Unca Darrell

MAY 31 / Long before Barack Hussein Obama and . . .

. . . his progressive project would come to power, Thomas Sowell explained who progressives are, how they operate, why their programs almost always fail, and why the failures never discredit the authors of those failures.

Mr. Sowell did this in The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (Basic Books 1995). It deserved then, and deserves now -- as the failures of Obamism continue to manifest themselves -- to be much better known, more often read, and better heeded.

I won't abuse the book by trying to summarize it. Here are a few clips to stir your mind and heart: 

MAY 28 / A must-read Chronicle takedown over at . . . .

. . . Big Jolly Politics.  

MAY 27 / Leftists yammer on and on about how . . .

. . . few cases of election fraud are ever taken to court.

They're right. Election fraud is hard to prove. It's easy, perhaps, to make a case against the homeless man who, for a Big Mac, votes a dead man's ballot. It's next to impossible, however, to identify and prosecute the top-tier political organizer who was responsible for the fraud, usually protected -- like a drug lord -- with several layers of lower-level cutouts.

Who would take investigators and prosecutors off murder and property theft cases to chase shadowy figures who steal nothing more tangible than elections and murder nothing more consequential than the integrity of democracy itself? Very few, as it turns out.

The rarity of criminal cases is not, however, evidence of the rarity of election fraud. We know this because . . . 

MAY 25 / In a cage match between conventional wisdom and Donald Trump, bet on . . .

. . . the man with orange hair.

The old theory, to which I subscribed, was that Donald John Trump would top out at about 30 percent against the field of better-qualified GOP primary adversaries. Didn't happen.

Then the ceiling was set at 40 percent. Nope.

Then 50 percent. Oh, well.

But not to worry: Conventional wisdom next held that the much-loved woman of the people, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, would crush Mr. Trump in November. All polls -- every blessed one -- showed her ahead of her bombastic adversary-in-waiting by double digits. If by November, she has not then done a perp walk for her email misdeeds, she still may beat him.

And yet and yet . . . . 

MAY 23 / Another example of how The Houston Chronicle falls short of journalistic standards

THE FRONT-PAGE LEDE in a newspaper is the story selected by editors as the most important of the day. It appears at the top of the front page in the right corner. Depending on the importance of the story, it can be one, two, or more columns wide.

Each front-page lede, like all other stories, is subject to criticism as journalism -- the who, what, where, when, and why of the story, and the competence and honesty of the reporting.

Independently of that, however, it is also subject to criticism for its placement. Is today's front-page lede truly important enough to justify its placement as the most important story of the day?

The Houston Chronicle last week (May 19) ran this front-page lede: . . .

MAY 21 / BUMPED . . . Never seen the Buddy Holly statue in Lubbock?

NOW, thanks to Unca D, you have.

Go here to see more.

My photos are way better than the statue itself, so you can now save yourself a trip.

You're welcome.

MAY 20 / While we're in Clovis, let's have a burger at . . .

. . . Foxy Drive-In.

It's the same restaurant, but not location, where Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison, Norman Petty, and the boys ordered burgers and fries to fuel their overnight recording sessions at Mr. Petty's nearby studio. The drive-in served its first burger in 1956. Mr. Holly's recordings were made the next year. A son of the original owners now runs the place. More pictures here.  

   



 

MAY 20 / What Jane Sanders did to Burlington College, her husband Bernie . . .

. . . might well do to the United States of America. 

Mrs. Sanders -- she of the 1988 honeymoon (at taxpayer expense) in Yaroslavl, Russia (then the Soviet Union) -- is one of her husband's chief political and policy advisors. Her resume features a stint as president of Burlington College, about which The Wall Street Journal reports this:

MAY 19 / Today's vicarious photo expedition: the Norman & Vi Petty . . .

. . . Rock 'n' Roll Museum in Clovis, New Mexico.

Well worth a trip.

May 19 / Unca D shares the sentiment, but . . .

. . . has no plan to express it quite so eloquently.

NOLAND, Mary Anne Alfriend. Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead . . .