via Tim Blair) Mark Steyn, National Review's "The Corner"
Being a supporter of neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama, I couldn't care less about accusations of "unfairness" and "negative campaigning". But in the matter of whether criticism of Obama is racist and criticism of Hillary is sexist, I think there's certainly more to the latter charge. Bob Ellis, an Aussie leftie and an Obama groupie, isn't an obscure blogger. This column appears on the website of the ABC, Australia's public broadcaster:
Her towering frigidity, blazing hubris, bellowing mendacity, varying accent from region to region, her high school-standard acting and ceaseless haughty impersonation of Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown have got me properly simmering... She is a stranger to consistency, sincerity and (at a guess) oral sex...
As conservative female bloggers know, it's amazing how quickly "progressive" men reach for the your-problem-is-you-don't-get-enough stuff. But, even so, it's remarkable how comfortable leftie guys are deploying the frigid-and-won't-put-out line against their own. One commenter rises to the lady's defense:
How dare you add a woman's perceived willingness to engage in oral sex as a marker of her character? You debase your own argument... Sexist scum.
But, far from being chastened, Ellis ups the ante and puts the fate of the planet on the First Lady's "unwillingness":
I wouldn't normally have raised this aspect of her private life but Hillary's failure to "keep the dog on the porch", as the famous Arkansas phrase puts it, had this not then caused, or partly caused Monica, the impeachment, Karl Rove's "morality politics", Gore's loss, Bush's win and, by global warming, the end of the world; like the length of Cleopatra's nose it's been, as it turns out, a big factor in everything that followed including a million deaths in Iraq and therefore probably worth noting by historians like me.
Amazing. The mouth that launched a million deaths. Bill was denied, people died.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/02/2008 17:55 ||
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#1
I thought so but wouldn't her frigidity lead to global cooling. This past winter was, after all, was one of the coldest on record. We would have to be in Iraq if her husband wasn't getting a BJ in the Whitehouse and had been minding the store.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/02/2008 20:41 Comments ||
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#4
One would think a well known pundit would be capable of thinking with those bits above his waist. However, he has effectively demonstrated I am not interested in learning any more of what he fondly believes to be persuasive thought. Ick.
Posted by: Snash Oppressor of the Mohammatans aka Broadhead6 ||
05/02/2008 21:30 Comments ||
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#6
Nice rant, but more appropriate to being delivered standing atop the bar in a neighborhood dive while brandishing a bottle of Jose Cuervo than on a corporate media website. (Is the ABC taxpayer funded like the BBC?) Methinks ol Bob Ellis has come down with some sort of lefty disease - perhaps Bovine Spongiform Clintonitis from eating tainted kangaroo. I'm no fan of Hillary, but that's just over the top. And yes, I did laugh.
#7
You know, the more I see of the demonrats and their supporters, the clearer it becomes to me that these people have never grown up. They never left puberty. They truly have no concept of anything beyond their own selfish desires.
This is one reason why I don't consider them human. To be human requires an understanding that other people are 'real' and 'matter' and need to be considered when making decisions or taking responsibility for your actions.
Well I don't know about you, but I thought this was laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Bin Laden says: “China is the only country in the world where you absolutely cannot cause trouble! That’s because al-Qaeda once sent seven terrorists to launch a surprise attack on China, and the result was this:
When the first terrorist went to blow up a grade splitting bridge for road traffic [where one road goes on top and the other below], he got dizzy and fell over;
When the second terrorist went to blow up a bus, he couldnÂ’t get on because it was too crowded;
When the third terrorist went to blow up a supermarket, he found that his remote detonation device had been pick-pocketed;
When the fourth terrorist went to blow a government building, he was beaten madly to pieces by security guards, who exclaimed: “We’ll teach you to demand wages and appeal to the authorities for help!”;
The fifth terrorist successfully blew up a mine and killed and injured several hundred people, yet after his clandestine return to al-Qaeda, not a single news report about the incident appeared in the media for six months, so al-Qaeda punished him for the “crime of spreading lies”;
The sixth terrorist attempted to blow up Guangzhou, yet when he exited the train station, his explosive material was forcibly stolen by the “Galloping Band” (feiche dang) of motorcycle thieves, which left him traumatized for quite some time;
The seventh terrorist went to blow up Tieling - the base of ChinaÂ’s steel industry - yet the sad appeals of Zhao Benshan [famous actor and comedian from northeast China] discouraged him.
Recently, a female terrorist was sent to blow up Henan, but she was hoodwinked and made a prostitute!
On May 1st, donÂ’t go to Carrefour! Let the world know that China canÂ’t be messed with! Happy Holidays!
It is hard to tell whether the author is truly proud of China and in support of the boycott, or is in fact ridiculing patriotic fervor because it obscures domestic issues, such as poor infrastructure, rampant crime, and strong-armed governance. The satire genre leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
#2
It is hard to tell whether the author is truly proud of China and in support of the boycott, or is in fact ridiculing patriotic fervor because it obscures domestic issues, such as poor infrastructure, rampant crime, and strong-armed governance. The satire genre leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
Yes, you can be proud of your country and make fun of its foibles. Yes, you can criticize your country and get pissed off when others do.
#3
Well, DoDo, China is currently being swept by a wave of nationalistic fervor. Nobody is allowed to criticize China at all, anyone who suggests China has any faults is a traitor or foreigner, and any attempt at debate immediately results in a firm "shut up".
#5
WAFF.com > LA TIMES [paraph]> FUKIYAMA - CHINA'S POWERFUL WEAKNESS - BEIJING'S REACH/CONTROL IS NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO PREVENT LOCAL PARTY GOVTS FROM [independently?]ABUSING THE RIGHTS OF ORDINARY CITIZENS.
HMMMMMM, I'm not certain iff author Fukiyama is trying to argue about INTERNAL CPC CORRUPTION + INEPTITUDES, versus CPC NOT BEING STALINIST = TOTALITARIANIST ENUFF???
#6
In any case, 2008-2012/13 > IMO, BIN LADEN + ISLAMISTS for the time being are pointing the ISLAMIST-JIHADIST SWORD SOLELY AT CHINA, RUSSIA + CENTRAL ASIA as they seek to RAPIDLY acquire STRATEGIC NUCWEAPONS STRIKE-TERROR = MUTUAL DESTRUCTION/DETERRENCE CAPABILITIES, etc VV ANY AND ALL MAJOR WORLD POWERS, espec the USA, + ISLAMIST EMPIRE UNDER THE BANNER OF NUCLEAR SHIA IRAN.
* Local "ACTIVE DEFENSE" = SEEMING "EXPANSION" OF JIHAD, + GEOPOL/GREAT POWERS BRINKMANSHIP.
ASYMMETRIC, RUSSO-CHINESE, ANTI-US "LOCAL/
BATTLE/WAR ZONE" + "ASSASSIN'S MACE" STRATEGEMAS - ISLAMIST STYLE, save for lack of Cold War massive arsenals + ICBMS???
#1
Bush is an idiot: Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush has tried pretty much everything to get North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il to come out of his cage. He has tried to coerce him with economic sanctions and schoolboy bluster — a policy course that ended in 2006, when Kim tested a nuclear weapon, precisely the opposite of the result Bush intended. Since then, the Administration has tried bribery, offering blandishments like free food and fuel oil in hopes that North Korea would stand down its nuclear program.
Maybe not so dumb. The conclusion of the article: But bribing Kim is the only realistic strategy. When the next U.S. Administration takes over in January, it's going to come to the same conclusion — whether the President is named McCain, Obama or Clinton.
Why? Because Time Magazine says so.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/02/2008 11:53 Comments ||
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#2
Millions for defense, but not one cent tribute.
#4
I thought Madeline Albright and Bill Clinton proved pretty conclusively that bribing Kim does NOT work. Starving them seems a much better way to me. At least if their troops are malnourished they won't be as much of a threat.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/02/2008 14:59 Comments ||
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This is one of those email forwards going around in China right now. Click to see the layout with pictures.
