Music break: What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Suzy style:



Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Perry and Gingrich might get on Virginia ballot after all

Moe Lane:

The Attorney General of Virginia “plans to file emergency legislation to address the inability of most Republican presidential candidates to get their names on the ballot;” as everyone reading this already knows, the recent Virginia primary ratification process ended up with only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul getting on the ballot. Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry had too many of their signatures invalidated by the process; the other candidates didn’t even try. As I understand the situation, emergency legislation will require a super-majority in the state (well, Commonwealth) legislature; but the fact that Cuccinelli is already getting bipartisan backup (and the reported support of the Governor) suggests that such a thing may be actually achievable.

Cuccinelli, via Pat Austin:

"Recent events have underscored that our system is deficient," he said in a statement. "Virginia owes her citizens a better process. We can do it in time for the March primary if we resolve to do so quickly."

Meanwhile, in Iowa:

Trying to close the deal, Perry leaves a good impression

TRENDING: Perry bets Iowa fortunes on robust ground game

Perry's Faith Talk Appeals to Iowa Voters

Rick Perry Bus Tour Day 12: The Momentum Has Caught On!

After Iowa, Perry plans to skip New Hampshire and head straight to South Carolina.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

2011 in review, via Mark Steyn

A feast for Steyn fans: some choice excerpts from his posts and columns which, among them, I think, touch on all his main themes: cultural degeneration, life-stunting monster government, demographic suicide, et cetera. Enjoy!

Big Government's Back Alley 

This is a remarkable moment in American life: A man is killing actual living, gurgling, bouncing babies on an industrial scale - and it barely makes the papers. Had he plunged his scissors into the spinal cord of a Democrat politician in Arizona, then The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC and everyone else would be linking it to Sarah Palin's uncivil call for dramatic cuts in government spending. But "Doctor" Kermit Gosnell's mound of corpses is apparently entirely unconnected to the broader culture. [. . .]

You may be one of those wealthy suburban "feminists" or "new men" indifferent to the fate of eight-pound "blobs of tissue" or 14-year old "women", but the gulf between propaganda and truth, between the fatuous feelgood bumper stickers and the rusty crochet hooks, is profound - and, in a world where statists and social engineers serve as ruthless enforcers for the prevailing ideology, its deep moral corruption will eventually swallow you, too.

Logan's Non-Run

In the first hour or two on Friday, I was just about the only guy on air pouring cold water on the approved hopeychangey narrative about young "freedom-loving" "democrats", and was reprimanded by "progressives" for pointing out correctly that there were very few women and even fewer uncovered women protesting on the streets of Cairo - even as the most famous uncovered woman in Tahrir Square was being set upon by a pack of savages. No such complicating factors were allowed to intrude on the delirious narcissism of the AP headline "Egypt Coverage Creates Unforgettable Daytime TV". But how can you keep shoveling that stuff out when your own reporter is a bruised, battered, bedbound rebuke to it? Even as America's laughably parochial media tried to make the story all about them or all about Obama (which boils down to the same thing), the one part of the story that actually was about one of them got buried. Would it have been different if it had been the A-list anchorettes - Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer? Or would even they have been subordinated to the politically correct narrative?

Uneasy Lies the Head

I don’t mind the union bruisers, Marxist social engineers and lockstep zombies of the Democrat identity-group plantations voting for Obama: They knew what they wanted, and they got it. But I find it harder to understand the preening metrosexual nincompoop ObamaCons besotted with fantasies about his “temperament” (mentioning no names). His “temperament” would seem to be one of his more obvious failings.

Pushing Deviancy Up

A hyper-sexualized society becomes, paradoxically, sexless, and certainly joyless. Listening in recent weeks to young women in both New York and London complain that the men they meet would rather look at pictures of them naked on the Internet than actually see them naked in the same room reminded me of The Children Of Men, in which P D James' characters, liberated from human fertility, find sex too much trouble. Eight-year olds with fake breasts are almost too obvious a satirist's fancy for a last desperate transgression of the terminally jaded. On WGN the other night, Milt Rosenberg and I were talking about popular music and the University of Chicago's approval of "hook-up" culture, and I made the not terribly original observation that a song such as "It Had To Be You" or "The Very Thought Of You" pre-supposes certain courtship rituals. If you no longer have those, it's not surprising that you no longer have songs to embody them: A love ballad, after all, is a kind of aspiration. So, if the fundamental things no longer apply as time goes by, who needs a song about them?

I was aware, as I was talking to Milt, that I sounded like Mister Squaresville, and so be it. Because, getting on for half-a-century in, there's not a lot of cool left in the Sexual Revolution. In fact, there's not a lot of anything left other than wreckage. 

(See also: A Tale of Two Declines and the excellent interview with Milt Rosenberg linked above. Highly recommended.)


Weiner's Twitter Tweaks 

“Flirting”? Why, yes: I’m assured by correspondents more au courant in “social media” that there’s nothing unusual about tweeting your nether regions to people you’ve never met in distant time zones. Get with the beat, daddy-o, it’s a widely accepted courtship ritual of the 21st century: The flower of American maidenhood wants to see a prospective swain straining his BVDs at what I believe the lads at the TSA call Code Orange alert before they’ll agree to meet him for a chocolate malt at the soda fountain. [. . .]

For the sake of argument, let us take it as read that American men are e-mailing their genitals across the fruited plain all day long, and that in the nature of these things one or two attachments go awry and wind up in the inbox of the elderly spinster who runs the quilting bee and you have to make a rather sheepish apology. Congressmen are among the few in this land who, in such a situation, can breezily say, as Weiner did to CNN’s Dana Bash, “You have statements that my office has put out.” Herein lies the full horror of American politics in the death throes of the republic: A congressman has nothing better to do of an evening than tweet his crotch to coeds, but he requires an “office” with “staffers” to “put out” “statements” on the subject.

When Weiners have staffers, it’s very difficult to have limited government: You cannot have a small state run by big Weiners. If you require an “office” to issue “statements” about your tweets, it’s hardly surprising you’re indifferent to statist bloat elsewhere.

TSA Obergropinfuhrer of the Day

There is a term for regimes that submit law-abiding wheelchair-bound dying nonagenarians to public humiliations without probable cause and it isn’t “republic of limited government.” Given everybody’s touchiness over Kathryn’s North Korean comparisons, I’ll say only this: George III wouldn’t have done this to you.

Amy Alkon posts a response from a bureaucratic bozo to her own experience at the airport. Caution for sensitive types: The word “labia” is included. But that’s because in 21st century America the anatomical feature “labia” are included in a trip to the airport – and that’s what should concern you. As the crack TSA agent informs Miss Alkon, “We go thru sensitive areas with back of hand.”

