The Other McCain

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

SIOUX CITY IOWA DEBATE TONIGHT

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 24 Comments

Roundup:
Frank Luntz on the Hannity special edition:

Newt defined himeself as the Reagan conservative,
Mitt Romney, the private sector conservative,
Ron Paul, the civil liberties conservative,
Rick Santorum, the conviction conservative,
Jon Huntsman, the consistent conservative,
Michele Bachmann, the female conservative,
and my favorite is Rick Perry, the Tim Tebow conservative.

My ratings:

Rick Santorum: He sounded quite strong on foreign policy and all values.
Rick Perry: Perry sounded quite improved.
Mitt Romney: Really didn’t sound good on the internals of his Massachusetts tenure.
Newt Gingrich: Michele wrecked Newt on Freddy Mac.
Ron Paul: Ran aground in the Straights of Hormuz. I understood his reticence on judges, but the Progressive judges in the last century are as wrong as the Federal Reserve, Ron.
Michele Bachmann: She sounded calm and poised, and did the best job of going after Newt.
Jon Huntsman: A couple of good ideas. Should have served some Tea, but it’s too late.

Overall, I remain firmly committed to supporting the GOP candidate, plan to vote for Sarah Palin in the primaries, and hope that Newt, Mitt, Paul, and Jon don’t make it. I hope the ticket boils down to some combination of Santorum, Perry, and Bachmann.

22:55 p.m. ET (Smitty): Brett Baher: Rick Santorum, what about Reagan’s 11th Commandment?
Santorum: Vet the candidates.
Perry: Bring it.
Mitt: They’re nothing new. Focus on BHO.
Newt: I’ve rebutted attacks, but focused on solutions.
Paul: Let’s be responsible. We’re picking up the media slack. Focus on issues.
Michele: We’re exposing who can do the best against BHO.
Huntsman: Respectful debate breeds trust.

22:50 p.m. ET (Smitty): Chris Wallace: Michele Bachmann, what about pro life issues?
Bachmann: We. Must. Get. Life. Right. Gingrich didn’t defund Planned Parenthood when he had the chance.
Gingrich: Bachmann is daft. I have an overwhelming pro life record.
Bachmann: He’s supported partial birth abortion candidates.

22:46 p.m. ET (Smitty): Chris Wallace: Rick Santorum, what’s your take on Mitt’s response.
Santorum: Yeah, if you peak at the details, Governor Romney issued gay marriage licenses.
Wallace: Mitt?
Romney: No, I’m all about traditional marriage.

22:42 p.m. ET (Smitty): Chris Wallace: Mitt, do you like those Cafe Press flip flops?
Romney: My position on gay rights is missionary, and mercenary. I have been firmly pro-life all along.
Wallace: Are you sure that those flip-flops are a good fit?
Romney: Yes, do they make my toes look furry?

22:37 p.m. ET (Smitty): Chris Wallace: Huntsman, should the GOP pander to Hispanics?
Huntsman: We just need to be true to conservative values, but illegal immigration is down. Immigrants are an engine of growth.

22:38 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn Kelly: Newt, what say you?
Gingrich: I agree substantially with Mitt. But drop the anti-state lawsuits, remove federal aid to sanctuary cities, secure the border.

22:37 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn Kelly: Mitt, do you expect illegals to go home and get all their paperwork in order to return?
Mitt: I will give them a RomneyCard to keep them in line.

22:35 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn Kelly: Rick Santorum, is Holder correct that Republican’s are politicizing Fast and Furious?
Santorum: Cartels are training terrorists in Central- and South America. BHO wrong. Reset.

22:34 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn Kelly: Rick Perry, would you take Eric Holder’s scalp?
Rick Perry: I’d toss an attorney general such as holder under the bus like it’s my frickin’ job, Megyn.

22:28 p.m. ET (Smitty): Cavuto: Rick Perry, you’ve criticized Solyndra, but you signed a 2003 bill for a natural gas company.
Perry: today is the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, including the 10th Amendment. So I’m all about letting states be competitive.

22:26 p.m. ET (Smitty): Cavuto: Michele Bachmann was the BP shutdown Bogus Policy?
Bachmann: BHO did no real investigation. Keystone XL is really important, BTW. BHO’s calculus is about his re-election, not policy.

22:24 p.m. ET (Smitty): Cavuto: Should we love Gaia or jobs.
Huntsman: Balancing act. We’ve got to quit shooting oil like heroine. We need alternatives like natural gas.

22:23 p.m. ET (Smitty): Cavuto: Newt, should the GOP get Zany about the XL pipeline?
Newt: The POTUS should use the XL pipeline to crush the OPEC threat, not pander to Lefty environmentalists?
Cavuto: AFTQ.
Newt: Vote it in and break it off in #OccupyResoluteDesks booty.

22:20 p.m. ET (Smitty): Baher: Perry, should we throw cereal at Sryia?
Rick Perry: I’ve called for a no fly zone, and I will enumerate BHO foreign policy gaffes, and pray I don’t drop one.

22:17 p.m. ET (Smitty): Baher: Huntsman, what say you?
Huntsman: I want a foreign policy that is based upon a good economy.

22:16 p.m. ET (Smitty): Baher: Newt, can you quote something historical for us?
Newt: Yeah, Israel is under rocket attacks.

22:15 p.m. ET (Smitty): Baher: Paul, are you dangerous?
Ron Paul: I’m too broke to be dangerous. Wage peace, muffers. Declare war when you need to.
Bachmann: The IAEA report points out that this is a weak response.
Ron Paul: No UN Report says such. This is nothing in comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Chill!

22:12 p.m. ET (Smitty): Baher: Michele Bachmann, we’re pulling out of Iraq today. Dangerously stupid, or stupidly dangerous?
Bachmann: I’ll go with fools and knaves for ignoring the Iranian plan. Ron Paul is dangerous.

22:09 p.m. ET (Smitty): Baher: Mitt Romney, was the President totally metrosexual to ask for the drone back from the Iranians?
Mitt Romney: Yeah, that was as limp wristed as it gets. American century. Peace through superior firepower, muffers.

22:07 p.m. ET (Smitty): Baher: Rick Santorum, Iran has been supplying terrorists against us. How are we responding.
Rick Santorum: Yeah, Iran has been at war with us. Sorry Ron, they hate us. We should go all Spec Ops on Iran with the Israelis.

10:04 p.m. ET (Smitty): Foreign Policy. Ron Paul. Iran may be a year off. Say you had solid intel about Iran. You’d remove sanctions?
Ron Paul: I’d run with the American people. I’ll play the UN card: they have no evidence on Iran. It’s another war buildup. I fear over-reaction.
Baher: Say you had solid intel. Still pull back sanctions.
Ron Paul: Hey man, sympathy for the devil. They just want respect. It makes more sense to work with people. No war.
Baher: One more time. Say they blockade Hormuz?
Ron Paul: Well, we’re teasing them into doing it. Sanctions are an overreach. We will launch doves.

Welcome, Instapundit readers!

9:58 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn Kelly: who is the best justice?
The conservative justices get kudos. From all but Paul. Ron Paul likes/dislikes them all. He made the point of the split on personal liberty and economic liberty, and how the SCOTUS has screwed the whole discussion.

9:55 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn Kelly: Mitt Romney, you sure nominated a fistful of Dems when you were a governor. Whaddup?
Mitt: yeah, I had to play the game. Congressional oversight over justices is a dodgy idea. We can impeach judges. Tools exist already.

9:54 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn Kelly: Ron Paul, is this too much?
Ron Paul: let’s hold our horses. Might lead to trouble if the Congress goes judging judges.

9:51 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn Kelly: Michele Bachmann, should we trash the 9th Circuit?
Bachmann: we need to have the separation of powers restored. Go Iowa! for scuttling the 3 justices over the marriage issue. Original intent!

