BUT THE PRESIDENT’S A DEMOCRAT SO THE PRESS DOESN’T CARE: The Botched Recovery From Superstorm Sandy. “Stories like this used to get a lot of ink when George W. Bush was in the White House and the press couldn’t say enough about the botched recovery after Katrina. But now that the greatest President since Lincoln occupies the Oval Office, trivial stories like agonizingly slow hurricane recoveries bore our enlightened press corps to tears. There is a clear message here: if you hate bad news, vote the straight Democratic ticket. True, bad things will still happen, but instead of rubbing your nose in them day after day, the press will say as little about them as is humanly possible.”
Archive for 2014
June 19, 2014
AT AMAZON, shop the Fourth Of July Sale!
INSTAVISION: I talk with Mickey Kaus about the Cantor defeat, the diverging views of immigration inside/outside the beltway, and what’s likely to happen next. Plus, is Eric Cantor the Admiral Byng of the GOP?
SEEMS LEGIT: Cost A Dem Governor A State Senate Majority, Get Investigated By The Feds. I’m sure they’d have been just as quick if the parties were reversed.
WHEN SENATORS BLAME THE VICTIM: When is it okay to say “I know you feel that you’re a victim… If you would be more careful, maybe you wouldn’t be victimized as frequently”? The answer, of course, is when the target is a white male.
PRIORITIES AT THE V.A.: Green Energy For Dead Veterans.
USA TODAY: “Lost” IRS e-mails shake trust in government. Ya think?
JAMES TARANTO: New and Improved? Mrs. Clinton’s not-yet-a-campaign runs into some difficulties.
A participant in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll provides this amusing quote, which appears in today’s Journal story about the results: “Anita Windley, 30, who voted for [Barack] Obama in 2008 and again in 2012, doesn’t think he’s doing enough to help people in her New York City neighborhood. She complains that jobs are still hard to find and the local schools are subpar. ‘It’s time for somebody new,’ she said, ‘like Hillary.’ ”
That would be Hillary Clinton, who if she wins the presidential nomination in 2016 will be the oldest Democrat ever to do so. Lewis Cass, 66 when he lost the presidency to Whig Zachary Taylor, has held the record since 1848, 99 years before Mrs. Clinton’s birth.
Although she hasn’t even declared whether she’s a candidate, there’s a common view that Mrs. Clinton’s nomination and election are inevitable. If you’re convinced that is true, you can put money on it: According to OddsChecker.com, London bookmakers are offering slightly better than even odds on her victory in November 2016. Before risking your life savings, consider that you’re betting on three contingencies. For the bet to pay off, she has to run and win the nomination and win the election. . . . She seems to be acknowledging that she privately changed her mind about Iraq long ago and dishonestly concealed her new view. Her defense is that it was a white lie and did not benefit her politically. Now, at long last, she is prepared to reveal her real position–which happens to be, even more clearly than it was in 2008, the only politically expedient position for a Democratic presidential candidate to take.
If only the Dems could find a clean and articulate newcomer — preferably a minority — who voted against the Iraq invasion. Less baggage that way. Of course that would rule out all of these folks:
ROGER SIMON: Why People Zone Out On Hillary. “Hillary is a nowhere woman, trying to replace a nowhere man, which is saying something given Obama’s recent poll numbers. And no one wants to pay attention to a nowhere woman who has been a serial liar. It’s stupefying. The natural reaction of most people, even many who will support her anyway, is to tune out — and they have.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: If She Had Drinks, You May Be A Rapist. See, with colleges and universities already facing a shortage of applicants — especially male applicants — this seems like poor marketing.
JAN MOIR: Shame on the she-furies who always assume men are guilty of rape…
Arrested at dawn. Placed on police bail for nearly two months. The target of a feminist crusade to further blacken his name.
What now for Ben Sullivan, the President of the Union at Oxford who has been told he will not be charged with rape? Can he expect an apology from those who campaigned so virulently against him?
Don’t hold your breath.
The 21-year-old history and politics student was arrested in May on suspicion of rape and attempted rape; accusations made against him by two different women. As Sullivan was the head of the debating society, he was a patriarchal cherry on the cake; a very high-profile student in a prestigious university. He was shown no mercy.
Sarah Pine, President for Women at Oxford University Student Union, wasted no time in leading the witch hunt against him. . . .
Had it gone to trial, Ben Sullivan’s guilt or innocence would have been a matter for the courts to decide. And if found guilty, his punishment would have been a lengthy jail sentence. Yet all this happened before the CPS had decided whether or not to charge him.
This is part of a chilling trend in which, on U.S. university campuses, feminists have become self-appointed rape cops. If a male student is accused of a sexual assault on a female student, it has become alarmingly commonplace for it to be dealt with in-house, as opposed to by the police.
University officials consider the evidence, deal with the matter and mete out the punishments to the offenders.
The article notes that people are beginning to call for anonymity for those accused before conviction, and tougher punishments for false accusations, which appear to be distressingly frequent.
BYRON YORK: What should Iraq war advocates say about the current crisis? How about “Boy, Barack, you’ve really screwed this one up!” Or is that too mean?
Anyway, I’m just going to keep running this video of what the Democrats, including Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, were saying on Iraq before the invasion:
ROLL CALL: Obama’s Democrats Wary of Military Action in Iraq.
Less than five months from midterm elections and more than 11 years after Congress first authorized the war, lawmakers are wary of getting sucked back into the conflict. But Congress’ opinion may not even matter, because President Barack Obama already has the authority to act if he chooses.
The commander in chief will detail his thinking for the four top congressional leaders Wednesday, in a White House meeting which might help to get more information through the halls of the Capitol.
Until then, members are all over the place on what to do, whom to blame and whether the president is deploying the right strategy.
Obama faces splits in his own party — with anti-war Democrats such as Rep. Barbara Lee of California hoping to repeal the authorizations to use military force in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere — and more hawkish members, such as House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, willing to consider air strikes to avoid Iraq becoming a new safe haven for terrorists.
While he has ruled out ground combat, Obama hasn’t ruled out air strikes against the forces of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to stem their march toward Baghdad, while pressuring Nouri al-Maliki to open his government to Sunni and Kurdish leadership.
Meanwhile, since Harry Reid was spewing a lot of revisionism yesterday, here’s a flashback to what the Democrats, including Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, were saying on Iraq before the invasion:
MICHAEL BARONE: Are The Two Political Parties About To Crack Up?
THE HILL: GOP young-adult group hits Landrieu in new ad: ‘We can’t afford that!’
The ad, shared first with The Hill, shows a young woman pushing a Landrieu look-a-like around a grocery store in a shopping cart. The politician greedily grabs items off the shelves, munching cookies and hoarding goods as the young woman admonishes, “I told you we can’t afford that!”
“Washington politicians, like Sen. Mary Landrieu, have a spending problem. They’re wasting money they don’t have, and sticking our generation with the bill,” a narrator says in the ad.When a cashier finally rings up all of the groceries, the sum comes out to $800,000 — an 18-year-old’s share of the national debt, per a Budget Committee analysis — and the Landrieu stand-in dismisses it: “She’s got it.”
Sounds pretty accurate.
DO TELL: Lawmakers Sound Alarm Over Wider Internal Surveillance: Senators Say Possible Monitoring of Legislative Officials Would Raise Constitutional Questions. Especially if the surveillance were politically motivated, which seems highly likely, especially in this Administration.
I wrote about this in USA Today a while back.
June 18, 2014
ED DRISCOLL: The Collapsing Obama Doctrine.
JIM TREACHER: Buh-Bye, Jay Carney. “He will be missed by fans of unintentional comedy.”
AT AMAZON, up to 40% off on Tumi Luggage. It’s been praised by many Insta-Readers during earlier luggage-blogging excursions.
Also, Hot Music, Hot Prices.
MS. MAGAZINE: Men Falsely Accused Of Sexual Assault Who Sue Colleges Are “Playing The Victim.”
Related: Feminist stages book-burning.
The book in question is Christina Hoff Sommers’ The War Against Boys.
On Twitter, this comment: “And these idiots wonder why they’re called ‘Feminazis.'”
A DEMOCRAT WHO THINKS SOUTHERN MEN ARE EFFEMINATE AND ERIC CANTOR’S PROBABLY GAY: Montana’s Brian Schweitzer. I hope he runs in 2016. But what’s really crazy is going to so much trouble to be on Ed Schultz’s show on MSNBC.
IRAQ: Why It’s Worse Than You Think. Not sure I buy this projection, but I sure hope my skepticism is justified.