That’s great news! Somewhere on page 273 of the handbook, there’s a graphic detailing the precise point on the upper thigh where the licensed state groper is obliged to invert his paw.

The New Britannia

This is the logical dead end of the Nanny State. When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the British welfare regime in 1942, his goal was the “abolition of want” to be accomplished by “co-operation between the State and the individual.” In attempting to insulate the citizenry from life’s vicissitudes, Sir William succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. As I write in my book: “Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons want to work, want to marry, want to raise children, want to lead a life of any purpose or dignity.” The United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers, the highest abortion rate. Marriage is all but defunct, except for William and Kate, fellow toffs, upscale gays, and Muslims. From page 204:

“For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population”.

I believe it is regarded as a sign of insanity to start quoting oneself, but at the risk of trying your patience I’ll try one more, because it’s the link between America’s downgraded debt and Britain’s downgraded citizenry:

“The evil of such a system is not the waste of money but the waste of people.”

The World They Made

I think they will have difficulty “saving themselves.” I have many in-laws and friends in delightful corners of village England, where as the sun rises on ancient hedgerows and thatched cottages it is easy to believe the paralytic chavs and incendiary imams and all the rest are somewhere far away and always will be. As leftie columnists in their Hampstead redoubts began (privately) to calculate as the rioters moved in from the less fashionable arrondissements, on a small island the mob doesn’t stay beyond the horizon for long.

Mad Debt

But in the early 21st century foreign and domestic debt is a threat to liberty. As the Brokest Nation in History drowns in its profligacy, its commissars will grow ever more rapacious and desperate. If you think Obama’s dreary attempt to blame America’s woes on corporate-jet owners is unbecoming to the chief of state, wait till he’s reduced to complaining about two-car families. By the way, if you’re reading this out on the runway at O’Hare, what’s the difference between a corporate jet landing and Obama flying in? With Air Force One, even when they switch the engines off, all you can hear is the whining.

No author writes a dystopian apocalyptic doomsday book because he wants it to happen: Apart from anything else, the collapse of the banking system makes it hard to cash the royalty check. You write a doomsday book in hopes you can stop it happening. But time is running short. If you think we’ve got until 2050 or 2025, you’re part of the problem.

Imperial Presidency 

Did no one in the smartest administration in history think this might be the time for the president to share in some of the “bad luck” and forgo an ostentatious vacation in the exclusive playground of the rich? When you’re the presiding genius of the Brokest Nation in History, enjoying the lifestyle of the super-rich while allegedly in “public service” sends a strikingly Latin American message. Underlining the point, the president then decided to pass among his suffering people by touring small town Minnesota in an armored Canadian bus accompanied by a 40-car motorcade. In some of these one-stoplight burgs, the president’s escort had more vehicles than the municipality he was graciously blessing with his presence.

American Autumn 

Ah, but the great advantage of mass moronization is that it leaves you too dumb to figure out who to be mad at. [. . .]

Underneath the familiar props of radical chic that hasn’t been either radical or chic in half a century, the zombie youth of the Big Sloth movement are a paradox too ludicrous even for the malign alumni of a desultory half-decade of Complacency Studies: They’re anarchists for Big Government. Do it for the children, the Democrats like to say. They’re the children we did it for, and, if this is the best they can do, they’re done for.

Adult Babies 

An able-bodied man paid by the government of the United States to lie in a giant crib, wetting his diaper week in week out, is almost too poignant an emblem of the republic at twilight. But, as Hillaire Belloc wrote, “Always keep a hold of Nurse / For fear of finding something worse.” Only last week, ABC News reported:

At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.

Oh, no! The horror!

“Self-reliance” is now a pejorative? Nice to have that clarified. And San Francisco, a city that registers more dogs than it has kids enrolled in its schools and in which adults are perforce the children they never bothered having, seems as good a place as any to make it official. In less enlightened times, “self-reliance” was the great animating principle of the American experiment. By the standards of the day, George III was one of the most benign, caring rulers on earth: You were his mewling charges, and he was the regal babysitter. Then a bunch of settlers in small towns clinging to wilderness and thousands of miles from His Majesty the Nanny decided they didn’t need him and they could stand on their own. What’s the word for that? Oh, yeah: self-reliance.

Is it too late for a Self-Reliance Awareness Day? No, there’s no ribbons. Make your own damn ribbon. If that’s too much to hope for, how about a Multi-Trillion-Dollar Debt Awareness Day? The ribbon starts out black but turns deeper and deeper red. How about a We’ve Spent All the Money Including the Money for an Awareness-Raising Ribbon Day? An Impending Societal Collapse Awareness Day?

Corporate Collaborators 

It’s the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It’s more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing. I don’t mean just the placards with the same old portable quotes by Lenin et al., but also, say, the photograph in Forbes of Rachel, a 20-year-old “unemployed cosmetologist” with remarkably uncosmetological complexion, dressed in pink hair and nose ring as if it’s London, 1977, and she’s killing time at Camden Lock before the Pistols gig. Except that that’s three and a half decades ago, so it would be like the Sex Pistols dressing like the Andrews Sisters. Are America’s revolting youth so totally pathetically moribund they can’t even invent their own hideous fashion statements? Last weekend, the nonagenarian Commie Pete Seeger was wheeled out at Zuccotti Park to serenade the oppressed masses with “If I Had a Hammer.” As it happens, I do have a hammer. Pace Mr. Seeger, they’re not that difficult to acquire, even in a recession. But, if I took it to Zuccotti Park, I doubt very much anyone would know how to use it, or be able to muster the energy to do so.

No Man's Land

Here surely is an almost too perfect snapshot of a culture that simultaneously destroys childhood and infantilizes adulthood. The “child” in this vignette ought to be the ten-year-old boy, “hands up against the wall,” but instead the “man” appropriates the child role for himself: Why, the graduate assistant is so “distraught” that he has to leave and telephone his father. He is pushing 30, an age when previous generations would have had little boys of their own. But today, confronted by a grade-schooler being sodomized before his eyes, the poor distraught child-man approaching early middle-age seeks out some fatherly advice, like one of Fred MacMurray’s “My Three Sons” might have done had he seen the boy next door swiping a can of soda pop from the lunch counter. [. . .]

You could hardly ask for a more poignant emblem of the hollow braggadocio of the West at twilight than the big, beefy, bulked-up shoulder pads and helmets of Penn State football, and the small stunted figures inside.