HereÂ’s a mock edition of the PeopleÂ’s Daily Overseas Edition newspaper written at some date in ChinaÂ’s future. This satire is finding its way around on the internet.
Check out these headlines:
The main headline at the upper left, above the mushroom cloud, reads: “China Successfully Tests new Type of Nuclear Bomb on San Francisco.”
Next to it in the top middle of the page: “United Nations HQ Moves to Beijing.”
Are you getting the picture? ItÂ’s enough to cheer up any Chinese less than chipper about the future.
At top right, the headline reads: “Premier Wen Jiabao accompanied by Gov. Ma Ying-jeou pays a visit to Taiwan.” (In other words, Taiwan has already been absorbed into China.)
At lower right, under the NBA logo, is the headline: “Yao Ming recovers from injury, helps Rockets with championship.”
Smaller headlines lower on the page read:
“Chinese government Apologizes for Accidental Bombing of Pentagon.”
“Dalai Lama is Shot and Killed.”
“Major Earthquake hits Japanese Islands;
Chinese government Sends Rescue Team.
No Survivors found Yet.”
“China Plans to Build 2nd Patriotic Military Base on Moon.”
ItÂ’s interesting that headlines play off not only natural interest in China growing ever stronger but also in seeing punishment wrought on its perceived enemies. Japan is abolished in a big quake, and the bombs fall repeatedly on the United States.
Posted by: Kelly ||
05/02/2008 17:30 Comments ||
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#9
All things equal, the Chinese can be one of Amer's + WestDemocracy' greatest allies-partner if we play things right.
* TOPIX/STARS-N-STRIPES > HAYDEN: US FORESEES GLOBAL UNREST, STRIFES AS POPULATIONS GROW + CIA CHIEF: CHINA [+ 3rd World]WILL BE MAIN US FOCUS IN 21st CENTURY [Russia???]+ CIA CHIEF:CHINA MAY TURN AGZ US,WEST IFF DENIED GLOBAL ROLE. Argues CHINA may turn "confrontational" iff NOT allowed to participate in world affairs.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/02/2008 21:04 Comments ||
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#12
If we can't do better in getting good government than we have been, our days are numbered anyway. Bush has lots of problems; McCain has more, the Dems who stand to replace Bush are absolutely despicable and probably already in China's pay.
We're in trouble. Big trouble. The saddest part is that we'll almost certainly have to wage a bitter and very destructive civil war before we can even begin to properly address the external enemies. If the wrong side wins that civil war, however, they'll just surrender. Either way, things will never be the same and we'll be paying for our inattention, stupidity and laziness for a long, long time.
Posted by: Thaimble Scourge of the Pixies4707 ||
05/02/2008 22:42 Comments ||
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Nabeel arrived in Sweden with a dream of milking the system for a "free" education. Excerpt:
After completing my engineering degree at one of the best institutes in Pakistan, I, like many other Pakistanis, chose Sweden over the UK and other countries for mainly two reasons:
1. You can get good quality further education in Sweden for free.
2. Swedish people are not racist and do not discriminate against immigrants.
After coming here as a Masters student, most of us feel the first reason to be very true but when it comes to the second part the story is quite different.
#1
It's just a guess Nabeel, but could you be experiencing pushback due to intimidation, rape and general uncivilized behavior your fellow co-religionists are inflicting on the Swedes?
#1
Actually, Clinton followed the Scandies when he championed welfare reform. However, GOP leverage caused him to add Time limits on benefits caused recipients to seek training so as to increase employability. The trouble in Scandanavia is: they allowed a large class of demanding immigrants - Muslims - who resist life off the dole. In addition, where they settle, crime explodes. The Scandies didn't need to use time limits before; now they are essential.
Implementation problem: Scandie academia and media are under strict obligation to portray Islamic culture in relativistic terms. A teacher can be terminated for basing Arab scientific notions - as they are - on pilferage from Greco-Roman civilization. In Sweden, Western Civilization is taught as an exploiter entity that owes everything to the ancestors of the parasitic class of new immigrants.
