The Other McCain

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

‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran, Civil Servant

Posted on | November 19, 2011 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

That is, for ‘Civil’ means ‘Selfish’, along with ‘Overlord’ values of ‘Servant’. Remember when your retirement investments did a face plant during the 2008 election season?

Here is a brief tidbit from Throw Them All Out by Peter Schweizer. Chapter 2. Crisis For All, Opportunity For Some (emphasis original)

On Tuesday, September 16, 2008, when Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke held another of their terrifying closed-door meetings with congressional leaders (two days before the “ashen-faced” meeting), the stock market had dipped only a few percentage points, and most people assumed that the financial crisis was a disruption that would have just a limited effect on the broader economy. But what Paulson and Bernanke told lawmakers on September 16 made it clear that the public’s perception was wrong. Paulson, in his memoir, explains that during the meeting he outlined that the federal government was going to bail out the insurance giant AIG and that the markets were in deep trouble. “There was an almost surreal quality to the meeting,” he recounts. “The stunned lawmakers looked at us as if not quite believing what they were hearing.”

The next day, Congressman Jim Moran, Democrat of Virginia, a member of the Appropriations Committee, dumped his shares in ninety different companies. Moran is a former mayor and city councilman of Alexandria, Virginia. Earlier in his political career he had faced legal charges for casting a vote on the Alexandria City Council that helped a developer friend win a bid for a lucrative plot of land. Moran pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge and resigned. It did not stop his career. He was elected mayor in 1985, and to Congress shortly after. (It’s interesting to note that legal standards IN Virginia are apparently higher than those of the U.S. Congress. Had moran cast that same vote in Congress, there would be no cause for any charges.)

This post is reprises a post of a couple days back: ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran Appreciates Him Some Real Nice Assets, and offers some context. I’m about 1/4 through Schweitzers book. Also not looking too good so far are Princess Pelosi and Senator ‘Stuck in Iraq’ Kerry. We’ll see if my ‘good gentleman’ Congressman appears in any further heists.

Arguing Jim Moran’s end of things–wait while I put on my mean old, hard-drinking, condescending, Ruling Class Overlord hat–everything he has done is perfectly, strictly legal. Furthermore, ‘they’ probably did worse, and ‘anyone’ could have done the same, if they had clawed their way up to a senior Democrat leadership position. The rationalizations are classic, straightforward, and vanish in a puff of hatred when the voters ‘call’ a Moran on his tendency to ‘put’ the tire iron alongside the voter head.

I’ve been voting against ‘Gentleman’ Jim for the last five elections. 2012 will be the second round since realizing that there is a moral imperative to stand up against the kind of falsehood that Moran represents. Moran brings a particular flavor of evil to the job, as we live in the shadow of Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. It’s purely conter-factual to speculate how Washington would have reacted to Moran, but one would venture something involving a musket with a fixed bayonet would occur. Help Virginia relieve the Congress of ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran. Support Patrick Murray.

Update: via American Power: Nancy, you ignorant Jane Curtin reference!

 

Previous/More Antics:

Category: Democrats, Patrick Murray, Scandal, Virginia

Is This It? Newt Says GOP Choice Will ‘Come Down to Mitt and Me’

Posted on | November 19, 2011 | 105 Comments

Thirty-three months after the first Tea Party rallies, we are presented with a choice between Mr. “It’s His Turn” and Mr. Speaker:

A surging Newt Gingrich said he’s bracing for searing political attacks from all sides now that he’s the latest front-runner in the cutthroat Republican bid for president — and he predicted the GOP nomination will come down to him and Mitt Romney.
“I fully expect the effort will be made over next three weeks by the Obama people, by other people who want the nomination and the news media to scrutinize me,” the former U.S. House speaker told the Herald in an exclusive interview. . . .
“I really see Mitt and I as co-front-runners,” said Gingrich, adding that the nomination battle is “going to come down to Mitt and me.”
“The one consistency is that Mitt has a hard time getting over 24 or 25 percent (in the polls),” he added. “Everyone was looking for the next ‘Not Mitt.’ ”

Really? The next “Not Mitt” is a golden oldie blast from the past? Back to the days of mullets, when MTV played music videos?

(Via Memeorandum.)

RECENTLY:

Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich

Today: Da Tech Guy on Da Radio Celebrates Da First Anniversary

Posted on | November 19, 2011 | 1 Comment

Our friend Pete Da Tech Guy has been broadcasting weekly on WCRN 830 AM — a 50,000-watt powerhouse in Worcester, Massachusetts — for a year now. Today’s broadcast at 10 a.m. ET is his first anniversary show, and his guests will include Professor Glenn Reynolds among others.

You can call 888-9-FEDORA (888-933-3672) to congratulate Pete during the show today or, better yet, you can go hit Da Tip Jar. (I did.)

If you’re in the central Massachusetts area, you can join Pete and his friends at Border Grille (246 Mill St., Leominster) for a special anniversary lunch today at 1 p.m. Considering that the Border Grille features more than 100 different brands of tequila, I’m sure it will be a memorable fiesta.

Category: Da Tech Guy

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
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