The Week’s Tweets In Review (11/23)

Barely A Blog, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Journalism, Media, The Zeitgeist

As a Twitter account holder writes on his Twitter handle or masthead, “I tweet, because I’m too lazy to blog.” And as my valued readers know, for a decade, now—since May 2005, to be precise—I’ve endeavored to provide them with a daily, detailed analysis, on Barely A Blog, of the events. Coupled with writing a weekly, well-read column, first launched in Canada (1998), and continued to this day in the US on WND—this commitment cuts into book writing. Like most women, I refuse to give up cooking, outdoor running, parrot, house and husband husbandry—which would not matter much were it not for the readers’ preference. You, too, have a lot on your proverbial plate. And you prefer a shift to shorter quips. As un-intuitive as tweeting is—it can be real cyber-ejaculate—I will try to increase the use of this format. At week’s end, however, a blog post, “The Week’s Tweets In Review (+ date),” will collate a selection of choice tweets.

Here goes, from latest to last:

Thomas Friedman: Still Consistently Foolish About Everything After All These Years

Intellectualism, Iraq, Islam, Judaism & Jews, Middle East, Neoconservatism

Rolling Stone is hardly a place for profound ideas, but even they don’t take Thomas Friedman seriously.

I hoped I had heard the last of this fatuous, smug, celebrity journo when, superimposed upon the program of another “gem” of veracity and virtue, Fareed Zakaria Plagiarizer, Friedman could be heard venturing, recently, that ISIS appeals to young men because these are “young men who’ve never held power, a job or a girl’s hand and joined ISIS to get all three.”

For once I agree with John Maynard Keynes, who, in preparation for Bretton Woods, was known to have muttered something to the effect that (and I paraphrase), the Americans have all the money; we British have all the brains.

Friedman still persists in rejecting reality. The failed invasions he once cheered have brought this dolt no closer to the realization that, “Evil is part of the human condition, always has been, always will be; that it can’t be wished away, treated away, medicated away, legislated away,” or invaded away.

So many body bags later (ours; theirs), and Friedman is no closer to the intuitive understanding that young men need the anchor of a strong, muscular belief system for which they might consider dying. Why do America’s best and brightest sell their souls (and sacrifice lives and limbs) to Uncle Sam? Heroism (perceived or real) is in a man’s nature. You can’t tweak it out of him like an unsightly nose hair. And you can’t replace it, Mr. Friedman, with an iPad or a subscription to Match.com for Muslim singles. The spiritual nullity that is the West is no inspiration to Muslim men (and increasingly not to our own), many of whom want- and need to be engaged in epic battles.

The truly gifted Myron Robert Pauli quips, “Ah yes, I am going to BLOW MYSELF UP and take other people with me because, (1) my job is non-existent and/or sucks (roughly 95 percent of humanity), and (2) I am horny (roughly 95 percent of men). What brilliant insight into Muslim terrorists—as if atheists and Christians and Jews never have sucky jobs and get horny! Such deep thinking conjures movies like ‘Mars Needs Women,’ with the late Yvonne ‘Batman’ Craig.”

Here is our Friedman File spanning over a decade:

In “PUNDITS, HEAL THYSELVES!” (May 29, 2004), Thomas joined “Christopher Hitchens (who, unlike TF, was undeniably a writer of considerable flair and originality), George Will and Tucker Carlson (both of whom conveniently recanted at the eleventh hour), Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Mark Steyn, Max Boot, John Podhoretz, Andrew Sullivan – as they grab the Bush administration’s Iraq bluff and run with it showing their utter ignorance of geopolitical realities; insisting our soldiers would be greeted with blooms and bonbons and that an Iraqi democracy would rise from the torrid sands of Mesopotamia.

In “HIS RHETORIC, OUR REALITY,” Thomas is shown to have bastardized an important, modest principle of Judaism to better comport with his political ends (January 26, 2005). Top be fair, Friedman doesn’t know better.

