UPDATE II: Just Another Mouth In The Republican Fellatio Machine (Ad Hominem)

Celebrity, Critique, Feminism, Individual Rights, Intellectualism, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Politics, Pop-Culture, Republicans

The column “Just Another Mouth In the Republican Fellatio Machine,” debuts on Taki’s Magazine today. Here is an excerpt:

“The symbolic thrust of Hustler’s crude, much protested, photo-shopped depiction of Rockefeller Republican S.E. Cupp is commendable: silence this siren of stupidity.

The Hustler make-believe image of Cupp was captioned incorrectly, describing the ‘conservative’ commentator as ‘someone who had read too much Ayn Rand in high school and ended up joining the dark side.’

Sacrilege. If S. E. Cupp has read Rand’s works, she has internalized none of it.

The problem with the product (or production) called Cupp is not that it is conservative and is being victimized for heralding conservative truths. This was the tired tack adopted by almost all the rightists who’ve rushed to Cupp’s rescue.

On the contrary. Cupp is no conservative. Like a lot of loud idiots, Cupp lacks a coherent ideology.

Dumb distaff abound on America’s news channels. Cupp is a leader of the pack, a luminary in the Age of the Idiot, rivaled only by Grand Old Party leading lights such as Margaret Hoover and Gretchen Carlson (Bill O’Reilly’s circus clowns, aka the “Culture Warriors”), Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Carrie Prejean, Noelle Nikpour, and Dana Perino (the Heidi Klum of the commentariat).

Like these low-watt women, Lolita’s forte is to gesture wildly and grimace, while parroting talking points disgorged by every other Bush bootlicker before her. …”

… To find out why (in this column’s opinion) “‘Big Media,’ Left and Right, came together unequivocally to defend the dishonored S.E. Cupp (who has been honored for her vomitous prose on C-SPAN’s Book TV, and was called on to speak at CPUKE 2012),” read “Just Another Mouth In the Republican Fellatio Machine,” now on Taki’s Magazine.

It goes without saying that you should click to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the Taki’s column. Or register your discontent at the Comments Section after the column.

UPDATE I: A reader at Taki’s writes this, which is completely true. I was thinking of exactly how O’Reilly avoids Coulter like the plague, because she can’t help but make him look unintelligent (I don’t think O’Reilly is stupid, and he can certainly be very funny, but he has nothing on Coulter’s intelligence, whatever else you think of her.)

“A completely TRUE article. I actually agree with every bit of it. CUPPCAKE goes on O’Reilly and I get the impression his avuncular patronizing of her means …he’s boning her. Coulter goes on, and Billo nitpicks at her like a grandma. He’s jealous of Coulter.”

UPDATE II: The one ad hominem leveled at me at Taki’s Comments Section is that I’m jealous of the Cupp creature (as if that constitutes an argument). That doesn’t square. Why would I be jealous of the half wit, but not of Coutler and Malkin (who are attractive and smart too, surely)? It shows you how far the ad hominem argument will take you. No where at all.

UPDATED: The Philosophy of Liberty (The Claims Of Kids)

Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Objectivism

Accolades are owed to a team that has rendered the philosophy of liberty in the simplest, purest of ways, to better popularize it. Ken Schoolland distilled liberty in words, and Lux Lucre (a very Randian label, given that lucre means money or profits) produced the animation. Watch it. Read it.

