While Obama golfed: Over the weekend, Tripoli Airport fell to the jihad boys. I was there some years ago, and thought it compared favorably with, say, Logan. Now it's a smoking ruin - part of the blowback from Obama's leading with his behind, or whatever he calls it. As things stand, this guy will end his presidency with a chain of failed states for al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, ISIS and the Taliban to gambol and frolic in stretching from West Africa to the Hindu Kush. But you can't see them from Martha's Vineyard, so who cares?
~Can you see Burger King from the Vineyard Golf Club? America's second-biggest burger chain is the latest US corporation to vote with its feet - by wooing Tim Hortons:
Burger King Worldwide Inc. said it is in talks to buy the Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain and relocate to Canada to take advantage of the country's lower corporate tax regime.
Like Pfizer and other companies, Burger King has figured out that the quickest way to escape Obama's America is to buy a business in another western nation and order up a new set of letterheads with a foreign address. President Tee-Time will doubtless give a speech at a fundraiser demonizing Burger King and reminding them that in this burg there's only one king and his slogan is "Have it my way!"
America is seizing up. A country that was once a byword for dynamism and energy has chosen not decline but something closer to suicide.
~The empire-building talk-show host Glenn Beck has apparently offered to buy Headline News from CNN. As Ed Driscoll points out, the news report at The Wrap manages to miss the main point of interest - which is that, before his present eminence, Beck was a minor host at HLN, one of several CNN anchors whose talents the network had no idea how to exploit, as opposed to the gate-delay deadbeats they keep on for decades. So the fun part of the story is the element of sweet revenge - as when former RKO contract player Lucille Ball returned to the studio lot and bought it for her production company.
~Also via Ed Driscoll, I learn that gangsta rap impresario Suge Knight was shot in West Hollywood - not by the Ferguson Police Department, I hasten to add. I only ever write about Suge when he's involved in a rap-wars shooting, and this time, poor fellow, he was the one who get perforated. The big guy has a small part in Mark Steyn's Passing Parade, which is available in a personally autographed print edition direct from SteynOnline, or in new expanded eBook format from Amazon worldwide and the other outlets listed at the foot of the page. Suge shows up in my obituary for his late client Tupac Shakur, shot dead in Vegas in 1996 while sitting in the passenger seat of Mr Knight's car:
This guy, Suge Knight, for example - the 300-lb gangsta impresario of Death Row Records who seems to be taking a surprisingly relaxed view of the murder, in the adjoining seat, of his biggest-selling artiste. I was vaguely aware that in 1994 Suge had paid $1.4 million to spring Pac from jail, and that Suge was a member of the Bloods, or maybe it was the Crips - anyway, not the Elks; I dimly recalled that during contractual negotiations he'd threatened Eazy-E, since dead of Aids, with a baseball bat. But, until the aftermath of Tupac's death, I never knew that Suge's house in Vegas was next door to Wayne Newton's.
Wayne Newton! What did Wayne ever do to deserve that? It's like discovering Saddam Hussein lives next door to Angela Lansbury. What do they talk about over the fence?
Well, now they can talk about Suge's bullet wounds. I wonder if this time, as in 1996, the wily hip-hopper has any exploitable product to hand:
With exquisite timing, a few days after their star's murder Death Row Records couriered 2Pac's last video over to MTV, with the innocent suggestion that they might like to rush it into high rotation. Filmed a couple of months ago, it shows, by a remarkable coincidence, the vocal artiste dying in a drive-by shooting in a car not dissimilar to Suge's. All it lacks is a bullet-ridden 2Pac turning to Suge and gasping with his dying breath, "Et 2, Brute?"
Thus life imitates art, or at least the video.
I can't help feeling we easy-listening types would get more respect if we did a bit of this sort of thing. Maybe I should shoot up Johnny Mathis' string section to promote my Christmas album.
~Don't forget Mark Steyn's Passing Parade can be yours in personally autographed print format direct from SteynOnline, or in the new expanded eBook edition, which you can be reading within minutes in Kindle, Nook or Kobo - from Barnes & Noble in the US, from Indigo-Chapters in Canada, and from Amazon outlets worldwide. Click below for your nearest branch office:
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