In “Foul Tom Friedman,” Tom sticks to familiar territory: fouling up the meaning of capitalism.

And, in “Obama’s And Abdullah’s Plans for Israel,” Thomas Friedman joins that intellectual giant Wolf Blitzer in uproarious applause for Abdullah bin Abdulaziz’s suggestion that Israel beat a retreat to the pre-1967 borders.

“Mr. Friedman,” notes a reader (hat tip Allen Cogbill), in response to this post, “has such deep ideas that a couple of fellows actually wrote an op-ed generator that generates columns for him. They did a nice job”:

2015, Tom Friend

UPDATED: Abdelhamid Abaaoud As Belgian As … Jacques Brel

Art, Europe, Music, The West

To listen to the Moron Media and their political masters, The Beast, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, architect of the November 13 attacks in Paris, was as Belgian as composer Jacques Brel. The gifted Brel, a manly man who died at a respectable age of 49 of lung cancer, gave us the achingly beautiful “Ne me quitte pas” (“If you go away”), sung sublimely by Dame Shirley Bassey.

UPDATED: Jacques Brel: What an intense musician. The male version of Édith Piaf. In Israel of my youth, these musicians were as popular as they were in Europe, back before The Beast.

Marieke:

UPDATED: On Refugee Reparations & Paul Ryan’s Weasel Words

Barack Obama, Bush, Constitution, Critique, Democracy, Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Law, libertarianism

Bush, Cheney, Clinton and Obama started the wars that eventually caused entire Middle-Eastern populations to be on the move. Personally, I think these American politicians and their respective cabals (Samantha Power and the Rices, Condi and Susan) should pay reparations, out of their personal fortunes, to Iraqi, Syrian and Afghani refugees. No qualifying test required.

Libertarian justice aside, Laura Ingraham has been ahead of Ann Coulter in evolving away from establishment Republicans and their weasel words, as was noted in this space, in July of 2014. Now Ingraham is doing her listeners a service by alerting them to how “Paul Ryan is using the language of the Left to advocate a new Republican way forward”:

“By opposing a ‘religious test’ for refugees, the new House Speaker Paul Ryan is ‘using the language of the left,’ ‘the language of Obama.'”

“Nobody is talking about a religious test,” counters Ingraham, “we are talking about a test of leadership, for the American people to finally see their leaders—Obama and the Republicans—standing up for the American people.”

Not quite. A religious test is inherent in refugee legislation, as religious persecution is grounds for a request for asylum. However, and by the sound of it, Americans are sick and tired of laws passed in contravention of their rights and interests.

More materially, there is nothing in the thousands of bills dreamed up by representatives, annually, that remotely approximates the will of a self-governing people and their exclusive interests. I mean, poor, working-class whites are dying in inordinate numbers in the US. Who do these local refugees turn to for redress? The left-liberal establishment (GOP included), which finds the exotic more sympathetic?

UPDATE: As Christians die across the Muslim world, America’s leaders feel the urgency of importing more Muslims:

Jeff Sessions (R-AL), “chairmen of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations and Immigration and the National Interest subcommittees respectively, issued the following statement, 11/17. It’s a little soft, but better than most:

… Under our nation’s current policy, the President simply brings in as many refugees as he wants. Refugees are entitled to access all major welfare programs, and they can also draw benefits directly from the Medicare and Social Security disability and retirement trust funds – taking those funds straight from the pockets of American retirees who paid into these troubled funds all of their lives.

Our immigration and refugee policies must serve the interests of our nation and protect the security of the American people. After admitting 1.5 million migrants from Muslim countries on lifetime visas since 9/11, it is time to assist in relocating Muslim migrants within their home region rather than relocating large numbers to the United States. It simply cannot be our policy to encourage a mass migration of entire populations from their homelands, a strategy that will only further destabilize the region and bring threats of terrorism deep inside our shores.” …