Some critics have dismissed my oft-stated preference for natural breasts as mere ignorant bigotry against artficial enhancement, but now at last I’ve been vindicated by science:
Thousands of women ‘should’ have breast implants removed
Around 45,000 British women are known to have had Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) implants, which have since been found to have contained industrial silicone and have not passed medical regulations.
Authorities in France are expected to call in all women there who have been given PIP implants in order to have them removed and replaced.
British experts said that women here should consider having them removed for ‘peace of mind’ as they have a high risk of leaking.
Investigations have been conducted after some suspicious cases of cancer were found in women with the implants . . .
“Some people claim that the ancient Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world in 2012. While I am generally skeptical toward such doomsday prophecies, recent events have undermined my habitual skepticism and filled me with foreboding premonitions. If 2012 doesn’t bring the end of the entire cosmos, there are those who say it is likely to destroy the Republican Party as we know it, and the first cataclysmic event is now less than two weeks away. . . .
“Pundits were thrown into a full-blown schizophrenic frenzy by the prospect that Texas Rep. Ron Paul might win the Iowa caucuses. Since late November, no poll has shown Paul worse than third place in Iowa. Two polls this week have Paul first, with Gingrich slipping to third behind Romney in one poll, and all the way to fourth place in another. According to some conservatives, a Paul victory in the Hawkeye State would be the worst thing to happen to the Republican Party since Lincoln’s assassination. It might even be a sign of the final apocalypse foretold by the ancient Mayan calendar.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Hawkeye Fever,” The American Spectator
Apocalyptic prophecies are a dime a dozen these days and, thanks to Ben Bernanke’s inflationary policies at the Fed, a dime ain’t what it used to be. But we at least see the fulfillment of Thompson’s prophecy: The going in Iowa has become genuinely weird, and who is more prepared for that weirdness than a pro like me?
Five days from now — Dec. 26, the day after Christmas — I’ll fly into Cedar Rapids to try to get a handle on the campaign madness that is now, according to pundits, turning Iowa into a vast Midwestern insane asylum.
Here are some of the latest Hawkeye State headlines:
Lots of Republicans have been calling Newt Gingrich that for years, but only in Iowa does an ordinary citizen get a chance to say it to his face.
Fear and loathing are rampaging out of control in the American Heartland, you see, and I’m just five days away from being right in the thick of it, thanks to readers who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund the past three days. Thanks are owed today to tip-jar hitters including Chris in South Dakota, Paolo in St. Petersburg, Buffy in Peachtree City, Michael in Texas, Peter in Spring Hill, Richard in New Jersey, Bill in Falls Church, Mike in El Segundo and my blog-buddy Jimmie Bise Jr.
Be assured of my gratitude, and my commitment to make this the best road-trip ever. And I’m sure some of you may wonder, “Can Stacy handle all that savage weirdness erupting in the Hawkeye State?” Continue reading The Weird Turn Pro →
The right is currently in a struggle to determine whether it will nominate a Ruling Class Overlord who says sufficiently conservative sounding things to take the nomination, the veers to the center to win the election. Alternatively, somebody with both high moral and conservative track records, e.g. Perry, Santorum or Bachmann, could be selected both to run and govern in a way that will reduce that thumping sound from the Founders’ graves.
Recalling that Riech is doing a convincing impression of a buffoon, his Huffington Post column becomes hilarious.
Some describe the underlying conflict as Tea Partiers versus the Republican establishment. But this just begs the question of who the Tea Partiers really are and where they came from.
The underlying conflict lies deep into the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And its roots are very old.
As Michael Lind has noted, today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority — predominantly Southern, and mainly rural — that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.
It’s no mere coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy. Of the Tea Party caucus, twelve hail from Texas, seven from Florida, five from Louisiana, and five from Georgia, and three each from South Carolina, Tennessee, and border-state Missouri.
Others are from border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. The four Californians in the caucus are from the inland part of the state or Orange County, whose political culture has was shaped by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression.
This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans — only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.
Read the whole thing, if you need a belly laugh. If you have history, pound history; if you have economics, pound economics; if you have neither, pound some strawmen.
The crucial point for all of the Left is that there is never a substantial economic argument to refute the Tea Party’s disdain for living in Reich’s blend of 1984 and Atlas Shrugged. Reich could at least refute Will’s devastating point that the Baby Boomer households have sucked up the wealth, to the detriment of anyone younger. Coming up with an argument would be like work, or something. Why not just point a finger?
Supreme Field Marshall of the Endless Strawman Horde, General Leopold von Stubble, said of Reich:
We do not fear Reich, for we produce strawmen at a rate even more prodigious than his destruction rate. What we fear is that the minds of his readers become tainted with facts. If people realize what a colossal joke Reich has become, they’ll quit listening. People attending to Reich’s endless stream of flatus is crucial for us to manage our high strawman production rate without flooding the market. Fortunately, with the election year coming up, we can expect President Obama to do his part to eliminate strawmen, so the pressure is off of Reich’s readers, at least through November 2012.
