The Other McCain

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

Cowboy Poetry Of The Day

Posted on | March 11, 2011 | 4 Comments

by Smitty (via Theo)

ode_to_harry_the_invertebrate

A wee ode to Harry the Invertebrate

Category: Blogging, Nevada

The Feminist Omerta

Posted on | March 11, 2011 | 47 Comments

Permit me to offer a simple analogy:

Feminism is to women as Mafia is to Sicilians.

Students of organized crime know that what we call “mafia” was, during its heyday, actually known to its members as La Cosa Nostra — roughly translated, “this thing of ours.”

That wild thought occurred to me as I contemplated the various women raking me over the coals in the comments of Little Miss Attila’s post about Sarah Palin and feminism, for example Roxeanne de Luca:

A lot of left-brained, educated women are infuriated by Stacy’s line of reasoning – we know ourselves to be equal to men (Stacy’s line about equality implying interchangeability aside, because they really are not the same thing at all), and don’t see why the laws and our society should not reflect that.
The disservice to the conservative movement is two-fold: first, it turns women away from it (and we do know that young, unmarried women win elections for Democrats); second, it ignores the fact that the progressive movement is like a virus that infects many hosts. Feminism is not the first, nor will it be the last, movement that the progressives have attempted to hijack. Why on earth we would not fight for feminism, rather than letting the progressives take it, is beyond me.

Wise gentlemen comparing “Stacy’s line of reasoning” to the reaction it has generated will recognize what’s going on here: We are at that stage of the argument you have with your wife when whatever started the argument has ceased to be relevant, and the point of the argument has become: She is right, you are wrong, and your refusal to acknowledge her unquestioned rightness is regarded as an intolerable insult.

The First Rule of Holes suggests that I should stop digging now, but before I lay aside my shovel, let me explain why my writing about feminism so profoundly offends women — even many women whom you would not normally expect to defend feminism:

  1. I actually know what I’m talking about — Look, I’m 51 years old and have been a voracious student of history since childhood. My Donkey Cons co-author, Lynn Vincent (Sarah Palin’s collaborator on Going Rogue) has praised my “encyclopedic” knowledge of political history — a comment which is not coincidental considering that, in fact, I’d read the entire World Book encyclopedia by the age of 12. Just as I’ve read more Marx than most Marxists, I’ve read more about feminism than most feminists. Sitting on my desk right now is Susan Brownmiller’s memoir, In Our Time. If I were just some random ignoramus ranting about “feminazis,” they could shrug it off, but I’m not, so they can’t.
  2. I remind them of somebody they don’t like — This is an unfortunate hazard encountered by any male writer who criticizes feminism: For many women, it triggers a mental association with every dipwad chauvinist a–hole they’ve ever known in real life. Friends might cite in my defense the fact that, in real life, I’m just a happy-go-lucky goof-off, but this is irrelevant to the mental-association problem. To every woman who has ever been passed over for a promotion that instead went to a guy, or otherwise felt herself subjected to sexist discrimination, the guy who criticizes feminism is mentally associated with That Awful Creep. This isn’t necessarily my fault, or the women’s fault, it just is what it is.
  3. Women writers have an investment in feminism — Here is where the term La Cosa Nostra comes to mind: For women writers, feminism is “this thing of ours,” a subject on which they expect to exercise a monopoly. You will note here a distinction between women who write for a living, or at least as an amateur vocation, and women who have no ambition to be regarded as “writers.” Insofar as any woman aspires to be a writer, one of the subjects about which she can always write — and never have to worry about competing for readership with male writers — is feminism. And unless she wants to be exiled to the outer darkness occupied by women writers who are avowedly anti-feminist, what she writes about feminism will in some sense celebrate feminism as a good and worthy movement.

So you see why my writing about feminism makes me such a convenient target, even of conservative women who are despised by actual feminists. No matter how much historical evidence I cite in support of the fact that Second Wave feminism was deeply rooted in the anti-American Left — both Betty Friedan’s pro-Soviet Old Left and the radical New Left roots of the Women’s Liberation Movement — they will not concede the point, because I was born with a penis, and no one born with a penis can be permitted to write with authority as a critic of feminism. Read more

Category: Feminism, Little Miss Attila, Rule 4

LIVE AT FIVE – 03.11.11

Posted on | March 11, 2011 | 7 Comments

TOP NEWS
Walker Wins His Battle With Unions On Collective Bargaining

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

Saunders of AFSCME: “It’s not over…we are in this for the long haul.”

King Hearing On Islamic Radicalism Gets Emotional
Rep. Ellison whines, leaves in tears



White House Libya Strategy Politically Risky
DNI Clapper’s prediction of ultimate victory by Qadhafi provokes calls in Senate for intervention by Lieberman, McCain, others



POLITICS
Nine Officers Reprimanded For Failure To Act Before Fort Hood Shootings

Memorial erected one year after Nidal's rampage

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Pressure On NPR Continues As O’Keefe Releases Second Video

Pawlenty Takes On Problem-Solver Mantle In New Hampshire


Rand Paul Blasts Energy Department Over Toilets

House Panel Approves Measure To Block EPA Carbon Rules

FHA Commissioner Steps Down; House Votes To End Foreclosure Assistance Program



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
The $200 Tablet Computer, or, Is B&N Smart Enough To Seize An Opportunity?
Oil Hovers Below $103 As Traders Eye Saudi Unrest
US Stocks Fall As S&P Plunges To Lowest Level Since January
Walmart To Expand “Express” Concept
IPhone, Blackberry Fall To Pwn2Own Hackers; Android, WinPhone 7 Still Standing
HP Fiddles While Microsoft Does A (Really Slow) Burn



SPORTS
Heat Ends Losing Streak, Beats Lakers

Kobe Bryant goes one-on-one against Dwayne Wade

Vocal Bosh leads out of the gate while Wade, James struggle in first period

Hope Remains Despite Fireworks At NFL Labor Talks




Big East Tourney: Pitt Edged By Connecticut

Hokies Whip Georgia Tech 59-43 In First Round Of ACC Tourney

Yogi Berra Released From Hospital After Fall In Clubhouse

Bruins Dominated By Ducks 76-59 In Pac-10 Opener

It’s Aggies Over Mizzou At Big 12 Tourney



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Timberlake & Biel Split

Justin Timerlake and Jessica Biel

No longer a couple. *shrug*

LAPD Raids Charlie Sheen’s Place Looking For Weapons; Possible Violation Of TRO

Tony Danza Files For Divorce

Lindsay Lohan Not Going To Jail – Today, Anyway

National Enquirer: Sandra Bullock Afraid Jesse James Will Expose Her Lesbianism

The Forbes Five: Hip-Hop’s Wealthiest Rappers

TeenNick Goes Retro With 90s Programming

Kirstie Alley Introducing “Dancing” Partner Maksim To $cientology?

Paris Fashion Houses Give Kanye The Cold Shoulder

Megan Fox Pulls Out All The Stops (And A Very Low-Cut Dress) But “Passion Play” Still A Direct-To-Video Flop

Britney Covers “Out” Magazine’s Ladies We Love Issue – But Insists “I Only Have Eyes For Men”



FOREIGNERS
Dalai Lama Steps Down As Political Head Of Tibetan Exiles
PRC Rescuers Search Town After Quake Kills 25
Saudi Security Opens Fire In Qatif, Wounds Three Protesters
Japan’s PM Hangs On Despite Donation Furor
France Recognizes Libyan Rebels As Legitimate Government Of Libya
US To Send Aid Team To Eastern Libya; SecState Clinton To Meet With Rebel Representatives



