The Other McCain

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

If There Is Any Value Whatsoever In The Current US Middle-East Policy. . .

Posted on | March 12, 2011 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

Consider this: what you’re seeing the US do now is essentially what Ron Paul’s non-interventionist approach would look like.
So consider that, ye Paul fans, as the butcher’s bill grows and reddens.

Category: Ace of Spades

Journalists or Clairvoyants?

Posted on | March 12, 2011 | 3 Comments

On Friday, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Politico published one of those Smartest Guy in the Room analytical pieces that always annoy the crap out of me, and ought to annoy everyone else, too. It amounts to Vandehei and Allen playing GOP strategists:

The Republican Party is undergoing a messy but unmistakable 20-month transformation from fanatically anti-Obama to fanatically anti-spending, providing top party officials a new and intriguing playbook for recapturing the White House in 2012. . . .
If a presidential candidate could harness the smaller-government conservatism, temper it enough to avoid a blatant overreach and articulate a vision for a prosperous future for the country, it’s not hard to imagine swing voters finding such a person appealing.

You see what they did there? It is now March 2011, but VandeHei and Harris  have their crystal ball so finely tuned that it tells them (contingent on a bunch stuff that follows an “if”) what kind of candidate and what kind of message swing voters will find appealing in November 2012.

Somebody get me those guys’ phone number. Next time I go to Vegas, I’ll just call them up and ask, “Red or black?” before I walk into the casino and —  magic! — make my fortune at the roulette table.

Go read the whole damned thing, which includes some obligatory bashing of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin — “flamboyant and controversial figures”! “bombastic voices”! — with blind quotes from “one top [Republican] aide” and a “senior administration official,” etc.

Hmmm. I wonder what you’d find if you looked back to March 2009, to see if Vandehei and Harris foretold the massive Republican victory of November 2010?

Because I’ve got $10 that says they didn’t have a fucking clue. Just to hedge my bet, let’s peek:

March 17, 2009: “Even when Obama went before the cameras to express outrage at the AIG bonuses, he seemed to nod to the contrived nature of it. The aide said that the White House is not as focused on ‘the immediate sound bite about AIG’ as it is on ‘the fact that everything we do demonstrates … that he’s on the side of the American people [and] that he’s fighting for them.
‘They believe it wholeheartedly — poll numbers show that,’ the aide said, accurately describing the data. . . . ‘His entire presidency is about being on the side of the American people. ‘”

March 21, 2009: “So far, the president has not alienated the business community — and, in some cases, has found ways to win over executives who had been skeptical at best.”

March 30, 2009: “He was caught flat-footed by the AIG bonus uproar, but since then Obama has presented himself as skeptical of a government-only solution and tired of business-as-usual on Wall Street. The White House used a well-choreographed rollout to dominate the news-cycle the past 24 hours with his tough love approach – and present Obama as a fair-minded centrist when it comes to bailouts.”

So in March 2009 there wasn’t the slightest foreshadowing that Obama’s disastrous economic policies would cost Democrats a net loss of 63 seats in November 2010, yet here we’ve got the same writers trying to tell us which candidate and which message the GOP needs to win over swing voters in November 2012? I know some of you guys hate Dave Weigel, but I’m quoting him anyway:

In March 1983, unemployment was 10.3 percent, Ronald Reagan looked like a possible loser in the next year’s election, and Democrats were talking about the deficit-exploding combination of his tax cuts and spending. In November 1984 unemployment was 7.2 percent, Walter Mondale was promising to cut the deficit by raising taxes, and Ronald Reagan was beating him in 49 states.

Elections are about a lot of things no reporter can predict, not even the Smartest Guys in the Room.

Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012

Loren Burke Is a Great American!

Posted on | March 11, 2011 | 12 Comments

Earlier today, talking about the California surfer dudes who hit the beach in hope of riding the tsunami, I said:

There is something distinctly American about guys who are willing to risk their lives for a super-gnarly wave.

The surge wasn’t as overwhelming as the surfers hoped — probably a good thing, too — but thanks to a reporter for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, we now have the name of one of the tsunami surfers:

Loren Burke, 23, La Selva Beach, a construction worker from the Westside, was surfing Friday morning said he went surfing with three friends. Burke grew up in the county and doesn’t remember ever hearing a tsunami warning before. He said he was excited seeing the ocean this morning, but didn’t expect to see a big wave hit.
“The waves were about 7 foot and it was a lot of fun,” Burke said after he got out of the water just after 8 a.m.

