LEAVING UKRAINE TO ITS FATE: Leon Weiseltier in The New Republic: “Obama has concluded…that he ‘will never have a constructive relationship with Mr. Putin,’ and so he has decided that he ‘will spend his final two and a half years in office trying to minimize the disruption Mr. Putin can cause, preserve whatever marginal cooperation can be saved and otherwise ignore the master of the Kremlin.’” Ignoring the master, of course, has the consequence of ignoring the master’s victims.
Archive for 2014
May 3, 2014
BENGHAZI MADE SIMPLE: The White House’s political and ideological instincts overpowered everything else, Jonah Goldberg writes in his latest G-File.
R.I.P. EFREM ZIMBALIST JR: Star of The FBI, 77 Sunset Strip, and the voice of Alfred the Butler in the iconic early 1990s Batman cartoon series was 95.
FLASHBACK: Hillary Clinton’s Iraq War speech. “Why should she be allowed to speak on campuses under this standard?”
RELATED: Students shocked to hear what Hillary said on gay marriage.
WITH GREAT RESIDUALS COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY: “Five Lame Superhero Sequels That Should Never Have Been Made,” from John Boot at the PJ Lifestyle blog, who adds, “Don’t bother with The Amazing Spider-Man 2.”
What veteran producer Lynda Obst dubbed the “the New Abnormal” last year is starting to feel rather tired and exhausted these days. So when does Hollywood exit its plastic-looking CGI superhero phase?
VIDEO: CNN BOSS JEFF ZUCKER SHOCKED BY STAFFER’S FEARFUL QUESTION:
Zucker was sucker-punched at a CNN town hall meeting last month when a staffer offered a brutally honest critique during a Q&A with Anderson Cooper.
“How do we stop managers . . . from being afraid of you?” asked brave Atlanta-based producer James Curry in a question read by Cooper at the session in New York seen by all bureaus. “It seems that everyone is on pins and needles whenever you give guidance . . . The bottom line is managers seem to fear you and act very strange when you’re around.”
When you’ve lost fellow Time-Warner-CNN employee Joe Klein and the Boston Globe, perhaps it might be time to end the joyless monomania of the Zucker current approach.
Plus there’s plenty of karma involved, considering that ordinarily, CNN loves audience plants armed with sucker punch questions.
FLASH: ACTUAL JOURNALISM COMMITTED BY MSM: “Damn Right I Taped Kerry’s ‘Apartheid’ Talk,” says the Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin. “And if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it in the exact same way.”
“The media is turning on President Obama,” Michael Goodwin wrote in the New York Post a week ago. But don’t worry — everybody in the media-political complex will be chummy tonight at Nerdprom.
IT WAS ALL A WARMUP FOR ALTAMONT, MAN: Gallery: San Francisco Hippies, 1966-67.
MY PUBLISHER IS RUNNING A FANTASY STORY CONTEST: Larry Correia is judging the contest for “action fantasy” for Baen Books. Details at the link, but the gist of it is below.
What we want to see: Adventure fantasy with heroes you want to root for. Warriors either modern or medieval, who solve problems with their wits or with their sword–and we have nothing against dragons, elves, dwarves, castles under siege, urban fantasy, damsels in distress, or damsels who can’t be bothered to be distressed.
VIDEO: “SOMEBODY PICKED THE WRONG TAXI:” Heh, indeed.™
THE SPY PLANE THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD: U-2 fried air traffic control computers, shut down LAX this past Wednesday.
CHANGE: Why Barack Obama should be relieved that George W. Bush is more popular than he is.
“What’s that? Oh, yeah, funny how that happened…”
READER BOOK PLUG: From Jay Posey, Morningside Fall (Legends of the Dustwalker).
ALAN GROSS TURNS 65 IN CUBAN PRISON; Family Fears He May Not See Next Birthday. From Bridget Johnson at PJ Media’s new Yellow Ribbon Project blog.
REASON TV: Nick Gillespie sits down with Sharyl Attkisson: Emails reveal White House hid truths about Benghazi attack.
CHECKING THE READINGS ON THE OBAMAMOMETER: Michael Walsh asks, “Is Obama Too Smart for the Presidency, or Is It Too Tough for Him?”
“COLLEGE CAMPUSES ESSENTIALLY OPERATE ON MOB RULE AT THIS POINT,” from Prof. William A. Jacobson at his Legal Insurrection blog, noting that “Condoleeza Rice withdraws as Commencement speaker at Rutgers after protests (Update — Does this mean Hillary should be banned too?)”
Nonsense. Hillary isn’t considered The Other — unlike 2008, that is.
Related: “Let’s Purge All Things.”
THE WORLD’S MOST EXPENSIVE DOLLAR BILL: “The Fall of Tina Brown & Newsweek Cost $100 Million,” from John Nolte at Big Journalism.
And note this:
Tina Brown spoke to Politico for their article. Which means…
….you get to read a quote from a left-wing Democrat who blames one of the biggest failures in publishing history in part on an “intractable union”:
“You know, you try it. You try taking over a magazine that was already dead, that was losing a fortune, that had an intractable union as well, so you were carrying 80 people who you couldn’t even replace, where you didn’t have any management left. At one point, I was having to be the editor, the managing editor and the executive editor. I mean, it was agony.”
Hey, when the Washington Post owned the magazine, they tried to warn us all on their cover that when it comes to Newsweek, “We Are All Socialists Now,” but evidently Tina missed the memo.
TOMMY VIETOR COMICS: “Dude, where’s my van?”
POLITICALLY INCORRECT DIETING: Scott Johnson on Power Line writes: “Inspired by Taubes, I’ve been following a low carb diet for 18 months. It has worked for me, but I’m not sure how long I can stick with it.”
Plus this:
Now comes journalist Nina Teicholz with today’s number one story at the Wall Street Journal site: “The questionable link between saturated fat and heart disease.” Taking off from a big study published in March in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, Teicholz writes: “The fact is, there has never been solid evidence for the idea that these fats cause disease. We only believe this to be the case because nutrition policy has been derailed over the past half-century by a mixture of personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias.”
SHELLACKING II: THE SEQUEL: From Matthew Continetti at the Washington Free Beacon, along with a giant “don’t get cocky, kid”-style warning at the conclusion.
NEXT THEY’LL WANT TRIGGER WARNINGS: All I have to say is that anyone who attends Titus Andronicus expecting it to be a gentle comedy or even one of the normal Shakespearean tragedies gets what’s coming to them. After all, it is the best Kit Marlowe play Shakespeare ever wrote.
THE MAN CAN BUST OUR MUSIC! “Authorities Seize Man’s Electronic Equipment For Blasting Celine Dion,” and playing “My Heart Will Go On” over and over.