The Other McCain

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

Golf Poses Are Usually Not Suggestive

Posted on | July 6, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

But, then, media clown parades typically do not collide with Political Clown Parades.

Category: Uncategorized

I Bet Doug Hoffman Is Laughing Today

Posted on | July 6, 2011 | 5 Comments

“The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. . . . Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, 2003

You remember Doug Hoffman, the Tea Party-backed candidate who came this close to defeating the Establishment RINO in the 2009 special election in NY-23. For some reason, Hoffman came to mind when I saw this story at Politico:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will report raising approximately $2 million in the second fundraising quarter of the year and ending the month of June with $225,000 in the bank . . .
But in a steep obstacle to Gingrich’s comeback hopes, his campaign remains about a million dollars in debt. It will be a struggle for Gingrich to put his balance sheet in the black and fund the kind of operation traditionally required to compete in Iowa, where he has indicated he’ll attempt to turn his campaign around.
Gingrich supporters acknowledge that his debt represents a serious financial challenge, though they note that the Republican has paid down about 10 percent of $1.2 million in invoices since June 9, when most of his senior political staff resigned. . . .

Newt’s campaign has been Scozzafava-ed, you might say. Anybody who gives him a dime now is just wasting money. He’s finished.

As a road man for the Lords of Karma, I remember tears on Election Night in Saranac Lake, but Doug Hoffman must be laughing now.

Category: Doug Hoffman, Newt Gingrich

Iowa Organizer Says He’s ‘100 Percent’ Certain Sarah Palin Is Running

Posted on | July 6, 2011 | 68 Comments

When I called former Des Moines talk-radio host Steve Deace yesterday to talk about recent reports of staff turmoil in the Herman Cain campaign, he told me something that shocked me. And now he has reported it at his Web site:

I met recently with attorney Peter Singleton, who has been putting together a grassroots operation for Palin in Iowa for months now. I asked him point blank if he thought Palin was going to declare her candidacy, and his answer was “100%.”

There you go, for what it’s worth.

Category: Election, Iowa, Republicans, Sarah Palin

LIVE AT FIVE – 07.06.11

Posted on | July 6, 2011 | 3 Comments

TOP NEWS
Obama Prods Congress On Debt Deal

Calls on Congress to "do something big"

Invites Congressional leaders to White House for Thursday meeting

Somali Terror Suspect Held  In Secret Detention
First such suspect held by Obama outside the legal system


Casey Anthony’s Acquittal Shocks America
Defendant could be free as early as Thursday



POLITICS
Minnesota State Government Remains Closed

Workers erect a "closed" sign on a rest stop near Hinckley, MN

Governor Dayton, legislative leaders meet but neither side is budging; more than 20,000 of Minnesota’s 36,000 state workers remain on furlough

New Policy On Military Suicide Condolences



State Investigators Uncover A Decade Of Cheating In Atlanta Public Schools

Fire Departments, New Urbanism’s Village Designs Increasingly At Odds

Romney Accuses Obama Of Speaking Loudly And Carrying A Little Stick

Judge Imposes Temporary Halt On Costa Mesa Layoffs

Nevada Supremes Say No To “Ballot Royale”



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Gold Reaches $1516/Ounce After Moody’s Cuts Portugal Debt Rating To Junk
ECB’s Trichet Tightening As Europe Feels A Squeeze
Wal-Mart Offers Dime Discount On Gas As Prices Remain High
Oil Prices Rally On Bullish Forecast
MPs To Debate Phone Hacking Scandal
Apple’s iPhone Gains Handset Market Share, RIM’s Blackberry Loses
HP Plans August Release For 64GB TouchPad



SPORTS
Jeter Edges Closer To 3000 Hits As Yanks Top Tribe

Yankees captain Derek Jeter congratulates Curtis Granderson after his second-inning dinger

Sabathia goes seven, gets 11 K’s in 9-2 win

Reds’ Woes Continue In Lopsided Loss To Cardinals

Pirates Keep Rolling, Down Astros 5-1

Pacers To Announce Frank Vogel As Head Coach


The Rocket Goes To Trial

Phillies Hammer Marlins 14-2

Baker’s Wild Error Helps Nationals Past Cubs 3-2 And Over .500 Again



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Charlie Sheen Coming Back To TV September 19

To be roasted on Comedy Central

Sheen: “You could say I’ve been providing kindling for this roast for a while. It’s time to light it up. It’s going to be epic.” Roast will air opposite Ashton Kutcher’s debut on “Two And A Half Men” as Sheen’s replacement

Does Reese Witherspoon Have A Tummy Tattoo?

