The Other McCain

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

Joe Scarborough’s Weird Man-Crush on Jon Huntsman: Get a Room, You Two!

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 25 Comments

MSNBC has in recent weeks become the daily venue for one of the most bizarre reality shows on cable TV: Morning Bromance, starring Joe Scarborough as a man helplessly smitten with “Republican presidential candidate” Jon Huntsman.

When he isn’t blowing air-kisses at Huntsman, Scarborough is citing every possible media blurb about Huntsman as ratification of the former Utah governor’s make-believe campaign. Joe is to Jon what 11-year-old girls are to Justin Bieber, or what Chris Matthews is to Barack Obama. If Scarborough hasn’t yet announced his leg-tingles for Huntsman, it’s only because the MSNBC host wants to save his final orgasmic gush for the eve of the New Hampshire primary, where some polls show Joe’s teen-idol candidate in third place behind Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

Today, for example, Scarborough cited an editorial from National Review that mentions Huntsman as a possible alternative to Gingrich. The obvious conclusion anyone would draw from that mention is, “Gee, Rich Lowry really hates Newt, doesn’t he?” But the conclusion pushed to the Morning Joe audience was that Huntsman’s conservatism has been Officially Validated, the ghost of William F. Buckley Jr. anointing Huntsman as spiritual heir to the Reagan legacy.

Scouting around for further evidence that GOP voters have succumbed to Huntsmania, Scarborough touted something nice that Erick Erickson had said about Huntsman. Evidently Joe isn’t well-informed enough about Erickson’s habits to recognize this for what it was: Proof that the Huntsman campaign recently hired one of Erick’s consultant buddies.

While no intelligent person could be fooled by this ridiculous Huntsman hype from MSNBC’s token Republican host, permit me to reiterate the facts about the man I’ve dubbed “Governor Asterisk.”

If Gary Johnson is a poor man’s Ron Paul, then Jon Huntman is a rich man’s Tim Pawlenty — an unimpressive governor whom self-interested Republican consultants saw as a potentially lucrative vehicle for employment during the 2012 campaign season.

Much like Pawlenty, Huntsman embraced the climate-change/green-energy theme as a triangulating gesture during the 2006-08 era of GOP “brand damage.” Going beyond that, however, Huntsman endorsed a gay-rights group’s agenda in February 2009, three months before joining the Obama administration as ambassador to China. Two years later, when Huntsman announced his presidential candidacy, a headline writer for the Salt Lake Tribune published this masterpiece of understatement:

Huntsman’s civil-union stance
may prove political liability

Gee, ya think so? Huntsman’s record practically guarantees his last-place finish in Iowa and South Carolina. Even if Huntsman should do well in New Hampshire, were that to give him any actual traction elsewhere (which I sincerely doubt), his destruction would be as simple as cutting a 30-second ad with video footage of the event at which Obama announced Huntsman’s ambassadorial nomination.

He’s Charlie Crist 2.0, complete with perma-tan. Huntsman represents no actual Republican constituency. The only reason he’s still running is because his bankrupt campaign got an infusion of Daddy’s Money. 

Huntsman’s “base” is the media, and being MSNBC’s favorite GOP candidate ought to be the final kiss of death for his Disney Princess fantasy of a campaign, and the schoolgirl crush he inspires in the lovestruck heart of Token Joe.

UPDATE: In a New York Times story two weeks ago about the help Huntsman’s getting from his billionaire father, we read this:

“If Huntsman is the story coming out of New Hampshire, he’s got a real shot,” said John Weaver, the candidate’s senior strategist. …

With an albatross like Weaver attached to his campaign, the only “real shot” Huntsman’s got is at being the candidate with the highest ratio of dollars spent to delegates received, which will most likely be zero. Yet hope — and hype — springs eternal with the latest poll numbers in New Hampshire.

It’s the colossal waste of time and money that annoys me.

Category: Election 2012, Jon Huntsman, MSNBC

LIVE AT FIVETENNINE – 12.15.11

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Panetta Cases The Flag In Baghdad

U.S. Forces Iraq flag is lowered before being cased and returned to the U.S.

