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

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.