Mere Rhetoric

Watchers Council Nominations - Conservative Wins And Losses

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:56:09 -0800

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. Last week's submissions were written in the background of the grassroots victory over Scozzafava in the NY-23, polls showing a Republican crush in Virginia, and the promise of at least moral victory...

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WH: GOP Wins Just Prove People Want Cost-Cutting Nationalized Health Care

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:15:45 -0800

Buried on the second page of Politico's "don't believe the post-election conservative hype" article, this is going to have Mickey Kaus positively tickled. Couple it with how death panels got reinserted into House legislation, and everything old really does seem new again: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insisted Wednesday that the White House plans no changes whatsoever in its...

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The Omri Ceren Show - 2pm PST - Barry Rubin On Lebanon's Crisis And Ours

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:11:16 -0800

Today's TOCS episode goes on the air a little less than an hour, with highlights from my interview with Prof. Barry Rubin, analysis from Dan Diker, and the weekly roundup of US, Israeli, and international news. To hear the show live - and to submit questions via the chat room or get on the air through the phone lines - head over to the show's Blog Talk Radio page at 2pm PST. The call with Diker...

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Agitprop-Funding NEA Chief: "Barack Obama Is The Most Powerful Writer Since Julius Caesar"

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:46:25 -0800

First of all - and I know this is ticky-tacky but the left's ubiquotous pseudo-sophisticated name checking gets obnoxious - Julius Caesar was not a particularly great writer. Even if that wasn't true, Marcus Aurelius was in every way a better scribe and at least equally as powerful. And as a purely historical matter, though it's distasteful to admit, Lenin and Mao also need to be included as...

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Confirmed: Obama Administration Alienates Every Last AfPak Leader

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:52:02 -0800

I just checked this to be sure, and "AfPak" definitely stands for Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's the region in which we're currently engaged in a hot war that we're desperately trying not to lose. So - at least in theory - alienating the leaders of both Afghanistan and Pakistan would be one of those geopolitical blunders that we've been assured were hallmarks of the Bush administration....

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Lebanon: Israeli Agents Launching Rockets At Themselves To Make Us Look Bad

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:52:13 -0800

Well sure it sounds batshit crazy. But if you look at it from the perspective of a conspiracy-addled antisemite - "whatever helps Israel must have been instigated by Israel, including the genocidal wars Arab States start and lose" - then it makes a lot of sense. Why wouldn't Israel fire on its own citizens, thereby exposing Lebanon to the unbearably withering prospect of an Israeli complaint to...

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Watchers Council Nominations - Insincerity As A Political Ideology

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:45:20 -0800

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. My submissions for this week are roughly "liberals always support the war we're not in" and "liberal American Jews always support Israeli self-defense except when Israel actually tries to defend...

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The Omri Ceren Show - Wednesday 2pm PST - Norman Podhoretz On Why Jews Are Liberals (Plus: New Features!)

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:32:58 -0800

Tune in tomorrow afternoon at 2pm for the fourth installment of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. I wrapped up the interview with Norman Podhoretz this morning and will play you some highlights on the air, split about 66/33 between Podhoretz's new book Why Are Jews Liberals? and his previous work World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. There just wasn't enough depressing...

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Collective Nutroots Wisdom: Lieberman Blocking Public Option So Israel Can Attack Iran Or Something

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:46:41 -0800

Cherry picking nutroots comments sections and finding antisemitism - not a neat trick. Finding the same antisemitic meme in comments across six top nutroots blogs - still not a particularly neat trick because what do you expect from Daily Kos, Wonkette, HuffPo, ThinkProgress, FiveThirtyEight, and DU? But closer! What would be really interesting is if blogs like HuffPo had been randomly filtering...

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Watchers Council Results - Antisemitism In The Age Of Obama

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:48:37 -0800

The full rankings for last week's Watchers contest are worth reading in full. The top Council blogs focused mostly foreign policy and the top non-Council posts did almost precisely the opposite. A good mix. The top Council post from Joshuapundit dealt with the latest round of "anti-Zionst" government and media witchhunts. Two notable things: (1) any concrete accusations against the Jewish State...

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The Omri Ceren Show - Richard Landes Wrap Up And Exclusive Full-Length Interview

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:20:44 -0800

First things first: make sure you check out the exclusive Richard Landes interview over on the One Jerusalem audio page. The highlights I played on the air were less than one-third of the total material - academics, it turns out, err on the side of thoroughness - and there are entire categories of questions that you don't get except on the full interview. The extended section on how Stockholm...

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Watchers Council Nominations - The Left Is Coping With The Burdens Of Governing Really Well

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:13:40 -0800

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. And each week I inexplicably end up waiting till the subsequent Monday to post the nominations and the winners. Not this time: Sunday! My own post dealt with how influential public diplomacy expert...

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Los Angeles To Do: Dore Gold At The Skirball, November 2nd

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:08:15 -0800

As part of my determined and ongoing campaign to dilute the Mere Rhetoric brand - strongly linked as it is now to an ethos of online anonymity and amatuer ranting - I'm co-sponsoring a real-life expert event with Dore Gold on Monday Nov. 2nd at the Skirball. The official co-sponsor list: Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, One Jerusalem, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and Mere Rhetoric...

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German Lingerie Ad: Burkas Are Really Sexy Or Something [Video, Mildly NSFW]

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:10:09 -0800

Actually I have no idea what message this Liaison Dangereuse commercial is trying to send. It's either "burkas are really sexy" or "you can be sexy despite burkas." Or it might be "sure you're trapped in a suffocating unassimilated ethnic community in the heart of Old Europe, where honor killings are increasingly common and seething anti-Jewish hatred is implicit, but that doesn't mean you can't...

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New Ad: Opposing ObamaCare Is Pretty Much Like Supporting Domestic Violence (Plus: Reform Will Fund "Reproductive Care") [Video]

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:56:41 -0800

I know I speak for everyone when I thank the National Women's Law Center for injecting a note of levelheadedness into the health care debate. The pan of the abused elderly woman was a particularly subtle touch, though it was the body-length scar that really sold it for me. But the shot of the woman looking at a pregnancy test was, I thought, confusing. When Obama says "reproductive care" it...

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