The Other McCain

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

Rep. Allen West: End Aid to Pakistan

Posted on | May 3, 2011 | 14 Comments

Congress should cut off foreign aid to Pakistan “unless we get a clear explanation” of whether the Pakistani government “was harboring Osama bin Laden,” Rep. Allen West (R-Florida) said in a letter sent Tuesday to the chairwoman of the House subcommittee that oversees foreign aid programs.

Click here to see a PDF of Rep. West’s letter to Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.

In the letter, West said that, “like many Americans,” he had believed bin Laden was hiding in northwest Pakistan’s tribal regions, where it would have been “very difficult to locate any individual, especially the most wanted terrorist in the world.”

“However, we now learn that Osama bin Laden was living in a million-dollar compound which was custom-built in 2005 in Abbotabad . . . The heavily fortified compound . . . is only a few hundred yards from the Pakistan Military Academy,” West wrote in the lettter to Granger. “It is not unreasonable for the American people to question if Osama bin Laden was located on government-controlled land, next to a military academy, and so close to the nation’s capital. What real assistance was the Pakistan Government providing for the last 10 years to locate the al-Qaeda leader and bring him to justice?”

West wrote: “I think it is quite clear that unless we get a clear explanation of what the Government of Pakistan knew abojut the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, all foreign aid from American taxpayers to this nation needs to cease. We need to understand whether the Government of Pakistan was harboring Osama bin Laden all these years.”

West, a retired Army lieutenant-colonel, served in Iraq with the 4th Infantry Division. He was elected to Congress in Florida’s 22nd District last year with strong support from the Tea Party movement, and is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

UPDATE: West’s suspicions about the Pakistani government’s relationship with bin Laden would appear justified by comments from CIA Director Leon Panetta. In an interview with Time magazine, Panetta said that U.S. officials ruled out informing Islamabad of their plans to get the al-Qaeda leader because “it was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets.”

UPDATE II: Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) today announced plans to introduce the Pakistan Foreign Aid Accountability Act, which “would require the State Department to certify to Congress that Pakistan wasn’t giving a sanctuary to the former world’s most wanted terrorist,” the Houston Chronicle reports:

Poe noted that Congress has already appropriated $3 billion to Pakistan for the year, and said unless the State Department can show that the country wasn’t harboring bin Laden, it should not receive “one more cent of American aid.”
“This is exactly why we need to reevaluate the foreign aid that we send to countries that do not have America’s best interest in mind,” he said.

UPDATE III: Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has been catching heat for his defense of the U.S. alliance with Pakistan.

UPDATE IV: PJTV interviews Rep. West (click image to watch):

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Category: Allen West, Pakistan, Terrorism

Chubby Chasers!

Posted on | May 3, 2011 | 11 Comments

A researcher who analyzed Internet search data about . . . uh, online erotica reports that guys like women with more to love:

[M]en prefer overweight women to underweight women. There are almost three times as many searches for fat women as there are for skinny women, and lest you think that’s some way we treated the search data, this is also reflected in popularity on adult sites. There are many more video sites devoted to overweight women than underweight women. Now, I should say as a caveat that men prefer healthy weight women overall. But if the choice is between a woman with a few extra pounds or a few less pounds, most guys will choose more pounds.

Science has thereby demonstrated the existence of a phenomenon we know as the Dan Collins Syndrome.

Category: Piece of Work in Progress, Science

‘Renounce and Abjure’

Posted on | May 3, 2011 | 7 Comments

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same . . .”
— Oath of U.S. Citizenship

That oath came to mind when I saw a post at Maggie’s Notebook about an immigrant named Mona Eltahawy, who has gotten herself all worked up into a tizzy about what she calls “frat boy” celebrations of the death of Osama bin Laden.

In the name of “multiculturalism” we have crammed our cities full of people like Mona Eltahawy, who feel no love or allegiance to this country, but instead cling to their narrowly defined ethnic identities, so permanently alienated from the American mainstream that they can feel no joy at our nation’s triumphs. These estranged newcomers — citizens in name only — are the fertile soil on which the seeds of hatred are sown.

“Hey, hey! Ho, ho! We support the PLO!”

Category: Foreigners, Immigration, Islam, Terrorism

White House Can’t Get Its Story Straight on How Osama Bin Laden Was Killed

Posted on | May 3, 2011 | 23 Comments

This is the kind of stuff that gives rise to conspiracy theories:

The White House backed away Monday evening from key details in its narrative about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, including claims by senior U.S. officials that the Al Qaeda leader had a weapon and may have fired it during a gun battle with U.S. forces.
Officials also retreated from claims that one of bin Laden’s wives was killed in the raid and that bin Laden was using her as a human shield before she was shot by U.S. forces.

(Via Memeorandum.) Jimmie Bise Jr. at Hot Air:

I can’t imagine that the anti-war left will stand quietly for much longer while President Obama does a victory lap for snuffing an unarmed old man no matter how much they may want him re-elected.

But who cares? Consistent non-partisan peaceniks tend to be kooks like Cindy Sheehan and fanatics like Glenn Greenwald. From the political perspective of the White House, who cares whether a relative handful of cranks and crackpots whine about this? I don’t seem to recall a sudden exodus of peaceniks from the Democrat Party when Bill Clinton ordered relentless bombing of Serbia in “The War of Monica’s Thong.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart says the Left is politicizing the death of bin Laden. But no, no, no, says Brian Beutler, it’s the Right that’s politicizing the death of bin Laden. And if you find all this confusing, you’re certainly not the only one:

(Hat-tip: Blogbat on Twitter.)

UPDATE: Linked by The Lonely Conservative, Bob Belvedere at The Camp of the Saints and Sissy Willis — thanks! — and now a Memeorandum thread. Meanwhile, Allahpundit is gobsmacked at the clumsiness of the White House communications operation:

How did we go from “Bin Laden had a weapon and was using his wife as a human shield” to “Bin Laden was unarmed and didn’t have a human shield” in the span of 24 hours when there’s apparently helmet-cam footage of the whole raid? Surely, surely, the White House knew that conspiracy cranks and naysayers would cite every discrepancy in the official narrative as “proof” that Bin Laden’s still alive or whatever.

Video of Jay Carney’s White House press conference:


Category: Barack Obama, Pakistan, Terrorism

Congressional Investigation Exposes White House ‘Transparency’ Myth

Posted on | May 3, 2011 | 2 Comments

Officials in the Obama administration “go to great lengths to avoid disclosing their meetings with lobbyists,” a Republican congressman said Tuesday, as he opened a House subcommittee hearing to investigate whether the White House is keeping its promises of “transparency.”

“The American people were promised a new era of openness and accountability and they haven’t gotten it,” said Rep. Cliff Stearns, chairman of the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“We’ve seen a lack of transparency in the Administration’s response to FOIA requests; their secrecy about the work done by key czars, such as the Climate Change Czar and the Health Reform Czar; and, more recently, they’ve tried to require selective disclosure of the political contributions of government contractors, but not unions,” Stearns said. “And our own investigation into the secret health care negotiations has been delayed by the Administration for more than a year.”

Stearns cited a recent report by the Center for Public Integrity which found that logs of White House visitors released by the administration “routinely omit or cloud key details about the identity of visitors, who they met with, the nature of the visit, and even includes the names of people who never showed up. These are critical gaps that raise doubts about their historical accuracy and utility in helping the public understand White House operations from social events to meetings on key policy debates.”

As Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner noted, “White House staff have purposely and repeatedly circumvented … visitor logs by meeting with lobbyists at Caribou Coffee and other locations outside of the White House.”

