Read it.

We want women and Negroes in these previously white-male bastions of privilege, but it has to be the correct (or should I say Correct?) kind of women and Negroes.

So glass ceilings only truly get broken by ladies who have the right kind of politics. Duly noted, white man!

Read it.

Apparently Obama is not sufficiently socialist for some.

For positive change in the issues that affect our daily lives — not only food but also jobs, income, housing — we need active political leadership. But until President Obama is pushed more strongly by the left, the coming presidential election represents a choice between a full-fledged attack on government services and a continuing slide into the gloomy and depressing world of austerity economics. That’s a real choice, but it’s not a happy one.

The New York Times is possibly the only place where you can see what Obama does characterized as ‘a continuing slide into … austerity economics’. If adding trillions to the national debt in less than three years counts as ‘austerity economics’, what is the language coming to?

Mark Bittman, the author, allegedly writes ‘on food and all things related’, so I guess there is nothing that the Left doesn’t think relates to politics. These people need to get a life … preferably not at taxpayer expense, although I realize that is asking a lot.

Read it.

The question almost answers itself.

Admit it:  when Joe opens his mouth, you feel a lot smarter than you did right before he opened his mouth.

Read it.

Imagine that. Quelle dommage.

Read it.

Although what reason the U.S. would have to invade their piss-ant country is left as an exercise for the reader, I guess.

What a great idea! Perhaps we ought to train a million-strong guerrilla army to defend the US against a Mexican invasion.

Oops! Too late….

Read it.

There is less here than meets the eye. tReason magazine has some fun with that:

CNN’s reporting of the new study focuses on one Mercedes Lipscomb, who was rejected from the National Guard for being 80 pounds overweight. She lost the weight on her own. First of all, good for her. Second of all, way to point out that this problem does not require government intervention.

More to the point, CNN’s reporting goes on about the cost to the military ($60 million) to have to replace overweight recruits that are unable to complete their service, which means the military is apparently letting in some of these 25 percent. Another full 50 percent of young Americans are disqualified due to poor education and criminal records, but you won’t find any suggestions of charter schools or legal reform (the early education programs are supposed to solve these problems).

Tina Rosenberg, Voice of the Crust, wants to nanny-state you even more than you are already. ‘It’s for the children!’

I’m not going to bother quoting any of her article, because it’s the same old we’re-doing-it-because-you’re-too-stupid-to-know-what’s-good-for-you logic that she would be the first to denounce if opponents of things like abortion or pornography or drugs or whatever the left-wing Neat Thing To Do of the week might be. I’d bet money she’s a huge supporter of Nanny Bloomberg’s attempts to make you Eat Right And Live Straight, by law if necessary.

Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s let people run their own lives, alright? If smoking poses no danger to others — and it doesn’t, bogus claims of ‘second-hand smoke’ to the contrary notwithstanding, however annoying it may be to those of us who don’t smoke — then Keep Your Nose Out.

This attitude is a major reason why government-funded (i.e. taxpayer-funded) health care is such a bad idea: Once everybody starts paying for your health care, then everybody thinks they have a right to stick their noses into your health care decisions, even when it’s obviously None Of Their Damned Business. This way lies fascism, and the fact that it’s dressed in a pretty blue-state Democrat Clever Plastic Disguise ought not to fool anybody (except the fools who are pushing it — and those, like the poor, we have always with us).

Read it.

The media-formerly-known-as-mainstream are doing their best –as a commentator who is more outspoken than I am put it–to “drag Barack Obama’s sorry ass across the finish line.” We see this every day; a particularly egregious example was the press coverage of Mitt Romney’s excellent trip overseas. The Media Research Center analyzed the news coverage of Romney’s trip and concluded that an astonishing 86% of network news stories focused on Romney’s supposed “gaffes.” If you watched the video of “reporters” from the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN heckling Romney in Poland, you don’t need a scorecard to know which presidential campaign they are trying to boost.

