The Other McCain

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

Education Bubble Reaches Egypt?

Posted on | January 30, 2011 | 12 Comments

“I have to pay 150 pounds a day to bribe police officers to let me sell on this pavement. How can I be this educated and not find proper work?”
— Ramadan Mohamed, Law graduate selling sunglasses on Cairo street

Category: Education, Egypt

Chris Matthews: ‘Blame Bush!’

Posted on | January 29, 2011 | 10 Comments

Don’t try this at home, kids. It takes a special kind of stupid:

“Leading off tonight: Unrest in Egypt. Proving the Iraq war wasn`t needed, these protests in Egypt, as well as in Yemen and Tunisia, are all aimed at dictators supported by the U.S. The demonstrations have not yet turned anti-American, but they could. These are the events the Bush administration hoped to encourage by lying about weapons of mass destruction and invading Iraq.”

Noel Sheppard tries to make sense of Matthews’ idiocy, but it’s a waste of time trying.

UPDATE: Adjoran in the comments: “If it weren’t for conservatives monitoring his show to catch his gaffes, he would have no audience at all.”

Meanwhile, Matthews says the Panama Canal is in Egypt, and Instpundit is almost moved to pity: “It is, of course, the kind of mistake anyone can make on the air. But it’s true — if Palin made it, it would be proof of stupidity.”

Category: Egypt, MSNBC

FMJRA 2.0: Fresh Pond Parkway Edition

Posted on | January 29, 2011 | 5 Comments

Olbermann Out at MSNBC

The Word Is ‘Reprehensible’

‘Whose Bright Idea Was It to Send Joe Biden Out to Talk About Egypt?’

Herman Cain Tops Santorum, Christie, Daniels, Pence, Huckabee in N.H.

‘Civility,’ Unless It’s Sarah Palin

The Decline and Fall of Lizardopolis

‘Man Was Born Free, And He Is Everywhere In Chains. . .’

The Pagan Caucus?

Democrat Attacked After Vitriolic Rhetoric From Sarah Palin … No? Never Mind.

In Which Charles Johnson Belatedly Discovers We Can Fact Check Your A$$

You Knew This Was Coming

Zombie Goes Kipling

RULE 5 SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!

VIDEO: British Girl, 13, Says Rape Threats Are ‘Happening to Lots of Girls’ at School

$14,000,000,000

Media Shocked — Shocked! — To Discover That Ann Marie Buerkle Is Pro-Life

Court to Rahm Emanuel: ‘F*** You!’

Glenn Beck Wants You to Threaten Violence Against Harmless Academics

Complete Guide to Tucson Shootings

  • Conservative Hideout

Paul Krugman, Mystifield

LIVE AT FIVE – 1.26.11

No, I’m Not Liveblogging It

Chris Matthews: ‘Balloonhead!’

Obama: ‘Countless New Jobs’

Snowed In!

America, the Doomed

LIVE AT FIVE – 1.27.11

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Labor Department Blames Snow for Increase in Weekly Unemployment

Health Care and the ‘N-Word’

Egyptian Regime Unraveling?

8-Year-Old Girl Raped by Illegal Alien

Get Pawlenty’s ‘Courage to Stand: An American Story’

In Desperation Move, Egyptian Regime Shuts Down Access to Iowahawk

Who Is Michael Scherer?

Palin Derangement Syndrome Prevents Bristol’s Appearance at University

Who Will Be The Bob Dole Of 2012?

Category: FMJRA Award

Egyptian Uprising: Latest Updates

Posted on | January 29, 2011 | 15 Comments

An Associated Press video report on Saturday’s developments:

The New York Times:

As street battles between protesters and the security police flared for a fifth day, Mr. Mubarak named a new government filled with military figures, signaling the pivotal role the military might play in shaping the outcome of the unrest. He appointed Omar Suleiman, his right-hand man and the country’s intelligence chief, as vice president and a retired general as prime minister.

Reuters thumbnail biography of Suleiman:

* He has been the director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Services (EGIS) since 1993, a role in which he has played a prominent public role in diplomacy, including in Egypt’s relations with Israel and with key aid donor the United States.
* He was born on July 2, 1936 in Qena, in southern Egypt. He later enrolled in Egypt’s premier Military Academy in 1954, after which he received additional military training in the then Soviet Union at Moscow’s Frunze Military Academy.
* He also studied political science at Cairo University and Ain Shams University. In 1992 he headed the General Operations Authority in the Armed Forces and then became the director of the military intelligence unit before taking over EGIS.
* Suleiman took part in the war in Yemen in 1962 and the 1967 and 1973 wars against Israel.
* As Egypt’s intelligence chief, Suleiman was in charge of the country’s most important political security files, and was the mastermind behind the fragmentation of Islamist groups who led the uprising against the state in the 1990s.

Obama met Saturday afternoon with his top advisers and issued a statement repeating what he said Friday about “opposing violence and calling for restraint, supporting universal rights,” et cetera.

