Archive for the ‘Politics and Poker’ Category
And her little dog, too
Posted by Ron Coleman on June 5, 2008
Posted in Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
Shoot him now?
Posted by Ron Coleman on June 4, 2008
From the New York Times blog:
This morning, a Boston-born performance artist, Yazmany Arboleda, tried to set up a provocative art exhibition in a vacant storefront on West 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan with the title, “The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama,” in neatly stenciled letters on the plate glass windows at street level. . . .
“The Secret Service had to do a whole questionnaire with me,” he said. “It was about an hour of questioning. They asked if I owned guns, if I was a violent person, if I had ever been institutionalized.”
Mr. Arboleda answered no. Nonetheless, he said the Secret Service asked him to take down the exhibition title from the window.
“I’m renting that space; the space was allocated for an exhibition and it’s my right to put those words up,” he said. “They said it could excite someone to do something crazy, like break the window. It’s terrible, because they’re violating my rights. If someone breaks a window, they’re committing a crime.”
He added, “The exhibition is supposed to be about character assassination. It’s philosophical and metaphorical.”
I wonder whether anyone has ever pushed a legal challenge to this generally well-understood, and popular, policy that the Secret Service has certain extraordinary legal powers it can execute in connection with a perceived threat to any person it is in the business of guarding.
It does seem constitutionally problematic. Because it seems here as if the authorities may have overreacted.
I would prefer merely a broad prohibition on “performance artists.”
Posted in Americana, Ars Longa, Metropolis, Oppression, Politics and Poker | 1 Comment »
Obama the intellectual?
Posted by Ron Coleman on June 3, 2008
My friend Pamela Geller offers, in somewhat more polemic language than I would use, a nonetheless compelling antidote to the largely unexamined conception — to some extent uncritically passed along by me — that Barack Obama has serious intellectual achievements of which he can rightly boast.
I very much appreciate the point. It’s one I began to ponder at about the same time her post went up, just by coincidence. I recalled that, like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama was a law professor at one point, and that Clinton, too, was frequently cited by supporters as a genius, a genuine intellectual — “brilliant,” as they say.
My thinking regarding both of them was the same: Intellectuals may achieve many things, but if they are truly intellectuals there is inevitably some novel or at least rigorous contribution to some art, science, philosophy or other body of thought-powered endeavor, such as law, by which that intellection may be proved and measured.
And in the case of both men (the comparison keeps coming up), there is neither. There is no book or book chapter, no judicial opinion in a case where one of them acted as counsel, no published article in a scholarly or professional work. There is not even a genuinely original great work of oratory or say, a riveting course-pack.
Intellectuals are as intellectuals do. Bill and Barack utilized their credentials, as they had every right to and as almost everyone else does, as stepping stones toward the realization of their grand ambitions. But neither of them can in any way be credited as having demonstrated a genius for anything other than achievement of that ambition. And this is not the same, we should recall, as a genius for leadership or government, with which we might credit a Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan. Neither man can be credited with being the moving or creative force behind the building of any great institution, public or private; of a noteworthy government program, initiative or policy; or a political movement that transcended the political institutions of their time and place.
There is no reason that a President must be any of these things. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Medialites, Politics and Poker | 8 Comments »
Shoes drop, crows roost, the whole thing
Posted by Ron Coleman on June 1, 2008
SO WHY — AFTER FAILING TO DO SO WHEN IT WOULD HAVE DONE HIM THE MOST GOOD — did Obama decide to quit the Trinity Church now? Larry Johnson says that another shoe is about to drop. Hmm. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Related item here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Also here.
The sub theme is Michelle Obama who, I kind of had a sneaking suspicion, was going to “help” flush out certain… issues here.
It’s not really a surprise, because it was always preposterous to argue that Barack Obama could get as far as he did, as fast as he did, whence he did, and be “different.” Precisely because he did all those things, we knew this was wrong.
In fact, he reminds very much of another young, ambitious politician — Bill Clinton — who had the whole thing mapped out from very early on but, far from being a different politician, only came to epitomize how a new, slicker generation works the system. Clinton made the “mistake” of losing some elections up front, while Obama locked onto the abundant teat of Chicago politics, which dispenses only sure things.
But despite the gifts of brilliant plans, talent and motivation, Barack and Bill could never have actualized their ambitions without great women at their side. And, as Clinton before him — and, as we may yet see, perhaps even more so? — Obama is seeing that there is sometimes a harsh price to pay for the super-talented, modern, accomplished woman fit to play that role and yet subsume, or seem to subsume, herself in her husband’s political career.
One way or another, that bill will be paid.
Posted in Politics and Poker | 1 Comment »
Nobody move or the Republican gets it!
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 27, 2008
Remember that quote from Blazing Saddles? Same idea here, right? Not quite:
A “SUPER-CRAPPY PLAN:”
I do not believe you’re going to teach anyone a “lesson” by sitting this one out or writing in Fred Thompson or Sunny Lucas. I believe that way too many people are ignoring the forest for the trees and that in doing so, they’re going to have a hand in electing Obama. Some say that’s fine because if the country’s going to be “ruined”, better that it’s ruined by a Democrat, and somehow magically we’ll come up with a fantastic, “real” conservative in 4 years even though there is no one like that on the horizon and everyone knows it. Like I said, I think that’s a super-crappy plan.
Sounds familiar. It’s like I told you months ago: Youth is wasted on the conservative.
Posted in Politics and Poker | 1 Comment »
All ambition, all the time
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 25, 2008
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton quickly apologized Friday after citing the June 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in defending her decision to keep running for the Democratic presidential nomination despite increasingly long odds.
“I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever,” the former first lady said.
Forget about the conditional apology part — “I regret that if” — which is standard political procedure these days. It’s just the last, sad rusted bolt in her metallic coat: Mrs. Clinton, ultimately, was always prepared to say anything, anything, to justify the previous half century of her life as a political robot by grabbing the iron ring.
We see now it was not merely a matter of the truth, which never stood in the way of the message (UPDATE: uh-huh!). It is simply that she does not care at all about the content of anything she says except whether or not it will have the desired political effect. That, of course, is a formula that is inherently self-defeating, but when you lack sensitivity… when you do not care… when you just do not get it…
You defeat yourself.
Cross-posted on Right-Wing News.
Posted in O Mores!, Politics and Poker | 1 Comment »
Football?
Posted by pennywit on May 15, 2008
According to the New York Times, Sen. Arlen Specter is once again criticizing the New England Patriots. Could somebody please explain to me why a senator is involving himself in what’s essentially a bush-league sports scandal?
I can almost understand Congress holding hearings about steroid use in baseball, as drug use is a major issue across multiple sports and there have been allegations of widespread drug use in baseball.
But a senator taking on a single team? Surely Specter has something better to do with his time.
Posted in Politics and Poker | 4 Comments »
Calling our libertarianism
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 12, 2008
Dean Esmay: Why I’m No Longer A Libertarian.
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Not so strange bedfellows
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 11, 2008
Michael Young at Reason Magazine is shocked, shocked at all that “strange new respect” being directed to Hezbollah by “the writer and academic Norman Finkelstein.” (Via Goldberg, via Instapundit.)
“Writer and academic”? Yeah, wasn’t Joseph Goebbels one of those, too?
Then, as a topper — Noam Chomsky! Sympathetic to Arab mass murderers, those guys? Really? Who knew. Good thing about these Internets is you get the news and stuff fast!
Posted in Orient, Politics and Poker | 2 Comments »
Top righties
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 9, 2008
John Hawkins polled righty bloggers (I was a no-show this time — got to keep him honest!) and has now published a list of The 25 Most Influential People On The Right According To Conservative Bloggers.
Posted in Blogophilia, Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
