Monthly Archives: May 2011

May 17, 2011 — Steven Hayward

Newt’s Romney Moment

Mark Twain is credited with the remark that history doesn’t repeat itself–but it rhymes.* Over the last 48 hours I think we’ve seen an ironic rhyme of an old career-killing incident: Newt Gingrich has had his Romney Moment. No–not the Romney moment you’re thinking; not Newt’s tentative embrace of an individual mandate for health care, which is the 8,000-pound millstone sinking Mitt Romney’s prospects. I think Newt’s problem is his »
May 17, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Bordering on war

Reading about the invasion of Israel by Arab “protesters” on Sunday, I wondered what the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick would have to say about it. She turned up yesterday with a post in NRO’s Corner to draw three conclusions: I think the violence that broke out this weekend on the Syria-Israel border is a clear indication that the revolutions in the Arab world are engendering more rather than less radicalism »
May 17, 2011 — Scott Johnson

A flood of bad analysis, part 2

The May 16 issue of National Review carries Steve Hayward’s article “The Tyrant Temptation,” which NR has now made available online. In the article Steve draws on Xenophon’s dialogue Hiero and Leo Strauss’s commentary on it, both included in On Tyranny. The dialogue subtly depicts how a philosopher should behave with a tyrant, as Strauss explains in his commentary. On Tyranny, incidentally, is a great book for anyone seriously interested »
May 17, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Klein’s list

Comedian Robert Klein captures something of the pride and insecurity of the Jewish people with a bit that seems to erupt from his subconscious. In his most recent HBO special he advises the audience: “Bernie Madoff — not Jewish. I hear he’s really Episcopalian. Jack Abramoff, not Jewish. Sully Sullenberger is Jewish. I know his family, from Boston. They’re herring merchants.” I thought of Klein’s list yesterday. Now he can »
May 16, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Union Thugs Provide Card-Check Preview

Union members who blew the whistle on bosses who were stealing from the union got forcible reminders of how unions operate: Unionized phone company employees say they were beaten or threatened after they accused their labor bosses of looting their coffers through various scams. One member of Communications Workers of America Local 1101 said that after he reported a time-sheet padding scheme, a thug beat him so badly his spine »
May 16, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Bordering on demagoguery

In his speech on immigration reform in El Paso last week (video here), President Obama opined: “[W]e’ve seen leaders of both parties who try to work on this issue, but then their efforts fell prey to the usual Washington games.” Michael Barone observes that Obama himself has been a prominent practitioner of these games. Having written a thoughtful book on the subject of immigration, Barone does not stop there. He »
May 16, 2011 — Steven Hayward

A Flood of Bad Analysis

Notably missing–so far–from the media coverage of the Mississippi River flooding is the usual hand-wringing about how this is surely another sign of global warming. Oh, it’s out there, you just have to look for it in some of the obscure green news sites and blogs. I’ve been predicting for a while now that the mainstream media would grow tired of the climate issue, and it looks as though that »
May 15, 2011 — John Hinderaker

A Verdict on Obama’s “Stimulus” Plan

Economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor have studied the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the purported stimulus bill) with great rigor. Earlier this week, they reported their findings in a paper titled “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Public Sector Jobs Saved, Private Sector Jobs Forestalled.” The paper is dense and rather lengthy, and requires considerable study. Here, however, is the bottom line: Our benchmark results suggest »
May 15, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Socialism: Not What It Used To Be!

The story of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest on sexual assault charges is interesting on a couple of levels beyond the prurient. My own first reaction was: why in the world is the head of the International Monetary Fund a socialist? But that probably just shows how far beyond the times I am. The details of the story have a consistent theme: socialism evidently isn’t what it once was. The trouble began »
May 15, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Arabs March On Israel

Today was the “Nakba” (or “catastrophe”) Day, when Palestinians and other Arabs mourn Israel’s victory in the 1948 war. The catastrophe, of course, was that Israel won. Nakba Day is an annual event, but today the Arabs tried a new strategy. Demonstrators marched on Israel from all directions, in a coordinated assault: Mobilized by calls on Facebook, thousands of Arab protesters marched on Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza »
May 15, 2011 — John Hinderaker

“Minnesota Congressman Paul Ryan Mulling Senate Bid”

That is the headline on this Associated Press story. Click to enlarge: Now, granted, depending on where you live, Minnesota and Wisconsin may seem more or less interchangeable. And we here in Minnesota probably wish Ryan were eligible to take on Amy Klobuchar next year. Still, it is a little scary to realize that some people–most who read newspapers, actually–rely on the Associated Press for their news. »
May 15, 2011 — Steven Hayward

Climate Change’s Bad Rap

As opinion polls showing continued erosion in public belief in climate catastrophe, the climate campaign ratchets up its own form of “denial,” attributing their un-hideable decline to a “communications” problem. Yeah, that’s the problem–people just haven’t heard enough facts about global warming to get with the program. So the latest attempt to break through to the masses is the rap video below featuring climate scientists and enough f-bombs to make »
May 15, 2011 — Scott Johnson

The Anti-Communist Manifestos

I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed John Fleming’s The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War, published in 2009. The John V. Fleming site is devoted to the book. Professor Fleming compiles reviews and comments genially on them here. Norman Podhoretz invoked the metaphor of The Bloody Crossroads to title his study of the intersection of literature and politics »
May 15, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Annals of fatuity

I quoted from Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Hillary Clinton last week in “Willful blindness, Egypt edition.” Here Goldberg focuses on the Obama administration’s treatment of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, murderous thug and terrorist host: QUESTION: Talk about – the one thing I didn’t understand was this Bashar al-Asad moment when you talked about him as being a reformer or being seen by others as a reformer. This is where the question »
May 14, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Democrats: Where Is Your Budget?

The inability of the Democratic Party to come up with a budget that it can even propose to the American people is the biggest news story of the day. It would be nice if somebody decided to cover it. Yesterday, the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee commented on the Democrats’ paralysis: With the statutory committee deadline having been missed by six weeks, and with 744 days gone by since »
May 14, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Thanks, Huck

Some think that the Republican Presidential field is weak this year; Scott made a comment to that effect a few days ago. I am not yet prepared to go along with that assessment. It remains to be seen who emerges from the pack and how he or she does against President Obama. If the GOP wins next year, no one will remember who the third and fourth best candidates were, »
May 14, 2011 — Scott Johnson

The turning of David Mamet

David Mamet is the accomplished playwright, screenwriter, novelist, author, essayist, and filmmaker. In 1984 Mamet was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross, his utterly harrowing update of Death of a Salesman. The new issue of the Weekly Standard carries Andrew Ferguson’s moving cover story on Mamet’s turn to conservatism. It is an intensely interesting and thought-provoking piece. As Ferguson recalls, in 2008 the Village Voice published Mamet’s quirky »