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

how, i mean, i just

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/249265/south-border-peter-robinson

South of the Border
October 13, 2010 9:04 A.M.
By Peter Robinson

Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Mexico’s original sin: a race-based class system. Until that changes, Victor Davis Hanson sees little hope for Mexico’s future.

We are in the eleventh hour in Mexico.

Click Here

This is INSANE:

Pragmatic Obama?
By Stanley Kurtz

Over at TAPPED, Mori Dinauer comments on “Obama’s Radical Past,” my preview of the argument of my forthcoming book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. Dinauer wants to know how I link socialism to Obama’s current governing philosophy and long-term political strategy. Dinauer also suggests that Obama is not an ideologue, but merely a pragmatist who sought political advancement through socialist connections that were an inescapable part of his leftist Chicago environment.

Agree or disagree, I comment on all of these arguments at length in Radical-in-Chief. The final chapter is an analysis of the Obama administration in light of Obama’s background in socialist community organizing. The pragmatism argument doesn’t work when you follow out the consistent socialist thread that runs through Obama’s life. Of course, if Obama is merely a pragmatist, it means that his carefully crafted political persona is a lie. After all, the whole point of Dreams from My Father is that Obama is sincere — that his community organizing solved his identity crisis and gave him a politics he could believe in. Obama himself stresses that he turned down the chance for a Supreme Court clerkship to do community organizing at near-poverty wages. You don’t ordinarily try to become a politician via community organizing; socialists, on the other hand, did look at organizing as a way into elective office.

Here I believe Obama. He was a committed community organizer who sincerely believed what other community organizers believed. The only thing he left out was that community organizers are socialists.

Community organizers are socialists, full stop.

Isn't that what the rich have always thought?

But when Richard Viguerie organizes direct-mail campaigns in the seventies, and Dick Armey corrals pissed-off white people, it's called "stoking middle-class anger."

That's not organizing, that's just mailing. Although what counts for organizing in the Obama presidency is just emailing.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/249650/public-employees-and-elections-conflict-interest-pat-sajak

lol what a doofus.

"i'd like to buy a clue"

"I’m not suggesting that public employees should be denied the right to vote, but that there are certain cases in which their stake in the matter may be too great. Of course we all have a stake in one way or another in most elections, and many of us tend to vote in favor of our own interests. However, if, for example, a ballot initiative appears that might cap the benefits of a certain group of state workers, should those workers be able to vote on the matter?"

DURRR DURRR DURRR

I wonder who would have more at stake: state employee re: benefits or top 1% of income re: say bush tax cuts.

DURRRR DURR DURRR

conflict of interest matters only when we are talking about GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES and TEACHERS UNIONS. way to focus on who/what is really influencing elections.

thanks to the comments on that Sajak post my next ILX username will be AOLMUSCLEGRANDMA

also i love how Derb soon piped in to note that he's long been in favour of disenfranchising public employees

I guess the true stfu question would be: you including the military?

jonah goldberg, paragon of manhood

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/249729/man-john-j-miller

http://world-o-crap.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Jonah-Goldberg-Killin-Yer-Doods-1.jpg

Does Sajak not understand that those same state employees actually still pay taxes, too? Wait, don't answer. Either answer is stupid.

That Jonah graf is hilarious.

u must be new here

irl lol

That Jonah thing is like....what, you want the date rapey types back?

wait wait wait wait:

We have no John Wayne, no Clint Eastwood.

which Clint Eastwood? THIS one?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Y2F7daFbH4M/SrlHBpzfNkI/AAAAAAAACu0/YxPPVb8u2ag/s400/high+plains+lobby+card.jpg

guessing my comment won't make it through:

"Thank you. I agree that people are easily split into binaries. I find this view allows me to maintain many preconceived notions and carry on minimal thinking at all times."

nah, it's on there!

nice. next step is osama thumbs up.

this is sort of amazing. (doesn't get really good until the buzzcut dude starts in.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BV_5m3nySo&feature=player_embedded

The Wise Latina Goes Off the Deep End
October 20, 2010 1:05 P.M.
By Adam Freedman

Here’s what happens when you pick Supreme Court Justices based on “empathy.”

Facts: An HIV-positive prisoner (Anthony Pitre) is transferred to a prison where all inmates are required to do hard labor. He doesn’t like hard labor and so, in protest, he refuses to take his HIV meds. As a result, he’s less fit for hard labor. But prison officials say: “Too bad, you still have to do hard labor like everyone else.” Pitre then sues the prison for “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Constitution.

The magistrate judge dismisses the claim as “patently frivolous.” The federal district court agrees. The Fifth Circuit agrees. Eight Supreme Court justices refuse to hear the case — with Justice Sotomayor dissenting. In a four-page dissent (highly unusual for a routine denial of certiorari), Sotomayor argues that Pitre had demonstrated that prison officials acted with “deliberate indifference” in violation of the Eighth Amendment (h/t Orin Kerr at Volokh).

Poor Sonia Sotomayor, she seems to be in over her head. Perhaps I’ll send her an empathy card.

Amusing write-up of that vid: http://wonkette.com/426842/conservative-nerd-gets-revenge-on-conservative-nerd-girlfriend-on-c-span

holy shit that video

‘The Trojan Pragmatist’
October 29, 2010 10:18 A.M.
By Mary Eberstadt

Kathryn’s thorough and informative interview with Stanley Kurtz about his new book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, is must reading. As one of a few people who read the manuscript before its publication last week, I know that this interview is the best preview yet of what’s inside — and that anybody reading it will end up wanting to read the whole book.

And no wonder. Radical-in-Chief compellingly lays out as never before the firm ideological chain running through the president’s political life. It joins Obama’s earliest radical mentors to his college Marxism-Leninism to his attendance at Socialist Scholars Conferences in the early 1980s to his years spent collaborating with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and other radicals to his steady rise in the world of socialist politics in Chicago and beyond. It also connects the dots between those decades of thought and work and associations — and current White House policy.

It’s a product of extraordinary research; see just for starters pages 392-393, where scores of libraries and librarians across the country are thanked for allowing the author access to archives that anyone else could have found too — but only Stanley Kurtz did. Frankly, reading the manuscript almost made me feel sorry for our president. He has something far more dangerous on his trail than the right-wing noise machine. He has as his political biographer a former Harvard anthropologist who learned how to research and handle evidence at some of the best universities in the world, and who’s won coveted teaching awards at Harvard and elsewhere for his ability to explain complicated issues clearly and persuasively. How scary is that? For a politician who’s depended on passing himself off as a post-ideological pragmatist, plenty.

She is also the author of numerous influential essays, including "Why Ritalin Rules," "Home-Alone America," "Eminem is Right," "How the West Really Lost God," and "Is Food the New Sex?" (Policy Review), and "The Vindication of Humanae Vitae," "How Pedophilia Lost its Cool," and "Christianity Lite (First Things)."

," "How Pedophilia Lost its Cool,

Imagine the furor had Allen Ginsberg written this article.

How scary is that?
http://imgur.com/qEfyrs.jpg

this isn't just some bullshit like the rest of the books we talk about. it has real footnotes! from a library!

just check out the libraries this guys thanks. pretty extraordinary if you ask me

archives that anyone else could have found too — but only Stanley Kurtz did.

Does she get how pathetic this sounds?

He has as his political biographer a former Harvard anthropologist who learned how to research and handle evidence at some of the best universities in the world, and who’s won coveted teaching awards at Harvard and elsewhere for his ability to explain complicated issues clearly and persuasively

and THIS

i wonder how she'd score on the "how elite are you" test

Gawker has some fun with Goldberg, Goldberg responds about as you'd expect.

love how all of a sudden Harvard's prestigious for these guys instead of OH NO HARVARD

actually that's what I respect about them; it's not the means, it's the ends.

And if he thinks I need to be punched in the face, I invite him to give it a whirl himself. If memory serves, it could lead to a fun few minutes for me.

^^ gets it

If As*ange is placing United States citizens and soldiers in peril in a time of war, then, in my view, he is fair game to be taken out as any other legitimate military target. Because this danger is more than just As*ange, if we have other methods to shut the operation down -- using our friends in Europe and their domestic agencies to crush Wikileaks -- then that may be more effective. If, however, assassination of an American enemy will have a chilling effect on the rest of Wikileaks, much like the bombing of his family had on Gaddafi, let's roll.

apparently these guys think "As*ange" is a cute moniker.

last sentence is pure internet tough guy. so pathetic.

lol at Goldberg calling Assange a "hipster"

the jonah goldberg column formula:

1) state calibrated "outrageous" and/or "counter-intuitve" position

2) insist that liberals are guilty of the same or far worse crimes

3) back-track like mad - OF COURSE I don't really mean assassinate

4) then sneak in a hateful kicker - but if the guy dies who the fuck cares

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/251916/voting-jay-nordlinger

he just keeps rambling on and on, it's amazing

They just keeps rambling on and on, it's amazing.

btw, people, listen up: this is the first election cycle since 2004 during which we'll see a giddy K-Lo.

I filled out this strange form, where you blackened ovals. Was I taking the SAT? You then shoved the form into a computer. There were different lines for these activities. It all seemed kind of . . . involved. And I really miss pulling levers. “Pulling the lever” will always be my expression for voting, no matter where technology takes us. We still call certain golf clubs “irons,” though they haven’t been made of iron in generations. We still speak of “dialing the phone” — do we?

Does “Don’t touch that dial” still have any meaning?

http://freelance-zone.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/andy_rooney.jpg

This one posted early this morning is a real pearl:

My Annual Complaint

November 2, 2010 8:02 A.M.

By Fred Schwarz

My annual complaint is that our most important right, the right to vote, depends upon the dedication and vigilance of poll workers who were too dull to get a job at Kmart. They seem honest and well-meant, and are usually polite, but not exactly quick thinkers. When I arrived at my polling place, I was directed to a man who barely spoke English and spent several minutes attempting to look up my election district (which I already knew). Then I went through my yearly ordeal of making repeated attempts to explain how my last name is spelled, even though I had written it out on a card in advance.