Mark Steyn on Benghazi

Mark Steyn, as usual, is must-read material.  I recommend his last three weekly columns, about Benghazi and what has happened since.

Did you know that since Benghazi, the Islamists have also destroyed six of our Harrier jets and killed two of our Marines?  (More.)  Neither does anyone else.  See also pro-Obama media bias.

Steyn:

• September 15th
  Disgrace in Benghazi
  And a dying superpower’s blundering response.
  (National Review Online, Orange County Register)

Alternate Interpretations of the Polls

Many conservatives are arguing that recent polls, showing Obama in the lead, probably are not accurate.  Here are a few of those arguments:

• Jim Geraghty at National Review Online:
  “This Morning’s Polls Project More Heavily Democratic Electorates Than 2008”
  “Why Party ID Matters, and Why Pollsters Avert Their Eyes”

• Ed Morrissey, Hot Air: “Are we too sensitive to partisan skew in polls?”

• Da Tech Guy: “Demoralized as Hell, The poll the media isn’t talking about edition”
  (Hat tip to Wintery Knight)

News Media Still Liberal — Consume Some Conservative Media!

The “mainstream” news media are all liberal.

The news media do occasionally conspire—such as at a Romney press conference about the Benghazi killings, when they coordinated to make sure the narrative would be all about criticizing Romney’s response (Right Scoop with the audio; see also News Busters, Hot Air, Breitbart.com, National Review Online), or in 2008 when liberal journalists used the e-mail list “Journolist” to conspire to keep the Reverend Wright story from hurting Obama’s chances in the election (Daily Caller, News Busters, Politico)—but I’m willing to assume that the rest of the time, there is no conspiracy.

There doesn’t have to be.

‘You Didn’t Get There on Your Own’

In the course of reflecting on President Obama’s speech at the convention last week, Yuval Levin reflects on the modern American left more generally:

. . . he persisted in the dominant trope of this convention—and, it seems, of contemporary progressive thought: the jump from the sheer fact of human interdependence to a defense of every federal program in precisely its current form. It’s the liberal welfare state or the law of the jungle, and no other alternative is imaginable. This mental gesture—which simultaneously offers an excuse for ignoring the imminent collapse of the liberal welfare state and for ignoring what conservatives are actually saying and offering—really deserves to be thought through. It is a fascinating indicator of the contemporary Left’s intellectual exhaustion.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Reflecting on the Democratic convention last week, National Review editor Rich Lowry remarked,

When Democrats say “We’re all in it together,” what they mean is that the Office of Extramural Research, Education, and Priority Populations in the Department of Health and Human Services needs twice as much funding.

I assumed his example was a joke, but no:  Our vast, sprawling government does indeed include an “Office of Extramural Research, Education, and Priority Populations”.  Its parent organization, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, is supposed to be “for all Americans”, but people of some races are apparently more equal than others.

But then, I guess that’s not news.

Muslim Culture Still Not Compatible with Liberty, West: U. S. Embassy and Consulate in Egypt and Libya Attacked

Yesterday, on the 11th anniversary of September 11th, “Egyptian protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy . . . , tore down the American flag and burned it” (Reuters) and “U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed when Libyan militants stormed the U.S. consulate” (ABC News).  (Apparently three others were also killed.)  The first, and perhaps the second, was apparently prompted by the making of an independent film about Mohammed.  ABC:

The attack on the consulate in Benghazi came shortly after protesters in Cairo, Egypt, scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy and tore down the American flag in an angry demonstration against a movie about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, depicting the founder of Islam as a fraud and a womanizer.

‘The Lazy Cobwebbed Assumptions of Myopic Narcissism’

Mark Steyn, as usual, is must-read material:

And when America slides off the cliff it lands with a much bigger thud than Greece or Iceland. I’m not certain that the Republicans will be able to prevent that happening. But I know that the Democrats can’t. America owes more money than anybody has ever owed anyone in the history of the planet. But millions of Americans don’t see it, and millions of those who do see it don’t see it as a problem.

. . . Sexual liberty, even as every other liberty withers, is all that matters: A middle-school girl is free to get an abortion without parental consent, but if she puts a lemonade stand on her lawn she’ll be fined. What a bleak and reductive concept of “personal freedom.”

‘I always thought there something ill-fated about . . . “shovel ready jobs” [for] a society that no longer encourages people to pick up a shovel.’

Ace of Spades HQ calls our attention to an interesting letter from the Dirty Jobs guy, Mike Rowe.

But mostly, Dirty Jobs was an unscripted celebration of hard work and skilled labor. It still is. Every week, we highlight regular people who do the kind of jobs most people go out of their way to avoid. . . .

. . . our country has become emotionally disconnected from an essential part of our workforce.  We are no longer impressed with cheap electricity, paved roads, and indoor plumbing. We take our infrastructure for granted, and the people who build it.

Louis XVI, to His Children

From a letter written by Louis XVI in prison, during the French Revolution, less than a month before he was executed:

I commend to God my wife and my children, my sister, my aunts, my brothers, and all those who are attached to me by ties of blood or by whatever other means. I pray God particularly to cast eyes of compassion upon my wife, my children, and my sister, who suffered with me for so long a time, to sustain them with His mercy if they shall lose me, and as long as they remain in this mortal world.

Crossroads Generation: Is It Everything You Hoped? Plus: In His Own Words, Again

Via Red State, a new ad from Crossroads Generation suggests that it’s time to move on:

Notes on the Parties’ Platforms UPDATE BELOW

Every four years, at their presidential nominating conventions, the Republican and Democratic Parties write their official platforms.  (Apparently one Web site has the text of past platforms going back to 1840.)

You can read them yourself, but they are not simple lists of concise statements of the parties’ positions; they’re full of background, findings of fact, and other long-winded attempts to frame the issues in their favor, present their positions in a way that makes them sound reasonable, and persuade the reader to agree with them.  Fair enough, and perhaps that’s inevitable, but the result is that the 2012 Republican Party platform (in PDF form) is some 60 pages long, the Democrats’ 40.  As Speaker John Boehner has remarked, “If it were up to me, I’d have the platform on one sheet of paper.  Have you ever met anybody who read the party platform?  I’ve never met anybody.”

Racism, Racism, Everywhere! Plus: ‘Fact-checking’ Paul Ryan

Lately a lot of liberals seem to think that our desire to elect Republicans can only be explained by racism.

Rich Lowry discusses some examples (full version at Politico, short version at National Review Online).

[Michael Eric Dyson] wrote a blog post for The New York Times contending that, by attacking Obama for cutting Medicare to pay for “Obamacare,” the Romney campaign is engaged in a politics of “racially freighted resource competition.”

Why? Because Medicare beneficiaries are “largely white” and “Obamacare” beneficiaries will be “disproportionately minority.” Edsall calls this supposed strategy “subtle.” Very, very subtle.

New York Times Liberal

In case you ever have occasion to wonder:  Yes, the New York Times is definitely part of the liberal news media.  Just take it from their own 2003-2005 “public editor” (“The public editor serves as the readers’ representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own”), Daniel Okrent:

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?

Of course it is.

. . . the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others[—]if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.