Topic one at BlogCon (hosted by these fine folks at Freedom Works) was Castle/O'Donnell, but that kept becoming a forbidden topic for reasons we all know too well.

Topic two was what an ummitigated submoron Megan McCain was. Usually topic two helped bring back the camaraderie lost over topic one.

On June 20, 2002, the United States Supreme Court decreed, in the case of Atkins v. Virginia, that the mildly mentally retarded were categorically exempt from capital punishment, reasoning that fully functional adults of diminished mental capacity were as a matter of law not as culpable for their acts. Writing eloquently in dissent, Justice Scalia drew a sharp distinction between the severely mentally retarded (who are truly not responsible for their actions), and the merely stupid (the category into which Mr. Atkins undoubtedly fell). Scalia argued forcefully that, with respect to the merely stupid, at least sometimes they deserve to be punished for their antisocial and destructive behavior.

This article, of course, is not about capital punishment. It is a book review of Dirty, Sexy Politics by Meghan McCain. However, the above discussion is relevant because I initially had reservations about writing this book review at all. After all, it is clear to everyone who has read Meghan McCain’s twitter feed, her “articles” on The Daily Beast, or her ill-fated campaign blog that Meghan is not a not a paragon of clear reasoning, exemplar of familiarity with facts, nor a model of English language expertise. And after subjecting myself to 194 continuous pages of her “writing,” it became clear that none of the above-described works truly plumbed the depths of mental vacuity in which Ms. McCain aimlessly and cluelessly drifts.

This presented a dilemma.

It is impossible to read Dirty, Sexy Politics and come away with the impression that you have read anything other than the completely unedited ramblings of an idiot. This being a professional website for which I have a great deal of respect, I searched for a more eloquent or gentle way to accurately phrase the previous sentence – but could not find one.

My own contribution to this is that Megan McCain has internalized the left's idea that the victim of persecution is holy. And thus she attempts to construct a narrative in which she is such a victim of persecution.

She is persecuted, you see, because:

1. She is young.

2. She has tattoos and/or tatas.

3. She likes gay bikers.

...and therefore Republicans don't like her, so she's persecuted or something.

Of course, none of those are actually the reasons Republicans don't like her; those reasons might include:

1. She never stops talking about the fact that i) she is young; ii) she has tattoos and/or tatas; or iii) she likes gay bikers.

2. She is a confirmed submoron.

3. She is an entitled pepperpot nepot who has been given large amount of money and attention due to the fact that she is the daughter of someone famous (daddy) and someone rich (mommy). And also, she is given this attention for the exact reasons she claims are the reasons for her persecution, to wit, i) she is young; ii) she has tattoos and/or tatas, and iii) she likes gay bikers.

4. It's a little bit much to be lectured about the trajectory of American politics from someone whose seminal political memory is the day Alf announced he would no longer eat cats out of a concern for global warming.

More: a funny post on the lost chapters of Megan McCain's mamm-oirs.

Kathleen Parker is my new BFF. She totally digs me, even though she mentioned me at the same time as the evil Darth CheneyÂ’s daughter. IÂ’m totally adding her to my Hanukwanzamas card list! SheÂ’s not like that h8r-ade drinker, Anne Coulter. You guys, did you read my essay at Daily Beast about that? It was super awesome. I write at The Daily Beast, you know. For reals! IÂ’m, like, a writer and stuff!

Anyways, she’s a poop head. And she doesn’t even have a juicy ass! Right, boys? Wink! OMG – I look so cute when I wink! So, girlfriends, look what I wrote.

By. Myself.

“Everything about her is extreme: her voice, her interview tactics, and especially the public statements she makes about liberals,” McCain wrote. “Maybe her popularity stems from the fact that watching her is sometimes like watching a train wreck.”

Super cool me: 1. H8r-ade drinker Coulter: 0

Or:

We have to bridge the divide in this country between smart, tolerant progressives and bible-thumping RethugliKKKan h8ers. And since I represent the best of both worlds, I went on “Real Time With Bill Maher.” Because like my dad, I’m all about bipartisanship. And tweeting with Snooki!

