NRO's The Corner 2: Ghost Protocol

Bill Wilde
04/16/12 13:58

President Obama's hypocrisy on this issue is mind bending. Apparently he has no problem putting people in jail for doing something that he himself did on a regular basis for years. Cordially, Bill

as for Rocket_J_Squirrel's analogy: I have to park next to a group of kids who are always smoking Broncos and fixing their cars. Guess we should call for the abolition of kids, cigs, and cars for sullying the neighborhood.

We will be rid of our laws against drugs and prostitution when the American population is as culturally indifferent to drugs and prostitution as are the people of Amsterdam. But guess what? Outside of a few 50-year-olds wearing leather jackets, most Americans don't want anything to do with Amsterdam, which is why we have different laws.

viva las vegas

The Corner watches Mad Men!.

Pete may not commit suicide, just as America did not commit suicide in the traumatic period that began with the Sixties.

This is reminding me so much of all of the bad essays I've helped students with this week.

lol

I think someone just programmed a chat-bot that processes random input from news and pop-culture through a cascade of simple ideological filters--and named it NRO.

Read the comments!

[Approved commenter] kreminitly
04/20/12 10:44

He's going to commit suicide with a .22 ? The guy just can't do anything right.

Our friends are crowing over this Pew poll:

The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party.

“Republicans fare substantially better than Democrats on several questions in the survey, as is typically the case in surveys about political knowledge,” said the study, which noted that Democrats outscored Republicans on five questions by an average of 4.6 percent.

The widest partisan gap in the survey came in at 30 points when only 46 percent of Democrats — but 76 percent of Republicans —- correctly described the GOP as “the party generally more supportive of reducing the size of federal government.”

The widest difference that favored Democrats was only 8 percent, when 59 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats recognized the liberal party as “more [supportive] of reducing the defense budget.”

The survey quizzed 1,000 people, including 239 Republicans and 334 Democrats.

However, Pew’s data suggests that the Democrats’ low average rating likely is a consequence of its bipolar political coalition, which combines well-credentialed post-graduate progressives who score well in quizzes with a much larger number of poorly educated supporters, who score badly.

For example, the survey reported that 90 percent of college grads recognized the GOP as the party most supportive of cutting the federal government. But that number fell to 54 percent of people with a high-school education or less.

In contrast, the Republican party coalition is more consistent, and has few poorly educated people and fewer post-graduates.

The widest partisan gap in the survey came in at 30 points when only 46 percent of Democrats — but 76 percent of Republicans —- correctly described the GOP as “the party generally more supportive of reducing the size of federal government.”

haha what kind of question (and answer!) is this

the GOP as the party most supportive of cutting the federal government.

like lol are they referring to Dubya here? Reagan? puhleeeze.

"most erroneously identified with"

why on earth would only 76 percent of republicans get that right??

"correctly"

i have yet to dig into this poll myself, but yes, the secret thread running through it is how clearly the wrong-answerers may be seeing the two parties

inability to identify party more associated with reducing defense spending just means you are smarter then the poll

As a college graduate I would answer the Pew survey in this way:

The Republican party's rhetoric is more consistently framed in terms of reducing the size of the federal government, but the actions of the Republicans at times when they have the power to control the size of the federal government are not consistent with that rhetoric. It would be far more accurate to characterize the Republicans as the party that wants to reduce the size of federal revenues.

the customers of Popeyes, White Castle, Dunkin’ Donuts and Chuck E Cheese were mostly Democratic, while the customers at Cracker Barrel, Chik-fil-A, Panera and Bob Evans were mostly Republican.

^^^My favorite part of this article. I'm surprised there was no talk around regions. What kind of lazy political analysis is this? I mean Dunkin' Donuts is basically the Northeast and Chick-fil-A is the South. Panera is mostly a suburban thing & White Castle is urban.

Further political analysis: Chick-fil-A rules. Cracker Barrel has good biscuits & gravy (for a chain). I wish I could move to a place that has both Dunkin' Donuts & Chick-fill-A (DC?). White Castle dominates this list. WTF Chuck E Cheese?

The same restaurants study showed that the customers at Cracker Barrel, Panera and Bob Evans were the most likely to vote in elections.

