The Other McCain

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

On the Road to Spartanville … Oh, Wait, No, Better Make That Spartanburg

Posted on | November 12, 2011 | 33 Comments

DUBLIN, Va.
We pulled into a McDonald’s here about 9:40 a.m. so that I could hop on the WiFi and get some work done quickly before gassing up the econo-rental (a black Ford Probe, $86 for the weekend) and heading back out on the road to Spartanburg, S.C., for tonight’s Republican presidential debate at Wofford College (8 p.m. ET, CBS).

Mrs. Other McCain let me bring our 12-year-old son Jefferson along for the trip, because every eighth-grader should be helping their dads cover presidential campaigns instead of lounging around all weekend playing “Call of Duty.” Jefferson’s career plan is to be elected president of the United States in 2044, but I’m afraid he’ll be haunted by the gaffe in this video:

Spartanville? That blunder may have looked rehearsed, but it was actually spontaneous, as was his clever recovery. And of course, no child of mine could ever forget The Five Most Important Words in the English Language: Hit the freaking tip jar!




Addendum: While we were driving down the road this morning, we heard “Freebird” on the radio and Jefferson declared that when he becomes president, he’ll make “Freebird” the national anthem. I shared this on Twitter — via cellphone, while driving 75 mph abd steering with my knee — and Jon Henke responded:

You WILL stand for 9:06 & you WILL hold your hand over your heart for 9:06. Or you’re an unpatriotic America hater!

And frankly, if you don’t hold up a lighter every time you hear the national anthem, we’ll question your patriotism.

Hell, yeah.

Category: Debates, Election 2012, Family, Fear and Loathing in Spartanburg, South Carolina

Palate Cleanser: Nigel Farage Lets Loose The Barrage

Posted on | November 12, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Nigel Farage is slightly less refined that Daniel Hannan, but that’s no complaint: sometimes you feel like a mallet, sometimes a scalpel.

Farage goes all Donald Trump and starts telling the Eurocrats that they should be fired. We have legions of civil servants in need of the same words here.

via HillBuzz, who do not seem to grasp that Farage is in fact an elected official, not a media personality like Beck.

Category: Europe, Foreigners

One Can Nearly Admire The Unmitigated Sack On Display

Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

#OccupyResoluteDesk:

Congress. . .“must not shirk its responsibilities,” according to a White House readout of the conversation.

Seriously. If the intent all along was to punish the Administration’s political foes in particular, and America in general, then the Administration’s actions make sense:

  1. Play the brinksmanship game in the Spring of 2011,
  2. load the poison pill into the Super Committee, and then
  3. make the GOP eat more brinksmanship and the poison pill when the Super Committee, necessarily, fails.

Brilliant! If I wasn’t so thoroughly disgusted at the Machiavellian evil that is this Administration, I would be tempted to admire the perverse talent involved. As with the collapse of the Euro, there doesn’t seem to be much to do in the case of the Super Committee except sound the collision alarm and grab onto something solid.

Over at HotAir, Allahpundit wonders aloud:

Is The One seriously threatening to block a bill that would lift those cuts in the event of a Super Committee deadlock, knowing full well that the GOP will use Panetta’s soundbite to destroy him for it next year? Remember: This guy does not take political risks, and he certainly doesn’t take them in the name of cutting spending. Could be that the fear of another downgrade is weighing on him if the triggers are rescinded, which will pose a threat to his reelection if the market reacts badly, but what are the odds that investors will flee the safety of Treasuries under any circumstance given the chaos in Europe?

Oh, the bond rating agencies, then? Re-election?

Well, it sure is swell that #OccupyResoluteDesk would respect something, since the will of the people as expressed in the result of the 2008 election seems to have all the appeal of old chewing gum.

America has produced an exceptional piece of work in this one. I think BHO and I agree here, though our meanings may vary.

via Memeorandum

Category: Barack Obama, Democrats

Denver Post Quotes @DaTechGuyBlog About @OccupyDenver at #BlogCon11

Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 28 Comments

The authoritative source:

More than a dozen protesters who say they are part of Occupy Denver disrupted a conservative blogger conference in downtown Denver this afternoon and one man was led away in handcuffs, witnesses say.
Information about the man who was arrested for trespassing was unavailable but witnesses at the Blogcon 2011 conference say he shoved a police officer who was trying to clear the group of out of the lobby at the Crowne Plaza hotel.
Attendees of Blogcon say they knew Occupy Denver was going to try to disrupt their conference because the group had advertised their intentions on Twitter. . . .
The disruption began around 2 p.m. during a data visualization seminar in one of the ballrooms. A few of the protesters tried to charge the ballroom doors to get inside. . . .
But people attending the conference had already started to notice unusual activity by a number of people in the hotel’s lobby and they began to film them, said Peter Michael Dominic Ingemi, a talk show host.
“They started bantering back and forth,” he said. “We all had video. They were filming us and we were filming them.”
Occupy Denver protesters yelled out “We are the 99 percent” and Blogcon attendees yelled back “We want the dog!”

Pete is, of course, Da Tech Guy, who tells the story of the Occupy invasion and includes this video:

The Denver Post story also quotes Tabitha Hale, who hates me.

UPDATE: Conservative Hideout has more video, and we’re linked by The Lonely Conservative, who let me and Da Tech Guy crash at her house in October 2010 when we were covering Ann Marie Buerkle’s campaign.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! When I talked to Pete earlier, he was puzzled as to why he wasn’t getting much traffic on his blog. Explanation: He had gotten in a hurry and misspelled Denver in the title. When he corrected the spelling, he changed the URL, so my link to him wasn’t throwing traffic. That’s been fixed, but he probably won’t notice my traffic now that he’s got the Instalanche, too.

Bob Belvedere at Camp of the Saints uses the word “soviet” to describe Occupy Denver and, if you know anything useful about Soviet history, you realize that his usage is accurate. Of course, nobody in the “Occupy” movement knows anything about the history they’re doomed to repeat — as farce, to quote their philosophical godfather.

Category: #Occupy, Da Tech Guy

#OccupyFail at #BlogCon11: What Fun!

Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 13 Comments

For the second consecutive year, Tabitha Hale didn’t think I was important enough to be invited to participate on a panel at BlogCon.

Or maybe Tabitha just hates my guts.

Either way, she subsequently offered me a “scholarship” to attend BlogCon, a consolation prize I was too proud to accept.

Pity is no substitute for respect, and if nothing I have accomplished in the past three years is worth respecting, I’d rather not be there in person for a repeat of the humiliation Tabitha inflicted by leaving me off the BlogCon agenda last year.

Like I said, maybe she just hates my guts and I could deal with that, if she would admit that it’s her personal contempt for me that explained the repeated exclusions. Instead, she permits my peers (and readers) to believe that the exclusion represents the inadequacy of my professional accomplishments. People say I shouldn’t take it that way, but I can see no other explanation.

Either (a) my blog sucks or (b) my blog’s good and Tabitha hates me.

Anyway, the Occupy Denver crowd descended on the hotel where all the really important and popular bloggers are hanging out:

There’s about 20 of them. They’re fairly young and dirty and speak in a strange jargon like the Oasis Tribe in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Now they’re doing that “mike check” thing, and are chanting.
When the hell are the cops going to get here?

Also, when will the attendees at BlogCon realize that by confronting the Occupy scum, they’re imperiling their own health?

Good thing I’m not popular or important, or else I might be at BlogCon, contracting an incurable contagious disease.

UPDATE: Da Tech Guy risked his health by getting close enough to interview one of the Occupiers:

UPDATE II: Denver’s KUSA-TV reports:

DENVER – Denver Police responded to the Crowne Plaza Hotel Friday afternoon where several Occupy Denver protesters reportedly caused a disturbance.
According to reports, a group of conservative bloggers are at the hotel, which may have incited the chanting.

Did you catch that? The presence of “a group of conservative bloggers” at a hotel incited the disturbance — as if the Occupy Denver riffraff were just minding their own business until those nasty bloggers provoked them.

UPDATE III: The unpopular and unimportant Jeff Goldstein:

The Occupy Denver kiddies got wind of the conference and naturally have to protest it. Because, you know — well, because, uh, KOCH BROTHERS RACISM HATE HATE HATE!
Hundreds of bloggers with video-capable phones, and these morons decide we’re to be the target of their disjointed, intellectually scattershot “protests”?
That’s some strategy, that is.