Protesters outside the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, D.C.:

Allapundit compiled a massive aggregation today, his latest update being a report that a “senior administration official” says the U.S. wants “managed change.” Don’t expect that to pacify the protesters.

UPDATE: Stanley Kurtz sees tribalism asserting itself in the streets of Cairo. On a more encouraging note — indeed, the only encouraging thing about Egypt I’ve seen all day — John Guardiano of the American Spectator predicts the Egyptian army will prevent an Islamic revolution:

[W]hile Islamist elements may well try to take advantage of the Egyptian revolution, they face one almost insurmountable obstacle: the Egyptian military, a professional force and a nationally respected institution which views itself as the guardians of greater Egypt.
Indeed, the Egyptian military is not dominated by Islamists; and it will not allow Egypt to descend into total anarchy.
In fact, the Egyptian military will play a major role in Egypt’s next government, just as it has ever since the Mamluks of the Middle Ages. . . .

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE II: Ed Driscoll rounds up the optimists-vs.-pessimists debate among conservative pundits, with Max Boot in a mood of neocon triumphalism and Stanley Kurtz the realpolitik pessimist. Of course, I lean toward pessimism, if only because optimism is an invitation to disappointment. I can’t help but wonder if Kurtz’s pessimism is a tribute to his literary namesake: “Exterminate all the brutes!”

UPDATE III: The European powers call for “free and fair elections”:

“It is essential that the further political, economic and social reforms President Mubarak has promised are implemented fully and quickly, and meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people,” said a joint statement issued by British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“The Egyptian people have … a longing for a just and better future,” the statement continued. “We urge President Mubarak to embark on a process of transformation, which should be reflected in a broad-based government and in free and fair elections.”

UPDATE IV: Donald Douglas is clearly in the neocon optimist camp and cites a Wall Street Journal editorial that I’m not sure makes his point:

Our stake in Egypt is not in any one ruler but in a transition from dictatorship to a more stable representative government that can better meet the aspirations of Egyptians.

See, my concern is that the “aspirations of Egyptians” might include such agenda items as “Death to the Zionist entity!” and “Down with the Great Satan!” Perhaps I remember 1979 too well.

PREVIOUSLY:


Category: Egypt

‘In the Name of Tolerance’

Posted on | January 29, 2011 | 16 Comments

“I’m not being rightwing. The people who believe themselves to be on the left, and who defend the agents of Islam in the name of tolerance and culture, are being rightwing. Not just rightwing. Extreme rightwing. I don’t understand how you can be so upset about the Christian right and just ignore the Islamic right.”
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali, interviewed in the Guardian

Category: Islam

Like Egypt, Charlie Sheen’s Problems Have Finally Reached Crisis Stage

Posted on | January 29, 2011 | 9 Comments

His hookers-and-blow lifestyle has at last become too much even for Charlie.

The Hosni Mubarak of Hollywood bad boys has entered rehab and CBS says Two-and-a-Half Men is “on hiatus.”

Anyone familiar with bipolar disorder would recognize Sheen’s symptoms: He cut a $30,000 check to a porn star Wednesday as a sort of down payment on her joining the “porn family” he was planning:

During the boozefest, Charlie agreed to rent out George’s giant estate for four months — at the rate of $250k per month — while George goes away on an upcoming trip to Thailand.
And why does Sheen need an extra mansion? Charlie explained that he wants to start a “porn family” — and he wants the “actresses” to all live in the same house.

What luck for 22-year-old porn star Kacey Jordan to encounter a millionaire in the midst of a manic episode, huh? TMZ has video of Kacey describing her evening with Charlie Sheen (which I link just so you don’t succumb to the temptation of Googling “Kacey Jordan video”). TMZ calls her a “high-end porn star,” because you wouldn’t want to think the star of a CBS prime-time hit show was partying with low-end porn stars, would you?

How out of control did Charlie get? Lindsay Lohan was worried about him.

Also worried about him: Ex-wife Denise Richards. Can you imagine her trying to explain this to their kids? “No, Daddy won’t be taking you to Chuck E. Cheese this weekend, because he’s too busy snorting up a briefcase full of coke with some porn stars.”

Personally, I think Charlie should have been institutionalized the minute he split with Denise. Letting her get away? Obviously, he was crazy.

So now Charlie’s in rehab and porn star Kacey is lawyered up, which means no more really fun Hollywood news for while.

Oh, wait, no — Demi Lovato just got out of rehab.

Maybe the fun has just begun.

Category: Celebrities, Hollywood, Sex

Egypt: ‘Attaboy, Mubarak’?

Posted on | January 29, 2011 | 38 Comments

“The position of the government of the United States of America should never be to say to the side that’s using batons on demonstrators, ‘attaboy.’”
— Jim Geraghty, National Review

Oh, I don’t know, Jim. When it came to student protesters in Berkeley and rioters in Watts, wasn’t Ronald Reagan’s election as California governor basically a result of the voters saying “attaboy”?

