Showing posts with label National Review Online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Review Online. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Kindness and generosity in the political/policy world of Washington, D.C. is not an unknown quality. But too often, the public doesn't hear the true story about someone and their personality until after they die. And so it was with Kate Walsh O’Beirne. Here's what you ought to know...

Kindness and generosity in the political/policy world of Washington, D.C. is not an unknown quality. But too often, the public doesn't hear the true story about someone and their personality until after they die. And so it was with Kate Walsh O’Beirne. Here's what you ought to know...

Mieux vaut tard que jamais - Better late than never...

Updated 2017-05-04 255 PM

I'd meant to post some thoughts last week on my blog about the recent passing of Kate Walsh O’Beirne, but somehow, I got so distracted by the dozens of other things on my mind these days that the first time I had a chance to publicly comment on her death, it was via Twitter, which for all of 140 reasons, is simply too small a platform for me to share what I knew with you loyal readers of the blog.

With the epidemic of shallow and biased news reporting going on all around us in South Florida on local and network TV, as well as what's in print locally and nationally, where a once-iconic magazine like TIME magazine is a shell of its former self -to say nothing of what's become of the once impressive reporting talent at the Miami Herald of the mid-1980's, when there were few newspapers in the U.S. who had a better group of clever and curious foreign correspondents trying to ferret out facts and trends worth knowing- I'm trying to rectify that oversight of mine regarding Kate O'Beirne today.

My reasons for doing so are both altruistic and self-serving. 
Self-serving in the sense that I always like to have an opportunity to remind you in a very tangible way that my blog and I can offer you a unique perspective on the news and current events of the day, locally and nationally, that you simply can't find elsewhere in South Florida or Florida.

Altruistic because I want you loyal readers of the blog to have the advantage of learning and knowing something very fundamental about the ways of Washington, D.C. that are usually ignored by the news media but which I came to learn from personal experience via my 15 years of living and working in the Washington, D.C.area, and getting to meet and know personally some of the biggest political, social and media personalities of the area from 1988-2003.
People whose names and work you know and whom you recognize the moment they appear on TV, even before they're identified on-screen.
People whose work and reputation at or whom are closely identified with The Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and the Brookings Institution and CSIS to name but a few places... 

I suppose the best way to express my feeling is to say that more than the vast majority of you readers can possibly imagine, even the more open-minded among you, there really ARE LOTS of very smart, opinionated and hard-working people in DC who, while perhaps holding diametrically opposing political or policy points of view from you, are not just lots of fun to be with personally, but are, fortunately, possessed of a unique kindness and sense of generosity that 99% of the people with whom you probably politically self-identify with, simply are NOT.
But Kate Walsh O’Beirne was one such person.

In the entirety of the 15 years I lived and worked in the DC area, meeting and working with a wide variety of very smart and conscientious people in all kinds of political and policy areas, there was never a year I was there when at least one person -and often several- and very well-known persons at that, who trusted me to keep their confidence, didn't at some point confide to me a positive story or anecdote they had to share about the exceptional nature of Kate Walsh O’Beirne's personal kindness.

Since I need to respect that confidence that was placed in me, I choose here, now, to share the story of someone who personally knows of her kindness and generosity, and whom, regardless of what you may think about him personally or politically, is better known than any of those people whose names I could name-drop here - Rush Limbaugh.

He, along with Ramesh Ponnuru's spot-on appreciation of her in his National Review column, tell a compelling story of a very influential woman.
Rush, thru the magic power of radio and painting a picture of her that's better and more true than almost anyone else I can think of on the current stage today could.

As it happens, I listened to Rush Limbaugh's nationally-syndicated radio show that day, as I do most days, and knew that it must be important because he started off his show -the single most-listened to radio program in America- with this very telling anecdote.
And as soon as he said her name, I knew exactly what was coming...

(Below, I have posted the video of that Limbaugh radio show segment that is, in a word, amazing. Or as I described it in my tweet last week, GOLD.)

And in listening to Rush Limbaugh relate the story of how she came to take an active interest in someone like him who was then an unknown quantity on the DC political stage, and someone that even many Conservatives and GOP partisans were highly-suspicious of, and often outright condescending of, it made me smile.
Smile because Rush was sharing a story that I personally knew to be true from experience over the years. 
But it's also a story which also made me quite sad because it only reaffirmed the reality that it's usually the case that most people in a community, even the very small community that political/media DC really is, don't hear about those truly selfless positive stories until after someone has passed away.
Trust me, there are a lot of people in Washington at all sorts of places who have felt true #gratitude.

And when you think about it, it also makes you wonder why we can't hear about these sorts of stories about other well-known people when it actually might matter and serve as a model for others, right?


---


National Review
Kate Walsh O’Beirne R.I.P. 
By Ramesh Ponnuru
April 23, 2017 3:05 PM 
@RAMESHPONNURU

Kate O’Beirne was part of National Review’s world before she joined the staff. When she became the magazine’s Washington editor in 1995 her resume already included stints at Senator Jim Buckley’s office, the Reagan administration, and the Heritage Foundation. She served NR in that position for eleven years and then became president of National Review Institute for six more. 
She brought a witty and well-informed conservatism to a national television audience as well through weekly appearances on CNN’s marquee political talk show “Capital Gang.” Conservatives were outnumbered there as on cable news generally at that time, but it never seemed that way as long as she was on.
Both her “Bread and Circuses” column for NR and her television commentary were marked by a rare combination of a deep interest in conservative policy, psychological insight, and common sense. Many of those same qualities put her advice — on politics, editorials, careers, and personal matters — in high demand.



Kate O’Beirne: Godmother of the Modern Conservative Movement
Transcript of this segment is here:
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/04/24/kate-obeirne-godmother-of-the-modern-conservative-movement/
I encourage you to read it, too, since it might make even more of an impact.


In his column, Ramesh Ponnuru uses the phrase rare combination of a deep interest in conservative policy, psychological insight, and common sense

It's also what, after I changed my party registration from Democrat to Republican after moving back here from DC in 2003, I observed is so clearly and frequently missing in Florida and South Florida commentary, esp. among the GOP set who so often are jaw-droppingly disconnected from pop culture. 
Or boring.
Or boring and depressing to be around!


Both her “Bread and Circuses” column for NR and her television commentary were marked by a rare combination of a deep interest in conservative policy, psychological insight, and common sense. Many of those same qualities put her advice — on politics, editorials, careers, and personal matters — in high demand.

And yes, in case you forgot, Ramesh Ponnuru was talking her working for the Sen. James Buckley who was William Buckley's older brother, so she knew both brothers about as well as anyone could know them.




Dave 


Sunday, March 4, 2012

A week later, this essay still resonates: Andrew C. McCarthy in NRO: Why Apologize to Afghanistan?


A week later, after reading many other articles about what's been going on in Afghanistan that either just beat around the bush or which -surprise- made excuses for President Obama, this essay still resonates for a reason:

National Review Online         
Why Apologize to Afghanistan?
By Andrew C. McCarthy
February 25, 2012 4:00 A.M.

We have officially lost our minds.
The New York Times reports that President Obama has sent a formal letter of apology to Afghanistan’s ingrate president, Hamid Karzai, for the burning of Korans at a U.S. military base. The only upside of the apology is that it appears (based on the Times account) to be couched as coming personally from our blindly Islamophilic president — “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. . . . I extend to you and the Afghani people my sincere apologies.” It is not couched as an apology from the American people, whose frame of mind will be outrage, not contrition, as the facts become more widely known.
The facts are that the Korans were seized at a jail because jihadists imprisoned there were using them not for prayer but to communicate incendiary messages. The soldiers dispatched to burn refuse from the jail were not the officials who had seized the books, had no idea they were burning Korans, and tried desperately to retrieve the books when the situation was brought to their attention.
Read the rest of the post at 

Andrew C. McCarthy column homepage at NROhttp://www.nationalreview.com/author/52265

Friday, January 27, 2012

Jeffrey Lord dissects a Romney hit-job on Gingrich: Elliot Abrams' revisionist hit-job at NRO is debunked by simple facts the MSM didn't care about




POLITICO video: Jim Vandehei on the anti-Newt attacks. January 27, 2012
http://bcove.me/nx4mo74a
Jeffrey Lord dissects a Romney hit-job on Gingrich: Elliot Abrams' revisionist hit-job in NRO is debunked by simple facts the MSM didn't care about
Glad to see that at least someone in this country is doing their homework and fact-checking the "facts." Especially the "inconvenient" facts that the MSM is too busy to look at before throwing them out into the ether. 

But first, here's the predicate:

National Review Online
Gingrich and Reagan 
In the 1980s, the candidate repeatedly insulted the president.
By Elliott Abrams
Posted online January 25, 2012 4:00 a.m.

Which led to my post of yesterday re Newt Gingrich and specifically, Rush Limbaugh's observations, and this from today, from which the video at the top of this post appeared:

POLITICO

Drudge, conservative media criticize Newt Gingrich
It’s as if the conservative media over the past 24 hours decided Gingrich is for real.
By Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen
1/26/12 8:00 AM EST 
Updated: 1/27/12 7:48 AM EST

Now, here's the fact-filled retort that lays bare the lies.

The American Spectator
The Spectacle blog
Elliott Abrams Caught Misleading on Newt
By Jeffrey Lord
Posted online January 27, 2012 11:28 a.m.
As Ronald Reagan used to say: Well.
Yesterday we took note of former Reagan State Department official Elliott Abrams' piece over at NRO that went after Newt Gingrich on his relationship with Reagan. While voting regularly with Reagan as a young congressman from Georgia, Gingrich, claimed Abrams, "often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides and his policies to defeat Communism." Abrams then goes on to cite " a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986."
Or sort of cites it. 
Read the rest of this spot-on post at:
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/01/27/elliott-abrams-caught-misleadi




Newt Gingrich campaign video: Ed Rollins: Gingrich was one of "most important players and most loyal to Ronald Reagan." January 27, 2012

http://youtu.be/SjOMMweAJ_s


Yes, The American Spectator that was started in Bloomington and which later moved to Arlington County, VA, just like me. In fact, for years, it was right near the Metro train station I used everyday, the Clarendon Metro, home of all those delicious Vietnamese restaurants I dearly miss, like Queen Beehttp://spectator.org/


When I lived and worked in the Evanston/Chicago area in the pre-Internet mid-1980's, I always purchased a copy of TAS (and The Washington Monthly) every month at the  Chicago-Main newsstand to see stories and columns about heretofore unknown issues, long-simmering grudges and policy flights-of-fancy in Washington and the country that I didn't see elsewhere.


Not that I always agreed with everything, but just like manhattan, inc. and SPY, my two favorite magazines, which I was also a charter subscriber to, their contributors writing was so spirited and fun that, sometimes, not always, it was easier to just believe rather than to fight it. 


That was where I first got large doses of Michael Barone's prescient insight, which he now dishes from The Washington Examiner.
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/author/michael-barone
and Real Clear Politics
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/michael_barone/
and TownHall
http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/
and National Review Online, where he has this piece today:

Gearing Up to Govern 
The GOP candidates are more serious about governing than is the incumbent.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289283/gearing-govern-michael-barone

Below, the new-and-improved version via Google Maps of the newsstand, long the best on The North Shore, that re-opened in 2001, after apparently vanishing for 8 years because of the CTA and city of Evanston being unable to get their acts together for the benefit of the area's residents. Eight years!
http://www.citynewsstand.com/progressupdate.htm



View Larger Map


Monday, January 9, 2012

Pow! Former Dem. congressman Artur Davis of Alabama slices-and-dices, marinates and sautés the N.Y. Times' Andy Rosenthal in the National Review Online. Delicious!

Pow! Former Dem. congressman Artur Davis of Alabama slices-and-dices, marinates and sautés the N.Y. Times' Andy Rosenthal in the National Review Online. Delicious!
But first, the necessary predicate, which I sent some of you the day it appeared in The Post:


The Washington Post
The Fix blog
Former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis talks party-switching
Posted by Aaron Blake at 03:18 PM ET, 12/30/2011
Former Democratic congressman Artur Davis, who has been a thorn in the side of Democrats in the aftermath of his loss in the 2010 Alabama gubernatorial primary, is a man without a political party.
In an interview with The Fix, Davis openly speculated about running for office as an independent or even a Republican. In both cases, he suggested his decision not to make the switch has as much to do with the difficulties involved as any desire he has to remain a Democrat.
Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/former-democratic-rep-artur-davis-talks-party-switching/2011/12/30/gIQAmOKyQP_blog.html


Reader comments at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/former-democratic-rep-artur-davis-talks-party-switching/2011/12/30/gIQAmOKyQP_blog.html


NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
Rosenthal’s Amnesia 
The Times columnist forgets how protesters treated LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Bush, . . .
By Artur Davis
January 9, 2012 4:00 A.M.
Lyndon Johnson was loathed enough that, in his final year in office, he dared not make a public appearance other than at a military base; it was commonplace for chanting crowds to gather and spray verbal obscenities at LBJ’s White House. Jimmy Carter’s presidency was a routine subject of cultural derision, some of it viciously aimed at his pre-teen daughter and his brother. Bill Clinton spawned so much hate that at least some of his adversaries spread strange rumors that he was connected to murder; then there was this thing called impeachment. George W. Bush inflamed some of his enemies enough that they carried signs crudely depicting him as a war criminal or a Hitler clone.
I mention all these instances of ugliness directed at presidents because they are apparently unknown to Andrew Rosenthal, a New York Times columnist, who caused a stir last week by implying that strident opposition to Barack Obama is racially motivated, and that it’s all part of a racist tide building in advance of the November elections.
Read the rest of the essay at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/287536/rosenthal-s-amnesia-artur-davis 


In case you forgot who ran that race-based ad campaign against Bobby Jindal in 2003 that's mentioned in the article above, it was Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.


