The Other McCain

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

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

Posted on | February 4, 2011 | 21 Comments

Elizabeth Spiers is taking over as editor-in-chief of the New York Observer — a minor blip of media news that is rather more significant than it would appear at first glance.

Earlier this week, the Observer ran a long article entitled, “The End of Blogging,” a grabby title that misinterprets the changes that are actually happening in the online world. Of course the irony is that the paper’s new editor is — you guessed, didn’t you? — a blogger:

Spiers is the founder of Dead Horse Media, which created highly successful blog properties such as Dealbreaker, Above the Law and Fashionista. She has also served as founding editor of Gawker.com and editor in chief of mediabistro.com.

She’s got some print-journalism background, too, but Spiers’ stock-in-trade is turning blogs into “properties.” As Joe Coscarelli of the Village Voice points out, “Spiers has been given the task of making the Observer ‘a website with a newspaper, rather than a newspaper with a website.'”

The much-analyzed Observer “End of Blogging” article — which got ripped apart by Chris Rovzar, among others — utterly misunderstood (or perhaps, cluelessly misrepresented) the phenomenon of online communication. It doesn’t matter, for example, whether or not you call your site a “blog” or whether you call the elements “posts” or “articles.”

A thing is what it is, regardless of what you call it. Read more

Category: Blogging

‘How Many Girls Have to Die?’

Posted on | February 4, 2011 | 3 Comments

Liberals obviously want this story to go away, but the abortion industry has got too much innocent blood on their hands, and Americans are tired of being taxed to pay for this shameful criminality. Dr. Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life:

“It is time to hold Planned Parenthood accountable for their seedy business practices,” said Dr. Yoest. “For too long, they’ve lived off the American taxpayer with little or no oversight. In the last week alone, we’ve seen proof in Philadelphia that women’s lives were at risk while officials turned a blind eye to what goes on at an abortion clinic. Then we saw video of a Planned Parenthood clinic manager in New Jersey talking about how to manipulate the law to cover up the abuse of underage girls captive in the sex trade. Today we see video from Virginia of possible misconduct in a Richmond Planned Parenthood clinic.
“How many girls have to suffer and die before we investigate the abortion industry? At some point, substandard care for women becomes criminal.” . . .

Read the whole thing.

Category: Abortion, Crime, Planned Parenthood

Fun With Lizards

Posted on | February 4, 2011 | 24 Comments

There’s all kinds of news I need to be blogging about today, but offline duties intervened and — as much as I know it bores most of you — I just had to call attention to the latest in Johnsonoid craziness.

Charles Johnson went on a rant about “stalkers and dimwitted creeps” — a rant thoroughly and hilariously mocked — and in the process, CJ linked back to a 2009 thread that included links to a couple of former LGF fan sites. But those two ex-sycophants have since been banned from LGF, as Diary of Daedalus had noted in November. So . . .

Someone at Diary of Daedalus pointed out that Charles had, by linking to this 2009 thread, accidently called attention to “praise” from ex-LGFers who now despise their former idol. Well, CJ claims never to read the “stalker” site Diary of Daedalus, but overnight he killed the links and — here’s the payoff, for connoisseurs of irony — Chen Zhen at Diary of Daedalus created a flashing GIF showing the deletion.

ROTFLMAO.

What’s going on over at LGF these days? Nobody would know if it weren’t for the gallant ex-Lizards who toil diligently to keep us informed on the latest laughable developments in Lizardlandia. But just imagine how embarrassing it is to Charles Johnson that he is so irrelevant at a time when interest in the Egyptian situation is delivering big traffic to Michael Totten and Weasel Zippers and other conservative bloggers.

Criticism of U.S. intelligence on the Middle East gets analyzed by Ed Morrissey and Jim Hoft for the benefit of thousands of readers, but who bothers anymore to see what Charles Johnson has to say? Who even cares?

Back in the day, when a big story like this would break, LGF threads would be swarming with hundreds of keen-eyed conservative commenters linking the latest important news. Ah, but then Charles Johnson gave into his resentment of Pamela Geller‘s success, and began banishing every commenter who didn’t go along with his anti-Geller jihad and now . . .

OK, sorry to bother the readers with this mention of LGF. We’ll get back to blogging about interesting stuff, I promise. Just as soon as I can quit laughing.

Category: Charles Johnson, Diary of Daedalus

Smitty and Tammy, Sittin’ in a Tree . . .

Posted on | February 4, 2011 | 2 Comments

You probably know the rest of that playground poem from memory, but Smitty’s a married man and his wife’s not named Tammy. However, Smitty did get a shout-out from Tammy Bruce when she had as a guest on her radio show our good blog-buddy Big Fur Hat from IOwnTheWorld.com:

If you lack the patience to listen to the whole thing, you can cheat by skipping forward to a bit past the 7-minute mark, where you’ll hear this:

Tammy Bruce: I’ve gone to the lounge at IOwnTheWorld.com, and you’ve got pictures there, you’ve got people’s favorite photos, you’ve got some videos, you’ve got . . .
Big Fur Hat: I got a haiku — I got a haiku from Smitty . . .
TB: Oh, I read that!
BFH: I got a haiku from Smitty the other day . . .
TB: I read that! I didn’t know what a haiku was, and now I do, and I thought it was a very good haiku.

And they go on from there, in mutual praise of Smitty’s “Haiku Sonnet for Sarah Palin,” which is unlikely to be included in the next edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, but did get reposted at IOwnTheWorld.

Meanwhile, I’m jealous both of Smitty for having been praised by Tammy, and of Big Fur Hat for having been a guest on her show. But now that we know she’s into poetry . . .

There once was a conservative sapphic,
Whom I would throw some blogosphere traffic,
If I were on her show.
There’s a joke there, I know,
But the punchline might be pornographic.

No, wait, I can do better than that:

There once was a blogger named Smitty,
Who gained fame by composing a ditty.
But alas, the poor fool
Got deployed to Kabul
And complains that the bandwidth’s a pity.

Category: Big Fur Hat, Talk Radio, Tammy Bruce, Uncategorized

How Screwed Are We?

Posted on | February 4, 2011 | 23 Comments

For more than a year, I’ve been warning against the idea that we are in an economic “recovery.” It’s not just the disturbing persistence of an unemployment rate above 9 percent.

That’s the symptom, not the disease.

What the U.S. economy is suffering from, and what no amount of neo-Keynesian “stimulus” can remedy, is a capital shortage. And in fact, the successive government interventions since 2008 aimed at fixing the economy have mainly worsened the fundamentals.

Consider, for example, the attempts to cushion the collapse of the housing bubble by trying to halt foreclosures or offer “assistance” to deadbeats who can’t make the payments on houses worth less than the mortgage value. What’s the net economic effect?

At Calculated Risk, Tom Lawler, a real estate economist and former risk policy veep at Fannie Mae, tries to figure out how many people have actually lost their homes to foreclosure, short sales or deed-in-lieu desertions. The answer: Not enough. Lawler . . . says the number of foreclosures that have been completed so far is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of loans that have gone bad. . . .
[T]here could be roughly three times as many homes on the market as there are now. Lawler points to 1,445,000 completed foreclosures and short sales at the end of 2010, compared with 4,296,01 mortgages that are past due by 90 days or more.

To adapt an old Marxian expression, we have a “reserve army” of unforeclosed deadbeats, who are on one hand a steady drain on the vitality of the financial sector but, on the other hand, a looming threat to the real-estate sector. Either the deadbeats are permitted to fall further and further behind on their mortgages (not good for the banks) or else the banks foreclose and all those homes are dumped onto an already glutted real-estate market.

It’s a lose-lose situation for the overall economy.

How will policy-makers respond? Badly, I predict. The most likely response is more inflationary pumping by the Fed, more deficit-funded bailouts for the deadbeat homeowners and/or the lenders, and perhaps also some more cumbersome regulation.

Also, consider the fact that 11 percent of U.S. homes are now sitting empty. If one out of nine existing homes lacks occupants — they can’t even find a renter, much less a buyer — what does that tell you about the market for new homes, and the home-construction industry that depends on that market?

The word you’re looking for is “screwed.”


Category: Economics

Rednecks: A Global Phenomenon

Posted on | February 4, 2011 | 5 Comments

It’s like the punchline of a Jeff Foxworthy joke:

BEIJING, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) — Two people were killed and 223 have been injured in the Chinese capital amid traditional New Year fireworks frenzy that lasted from Wednesday evening to Thursday noon. . . .
On Thursday, Beijing dispatched more than 20,000 street cleaners after a night of fireworks. A total of 2,380 tons of exploded fireworks have been swept up by workers.

That there’s funny, I don’t care who you are.

Category: China, Fireworks

LIVE AT FIVE – 2.4.11

Posted on | February 4, 2011 | 1 Comment

TOP NEWS
U.S. Pressure On Mubarak Opens Rift With Middle East Allies

President Mubarak, determined to walk away and not be pushed

UAE, Saudi Arabia send public messages of support for Egyptian president and his new VP

Madoff Victim Claims Mets Owners Ignored Alarms
Wilpon and Katz being sued by Ponzi scheme victim

Bernanke: Fed Not To Blame For Food Price Increases
Is he really this bad a liar, or just lethally inept?

IPv4 vs. IPv6: A Short Guide
Yes, the internet ran out of addresses. Relax, they made more.



POLITICS
Report: FBI, Defense Department Missed Warning Signs Before Fort Hood Jihadi Rampage

Soldiers mourn at a memorial service for the Ft. Hood dead

Evidence of radicalization ignored

Son Of Former Enron CEO Found Dead In Santa Ana Apartment

Mayor Daley Defends Chicago’s Response To Blizzard


NM Democrats Assail Governor Martinez’ Immigration Order

Group Says Video Shows Planned Parenthood Wrongdoing In Virginia



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Gold Declines As Recovery Cuts Demand
Pimco: Whitney Analysis “Not Worth Paper It’s Written On” (Video)
Retailers Lead Stock Market Gains Ahead Of Jobs Data
OECD: Communications Block Cost Egypt $90 Million
Microsoft Alliance Rumors Lift Nokia Shares
California Prison Guards Union Called Biggest Obstacle To Keeping Cellphones Away From Prisoners



SPORTS
Heat, Celtics Combine For 7 of 12 NBA All-Stars

L.A. Clippers' Blake Griffin, selected for the first time to the All-Star team

Celtics’ Garnett selected for 14th straight season

Andy Pettitte Retiring From Yankees (Video)

It’s Bruins Over Stars In 6-3 Beatdown (Literally)

Devils Hold Off Rangers To Continue Comeback


Poll: Fans Indifferent To Proposed 18-Game NFL Season

NFL Battle For Billions Needs Infusion Of Common Sense



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Miley Cyrus Gets Tattoo #5

Miley Cyrus Sporting Dreamcatcher Tattoo

No reaction yet from pro-Mubarak protesters

Halle Berry’s Nasty E-Mail To Baby Daddy: “You Were Only Good For One Thing”

Kate Moss Soon To Be Mrs.

“V” Star Morena Baccarin On Short List For “Avengers” Movie

“Buffy”‘s James Marsters Weds Longtime Girlfriend

Ultimate Bond Girl Eva Green Gets “Dark Shadows” Lead

“The Real World” Returns To Vegas, And A Hotel Room Gets Trashed

Lindsey Lohan’s Best Defense? Silence

Camille Grammer To Guest On “Sh!t My Dad Says”



FOREIGNERS
Dueling Protests In Yemen Unfold Peacefully
Haiti Panel Announces Candidates For Presidential Runoff
Devastation At Epicenter Of Australian Mega-Cyclone
Fireworks Spark High-Rise Blaze In Shenyang
Nepal Picks New PM After Six-Month Stalemate



BLOGS & STUFF
Protein Wisdom: ABC Reporter Brian Hartman Threatened With Beheading
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin Declines CPAC Invitation Due To Scheduling Conflicts
Da TechGuy: Answer – When The Black Man People Call For Hanging Is A Conservative
Israel Matzav: Confirmed – Muslim Brotherhood Will Abrogate Camp David Agreements
Althouse: Charlotte Charred By FLOTUS Roast
The Foundry: The Numbers Don’t Lie – Reagan’s Recovery Far Stronger Than Obama’s
Federal Judge Rules Administration In Contempt For Continuing Drilling Moratorium
Erick Erickson: Is John McCain Back To Being A Maverick Now?
Nice Deb: Administration Covering Up Abortion Statistics
POWIP: Egypt, Breadbasket Case


— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

Spare Us Your Sermons

Posted on | February 3, 2011 | 54 Comments

“We Are All Egyptians,” Nicholas Kristof declares in a New York Times column with a Cairo dateline.

Except we aren’t Egyptians, and the vast majority of us will never set foot in Cairo. For those of us who aren’t traveling the world on an expense account, the Atlantic‘s Clive Crook offers this helpful reminder:

The Egyptian Revolution Is Not About Us

This is very important to remember. Whatever is happening in Egypt — and frankly, I’m not sure that it’s a “revolution” — it isn’t likely to be influenced by anything I write about it, or Rush Limbaugh says about it.

In fact, there appear to be limits even to Barack Obama’s ability to influence events in Egypt, contrary to rumors that the president is planning to walk to Cairo and feed the protesters with five loaves of bread and two fishes.

Despite our apparent impotence, however, there are a lot of people who seem obsessed with the idea that we must watch what we say about Egypt. They seem to believe that only certain thoughts are permissible about Egypt. If we say the wrong thing, or even think the wrong thing, we might somehow influence the situation in Egypt for the worse.

This is a type of psychotic delusion called “magical thinking”: If we think good thoughts about Egypt, good things will happen in Egypt. If only we believe in peace — with all our hearts! — there will be peace.

According to the Magical Thinking School of Foreign Policy, the root cause of Egypt’s miseries is American wickedness. It is the evil in our own hearts — our ignorance, our prejudice — that has caused these tragic events. Therefore, say the magic thinkers, if we will purify our minds, renounce our xenophobic bigotry, cross our fingers and hope for democracy in Egypt, then democracy in Egypt will happen.

Also, you’ll finally get a pony for Christmas. Read more

Category: Conservatism 101, Egypt
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