Make this make sense if you can

Here is the headline: Pope Francis reneges on offer to take in Christian refugees, and here is the story:

A Christian brother and sister from Syria felt blessed to have been among the dozen refugees selected to start a new life in Italy — but now say their savior, Pope Francis, abandoned them on a Greek island, according to a report.

Roula and Malek Abo, who had been housed in a refugee camp on Lesbos, said they thanked their lucky stars when they found out the Vatican had selected them during the pontiff’s visit to the island last week, the Daily Mail reported.

Their dreams were shattered, though, when they were informed the following day that they would not be traveling to Rome. Instead, three Muslim families were taken.

The only sense one can make is if I make some kind of assessment of in whose interests the Vatican is being run. And those interests do not look like the interests of Christians.

Died: April 23, 1616, Stratford-upon-Avon, England

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

It was exactly 400 years today that William Shakespeare, once a well-known playwright across the English-speaking world, shuffled off this mortal coil. I therefore thought we should mark the occasion. How I will do it is by noting that I picked up a secondhand copy just yesterday of Lytton Strachey’s Books and Characters: French & English which has a wonderful essay on “Shakespeare’s Final Period”, although the reason I actually bought the book was because it was dedicated to John Maynard Keynes. But what I found so interesting about the essay was that it assumed intimate knowledge of about a dozen Shakespearean plays of which for me, anyway, many were way off my own most important dozen. I have to admit I am almost entirely unfamiliar with Cymbeline or The Winter’s Tale or Timon of Athens although with the others he discussed I was pretty au fait. I suspect few enduring a modern education would even recognise these titles never mind know a thing about the plays. I, on the other hand, am from a different era. Today it is Tony Soprano rather than Titus Andronicus anyone would be more likely to know.

But this short post is about Shakespeare’s death and the article was about whether he had become more content with life even as he aged, which apparently was a common view in 1906 when the article was written. Based on an ability to properly date the order in which the plays were written, which had been discovered just around that time, Strachey thinks it is nonsense and goes about showing there is no genuine sign that Shakespeare had entered upon a serene and contented existence as his life drew to an end. If anything, he says, he just got bored with trying to write about real people in real circumstances and therefore went off on various imaginative excursions so that he could write beautiful poetry but didn’t have to worry whether his characters were realistic and the plot lines made sense. The Tempest, as he says, ought to be play about Prospero’s revenge but ends up being mostly a love story.

Anyway, however Shakespeare spent his final years, they ended on this day four centuries ago. It is a miracle that so many of his plays have been preserved and one may only hope that 400 years from now there will be others to commemorate and honour the anniversary of his death.

The most politically incorrect letter ever written

This letter was a hoax of sorts, or so it says at the start, posted somewhere on the internet as a response from Oxford to students attending as Rhodes Scholars to remove the statue of Oxford Benefactor Cecil Rhodes. Here’s how the letter begins.

Dear Scrotty Students,

Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort and well being of many generations of Oxford students – a good many of them, dare we say it, better, brighter and more deserving than you.

This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don’t understand what this means – and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case – then we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?”

Oxford, let us remind you, is the world’s second oldest extant university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th century. We’ve played a major part in the invention of Western civilisation, from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through the Enlightenment and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn, Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman. We’re a big deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater – their dear mother – and they respect and revere her accordingly.

And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly. Sure we’ll concede you the short lived Southern African civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. But let’s be brutally honest here. The contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as near as damn it to zilch.

And then it gets worse.

Majority of Australians support US alliance whoever becomes president

We have just had eight years of the worst ever president in relation to American foreign policy, someone who has happened to mangle every single international relationship the US has. With Hillary – the architect of the disaster in Libya – the likely winner in the coming election, we have the Lowy Institute, in the person of its executive director, arguing that electing Donald Trump would jeopardise the international order. This man needs to have a look at the world as it has progressed since 2009. The article is President Trump? We say no thanks to the Donald. This is how he characterises our future relationship with a Trump administration:

Our deepest strategic instinct has always been to make common cause with a like-minded global ally. For nearly 65 years, that ally has been the US. However, that was before The Don­ald came along.

And if Trump is president, then what? Who is that like-minded global ally you are planning to count on? If this is their version of deep thought, I’d hate to see what they would just sprout off the top of their heads.

Spring thaw – they’re warming to Donald

donald trump

The Great Negotiator is about to open his dialogue with the Republican national executive. Republican establishment warms to Trump after big New York win.

The New York real estate mogul’s win Tuesday in his home state over rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich was an important milestone for RNC members, who said it could put him on a pathway to acquire the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination outright without a contested convention.

“There are a fair number of RNC members who were discounting his chances of success when we met in January and now see that he’s building a substantial lead and may in fact get to 1,237 before we get to the convention,” said Steve Duprey, an RNC member from New Hampshire.

“The New York results were such an overwhelming win,” Duprey said. “It’s impressive. That’s what I’ve heard people talking about.”