BLOGS & STUFF
Legal Insurrection: Why Do These People Feel No Fear About Expressing These Death Threats In The Open?
Sister Toldjah: New Tone Watch – Death Threat Mania Invades Wisconsin
American Power: Betsy Liley Contradicts Initial NPR Statement On “Refusing” $5 Million From Phony Muslims
Althouse: Why Doesn’t The President Say Anything About The Wisconsin Protests?
Mediaite: NPR Journalists Send Open Letter; “Appalled” By Sting Video Contents
Cubachi: Rand Paul – “You favor a woman’s right to an abortion but not her right to choose a lightbulb or toilet.”
Riehl World View: Cornyn Has To Go
Maggie’s Notebook: Americans Cried First…Now Keith Ellison Sheds A Public Tear
Moe Lane: What’s The Big Deal About Krugman’s Admission?
Blackfive: Leader Of Free World Recognizes Libyan Transitional Government
Hit & Run: The Extreme Bill In Wisconsin That Would Put The State’s Public Sector Collective Bargaining Rules Roughly In Line With Half The Other States
Don Surber: NYT “Fact Checker” Misquoted Christie

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

Epic Rant by Jeff Motherf–g G.

Posted on | March 10, 2011 | 7 Comments

Borrowing the Hammer’s “new tone” motif for a minute, because it’s beautiful when Jeff G. gets his rant on:

Here’s what these idiot Madison “protesters” — along with their intellectually bankrupt fellow travelers playing Solidarnosc on f***ing facebook as if this is just another cause celebre the world has ginned up to keep hipsters feeling “political” — are actively, vocally agitating FOR: no school choice for kids; no merit pay for teachers; seniority raises, and a first hired / last fired policy that promotes mediocrity, disinterest, and underperformance, while providing no incentive for effective teaching; forced union dues; forced political contributions to the Democrat party, made possible by a tawdry money laundering scheme that in many ways works to disenfranchise Republican voters in the union; the inability of taxpayers to have any say over local schools; and on and on and on. . . .

Go read the whole epic thing, unless you find f-bombs offensive, but the Left’s wacko reaction to the Wisconsin situation could probably make Billy Graham cuss a blue streak.

Somehow I’ve spent the past few days bogged down and sidetracked by stuff that’s kept me from staying on the Wisconsin story the way I should, and now I’ll play catch-up. Here’s video of the thug mob blitzing the Capitol after the Senate vote:

Did you notice what I noticed about that mob? Kinda young-ish, eh? Like maybe they’re not really the struggling proletariat, but actually a bunch of overprivileged University of Wisconsin students acting out their radical fantasies of what it must of been like back in The Sixties, man. As if repealing the protected status of government employees was the moral equivalent of napalming bamboo huts or something.

Whenever I see such puerile upper-middle-class punks doing their pseudo-radical protest thing, there’s this voice in my head saying, “Where’s the Ohio National Guard when we really need ’em?”

But I ignore the voices in my head, and instead read Drew M at AOSHQ:

So if you lose a vote you get to riot and take over the capitol building? … It’s good that Democrats are showing themselves for what they are…thugs who resort to physical attacks when they don’t get their way.

What’s interesting is to watch lefties doing their Charlie Sheen imitation — “winning!” — in an effort to convice themselves that this crushing defeat they just suffered is actually bad for Republicans. They’ve got polls, you see, just like back in March 2010 they had polls telling them what a brilliant idea it was to shove ObamaCare through Congress, despite clear signals to the contrary like Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts. (See: “Democrats in the Deathmobile,” The American Spectator, March 19, 2010.)

Once again, we are confronted by the yawning gap between what Democrats say during election campaigns — trying to convince middle-class suburban voters how responsible and civil and moderate they are, unlike those dangerous Republican extremists — and what Democrats actually do when their special-interest agenda at stake. Please read Peter Ingemi’s Examiner column, “Two groups, two narratives.”

Category: Da Tech Guy, Democrats, Protein Wisdom, Unions, Wisconsin

This May Be Nothing, Or It Might Be Worth an Instalanche

Posted on | March 10, 2011 | 10 Comments

OK, there were a million things I wanted to blog about today, but didn’t get around to yet, and now I’m once again sidetracked by a cryptic Twitter message from Sissy Willis:

@rsmccain Basic idea, the importance of being noticed (Darwinian status seeking)=huge=ur theme of my blog http://bit.ly/i2hNQv

Given the 140-character limit, perhaps there’s some missing context that would help me understand what Sissy’s trying to say. Yet I was intrigued that the link led to a Google search on the phrase “the importance of being noticed,” the top result of which was a post describing the “rush of dopamine” Sissy got from her first Instalanche.

Obviously, this is something very important blog-wise. And then there was an August 2009 post by Dr. Helen Smith that included this comment by Sissy:

Fascinating and timely topic.
Schopenhauer’s informational and reputational “cascades” of sheeplike belief formation among our fellow human beings come to mind: “There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion.” I blogged about it here:

http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2007/10/there-are-very-.html

Another important angle: “The importance of being noticed” — to dissent is to be relegated to the fringes of polite society:

http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2006/04/in_order_for_sc.html

Now I became totally obsessed, like Sherlock Holmes after he’s found his first clue: A meme not only related to the coveted Instalanche, but also connected to the InstaWife? The game is afoot, Dr. Watson!

Further sleuthing turned up this 2005 post by Sissy:

[E]ach one of us seeks, through our accomplishments, to earn a place of honor among our peers. The real issue is, whom do we select as our peers. Once again we recall Peter F. Rowbotham’s citation of the unorthodox bonding rituals of Hell’s Angels and British soccer fans as examples of a “system of honor that is an alternative to mainstream moral orders.”

Hmmm. I don’t know Rowbotham from Schopenauer, but perhaps what Sissy is trying to say is that bloggers are like Hell’s Angels, and Instapundit is Sonny Barger?

Or something like that. The blogosphere is what Hayek would call a spontaneous order, a system planned by no one and with no conscious design, responsive to thousands of inputs. And like the Hell’s Angels — or a college fraternity, for that matter — the blogosphere is also based on the principle of mutual selection: You volunteer for the group, and the group decides whether to accept you.

If I have correctly followed this Hansel-and-Gretel bread-crumb trail of inferences, then, what Sissy is saying is this: To the blogger, an Instalanche is a signal of acceptance by one’s peers, a signal that you are one of the gang, so that “Darwinian status-seeking” — doing whatever is necessary to get the ‘Lanche — affects the informational and reputational “cascades” of the blogosphere.

Alternate hypothesis: Too much caffeine and too little sleep have addled my brain into a Charlie Sheen-like acute manic state, so that I’m reading waaaay too much into this cryptic message from Sissy. In which case, the message may actually be as simple as . . .

“Hey, you should link me more often, stupid!”

Go read Sissy Willis’s blog immediately. Even if I’m as crazy as Charlie Sheen, there must be some deep significance to that Tweet, and I’m not taking any chances of screwing up my blog karma.

#winning!

Oh, and here’s yet another job nobody bothered to offer me:

NEW JOB
HotAir.com – Writer
Description: HotAir.com is seeking a third writer to join the current duo of Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit. HotAir is the largest conservative blog, has a readership of over two million readers a month and is cited daily by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Bill Bennett and pundits across the airwaves and online. Blogging at HotAir is the perfect opportunity for a writer with a quick wit and a nose for news. Competitive salary commensurate with experience plus full benefits. Please send inquiries to [email protected] or fax to 703-247-1257, Attention: Jonathan Garthwaite, General Manager.
Added 03/08/11.

Honestly, sometimes I feel like the ugliest girl on the cheerleading squad. I’ve spent the past three years doing cartwheels and somersaults online and still, nobody even wants to look up my skirt . . .

Category: Dr. Helen, Hot Air, Instapundit, Sissy Willis

I Don’t Hate Trains

Posted on | March 10, 2011 | 34 Comments

“What, exactly, do Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians have against trains? Seriously, what?”
— David Weigel, Slate

Few things — not even the threat of a coffee shortage — bother me quite so much as what I call the Existential Theory of Liberalism:

Everything that exists must be subsidized by the federal government; ergo, to argue against government subsidies for something is to advocate the abolition of that thing.

