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April 29, 2008
At This Point, The Scariest Thing About Hillary Is...
...The left hates her and treats her like Lieberman.
So says a friend of Rich Lowry's. His friend also thinks HRC is trying to present herself as the new Scoop Jacskon. I have personally observed the potency of the antipathy held by the true left for Hillary. A complementary observation is that the center (whose votes will decide the election, as always) might well take that antipathy by the left as a kind of backhanded endorsement. All the more reason that Clinton would be the more formidable candidate for McCain, especially if she can successfully channel Jackson and Lieberman.
But she has to get nominated first. Imagine: Hillary almost, but not quite, succeeds in wresting the nomination from Obama. Nominatus interruptus, indeed! Oh, the humanity!
Posted at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)April 22, 2008
Billy Ayers: Never Mind, It Was So Long Ago...
James Lileks notes a Chicago Tribune editorial that quotes mayor Richard Daley of Chicago speaking about Obama and Billy Ayers:
"I don't condone what he did 40 years ago [Daley said] but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time, but those days are long over.”
Oh boy, talk about a batting practice fastball over the heart of the plate. But I'll pass on it, and let Lileks take it:
It was a difficult time. What a wonderful absolution. Oh, we all went a little mad. Some of us listened to Steppenwolf, some of us bombed government buildings and plotted robberies that killed people, some of us were rotting in Vietnamese prisons having our teeth bashed out by torture experts. Those days are behind us now, best forgotten. (Unlike the McCarthy era, which will be the subject of 163 movies about the blacklist next year, bringing the total to 45,203.)
Yeah, sure, what's a few bombings in the name of revolution? Hell, we deserved it.
Posted at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)April 21, 2008
Joke Headline Of The Day (Or The Year...)
From MSNBC:
Hamas offers truce in return for 1967 bordersLeader of Islamic group makes statement after meetings with Carter
The leader of Hamas said Monday that his Palestinian militant group would offer Israel a 10-year "hudna," or truce, as implicit proof of recognition of Israel if it withdrew from all lands it seized in the 1967 Middle East War. [...}
Ha ha ha! Oh Hamas, you crack me up! Pull the other one! You guys could be the life of the party--now, where's Lenny Bernstein?
Posted at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)April 09, 2008
Steyn on WFB
Kathryn Judson posted this snippet of Mark Steyn's observations on the impact of William F. Buckley:
"...The 1950s are assumed, at least by children of the Sixties, to be a “conservative” era. But at home New Deal liberalism controlled all the levers of society and abroad the Communists had gobbled up half of Europe, neutered most of the rest, swiped China, were eyeing up other valuable real estate across the planet, and Washington’s foreign-policy establishment was inclined to accept this as a permanent feature of life to be “managed” rather than defeated.The Republican minority in Congress were isolationists or country-club liberals, and their presidential nominees were “moderates” like Dewey or non-partisans like Ike. There was virtually no serious intellectual energy in American conservatism. The notion that in the early 21st century more Americans would identify themselves as “conservatives” than as “liberals” would have struck the elites of 50 years ago as preposterous: a scenario unimaginable outside the more fanciful dystopian science fiction... [snip]...
Then Bill Buckley showed up and was brilliantly effective. In the barren soil of the Fifties, he planted what became a mighty family tree that includes not just Barry Goldwater and then Ronald Reagan but millions of other Americans. I’ve been amazed in recent days by the number of e-mails I’ve received from readers retelling essentially the same story across the decades: Buckley came to their college in the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, or Nineties, and the scales fell from their eyes. Or they were in the local library and found a stray copy of something called “National Review” that had somehow managed to penetrate the perimeter fence. Or they were flipping through the channels late at night and stumbled across this cool guy with a pencil effortlessly eviscerating some liberal panjandrum..."...
"There was virtually no serious intellectual energy in American conservatism." Absolutely spot on. I've come to the conclusion that the image of the "fifties" that is so reviled by the baby boomers is really a myth, a creation of Hollywood, really. Think of it: Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best were creations of the Hollywood studios and bear as little resemblance to everyday life in the fifties as Friends did to life in the early 2000's. And Steyn makes an observation that should be obvious: the fifties were the absolute low point of conservative ideological influence.
I'm pretty close with my praise of so-called great men or women, but it cannot be denied that WFB was a truly great man.
Posted at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)Michelle Obama's Latest Wisdom
The Charlotte Observer reports on Michelle Obama's campaign trip to Harrisburg PA (hat tip to Instapundit):
"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."
Yes. That top ten percent of wage earners (you know, the ones that pay over 70% of the total income tax revenue, see table 6, here) need to pay some more.
Posted at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)April 08, 2008
Hillary Says Our Military Needs "Rebuilding"...
...but the enlistment for one of our most-deployed infantry divisions has met its yearly quota--in half the allotted time! From the Mudville Gazette (hat tip: Instapundit):
In case that wasn't clear, I'll explain: the 3ID - the Division that took Baghdad in 2003, did a second tour in Iraq in 2005, and then bore the brunt of the surge in 2007, exceeded it's re-enlistment goal for FY2008 half way through the year.But I was just kidding when I called it a "news story" - no national news source in America would ever even consider running a story like that.
Yep, so true. Can you imagine what it would be like if we didn't have to run against the relentless hurricane-force wind of media bias?
Posted at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)April 02, 2008
Pining For Guatanamo
Cliff May notes the Turks have detained some suspected al Qaeda bad guys, and notes:
They're going to wish they were in Guantanamo.
[snicker]
Ya think?
Posted at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)April 01, 2008
The Liberals' Break With Their Past: Still Waiting
In response to a fair-minded liberal's query, Jonah Goldberg writes:
Whenever I hear the criticism as offered above [that Jonah's application of the fascism meme have become a bit "fevered"] I often want to ask: “Okay, if you agree with me that Progressivism, Wilsonian war socialism, and New Deal corporatism were all to one extent or another fascistic, when do you think liberalism went about the hard work of shedding itself of this baggage?”Because when I look around, I see a lot of liberals lionizing the New Deal and celebrating their own profound indebtedness to the very same progressives you admit were disturbingly fascistic.
Exactly. I'd be very interested in studying that defining moment when liberals changed their stripes. Over forty years ago, William F. Buckley read the John Birchers out of the conservative movement--when did the liberals do the same for the eugenicists, anti-individualists and imperialists that formed the basis of the Progressive party?