So I did the show, and even though IÂ’m the good kind of inclusive Republican, this old dude named Paul Begala got h8r-ade all over my cute black suit that I bought special for TV. OMG, he was so vicious like a conservative or something even though he totally has mountains of liberal cred. Anyway, what happened is I told this guy that I loathe Bush like all intelligent and enlightened people, but itÂ’s time for Obama to stop blaming Bush for everything. And then this happened:

PAUL BEGALA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Not to enough of a degree. I’m sorry. Not nearly enough. Ronald Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter every day for eight years. In the speech — in the speech, what President Bush said one of the things he’s had to adjust to…

MCCAIN: I wasnÂ’t born yet, so I donÂ’t know.

BEGALA: I wasnÂ’t born during the French Revolution, but I know about it.

MAHER: HeÂ’s a mean man, Paul Begala.

MCCAIN: You clearly know everything. So — and I’m just a blonde sitting here.

I think he h8ed on me because I’m young and blonde. How am I supposed to know stuff that happened all the way back in the sixties? But duh! This isn’t shocking. Republican women always get treated so unfair. Except for Sarah Palin — she was totally asking for it.

That exchange is for real. Begala -- who is a dick; make no mistake about that -- pointed out that if Meggie-Mac wanted to comment on politics, she had to up her game and maybe read up on stuff that happened before 2007, and her response was to claim Begala was just putting her down for being "blonde."

So there we are in 2010 -- young, pretty blonde women with huge cans are victimized by not being given enough attention on television.

BTW, I have no problem with young, cute-ish, busty blonde chicks on television. If I'm going to hear a lot of stupid blather (and that's going to happen most nights you're watching cable news), I'd rather have some bazongas to look at while I gnaw the meat off my own fingers.

However, to claim that such women are discriminated at on television?

Really? Want to explain how this becomes the day's must-mention story?

It's not h8er-ade, Meggie Mac. It's annoyance over a twit.

Speaking of hate, by the way, I came up with a new GOP slogan this weekend. I'm going to pitch it to Ladd Ehlinger, Jr.

Today's GOP

Let's put aside the old hatreds yesterday,
and focus on the new hatreds of tomorrow.

Posted by: Ace at 10:36 AM | Comments (270)
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I am really, honestly, diligently looking for something good to post to push down the O'Donnell/Castle unpleasantness but coming up woefully short. Hot

Posted by: Ace at 09:47 AM | Comments (226)
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Someone is going to get shocked in November; why not Nancy?

Dennis just put out a great ad:

Someone asked who did this ad? I figured it was Ladd Ehlinger, Jr., who did Dale Peterson's ad and the Mattie Fein Young Frankenstein ad; I just got confirmation. This was the ad, I guess, that he kept saying he was doing (but couldn't talk about) during my interview with him.

You can read about him in my interview here. His basic ethic is No such thing as a lost race.

Let me just ask for a little prognostication: What is the turnover in House and Senate this year? And if it's different -- what could it be if the GOP weren't too busy stepping on its own dick?

If the GOP would lay off its own dick, it would have a veto-proof majority.

you think this year 50 House seats, 10 Senate, or you don't want to guess?

Not quite sure what the final result will be. Depends upon how many commercials I can do.

Heh. It ain't braggin' if it's true.

Posted by: Ace at 07:53 AM | Comments (164)
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Conservative or RINO? Glib, I know, but this doesn't seem the work of a principled conservative. It seems like someone who needs money.

O'Donnell... sought $6.95 million in damages. In a court complaint, she extensively detailed the "mental anguish" she suffered after allegedly being demoted and fired because of her gender. And, although she didn't have a bachelor's degree until this year, O'Donnell implied she was taking master's degree classes at Princeton University in 2003.

O'Donnell alleged in a July 1, 2005 complaint filed in district court that she had been demoted because ISI's conservative philosophy dictated that women must be subordinate to men. She claimed she was fired when she contacted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding her demotion. ISI told the Delaware News Journal that she had been "terminated for operating a for-profit business."

That would be running her PR business out of her ISI office.

Her own complaint went on to allege she was sort of crazy.

Miss OÂ’Donnell was and is profoundly humiliated by this demotion of being asked to perform clerical and administrative tasks[!!! -- ace] after appearing on national television as a media and public relations expert and spokeswoman, for a man who was hired straight out of college as ISIÂ’s receptionist and clerical assistant, and whom she had been asked to train previously [emphasis in original]. [...]

So, she was operating a side-business out of a non-profit's office, and she got demoted, and she was traumatized by having to do clerical work after appearing on national television, and it caused great anguish that her former subordinate was promoted above her. (Or she was demoted before him.)

