The Other McCain

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

You Don’t Do Champagne Work On A Kool-Aid Budget

Posted on | October 14, 2011 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

I completely understand Ladd Ehlinger’s point here. When you’re trying to accomplish something artistic, tools do matter. As ancient commenter Solomon noted:

If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct. Eccl10:10

And why waste wisdom overcoming tool deficiencies, unless that itself is part of the art? All this is to say: Ladd has a point.

So, the bazillion dollar question is: how does one go from dead 0 to auteur? Jerry Pournelle has noted that, as a writer, you throw away your first million words. What is the corresponding duration of film, one wonders? Then again, some say you never ‘arrive’, to note Buddy Rich:

Late in his life, Buddy Rich was asked if he considered himself the world’s greatest drummer, and he gave an inspiring reply: “Let’s put it this way: I have that ambition. You don’t really attain greatness. You attain a certain amount of goodness, and if you’re really serious about your goodness, you’ll keep trying to be great. I have never reached a point in my career where I was totally satisfied with anything I’ve ever done, but I keep trying.”

One of the ironies of education, I’ve found, is that the best learning comes while teaching. That is, the effort required to translate some knowledge from my head to that of another has a massive clarifying effect.

But we often start with that Kool-Aid budget. And I submit that quite a few problems are heuristic in nature: you’ve just got to drink some Kool-Aid prototypes just to understand the problem enough to undertake the champagne work. At the risk of sounding a teeny bit Freudean, I was raised by such a perfectionist mother that she would regularly avoid trying things, knowing that the result would be sub-champagne. A major part of growing up was forgiving her that.

Maybe if you’re Mozart, you can toss off a Symphony #40 as Zeus toss out Athena from his brow:
For the rest of us, the process of elimination will have to do. And if a Kool-Aid budget is what you got, well, you go to art with the budget you have, not the budget you wish you had, to mangle Rumsfeld.

Update: linked by That Mr. G Guy.

Category: Art, Ladd Ehlinger, Video

Will N.H. Flinch in Primary Standoff?

Posted on | October 14, 2011 | 5 Comments

A glimmer of hope to avoid a December date for the New Hampshire primary:

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner is imperiling the state’s place in the political world by threatening to hold a December primary, New Hampshire GOP Chairman Wayne MacDonald charged Thursday. . . .
MacDonald urged Gardner to hold the state’s election Jan. 10. . . .
Gardner, who has full control over the state’s primary date, released a statement Wednesday saying he was willing to drastically reshuffle the primary calendar to keep New Hampshire at least seven days ahead of the next nominating contest. He said the only way he’d consider Jan. 10 is if Nevada moves its caucus — currently scheduled for Jan. 14 — back three days. On Wednesday night, the Nevada GOP declined to make the move.
Reiterating his confidence in Gardner, MacDonald repeated his call, first reported by the New Hampshire Union Leader, to take a more lax interpretation of the state law that requires a seven day buffer before the next “similar election.”
“There is a difference between a primary and a caucus, so I don’t think Nevada should affect us,” MacDonald said. “The 10th, to me, seems to be the most sensible date.”

That might be just enough of a loophole to allow New Hampshire to save face. Let’s pray Secretary of State Gardner will listen to reason.

If he does do the primary on Jan. 10, who gets screwed? Nevada. Because I think most reporters will be like me: It doesn’t make sense to leave Manchester, N.H., on the morning of the 11th to fly to Nevada to cover their caucus on the 14th, and then get on a plane the 15th to fly to South Carolina (their primary is the 21st). Better to go directly from New Hampshire to South Carolina and let Nevada fend for itself.

So a Jan. 10 New Hampshire primary would probably deprive the Jan. 14 Nevada caucuses of a good bit of press coverage, and might just give me an excuse to come home for a few days after New Hampshire before hitting the road for South Carolina.

Category: Election 2012, Nevada, New Hampshire

Karl Rove Says Herman Cain Campaign ‘Not Gonna Have a Nice Ending’

Posted on | October 14, 2011 | 57 Comments

Via POH Diaries and Gateway Pundit:

Let me be blunt in saying that I am thoroughly familiar with every argument against Herman Cain’s candidacy, and far more aware than most political journalists of the organizational challenges (to put it mildly) of the Cain campaign. Last night I was on the phone with my buddy Ali Akbar as we bemoaned bewailed bitched about discussed the hopeless clusterfuck organizational challenges of Cain’s staff situation. While all campaigns go through their rough spots, and I’ve seen campaigns win elections despite serious errors, Herman Cain’s campaign now faces two huge problems:

  1. They’re less than 90 days away from the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. Even if the Nevada situation can be worked out to keep New Hampshire from jumping to December, 90 days from Iowa is still a damned short time to put together an effective ground game in all 99 counties in Iowa.
  2. They’re up against Team Romney. Say what you will about Mitt, his campaign staff is a ruthlessly disciplined machine, and they’ve got about a 5-to-1 fund-raising advantage over Cain.

As I explained to Ali, if the Cain campaign were to raise $100,000 every day, that would be $3 million a month or about $8 million between now and Jan. 3. The problem is that the Perry campaign’s sitting on something like $15 million and Romney raised $10 million in the last quarter. Even if the Perry campaign didn’t raise another dime, they could spend $5 million a month between now Jan. 3, and that’s a heckuva lot of TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire. Whatever Romney’s cash-on-hand figures, he’s got the big bundlers like Georgette Mosbacher behind him, and will have no shortage of cash for TV ads.

How can the Cain campaign possibly hope to compete with that? If you just look at it as a problem of simple math, by the ordinary logic of campaign operations, Cain would be doomed beyond hope even if his staff were as efficient as Team Romney. So I cannot necessarily say that Rove’s basic calculation is wrong. Insofar as normal politics is concerned, Rove’s prediction of an unhappy ending for the Cain campaign seems smart.

But normal politics has taken a savage beating the past few years, and it’s hard to calculate the odds of success for the kind of “outside-the-box” campaign that Cain and his staff have been talking about since December. Nobody expected, 10 months ago, that Herman Cain would be where he is now, neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney at the front of the field. Hell, nobody expected this even one month ago, when Cain’s poll numbers were stuck in single digits. It’s been only 20 days since Cain shocked the world with his victory in the Sept. 24 Florida straw poll, so everybody’s still trying to get their heads wrapped around the concept of “Herman Cain, Republican contender.”

If you’ve got a Road to the White House map, we’re currently off at the edge in uncharted seas where the legend reads, “Here Be Dragons.”

And when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

It just occurred to me that today, Oct. 14, is the two-year anniversary of the day in 2009 when Lisa De Pasquale invited me to join a conference call with a guy named Doug Hoffman. Maybe you’ve heard of him.

Miracles can happen, and what happened in NY-23 two years ago was a rare kind of inspirational moment in politics. And when it was over, a new kind of campaign paradigm had been created:

Yates Walker ate breakfast in the Blue Moon Café on Main Street in Saranac Lake, New York, on the morning of November 4, [2009] and delivered an after-action report on the battle that had just been fought in the upstate 23rd District.
“We took a CPA from 9 percent to 46 percent in two and a half weeks,” said Walker, a young veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division who had been hired 18 days earlier to work on Doug Hoffman’s congressional campaign staff. “I couldn’t be prouder.”
He fell 5,000 votes short of defeating Democrat Bill Owens, but Hoffman’s surprising surge in the closing weeks of the three-way special election in upstate New York had, in Walker’s words, turned the bespectacled accountant into “an electric symbol of conservatism.” . . .

Read the whole thing in case you’ve forgotten that magical two and a half weeks. Karl Rove never saw that coming, either, and if Herman Cain is going to beat Mitt Romney, his campaign is going to have make that kind of lightning strike twice. Such were the thoughts that came to my mind in the wee hours this morning, after I had filed my latest American Spectator column:

Hickory trees were blazing brilliant gold in the forest surrounding my home on the western slope of South Mountain as I stepped outside Thursday afternoon to take a call on my cellphone from a well-informed source. My enjoyment of the autumn scenery was diminished only slightly by the cool drizzly overcast weather, but much more by the shadows of gloom gathering over the 2012 Republican presidential campaign, which was the reason for the phone call.
After listening with great interest, I walked inside to the dining room table, picked up a pen and asked my source to repeat the information which I scrawled into a notebook: “Rubio [chief] of staff — CESAR — used to be w/ Romney’s campaign … used his contacts to push primary to 31st because they want Romney in.” A couple more phone calls to D.C. and Florida, a few minutes of online research, and I had an exclusive: “Top Rubio Staffer Reportedly Pushed for Early Florida Primary to Help Romney.” Perhaps not the kind of story Matt Drudge would consider worthy of a banner headline, but a key piece of the puzzle surrounding events that have hopelessly scrambled the 2012 schedule. . . .

