Posts Tagged ‘Nathaniel Branden’

LinkSwarm for December 5, 2014

Friday, December 5th, 2014

Let’s jump into it:

  • IRS cites taxpayer confidentiality in defying a federal judge by refusing to hand over documents showing it violated taxpayer confidentiality by sharing that information with the White House.
  • By 2020, some 90% of Americans will be forced onto ObamaCare exchanges.
  • 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.
  • European “austerity” isn’t.
  • The European economic crisis has gotten so bad that traditional left-wing and right-wing parties are thinking of teaming up to thwart newly ascendent Euroskeptic parties.
  • Fracking is kicking Putin’s ass. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Battles with jihadists kill 20 in Chechan capital of Grozny. I guess December is rerun season in Russia as well…
  • 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.)
  • How PBS lied about Ferguson.
  • The Rolling Stone story 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:

  • Andrew Klavan on #GamerGate and the immense gozangas on display in Soul Caliber. Nice shirt! (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • The UK announced they’re finally going to pay off their World War I debt. Governments come and go, but sovereign debt is almost immortal…
  • Another day, another 36 people killed by jihadists in Kenya.
  • In Denmark, “27 percent of male descendant of immigrants from non-Western countries aged 20-24 years were convicted of an offense in 2013.”
  • Shakespeare First Folio found.
  • Newly discovered Ayn Rand novel to be published.
  • 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…
  • Detroit man steals ambulance to go to a topless bar.
  • I have no joke here, I just like typing Vegan Strip Club Riot.