Monthly Archives: May 2014
May 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Those into pattern recognition won’t be challenged by the link among the list of Democratic Senators now calling for the resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. Politico reports that Senators Mark Udall of Colorado, John Walsh of Montana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina released separate statements calling on Shinseki to resign. Late Wednesday night, Democratic Senators Al Franken and Jeanne Shaheen also fled Shinseki’s sinking ship. Now that
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May 29, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Media Matters has an interesting interview with Daniel Schulman, an editor at Mother Jones who has written a book on the Koch brothers. The main topic of the interview is Koch Industries’ aggressive response to journalists who try to smear the company and its owners: “In terms of the general P.R. operation, I think that KochFacts itself has been pretty effective at giving reporters pause,” Schulman said. “Now you know
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May 29, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Egypt held its presidential election this week. Army strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was elected with 93.3 percent of the vote. A margin like that can only be explained by large-scale fraud, non-turnout by those who support other candidates, or both. I can’t speak to whether there was fraud, but certainly voter turnout was low. The government claims that turnout was 46 percent, well below the 80 percent Sisi had called
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May 29, 2014 — Steven Hayward
I was privileged to visit and lecture at the U.S. Air Force Academy a few weeks ago, and noted at the time that the students—I mean, cadets—looked and spoke rather differently than most of the students I encountered at Boulder. They impressed me as a very serious and fine bunch. (See photo below.) Too bad they had to suffer through Slow Joe Biden as their commencement speaker earlier this week.
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May 29, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Amidst all the straw men President Obama grappled with during his mushy commencement speech at West Point were a few serious points. One of them was this: [T]he need for a new strategy reflects the fact that today’s principal threat no longer comes from a centralized Al Qaida leadership. Instead, it comes from decentralized Al Qaida affiliates and extremists, many with agendas focused in countries where they operate. And this
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May 29, 2014 — Steven Hayward
News has just crossed the wire this morning that the economy contracted at an annual rate of 1 percent during the first quarter of this year. Many people will probably point to the brutal winter weather as a factor, though the Dept. of Commerce fingers “negative contributions from private inventory investment, exports, nonresidential fixed investment, state and local government spending, and residential fixed investment,” and notes that consumer spending was
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May 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Reading Jonathan Last’s weekly email newsletter note to Weekly Standard readers yesterday (subscription is free; subscribe here), I recalled that we had posted the memorable video of Nigel Farage disparaging the president of the European Union on the floor of the European Parliament under the heading (pulled from his speech) “Who the hell do you think you are?” In his email Jonathan recalled that 2010 video and linked to two
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May 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
The Free Beacon’s David Rutz promised us a sequel to “Sharpton versus the teleprompter,” depicting the vile Al Sharpton’s work at MSNBC. In the video below, Rutz delivers. You probably missed all this at the time. Rutz posts volume 2 with these notes: Al Sharpton’s ferocious battle with the English language and his own teleprompter wages on, with no end in sight. People (Mark Rubio? Galeo? Gina De Jess Whose?),
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May 28, 2014 — John Hinderaker
For some reason, talk of reparations is in the air. I haven’t seen any concrete proposals, but on Twitter, lots of people are debating whether African-Americans should be paid money to compensate them (or, more logically, their ancestors–but it’s a little late) for slavery. Steve even wrote a half-serious post on the subject yesterday. At Ricochet, Jason Rudert argues that “The Time for Reparations Is Now.” Rudert writes: The window
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May 28, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
During his mushy commencement speech at West Point, President Obama told the graduates, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” (Every fiber of his being? Who’s writing this crap?) Obama refrained from adding, as he has in the past, that Brits and Greeks believe, respectively, in British and Greek exceptionalism. Unfortunately, Obama’s account of what makes America exceptional suggests that he still doesn’t truly believe in
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May 28, 2014 — Scott Johnson
President Obama gave the commencement speech at West Point this morning. The subject of the speech was foreign policy. The White House has posted the text here. The White House has also posted the video here and uploaded it to YouTube; I have posted it below. Please check it out. I find it difficult to imagine the mental nullity required to draft and revise this speech. You almost have to
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May 28, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
It’s clear by now that if you publicly oppose gay marriage or give money to those who oppose it, the gay speech police will try to ruin you (and may succeed). But it turns out that even supporting gay marriage isn’t enough to protect you from attack if you make statements on collateral matters that gay marriage proponents find harmful to their cause. Take the case of Douglas Laycock, a
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May 28, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here and here about the Obama administration’s proposed rule on “affirmatively furthering fair housing” (AFFH), an attempt to dictate how we shall live. In essence, President Obama seeks to use the power of the national government to create communities of a certain kind, each having what the federal government deems an appropriate mix of economic, racial, and ethnic diversity. The proposed AFFH rule, issued last July, was expected
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May 28, 2014 — John Hinderaker
In the U.K., two of President Obama’s former campaign gurus have lined up on opposite sides. David Axelrod has tried to help right Labour’s sinking ship, while Jim Messina has scandalized American liberals by working as a consultant for David Cameron and the Conservatives. Don’t worry, Messina says: the British Tories are nothing like our nasty Republicans. The New York Times has the story. Along the way, it provides a
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May 28, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Last night Brian Ward and I recorded Episode 71 of the Hinderaker-Ward Experience. We talked about the news of the day, including Memorial Day, the VA scandal and what it tells us about government medicine, Barack Obama as a symbolic president and the prospect of Hillary as another one, and the appalling story of Meriam Ibrahim, on death row in Sudan for the crime of apostasy. We awarded the Loon
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May 28, 2014 — Steven Hayward
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning on Nevada cattle ranchers other than Cliven Bundy who are being denied access to public grazing lands on the pretext of drought, even though northern Nevada’s grasslands have grown robustly this year (in part because northern California and Nevada haven’t been nearly as parched as southern California). Here’s the lede to “Grazing Limits Feed Tension in Nevada”: BATTLE MOUNTAIN, Nev.—Rancher Pete Tomera slowed
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May 28, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Caroline Glick devotes a column to “Pope Francis’s unfriendly visit” to Israel. She makes a number of points that seem persuasive to me. Caroline discusses the Pope’s stop for a photo opportunity at a portion of the security wall separating Israel from the Palestinian Authority, commenting in part as follows: Reasonable people disagree about the contribution the security fence makes to the security of Israelis. But no one can reasonably
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