The Other McCain

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

Sure, Trump For President, But Of What?

Posted on | March 27, 2011 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

Dr. Helen has come out in favor of The Donald as a potential candidate for POTUS. I don’t think I’m overstating her there.
However, if he’s no more serious than the current example, then I wouldn’t vote for him as President of Hair Club for Men. We need limited government and fiscal sanity. The Trump/Christie/Whoever stage shows can go, for all I’d support them.
Demand substance; reject style.

Category: Uncategorized

05Apr: Walker’s Wisconsin Waterloo?

Posted on | March 27, 2011 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

John Nolte at Big Government updates us on the status of the case of the Union vs. Governor Walker in Wisconsin. It’s an excellent overview, worthy of your full attention. The gist is that if one of the four conservative judges on the court, Prosser, is lost on the 05Apr election, then the court would flip to Lefty, and all semblance of rule of law, common sense, fiscal responsibility, reason, representation of the people, etc., could go straight down the tubes. One wishes one was engaging in hyperbole there.
In the face of such journalistic excellence, there was only one thing this blog could do: dispatch Sissypuss the Blog Kitty for a video exclusive. Here, our gritty, intrepid back-alley correspondent has captured two of the three sitting Lefties on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, discussing their day in their usual seriousness:
This blog is still waiting for an official denial from The Troglopundit* of the rumor that these judges had raided Trog’s personal lingerie collection, NTTAWWT. If he’s too embarrassed to admit the loss of these unmentionables, this blog understands in advance.
We here at ToM are willing to go to extreme lengths to help great bloggers like Trog achieve important milestones like a million pageviews, and we’ll cheerfully toss his dignity under the bus to do it. You’re welcome, Trog.

*I may have invented a new category, the ‘begging-the-question link’ with this one.

Category: Troglopundit, Wisconsin

Even Mark Steyn Misses The Point From Time To Time

Posted on | March 27, 2011 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

Steyn’s NRO article “The Art of Inconclusive War“, subtitled “Why is it that the United States no longer wins wars?” is another fine outing, but ultimately dances around the issue of the lack of victory in war, as evidenced by actual peace.
Bottom line up front: homo bureaucratus is here to manage problems, not solve them. Once you grasp that the whole war question is now merely a variation on the theme of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy, mystification can then give way to frustration. Verily, the power, policy, and process are far more important than any actual outcome. The intent justifies the means, and any negative ends are the fault of the Demonized Conservative of the Day (DCD).
Steyn’s article begins by laughing at Kinetic Military Action’s blatant contradiction of everything Candidate Obama said about foreign entanglements. The 2008 campaign was a virtuoso sunshine-up-your-backside performance, which can only be topped by the same rubes insisting on getting fooled again to the tune of the Who. I have faith in Mitt Romney’s capacity to bring such a debacle to pass.
After considering some of our NATO allies, Steyn floats the question:

. . .let us consider why it is that the United States no longer wins wars. Okay, it doesn’t exactly lose (most of) them, but nor does it have much to show for a now 60-year-old pattern of inconclusive outcomes. American forces have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan for a decade: Doesn’t that seem like a long time for a non-colonial power to be spending hacking its way through the worthless terrain of a Third World dump? If the object is to kill terrorists, might there not be some slicker way of doing it? And, if the object is something else entirely, mightn’t it be nice to know what it is?

Mark, your insistence on some kind of rationale here is touching, even quaint. In the case of Afghanistan, we’re flipping the COIN. A lot of coin. Afghanistan is The Ultimate Shovel Ready Project. I say that neutrally. The American policy is to dump a pile of blood and treasure here buffing up the infrastructure, while showing the Afghan forces how to handle the kinetic side of things. ATAMO*, and Afghanistan is a modern, stable country. Sorry if faith-based foreign policy leaves you underwhelmed. Recall it took Moses two generations in the Sinai to get anywhere with the Israelites.
Here comes the tell:

I am by temperament and upbringing an old-school imperialist: There are arguments to be made for being on the other side of the world for decades on end if you’re claiming it as sovereign territory and rebuilding it in your image, as the British did in India, Belize, Mauritius, the Solomon Islands, you name it. Likewise, there are arguments to be made for saying sorry, we’re a constitutional republic, we don’t do empire. But there’s not a lot to be said for forswearing imperialism and even modest cultural assertiveness, and still spending ten years getting shot up in Afghanistan helping to create, bankroll, and protect a so-called justice system that puts a man on death row for converting to Christianity.

