Archive for 2015

KURT SCHLICHTER: “Let’s be absolutely clear – Donald Trump is entirely the fault of a GOP establishment that lied to conservatives and refused to do what it promised it would do. Trump is no secret Machiavellian genius cunningly outmaneuvering his enemies from his super-classy Atlantic City volcano lair. He’s a finger-to-the-wind charlatan who will say whatever he needs to say to maximize his own personal adulation. And he would still be merely a tiresome reality TV catch-phrase generator if the GOP establishment had not treated the rest of us like dirt.”

IT’S CERTAINLY TRUE THAT THE IMMIGRATION ISSUE CROSSES PARTY LINES, AND UNITES TRUMP AND SANDERS: Floodgates Open: Top Democrat Professor Says ‘I’ve Never Seen any Politician’ with Better Immigration Plan than Trump.

Demonstrating the broad appeal of his in-depth immigration plan released Sunday, Trump’s proposal has won the accolades of one of the nation’s leading experts on the H-1B visas program. The H-1B is a visa designed to provided corporations with cheaper and less experienced guest workers to fill technology jobs.

Norm Matloff, a professor at UC Davis, has written extensively about H-1B visa abuses, and his work is widely cited in the H-1B reform community.

Matloff, a self-described Democrat and “longtime admirer of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT),” gave Donald Trump’s H-1B policy “an A+” and was pleased that the Republican frontrunner was willing to take aim at the Republican establishment’s preferred candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Rubio is pushing a plan to triple H-1B visas so that corporations can more easily import substitute guest workers.

Other politicians take note.

YOUR BAND SUCKS: Jon Fine on How the Indie Cultural Revolution Changed America for the Better: “If you’re telling me Amazon is bad for culture, like seriously, f*** you,” memoirist of ’90s alt-music scene Fine tells Nick Gillespie in a new Reason TV video:

“If there’s anything that will turn you into a foaming-at-the-mouth Tea Party[er] and get you throwing stones at every liberal shibboleth you can get your hands on, it’s going to Oberlin,” Fine says. At the same time, his urge to create radically different music far beyond anything that was being played on MTV or commercial radio.

But then, it’s not a coincidence that the Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker and Exene Cervenka of the punk band X saw an affinity with the Tea Party.  Or as somebody once sang, “When things get so big, I don’t trust them at all. You want some control, you’ve got to keep it small.” (Though curiously enough, somehow as a man of the far left, Peter Gabriel doesn’t extend his “DIY” advice to the size of government.)

USA TODAY: Clinton’s shaky email defenses: Campaign proves she doesn’t lie by citing fact-checkers who point to clever deceptions. “After Hillary Clinton provided her much-discussed private server to the proper authorities last week, her campaign sent out an email blast to supporters and posted on its website a fascinating briefing to bring all the ‘facts’ about the email “nonsense” together. Yet, the links the briefing provided to clear Clinton’s good name are a bit curious. If you follow them, you’ll find that when Clinton is given every benefit of the doubt, she is innocent of specific deliberate falsehoods. At the same time, the links indict her for a campaign of deliberately misleading statements, dating to a news conference in March.”

VIDEO: JOIN INSTAPUNDIT, PJTV STARS AT ‘BULLETS AND BOURBON’ IN DECEMBER.

Click the link for more information and for reservations: http://bullets-and-bourbon.com

You have the right to own a gun in the United States. Unfortunately, there is a push to take away your second amendment rights. Co-host of PJTV’s Trifecta, Stephen Green and author Kevin Williamson join host Glenn Reynolds to talk about gun rights in America. You’ll also learn about a special event taking place in December at Rough Creek Lodge near Dallas, Texas. It’s Bullets & Bourbon — a weekend long retreat dedicated to the second amendment and fine bourbon, which in addition to Glenn, Steve, and Kevin, will also feature PJ Media’s CEO Emeritus Roger L. Simon, Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey, Dana Loesch of Glenn Beck’s The Blaze network, strength training expert Mark Rippetoe, and Dr. Helen Smith. (And I’ll be there as well, of course.)

Be sure to make a reservation to join your favorite PJTV stars in December.

TOO HAPPY, WHITE AND FEMININE? Yep, that’s what an angry AL.com writer seems to think about a sweet and upbeat sorority recruitment video posted by the University of Alabama’s chapter of Alpha Phi sorority. The writer, A.L. Bailey, complains:

No, it’s not a slick Playboy Playmate or Girls Gone Wild video. It’s a sorority recruiting tool gaining on 500,000 views in its first week on YouTube. It’s a parade of white girls and blonde hair dye, coordinated clothing, bikinis and daisy dukes, glitter and kisses, bouncing bodies, euphoric hand-holding and hugging, gratuitous booty shots, and matching aviator sunglasses. It’s all so racially and aesthetically homogeneous and forced, so hyper-feminine, so reductive and objectifying, so Stepford Wives: College Edition. It’s all so … unempowering. . . . Yes, sororities are known for being pretty and flirty; they aren’t bastions of feminist ideologies. But perhaps they shouldn’t completely sabotage them either. 

Why do I get the impression that A.L. Bailey is either an ugly, angry feminist who is jealous of the obviously pretty, happy, All-American college girls displayed in the video, or a nerdy, self-righteous progressive male hipster who could never get a date with one of these lovely young ladies? They seem fully empowered to me, and it’s not their responsibility, as college-age sorority girls, to fly the flag of radical, liberal/progressive feminism. In fact, A.L. Bailey seems utterly unaware of the possibility that these young women might think of feminism in very different ways from his/her own antediluvian stereotype. 

According to Scott Greer of the Daily Caller:

What this author is really saying is that these women shouldn’t be so darn white, happy and feminine.

Unfortunately, Bailey is not a fringe outlier. Her article is only the latest salvo in the left’s war on sorority girls.

Last Friday, The Washington Post published an article urging the removal of “the Southern belle from her inglorious perch.” A noted ideal for sorority women in the southeast, the belle in the eyes of the Post is instead a horrific icon of white supremacy.

Thankfully, according to WaPo, southern schools like the University of Georgia are taking the bold step in banning the southern belle’s dreaded “hoop” skirt. This skirt, as the author Elizabeth Boyd believes, is just as much of a “racial symbol” as a noose or Confederate battle flag. That’s why it must go — and so must the belle herself.

Well, I’m certainly no big fan of the hoop skirt, having worn them several times for proms and sorority events when I was a young woman living in Atlanta. But to suggest that the hoop skirt–or being a Southern “belle”–is a “racial symbol” is patently ridiculous. Hoop skirts are uncomfortable and inconvenient, which is why they are no longer worn very often. But they have nothing whatsoever to do with any racial beliefs, anymore than wearing cotton clothing does. Just because cotton was grown principally in the South and harvested by slaves, does this make cotton a “racial symbol”?

C’mon people, grow some common sense, and maybe a little self esteem. Not everything associated with “the South” is racist, and certainly being a southern “belle” or gentleman–i.e., someone of good manners, grooming and education–is something we should be encouraging, not disparaging. And yes, such individuals can come in all races, religions and ethnicities. And a sunny disposition–on anyone–is always preferable to the depressing, too-serious angry liberal/progressive attitude of perpetual grievance.