Tag: Blithe Spirit

Better off the party of “no”

Erick Erickson.
Erick being interviewed

Red State’s Erick Erickson on the just released Republican “Pledge to America”:

These 21 pages tell you lots of things, some contradictory things, but mostly this: it is a serious [sic] of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans because the House GOP does not have the fortitude to lead boldly in opposition to Barack Obama.

Other than that, he’s all for it.

He will vote Republican in November, he says, but “will not carry their stagnant water.”

Loyal opposition, therefore.

Tags: ,

More candor, this time from a newsman

Image representing New York Times as depicted ...
Where news comes laundered

Yes, we recognize the ploy, do we not?  It’s NYT man defecting to Huffington Post, where he can let his great thoughts all hang out:

[Peter] Goodman, who spent a decade at The Washington Post before his three years at the Times, says he will still rely on facts and not engage in “ranting.” And while he was happy at the newspaper, he says, he found he was engaged in “almost a process of laundering my own views, through the tried-and-true technique of dinging someone at some think tank to say what you want to tell the reader.”

Carefully chosen facts, at that.  But that’s what you do: find an approved think-tanker or academic and launder your views, which nonetheless get out there, if under the guise of objectivity.  The games newsies play!

Tags: ,

What means this quango?

Satellite image of Great Britain and Northern ...
United Kingdom from very high up

What the heck is a quango?  Not having immediate access to Diarmaid (I remember my spelling with diary-maid without the y) MacCulloch (also a tricky one), who uses it in the 9/10/10 Times Lit Supplement as something “set up” to do something.  A group.  It’s a collective noun, and a new one for me.

Oh yes.  What do it mean?

–noun, plural -gos.
(esp. in Great Britain) a semi-public advisory and administrative body supported by the government and having most of its members appointed by the government.
Origin:
1975–80; qu ( asi ) -a ( utonomous ) n ( on- ) g ( overnmental ) o ( rganization ) or qu ( asi ) -a ( utonomous ) n ( ational ) g ( overnmental ) o ( rganization )

says Dictionary.com.

It’s an acronym, what do you know?  Quasi autonomous (national) governmental organization.

Clever, these English people, though I’m not sure The MacCulloch would appreciate my calling him one of those.

Tags: , ,

Apologies, apologies

Official 109th congressional photo.
Dear supporters: Please forgive me.

Sun-Times:

Rep. Jackson: I did nothing wrong but ‘deeply sorry’ over ‘social acquaintance’

Chicago congressman vows to remain in office in wake of Sun-Times report regarding fund-raise

Sorry about what, if he did nothing wrong?  Ah, there’s the rub.  Sorry about the bad publicity, hence apology to “some of his supporters,” who share his sorrow about diminishing his political salability.

Which makes this a pro forma lie, typical of public-figure apologizing.

Tags:

Friends again with our overseas cousins?

Sir Winston Churchill.
His bust got pitched.

Mike Fahy: Interesting article in The UK Telegraph (London) noting that the Tea Party of December 1773 sparked the American Revolution against George III. But the modern-day grassroots Tea Party may play a key role in ejecting Barack Obama from the White House in 2012, thus restoring Anglo-American relations.

Unlike the Obama administration, the new wave of conservative leaders in the United States recognise Britain as America’s most important ally, are suspicious of EU-style supranationalism, and understand the great sacrifices that the US and UK have made in the defence of liberty and freedom across the world. One thing is certain if President Obama loses the White House in 2012. His successor definitely won’t be throwing a bust of Sir Winston Churchill out of the Oval Office.

Editor: Those 1773 tea partiers got a lot of their ideas from the once mother country, now didn’t they?

Tags:

A definite knack for words

The New York Sun
Image via Wikipedia

This New York Sun knows how to start off an editorial:

O Christian Martyr Who for Truth could die
When all about thee Owned the hideous lie!
The world, redeemed from superstition ’s sway,
Is breathing freer for thy sake today.

Those are the words of John Greenleaf Whittier on the monument of one of the women of Salem, Rebecca Nurse, who went to the gallows in the summer of 1692 for being a witch. Now, more than 300 years later, our greatest pundits are pulling their chins over a long-ago television broadcast in which the Republican nominee for Senate from Delaware talks about a teenage escapade in which she went with a friend who dabbled in witchcraft and sat on what may have been a wiccan altar, though she wasn’t aware of it at the time for the lack of blood.

Why can’t we do that in Chicago?

Tags: , ,

Off-cuff unintended candor

1869 tobacco label portraying Boss Tweed, from...
Boss Tweed rewarded his followers, 1869

Obama answering Velma Hart at yesterday’s town hall, said you’re the kind of people “we want to reward.”

We?  Who’s we?  He being top dog in U.S. government, he must meant the government.  What’s the government got to do with it?

We, meaning the whole rest of the country, find ourselves rewarded mostly by our own efforts, not a beneficent government, even in social security payments, which I know something about, which depend on past earnings and keeping up with FICA payments.

He says things like that because of his swollen notion of where gummint (my usual term in this context) fits into our (most people’s) lives, with special attention to his role as top dog.

Tags: ,

Another kind of gay pride

Couple Gets Married After Waiting 23 Years @ S...
Married in Iowa

Eve Tushnet is not your father’s and mother’s lesbian.  She grew up Reform Jewish and secular, depending on the parent, the child of a Harvard law prof and prison-industrial-issues lawyer, is a Yale alum who found God there in a debating society, converting to Catholic.

Now, at age 32, Tushnet is a unique voice in the discussion of religion and homosexuality. She very openly embraces her sexual orientation but is celibate and advocates against same sex marriage. She is the darling of numerous church conservatives but is also a great admirer of radical pacifist and Catholic Worker Movement founder Dorothy Day.

Ultimately, however — as our discussion below indicates — simple labels and categories are unhelpful with regard to Tushnet , whose greatest commitment appears to be to an “ethos to pursue truth wherever it takes you, and then live up to that no matter what it costs.”

Sounds like newly Blessed John Henry Newman to me, the pursuing truth no matter what.  Busted Halo does the interviewing.

Tags: ,

GM getting help from its DC friends

The headquarters of the United States Environm...
EPA HQ, where good things happen

Hey, if gummint can’t give a hand to Gummint Motors, what will?

EPA introduces Vehicle grading to Push Chevy Volt

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation are asking the public what [they should know] to make the best economic and environmental decisions when buying a new car. The two agencies are proposing changesto the fuel economy labels consumers see on the window of every new vehicle in dealer showrooms.

To which Freedomist adds this advice:

Learn more and find out how you can view the proposed changes and offer your feedback.  Make Your Voice Heard- tell the EPA where they can put their attempt to sell a Government Motors Car (GM) by emailing them here: newlabels@epa.gov.

You should do this because of your abiding trust in gummint officials, both as to their wisdom and their loving care for you.

While you’re at it, you might do some checking from non-gummint sources, however.

From WSJ- the details of the plan

From Hotair- how GM will benefit

From Edmonds- how the American public overwhelmingly wants neither the grading NOR the overpriced electric car

Re: #3, so what? The American public is not to be trusted in the matter. Gosh!

O’Donnell, you’re soooo bad!

Get thee behind me, Charles Krauthammer.  I renounce you and all your works.

Tuesday in Delaware was a bad day not only for Republicans but also for conservatives. Tea partier Christine O’Donnell scored a stunning victory over establishment Republican Mike Castle. Stunning but Pyrrhic. The very people who have most alerted the country to the perils of President Barack Obama’s social democratic agenda may have just made it impossible for Republicans to retake the Senate and definitively stop that agenda,

he says in today’s Chi Trib, playing the tempter.

He just knows this to be true.  No chance for her, he would like to say, but as a pundit he must cover options, so to O’Reilly he said one in ten.

I say he believes it but is also repelled by the woman, who is socially conservative and un-Harvard-like in ways he finds repellent.  Like Sarah Palin. 

These women do not fit into his worldview except as viewed from the tip of one’s nose, head down slightly, just enough to make his point.

Sorry, Charles, you do not speak to my condition, I being for many months in a life of quiet desperation, politically speaking.

Later great (second) thought: Another interpretation is possible: Charles wants Obama held up at the pass so much that he’s extremely exercised about what he considers blowing the opportunity.  Which makes him too much the rational thinker, not enough the romantic.  The O’Donnell nomination is pressing Tea Party luck — too far, he says.  But this is no time to be squeamish, say the gung-ho revolutionaries, or at least rebellion-pushers.  Among which am I.

Tags: