The Amazing Mystifying Stupidity of Meghan McCain

She's really rather special - even by ditzy zaftig politically-connected blonde chick standards - and her vapidity contains multitudes. Here is a bit of her rantings last night about Sanford's victory in SC:

None of you crazy, extremists scare me. I've been doing this since my gestation. Gay marriage will be legal everywhere in America very soon.
- Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) May 08, 2013

But guess what she was advising America to do back in 2009: Forgive Mark Sanford. Ah but see that was like then - this is totally 2013 and all uh, post-gestational and stuff.

Meanwhile she continued on with her tweet-trum...

@carolinemanzo I just can't right now. I am furious. You can lie and cheat and still get sent back to Washington!
- Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) May 8, 2013

And Iowahawk finally had enough of her blatherings.

@meghanmccain if it wasn't for politicians cheating on their wives, you wouldn't exist.
- David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 8, 2013

Followed by:

What was the blast radius on that last tweet?
- David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 8, 2013

*mic drop*
- David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 8, 2013

Aaron Worthing points out that Meggie Mac's struggles with English grammar and vocabulary (as well as basic facts and logic) are hardly new. Here is a snippet of Leon Wolf's epic review of her last book:

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.

...The most obvious problem with Dirty, Sexy Politics is that grammatically, the book appears to be the work of a high school sophomore. To be more accurate, it appears to be the first draft of an essay written for a high school English class; the one turned in before the teacher makes all the pretty red marks in the margin that helpfully keep students from turning in final papers riddled with comma abuse, sentence fragments, and incorrect punctuation. Each subsequent page of this book contains one grisly crime against the English language after another.

Meghan McCain graduated from Columbia University with a BA in Art History in 2007. She registered as a Republican in 2008.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:11 PM | Comments (489)
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There's stuff in the sidebar, and there's all that stuff from the morning.

I'm pretty tired. I think I'm going to watch Jack Reacher.

Oh way I did last night. It's... eh, it's like Sherlock Holmes 2: Game of Shadows. It's a very professional movie. Everyone in the movie did it for the paycheck, but here's the thing: They earned their paycheck. It's not bad. They did a pretty decent job. No one phoned it in, no one botched their job.

And yet... It does just feel like a well-executed job that you're not entirely sure needed doing. Without any real spark of inspiration, it's questionable why there had to be a Jack Reacher movie. (Note: Again, I don't mean to say it's flawed or poorly done in any way; I mean it just lacks that spark where you recognize some real innovation and passion.)

Christopher McQuarrie has graduated from his early directorial work on The Way of the Gun to directing a big-budget, heavily-promoted movie that looks like a big-budget, heavily-promoted movie. (And I mean this in a good way: I like when big-budget movies look like they spent a lot on lighting and good film.)

I give it... two and a half stars. Perfectly watchable, not a thing wrong with it. Everyone involved who drew a check at least gave us Full Value for the check. And yet... even though I approve of detective-action movies (do they make these anymore...?)... I can't say it's a must see. I spent $6 on the PPV and I feel like I got $6.95 entertainment value. Worth it, but... you're not going to kick yourself if you miss it.

I sort of would like this movie to make more money, though, so they make more of this type of movie.

Oh, couple of things: Pretty good villains. German director Werner Herzog (?) brings an odd, creepy menace to the "Mastermind" villain role, and some guy I never saw before is convincing as The Muscle. The latter guy just seems like he's a badass and a bad guy all around, even with limited screentime and no "grabby" scenes.

The ending is exactly like Lethal Weapon, fighting the Muscle in the rain. By the way, remember in Lethal Weapon? There was a whole dramatic arc about Riggs wanting to kill himself? And then suddenly at the end he doesn't?

What's the theory there? That the only thing that could convince Riggs that life was worth living was beating up Gary Busey?

One last thing: The movie gets a little annoying in inserting unforgivable hero-worship lines in various places. It gets a little thick at the end, with a guy crying like a baby over how Incredibly Bad Ass and Out for Justice Jack Reacher is. Jack Reacher also says a line, out loud, that was probably taken from the book, but only in the narrator's voice.

He does the old "Tell me what I want to know or I'll shoot you" thing. The guy breaks, instantly, and the girl says "You weren't really going to shoot him, were you?"

And Tom Cruise/Jack Reacher says, unforgivably, "I didn't have to. One look at him and I knew he was a survivor. One look at me and he knew I never bluff."

What?

I wouldn't mind the author of the book writing that about the hero -- although it's still pretty gay -- but the hero himself saying it?

Aren't other people in an action movie supposed to talk about how bad-ass the hero is? Unless the hero is a braggart, the hero's not supposed to. The hero's not supposed to spout his own taglines.

I mean, the Lethal Weapon poster said "Mel Gibson is a lethal weapon," but Mel Gibson himself never said that.

If he'd said that, someone would have slapped him, and they would have had the right of it.

There are a few times in the script where horrible lines like that seem to have been inserted just to appear in the trailer, so they can have people talking about how Jack Reacher is a ghost, but he's a ghost made of elbows, knee-strikes, and Justice.

But who cares. Doesn't really harm your immersion in the film because you really weren't all that immersed in the first place.

Posted by: Ace at 03:18 PM | Comments (440)
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Allah has something of a Grand Unified Theory on this.

Why is it so important that the Kochs do not buy the LA Times?

Why is it so important for the liberals to push out the only reporter who covered Benghazi?

"Ghettoization." If the "neutral media" -- actually liberal as hell -- can present a unified party line on stories, always supporting one another and never showing a crack in the wall, they can sneer at stories they don't like by saying "Only Fox claims that."

This becomes unhelpful to the liberals for the same reason it's helpful to conservatives. Conservatives always say "Wow, now it's on CBS!" We call that vindication -- that it's gotten out of the ghetto to the liberal media. That even the liberal media was forced to cover that.

But for those in the liberal media who consider the airwaves Their Air -- a valuable property they own and can exploit as any property-owner can, for their own benefit, to their own taste -- this is a problem for exactly the same reasons. Just as we claim victory when we say "Now it's on CBS!," so too do liberals feel failure when a true story that hurts liberals escapes from the conservative news/talk radio ghetto and shows up on Their Air.

And so, while they can't push Sharyl Attkisson out of the profession, they can give up a major reporter to Fox, which reduces the damage she can do.

After all, if she reports over there, "It's just a Fox story." The liberal media remains pristine and unified in its Ideological Wall of Silence.

"Treason never profits," a brave man named Kevin Costner said, "because if it profit, then none dare call it treason."*

Similarly, the media can never be embarrassed by its liberal bias and deliberate suppression of the news for political purposes if no one in the media ever breaches the wall of silence and clues the public in to what it's hiding. Even though CBS is currently pointing at Sharyl Atkkisson as The Only Network Reporter Who Reported on Benghazi, they're resentful about it, because her work stands as a rebuke to their own, and as a rebuke to their politicization of the news for the benefit of a political party.

But what if she was disappeared? What if her respectability and credibility were stripped from her?

Ah, then that would be glorious. Because there would be no troublesome reporter at CBS embarrassing the rest. She would just be a Fox Personality, and hence, neutralized.

* I know it's not Kevin Costner's quote. But I'm too lazy to look it up so I'll cite his mention of it in JFK.

Addendum: I think Sharyl Attkisson might be embarrassing them in this way: when they bury one of her stories, she publicizes itself on Twitter, and thus makes her editors look like... well, like liberal hacks suppressing a story because their job is to suppress information and con the public into voting the way the editors prefer.

I think that's what they might think of as "advocacy:" Promoting her own stories and, by doing so, thwarting their own determination to bury them.

And they might consider that "advocacy." After all, They have decided her stories are unimportant. But then she "advocates" for their importance.

And we can't have that. We can't have differences of opinion in a media which allegedly champions a free and open debate.

Final Word: Here's how the non-ideological, objective LATimes covered today's explosive revelations:

Posted by: Ace at 02:00 PM | Comments (340)
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Two corrections: I earlier said that Buzzfeed was wrong in saying that Hicks was forbidden to talk to investigators. It appears I was wrong, and that's exactly what happened.

I have to say on this point that I don't really understand when he was forbidden to talk to investigators and when he was only forbidden to talk to them alone. I trust someone will untangle this at some point.

Not the media, of course.

I also earlier said that Susan Rice had responded to Hicks question about why they were continuing to say a video caused the attack with the response "I don't know." In fact it was Beth Jones.

Now, those corrections out of the way:

From Hot Air, discussing the Daily Caller's report, I'm not sure there's a more clear proof of cover-up than State Department officials ordering a State Department diplomat not to answer questions about Benghazi.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (179)
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And then, a liberal weighs in:*

* Corrected. I initially blamed this reading on the Washington Post. In fact, that's just the gloss the liberal twit gives it.

We'll see if the Disgruntled Employee storyline takes root in the leftwing media. I have high hopes-- they've never disappointed me before.

Still:

Posted by: Ace at 12:52 PM | Comments (195)
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Jonah Goldberg discusses this. His take is "Sure, I wish there were more of social penalty for immoral behavior, including a de facto bar from attaining high office, but that's not the world we live in.

Maggie Gallagher says differently. If I can parse her words -- "This was a bad election victory" -- she wishes he'd have lost.

I might be too libertarian on this point but I believe it's strange and harmful thing to believe politicians represent your personal values as if they were you spouse.

Your spouse does represent you. And your kids represent your values, ideally. And even, if you're lucky, your place of employment might represent your values.

And that's about it. The rest of the world are strangers to you.

I think it's a mistake to always confuse these highly impersonal, arms-length, stranger/transaction relationships with some kind of reflection of self.

I always hear this, for example, in justifying losing a senate seat to archliberal Coons -- "Well," people from other parts of the country, non-Delwarians, say, "I don't want Mike Castle to represent me. I don't want to be stained by his RINO-ish beliefs. I don't want to be called upon him to put my honor on the line to defend the likes of him."

With all due respect, who on earth imagines such a burden falls upon one's shoulders?

Do we routinely scrutinize those with whom we have an arms-length, transactional relationship -- a mechanic, a banker, a doctor -- for their sexual and ideological beliefs, in order to make certain that we aren't put in a position of "having to defend" their choices?

No, we don't.

I think most people are friends with someone who got divorced. I imagine few have written divorcees out of their lives entirely. Now, a friendship is a much more intimate relationship than that which exists between voter and elected politician. Chances are, the latter have never so much as met and never will meet.

And most divorces will include an element of infidelity, even if it never becomes publicly notorious.

But if a friend is not written off -- shunned, rejected, ostracized, turned away -- for divorce, why a politician? A friend does in fact "represent" you, to some extent. It's a familiar relationship.

It's a mistake to confuse a thing for that which it is not. A politician is no more an avatar of one's highest aspirations and deepest beliefs than one's baker. It is a transactional relationship only, not an intimate one, and not a personal one.

Politicians have never, as a group, been heroic or morally upright. Are we now pretending the last 2000 years of human society never happened, and that we don't know this?

These people are not heroes. They are instruments to be used by as, as is convenient and useful to us, just as one's baker is, in final analysis, a vehicle by which we attain pastries.

When they are useful, they are used.

When they are still marginally useful, but a better tool comes along -- a better politician, a better baker-- they are discarded.

It's always been this way. It must be this way. The political is not, as the left would have it, the personal.

I think we've gotten a little bit crazy in treating politicians like heroes. They're not. They never have been. They never will be.

As a class -- as a class -- they are among the least-moral people of the face of the earth.

We all know this. Why are we pretending it's otherwise? Where have gone the days when we could crack a joke about the Immoral Buffoon we have in office, while still acknowledging the truth of it, that he's better than an Immoral Buffoon who compounds his offensiveness by voting against our political preferences?

There are genuine heroes. Chances are, you know a couple in your personal lives.

Politicians are generally not heroes. Why are we treating them as if they were?

It's disappointing when someone you consider a hero fails, when he falls. When he behaves in a selfish, corrupt fashion.

But why are we talking about politicians in these terms? It hurts when a Hero falls, true; but Sanford isn't a hero. Sanford is a guy charged with one duty: Voting the way the people in his district would like him to vote.

That job is no more heroic than the baker who puts icing on my birthday cake. It's a job they're paid to do. Why should any of my sense of self be wrapped up in their exploits and their failings?

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (398)
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Buzzfeed says he was told not to meet with investigators, but I believe that's incorrect: He was told to not be "isolated" with Congressional investigators -- that is, he was told not to speak with them without having a Hillary delegate present, monitoring the conversation.

Remember, it was the Administration's claim that they were not engaged in attempting to silence or control the whistleblowers.

Having Hillary's fixer present with you at every meeting -- remember, Hillary was Hicks' boss, before she wanted to spend more time with her family -- would not seem conducive to getting the unvarished truth out.