Jens Orback, a Swedish Cabinet Minister, said on a radio program, "We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be towards us." Cultural relativism in action.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/07/let-them-eat-kebab-new-marie.html
#2
As far as welfare goes, reform works well up to a very particular point: food. Every other type of welfare reform works well, but there should be an abundance of low cost and free food at all times.
The logic is downright twilight zone, however.
To start with, food welfare is not a system, but two. It is the flip side of the immense and amazing, but very managed American agribusiness system. In many ways, agribusiness is everywhere as much as the military industrial complex. It is enormous beyond belief. It actually transcends the free market, a point few understand.
Even marginal overages and shortages in agribusiness translates to billions of dollars, and unlike just about anything else, shortages are intolerable, so the system must overproduce.
This means that mountains of excess food can either be expensively stored for a while, be given away, or rot.
Was the government to directly provide food to the poor, as much as they wanted, and just out of the excess, they would be eating a 10,000 calorie a day diet. And there would still be huge amounts of food left over.
After all of that, then consider what food welfare accomplishes. It gives people the energy they need to work or do anything. If you take it away, like animals, they have to spend all their free time trying to get food, instead of working. Taking it away not only doesn't motivate, it makes their leaving poverty harder.
That is why other types of welfare reform work. Because they take away inessential things, like money and housing. And taking them away does motivate. If you don't have them, your life will be uncomfortable.
But you have to have food. It is more important than work. And since we can either give it to you, or it will rot anyway, why not?
"I can no more disown him [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother
-- Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18
Guess it's time to disown Granny, if Obama's famous Philadelphia "race" speech is to be believed. Of course, the speech was not just believed. It was hailed, celebrated, canonized as the greatest pronouncement on race in America since Lincoln at Cooper Union. A New York Times columnist said it "should be required reading in classrooms across the country." College seniors and first-graders, suggested the excitable Chris Matthews.
Apparently there's been a curriculum change. On Tuesday, the good senator begged to extend and revise his previous remarks on race. Moral equivalence between Grandma and Wright is now, as the Nixon administration used to say, inoperative. Poor Geraldine Ferraro, thrice lashed by Obama in Philadelphia as the white equivalent of Wright's raving racism, is off the hook.
These equivalences having been revealed as the cheap rhetorical tricks they always were, Obama has now decided that the man he simply could not banish because he had become part of Obama himself is, mirabile dictu, surgically excised.
At a news conference in North Carolina, Obama explained why he finally decided to do the deed. Apparently, Wright's latest comments -- Obama cited three in particular -- were so shockingly "divisive and destructive" that he had to renounce the man, not just the words.
What were Obama's three citations? Wright's claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming Sept. 11 on American "terrorism."
But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago. Obama decided to cut off Wright not because Wright's words or character or views had suddenly changed. The only thing that changed was the venue in which Wright chose to display them -- live on national TV at the National Press Club. That unfortunate choice destroyed Obama's Philadelphia pretense that this "endless loop" of sermon excerpts being shown on "television sets and YouTube" had been taken out of context.
Obama's Philadelphia oration was an exercise in contextualization. In one particularly egregious play on white guilt, Obama had the audacity to suggest that whites should be ashamed that they were ever surprised by Wright's remarks: "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning."
That was then. On Tuesday, Obama declared that he himself was surprised at Wright's outrages. But hadn't Obama told us that surprise about Wright is a result of white ignorance of black churches brought on by America's history of segregated services? How then to explain Obama's own presumed ignorance? Surely he too was not sitting in those segregated white churches on those fateful Sundays when he conveniently missed all of Wright's racist rants.
Obama's turning surprise about Wright into something to be counted against whites-- one of the more clever devices in that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud in Philadelphia -- now stands discredited by Obama's own admission of surprise. But Obama's liberal acolytes are not daunted. They were taken in by the first great statement on race: the Annunciation, the Chosen One comes to heal us in Philly. They now are taken in by the second: the Renunciation.
Obama's newest attempt to save himself after Wright's latest poisonous performance is now declared the new final word on the subject. Therefore, any future ads linking Obama and Wright are preemptively declared out of bounds, illegitimate, indeed "race-baiting" (a New York Times editorial, April 30).
