Out of Zhuji, China, there was a wire-service report that arrested me. See what you think:
Seven months pregnant, Wu Weiping sneaked out early in the morning carrying a shoulder bag with some clothes, her laptop and a knife.
“It’s good for me I wasn’t caught, but it’s lucky for them too,” said Wu, 35, who feared that family planning officials were going to drag her to the hospital for a forced abortion. “I was going to fight to the death if they found me.”
I thought, “You know, that’s a mother. There’s a real mother. That’s what a mother is, right?”
I also thought of Wesley Clark, when he was running for president: “Life begins with the mother’s decision.” In a sad, sick way, that’s true.
Advertisement
This report tells us that Raúl Castro has “put on ice highly-anticipated plans to ease travel restrictions on Cubans, telling lawmakers the nation would not be pressured into moving too fast and citing continued aggression from the United States as the reason for his cautious approach.”
Did you catch that “lawmakers,” referring to members of Cuba’s “parliament”? Funny! But that’s not my point.
I thought of an Erich Honecker joke that George Shultz once told me. The East German dictator had this hot new girlfriend. He said to her, “I’ll do anything for you.” She said, “Anything, Erich?” “Yes,” he answered, “anything.” “All right then,” she said. “I want you to tear down the Berlin Wall.”
He thought for a second and said, “Oh! You want to be alone with me!”
I thought you might be interested in this report, datelined Tripoli (Libya, not Lebanon):
For the first time in more than four decades, Libyans on Saturday celebrated the 60th anniversary of the country’s independence from Italy and France.
Under Moammar Gadhafi’s 42-year rule, the celebration was scrapped and instead, only the 1969 date of his coup was marked.
“Today we begin the building of Libya as our forefathers have done,” Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib said during the celebration. “We call on our sons to build Libya after its destruction.”
Yes, one thing about dictators such as Qaddafi and Saddam: It’s all about them, to use a modern phrase, isn’t it?
A little language? You may have noticed that the first sentence in the above-excerpted report is faulty. Libyans have celebrated the 60th anniversary only once. The sentence should have read (something like), “For the first time in more than four decades, Libyans on Saturday celebrated the anniversary of their country’s independence from Italy and France, which occurred 60 years ago.”
Avoiding work, I clicked on a video offered on the NRO homepage. It showed Mitt Romney reading a top-ten list on the Letterman show. He did a very good job of it, I think. Letterman kind of snarked and grumped as Romney read the list. And he did not engage with Romney much afterward.
Fine. After seeing this, I thought of Michele Bachmann, who went on that show where they played that nasty song as she entered. And I thought, “Why do conservative Republicans do this? Why do they go on these shows where they are clearly hated?”
I know, it can be helpful electorally. I’m all for that. Furthermore, I don’t believe that conservatives should retreat to catacombs. I’m not even sure I believe 100 percent in a conservative counterculture.
But I do believe that conservatives should ask themselves, before going on these TV shows, “Is it really worth it?” I mean, Michele Bachmann is a conservative Christian who has had several children of her own and fostered many others. She’s against abortion. She prays and whatnot. Doesn’t she realize that, to Hollywood, she’s the devil incarnate (or something)?
Conservatives are never more pathetic than when they try to be cool. Reminds me a little of classical-music people who long for the music they like to be more popular. I always tell them, “There’s a reason they call popular music popular music, you know.” Often they don’t like that very much.
I dslike it also big time. It's unwieldy and I think the lack of comments on so many posts are a result of the placement of the comments tab. Also too many ads, too many moving parts, too many promos for other parts of the website. It stinks. More is not better, change is not always better. In this case, I think less would be more.
And as always, I truly believe that the maker of these changes never uses the website as we have to and so doesn't know how cra99y it really is.
Agree with your overall sense of the "upgrade." Definitely the comment tab. In the Corner, some of the staff write incredibly long posts. Nothing wrong with that; but when you do want to comment, you have to scroll all the way to the top. Just frustrating, and I agree; end result is less commentary.
Whenever I read feedback about a redesign, I think of a column I read many years ago by the managing editor (?) at the Chicago Tribune. He was commenting on the all the comments (mostly complaints) about a recent extensive redesign of the paper. He said that by far, the single most common complain they got was that they didn't like the new typeface for the body copy in articles. Wasn't as "readable" as the old typeface, they said. Well, it turns out that the body copy type face was one of the few things they did NOT change in the paper. His point was simply that people don't like change, and always complain about it. But you'll get used to it. And soon you won't even remember what any of the changes were.
I think the problem with the classical music analogy is that we live in a democracy. So conservatives have to go for popularity if they want to get anything done. They/we can't just relax in the knowledge that our ideas are better as classical musicians can.
That train set is just like everything else in the Obama administration: cheap stuff recycled with a new coat of paint. Those "collector" sets are based on the low-end product range of a particular manufacturer. Not worth the price.
And lots of "trainiacs" are left of center. You should hear the screaming about attempts to de-fund Amtrak. It's as shrill and strident as the sounds emitted by the subsidized-health-care-for-all crowd. Sad but true.