9:49 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn Kelly: Newt, your Court plan is really tough. Is it too much?
Gingrich: Newt.org has a paper about how we need to liquidate judges who attack American Exceptionalism. I will make the Judiciary lay by its dish. Historians may have a better grip on the picture than lawyers.

9:48 p.m. ET (Smitty): Mitt Romney: let the markets figure out where the jobs will grow. Manufacturing, high tech, and energy are it. I promise an American Century.

9:45 p.m. ET (Smitty): Rick Santorum, we need to let money return to the U.S. to rebuild industry. Cut corporate tax. I will snuff every BHO regulation with extreme prejudice.

9:43 p.m. ET (Smitty): Governor Huntsman, can you fix China? Sure, invite dissidents to dinner. Let’s share us some values.

9:42 p.m. ET (Smitty): Rick Perry goes after Newt Gingrich’s confusion on the difference between lobbying and influence. Part time Congress, like in Texas, balanced budget amendment.

9:41 p.m. ET (Smitty): Ron Paul sounded great on earmarks.

9:38 p.m. ET (Smitty): Newt, did you waffle on the ‘right wing social engineering’ bit on Press the Meat?
Gingrich: Look, I have to go all Reagan here to be a great communicator. I must kiss up to Mitt to get him to soak up some heat.
Romney: We’ve really got to do it for the kids.

9:35 p.m. ET (Smitty):
Ron, do you buy Newt’s noise?
Paul: GSE is neither fish nor fowl. This bunk leads to fascism.
Newt, what do you say?
Gingrich: Hey, lots of other people do the same thing, and it wasn’t lobbying.
Michele, are you smelling what Newt is stepping in?
Bachmann: Quite whiffy. He’s tainted.
Newt, can you refute?
Gingrich: I can slice the facts anyway you like.
Michele?
Bachann: He took 1.6 million.
Newt?
Gingrich: I did not have sex with the definition of ‘lobbyist’. And I will kill Fanny & Freddy if they are too politically painful.

9:29 p.m. ET (Smitty):
Newt, GSEs have lined your wallet, and you’ve supported them. Are you Michael Moore without a ballcap?
Gingrich: look at the full picture. I was in private enterprise. Habitat for Humanity. Love me.

9:28 p.m. ET (Smitty) DC Culture:
Mitt, are you vulnerable to charges of being a capitalist meanie?
Romney: it sucks if you were on the receiving end, but if you look at the bigger picture, we’re better under capitalism. How did BHO do as dictator of Government Motors?

9:20 p.m. ET (Smitty): 30 second government shutdown responses:
Santorum: Motivate people with a righteous narrative.
Perry: 3 years OJT, BHO AFU. Stupor committee is a leadership joke.
Mitt: If I could drive an 80% Dem legislature in Mass. Leadership, muffers: I speak it.
Newt: The Saul Alinksy leadership is killing us. I know better.
Paul:We’ve got to cut this Leviathan down.

9:12 p.m. ET (Smitty): Rick Perry: your debate stack-ups are of Indy 500 proportions. Perry: I will have Tebow coach me to victory.

9:11 p.m. ET (Smitty): Michele Bachmann: can you capture the cross-eyed twenty-something barista demographic? MB: why yes, if I can pick them up in Minn, then I can do it elsewhere.

9:10 p.m. ET (Smitty): Mitt and his hair serve up some hope and change. Mentioning his whole resume without the Bain Capitol.

9:09 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn goes to Santorum. Will you douse yourself in gasoline and set yourself on fire to get your campaign going? Rick Santorum plays the political AND personal life cards. Go, Rick!

9:06 p.m. ET (Smitty): Megyn goes to Paul. Can you win the nomination, and if not, will you guarantee not to sandbag the nominee? Paul contrasts himself nicely with the others.

9:05 p.m. ET (Smitty): Newt. Who says I am not pretty, conservative? And I’ve got facts at my fingertips, too.

9:04 p.m. ET (Smitty): Newt I am the master debater!

9:03 p.m. ET (Smitty): First question to Newt. Can you guarantee nothing will go wrong if you’re nominated? Newt plays the Reagan card. Electability!

