URLs du Jour

2017-01-18

True story: I was doing the acrostic in the Saturday WSJ, and one clue was:

Grammy-winning singer whose career began in the Cotton Club chorus line in 1933 (2 wds.)

Nine letters. Hm. An older African-American woman, obviously. Eartha Kitt? Maybe, but the letters didn't fit well into the grid. Oh, well, let's think about it…

But later that day, I was reading a book I got from the library, The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy. And there on page 129 was a story about Steve Allen getting hate mail from a bigot because Allen had dared to kiss a black woman on the cheek after her performance on his 1950s TV show.

The woman: Lena Horne. Hey! Where did I put that puzzle?

Coincidences can be … pretty coincidental sometimes.

  • Kevin D. Williamson offers a remedy to all those oleaginous Obama flacks deeming his tenure to be scandal-free. The VA? Spying on the press? Weaponizing the IRS and the BATF? …

    It is one thing to have a degenerate president. It is something else — something far worse — to have a degenerate government. Barack Obama may have spent the past eight years as sober as a Sunday morning (his main vice, we are told, is sneaking cigarettes) and straight as a No. 2 pencil, but he leaves behind a government that is perverted.

    … something the MSM reported as little as possible, and has now memory-holed.

  • The Live Free or Die state made Reason, but not in a good way: "Rape, Child Molestation Allegations Would Require Outside Corroboration Under Ridiculous New Hampshire Bill"

    In New Hampshire, those who commit rape or sexual abuse without witnesses present could be all but guaranteed to get away with it under a new proposal from state Rep. William Marsh (R-District 8). The measure, House Bill 106, stipulates "that a victim's testimony in a sexual assault case shall require corroboration" when the defendant has no prior sexual-assault convictions. It does not elaborate about what kind of corroboration would be sufficient.

    As the article notes, Marsh's bill would require a higher standard of proof for sexual assault than exists for other violent crimes.

  • Meanwhile, the much-ballyhooed "Women’s March on Washington", should more properly be renamed "Some Women's". Katrina Trinko at the Daily Signal: "Once Again, Feminists Silence Pro-Life Women"

    The Women’s March on Washington, scheduled to occur the day after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, had listed a pro-life group, New Wave Feminists, as a partner organization. After The Atlantic highlighted the group’s participation as a partner in the march, the Women’s March took the group off the list, saying its inclusion had been an “error.”

    That "inclusive" thing only goes so far.

  • Roger L. Simon claims to have discovered "The Real Reason John Lewis and Company Boycott the Inauguration". Executive summary: fear that Trump might succeed. I liked this:

    In any case, this is all happening against a background of what is indeed an unspoken calamity for the media, Lewis, his ideological cohorts, and whoever it is investing all this money (Soros, et al.). Liberalism and progressivism are dead. They're out of ideas. That's the untold story behind the failure of the Hillary Clinton campaign. She had no plan to run on because there is no longer a liberal-progressive plan to have, one that works anyway. There was no longer a there there. Trump won because of that, even with all those forces aligned against him.

    "Out of ideas." Exactly. These days, it's all about the accumulation of political power.

  • Speaking of which, my own CongressCritter/Toothache has announced where she will be during the Inauguration:

    Praying is good. However, I can't help but appreciate the blunt honesty of Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader:

    But [Trump] hasn’t proved himself to me at all yet, so I respectfully decline to freeze my ass out there in the cold for this particular ceremony.

    Why can't NH's Democrats be more like Oregon's? "Live Free or Freeze Your Ass Out There".


Last Modified 2019-01-06 6:29 AM EDT