SO, WHY DOES CONDE NAST OWN REDDIT? AND WHY DOES BARACK OBAMA PATRONIZE IT?
Archive for 2012
October 15, 2012
CHUCK SCHUMER TO TAX REFORM: Drop Dead!
SCIENCE: What do women want? To be married, of course. “I do not know of one cohabiting couple with children in which the woman doesn’t secretly wish they had got married. There, I’ve said it.”
THE EUROPEAN UNION knocks Press TV, Iran’s English language propaganda channel, off the air. This is not, by the way, a free speech issue. The people of Iran have no freedom of speech whatsoever, and Press TV is an overseas propaganda arm of their oppressors. Europe’s freedom of speech protections, however robust or not they may be, are for European citizens, not for totalitarian state sponsors of terrorism abroad.
PROGRESSING BACK TO THE MIDDLE AGES: Germany facing power blackouts
‘THE TEA PARTY WILL WIN IN THE END:’ Elizabeth, that’s quite a change for Frank Rich, who was calling the Tea Party ‘Stalinists’ back in late October of 2010.
As Matt Welch of Reason wrote at time, “Only Stalinists Use Words Like “Stalinist.'” Of course, that was back when Rich was still with the New York Times, effectively the print division of MSNBC. Unlike the wild and woolly Times, perhaps New York magazine requires him to dial the radical chic rhetoric back a notch or ten.
OF COURSE HE DID: Fidel Castro ‘recruited Nazi SS members to train troops during Cuban missile crisis’. Red fascism, black fascism; international socialism, national socialism; six, meet half a dozen — Making one hip and burying the other was always a sign that Western intellectuals had bought Agit Prop.
RUDY GIULIANI ASKS SOLEDAD O’BRIEN OF CNN, ‘Am I Debating With the President’s Campaign?’
I’d say the answer is baked in the cake.
21ST CENTURY ARTISTIC EXPRESSION: A VAGINA RAP SONG. “B*tch, your vag is Janet Reno” is kinda mean, even for rap. But this is more proof that 2012 is the year when vaginas jumped the shark. . .
MITT’S COATTAILS GROWING?: Rep. Todd Akin (R) has now pulled ahead of incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill (D) in Missouri, 49 to 45 percent. Likely attributable to Romney’s surging popularity.
A BRAVE MAN: Meet Jonathan Spyer, the Israeli who sneaked into Syria. Twice. His first book, The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict
PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR A DECADE, BUT HOW MUCH HAS BEEN DONE? Old-Fashioned Control Systems Make U.S. Power Grids, Water Plants a Hacking Target.
THE TEA PARTY WILL WIN IN THE END: It’s official: Frank Rich at New York Magazine admits it. “This is a nation that loathes government and always has. Liberals should not be deluded: The Goldwater revolution will ultimately triumph, regardless of what happens in November.” Let’s hope Americans do remember their constitutional roots and why big government is to be feared and loathed. The tea party is alive and well.
EARLY VOTING IN COBB COUNTY, GEORGIA: Reader John Steakley writes: “The line is out the door and doubled back on itself at noon, and this isn’t a battleground state.” I could be wrong, but I kinda doubt they’re lining up out of eagerness to vote for Obama.
A CULTURE OF DEPENDENCY=MODERN DAY SLAVERY: The Tea Party Victory Fund has a compelling ad making the point that the progressive/liberal idea of government dependency is today’s version of slavery. Their chief weapon? The Obamaphone lady. Oh, and before any liberals/progressives can scream “racism!,” the Tea Party Victory Fund is headed by Ken Blackwell, a former Cincinnati Mayor and Ohio Secretary of State, who is black (not that this will stop the “r” word accusation).
UNDER 20 AND NOT SURE ABOUT COLLEGE? Apply To Be a Thiel Fellow.
UPDATE: More here. (Bumped).
LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Do We Really Need More Teachers?
TEASING THE MULLAHS: Tiny Azerbaijan unleashes pop-power against Iran’s mullahs. (My alternate intro for this would be I WANT TO TEACH THE WORLD TO SING.)
MARC THIESSEN: The new Middle East coverup: Biden caught in Syria debate falsehood. “First there was the Libya coverup. Now, we have the Syria coverup.”
MORE EDUCATION BUBBLE UNDERPINNINGS: Biased Against the Bright And as the mother of bright kids, I must tell you some bias is impossible to eliminate. Teachers tend to encourage people who resemble them (which is why driving men out of teaching was a serious mistake) and the majority of teachers like the majority of everything else are “average.” But “social justice” and Marxism make this (as everything else they touch) worse.
IN THE MAIL: No Lost Causes.
