Quote of the Day: Mark Steyn on Putin

Pretty much, yeah:

Putin has pulled off something incredible: He’s gotten Washington to anoint him as the international community’s official peacemaker, even as he assists Iran in going nuclear and keeping their blood-soaked Syrian client in his presidential palace. 

Steyn on Politically Correct Big Brother

"The bozo leviathan sees everything ... and nothing." *Sigh.*   It also doesn't help that all this takes place in the middle of Scandal-a-palooza's apparently endless shenanigans.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Margarine

Here is a fascinating bit of Canadian history.  (Real butter's still better for you, though!)

Steyn on Surveillance and Drones

Steyn is always worth your time.  Here are two tastes of his latest: "the government is too craven to stray beyond technological warfare and take on its enemies ideologically" and "government is increasingly comfortable with a view of society as a giant “Panopticon” — the radial prison devised by Jeremy Bentham in 1785, in which the authorities can see everyone and everything." 

Mark Steyn, Mark Twain, and the $ 1 Trillion Coin

Do read.  Now I want to read that Twain story!

Quote of the Day: Mark Steyn on Equal Justice Under Law

Just look at what l'affaire David Gregory hath wrought. Steyn observes:

Laws either apply to all of us or none of us. If they apply only to some, they’re not laws but caprices — and all tyranny is capricious.

Well, DUH.  Of course, I also feel compelled to offer this PSA: "The Fact That A Law Exists Doesn't Mean That It's Not Stupid."  (On a related note, remember this?  We're all felons now, eh?)  

Mark Steyn and a Tale of Two Asinine Videos

As usual, Steyn says it much better than I could.

Mark Steyn on the Mob and the First Amendment

Worth a look, as Steyn always is.

Niall Ferguson on Romney vs. Obama

The Oxford/Harvard professor and analyst has something to say.  I give you a blurb because he says a lot of the things that I would say if I ever had the time to sit down and blog them all out for you:

The voters now face a stark choice. They can let Barack Obama’s rambling, solipsistic narrative continue until they find themselves living in some American version of Europe, with low growth, high unemployment, even higher debt—and real geopolitical decline. 

Or they can opt for real change: the kind of change that will end four years of economic underperformance, stop the terrifying accumulation of debt, and reestablish a secure fiscal foundation for American national security.

Well, I suppose we can sort of append him to the list of 400 economists who have declared publicly for Romney.  You know, you can boil down the entire presidential campaign, I think, to one idea: Romney with Ryan has a plan.  Obama has a narrative.  (The less said about Biden the better, aside from the snarky observation of who chose him for the VP slot in the first place, hm?)

UPDATE 1: Mark Steyn on who has a plan and who doesn't.  Hmmm.  This too.

UPDATE 2: In the interest of fairness, an opposing response to Ferguson.

UPDATE 3: Ferguson responds to his critics.

Steyn and Romney

Pretty much, yeah?

Mark Steyn Considers Geert Wilders and the Dutch

Steyn is always fascinating.  As for Wilders, whatever else he is, he's also a lightning rod. Death threats are not okay, no matter what sort of person he might be.  As for Steyn's piece, this is how it begins:

When I was asked to write a foreword to Geert Wilders’ new book, my first reaction, to be honest, was to pass. Mr. Wilders lives under 24/7 armed guard because significant numbers of motivated people wish to kill him, and it seemed to me, as someone who’s attracted more than enough homicidal attention over the years, that sharing space in these pages was likely to lead to an uptick in my own death threats. Who needs it? Why not just plead too crowded a schedule and suggest the author try elsewhere? I would imagine Geert Wilders gets quite a lot of this. 

And then I took a stroll in the woods, and felt vaguely ashamed at the ease with which I was willing to hand a small victory to his enemies. 

Steyn on the Secret Service's Not-So-Secret Services

Trust Steyn to make you laugh about this entire debacle of incompetence mingled with feckless venality and general dirtbaggery.

Of Memes and Mangled History

The 19th president of the US Rutherford B. Hayes becomes an Internet meme and takes off.  Why?  Here's why, as Mark Steyn explains.  What a cocktail of ignorance and condescension.  *Sigh.*  UPDATE:  Gentle reader Dignified Rant has contributed a meme!

Quote of the Day: On the Persecution of Christians in the Middle East

A thought:

When Lord Sacks, chief rabbi in England, rose in the House of Lords to speak about the persecution of Christians, he quoted Martin Luther King. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

Read on.  UPDATE:  More here.

Steyn on OWS: "Anarchists for Statism"

Take a look.  *Sigh.*

Mark Steyn on Presidential Ostentation

I'd never really thought about it before, but the juxtaposition between the visit to Minnesota and the escape to Martha's Vineyard does seem rather ... striking after I read this.  Besides, Steyn always manages to be entertainingly humorous no matter what his topic is.

Steyn on Fake Personae and The Easily Duped

Heh.  I suppose if you tell certain people exactly what they want to hear in their preconceptions and biases, you can get away with all sorts of ludicrous hijinks that no normal thinking (i.e., skeptical and demanding proof) person would ever fall for.  Don't be a gullible dupe.  As for the fake personae just recently busted?  There's nothing else I can do but quote Austin Powers: "THAT'S A MAN, BABY!"  Yeah!

Mark Steyn on Lindsey Graham and the First Amendment

Comment the first, comment the second.  Basically in this entire mess, just about everybody is a dirtbag (except, of course, Steyn as scathing commentator).  The nutty embarrassment of a "pastor" in Florida, the howling murderers over there, the mewling political twits over here.  Hasn't anybody ever heard of the old adage that the best remedy for bad speech is more speech?  Or Voltaire?   Here's a thought.

Steyn on Libya: "Impeccably Multilateralist"

Mark Steyn is as humorously pointed as ever (recall this?).  Here's how he starts this time around:

If I recall correctly, we went into Libya — or, at any rate, over Libya — to stop the brutal Qaddafi dictatorship killing the Libyan people. And thanks to our efforts a whole new mass movement of freedom-loving democrats now has the opportunity to kill the Libyan people. As the Los Angeles Times reported from Benghazi, these democrats are roaming the city “rousting Libyan blacks and immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa from their homes and holding them for interrogation as suspected mercenaries or government spies.” According to the New York Times, “Members of the NATO alliance have sternly warned the rebels in Libya not to attack civilians as they push against the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.” We dropped bombs on Qaddafi’s crowd for attacking civilians, and we’re prepared to do the same to you! “The coalition has told the rebels that the fog of war will not shield them from possible bombardment by NATO planes and missiles, just as the regime’s forces have been punished.” 

So, having agreed to be the Libyan Liberation Movement Air Force, we’re also happy to serve as the Qaddafi Last-Stand Air Force. Say what you like about Barack Obama, but it’s rare to find a leader so impeccably multilateralist he’s willing to participate in both sides of a war. It doesn’t exactly do much for holding it under budget, but it does ensure that for once we’ve got a sporting chance of coming out on the winning side. If a coalition plane bombing Qaddafi’s forces runs into a coalition plane bombing the rebel forces, are they allowed to open fire on each other? Or would that exceed the U.N. resolution?

Melanie Phillips sums up the entire operation as "clueless."  I'm afraid that she's right.  RELATED POST: Libya and Liberal Way of War.

The HopeChange Chronicles: The Unengaged Style

Mark Steyn takes aim.