Category Archives: English

Bill O And Barack O’s Zero-Info ‘Sparring’

Barack Obama, English, Media, Republicans

During his interview with Barack Obama, which he had advertized non-stop for weeks, Bill O’Reilly acted his trademark abrupt. Nobody much minded given who was sitting opposite him.

Also trademark Fox News was the heavy focus not on the infractions of the healthcare law and the law-makers who midwifed it, but on the technical glitches.

When Obama began bandying about bogus numbers of people who’ve signed up for healthcare, O’Relly might have nabbed him but … didn’t. Instead, on the broadcaster noodled about the need to fire Kathleen Sebelius.

O’Relly did get to the, “If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance” lie, but let it slide without resolution.

For the rest, the interview is vintage Bill O’Reilly bluster. A lot of bravado and noise from O’Reilly; but not much more.

Thanks to Fox News for finally offering a transcript. I usually leave the page when I see one of the network’s big fat pictures of a video clip I’m supposed to watch. Some of us still prefer the written word.

‘Into The Cannibal’s Pot’ In University Libraries

Education, English, Ilana Mercer, Political Correctness, South-Africa

It transpires that intellectually curious and honest academics are having some luck in their efforts to increase the chances of students being exposed to solid facts and serious analysis pertaining to South Africa.
A very nice professional who wishes to remain anonymous—he works behind enemy lines in academia—has been kind enough to forward me a list of “the [university] libraries that have [“Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”] and have reported that they have it to WorldCat.” The gentleman informs me that, “Most books are purchased via standing orders for major publishers, or approval plans, so books not acquired in that way get bought when someone, usually a faculty member, requests that they be purchased.”
You know what this means? Academics can place orders for the book and thus increase the chances that students are not bamboozled by idiots (such as my co-panelist on the Cross-Talk TV show).

Let me know how it goes. I’ll be sure to mention any successful outcomes.

Location  Library  Local Holdings   
US, AK ANCHORAGE PUB LIBR XYZ  

US, CA ALIBRIS ALBRS  
US, CA STANFORD UNIV LIBR STF  

US, CO DENVER PUB LIBR DPL  
US, CO LAFAYETTE PUB LIBR FIU  
US, CO PUEBLO CITY CNTY LIBR DIST   

US, DC LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DLC  

US, FL AVE MARIA UNIV AVMAR  

US, IA DORDT COL Local Holdings Availa…   
US, IA JOHNSTON PUB LIBR JUH  

US, IL WARREN NEWPORT PUB LIBR DIST IHZ  

US, KY HENDERSON CNTY PUB LIBR DIST KG6  

US, MA MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECH MYG  

US, MI UNIV OF MICHIGAN LIBR EYM  

US, MO KANSAS CITY PUB LIBR KCP  

US, NH YBP LIBRARY SERVICES YDX  

US, NJ PRINCETON UNIV PUL  

US, NY CORNELL UNIV Local Holdings Availa… COO  
US, NY MID-YORK LIBR SYST ZTM  
US, NY SUNY AT ALBANY NAM  

US, OH AKRON-SUMMIT CNTY PUB LIBR APL  
US, OH SHAWNEE STATE UNIV OSS  
US, OH WORTHINGTON PUB LIBR OWR  

US, PA TEMPLE UNIV TEU  

US, WA PACIFIC LUTHERAN UNIV OPV  

CA, AB UNIV OF ALBERTA UAB  

CA, ON COUTTS LIBR SERV CDX  

New Zealand AUCKLAND LIBRS NZAUC  

South Africa DACST-DEPT TRADE & INDUSTRY LIBR
 
US, CO DOUGLAS CNTY LIBR DAD  

US, FL SARASOTA CNTY LIBR SYST FSP  

US, MD JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV JHE  

US, MO OZARKS TECH COMMUN COL TLO  

US,NH YBP LIBRARY SERVICES YDX  

US, WA FORT VANCOUVER REG LIBR YEP  
US, WA NORTH CENT REG LIBR OEI  

Australia LIVING CITY SVC ATNSP  
Australia STONNINGTON LIBR & INFOR SVC ATVLI  
Australia SUTHERLAND SHIRE LIBR ATSSL  

South Africa NATIONAL LIBR OF SOUTH AFRICA
 
Germany UNIVERSITATS BIBLIOTHEK POTSDAM

CA,AB

Über Alec, Barking-Mad Bashir, Death-Defying Libertarians

Ann Coulter, English, Family, Feminism, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Objectivism, Political Correctness

“Über Alec, Barking-Mad Bashir & The Death-Defying Libertarians” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

…. BLACKOUT. “Phony panic” and “urban myth” is how the “prestige press” is characterizing widespread reports of en masse, black-on-white Knock-Out attacks. “Boys behaving badly,” noodled one jocular Democratic strategist about the sucker-punching to death of a few people, so far.

The mischief-makers must be laughing. They couldn’t care a fig. In fact, the rhetorical reprisals the perpetrators deploy to define their crimes are as precise as the blows they land on their pale victims: “polarbearing,” Jew hunting, and so on.

But some libertarians were having none of it, insisting à la the left, that to frame the felons in anything but race-neutral terms is collectivist and racist.

In the face of such dogged denial, I worry that libertarians who reject reality may be doomed to extinction.

Picture this: You walk past a feral gang of black youths, like the ones depicted in all these terrifying YouTube clips. You grin bravely, place honky hands on ears and hum loudly as you saunter by, until… you are coshed on the head by a black youth. Then another. And another.

As you fall to your knees near death, you congratulate yourself on cleaving not to reality, but to a noble “theory” instead. You die a happy, theoretically pious libertarian.

It must be abundantly clear to any thinking man that this is idiotic, not individualistic.

Those who’re derided as apostles of intolerance—”collectivists”—for cleaving to reality will likely outlive the self-sacrificing, self-styled individualists, sacrificed to an idea that has no basis in objective reality. …

The complete column is “Über Alec, Barking-Mad Bashir & The Death-Defying Libertarians.” Read it on WND.

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Happy Private-Property Day.

The Word Slavery Doesn’t ‘Belong’ To Blacks

Debt, English, Political Correctness, Race, Sarah Palin

Now a Fox-News hire, the boring, liberal mediacrat Howard Kurtz had a go at MSNBC’s Martin Bashir. Barking-mad Bashir, an English import, swore at Sarah Palin on air.

Kurtz is as inspiring as the rest of the banal bobbing heads on the network. He uses a fancy, French word like “denouement,” but can’t conjugate a good old English verb: “lie,” as in “lie down.”

“You might think a mayor might lay low for awhile after admitting to smoking crack … blah blah,” wrote Kurtz of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Conjugate the verb “to lie,” dammit! It’s “lie low,” not “lay low,” stupid!

Repeat after me, Howard: “I am lying low. I lay low yesterday. I had once lain low after making another grammatical faux pas. And, for the same reason, I will lie low in the future.”

Still worse was Kurtz’ pathetic condemnation of Palin for “likening government borrowing to the awful legacy of buying and selling African-Americans”:

Now the issue on which [Bashir] went after the former Alaska governor and Fox News contributor is fair game. Palin had spoken in Iowa of borrowing from China to pay for the national debt, saying: “This isn’t racist. But it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due.”

Palin used a perfectly good noun—slavery—to denote the bondage that trillions in government debt imposes on citizens.

Any opinion writer worth his salt would have rejected the idea that certain eternally aggrieved groups can stake out exclusive linguistic rights to words in our language.