Hollywood’s Highest-Paid Actresses

Jennifer Aniston Going On Hiatus

Which “Real Housewife” Could Lose Her $6 Million Home?


“Gossip Girl” Targets Elizabeth Hurley

Christopher Walken To Play Zeus In “Gods Behaving Badly”

Charisma Carpenter To Guest On “Burn Notice”



FOREIGNERS
Libya Looks Toward Talks, But Quick Results Unlikely
Japan To Conduct Stress Tests On Nuclear Reactors
Weapons Prove Iranian Role In Iraq Terror, US Says
Thaksin Won’t Seek Role In Sister’s Government
EU Bans Egyptian Beans & Seeds After E. Coli Outbreak
Egyptian Courts Acquit Three Mubarak Ministers On Corruption Charges



BLOGS & STUFF
Gateway Pundit: NYT Squish David Brooks Says GOP Indecent For Not Raising Taxes
Legal Insurrection: Daily Beast Plays The David Duke Card
Hit & Run: Obama Uses Bully Pulpit To Demand End To Political Rhetoric
Yid With Lid: Why Gallup’s Analysis Of Jewish Voters Is Dishonest
Troglopundit: Baldwin’s Decision A Chance For Wisconsin To Go Even More Republican?
WSJ: Inside The Disappointing Comeback
Jim Geraghty: Running Mate Joe Biden, As Truthful As Ever Since Day One
Walter Russell Mead: The Shame Of The Cities And The Shade Of LBJ
Don Surber: Obama Snubs Reagan
Moe Lane: Obama Campaign Site Hacked

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

‘Like Losing Your Virginity …’

Posted on | July 5, 2011 | 19 Comments

“. . . you will never forget your first Instalanche.”

Unless, of course, somebody slips rohypnol in your drink at a party and you wake up the next morning with 10,000 new readers, trolls all over your comments, and a vague sense of guilty pleasure.

The same young blogger who wrote to Doug Ross sent me an e-mail seeking my advice and I replied, in part:

“Always drink beer in a bottle, because if a fight breaks out, you’ve got a weapon right there in your hand. Smash the bottom of the bottle against the bar, brandish the jagged shards like a knife (what they call a ‘Puerto Rican switchblade’) and loudly threaten to slice the throat of the first motherf—-r that gets in your way while you move warily toward the door.”

Do that just once at a Heritage Foundation cocktail reception, and the motherf—-rs won’t dare cause you trouble again.

Also, chicks dig it.

Category: Blogging, How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog

‘A Haunting Piece,’ IYKWIMAITYD

Posted on | July 5, 2011 | 32 Comments

From a liberal reporter’s forthcoming Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, This Bitch Is Dangerously Crazy:

McClelland, 31, sought professional help but said she ultimately cured herself by staging her own rape, which she writes about in a haunting piece for the online magazine Good. The title: “How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD.”
Her sexual partner mercilessly pinned her, beat her about the head and brutally violated McClelland — at her request.
“I was not crazy,” she told ABCNews.com.

Oh, hell, yes, she was. But I didn’t tell that to ABC News, because they didn’t ask me. This crazy woman needs to be mocked, and often, and by someone who knows how. Speaking of Ace of Spades . . .

“Psychiatrists give such people psychotropic medications; leftists give them book deals.”

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: My apologies to readers and to Ace for having originally the wrong link where I’d intended to link his commentary, which I was content to let be the last word on this subject.

Fixed the link, and now I’ve decided this McClelland woman deserves more than sarcastic putdowns and a link to Ace. Because I printed out McClelland’s tale, sat down and read through the whole thing, and want to go on record with a couple of observations:

  1. McClelland’s journalism career will end badly. She’ll get caught plagiarizing or fabricating or otherwise in a career-ending ethics scandal, and then she’ll be through as a reporter. Her obvious penchant for the “just-so story” — the riveting anecdote that exactly encapsulates the point she wishes to make — is a bit too well developed.
  2. Feminism licenses women writers to get away with stuff that no male writer would dare even attempt. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, writers like Norman Mailer could do tough-guy posturing and talk dirty about sex in the guise of journalism and be considered daring and avant-garde. But that style got overdone by bad Norman Mailer wannabes (and, honestly, the original was tiresome enough) so nobody does it anymore. What we have instead is women writing bizarre sexual self-revelations in the guise of “empowerment.” A few years ago, some woman wrote a whole book about her erotic anal adventures, a book that earned her universal praise from critics. No male writer — and certainly no heterosexual male writer — could get a book contract for a book about his sexual exploits, because the critics would laugh him to scorn. Who the hell cares about a straight guy “exploring erotic frontiers” or whatever purpose is allegedly served by women writing about sex?

Consider these few excerpts from McClelland’s tale:

By my second working day in Haiti, I was finding it alarmingly difficult to get out of bed in the morning, already having rape nightmares and, worse, daymares. And that was before one of the upstanding pillars of the Haitian elite, who insisted he was a gentleman because he loses his erection if a woman starts to fight him off, started to stalk me. On the third day, one of my drivers cornered me in an abandoned building, and I had to talk him out of his threats to touch me. On the third night, I got very drunk. That night, and the next nine nights. . . .
When a French UN peacekeeper I’d met went AWOL to knock on my door, wanting to know, when I gladly unlocked it for him, please if he could kiss me, I couldn’t feel him. Literally. I watched, confused, as he climbed onto me weightlessly, though he was clearly much bigger than I am. When we met again to say goodbye more than a week later, I grasped for anything concrete: my hands on his muscled, uniformed ass, my pelvis against the gun at his waist. Still, I could feel only something static and empty in the places usually occupied by my limbs. When he walked away—telling me he loved me, god bless ’em—I cried my face off. . . .
For months, anything could trigger the sobbing or the heaving. But two things guaranteed it: One was any smell reminiscent of the raw sewage at the displacement camp, where I’d thrown up in my mouth and swallowed it. The other was masturbating. Having gotten increasingly concerned about my new habit of wincing when I thought about sex, I became determined to touch myself like a normal, wholesome person. One time, I managed to keep the bad thoughts at bay all the way until the end. . . .

Are the actions and feelings described by McClelland true? We don’t know and cannot know. No objective verification is possible. We cannot ask the soldier, the driver, the “pillar of the Haitian elite” for their side of events. And certainly there is no one other than McClelland who can vouch for McClelland’s masturbation habits.

Perhaps you see why I am suspicious of a reporter who writes such things as serious journalism, especially when the things she writes have that “just-so” quality about them. Especially when the writer is hustling a new book. And most especially when it occurs to me that the writer’s agent must surely be sending this 2,790-word wild-brutal-sex article to Hollywood producers, directors and actors.

How vividly dramatic, you see. The tropical third-world setting. French U.N. peace-keepers. The tragedy of an earthquake, the tragedy of rape, the tragedy of poverty — and the courageous (but vulnerable) young female reporter in the midst of all this tragic human drama.

It’s Jurassic Park, but with Haitian rapists as the menacing dinosaurs.

My advice to Mac McClelland: Get the largest possible cash fee up front, since it’s about 90% certain that’s all you’ll ever see in one of these “development” deals. Also, demand points on the gross box-office receipts. Points on the net profit are for chumps, because the studio accountants will always find a way to rip you off, shrinking the profit by billing various costs against the bottom line.

