NRO's The Corner: Rolling Bile, Spit, and Gnash Thread

Sex Makes Babies [Maggie Gallagher]

The problem is not the Pill. The problem is the idea, which promoters of the pill introduced and promoted with great fanfare, that we have separated sex from reproduction.

We teach the young to think of pregnancy as a rare emergency, an unexpected side effect of engaging in sexual acts. This disconnect produces a great deal of lunacy in our culture, and suffering for children, too.
----------

Newsflash: Sex makes babies.

is that what's behind all the gay hate, that they get off easy?

pretty much

'Obama's Katrina' [Yuval Levin]
I think it’s actually right to say that the BP oil spill is something like Obama’s Katrina, but not in the sense in which most critics seem to mean it.

It’s like Katrina in that many people's attitudes regarding the response to it reveal completely unreasonable expectations of government. The fact is, accidents (not to mention storms) happen. We can work to prepare for them, we can have various preventive rules and measures in place. We can build the capacity for response and recovery in advance. But these things happen, and sometimes they happen on a scale that is just too great to be easily addressed. It is totally unreasonable to expect the government to be able to easily address them—and the kind of government that would be capable of that is not the kind of government that we should want.

Let’s say a major hurricane hits a large and densely populated American city with five hundred thousand inhabitants. Much of the city is below sea level, and the flood-waters that follow in the wake of the storm quickly overrun it, filling nearly every street with water, in many places fifteen feet in depth. The magnitude of human suffering and destruction of property is mind-boggling. But within six days, everyone is out of the city and in total approximately one thousand people—one in five hundred residents—lost their lives in the calamity. Hour by hour, the government response was messy and ugly—it could hardly be otherwise given the magnitude of the disaster. But looked at with a little perspective, is that really a story of a failure of government response, or is it an example of how to contend with an immense natural disaster in a densely populated urban center? Is it a model of incompetence, or the most effective mass evacuation in human history?

Now let’s say a massive oil drilling platform, working with a variety of flammable and explosive liquids and gases in huge amounts more than 40 miles out in the ocean suddenly experiences a catastrophic failure that sets off a fiery explosion, sets the rig on fire, and causes it to sink—releasing an enormous gush of oil into the ocean more than 5,000 feet below sea level. Vast quantities of oil spill into the sea, threatening fish, wildlife, and coastal industries. The company that owns the rig, together with federal regulators, scientists, and engineers, tries a variety of different techniques—from remotely operated vehicles to containment domes to pumping heavy fluids down large pipes onto the well head—some of them invented on the fly, while 80 ships and several thousand people engage in a sophisticated cleanup and containment effort. Is this a failure of regulation and a model of slothful inefficiency, or is it an impressive display of human ingenuity and power in response to a terrible accident? We don’t yet know how long the spill will continue or how bad its consequences will turn out to be. And obviously it would have been great to avert such an accident, or to respond even faster and more effectively when it happened. But can we really say that not having done so is a massive failure of government, or of the oil industry?

We seem to think that given our modern powers, there ought to be no accidents and no natural disasters anymore, and when those happen we blame the people in charge. Well, call me crazy but I don’t want a government so powerful that it could move half a million people in mere hours in response to a hurricane, or would have such total control over every facet of every industry that the potential for industrial accidents would be entirely eliminated. Such power would come at enormous cost to a lot of things we care about.

you're crazy

the kind of government that would be capable of that is not the kind of government that we should want

rong

Considering the positions + readers of NRO, that's actually a pretty well articulated point. If you are against government power then you certainly can't complain when they fail to act effectively in the face of disaster.

Well you can't wan't to drown government in the bathtub and expect it to do your laundry in the end I suppose.

As I leave Oslo, Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, arrives. He is just perfect for the Norwegians — I mean, for the Norwegian political elites: Third World, “indigenous,” not quite a commie, not quite a democrat, something in between. Perfect.

love the scare quotes there

those Norwegian political elites, thinking they're hot stuff.

Post of the week:

Rhymes Without Reason [Mark Steyn]

I had no idea until today that this was the marching slogan of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid:

Butch, femme, bottom, top
Israeli apartheid has to stop.

Hmm. Michael Coren expands on the paradox of an anti-apartheid rallying cry itself obsessed with categorization. But I found myself wondering: Is there a Queers Against Sharia? If not:

Butch, femme, top, bottom
Gay bars in Riyadh? It's hard to spot 'em

Bottom, top, femme, butch
Pride parade's dull since the Taliban putsch

Top, bottom, butch, femme
With complimentary FGM

Top, bott, butch, femme, trans
Quit your chanting and read your Korans.

If there's one thing I never get tired of, it's the idea that to criticize one thing you must also criticize all things wrong with the world. (Also, a google search didn't reveal gay rights criticism of Islamic states?)

well that's the thing with any ideological cultural crit---all the failings of the world (as you see them) are secondary to the collective's failure to understand whatever it is you have ~grasped.~

how is Evo Morales not indigenous? also, the critique (such as it is) could be said about the "elite" in any country (I think).

http://article.nationalreview.com/435185/conservative-rock-songs-deconstructed/john-j-miller

lol

found this clicking around from that link:
John J. Miller on Iron Maiden on National Review Online

hahaha.

The second song is one of Iron Maiden's most familiar: "Two Minutes to Midnight." It's an anti-nuke tune whose politics aren't exactly to my liking.

lol pathetic

http://rightwingnews.com/2010/06/the-20-hottest-conservative-women-in-the-new-media-2010-edition/

http://rightwingnews.com/resizebyid.php?id=1

Judge Not [Jonah Goldberg]

Yes, I was a judge of the Hottest Conservative Women in New Media "contest." My shame spiral is bottomless.

figured that out years ago, J

http://i47.tinypic.com/2irn3m8.jpghttp://i47.tinypic.com/2irn3m8.jpghttp://i47.tinypic.com/2irn3m8.jpg

poor k-lo

the liberalheretics' video section is just a ray stevens video.

http://www.theliberalheretic.com/blog/node/993

http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/2682500807_fb4fe635c5-41896-20091231-2.jpg

poor k-lo

has anyone ever pointed out how much Steele looks like Shock G/Humpty Hump

http://25.media.tumblr.com/zk2Z35IWTkstjwa2r5qxzcZ6o1_500.jpg

dude.... they kind of have the same voice too!

WHAT UP

let's take it to the streets

i always thought he looked like larry david

http://nicedeb.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/michael_steele.jpghttp://l.yimg.com/l/tv/us/img/site/54/00/0000035400_20061023184733.jpg

btw, is there any way any of us could help start a nutjob argument about whether Malkin's shattering of the race barrier on that Hot Women list is a byproduct of affirmative action? I would like to see her thought process if someone could get that rolling.

ann coulter's inclusion was a nice gesture towards transgendered people as well.

classy

Marfan's took Lux Interior, yet Coulter still lives. UNFAIR.

Sir Jerk? [Jay Nordlinger]
So, Paul McCartney is in the East Room of the White House, with President and Mrs. Obama. He is being fêted because he has just won an award from the Library of Congress. He caps the evening with this remark – this is his farewell, his send-off: “After the last eight years, it’s good to have a president that knows what a library is.”

Can anyone tell me why people are such schmucks? Why they are so graceless and clueless and nasty? I mean, Paul McCartney’s like the richest, most popular, most honored musician in the world. Does he not have it in him to behave like a gentleman — or at least a non-boor — while he’s being celebrated at the White House? Does he have to be the Wanda Sykes of popular music? Is it not possible to love Obama, as McCartney does, without hating Bush — or at least insulting him on a high, non-political occasion?

I don’t care that “Penny Lane” is a pretty tune, Paul McCartney is a horse’s butt. Let me amend that: He acted like one, on Wednesday night.
06/04 09:14 AM Share

Funny how this WH and its supporters laugh about Bush and reading yet show their own ignorance in making comments about a law in Arizona deriding it yet they openly admit they have not read it. This comes from the highest law enforcement and homeland security positions in the land. Is it perhaps 17 pages is beyond their comprehension skills or do they feel that reading is unnecessary since their supporters seem to swallow everything they say hook line and sinker and feel that perhaps they are too inferior to read for themselves and therefore won't discover that the Arizona law is more protective of immigrants than the federal law? I think if I were a democratic supporter I wouldn't be ridiculing anyone right now for their reading skills, and I won't even mention they can't read the laws that make it illegal to offer someone a position whether paid or unpaid to get out of a race. But then I guess worrying about laws only comes into play when a democrat is trying to prosecute a republican, otherwise they claim "business as usual and everyone does it". Maybe they can make a list so we can all read it of which laws only apply to certain political parties and which ones we can ignore when it suits us.

Posted by: justmyvoice | June 3, 2010 5:55 PM | Report abuse

It's crazy, but I don't totally disagree with Nordlinger xp, I think he makes a reasonable point. If I were in the White House, I'd be really formal and not crack jokes about other Presidents

I mostly posted that Nordlinger comment to set the scene for the Corner comments that are sure to follow.

btw, I totally think it's ok to make jokes about President Taft getting stuck in the bathtub nowadays.

LOL @ the outrage over Macca's remarks. Bush read books OK, but he was the king boor as pres, back-slapping and nick-naming, treating the world stage as his personal lockeroom

anybody else notice that the corner has been hacked w/bogus spam-links

LOL @ the outrage over Macca's remarks. Bush read books OK, but he was the king boor as pres, back-slapping and nick-naming, treating the world stage as his personal lockeroom

truthbomb^^^

mega lolz @ the Wanda sykes of popular music

Nordlinger posted a ton of inane shit today but the best was his attempted psychoanalysis of that Irish Nobel laureate who was on one of the Gaza ships

Re ‘Bolton!’ [Jay Nordlinger]

My inbox is full of e-mail in full-throated support of an idea we discussed earlier: Bolton for President. Some say, “My friends and I have talked about this for months.” Readers really want to bypass secretary of state altogether and send Bolton right to the Oval Office. In fact, that may be easier for JRB: election by the people over confirmation by the Senate.

Seriously, shouldn’t there be some outside-the-box candidates in 2012? A Petraeus, a Bolton? Must the field include only the same old suspects? Do you know a clearer thinker, a sharper speaker, a bolder official than Bolton? The times could use a guy like him, frankly. And in debate against Obama — wow.

Many readers have said, “About time we had a president with a mustache.” That’s what President Bush used to call him, or called him at least once: “The Man with the Mustache.” Readers also said, “When was the last time we had a president with glasses? Bush 41? How about before that?” A lot of people mentioned TR: mustachioed and bespectacled.

Finally, one reader said, “We conservatives always set our sights too low. Forget having Bolton as president. Make him dictator for a day, à la Friedman and China.” Yeah, and don’t forget that Woody Allen wants to confer dictatorial powers on Obama, too (temporarily, to be sure).

Anyway, I think I feel a draft . . . “Bolton for President.” To paraphrase an old line — I learned this from Bob Novak; a 19th-century Republican speaker of the House said it, I think — “The Republican party and the American people could do worse, and probably will.”

yeah nordlinger has been giving everyone else a strong run in the stupid + pissy + clueless + arrogant stakes. who the hell is this guy?

"And in debate against Obama — wow."

lol

Anyway, I think I feel a draft

between his ears

BOLTON FOR PRESIDENT: Because Cheney Was Too Well-Liked