The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ace of Spades Really Hates Ron Paul, Endorses Re-Election of Barack Obama

Posted on | December 1, 2011 | 73 Comments

“I heretofore state I will not support, or vote for, Ron Paul, under any circumstances whatsoever.
“That’s where I’m coming from. Under no circumstances whatsoever will I vote for this reactionary, anti-semitic peacenik ‘We brought 9/11 ourselves’ pacifist Chomskyite crank.
“And I’ll say it: I will, yes, be amenable to Barack Obama being re-elected under those circumstances.”
— Ace of Spades

This seems to be turning into “Let’s F– With Ace” Week, so what the heck? Go with it. Having spent three months kicking Tabitha Hale in the shins — “Not Good Enough for BlogCon” — this wheel’s gonna keep on squeaking until some grease shows up.

Also, “heretofore,” Ace? Think you meant “hereby” or “henceforth,” but if the Valu-Rite Vodka says “heretofore” . . . Go with it.

Everybody knows I love Ace, so why am I doing this? Why would I push a running gag so far as to deliberately expose him to the vitriolic rage of the Paulistas who will flood his comments with fuming denunciations? A few possibilities suggest themselves:

A. It beats the hell out of finishing my long post about why you should hit my tip jar to send me to Iowa.
B. It beats the hell out of transcribing audio of the various interviews I’ve done recently.
C. It beats the hell out of soberly confronting the undeniably grim prospects for the Herman Cain campaign.
D. There’s no point traffic-baiting Allahpundit who, since becoming an employee of Salem Communications Inc., doesn’t give a damn anymore whether bloggers talk smack about him.
E. Admit it: “Let’s F– With Ace” Week is probably funnier than anything else I could be blogging about this week.

If you answered “All of the Above, But Mainly E,” congratulations: Put $10, $20, $50 in my tip jar and I’ll keep it up all week, just for fun and also to pay my way to Iowa. Because if you’re going to f–k around on a blog as a therapeutic escape from depressing realities, you might as well do it for profit. More f–king around after this ad for our Amazon “Black Monday Deals Week” specials.

See? I got no shame in my game, because Smitty reminded me last week why he’s willing to pay the blog-hosting fees out of his own pocket: It’s his patriotic duty to keep me online.

Smitty knows the backstory: In January 2008, the Washington Times announced that Wes Pruden would retire as editor-in-chief of the paper and be replaced by a guy from the Washington Post. And after this was announced to the newsroom, I went outside for a smoke along with one of our investigative reporters who said to me, “If I had wanted to work for a Postie, I’d have applied at the f–king Post.”

Bingo. That night, I went home and talked to Mrs. Other McCain, then sat down and wrote out my resignation. Ten years at the paper I loved — if I had stayed until the next anniversary celebration, four months later, they’d have given me a gold watch — and I just quit. Walked away.

As I wrote in my resignation, it was as if God said, “Go.”

Crazy? Yeah. But you can’t f–k me over and backstab my friends and expect me to stick around like I got nowhere else to go.

Over the course of the next year, after I quit a job that I had quite literally prayed to get, then went to Africa and came back, I spent out my 401(k) to cover the bills and — although not really expecting it to happen this way — turned this blog into something like a success.

Not a particularly lucrative success, mind you, but when it reached the million-hit threshold in February 2009, I celebrated by jocularly “explaining” how I’d done it, and thereby provided several other bloggers a blueprint for enhancing their own online footprint. Smitty joined up as co-blogger and converted us to WordPress by January 2010. Wombat came aboard last fall, and now here we are — as the fourth anniversary of my resignation from the Washington Times approaches next month — around 8.5 million visits into this unprecedented experiment in reader-supported online journalism.

Hit the freaking tip jar, my friends, so that when that anniversary arrives in January, I’ll be rolling on the campaign trail like the most amazing New Media rock star the world could ever imagine.

Because when I tendered my resignation, nobody asked me to stay. 

Many of my colleagues expressed regret at my departure, but management? Evidently, they deemed me worthless and expendable. And although I went out of my way to leave on good terms — bending over backwards not to burn a bridge — my former employer has subsequently treated me as persona non grata, so that no matter what exclusive news I report, or however many quoteworthy paragraphs I write for The American Spectator, the editors of The Washington Times are under strict orders that my name can never appear in the pages of the newspaper where I worked for more than a decade.

Vengeance as a career strategy is a theme I’ve been meaning to explore for a while, but that’s more work than I’d care to do today. The main points here are (a) hit the freaking tip jar, so (b) I can go to Iowa, and also (c) let’s keep on f–king with Ace.

Among the several debts of gratitude owed for the success of this blog, Ace is near the front of the long line of creditors, because when I was stuck at a desk in the newsroom all those years, AOSHQ was not merely a source of news and humor, but a beacon of hope and inspiration: “Hey, if worse comes to worse, I could get myself one of those ‘blog’ doohickeys and be a funny guy on the Internet, too.”

Not exactly a lucrative career, as I have subsequently learned, but a career nonethless, even if there is zero prospect of my ever becoming an employee of Salem Communications Inc. like that exemplary Christian role model, Allahpundit.

Zing!

Anyway, when I started this post, what I actually meant to do was to use Ace as the bumper for a two-way carom-shot excuse to embed Ron Paul’s anti-Gingrich video:

Vengeance as a career strategy, et cetera: “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining,” and while some of our pragmatic friends are trying to convince conservatives that we should let bygones be bygones, The Raven is calling Newt’s name. The payback bill has come due and no sophisticated arguments about strategic pragmatism are going to stop me from seeing that the full sum is collected.

“A Road Man for the Lords of Karma.”

(Say, did I ever tell y’all about the time the Washington Times put me on six months probation because of something I wrote about Ralph Reed? No? Remind me to tell you that story one day.)

Where there is life there is hope and, if Herman Cain decides to pack it in — or if his staffers screw me over again like they did Tuesday — I’m prepared to climb off the Cain Train and jump aboard the Santorum Express, which might surprisingly become a last-minute juggernaut screaming across the snow-covered plains of Iowa with the unstoppable momentum necessary to wreck all the plans and prognostications of the punditry who are now portraying the Republican presidential campaign as a Newt-vs.-Mitt dilemma.

Don’t say it can’t happen, because I’m here to tell you: It can.

That’s a guaranteed fact, Jack. And you can take it to the bank, because I’m a professional, neutral and objective journalist.

Now, hit the freaking tip jar.

 




UPDATE: “Save me a seat on that f–king bullet train to awesome!”

RECENTLY:

 

Category: Ace of Spades, Amazon, Election 2012, Iowa, Neutral Objective Journalism, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Shoe Leather Fund

Comments

73 Responses to “Ace of Spades Really Hates Ron Paul, Endorses Re-Election of Barack Obama”

  1. Pathfinder's wife
    December 1st, 2011 @ 11:00 pm

    I just consider him more of an abject political whore (moreso than even the average whorish lot) and scripted, pay for play politician who will cozy up to anybody (emphasis on anybody) if they give him a little somethin’ somethin’.

    The GOP Obama!  Exactly what the country needs!

    Really, look at some of the things he’s said, tie it in with what he’s done, and then follow the money trail — it isn’t, heh, faith inspiring.

    And then there was that kickoff to his announcement — bad juju there (but that’s just a gut reaction).

  2. Pathfinder's wife
    December 1st, 2011 @ 11:06 pm

    I should add, in fairness that Perry isn’t the only GOP canidate that makes causes a peculiar retching, like a hairball, in me — it’s just that he was trumpeted as the Great Conservative Hope and Savior, and thus has become a focus for my ire.
      I’m not a big fan of Romney either nor all that comfortable with Newt.

  3. andycanuck
    December 1st, 2011 @ 11:19 pm

    Romney’s grandpa accused Huntsman’s grampa of wearing white after Labor Day. Romney almost lost an eye from the tiny plastic sword holding the olives when he had the martini thrown in his face.

  4. Anonymous
    December 1st, 2011 @ 11:19 pm

    I think you mean Ron Huckabee

  5. Anonymous
    December 1st, 2011 @ 11:44 pm

    Ace is one of the few who can crank up the snark to 11.  I didn’t take it very seriously.

  6. Finrod Felagund
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 12:19 am

    We were warned nearly 35 years ago about the dangers  of pigs on the wing.
     

  7. Anonymous
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 8:14 am

    This is what KILLS me: all Paul does is recite what the CIA reports say about Terrorism! That makes him a nut because he doesn’t sanitize it in the propaganda that conservatives are used to hearing.
    Check out the Rumsfeld commissioned Chicago Project on Terrorism for the most complete terror database in the world and it validates what Paul says about the middle east.

  8. ThePaganTemple
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 8:36 am

    @Republicanmother Regardless of what he bases it on he still beclowns himself by suggesting we can get along and be friends with the Iranian regime, and that they have as much right to a nuclear weapon as “anybody else”. It’s bullshit, and it bespeaks a naivety that could be disastrous in any kind of position of influence, let alone the presidency.

  9. Anonymous
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 9:39 am

    What’s bullshit is that Pakistan has nuclear weapons and they have some serious Islamic jihadiness in that country and they’re what? An ally of the US? Until the NATO bombing they were. Who’s the naive one?

    The current Iranian regime would be gone in short order if that country could be re-opened, as the population is not representative of the government. Iran was an ally of the US for many decades, as long as an American puppet dictator was calling the shots, that is. The mafia has more moral authority than the US Gov. at this point.

    *golf clap* you used all the propaganda trigger words: Iran, nuclear, naivety, and regime. I’m sure they were field tested in the RAND corporation offices for their effectiveness.

  10. The Wondering Jew
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 10:27 am

    I will take the fine judgement shown in this comment as fully indicative of what I have come to expect from the fanatical anti-Paul crowd . . .