Media bias? Say it ain’t so!

Read it.

Hattori was convicted of attacking and raping a 19-year-old student who was cycling home from college in January 2002. He set her on fire while she was still conscious, killing her. Hattori was on parole after being sentenced for a violent robbery.

Matsumura killed his 57-year-old aunt and his 72-year-old grand uncle in separate attacks in January 2007 and stole their money.

Sound like good calls to me. At least they don’t charge the families for the cost of the pistol bullet, as I’m told the Red Chinese do.

Amnesty International says there are around 130 death-row inmate in Japan at imminent risk of execution. It says the secretive nature of the system means they may spend every day on death row fearing they could be killed at any time.

I have no problem with that.

France urged Japan to restore a moratorium on its use of the death penalty following the executions.

Doesn’t seem to me like any of France’s business. They don’t have a Frog in this fight, to coin a phrase.

“France calls on Japan to follow the path of the 140 countries who have, in law or in practice, ended capital punishment by re-establishing its de facto moratorium while it continues a national debate on the future of the death penalty,” a French foreign ministry spokesman said.

Well, let’s just compare France’s murder rate with Japan’s. (Don’t forget to include the multicultural immigrants, which Japan has had the wisdom to keep out.) Looks like France has 1.35 per 100k while Japan has 0.45 — perhaps the Japanese know something that the French don’t?

Read it.

General Francisco Franco is to be stripped of his title of honorary mayor of Valencia, 36 years after his death, following a Spanish court ruling that it is “incompatible” with modern democracy.

Although they were quick enough to kiss his ass when he was alive. And he was a short shit, too, so that would have involved some serious bending down.

Read it.

 CNN represents the passive-aggressive Left. MSNBC is unrestrained id, but CNN can never fully surrender to its liberal impulses. It tries to maintain a fig leaf of neutrality. But CNN can’t get through the day without betraying what it really thinks, often in underhanded ways. Thus, when CNN did a story on Chick-fil-A today, what did it focus on? The merits of the controversy? The fact that more than one Democratic government official has threatened to violate the company’s constitutional rights, because its CEO is opposed to gay marriage? No. In a dog whistle to its liberal audience, CNN focused on the fact that Todd and Sarah Palin, along with thousands of other Americans, tweeted photos of themselves eating at Chick-fil-A….

Read it.

Barack Obama’s White House has been forced to admit that it did return a bust of Sir Winston Churchill to British diplomats, after describing such claims as “100 per cent false”.

Perhaps I need a new category, ‘Obama’s Minions Caught Lying Again’.

Read it.

Dimock, Pa. is famous within the anti-fracking movement for being the city from the movie Gasland where residents had to drink exclusively from bottled water because the well water was so contaminated by nearby fracking sites that you could light it on fire. However, yesterday the EPA released data that actually indicated that samples in the private drinking well water “did not indicate levels of contaminants that would give EPA reason to take further action,” according to the EPA’s press release. The EPA did find dangerous levels of arsenic, barium, and manganese in five homes (out of the 64 sampled), but all of these substances “are also naturally occurring substances” which, in any case, can be reduced by available treatment systems.

In other words, the enviro-nazis and their ‘progressive’ co-conspirators are lying like rugs.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Mark Helprin has some fun with a Voice of the Crust.

Every day it seems, reason and the English language are ravished by contemporary American politics.

For example, as there is no God-given tax rate, when the rate increases it is an increase, not the expiration of a decrease. Were it the latter, one could say that the Bush tax cuts were not tax cuts but the expiration of the Clinton increases, the Clinton increases the expiration of the Reagan cuts, the Reagan cuts the expiration of previous increases, and so on. Such is the thinking of non-effervescent minds that see as a cut a lesser increase in spending than they advocate, or urge passage of a stupendous, juggernaut, congressional bill so that they can find out what’s in it.

