The Other McCain

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

Matt Lewis Says You’re a Stooge

Posted on | September 21, 2011 | 19 Comments

“Spend some time on Twitter and it becomes obvious that there are some (not all) grassroots conservatives who blindly adhere to whatever a handful of politicians, cable news pundits, and talk radio hosts, say — and punish those who dare object.”
— Matt Lewis, “Examining the new conservative schism,” The Daily Caller

Category: Politics

Google & Bing Treating Rick Santorum To Some Of That ‘New Tone’

Posted on | September 21, 2011 | 29 Comments

by Smitty

Alan Colmes points to Roll Call, where something completely tasteless is on display:

Try it for yourself: Enter “Rick Santorum” into Google. In a fraction of a second you’ll have hundreds of thousands of results. But two of the top four cite a graphic definition for a sexual neologism. In this case, the neologism is a reference to anal sex.

This, of course, is no accident.

Santorum himself sounded slightly defeated when asked about it recently.

“It’s one guy. You know who it is. The Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate. It’s unfortunate that we have someone who obviously has some issues. But he has an opportunity to speak,” Santorum told Roll Call.

The number one Google result is the same sick URL as the third one on Bing. And, sure Google bombs are a game anyone with a script and a sick bent can engineer. And no, having the government regulate this is as sick an idea as that unspeakable link itself.

A couple of points:

  • If you’re doing right right thing, as Rick Santorum is, you’re going to offend some evil people. It would be a Left-handed compliment, if the Google bomb wasn’t so foul and debased.
  • Conservatives need to rally and support Rick Santorum, and anyone else taking the struggle to the foe. If you think that Western civilization isn’t under a continuous assault by the forces of nihilism, you need to wake up, pronto.
  • Rick Santorum is an intriguing conservative leader, because he has already served in the Senate, and thus knows the ropes, but has spent some years outside the beltway, and thus has some clue about, you know, America. The list of candidates with that mix is quite short.
  • Lisa Graas is a staunch supporter. Probably worth 1% of the vote in the primaries right there.

I hope that the search engines can find some solution that lets leaders of all parties focus attention away from crass, sophomoric attacks like this one on Santorum. Blogs should point out these abuses when they occur, so that this sort of abuse becomes more of an advertisement for the target than an effective attack. In the final analysis, that may be the preferred way to combat this.

God bless you and your campaign, Mr. Santorum.

Bonus Santorum: going after a waffling Perry for being a flip-flopper. Why does Santorum hate comfortable footwear?

Category: Rick Santorum

The Avoidance of Responsibility: Liberals Exculpate Themselves for Obama’s Failure

Posted on | September 21, 2011 | 15 Comments

Nothing is more important to liberals than avoiding responsiblity for the failures of liberalism, and the debacle that is the Obama administration thus requires extraordinary efforts at blameshifting and scapegoating. Fortunately for liberals, there is Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men, a new book that tells them what they want to hear.

You can read Dave Weigel’s “Where It All Went Wrong” and David Graham’s “9 Juicy Bits from Ron Suskind’s Book” and see how Confidence Men permits liberals to admit that Obama is a stuttering clusterf–k of a miserable failure without having to admit that liberalism has failed.

The key scene in the book, according to both Weigel and Graham, is when Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) denounces the president’s economic team, shouting at Obama: “You’ve picked the wrong people. I don’t understand how you could do this. You’ve picked the wrong people!”

What did Dorgan mean by this? Graham cites a passage where one attendee at meetings of the president’s National Economic Council tells Suskind: “Each morning at the economic briefing it was like we were debating Krugman.”

That is to say, the left wing and the far-left wing of Obama’s economic team were divided,. the more radical among them agreeing with Paul Krugman that the 2009 “stimulus” was too small. There was apparently no one in the Obama White House who expressed any skepticism toward the Keynesian theory behind the $800 billion stimulus. It was, instead, a debate between Larry Summers and his moderate Keynesian allies, on the one hand, and the Krugman-influenced advocates of a more aggresive Keynesianism.

Summers won this struggle, at least in the short term, and thus emerges as one of the villains of Suskind’s book, so that liberals reading Confidence Men may therefore believe that Obama’s failure vindicates Krugman and other far-left critics of the administration’s economic policy.