“The philosophy of liberty is based on the principle of self-ownership. You own your life. To deny this is to imply that another person has a higher claim on your life than you do. No other person, or group of persons, owns your life nor do you own the lives of others. You exist in time: future, present, and past. This is manifest in life, liberty, and the product of your life and liberty. The exercise of choices over life and liberty is your prosperity. To lose your life is to lose your future. To lose your liberty is to lose your present. And to lose the product of your life and liberty is to lose the portion of your past that produced it.
A product of your life and liberty is your property. Property is the fruit of your labour, the product of your time, energy, and talents. It is that part of nature that you turn to valuable use. And it is the property of others that is given to you by voluntary exchange and mutual consent. Two people who exchange property voluntarily are both better off or they wouldn’t do it. Only they may rightfully make that decision for themselves.
At times some people use force or fraud to take from others without wilful, voluntary consent. Normally, the initiation of force to take life is murder, to take liberty is slavery, and to take property is theft. It is the same whether these actions are done by one person acting alone, by the many acting against a few, or even by officials with fine hats and fancy titles.
You have the right to protect your own life, liberty, and justly acquired property from the forceful aggression of others. So you may rightfully ask others to help protect you. But you do not have a right to initiate force against the life, liberty, or property of others. Thus, you have no right to designate some person to initiate force against others on your behalf.
You have a right to seek leaders for yourself, but would have no right to impose rulers on others. No matter how officials are selected, they are only human beings and they have no rights or claims that are higher than those of any other human beings. Regardless of the imaginative labels for their behaviour or the numbers of people encouraging them, officials have no right to murder, to enslave, or to steal. You cannot give them any rights that you do not have yourself.
Since you own your life, you are responsible for your life. You do not rent your life from others who demand your obedience. Nor are you a slave to others who demand your sacrifice.
You choose your own goals based on your own values. Success and failure are both the necessary incentives to learn and to grow.
Your action on behalf of others, or their action on behalf of you, is only virtuous when it is derived from voluntary, mutual consent. For virtue can only exist when there is free choice.
This is the basis of a truly free society. It is not only the most practical and humanitarian foundation for human action; it is also the most ethical.
Problems that arise from the initiation of force by government have a solution. The solution is for people of the world to stop asking officials to initiate force on their behalf. Evil does not arise only from evil people, but also from good people who tolerate the initiation of force as a means to their own ends. In this manner, good people have empowered evil throughout history.
Having confidence in a free society is to focus on the process of discovery in the marketplace of values rather than to focus on some imposed vision or goal. Using governmental force to impose a vision on others is intellectual sloth and typically results in unintended, perverse consequences. Achieving a free society requires courage to think, to talk, and to act – especially when it is easier to do nothing.”

UPDATE (June 6): THE CLAIMS OF KIDS. Great points as always, Myron (in Comments). We here at BAB have an interest, not a claim, in your sticking around. Your commitment to your daughter, of course, is voluntary, although I recall participating in long, theoretical, libertarian discussion threads as to whether our children have a legal claim on us. In other words: should you be jailed if you secede from taking care of them? A fascinating, but futile, debate.

UPDATE II: Tug Of War In Wisconsin Over (Rust-Belt Revolt?)

Elections, IlanaMercer.com, Labor, The State, Welfare

Citing a January poll, George Will observed that policy differences, not criminal behavior, drove the recall campaign against Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

“In the tug of war witnessed in Wisconsin, I wrote in February, of 2011, “the ‘Takers’ (tax consumers), organized by the likes of the AFL-CIO, Andy Stern’s Service Employees International Union, and the national and local teachers unions, want the ‘Makers’ (the so-called rich who fund their existence) to support overgenerous pay and pensions in perpetuity. To grant them their wish, these organized interests are accustomed to turning to the Über-parasites: politicians. This time, a politician in the person of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has refused to facilitate the smooth transfer of wealth from those who create it to those who consume it with no thought for the morrow. (“Public Enemy No. 1: Government Unions”)

Rejoices Guy Benson of TownHall.com: “For the second time in two years, the people of Wisconsin have elected Scott Walker. He is, and will remain, the state’s governor. This outcome is a triumph for Badger State conservatives, the Tea Party movement, and fiscal sanity generally. Though the Left will spin this defeat furiously, make no mistake: They are crestfallen tonight. Their bete noir has prevailed.”

“NBC, CNN, and Fox News have all called this race,” he confirms.

In “The Whine From Wisconsin,” George Will provides the backdrop to what has become a “socialist sandbox of childish pleasure”:

This state, the first to let government employees unionize, was an incubator of progressivism and gave birth (in 1932 in Madison, the precursor of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) to its emblematic institution, the government employees union — government organized as a special interest to lobby itself to expand itself. But Wisconsin progressivism is in a dark Peter Pan phase; it is childish without being winsome.

