The Other McCain

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

Raise Fareed Zakaria’s Taxes!

Posted on | August 3, 2010 | 3 Comments

I agree with that part of his argument, although his argument for raising everybody else’s taxes by repealing the Bush tax cuts is kinda lame.

On the other hand, considering that he is the highly-paid foreign editor of a bankrupt magazine that just sold for $1, maybe Fareed Zakaria could get laid off and collect 99 weeks of unemployment compensation. And, as Nancy Pelosi has reminded us, unemployment checks are a big job-creator, so Zakaria being out of a job would do even more for the economy than raising his taxes, according to Liberal Logic[TM].

Category: Taxes

Michelle Malkin: ‘I Stand by My Endorsement of J.D. Hayworth’

Posted on | August 3, 2010 | 16 Comments

KFYI-550 AM via Sonoran Alliance:

Here’s video of J.D. debating that useless RINO last month:

Arizona Republican U.S. Senate Debate – Phoenix from JD Hayworth for U.S. Senate on Vimeo.

J.D. HAYWORTH for U.S. SENATE

Category: Arizona, J.D. Hayworth, Senate, Uncategorized

They’ll Never Steal a Chevy Volt

Posted on | August 3, 2010 | 6 Comments

Car thieves aren’t doing their share to save the planet:

The Cadillac Escalade, a big luxury sport-utility vehicle, once the favorite of rappers and moguls alike, remains tops for average insurance theft losses, according to the insurance industry’s Highway Loss Data Institute report out today.
Other automotive eye candy, such as the Chevrolet Corvette Z06, also placed high on the theft-loss list — but so did the workhorse Ford F-250 crew cab pickup with four-wheel drive.

Frequency of reported theft of a Dodge Charger Hemi? 7.1 per thousand. Theft rate for Toyota Prius? 0.8 per thousand.

No self-respecting car thief would want to be seen driving a hybrid.

Category: Environmentalism

Paco Strikes Again

Posted on | August 3, 2010 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

Paco serves up a splendid bit of palate cleansing fiction. Among several savorable sequences, there is this:

Kerry – tall and saturnine, with a face like a garden spade and hair resembling a nicely maintained badger pelt – walked hurriedly into the room and took J.P.’s outstretched hand.

“Senator, what a delightful surprise! May I offer you some refreshment? A drink, perhaps?”

Kerry, looking more than ever like the thing Mary Shelley really had in mind when she wrote her famous novel, accepted the offer with alacrity. “Yes, yes, thanks…whiskey…neat, if you please.”

J.P. cocked an inquisitive eyebrow at Spurgeon, who nodded and glided silently to a small table, where a generous selection of spirituous beverages was arrayed in cobalt-blue, Victorian-era crystal decanters. Spurgeon picked up a decanter filled with Macallan (1947) and glanced at his employer; J.P. surreptitiously held up two fingers, signifying an order for a double. Spurgeon poured the whiskey into a tumbler, placed it on a silver salver, and presented it to Kerry – who grabbed the glass, knocked back the whiskey, wiped his mouth and asked for another.

In spite of his ingrained self-control, Spurgeon’s nostrils were now flaring like those of a bull in the arena that had just been introduced to an emaciated Spaniard wearing tight satin trousers and waving a little red cape. He took the liberty of addressing the senator.

“You found the whiskey…the Macallan 1947…to your liking, sir?”

“What? Oh, yes, fine, fine. Although I’m really more of a bourbon man.”

RTWT.

Category: Blogging

Jon Meacham’s $1 Legacy

Posted on | August 3, 2010 | 20 Comments

One dollar — that was the reported selling price of Newsweek, following Meacham’s disastrously pretentious “re-invention” of the magazine. Let’s see if we can figure out why that didn’t work:

To cite one obvious example: newsweeklies annually marked Christian holidays with a cover story on a religious theme, always respectful and sometimes celebratory in tone. . . . The new Newsweek, by contrast, published holiday issues that any good secular journalist would like to read. One issue near Christmas offered a long and fallacious cover story on “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage.” Easter came and the magazine feted “The End of Christian America.” Pieces like this weren’t so much a challenge to traditionally religious readers as a declaration of war. Why not just put a bullet in the Easter Bunny while you’re at it?

Then again, there was the infamous “Is Your Baby Racist?” cover story, an excerpt from the book Nurture Shock — a chapter titled “Why White Parents Don’t Talk About Race” — with the authors promising that “the piece is just beginning of our dialogue on race: we’ll be continuing the conversation with related posts on kids and race relations all this week. We’re very excited about this, and we can’t wait for you to join us.”

