The Other McCain

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

Occupy Sexual Assault: Disrespect for Private Property Has Consequences

Posted on | November 19, 2011 | 33 Comments

Celebrations of sociopathic tendencies — and demonizing wealth is sociopathic — tend to attract maladjusted deviants:

ST. LOUIS (KMOV) — A 20-year-old woman participating in the OccupySTL protest reported to police that a man sexually assaulted her while she was in her tent on November 8, three days before tents were removed by the city. . . .
Brian E. King, 38, was charged with first degree sexual misconduct after police said he crawled into the victim’s tent and touched her breast. The assault happened on November 8 at the encampment that used to be set up in Kiener Plaza.

Perhaps the suspect will claim he was acting upon the “social justice” rationale of the movement: He represents the 99% of guys who are unfairly deprived of their equal opportunity to grope the breasts of cute 20-year-old chicks. Fight the System!

UPDATE (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers!


Category: #Occupy, Crime, Progressivism

Doug Hoffman Forgives Newt Gingrich?

Posted on | November 18, 2011 | 52 Comments

When Professor William Jacobson called this to my attention, I could scarcely believe it, yet Dave Weigel has the story:

So what does Hoffman think? Is Newt to be trusted?
“I support all the candidates running right at the moment,” said Hoffman. “Any one of them would be better than the current president, and that definitely includes Newt Gingrich. Newt apologized to me for not endorsing me, and that’s water over the dam, I think.”
Right before the election, Gingrich apologized publicly for endorsing Scozzafava. Sometime after the election, he called Hoffman to tell him personally.
“He was very sincere in his apology,” said Hoffman. “He was given misinformation as to what this race was all about, and what the other candidate was all about. The people in this district, the sort of local leaders who had endorsed Scozzafava, fed him the wrong information. I don’t think it was an error in his judgement. I would advise other conservative Republicans: Don’t hold this against him.”

Wow. Just . . . wow.

Dave e-mailed me his story and I told him I’d already seen it, but replied to the effect that perhaps, after 14 years in Washington, I’ve finally “gone native.” Anybody in Washington who got screwed over as badly as Hoffman got screwed over by Gingrich would insist on exacting their bloody retribution as a matter of principle, as a warning to anyone else who might be tempted to do the same.

If you let yourself be treated like a doormat, you can’t complain about the footprints on your back. Capische?

Imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot. How would Newt have reacted if Hoffman had done to him what he did to Hoffman?

Even if it was a sincere mistake — Gingrich being “given misinformation,” as Hoffman says — wasn’t Gingrich obligated to double-check his facts before going on Fox News the third or fourth times to praise Scozzafave and trash Hoffman? At the time, everybody who knew anything about the NY-23 race knew Newt was wrong, and yet he refused to walk-back his endorsement of Dede until after she quit and endorsed the Democrat.

“Water over the dam”? Doug, you’d be Congressman Hoffman today if Newt hadn’t spent two weeks in October 2009 going on TV — again and again and again — to badmouth you as a dangerous extremist.

This forgive-and-forget turn-the-other-cheek stuff is fine as a moral ideal, but moral idealism and three bucks will get you a cup of coffee in Washington, and in the time it takes to drink that cup of coffee, you’ll get backstabbed by a half-dozen of your “friends” who figure you for a weakling. It’s like being the slowest wildebeest in the herd when a hungry lion leaps out of the bushes down by the watering hole. Next thing you know, vultures are picking your bones.

So Doug Hoffman has forgiven Newt Gingrich, but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to emulate Hoffman’s Christian example.

“You Still Have to Answer for Santino, Carlo.”


Category: Dave Weigel, Doug Hoffman, Election 2012, Legal Insurrection, Newt Gingrich

A Quick Search On ‘Waxman’ In
‘Throw Them All Out’ Turned Up Nothing

Posted on | November 18, 2011 | 10 Comments

by Smitty

Still in the first chapter of Throw Them All Out on the Kindle. No mention of Waxman for a text search or in the index. Yet this piece in CNSNews makes you wonder if he’s scoring bank or just a kool-aid quaffer:

Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said that Department of Energy subsidies, such as the the failed $535-million loan guarantee to solar company Sloyndra, were “saving” people from “fires, droughts and floods” that are caused by global warming.
“I want to put this in perspective Dr. Chu,” Waxman told Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on the Solyndra failure. “You’ve been trying to move our nation toward a clean energy economy. And that’s essential to protect American families from fires and droughts and floods and other extreme weather that climate change will bring.”

Maybe with eight years in, he’s not getting cut into the really good deals like my Congresstool, ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran. Or, the honest people of Waxman’s district aren’t looking hard enough at the record to locate the graft.