‘Progressives’, like their siblings the Socialists and Communists, realize that controlling the meaning of language perforce controls the means of debate. Hence the use of loaded terms like ‘piracy’ and ‘theft’ for copyright infringement, and ‘gay marriage’ for a relationship that has never been characterized as marriage in all of human history.

The nation appears more and more able to eat whatever words are shoved down its throat. It is told, and does not protest, that Islam is a religion of peace. Islam is indeed a religion of peace, but it is also, quite demonstratively and throughout the world in proof after proof day after day, a religion of war.

(And that’s not to mention usage of ‘racism’ for being disagreeable to Muslims, which aren’t a race even by the expansive standards of the Left.)

Perhaps the most brazen language diktat has been the mischievous switch of political colors. Stalin would hardly believe it, but blue now supposedly signifies the left and red the right. According to Wikipedia and the Washington Post, so it must be true, the change came in 2000 courtesy of MSNBC and NBC’s “Today” show. It next migrated to David Letterman at CBS, and then went bacterial. The spirit of the change is reminiscent of the cable TV directory that read, “The World’s Best Ho . . .” when space was clearly available for “tels.” One can imagine the high-pitched giggling at this naughtiness. Saddling your political rivals with a symbol to which they have been historically opposed is an even better and naughtier joke. Either it was that or numbing cluelessness.

That’s always puzzled me. Republicans are Red? Not even. Democrats are Blue, the traditional color in Europe for Reaction? Guess their admiration for Europe stops at that water’s edge.

Red is the mobile color of passion and engagement, and blue the staid color of reason and detachment. As you may recall, the left champions radical change spurred by boundless compassion, while the right wants to check the passions of human nature as they flow into politics, and to balance opposing powers in a stable equilibrium. Over time, natural affinities for the two colors have been confirmed by adoption—communist, socialist, and labor parties almost always favoring red. But if NBC says to, we had better jump into line. Most of the country has already done so without a thought. Who says “old media” is vestigial? They are highly adaptable, or, as they might say, “Better blue than dead.”

After all, if the Voices of the Crust say it, is it not our duty to believe it?

Read it.

There’s been a lot of noise on the internet recently about the fact that the Windows-based software being used in the remote control system of drones use by the American military has been hit by a virus and this has caused the Department of Defense (DOD) to use GNU/Linux which is a more secure option. This has, predictably, caused raised eyebrows and demands by some that any military organisation should be prevented from using GNU/Linux in offensive weapons systems.

Thanks, guys, I needed a laugh. Just how do you plan to stop them? Call the U.N.? Join the Folksong Army?  Occupy Leavenworth?

Read it.

The New York Times is receiving pushback from its constituents for having the audacity to explain that changes in marriage patterns are playing a huge role in the growth of income inequality.

‘Step outa line, the man come, and take you away….’

Katie Roiphe pushes back in a piece for Slate. She characterizes the piece as “another puritanical and alarmist rumination on the decline of the American family disguised as a straight-news story.” Presumably, Roiphe believes that income inequality is a legitimate story topic, but its causes aren’t, unless they conform to the feminist narrative.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised. (Slate really ought to be renamed Prate.)

Read it.

In the debate over natural gas drilling, the companies are often the ones accused of twisting the facts. But scientists say opponents sometimes mislead the public, too.

Critics of fracking often raise alarms about groundwater pollution, air pollution, and cancer risks, and there are still many uncertainties. But some of the claims have little – or nothing- to back them.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

If that’s not the perfect article for NPR, I don’t know what is.

Read it.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) threatened on Monday that Democrats would let the Bush tax cuts expire for everybody if Republicans did not compromise with Democrats and not extend the tax cuts for those in income brackets above $250,000.

Message: It’s more important for ‘the rich’ to get hurt, even if everyone gets hurt, than take the chance that  everybody might get a benefit that ‘the rich’ might also get.

Democrats: The Kindergarten Recess Party.

Read it.