The Existential Theory of Liberalism can be seen in action whenever any conservative proposes reducing federal expenditures for, say, the National Endowment for the Arts, and is therefore accused by liberals of being “anti-art.” By the same token, if you criticize the federal Department of Education, you are “anti-education,” and if you oppose using taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem-cell research, you are “anti-science.”

(Don’t attempt to use this trick against liberals, however, or you will discover that turnabout is not fair play: If you accuse liberals of being “anti-religious” because they oppose prayer in public schools, they will then accuse you of being a fanatical theocrat who wishes to “impose your beliefs” on others. Of course, liberals routinely use government subsidies to impose their beliefs on the rest of us: “stimulus” grants for gay pornography, anyone? Liberals fervently believe in sodomy, and therefore insist that taxpayers foot the bill to promote their favorite pastime, but I digress …)

When my buddy Dave sent me his train story from Slate — and you really should read the whole thing, which isn’t all bad — I felt obligated to reply by e-mail:

I don’t hate trains. I also don’t hate windmills, ethanol, “All Things Considered” or any of the other things that are subsidized with federal tax dollars because there is not enough market demand for them to be otherwise economically viable. It is an error of logic to conflate opposition to subsidies with “hate” for the thing subsidized.
I do, however, admit to hating Auburn University, “performance artists” and the United Nations, all of which get federal subsidies.
— RSM

Meanwhile, Philip Klein has an article at The American Spectator about the recent epidemic of train-mania among liberals:

“Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail,” President Obama declared in his State of the Union address, making it the most ambitious element of his vision for “winning the future.”
Invoking national pride, Obama mused that “America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, constructed the interstate highway system.” Sadly, he lamented, the U.S. now lags behind Europe, Russia, and China in modern transportation infrastructure.
If the nation met his goal for high-speed rail adoption, he said, “This could allow you to go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying — without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already under way.”
To most Americans, the passing reference to California was likely an afterthought, lost amid all the dreamy rhetoric of rebuilding the nation. But upon closer inspection, the state’s proposed high-speed rail system serves as a perfect example of the gap between the promise of transformational liberalism and the reality of big government. Taxpayers everywhere should pay attention, because the project has already been granted $3.2 billion in federal funds, mostly through Obama’s economic stimulus package — and its backers hope to gobble up billions more over the next decade.
The $43 billion transportation project to link Los Angeles to San Francisco with a bullet train by 2020 would be considered grandiose during the plushest of times, yet it’s being pursued during an era when governments at all levels are mired in deep fiscal crises. The plan has been subject to a series of scathing reports by independent analysts, raising concerns about everything from its cost estimates to its business model. The University of California at Berkeley has questioned its lofty ridership projections. And even the Washington Post has editorialized against it.
Although voters in the financially strapped Golden State approved a ballot measure in 2008 authorizing up to $9.9 billion in bonds to build the rail system, the project has encountered a lot of opposition as it has progressed. Several cities are suing to prevent the trains from tearing through their downtowns. Farmers are worried that the tracks will carve up their land. Some environmental groups normally predisposed to supporting high-speed rail have turned against the proposed route, fearing its effects on undeveloped areas. When the High-Speed Rail Authority announced that the initial section of the line would be built in the state’s less inhabited Central Valley region, many were puzzled as to why they didn’t begin by connecting large cities with more potential riders. As a result, critics dubbed it the “train to nowhere.” . . .

You must read the whole thing, because it was written by Philip Klein, who is Jewish. If you don’t read it, that means you hate Jews.

Oh, wait. I’m sorry. I unexpectedly lapsed into thinking like a liberal for a moment, which reminds me of another patented trick of Liberal Logic™ — the Just-Like-Hitler Theory of Republican Policy.

We’ve recently seen this employed in Wisconsin, where GOP state legislators passed a bill to limit the power of government-employee labor unions, resulting in this predictable accusation: “Republicans hate unions! You know who else hated unions? Hitler!”