What a fascinating contrast: the revelations of Congressmen doing things that may not be strictly illegal, but certainly shall not pass the smell test, while simultaneously blowing off the basic job of running the country’s budget, as exemplified by the Stupor Committee. Don’t even bother with anger, people. Instead, harden the resolve to get involved and deliver an anti-incumbent tsunami next November that will make 2010 seem a mere pump-priming.

Reader Robert Birch sends the following quote:

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” ? Napoleon Bonaparte

Update: linked at Katy Pundit

Category: Democrats

There Are No Awards for ‘Most Promising Middle-Aged Conservative Journalist’

Posted on | November 18, 2011 | 62 Comments

“One of the reasons why there are so few conservatives in America’s newsrooms is because the profession of journalism is relentlessly derided by those who claim to speak for the conservative cause. No kid who grew up listening to talk radio could possibly believe that becoming a reporter is a worthy ambition. (To be a talking-head pundit on cable TV, yes; to be a mere reporter, no.) And this blanket condemnation of journalism qua journalism is sufficiently broad enough to encompass . . . well, me.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Conservatives Against Journalism,” The American Spectator, June 26, 2010

“Even after Pruden issued an edict against any more stories about dog-eating, culture page editor Stacy McCain tried using a story about a Korean church in America, where dogs were eaten.
“Pruden came down the stairs to the national desk and said not to use the story.
“McCain popped up: ‘Actually, Wes, it’s a pretty good story …’
“McCain never finished his sentence as Pruden turned bright red, as angry as I have ever seen him, and made it clear, in no uncertain terms, not to use the story.”
— Ken Hanner, unpublished manuscript

If you’ve never seen Wes Pruden angry, it’s not an experience recommended for the faint of heart. For some reason, the problem with that Associated Press wire story hadn’t crossed my mind while I was looking for a 400-word item to fill a hole on Page A2. When the Editor-in-Chief made one of his rare appearance at the national editor’s desk, the significance of his edict still didn’t immediately register.

The difference between insubordination and sincere cluelessness is probably not worth exploring here, but reading the ninth chapter of this manuscript by Ken Hanner — who spent 26 years at the Washington Times, rising from rookie business writer to become national editor of the paper — called to mind one of several incidents that earned me a reputation as a loose cannon.

“Not Management Material,” as they say.

And never mind all that — just a random painful recollection. However, perhaps you can imagine the sense of irony that overcame me when I saw Ben Domenech’s lecture about “the real failings of conservative media and the journalists they employ.”

Sigh.

OK, having had a calm smoke and switched to decaf, I’ll attempt a reply.

Setting aside everything else, there is a chicken-and-egg problem involved in Domenech’s complaint. Journalism as a profession is dominated by liberals, who outnumber conservatives in America’s newsrooms by a factor that has been estimated at about 7-to-1 based on the best available surveys.

Why is this so? Given that Democrats and Republicans are roughly equal in the general population, why are Democrats so disproportionately over-represented in the press corps? Read more

Category: Journalism

Muscular Statesman Harry Reid Drips Testosterone And Leadership Everywhere In Remarks On Stupor Committee

Posted on | November 18, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve seen firmer lumps of bread dough. Like the Nobel Committee, one engages in wishful thinking in the hopes of altering the outcome. Unlike the Nobel Committee, one keeps one’s expectations of the American political class well below zero, for minimal surprise.

The Stupor Committee was never anything more than an admission of failure. When was it ever going to do anything but fail? The only questions of interest are:

  • Will further means of avoiding the budget problem be discovered?
  • Will the #Occutards offer enough entertainment that the propaganda media successfully divert attention from the dismal failure of Congress?
  • Will enough ways be found to bribe the American people with their own money be found to somehow drag Obama across the re-election line?
  • Will Peter Schweizer’s book drive enough anti-incumbent outrage to bring down the Ruling Class?

Update: linked at Daily Pundit.

Category: Budget

Fannie, Freddy, Newt, Sitting In A Tree: But Do Not Say ‘Newt Lob-A-Bee’

Posted on | November 18, 2011 | 42 Comments

by Smitty

A Fox clip with Napolitano and crew, discussing Newt’s fishy assertion he did no lobbying, and moving into the mortgage question in general.

As far as doing anything with the housing crisis, the answer is the States. The houses in question all exist in States. That the Federal government is involved at all is a 10th Amendment violation, straight up. Start with honesty about what level of government should undertake which tasks.

Let States, following North Dakota’s lead, stand up their own banks, and then take whatever crap exists within them onto their books. Then let the States figure out what to do. Also, let the States default, if necessary, in order to get better. Let the Federal government assume an oversight role.