What we are likely to get from the liberals, then, is an explanatory narrative much like the one that prevailed circa 2003-05, when repeated Democratic electoral and legislative defeats were explained as resulting from timidity on the part of Democrats.

“We need to fight, fight, fight!” was the cry of the DKos crowd during the mid-Bush years, and this Fightin’ Liberal mentality is apt to dominate conversations on the Left during the 2012 campaign season. We have already seen the administration/re-election campaing rolling out this combative posture, first in Obama’s Sept. 8 jobs speech — “Pass this bill right away!” — and then in Monday’s budget speech — “pay their fair share!”

As silly as this Fightin’ Liberal act seems to conservatives, who see it for the hokey political show-biz stunt it is, Obama’s partisan bully-boy act is just the sort of populist gesturing that we might expect from Democrats who think they’ve failed because they weren’t liberal enough. And that’s the only explanation of Obama’s failure that liberals can accept.

Many conservative commentators have enjoyed the unflattering portrait that Suskind’s book provides of the Obama administration as a place where there are “no adults in charge,” and where the president himself is clearly unready for the managerial tasks of the office. But while this view vindicates conservatives who warned in 2008 that Obama’s background did not prepare him for the presidency — he had no previous executive experience — it nonetheless isolates Obama the man as the source of the failure, rather than the liberal philosophy that controlled Obama’s administration.

Just as liberals never blamed liberalism for the failures of Lyndon Johnson or Jimmy Carter, so also will liberals insist that Obama’s political failures be attributed to something other than his liberal policies.

The Dream is dead — long live The Dream!

Category: Barack Obama, Books, Liberals

LIVE AT FIVE – 09.21.11

Posted on | September 21, 2011 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
America Expands Drone Bases In Africa, Arabia

A drone waits to take off against jihadis on the Af-Pak border

New bases in Ethiopia and the Seychelles aim to cripple Al Qaeda attempts to shift operations away from Afghanistan

Another Chapter Of Destruction For Japan
Typhoon Roke hits already-devastated Fukushima prefecture



Georgia Pardons Board Denies Clemency For Troy Davis
Convicted cop-killer’s appeals exhausted



POLITICS
Political Shift In California Trips Brown

Governor Jerry Brown reviews documents with his wife and a staffer

“The Republicans won’t do what I want!” governor complains

Supremes Halt Execution Of Former Army Recruiter

House Disaster Vote Sets Up Showdown With Senate

Gallup: Economic Pessimism Deepens, And It’s All Obama’s Fault


Solyndra Officials To Take The Fifth

Report: Limits Needed On Police GPS Tracking

Taxpayers Foot The Bill For DOJ’s $16 Muffins



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Euro Stocks Lower As Investors Await Outcome Of Fed Meeting
Fed Looks To Ease Policy As US Outlook Dims
UAW Pitches GM Deal As “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs”
Oracle Expects Solid Q2
IMF: World Economy Entering “Dangerous New Phase”
Power Customers May Foot Bill For Merger Layoffs
Gold Edges Up Ahead Of Fed Decision
Google+ Opens To Public
Antitrust Enforcers Looking Into Google Ad Rates For Microsoft
Comcast Begins $9.99 Broadband Rollout For Low-Income Families



SPORTS
Pac-12 Conference Pulls Expansion Off The Table

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott

No entry for Oklahoma, Texas

Kershaw Wins 20th As Dodgers Fell Giants

Yankees Beat Rays, Close In On AL East Title

Papelbon Takes The Hit As Sox Lose To O’s

Cards Win In A Pinch With Six-Run Seventh

Reds Top Astros 6-4

Morton Shuts Down Snakes, Alvarez Homers In Pirates’ 5-3 Win

Turkish Soccer League Imposes Unique Hooliganism Sanction: Only  Women And Children Admitted For Two Games

Nationals Sweep Phillies In Day-Night Doubleheader



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
“Two And A Half Men” Premier Hot, “Playboy Club” Not

Premiere draws over 28 million viewers

Other CBS comedies also did well

Tareq Salahi Calls Michaele A “Groupie Slut”

Dancer Formerly Known As Ron Artest Gets The Boot From DWTS


Elin Nordegren Headed To The Altar?

