The Other McCain

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

Republicans? In California?

Posted on | September 17, 2011 | 11 Comments

For several weeks now, I’ve been hearing rumors that there was something in California called a “Republican Party” with elected officials and stuff.

But I dismissed all those rumors as crazy talk, because it has been years and years since any actual Republican has won any important election in California. Somebody told me that Maria Shriver’s ex-husband once claimed to be a Republican, but I never believed a word that guy said (and as it turned out, Maria shouldn’t have believed him either).

Imagine my surprise, then, when my buddy Joe Fein in L.A. wrote a blog post saying that not only is there a “Republican Party” in California, but they’re having what they call a “state convention.” I figured this meant that three or four guys were getting together in the corner booth at a diner on Wilshire Boulevard or something, but Joe has some pictures and at least one of them shows what appear to be at least half a dozen people in what looks like a hotel lobby.

Joe also has pictures of what he calls the “media department” of this alleged California GOP — I dunno, to me it looks like a dude with a laptop — and also a photo of a chick in front  of a “Rick Perry for President” sign. Rick Perry probably heard the rumors, too, and figured what the heck, if they say they’re having a convention, might as well send a chick with a sign.

Anyway, Joe promises that this “California Republican” stuff is for real, and says he’ll be posting some more pictures as proof that they’re really having a “convention.” So go check Joe Fein’s Valley of the Shadow blog this weekend because it might be true.

Maybe their so-called “media department” will send out a press release.

Crazier things have happened.

Category: California, Republicans, Valley of the Shadow

Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn, 1820-1863

Posted on | September 16, 2011 | 49 Comments

“A man whose willful violation of social rights led him to such an inglorious end.”
— Maj. Gen. S.J.R. Liddell, C.S.A., commenting on the death of Van Dorn

History teaches few lessons more useful than the tale of a great soldier, praised for his daring courage, the survivor of many a fearsome battle, who died so dishonorably as did Earl Van Dorn.

A West Point graduate and grand-nephew of Andrew Jackson, the Mississippi native distinguished himself as a hero of the Mexican War, where he served under Winfield Scott and was twice wounded, and twice promoted for gallantry in action at Cerro Gordo and at Mexico City. He subsequently fought against the Seminole and the Comanches, and was wounded four more times in action, including once with a Comanche arrow through his chest that nearly killed him.

Beyond his military accomplishments, Van Dorn was both a poet and an artist, as well as one of the nation’s finest horsemen, a romantic figure in a romantic age. His unquestionable battlefield courage ensured that his services would be most welcome when, upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he resigned from the U.S. Army and offered his sword in defense of his native state. Such was his outstanding reputation that, when Jefferson Davis was chosen as the president of the Confederacy, Van Dorn was chosen to replace Davis as commander of Mississippi’s state troops.

In January 1862, Van Dorn was appointed commander of all Confederate forces west of the Missippi River and led his army on an advance into Arkansas that culiminated in the Battle of Pea Ridge. Successful in the first day’s fight that nearly broke the Union army under Gen. Curtis, Van Dorn’s army was defeated on the second day and forced to retreat. Ordered to cross the river to unite with Albert Sidney Johnson’s army in western Tennessee, Van Dorn arrived too late to participate in the Battle of Shiloh. In October 1862, Van Dorn was defeated when he led some 20,000 Confederates in a deadly frontal assault on an entrenched Union force at Corinth, Mississippi.

Brought before a court of inquiry to answer for the Corinth debacle, Van Dorn protested that he had no personal wealth, having spent his life in service to his country, and therefore his only real possession was his reputation, “without which life to me were as valueless as the crisp and faded leaf of autumn.” He was acquitted of all charges.

It is extraordinarily remarkable that Van Dorn, having made so much of his military reputation, would have later lost in life as he did. Alas, he had a reputation for more than courage under fire.

Though married for some 20 years, and the father of two children, Van Dorn was very much a ladies’ man, and his female admirers got more than poetry, paintings and compliments in return for their affections.

To put it quite bluntly, Earl Van Dorn was a serial adulterer. The handsome general was “the terror of ugly husbands,” as one contemporary phrased it, and it was this well-deserved reputation that destroyed him. Read more

Category: Books, History, Sarah Palin

Solyndra as Symbol and Metaphor

Posted on | September 16, 2011 | 27 Comments

“Where are you going to find a nickel’s worth of business sense in an administration where there’s no private-sector experience? And caution is for lesser mortals, not The One and his chosen crew.”
— Glenn Reynolds, “SolarGate Update”

The half-billion deficit dollars pissed away on a bankrupt boondoggle of “green jobs” may become the scandal that ultimately dooms the Obama administration. We could belabor the obvious fact that Democrats cut a sweetheart deal with a big donor to make taxpayers fund an “innovative” private company that couldn’t make it in the free market, but instead let’s consider something even more shocking: Democrats really believed in this phony-baloney stuff!

Democrats were eager to include the DOE loan guarantee programme as part of the stimulus bill in part because they believed it was, in fact, the optimal type of stimulus.

That’s the Economist arguing with the Atlantic‘s Megan McArdle about the Solyndra scandal, and the anonymous Economist writer provides this chart showing administration officials’ calculation of the “stimulus” value of these allegedly innovative policies: 

Details of the Economist/McArdle dispute are irrelevant to the point I wish to make: Once you begin assigning Keynesian “output multiplier” values to federal spending proposals — and making such arbitrary speculations the basis of decision-making — you have in fact ventured into the kind of planned-economy error that sank the Soviet empire.

A free-market economy may be wasteful in some sense, and the outcomes resulting from unsupervised human action may be harmful in some sense, but when a government’s planned-economy policy tries to pick winners and losers — and gosh, Solyndra was a world-class loser, wasn’t it? — the waste and harm are inevitably more painful, simply because they are the result of a conscious decision made by responsible agents acting in the name of the nation.

The Ukrainian terror famine and the Chernobyl disaster were outcomes of Soviet policy (the first deliberate, the second accidental) undertaken on behalf of the workers’ socialist state, so that those who suffered were in effect chosen victims of “The People,” unwilling martyrs for the struggle of the worldwide proletariat. In America, by contrast, we are accustomed to muckraking journalists and liberal crusaders who chastise the nation on behalf of victims of government neglect:

  • Here, say the liberals, is the family bankrupted by medical expenses. If only government would provide universal health insurance, the mother of these children might not have died of cancer, their father would not have wiped out his savings, and they would not have lost their home.
  • Here, say the liberals, are the Gulf Coast residents who lost their jobs because of an oil spill. If only government would enact stricter regulation on off-shore drilling, commercial fishermen and other businesses and employees dependent on the fishing industry would not have lost their livelihoods.
  • Here, say the liberals, is the teenage transvestite murdered by hateful schoolmates. If only government would pass civil-rights protections for gays and implement “tolerence” policies in schools, such horrific tragedies could be averted.

Grant that all of these liberal arguments have some merit. Stipulate that U.S. policies vis-à-vis health care, environmental protection, and gay rights fall short of an optimum ideal. But those who are skeptical of greater government intervention see the choices involved in terms of trade-offs, so that a policy aimed toward achieving an ideal or alleviating a specific harm might — by the law of unintended consequences — create other harms. My libertarian friends are wont to think of unintended consequences strictly in terms of economic interventionism, but I could cite innumerable harms resulting from trying to pick winners and losers in the pursuit of non-economic social goals.

Years ago as a journalist in small-town Georgia, I became aware that some white teenagers were succumbing to a frighteningly merciless sort of racist mentality because school policies intended to suppress racial conflict were actually fomenting black-on-white gang violence. There is no need to relate the specifics of that situation here, but if anti-racist policies could beget racism — which is exactly what happened — I consider it entirely possible that “tolerance” policies aimed at protecting homosexuals could beget a new kind of homophobia, especially merciless because the young do not remember the bygone wrongs that these policies were intended to remedy. And, lest liberals think they can cure such a problem through politically-correct history lessons, I assure you on the basis of many years of direct observation that nothing so inspires contempt in the heart of a bully than pious lectures about the helpless victimhood of the despised Other.

Have we wandered far afield from a discussion of Solyndra? No. The relevance is quite direct: Intending to pave the way for “innovative” new sources of alternative energy, the Obama administration has almost certainly guaranteed that there will be no future “investments” of taxpayer dollars in projects like Solyndra.

In one of those predictable pendulum swings of Newtonian politics, a powerful backlash against “green energy” is now underway and gathering an irresistible momentum. The American people will not (and should not) be satisfied until some high government official is indicted on criminal charges and prosecuted to the full extent of the law in the Solyndra scandal. If Eric Holder tries to protect the guilty, Holder will be destroyed by public outrage when his complicity is discovered.

Were I in a position to advise Obama, I’d tell him to pick a scapegoat or two to throw under his bus, so as to spare himself a Watergate-sized obstruction-of-justice snowball. Better a couple of deputy undersecretaries or minor White House functionaires go to federal prison than to get yourself into one of those “what did he know and when did he know it” traps.

All the woes now descending on the Obama administration could have been averted, if any of them had been familiar with the works of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Thomas Sowell.

