The Other McCain

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

Democrats: ‘Civility’ Means It’s OK for Us to Start Calling Republicans Nazis Again

Posted on | January 19, 2011 | 8 Comments

Disagree with them and you’re a brownshirt:

In an extraordinary outburst on the House floor, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) invoked the Holocaust to attack Republicans on health care and compared rhetoric on the issue to the work of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
“They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels,” Cohen said. “You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That’s the same kind of thing. And Congressman Cohen didn’t stop there.
“The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it–believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care. Politifact said the biggest lie of 2010 was a government takeover of health care because there is no government takeover,” Cohen said.

Meanwhile, it appears that Sheila Jackson-Lee has shared her “health-care-is-a-right” talking points with John Lewis:

“Well, when you start off with the Preamble of the Constitution, you talk about the pursuit of happiness,” said Lewis. “You go to the 14th Amendment–it’s equal protection under the law and we have not repealed the 14th Amendment. People have a right to have health care. It’s not a privilege but a right.”

 

In all sincerity, Congressman: To assert that some people have a “right” to goods and services that other people must work to produce — well, there is a phrase for that and indeed, it is mentioned in the Constitution.

Check the 13th Amendment, which abolished involuntary servitude.

UPDATE: Cohen wants to repeal Godwin’s Law or something. Kudos to CNN’s John King for calling him to account for that . . . uh, “blood libel.”

Category: Health Care

Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher Star in Pre-Marital Divorce Training Video

Posted on | January 19, 2011 | 9 Comments

Here, see for yourself:

The story is, evidently, a romantic comedy for the post-marriage generation:

The calling card of “No Strings” is its cavalier attitude toward casual sex, and how members of the opposite sex have precious few boundaries talking about or engaging in the practice of making love. . . .
“I think holding the door for the girl that you are having casual sex with is very romantic,” Kutcher told me during a recent one-on-one interview we had in Los Angeles. . . .
“I think this movie does point out, though, that we have to stop acting like casual sex isn’t happening, and start to be realistic about what a modern courting relationship is like,” Kutcher went on to say.

Realistic? You want to be realistic, Ashton? Realistically, that story doesn’t end “happily ever after.” At best, it ends with an efficiency apartment, child-support payments, visitation every other weekend and your kids being raised by Mommy’s New Boyfriend. A little further down the scale of optimal results, and maybe it ends with a restraining order. It can (and often does) get much, much worse.

Pre-marital promiscuity is like spring training for adultery. You may have noticed Charlie Sheen isn’t exactly living out the happily-ever-after romantic fantasy. Old habits die hard, and the  most perverse behaviors can seem “normal” if you do them often enough.

Much of American society has become so hopelessly decadent that not only are some kids accustomed to the whole blended-family carnival– step-mom and half-siblings and Mommy’s New Boyfriend — but even their grandparents are divorced and remarried, so that their “family tree” is an utterly confusing thicket of attenuated semi-relationships.

Among those raised in such a scrambled domestic environment, this dysfunctional pattern replicates itself in their own lives, because they lack any role models for sustained monogamy.

Naturally, the offspring this of twisted culture seek reassurance that everything’s going to turn out OK for them. They find a falsely flattering reflection in the warped funhouse mirror of Hollywood, which tells them a fairy tale in which habitual promsicuity somehow magically transforms itself into romance.

Good luck with that, kids.

This isn’t a “romantic comedy.” It’s really a tragedy.

Category: Culture, Hollywood, Sex

Abortion Is Murder, and Sometimes We Are Brutally Reminded of That Fact

Posted on | January 19, 2011 | 27 Comments

Even the Associated Press can’t ignore this story:

A doctor who provided abortions for minorities, immigrants and poor women in a “house of horrors” clinic has been charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive . . .

(Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: John Hayward at Human Events on Philadelphia abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s ghastly practice:

He’s been doing it for thirty years, and raked in millions of dollars. . . .
Since our media is obsessed with “climates” and “dangerous language” these days, maybe it’s time to review the antiseptic language that helped Gosnell carry on his grim trade for decades, while his heinous deeds were described as simple outpatient surgery to remove “unviable tissue masses.” . . .

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE II: Lisa Graas reminds us that Dr. Gosnell is not a random point off on the edge of the scatter-chart. Planned Parenthood is also apparently willing to cross the line between “choice” and infanticide:

“The news coming out of Philadelphia is disgusting. Infanticide continues to happen in America and only certain cases are coming to light. SFLA has been on top of this since 2008 when we released an undercover video of a Planned Parenthood worker, at a federally funded Planned Parenthood facility, openly admitting to practicing infanticide as a form of an abortion procedure. These are newborn babies who are being left to die or are being killed because they are supposedly ‘unwanted.’ America needs to put a stop to this barbaric and inhumane practice and Congress must defund Planned Parenthood immediately.”
— Kristan Hawkins, Students for Life of America

UPDATE III: “How does a man murder an innocent child in cold blood and then go about his business?”

