The Other McCain

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

Bumped: Philanthropic Outlets

Posted on | August 23, 2010 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

As the son of a son of a sailor, I cannot fail to link Dan Riehl’s USS Ranger post. It looks like they’re mooring her on the Columbia River, East of Portland, AFAICT. The store link features a vampire novel for that goth in your life. I opted for PayPal.

Switching from the big, steel, welded artificial shes to the living, breathing ones that could be your mother, sister, wife, or daughter, [UPDATE: the splendid KillTruck], posting at Snark & Boobs, is emphasizing neither snark nor boobs in this thoughtful outreach post:

I have a thing for prostitutes. A fascination that has become a demented joke among those that know me, but it didn’t start as one. After the loss of a child and rape, I can’t think of a worse situation for a woman to find herself in than trading sex for money. There is absolutely nothing empowering about servicing a dirty stranger in a dirty place for a wad of dirty money. I can’t fathom a bad act so bad that anyone deserves to endure that even once, let alone over and over and over just to survive. I don’t look at prostitution as a crime. I look at it as a symptom of desperation, a desperation none of us are above succumbing under the right circumstances. This is the part where a lot of conservatives invoke personal responsibility, which is a valid argument if the one making it has never needed a second chance. Not to mention the fact that social problems like addiction, sexual exploitation and the breakdown of the family have obvious implications on American society, regardless of the current size of government. And so, as a Christian I’m commanded to offer a hand out to anyone with a hand up, as an American it just makes sense in the big picture and any woman that could turn a blind eye to the exploitation of her sisters should be forcibly liberated of her ovaries. . . .
Meanwhile, Episcopalian priest, Becca Stevens, has been pulling women out of the gutter for for over a decade, literally. Stevens is the founder of Magdalene, a 2 year residential program for women overcoming prostitution, addiction and homelessness.

It is a blessing to be able to shop on the Thistle Farms site to support the Magdalene effort, and I hope you consider such.

Update: Little Miss Attila-lanche!

Category: Blogging, Dan Riehl, Kill Truck, Little Miss Attila

Barack Obama Elementary School

Posted on | August 23, 2010 | 8 Comments

Via Inside Charm City:

The first school in the D.C. area named after the current president opens Monday morning as the school year begins in Prince George’s County.
Barack Obama Elementary School opens its doors in Upper Marlboro, Md., for the first time Monday. The school is being touted as being an environmentally friendly “green” school.

Yeah. The president sends his kids to posh, private Sidwell Friends School. But I’m sure folks in Prince George’s County are proud to spend their tax dollars to honor the Hypocrite-in-Chief.

UPDATE: In completely unrelated news:

Justice Department Seeks Ebonics Experts 

Category: Barack Obama, Education

Joe Miller Didn’t Give Me Bloggola

Posted on | August 23, 2010 | 20 Comments

Six weeks ago, I reported about Joe Miller’s Senate campaign in Alaska, and yesterday Ace of Spades endorsed Miller. Thanks to the Daily Caller, Ace now finds it necessary to point out that he didn’t do it for money:

I got annoyed when the Tea Party Express kept asking me to promote Joe Miller. I know they all get paid — they’re professionals. But instead of buying an ad and paying me, they just wanted me to promote their fundraising for Miller.
I didn’t push Miller the first day they asked because of that annoyance. But the second time, I realized what I was doing: I was taking out my resentment at the you-do-this-for-free conservative organizations against a very good candidate I would otherwise support, just because I was annoyed that it had been decided I was Mr. Cheap Date.
So I promoted Joe Miller, as I should have on Friday; I endorse him enthusiastically and without reservation.

You should read the whole thing, because it’s a very thoughtful examination of how money and/or the hope of money can influence bloggers’ thinking. I just checked my tip jar, and if Jeff S. in Walla Walla or Barry C. in Missouri ever needs a favor, hey, I’m there for you, man!

I doubt either of those guys is a campaign operative trying to influence my coverage, but even if they were, they haven’t demanded a quid pro quo. On the other hand, Jeff won’t mind if I say, “Go, Dino Rossi!” and I’m sure Barry won’t mind me saying, “Go, Roy Blunt!” And if they want me to say it again, I’ll be happy to oblige.

Expanding on my previous post, my key thought here — and I said this in an e-mail to Ace — is that the problem isn’t bloggers hustling for a few extra bucks here and there. Rather, the problem is these big-money “New Media consultants” who collect six-figure incomes for doing little more than sending out e-mail press releases. There ought to be some way to eliminate the middle man so that bloggers aren’t starving while the consultants get rich.

