The Other McCain

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

Hey, Maybe Glenn Beck Was Right

Posted on | March 2, 2011 | 4 Comments

You may recall that, when the Egyptian revolution first popped into the news, Glenn Beck caught a lot of grief for saying that the American Left was in league with Islamists to destabilize the Middle East. What Beck said — or perhaps the way he said it — seemed a bit kookier than that, but the essence of his accusation is not really new: David Horowitz’s 2006 book, Unholy Alliance, makes basically the same argument.

Well, guess what? Glenn Beck isn’t the only one worried about the American Left supporting terrorists. There’s also the U.S. Justice Department:

It’s not every day that an American labor union gets investigated for possible ties to two of the world’s most lethal terrorist organizations. But Chicago’s Service Employees International Union Local 73 isn’t an everyday union. Last September 24, FBI agents raided residences in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan of more than a dozen radical activists in an effort to connect them to the Hamas (Gaza and the West Bank) and FARC (Colombia) guerrilla movements. Two of the occupants were SEIU Local 73 chief steward and executive board member Joe Iosbaker and former local board member-steward Tom Burke. . . .
Federal officials are trying to determine whether they and a dozen other subpoenaed activists, mainly in Chicago and Minneapolis, have provided financial or other material support for armed revolutionary movements. “The warrants are seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism,” remarked Steve Warfield, spokesman for the FBI’s Minneapolis field office.

Read the rest of that. And here’s video from those crazy kooky conspiracy theorists at Fox News Democracy Now:

Video via The Blaze, and thanks to commenter Adobe Walls for the tip.

Category: Glenn Beck, Terrorism, Unions

Sheila Jackson-Lee: Boss From Hell

Posted on | March 2, 2011 | 22 Comments

Everybody on Capitol Hill has stories to tell about members of Congress who are screaming tyrants toward their staff. John McCain is notorious in that regard. But by far the worst bosses on Capitol Hill are women members, and one might narrow down that list by saying “liberal Democratic congresswomen,” among whom a particuilarly vile specimen is Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Hell):

The Houston Democrat addressed one of her employees as “you stupid motherf****r.” And not just once, but “constantly,” recalls the staffer, “like, all the time.”
Another Jackson Lee aide recounts the time her parents came to Washington to visit: “They were really excited to come to the congressional office. They’re small town people, so for them it was a huge deal. They were actually sitting in the main lobby waiting area….[Jackson Lee] came out screaming at me over a scheduling change. Called me a ’stupid idiot. Don’t be a moron, you foolish girl’ and actually did this in front of my parents, of all things.” . . .
Capitol Hill is famous for its demanding, insensitive bosses. Yet even by the harsh standards of Congress, Sheila Jackson Lee stands out. She may be the worst boss in Washington. “It’s like being an Iraq War veteran,” says someone who worked for her. Strangers may say, “‘oh I know what you’ve been through.’ No, you really don’t. Because until you’ve experienced it. . . . People don’t tell the worst of the stories, because they’re really unbelievable.”

Read the whole story by Jonathan Strong, who is turning out to be one of the best hires Tucker Carlson made at the Daily Caller.

Category: Congress, Democrats, Texas

Who Is John Galt?

Posted on | March 2, 2011 | 11 Comments

The makers of the new movie Atlas Shrugged: Part I have invited me to an exclusive screening today in Washington, D.C. Here’s the trailer:

They’ve taken a huge gamble, producing this ambitious film under a tight deadline and on a tight budget.

During the CPAC blogger bash at FreedomWorks, they previewed four scenes from the movie. Clearly, they’re hoping to generate major buzz before the film’s theatrical release on April 15.

Yeah: Tax Day. Pretty clever.

Learn more at the official Atlas Shrugged Movie site.

Category: Movies

‘Centrist’ Obama?

Posted on | March 2, 2011 | Comments Off on ‘Centrist’ Obama?

Obama’s decision to dump the Defense of Marriage Act exposes the bogusness of his mythical “move to the center”:

It also is increasingly clear that Mr. Obama has learned nothing from the “shellacking” his party took in the midterm elections, despite all the talk to the contrary from his sycophants in the media about his “moving to the center.”
The pretense of a move to the center is, and always was, just that — pretense — his window-dressing appointment of William Daley as chief of staff and a supposed rapprochement with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce notwithstanding. . . .
Why else would he make the calculated decision not to defend DOMA, a law duly enacted by Congress and signed into law by a fellow Democratic president? Mr. Obama variously claims to be against gay marriage, even as he says his views on the subject are “evolving,” but this decision rips the mask off that charade. He knows his opposition to DOMA, while it might send a thrill up the collective leg of the editorial board of The New York Times, is contrary to the expressed wishes of the electorate: Thirty states have voted on gay marriage, and all 30 have voted against it. What part of “no” does Mr. Obama not understand? . . .

