Friday morning round-up and Open Thread

Victorian posy of pansiesHave I got a lot of fascinating information to pass on to you. Without further ado:

You already know that VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has finally left the building, so that’s not news. What you might enjoy, though, is Deroy Murdock’s post explaining why Obama’s default setting — “It’s all George Bush’s fault” — shouldn’t and probably won’t fly here. I also think that, because Obama has now spent five-and-a-half years in office, all but the true believers are going to think that it’s time he owns the troubles on his watch.

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The tyranny of DemProg censorship on campuses has become so extreme that even former New York mayor Michael “Don’t touch that drink” Bloomberg has spoken out against it, at Harvard no less. Interestingly, America’s self-styled “best and brightest” were not impressed by his exhortations to open their minds, according him only tepid applause.

(For those new to this site — yeah, you, the one over in the corner — DemProg is my new shorthand for Democrats and Progressives. Progressives used to be the left wing of the Democrat party. Now they are the party, so I’ve blended the terms for my convenience.)

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From the lies, damn lies, and statistics file, Thomas Lifson catches the New York Times pretending that Asians are white, so that it can promote allegedly damning statistics about Silicon Valley.

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Meriam Ibrahim didn’t just give birth in a Sudanese prison cell, where she and her toddler are living pending her execution in two years (after the newborn is weaned) for the “crime” of refusing to renounce Christianity. She gave birth while chained to the floor! Both the State Department and America’s establishment Christians continue to evince, at best, only minor interest in her plight.

I keep posting away about this on my real-me Facebook, and I hope everyone else continues to do so. Since the drive-by media won’t publicize this, we have to.

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Evelyn Gordon points out one more time that Israel does an abysmal job of showing the way in which the “helpless” Palestinians are constantly planning deadly raids against Israelis. Instead, Israel just waits until yet more poisonous propaganda comes out against it, and then weakly tries to make its case, sort of.

How is it that Israel, a nation of really smart people, still hasn’t figured out that many of the battles in ongoing war between Israel, on the one hand, and Muslims, Palestinians, the UN, Leftists, and Europeans, on the other hand, don’t occur on the ground but, instead, in the world of the mind?

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When I was in my 20s, I had emergency abdominal surgery. I was a wuss, but I was also unlucky enough to have a Nurse Ratchet, who refused to give me my pain medicine the first night after surgery, because she found me irritating. I therefore have some insight into abdominal pain.

What I experienced, however, cannot equal what happened to a British woman unlucky enough to find herself in the unloving hands of a National Health Service facility. She writhed in pain, finally dying after three days, suffering and death that apparently came about solely because the staff just couldn’t be bothered with treating her.

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We’re heading for the double part in our long-expected double-dip Recession, kind of like what happened to America when, having weathered the 1929 crash, Americans found themselves heading into the 1937 economic abyss. In both cases, these economic disasters happen[ed] because of Keynesian economic policies.

We know how the 1930s ended. Let’s hope the teens of the 21st century have a better outcome. (See this too for more info about America’s lost generations.)

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Thomas Lifson says that Obama’s West Point speech shows a presidency in terrible trouble. I agree. I just wish a troubled presidency didn’t also mean a troubled nation.

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Rule No. 1 in American politics: It’s okay if a Democrat does it.

Today’s example is a Democrat who said that a Hispanic Republican should be sent back “wherever she came from.” Only after the dog whistle applause died down, did the DemProg add “I think it’s Texas.”

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Jonah Goldberg makes an important point, which is the fact that DemProgs want to remake our entire country to stop a few insane killers. Saying this isn’t meant to diminish the tragedy of those caught in the deranged killers’ paths. It just acknowledges that, even if we erase who we are, we’ll still have deranged killers.  They’ll just be responding to different cultural triggers.

One of the profound differences between DemProgs and conservatives is that the former think we can use government power to erase all risk from the world, while the latter believe that individuals have the responsibility to behave reasonably to reduce risk. Harking back to my crosswalk sting, that’s why I won’t win in court: I behaved reasonably to avoid an unreasonably behaving pedestrian, which is what the statute requires. Our local courts and law enforcement, however, believe that there are absolute (and unwritten) codes of behavior that we must all observe in order to prevent the risk of hurting even one irrational adult. (Children, of course, are a different matter, because we presume they’re irrational around cars.)

