The Other McCain

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

Can ‘Vitriol’ Be Cured by ‘Civility’? And What Does It Have to Do With Tucson?

Posted on | January 10, 2011 | 37 Comments

“What, you can’t be crazy no more? Did we eliminate ‘crazy’ from the dictionary?”
— Chris Rock

Lisa Graas ran the “Palin Twibe” Twitter account in support of Sarah Palin until Palin endorsed Rand Paul, whom Graas opposed in the Kentucky Senate primary. Graas knows a thing or two about “vitriol,” if we may borrow Sheriff Dupnik’s phrase. Pick a fight online with Ron Paul’s supporters, and you’ll get vitriol by the bushel basket. Lisa comments on the reaction to the Arizona shooting:

Incidentally, the way I found out about the shooting was through an avalanche of tweets calling Sarah Palin a ‘murderer’. I was even called a murderer for asking people not to point fingers of blame. There is certainly ‘vitriol’ . . . but it’s not coming from the direction the Left claims.

Indeed. The finger-pointing frenzy from the Left has not been quelled by the emerging picture of Loughner as a lone kook, an angry atheist who, according to acquaintances, was “left wing.” But more to the point — a point I’ve been trying to hammer home since Saturday — there is no evidence that “vitrol” in ordinary partisan politics had anything to do with Jared Lee Loughner’s crime. Read more

Category: Arizona, Crime

LIVE AT FIVE – 1.10.10

Posted on | January 10, 2011 | 4 Comments

TOP NEWS
Giffords’ Survival A Testament To The Mystery Of Brain Injury

Rep, Gabriele Giffords and her husband, Commander Mark Kelly, at their wedding in 2007

“The belief is if you get shot in the head, you’re dead, but it isn’t like that,” agreed the University of Miami’s Ross Bullock, chief of neurotrauma at Jackson Memorial Hospital. “Every patient is an individual and more so with a gunshot than anything else,” he said.



Khartoum Appears Ready To Accept Results Of Secession Ballot
Borders, citizenship and oil all remain to be settled after the voting

Hillary Working To Maintain Tight Sanctions On Iran
Administration concerned that Gulf states may slack off now that Iranian bomb threat seemingly deferred



POLITICS
Giffords Shooting Fuels Debate Over Rhetoric

Patty Atkins prays at a Sunday morning vigil at University Hospital

See also Glenn Reynolds’ op-ed in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal.

After Shooting, Fresh Look At Protecting Lawmakers

Rahm’s Police Plan Adds More Cops But Doesn’t Move Them To High-Crime Neighborhoods


NYC Leaders Face Grilling On Blizzard Response

Christie, Year 2: Stay The Course



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Investors Start Week On The Defensive As Potential Gains Are Limited
PRC Reports Reduced Trade Surplus Before Obama Meeting
VW’s New U.S. Chief Gets Tough Marching Orders From Germany
Verizon Confident It’s Got The Muscle For IPhone
Hard Drive Withstands Drops, Immersion, Shotgun Blasts
“Kinect” For PCs In Development



SPORTS
Blame For Eagles’ Loss To Pack Goes Higher Than Vick

The Pack's Tramon Williams intercepts a Michael Vick pass to end the Eagles' last offensive threat

Packers win 21-16, as Eagles suffer a general collapse

Chiefs Go Down In Flames, As Usual

Ducks’ Hiller Posts Second Shutout In A Row




Lightning GM Yzerman Not Looking To Make A Major Move

Bears Get Rematch With Seahawks, 9 1/2 Point Edge

Nyets Closing In On Carmelo Trade



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
The Beckhams Are Expecting Baby #4

David and Victoria Beckham

Due date sometime in the summer

Cruises Pass On Oscars Due To Anne Hathaway
moar like Xenu, amirite?

ABC Plots A Return To Oz With Salma Hayek
Talk about your witchy women. Yow.

“Glee” Does “Thriller”
Also, more Gwyneth and Gaga in upcoming season, but no Justin Bieber.

“Jersey Shore” Duo Rips Joy Behar (Video)



Joan Rivers: My Red Carpet Reporting Days Are Over

Sarah Palin’s Big Decision: Payday Or Politics?




FOREIGNERS
Iranian Air Crash Kills At Least 70, More Deaths Likely To Follow
Thousands Of Pakis Demonstrate In Support Of Blasphemy Law
Australian Floods Continue Devastating March
Hamas Calls For Factions To Stop Attacks On Israel; Meanwhile, Israeli Air Force Continues Strikes Against Gaza Targets
PRC, Dear Leader Forge New Consensus Of The People: Japan, ROK To Increase Military Cooperation
Hackers Use Nork Tweets To Call For Uprising



BLOGS & STUFF
Ed Morrissey: The Shame -And Hypocrisy- Of CNN
Blackfive: I Am Getting Tired (Again)
Legal Insurrection: Two Sicknesses On Display In Arizona
Tammy Bruce: Interview With Rebecca Mansour (Podcast)
Weasel Zippers: Carolyn McCarthy To Push New Gun Control Bill
Althouse: Jack Shafer Defends Free Speech – Even Violent Political Rhetoric
Gateway Pundit: Megyn Kelly Takes On Sheriff Dupnik (Video)


— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

A Very Special Comment

Posted on | January 10, 2011 | 25 Comments

My 12-year-old son delivers a reply to someone with a gigantic ego and a miniscule audience:

Here’s the script:

Saturday’s shootings in Tucson, Arizona were hateful and tragic, the senseless and desperate deeds of a demented man. All decent Americans mourn the lives lost and irreparably damaged by this atrocious act of insane violence.
Yet another act of hateful insanity was committed Saturday, an act for which the perpetrator has not been held accountable. His weapon was not a gun, but a cable television network, and his ammunition was a diatribe as demented in its own way as anything ever posted on the Internet by Jared Lee Loughner.
I speak, of course, of Keith Olbermann.
For too many years, Olbermann has been permitted to hector Americans with his deranged rantings, festooned with polysyllabic adjectives and elaborate analogies. There is no political conflict too mundane, nor any legislative battle too routine, for MSNBC’s primetime host to whip out a comparison to Hitler and the Third Reich. And in these overblown Olbermann metaphors, it is always Republicans and conservatives who are cast as Nazis.
On Saturday, it was revealed that the Tucson shooter was a 22-year-old man with a history of drug abuse. A high-school friend of the gunman described him as a “political radical,” whose views were “quite liberal,” even “left wing.”
Yet we cannot hold the Democratic Party responsible for this madman’s violence. Neither should we blame Daily Kos and other liberal bloggers, nor even such irresponsible TV demagogues as Dylan Ratigan and Ed Schultz.
Police say that the man who committed the Arizona shooting is in custody. Jared Lee Loughner has the right to be presumed innocent unless and until he is found guilty by a jury of his peers. But so far as we know, one man alone pulled the trigger. He alone is to blame, and he alone will pay the penalty for his crimes.
This was not good enough, however, for Keith Olbermann.
In an attempt to score cheap political points from Saturday’s shooting, Olbermann treated his viewers to one of the most shamelessly irresponsible lectures in his long, sad history of shameless irresponsibility. His “Special Comment” was indeed special, although probably not in the way Olbermann intended. He named Sarah Palin and Sharon Angle. He named Jesse Kelly and Allen West. He named Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement. Olbermann named all of these people in his Saturday “Special Comment,” suggesting that they were somehow responsible for the shooting in Tucson. But they were not responsible, neither directly nor indirectly.
There is nothing — not one shred of evidence, not one word of testimony — suggesting that any of these people named by Keith Olbermann did anything that in any way inspired Jared Loughner’s criminal madness.
Olbermann accused innocent people of encouraging a horrible crime. If we may borrow one of Olbermann’s favorite tactics, we might say that Olbermann committed what Hitler called The Big Lie. And we might also say that Olbermann tried to turn the Tucson shooting into the Reichstag fire.
The producers and executives at MSNBC permitted Olbermann to deliver his hateful sermon. And the advertisers on MSNBC paid for it. The good news, of course, is that hardly anyone watched it.
Olbermann’s audience is so small that his show is seen by fewer viewers than a lot of YouTube videos. For all his dramatic language, for all the bombastic delivery of his exaggerated self-important political sermonettes, Olbermann attracts at most a few hundred thousand viewers five nights a week. His audience is not one-tenth as large as the number of people who hear Rush Limbaugh’s radio show every day.
As a commercial enterprise, then, Olbermann’s program is a complete failure. Olbermann’s ratings have fallen, and they can’t get up. Yet MSNBC continues to give this pompous gasbag their eight-o’clock hour, and pay him millions of dollars a year, as if he were such a success that their network could not survive without him.
It remains to be seen how long they can continue this sad charade. Will Olbermann be on MSNBC at 8 p.m. each weeknight forever? Will the network sustain him, no matter how low his ratings go? Will he be allowed to continue lecturing America until, at last, his audience shrinks to zero?
Americans don’t need your sanctimonious sermons, Mr. Olbermann. We don’t get our moral lessons from MSNBC.
We believe in basic truths that were already well-known long before you ever showed up to lecture us on cable TV.
And we don’t need a lot of fancy words to explain things as simple as “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
Good night, Mr. Olbermann.
Good night, and good riddance.

Thanks to Jefferson as the anchorman, thanks to the cameraman (Emerson, age 10) and thanks to Mrs. Other McCain for putting up with our silly blog projects.

UPDATE: Somebody noticed:

A “panicked defense of hate speech“? That’s called projection, Keith. Look it up.

Category: humor, MSNBC, Video

Rule 5 Sunday: Once More, With Feeling!

Posted on | January 9, 2011 | 7 Comments

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, and Loyal Readers of The Other McCain, it’s time once again for Rule 5 Sunday, which unbelievably enough is actually appearing on Sunday for the second week in a row! Who’d’a thunk it?


Perhaps the Culture Warrior, who graced our inbox with a link to the lovely Gina Carano.


Mind-Numbed Robot ground his gears and produced this excellent post with the likewise excellent Ashlee Simpson.


Soylent Green graced us with a link to his fabulous Corset Friday Frenzy as well as a truly remarkable blessing for those of us that celebrated Christmas this past Friday.


Elsewhere, Three Beers Later leaked a photo of Muammar Qaddafi’s curvaceous Ukrainian nurse.


Fishersville Mike draws our attention to “Big Bang Theory”, or more correctly, to one of its stars.


Dustbury shows us what became of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and adds an update on Toni Braxton.


DaleyGator shows us what’s cooking in his kitchen, some thumbnails of Jenn Sterger, a rather cheeky New Year’s greeting, and last but not least, Kelly Carrington.


Proof Positive graces us with Adrienne Barbeau as a fine vintage offering; next up he submits Tina Wallman, and finally, going from the sublime to the ridiculous, Representative Mary Bono.


Thanks to everyone that submitted links! Send your Rule 5 offerings to me at Rule 5 Wombat.

Category: Rule 5

A Thought Concerning The False Lefty Propaganda

Posted on | January 9, 2011 | 22 Comments

by Smitty

Lefty commenters were boring in their predictable attempt to manage the dots in the Arizona shooting and connect them in politically convenient ways.
Instead of getting all bent out of shape, the way the Usual Suspects want you to, instead, consider offering detailed, sincere forgiveness.
We should both pray for recovery for the wounded, justice for the perpetrator(s), and forgiveness for those whose remarks linking anyone Conservatives or Tea Partiers to the shooting are as unhinged as the shooter himself.
While not ethically required, going that route is an improvement, morally speaking, as it halts the slide into becoming as shrill and unbearable as Westboro Baptist Church.
Forgiveness is powerful: employ it.

Category: Arizona

FMJRA 2.0: Not Now John

Posted on | January 9, 2011 | 10 Comments

I’ve got to get on with this.

Arizona Shooter ‘Seems to Be Someone Desperately Needing Mental Health Care’

Best. Republican. Scandal. EVAH!
UPDATE: Is ‘Lurid’ Photo a Hoax?

