The Other McCain

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

‘I Applied to the CIA But …’

Posted on | February 6, 2011 | 7 Comments

Remember when I told you about Elizabeth Spiers, the famous blogger who just became editor-in-chief of the New York Observer? When I sent that post to Professor Glenn Reynolds, he sent me back an e-mail informing me that Spiers is from — wait for it — Wetumpka, Alabama.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that a small-town Southern girl has conquered the Manhattan media world. After all, in 1967, Willie Morris from Yazoo City, Mississippi, became the youngest-ever editor of Harper’s Magazine. And in 1996, Rick Bragg from Piedmont, Alabama, won a Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for the New York Times.

So anyway, I did some Googling and found this 2003 profile of Spiers:

It is not enough to have guilt-inducing stacks of unread New Yorkers and alumni magazines from three years back. Those who wish to keep current must now contend with the constantly replenished form of written chatter known as Weblogs.
Despite the obvious problems inherent to a genre whose authors write as much as they want about anything they want, a few blogs have become must-reads (don’t worry, they’re archived).
The blame goes to people like Elizabeth Spiers, 27, from Wetumpka, Ala. Her raised-eyebrow approach to the sacred syllogisms of Manhattan culture and gossip made a blog called gawker.com so popular that Entertainment Weekly called it the It blog and The Guardian, a British newspaper, quoted a fan as saying it was ”like living in New York without paying the rent.” . . .
The daughter of a lineman and an accounts-payable clerk (both work for the Alabama Power Company), Ms. Spiers was student body president, a basketball and a softball player, and a cheerleader. ”But I’m not sure I want to say that on the record,” she adds.
She had a difficult time persuading her parents to let her apply to an out-of-state college, but nonetheless ended up at Duke University, where she took Arabic, wrote a paper on terrorism and considered working for the State Department or an intelligence service. ”I applied to the C.I.A. but nobody called me back,” she says. When she graduated in 1999, she joined the ranks of the dot-commers in New York City, and went on to analyze Internet business plans for venture capitalists. . . .

Imagine what might have been, if only the CIA had called her back!

Category: Alabama, Blogging

Hey, Remember That Crazy Conspiracy Theory Glenn Beck Was Talking About?

Posted on | February 6, 2011 | 49 Comments

According to every Serious Foreign Policy Pundit, it’s absolutely insane for Beck to assert that the Left and the Islamists are in alliance to bring revolution to the Middle East. However, as Donald Douglas points out, that’s what the Left is telling us:

The neo-Stalinist ANSWER homepage has the announcement, “Emergency demonstrations: Stop all U.S. aid to Mubarak dictatorship” . . .
Code Pink’s Jodie Evans . . . served as a top campaign fundraiser for Barack Obama, and now her organization is leading a fundraising operation for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: “Code Pink: Obama, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood Ally Raising (Tax Exempt) Money to Overthrow Egypt Gov’t” . . .

But don’t let yourself be distracted by mere facts. Bill Kristol says Glenn Beck is “hysterical” and it must be true because, after all, Bill Kristol is a Serious Foreign Policy Pundit and Glenn Beck is just . . . well, he’s just Glenn Beck, right?

And really, who is this Lisa Graas person who tells us about “Five Revolutions Backed by George Soros”?

“The Soros centre’s job in eastern Europe is nearly finished. Its main focus now is the Islamic world, Arab countries, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.”

Oh, that’s not a quote from Lisa Graas. That’s a 2007 quote by Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh, a consultant for the Soros-funded Open Society Institute.

But don’t believe that crazy conspiracy-theory stuff. Trust the Serious Foreign Policy Pundits. Because they’ve never been wrong before.

My friend Dr. James Joyner, however, is of another opinion:

Going back at least to William F. Buckley, Jr.’s famous article casting the John Birch Society out of the legitimate conservative moment, it has been understood that letting the fringe define the cause hurts it. Buckley correctly reasoned that Birch founder Robert Welch’s crazy and outrageous conspiracy theories were tainting the legitimate anti-Communist movement.
Similarly, the psychotic rantings of Glenn Beck invite ridicule on the rest of us. Legitimate points are inevitably countered by comparisons with absurd variants by Beck, Coulter, Limbaugh, and others who make a living stoking the fears of the base. This is, at best, a distraction from the debate and, often, makes intelligent discussion of the issues next to impossible because they’ve been preemptively framed by the loudest, most shrill, most hyperbolic voices.

