Recent Appearances...

Warning: Undefined array key "rbname" in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 14
Hello !
Recent Appearances...

Home Front: Politix

Kamala Harris to skip traditional Al Smith dinner, first time presidential candidate has ducked charity event since 1984

2024-09-22

Flailing, because she's an imbecile
[NY Post] This is no joking matter

Vice President Kamala Harris has decided to dodge former president Trump and skip this year’s Al Smith Dinner — a major election year event that generations of candidates have attended — becoming the first presidential hopeful to duck out since failed presidential wannabe Walter Mondale in 1984.

While Trump has agreed to go to the 79th iteration of the Archdiocese of New York’s dinner on Oct. 17, Harris’s camp
spokes person Lance-Bottoms
says she will instead campaigning in key battleground states on the final stretch before election day, her campaign told The Post.
It has been a tradition for both presidential candidates to attend the dinner — at whch the contenders take turns giving speeches roasting eachother — since Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy appeared together in 1960.

Archdiocese spokesperson Joseph Zwillng told The Post they learned that Harris would not be there on Saturday.

"We are disappointed that she will not be with us, as this is an evening of unity and putting aside political differences in support of a good cause of helping women and children in need regardless of race, creed, or background," he said.

"We hope she reconsiders."

Link

Home Front: Politix

Replacing Biden Improves Dems Chances

2024-07-02

[Townhall] Consequently, the only question we should be asking regarding Biden’s removal is this: Would Biden’s removal at the top of the ticket help Donald Trump get elected President of the United States? It’s that simple, and the answer is simple as well. No, removing the weakest candidate Democrats have run since Walter Mondale does NOT help Trump get elected. In fact, replacing Biden with almost anyone would almost certainly HURT Trump’s chances, which is why so many Democrats are in panic mode to make this happen.

Before the debate started last week I tweeted this: "Should Trump have waited to debate Biden until both are formally nominated? If this is a massacre and ends in Biden being replaced, it would be one of the biggest political miscalculations in history."
Some at the Burg suggested this was part of the Obumble playbook.
Given how things have played out so far, it seems that agreeing to a debate this soon was a mistake, albeit an honest one. We shouldn’t want Biden - Trump’s best shot at winning - replaced on the ticket, and we shouldn’t help Democrats right their ship by lifting a finger to make that happen.

Link

Home Front: Politix

From hope to terror: How Obama's signature failure continues to haunt our politics

2024-03-11

[Restoring America] I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still feel the faintest stir of optimism at the sight of former President Barack Obama’s once-ubiquitous "Hope" poster. Designed by street artist Shepard Fairey, the image of Obama gazing skyward in highly contrasted shadows of blue and red was perfectly suited to the caption, written in bold, blocked lettering: "Hope." New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl called it "the most efficacious American political illustration since ’Uncle Sam Wants You.'"

It’s important to recall just how depressed the country was by the end of former President George W. Bush’s second term. Hurricane Katrina had leveled a beloved city. The Iraq War had become a historic disaster. The housing market had crashed, which ushered in the Great Recession. The nation was starved for a fresh vision and a leader who embodied America’s promise of a harmonious whole emerging from a diverse multitude. Obama, the son of a Kansan and a Kenyan, seemed supernaturally suited to the moment.

I’ll always hold that voting for Obama was a good bet (I pulled the lever for him twice). Political figures with his singular capacity to capture the public imagination don’t appear often. Even my father, a constitutional conservative who hasn’t voted for a Democrat since Walter Mondale, couldn’t hide his excitement when I told him I was attending Obama’s inauguration. "Cheer for Obama, sure," he said wryly, "just don’t cheer for Biden." (He remains the most astute political observer I know.)

There are numerous data points that epitomize Obama’s failure to capitalize on the unprecedented goodwill afforded his political ascendency, from the chaos engulfing the Middle East as a direct result of his policies to the ruination of American manufacturing to the expansion of the surveillance state and drone warfare. But nothing captures the depth of his failure quite like the attenuation of American hope.

A recent Pew poll reveals that a staggering 86% of people now report feeling exhausted or angry about the state of our politics. This was echoed in a recent NBC poll that found 81% of people are confident their children’s lives will be worse than their own. The children don’t feel much better: A recent Harvard study found that two-thirds of young people report feeling more fear than hope about the future of democracy in America.

Obama didn’t simply fail to instill hope in America. He oversaw and managed its precipitous downfall.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Pro-Hamas protests show how higher education has finally crossed the line

2023-10-16

[NYPost] Higher education may have finally crossed the line.

With the horrific massacre, rapes and infant murders and kidnappings Hamas proudly perpetrated in Israel, much of the American academic community, especially at elite universities, sided with . . . Hamas.

It is not playing well.

Harvard has been the most talked-about example, because, well, it’s Harvard.

Dozens of Harvard student groups released a remarkably callous statement saying Israel’s government is "entirely responsible" for Hamas’ violence.

And Harvard’s President Claudine Gay released an initial statement so ham-handed that she spent the rest of the week trying to row it back.

The Harvard students have since deleted their statement, though it still lives on the Internet, of course.

They deleted it because many major firms announced they won’t hire anyone on the list. Some have even asked for membership lists of the student organizations involved so they can make sure not to hire any students who belong.

A group called Accuracy in Media has been sending billboard trucks around Harvard Square naming the students involved, which some have called "doxing," though publicly naming the public authors of a public statement hardly seems to rise to that level.

Winston & Strawn, a top law firm where Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale was once a partner, rescinded a job offer for an NYU law student who issued a pro-Hamas proclamation.

This was followed by Harvard’s Kennedy School losing billionaire philanthropist Idan Ofer and his wife Batia from its board.

"Unfortunately, our faith in the University’s leadership has been broken and we cannot in good faith continue to support Harvard and its committees," said the couple, worth $20 billion.

You have to be a very big donor to be on Harvard’s board; to have two seats you have to be bigger still.

Billionaire alumnus Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund founder, slammed Harvard too and was joined by a number of his fellow CEOs.

The message: Harvard is no longer morally worthy of our money, and we don’t want to hire its students.

The major law firms, hedge funds and Wall Street houses have had enough of woke students.

Business Insider reports one hedge-fund founder trashes applicants as a "bad cultural fit" when he encounters résumés listing woke activities.

And it’s not just Harvard: Ackman also called out another Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania.

And at the University of Michigan, a business professor smirkingly posed for photos as he tore down posters with names and photos of people Hamas took hostage, while a Cornell diversity and inclusion officer came under fire for social-media posts celebrating the Hamas attack as "resistance."

Similar events took place at the University of Virginia, Stanford, George Washington University, Swarthmore and a host of other elite schools.

Sen. Marco Rubio summed up the objections: "For decades cowardly college administrators have enabled our universities to become nests of Anti-American/Anti-Western activism. This week student groups at our most ’elite’ universities signed their names to proclamations siding with savages who murdered & mutilated babies and raped & desecrated the bodies of dead women. And across America college students" with "federal taxpayer subsidized" loans "celebrated the murder of Jews."

Famed historian Victor Davis Hanson observed: "Americans knew higher education practiced racist admission policies. It has long promoted racially segregated dorms and graduations. And de facto it has destroyed the First Amendment. But the overt support for Hamas killers by the diversity, equity, and inclusion crowd on a lot of campuses exposes to Americans the real moral and intellectual rot in higher education."

It’s almost amusing to see the shocked reaction of elite university students and administrators to the notion that people might object to their statements.

In their insular worlds, endorsing murder, rape and torture isn’t objectionable so long as the perpetrators are deemed "oppressed." It turns out others disagree.

There may be a sea change in attitudes.

We’ve long known higher education breeds a lot of silly — and sometimes dangerous — ideas.

We know its admissions policies are racist, especially against Asians.

("The left hates Asians," Elon Musk tweeted in response to a story about an Asian applicant with near-perfect scores who was rejected by all the top schools to which he applied.)

But this is too much.
You not going to pay their student loans?

Link

-Obits-

Bob Dole, Former Republican Presidential Candidate, Dies at 98

2021-12-05

[EpochTimes] Bob Dole, a former Republican U.S. Senator from Kansas and GOP presidential candidate, has died at age 98, his family confirmed in a statement on Sunday.

“Senator Robert Joseph Dole died early this morning in his sleep. At his death, at age 98, he had served the United States of America faithfully for 79 years,” said his family in a statement via the Elizabeth Dole Foundation.

Earlier this year, it was announced that Dole was being treated for advanced lung cancer.

For 30 years, Dole was a senator for Kansas, and in 1976, he was President Gerald Ford’s vice presidential nominee. The pair was defeated by then-Democrat candidate Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Walter Mondale.

