This photograph is the Democrats’ dilemma, distilled. At twenty percent of Democrats blacks punch above their weight. But they’ve earned their group privilege by way of, to put it nicely, screwing up. Black dysfunction–crime, professional mediocrity, poverty–is converted into political power by demagogy aided by the religious commandment that black problems all result from whiteContinue reading “Portrait of the Current Year”
Tag Archives: election
The Million Menses March
The Women’s March came to Portland yesterday. Tens of thousands turned out. The mood was festive and family-friendly (that is the kiddies’ physical well-being wasn’t immediately threatened), contrasting the march of the day before, which degenerated by late night into countless small standoffs with police who used tear gas and flash bangs to clear streets andContinue reading “The Million Menses March”
Palestinian-Portland Solidarity
One recurring presence among the signs and symbols in any Portland demonstration is the Palestinian flag, of course. Here it is sharing space with one of the more common specific themes of the new Trump-out demonstrations, the upside-down American flag: Portland has an active liberal Jewish community of course (I’ve suffered, and perversely enjoyed, theContinue reading “Palestinian-Portland Solidarity”
Fire and Brimstone and Fire
Westboro Baptist Church style preachers showed up at the inauguration day protests in Portland. Just as they did at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, they staked out a spot and bravely harried the crowd with intentionally offensive rhetoric. This guy held out for well over an hour. There were no other counter-protesters there. TheyContinue reading “Fire and Brimstone and Fire”
The Curious Case of Bradley’s Button
Yesterday Steve Sailer noted today how Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning’s gender dysphoria, having gone from footnote to forefront during his incarceration along with the rise of the trans rights movement, is now seen by fashionable convention as a legitimate sympathy factor favoring President Obama’s commutation of his sentence, as evidenced by the New York Times: It’sContinue reading “The Curious Case of Bradley’s Button”
Heckling the Coronation
During his first year in office, President Obama can be expected to unquestioningly acquiesce to the consensus demanding he oversee an increase in public debt twice as large, as a percentage of GDP, as any year in the Roosevelt administration. He will do this because, as any successful politician, he is congenitally incapable of recognizing,Continue reading “Heckling the Coronation”
John McCain’s Base Base
Perhaps you‘ve seen it, the near-precise moment when John McCain lost control of his campaign. The scene is a now familiar one, the bogus “town-hall meeting.” He’s passing the microphone around like a decrepit Donahue, standing before a woman who starts by saying she “can’t trust” Obama; McCain is nodding along, intimately engaged for theContinue reading “John McCain’s Base Base”
Hope and Hype
(minor clarification: “the Mortician” is David Axelrod, for his dour visage, not Ms. Obama) Ah, it had nothing to do with Kennedy. Still, all that vigor disappeared once he found out he couldn’t get anything done.–Mad Men Events, dear boy, events.–Harold MacMillan To emerge sane from the recent party conventions and the endurance test ofContinue reading “Hope and Hype”
And the Uncle Tim Goes to…
I used to be disgustednow I try to be amused–Elvis Costello, The Angels Want to Wear My Red Shoes In Slate’s unfortunately named “Big Idea” column, Jacob Weisberg, waving about the latest NY Times/CBS poll (PDF) like Joe McCarthy brandishing his list of names, campaigns for title of this season’s most conspicuously contrite white (aContinue reading “And the Uncle Tim Goes to…”
The Ecstasy and the Apostasy
I’m just retrograde enough to think that voting for Barack Obama because of the gesture it constitutes, whether to Black America’s or the world’s historical resentment, is an absurd way to go about selecting a president (and the source of a nifty political gimmick for a campaign already low on substance). But one can’t denyContinue reading “The Ecstasy and the Apostasy”
untethered 