RNC members said Trump could help improve the climate by taking steps to end the bad blood that has developed between him and the committee’s leadership, including RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

And why wouldn’t he move towards them. The most important re-alignment in politics since The New Deal is there for the asking.

“Labor hasn’t learned and would do it all again”

I am so far from thinking I would like to teach the Libs a lesson by voting against them that nothing seems more bizarre than voting Labor as a corrective. There is no question that if the Libs had known then what they know now, they would not have installed Malcolm in a pig’s fit. Utterly useless in every way it is imaginable for a leader of a conservative party, who is now more likely to lose the upcoming election than Abbott ever was. If you can see the governments of Victoria and Queensland and you still prefer Labor for three years, then I have nothing to say to you. But perhaps Tony Abbott can persuade you to think again [no link to story]:

By losing control of our borders, building overpriced school halls and installing home insulation batts that caught fire, the Rudd-Gillard government became notorious for its inherent incompetence and waste.

By introducing a carbon tax and a mining tax, it demonstrated its addiction to big government.

Just how much lasting damage was done by the worst government in our history is only now starting to become apparent.

But Labor hasn’t learned and would do it all again – and more.

They may be incapable of learning which is the worst part of all.

The worst electorate in American history

obama work is done

The point is that he was elected twice and near as I can tell remains in positive approval rating territory. Every one of the problems Obama has had to deal with has been either self-created or made massively worse by his inept policies and decisions. Nothing today is better than it was on the day that GW Bush left office, neither domestically nor across the world. There was a downturn in 2008, a financial crisis that had already burned itself through by the middle of 2009. These things happen but there was no reason that an upturn was not then on the horizon. The surge in Iraq had worked, and while nothing was as one would wish, there was a potential for an accommodation across the Middle East. Syria was not in the midst of a civil war, nor was Europe invaded by millions, some of whom were refugees while most of them were not.

Yet here is the real point. He was not foisted on America by some enemy out to harm its international standing and economy. He was not a chance occurrence of some kind, and was not only elected but re-elected. He was the popular choice over a Senator McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, both of whom would have fulfilled the office with honour, integrity and good sense.

And just to remind yourself of the kind of person Obama is look at the people he surrounds himself with, that is, at the only kind of person whose judgment he will trust given how massively vain and narcissistic is he. Just look at this quote from his closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, and try not to feel ill:

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is… He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually…

So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. …

He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.

Only someone absolutely detached from the world could bear the company of others who hold such absurd and fantastic beliefs about themselves. Jarrett is probably even lying but knows what he likes to hear. Obama is the most colossally stupid man ever to be president – a bone-headed fool in every respect without a sound political or philosophical principle from head to toe. But when all is said and done, it is the people who got him there who truly deserve to be condemned. We will be paying for their stupidity for a very very long time to come. There really is nothing about modern America that is admirable or worth copying elsewhere. It remains a model for the left everywhere even as it self-destructs before our eyes.

The worst president in history

obama work is done

The point is that he was elected twice and near as I can tell remains in positive approval rating territory. Every one of the problems he has had to deal with has been either created by Obama or made massively worse by his inept policies and decisions. Nothing today is better than it was on the day that GW Bush left office, neither domestically nor across the world. There was a downturn in 2008, a financial crisis that had already burned itself through by the middle of 2009. These things happen but there was no reason that an upturn was not then on the horizon. The surge in Iraq had worked, and while nothing was as one would wish, there was a potential for an accommodation across the Middle East. Syria was not in the midst of a civil war, nor was Europe invaded by millions, some of whom were refugees while most of them were not. What you see when you look at Obama is correctly described by Ace of Spades:

The bloodless anger of a hollow-chested academic second-rater, spitting impotent venom at his colleagues in the break-room.

Yet they elected him twice. And just to remind yourself of the kind of person he surrounds himself with, that is, the only kind of person whose judgment he will trust so massively vain a narcissist is he, we have this quote from his closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett:

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is… He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually…

So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. …

He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.

Only someone absolutely detached from the world could bear the company of others who held such fantastic beliefs about themselves. Obama is the most colossally stupid man ever to be president – a bone-headed fool in every respect without a sound political or philosophical principle from head to toe. But when all is said and done, it is the people who got him there who truly deserve to be condemned. We will be paying for their stupidity for a very very long time to come.

Trump wins big in New York

UPDATE: Fake front page from the New York Times:

nyt trump front page

Now back to the present. What matters is in the states that didn’t vote Romney in 2012.

NEW YORK:
*CLINTON 57% SANDERS 43%
*TRUMP 60% KASICH 25% CRUZ 15%

With more from Drudge to put this election in context:

SHERIFF WARNS: WITHOUT SECURE BORDERS EVERY COUNTY WILL BE ‘BORDER COUNTY’…
Tearful mother begs congress to enforce the law…
‘Nothing has been done, gov’t pretends to care’…
Border agent probed by DHS after testifying before Congress…
Church receives millions from Feds to relocate illegals in USA, says America ‘raped’ migrants’ countries…

And just to appreciate how difficult it is to overcome the forces of Hillary: Only 6% Trust Media, But It Should Be Less.