The Terrorists Have Won

US airport “security” serves no serious purpose except to accustom free-born peoples to behaving like a compliant bovine herd. America is now a land where 85-year old grannies are strip-searched without probable cause. You’re extremely naive if you think that, once government acquires a taste for that, it will remain confined to the airport.

Zero Tolerance, Zero Proportion

If officials of the Boston public-schools system genuinely believe that when a seven-year-old kicks another seven-year-old in the crotch that that is an act of “sexual harassment,” then they are too stupid to be entrusted with the care of the city’s children. If, on the other hand, they retain enough residual humanity to understand that a seven-year-old groin-kick is not a sexual assault but have concluded that regulatory compliance obliges them to investigate it as such, then they are colluding in an act of great evil.

Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive.

The Gingrich Gestalt 

On the eve of Iowa it seems the Republican base’s dream candidate is a Clinton-era retread who proclaims himself a third Roosevelt, with Taft’s waistline and twice as many ex-wives as the first 44 presidents combined; a lead zeppelin with more baggage than the Hindenburg; a self-help guru crossed with a K Street lobbyist, which means he’s helped himself on a scale few of us could dream of. For this the Tea Party spent three years organizing and agitating? 

Elisabeth's Barrenness and Our Own

The notion of life as a self-growth experience is more radical than it sounds. For most of human history, functioning societies have honored the long run: It’s why millions of people have children, build houses, plant trees, start businesses, make wills, put up beautiful churches in ordinary villages, fight and if necessary die for your country . . . A nation, a society, a community is a compact between past, present, and future, in which the citizens, in Tom Wolfe’s words at the dawn of the “Me Decade,” “conceive of themselves, however unconsciously, as part of a great biological stream.”

Much of the developed world climbed out of the stream. You don’t need to make material sacrifices: The state takes care of all that. You don’t need to have children. And you certainly don’t need to die for king and country. But a society that has nothing to die for has nothing to live for: It’s no longer a stream, but a stagnant pool.

If you believe in God, the utilitarian argument for religion will seem insufficient and reductive: “These are useful narratives we tell ourselves,” as I once heard a wimpy Congregational pastor explain her position on the Bible. But, if Christianity is merely a “useful” story, it’s a perfectly constructed one, beginning with the decision to establish Christ’s divinity in the miracle of His birth. The hyper-rationalists ought at least to be able to understand that post-Christian “rationalism” has delivered much of Christendom to an utterly irrational business model: a pyramid scheme built on an upside-down pyramid. Luke, a man of faith and a man of science, could have seen where that leads. Like the song says, Merry Christmas, baby.

Happy New Year?

***

Steyn: Arab Spring to American Autumn:

I was idly considering compiling a big ol’ year-end round-up of my take on 2011, but the Pundette has put together such a grand anthology of Steyn bits from the last 12 months I don’t think I can improve on it. Some of it I’d clean forgotten I’d written.

The Obama stuff’s in there and the spending, and the Weiners and Sanduskys, but I like the way the selection focuses on the broader themes underlying the freaky news items. As I always say, in the end culture trumps economics. The real problem in Greece isn’t the Greek finances so much as the Greek people. That’s a good general rule.

So Happy New Year – and let’s get real in 2012.

It was my pleasure. You may call me a shameless fangurrl and I won't deny it. But nobody comes close to Steyn on the culture, and yeah, it trumps economics and everything else.

***
Linked by Marathon Pundit -- thanks and HNY!

***

Related: Most memorable quotes of 2011 (only about 15% Steyn).

Also: Same deal for 2010.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

If Santorum is surging, so is Perry

Today's NBC/Marist poll finds that Santorum has risen 6 points, from 9 to 15%. Perry has risen 4 points, from 10 to 14%. The Washington Post is fairly typical in its coverage, calling the Santorum rise a "surge" but Perry's "a slight boost." The margin of error is 4.8%.

Yesterday's Rasmussen survey put Santorum at 16%, Perry at 13%, and Gingrich at 13%. The margin of error is +/- 4.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Memorable quotes from 2011

Way too long and yet not finished. Oh well. I'm tired of looking at it and you probably will be, too, before you get to the end (though I've saved some of the best for last). But anyway, here goes:

I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history.  Barack Obama

Obama's historical ignorance could be a full time beat for somebody who does this work for a living, and it tells us something truly important about Barack Obama. His ignorance is as broad as it is deep. Not that you couldn't deduce that on your own from his performance on the job. Scott Johnson

His mind is set in concrete. Richard Epstein

Well, now, here’s my point. If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon — (laughter) — you may have a big family, but it’s probably not that big. How many you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids? (Laughter.) Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then. (Laughter.) . . . So, like I said, if you’re getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in. Barack Obama

America, 2011: A man gets driven in a motorcade to sneer at a man who has to drive himself to work. Mark Steyn

In fact, this weekend was such a tense time in the White House that Obama only got in nine holes of golf. But he still managed to deliver his joke script to the White House Correspondents Assn. dinner Saturday evening. Sunday was, Brennan revealed to his eager audience, "probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of times in the lives of the people assembled here." Poor poor bureaucrats. Extra Tums all around. Did someone order dinner? Andrew Malcolm

Go ahead, Mr. President, play golf. But you should never take it for granted that you’re a president playing golf, not a golfer playing president. Jonah Goldberg

And Milbank notes that it wasn't only Republicans who made a mockery of Obama's travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham of a speech to a joint session of Congress. James Taranto

We don’t estimate speeches. Douglas Elmendorf

He’s like a new car: First it’s really awesome, and then you realize it’s a lot like the other cars. Jerome Lincolns

Charm is no substitute for substance. And they aren’t that charming. Jennifer Rubin

Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.” Unnamed official

Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable. Joe Biden

Friedman’s gut is a terrifying thing. Jonah Goldberg

A government big enough to give you everything you want isn’t big enough to get you to give any of it back. Mark Steyn

June 29 was the day that Wisconsin was to be no more. The streets were going to be deluged with sewage. Children would begin pouring bleach into their cereal, as they would cease to learn otherwise in school. The state would devolve into a fiery Mad Max–style wasteland, where people feast on squirrels and barter their pelts. For it was the day that Governor Scott Walker’s plan to scale back public union collective bargaining took effect. Christian Schneider

I, for one, am trying to determine which of my children to love less in order to make more room in my heart to love Paul Ryan more. Christian Schneider

They need her. She doesn’t need newspaper or TV producers to drive her story. She drives them. Crazy. Michelle Malkin

Seriously, the future of the nation hangs in the balance and some morons want to saddle up with a rich, self-promoting, rodeo clown? Dan Riehl
 