Pay me, baby.

For at least six months after being fired, Miss OÂ’Donnell suffered enormous pain, cried frequently at the sense of personal loss and failure caused by ISI, and at the sense of injustice, and could not sleep at night, often wide-awake, replaying the whole scene in her mind, until 5:30 am, and has suffered from understandable and resulting depression.

This is her own complaint, remember. Submitted by herself.

Miss O'Donnell's mother and sister both noticed and spontaneously told her at the time, prior to litigation, that she was differently [sic], and urged her to seek medical evaluation...

Again: From her own complaint.

It is worth pointing out that we just replaced a Castle-level RINO, Murkowski, with a true-red conservative, so we have a RINO slot open.

I would be willing to forgive this stuff and put on the pom-poms if I thought she could win. Okay, so maybe she's never before spoken at any great depth on fiscal issues, so maybe she doesn't really have any actual accomplishments apart from getting on national tv a few times on a freebie basis, so maybe she will file lawsuits if you ask her to do some light clerical work, and so maybe she's not really going to be threatening Antonin Scalia as a thought-leader anytime soon.

I support JD Hayworth and he was a bit of a dolt. But I figured that if he was a flaky dolt and needed the job that means he'd owe us and so would be a good Senator for us. Not a leader, but a good minion.

There is something to be said for that.

Assuming the flaky dolt you have in mind can actually become a Senator.

People get annoyed when we on the anti-O'Donnell side bring this stuff up. Surely you don't believe that if not for us mentioning it the Democrats wouldn't hear about it. Does it make me a traitorous jackass, as Mark Levin would apparently have it, if I help warn people about the derailing train they're about to board?

I know she can get the nomination -- I'd say that's pretty much the most likely outcome now. But can she actually do the job of getting elected?

more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:04 AM | Comments (718)
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We're a little less than a day away from another round of primaries. Of course, the one that's caught all our attention and become a somewhat greater symbol than would ordinarily be the case (Really? Delaware?) is Castle vs. O'Donnell.

For some, the race is about pragmatism: "do we take a sure thing in a blue state and take back the Senate?" We've been arguing a lot of that here at the HQ. For some, the race is about sending a message: "what kind of GOP do we want to be a part of?"

Those are absolutely appropriate questions to be asking in a primary. That's the whole point. But tomorrow evening the primary will be over. And, no matter who wins, Republicans will have to pull together to keep this senate seat out of Democratic hands.

Some have already stated that they won't do that; that they'd rather a Democrat win the seat than Mike Castle. That's exactly the sort of self-induced injury the GOP doesn't need. (Not to mention, the O'Donnell supporters are going to be pretty butt-hurt if they receive anything less than full-throated support from the former Castle supporters were she to become our candidate.)

Tomorrow, the GOP picks a candidate and the questions change. After tomorrow, it's not about pragmatism or purity. The only questions that matter: "do you vote for an (R) or do you vote for a (D) or do you sit out and let the (D) win?" No names in there. It doesn't really matter who the (R) is or who the (D) is.

And it doesn't really matter which side of the primary battle lines you were on. Or, it shouldn't. But I would excuse a little venom in some cases. The loudest mouths on the O'Donnell side engage in so many personal attacks, it's not clear to me that they even care what happens after the primary. And the targets of their attacks can probably be excused for saying "to hell with it."

This morning, Mark Levin, in the space of less than 300 words, calls Patterico "jackass", "idiot", "the ass", and "loser with a keyboard, part of the circle nerds." He also attacks Patterico's competency to do his job -- his real job, not his blogging hobby. With personal attacks like that, I wouldn't be surprised if Patterico declined to lend his support to Levin's candidates in this race or any other in the future. And that's another self-induced injury that the GOP doesn't really need.

By the way, here's the post Levin is "responding" to by calling Patterico names and impugning his livelihood. Please read it. You'll note a remarkable lack of namecalling.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:02 AM | Comments (86)
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Brand Democrat™ from Slublog.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:49 AM | Comments (215)
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Well, this just got (even more) interesting.

It looks like thereÂ’s a real possibility of a major upset in the Delaware Senate primary on Tuesday night, with insurgent conservative Christine OÂ’Donnell leading longtime Congressman and Governor Mike Castle 47-44. That 3 point lead is well within the pollÂ’s margin of error.

If Castle is indeed defeated Tuesday night it will be yet another sign that conservatives have a strangle hold on the Republican Party and moderates may or may not be welcome anymore. Castle has an overwhelming 69-21 lead with moderate voters but they only make up 33% of the likely primary electorate. OÂ’Donnell has a 62-31 lead with conservatives thatÂ’s more than enough to propel her to the overall lead.

ItÂ’s clear that CastleÂ’s popularity has taken a sharp turn in the wrong direction over the last month. An August PPP poll found his favorability with Delaware Republicans at a 60/25 spread. Now his favorables within the party are negative at 43/47. ThatÂ’s largely a product of 55% of voters in his party saying they think heÂ’s too liberal compared to 37% who think heÂ’s about right.

...General election Senate numbers we'll release later this week make it clear the biggest beneficiary of this primary becoming so unexpectedly hotly contested is Chris Coons. He would start out with a large advantage over O'Donnell in a general election match up, and is polling closer to Castle than he was when PPP polled Delaware last month.

Not sure what's left to say that hasn't already been said at this point (though that doesn't mean someone won't have something else to say about it tomorrow).

On the upside...it'll all be over one way or another on Tuesday.

Okay, one new thought...RCP has one poll on the House race in Delaware (from PPP in early September) shows the Democrat leading the two possible GOP candidates by 16 and 18 points.

Why does anyone think a state that is going to elect a Democrat to the House this year really wants to send a hardcore conservative about whom there are a lot questions to the Senate?

Remember, Delaware has one house seat, so it's the same electorate. Do you really think they are going to split their ticket for a Democrat and O'Donnell? This is probably one of 3 or 4 Democratic pickups in the House this year but on the other hand they are just dying to send a Palin/DeMint backed candidate to the Senate?

How does that make any sense?

*I corrected the headline. Technically it is a tie since it's within the margin of error but O'Donnell is leading.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:22 PM | Comments (609)
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Appy-polly-loggies for the delinquent book thread, my droogies. And alas, late as it is, it must be thin gruel as well: I had no opportunity in the past week to read or buy books. My Kindle has sat untouched on my bedside table; two hardcovers sit beside it, each with a bookmark that has not moved in the past week.

I have been in a spacefaring frame of mind, having finally gotten my telescope out of storage and taken some looks at the gorgeous night sky. (September is the best month of the year for stargazing in my neck of the woods -- Jupiter's moons can almost be picked out with the naked eye on clear nights.) In consequence, I plan to buy the newest edition of The Backyard Astronomers Guide. I had an old copy for many years, but it has gone walkabout. I can still find most of the Messier objects with a bit of help, but not, alas, from memory.

What are you all reading?

Posted by: Monty at 05:17 PM | Comments (80)
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Alrighty let's get down to it. Last call for the weekend.

10 Awesome Scary Movie Scenes

So here's a collection of ten scary movie scenes. I've seen nearly all of these and yes they are are scary but of course there are many more. Some scenes are scary in and of themselves while others are scary mainly because they're the culmination of tension that's been building the entire movie. So here are a couple other ones that I'd also include in the list.

2001: The monolith scene. Because interacting with an alien unknown should be scary.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:00 PM | Comments (826)
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Well, at least the anti-business 1099 mandate expected to hurt the economy more than it raises revenue. Republican Senators, along with several now-panicky Dems, are trying to add a repeal amendment to the small business bill under consideration this week.

Most Republicans want a full repeal. In a recent speech, the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, said the “1099 mandate” showed how the health care law could “wreak havoc on employers and entrepreneurs.”

Republicans also see the new requirement as an example of the intrusive role they say the I.R.S. will play in enforcing the health care law, including its requirement for most Americans to carry insurance.

Senate Democratic leaders prefer a proposal by Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, that would reduce the scope of the reporting requirement. Under Mr. NelsonÂ’s plan, businesses with 25 or fewer employees would be exempt from the new requirement, and the reporting threshold for larger businesses would be set at $5,000, rather than $600.

Meanwhile, the White House is nervously opposing either repeal effort because of fear it may create momentum to cancel other unpopular provisions in ObamaCare.

Oh, and this little gem was buried in the article:

The reporting requirement was in the health care overhaul bill unveiled in mid-November by the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. But it drew little attention at the time — it was one of more than 15 revenue-raising measures in the bill — and many lawmakers were apparently unaware of it when they voted for final passage of the legislation.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:41 PM | Comments (77)
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