On what grounds? This 20-year association with Wright calls into question everything about Obama: his truthfulness in his serially adjusted stories of what he knew and when he knew it; his judgment in choosing as his mentor, pastor and great friend a man he just now realizes is a purveyor of racial hatred; and the central premise of his campaign, that he is the bringer of a "new politics," rising above the old Washington ways of expediency. It's hard to think of an act more blatantly expedient than renouncing Wright when his show, once done from the press club instead of the pulpit, could no longer be "contextualized" as something whites could not understand and only Obama could explain in all its complexity.
Turns out the Wright show was not that complex after all. Everyone understands it now. Even Obama.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/02/2008 16:02 ||
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#1
Clearly Candidate Obama should convert to Judaism. My congregation isn't segregated like the repudiated Reverend Wright's. (Not that we want him, but even so.)
#2
TW, if Obama had even a shred of Jewish character to his soul, he would have changed his middle name to something more "American-sounding" the day after 9/11.
(Heck, even goyishe Brits knew this trick. Eric Anthony Sykes changed his name -- Schwabe -- during World War I because he found it "too Germanic").
#3
"(Heck, even goyishe Brits knew this trick. Eric Anthony Sykes changed his name -- Schwabe -- during World War I because he found it "too Germanic").
Scooter, the most famous name changer was of course, George V.
#5
OTOH, LAURA INGRAHAM om O'REILLY/FOX > Iran criticizing Hillary for her anti-Iran obliteration remark was the best thing that could happen to Hillary.
Speaking of which, PAYVAND/IRANIAN.WS/TOPIX > IRAN COMPLAINS TO UN OVER HILLARY OBLITERATION REMARK + AHMADINEJAD > OBAMA [black man], CLINTON [woman] CANNOT WIN [2008 US POTUS election]. MOUD BELIEVES THAT US ELEX IS ON A PREDETERMINED COURSE/DIRECTION; + IRAN: US WARSHIPS [2nd Carrier]IN GULF IS AN EMPTY DISPLAY OF POWER.
#6
Iranian President Ahmadenijad believes John McCain will/must be the next American president, because the other candidates come from inferior classes? He might want to readdress his god, asking for a recount.
In his April 25 Washington Sketch column, "Iraq War Is Everyone Else's Fault, Feith Explains," Dana Milbank asserted that the "CIA was correct" that there were no links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The historical record tells a different story.
In 2002, then-CIA Director George Tenet wrote in a letter to Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, that "our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida is evolving" and "we have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida going back a decade."
A March 2008 report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command included information about the relationship between Hussein and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second in command: "Saddam supported groups either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives."
Critics of the war in Iraq often try to minimize -- if not dismiss -- the links between Saddam Hussein and terrorists. As they say, facts are stubborn things.
JON KYL
U.S. Senator (R-Ariz.) Letter to the editor in today's WaPo. As an Arizona resident, I am thankful for the exceptional representation we have had in the Senate.
#2
With you completely Jim. The only, only, only reason I ever needed for the war was that Saddam Hussein was a genocidal thug-bastard who needed killin'. Weapons of mass destruction be damned, Saddam needed to go.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/02/2008 11:09 Comments ||
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#3
facts are stubborn things
But so are the lousy, loony, left-leaning, liberal losers of the media.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/02/2008 11:56 Comments ||
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#4
I thought WMD argument was a sexed up deal by W that turned out to be a bad business move.
They already had 17 violations of UN HR 687/88 plus about 100 confirmed times when the iraqis shot sam's at our jets over the NF zone. Total justification for regime change. I hated when W started talking about the WMDs - made it a smoking gun situation vice the iron clad reasoning provided by the 1991 cease fire agreements.
Posted by: Snash Oppressor of the Mohammatans aka Broadhead6 ||
05/02/2008 21:27 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
"I can no more disown him [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother
In his April 25 Washington Sketch column, "Iraq War Is Everyone Else's Fault, Feith Explains," Dana Milbank asserted that the "CIA was correct" that there were no links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. The historical record tells a different story. 