Hell, I bet Barry Manilow could tell them how and why they went wrong. But it’s too late now, and the unintended consequences are piling up into a Himalyan mountain of failure we haven’t seen since Jimmy Carter was in the White House and Barry Manilow topped the charts with that song about the hottest spot north of Havana:






Category: Barack Obama, Corruption, Economics, Environmentalism, Scandal

In Search Of, You Know, A More Peaceful Kind Of Peace

Posted on | September 16, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty (h/t Jihad Watch)

In the Jerusalem Post:

CAIRO – Egypt’s Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said a peace deal with Israel was not “sacred” and could be changed for the benefit of peace or the region.

His comments, made in an interview with a Turkish television channel and broadcast on state television, were the strongest yet by the new government which took over after president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February.

“The Camp David agreement is not a sacred thing and is always open to discussion with what would benefit the region and the case of fair peace … and we could make a change if needed,” he said in the interview.

One wonders exactly what defects Sharaf is referring to in this 30+ year-old agreement. Maybe some exist, or conditions have shifted in those decades that merit some follow-on talks.

However, anyone who has been paying attention to the shenanigans involving pretty much every single one of Israels neighbors in the last couple of years has got to look at this and wonder, what, if any, good can come from Sharaf.

Interesting times.

Category: Uncategorized

‘This Crazy Blogger, Stacy McCain’

Posted on | September 16, 2011 | 30 Comments

Crazy blogger at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Sept. 13, 2011

Dave Weigel quotes Creepy Joe:

Joe McGinniss is no longer surprised at the hate engendered by his new biography, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. “Did you see this crazy blogger, Stacy McCain, saying he’s starting a legal fund for Todd Palin?” he asks. The blog post appeals for $25 donations to SarahPAC to “help defray Todd’s legal expenses when he shows up at McGinniss’s first book signing and pounds that scurvy worm into a bloody pulp.”

Don’t read the rest of it, unless you’re interested in a stale rehash of the familiar litany of blind-sourced smears. But do contribute generously:

TODD PALIN LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
Because Creepy Joe Might Actually Get
the Ass-Whupping He So Richly Deserves

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Books, Dave Weigel, Liberals, Sarah Palin

Where $19 Billion Is a Rounding Error

Posted on | September 16, 2011 | 4 Comments

Where else? Government:

Nearly $19 billion in state unemployment benefits were paid in error during the three years that ended in June, new Labor Department data show.
The amount represents more than 10% of the $180 billion in jobless benefits paid nationwide during the period. . . .
Improper payments most often occur when recipients claim benefits even though they have returned to work; employers or their administrators don’t submit timely or accurate information about worker separations; or recipients don’t correctly register with a state’s employment-service organization.

Your tax dollars at work . . . Well, not exactly “at work,” eh?

When you’re subsidizing sloth, however, it’s probably unrealistic to expect honesty, diligence and thrift on the part of the recipients.

Category: Corruption

‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran Loves The National Labor Relations Board

Posted on | September 16, 2011 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

PJ Tatler:

The US House has passed HR 2587, the Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act.

From the National Taxpayers Union:

Introduced by Rep. Scott (R-SC), this bill would prevent the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from substituting its judgment for a private employer’s in decisions on how best to manage the employer’s own resources.

And who is nay-ing like a jackass? Northern Virginia’s own, “Gentleman” Jim Moran.

Way to put your party ahead of your own State, the economy, and common sense, Mr. Moran. What can I say of your commitment to cretinism that is remotely positive? Hmmm. It is consistent.

Resist we Mouch. 

Previous/More Antics:

Category: Jim Moran, Virginia

How Much Does Glenn Beck Pay Brian Sack to Make Tasteless Sarah Palin Jokes?

Posted on | September 16, 2011 | 28 Comments

Image from GBTV

“Regardless what you think of her, this rumor stuff is getting absolutely ridiculous. I don’t believe Sarah Palin slept with Glenn Rice, and this rumor-mongering is unfair to her kids — Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, Trig and Dunky. Now, according to the book, it was a one-night stand. It was supposed to be a two-night stand, but she bailed halfway through.”
— Brian Sack, GBTV, Sept. 15, 2011

The blogger at God and Country First:

Tonight Brain Sack made an extremely poor taste joke about Sarah Palin. Don’t we have enough of that crap in the lame stream? I am not going to pay $10.00 a month to hear more. Brian has made a few tasteless remarks the last few days. Tonight’s pushed me very close to canceling my account. I really think you should get rid of him, mostly because he is NOT funny. One more example of the lack of comedic talent from conservatives. . . .
Glenn, can you imagine the Palin family sitting around TV watching your show via Roku and expecting to hear healthy conservative truth, and then have to endure that tasteless joke from Brain Sack tonight.

God and Country First has the video clip, if you want to see Brian Sack introduced as the man who, according to Glenn Beck, is going to put Jon Stewart out of business — by making “woodpile” jokes about Republican women, we must presume. Read more

Category: Glenn Beck, humor, Sarah Palin
« 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