The Other McCain

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

Like Roman Polanski, a Hero in France

Posted on | January 3, 2011 | 4 Comments

Julian Assange is Le Monde‘s “Man of the Year”:

Hat-tip: Donald Douglas at American Power. who has much more International Hero of World Peace™ news.

Category: France, WikiLeaks

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

Posted on | January 3, 2011 | 17 Comments

There is probably no political angle to this story:

A man who fought to get the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built and served in two Bush administrations was murdered, Delaware police say.
John P. Wheeler III, 66, was found dead in a Delaware landfill, and his death has been ruled a homicide by Newark, Del., police. They are asking the public for leads in the case.
Wheeler’s body was found in Wilmington on Friday after a disposal truck containing his body made pickups in Newark.
Wheeler, who lived in New Castle, was chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund during the Ronald Reagan era. He also held many high-profile government positions after graduating from West Point in 1966.

No reason to speculate about this crime. Just let the police do their work. Nevertheless, we can expect that conspiracy theorists will offer all kinds of arcane explanations.

UPDATE: More from the Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal:

Friends and neighbors were shocked to learn Wheeler had been murdered.
“This is just not the kind of guy who gets murdered,” said Bayard Marin, a Wilmington attorney who represented Wheeler. “This is not the kind of guy you find in a landfill.”
Wheeler worked in Washington, D.C. and investigators have determined he was on an Amtrak train from Washington to Wilmington on Tuesday, said Newark police Lt. Mark Farrall.
“The last place they can put him is getting off the Amtrak train in Wilmington,” Farrall said.

UPDATE II: Local news video via the Political Carnival:

Former Bush Aide Found Dead In Landfill: MyFoxPHILLY.com

UPDATE III: James Fallows at The Atlantic Monthly was a friend of Wheeler and notes that Wheeler had been pushing to bring ROTC back to Ivy League campuses.

Now a Memeorandum thread with commentary by Gateway Pundit.

UPDATE IV: Fallows is now upset that Fox describes Wheeler as a “Bush aide” — no, Fallows insists, Wheeler was a good person.

Nudge, nudge.

UPDATE V: Yale Law grad Instapundit points out that Wheeler was a fellow Yalie. Conspiracy theorists can now add Skull and Bones to their list of suspects.

Category: Crime, Delaware, Republicans

At Last: A Kennedy-Free Congress!

Posted on | January 3, 2011 | 1 Comment

From 1947 to 2011, it has been more than six decades since there’s been a Congress without a Kennedy:

It’s remarkable. From Jack through Patches, it’s like watching evolution in reverse. It makes me doubt Darwin’s theory.

Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

Category: Congress

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Obama Administration ‘Destroying This Country’

Posted on | January 3, 2011 | 3 Comments

Our “Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around” (Rule 2) is named in honor of a memorable remark by the Marine drill instructor in the 1987 Kubrick classic. An actual Marine, R. Lee Ermey, was perfectly cast in that role. At a Toys for Tots event last month, Ermey spoke out against the Obama administration:

“The economy really sucks. Now, I hate to point fingers at anybody, but the present administration probably has a lot to do with that. And the way I see it, they’re not going to quit doing it until they bring this country to its knees. So I think we should all rise up, and we should stop this administration from what they’re doing, because they’re destroying this country. They’re driving us into bankruptcy so they can impose socialism on us. That’s exactly what they’re doing and I’m sick and damned tired of it, and I know you are, too.”

Semper Fi, Sarge. John Nolte at Big Hollywood predicts this will result in efforts to blacklist Ermey, who is currently starring in a funny GEICO commercial.

Let’s hope not. And now, for the Best Motivational Speech Evah!

Category: Barack Obama, Celebrities, Economics, Video

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

Posted on | January 3, 2011 | 10 Comments

Izabella St. James (real name, Izabella Katarina Kasprzyk) might be best known for her role as “Jimmie’s Girlfriend” in the 2008 cinema classic Ninja Cheerleaders, except that she once played the role of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend.

The Polish-born beauty was never a centerfold, but she has has written a tell-all book, Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion in which she describes a somewhat less-than-glamorous reality:

For Izabella, the Playboy Mansion was far from the glamorous pleasure palace she had imagined. ‘Each ­bedroom had mismatched, random pieces of furniture . . . It was as if someone had gone to a charity shop and bought the basics for each room.
‘Although we all did our best to decorate our rooms and make them homely, the mattresses on our beds were ­disgusting — old, worn and stained. The sheets were past their best, too. . . .
‘Hef was used to dirty carpets. The one in his bedroom had not been changed for years, and things became significantly worse when Holly Madison moved into his room with him as Girlfriend No. 1 soon after I moved in, bringing her two dogs.
‘They weren’t house-trained and would just do their business on the bedroom carpet. Late at night, or in the early hours of the morning — if any of us visited Hef’s bedroom — we’d almost always end up standing in dog mess. . . .

(The girls got $1,000 weekly allowance and free plastic surgery.)

Freedom of a kind came on Wednesdays and Fridays, the official nights out, which were the prelude to the twice-weekly sex parties in Hefner’s bedroom.
The girls travelled with Hefner in a white limousine which had a ­leopard-skin interior, with Playboy bunny logos sewn onto the seats. As they left the mansion, they drank Dom Perignon champagne and downed Quaaludes, a prescription-only sedative drug popularised in the Seventies and now handed out by Hefner. . . .
At around midnight, according to St James, Hef would take his Viagra. ‘After that, he would constantly check his watch to make sure we left at the right time because if we didn’t, or the timing got messed up, he wouldn’t be able to perform later. . . .
‘I wanted to see if this experienced King of Sexdom knew anything the rest of us did not,’ she recalls. ‘But he just lay there like a dead fish.
‘We often wondered why he did it at all. He must know deep down that it is just a show. But he is trying to live out this fantasy he has been selling to people since 1954. He wants to live up to the Playboy image he created and the expectations people have of him.’

Shabby furniture, dirty beds, dog poop on the floor, bad sex with a Viagra-gobbling geezer — c’mon, ladies, who can resist that?

Category: Celebrities, Sex

Speaker John Boehner’s Swearing-In: Less Glamorous, More Choked Up and Crying

Posted on | January 3, 2011 | 7 Comments

The Washington Post:

Austerity is the theme of Republican John A. Boehner’s installation as House speaker this week, placing the start of this new Congress in stark contrast to the more lavish festivities that marked Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s swearing-in four years ago.
On Wednesday, following a bipartisan prayer service at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Boehner will recite the oath and take the gavel from Pelosi with the attendant pomp and no more – except, perhaps, a few tears.
Then the 61-year-old Ohioan will deliver his maiden speech to the new House, which includes a huge cadre of freshmen lawmakers. Many of them are rambunctious Republicans who sailed into Washington with the tea party winds and are determined to use their new majority to undo much of President Obama’s legislative record.

Don’t expect Hollywood celebrities. Do expect some crying. And lots and lots of Ohio people:

John Boehner would have a sizeable crowd in Washington Wednesday to watch him be sworn in as the 61st Speaker of the House if it were only his blood relatives coming.
Boehner is the second oldest of the 12 children of the late Earl and Mary Ann Boehner of Reading; and 10 of his siblings and their families are going to Washington for the swearing-in.
But hundreds of others are coming as well, by plane, automobile and buses – cousins, family friends, campaign volunteers, Republican Party officials from all over Ohio, and tea party activists who supported the West Chester congressman’s “Pledge to America” campaign that led to the GOP taking over the House in the November election.
“There are a whole lot of us here who want to pay tribute to John’s accomplishments,” said David Kern, a Liberty Township trustee who is chairman of the Butler County Republican Party.
“It’s something we are very proud of – that the speaker of the House comes from Butler County, Ohio,” said Kern, who will fly to Washington Tuesday for the Boehner swearing-in and festivities. “That’s something to celebrate.”