Dole, who was injured while fighting in World War II, was the Senate majority leader from 1985 to 1987 and later, from 1995 to 1996. In 1996, Dole clinched the Republican nomination for the presidency but was ultimately defeated by incumbent President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

Writing in his memoir, “One Soldier’s Story,” Dole said that his experiences in World War II defined his life.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), confirmed that the speaker had ordered the flags at the Capitol to be flown at half-staff following Dole’s passing.

Dole is survived by his wife, former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), and his daughter, Robin Dole.

Link

-Great Cultural Revolution

Minneapolis business owner talks about the troubles the neighborhood is going through

2021-07-10

[AUDACY] After weeks of unrest in the Uptown area of Minneapolis, a business owner is saying enough is enough and is looking for help to bring safety back to the area.
The owner, who spoke to News Talk 830 WCCO's Adam Carter on the condition on anonymity has owned a business in the area since 2018. He says that the past few weeks of civil unrest has been the worst the area has seen. He says that the problem is with the leadership in the city.

"A disgusting lack of leadership. There is not an adult or a parent in the room. The city needs leadership right now and I don't believe the city leadership that we currently have has it in their DNA to do what it takes to fix, or get under control, the issues that we are facing in Uptown."

As the owner looked to place blame on why the civil unrest is happening in Uptown, he turned his ire to Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender.

"Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender had an opportunity to direct the police forces to deal with the people committing illegal acts, not peaceful protests, but illegal acts. Blocking traffic, setting dumpsters on fire, shooting paintballs at customers, throwing rocks at people. Instead of directing the police to deal with the illegal acts being committed, she tells the police to block traffic so the protesters and agitators can have time to continue their illegal acts."

The Uptown business owner says that he understands peaceful protests in the wake of the death of Winston Smith. He doesn't believe that the people causing the issues in that part of Minneapolis are part of the peaceful protesters.

"It is by far the most moronic leadership decisions you can make when dealing with those that don't have a cause. The agitators don't have a cause, they're anarchists. They just want to stir up trouble."

While the civil unrest has gone on for weeks in Uptown, the owner says he doesn't know how long his business can stay afloat. He is hoping that something can be done to end the pandemonium in the streets.

"At what point do they actually get their fill to deal with it? That's the part that is befuddling and the most upsetting. At what point do you say 'enough is enough?' They are currently saying they are not at their breaking point yet. But Uptown is at its breaking point."

After taking aim at the Minneapolis City Council, the owner had one more salvo for Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

"Governor Walz is culpable and absent because he is running for re-election and he won't send additional resources to the Minneapolis Police Department to attack and address the issues we're facing. Without a vibrant Minneapolis the state of Minnesota is not vibrant."

Link

-Obits-

Former Vice President Walter Mondale dead at 93

2021-04-20

[NYP] Walter Mondale, who served as vice president under Jimmy Carter and was the Democratic nominee for president in 1984, died Monday in Minneapolis, a family spokesperson said. He was 93.

Nearing his death on Sunday, the elder statesman from Minnesota spoke by phone with President Biden and former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, as well as Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Axios reported.

In a goodbye email obtained by the website, Mondale told 320 staffers who worked for him over his four decade-long political career how much they meant to him and said he knew they would "keep up the good fight."

Link

Home Front: Politix

Joan Swirsky: 'Heads-Up Jewish Americans‐Democrats Are Your Enemies'

2020-07-14

[News with Views] Montana has about 1,400 Jews, Mississippi about 1,500, South Dakota 250. If I lived in any one of those beautiful states, I would not be writing this article. But I live in New York——home to about one-million, 800-thousand Jews——so the politics of being Jewish affects me and my family in a very existential——life and death——way.

It’s quite simple for me, as it should be for all Jews, given the fact that in a world of about eight-billion people, we Jews are a miniscule 15 million, only about six-million in the United States, eight-million in Israel, and another one-million around the world. That is equivalent to the proverbial drop in the ocean.

A PRESSING IMPERATIVE
If we Jews and our supporters don’t aggressively address the pandemic of anti-Semitism that is galloping around the globe and exploding here in America, rampant on college campuses, aided and abetted by a craven media that gives credibility to career hate-mongers like Louis Farrakhan and his ilk, and even contaminating the hallowed halls of the U.S. Congress——with more floridly hate-Jews/hate-Israel Democrats than ever before in history——then we know from our tragic history that annihilation could be right around the corner.

Sadly the Democrat Party of old——of JFK, Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Senator and VP Walter Mondale, et al——has vanished, replaced by Democrats like "the squad" who spew their poisonous hatred of Jews and Israel from the House of Representatives itself. Then there are those who remain thunderously silent——including elected Democrat Jews like Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Jerrold Nadler, Eliot Engel, Adam Schiff, Richard Blumenthal, as well Democrat Representatives from Long Island——with a huge Jewish population——Tom Suozzi and Kathleen Rice.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Lewinsky allegedly freaked out after Clinton's affair with VP's daughter

2016-06-19

"President Bill Clinton had an affair with former Vice President Walter Mondale’s daughter -- while multitasking with at least two mistresses in the White House -- according to a tell-all by a Secret Service officer who guarded the Oval Office.

Gary J. Byrne's account of walking in on Clinton and the gorgeous Eleanor Mondale, then a TV journalist, is the first eyewitness report of the long-rumored affair.

"There before us was E! Network host Eleanor Mondale .â.â. and President Clinton in a compromising position, that is, making out on the Map Room table," Byrne writes of the alleged Christmastime tryst around the middle of Clinton's presidency.

Proof positive that women are selfish.

.gif for you, Mr. Besoeker.

Happy Father's Day!

Link

China-Japan-Koreas

Caroline Kennedy makes regal arrival for Japan post

2013-11-20

Nearly 50 years after an assassin killed President John F. Kennedy, his daughter was triumphantly received as Americas ambassador to Japan in the country that made her dad a hero.
Japan was receiving ambassador's in Hollywood? That's odd...
Caroline Kennedy arrived at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo Tuesday in an ornate, horse-drawn carriage befitting the Princess of Camelots role as American royalty
One might say more like Marie Antonette - but that role is already taken...
to present her credentials to Emperor Akihito.
Meanwhile, back at home, images of her standing stoically at her fathers funeral were being replayed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death this week.

Kennedy, 55, is the first female US envoy to Japan, Americas fourth-largest trading partner.

Caroline Kennedy was appointed ambassador after helping President Obamas re-election campaign.
Not for her Diplomatic skills or experience... but as a political payoff. And I don't think the Japanese missed that little factoid.

Honored to present my credentials to His Majesty the Emperor of Japan. What a memorable day! Kennedy tweeted later, sharing a photo of her alighting from the carriage at the palaces Pine Hall.
It's all about ME!
In a meeting with reporters, Kennedy described the ceremony as wonderful.

I am honored to serve my country, she said.

The appointment was a soft landing after her failed attempt to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Senate after Clinton became Obamas secretary of state.

Despite critics who said Kennedy doesnt have the gravitas to follow in the footsteps of other former US ambassadors to Japan, including Walter Mondale and Tom Foley, she has said she is well aware of the responsibilities.

This appointment has a special significance as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of my fathers presidency, she told a Senate committee in September before being confirmed for the post.
It's all about ME! (oh.. and my daddy)
I am conscious of my responsibility to uphold the ideals he represented a deep commitment to public service, a more just America and a more peaceful world.
Kind of like the wolf performs a public service in culling the herd of sheep of its weak, ill, and tasty...
Kennedy handed the emperor a letter from Obama with her credentials, along with a letter of resignation from her predecessor, John Roos, according to the Imperial Household Agency.
What? No IPOD! This is an outrage!

The emperor usually receives about 40 new ambassadors each year.

Thousands of Japanese lined the streets of Tokyo to catch a glimpse of the new ambassador as she waved from the century-old carriage.
It's all about ME!
Japan is also home to the Navys 7th Fleet and 50,000 American troops.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Pubs Should Learn Dems Lessons of 1989

2013-09-23

The Republicans of 2013 look a lot like the Democrats of 1989 -- shut out of the presidency, beholden to a shrinking base and on the wrong side of major demographic shifts in the country.
Wait, the Pubs were on the right side of the demographics in 1989?
That's the argument two longtime Democratic strategists -- Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck -- make in an essay titled "The New Politics of Evasion" in the fall edition of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. For any Republican hoping to win back the White House in 2016, it's an absolute must-read.
Because you can trust a couple of Democratic strategists to give the Republicans clear, unfiltered, good advice...
The first myth centered on the idea that Democrats had come up short at the presidential level in 1980, 1984 and 1988 because the candidates they had nominated -- Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis -- were insufficient adherents to liberal orthodoxy. If only the party had nominated a "true liberal," the argument went, they would have won. Sound familiar?
Another similarity - they were all doofuses.
The second myth -- of mobilization -- is all about demographics. In the 1980s, Democrats insisted that if only blacks and Hispanics would vote in numbers commensurate with their share of the population, the party's nominee would win. They didn't, and Democrats didn't win. Fast-forward to today and some within the Republican Party are making that same losing argument about consolidating the white vote.
And if the Pubs could figure out how to get dead people to vote five times, that'd be another good lesson from the Dems.
The final myth is that of the "congressional bastion," the idea that if the party out of the White House still controls a chamber of Congress and/or a number of state and local offices then it's evidence that all is well and major change isn't required. But, holding a House majority in a deeply gerrymandered set of districts is not the same as winning a national presidential election. And the 2012 election proved that the massive gains the GOP made in the 2010 midterms are more the exception than the rule.

The problem for smart Republican strategists is not figuring out what's wrong, but developing a real and pragmatic plan to fix it. Democrats fixed their problems of the 1980s with one man: Bill Clinton.
And now, the interesting part.
The obvious analog to Clinton in the modern Republican Party is former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Bush, like Clinton, spent much of his formative life as a governor and, on issues ranging from education to immigration, has shown a willingness to break from Republican orthodoxy and the party's base.
Has he also got a thing for not-all-that-attractive young wimmins?

Link

-Election 2012

CRUSH THEM

2012-11-06

Good last-day call to arms by Michael Walsh in National Review Online
Conservatives have a rare opportunity tomorrow to do something they signally failed to do in the landslide elections of 1972 and 1984: finish the job. Nixon's victory was vitiated by Watergate and quickly revenged by Woodward and Bernstein, leading to his replacement in 1974 by Jerry Ford, a man who exactly nobody thought was qualified to be president of the United States, probably including Ford himself. Ford led to Jimmy Carter, whose ineptitude and weakness in turn lead to Ronald Reagan, who swept Carter away in 1980 and then smashed Walter Mondale and the Democrats to powder in 1984.

And then, having won a famous victory, conservatives went home and left it to the establishment GOP in the form of another man who never should have been president, George H. W. Bush, to fritter away the fruits of ideological victory and be supplanted by Bill Clinton.

In retrospect, of course, William Jefferson Blythe III was Pericles of Athens compared to Barack Obama, who far more than Clinton has revealed the true face of contemporary American left-liberalism in all its coercive ugliness: a blizzard of executive orders; the deployment of the regulatory agencies that have (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) "sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance"; and the naked Marxist appeals to race and class envy. The most anti-American of American presidents has run the most un-American of campaigns.

And that, by rights, should be it. That it's not explains the alarm of conservatives whose view of patriotism is that they love their country as it is, not as they wish it might someday be. From Day One of the Obama administration, real conservatives understood the explicit threat of "fundamental change," whose meaning can now be clearly discerned in Obama's "revenge" remark; for the Left, "revenge" is precisely what this election is all about. For them and their voting-bloc constituents, it's payback time: payback for slavery and segregation; payback for poverty; payback for foreign wars; payback for restrictive immigration laws. They've long used the goals of the civil-rights movement -- which after all was directed precisely against Democrats -- and the Vietnam-era "anti-war" movement -- which arose in opposition to the foreign policy of the Democrats -- as wedges with which to crack the larger social structure and now, so close to realizing the ultimate expression of "critical theory" -- that everything about America stinks -- they and their media allies are doing their best to swing one last election for Obama.
Emphasis mine-RbR. Folks, this is what's at stake here. If the communists (I absolutely REFUSE to call these bastards by the same party name shared by Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy, Scoop Jackson and Zell Miller) win this one, they win the whole enchilada...everything they've patiently worked for over almost fifty years as they slowly but steadily gnawed on the timbers and frameworks that kept our country standing upright.
It's not enough for the GOP to win tomorrow. It needs to win big, a win so convincing that even the Left won't be able to explain it away. The definition of victory in war is not a 50.1 percent majority that allows the other side to keep fighting -- it's the battleship Missouri, on whose deck the losing side signs articles of capitulation. The modern Left -- the unholy spawn of '30s gangland and '60s academic Marxism -- must be forced to its knees in surrender.
God, I absolutely LOVE Walsh's description of "the modern Left.". But I think maybe he's placing a little too much emphasis on this one day. If the good guys win, it may still be by a small margin - and the bad guys may still end up holding the Senate. But assuming we win...well, we can't think of it as an Appomattox or a Tokyo Bay. At best, it'll be our Trenton - the first real victory for the good guys in what's likely to be a very long war. There's a whole culture to take back. One school-board seat, one professorship, one op-ed, one screenplay at at time.

Link

Warning: Undefined property: stdClass::$T in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 132
-12 More