God's Own Crunk

John Edwards, such a pleasant sounding name, no?

I was in the hotel feed hall and the 71″ screen had “Good Morning America” blaring for some reason, so I couldn’t help but watch the 5-minute piece they just did on the John Edwards trial. If you didn’t know who John Edwards was while watching the piece, you still wouldn’t know who he was by the end of it. Among other things, there was no mention that until Fred-6 got rollin’, Edwards was the apple of liberal Democrats eye when it came to the 2008 POTUS race (or, to put it better, that Edwards was among the final three in the race for the Donkey nod in ’08).

They forgot to mention that Edwards was, in fact, a Democrat.

They forgot to mention that Edwards and his wife used her battle with cancer to pull at naive American heartstrings of what a swell guy he was.

They forgot to mention that Edwards and his wife, while putting up this front, forgot to mention that Edwards knocked up his videographer and had a bastard child, instead claiming the child was aide Andrew Young’s, whose testimony the story focused on. Oddly, they didn’t mention what, exactly, the trial was about, though it was clear that money was involved.

And they still slobber over John Edwards’ nuts.

George The Greek and John Abrams, speculating on whether or not he should be put on the witness stand, thought it would be a bad idea because of how likable and charming the man is. Uh-huh.

I don’t normally care about bias, but the attempted cover-up by the media of the Edwards affair/bastard child  was shameless enough, and the fact that they have whitewashed this man’s role in Dokey national politics and his flagrantly hypocritical “two-’murricas” metaphor was enough to set me off on a bad start to the day.

John Edwards was a Liberal icon until he was proven so rotten in so many ways, he wasn’t. He used his wife’s cancer as proof of how great a person he is, and she helped him cover for all his obscenities. I don’t think he deserves prison – crucifixion might be nice.

This is the type of thing that ensures I never get too attached to Republicans, their fights and various Issues of the Day. Anyone could’ve seen this coming a mile away, and many did. It’s just depressing to see how quickly it came about:

Last summer, Republicans in Congress agreed to increase the federal debt limit in exchange for the Democrats’ pledge to cap future spending at agreed-upon levels. The compromise was embodied in the Budget Control Act; discretionary spending was to increase by no more than $7 billion in the current fiscal year. I wrote yesterday about the fact that the Democrats intended to violate the Budget Control Act by increasing deficit spending on the Post Office by $34 billion. The measure probably would have glided through the Senate without notice had Jeff Sessions not challenged it. Sessions insisted on a point of order, based on the fact that the spending bill violated the Budget Control Act. It required 60 votes to waive Sessions’ point of order and toss the BCA on the trash heap.

Today the Senate voted 62-37 to do exactly that. This means that the consideration that Republicans obtained in exchange for increasing the debt limit is gone. Moreover, some Republicans–I haven’t yet seen the list–voted with the Democrats today.

via Senate Votes to Abandon Budget Control Act | Power Line.

It should be – from B. Daniel Blatt at Gay Patriot:

We shouldn’t ask government to sanction our sexual orientation, but do ask that it not condemn it.  We don’t need validation from the state to live freely.  And it is not warranted for the state to punish us for our difference — or for acting upon our sexual/emotional longings for affection and intimacy.

via GayPatriot » What gay Republicans (should) expect from the state.

Don Surber lays it on the line – I like it:

The party-time attitude of the Secret Service reflects a president who blows millions on vacations to exotic locations hither and yon. He spent $250,000 of taxpayer money so he could fly to New York City to catch a Broadway show.

Even after the Secret Service party became an international scandal – an embarrassment that made the United States look like an imperial state slumming in Colombia – Hillary Rodham Clinton kicked up her heels and partied all night at a night club in Cartagena.

The disgust was felt worldwide.

“It is hard to imagine Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright or Henry Kissinger ‘livin’ la vida loca’ on the world stage,” wrote Nile Gardiner of the Telegraph in London.

“This was less an example of ‘smart power’ than a boozy nightclub audition for the sixth season of ‘Jersey Shore.’

via Partying on the public dime is endless « Don Surber.

Although we’ll get few reminders of this, it’s appropriate to remember on occasion:

First, Obama’s economic policies had nothing to do with the end of the Bush recession, since the recession ended 5 months after Obama took office and before any of his policies, including the February 2009 Stimulus Bil, had come into effect.  So Obama gets zero credit for the end of the Bush  Great Recession.Second, Obama owns the failed recovery from the recession.  It took place entirely on his watch, and during a time period when Obama’s policies and threatened policies were a factor.

via » The Obama Great Failed Recovery – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

Here’s Reason’s Nick Gillespie riffing on a riled up Orin Hatch, who is furious that, um, “radical liberterians” have the gall to challenge him the GOP primary:

A huge part of that is precisely what’s playing out in Utah. Libertarians need to stop going along with a feckless GOP that takes limited-government partisans for granted; they need to start ransoming their votes for candidates such as Rand Paul and Mike Lee who will actually work to deliver lower spending and less government intervention into everything under the sun.

via Sen. Orrin Hatch “doggone offended” by “radical libertarians,” threatens to punch them (us) in the mouth. – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine.

Hatch’s bravado mixed with a dash of rage and some old-fashioned frustration has gotten a lot of play on Twitter, in part because it’s a) very funny and b) indicative that, for all the talk of the Tea Party movement being a fad, it’s making the proper inroads.

As much as I’m for tossing out Democrats into the cradle of unelected public service and nonprofit work they inevitably land after losing their elected positions, I’m more interested in tossing out establishment GOPers who are as much a part of the problem as z’liberals they talk tough about during elections, then go on to vote like during their terms.

[That sentence is so rhetorically atrocious I'll not even try to justify it - moving on ... /brex]

At some point in the last year, I became convinced – finally – that the country’s direction is no longer reversible, that now it’s a matter of short term mini-disasters or long term, Greece-style major disasters. As someone who doesn’t like debt, I prefer tackling the little problems first. The Donkeys are the big problem, but seven-term Senators are many of the little problems: they’ve had their shot to change things, and they haven’t.

FWIW, Hatch’s most memorable performance in the Senate came during Clarence Thomas’s advise/consent hearings in the Senate back when I was in high school. While it was nice that the man took Anita Hill to task for her fantastic claims of Thomas’s harassment, that was 20 years ago. Until it was truly unfashionable ie the last three years or so, Hatch never met a BigGov program he didn’t like and enthusiastically vote for. Ergo, it’s been a nice ride, Sen. Hatch, but enjoy your golden parachute and GTFO.

It won’t be that easy, though. Once a Senator gets that established, it usually takes death to unpry their hands from such a seat of power, and even then, there’s no guarantee that said seat won’t be handed to a younger member of the same family.

A meta-story within John Derbyshire’s piece at Taki’s and subsequent firing at NRO is the scatter-bomb of Conservatives fleeing to disassociate themselves from what he wrote (log on to Twitter and prepare to eat some shit, if you have the stomach). Aside from being pathetic and sad, it’s also telling.

Bill Quick, thankfully, has an entirely different take on the subject:

I live in a predominantly black ghetto, which is why I am not so quick to put on my racist stomping boots and start working over Derbyshire’s screed. More than a little of his advice is the sort of thing I take to heart every day.

Let me put it in a slightly different way: The reason I don’t go strolling around my neighborhood after dark isn’t my Asian or Hispanic neighbors. Blacks number less than 15% of the population, and yet commit close to 50% of the violent crimes. Pretending that pointing that out is racist is, itself, a stance that is arguably racist.

via Ruling Class Reflexes On Race and Crime | Daily Pundit.

[UPDATED: Here's the piece... /brex]

John Derbyshire wrote a fuckitbucket piece over at Taki’s about race, and after a couple days of rage, Rich Lowry fired him from National Review. Lowry’s cyawldntwannabeya is posted in full below – since Derbs’ piece won’t come up for me, I screencapped it in my Reader so you can at least see I’m not freeloading on something I don’t know about.

