I’ve been having massive connectivity problems, getting knocked offline regularly. I’m giving up for now and plan to post later today.
A plea to the closet Republicans of Marin: come out, come out, wherever you are
It’s not that I’m unsympathetic to the plight of those such as Bookworm who are Republicans (or Independents, or at the very least non-liberals) living in mega-blue areas such as Marin County, and who choose to keep their mouths firmly shut about their politics for fear of social rifts.
The temptation to “pass” for liberal is very great. I understand; I do. I even feel your pain.
But I have come to believe that the costs of keeping silent are much greater than the costs of speaking up—both for Bookworm and her fellow closet Republicans, and for our country. And yes, even for her liberal friends. Continue reading →
The King has spoken
Noblesse oblige from the King. Now that it probably no longer matters.
Typical.
RIP Solzhenitsyn
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn has died. Solzhenitsyn was an unusually strong-minded and uncompromising man who looked like an Old Testament prophet or Captain Ahab, and acted somewhat like both. Rest in peace.
Obama camp is learning you can only fool some of the people…
Estrich finds out the hard way…
…what it means to question anything about the Obama campaign.
Obama’s paper trail in Illinois
For many years Obama has carefully cultivated his history to assure that he remains a blank screen on which people can project whatever they want to see. For example, he is unique in being a Harvard Law Review President and later a University of Chicago law professor whose published works number exactly zero (see this and this). His record in the US Senate is so scant as to be nearly nonexistent.
But Stanley Kurtz has done some fine work for the Weekly Standard, delving into what he calls Obama’s “lost years”—the job he held the longest of any in his life so far, Illinois State Senator. Kurtz unearths a surprising amount of information that belies Obama’s new post-racial, nonliberal incarnation. Continue reading →
Stop me before I change my mind!
Here’s another story of political change (second part here).
It’s of interest to me not only because writer/changer Lissa cites me as inspiration, but because of the description of her reaction when she first realized she was going in the direction of Left-to-Right political change:
At this point I was severely uncomfortable. As I’ve mentioned before and can’t emphasize enough, my family is very left-leaning. (As I’ve also mentioned before, they are also intelligent, loving and caring, so think twice if you’re planning on dissing them in the comments.) What if, God forbid, I became a conservative? That would be unconscionable. I’d gotten into enough passionate arguments over whether the United States had the *right* to invade Iraq; I could only imagine the difficulty it would create if I started advocating gun rights and the like.
I sent out a cry for help. I emailed my liberal, politics-following friends (good, intelligent people all) and asked for assistance. I explained that I was starting to lean toward the conservative side and asked for blogs, articles, arguments ”” anything that would help keep me firmly in the liberal camp. I received back a few variations of “Bush is an idiot” and “Bush is a horse’s ass.”
Lissa was asking for the equivalent of an intervention to “save” her. Continue reading →
You can’t make this stuff up
The Onion could. But it doesn’t need to. Obama obliges by saying it himself. The subject matter is his recent trip abroad:
I was puzzled by this notion that somehow what we were doing was in any way different from what Sen. McCain or a lot of presidential candidates have done in the past,” Obama said Sunday, speaking about his trip at a conference of minority journalists. “Now, I admit we did it really well. But that shouldn’t be a strike against me.”
The man is tone deaf. In the first sentence, he doesn’t get the difference between a rock star tour and a fact-finding trip. In the second, he doesn’t understand how arrogant he sounds. And in the third, he whines.
Who ever said…
…Obama’s not consistent? He certainly has been on this issue.
Let’s see if I’ve got this right
The Obama “dollar bill” remark wasn’t about race before it was about race.
Getting dizzy, anyone?
Olmert vows/promises to quit
Israel prepares to say a heartfelt buh-bye to Olmert, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. He was a weak leader who arguably made the country’s position worse.
The next steps for Israel are unclear. There will be an election in September for leader of Olmert’s party, but if no new name emerges Olmert could linger on quite a while. If a national election were to be called, Netanyahu is the current frontrunner.