The Other McCain

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

Think Right-Wingers Started ‘Birther’ Rumors? Nope: Clinton Supporters!

Posted on | April 29, 2011 | 17 Comments

Clay Waters at Newsbusters explains “the rumor that Obama was not a U.S. citizen was initially spread in April 2008 by a group of Hillary Clinton supporters,” which is something to keep in mind the next time someone claims “raaaaacism” is the besetting sin of Republicans.

The media often promote all manner of myths that lack basis in fact. Thursday evening, I was working on the blog while the TV in my home office was tuned to Fox News. My 12-year-old son Jefferson was doing his homework on the sofa in the office when, on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Republican strategist Margaret Hoover said that Obama is the only president whose citizenship has ever been questioned.

“She’s wrong,” Jefferson said. “What about Chester Arthur?”

“Chester Arthur?” I asked.

“Yeah. They said Chester Arthur was born in Canada.”

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“I looked it up on the Internet. It was on the History Channel.”

So I looked it up myself, and it’s true: During the 1880 presidential campaign, after Arthur was chosen as James Garfield’s running mate, Democrats spread the rumor that Arthur — son of an Irish immigrant — was actually born in Quebec, rather than Vermont. The Associated Press reported last year: “According to historical accounts, Republican bosses wanted [Arthur] to provide proof of his birthplace, but he never did.”

This is just another example of liberal double-standards, where they blame Republicans for something Democrats did. For example, it was Al Gore who first used the Willie Horton case against Mike Dukakis during the 1988 Democrat primary campaign. Yet the infamous Willie Horton ad, which aired only briefly after Dukakis got the nomination, is always cited as evidence of GOP race-baiting. (Ann Coulter addresses the Willie Horton myth, and its subsequent use in media lies, in her books Godless and Guilty.)

The reason this needs to be pointed out is not to engage in any kind of “tu quoque” one-upsmanship against Democrats, but rather because media bias is so ubiquitous that even Republicans like Margaret Hoover, who really ought to know better, help spread these Democrat-friendly myths.

While I have never been interested in the “Birther” allegations, which strike me as politically moot, if turnabout is fair play, then certainly conservatives can play the “just asking questions” games that Democrats used throughout the Bush years. Donald Douglas has video of Pamela Geller asking questions on Fox Business Network.

Is it offensive or “racist” to ask such questions? Who cares? Pamela Geller is not running for president. And as I wrote in addressing the “Birtherdämmerung” at The American Spectator:

Having concluded the Wagnerian saga of Obama’s Hawaiian origins, his opponents are now left to pursue the more mundane mission of convincing a majority of their fellow Americans that the president’s policies are harmful and destructive. That’s neither a conspiracy nor a theory, but a fact.

Let’s let Rush Limbaugh have the last word:

If Obama is so smart, isn’t two and a half years enough time to figure out it isn’t working? . . . Isn’t two and a half years enough time to realize that you’re on the wrong path?

Just askin’ questions . . .


Category: Barack Obama, Conspiracy Theories, Hillary Clinton, Racism

Ye Merry Olde Upskirt Traffic

Posted on | April 29, 2011 | 21 Comments

Back in November, when I first had the silly idea of grabbing the “Kate Middleton upskirt photo” Google-bomb (I blame John Hawkins and his Linkiest aggregator site for the inspiration), I little imagined how traffic would surge on the royal wedding day. Read more

Category: Great Britain, Marriage, Rule 5

George Soros: Forget About Adam Smith; My Invisible Pimp Hand Is Strong

Posted on | April 29, 2011 | 15 Comments

by Smitty (via George Scoville)

Via the BlogCon email list, Scoville pointed to a George Soros column Politico. First, it’s a brief article. At just under 1,500 words, there is no way to shoehorn complex ideas into a small space. Nevertheless, it is revealing, and you should read the whole thing.

Soros gives us some biographical information, and then sets up Popper and Hayek as intellectual competitors. Popper preaching falsifiability, Hayek the invisible hand that plays Freedbird on the guitar of the marketplace. I’ll note that Popper offers a methodological tool; Hayek an analysis.

Soros offers a play-by-play of the Popper/Hayek debate in Economica for which he is old enough to have been present.

With that, here is what I think is the center of Soros’ argument, emphasis mine throughout:

While I was admiring the elegance of Popper’s theory, I was also studying elementary economics. I was struck by a contradiction between the theory of perfect competition, which postulated perfect knowledge, with Popper’s theory, which asserted that perfect knowledge was unattainable. The contradiction could be resolved by recognizing that economic theory cannot meet the standards of Newtonian physics.

