The Other McCain

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

Advice to Boys: Beware of Chicks You Meet Through Online Gaming

Posted on | January 11, 2011 | 7 Comments

Especially if they’re old enough to be your mom:

A California woman flew across the country to have sex with a 13-year-old she met through her Xbox, police said.
Rachel Ann Hicks, 36, was arrested Friday for allegedly bedding the Maryland teen, according to police in Orange County, Calif.
The woman is being charged with two counts of rape, one count of second-degree sex offense and one count of sexual solicitation of a minor, according to WBALTV News in Baltimore.

PREVIOUSLY: ‘Few People Understand the Damage Boys Who Are Abused by Women Can Suffer’

Category: Crime, Sex

Poll Shows MSM Spin on Tucson Shooting Rejected by Stupid American Majority

Posted on | January 11, 2011 | 12 Comments

Damn it, when are you ignorant people going to wake up and recognize the moral superiority of your liberal overlords?

Nearly six in 10 Americans say the country’s heated political rhetoric is not to blame for the Tucson shooting rampage that left six dead and critically wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, according to a CBS News poll. . . .
Overall, 57 percent of respondents said the harsh political tone had nothing to do with the shooting, compared to 32 percent who felt it did. Republicans were more likely to feel the two were unrelated – 69 percent said rhetoric was not to blame . . .

Isn’t it about time that 57% of you admit you have blood on your hands? Don’t you realize how much more enlightened and tolerant those 32% are? How are we ever going to “tone down the rhetoric” is you refuse to admit that Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh were responsible for this atrocity?

Via Memeorandum, with more commentary from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, Dave Weigel, NewsBusters, Nick Gillespie at Reason‘s Hit & Run, Weasel Zippers, William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, JammieWearingFool, and Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit.


Category: Arizona, Crime, Polls

Herman Cain on the Iowa Caucuses

Posted on | January 11, 2011 | 2 Comments

Duane Lester interviews the not-yet-official candidate after an event in Council Bluffs, Iowa:

In Iowa, like New Hampshire, candidates really get the chance to be vetted. This meeting that we had here today is a good example. They didn’t hold back. And in Iowa, you can’t just buy enough advertising and you’re going to win the caucuses. And so Iowa is special, not only because it’s an early primary state, but because the process that is used here is so unique that it truly forces candidates to be vetted as they begin to campaign the other states around the country.

This is an important point about the organizational aspect of the presidential campaign. Barack Obama’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Iowa caucuses ultimately proved decisive, and the secret of Obama’s victory in Iowa was a superior ground game: She began the campaign with far more money and vastly greater name recognition, but the Obama campaign simply out-organized her.

“Retail politics” — the candidate shaking hands with individual voters and talking to small gatherings of supporters in people’s living rooms — really makes a difference in Iowa and New Hampshire. Voters there have become accustomed to being actively courted by candidates and Cain’s recognition of that dynamic is important to his grassroots approach to the campaign.

Read the rest of Duane Lester’s interview with Herman Cain.

Category: Herman Cain, Iowa

They Only Have to Be Right Once

Posted on | January 11, 2011 | 16 Comments

“Here we go,” says William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, after a Democrat decides that applying the phrase “job killing” to ObamaCare is an incitement to violence:

A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the “Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act,” was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby’s shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend — but is it really necessary to put the word “killing” in the title of a major piece of legislation? I don’t think that word is in there by accident — my Republican friends know as well as anyone the power of words to send a message. But in this environment and at this moment in our nation’s history, it’s not the message we should be sending.

This is yet another example of how liberals routinely claim Republicans are engaging in “dog whistle” rhetoric — supposedly sending coded messages — when only liberals seem able to hear the whistle. How many times have we been told by liberals that various criticisms of the Obama administration’s agenda are inherently racist?

