The Other McCain

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

Strained Althouse Logic: Bipartisan Appeal Equals Presidential Disqualifier?

Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

Kind of a head-scratcher here (emphasis original).

. . .Sarah Palin’s rise to power in Alaska and her excellent achievements and immense popularity as governor. The problem is that all of this happened in the context of boldly and bravely challenging the corrupt Republican establishment. This made her very popular with Democrats in Alaska. She worked in a bipartisan way, mainly to extract money from oil and gas resources in Alaska, and that was popular with everyone, pushing her ratings above 80% in Alaska. She was raking in money for Alaskans and challenging the big corporations (and their inside dealings). What’s not for Democrats to like?

But once McCain brought her in as the vice presidential nominee and she launched into ripping up Barack Obama, her ratings plummeted in Alaska. And non-Alaskans never got up to speed about the things that had made her popular in Alaska.

And then she concludes:

Democrats were central to Sarah Palin’s greatness: That is the argument in the movie. If that is true, there is no greatness upon which to build a presidential bid.

As with the debt ceiling kerfuffle, the real problem besetting Governor Palin is boredom: we know the 02 August Line of Death couldn’t be less meaningful if had been decided by the Qaddafi One himself; also, the pregnant pause we all sort of anticipate will give birth to a Presidential run seems to be going on too long.
However, if and when Governor Palin decides to enter the race, then the question becomes whether the propaganda media has successfully poisoned the well to the point where she gains no significant traction. Yet, if The Undefeated’s thesis is valid, and she has the charisma to draw in significant Democrat support, then she should, well, draw significant Democrat support.
By the time the 02 August debt kerfuffle reaches its next stage of idiocy, making the anti-DC case shouldn’t be terribly hard.

Speaking of Sarah, via the FaceBook page above:

Victory Film Group and ARC Entertainment, the distributor of “The Undefeated,” the film about Gov. Sarah Palin’s rise from obscurity to national prominence, jointly announced today that beginning on September 1st the film will be available to 75 million homes via Video on Demand and Pay-Per-View access through national and regional cable and satellite operators. The DVD will launch on October 4th and will be available at traditional and online retailers nationwide. ARC is estimating its initial unit shipment to be approximately 250,000 units. A “Special Edition” DVD will contain additional new content and will only be sold in Walmart stores. ARC will continue to expand the limited engagement theatrical release nationwide throughout August and September as demand across the country remains high.

Maybe we can have a viewing party. I’m planning some sort of Smittypalooza event for Friday, 07 October to celebrate just a few blessings.

Category: Uncategorized

Terrorists for Tax Increases

Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 7 Comments

This morning I got a Twitter message from a friend who works at the DC offices of Americans for Tax Reform, informing me that they had been evacuated after a bomb threat. Alex Pappas at The Daily Caller reports:

Staffers at Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group run by conservative activist Grover Norquist, evacuated their building Monday morning after a bomb threat was called in, according to authorities.
A spokesman for the Washington D.C. police department, Anthony Clay, confirmed to The Daily Caller that officers from the explosive ordnance division were called to the building that houses the organization’s D.C. offices shortly after 9 a.m. . . .
No explosives were found, the officer said. Police had shut down 12th Street in Washington near ATR’s offices.
“The police are conducting an investigation,” said John Kartch, a spokesman for ATR, in an email.

Read the whole thing. Several left-wing bloggers (and, I’d imagine, some MSNBC hosts) have blamed ATR founder Grover Norquist for the debt-ceiling crisis, saying that Republicans who signed the ATR’s no-tax-increase pledge are the obstacles to a bipartisan “balanced approach” compromise. A few relevant points here:

  • Not every conservative is a Grover Norquist fan. Michelle Malkin especially hates him.
  • David Brooks took a cheap shot at Norquist last week, calling him a “Beltway bandit.” At risk of offending Michelle Malkin, then, I’ll confess to having a soft spot in my heart for anyone David Brooks doesn’t like.
  • Did I mention that Norquist is reputed to have said, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”?
  • Remember when every host on MSNBC was accusing Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin of fomenting right-wing extremist violence? Yeah. Tu quoque, Ed Schultz.
  • It strains our minds to think that anybody could be so stupid as not to see through the debt-ceiling kabuki-dance that Obama and the Democrats have orchestrated in their attempt to score a political “win” by blackmailing Republicans into voting for tax increases. However, as Russ Emerson pointed out in reference to Democratic Underground, there are some liberals so clueless that they believe everything they’re told by their so-called “leaders.” Such people are dangerous.

My frequent (and sometimes tasteless) jokes, my blogging about silly celebrities, the fun of “Rule 5 Sunday” — all of these are ways of signalling to readers that politics is not the be-all, end-all of human existence.

Even though there are times when we must rally the troops and exert maximum effort to win elections or fight other political battles, the minute we start thinking that our ideology or agenda is so urgent that it can and must be advanced through force or fraud, we have surrendered whatever claims of honor our cause ever deserved.

The Left has always been dishonorable. But we cannot defeat the Left by becoming the Left.

(P.S.: Alex Pappas is a good kid, even if he does work for Tucker Carlson. Alex is a ‘Bama boy. Roll Tide!)

Category: Democrats, Terrorism

Bogus ‘Facts’? Twisted Logic? Raw Hate? Of Course: It’s Democratic Underground!

Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 17 Comments

Next time somebody tries to tell you that the Right is a collection of crazy wingnuts, tell ’em to check out the DUmmies:

Compared to the poltroons at DU, the Huffington Post* is a regular collection of rocket scientists.
Even the assemblage of cretins at the Daily Kos has been heard to advise the DU, “hey, guys, you might want to dial the crazy back just a bit.”

Russ Emerson systematically dismantles a DU “argument.” It seems almost a waste of Russ’s brilliance to bother fisking such idiocy. A nasty job, but somebody had to do it.

Category: Democrats, Russ Emerson

The Economic Kabuki Is A Bigger Problem Than The Political

Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Via the ever-upbeat Monty at Ace of Spades, this Hernando de Soto article is worth your time. He outlines six specific developments that have destroyed the clarity and reliability of information in the global economy, and then concludes:

If we can agree that the recession wasn’t about bubbles but about the organization of knowledge, we can move on to restoring the systems that allowed the global economy to expand more in the last 60 years than in the previous 2,000.
We are now staring at a legal and political challenge. A legal challenge because American and European governments allowed economic activity to cross the line from the rule-bound system of property rights, where facts can be established, into an anarchic legal space, where arbitrary interests can trump facts and paper swirls out of control. The rule of law is much more than a dull body of norms: It is a huge, thriving information and management system that filters and processes local data until it is transformed into facts organized in a way that allows us to infer if they hang together and make sense.

Mainly, though, it’s a political challenge. Politicians must raise the financial crisis to commanding heights, where the entrenched institutional problems of a failing order can be addressed. Markets were never intended to be anarchic: It has always been government’s role to police standards, weights and measures, and records, and not condone legalized sleight of hand in the shadows of the informal economy. To understand and repair one of mankind’s greatest achievements—the creation of economic facts through public memory—is the stuff of nation-builders.

I’ve seen up close what this economic confusion looks like. An Afghan government entity wants some construction done, and has a project with a U.S. entity. At a meeting, the U.S. representative states that there are some approval hoops for the project funding that are delaying commencement. The Afghan rep. says, ‘Fine, but could you at least put a ditch at the property boundary? If you don’t then locals will move in, park livestock, and commence to make ownership claims.’
Not only should we avoid investing in things we don’t understand, we should identify politicians trying to do incomprehensible things and run them out on their ear the next election cycle. Stated another way: go write some software. You’ll appreciate immediately the need to remove complexity wherever possible. Complexity is not your friend, though it may be the business model of someone else.

Update: linked at The NeoSexist.

Category: Uncategorized

HuffPo Blogger Talks About Liberty Like It’s A Bad Thing

Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

This Fred Goldring rant is a valuable summary of the disease afflicting the Progressive mind: Dear Tea/Republican Party: Be Careful What You Wish For — And I Want My Country Back!
Shorter Goldring:

  1. You need government.
  2. Specifically, you need federal bureaucracies.
  3. If I say that mine is the majority opinion, that makes me correct.
  4. If I clutter a federal argument with local points, I can point fingers at the opposition.
  5. If I claim to confront ‘some actual realities’, and then slander the Founders, that makes me sound cool.
  6. By spinning a ‘demography is destiny’ argument onto ‘Whites’, then I can project a paranoid narrative onto them.
  7. We Holy Progressives gave you a black President to purge your raaaaacist hearts, but, in your fallen Whiteness, you perversely rejected Holy Progress and somehow became more raaaaacist.
  8. Strangely, fear-mongering is an evil weapon only used by conservatives.
  9. If I can build an argument that liberty is against the self-interest of Americans, that will make me sound cool.
  10. No matter how many times I characterize protecting the integrity of the vote as conservatives trying to disenfranchize voters, I still get a chuckle.
  11. The debt ceiling fiasco may be a turning point.
  12. In closing, I must sound a shrill alarm that the end of the Progressive Era nearly makes me wet myself.