Via Proof Positive, we have the Alyssa Rosenberg at Squaking Points Memo giving a belly laugh over the new Rainbow Six game which apparently has the player ventilating #OccupyWallStreet protesters.
I would love to see the mic check that goes into getting consensus for this kind of nonsense. But as much as I’d just love to knock this impulse, I’m also dead sure that while most of Hollywood will blame one-off Ponzi schemers for much of the recession, conservative artists will try to help cement a narrative that the 99 percent movement and advocates of financial system reform are inherently anti-capitalist and violent.
While not really coming out in defense of violent video games, not spending time/money on them myself, it would be helpful if Rosenberg would go back and apply the same concern troll affection to Obama vs. Tea Party.
I doubt Rosenberg has the intellectual honesty to admit that:
The Left went there first, louder, and longer, going so far as to have then-Speaker of the House Pelosi connect Tea Partiers with Nazis.
I found the cluttered thinking of the woman who stated she’s Jewish to be most interesting. The notion that if you’re going to represent one religion, you should represent all religions is fantastically silly. If a religion is a spiritual course to steer, then you should drive all directions at once? That’s a formula for going nowhere, I should think.
A South American trading bloc has agreed to close its ports to ships flying the Falkland Islands flag.
Mercosur, which includes Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, came to the decision at a summit in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo.
But Uruguayan President Jose Mujica said British-flagged civilian ships that may supply the islands would still be allowed to use its ports.
The [British] Foreign Office said there was “no justification” for the action.
The Falklands flag is flown by 25 boats, mostly fishing vessels operated in joint ventures with Spanish companies.
The Mercosur decision is the latest in a series by Latin American regional bodies designed to show solidarity with Argentina which has long claimed sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, which it calls Las Malvinas.
Britain has held them since the 1830s and says their future is not negotiable. The two countries fought a brief but bloody war over the islands in 1982.
That’s reported by the BBC. Biased BBC is struck by the fact that the national network chose, in a caption on its Web site, to highlight this: “Argentina has long claimed sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, which lie 400 miles from its coast.” Never mind the British claim, eh?
As for the BBC’s description of a “bloody war” in 1982, the death toll in the Falklands War of both sides combined was less than 1,000. By comparison, during World War II, the British lost more than 1,000 troops killed on D-Day alone — a single day. During the three-month Battle of Britain, when the island kingdom stood alone against the vengeance of the Luftwaffe, the RAF lost nearly 2,700 men.
The BBC exaggeration of the trifling Falklands affair into a “bloody war” is of a piece with their horror of empire expressed by the implication that Argentina has a legitimate claim to the islands “400 miles from its coast.”
FACT: Cuba is just 90 miles from Key West, Florida.
My son-in-law is Argentine. Fine people, the Argentines, and I cheer their soccer team in the World Cup, but I also enjoy mocking their silliness about “Las Malvinas.” No Thanksgiving dinner at our house would be complete without my annual toast to Margaret Thatcher and a rousing chorus of “Rule, Britannia.”
When Britain first, at heaven’s command,
Arose from out the azure main . . .
This was the charter, the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
Rule Britannia!
Britannia rule the wave!
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!
UPDATE: It is an amazing fact of history how England, an island nation the size of Alabama, has spread its influence across the globe. The population of the United Kingdom today is 62 million. Add together the United States (300 million), Canada (34 million), Australia (22 million) and New Zealand (4 million), and the rest of the English-speaking world is at least six times larger than the nation that “arose from out the azure main.”
One of the hardest things about blogging is maintaining morale during times of discouragement. And so I’m grateful to the readers who responded to last night’s emergency request for contributions to the Shoe Leather Fund for my rapidly approaching Iowa trip: Jeff in Walla Walla, Richard in North Hollywood, and Glen in Dubai — yes, I said Dubai.
There were other bits of encouragement: Mike Rogers at Granite Grok promoted my fundraiser, and used some “points” to arrange for me to have a nice hotel room near Des Moines for Jan. 2 and 3. So that’s two days of the eight-day trip coverage, and Dan Collins’ Romanian friend in Cedar Rapids (who will unfortunately be out of town when I arrive Dec. 26) will nonetheless permit me use of his home during his absence. That covers another day or two, and so we approach the minimum feasibility horizon.