How many times have we heard variations of this argument? 

“Oh, Buckley purged the Birchers and therefore, we must now cast aside Uncouth Person X and distance ourselves from Populist Organization Y, because above all else, the Official Conservative Movement must maintain its precious respectability!”

If we had listened to that argument in 2009, there never would have been a Tea Party movement. Republicans would have rolled over and played dead and gone along with the whole Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda because it was not respectable to oppose Keynesian “stimulus” spending, cap-and-trade, nationalized health care, and so forth.

Now that “the loudest, most shrill, most hyperbolic voices” have succeeded in fomenting grassroots opposition, however, we are told that elected representatives must ignore the people who elected them and, instead, must heed those respectable voices who did nothing at all to help encourage the Tea Party movement.

Hey, let’s dump Ann Coulter because, after all, “the Age of Ann has passed,” right? She’s only the author of, what, five or six New York Times bestsellers?

Yeah, let’s get rid of Coulter because a bunch of bloggers said so.

Purge Coulter! Purge Beck! Purge Sarah Palin! Purge Mark Levin! Purge Rush Limbaugh!

Purge! Purge! Purge!

And keep right on purging until the only people inside the Big Tent are respectable Republicans like Mike Castle, Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Specter and Charlie Crist, and the motto of the Official Conservative Movement becomes, “Me, Too.”

UPDATE: Linked by The Great One: “Cool it with the Stalinist purge crap.”

UPDATE II: Please permit me to point out that, while any conservative who mentions the influence of George Soros is portrayed as a dangerous conspiracy kook, it is perfectly acceptable for liberals to demonize the Koch brothers as right-wing puppetmasters.

UPDATE III: Did I ever mention that you never want to make Dan Riehl pissed off at you?

Category: American Power, Ann Coulter, Egypt, George Soros, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Tea Party

VIDEO: Ronald Reagan’s 100th

Posted on | February 6, 2011 | 4 Comments

A tribute from Carol at No Sheeples Here:

Category: History, No Sheeples, Video

FMJRA 2.0: I’ll Have The Dance Beats With A Side Order Of Ambient, Please

Posted on | February 5, 2011 | 6 Comments

Power Line Gets Scalped: Did Indian Tribe Money Influence Akin Gump Decision?

In Case You Didn’t Notice, ObamaCare Is Both Unconstitutional and Un-American

Egypt Gets Violent, Obama Gets Angry, Networks Get Ratings, I’ll Pop the Popcorn

Spare Us Your Sermons

Who Will Be the Bob Dole of 2012?

Egypt: ‘Attaboy, Mubarak’?

‘In the Name of Tolerance’

Egyptian Uprising: Latest Updates

FMJRA 2.0: Fresh Pond Parkway Edition

So nice, she linked it thrice!

Chris Matthews: ‘Blame Bush!’

Education Bubble Reaches Egypt?

‘Climb Back Into That Academic Vagina’

Herman Cain Attends Koch Brothers Meeting, Causes Left-Wing Freak-Out

‘Regime Change’ in Egypt?

Rule 5 Sunday: Is Cairo Burning?

Six Days and a Rib

Young Women: This Probably Explains Why Guys Only Want You For Sex

Van Jones and Other Marxist Scum Protest Koch Brothers’ Meeting

When It Comes to Foreign Policy, Let’s Trust Alan Colmes and Jimmy Carter!

Haiku Sonnet For Sarah Palin

Your Daily Egyptian Update

Got Any Good Jon Huntsman Jokes?

Egyptian Mob Explains That ‘Freedom’ Means ‘We Got to Destroy Israel’

Massive New Protests in Egypt

Army Chief Lt. Gen. Sami Enan Likely Mubarak Successor, Says French Report UPDATE: Mubarak Gives TV Speech, Will Step Aside After September Election

Egypt: Crisis Averted? Obama’s Speech: Transition ‘Must Begin Now’ (VIDEO)

Now That Obama Has Saved Egypt From Disaster, It’s Time to Blog About Charlie Sheen and Other Screwed-Up Celebrities UPDATE: Justin Bieber Video Added!

LIVE AT FIVE – 2.2.11

Crisis in Cairo Continues: Egyptians Ignore Obama, Resort to Violence

In Desperate Bid to End Cairo Violence, Levi Johnston’s Sister Agrees to Pose Nude

Egypt! Egypt! Egypt!

