Favorite poster from NR's "The Corner"

against "made up" holidays that seem "politically correct."

jesus that "punk" guy is full of shit x999999999

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2020898/posts

Juneteenth really makes these people angry, I wonder why?

Eff these people. The local Juneteenth block party/parade thing is happening this weekend about 10 blocks from my house, and it's awesome. Food and music and people and dogs everywhere. And the follow-up party is a week later.

This is my fave line from the local press release:(emph. mine)

A special ceremony will be held at 1 p.m. at the statue, and feature an appearance by Miss Black Oregon 2009 and well-known Lincoln impersonator, Steve Holgate.

wowowowowowowow

Understanding Obama on Iran [Andy McCarthy]

Call me thick, but I continue to be baffled by a lot of the commentary, cited by Rich and others, which gives as the rationale for President Obama's diffidence his purported determination to preserve the opportunity to negotiate with the mullahs on their nuclear program. Obama is resigned to Iran getting nukes (perhaps even having them already) and has no intention of doing anything meaningful about it.

The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society. In this he is no different from his allies like the Congressional Black Caucus and Bill Ayers, who have shown themselves perfectly comfortable with Castro and Chàvez. Indeed, he is the product of a hard-Left tradition that apologized for Stalin and was more comfortable with the Soviets than the anti-Communists (and that, in Soros parlance, saw George Bush as a bigger terrorist than bin Laden).

Because of obvious divergences (inequality for women and non-Muslims, hatred of homosexuals) radical Islam and radical Leftism are commonly mistaken to be incompatible. In fact, they have much more in common than not, especially when it comes to suppression of freedom, intrusiveness in all aspects of life, notions of "social justice," and their economic programs. (On this, as in so many other things, Anthony Daniels should be required reading — see his incisive New English Review essay, "There Is No God but Politics", comparing Marx and Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb.) The divergences between radical Islam and radical Leftism are much overrated — "equal rights" and "social justice" are always more rally-cry propaganda than real goals for totalitarians, and hatred of certain groups is always a feature of their societies.

The key to understanding Obama, on Iran as on other matters, is that he is a power-politician of the hard Left : He is steeped in Leftist ideology, fueled in anger and resentment over what he chooses to see in America's history, but a "pragmatist" in the sense that where ideology and power collide (as they are apt to do when your ideology becomes less popular the more people understand it), Obama will always give ground on ideology (as little as circumstances allow) in order to maintain his grip on power.

It would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama's instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters. As this position became increasingly untenable politically, and as Democrats became nervous that his silence would become a winning political round for Republicans, he was moved grudgingly to burble a mild censure of the mullah's "unjust" repression — on the order of describing a maiming as a regrettable "assault," though enough for the Obamedia to give him cover. But expect him to remain restrained and to continue grossly understating the Iranian regime's deadly response. That will change only if, unexpectedly, it appears that the freedom-fighters may win, at which point he'll scoot over to the right side of history and take all conceivable credit.

I think Victor had this right on Saturday: "Obama is almost more at ease with virulent anti-Westerners, whose grievances Obama has long studied (and perhaps in large part entertained)," (though I'd have omitted the "almost"). Mark Steyn made the same point in a post last week (about a Robert Kagan column that Pete Wehner also discussed).

It's a mistake to perceive this as "weakness" in Obama. It would have been weakness for him to flit over to the freedom fighters' side the minute it seemed politically expedient. He hasn't done that, and he won't. Obama has a preferred outcome here, one that is more in line with his worldview, and it is not victory for the freedom fighters. He is hanging as tough as political pragmatism allows, and by doing so he is making his preferred outcome more likely. That's not weakness, it's strength — and strength of the sort that ought to frighten us.

06/22 10:05 AMShare

McCarthy long since proved the truth of the 'Battle not with monsters' dictum.

yeah, i'm having trouble understanding a mind that could write any of those sentences.

Call me thick

Ok, sure.

Maybe this is the last of my naivete speaking up, but I'm just floored that a federal prosecutor can write those sentences. Where's the evidence that Obama is "comfortable" with totalitarian regimes"?

Probably shaking Chavez's hand or something like that. Who knows with this guy.

arguing solely by assertion has been the stock in trade of movement conservatives forever, GWB's two terms can be summarzied as governing by assertion imo. asking "where's the evidence" could be posted after anything written by anything at the corner, or contentions, or redstate, or the washington post op-ed page...

coming to a conclusion based on a careful reading of the (messy) facts is... weak, because you have allowed something outside yourself to dictate to you what is true, rather than your own principles. is that what the mentality is?

i get what you mean by "maybe this is the last of my naivete" alfred, cos yeah i've been reading this kind of garbage for my whole adult life and this attitude above all others is still baffling and infuriating to me

As a nice enough corrective I enjoyed this Shepard Smith profile:

The anchor has taken an unwavering stand against what he calls the “fantasy land” that some critics of Mr. Obama live in.

“It is the reporting of this news organization that Barack Obama is a citizen and he is not a Muslim,” Mr. Smith said, touching on a subject — Mr. Obama’s birth status — that has animated conspiratorial discussion in conservative circles, from relatively obscure far-right Web sites like Atlas Shrugs all the way up to the loudest mainstream conservative voice, Mr. Limbaugh.

Without specifically addressing Mr. Limbaugh (whom he said he enjoys), Mr. Smith said: “An unreasonable comment to me is beginning with a statement that is contrary to fact and moving on from that premise: ‘Barack Obama is not a citizen; he is a Muslim looking to take down the nation.’ When you begin with that premise, you are out of bounds.”

if andrew mac had balls he'd just come out say what's obviously on his mind: "obama sides w/the mullahs cause he's a muslim"

And I've been reading The Corner for years! I still do because once in a while they post something that really appalls me.

in related news the wash post increasingly resembles NRO/the corner. and not just in the editorials, the last two front pages have featured weird and flimsy pro-GOP "news" stories.

god, Friday was a rogue gallery: Wolfowitz, Krauthammer, et al.

That McCarthy column is seriously just. . . insane.

So Rich Lowry says "Hey Andy, you sound ridiculous" (in slightly different words) and McCarthy responds. Oh dear. In conclusion:

Finally, I detect in your post a sense that I'm this close to the fringe. Saying, "whatever policy differences we have with him," is generally a prelude to claiming that some objection that has been lodged is beyond the realm of acceptable argument. I'll say two things about that. First, if you look at the sweeping changes that have occurred in the past five months, I think what I argued before the election about the significance of Obama's Leftist background and radical connections was on the mark. Second, I am saying what I am saying because I respect the president. As I said in the last post, I don't think he is weak at all. To the contrary, I think he has strategic goals that he pursues in highly disciplined, tactical pragmatism. He is a force to be reckoned with, and I don't think you reckon with him by hopefully assuming that, on some level, he shares our ideas about what's best for the country and the world. I credit him for wanting what's best — but only as he sees it.

I credit him for wanting what's best — but only as he sees it.

Does he actually believe this statement is an effective indictment?

'm not suggesting that Obama loves the mullahs or that he wants to turn America into Iran. I am not saying Obama wants the mullahs to abuse their own people — I'm sure he'd prefer this all to end without (further) bloodshed. I am merely saying that (a) the president does not think the mullahs are evil, (b) he thinks they have a point, (c) he thinks he can forge a rapprochement and deal effectively with them (though he is under no illusions about stopping their nuclear ambitions), (d) he is not a big believer in freedom, and (e) he thinks the world would be more stable and easier for him to navigate if the mullahs win.

So, um...the second set of assertions contradict the first set. Is this why Macca's no longer a prosecutor?

My god that second post is even more insane than the first.

"I think he sincerely believes he could deal with the mullahs and make them less anti-American than they now are, once they realize how he is reversing a lot of what offends them (and him) about America."

Like what is he even talking about here? Bonkers.

We didn't listen to his delusional ramblings 5 months ago and they all came true u_u

Yeah it's true. All those conservatives in camps. When will we learn to listen?

the k-lo fat jokes upthread gave me a stomach ache

Stay away from the ice cream.

i always picture k-lo as one of the humans in wall-e

hahaha!

Carl Owen counters this nonsense:

OK, let me see if I've got this right. Since Barack Obama has taken the presidential oath of office we have witnessed: a) Hezbollah lose a shoo-in election in Lebanon, b) Pakistan begin serious efforts to control the Taliban and al Qaeda elements inside its borders, c) Netanyahu of Israel mumble support about a two state solution and rethink settlements and, d) A major awakening of the Iranian citizenry against the heavy-handedness of the mullahs. What hasn't changed? The simple-minded thuggery of the Right when it comes to foreign policy (and Grover Norquist, someone should gently remind him that it's 2009, not 1989). They have long preferred a modified Teddy Roosevelt approach. Speak loudly and wail away with the biggest stick you can find. I don't know if all this is the results of one speech in Cairo by the President but if it is I hope he gives a second, and soon

conservatives are so weird, part 1mx

The Age of Jackson [John Derbyshire]

I heartily applaud Jonah's nicely balanced, commendably sour refusal to celebrate Michael Jackson's peculiar life in the same gushing spirit the media has displayed. Sourpuss refusals to go along with gushy media enthusiasms are a part of what we're about here at NRO, and long may that remain so.

Working up my Radio Derb transcript here, I find I've been chastened by the concurrent death of Farrah Fawcett, who was only twenty months younger than me. I hear footsteps coming up the driveway, and shall keep perfectly still till they've gone, as I hope and trust they will. In that spirit, I'm trying hard to find something positive to say about the guy the media were calling "the Gloved One" the last time I paid any attention, which I see was a decade or two ago.

All I could come up with was that Jackson, like Fawcett, was a relic of the time when we were a single nation, listening to the same pop songs, going to the same movies, sticking the same babe posters on our bedroom walls, laughing at the same jokes, even giving our kids names from a common stock. Whether Jackson should be extravagantly mourned or not, I leave to you to decide; but that era of national-cultural unity surely should be. Requiescat in pace.

06/26 11:41 AM Share

looooool

hates black people

Isn't he British?

hes confusing the pre-revolutionary war era with the 80s i guess

Oh, the good old days when every other little girl was named "Farrah"

The Cap-and-Trade Stampede [Victor Davis Hanson]

It was somewhere around 3-4 years ago that "global warming" suddenly morphed into "climate change" in vernacular speech. Soon previously antithetical events, from floods to draughts, forest fires to ice storms, record lows and unprecedented heat, windless days and violent gusts — hitherto known by our parents as "the weather" and "stuff happens" — suddenly became symptomatic of the horrible middle-class habits of burning carbon to go places and keep either warm or cool. One could not lose an argument, since on any given day something other than clear and 75 degrees was attributed to carbon footprints and global changes. When undetectable the problem was "insidious," when a Southern California canyon went up in wildfires it was, "You see! We warned you!" — as if the newer "climate change" fulfilled some deep-seated psychological need in many in the media.

In the methodology of phrenology or astrology, any natural disaster was hyped in magnitude (the locus classicus was Obama's claim in May 2007 that "10,000" had died (actual death toll: 12) in a tornado in Kansas (apparent proof, he further claimed, of what happens when Bush diverts the Kansas National Guard to Iraq and leaves the depopulated state short-handed while thousands perish).

I just spent a few days in the Sierra in May during freezing cold temperatures and snow; a week ago it was quite cool and raining in New York; each time I have passed through Phoenix this spring it seemed unseasonably cool; and just gave a talk on the Russian River and about froze. Meanwhile the grapes look about ten days behind due to unseasonably cool temperatures. Any empiricist would be worried, as Newsweek once was, about global cooling. Will the planet boil, if we slow down a bit, review the science and dissenting views, and consider the wisdom in a recession of allotting nearly a trillion dollars to changing our very way of life (while the Chinese absorb market share)?

06/26 11:33 AMShare

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/temptrend.png

...u fukkin moron

i love is the elevation of big-ass cars with shitty mpg and dirty-filthy coal plants and 68-degree a/c settings to a "way of life."

i really love the idea of VDH doing a few things here and there and needing a jacket (esp "my vineyards are late") followed with "any empiricist would be worried..." no, fuckstick, no empiricist would be worried. a narcissist would be worried, tho.

empiricist, imperialist, whatever.

love how people who pull out these anecdotes about it being unseasonably cold somewhere are usually willing to acknowledge that the global avg temp has gone up ("oh but it was only a tenth of a degree") but can't put it together enough to realize that that means that someone, somewhere is saying it's gotten hotter where they are. duh.

but, my fucking vineyard??!?

oh, my grapes are 10 days early. weird.

just a simple agrarian, thinkin baout things

Jay Nordlinger: the screwiness moves:

There is mail in that column, too. And I so like one letter I publish, I’m going to talk about it again, here in the Corner. The letter comes from an Italian-American friend of ours — reader, cruiser, etc. (I’m not implying anything by “cruiser” — it’s just that he has come on at least one of National Review’s cruises.) He was thinking about the Ricci case. And he says that, when he was growing up in Kansas City, Italians weren’t considered white — far from it. Now they’re lily, it seems.

“I can’t figure out if we got a promotion or a demotion. I mean, just as it’s time to line up for minority benefits, we get bumped to the back of the line for being white.”

And I especially loved this: “Heck, here in Los Angeles” — where our cruiser now lives — “people refer to me as Anglo. Imagine that, in the very place where Rudolph Valentino was the original Latin Lover.”

Valentino would not be a “Latin lover” today — Sonia would definitely say no. He would be an unwise non-Latino, with a poverty of experience. America has always been screwy about race and ethnicity, of course. But you’ll agree that that screwiness moves.

does the screwiness move in a corkscrewy motion

screwiness may be long, but it bends towards justice

what are "minority benefits" please

future telling bald hotties, touch sensitive wii justice with apple controls, jetpacks