The only challenges I see are:

  • Forcing governments to face problems means confronting difficulties right now. People enter accept government positions as a means of avoiding reality.
  • Moving the problems closer to the people who own them lowers the opportunity for graft.

Expecting the Federal government to do anything useful about housing, recalls Stacy’s days as a smoke-free pharmacist, when Mickey Kaus set Stacy up with McCain’s first electronic device. Not sure who the person in the gold dress is. Or maybe I am, but spilling those beans would be really bad. UPDATE: The point here is that Stacy isn’t in pharmaceuticals anymore, and the country would also benefit from getting the government rooster out of the henhouse.
Because if you have a financial pain, and you use the Federal Reserve like a drug, the cause of that pain will still be there. The citizens of these United States must be more than Andy Kaufman, looking at DC and saying “I trusted you.”

Category: How This Here Internet Thingy Works, humor

‘Frothing Degenerate Mob’ Would Make a Great Name for a Punk-Rock Band

Posted on | November 18, 2011 | 42 Comments

That phrase occurred in one of my posts yesterday as I contemplated MSNBC’s utterly one-sided coverage of Occupy Wall Street’s nationwide “Day of Action”:

Liberals decided from the outset that Occupy Wall Street would be a rallying point, their triumphant response to the Tea Party movement, and they refuse to let it go. It must be defended.
Now that the Left’s movement has disintegrated into what Cupp calls a “public-relations nightmare” — violence, crime, disease, an irresistible scum-magnet for every pervert, schizo and anarchist looking for a deviant thrill — the MSNBC crowd continues stubbornly insisting that this frothing degenerate mob is a broad-based “social movement,” and that everything offensive about it can be dismissed as irrelevant or trivial, in comparison to the movement’s goals, whatever the goals actually are.

What the MSNBC crowd refuses to recognize is that the offensive aspects of the Occupy movement are not incidental to it, but an expression of the movement’s anti-social essence.

The mobs who are attacking “Wall Street” are anti-wealth and anti-capitalism and, if you understand what wealth and capitalism represent, you understand that the Occupiers are also anti-work, anti-thrift and anti-enterprise. That is to say, they are fundamentally hostile to bourgeois values.

Therefore, the outbreaks of criminality (extensively documented by John at Verum Serum) represent the dangerous anarchic impulses that inspire the movement. It does not matter how often the leaders of Occupy Wall Street disavow violence; their demonization of the rich inevitably attracts twisted souls filled with inchoate rage. Young people who hate their parents, maladjusted neurotic personalities seeking scapegoats for their own failures, ranting madmen in the throes of schizophrenia — to such deviants, the “Occupy” protests are a festive celebration of grievances and resentments they have long nourished in their envious hearts.

Knowing that these sociopathic tendencies are fundamental to the spirit of the Occupy movement — having recently spent a few minutes trapped among the riotous mob — I was angered but not surprised to spot a sign in a video of yesterday’s crowd: “F**k the System, NYPD, Bloomberg.” What is “the System” that inspires the obscene epithet?

It is “the System” of private property and market exchange.

It is “the System” of the Rule of Law.

It is “the System” of limited representative government, which is not constitutionally authorized to pick winners and losers, nor to redistribute wealth according to notions of “equality,” “fairness” or “social justice.”

Stipulate that wealthy interests have gamed “the System” to their own advantage, so that Goldman Sachs, General Motors and other corporations deemed “too big to fail” have received windfalls at taxpayer expense, in repayment of their support for the bipartisan corruption in Washington. But the Occupiers aren’t reading Peter Schweizer’s shocking new expose of crony capitalism or demanding criminal prosecution of Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, et al. 

The mobs are not focusing their wrath on the politicians responsible for the problem, but instead are raging against Wall Street, that enduring symbol of the free-enterprise “System,” which is merely doing what Wall Street has always done, providing a market where those with capital to invest seek opportunities for profit.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, Mark Halperin said of the Occupiers, “They have not handled their brand well.” But exactly what is their “brand”? The Lonely Conservative’s “Day of Action” roundup highlights one action that adequately epitomizes the OWS “brand”:

In Utah, they bombed a Wells Fargo branch office with Molotov cocktails. I guess they don’t understand that quite a few in the 99% work at banks as tellers and clerks.

Why can’t liberals like Halperin confront the reality that Molotov cocktails are a logical consequence of the Occupy movement? Once more, we quote The Lonely Conservative:

The only positive thing to come out of all of this is that now people can see with their own eyes what life is like in a collective utopia.