The White House refused to send any administration officials to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, Sterns noted. The complete text of Stearn’s opening statement is below. Read more

Category: Barack Obama, Congress

Feminists Offended by TV Commercial; Osama bin Laden? Not So Offensive

Posted on | May 3, 2011 | 8 Comments

This is National Offend a Feminist Week, and last night I checked in to see what was happening at Feministing, where Lori Adelman was profoundly offended by this commercial for Klondike ice cream bars:

Now, this is what we call a “joke.” The guy in the commercial is watching the game, and his wife wants to talk to him about something else — something greatly interesting to her, but of no interest to him, since he is watching the game.

The joke is dependent on stereotypes: Guys just want to watch sports on TV and aren’t good at listening to their wives. But there is a recognizable element of truth to these stereotypes, and certainly many married people — husbands and wives alike — will smile in recognition.

Adelman is offended, however: “Wives, of course, only talk about things like which color to paint the foyer.”

No, but whatever she wants to talk about while her husband is watching the game is, from her husband’s perspective, trivial. The point of the joke isn’t that wives only talk about trivial things. Rather, it is about the fact that women value communication in a way that most men don’t. (And guys value sports in ways that women usually don’t.)

Entire essays have been written on the subject of differences in how men and women communicate. This TV commercial oversimplifies these differences, and arguably does so in a sexist direction, but hey — it’s just a freaking commercial, OK?

Meanwhile, Feministing offers a guest-blog by a “race theory” professor, Falguni A. Sheth, who is enraged by the death of Osama bin Laden:

The assassination of Osama Bin Laden doesn’t signal a victory for Americans but rather a resounding alarm about the surreal state of affairs in which we Americans have landed, with President Obama at the helm, leading the charge to assassinate Americans and foreigners alike, and vicious beatings of all others who express dissent and stand in the way of the United States Government. We must finally set our sights on neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, but instead put our faith for hope and change in a third party who will kick these vicious xenophobic, racist, brutal plutocrats out of office, and send their banker and insurance friends packing as well. Shame, President Obama, on you and all your “Democratic” colleagues.

You really ought to read the whole thing, just to see how demented this woman is in her anti-Americanism. (You won’t be surprised to learn she is a Berkeley alumna.) But while the editors of Feministing permit Professor Sheth 1,000 words to denounce American “imperialism,” they offer just a brief and uncritical mention of this bit of news:

There are reports that during the attack on the Osama bin Laden’s compound yesterday, a woman was used as a human shield. The President’s chief counterterrorism adviser says that woman was one of bin Laden’s wives.

Not a peep of criticism there of Islam’s explicit endorsement of polygamy, nor any acknowledgement that, in fighting militant Islam, the West is confronting a belief system infinitely more oppressive of women than anything in that Klondike TV commercial.

Category: National Offend a Feminist Week

Wow: Charlie Sheen Visits Tuscaloosa

Posted on | May 3, 2011 | 4 Comments

He’s vowing to organize a fundraiser featuring his Hollywood friends to help tornado victims in Alabama:

You know what would be cool? If Charlie could get Alyssa Milano to join his Alabama fundraiser. Just sayin’ . . .

Category: Alabama, Celebrities

Just a Coincidence, I’m Sure

Posted on | May 3, 2011 | 12 Comments

Aleister at American Glob:

September 11, 2009 – Obama Skips Ground Zero Memorial, Sends Joe Biden

September 11, 2010 – Obama Skips Ground Zero Memorial, Sends Joe Biden

May 5, 2011 – Obama to visit Ground Zero

And how convenient that he’s decided to visit Ground Zero on Thursday — same day as the South Carolina GOP debate. Just a coincidence.

Also a coincidence? Romney will skip the Carolina debate.

Also skipping: Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachmann. It should be kept in mind that, since 1980, no Republican has won the nomination without winning the South Carolina primary. Georgia’s Herman Cain is practically on home turf there, and coming off a strong showing Friday in New Hampshire. Yeah, I know it’s early, but the key GOP activists in South Carolina will remember who dissed them by skipping this debate.

Isn’t it time you joined the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain?

Category: Barack Obama, Debates, Election 2012, Herman Cain, South Carolina
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