Tuesday morning round-up
Just stuff I found interesting:
As a word person, I was delighted with Jeannie DeAngelis’ American Thinker article explaining why George Bush’s vocabulary errors didn’t matter, and why Obama’s should. “Corpse-man” is just the gilding on the lily of Obama’s disconnection from the world of true communication and real values.
Come election time, third parties are always bad for the party that they most closely resemble. That is, they suck votes away from their closest competitor, leaving their mutual opponent standing tall. Nevertheless, I think the Tea Party movement is a very important movement, especially if the Republicans can learn from it, absorb its message, and bring those disaffected Republicans and Independents back into the fold. Woe betide both the Tea Partiers and the Republicans, though, if they create an adversarial relationship with each other. Rich Lowry opines here about the Tea Party’s vitality and necessity in the current political scene.
Here’s a good article from Mackubin Thomas Owens about non-homophobic reasons for leaving Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in place. On a similar topic, Dennis Prager deconstructs Frank Rich’s fevered, and fact-free, defense of jettisoning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Fundamentally, I can’t escape the feeling that straight soldiers may legitimately feel uncomfortable serving with openly gay men who may (a) engage in personal relationships within the ranks that affect group dynamics or (b) may be sexually predatory towards other men in the unit. Having said that, I strongly approve of allowing openly gay people to serve in non-forward combat arenas, much as women do now. But, having said that, I don’t think the women in Afghanistan are sleeping in the same barrack rooms as the men. Would this mean separate barracks for gay and straight men in non-combat environments? Also, how would this work with the whole panoply of military life, such as family housing, etc.? Integrating blacks meant opening the military to the same lifestyle, but a different color. Openly integrating homosexuals means fundamentally changing the military culture to accommodate a group that is distinguished only by their lifestyle habits. (And no, I don’t want to open a debate here about whether being gay is a result of nature or nurture. I’m just pointing out that the single thing that distinguishes gays from everyone else is sex practices, an activity in which one choose to engage or not, as opposed to a static color.)
Apparently “yellow” — the color of the sun, of a lemon, of a daffodil — is a dirty word. Who knew? Only the PC grievance mongers had figured this one out. I feel the need to vent: Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow.
I have always been a very, very big Elton John fan. I think he is one of the most talented performers of the modern era. He’s gone up in my estimation today because I learned that he’s performing in Israel, something that always gets the goat of one Leftist group or another. (Let’s just hope he doesn’t disappoint me, and back down.)
Years ago, Penn and Teller did a TV show about the fact the recycling is a costly boondoggle. Berkeley seems to be bearing out the truth of that.
Should you have the patience (and are crazy enough), you can go back through my old posts and read where I predicted, over and over, that Obama would not pull a Clinton and tack to the center. I argued that, while Clinton’s narcissism demanded perpetual love, and he would do anything to maintain it, Obama’s more malignant narcissism has him viewing everyone around him as an idiot, who should just be harangued more and more to get with Obama’s program. This is true even if the “idiot” is the majority of the American voters. To date, facts on the ground are bearing out my predictions.
If you’re a California Republican voter, please take note of the fact that Tom Campbell, who is currently in the lead, has a history of being remarkably hostile to Israel. That’s never a nice trait, but it’s one that’s especially worrying in the face of a nuclear Iran. Both the Weekly Standard and Commentary have more info. (And even if you don’t personally vote in California, if you know Jews who do, you might want to relay this information to them.)
The Nanny-in-Chief in action: Fat kids now the subject of intense government scrutiny. Sasha and Malia welcome them to the re-education camp.
That government is best that governs least. I believe it, you believe it. Victor Davis Hanson explains why we should be afraid of the government that tries to govern most.
Watch the slow-motion, courtroom-directed death of freedom in Holland. It hurts especially when remembers that, during the religious wars that tore Europe apart, Holland managed to carve itself out as a bastion of freedom (by that era’s standards). It’s now becoming an especially repressive place, all in its efforts to placate its murderous Muslim minority.
Britain has become a parody of a Nanny State, bullying its law abiding citizens, even as it panders to its Islamists and criminal classes. It is a Clockwork Orange nightmare — and the majority of its citizens now want out. What’s important to note is how quickly this took place. I lived in England in the early 1980s, when Maggie Thatcher was slowly bringing it around. England started thriving under Maggie, and even under the early Blair years. However, as the state exerted more and more dominance over the minutiae of its citizens’ lives, all the while applying a PC double-standard to selected victim groups, its collapse has been fast and complete. It’s even worse than pre-Thatcher, because the pre-Thatcher era was one of government economic control, but it didn’t have that poisonous mix of Nanny State and PC ideology.
Please consider this an open thread, an add anything else you found interesting today.