ARIZONA OUTRAGE: Rep. Giffords Shot in Tucson; U.S. Judge Killed; Gunman Identified as Jared Loughner, 22

RINO No More: Dede Scozzafava Appointed to Job by Democrat Cuomo

Did President Obama Invent Muslim Victims of Egyptian Church Bombing?

Ex-Playmate: ‘Everything in the Playboy Mansion Felt Old and Stale’ Including Hef!

FMJRA 2.0: I’ll Take That Egg Nog To Go, And Make It A Double

Rule 5 Sunday – Actually On Sunday This Week!

Ruh-Roh: Former Bush Aide Murdered, Body Found in Delaware Landfill

Montana Democrat Sen. Max Baucus Will Marry Former Staffer Melodee Hanes

Sodomy Is Not Pro-Life

Iran TV Blames Jihadist Bombing of Egyptian Church on ‘Zionists’

LIVE AT FIVE – 1.4.10

Captain of USS Enterprise Relieved From Duty in Politically Correct Witch Hunt

The Fatherhood Deficit

Walpin’s Appeals Rejected

Livestreaming the Constitution

SHOCKING REPUBLICAN SCANDAL!

Pelosi: ‘We Have No Regrets … Deficit Reduction Has Been a High Priority’

How Much Spending Will GOP Cut?

Ann Marie Buerkle Sworn In
UPDATE: Alas, Poor Marco Rubio!
UPDATE: Catching Up With Griffith
UPDATE: Interview With Renee Ellmers

BREAKING: FBI Investigates Suspected Mail Bomb Near Maryland State House UPDATE: Governor O’Malley Targeted?

Calling the Democrats’ Bluff

If John Boehner’s Lost Nick Gillespie …

BREAKING: Bomb Scare in D.C.
UPDATE: Napolitano Was Target

‘When You Remove A Cancer, What Do You Replace It With?’

A Song for All My Feminist Fans

Category: FMJRA Award

‘Unbalanced People … Respond to the Vitriol That Comes Out of Certain Mouths’

Posted on | January 9, 2011 | 13 Comments

Yeah, that’s what Sheriff Dupnik said, and here’s CNN video:

William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection has the documents from the criminal charges filed against Jared Loughner. But obviously, Sheriff Dupnik has a point. And I think we know who, more than anyone else in America, is responsible for unloading unspeakably hateful “vitriol” into the minds of “unbalanced people”:

Keith Olbermann named Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, Allen West, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and the Tea Party movement as somehow responsible for Loughner’s crime. He named them without any evidence or testimony indicating they had anything to do with it. This was indeed a “Special Comment,” and certainly it deserves a special reply.

UPDATE: Noel Sheppard: “ABC Interviews Friend of Giffords Shooter, Ignores Her Claim He’s Liberal.”

It’s not just one network or a handful of tendentious commentators. The atrociously biased reporting — the guilt-by-association tactics even when there is no actual association — we have seen in the coverage of this crime can only be termed the MSNBC-ization of the media.

Category: Arizona, CNN, Crime, Media Bias, MSNBC, Video

The South Rises Again (in Sudan)

Posted on | January 9, 2011 | 4 Comments

A referendum begins, and voters in South Sudan are expected to approve their independence from Khartoum:

Joy marked the faces of South Sudanese citizens as they waited in long lines at polling stations throughout this dusty boomtown that, come July, is likely to be the world’s newest capital.
In Juba, many residents rose before dawn to get in line for their chance to vote in this historic referendum on whether semiautonomous South Sudan will secede from Sudan. Others stood in the baking sun for the chance to make the choice of a lifetime. After decades of struggle, emotions of relief, happiness, and excitement abounded among voters. . . .
“This is democracy at its most basic, where people are choosing their future, and how and by whom they want to be governed,” said former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in the country with former President Jimmy Carter’s election observation mission.
“It’s important that the enthusiasm, the energy, leads to solid results that are expected by everyone,” Mr. Annan said, while women in line to vote behind him ululated spontaneously – a sign of celebration which was a a common occurrence Sunday, the first day of polling.
A few minutes before Annan and Mr. Carter arrived, a southern man had led the hundreds of soon-to-be voters in chants of “hallelujah.”

If at first you don’t secede . . .

Category: Sudan
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