The Other McCain

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

‘Sugar Baby’ Seeks ‘Successful Mentor’

Posted on | November 15, 2011 | 15 Comments

Her name is Julia Biryukova and her toddler is missing:

The website offers a “secure place for like-minded Sugar Daddies, Mommies and Sugar Babies to meet each other.”
JB signed up to be a sugar baby, “which means she’s looking for someone wealthy to take care of her,” Wade said. JB said she is “looking for financial stability and assistance.”
“I am looking for a successful mentor,” the profile said. “I am looking for a REAL man. YOU tell me YOUR ‘ideal’ arrangement!”
The profile says JB expects “$3,001 – $5,000 monthly.”
The profile page features nine photographs of Biryukova and describes her as 30 years old, a nonsmoker and nondrinker who can “speak fluent Russian, Ukrainian and English” and lives in Redmond. The last time JB accessed the account was Oct. 26, Wade said.
Biryukova, 30, is a native of Ukraine. She moved to the United States as a child and has an apartment in Redmond. She and her husband, Solomon Metalwala, are involved in a divorce and child custody dispute.
Biryukova told police she left her 2-year-old son, Sky Metalwala, alone in her car Nov. 6 and went to get gas with her 4-year-old daughter. She said that when she came back about an hour later, Sky was gone.
Police said the car started and ran fine when they took it for a test drive. Investigators said they have been frustrated that Biryukova has not answered questions about discrepancies in her story.

Could an anthropological essay be written about this? Of course. We remember the case of Susan Smith, who drowned her two young children because her new boyfriend wasn’t interested in becoming a stepfather. High rates of divorce and illegitimacy have put a lot of women into situations similar to Biryukova’s, where motherhood impairs their romantic prospects.

Biryukova’s evident belief that she might fetch more than $3,000 a month in support as some rich man’s “sugar baby” certainly casts suspicion on her in this case. How would a 30-year-old divorced mom fare in such market? And how much would she improve her market position by striking “mom” from her profile?

This is a larger problem symbolized by this situation and it would be worth an essay, were I in the mood to write an essay.

Category: Crime

Old And Busted: Nobel Peace Prize.
The New Hotness: Confucian Peace Prize

Posted on | November 15, 2011 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

In Vladimir style, he wakes up one morning with a prize so cool that neither Jimmy Carter, nor St. Albert of Gore, nor even the vaunted #OccupyResoluteDesk have one:

After two wars in Chechnya, one conflict in South Ossetia and two of the deadliest hostage relief operations in modern history, the former KGB officer was named on Monday as the winner of the second Confucian peace prize.
It is unclear if Putin is even aware of the award which was chosen by an obscure cultural organisation, the China International Peace Research Centre, from a field of nominees including Bill Gates, Angela Merkel, Kofi Annan, Jacob Zuma and a Tibetan Panchen Lama imposed by Beijing.
The 16-judge panel said that Putin deserved the award because his criticism of Nato’s military engagement in Libya was “outstanding in keeping world peace”, regardless of the fact that it had no bearing on the outcome of the north African conflict.

The five member Nobel Prize Committee could not be reached for comment. Sissypuss the Blog Kitty, however, has it on good authority that them Norwegians are sure-a pissed-a off, you betcha. Ole Danbolt Mjøs, Nobel Committee chair, purportedly expressed outrage:

Norway will not permit the Peace Prize brand to be diluted by this ‘Made in China’ frippery! This means war!

Putin is said to have interrupted #OccupyResoluteDesk on the links with the news:

Bow to this, Barack! I’ve got the Confucian Peace Prize. Also, no trouble getting re-elected. Ask me nicely, and I’ll offer you some advice on campaign videos. Later, sucker.

via Memeorandum

Update: more at Troglopundit.

Category: China, Farce, humor, Norway

Remembering Newt’s Awfulness

Posted on | November 15, 2011 | 100 Comments

Just now, I called Dan Collins to talk about the grim prospect that threatens to destroy all hope of carrying forward the Tea Party momentum of the 2010 midterms: Mitt vs. Newt as the final showdown for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Dan was saying that this has provided him an occasion to remember all the reasons he can’t stand Newt Gingrich.

The idea that Newt could fill the role of a champion of grassroots conservatism against the Republican Establishment is so absurd as to be laughable, if the situation were not so tragic.

“The limits of Newt Gingrich’s staying power” is the Washington Post headline expressing what is perhaps the only hopeful aspect of the most recent polls: The Newt Bubble can’t possibly last, and eventually some other Not Romney will emerge as the leading alternative. However, viewing the situation as it stands now — seven weeks before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses — by the time the Newt Bubble ends, there will be little time for any other Not Romney to raise the big money needed to fund a campaign against Romney in Florida.

Gingrich Said Paid by Freddie Mac to Win Allies
— Bloomberg News

Gingrich needs to explain what
he did for Freddie and Fannie
— Jennifer Rubin

Yeah, a bit more attention to that kind of stuff would be helpful. This whole “Second look at Gingrich” nonsense — I’m looking at you, Ed Morrissey — is almost as much a waste of time as the Jon Huntsman campaign, and the sooner people wake up and realize it, the better.

 Da Tech Guy has excoriated me for my anti-Gingrich attitude, but I’m serious and will repeat what I said yesterday: To support Newt is tantamount to advocating the re-election of Barack Obama.

Anyone who thinks Newt can beat Obama is delusional. As bad as Romney is, he’s not worse than Gingrich, and if this Newt Bubble isn’t deflated PDQ, I fear that I might be stuck making that argument next February, a profoundly depressing prospect.

UPDATE: My friend Jeffrey Lord has taken leave of his senses. Comparing Gingrich to Winston Churchill? The most obvious difference is that the latter was a man of action, who understood that deeds counted more than words.

Churchill’s disrepute among his political rivals can be attributed chiefly to their envy of his superior qualities. The way Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, became the scapegoat for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign is one episode that must be studied to see how Churchill was damaged by this resentment. He had won early fame in the Boer War and self-interested rivals, concerned mainly with their own status, viewed Churchill’s success as likely to result in their own eclipse — as of course it ultimately did, but only after their had kept him in the wilderness during the years of appeasement in the 1930s.

Category: Election 2012, Newt Gingrich

Maybe The Cleanup Crew Can Work On Julian Pecquet’s Head After Zuccotti Park

Posted on | November 15, 2011 | 25 Comments

by Smitty

What a nauseating bucket of drool at The Hill:

Pecquet Smitty
Democrats on Capitol Hill are worried that the Supreme Court will rule against President Obama’s healthcare reform law. The SCOTUS will rule in favor of the Constitution and liberty. Liberty, Mike Foxtrot: do you speak it?
Over the last couple weeks, congressional Democrats have told The Hill that the law faces danger in the hands of the Supreme Court, which The New York Times editorial page recently labeled the most conservative high court since the 1950s. No the SCOTUS is supposed to protect the Constitution. Also, you seem to have conflated Appeal to Authority with Appeal to Clowns. You see, nobody that gives the likes of Krugman or Brooks the space to peddle idiocy has any credibility.
While the lawmakers are not second-guessing the administration’s legal strategy, some are clearly bracing for defeat. Why should the administration, which peddles policies of failure, of which ObamaCare is just a particularly egregious example, expect to do anything but fail here? Does the administration actually want to succeed, and have the ObamaCare albatross perch upon #OccupyResoluteDesk? BHO, admittedly, whitewashes everything, but I’m not sure this was the whitewash which he sought.
“Of course I’m concerned,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). The justices “decide for insurance companies, they decide for oil companies, they decide for the wealthy too often.” What is that supposed to mean? If the Justices are deciding cases based upon anything other than law, in the service of justice, then, by all means: let the Justices be impeached. Or did you read such drivel in the New York Times, Brown? Sure, Kelo, but does anybody doubt that the main beneficiaries of ObamaCare are the crony capitalists friends of the Administration?

The Daily Pundit piles on as well.

A less idiotic take over at the WSJ, emphasis mine:

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether ObamaCare is constitutional, granting certiorari in a case brought by 26 states shortly after that law was enacted in March of last year. In so doing, it will be ruling upon the very nature of our federal union.

One might be tempted to think that our leadership would agree. Yes, ObamaCare is a Big Biden Deal. So why did the Democrat-controlled Congress trie to back-door the legislation, and not offer an Article V convention? I sort of know the answer, but that is a rhetorical club with which these Progressive hacks should be flogged on a more or less endless basis.