POLITICO
Artur Davis: From Dem star to exile
By: Alex Isenstadt
December 1, 2011 11:37 PM EST
The future once seemed limitless for Artur Davis.
Not so long ago, he was viewed as one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars, routinely evoking comparisons to Barack Obama. A smart, ambitious Harvard Law School graduate like Obama, Davis appeared to be on a trajectory to make history as Alabama’s first black governor. Some saw the youthful congressman as a future attorney general.
Today, all that is gone.
Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/69578.html


Reader comments at:
http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=1&subcatid=1&threadid=6210856


Anyone who's well-read, with a lick of common sense and possessed of an open mind, and who has spent any serious amount of time living and working in the Washington, D.C. area, knows almost from osmosis that nobody-but-nobody is EVER more popular with the ranks of the Beltway's permanent Democratic-leaning Mainstream Media than a Republican former insider or power-broker who says positive things about the Democratic Party's policies, or, who attacks another prominent Republican, the better-known the better.


This explains the recent phenomena the past three months of appearances on U.S. network TV and the cablenets by former GOP House members, staffers and party officials from the 1990's, many of whom had completely fallen off the MSM's radar, so long as they have something negative to say about Newt Gingrich, even if they owe their own rise from complete obscurity to prominence to Newt.
(That is, if you believe that nobody from Romney's PAC was involved in any way with coordinating this shopping of these anti-Newt/pro-Republican establishment types to make it easier for the MSM to find them.)


Conversely, nobody is ever treated more like a leper by the MSM than a Democrat who decides -whether out of an overabundance of backbone, bluster, spite or some other reason- to pop-open the hood of the post-Clinton Democratic Party and take a hard look at the role of their pals in the race-identity politics movement and SEIU by performing a LIVE autopsy.
Nobody wants to see under the hood and see the meat being made.



Fox News video: Daily Caller reporter Michelle Fields discusses proposed voter ID laws and former AL congressman Artur Davis says via videotape that he believes voter fraud is more present in the absentee ballot process than it is at the actual voting booth, and relates the experience in Alabama. 

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The predicate for Obama's foreign policy in Libya of multi-lateral 'Meals on wheels -with guns' - President Reticent



Comedy Central video:
Daily Show host Jon Stewart discusses the bombing in Libya with Aasif Mandvi and muse over President Obama's efforts to proceed without Sen. Richard Lugar's say-so.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-21-2011/odyssey-dawn---unconstitutional-war


Stanley Kurtz
recounts the role of present-day
National Security Council advisor Samantha Power on Candidate Obama in the National Review Online, and how we now have gotten to the present point where our foreign policy seems to include what I can only call "Meals on wheels -with guns."
But it's likely that the Irish-born
Power, given her own background, probably doesn't know too many of the delivery drivers -the instruments of that policy she has helped formulate.

My guess is that Power probably doesn't care that many of the military personnel involved there DON'T KNOW why they are there, how long they'll be there, or even how they'll even know whether or not they are successful in their mission.
Seems like I recall someone once saying THAT sort of situation would never ever exist if he were in charge.

I guess Power will just email them the details later, after she's gotten a bite to eat after work, since she's clearly a 'Big Picture' woman who doesn't want to get bogged down in the minutia.


And when are we going to hear what George Clooney thinks after Obama has ignored what's taken place in The Sudan?



ABC News video: George Clooney Hopes Satellites Will Shed Light on Sudan, January 2, 2011.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-clooney-hopes-satellites-shed-light-sudan/story?id=12523421


Stanley Kurtz's
closer is classic:

As with health care, Obama’s talk isn’t working because he cannot afford to specify broader ideological motivations he knows the public won’t buy.
Precisely!


National Review Online

President Reticent
By Stanley Kurtz
March 22, 2011 10:26 A.M.

Obama doesn’t tell you what he’s thinking. He keeps his motives to himself. Cherished long-term ideological goals are advanced as pragmatic fixes to concrete problems in the present. Now we’re seeing the familiar domestic pattern in foreign policy as well.


Few Americans realize that Obama has had a longstanding interest in multilateral efforts to combat war crimes and genocide. Obama would like to see a more constraining international legal regime on war crimes, even at the cost of national sovereignty, not to mention the blood and treasure of the countries doing the enforcing.


Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/262725/president-reticent-stanley-kurtz

Meanwhile, almost nine years ago...
Audio of Samantha Power discussing her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "A Problem From Hell" on NPR/WAMU-FM's Diane Rehm Show, March 27, 2002
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2002-03-27/samantha-power-problem-hell-basic

Audio of Power on NPR's Fresh Air, which I heard at the time, June 5, 2003, when I was still living up in the Washington area:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1287149


Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Lugar calls for debate on U.S. role in Libya
March 22, 2011 3:00 a.m.
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110322/NEWS04/303229937