Gingrich: Comparisons and Myths.

I've always kind of liked Newt Gingrich for his brains and brashness. I've also often wondered about his judgement (having an affair while sticking it to Clinton over Lewinsky? Really?). Now that Hermann Cain has hit his first post-bounce drop, I'm prepared to lean toward him a little.

In the AmSpec, Jeffrey Lord compares Gingrich to Churchill. The parallels are interesting, but more interesting is this:

Not to be forgotten is what Fox News commentator Juan Williams, recently sitting next to Gingrich on the set of Special Report with Bret Baier, delicately referred to as the former Speaker's personal "baggage." By which Williams means the Speaker's three marriages, the extra-marital business and all the rest. The famous myth of the first Gingrich divorce is discussed here by Gingrich's daughter Jackie Gingrich Cushman, who was present at the time. Surprise, surprise -- fact, says Ms. Cushman, is different than left-wing fiction. The first Mrs. Gingrich, a private person, is very much still alive, present and accounted for and not deceased as is the tale. The story runs roughly that the dastardly Newt took divorce papers to his dying wife's bedside when she had no idea a divorce was in the offing, shocking her as she lay dying. In fact Mrs. Gingrich, says her daughter, had herself requested the divorce long before Gingrich entered her hospital room. The story, says Cushman, is fiction from start to finish. Gingrich's political mistake was not understanding that such a personal moment would be distorted and used by liberal opponents. Out of such a moment perhaps comes the Newtonian understanding of the need for a political rapid response team whose sole purpose is to flag political untruths on the spot. Be that as it may, this tale shows the endurance of a political Bigfoot tale, the political equivalent of the fictional monster repeatedly spotted but mysteriously never actually captured because, of course, in fact it doesn't exist.

The art of political judgement differs not greatly from the art of the bloodhound. One must learn to tell false scents from true ones. If Gingrich isn't really as personally awful as legend has it, then maybe -- just maybe, he has mellowed, and like Churchill, knows what the hour demands.

Of course, not everyone is prepared to embrace this rise. Robert Stacy McCain seems more hostile to Gingrich than he was to Rick Perry, which is saying something. This I cannot understand. Preferring Hermann Cain to Newt can be defended on conservative personal and policy preferences. Preferring Mitt Romney to Newt smacks rather of taking one's ball and going home.

Bye-Bye, OWS

Marybeth Carragher, who lives in a building overlooking the park, said she and other residents were apprehensive about the city’s plan to let the protesters return, without their tents. “I think my neighbors and I are very thankful that the mayor acted,” she said, “but we remain completely outraged for having to endure this for nine weeks.”

My New Favorite Word for the Left...

Oikophobic. (This is why it pays to read Instapundit)

American patriotism is not a blood-and-soil nationalism but an allegiance to a country based in an idea of enlightened universalism. Thus our oiks masquerade as--and may even believe themselves to be--superpatriots, more loyal to American principles than the vast majority of Americans, whom they denounce as "un-American" for feeling an attachment to their actual country as opposed to a collection of abstractions.

Read the whole thing.

The Orwellian Inquisition Against Verbal Naughtiness

Katie Roiphe in the New York Times: (h/t Instapundit)

In our effort to create a wholly unhostile work environment, have we simply created an environment that is hostile in a different way? Is it preferable or more productive, is it fostering a more creative or vivid office culture, for everyone to vanish into Facebook and otherwise dabble online? Maybe it’s better to live and work with colorful or inappropriate comments, with irreverence, wildness, incorrectness, ease.
Is the anodyne drone typing away in her silent cubicle free from the risk of comment on her clothes, the terror of a joke, the unsettlement of an unwanted or even a wanted sexual advance, truly our ideal? Should we aspire to the drab, cautious, civilized, quiet, comfortable workplace all of this language presumes and theorizes?

Naturally the comments section brims with bland, earnest objections, the bulk of which suggest that said anodyne drone is precisely the goal they seek to achieve. Asked and answered, then. But one fellow sums up the progressive contrition perfectly:

Hey, I'm no professional feminist, but I'd rather let people decide for themselves what they find acceptable. That might include humoring some people who indeed seem Puritanical and hypersensitive. Who am I to tell them where "the line" is?

It does not occur -- or is not said -- that "humoring" the seemingly Puritanical differs not at all from accepting their interpretations and obeying their diktats, and that this achieves precisely the opposite of the free-thinking, tolerant universe that the "Who am I to ... ?" mantra prays for. The (seemingly!) Puritanical and hypersensitive have no qualms about saying exactly where the line should be, not merely for themselves but for everyone else. And they suffer no guilt about enforcing this line with all the power of the law.

Do you possess a mind, capable of distinguishing between good and bad? Then you can say where the line ought to be. Any who attempt to silence you do not share your good will.

Baltimore: Nobody Votes, Everybody Pays

This is what ennui looks like:

Judging from the sparse turnout at the Fells Point school, there were probably lots of stickers awaiting voters that may never show up. The same scenario was expected at the city’s other 289 polling places. City election officials were predicting only about 10 percent of the city’s 370,000 registered voters would cast ballots. That would make the Sept. 13 primary election look like it was crowded. About 23 percent voted in that primary despite a contested race between Rawlings-Blake and rivals Otis Rolley and Catherine Pugh.

There's a Republican and a Libertarian voting, and neither party even bothered to make an effort to contest this election. A city in which 10% of the population vote in a general election is a city with votes for the picking. The GOP and Libs should start a Baltimore Protest/Reform Party, and march through the streets until someone pays attention.

Of course, all that requires money and moral courage, neither of which are in abundance here.

This Magazine's Offices Got Firebombed

It says "100 Lashes if You Don't Die of Laughter"

Take it and Post it. They can't firebomb all of us.

The New Depression is On, Y'all...

So sayeth Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, to CNBC (h/t: Ace):

“Our view is that unfunded guarantees are worthless. Raising resources to fund the EFSF and the associated SIV will require diverting savings – domestic European savings, for the most part, not Chinese savings, and not those kept on reserve at the IMF – from either domestic consumption or investment,” he said.Raising that money within the next year from European savers will have a major effect on jobs and incomes as output and demand drop sharply, according to Weinberg, who believes that Europe will be back in crisis sooner rather than later.“We predict a catastrophic contraction of GDP in Euroland in a combined monetary and real-economy event," he said. "The event we envision is much more akin to the Great Depression of the 1930’s than to any business cycle we have experienced in our lifetimes.”

And what happened after the Great Depression in Europe?

I say we let the Germans win this time. Help them out, if possible.

The Occupy Movement's Masturbation Rage

A few weeks ago I pointed and laughed at a genius who misspelled her lament at not being able to land a job with her expensive degree. I felt bad about it later (I actually didn't), but it turns out the young lady did not take kindly to being upbraided:

I recognize that I switched the i and the e in field. If you want to sit there and lie to yourself and say that you’ve never done that, go ahead. But I wasn’t going to go through all the trouble to take it down, rewrite the sign, re-upload it, and then still probably catch hate for people that center their lives around looking for it.

When people talk about how the younger generation has no concept of non-verbal communication, this is what they mean. Luv, if you can't take the time and effort to make sure your pedestrian rant at Teh Man doesn't make you look like a complete idiot, then you can't be surprised when people make fun of you. Because they don't know you. Because all you are to them is a piece of paper with words next to the kind of hangdog face that Sarah McLachlan uses to get donations for the ASPCA.

It's a hard cold cruel fact that I began to come to terms with about halfway through college: people judge you on first impressions, and that means appearance. It's human nature. It isn't going to change. If you're going to put your face out there in the big bad world, try not to give people a reason to throw shit at it. And if you can't be bothered, then your skin better be thicker than rhino horn, 'cause the Internet is a mean mean place.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Last night I attended a performance of Church by Young Jean Lee at Single Carrot Theater in Baltimore. Fine performance of a provocative play by a damn good troupe. I mean "provocative" in the best possible sense of that word: it provoked me to think about it's subject, that being organized religion in general and Christianity in particular. But it also gave me a wonderful phrase to hang about the Occupy Movement and its fellow-travelers: Masturbation Rage.

Everything about these clowns is a cheap facsimile of what they imagine the French Revolution was like. A bunch of people standing around waving signs and being obnoxious is not, in any meaningful sense, "occupying" anything. Sure, that's where things have to start: the Tea Party and the French Revolution began that way. But then you have to move on and organize, create a set of goals and attempt to carry them out. For the Tea Partiers, that meant expressing our distaste at our New Class overlords and using electoral muscle to hold the GOP's feet to the fire. Now, they may not succeed in that second part, but they're trying.

The Occupy Movement is a stunt. It's astroturf. It's waiting for fucking Godot to immanentize the eschaton. It's a loud pitched wail for Big Daddy White Boss to change your diaper and give you a sucker. When it ends, exactly the same players will be saying and doing exactly the same things, and the New York Stock Exchange will open and close as though nothing happened. Because nothing has. Ask this guy:

We will stack the bodies this high...

What's the difference between you and him? His maxim was that "political power comes from the barrel of a gun." When V.I. Lenin "occupied" something, that wasn't a demonstration of the possibility of occupation. It meant blood was going to flow. He didn't want the Tsar to provide jobs for the mis-educated; he wanted to kill the Tsar. Which he did.

The Occupy "movement" has legitimate complaints. Crony capitalism is a blight on a free society. The higher education industry has been shafting their customers for decades. But they can't see the extent to which they are the pawns of the institutions they claim to deplore. They have allowed themselves to be turned into useful idiots for a political class that exploits their misery to serve those same corporate and bureaucratic interests. In much the same way, Lenin exploited the suffering of the Russian people during WW1 to establish a regime that multiplied that suffering a thousand-fold.

Trying to prevent industry from corrupting government by giving government more money and authority is like trying to prevent rape with breast implants. All you're doing is making the victim more desirable.

The More They Tell Me Cain Can't Win, the More I Wonder if He Can

Despite everybody taking a shot at 9-9-9, he's still atop the polls.