JOURNALISM: The NYT kept the Libya hearing off the front page because “It’s three weeks before the election and it’s a politicized thing…” “Is the Libya scandal as big as Watergate? The substance of it may be much worse than Watergate, and the Obama administration seems not to have heeded the old Watergate lesson that it’s the cover-up that gets you, but if Obama loses the election, that will limit the dimension of the scandal. If he wins the election — especially if it’s very close or contested in some way — Republicans may work themselves into a frenzy going after Obama. Remember that Richard Nixon was reelected after the Watergate scandal broke. The break-in was 5 months before the election, and the first stories had come out. The next 2 years were hell for Nixon, and he was drummed out of office. And Nixon had won by a landslide.”
From the comments: “Watergate didn’t have a body count.”
UPDATE: Rudy Giuliani: White House ‘trying to cover up this scandal’ in Libya until after election. “The White House … has fumbled this — whether it’s a deliberate cover-up or they’re making it look like a cover-up, they have fumbled the ball four or five times here.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Mockery for the bylined Democratic Party operatives at the Times from reader Mark Miller, who points out:
To suggest that the NY Times kept the Libya hearing off the front page because it was a politicized story is a joke. On November 4, 2000 — the Friday before election day on Tuesday, 11/7/2000 — the GWB DUI arrest in 1976 story was front page news in the NY Times. Was that a politicized story?
Here’s the link to the story. So stay tuned for more . . . journalism!
And here’s the correction/editor’s note appended to the story that makes clear that it was a front page story:
Editors’ Note: November 5, 2000, Sunday A headline yesterday on the continuation of the front-page article about Gov. George W. Bush’s presidential campaign said in some copies that he had stressed integrity ”Even as Drunken-Driving Arrest Raises Questions of Character.” That phrasing exceeded the facts of the article, and its opinionated tone was unintended. A replacement headline went astray in the production process.
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My note: what I love about that correction is the last sentence. “A replacement headline went astray in the production process.” Are “replacement headlines” sort of like puppies? They just wander off by themselves? What the hell?
Mock them all you want. They deserve it. I can only imagine what last-minute surprise they’ll try to spring this time. All while pretending that they’re Responsible Journalists and Important Members of the Fourth Estate.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader writes:
Remember the great “Missing explosives from Al Qaqaa” scandal during the 2008 campaign?
3000 hits at nytimes.com. I don’t remember them avoiding that story because it had been politicized.
Nope. Then there was the bogus McCain-affair-with-a-lobbyist hit piece. And, of course, there was this embarrassing cheap shot from the WaPo.
The election’s three weeks away, and the Dems are falling behind. So stay tuned for more . . . journalism!
MORE: Reader Craig Anderson ventures some predictions:
On your blog today (10/15/2012) you said, “Mock them all you want. They deserve it. I can only imagine what last-minute surprise they’ll try to spring this time.”
Allow me to offer a little help. Here’s what I think you can expect out of the Obama camp and / or their surrogates in the press in the last weeks:
1. Someone will claim that Romney had an affair of some kind. To make it the most salacious possible, they’ll claim it happened while he was a Mormon bishop.
2. He’ll be tied to something they’ll find in Mormon history, probably the Mountain Meadows massacre. They’ll try to smear him with some story from the past, easy to do with all the nonsense printed about the Mormons in the 1830’s – 1860’s.
3. They’ll find some way to pin Romney to some other nefarious thing while we was CEO of Bain. Think the Romney-was-responsible-for-my-wife-dying thing was outlandish, just wait a bit; they’ll come up with something to top it.
4. Something related to his time as governor, which will show that he’s actually planning to turn the country over to his church, or to Israel, or some other scheme to confiscate all the life, liberty and property of every middle class person in America.
Obama himself won’t do it, it will be the PACs, or perhaps even Harry Reid again (particularly if they want to drum up a Mormon-based smearing).
I guarantee that Obama (especially) and his team will find nothing too beneath them to dredge it out and use it for smearing.
And while we’re at it, let’s examine Obama just a little more closely. Obama didn’t initiate the attack on Libya, but he joined it (about 3 weeks late; “leading from behind” they called it; the rest of us call that “following”). He said it would be “weeks, not months”. Yet it ran on for, what, 6 – 8 months? This was a violation of the War Powers Act, which required the president to get the congress’ approval. Shouldn’t Obama have been impeached for violating the law in such an extreme way?
Well, they won’t run stories on that issue. But it’s nice to have an advance copy of the script. . . .
DAN MITCHELL: If the Auto Bailout Was a Success, I’d Hate to See What a Failure Looks Like.
Related: How The GM Bailout Turned Into Foreign Aid. “With more losses and expenses coming, taxpayers can expect to see their investment in GM’s North American operations continue to support a steady flow of cash to GM’s overseas operations. Perhaps taxpayers should have been told that they weren’t simply bailing out an American automaker, but a variety of overseas operations as well.”