Month: May 2015

In Which I Investigate the Clintons for Five Minutes and Find Something Fishy

Yesterday at PJ Media, I contributed in a small way to the investigation of the Clintons’ baroque and promiscuous business life:

The original Associated Press story said that WJC, LLC, the “shell company” in question, was formed in Delaware in 2008.

It’s more interesting when you find out the specific date. I searched the database of the Delaware Department of State’s Division of Corporations. There is one listing for WJC, LLC. According to the information on file, the company was formed December 3, 2008. President Obama had confirmed Hillary Clinton as his choice for secretary of state just two days earlier, on December 1, 2008.

This bit of sleuthing, I’m proud to say, earned me a mention on the New York Post editorial page (May 28):

Just two days after President Obama confirmed that Hillary Clinton would be his secretary of state, Bill Clinton set up a shell corporation to “channel” his payments for unspecified consulting work.

Another day, another revelation about the Clintons’ tangled financial web. (Kudos to Robert Wargas of Pajamas Media for pinning down the date Bill set up his dodge.)

 

All Days of Remembrance Require Poetry

At PJ Media, I write about the poetry of the late Richard Hugo, a bombardier during the Second World War, as a way of remembering our fallen guardians:

His 1969 collection “Good Luck in Cracked Italian” distills many of the feelings he took with him from his combat missions in Europe. Here, for example, is the opening stanza of “G.I. Graves in Tuscany”:

They still seem G.I., the uniform lines
of white crosses, the gleam that rolls
white drums over the lawn. Machines
that cut the grass left their maneuvers plain.
Our flag doesn’t seem silly though plainly
it flies only because there is wind.

The last two lines might strike you as flippant. But what appears to be frivolity or cynicism, in a Hugo poem, often turns out to be simple bewilderment: something seen through the eyes of a broken man whose honesty has an unintended comic effect.

Does Posting Selfies Make You A Narcissist?

I have been traveling for the past few weeks and dealing with family issues, so I am only just getting around to posting about this, from me in PJ Media on May 14:

Selfies did not cause the phenomenon of the purely Internet-based relationship. Those were around before selfies became common. (I believe such relationships started during the age of AOL Instant Messenger and got worse from there.) In my experience, most selfies are not sent to an interlocutor directly, but posted passively on social media profiles. When the recipient is a specific somebody, selfies can enhance the humanness and intimacy of an online encounter. When the recipient is “everyone,” however, I think this is where the narcissism comes into play.

Quackery Isn’t Just Wrong; It Can Be Deadly

In the health section of The Spectator, I write about quacks and how they manipulate people into rejecting standard medical treatments, especially when it comes to cancer:

Once someone is hooked into the ‘alternative’ mindset, he or she tends to believe increasingly bizarre theories about treating disease. If you start from the premise that the establishment is tainted, it follows that those theories most divergent from establishment opinion are the most valid.

[…]

Belle Gibson, a popular Australian blogger, claimed to have beaten terminal brain cancer with all sorts of ‘holistic’ therapies and a sugar-free diet, which she advocated to others. In late April, Gibson admitted she never had cancer.

How many people, while listening to this vile impostor, refused standard treatment in favour of ‘oxygen therapy’ and gluten-free goodies? How many then died stuffing their mouths with organic broccoli while their untreated, ulcerating tumours broke through their skin?