Category Archives: Social Commentary

The Real War On Women

…is by Democrats. Not to mention the NAACP:

I know I’m just a blogger & radio talk show host, but it seems to me that the NAACP actively working to make sure a democrat convicted of assaulting a woman who refused him sex is something that would not only be Immediately be recognized as Newsworthy, but given the “War on Women” meme would elevate this to a national story.

It has been said that the current media are simply Democrat operatives with bylines. If they choose to ignore this story that will be confirmed without a doubt.

Oh and if you claim to be a feminist & aren’t outraged by this, then you’re lying to yourself.

Yup. Just like their defense of Bill Clinton’s predatory behavior.

Failing Well

…is the American way. Michael Barone reviews Megan McArdle’s new book, which I think has some similar themes to mine.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This bit is interesting:

Her advice is to avoid enterprises that are in long-term decline, such as General Motors starting in the 1970s. In business and public policy, try to learn from well-conducted experiments — but recognize that successful trials can’t always be replicated on a large scale.

I think that also applies to NASA human spaceflight as practiced for the past fifty years.

“Yes, We Can Say That”

Mark Steyn continues his free-speech crusade (and I use that word deliberately):

I don’t care for all this beyond-the-pale stuff, because the pale is already way too shrunk. And, aside from anything else, once you get into the habit of banning and proscribing, your critical thinking goes all to hell. Many of us have seen one or two of those ill-advised shows on al-Arabiya or al-Jazeera in which some fire-breathing imam invites on a despised, Westernized, apostate woman in order to crush her like a bug, only to have her run rings round him. The Syrian émigré Wafa Sultan famously did it to Faisal al-Qassem and Ibrahim al-Khouli. It’s hardly surprising that a culture that puts so much of life beyond discussion renders its inmates literally speechless — to the point where, faced with, say, a school teddy bear innocently named Mohammed, the default opening gambit at the local debating society is to shriek “Allahu Akbar!” and start killing.

We’re not at that point yet. But, raised in the cocoon of conformity that is American academe, the Left is increasingly showing all the critical-thinking skills of your average dimestore mullah. The other day, in between its ongoing complaints about Michael Douglas’s “homophobic” awards acceptance speeches, Salon ran a story by one of its many pajama boys headlined “Ted Nugent Writes Insanely Racist Op-Ed.” Apparently, Ted had written a “vile rant” at “the batshit insane right-wing fever swamp of a site known as WorldNetDaily.” “Even for Ted Nugent,” cautioned Elias Isquith in his opening sentence, “this is bad.” Alas, poor old Ted couldn’t quite live up to his batshit-insane billing: There followed a few unexceptional observations about black crime and broken families maybe a smidgeonette more heated than one might hear from, say, Bill Cosby or Juan Williams. More to the point, the hapless pajama boy didn’t even attempt to explain what was so objectionable about Nugent’s “rant.” As the Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle put it, “Salon calls out Ted Nugent’s ‘racist’ MLK Day column — without refuting his points. Must be Friday.” All Mr. Isquith can do is reprise Ted Nugent’s words and then shriek “Batshit insane!” and “Insanely batshit!” over and over, like Lady Bracknell with Tourette’s.

Which brings us to Michael Mann, the fake Nobel laureate currently suing NATIONAL REVIEW for mocking his global-warming “hockey stick.” Of the recent congressional hearings, Dr. Mann tweeted that it was “#Science” — i.e., the guy who agrees with him — vs. “#AntiScience” — i.e., Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. That’s to say, she is by profession a scientist, but because she has the impertinence to dissent from Dr. Mann’s view she is “#AntiScience.” Mann is the climatological equivalent of those bozo imams on al-Arabiya raging about infidel whores: He can’t refute Dr. Curry, he can only label her.

Read all.

Jasper

The day that the Lileks family has feared for so long has finally come.

We had to do the same thing with Jessica the cat a year and a half ago. She was eighteen, and hadn’t lost bladder control so much as become senile, and willfully doing it in inappropriate places. We probably waited too long for her, but saying a final goodbye to an old friend is never an easy thing to do. She’s in the back yard now, where she used to play.