UPDATE IV: Guess who said this?

“People who know the history of Margaret Sanger, who started Planned Parenthood, they know that the intention was not to help young women who get pregnant to plan their parenthood. No — it was a sham to be able to kill black babies . . . 75 percent of all Planned Parenthood facilities are located in black neighborhoods. . . . I believe that life begins at conception, period.”

Herman Cain said that.

UPDATE V: Ed Morrissey:

My guess is that few people will rush to defend Gosnell’s alleged actions, apart from the fringe like Peter Singer who argue that parents should have the option of terminating an infant’s life past a live birth. But this revelation will certainly linger in the minds of everyone else, and have people asking how many more Gosnells may be making their own fortunes through similar means.

Ericka Andersen on Twitter: “Abortion is abortion is abortion. This guy just made it obvious. Wake up people. Early term, late term. Its all murder.”

UPDATE VI: “All this should reveal the intellectual dishonesty and moral vacuousness of acting as if the line between ‘a woman’s choice’ and ‘infanticide’ is located somewhere around the cervix.”

UPDATE VII: News video via Anglican Samizdat:

Category: Abortion, Crime, Pennsylvania

Rush Limbaugh on Zeitgeist

Posted on | January 19, 2011 | 43 Comments

“If the movies you go see tell you that your government was behind the downing of the trade center and the Pentagon in 9/11 — as the movie Zeitgeist did, a documentary — if you were told by Michael Moore that all of this was done on purpose, if you’re told that the rich have taken what’s rightfully yours, if you’re bombarded with this every day as part of a political message, what would you be capable of doing? . . .
“You take people who are unbalanced, weak, susceptible, impressionable and you bombard ’em with that message in the Democrat Party and their willing accomplices in the media every day, and what the hell kind of person or people are you going to create running around out there? Then you show ’em the Michael Moore movie or show ’em the Zeitgeist movie, their government — led by a Republican — lied, took us into war in Afghanistan, lied to take us into war in Iraq, lied about weapons of mass destruction, lied about being responsible for 9/11, purposely wired those buildings to blow up and blamed it on some innocent Muslims, what are you gonna think? Are you not gonna run around confused and filled with hatred?”
— Rush Limbaugh, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2010

This is my 14th post about Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist obsession and, as I remarked on Andrea Shea King’s show Monday night, I’m afraid I’m nearly as obsessed with it as Loughner was — but don’t worry, I’m not going to go crazy. However, I’m not going to stop blogging about this so long as those whom Limbaugh calls the Democratic Party’s “willing accomplices in the media” continue to ignore this crucial evidence that the Tucson shooter was suffering from an acute case of Bush Derangment Syndrome. The absurd claim that Loughner’s was suffering from right-wing paranoia is completely debunked once you begin digging into Zeitgeist’s worldview as a progressive New Age phenomenon.

Ed Driscoll jokes, “Funny, I don’t recall seeing that film running during the last National Review Cruise,” but it’s no joke. Maggie’s Notebook has watched the whole movie and yesterday pointed out that the Artivist Film Festival — which gave its 2007 “Best Feature” award to Zeitgeist — is funded by the Brazilian petroleum company Petrobras, in which George Soros held a major stake until that became politcally controversial.

The producers of Zeitgeist have put a transcript of the film online and, while it isn’t actually complete — there are parts of the narration missing — it’s important to look at what Zeitgeist actually claimed:

“September 11th was the jump start for what is now an accelerating agenda by the ruthless elite. It was a staged war pretext, no different than the sinking of the Lusitania, the provoking of Pearl Harbor and the Gulf of Tonkin lie. In fact, if 9/11 wasn’t a planned war pretext, it would be an exception to the rule. It has been used to launch two unprovoked illegal wars, one against Iraq and one against Afghanistan. However, 9/11 was a pretext for another war as well. The war against you. The Patriot Act, Homeland Security, the Military Tribunals Act and other legislations are all completely and entirely designed to destroy your civil liberties and limit your ability to fight back against what is coming. . . .
“[L]et’s recognize how history repeats itself. In February 1933, Hitler staged a false flag attack burning down his own German Parliament building, the Reichstag and blamed it on communist terrorists. Within the next few weeks he passed the Enabling Act which completely eradicated the German Constitution, destroying people’s liberties. He then led a series of pre-emptive wars all justified in German people as necessary to maintaining “homeland security.”

Yeah: 9/11 was the Reichstag Fire. Remember that Zeitgeist was released in 2007. How many “Bush = Hitler” posters did we see at left-wing anti-war rallies back then, when 18-year-old Jared Lee Loughner was becoming obsessed with Zeitgeist?

