The Other McCain

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

More News on Liberty.com

Posted on | August 21, 2010 | 4 Comments

Wednesday, I blogged about the launch of Liberty.com, which will officially go live Sept. 1. David Catanese reports at Politico:

A new conservative group created to harness the energy of the tea party into a national financial force has set a lofty goal for itself: match or eclipse the influence of MoveOn.org in campaigns across the country.
Liberty.com plans to launch its independent expenditure political committee Sept. 1, with the intention of becoming an all-encompassing conservative grass-roots organization that weighs in on federal and state political races and issue-oriented movements.
Launching under the umbrella of the group Americans for New Leadership, Liberty.com will be led by tea party organizer Eric Odom and begin its venture with $700,000 and 70,000 members, according to a spokesman. Odom previously built conservative coalitions under the American Liberty Alliance and The Patriot Caucus.
“We’re looking to compete directly with MoveOn.org. We’re looking to be a player for a long time. No one else on the right is doing what we’re doing,” said Liberty.com spokesman Yates Walker, who remains a consultant on Christine O’Donnell’s U.S. Senate campaign in Delaware. . . .

You can read the rest of that. Eric, Yates and Steve Foley hosted a Blog Talk Radio program about it:

Listen to internet radio with Liberty Alliance on Blog Talk Radio
Category: Election, Tea Party

DNC Tries to Flush Anti-Bush Ad Down YouTube Memory Hole: FAIL!

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 10 Comments

The Democratic National Committee put out a TV ad blaming Bush for the “Republican policies that got us into this mess,” which caused a big stir today on the blogosphere. This evening however — no doubt embarrassed by the transparent desperation of their blame-Bush message — the DNC changed the setting on the YouTube channel to “private,” preventing people from seeing the video. Fortunately, Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection points out that the video is still available from Mediaite.

Unlike the Democrats, Republicans aren’t pulling their videos off the ‘Net:

UPDATE: A commenter at Legal Insurrection:

Ah, sweet irony. At 0:16, the narrator says, “Do we hold big business accountable when they’ve gone too far?” The picture shows the CityCenter project in Las Vegas. In a number of its ads, Harry Reid’s re-election campaign describes how he used his clout to intervene with lenders and save CityCenter when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Now, that’s holding big business accountable.

Yeah, for Democrats there are always two kinds of “big business” — campaign contributors for whom they do special favors, and those evil greedy corrupt fat cats who give money to Republicans. Not surprisingly, it’s kinda hard for Democrat propagandists to tell the difference.

UPDATE II: Moe Lane at Red State:

I guess enough people asked “Does getting Bush back mean we get 5% unemployment back, too?”

BTW, to be “fair and balanced” despite my own pessmistic mood, I’m obligated to report that Charlie Cook is optimistic about GOP prospects of taking the House. But I repeat my earlier warnings: Polls are not campaigns and politics is about elections.

I fear that too many conservatives are thinking, “Obama is unpopular, the economy sucks and therefore Republicans will automatically win.”

Nothing is automatic in politics.

UPDATE III: In an update, Jacobson says it appears that the DNC took the video down, re-edited and reposted it. The re-edited version omits the Reid-backed City Center project as an emblem of “big business.”

Category: Election, Video

VIDEO: How to Report the News

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 4 Comments

Apologies if you’ve seen this before. I hadn’t.

Update (Smitty): There is a massive cheap shot at RSM that one could take here, but, rather than take it, I’ll instead hoist some vanilla pudding at him. Cheers, Stacy!

Category: Neutral Objective Journalism, Video

One Wonders If Salon Is Beamed From Another Planet

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 40 Comments

by Smitty

Elon James White, “Defending Park51, attacking Dr. Laura“:

The common thread between condemning Dr. Laura and defending Park51 is the idea that the persecuted should be protected.

Dr. Laura, in my opinion, should release a record of gangsta rap covers, so that she can use the word which sorts between ‘bigger’ and ‘rigger’ at very high frequency and then be referred to as an ‘artist’.

Past that, though, what does White possibly mean by this use of ‘persecuted’, ‘protected’, and the Ground Zero Mosque (Park 51)? It seems that White may have unexpected-ly progress-ed to an illegal marriage of terms here. Rational people may have thought that ramming a plane into a building and killing nearly 3,000 people would count as an extreme, even ultimate, form of persecution, and that the wishes of the survivors and locals should count for something in deciding the who/what/where/when/why/how that they should/shouldn’t be remembered.

Ace of Spades, as usual, is spot on (Disclaimer: I don’t care about the Stars and Bars in South Carolia):

Is it time to return the Stars and Bars to the South Carolina State House?

I ask because I thought the rule was that an understandable revulsion to the memory of an emotionally-wounding time was enough to win out over a noisy, self-promoting group’s determination to advertise its views in a prominent, highly-symbolic area… but now I find that’s not so true, not so true.

So — Confederate flag at the SC statehouse again?

Because the people flying the flag there say they too have good, non-objectionable motivations for doing so — a reminder of heritage, honoring the dead, etc., etc. But previously we have shown skepticism towards their claimed motivations, and also decided their motivations were irrelevant — it wouldn’t even matter, we decided, if their motives were pure; the important thing was the Confederate flag was too hurtful to have near the people’s house of government.

Again, so I now find out this isn’t the rule anymore.

So if it’s not the rule anymore: Why can’t we have the Confederate flag at the SC statehouse?

Repeat: I’m not interested in seeing the Stars and Bars in South Carolina again. However, it’s worth putting to these clowns on the Left, just for the sad spectacle of their mental gymnastics.

Only in the mind of a modern Liberal can a difference which makes no difference amount to a big difference.

Update: Ace of Spades trots out the flaming skull for the audio tapes of that dovish imam. It’s not like the Left really had significant credibility remaining to destroy.

Category: Ace of Spades, Blogging

The Internet: The Elites’ Least Favorite Suppository

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

Our favorite Limey, Daniel Hannan notes the following, emphasis mine:

The Internet, as Douglas Carswell argues, is ironing out a kink in our cultural and political alignment, whereby a small elite artificially reoriented our foreign policy, our trade and even our news cycle away from our old alliances and towards Europe. That’s the great thing about the web (or, from a Europhile perspective, the disagreeable thing): it democratises.

Pesky internet giving people tools to force leaders to [NSFW] represent*. Someone should write a book on that.

*Linking Hannan and Kornfeld in the same post for the broadest possible spectrum of English.

Category: Blogging, Instapundit

It’s FDIC Bank Failure Friday!

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 7 Comments

Associated Press:

Regulators have shut down two Florida banks and one in Virginia, lifting to 113 the number of U.S. bank failures this year.

That count evidently omits today’s announced closure of Chicago’s ShoreBank. Bloomberg News reports:

ShoreBank Corp., the Chicago lender operating under a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. cease-and- desist order for 13 months, will be shut and most of its assets will be bought by Urban Partnership Bank, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Urban Partnership, created to make the acquisition, will keep branches in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit and continue to focus on low-income communities, the people said, speaking anonymously because the matter is private.

That’s just the tip of an iceberg of economic bummers in this week’s “Recovery Summer” update. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 57 points today, closing at 10,213 for a net loss of 90 points on the week — down 440 points since Aug. 6. Bloomberg News again:

U.S. stocks fell, extending a second straight weekly decline for major benchmarks, as a drop in commodities pulled oil and metals producers down amid concern the economic rebound may be flagging. . . .
The major indexes capped their first back-to-back weekly drops since July 2 and closed at their lowest levels since July 21. . . .
The S&P 500 has fallen 12 percent from this year’s high in April as signs the economic rebound is stalling overshadowed better-than-estimated earnings growth.

Want some more bad news? Try this analysis of the federal HAMP mortage-adjustment program:

[F]or the median borrower, about 80% of the borrower’s income went to servicing debt. And the median is 63.5% after the modification.
These borrowers are still up to their eyeballs in debt after the modification. . . .
The borrowers [debt-to-income] characteristics are poor – suggesting a high redefault rate over the next year or two.

Further defaults and foreclosures will kill recovery in the housing sector, and without a housing recovery, unemployment will stay high and the banking sector will continue to be shaky. See how this all works together?

Brett Arends at the Wall Street Journal lists 10 reasons for pessimism, including these:

  • 5. People still owe way too much money . . .
  • 6. The jobs picture is much worse than they’re telling you. . . .
  • 7. Housing remains a disaster. . . .

Arends poses this question, “If a laid-off contractor with two kids, a mortgage and a car loan is working three night shifts a week at his local gas station, how many iPads can he buy for Christmas?”

Let’s pause momentarily to consider the possibility that the Chinese real-estate bubble is about to burst. Click and read that, then remember that China is a leading buyer of U.S. Treasuries. If that bubble bursts, how will it affect Beijing’s willingness to buy more of our debt?

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has returned to its policy of buying debt from the Treasury:

The Federal Reserve bought $3.609 billion of Treasuries as part of a program to reinvest principal payments on its mortgage holdings into long-term government debt to prevent money from being drained out of the financial system.

