Monthly Archives: May 2013

NixBama

Featured image So what’s that old Santayana line about those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it?  Can we mix that in with Karl Marx’s line about history repeating itself as farce?  Either way, this video juxtaposition of Nixon and Obama, from RevealingPolitics.com, is sure to leave a mark: »

Does This Ad Make Me Look Racist? (Chapter 3)

Featured image We have commented before about the Sensitivity Police who use electron microscopes to spot the most minuscule trace of racism wherever it can be found, such as this Volkswagen ad, and this ad for the Discovery Card.  Here’s the latest entry in the Racism Overreaction Playbook: a Cheerios ad featuring a mixed-race couple (below), which you would think would receive the approval of the Multidiversiculturalites.  But apparently it has caused »

Green Weenie of the Week: The Downhill Skiing Industry

Featured image Talk about going downhill fast: 100 ski resorts have signed on to a Climate Declaration calling for “action” on climate change.  In typical hokum, this declaration suggests that “climate action” represents “one of America’s greatest economic opportunities”–a claim about as credible as a women’s Spandex apparel concession in Saudi Arabia. This deserves a whole case of Green Weenies, along with the buns.  My old partner-in-climate-crime Ken Green of the Fraser »

When Ted Williams didn’t eject

Featured image Colonel Jerry Cadick’s recounting of some of his “ejection” experiences reminds me of a story about Ted Williams that John McCain told a group of us one New Hampshire day aboard the “Straight Talk Express.” McCain, a Boston Red Sox fan and (of course) an ex-fighter pilot, greatly admired Williams, who served as a fighter pilot in two wars. During a mission in North Korea, Williams’ fighter plane was crippled »

The ubiquitious Tom Perez

Featured image At PJ Media, Christian Adams points out that former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman “isn’t the only non-cabinet member from the Obama administration to visit the White House an extraordinary number of times.” Tom Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, made 83 visits during the period covered by White House logs examined by the Daily Caller. This makes Perez the third most frequent visitor to the White House. Only Shulman »

When “Diversity” Means Conformity

Featured image I wrote here the other day about how “diversity” has become a latter-day Stalinist concept, when it doesn’t imply downright hate from the left, just as “multiculturalism” is cover for self-loathing of Western civilization rather than a genuine curiosity about what might be learned from other cultures.  (I think it was Allan Bloom who pointed out, for example, how few of the devotees of “multiculturalism” actually bother to learn a »

Unintended consequences: Ejection seat edition

Featured image The legendary Colonel Jerry Cadick (USMC, ret.) writes to comment on Steve Hayward’s meditation on unintended consequences. This is too good to keep to ourselves: Your article reminded me of some personal experiences I had in 26 years as a Marine fighter pilot. Not with seat belts, airbags and red light cameras, but with ejection seats. I became a naval aviator on 6 October 1964. This was a time when »

Koch-Heads Beclown Themselves Again

Featured image File this under the ditty “Tie a Yellow [Journalism] Ribbon Round the Old Koch Tree” (hat tip to our erstwhile headline writer RS), as we take in our pals at ReasonTV allowing the protesters against a possible Koch purchase of the LA Times make utter fools of themselves: »

Ted Cruz’s thoughtful approach to immigration reform

Featured image The mainstream media, on behalf of the left, treats Ted Cruz as if he were a knee-jerk, obstructionist right-winger, devoid of subtlety and nuanced thinking — a nastier version of Sarah Palin, as the MSM portrayed her. But that’s not the Ted Cruz I see. Sure, he is capable of serving up red meat, as any ambitious modern politician must, at times, do. But on the issues, he generally comes »

The Other IRS Scandal

Featured image It wasn’t just the Tea Party: it has been widely reported that the IRS also has harassed and discriminated against pro-Israel charities, in particular those that support settlements in Judea and Samaria. In the Free Beacon, Alana Goodman pursues the story: A Washington Free Beacon investigation has identified at least five pro-Israel organizations that have been audited by the IRS in the wake of a coordinated campaign by White House-allied »

EPA a Job Killer? How About Just Killer, Period

Featured image From E & E news (subscription required, so I won’t post the link), a news item that requires no commentary: Emissions Device May Have Cut Power to Ambulance on Way to Hospital A U.S. EPA-mandated device meant to reduce diesel emissions may have shut down an ambulance carrying a suspect who had been shot by police in Washington, D.C. While medics yesterday were transporting the injured man, who was suspected »

How the Climate Campaign Plans to Get Its Groove Back

Featured image Day after day comes more news of the gradual collapse of the climate campaign.  Between the embarrassing lack of continued warming and the reckoning with the unsustainably (heh) high cost of renewable energy to displace hydrocarbon energy, you can hear politicians slowly backing away from the whole scene, especially over in Europe.  Yesterday, for example, Tim Yeo, one of the leading advocates of climate action in the UK, took a »

The audacity of lope

Featured image We are all familiar with the Democratic hit and run operation, metaphorically speaking, in which the cry of “racism” is followed by the “move on” maneuver. Louisiana state senator Karen Carter Peterson — the chairman of the state Democratic party — brings the metaphor to life as she runs away from local television reporters who ask about her declaration that opponents of Obamacare are driven by racism. NRO’s Jim Geraghty »

In Syria, McCain reportedly posed for pictures with rebel kidnappers

Featured image During his brief visit to Syria last weekend, John McCain posed for a group picture that reportedly includes two men who kidnapped 11 Shiite pilgrims in Lebanon. The two men, Mohamed Nour and Abu Ibrahim, are identified as kidnappers by The Daily Star of Lebanon. A spokesman for Sen. McCain said that if anyone in the photo was among the kidnappers, that is “regrettable.” The spokesman added that “it would »

Eric Holder’s pattern of giving false testimony

Featured image When President Obama nominated Eric Holder for Attorney General, the Republican establishment was not displeased. As I wrote at the time, “most members of that establishment feel more comfortable with their fellow Washington insider than they do with taking their chances on an Obama nominee to be named later.” At Power Line, though, we had major concerns about Holder. Prominent among them was his lack of honesty. For one thing, »

Britain’s Suicidal Self-Delusion

Featured image More evidence that Britain has decided to embrace its cultural suicide comes from The Telegraph, which reports that the British High Commission pressured Kenyan authorities to release Michael Adebolajo, the murderer of Drummer Lee Rigby in London last week, after Kenyan police had arrested Adebolajo in 2010 when Adebolajo was attempting to make his way to Somalia for terrorist training: A Kenyan lawyer who represented the 28 year-old suspected of »

Why Lerner took the Fifth

Featured image Whether or not IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner properly asserted her Fifth Amendment right not to testify absorbed commentators after her appearance before the House Oversight Committee last week. But the question why Lerner took the Fifth has not received a comparably close look. Before asserting the Fifth Amendment, Lerner denied that she has misled Congress. Thus the controversy over whether Lerner had waived her Fifth Amendment protection. »