Please read the whole thing. We’re on the road to political Armageddon, folks, and the next stop on this road is Las Vegas. Hit the freaking tip jar!

Category: Doug Hoffman, Election 2012, Fear. Loathing., Herman Cain, Karl Rove, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney

#OccupyWallStreet Suggested Theme

Posted on | October 14, 2011 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Chatting with @ExJon on Twitter brought this gem to mind:

Soundgarden took the music from “Into the Void” by Black Sabbath and substituted verbiage attributed to Chief Seattle, but not really.

Somehow the heavy equipment grinding of the music, the Noble Savage lyrical sentiments, and the apparently ‘fake but accurate’ status of the lyrics themselves just come together with the #OWS weenies somewhere around infinity. Magic.

Update: Russell Simmons offers to pay to clean up Zuccotti Park in NYC.

Sissypuss the Blog Kitty, our able field agent, was unable to confirm whether Simmons was trying to hire the #OWS protesters to pick up after themselves. Hiring talks may have broken down at the point that the wages reminded the protesters too much of their allowance from mum and dad, or, the protesters were simply too incompetent to perform basic janitorial tasks. Expect updates.

Category: Music, Progressivism, Video

LIVE AT FIVE – 10.14.11

Posted on | October 14, 2011 | 7 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Officials Say Evidence Points To Iran In Assassination Plot

House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers (R-MI)

Wire transfers point to Iran’s Quds Force, Revolutionary Guards; Obama talking tough but no sign of action yet

Lobbyists Claim Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan Would Hurt Consumer Spending
Bloomberg cites business & trade groups who claim federal sales tax would depress consumer outlays


Steve Wozniak First In Line For New iPhone
Apple’s co-founder shows up early at Los Gatos Apple Store to snag 4S



POLITICS
Occupy Wall Street Finally Cleans Up After Itself

Workgroups gather trash in Zuccotti Park

Some protesters plan to resist police clearance of park for management’s cleaning tonight

Elizabeth Warren Talks Tough On Iran; Accused Of Plagiarism



Governor Asterisk Sticks UP For NH In Nevada Primary Challenge

NC Muslims Convicted Of Conspiracy To Aid Jihadi Attack On Quantico

Obama Campaign Raises $42 Million

Rick Perry To Lay Out Energy Jobs Proposals

House Passes Health Care Abortion Bill



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Google Profits Jump In Third Quarter
Gap Contracts Locally, Expands Globally
Japanese Stocks Drop As Spanish Downgrade Stokes Europe Concerns
German Bankers Argue Against Capital Plans
Blue Shield To Return $450 Million In Credits
Brent Crude Hits $112 As PRC Inflation Cools
Blackberry Blackout: How It Happened
Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C and UNIX, Dies
Apple Faces iCloud, iOS5 Launch Troubles
Aussie Court Rejects Apple Push To Widen Samsung Ban
Samsung Avoids Galaxy Tab Ban In US, But Judge Rules Patents Infringed
Air Force Insists Drone Cockpit Virus Just A “Nuisance”



SPORTS
Tigers Top Rangers In Game 5 To Stave Off Elimination

Verlander comes through for embattled Detroit nine

Wily Wolf Blows Down House Of Cards To Level Series

Stern Warns NBA Could Shut Down Until Christmas

USC Beats Cal For Eighth Straight Time, 30-9

Ovechkin, Caps Still Own Penguins; Win 3-2

Tony Stewart Takes Pole At Charlotte

Nationals Prospects And Catchers Start Play In Venezuelan Winter League



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Lindsay Lohan Booted From Community Service Program

