As always, the revamped Watcher’s Council, which is now WOW! Magazine, a collaborative magazine with posts from Watcher’s Council members and their friends, is worth checking out. If you were to go over there now, you’d find the following recent posts (and Lord alone knows how much time you could spend reviewing past posts from this informed and prolific crowd):
[VIDEO] Please enjoy watching Daniel Hannan politely, but firmly, bitch slap the execrable Christine Amanpour
Christine Amanpour is not a journalist. She’s a vicious, unprincipled, loud-mouthed, bullying partisan hack, who has no interest in investigating issues but, instead, simply wants to imprint her hard Left, anti-West narrative on everything she touches. That’s why it’s so delightful to see Daniel Hannan refuse to let her bulldoze him and then put her firmly in her place.
Amanpour, incidentally, is typical of the transnational self-styled “elite” who have sought to control the Western world for their own benefit for the past 20 or so decades. While they’ve enriched themselves, they’ve impoverished the middle class, and reduced the very poor to such an infantile, dependent level that they can no longer care for themselves. My dream is to see the middle and working classes throughout the Western world rise up and, through the democratic process (i.e., the ballot box), remove all power from the hands of Amanpour and her ilk. They are fatuous, yet horribly dangerous, people who need to be sidelined. In a just world, Amanpour would be cleaning the toilets at a gas station, not broadcasting her toxic (and often highly antisemitic, and therefore anti-Israel) effluvia to the world.
The Bookworm Beat 4-26-15 — the “writer’s block” edition and open thread
I know this is going to surprise those of you used to my usual output of posts, but I’m suffering from writer’s block. The last few weeks have been so chaotic, my opportunities to write so random and infrequent, and the news of the world so overwhelming that, now that I finally have time to sit down and write, I’m frozen. After sitting her for a while, I decided that the best thing to do would be to clear my spindle. I know some of the contents are outdated, but they may still be of interest, and getting through the backlog may help spark my dormant (I hope, rather than extinct) yen to write.
Obama fiddles with Iran while the Middle East burns and Israel is forced to go it alone
All eyes may be on Obama and his desperation to get a deal with Iran (despite the fact that, in a sane world, the smaller, weaker, poorer Iran would be desperate to get a deal with Obama), but the fact is that the entire Middle East is a flaming disaster thanks to Obama’s habit of alternately meddling in and abandoning Middle Eastern affairs.
Bret Stephens explains that, thanks to Obama’s policies, it is now impossible for Israel to walk back the way in which he’s abandoned and isolated it:
Come on, Patrick Howley. Tell us what you REALLY think about Stephanie Cutter
I haven’t seen CNN’s newly re-booted Crossfire, but Patrick Howley did. Howley does not think highly of Stephanie Cutter, who lied her way through Obama’s campaign and still land on her feet as a well-paid talking (or squawking) head on the “Obama mania media”. How much does Howley dislike Cutter? This much:
A loathsome creature like Stephanie Cutter, the roots jutting out from her blonde dye job as black as the recesses of her soul, can push her way onto national television to sit next to a former Speaker of the House
and two sitting U.S. senators. A charmless, dead-eyed, tacky sociopath with no sense of ethics, an empty shell spewing her flat-throated bile without the slightest trace of self-awareness, can beat all of us to the front of the Darwinian line.
A figure of hatred and dishonesty, a person devoid of any pleasantness or redeeming human value, a treadmill-stomping, Starbucks-chugging monument to modern self-absorption, someone incapable of appreciating good art, fine food, or the love or kindness of her fellow man, can shove and kick and lie her way ahead of the rest of us in this misbegotten society. This unmitigated monster can appear before us, talentless, grating, fraudulently tanned, thrusting in our faces the career trophies she earned simply because we didn’t care enough to stop her from getting them.
And that’s just the intro! You really should read the whole thing. It’s positively Shakespearean in its venom. I can’t say I disagree with it. I only wish Howley had gone on for a few more paragraphs to give us the full flavor.
The following video does not show the real Stephanie Cutter, but it could be:
Monday already? Well, there’s good stuff out there.
William Kristol and Peter Wehner, even though using the polite language of statesmen, have delivered a scathing indictment against our absent commander in chief. Considering that Obama is indeed the CIC, court-martial for dereliction of duty doesn’t seem unreasonable. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll even get impeachment.
I know that, for many, the Constitution these days is just passé. (I mean, if the leader of the House Dems can’t understand it, who can?) David Rivkin and Andrew Grossman try to resuscitate that vital document in the context of the Left attack on the right to bear arms.
Roger Simon deftly ties together Dr. Benjamin Carson and the racism that still poisons the heart of the Democrat party.
Upon hearing the Pope Benedict is retiring, CNN has leaped into the fray with inchoate conspiracy theories and claims that the child abuse scandal is driving Benedict out. I have absolutely no doubt, though, that the Pope spoke the truth when he said his health, mental and physical, is the reason he is retiring. One of the things I’ve seen watching my Mom and her friends age is that, just as the first 18 or so years of a person’s life are a time of incredibly rapid change, so too are the years after 80 for most people (and Benedict is 85). For my mother, her 80th birthday was like stepping off a cliff — within months, she went from vital elderly, to decrepit old. And it’s not just my Mom. It’s the norm at her retirement home. Just as the very young grow up at warp speed, the very old age at warp speed. I think that Benedict is wise to arrange for an orderly transition and, even more important in these times, is making sure to have a say in the Papacy’s future direction.
Had it been an injured Israel, the Palestinians would have ripped him to shreds and bathed their hands in his blood. Because it was an injured Palestinian, the Israeli Defense Force acted rapidly to save his life.
If Wolf Howling writes it, it’s good. So when he turns his eye to the subject of the Obama administration’s war on children and family, with ammunition supplied by ObamaCare, you know it’s a post you’ll want to read.
Have you guys come across anything interesting? This is an Open Thread.
CNN slanders Rush visually and verbally *UPDATED*
You’ve already heard about the fact that, in order to block any chance of Rush having an ownership interest in an NFL team, liberal talking heads (including Al Sharpton) and the MSM attributed manifestly false quotations to Rush, in order to accuse him of being a grotesque racist. However, before visiting PowerLine, I hadn’t seen the photograph CNN used of Rush. It’s interesting that, not only did they use a false, slanderous quote, the CNN “newsies” also used an antiquated photo of Rush from a time before he slimmed and trimmed:
He looks fabulous now (as you can see below), but they sold him to the public as someone who looks like a bloated plantation owner:
UPDATE: Contrary to CNN’s fondest dreams, Rush is not Jefferson Davis “Boss” Hogg:
UPDATE II: I have it on very good authority that Bill O’Reilly used exactly the same mean-spirited picture of Rush. (I wouldn’t know since O’Reilly has never piqued my interest.) The Radio Patriot suggests that, in Bill’s case, it may be simple professional jealousy. If that’s the case, Bill should give it up. He’s not in Rush’s league, so there’s no competition.
Moral clarity . . . on CNN?!
This moment of moral clarity wasn’t exactly what CNN interviewer, Fionnuala Sweeney, was seeking. She was trying to use the seminary slaughter as yet another talking point in the “Palestinians as pushed-to-the-limit victims of Israeli aggression” line of thinking. Unfortunately for her, and fortunately for CNN viewers, interviewee David Horovitz absolutely refused to put up with that kind of relativistic garbage. You can see the video here. The only depressing thing about this video is the underlying knowledge that Sweeney, who peddles this garbage, gets more air time overall than Horovitz, who had just that one minute to make a broad and important moral point.
Hat tip: American Thinker