“A lot of fun.” Loren Burke, I salute you!

UPDATE: As mentioned earlier, I made a contribution to the Red Cross to help disaster-relief efforts in Japan, and they sent me an auto-reply thank-you e-mail:

The American Red Cross is acting swiftly to put your donation to work in communities affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific. We are supporting relief work to meet critical needs. On behalf of those we serve by our humanitarian mission, thank you.

So that’s pretty cool, and I urge all readers to go give the Red Cross what you can — $10, $20, whatever — because the folks in Japan are going to need all the help we can give them.

Let’s just hope they can get those nuclear power plants fixed, or the disaster may become even worse.

Category: California

‘A Vagina . . . and a Brain’

Posted on | March 11, 2011 | 42 Comments

Contrary to feminist myth, many of us guys actually prefer women who have both a vagina and a brain, especially when a woman knows which organ to think with:

I have a mind of my own, and I don’t need to be told I’m a victim. Or that society must change utterly for my convenience. Or that I need advocates in order to be just as good as any man. . . .
I’m an at-home mom with a busload of kids, and I don’t feel that I’ve wasted my life or missed out on a career. Instead, like many women in my position, I have sacrificed things I consider of lesser value in order to do something I consider both important and rewarding.
The feminists won’t recognize that. So they don’t speak for me. . . .

Attagirl! (Wait: Is “attagirl” sexist? Like I should be worrying about such things at this stage of the argument . . .) Her coments echo Natalie Portman’s Oscar-night declaration that motherhood is “the most important role of my life.”

The lady’s testimony — “mind of my own . . . busload of kids” — points to one of those fingernails-on-a-chalkboard problems with feminist rhetoric: If being “just a mom” is a task beneath the dignity of intelligent women, doesn’t this ensure that a majority of future generations will be the offspring of idiots? Read more

Category: Education, Family, Feminism

A Tsunami of Posturing

Posted on | March 11, 2011 | 24 Comments

Few things are more predictable in modern discourse than the instinctive opportunism of those who, as soon as tragic news makes headlines, seek to turn it to some narrow political advantage.

The as-yet-unnumbered innocent Japanese who have lost their lives can speak on behalf of no agenda, and the distraught survivors of the devastation want nothing but help and comfort. And yet . . .

Today’s tsunami: This is what
climate change looks like

And yet . . .

Tsunami Relief And Preparedness Cut In GOP
Budget Proposal: National Weather Service

Decent people are appalled by such posturing. What comes next: The Great Compassion Rodeo, in which liberals display their moral superiority by claiming to care more about Japanese tsunami victims than the rest of us. But you know who’s actually helping tsunami survivors? The United States Navy, that’s who:

Eight warships are headed to Japan to render disaster relief in the wake of a catastrophic magnitude 8.9 earthquake that left hundreds dead Friday. The quake unleashed a tsunami that is tearing across the Pacific. . . .
“Our deepest sympathies go out to our close friends in Japan as they deal with this tragedy,” Adm. Patrick Walsh, Pacific Fleet commander, said statement posted on his Facebook page. “U.S. Pacific Fleet is making preparations and posturing our naval assets to provide assistance when directed. We stand ready to support those in need. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan.”
None of the 38,000 military personnel assigned to Japan are dead, Pentagon spokesman Marine Col. Dave Lapan said Friday. He said six ships are headed to Japan to render aid, if called upon: the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan; amphibious assault ship Essex; dock landing ships Germantown, Tortuga and Harpers Ferry; and amphibious command ship Blue Ridge.
In addition, cruiser Chancellorsville and destroyer Preble, along with Reagan, have been ordered to “proceed at best safe speed toward Japan,” Pacific Fleet said on its Facebook page at noon Eastern time.

My co-blogger is a career Navy man, of course, but he’s deployed ashore in landlocked Kabul, and we have no reason to suspect they’ll send him to provide emergency IT support in Japan. Each of us must do what we can where we are, and all of us can give to the Red Cross. I just did.

UPDATE: Now, back to the news . . . Earlier today, I was watching TV and they reported that, despite warnings, surfers were trying to get onto Southern California beaches and ride the tsunami-enhanced waves. Further north, a reminder of the dangerous reality: “A 25-year-old man was declared dead Friday afternoon after being swept out to sea off a northern California beach while trying to photograph a tsunami launched by the massive earthquake near Japan, according to a Del Norte County, California.”