“In New Hampshire on Thursday, Cain accused the protesters of ‘trying to destroy the greatest nation in the world’ with plans to stop traffic and subway commuters. He accused them of trying ‘to infringe upon people’s right and liberty to go to work.'”
— CBS News

You can mock Herman Cain all you want, but who can deny he’s gotten this exactly right? The Occupiers are the vilest dregs of humanity, a menace to society, the friends of all that is false and evil, the enemies of all that is good and true.

Criminals is what they are and crime is what they do.

Liberals who have embraced Occupy Wall Street refuse to let it go, and we should not let them turn it loose, because they deserve all the shame and disgrace they gain by that foul embrace.


UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Did I mention that I’m a greedy capitalist blogger? “Occupy Tip Jar,” IYKWIMAITYD.

Category: #Occupy, Conservatism 101, Crime, Progressivism

LIVE AT FIVE – 11.18.11

Posted on | November 18, 2011 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Filthy #OWS Hippies Clash With NYPD, 250 Arrested

#OWS protesters annoy subway riders in NYC

Attempt to close NYSE fails; weak turnout for afternoon subway invasion; similar wild successes reported across the country




Idaho Nutbar Charged With Attempted Assassination
Another lone crazy

Syrian Military Defectors Taking Active Role In Revolt
Russian ambassador: “Already looks like civil war”





POLITICS
Energy Secretary Balks At Apologizing For Solyndra Loan Guarantee Debacle

Energy Secretary Steven Chu

“As the secretary of Energy, the final decisions on Solyndra were mine, and I made them with the best interest of the taxpayer in mind.” Uh-huh.

Congress Kills Funding For Obama’s High-Speed Rail

Tea Party Activists Remain Wary Of Romney

More Discretion In Deportations

California Supremes Rule Prop 8 Backers Have Standing To Challenge Court Ruling

“Supercommittee” Appears Unlikely To Reach Agreement

DOJ Dispute With Alabama Over Immigration Law Heats Up



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Merkel And Cameron Discuss Clashing Views On Euro
Nikkei At Month Low As Euro-Zone Yields Spook Markets
Motorola Mobility Stockholders Approve Acquisition By Google
Oil Heads For First Weekly Drop Since September On European Debt Concerns
US Stocks Post Third Decline In Four Days
Confused By Android Updates? Join The Club
Slim Profit For Amazon’s Kindle Fire
Army Tests Hypersonic Weapon Over The Pacific



SPORTS
Bud Selig Not Done Ruining National Pastime Yet

Baseball Commissioner And Village Idiot Bud Selig

Astros to the AL West, two wild cards per league, other stupidity on the way

Cubs Sign Dale Sveum As Manager

Bruins On A Roll, Win Seventh Straight

Carl Edwards, Tony Stewart Locked Up In Chase For Cup

Read Lifts Flyers Past Coyotes

Clayton Kershaw Wins NL Cy Young, Joins Elite Dodgers Company

Nationals Promote Randy Knorr To Bench Coach



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Demi Moore Ends Marriage To Ashton Kutcher

Ashton & Demi

Okay, who had them in the divorce pool?

LA Sheriff’s Department Reopens Investigation Into Natalie Wood’ Death
Seeing as how they’ve run out of contemporary crimes to handle

Bieber’s Alleged Baby Mama Busted By Text Messages

Selena Gomez’ Alleged Stalker Placed On Psychiatric Hold

Greg Kinnear Coming To “Modern Family”


Finally! Beyonce Reveals Her Wedding Dress From 2008

Warren Beatty’s Transgender Son Dishes On Chaz Bono

“The Ricki Lake Show” Scores Syndication Deals

Snooki’s Secret To Beauty: Kitty Litter!



FOREIGNERS
Germany Seeks To Stop UK Vote On EU
Eight Arrested In Wilson Ramos Kidnapping
Italy’s New PM Offers Plan To Reform Finances, Spur Growth
Pakistani Ambassador Recalled Over Controversial Coup Memo
Kenya Asks US For Help With Somalia



BLOGS & STUFF
Gateway Pundit: #OWS Goons Terrorize Small Children
Allahpundit: Gingrich To Media – Let Me Explain The Difference Between The Tea Party And OWS
Dana Loesch: Columbia Journalism Prof Abhors “Unwashed Masses” Of Citizen Journalists
Weasel Zippers: SEIU President To Help “Occupy” Brooklyn Bridge
NRO Primary Event: Cain Defends Libya Answer
Ann Coulter: If Not Romney, Who? If Not Now, When?
Lonely Conservative: “Patriotic Millionaires” Refuse To Pony Up To Pay Off National Debt

Category: Live at Five
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