Sell icky some place else Newt, we're not buying. Patrick Archbold

I will work every day to make Washington, D.C. as inconsequential in your lives as I can. Rick Perry

When they ask me, "Who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan?" I’m going to say, "You know, I don’t know. Do you know?" Herman Cain

President Obama supported the uprising, correct? President Obama called for the removal of Qaddafi - just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing before I say yes I agree, or no I didn't agree. I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason - nope, that's a different one. [pause] I gotta go back and see - um, I got all this stuff twirling around in my head. Herman Cain

Yet for the first time in decades I feel a sudden craving for nicotine, possibly while making non-sexual gestures of an uncomfortable nature. Mark Steyn

I’ll tell you what, ten thousand bucks. Ten-thousand dollar bet? Mitt Romney

Go ahead, GOP. Nominate this health-care regulating, pro-abortion, flip-flopping, liberal, phony, RINO stiff. But believe me when I say that I will NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVER vote for him. Jay Anderson

Gingrich, who would have made a marvelous Marxist, believes everything is related to everything else and only he understands how. George Will


We should all envy Newt Gingrich’s vitality that he has been capable of such youthful indiscretions in his mid to late 60s. Rich Lowry

Oops. Rick Perry

So this is my choice now? Newt or Mitt? Wow, life sucks. Patrick Archbold

I don’t have to convince myself that he’s a changed man in order to feel good about my choice. Damn Dirty Rino

That’s great news! Somewhere on page 273 of the handbook, there’s a graphic detailing the precise point on the upper thigh where the licensed state groper is obliged to invert his paw. Mark Steyn

You get real smart after they come to your house and arrest you and make you feel like Charles Manson. Wade Martin

An able-bodied man paid by the government of the United States to lie in a giant crib, wetting his diaper week in week out, is almost too poignant an emblem of the republic at twilight. Mark Steyn

Back at the OWS encampment at Zuccotti Park, it’s a hygienic disaster area: greasy hair, stained shirts, crusted trousers—and that’s just the journalists. Matt Labash

We don’t know where it comes from. It just appears, and we eat it. OWSer Tom Hintze

Ah, but the great advantage of mass moronization is that it leaves you too dumb to figure out who to be mad at. Mark Steyn

First, as an historian with a passion for medieval history, I have often wondered what odors would assail the senses if one was among a large group of individuals who had only a passing acquaintance with concepts of hygiene. I no longer have to wonder. Jim Lacey

It’s like Walmart for rats. Wayne Yon

The sperm meets the egg, the kid's born and off to school he goes and you might see him on weekends, but you're not gonna be expected to feed him. Rush Limbaugh

Moreover, a nation of children who get dropped off each morning as they kick and scream for their mommies can hardly be described as a net positive. Suzanne Venker

Our kids aren't rousted like vagrants and put on buses before the sunrise because it suits the public school teachers. We go to bed when we're tired, and we sleep until the sunlight wakes us up. Our kids sleep until they're not tired anymore, then their mother starts school. Ambien for dinner and Paxil for breakfast makes you an extra in a zombie movie.  Gregory Sullivan

It’s not true that kids grow up fast. What is true is that it seems fast if you’re paying too much attention to other stuff. Joel Achenbach

Big Government programs “for the children” are never about the children. Michelle Malkin
 
When you are home schooled, you automaticly loose the whole social experience of school. In the real world you need to be social. Otherwise you’re going to get know where. Anonymous public school student

Among much of America’s hideous educrat monopoly, the Golden Rule is that regulatory compliance is always the right thing to do, no matter how stupid and wicked it is. Mark Steyn

If [Itzhak Perlman] was thirteen years old today he'd probably play X-Box instead, be systematically starved and hounded because he's "obese," and be drugged into oblivion because he won't pay attention to drivel in class. Gregory Sullivan

When citizens are taking pictures of couples with children because it is so rare to see such a sight you know the country has failed. Amy Owen

Good rule of thumb in politics: Find out what side of the issue feminists are on, and get on the other side. (If feminists ever bothered to denounce Islam’s brutal oppression of women, I might have to consider joining the Taliban. But feminists are too busy whining about “pay equity” to notice that Muslims are still stoning women to death under sharia law and forcing girls into arranged marriages.) Stacy McCain 

What the hell is wrong with Weiner and everyone? The guy deserves a rap in the mouth for that, doesn't he? Where are the feminists? Matthew Archbold

Cut him some slack. Hey look, Rep. Weiner’s a busy guy. Who can possibly expect him to keep track of every picture of his own crotch he’s ever taken? Jonah Goldberg

No - the real outrage is that Anthony Weiner has a cushy athletic club, paid for by us, as a backdrop for his stupid photos. I pay money every month to work out on weight machines at our local gym while these do-nothing gas bags in Washington hang out in their very own taxpayer funded gym. Now, that's outrageous. Adrienne

“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date.” Let’s translate that Jon Corzine quote into Latin, engrave it in stone, and make it the official motto of Congress. Kevin Williamson

The origins of Loughner's delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman's? Charles Krauthammer

If you haven't already read America Alone, you simply must. It will make you want to have kids and buy guns. Dr. Milton Wolf

After finishing reading the book I wasn't sure whether to get pregnant or kill myself. Wendy Sullivan 

I was aware, as I was talking to Milt, that I sounded like Mister Squaresville, and so be it. Because, getting on for half-a-century in, there's not a lot of cool left in the Sexual Revolution. In fact, there's not a lot of anything left other than wreckage. Mark Steyn  

Self-indulgence is the common thread that runs through most culture war issues. From marriage to divorce to cohabitation to abortion, the desperate desire to satisfy the longings of our heart collides with a Judeo-Christian moral tradition that calls for children to be raised in faithful, married mother-father households. And so we make endless accommodations to our desires — protecting as a legal right the quest to satisfy every personal whim — and our culture cracks and crumbles. David French

This is a remarkable moment in American life: A man is killing actual living, gurgling, bouncing babies on an industrial scale - and it barely makes the papers. Mark Steyn

The Statue of Liberty should be the symbol of this city, not the grim reaper. Archbishop Dolan  

Seriously, does 30 years of calling babies “blobs of tissue” have no effect on the culture? Matthew Archbold

***

Not enough Steyn in that list? Try this one.

Last year's quotes here.

***

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Let them eat butter

More to the point, try and stop them. They sure love their perks, eh?