In Japan, meanwhile, the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station remains a source of concern.

UPDATE II: Instapundit finds a news story about those tsunami-loving surfers. If anybody finds a story with names and/or photos of those dudes, please link it in the comments. There is something distinctly American about guys who are willing to risk their lives for a super-gnarly wave. They deserve their 15 minutes of fame.

UPDATE III: Loren Burke Is a Great American!


Category: Japan

‘Stacy’s Insult Against Governor Palin’?

Posted on | March 11, 2011 | 55 Comments

Well, it’s come to this. Not content to accuse me of arguing by means of ”oversimplified fiddle faddle,” now Little Miss Attila comes into the comments and accuses one of my defenders of “trying to slide away from Stacy’s insult against Governor Palin — and me — by simply throwing away the word that is in dispute.”

(Permit me a moment to bask in the glory: When I decide to stir the pot, I by God stir the pot, don’t I?)

In our phone conversation yesterday — which Attila also blogged about — she invoked Jeff Goldstein‘s “intentionalism,” but I don’t think she wants Jeff Freakin’ G. to jump into this one. That boy knows a thing or two about pot-stirring himself.

We’re now in a Humpty-Dumpty game, where Attila insists that the word “feminism” means exactly what she says it means, and any effort by me to contest that definition is an insult to all women — her, Roxeanne, Cassandra, Darleen, Sarah Palin, and presumably my own wife and daughters — as if every woman shared her own fanatical commitment to co-opting feminism.

Here’s the situation: Attila wishes me to admire her colorful pet reptile, “feminism,” and I’m trying to tell her, “Excuse me for not joining in the admiration, ma’am. That’s a deadly viper, and I’d advise you to drop that snake immediately.”

That Mr. G. Guy stands amazed at the trench-warfare intensity of this battle. Just a skirmish, sir. Let’s wait and see if Goldstein decides to join in, and then we might be looking at the blogospheric equivalent of Passchendaele — nearly a century later, they’re still arguing over who “won” that one, but each side lost at least a quarter-million casualties.

Or we might make reference to Verdun. Among the monuments on that terrible field is the Douaumont Ossuary, filled with the bones of more than 100,000 unknown dead.

UPDATE: Attila is at it again in the comments below, and I’d answer her down there, except that a glitch in the Disqus system has actually blocked me from commenting on my own blog. (Wombat’s working on the problem.)

What Attila is doing — as I think any student of logic would see — is telling every woman who will listen that by disputing the meaning of the term “feminism,” I’m purposefully insulting them. And it’s interesting to see how well this species of bandwagon argument is working for her so far.

In her comments below, Attila accuses me of wanting to “drag this out” and actually invokes the victims of the Japanese tsunami (!) as witnesses against me.

So these are the ground rules: She is permitted pre-emptively to accuse me of “oversimplified fiddle-faddle,” then walk away as if this were nothing and, if I dare take notice of my injury, I’m the cruel villain who (just by the way) is indifferent to the suffering of others.

You see the relevance, don’t you?

If “feminism” means anything, it means that women are endowed with collective innocence, while collective guilt is assigned to men. Under such circumstances, any conflict between male and female must result in the man’s defeat, because it would be social injustice for a man to win, no matter the facts of the case.

Meanwhile, Maggie’s Farm is popping the popcorn. Glad you’re enjoying the show.

UPDATE II: With reckless indifference to Japanese suffering, Goldstein brings his “demonstrative genius” into the argument. And along the way, he links to a 2005 post that brought Jeff this accusation from ur-feminist Amanda Marcotte:

Drink your entire drink if you suspect the reason the conservative blogger keeps writing about the same few feminist bloggers is he can’t believe they are both feminist and yet sexually attractive to him.

Collective innocence, collective guilt. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. And we smile at the sequelae: Marcotte joined Team Edwards, was thrown under the bus when her “Christofascist godbag” past became controversial, and Edwards sired a bastard child with starstruck Rielle Hunter while cheating on his cancer-stricken wife.

Yet “feminism”– an ideology to which Marcotte has devoted her life — is still such a valuable brand in the politcal marketplace that Attila will fight to the death to defend it.