9:01 p.m. ET (Smitty): Brett paints a grim picture of the world situation. Electability. Is that tonight’s codeword?

9:00 p.m. ET (Smitty): Brett Baher still doesn’t look old enough to be on TV. They’re all on stage, saving the walk on time. Huntsman is back!

PREVIOUSLY (8:20 p.m. ET)
***

Just 19 days until the crucial Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, and the final pre-caucus debate in the Hawkeye State is at 9 p.m. ET on Fox News:

SIOUX CITY, Iowa – It’s been 32 weeks since the first Republican presidential debate. Since then, a changing cast of contenders has faced off a dozen times across the country with millions watching at home.
Of the original combatants from that May 5 meeting in Greenville, S.C., only two, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, remain. There have been four lead changes in national polls, two candidates drop out, four candidates join the field and billions of pixels poured out by reporters and pundits trying to make sense of it all.
Tonight, that all culminates here on the western edge of Iowa with the 13th showdown — the last chance for candidates to make their cases before voters start the process of picking a presidential nominee. Even in a cycle that has been shaped by televised debates like no other, the stakes for the candidates this evening are enormous.

The tension in the Sioux City Convention Center tonight is reportedly so extreme that Republicans in the audience have chewed their fingernails to bloody nubs, and the candidates are washing down Xanax with whiskey just to be able to calm their stress-strained nerves.

The Fate of the Free World hinges on what will transpire on that stage tonight, and here are some headlines that capture the dramatic political landscape on which will be fought the struggle destined to be known as Armageddon in the Heartland:

Iowa: Romney 23%, Gingrich 20%, Paul 18%
— Rasmussen Reports

Gingrich Momentum Slows, Polls Suggest
— New York Times

Mitt Romney’s life as a poor Mormon
missionary in France questioned
— U.K. Telegraph

Newt Gingrich shows signs of slide in Iowa
— Politico

“Something Incredibly Stupid”
— Andrew Sullivan

What Sully said, if you must know, was that Chris Wallace should recuse himself as moderator of tonight’s debate because Wallace said something bad about Ron Paul, and therefore is not “objective.” And if there is one thing that Andrew Sullivan insists on, it is that journalists must be completely objective — although no one could ever aspire to being as objective as Andrew Sullivan.

Anyway: Smitty will be liveblogging here — even though he’s kinda upset that I offered to sell him to a Las Vegas billionaire — and we’ll have updated reactions from all over. Commenters are welcome to add their objective observations about tonight’s proceedings. That is, if you’re not so distraught by the extreme tension that you’ve completely chewed off your fingers before it begins.

Just to help settle your nerves: Christina Hendricks and whiskey. Objectively speaking, I didn’t much notice the whiskey. IYKWIMAITYD.


Category: Debates, Election 2012, Fox News, Iowa

Is Congress, Unexpectedly, Robbing Us Deaf, As Well As Blind?

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 1 Comment

by Smitty

Dell Hill points to Director Blue’s post about the dirty truth of the nearly 1,000 Days of Budget Silence:
Doug Ross’s asserts:

What Democrats and big-government Republicans aren’t telling you is this: the Obama-Pelosi-Reid “one-time Stimulus package” was built into the baseline, which means each year that the Obamacrats can avoid writing a budget is another year that this cash furnace can continue burning your children’s money.

but that is less than clear.

If I understand the implication correctly, including Stimulus loot in the Baseline and then not bothering to do a new budget means that the Senate is essentially a re-enactment group, staging #OccupyResoluteDesk’s 2008 heist annually, as the last passed budget stands until superseded. That is less than clear from the text of the legislation, but it says in
SEC. 301. EMERGENCY DESIGNATION.:

For purposes of Senate enforcement, all provisions of this Act are designated as emergency requirements and necessary to meet emergency needs pursuant to section 204 of S. Con. Res. 21 (110th Congress), the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2008.