Which is to say, the Fed is trying to stave off deflation. Here’s a video report:

Commercial real estate prices dropped 4% in June and Business Insider noted: “Commercial real estate values are now down 41.3% from the peak in late 2007.”

Now, let’s talk about all those jobs that the stimulus has “saved or created.” Uh . . . California’s unemployment is at 12.3% and Harry Reid’s home state of Nevada just hit an all-time record 14.3% unemployment rate. And things are clearly (but “unexpectedly”) getting worse:

On Thursday morning, the Labor Department said that new jobless claims filed last week unexpectedly rose by 12,000 to hit 500,000, the first time since November that the half-million mark has been reached. . . .
Everyone is familiar with the monthly national unemployment rate . . .
But the new weekly jobless claims number, which is released each Thursday by the Labor Department, gives us a faster, week-by-week snapshot of unemployment. And the picture is getting increasingly ugly.
The latest number marked the third straight week of increase in new weekly jobless claims. That suggests that employers not only are not hiring, it suggests that they’re starting to lay off workers again, and that will start a whole cascade of problems for the U.S. economy . . .

Now, here’s three scary words: “Bond market bubble“:

If over the next year, 10-year interest rates, which are now 2.8%, rise to 3.15%, bondholders will suffer a capital loss equal to the current yield. If rates rise to 4% as they did last spring, the capital loss will be more than three times the current yield. Is there any doubt that interest rates will rise over the next two decades as the baby boomers retire and the enormous government entitlement programs kick into gear?

The minute you start talking bond yields, people’s eyes glaze over, but let’s let Jeremy Siegel try to explain it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A sure sign that Siegel is right to be concerned about the bond market? Paul Krugman is scoffing.

Category: Economics

I’d Vote For A Frickin’ Wiccan

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 47 Comments

by Smitty

. . .if that candidate took the Oath of Office in a serious way.

Note to conservatives fretting un-knowable aspects of the Presidential character (is he Moslem?): nice gills.

This argument joins Birtherism in the list of shiny, tangential arguments that can be used to manage the tempo of the news cycle.

As far as what really matters, I’ll offer, in the concrete category, the national debt, and, in the abstract category, the death of Federalism that has led to a Ruling Class and, yes, the debt.

Who gives a flying French fornication if we elected our first Moslem President concurrent with our first black President? That Ruling Class, and the dirty debt diaper we now enjoy, was born and baptized under the tenure of Woodrow Wilson. Yay, Chrisitianity: if you haven’t got a Caesar unto whom to render, sodomize your secular Constitution and see what grows within a century. We’ve gone from

E Pluribus Unum

to the current

Eh? Pluribus? UNUM!

thanks to the kneecapping of the several States via Amendments 16 & 17 and the Federal Reserve Act, AKA the Cosmic Credit Card.

Conservatives, Tea Party celebrants, and the American wing of the Republican Party need to be talking about the Post-Progressive Era. The era when

  • social policies are, appropriately, funded and implemented at the State level,
  • the Federal government does its Constitutional interstate and internation thing, and
  • anyone promoting non-wartime Federal deficit spending is, appropriately, laughed out of office.

The Post-Progressive transition promises to suck. Sorry, no golden hover ponies. But the country has faced stiffer existential challenges with aplomb.

Thus, it really doesn’t matter if the Progressive Era was bookended by a Southern Death Cult-ist and a Hare Krishna; all that really matters is that it end.

Update: having said all that, this is funny.

Category: Progressivism

Dan Collins Is an Evil Right-Wing Islamophobic Neocon Hatemonger

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 34 Comments

Really, it’s a miracle he doesn’t have his own syndicated talk-radio show and a primetime slot on Fox News:

At least AP journalists are able to refer to it as a mosque, though I’ve been challenged on those grounds as well, by sympathizers who feel that they can defuse the issue by characterizing it instead as a cultural center. As Jim Treacher points out, that tends to weaken the argument that this is about religious liberties, of which many leftists are suddenly advocates. The best argument that it is a mosque is probably that that’s the way the Cordoba Initiative refers to it. That’s not to mention that on three occasions the State Department has paid for Imam Rauf to travel on their dime to fund raise abroad . . .

Read the whole thing. It’s only a matter of time before the Southern Poverty Law Center, Media Matters and Little Green Footballs join forces to create DanCollinsWatch.com, just to keep an eye on that notorious fomenter of dangerous extremism.

In other news, Ann Coulter sent somebody an e-mail.

Category: Piece of Work in Progress
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