Still more at Hot Air, which notes the following about Elena Kagan, whom I’ll dub #OccupySCOTUS:

Kagan has been exceedingly conscientious about recusals, perhaps more so than necessary. It’s safe to say that such scrupulous adherence to the judicial canon will work in her favor when she argues — or more likely her defenders, as Kagan is unlikely to directly address these calls — that she has no need to recuse herself in this case.

Ah, yes: play scrupulously by the rules, so that you have something at which to point when it’s time to cheat. The Lefty evil can at least be elegant upon occasion.

When the history of this administration is written, ObamaCare shall have proven the Battle of the Bulge. 2012 will be anything but boring.

via Instapundit

Category: #Occupy, Democrats, Health Care

Fertility Facts: ‘It’s Not That We’re Stupid. It’s That We’ve Been Misinformed.’

Posted on | November 15, 2011 | 26 Comments

At last, intelligent women are starting to speak out about how they’ve been misled about basic facts of reproductive science:

From the outside, Holly Finn certainly looks fertile.
With shoulder-length dark hair, smooth skin and a slim but curvaceous figure, the San Francisco-area writer could be any young mom with a baby on her hip.
But at 43, Finn says, her ovaries know better — and she would have, too, if not for what she believes is society’s widespread ignorance about infertility.
“I really feel that there are important pieces of information that don’t get passed along,” says Finn, who has now tried for four years to conceive through in-vitro fertilization. “I actually think it’s quite a brutal dishonesty.”
Most women aren’t taught — and don’t learn — basic facts about fertility and aging, says Finn, author of the e-book “The Baby Chase.” Instead, celeb moms the likes of Salma Hayek (a baby girl at 41), Marcia Cross (twins at 44) and Mariah Carey (twins at 41) make being an older mom look easy — and glamorous.
“It’s not that we’re stupid,” she says. “It’s that we’ve been misinformed.”

Whenever I write about this topic, I get outraged reactions from feminists who seem to think that explaining procreative biology is an insult to women. Postponing childbearing past age 30 involves a significant risk of infertility. And because the risks of birth defects (especially Down’s Syndrome) are much greater for pregnancies after age 35, delayed motherhood reduces a woman’s chances of having healthy children.

When a man says this, however, he will immediately be attacked as if he were advocating the kind of patriarchal dystopia described in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It is therefore encouraging to see women like Finn calling attention to this kind of survey data:

Most women simply don’t realize that at 30, a healthy woman has about a 20 percent chance of conceiving per month and by the time she reaches 40, her odds drop to about 5 percent . . .
Instead, many of those surveyed thought that a 30-year-old woman would have a 70 percent chance of conceiving and that a 40-year-old’s chances could approach 60 percent.
They also believed that a 20-year-old woman might get pregnant in less than two months of unprotected sex, rather than the five months that is the average.
“It’s basic biology and basic knowledge of how age impacts your fertility if you’re a woman,” says Collura.
But most women aren’t getting those basics until it’s too late, said Dr. William Schoolcraft, medical director of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine in Denver and two other locations.
“They don’t even come in for fertility treatment until they’re literally in their 40s,” he said. “Some come in and they have run out of time.”

Finn’s 50-page Kindle booklet, The Baby Chase, is available from Amazon for $1.99. I wish that all those otherwise smart young women who think, “Well, that won’t happen to me,” would wake up and realize: It just might.  And I also wish people would realize that nightmare dystopias come in many flavors:

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Contraceptive Culture, Feminism

VIDEO: Cain Family on Fox News

Posted on | November 15, 2011 | 17 Comments

Category: Election 2012, Fox News, Herman Cain, Video

VIDEO: ‘Herman Cain Reminds Me of Ronald Reagan,’ Says Iowa Farmer

Posted on | November 15, 2011 | 37 Comments

During my visit to Iowa in August, I met and interviewed former Iowa Farm Bureau chief Dean Kleckner, who is featured in Herman Cain’s Iowa ad that began airing last week:

NBC News reported:

Unlike Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who have been running TV ads on local stations in Iowa, Cain’s 60-second ad began airing on cable — FOX News Channel to be exact.
“The new television ad is a result of the strong fundraising that has occurred over the last ten days,” Steve Grubbs, Cain’s Iowa chairman, told NBC News. “Our supporters are rallying to Herman Cain’s defense and that means we will be able to take our message directly to voters.”
The ad has three Iowa farmers and one former farmer discussing how EPA regulations are hurting their business amidst scenes of farmland and other Iowa landmarks.
“Over-regulation is killing the American farmer. I think Herman Cain is the answer,” retired farmer Dean Kleckner says in the ad.
Kleckner served 10 years as president of the Iowa Farm Bureau, 14 years as president of the American Farm Bureau, and on the U.S. Trade Advisory Committee under three presidents.
“Herman Cain reminds me of Ronald Reagan and I knew Ronald Reagan. It is time to put the United back into the United States of America,” Kleckner continues in the ad.

One of my beefs about the Cain campaign — and I’ve been complaining about this to friends for weeks — is that they have not yet produced a single 30-second TV ad. Lots of online videos, but no 30-second TV spots. Which was OK, when they didn’t have enough money to buy TV time, but we’re now just seven weeks away from the Iowa caucuses, they’ve collected millions of dollars in contributions since September, and isn’t it time they produce a standard 30-second ad?

UPDATE: By the way, the new-and-improved HermanCain.com site isn’t improved enough. For example, when I saw Cain in South Carolina, he told me he would be in Iowa today, but good luck trying to find today’s itinerary on the site. Instead, I have to get the news from Politico:

DUBUQUE, Iowa — Herman Cain is back in Iowa Tuesday for to kick off a week of early-state campaigning that will take him to New Hampshire and Florida. . . .
Cain’s in first place, with 20 percent, though Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are all just points behind according to the Bloomberg News numbers out Monday. A second survey, taken by Kellyanne Conway’s polling company, also shows Cain in first place in Iowa, with a one point lead over Gingrich.
Steve Grubbs, Cain’s Iowa chairman and a veteran of the Steve Forbes and Bob Dole campaigns, said Tuesday that Cain would speak with reporters after each of the two Iowa events . . .

I don’t want to link Politico for Herman Cain news, OK? But when I can’t get Herman Cain news in a timely manner from HermanCain.com, I don’t have any other choice. The last time I talked to J.D. Gordon, he told me he now has a communications team of four people. What the hell are those people doing, if they’re not writing press releases and posting them on the Web site?

Is there no one in the Cain organization who understands the importance of timeliness in the news business? And don’t they understand that campaign activity is, in fact, news? The campaign’s Web site therefore could and should be a conduit for breaking news, because who knows better what the campaign is doing than the campaign’s own staff? Instead the site is posting stuff way out of date, so that by the time it’s on HermanCain.com, it’s obsolete.

Three polls this week — from Bloomberg, the Polling Company and Insider Advantage — show Cain leading Iowa. As of 11 a.m. today, none of that good news for Cain was reported anywhere on HermanCain.com. Talk all you want about running a “non-traditional campaign,” but tolerating incompetence isn’t “non-traditional,” it’s just stupid. I can ignore gaffes, but I can’t ignore basic communications failure like this. 

A candidate’s Web site should be the first and best source for news about campaign activity. Your supporters (to say nothing of neutral objective journalists like me) shouldn’t have to go Googling around to try to figure out where the candidate will be campaigning from day to day.

Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain, Iowa

NYPD Clears Out Occupiers

Posted on | November 15, 2011 | 21 Comments

About damned time:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday defended his decision to clear the park in Lower Manhattan that was the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, saying “health and safety conditions became intolerable” in the park where the protesters had camped out for nearly two months. . . .
“New York City is the city where you can come and express yourself,” the mayor said. “What was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that.” He said the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”
The mayor’s comments at a City Hall news conference came about seven hours after hundreds of police officers moved in to clear the park after warning that the nearly two-month-old camp would be “cleared and restored” but that demonstrators who did not leave would face arrest. The protesters, about 200 of whom have been staying in the park overnight, initially resisted with chants of “Whose park? Our park!”
The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said that nearly 200 people had been arrested, 142 in the park at 50 to 60 in the streets nearby. Most were held on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Via Memeorandum. Isn’t it weird that, in a city of 8 million people, a few hundred “Occupiers” could be portrayed as the spearhead of a broad-based popular movement? I mean, it’s almost as if there were some kind of bias in the media coverage or something.

Category: #Occupy, New York
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