The Other McCain

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

Sully: ‘We Are Damn Lucky to Have Him at This Fraught Moment in History’

Posted on | April 2, 2011 | 10 Comments

“Him” of course being President Obama, who still moves Andrew Sullivan to paeans of gratitude, no matter how un-constitutionally Bush-like or wrong-headed Obama’s actual policies might be.

Did you say “Battered Wife Syndrome“?

Yeah. Everybody sees it, except the victim who refuses to take responsibility for enabling his own abuse. Meanwhile, with our brilliant European “allies” in charge of the air war, things are going just dandy for the Libyan rebels:

At least 13 people are reported to have been killed when a coalition plane flying over Libya fired on a rebel convoy between Brega and Ajdabiya on Friday, the rebels say. . . .
A doctor in the town of Ajdabiya, Suleiman Refardi, told the BBC that on Wednesday the coalition air strike on Zawia el Argobe targeted a government convoy that included tanks, artillery and lorries carrying ammunition.
A direct hit on an ammunition truck and trailer sent a hail of shrapnel into nearby houses, he said.
Four of the dead were female, including three children from the same family, aged between 12 and 16. Three boys, aged between 14 and 20, were also killed.

Here’s a video report:

Because there are no lefties marching around shouting “Obama lied, Libyans died,” Sullivan can pretend that President Awesomeness is a blessing to humanity “at this fraught moment in history.”

But this pretense cannot be maintained forever, if failures continue being heaped one upon another.

Category: Andrew Sullivan, Libya

Facts Are Stubborn Things

Posted on | April 2, 2011 | 50 Comments

Following up on this morning’s radio debate with Little Miss Attila, I found myself interrogated in the comments by Attila’s ally, Darleen Click of Protein Wisdom, who now wants to debate women in the military. This endless appetite for argument — the women’s point being that any man who criticizes feminism qua feminism must be wrong — compelled me to make this point:

Again, you see that my view of these issues is informed by a study of the feminist movement’s actual history, as opposed to a generalized sentimental commitment to “equality” as an ideal.

And this, I say again, is the real ground of the dispute. Feminism has an actual history, bound up in specific ideas and events and people, and the attempt to hijack the term “feminism” as some part of the conservative agenda is misguided, because it requires us to embrace a narrative of feminism that is counterfactual.

(And, no, I don’t care what Christina Hoff Sommers says about it.)

The problem lies in our society’s obsession with “equality,” a liberal fetish that seems to have been smuggled into the conservative tent, so that seemingly we are all egalitarians now. But as I tried to point out in our go-’round over women in the military: Is the job of the U.S. military to kill our nation’s enemies, or is its purpose to provide “equal opportunity” for women?

If you say the latter, then you are on the side of Patricia Schroeder and all the left-wing anti-military Democrats who don’t give a damn about American national security. Read more

Category: Feminism, Little Miss Attila, Military, Protein Wisdom

Showing Any Public Figure Crucified Is As Tasteless As Burning The Qur’an

Posted on | April 2, 2011 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

An interesting discussion came up today regarding the idiot in Florida who burned the Qur’an, and the resulting deaths in MeS, just north of me by a couple of hours.
Burning anyone’s scripture is deplorable. Double deplorable for anyone nominally a follower of the Christ. Do you really think He’d do such? Really?
And so then you have horrid depictions of other sacred objects, connected to public figures.  The image is far enough out there that I don’t care to embed it in this blog post.
The discussion went in the direction of the Florida pastor being held responsible for the Afghan deaths. While not defending the goofball pastor in the slightest, I cited the 2005 Newseek story about Qur’an flushing, which fiction cost 17 Pakistani lives. The causality gets to be challenging. The Florida pastor and the LA artist both merit public derision for tastelessness. But is the threat of a Heckler’s Veto by citizens willing to undertake violence sufficient justification for government restrictions on freedom of speech?
My counterpart in the discussion felt that the Pastor had behaved immorally. Now, from a Christian standpoint, you can build that argument, but what about a secular legal vantage? Playing the slippery slope card, I told him that we could equally decide alcohol is immoral, and outlaw beer. He said “Fine by me, I hate beer.” Great, we can outlaw all alcoholic beverages, then.
The argument concludes around the notion that we all have things we don’t like, but which others cherish. The least-worst answers here are:

  • Never actively offend others’ faith.
  • Strive to minimize passive offense of others’ faith.
  • When someone of your own stripe runs amok, regulate them.
  • Ensure the regulation is kept at the social level; attempts at codifying good taste as secular law are doomed to failure.

