Bob's Place

It is inconceivable to me how a natural disaster could spark a virtual orgy in a political movement, but that seems to be precisely the effect of Hurricane Katrina on liberals.................

....................You would think the liberal cabal would have thoroughly discredited itself with its incessant crying of "wolf," but with mainstream media megaphones always at their back, they march on.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 8:05 AM |

In past columns, I’ve mentioned the tendency of people to come up to you — even if they don’t know you very well, or don’t know your politics — and say, “I hate Bush.” This happens with incredible frequency. Right-leaning friends of mine mention it all the time. People — in New York, in particular — come up to any Tom, Dick, or Harry and say, “I hate Bush.” They say it in full confidence that the other guy will agree. To them, it’s almost like saying, “I like puppy dogs and ice cream.” And yet, would you — a conservative — ever say, “I hate Hillary Clinton,” or “I hate Jimmy Carter,” or “I hate Barbra Streisand”? I can’t imagine it.

It might have to do with the towns in which I’ve lived (Ann Arbor, Cambridge, etc.). If you’re a conservative, you simply expect that others will revile your beliefs. I used to say, “I assume everyone’s a drunk, an adulterer, and an anti-Semite, until proven otherwise.” And in politics — more narrowly construed! — I always assume some variety of leftism. For one thing, it’s safer.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 9:10 AM |

One is the consciousness of legal liability that has permeated our culture in the most astonishing way. The shortest, safest school outing requires signed releases. School nurses can't give children a tablet of ibuprofen without parental permission. Paper coffee cups warn me that coffee is hot. I bought a kayak a couple of years ago that came with a sticker -- "Important Notice! Read Before Use!" -- informing me that kayaks are used on water and that people can drown if they don't wear life jackets or don't know how to swim.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 3:34 PM |

Of course, I’m not suggesting that every liberal hippie from the 60s is a full-blown sociopath like my fellow chaperone. But the symptoms are always the same, aren’t they? His condescension towards blacks, his unwavering arrogance in the wake of his own obvious stupidity, his looting and hoarding of limited resources, his lack of respect for the truth, his the lack of respect for the property of others, and, mostly, his refusal to grow up.

My weekend in the mountains reminded me that liberalism is not really a political philosophy. Instead, it is a state of arrested emotional development. It is a way of thinking, which leads to no place in the real world. It is a place existing only in the imagination.

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 8:17 AM |

Let ghoulish CNN file suit against the government to film all the bloated corpses it can find. Let a pontificating PBS "NewsHour" conduct more televised roundtables with grim-faced elites searching out purported national racism. But few any longer trust a frenzied media whose reporters and commentators continually prove as incompetent as they are disingenuous.

Was it too much to ask reporters to look to history to judge this recovery against other past disasters here and abroad? Could they have strived for accuracy instead of ratings — and at least made sure that the images from their cameras did not refute their own predetermined scripts?

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 9:05 AM |

NEW YORK Michael Kinsley, the high-profile editorial page honcho and columnist at the Los Angeles Times since 2004, has been forced out at the paper, ending on what he called a "bitter note."

# posted by Bob Taylor @ 4:29 PM |