The Other McCain

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

The Boundless Jealousies Of Deployment

Posted on | June 19, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Not only can I not attend Right Online, I can’t even upload the picture of BlogProf looking like he’s about to pick up Stacy McCain and shotput him across a hotel lobby.
Not that he would actually do that, mind you: I was merely engaging in a bit of hyperbole to tease you into following the link.

Category: Uncategorized

Legal Insurrection Is So Good, One Is Nearly Tempted To Attend Law School

Posted on | June 19, 2011 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

The title of this post is absolutely not snark. If there is one unintended consequence of the blogosphere, it is to point out that there are a few lawyers: Professors Althouse, Volokh, Reynolds, and of course Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, who are worth their salt. The other 98%, perhaps not so much.
Check out the new site.

Category: Uncategorized

Walter Russel Mead On Hypothetically
Un-jumping A Shark

Posted on | June 18, 2011 | 28 Comments

by Smitty

From “Can This Presidency Be Saved?”, emphasis mine:

President Obama still has a shot at convincing voters that the GOP would make things worse, but his administration has not just lost control over the direction of the economy. It has lost control of the discussion about the economy.

With a maximally bloody-minded view, precisely two stooges would render the above statement true. The effective question is whether sufficient voters can be duped into supporting the policy of failure, which has failed. This blog would like anyone who wishes to vote for BHO again to shout ‘Jehova’* once you have exited your polling place:

Why did the stimulus fail? What did the President learn from this failure and what will the President try next? The White House has been so busy bobbing and weaving it has not communicated a simple, clear story about what went wrong and what happens next.

The stimulus failed because capitalism is what succeeds. The administrations non-grasp of this simple truth, and systemic, willful refusal to revisit the false basis for its fundamental assertions, mark it and anyone benighted enough to support it as abject fools.

These and similar blunders have two things in common: they are unforced errors, and they undercut the President’s ability to present himself as a visionary leader who both understands where the country is headed and has a plan for meeting the obstacles in our path. He frequently appears surprised by events, and over time confidence in his leadership is leaking away.

What Mead calls ‘unforced errors’ are the simple fruit of false beliefs and assertions. The quack or snake oil salesman is only successful insofar as the steady supply of dupes continue to suspend disbelief. When was the last time a total fraud ever recovered? Can’t think of any.

Americans are realistic enough to understand that the breakdown of the blue social model is a messy process and that perhaps no president can deliver a pain free transition to the next stage. But what they aren’t hearing from President Obama is a compelling description of what has gone wrong, how it can be fixed, and how the policies he proposes will take us to the next level.

More fundamentally, Americans are realizing that to have ever expected such vaguely divine output from any human being or government is pure crap. Jig’s up, and it proved a mindless 4/4 disco beat anyway. Obama lacks the wisdom to grasp that his weltanschauung is false.

Mead concludes:

The longer the President fails to dominate the discussion about where this country is going the more his authority will erode. In the end, a failure to define the problem and outline a convincing solution will hurt more than what now appears his likely failure to regenerate healthy economic growth by the next election.

He may have only one chance to get this right. A failed attempt to define the problem and control the discussion would further fuzz the President’s image and reinforce the sense among many voters that the man is not up to the hour.

The Obama Presidency can still be saved, but only if the President becomes the kind of inspiring and effective leader these tough and uncertain times demand.

That is much, much harder than it looks.

No, he’s jumped the intellectual shark. Unfortunately, he’s still got to land, and will lay economic waste to the country while doing so. I hope he lives decades to come, and grows to realize the depth of the contempt people hold for his ideas.

*Update: As pointed out in the comments, the name English name for YVHV should likely end in an ‘h’. Even if somebody did register http://www.jehova.net/.

Category: Uncategorized

VIDEO: Stephen Bannon, Director of Palin Documentary ‘The Undefeated’

Posted on | June 18, 2011 | 28 Comments

MINNEAPOLIS
By now, you’ve heard the amazing buzz about The Undefeated, the new documentary about Sarah Palin. There was a special screen last night at the Right Online conference. Trust me, this is going to be a must-see blockbuster, a film that will change the way you think about Palin. Here is my interview with the movie’s director, Stephen K. Bannon:

Thanks to Melissa Clouthier for arranging the interview.

Category: Movies, Right Online, Sarah Palin

Editorial Peeves: Redundancies

Posted on | June 18, 2011 | 60 Comments

by Smitty

Allahpundit is a great blogger, but “Video: Sign the petition to ban job-killing ATM machines” tramples a peeve of mine. If you decode the acronym, you now have ‘automated teller machine machines’. Similarly, the new military ID is a Common Access Card, or CAC. As you might expect, people call it a CAC card. Gaaah! On a related note, please do not ‘reply back’ to email from me. A simple reply is sufficient.
The consideration of all for the content of what they are writing and saying is greatly appreciated.

Category: Uncategorized

Virginia State Senate Races

Posted on | June 18, 2011 | 1 Comment

by Smitty

This blog would like to tout two State Senate races in Virginia. I’m only a month late mentioning Bryan Rhode, who is running in the 22nd Senate District. I went to school with Bryan’s brother Rob, who is an outstanding American if there ever was.
Closer to the Potomac, Tito ‘the Builder’ Munoz is running in the 36th Senate District. I met Tito while campaigning for Patrick Murray in 2008, and esteem the gentleman highly. Hat tip to just a conservative girl.
Recall, the task of recovering the country from Progressive rot takes effort at all levels of government. Props to Rhode and Munoz for undertaking the effort to run.

Category: Uncategorized

Thanks, Rush!

Posted on | June 17, 2011 | 51 Comments

Here’s the transcript of Rush Limbaugh’s show today:

Folks, this is from Robert Stacy McCain, the American Spectator blog: “Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected within a week to make a decision on whether to enter the 2012 presidential campaign, according to one Republican source. Vendors of campaign services who hope to work for Team Palin…”
I guess “vendors of campaign services” are like pollsters and buttons and signs, T-shirts, that stuff. They’ve “been told that Palin, the 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate, will decide soon one way or another on mounting a 2012 campaign.” . . .

Rush then began to discuss reaction to a Rasmussen poll (45% of GOP Primary Voters Say It’s Bad for Party If Palin Enters Presidential Race) before returning to the topic:

By the way, Palin has tweeted in response to this, knocking down this story that she’s gonna make up her mind next week. The tweet says, “Really? Hmm, guess they forgot to inform me what I’m ‘expected to do’ next week.” This is in response to the American Spectator blog that I just read from which says that she’s expected within a week to make a decision on whether to run.

One of the difficult things about reporting on Sarah Palin is that only Sarah Palin can speak for Sarah Palin, and she only talks to Fox News. So if you’re a reporter who doesn’t work for Fox News, you have to get what you can get where you can get it. Before I filed that brief report at the Spectator this morning, I made a call to try to confirm it with Palin’s people. But I guess if you don’t work for Fox News, they don’t take your call.

So damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You either (a) work for Fox News or (b) aren’t allowed to report on Sarah Palin. And while I’m not complaining, I can certainly understand why this predicament irritates the 99% of political reporters who don’t work for Fox News.

Category: Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin

Ah, Krauthammer

Posted on | June 17, 2011 | 35 Comments

by Smitty (via NRO)

From CK on Fox:

I am surprised that so many Republicans are jumping on the War Powers Resolution. They will regret it, because if you have a Republican in office, you’re going to have isolationist Democrats who are going to try to restrain his exercise of his powers… and the Republicans aren’t going to like it. I would not truck in the War Powers Resolution.

I also think that the administration’s defense of what it’s doing is extremely weak and misguided. Obama’s answer essentially is, ‘Well, the resolution is out there, but it’s not relevant because this isn’t really a war,’ which is absurd and insulting. …

What he should say is, “I, like every other of my predecessors, I do not recognize the legality of this act and its authority over the presidency.’ And that’s where he should make his stand. …

Does Charles grasp that many conservatives are unhappy with the bi-partisan penchant for saber rattling? If socialism is the opiate of bureaucracy, then military adventurism is the alcohol of the national greatness set. BHO may be giving the military-industrial complex its bottle, but a look at the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll indicates the usual suspects may be having problems holding it down.
After three years of anything but sobriety or truth, there seems little hope of the administration dealing with, well, reality.
The question then moves to whether the surreality will make it across the impeachment threshhold. I doubt that. The administration will more or less seize up, but the impeachment will be the 2012 election itself. The country will stagger forward in a political stupor for another 17 months until the next inauguration, I reckon.

Category: Uncategorized
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