I read Derb’s piece a few minutes after it hit my Reader (it was a late night and all…) and didn’t think much of it, at least in terms of it becoming a viral sensation/zomghestheantichrist kind of thing, probably explaining, in part, why I’m terrible at figuring out what will Be Big on The Internet.

I’ve read Taki’s since it launched, and one of the many things I like about it is its publication of, for lack of a better term, un-PC talk about race in America. Derbs’ piece was a listing of advice he gives his children regarding dealing with black people. It was the PC version of the leaked audio of Greg Williams advising NO-Saints players to go for vulnerable ACL’s – whether you’re thinking it or not, you’re not supposed to say it.

The one that seems to have ruffled feathers had to do with never stopping to help a black person stuck on the side of the road, but there were other points that sensitive types of a Lowry-esque persuasion would flee. Some took issue with his bringing IQ into the conversation, while others (namely, me) were baffled that he was able to write at a place like Taki’s and a place like NRO at the same time.

The best answer to speech is more speech. Lowry can hire and fire who he wants, of course, but he’s a pussy of the highest order for getting rid of Derbs – this is a free-speech game, and if the contest is to ensure making valid/debatable/questionable points without offending any readers, then, well, Lowry’s in the wrong game. Voicing unpopular/taboo opinions should be the point, not the outlier – Derbs’ piece was fine-and-dandy by me, just as any other piece of writing that isn’t forcing a change in my behavior at the business end of a gun.

I’m not surprised Derbs got the boot from NRO, but I am curious to see how Taki’s will respond and/or defend Derbs. The site is platinum in my book – now that the unpopular rubber has met the spotlighted road, we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, here’s Lowry’s statement over at z’Corner at NRO regarding the shitcanning of Derbs:

Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream,” or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.

via The Corner – National Review Online.

I didn’t catch WSJ’s Best of the Web yesterday, but it struck a note similar to z’GOC’s rant regarding nice guys. In context, Taranto is discussing Mitt Romney’s statement that Fred-6 is a nice guy who’s in over his head:

“He’s a nice guy, but . . .” is exquisitely condescending. It’s probably not true: Obama strikes us as a petulant narcissist. But calling someone a “nice guy” is rarely a genuine compliment, and it never is when conjoined by “but.” As any man who has ever been rejected by a woman knows, describing someone as “a nice guy, but . . .” is another way of saying he’s ineffectual. That is exactly the point Romney is making about Obama.

via ‘Nice Guys’ Finish Last – WSJ.com.

The President has never struck me as a particularly nice guy, but such things aren’t important to me. As I said yesterday, niceness is pretty much useless in seduction, and the laws of power are no different in that regard. There are times when I see niceness as a smoldering cauldron of passive-aggression, and I doubt I’m remotely original in that observation.

Putting the politics of this business aside, one thing I’ve noticed repeatedly as I’ve observed El Presidente over the past three years and change is that he only seems genuinely happy when basketball is involved (no, that’s not a racist dogwhistle you fucktarded jackass). While his wife grimmaced, Fred-6 seemed genuinely happy watching the college game aboard the aircraft carrier earlier this year, and although I get annoyed with ESPN’s regular updates on how the POTUS’s bracket is faring during March Madness, I don’t begrudge the guy something he seems to genuinely enjoy.

Happiness and niceness aren’t related, at least in my book. I’m usually outwardly happy even though – to re-use the word – I smolder in a depression that lingers somewhere between meloncholy and misery on most occasions; and while I’m unfailingly polite, I’m not particularly “nice” in that agreeable sort of way nice people tend to be.

Very few people who have acquired power are described as “nice.” Omelets and broken eggs come to mind, or that tagline from the Facebook movie about pissing off a few people while making millions of Friends. And so forth.

To wit, I don’t think it’s a compliment or a criticism when I say that the POTUS doesn’t strike me as a nice guy. Dennis Kucinich, another flaming Liberal and secret Alpha Male, seems like a nice guy, but he’ll never be POTUS.