The Other McCain

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

Paul Ryan Nixes 2012 White House Bid

Posted on | August 22, 2011 | 11 Comments

The Weekly Standard has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for this idea, and now breaks the news to the readers it has been hyping up:

Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan has decided for a final time that he will not run for president in 2012, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned. Ryan, who began seriously considering a bid in late May after Indiana governor Mitch Daniels took himself out of the race, had consulted with top Republicans, including Karl Rove and Frank Luntz, as he contemplated his political future. . . . Ryan ultimately decided to continue his focus on debt and entitlement reform as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
“I sincerely appreciate the support from those eager to chart a brighter future for the next generation. While humbled by the encouragement, I have not changed my mind, and therefore I am not seeking our party’s nomination for President. I remain hopeful that our party will nominate a candidate committed to a pro-growth agenda of reform that restores the promise and prosperity of our exceptional nation. I remain grateful to those I serve in Southern Wisconsin for the unique opportunity to advance this effort in Congress.”

You’ll notice — or at least, I noticed — that the hyping of Ryan as a 2012 candidate (long after he had already said he wouldn’t run) got more intense after T-Paw dropped and Perry got in. That’s your clue that there are specific people who were behind this bogus bandwagon for their own particular purposes. Same deal with the endless Chris Christie chatter.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Ryan and would have liked for him to get in for 2012, but there’s a lot of factional intrigue behind some of these things. Not to mention consultants wanting contracts, speechwriters wanting jobs, vendors wanting clients, etc.

Electoral politics is a multi-million-dollar industry, and if you think it’s all about ideas and idealism, you’re waaaaay wrong.

UPDATE: Nate Silver has charts — lots and lots of shiny colorful charts!

Category: Election 2012, Paul Ryan

‘Unexpectedly’: Voters in NY-9 District Realize President Obama Is a ‘Moron’

Posted on | August 22, 2011 | 12 Comments

By now you’ve noticed how bad economic news in the Obama age is always “unexpected” according to liberal reporters. Now the failure of Obamanomics seems to be intruding into the political sphere:

Of all the places to hear fulminations against President Obama, one of the least expected is the corner of 71st Avenue and Queens Boulevard, in the heart of a Congressional district that propelled Democrats like Geraldine A. Ferraro, Charles E. Schumer and Anthony D. Weiner to Washington.
But it was there that Dale Weiss, a 64-year-old Democrat, approached the Republican running for Congress in a special election and, without provocation, blasted the president for failing to tame runaway federal spending. “We need to cut Medicaid,” she declared, “but he won’t do that.” She shook her head in disgust. “He is a moron.”
After nodding approvingly for a time, the Republican candidate, Bob Turner, signaled for an assistant to cut off Ms. Weiss. Frustration with Mr. Obama is so widespread, he explained later, that he tries to limit such rants to about 30 seconds, or else they will consume most of his day.
“It’s endemic in the district,” Mr. Turner said. “You can’t stop them once they get started.”
The Sept. 13 election was expected to be a sleepy sideshow — a mere formality that would put David I. Weprin, a Democratic state assemblyman and heir to a Queens political dynasty, into a Congressional seat that became vacant this summer when Mr. Weiner quit over an online sex scandal.
Instead, the race has become something far more unsettling to Democrats: a referendum on the president and his party that is highlighting the surprisingly raw emotions of the electorate.
National Democrats, alarmed by a poll that showed the contest far closer than anticipated, are privately fretting that even a close outcome in a working-class swath of Brooklyn and Queens may foreshadow broader troubles for the party in 2012.
The Siena College poll, conducted early this month, showed Mr. Weprin with an advantage of 6 percentage points, within the margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 points.
Suddenly Mr. Weprin’s aides have ramped up fund-raising, enlisting big-name figures like Senator Joseph I. Lieberman to headline events. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has dispatched operatives to advise the candidate. And the campaign, aided by big city unions, is drawing up an extensive field operation to turn out the vote.

Read the rest — thanks to Bert the Samoan Lawyer for the tip.

Unlike Barack Obama, I hate to encourage false hope and impossible dreams, but NY-9 may be a heckuva lot more winnable for Republicans than even the freaked-out Democrats fear.

The district’s Cook Partisan Voting Index rating is only D+5 — not nearly as prohibitively partisan as Jerry Nadler’s 8th District (D+22), for example. And remember how fired up we got for Sean Bielat’s challenge to Barney Frank? The Cook PVI rating for Frank’s MA-4 district is D+14. So if a bunch of bloggers and Tea Party types could put the fear into Barney — and we had him sweating, didn’t we? — we might actually be able to beat this Democrat second-teamer Dave Weprin.

But we’ve got to get cracking, folks: Sept. 13 is just three weeks from Tuesday, so go give Bob Turner $20 or $50 or $100 now and then help spread the word via Twitter, Facebook or e-mail to all your friends: A Republican could win this NY-9 special election, so please give now!

UPDATE: Just today Bob Turner was endorsed by the NY Sun.

BOB TURNER FOR CONGRESS
He Never Tweeted Pictures of His Junk to a Porn Star

Category: Congress, Election, New York

T-Paw and ‘Robust Internationalism’

Posted on | August 22, 2011 | 8 Comments

What to make of this article by Jamie M. Fly in Foreign Policy?

The departure of Gov. Tim Pawlenty from the race for the Republican nomination for president deprives national security conservatives of one of the field’s leading champions of a robust internationalism. Despite the ludicrous rants of Rep. Ron Paul and efforts by some Tea Party organizations to back significant defense cuts, most of the remaining Republican contenders appear to be relatively hawkish. However, Pawlenty’s willingness to speak out on foreign policy and to push back against undercurrents of isolationism in the party will be sorely missed.

You can read the whole thing. My inner cynic tells me that the true subtext is: “One of Jamie Fly’s buddies was an adviser to Pawlenty on national security issues and is now hustling around for another campaign gig, so let me praise T-Paw as a way of promoting my buddy’s job-search.”

But that’s just my inner cynic talking. Less cynically, I’m mystified that Fly’s article didn’t mention Rick Santorum as a spokesman for “robust internationalism.” It’s probably because Fly wants to limit the discussion to candidates he thinks might actually hire his now-unemployed former T-Paw adviser buddy. (Damn that inner cynic! Always interrupting …) And most of the experts rate Santorum’s campaign as a hopeless long-shot, as opposed to Pawlenty’s can’t-miss campaign which, alas, imploded at its first contact with actual Republican voters.

Insofar as it involves actual policy — as opposed to politics — I am skeptical of Fly’s worries about an internecine GOP conflict between “robust internationalism” and “undercurrents of isolationism.” Is Fly attempting to throw us on the horns of a false dilemma? Does he overlook the possibility that the arguably excessive hawkishness of the Bush presidency could afford to be tempered by a mild dose of the “isolationism” he so dreads? Read more

Category: Election 2012, Foreigners, Military, Tim Pawlenty

Because The Olympics Is All About Athletes And Competition, Right?

Posted on | August 22, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

The Puffington Host:

The U.S. Olympic Committee has notified all interested cities that it will not submit a bid to host the 2020 Olympics, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on Monday.
Chicago, New York and Dallas were among those that had expressed interest in putting forth a bid to host the games, but any bid was contingent upon the USOC working out a long-simmering revenue-sharing deal with the International Olympic Committee.

The Olympics is like the U.N. in better physical condition, and with a more reasonable world impact.

Category: Sports

Herman Cain on Janeane Garofalo: ‘I Wanted to Send Her a Thank You Note’

Posted on | August 22, 2011 | 9 Comments

Left-wing actress Janeane Garofalo told Keith Olberman last week that she thinks someone in the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy — she named Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers as likely suspects — must be secretly paying Herman Cain to run for president. At the opening of Cain’s new campaign headquarters in Manchester, N.H., Da Tech Guy caught the candidate’s mirthful reaction:

Anyone who knows Herman Cain knows that he is a cheerful, optimistic kind of guy who — having beaten cancer five years ago — is grateful for every new day. He easily laughs off a slur from an idiot like Garofalo.

So who are the secret right-wingers who are paying Herman Cain to run for president? That would be you: Thousands of ordinary Americans, patriotic grassroots conservatives giving whatever they can afford to keep his “Common Sense Solutions” bus rolling. As the Cain campaign said in Friday’s fund-raising e-mail, “even $5, $10, $25 helps” — and they could have added, “helps to drive Janeane Garofalo even crazier than she already is.” You can donate now.

Also check out the rest of Da Tech Guy’s coverage of Cain’s recent two-day tour of New Hampshire:

Category: Celebrities, Da Tech Guy, Herman Cain, Liberals, New Hampshire

DNC Quotes Governor Asterisk

Posted on | August 22, 2011 | 23 Comments

During my Iowa trip, I began referring to Jon Huntsman as “Governor Asterisk,” because his support in the GOP primaries is somewhere between “too small to be measured” and utterly non-existent. He is an irrelevant footnote to the campaign, a spokesman for no meaningful Republican constituency, who clutters up the stage at debates and gets vastly more media attention than he deserves.

Instapundit last night linked a Politico column pointing out that the Democratic National Committee sent out a memo quoting Huntman’s statements on the Sunday talk shows. Huntsman’s presidential campaign is therefore functioning as a propaganda tool for Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Huntsman doesn’t represents any particular Republican faction. Rather, he represents a point in time — late 2008 through spring 2009 — when a lot of “smart” people in the GOP seemed to believe that the Obama ascendancy was more or less permanent. The way to succeed as a Republican in the Obama era, these people believed, was to cooperate in the patriotic spirit of Bipartisan Compromise.

You can run down the list of names of those who succumbed to this nonsense: Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, Dede Scozzafava, Bob Bennett — and, while we’re at it, let’s go ahead and throw John Cornyn‘s name in there, too.

When Huntsman accepted an appointment from Obama as ambassador to China, the former Utah governor probably little suspected that the political tide would turn as soon as it did. He might have expected that he could return from Beijing in a couple of years and be welcomed by a GOP chastised by defeat. Instead, by the time he returned to seek the presidential nomination, the Republican Party had rolled to its biggest mid-term landslide in more than half a century.

Huntsman is the fossil remnant of a brief political epoch — the Age of the RINOsaurs, if you will — and is destined to the oblivion that all such creatures richly deserve.

Category: Election 2012, Jon Huntsman

Least Shocking 1.2 Teravolt Discharge Ever: The Federal Reserve Is A Conspiracy Against The Public

Posted on | August 22, 2011 | 19 Comments

by Smitty (via Reboot Congress on Twitter)

Yeah, had to look up the SI prefix on that one. Tyler Durden over at Zero Hedge reveals something you’ve more or less suspected, but didn’t want to go all tinfoil hat about, emphasis original:

. . .Wall Street’s (not to mention the rest of the world’s) biggest banks received a total of $1.2 trillion in previously secret Fed loans, in addition to the trillions in public backstops and loans from the US Treasury. As a reminder, “denominated in $1 bills, the $1.2 trillion would fill 539 Olympic-size swimming pools.” The best summary of this ongoing collusion between the Fed and Wall Street, in which it once again for the nth time becomes clear that all the Fed cars about is making sure its banking masters are never impaired, is from the article itself: “Even as the firms asserted in news releases or earnings calls that they had ample cash, they drew Fed funding in secret, avoiding the stigma of weakness.” And there you have it: everything that come out of Wall Street is and has always been a lie. . .

Now, I love my country, the Constitution, and its symbols; however, the level of global deceit involved with the Federal Reserve is such that I will agree: Americans have a substantial reason to be ashamed over this. This blog calls on all GOP Presidential candidates to estimate the number of shotgun shells they estimate it will take to put this zombie down, in the name of all that’s decent.

It is time to End the Fed.

Anticipating Bernanke’s kiss-my-rebuttal, he’d probably say that we want him on that bank, we need him on that bank. Bunk. This is a man, in a long series of men, on a policy bender, cheerfully deciding that what we all need now is a little more hair of the bitch. If Bernanke wants to stress test his wallet, that’s his prerogative. If our government fails to protect my wallet, and that of my children, then my government is illegitimate, unrepresentative, and debased.

It is time to End the Fed.

The Creature from Jeckyll Island will celebrate a century of undead, anti-Constitutional existence in 854 days, as of 22 August, 2011.  Of the two conferences in the American Political Football League that have perpetuated this monstrosity, the GOP is relatively more likely to step up to the [expletives go here] plate and finalize the Fed.

It is time to End the Fed. Come to think of it, 1.2 teravolts would probably vaporize the Fed nicely.

Related Rick Perry thoughts at Chicago Boyz. Meanwhile, The Moderate(ly Progressive) Voice links CBS giving a platform to the frequently helpful Ben Stein beclowning himself. Just because the Federal Reserve has been a slow-motion heist, Ben, does not justify it.

Category: End The Fed

Gold Nears $1,900 per Ounce

Posted on | August 22, 2011 | 10 Comments

Anyone seriously expect it to stop short of $2,000?

Gold futures notch a fresh nominal record in electronic trading in Asia on Monday, against a backdrop of concerns over the health of the economies in Europe and the U.S.
Gold for December traded at $1,882.50 per ounce, up $30.20 in electronic trading.
Gold futures reached a fresh record closing high of $1.852.20 an ounce in regular trading in New York on Friday, after hitting an intraday high of $1,881.40 an ounce.

You should have listened to Glenn Beck!


Category: Economics
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