The Other McCain

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

The Progressive Hits Just Keep On Coming. The GOP Wasted Money?

Posted on | April 8, 2011 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Alan Colmes continues to be a more refined form of silliness than the SOL/PuffHo. The other day I was noting the sanctimonious concern for the poor. Now we observe him, get this, fretting that “GOP Shutdown Threats Already Costing Us Money“. This is hysterical, in both the ancient and modern senses of the word. Read more

Category: Alan Colmes, Progressivism

LIVE AT FIVE – 04.08.11

Posted on | April 8, 2011 | 3 Comments

TOP NEWS
Progress, But No Deal On Budget?

GOP Representatives Cantor and Hunter discuss spending cuts

Continuing resolution passed by House; Obama promises to veto it

Powerful New Quake Batters Japan
Two killed, but no additional damage to Fukushima reactors

Tsunami Warning Lifted (Video)



Hedge Funds Chase Opportunities In Japan After Quake

NATO Admits Air Strike On Rebel Forces
Friendly fire incident triggers rout to Ajdabiya



POLITICS
Prosser’s Huge Gain Comes After Waukesha County Flub Caught

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus

Canvassers around the state updating totals as reporting errors found

Black Sacked As NYC School Chancellor, Deputy Mayor Walcott In

Arizona House Approves Campus Carry

Obama Trip To Indiana Scrapped Amid Budget Battle

House Votes To Stop EPA Regulation Of Greenhouse Gases

Bachmann Gets Larger Venue For SC Speech


Fargo Flood Danger Past, Moorhead Optimistic

Democrat Rep. Sherman Accuses White House Of Hiding True Cost Of Libya Intervention



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Euro Hits New 11-Month High Against Yen
European Central Bank Head Says Inflation Risk, Rates A Delicate Balance
Small Drillers Say New Rules Threaten Wildcatters’ Survival
HP Sues Former Executive Who Joined Oracle
Gold Hits New Record, Silver Just Short Of $40
Crude Oil Continues To Rally Higher; NYMEX HIts 2 1/2 Year High
Microsoft Sets Mammoth Patch Tuesday
Facebook Open Sources Server, Data Center Specs For Prineville



SPORTS
Thrashers Okay With Spoiler Role

Atlanta Thrashers celebrate after defeating the NY Rangers

Not bothered, but not enthusiastic about knocking other teams out of the playoffs either

Garnett Says Celtics Need To Harden Up For Playoffs

Some Guy Happy About Hitting Ball On Manicured Lawns

Jury Set To Decide Bonds’ Fate

Nationals Prospect Bryce Harper Goes 2-for-4 In Minor League Debut

Indians Keep Bosox Winless, And Other Tales Of Junior Circuit Woe

Nats Beat Marlins In 11, 5-3



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Kate Gosselin Sued For Stiffing Marriage Counselor

Reality star has fresh new legal problems

Owes $10,000 to counselor flown out to LA

Charlie Sheen Wants Mila Kunis To Join His Goddesses

Karina Smirnoff’s Playboy Spread Could Land “Dancing” Star In Hot Water

Christie Brinkley Still Fabulous At 57


LeBron’s Mother Busted In Miami

Eva Longoria Has Wardrobe Malfunction On Letterman (Video)

Ben Affleck Circling Big “Great Gatsby” Role

Team “Hunger Games” Talks



FOREIGNERS
Gunman Attacks Rio School, Kills 12, Himself
IDF Hits Smuggling Tunnels & Terrorist Bases As Hamas Calls For Cease-Fire
Eurozone Ministers To Discuss Portugal’s Call For Aid
France Resurrects Border With Italy; Deploys Police To Stop Illegal Immigrants
US Expels Ecuadorian Ambassador, Suspends Dialogue



BLOGS & STUFF
Blackfive: Even Obama Can’t Be This Dumb
Yes He Can! 😛
Megan McArdle: The People’s Budget
RedState: Is Barack Obama Obfuscating The Cause Of The Shutdown?
Allahpundit: The Greatest Press Conference OF ALL TIME (Video)
Lonely Conservative: Mike Lee Says Obama Planned The Shutdown With Malicious Intent (Video)
Protein Wisdom: It’s Official
Doug Powers: Nancy Pelosi’s “Starving Seniors” Math Just A Little Bit Off
PJ Tatler: Missile Defense Is Impossible Or Useless Or Something
Don Surber: Look For O To Visit Florida…Often


— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

Wound + Salt = ‘Hey, Liberals, How Are You Liking That Wisconsin Result?’

Posted on | April 7, 2011 | 28 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, when it looked like liberal Joanne Kloppenburg had narrowly defeated Wisconsin state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, I was in abject misery. Now? Baby, I feel fine!

In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold released new vote totals adding a net total of 7,582 new votes in the tight state Supreme Court race to Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor.
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said Thursday that she failed to save in her computer and consequently report 14,315 votes cast in the city of Brookfield, omitting them entirely in an unofficial tally released after Tuesday’s election. The new totals give 10,859 more votes to Prosser from Brookfield and 3,456 more to Kloppenburg, she said. Smaller discrepancies turned up in two other communities as well.

National Review says this is “almost certain victory” for Prosser, and no doubt much bitter lamentation for liberals.

More at Instapundit. Read ’em weep, liberals!

UPDATE: Ace of Spades is totally in the Gloat Zone.

Meanwhile, my friend Jehuda has called to my attention some commenter at Ed Driscoll’s who described my reaction yesterday as “wailing and hand-wringing.” No: Despair is merely realism when the situation objectively sucks. And if Kloppenburg had won this thing, the situation would have sucked quite objectively.

I hate losing. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Show me a “good loser,” and I’ll show you a loser.

So when I’d stayed up until the wee hours Tweeting election results as they were updated, woke up five hours later to see Prosser hanging on to a slender lead, and then in the afternoon seen Kloppenburg declared the winner by 204 votes, I was ready to say, “To hell with Wisconsin.”

Write ’em off. Screw those losers. Might as well be California.

But now? Yeah, that was beautiful. Way to go, Wisconsin GOP: Get the liberals all gloaty for about 24 hours and then break their little hearts.

The objective suck is now on the other foot.

Category: Election, Uncategorized, Unions, Wisconsin

Daniel Hannan Palate Cleanser

Posted on | April 7, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Even working briefly with ideas familiar to readers of this blog, Hannan remains a spot-on palate cleanser:

He is also well worth your time in print.

His polar opposite is the Bearded Clown, Krugman.

I have rarely seen a human being so misguided, seemingly incapable of grasping that the very ideas he espouses are the drivers of the problems he cites.

Update: linked at That Mr. G Guy.

Category: Budget, Economics

Not To Go Blaming The Victims, But ‘Ezra Klein Urban Planning’ Is A Wash

Posted on | April 7, 2011 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Have we pilloried Ezra Klein enough for his über-knob assertion that “it’s impossible to understand the US Constitution because it’s over 100 years old”? No. The notion that ‘wisdom is timeless’ is like Levis 501 blue jeans, only older.
Old like an obelisk whose wisdom you ignore at your peril.
the_phallus_of_malice

“High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,” the stone slab reads. “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”

It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan’s northeastern shore.

Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old. Collectively they form a crude warning system for Japan, whose long coasts along major fault lines have made it a repeated target of earthquakes and tsunamis over the centuries.

The markers don’t all indicate where it’s safe to build. Some simply stand — or stood, until they were washed away by the tsunami — as daily reminders of the risk. “If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis,” reads one. In the bustle of modern life, many forgot.

One must re-emphasize: the purpose of this post is not to kick the Japanese when they are down. Population growth will assess risk and go where it wills. If anything, we should redouble support.
Too, technology is variable. So ideas must expand to include new possibilities, e.g. space travel, that could not be undertaken previously. Got that.
However, that has nothing to do with human nature, and by that I mean the capacity for corruption. As the debt tsunami rolls in, James Madison reveals the foolishness of the Kleins:

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is little known, and less fixed? 

Given this wisdom, what we need are candidates who are dedicated to de-scoping the federal behemoth, spending less than the government collects in taxes, and politically moving us back above the tsunami markers.
Common sense is the new radicalism.

Update: linked at SI VIS PACEM.

Category: Japan, Progressivism

BREAKING: Air Strikes Hit Libyan Rebel Tanks, Spark ‘Mass Panic’ in Ajdabiyah

Posted on | April 7, 2011 | 10 Comments

News accounts are very confusing and contradictory at this point, but it appears that the Libyan rebels who had been trying to re-take the port city of Brega sustained a serious defeat today, and may even be prepared to abandon Ajdabiyah, 50 miles east of Brega on the coast highway. Here is a report from McClatchy News:

AJDABIYA, Libya — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s air force evaded the U.N.-ordered NATO-enforced no-fly zone on Thursday and destroyed three rebel tanks parked along a key highway here, triggering a rebel retreat that seemed to pave the way for a full pro-Gadhafi assault on the city of Ajdabiya.
Rebels at first had blamed NATO for the airstrike, which witnesses said killed between two and six rebel fighters. But Eman Boughaigis, a spokesman for the rebel National Libyan Council in Benghazi, said the attack had actually been launched by a Gadhafi loyalist aircraft.
It was not immediately clear how the aircraft had evaded the no-fly zone, which the U.N. ordered last month to keep Gadhafi planes from attacking rebel forces. . . .
The tanks — three Soviet-built T-72s and a Soviet-built T-55 — had left Benghazi, the rebel capital, Wednesday to reinforce rebel positions near Brega, site of a strategic oil terminal where rebels and pro-Gadhafi forces have been battling for days. A rebel unit commander, Salah Saraj, 34, said the rebels had parked the tanks after NATO ordered them not to go forward.
A lone aircraft attacked the four tanks at about 11 a.m., according to another rebel fighter, Ahmed Salim Youssef, 25, who said he witnessed the attack. Three tanks suffered direct hits, Youssef said. Also hit was a bus carrying rebel fighters.
Youssef said the attack took place about 12 miles outside of Brega and that the aircraft made two passes at the tanks.
The assault apparently was carefully coordinated with Gadhafi loyalist ground troops. When the rebels abandoned their positions near the tanks, loyalist forces pursued, chasing the rebels to the western gate of Ajdabiya.
Ajdabiya was the last rebel redoubt before the capital of Benghazi, 100 miles away, but it appeared to be on the verge of being seized by loyalist forces Thursday evening. . . .

Other reports indicate that this was another friendly-fire error, like a previous misguided NATO air strike that killed 13 rebels. So like I said, it’s confusing at this point. Here is a video report that indicates the rebels are panicking, and some are pulling back from Ajdabiyah:

As you hear from this report, for Qaddafi’s forces to advance from Brega to Ajdabiyah would be very difficult, if NATO aircraft are on alert. But if Qaddafi’s air force is still actually capable of making attacks on the rebels, what the hell is NATO doing?

UPDATE: The Associated Press seems to believe this was a NATO friendly fire incident:

Rebel fighters claimed NATO airstrikes blasted their forces Thursday in another apparent mistake that sharply escalated anger about the military alliance’s efforts to cripple Libyan forces. At least five rebels were killed and more than 20 injured, a doctor said. . . .
“Down, down with NATO,” one fighter shouted as dozens of rebel vehicles raced eastward from the front, toward the rebel-held city of Ajdabiya.
Later, hundreds of cars poured out of Ajdabiya toward the de facto rebel capital, Benghazi, amid fears that pro-Gadhafi forces could use the disarray among rebel units to advance along the Mediterranean coastal road that serves as the lifeline for both sides. . . .
A rebel commander, Ayman Abdul-Karim, said he saw airstrikes hit tanks and a rebel convoy, which included a passenger bus carrying fighters toward Brega. He and other rebels described dozens killed or wounded, but a precise casualty toll was not immediately known. . . .
The rebel commander Adbul-Karim said the tops of rebel vehicles were marked with yellow under advice by NATO to identify the opposition forces. But rebels use tanks and other vehicles commandeered from the Libyan army — potentially making their convoys appear similar to pro-government units from the air.
The attack occurred about 18 miles (30 kilometers) from Brega, where rebel forces have struggled to break through government lines, he said.

So while there is confusion about whether this air strike was made by NATO or Qaddafi’s air force, this Associated Press account does appear to confirm the sense of panic in Ajdabiyah over the possibilty that Qaddafi’s troops will advance.

