Sadly, No!

I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school.

Shorter Michael Medved: America faces a greater threat from its own disloyal elites than it does from foreign terrorists.

Shorter Tony Blankley: If President Bush paid attention to his critics, the Middle East would descend into chaos and warfare. No, no – even worse than it is now. Also, oil prices would skyrocket.

Shorter Paul Greenberg: Anna Diggs Taylor … That’s not an Arab name, is it?

Shorter Ben Shapiro: The world is far too dangerous these days to re-elect Bill Clinton.

Shorter Michelle Malkin: A makeup manufacturer is lucky conservative women didn’t riot or issue fatwas when a celebrity spokesperson said some things that offended us.

Shorter Terence Jeffrey: Democrats will never win elections unless they appeal to the Republican base.

Shorter John Stossel: Like most libertarians, my political views were cobbled together during dorm-room conversations about Ayn Rand, naked chicks, and the deeper meaning of songs on AM radio, circa 1972.

Shorter Linda Chavez: I don’t get it. It cannot be verified that illegal immigrants account for 95 percent of LA’s outstanding murder warrants, yet this likely innacurate claim persists among right-wing commentators.

Shorter Kathleen Parker: Why should we expect the president to speak in anything more than an intricate pattern of crude grunts and occasional bursts of local color? After all, the man is from Texas.

Shorter Thomas Sowell: Transcending religion, race, or any other traditional political reference, modern American Jewry liberalism is often described these days as a voluntary polity, a secular organizational network with emphasis upon social, educational, economic and political activism.

Shorter Walter Williams: I’m not suggesting that we rush to use our nuclear capacity to crush states that support terrorism, but we should consider that option.

Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I would argue that U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor should have rejected even more Bush administration policies.

Shorter Michael Fumento: Only conservatives should politicize AIDS.

Shorter Austin Bay: A suicide bomber cannot be deterred by the threat of “mutual destruction,” but a more robust missile defense system would more robustly defend against, you know, missiles.

Shorter John McCaslin: Americans should care more about the integrity of electronic voting, which I’m trivializing, and – Hey! I thought of another possible definition for “macaca.”

Shorter Jay Sekulow: Don’t worry. Lawyers continue to defend the Ten Commandments from the infidels who wish to banish their guiding principles from our legal system.

Shorter Herman Cain: If the Hezbocrats have their way, you’ll be forced to pay higher prices at Wal-Mart.

Shorter Maggie Gallagher: Can you believe pedophiles would have the audacity to discuss their perversion online?

From US News & World Report:

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we’re learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he’s still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides.

…Cut a few for laughs? Wah, it gives you ‘a jolly.’

Seriously. Trouble with Great Britain lately? A remedy for Mr. Bush:

From Michael Barone’s latest piece:

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes.

Y’know who served in Vietnam? John Kerry, Al Gore and Jack Murtha. Y’know who didn’t? George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Gavin adds: And Karl Rove, and John Bolton, and Tom Delay, and Dennis Hastert, and Bill Frist, and Newt Gingrich, and…Michael Barone.

Above: Baroney sandwich, side of Cheetos

Though come to think of it, maybe there is no irony in Barone’s piece. Maybe he’s just inadvertently telling the truth…

UPDATE: Oh man. As R. Porrofatto points out, the comments on Barone’s piece are priceless. Here is my favorite:

buck writes:

The Greatest Generation is to blame for the covert enemies. True. The baby boomers are the children of the returning WWII Veterans. These Vets all came home so tired and disgusted with war that they vowed that their children would never have to go to war like they. So started from infancy the children were raised to detest war for ANY reason, for ANY cause. The returning vets also were mostly Democrats. I remember the close to violent arguments in my own family and it was usually the Vets/Democrats vs the feathermerchant/Republicans. The returning vets pampered their offspring and mollyucoddled and spoiled them and this is what we got. God bless ’em, they won a war but the war cost them their good political judgment.

