The Other McCain

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

Hmmmm …

Posted on | July 27, 2011 | 63 Comments

Press release from the Herman Cain campaign:

For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
For More Information:
Ellen Carmichael, (678) 601-2772
[email protected]

Cain Meets with American Muslim Leaders

(Stockbridge, GA)- Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain met with American Muslim leaders this afternoon at the ADAMS Center in Sterling, Virginia. After the meeting, Cain issued the following statement:

I would like to thank Imam Mohamed Magid and the ADAMS Center for extending their hospitality to me this afternoon. We enjoyed heartfelt fellowship and thoughtful dialogue about how patriotic Americans of all faiths can work together to restore the American Dream.
While I stand by my opposition to the interference of shariah law into the American legal system, I remain humble and contrite for any statements I have made that might have caused offense to Muslim Americans and their friends. I am truly sorry for any comments that may have betrayed my commitment to the U.S. Constitution and the freedom of religion guaranteed by it. Muslims, like all Americans, have the right to practice their faith freely and peacefully.
As I expected, we discovered we have much more in common in our values and virtues. In my own life as a black youth growing up in the segregated South, I understand their frustration with stereotypes. Those in attendance, like most Muslim Americans, are peaceful Muslims and patriotic Americans whose good will is often drowned out by the reprehensible actions of jihadists.
I am encouraged by the bonds of friendship forged today at our meeting, and I look forward to continuing this very healthy dialogue. The relationship we established was so positive that the Imam has invited me back to speak to not only some of their youth, but also at one of their worship services.

In attendance at Wednesday’s meeting were:
Imam Mohamed Magid, Executive Director of the ADAMS Center.
Sister Humera Khan, Director, Muflehun.org.
Joshua Salaam, Youth Director of the ADAMS Center, former U.S. military officer.
Robert Marro, Board of Trustees at the ADAMS Center, former U.S. Foreign Service Officer (Minister, Counselor of Embassy)

The ADAMS Center serves more than 5,000 families in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. To contact the ADAMS Center, please call (703) 433-1325.
Friends of Herman Cain will release photographs of the meeting later this week.

Well? Will all those who were denouncing Cain as an “Islamophobe” apologize now? Or will those who defended Cain against such accusations now abandon him? Will this suffice to end the whole “Cain-vs-Islam” controversy?

These are just questions.

Answering such questions is above my pay-grade.

UPDATE: The readership does not seem to approve — to put it rather mildly. In the comments below, Bob Belvedere cites references indicating that Imam Magid and ISNA are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

As readers might deduce, I was rather stunned by this press release. Even more stunning? More than an hour and a half after I posted Cain’s press release, Drew M. hat-tipped Byron York for the same press release.

Because Byron York is important. And I’m chopped liver.

Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain, Islam

Hey, If You Listened to Glenn Beck …

Posted on | July 27, 2011 | 38 Comments

. . . and bought gold when it was still trading under $1,200 an ounce, you may be asking yourself now: “Should I sell at $1,600+ and cash out the 33% profit I’ve made in the past 14 months?” If you’re in such a mood, Adrian Ash at Forbes says, “Buy real estate!”

After this week’s poor U.S. housing data, might the average home be nearing its low? Priced against gold it might be.
Dropping hard as the gold price doubled and more since 2006, the average U.S. home is now priced at 103 ounces of gold . . .
Housing has only been cheaper against gold . . . in 26 of the last 121 years. It’s currently priced around half the long-run average of 201 ounces.

Look at this chart that Ash provides at Forbes:

There are no guarantees, of course: It may take a couple of years — and the defeat of Obama in 2012 — before we see any meaningful recovery in the housing market. And the gold boom may not be nearly over yet. But if you’ve been reaping gains from gold, and are looking for some place to put your profits, this looks like a great time to start bargain-hunting for cheap real-estate deals.

BTW, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 200 points today at 12,302.55 — that’s about 380 points down from Friday’s close of 12,681.16.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And while we’re talking economics, let’s look at this headline from Jane Hamsher:

Standard and Poor’s Should Not Be Able
to Play Kingmaker in the 2012 Election

Hamsher writes: “Standard and Poors is evidently meeting with high-stakes gamblers and letting them know where to place their bets as they manipulate the global economy,” and much other laughably misguided gibberish.

