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Lt. Harry “Breaker” Morant has passed away.
From one of the finest Australian movies of all time.
*EDIT* I see that NRO resident kulturny Jonah also recognized the greatness of this actor. Well done, Jonah, and nice choice of video.
Jamie posted this at 6:56 PM HKT on Monday, November 16th, 2009 as Those Wacky Foreigners
Hitch on St. Sarah of Wasilla:
But the problem with populism is not just that it stirs prejudice against the “big cities” where most Americans actually live, or against the academies where many of them would like to send their children. No, the difficulty with populism is that it exploits the very “people” to whose grievances it claims to give vent.
My favorite reaction so far:
I haven’t read the piece yet, but can’t help but immediately react: One of Sarah Palin’s biggest fans is John O’Sullivan. I know and love many “hicks”; John O’Sullivan is no “hick.”
I’m sure Ms. Lopez doesn’t like it when people judge her without reading what she writes. One would think she would give others the same courtesy.
Jamie posted this at 2:21 PM HKT on Monday, November 16th, 2009 as Hitch-slapped!
This video from The Center for Freedom and Progress does a great job of explaining the fallacy of the current health care “reform” packages helping to lower budget deficits:
Look, if liberals want to make the case that we have a moral obligation to provide health care to as much of the population as possible I’m willing to hear them out. However, to claim that these bills will improve our fiscal health when it hinges on accurate predictions from the CBO and promises from politicians not to overspend you are being disingenuous at best.
Jamie posted this at 2:41 PM HKT on Friday, November 13th, 2009 as Health Care
This is a decent enough post detailing Sullivan’s distaste for, and problems with, propagandists like Sean Hannity. To be frank, I share a lot of the same feelings regarding much of what Fox News does (to forestall the inevitable backlash from some commentors I will stipulate the following: Yes the librul media is just as bad most of the time, John Stewart is a pinko-lefty, blah blah blah, harumph harumph harumph – HEY! I didn’t hear a harumph out of that guy!)
Then he closes with this paragraph:
And yes, this makes the actual, living breathing representative of political conservatism in our time the current president of the United States. And anyone with any passing concern for the legacy of conservative philosophy knows it.
Really? For a man whose blog once proudly proclaimed a quote from George Orwell:
To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
this is truly pathetic.
Andrew – you are just as much a propagandist as anyone on Fox News and your condescending snide derisions make your propaganda even more unpalatable.
Jamie posted this at 2:06 PM HKT on Friday, November 13th, 2009 as What Ever Happened to Andrew Sullivan?
I’ve spilled my share of pixels criticizing the Bush Administration’s detention policy, but this strikes me as completely insane:
WASHINGTON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other men accused in the plot will be prosecuted in federal court in New York City, a federal law enforcement official said early on Friday.
But Obama the administration will prosecute Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — the detainee accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen — and several other detainees before a military commission, the official said.
The decisions to give civilian prosecutors detainees accused of the 2001 terrorist attacks and keep the case of the Cole attack within the military system are expected to be announced at the Department of Justice later on Friday by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because that news conference has not yet taken place.
Why does everyone fly to such ridiculous extremes on this subject? America gets attacked. So we capture and detain a bunch of the ringleaders prisoners indefinitely at The Only Secure Location In The World and torture them (but only just a little). Then, we have this whole rigmarole a few years back that ends with the passage of some fairly sensible legislation to try them through the military so we can be done with them and (hopefully) see them hang. Then, we completely drop the ball for the next three years and elect a new president who wavers between being a cynical bastard and being a completely reckless pie-in-the-sky lefty nutcase, as we’re seeing today!
Hi, customer service? Yes, I’d like to return this world; it’s defective.
Tom posted this at 9:58 AM HKT on Friday, November 13th, 2009 as CHANGE!, Liberty and/or Security
Defending the then-new Constitution, Publius made very strong arguments in favor of mixed regimes, with power distributed among legislative, executive, and judicial branches so as to take advantage of the strengths of each, and to prevent any from accumulating too much power. The legislative branch can take time to be deliberative, and to enact legislation that appeals to a broad swath of the country. The executive can conduct deliberations in private, and provide a single, decisive leader for foreigners to deal with (rather than a squabbling and vacillating committee).
Putting together a few recent posts, it dawns on me that between Obama and the Democrats in Congress, our government has abandoned those advantages laid out in the Constitution. The House of Representatives rushes through legislation, without time for meaningless formalities like reading the bill or counting votes. Because, I guess, we’ve got to pass laws (that even if enacted won’t take effect for months) NOW NOW NOW!
Meanwhile, the president who campaigned on winning in Afghanistan, more than a year after his election, still doesn’t have a plan for what to do, and – much worse – is publicly dithering and casting into doubt our support for the Afghan regime. While Americans die and foreigners justly doubt our steadfastness, the president continues to publicly announce that he just isn’t sure what we’ll be doing.
So here we are, with a Congress that is acting with the petulant impatience of a boy-king who’s just attained his majority, and a president who is waging war with all the decisive unity and determination of a hundred-member committee. It’s like Opposite Day at the Constitutional Convention.
Apollo posted this at 6:56 PM HKT on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 as CHANGE!, Politics, The Democratic Congress
How urgent was Nancy Pelosi’s need to pass her health bill? So urgent that she needed to swear in two representatives before the votes in their elections were counted.
What kind of banana republic is this? The next time you hear Democrats making some stupid argument about some group being “disenfranchised” because they have to show IDs to vote, point to the absentee voters of NY-23, who were literally disenfranchised: their votes did not count toward determining who won their election.
I don’t think there’s been a contested bill in the history of this republic so important that we needed to swear in Congressmen before the votes were counted. But I guess House Democrats would disagree. This ought to be a tremendous scandal.
Apollo posted this at 1:44 PM HKT on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 as Politics, The Democratic Congress
When you spin this much it must make you very very dizzy:
What we are seeing here, I suspect, is what we see everywhere with Obama: a relentless empiricism in pursuit of a particular objective and a willingness to let the process take its time. The very process itself can reveal – not just to Obama, but to everyone – what exactly the precise options are. Instead of engaging in adolescent tests of whether a president is “tough” or “weak”, we actually have an adult prepared to allow the various choices in front of us be fully explored. He is, moreover, not taking the decision process outside the public arena. He is allowing it to unfold within the public arena. Others, moreover, are allowed to take the lead: McChrystal, or Netanyahu, or Pelosi, in the case of Af-Pak, Israel-Palestine and health insurance, respectively. Obama encourages the process but hangs back, broadly – and persistently – pursuing certain objectives without tipping his hand on specifics or timing.
My only response to such a piece so blatantly divorced from reality is: Can I buy some pot from you?
Jamie posted this at 1:36 PM HKT on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 as What Ever Happened to Andrew Sullivan?
Hot damn, they invented the Tri-Corder.
Jamie posted this at 10:18 AM HKT on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 as Nerdom, Science!
It’s often thought that the aphorism “Politics is showbiz for ugly people” is descriptive. On the contrary, it is prescriptive.
If the last few years have taught us nothing else, it’s to be wary of attractive politicians. Not because good-looking people are stupid, but because they make us stupid. Witness the utter brainlessness that Sarah Palin and Barack Obama elicited from their supporters — not because of anything they did or were believed likely to do — but because they had tremendous sex appeal. It’s no more a coincide that Palin is a woman and that the GOP is disproportionally male than it is that Obama is male and democrats are disproportionally female.
The GOP’s new diva, Rep. Michelle Bachman, may not be quite as attractive as Sarah Palin, but she’s comfortably over the “hot” threshold. There also appears to be little question that she is both witless and increasingly popular among the GOP base. Now, apparently, Sean Hannity is busy misreporting (or lying) about the size of her crowds. People do funny things when people pretty are involved. Politics shouldn’t be funny that way.
Tom posted this at 11:43 AM HKT on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 as Ladies, Gentlemen, and the Rest of us, Politics
From Reason:
I’ve always said that if you don’t want “evil corporations” manipulating the system, take the power away from the system. Then there won’t be anything left to manipulate.
Jamie posted this at 11:30 AM HKT on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 as Uncategorized
You may change the shape of your bottle. You may put it a silly label on it. But so long as you keep the stuff in the bottle the same, I will love you tenderly and continue to purchase your delightful products.
Tom posted this at 12:52 AM HKT on Monday, November 9th, 2009 as Uncategorized
Let’s say you’re the Speaker of the House, and you’re interested in passing major legislation – by dollar value, the single most expensive piece of legislation in the history of the world, a piece of legislation that will restructure the entire economy of a nation that accounts for 1/4 of the economic output of the entire planet. And let’s say that you think it’s the legislation that your party has campaigned on for over a decade, and that helped usher your party to it’s greatest electoral triumph in forty years.
Do you pass it on a Saturday night, with two more votes than the bare minimum required for passage, and but a single vote from the opposition party?
The Democrats know this is a terrible bill, they know that the country is against it, and they know that if it becomes law it will lead to an epic defeat of their party. We know these things, with complete certainty, because of their actions. (Note that our worthless, lying, cowardly president is resorting to political hate speech. God may have mercy on him, but henceforward I shall have none.)
This is no way to run a democracy.
Apollo posted this at 1:45 AM HKT on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 as Politics, The Democratic Congress
This is the kind of police action one would expect in Soviet Russia or Communist China:
This is nothing but disgusting thuggery. No wonder I have no respect for cops.
Jamie posted this at 3:56 PM HKT on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 as Liberty and/or Security
This review of a Ford Fusion Hybrid provides the best description I’ve yet to read about what it’s like to drive a hybrid. This could just as easily apply to my Civic:
Like other hybrids, the Fusion has a profound effect on the driver that can only be properly compared to a personalized regimen of mood stabilizers, anti-anxiety pills and attention-deficit medication. Leaving town through Friday rush hour congestion would normally be a cut-and-thrust exercise for me, an id-tickling campaign of maximum effort leading only to minor advantages in speed and lane placement. That’s just how I roll. But despite believing deeply that traffic is a battle to be fought, I found the Fusion guiding me towards a center lane. There, the Fusion settled into a sedate, nay, a mature pace. I found myself focusing on the battery levels, indicated mpg, and accelerator level. Sure, the point of a hybrid is to be driven efficiently, but there’s more to it than that. Like any good psychotropic cocktail, the Fusion Hybrid leaves you wondering what happened to your old personality, and why the new one can’t stop fixating on something as relentlessly prosaic as fuel efficiency.
As an experienced hybrid driver, I can also fixate on feeling morally superior.
Apollo posted this at 5:56 PM HKT on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 as Ourselves