ABC's Yunji de Nies keeps tabs on the Obamas' posh vacation:

President Obama and the first lady enjoyed a night out with friends, with a leisurely three-hour dinner at Alan Wong’s Restaurant. The upscale eatery specializes in Hawaiian Regional Cuisine and is a favorite of the first couple.

Two years ago, Wong traveled to Washington to prepare a luau at the White House Congressional picnic. The Obamas regularly dine at the Honolulu restaurant while on vacation and on Wednesday night sat at their usual table, with the president seated with his back to the wall – in what Wong has described as the “Feng Shui” seat in the restaurant.

The group ordered off of a special tasting menu, though no word on what that entailed.

Keith Koffler speculates on the menu, but the word on Twitter is that they're, well, eating butter. Yeah. You can't make this stuff up.

I'll update when I get all the greasy details. Meanwhile, FORE!

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Surging, splitting, surviving

In my more rational moments I remember that none of these Iowa polls means anything. But this CNN poll is inspiring a lot of alliterative buzz about a Santorum surge. Erick Erickson isn't thrilled:

Santorum has no money or organization outside of Iowa and cannot win the nomination, but Iowans love a guy who sucks up to them and makes sure they know he loves the babies.

As a pro-lifer myself, I have to throw up a bit in my mouth that Iowa conservatives are seriously considering Rick Santorum, which will only help Mitt Romney, a guy who even after his supposedly heartfelt conversion to life put some seriously pro-abortion judges on the Massachusetts bench hiding behind the “Well it was Massachusetts for Pete’s sake” defense.

Read the rest. I like Santorum for lots of significant reasons. But he lacks something very important: executive experience. Perhaps voters don't care much about that anymore, but it's the closest a candidate can come to training for that highest office, and Perry's executive experience is extensive.

Mickey Kaus makes a reasonable argument about the three candidates currently splitting the conservative vote:

This is the argument against Perry and Santorum? Nate Silver thinks that “for [Mitt Romney] to fail to win the nomination, someone else has to, and it’s hard to see who that is.” Really? Here is his argument that Perry is “too flawed":

Rick Perry is in something of a parallel position in Iowa. He’s someone who could look wholly different to voters with a strong finish there. But for now he’s stuck splitting the evangelical vote with Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum and hasn’t been able to build up much momentum.

But if Santorum and Bachmann drop out then Perry won’t be splitting that vote anymore, right? Same for Santorum if Perry and Bachmann drop out. Since the role of Iowa is to force people to drop out, it’s hard to see how this is a very strong argument against Perry or Santorum’s chances going forward. It’s a soluble problem!

Read the rest. Makes sense to me. We'll see.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Perry still a threat

Jennifer Rubin's attack on Rick Perry this morning gives me hope that he'll be the big surprise of the Iowa caucus. I don't think she'd go after him like this if she didn't see him as a threat to Romney:

If, in fact, his results are poor in Iowa and his days in the race are numbered, he will return to Texas a diminished figure. His immigration policy has incurred the ire of the base. His crony capitalism and big spending on himself (on housing and travel, and now his security detail) leave a bad taste in the mouths of Tea Partyers.

Really? And her candidate, who by no stretch of the imagination can be considered a conservative, is supported by Tea Party types? In his dreams.

Hey, how about a gratuitous slam at Sarah Palin, while she's at it?

He might actually consider doing what Sarah Palin never did — hit the books, learn some public policy and restore his reputation. If he does that and is a team player (such as helping to elect Republicans around the country), he might have another shot at the presidency. But then again, perhaps he’s figured out that running for president is too far outside his comfort zone. One disappointing and personally humiliating run for the White House might be more than enough to satisfy his curiosity and ambition.

Personally humiliating? Yes, he's made mistakes, but he's handled them with humility and grace. He's not the brittle figure who laughs tensely whenever his record is criticized, tries to show up his rivals in weird, out-of-touch ways, or constantly holds his finger to the wind, always ready to trim his positions accordingly. And maybe Ms. Rubin knows something I don't, but last I heard, Perry was tied with the other two conservatives in the latest poll and has enough money to stay in the race beyond Iowa.

Not over yet.

***
Updated to add Steyn's talk with Steve Forbes about Rick Perry's proposals:


***
Have another: Jim Geraghty:

Perry’s road to victory is challenging but visible: Perform “well enough” in Iowa, South Carolina, hopefully Florida (although that contest remains winner-take-all, at least as of this writing), Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona, and then make his big push on Super Tuesday, consolidating the anti-Romney vote.

***
Linked by Michelle Malkin -- thanks!

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Various & sundry

A few things:

Melissa Clouthier on how our Golfer-in-Chief's me-first attitude affected the Christmases of others:

President Obama might be the most selfish president ever. Instead of staying home with his family, President Obama had to go golfing on Christmas day.

Big deal, you say?

Well, the big deal is that a bunch of Marines had to work–blocking roads and doing other miscellaneous security detail–instead of being home with their families.

Here are some of the comments from the wives of these men.

Melissa: "No class and no empathy." Hard to argue with that. Read the rest.

Another lovely Christmas tale, via Mark Steyn:

Courtesy of my state newspaper, The Union Leader, here’s another heartwarming tale from America’s friendly skies. This time SouthWest Airlines bravely attempted to prevent a dying eight-year old boy from spending his last Christmas at home.

Big Brother has no soul.

In other news . . . Is it just me, or are depressing stories dominating the news more than usual this morning? Like this one about an autistic kid stuffed in a bag at school. Or this one about transhumanism in the gaming industry. Or this horror story, or this one. If I didn't know better I'd say all is pretty much lost. But I'm with James Delingpole:

It was true in the trenches of 1916. It remains true now. The dark forces of Mordor are on the march. We really might wish it otherwise but such is life, such is fate. Are we going to stay cowering in the false security of the Shire, waiting for the Orcs to arrive? Or we going to screw up our courage, seize that ring and venture all on the perilous journey to Mount Doom?

Read the whole thing. (And the next post will be uplifting, I promise.)

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

The Virginia primary mess; Update: Were the rules changed in midstream?

Scroll down for update.

***

A few facts about the Virginia primary debacle, courtesy of Just a Conservative Girl and BearingDrift: If a candidate submits 15,000 signatures which include 600 from each congressional district, the signatures aren't verified. That means that neither Ron Paul's nor Mitt Romney's petitions have been scrutinized as have Perry's and Gingrich's.

That sounds like a lousy rule to me. But whether or not you think it makes sense, the rules have been in place since 1999. And even if the process is more difficult than in other states, I can't think of any good excuses for the Perry campaign's sloppy failure to qualify. Even less for Newt, who lives in Virginia and had plenty of time to get organized.

