The Other McCain

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

Obligatory WikiLeaks Apocalypse Post

Posted on | November 28, 2010 | 23 Comments

The biggest headline of the massive 250,000-document dump by Julian Assange’s organization is probably this:

Prince Abdullah: Neo-Con Warhawk?

Dude. When it turns out Saudi royalty is on the same page with Bill Kristol vis-a-vis the need to bomb Iran, you know Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime is in trouble.

More seriously: This WikiLeaks dump is extraordinarily damaging to U.S. foreign policy. It impairs the trust of our allies if their confidential communications with our diplomats are not secure. Even the New York Times — which for 40 years has had an unstated editorial policy of undermining America’s national security at every opportunity — feels the need to defend itself for reporting on these leaks.

The investigation to find the persons inside the U.S. government responsible for these disclosures should be a top administration priority, and Congress should hold hearings into the evident laxity with classified information. The White House issues a bland statement, but am I the only one who has noticed that WikiLeaks didn’t seem to have unfettered access to America’s top secrets until the Obama administration came to town?

Massive aggregation at Memeorandum, with more reports from Spiegel, Haaretz, The Hill and the Wall Street Journal, and blog commentary by Moe Lane, Weasel Zippers, Legal Insurrection,  Yid With Lid, Outside the Beltway, Melissa Clouthier, Donald Douglas at American Power, Gateway Pundit, Instapundit and Vodkapundit. Dude, that’s a lot of “pundits.”

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Foreigners, Iran, Saudi Arabia

Not Just ‘Yes,’ But ‘Hell, Yes!’

Posted on | November 28, 2010 | 16 Comments

Addressing the subject of “The Weekly Sarah Palin Segment,” my friend Professor William Jacobson tops me:

I have 93 posts (94 with this one) in my Palin tag, most of which are devoted to responding to Palin Derangement Syndrome. . . .
They make up tales about Palin’s childhood health care, whether she had a boob job, make jokes about her giving hand jobs, claim she “rolled her eyes” when told someone was a teacher, examine the color of her bracelet to claim she dishonored war dead, falsely claim she advocated war with Iran, distort polling about her, attack her intelligence, berate her for recommending followers read a Thomas Sowell column, move next door to her to snoop on her, go after a blogger who defends her on MSNBC, claim her success is because men are aroused by her, go nuts because of her (first) book tour including counting the number of non-white people in crowds, blame her for a turkey farmer’s problems, suggest she contributed to a swine flu outbreak in Alaska, turn her into a pin-up girl for a news magazine, misrepresent her comment about “death panels,” claim she is “too sexy” to be a national politician, concoct the hoax that she didn’t know Africa was a continent, and hang her in effigy — and I post on it.

He’s exactly right. He’s also exactly right that conservatives defend Sarah Palin “not because of who Palin is, but who the Palin haters are.” We hate the haters. And then the professor swings the hammer with such accuracy as to split atoms in the nail:

But as I reflect back on the past two plus years since Palin’s nomination, I’m wondering if an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight with the Palin haters is just what this country needs most, not least.

Read the whole thing and — Governor Palin, if you’re reading this — hire Professor Jacobson for your campaign team.

UPDATE: A Memeorandum thread, and this headline caught my attention:

McCain compares Sarah Palin to Ronald Reagan 

It was that other guy.

Category: Legal Insurrection, Sarah Palin

Blame Feminism?

Posted on | November 28, 2010 | 4 Comments

“[T]he goal of third-wave (gender) feminism is the destruction of marriage because of the ‘unequal’ male/female roles inherent in marriage. Third-wave feminists pushed early sex education, recreational pre-marital sex and taxpayer-funded abortion as a way to de-couple sex from marriage. . . . [P]re-marital sex reduces the stability of marriages, and the effect is increased depending on the number of pre-marital sex partners. . . . [W]omen influenced by feminism shun chivalry, and bypass men who excel in the traditional roles and who would make good husbands and fathers, and prefer to have the drama of ‘hook-ups’ with ‘bad boys’ . . . Good men, seeing that goodness is getting them nowhere sexually, will drop goodness like a hot potato and begin to act like bad boys. Naturally, these bad boys are not able to shoulder the burdens of the roles of husband and father, because they were never evaluated or selected to fill those roles. . . . Marriages don’t survive if neither the man or the woman is tested and selected for making self-sacrificial commitments to other people. The real victims of marital instability are the innocent children of the selfish feminists. As a result, boys grow up without fathers, which increases their tendency to be poor students, poor workers and sexually aggressive, and girls grow up without fathers, which drastically lowers the age at which they have sex.”
— Wintery Knight, “What Is Causing the Epidemic of Gang Rapes in Europe?”