I’ve already paid for my airfare to Cedar Rapids, as well as the Jan. 5 flight from Des Moines to Boston to cover the New Hampshire primary, so that’s covered. It’s the first few days of the Iowa trip that have me worried right now. Because it takes three or four business days for PayPal transfers to clear the bank, and because the banks will take a long holiday weekend, unless you hit the tip jar in the next 24 hours — by midnight Wednesday — there’s no way I’ll have that money available to rent a car or pay other expenses when I land in Cedar Rapids the day after Christmas.
Online fundraising during the holiday season is, of course, a difficult prospect. Blog traffic slumps this time of year and people understandably are busy shopping, but if any reader is feeling the urge to kick in $10 or $20 right now — hey, don’t fight the feeling!
Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats called Michele Bachmann and urged her to drop out of the race and endorse Rick Santorum, a source with knowledge of the conversation told POLITICO Tuesday . . .
Bachmann declined, the source said, noting to Vander Plaats that she has consistently polled ahead of Santorum in the race and still does. . . .
Of course, Vander Plaats shouldn’t have been telling Bachmann to quit. I’ve met Bachmann, I like Bachmann, and I expect to cover Bachmann when I get to Iowa. But she got her “Flavor of the Month” moment in June and couldn’t push it past 14 percent nationally, whereas Rick Santorum never got that shot, and I’m naturally partial to the longest longshot, the lowest underdog in the race. (Which is where Herman Cain was when I jumped aboard the Cain Train a year ago.)
Furthermore — and this is something a lot of Sarah Palin fans saw at the time — much of the media hype that Bachmann got in June was driven by the hope of liberals that, if Bachmann did well, her success would discourage Palin from entering the race and fighting Bachmann for the “Tea Party woman” vote.
Allahpundit is being completely bogus in trying to spin this Vander Plaats thing against Santorum, initially seeming to do so in favor of Bachmann, while ultimately using it to plug Perry:
How come Vander Plaats didn’t ask Bachmann to drop out and endorse Perry instead? Like I say, it makes perfect sense for social conservatives to want to unite behind a champion; what doesn’t make sense is uniting behind Santorum instead of a guy with loads of executive experience and a dynamite jobs record to throw in Obama’s face. Perry’s also much likelier to parlay an Iowa upset into a sustained campaign against Romney than Santorum is, I think.
Bachmann endorse Perry? Oh, hell, no. It was Perry’s bigfoot entry into the race that deprived Bachmann of the bump she would otherwise have gotten from her Ames straw poll win. The candidates who had spent weeks campaigning in Iowa prior to Aug. 13 are united in despising Perry’s campaign for that South Carolina publicity stunt.
Santorum’s surprisingly strong fourth-place finish at Ames was another story that got buried in the Perry hype. Despite the fact that he and Bachmann are both competing for the same social-conservative votes in Iowa, Santorum has always spoken well of Bachmann. A lot of Bachmann voters have Santorum as their second choice, and vice-versa. With the way the caucuses work, there will be some voters who go in Jan. 3 planning to vote for one of them who end up voting for the other.
Has Insty linked anybody’s endorsement of Rick Santorum? I don’t think so. And why not? Because Insty hates Rick Santorum with that special kind of hate that the vast majority of the conservative blogosphere reserves for Santorum.
What’s that all about? Santorum is a social conservative, and everybody seems to have convinced themselves that social conservatives are a dead weight impeding the Republican Party and therefore no one should ever express support for any social conservative anywhere, under any circumstance.
OK, if you feel that way, fine. It’s a free country, but hasn’t Rick Perry also been rather desperately trying to convince Iowa Republicans that he, too, is just as much a social conservative as Rick Santorum? Wasn’t that the whole point of this TV ad?
Perry deliberately contrasts “gays in the military” vs. “prayer in school” — a rather obvious play for the social conservative vote, don’t you agree? And yet Santorum isn’t acceptable because he’s a social conservative?
Perry is acceptable because, I suppose, the bloggers endorsing him figure he’s just engaged in insincere hypocritical pandering: Perry doesn’t really mean this stuff, so it’s OK to support him. Perry’s not going to lift a damn finger to actually implement any kind of social-conservative policy, he’s just talking up this stuff to fool those hicks in Iowa.
Also, as any Perry supporter will tell you, mandatory Gardasil injections are cool! All the kids in Texas, they love them some Gardasil.
UPDATE IV: Further encouragement in the form of tip-jar hits from Jeanne in Drexel Hills, Mark in Horsham, Lisa in Kentucky, Ross in Lakeland, and from our libertarian friend Tom Knapp, whom I suppose will expect me to get some good Ron Paul coverage while I’m in Iowa.
Actually, covering the Ron Paul campaign is easy because whenever there’s an event, the Paulistas are all around the place waving signs. A lot of the major media types covering the GOP campaign tend to ignore the Paulistas, mainly because the sign-waving hordes are such a commonplace feature of every event but also because — until quite recently — nobody thought the Paulistas would actually have an impact on the outcome.