Another sequel: Jeff also links a 2005 post of his that drew comments from someone by the name of “Allah”:

Let’s put some meat on the bone here.  If you want to eschew labels, fine, although I personally think that’s weak: few of us are so unique and eccentric in our beliefs that we don’t fit reasonably well into some existing category.  What I want to know, using labels or not, is to what extent Lauren and Trish et al. agree with or condone the type of paranoiac, bad-faith/ulterior-motive argumentation Marcotte specializes in.  Neither Jeff nor I have gotten a straight answer on that point yet, such that this “debate” is beginning to feel like a game of fucking charades.  Stop making us guess and then telling us what you’re not.  Tell us what you are. . . .

What’s happening here, I suspect, is that they want to avoid conflicts among the sisterhood to whatever extent possible lest it damage solidarity.  That’s why Lauren won’t give me a straight answer about Marcotte being loco, preferring instead the tactful dodge about the two of them being “different people.”

I don’t mean to belabor the point, but after having been flamed to the skies on Feministe for daring to overgeneralize about feminists, I think it might be a wee bit important to specify how, precisely, my generalization was unfair. . . .

The point at issue throughout this whole thing has been the extent to which feminists—Lauren and Amanda, in particular—think alike.  Lauren took great umbrage at the suggestion that she’s some kind of Marcotte manque.  She devoted an entire post at Feministe to flaming me for it.  Given those circumstances, yes, I think it’s absolutely, 100% appropriate to ask her to explain how, specifically, she and Amanda differ.  Because if it turns out that they don’t differ all that much, then her “we’re two different people!” ends up looking a bit disingenuous, no? . . .

More than 100 comments on that post. Good times, my friends. Good times.

Category: Feminism, Little Miss Attila, Rule 4

‘Looking Presidential’

Posted on | March 11, 2011 | 3 Comments

On a Friday, when the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan is monopolizing news coverage, the White House calls a press conference for the Healer-in-Chief.

For those who appreciate raw cynicism, this is a thing of beauty.

UPDATE: Darleen Click:

[J]ust heard the One say we shouldn’t believe what we are seeing or reading … he is all for drilling, just doing it responsibly.

Right. Because those Republicans are for irresponsible drilling. Also, as His Mendaciousness just implied, Republicans are against research and hate infrastructure.

UPDATE II: AOSHQ is live-blogging the Great Prevaricator’s Big Lie Carnival, and catches this:

[Obama] basically defines cuts as belonging [to] one of two forbidden categories:
1. Cutting our “Investments in the future.” High speed rail and Pell grants cannot be cut because they are investments in the future.
2. “Sneaking” a political agenda into a budget dispute. This category includes pretty much everything else — if you’re cutting an unnecessary program like NPR, that’s really just sneaking an ideological agenda into a budget discussion, and that’s not allowed.
After this political bickering by Obama, he heroically calls on others to “stop their political bickering.”

This endlessly elastic “investments in the future” meme reminds me of how,  whenever anyone criticized the $800 billion stimulus bill, Democrats immediately started talking “roads and bridges,” even though infrastructure projects were something like 6% of the stimulus. The 94% dog (a pork-barrel terrier) was rhetorical wagged by its 6% infrastructure tail.

UPDATE III: We must interrupt the brilliantly dishonest Obama for this breaking update on the delusionally stupid Nancy Pelosi:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the House Republicans’ proposed cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget would hurt biomedical research’s “biblical power to cure.”
Pelosi, speaking at a press conference on Capitol Hill celebrating the first anniversary of the health care bill’s passage, said, “There’s a cut in funding for the National Institutes of Health. This is not a healthy thing for our country because that research has answers. You know that every family in America is one telephone call, one diagnosis, one accident away from needing the kind of biomedical research that can cure – really have the biblical power to cure in a very, very special way and so to cut back on that research is wrong.”

(Ed Morrissey has the video at Hot Air.) Yesterday I described the Existential Theory of Liberalism, and here Pelosi deploys it typically: “Biomedical research” and “NIH budget” are the same thing in her rhetoric. 

Federal funding is the sine qua non of research, Pelosi implies, so that no one would do any biomedical research at all if it weren’t for NIH funding. She also implies that the entire NIH budget goes for research that is absolutely lifesaving. To believe this, of course, you must believe that there is no administrative overhead at NIH — not a penny beyond the absolute minimum, the bare necessities — and that the NIH never funded, for example, Professor J. Michael Bailey’s porn-arousal studies.

Category: Barack Obama, Japan

Paco: You Want Some Of This?
Us: Yeah, We’ll Take Two Terms

Posted on | March 11, 2011 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

Paco announces.
Best news I’ve heard all flippin’ day.
You know what to do.

Category: Blogging
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