Take the money and run, sweetheart — that’s the Hollywood way.

Category: Feminism, Liberals, Sex

HOLY FREAKING CRAP! Casey Anthony Becomes the O.J. Simpson of Baby-Killers

Posted on | July 5, 2011 | 129 Comments

The Florida jury just acquitted her of killing her 2-year-old, and I expect her soon to announce that she will now go hunting  the “real killers” . . .

UPDATE: The Orlando Sentinel:

The verdict means 25-year-old Anthony was found not guilty of all charges except for four counts of providing false information to law enforcement officer. She will be spared a death sentence, but could still potentially face years behind bars in a Florida prison.
She will be sentenced Thursday at 9 a.m.
Jurors deliberated for less than 11 hours over two days, pondering the witness testimony and hundreds of pieces evidence they were presented with over the several-week trial. The jury found Anthony not-guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child.

Frankly, I thought she deserved the death penalty for hogging up endless hours of cable-TV news coverage, but apparently that’s not a capital felony in Florida.

UPDATE II: Donald Douglas is updating what is sure to be a comprehensive aggregation and already has video of the lying murderous slut’s reaction to her acquittal:

While Casey has been acquitted of murder, she is certainly guilty of being a lying slut but — just like hogging up cable-news coverage — that’s not a death-penalty crime in Florida.

Professor Glenn Reynolds says the moral of the story is, “Don’t talk to the cops.” No, I’d say the moral is, “Never trust a lying slut.” Or challenge my equanimity, for that matter.

UPDATE III: An Orlando TV station declares that the trial “captivated the nation.” Which is, I suppose, a way of saying that TV ran wall-to-wall coverage for the benefit of idiots who were “captivated,” which no sane person could have been. Some postgraduate student of communication theory will undoubtedly write his Ph.D. dissertation on what the Casey Anthony saga tells us about the process by which network TV producers decide which crimes to turn into media circuses.


Category: Crime, Florida

GOP Swears Balanced Budget Amend. Will Make Congress Serious About The Job They’ve Blown Off For Decades

Posted on | July 5, 2011 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

One of the challenges in Afghanistan is that there just isn’t a competent workforce to do, for example, wire a building. You’ve just had a building built. Your likelihood in the winter of turning on the heat and not having your new building, itself, become the heat source is just not where most insurance companies would like it to be. Not wanting to get too pejorative here.
Now, after the smoke has all been let out of your building, and you build another, and the same people come back and offer to wire it again, where is your trust? Is your trust down in the abused spouse range? Are you the sort of punishment glutton that figures you’re just funding OJT for these genuinely nice, but incompetent folks?
Senatorial hopeful George Allencopies a National Review article about the GOP and the balanced budget amendment:

A Balanced Budget Amendment must be included in any agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Helping our economy grow and create jobs needs to start with binding steps to exercise fiscal restraint. The reckless and wasteful spending in Washington is out-of-control, and it’s time that lawmakers take a stand and force our country to get its fiscal house in order.

What sort of stand should these politicians make, George? Lemonade? Could they run such a stand? Could they prove their capacity to do so, before we extend more trust?
I’m working hard to be constructive here. What will be new about this balanced budget amendment that will give our government a lasting shot of common sense? Will there be an emergency spending loophole? Will we see budgeting, itself, become a purely emergency evolution?
In short, again-prospective-Senator Allen, if we’re going to waste time amending the Constitution to say we should balance the budget, we should also amend it to force Congressmen to sign papers with their real names. They would still behave as cartoon characters, one suspects.
No, one suspects this shall amount to nothing more than political theater. Here are some suggestions for what to do to regain some credibility:

  • Axe some executive departments. Snuff some Congressional committees.
  • Implement a one page tax code. (A call to axe the IRS outright might be seen as extreme.)
  • Reduce non-military federal jobs by a percentage equal to jobs lost since BHO was sworn in.

Show some leadership, George. Tell us how you’ll liberate Americans from the thrall of Atrocious Congresses Past. We’ll love you for it.

Category: Uncategorized
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