The Other McCain

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

Pawlenty’s Drunk Campaign Staffer Arrested for Trespassing in Iowa

Posted on | April 6, 2011 | 5 Comments

Ben Foster, 24, was arrested after he tried to break into a house in Ankeny, Iowa, at 3 a.m. A staffer for the Tim Pawlenty presidential exploratory campaign, Foster was evidently so drunk he mistook the house in Ankeny for the place he was staying — 10 miles away in Johnston, Iowa. Both towns are suburbs of Des Moines.

After barfing in a family’s yard and badly frightening their teenage daughter with his early-morning intrusion, Foster has apologized and will be suspended for two weeks from the Pawlenty campaign.

So I’m just going to take this opportunity for a brief message:

HERMAN CAIN for PRESIDENT
Because His Campaign Staff Won’t Barf in Your Yard

Category: Election 2012, Iowa, Tim Pawlenty

Gone, Wisconsin!

Posted on | April 6, 2011 | 53 Comments

Joan Kloppenburg has declared victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election — apparently winning by a margin of 204 votes — and thus dies whatever hope there had been for the state’s economic and political future.

Gov. Scott Walker and the newly-elected Republican majority in the legislature had begun the only possible reform that could have saved Wisconsin: The disestablishment of the government employee unions that were strangling the state’s economy. Now, with a cleverly orchestrated campaign, the AFL-CIO has replaced state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser with a pro-union hack to block implementation of the GOP’s reform agenda.

What is interesting to note is that, in November, Walker was elected with 1.13 million votes — 52% of more than 2.1 million votes cast.

Now, barely five months later, his election has been effectively undone by Kloppenburg, who won with a mere 740,090 votes, roughly two-thirds of Walker’s November total.

It appears that nearly 400,000 people who voted for Walker in November simply stayed home on Tuesday. With their state’s future on the line, they were MIA.

Thus ends — gone! gone forever! — all hope of liberating Wisconsin from the job-killing government-union stranglehold.

Good-bye, Wisconsin!

UPDATE: Ace is remarkably stoic about the End of Wisconsin, while The Rhetorican foresees a Greece-like future for the Land O’ Cheese.

Category: Election, Unions, Wisconsin

Could Stacy McCain Ever Use An iPad?

Posted on | April 6, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

The fedora. The cigarettes. The coffee. The lucid, well-organized prose that sucks the order out of the rest of his life. The laptop that has been beaten in the ‘rented mule’ fashion.
Stacy McCain, whom I guess I’ve known about three years now, is a man so set in his ways that the ruts of his life look like arroyos. At events like CPAC, other bloggers gather, and a relative neophyte will mention Stacy and wonder out loud if some sort of intervention could be undertaken to, you know, pull him back from the cliff just a little bit. For his own safety. The rest listen patiently, recalling their similar thoughts, mutter, shake their heads in the negative, and continue on. You can certainly tell Stacy from a distance; but you can’t tell him much.
All that may change, though, when he sees this:could_this_be_the_trick
The hipster sexiness of the iPad, combined with the retro-gonzo typewriter body straight out of Ernie Pyle? That would out-gonzo Hunter S. Thompson, I reckon. The idea of walking back the touch screen and instead using a typewriter interface seems pure chindogu, but that’s very much in keeping with Stacy himself. Sure, it’s not the infamous Barbie Cam, but. . .it would run TweetDeck.

Category: R.S. McCain School of Journalism, Uncategorized

Another Daily Libyan Rebels Update: If This Is Wednesday, They’re Advancing

Posted on | April 6, 2011 | Comments Off on Another Daily Libyan Rebels Update: If This Is Wednesday, They’re Advancing

When last we left the Half-Assed Uprising, the ragtag rebels had retreated from Brega yesterday — some reportedly fleeing all the way to Ajdabiya, 50 miles up the coast — after Qaddafi’s forces laid down an artillery barrage.

Today, the Mighty, Mighty Libyan Rebels have resumed the offensive, according to a recap and update from Reuters:

Libyan rebels regained ground in a new advance on an oil port Wednesday but accused NATO of inaction hindering their quest to oust Muammar Gaddafi. . . .
In their eastern heartland, ill-trained insurgents thrust back westwards towards the contested oil port of Brega, recovering mostly desert terrain lost in a pell-mell retreat from Gaddafi’s superior firepower the day before.
Rebels returning to the tiny outpost of al-Arbaeen, midway between Brega and their frontline town of Ajdabiyah, spoke of rocket duels close to Brega’s port as both sides strived to end a ragged stalemate in the oil-producing state’s civil war.
There was little doubt the rebels had made ground after falling back at least 40 km (25 miles) Tuesday but it was impossible to verify accounts that they were closing in on Brega once again.
There were reports of mortar and rocket battles near the town on Libya’s desolate Mediterranean highway 80 km (50 miles) west of Ajdabiyah. Fighting had resumed at daybreak after government forces were resupplied with ammunition and swung east from Brega, rebel officer Mohamed el-Masrafy told Reuters.
“God willing, we are going to try to enter Brega today,” said rebel Idriss Abdel Karim, but he and various comrades complained of a lack of support from NATO bombers.
“(Government forces) are scared of NATO air strikes but NATO doesn’t bomb anything in the first place,” he said.

So it’s “impossible to verify” whether the rebels are actually making headway against “Gaddafi’s superior firepower” at Brega and, I suppose, a few hours from now we’ll have further confusing and inconclusive reports about the situation.

What we can say for sure is that (a) the Libyan rebels have a low opinion of our NATO allies’ military effectiveness, and (b) Moammar Qaddafi is no closer to being overthrown today than he was yesterday.

Oh, and also (c) Brent crude hit a 25-year high of $123 a barrel.

Category: Libya

Trog Summarizes Ryan, And Had Me Until The Last Sentence

Posted on | April 6, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

TrogloPundit does a fine job of summarizing thoughts of Ace and Hot Air on the Ryan budget. He wonders what Ryan has to do to get past some of the underwhelmed response in the conservative blogs. I understand you’ve got to cheer for the Representative from your own state, but really, Trog: this is far more of a going-in position than anything else. It still concedes too much of the federal over-reach to Washington DC as legitimate.
I applaud Ryan. In its way, like ObamaCare’s individual mandate was a stepping stone to single payer, Ryan’s budge merely points out that the status quo is unacceptable. The real machete and meat cleaver action on the budget has to come another day. “Y’all cain’t get there from here”, but a start with a plan like Ryan’s begins to move you in that direction.
Where Trog loses me is his last sentence:

One more thing: you know what the real flaw in this plan is? It requires future Congresses to stick with it.

No, Trog, Congress has a century of “relief in the round” that has got us here. Who has to stick with it? We The People, as driven by the Tea Parties. The beltway goobers are only going to be as faithful as their gnawing anxiety about the pitchforks back home.

Category: Paul Ryan, Troglopundit, Uncategorized

REPORT: Beck to End Daily Fox Show

Posted on | April 6, 2011 | 10 Comments

Apparently, Glenn Beck has issued a press release announcing he “intends to transition off of his daily program” on Fox News Channel.

Exactly what that means, we don’t know yet.

UPDATE: The press release describes discussions about “a variety of television projects” in a vague enough way that media tea-leaf readers at both the Washington Post and NPR interpret this as a polite let-’em-down-easy way of Fox saying, “See ya later, Glenn.”

UPDATE II: HuffPo notes: “Joel Cheatwood, a senior Fox News executive who Beck hired away to his own company, will serve as the main liaison between the two networks.” The New York Times observes, “The joint statement did not specify an end date for Mr. Beck’s show.”

UPDATE III: Behold, the idiotic glee in Lizardlandia:


So, in August 2009, Charles Johnson labeled Beck a “raving freakazoid nut sandwich” and now in April 2011 — which is to say, 19 months later — claims vindication, “laughing last.”

Except that every weekday for the past 19 months, Beck has reached a national television audience of more than a million viewers, continues to draw millions of radio listeners, and has sold umpteen thousand books, earning himself many millions of dollars.

Not bad for a “raving freakazoid nut sandwich.”

Category: Fox News, Glenn Beck

I Guess Katie Couric Turned It Down

Posted on | April 6, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

*cough* Debbie *heh* Wasserman-Schultz *snort* for DNC Chair? Replacing little ol’ Timmy “NOVA” Kaine? Really? Admit it, Debbie: dread of Allen West has driven you to seek a safer harbor. It’s all gonna be OK.

More at Hot Air.

Category: Florida

So, Monica Potts: When’s the Wedding?

Posted on | April 6, 2011 | 3 Comments

In the American Prospect, Monica Potts gets all sarcastic about Kay Hymowitz’s new book, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys., describing Hymowitz’s thesis:

Hymowitz argues that a generation of parents who spent their time empowering girls has left men adrift and unable to understand their proper place in society. . . . Feminism, she says, has created a perpetual child-man unable to grow up, leaving scores of women partner-less. Apparently, Hymowitz believes, positive stereotypically male traits — courage, fortitude, stoicism — can only be enforced through traditional family structures. Left to their own devices, men fall into their natural irresponsible state, unable to commit because society has sent the message that they are unnecessary.
For this, she blames women!

Whether or not Miss Potts has accurately described Hymowitz’s argument, I’ll leave to others to decide. (I haven’t read the book, so I’m unprepared to defend it.) But I will note that Miss Potts provocatively headlines her article, “Why Aren’t You Married Yet?” — and never answers her own question. Read more

Category: Feminism, Marriage
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