The Other McCain

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

William Teach Thinks He’s Got Me Beat With Natalie Portman Thong Picture . . .

Posted on | November 21, 2010 | 7 Comments

. . . and he’s wrong. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a Rule 5 better than Natalie Portman’s bare bottom. But my friend at Pirate’s Cove only has a photo. How about video of that famous tush? Skip ahead to about 1:25:

UPDATE: Yankee Phil has a Rule 5 roundup. He’s even offering to fill in for Smitty. It’s a huge duty and must be exercised responsibly. We try to keep Rule 5 Sunday PG-13, but these things can escalate out of control and next thing you know, Donald Douglas goes thermonuclear.

Category: Celebrities, Rule 5

Excellent Legal Advice for Sarah Palin

Posted on | November 21, 2010 | 4 Comments

Professor William Jacobson:

These are, after all, the same people who went after Meg Whitman’s kids and bragged about it, who ran the “one-night stand” hit piece on Christine O’Donnell and bragged about it, and who created and spread the rumor of your supposed boob-job and bragged about it.
And they bragged when they stole a partial copy of your book, and they dared you and taunted you to do something about it, and you did. . . .
You need to have your lawyers give the people at Gawker a full nude-body scan and junk fondling. . . .

Read the whole thing.

Category: Legal Insurrection, Sarah Palin

Republican Buerkle Leads by 567 Votes in NY-25; Still No Concession From Maffei; UPDATE: Buerkle Campaign Says, ‘We Need to Allow the Process to Proceed’

Posted on | November 21, 2010 | 4 Comments

The incumbent Democrat appears to have been defeated, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard: 

Republican Ann Marie Buerkle holds a 567-vote lead over U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei in the 25th Congressional District race after Wayne County election officials released their unofficial tally of absentee votes today.
Buerkle added 269 votes to her lead after getting 790 votes to Maffei’s 521 in the absentee vote tally in Wayne County. Elections officials in Wayne County completed the tally today and posted the results on their Web site.
With those votes in, the total unofficial vote count for the entire district stands at 104,374 for Buerkle and 103,807 for Maffei, who is seeking his second term in Congress.
Abby Gardner, a spokeswoman for Maffei, said the campaign had no immediate comment on the Wayne County results.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports that the total number of “challenged” ballots is not enough for Maffei to make up the difference. The Lonely Conservative states the obvious:

It’s time for Dan Maffei to concede already. It’s over. Ann Marie Buerkle will be the next representative from NY25. There’s nothing left for him to cling to.

Remember that a victory for Buerkle would make history.

UPDATE: Tim Sahd of National Journal explains why Maffei is unlikely to overturn Buerkle’s win:

Attorneys will head to court early this week to argue over whether a handful of disputed absentee ballots should be counted. But a Onondaga County elections official noted that Maffei’s campaign was the one that objected to most of those disputed ballots, meaning that any count would likely only boost Buerkle’s lead.
Maffei has indicated he may ask for a recount, but Democrats should not put too much hope in that process. In several other House contests this year, recounts have changed the final result by just a handful of votes; certainly not enough to overturn the certified result.

UPDATE II: Statement from the Buerkle campaign:

“We are pleased with the numbers released by Wayne County today. There is another court hearing set for Tuesday morning, and we will wait to hear Judge DeJoseph’s determination now that all absentee ballots in New York’s 25th Congressional District have been counted. While we remain confident that Ann Marie Buerkle will emerge the victor, we need to allow the process to proceed as set forth in the original court proceedings initiated by the Maffei campaign.”

Category: Ann Marie Buerkle, Congress, Election, New York, The Lonely Conservative

‘Shut Up, Moron’

Posted on | November 21, 2010 | 7 Comments

That’s a direct quote, one of the nicer things my children say to each other. Because there are six of them — the oldest 21, the youngest 7 — my kids have to put up with lots of stuff, including frequent verbal abuse from their siblings.

Which is a good thing, I think, in the sense that Marine boot camp at Parris Island is a good thing: You survive this, and whatever comes next isn’t quite so bad.

My wife is one of seven kids in her family, a factor that I credit for her admirable emotional resiliency. She is not a “drama queen.” She is not a “high maintenance” personality.

This anecdotal evidence informs my skepticism toward the claim by British researchers that only children are happier:

One of the widest-ranging research projects on family life conducted in Britain has revealed that the fewer siblings children have, the happier they are — and that only children are the most contented.
The findings, shared exclusively with the Observer, suggest that “sibling bullying” could be part of the problem, with 31% of children saying they are hit, kicked or pushed by a brother or sister “quite a lot” or “a lot”. Others complain of belongings being stolen by siblings and being called hurtful names. . . .
The findings are based on in-depth questionnaires completed by 2,500 young people, which have been analysed by Gundi Knies from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex where the Understanding Society study is based. She suggested that factors such as competition for the parents’ attention or the fact that toys, sweets or space need to be shared could be to blame.

One blogger mocked: “This could be fodder for those advocating for population control . . . Or to convince Michelle Duggar to tie those tubes already.”

Hold your mockery for a moment, and think about the social-science methodology of that research: Asking kids if they’re happy — their subjective assessment of their own happiness — is not necessarily going to tell you anything about how well-adjusted they are.

To return to the Parris Island analogy, if you surveyed Marines in boot camp, their self-reported happiness might not be too high, but the purpose of boot camp isn’t to make the recruits happy, it’s to prepare them for military careers. And the purpose of the family is to prepare children for life.

Furthermore, the British researchers offer no separate analysis of children’s happiness correlated to their parents’ marital status. If, as I suspect, a sizeable proportion of the children with more siblings came from families with never-married, divorced or re-married parents (welfare mothers, step-families, etc.), then the reported “unhappy” feelings likely resulted from circumstances other than the number of siblings, per se.

Rather than being overly impressed with the supposed “scientific” findings of this British study, then, I would refer you to the vast research showing that the best environment for children (however few or numerous their siblings) is to be raised by both biological parents, who are married to each other.

The British study’s reported findings are therefore misleading. Why? Because if this research encourages married-parent families to have fewer children — if more married couples limit themselves to just one or two kids — then a smaller percentage of society’s children will be raised in such families.

Allan Carlson has frequently referred to the marital birth rate (i.e., the average number of children born to each married couple) as the best overall indicator of the condition of family in society. Carlson has observed that, since the 1960s, the United States has “witnessed mounting disruption of American families, marked by a low marriage rate, a very high rate of divorce, soaring illegitimacy, and a sharp decline in marital fertility.”

Common sense tells us that these various phenomena are somehow related, and I think that all of these phenomena are consequences of the rise of the Contraceptive Culture — the idea that reduced fertility is essential to a better life.

If my wife and I had stopped at one child, yes, that child would have been happy. But we didn’t stop there, and so five other children share that happiness. Not that the kids always appreciate this beneficial experience. They constantly tease and taunt and torment each other.

“Shut up, moron.”

Sounds like happiness to me.

Category: Family

‘The Operators of Some of These More Obscure Websites and Blogs . . .’

Posted on | November 21, 2010 | 2 Comments

Professor Reynolds lacks a “dazzling personality” and as for the rest of us . . . Chopped liver, man.

Category: Instapundit

The Devil Wears Nada

Posted on | November 21, 2010 | 11 Comments

Anne Hathaway likes being naked. As a matter of fact, she’s pretty sure you want to see more of her naked:

Fans of Anne Hathaway will get to see a lot of her in “Love and Other Drugs.” The 28-year-old actress is nearly naked — a lot.
“Well, I’ve had a chip on my shoulder since ‘The Princess Diaries’ where my nude scene was cut. So I’ve been trying to make up for lost time ever since then,” she joked. . . .
“One of the things was that when you’re in the early throes of passion and lust and love, you spend a lot of time unclothed. And the beginning of our characters’ relationship is at that moment. Obviously we go to a deeper place of love and companionship and intimacy.”

I will not name the irresponsible person who sent me that story about “passion” and “lust” and Anne Hathaway nude. Because it would be wrong to identify the irresponsible person who sent me an e-mail with the subject line, “Hathaway’s cheap bid for another Rule 5 Sunday moment.”


That’s just wrong. Why should we be forced to watch Jake Gyllenhaal manhandle Anne Hathaway? We don’t want to see Jake with his dirty paws all over her like that. What we want — and Anne knows we want it — is to see her naked. Read more

Category: Celebrities, Hollywood, Rule 5

OK, This Is Pretty Cool

Posted on | November 21, 2010 | 1 Comment

Guess who re-Tweeted my American Spectator item last night?

Maybe you should consider subscribing to the print edition of The American Spectator. Makes a great Christmas gift. Just sayin’ . . .

Category: American Spectator, Sarah Palin

Except It’s Not Called Newsweek

Posted on | November 21, 2010 | 5 Comments

“In this climate, there should be room for a general-interest magazine to reinvent the old middlebrow formula. There should be room for a magazine that counterprograms against the ceaseless ephemera of much of the online world and offers things you will remember, a magazine that doesn’t endlessly chase buzz, that isn’t coastal urban journalists writing ceaselessly for each other, that doesn’t aim for insider-ish horserace gossip when covering politics, that doesn’t chase the same upscale liberal audience that every other media outlet is chasing.”
— David Brooks, New York Times

If you actually want a magazine like that, it won’t be edited by a celebrity-mongering cosmopolitan trans-Atlantic expatriate Brit like Tina Brown.

A great magazine might have first-hand reporting from Afghanistan, with contributions from thoughtful writers like Roger Scruton, Quin Hillyer and Paul Johnson. A truly great magazine might point out the idiocy of dimwit celebrities like Meghan McCain, or introduce readers to the brilliance of Hillaire Belloc.

Such a magazine would offer a year’s subscription for just $49 — and might occasionally employ a freelance journalist clever enough to point out that a subscription to the American Spectator would make an excellent Christmas gift for that special someone on your list.

Category: American Spectator, Holiday Gift Guide
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin