NRO's The Corner: Obamacare ‘like a house on fire’ with more flammable parts yet to come

cuz Jonah said so.

sounds like an impending disaster! can we buy reverse credit-default-swaps on obamacare's house?

our friend:

In the latest Need to Know, Mona Charen starts off by talking about music. Then she gets into the tawdry subject of Bill Ayers, that “old, washed-up terrorist,” as John McCain described him during the 2008 campaign. We also talk about IRS harassment, Barack Obama, and the press. Mona gives a social-science tour de force on the matter of family breakdown. We wax lyrical, and truthful, about the ability of free enterprise, under the rule of law, to uplift the poor.

please add truthful to the thread title somehow

The Value of Putin
Putin ends up existing to warn us in the West of what we are not.
By Victor Davis Hanson

All that said, there is a value for us in Putin. I don’t mean the strange Pat Buchanan–style admiration for Putin’s creepy reactionary social agenda and his tirades about Western social decadence. Rather, I refer to Putin’s confidence in his unabashedly thuggish means, the brutal fashion in which a modern state so unapologetically embraces the premodern mind to go after its critics, be they journalists or academics, or stifles free debate without worry over Western censure. Putin is a mirror showing more than just what we should not be.

We in the West get into fiery debates over civil union versus gay marriage as the appropriate legal means of recognizing homosexual unions, with all the accompanying charges of insensitivity — without much notice of how the vast majority of gays are treated elsewhere in the world. In contrast, Putin, mostly to global silence, does nothing as his thugs with impunity terrorize gay activists (who mostly demonstrate for basic freedom of speech, not marriage). Miley Cyrus insults our sensibilities and becomes fabulously rich; the Pussy Rioters go to jail.

We in California divert life-saving water to save a baitfish; Putin’s $50 billion Olympics may prove to be an ecological disaster.

that goddamn miley always insulting my sensibilities, maybe she should go to jail, makes you think

on first glance I thought VDH had written Miley was an ecological disaster.

lol @ the idea that the star of Hannah Montana had to insult our sensibilities in order to become fabulously rich

the Pussy Rioters insult our sensibilities and go to jail

bet VDH smacked his lips over that one

the life we save might be a baitfish

We in California divert life-saving water to save a baitfish

i hate him so much

there's no water to divert or not divert. that's the problem. that's the fact.

yup. we should be building new reservoirs, not debating this non-issue

In contrast, Putin, mostly to global silence, does nothing as his thugs with impunity terrorize gay activists (who mostly demonstrate for basic freedom of speech, not marriage).

this isn't true you lying sack of shit

also "Well, we in the liberal West don't care about gays unless they demonstrate for marriage" fuck you

You know he can't hear you, right?

oh shit how do I retract

lol at right-wing putin envy. here's the best part:

Putin is almost Milton’s Satan — as if, in his seductive evil, he yearns for clarity, perhaps even a smackdown, if not just for himself, for us as well. He is not the better man than Obama but, again like Milton’s Satan, the more interesting, if only because he reminds of us of our own limitations.

this is a whole other kettle of right-wing zaniness but TAC's rod dreher -- who normally writes as the magazine's token 'thoughtful christian' voice -- wrote some really disgusting, hateful, misogynistic stuff about pussy riot, pretty much applauding their arrest. finally got me to quit reading that site altogether, except for larison.

did they just compare obama to god? or is it just any american president who's god.

"there are some people to whom health-insurance ought to remain an aspirational luxury"

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/arkansas-private-option-medicaid-021114

goole! Your boy has some thoughts on feminism.

always behind his own stable, that guy

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370451/feminist-mystique-kevin-d-williamson

Feminism began as a simple grievance, mutated into a kind of conspiracy theory (with “patriarchy” filling in for the Jews/Freemasons/Illuminati/Bohemian Grove/reptilian shape-shifters/the fiendish plot of Dr. Fu Manchu/etc.), spent the 1980s in grad school congealing into a ridiculous jargon, and with the booming economy of the 1990s was once again reinvented, this time as a career path.

^^ NRO knows its audience.

a challenger appears

http://thefederalist.com/

Celebrate Love, Not War: Don’t Use Valentine’s Day to Attack Men

Yes, men and women are different. But the answer is not a feminist Promised Land that is exhausting, devoid of love, and not much fun at all.

Bill De Blasio’s Law Enforcement Racket

Is Bill de Blasio about to take New York City’s public safety back to the bad old days of rampant street crime and murder – or is it just a charade?

Most of these contra-feminist pieces rely on the technique of first defining feminism in exactly the terms they prefer to apply to it, then attacking that version. The inevitable conclusion: feminism is horrible and ought to be rejecting by all right-thinking people. What is rarely clear is what they endorse, which is usually a misty, nebulous, sentimental warm-fuzziness that they are certain would arise spontaneously if only feminism weren't impeding its arrival.

I'd say that's the least of their problems, but you are not wrong.

if they're attempting to rebrand the war on women as just ye olde war on feminism that's probably the smartest response they've had yet (/= actual smart respone ftr). there's still alot of women, esp among independent voters, that reject the feminist label cuz they 'don't hate men' or some other taylor swift reason.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/370957/print

Geographically, trans in Latin is a preposition that meant “on the other side” (Caesar refers to the Germans, who dwell “trans Rhenum,” on the other side of the Rhine) and cis meant “on the same side” (Livy describes how in early Rome a certain banished ethnic group, if caught “cis Tiberim,” on this side of the Tiber, had the price of their liberty set at a thousand units of bronze, which sounds like a good deal more than the Gang of Eight would ask for).

Where we now like to apply these to galling (for some) concepts about gender and sex, the Romans used them as prefixes to refer to the province of Gaul that was on the same side of the Alps as the city of Rome — Cisalpine Gaul — and the part that was on just the other side — Transalpine Gaul.

haha

sorry I guess this isn't from The Corner, just NRO.

what we claim is lawless unconstitutional kenyan muslimism under soetero we'd be cool with under the mormon

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370854/democrats-media-slam-president-romney-over-health-care-law-changes-charles-c-w-cooke

thohan
• 3 hours ago

Excellent piece. It's nice to have guys like Cooke on my side.

Check Your Privilege, Facebook! Social Media Giant Slights Members of 51st Gender
By Alec Torres
February 13, 2014 4:34 PM
Comments0

As Patrick Brennan recently discussed on the Corner, it’s getting harder to know how to refer to another person’s gender(s). Now, Facebook is making it even harder.

The Associated Press recently broke the news that Facebook now offers users a customizable gender option with about 50 different gender-identifying terms people can use to describe themselves along with three separate pronoun choices: him, her, or them.

The grammatical debate over the application of the plural pronoun “them” to a single subject aside, it’s a sad sign of the times that Facebook excluded whatever the 51st gender descriptor is, thus committing a hate crime against the dozens of people who probably describe themselves with said descriptor.

How dejected — nay depressed — must flexual people feel knowing that Facebook now accepts cisgender females, Trans*Men, and Trans*Males (don’t worry, the distinctions elude me, too) but not them and their girlfag peers.

Or what of all the trigender people who find out that Facebook will let one choose up to “bigender” but not beyond. They must be at least a third as offended as the flexuals.

it gives me pleasure to think how bad these assholes are gonna hate the future

guys, we're over here: NRO's The Corner: Obamacare ‘like a house on fire’ with more flammable parts yet to come

MODS?

xpost amen
fuck y'all str8 men

jesus christ, that Charles C. W. Cooke 'satire' piece has its head so far up its ass, it could probably discover three or four new genders just by opening its eyes

I used to be way into subjecting myself to the internet conservative cesspool; nice to see that the quality of the prose hasn't slipped:

Among her most enthusiastic boosters is Cecile Richards, daughter of the late Texas governor, who is paid nearly a half-million dollars a year for her work defending the surgical dismemberment of unborn children in the furtherance of sexual convenience.

... And You Will Know Her by the Surgical Dismemberment of Unborn Children in the Furtherance of Sexual Convenience

also, I mean, just, huge roffles at these guys scratching their heads all "The ideology of feminists is incoherent—some of them want one thing, but others want this different thing!! Whatta buncha flighty dames!!!!" (You don't need to keep capitalizing 'feminist' — ED.)

"why is it okay for Hillary to call other women in politics 'whiny', but not for me, a white man at a computer, to continue dragging Anita Hill's name through the mud??" *tears flow into bib*

hahahaha

It’s one thing to be tolerant of what once were known as “alternative lifestyles.” It’s another thing to be asked to celebrate them, as the exuberant mythologizers of Michael Sam and Johnny Weir ask us to do. And it is way beyond the pale to hold forth on any sort of sex life — perhaps apart from self-restraint — as if it’s a form of heroism.

Yet the culture of the professional Left, enthusiastically aided by the establishment media, is going bonkers in pushing active homosexuality (or any one of several exotic variants thereof) as an absolute virtue. One can hardly turn around these days without facing, in fiction or in real life, what amounts to homosexual chic. From the amount of primetime air time afforded to gay Americans, one would think they constitute at least a large minority of the population, rather than the 3 to 5 percent they actually do.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” as Seinfeld wisdom had it. Most Americans assuredly don’t much care what other people do as long, as the saying goes, as they “don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.” And if the Bible tells us it’s a sin, well, we can leave that issue between the putative sinner and a God famous for both judgment and mercy. Our job, speaking spiritually rather than physically, is to love our neighbor, not from some misguided impulse to charity but instead genuinely, as equals — and to worry about not committing our own particular brands of transgression.

active homosexuality (or any one of several exotic variants thereof)

ooh do tell!

*fans self*

Steve_Seattle • 33 minutes ago

For liberals, it is an easy step to go from support of fornication, abortion, pornography, and prostitution to support of homosexuality. It costs them nothing, while giving them an opportunity to bash conservatives as bigoted and unenlightened. For that reason alone, the MSM will not soon drop this issue.
But I sometimes wonder how sincere is this liberal celebration of homosexuality. In less-guarded forms of liberalism, such as blue-collar liberalism, you still hear gay jokes and gay epithets, and these typically go unchallenged even if the participants don't care much about gay marriage. And in unguarded moments, liberals such as Alec Baldwin resort to gay epithets when they are angry, or will refer to some conservative as a "closet homosexual."

I am looking forward to crowds of conservatives, milling about, holding crude signs and fervently chanting, "Down with fornication!"

For liberals, it is an easy step to go from support of fornication, abortion, pornography, and prostitution to support of homosexuality.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kYBdM44_J58/Sa3OeSHaArI/AAAAAAAABbU/k2MeHt1WpXE/s400/PornInUtah.JPG

http://cdn0.dailydot.com/uploaded/images/original/2013/8/27/Screen_Shot_2013-08-27_at_10.00.11_AM.png

anita queen?

OK, here you go!

http://news.tangatawhenua.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/The-Queen-7.jpg

heelllooo loyal subjects!

Quin Hillyer

In which it is shown that Jay Nordlinger has lost his mind.

Decline Is a Choice. A Bad One. But People Still Choose It. I Don't Understand It. Decline Is Bad. Hello. Is This On.

http://i.imgur.com/vrib3xM.png

The best comment I've seen in forever, on Roy Edroso's alicublog about Rich Lowry and this whole Arizona thing:

Also, if you go back to Quin Hillyer on the fainting couch about Johnny Weir gaying up figure skating, this week brings us National Review writers protecting the following from gays: 1) figure skating 2) bakers 3) florists 4) photographers. They can't even figure out which end of the slippery slope is which.

Charles Pierce had fun with LOLry: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Brewer_Veto

nutrition information labels about to become "a whole lot more intrusive":

These reforms are not minor. The most important change is that they are increasing the size of a serving, so all foods and beverages will immediately appear to be more calorie-laden than before. Anyone watching their calories could be easily caught out by this, and eat less, for instance. But that is irrelevant to the main point at issue here — the role of the First Lady.

Today's nutrition labels state the size of a serving and the number of calories in a serving of that size. Under the immanent doomsday scenario, nutrition labels will *gasp* state the size of a serving and the number of calories in a serving of that size.

dlh you dropped the best line:

But that is irrelevant to the main point at issue here — the role of the First Lady. As one food-industry insider told Politico, “I don’t think anyone is going to be foolish enough to attack the first lady — that’s just stupid.”

how wrong you are, food-industry insider

Henry Burlingame • 42 minutes ago
How about a regulation requiring Michelle Obama to put a warning label on her fat ass?

With all that exercise and healthy eating? I think not.

yeah. i have a crush on FLOTUS, and i'm pretty sure that's the first time in my lifetime i could say that.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/legacy/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/nancy_reagan_mr_t_2.jpg

did nothing for me.

what about Nancy?

I hear she gave Too $hort a blowjob

yeah 'michelle obama is disgustingly hypocritically fat' is one of those rightwing memes that's so mystifying i don't know if it's misogyny or racism or what kind of insanity.

"or"

they also think her clothing style is "trashy"

racogyny

or assholism, that trips off the tongue a little better

they also think her clothing style is "trashy"

Michelle Obama is exquisitely well-dressed.

misogyny, racism, and closeted homosexuality :)

obama dentata

classic headline and byline:

How We Can Make Putin Pay, and Why We Must
By Elliott Abrams
March 3, 2014 2:44 PM

Putin pays $50 at least

During investigation of the Iran-Contra Affair, Lawrence Walsh, the Independent Counsel tasked with investigating the case, prepared multiple felony counts against Abrams but never indicted him.[24] Instead, Abrams cooperated with Walsh and entered into a plea agreement wherein he pled guilty to two misdemeanors of withholding information from Congress.[25] He was sentenced to a $50 fine, probation for two years, and 100 hours of community service.

I constantly see Right Wing relatives comparing her to Marie Antoinette and seem to think that the Obamas are living like monarchy while the rest of the US starves which is a little odd to me because nothing they do seems flashy and I think they take fewer vacations than other families in the White House.

They hate success.

Anyway, last week, I felt a surge of bitterness. Why? I am disliking the current occupant of the White House more than ever. And, on seeing this house, I winced. And then I caught myself: "Come on, Jay. It's still the White House. Presidents come and go. This is a great and glorious country, with a constitution, separation of powers, regular elections . . . Don't have an ‘our planes' attitude." Like others, I suppose, I have to remind myself of this from time to time. I think I'll need ever more frequent reminders in coming years.

it's just... sometimes it's so hard to be a jingoistic fuckhead, you know?

well, yeah

It's so extra funny when these types complain about unemployed people being lazy and liberals not wanting to work and stuff. This guy's job is basically transcribing a toddler-age hissy fit into a string of multisyllabic words.

Mr. Farrow and the Obama Syndrome
By Victor Davis Hanson
March 4, 2014 1:08 PM
Comments18
Print Text

Young, charismatic, good-looking, hip, and glib are all superficial traits that supposedly cerebral liberal elites have a bad habit of believing trump experience, knowledge, humility, and what the Greeks called pathei mathos, learning through requisite pain. Once someone is acclaimed as a liberal prodigy by elites, stamped with the right Ivy League brand and aristocratic contacts that resonate through networking and cocktail parties along the Boston to D.C. corridor, all normal cross-examination seems to end.

He is anointed a genius—and then usually Nemesis strikes, in the fashion that the once just-about-to-be-appointed New York senator Caroline Kennedy could not find a polling place or finish a sentence without a “you know” (142 times in an interview), or Barack Obama became Phaethon, his crashing chariot our presidency, and his collision scorching those below him. Harvard Law can teach one everything one needs to know except how to pronounce corpsmen, establish a deadline, red line, or step-over line, and why not to be post-election flexible with Vladimir Putin who really was America’s chief conventional worry all along.

In which elite prep school did Victor Hanson learn his annoying habit of ill-advised classical allusions?

george w, otoh, was pathei mathos incarnate

xp from lewis lapham, no doubt

I dropped by VDH's wiki page and (surprise!) I find that he has a PhD from Stanford from which post he berates elitism, and a fellowship at the Hoover Institute from which vantage he berates networking in the Boston to D.C. corridor. No exclusive prep school, though. His Stanford doctorate was in classics, so the urge to flash his credentials is vestigial.

Victor Davis Hanson imagines himself a very tall poppy indeed

wow, such humility

Vladimir Putin who really was America’s chief conventional worry all along.

this feels like a pretty serious case of retconning

what galling prose

One wonders why "conventional" worries merit a special category of worry, or why he suddenly wants to elevate that category ahead of nuclear worries or terrorist worries, which right-wingers seem to rate far higher than Russian tanks whenever it is more convenient to their aims.

Vladimir Putin Dr. Doom who really was America’s chief conventional worry all along.

Vladimir Putin who really was America’s chief conventional worry all along.

hey did i just blink or did VDH admit to being wrong about foreign policy for the past 20 years

oh i see he threw "conventional" in there, very clever, doctor

conventional like non-nuclear? conventional like non-terror? conventional like non-?

Conventional like "white."

Rick Perry, intellectual.

Perry’s roof-raising speech Friday, which was festooned with ten-dollar words and an emphasis on state governance as a mechanism for crowd-sourcing solutions, broke through in part because it came in a new package: Perry the collected-but-not-cool thinking man, wearing a muted tie, a bespectacled elder statesman whose long tenure as chief executive of the Lone Star state bestowed wisdom on him while showering prosperity on Texans.

"You can’t see Perry’s sensible shoes, but he’s working a subdued, knees-together posture, modestly leaning in to his interlocutor, fully committed to the pursuit of better solutions."

Very disappointed I was not the first to write such insightful prose.

Showering prosperity - MAKE IT RAIN!

so, he put on glasses?

in which Jonah explains how his daughter isn't bossy

jonah makes a stylistic breakthrough. four pages! subheadings! i think he may have discovered dfw.

So why all the throat clearing about a point anyone this side of Joe Biden can grasp? Well, first of all, if you haven’t learned by now, the G-File is a lot like riding a bike to Gary, Ind.; the best part is the journey, not the destination.

[W]hen George W. Bush was proposing to create private accounts for social security, liberals reacted like he wanted to put a Hooters in the Vatican. (That analogy only works if you assume liberals have a sense of piety with regard to the Vatican — or disdain for Hooters. If you can’t get your head around that, substitute “liberals reacted as if he wanted Lena Dunham to stop doing nude scenes and do something worthwhile with her life.”)

disraeligears • 2 hours ago

I was watching The Book of Daniel last night, and in it they made a great point of the fact that though Darius did not want to throw Daniel into the lion's den, his advisors, after doing a a laborious search, could find no law which would allow Darius to abrogate his own law. So, with much regret, Daniel had to go into the lion's den, but Obama, having much greater power than the autocrat Darius, can simply make the law whatever suits him at the moment.

disraeligears

I can see the congratulatory pat he gives his thigh as he composed the last sentence

Fans of “The Adventures of Letterman” — not the once-funny late-night-talk-show host, but the cartoon from The Electric Company (narrated by Joan Rivers!) – might remember that the superhero used letters to thwart any threat. The villainous (oddly turban-wearing) Spell Binder would use his wand to change the “L” in “light” into an “N” for “night,” causing the world to be plunged into darkness, or he’d change “pear” to “bear,” making things awkward for a young lady who intended to eat a pear. Letterman — who was faster than a rolling “O” — would swoop in to save the day. (Just watch the videos I linked to, it will explain everything.) Post-modernists are a bit like Spell Binder. They hang quotation marks on any capital T Truth and the weight pulls that top bar in the capital letter “T” down until it becomes a smaller, lowercase letter; making “the Truth” into simply “a ‘truth.’”

oddly turban-wearing

This makes a Bryn Mawr seminar (unless they prefer to call them “ovulars” now) on post-modern themes in the sermons of Thulsa Doom seem like a really productive use of time.

this convo has gone into weird places but can we all at least agree that obamacare is a job-killing tax-and-spend armaggedon that's ruined the country irreversibly and we are forever doomed i feel like this is now beyond question

Well, we all know how the 'job creator' class likes the whine the most when things are going their way.

likes to whine the most

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/373579/foolish-anti-vax-cause-rich-lowry

here entirely and solely for the comments

The problem of reemerging diseases is a problem of illegal
imagration. In third world hell holes they don’t have mandatory vacation protocols for Jenny McCarthy to rail against.
Vaccinated fence jumpers number in the many millions. Anti Vaxers grumble but take the shots or their kids can't go to school.

They come here with the blessing of Marco Rubio and spread
formally dead diseases.

Whooping cough, measles, polio are all making a resurgence
but don’t blame Jenny McCarthy blame Juanita Martinez

I propose we make illegal imagration against the law.

mandatory vacation protocols

Altalena Vekis • 4 hours ago

And is it just COINCIDENCE that while Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln, Lincoln had a secretary named Vaccine?

lord help me i lol'd

formally dead diseases

Les maladies revenantes!

Spring is upon us at last, and with it is the new spring issue of National Affairs. Among the offerings:

-Jim Manzi on how to revive American innovation
-Ron Haskins on whether government can encourage marriage
-Judah Bellin on reforming student loans
-Gabriel Schoenfeld on the trouble with shield laws
-Ilan Wurman on originalism and the founders
-Diana Schaub on the Gettysburg Address

-Ron Haskins on whether government can encourage marriage

After which he examines whether government can contain communism.

‘Seems an Awful Waste’
By Jay Nordlinger
March 25, 2014 8:36 AM

When I saw the headline “Aborted babies incinerated to heat UK hospitals” (story here), I thought of Sweeney Todd. Reason is, I saw this Sondheim musical recently, and reviewed it here. Sweeney Todd can put you in a macabre frame of mind.

Remember, Mrs. Lovett is a maker of meat pies. Her friend Sweeney has just killed someone — and will kill many more. They are talking about how to dispose of the first victim’s corpse. And Mrs. Lovett gets an idea.

“Well, you know me, sometimes bright ideas just pop right into my head, and I keep thinking . . . Seems a downright shame . . .” Sweeney wonders, “Shame?” Mrs. Lovett continues, “ Seems an awful waste . . . Such a nice plump frame Wot’s-his-name has . . . Had . . . Has . . . Nor it can’t be traced. Business needs a lift — debts to be erased — think of it as thrift. As a gift. If you get my drift . . .”

Sweeney doesn’t. Mrs. Lovett continues, “Seems an awful waste. I mean, with the price of meat what it is, when you get it, if you get it.” Sweeney says, “Ah!” Mrs. Lovett answers, “Good, you got it.”

“Mrs. Lovett, what a charming notion,” says Sweeney, “eminently practical and yet appropriate as always. . . . How delectable! Also undetectable.”

A question: If an unborn child is just a “meaningless blob of protoplasm” (the phrase I grew up with), what’s the rumpus about using this blob for a little fuel? Why the squeamishness?

Either it’s a baby or it’s meaningless matter. Decide, please. (The cries I always heard were, “It’s not that simple!” Then you grew up, thought, and realized, “Yeah, it kind of is, actually.”)

(the phrase I grew up with)

I am so glad Jay finally grew up.

"meaningless blob of protoplasm”

25 results, half of them Nordlinger.

“We’re gathered to celebrate Women’s History Month, but I don’t celebrate Women’s History Month,” announced writer Mona Charen, one of the panelists. “It doesn’t interest me whether a person who happens to share my chromosomes sits in the Oval Office. It doesn’t interest me how many women members of the Senate there are.”

What interests Charen and the other women on the stage is their belief, as Charen put it, that “feminism has done so much damage to happiness.” And the solution to this damage, it turns out, is matrimony — the same thing that will solve problems such as income inequality and the Republican Party’s standing among women.

“We should show concern for everybody by extending the marriage franchise to everybody,” panelist Mollie Hemingway proposed. “Everybody go out, right now, go get married if you’re not married,” she said to laughter, “and we should be able to solve all these problems.”

“If we truly want women to thrive,” Charen concurred, “we have to revive the marriage norm.”

putting the cats bag in the bag eh

Mona Charen and Hemingway, writers and think tankers, follow that advice obv.

"We have to revive the marriage, Norm"

http://ifanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/norm-peterson.jpg

man, fuck you for making me read dana milbank!

I got a better one for you.

holy fuckin shit holy fuckin shit holy fuckin shit holy fuckin shit

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/375135/happiness-jay-nordlinger

hahahahaaaaa omg omg nothing more perfect will happen

Before I click, is it anything like Brooks' column

it's definitely an amusing if inevitable development. at the very least they've finally found the guy capable of filling john simon's shoes.

Please be more direct, editors.

Justice Sotomayor is here arguing in effect that if a constitutional referendum doesn’t go the NAACP’s way, then its effects are invalid. This is not an exaggeration: Justice Soyomayor argues explicitly that Michigan’s voters would have been within their rights to, for example, lobby university authorities to adopt race-neutral admissions standards but that by adopting a constitutional amendment insisting on race neutrality, thereby transferring the decision from the education bureaucrats to the people themselves and their constitution, they “changed the rules in the middle of the game.” Her opinion is legally illiterate and logically indefensible, and the still-young career of this self-described “wise Latina” on the Supreme Court already offers a case study in the moral and legal corrosion that inevitably results from elevating ethnic-identity politics over the law. Justice Sotomayor has revealed herself as a naked and bare-knuckled political activist with barely even a pretense of attending to the law, and the years she has left to subvert the law will be a generation-long reminder of the violence the Obama administration has done to our constitutional order.

the moral and legal corrosion that inevitably results from elevating ethniccorporate-identity politics over the law

fixed it for ya

Wow so much violence give the US a legal bandaid.

ok i'm to the left of sotomayor but i still think her legal reasoning doesn't quite pass the BS detector. the hyperbole and race-baiting surrounding that observation i could do without.

I somehow doubt you are to left of Sotomayor on issues of affirmative action.

Kennedy's reasoning OTOH throws off all kinds of BS alarms. "If we talk about race we're perpetuating the idea of race, but if we ignore it it'll all go away like the fantasy it is."

that's the standard right wing line about affirmative action: that it's the REAL racism

Kevin Williamson continues to embarrass himself.

That was the short version??

think i finally stopped reading this (any future armond reviews aside of course)

perhaps of use: http://www.donotlink.com

Conservative students have to put up with liberal commencement speakers all the time. Democratic and liberal bigwigs dominate the commencement circuit. Once in a blue moon, liberal students (and faculty) are asked to put up with a conservative speaker. But will they? No. At least not at Rutgers. (See the news here.)

Someone on the Democratic side — perhaps President Obama — should say, “I hate the Republican party and everything they stand for, but this is wrong. This is not right in America.” Is there anyone big enough on the Democratic side to do that?

Personally, I wouldn’t like it if a Democratic former secretary of state were hounded out. There has got to be some Democrat, somewhere, who doesn’t like what has happened at Rutgers.

P.S. If conservatives wanted to try their hand at the Left’s game, they could say, “Rutgers apparently can’t stand the sight or sound of an independent black woman.” They could direct the same gibe at Brandeis (for Hirsi Ali). But that is a dirty game.

P.P.S. What a gracious woman Condoleezza Rice is. She should run for president. But then, in view of 2012, does the American public appreciate graciousness? They chose Obama and Biden, those true gents, over Romney and Ryan.

One of my friends from Standford had Condoleeza Rice as her thesis advisor, I asked if she actually signed her thesis or just stamped it with her cloven hoof.

Recent losing presidential candidates ranked by graciousness (most gracious to least)

1. McCain
2. Kerry
3. Romney
4. Gore (with much justification)

I don't remember the VPs well enough to really rank them on this scale but terrifyingly enough John Edwards might come out on top here? Tempted to go back one more election, my vague memory is that Jack Kemp despite being politically horrifying in many ways seemed like a relatively gracious dude.

he was.

otm:

Andrew C. McCarthy @AndrewCMcCarthy
Advice for #Benghazi Select Cmte: Don't Draft @AndrewCMcCarthy for special counsel - My @NROcorner post http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/377243/advice-benghazi-select-committee-dont-draft-mccarthy-andrew-c-mccarthy …

Kevin Williams:

His demeanor is that of a man who has been diagnosed with cancer who puts on a brave face, gets up every morning, and reiterates his determination to “beat this thing.” (Not that I don’t think the presidency is a cancer, but that’s a point for a different post.)

It’s a remarkable talent he has. When he was getting beat up politically for his association with that goofy racist clergyman, he lectured us on the evils of racism, as though we’d been the ones sitting in on those hateful sermons. Every time he has some spectacular screw-up, which seems to be about once a quarter, he pronounces himself outraged, as though he had not failed us but had been failed himself.

So Barack Obama has sworn that he will not tolerate the incompetence of the Obama administration. I’d like to think that that means he is going to resign, but I don’t think that’s what he meant.

how witty! watch your back, jay nordlinger! just kiddin' there's room for both

in HELL

Every time he has some spectacular screw-up, which seems to be about once a quarter, he pronounces himself outraged, as though he had not failed us but had been failed himself.

wow it's almost like authority figures are not omniscient superheroes.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_05/thats_kind_of_racist050539.php

Discussing Williamson's description of African-Americans and all single women

remarkably risk-averse compared to traditional conservative constituencies such as white men and business owners.
remarkably risk-averse compared to traditional conservative constituencies such as white men and business owners.

He's so clueless. Plus I guess he doesn't have an editor (or the editor is just as tone-deaf and insulated regarding how such phrasing looks. He really thinks he's gonna win over support with that line comparing all black people and all single women to folks who call a psychic hotline!)

George Will on Friday became the latest conservative pundit to attempt to debunk sexual assault statistics, arguing that universities' efforts to address campus rape have made "victimhood a coveted status."

In a column for the Washington Post, Will argues that universities are basing their definition of sexual assault on a "Washington" education, which is leading to inflated statistics.

“They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous ('micro-aggressions,' often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate," he wrote.

Will offers an anecdote from a student at Swarthmore College, in which a woman reported a rape after a former sexual partner wouldn't take no for an answer. Will implies that because the incident occurred "with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months," she wasn't sexually assaulted.

"I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep," the woman wrote about the encounter.

"Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped," Will wrote about the Swarthmore student. "Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of 'sexual assault' victims. It vows to excavate equities from the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults."

first against the wall etc.

as opposed to this cocktail of cocktails, reprehensible right wing ideology, and faux sophistication of today's prolonged senescence of especially especially especially privileged old assholes.

Bartender! Two of those, please!

I am glad someone is finally taking a stand against rape victims.

camille paglia covered this pretty exhaustively already

i suppose if anybody should be able to think they can recognize barely trying

What a piece of shit. I have to say, i thought Ross Douthat's column a few weeks ago on this topic was quite good. Not sure it makes up for that "have more babies, white people!" column, but he clearly put some thought into it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/opinion/sunday/douthat-rape-and-the-college-brand.html

this guy is always worth reading

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/380024/goes-mosul-kevin-d-williamson

Conor Friedersdorf in George F. Will's defense:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/rage-against-the-outrage-machine/373069/

Also:

Sweet Diversity
By Jay Nordlinger
June 25, 2014 9:06 AM

Sometimes I think that we on the right are the only defenders of diversity.

i was thinking about polling diversity V. redistribution earlier today. he's right tho that diversity was a right-wing hijacking of policy.

Comments on comments, so glad these people have jobs. Really contributing a lot to make the world a better place.

So, when are you] going to sign up for the National Review 2014 Post-Election Caribbean Cruise? We’ve got nearly 270 cabins booked for what is going to be the conservative event of the year (scheduled for November 9th to the 16th). Ya snooze, ya looze — don’t let that happen to you. Get complete information about the trip — learn about who the 40-plus great speakers are, the wonderful Allure of the Seas, affordable and luxurious staterooms, NR’s exclusive programs of seminars, receptions, “Night Owls,” and smokers, and so much more — at www.nrcruise.com.​

don't be a loozer

Anybody been following the "Postmodern Conservative" blog that relocated to NRO?

Armond's movie column?

NR’s exclusive programs of seminars, receptions, “Night Owls,” and smokers
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Bktad0_PktY/S4h271Q8m9I/AAAAAAAABaI/cugXdbXaSmg/s400/KathrynJeanLopezPortrait.jpg
I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I sure don't want to hurt no one

Get ready for some laffs, guys

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/383807/left-cool-king-jonah-goldberg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sW65ilskOC8/SnDSeirAm7I/AAAAAAAAY9k/FEqUPL1gHjs/s400/JonahGoldberginCar.jpg

What justification can there be for this? Well, we could talk in general terms about whether “catharsis” or “shock-tactics” might provide one, but the bottom-line is that there can be no justification for “Masters of War” unless the historicist or Leninist theories about war are true .

http://i.imgur.com/NpUpFa7.jpg

Mona, count me a churl, but I would not read much into Hillary Clinton’s praise of George W. Bush. She praised him on one ground: his AIDS relief in Africa. That is the one thing Democrats give W. credit for. Sort of like when WFB died, and a lot of people acted like the only thing he had ever done in his whole, long, magnificent life was support the legalization of pot. They thought that was cool.

Two springs ago, I wrote about the dedication ceremony of the GWB Center at SMU. All the former presidents were there, plus the incumbent. And each of the Democrats — Obama, Clinton, and Carter — heaped praise on W. for his policy on Africa. Carter actually said, “Mr. President, let me say that I’m filled with admiration for you and deep gratitude for you,” because of “the great contributions you’ve made to the most needy people on earth.”

Clinton and Obama made the same sounds. Better than nothing, I suppose. But I could get excited if a Democrat praised, say, W.’s stance against “partial-birth abortion.”

(Mona, please feel free to set me straight either here online or in our next podcast. My current mood is decidedly churlish. It seems not to be in a hurry to pass . . .)

when will one of the crazed lefties these ppl always complain about messily murder them

your mood, Dan, is decidedly churlish.

what else did WFB do besides inspire faux-intellectualism on the right.

Well, this is just a gem: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/384081/smarter-thou-charles-c-w-cooke

Going from angry bitter nerd rant against Fake Nerds to angry bitter nerd rant against the left

*clicks* not

Woe, that National Review comments section is some ninth circle of hell. Never again...

Years ago, I worked for a man who was a fairly high-flying lawyer. He went to three storied schools: Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard (in that order, I believe). One day, I got to asking him where he was from. West Virginia, he said. The family was poor. I don’t think there was a father. I believe it was a no-electricity, no-running-water situation. I believe he did not have a proper pair of shoes until 14 or something.

What I remember specifically is this: There were no books in the house, of course. But there was one guy in town who was well off — he was the banker, maybe — and he had books. He let Michael read pretty much all of them.

I remember thinking, “To much of the world, Michael is just another ‘privileged white male.’ Yet if he were of a different color — or even of the other sex — he would be hailed as a great bootstraps story.”

This brings me to Maine: and the governor, Paul LePage. He was born in Lewiston — no garden spot — in 1948. He was the first of 18 children. The family was Franco-American, and French-speaking. Paul’s father was a mill worker and drunk. A violent drunk. He beat the hell out of Paul, who escaped home at age eleven. Paul lived on the streets for two years — sleeping in stables and strip joints and the like. Eventually, a couple of families kept an eye on him. When he got to college age, he could not get in, because his English wasn’t good enough: He spoke French. But he finessed that — there’s a French word — and he worked his way up.

Okay, my point is this: LePage is a conservative Republican — and fantastically, sometimes thrillingly unpolished — but he if were a liberal Democrat, he would be a national celebrity as Horatio Alger incarnate. There’d be movies and songs and poems about him.

Am I expressing conservative paranoia and self-pity about the media and “the culture”? Or am I simply acquainted with reality?

By the way: If Clarence Thomas were a liberal Democrat, instead of a conservative Republican, his story would be taught to every child in the land, and his poster would be ubiquitous on kids’ walls. Hell, he might be on a coin already.

Imagine a world where our children all had posters of Clarence Thomas instead of Sonya Sotomayor.

if ifs and ands were pots and pans...

If Clarence Thomas were a liberal Democrat, instead of a conservative Republican, his story would be taught to every child in the land, and his poster would be ubiquitous on kids’ walls. Hell, he might be on a coin already.

or a Coke can ;-)

The Monster Maims without Mercy
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
August 11, 2014 3:09 PM
Comments0

Print Text

I just googled Christians in Iraq and a photo of President Obama playing golf was the first news item that came up.

I’m sorry, but that’s our problem. We act as if everything is the same old political bickering until someone gets hurt. We notice a difference when we are attacked — but here at home. That stops us, obviously.

We pay attention when Ted Cruz or Rand Paul take to the floor of the Senate and read the phone book or otherwise talk until we’re sick of them and/or the news coverage. We notice a difference when Eric Cantor loses when few saw it coming. But everything’s pretty much same-old otherwise. Cynical, yawning, back to our hardened sides or indifference.

But when people are suffering and dying how can we be so comfortable ignoring it – whether they be innocent unborn children or elderly in the hospital or clinic closest to us or families hoping for a better life or Christians refusing to surrender to intolerance or militant Islamic tyranny?

Is this who we are?

News flash: K Lopez contemplates becoming Mother Theresa long enough to write a column. Later drops the idea as likely to interfere with her current compassionate lifestyle of pointing our attention at innocent unborn children, elderly in the hospital or clinic closest to us, families hoping for a better life, and Christians refusing to surrender to intolerance or militant Islamic tyranny.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c163/wvferrell/db94891b-9626-47e3-a700-519b79b3e080_zps1b932576.png

kevin d. williamson's latest anti-illinois article begins "Hey, hey craaaaaacka!"

Nordlinger has a post about the knockout game and Jonah has a post about bringing back the Vatican army

the primate thing you could maybe get away with, maybe, but 3/5 ffs

they can't help but be 'clever' in their straight-up racist shit-eating assholedom

In Impromptus today — the first part of a “Salzburg Journal” — I say something about the word Polizei: which has a stigma for me. The German word for police sounds more sinister than words for police in other languages — to me. This is a personal thing, though I bet others share it.

You remember the Volkspolizei in East Germany, abbreviated to VoPo. You did not want to be caught in the snares of the VoPo, any more than you wanted to be caught in the snares of the KGB (or the Gestapo).

Here in the Corner, I thought I’d mention some other German words: schnell, raus. These words always remind me of Hogan’s Heroes, so help me (though schnell is a fairly common marking in music).

How about Führer, an innocent word, or formerly innocent word, meaning “leader”? You will find it and related words throughout the Bible, as in “er führet mich auf rechter Strasse” — “he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness.”

Are these words to be . . . verboten (speaking of German)? It’s all in the ear, and probably the age and the nationality, of the listener.

Is 'Fuhrer' used as a known in modern German Bibles? Honestly curious.

This is an absolute masterwork, from the URL to the final period.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/386539/holders-bank-america-heist-funds-lefts-community-organizer-shock-troops-andrew-c

first sentence in
http://i.imgur.com/Rh8sq4f.gif

Just a little over a month after being fired for at least 41 instances of plagiarism, former BuzzFeed viral politics editor Benny Johnson has been hired as The National Review’s first-ever social-media director.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/benny-johnson-hired-by-national-review.html

fits the profile

Benny made a terrible mistake. But he has owned up to it and learned from it," said National Review editor Rich Lowry. "He's a talented journalist, with obviously a lot to contribute. He knows he's joining a storied institution at NR, and we look forward to his helping us carry on our mission across all platforms."

Kevin Williamson has words for those vermin who participated in yesterday's climate change rally:

The streets of Manhattan are teeming with hippie filth this afternoon as the People’s Climate March (and Rally Against Personal Hygiene on General Principles) rolls through town like an addled occupation force. One particularly loopy-looking couple of well-seasoned veterans of the protest circuit, little signs reading “Divest from Fossil Fuels” pinned to their shirts, were desperately trying to hail a taxi. New York City taxis, as everybody knows, run on magic. I offered them a ride in my invisible solar-powered unicorn chariot; they did not take me up on it. I assume Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore shared a unicycle to get here.

But Grover and Moonbeam were far from the strangest or most ironic sight in the city today. Across town, the section of Park Avenue fronting the Waldorf was a sea of Communist banners, as if that kid from Rolling Stone had finally had all his dreams come true. It was some sort of China rally. The Chinese have good cause to be proud of their civilization, but not of that flag, and the government it represents, the so-called People’s Republic.

People’s March. People’s Republic. Listen to the Left, and they’ll always tell you who they really are.

"teeming with hippie filth"!!!!

That reads like he wrote it using a Mad Libs pad.

^This guy knows the power of sarcasm to sway the unreflective mind.

xp

"hippie filth"? haha the protestors I saw were mostly well-scrubbed college kids. kw channeling spiro agnew or rabid hippie-baiting TV host joe pyne

ludicrous, crusty, Morton Downey Jr-esque dullardry is the only kind of machismo these feebs can even slightly convincingly approximate.

right wing journos' MO is always to go to a protest and search for the weirdest outliers, then say "The left reveals itself!"

our favorite NRO denizen loved it:

I would like to add something quick to Kevin’s post. (I’m too nervous to watch every pitch of the Tigers versus the Royals.) I spent some time near the crowd today — and that crowd was more like a mob, in my view. Swarms of zealots, screaming — literally screaming — against a devil they call “fossil fuels.” These people did not seem to me democrats assembling in support of a cause (however misguided). They struck me as ideologues, people in the grip of a negative passion, the kind of mob that would be wowed by Hugo Chávez.

I hope I do them an injustice. (But I doubt it.)

P.S. I have never much liked the recent expression “on steroids” — that got old within a year of its regular use, to me. But Manhattan today has been Ann Arbor on steroids. (Some readers know that Ann Arbor is my hometown and a frequent punching bag of mine.)

P.P.S. If only people felt as passionately against dictatorship and human-rights abuses — in China, Cuba, the Arab world, and elsewhere — as they do against fossil fuels. There are real enemies in the world, but oil and natural gas aren’t one of them (or two of them). And against what is the people’s fury directed? Against what do the schoolteachers preach? Of course.

Those of us who have been working against various mandates imposed by the Affordable Care Act are as a matter of fact attempting to extricate ourselves from involvement in Lena Dunham’s sex life, the details of which we would gratefully leave to her own idiosyncratic management. It is the so-called Affordable Care Act that has involved us in subsidizing birth control, abortifacients, surgical abortions, and who knows what else, for the strong, powerful, self-actualized American woman who cannot figure out how to walk into Walgreens, lay down the price of a latte, and walk out with her own birth-control pills, no federal intervention necessary. The very conservative editors of this magazine are in fact trying to make it easier for them to do so with over-the-counter birth control. I suspect that Miss Dunham does not know very many conservatives, so allow me to pass along the message: We really, truly, sincerely do not wish to be involved in your sex life.

...which is why i wrote this paragraph.

nothing like kevin williamson straight up lying about what justice RBG said about abortion and non-rich women. and then the next day saying women who've had an abortion should be hanged.

Okay, I mean, she knows, right?

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/390235/me-corner-maggie-gallagher

the comments are hilarious

I wonder if that one son of hers just kinda shrugs at the drunk texts at 2 am.

the comments seem to confirm that 90 percent of NRO's traffic is hate reading

They probably checked their subscriber numbers and realized "Wait, the only people who actually support us financially are the ones who take our damn cruises."

Gary Thomas Byrne-McIntire • an hour ago

Interesting music selection.. R.E.M. --Stipe stated, "I don’t. I think there’s a line drawn between gay and queer, and for me, queer describes something that’s more inclusive of the grey areas."

would really like to know exactly how she interprets that song and video

that was just a dream?

amazing that the lol @ maggie havent been deleted (yet)

^ comments I mean. earlier k-lo posted her usual lukewarm oatmeal about the catholic synod and got her ass handed back by the corner's reliably homophobic professional catholics. they're incredible, literally "more catholic than the pope" and utterly lacking what the nuns used to call the virtue of humility.

heard George Weigel on NPR today in the car and underneath his usual condescending bluster he sounded worried.

I had to mention George Will's column

One of the wonders of this political moment is feminist contentment about the infantilization of women in the name of progressive politics. Government, encouraging academic administrations to micromanage campus sexual interactions, now assumes that, absent a script, women cannot cope. And the Democrats’ trope about the Republicans’ “war on women” clearly assumes that women are civic illiterates.

it gets better

KEEP NRO WEIRD

https://twitter.com/reihan/status/525737392842752000

Gourd Opinion Haver ‏@SeanRMoorhead 17h17 hours ago

.@reihan I am a licensed sexual orientation reparative therapist in Provo. Put me on the reverse racism beat and you'll never regret it.

A Question of the Hour
By Jay Nordlinger

In recent years, I’ve had several occasions to go to Norway, and a visit to that country will make you think about immigration, assimilation, and all that jazz. So will a visit to Holland, for example. Anyway, I returned from Norway a couple of days ago.

While there, I thought of something Mark Steyn said — one of his greatest Broadway analogies ever. Some people think that a new Europe will be essentially like a cast change of Hello, Dolly! You may remember the “black Hello, Dolly!” (starring the great Pearl Bailey). Sure, the cast was of a different color. The show had a different flavor. But it was still Hello, Dolly!

Will Europe be that way? Will Norway still be Norway, only in hijab?

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/391152/question-hour-jay-nordlinger

How fucking dumb are these guys

You may remember the “black Hello, Dolly!”

Actually, no, since I'm not obsessed with maintaining our culture's racial purity, I do not remember that.

greatest broadway analogies

"Would The Book of Mormon be the same if it was performed by Muslim actors and instead of singing it was beheadings?"

The show had a different flavor. But it was still Hello, Dolly!

how pissed was Nordlinger to find out HD's title already had an exclamation point

man the 20th century was pretty gnarly huh dudes

https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/526750972341927936

(keep scrolling)

Benjamin Dueholm ‏@bendueholm 12m12 minutes ago
@HeerJeet They never do though. When Buckley died the eulogies were all about binge drinking and the harpsichord. Race politics vanished

Okay, let me give you a domestic version of the Africa business. Years ago, I spoke with a judge in West Virginia — a die-hard liberal Democrat who, as a young man, had worked with Sargent Shriver in the War on Poverty. I asked him, “Did it do any good?” Quietly, and with sadness, he said, “No.”

If an arch-right-winger like me says that — or even the best economist at the Cato Institute — that’s one thing. But for him to say that — I was kind of moved.

goole's friend is back:

For the Left, particulars do not matter: It does not matter whether Michael Brown was in fact shot in the back with his hands raised in a gesture of surrender, or whether that University of Virginia student did in fact suffer the horrific gang-rape described in Rolling Stone. For the Left, this is all tribal, white hats vs. black hats. Fraternity members and police officers are, in their view, by definition on the wrong side of every dispute. That is why we have such rhetorical inventions as “rape culture” and pervasive white supremacy—these are metaphysical propositions that cannot be disproved, because they are not subject to evidence. If the particulars do not support the general case, then the particulars either are ignored or are dismissed as lies produced by a conspiracy.

For the Left, this is a bit of a problem insofar as it touches police, because the Left believes in effectively unlimited state power. It is difficult to reconcile a taste for unfettered state power with a belief that those entrusted with that unfettered power are violent and psychopathic white supremacists.

If you doubt that this is a fundamentally tribal question, consider this: What would the Left’s reaction be if police officers were being hauled in on charges of sexually abusing children as frequently as public-school teachers are? We’d have presidential speeches and blue-ribbon commissions up to our lumbar clefts if that were the case. But public-school teachers are white hats, in the Left’s view, while police are black hats.

just magnificent

consider this

decries rhetorical inventions. promptly uses a rhetorical invention.

What would the Left’s Right's reaction be if police officers were being hauled in on charges of sexually abusing children as frequently as public-school teachers priests are?

something along the lines of "allowing homosexualists to become cops opened the gates to perversion" no doubt

I don't even understand Williamson's question, no matter how many times I've read it.

it actually makes LESS sense the more you "think" about it

this is genuinely dazzling work

false equivalence is the fallacy of our time

the answer is, i'd be happy? i think i'd be happy about that.

We need to close the year with a post from NRO's house intellectual Kevin Williamson:

To add just one thing to Quin’s excellent observations: Some of my lefty/opportunistic correspondents have asked: “How could something like this possibly happen? How could somebody accept an invitation to speak to a group without being sure what that group is about?”

Answer: Easily, in my experience.

Like politicians, opinion writers receive a great many invitations to deliver talks about the things we care about. I imagine that Steve Scalise gets a great many more than I do. But I myself have, within recent memory, accepted an invitation to give a talk (I believe it was to be about the national debt) to a perfectly respectable-sounding organization (Something Somethings for Liberty, I think) that turned out to be something else: Birchers, in this case, not David Duke nut clusters. I withdrew when I discovered what they were about. But it is not difficult to imagine that if I had a politician’s packed speaking schedule rather than my own comparatively leisurely one, I might have shown up and given my entitlement-reform talk to a bunch of people who think that Dwight Eisenhower was a Soviet agent.

On the other hand, it is more difficult to explain away all those photos of noted Democratic and progressive leaders in the company of Louis Farrakhan. Is there anybody who doesn’t know what he is about?

https://twitter.com/NRO/status/560890219897974784

boom

jews aren't white, the UN told me so

I need to poll these:

Following up on Joel’s post about Governor Jindal’s comments on assimilation yesterday, here’s my top-ten list of what we should expect from those who want to become Americans (and those who are already Americans, for that matter). The list was first published in a National Review Online column nearly 15 years ago, and it was fleshed out in this congressional testimony seven years later:

1. Don’t disparage anyone else’s race or ethnicity.

2. Respect women.

3. Learn to speak English.

4. Be polite.

5. Don’t break the law.

6. Don’t have children out of wedlock.

7. Don’t demand anything because of your race or ethnicity.

8. Don’t view working and studying hard as “acting white.”

9. Don’t hold historical grudges.

10. Be proud of being an American.

My list and Governor Jindal’s appear, unsurprisingly, to be similar — especially, per Joel’s post, with regard to my last item.

1. Be proud of anyone's race or ethnicity.
2. Don't disparage anyone's historical grudges.
3. Respect children out of wedlock.
4. Don't demand to speak English because "acting white."
5. Don't view working and studying hard as "being an American."

If it weren't for the fact that every item on that list can be viewed as racist code, one might view it as pretty innocuous.

"Don't hold historical grudges" is my fave on there; totally a reasonable request.

"Sure your grandparent's generation violently suppressed my grandparent's generation but I see no point in thinking about that now; doesn't inform our modern world in any way."

"No backsies"

That Was Then, This is NRO

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2015/02/rich_lowry_hates_tables_and_gr054151.php#

Lowry's editorial in Politico re the Vox interviews with Obama is petty and snarls and that's not even getting into his comparison of Ezra Klein to Leni Riefenstahl. Lowry's invocation of "traditional marriage" and his venom re spending, taxes and regulation is comically cliche at this point.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/vox-obama-rich-lowry-115134.html#ixzz3RjdjDVQp

Holding historical grudges is the national pastime in the American South.

regional pastime, please

http://c10.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/styles/original_image_with_cropping/public/homepage-featured-image/miley2.jpg?itok=a98-H1_e

by Fred Schwarz February 19, 2015 6:29 PM

I think Obama does love America; he just has a funny way of showing it. Some people see love as a partnership: “I love you, so I want to support you and reassure you and help you achieve all your goals.” But there’s also the type of person who sees love as a project: “You’re a total mess, but because I love you, I’m going to make you lose 20 pounds and get rid of those awful clothes and find you some new friends to hang out with and tell you what to read and improve your taste in wine and get that squeaky sound in your car fixed and maybe get you off your butt a little bit on weekends, darling.” Obama’s love for America is of the second type.

whadda maroon

by JAY NORDLINGER

February 22, 2015 10:21 PM

1) The host can’t stop stoking racial grievance. Great — exactly what America needs. 2) The idea that women don’t have equal rights in this country is a lie — a lie that, year after year, does harm. 3) Harry Belafonte is the opposite of a humanitarian: the loyal supporter of one of the most brutal dictatorships of our times, the Castro regime in Cuba, which has imprisoned, tortured, and killed thousands of innocent people.

sounds more like a list of demands

most otm corner comment ever, amid the homophobic campfire circle on a thread about the Atlanta fire chief

I have a lot of gay friends, every single one of them says they knew by 9 years old that they were gay. My guess is that most of them (gay people). Would say something similar. Are you going to tell me that's a choice? Or do you think maybe it's genetic? I don't think this guy should have been fired but can we stop with this fiction that people are really choosing this. Are there some people who might experiment or be unsure? Of course but for the vast majority this is who they are and apologies to lady gags but they were born that way. I wish you guys would stop acting like gay people are doing something wrong. It almost seems like you think they are gay to piss you off

there's also a sliver of a good idea in J-Goldberg's post about blacks and Hollywood but it's buried in balderdash.

by Deroy Murdock March 3, 2015 10:37 AM

As Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress today, controversy continues to rage over whether House speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) should have invited him without consulting Obama. As it happens, Boehner did alert the White House an hour before the speech was announced. Whether or not that counts as consultation is an open question. It’s worth noting though that Congress is a separate and co-equal branch of government. If Congress wants to hear someone speak, it does not have to get permission first from Obama or anyone else in the White House. At some point in the near future, Congress, or at least the Senate, may have to approve or reject whatever deal Obama makes with Iran. America’s duly-elected legislators have every right and power to summon whomever they wish to give them information and perspectives to help them make decisions on any such agreement, as well as broader American policy on the Middle East. Bibi accepted an invitation extended to him by Boehner. Bibi was under no obligation to check and see if Obama “approved” of Congress’ invitation. Bibi is the most blameless character in this story.

If the prime minister were trying to weedle his way onto the House podium without permission, I would be all for keeping him from speaking, or at least for legislators boycotting his appearance. But as it happens, Bibi was asked to address both houses of Congress. And both houses of Congress he should and shall address. Members of both parties and both chambers should listen to his outlook and then meditate on and debate the merits of his message. This is how democracies operate. If Obama can’t handle that, he can ask to address a joint session of Congress and offer his own views on how to handle Iran and the rest of the blazing inferno that we affectionately call the Middle East. If the president does not appreciate the fact that Boehner did not consult him before making a decision, perhaps he now knows how Congress feels about his relentless rule by decree. Obama did not consult Congress before issuing his executive orders on amnesty, nor on the numerous unilateral changes he made to Obamacare. As he himself is fond of saying, he’s “gone around Congress” numerous times, as a matter of course. Indeed, Obama plans to structure his intended atomic agreement with Iran in such a way that Congress cannot approve or reject it, either.

As he has so many times before, the president hopes to issue an Iran deal like a pronouncement from the throne. So, before the administration continues its tantrum over not being consulted, it should consider consulting Congress when it wants new laws written or old laws revised. This is how we do things in America. Obama should leave the decrees to his friends in Tehran.

It’s worth noting though that Congress is a separate and co-equal branch of government.

i think this is right, it's been kinda weird seeing the big critics of executive power (to the detriment of the other branches of government) defending its exclusivity in this case. (nb i understand foreign affairs, or at the very least inviting foreign leaders maybe be different but still it's a weird argument to lean on that this is insulting to the executive.)

Limbaugh Says Obama Treats Netanyahu 'Like A White Policeman From Ferguson' 42 minutes ago

still it's a weird argument to lean on that this is insulting to the executive

how is this weird. it's insulting to the executive.

Bc the executive should have less power not possibly made up new powers

i mean, that's the whole point of it, to be insulting to the executive

The fact that the State Dept. was not consulted or even notified until the invitation had been accepted can't be construed as anything but an insult to the executive. The Congress may be a separate and equal branch, but it is all supposed to be the same government and its parts should be expected to work together.

it's a bit of a tempest in a teapot the whole thing

it's a bit of a tempest in a teapot the whole thing

Agreed. By the logic of "insult" here, one could argue Obama has a few times "insulted" Congress as well.

One of the more boring, to me, discussions in politics is whether and how members of one party have "insulted" a POTUS of the other party. IMO that just tends to be a rhetorical distraction from the issues.

Edit to: One of the more boring, to me, discussions in politics is whether and how members (or POTUS) of one party have "insulted" members (or POTUS) of the other party.

I hadn't read one of these classic posts in a while.

has there been a horror movie yet about war memorial statues coming to live and hoisting children on their shoulders?

National Treasure?

I don't even get what he's saying. He comes down on the finger-wagging side, so that means he doesn't think kids should climb on the statue? But the dead embronzed nurse would actually WANT the kid to climb on her so...?

Also, has this guy really never frolicked in a graveyard? I feel like people constantly frolic in graveyards.

Graveyards were meant to be frolicked in; people useta have picnics in them alla time

uh

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416078/sick-and-twisted-culture-jay-nordlinger

And I believe I got a whiff — just a tiny whiff — of Nuremberg in Avery Fisher Hall tonight.

i have that cologne

it has nothing of the aroma or piquancy of my good friend Rush.

ie flopsweat and cheesypuffs

Obviously, John Adams knows nothing about Rush Limbaugh. It’s a good bet he has never listened to Rush’s show or read an article by him. The same must be true of the audience members who applauded.

They never him.

And this dude is one of their smarter writers.

One of the reasons Netflix’s House of Cards is so popular is that Francis Underwood, the fictional president played by Kevin Spacey, makes for a juicy villain, one utterly drenched in his own cynicism. But most people know the show is a fantasy. “No one can possibly be that amoral and rise to the highest levels of government,” one of my Michigan relatives told me. “Thank goodness.” But Harry Reid, who announced his retirement from politics last Friday, sure comes close.

Obviously, John Adams knows nothing about Rush Limbaugh.

well, obviously.

imagine his distress.

munich iirc

classic post coming:

What a miserable week. Most miserable? That at a time when Christians are dying for the freedom to love God completely, we’re rolling back rights under a tyrannical abuse of the word tolerance. Miserable that many reasonable people have no idea what’s actually going on there. Miserable that reasonable people think this is about bigotry. Also miserable: the targeting of Memories Pizza.

2. This poll, from just before all hell broke loose in Indiana, deserves more attention: Fifty-four percent of respondents to a Marist Poll survey, commissioned by Catholic News Agency, support or strongly support First Amendment religious liberty protections or exemptions for faith-based organizations and individuals, “even when it conflicts with government law.” About 65 percent of Marist Poll respondents opposed or strongly opposed penalties or fines for individuals who refuse to provide wedding-related services to same-sex couples “even if their refusal is based on their religious beliefs.” Only 31 percent supported or strongly supported such penalties. The results of the poll were released in mid-March. In the days that followed, religious liberty became a heated issue, particularly surrounding the March 26 signing of the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The state’s governor, Mike Pence, said that despite media hype, the law is not based on anti-gay discrimination, but on a 20-year legal precedent of protecting the rights of religious individuals and charitable organizations.

3. Ed Meese and Ryan Anderson.

which particular christians are dying for the freedom to love god completely?

3. Ed Meese and Ryan Anderson.

which particular christians are dying for the freedom to love god completely?

I think it's the Jehovah's Witness who wasn't allowed to use Medicaid to get a bloodless liver transfusion in another state. But I didn't know NRO thought Jehovah's Witnesses were Christians.

3. Ed Meese and Ryan Anderson.

DON: Well, yeah.

Do you guys think this strategy will be attempted at the federal level? Giving national corporations the religious right to ignore gov't laws sounds like a bad idea.

Nah.

only for arts & crafts stores

and wherever K-Lo does her Bible shopping.

The targeting of Memories Pizza. Memories of the targeting pizza. Pizza targeting memories.

Misty target-covered memories of the pizzas we were

and this from one of the more reasonable people:

We who are appalled by the perverse reaction to the Indiana law are not exactly defending the free exercise right; we are in a sense opposing a violation of the prohibition on religious establishment. The point is not that running a flower shop is a way of practicing one’s religion. The point is that, if reasonably possible, people should not be compelled as the price of entry to the public square to honor as true what their understanding of their religious obligations compels them to judge false.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/416421/church-left-yuval-levi

The point is that, if reasonably possible, people should not be compelled as the price of entry to the public square to honor as true what their understanding of their religious obligations compels them to judge false.

this sentence

which particular christians are dying for the freedom to love god completely?

― mookieproof, Thursday, April 2, 2015 8:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

p sure he means in egypt, syria and iraq

Jonah has written about the jokes Obama told last night. I’d like to add a word.

Commenting on his relationship with Joe Biden, he said, “We’ve gotten so close that some places in Indiana won’t serve us pizza anymore.”

I realize it’s just a joke. A joke told on a jokey evening. It’s a good joke, too. Funny. “Lighten up,” right?

But still: That pizzeria, Memories, did not refuse to serve gays. They’re happy to serve gays. The owner and his daughter said they would not cater a gay wedding (not that a pizzeria has ever been asked to cater a wedding, to my knowledge). Does it matter? Yeah, a little, even on a jokey evening. (Sounds like the title of a Frost poem, almost.)\

lots of pizza for thought there

guess who

nerdlinger

so the Kraut wrote a column calling for the release of captive whales. Mona Charen responds:

I admire Charles Krauthammer extravagantly (doesn’t everyone?) and agree that keeping Orcas confined for our entertainment is probably cruel. But he asks a question that has a much more obvious answer. It’s simple: abortion. Here’s my take on that subject today.

abort the whales

A question a child might ask, but not a childish question. And the answer is abortion.

oh man:

In Part II of today’s “Macedonia Journal,” I speak of George Soros, who is a big deal here in America — but who is a far bigger deal in that little Balkan country. One local conservative told me, “Soros came into Macedonia like a Trojan horse, and now he is an octopus.” The Hungarian-born billionaire pushes a sharply Left agenda through a host of NGOs and activists. The activists are called “Sorosoids” — by conservatives, that is. It is not a flattering term.

When the weather’s nice, I see Sorosoids all over the streets of New York. They have clipboards and stop people to enlist them in various Left causes. The pickings should be fairly easy for them in this city. Worse luck in Provo?

We the American taxpayer contribute to Soros in Macedonia, in that we give to his principal foundation through USAID. Why does Soros need our bucks, in light of his own? A good question, to which I don’t have a ready answer. I believe our officials think we are contributing to the democratic process, not to a particular side (namely, the “post-Communist” one).

The Soros foundation’s activities in Macedonia are multifarious, but one of them has been to translate Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Just what a country struggling to emerge from Communism needs, right? And this got me to thinking about Saul and Rules right here at home. Our current president has an Alinskyite past; and so does our next potential president, HRC. If she gets in, maybe she’ll include Rules for Radicals in a national Common Core? Maybe we should give it to the chillen in the cradle, in lieu of The Cat in the Hat and whatnot?

What people in Macedonia, the United States, and elsewhere should be exposed to is the U.S. Constitution. President Obama used to speak highly of it, or at least respectfully. (Wasn’t he supposed to have taught it?) He said, for example, that the Constitution forbade him to amnesty illegal aliens, all by himself. He was not an emperor, you know.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

Hitting ALL the notes

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418273/university-report-room-full-white-people-microaggression-katherine-timpf

^^^ satire they call it

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/416919/there-huge-wage-gap-and-its-because-conservative-men-hate-women-katherine-timp

not found?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/416919/there-huge-wage-gap-and-its-because-conservative-men-hate-women-katherine-timpf

okay, these are ALL one note explicitly sarcastic "articles" from the same writer from the past year alone.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/416919/there-huge-wage-gap-and-its-because-conservative-men-hate-women-katherine-timpf
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/396565/ten-ways-men-oppress-women-their-everyday-behavior-katherine-timpf
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413666/colleges-non-offensive-party-theme-ideas-are-actually-so-offensive-katherine-timpf
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398868/yes-lets-cancel-olympics-forever-because-they-hurt-environment-katherine-timpf
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415012/putting-woman-20-bill-does-not-go-far-enough-katherine-timpf
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415256/study-being-nice-women-sign-sexism-katherine-timpf
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417313/real-problem-rotc-heels-march-its-insult-trans-community-katherine-timpf

http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/581088863944228864/5zUyxPWC.png

kulturtimpf

We women are making like 77 or 78 percent less money just because we’re women — and conservative men don’t care because all they want us to make are babies.

oh no she doesn't know the difference between making 77% less money and making 77% of what men make.

Q: Why do you want to go into journalism?
A: Spite!

Um, hell-ooooo-ooooh! First of all, the fact that these women are just candidates for one bill rather than all automatic shoo-ins for their own bills is an outrage. After all, the people of our racist country will just pick one of the white ones — making the women of the other nominated cultures feel inferior. And like some cultures weren’t even nominated at all. There are literally no Native American women on the list, even though there should pretty clearly be at least one from every single tribe. Oh, and by the way, there is not a single handi-capable female included. What a joke.

There must be a gender-fluid bill, a straight female of each race, a lesbian female of each race, a bisexual female of each race, an asexual female of each race, a gender nonconforming person of each race, a handi-capable female of each race, a handi-capable gender nonconforming person of each race, and also a few mixed-race representatives. I think that Gloria Steinem and Lena Dunham should at least be considered too even though they’re obviously a little bit evil because they’re white. I apologize if I am forgetting anyone. I’m aware that my white privilege makes me a terrible person so please forgive me in advance for my ignorance. I didn’t mean to oppress you.

What we actually need to do here is overthrow our entire currency. Not having enough denominations of money to represent all marginalized groups is no excuse to exclude anyone — we just need to add more denominations! I really don’t see what would be wrong with a $1.27 bill, for example. Why not? Isn’t this the most important thing ever in the world?

Also, to make more room we should definitely do away with all of the straight, cisgender white males already on the bills. I mean seriously. I really don’t know why we’re still celebrating these people even though it’s a proven fact that every single problem in the world is all their fault.

Katherine Timpf is a """"""""""""""""""""""""reporter"""""""""""""""""""""""" for National Review Online.

i like that she's clearly unaware that there's sacajawea currency in circulation

That fact conflicts with the strawman party she is throwing herself.

It blows my mind how these are the types of people looking down on the poor and tsk-tsking the lack of work ethic in the lower classes and what do they do for a living? It's basically an adult form of "Nanny-nanny-boo-boo".

But what can we expect from an event titled “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes”? Yes, “her” — as if everyone who wears heels automatically uses that pronoun. Now, this might not seem like a big deal to people who aren’t as culturally aware as I am, but I promise you that it is wildly problematic. It totally ignores the fact that there are many heel-wearing, female-identified people out there who don’t want to be referred to by language associated with the traditional gender binary. What about the “they/them/their/theirs” people out there, huh? Or the “xe/xem/xyr/xyrs”? Of course, I’m also going to mention the pronouns “ne/nem/nir/nirs” and “ve/ver/vis,” as well as the fact that there are people who prefer to invent their own pronouns or to not use any at all, because I’m a wonderful person and superior to those who might forget and leave some people feeling excluded. Sometimes I think about how far we still have to go before we’re living in a truly accepting and loving culture — it’s daunting.

at least interesting to see that tin-eared rancid satire of tumblrspeak is a lane grown bigger than twitter nobodies

I long for the days when it was just about the War On Christmas.

There must be a gender-fluid bill, a straight female of each race, a lesbian female of each race, a bisexual female of each race, an asexual female of each race, a gender nonconforming person of each race, a handi-capable female of each race, a handi-capable gender nonconforming person of each race, and also a few mixed-race representatives.

who writes like this

oh right – a Cornerite.

Emerald Bixby • a month ago

Katherine, I'd never heard of you before, but today is the first time I've been glad that a website had the irritating-as-all-hell "scrolling takes you directly to the next article" interface. I came to see what the Sarah Silverman thing was about, and saw the title for this piece below it -- and I didn't notice (at first) that it was also by you, so I didn't expect it to be sarcastic until I was pleasantly surprised.

Not only is your execution stellar, but your attitude is great. It's inspiring and reassuring to me every single time I see someone like you calling out how fucked the popular oppression narrative is, especially because the stupid nature of the problem means that we need more women piping up. I only became aware a short few years ago that there are other women who reject victim culture, so it still strikes me deeply and means something special every time I see a respectable woman writing credible, interesting work that criticizes the issue. Thanks for writing the piece that started my day with a sense of camaraderie instead of frustration!

five bucks that Emerald Bixby is Mona Charen

who will victimize the victims?

Found this clip from Larry Wilmore's show:

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/7trhiv/the-nightly-show-panel---rand-paul-s-presidential-run---keep-it-100

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Baratunde Thurston and Kat Timpf talk about Sen. Rand Paul's presidential campaign and his efforts to appeal to voters across the political spectrum. (8:12)

"comedian"?

All these people are horrible people, who no doubt are endlessly grateful that Hitler existed, so that by the force of comparison he made being a selfish twat seem less evil in the milder form in which they manifest it.

otoh maybe most people are trying to stay true to values + virtues that they sincerely believe are good and we differ from them wrt which virtues are more/less important, and what is true about reality

http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/581088863944228864/5zUyxPWC.png

ws

look again

NRO climate change section yet to update since January. IIRC it's an article about a cold day in Detroit.

otoh maybe most people are trying to stay true to values + virtues that they sincerely believe are good and we differ from them wrt which virtues are more/less important, and what is true about reality

Is there a "bump this thread every time some anti-gay pastor/politician shows up on Grindr" thread?

Jesus Fucking Christ: evangelical bigwig opposed gay marriage "because it takes the dirt and danger out of clandestine sex with rent-a-men"

This is a big story, certainly. Hastert was a leader on the national stage less than a decade ago, and remains a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

Yet one cannot help but observe: Three authors are given a byline for this scoop, and six others are credited with “contributing” to the report. That’s nine Washington Post authors hard at work getting the (legally non-actionable) background to the indictment of a retired congressman.

And it’s not just the Post. ABC News needed six authors to report the same story. The New York Times needed five. Politico needed four.

Would that so much media manpower were devoted to covering current scandal-laden politicians — like, oh, for instance, Hillary Clinton.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/419087/no-time-hillary-scandals-because-every-reporter-everywhere-covering-dennis-hastert

Yet one cannot help but observe:

Yes. The moment I heard about Hastert, my mind went immediately to wondering why these reporters weren't assigned to digging dirt on HRC. Most natural thought in the world.

by Kathryn Jean Lopez June 25, 2015 11:00 AM @kathrynlopez

I’m watching my inbox overflow with reactions to the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling this morning. It reads like a flashback to very long days and late nights in March 2010.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420300/ten-things-caught-my-eye-today-june-25-2015-kathryn-jean-lopez

Even “natural family planning” methods that were the secret knowledge of extra-chaste Catholics and extra-crunchy liberals are now a hot investment in Silicon Valley.

...

extra-chaste Catholics and extra-crunchy liberals
extra-chaste Catholics and extra-crunchy liberals
extra-chaste Catholics and extra-crunchy liberals

can I have a side of honey mustard

Once, when Ronald Reagan was running around trying to be president, Mike Deaver went to him and said, “Governor, I think it’s time we had a new speech. We’ve been giving your current speech over and over.” Reagan said, “I like the speech, Mike. You get me new audiences.”

I’m going to tell a story I’ve told over and over — but perhaps there are new readers who haven’t heard or read it yet.

Years ago — it was 2003 — I was at an Upper East Side dinner party. The nice thing about going to these things is that, no matter how painful they are, you have journalistic fodder for a long time to come.

The Supreme Court had just ruled on a Texas sodomy law. Everyone was celebrating the decision. The Court had overturned the law. My hostess asked me what I thought (basically).

I said, “I admire the dissent of Clarence Thomas. He said that the law was dumb, and that, if he were a Texas legislator, he would vote to overturn it. At the same time, he could find nothing in the Constitution that forbade Texas to make the law.”

My hostess did not look at me with disagreement or contempt. She looked at me with confusion and disbelief. Who could hold a view such as mine or Thomas’s?

If you wear the black robe and wield the gavel, you have the powah, baby. And you use your power to do good, as you conceive good. Who would pass up such a chance?

I believe that, for the majority of judges in last week’s gay-marriage ruling, the question was not “Does the Constitution allow states to define marriage?” but “Do you favor gay marriage? Yes or no?” Judging is not for everybody. Judging requires a certain neutrality, which can be annoying. It requires fidelity to constitution and law. A judge has a constituency of one: the constitution and law. Most people, I think, would rather be lawmakers than judges. I myself would rather be a lawmaker. But if I were a judge, I think I’d do my job.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420436/gay-marriage-and-the-nature-of-judging

sit down, Uncle Jay has a story he's told a thousand times.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/420765/speed-of-social-change-in-america

there's some interesting stories in the comments from readers about their interactions with real life lesbians

Listen, I have no brief for the Confederate flag, to put it mildly. But I may have less of a brief for the herd mentality, and the kind of social panic that is characteristic of this country.

By the way, there are a helluva lot of Che Guevara T-shirts in the streets. When are they going away? When will they be stigmatized? When will that face be replaced by, say, the face of Armando Valladares, Oscar Biscet, or some other Cuban human-rights hero?

If you live long enough, you realize that today’s right-wing alarmism is tomorrow’s ruthlessly enforced norm. Some years ago, when people were touting civil unions, right-wingers would raise the prospect of marriage — gay marriage — and the civil unionists would say, “You alarmists and scaremongers! No one’s talking about marriage, for heaven’s sake! You would really deny a person the right to visit his loved one in the hospital? Or to leave him his estate? What kind of monster are you?”

oldcodyjr • 10 hours ago

Saw "Field of Dreams" the other day. Remember James Earl Jones great speech? Something about America can change on a dime, but the one constant is baseball. 'Oh, the people will come, Ray."

I wanted to cry.

Because we've ruined, too.

there's some interesting stories in the comments from readers about their interactions with real life lesbians

yeah the one about harassing "queers" at the office really puts the lie to this "how dare you call us bigots because we oppose gay marriage" argument as if anybody bought it in the first place. corner comments on any gay-related post are a sewer but this one takes the wedding cake. surely nordlinger and the nro editors would protest that they can't control the comments but at this point the ssm posts are pure hater bait. and hate-reader bait.

Order66 • 13 hours ago

All of the change you mention requires cooperation, if not complicity, on the part of otherwise normal people. It is until it isn't. Then, snapback.

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dagny Order66 • 13 hours ago

Remember in the 70s when they wanted to make us switch to the metric system? Like that.
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Order66 dagny • 13 hours ago

They're still trying to sell soccer, too. Part of it is that I just like to resist for the sake of resisting. A good chunk of my contempt for soccer and the metric system is due to the fans and champions of soccer and the metric system. Sorta like it works for me RE: Rand Paul.
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Kan2 Order66 • 12 hours ago

I keep think the attempts to make us a soccer country are one and the same as the progressive cause. All the kids are forced to play the dam game, and nobody gets to be crowned the winner.
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Order 66 is among my favorite commenters. I imagine him wearing a Palpatine shroud around the office, proudly.

the famously anti-nationalistic sport of soccer

dagny is my favorite commenter, hands down. literally "more catholic than the pope" peggy noonan with a sociopathic mean streak

she's so patronizing and nasty it's actually hilarious.

A judge has a constituency of one: the constitution and law.

Isn't that two?

Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four...no... amongst our weapons.... amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.

Speaking of Peggy Noonan, I once came across a really dark, depressed column in which she said people should give up on the pursuit of happiness, it was a fuckin hideous ruse, there is no such thing as happiness. Haven't seen a recent picture, but she was pretty damn cute for a long time, maybe a magnet for conservative attentions which disillusioned her or confirmed this underlying sense of things, maybe she was tampered-with by early Catholic girl school indoctrination, who knows? I felt bad for her, wondering if more of this sort of public venting might help her move past, but didn't see any more. She probably doesn't believe in psychiatry, or if so, what kind (shudder). Occasionally seen this kind of candor from other conservatives----"People are no damn good, " more in sorrow and resignation than anger or smirkage---good subject for a book (anthology?)

recent noonan pic: http://i.imgur.com/JQmC1cX.jpg

this place has kind of turned into the "kevin williamson rolling shitshow" hasn't it. haven't seen anyone else making waves recently.

it's early in the season

I just read (about) that piece.

what a cheap little fuckface

Jonah:

We are now in the crazy stage where people are shouting at me that I (or Charles Krauthammer, or George Will or Erick Ericson or Kevin Williamson) must be a liberal if I don’t support Trump. Never mind that the objective evidence leans overwhelmingly that support for Trump puts your conservative convictions in doubt. Are we really going to go down the insane path of saying that real conservatives must abandon good manners and respect for women to demonstrate their purity? Count me out of that nonsense. And, even if you yourself think Trump’s comments are funny or entertaining or not that big a deal or just a gaffe, at least ponder for a second about whether you think they will help Republicans win the presidential election. Everyone loves Reagan. Everyone says we need a great communicator. Well, the point of being a great communicator is to communicate. That is to say, it is to persuade people. If you think that Trump is the right guy for that project, you’re the one who just doesn’t get it.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

enjoy the reapening, fuckwits

The comments sections on their Trump threads this morning are great.

this has to be jay nordlinger moonlighting under a pseudonym. or else he has a disciple.

http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/columns/3815082-marilyn-heltzer-dont-try-any-language-unless-you-are-very-fluent

Die, you psychopath

If a couple who are nationals of Egypt enter our country and have a baby while they are here, why is it sensible to presume that child’s allegiance is to the United States rather than Egypt?

just to cite a you know ahem wink/nudge *random* example #terroristbabies

Because they buy Duck Dynasty products?

Currently questioning the allegiance to the United States of someone who wants to throw away its hundreds of years of world status as an immigrant country.

hey fuckos you wanna trade the 14th for the 2nd?

Yet, every person present in the United States is not presumed to have fealty to the United States, which is what “jurisdiction” means in the Fourteenth Amendment.

fealty!

fe·al·ty
ˈfē(ə)ltē/
nounhistorical
a feudal tenant's or vassal's sworn loyalty to a lord.
"they owed fealty to the Earl rather than the King"

But yes land of the free yadda yadda.

clearly we need to have these egyptbabies swear a blood oath of fealty

1) All my life, gays have pleaded for tolerance, understanding, and respect. They have been right to do so. And they have received more and more of those things. Today, others are pleading for those things from them. (I think of florists and bakers, for example.) They seem in no mood to give them. I can understand — but it’s still wrong.

2) The other day in Salzburg, I was listening to a tableful of Americans and others decry and defame the Republican party, and praise and exalt the Democratic party. (Typical day.) One woman said, “Fiorina is dangerous. She’s smart. She’s dangerous.” Honestly, she sounded worried. I thought that was a nice compliment to Carly.

3) Our senior editor Rick Brookhiser came up with a characteristic mot: “National Review was tough on immigration when Donald Trump was still on is first wife.”

4) I once knew a writer who said that he always did something when he wanted to avoid writing: clean his apartment. “I had the cleanest apartment in Chicago,” he said. That was before Twitter — the ultimate writing-avoidance.

5) The maker, or makers, of those Planned Parenthood videos? I think they should win every award under the conservative sun. Under the human sun, actually. They’ve done a tremendous service. Harriet Beecher Stowe, with a novel, rocked the conscience of America. These videos should do something similar, if the American conscience is open to rocking.

https://youtu.be/880cjhasH00?t=39s

Kevin Williamson:

To the feminist writer Marie Shear we owe millions of bumper-stickers and T-shirts reading: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” But apparently that is to be considered a thing of the past as sex-selective abortionists pull off the metaphysically impressive feat of aborting girls who aren’t people, thus simultaneously performing the Left’s holiest sacrament—abortion—and its one unforgivable sin—discrimination.

I hate the 21st century.

dishonest rhetoric is an NRO specialty of the house

affording florists the right to selectively ignore the rights of others is the civil rights battle of our time

marmaduke-strength characteristic mot also

as sex-selective abortionists pull off the metaphysically impressive feat of aborting girls who aren’t people, thus simultaneously performing the Left’s holiest sacrament—abortion—and its one unforgivable sin—discrimination.

you just know he was really proud of this one.

@NRO
ESPN Owes Curt Schilling, and America, an Apology

holy shit folks, you gotta check this out:

#NRORevolt

i guess Jonah told the neofacha types supporting trump they weren't welcome, and they are taking it pretty well

"I can't believe the nro would alienate white supremacists who think Trump should be president. very short-sighted...cuckservatives"

link?

Never mind -- found it. Ugh. Sorry I asked.

Kathryn Jean Lopez retweeted
Jay Nordlinger ‏@jaynordlinger 17h17 hours ago
@KevinNR P.S. WFB used to tease me by paraphrasing a Bob Hope line from a movie: "He'll have a lemonade -- in a DIRTY glass!"

uh

Kevin D. Williamson ‏@KevinNR 17h17 hours ago
True fact: You can go into the seediest bars in Georgetown and order a "Nordlinger" and they'll bring you a Dr Pepper float. @jaynordlinger

from Road to Utopia

xxp

the tweet that starts that exchange is great

xp lmao yeah that's it. "seediest bar in georgetown" is like "shortest globetrotter" right?

I thought a "Nordlinger" was a punch in the dik

David French:

As we’ve been discussing on the Corner today, Ben Carson is under fire for expressing that he would not support a Muslim candidate for president. My response to the question would be simple: “Which Muslim?” I’ve never in my life voted for a faith. I’ve voted for candidates. And while faith certainly helps form candidates, faith identification can’t even begin to tell their entire political story. I’m Evangelical, but I’d walk over broken glass to vote for my conservative atheist friend and NR colleague Charlie Cooke rather than, say, a progressive Presbyterian – even though he or she shares aspects of my religious tradition. And while I’d never support Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for president for a host of reasons (beginning with the fact that he’s an Egyptian strongman), I prefer his ruthless approach to fighting jihad over our own Christian president’s pattern of half-measures and appeasement. But there’s another virtue in asking “which Muslim?” Searching for the right answer to the question would quickly reveal the lack of prominent Muslim voices who are also articulate defenders of western civilization and American constitutional values. The Left and mainstream media (I’m being redundant) have consistently elevated Muslim critics of American life and values while giving little attention to those Muslim patriots who revere our traditions and have often fled to the United States specifically to reject the dysfunctional cultures that dominate the Middle East and much of the rest of the Muslim world. For the Left, the authentic Muslim is typically the Muslim who hates the West. And those people I wouldn’t want anywhere near the Oval Office – as occupants or even as guests.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/424406/i-scream-you-scream-jay-nordlinger

Ben Carson is under fire for expressing that he would not support a Muslim candidate for president.

stay with me here, but this is not true

hot the heels of his nobel peace prize expose...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41fbu6kJhwL.jpg

oh man

Setting himself up for the 2019 revised edition with chapters on Malia and Sasha.

man people are really losing it over this cooke piece on pedophiles huh

do tell!

I am not a practicing Christian, but, as far as I can recall from my instruction as a child, the author is taking precisely the approach that Christians are supposed to take when they find themselves tempted toward sin. I suppose that it is possible that I am seriously mis-remembering the core tenets of the faith, but don’t followers of Jesus believe that everybody is born with impulses that lead them toward unacceptable behavior? And don’t they also believe that they are called to act chastely — that is, to avoid indulging those impulses and instead to seek a way to be freed from them? It was a while ago, I accept, but I cannot recollect any caveats being attached to these rules. Are we now to suppose that it does not apply when the propensity in question is sufficiently egregious? Is there a new-fangled carve-out for instincts that turn our stomach?

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/424373/salons-much-maligned-pedophilia-piece-charles-c-w-cooke

oh i didn't even read it, nor the salon piece. i just saw trails of the argument on twitter. he and other NRO/in the tent conservatives were fighting with the truly weird alt-right types about whether even discussing the issue is some kind of surrender to depravity.

conservatives are really convinced that liberals are trying to normalize pedophilia, it's the craziest thing. there's something about the right that just refuses to understand consent.

Stephen • 20 hours ago

Thank God Jonah chimed in with an article to show that NR is not on the same page as Cooke. I think many conservatives warned, and we see it in the press and now even NRO, that with the cave to judicial supremacy on gay marriage the pedophiles and polygamists would start asking for understanding and rights next.

Mr. Cooke's opinion might fit in better at Salon, Vox, or the Daily Kos.

We can focus on finding a cure for pedophilia (so far the illness doesn't respond to treatment), but must recognize that being born a monster doesn't excuse being a monster. Instead of asking for sympathy, the pedophile should ask for treatment and separation from society. Remember, the homosexual community asked for understanding, asked us to change the definition of marriage, and all of it began with the American Psychological Association dropping homosexuality from being considered an illness (with no scientific consideration). Mark my words - enough movement to the left and pedophiles will be asking for the same rights and acceptance. They won't want to be called "ill" anymore. There's a reason that NAMBLA is a lobbying organization; they believe they will change the future.

Note the timing of this article. A Special Forces leader was removed from the army and also lost an appeal for re-entry. Why? Because he "shoved" an Afghan man under his leadership that had a little boy chained to a bed as a sex slave. The army's position is that we aren't there to judge others. So much for De Oppreso Liber.

i haven't had the stomach to look into the afghan pederasty scandal.

the use of 'cuckservative' is really something

it's like a third-grader who just learned the word 'fart'

osephistan • 20 hours ago
I'm just going to listen to the new Iron Maiden album & pretend that the 80s never ended & Reagan is still President & JPII is still Pope.
5 • Reply•Share ›

Law Student josephistan • 19 hours ago
If only...
1 • Reply•Share ›

SonofaGip josephistan • 20 hours ago
Good idea! This country has been going downhill since the Cold War ended.
• Reply•Share ›

Dragonslav josephistan • 20 hours ago
I'm not a big Maiden fan, but I heard it was pretty good.
• Reply•Share ›

JP Dragonslav • 20 hours ago
How about Banana Rama?
1 • Reply•Share ›

Dragonslav JP • 17 hours ago
LOL. My wife generally cringes at my music. I wear it proudly. The Butthole Surfers show and the Megadeth shows that I saw way back when were two of my favorites. In my old age, I fondly remember seeing Rush and Porcupine Tree (with a nice little metal band called 3 as opener). And I could probably partially sing along to at least one Banana Rama song.
• Reply•Share ›

Turning Leaves JP • 20 hours ago
I heard a rumour that it's been a cruel summer.

Our progressives friends accept “Born This Way” for exactly one category of human inclinations: those related to venereal enthusiasms. When it comes to sexual taste, our progressive friends are all Sir Francis Galton, writing disquisitions on hereditary fabulousness. But they resist well-founded scientific accounts of the biological basis of human intelligence and its heritability. Conservatives, who in spite of their recent ghastly experiments with populism have not entirely lost their instinct for hierarchy, are in the main perfectly comfortable with a “Born This Way” account of intelligence. But delve too deeply into questions about which other aspects of human interior life may also be biological, hereditary, and effectively immutable, and you will start to encounter some resistance.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

nro: putting lipstick on pigs since 1955

i only made it through half of that before my lizard brain took over and hurled my cellphone into the next room

To judge from the popular media, the best use of recent findings in neurological science is to grossly oversimplify it, then use the resulting paste to cement your prejudices.

Hey, I'm not well-versed enough in political media to know, but this seems like the right thread to ask: of conservatively-slanted news sources, are there any that one could recommend as the least-unreliable or least-worst? I know this is a tall order.

American Conservative's Daniel Larison is a generally reasonable source for critiques of GOP batshittery.

the national interest & walter russell mead are ok

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-historian-national-review-civil-rights

Historian vs NRO's Williamson on twitter re Civil Rights Act of 1964

i see interesting + reasonable things occasionally in WSJ op-ed pages, some of WaPost stuff (volokh conspiracy runs some good pieces), once in a while in Commentary. obv you have to sift the wheat from the chaff but that's true for left-leaning media too.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-historian-national-review-civil-rights

Historian vs NRO's Williamson on twitter re Civil Rights Act of 1964

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, October 20, 2015 11:53 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bernstein gave hm a good fisking three years ago and Williamson still does this shit.

http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/05/fables-continued.html

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/10/no-poor-people-dont-inherit-lot-money

debunking another Williamson item

uh

n October 2012, just as presidential campaigning had reached fever pitch, I was raking leaves in the front yard of my northern-Virginia home when I noticed a pack of volunteers clad in “Romney 2012” T-shirts canvassing the neighborhood door to door, engaging residents and drumming up support for their candidate. When my house was next in line, I set aside the rake and started down the driveway toward the group. They walked right past me without so much as a friendly smile or neighborly “Hello.” How curious.

Returning to my yardwork, I watched as they dutifully stopped at my neighbor’s house and deposited campaign materials at the front door. And then the band made its merry way down the road. As a black guy, I couldn’t really fault the group’s practical decision. After all, why spend time and campaign resources on me when nine in ten blacks routinely vote for the Democratic presidential nominee and when the nation’s first black president was seeking reelection?

But as an American, I was furious. The message this group conveyed was that my vote — the right to cast it was one of many rights of citizenship I spent a career in the military protecting — was not worth pursuing. The snub meant they were unable or unwilling to make a case for their candidate because I had a different appearance. So much for party outreach. Perhaps I’m being too sensitive about this. To see bigotry in a run-of-the-mill slight is to buy into the prevalent but lazy narrative that the Republican party is racially intolerant — a parlor game of zero interest to me

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426146/republican-party-black-voters

It's actually not a hysterical article, but I can't get past the first three paragraphs.

I like that he dismisses the notion that the Republican party is racially intolerant as a parlor game and then spends the next two paragraphs fleshing out ways in which the Republican party is racially intolerant.

I'm not saying it was racist aliens, but it was racist aliens.

the cognitive dissonance that guy must process on a daily basis is incredible

This is OTM though:

Everything the Republican party needs to know about the African-American electorate is bound in this one truism: Once civil-rights protections are guaranteed, African Americans will feel free to vote in accordance with their varied economic and social interests.

meanwhile, american conservatism has a new favorite sheriff:

https://twitter.com/SheriffClarke/status/659197285172166657

Once civil-rights protections are guaranteed

bit of a ways to go on this one, let me check and see which party is obstructing progress on this point...

tbf the essay is a gentle way of saying that without actually saying it and sending them into an impregnable huff, but whole thing could prob also be reprinted under "quixotic"

Clarke frequently appears at public events on horseback wearing a cowboy hat. Among his controversial remarks were his assertions that Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele had “penis envy” and must have been on heroin when crafting the county budget.[3] In 2015, at an NRA event, he, according to Miranda Blue of Right Wing Watch, proposed redesigning the Great Seal of the United States to include a semi-automatic rifle. [4]

It's a thin ledge to walk, and he walks it pretty well, but I imagine his eye started twitching pretty hard when he had to write "As it turns out, many of these laws have made voting more difficult for many blacks."

Roy Edroso points out this juxtaposition: https://twitter.com/edroso/status/659369112674660352

jonah: "one could argue" that Ben Carson is "even more authentically African-American than Barack Obama."

'arguments were made'

white guys arguing over how black a black guy is, what could go wrong

oh ffs

why do I even look at this thread

^^ hardly a surprise coming from the same folks who would argue that Clarence Thomas is more authentically African-American than Barack Obama and who think this means something to someone other than white conservatives trying to score debating points.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_11/how_can_national_review_fairly058492.php

National Review writers dislike of Trump hurting their role in creating feel-good inside a bubble "debates"

What Nail Salons Can Teach Us About Immigration Enforcement
by Reihan Salam November 6, 2015 5:03 PM

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

that dude's basically gladwell run thru a heritage foundation filter

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426810/white-working-class-death-rate

by VICTOR DAVIS HANSON November 10, 2015 4:00 AM @VDHANSON Truck drivers, trappers, farmers don’t rate in the eyes of our elites.

trappers?

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.sodahead.com%2Fpolls%2F003231079%2F4959385724_trapper1_answer_5_xlarge.png&f=1

maybe they meant rappers

snappin and trappin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew1WBwh3zgo

he also calls TNC a middle-class careerist

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/rol

seems like at least some trappers are doing okay in today's economy

I'm not going to post David French's responses to the Mizzou resignations.

I’ve now read a couple of columns on Obama’s anger — how he gets riled up at Republicans, and at reporters, if they ask him even slightly discomforting questions. Longtime readers have heard me say this before, but they will bear with me again: During the ’08 debates, versus McCain, Obama said that America was the greatest country on earth. He said it in the tone of a hostage being forced to make a false statement by his captors. He might as well have been blinking T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code. You could almost hear Axelrod saying to him, before the debate, “You have to say that America is the greatest country in the world.” In any event, it was perfectly clear that the candidate’s heart wasn’t in it. Contrast this with his passion in the 2012 campaign when he went on his “You didn’t build that” riff. It might as well have been Reverend Wright, workin’ up a sweat. Obama performed the riff with all the conviction, heart, and gusto possible. You can tell what he really believes in and what he doesn’t. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: If Obama and other Democrats could muster half the righteous indignation against the Jihad that they do against Fox News, Mitt Romney, and the Kochs, this country and the world would be far better off.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/427338/obama-anger

What does "America is the greatest country in the world" even mean? Greatest at everything? In that case, we should sweep all the medals in the Olympics. Except we don't, so it couldn't mean that. Greatest at some things, but not others? Then we're just like every other country in the whole world. But then... that would be saying nothing. (Aha!)

do political leaders in other countries routinely claim that their countries are the greatest in the world?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUNxdG_4DqI

What does "America is the greatest country in the world" even mean?

It means we should not look to the rest of the world for alternate ways of doing things when we can easily and comfortably regress into self-affirmation.

american exceptionalism is the GOPs Santa: they don't believe in it really but damned if they'll let anyone argue the point because WHAT IF THE CHILDREN HEAR

Kevin Williamson thinks he's so delicious:

by Kevin D. Williamson November 23, 2015 11:19 AM @kevinNR I spent part of the morning listening to the Michael Smerconish program (incidentally, now the most entertaining thing, certainly the most bearable thing, on political radio) and the subject was the controversy at Princeton over the fact that a school is named after that university’s and this nation’s former president, Woodrow Wilson. The complaint is that Wilson (Democrat, in case you’ve forgotten) was a racist, which is of course true: The father of American progressivism was an admirer of the Ku Klux Klan, among other things. This will come as no surprise to those of you who read Jonah Goldberg (which should be all of you). One of Smerconish’s callers wondered whether such ahistorical standards (Wilson’s opinions were horrifying, but they were not unusual for his time, nor unusual among progressives) would be applied to figures who were not white, male, American political leaders?

The obvious answer is: No.

I put before you the case of a man whose published works are full of ugly racial slurs — slurs that were considered offensive even at the time he was writing them — whose political activism was built on demands that the government create and reinforce legal distinctions between the “civilized” races and blacks, who was utterly indifferent toward modern slavery, who denounced blacks as “savages,” who in fact went so far as to demand the forcible relocation of blacks away from non-black communities as a matter of public sanitation, and who supported segregation in housing, education, and hospitals. Asked about apartheid in South Africa, he said: “We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they do.” He held horrifying opinions about the Holocaust. His opinions about women were antediluvian. He participated in a campaign of anti-gay “sexual cleansing,” using the state to enforce traditional religious values. His personal life was thoroughly creepy in ways at least as bad as Thomas Jefferson’s. Which leaves us with the question: What new name are we going to choose for James Madison University’s Mahatma Gandhi Center?

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/427504/naming-names-kevin-d-williamson

well:

Kevin Williamson Richard_Reed • 2 hours ago

If you're talking about Attenborough's movie, yes, it's hagiography. It's also a great movie, one of my favorites. I've often said that Oliver Stone's "Nixon" is probably the best movie ever made about American politics, so long as you don't make the mistake of thinking it is about the historical figure Richard M. Nixon. Same with "Gandhi."

More broadly, all of the heroes of the past had their defects: Gandhi, MLK, Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington, etc. My read on Lincoln, MLK, and Gandhi is that each of them was right about one big important thing, and that's what we remember them for, what we celebrate them for. And there's nothing wrong with that. I can't think of much good about Wilson, but the folks at Princeton didn't consult me on the question.

I need dlh in here

Donald Trump has Jacksonian appeal, sez Sparklepants.

except unlike trump andrew jackson has actually accomplished something in his life (without the help of inherited money from his parents, too)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUq2YJ1XAAAgovw.png

mmhmm

Somehow the fact that that was posted at 4 AM makes it even more hilarious.

Over at Bloomberg View, I go into the questions of what responsibility pro-lifers bear for the murders in Colorado Springs, what political movements generally have a responsibility to do to discourage violence, and how selectively the press covers these issues. Here I want to make a simple point about the political exploitation of these killings to discredit pro-lifers: I don’t think it’s going to work.

I think, that is, that most Americans are perfectly capable of distinguishing this murderer from peaceful pro-lifers and of seeing that, while pro-life activists, like any other kind of activists, sometimes say intemperate things, they are not responsible for these murders. That might change if these murders were followed up by others, so that we had a real pattern that people regularly saw in the news. But nothing like that has been happening in recent years. Look at this chart from the National Abortion Federation: There were 2 murders attributable to anti-abortion violence in 1998, one in 2009, and none in between or afterward–until now. That’s too many murders, of course, but thankfully we have seen no organized campaign of anti-abortion violence.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/427787/politics-colorado-springs-murders-ramesh-ponnuru

There were 2 murders attributable to anti-abortion violence in 1998, one in 2009, and none in between or afterward–until now

lol judging from Joanie Crawford's twitter feed there's no way these numbers are right

here i want to make a simple point about the political exploitation of these killings to discredit ___________

Interesting how a lack of murders means there was no campaign of violence.

Obama’s ISIS Strategy Is No Better than the Allies Hiding Behind the Maginot Line in World War II

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

OH MAN

For the last seven years (give or take), I’ve had a slew of questions I’ve wanted to ask President Obama. I’ve never had an opportunity.

Anyways (as we say in the Midwest), here’s another one: Mr. President, you talk all the time about Islamophobia, and the danger of it, and the wrongness of it. Okay. But, in San Bernardino, a neighbor of those terrorists decided against reporting his suspicions to the authorities. The reason: He didn’t want to be accused of Islamophobia, racism, and all the rest of it.

Does that move you at all? Does that give you pause? Does that make you mutter, under your breath, “Damn”?

Okay, I’m not talking to the president anymore, I’m just blogging. Some years ago — I think it was 2002, 2003, in the early years of what we called the “War on Terror” — a colleague of mine exited a plane. Before it took off, I mean. He didn’t like what he saw — a group of men congregating and whispering.

He didn’t have enough to say something — remember that? “See something, say something” — but he did not feel comfortable remaining on the plane. He decided, for himself, that he would get off, and pay whatever he had to, for a later flight. His reasoning: “I may die, but I’m not going to die for political correctness.”

There are a lot of lousy ways to die. Political correctness must be one of the lousiest.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/428206/mr-president-jay-nordlinger

Anyways (as we say in the Midwest)

nationalist fanfic

i would argue that slowly going insane while you blog is a much lousier way to die

chilling story

too bad about that plane, but as they say "he didn't have enough to say something"

"I may die"

thanks for the new display name tho

waiting around in an airport lounge, racist & broke & alone

lol xp