Assuming the pose of high-minded arbiters of civility, liberals arrogate to themselves the ability to decide what are and are not legitimate arguments and — surprise, surprise! — any argument made by conservatives is immediately ruled out of order. The more effective a conservative argument, the more success any particular strategy, tactic or rhetorical method has in defeating liberalism, the more likely it is to be attacked as an expression of “hate.”

Day in and day out for nearly two years, liberals have repeatedly claimed that the Tea Party movement is a hate-filled aggregation of violent bigots. (April will mark the two-year anniversary of the infamous DHS “Rightwing Extremism” report, issued just days before the 2009 Tax Day Tea Party rallies.) Why do they keep saying this, without any credible evidence? Because, as Da Tech Guy says, they only have to be right once:

Simple mathematics suggest that if you bet on a a particular number on a roulette wheel continually sooner or later it will come up, however if it comes up after you have lost over and over again, it is not proof of your gambling prowess.

Having spent some time in Vegas, I can attest to the truth of that. But words are cheaper than casino chips, and liberals had been betting the mortgage on the “Tea Party extremist” meme for so long that, when gunfire erupted in Tucson, they instantly leaped to the conclusion that their lucky number had finally hit.

Alas, they bet wrong again. Read more

Category: Arizona, Crime, Liberals, Media Bias, Tea Party

LIVE AT FIVE – 1.11.11

Posted on | January 11, 2011 | Comments Off on LIVE AT FIVE – 1.11.11

TOP NEWS
Commentators Rush To Blame Media For Loughner’s Murders

Meanwhile, the Lamestream Media blames Sarah Palin.

And pious blathering about “violent rhetoric” focuses only on the Right.

South Sudan goes to the polls
Most observers think secession’s a done deal




Tom DeLay Sentenced To Three Years For Money Laundering, Free On Appeal Bond
“I can’t be remorseful for something I think I didn’t do”



POLITICS
Brown’s Budget For California: “Honest” And “Very Painful”?

Governor Jerry Brown presents his budget

Budget cuts $12.5 billion in spending, raises taxes, and cuts state salaries 8-10%

Arrest Made In Threat Against Senator Bennet’s Staff




Limbaugh: Democrats Sought To Profit From Loughner’s Murders

Illinois Governor Quinn: “We Will Pay Our Bills”



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Alcoa Shines As Aluminum Prices Rise
Hef Buys Back The Bunny: Founder Of Playboy To Take Company Private In $207 Million Deal
Merger Of Duke, Progress Energy Would Create U.S. Largest Utility
NASA Ames’ Kepler Mission Finds First Rocky Exoplanet
“World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm” Sells 4.7 Million In First Month



SPORTS
Rockets Still Trying To Trade For Anthony

Chancey Billups and Carmelo Anthony: soon to be ex-Nuggets?

No deals until the deadline?

Penalties And Scandals Highlight Irregular College Football Season

Penguins Squander Lead, Fall 4-2 To Bruins

Rangers Trade Rozsival To Coyotes For Wolski


Petersen Intrigued By Stanford But Stays At Boise State

Wings Goalie Osgood Out 6-8 Weeks With Injured Groin

FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Owen Wilson’s Going To Be A Dad!

Owen Wilson

Pregnant GF Jade Duell in Hawaii, where she plans to give birth

Scarlett “Devastated” By Ryan & Sandra’s Rebound Romance

‘Tis best to be off with the old love, before one is on with the new, eh, Scarlett?

Jake Gyllenhall Praises, Teases Pregnant Natalie Portman

Britney’s New Single “Hold It Against Me” Leaks To Internet A Day Early

How Caroline Kennedy And Maria Shriver Shivved “The Kennedys” Miniseries

Giada DeLaurentiis Embraces Traditional Roles Of Wife And Mom



FOREIGNERS
Eight Killed, 72 Missing As Australian Floods Continue
Bhutto Pledges To Defend Pakistan’s Minorities, Condemns Those Who Praised Slain Governor’s Assassin
ROK Rejects Nork Dialogue Offer As Ploy To Get Aid Restarted
Spanish PM Zapatero Says Basque Terrorists’ Offer Of Permanent Truce Doesn’t Go Far Enough
Ouattara Offers Unity Government If Gbagbo Steps Down



BLOGS & STUFF
The Cholla Jumps: Jared Loughner Is A Product Of Sheriff Dupnik’s Office
See also Atlas Shrugs.
Legal Insurrection: What David Frum Needed To Say
Michelle Malkin: The Progressive Climate Of Hate – An Illustrated Primer
Protein Wisdom: Hillary Must Go

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

Miley Cyrus: Healing America

Posted on | January 10, 2011 | 7 Comments

After three hours of watching MSNBC hosts lecturing us about the “culture of hate” — by which term they mean, Sarah Palin — they blame for the shootings in Tucson, I was bored out of my skull.

If this crap is boring me senseless, surely it must be boring you. Fortunately, we have celebrities to distract us:


I’m not sure why Miley Cyrus and Emily Osment were playing kissy-face, but thanks. America needed that.

Category: Celebrities

MSNBC’s Non Sequitur Marathon

Posted on | January 10, 2011 | 12 Comments

It is an established fact that the man who killed six people and wounded 12 other people in Tucson was not a Republican. Or a conservative. He didn’t even vote in 2010.

Jared Loughner is a psychotic who bore an irrational grudge against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Why, then, is MSNBC treating its viewers to hour after hour of discussions today about how Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Sharron Angle and others engaged in irresponsible rhetoric that allegedly could incite people to violence?

It’s a complete non sequitur. At this moment, I’m watching Hardball, where Chris Matthews opened his show with 15 minutes of this nonsense. Nick Gillespie nails it:

Readers of this site know I’m no Sarah Palin fan, but to accuse her of complicity in the murderous spree of a clearly insane person is one of the main reasons that partisan political parties are losing market share. I had myself tweeted that blaming Palin for Jared Loughner’s mass killing would be like blaming J.D. Salinger for Mark David Chapman shooting John Lennon (and as Jesse Walker pointed out, in Chapman’s case, at least we could be sure Chapman had read Salinger).

UPDATE: Olbermann’s on now, insisting that anyone who doesn’t share his pretzel-logic perspective — Sarah Palin’s “target” map must somehow be implicated in the Giffords shooting — is irresponsible. But the demented crackpot (i.e., Loughner, not Olbermann) was living in Kookville, as Allahpundit says:

Yeah, go figure that a guy who spent the summer making nonsensical outbursts in class and answering questions on a math test with “Eat+Sleep+Brush Teeth=Math” wasn’t all that interested in the midterm elections.

UPDATE II: Olbermann keeps going on and on about a “climate of hate,” etc., and yet fails to see that there is no relationship between anything said by Sarah Palin (Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Sharron Angle, etc.) and Loughner’s crime. What part of non sequitur don’t you understand, Keith?

Category: Arizona, Crime, MSNBC

The Suspect and the ‘Usual Suspects’

Posted on | January 10, 2011 | 29 Comments

The TV in my office is tuned to MSNBC this afternoon, and there was just a report about a proposed law that would make it a federal crime to use threatening language against a member of Congress.

Jonathan Turley says this was suggested by Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.), and I’m tempted to write very ugly things about Brady, just on general principle. Hey, let’s all threaten members of Congress while it’s still legal, right?

This Tucson shooting is just about the only thing the blogs are talking about today, so I don’t suppose there’s much point writing about anything else. I’ll just aggregate and comment:

I’ll update with more in a minute. Michael Smerconish was just on MSNBC talking about “civil discourse.” We ought to have a drinking game, where you take a drink every time someone uses those kinds of cliches.

UPDATE: I was talking to another political reporter today, and we discussed the idea of going to Arizona (which some commenters here had suggested). But this is the kind of story where actual reporters on the scene are doing good work, and there’s not much value-added to show up two days after the event just to become another warm body in the scrum. As an example of good reporting by the regular media, there’s an excellent Associated Press profile of Loughner with information like this:

Loughner’s alienation from his friends was gradual.
The Loughner they met when he was a freshman at Mountain View High School may have been socially awkward, but he was generally happy and fun to be around. The crew smoked marijuana every day . . .
Once, during school lunch break as a junior, he downed so much tequila that he came back to class, within five minutes passed out cold, had to be rushed to the hospital and “almost died,” one friend said.

That’s significant: He was “awkward” — a term that describes a lot of high school freshmen — and tried to fit in by using drugs and alcohol. This maladaptive behavior was part of a gradual alienation from his friends, and no one seemed to realize where it might lead, until he was such a wackjob that he had to be banned from his college campus. His former philosophy professor recognized Loughner’s madness:

“Yeah, that’s him,” says Kent Slinker, when I read him some of Loughner’s syllogisms over the phone. “That kind of nonsensical, disconnected thinking.” Slinker, an adjunct philosophy professor at Pima Community College, taught Loughner in Introduction to Logic during the spring semester of 2010. Slinker’s impression of Loughner was that of “someone whose brains were scrambled.”

“Civility” can’t cure schizophrenia.

UPDATE II: Andrew Klavan at City Journal:

Judging from his website, I would guess that Jared Lee Loughner suffers from schizophrenia. . . .
I wasn’t going to write anything about the incident because — unlike, say, the frequent and ongoing atrocities inspired by the very intent of Islamism or Communism — it didn’t seem to be a murder caused by any sort of coherent idea. . . .
But while little useful can be said about the murders themselves, the rush to narrative of our dishonest and increasingly desperate leftist media does have to be addressed. The Left — which has been unable to discover any common feature uniting acts of Islamist violence worldwide — nonetheless instantly noticed a bridge between the Tucson shooting and its own political opponents. The Chicago Sun-Times ran a slavering editorial blaming “the right.” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson suggested that the killings were inspired by right-wing rhetoric.

Exactly. It is the liberals who rushed to judgment Saturday and Sunday, fabricating a “right-wing” motive where no such motive existed, who need to explain and apologize for that error. Yet if they were capable of understanding their own errors of judgment, they wouldn’t be liberals, would they?

Meanwhile, the WaPo‘s Greg Sargent knocks down another red herring: Department of Homeland Security officials “have not established any such possible link” between Loughner and American Renaissance. Sargent implies that Fox News made up the link, but I’ve published the text of the purported DHS memo, which raises the question: Who wrote that memo?

UPDATE III: Greg Sargent also has an interview with Paul Begala:

“What has been striking has been their defensiveness and lack of introspection,” Begala said of right wing commentators. “Even if this was simply the delusional act of a madman, there’s no harm in reassessing, by saying, `Holy smokes, what are we doing here?'”

“Defensiveness”! The Left attacks, attacks, and attacks, and the minute you dare talk back to them, they get all indignant: “Why are you being so defensive?”

From Markos Moulitsas to Paul Krugman to Keith Olbermann, many of the leading voices of liberalism utterly disgraced themselves in their rush to play “Pin the Tail on Palin” Saturday, and Paul Begala can’t even be bothered to notice.

No, to Paul Begal, the problem is always with conservatives. Yet it was Begala and his Clintonista colleagues who developed “the permanent campaign” mode of politics to a high art form in the 1990s. (Where did they get that idea? Was it merely a coincidence that The Permanent Campaign was the title of a 1982 book by Sidney Blumenthal?) But far be it from liberals to urge their fellow liberals to do some “introspection” of their own.

UPDATE IV: Loughner didn’t even bother to vote in the 2010 election. It would seem rather difficult to claim that he was incited to murder by “vitriolic” rhetoric, yet couldn’t be incited to vote.

Category: Arizona, Crime
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