Month: October 2012

Glenn gets snarky–

IN LIGHT OF HIS COMMENT ABOUT HORSES AND BAYONETS, here’s some recommended reading for President Obama: Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan. Remember when they had to air-drop saddles? Perhaps Obama will have more time for reading, soon.

Heh™. Indeed©.

Early candidate for snark-o-the-week –

“Tennessee played a great game tonight. They were well prepared and well coached, and the team executed the game plan flawlessly. The loss was due to the poor policies left over from the Fulmer era.”

Rooool Tide!

Via Instapundit, Ed Driscoll reminds us of an old (in Internet time) article by Jim Treacher (@jtlol for those who like to follow snarkiness on Twitter) from ‘way back in September 2008. He has him pretty well pegged-

My initial reaction to Bacongate was, “Well, it’s just another gaffe. Obama couldn’t possibly be dumb and mean enough to call Palin a pig.” Yeah, she mocked him during her convention speech, but it was all about his record (or lack thereof) and soaring rhetoric. Which isn’t nice, perhaps, but that stuff is fair game in a political campaign. Could he really be so thin-skinned and self-serious that he’d start hitting back with personal insults?

Yes. He. Could.

At first I thought it was a mistake for the McCain camp to demand an apology. As I told my close personal friend Glenn Reynolds, I thought they should have said something like:

“We’re pleasantly surprised by Senator Obama’s newfound sense of humor, and look forward to watching it develop over the coming weeks and months.” You know, rise above it, while still reminding everybody that Obama is a stiff, humorless, gaffe-prone scold.

But now I’m having second thoughts. I think he meant exactly what the crowd obviously thought he meant, because it fits a clear pattern of behavior.

A pattern that has become blindingly apparent over the past four years, and especially over the past four months.

What was the Obama camp’s initial reaction to Palin’s announcement (of her candidacy- ed.)?

“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.”

Yeowtch! And her palmprints on the podium were still warm. (Quite a contrast to McCain’s ad, less than 24 hours earlier, congratulating Obama  on his achievement.) But then, later that same day, Obama walked it back:

“I think that… campaigns start getting these hair triggers and the statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments,” he said, according to the pool report, apparently criticizing his staff for going overboard, as he did occasionally in the primary.  So he’s  not the hostile, panicky jackass. It was his staff’s fault.

Yes We Can… Pass the Buck!

Perceptive, that Treacher fella. Too bad more folks didn’t listen to him. I felt the same way, but then I felt like an asshole crying in the wilderness against Hope! and Change! The best outcome I could see was that somehow the Lightbringer’s election would bring us a new era of racial comity in this country. Guess that didn’t really work out, did it? In many ways I feel like I’ve been dragged back to the Sixties, and that is not an era I ever wished to repeat.

Read The Whole Thing™ and see if JT didn’t have the man absolutely pegged before he ever became The Preznit.

Not optimal, you say?

Free speech, that old-fashioned notion enshrined in British Common Law and further enlarged in the American colonies, seems to be dying in the mother country. From The Guardian–

Don’t be absurd, you say. But would it be any more absurd than a student being arrested under section 5 for saying to a mounted policeman: “Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?“, or the 19-year-old Kyle Little, charged and convicted – though then cleared on appeal – for delivering what was described as a “daft little growl” and a woof at two labradors? Or a 15-year-old summonsed for holding up a sign outside the Church of Scientology’s central London headquarters saying: “Scientology is not a religion. It is a dangerous cult“? (I repeat those exact words here, as my own. Officer, you know where to find me.)

Then there was the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, arrested and charged for shouting slogans and displaying placards condemning the persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people by Islamic governments, during a protest at a Hizb ut-Tahrir rally. And an evangelical Christian preacher who was convicted and fined for holding up a home-made sign that, beside the motto “Jesus is Lord”, proclaimed: “Stop immorality, stop homosexuality, stop lesbianism.”

It gets worse…

Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act says a person “is guilty of an offence if he (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby”.

Plus, helping enforce that Act is a ratio of 1 CCTV camera for every 32 people.

Wow, lots of folks on Twitter and blogs would be headed straight to the hoosegow if we had that here. Oops, wait, we might be getting there-

Praised by colleagues as smart, friendly and passionate about the law, Teresa Wagner was a leading candidate when two jobs came open to teach writing at the University of Iowa law school. An alumnus, she was already working part-time at its writing center and received positive reviews from students and a key committee.

But after she interviewed with the faculty in 2007, one job went to someone without teaching experience and the other wasn’t filled. She was passed over for other jobs in the coming years. She now says she was blackballed because of her legal work against abortion rights and will take her complaint to a jury this week in a case that is being closely watched in higher education because of longstanding allegations of political bias at left-leaning law schools.

Conservatives have maintained for years that they are passed over for jobs and promotions at law schools because of their views, but formal challenges have been rare, in part because of the difficulty of proving discrimination. Wagner’s case is considered the first of its kind.

“This will put a spotlight on a terrible injustice that is being perpetrated throughout American higher education,” said Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, who says he routinely hears from rejected conservative professors. “What makes Teresa Wagner’s case so extraordinary is she came up with the documentary evidence of what was really going on.”

Seems like we’re starting down the same road- see almost any major university’s speech code.

I just finished watching a really hokey old movie, “Excalibur”, which is basically a straight retelling of the Morte D’Arthur. Really shows its age. Cringe-inducing- almost. But implicit in it is that one day, in her hour of greatest need, King Arthur will return to save Merrie England, presumably from herself. I’m thinking now might be a good time, Art.

And could you stop by the Colonies and remind our people of the one thing that is most important about our freedom- that silly old thing called Free Speech?

 

Castro Suffers Massive Stroke

If he is, indeed, on that last long downhill run, vaya con Dios, dude.

I hope he dies quietly in his sleep, like my grandfather- not screaming in terror like his passengers…