Favorite poster from NR's "The Corner"

The Gathering Storm [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Now that it's past midnight, I begin my Santorum for SecDef campaign.

Rumsfeld will likely resign before year is out. And so ...

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should we send her a case of drugs next wednesday y/n?

Yes, and cut them with melamine.

and an three-year-old Steak and Ale baked potato.

*a

Kathleen Parker hasn't written for the Corner since she accused McCain of being horny. Did they fire her?

Re: 7th Inning Stretch [Andy McCarthy]

John J, I've been telling my 6-yr-old son that the games start after 830pm because these are games even the people in California want to watch so they can't be started at our usual 7pm time. But it's not making anyone around my house feel any better about it — that a kid who loved baseball and got deeply involved in it all year can't watch the World Series because it's on too late.

My one consolation: Naturally, all the kids at school want Obama. But when I told him yesterday that we would have been able to watch an inning or two tonight but Obama bought commercial time so the game is starting too late, he got pretty annoyed at The One. If all of Obama's support is this thin, McCain's got a real shot.

Who, after all, would want to watch the late innings of what could be the deciding game of the Fall Classic if you could watch Barack lecture us about Social Justice, Economic Justice, Redistributive Change, 95 percent gobbledygook tax relief for non-taxpayers, etc.

"If every voter acts like they're six years old and gets mad because The One is delaying the baseball, McCain's got a shot."

K-lo must be sharing her stash with Steyn:

Eye Caramba [Mark Steyn]

Jonah, you just don't get it, do you? Who ya gonna believe? Obama or your own lyin' eyes? There are none so blind as those who will not see and none so seeing as those who are blinded by the light. Americans want to move beyond the same tired old eyeballs. There are no red eyes or blue eyes, just red eyes gradually turning blue again all over America as they sober up after eight years of an almighty Bush-McCain bender that left them face down in a pool of vomit with a repossessed home and no health insurance. But, if you have got health insurance, why not get that Canadian laser eye surgery everyone raves about? It's amazing. On a clear day, rise and look around you, and you'll see who you are. On a clear day you can see Catalina, twinkling under a shimmering hazy tax cut for 95% of the American people just waiting to make landfall. On a really clear day you can see Europe, where all over the continent happy contented workers place their infants in government day care and then leave for six weeks' paid vacation. Obama is the Cyclops, and America is Jean Grey, back in her Marvel Girl days, if I recall correctly.

Anyway, don't make any cracks about Sammy Davis Jr's glass eye, because that's just racist, like Joe the Plumber.

And now if you'll pass the sharp pencil I think I'll remove my own ideological blinders.

Poor Steyn be mixin' his metaphors.

I am still trying to figure out what his x-men comparison is supposed to mean, but maybe that's a futile exercise.

Obama is the Cyclops, and America is Jean Grey, back in her Marvel Girl days, if I recall correctly.

wha-?

xp lol

omg mark steyn

that is like the time i kept a journal when i was tripping on mushrooms

without the weird scratches from when i couldnt figure out how to use the pencil

actually its more like a fiona apple album title

Is it worth asking him how the X-Men reference is supposed to tie into the rest of this? Is he implying Obama is going to pine gormlessly after America for years before working up the courage to court it? (He would have gotten more mileage out of referencing the first Phoenix storyline, where he could imply that America was begging Obama to destroy itself by voting for him.)

America wants to cheat on Obama with a short Canadian?

Gordon Brown better not be Emma Frost, that would be just gross.

ew

Wait is America going to turn into the Dark Phoenix?

If Obama is Cyclops and America is Marvel Girl, then McCain is Dr. Light and America is Sue Dibny.

oh snap

So What About the Obamacons? [Jonah Goldberg]

Several readers have asked, with varying degrees of charity of spirit, whether I still think the Obamacons are a phoney phenomenon. After thinking about it, I have to say I have changed my mind somewhat. The Obamacons have reached sufficient voice and number to be more than the "statistical noise" you get every election year. That said, I would still say that while the phenomenon isn't entirely phoney, I have a very hard time saying the same thing about the arguments the Obamacons use. I think the idea that there would be much that is recognizably conservative in an Obama presidency is absurd.

10/29 03:24 PM

'statistical noise'

I love how Goldberg strives for a tone of bemused detachment, like he conceives himself as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court.

The Obama Show [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I had a sinking feelings watching this Obama infomercial. Until it flashed a preview for the LIVE OBAMA EVENT. That instinct to overshoot could may be a big part of the reason this is still a contest, that he hasn't quite sealed the deal. When you think about it, his campaign is one huge overshoot. It could be a successful one, mind you. But we are a skeptical people ... right?

I'll say this much for the last half-hour [Andy McCarthy]

The Knicks look much better than I'd have thought.

A Joke And What It Reveals [John Hood]

Speaking in front of a huge audience at downtown Raleigh rally yesterday, Barack Obama threw off a humorous line about John McCain's accusation that the Obama tax plan is redistributionist:

McCain has “called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class,” Obama said. “I don’t know what’s next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

Ha ha.

Only, in this passage Obama revealed precisely why he is vulnerable to such charges: he can't seem to tell the difference between a gift and a theft. There is nothing remotely socialistic or communistic about sharing. If you have a toy that someone else wants, you have three choices in a free society. You can offer to trade it for something you value that is owned by the other. You can give the toy freely, as a sign of friendship or compassion. Or you can choose to do neither.

Collectivism in all its forms is about taking away your choice. Whether you wish to or not, the government compels you to surrender the toy, which it then redistributes to someone that government officials deem to be a more worthy owner. It won't even be someone you could ever know, in most cases. That's what makes the political philosophy unjust (by stripping you of control over yourself and the fruits of your labor) as well as counterproductive (by failing to give the recipient sufficient incentive to learn and work hard so he can earn his own toys in the future).

Government is not charity. It is not persuasion, or cooperation, or sharing. Government is a fist, a shove, a gun. Obama either doesn't understand this, or doesn't want voters to understand it.

John Hood evidently not a relative of the Nottingham Hoods then...

I can only assume Mr. Hood is going to spend tomorrow giving a fist, a shove or a gun to all those damn kids coming around trick-or-treating.

He probably has a sign on his door and is not allowed.

:-D

Government is a fist, a shove, a gun.

wow. just wow.

In the NRO Universe, we literally live in 1934 Germany. Literally.

Is he going on that NR Cruise thing? What a delight at the dinner table he'll be.

If you have a toy that someone else wants, you have three choices in a free society. You can offer to trade it for something you value that is owned by the other. You can give the toy freely, as a sign of friendship or compassion. Or you can take large amounts of money from the tobacco industry.

can we all book a cabin on the cruise?

Remember that NR piece about one of their cruises – one where William F. Buckley was dismissed as senile by the younger Cornerites?

all sold out ;_________;

http://www.nrcruise.com/Media/nr-note.gif

"How To Book The Cruise"

sounds like a potential Larry Craig memoir title.

Would anyone like to participate in a NRO collaborative script set on their cruise? The climax comes when the ship starts going down Titanic-style and Jonah + K-Lo have a DeCaprio/Winslet style romance!

no

K-Lo/Twinkie fan fic

This is the soundtrack:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51O23tTB2aL._SS500_.jpg

ouch did u just call klo a whale

klo is jean grey, the twinkie is cyclops

K-lo is Dr. Light. The Twinkie is Sue Dibny.

I am so sad that cruise is booked. ;_;

Greenwald writing about The Corner:

Many people have noted the even-worse-than-usual malice and derangement of National Review writers over the past couple of months. Much of that has been just a mild, desperation-fueled extension of standard form -- the low-level, vapid, cliché-spouting cartoons (Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez); the right-wing talk-radio-level haters (Mark Levin, Mark Steyn, Lisa Schiffren, Victor Davis Hanson); the GOP-loyalist Dead-Ender operatives (Rich Lowry, Ed Whelan), etc. But Andy McCarthy's unique descent into full-fledged reality-detachment and "sheer madness" has really been something to behold -- not because it's inconsistent with prior behavior (it's isn't), but because he was, not all that long ago, a federal prosecutor, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, with immense power over the lives of many people

Bad Thoughts [John Derbyshire]

Now here's a subversive little thought about that Khalidi tape that the Los Angeles Times is guarding like a cargo of plutonium.

* Item: The Los Angeles Times is owned by the Tribune Co.
* Item: The Tribune Co. is based in Chicago.
* Item: "In 2008, Tribune is struggling under a $13 billion debt load, much of it incurred in taking the company private in 2007, and from plummeting advertising income at its newspapers." (Wikipedia. A business friend tells me the current figure is actually $14.7 billion.)
* Item: Tribune Chairman and CEO Sam Zell is a major Republican donor. Why would he not want his paper to release the Khalidi tape?
* Item: The federal government is sitting on a bailout fund of $700 billion.
* Item: It's not likely the Treasury can disburse more than one or two hundred billion of that before the next administration comes in.
* Item: The next administration will therefore have at least half a trillion greenies to hand out to anyone it deems worthy of being bailed out. Anyone — there are no hard and fast rules.
* Item: 14.7 billion is a very small proportion — less than three percent — of half a trillion.

When Sam Zell's office was called and asked about this (by a friend of mine who requests deep anonymity), they said the thought was ridiculous.

Which of course it is. Perfectly ridiculous. Utterly, impossibly ridiculous. Preposterous. Totally preposterous … (Rinse and repeat.)

10/30 04:59 PM