Basically, the climate alarmists are asking us to cripple our economy based on prophesies that never come to pass

Climate alarmists are notoriously bad at making predictions. … there’s the UN’s 2005 prediction that fifty million climate refugees would inundate the world by 2011, an estimate that fell short by about fifty million.

Benny Huang is back and in as good shape as ever.

The doomsday clock struck midnight this May 4th as the United Nations’ predicted point-of-no-return for action on climate change passed.

… Eight years ago, the much-maligned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an artifact of the UN, declared that mankind had only eight years to drastically reduce carbon emissions if it wanted to hold global temperature change to less than two degrees Celsius.

  … Dire predictions are the bread and butter of the climate alarmist community. In January of 2009, NASA scientist and climate zealot Dr. James Hansen predicted eco-doom just a little sooner. “We cannot afford to put off change any longer,” said Hansen. “We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.”

Which hasn’t happened. As an odd twist of fate, America has reduced its carbon emissions, though only as an inadvertent byproduct of economic decline and stagnation, something President Obama would rather not take credit for. Actual legislation to combat climate change appears to be way down the list of his priorities, ranking behind healthcare and repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. President Obama has failed to shepherd a carbon tax plan through Congress, mostly because he hasn’t tried very hard.

 … The greatest contribution James Hansen could possibly make toward saving the earth would be to retire from the lecture circuit.

Could it be that Dr. Hansen et al. are engaging in a tried and true sales technique? It’s called “creating a sense of urgency” and it can be found with astonishing regularity in automobile showrooms. The unctuous salesman tries to convince you that he’s really trying to get the best deal for you and then pressures you jump on this amazing limited time offer. If you take the weekend to consider such a large purchase the promotion will be over and you’ll miss out. So don’t think, just buy.

You must act now! Time is running out!

But James Hansen is no mere salesman, is he? In a manner of speaking, he is. He’s selling an idea, and one that comes with an enormous price tag. What the climate alarmists are suggesting goes beyond carpooling and recycling. They’re basically asking us to cripple our economy based on some pretty outlandish prophesies that never come to pass.

 … In science, predictions are really where the rubber meets the road. To have any value, theories must have predictive capability. For example, when a twenty kilogram cannonball is dropped from a height of one hundred meters, scientists can accurately predict its velocity just before hitting the ground (44.27 m/s) and, knowing a little about the hardness of the surface, how much force it will exert upon impact.

That’s the way science works. Or at least that’s how it worked until a group of political activists masquerading as scientists changed the rules of the game.

When predictions miss the mark over and over again, prudent science-loving people recheck their calculations and revisit their assumptions to see what went wrong. But climate dogmatists have too often declared the science settled to admit any gaps in the theory. Consequently, the theory of global warming, or climate change, or whatever we’re calling it this week, need not provide any valid predictions. It can churn out one overblown horror story after another for nearly three decades and we’re all supposed to believe that the science is sound.
And settled.

Yesterday I was at a French dinner where one of the cheeses seemed to be in an advanced state of putrefaction

in general, we Brits are not used to seeing food that has grown a skin since it was prepared for consumption

writes Stephen Clarke.

I’m no scientist but I suspect that vast fortunes get spent by dairy companies on making sure that cartoned foods like yoghurt and rice pudding don’t grow skins. Similarly you don’t see cheeses with their rinds on in many British supermarkets, except for the lily-white perfection of the coating on a Camembert or Brie that looks more like icing on a cake. This is probably because we think it’s a bit of a rip-off to get sold a thick layer of inedible skin on such an expensive commodity, even if it doesn’t bother us when we peel mangoes.

Here in France, though, you can still buy lots of cheeses in their rinds, and there are a surprising number of small cheeses that you buy whole. Lots of people will also dig a cheese out of their fridge and scrape off the blue-green gunge that has accumulated as cheerfully if they were removing a bruise from an apple. Yesterday I was at a dinner where one of the cheeses on the board seemed to be in an advanced state of putrefaction. It had gone almost liquid and sunk in the middle like a rotten orange. But a woman squidged into it and smeared it on her plate as though she was serving caviar. It smelt like mature sock, but she pronounced it delicious. She was, I should add, a fairly posh 40-something Parisian, and there are plenty of French people out there, especially younger ones, who eat their cheese in neat metric cubes that have forgotten they ever had a skin. So i’m not sure that putrified Saint Marcelin has a great future, even here in France.

 … All of which made me laugh when a friend sent me the link to a BBC report about American food officials declaring French cheese “filthy” and inedible. The funniest thing was that it was Mimolette, a hard Edam-like cheese that even I as a Brit find a bit bland. It’s usually sold in small semi-circular slices with a curve of rind, or the kind of rectangular rindless blocks that you would think the Americans might enjoy. It’s the last cheese you would expect to get an import ban. The US food officials apparently objected to the mites on the skin, which makes you wonder whether American cheeses are ever made with rind. Maybe they’re just poured into a metal mould. Perhaps they don’t even curdle the milk any more – after all curdling is a sort of decomposition.

The tragic thing for France is that this American hang-up about food mites probably goes back to the mid-19th century when America itself infected France with an epidemic of cute yellow bugs called Phylloxera.

What Bureaucrats Do: Making Street Names Unnecessarily Longer

If we can ever be bothered to think about them, street names are usually a mystery

writes Stephen Clarke,

except maybe in American cities where it’s pretty obvious why they’ve called a road “First Avenue”. In Paris, curious passers-by and residents are often helped by little explanations on the blue enamel plaque, telling you who exactly gave their name to the thoroughfare.

 … I used to live in an excellent street in Paris – not only was it well-placed, in the Marais, it was also short and easy to spell. I pity the poor people who live in streets like the rue des Cinq Martyrs de la Révolution du 25 Mai 1848 (which doesn’t exist, but could in this country that loves to commemorate important dates in its street names). My address was in the rue Dupuis, so filling in forms was a pleasure. Recently though, I walked along it and noticed that they’ve changed the name to explain who Monsieur Dupuis was – it’s now called rue Charles-François Dupuis. He was an 18th-century scientist and politician, apparently. Perhaps the city didn’t want us to confuse him with some other Dupuis who did less noteworthy things – Jean-Paul Dupuis the serial-killing shoe repairer, maybe, who also doesn’t exist but could do in some 19th century novel.

I hope the powers-that-be won’t apply this full-name principle to all Paris’s streets, otherwise lots of residents could be in for a painful form-filling time. There’s a boulevard Beaumarchais, for example, named after the author of The Marriage of Figaro, and his full name is Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Even worse, the neat rue de Sully in the 4th is named after Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully whose other titles were Prince souverain d’Henrichemont et de Boisbelle Baron, Marquis de Rosny, Marquis de Nogent-le-Rotrou, Comte de Muret et de Villebon, Vicomte de Meau. Try to get that on a postcard.

Stephen Clarke’s book Paris Revealed is an insider’s guide to his home city, and includes a section on street-naming policies, and the history of Paris’s trademark blue enamel plaques.

Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech"

Instapundit links John Nolte's Breitbart article entitled 6 Reasons Pamela Geller’s Muhammad Cartoon Contest Is No Different From Selma.

But there's an older racial issue, and an even more central issue in American history, that can be linked to the left's current crusade against hate speech.

And that is slavery.

And believe me, leftists do not come out on the right side of history.

Far from it.

