The Other McCain

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

The Angry Left Turns Against Obama

Posted on | December 7, 2010 | 11 Comments

Have you ever seen Fatal Attraction? He’s Michael Douglas, the Democrats are Glenn Close, and now it’s bunny-boiling time:

Resentments between President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats that began simmering even before their mid-term disaster are nearing a boil on Capitol Hill, as liberals make clear that Obama’s efforts to strike a lame-duck deal with Republicans will come at a cost: Open and on-the-record taunting about whether the president is a patsy. . . .
The general sentiment, as described by one participant: “What the [heck]? Could we have a little fight before we cave? Why go right to surrender?”
Outspoken Democrat Anthony Weiner of New York compared it to “punting on 3rd down — it seems the president is not seeing the value of being on [the] offense.”
“You can’t let Republicans win on this. There’s no more central campaign promise made by President Obama than to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and he needs to be willing to fight on this,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which on Monday circulated quotations from some of Obama’s 2008 campaign organizers who are threatening to pull their support in 2012 over the tax cut. . . .

You can go read the whole thing. Of course Adam Green’s list of angry leftists “threatening to pull their support” don’t mean a word of it, and Obama knows it. This is just empty noise. They’ve got nowhere to go, no alternative candidate with the guts to challenge Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries.

Look at Ezra Klein playing the role of the Left’s David Brooks, admiring the crease in the presidential pants-leg. Meanwhile, the actual Left is all sputtering impotent rage about the “monstrous” compromise.

And as for “outspoken” Anthony Weiner’s complaint that Obama “can’t let Republicans win,” guess what? Republicans already won.

Biggest GOP landslide in more than 60 years.

And, dear reader, you helped make this happen. Read more

Category: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election, Election 2012, Rhode Island, Taxes

LIVE AT FIVE – 12.07.10

Posted on | December 7, 2010 | 1 Comment

TOP NEWS

President Plays “Let’s Make A Deal” With GOP On Tax Rates

President meets GOP halfway on tax rates, Dems enraged

Bush tax rates extended two years, unemployment benefits extended 13 months

Australian PM Waiting For Police Advice on Assange
Refuses comment on cable contents


Press Thinks Appeals Court Supports Gay Marriage
But no clear proof to support/contradict that from today’s hearing



POLITICS

Reserve Sailor Busted For Attempted Sale Of Classified Documents

"$3500 for classified papers? Sure, why not?"

Currently in the brig at Norfolk

Tea Party Nation Calls For Palin To Lead RNC; She Demurs

Emanuel’s Tenant Withdraws From Mayoral Race

Bloomberg Calls For Easing NY Voting Fraud Laws

CA Lawmaker Aims To Remove Cell Phones From Prisons

Chicago Board of Elections Begins Sorting Through Challenges To Emanuel’s Candidacy And Others

Bigots And Terrorists In Portland



THE ECONOMY, STUPID

Silver Prices Hit 30-Year High Amid Inflation Concerns

Blue Chips Close Lower As Investors Pause

Government Sells Stake In Citigroup, Clears $6 Billion Profit

Google Rolls Out Nexus S “Gingerbread Man”
Run, run, Apple! As fast as you can!

AT&T Rated Worst Cellphone Service Provider By Consumer Reports

Google Launches eBooks: A Kindle Killer?



SPORTS

Broncos Give McDaniels The Boot

Josh McDaniels, new addition to the 9.8% unemployment figure

Broncos 5-17 after 6-0 start in 2009

Don Meredith Dies Of Brain Hemorrhage, 72

Stoudemire Leads Knicks To Unexpected 13-9 Record With Win Over Timbermutts

Joe Bramlett Becomes First Black Since Tiger To Qualify For PGA Tour



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS

“The Skeletons Have Already Been Let Out Of My Closet”

Angelina Jolie

Reveals the truth about Brad and her children

Kelsey Grammer Engaged To New GF

“Skating With The Stars” Contestant Rushed To Hospital

Alex Welch Still Waiting For Apology From Demi Lovato

Katy Perry Wows Troops In Jessica Rabbit Costume, Vinyl Camo

Britney, Jason Enjoy Romantic Mexican Getaway


Neil Patrick Harris To Host Spike Video Game Awards



FOREIGNERS

ROK To Fortify Islands Near Disputed Sea Border With Norks

Over 90,000Venezuelans Displaced By Rains

Argentina Joins Brazil In Recognizing Palestinian State

Medvedev Pledges Improved Relations With Poland



BLOGS & STUFF

Moe Lane: It’s All Over But The Gloating

AmSpecBlog: The Politics Of Extending The Bush Tax Cuts

L. Gordon Crovitz: Julian Assange, Information Anarchist

Don Surber: Walmart Case Could Bring Tort Reform

Megan McArdle: What Does It Look Like To Leave The Euro?

iOwnThe World: Righteous Fisking Of Crooks And Liars


— compiled by Wombat-socho

Category: Live at Five

Unintentional Hilarity: Feminists Ask If Julian Assange Committed ‘Rape-Rape’

Posted on | December 6, 2010 | 135 Comments

Exactly why this showed up on Memeorandum, I don’t know, but with a headline like “Some thoughts on ‘sex by surprise,'” I had to click and it’s Jill Filipovic at Feministing:

There’s a lot going around in bloglandia and on the interwebs about WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange’s sexual assault charge in Sweden; commentators are saying that Assange didn’t really rape anyone, and these are trumped-up charges of “sex by surprise,” which basically means that Assange didn’t wear a condom and so days later the women he slept with are claiming rape. . . .
It also sounds like in one case, condom use was negotiated for and Assange agreed to wear a condom but didn’t, and the woman didn’t realize it until after they had sex; in the second case, it sounds like the condom broke and the woman told Assange to stop, which he did not. . . .

Yadda, yadda, now the unadulterated nonsense:

It’s an obvious enough concept for feminist thinkers who have spent more than 10 minutes considering the realities of sex and sexual assault: If you consent to sex but then at some point during sex withdraw that consent by telling your partner to stop, your partner should stop, and if your partner doesn’t stop then that’s assault. . . .
Whether withdrawal of consent is what actually happened here is impossible to tell, so I’m not suggesting that Assange is a rapist or that these charges are 100% definitely on-point; I have no idea. But neither do the commentators who are saying that Assange did nothing more than have sex without a condom. And it’s important to counter the “haha sex by surprise those crazy Swedes” media narrative with the fact that actually, non-consensual sex is assault and should be recognized as such by law. Consenting to one kind of sexual act doesn’t mean that you consent to anything else your partner wants to do; if it’s agreed that the only kind of sex we’re having is with a condom, then it does remove an element of consent to have sex without a condom with only one partner’s knowledge. To use another example, if you and your partner agree that you can penetrate her, it doesn’t necessarily follow that she has the green light to penetrate you whenever and however. . . .

Go read the whole silly thing, but I warn you: That’s three minutes of your life you’ll never get back.

Having already said that the proper response to Julian Assange can be summarized in four words — Predator drone. Hellfire missile. — I certainly have no interest in defending that disgusting scumbag. But I think many people who look at life from a practical, common-sense perspective will react to Jill’s fine scruples about the process of ensuring mutual consent much like I did: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Is this what all that ’60s “sexual liberation” rhetoric has wrought?

In an era when some 40% of U.S. births are to unmarried women, in a culture where “Girls Gone Wild” and “hook-ups” are normative, where threesomes, bisexual experimentation and amateur video-porn orgies have become a virtual rite of passage for many young Americans, where chlamydia and herpes are pandemic — in this era of rampant sexual decadence, I say, does Jill Filipovic (J.D., NYU) seriously expect horny strangers to negotiate consent calmly on an act-by-act basis while they’re knocking boots, making the beast with two backs, in flagrante delicto?

Listen up, sweetheart: You buy the ticket, you take the ride.

You made your choice when you picked the guy, who is going to run his standard modus operandi on you, just like he ran it on the last three-dozen hoes he played. Read more

Category: Crime, Feminism, Sex, WikiLeaks

VIDEO: Helen Thomas Controversy

Posted on | December 6, 2010 | 2 Comments

I’m kinda thinking: What were the qualifications to receive a “Helen Thomas Diversity Award”? Applicants must write an essay explaining why all the evils of the world should be blamed on Zionists . . .

Great video report from Emily Spain at Newsy:

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Yesterday’s post, “Helen Thomas: Blood on Her Hands,” was linked by Da Tech Guy, the Rhetorican and James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal.

Further commentary from Classical Values, The Blogprof, Israel Matzav and Tammy Bruce.

Category: Terrorism

Bristol Palin, Margaret Cho, Kathy Griffin and the Politics of Sexual Destruction

Posted on | December 6, 2010 | 41 Comments

“Everyone was trying to pit me against Bristol, but the truth is, we got along well. She never asked me to babysit Tripp or anything like that, but I consider her a friend. . . . I really like Bristol as a person. . . . I am proud of her for shaking her ass!”
— Margaret Cho

You might think Hollywood liberals would embrace it as a feminist Cinderella success story: The teen mom, seduced and abandoned by a two-faced cheater, gets a once-in-a-lifetime chance at a nationally televised dance competition. (Plot complication: She’s never danced in her life!) And yet, despite all odds, overcoming her own awkwardness and the disparagement of critics who call her “fat,” the small-town girl makes it all the way to the finals, becoming the object of worldwide admiration and a role model for young mothers everywhere.

But there have been no reports of bigtime producers bidding for the rights to make The Bristol Palin Story, and instead the heroine is predicably scorned and mocked, used as yet another weapon to attack Sarah Palin because . . . well, Sarah Palin is a conservative Republican, and therefore deserves to be attacked — by any means necessary.

(Quick aside: Note how accurately liberals identify their targets. If they wanted to mock chubby daughters of famous GOP politicians . . . uh, no, that won’t mock that one, because she’s a liberal, just like them.)

So here’s Margaret Cho, claiming to be Bristol’s friend and being “proud” of Bristol’s performance. Bristol had never said anything negative about Cho, and yet Cho could not resist the opportunity to use Bristol as a weapon against Governor Palin:

I heard from someone who really should know . . . that the only reason Bristol was on the show was because Sarah Palin forced her to do it. Sarah supposedly blames Bristol harshly and openly . . . for not winning the election, and so she told Bristol she “owed” it to her to do DWTS so that “America would fall in love with her again” and make it possible for Sarah Palin to run in 2012 with America behind her all the way. Instead of being supposedly “handicapped” by the presence of her teen mom daughter, now Bristol is going to be an “asset” – a celebrity beloved for her dancing.

And don’t miss the viciousness of Cho’s let-me-call-her-fat-while-I-pretend-to-be-sympathetic shot:

It’s heartbreaking that people are so awful to her about her weight. I think she looks fantastic, and why does everybody think they have a right to comment on our bodies? . . . If people call her fat what kind of impact does that have on women who have similar body types – which is most of us?

Can we talk bluntly here? Read more

Category: Celebrities, Culture, Feminism, Sarah Palin, Sex

NY-1 UPDATE: Judge Reviewing Ballots, GOP Suspects Illegal Voting by Dems

Posted on | December 6, 2010 | 2 Comments

New York’s 1st District, encompassing eastern Long Island, remains the nation’s last undecided congressional race of 2010. Supporters of Republican challenger Randy Altschuler contend that incumbent Democrat Rep. Tim Bishop was the beneficiary of illegal votes:

Absentee ballot counting ground to a halt at 11 a.m. Friday in the only still-undecided congressional race in the nation, as lawyers and strategists for both candidates continued preparation for a showdown in State Supreme Court next week [i.e., starting today].
Republican challenger Randy Altschuler gained six votes on incumbent Democrat Tim Bishop in the count yesterday, narrowing the difference between the two candidates to 271 votes or 264 votes, depending on which side is doing the tally. (Bishop’s camp has his lead at 271 but the difference is only 264 according to Altschuler’s people.)
But more than 1,400 paper ballots remain uncounted — two-thirds of them because of objections raised by Altschuler — and the decision to count them or not will be made by Supreme Court Justice Peter H. Mayer . . .
Mayer will rule on the validity of an assortment of objections to the remaining absentee ballots . . . .
Of Altschuler’s approximately 1,000 outstanding ballot objections, about 650 of them are based on residency challenges. Altschuler’s lawyers are preparing to argue that the voters in question were improperly registered to vote in Suffolk County, according to Altschuler spokesman Rob Ryan.
Ryan said the Altschuler team’s investigation of those 650 challenged absentee ballots has turned up “hundreds” of voters that he contends should not have been allowed by the Board of Elections to register and vote in Suffolk County. He declined to give a specific number. The research is still continuing, he said.
The voters in question include people who own homes in New York City, have a New York City address on their drivers’ licences and, in numerous instances, voted in New York City multiple — even dozens of — times over the past decade or so. Some of them have gotten STAR tax relief — available only on one’s principal dwelling — on homes outside the 1st CD. Ryan said the Altschuler team has also turned up recorded mortgage documents in which some of the voters affirmed their NYC residences were their primary residences — and then voted in Suffolk County.
“That’s either voter fraud or bank fraud,” Ryan said.
Ryan accuses New York City Democrats of scheming to influence elections outside of the city. “They have taken proactive measures to encourage people to vote from their vacation homes,” Ryan said. He pointed to CountryVote.org, a website he said was established by a group of Democratic lawyers to encourage wealthy New York City Democrats who have second homes in the country to register at their country address — where their vote in an election will have more influence.
“It’s a move to stack the deck. The Democrats win in NYC by such wide margins, they don’t need the votes there, so why not put people in other places where their votes will count,” Ryan said. . . .

Read the whole thing. Sources close to the Altschuler campaign provided me with this timeline of the post-election events:

ELECTION DAY: New voting machines (scanners with retained paper ballots) are used for the first time in a statewide General Election. When the polls close returns are unusually slow coming in, not only in the 1st District, but across the state. The following morning Altschuler is presumed to have lost by over 3,400 votes.

FRIDAY, 11/5: The voting machines have been returned to the Board of Elections warehouse and the memory chips in the machines are downloaded and a swing of 3,800+ takes place. Altschuler ends the day up by 383. It appears that the reported vote on Election Night was riddled with human error caused by election workers who are unfamiliar with the workings of the new machines. (This same type of situation arose in November 2009 when the new machines were used in 7 of 11 counties that make up New York’s 23rd Congressional District. In this case one candidate gained over 2,500 votes when the memory chips were downloaded.) Almost immediately, the Bishop campaign starts calling for a hand-count of all ballots scanned by machines on Election Day; approximately 184,000 ballots. This came a day after they had ridiculed the Altschuler campaign for wanting a count of the absentee ballots.

TUESDAY, 11/8: Bishop goes to State Supreme Court wanting hand count of all 184,000 scanned ballots judge requests legal basis for the count. The Suffolk County Board of Elections starts a NY State mandated audit of 3% of all machines in the County. This is a statewide mandate to make sure that the new machines are working properly. The BOE finds no problems with the machines when the audit is completed 10 days later.

WEDNESDAY, 11/9: Suffolk County Board of Elections starts count of over 11,000 absentee, military and affidavit (emergency) ballots. This is includes a challenge process by which each campaign challenges ballots prior to them being opened and counted. These challenges can be based on a variety of issues ranging from late postmark to handwriting or residency issues. Challenged ballots are set aside by type of challenge and will not be opened or counted until the challenge is resolved.

TUESDAY, 11/23: Count of approximately 9,000 of the above referenced 11,000+ ballots is completed. Altschuler now trails by 230 votes with over 2,200 challenged ballots remaining to be counted.

MONDAY, 11/29: FOX NEWS runs story citing incidents of fraud in numerous absentee ballots that have been challenged. Under NY State law these are felonies and if convicted the voter can be sentenced to a year in jail. The ballots challenged on a residency basis revolve around individuals with residences in New York City or Florida with multi-million dollar vacation homes vacation homes in the Hamptons and Shelter Island.

WEDNESDAY, 12/1: At close of business Altschuler is behind by 259 votes.

THURSDAY, 12/2: Judge is review all challenges based on technical issues.

MONDAY, 12/6: Judge will start to review remaining challenges based on handwriting or residency issues.

Flashback: My CPAC interview with Randy Altschuler.

Category: Congress, Election, New York

Democrats Reward Failure

Posted on | December 6, 2010 | 1 Comment

Of course, that’s the principle of their social-welfare policies, but who thought they’d apply it to politics?

Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.) promoted an internal candidate to be the new executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Israel, the new DCCC chairman, announced Monday that Robby Mook would be the committee’s next top staffer.
Mook led the DCCC’s Independent Expenditure effort in the 2010 cycle, during which the party lost more than 60 seats and its majority. . . .
“Robby has the right combination of experience, political know-how and leadership savvy to help make this the shortest Republican majority in history,” Israel said in a statement.

Translation: He’s an experienced loser! Note that Republicans, despite their huge victory in the mid-term elections, are staging a mutiny against RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who is being blamed generally for the GOP having failed to win more.  

In their dissatisfaction with a less-than-complete victory, Republicans remind me of the ancient Athenians, as described in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War: “And what they have planned but not carried out, they think that in this they lose something already their own; what they have attempted and gained, that in this they have achieved but little in comparison with what they mean to do.”

Related: Tea Party Nation promoter wants Sarah Palin to seek the RNC chairmanship.

Category: Democrats, Election, Michael Steele

‘A Communicational Schematic That Is Superior to Anything Else in Existence’

Posted on | December 6, 2010 | 14 Comments

On April 7, 2002, a university professor in Tennessee posted this:

I keep hearing from people that they started a weblog because of InstaPundit. About a month ago, I asked everyone who did so to email me. I got so many that it took me a while to find the time — and energy — to compile them into a list.

You can go look at that list, which includes such well-known names in the blogosphere as Stephen Green, Ed Driscoll and (believe it or not) Matthew Yglesias. The list of Instapundit-inspired blogs was subsequently collected by Jeff Wolfe with hotlink URLs and an addendum.

What is interesting, in looking at all those blogs, is how many of them have faded into oblivion, even as blogs that started much later — including this one, which became a full-time project in March 2008 — have endured and flourished.

Blogs come and go, but Instapundit still dominates. Imitated, but never excelled. And while that success continues to inspire emulation, it also excites envy. (Such are the perils of success.) Who is this guy, whose mere “heh” can mean so much? Why should his enigmatic interests, his particular likes and dislikes, have such overwhelming influence in Blogland? Read more

Category: Barrett Brown, Blogging, How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog, Instapundit
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