And may God have mercy on the creep in LA who depicted Sarah Palin getting spiked. Not asking him to like the lady; just for a modicum of decency. As art, the style isn’t completely without merit. The subject matter is the problem. Also, I’d put forward the same objection if BHO was enjoying the nine inch nail. If the artist had gone that route, the media would probably call the artist a raaaaacist.

Ed Driscoll has more, as does M. Joseph Sheppard

Category: Ed Driscoll, Sarah Palin, The Flemish Menace

Say Hello to Snow White

Posted on | April 2, 2011 | 15 Comments

That’s 22-year-old actress Lily Collins, who reportedly has been chosen to star in the forthcoming live-action version of Snow White. Collins is best known for having played Sandra Bullock’s daughter in The Blind Side. You may also be familiar with Lily’s dad. Read more

Category: Celebrities

14-Year-Old Suspended for Exposing School Secretary’s Porn Star Career

Posted on | April 2, 2011 | 12 Comments

Education news from Canada:

A teenager has been suspended from classes after revealing on a Facebook page that an office assistant at his Quebec City-area high school was moonlighting as porn star in her off-hours.
According to news reports, the 14-year-old alleged administrators at Etchemins Secondary School in Levis, Que., also threatened him with criminal charges. . . .
The clerical worker, who goes by the porn-actress name of Samantha Ardente, was suspended with pay last week after authorities learned a student had spotted her in the porn video Serial Abusers 2.
The boy had asked her for an autograph. Ardente wouldn’t give him one and asked him to keep quiet about the matter. The boy then created a Facebook page in her name, complete with a racy photo of her in her undies.

Maybe “Samantha Ardente” can get a job in California schools, working with teenage pole-dancers.

Category: Canada, Education, Scandal

Miss Dominican Republic Scandal: How Much Longer Can the Cover-Up Continue?

Posted on | April 2, 2011 | 13 Comments

As Smitty reported yesterday, Evi Siskos (pictured above) has claimed that she was robbed of the Miss Dominican Republic title because judges were bribed to give the crown to Dalia Fernandez. Dan Collins at Piece of Work in Progress has updated us on his ongoing investigation of this scandal. My own efforts to get to the bottom . . . er, to expose . . . to uncover the sordid truth have been hampered because no habla Espanol:

NUEVA YORK._ Esta ciudad, cuna del concurso mundial de belleza Miss Universo, fue escenario ayer miércoles de lo que parece ser el de una guerra entre mega divas y mises dominicanas, cuando en conferencia de prensa la ex candidata de Samaná –Evi Sisko – denunció que en el certamen 2011, “hubo dinero sucio”, sugiriendo que la corona fue comprada por la actual reina Delia Fernández, representante de Santiago de los Caballeros.
Se unió también a la campaña de denuncias que alegan que Fernández pagó $100.000 dólares por su corona.
Evi Sisko, que representó la península samanense pidió que debido a las acusaciones de fraude que algunas concursantes están denunciando en la prensa, se debería exigir alguna explicación a la Organización Miss Universo Internacional con sede en esta metrópolis y cuya franquicia es propiedad del magnate de bienes raíces, Donald Trump.
“Yo, lo que quiero es la verdad, exijo saber qué pasó”, expresó en la rueda de prensa celebrada en Manhattan.

Ay, caramba! Muy caliente! Uno cerveza, por favor.

Category: Dominican Republic, Piece of Work in Progress, Rule 5

Remember: Radio Feminist Fight With Little Miss Attila 10 a.m. ET Today

Posted on | April 2, 2011 | 47 Comments

The three-week-old feud begun by Little Miss Attila — “oversimplified fiddle faddle”! — will get an airing today on Da Tech Guy’s radio show on WCRN 830 AM (click the link to listen live online) at 10 a.m. Eastern. Attila is boasting that she’ll put me to flight.

UPDATE: The consensus of the in-studio guests was that Attila “won” our debate — which troubles me not at all. An interesting caller from Rhode Island referenced his sisters, self-declared feminists, who despise Sarah Palin.

My point all along: Feminism is and always been a movement of the Left. Ergo, efforts to re-define feminism as mainstream will tend to empower the Left. Conservatives trying to drape Gov. Palin in the garments of “feminism” are engaged in a project that is wrong-headed, because Gov. Palin’s biography — happily married mother of five and political leader — in fact refutes feminist ideology.

UPDATE II: In conclusion:

“Those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies some description must be uppermost. The levellers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground.”
– Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

UPDATE III: Well, I thought that would be the last word, but I see that Darleen Click in the comments has asked that I clarify some remarks I made in reference to women in combat.

In 1995, Newt Gingrich was widely ridiculed and condemned for saying: “If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for thirty days because they get infections . . .”

Gingrich went on to talk about upper-body strength and men supposedly being “biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes” (a sort of Darwinian heredity-is-destiny argument), but what was he saying about women and infections? Where did that come from?