Sure they won the war, but they never had the courage to post opinions at Townhall.com, did they? “Greatest Generation” my ass. Serves their wrinkly old keisters right if we privatize their precious Social Security…

Our Covert Enemies

Michael Barone has long been known as a moderate, nuts-and-bolts observer of the political scene. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that only over the last few years, as Michael has observed the impotence–at best–of the Democratic Party in the face of existential threats to our civilization, has he come out as a conservative.

Our Covert Enemies

Michael Barone has long been known as a moderate, nuts-and-bolts observer of the political scene. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that only over the last few years, as Michael has observed the impotence–at best–of the Democratic Party in the face of existential threats to our civilization, has he come out as a conservative.

The End.

BTW: Here’s the notorious new Barone column that Hindy is praising. Yes, it’s for real. No, we don’t know what’s wrong with him either.

We knew a kid once who used to get bonked out of his head on paint-stripper fumes — only instead of waking up as a senior writer for US News and World Report, he generally woke up naked on the floor covered in his own feces. So the comparison breaks down, pretty much.

I just get down and I go for mine, say “Check one-two,” and run down the line.

Shorter Michael Barone: History is written by the victors, but disloyal elites prefer to read it from the perspective of the Islamofascists.

Shorter Chuck Colson: Rheet! Hey everybody, look over there! Fascists!

Shorter Mary Katherine Ham: Reality show contestants more accurately reflect real-life Americans than their fictional counterparts.

Shorter Suzanne Fields: Nobel Prize-winner Gunter Grass is certainly a hypocrite for demanding that Germans atone for World War II while hiding his own Nazi past, but his worst crime was criticizing America.

Shorter Robert Novak: The Bush administration should reverse course and engage our terrorist enemies in diplomatic negotiations, now that our position has been weakened by disastrous wars.

Shorter Roger Schlesinger: Have you given any thought to your retirement investments?

Shorter Star Parker: A recent study by a conservative think tank suggests liberal activists are to blame for high retail prices.

Shorter Mike S. Adams: Y’know what would be really cool, is if everybody e-mailed this professor and called him this nickname I thought up for him. I’ll even give you a link.

Shorter Joel Mowbray: Virtually all news stories from the war zones of the Middle East are influenced by terrorists either through thuggery or trickery.

Shorter Debra J. Saunders: As a journalist, I urge you to consider that reporters have the right to protect their confidential sources.

Shorter Robert Novak: My sources tell me the Democrats are plotting various election strategies.

Shorter George Will: China should let Japanese bygones be bygones.

Shorter Kathryn Jean Lopez: Rick Warren just might cure AIDS by promoting, if not a purpose-driven sex life, abstinence.

Shorter Bill O’Reilly: Surely the terrorists delight at the additional inconveniences we must endure at the airport to uncover their dark plots. Perhaps they’d change their tune if their Muslims were singled out for additonal scrutiny.

Shorter Paul Jacob: Think of the money we’d save if we privatized the federal government.

Shorter Kevin McCullough: Marvel as I thwart the Straw Liberal’s attempt to plant a dagger firmly in your back.

Shorter Doug Wilson: Conservatism holds the keys to competing with the Chinese, who I’ll remind you are just as human as you and me.

Gavin adds: Tee hee.

[Apologies to DA]

Marty Peretz is talking again. This time the solon of the liberal New Republic has some advice about John ‘Disco Biscuits’ Bolton, and how he’s pretty much just like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democratic UN Ambassador — and therefore everyone should agree that Bolton should be confirmed. The fun starts in this fashion:

After serving (quite magnificently) for two years as ambassador to India (in the tradition of John Kenneth Galbraith), Moynihan was named to the U.N. post by President Ford. Again, the Times found fault with the designee: “[T]he prospect of Mr. Moynihan at Turtle Bay has aroused among some friends of the United Nations genuine doubts about United States policy toward the world organization, and especially toward third world countries.” The Times was carrying on what one could only call a vendetta against Moynihan for what were then surprising insights on race but are now–forgive the metaphor–white bread.