Leftists are constantly railing about "America's original sin" and about the founding fathers' alleged support for (if not introduction of) slavery in the nation.

What leftists don't know is that one of the reasons that slavery persisted in the (Southern) U.S. as long as it did is that to oppose the special institution was considered to be practicing hate speech.

Yes, to oppose slavery was considered hate speech.

No. No! Not by all Americans!

By members of the Democrat party.

When (conveniently) castigating our forefathers… (Let me add a couple of parentheses: I add "conveniently", because this allows the current generation of leftists to feel good about themselves while engaging in self-praise and bragging how wonderful they are; indeed, leftist "values" and "arguments" is little more than an incessant litany of self-praise, bragging that one is more compassionate than anyone else, bragging that one is more intelligent than anyone else, bragging that one is more understanding than anyone else, bragging that one is more tolerant than anyone else, bragging that one has more humanity than anyone else, etc, etc, etc…) When (conveniently) castigating our forefathers (therefore) for allowing slavery to have lasted so long, or for having slaves at all, or for "introducing" slavery to the American continent, I wonder if leftists realize that one of the reasons it persisted was the Democrat Party's opposition to… (wait for it)… to… hate speech.

And the practitioners of hate speech (the abolitionists) were considered unethical, unrealistic, delusional crazies, who deserve little else but the utmost disgust — you might even say that they were the equivalent of today's demonized Tea Partiers.

Don't believe me?

Think that sounds far-fetched? Or too far-fetched?

Ask Abraham Lincoln.

Of course, the 21st-century term "hate speech" was not used, as such.

But listen to the Sixth Debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, at Knox College (full disclosure: I am working on a graphic novel biography with artist Dan Greenberg on The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln), and ask yourself if "hate speech" to be avoided (and opposed) at all costs is not what Abe is referring to when he describes the travails of the Republican Party.

Before we do read the appropriate part in the Sixth Debate, however, let's quickly take a look at another part of that debate, something echoed in the Seventh Debate.

1) The Presence of Slavery at the Founding of the USA Is Always Taken by Democrats—Either Favorably or Unfavorably—as the Founding Fathers' Intended Support For, If Not Creation of, the Institution

Today's Democrats would have citizens believe that America is (or was) a horrid, wretched place because slavery was present at the founding of the American Republic.

Yesterday's (i.e., the nineteenth century's) Democrats would have citizens believe that critics of slavery were horrid, wretched people because slavery was present at the founding of the American Republic.

Are these opposite or mutually exclusive? No. Why? Because in all cases, what Democrats are doing is nothing more than engaging in their ritual litany of self-praise (19th-c leftists praising themselves for loyally following the traditions of the American Republic, 20th- and 21st-century leftists praising themselves for refusing to close their eyes on the true evil nature of the American Republic). In either case, Democrats seem to simply refuse to use their brains and see things in context, while — deliberately or otherwise — perpetuating what Lincoln called "historically a falsehood".

As Lincoln said in the Sixth Debate:

 … I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter of choice, the fathers of the Government made this nation part slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More than that: when the fathers of the Government cut off the source of slavery by the abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why he and his friends could not let it remain as our fathers made it?

What Lincoln did in preparation for the debates was spend hours in the Illinois statehouse library and look up all the documents from the time of the writing of the Constitution, discovering in the process that not a single one of the founding fathers — Northern or Southern (!) — had ever meant for, or ever expected, or ever intended for, slavery to continue unabated.

(You understand why leftists cannot allow schoolchildren to learn (too much) about the Lincoln-Douglas debates these days, as it would be much harder to demonize the United States — along with Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, etc etc etc — all the while engaging in unending self-laudatory remarks. No no—much better that our kids learn of much more important things, such as the the horrific—horrific, I tell you—situation of gays and lesbians throughout  American history, with its attendant weeping and gnashing of teeth.)

The Rail-Splitter repeats the above fact in the Seventh Debate:

 … the fathers of the Government expected and intended the institution of slavery to come to an end. They expected and intended that it should be in the course of ultimate extinction. … It is not true that our fathers, as Judge Douglas assumes, made this Government part slave and part free. Understand the sense in which he puts it. He assumes that slavery is a rightful thing within itself,—was introduced by the framers of the Constitution. The exact truth is, that they found the institution existing among us, and they left it as they found it. But in making the Government they left this institution with many clear marks of disapprobation upon it. They found slavery among them, and they left it among them because of the difficulty—the absolute impossibility—of its immediate removal. And when Judge Douglas asks me why we cannot let it remain part slave and part free, as the fathers of the Government made it, he asks a question based upon an assumption which is itself a falsehood …

2) Considered Uncouth and Extremist, Like "Hate Speech" Today, Criticism of Slavery Was to Be Avoided and the Boorish Critics Were to Be Gagged If and When Possible

And now, back to the Hate Speech part of the Sixth Debate; see if what Old Abe is discussing isn't the equivalent of shocking examples of speech that Democrats say need to be restricted.

I will say now that there is a sentiment in the country contrary to me—a sentiment which holds that slavery is not wrong, and therefore it goes for the policy that does not propose dealing with it as a wrong. That policy is the Democratic policy, and that sentiment is the Democratic sentiment. If there be a doubt in the mind of any one of this vast audience that this is really the central idea of the Democratic party, in relation to this subject, I ask him to bear with me while I state a few things tending, as I think, to prove that proposition.

 … If there be a man in the Democratic party who thinks it is wrong, and yet clings to that party, I suggest to him in the first place that his leader don't talk as he does, for he never says that it is wrong. … I suggest to him that if he will examine the policy proposed to be carried forward, he will find that he carefully excludes the idea that there is any thing wrong in it. If you will examine the arguments that are made on it, you will find that every one carefully excludes the idea that there is any thing wrong in slavery. Perhaps that Democrat who says he is as much opposed to slavery as I am, will tell me that I am wrong about this. I wish him to examine his own course in regard to this matter a moment, and then see if his opinion will not be changed a little.

You say it is wrong; but don't you constantly object to any body else saying so? Do you not constantly argue that this is not the right place to oppose it? You say it must not be opposed in the free States, because slavery is not here; it must not be opposed in the slave States, because it is there; it must not be opposed in politics, because that will make a fuss; it must not be opposed in the pulpit, because it is not religion. 

Then where is the place to oppose it? There is no suitable place to oppose it. There is no plan in the country to oppose this evil overspreading the continent, which you say yourself is coming. …

 … turn it in any way you can, in all the arguments sustaining the Democratic policy, and in that policy itself, there is a careful, studied exclusion of the idea that there is any thing wrong in slavery.

3) American Slavery and Abolitionism in the Context of World History

Of course, some might say that slavery existed for 5,000, for 10,000 years previously, so perhaps rooting it out in the space of some 73 years ain't in the final analysis all that bad.

To use Instapundit's regular quote of Robert Heinlein's,

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. 

(The science-fiction author goes on to say that: "Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.” ")

So, for centuries, for millenia, grinding poverty was the normal condition of mankind, with the vast majority of people throughout the world living a life of poverty and ennui, doing little more than working their farms to feed themselves, and rarely subsisting on more than the equivalent of $3 a day.

Next to that, how bad was slavery?

Compared to the bane of poverty that most people lived in, how terrible was it to be a slave, how immoral was it to own slaves?

Seriously.

Now, the spittle-flecked will scream that I am a racist with no empathy defending Southern plantation-owners. And a number of conservatives might join their chorus.

But it is time that we own up to one basic fact:

Slavery — like poverty — in the past was ubiquitous.

Both started coming to an end (some places faster than others, but certainly all over the West) after the American Revolution and the advent of capitalism (which some of us prefer to call, simply, the free market), along with the industrial revolution in the land of their English-speaking cousins.

I.e., slavery started coming to and end in, and thanks to, the English-speaking nations.

And yet, the only slavery the nitpickers (American or foreign) condemn, revile, and wail and gnash their teeth over is slavery in the US of A. South American slavery of Africans? No, not so much. White slavery of whites (from Rome to the 19th century)? No. Arab slavery of Christians? No. Arab slavery of (other) Arabs? No. Black slavery of blacks? No. Slavery today, from the Arab world to the African continent? No. The only slavery that is rendered in apocalyptic tones—the most apocalyptic tones possible ("America's original sin"!!)—is America's. (Is it any wonder that I conclude that we are living in the era of the drama queens?)

(When Amazon banned the sale of all items bearing the Confederate flag in the wake of the nine black churchgoers killed in Charleston by a white racist, Breitbart's Katie McHugh (képi tip to Sarah Hoyt) pointed out that the giant retailer had no compunction to continue selling all sorts of communist merchandise—with not a word concerning the millions of enslaved laborers on the gulag, not to mention the 94 million deaths world-wide—"featuring the hammer and sickle, Joseph Stalin’s mustache, all things Che Guevara, Vladimir Lenin and other colorful revolutionaries".)


And conservatives jump on this bandwagon. Even conservatives as diverse as Scott Rasmussen, Milton Friedman, David P Goldman (alias Spengler), and Onan Coca buy into this. Ben Stein refers to "the horrors of slavery" while the Washington Examiner speaks of the "long-festering wounds that were the terrible national legacy of slavery."

In the Prager University video Don't Judge Blacks Differently, Chloe Valdary refers to racism as "a stain so deeply ingrained in our culture" while bemoaning "the disparity between the races". Saying "America made grave and profound moral errors with regard to race", Jonah Goldberg calls slavery "an evil institution" that "will always remain a stain on America’s honor."

See, I am not defending slavery, but what the drama queens are doing, and getting conservatives to go along with, is perpetuating historical falsehoods, along with false comparisons, such as comparing the life of a slave (but only a black slave in the United States, you understand by now, not any others) to life in today's modern world (which truly would be nothing but atrocious) while ignoring the dreary poverty that life was for most people, black as well as white, in the West as throughout the rest of the world, up until the 18th and 19th centuries.


4) The Arguments Southerners Used to Defend Slavery in the 19th Century Sound Strangely Similar to Those of Leftist Heroes the World Over in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Indeed, when Southerners defended slavery, they brought out what was hardly an unreasonable argument; they said that that "freedom" among the Yankees was a mirage—that the only freedom the workers had there was the freedom to croak—and that they (the Southerners), at least, were taking care of their blacks, taking care of them from the cradle to the grave no less. And ain't that generous of them?!

You think that sounds ridiculous? Alright; so do I. Am I defending slavery? Am I defending the Southerners who practiced it? Am I "ridiculously" enamored of the image of ante-bellum plantation life? Not at all. Au contraire: notice how the Southern defense of slavery (we are taking care of our blacks/of the people/of our citizens) is not a conservative position; in no way is it so.

This is the liberal, the progressive, the smiley face position of the left, with all their good intentions and all their central plans, from LBJ to Barack Obama, from Allende and Che Guevara to Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, from Scandinavia's "we-enlightened-people-support-all-members-of-society" nations to Western Europe's incomparably glorious health care systems. Coupled with their outraged condemnation of the Yankees' evil capitalism (Yankees here meaning all American citizens and not just, as among 19th-century Southerners, American citizens from North of the Mason-Dixon line).

You may wonder (whether you lean left or right), really, is there no difference? There are a couple of differences, actually. First of all, the Southern plantation owners are private citizens, businessmen, while the others all embody the state and its armies of bureaucrats.

Right there, our leftist friends have an additional reason to attack slavery, with a fit of anger: wasn't slavery private business, after all, the affair of ruthless capitalists? (Actually, no it was not the free market, since the blacks had no freedom and no say in the matter.) In any case, compare this with the non-committal, neutral response to the far more cruel societies of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot ("Sure, sure, of course we condemn the Soviet Union and China's millions of dead … but… at least… we have to admit… that… they had good intentions").

What 19th-century Democrats were telling their castigators, in effect—to return to the hate speech point—was "at least we have good intentions (and if you have the outrageous gall not to believe that, you must be a worthless, ridiculous, laughable excuse of a human being with no values of empathy who ought to be shut up)".

Second difference, the goal of the statists seems to be to create a playground, one in which they tell the citizenry: "Don't worry, we support you, society supports you, just use your earnings (what's left after taxes) to make your life pleasant and comfortable, and we'll take care of the rest—your protection, your safety, your health care, your lot in life, everything." What the Southern plantation owners demanded, of course, was that their slaves work, work hard, and indeed engage in back-breaking, exhausting work. Question: are today's leftists more concerned with the freedom of the citizen or with the fact that his overlords do not provide him with a playground but ask him to work (admittedly, back-breaking work)?

Ben Carson is attacked for saying Obamacare is akin to slavery.

I keep getting emails from Barack Obama in which he tells me he wants to continue fighting for the American people.

In that sense, he has truly succeeded in "fundamentally transforming the United States".

For wasn't the American Dream the dream to get money, and thereby to get riches, and thereby to get power, and thereby to get independence?

Wasn't the American Dream the freedom from having to look and to appeal (just like in Europe) to our betters, to our leaders, to our smiley-face bureaucrats, to our "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" politicians, to intervene in our lives (with the bestest of intentions, natch)?



5) Republicans in the 19th Century Were As Castigated, As Ridiculed, and As Demonized As Today's GOP Members Are—If Not More

You can hardly find a description of the Garland's Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest, pro or con, without the writer (again, pro or con) feeling the necessity to have no choice but vilify Pamela Geller in the harshest of terms, as a human being of the most horrid of sorts (from shrill and obnoxious to possibly outright racist).

Guess what, Democrats! That is exactly (as we have seen) how your party treated abolitionists in the 19th century. As the lowest, and as the vilest, of human beings.

It is often said that Abraham Lincoln was a racist (the—few—times he used the N word, he actually appears to have been quoting Stephen Douglas's words back to him) — or that he had no choice, willingly or otherwise, but to appeal to the common racism of the American people. (Thus the modern-day leftist has history conveniently written down, once again, in a way in which America's forefathers are all demonized, as bigots, while modern leftists like he or she appear wise and humanistic.)

As John Nolte writes,

When you are dealing with the mainstream media, it is always difficult to tell if you are dealing with willful ignorance or just plain old ignorance-ignorance. There are plenty of moronic savants in the national media who have cracked the “hot take” code to please their left-wing masters but have no fundamental grasp of history, or much of anything much of else.

Leftists have again twisted history, as Jonah Goldberg notes in Liberal Fascism, to condemn Americans en masse while leaving the Democratic party unscathed.

…In the liberal telling of America's story, there are only two perpetrators of official misdeeds: conservatives and "America" writ large. Progressives, or modern liberals, are never bigots or tyrants, but conservatives often are. For example, one will virtually never hear that the Palmer Raids, Prohibition, or American eugenics were thoroughly progressive phenomena. These are sins America itself must atone for. Meanwhile, real or alleged "conservative" misdeeds — say, McCarthyism — are always the exclusive fault of conservatives and a sign of the policies they would repeat if given power.

What Lincoln had to do, rather, was less "appeal to the common racism" per se of the average American per se than to distance himself from those demonized abolitionists.

In the very same manner that Republicans, today, are constantly being asked, requested, to differentiate themselves from "far-right" "extremists" of such groups as the Tea Party.

That's right: the abolitionists of the 19th century were as demonized and ridiculed (today's castigators of slavery will be happy to know) as the members of the Tea Party are today.

And how about members of the nascent Republican Party? How were they treated in the 1850s? Can you imagine?

Well, only five years ago, James Carville referred to (modern-day) Republicans as "reptiles".

And 150 years ago, when an Illinois Republican felt the necessity to address himself to Southerners and Democrats (during his Cooper Union
speech in 1860), guess which term Abe Lincoln reached for:

…when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles [!], or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans]. In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

"Reptiles, outlaws, pirates, murderers"… How often have Republicans been called terrorists in the past seven years?  (And in the years, in the decades, before that?)

So maybe we should take with a pinch of salt all the alleged decrees that the Democratic and Republican parties have switched positions between them and how, today, Lincoln would "obviously" be a Democrat.

You might be tempted to dismiss such (self-serving) musings — along with comparisons of the likes of Barack Obama to such illustrious predecessors as Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan — as not the fruit of intellectual investigation, analysis, and arguments but—again—as part of its incessant litany of self-congratulation.

(Is it any wonder that I assert that The Leftist Worldview in a Nutshell can be summarized as A World of Deserving Dreamers Vs. Despicable Deplorables ?)

Indeed, debate over the causes of the Civil War veer between the South's defense of slavery and the South's (alleged) fight for state rights.

How about a much simpler solution?

Isn't the truth looking at us from the center of the room?

Isn't the main reason that, then as now, Democrats (ever "fighting for the American people") did not want to be ruled by such low-life scum (reptiles, outlaws, pirates, murderers, terrorists, haters, etc) as Republicans, as abolitionists, as Tea Partiers?

Update: The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History

French politicians still think that one of the privileges of getting elected is to act like a 19th-century prince

France has long thought of itself as the sexiest place on the planet

notes Stephen Clarke,

and the male politicians think they’re top of the social heap, so they assume that they’re infinitely desirable, and completely untouchable (not literally, of course – touching is what it’s all about).

One problem seems to be that journalists in general treat the politicians like stars. Of course I’m not saying that the women journalists in any way deserve to be subjected to sexist remarks. But if reporters spend their time chasing after politicians begging them for interviews about who they might support in an election two or three years away, and thereby imply that the politiicians’ influence is so great that the whole nation wants to hear their opinion, it is going to go to their heads (and elsewhere).

I’ve said it before, but I think it’s worth repeating: the French Revolution didn’t sweep away the élite, it just created a new one. In my book Dirty Bertie, I described how the young English Prince (the future Edward VII) fitted effortlessly into this system when he started coming to Paris on sex tourism trips in the mid-19th century. In France, as a member of the international elite, he was accorded as much respect, if not more, than back home under the British monarchy. He could (and did) proposition any woman he wanted – married or not – and the understanding was that she was a prude if she declined or took offence.

It’s exactly the same today with the political elite. A young female journalist threatens to complain to the police because a politician is chasing her around his office? Who does she think she is?

The 40 female journalists who wrote the open letter didn’t name the politicians. I have been told a couple of them by a friend of a one of the journalists, and I was pretty surprised. They’re men who ought to be afraid of losing their jobs (and all their privileges) if anyone catches them at it on camera. But apparently they still think that one of the privileges of getting elected is to act like a 19th-century prince.

Stephen Clarke’s new book How the French Won Waterloo (Or Think They Did) will be published soon in English. It’s out already in French, but the second half of the title is missing, for some strange reason. It’s just Comment les Français Ont Gagné Waterloo.

Related: Jacques Chirac's Golden Rule While on the Road (NSFW)

Obama takes jab at Fox News over portrayal of poverty

Fox Business' Stuart Varney reacts to Barack Obama’s jab at Fox News over its portrayal of poverty.

(Look at 02:00, as the (left) camera pans from Obama and a neighbor towards a man with glasses with black frames [he is also the man on the right earlier, at 00:10, shaking hands with Barack Obama]. Isn't that our old friend Jonathan Gruber? Nah, it can't be…)

Jacques Chirac's Golden Rule While on the Road (NSFW)

According to a laughing Rose­lyne Bache­lot, writes Voici's Mathias Alcaraz, the former government minister's favorite Jacques Chirac quote was the following:

Il me disait toujours “Tu sais, quand tu es en dépla­ce­ment, il ne faut jamais perdre une occa­sion de bouf­fer, de pisser, de baiser”

He always told me, "You know, when you are on the road, you must never waste an opportunity to eat, to take a piss, to get laid."

(FYI, all three verbs used by Chirac are slang words, with the latter one closer to the F-word.)

Ensuite, il allait aux toilettes et il me disait “Y’en a plus que deux à faire!”

Then he would head off to the restroom, and quip "one down, two to go."

Related: French politicians still think that one of the privileges of getting elected is to act like a 19th-century prince

My father and millions of Soviet soldiers, sailors, and airmen, virtual slaves, brought the world not liberation but another slavery

Every year on May 9, Victory Day in Russia — marking the anniversary of the day that news of the German surrender in 1945 reached Moscow — my father would go to the closet and take out his sailor’s uniform, which required regular alteration to accommodate his growing belly, and pin on his medals.

Thus Mikhail Shishkin remembers the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 in a New York Times piece entitled How Russians Lost the War.

It was so important to me to be proud of my father: There had been a war and my papa had won it!

When I grew up, I realized that in 1944 and 1945, my father was sinking ships that were evacuating German civilians and troops from Riga, in Latvia, and Tallinn, in Estonia. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people met their deaths in the waters of the Baltic — for which my father received his medals. It’s been a long time since I was proud of him, but I don’t judge him. It was war.

My father fought the evil of fascism, but he was taken advantage of by another evil. He and millions of Soviet soldiers, sailors and airmen, virtual slaves, brought the world not liberation but another slavery. The people sacrificed everything for victory, but the fruits of this victory were less freedom and more poverty.

My father was 6 when his father was arrested. A son wants to be proud of his father, but his father was called an enemy of the people. My grandfather perished in the gulag.

When the war began, the persecuted population heard from the loudspeakers, “Brothers and sisters!” The baseness of Russia’s rulers lies in the way they have always taken advantage of this remarkable human emotion: the love of homeland and the willingness to sacrifice everything for it.

So my father went off to defend his homeland. He was still a boy when he went to sea, in constant terror of drowning in that steel coffin. He ended up protecting the regime that killed his father.

The victory gave the slaves nothing but a sense of the grandeur of their master’s empire. The great victory only reinforced their great slavery.

After the war, my father drank. All his submariner friends did. What else could they do?

  … The chief Russian question is: If the fatherland is a monster, should it be loved or hated? Here everything has run together, inseparably. Long ago, a Russian poet put it this way: “A heart weary of hate cannot learn to love.”

 

Of course, I wish my homeland victory. But what would constitute a victory for my country? Each one of Hitler’s victories was a defeat for the German people.

