Our Left in Vietnam: “Give peace a chance” wasn’t all they were saying

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a fascinating reminiscence by a series of aging boomers (are there any other kind?) in the Spring 2008 City Journal. It’s entitled “May 1968: Forty Years After,” and all of the writers appear to be to members of that group that so interests me today, the Left-to-Right political changers.

One of the best of the essays (all are recommended reading) is “From the Danube to Chicago” by Sol Stern, an editor at City Journal who’s been campaigning for years to waken the country to the dangers of the educational “reforms” of radical Leftist Bill Ayers (see this article, for example, written in the summer of 2006, before Ayers was on the radar screen of most people).

Back in 1968, Ayers was riding high as an SDS member at the University of Michigan. Along with wife-to-be Bernadine Dorhn, he was on the cusp of founding the more violent Weathermen and engaging in a series of bombings for which he has yet to pay any price and does not regret.

In 1968 Stern himself was a Ramparts editor and active in the “peace” movement to end the Vietnam War. Continue reading →

Super-duper Tuesday

The New Neo Posted on by

The primary season was constructed so that Super Tuesday, which occurred this year aeons ago back on February 5, was supposed to be decisive in indicating a winner. This would make it easier to consolidate the party behind the nominee and get a head start on the general election.

It went that way for John McCain, who emerged as the surprising leader in the originally crowded Republican field. But for the Democrats, a funny thing happened on the way to the convention. Continue reading →

Sanity Squad tonight (note time change)

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s that time again: the Sanity Squad will be on Blog Talk Radio tonight. Click here to listen live at 7:30 PM Eastern time, or to hear a tape if you can’t make it then. Siggy, Shrink, Dr. Sanity, and I will be discussing the Great Democrat Cultural and Social Divide—or, “it’s not really about politics for them.” The second topic will be the results of the British elections and the meaning and significance to America of the British voters’ rejection of the Labour Party.

The life of cell phone chargers

The New Neo Posted on by

My cell phone charger died last night. That means I have to race out today and get a new one before my cell phone battery gives out. Or drive around in the car in order to charge it there, much like a reverse version of when I used to take my wailing infant son and place him in the carseat until the movement of the car lulled him to sleep.

So this is my question for all you techies out there: why do cell phone chargers die so early? Continue reading →

Blood on the track: the bell tolls for Eight Belles

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve never been especially interested in horses, and I almost never watch horse races.

One exception was the 1975 match race between the unbeaten filly Ruffian and that year’s Derby winner Foolish Pleasure. As we watched, Ruffian broke down towards the end of the race, and she ended up being euthanized. Ruffian is buried at Belmont Park facing the finish line.

I didn’t watch yesterday’s Kentucky Derby, but I heard about it and have seen photos. The remarkable filly Eight Belles suffered an unprecedented injury, breaking the condylar bones in both ankles after the race as she circled the track for the cooldown lap. She was euthenized then and there, the only time in the Derby’s long history that a horse has ever died in the race.

There is something almost unbearably poignant and even horrific about this sort of event, even to someone like me who’s ordinarily indifferent to horses. Continue reading →

1972: Democratic rifts, then (and now?)

The New Neo Posted on by

In a Newsweek interview with George Will and Sean Wilentz that’s mainly about the Left re-evaluating Reagan, there was this food for thought from Will:

What happened in ’72 was the aggressive, conscious, tough, skillful disenfranchising of organized labor and of the big city machines, by George McGovern. McGovern was thought of as a soft prairie farmer. He was one tough cookie, a man who took a nonexistent Democratic Party in South Dakota and produced a senator””that was himself””not many years later. What happened in ’72””that formalized, aggressive takeover of the Democratic Party by one faction at the expense of another””is what we’re seeing playing out right now. It is no accident, comrade, that in ’76 Reagan makes a strong run and in ’80 he makes it into the White House over the remains of the badly divided Democratic Party.

The Times: still spinning after all these years

The New Neo Posted on by

I know, I know, I should leave the NY Times alone to its dwindling readership and coffers. I should take the pledge to never type in its sorry URL again.

But I’m weak. Every now and then some link catches my eye at another site and the temptation to click is irresistible. And so today at Real Clear Politics I happened on this editorial, stunning in its shamelessness even for the Times.

Here’s the lede: Continue reading →