The Other McCain

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

Edasurc: ‘Crusade’ Spelled Backwards

Posted on | December 25, 2011 | 28 Comments

by Smitty

Earlier, this blog noted the plight of the Egyptian Christians. Memeorandum points to The New York Times (twice today) with atrocious news:

A series of apparently coordinated bombings struck three churches during Christmas services across Nigeria on Sunday, killing more than a dozen people and solidifying a recent escalation in violence by a radical Muslim sect.
At least five bombings were reported, including three at churches and one at a state security building. The worst appeared to be at a packed Catholic church just outside the capital, Abuja, where a bomb tore through the building and killed at least 16 people as they left a morning mass.

Now, the Islamic extremists wage jihad, and refer to Western countries as ‘Crusaders’. That baffles Americans, because we:

  • are not religiously motivated to intercede militarily in the Middle East,
  • are in fact dedicated to a division of sacred from profane in pretty much everything, i.e. haven’t got a ‘Christendom’ to saddle up and deploy on a crusade,
  • would likely have significantly different tactics in use in the hypothetical case of a Crusade,
  • are disconnected by eight hundred years and an ocean from the historical Crusades.

And yet, looking at the news, one is tempted to connect the dots, with Christian blood, in such a way as to wonder aloud if the ummah isn’t engaged in something akin to a ‘crusade’ against Christians. Let us not call it jihad, though. That term is copyrighted by some Imam, who will immediately contend you are misusing it. Edasurc, ‘crusade’ backwards, besides turning up some World of Warcraft character hits on Google, does not appear to have any previous usage. Therefore, let us define that to mean the (occasionally violent, even murderous) animosity toward Christianity on display in various Muslim countries toward unarmed Christians.

It was strange to be in Kabul, and go to the military chapel of a Sunday, sing hymns, and hear excellent preaching, and to recall that, outside the walls of New Kabul Compound, one could be forced to pay the ultimate price for that.

A fellow Baptist like Ron Paul might balk at U.S. involvement in supporting people in foreign countries who are being butchered. But, as with these Nigerians in today’s outrage, the Copts in Egypt, or the Jews in Europe in the last century, we have a gnawing question: what is the body count at which one triggers that possible Burke line:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

There really is no formula to compute the crossover point. It’s a matter of context and leadership. Nevertheless, I should expect our serious GOP candidates to offer some kind of policy. On the playground of world religions, there is exactly one bully. Whoever thinks that bully can be appeased is a fool, and needs to have their foolishness escorted away from levers of power. Whether calling that bullying ‘Edasurc’ helps elevate the problem in the public debate, I have no idea. But the body count from Edasurc keeps rising.

Category: Uncategorized

Joe Nocera On ‘The Big Lie’

Posted on | December 25, 2011 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

Joe Nocera in the Grey, Undead Lady:

So this is how the Big Lie works.
You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility.

Postmodernism is the ultimate lie, beginning with the notion that there is no Truth. In responding to any modern accusation of deploying a ‘Big Lie’, one should first make the accuser stand and deliver on the question of what they hold to be absolutely True.

You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded congressmen pick up your mantra and invite you to testify at hearings.
You’re chosen for an investigative panel related to your topic. When other panel members, after inspecting your evidence, reject your thesis, you claim that they did so for ideological reasons. This, too, is repeated by your allies. Soon, the echo chamber you created drowns out dissenting views; even presidential candidates begin repeating the Big Lie.

Thus far, we could be referring to the Big Lie that is Anthropogenic Global Warming, or whatever they are calling AGW at the moment–I guess it is ‘climate change’–a really Big Lie, like the flu, begets variations in its assault on Truth.

But Nocera’s task is to ignore the 10th Amendment, and try to con you into believing that the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 wasn’t Yet Another Progressive Puddle of Puke (YA3P). The U.S. has permitted, for almost 40 years, a short-circuit in the chain of command. We have allowed the Federal government to bypass the state capitals and deal directly with citizens for housing.

Thus has Peter Wallison, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis. His partner in crime is another A.E.I. scholar, Edward Pinto, who a very long time ago was Fannie’s chief credit officer. Pinto claims that as of June 2008, 27 million “risky” mortgages had been issued — “and a lion’s share was on Fannie and Freddie’s books,” as Wallison wrote recently. Never mind that his definition of “risky” is so all-encompassing that it includes mortgages with extremely low default rates as well as those with default rates nearing 30 percent. These latter mortgages were the ones created by the unholy alliance between subprime lenders and Wall Street. Pinto’s numbers are the Big Lie’s primary data point.

Nocera gets down to naming names here, giving two people who have ‘almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis’. It would seem that if one is going to wield the Big Lie stick, one would want more certainty than ‘almost’. Are we to believe that these two blokes just randomly decided to connect the Fannie/Freddie dots in a certain way? Powerful dudes, if they are responsible. Maybe they informed Jonah Golderg, whose book Liberal Fascism was my personal entre into the rottenness of Progressivism.

Or is the quibble the notion that the financial crisis had a single cause? I have neither heard of, nor read yet, Wallison or Pinto. Did they really say it was all Fannie/Freddie, or just that these GSEs had contributed significantly?
Nocera concludes:

To have that debate, though, we need a clear understanding of what role the government’s affordable-housing goals did — and did not — play in the crisis. And that is impossible as long as the Big Lie holds sway.
Which, now that I think of it, may be the whole point of the exercise.

I see nowhere in Nocera’s article any acknowledgement that Fannie/Freddie are

  • possibly Constitutional dodgy for starters;
  • that they engender massive moral hazard (temptation) for mischief (Senator Dodd is gone, Representative Frank does not plan to run for re-election. Could that mean they kinda know they transgressed?);
  • that daring to question the validity of the scam triggers such white-hot denunciations for a reason.
So, the ball is in your court, Nocera. Why don’t you begin with first principles and justify Fanny/Freddy, and the debt they’ve wrought, and maybe we’ll see your finger pointing and Big Lie invocation as something other than Even Bigger Lie.
via Puffington Host
Category: History, HUD, Progressivism

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Posted on | December 25, 2011 | 22 Comments

The family gathered around the Christmas tree for a traditional holiday song, with a traditional greeting at the end:

It was a most excellent Christmas: We went out caroling and giving gifts to neighbors on Christmas Eve, then got in the car and drove around looking at Christmas lights. The kids woke up at 7 a.m. to open gifts. Here’s the scene of the stampede upstairs:

Notice the dog Marley at the end of that one, knocking over a gift with his tail. In a family with six kids, Christmas morning is always fun. Of course, kids grow up so fast — 13-year-old Jefferson is nearly as tall as me already — and now that our oldest Kennedy is married, we’re about ready for some grandkids. But her hubby’s still in law school, so they say they want to wait. My son-in-law was operating the video camera, and started recording before we were ready, thus producing this “blooper” clip:

Merry Christmas to everyone!

–





Category: Christmas, Family

Prayer For The Egyptian Christians

Posted on | December 25, 2011 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

Christianity seems to make one a punching bag in the Middle East in general, and Egypt in particular:

Under US and international law, growing numbers of Egyptian Christians will qualify as refugees if these conditions continue to worsen.
For Americans, the persecution of religious believes in other countries is more than a foreign policy problem. Russian persecution of the Jews in the 19th century led millions of Jews to immigrate to the United States between 1880 and the start of World War One. Religious and ethnic minorities fled to the US from all over Europe and the Middle East in the old days. One reason that so few Christians remain in most of the Middle East is that the United States primarily, but other western countries as well, have allowed millions of Christian Arabs to escape — in some cases looking for security and an end to persecution, and in others for better economic opportunity and the absence of discrimination.

For one of ‘those’ Evangelical Christians, I cut strongly against the usual SoCon reading, trending libertarian on federal issues. The New Testament is between individuals and the Almighty, not a foreign policy manual.

Still, one would hope that our good Christian POTUS would recall:

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
By this shall all [men] know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. John 13:34,35

and help the Egyptian Christians to the greatest extent possible, while coloring within the lines of the law. If BHO can be bothered while chilling out in Hawaii, that is.

via Instapundit

Category: Barack Obama, Egypt

The World’s Youngest Blogger Paraphrases Congress

Posted on | December 24, 2011 | 11 Comments

Category: humor, Video, World's Youngest Blogger

I DENOUNCE THIS ATROCITY!

Posted on | December 24, 2011 | 21 Comments

I’m not sure which is more profoundly offensive: The song itself, or Richard McEnroe posting it under the title, “A Ron Paul Christmas”:

There are so many layers of sick humor atrociously bad taste hate crime involved, I’m not sure where to begin:

  • Orthodox Jews will be horrified by this shiksa‘s expression of carnal lust for Jew-flesh;
  • Ron Paul supporters will be insulted by the suggestion that a politician hates Jews merely because he has been known to rant about the  “Israel lobby” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink); and
  • Islamic fanatics will be infuriated by this taunting reminder their relentlesss efforts to annihilate every Jew on the planet have failed.

These are just three of the most obvious human rights violations involved and therefore:

I DENOUNCE RICHARD McENROE

Because, hey, being denounced by me? It’s like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval with the ADL, SPLC, Media Matters, etc.

Category: Christmas, humor, Ron Paul, Three Beers Later, Video

FMJRA 2.0: Twisting In The Wind

Posted on | December 24, 2011 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Report: Huntsman, Bachmann, Santorum Fail to Make Virginia Primary Ballot UPDATE: Close Calls for Newt and Perry

Shorter Ace: ‘Bitches Lie’

Fear of a Ron Paul Planet

Slouching Toward Cedar Rapids

Yeah, That Was Pretty Quoteworthy

Republican Fascism And Raaaaacism

Sean Hannity Flummoxed By Michelle Malkin

No, Jesse Jackson, Jesus Was An #Occupier To About The Extent You Are Worth Two Hoots As A Reverend

Bibi, You Rock

Politico Stirs The GOP Pot

From an Undisclosed Location

‘Fatwa’ Against Bollywood Actress

Minnesota Republican Resigns Post Over Allegation of ‘Inappropriate’ Relationship

Santorum Campaign Sends 60,000 Mailers to Iowa Voters: ‘No Surrender’

FMJRA 2.0: Toys In The Attic

Schadenfreude, Virginia

Will To Reich: ‘You Are A Pyromaniac In A Field Of Strawmen’

Kim Jong’s Illness Finally Takes Him

Gingrich Campaign ‘Imploding’ in Iowa; Ron Paul Leads; Rick Santorum Gains

LIVE AT FIVE – 12.19.11

I Don’t Know If I Agree With Surber

 

Your Monthly Sarah Palin Wink

Rule 5 Monday

For Some Strange Reason, I Was Reminded of Lawrence v. Texas

Vice President Condi Rice?

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Strange Rumblings in the Heartland

Perry Iowa TV Ad Attacks Newt Gingrich as ‘K Street,’ Mitt Romney as ‘Wall Street’

LIVE AT FIVE7:30 – 12.20.11

BREAKING: Rick Santorum Gets Endorsement by Key Iowa Social Conservative Leader Bob Vander Plaats UPDATE: In Interview, Santorum Says Endorsement ‘Sends a Strong Signal’

News Flash: Democrats Lie (and Have Conniptions When They Get Caught)

Because I’m Feeling Kinda Bad About Giving Ace of Spades Such a Hard Time …

Meghan McCain: I Look At Callista Gingrich, And All I Hear Is Foreigner

LIVE AT FIVEEIGHT – 12.21.11

Britannia, Rule the Waves!

#OccupyDC Nativity Scene

The Weird Turn Pro

The Deadly Menace of Fake Boobs

E-Mail From Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

Scott Ott And The #40Dollars

Behold, I Bring You Peace, Goodwill, and Also This Gratuitous Vintage Pinup Girl

Senior Game Player, Gamely, Denies Game In Progress

God-Hating Feminist Blogger Denounces Iowa Republicans and Rick Santorum

LIVE AT FIVEEIGHT – 12.22.11

70% Of Americans Self-Identify As Raaaaacists Who Want Valid Elections

Santorum Surge: It’s Real and Spectacular

Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right. Two Thousand Wrongs? A Right Jolly Commie Start.

Minnesota Republican ‘Made Some Mistakes and Errors in Judgment’

LatmaTV Delivers A Brutal Carol

LIVE AT FIVE – 12.23.11

Whittle Speaks As The GOP Would, Had It Hair #1 Where Necessary

Classics of the Golden Age of Fringe, Or: Ron Paul Digs the Beatles’ White Album

Perry Heartache In VA: Just A Bit Outside

Gingrich Misses Virginia Ballot Too

 

Top linkers this week:

  1. The Pro From Poca (13)
  2. Lonely Conservative (8)
  3. Katy Pundit (7)
  4. (tied) Lisa Graas, Daily Pundit, and Zilla Of The Resistance (5)

Thanks to everyone for the linkagery! Deadline for next week’s FMJRA will be Friday, December 30.

 

Category: FMJRA Award

Gingrich Misses Virginia Ballot, Too

Posted on | December 24, 2011 | 83 Comments

This was pending late last night, but now has been confirmed: Like Rick Perry — and Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum — Newt Gingrich failed to submit enough eligible signatures to qualify for the March 6 Virginia Republican primary. That leaves Virginia voters to choose between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Irony?

A poll released Wednesday showed Gingrich with a slight lead over Romney among Virginia Republicans in the race for president. The Quinnipiac University poll shows Gingrich at 30 percent and Romney at 25 percent among Republican voters.

Leading the poll. Not on the ballot.

UPDATE: Extra embarrassment for Newt? He actually left the campaign trail in Iowa this week to return to Virginia for two days in an attempt to make the ballot — a costly and, as it proved, futile waste of time.

And Newt lives in Virginia.

UPDATE II: Just dawned on me — all the “Anybody But Romney” voters in Virginia will have only one choice on March 6.

“Ihese stooges don’t scare me!”

UPDATE III: Linking Politico (not me), Ed Morrissey gets it wrong:

Bachmann and Santorum don’t have the resources to put people on the ground in Virginia; they’re both sinking everything they have into Iowa.  I don’t think anyone expected them to qualify for the Virginia ballot.

But as I explained Thursday, Santorum did have an effort afoot in Virginia to get on the ballot. I was on the grassroots conference call at which that effort was discussed and a top Santorum staffer said they were “hoping for a Christmas miracle” in Virginia.

Another “Christmas miracle” would be if my friends like Ed would actually bother to read my blog once in a while.

Also, I hope Santa brings me a pony. That could happen.

So anyway, the reason the Santorum campaign didn’t submit signatures is that they fell short of the 10,000 minimum, whereas the Perry and Gingrich campaigns cleared the 10,000 mininum but were rejected during the validation process. As the state elections board says, some petition signatures are always invalidated, so to get 10,000 minimum (including at least 400 in each of the 11 congressional districts), they recommned getting at least 15,000 signatures statewide, with at least 600 in each district.

As I also explained Thursday, it was obvious the moment the numbers were announced that Gingrich and Perry, with about 11,000-12,000 signatures each, might take a hit in the validation process. But nobody important can be bothered to read this blog. IYKWIMAITYD.

UPDATE IV: And just in case anyone was wondering: No, Virginia rules do not allow write-in votes in a primary campaign.

Category: Election 2012, Newt Gingrich, Virginia
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