The Other McCain

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

Thanks, Secretary Powell, For That Mondo Bitchen Motivational Speech

Posted on | November 27, 2011 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

We actually TiVo’d Press the Meat, hoping that Norquist would deliver a comeuppance to Senator ‘Infamous’ Schumer over the Tea Party Debt Commission. Grover did not, which is interesting.

Secretary Powell has some fresh, distinctive convolutions to his logic here. The Founders compromised on slavery, and we got a Constitution that, eventually, and after a bloody civil war, did support liberty for all.

The last century of Progressivism has not been about compromise. Rather, it has been about the slow, illegitimate expansion of federal power, at the expense of Article V.

Now, because the Founders compromised to allow slavery, Tea Partiers, if I understand Powell correctly, are to accept the moral, intellectual, and Constitutional bankruptcy of Progressivism.

“The Tea Party point of view of ‘no compromise whatsoever’ is not a point of view that will eventually produce a presidential candidate who will win,” he said.

Hey: thanks, Secretary Powell. I have a head full of questions about the meaning of the various oaths you’ve sworn, but I’ll forego all that by way of saying thank you for the great service you had offered to the country.

via Alan Colmes

Update: the Daily Pundit is more blunt, but about the same wavelength.

Category: Progressivism

Gang-Raped for ‘Democracy’?

Posted on | November 27, 2011 | 18 Comments

Caroline Franz (left) shown amid a mob of Cairo protesters

“We were then assaulted by a crowd of men. I was beaten by a group of youngsters and adults who tore my clothes. . . [I was molested in a way that] would be considered rape. . . Some people tried to help me but failed. I was lynched. It lasted three quarters of an hour before I was taken out. I thought I was going to die.”
— Caroline Sinz, French TV reporter, describing how she was assaulted while covering protests in Cairo

“When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. . . . I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. . . . The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints.”
— Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Some people become so obsessed by intellectual abstractions — “liberty,” “equality,” “social justice,” “human rights,” etc. — that they can ignore or accept even the most catastrophic consequences of their good intentions. For too many people, ideas are like idols, to be worshipped without doubt, no matter how many corpses are piled up at the bloody altars of their fanatical cults.

“Democracy” is one such intellectual idol, and imposing this idea on the rest of the world has become a bipartisan pursuit of our political establishment, an idée fixe exercising such a dominant influence over our foreign policy that no matter how many wild-goose chases we make, or how often the will-o’-th’-wisp eludes our frantic grasp, we never tire of the effort. So it was that I thought of Burke’s sober caution when I saw Donald Douglas’s post “Sharia Revolution in Egypt,” with this video:

Democracy is, as Burke would say, “a strong principle” and we ought to observe the effects of democracy in Egypt before we risk offering congratulations to the Egyptians. The effects observed so far don’t exactly inspire confidence that the Egyptians have really received a blessing, and recent headlines are troubling:

Muslim medical students boycotting lectures
on evolution… because it ‘clashes with the Koran’
— Daily Mail

Arab League Approves Sanctions Against Syria
— New York Times

Suspected Islamists bomb police station, bank in Nigeria
— Agence France Presse

Taliban paid £100 a month to stop fighting
— Telegraph

Fond hopes about the “Arab Spring” seem likely to be as ill-founded as were the similar hopes of “Recovery Summer.”
 
 

Category: Crime, Egypt

Give Thanks to … Charles Johnson?

Posted on | November 27, 2011 | 89 Comments

The terminal stage of narcissistic personality order:

Happy Thanksgiving to all LGF readers.
On this day, I’d like to thank 2007 me, who woke up and realized that the “counter-jihad” bloggers were in truth a bunch of bigots and fascists. And I’d also like to thank the 2009 me, who realized that the Republican Party was dangerously off the rails, and publicly jumped off their runaway right wing train. . . .

Diary of Daedalus has more, for those readers whose reaction to such news is, “Oh, you mean Little Green Footballs is still online?”

If you didn’t discover the blogosphere until after 2007, of course, your reaction is probably, “Charles Who?”

He used to be somebody important, believe it or not.

 

Category: Charles Johnson

Newt Gingrich Wins Coveted GOP Primary Endorsement From … Bill Clinton?

Posted on | November 27, 2011 | 24 Comments

All the wrong people are saying nice things about Newt:

“He’s articulate and he tries to think of a conservative version of an idea that will solve a legitimate problem,” Clinton said, by way of explaining the Gingrich resurgence.

Jonah Goldberg sees “omens that World Historical Newt is returning to the scene.” Some people haven’t forgotten who Newt really is.

“I never met a single Tea Party activist that supported Newt Gingrich for president.”
— Brendan Steinhauser, FreedomWorks, May 17, 2011

Hat-tip to Doug Powers at MichelleMalkin.com; more at Memeorandum.

Category: Bill Clinton, Election 2012, Newt Gingrich

Cain on CNN: ‘In Terms of the Mechanics of the Campaign, Nothing’s Gone Wrong’

Posted on | November 27, 2011 | 24 Comments

Talking to Candy Crowley today on her State of the Union show:

Herman Cain ascribed his recent drop in the polls to false sexual harassment allegations and voter confusion about his positions on abortion and foreign policy, saying Sunday that some of his remarks over the past month had been taken out of context.
“Obviously false accusations and confusion about some of my positions has contributed to it,” Cain said on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked by host Candy Crowley about his campaign’s flagging poll numbers.
“That was to be expected. In terms of the campaign itself, nothing has gone wrong in terms of our strategy of spending time in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida,” Cain added. “So in terms of the mechanics of the campaign, nothing’s gone wrong.”
Cain said criticism over his position on abortion and foreign policy matters was fueled largely by comments that were taken out of context, leading to voter confusion.
“Some people are heavily influenced by perception more so than reality,” Cain said. “The good news is most of my supporters have stayed on the Cain train, as we say.”

Speaking of the Cain Train, I just got off the phone with a lady in Northport, Alabama, who is organizing a convoy of Cain volunteers that will be heading to South Carolina in January.

“The media don’t have a clue,” she said, speaking of what the grassroots network of Cain supporters have been doing “under the radar.”

UPDATE: A Cain volunteer created this video and, if you’ll watch closely at the 32-second mark — showing Cain speaking at the Iowa State Fair in August — you might spot an objective journalist in a brown fedora and navy blazer sitting in the front row:

UPDATE II: Here’s video of Cain on CNN:

Alan Colmes calls Cain “incomprehensible,” which leads to the obvious question: Why does Alan Colmes hate black people?

Unfair? Of course. But liberals have been playing that cheap game constantly the past four years, and have thus forfeited the right to complain about “fairness” in political arguments.

Now a Memeorandum thread.

Category: Alabama, CNN, Election 2012, Herman Cain, South Dakota

Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader Endorses Newt Gingrich for President

Posted on | November 27, 2011 | 24 Comments

Unexpectedly?

For President, Newt Gingrich
This newspaper endorses Newt Gingrich in the New Hampshire Presidential Primary.
America is at a crucial crossroads. It is not going to be enough to merely replace Barack Obama next year. We are in critical need of the innovative, forward-looking strategy and positive leadership that Gingrich has shown he is capable of providing. . . .

It’s all over the top of Memeorandum:

Union Leader endorses Newt Gingrich
— Politico

Gingrich wins Union Leader endorsement
— The Hill

Newt Gingrich Gets Big
New Hampshire Endorsement
— Fox News

Will this endorsement help Gingrich raise lots of money? Yep. Will it prevent Mitt Romney from winning New Hampshire? Nope.

“Behold . . . a little cloud . . . like a man’s hand,” on the horizon:

After Tuesday’s debate sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, The American Spectator‘s George Neumayr criticized Gingrich for his “scolding tone” on immigration, saying that Gingrich had “alienated conservatives … with his holier-than-thou approach to illegal immigration.” Tim Albrecht, spokesman for Iowa’s Republican Gov. Terry Brandstad, said on Twitter after the debate: “Newt did himself significant harm tonight on immigration among caucus and primary voters.”
Roy Beck of Numbers USA, a group that advocates for lower immigration levels, said voters won’t like Gingrich’s “long-term record” on immigration.
“In fact, Gingrich’s leadership in Congress is one of the reasons we have so many illegal aliens today who have been able to stay in this country for 25 years,” Beck said in an online column Wednesday. “That’s the supreme irony of Gingrich’s pro-amnesty remarks in last night’s debate. The man who helped ensure that illegal aliens from the 1980s and 1990s are still here in 2011 asked voters last night to consider the inhumanity of making illegal aliens leave this country after they have sunk such long roots here.”
Beck noted that Gingrich had a career grade of “D” on Numbers USA’s report card on immigration issues.

Just sayin’ . . . a couple more headlines:

Did Newt Gingrich just
flip-flop on immigration?
— Christian Science Monitor

Rivals say Gingrich stance
is equivalent to amnesty
— Des Moines Register

 


Category: Election 2012, New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich

VIDEO: Latma Works Out On Bob Dylan ‘The Times, They Are A-Changin’

Posted on | November 27, 2011 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

This is one of those that is technically polished, and completely worth your time. Yet somehow the collision of Dylan and Gaza becomes so horrific that you may forget to laugh.

via Atlas Shrugs

Category: humor, Israel, Video

Iowa Heats Up

Posted on | November 26, 2011 | 6 Comments

Thanksgiving’s over. We’re now just 37 days from the Jan. 3 caucuses:

Mitt Romney’s first campaign advertisement in Iowa this election cycle – an oversized postcard – says he’s “the strongest Republican to beat Barack Obama and protect our values.”
So-called “values” voters – conservatives who oppose abortion and same-sex marriage – traditionally turn out in force in Iowa to cast the first votes in the GOP nominating process.
And Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, faces a serious threat from evangelical Christian activists in Iowa, some of whom are plotting ways to block him from winning the Jan. 3 caucuses.
Multiple versions of the Romney mailers, each with a different theme, are circulating in Iowa.
The post-Thanksgiving rush to the 2012 Iowa caucuses, just 37 days away, brought a wave of campaign pitches today.
“Today’s mail included pieces from Cain, Paul & Romney,” Iowa GOP Chairman Matt Strawn tweeted. “Plus a Bachmann autodial.”

A month from today — Dec. 26, the day after Christmas — I plan to be on a plane to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Hit the freaking tip jar.

Category: Election 2012, Iowa
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin