This video, reportedly of Freguson’s own Mike Brown (and it does look a great deal like him) presents an glimpse of him distinctly at odds with the “Hand up don’t shoot” crowd’s characterization of him as a “gentle giant”:
Usual caveats for things found on the Internet apply.
So left-wing stalwart magazine The New Republic just let several long-time editors go, reduced their publishing schedule from 20 issues a year to 10, and put a former Gawker-person in charge as editor, which is just short of putting up a sign reading “Dead Magazine Walking.” John Podhoretz traces their decline to the age of Obama:
I think the answer is that there never was any Obamaism to champion; there was no serious vision of America and the world being laid out by the administration that provided fertile ground out for intellectual cultivation, for voices on the outside to make sense of that serious vision and help it cohere into an argument. (In the 1980s, ironically, it was the New Republic‘s own Charles Krauthammer who did just that in explicating the “Reagan Doctrine,” though even more ironically, he did it in the pages of Time Magazine rather than in TNR.)
What there was, instead, was the increasing reliance on the cheap-shottery of the Internet era—in which TNR and others were driven more by a kind of grinding loathing of the Right than by an effort to create a more effective and serious Center-Left. The magazine foundered because liberals foundered, because Obamaism was a cult of personality that demanded fealty rather than a philosophy that demanded explication.
Also: I was unaware that The Weekly Standard had twice the circulation of The New Republic. And you should check out the rest of that piece, not least for the perfect title…
And speaking of Podhoretz, his New York Post piece on why Hillary’s supposed cakewalk to the Democratic nomination is a sign of party weakness is well worth reading: “Hillary Clinton has no natural claim to her party’s nomination. She’s not even an especially gifted politician. Aside from the spectacular incompetence of her 2008 campaign, she is as gaffe-prone as Dan Quayle and as awkward as Bob Dole.”
For the left, the truth no longer matters. “For the Left, this is all tribal, white hats vs. black hats. Fraternity members and police officers are, in their view, by definition on the wrong side of every dispute.”
Mary Landrieu isn’t just going to get beat in Saturday’s runoff, she’s primed to get slaughtered, trailing in the latest polls by 24 points.
Wisconsin might be getting ready to pass right-to-work legislation. Hey Wisconsin unions: How’d that whole “recall” thing work out for you? “You come at the king, you best not miss.”
Evidently teenage boys have too many cooties to be taken in at the Salvation Army. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The Rolling Stonestory of an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity continues to unravel. If there was an actual gang rape, the perpetrators should be arrested and tried. If not, Rolling Stone has some editorial house-cleaning to perform…
Breitbart demolishes Lena Dunham’s “raped by a Republican” story. Plus this nugget from a liberal college administrator “‘Asking whether or not a victim is telling the truth is irrelevant,’ Ms. Hess proclaimed. ‘It’s just not important if they are telling the truth.'”
On the same theme:
So as I understand it, Atticus Finch is now the bad guy in "To Kill A Mockingbird," because he doubted a story about rape.
And speaking of Rand, her longtime disciple/lover Nathaniel Branden died at age 84. I’m sure he would be deeply offended at the suggestion he’s gone on to the afterlife…
The Ferguson indictment (or non-indictment) is evidently coming down at 8 PM tonight. Why the night rather than the day, and why now rather than during the next polar vortex, I couldn’t tell you. It’s almost like somebody somewhere wants a riot.
Police presence is described as “extremely heavy.” Shops have boarded up their windows. Barricades are already up in the courthouse, and heavy Homeland Security presence there has already been reported.
Descriptions of the “protestors” on site doesn’t sound terribly encouraging:
Protester tells me he has a gun and he has every right to use if the police put their hands on him. Then flashes me the gun. #Ferguson
How the Obama years have hollowed out the Democratic Party. “The more serious problem for Democrats is the drubbing they’ve taken in the states, the breeding ground for future national talent and for policy experimentation. Republicans have unified control—the governorship and the legislature—in 23 states.”
“The core tenets of the blue model as a basic governing philosophy are in much deeper trouble than many of the operatives and thinkers of the Democratic Party are prepared to admit.”
Democrats also got nothing from their incessant attacks on the Koch brothers. I just can’t imagine why their “your billionaires are evil but our billionaires are above reproach” strategy wasn’t a hit with voters…
Speaking of which: “There are many reasons to celebrate the Republican party surge in the US mid-term elections but for me they boil down to two words: ‘Tom’ and ‘Steyer.’”
And wondering on Twitter why there wasn’t a Tom Steyer Downfall parody, I found out there were two:
Communism is evil, no ifs, and or buts, and the dramatic difference between freedom and slavery on different sides of the Iron Curtain was too stark for any but the most blinkered leftists to ignore. Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher (among many others) all saw that difference clearly and worked to bring it down. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the beginning of the end not only for East Germany and the Warsaw Pact, but the Soviet Union as well. Freedom won and tyranny lost.
Thomas Sowell: “Many Democrats are running away from Barack Obama, but they can’t hide their record of voting for Obama’s agenda more than 90 percent of the time.”
Speaking of pandering to women: Evidently, it isn’t working for Mark Udall in Colorado. “A myopic focus on reproductive freedom and the ‘War on the Women’ does not seem to be an effective way to mobilize and motivate women in a year when the economy and jobs are at the forefront of voters’ minds.”
Indeed, the gender gap is working against Udall, since Gardner’s lead among men is much bigger than Udall’s narrow lead among women.
Texas Democrats thinking “this time will be different!” because of money spent targeting Hispanic voters are forgetting Tony Sanchez’s big bucks 2002 campaign. “Perhaps Texas Latinos just don’t like the shoddy liberal product that Texas Democrats keep trying to sell them.”
