Category Archives: History

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

George W. Bush And Christmas

12 Comments

Why he never left the White House until the day after:

After a few years, curiosity finally got to the former Washington Times reporter and he asked a low-level administration official why.

“I still remember what she said,” Curl wrote. “’So all of us can be with our families on Christmas.’”

“Who was ‘us’? Hundreds and hundreds of people, that’s who. Sure, the reporters who covered the president, but also dozens and dozens on his staff, 100 Secret Service agents, maybe more, and all of those city cops required whenever the president’s on the move in D.C.,” Curl added in his column.

However, things seemingly changed when Obama took office.

“[T]his president would never delay his trip to his island getaway. He’s off every year well before Christmas. Hundreds and hundreds head off with him, leaving family behind,” Curl wrote.

Some people have class, others are narcissists and leaches on the wealth of the taxpayer.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Barack Obama’s top ten violations of the Constitution this year. Note that this implies that there were many more.

History, Political Commentary

Avi Davis

1 Comment

RIP:

Avi Davis, president and founder of the American Freedom Alliance, passed away peacefully early Monday morning at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was surrounded by friends and loved ones.

Davis suffered a heart attack 11 days ago while cycling. He was placed in an induced coma as doctors ran a series of tests to determine his brain function, but ultimately he was unable to recover. He leaves behind two sons, Mati and Amiad, both his parents, Betty and Jack, a sister Yvette, and brothers Yoni and Shimmi. He was just 57 years old.

Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon said: “Avi Davis was a good man. A fighter, a patriot, a man who understood the conservative movement first needs to win in the marketplace of ideas. The country lost a leader, Breitbart News lost a friend.”

Sad news. I met him last summer at the Magna Carta event he put together in Westwood. Sobering, because he’s younger than me.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Islam

43 Comments

Americans don’t like it. Not even Democrats. And with good reason.

There are many good people who are Muslims, but Islam is a problem. We are not at war with Muslims, but Islam is at war with us, and has been since it was founded, thirteen-hundred years ago.

[Update a few minutes later]

After the latest mass murder, CAIR’s push for sharia rolls on.

[Update a few more minuts later]

More from Andy McCarthy: Is Islam a religion?

I’d say no. It’s a totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion. Which may be one reason that, unlike other religions, the Left seems to have an affinity toward it.

[Friday-afternoon update]

The hidden reason Americans dislike Islam. They know military people who have first-hand experience with it:

Yes, they were in the middle of a war — but speaking from my own experience — the war was conducted from within a culture that was shockingly broken. I expected the jihadists to be evil, but even I couldn’t fathom the depths of their depravity. And it was all occurring against the backdrop of a brutally violent and intolerant culture. Women were beaten almost as an afterthought, there was a near-total lack of empathy for even friends and neighbors, lying was endemic, and sexual abuse was rampant. Even more disturbingly, it seemed that every problem was exacerbated the more religious and pious a person (or village) became. I spent enough time outside the wire and interacting with tribal leaders to get a sense of the reality around me, but the younger guys on the line spent weeks at a time living in the heart of the local community. I remember one young soldier, after describing the things he’d seen since the start of the deployment, gestured towards the village around us and said — in perfect Army English — “Sir, this s**t is f**ked up.”

Yup. There are millions of good Muslims, but Islam is a big problem, and has been for over a millennium.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Right To Bear Arms

…is not up for debate:

When debating the wisdom of the Constitution’s Second Amendment, the media tends to start from the presumption that the question is purely scientific, and that the answers can — and should — be derived from statistical analyses and relentless experimentation. This approach is mistaken. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is not the product of the latest research fads or exquisitely tortured “data journalism,” but a natural extension of the Lockean principles on which this country was founded. It must be protected as such.

…Reacting to this argument, we often hear advocates of gun control propose that the Founders’ observations are irrelevant because they could “not have imagined the modern world.” I agree with the latter assertion: They couldn’t have. As well-read in world history as they were, there is no way that they could have foreseen just how prescient they were in insisting on harsh limitations of government power. In their time, “tyranny” was comparatively soft — their complaints focused on under-representation and the capricious restriction of ancient rights. In the past century, by contrast, tyranny involved the systematic execution of entire groups and the enslavement of whole countries. The notion that if James Madison had foreseen the 20th century he would have concluded that the Bill of Rights was too generous is laughable.

Nor could the Founders have imagined the entrenched tyranny that would arise in their own country. Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Company were hypocrites, certainly — like so many at the time they spoke of equality and liberty while indulging slavery — but the generation that met at Philadelphia did at least consider that the institution would die out peacefully. Instead, it was abolished only by bloody force, and then transmuted into something almost as abhorrent.

And as he notes, proposals for gun control have always been profoundly racist, and remain so.

[Update a while later]

Related: The historical African-American tradition of firearms.

[Afternoon update]

No, the right to bear arms isn’t absolute. So what?

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Mean People Are Lying About Hillary Again

1 Comment

Remember in the 90s when those lying women were accusing poor Hillary’s husband of sexual harassment and rape?

Well now those terrible Benghazi families are lying about what she told them on the tarmac:

“I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand. And she said ‘we are going to have the film maker arrested who was responsible for the death of your son,’” recalls Tyrone Woods’ father, reading directly from his written record from that day. Sean Smith’s mother and uncle remember the same thing, as does Glen Doherty’s sister. Now watch Hillary’s performance from this past Sunday. Note how anchor George Stephanopoulos, to his credit, asks a very specific question, preceded by clips of statements from several of the aforementioned family members.

I’ll bet Woods’ father was lying to his diary, like that guy in the Clinton administration. It must be terrible to be a Clinton, and always have people telling lies about you.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Loretta Lynch And The New York Times

8 Comments

How they made me join the NRA:

I wouldn’t doubt the editorial board of the NYT is also aware that the policy of the Nazi party was pretty close to what they are recommending, the confiscation of guns — for the National Socialists so that they could be sure they were only in the hands of those deemed acceptable (not Jews, etc.). To use Orwell’s term this time, that would make the NYT “objectively pro-fascist.”

But perhaps less harmful than our own government. Reacting to the San Bernardino Islamic ideology-based terror rampage… er, workplace violence… the first thing out of our attorney general’s mouth was to warn James Comey, director of the FBI, that the real danger from this event was anti-Muslim backlash and to watch his language. In other words, don’t call a duck a duck. According to DCWhispers, the order had come down from Obama and Jarrett to Lynch, in which order was unspecified, that Comey’s statements should be bowdlerized. It was.

Okay, I’ve had it. Mr. LaPierre, as I told you, I’m in. You’ve got another one-time Jewish lefty in the NRA. That should make at least one of us.

If these people want a civil war, they should be careful what they wish for, and shouldn’t delude themselves that they’ll win it. I don’t know if America will survive, but they sure as hell won’t.

[Update a few minutes later]

Barack Obama is getting what he wanted:

We now know from media reports that the President intends to call for gun control. He may even try by executive order.

This was the plan all along. Just like Europe.

Get Americans worried and fearful about terrorism, show that the government is incapable of dealing effectively with it, then declare that the only solution is to round up guns so terrorists cannot get them.

It is all by design. The President never had any intention of working aggressively to stop domestic terrorism. He needed it to fester and call it something else, just as he needs problems with Obamacare to fester to get to single payer, in order to curtail our freedoms.

Many of us saw this coming eight years ago. But more didn’t, or did and were cheering for it.

[Update a few minutes later]

The New York Times is calling for immense expense and a political civil war to reduce gun violence a negligible amount.

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Richard Posner

5 Comments

…and the Constitution:

This has implications that go far beyond the judiciary. The only reason for not tarring and feathering any government official for effrontery when they tell us what to do is that their power to do so is somehow legitimate. But that legitimacy comes from the exercise of constitutional power. If the Constitution doesn’t mean anything, well, then, maybe it’s time to go long on pitchforks. Because without the Constitution the angry mob is just as legitimate as the perfumed princes of the state.

Here is Josh Blackman’s take down of Posner.