The Other McCain

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

Krugman Shows Off His Oxymoron

Posted on | September 11, 2011 | 57 Comments

by Smitty (h/t Jazz Shaw)

I really can’t comment on this in any family-friendly way.

Category: Uncategorized

Arguably The Best Thing Written On The Subject Of 9/11

Posted on | September 11, 2011 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN — This is track five on Satriani’s 2006 Super Colossal release. It’s called “Ten Words,” though he never gets around to explaining what those words are. In the CD booklet, he noted that he composed this on piano on 12 September 2001, and then let it sit for a few years before recording it:

Inspired by Satriani’s work (the subject of this post), I composed a hymn Read more

Category: Terrorism

On September 10th

Posted on | September 10, 2011 | 27 Comments

Front page, The Washington Times, Sept. 12, 2001

Ten years ago, I covered a press conference in D.C. and wrote an article that appeared in The Washington Times:

Coalition watches
war on drugs for
rights violations

Letter calls for grilling Bush nominee

By Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A broad coalition of conservative and civil liberties groups wants assurances that the Bush administration’s war on drugs will respect constitutional rights and the privacy of citizens.
Bringing together such diverse groups as the American Civil Liberties Union and the social conservative Eagle Forum, the ad-hoc Coalition for Constitutional Liberties has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to question President Bush’s top drug-policy nominee on issues of electronic surveillance and other law-enforcement tactics that they say violate citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights.
In a letter to the committee, the coalition led by the Free Congress Foundation asks that John Walters — nominated as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by Mr. Bush — be questioned during confirmation hearings today about his views on how “drug policy drives government surveillance and invasion of privacy.”
“As a taxpayers’ group, we don’t like the idea of paying the government to abuse our rights,” Robert Fike of Americans for Tax Reform said at a press conference yesterday announcing the coalition . . .

The story went on from there, but I don’t know whatever happened to the Coalition for Constitutional Liberties and I frankly doubt anyone paid any attention to that article because it was published on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

That morning, I was awakened by my wife, handing me the phone. It was my brother Kirby calling from Georgia. “Turn on Fox News,” he said. “A plane just hit the World Trade Center. It’s a terrorist attack.”

Still half-asleep — my workday didn’t usually start until noon — I stumbled into the living room and stared at the TV showing smoke pouring out of the WTC tower, but I couldn’t believe terrorists were responsible. Maybe, I told my brother on the phone, it was some kind of accident. “No, Stacy, it’s terrorism,” Kirby insisted.

I hung up the phone still unconvinced, and was thinking about going back to bed when the second plane hit. Obviously, this was no accident, so I decided to get ready for work. While I was still in the shower, one of the WTC towers fell, and then the second, and in the meantime we learned that a third plane had hit the Pentagon.

By the time I got to the office, they were already putting the finishing touches on a special early edition of the paper and the rest of the day was lost in a blur of work. What I do remember, however, is when the TV news that night showed crowds of Muslims dancing jubilantly in the streets, celebrating this attack on America.

Those ugly little scenes are seldom mentioned nowadays, but are burned into my memory. Say what you will, I know who the enemy is.

Not so with Georgetown Law professor David Cole, who apparently decided to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9-11 by demanding that Obama pursue war-crimes charges against Bush administration officials. Donald Douglas at American Power writes:

Behold the mind of the progressive left on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attacks. For radical progressives, it’s America that’s the problem, not the fanatical killers who continue to wage war against us.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Linked by Melissa Clouthier and by Duane Lester at All American Blogger — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

Meanwhile, I just printed my boarding pass to fly to Tampa. Flying on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 doesn’t exactly thrill me.

I’m sure all those terrorism concerns are just phantoms conjured up by worry-warts and over-excited bureaucrats. But I spent Saturday night watching 9/11 documentaries and so it’s kinda creepy to think about boarding a plane in a few hours.

Nevertheless, there’s a CNN/Tea Party Express debate Monday night in Tampa, and I’m flying down Sunday to cover it.

And there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, right? Right?


Category: Terrorism

Advice to Selena: Never Trust a Canadian

Posted on | September 10, 2011 | 15 Comments

Oh, yeah, we know he acts all sweet and innocent and romantic, but it’s time to wake up and smell the juvenile womanizer:

Canadian heartthrob Justin Bieber has announced he’d like to make one lucky gal his wife in the near future.
“By 25 or 26 [years old], I want to see myself, like, married or start looking for a family,” the 17-year-old singer told Women’s Wear Daily in New York City on Thursday, when the fashion publication asked where he sees himself five years from now. . . .
“I want to be a young dad,” he said. “I want to be able to have done what I wanted to do — to be successful, to do a movie or whatever. But if the time is right, I definitely want to be married by 25.”
However, the superstar was quick to admit that although former Disney darling Selena Gomez is currently his “girlfriend right now,” marriage is not in their immediate future.
“One thing — I’m not looking to get married now,” he added.

He’s not taking you seriously, Selena. You’re his “girlfriend right now,” but he’s talking marriage and babies in the distant future, when he’s 25.

Trust me on this one, girl: Bieber’s just stringing you along. He’s a user. He’s exploiting your naïve “true love” infatuation and then, a year or two from now — after he’s taken all he wants to take — he’s gonna discard you like a used Kleenex.

Typical Canadian. They’re all like that.

Category: Canada, Celebrities

Is BHO Crazy Like A Fox?

Posted on | September 10, 2011 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

Looking at the “Lincoln founded the GOP” kerfuffle, one is tempted to wonder if the verbal gaffes aren’t intended as a distraction.

Gunwalker and Solyndra really should be even bigger deals than they are; nothing short of a thorough investigation is enough for these scandals.

And, sure, the Lincoln gaffe is another brick in the wall of the Mainstream Media Mausoleum. After the Sarah Palin/Paul Revere history lesson, we’re reminding ourselves that, sure enough propaganda reigns in the Lefty mind, both when attempting to shred good people and cover for those who may not be so good. 

In the final analysis, it is irrelevant whether the guy who won’t release his college transcripts is a dunce, or playing one at taxpayer’s expense.  It doesn’t matter if this is some effort to distract attention from the real problems of how we

  • de-scope the federal government,
  • re-invigorate the private sector economy, and
  • articulate to the American people that entitlements are a mirage from which we all need to divorce ourselves as gracefully as possible.

That’s just the beginnings of the list of things that demand our attention. BHO’s non-grasp of history? Worth noting in passing, maybe.

Category: Barack Obama

Wow! Amazon Sells a 250-Gigabyte Compact Desktop Computer for $309.99?

Posted on | September 10, 2011 | 19 Comments

It’s amazing the stuff I discover while checking the Amazon Associates sales report. Somebody bought the Acer AspireRevo AR3700 compact desktop computer for $309.99 — providing a 4% commission of $12.40 for me — and it’s a pretty cool setup at a bargain price. Of course, that price doesn’t include a monitor, but maybe the buyer plans to use the AR3700 to run videogames via their HDTV, which is one of the recommended uses. But you can get an Acer 19-inch widescreen LCD monitor for just $94 at Amazon.

We also recently sold an MSI notebook computer for $739. The product description reads, “MSI FX620DX-256US Notebook Intel Core i5 2410M(2.30GHz) 15.6-inch 6GB Memory 640GB HDD DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M.” I don’t know what all that means, but I do know that my commission was $25, which means Mrs. Other McCain will be $25 happier when the Amazon Associates check arrives next month.

Keeping Mrs. Other McCain happy is, of course, essential to the continuation of my blogging career and not just because, as I have previously remarked, she’s got a kitchen drawer full of knives and I’ve got to sleep sometime. The business of monetizing Web traffic — i.e., getting the occasional check in the mail — is the difference between me flying off to Iowa and taking a train to New Hampshire to cover the presidential campaign and me going down to the temporary agency to apply for a job as a forklift driver. So when you see me promoting Amazon sales here from time to time, you understand what it’s all about: If blogging is more than a hobby, the bills have to be paid.

When I first started blogging, I thought of Amazon as just an online bookstore. I didn’t realize that (a) once readers click through one of the Amazon Associates links, they can browse around and buy anything and I still get the 4% commission, and (b) they sell everything at Amazon. So when I started seeing on the sales report that people were buying all kinds of stuff — including jewelry, computers and big-screen TVs — that I’d never even realized they could buy at Amazon, it was like one of those cartoon scenes with the lightbulb over my head. “Ohhhhhh!”

You want a 26-inch riding lawnmower for $799.99? You got it — and free Super Saver shipping, too! You want to buy your kid a $349.99 mini-bike for Christmas? You got it! And if you want to surprise your wife with a Mikasa 45-piece china service for $169.99, why shop anywhere else?

See, I understand that many of our readers have wives or husbands who might get peeved if you were to hit the tip jar for $20.





“Giving money to a blogger? Are you nuts?” But your spouse won’t have any cause to complain when you get a great bargain on a useful household item — or a thoughtful gift — from Amazon.

Of course, we haven’t sold that 7-carat diamond ring for $120,000 yet, but I’m still hoping. Because if I can just sell one . . .

UPDATE: Got a question on Twitter from Debbie, who was concerned that I might know who buys what on Amazon. Rest assured that, while the Amazon sales report tells me what items we’ve sold, it does not identify the buyers. And so your privacy is guaranteed. Read more

Category: Amazon

Madison Rising: ‘Soldiers of America’

Posted on | September 10, 2011 | 2 Comments

We picked up a new advertiser yesterday, a rock band called Madison Rising that was recently written up at Big Hollywood and in the New York Post. Their first single is “Soldiers of America”:

They come from the bright light cities.
They come from a one-horse town.
But if they’re coming for you, boy,
You better know they ain’t messin’ around.

Pretty cool, if you think of it this way: They’re singing about Smitty!

Madison Rising an album coming out at the end of the month, but you can buy an MP3 download of their first single for 99 cents at Amazon.

Category: Music

‘Move Over, Bloggers!’

Posted on | September 10, 2011 | 12 Comments

One of the glorious triumphs of the blogosphere occurred on the night of Jan. 19, 2010, at the victory celebration in Boston for the Scott Brown campaign. History was being made — a Republican had won Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat — and bloggers quite literally had front-row seats. Thanks to our friend Ali Akbar, who was in charge of media seating arrangements for the event, a slew of bloggers including Eric Odom, Steve Foley, Garrett Quinn, Pamela Geller, Da Tech Guy, Dan Collins, Ace of Spades and myself were accorded prime space in the Park Plaza Hotel ballroom. This was deeply resented by some of the regular press. Every political reporter on the planet was in Boston that night, and many of them found themselves without ballroom seats, filing from the “media center” on the other side of the hotel.

It’s not just in politics that bloggers are upending the established order. Something similar happening in the beauty-and-fashion world, where the blog “Body & Soul” found this resentful article in Nails magazine, a trade journal for manicurists:

Move Over, Bloggers!
I’m getting kind of tired of all these consumer blogger online who are just infatuated with nail polish and post endlessly about polish and doing their own nails. I mean, sure, they probably help increase the awareness of nail care and new products (mostly polish), bjut I think it’s time for those of us on the professional side of the nail world to take back our place in the pecking order.
They’re even starting to infiltrate my side of the nail world as well — I see as many bloggers taking meetings with manufacuters and hanging out in the press room at trade shows as I do actual journalists.
As nail technicians, YOU have the influence over your clients to share the latest color trends and nail styles. Who knows better than YOU about the differences in hybrid gels and what the right treatment for peeling nails is. Don’t cede your powerful professional influence to a bunch of polish junkies who are looking for free handouts of the latest collections from manufacturers. OK, that’s a little harsh. But seriously, the professional side of our industry needs to stay in the forefront and the DIY-ers need to take a small step back.

LOL! Reminds you of Karl Rove whining about Christine O’Donnell beating Karl’s boy Mike Castle in Delaware, doesn’t it?

Category: Blogging
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