UPDATE IV: “I am really starting to lose faith in the hippies of my generation.”

UPDATE V: Denver police: Not nearly brutal enough. Why aren’t they beating these hippies unmercifully?

Because hippies are white. And Denver cops are racist.

Refute that!

UPDATE VI: John Hawkins:

About 15 scruffy looking protesters arrived in the lobby with, as far as I can tell, no intention other than disrupting the conference.
They succeeded — but, not in the way they expected because after they started chanting, bloggers poured out of the conference to take pics and videos. Soon, there were 30 bloggers surrounding 15 Occupy people and chanting things like “We love Koch money” and “Breitbart, Breitbart!” There was lots of chanting, lots of yelling, and Steven Crowder got shoved by one of the female Occupiers.

Now a Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE VII: Sister Toldjah posts video:

UPDATE VIII: “Denver HS Teacher Brings Students to Join #OWS Mob As They Storm Conservative Conference (Video).”

Category: #Occupy, Ace of Spades, Da Tech Guy, Tabitha Hale

Victor D. Hanson Offers Meanness And Mitt

Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 37 Comments

by Smitty

VDH is one of the few academics worthy of the respect formerly afforded the ivory tower. His analysis is pure gloomy realpolitik: only Romney has the chops to take on Barack.

Where I badly want to disagree with Victor is that he seems not to hold out much hope for the American people. While fully in the Anybody But Obama camp, it seems a lighter Fail if the replacement has to be Some Personality. That the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in our founding documents seem insufficient to excite the people on their own plays into the Left’s thesis that people are sheep, and should be herded by experts.

The subtext of Mitt at the CNBC Economics Debate seemed to be acceptance of the pre-2008 state of diminished liberty, with enough Tea Party flourishes to pull in conservatives for the ‘win’, where winning means crashing more slowly. Romney does not seem a terribly visionary statesman who is bent on rolling back the federal overreach of the last century.

Update: I want this to be wrong, but somehow I don’t think it will prove so: “Big Labor’s Scorched-Earth Campaign in Ohio a Preview of Obama’s Reelection Campaign”

Update II: linked at The Camp of the Saints.

Category: PJTV, Politics

Small Arms May Stop Spread Of Tuberculosis At #OccupyObamaVilles

Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

Ladd Ehlinger seems surprised that anarchy, poor sanitation, and the onset of winter can lead to outbreaks of diseases like tuberculosis.

I disagree with those who said the Occupy movement was doomed at the first sign of winter. This is because I have never seen it as a grass-roots movement, but one cooked up by Obama’s OFA organization, in collusion with Anonymous and Lulzec members, and funded by all the usual suspects, including Soros. The reasons for the cooking had little to do with today’s politics, but the 2012 election, and scaring the bejesus out of soccer moms inclined to vote Republican.
Now an unlikely enemy has arrived to lay waste to these plans, the super-tuberculosis bug. Lie down with dogs, get fleas; lie down with Occupiers, and get both fleas and a disease that can’t be cured and may well kill you.

Via Althouse, there is also Zuccotti Lung, as this blog raises awareness of recent advances in our respiratory tract sickness choices.

These public health concerns may be mitigated somewhat by what seems to be a rash of shootings at ObamaVilles around the country. I was just wondering out loud on Twitter if the gun violence might not be a backup plan for the collapse of Fast & Furious. The American people must somehow be made to accept that the 2nd Amendment is as moot as the 10th Amendment if we are to reach the next stage of Holy Progress. Is it possible that the shooting victim in Oakland was a poet named Horst Wessel?

Is this all part of some grand scheme masterminded by #OccupyResoluteDesk? If so, then liberty-loving Americans must ponder, harden their resolve, and let their peaceful, patriotic actions answer the mail on this sad, creepy #Occupy movement.