BearingDrift points out that plenty of candidates have managed to get on the ballot in previous primaries:

2008 – Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, John Edwards; Ron Paul, John McCain, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney.

2004 – Al Sharpton, John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Dick Gephardt, Lyndon Larouche.

2000 – Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer, George W. Bush, John McCain, Steve Forbes.

So, apparently, Lyndon Larouche, Al Sharpton, Alan Keyes, Fred Thompson and Dennis Kucinich ran better organized campaigns for their party nominations than Gingrich and Perry.  Wow.

Yeah, wow. Fred Thompson seemed to manage it even in his sleep. He was already out of the race by the time the primary came around so it didn't ultimately matter, and it may not matter this time, either.

But why did Larry Sabato speculate that the Virginia GOP might "turn a blind eye to problems" with Gingrich's and Perry's petitions? He implied that verification is sometimes a formality instead of a rigorous process. Were some of the above past candidates given a pass? How many of them submitted 15,000 names and thus avoided the scrutiny of verification? Another question: When a candidate submits 15K signatures, does the VA GOP still ascertain that they're properly distributed by district? If not, it's kind of a farce, isn't it?

Fellow Virginia resident Just a Conservative Girl:

Look, getting people to sign these petitions is not easy. I am not saying that it is, but they were only required to get less than barely over one tenth of one percent of qualified voters. But the fact that it is difficult is the reason that an organized campaign is vital. You must have the staff to organize the volunteers. Another thing to remember is Virginia has off-year elections. We had an election last month. Every campaign has access to the information on where the voting locations were and what the past numbers of voters showing up to those locations are. This is low hanging fruit, everyone showing up is a registered voter. I volunteered on election day. I only saw people out for Romney, Newt, and Obama. I asked the other volunteers at the results party that I went to and none of them saw any for any of the other candidates that I listed. I personally signed for Cain, Newt, and Rick Santorum. I wouldn't sign for Romney and was never asked to sign for any other candidate. I am also on the email list for virtually every candidate and was only asked to collect signatures for Romney and Cain.

Newt would like to change the rules because he is unhappy with the results. That is a leftist tactic. I find it abhorrent that Newt is now looking for a way around the rules. While I do feel cheated that I only have two choices on my ballot. The people who cheated me were the candidates themselves.

Gateway Pundit wonders whether the fix was in and Moe Lane suggests that Mitt request that his petition be verified just like Perry's and Gingrich's. That will never happen but I'm beginning to see the appeal of a completely blank Virginia ballot.

***

Update: Just saw this, which seems to change everything. Moe Lane:

One small problem with that: as Winger argues, the rules were allegedly drastically changed.  In November of this year.

Winger’s article is too long to reproduce here, so I’ll summarize it: prior to the 2012 elections it was Republican party policy in Virginia to simply deem any candidate that brought in ten thousand raw signatures as having met the primary ballot requirements under Virginian state election law.  So, for example, Alan Keyes (a popular negative example for people making the ‘any competent campaign’ argument) apparently did not actually have his petitions checked in 2000 and 2008; absent going back and looking at the paperwork (assuming that it even still exists), there’s no way to tell whether he would have survived the scrutiny of 2012.  And that’s true of every other candidate who has appeared on the primary ballot in Virginia.  None of them qualify for an apples-to-apples comparison – and this remains true no matter how many signatures were collected.  If you know that your signatures will not be checked if you get above 10K, you are simply operating in a fundamentally different environment than one where you know that your signatures will be checked.

So what happened? Osborne v. Boyles.  On October 24th independent state delegate candidate Michael Osborne filed suit against the Republican party of Virginia (specifically, Fifth District GOP Chairman Brandon Boyles) because of this policy: as the article notes, “the law simply requires that party-affiliated candidates present their petitions to the local party chairman – in this case Boyles – who is responsible for reviewing the petition signatures on their own. It does not dictate how thorough this review must be or give state officials any power to challenge it.”  The case is still pending – interestingly, the election that this lawsuit was ostensibly addressing has come and gone – but according to Winger the VA GOP decided in response to bump up from 10K to 15K the threshold for simply deeming the requirements as being met.  The complications of it being the day after Christmas makes final confirmation of all of this difficult, but Osborne v. Boyles is an actual case and Richard Winger is one of the go-to guys on the arcane subject of ballot access: what I can check out about this story I have checked out.

Read the rest. If true, something's really wrong here.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Merry Christmas music 2011

If you recognize this from last year try to think of it as a tradition instead of a rerun. I've added a few new things and hope you'll find something you like.

Charpentier: Kyrie from Messe de Minuit

Corelli: Christmas concerto

Jessye Norman: Gesu Bambino

Vince Guaraldi: O Christmas Tree

Oscar Peterson: Jingle Bells

Diana Krall: Jingle Bells, Let It Snow

Ella Fitzgerald: Sleigh Ride, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Judy Garland: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Peggy Lee: Winter Wonderland 

Chet Atkins: Away in a Manger, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 

Chet and Suzy Bogguss: Mr. Santa

Emmylou Harris: Beautiful Star of Bethlehem

Kate Rusby: Sweet Bells 

Sinatra: I'll Be Home for Christmas

Sinatra: The Christmas Waltz

Bing: Mele Kalikimaka 

Bing and Dorothy Collins: The Christmas Glow Worm

Frank and Dean: Marshmallow World

And last but not least:
The Frank and Dean Christmas tree


Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

A reason for more than the season

One of the beautiful things about Christmas is that it's all about the birth of a baby.

Sassoferrato

I wasn't planning to post anything more today (except the traditional Christmas music post, coming soon), but after reading Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak yesterday and Mark Steyn this morning, I had to dash this off.

Petula Dvorak specializes in columns about contemporary motherhood. Her favorite words to describe modern moms: frenetic, frenzied, over-committed, multi-tasking, beleaguered, overwhelmed, manic, exhausted, crazy-busy, et cetera. (Case in point here.) This busy-ness is as much a badge of honor as it is a claim to victimhood -- a win-win for post-feminist moms.

Ms. Dvorak is one of the mothers who couldn't figure out what to do with her kids during the enforced downtime created by the DC area blizzards a couple of years ago, so unusual was it to have unstructured time at home. She scoured the internet for projects to keep the kids "occupied." (That 21st century kids are so often unable to find ways to amuse themselves speaks volumes about our culture and the way we're raising our children, but that's an issue for another day.)

May I submit that if parenthood is a nightmare of overscheduled, restless, and largely meaningless activity, you're doing it wrong.

In her latest column, Ms. Dvorak reveals that she's painted such a dismal picture of parenthood that she's souring her readers on the idea of having any kids at all:

None of this amuses Jamel, a [28 year-old] communications manager at a trade association in Arlington who wrote that “the thought of having kids scares me to death. Children are expensive, needy, and time consuming. . . . What is the point of having kids if your life ends when theirs begins?”

There's an answer to that question.

In his latest piece, Elisabeth’s Barrenness and Ours, Mark Steyn confirms that the guy above is not alone:

The developed world, like Elisabeth, is barren. Collectively barren, I hasten to add. Individually, it’s made up of millions of fertile women, who voluntarily opt for no children at all or one designer kid at 39. In Italy, the home of the Church, the birthrate’s somewhere around 1.2, 1.3 children per couple — or about half “replacement rate.” Japan, Germany, and Russia are already in net population decline. [ . . .] In a recent poll, invited to state the “ideal” number of children, 16.6 percent of Germans answered “None.” We are living in Zacharias and Elisabeth’s world — by choice.

The notion, so aptly expressed above by Jamel, that giving one's goods, love, and time to one's children amounts to "the end" of one's own life, springs from a sort of spiritual death. Steyn:

The notion of life as a self-growth experience is more radical than it sounds. For most of human history, functioning societies have honored the long run: It’s why millions of people have children, build houses, plant trees, start businesses, make wills, put up beautiful churches in ordinary villages, fight and if necessary die for your country . . . A nation, a society, a community is a compact between past, present, and future, in which the citizens, in Tom Wolfe’s words at the dawn of the “Me Decade,” “conceive of themselves, however unconsciously, as part of a great biological stream.”

Much of the developed world climbed out of the stream. You don’t need to make material sacrifices: The state takes care of all that. You don’t need to have children. And you certainly don’t need to die for king and country. But a society that has nothing to die for has nothing to live for: It’s no longer a stream, but a stagnant pool.

And a shallow one. At the end, Steyn makes a compelling empirical case for Christianity: the alternative isn't working. In the most fundamental sense, Godless societies are failing because they have nothing to live for, and the result is a void, the absence of life.

I've deliberately refrained from excerpting Steyn's conclusion so please go read the whole thing and then mentally insert his last paragraph right here.

Correggio

Merry Christmas.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Perry and Gingrich fail to qualify for Virginia primary

All aboard the fail train:

A source with knowledge of the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) petition signature verification process says Rick Perry was ‘dead on arrival’ and had no chance of getting on the ballot, even before the verification process began.

The source said more than 1,000 of Perry’s 11,911 signatures were automatically invalid because the sheets they were turned in on had not been notarized, a requirement set forth by the Virginia Board of Elections. Furthermore the source said the campaign also did not follow ‘simple’ rules such using double-sized petition sheets or correctly licensed notaries.

So they were just winging it? Good grief.

It is possible that Perry, who announced his campaign in August, never received a copy of the email the State Board of Elections sent out clearly stating the rules.  Furthermore, Perry would have had to begin collecting signatures almost immediately after announcing to collect as many signatures as Romney, who began collecting signatures in Virginia on August 1.

No word yet on the ways in which Gingrich, who entered the race early and resides in Virginia, screwed up so royally.

So that leaves two choices on my March ballot: Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Awesome! -- a choice between a perfectly lubricated weather vane devoid of conservative instincts and a crank with some highly objectionable sympathies. A Paul win in Virginia is a distinct possibility. Of course, it may be over before that. No one knows the outcome. But with a Romney candidacy more likely than ever, I spent some time last night contemplating a second Obama inauguration and what kind of damage he would do in a second term. A lot of that depends on who controls the House and Senate. It all seems up for grabs right now.

***

Edited to add this excellent post by Moe Lane.

***

I don't really know what to say except don't let it ruin your day. How about some very tenuously related comic relief? Rodney Fails to Qualify

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Video: Great Moments in Presidential History

Thomas Sowell nailed it in 2008, and three years later Obama is still leading with ego and mouth:



Steyn talks about the ad with its creator:



More where that came from, indeed.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve

By popular demand, Persimmon Coxcomb has made a reappearance at SteynOnline. I won't excerpt but will tell you that I consider paragraph #4 to be a small masterpiece. Click and enjoy. Also enjoy his special audio Song of the Week, "White Christmas." (There's a musical treat at the end.)

Mark also has some interesting Christmas movie suggestions for you sorted by category: best nativity scene, best snow globe, et cetera. He ends his list with this:

THE FIRST TERRORIST CHRISTMAS MOVIE
A barefoot Bruce Willis swings into action when a gang of evildoers hijack a Christmas Eve office party in Die Hard (1988). Thank you, Hollywood: If you want to see terrorists getting whumped by Americans at holiday time, you have to make do with Alan Rickman.

I love Die Hard, Alan Rickman and all the f-words notwithstanding. To that I'll add a couple more favorites. Best Western Christmas movie: 3 Godfathers, 1948, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne. I'm not a big Wayne fan but that doesn't matter. Amazon description (mild spoiler alert):

Director John Ford's Western retelling of the Biblical Three Wise Men tale remains a scenic and thematic masterpiece. Ford adds color to his feature-film palette, capturing stunning vistas via cinematographer Winton Hoch, who would win two of his three Academy Awards * for Ford films. Again, populist-minded Ford asserts that even men of dissolute character can follow that inner star of Bethlehem to their own redemption.

Another sentimental favorite I haven't seen in years is 1949's A Holiday Affair starring Janet Leigh at her very prettiest and Robert Mitchum as his usual masculine self, in non-evil mode. You can watch it instantly on Amazon.

I've made it a tacky Christmas tradition here to post what might be the most mercenary Christmas song ever written, "Everybody's Waiting for the Man with the Bag." Take it away, Kay Starr:



When I looked up the authorship of the song I found that lyricist Irving Taylor also wrote the words to something completely different: "So Dear to My Heart," the title song from a very sweet early Disney movie about a boy and his lamb. But I digress. That's got nothing to do with Christmas.

For less materialistic Christmas music with a country flavor, check out Suzy Bogguss's two CDs, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas. The latter isn't available on Amazon but you can listen to samples and purchase both CDs here. Suzy does a gorgeous cover of the Steyn sensation, "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve." (We saw her sing it live last year.)

As we're in the midst of a political season, click here to read about Gov. Rick Perry's childhood Christmas memories. It's like something out of the Little House books. 

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Mitt Romney won't release his tax returns

Of whom are they speaking?

“Why does --------- feel like he can play by a different set of rules? What is it that he doesn’t want the American people to see? ----------, who has favored secrecy over openness time after time, should live up to the same standard of disclosure" set by others.

