Boehlert vs. ‘Neocons’? (Nudge, Nudge)

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Ed Schultz and Eric Boehlert on MSNBC

Two weeks ago, Jeff Dunetz took note of M.J. Rosenberg’s departure from Media Matters (which I blogged about April 8 and April 10), and it’s kind of funny how sometimes when you pull a dangling thread, the whole sweater starts to unravel.

Was Dunetz onto something? Was Rosenberg merely the thread dangling from a Media Matters sweater knitted of unsavory views? Ben Shapiro decided to keep tugging at that shoddy fabric:

Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert, one of the faces of the organization, has a dicey record when it comes to Israel and the Jews. . . .
In 2002, he wrote a piece for Salon.com in which he lamented the fate of Professor Sami Al-Arian, former North American head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This is the same Al-Arian who proclaimed, “God cursed those who are sons of Israel … Those people, God made monkeys and pigs … Let us damn America, let us damn Israel, let us damn them and their allies until death.” When Al-Arian was suspended from his teaching post at Florida Atlantic University, Boehlert defended Al-Arian as an “innocent professor.”
As for mainstream media coverage of Israel – which is almost universally skewed against Israel – Boehlert thinks that the media coverage isn’t anti-Israel enough. “I don’t think it’s a surprise to suggest the Middle East conflict is essentially told through the eyes of Israel,” Boehlert said in 2006. . . .

Read the whole thing, and permit me to take the unusual (for me) step of counseling caution here. Anti-Semitism is quite nearly the most deadly accusation one can level in American politics, and ought not be applied haphazardly to every critic of Israel or every critic of U.S. Mideast policy. My own views being sufficiently ultra-Zionist to have earned me second place in Sully’s 2009 “Malkin Awards” competition, I do not insist that everyone of good faith must share my opinions.

Bibi Netanyahu? A squishy moderate!

Both coalition politics and successful governance require us to tolerate a range of opinions on any given issue. If we denounced as Jew-haters every critic of Bush-era foreign policy, we would be required to condemn, inter alia, the late Robert Novak.

Our precocious friend Ben Shapiro correctly says that Boehlert once offered a “drumbeat” of commentary that “the press was too favorable to the Jewish State.” In this, Boehlert echoed a common theme of the anti-war Left during the Bush 43 era. Continue reading Boehlert vs. ‘Neocons’? (Nudge, Nudge) →

Roxanne Doesn’t Have To Turn On The Red Lights. She Does Anyway; Dad Didn’t Teach Her Otherwise

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by Smitty

No, I don’t mean Roxeanne de Luca specifically. Or prostitution in the Secret Service sense. I mean, emphasis mine:

Now, let’s cut through the drivel: play-acting at being married with someone to whom you have not committed will delay that commitment, or finding the person you really want to commit to. Acting like someone’s wife, when that person has not wed you in front of his family and friends, will just make you feel like you’re in a perpetual audition — because you’re in a perpetual audition. Not to go all Ayn Rand, but you wouldn’t take that from an employer (it would be “hire me, enough already, or I’ll find another job”); why do you take that from a man?

Show me these famous live-in women, and the males perpetuating these arrangements, and I’ll show you some kids playing grown-up.

Irrespective of age, that male is a boy, not a man. Men just don’t use women as protein receptacles. Bill Clinton, I mean you. How many women who eschew marriage had a father (i.e. mature man) in their life?

All I can say is that the World’s Youngest Blogger will be raised to understand that sexuality is not a video game. Have lots of women friends; treat them like sisters. But don’t go trading protein with them as a dog in the street. You might get Cowelled. Wait until the will of the Almighty has been revealed, marry, and enjoy life.

Should I be blessed with a daughter, on the other hand, she’ll be taught to look to the Almighty for self-actualization. No other human can provide such. Dad can only build a daughter up; not even he can do that.

This ‘living together’ noise cannot be mocked too much as yet another aspect of the Postmodern assault on everything of value in our culture. Behaviors that lead to success are mocked, while those that lead to failure are celebrated.

That Amazing Right Wing!

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Is there anything it can’t do? Not according to Jay Parmley, who was recently forced to resign as executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party after being accused of sexually harassing a 26-year-old male staffer.

Parmley, who served less than a year at the helm of the party, denied harassing any employee and blamed right-wing political enemies for “spreading a false and misleading story.”
“Even though I have not done anything wrong, it is clear to me that I need to move on,” Parmley wrote in his resignation letter. “I refuse to be a distraction.”

Unfortunately for North Carolina Democrats (a) the distraction continues because (b) it wasn’t “right-wing political enemies” Parmley got frisky with. No, that would be his fellow Democrat:

The sexual harassment allegations are detailed in a Dec. 8 letter from Adriadn Ortega, a former party staffer, to then-Executive Director Jay Parmley. Ortega claimed he was “fired in retaliation for my complaints of sexual harassment” and asked for a severance equal to his annual pay and health care coverage for a year.
His allegations match those detailed in a complaint filed Jan. 31 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission obtained by The N&O. The EEOC complaint stated that Ortega tracked the alleged harassment in a notebook. . . .
In the letter, Ortega says Parmley:
• Frequently gave him unwanted shoulder rubs despite verbal objections.
• Pointed to his crotch area and asked how his crotch looked in his pants.
• On July 28, detailed his past sexual activities.
• On July 29, showed Ortega a picture of a penis.
• On Sept. 6, caressed Ortega’s leg as they drove back from a Democratic convention kick-off in Charlotte.

These are mere allegations, of course. But it should be obvious that young Mr. Ortega either (a) didn’t find Jay Parmley attractive, or (b) failed to understand that homosexuality is now considered compulsory by North Carolina Democrats.

DEMOCRATS: THE GAY PARTY
Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That!

LIVE AT FIVEEIGHT – 04.19.12

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— compiled by Wombat-socho


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SOTD: A Complete History Of The USSR, Arranged To The Melody of Tetris

OPRA: Only Problematic in
Republican Administrations

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by Smitty

We need a good tag for situations like the following, in which we have a DOE flunky getting to look like a organ grinder’s pet in front of a Congressman, confessing that, well, they just couldn’t manage the flood o’ cash adequately:

A mere 300-350 investigations. So at least it’s not in the thousands. Yet. If this had happened in a McCain administration. . .
They punish the monkey, and let the organ grinder occupy the Resolute Desk.

via Breitbart

Update: more at The Blaze

The 1866 Civil Rights Act

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by Smitty

Thanks to Republicans beginning to appreciate the heritage of our Grand Old Party, it has become better known that Republicans in Congress supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act much more than did the Democrats. Indeed, the legislator most responsible for breaking the Democrat filibuster was a Republican senator, Everett Dirksen.
And now, the question that should be before us: How did that landmark legislation come to be? The answer to that is a source of pride for all Republicans today.
The origin of the 1964 Civil Rights Act can be traced back to the Reconstruction era. That was when the Republican Party enacted the first civil rights act ever, the 1866 Civil Rights Act. Never heard of it? Democrat history professors would rather you didn’t. With that law, Republicans took a big step toward making Abraham Lincoln’s vision for “a new birth of freedom” a reality.

It was a ‘whoa’ moment while reading Rumsfeld’s book to discover that he’s a goat so old as to have voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act. The 1964 one. Michale Zak is a historian who is working diligently to recover American History in general, and that of the GOP in particular, from decades of Commie airbrushing.
Read his entire Human Events article on the 1866 Civil Rights Act.

Update: linked by The Lonely Conservative

‘We’re Here! We’re Queer! And Now, Unfortunately, We’re Unemployed!’

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Bend over and take it, influential gay journalists!

The editorial staff of the influential gay lifestyle magazine Out is being laid off with one month’s severance as of Friday, Capital has learned.
But according to Out editor-in-chief Aaron Hicklin, it’s more complicated than that.
Hicklin said he will hire back an unspecified number of editors on a contract basis into a new company he is founding called Grand Editorial. It will operate the magazine as a contractor for Here Media, sister company of Regent Entertainment Inc., which acquired Out in 2008.
Hicklin told Capital there will be no reduction in the frequency of the magazine or other major changes to the content.
“This was not a cost-cutting measure,” he said.

“Not a cost-cutting measure”? Could it be — just throwing this out there as a possibility — that Hicklin’s “complicated” scheme to replace a salaried staff with freelance contractors is an attempt to avoid providing health insurance coverage and other benefits?

Would I be correct in guessing that Out‘s offices are located in New York City, a jurisdiction notorious for its onerous regulations? Would I also be correct in guessing that Out has a lot of middle-aged staffers whose existing health problems and potential future risk for such problems have made the cost of insurance coverage extremely expensive?

Just askin’ questions . . .