Read more

Category: Uncategorized

BLACK MONDAY? Obama’s Debt-Ceiling Crisis Strategy Could Sink Wall Street

Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 39 Comments

Let’s be clear: President Obama has orchestrated this unnecessary drama for the specific political purpose of causing a crisis that he — with the willing assistance of the liberal media — hopes to blame on Republicans.

Yet while Obama, the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are scripting a kabuki dance, economic reality threatens to intervene:

U.S. stock futures fell, indicating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index will drop after rallying within 1.4 percent of a three-year high, as President Barack Obama and Congress failed to reach an agreement on raising the federal debt limit, intensifying concern the nation will default.
S&P 500 futures expiring in September declined 1.1 percent to 1,326 at 12:13 p.m. in Tokyo. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost 133 points, or 1.1 percent, to 12,488.

The Japanese Nikkei index lost 82 points. The Chinese Hang Seng was down 175 points. Meanwhile, Harry Reid — who has been worse than useless in this phony crisis — now says he has a plan:

The Senate’s top Democrat rolled out a plan Sunday night to raise the nation’s debt limit – in a way he said even Republicans could not refuse.
Senate Democratic boss Harry Reid proposed slashing $2.7 trillion in spending and raising the debt ceiling through 2012 to avoid a market meltdown.
The offer “meets Republicans’ two major criteria: It will include enough spending cuts to meet or exceed the amount of a debt ceiling raise through the end of 2012, and it will not include revenues,” Reid said in a statement.
“We hope [House] Speaker [John] Boehner will abandon his ‘my way or the highway’ approach, and join us in forging a bipartisan compromise along these lines,” Reid said.

The accusation that Boehner is the obstacle to a “bipartisan compromise” is laughable. The GOP leadership very much wants a deal, but Obama and Harry Reid’s Democrat majority in the Senate refuse to play ball.

For two years, Obama, Reid and Nancy Pelosi acted as if they could spend infinite money with no regard whatsoever to the effects of deficit spending. Now — with Obama looking for something he can score a “win” against the GOP — suddenly they’re all about the balanced approach.

Lying bastards.

John Hayward at Human Events rakes Obama over the coals for his dishonest rhetoric.

Meanwhile, John Boehner lays it on the line:

It boils down to this: The president wants his $2.4 trillion debt limit increase all at once, without any guarantees that we’re going to cut more than $2.4 trillion in spending. The administration says they have to have it all upfront so we don’t have to deal with this again until after the next election. You heard the president say that himself on TV the other night.
We’ve seen this coming all year long. But here’s the challenge: To stop him, we need a vehicle that can pass in both houses. . . .
The White House has never gotten serious about tackling the serious issues our nation faces — not without tax hikes — and I don’t think they ever will. . . .

So today, everyone will be watching Wall Street. And if you’ve got your 401(k) or other retirement investments in stocks . . . well, see, what happens to your money is of no interest to the Democrats. All they care about is politics.

Obama Fears Losing Reelection More Than Default. And meanwhile, here’s a kick in the head:

Gold hit a record high above $1,620 an ounce on Monday . . . over fears of a possible U.S. debt default as the debt ceiling talks in Washington stalled.

Yeah. You should have listened to Glenn Beck.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

PREVIOUSLY:


Category: Barack Obama, Budget, Economics, Harry Reid

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.25.11

Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
As Debt Deadline Looms, Both Parties Prepare Separate Solutions

Speaker Boehner and President Obama on Saturday

Boehner & Reid craft separate plans to raise debt limit, President threatens veto, Coburn calls threatened veto “ridiculous”.
Analysts Say Little Danger Of Market Panic




Inside The Mind Of The Oslo Murderer
Bruce Bawer examines the motivations of Anders Behring Breivik

Hotel Maid Goes Public With Accusations Against Former IMF Chief
Nafissatou Diallo does interviews with Newsweek, ABC News



POLITICS
Pelosi Seeks Ethics Investigation Of Oregon Democrat Wu

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

Congressman accused of rape by teenage daughter of campaign donor

Same-Sex Marriages Begin In New York

Top Recipient Of Texas Donations So Far? President Obama

First Lady, Jill Biden Urge Support For Military Families

Chris Christie – Not Candidate, But Kingmaker?

