Keith Burgess-Jackson

I leave you this fine evening with a column by Charles Krauthammer. It occurred to me while reading it that Hillary Clinton’s strategy has been thwarted. By this time of year, she was supposed to have secured the Democrat presidential nomination and begun to position herself as a centrist. Instead, she has to stay to the left in order to keep the moonbats happy. The longer she stays to the left, the more insincere it will seem to people when, having secured the nomination, she tacks to the right.

1. “Taxman, Mr. Thief,” by Cheap Trick, from Cheap Trick (1977).

2. “Clones (We’re All),” by Alice Cooper, from Flush the Fashion (1980).

3. “Winds of Santa Ana,” by Animal Logic, from Animal Logic (1989).

4. “The Rain Song,” by Led Zeppelin, from Houses of the Holy (1973).

5. “One of Our Submarines,” by Thomas Dolby, from The Golden Age of Wireless (1983).

Barack Obama distances himself from his pastor.

Here is Peggy Noonan’s latest column. Here is Peg Kaplan’s latest post.

Here.

Leave it to the New York Times to assign a review of a book by a progressive to a progressive. Can you say “echo chamber”? The reviewer says that a majority of Americans are progressive. If that’s the case, then progressives are stupid, because they’ve won only three of the past 10 presidential elections (and only five of the past 14).

Addendum: The word “liberal” has negative emotive meaning not because evil conservatives have defined it that way, but because it refers to liberalism. If and when liberalism becomes popular, the word “liberal” will acquire a positive emotive meaning.

To the Editor:

Re “The Young Woman in Question, 22 and Worried About the Rent” (news article, March 13):

Since economic desperation is the foundation of most prostitution, I have a suggestion for how Eliot Spitzer can start to atone for his pathetic transaction.

He is the heir to a large real estate fortune and should be able to come up with a handsome chunk of money to endow a trust fund that would temporarily pay the basic living expenses of women arrested for prostitution.

This would make a dramatic difference in the lives of these women and serve as a reminder that economic injustice is usually the root of the sad profession of prostitution.

David Hayden
Wilton, Conn., March 13, 2008

Note from KBJ: Isn’t economic desperation the foundation of most work?

1. How many of you believe that Hillary Clinton is a fan of the New York Yankees? If she isn’t, why would she say that she is? That would be lying.

2. I love baseball more with each passing year. I hate the Yankees more with each passing year.

3. I liked the designated-hitter rule when I was a progressive. I hate it as a conservative.

4. If I were a player, I would not want to travel to Japan or any other foreign country. I don’t care that it’s good for Major League Baseball.

5. Bud Selig has been pestering me to succeed him as commissioner. When I asked why, he said it’s because nobody understands and loves the game as much as I do. If I become commissioner, I’ll do the following:

a. Abolish the designated-hitter rule.

b. Ban armor.

c. Raise the mound.

d. Prohibit teams from spending more than 110% of the MLB average on players.

e. Apologize to Pete Rose and induct him into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

f. Add two teams to the American League so that there are 16 teams in each league. Then divide each league into four four-team divisions: East, West, North, and South. Get rid of the stupid wild-card format.

I told Selig I’d get back to him. Should I accept?

6. Steve Phillips of ESPN predicted a couple of weeks ago that 25-year-old Miguel Cabrera of the soon-to-be-World-Champion Detroit Tigers will win the Triple Crown this year. Quiz: Who is the most recent Triple Crown winner?

7. I love Baseball Tonight. Krukky is a gem.

8. How many others could have done as well as Joe Torre while managing the Yankees? Could anyone have done better? Will Torre take the Los Angeles Dodgers to the promised land?

9. Who plans to attend a Major League Baseball game this year? Which park? How many times?

10. The Yankees suck.

Next thing you know, the Chicken Littles of the scientific community will be shrieking about global cooling.

As a historical structure of ideas, conservatism has received much less attention in the history of ideas than have individualism and rationalism, systems which so notably held the intellectual field in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet, from an essentially minor position in the nineteenth century, conservatism has come to exert a profound influence upon the contemporary mind.

(Robert A. Nisbet, “Conservatism and Sociology,” The American Journal of Sociology 58 [September 1952]: 167-75, at 168)