And Rick Perry has issued his 20-20 plan, and Newt has said "Me, too!"

So it would seem that the man has fundamentally transformed the race.

So again, what do we need Romney for?

Herman Cain is Pro-Choice, and I Don't Care...

Vox Populi has the skinny.

I'm more or less in Santorum's wheelhouse on this issue. An abortion obtain for any other reason than to save your own life is a moral failure, and I don't have a problem with them being illegal. But I also don't have a problem with a GOP pres candidate who thinks differently, because abortion is not my #1 issue for the federal government to handle right now. It's not even Top Ten. In fact, I don't want the federal government to handle it at all, which is why I want the Supreme Court to rescind Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.

But then, I haven't been burning incense to a little Herman Cain doll. I'm about ready to vote for Newt, just to see him tussle with Obama in the debates.

Kaddafy Killed

I guess that means we won.

What did we win?

Because the Only Way to Decrease Rape is to Rape More People...

Sheriff Joe Biden, the executive branch's most prominent FailBot, rides again.

Biden's reasoning -- that more rapes will undoubtedly occur if the federal government doesn't subsidize law enforcement -- doesn't pass the smell test. For that matter, I didn't know feminists were so approving of the way our law enforcement systems handled rape cases.

But these are difference that the reality-based community can surely paper over.

BY THE WAY: Biden's facts are wrong.

New Poll: All GOP Frontrunners Beat Obama

It's only one poll, but it begs the question:

If Hermann Cain can beat Obama, then what the hell do we need Mitt Romney for?

The New, Post-Racial America

When Democrats support a black Democrat for President, they are heroically redeeming America.

When Republicans support a black Republican for President, they are racists.

Because.

"Becoming President is a Narcissist's Dream...

...having to do the job is his nightmare."

More #OccupyWallStreetFail

Probably shouldn't have majored in Marxist Dance Interpretation, either....

The Wall Street Protesters in a Single Image

Behold, as the Honkies Gather on Wall Street

Via Instapundit, a collection of pictures of the Angry Vegan Brigade on Wall Street.

Notice the distinct lack of color at these gatherings. Why, surely if their ideas weren't racist, they could persuade others of darker hues to support them. Right, Angry Proggie Commentator?

Absolutely right, you teabagging bastard.

I mean, this is a white crew we got goin' here. How white are they? As white as:

• A Laurence Welk audience
• Dudley Do-Right's pasty rear end
• A sun-bleached copy of The Turner Diaries
• Warren Gamaliel Harding's taste in music
• The maiden aunt of that English chick who used to tell people they were the Weakest Link and then snap up an octave saying "Good-Bye"
• Anyone who's ever complained about people calling bandages "Band-Aids," because Band-Aid is a brand name!
• The cast (and audience) of How I Met Your Mother
• Robin Williams' sad, desperate attempts to act black

I'm sure Ace of Spades has something similar ginned up, as he did here and here, but it's hardly like Top Ten  Lists were his idea.

Bank of America: When Unintended Consequences are Ear-Splittingly Obvious

Consider the principle known as "blowback": that if you attack someone, you should reasonably expect that they will hit back. Thus, Machiavelli's dictum that if you must do an enemy an injury, do him one from which he will not recover.

Now, click over to Ace and read about why Bank of America is gouging me $5 a month for using a debit card.

What proggies consider obvious with regard to Islamic terrorists they consider a bizarre mystery with regard to American businesses.

But behold the Genius that is Barack Obama:

‘You don't have some inherent right just to – you know, get a certain amount of profit.

You don't? When you run a business you don't have the right to defray costs by charging value for service? Does this statement even have that level of thought?

Theorem: Centrists are the Real Conservatives

The problem with appealing to centrists is that you have to govern like one or they will abandon you, whilst proudly announcing their moderation vis-a-vis your reckless extremism.

Look at the conservative agenda: privatize Social Security, re-vamp the tax code, reform tort systems, all the while investing billions to insure that jihadis from the Kyber Pass to Cape Horn continue to explode.

Look at the progressive agenda: ramp up taxes, socialize health-care, go full-Keynes on a new Stimulus, all the while investing billions to insure that public unions from Sea to Shining Sea continue to feather their nests.

Either approach identifies problems and proffers radical solutions. Regardless of what one thinks of them, they have the virtue of ambition.

Centrists, on the other hand, pretend to want someone who will do bold and exciting things, but really want someone who will "get things done," i.e. let things get back to normal, so they can get back to their lives. Whatever is going on right now is what they want to continue, with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of important-sounding bromides. As with the governance of the EuroZone, nothing will be done but a great show will be made of doing it.

Occasionally, they will get furious with the general state of affairs and Demand Change. This demand will be stuffed like the skin of a sausage with thunderous denunciations of the current government and the awful mess they have made. Once that pack of fools are gone, however, so is most of the substance of their fury, leaving only a thin film of actual policy.

Centrists are easily panicked, easily browbeaten, and easily led astray, because the only thing they believe in with any regularity is that anyone who wants any real thing is dangerous. So anyone who more successfully pretends to want everything in general and nothing in particular wins.