Category: Feminism

U.K. Rape-Gang Leader’s Ex-Girlfriend ‘Wasn’t Surprised’ by His Crimes

Posted on | November 28, 2010 | 1 Comment

Notice that she “felt like something wasn’t right” about Mohammed Saddique, and yet she couldn’t say no to him:

A FORMER girlfriend of the ringleader of a Derby gang which raped and abused at least 27 girls has described evil Abid Mohammed Saddique as a “puppet master”.
Toni-Marie Redfern was horrified to discover that during their 18-month relationship the “sexual predator” was waging a campaign of assaults on vulnerable victims as young as 12. . . .
“When I found out what he had been doing I felt physically sick,” said Toni-Marie.
“It sounds awful, but I wasn’t surprised. I felt like something wasn’t right from the moment I met him. Even then, I was thinking ‘what have you got yourself into?'” . . .
All the time he was preying on girls in Derby, he was dating Toni-Marie, who was unaware her boyfriend was married to another woman, with a child on the way.
Toni-Marie was 16 when she met Saddique, who cornered the teenager while she was out shopping.
Now 20, she said: “For some reason I turned round and caught the eye of Saddique. He was with Liaqat and they just made a beeline for me. . . .”

Saddique easily deceived Toni-Marie  — both about his marriage and his serial abuse of other girls — despite her sense that there was something wrong about his behavior. Meanwhile, at least one of the Derbyshire gang’s victims had been previously abused:

A SCHOOLGIRL, who was in the care of the city council when she fell victim to a gang of Derby perverts, had been groomed and sexually abused by another man only months earlier, the Telegraph can reveal.
The youngster was placed in a children’s home by Derby City Council for her own protection after police arrested Ansar Hussain, who targeted her when she was just 13.
But despite being under the supervision of social workers, she fell into the clutches of evil Abid Mohammed Saddique and Mohammed Romaan Liaqat – the ringleaders of a gang who raped and abused 27 girls.
And now the council has admitted that it failed to spot clear signs that she was being sexually exploited not once – but twice.

And here’s the Understatement of the Year:

“The public are not so aware of the dangers men like these pose to young people.”

Gee, do you think the public might be more aware if the media and public officials in England weren’t always tiptoeing around uncomfortable facts in an effort to avoid offending “men like these”?

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Crime, Great Britain, Sex

Prediction: ‘The Black Swan’ Will Break Record for DVD Sales of Ballet Movies

Posted on | November 28, 2010 | 5 Comments

Here’s the trailer for Natalie Portman’s new R-rated movie:


Locking Lips With ‘Black Swan’ Trailer – Watch more horror
Whether or not Portman gets an Oscar here, her performance will be watched — over and over and over again — on DVD by guys who never before watched a ballet movie:

As Nina becomes paranoid about Lily stealing her role, she begins to have delusions — sometimes she believes she’s looking at Lily, only to realize she’s visualizing a darker and more liberated version of herself. The fluidity of that relationship culminates in a heated sex scene between the young women, which is teased in the movie’s trailer and has for months been the subject of media fascination.
It was one of the few scenes the actresses shot together, and Portman — whose character also masturbates in the film — described it as “super awkward.”

Exit Question 1: Were the lesbian scene and the masturbation scene in the original screenplay, or did director Darren Aronofsky add those scenes to the script, just so he could film them?

Exit Question 2: How wrong is it that Aronofsky gets paid for that kind of “work”?

Category: Celebrities, Hollywood, Movies, Sex, Video

‘The Weekly Sarah Palin Segment . . .’

Posted on | November 28, 2010 | 31 Comments

“. . . in which the impression is given that the whole of conservatism is encapsulated in this one glorious woman.”

Instead, he would perhaps have us believe, the whole of conservatism is encapsulated in Charles Krauthammer’s brain.

It is not Krauthammer’s fault that the media are obsessed with presidential politics. It is not Krauthammer’s fault that, when Palin’s choice as running mate in 2008 suddenly made the GOP ticket competitive with Obama (see the poll numbers cited here), the media embarked on a search-and-destroy mission against Palin. And it is not Krauthammer’s fault that the media have continued to use Palin as a scarecrow, a Republican demon-figure presented as the too-horrifying-to-contemplate alternative to supporting Obama.

However, it is Krauthammer’s fault that he can’t speak of Palin except to dismiss her with a sneer. (Am I the only one who noticed his significant pause between “glorious” and “woman”?)

Allahpundit isn’t as openly sneering as Krauthammer: “While no one would claim that conservatism begins and ends with Palin, some of her more devoted supporters do seem to regard her as an avatar of the movement.”

Here’s my problem with such dismissive attitudes toward Palin from conservatives: It sets up the 2012 primary contest as a battle between Smart Republicans (who are presumed to oppose Palin) and Dumb Republicans (who presumably support Palin). This message — which is being shouted from the rooftops by Krauthammer, Rove and many others — will tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Which is to say, most of the Smart Republicans who take their political cues from the conservative intelligentsia will in fact oppose Palin. But the influence of Rove, Krauthammer et al. is not so great as they wish and, in a multi-candidate field, the irreducible hard core of Palin supporters among GOP primary voters is still large enough to win pluralities in every state where the primary electorate is limited to registered Republicans. (Seriously: Comparing the average Romney supporter to the average Palin supporter, which is more likely to trudge through the snow to attend an Iowa caucus meeting?)

There is therefore a very real possibility of Palin winning the 2012 presidential nomination, at which point all the sneering condescension of the Krauthammer/Rove class will justify the MSM in declaring, “The Dumb Republicans have won!”

And that’s not going to help beat Barack Obama, is it?

At least for the sake of argument, let Palin’s supporters stipulate that, as a candidate, she has very real liabilities. Let them grant that Palin’s detractors are sincere in their criticisms. Rule out of bounds any ad hominem attacks on the “Beltway elite” or any accusation that the anti-Palin conservatives are expressing mere snobbery toward someone they perceive as a provincial rube.

Still, from a standpoint of pure political strategy, Palin’s conservative critics are at risk of wrecking the GOP’s chances in 2012 by their constant reiteration of anti-Palin memes. If Republicans are to defeat Obama in 2012, they absolutely must have the enthusiastic support of the Palinistas, whether or not Palin wins the nomination.

If Palin’s supporters believe that she has been cheated out of the GOP nomination because a cabal of elitists conspired against her, they’re unlikely to volunteer to man phone-banks and canvass precincts and do the other kinds of grassroots activism necessary for some other Republican nominee to beat Obama.

And what if Palin is the nominee?

Elections are about choices, and I presume that Karl Rove and Charles Krauthammer — and even David Frum –would prefer to see Sarah Palin take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2013, rather than to see Obama win a second term. If I am correct in that presumption, I would hope to see the conservative intelligentsia start acting as if a Palin presidency were both possible and preferable to Obama’s re-election. 

Because it is possible, even if Palin is not your ideal candidate for job.

Category: Election 2012, Sarah Palin

‘Far More Grim’

Posted on | November 28, 2010 | 2 Comments

Instapundit links a sobering discussion of America’s fiscal problems by National Review‘s Yuval Levin:

Most of the baseline assumptions about the size of our debt assume that today’s exceedingly low interest rates continue. If they don’t — even if rates just return to the average of the past 20 years — the picture looks far more grim.

Levin was responding to a Weekly Standard article by former Federal Reserve official Lawrence Lindsey. There are limits to the neo-Keynesian fiscal and monetary games that Washington has been playing for the past couple of years. The market for U.S. debt is not infinite, and monetizing the debt (which is what “quantitative easing” is about) involves the not-insignificant risk of a Weimar-like disaster.

America’s problems have been overshadowed, and to some extent mitigated, by the much more immediate problems of Europe. However unattractive U.S. bonds may be to investors, they are still more attractive than investing in Greek, Irish or Portugese bonds, and the weakening of the euro inevitably strengthens the purchasing power of the dollar. (Although a stronger dollar hurts our exports, so it’s not an unalloyed good.)

Still, anyway you slice it, the huge deficits resulting from two years of neo-Keynesian interventions — which include, of course, the Bush-era TARP bailout — represent real reasons to be pessimistic about the prospects for economic recovery. And the fact that we’re now at risk of military conflict with an ally of China, a major purchaser of U.S. government debt, adds still more grimness to the picture. Some other reasons to be pessimistic:

If I had to bet whether unemployment a year from now would be higher or lower, my money would be on “higher.”

That would probably be enough to get me branded an economic saboteur by Matthew Yglesias, but I’m not the one who has advocated the policies that have brought us to this sad situation. I opposed the Bush bailouts (“The Bible vs. the Bailout” and “Libertarian Populism“), and I warned early and often against the neo-Keynesian approach embraced by the Obama administration: “It Won’t Work,” “It Still Won’t Work” and “The Fundamentals Still Suck.”

There is no pain-free way out of our fiscal and economic predicament. Sound fiscal policy would likely, in the short term, result in higher unemployment. But the policy path we have followed since 2008 — massive federal borrowing to fund the stimulus-and-bailout agenda — has only increased the debt overhang that is the 800-pound gorilla we ignore at our peril.

UPDATE: Now a Memeorandum thread. I wish serious posts about economics got as much traffic as a Kate Middleton upskirt photo, but we must live in the real world — which is, of course, one of the great lessons of economics. That’s the problem with liberals: They pursue policies aimed at bringing about some abstract ideal like “social justice,” instead of developing policies that take cognizance of economic reality.

Category: Economics

Kate Middleton Upskirt Photo?

Posted on | November 28, 2010 | 12 Comments

Yes, dear reader, there is such a photo. And while I had previously linked to the Left Coast Rebel’s Kate Middleton bikini picture, it had not even occurred to me to try to get Google-bomb traffic for “Kate Middleton upskirt photo.”

The blame for this discovery goes to John Hawkins’ “Linkiest” aggregator, which linked a Coed Magazine gallery of Kate Middleton pictures that included the aforesaid photo.

Would it be wrong to post that photo? Would it undermine the dignity of the woman whom Prince William has chosen as His Royal Consort? Would this weaken the “special relationship” with the United Kingdom, America’s strongest ally in the Global War on Terror? 

Would I be violating the Blogger Code of Ethics?

Ethics, shmethics. Read more

Category: Celebrities, Rule 5
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