No, that's not a relic from 2008, when candidate Barack Obama refused to reveal his transcripts from three colleges. It's the Obama campaign, yesterday, criticizing Mitt Romney for refusing to disclose his tax returns.

Moe Lane: The chutzpah is strong with this one:

I don’t know: possibly Romney’s got the financial equivalent of the alleged gentleman’s C+ GPA that Ben LaBolt’s boss has been resolutely hiding for the last decade or so? – No, come on: it’s like the worst-kept secret in Washington DC that the President doesn’t exactly live up to the intellectual hype that his sycophants like to toss around.  Which is not to say that Obama is dumb.  He probably has an IQ of about 125 or so; which is pretty good, all things considered.  Middling decent.  But it’s not like he can set fire to people with his mind.

None of which means that I am totally fine with Romney not releasing his tax returns.  But I see no reason why we should pretend that Mitt Romney’s not playing by the same rules that Barack Obama laid down in the first place, either.  Fair’s fair.  And transparency begins at the White House.

The DNC is all over it:

The Democratic National Committee took only hours on Thursday to unveil a new Web site, www.whatmittpays.com. The site allows visitors to select their income level and compare how much less they would have paid if they were taxed at what the group assumes would be Mr. Romney’s lower rate.

Newt says he'll release his if (heaven help us) he becomes the nominee. Rick Perry has been releasing his for decades.

Business Insider:

Although candidates are not legally required to release their tax returns, it has become common practice for both party's presidential nominees to do so. If Romney makes it to the general election and sticks by his decision, he would be the first post-Watergate candidate not to release his returns.

Romney's campaign team has clearly decided that the political risk of releasing the returns outweighs the potential problems of not doing so.

Read the rest.

Thanks to MichelleMalkin.com for the Buzzworthy link.
Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

The school lunch racket

Someone is benefiting from the push to serve "healthier" food to school children but it's not the kids. Michelle Malkin reminds us of an enduring truth:

Big Government programs “for the children” are never about the children. If they were, you wouldn’t see Chicago public school officials banning students from bringing home-packed meals made by their own parents. In April, The Chicago Tribune reported that “unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.” The bottom line? Banning homemade lunches means a fatter payday for the school and its food provider.

You have to have a medical excuse to bring a lunch from home in Chicago. Parents aren't allowed to feed their own kids without a note from a doctor. And parents accept that. I guess it's just easier to let the benevolent state take over yet another family function. They really do know best. And everyone knows parents are so busy these days. You can't expect them to find time to make a lunch or even a breakfast or a dinner for their kids. And all this help from the government will only make the family stronger, right? Because the family that never eats together or sees each other . . . um . . . how does the rest of that go?

Back to Michelle Malkin:

Remember: The unwritten mantra driving Mrs. Obama’s federal school lunch meddling and expansion is: “Cede the children, feed the state.” And the biggest beneficiaries of her efforts over the past three years have been her husband’s deep-pocketed pals at the Service Employees International Union. There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more at all costs.

What a racket. Tons of food no one ever wanted is being thrown away in Los Angeles:

Earlier this spring, L.A. school officials acknowledged that the sprawling district is left with a whopping 21,000 uneaten meals a day, in part because the federal school lunch program “sometimes requires more food to be served than a child wants to eat.” The leftovers will now be donated to nonprofit agencies. But after the recipients hear about students’ reports of moldy noodles, undercooked meat and hard rice, one wonders how much of the “free” food will go down the hatch — or down the drain. Ahhh, savor the flavor of one-size-fits-all mandates.

At least Michelle O will get a book out of it. So there's that. 

Read the whole thing.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

New Perry ad shreds Newt (and Mitt)

I love it:



Bonus: Meet Anita Perry:



Don Surber wrote today that Gov. Perry is "the last conservative standing." I agree.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

More than just "baggage"

Who am I to differ with Thomas Sowell? But I see plenty of problems with a Newt Gingrich candidacy in addition to the fact that he is a serial adulterer.

But I'm totally with Mr. Sowell here:

Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.

(Emphasis mine.)

Jennifer Rubin doesn't care much for the terrible excuses Newt provided a while back for his trangressions:

Then there was Gingrich’s bizarre excuse-mongering. In an interview in March he proclaimed, “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. What I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them. I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness.” That is not a showing of regret; it’s a indication of self-pity and egomania.

I wholeheartedly agree. That was dreadful. But J-Ru goes places I'm not quite willing to go:

Now let’s take a look at Callista. There was that interview when she begged for Marianne’s forgiveness. There was the one when she expressed remorse for having broken up a marriage. Oh, wait. She’s not done any of that. In fact, the reason she has, as Parker notes, played “the relatively safe role of admiring sidekick” is that she dare not subject herself to the series of questions that would detect her degree of remorse. Her husband signed a fidelity pledge, but why should we take that any more seriously than two sets of marriage vows? Does she feel remorse about the affair that put the party at risk and ended a marriage? Has she ever sought forgiveness from Marianne? How would she feel if another woman had an affair with Gingrich? And by the way, how did she manage to ring up six figures in Tiffany charges?

A great deal of that is perfectly true but some of it is none of our business. I'll leave it to God to judge the state of Mr. and Mrs. Gingrich's souls. But that doesn't mean we voters shouldn't make some kind of judgment on Newt's character and temperament, along with his philosophy, guiding principles, record, and proposals. We have to evaluate them all. Newt doesn't make my short list. And neither does Mitt.

For Catholics who think Newt deserves their vote because of his conversion (yes, they're out there), please read Francis J. Beckwith's analysis, including this excellent observation:

This is not to diminish or call into question Gingrich’s conversion. Quite the opposite. For, as the Catholic Catechism teaches, absolution of sins does not eradicate all the effects and consequences of those sins on the shaping of one’s character. This requires ongoing conversion, including detaching oneself from those things that may provide an occasion for sin.

It seems to me that a man whose sins arose as a consequence of the pursuit of political power and the unwise use of it after he became Speaker of the House should not be seeking the most powerful office in the world.

Humility, folks. There's a reason it's known as the foundation of all virtue. And there's a difference between confidence and egotism. Since I believe nothing is impossible with God, I'm praying that a humble person might be elected president next year.

***
Speaking of humility, I just noticed this post on the Corner from Yuval Levin: Exceptional Humility

President Obama said:

The issue here is not going be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.

So much of what there is to know about the president is contained in that little statement, especially the words “with the possible exceptions.”

Oremus.

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the Buzzworthy link.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.