This is a very funny way of delivering old news.

my formatting is all goofy there

just got an email

Friends, readers, countrymen: You may have heard already (maybe too much) about my new book: “Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World.”

The subject is a juicy one: It gives you an overview of the 20th century (and about a decade of the 21st). It introduces you to a vast cast of characters, all of them interesting, not a dullard in the bunch. I’m speaking of the laureates, mainly. They’re a diverse bunch, too: What do Mother Teresa and Yasser Arafat have in common? (Someone said, “Is it the unusual headwear?”)

Finally, when you explore the peace prize, you have to confront some of the biggest questions: concerning war and peace, freedom and tyranny, and all that jazz.

As I said, the subject is juicy, and I hope you would find the book so too. To order it from National Review, go here. Ask for a signature and an inscription, if you want. Or, order the book more traditionally (!) – from Amazon, here.

And lemme know what you think, by e-mailing me via my column.

Thanks much, and all best,
Jay (Nordlinger)

his prose is so creepy: that mix of slang ("lemme know") and coy locutions ("As I said, the subject is juicy, and I hope you would find the book so too").

and all that jazz!

gah juicy (x2!)

Jay (Nordlinger)

(Austerity (Ponies))

it's kinda like when you were in fifth grade and a classmate called you for the homework who you didn't really know very well and they said, "hey, it's Jay. [long pause] you know, Nordlinger, from school." "i know who u are, Jay."

or he made torturous parenthesis signs with his fingers

I got that Nordlinger spam, too -- I noticed that the book hasn't really been reviewed too much outside the usually spots (Examiner, some promotion on NRO, hard-hitting KLO q&a).

Mordy, have you emailed him before? I've called him out on some stuff but never got a response until he/NRO spammed me about that dumb book.

i don't think so. i tend to save my vitriolic emails for jonah. maybe if you email one of them they just add you to the collective PR email listings. it did come from no-reply @ nationalreview.com

anybody listening
NRO reply at all

oh no

Or, order the book more traditionally (!) – from Amazon, here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw

this is really fucked up

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/297159/all-means-lets-worry-about-richard-grenell-kevin-d-williamson

in the course of mounting a defense of a gay foreign policy aide to mitt romney, mr wmson goes through the motions of some truly arch arch archreacitonary shit about sex, marriage, culture etc.

we need a term for that kind of mode of writing, not exactly throat-clearing, but "i am in a dispute with another conservative, and i'm taking was looks like the not-most-right-wing line, so i have to sound like a really angry asshole about something kind of related to what i'm talking about"

I'm sure there's a term for that type of rhetoric. It's p common.

assholery

What perfect timing!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/homophobic-maybe-youre-gay.html

Our paper describes six studies conducted in the United States and Germany involving 784 university students. Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then they took a computer-administered test designed to measure their implicit sexual orientation. In the test, the participants were shown images and words indicative of hetero- and homosexuality (pictures of same-sex and straight couples, words like “homosexual” and “gay”) and were asked to sort them into the appropriate category, gay or straight, as quickly as possible. The computer measured their reaction times.

http://thumbs2.modthesims.info/img/3/1/4/6/7/2/2/MTS2_dramamine213_1167042_murray-ghostbusters.jpg

straight men were asked to blow the researcher, toothiness reported on a 10-point scale

So many examples they could have included, too

http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/the-7-best-gifs-piers-morgan-pulled-out-of-jonah-g

http://s3-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web03/2012/5/1/11/anigif_enhanced-buzz-24994-1335885007-7.gif

http://s3-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal05/2012/5/1/11/anigif_enhanced-buzz-15613-1335884995-3.gif

"i could barely fit it into my mouth"

omg lol

What is he on? Is it a combination of 5 hour energy and beef jerky?

Probably how he wrote his books.

paul masson champagne surely

a combination of 5 hour energy and beef jerky

if this appeared under him when he was on tv I might cry at the beauty.

So, I was on Piers Morgan’s show on CNN tonight. It was a shameful spectacle. He pretended to be a serious interviewer and I spent far too long pretending he was one too. My apologies to everyone who tuned in. I will have a more comprehensive response tomorrow on the Tyranny of Cliches blog.