Katy Perry Is InStyle’s October Cover Girl

How “Glee” Boss Plans To Win You Back In Season 3

Buzz Aldrin’s Giant Leap In Love



FOREIGNERS
Afghans Gather To Mourn Former President Slain By Jihadi Bomber
French Want Palestinians To Drop UN Bid
India Quake Toll Hits 91, Dozens Still Missing
3 Dead. 34 Injured In Ankara Bomb Attack
Mexico Still Waiting For Answers On Fast & Furious
Nork, ROK Nuclear Envoys To Meet In Beijing



BLOGS & STUFF
Lonely Conservative: AP Fact Check – Rich People Pay More In Taxes Than Their Secretaries
Weasel Zippers: GOP Leaders Warn Bernanke To Stop Quantitative Easing
AmSpecBlog: Gary Johnson Gets Another Shot
Power Line: Shock Poll?
Allahpundit: Slide – Perry’s Lead Over Romney Down To 3% In SC
NRO Corner: Santorum Calls Perry Flip-Flopper
Jawa Report: Charles Johnson Has A New Title
Bob Owens: Gunwalker’s Body Count Grows, Along With Administration’s Coverup
FireDogLake: All The Right People Hate Obama’s Deficit Plan
Ed Morrissey: Has Obama Quit Already?
Atlas Shrugs: Ezra Levant – “Take Your Secret Saudi Threats And Shove Them”


SOTD: Visage

Category: Live at Five

We Already Know They Don’t Teach Economics at Harvard Law School

Posted on | September 20, 2011 | 6 Comments

But you might think they’d require an introductory course in logic, because Dwayne Lester shows how invalid fallacies are the only arguments made in favor of Obama’s “Buffett Rule” requiring tax increases on the rich.

Category: Barack Obama, Budget, Economics, Taxes

‘MuffinGate’: Obama Says We Must Tax the Rich Because Federal Officials Can’t Do Without $5 Swedish Meatballs

Posted on | September 20, 2011 | 35 Comments

The rich must “pay their fair share” or Obama will veto any deficit-reduction legislation. Why? Because the only alternative is to reduce the catering bill:

U.S. Justice Department agencies spent too much for food at conferences, in one case serving $16 muffins and in another dishing out beef Wellington appetizers that cost $7.32 per serving, an audit found.
“Some conferences featured costly meals, refreshments, and themed breaks that we believe were indicative of wasteful or extravagant spending,” the Justice Department’s inspector general wrote in a report released today.
The inspector general reviewed a sample of 10 Justice Department conferences held between October 2007 and September 2009 at a cost of $4.4 million, a period that included the administrations of Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama. The Justice Department spent $73.3 million on conferences in fiscal 2009, compared with $47.8 million a year earlier, according to the report.
The muffins were served at an August 2009 conference of the Executive Office for Immigration Review and the beef Wellington was offered at a February 2008 meeting hosted by the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. A March 2009 conference of the Office on Violence Against Women served Cracker Jack, popcorn and candy bars at a single break, costing $32 per person, according to the report.
The report is a follow-up to one from 2007 that found the Justice Department had few controls to limit the costs of conference planning, food and beverages. That audit cited a reception that included Swedish meatballs costing $5 apiece.

Spending $32 per person for snacks at a conference? “Stimulus!”

If you don’t understand that, ask Paul Krugman. He won a Nobel Prize, y’know.

Category: Corruption, Scandal

The Irony of Tucker Carlson, Sarah Palin, Mike Tyson, Greta Van Susteren and … Me

Posted on | September 20, 2011 | 70 Comments

Scene from “Daily Caller Downfall”

“In Ohio, which McGovern eventually lost by a slim 19,000 vote margin, his handlers figure perhaps 10,000 of those were directly attributable to his public association with Warren Beatty, who once told a reporter somewhere that he favored legalizing grass. This was picked up by that worthless a–hole Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) and turned into a major issue.
“So it fairly boggles the mind to think what Humphrey’s people might do with a photo of McGovern shaking hands with a person who once ran for Sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, with a platform embracing the use and frequent enjoyment of Mescaline by the Sheriff and all his Deputies at any hour of the day or night that seemed Right.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Guilt-by-association smears are an ever-present danger in political life, and my carefully cultivated bad reputation probably keeps me from scoring some “exclusives” I might otherwise get. But the upside is that there is no one trying to tempt me through the revolving door that separates journalism from politics.

No Republican, not even Herman Cain, could get away with hiring me as a “media consultant” or “communications strategist” or some other type of glorified P.R. gig, so there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’ll ever become Jay Carney, and thank God for that.

Nor is it likely that I’ll be invited onto one of Sean Hannity’s “Great American” panels, because the executives at Fox News understand that their on-air choices are seen as officially symbolic of Conservatism, Inc. Every sin committed by Roger Ailes is somehow blamed on the GOP, and so even if I were as telegenic as Megyn Kelly, they’d never invite me to do the pundit gig on Fox. I’d stand a better chance of becoming a regular contributor on Rachel Maddow’s show.

It is therefore highly ironic — indeed, morbidly amusing — to watch Tucker Carlson getting raked over the coals by Greta Van Susteren:

What Tucker can’t seem to bring himself to admit is that about 10 minutes worth of careful editing would have put Jeff Poor’s article into the safety zone where not even the most zealous Palinista, nor even Sarah Palin herself, would have had any cause to complain:

Mike Tyson Targets Sarah Palin
in Obscene Sexual, Racial Rant

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson engaged in a lurid and lengthy sexual rant about Sarah Palin during an interview broadcast on a Las Vegas radio station.
Referring to unsubstantiated claims in a new book that the former Alaska governor once dated former professional basketball player Glenn Rice, Tyson fantasized at length about Palin having sex with another former NBA player, Dennis Rodman. Both Rice and Rodman are black, and Tyson made graphic reference to racial stereotypes as he asked KWWV-AM hosts Paul Howard, Mitch Moss and Seat Williams to “imagine Palin with a big old black stallion.”
Tyson, who was convicted in 1992 of raping a teenage beauty pageant contestant, asserted that Palin “needed” to have sex with a black man, an experience he said “every white girl” desires in order to “get that out of their system.”
“Every uppity white middle class [woman says] . . . ‘Gotta get me a black man before I go prosper in this white world,'” Tyson said during the interview, provoking hysterical laughter from the hosts of the “Gridlock” program on the ESPN Radio affiliate station.
Saying he had read Joe McGinniss’s new “unauthorized biography” of the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, Tyson said, “Isn’t that beautiful to hear Palin [had sex with] a black man? . . . Her and her sister were into that stuff.” . . .

An article written that way might have included a sentence to the effect, “A spokesman for Governor Palin did not respond to a request for comment on Tyson’s remark.” And that kind of article could have led to a discussion of harm that results from such stereotypical attitudes.

Instead, we have Tucker Carlson trying to defend the legitimacy of a bad editorial judgment. And there are multiple layers of irony in the fact that I’m the guy pointing this out. Chief among the several ironies is this: When I was on the national desk at The Washington Times, I was always the “loose cannon” in the newsroom testing the boundaries of what could be printed in our “family-friendly” newspaper. Go ask Ken Hanner, Victor Morton or Geoff Etnyre how many times as an assistant editor I got chewed out for sending to the copy desk articles that got flagged as including language that senior editors disapproved.

Given that background, I can empathize with the predicament that Jeff Poor and Tucker Carlson have found themselves in, but cannot for the life of me understand Carlson’s defense. He seems to have the idea that Greta Van Susteren (and Tammy Bruce and Jedadiah Bila and everyone else who objected to the Tyson article) somehow expected the Daily Caller to ignore this incident. Carlson is pretending that the only way to report the story was the way that Jeff Poor reported it.

Allegations that the article represents an anti-Palin attitude — or a “boys club” environment — at the Daily Caller could be dismissed if Carlson would admit that the article, as originally published, was gratuitously offensive.

Of course, I have at times been accused of writing gratuitously offensive things on my blog, but that’s just me. This blog is not a publishing company into which people were invited to invest millions of dollars to create the “conservative answer to the Huffington Post,” which was Tucker Carlson’s original selling point for the Daily Caller. When I responded to Carlson’s boastful May 2009 announcement by saying that his proposed project “better not suck,” I scarcely expected that by September 2011, the Daily Caller would be accused by Greta Van Susteren of inciting sexual violence against women. Nor did I expect I’d be laughing myself to tears over Richard McEnroe’s “Downfall” parody:

And if you feel an urge to hit the tip jar — hey, don’t fight the feeling!