Liberals who tried to blame Sarah Palin, Fox News, talk radio and the Tea Party movement for Loughner’s crime cannot be permitted to ignore the progressive roots of the killer’s insane rage.

Category: Arizona, Conspiracy Theories, Crime, Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio, Zeitgeist

ObamaCare: Bad for Your Health

Posted on | January 19, 2011 | 9 Comments

Sally Pipes in the New York Post:

Repeal of ObamaCare can’t come soon enough — as several damaging provisions are set to take effect this year.
For starters, it has effectively stopped the construction of physician-owned hospitals throughout the country.
Section 6001 of the health-care law required physician-owned hospitals to obtain their Medicare certification by the end of last year. Without it, they can’t treat Medicare patients. And the facilities needed to be open to get that certification.
So construction halted at 45 hospitals as the New Year arrived. Work on countless others will never start, having been effectively banned by ObamaCare. This will limit competition in the health-care marketplace, driving up costs for patients.

ObamaCare is causing a pandemic of political insanity and Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) is Patient Zero:

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, said on Tuesday afternoon that repealing the national health care law would violate the Constitution.
Arguing that the Commerce Clause provides the constitutional basis for ObamaCare, Jackson Lee said repealing the law by passing Republicans’ H.R. 2 violates both the Fifth Amendment’s right to due process and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
“The Fifth Amendment speaks specifically to denying someone their life and liberty without due process,” she said in a speech on the House floor moments ago. “That is what H.R. 2 does and I rise in opposition to it. And I rise in opposition because it is important that we preserve lives and we recognize that 40 million-plus are uninsured.
She continued, “Can you tell me what’s more unconstitutional than taking away from the people of America their Fifth Amendment rights, their Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the right to equal protection under the law?”

Allahpundit has a link to the C-SPAN video. When you begin to think you have the “right” to goods and services that others must work to produce, clearly you have descended into hopeless madness.

Or you’re a liberal Democrat. Six of one, half-dozen of the other . . .

(Via Memeorandum.)

Category: Health Care

‘Die, Navin R. Johnson!’

Posted on | January 19, 2011 | 6 Comments

“The new phonebook’s here! The new phonebook’s here! . . . This is the kind of spontaneous publicity — your name in print — that makes people! Things are going to start happening to me now!”

To explain the non sequitur: Steve Martin’s excitement over the “spontaneous publicity” of the new phonebook is how I felt when I got Instalanched last night. But of course, the consequences of Navin R. Johnson’s publicity weren’t quite what he expected. The crackpot gunman looking for an opportunity to wreak his vengeance on a “random son of a bitch” — well, we used to make fun of lunatics like that. Americans used to have a sense of humor. But then political correctness came along, and advocates for the mentally ill told us it was wrong to laugh at kooks, nuts and wackos.

Everything became very serious, and everybody had to be very sensitive, but I don’t think all that seriousness and sensitivity actually helped anyone. In fact, I’d be prepared to say that things have gotten much worse.

Good mental health isn’t about being somber and thin-skinned. A genuinely healthy personality is cheerful and optimistic, and is not easily easily angered or discouraged. If you devote your life to looking for reasons to feel offended and seeking scapegoats to blame for your unhappiness, you’re just like that wacko flipping through the phonebook looking for some “typical bastard” to kill.

Seriousness and sensitivity? That crap will make you crazy.

Category: humor, Instapundit, Video

LIVE AT FIVE – 1.19.11

Posted on | January 19, 2011 | Comments Off on LIVE AT FIVE – 1.19.11

TOP NEWS
Peace Corps Founder Sargent Shriver Dead At 95

Sargent Shriver, 1915-2011, RIP

Probably best known for marrying into the Kennedy clan, work with Special Olympics

Senator Lieberman To Retire In 2012
Second Democratic senator to announce retirement

PRC President Visits Amid Mounting Military Tension
Rising concern in the Administration about PRC capabilities

Ministers Quit Tunisian Unity Government As Protests Continue (Video)



Steve Jobs’ Absence Leaves Unanswered Questions (Video)

Facebook Changes Rules For Access To Personal Data
Users upset over apps’ ability to access mobile phone numbers, home addresses



POLITICS
Sarah Palin: Center Of The GOP Universe?

Sarah Palin signing "America By Heart" last November in Little Rock

“But enough about Sarah Palin; what do you think about Sarah Palin?”

