeches that he has been president for the past three years. We can expect him to refuse to take responsibility for how his big spending policies have contributed to our economic woes. Instead, the President will promote class warfare to gain support for his tax increases and bigger government.
So in advance of the State of the Union speech, Americans for Prosperity is launching “Obama Forgets,” a 7-day effort that will highlight some of the Obama Administration’s worst offenses to the principles of limited government and free market enterprise.
“Obama Forgets” will lead up to President Obama’s State of the Union address, when AFP will host large watch parties throughout the country.

Americans for Prosperity:

President Obama Forgets he signaled a new corruption-free era in Washington. But AFP activists want to remind him of that he wasted taxpayer money on a green jobs scam at Solyndra, gave preferential health care exemptions to his political allies and funded an organization accused of voter fraud.
President Obama’s stimulus package set up a $535 million loan for a solar energy company, Solyndra . The solar energy company not only was facing bad financial prospects, but received heavy investment from one of Obama’s top campaign contributors: George Kaiser. Despite receiving signs the company was about to go under, Obama continued to funnel taxpayer money into the failing business and tried his administration’s ties to the company’s funders.
Health care reform is another area where Obama’s corruption is apparent. The President held closed-door meetings with interest groups like the AFL-CIO and other labor unions. Later, he issued waivers for a unions and unionized companies so they wouldn’t be adversely affected by his new health care law. As a result, companies like AT&T projected higher costs of doing business, while unions got a break. In other words, what’s good for taxpaying Americans isn’t necessarily good for Obama’s political base and he rewarded his friends.
Finally, Obama passed a stimulus spending bill that gave handouts to Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) , an organization repeatedly convicted of voter fraud . Instead of using his power to promote prosperity, Obama is choosing winners and losers in an already corrupted economy.

Just remember, no matter how many bloody noses there are in the primary scrum, anyone on the right is a friend.

Category: Barack Obama

Newt Gingrich Mysteriously Cancels Press Conference at S.C. State Capitol

Posted on | January 18, 2012 | 56 Comments

COLUMBIA, S.C.
This morning’s schedule showed that Newt Gingrich would have an 11:30 a.m. press conference here at the Statehouse, and I drove nearly 100 miles from Charleston to cover it but Newt was a no-show, and no one seems to know why. I’ll add more information as soon as I can find out what happened.

UPDATE: According to the British Guardian newspaper, the press conference was actually held at 10 a.m. But here’s what was on the Politico‘s campaign calendar:

And it wasn’t just me who got misled by this scheduling mixup. Ben Adler of The Nation was there, as were Dave Hogberg of Investors Business Daily, Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times, more than a dozen other reporters and multiple TV camera crews.

While I didn’t get to cover a press conference, I did find time to read the inscriptions on the famous Confederate monument at the Statehouse:

On the north side, it reads:

“This monument perpetuates the memory of those who true to the instincts of their birth, faithful to the teachings of their fathers, constant in their love for the state, died in the performance of their duty: who have glorified a fallen cause by the simple manhood of their lives, the patient endurance of suffering, and the heroism of death, and who, in the dark hours of imprisonment, in the hopelessness of the hospital, in the short, sharp agony of the field, found support and consolation in the belief that at home they would not be forgotten.”

On the south side:

“Let the stranger who may in future times read this inscription recognize that these were men whom power could not corrupt, whom death could not terrify, whom defeat could not dishonor, and let their virtues plead for just judgment of the cause in which they served. Let the South Carolinian of another generation remember that the state taught them how to live and how to die, and that from her broken fortunes she has preserved for her children the priceless treasure of their memories, teaching all who may claim the same birthright that truth, courage and patriotism endure forever.”

Some other reporters, desperate to get something useful from their dry run to the press conference we missed, decided to try the old campaign-coverage trick of interviewing a “typical” local voter:

Perhaps unknown to this camera crew, the man they’re interviewing is the infamous Will Folks, a disgraced Republican political consultant who once claimed to have had an affair with Gov. Nikki Haley.

So much for the “typical” voter, eh?

Category: Election 2012, Newt Gingrich, South Carolina

To Expand on What Smitty Said

Posted on | January 18, 2012 | 50 Comments

Finding political symbolism in the latest headlines can be a silly game. It may be that the Costa Concordia should teach no lesson other than to remind us why the phrase “Italian navy” never struck terror in anyone’s heart.

Nevertheless, Vox Day ventured the opinion that feminism was somehow implicated in the disaster, an opinion which was linked by Instapundit, which inspired an eruption from Cassandra at Villainous Company. And then Smitty, a man who knows something about matters nautical, weighed in on the fray.

On the one hand, it’s difficult to say that Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, et al., are directly implicated in the cowardice of Capt. Francesco Schettino and his crew. There were cowards before there were feminists, obviously, so to cite such spectacular cowardice as the fruit of a particular ideology may be going too far.

Nevertheless, we can say that an emphasis on rights tends to encourage the neglect of duty, and we live in an age when considerations of duty seldom enter the public discourse. Without duty — where the is no sense of obligation, responsibility, honor, respect — selfishness natural prevails, and one manifestation of that selifshness is the feminist sensibility.

The famous feminist slogan, “the personal is political,” summarizes everything that is wrong with feminism as an ideology and a movement. What the slogan suggests is that the ordinary discontents of women — their unhappiness with romantic relationships or disappointments in their careers — should be elevated to the status of political causes, because . . .

Well, why?