Apparently, readers were somewhat less excited about this “dialogue” and, whatever the value of the Nurture Shock blog to sales of the book, its value to Newsweek seems to have been negligible. This was typical of the self-indulgently unbusinesslike decisions that Meacham made. At a time when Internet competition is teaching news organizations everywhere the virtues of running “lean and mean,” Meacham maintained a full-time staff of more than 350.

Jeff Poor at Newsbusters observes that the self-indulgent editor’s self-indulgent publisher Donald Graham, in selling the magazine to the wealthy husband of Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), signified that he didn’t have a clue of what had gone wrong:

“Graham felt comfortable with Harman’s centrist politics, and was comforted by the idea of selling to a stalwart of the Washington establishment. . . . Harman is expected to preserve the serious-minded, essentially New-Democratic tone [outgoing Newsweek editor Jon] Meacham set for the magazine.”

Never mind the idiocy of this definition of “centrist politics.” What about the absurd notion that Newsweek needs “a stalwart of the Washington establishment” as its publisher? What about the dubious proposition that Meacham’s “serious-minded” approach is worth preserving? Does it never occur to these people that perhaps doing more of what caused the failure might lead to more failure?

At this historic moment, let’s not forget how the “serious-minded” Newsweek editors managed to blow Michael Isikoff’s exclusive on the Monica Lewinsky scandal:

At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication.

That’s the kind of stupidity it took to turn a once-important magazine into a $1 property. Ed Driscoll wonders “how much worse can it get?”

Category: Media Bias, Neutral Objective Journalism

When Maxine Waters Needed Ethics Advice, She Turned to Barney Frank

Posted on | August 3, 2010 | 15 Comments

Maybe you see the problem here:

US Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts urged Representative Maxine Waters of California to avoid any dealings with Boston-based OneUnited Bank because her husband owned stock in it. But the congresswoman didn’t heed his warnings, according to a House ethics report released yesterday, and now faces a possible trial before her colleagues over a conflict of interest with the bank.
The 79-page report by the Office of Congressional Ethics said Waters confided to Frank that bank officials came to her for help in 2008. But she felt conflicted because her husband, Sidney Williams, had served on the board of OneUnited from 2004-2008 and was a stockholder. It is against House rules to use one’s power as a member for personal financial gain.

Anyway, the bank in which Waters and her husband were involved had a rather strange interpretation of “community service”:

The case renewed attention on OneUnited, the nation’s largest minority-owned bank, which has been dogged by financial and governance troubles since the financial crisis erupted in the fall of 2008.
The bank lost $50 million on investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac . . . and was sanctioned soon after by bank regulators, who charged that it had employed poor standards on loans and documentation. Regulators also chided the bank’s top executives for taking excessive pay and perks, including a $6.4 million beachfront mansion in Santa Monica the bank says it used to conduct business. . . .
In fact, the bank was making very few home loans in recent years, according to a Globe review. The handful of mortgages the bank did write were mainly to wealthy clients in tony locations, including the South End and Martha’s Vineyard, despite the bank’s stated mission to support Boston’s urban communities.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with “wealthy clients in tony locations,” but isn’t it ironic that Waters — who militates constantly in the name of social justice to the poor — should get entangled in ethics charges over a bank that seems mainly to have been interested in helping the rich?

Category: Corruption, Democrats

The Child Requested An Extension Of The Sentence

Posted on | August 3, 2010 | 16 Comments

by Smitty (h/t Lucianne)

“Smug mother Gisele Bundchen says there ‘should be a law’ forcing women to breastfeed for six months“

Category: Uncategorized

The 100 Days Night

Posted on | August 2, 2010 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

July 26, 2010, T-Mac and Elliot Engel of NY. This is a couple of party hacks swapping talking points. After the initial pawn push in the opening half, the middle of the clip threatens to warm up, especially when the Fox head holds up the popularity of the POTUS to the ‘Bush did it’ line. However, T-Mac’s ball-control offense is tired, tired, tired.

I sort of hoped T-Mac would come out swinging a little harder. He enumerates the various policy ideas the GOP has made available, but the real papers that matter are the ones predating either party: the DoI, the Constitution, and the Federalist papers. This “your party did it”, “no, your party did it” stuff is the height of foppish.

Category: Democrats, Republicans, Thaddeus McCotter
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