The Other McCain

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

Today’s News of the Weird

Posted on | December 12, 2011 | 15 Comments

From Alabama, with love:

A conservative Christian politician has a secret life as a sperm donor for lesbian couples – even though he has campaigned against gay marriage.
American politician Bill Johnson has spent most of this year in Christchurch [New Zealand] helping run the earthquake recovery, all the while using the online persona “chchbill” to meet women who want help to get pregnant.
Under that persona, he has discussed making donations to at least nine women without the knowledge of his family in the US.
Three of the women are now pregnant, and Johnson has assisted another three with donations in the past month. It is believed he has been in communication with at least another three women to discuss sperm donation.

Wait — it gets weirder:

He moved to Christchurch after the February quake without his wife Kathy, a two-time Mrs America finalist who has three children from a former relationship. . . .
The Herald on Sunday approached Johnson on Thursday at a restaurant in Christchurch where he had just finished dining with one of the women he had successfully impregnated.
He said the urge to become a biological father was “a need that I have”.
“I am married to the most beautiful woman in the world. When I married her I knew we couldn’t have any more children. She had a hysterectomy 10 years ago.
“There is nothing my wife would want to give me more in the world than a child of my own.”

TMI! TMI! TMI!

We can safely predict that the soon-to-be-ex-politician will be hearing shortly from the lawyer for his soon-to-be-ex-wife. And then he’ll be free to donate sperm to whomever he chooses.

Category: Alabama, New Zealand, Scandal

Problem Perry’s Campaign Denied in September, Confirmed in December

Posted on | December 12, 2011 | 12 Comments

Nobody seems to remember who first raised this issue:

Does Pain Explain Perry’s
Poor Debate Performances?

That was Sept. 23, the day after the Orlando debate, and I’d gotten an e-mail tip from blogger Brian Ledbetter that Rick Perry had undergone back surgery in July. The next day, a top Perry adviser denied to Jennifer Rubin that the governor’s back was causing any problem. But now, in an interview with the Des Moines Register, Perry says it was a problem:

I think part of the reason you have seen a somewhat different candidate on the debates is my health, and (I’m) both physically and mentally just back in the game. You have fusion on your back, and it takes you a while to get back on your game. . . . I would suggest to you that I was pretty fatigued.

So today — now that the story is at Memeorandum, Hot Air and PJ Tatler — I’ve got another question:

Why did Perry’s advisers deny the problem in September, if Perry evidently was willing to admit it?

It doesn’t make sense.

UPDATE: Some people on Twitter have decided this as an occasion to renew their ax-grinding against Jennifer Rubin who, as I mentioned Saturday, has been accused of being in the tank for Mitt Romney — and not without reason. But why the ax-grinding on a story that has nothing to do with Romney?

Rubin did due diligence in asking Perry’s people about this story in September, and got a denial that now appears to have been misleading. Rubin’s alleged bias aside, she did valuable work in reporting that story. It would seem that the real disservice to Perry was done by the aides who tried to cover up a problem which — had they been willing to admit it at the time — might have put Perry’s troubles in a more sympathetic light.

Category: Election 2012, Rick Perry

Yeshiva Girls Gone Wild

Posted on | December 12, 2011 | 5 Comments

You know you’re reading bad porn when you get lines like this:

After all of our secret rendezvouses, I’m still not used to seeing him without his yarmulke on, but this time it’s somewhat of a comfort.

Sweetheart: “Rendezvouses“? I’d expel you for bad grammar.

This anonymous article in the Yeshiva University Beacon has caused a huge media controversy:

Jewish University, School Newspaper
Cut Ties Over Controversial Sex Column
— Fox News

Essay Sparks Campus Uproar
— Wall Street Journal

Editor of Yeshiva University
paper The Beacon resigns
amid outrage over sex essay
— NY Daily News

Orthodox Jewish Student’s
Tale of Premarital Sex,
Real or Not, Roils Campus
— New York Times

Yeshiva University paper
sex story creates uproar
— Jerusalem Post

It’s a shanda! Beth Mandel sent out a link on Twitter to an article at the official Yeshiva newspaper, The Commentator:

This wasn’t censorship — at all. The administration did not take the article down, or demand that it be taken down. As more and more informed reports emerged, we learned that the Stern College for Women Student Council (SCWSC), responding to clearly demonstrated student opinion, asked the Beacon editorship to remove the article. By and large, the student body that the Beacon seeks to represent felt that the Beacon actually misrepresented them and so wanted the story gone. Therefore, it probably would have been unreasonable to think that any national coverage would result from the meeting, as removing the story was only acceding to the requests of the online paper’s constituents.