UPDATE: Ace of Spades:

The original article is neutrally written. There is not a suggestion of the writer’s belief that Mike Tyson is out-of-bounds, not a word of criticism for the ESPN radio hosts for taking the interview here. . . .
Sometimes it’s hard to read tone, but the sense I got from the original piece was that the best jokes were being highlighted. . . .
Locker-room sex stuff. And just in case it isn’t already risque enough, Tyson starts throwing in some weird racial stuff, too.

Which is, I think, perhaps unfair to Jeff Poor. I know Jeff Poor, who did good work for Newsbusters, and don’t believe that he quoted Tyson’s remarks with an idea of derogating Palin.

What I actually think is that a lot of younger people, accustomed to watching Comedy Central where this kind of “humor” is commonplace, take it for granted. And in the Internet age, where everything is just one Google search away, it might seem that there is no harm in repeating whatever is already “out there.” Tucker Carlson is 10 years younger than me, and Jeff Poor is also young, and this is probably the reason why they reacted to the criticism the way they did.

After Dan Riehl brought attention to the Daily Caller article, my response was horror at what Tyson said:

The blog-war aspect of this incident rather dwindles into insignficance when measured against the apparent willingness of a Las Vegas radio station to allow Mike Tyson to spew such filthy and derogatory racial stereotypes.

And I still wish that was the focus of discussion: Why did these radio sports-talk guys raise this Palin question with Mike Tyson, then laugh at his response as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever heard? You don’t have to be a prude or a women’s studies major to be stunned by what Ace euphemistically calls the “weird racial stuff” in Tyson’s diatribe. A thorough discussion of that, however, would require mining another layer of irony I’d rather not deal with this afternoon, so I’ll content myself to quote my original reaction:

Now that I think of it, have we heard from Jill Filipovic, Jessica Valenti, Melissa McEwan or any of the other feminists? Because if Sarah Palin weren’t a Republican, I think they’d probably be outraged by this.

But I guess Sandra Bernhard answered that question three years ago, huh?

UPDATE II: Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

The damage to The Daily Caller is enormous. . . . This is a disaster compounded by the folks at The Daily Caller digging while in a hole, and digging even harder when people called them out on it, and doubling down on the digging as it went viral.

Like Professor Jacobson, Bob Belvedere at The Camp of the Saints sees this incident as highly damaging to the Daily Caller.

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Fox News, R.S. McCain School of Journalism, Racism, Sarah Palin

‘It Gets Better,’ Except When It Doesn’t and Then Teenagers Commit Suicide

Posted on | September 20, 2011 | 6 Comments

If you haven’t paid much attention to public schools in recent years, you may not realize that “anti-bullying” messages are now ubiquitous, often promoted in the name of “tolerance” for gay youth. And this theme has atracted outspoken support from Hollywood celebrities:

Last September, the “It Gets Better Project” was launched online as a place for adults — including high-profile celebrities — to reassure troubled and potentially suicidal lesbian, gay and bisexual youth that despite the taunting, bullying and physical abuse they face as adolescents and teens, life improves after high school. . . .

This message was posted to YouTube in May as part of the “It Gets Better” campaign:

The kid in that video was 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer. He committed suicide Sunday, which would seem to contradict the slogans and Self-Esteem Theory behind the “It Gets Better” campaign.

Perhaps these kids need another message. Pondering the plight of Jamey Rodemeyer, and understanding what teenagers are like, I’m having a hard time imagining an anti-bullying regime rigorous enough to protect kids like Jamey from insults. It’s just unrealistic.

The essential point of “It Gets Better” is correct: High school sucks.

It just does, for the vast majority of kids, without regard to sexuality. There are a relatively small number of popular kids — the jocks and cheerleaders, mainly — for whom high school is the Best Time of Their Lives, but for the rest of us mere mortals, high school was four years of relentless tedium interrupted only by occasional moments of misery and humilation. Read more

Category: Culture, Education, Gays
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