Speaking of which, Da Tech Guy didn’t get his share of the “blogola” loot, and the Lonely Conservative wonders how to become the Rich Lonely Conservative.

There’s now a Memeorandum thread, with commentary from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, John Hawkins at Right Wing News, Jillian Bandes at Townhall and Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. And one final point:

JOE MILLER for U.S. SENATE
He Must Be a Real Fiscal Conservative,
Because He Still Hasn’t Hit the Freaking Tip Jar!

UPDATE: Dan Riehl has a roundup of reaction and includes a link to Melissa Clouthier:

If you want perfection and purity, politics is not your business. Politics is people and people are fallen, imperfect creatures. Deal with it.

Amen, and read the whole thing. It’s 31 flavors of pure awesome.

Category: Ace of Spades, Alaska, Blogging, Shoe Leather Fund

Tucker Carlson Says, ‘Hit the Tip Jar’?

Posted on | August 23, 2010 | 38 Comments

It was kind of weird to see myself quoted in a Daily Caller story with the headline, “True stories of bloggers who secretly feed on partisan cash“:

Conservative blogger Robert Stacy McCain complains that politicians aren’t purchasing more advertising on blogs. “Advertising buys good will,” he says.

That complaint was in response to something reporter Jonathan Strong told me, and which he reports in his story:

In December of 2009, Red County received $20,000 from the Meg Whitman campaign, which has sent the site $15,000 a month since then.

Do the math. That adds up to about $125,000 — an insane sum to pay for blogging, which Strong implies was a quid pro quo, since Red County bumped an anti-Whitman blogger from its site.

We’ll let others debate the ethics of such transactions. What I see here is an example of several different problems with the Republican Party’s approach to New Media. As I explained to Strong, it would have been a lot smarter for Whitman to “spread the love” around the blogosphere, perhaps by buying Blog Ads (my rate is $25 a week) or Google AdSense placements.

If the Whitman campaign wanted to put all its eggs in one basket, however, why not throw $20,000 into the “Southland Fundraiser” idea that Joe Fein at Valley of the Shadow suggested? Bring several bloggers to L.A. for a weekend event that would combine New Media outreach with a joint fundraiser for candidates and the state party. However such an event was structured — seminars about online activism, meet-and-greets with candidates, etc. — it would serve many purposes, especially putting California “on the map” with conservative bloggers.

That kind of “more bang for the buck” approach is one I’ve discussed often with other bloggers — including my buddy Jimmie Bise Jr. of Sundries Shack — and yet it seems impossible to get people to listen. The strategic payoff of Rule 2 is to spread the linky-love around and build up the newer and/or smaller blogs, so that the conservative ‘sphere has a broader reach and a deeper base.

Most conservative bloggers are part-timers, for whom a couple of hundred dollars a month would be a godsend. Trying to “monetize” Web traffic is a notoriously difficult task, and even successful full-time bloggers aren’t exactly “farting through silk,” to borrow P.J. O’Rourke’s colorful phrase. You’ll notice that Professor Glenn Reynolds hasn’t quit his day job, and Ace of Spades isn’t lighting Cohibas with $100 bills.

I’m not the only blogger quoted in Jonathan Strong’s story:

“Riehl World View” readers might be interested to know that Riehl is not simply a blogger, but also a paid consultant to the RNC. In an interview, Riehl said he was paid an amount in the “hundreds of dollars” for writing a strategy document on how the RNC could better reach out to bloggers. Riehl said his motivation for defending Steele was to aid the Republican Party, and that he didn’t disclose his consulting work because, “I didn’t see it as having anything to do with my views.”
“I never made enough money to be bought,” he said. . . .

Dan Riehl is from New Jersey, as I often point out, and my advice to anyone who asks about him is always, “Don’t f— with Dan Riehl.” I’ll leave it to Dan to judge whether Strong has ignored that advice, but there’s something else that Strong quotes Dan about:

If it appears that conservative bloggers are more likely to take campaign money than their liberal counterparts, there may be a reason. According to Dan Riehl, conservatives can’t rely on the infrastructure of foundations and think tanks that supports so many liberal bloggers.
Riehl has made it a goal to mobilize conservative benefactors and organizers to establish a funding infrastructure mimicking what the liberal “netroots” created during the Bush years. “They did it the smart way,” Riehl says.

Dan’s comment about the relationship between conservative institutions and the blogosphere deserves a post of its own, but I’ll briefly say this: There is a notable tendency of all organizations on the Right to hire buttoned-down, strait-laced College Republican types. There is a glaring disconnect between these GOP clonebots and the conservative blogosphere, which tends to attract hell-raisers, wild cards and loose cannons who don’t like being told what to say and do.

I’ll leave that little lecture for another time, however, as it now appears that Dan Riehl isn’t very happy with the Daily Caller:

Straighten your bow-tie, jerk. You look like a fool to me from here.

Read the whole thing, and please: Hit the freaking tip jar!

Category: Blogging, Dan Riehl, Neutral Objective Journalism, Shoe Leather Fund, Valley of the Shadow

Moe Lane Interviews Mattie Fein

Posted on | August 23, 2010 | 2 Comments

At Red State:

Category: California, Congress, Election, Mattie Fein, Red State

‘We May Be Incompetent, But We Are
All You Have Got’ Is An Increasingly Feckless Argument

Posted on | August 23, 2010 | 8 Comments

by Smitty (h/t Insty)

Conglomerate Blog has a doom-tastic post about how New Jersey is being sued by the SEC for creating a situation where bond

investors were not provided adequate information to evaluate the state’s ability to fund the pensions or assess their impact on the state’s financial condition.

How can this be a bad thing, if NJ joins 46 other States (with Ohio missing data) in blowing off pension funding? The SEC can sue a State, but not the reverse, it turns out.

Like most securities lawsuits, New Jersey’s problems could have been cured with disclosure. That is, the problem from the SEC’s perspective was not that the state doesn’t fund its public pension funds adequately; it is perfectly natural for a public entity to get stuck in this jam of not wanting to raise taxes or slash spending yet still having to honor its contracts. Rather, the problem is that New Jersey failed to tell investors buying its bonds about this underfunding.

Why not simply disclose? There is the usual answer of not wanting to have to offer higher interest rates on bonds, which is no different than the motivation of any private securities issuer. My guess is that the more telling reason is political: what senior state Treasury employee wants to sign off on disclosure that will give ammunition to a Governor’s opponents and unions?

This is just another example of the electorate failing to demand and reward integrity. The country needs to elect 48 more in the McDonnell/Christie mold, and quit chasing the Palins out of office by abusing the legal system.

This is the fruit of a system that says “You can’t handle the truth” and substitutes Federal Reserve-financed bailouts in lieu of accountability. I think we should End the Fed, add 49 more State banks, and require greater accountability from officials.

They may be incompetent, but, when the economy really seizes up, we will see what the alternatives look like.

Category: Weimar America

Pamela Geller and the Scandalous
Bikini of Right-Wing Extremism

Posted on | August 23, 2010 | 8 Comments

Evidently taking their cue from the Washington Post, now the British Guardian has decided that the most newsworthy thing about conservative blogger Pamela Geller is that she has been seen in public in a swimsuit:

Pamela Geller is on a mission to save the free world and she’s doing it, on this occasion, in a bikini as she writhes around in the sea.
“Here I am in my chador, my burka,” Geller jokes to the camera in one of a string of video blogs campaigning against Islamic “world domination” shortly before kicking back in the waves.

The video is from August 2006 and out of all that Geller has done in the ensuing four years — including authoring The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America with her frequent collaborator, Robert Spencer — evidently nothing lends itself so easily to a feature lede as her bikini moment.

Geller laughed about this treatment when I spoke to her on the phone last week, and at her blog says, “It is comedy. It is to laugh. It is to cry.” Geller told me she was amazed at how she has been singled out as the instigator of controversy over The Lower Manhattan Islamic Cultural Center That the Associated Press Won’t Call the “Ground Zero Mosque” Anymore.

Geller insists she was just one of many involved in the opposition, and says the hundreds who turned out for a June 6 protest deserve credit for making the mosque one of the biggest political stories of the summer. Still, her TV appearances — including CNN, MSNBC and multiple appearances on Fox News — have made her the best-known face of the anti-mosque forces, which is why she’s now the subject of hostile coverage.

Latest example: Max Blumenthal is blaming Geller for an “incident” at a Sunday rally she had nothing to do with. Her rally will be Sept. 11.

Category: Atlas Shrugs, New York, Religion

Unsure About Barney Frank’s Conversion

Posted on | August 23, 2010 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Conservative Girl puts a religious spin on Frank’s awakening, but let’s not overplay this quotation:

“I hope by next year we’ll have abolished Fannie and Freddie,….it was a great mistake to push lower-income people into housing they couldn’t afford and couldn’t really handle once they had it….I had been too sanguine about Fannie and Freddie.”

If Barney doesn’t realize that the Community Reinvestment Act was a Tenth Amendment violation first, and the precipitator of economic ruin second, then he’s just as likely to replace it with an even worse disaster.
Something like the Federal American National Neighborhood Yard Protection / Advancement Community Keepers (FANNY PACK), for example.

Category: Massachusetts
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