The Other McCain

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

In the Future, Every Semi-Famous Woman Will Be Photographed Naked

Posted on | May 11, 2011 | 5 Comments

An addendum to Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” prophecy, based on two items at the celebrity gossip aggregator WeSmirch:

So that Set A (“semi-famous women”) and Set B (“nude women”) eventually will overlap to such a degree as to be mathematically coterminous.

Of these two latest examples of Set AB (“semi-famous nude women”), Lizzy Jagger is probably of more interest because of the novelty factor, given that erstwhile Sheen companion Bree Olson has been an “adult video” performer for several years. As noted during Charlie’s “winning” meltdown, Olson (real name, Rachel Oberlin) won a 2008 award for “Best Anal Scene,” after which we might suppose that she has nothing really new to reveal by merely posing naked in Playboy.

We are not yet prepared to predict whether all semi-famous women will, in the future, publicly perform such acts as those for which Bree Olson is known. However, that possibility cannot be ruled out.

In other naked news, Meghan McCain goes “naked” in skin-cancer prevention public service announcement. (“Someone needs to do a charity to help people regain their sight after gouging out their eyes,” as the AOSHQ headline says.) And, also via AOSHQ, here’s a video of a guy who goes crazy on a New York subway, strips naked and starts screaming about black people and Jews. (OBLIGATORY NSFW CONTENT WARNING.)

Yeah, it’s sideways — recorded with a cell-phone.

Category: Celebrities

BREAKING: New Iowa Poll Shows Herman Cain Surge to Double-Digit Lead

Posted on | May 11, 2011 | 26 Comments

Via Steve Foley at Citizens for Cain:

Herman Cain . . . . . . . .23.7%
Mike Huckabee . . . . . . 12.3%
Newt Gingrich . . . . . . . 9.7%
Ron Paul . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1%
Sarah Palin . . . . . . . . . 8.3%
Michele Bachmann . . . . 6.8%
Donald Trump . . . . . . . 6.6%
Mitt Romney . . . . . . . . 5.8%
Tim Pawlenty . . . . . . . 4.4%
Rick Santorum . . . . . . . 4.2%
Mitch Daniels . . . . . . . . 2.2%
Jon Huntsman . . . . . . . 0.2%

This survey by 2012 Iowa Report is evidently not a random poll of likely Republican caucus-goers, but is described thus: “The 2012 Iowa Report Poll, a project of Grassfire Nation, is a special survey of Iowa conservatives conducted weekly to help measure where Iowa conservatives stand on the 2012 Republican presidential field.”

I’m not sure what that means, but it certainly demonstrates that last week’s South Carolina debate helped boost Cain’s profile. He has gotten past the problem of “Herman Who?”

Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain, Iowa, Polls

Of Straw Men, Politics and Policy

Posted on | May 11, 2011 | 4 Comments

Here is (limited) praise of the use of “straw men” in discourse and, guest-blogging at Instapundit, Kenneth Anderson says, “I rather agree.”

Stipulate that creating a tendentious characterization of an opposing argument for the sake of argument is nothing particularly objectionable.

If all you are doing is hashing out ideas in a more or less hypothetical fashion, then you may create and hack down entire brigades of straw-man opponents, without inflicting any real harm on anyone. (I sometimes have to point out to critics of my blog that, if I’m wrong, the stakes are rather low, given my limited influence.)

The situation is much different, however, when we see how often President Obama employs the straw men “some” and “others” to falsely present his own agenda as a sort of moderate Third Way compromise between two equally obnoxious extremes. Obama presents himself as the Goldilocks of public policy, sampling the bowls of porridge at the home of the Three Bears until he finds one that is neither too hot nor too cold. This presentation of rejected (hypothetical) alternatives conveniently relieves Obama of justifying his own specific policy proposals as necessary. Read more

Category: Barack Obama

NY-26 Update: New TV Ad; NRCC Gets Involved; Whither David Ballavia? UPDATE: Holy Freaking Crap! Donald Trump Now Blaming Paul Ryan?

Posted on | May 11, 2011 | 15 Comments

Lots of new developments in New York’s 26th District special election campaign since I blogged about it yesterday. First, here’s a look at that new TV ad from American Crossroads:

They’re targeting Crazy Jack Davis, the fake “Tea Party” candidate who ran three times unsuccessfully as a Democrat in 2004, 2006, and 2008. Meanwhile, in a sign of surging interest in this key race — the special election is May 24 — the national GOP is getting more directly involved on behalf of Republican Jane Corwin:

The National Republican Congressional Committee hasn’t invested in the increasingly competitive race for a vacant western New York House seat – until now.
The House GOP campaign arm has activated its independent expenditure unit, authorizing it to begin spending funds in the race, according to an NRCC official.
Unlike the NRCC itself, the committee’s independent expenditure wing does not face contribution limits in the race and can spend freely on TV, radio ads, get-out-the-vote and other election efforts. . . .
The committee has funneled $40,000 in checks from House GOP lawmakers to her campaign, and has dispatched Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions to hold in-district fundraisers for her.
The committee has also been holding nightly phone banks in support of Corwin, and is assisting her campaign with GOTV and communications efforts.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for its part, has invested $250,000 in TV time in the race and has funneled around $100,000 to Hochul’s campaign.

Finally (and this might have been expected), disgruntled former Republican candidate David Bellavia may be prepared to endorse Davis.

Bellavia and many of his supporters felt betrayed by the GOP establishment’s choice of Corwin. This very much reminds me of the situation during the PA-12 special election a year ago, when the disgruntled Bill Russell refused to support the nominee Tim Burns.

The fortunate difference is that NY-26 is a natural Republican stronghold, whereas PA-12 was Democrat Jack Murtha’s personal fiefdom. So while Bellavia’s disaffection can hurt the GOP, it’s not nearly as disastrous as was Russell’s in the Democrat-leaning Pennsylvania district where the Republicans needed every possible break merely to be competitive. Meanwhile, there’s more big news in NY-26:

The Tea Party group FreedomWorks is mobilizing its grassroots network in New York’s 26th congressional district to “defend the Tea Party brand” against third party candidate Jack Davis, who the group is labeling “a fraud.”
FreedomWorks, led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R), is the latest national group to get involved in the May 24 special election with polls showing a tight three way contest between Democrat Kathy Hochul, Republican Jane Corwin and Davis. . . .
“We basically feel that we need to defend the Tea Party brand,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the group’s director of federal and state campaigns, who called Davis “a fraud.”
Steinhauser said the group will coordinate with local Tea Party leaders to organize door-to-door canvassing efforts and ask its members across the country to participate in phone banking efforts targeting Davis.

Less than two weeks until the election, and this one’s turning into a real donnybrook.

JANE CORWIN FOR U.S. CONGRESS

UPDATE: Buffalo Democratic blogger Chris Charvella has some criticism of the American Crossroads ad that are worth reading. The rhetoric of the ad very much resembles the kind of stuff the DCCC was throwing at Republicans during the 2010 cycle.

So why do we have a conservative PAC making Democrat-style class-warfare attacks on a third-party candidate? I guess the point is to confuse further the already-confused independent voters. Maybe American Crossroads has looked at the polling numbers and figured out something about the NY-26 electorate that isn’t apparent to an outside viewer.

UPDATE II: This is just abominable:

If Republican Jane Corwin goes down in defeat in the May 24 special election in New York’s 26th congressional district, blame Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget, Donald Trump said Wednesday.
Trump, speaking in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire, blamed Ryan’s budget proposal — in particular, its controversial provision to reform Medicare — for dragging Corwin into a competitive race to replace resigned Rep. Chris Lee (R).
“A very popular Republican woman is running for the office. She was expected to win easily,” Trump said in the Granite State. “She’s having a hard time defending that whole situation with Medicare.”
“Too early, too soon. There was no reason for him to do it,” he later said.

Of all the numerous problems facing Jane Corwin in NY-26, I’d guess that this is very close to being a non-factor. That’s merely a guess, of course, since I’m not in the district and just began paying attention to the campaign yesterday. But for Trump to attempt to make this about something happening in D.C., rather than something happening in the 26th District, strikes me as implausible.

Small wonder, really, that the “Trump bubble” as a potential GOP 2012 presidential candidate was so short-lived.

UPDATE III: Wow, it sure is a weird coincidence that Trump is making the exact same argument as Nancy Pelosi.

It’s almost as if Trump were . . . a Democrat, or something.

Category: Congress, Election, New York, Republicans, Tea Party

U.S. Government Program Providing Global Opportunities for Women

Posted on | May 11, 2011 | 16 Comments

If by “global opportunities,” you mean a chance to get raped by thugs in backward Third World countries:

Jess Smochek arrived in Bangladesh in 2004 as a 23-year-old Peace Corps volunteer with dreams of teaching English and “helping the world.” She left six weeks later a rape victim after being brutalized in an alley by a knife-wielding gang. . . .
Today, Ms. Smochek is among a growing group of former Peace Corps volunteers who are speaking out about their sexual assaults, prompting scrutiny from Congress and a pledge from the agency for reform. In going public, they are exposing an ugly sliver of life in the Peace Corps: the dangers that volunteers face in far-flung corners of the world and the inconsistent — and, some say, callous — treatment they receive when they become crime victims. …
But from 2000 to 2009, on average, 22 Peace Corps women each year reported being the victims of rape or attempted rape, the agency says. During that time, more than 1,000 Peace Corps volunteers reported sexual assaults, including 221 rapes or attempted rapes. . . .

Read the whole thing. Here is a video report:

You may be surprised (or perhaps not so surprised) to learn that Democrats are siding with the agency against the victims:

Apparently, just as some feminist groups were prepared to give President Bill Clinton a pass on his record of sexual harassment, so now some Democrats are willing to do the same with the Peace Corps on its sorry record on rape. We’ll be waiting to see whether feminist groups who claim to speak for female victims of sexual violence will also be so awed by the memory of John F. Kennedy that they will refuse to pressure Congress to help Peace Corps volunteers who have been victimized while serving their nation abroad.

There is a metaphor somewhere in that story, I’m sure, although I hesitate to speculate what it might be.

Category: Crime, Foreigners

Not Quite Sure What to Make of This

Posted on | May 11, 2011 | 12 Comments

One of the basic principles of blogging is, Know Where Your Traffic Is Coming From. How are readers reaching your site? Are they coming from links at other blogs? Are they finding you through search engines? Social networking? Tweets by Alyssa Milano?

If the object of the game is to increase traffic — and doesn’t everybody want more readers? — you’ve got to have some idea of what your current traffic is all about. So I spend a good bit of time looking at SiteMeter statistics, monitoring traffic, and this morning I spotted something unusual.

Someone came here from a site called “F*** Yeah Chubby Girls.”

I screen-capped the visit to preserve a record of it. “F*** Yeah Chubby Girls” is a “body acceptance” site, not an online dating service. (Sorry to disappoint you, guys.) The idea is that plus-sized ladies submit photos of themselves (and brief notes) so as to express pride and confidence in their chubbiness.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

In fact, I’m all in favor of it. (I’m sure “Chubby Chaser” Dan Collins is also in favor of it.) As I’ve explained before, I totally approve of ladies with “more to love” or, as folks say down home, more cushion for the pushin’. Go right ahead and have yourself another plate of biscuits and gravy, sweetheart. It’s all good to me.

Being supportive of the “body acceptance” movement, I think it’s a good idea to share at least one of the “F*** Yeah Chubby Girls” submissions, so that readers can have an opportunity to express their own supportive responses. Read more

Category: Feminism, Piece of Work in Progress, Rule 5

Obama’s Private $35,000 Fundraiser

Posted on | May 11, 2011 | 9 Comments

You probably didn’t hear much on the news about this event, did you?

President Obama’s take from his Austin, Texas, fundraisers is $2 million, a Democratic source said Tuesday.
More than 50 attendees paid $35,800 – the maximum legal limit – to dine with the president at a private residence. Attendance at a separate reception for more than 700 people at Austin’s Moody Theater started at $44 for students and $1000 for floor tickets to watch Obama speak and country artist Robert Earl Keen perform.

The president is now using the death of Osama bin Laden as an applause line in his fundraising speeches. So thank you, Navy SEALs, for your contributions to the president’s re-election campaign!

Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012

How Not to Fix Your Economy

Posted on | May 11, 2011 | 12 Comments

“Greek labor unions were planning a general strike and a mass protest on Wednesday against the country’s economic austerity measures.”

The labor unions, which have done so much to wreck the Greek economy, are now fighting against efforts to repair the damage.

It’s like Wisconsin, really.

Category: Economics, Greece
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