weekly standard – Moe Lane

Occupy Wall Street latest skin mask for Blackshirt Left.

(Via Instapundit) I find it mildly astonishing that this even needed to be written, honestly:

What we are seeing here is the latest iteration of an old political program that has been given new strength by the failures of the global economy and the power of postmodern technology. [snip] … the concerns of labor intersect only tangentially with those of Occupy Wall Street’s theorists and prime movers. The occupiers have a lot more in common with the now-decades-old antiglobalization movement. They are linked much more closely to the “hacktivist” agents of chaos at WikiLeaks and Anonymous.

But perhaps this isn’t immediately obvious to the casual observer. Continue reading Occupy Wall Street latest skin mask for Blackshirt Left.

NY-23 Hoffman/Scozzafava: What Jim said.

This got triggered by the refutation of Dede Scozzafava’s allegation that John McCormack – John McCormack – screamed questions at her, I think. Jim Geraghty’s had enough, and so have I.

The time has come for the RNC and NRCC to ask for their money back. This goes well beyond any reasonable difference on policy. There’s room in the party for pro-choice Republicans and pro-gay marriage Republicans and maybe even the odd pro-card-check Republican. But not this kind of arrogance, this kind of clumsy dishonesty, this kind of reckless hostility to a reporter and a publication that need not be an enemy.

The RNC and NRCC are better than the Scozzafava campaign; it’s time for them to demonstrate that they know how a candidate and her staff are supposed to react when asked a question, and show that Scozzafava’s team’s behavior is just not acceptable.

It’s time for the national GOP to – reluctantly, and I understand their reluctance! – drop Dede Scozzafava and go with Doug Hoffman. This isn’t a situation where the national party is overriding the will of local primary voters; it is a situation where a particular choice of candidate turned out to be the wrong one. Bad choices may be reversed. It’s also time for Ms. Scozzafava to act in the best interests of first the voters of NY-23; and second, the Republican party; by dropping out of the race. As it stands she is helping the Democratic candidate, whose presence in Congress and support of the current ruling party would certainly hurt the former.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Shorter Chas Freeman: the rabble at Tiananmen Square weren’t suppressed enough.

No, really.

NO. REALLY.

But I want to take issue with what I assume, perhaps incorrectly, to be yoiur citation of the conventional wisdom about the 6/4 [or Tiananmen] incident. I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than — as would have been both wise and efficacious — to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo’s response to the mob scene at “Tian’anmen” stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

Via Doubleplusundead, who I think is as appalled as I am. Freeman goes on to slam the Bonus Army of 1932 and endorse Hoover’s suppression of it, which is certainly an… interesting position for a Democratic politician to take. Although not as interesting as calling the deliberate murder of almost a thousand civilians as the “dilatory tactics of appeasement.” Where does President Obama keep finding these people?

Moe Lane

Crossposted at RedState.