More: Cheryl Mills was "very upset" with Hicks. Video at the link.

"I was instructed not to allow the RSO, the acting deputy chief of mission — me — to be personally interviewed," said Gregory Hicks, the fomer Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, who was in Tripoli at the time of the Benghazi attack. He said that was the first time administration lawyers had told him not to talk to a congressional delegation, and that a lawyer attempted to be present during the meeting.

"We were not to be personally interviewed by Congressman Chaffetz," Hicks said again later in the hearing.

...

Hicks also said that Cheryl Mills, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's chief of staff (who Ohio Rep. Jordan referred to as Clinton's "fixer" while questioning Hicks), had attempted to monitor the meeting between Hicks and the delegation consisting of Rep. Jason Chaffetz.

And more from Bryan Preston:

2:44 pm Rep. Chaffetz takes the mic again after brief questioning from another GOP member. He asks whether the US government ever asked the Libyan government for overflight permission. Hicks responds that a drone was overhead and it had permission. No other requests for permission were asked for, but Hicks and Nordstrom say the Libyans would have granted such permission if it had been asked.

Earlier, I missed a moment: Hicks testified that he debriefed Clinton at 2 am after the attack, but she continued to blame the YouTube for days afterward. He never even believed that the YouTube movie had anything to do with the attack.

...

2:56 pm Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) takes over questioning, asks Hicks about his conversation with Jones regarding Rice’s statements. He says the conversation was “curt,” and that soon thereafter he started getting questioned about his “management style.”

Gosar plays Clinton’s “What difference, at this point, does it make?” video, asks Hicks to respond to it. Hicks: Libyan president was insulted, and his credibility was reduced along with his ability to govern. He was angry even two weeks later. It negatively affected our ability to get the FBI to Benghazi quickly enough to investigate. This is the third time Hicks has connected the Clinton and Rice statements to obstructing the FBI investigation.

In addition, Hicks asked Rice why she continued to blame the video when no intelligence suggested such a link. Her answer? "I don't know."

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (453)
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Actually he's always free at PJMedia but I thought I might interest people by suggesting they were getting something for free.

I had intended to liveblog this but I got distracted. He isn't distracted. He's on it.

The hearings have been featuring some news in the past hour.

1:19 pm Rep. James Langford (R-OK) asks Hicks and Nordstrom whether security was adequate at Benghazi. Answer from Nordstrom: No. They did not meet the minimum standards. Nordstrom testifies that only the Secretary of State can grant waivers for facilities that do not meet the minimum standards. ThatÂ’s BIG.

...

1:24 pm Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) gives speech saying that we must learn from Benghazi so that it does not happen again. Democrats continue the pattern of talking at rather than asking questions of the three whistleblowers. Tierney continues the pattern of isolating and attacking Rep. Issa, bringing Alinsky tactics into the U.S. House of Representatives hearing on a terrorist attack that killed four Americans.

Tierney accused Thompson of not making himself available to the State Dept.’s ARB investigation. Thompson corrects him — he did make himself available but the ARB did not interview him.

Tierney now playing a video of DNI James Clapper defending Hillary Clinton. Democrats defend Democrats — big shocker there.

Hicks: “There was no report of a demonstration.” Tierney quickly interrupts him. Tierney ends with a speech.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (329)
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You're weird and fringe if you're tweeting about Benghazi, a study shows.

Thanks to Demographics Pro, a Twitter analysis firm, we have some vague idea of who’s tweeting the most: According to their report, #Benghazi tweeters are 58.3% male, with an average age of 52.6 years and a median income of $61,800 (“within the top 20 percent of overall Twitter distribution,” the report adds).

The tweeters are also overwhelmingly white and married, according to Demographics Pro; they also like Chick-fil-A and Walmart — two brands most often associated with conservatives.

I wonder what Demographics Pro would say about people tweeting about gay marriage or gun control?

This is an extremely obvious and odious media tactic -- to portray those on its political side as Just Like You, and those on the opposite side as Not Like You. The Other.

Whenever the media covers an anti-war protest or a pro-choice rally, they throw out a diverse rainbow of descriptions of attendees.

You've seen this sentence a thousand times before: "They come from all walks of life -- grandmothers, young mothers, carpet installation workers, policemen, soldiers, teachers, doctors, retirees, college students, and the occasional activist."