Grant that Hosni Mubarak isn’t UC President Clark Kerr and that Egyptians in 2011 have grievances more serious than did the residents of Watts in 1965. Still, the question isn’t merely who is wielding batons, but against whom the batons are being wielded.

I remember seeing the Denver police in riot gear at the Democratic convention in 2008 and thinking, “Man, I hope the anarchist scum try to start trouble with these guys.”

So if I didn’t mind the Denver police putting some well-deserved whup-ass on smelly American peaceniks, why should I object to Cairo police putting some whup-ass on the Muslim Brotherhood?

Because he’s a member of Congress, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Awesome) can’t put in quite such blunt terms:

Though many will be tempted to superficially interpret the Egyptian demonstrations as an uprising for populist democracy, they must recall how such similar initial views of the 1979 Iranian Revolution were belied by the mullahs’ radical jackbooted murderers, who remain bent upon grasping regional hegemony and nuclear weaponry.

American idealism about democracy and free speech and peaceable assembly doesn’t necessarily match the situation on the ground in Cairo and, in the absence of knowledge about what a post-Mubarak Egypt would look like, we ought not let our enthusiasm outrun the facts. As it is, the facts don’t look good for Mubarak:

Egypt was engulfed in a fifth day of protests on Saturday but an attempt by President Hosni Mubarak to salvage his 30-year rule by firing his cabinet and calling out the army appeared to backfire as troops and demonstrators fraternized and called for the president himself to resign. . . .
The feared security police had largely withdrawn from central Cairo to take up positions around the presidential palace . . .
Following Mr. Mubarak’s demand in his late-night speech, the Egyptian cabinet officially resigned on Saturday. But there was no sign of letup in the tumult. Reports from morgues and hospitals suggested that at least 50 people had been killed so far.

UPDATE: A former adviser to the Obama administration argues that the Muslim Brotherhood “should not be seen as inevitably our enemy” — which is what you’d expect an Obama adviser to say, I suppose — but Thomas Joscelyn isn’t buying it:

Hosni Mubarak’s regime is no friend of freedom, even though it is certainly an ally against al Qaeda.
In all likelihood, an Egypt dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood (if that is how the turmoil plays out) would be neither.

And not to justify the Zeitgeist conspiracy-mongers murmuring about “international bankers,” but Larry Kudlow suggests that Ben Bernanke’s “quantitative easing” policy at the Fed might be implicated in the Egyptian unrest:

Commodities are priced in dollars, and the Fed has been overproducing dollars for more than two years. Consequently, emerging markets throughout the world — and the food sector in particular — are suffering from rising inflation.

UPDATE II: President Obama’s official remarks last night:

The speech left “lots of people complaining bitterly that [Obama] had endorsed Mubarak’s grim struggle to hold on to power, missed an historic opportunity, and risked sparking a wave of anti-Americanism,” says GWU Professor Marc Lynch, adding: “The administration, it seems to me, is trying hard to protect the protestors from an escalation of violent repression, giving Mubarak just enough rope to hang himself, while carefully preparing to ensure that a transition will go in the direction of a more democratic successor.”

Well, Professor Lynch is an expert and I am not, but I would say that in general, previous optimism about the Obama administration has inevitably led to disappointment. Even in a situation like this — where the U.S. seems confronted by a choice between “bad” and “worse” — my hunch is that whatever Obama does will turn out to be disastrous.

UPDATE III: Carolyn Glick of the Jerusalem Post is not sanguine about what the Egyptian unrest means for Israel. Her pessimism points toward the basic problem with those who talk hopefully about “Mideast peace,” namely the fact that the Arab/Muslim world has been steeped in anti-Israel hatred for so long that Israel’s choices come down to either fighting against radicals or negotiating with “moderates” who don’t really represent anyone.

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Egypt

Who Will Be the Bob Dole of 2012?

Posted on | January 29, 2011 | 17 Comments

Smitty in the Kabul bureau thought this exchange between Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn was worth sharing:

Hugh Hewitt: Oh, that brings me, though, to the NBC dictate, that they will run the first Republican debate at the Reagan Library on May 2nd, along with Politico. It will be hosted by Brian Williams. They just told people to show up. And you know, I’ve got to assume that Brian Williams and Chris Matthews talk a little bit. Why in the world would we allow, Mark Steyn, the conservative movement, to allow the MSM to mediate these debates?
Mark Steyn: Oh, come on, Hugh. I mean, I think Brian Williams is the perfect man to moderate the debate, and determine who is going to be this year’s Bob Dole or John McCain. We’re interested, I think in this political season, we need to identify as early as possible the decent, dignified Republican loser who knows how to give a great concession speech. And I think that’s what Brian Williams and NBC are hoping to get a jump on. And now if you’re actually interested in saving this country from sliding into a multi-trillion dollar abyss, then letting Brian Williams dictate your nominating process is a complete waste of time. But I’m not sure the Republican party at heart quite gets that yet.

Obviously, Mr. Steyn is indulging in a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor there, but indeed that’s the way the Republican Party seems to operate.

Category: Election 2012, Republicans
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin