NRO's The Corner: what if an accident of birth had placed Obama in Cuba?

New season, new thread, new Nordlinger:

In an Impromptus last week, I reflected on the question, “Who is Obama?” And, in a column previous to that, I talked about Hugo Chávez — who said that, if Obama were a Venezuelan, he would vote for him. That is, Obama would vote for Chávez. (By the same token, said Chávez, he would vote for Obama. In other words, if Chávez were an American — think of that! — he’d pull the lever for our incumbent.)

Can you say for sure that a Venezuelan Obama would not support Chávez?

What if he were Cuban? What if an accident of birth had placed Obama in Cuba? Would he be with the regime? With the dissidents? Or would he be in between, with the great group of people who just want to keep their heads down and survive?

These are painful questions. Reagan talked about freedom and democracy a lot — incessantly. And promoted those things. George W. Bush did the same. And, when he did, a big segment of our Right cried “Wilsonian!” “Neocon!” “Israel Firster!” (I don’t know if that last term was around during the W. presidency. The sentiment certainly was.)

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/330421/reagan-and-obama-c-jay-nordlinger

These are painful questions.

indeed

Can you say for sure that a Pope Romney would not censure Galileo? Can you say for sure that a Shoeless Paul Ryan wouldn't throw the 1918 World Series? Can you say for sure that a folk-icon Ron Paul would not go electric at Newport???

think of that!

If Nordlinger high? This seems like something someone would sit around wondering about if they were whacked out on something.

I genuinely do not understand what point he's attempting to make there.

he thinks he's making some point about Obama's essential character

what he's actually doing is playing dress-up with his Obama Barbie doll

i like that just like ilx these guys are driven to writing wistful fanfiction about their candidates:

They might also say, “Obama’s policies didn’t work in one term. They wouldn’t work any better in a second term. The problem is not time — the problem is their thinking.”

I think this would be good campaigning, in addition to true.

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20051124042911/marveldatabase/images/8/85/What_If%3F_Vol_1_11.jpg

wait omg sorry

I recently reviewed a book by Mark Mazower, a brilliant but leftist historian. One of the points I made was that, for him, the opposite of Communism is never democracy or freedom — it is “capitalism.” He’ll speak of “the Communist countries” and “the capitalist countries,” of “Communist policies” and “capitalist policies.”

Is Obama of the same mindset? Let’s hope not, for he is, after all, president of the United States.

t/s: "a brilliant but leftist historian" vs "let's hope the president of the united states doesn't understand what words mean"

oh my

Let's hope not.

Biden’s Private Reality
By The Editors

(sry should have been 1919 World Series up there)

for him, the opposite of Communism is never democracy or freedom — it is “capitalism.”

wow he really Got Him with this one

remember when texas kicked the word 'capitalism' out of its textbooks and replaced it with 'free enterprise'?

nordlinger is bad at pronouns

he sees this as a thought exercise, i call it mental masturbation

Romney in the Arena
By Michael Knox Beran
October 17, 2012 9:47 A.M. Comments14

1. Romney was Teddy Roosevelt’s “man who is actually in the arena” last night. If his face was not “marred by dust and sweat and blood,” he was mocked by the off-camera vulgus mobile in the spectators’ gallery (press? Hofstra scholars?), and he was repeatedly given the thumbs down by Candy Crowley. Why is, how can, the Commission on Presidential Debates be so inept in setting up neutral coliseums?

why is how can

I don't think he understands commas

Why is the Commission on Presidential Debates be so inept in setting up neutral coliseums? <--- v important question, lovechild of Yoda and Oswald Bates

well, the vulgus mobile doesn't understand him, period

i had vulgus mobile for a while but they didnt have a 4g plan

I had vulgus mobile a little while back but the antibiotics cleared it right up

Coliseums is a poor choice of word, too, if you're going to be all vulgus mobile on us.

Vulgusmobile presumably the customised crimefighting vehicle of choice of Vulgusman?

Actually, it should be mobile vulgus (hence eventually our word, 'mob') but Mr Beran not only can't parse English but can't get his high-falutin' Latinisms down, either. At least he references an American president who would have loathed Mitt.

I think there's a mobile vulgus hanging in the lobby of the art museum

and that is why we need to defund the NEA

'mobile vulgus' is the latinism, although in latin the order doesn't matter.

When it transfered from Latin to English in the 17th century the idiom was predominantly mobile vulgus -> 'mob'

Obviously, vulgar and vulgate etc, were already in our vocabulary.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/330800/debates-2012-exercise-liberal-pathology-stanley-kurtz

lead:
Liberalism isn’t doing so well lately. In fact I’d go so far as to say that liberalism is becoming downright pathological.

conclusion:
It seems fair to conclude, then, that liberalism isn’t doing so well lately. In fact I’d go so far as to say that liberalism is becoming downright pathological.

Quality writing.

And everything in between could quite easily be said about so-called conservatives

xpost

He's closed his own loop!

the transition from "relatively reasonable" to "disgusting dickhead" is magnificent in this comment:

r212 • 40 minutes ago

I think you'd have to be a complete boob to not understand the difference between, "The policies of President Obama are harmful to the economy, in general, and to this business, in particular" and "You're fired if you don't vote for Romney." (What boss in his or her right mind would say the latter, anyway? It is so obviously illegal, it doesn't even merit discussion.)

We just went through a huge round of layoffs where I work, because both the economy and our business have been terrible. And yet, I know that huge numbers of employees here will vote for Obama. To them, birth control pills and having a "cool" president trump any kind of rational thought. (Does it sound like I have a low opinion of my co-workers? In a political sense, sadly, I do.)

so irrational for people who may be laid off to vote for a President who extended unemployment benefits.

An old-time political hand in D.C., whom I know and who has advised and worked on many campaigns, is utterly convinced that the exchange was a setup of Romney by the Obama campaign and Crowley.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/330922/obama-crowley-set-john-yoo

Obama claimed he had mentioned it the day after the attack, looked at Crowley, and asked her to “get the transcript.”

ok then i'll say "get the transcript" then u get the transcript

attn scrubs: this is how you concern troll

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/331167/obama-ads-aired-during-racist-sitcom-katrina-trinko

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331042/attack-ivy-league-holes-fred-schwarz

this is hilarious

I can't wait to read what John Yoo wrote about executive overreach.

what the hell does "countrified" mean?

Breaded and fried in a pan?

bandmom • 2 hours ago −
Wow, this is much ado about nothing. Maybe I'm a racist but I never thought 2 Broke Girls was racist or the jokes were racist. I watched it last year and not so much this year. It's too sexualized for me, but racist? nah. (Where is the writing that went into shows like Frazier? Hilarious).

lead:
Liberalism isn’t doing so well lately. In fact I’d go so far as to say that liberalism is becoming downright pathological.

conclusion:
It seems fair to conclude, then, that liberalism isn’t doing so well lately. In fact I’d go so far as to say that liberalism is becoming downright pathological.

kind of imagine this ringing through the writer's head over and over again, a la 'dental plan! lisa needs braces!'

It's too bad that the real Civil Rights era (to distinguish it from the present-day totalitarian crusade that has disgustingly usurped its mantle) made segregation such a dirty word, for units built along the lines of the nisei battalions of WWII would seem a way to accommodate the Sikhs, women, gays (I see your Spartans, Kevin, and raise you the Theban Sacred Band) and whomever else needs to separate himself from the 'mainstream' (that's a weak word, but I can't come up with a better at the moment) military.

just guys talking about beards

digging their new house millennial (betsy woodruff is a william f. buckley fellow at the national review institute)

I listened to “Thrift Shop” against my will probably 2,394,578,234,957 times last year

they shouldn't have made her put those commas in

the real Civil Rights era

cause yeah make no mistake if this guy had been around back then he'd have been totally down

this picture
http://c9.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/uploaded/pic_giant_012714_SM_Macklemores-Not-the-Best-Rap-Album_1.jpg

macklemore and me
http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140110155056/aliens/images/9/91/Macandm.jpg

eerie

I don't know where to start

The article on George P. gave me a memory — of Wanda Sykes at the 2009 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Infamously, she said vile things about Rush Limbaugh, just vile. In other words, par for the course. But she also said something kind of funny, as I recall.

Looking at President Obama, she said (and I paraphrase), “You’re the first black president and all, and we’re proud of you. But as soon as you screw up, you’ll be half white. It’ll be like, ‘Who elected the mulatto?’”

Last week, I was in Peru, talking with Hernando de Soto. (How pleasant to be able to write that sentence.) One of the things we talked about was the term “Latins.” It used to refer to Europeans who had come to the Americas. In evolution, it became something a lot different.

And I know I’ve related this story before — it comes from Pat Gigliotti, a friend of NR’s, and a cruiser with us. He was born with the name Pasquale, but an Irish nun had trouble pronouncing it, so renamed him “Pat.”

how bout "cruiser"

I really think that's there because they're hurting for paying customers and they want to work it into as many articles as possible

(How pleasant to be able to write that sentence.)

lol

being stuck on a boat full of NRO people continues to sound like the stuff of nightmares

robert bork griefing a cruise ship bartender will be one of those things rattling around in my head until i die

^^^ I keep imagining "Judge" Bork and Jonah seizing my glass, shouting, "That's no way to drink it, faggot!" and pouring it into their assholes while K-Lo shakes her head.

there's tonight's nightmare taken care of

I keep imagining "Judge" Bork and Jonah seizing my glass, shouting, "That's no way to drink it, faggot!" and pouring it into their assholes while K-Lo shakes her head furiously prays.

Kathryn Jean Lopez ‏@kathrynlopez 2h

and count me as one grateful woman for men who defend the weakest and human dignity.

(and I paraphrase)

being stuck on a boat full of NRO people continues to sound like the stuff of nightmares

― SHAUN (DJP), Tuesday, January 28, 2014 8:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I understand that, but how about if you were the only one armed with a chainsaw? Stuff of dreams, right?

that would just be a slightly different nightmare

I don't want to be hip-deep in Mona Charen/John Derbyshire effluvia/innards

— Charlotte Hays is the author of When Did White Trash Become the New Normal? and the director of cultural programs at the Independent Women’​s Foru

*Fervently praying that the norovirus hits the next NRO cruise*

The Silent SOTU
By Michael Walsh
January 29, 2014 4:03 PM

As it happens, I watched the end of the State of the Union Address (it really does need another name at this point, since it effectively has nothing to do with the actual state of the union) from the vantage point of an exercise bike at a gym largely patronized by emigres from Armenia and their American-born kids. On two screens, President Obama, swivel-necked, flap-jawed and jug-eared, commanded almost nobody’s attention, while the basketball game on the other screens drew a host of viewers on bikes and treadmills. And this, I reflected, was exactly as it should be. The people all around me were the folks who run the restaurants, liquor stores, auto-repair shops, and other business that keep Glendale, Calif., humming; they’ve seen this movie before, and it’s what they saw and lived — and fled — as the Soviet Union was cracking up. They’re too busy making a living to have time for the politics of redistribution.

it’s what they saw and lived — and fled — as the Soviet Union was cracking up

these fuckin' guys with this shit

tbf, the soviet immigrants i know are the biggest republicans i know

a 2013 high point for me was having dinner w my dealer's rich californian ex-soviet parents and their friends and they were GREAT and awesome to talk to abt literature (and the ussr) but yeah firm republicans. i argued lightly abt reagan with one and he said a bunch of the standard "what you have to understand is that before reagan, everyone was depressed about the direction of the country, nobody knew how america could go forward, and then reagan gave people hope and pride again" stuff, and i had had enough wine bought for me to say "oh u mean like putin"; both of us seemed to immediately regret the conversation after this and went back to talking abt jack london (soviets love jack london b/c their schools didn't hide everything that wasn't about dogs)

so fucking gross tho when american conservatives who never--ugh look never fucking mind

the first sentence is a Steely Dan scenario

for some reason the worst thing for me there tho is "flap-jawed". he's giving a speech! even president john wayne in the alternate universe where america never fell didn't just stand there glowering manfully for two hours.

remember your JFK, Bill: the White Russian community was notoriously anti-Communist.

lol @ bill

This is like how those communists always want to put Czars in charge, right ?

difficult listening hour that whole story rules please write a memoir

pour one out?

http://theweek.com/article/index/255756

Get a load of this tough guy.

so tough he broke his space bar

for those of you who haven't hated someone thoroughly enough for today

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/370158/talented-leading-man-exits-ben-shapiro

is that about Romney

"Man exits Ben Shapiro"

103
By John J. Miller
February 6, 2014 9:52 AM

Ronald Reagan was born 103 years ago today. That puts his birth closer to the birth of Abraham Lincoln than to today.

what if an accident of birth had placed Reagan's birth closer to Lincoln than today?

Thread's run full circle. Mods, close...?

um

In the library, there is a Heritage Room, which is sort of easy to mock, I guess: It has first editions and old coins and other symbols of our “heritage,” American and more broadly Western. But there’s nothing mockable about it, I find. It’s a wonderful room, even an inspiring one.

As we’re leaving, I say to my guide, “Do you notice the Heritage Room smells good?” “Yes,” he says, “that’s because there are girls in here right now. It smells like girl.”

Nordfinger

it smells like lady liberty

does he think we're gonna mock the heritage room cuz museums are for wimps or what

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

I'm guessing "smells like girl" isn't quite the same as the "Smell of Female" in the Meyersian sense.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371799/enough-gay-mania-quin-hillyer

i think i saw Gay Mania open for Pansy Division once

That whole piece is so full of "we accept you gay people already (even though we really don't)" I don't even know where to start.

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market forces at work!

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