Note that what that description of the attendees of a leftwing event is attempting to do -- by throwing out a very broad spectrum of the human experience and associating it with the cause, it is attempting to make you see yourself in the people there, to trigger some feeling of empathy, of sympatico, to see that these people are your neighbors, your coworkers, your family and your friends.

They're Just Like You.

But when the media is hostile to a cause, it attempts the exact opposite. It attempts to paint the supporters of a cause to which it is hostile in the most reductivist and restricted demographic terms possible. They attempt to paint these people as a very narrow sliver of the human experience, so that as few people as possible will see themselves in it.

This is the Not Like You treatment.

This is how they describe the Tea Party -- "overwhelmingly white and older, and poorer than the average." Actually that's how they first reported the Tea Party, assuming that they were poor (because of the liberal bias in the assumption, as first announced by the Washington Post, that the Christian right was "poor, uneducated, and easily led").

Once they discovered that the Tea Party was wealthier than average, the standard description became "overwelmingly white, older, and richer than the average American."

"Poorer" just disappeared from the narrative. Why? Because noting that the Tea Party was represented by those from a range of economic situations would be the Just Like You treatment -- casting a wide net -- and the media was determined to give them the Not Like You treatment, with as small a net as possible.

Thus, the Tea Party is either going to be pigeon-holed as Poorer Than You (and hence Not Like You) or Richer Than You (and also Not Like You), but in no case will they allowed to have a broad range of wealth levels, because then one of those wealth levels might strike a chord with a reader, and the media will not allow that.

They're Not Like You. They are this very narrow range of human variations of which you are not a part.

In Hollywood terms -- they're "not relatable." The left is always "very relatable."

This is how Hollywood signals who is the hero and who is the villain -- the hero is always given a character tag which is widely shared by a great number of people, whereas the villain is strange. The hero has attributes that invite the audience to identify with him; the villain is given attributes to guarantee that they will not.

Look at these silver-haired retired schoolteachers, young Latino construction workers, junior archery league champions, etc., who represent the left. They're Just Like You -- there are so many different varieties of them surely you see yourselves somewhere in the mix. They're relatable heroes.

Now, as I say, the media could promote this sort of thing -- pigeonholing the average gun-control advocate as urban, liberal, atheist, and either poor and uneducated or having an advanced degree and/or much wealthier than average (not like the average person), or they could pigeonhole the "average" gay rights supporter as either an urban upscale trend-following gay male or an urban upscale middle-aged white woman.

But they don't. This reduction of a broad swath of human experience into a single mockable demographic stereotype is a treatment given only to the right.

Just Like You versus Not Like You -- one of the most common, cheap, obvious and vicious tactics of bias in the media's playbook.

Posted by: Ace at 09:07 AM | Comments (348)
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Note: There is a Benghazi Hearings Open Thread below. However, given that as much as I might like to, I can't take the day off, I will be posting other stories, and occasionally updating the Benghazi Hearings thread and bumping it to the top.

For the first time in his life, Chuck Todd is proud to be an American, and it's all due to Obama's "very rational" responses to Benghazi.

When you think about it, lying is a rational response too, when you've gravely erred.

CHUCK TODD: I think we sometimes forget what was going on at that time. We did have multiple embassies in the region, both in North Africa and in the Middle East, that were dealing with protests. Remember, they raised a black flag on the U.S. embassy in Tunisia during that same period. We had the issues that were going on in Cairo. So, you had, and in fact one of the reasons they didn’t send all six special ops, they say at the time, is that they didn’t want to have Tripoli unguarded at all. And don’t forget, that was the U.S. embassy. And considering what was happening to U.S. embassies in the region at the time, it’s actually very rational thought: all right, let’s dispatch two guys to the consul — to Benghazi for now.

...

SCARBOROUGH: ThereÂ’s more coming. And there should be more coming. Because the fact is Hillary Clinton and the State Department did not heed the concerns of a U.S. ambassador who ended up dead. That does warrant investigation. Is this going to be bigger than Watergate and Iran-contra, ten times over?

TODD [laughs]: It doesnÂ’t look that way.

Video at the link. Doug Powers, writing at Michelle Malkin's site, also notes that Chuck Todd confesses that within three or four days, everyone in the world knew this was terrorism (make that three to four hours, Chuck); and yet Chuck still has no problem with Susan Rice claiming this was a spontaneous demonstration based on a YouTube video five days after the attack.

Posted by: Ace at 08:19 AM | Comments (317)
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