Oh, you medieval Crusader, you! This pre-Cold War analysis neglects the fact that the National Security Act of 1947 was really the Team America, World Police Act. The US, prior to the Cold War, never maintained a substantial navy or army. Yet here we sit, two decades after perestroika, a solution in search of a problem. If we don’t like the policies of the current administration, the proper venue is the ballot box. Nothing short of trimming the ambitions of the national security strategy will amount to much.
Steyn applies his old-school thinking to Libya and comes up confused. The headache only comes if you’re operating under the assumption that the policy should make sense beyond the next opinion poll. By pointing his waffle maker at Tripoli, BHO has made up 10 points on the Rasmussen WTF Index. See how that line moved? That’s a BFD in the race for re-election.
Steyn appears to be on an appropriately cynical course as he concludes:

The United States is responsible for 43 percent of the planet’s military spending. So how come it doesn’t feel like that? It’s not merely that “our military is being volunteered by others,” but that Washington has been happy to volunteer it as the de facto expeditionary force for the “international community.” Sometimes U.S. troops sail under U.N. colors, sometimes NATO’s, and now in Libya even the Arab League’s. Either way, it makes little difference: America provides most of the money, men, and materiel. All that changes is the transnational figleaf.

Remember that all that money was borrowed. As the US government devolves into a full-on ponzi scheme, the Shiny New World Government (courtesy of King George) will pay the US to flex where needed, and ensure that the remaining independence of the countries in the world is reduced.
We’ll get there. More little spats will occur, and the US’s political independence, like its energy independence, will be eroded, and her sovereignty punted upstream to faceless, soulless, unelected, cosmopolitan twerps.
“A Republic, if you can keep it?” Sorry, Benjamin.
(Wow, this is a dark post. I should go review that McDonnell video for a pick-me-up.)

Update: Linked at Maggie’s Notebook.

*And Then A Miracle Occurs

Category: Uncategorized

Thanks Guv, You Do Us Proud

Posted on | March 27, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty (gracious hat tip to Cubachi)

One derives a great deal of satisfaction from the privilege of voting for genuine Americans like Bob McDonnell. You can tell the difference between a good leader and another Ruling Class stiff by the way a good leader draws the audience up to a higher level through a speech, as opposed to stepping down to the proletariat elevation for a few minutes of gumflap.
More important than the words are the actions. And this is what differentiates a good leader like McDonnell from one who Bloviates Hubris Often.

It is a privilege to reside in a state rife with solid leaders like McDonnell and Cuccinelli, (not to mention Patrick Murray, whom I hope shall muster another attempt to unseat Moran next year) providing leadership today in the fine tradition of Washington, Jefferson, and Mason. I look at these guys, and then consider the rot on the north bank of the Potomac, and figure that there is no way these slack-jawed Progressive idiots can succeed in destroying America.

Category: Virginia

Parenthood Is Noble

Posted on | March 27, 2011 | 12 Comments

by Smitty (via Insty)

Of all the lies of the modern Progressive movement, an overarching falsehood is that fatherhood and motherhood are not good. This is implicit in things like the Overpopulation Myth and the Gender/Sexuality Are Socially Constructed Myths. It’s been explicit in the feminist assault on motherhood.
The result? Virginia Postrel can meaningfully title an article ‘Mommy Track’ Without Shame.

But most want children, and once they have kids, these “talented and creative” women, “are willing to trade some career growth and compensation for freedom from the constant pressure to work long hours and weekends.” 

Instead of treating such women as pathetic losers to be jettisoned for a new crop of recruits, she argued, companies should recognize them as a “precious resource.” Such women could bring experience, continuity and talent to middle-management jobs traditionally occupied by short-termers on their way up or “mediocre” men whose ambitions outstripped their ability.