  11. The Wondering Jew
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 10:30 am

    TPT, thanks for this, especially since I know you don’t particularly care for Paul.  In addition to a number of top-quality conservative supporters, he does attract his fair share of cranks but I am quite confident in saying that he is neither racist nor anti-Semitic.

    DaveO some of the stuff you are writing about Paul on this thread is just nuts.  Sure, the ideas aren’t original to Paul, but trust me, he was the only person in politics saying them during the last election and for many years before. And the notion that Paul supporters, as a group, were trying to support McCain in 2008 when they knew their guy couldn’t win– I mean it’s literally crazy. 

    I was involved with Paul’s grassroots in 2008, and the notion that frankly as a group, they cared which fake “conservative” among the other choices won the nomination is an absolute joke.

  12. ThePaganTemple
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 10:42 am

    @Republicanmother-Pakistan already has nukes, so we have to tailor our policies accordingly. Things are coming to a head, and have been for some time, the topper being when it looks to many of us like Pakistan was providing safe harbor to Bin Laden all along. But they are still “allies” of convenience. Iran has been hostile for three decades. Its more than just incidents during the Carter era, you conveniently ignore they are the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism, including Hezbollah and Hamas. Whether you like it or not, they are our enemies and Israel is our allies. All of the self-righteous bleating by Paul and his merry band of Kumbaya singers isn’t going to change reality. Someday we will, we have to, destroy the Iranian regime. We will deal with Pakistan in good time, when we have a President and Senate with a collective spine and set of balls.

  13. Andrew Patrick
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 11:00 am

    Stacy, in attempting to sic the Paulbots on Ace, you’ve brought a few over here.

    Something about honey in a beehive is coming to me, but I can’t put it together.

  14. richard mcenroe
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 11:04 am

    Smedley Butler, the Marine who described the Corps as “company cops for United Fruit.”

  15. richard mcenroe
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 11:05 am

    I’ve seen Ace crank up the snark.. This was hysteria.

  16. Pathfinder's wife
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 11:34 am

    Considering when he was serving, unfortunately it could be seen that way.  This was not a disparagement of the Corps so much as an indictment of the way they were being used. 

  17. AngelaTC
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 11:57 am

    Awesome! Gary Johnson will appreciate your support.  Unless you’re going Green…never can tell about squishy centerists.

    I think the people that the GOP sent screaming away from Bush’s failed policies in 2006 and 2008  would come back in droves, so losing a few big government Republican ideologues wouldn’t matter too much. 
    What would matter, and what I think would happen in the fantasy  land where Ron Paul actually won the nomination, is that the establishment neocons would launch a third party run, because there’s no way they’re going to sit back and watch Ron Paul crash their gravy train.

    They would much rather have a Democrat win than a small government minded conservative, a point Newt made abundantly clear when he literally recruited a Democrat to switch parties to try to beat Paul way back in the ’80’s.

    But it’s a theoretical discussio.  Ron Paul won’t win.  Sadly, that means nothing will change. 

  18. AngelaTC
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 12:01 pm

    Apparently he and I define “American interests” much differently.  I believe that capitalism is mightier than the sword.  

    It’s amazing that people can still defend such a horrifically failed foreign policy with a straight face. 

    But his avatar is a stooge – maybe it’s performance art.

  19. AngelaTC
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 12:06 pm

    But doesn’t it ever occur to you that the people you’re putting faith in  believe have been wrong about everything they’ve told us so far?  Like him or not, everything Paul says is backed up by facts from the CIA and the Pentagon.  He’s a sitting member of Congress – I have no doubt he’s privvy to far more information than I am .  Couple that with the fact that every prediction he’s made was right – I just don’t get the disconnect.   2003 – told us Bin Laden.

  20. Pathfinder's wife
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 2:47 pm

    I suppose by saying that you mean Paulbots shouldn’t be allowed anywhere but on their own private reservation?  And why is that?  If they are idiots, then you can take enjoyment in winning arguements with them easily,no?

    For the record: I don’t consider myself a  Paulbot or necessarily think of myself as a Paul supporter (and Descartes would say that will suffice).  I’m pretty much over supporting any politician at this point in my life — they have a nasty habit of stabbing the public (ergo, me)  in the back.

    I will say that I’m open to supporting or at least listening to the canidates for POTUS (and Paul is one of them and has given me some food for thought — some of his platform I can support quite readily).  Only four have I completely ruled out: Obama, Hillary, Romney, and Perry (and Gingrich had best watch it, he’s close).  I can give reasons why I have utter contempt and disdain for them and am willing to listen to the others. 

  21. Anonymous
    December 2nd, 2011 @ 4:42 pm

    Like I’ve said, our foreign policy as run by the Council on Foreign Relations (laugh if you must but its the truth!) has been a complete cluster&##$
    I’m not naive, but recognize who’s really pulling the strings here. I guess it has to be in a mainstream publication or Rush has to say so for “conservatives” to believe that who controls the money, controls the armies.

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