Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Burqua Tourism

13 Comments

Phyllis Chesler isn’t very impressed with Naomi Wolf’s shallow defense of Muslim oppression of women.

[Wednesday afternoon update]

Naomi isn’t very happy, and demands an apology, which she isn’t going to get.

[Bumped]

[Thursday afternoon update]

It’s round three. Someone needs to take the shovel away from Naomi before she gets to China.

[Bumped again]

[Update a couple minutes later]

Don’t miss the link to the Jamie Glazov piece:

Reminiscent of creepy and pathetic tales that fellow travelers told (about what they had “learned”) upon their returns from Stalinist Russia and Maoist China, Wolf comes back to share the news. Many Muslim feminists, she implores, apparently told her that they wish that we Westerners would focus on examples of women’s rights in their societies rather than on “what they wear.”

Sorry Naomi Wolf, the mere fact that someone told you something does not erase the reality of how tyrannical structures employ dress codes to wield various forms of oppression. If Jews were, for instance, once again forced, in any given society, to suddenly start wearing particular articles of clothing to identify and distinguish themselves from other people, should those of us who are concerned suddenly become unconcerned merely because a Jewish person in that society told you to tell us not to worry about it?

Not that you know or care anything about history, but there is a reason why despotisms and apartheid structures create dress codes. The enforcement of such codes plays a crucial role in keeping the structures of tyranny and the enslavement of a people in check (e.g., Maoist unisex clothing had a ruthless purpose). Ms. Wolf, do you really fail to grasp the fact that dress codes in the Islamic world, such as the niqab and the burqa, play a crucial role in keeping the chains of gender apartheid in place, and that this is precisely why the guardians keep them in place?

No Ms. Wolf, I won’t stop worrying about what Muslim women are forced to wear. I care about the Muslim women who have had acid thrown in their faces, or who have been raped or killed or set aflame, because of the dress code they chose not to follow. I know you don’t care about them, because they eluded you somehow during your political pilgrimage and you have yet to utter one of their names and tell us, with heartfelt concern, what happened to them and why.

As I said, someone needs to get her to quit digging.

History, Political Commentary, Weird

Birds Of A Feather?

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A picture has surfaced that may depict Hitler playing chess with Lenin. There is cause for skepticism, of course:

Historian Helen Rappaport, who has just written a book called “Conspirator: Lenin in Exile”, said the etching was probably a “glorious piece of fantasy”.

She said: “In 1909 Lenin was in France and there is no evidence that he was in Vienna.

“In October he went to Liege in Belgium and in November he went to Brussels. He would have visited Vienna before and after that year.

“He liked the place and went there because he travelled around Europe on trains, but he wouldn’t have been there long enough to meet a young Hitler.

“He was also as bald as a bat by 1894 with just hair on the sides of his head.

“And when in exile he was not known as Lenin and instead used a number of aliases.

“The person believed to be Lenin in the etching may well have been one of his revolutionary or Bolshevik associates who was misidentified.

“It may even have been an Austrian socialist with whom he associated in the Second International.

So, maybe it wasn’t Lenin. That right winger Adolf Hitler was hanging out and playing chess with some other socialist.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Revolt Of The Masses

3 Comments

Thoughts from Daniel Henninger:

the lumpen electorate works, and the lumpen bureaucratariat spends. They get away with it because they have perfected the illusion that no human hand causes these commitments. The payroll tax just happens. Entitlements are “off-budget,” presumably in the hands of God. This is government without the responsibility of governance.

Unable to identify who or what has put them in hock to the horizon, national electorates are attempting accountability by voting whole parties out of power. Rasmussen recently found that 57% of voters would throw out Congress en masse if they could. Gerrymandered districts ensure that they can’t.

Problem is, the lumpen bureaucratariat can’t stop spending and borrowing and won’t incentivize growth. Amid the phenomenal spending on the financial mess here, they tried to pass a cap-and-trade bill whose centerpiece was an auction of carbon credits to flow trillions of dollars toward the bureaucracies. Mr. Obama’s people seem weirdly oblivious to the scale of their outlays, programs and dreams.

Something has to give.

[Update a few minutes later]

Will Obamacare be to Obama what Spain was to Napoleon?

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

The Hoyer Town Hall

4 Comments

Mark Hemingway has a report:

To his credit, Hoyer finally took questions via random lottery for almost the next two hours. What is not to his credit is how he answered those questions. I could pick apart the political objections to his claims some more, but Hoyer seemed bound and determined to sink himself by simply being tone-deaf.

When one woman on Social Security disability, and obviously sympathetic to the Democrats’ proposed reforms, explained that she had to drop her $400-a-month health insurance, Steny Hoyer (D-Math) explained that the current plan would help her because it would cap out-of-pocket expenses at $5,000 a year. Another sympathetic questioner wondered why he didn’t have a bipartisan Life Experience Panel, before asking a fawning question.

If his handling of positive questions was less than deft, his reponse to opponents was flaming-dirigible bad. After he repeatedly assured everyone that this bill was fiscally responsible, another questioner asked somewhat incredulously how this bill would save money. Hoyer responded, “I didn’t say the bill would pay for itself, I said it would be paid for.” The angry crowd didn’t like that bit of sophistry one bit. And when another questioner asked how he could assure the bill’s fiscal responsibility when Social Security and Medicare were bankrupt, Hoyer responded by saying, “Indeed, I don’t know if they are going bankrupt . . .” and had to wait to continue because of the riotous laughter that ensued.

Are they stupid, or do they think we are? Or both?

Occasional Transterrestrial commenter Chuck Divine also attended and blogged about it.