Formally marks the end of the war in Iraq; 4000 troops remain to train Iraqi security forces

Ron Wyden, Paul Ryan Propose Bipartisan Medicare Reform Plan
Would preserve current Medicare until 2022, then give seniors option of private plans



Democrats Abandoning Millionaire Surtax
Closer to compromise on payroll tax cut bill?



POLITICS
GOP Proposes $915 Billion Continuing Resolution

U.S. Capitol dome

Congress had originally agreed on bill Monday, but Senate Dems bowed to White House pressure, used bill as bargaining chip in payroll tax tussle

#OWS Occupies Manhattan Courtroom

Governor Asterisk Claims He’ll Catch On After “Silly Season”

It’s Witchcraft: Christine O’Donnell Endorses Mitt Romney

NJ Town Defends “Christ In Christmas” Banner Against Activists, Atheists

Senate Rejects Two Balanced Budget Amendment Bills On Party Lines



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Spanish Bonds Advance As Demand Rises At Auction; Bunds Decline
European Stocks Expected To Open Lower; Asian Stocks Weigh “Grim Data” From PRC, Japan
SNB Acts To Counter Deflation, Leaves Franc At 1.2 Euros
PRC Tariffs On US Autos Turn Up The Heat In Trade Dispute
Gasoline Falls To Two-Week Low As OPEC Raises Output Limit And Euro Drops
Eurozone Manufacturing & Services Contract For Fourth Month In A Row
Market Turning Bearish On Gold?
Research Shows Hands-Free Cellphones Just As Risky
WinPhone 7.5 Vulnerable To SMS Hack?
Google Pulls 22 Apps From Market To Prevent Fraudulent Charges
FBI Director: Bureau Never Sought Carrier IQ Data
Nokia Re-Enters U.S. With $50 Smartphone
Wintel Ultrabooks Match Mac Airbooks In Speed, Lightness



SPORTS
Stern Says Paul To Clippers Is Better Trade For Hornets

Soon to be former Hornet Chris Paul

New Orleans gets three players and a 2012 draft pick for their star

Red Sox Swap Damaged Goods To Astros For Closer Melancon

NFL Completes Deal With Fox, CBS, NBC


Waiting Game Begins For Japanese Ace Yu Darvish

Magic Call A Halt To Dwight Howard Trade Talks

Bruins Break Free From Senators



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Paris Jackson Fills In For Missing Lindsay On “Ellen”

Paris Jackson, Ellen DeGeneres, LiLo (inset)

Michael Jackson’s 13-year-old daughter talks about acting and school

Giulia Rancic Doing Well After Double Mastectomy

Surprised Judge To Lohan: “You’ve Done Your Work”

Angelina Jolie: Brad & I Cooked Our Own Turkey

Clint Eastwood: Go Ahead, Punk, Make My Reality Show

Madonna Inks Three-album Deal With Interscope

Megan Fox In Bed With Sacha Baron Cohen For “The Dictator” Trailer

Demi Moore: Who Cares If I’m Still “MrsKutcher” On Twitter?



FOREIGNERS
Former French President Chirac Convicted Of Corruption
Putin Accuses Protest Organizers Of Working For The West
Hooch Toll Rises To 131 In West Bengal, 7 Arrested
West Bank Mosque Torched
U.S.: Syria’s Assad “Dead Man Walking”
PRC Villagers Defy Government
Monti Government Calls For Confidence Vote On Austerity Package
Panetta Says U.S., Allies Winning Afghan War



BLOGS & STUFF
Lonely Conservative: Democrats To Drop Millionaire Surtax From Hostage Demands?
FDL: President Won’t Veto Defense Authorization Despite Detention Provisions
National Review: Winnowing The Field
iOwnTheWorld: National Review Makes Their Case – NO GINGRICH
Rush Limbaugh:: GOP Race Not Over; Mitt And Newt Both Have Problems
Legal Insurrection: “Zany” Is Looking Pretty Good Right Now
Don Surber: Birth Of A Defamation
Ed Driscoll: MSNBC Keeps F***king That Chicken
Power Line: Tom Friedman Goes Full Metal Mearsheimer
Gateway Pundit: Governor Gary Johnson (R-NM) May Announce Third-Party Run As Libertarian
IBD: Docs Show Breuer Lied About “Fast & Furious”
American Spectator: Politico’s Nuns’ Story
Atlas Shrugs: Muslims Offended By Pa. House Bill To Outlaw Sharia
Da Tech Guy: The Left’s Endgame For Illegal Immigration
Tim Blair: The Siege Of Wukan
Weasel Zippers: Ron Paul Lands Coveted Andrew Sullivan Endorsement