Did stereotypes used to be called monotypes? (A better name, perhaps…)

It is a cliché that clichés are clichés because some of them are true

writes Stephen Clarke.

Similarly, stereotypes are usually stereotypes because they are based on observation – they’re not necessarily a bad thing. (By the way I wonder if stereotypes used to be called monotypes. A better name, perhaps, for a single sort of person that is meant to characterize a whole set of people.)

Anyway, I say all this as an advance apology. I am about to tell a [Parisian story] that conform to Parisian stereotypes. My only defence is that [the event] happened. In Paris, too.

 … I was having a quick coffee in the Marais, at a place where I stop off sometimes when I’m in the area. I stood at the bar, and noticed I was the only one doing so. The other customers all seemed to be sit-down tourists. I had a quick read of the paper, paid, leaving a small tip as you do, then turned to go. As I did so, I heard a growl behind me and noticed that the waitress had been charging past with a tray, and had been forced to slam on the brakes when I turned away from the bar into her path. I apologized – “pardon” – and got out of her way. As she put her tray on the bar, she replied, “You should watch where you’re going! Merde!”

Of course we don’t know, and it wasn’t the right time to ask, what’s been going on in her life recently. Money worries, husband troubles, her favourite player is out of the French Open, who knows. It is very rare for Parisian waiters and waitresses to let the customer hear this kind of aggression, although they must think it quite often, for example when people take hours (well, OK, seconds) to order, or complain that they wanted a ham and cheese sandwich and not a ham and cheese omelette, or ask what’s in the beef lasagne. So I just said “Is that how you talk to your customers?” and left. There are half a dozen cafés in the same street, I don’t need to go back to that one. But i thought that she’d really let the side down. I’ve been defending Parisian waiters for years, saying they can seem brusque but they’re just being professional – they have to work fast and sometimes we the customers hold them up, but be polite and they will too. Now I was disappointed to have been proved wrong. After all, if you can’t rely on a Parisian waiter or waitress to look down on you in imperious silence, what is the world coming to? It’s like Jeeves telling Bertie Wooster to go and f**k himself (which, I must admit, he occasionally deserves.)

The thing is, the Parisian waiters and taxi drivers who aren’t nice to tourists aren’t nice to anybody, ever

The French love their summer traditions

notes Stephen Clarke

– the Bastille Day parade, for example, when the Champs Elysées is covered in tanks and soldiers and the air overhead rumbles to the sound of jet fighters, while, down in the residential marquee, arms buyers from all over the world note the serial numbers and hand in their orders. Another one is the annual attempt to break the record for the longest-ever traffic jam, when almost everyone in the nation gets in their car and tries to drive along the same stretch of autoroute at the same time, having a quick rest in the south of France and then repeating the record attempt in the other direction.

A lesser-known summer tradition is the regular campaign to suggest that the French, and the Parisians in particular, need to be nicer to tourists. Every year, newpaper articles and TV shows do shock-horror features about unfriendly waiters, hotel receptionists, taxi drivers and shop assistants. I often get to join in the fun. Several times over the past few years I’ve been invited by French TV crews to go out and prove that Parisian waiters are all bastards. When I object that they’re not, the TV people say, “don’t worry, we’ll find some”, or “you can annoy them so much that they turn bad”.

Once, I agreed against my better judgement to sit down at midday at a table that was laid for lunch and order a coffee, an act of folly that will usually result in the waiter asking me to sit elsewhere, preferably in another café. I used to get annoyed about this, but now I understand.

 … This year, the city of Paris has decided to annoy all its waiters, receptionists, taxi drivers and sales assistants at once by sending them a booklet explaining that they have to stop being nasty to tourists. This will almost certainly be counter-productive. Those who are generally nice to tourists will take offence, while those who aren’t will take revenge.

 … The thing is, the Parisian waiters and taxi drivers who aren’t nice to tourists aren’t nice to anybody, ever. They’re genetically grumpy and you’re not going to change them. As for the others, well, tourists simply need to be aware that the concept of ‘the customer is always right’ doesn’t exist here. The rule in Paris is that the tourist is usually a badly informed idiot. Which is, after all, the basic nature of the tourist.

 … Anyway, visitors to a country are by nature going to be ignorant to some degree about the country they’re visiting, and this irritates the naturally impatient, stressed-out Parisian waiter or waitress who has probably been up since dawn, sweated their way to work on public transport and been on his or her feet for hours. The same goes for taxi drivers, who spend their whole careers dealing with other Parisian drivers, a fate rather like spending your life in a fish tank of piranhas.

Stephen Clarke’s book Paris Revealed is full of handy hints on how to deal with the French, and explains why Parisians act the way they do. It also contains tips on where to see great art without queueing for hours, how not to choose a hotel, and how to use the Métro without getting elbowed in the ribs.

"David" Miliband and "Nicholas" Farage Are Two of the Losers in the UK Elections

Blame it on the stress of the breaking news cycle, but twice, Fox News' Greg Palkot got the (first) names of British leaders wrong.

At 00:57, he gets Ed Miliband's first name mixed up with David Cameron's.

And at 02:08, UKIP's Nigel Farage becomes Nicholas Farage.

No biggie, and nothing to get excited about, but that's what the news stress will do for you some days.

VE Day: Vera Lynn shares wartime memories

Vera Lynn is still alive?!

I had no idea!!

Here is one of her most famous songs, White cliffs of Dover.

70 Years Ago, the German Army in Denmark Surrendered, and Joyful Danes Filled the Streets of Copenhagen

For the past couple of weeks, Denmark has been celebrating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, as can be seen in a Berlingske Tidende photo display.

A message on a resistance fighter's car seems to say that his group has executed seven snitches.

May Day, the day when the French celebrate the “festival of work” by not working

It’s May 1, the day when the French celebrate the “festival of work” by not working

wrote Stephen Clarke five days ago.

Yes, old joke. And not a very accurate one.

There are buses this morning, the Métro is running as usual, the cafés are open, and lots of people are out in the rain, selling little sprigs of lily of the valley, the traditional May 1 flower. Some of the flower sellers have been over-working in my opinion. It’s pretty difficult these days to find a straightforward sprig of “muguet” without extraneous leaves or alien flowers tucked in there to raise the price.

A Legal Immigrant Testifies: America is a tolerant nation, but immigration is not a right, it is a privilege

I am a legal immigrant

writes Ida Tiongco to The Economist from New York City.

America is a tolerant nation, but immigration is not a right, it is a privilege, and countries should guard their borders. People like myself do not question the deportation of those who broke American laws. We came here legally and expect others to do so.

Amnesty: Nothing could be more illiberal and cruel, and nothing impoverishes America more than rewarding those who violate its laws

I am tired of The Economist’s repetitive fulminations against America deporting illegal immigrants (“Barack Obama, deporter-in-chief”, February 8th)

wrote an irate reader of The Economist, David Donnelly, a year ago from Bangkok.

After all, they have broken the law. But more significant by far is the message that any kind of amnesty sends to the millions of people trying to emigrate to America who follow the rules but are turned down.

I have worked in Thailand for 15 years and I see daily the hundreds of Thais visiting the American embassy to try to emigrate by adhering to our procedures; less than 3% gain admission. The situation is the same all over Asia and the developing world. There is little sympathy for those who don’t get a visa. Yet illegal immigrants from Mexico are to be rewarded for violating the law merely because America shares a border with Mexico.