One gets the prodding sensation in the bowels that the seemingly innocent phrase ‘For purposes of Senate enforcement’ may be the sort of magic spell that can turn an Oldsmobile Delmont 88 into a submarine, IYKWIMAITYD. Ah, the 110th Congress, you shall ever live in infamy.

Trying to end on a humorous note, these budgetary gymnastics, at a high level of abstraction, are like Joe Satriani’s fingers, as a young John Boehner attempts to grasp where it’s all going. Relevant passage starts at 0:46

Category: Budget, Democrats

Just Because We Can Does Not Mean We Should

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

Title lifted from the wonderfully titled Apophenia, which has an interesting definition. That post on Danah Boyd’s blog begins:

Learning to moderate desires and balance consequences is a sign of maturity. I could eat only chocolate for all of my meals, but it doesn’t mean that I should. If I choose to do so anyhow, I might be forced to face consequences that I will not like. “Just because I can doesn’t mean I should” is a decision dilemma and it doesn’t just apply to personal decisions.

Read the whole thing, which has to do with the software consequences of social networking, concluding:

Just because people can profile, stereotype, and label people doesn’t mean that they should. Just because people can surveil those around them doesn’t mean that they should. Just because parents can stalk their children doesn’t mean that they should. So why on earth do we believe that just because technology can expose people means that it should?

Via Anna Marie Hoffman at The College Conservative, a similar question is raised about a program I will not watch called “Sperm Donor”.

Essentially, programs like “Sperm Donor” are normalizing the unethical effects of the sperm donor industry and are continually perpetuating the moral decay of our society. By restructuring the traditional family unit and the two-parent heterosexual model, the sperm donor industry is purposefully changing America’s definition of a stable society and thus is ultimately hurting the children conceived from such a system.

However, there is hope that the abuses of the sperm donor industry will halt. Recently, The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network released a film called Anonymous Father’s Day, which features adults searching for their biological fathers and calling for the end of the very system that conceived them.

Hoffman includes this video:

That’s a trailer for a documentary called Anonymous Father’s Day.

In the trailer, one woman asks “Should we be conceiving children in the first place who will be deliberately denied the ability to know, and be known by, their father?” Another woman states that she wants “…her children to know where they came from.” Such statements convey both the unethical and emotionally damaging nature of anonymous sperm donations.

The practice of anonymous sperm donors, and children fathered by them, is certainly legal and has a market. That would lead one to conclude that it is ethical, rather than unethical. In other words I’d say ethical means ‘not illegal’.

But is it moral? (My, admittedly non-standard, ethical/moral distinction is covered here.) That is, does anyone think that the Almighty is pleased, and/or glorified by people thumbing their noses at the clear, simple, obvious, form-follows-function beauty of:

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. Gen 2:24

There is vast capacity to use modern technology to tinker about with the natural order of things. I’d like to fall short of a sweeping judgement here, in the space of a blog post. It’s possible that there may exist a really good case for why using an anonymous sperm donor is not immoral. But it seems that protecting the father’s (or the mother’s in the case of an egg donor) privacy at the expense of dropping a sizable existential dilemma on the offspring is immoral. That is, the biological parents (i.e. DNA providers) are doing to the child emotionally what the government is doing economically: casting debts upon them without any sort of dialogue. A variation on taxation without representation, if you will. Progressivism seems to be about finding the least vocal victim.

Category: Culture

Determined to Lose the Catholic Vote, Newt Gingrich Says Homosexuality Is a Choice Like … Clerical Celibacy?

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 37 Comments

I understand the argument, but maybe the twice-divorced candidate isn’t the guy who should be making it:

Q: Do you believe that people choose to be gay?
GINGRICH: I believe it’s a combination of genetics and environment. I think both are involved. I think people have many ranges of choices. Part of the question is, do you want a society which has a bias in one direction or another?

Q: So people can then choose one way or another?
GINGRICH: I think people have a significant range of choice within a genetic pattern. I don’t believe in genetic determinism and I don’t think there is any great evidence of genetic determinism. There are propensities. Are you more likely to do this or more likely to do that? But that doesn’t mean it’s definitional.

Q: So a person can then choose to be straight?
GINGRICH: Look, people choose to be celibate. People choose many things in life. You know, there is a bias in favor of non-celibacy. It’s part of how the species recreates. And yet there is a substantial amount of people who choose celibacy as a religious vocation or for other reasons.

First, permit me to say that there is no conclusive evidence — none, zero, zilch — that homosexuality is genetically determined.

 “Propensities,” I dunno. But to bring up “people who choose celibacy as a religious vocation,” given his own track record? Am I the only one who thinks this might hurt Newt with Catholics? And do you think maybe Catholic voters in Iowa might suddenly remember that there is a Catholic candidate on the ballot who is, y’know, actually Catholic?

Category: Election 2012, Gays, Iowa, Newt Gingrich

Billionaire Prepared to Spend $20 Million on My Blog Newt Gingrich’s Campaign

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 11 Comments

Is Newt a better investment?

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is planning to direct $20 million to an outside group backing Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign, multiple sources told POLITICO – the first answer to urgent pleas from allies to the former speaker’s long-time billionaire supporters.
After leaving Congress, Gingrich cultivated a network of a few dozen uber-wealthy backers who poured tens of millions of dollars into a network of groups that helped him maintain a foothold in politics. Now, operatives supporting his presidential campaign are asking those same donors to write fat checks to a suite of new super PACs they hope can spend big on ads to offset Gingrich campaign fundraising that had lagged behind his rivals.

Hey, Mr. Adelson, wanna buy a blog? C’mon, I’ll throw in a perfectly good sidekick and a slightly used Wombat. But wait — there’s more! My vast list of e-mails and phone numbers of bloggers — that’s gotta be worth something, right?

Right? Hello? Is this thing on?

Never mind. Guys like Sheldon Adelson don’t read blogs. He probably hires guys to read blogs for him.

Category: Election 2012, Newt Gingrich

We Needed ‘Science’ to Tell Us This?

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 24 Comments

Unattractive guys lacking social skills are — unexpectedly! — poor judges of women’s interest in them:

There are “tons” of studies that show men think women are interested when they’re not, says lead author Carin Perilloux, a visiting professor at Williams College. But her study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, found that not all men do. And surprisingly, it appears that the dorky, less attractive guys are more likely to think they’re babe magnets than their more attractive counterparts. . . .
The more attractive the woman was to the guy, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest in him, researchers found. And it turns out, the less attractive men (who believed they were better looking than the women rated them) were more likely to think beautiful women were hot for them. But the more attractive guys tended to have a more realistic assessment.

Read the whole thing (hat-tip to Hot Air Headlines) but you don’t need psychological case studies to explain this phenomenon. The more success a guy has with women, the more experience he has in judging which chicks he has the best chance with.

If a guy is regularly scoring with chicks in the 6-to-7 range on the 10-scale, but has little luck with any chick who rates an 8 or better, he learns to spot chicks in his feasible range.

Less-attractive guys are sometime unfortunately unwilling to settle for the less-attractive chicks in their range. Popular entertainment (e.g., sitcoms in which chubby middle-aged losers have beautiful wives 10 years younger than them) suggests to these guys that they’ve got romantic opportunities they don’t actually have. And because the “dorky” guys also are usually lacking in social skills, they don’t have enough real-world romantic experience to judge either their own attractiveness or women’s interest in them.

As a result, the nerd’s only barometer of such matters is:

  1. Is she hot? and
  2. Will she talk to me?

Attractive women learn at an early age to spot guys like that and never give them any encouragement, lest they find themselves followed around by a lovestruck nerd who mistook her polite smile for a gesture of erotic passion. Guys who think pretty girls are “stuck up” fail to understand this as a necessary defense mechanism on the woman’s part.

Having seldom been mistaken for Brad Pitt myself, I spent my youth learning to make the best of what few advantages I possessed in the Darwinian competition for, uh, mating opportunities.

Learned to dance. Learned to play guitar. Dressed sharp. Told a few jokes. Also, and most importantly, I was always grateful for whatever female companionship I could get, without much caring that none of them looked like Vogue fashion models. While this any-port-in-a-storm attitude — romantic pragmatism, we might call it — may not strike you as ideal, it beats the hell out of being alone.

The ironic thing, of course, is that I eventually ended up married to a lovely woman who, as anyone who knows us will agree, is way too good for me. (Luck? No — it was skill, my friends.)

Here’s the thing: Actual real-life experience with women has the effect of teaching that beauty — however much we may admire it — is still only skin-deep. To quote Smokey Robinson: “Pretty girls are a dime a dozen. Try to find you one who’s gonna give you good lovin’.”

Back in the day, I’d go to a party and see guys hovering around the prettiest girl in the room, while less attractive girls sat unnoticed. Hey, “hunt where the ducks are,” as they say: Let those idiots chase the Queen Bee, I’ll be over here applying my charm where the odds of success are greater.

Unattractive guys do themselves a disservice when they eschew the companionship of unattractive women, while pining hopelessly for the “10” they’ll never get. Experience matters, and you’re never going to get any experience — except perhaps the experience of repeated rejection — by constantly chasing girls who are out of your league. Practice makes perfect, and if you get good enough at the game, you might one day get called up to the major leagues.

Guys talk about “geting lucky,” but it isn’t entirely luck. Ask my wife.

Category: Science, Sex

Rep. Jim Moran Does The Right Thing On The National Defense Authorization Act

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

The Senate’s bill to make CONUS part of the battlefield has been one of the creepier items of recent news. My Representative, of whom I am not always the biggest fan, let us say, had the following to say of this legislation, via Blue Virginia:

“While the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes important provisions for our national defense, reluctantly, I must oppose the bill because it contains language that sets a frightening precedent which severely compromises the ideals, values and principles our nation was founded upon.
“It is a grave mistake to allow the government to detain terrorism suspects, even those who are American citizens, without charge or trial in military prisons. If an individual is accused of supporting terrorist groups or of committing an act of terrorism, they should have an opportunity to defend themselves in a court of law. It takes little imagination to consider how such a policy might be grossly misused against innocent people by future administrations.
“Further, the military should not – nor does it want to – enforce American law. But this bill would do exactly that, by imposing law enforcement duties upon our troops. Our civilian law enforcement agencies have proven themselves capable of apprehending, interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects. The United States is home to a world class civilian court system – one that has overseen the successful prosecution of more than 400 terrorists.
“The United States should never hold an individual, American or otherwise, indefinitely without charge. These provisions were poorly constructed and undermine our defining principles of liberty and justice for all.”

One could pick at the civil law/law of war distinction a bit, but, nah: let’s allow for a rare moment of substantial agreement with the fellow, and not bicker and argue over ‘oo detained ‘oo.

Category: Jim Moran, Virginia

Kedging

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Kedging in the Golden Era.
The Manual of Seamanship for Boys and Seamen of the Royal Navy, 1904 (a recent fathers day gift) defines kedging as follows: “Laying the kedge anchor out in a boat and warping ahead to it”. In more practical English it meant that sailing ships in the days before steam power was invented, used kedging as the only way to enter harbours at the heads of river estuaries or tight anchorages, if sailing was not feasible. How was it done? Well, a long boat with a bunch of strapping young sailors was sent out with a light kedging anchor and rowed ahead as much anchor line as the ship had, dropped the anchor and then a crew on the ship used the capstan to pull the ship ahead. The same book mentions that HM shipyards made anchor hawsers to a maximum length of 113 fathoms (678 ft), so one gets the impression that it was a laborious exercise to bring a ship to its final destination.

Yeah, I somehow don’t feel that fleeing the Surface Warfare community at my earliest convenience was a bad thing. When I say “Old Navy”, I’m referring to hard core types of the Ernest E. Evans category.

That’s actually a cheap shot at the SWOs. They really are doing their job. It’s the elected leadership that is running the fleet aground, along with everything else.

via iOwnTheWorld

Category: Military, Uncategorized
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