The Other McCain

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

2012: Still A Muddle

Posted on | April 27, 2011 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Rich Galen at CNSNews contrasts BHO with predecessors’ approval ratings at this point in their first administration. Carter was doing about 10 points worse. The interesting point is that BHO’s approval equals that of the Gipper:

The best example is Ronald Reagan whose 43 percent matches Obama’s current rating. Reagan, let us remember, went on to win 49 states in his re-election in 1984 against the Democrats’ dream team of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.

On the other hand, Dr. John Pitney, professor in the school of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, sent me a great annotated bibliography of press pieces about how weak, how late-starting, how little-known, how futile it looked for Democratic candidates at about this point in the 1992 President cycle.

Yes, and I must admit that my non-regard for Mr. Ruling Class Bush41 bought me eight years of Bubba:

It is true that Clinton was aided and abetted by Ross Perot who mounted a furious third-party candidacy and who, in spite of not winning any electoral votes, got nearly 20 percent of the popular vote.

While H.W. would probably not have won anyway, Perot’s candidacy clearly cost Bush several states, much as – eight years later – third party candidate Ralph Nader likely cost Al Gore a victory in Florida and we know how that turned out.

So, when you hear the office know-it-all state with absolute certainty that they can divine the outcome of the Presidential election in November 2012 because of the polling in April of 2011; smile, nod, stir your coffee, and walk back to your desk.

Perot was proto-Tea Party. 15 years ahead of his time. No blog support.
What I like the most about this notion of unpredictability is that there is hope for repeal of Amendments 16 & 17, plus that atrocious Federal Reserve Act during their centennial in 2013.
While the current efforts of Paul Ryan &c are not nothing, the fact that they are not addressing the roots of Federal over-reach is worrisome.

One thing we do have to look forward to is the Left nattering on about how 2012 is the most raaaaacist election ever. To paraphrase the Instapundit, the country will get past raaaaacism when the people on the Left perpetuating the raaaaacism finally desist from the raaaaacism.

Category: Election 2012

Obama: Miracle Cure for Liberalism

Posted on | April 27, 2011 | 4 Comments

Some people who were lulled into a trance are now wide awake:

Daniel Loeb, founder of Third Point LLC, was one of the biggest Obama fund-raisers in 2008, rounding up $200,000 for him, according to campaign-finance records. In the decade prior, Mr. Loeb and his wife donated $250,000 to Democrats and less than $10,000 to Republicans.
But since Mr. Obama’s inauguration, Mr. Loeb has given $468,000 to Republican candidates and the GOP, and just $8,000 to Democrats.

The Lonely Conservative has further thoughts about Obama’s big-money donors.

Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012

Important New Theory On The Etymology Of ‘Boob’

Posted on | April 27, 2011 | 4 Comments

by Smitty (h/t Theo Spark)


Reactions to the news were mixed, particularly with the man previously known as the Epitome of Boob:

'Unexpected. I thought I was still competitititive.'

Category: humor

Respecting Lawrence O’Donnell

Posted on | April 27, 2011 | 9 Comments

by Smitty (via Hot Air)

O’Donnell does a more courageous job of expressing the Progressive Faith than almost anyone else on the Left.

The fact that the Progressive Faith arrives in a sodomized expression of Christianity comes close to triggering a puke reflex. It happens. May Heaven have mercy upon you, Lawrence O’Donnell, and the Holy Spirit grant you the wisdom to grasp that the State is not the Almighty, merely a secular means of de-conflicting group interests.

People seriously interested in the Rich Young Ruler are directed to Bonheoffer, but warned: ol’ Dietrich was never about the feel-good Gospel, right up to the bitter, tragic end.

Update: More at Eternity Matters.

Category: Hot Air, MSNBC

Progressive Economics Fail At The Huffington Post

Posted on | April 27, 2011 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Over at SOL/PuffHo, they just don’t get the new Progressive Economics. Jobs are what matter. Product? Not so much. Thus, if the State of Illinois pays for signs with spelling errors, that isn’t a bug, that’s a feature! Workers and materials suppliers will be kept busy moving the location of the typo all around the sign. It’s all about jobs saved or created, man!

It is crucially important to view this as a sign of Progressive economics.

Created? Why, yes! What may superficially appear to be an increase in societal entropy is really all about job opportunities. New bureaucracies will have to be born to create a staff of people who can interpret the increasingly meaningless signs cluttering the landscape.
After a critical mass is reached, a new academic field will emerge: Progressive English Studies. The old, relatively stable form of English will remain, so that the Ruling Class can continue its course of leisure and oppression of the common dogs, but those common dogs will be increasingly fragmented, divided, and unable to manage parties or tea, much less Tea Parties.
Full circle, then: this humble sign in Illinois, far from a sign of stupidity, is a harbinger of winning the future, full employment, and portion controlled servings.
Yeah, Progress: yeah!

Lest you think this post pure snark, check out the new line of street sign furniture.

Update: linked at House of Eratosthenes.

Category: Huffington Post

VIDEO: Obama Sermonizes About This Silly Distraction From His Incompetence

Posted on | April 27, 2011 | 23 Comments

Professor Glenn Reynolds:

The White House may think it’s sprung a trap, but I think they waited too long. By now — as the polls from earlier this week showing how many independents thought Obama wasn’t born here, and which probably prompted the release decision, indicate — the damage is done.

