When America is about to throw an ally to the wolves, we follow an established ritual. We discover that the man we supported was never really morally fit to be a friend or partner of the United States. When Chiang Kai-shek, who fought the Japanese for four years before Pearl Harbor, began losing to Mao’s Communists, we did not blame ourselves for being a faithless ally, we blamed him. He was incompetent; he was corrupt. We did not lose China. He did. When Buddhist monks began immolating themselves in South Vietnam, the cry went up: President Diem, once hailed as the … 
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In my last piece at Taki’s Magazine, I discussed the unprecedented phenomenon of a few Republican Party pollsters and strategists admitting, most times begrudgingly, that winning more White votes might be more effective than pandering to minorities (That is, they’ve awaken to what VDARE.com has called “The Sailer Strategy.”) The backlash of White voters against Gatesgate put Obama’s approval ratings into a freefall.  A few Republicans realized this, and it looked like the Stupid Party’s IQ might breach room temperature. Obama & Co. gave Whites even more reasons to oppose him with the Van Jones and ACORN scandals. The President’s ratings … 
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The GDP numbers out yesterday, which showed economic growth at 3.5% in the third quarter, brought a deafening chorus from public and private economists who all agreed that the recession is officially over. With such a strong report, they are happy to tell us that not only has the Fat Lady finished her aria, but she has left the building and is sipping champagne in the bath. As usual, it falls on me to rain on the parade. Even the giddiest commentators admit that the upside GDP surprise resulted almost entirely from government interventions. But, by pushing up public and private … 
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A Kabul–based United Nations’s guesthouse is the latest target to be hit by Afghani insurgents. Eight people, including an American, were killed. Three days prior, capital-city Kabul was the scene of a helicopter crash that claimed 14 American lives, in what the Associated Press characterized as “the deadliest day for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in more than four years.”  A day later, eight more American troops were taken out in two separate insurgent attacks, this time in southern Afghanistan. So far, the Left’s Prince of Peace has beefed-up Bush-era troop levels to 68,000, and is giving a good deal of … 
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If we had it to do over, would we send an army into Afghanistan to build a nation? Would we invade Iraq? While these two wars have cost 5,200 dead, a trillion dollars and a divided America facing an endless war, what have we won? Gen. Stanley McChrystal needs 40,000 to 80,000 more troops, or we risk “mission failure” in Afghanistan. At present casualty rates—October was the worst month of the war—thousands more Americans will die before we see any light at the end of this tunnel, if ever we do. Pakistan, which aided us in Afghanistan, now has a war … 
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I don’t know much about economics. What I do know is that so many so-called “experts,” including politicians and economists, are wrong far more often than they are right. They’re wrong about virtually everything, and yet shamelessly keep selling the same old fairy tales. They are liars. They are cheats. They are whores. As Congress plots government healthcare, Americans should remember how incredibly wrong Washington leaders were about the cost of programs like Medicare. Bush and Obama have already been proven irrevocably wrong about TARP and stimulus, and yet both claim it’s working. Months ago in South Carolina, Gov. Mark Sanford … 
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NEW YORK—Something’s bothering me about the Polanski business. No, unlike Harvey Weinstein and Bernard-Henri Lévy—not to mention that Mitterrand paedophile—I will not defend Roman’s actions with a 13-year-old, but I will say that, with friends like his making fools of themselves defending him, it will be a miracle if he gets off with a slap on the wrist. Although this may sound pompous, I doubt if any of his defenders have known Polanski as long as I have—40 years and counting—but let’s take it from the top. What Hugo Rifkind wrote about him and his defenders in these pages on 3 … 
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In the latest issue of Quadrant, Peter Kocan complains about my “sourness” in depicting the paleoconservative persuasion in my autobiography, Encounters. Peter is shocked that someone who is described as “America’s leading paleoconservative intellectual” would be “sawing off the branch on which [he] sits,” by treating his movement as a collection of has-beens. Peter compares my “weird” behavior to that of an imaginary David Crockett, who “had survived the Alamo only to declare the fight a stupid fiasco and the defenders a bunch of jerks.” The review contrasts my bitter disenchantment about my erstwhile companions in arms with the spirited tropes … 
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The cable period drama Mad Men attempts to answer the question: What would have Cary Grant’s stylish advertising executive in Hitchcock’s 1959 barnburner North by Northwest gotten up to if—instead of getting chased by spies all the way to Abraham Lincoln’s nose on Mt. Rushmore—he and his superb suits had simply stayed on Madison Avenue during the advertising industry’s storied golden age? After the Tom Cruise generation of boyish, small, and energetic stars, it’s refreshing to see a Golden Age of Hollywoodish leading man like tall, dark, and handsome Jon Hamm, who plays creative director Don Draper as the strong, silent … 
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Evidence that the U.S. is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it. One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and advance their private interests. Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality, as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of everyone else. Income inequality in the U.S. is now the most extreme of all countries. The 2008 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report, “Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries,” concludes that the U.S. is the country with the … 
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