Bernie Goldberg Meets Jason Whitlock…Finally

If you think you've got it bad, try being an outspoken Black conservative.   

 Bernie Goldberg: Once upon a time, sports was a place that we went to get away from the daily barrage of politics and a lot of other stuff we don’t like. Not anymore. Is that a fair assessment?

Jason Whitlock: Yeah, I think one upon a time, sports was second to religion in bringing people of diverse backgrounds together. And so, I think, other than religion, nothing promoted unity more than sports in America.

Bernie: What happened?

Jason: I think that the adversaries of America realized the power of sports to bring people together and started investing in turning sports into something polarizing that didn’t bring us together.

“Blackness has been turned into a political ideology.”

And so, they have to hop on board with what Colin Kaepernick is promoting or what LeBron James is promoting, because the social-media machines—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram—will brand you as “racist” if you don’t get on board. If you don’t think George Floyd is akin to Martin Luther King, you could be branded as racist. And people are in fear of that; and so everybody’s truth is being compromised; and everybody’s hopping on board with the propaganda that’s being promoted; and sports have become highly politicized.

And so, people are just being bullied into supporting this anti-American sentiment and promoting the idea that America is the land of unchecked, racial bigotry.

Bernie: For fear, you believe, of being called a racist?

Jason: Or, if you’re black, they’ll call you a sell out and Uncle Tom.

Read the whole thing. 

King David vs. Jonah Goldberg

It’s an interesting question.

 Should we judge a man on the totality of his works, or focus on his flaws?

 It’s worth looking at the historical King David, a person most Jews and Christians hold in high regard.

 There was much more to him than the juicy details we all know so well. He was a Peeping Tom with several wives and concubines, not uncommon for his time. What was not common was that he seduced a married woman.

He had the husband killed in a battle along with other Israelites as a cover-up for his crime of seduction.

 He raised an incredibly dysfunctional family. One son raped his half-sister. Another son murders his half-brother.

 Family troubles result in civil war during which the son rapes David’s concubines to motives his followers.

 He was politically divisive, creating friction between Judah and the other tribes of Israel which led to another rebellion in which one of David’s enforcers murders another one of David’s followers when didn’t follow orders quickly enough.

This is the guy that Jews hold in high regard?

 From a moral perspective, David was a monster making Trump angelic in comparison.

 A “Real Jew” with high moral standards would have opposed him and used every opportunity to denigrate him. He would have called on God to smite him, and given serious though to allying with Israel’s enemies to bring him down so that Israel could be reborn pure as the sands of the desert.

Despite his personal failures, we honor David because of what he accomplished. They are not an excuse for sin, but an explanation of why God can work through a very flawed individual to bring blessings to the people.

OTOH, Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian and led an exemplary personal life.

This commentary on Jonah Goldberg applies to all the NeverTrumpers on the Right

I just don't get it. You're right dude, why don't you act like it?

Mollie Hemingway: Diehard Conspiracy Theorists In Media and NeverTrump Can't Figure Out if Tillerson Was a Lapdog of Putin or a Dogged Opponent

Ace of Spades does a fairly good job of cutting Jonah Goldberg's nuts off.

Last night on Special Report, Jonah Goldberg insisted that the House Intelligence Committee report that there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and Trump actually vindicated the "Washington Consensus," which he claimed only believed that Russia had interfered with the election, but did not believe anything about collusion.

Are you kidding me? Look through Mollie Hemingway's tweets from the Conspiracy Theorists -- all in the media, or formerly in the media, like Twitter activist Bill Kristol -- and try selling me on this jackass notion that the "Washington Consensus" has not been pushing the "Trump's a traitor and Manchurian Candidate in cahoots with Putin" line for sixteen long hysterical months.

But Jonah Goldberg did rise up vociferously to claim the "Washington Consensus," which must no doubt include his buddies at CNN who push this literally all day long, never really believed there was any "collusion," just interference on Russia's part but without any collusion with Trump.

It's insane. It's literally insane.

Does he literally never watch CNN? That would shock me -- I have a feeling he watches CNN a lot, in between watching MSNBC.

Mollie Hemingway comments:

Just last night I was told on national television that the general consensus in D.C. is that Russia is bad but that Trump and Russia didn't collude. That a treasonous collusion narrative isn’t even "remotely" the general consensus. Someone might want to tell... everyone in the media who has been pushing it non-stop for more than a year no matter the facts on the ground.

As the media reaction to Tillerson's nomination and firing show, we're witnessing the Unified Theory Of Russia Collusion at work. If it's true that the "general consensus" in D.C. is nothing remotely near the idea that Trump and Russia colluded to steal the 2016 election, people should stop pushing the theory. Better yet, if they buy into the theory -- as so many of our supposed media elites obviously do -- they should start to be more specific about the theory. And if they don’t, they should not nibble around the margins of the theory.

Hear, hear. Less "Just Asking Questions" about whether fire can really melt steel, and more straightforward declarative assertions about what Trump either did do or did not do.

There is a game in politics. The Truthers played this game; some politicians hoping to curry favors with the Truthers played it. Like John Kerry.

The game goes like this: While not explicitly endorsing a conspiracy theory for which there is no evidence, you sort of talk it up to maintain its viability as a political attack point. You don't say definitively you believe it -- you just say, as Patterico says today, it raises "interesting" questions.

You keep your "Clean Skin" as far as being a Conspiracy Theorist, and yet you do all you can to suggest to the conspiracy-minded that the conspiracy is All Too Real.

It's a way to speak as Yasser Arafat did, to two different audiences telling two different stories. You encourage conspiracy theorizing, while (mostly) not committing yourself to any particular version of the conspiracy theory.

Just Askin' Questions, you know.

It's one thing for politicians to do this -- they lie.

But pundits and analysts and "thinkers" and "experts" are supposed to tell you exactly what they think.

If Jonah Goldberg, for lo these many months (sixteen or thereabouts) has known that the "Washington Consensus" was actually that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia, why did he keep that on the Q.T. and the D.L.?

Why didn't he tell people?

Why did he enable a conspiracy theory he's now telling us that those In-the-Know always knew was pretty much bullshit?

It's the equivalent of a guy who never quite declares that "Bush knew" that the 9/11 attack was coming but let it happen anyway to enable the PNAC warplan but who is careful never to pour cold water on such conspiracy theories to keep #TheResistance agitated and animated.

You are paid, supposedly, for the truth, and what you know, and what you don't quite know but think to a reasonable certainty.

If Jonah Goldberg is claiming that there is no, and was no, "Washington Consensus" about the Manchurian Apprentice conspiracy theory, why has he been so shy about saying so?

And why is he not throwing cold water on the various members of the Washington Consensus -- such as Patterico, Erick Erickson, Bill Kristol, and of course various and sundry members of the legacy media -- currently spinning out new conspiracy theories about Tillerson's long-expected firing?

If you don't believe in the Conspiracy Theory, then say so firmly.

And if you do believe in it -- then say that too. Do not hide your beliefs with equivocation, evasion, and insinuation.

Where's Jonah on this? Will he ever say? Will he just talk around it without doing his basic job -- You Had One Job, you know -- of telling his readers what he really thinks?

Those pushing this theory should stop being cowards and dishonest hacks and tell us what they believe the quid was in this collusion, what was the quo, and how it was all agreed to.

And, as bonus: They should clue us in as to whether US troops killing Russian troops in Syria was done on Putin's orders.

And as another bonus: Given that the House Intelligence Committee is set to announce no evidence of any collusion -- are they now part of the conspiracy?

Or are they, the people with first-hand knowledge of witness statements and reams of classified reports the average blogger or Twitter blowhard does not possess, somehow less informed by the Washington Consensus Elites?

Still and idiot

Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg's Above It All

National Review has been one of the leaders of the #NeverTrump movement and Jonah Goldberg is a senior editor.  That is a perfect place from which to position himself above the fray.  Goldberg and NR hate the Trumpian populism with a burning hatred that far exceeds their dislike of the Left. 

During the 2016 election they preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.  Their hate of Trump and what he represents transfers to anyone who is on the same side of the cultural spectrum as Trump.

 

Which bring us to Roy Moore, Republican candidate for Senate from Alabama.

In this article he casts big stones at Judge Roy Moore who has been hit with a flurry of just-before-the-election sexual accusations.    

Right-wingers tell me that Al Franken must resign for behavior far less offensive than what Roy Moore has been accused of.

See what he did there?  Equating an unproven accusation with a fact that has been memorialized with pictures.  

Where there's an opportunity to stop another Trumpian figure an accusation =  a fact.  

In this respect, Goldberg is vying for a SJW award; since SJWs tell us to always believe the women, unless the accusation is against a Democrat. 

Goldberg deplores hypocrisy, and in an ideal world hypocrisy is to not a virtue, although I am reminded  of the old saying that “hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.”   Hypocrisy is a human failing.  What I find even worse is that in so much of modern society virtue is no longer honored and vice is no longer condemned.   Where vice is normal, hypocrisy can't exist.

The problem with Jonah’s argument is not that it’s not abstractly worthwhile but it’s vacuous.   In years past, when NR was Bill Buckley’s magazine, Jonah wrote for the Conservative Republican audience.  Now that he’s a full fledged member of the #NeverTrumpers his writing is meant for a very small coterie and, except for some ankle-biting of Trump and his supporters, his writing has absolutely no effect on the culture.

It’s a form of onanism.  He’s writing for a fringe of a fringe.  That doesn’t make him a public intellectual; it makes him a jerk.  Someone who pretends to be something he’s not.  He’s not on the field where the game is being played; instead he’s wandering the sidelines jumping up and down hoping for attention.

Jonah's an entertaining writer, but opinion writers should be held to different standards than novelists.  The novelist only needs to entertain to be successful.  Opinion writers should have somewhat loftier goals.  Advancing their ideas, for one. 

Let’s check the scoreboard.

Didn’t National review call for the end of the Clinton Presidency during Whitewater and the Lewinski affair?  Yes.  And what happened?  Bill Clinton won two terms.  "We’ll just have to win" said perjurer/rapist/sleazebag Clinton.  And he did. 

Did National Review inveigh against the Obama presidency?  It most definitely did, and what happened?  He won two terms.  And, I might add, changed America … as he promised; not for the better but for the worse.  Not in the direction of National Review or the conservative direction, but in the direction of The Nation.  The country became the country of "Hands up don't shoot" and Black Lives Matter.  It honored Harvey Weinstein.   It became the country of Big Lies like the UVA Non-Rape and the Duke Lacrosse non-Rape Case.

But, but, but ....That’s not fair, cries NR and the #NeverTrumpers.  You can’t expect an opinion magazine and a few articles in the Wall Street Journal to effect an election.  It’s the rest of the press and the Democrats who are to blame. 

Can we be honest?  The people who were the intellectual Generals of the Right were as effective as the Washington Generals, the patsies for the Harlem Globetrotters.  The Washington Generals lost to the Harlem Globetrotters over 16,000 times.  They were there to make the Globetrotters look good.  And that's the role that Goldberg, and the others leaders of the "Respectable Right" were assigned.  And they played their role to perfection.

So here we are.  But in the meantime a strange, totally unexpected, intruder has entered Washington.  Despite unified opposition from Democrats, the Press (but I repeat myself) and the Establishment Right, we have a Republican President and he has a nominally Republican Congress.

And at this juncture, when the economy is picking up, the stock market is reaching all-time highs,  regulations are being repealed, energy production is booming, unemployment is at record lows, Jonah Goldberg calls us to commit political suicide.  To repeat the totally ineffective, ineffectual plays that were called before.  As the Democrats are circling the wagons around Al “Fish Lips” Franken, Goldberg demands that Republicans lose the Senate seat in Alabama.  Bill Buckley once said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact, but Jonah Goldberg doesn't believe it.  It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. 

Jonah Goldberg's not insane.  He's comfortable.  The old Conservative objectives of limited government and rescuing America from decline is not his objective.  His eyes are closer to home.

He’s doing fine.  He’s got a job at NR, a syndicated column; he’s on Fox News from time to time as one of the designated “conservatives.”  He writes books, he’s happy, particularly content with the audience he’s got and the paycheck he receives.  Jonah Goldberg is a business, a persona, an actor  playing a role, just like many of the people who are doing well in the Swamp.  In reality he’s a guy with a pretty good career and he isn’t about to blow it.   That’s what pays the groceries and keeps a roof over his head.  He's not that much different from the sales rep who’s meeting his quota.  And he has just as much influence on the culture and the direction of American politics.

Which is interesting.  Because the current President – Donald Trump – is a gifted amateur.  And he’s doing a great job changing the culture, changing Washington, making America Great Again despite having to fight this particular fight virtually alone.  That’s why it’s time to roll right over the professionals – the Generals who have lost the last wars; every damn one of them.  It's time to go with a new team – and go with amateurs who will, at the least, fight.  Because the fight means something to someone who still cares. 

Yale's Student Organizations, But Liberal Nuts Still Think It's Not Diverse Enough

And they're right! There is not on organization that specifically conservative.

From NR (Jonah Goldberg)  - read the whole thing!

-A Learning and Interactive Vietnamese Experience
-Asian American Students Alliance
-Asian American Studies Task Force
-Association of Native Americans at Yale, Undergraduate Organization
-India at Yale
-IvyQ (as in “Queer”)
-Japanese Undergraduate Students at Yale
-Latina Women at Yale
-Liberal Party
-Reproductive Rights Action League at Yale
-Sex and Sexuality Week Planning Board
-Undergraduate First Generation Low Income Partnership
-Women in Physics
-Women’s Leadership Initiative at Yale
-Yale Queer+Asian
-Yale Urban Collective
-The Black Solidarity Conference at Yale
-The Yale Women’s Center
-Yale Southeast Asian Movement
-Q (again, as in Queer) Magazine
-Alliance for Southeast Asian Students
-Arab Students Association
-Association of Salvadoreñas at Yale Undergraduate
-Black Student Alliance at Yale
-Brazil Club
-Canadian Students’ Association at Yale [Talk about safe spaces!]
-Chinese American Students’ Association
-Chinese Undergraduate Students at Yale
-Club Colombia
-Club of Argentine Students at Yale
-Club of Romanian Students at Yale
-Cuban-American Undergraduate Students’ Association
-Despierta Boricua, the Puerto Rican Student Organization at Yale
-DisOrient
-Eritrean and Ethiopian Student Association at Yale
-In the Q[as in Queer]loset
-Japanese American Students Union
-Kasama: The Filipino Club at Yale
-Korean American Students at Yale
-La Revolucion
-La Societe Francaise
-Lo Stivale
-Malaysian and Singaporean Association
-Organization for Racial and Ethnic Openness
-Russian Cultural Club
-Sisters of All Nations
-South Asian Society
-Southeastern European Society
-Student Association of Thais at Yale
-Students of Nigeria
-Swiss Students and Affiliates at Yale
-Taiwanese American Society
-The German Society of Undergraduates at Yale University
-The Polish Students’ Society of Yale College
-Vietnamese Student Association
-Yale African Students Association
-Yale Black Women’s Coalition
-Yale British Undergraduates
-Yale Caribbean Students’ Organization
-Yale College Black Men’s Students Union
-Yale College Student Czech and Slovak Society
-Yale Dominican Student Association
-Yale European Undergraduates
-Yale Friends of Turkey
-Yale Hawaii Institute
-Yale Kala
-Yale LGBTQ Cooperative
-Yale Mexican Student Organization
-Yale Scandinavian Society
-Yale Undergraduate Portuguese Association
-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ Activism Collective
-Margin: Student Perspectives from the Left
-Middle Eastern Resolution through Education, Action & Dialogue
-Party of the Left
-Students for Justice in Palestine
-Yale NAACP

Jonah Goldberg on President Obama Politicizing Issues

Liberal agression

Jonah Goldberg

Liberals are the aggressors in the culture war. The only shocking thing about that statement is that it ever shocks liberals. On their own terms, they take pride in being “change agents” and “forces of progress.” But the moment anyone attempts to defend themselves against the social-justice warriors, they are treated as the aggressors in the culture war. “Don’t impose your values on me!” should be translated as, “Stop trying to defend yourself as we impose our values on you!”

Jonah Goldberg Calls It!

You can't make this stuff up!

A Tedious, Recycled State of the Union

Before the financial crisis, Obama ran on “investing” in education, health care, renewable energy, infrastructure, and so on. After the financial crisis hit, presumably our needs changed, but not Obama’s agenda. Suddenly, what America needed to do to respond to the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression was to again “invest” in education, health care, renewable energy, and infrastructure. And now that the “shadow of crisis has passed,” as he announced on Tuesday, the same investments are needed. Why? Because he said it before, of course.

The same holds true with his foreign-policy agenda. As a candidate, Obama vowed that we needed to pull back from the War on Terror. After the rise of the Islamic State and the metastasizing of jihadist terror around the world, we must stay the course. Even when events deviate from the president’s well-worn script, what matters is that the script never change so Obama can keep talking and talking and talking.

Obamacare Schadenfreudarama

Jonah Goldberg pens a classic.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the unraveling of ObamaCare.

Read the whole thing.

Bending the Trayvon Martin Tragedy To Fit

Jonah Goldberg:

I never thought the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case deserved nearly the attention it got. But reasonable people can disagree about that. What strikes me as unconscionable, however, is the way the supposedly objective media have not only sensationalized a tragedy but at times appear to deliberately bend the facts to fit a desired story line. Maybe it started with the use of pictures of a younger Martin or with the sudden embrace of the term "white Hispanic" to describe Zimmerman in order to more easily paint him as a racist.

...

Any hope that the editorializing would end with the trial was naive. National Public Radio recently profiled Sybrina Fulton, Martin's mother. In response to the tragedy and the trial, Fulton has become a civil rights activist, NPR reported.

It was a deferential piece, and understandably so. Who wants to add to the woman's pain? But there's a difference between deference and advocacy. In a speech to the National Urban League, Fulton said her son was killed "all because of a law, a law that has prevented the person who shot and killed my son to be held accountable and to pay for this awful crime."

And how did NPR's Greg Allen put that statement in context? He told listeners: "Fulton is one of many pushing for a repeal of Florida's 'stand your ground' law." He noted that sit-ins have been staged but that the Florida governor remains "unmoved." And that was it.

...

But that is an airy justification for the media to treat the law as if it were central to the whole controversy. Is it conceivable that NPR would let, say, a gun rights activist's wildly tendentious interpretation of a law stand without some explanation or context? Why should opponents of "stand your ground" laws get different treatment?

I think part of the answer is that the media and civil rights groups want a consolation prize. They didn't get the verdict -- or the story line -- they wanted. But they need to get something positive out of this. I certainly understand why Trayvon Martin's family feels that way. I fail to see why the media should so eagerly oblige.

Read the whole thing.

Jonah Goldberg on the Cynicism of the Obama Presidency

In the fifth year of the Obama regime, the President and the press never accept responsibility for what's happening in Washington. Read the Limbaugh Theorem.

That’s not the narrative you usually hear, because for most of Obama’s presidency, the Washington press corps was enthralled with him. It wasn’t until the dawn of his second term that most reporters stopped asking questions like “Can you create a boulder too heavy for you to lift?”

It’s also odd that Obama has pivoted back to the economy when, depending on whose estimates you use, he’s made similar “pivots” on average once every two to four months since he’s been elected. As one wag told The Weekly Standard, “You do that on the basketball court, you get called for traveling.” But the more apt image is of a basketball player with one shoe nailed to the floor, constantly pivoting in a circle.

But it’s not just odd, it’s deeply cynical. For starters, it was the reelected president — not “Washington” — who took his eyes off the economy to exploit a tragedy for new gun controls that would not have prevented the tragedy itself. His unilateral crackdown on carbon emissions isn’t exactly a full-throated effort to create jobs either. When Congress took its eye off the ball by taking up immigration reform, the White House cheered.

ls Al Sharpton the Voice of Black America?

Jonah Goldberg recounts for us the unsavory history of the despicable Al Sharpton. The Al Sharpton of the Tawanda Brawley hoax, of the Crown Heights riots and murder, of the Freddy's Fashion Mart fiery deaths.

Goldberg asks the question of why Sharpton is embraced and empowered by the Liberal elite.  We know where he gets the microphone.  Here's the puzzle: where's his money, and how does a penniless man get invited to join the membership of the Grand Havana Room? 

 Taking up the penthouse floor of 666 Fifth Avenue, the Grand Havana Room is a private, invitation-only cigar club and four-star restaurant. Through its windows, you can see the toiling salary men 39 floors below as they scurry about like ants, some furtively smoking in doorways, ever fearful of Nanny Bloomberg’s All-Seeing Eye.

Named by Business Insider as one of the “11 exclusive clubs Wall Streeters are dying to get into,” the Grand Havana Room is where power brokers and celebrities hobnob with captains of industry in one of the last places where it’s still legal to smoke in the Big Apple.

Immune as I am to the seductions of class resentment and Jacobin envy, I will admit it: I love the place. If invited, and if I could afford it, I’d join.

The one question I have is: Who’s paying for Al Sharpton’s membership?

“The Rev” is an omnipresent member of the club. After his MSNBC show, he’ll swing by for dinner and cigars amid the other Masters of the Universe. I couldn’t confirm that he repaired there after he broadcast his radio show, Keeping It Real, from Zuccotti Park to show his solidarity with the 99-percenters.

The reason I ask who’s paying for his membership is that Sharpton’s relationship with money has always been complicated. When he claimed he didn’t have the resources to pay damages in a defamation suit he lost, Sharpton was asked in a deposition how he could afford his suits. He didn’t own them, he replied, someone else did. He was merely granted “access” to the garments as needed. The same went for his TV, silverware, etc.

 

So it turns out that he not only goads his followers to kill the Jews  and the "white Hispanics" and "creepy-ass crackers", he is a tax cheat.   But then, he fits in well with the other members of the Obama administration.  Which gets us to the headline question.  Al Sharpton manages to stir the passions of a lot of people.  Is he the voice of Black America?  Let me know because if he is we have more reason to be worried that you may think. 

Goldberg: Education spending that isn't smart

At this point, I would not be surprised if education spending is as effective at promoting growth as Solyndra.

Spinning the ‘Pile of Manure’ Economy

Jonah Goldberg recalls Ronald Reagan's famous joke ...

It was arguably Ronald Reagan’s favorite joke. In one version, two kids — one an optimist, the other a pessimist — rush downstairs on Christmas morning. The pessimistic kid gets a new bike and weeps that he’ll probably break it soon. The optimistic kid is presented with an enormous pile of manure and squeals with delight: “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

Here's Obama's version ...

Barack Obama, who always wanted to be a liberal version of Ronald Reagan, has his own version of the joke. It’s not particularly funny, alas. In Obama’s telling, the kid runs downstairs, sees a huge pile of manure and yells, “Yay! Manure! Who needs a pony!”

Obama, having reduced the economy to a pile of manure, a crowing about how great the manure is. Read the whole thing.

Proof that young people are so frickin' stupid!

Jonah Goldberg makes the point that "young people are so frickin' stupid"   As if determined to prove his point beyond parody, they organize a march on Rush Limbaugh's office ... in Chicago!

A crowd of Occupy protesters in Chicago descended on Rush Limbaughs “office” Thursday to air their grievances about the conservative radio host.

The problem? Despite their references to “Rush’s office building” and “Rush Limbaugh’s studio,” they weren’t in the right place — not by more than 1,000 miles.

Anyone who has ever listened to Rush Limbaugh knows that he lives and broadcasts from Florida.

Which brings up two points that Rush made on Friday:

•  Most people who hate him have never listened to him.
•  People who listen to him should ask those who hate him why they have an opinion on something they know nothing about.

The OWS crowd is so stupid that they organize a march without the first inkling of a clue that the object of their uninformed hate is not within a thousand miles of their destination.

Jonah Goldberg: Young people are ‘so frickin’ stupid’ [VIDEO]

Jonah Goldberg: The political ‘center’ is a myth [VIDEO]