Read more

Category: George Soros

Nearly Enjoying Trifecta

Posted on | April 29, 2011 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Trifecta has a bull session about amending the Constitution. They badly need to support buffering, so that I can let the clip download at a medium pace in a back tab, and then watch it normally. Typing commentary for this post was somewhat improved by the stop-n-go motion, but it’s bad. I managed to enjoy 3 minutes of it. (Click to watch.)

They’re on about term limits. ‘Meh’, say I. Term limits are symptomatic, but not, of themselves, problematic. The real issue is the systemic drivers that reward a West Virginia for afflicting the rest of the country with Byrd droppings for half a century.
As I’ve already argued at some length, what we need to do, rather than add, is subtract.
Fiscal responsibility through a budget amendment is another bugaboo. There will be a loophole for ’emergency’ spending, and reality, itself, will become a total emergency.
A fair, flat tax with everyone having skin in the game isn’t such a bad idea, but it still accedes too much power to DC, in my opinion. States should firewall their citizens from DC, and tax farm however the citizens see fit. This would be slightly less stable, but States need skin in the game, too. My notion would have the states liable for a target amount, the budget limited to the previous years’ actual receipts, and a VAT assessed on States that fail to meet their tax target of sufficient magnitude to make up the previous year’s delta.
Admittedly, this sucks because the government’s revenue stream is less predictable. However, that ain’t no bug: it’s a feature. Reality-based estimates of what the government actually can provide will help curb the propensity for idiocy. In other words, we’d have a desperately needed negative feedback loop.
My full presecription is here.

Update: linked at The Camp of the Saints.

Category: Constitution

EXCLUSIVE: Royal Wedding Photo

Posted on | April 29, 2011 | 14 Comments

Guarantee no other site on the Internet has this one:

That’s my 8-year-old daughter Reagan Elizabeth, who got up at 4 a.m. to watch coverage of the royal wedding. Note the tiara. We call her “Princess.” You should hit Ye Merry Olde Tip Jar.

UPDATE: From Her Royal Majesty:

The Queen has today been pleased to confer a Dukedom on Prince William of Wales. His titles will be Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus.
Prince William thus becomes His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge and Miss Catherine Middleton on marriage will become Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge

(Via Memeorandum.)

Category: Family, Great Britain

LIVE AT FIVE – 04.29.11

Posted on | April 29, 2011 | 1 Comment

TOP NEWS
Dozens Of Tornadoes Ravage South, Nearly 300 Dead

Forest Lake neighborhood of Tuscaloosa Alabama: completely destroyed

Alabama hardest hit with 131 confirmed deaths

Can New CIA Chief Petraeus Be Objective In Judging His Own Work?
CIA, DIA agree that official progress estimates too rosy


Nine State Attorneys General Urge NLRB To Drop Boeing Complaint
SC Attorney General Alan Wilson: “Our states are trying to emerge from one of the worst economic collapses since the Depression…Your complaint further impairs an economic recovery.”



POLITICS
Governor Perry Accuses Obama Of Ignoring Texas

Texas Governor Rick Perry

State’s requests for disaster designation due to wildfires ignored, though some help from FEMA has arrived

President Rules Out Implementing Immigration Reform By Executive Order

Florida Supreme Court Overhaul Hits Resistance In State Senate

Wikileaks Suspect To Be Confined With Other Leavenworth Inmates



Groupon Rejects “Apprentice” Ads After Complaints

California Assembly Approves Bill To Disincorporate City Riddled With Corruption



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Stocks Extend Multiyear Highs On Fed Plans To Keep Interest Rates Low
RIM Cuts Profit Forecast As Blackberry Demand Falls Short
US GDP Growth Slows To 1.8%, Unexpected Jump In Jobless Rate
Microsoft 3Q Earnings Up 31%
Silver Pops, Gold Surges On Inflation Fears
Budget Cuts Pull Plug On SETI Listening Posts (Video)
Motorola Xoom vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab 7: A Study In Usability
HP starts Work On $2.5B NASA Contract



SPORTS
NFL Commissioner Booed At Draft

The Carolina Panthers' new rookie QB, Cam Newton

Also, some guy from Auburn picked first by the Panthers

NFL Tells Teams, Players It’s OK To Go Back To Work

Lakers Swat Hornets, Advance To Second Round




Hawks Beat Magic, Advance To East Semifinals

On To Round 2 Of The Stanley Cup Playoffs After A Wild First Round

Forty Million Billion Guys Drafted By Various NFL Teams
seriously, I couldn’t care less



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
“Mad Men” Star January Jones Going To Be A Mom

January Jones


Expecting in the fall

Chuck Lorre Hatches “Two And A Half Men” Reboot Sans Sheen…

…Or Will Show Simply Be Axed?