Background: Stern College is the women’s school at Yeshiva, which takes Orthodox Jewish religion seriously, and the Beacon received some funding from Stern College. Furthermore, as Commentator editor Benjamin Abramowitz explains, evidently the editors of the Beacon were the ones who tipped off the national media to the controversy. Abramowitz links a Jewish blogger’s commentary:

[A] lot of students responded [to the Beacon article] by saying, in effect: This is not what we choose to represent us. This is not what we want people to think when they hear the words Yeshiva University. This is not what we want people to think when they hear the words observant Jew. This is not what or who defines us and we don’t want it up there for people to think this is what defines us.
But the editors of the paper said: Your opinions be damned and your reactions be damned. . . . We have free speech and we’re not afraid to use it. And we don’t care if this becomes . . . a scandal dragged across the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and so on; we don’t care if we make Yeshiva University out to be some sort of evil overarching censorship committee. We only care about ourselves and the fact that we should have the right so say what we want.

That is to say, the Beacon editors are selfish, self-aggrandizing and self-indulgent, indifferent to the reputation, opinions and best interests of the community they are supposed to represent.

In a word, they’re brats.

If the student editors wanted to publish that stuff, they could have dropped out of Yeshiva and enrolled in some other school. Instead — brats that they are — they were in effect attempting to subvert the entire meaning and mission of their religious university.

Also: The plural of “rendezvous” is the same as the singular.

Expel the grammar-deficient brats!

UPDATE: The anonymous Yeshiva girl probably doesn’t realize they already wrote a country-and-western song about her:

Talk was small, when they talked at all.
They both knew what they wanted.
There was no need to talk about it.
They were old enough to scope it out and keep it loose.
She said, “You don’t look like my type,
But I guess you’ll do.”
Third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous.

Category: Education, Religion, Sex

Iowa State University ‘Sexuality’ Professor Heckles Rick Perry at Campaign Event

Posted on | December 12, 2011 | 24 Comments

Warren Blumenfeld, associate professor of “Multicultural & International Curriculum Studies,” academic heckler:

A packed coffee house where Rick Perry spoke this afternoon turned into a bit of a ruckus that left the candidate heading out the back door and straight to his vehicle after several Iowans screamed questions about his views on gays.
“Why do you hate gay people so much,” someone in the audience screamed as Perry wrapped up a campaign stop without taking questions from the audience.
“Go back to Texas” another screamed from the back of Cafe Diem coffee shop in Ames.
Iowa State University associate professor Warren Blumenfeld was one who shouted questions to Perry, asking him why he was marginalizing and demonizing non-Christians.
“The implication is if you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered, you’re not a real American,” said Blumenfeld, who teaches studies about sexuality. “He is marginalizing people and dividing this country, and he’s demonizing proud Americans who just don’t have the social identities as he has.”

A quick glance at Blumenfeld’s c.v. indicates he isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed: He got his B.A. in sociology at San Jose State in 1969 and waited some 30 years before getting an Ed.D., which is one of those “junk” degrees that public-school bureaucrats get if they’re an assistant principal who wants to get promoted. Professor Blumenfeld’s “research interests” include:

Multicultural education, queer studies, special education, educational psychology, social identities (race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, socioeconomic class, religion, physical and mental abilities) and the ways in which they affect educational outcomes; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues in education; gender fair education; intergroup relations; school bullying; cyberbullying; Christian privilege; African American and Jewish American relations.

Professor Blumenfeld’s academic publications include such prestigious works as Butler Matters: Judith Butler’s Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies and Homophobia: How we all pay the Price.

  • Question One: In tough economic times, how does the state of Iowa justify employing such a professor of useless trivia?
  • Question Two: Doesn’t Professor Blumenfeld read the news? Rick Perry loves gays so much he hired one as his pollster.
  • Question Three: Can’t somebody persuade Professor Blumenfeld to heckle Rick Santorum? He needs the publicity more.

Category: Education, Election 2012, Gays, Iowa, Rick Perry

Barack Obama’s ’60 Minutes’ Interview Has Me Screaming at My TV Again

Posted on | December 12, 2011 | 85 Comments

Today on Morning Joe, they were playing clips of Steve Kroft’s 60 Minutes interview with President Obama, and I literally started screaming. There is only so much of this bulls–t I can endure without talking back to my TV:

OBAMA: If I can’t get Republicans to move, partly because they’ve made a political, strategic decision that says, “Anything Obama’s for, we’re against, because that’s our best chance of winning an election,” I don’t think the American people would see that as a failure on my part. My preference is that they’d have a different attitude. You know, I’ve been joking with my staff lately that I think in my next speech, I am gonna say, “I am adamantly opposed to investing in education and putting teachers in the classroom. I’m adamantly opposed to rebuilding America and putting construction workers back to work.” And I’m thinking maybe suddenly Republicans might be for it. But, you know, keep in mind, I’m talking about Republican members of Congress. I’m not talking about Republicans around the country.
KROFT: They don’t like you much better. It’s only 7% approval rating.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah, no, I understand. But I think that they like the ideas that we put forward. I mean, the interesting thing is the majority of Republicans actually think we should have a balanced approach to deficit reduction, including tax increases for the wealthy. The majority of Republicans do think that we should make investments in roads and bridges and improving our airports and investing in basic research and medical research.
So if you take my name out of it and just look at the ideas that we’ve been presenting, these are common sense, mainstream ideas that …

THAT WE CAN’T AFFORD! YOU ALREADY BLEW A TRILLION DOLLARS ON THIS STIMULUS CRAP AND WHAT DID IT GET US, HUH? WHERE’S THE F–KING RECOVERY? THE DEFICIT’S OUT OF CONTROL! WE DON’T HAVE THE MONEY TO PAY FOR THIS CRAP! SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT ‘COMMON SENSE’!

 Obama thinks he can just rattle of a laundry list of spending projects, call them “common sense, mainstream ideas” and — POOF! — the money magically appears to pay for this stuff.

And something else: He loves to talk about infrastructure — “investments in road and bridges” — as if that was the majority of what he’s spending money on, when in fact, infrastructure projects were less than 5% of the stimulus bill. It’s like me sprinkling a turd with sugar and asking you to eat it and when you refuse, I accuse you of disliking sugar. Here’s another idiotic assertion:

KROFT: [Republicans] say it’s your insistence on raising the taxes to the wealthiest Americans, that you’re fixated on that. And that there are other ways to raise revenue.
OBAMA: Steve, the math is the math. You can’t lower rates and raise revenue, unless you’re getting revenue from someplace else. Now, either it’s coming from middle-class families or poor families or it’s coming from folks like you and me that can afford to pay a little more. I mean, I think the average American understands that.

ECONOMIC GROWTH, YOU F–KING IDIOT! EVER HEARD OF THE LAFFER CURVE? SUPPLY SIDE? ART LAFFER COULD EXPLAIN IT TO YOU IN 15 MINUTES WITH A COCKTAIL NAPKIN!

Obamanomics is simply ignorance as the basis of policy. The more you know, the less you like it, and his only hope of re-election is to promulgate counterfactual ideas and persuade voters that they must choose between two lies: His dishonest characterizations of his own policies and his dishonest characterizations of Republican policies.

I hope he fails, because my blood-pressure can’t take another four years of listening to this guy lie.

UPDATE: Linked by The Lonely Conservative — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!


Category: Barack Obama, CBS, Economics, Election 2012

LIVE AT FIVE – 12.11.11

Posted on | December 12, 2011 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
DNC Says Gingrich The Original Tea Partier

Newt Gingrich

LOLWUT? Stop smoking that dope and get serious, Debbie!

Obama Makes His Case For Second Term On “60 Minutes”
Not done destroying economy, basically


Manuel Noriega Extradited To Panama, Will Serve Jail Time
Old enough to serve sentences under house arrest



POLITICS
New England States Cut Low-Income Heating Aid For Poor

What party thinks it's okay to let poor people freeze? Hint: not the GOP

And what party would be running all those states, to say nothing of the Federal Government, Posties? *crickets*

Kansas Tea Party Group Discovers Skunks Now Racist

Ron Paul Won’t Rule Out Third-Party Run

Who’s Protecting Illegals? A State-By-State List

Congress Edges Toward Compromise On Spending

Rick Perry Hears Support, Hecklers At Ames Stop

SCV Files Free Speech Lawsuit To Get Confederate Flag License Plate



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asia Stocks Snap Two-Day Loss On EU Optimism
PRC Marks Decade In WTO Amid EU, US Criticism
Mr. Corzine Goes To Washington
Debt Buyers Brace For Busy Weeks
Filthy Hippies Hope To Block West Coast Ports
Corporate Carve-Out Revolt In Illinois
Oil Fluctuates On Europe Debt Outlook; Iran Urges Production Cuts
WebOS Doomed To Fail…
…Or Did HP Finally Make The Right Move?
Apple’s Hottest New Product Can Be Thrown In The Wash
Google’s Integration Of Google+ Into GMail Is Right Touch
Falcone’s LightSquared Said To Disrupt 75% Of GPS In Tests



SPORTS
Broncos Trample Bears, 13-10, Take First Place

Bears DB Brian Urlacher brings down Tebow

Broncos come back from 10-point deficit in fourth quarter, win in OT on 51-yard field goal
How To Explain Tim Tebow? He Has QB Rating Of 110.2 After Third Quarter

Mavericks Sign Odom From Lakers

Yates Heroics Send Texans To Playoffs

Braun Tests Positive For Drugs – Or Does He?

Redskins Find Failure Again

Sharks Can’t Hold Late Lead, Fall to Blackhawks In OT



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
“Posing Nude Gives Me Confidence”

Lindsay Lohan's Playboy cover

Lindsay Lohan in Playboy

Britney Spears Celebrates 30th Birthday A Week Late

Alec Baldwin Continues To Flout First Rule Of Holes

Hulk Hogan Sues Ex-Wife Over Abuse, Gay Affair Claims

Kirsten Dunst Granted Temporary Restraining Order Against Frenchman

“Jersey Shore”‘sAngelina Pivarnick Sued Over Staten Island Mall Fight

Lowe’s Pulls Ads From “All-American Muslim”

Michael Jackson’s Daughter Paris Gets First Movie Role

Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O Is Married!

Katy Perry Talks SNL: “There Were A Lot Of Pitches About My Boobs”



FOREIGNERS
US Military Vacates Pakistani Air Base
Cameron Prepares To Defend EU Veto Amid Deputy PM’s Criticism
Russia’s Middle Class Turns On Putin
ROK Coast Guardsman Killed By PRC Fisherman
Syrian Activists Call For Strike; Violence Ramps Up In Homs
Peruvian President Humala Names Retired Army Officer As PM



BLOGS & STUFF
David Weigel: Newt Wins The Dress Rehearsal
Legal Insurrection: Newt’s Palestinian Comment Was About More Than History
The Lonely Conservative: Santorum Says – We Need This Election To Be About Barack Obama
Gateway Pundit: Obama-endorsed #OWS Goons Ready To Shut Down US Ports Today
NRO Corner: What About National Security?
Israel Matzav: Were The “Palestinians” Invented?
Jawa Report: Watch Out, Jonas Brothers – Obama Was Serious About Using Predator Drones
Via Meadia: The Brits Tune Out The Greens
Jihad Watch: In Maldives, Silent Protest For Religious Tolerance Attacked With Bricks, Stones, Death Threats
Jonah Goldberg: More On Fact-Checking
Weasel Zippers: Obama Says “Everybody Has To Do Their Part” To Redistribute Wealth


SOTD: I Don’t Care (So There)

Category: Live at Five

Reading ‘Trotsky’

Posted on | December 12, 2011 | 21 Comments

For the past few days, my bedtime reading has been Robert Service’s Trotsky: A Biography. It is my boast that I’ve read more Marx than most Marxists and, as an amateur student of Communism, I’ve long been fascinated by Leon Trotsky.