Good luck getting a credible explanation for that, short of the advocacy of an all-powerful government that monitors every private transaction and treats every disagreement or injury as a potential tort. If every rude word in the workplace is a civil-rights violation, and every broken heart is grounds for a lawsuit, well, yes, in such a society ‘the personal is the political,” but it is difficult to say that such a regime actually contributes to women’s well-being or happiness. Yet this is the regime that prevails in a hyper-litigious culture when any recognition of the differences between men and women is prohibited as “discrimination.”

This is what we mean by the word “feminism,” a species of egalitarianism that is as mistaken and as damaging as any other egalitarian philosophy. This make-believe androgyny is armed with the force of law and protected by the intellectual prestige of academia, and seldom does anyone dare to question its philosophical foundations or its implicit premises.

A deference to feminism has taken hold that is almost never noticed: Anyone who writes about feminism except to praise it is presumed to be ill-motivated, and even most critics of feminism feel obligated to soften their crtiticisms by including disavowals of any intent to condone “discrimination.” But if we cannot discriminate between men and women — if we cannot say that male and female are distinct qualities involving differences significant enough to deserve recognition and accommodation — we are forced into maintaining the pretense of a phony “equality” that exists only in the minds of ideological fanatics.

And what no one can ever say is that feminism is an ideology of selfishness, which tells women that their ambitions, their desires and their grievances are more important than those of men. By embracing feminism, a woman becomes entitled (at least in  her own mind) to deferential favoritism, with an entire political/legal movement standing ready to unleash hell on any poor bastard who dares dispute her “right” to anything she covets.

Feminism = “What’s in it for me?”

This equation often manifests itself in outrageous claims of victimhood and absurd public festivals of indignation like “Slutwalk,” which began when a Toronto police official — noting that a serial rapist who was still at large seemed partial to women dressed a certain way —  suggested as a public safety measure that maybe women should avoid dressing that way. The fact that the officer was merely trying to help women protect themselves against a dangerous criminal was lost in the subsequent rage-fest, which inspired international emulation. A simple fact about crime (i.e., that people can take precautions to reduce their likelihood of becoming victims) had so offended feminist sensibilities that the protests were necessary to silence anyone who might ever again be tempted to state such a fact.

The appropriate answer to this ridiculous ideology is not a counter-ideology; we do not need a “man’s movement.” Rather the appropriate answer is to expose feminism as the dangerous folly it is, and to show courage in doing so. Too many men are afraid to denounce feminism directly and comprehensively, and the scent of fear only incites the feminists to more furious attacks. But let us acquit ourselves as men, and not abandon ship like Capt. Francesco Schettino.

Category: Feminism

Part Of Recovering Western Civilization Is Just Saying “No” To Feminist Tripe

Posted on | January 18, 2012 | 29 Comments

by Smitty

The Last Tradition links to Lowry in the NY Post contrasting the Titanic with Costa Concordia, but I think this analysis overplays the hand by a long shot:

I’m not trying to single out Italian men because the same crisis exists in the United States. We have almost two generation of males in this country that hasn’t be taught what a real man is or suppose to act like. Because of Feminist propaganda, traditional gender roles have been blurred to the point where it’s politically incorrect to acknowledge specific differences between men and woman. Put simply, manhood has to be taught to boys in order for them to become real men. And that’s not happening anymore.

I’m far more in agreement with Cassandra over at Villainous Company, emphasis original:

Wow. Just wow. Six dead and 29 missing in a tragic accident that (so far as I can see) is attributable to the cowardice, negligence, and poor example of the captain and crew – note carefully: to *some* men, not *all* men – and the reaction is, “Up yours, feminists/women – you got what you deserved”?
If a little boy is elbowed aside by an able bodied man and drowns as a result, has he “reaped what he sowed”? Alternate form of the implied argument is, “It’s not the man’s fault – those horrid feminists and their mind control rays made him do it!” Allow me to riff on the ubiquitous Heinlein quote:
Any society that allows morality to be defined down to the lowest common denominator will not long survive.

The morality of the crew members is between them and the Almighty. What is going to matter is that they have behaved unethically in abandoning their duties. The Admiralty Court, affectionately known as “the long green table” is one of the closer brushes you can have with the judgement seat of God while continuing to draw breath. They’ll build a timeline and rake those Italians over coals in slow motion, pointing out every single error of training, maintenance, and judgement. Or not; maybe the Italian court is as capsized as the Costa Concordia herself, but I doubt it. The amount of money involved in crewing, maintaining, and operating ships is such that they are Just. Not. Fannying. About.

In contrast to the radical feminists.

We enjoy tossing the entire Postmodern exercise in idiocy that is radical feminism under the bus around this blog, and then backing up over it several times, just to test the steering. Radical feminism is so risible that it really serves no use other than mockery. Trying to hang any sort of excuse on these bimbos is an act of auto-beclownment.

The traditional, mutually supportive roles of women and men are as simple as 2+2=4. Just because Andrea Dworkin and company came along and contended that arithmetic was an oppressive patriarchal regime, and that 2+2=5 is every bit as emotionally satisfying as the correct answer, does not an excuse make.

Man up: reject radical feminism, and every other attendant Postmodern falsehood, for such all have “Made in Hell” stamped on them. Aside: For an interesting character study on this topic, check out Lord Jim. I hated that the first time I read it, because I didn’t believe such a jackwagon could exist. Then I met one. A couple decades later, Barack Obama was elected.

Category: Feminism, Italy
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