It turns out — and this got obscured in the furor over Gingrich’s remarks — that he was referring to actual Pentagon studies about health problems of women soldiers deployed in combat-type situations. One report on these problems was the so-called “Lady J” study which found:

“Lack of suitable bathroom facilities and sufficient privacy pose a problem for timely urination. Active duty females in the field will decrease their oral hydration to diminish the frequency of urination as well as voluntarily suppress urination as long as possible. Subsequently, these women may induce prolonged bladder distention and increase their risk of urinary infections.”

These are simply medical facts, and not some sexist ideological oppression imposed by the patriarchy (or Newt Gingrich). The Pentagon found that women had more health problems than men when deployed, which imposed additional costs for medical care and undermined combat-unit readiness (i.e., units were under-strength because troops were absent on sick leave).

Leaving aside entirely the whole “giraffe-hunting” silliness, these studies highlight a basic question: Is the U.S. military supposed to be used for the purposes of national defense, or is it a vehicle for social engineering, to provide “equal opportunity” for women to advance to positions of leadership?

If women officers are to hold command rank, they must have experience serving as leaders of combat troops. Therefore, feminists insist that the military must bend the rules (and suffer the health costs and impairment of readiness) to put women into combat units. If you are a feminist — that is to say, if equality of the sexes is the be-all, end-all of your political involvement — then you must say, “To hell with readiness, and to hell with the costs of additional medical care, make it happen!”

I am not a feminist, and oppose such a policy. It is incumbent on those who call themselves feminists to explain why the U.S. military should be twisted like a pretzel to accommodate their ideological fanaticism.

For a very informative account of issues surrounding women in the military, I recommend Stephanie Guttman’s 2000 book The Kinder, Gentler Military: How Political Correctness Affects Our Ability to Win Wars.

UPDATE IV: Facts Are Stubborn Things.

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Da Tech Guy, Feminism, Little Miss Attila, Talk Radio

Sir Andrew of Rubesville

Posted on | April 1, 2011 | 28 Comments

No sooner does Kevin Drum claim ownership of his gullibility — one tenable option for Obama’s anti-war leftist supporters — than Andrew Sullivan mounts his high horse in protest:

Many of us supported this president because he promised to bring back the constitutional balance after the theories of Yoo, Delahunty, et al put the president on a par with emperors and kings in  wartime. And yet in this Libya move, what difference is there between Bush and Obama?

Well, competence — or at least the common-sense recognition that war cannot properly be fought by piecemeal commitments. Obama evidently wants the Libyan intervention to be something that is Not Quite War, and does not appear to have considered the possibility that this will be more damaging for U.S. interests than if he had ordered a massive invasion of Libya. Sully cares not a bit for U.S. interests, of course, but is concerned only for his own credibility: His erstwhile idol Obama has outdone Bush in foreign-policy high-handedness, thus embarrassing one Andrew Sullivan (B.A., Oxford; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard).

Leaving aside Sully’s tattered credibility, however, let’s consider the situation as it now stands in Libya:

U.S. officials are becoming increasingly resigned to the possibility of a protracted stalemate in Libya, with rebels retaining control of the eastern half of the divided country but lacking the muscle to drive Moammar Gaddafi from power. . . .
New evidence of a possible impasse emerged Friday as an opposition spokesman called publicly for a cease-fire that would halt the fighting and essentially freeze the battle lines. The Libyan government rejected the proposal, saying that it would not “withdraw from our own cities.” . . .

So the Obama administration has, apparently, committed insufficient military resources to achieve any decisive outcome. Every additional day Qaddafi remains in power is like an advertisement of American impotence. And Harry Reid adjourns the Senate rather than permit debate on whether the president has constitutional authority to wage this Not Quite War.

“The president’s own words are incredibly important here. The hypocrisy is amazing. In 2007, the president said, ‘The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.’ And yet here we have a president cavalierly taking us to war. He seems to have had a lot of time to talk to people. He talked to the Arab League; they had time to get together and vote on it. He talked to the U.N.; they had time to get together and vote on it. But he had utter disregard and contempt for the most important body in the United States that represents the people, the U.S. Congress — utter contempt. He’s gone to NATO, he’s gone to our allies, he’s gone to the U.N., he’s gone to the Arab League, but he has not had one single minute of debate in Congress. To add insult to injury, he chose to go to war while in Brazil, while Congress was not even in session.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky)

And rather than allow such a debate, Harry Reid adjourned the Senate — leaving Sully’s shredded credibility flapping in the wind.

UPDATE: Greetings, readers of the Instapundit!


Category: Andrew Sullivan, Libya, Military, Rand Paul
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