Category Archives: Culture
Poor Mouth
Hillary’s book tour got off to a poor start during an interview with Diane Sawyer. We learned that Bill and Hill came to the White House “with no money” and left “not only dead broke but in debt“. People used to call her Patches.
It wasn’t for lack of effort, though, or “dint of hard work” as Hillary put it.
The threadbare baggage the Clintons brought to Washington from Arkansas in 1993 included the Whitewater real estate scheme. They lost $40,000 on that one. According to prosecutors, dubious loans through a failed S&L didn’t profit them either. More hard work and nothing to show for it. Plucky Hillary did finally manage to shoo the wolf from the door by turning $1,000 into $100,000 on a cattle futures trade. She attributed her investing acumen to reading the Wall Street Journal.
All that hard work finally blossomed into a happy ending with $200,000 speaking fees, multi million dollar book advances, and a bankroll over $100,000,000.
As a candidate for the 2004 nomination Howard Dean said he led the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Poor Patches now leads the limousine liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
Only in America.
Trigger Warning
Trigger warnings are the new spoiler alert on campus. Some students are demanding that professors include a warning if course material will include any of the usual offensive suspects like racism, sexism, ableism, classism, or anything else that makes them uncomfortable.
Here’s a link to Bret Stephens‘ advice to the class of 2014: “Those of you who want to lead meaningful lives need to begin unlearning most of what you’ve been taught, starting right now.”
If You Like Your VA You can Keep Your VA
When a vet asks for treatment at the Phoenix VA his request is entered into one set of books. When the time draws near that he will actually be treated he’s entered into the real set of books. That way long waits look short and bureaucrats get bonuses.
Veterans Affairs boss Eric Shinseki says he’s mad as hell about this. It’s all news to president Obama. He found out about it on CNN. Now he’s madder than hell. But not mad enough to fire Shinseki.
VA for the 21st Century
You can go here to see the President bragging in 2009 about resetting the VA for the 21st century.
Campus Speech
Well, at least the Harvard Black Mass didn’t happen Monday night.
The Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club invited the devil himself to campus. Lucifer’s speaking gig was arranged in conjunction with the New York Satanic Temple. The event was to take place in the form of a Satanic Black Mass. Joining the Prince of Darkness at the lectern was to be Harvard professor Christopher Robichaud. According to USA Today Robichaud planned to remark on religious liberty.
Not surprisingly, Catholics were outraged and the thing was moved off campus under a storm of protest. At the last moment it was cancelled altogether.
In April Brandeis University cancelled altogether its offer of an honorary doctorate for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She writes and speaks about real religious liberty and the real war on women in Muslim countries. She’s also a critic of Islam itself. Condoleeza Rice was driven away from her Rutgers University speech by unhinged faculty members and their poorly informed students accusing her of war crimes. IMF boss Christine Legarde was also disinvited from her speaking engagement at Smith University.
I’m not equating disinviting Legarde, Rice, or Ali to disinviting Satan. I’m equating academics to nuts.
In a column about the lack of due process in college, Thomas Sowell discusses “free speech” zones on campus:
The track record of academics in other kinds of cases is not the least bit encouraging as regards the likelihood of impartial justice. Even on many of our most prestigious college campuses, who gets punished for saying the wrong thing and who gets away with mob actions depends on which groups are in vogue and which are not.
This is carried to the point where some colleges have established what they call “free speech zones” — as if they are granting a special favor by not imposing their vague and arbitrary “speech codes” everywhere on campus.
The irony in this is that the Constitution already established a free speech zone. It covers the entire United States.
Mothers Day Kiss
Woke up Mothers Day morning to the sight of Michael Sam kissing his boyfriend’s cake covered face on SportsCenter… over and over and over. Sam, the first openly gay player in the league, was picked by St. Louis in the final round of the NFL draft. Football experts from Barack Obama to Peter King say this is a good thing. So it is.
No Kiss
It won’t be easy, though. I was reminded by a friend that Jonathan Martin got no kiss when his Dolphin teammates bullied him out of Miami to San Francisco last year. And Martin wasn’t even gay, just nice.
