Friday Night Early ONT

Kevin Williamson's great, really great, slam on a NYT piece which does its utmost to obscure the central fact being reported, that stone-throwing Palestinians murdered a Jewish man in Israel as he was driving home for dinner.

Must read. The media does this every day.

Not to be all PC and score-keeping, but remember when some got really super-angry at Richard Sherman for allegedly yelling at the female sports reporter?

Remember when I said "Hey calm down, you're misreading that (he's yelling at "Crabtree," just using the woman's camera to do it), and he's not that kind of guy anyway?"

Yeah, he's a pretty sharp guy.

The White Nationalists went after a guy who I think is one of the most conservative and best pundits I know, David A. French, because French is a "racecuck" for having adopted an Ethiopian baby.

Trump released his statement on the 2nd Amendment.

This guy says he finally realizes why Obama's doing nothing in Syria, and note, as you read this, my link is not the same as arguing that we should be doing something in Syria.

But there are some good reasons to do nothing in Syria, and then there are... Obama's reasons.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I was meeting with high-level Obama administration officials in Washington, D.C., two months after escaping Syria in February 2014, and I had just described to them all the horrors I had seen: the torture of protesters, the rape of women, the bombardment of civilians, the barrel bombs, the massacres, the sieges, the starvation, and the gassing of hundreds of innocents with sarin in August 2013. I had recounted how I barely survived those sarin attacks and the siege of my hometown, Moadamiya, near Damascus; and how, by some miracle, I managed to trick the regime into letting me leave Syria.

Now, I was asking the officials to take simple steps, to do something, anything, that would protect the millions of civilians I had left behind from further starvation and slaughter. But as I pressed these officials for answers, their replies grew increasingly divorced from the Syrian conflict:

Why couldn’t there be military action to protect civilians? The reply: The U.S. is helping Syrians through humanitarian and nonlethal means. Me: Thanks for your generosity, but can Band-Aids take down a fighter jet as it bombs civilians? Them: President Bashar Assad’s air-defense systems are too strong for a no-fly zone. Me: Then how does Israel keep bombing the regime? Them: The U.S. wants to avoid a military solution. We also need to stabilize the whole region. Me: Assad’s barrel bombs and starvation sieges are driving extremism, I've seen it with my own eyes--you call that stabilizing the region?

In this meeting and in numerous other meetings with people familiar with Mr. Obama's personal thinking--at the State Department, with Democrats in Congress, at the White House--we would eventually reach a moment of honesty when someone would say, in effect: President Obama does not wish to upset the Iranians.

This great big radiotelescope is going to find the alien invaders, finally.

All I will say to them is to quote the Son of Sam when the police came for him: "What took you so long?"

James Taranto (first google hit) on the Trump phenomenon, and why it may now fail.

His point is obvious: Trump's momentum is based primarily upon Trump having momentum. What happens if he loses that? I gotta tell you, I'm a superficial kind of candidate-picker, and I tend to go with who I think could get a swell of support for him; that's actually one of the three big reasons I'm inclined towards Trump. (The other two being immigration hawkishness, and opening up debate for people to actually talk without being badgered to death by macroaggressions.)

But what happens when he starts to falter? And he does seem to be teetering to me now. (Though he's seemed to teeter to me two or three times before.)

Speaking of that, the polls show a mixed picture: One poll has him well out front nationally with 37%, while one poll in New Hampshire has him slipping into second place behind Carly Fiorino.

One big problem I have with Trump stems from one of his strengths. He's more immune to social pressure to change his mind than most people -- I think critics would even concede that.

But there is a huge downside to that, I hope everyone also realizes. What if he gets some nonsense in his head that is plainly wrong? And when I say wrong I mean "very leftist and anti-conservative."

His penchant for conspiracy theories is very, very worrisome. I would shrug off the conspiracy theory thing except that I'm worried about what "interesting ideas" might seize him after January 2017.

Who could change this guy's mind? Loose canons can make things interesting, but there's a reason ships nail and tie down their canons. They can do a lot of damage to one's own ship, too.

Happy weekend!

posted by Ace at 09:08 PM

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