I submit that the real problem here is that women are fed a logical OR here: motherhood OR career.
This is steeped in falsehood. Motherhood IS a career, and anyone who’d condescend toward my mother for raising three well-adjusted children has outed him- or herself as a godforsaken fool.
Furthermore, I’d assert without proof that those saying that parenthood in general and motherhood in particular are somehow worth less than materialistic career pursuits:

  • are directly responsible to the cratering of the birthrate,
  • hasten the insolvency of the bogus social welfare programs they espouse,
  • are among the least happy members of the Brave New World they’ve created,
  • systematically project their failure on conservatives,
  • foam at the mouth when they hear the name “Sarah Palin”.

In summary, the falsehoods that threaten the long-term survivability of the American Dream tend to collect in heads which begin with false premises like ‘Parenthood sucks’.
For an excellent related post on the ignobility of treating sexuality as a video game, see The Camp of the Saints. I cannot resist preserving this particular gem:

Liberals, knowing that everyone has messed up at some point or another, would have us believe that hypocrisy involves nothing more nor less than stating the existence of an absolute moral truth.

Again, one is left to wonder how anyone believing that God is absolute moral truth, for one example, a Christian, can associate with the Left.

Update: linked by That Mr. G Guy.

Update II: more thoughts at The Underground Conservative

From the likes of Ward Cleaver, Jim Anderson and Mike Brady on TV in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s to Cliff Huxtable and Jason Seaver in the 1980s, Americans saw positive images of Dad on TV. Now where are they? Gone. At best, Dad is an idiot. A moron. If he’s even there. Sorry, but Homer Simpson is not a positive role model for a father.

Good point.

Category: Uncategorized

‘My Little Realm …’

Posted on | March 27, 2011 | 17 Comments

New York Times editor Bill Keller damns his own soul to hell with a column attempting his own justification:

Back in 2004, Daniel Okrent, the first ombudsman at The Times, wrote a column under the headline, “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” The sly first sentence of his essay was: “Of course it is.” Nobody seems to remember what came after. Okrent went on to explain that The Times’s outlook, steeped in the mores of a big, rambunctious city, tends to be culturally liberal: open-minded, skeptical of dogma, secular, cosmopolitan.

But it is none of those things, Mr. Keller. Indeed, it is the opposite of those things. The New York Times is close-minded, a credulous purveyor of the specific dogmas of organized liberalism, devoted to the credos of political correctness with the zeal of a fanatic, and narrowly provincial.

That’s not a mote in your eye, sir, it’s as much timber as might be found in a sequoyah forest. It blinds you to your failures, and if there were yet in your shriveled soul any remaining capacity for shame, you would have long ago resigned, never again to plague the world with pompous proclamations of your bona fides.

You have personally presided over the ruin of a once-great institution. These protestations of your good intentions serve only to remind readers of how the road to hell is proverbially paved. And what an epic folly you distill into a single ten-word sentence:

My little realm, the newsroom, consists of about 1,100 people.

Good Lord! The world’s largest and most highly-paid news-gathering operation in print journalism is your “little realm”!

And what a fine waste you have made of it, Mr. Keller. Your paper is routinely beaten on major stories by other news organizations with the merest fraction of the vast resources you command.

I suspect you will not reign over your “little realm” much longer. Some day historians chronicling the collapse of the New York Times will produce charts demonstrating that the downfall began the day you were hired and that the decline of the paper can be exactly correlated to the rise of Bill Keller within the organization.

Failure heaped upon embarrassing failure cannot be endlessly repeated and sold to the proprietors as success. Sooner or later, all these failures for which you have been personally responsible (try as you might to direct the blame elsewhere by your promiscuous use of “we”) will eventually tip the scales against you, and you’ll be gone.

Not a moment too soon, either. You are a stinking disgrace to the profession of journalism and the world would have been better off had you decided to pursued a career as a pimp, a carnival sideshow hustler or some other occupation for which you might possess an actual aptitude.


Category: New York Times

Roxeanne de Luca Writes About Feminism, Sex and Virginity

Posted on | March 26, 2011 | 14 Comments

In her role as guest-blogger at Camp of the Saints, Roxeanne explains the difficulties of being A Woman Who Disagrees With “Pro-Sex” Feminists:

I got excoriated . . . .because I suggested that premarital sex is not an achievement and is about as novel as not wearing a hoop skirt. When I said that premarital sex is about as rebellious against men as is giving extra money to the IRS to protest excess government spending, it was on. No turning back. It was full-on chastity shaming from the “pro-woman feminists”, who said that (inter alia) only repressive religions and the Victorian era make us think that there’s something wrong with sex, that it’s not an achievement to be a virgin until marriage, and that prohibitions on random sex are all about repressing women’s rampant sexuality. Oh, I also don’t know that women like sex, too, am denying sexual agency to women, and I have hang-ups.

Read the whole thing.

(NOTE: This post edited to omit admittedly disastrous humor attempt. My sincere apologies. — RSM)

Category: Camp of the Saints, Roxeanne de Luca, Sex

FMJRA 2.0: E.T.I.

Posted on | March 26, 2011 | 3 Comments

-Compiled by Wombat-socho

Apologies for missing last week’s installment of  the FMJRA, but I really hadn’t planned on spending the weekend at Uncle Eric’s hooked up to an intravenous. With that minor inconvenience over with, here’s your linkagery for this week!

OPERATION ODYSSEY DAWN: U.S. Launches Attacks on Targets in Libya

Economic Terror Plan for ‘Redistributing Wealth and Power in the Country’

The Triumph of Raaaaacism: Liberals Get in Touch With Their Inner Teabagger

The New Tone Deafness: Public Unions ‘McVeigh In’ With OKC Imagery

Robert Stacy McCain: Six Megahit Man

In E-Mail to Dan Riehl, Shankman Claims ‘Very Mainstream Catholic Theology’

‘Valley Of The Shadow’ Reports From A Convening Of Springs In The CA Republic

The Wisconsin Restraining Order as a Harbinger of 2012?

Mises on ‘Christian Socialism’

California GOP: Falling Down

If Obama’s Lost Louis Farrakhan …

‘Any Similarity Is Coincidence’

From Mountains Jenghis Roamed About

About The Only Unused Obama Comparison Remaining: Elric

‘Arab Savages’ and Other Things No One Can Write About in 21st-Century England

SEIU Sued for ‘Harassment’

What Part of ‘Asserting Private Knowledge’ Is So Hard to Understand?

Rule 5 Sunday: Sweater Puppy Madness!

Wolcottism

LIVE AT FIVE – 03.22.11

Movement To Kill The VampireEnd The Federal Reserve Gaining Steam

Press Conference in Chile Gives Obama Chance to Lie in Two Languages

‘Too Good a Pleasure to Forego’

Is Charlie Sheen Really ‘Winning’?

Troubleshooting ‘Beyond the Welfare State’

Multilateral Retardation

Bigger Breasts: By Any Means Necessary?

‘Not Only Wrong, But Dangerous’

U.S. Policy On Libya Explained: It Was All An Esoteric Steven Wright Reference

This Is Probably Not the Onset of an Incurable Terminal Illness, But …

“LIVE AT FIVE – 03.24.11“

Should Any ‘Spooky Dude’ Be Allowed To Recast The Global Economy?

Your Bagram Accommodations

Fred Phelps And Westboro Baptist Predictably Tasteless In Remembering Liz Taylor

Alan Colmes Is A Dumb [Maher], But You Already Knew That

Military Gay Training

‘Kinetic Military Action’: Remember When It Was Simply ‘War’?

What A Condescending Pile Of Hooey

He’s Herman Cain …

Housing Sales Data ‘Badly Flawed’?

Conrad Is A Knob, And We Need To Attack The Lousy Assertions Behind His Ideas

The Nyquil Worked

He Who Hates Attractive GOP Women

“Three 12-Year-Old French Girls Were Delivered To Him As A Birthday Present”

Weiner Schnitzeled?

Geraldine Ferraro Passes, Sarah Palin Salutes

Top linkers for this week:

  1. Lonely Conservative (10 links)
  2. Maggie’s Notebook (8 links)
  3. POWIP, Protein Wisdom, and That Mr. Guy (6 links)

Those who link here from Blogger should send their links to me for inclusion in next week’s FMJRA, because WordPress hates you.

Category: FMJRA Award
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