The Other McCain

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

Shout Out To Article V Fans

Posted on | April 17, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Nothing is perfect, even the U.S. Constitution. Even if it were perfect, it would still be of value to kick the tires, at least for the edification of the kickers. Some don’t like the Electoral College. There are some problems I see with the stealth movement to snuff the EC, though:

  • The path chosen seems to ignore the Article V Amendment process. Rather than Amend the Constitution, the approach taken seems to be to tackle each state’s rules individually.
  • The goal of the project is to eliminate yet another aspect of statehood itself.
  • The people interested in this seem to be the cretins driving some of the economically unsustainable ideas afflicting the country, e.g. ObamaCare. What is it about bad thinking, like a clogged toilet, that seems to fill some heads with crap?

Listen, Leftie losers: make an Article V case, or study silence.

Category: The Lonely Conservative

Ladd Ehlinger’s Four Letter Review Of Atlas Shrugged: Crap

Posted on | April 17, 2011 | 22 Comments

by Smitty

Let me first say I preferred reading “The Fountainhead”. Second, my standard review of everything: “It would have been twice as good if it was half as long” definitely applied to “Atlas Shrugged”. Rand’s critique of Socialism is effective, her approach to sexuality bizarre, and her atheism a total yawn. Thirdly, I’m not going to catch this or any sequel soon. Still haven’t seen Lord of the Rings, for that matter.
That said, Ehlinger offers a thorough, serious review of the movie.

Look, before I go on, let me make things perfectly clear. It would be great for me if “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1” was a good movie and went like gangbusters. It would be great for me to honestly say, “Wow! What a work of art!” and the film gets them into the theaters in droves. Then I wouldn’t look like I was sour-graping the thing.

Also, an “Atlas Shrugged” success might entice some of those damned goofy libertarian-objectivist-conservatives like the Koch Brothers to get off their asses and invest in movies that celebrate freedom, which are the kind of movies I want to do. Instead they spend their time throwing their money away by donating (yeah. Donating. WTF? Are they libertarian-conservative-objectivists or not? Shouldn’t they f’ing INVEST? Why not bust out some koom-bah-yah and granola while you’re at it, guys?) to political action committees and smarmy politicians. This does nothing to change the pop culture, which is where freedom is losing — worse than big time. We need more guys like the one who invested in this movie (only with better taste in directors).

Instead, all of our freedoms are being eroded away because of our current pop-culture. John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are doing more to destroy freedom than Obama ever could, and no amount of donating to think-tanks and goofy PACs is going to save things.

And hell, I’d love to do “The Fountainhead” right now. The first movie version, in black and white, was a piece of crap. Of course, the book was crap, but that’s the point – a great filmmaker takes the material at hand and turns it into great art. Welles adapted a crummy potboiler into Touch of Evil and Alfred Hitchcock turned something forgettable into Vertigo.

More than that, it would be great to see a good film for my eleven bucks. Give me another Vertigo. Give me another Wild Bunch. This movie is supposed to be all about success, competence, greatness. Right? Where the hell is all of that achievement in the film as a film? Nowhere, because…

Unfortunately, we don’t have a John Galt directing this film.

Read the whole review. Also, while you’re in his ‘hood, subscribe to his blog.
From what I’ve read of the reviews, let me pontificate on one of Ehlinger’s earlier points:

Rand was a great political philosopher. She was just a crappy fiction writer. Her ideas were great; even her plot “hooks” were great (the producers of society go on strike when collectivists take over; the world’s greatest architect blows up a building that he designed when collectivists ruin his vision). But she couldn’t get that into any interesting form.

And form is king.

Since I’ve read some Rand, here is my take: she was reacting to Socialism in general, and the Soviet Union in particular. However, that was a negative thing: her ideas mainly existed in opposition to those derived from Marx.
What she said in a positive sense, “the human mind is the pinnacle”, doesn’t make it past the first Alzheimer’s patient, as far as I can tell. A great piece of creation, the mind, but fragile and finite and looking silly when taken beyond proper context, as Rand’s philosophy would seem to require. And then her (can I call it “elemental”?) approach to sexuality merges with this to form a distorted view of the human condition.
So no wonder her ideas don’t enjoy tremendous traction outside of her books.
On the topic of film adaptations of books, let me key on Ehlinger’s point concerning form: a book is not a film, and vice versa. They are almost completely different media. Anyone saying “I read the book, and the film sucked” has already failed, if I am their audience. A film adaptation is a related work at best.
If anything, it sounds like the Atlas Shrugged creative team was too slavish to the book. The basic story could probably have been told in 90 minutes. There would have been howls from purists, who wanted line-for-line fidelity with Rand. Those weenies should be told to get themselves a camcorder and shoot the book straight to YouTube, for all 243 people so bereft of existence as to find that necessary.