But as usual, no fair turning this trick against liberals, although it would be pretty easy.

I mean, c’mon: How did Hitler use trains? To ship Jews to death camps!

No wonder Phil hates trains . . .

Category: American Spectator, Dave Weigel, Liberals

David Brooks, Brutally Spanked

Posted on | March 10, 2011 | 19 Comments

My apologies for neglecting my regular “David Brooks Fisking Day” duties for several months. Perhaps I’ll have to start outsourcing this task. The NYT’s house “conservative” has published a pretentious new book, The Social Animal, which gets completely dismantled by Will Wilkinson at Forbes:

Brooks supplies neither drama, high emotion, nor the mindbending metaphysics of aging without time. He serves up instead a shapeless story of ruling-class, Davos-goers so tedious, so lacking in passion and intensity, one begins to hope Harry and Erica will be pursued by proletarian lynch-mobs, revealed as rubber fetishists, or at least stranded at sea one ominous afternoon on a friend’s yacht, just so one may be sure these cardboard cutouts have functioning cardboard hearts. . . .
It’s easy to see the appeal of a spoonful of human interest to make the medicine of science go down. And it would be easy to forgive Brooks the insipidity of his characters and the tedium of his tale if he really delivered on his promised synthesis of the paradigm-busting sciences of the mind, but he delivers only a muddle. . . .
The story of Harold and Erica does not really illustrate a new, coherent, science-based theory of human nature. It is a bowl hammered from Brooks’ philosophic predilections into which a jumbled stew of scientific anecdotes is poured. And it is not good stew. . . .

Read the whole brutal thing, which is nearly enough to make me regret having previously urged the arrest of Wilkinson, a “scofflaw dopehead” whom my confidential sources suspect of having commited fornication with Kerry Howley. 

Despite Wilkinson’s obvious criminal tendencies, however, I think we can agree that a man who despises David Brooks can’t be all bad. So when America’s law-enforcement community finally awakes to the looming menace of reefer-crazed libertarians — after a joint task force led by the Iowa City SWAT unit raids Wilkinson’s home, tasers him, and hauls him away to jail — I hereby offer to testify as a character witness at Will’s trial.

Category: David Brooks Fisking Day

UPDATE: The Girl Scouts Sex Scandal

Posted on | March 10, 2011 | 14 Comments

My post Saturday about the March 2010 Girl Scouts scandal — involving a Planned Parenthood “Healthy, Happy and Hot” pamphlet made available at a United Nations conference event — drew some blowback from commenter Paul Katz:

The whole thing was a far-religious right slander campaign against the Girl Scouts. . . .
Anyone or any blog reposting this slander really ought to issue a retraction.

I’ve done some follow-up reporting and, while it will take a while to turn this into a full story, I do want to pass along one item now: An open letter sent to Girl Scouts parents and supporters from Sharon Slater of Family Watch International. It was Mrs. Slater whose eyewitness report about the U.N. conference “Girls Only” panel sparked the uproar over the “Health, Happy and Hot” brouchure. In the wake of the controversy, Mrs. Slater wrote in her open letter:

Because some news outlets picked up our story and reported that the booklet was “distributed” to the girls (even though I had not witnessed the booklets actually put into the girls’ hands), unfortunately, some have tried to discredit my report by focusing on the word “distributed” rather than the fact that the brochure on the back table was available to the girls at the meeting, which is the common way of “distributing” handouts at these types of UN meetings. And more importantly, those who have focused on the word “distributed” and what the word means or does not mean, rather than the fact that the Girl Scouts were at the UN promoting a number of radical sexual rights that are outlined in the Planned Parenthood booklet, have entirely overlooked the facts, which are that the Girl Scouts were promoting abortion and other controversial sexual rights at the UN.

You can download Mrs. Slater’s open letter as a Word document. I also want to call your attention to a history of the association between Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood. And you can click here to see a PDF file of the “Healthy, Happy and Hot” pamphlet.

I will have more on this story later.

Category: Planned Parenthood, Scandal, Sex, United Nations
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