VIDEO: Battle of Tahrir Square

EGYPT: Today’s Latest News Updates: Mubarak Warns of ‘Chaos’ (Video) UPDATE: Five-Day Internet Shutdown Cost Egyptian Economy $90 Million UPDATE: Blogger ‘Sandmonkey’ Free UPDATE: Tanks Fire on Protesters?

Rednecks: A Global Phenomenon

How Screwed Are We?

‘How Many Girls Have to Die?’

‘The End of Blogging’? No, It Just Proves That Nothing Succeeds Like Success

Virginia Muslim Institute?

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    Category: FMJRA Award

    Kristol vs. Krauthammer?

    Posted on | February 5, 2011 | 58 Comments

    Let’s you and him fight!

    Our friend Charles Krauthammer began his column last week by asking, “Who doesn’t love a democratic revolution? Who is not moved by the renunciation of fear and the reclamation of dignity in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria?”
    Some on the right, that’s who. . . .
    As Krauthammer puts it, “All revolutions are blissful in the first days. The romance could be forgiven if this were Paris 1789. But it is not. In the intervening 222 years, we have learned how these things can end.”

    Of course, this hint of an intra-neocon skirmish is merely the preliminary bout, Kristol’s warm-up for the main event:

    When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.

    Generally speaking, I’m a bigger fan of Kristol than of Krauthammer, mainly because Krauthammer is such an anti-Palin snob. In this case, however, I share Krauthammer’s forebodings of an Egyptian revolution and dislike Kristol’s effort to enhance his own Strange New Respect quotient by dissing Beck.

    BTW: Regular readers will note that, after seven consecutive days of nearly non-stop Egyptian blogging, I gave it a rest Friday.

    There’s only so much of this foreign-policy punditry stuff I can stomach, and unless somebody prosposes to hit the tip-jar to send me to Egypt — Fear and Loathing in the Lobby Bar of the Cairo Hilton — I’m going to blog about other stuff for a while.

    Category: Egypt

    Sarah Palin Quotes Instapundit

    Posted on | February 5, 2011 | 19 Comments

    First, it was “blood libel,” now she’s using “Army of Davids.”

    Next thing you know, she’ll borrow his “Heh.” Or maybe, “They told me if I voted for John McCain . . .”

    Category: Instapundit, Sarah Palin

    From the Department of Not Exactly News: Chris Matthews Is Very Confused

    Posted on | February 5, 2011 | 29 Comments

    You can’t make up stuff as funny as this:

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    “I feel ashamed about this. I feel ashamed as an American, the way we’re doing this. . . . We’re not handling it as Americans should handle a matter like this. And I don’t feel right about it.”

    There’s a lot of commentary concentrating on the fact that Matthews criticizes Obama, but as Ed Morrissey says, the whole 12-minute clip is worth watching.

    Like many liberals trying to make sense of the Egyptian crisis, Matthews has been whipsawed between his support for democracy and his support for Democrats. It’s enormously upsetting to Matthews because he so very much wants to credit Obama with doing the right thing, even when (a) it’s not really clear what “the right thing” is, and (b) Obama is quite obviously doing everything wrong.

    Putting aside the frightening thought of Islamists turning Egypt into Iran-on-the-Nile, conservatives have a much easier time making sense of this crisis: We expect Democrats to bungle foreign policy. We never believed Obama had any kind of miraculous abilities, and we especially jeered at Obama’s naive notion that the secret to foreign policy was to celebrate every week as “Be Nice to Foreigners Week.” Read more

    Category: Barack Obama, Egypt, Liberals, MSNBC

    Virginia Muslim Institute?

    Posted on | February 5, 2011 | 23 Comments

    Somebody mentioned this in the comments the other day when I was up to my neck in Egypt blogging, but I just saw it again at 1389 Blog:

    VMI is celebrating the Muslim invasion
    and occupation of Spain in 711 AD.

    And then I read this:

    The March 23-25 celebration entitled “711-2011: East Meets West” and organized by VMI’s Center for Leadership and Ethics, is scheduled to feature standard Muslim apologists Reza Aslan and Akbar Ahmed. VMI Superintendent Gen. J.H. Binford Peay has even filmed an invitation to the celebration.

    So the poison of “multiculturalism” does its deadly work everywhere, even in the hallowed halls of Lexington, Va.

    They need to change the name from VMI to WTF.

    Category: Education, Islam, Military, Virginia
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