Read the whole thing at The Washington Times.

Category: Barack Obama

Note to Self: Never Link Xconomy.com

Posted on | March 2, 2011 | 7 Comments

Megan McArdle at the (soon-to-be-Sully-free) Atlantic linked and excerpted an interview that Xconomy.com did with a venture capitalist, Ken Kinsella.

The World’s Tallest Female Blogger admits that her excerpting — more than a third of a 2,100-word article — was way over the “fair use” line and, while she included a link to the article, she named neither the source site nor the writer who conducted the interview.

Bad Megan! Bad, bad Megan!

However, it subsequently became apparent that Xconomy is a site run by obnoxious douchebags:

I won’t disclose the contents of our correspondence, since the editor who emailed me has requested that they remain confidential. I think I may disclose that they are very upset about what they see as an egregious fair use violation. I attempted to rectify the situation by trimming down the excerpts, and naming the site from which they were drawn, but this seems to have somehow only made them madder — perhaps because this is so rare in my ten years of experience blogging that I was mystified rather than sufficiently apologetic.  But of course I support their right to control lengthy dissemination of their work, so I have taken down the offending post.

Look: Nothing wrong with a publisher enforcing his intellectual property rights, but it isn’t good business for a publisher to act like a complete douchebag toward bloggers.

In point of fact, my excerpt of Megan’s post amounts to more than a third of its content, so if her editors at the Atlantic wanted to be total douchebags, they could start filling my inbox with huffy e-mails threatening me with legal action. But they don’t do that because, even though their traffic is way bigger than mine, getting linked by bloggers is good for their business.

Megan McArdle is a nice person who has good-naturedly put up with a lot of joshing from me over the years and seldom complained, not even when — after her engagement to Peter Suderman — I dubbed her “my favorite acromegalic bride-to-be.” Megan knew that I was just trying to needle her enough to get a link and, imperious giantess that she is, she refused to lash out in anger.

That would be beneath her — as, of course, most things are beneath someone who’s nine feet tall.

Perhaps I exaggerate. Still, it is a mark of her graciousness that Megan hasn’t crushed me beneath one of her enormous feet, and anyone who is mean to her is therefore my enemy.

Xconomy.com now has a spot on my (very short) no-link list.

Category: Megan McArdle

‘Floating Out There in the Journalistic Ether’

Posted on | March 2, 2011 | 10 Comments

Jack Shafer of Slate attempts to make sense of New York Times columnist Frank Rich’s departure for New York magazine:

Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Frank Rich is leaving a weekly column at the nation’s most important daily newspaper for a monthly column at the second best weekly in the country.
If Rich’s move is about wanting to spend more time with his family, gain greater distance from Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal, free himself to pursue his HBO projects more aggressively, or to work once again with New York Editor Adam Moss, with whom he has a mind-meld, I understand. But unless the deal came with Bloombergian bags of cash, it makes no sense. . . .
One of the charms of working weekly—or daily, for that matter—is that your readers know where and when to find you. But with Rich going monthly for a much less prominent publication, he’ll get lost. In this new venue, there will be no obvious cues—Sunday morning bagels and coffee, for example—that it’s Rich time. He’ll just be floating out there in the journalistic ether.
He won’t be the only one. Howard Kurtz, one of the iron men of journalism, has been floating in the ether ever since leaving the Washington Post for the Daily Beast last fall. He’s writing prolifically about the media and other topics for the Beast, as he did for decades at the Post. But Kurtz’s copy used to be hand-delivered to my front door step

I agree with Shafer that it’s hard to make sense of Rich’s move, except for the possibility that New York will let him run rampant online as a blogger, which would be amusing. Rich’s columns in the Sunday Times, which he had all week to compile, were generally target-rich environments, full of tendentious and predictable liberal nonsense. On the other hand — and I certainly wouldn’t rule this out — perhaps Rich is going to a monthly so as to free up his time to compile a book.

On the other hand, I don’t think Kurtz’s work has suffered by his transfer to the online Daily Beast, except for the fact that he now has a smaller footprint in D.C. Being a prominent contributor to the Washington Post — where Kurtz’s articles were most often placed on the “Style” section front — has a cachet.

Speaking of “journalistic ether,” how much ether did Tina Brown huff before hiring Andrew Sullivan? And what was she smoking when she wrote this?

I am thrilled to share the news that Andrew Sullivan is bringing his trailblazing journalism to The Daily Beast. Andrew almost single-handedly defined the political blog and has been refining it as a form of journalism in real time nearly every day for the past decade. . . .
Scrolling down Andrew’s blog helps to give orientation in the world, to get the smartest possible fix on the news at any given moment. . . .