Bill Clinton Stumps For Rahm In Chicago

Supremes Debate Fairness, Not Stealth Secrets


Supremes Won’t Take Up Gay Marriage Challenge In DC



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Apple Profits Shatter Expectations
Did Feds Fold On NBC/Comcast Merger Conditions?
President Moves To Stem Regulations Stifling Job Growth
Sprint Criticized For New Smartphone Fee
Apple’s Cook Scoffs At CES Tablets, Calls Them “Vapor”



SPORTS
Nyets’ Pursuit Of Anthony Reaches Critical Point

Mikhail Prokhorov, NJ Nets Owner, in Denver

Tonight’s the night?

Prince Fielder, Heath Bell Avoid Arbitration, Sign With Brewers, Padres

Bears/Packers Tickets: Gone In Sixty Seconds

Teammate Claims Lance Armstrong Was Instigator Of Substance Use

NFL Owners: Union Collusion Claim Won’t Impact Labor Negotiations



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Kristen Stewart: Coming On Strong

Kristen Stewart of "Welcome To The Rileys"

The Vogue interview.

Kelly To Regis: You’re WHAT?

Melissa Etheridge Slammed By Ex For Cheating With New GF

Jennifer Aniston Goes Topless, Gets Flirty In Allure Magazine

Hendricks Has “Mad” Jewel Moment

Minka Kelly Looking For A Roommate

Halle Berry’s Ex Files Paternity Petition



Ashton Kutcher On Casual Sex, Natalie Portman For “No Strings Attached”

Lindsay Lohan Passes Drug & Alcohol Tests

Vince Neil Gets Two Weeks In Jail, Two Weeks House Arrest For DUI



FOREIGNERS
Baby Doc Indicted On Corruption Charges By Haitian Court
7.2 Quake Hits SW Pakistan, No Reported Dead
ROK, US Discuss Changes To Missile Accord
Irish PM Wins Confidence Vote; Foreign Minister Resigns



BLOGS & STUFF
Ed Koch: Sarah Palin Holds High Ground Over Harsh, Unfair Critics
Contentions: Why Palin Won’t Fade Away Any Time Soon
Cubachi: Cheney On Obama – “He’s Learned Bush’s Policies Were The Right Ones”
Jonah Goldberg: Sy Hersh Loses It
Moe Lane: Drinking Greenwald’s Pain
Jawa Report: Paki Intel Agency Rushed Mullah Omar To Karachi Hospital?

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

VIDEO: Herman Cain vs. Clinton, 1994

Posted on | January 18, 2011 | 10 Comments

Watch this video in which the Godfather’s Pizza CEO discusses the economic impact of government health-care with Bill Clinton, and tell me if you can think of any Republican candidate better qualified to argue the case for repealing ObamaCare:

You really ought to read this 1994 Newsweek article that highlights Cain’s key role in helping defeat HillaryCare. A lot of pundits keep low-balling Cain’s 2012 prospects, but Dave Weigel points out how that moment made Cain a conservative hero:

Herman Cain’s political career began when he defeated Bill Clinton on live television. . . .
Conservatives treated the Cain mutiny like a bootleg from a Bob Dylan/George Harrison jam session, passed from fan to fan. Rush Limbaugh played the clip on his short-lived TV show. Cain’s senator, Paul Coverdell, called him a “profile in courage.” Newt Gingrich praised Cain and, after Republicans won Congress in the fall, gave him a slot on a flat-tax study group. . . .
Last week Cain launched a presidential exploratory committee, becoming the first Republican candidate of the 2012 race. . . .
In 2011, the Republican electorate wants to hear from anyone who’s not a politician. . . .
“The political landscape has changed dramatically because of the citizens’ movement spurred by the Tea Party movement,” Cain told me in an interview, giving me the elevator pitch for why he couldn’t win a GOP Senate primary in 2004 but can win a presidential primary now. “Based upon me being very active in that citizens movement, talking to dozens and dozens and dozens of Tea Party rallies, events, conferences all over this country, I believe that people have a better attitude for an unconventional candidate—someone who’s more of a problem-solver than a politician.”
He’s right about the Tea Party. When Cain speaks at conservative conferences and Tea Party rallies, he gets bigger crowds than members of Congress, and only slightly smaller crowds than Fox News hosts. . . .

You should read the rest of that. Be prepared for the usual skeptical snarkiness from Weigel, who doesn’t want to blow his smart-guy rep by being seen as overrating a longshot. But I frankly think Cain’s being underestimated. 

He’s got a rare combination: Business experience and populist appeal. I’ve called him “Steve Forbes with charisma,” but you could also think of him as Ross Perot without the craziness. If you’ve seen how Cain can connect with a conservative crowd, and then you start thinking about the kind of grassroots, hand-shaking, retail politics that it takes to win in Iowa and New Hampshire . . .

Hey, he already beat cancer. You gonna bet against a guy like that?

CITZENS FOR CAIN: Join the Grassroots Army

Category: Bill Clinton, Dave Weigel, Election 2012, Health Care, Herman Cain
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