Moynihan, the Joe Lieberman of his day, was (however) smart and genuinely intellectually engaged; and was famously called a man who had written more books than most people had read. Peretz certainly seems to be counting on the fact that most haven’t read Moynihan’s book on his tenure as UN Ambassador, A Dangerous Place. Peretz refers to it in the column without a hint toward the book’s most famous passage, regarding the 1975 genocide in East Timor. Moynihan:

“The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.”

If intentionally enabling the massacre of 102,000 civilians can be considered a noteworthy detail, as it was to Moynihan during his life, as well as to many others, then Peretz is at best just gassing off as usual, using a superficial erudition to do a fan dance on some unstated private agenda or another. (Peretz is, in the last analysis, a rigid and reactionary character who constructs arguments on a just-in-time basis.)

But, you know, Moynihan was a Democrat, so Democrats take note. And you can almost see Peretz grinning and clapping his notedly meaty, short-fingered hands together with the conclusion. Check this:

It is really quite unseemly for the Democratic minority to be stalking Bolton’s nomination. It isn’t as if the U.N. post is a judicial appointment, where the separation of powers implies greater senatorial prerogatives in exercising “advice and consent.” The U.N. ambassador is really a representative of the president in international affairs. Of course, most Democratic senators oppose the president’s foreign policy. But they are in the minority. And do they have the right to sabotage a nomination that expresses–for better and for worse–the president’s views?

It’s ‘really quite unseemly,’ etc.

Intelligent readers might be forgiven for suspecting that Marty’s views on Bolton might somehow have something or another to do with…you know, Israel, as opposed to the best interests of the United States of America.

Update: Also this:

Maura Moynihan, daughter of Senator Daniel Moynihan wrote an op-ed for Newsday (New York) in which she argued that John Bolton is no Moynihan.

In comparing Bolton to Senator Moynihan, conservatives have “distorted our New York senator’s views on diplomacy and international law.”

Maura Moynihan details her father’s record as both a fierce defender of American interests and a pragmatic internationalist. “When right-wing commentators claim that Bolton ‘s outspokenness makes him ‘the next Pat Moynihan,’ let us remember that Moynihan often said that in Washington toughness and ignorance are frequently confused.”

“Bolton has said that if the UN building in Manhattan ‘lost 10 stories it wouldn’t make a bit of difference,’ and Robert Novak recently said, ‘No one had more contempt for the UN than Pat Moynihan.’ Nonsense. Moynihan said: ‘The UN was created by our country, and embodies our conception of international law … these are the proclaimed standards of the nations of the world, to which they are bound by solemn covenant.'”

“Moynihan sought to restore integrity to the UN, not to dismantle the institution created by the Allies after the defeat of Hitler and the Axis powers.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow. Watch this video of Bush’s press conference today. He’s completely come off the rails.

The petulant jack-ass simply cannot stand to have his policies questioned in any way. He has precisely zero capacity for reflection or doubt. I am horrified that he will be in charge of this country for two more grueling years.

Confederate Yankee takes a break from calling every available photo of Lebanese civilian casualties a fraud, and its photographer a terrorist supporter, to mark the death of WWII photographer Joe Rosenthal:

Goodbye, Joe

Via CNN:

Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of six World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died Sunday. He was 94.

Rosenthal died of natural causes at an assisted living facility in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.

“He was a good and honest man, he had real integrity,” Anne Rosenthal said.

His photo, taken for The Associated Press on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.

Meanwhile, this is from the AP, Feb. 1995:

For 50 years now, Rosenthal has battled a perception that he somehow staged the flag-raising picture, or covered up the fact that it was actually not the first flag-raising at Iwo Jima.

All the available evidence backs up Rosenthal. The man responsible for spreading the story that the picture was staged, the late Time-Life correspondent Robert Sherrod, long ago admitted he was wrong. But still the rumor persists.

In 1991, a New York Times book reviewer, misquoting a murky treatise on the flag-raising called “Iwo Jima: Monuments, Memories and the American Hero,” went so far as to suggest that the Pulitzer Prize committee consider revoking Rosenthal’s 1945 award for photography.