UPDATE (June 6): RUST-BELT REVOLT? National Journal pinpoints the Walker victory as “a sign of the cultural divide between national Democrats and blue-collar whites.” Especially telling is the fact that the governor “carried 38 percent of union households.” From “Red Flags All Over for Obama in Wisconsin”:

President Obama wasn’t on the ballot in Wisconsin, but Gov. Scott Walker’s decisive victory in last night’s gubernatorial recall is a stinging blow to his prospects for a second term. The re-election was a telltale sign that the conservative base is as energized as ever, that the Democratic GOTV efforts may not be as stellar as advertised, and that the Democratic-leaning “blue wall” Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania will be very much in play this November.
Walker won by a bigger margin than he did in 2010, and with more overall votes. He carried 38 percent of union households – a slight improvement from his 2010 midterm tally — a strikingly strong number given how he’s been cast as the villain of labor. It’s a sign of the cultural divide between national Democrats and blue-collar whites, one that is particularly acute for the president.
Obama’s team is taking consolation in the fact that exit polling showed him leading Mitt Romney, 51 to 44 percent. But that’s hardly good news: with near-presidential level turnout (and notably higher level of union turnout), Obama is running five points behind his 2008 performance. Replicate that dropoff across the board, and all the key swing states flip to Mitt Romney.

MORE.

Personal Notice: The Mercer Articles Archive is out of whack, missing enormous sections, as a result, probably, of a server data-base error. A ticket has been submitted. I hope to have the problem resolved as soon as possible. If you want to read the latest Mercer Articles, or search the articles database, go to the Return to Reason archives on WND.

RESOLVED.

UPDATE II: I don’t know whether, as Ann Coulter puts it, “Walker’s victory Tuesday night was an amazing, miraculous, transformative event in the history of the nation.” But she makes a point previously made in this space too, (minus the respectful references to FDR):

“There’s a reason both FDR and labor leader George Meany said it would be insane to ever allow government employees to unionize. People who work for the government don’t have a hard-driving capitalist boss on the other side of the bargaining table demanding more work for less pay.
No one is worried about the profit margin because there is no profit – it’s government! Rather, the only people on the other side of the table are the unions’ co-conspirators: Democratic politicians willing to spend the public treasury on union members, who will repay the politicians by mobilizing voters.”

The Pain In Bain

Business, Capitalism, Critique, Democrats, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Fascism, Free Markets, Hillary Clinton

According to Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, a defense of “Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s former firm,” and “the paragon of capitalist evil,” must be rooted entirely in corrupt self-interest. So there’s not even a smidgen of truth in Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s condemnation of the Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain? How about the other two prominent Democrats to defend Romney and his work? (Read on.)

“Booker went on Meet the Press and angered hordes of Democrats when he condemned the Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain as ‘nauseating,’ equating the anti-Bain messaging to the GOP’s sleazy use of Jeremiah Wright, and then demanding: ‘stop the attacks on private equity’ (in response to the backlash, Booker then released a hostage-like video recanting his criticisms and pledging his loyalty to President Obama).”

Without explaining the mechanism by which the private equity firm achieved this feat, Greenwald asserts further that the likes of Bain Capital are “destroying the middle class in order to enrich greedy vulture oligarchs.” AND, “We also all know that the Democratic Party is the defender of the middle class and the bold adversary of corporate pillaging.”

Do we?

DITTO Deval Patrick. HuffPo uses the same “reasoning”—“a history of ethically questionable connections to financial firms”—to condemn the Massachusetts governor for his defense of the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney [05/31/2012] … during TV appearances.”

“The Democratic politician was supposed to be serving as a surrogate for President Barack Obama. Patrick, who has a history of ethically questionable connections to financial firms, applauded Boston-based Bain Capital, implicitly criticizing the Obama campaign’s attacks on Romney’s record at the private equity firm.”

Patrick is the second Obama surrogate with strong ties to the financial industry to defend Bain, following in the footsteps of Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, who ignited a week of outrage from Democratic Party strategists for describing the Obama campaign’s slams against Romney’s Bain work as “nauseating.”

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE. One other major Democrat has defended Romney and his job record. “This is good work.” “I don’t think we ought to get in a position where we say this is bad work,” said Bill Clinton.

The DC Decoder’s correspondent floats yet another crazy ad hominem: “Bill may be intentionally sabotaging President Obama in order to set Hillary up for a run in 2016,” which, to her credit, she doesn’t quite buy.

Others suggest the former president simply misspoke. But we don’t buy that either.
Here’s the thing: Clinton’s comments weren’t just “off message.” They were a declaration of war on the message. They underscore a fundamental split within the Democratic Party that’s less about Romney’s record at Bain than it is about whether the party as a whole is perceived as a friend or foe of Wall Street and the world of business and high finance.