Such a policy promotes rather than discourages illegal immigration. Nothing could be more illiberal and cruel, and nothing impoverishes America more than rewarding those who violate its laws. Few, if any, “nativists” oppose letting talented and educated immigrants into America legally.

How electoral “firsts” work: The modus operandi is for the media to constantly harp on the fact that their preferred candidate suffers a handicap because he or she is different, which requires them to malign America as a very dark place

Chelsea Clinton thinks America should elect her mother president because she’s a woman

writes Benny Huang.

She’s setting the tone for the next presidential election, making it about gender when it should really be about issues. Her mother employed very much the same tactic in 2008 when she tried to make her seemingly inevitable election into a historic “first” for women. Her hopes were dashed when a (half) black guy hijacked the oppression narrative and ran away with the nomination. His blackness trumped her femininity.

What Clinton was trying to do in 2008 was to demonstrate what a hard row she had to hoe with all of those sexist men out there trying to preserve the presidency as a boys’ club. In New Hampshire, a group of supposed male chauvinists heckled her with shouts of “Iron my shirt!” Without missing a beat, Clinton retorted, “Ah, the remnants of sexism—alive and well,” which elicited cheers from the crowd. After the applause had died down, she added: “As I think has just been abundantly demonstrated, I am also running to break through the highest and hardest glass ceiling.”

You go, girl!

How convenient it was to have a few foot soldiers in the #waronwomen right there in the audience to illustrate her point. Almost too convenient. A New York Daily News reporter followed the two hecklers, later revealed to be Nick Gemelli and Adolfo Gonzalez, to their cars. Shockingly, Gemelli’s ride sported a “Hillary for President” bumper sticker, which he was at a loss to explain. The two young men were actually interns at a Boston radio station and they passed the incident off as some kind of radio prank.

Gemelli and Gonzalez were obviously plants. The whole thing was stage-managed to make Hillary Clinton appear to be a feminist warrior battling heroically against the forces of reactionary sexism.

Which is what these electoral “firsts” are always about. They are products manufactured by campaigns and marketed by the news media. If that sounds kind of redundant it’s because the media and the Democratic Party are so interwoven that they sometimes appear to be the same thing.

Allow me to explain how electoral “firsts” work. The modus operandi here is for the media to constantly harp on the fact that their preferred candidate suffers a handicap because he or she is different, which naturally requires them to malign America as a very dark place, full of sexism, racism, this “-ism,” and that “-ism.” Then the media ask if we’re “ready” for someone who’s a little different to serve in a particular office.

The implication is that if the media’s preferred candidate is rejected at the polls then only the residual prejudices of yesteryear can be blamed. As an added bonus, it also forces the opposing candidate’s supporters to constantly explain that they aren’t motivated by bigotry.

I’ve noticed that the media’s concern for “firsts” seems a little lacking when the “first” is a Republican. Considering the media’s fixation on race and racism, it’s a little odd that they aren’t more interested in the one and a half Hispanics now running for president—Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. But they’re Republicans, and while I fully expect the media soon to ask if they’re too brown for the GOP, they will never portray either of them as racial trailblazers struggling against bigotry the way Obama was portrayed during his two presidential campaigns.

Why not? Isn’t our willingness to elect people of various backgrounds the yardstick by which we measure progress? Oh, that depends.

In 2008, the media asked if America was too racist to elect a black president but we elected one despite the fact that he couldn’t assemble a coherent sentence without a teleprompter. So America has been acquitted, right? Not so fast. In 2012, the media asked if America was too racist to reelect a black president.

Did they miss 2012’s other potential electoral “first”? We had never had a Mormon in the White House, and still haven’t. So where was the pressure campaign to elect a Mormon?

Apples and oranges, some will say, because Mormons haven’t endured quite the same suffering in this country as blacks. Okay. Of course, Mormons were never enslaved but they were forcibly driven from a few US states and it was legal to murder them in Missouri until 1976. But let’s not lose focus on the more important question—which group faces a steeper climb to elected office?

 … These silly games we play with “firsts” are really the worst kind of politics. If we want to realize the country that Chelsea Clinton claims to want—one in which equal opportunity is the rule—we have to dispense with all of the stupid jockeying for victimhood. Look at how shameless it’s become—Hillary Clinton actually perpetrated a hoax against herself to make it appear that she, a political titan, was actually the lovable underdog, and for no other reason than because she’s a woman. The proper way to create the equal opportunity that Chelsea Clinton claims to want is to make elections about issues rather than race or gender.

France to investigate sex abuse claims against soldiers in Central Africa

A Parisian prosecutor says an investigation is under way into claims French soldiers in the Central African Republic sexually abused children

reports the BBC.

France sent an initial 1,600 troops to the country in December 2013 after violence flared following a coup.

On Wednesday, the Guardian newspaper reported that a United Nations worker was suspended after leaking a report on abuses by French troops.

It says a UN report claimed children as young as nine were abused.

 … A spokesman for France's Ministry of Defence said in a statement: "The defence ministry has taken and will take the necessary measures to allow the truth to be found.

"If the facts are proven, the strongest penalties will be imposed on those responsible for what would be an intolerable attack on soldiers' values."

South Vietnam's Fall 40 Years Later: America had been humbled in 1975, even humiliated, and the Left… threw a party!

The image was heartbreaking

writes Benny Huang of a war that ended 40 years ago, without the stars and stripes flying high

—soldiers and Marines crowding together atop the final American outpost in a country that wouldn’t exist the moment they lifted off. Historian Dominic Sandbrook summed up the mood: “For the Americans who fled Saigon in those desperate hours, there were no words to describe the grief and shame they felt that morning. In two weeks, they had supervised the evacuation of six thousand Americans and more than more than fifty thousand Vietnamese: a heroic effort under any circumstances but one that fell short of an honorable exit. ‘The rest of our lives, we will be haunted by how we betrayed those people,’ one diplomat said on the USS Okinawa. ‘It made me cry when I got here. There were lots of people who were crying when they got here.’”

 … Just two years prior, Henry Kissinger had negotiated the Paris Peace Accords which essentially solidified everything that the United States had been fighting for. North Vietnam agreed to accept South Vietnam’s existence while the United States promised to return if Hanoi did not honor the deal. It was an agreement both sides were destined to break.

While brave military men cried and those loyal to the Republic of Vietnam were killed or deported to “reeducation camps,” the mood here at home was starkly different. Among certain segments of the population it could only be described as elation.

On May 11^th fifty thousand jubilant revelers staged a celebration in New York’s Central Park. One reporter described it as a “joyous all-day carnival of songs and speeches in the perfect sunshine.” One person in attendance told a reporter: “There’s a lot of lumps in a lot of throats. It’s unbelievable. Today is the first day I finally realize the war is over.”

“Over” was such a strange word. For Americans, the war had already been over for two years, when the last combat troops left Vietnam. But that was not enough for the most strident activists who would not rest until the country we had bled so much to protect was washed away like a sand castle on the beach. Not surprisingly, Congresswoman Bella Abzug, who belonged to at least one communist front group, delivered a rousing speech that day. She had been instrumental in cutting off aid to our flailing ally and opposing any effort to enforce the terms of the treaty. It would not be an overstatement to call her Hanoi’s best friend.

But for the South Vietnamese the war wasn’t really over even on April 30^th. Their war had just begun, as they were murdered, tortured, and sent to the regime’s 150 “reeducation camps” to be indoctrinated in the virtues of Marxism-Leninism. Some people didn’t emerge from those camps for seventeen years, and 165,000 never left at all. But even then it wasn’t over. In present day Vietnam, those who resisted communist rule are segregated into ghettoes and officially discriminated against, as are their descendants, for the “crime” of having been puppets of the “imperialist” Americans. As if the victors had been anything other than puppets of China and the Soviet Union.

A reasonable person would be able to forgive the revelers if they had been merely marking the end of an acrimonious war that had inflicted so much pain on their generation. They were probably ignorant of the bloodbath on the other side of the world and, in their defense, the American press didn’t spill much ink reporting it. But the imaginary end of hostilities is not what made that day so sweet for them. America had been humbled, even humiliated, and they threw a party.

They perceived their country as a bully on the world stage and no one frets when a bully gets his nose bloodied because it teaches him a lesson. For a while it seemed that we had really learned that lesson, as “Vietnam Syndrome,” a phrase coined shortly after the war, caused us to shy away from conflict. No longer would we oppose the expansion of communism anywhere it reared its ugly head, as President Truman had outlined in the doctrine that bears his name.

The much maligned “Domino Theory” was at least partially vindicated when neighboring Cambodia and Laos fell to communism. In Cambodia, the victorious Khmer Rouge murdered about a quarter of the population. Noam Chomsky, the world’s most (in)famous intellectual and idol of the Far Left, denied the existence of any such massacre before denying that he’d denied it.

Even today those who opposed the war snicker at the Domino Theory because only two other countries toppled. Yes, “only” two. A few more dominoes could be found if we looked a little farther afield. During and immediately after the Vietnam War eight additional countries fell to communism: South Yemen, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Grenada, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan. The free world was thrown back on its heels and the Soviets seized the momentum.

None of which seemed to bother the Left. Nor were they bothered that our military limped out of Vietnam rife with indiscipline, drug abuse, and racial conflict, problems which persisted into the 1980s. While Americans had once considered soldiering to be a noble profession, in the aftermath of Vietnam many people saw servicemen and veterans as pitiful creatures, and those were the generous ones. Others considered them lowlifes and deranged would-be killers waiting to snap.

Didn’t any of this nag at their consciences? Not a bit. A “Mission Accomplished” banner might as well have hung in Central Park that day. A weaker America coupled with a global red wave was what they had always wanted.

And they got it.

None Shall Pass — No Pasarán

A professor threw a Texas-sized tantrum flunking his entire class mid-semester and quitting after complaining that students mocked, threatened and ridiculed him

reports Fox News.

"I am frankly and completely disgusted,"Texas A&M Galveston, Professor Irwin Horwitz told his business management students in a blast e-mail, according to Inside Higher Ed. "You all lack the honor and maturity to live up to the standards that Texas A&M holds, and the competence and/or desire to do the quality work necessary to pass the course just on a grade level.

"I will no longer be teaching the course, and [you] all are being awarded a failing grade."
Horwitz said students had cheated, told him to "chill out," called him a "[expletive] moron" and spread false rumors about him. He told KPRC news he even felt unsafe in the classroom at times.

No one at Rolling Stone apparently found it curious that Erdely stumbled upon festering rape scandals at the 3 institutions that comprise the trifecta of left-wing hate objects—organized religion, the US military, and that bastion of male privilege, fraternities

Allow me to offer some unsolicited advice to Rolling Stone and the journalistic community at large

begs Benny Huang regarding the utterly debunked “Rape on Campus” article that failed to meet the most basic standards of journalism and for which no one will actually lose their job. (Thanks for the link, Instapundit.)

This abominable piece might never have been published if Rolling Stone had made some room on their staff for a conservative voice.

The problem with [Sabrina Rubin] Erdely’s article is that it appealed to her confirmation bias. “Jackie,” the anonymous “victim” of a fraternity house gang rape that never happened, told Erdely a story which Erdely was inclined to believe because it reinforced her notions about typical rape scenarios. Erdely admitted that she had gone in search of a campus rape story, asking around for anyone who had been victimized and would consent to being the subject of an article. It was Erdely’s intention, in her own words, to demonstrate the “pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture” on college campuses. Lo and behold, she found what she was looking for.

Unfortunately for the brothers of Phi Kappa Psi, a story about a rape on campus was not, in and of itself, enough to satisfy Erdely’s hunger. According to Alex Pinkleton, a friend of “Jackie’s” and a victim advocate at the University of Virginia (UVA), “I just didn’t like that it seems like she [Erdely] was looking for a story that had to be in a fraternity.”

Had to be in a fraternity? Why? Would it have been any less horrific if it had happened, say, at a conference of College Democrats? No, but Rolling Stone would not have covered it if it had.

It should be noted here that Erdely had done at least two rape stories prior to “Jackie’s”—one concerning the US Navy and the other a Catholic parish in Philadelphia. No one at Rolling Stone apparently found it curious that Erdely stumbled upon festering rape scandals at the three institutions that together comprise the trifecta of left-wing hate objects—organized religion, the US military, and that bastion of male privilege, fraternities.

[In all three stories,] Healthy skepticism was put on hold. Erdely had so much faith in “Jackie’s” story that she even agreed not to contact the accused for their side of the story. She apparently didn’t think anything was fishy about a source who demanded anonymity and didn’t want anyone to take the most basic measures to corroborate her story. Erdely then submitted a gut-wrenching article to her editor who didn’t ask too many probing questions.

Neither did the fact-checking department, for Pete’s sake. The negligent party here is Coco McPherson, Rolling Stone’s chief fact-checker. From Columbia’s report: “McPherson read the final draft. This was a provocative, complex story heavily reliant on a single source. She said later that she had faith in everyone involved and didn’t see the need to raise any issues with the editors.”

She had faith in everyone involved. That’s code for “the story felt right.” It felt right because McPherson shared Erdely’s prejudices that fraternities are hives of sexual violence and Women Don’t Lie™.

Couldn’t they have gotten someone else to fact-check the piece? Someone who might, I don’t know, have checked some of the facts? I think a conservative might have done a better job of it, though not because conservatives don’t also suffer from confirmation bias. Everyone does. That being said, it doesn’t require a person with no blind spots at all to point out the holes in this story; it merely requires someone who doesn’t share the author’s.

Yet no one fitting that description could be found at Rolling Stone or most other publications for that matter—the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the New York Times, etc. And that’s the way they like it. The people who run big name media outlets, with few exceptions, have the same ideological bent. Holding all the most fashionable opinions is the price of admission to this hermetically sealed world. It actively resists change to the extent that even the embarrassing “Rape on Campus” debacle won’t precipitate a shakeup at Rolling Stone or even a reevaluation of policies and practices.

Graphic Novel Anthology on the German Occupation of Denmark

One week from now, coinciding both with the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's invasion of Denmark and with the 70th anniversary of the liberation, appears a 250-page graphic novel anthology, announces Serieland, the subject of which is the German occupation of Denmark during World War II.

Among the stories in Knivsæg by almost 50 mainly Danish authors and cartoonists (the Fahrenheit book can be ordered at Arnold Busck) is an 11-page contribution by Erik Svane and Dan Greenberg (as can be seen in Miwer's video trailer at 0:51), the duo which is hard at work to bring you The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln.

From Fahrenheit:

Det er 70 år siden, Anden Verdenskrig sluttede i Danmark, og vi har allesammen hørt fortællinger om besættelsen. Nogle historier har vi fået fortalt af forældre, bedsteforældre, onkler og tanker, andre har vi hørt fra venner og kolleger. Langt de fleste historier handler om sabotage, en mangelsituation eller rationering, eller de er en personlig fortælling, der giver indblik i familiens historie. 
 
Men KNIVSÆG har vi, der ikke oplevede kringen, sat os for at genfortælle nogle af dens historier i tegneserieform. Vi håber, at antologien – hvis bidragsydere tæller både nye kræfter og garvede navne – udover at formidle et syn på besættelsen også kan give et spraglet og vidtfavnende signalement af talentmassen inden for den danske tegneserie lige nu.

Germany's occupation of Denmark — Timeline
Tidslinje over Danmarks besættelse 1940-1945  

Visiting Cuba, leading Democrat asks for "a dialogue on the issues that we agree with and the issues that we disagree about"; this is what the Cuban people has wished for for the past 60 years

Andrew Cuomo has become the first US state governor to visit Cuba since a thaw in relations began last year 

reports the BBC.

A number of US officials and politicians have visited the Communist-run island since the thaw in relations was announced on 17 December, but Mr Cuomo is the first state governor to do so.

He travelled with a delegation of New York-based companies which he said he hoped would become some of the first to operate in Cuba.

Mr Cuomo also said engagement and full relationships were the best way "to have a dialogue on the issues that we agree with and the issues that we disagree about".

Nice, Andy. As usual, Democrats ignore love the foreign governments and the élites that make them up, ignoring the plight of the common people that live under such régimes (see Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Bagdad, etc, etc, etc…).

T'is Cuban opposition members who would like to have, and would have liked to have had for the past 60 years, to have a dialogue with the Castro brothers on the issues that they agree with and the issues that they disagree about.

Lafayette Ship Replica Sets Sail for America

With champagne, fireworks and a presidential blessing, a painstakingly built replica of the frigate once used to bring French troops and funds to American revolutionaries is setting sail for Boston

reports the Associated Press.

Saturday night's celebratory sendoff for the $27 million Hermione seeks to retrace the 213-foot frigate's trans-Atlantic journey in 1780, when its namesake under Marquis de Lafayette's command helped to lay the foundation of French-American relations.

Lafayette persuaded French King Louis XVI to provide military and financial support to George Washington's troops. Lafayette set sail on March 21, 1780, arrived 38 days later in Boston, and played an important role in the revolutionaries' ultimate defeat of Britain.

 … The ship is the fruit of nearly two decades of brainstorming, fundraising and toil. Using captains' logs and manuscripts from the era, maritime experts and historians ensured that workers used the same construction materials and methods as those used to build the original.

 … Volunteer crew members will sail the frigate, with "Hermione" carved across its stern, across the Atlantic.

 …The relationship born of Lafayette's journey has also been lasting. Even in times of modern diplomatic tensions, American presidents routinely refer to France as "our oldest ally."

"If it hadn't been for that French intervention at that time," [said Miles Young, president of the Friends of Hermione-Lafayette in America], "the war of independence probably wouldn't have been won."

Contempt of Congress? These Days, It’s No Big Thing

In a sane world, destroying subpoenaed evidence would end a politician’s career

notes Benny Huang.

What Hillary Clinton did was a crime yet she won’t pay any legal penalty any everyone knows it. She’ll play it off, deriding it as a FOX News story that only the nutroots still talk about. “Email server” will probably become a sexist code word, much the same way that “Obamacare,” “golf,” and “apartment” have become racist code words during the Obama years. Hillary will intimidate those few reporters who have the nerve to ask her about it and she will then waltz effortlessly to the Democratic nomination, if not the White House.

There was a time when flipping Congress the bird was considered something of a serious transgression, but no longer. Hillary Clinton is the third Obama administration official or former official to blow off congressional investigators and the third to escape legal punishment. The first two were Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS official Lois Lerner. In both cases, the accused party was charged but the Justice Department refused to prosecute.

Attorney General Eric Holder was charged with contempt of Congress in 2012 when he refused to furnish the House Oversight Committee with tens of thousands of pages concerning the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal. Operation Fast and Furious was an ill-conceived initiative involving the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that deliberately allowed straw purchasers to buy more than 2,000 guns and transport them across the Mexican border to drug cartels. One of those guns was used to murder a US Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry. The total number of Mexican victims is more difficult to calculate but can probably be counted in the hundreds.

Holder doesn’t think he should be required to provide any additional Fast and Furious documents because he’s already provided thousands of pages. The fact that he’s withholding tens of thousands of pages isn’t supposed to matter. He willingly gave up the ones he wanted Congress to see, so what difference does it make if he’s still clinging to the incriminating ones? At one point, his Justice Department even offered to furnish a “fair compilation” of the outstanding documents if congressional Republicans agreed, in advance, to end their investigation.

Chutzpah.

 … Lois Lerner has about the same amount of respect for Congress as Holder, which is to say none at all. When she was at the IRS, her office deliberately targeted conservative organizations for special scrutiny, often failing to grant their status after years of examination while similar liberal groups were rubber-stamped. Groups that contained the words or phrases “Tea Party,” “patriot,” or “9/12” were singled out, as were groups that were critical of government policy. Groups were asked if any of their leaders had intentions of seeking public office in the future, even what they prayed about.

The whole operation had the appearance of either an intelligence gathering operation, a fishing expedition to find any excuse to deny the tax-exempt status, or an attempt to keep opposition groups tied up with onerous paperwork. A combination of all three is certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

 … Last week we learned that Eric Holder is exercising his “discretion” in the Lerner case. He has decided that her unqualified declaration of innocence does not preclude her pleading fifth amendment. She can have her cake and eat it too.

So Hillary Clinton is in good company. She won’t go to jail; she won’t even be forced out to pasture, as disgraced old politicians used to be when caught violating the law and their oaths of office. She’s a new breed of politician, characterized by her shamelessness, just as we are a new kind of voting electorate, ready to elect her the next president. Congress is a joke and defying its subpoenas carries no penalty.

Poisson d'Avril: The French Sense of Humor

The French have a wonderful sense of humour

writes Stephen Clarke.

Of course they do. Anyone who’s seen the film La Cage aux Folles, about a gay nightclub owner whose son wants to marry the daughter of a right-wing religious politician, or Ridicule, about the need to be good at repartee if you want to attract the attention of Louis XIV at court, will know this. If they can speak French, that is.

It’s not the same as the British sense of humour, that’s for sure. The traditional French idea of an April Fool’s joke is (or rather was, because it’s rarely played these days) to stick a paper fish on someone’s back without them knowing. Yes, très drôle.

The Telegraph writer is being facetious, naturellement, but a variant on this joke — not necessarily played on April 1 — is far funnier; stick a piece of paper on a friend's back as you take leave of him or her and giving his or her name, for instance, "Je suis Isabelle" or "Mon nom, c'est Isabelle."

As Isabelle walks down the sidewalk, she hears her name being called out (by a perfect stranger), and turns in bewilderment, for she cannot see anybody waving to her, let alone anyone trying to get the attention of some other woman named Isabelle. As she continues her walk, she regularly hears "Isabelle!" called out, turns, and sees no one interested in her or in any other similarly-named woman, as the perfect strangers in question immediately return to playing innocent bystanders and doing their own thing.