Archive for 2016

WHAT THE? HOW ABOUT WE USED THEM IN STRATEGY?  Do these people have to have their brains ablated before getting newsmedia jobs? Brian Williams: We Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan ‘in Anger’.  And if we had used them in anger, would they have stopped the war less?  Stopped the massacre of our troops less? Stopped the likely suicide (in case of American invasion) of Japanese citizens less?  Dear Brian Williams, get a clue.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:

SINCE THE SUBJECT’S IN THE NEWS AGAIN, here’s the Kerry Christmas in Cambodia speech post. There’s more background here, here, and here.

And refresh my memory: Did Kerry ever release his military records in full, as he promised? It seems rather silly of him to restart this debacle otherwise.

UPDATE: More here.

And Ed Driscoll is dubbing Kerry’s newest initiative the “Blogosphere Full Employment Act of 2006.” He is a gift that keeps on giving. More here, too.

TWO LETTERMANS IN ONE!

Rolling Stone, September 17, 2015.

— The Indianapolis Star, yesterday.

If Letterman really believed in global warming, he’d be calling for the banning of the Indianapolis 500, rather than reveling in it:

Al Gore and his confreres argue time and again that Americans must change their habits and culture to avoid the ecological holocaust. Chief among these changes is for Americans to give up their addiction to driving, or driving “unnecessarily.” Surely a film that teaches young children to love cars is a great moral crime given the supposed moral stakes. Similarly, why isn’t Gore — or anybody else in the Democratic party — denouncing NASCAR? If global warming is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, aren’t NASCAR races the moral equivalent of corporate-sponsored, televised neo-Nazi rallies? NASCAR creates greenhouse gasses for pure entertainment. Millions of people drive to these races, poisoning the atmosphere, to watch grown men poison the atmosphere even more. Where is the condemnation?

I know I’ll hear from all sorts of angry readers for taking Gore’s position to the extreme. But this has it backwards. I’m merely taking Gore’s extreme position seriously. We have lots of debates over the factual soundness of environmental extremism but nearly none on the moral soundness of environmental extremism. Once you compare a problem to the Holocaust — even remotely — you’ve lost your moral wiggle room. No politician, indeed no responsible person in this country, would endorse a comedic cartoon about genocide, never mind take their kids to it. Give PETA credit. While it repugnantly compares the raising of chickens and cattle to Auschwitz, the organization at least has the courage of its convictions, and protests virtually everything that treats animals as anything less than people.

Environmentalists like Gore who invoke the Holocaust are too afraid to follow through. They want all the credit for denouncing what they consider a moral horror, but they’re unwilling actually to face the real consequences of their rhetoric. I don’t believe global warming is akin to the Holocaust. But if I did, I’d like to think I’d have more courage about it than Gore is showing.

As the Professor is wont to say, I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves.

THIS IS WHY CALIFORNIA CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: Vandals Deface Vietnam War Memorial In Venice:

Vandals defaced a memorial to Vietnam war veterans in Venice – an awful sight on this Memorial Day weekend.

Stewart Oscars welled up as he looked at the vandalized mural located on Pacific Avenue near Sunset Court. It was covered in graffiti from end to end.

“This knocked me out. So sickening. Just sadness…think of all these people. They’re gone,” Oscars said. “I remember the Vietnam war and how friends went to war, and bodies came back. Somehow, it has to be taught that this is not a good idea. This is actually stupid.”

Yes, but who will teach kids graffiti is vandalism, and not a “legitimate form of self-expression,” as so many leftist cultural elites believe?

WEAPONIZED INTERTEXTUALITY, HOLLYWOOD’S NEW CURRENCY (VIDEO):

As with sampling and rap music, this is what happens to a genre that is utterly bankrupt of new ideas, and must rely on its audience’s memories of a more vibrant creative past to keep the party going just a little while longer, before the lights finally go out.

SHRINK IT AND PINK IT: SOME OFFERINGS FOR THE LADIES AT THE NRA EXHIBIT HALL: “Every year I wander around looking at the new products and take note of the items available for the ladies,” Liz Sheld writes at PJM in a photo-laden post. “I’m not sure why the industry thinks that if it makes something pink, it will sell to the women folk. Perhaps it’s cheaper than manufacturing a gun with a grip for a smaller hand or a shotgun with a stock that has a length of pull shorter than 14 1/2 inches. Here I’ve collected some of the pinkier offerings I am putting in my pink firearms Hall of Shame.”

Last weekend, my wife and I visited the (slightly more modest) gun show in the Glen Rose, TX civic center, sponsored by Cleburne-based Whipp Farm Productions. There were plenty of pink pistols and, perhaps in honor of the late Prince, a few purple rifles as well. The local Marine Corps League was raffling off a rather more substantial looking firearm; though when they asked for a phone number, they told Nina they just use that as an excuse to score phone numbers off girls…

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Click to enlarge.

Whatever your gender or color preferences, you’ll have lots of fun discussing (and using) the latest firearms technology at Bullets & Bourbon at neighboring Rough Creek Lodge in December. Click here for registration details!

IT’S AN EASY CASE TO MAKE: Green Party’s Jill Stein on the Feminist Case Against Hillary Clinton.

I interviewed Jill Stein in 2012. If I were a clever GOP operative (assuming such exist), the minute Bernie’s out of the race I’d plaster college towns in swing states with Green Party signs and leaflets, and try to bleed some key votes away from Hillary.