Dear Ms. Hamsher: If you don’t know what you’re talking about, would you please at least stop misinforming your readers? Because there is enough economic ignorance in the world already, thank you.

While I have neither the time nor inclination to turn this post into an introductory economics course (“What is the function of the bond market? What do bond rating agencies do? To whom are the rating agencies responsible?”), the least I can is to point out obvious facts, such as: Jane Hamsher doesn’t know jack shit about economics.

UPDATE: Professor William Jacobson says it’s a rare thing when he agrees with Jane Hamsher — and it’s a rare thing when Professor Jacobson is so clearly wrong. Let me quote this part of Hamsher’s argument:

[T]here is a very serious chance that a ratings downgrade will trigger an economic downturn that would cause unemployment to rise dramatically. And everyone on all sides knows that Obama would most certainly pay the price for that in 2012.

Well . . . duh.

But forget the politics. It is the underlying economic reality that would cause the downgrade, not the whim of S&P’s executives. And everything else that Hamsher writes about this subject is premised on the conspiratorial idea that S&P is acting on a political motive, rather than attempting to offer investors an honest assessment of the value of U.S. bonds.

Do we or do we not have a crisis that could affect U.S. creditworthiness? That is the only question, and the people who buy bonds are entitled to an honest answer. I think we can expect more honesty from S&P than we can from President Obama, or Tim Geithner, or Ben Bernanke.


Category: Budget, Economics

VIDEO: Dick Morris Interview With Herman Cain: ‘What an Impressive Guy!’

Posted on | July 27, 2011 | 4 Comments

Dick Morris does what he calls his “Lunch Alert” videos, and here he talks economics and jobs with Herman Cain:

More at DickMorris.com.

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Category: Economics, Election 2012, Herman Cain, Video

‘F*** JOHN McCAIN!’

Posted on | July 27, 2011 | 61 Comments

That was the complete text of a Twitter message — except I spelled out the first word — I sent when I heard about this:

Mr. McCain mocked Tea Party-allied Republicans in the House for believing — wrongly, he said — that President Obama and Democrats will get the blame for a default if Republicans refuse to increase the nation’s debt ceiling.
By that flawed logic, “Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements and the Tea Party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth,” he said, quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial.
“This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into G.O.P. nominees,” he jeered, referring to two losing Tea Party candidates for the Senate in 2010.

(Video via Eric Scheiner at CNSNews.com.)

If there were any justice in the world . . . Well, it probably wouldn’t be wise to finish that sentence. But I think you see why I supported J.D. Hayworth in last year’s Arizona primary, and why I bragged on Election Day 2008: “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Bob Barr.” However, I felt it necessary to apologize to my Twitter followers today:

And this seems like a good time to remind readers that I’m raising money for a shoe-leather trip to Iowa.





UPDATE: Ed Morrissey offers a Tolkienesque rejoinder:

By the way, just in case in you don’t recall … the hobbits win in Lord of the Rings. They got a lot of ridicule from the elite and the powerful along the way, but they end up saving the West from ruinous destruction.

And just in case anyone’s discouraged by these RINO gestures from twerps like Crazy Cousin John, remember that the Democrats don’t have their act together, either:

Dem lawmaker: ‘Nobody I know’ has seen Reid plan

UPDATE II: This is the fun stuff:

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he ordered GOP lawmakers to “get your ass in line” behind his debt proposal during an interview Wednesday on a conservative radio show.
“My goal is to continue to work with all our members so we get them to the point where they say ‘yes,’ ” Boehner said on Laura Ingraham’s radio show.

UPDATE III: As of this writing (3:18 p.m. ET) the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down nearly 200 points. I blame John McCain.

UPDATE IV: Ace of Spades has some good stuff.

Category: Budget, John McCain, Tea Party

Herman Cain: He’s In It To Win It

Posted on | July 27, 2011 | 8 Comments

Late Tuesday night, I had about 45 minutes of frustrated confusion when California writer Jim Henson sent a couple of Twitter messages to Shane Vander Hart and me:

My reaction to that — knowing that such a rumor could have no basis in fact — was something like, “WTF?” To which Henson replied:

Well, you can’t just say stuff like that without any backup, so I asked Henson to send me a link to the article he was talking about. Meanwhile, I started furiously Googling and failed to turn up any such thing. Finally, Henson found the article — an unsourced item by “Race 4 2012” blogger Matt Coulter:

So my prediction? Herman Cain will stay in until the day after the Ames Straw Poll, then drop out and endorse Mitt Romney. . . .

What Coulter was reacting to was (a) the fact that Cain canceled a planned appearance this week on “The Colbert Report”; and (b) a report that Cain had canceled a scheduled Aug. 6 event in Iowa. As to (a) there was a scheduling conflict and as to (b) it ain’t exactly so.

This morning I called Cain spokeswoman Ellen Carmichael, who explained that the “canceled” Iowa event had never been on the schedule at campaign headquarters. One of Cain’s local supporters had wanted to have the candidate at that event, but Cain had already made plans to be somewhere else on Aug. 6, and so it was reported as “canceled” even though it had never been officially scheduled.

Ellen Carmichael was kind of miffed that Matt Coulter (or anyone else) would write something like that without calling her first. She is super-easy to reach — (678) 601-2772 or e-mail [email protected] — if any reporter or blogger has questions about the campaign.

So before anybody else goes writing something nutty like that again, please call Ellen first. Read more

Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain, Iowa, Republicans, Shoe Leather Fund

Nancy Pelosi’s Class-Warfare Rant: ‘We Get the Sacrifice, They Share the Wealth’

Posted on | July 27, 2011 | 25 Comments

San Francisco multi-millionaire populism:

“The budget deficit is an excuse for the Republicans to undermine government plain and simple. They don’t just want to make cuts, they want to destroy. They want to destroy food safety, clean air, clean water, the department of education. They want to destroy your rights. . . .
“[House Speaker John Boehner] has said that between him and the president they have a different vision of America and that’s how come their budget proposals are different. Quite different . . . We get the sacrifice, they share the wealth.”

“We”? We? And “sacrifice”? Sacrifice?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s net worth skyrocketed 62% last year, to a jaw-dropping $35.2 million, according to financial disclosure forms released [June 15].

What a transparent phony! The great comfort is that she will never — never — be House Speaker again.

Category: Budget, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi

I Have, In Fact, Fathered One Ridiculously Handsome Fellow

Posted on | July 27, 2011 | 81 Comments

by Smitty

Not to get too cocky about matters, lest the Almighty put me in check, but the World’s Youngest Blogger really sports a surfeit of cute. I told him that his name is Niklas Dietrich Smith. Then I told him that, as a result of government irresponsibility, he was starting out in the hole 60 large:

That’s a 9 pound, nearly 2 foot long piece of pissed off American right there. Fortunately, we calmed him down for a better pose with dad:

So, yeah, I may be a little busy doing the daddy thing here the next few days.

Category: Uncategorized

Obama Kabuki Wrecking Your 401(k)

Posted on | July 27, 2011 | 4 Comments

Let’s see: Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped another 91 points Tuesday, down to 12,501.30, having lost 223 points in the past three sessions. If stocks are down, then bonds are up, right? Nope:

Treasuries fell [Tuesday], eroding a gain from [Monday], as President Barack Obama threatened to veto House Speaker John Boehner’s plan to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and reduce spending by $3 trillion.
The U.S. may have its top-level credit rating cut as politicians struggle to reach an agreement on how to increase the federal borrowing limit, a step needed to keep paying its debts, according to BlackRock Inc. and Loomis Sayles & Co. The Treasury is scheduled to sell $35 billion of five-year debt today, the second of three note auctions this week.

Hmmmm. Stocks down and bonds down. So . . .

Gold futures rose for the third straight session as the prolonged U.S. debt stalemate boosts demand for the precious metal as a haven. . . .
Gold futures for December delivery rose $4.90, or 0.3 percent, to settle at $1,619.30 an ounce at 1:48 p.m. on the Comex in New York. Earlier, the price fluctuated between gains and losses. The August contract reached a record $1,624.30 yesterday.

You should have listened to Glenn Beck!

UPDATE: And gold goes even higher:

Gold forged a record high above $1,625 per ounce (in London) on Wednesday, as investors parked their cash in the precious metal in the face of heightened concerns over a potential US default.
The price of gold struck $1,625.70 an ounce at about 0600 GMT on the London Bullion Market, beating the previous record of $1,624.07 that was hit on Monday.
“The threat of default by the world largest economy has led gold to a fresh peak above $1,625 this morning,” said FastMarkets analyst James Moore.

(Hat-tip: Don Surber.)

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Category: Barack Obama, Budget, Economics
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