Lindsay Lohan, in trouble as usual

Shifted from Women’s Center to Red Cross, but not racking up the hours there either

Ashton Kutcher Concerned About “Two and A Half Men” Ratings Drop

Courtney Stodden Kicked Off Facebook For “Inappropriate Sexual Content”

Fred Durst Signs With CBS To Star In Comedy Project

Leal: I Would Never Have Slept With Him If I Thought He Was Happily Married

Bethenny Frenkel Sold Drink Company For $8 Million, Not $120 Million



FOREIGNERS
Behind The Scenes: How The Shalit Deal Was Done
UN Reduces Kenya Aid Operation After MSF Abductions
Drone Attack In Pak Kills Haq Commander
Former Ukraine PM Tymoshenko May Face New Charges
“Dragon King” Marries Commoner In Remote Bhutan
Egyptian Generals Say Soldiers’ Copt Killings Not Intentional



BLOGS & STUFF
WyBlog: NY Times Plans More Staff Reductions
Michelle Malkin: Costs Of The Occupiers
Atlas Shrugs: More Jew-Hatred At Occupy LA
Pirate’s Cove: #OWS Nuts Threaten Wall Street Bull
The Lonely Conservative: Trickle-Down Class Warfare
Allahpundit: Unusual – US Ambassador Confronts Iranians Over Terror Plot
Jihad Watch: Iran Fails At Space Monkey Launch
Neo-neocon: Is Romney Really A Big-Government Republican?
Weasel Zippers: Islamic Sex Guide Says Wives Can Only Satisfy 10% Of Their Husbands’ Desires
Gateway Pundit: Rush Limbaugh Says Mitt Romney Is Not A Conservative (Video)
NRO corner: Romney’s Been “Pre-Disastered”
Megan McArdle: Who Besides Solyndra Got Loan Guarantees?
Yid With Lid: Jesse Jackson Jr. Wants Obama To Suspend The Constitution


SOTD: ME262

Category: Live at Five

‘Money Is Fungible’: ObamaCare and the Fight to Defund Planned Parenthood

Posted on | October 13, 2011 | 33 Comments

Calling for Congress to pass the Protect Life Act — which would prevent Planned Parenthood from getting funded by ObamaCare — Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life said: ““Money is fungible. Taxpayers should not be involuntary donors to the abortion industry and health care workers’ conscience rights must be protected.” (Click here for full statement.)

Nancy Pelosi is going nuts:

“Under this bill, when the Republicans vote for this bill today, they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor and health care providers do not have to intervene if this bill is passed. It’s just appalling.”

And other Democrats are following Pelosi’s lead:

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) on Thursday charged House Republicans of misogynous motives in bringing up a bill that seeks to limit federal funding for abortion.
“What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are attempting to do is misogynist,” Speier said on the House floor. “It is absolutely misogynist.”
“This bill goes to the farthest extreme in trying to take women down, not just a peg, but to take in shackles to some cave somewhere,” Speier said.

Hey, remember when Democrats were demanding that we tone down the rhetoric? Remember “civility”? So now Democrats are calling Republicans misogynists who want women to die, or to put them “in shackles to a cave somewhere.”

Civility! If it weren’t for double-standards, Democrats would have no standards at all.

Category: Abortion, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, Planned Parenthood

Paco Enterprises Gets Protest Management

Posted on | October 13, 2011 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Paco strikes again:

“I regret to inform you, sir, that a mob of Bolsheviks and anarchists has foregathered in front of Paco Tower, under the auspices of the notorious “Occupy” movement. They seem to be clamoring for the overthrow of – forgive me for repeating something so vile, Mr. Paco – for the overthrow of capitalism. And in your own person, they apparently think they have found a highly symbolic target. The crowd is heaping obloquy on your head, and they are preparing to burn you in effigy. I sincerely fear pillage and mayhem.”

Come for the prose, stay for the punch line.

Category: humor, Uncategorized

A Short ‘Fear And Smitty In Lost Wages’ Training Film

Posted on | October 13, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Most of these go without saying, but we are discussing a road trip with Stacy to cover the CNN debate in Las Vegas, so a glance at the basics may be in order:

via iOwnTheWorld

Category: Fear. Loathing., humor, Video
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