Eyeing Iowa, Bachmann Slams Pawlenty On Credentials



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Greece Debt Rating Cut Three Levels By Moody’s
Asian Stocks Slip On US Debt Deal Delay
Drug Prices To Plummet In Wave Of Expiring Patents
Dollar Dips With US Debt Ceiling Talks Deadlock
Asian Oil Lower On US Debt Default Concerns
Fake Apple Stores Spur PRC Officials To Inspect Electronics Retailers
Judge Tells Oracle To Rethink $2.6 Billion Claim Against Google; Is Google Willing To Settle?
AT&T/T-Mobile Merger Confronted By Angry Customers
“Some People Get A Droid Because They Want A Phone, Not A Religion”
Toshiba Thrive Tablet Mostly For Work, With Some Play



SPORTS
Roberto Alomar, Bert Blyleven, Pat Gillick Gracefully Enter Hall Of Fame

Pat Gillick, Roberto Alomar, and Bert Blyleven hold their plaques during their induction Sunday

Alomar: “My heart is half Puerto Rican and half Canadian”

NFL Lockout Could End Today If Players Approve Deal

Nationals’ Fast Start Brings False Hope In LA

Tigers Talking With Dodgers About Hiroki Kuroda?

Sources Say Favre To Eagles Unlikely

Stubbs Sayonara Homer Puts Reds Ahead Of Braves For 4-3 Win


Paraguay’s Justo Villar: Uruguay Deserved To Win Copa America

ACC’s Swofford Likes League’s Potential, Acknowledges Shortcomings

All-Time Record Wreck: Mariners Set Team Record With 15th Loss In A Row



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Sordid Final Hours Of A Troubled Star

Fans leave flowers and other tributes outside Winehouse's apartment

Amy Winehouse, 1983-2011 RIP
Russell Brand: For Amy

Kristin Cavallari And Jay Cutler Call Off Engagement

First Photos From “Snow White And The Huntsman”


“Glee” Boss: Colfer, Monteith, Michele Staying, But Sam Won’t Be Back

“Captain America” Opens At $65.8 Million

“Amazing Spider-Man” Villain Rhys Ifans Arrested for Misdemeanor At Comic-Con

News Orgs Deny Offering Money For Casey Anthony Interview



FOREIGNERS
Bullet Train Crash Raises Questions About PRC’s Rail Plans
US Struggles To Free Money For Libyan Rebels
UN Food Agency Hosts Emergency Talks On East African Drought
Nork Diplomat Invited To US For Nuke Talks
Australia, Malaysia Sign Refugee Swap Deal



BLOGS & STUFF
Babalu: “They Tried To Make Me Go To Rehab But I Said ‘No, No, No'”
Human Events: Barack The Mad
RedState: What About Paul Ryan’s Budget?
Moe Lane: Reading Paul Krugman So That You Don’t Have To
Gateway Pundit: Boehner Says “I Know The President Is Worried About The Next Election, But My God, Shouldn’t He Be Worried About The Country?” (Video)
Lonely Conservative: Democrats Could Have Raised The Debt Ceiling Last Year
Weasel Zippers: Wu Won’t Resign, Says He’ll Serve Out Term And Retire In 2012
Gates Of Vienna: What Do We Know?
Marginal Revolution: Means-Testing Medicare Is A Marginal Tax Increase
Michelle Malkin: No, James Fallows, The Washington Post Doesn’t Owe The World An Apology
Power Line: Someone Is Putting Words In Jen Rubin’s Mouth
American Thinker: Will The Hard Left Primary Obama?

Category: Live at Five

VIDEO: Jim and Bob, Possum-Killers

Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 31 Comments

We live up in the woods near South Mountain, east of Hagerstown, Maryland, and my wife has a rooster and some hens in the backyard which provide us with eggs. So I was working here in my basement office at home, a little after midnight, when my 18-year-old son Bob comes running in the door and yells for his twin brother: “Jim, get your gun! It’s a possum!” And out the door they went. A half-hour later, they returned safely and successfully. The possum? Not so much.

It’s obviously hereditary. I call ’em Bo and Luke.





You definitely ought to hit the tip jar. I’ll buy ’em some more shells.

Category: Family, humor, Video
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