Or so The Politico would have you believe. (Agenda? What agenda?) Sorry, guys; it’s only a nightmare for Democrat demagogues who need those votes in order to access the public trough.

In the states with significant voter ID laws, more than 10 million eligible citizens live 10 or more miles from an office issuing the proper photo IDs and about half a million of those voters don’t have access to a vehicle, according to a study out Wednesday.

So how do they get to the polls on election day? Both political parties have ‘get out the vote’ efforts; getting voters registered would seem a perfect application of that. But no; opening the system up to fraud is the only ‘fair’ solution.

In the report, the Brennan Center — which is regarded as a liberal think tank and is against the new voter ID laws — states free photo IDs are not easily accessible to the 11 percent of voters who do not currently have them.

So how do they cash a check, drive a car, fly on a plane, get into an R-rated movie, see the President, or attend a Union meeting, all of which require a photo ID? I guess voting is less important than any of those other things.

The government offices where voters can obtain the proper IDs have limited business hours, the Brennan Center stated, citing an example in Sauk City, Wisconsin where the ID office is open only on the fifth Wednesday of any month — but only four months in 2012 have that fifth Wednesday.

Oh, gee, the government’s operations are inconvenient. Who would ever have thought it? And Wisconsin is a blue state — surely it couldn’t be that Democrat bureaucrats are deliberately making getting a government ID difficult so as to support studies like these? Naw, that could never happen.

Read it.

Frum certainly has embraced his inner Crust and ‘progressed’ far from the days when he pretended to be a conservative.

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline turns over a rock and watches what scuttles out.

Here’s how Politico writers Jake Sherman and Reid Epstein reported the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s vote to hold Eric Holder in contempt: “The Fast and Furious investigation has finally handed House Republicans a prize they’ve long sought: a legal smackdown of the Obama administration.”

Can anyone imagine this lead sentence if the House had found the Attorney General in a Republican administration, Alberto Gonzalez for example, in contempt? I can’t. Instead, Politico would no doubt be focusing on the obstruction (real or imagined) that led to the contempt vote, and very possibly touting the House’s action as a victory for truth, justice, and the American way.

CNN is pissed that Congress isn’t passing enough laws.

The current Congress has worked just as many days as its legislative predecessors. It just has a lot less to show for it.

According to a CNN analysis of congressional records that looked at bills that became law and the number of days lawmakers worked, members of the House have spent more than 150 days and Senate just over 140 days in session so far, comparable to previous Congresses at this point in the term.

Color me cynical, but I think that’s a feature, not a bug. Of course a Voice of the Crust would think more laws better than less, but somebody ought to sit them down and explain that ‘number of laws passed’ is not the proper metric for a legislature. That way lies fascism.

Read it.

Though Stewart distances himself from the “one-percenters” and bellows over their extravagance, his bank accounts bear all the marks of the “multi, multi, multi, multi millionaires” he mocks. The 49-year-old Stewart, born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, makes more than 300 times the median American salary, owns three luxury homes and sometimes doesn’t pay his taxes.

In January Stewart exploded on-air over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s income level. “That’s almost — that’s almost $57,000 a day!” he gushed.

But Stewart’s own income level brings him and his wife Tracey approximately $41,000 a day. The celebrity income-handicapping website Celebrity Net Worth lists his annual salary as $15 million and estimates his net worth at $80 million.

Pot, meet kettle.

Read it.

The poor in Britain face a “perfect storm” of benefit cuts, rising living costs and a lack of jobs that result in a return to Victorian levels of inequality, a charity has said.

Women and minorities hardest hit, of course.

Left as an unjustified assumption is that ‘inequality’, per se, is somehow a Serious Problem … which of  course it is to the Levelers in OxFam — but for normal people? Not so much.

Benefit cuts? Well, if fifty years of socialist kleptocracy hadn’t raised two generations of slackers dependent on the government, that wouldn’t be a problem. Rising living costs? Try toting up the costs of silly government regulations layered on top of normal business costs. (Guess how much of the price of auto fuel is taxes. No wonder ‘living costs’ are rising.) Lack of jobs? Figure the costs of hiring a new worker under the Nanny State and see whether you can make a profit doing so.

So what’s the solution? According to OxFam, more government. ‘Let’s try adding more of what got us in this situation in the first place! Of course, what a wonderful idea!’

The notorious Sean Rayment overheats his cliche machine.

It’s hot, dark, airless and smells of rotting wood. The floor is uneven and my guide, a US soldier, warns me that there may be snakes.

I walk gingerly to the centre of the room where a wooden table is bolted to the floor. The hut is divided into two rooms, each the mirror image of the other.

There are no windows, just space for an air-conditioning unit; the ceilings and walls have been soundproofed.

Read it.

Published in the spring of 1962, Michael Harrington’s The Other America was a sweeping description of the country’s poor, combined with an appeal to the federal government and “better-off” to save them. It became one of the best-selling books ever authored by an American socialist, inspired the creation of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society regime, and has been routinely hailed as one of the most influential books of the 20th century. This year partisans of the welfare state are commemorating the golden anniversary of The Other America with a series of celebrations and renewed calls for government programs to save the poor once more.

Read it.

Well, if you’re really concerned….

So what vast sums of money did the duplicitous executives at General Electric lavish on the Reason Foundation in 2008 and 2009 to support an implied campaign to traduce climate science? Exactly $325. How much did GE spend on matching and direct grants on the six think tanks identified by the UCS as being pro-climate consensus? That would be $497,744. At least with regard to General Electric’s contributions, it appears that the Union of Concerned Scientists has salted a follow-the-money trail with pieces of fool’s gold, which certain unwary news outlets obligingly picked up and reported as real bullion.

Read it.

Read it.

It was a fairly typical lunch at an academic conference in the East after the New Hampshire primary in 2008. There was a smattering of endowed professorships and international reputations at the table, perhaps eight academics in all.

Along with the sweet tea and penne pasta came the inevitable skewering of George W. Bush.

“Never has a president experienced such horrible poll approval numbers in the midst of a war,” one professor quipped.

“That is, if you overlook Harry Truman,” I interjected into an uncomfortable silence.

It was going to be that kind of meal.

Illustrating once again Jonah Goldberg’s theory of The Tyranny Of Clichés: Nobody in the Crust likes George W Bush, so obviously he’s The Worst President Ever; everybody in the Crust loves Barack Obama (although that love is wearing kinda thin recently), so obviously he’s The Best President Ever. Record? Who cares about the record?

“I couldn’t vote for a Mormon,” one professor said. There was some polite (or perhaps impolite) head-bobbing. “It’s a cult. Very intolerant, and their opinions about women, and, well … ” and his voice trailed off.

Ask him his opinion of Muslims, and I expect that he would fall all over himself proclaiming his willingness to vote for one for President.

I’ve attended numerous scholarly conferences since that lunch where Mormonism has been discussed, and it is amazing to confront snide and disdainful comments and even overt prejudice from intellectually and sophisticated academics. And it seems perfectly acceptable to express this bias. Mormons are abnormal, outside the mainstream; everybody knows that. They don’t drink alcohol and coffee. Their women are suppressed. They don’t like the cross, and their most holy book seems made up. And there’s that multiple-wives thing. At one session involving a discussion of Utah’s history, several dismissive comments were spoken, rather blithely and without any sense of embarrassment. Belittling comments were made about Mormons’ abstemiousness, and there was a general negative undercurrent. The LDS Church was referred to as the Mormon Church, something many members object to. They don’t mind being called Mormons, but their church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS Church. At least some of the professors who were making these remarks knew that.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/05/29/essay-about-prejudice-academe-against-mormons#ixzz1weV83BeG
Inside Higher EdI’ve attended numerous scholarly conferences since that lunch where Mormonism has been discussed, and it is amazing to confront snide and disdainful comments and even overt prejudice from intellectually and sophisticated academics. And it seems perfectly acceptable to express this bias. Mormons are abnormal, outside the mainstream; everybody knows that. They don’t drink alcohol and coffee. Their women are suppressed. They don’t like the cross, and their most holy book seems made up. And there’s that multiple-wives thing. At one session involving a discussion of Utah’s history, several dismissive comments were spoken, rather blithely and without any sense of embarrassment. Belittling comments were made about Mormons’ abstemiousness, and there was a general negative undercurrent. The LDS Church was referred to as the Mormon Church, something many members object to. They don’t mind being called Mormons, but their church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS Church. At least some of the professors who were making these remarks knew that.

Timothy Egan purportedly writes for the New York Times purportedly ‘from the West’ (I think they mean ‘the Upper West Side’).

His nominal thesis is that it would not be a good thing to require that a President have business experience.

Well, there goes Teddy Roosevelt, the writer, rancher and police commissioner, not to mention his distant cousin Franklin Roosevelt, the assistant naval secretary and politician, or Dwight Eisenhower, the career soldier. Ike’s résumé, which includes defeating the world’s most concentrated form of evil in Nazi Germany, would not be not enough to qualify him for the presidency.

I don’t know about you, but it wouldn’t bring a tear to my eye to have had any of those three miss the Presidency. Teddy Roosevelt was the living icon of Progressivism, and laid the groundwork for the explicit fascism of Woodrow Wilson; Franklin Roosevelt took a Depression and, by his policies, stretched it out as long as he could; and Eisenhower not only sat on his hands during the Polish and Hungarian revolts against Soviet hegemony in 1956, but jerked the rug out from under the British and French when they attempted to respond to that poster child for third-world-dictator confiscation, the theft of the Suez Canal by Nasser. Not one of them had any more business experience than Barack Obama, and not one of them was a positive influence on world history. So that dog won’t hunt.

The less experience in business, the better the president.

So much for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and all those old Dead White Males. By this standard, the election of Barack Obama (who has less business experience than any kid who has run a corner lemonade stand) ought to have brought in Utopia. How’s that hope and change thing working out for you?

Read it.

From Captain Cook to playboy Prince Bertie, Tessa Dunlop examines the appeal of the tattoo among high society.

A transparent attempt to sanitize the celebrity culture of narcissism that has rich white liberal kids attempting to act like the poor black underclass. If the tattoo has any appeal, it is among low society, not high; a public distinguishing characteristic of people with poor to nonexistent impulse control, like slacker adolescents and the criminal fringe. ‘Here’s your sign.’

Gavin McInnes looks at the race-hustle all-stars.

It was a tough week for racial witch hunters. In fact, it’s been a tough quarter-century for them.

Funny how that works.

Here are ten examples of fabricated “hate crimes” that fuck it up for those of us living in the real world.

Read it.

House Democrats received training this week on how to address the issue of race to defend government programs, according to training materials obtained by The Washington Examiner.

Read it.

While studiously avoiding and evading any investigation of Barack Obama’s “youth” (i.e. the period prior to his running for President) or devoting resources to any of the many scandals (selling guns to Mexican drug lords, politicizing along racial lines the Justice Department, etc.) which would have been front page day after day in another administration, WaPo devoted months and resources to investigating what Mitt Romney did in high school.

Media bias? What media bias?

Read it.

Here’s the problem with the press coverage of Barack Obama: the mainstream media is so overwhelmed by his charisma that they often miss the important details. Every decision, speech, policy statement or impromptu visit to the bathroom is presented as a piece of “history” – the dawn of a new era. The Prez could go seal-clubbing and much of the media would see it as a new epoch for winter sports. “Barack Obama Becomes the First President to Kill Six Seals in Under One Minute,” the New York Times would proudly report, while Twitter would be all abuzz with how hot he looks in snow shoes.