BTW, I’d like to go down to Washington to cover Wednesday’s ceremonies opening the 112th Congress, checking in with some of our favorites like Ann Marie Buerkle and Allen West. So if you want to hit the tip jar for $10 or $20 to help with expenses — gas, parking, bribes for Maryland State Troopers who clock me doing 91 mph in a 65-mph zone — that would be appreciated.

UPDATE: Supporters of North Carolina’s Renee Ellmers will celebrate her swearing-in Wednesday at the Hay-Adams Hotel.


Category: Allen West, Ann Marie Buerkle, Congress, John Boehner, Ohio, Republicans

112th Congress: Ready to Rumble!

Posted on | January 3, 2011 | 1 Comment

The Wall Street Journal‘s Patrick O’Connor and Janet Hook preview the upcoming fights:

The Republican majority that takes over the House this week plans an ambitious drive to slash government spending by tens of billions of dollars in the next few months, a strategy that ensures that the capital soon will be consumed by intense debate over how and where to reduce the size of government.
The incoming House majority will start by offering two measures this week that carry more symbolism than substance. One will be a motion to repeal the health bill that President Barack Obama signed last year, and the second will be a measure to trim the cost of running the House itself. The health-care repeal isn’t expected to go anywhere in the Senate, where Democrats retain the majority, and the package of cuts to the House budget will only save about $25 million from a federal budget that exceeds $3 trillion.
After that, however, Republicans in the House say they plan to move on to offer a far more sweeping package of “recissions,” or elimination of spending previously approved, that will aim to bring domestic spending back to where it was before Mr. Obama became president. The skirmish over that proposal for spending cuts, coupled with related fights over government regulation and health care, will set the battle lines for the next two years, as Washington returns to divided government.

Let the partisan bickering begin! Gridlock is our only hope! Glenn Reynolds offers some suggestions:

The first advice comes from Han Solo in the debut “Star Wars” film: “Don’t get cocky.” Republicans won big in the last election, but, if they think that constitutes an excuse to slip back into their old ways, circa 2004 to 2006, then they are doomed — not just as individual politicians, but quite possibly as a party. The public’s patience is quite limited, and is likely to stay so for the foreseeable future. . . .

Read the whole thing.

Category: Congress, Republicans, Taxes

The Bold, the Brave, the Wrong

Posted on | January 3, 2011 | 2 Comments

American Spectator associate editor W. James Antle III rang out the old year by highlighting his most misbegotten predictions of 2010:

4. Christine O’Donnell is a no-hoper in the primary. I wasn’t confident enough in that one to make the prediction publicly, but I did dissuade an intern from writing a piece that took her ability to beat Mike Castle seriously. Oops! Though in my defense, it was before she caught on with conservatives nationally — the prerequisite for a successful Tea Party challenge this year.

Heh. Smitty was one of the first bloggers to spot the O’Donnell juggernaut, and I spent three days in July shadowing Team Christine at the Right Online in Vegas. Still, when I traveled to Dover for Primary Night coverage, I went there secretly expecting Castle to squeak out a win.

O’Donnell’s upset win in the GOP primary seemed to me such a miracle I thought it would provide the kind of Cinderella-story momentum that would carry her to victory in November.

That didn’t work out so well. Nevertheless, no regrets.

What I can’t understand, however, is why my buddy Jim Antle would “dissuade an intern from writing a piece that took her ability to beat Mike Castle seriously.” What’s wrong with doing a serious story about a long-shot underdog?

If you surrender to that kind of “inevitability” thinking, then front-runner status becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, doesn’t it? Besides which, it’s possible to do a story about an underdog that takes his candidacy seriously while at the same time acknowledging the long odds against him. Maybe that kind of reporting is beyond the skill level of an intern, but it can be done.

Good political reporting shouldn’t always be about jumping aboard the front-runner’s bandwagon, and ought not be dependent on anyone’s prediction of the outcome. Because sometimes the front-runner doesn’t go the distance, and sometimes the winner is a dark horse.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Category: American Spectator, Christine O'Donnell, Delaware
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