UPDATE: We now have a White House transcript of the president’s press-conference statement, which gets fact-checked by Conn Carroll:

President Obama claimed that the reason he released his birth certificate today is because the issue had become a distraction. Specifically, he blamed the conspiracy for drowning out his speech earlier this month attacking Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity. . . . That is just plain false.

Read the whole thing at The Washington Examiner.

UPDATE II: Evidently banned by his new corporate overlords from resurrecting his Trig-Truther obstetric inquisition, Andrew Sullivan resorts to nudge-nudge wink-wink mode:

Get over yourselves, MSM. And do your job – not defending the right of people in power to protect themselves, but scrutinizing them relentlessly, with every fact and document you can get. . . . Do you know what I am saying?

Yeah. We know exactly what you’re saying, Andrew.

UPDATE III: Ace of Spades notes that some Birthers just keep on Birthin’ — which is exactly the problem with Sully and Trig Trutherism. Once somebody stakes their political credibility on a particular narrative, they have what might be called a status investment in the truth of that narrative. People who have built reputations as 9/11 Truthers (e.g., Alex Jones) and never going to come out and say, “You know what? This conspiracy-theory stuff is a big steaming pile of hooey. I’ve been a total dupe, an abject fool, a credulous idiot, and I guess everybody who made fun of me was right.”

By the same token, Sully can never admit that his absurd fascination with Trig-Trutherism was the product of his own emotional and intellectual weaknesses. He may eventually just tiptoe away from Trig Trutherism, hoping people will forget what a damned ridiculous spectacle he made of himself, but he wil never ‘fess up and own it.

strong>UPDATE IV: Shocking revelation!

The certificate reveals that the future president was born Barack Hussein Muhammad Jihad Guevara Manson Obama on July 4, 1976, in Pyongyang, North Korea. Not only is he not a natural-born citizen, he’s not even old enough to be president. And his mother, Ethel Rosenburg, lists her religion as “Stalinist.”

That James Taranto, what a kidder . . .

PREVIOUSLY: WATERLOO FOR BIRTHERS: Obama Releases Long-Form Birth Certificate

Category: Barack Obama, Donald Trump

Donald Trump, Neo-Confederate?

Posted on | April 27, 2011 | 23 Comments

That’s what Alyssa Rosenberg of Think Progress appears to be suggesting with her report that Donald Trump donated “$25,000 for the post-Katrina restoration of Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis’s retirement estate on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”

“Pin the Confederate Tail on the Republican” seems to be a popular progressive game this week, with Jamelle Bouie of The American Prospect exulting over a recent poll showing substantial pluralities of Republicans in Georgia, North Carolina and Mississippi say they wish the South had won the Civil War.

Dave Weigel noticed that the same poll shows a surprising level of Lost Cause sentiment among Democrats. In fact, the poll found that 22% of Mississippi Democrats wish the South had won the War.

This poll is from the liberal Public Policy Polling firm which, of course, is engaged in anti-GOP propaganda. But I reckon they haven’t considered the possible consequences. One can imagine some crafty operative circulating an anonymous e-mail before next year’s crucial South Carolina primary with the subject line: “Romney: Soft on Race-Mixing?”

UPDATE: Whoopi Goldberg plays the race card — wow, who could have seen that coming, huh? — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

By the way: I was born in Atlanta, Georgia (and have the birth certificate to prove it), yet when it comes to college football, my allegiance has always been to the University of Alabama, because my Dad graduated at Tuscaloosa.

Perhaps you could find a metaphor there. Just sayin’ . . .


Category: Polls

Massacre in Mexico

Posted on | April 27, 2011 | 4 Comments

President Obama has plenty of time to worry about Libya, while murderous anarchy is just across the southern border:

Security forces have unearthed six more bodies in a northeastern Mexican border state where a drug gang is believed to be kidnapping passengers from buses and hiding their victims in secret graves, authorities said Tuesday. A total of 183 bodies have been discovered in a month.
The horrific discoveries have intensified criticism that lawlessness reigns in Tamaulipas state, where the Zetas drug gang has terrorized migrants trying to make their way north to the United States. It is the same region where authorities say the Zetas killed 72 Central American migrants in August.

The New York Times reported on the failed state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas near the Gulf Coast:

Open war between the Gulf Cartel and its former enforcers, the Zetas, means that the roads here are still filled with gang lookouts on motorcycles, who report back to cartel leaders, residents say.
Gunmen believed to be tied to the Zetas assassinated the lead candidate for governor last year and later forced a mass exodus from a small town near the Texas border. Extortion payments have become more regular than taxes, security analysts say, while many of the authorities are either terrorized or bought off: 16 municipal police officers have been arrested so far in connection with kidnappings and killings.

And from the latest Stratfor memo on the Mexican situation:

A mass grave was found April 21 in Durango, Durango state. While a great deal of attention has been focused on mass graves discovered in San Fernando attributed to the Zetas, we believe the Durango discovery is important, too, because it is a reminder that the Zetas are not the only Mexican drug-trafficking organization that engages in mass murder.
As of April 26, 58 decomposed bodies had been found in Durango. The state of decomposition indicates that the grave sites had been occupied for many months, longer than the mass graves in San Fernando.

It’s like we’re living next door to Rwanda. Maybe our NATO “allies” can help, huh? U.N. “humanitarian” mission maybe?

Category: Crime, Mexico
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