Trotsky was an early comrade of Lenin, but spent more than a dozen years allied with the Menshevik faction of Russian communists after the split at the Second Party Congress in 1903. Trotsky at that time rejected Lenin’s dictatorial tendencies, but later sided with the Bolsheviks on the eve of the Russian revolution, emerging as the leader of the Red Army.

Trotsky was inarguably the most intellectually gifted of the Bolshevik leaders, and his talent as a writer earned him the nickname “The Pen.” Certainly anyone who has read Trotsky’s work appreciates his subtlety as a writer in comparison to the blunt formulations of Lenin. I had often wondered how much of Trotsky’s reputation as a writer in the English-speaking world was due to the talents of his translator Max Eastman, but Service makes clear that Trotsky’s ability won him admiration among Russian radicals long before anyone in the English-speaking world had ever heard of him.

Aware of his gifts, Trotsky was self-confident to the point of arrogance, and insisted on his own intellectual independence. His willingness to criticize Lenin, while at the same time also criticizing the faults of his own Menshevik allies, was an early indication of Trotsky’s distinctive genius — which, of course, ultimately led to his own fatal downfall.

Trotsky’s undeniable superiority made him an object of suspicion and envy. Vera Zasulich was said to have remarked to early Russian Marxist leader Georg Plekhanov, “That young man’s a genius,” to which Plekhanov replied: “That is something I can’t forgive Trotsky.” And indeed, Plekhanov conspired to prevent Trotsky from joining the editorial board of the Russian Marxist journal Iskra.

Trotsky’s personal abilities as a writer, orator and leader made him the odd man out in the succession struggle that followed Lenin’s death in 1924. The brutal and ruthless Stalin could not tolerate the potential rivalry, and Trotsky was purged, exiled and finally assassinated.

Well, “the only good Communist,” et cetera — but Trotsky has always seemed a more sympathetic and humane figure than other Communist leaders, if only because of his denunciations of Stalinism. If there was any socialist alternative to the bloody paranoid police state over which Stalin so viciously ruled, Trotsky symbolized it.

Of course, the search for a humane “true socialism” is a snipe hunt. As Hayek observed in the famous 10th chapter (“Why the Worst Get on Top”) of The Road to Serfdom, any attempt to impose a socialist economy ultimately requires coercive measures, so that socialist movements are always ultimately led by ruthless and immoral men. Thus, the idealists and dreamers who follow such movements must eventually either repudiate socialism or else consent to the rule of murderous dictators.

Trotsky never seemed to see what Hayek saw so plainly. Having been radicalized in his youth, he remained loyal to his radical dream until the day that dream — as embodied in the person of KGB assassin Ramon Mercader — slammed an ice-axe into his head.

There is a lesson to be learned from Trotsky’s life, but some people seem doomed never to learn it.

Category: Books, History

ACORN Returns as ‘Occupy’

Posted on | December 11, 2011 | 15 Comments

When the radical group ACORN was shut down, Jeff Quinton at Quinton Reports reminds us, the state and local chapters of ACORN reconstituted themselves as new non-profits. And guess what they’ve been up to lately?

In more than two dozen cities across the nation Tuesday, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement took on the housing crisis by re-occupying foreclosed homes, disrupting bank auctions and blocking evictions.
Occupy Our Homes said it’s embarking on a “national day of action” to protest the mistreatment of homeowners by big banks, who they say made billions of dollars off of the housing bubble by offering predatory loans and indulging in practices that took advantage of consumers.

One of the groups identified in that story — “Neighborhoods Organizing for Change” — is a spin-off of ACORN, and investigative reporter Matthew Vadum notes that the Working Families Party, an ACORN political front group, was involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement “from Day One.”

The tactic of “occupying” foreclosed homes was a high-profile tactic of ACORN in 2009, Quinton notes.

UPDATE: And in other “Occupy” news:

Anti-Wall Street activists
look to block West Coast ports
Anti-Wall Street protesters, hoping to briefly cripple a key supply chain of American commerce and re-energize their movement, plan to attempt to block major West Coast ports on Monday.

Question: What, exactly, is this intended to prove? Whom is supposed to be benefitted by this? Is this some kind of “mainstream” movement on behalf of the middle class — as our friends in the liberal media would have us believe — or is it a tiny fringe of Marxist radicals?

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers!


Category: #Occupy, ACORN
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