URLs du Jour

2018-09-24

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Hah, didn't I say yesterday that things would be worse today? I claim prescience, although it doesn't extend to Powerball.

  • It's current events time, and the currentest is summarized by Robby Soave at Reason: Brett Kavanaugh Accused of Sexual Misconduct By a Second Woman.

    Another woman who knew Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh three decades ago has come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct.

    Deborah Ramirez attended Yale University with Brett Kavanaugh. They were both present at a party in a dorm room their freshman year, Ramirez told The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer. They sat in a circle with other students, consuming alcohol, and Ramirez became extremely drunk. She was "foggy and slurring her words," according to The New Yorker, when a male student exposed himself to her. She pushed him away, touching his penis in the process, she said.

    The eye-catching bit is Robby's sub-headline: "Claim that Kavanaugh exposed himself at a Yale party 35 years ago is less convincing than Ford's alleged rape, but suggests a pattern."

    Suggests a pattern? Let me tell you, readers, the Reason commenters are incandescent. Example:

    So, a second accusation with no evidence to back it up is to be accepted without question? Because I don't see how it could point to a 'pattern of behavior' otherwise. But its nice to know that I'm not part of 'the public' - or whoever you've been hanging around with. Because the rest of us are a little dicey on the whole 'I read it on the internet and it confirms my pre-existing biases, so it must be true' thing you've got going on now.

    We await further developments, in the sense that flood victims await news of tornadoes. Before it's too late, you might want to invest in our Amazon Product du Jour.


  • You may have been wondering why the Left is so consumed with hate. I'm not sure if you need a WSJ subscription to find out Shelby Steele's answer, but give it a try: Why the Left Is Consumed With Hate.

    Even before President Trump’s election, hatred had begun to emerge on the American left—counterintuitively, as an assertion of guilelessness and moral superiority. At the Women’s March in Washington the weekend after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the pop star Madonna said, “I have thought an awful lot of blowing up the White House.” Here hatred was a vanity, a braggadocio meant to signal her innocence of the sort of evil that, in her mind, the White House represented. (She later said the comment was “taken wildly out of context.”)

    For many on the left a hateful anti-Americanism has become a self-congratulatory lifestyle. “America was never that great,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said. For radical groups like Black Lives Matter, hatred of America is a theme of identity, a display of racial pride.

    For other leftists, hate is a license. Conservative speakers can be shouted down, even assaulted, on university campuses. Republican officials can be harassed in restaurants, in the street, in front of their homes. Certain leaders of the left—Rep. Maxine Waters comes to mind—are self-appointed practitioners of hate, urging their followers to think of hatred as power itself.

    The Left is dependent on finding Evil American Oppression; that's its sole raison d'être these days. Without finding someone to hate, everyone would realize their irrelevancy.

    (Scapegoating isn't confined to the Left. Just ask D. Trump.)


  • NR's Andrew C. McCarthy is indefatigable in his analysis of the twists and turns of—what are we calling it now, Russiagate? Here he looks at a recent response to an NYT story: Rod Rosenstein’s Resistance. With a classic opener:

    Rod Rosenstein is even a weasel when repudiating his weasel moves.

    It's pretty damning about a guy who, with Jeff Sessions' recusal, is in charge of Robert Mueller's never-ending investigations.


  • You may have heard the story about the arrest of desperate criminal Tammie Hedges, who committed the heinous crime of… giving medical care to pets abandoned in the wake of Hurricane Florence. At Econlib, David Henderson ponders the important question: Without Government Intervention, Who Would Kill Our Pets?

    There are large excerpts from news coverage, but the bottom line is that the pets went from Tammie's no-kill (but unlicensed!) no-kill shelter to a kill shelter, thanks to the crack law enforcement efforts of Wayne County Animal Control. Comments David:

    I don’t know whether the relevant Wayne County Animal Control person hates animals—probably not—but what I think likely is that the Wayne County Animal Control person hates competition.

    Indeed. I hope things work out for the abandoned 17 cats and 10 dogs.


  • Old Usenet buddy Clayton Cramer notes an Interesting Analogy. (Just one paragraph, and I'm Quoting The Whole Thing.)

    My wife pointed out yesterday that white entertainers in the 19th and early 20th centuries wore blackface to make stereotypical fun of blacks in minstrel shows. This is now considered offensive and would likely lead to ferocious criticism. But what is a drag queen but a man engaged in stereotypical female behaviour?

    I'm sure there are contrived "that's different" excuses out there somewhere. But Halloween is coming up, which (almost certainly) means there will be hectoring notices at the University Near Here about various "cultural appropriation" costuming heresies. (Here's one from last year.)

    But will anyone take a forthright stand against sexual appropriation?


Last Modified 2024-01-24 3:41 PM EDT