And just a year ago, columnist Jack Anderson promised readers “the real story” of the Iwo Jima photo: that Rosenthal had “accompanied a handpicked group of men for a staged flag raising hours after the original event.”

Anderson later retracted his story. But the damage, once again, had been done.

What does not kill J.M.P.P.’s egomania only makes it stronger:

All objective data indicate that I have above-average attractiveness. So I think it’s clear that the “you’re ugly” posts are really being fueled by a combination of sour grapes (not because they necessarily wanted to date me, but because they’ve been rejected by other women and want someone to take it out on) and mediocre people’s need to try to tear down their betters.

And:

Very few men are alpha males. The sooner the ones who aren’t realize that and stop chasing alpha females [like herself, she means] the sooner they can refocus their attention on women they could actually get.

Nietzsche (BGE, 111):

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

Update: Jacquie is a smug bitch whose insane degree of conceit, coupled with her thorough mediocrity, is terribly annoying to others (hence all the bile thrown her way). But this is why you should really hate her: She takes her libertarianism seriously — by which I mean, she is a Social Darwinist:

Education, income, financial responsibility: These are major components of one’s socioeconomic class, which is a pretty big indicator of quality.

I’m from an upper middle class background but spent most of my teens and early 20’s rebelling against my parents’ pressure for me to finish my degree and get an academic or other professional career. I spent those years “slumming it� working, living, and socializing with members of the lower middle, working, lower, and even destitute (homeless) classes. So I have plenty of experience of what the people in those classes are like. Their lives are self-inflicted disasters.

I used to be a believer in the popular myth that poverty in the US is the result of poor luck, not poor character. It took wasting years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars trying to help my “less fortunate� friends and boyfriends before I finally gave up and realized that their situations were the result of consistently making bad choices and not just misfortune.

Gavin adds: From slumming it with members of the upper class, I’ve found that ‘upper middle class’ is quite often a code term used by people who grew up taking ski vacations at Courchevel, but whose families didn’t actually own the resort.

Bradrocket adds: I think this passage actually makes a fair point:

Very few men are alpha males. The sooner the ones who aren’t realize that and stop chasing alpha females [like herself, she means] the sooner they can refocus their attention on women they could actually get.

I can’t disagree. Men who are not assholes should not want to date raging hose beasts like Jacquie.

A couple of wits on the subject of power-worshiping, preening, butch wimps:

Jesus’ General:

Dear Mr. [Montgomery] Gentry,

It ain’t easy being a country music star. That’s especially true for someone like you whose entire image is centered around his masculinity. Heck, with all the hunting, war, and beating-up-people-for-Jesus imagery in your videos, I bet you’re afraid to kick back for even a few minutes on the john and pee, sitting down, lest someone catches you–not that I’d ever approve of that kind of unmanly behavior, but I think you get my point.

That’s why your recent arrest for shooting a caged tame bear with a bow and arrow is so damaging. It causes manly men like myself to lose respect for you. How can we continue to enjoy watching you taunt inexperienced impoverished young men into going to Iraq to fight our war now that we know that you shot Cubby in his cage?

Gore Vidal:

Give a sissy a gun and he will kill everything in sight. TR’s slaughter of the animals in the Badlands outdoes in spades the butcheries of that sissy of a later era, Ernest Hemingway. Elks, grizzly bears, blacktail bucks are killed joyously while a bear cub is shot, TR reports proudly, “clean through . . . from end to end” (the Teddy bear was yet to be invented). “By Godfrey, but this is fun!” TR was still very much the prig, at least in speech: “He immortalized himself along the Little Missouri by calling to one of his cowboys, ‘Hasten forward quickly here!'” Years later he wrote: “There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.”

There is something strangely infantile in this obsession with dice-loaded physical courage when the only courage that matters in political or even “real” life is moral.

That’s right: it’s not really hunting. It’s posturing; it’s the act of putting on the butch costume in the hopes that the mask will eventually remake the man. These guys are weenies.

Besides, everyone knows that the only small bears it is right to shoot are those which wear blue colors and play baseball in an ivy-caged yuppiefied hellhole — in which case, fire at will, gentlemen!