It is said that “a fool and his money are soon parted.” In publishing, a fool and his money sooner or later hire Tina Brown, so that in a few short years, he becomes a fool with much less money.

Category: Andrew Sullivan, Journalism

Mob Rules: Wisconsin Protesters Swarm GOP Legislator, Scream ‘Shame! Shame!’

Posted on | March 2, 2011 | Comments Off on Mob Rules: Wisconsin Protesters Swarm GOP Legislator, Scream ‘Shame! Shame!’

Via Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit; more at Michelle Malkin and Hot Air:

If this is what “civility” is supposed to look like . . .

Category: Unions, Wisconsin

LIVE AT FIVE – 03.02.11

Posted on | March 2, 2011 | 3 Comments

TOP NEWS
House Passes Spending Bill, Avoiding Shutdown

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agrees to pass the House bill

Stopgap spending bill passes 355-91, includes $4 billion in spending cuts

Gaddafi Defiant As West Flexes Military Muscle
USS Kearsarge and Ponce redeploy to the Med; US, NATO discussing no-fly zone


Khadafy Musters Show Of Strength In Tripoli
UN Suspends Libya From Human Rights Council
Crisis in Libya Accelerates Tunisian Problems



POLITICS
Wisconsin Governor Proposes Austerity Measures To Balance Budgets

Governor Scott Walker, R-Wisc.

Proposed budget includes $1 billion in cuts to public schools, University of Wisconsin, local government aid

Chicago Police Superintendent Weis Quits; Former Top Cop Hillard To Be Interim Replacement

Guru’s Trial Over Sweat Lodge Deaths Begins

Western Governors Fume Over President’s Plan For Wilderness Areas

Bipartisan Embrace Of New GAO Report On Waste, Duplication In Federal Government



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
US Stocks Close Lower As Oil Fears Persist
Bernanke: Fed Would Act If Oil Ignites Inflation
Asian Stocks Fall As Oil Surges On Continuing Mideast Crisis; Silver Hits 31-year High
Budget Airlines Force Big Rivals To Scale Back Fare Increases
IPad Already Obsolete: 10 Technologies That Render It Outdated
World’s First Eye-Controlled Laptop Arrives



SPORTS
Magic Still A Factor Despite Shifts In The East

Jameer Nelson dominates the 4th quarter against the Knicks


Nelson leads Orlando to victory over reinforced Knicks, 110-106


Judge Rules NFL Owners Can’t Use TV Cash In Work Stoppage



Timbermutts Salute Strib Writer/Lakers Fixture Sid Hartman

BoSox Owner John Henry Reveals 2009 Half-Million Dollar Fine For Criticizing MLB’s Revenue Sharing Plan

Brigham Young’s Davies Dismissed From Team For Honor Code Violation

Barry Bonds’ Trainer Still Won’t Testify, May Return To Prison



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Oscar Co-Hosts Grew To Loathe Each Other

Ann Hathaway & James Franco

“She had to provide all the energy — he was just phoning it in.”

Franco Stoned During Oscars?

Stars Dis Oscar Hosts, But Only Off The Record

Robert Pattinson: The Vanity Fair Interview

Les Moonves Breaks His Silence On Charlie Sheen

Christina Aguilera & BF Busted

Melissa Gilbert, Bruce Boxleitner Split Up

Katie Holmes Sues Star Magazine Publishers For $50 Million

Lindsay Lohan – Surveillance Tape Backs Her Story



FOREIGNERS
Libyan Rebels March West
South Yemen Politician Seeks Referendum On Secession
Iranian Protesters Clash With Police
German Defense Minister Resigns In Plagiarism Scandal
ROK Activists To Continue Leafleting Norks
Irish Election Results Biggest Shakeup Since Civil War; Fianna Fail Crushed, Finishes Third Behind Fine Gael, Labor



BLOGS & STUFF
David Weigel: Huckabee Is Not A Birther
Michelle Malkin: Unhinged Crowd Corners Wisconsin Republican Senator (Videos)
NRO: Bernanke – Budget Cuts Won’t Harm Growth
Sister Toldjah: Holder Dodges, Fumes, Talks About “My People” In Committee Hearing
Legal Insurrection: PPP Using Skewed Samples In “Do Over” Poll
Protein Wisdom: “A Union Education”
Jawa Report: Assange – Da Joooos Sent Fembots And Reporters To Smear My Name
Newsbusters: Pro-Union Thugs Assault FNC’s Mike Tobin
Lonely Conservative: Reich To Rich – Redistribute Wealth Or Face Angry Mobs
Maggie’s Notebook: AWOL Wisconsin Dems Unhappy; One Broke, One Pregnant – Dissension In The Ranks Ahead?
Joanne Jacobs: Spend Smarter On Teachers

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five
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