UPDATE II: Reuters also appears to believe this was a NATO friendly fire incident, but here’s the lead on their story:

Libya’s seven-week-old civil war is reaching stalemate, a senior U.S. general said on Thursday . . .

Like we needed a general to tell us that. But notice how this is now just a “civil war” in Libya, as if Operation Odyssey Dawn never happened and President Obama had never declared Qaddafi “must leave.” If Qaddafi had been vanquished, the headline would have been “Obama Wins,” but now that it looks like Qaddafi might hang on, the media want you to forget that Obama committed U.S. prestige to this fucked-up war.

UPDATE III: It appears to be the belief of the official rebel spokesman that the air attack came from Qaddafi’s forces:

A spokesperson for the opposition’s National Transitional Council, Imam Bugaighis, said the air strike near the Libyan oil-town of Brega is believed to have been by pro-Gadhafi forces and not by NATO war planes as initially reported from the field.
Bugaighis: “There is no evidence the strike was by NATO. The jet fighters were at low level and they bombed our Free Libyan forces.”
Reporter: Who was behind this attack?
Bugaighis: “Gadhafi’s regime, Colonel Gadhafi’s regime”

Of course, you see that this would reflect just as badly on NATO as if it were a friendly-fire incident. If NATO is supposed to be enforcing a no-fly zone, and yet Qaddafi’s air force is able to attack the rebels, where is the vaunted NATO air superiority that was supposed to make a decisive difference in Libya?

UPDATE IV: Another report of panic in Ajdabiyah:

Civilians and rebels fled Ajdabiya in their thousands yesterday on rumours that Colonel Muamar Qaddafi’s forces were charging towards the key eastern town, witnesses said.
Families packed into cars and trucks joined rebel military vehicles — pickups loaded with rocket launchers and machine guns — in a stampede north-east towards the rebel bastion Benghazi, some 160 kilometres away.


Category: Libya

$39,978 a Year

Posted on | April 7, 2011 | 8 Comments

That’s the undergraduate tuition at Dartmouth College, where Josh Riddle and David Rufful are students. And here’s their new rap video, “Obama, Reid, Pelosi”:

Riddle and Rufful got written up at The Blaze by Emily Esfahani Smith (Dartmouth ’09), who has never once linked my blog.

Also, Riddle and Rufful are on the staff of The Dartmouth Review, where the blog roll includes David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan — but not me.

Despite such vicious snubs, in sending me their new video via e-mail, Mr. Riddle wrote: “I love reading your blog. . . . Thanks for your blog, it has been a great fountain of knowledge for me.”

OK. Now shut up and link me, Josh. I got ties older than you, kid.

— Robert Stacy McCain, Jacksonville (Ala.) State University, ’83

Category: Education, Music, Video

One Does Hope This Is Pure Bluff

Posted on | April 7, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

CNS News reports “Soldiers Won’t Get Paid Under Government Shutdown, Medicare Payments Would Continue, Obama Administration Determines”

Soldiers will continue to earn money but not be paid during a government shutdown, a senior Obama administration official said. 

“Military will continue to work as I described earlier,” the official said. “They will continue to earn money during this period of time. Given that we do not have any money to pay out, they will not be paid. They will not receive their paychecks until we have money again and Congress appropriates.”

Now, this is no personal threat to servicing the mortgage. However, I fear for the junior lads and lasses who haven’t glommed onto the fact that living from paycheck to paycheck, or loan to loan in the government case, is the height of stupid.
As the political situation bottoms out, this could be a long-term win, though.

  • Threatening the foundation of the military-industrial complex could lead to some much-needed soul-searching about the US National Security Strategy. By this I mean the ‘If not neo-Con, then what?’ question. If we deem the PAX AMERICANA is too dear for the wallet, then what will we do instead?
  • Messing with the troops, especially ones forward deployed, is not going to help anyone’s popularity, Legislative or Executive. This will help loosen some of the deadwood that needs removal.

While I don’t care for poker, I do play some chess, with the subtlety of a freight train. You want to bluff? I’ll trade material all day long. Bring it.

Update: linked at The Lonely Conservative.

Update II: also at The Camp of the Saints.

Category: Barack Obama
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