For a more positive review, see Ed Morrissey. One of my philosophies is that, if you’re going to watch a film, you have to allow yourself to be entertained. It’s 90 minutes of your life you won’t get back. Sufficient unto the flick is the crappiness thereof, to paraphrase the Sage.

Category: Ladd Ehlinger

NoSheeplesHere Saddles Up The Union-icorn For A Spin

Posted on | April 17, 2011 | 1 Comment

by Smitty

The strange, creepy relationship between the Administration and unions is something about which Americans need to be reminded frequently. Also, the Administration’s fantasy approach to such matters as budgeting and economics. Some call it ‘unicorn math’. NoSheeplesHere brilliantly merges the two ideas:

'Lay my hands oh heaven and the sun and the moon and the Czars. . .'

Read the whole, detailed, important thing.
Lady, you rock!

 

Category: Barack Obama, No Sheeples

FMJRA 2.0: Lend The Devil A Hand

Posted on | April 17, 2011 | 3 Comments

This Reminds Me of Stalingrad

Having Met Todd Palin …

‘No Poor Man Ever Gave Me a Job’

A Rasher of Bacon As A Unit Of Measure

Bad to Worse for Libyan Rebels

Sweet, Sweet Quantitative Easing

FMJRA 2.0: I Am What I Am

Hef at 85: A Myth Grown Old

‘An Aimless and Slovenly Disaster’

Oh Sure, Right After I Got Wrecked Converting The Traditional IRA To A Roth

Fort Sumter 1861: ‘Strike a Blow!’

Rule 5 Monday: Beautiful Together

“LIVE AT FIVE – 04.12.11”

Sputnik or Fort Sumter?

Smoke, Mirrors, Some Assembly Required

Why It Is Crucial To Own The Definitions

A: Since Most Are Neither Productive, Nor Reproductive, Nor Paying Taxes

Conservatives: Relax About Boehner

Word of the Day: Sharing!

Daily Libya Update

It’s a ‘Framework,’ Not a ‘Plan’

It’s Time Everyone Keep Their Naughty Bits Under Control

Sheen: My Show Is So Outstanding, I Should Totally Be President

Pansexual? That Sounds Like A Member Of A Splinter Group That Broke Off From The Church Of Appliantology

How Ladd Ehlinger Went Viral And Flu Around The World

Trump Is A Tea Party Favorite?

Rush: ‘Cut To The Chase,’ a Tea Party Rallying Cry

Lawrence O’Donnell May Be A Knob, But That’s Not A Crime On Its Own

‘Avenge the Patriotic Gore That Flecked the Streets of Baltimore’

Guys: Collective Guilt Is Not Sexy

TODAY: Herman Cain in New Hampshire

A History Lesson for Janelle Harris

Allow Me To Disagree With Sen. DeMint

The Ryan Budget

Top linkers for this week:

  1. Lonely Conservative (7)
  2. (tied) Little Miss Attila, Maggie’s Notebook, and That Mr. G Guy (5)

Thanks to all for their links, which have us on track to reach a quarter-million page views for April! Blogspot bloggers, please send your FMJRA links to me at Wombat-socho.

Category: FMJRA Award

Fox & Beck: The Real Story

Posted on | April 17, 2011 | 6 Comments

Jason Write, who co-authored Glenn Beck’s book The Christmas Sweater, explains the less-controversial truth behind the end of Beck’s daily show:

He and his vastly underrated business and creative teams at Mercury Radio Arts have long considered a change when he became, in effect, a free agent. It’s not what his detractors want you to hear, but if Beck and his production company had wanted to keep the daily show, he would have signed a new deal and continued clubbing the competition.
While Beck’s ratings have slipped from the sky highs of the health care debate, he still pulls 2 million viewers for a live broadcast at 5 p.m. EDT. Consider that a moment. He’s capturing those ratings with a show that airs on the East Coast while most are commuting home and at 2 p.m. on the West Coast, when folks are still tied to their cubicles.
Although he airs during Denny’s senior discount hour, he’s still pulverizing the prime time 8, 9 and 10 p.m. shows on the other cable news networks. He has unprecedented numbers for such an early broadcast. Are we really to believe Fox killed a show breaking ratings records in a time slot no one wants? . . .
Beck will continue to appear on Fox as a guest on other programs, he will produce and appear on programming of interest to Fox’s core audience, and he will remain a member of Fox’s extended family. What he won’t have to do is put on makeup and be locked in a studio at 5 p.m. every weekday.

Category: Glenn Beck

Public Education: Making It Easy for Sexual Predators to Find Their Prey

Posted on | April 17, 2011 | 18 Comments

When he was about 30 and teaching high-school band in Georgia in the late 1980s, Robert Hamberg divorced his wife, Jacque, and married 18-year-old Diane, his former student who had once baby-sat his children.

Well, OK. Creepy and unethical, perhaps, but not illegal. However, reasonable people might think that such behavior would have put an end to Hamberg’s teaching career. And reasonable people would be wrong:

Former Gulf Coast [Fla.] High School band director Robert Hamberg had sex with a 15-year-old student at school, at his home and in his car, a Collier County jury decided.
The jury deliberated almost 7 1/2 hours [Thursday] before finding Hamberg, 53, of Bonita Springs guilty on all eight counts of lewd and lascivious battery on the teenager from February to May 2009. . . .
For the girl, now 17, the verdict was affirmation she had been telling the truth about Hamberg, who was very popular at Gulf Coast High, where he developed the school’s successful band program . . .
“This is about justice. The victim was victimized from day one and called a liar. But the six people on the jury believed her,” Assistant State Attorney Mara Marzano said.
During closing arguments, Marzano told the jury Hamberg preyed on the young girl’s affections by telling her she was pretty and complimenting her on the way she played piano.
The girl gave explicit details of her encounters with Hamberg, including oral sex in school dressing rooms and at his house, fondling her genitals and attempted intercourse. . . .
During the trial, the judge allowed testimony that Hamberg married his current wife, who had been his band student at a Georgia high school and baby-sat his children. . . .
The alleged victim, Marzano said, “was a young girl with a school girl crush on her band director.”
Hamberg, said Marzano, exploited her infatuation. . . .
Hamberg “drew her in slowly like he was reeling in a fish,” the prosecutor said.
Hamberg gave her his personal email address and flirted with her on the Internet, Marzano said.
Then the relationship grew from hugs to kisses to repeated sex acts in school rooms, his home and in his car, Marzano said.

So the taxpayers of Collier County, Fla., basically provided Robert Hamberg with this opportunity to seek out a teenage victim, after he had already demonstrated an unethical sexual interest in his students by his actions in Georgia more than 20 years ago. And I guarantee you that nobody at Gulf Coast High informed parents that Hamberg’s wife was his former student.

Most people have no idea how much of this stuff goes on in schools because — despite federal mandatory-disclosure laws that require officials to report suspected abuse — public school administrators have a vested interest in keeping scandals like this quiet. Read more

Category: Crime, Education, Florida, Scandal, Sex

Rep. Thad McCotter Talks Libya and Plays Blues Riffs on His Custom Telecaster

Posted on | April 17, 2011 | 1 Comment

From Human Events.

Category: Thaddeus McCotter

Oh, My Goodness: Jesse Jackson Accused of Sexually Harassing Gay Staffer?

Posted on | April 16, 2011 | 27 Comments

Well, well, well — what have we here?

The Rev. Jesse Jackson is vehemently denying allegations from a member of President Obama’s gay rights issues panel, who claims he was fired from the civil rights leader’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition because he is openly gay.
Tommy Bennett, who worked for the organization for more than two years as the national director of community affairs, filed a complaint last year with Chicago’s Commission on Human Relations accusing Jackson of discrimination, harassment and even asking him to perform oral sex on him.

Thanks to commenter Pagan Temple for calling my attention to this story. Now, let’s read more of the juicy details startling accusations:

In his complaint, Bennett says when he assumed duties as Jackson’s travel assistant, he was required to perform “humiliating” tasks for the former presidential candidate, including escorting women to his room and cleaning up after his tryst was done. Bennett says he believes he was forced to do these tasks because he is gay.
He also claimed that he was once summoned to take notes in Jackson’s hotel room, where he found Jackson “dressed only in his underwear (briefs) and a v-neck t-shirt.” Bennett claims that Jackson, whom he had given Cialis to earlier, was sexually aroused and breathing fast.
Jackson told him a story about his gay high school teacher who became a mentor and provided Jackson with a good grade, pocket change and oral sex. Bennett interpreted that as a sign that Jackson wanted oral sex from him, but he says he left the room.

Two possibilities suggest themselves here: (a) Tommy Bennett is telling the truth, or (b) he plagiarized the “Canteen Boy” sketch from SNL.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Gays, Jesse Jackson
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