Even Brits can see the truth.

So on Monday, Obama was losing dollars on the Hollywood fundraising circuit. On Wednesday, he endorsed gay marriage. On Thursday, he flew to Hollywood for a fundraiser, where 150 donors paid $40,000 each to meet the Prez at the home of George Clooney. Coincidence?

Barack Obama, candidate of the 1%.

Read it.

The UN Security Council on Thursday condemned the deadliest bomb attacks of Syria’s 14-month uprising, urging all sides to stick to an international peace plan after at least 55 people were killed.

Actual effect on what happens in Syria: None.

Read it.

“I am not a welfare queen,” says Melissa Bruninga-Matteau.

Although the hyphenated last name does look like spoor of a would-be member of the Crust.

That’s how she feels compelled to start a conversation about how she, a white woman with a Ph.D. in medieval history and an adjunct professor, came to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Ms. Bruninga-Matteau, a 43-year-old single mother who teaches two humanities courses at Yavapai College, in Prescott, Ariz., says the stereotype of the people receiving such aid does not reflect reality. Recipients include growing numbers of people like her, the highly educated, whose advanced degrees have not insulated them from financial hardship.

Uh, I think the prominent arm tattoos might have something to do with it…. As well as the fact that the  typical business requirement for medieval-history PhDs (outside of academia) is, last time I looked, too small to measure. If her degree were in statistics, she’d be sitting pretty. ODF.

“I find it horrifying that someone who stands in front of college classes and teaches is on welfare,” she says.

I find it horrifying that so fine a fellow as myself has to work for a living at all, but that’s life for you. Markets work, even when they horrify you.

Read it.

Sure, just as soon as Muslims give the Middle East back to their native Christian inhabitants. Let’s start with giving Egypt back to the Copts, and Istanbul back to the Greeks. And then perhaps ‘Kaliningrad’ back to the Germans, and Tibet back to the Tibetans, and you can carry on like this all day.

Read it.

President Obama’s campaign re-election website has put up a public relations initiative called “The Life of Julia.” The goal of this initiative: to compare “how President Obama’s policies would help one woman over her lifetime – and how Mitt Romney would change her story.” It’s propaganda of the worst order. It’s a typical Obama scare tactic. And worst of all, it assumes that Julia will remain dependent on the government her entire life.

Well, under Obama’s policies, she will.

Julia’s story begins when she’s 3. Thanks to President Obama, the website says:

Julia is enrolled in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve programs like this one, Julia joins thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.

Well, no. Head Start has been one of the worst failures of the federal government. The Department of Health and Human Services itself found that the government has invested $150 billion in Head Start since 1965 … and that has yielded precisely zero impact for the kids involved. But according to Obama, that dastardly Romney fellow would cut Head Start by 20%. The horror, the horror!

Apparently, nothing happens in Julia’s life until she’s 17. There’s a reason for that – America’s public school system is an utter failure, and Obama knows it. But Obama says that Julia at age 17 is flourishing (presumably she isn’t one of the approximately 25 percent of all students who drop out of school, or one of the 40 percent of black or Hispanic students who do so). Here’s Julia’s life under Obama at 17:

Julia takes the SAT and is on track to start her college applications. Her high school is part of the Race to the Top program, implemented by President Obama. Their new college- and career-ready standards mean Julia can take the classes she needs to do well.

Julia must be one of the lucky ones to get into a charter school. If she goes to one of America’s normal public schools, this is a pipe dream. But according to Obama, nasty Romney would cut funding for public education “to pay for tax cuts to millionaires.” Because what we need is more education spending, not less – even while districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District expend about $30,000 per year per student to achieve the worst results in the nation.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Rod Dreher brings the heat.

Honestly, Maureen Dowd writing about anything having to do with religion is about like me writing about the storm and stress of the PGA Tour. In her column, she recycles every tired cliche about the Mean Old Men of the Vatican picking on the Poor, Defenseless Church Ladies. Even though the Vatican report is publicly available information, Dowd never once mentions the main reasons for the Vatican investigation into the nun group nor does she bring up the fact that the Vatican did not investigate all American nuns, only those who had substituted radical feminism and related ideologies for Catholic doctrine.

Read it.

Thanks a bunch, guys. Your’re the best.

Read it.

In an explosive memoir released today, former CIA counterterrorism chief Jose Rodriguez provides new evidence that Rep. Nancy Pelosi lied when she declared she had not been briefed about the use of waterboarding.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

There’s a reason why most would-be politicians start by running for lesser offices, as Massachusetts Democrats are finding to their chagrin this spring, as their anointed US Senate candidate springs one unpleasant surprise after another.

The Warren campaign is becoming an excellent illustration of the Cerberus-like combination of government, academia, and the media that Mencius Moldbug used to call The Cathedral.

Last week, news broke that Harvard Law had cited Warren as a minority hire — a Native American — when it was under criticism for lack of faculty diversity in 1996. Asked Friday for proof of her Indian ancestry, Warren’s said it’s part of her family “lore.”

Of course, one must be a member of a fashionable minority if possible. Don’t bother us with pesky facts.

Better a Native American than a ‘white Hispanic’, presumably.

When the campaign began, The Boston Globe saluted Warren for her “rise from poverty” as a child in Oklahoma City. Since then, as the truth has trickled out, the narrative has evolved. Goodbye poverty, hello to “the jagged edge of the middle class.”

We’ve learned that, by 1965, Elizabeth’s family had three cars, including a white MG that the hard-scrabble Native American drove daily to her tony high school. Still, the Globe insisted, the MG was “beat up.”

Well, that’s all right, then. That surely qualifies as Working Class. Don’t bother us with pesky facts.

Last Friday, she released four years of tax returns. Over those four years, Warren and her husband, another Harvard Law prof, averaged $300,000 more than Sen. Brown and his spouse, a TV anchor. In 2009, the Warrens made $981,000 vs. the Browns’ $249,000.

Even the Globe had to admit that Warren was “in the top 1 percent of earners” — ironic, considering her bragging that she provided the “intellectual foundations” of Occupy Wall Street.

Hey, it doesn’t matter who you really are, what matters is who you want to be. Don’t bother us with pesky facts.

Read it.

“The fracture between the common traveller and the people providing the services is broken,” said Hawley, “and I’ve used the term ‘toxic,’ and I think that is dangerous to security when neither side are particularly listening to the other and I think that is what needs to be fixed.”

Of course, the obvious response is: Well, whose fargin fault is it that the TSA is resented? Hmmm?

And don’t get me started on that whole ‘security theater’ thing….

Read it.

Read it.

NPR’s Mara Liasson outraged female listeners on Weekend Edition Sunday on April 15 when she said Mitt Romney’s political problems aren’t with “stay-at-home moms,” but rather with “educated women.”

Seven days later, NPR admitted it scrubbed the clip and the transcript for the website.

Got a problem? Down the Memory Hole with it!

Read it.

Reading through the numerous articles about “pink slime” alongside articles about general meat consumption published conspicuously close to the “pink slime” controversy, one can only come to the conclusion that the hysteria over “pink slime” was ginned up to make consumers focus on meat production.

Ya think?

The Food Elite doesn’t just want to ban “pink slime.” They don’t want to curtail only red meat consumption. The Food Elite wants to curb the consumption of all meat. There is an explanation for why the Food Elite wants us all to consume less meat, but that’s a discussion for another day. For now, it’s enough to focus on the fact that the Food Elite doesn’t want us eating meat.

As indeed they don’t.

Read it.

As it so happens, I agree.

In fact, aside from Margaret Thatcher, the ‘Conservatives’ haven’t had a Right Wing Person lead their party since Churchill, and he was kind of borderline.

Makes you wonder what exactly they’re thinking over there.