Category: #Occupy, Ann Althouse, Barack Obama, Ladd Ehlinger

‘Just Win, Baby’

Posted on | November 11, 2011 | 44 Comments

“There was a time, about ten years ago, when I could write like Grantland Rice. Not necessarily because I believed all that sporty bulls–t, but because sportswriting was the only thing I could do that anybody was willing to pay for.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

When I was 12 years old, the Sweetwater Valley Red Raiders got a new coach, Terry Kipta. Unlike many of our other rec-league coaches who had never played beyond the high-school level, Coach Kipta had been a starting lineman in college and had even spent a year or two on the lower rungs of pro ball.

We had a battle for quarterback that year, because there was a kid named Latimer who had previously played halfback, but had worked hard in the off-season on his passing. He actually had a better arm than our quarterback, but Latimer had a goofy sense of humor and thus was judged deficient in the kind of “leadership qualities” desirable in the quarterback role. Also that year, we had an end named Sims, a lanky kid with blinding speed, and this combination of Latimer and Sims led to a certain magic.

Coach Kipta was the first coach in our league to use what was called a “pro set” formation on offense: Two running backs, a split end and a wingback who could line up either as a flanker (outside the tight end) or on the other side in the slot between the tackle and split end. In the early 1970s, the triple-option wishbone was the most common offense, although some teams used the power-I or even the old straight-T.

One of the plays Kipta used was a halfback option pass. We practiced and practiced that play, and used it with devastating effect.

Our very first game of the season, when we came out on offense, broke the huddle and lined up, it was clear that our opponent had not prepared to defend against the pro set. Their coaches started yelling for their linebackers and defensive backs to cover the flankers, and there was a Chinese fire drill as the opponents went scrambling around to try to get in position. And then we did the “silent soldier.”

The “silent soldier” was another sneaky genius trick in Coach Kipta’s bag, The quarterback called “down,” “set” and then – nothing.

However, we were counting silently inside our heads: “Thousand one, thousand two . . .” So if it was “silent soldier 3,” the center would count to three before snapping the ball, at which time the whole play went into motion simultaneously. The other team, naturally expecting the quarterback to call “hut-hut-hut” as the signal for the snap, would be caught off guard, a step behind, unless they had been relentlessly drilled (as all defensive players should be) to watch the ball instead of listening to the quarterback’s signals.

Our opponents had never seen anything like the pro-set offense, and had never encountered the “silent soldier,” so they were already badly off-balance when our center Royce McAllister snapped the ball without warning. Caught by surprise from the start, the play they saw developing looked for all the world like a standard toss-sweep, as the quarterback pitched the ball to the halfback Latimer. The opposing linemen, of course, didn’t take long to notice that those of us Red Raiders on the line (I was at right guard) didn’t “fire out” across the line of scrimmage but instead were forming a protective pocket of pass blocking.

Their linebackers were completely fooled, however, and by the time any of the defensive linemen (and their coaches on the sideline) started yelling “Pass! Pass!” the linebackers were already chasing toward Latimer under the assumption that he was running a sweep. The other running back was there to block for Latimer — who, of course, had the option of running if he saw an opening — but instead he was looking downfield for Sims, who was racing deep on the fly down the right sideline.

We had practiced that play over and over, you see, and our opponents had never seen anything like it. Between the unusual formation and the “silent soldier” snap-count, their defense was confused and off-balance because, in those days of wishbone triple-option football, no team in that league ever threw the bomb on the first play from scrimmage until Coach Kipta’s Red Raiders did it — and did it on a halfback option pass.

Latimer unleashed his lanky arm and his pass went spiraling downfield in a precise arc to where Sims was three steps ahead of the defensive back. Latimer led him just right (I tell you, we had practiced it over and over) and Sims didn’t have to break stride as he scooped in the pass and raced straight into the end zone for a touchdown.

Mr. Brown, whose son Robbie was our tight end, snapped a picture of that play at just the moment Sims reached out to catch the pass and, at the end-of-the-year Red Raiders award banquet, Sims received an 11-by-17-inch framed enlargement of that photo. We used the halfback option pass sparingly that season — never more than once a game — and as I recall, the only variable in its success was if Sims dropped the ball. But the play was never more beautifully executed than it was on that first play from scrimmage in our first game of the season, when our opponents were caught completely by surprise.

Now, why did I tell that story? Am I just lost in nostalgia, re-living the glory of my youth? Or is there a moral to the story? Read more

Category: Election 2012, Football, Herman Cain
« 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