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Regarding Benghazi, it appears that Hillary genuinely believes that she can run on “What difference, at this point, does it make?” At least that’s the feeling one gets from her new autobiography. It will be a true “shame on America” moment if her belief is proven correct.

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DemProgs, though, do get away with murder, literally. At Ace of Spades, you can see Nancy Pelosi’s differing reactions to deaths in battle, depending upon which administration is in charge and which party will be most damaged by outrage or the lack thereof.

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Is it really important to gay rights that our National Parks go out of their way to include gay history? What am I saying? Of course it is! This is the year of everything gay.

The one good thing about this kind of spasm of enthusiasm is that it cannot sustain its momentum. Eventually, gays (and the whole LGBTQ spectrum) will go back to being ordinary citizens, just like everyone else.

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Buriram City in Thailand takes very seriously violence during its New Year celebrations. So seriously, indeed, that the city has come up with a novel, and probably very effective, way to deal with thug eruptions.

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Poor, poor Gwyneth Paltrow. You know how sometimes people tweet out mean things about her privileged life and snotty attitude? That stuff is tough. It’s just like being at war. Or perhaps, as a Green Beret explains, to her NOT. I especially like the very last line of his open letter.

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When we comment about the damage the DemProg welfare system does to blacks, we’re dismissed as racists. When a black man does it, the DemProg media infrastructure dismisses him as an Oreo or Uncle Tom.

Be that as it may, Andrew Klavan says that Jason L. Riley, a black man, has bravely stepped forward to explain, chapter and verse, how damaging DemProg policies are to blacks. One can only hope that blacks are more receptive to stubborn facts when they come from an Oreo than when they come from a racist.

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The Left is trying to excuse the government’s disgraceful passivity with regard to Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, a Marine hero, imprisoned in Mexico for accidentally getting stuck on the wrong side of the border with his legally-owned guns. Tahmooressi faces 20 years in Mexican on gun charges but we know what the State Department is saying to itself: “The only way guns are going from the U.S. to Mexico is if they’re unmarked, illegal, and funneled through Operation Fast & Furious. Everyone else can go to Hell.”

But about that attempt to smear Sgt. Tahmooressi. What the smears say is that there were big signs showing he was coming to the border so that, contrary to his version of events, he could have avoided entering Mexico — except that’s not so. The road Tahmooressi was on when he made his 911 call to try to avoid leaving the U.S. is built so that it’s one way, no exits.

I have an idea, though, how this Marine can save himself: He just needs to announce that he’s gay. In that case, President Obama will fly to Mexico personally to rescue him.

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Obama travels with the largest entourage of any leader in the Western world. He throws himself lavish parties in the people’s White House and his family goes on two or three multi-million dollar, taxpayer-funded vacations annually. He and Michelle are doing what they can to live the high life on the People’s dime.

Not so Jose Mujica, president of Uruguay, who is called “The World’s Poorest President.” He didn’t earn this sobriquet because of poor performance. He earned it because he recognizes that he is the people’s servant, not their master, and he lives his life accordingly, with a large dollop of altruism and charity thrown in for good measure.

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And finally, two videos. The first shows national reporters finally figuring out that maybe, just maybe, the Emperor has no clothes. I will forever be mad at these ideologues for collaborating to get Obama elected twice, but maybe their openly expressed disdain will slow any political momentum Obama still has:

And Bill Whittle, who needs no introduction:

Just as a preview of Whittle’s brilliance, this is how he begins:

One of the complaints leveled against Conservatives by Progressives is that we’re always looking backwards. Why always so locked in the past? Why so obsessed with history? Why always looking behind us? Why not look forward?

There’s actually a very simple explanation for that. You see, the past exists. And the future doesn’t. Not yet, anyway. That’s why progress isn’t always good. We could be progressing forward off a cliff. Or into the room where the murderer is hiding. Or out into the water where the shark is. And since we can’t know where we are going, the best we can do is to see if we can learn anything from where we have been.