Observations on last night’s abortion fest in Charlotte. This is starting to remind me of 1972, in the leftist insanity on display. You almost have a sense that they know they’re going down in November, big time, and want to do it in a blaze of collectivist glory.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
It’s Not You, It’s Us
Frank J. says that America has failed Barack Obama.
I’d like to say that we never deserved him, except we do, because we voted for him. Less than nine weeks to rectify that mistake.
One Soul Mate
While it’s a nice romantic notion, the idea that there is just one person for you always struck me as nonsense, because the chances of finding them would be infinitesimal. But the indispensable XKCD actually runs the numbers.
Justice
Now this is what I call an honor killing.
Bob Is A Racist
Bigotry, explained.
As someone rightly points out in comments, you’re a racist if you even view this video.
American Character
A half-century of unfettered expansion of entitlement outlays has completely inverted the priorities, structure and functions of federal administration as these were understood by all previous generations. Until 1960 the accepted task of the federal government, in keeping with its constitutional charge, was governing. The overwhelming share of federal expenditures was allocated to some limited public services and infrastructure investments and to defending the republic against enemies foreign and domestic.
In 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays—about the same fraction as in 1940, when the Great Depression was still shaping American life. But over subsequent decades, entitlements as a percentage of total federal spending soared. By 2010 they accounted for just about two-thirds of all federal spending, with all other responsibilities of the federal government making up barely one-third. In a very real sense, entitlements have turned American governance upside-down.
It’s not just a fiscal problem, or a governance problem. It’s a moral problem, when so many think that they are literally entitled to live off the productivity of others. It can’t go on, so, one way or the other, it won’t.
Antonio Villaraigosa
…”is the Hispanic Obama”:
Clean, articulate, well spoken, and full of shit beyond reckoning.
Though as another commenter points out, he’s not actually all that articulate or well-spoken. Of course, neither is Obama, when off teleprompter.
Fortunately, he’s only been Peter Principled to a position where he can just wreck Los Angeles, instead of the whole country, as Obama was. It is amazing that they made this clown head of their convention. Everyone I know in LA split a gut when they heard about his new role. As is noted, unlike the Republicans, with Rubio, Cruz, Martinez, etc., he’s the best the Dems can come up with as their token Hispanic.
Of course, in fairness to Dr. Peter, the Donkeys seem to have a knack for promoting hacks to far above their level of incompetence.
Media Madness
…and the reckoning.
I don’t buy the polls, either. I think that we’re going to see a huge preference cascade, and it may already be happening.
The Inflexible Ideologue
What will Barack Obama do with another four years? The ironic thing, of course, is that Leftists are always pretending that they have no ideology — they’re just “pragmatists,” doing “what works.”
Dog Whistling
…now that “golf” and “Chicago” — along with “Clint,” “Medicare,” “debt,” “jobs,” “foreign policy,” and “quantitative easing” — are all racist code words, are there any words left that aren’t racist? Yes, here’s one:
“Negrohood.”
Not familiar with it? New York Assembly candidate Ben Akselrod used it the other day in a campaign mailout to Brooklyn electors, arguing that his opponent “has allowed crime to go up over 50 percent in our negrohood so far this year.”
Like Messrs. Dunn, Matthews, and O’Donnell, Ben Akselrod is frighteningly pasty white, and a Democrat, and so presumably has highly refined racial antennae. Had a campaign staffer suggested that Mr. Akselrod’s opponent was wont to wear “plus-fours” and had a “niblick,” obviously such naked racism would have been deleted in the first draft. But the more subtly allusive “negrohood” apparently just slipped through.
Mr. Akselrod now says it was a “typo.” Could happen to anyone. You’re typing “neighborhood,” and you leave out the “i,” and the “h” and “b,” and the “o” and “r” get mysteriously inverted. Either that, or your desktop came with Al Sharpton’s spellcheck. And then nobody at the campaign office reading through the mailer spotted it. Odd.
It’s only the beginning of September. So we’ve got two more months of this. I don’t know how it will play in the negrohoods of Chicago — whoops, sorry, I apologize for saying “Chicago” — but let me make a modest observation from having spent much of the last few months traveling round foreign parts. When you don’t have frighteningly white upscale liberals obsessing about the racist subtext of golf, it’s amazing how much time it frees up to talk about other stuff. For example, as dysfunctional as Greece undoubtedly is, if you criticize the government’s plans for public-pensions provision, there are no Chris Matthews types with such a highly evolved state of racial consciousness that they reflexively hear “watermelon” instead of the word “pensions.” So instead everyone discusses the actual text rather than the imaginary subtext. Which may be why political discourse in the euro zone is marginally less unreal than ours right now: At least they’re talking about “austerity”; over here we’re still spending, and more than ever.
One of the encouraging things is that I think the race card has been so overcharged that no one can proffer it up any more, and be taken seriously.