The Other McCain

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

Sen. ‘Name That’ Thune Names Romney

Posted on | November 25, 2011 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Dondero reports that Senator John Thune has endorsed ol’ Willard Mitt for POTUS:

“Mitt Romney has shown throughout his life in the private sector, as leader of the Olympics, as governor and in this campaign that he will not back down from difficult challenges.”

Come to think of it, having led the Olympics may be the optimal pro-Mitt argument:

  • The Olympics and the U.S. government both claim to be about some idealized notion of humanity, yet mercilessly exploit the youngest segment of society.
  • Both organizations are ruled by a core elite that re-distributes wealth wherever they go.
  • Neither outfit seems to produce anything of actual economic value.

But there may be some deeper meaning here. If the pre-Wilson era is akin to the Ancient Olympic Games, then Romney’s path to restraining the modern Olympic leviathan becomes simple: resurrect that ancient Constitution and cut the federal games back to the Enumerated Powers. You hear that, Mitt? I realize it’s the height of Progressivism, but the rhythmic origami event has got to stop.

Category: Mitt Romney, Republicans, South Dakota

NSFW Video Jiggers A Bigger Digger

Posted on | November 25, 2011 | 1 Comment

by Smitty

I won’t embed the clip, due to the amount of potty mouth and the word that sorts between Jigger and Rigger, but go watch this. As with Pulp Fiction, the talent on display manages to overcome the foul language. However, this is far shorter, makes a point, and manages to twist humorously more than once.

On a related note, along with ObamaCare, we should just load-shed all of the Hate Crime legislation. Laws trying to make crime more crime-y may have some kind of populist appeal, and help fill that legislative session, but leave you with absurdities like Amish men being charged with federal hate crimes over beard shavings.

Holy Over Criminalized, Batman! Boo Ya Pictures has the right of it: we need to laugh more at the inanities, not empower enforcers.

Category: humor, Video

Incredible 10-Year-Old Mexican Singer Rocks the World With Music Video

Posted on | November 25, 2011 | 50 Comments

Somebody sent me the video, which already has more than 5 million views, and I frankly couldn’t believe a 10-year-old could sing like this, but evidently it’s legit:

Angie Vazquez and her band, Los Vazquez Sounds, have people all over buzzing about their cover of Adele‘s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ — 1.16 million to be exact.
The Mexican trio posted their rendition of the hit song, and it has since become a viral sensation, boasting over 1 million views in less than a week. Ten-year-old Angie is joined by 15-year-old Abelardo on guitar, bass and piano, as well as 13-year-old Gustavo Vazquez on drums. Watch out, Jonas Brothers!

That was 1.16 million views as of three days ago, so apparently this has gone seriously viral since then. Ready for it? Watch:

UPDATE: Linked by Marfdrat, The Crawdad Hole and by Kathy Shaidle, who is worried about young Angie’s future. Welcome, Hot Air readers!

UPDATE II: El Otro McCain: Ahora disponible en español!

 

Category: Mexico, Music

WOW! Latest Rasmussen Poll: Cain 26%, Romney 23%, Gingrich 14%
UPDATE: Wrong: Data From Nov. 3

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 18 Comments

This is shocking:

The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on November 21-22, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. . . .
Among likely GOP primary voters nationwide, Romney is just behind businessman Herman Cain with 23 percent support; Cain earns 26 percent of the vote and Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is in third with 14 percent support. Romney runs best in New Hampshire – where he picks up a commanding 41 percent of the vote — but falls short of Cain in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida.

A sudden Gingrich meltdown? Cain on top in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida? Wow. Just . . . wow.

UPDATE: False alarm, folks. This article includes two different sets of polling data. The head-to-head match-ups with Obama — the lead item in the NewsMax story — is from Nov. 21-22. The nationwide GOP primary voter information is from Nov. 3, before Gingrich’s recent surge.

UPDATE II: I feel bad about having jumped the gun on that NewsMax story. What happened was, I was live-Tweeting AMC’s showing of The Godfather, when somebody Tweeted me those Rasmussen numbers. My brain exploded: “Holy crap!”

It took me about 15 minutes to read the NewsMax story and compose a post. Then it took another 8 minutes to sign up for the Rasmussen 3-day trial, discover that the story had been misreported, and post the correction.

I shouldn’t have pulled the trigger so fast on the original post, but the numbers were so shocking — an apparent reversal of fortune — that it would have been major news, so I rushed to get it online.

Hot-headed, just like Sonny Corleone, eh? My apologies.

Category: Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Polls

CBO: Stimulus Cost More, Did Less

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 3 Comments

Recovery bummer:

After nearly all the stimulus money has been spent, the Congressional Budget Office now admits it cost more than advertised, did less to boost growth and will hurt the economy in the long run.
In its latest quarterly report on the economic effects of the Obama stimulus, the CBO sharply lowered its “worst case” scenario while trimming many of its upper-bound estimates for stimulus-fueled growth and employment.
The new report finds, for example, that the stimulus may have added as little as 0.7% to GDP growth in 2010 — when spending was at its peak — and created as few as 700,000 new jobs. . . .
So in other words, the CBO now says it’s possible that the stimulus had virtually no meaningful effect on growth and employment despite its massive price tag. . . .
All this comes after the CBO increased that price tag to $825 billion from its initial $787 billion — a 5% hike.

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Category: Economics

Journalist Says She Was Molested in Custody by Egyptian ‘Security’ Forces

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 8 Comments

Is this a logical sequel to the “Arab Spring”?

The US-based Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy has been released, according to her personal Twitter account, after 12 hours in detention at the hands of Cairo security forces. A later tweet from the account @monaeltahawy said that she was sexually and physically assaulted while being held inside the interior ministry in Cairo, in the early hours of Thursday morning. . . .
At 10:30am on Thursday, the former Reuters Middle East correspondent who has been lauded for her recent coverage of the Egyptian uprising, began tweeting that she had spent 12 hours in detention under the authority of interior ministry and military intelligence officials and that she had suffered a serious sexual assault by up to half a dozen members of the Egyptian security forces. She also said that she had been kept blindfolded for hours and also posted a picture of her severely bruised hand and then both her arms in casts.

A few more “Arab Autumn” headlines from Memeorandum:

Egyptian Generals Apologize for
Bloodshed but Reject Calls to Leave Power

U.S. urges Americans
to leave Syria “immediately”

Leaked UN report reveals torture,
lynchings and abuse in post-Gaddafi Libya

A few weeks ago, discussing Libya on Red Eye, Kevin Williamson used the phrase “desert savages,” which is politically incorrect, but when we see savagery like this, who can say it isn’t also accurate?

Category: Egypt, Libya, Syria

An Article So Excellent You Use A Blog Post As A Sort Of Bookmark For It

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Yuval Levin at the National Review Online:

But the Tea Party has been very unusual for an American populist movement. It has not been focused on soaking the rich, as left-wing populists always have been. It has not even been primarily focused on reducing the tax burden on the middle class, as right-wing populists usually are. Rather, the Tea Party has focused on restraining government. It originated in outrage about federal bailouts, and has directed its energies toward pulling back the cost and reach of the state. It has asked for fewer government giveaways, not more. It has even given voice to a tight-money populism, criticizing the Federal Reserve for inviting inflation — a far cry from populists of old. And the Tea Party has also been intensely focused on recovering the U.S. Constitution, and especially its limits on government power (and therefore on the public’s power) — another very unusual goal for a populist movement.

Read the whole thing, contrasting the Left’s flailing for the last three years with the Tea Parties and the Founders in a scholarly way, with a number of historical references I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read yet.

Thank you very much for this, Mr. Levin.

Category: Tea Party

#Occupy Black Friday?

Posted on | November 24, 2011 | 15 Comments

“Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America’s heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world.”
— cover blurb for Sam Walton: Made in America

Among the many things we should be thankful for this Thanksgiving, despite our current economic woes, is the free enterprise system. But guess who doesn’t like capitalism?

Occupy protesters want shoppers to occupy something besides door-buster sales and crowded mall parking lots on Black Friday. . . .
In Seattle, protesters are carpooling to Wal-Mart stores to protest with other Occupy groups from around Washington state. . . .
Protesters say the movement shouldn’t take away money and seasonal jobs from the working-class majority it says it represents. The corporations, not the shoppers, are the focus of any protests, they say. But organizers hope their actions drive people to reconsider frenzied bargain shopping at national chains and direct their attention to small, locally owned stores.

We know Occupiers are stupid, but the fathomless depth of their ignorance simply amazes me: How do you demonize “corporations” but exempt from your criticism the shoppers whose purchases supply revenue to those businesses? Aren’t the customers and employees — by their voluntary cooperation in the capitalist enterprise — as guilty as the corporate CEO? And why do the Occupy protesters think Wal-Mart is evil, while the local mom-and-pop store is OK? The Associated Press asked some economists about the “shop local” mentality:

Shopping only local neglects economies of scale, job specialization and other pluses that big, multi-state retailers offer, said George Mason University economist Russ Roberts.
“Don’t punish yourself by not shopping where you can get the best deal; that’s foolish,” Roberts said.
And, fair or not, small businesses aren’t necessarily the best employers in terms of wages, benefits, opportunities for advancement and other measures, said John Quinterno, principal at the public policy research firm South by North Strategies in Chapel Hill, N.C.
He calculates that small mom-and-pops, which he defines as businesses with fewer than 10 employees, account for nearly 80% of employers in the U.S., but only about 11% of the jobs.
“Sometimes we romanticize small business — and I say this as a small business owner myself — so that it skews some of our debates about economic and labor policy,” Quinterno said. “It doesn’t mean they aren’t important. It just means that larger businesses tend to create a lot more value-added per job.”

Look: Mom-and-pop businesses have to compete in the marketplace, and the existence of gigantic retailers requires small entrepreneurs to be innovative, to work harder and smarter to find a niche in which they can compete successfully. And in most cases, the giant corporations that Occupiers hate began as tiny local businesses: Sam Walton started out as the owner of one store in Arkansas.

While we’re at it, why should Occupiers focus on Wal-Mart? Why not Sears, Best Buy, Target, Costco, or Dollar General? Aren’t all of those “corporations”? Aren’t they offering Black Friday specials? Aren’t the stockholders and executives of those companies as avidly in search of profits as Wal-Mart? Isn’t it only Wal-Mart’s spectacular success that makes them an especial focus of anti-capitalist rage?

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy flash mob fails to impress Walmart workers.“A two minute ‘flash mob’ by members of Occupy’s Santa Ana contingent left some Walmart employees feeling disrespected and confused.”

Why Wal-Mart? Because the Occupiers are ignorant, that’s why. Their arguments against capitalism appeal to the worst emotions — envy and self-pity — of people who fail under the free-enterprise system because they haven’t made the effort to understand the free-enterprise system.

You know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see FreedomWorks, Media Research Center, Accuracy in Media or some other conservative group send out groups of activists armed with video cameras and a sack of books: Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics.

Imagine the video footage as the free-market activists ask the Occupiers, “Hey, have you read Basic Economics? . . . Have you ever heard of Thomas Sowell? . . . Well, here, I’ll give you a free copy of this book, by one of America’s most famous black intellectuals . . .” Read more

Category: Amazon, Economics
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