SOTD: It’s On The Rocks

Category: Live at Five

OMG

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 1 Comment

by Smitty

Observing My Government’s

Overwhelming Monetary Gouging,

One Might Guess

Our Main Guarantee:

Obama Must Go

And, for a chaser, the Ott:

Update: things that would be raaaaacist if I did them:

Category: Barack Obama, humor

Judges [Update: Or Legislators] That Should Be Cashiered

Posted on | December 15, 2011 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Volokh:

If you buy a card that allows you unlimited access to a city subway system, and you then sell swipes from your card to let others access the subway system on your card, are you guilty of theft? No, says the New York Court of Appeals in People v. Hightower (Dec. 11), because you legitimately own the access that you are selling:

Oh for Crying. Out. Loud. In. The. Dark.

So, one person buys a card, lets everyone else use the system, bankrupting it, and some berobed clown in New York thinks that’s just ducky? Really?

I was called for jury duty, and pled the fact that I was in Afghanistan for not showing. Down the road, if called, I may bluntly tell them during the voir dire that I may have to vote against the legislators, or the judge, if the law or the jurisprudence is sufficiently out to lunch. Isn’t that the point of a trial by jury, to let We The People retain sovereignty in the legal system?

Postmodern silliness is all fine in the privacy of one’s own head. When laws are written or judgements handed down that are utterly stupid, we suddenly discover that the assertion of wisdom on the bench may have been perverted by a pack of godforsaken fools.

Category: Progressivism

Complete Insignificance of This Blog Now Confirmed by Recognized Expert
UPDATE: Necessary Correction

Posted on | December 14, 2011 | 48 Comments

Once you’re deemed “Not Good Enough for BlogCon,” it’s just a matter of time before people decide you’re Not Good for Anything Else.

Hat-tip to A Blog That Matters.

UPDATE: I’m told that the fine print on the “Best Blogs” list explains that contributors to Right Wing News (of which I am one) were not eligible for inclusion on the list, so therefore:

  1. I’m OK with John Hawkiins;
  2. I’m too stupid to read  the fine print; and
  3. I’m still “Not Good Enough for BlogCon.”

Don’t mind the bleeding, Doc. Just give me something for the pain.

UPDATE II: By the way, “Deep Fried Manatees” is an awesome name for a blog, no matter what PETA tries to tell you.

Category: Blogging

Unprecedented Uprising in Chinese Village Chases Out Communist Party

Posted on | December 14, 2011 | 20 Comments

Malcolm Moore reports from Wukan, China:

For the first time on record, the Chinese Communist party has lost all control, with the population of 20,000 in this southern fishing village now in open revolt.
The last of Wukan’s dozen party officials fled on Monday after thousands of people blocked armed police from retaking the village, standing firm against tear gas and water cannons.
Since then, the police have retreated to a roadblock, some three miles away, in order to prevent food and water from entering, and villagers from leaving. Wukan’s fishing fleet, its main source of income, has also been stopped from leaving harbour.
The plan appears to be to lay siege to Wukan and choke a rebellion which began three months ago when an angry mob, incensed at having the village’s land sold off, rampaged through the streets and overturned cars.
Although China suffers an estimated 180,000 “mass incidents” a year, it is unheard of for the Party to sound a retreat. . . .

Read the whole article, which was sent to me by Bert the Samoan Lawyer in an e-mail with the subject line, “This needs to go viral.” Damn right!

Category: China

Jeffrey Lord vs. the Paulistas

Posted on | December 14, 2011 | 55 Comments

Driving back today from picking up my twin sons at college — today was the last day of final exams in their first semester — I heard my American Spectator colleague Jeffrey Lord on Sean Hannity’s radio show talking about his war against Ron Paul’s supporters.

It makes my head hurt to think about it, stirring unfortunate memories of internecine feuds between paleocons and neocons stretching back at least 30 years.

My own nuanced take on the situation: Beginning with the Bush 41 administration, the neocons began insisting not merely on their own dominance within the Republican Party, but started demanding that their paleocon adversaries be utterly purged from the ranks. (David Frum, among others, so insisted.) And so it was that, by the time of the Bush 43 administration, there was no one inside the “Big Tent” disposed to say a discouraging word about the prospects for a bloodless conquest of Mesopotamia while also, incidentally, using U.S. armed forces as the necessary means to introduce Pashtun tribesmen to the wonders of Western democracy, including women’s suffrage.

“Hey, Chief, can we have a brief discussion about the concept of ‘imperial overreach’ here?”

You don’t have to think Ron Paul is The Only Hope of the Republic, or be a devout disciple of Lew Rockwell, to say that maybe it would have been helpful if, circa 2002-03, some non-interventionists had been in a position to influence the decision-making process at the White House.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all in favor of kicking jihadi butt. And I’m not one of these kooks who sits around brooding about the “military-industrial complex,” “international bankers,” et cetera. But isn’t it fair to ask, three years into the Obama Age, if GOP foreign policy got a wee bit hubristic during Bush 43’s presidency?

Mine is a modest criticism, then, of neoconservative influence in U.S. foreign policy, as distinct from the all-out crusade that Jeffrey Lord seems to be pursuing against Ron Paul and the Paulistas. I’m not sure how this started, but here are some recent items by Lord at the Spectator:

Sean Hannity’s interview with Jeffrey Lord — and I only heard a few minutes of it — reminded me of all the reasons why I sometimes hate Sean Hannity, who has a tendency toward a Manichean worldview in which there are always exactly two sides to any argument:

  1. Hannity’s side, and
  2. UN-AMERICAN LEFT-WING RADICAL EVIL!

Having been occasionally accused of “simplistic” politics, I would assert that I am an enigmatic tapestry of layered complexity by comparison to Hanntiy’s accustomed mode of discourse.

Stipulate that Ron Paul’s supporters include legions of monomaniacal fanatics and a certain number of outright Jew-haters. Is it not possible to engage the more decent and rational Paulistas in a discourse leading toward a principled and honorable compromise, so that their energy (and profound opposition to the Welfare State) can be harnessed within a broad-based coalition aimed at defeating the common enemy, Democratic PartyLiberalism?

UPDATE: Speaking of Manichean worldviews — MSNBC compares Mitt Romney to the Ku Klux Klan.

Of course, the KKK never flip-flopped but . . . Never mind.

Category: American Spectator, Election 2012, Ron Paul, Talk Radio

Newt Staffer Fired for Mormon ‘Cult’ Comment Got a Raw Deal, Source Says

Posted on | December 14, 2011 | 73 Comments

When I blogged about this controversy last night, I realized the story would cut at least three ways:

  1. Gingrich would be hurt by association with a “controversy.” Most people would just hear a blurb about it on TV or radio and absorb the notion that Newt was somehow connected to what would appear to be an unfair attack on his chief rival’s religion.
  2. Romney would be hurt, because the “controversy” would remind a certain number of conservative Christians that Mitt is a Mormon and, yeah, many people have categorized Mormonism as a cult.
  3. Gingrich would be hurt — and here’s the weird two-bumper carom shot — because some conservative Christians would see Newt as a gutless sellout for firing a guy who (in their view) had the courage to speak the truth about “the cult of Mormonism.”

Cui bono? Rick Santorum, of course!

But some friends last night on Twitter pointed out that fired Gingrich staffer Craig Bergman  — speaking in an Iowa focus group last week, the day before he was hired as Newt’s Iowa political director — hadn’t said that he personally believes Mormonism to be a cult. Rather, Bergman was merely describing the beliefs of “a lot of the evangelicals.”

These are two vastly different things. It’s the difference between saying, “Let’s go burn a mosque to celebrate Tim Tebow leading the Broncos to victory over the Patriots” and saying . . .

Well, maybe that’s not the perfect example. But you get the point, and the point is amplified today by the Iowa Republican, the Web site that co-sponsored last week’s focus group:

The controversial comment came in regards to Mitt Romney’s prospects, if he captured the GOP nomination. “There is a national pastor who is very much on the anti-Mitt Romney bandwagon,” Bergman said. “A lot of the evangelicals believe God would give us four more years of Obama just for the opportunity to expose the cult of Mormon…There’s a thousand pastors ready to do that.” . . .
As co-moderator of the focus group, TheIowaRepublican.com believes Bergman was not making a statement that reflected his own views of the Mormon religion, but was relaying what he heard from the “national pastor” referenced in his comment.

In other words: Bergman got screwed.

He wasn’t saying that he has a problem with Romney’s religion. He was saying that many evangelicals — including “a national pastor,” whom he did not name — have a problem with Mormonism, and who can deny that Bergman has acccurately stated a fact?

Furthermore, having studied the subject some years ago, I can attest that many Christian theologians agree that Mormonism should be categorized as a cult. In defense of Mitt Romney, however, I’ll say that liberalism is also a cult, and it’s liberalism that’s taking America to hell in a hurry, so you can judge for yourself which cult poses the greater danger in 2012.

Look, if a Protestant like me can support a papist like Rick Santorum — “papist” being the kind of slur you don’t hear very often in our politically correct age — clearly the crisis is upon us.

In a contested Republican primary, everybody’s got their most favorite and least favorite candidates. For me, Newt Gingrich is down near the bottom of the list — worse than Ron Paul, but better than Jon Huntsman — and your mileage may vary, but I think we can all agree that Obama’s worse than any of the Republicans.

Except maybe Huntsman, who could be the Anti-Christ for all we know.

 

UPDATE: It was rather surprising to me that the very first comment — alas, from our loyal commenter Joe! — was to the effect that it is “offensive” to call Mormonism a cult. (Y’know, if you’re easily offended, this blog will give you a half-dozen reasons a day to be offended, at a minimum.)

Ask yourself this: Why are we required to tolerate atheists, who insist that all Christians are ignorant and deluded propagators of implausible superstition, and yet orthodox Christians are shouted down if they feel obliged to identify heterodox faiths as “cults”?

Why is that so, huh?

Answer: Because we have been, as the apostle Paul said, “conformed to this world,” and have adopted the widespread popular opinion that the greatest danger in American society is posed by those dangerous right-wing Christian theocratic extremists, that’s why.

The faults and failures — both real and imaginary — of traditional Christians have been magnified in the public mind over the course of the past several decades, so that the Christian who merely defends the basic beliefs of his faith is automatically accused of aspiring to “impose his beliefs” on others, among much other mischief and malice attributed to Bible-believers.

Look around you, my fellow Americans. Does it really seem to you as if the greatest danger to our nation is that right-wing Christians might suddenly seize control of government and start imposing their beliefs on society? I think not.

You see that I have attached to this post Amazon links for three books by Christian writers who are critics of Mormonism. Their characterizations of the LDS belief system, and the evidence they adduce, may be perused by any of you, and accepted or rejected as you see fit. I’m not trying to “impose” my own beliefs on anyone, but merely stating that there are — as Craig Bergman was fired for saying — many Christians who categorize Mormonism as a cult. And this categorization is perhaps only important to Christians who consider it their sacred obligation to proclaim the Way, the Hope and the Light.

Secularists are under no such obligation, and I understand that they may be offended by the evangelical impulse. But proclaiming the Gospel is not as “offensive” as, for example, flying jetliners into skyscrapers or strapping plastic explosives to your body and detonating yourself in the middle of a crowded disco. So stop whining about being “offended,” or I’m likely to do something genuinely offensive like posting photos of Helen Thomas.

And you wouldn’t want that, would you?

As far as politics goes, Mitt’s Mormonism bothers me less than RomneyCare. And if you want a Republican presidential candidate who stands solidly for religious freedom, Lisa Graas has a suggestion.

UPDATE II: Linked by Da Tech Guy, Lisa Graas and Daily Pundit — thanks! — and now a Memeorandum thread.

Category: Election 2012, Iowa, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Religion
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