Meredith Vieira To Leave “Today” In June

Duchess Of York Asked To Keep Low Profile During Wedding

Richie Sambora Checking Into Rehab




Jeremy Renner Forms Production Company, Developing Steve McQueen Biopic

The Smiths’ Morrissey: “Royals Are Benefit Scroungers”
…and that’s pretty much the extent of our wedding coverage.



FOREIGNERS
Syrian Ba’ath Party Members Quit; Army Defections Reported
Fourteen Killed In Moroccan Cafe Blast
Four Protesters Sentenced To Death In Bahrain For Killing Police; Three Others Given Life Sentences
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Latest To Take Earnings Hit From TEPCO Disaster
“Papa Boys” Celebrate Pope John Paul II’s Beatification
Germany Expects Influx Of Polish Workers
Israeli Officials Urge Energy Independence After Egyptian Gas Pipeline Explosion



BLOGS & STUFF
American Power: Birther-Mania!
Michelle Malkin: Obama Lied, Transparency Died Part 9,999
Power Line: Facts About Oil
Cubachi: Rand Paul To Donald Trump – Prove You’re A Republican
Chicks On The Right: Hey Animal Carers! Seen Any Free Roaming Animals Lately?
Gateway Pundit: Foul-Mouthed Far Left Thugs Disrupt Another Allen West Town Hall (Video)
Nikki Haley: Obama’s Silence On Boeing Is Unacceptable
Tim Pawlenty: The Federal Government Vs. Job Creation
Marco Rubio: How Obama Must Respond To The Massacre In Syria
Rush Limbaugh: Populism Is Not Conservatism
Atlas Shrugs: A Great Idea

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

Is America Ready for the Return of National Offend a Feminist Week?

Posted on | April 28, 2011 | 33 Comments

Yes, it’s true: The third annual celebration begins Monday, May 2, and I’ve begun preparing for the occasion by accumulating vintage images of happy housewives from the Dark Ages of Patriarchal Oppression. Nothing so offends a feminist as the idea that somewhere there might be a woman who considers it an honor and privilege to be “Just a Mom.”

Marriage, motherhood, housekeeping, domesticity — these are the great evils of the Dark Ages of Patriarchal Oppression from which feminists are so proud to have rescued American women.

To be unmarried and childless is the feminist ideal of liberation from male-dominated heterosexist tyranny. Read more

Category: Feminism, National Offend a Feminist Week

Victor Davis Hanson Surveying The Big Red American Soviet

Posted on | April 28, 2011 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

Over at the National Review Online, Hanson characterizes the duplicitous nature of contemporary American political life. It’s as though we’ve entered into an era of mandatory doublethink, ‘simultaneously accepting as correct two mutually contradictory beliefs, often in distinct social contexts’. Quoting Hanson, with my formatting:

In the American Soviet, only two questions remain.

  1. Do these double lives of ours make a sort of sense: Is it that the official utopian rhetoric about love among the masses offers psychological compensation for our private self-interested skepticism about the nature of man?
  2. Or is the daily lie a modern Western rather than an enduring human phenomenon — our 21st-century leisure and affluence infecting us with intellectual and moral boredom, in which we long ago outsourced our collective morality to our bureaucratic overseers as we busied ourselves with far more enjoyable private indulgences?

I submit that history is like a noisy wave, e.g. a stock ticker, and you can always be like Hudson in Aliens:

Hudson: That’s it man, game over man, game over! What the f**k are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?
Burke: Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don’t we try that?

The other extreme would probably be the President’s seemingly detached golf swing. Neither tangent off of history’s signal really indicates the direction in which events stagger.
As I’ve been wont to argue the American Soviet has been a century-long process. While it’s fine to characterize it at various degrees of magnification, what matters now is energizing the American people to defend “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and not the cheap substitutes of “constrained existence, managed liberty, and Orwellian spin”.
The people have been conditioned to depend on the government, hate capitalism, and avoid the challenge of independence. Has the American spirit been vanquished? Nah, just restin’. It may be the case that the Baby Boomers, like the slaves coming out of Egypt, are a lost generation. The question then moves to whether the death spasms of a morally dysfunctional generation can take down the whole country. Look at the pictures of the Tea Party rallies. Not a few gray hairs about. I’d say, no: the fish may have rotted a bit at the head, but the body retains vigor.
There is no other option but to recover liberty and economic vigor for the United States.

Update: That Mr. G. Guy appreciated the dead parrot reference.

Category: Tea Party
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