Archive for September, 2008

On Palin’s E-Mail

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

First, I’d just like to say “A group hacked into her Yahoo” has got to be the most unintentionally hilarious tagline of the year.

Second, I’m inspired to recall a rather lengthy discussion that took place, of all places, here at The Blog That Nobody Reads. The subject was Barack Obama’s less-than-inspired comments about lipsticks and pigs and newspapers and fish and I had the feeling at the time it would be revisited. Blogger friend Buck’s scolding comments looked reasonable, in their own way, to me from the very beginning:

The Republicans, OTOH, make me frickin’ SICK by assuming the mantle of The Perpetually Offended. That’s the LEFT’S schtik… and a sorry one it is and always has been. To watch the McCain campaign play this game turns my stomach. Besides that… Palin has ZERO need for a frickin brigade of White Knights riding to her defense…damsel-in-distress style. That woman can more than take care of herself, so let her do it. If she chooses to.

The Left was doing a wonderful job of imploding, and then WE come along and help them recover with this idiotic and dumbass move.

Way to go, McCain campaign. And shame on all you that have bought into it.

I steered the discussion away from this, because I was not (and am not) familiar with whatever righteous indignation might have been radiating from McCain HQ. I don’t give a rat’s ass, because I don’t believe in noble, decent public servants. I think they’re all scumbags.

Well, I don’t think that. But I think that’s what we should be presuming, when we cast votes. Trying to figure out who’s pure-of-heart is a Dickensian game…a sucker’s game. It’s Washington, DC. I believe in the power of the beltway crowd to go to bed on Sunday Night as Dr. Henry Jekyll and wake up on Monday as Edward freakin’ Hyde.

But Buck’s sentiments do have merit in places. Like right here. I’m humming his tune, as the right-wing blogomaniacs go into meltdown and “How *dare* you pry into her e-mail??” It’s probably technically illegal. But if she’s transacting state business on a Yahoo account, in violation of policy and in an effort to get around an investigation, that’s much worse.

And that brings me to the third point. And on this point, rubico speaks for me (although I’m inclined to believe the fellow is a likable dumbass):

I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family

The most incriminating thing I saw was something where she was bitching at somebody about some guy. I’ve spent a few years in network security, getting my career more firmly wrapped around policy & procedure stuff than around my technical stock-in-trade…which is a completely different story entirely…

Language Advisory…but the point of it is, I do have some understanding of company policies about using business e-mail for business stuff and personal e-mail for personal stuff. I’ve written and edited those policies. This most incriminating tidbit selected from all the Palin e-mail evidence pile I was shown — would fall squarely into the “personal” category (so long as it kept a lid on confidential information, which certainly seemed to be the case). In a nutshell, based on the information that came my way, and I did open Pandora’s box and inspect the contents as best I could…she’s clean.

I have invited left-wingers to float me some examples. They are the “reality based community,” after all. And you haven’t long to wait, when you go looking for some of them to fling their spittle around about what an OUTRAGE!!!! it is that the Governor of Alaska is using Yahoo for government business. I’ve been challenging them to choose, for me, the one single most glaring example of Palin using personal e-mail for business. Preferably, with the effect, intentional or otherwise, of getting around this investigation I keep hearing about.

So far, they haven’t given me squat. It isn’t hard to figure out why. They don’t have it.

That’s not hard to guess. That’s usually the case when lefties are acting OUTRAGED!!!! about something. If the facts are on your side, pound the facts, if the law’s on your side, pound the law. If neither one is on your side, pound the table.

Fourth: Why do I think Rubico is a likable dumbass? Because of this:

…and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff, so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state

Fifth: This “white knight fucker,” likable or not, is an even bigger dumbass.

The “white knight fucker” was the /b/tard who thought that going through Sarah Palin’s email wasn’t cool. He logged in, changed the password, and sent an email to a friend of Palin’s warning her and letting her know the new password. Unfortunately, he then posted a screenshot of this email to let the other /b/tards know their fun was over. He failed to blank the password, and they all tried to log in and change the password — which tripped the automated Yahoo! freeze.

I LOL’d. Really, I did.

Sixth: I must give high marks to the link you find above, from which these excerpts are taken. It’s Michelle Malkin’s site, and it lays to rest an awful lot of rumors that have been floating around about this, which never did make too much sense, with some rational explanations that do.

Here’s the short version: there is a site called 4chan.org. It is an image posting site based on a popular Japanese site. The site contains multiple boards, each of which is dedicated to a particular subject. The most notorious of these boards is called /b/. /b/ is the board dedicated to random images. /b/tards, as its denizens are called, are interested only in their own amusement. Their sense of humor runs the gamut from sick to cruel to merely strange. Lolcats, as made famous by http://www.icanhascheezburger.com, originated on /b/. A lot of memes start there. There is a lot of racist humor — pictures of excited and happy black people in proximity to fried chicken abound. There is a lot of pornography. Sometimes it’s child pornography, although posting that is moderator grounds for banning — no, it’s not a pedophile ring; /b/tards post it because they think doing so is funny.

4chan does not log participants. Most people don’t use or have usernames, and post instead as “Anonymous.” And every so often, a number of /b/’s anonymous denizens decide to make somebody’s life hell. Sometimes it’s a random person who offends /b/’s sense of propriety. Sometimes it’s a forum dedicated to a serious topic. Sometimes it’s Scientology. And Tuesday, it was Sarah Palin. Or it would have been.

Sarah Palin’s email account was hacked by one person. Not a group.

This person read her emails, then posted the username and password on /b/. This happened at about 4 in the morning on Tuesday. The idea was that the sea of Anonymous /b/tards would download the emails, upload porn, and cause all manner of mischief. Anonymous is not a group of hackers. Anonymous is more like gremlins. They are hyperactive adolescents in search of amusement and joy, which they often get by upsetting people and making messes. That’s what was happening here. Anonymous did not hack the account. A hacker tried to throw Sarah Palin to Anonymous. Not all of Anonymous was having it. One person threw a crowbar in the works. Other /b/tards were displeased to miss a chance at the lulz. The moderators stepped in. The thread was deleted.

Later, other individuals created threads reposting screencaps of emails and the inbox, and put together a collection of these files. All mentions of these were purged by the moderators. So then some bright /b/tards decided to email what little stuff they had to the media.

That’s pretty much it.

It Never Was About the Chicks III

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

Becky notices something rather disturbing. Disturbing and, for her, surprising…not surprising for me. But I’m standing in lockstep with her on the disturbing part.

I never expected the National Organization of Women to endorse Sarah Palin. I know from personal experience that a girl’s inability to wrap her head around the idea that the fetus subjugates women, is enough to get her membership revoked.

But even so, still having respect for the goals of the organization, I thought they might join other feminists, who are equally opposed to Palin’s politics, but defend her against the rampant sexism.

After all, the ACLU, on principle, defends such vile clients as the KKK and NAMBLA.

That didn’t happen.

No duh.

It is incredible they are endorsing Obama-Biden simply because the Republican ticket has a woman who has a slightly different view of feminism than they do.

No it isn’t. They’re supported by the billions-of-dollars-strong abortion industry. It’s not an effort to secure equal rights for women, it’s an effort to bolster and buttress that industry.

NOW President Kim Gandy states that women in our country won’t support Palin because Palin’s idea of feminism differs from hers.

First of all, it appears from the polls that a good number of women do not take their marching orders from NOW, and actually find Sarah Palin kind of appealing.

Yup. It’s the plague of our society, held over from the twentieth century, a demon teleported into our world through the miracle of electronic mass communication: The mystic who purports to speak for “all of us,” who in reality did not go door to door finding out what “everyone” thought.

I’m sure when the angels look down on us and observe us continuing to put these mystics on soapboxes they don’t deserve, they forgive us for falling into this habit. We invent the radio, one man is able to speak to millions of his fellows in a single moment…it’s rather unavoidable that someone will form the habit of telling us what we’re thinking. And those among us with weaker minds, will accommodate him.

I don’t think the angels are quite so forgiving of this tendency we have to carry that bad habit out of one century, and into another. At some point we should be getting over it. Maybe that’s what’s happening with Sarah Palin. Kim Gandy can present herself as a magical spokesperson for any & all living female things, all she wants. That don’t make it true.

On that part, I agree with Becky.

The thing she said toward the end, kind of set me off. Which is rather a pity, because I’m sure this was not a central pillar to the message she was trying to present:

NOW reminds me of the bitterness we have detected under the skin of another caricature of the seventies—Jesse Jackson. The success of Barack Obama made the Reverend’s tired rhetoric irrelevant.

But at least Jesse finally bit his tongue and is going along for the ride—which would not have been possible but for the ground breaking work of himself and others in the prior century. [emphasis mine]

To which I had to enter the following comment:

Shenanigans.

Maybe it’s my six-foot-tall-white-straight-maleness, maybe it’s my virginity with respect to working for a trade union, or maybe it’s some combination derived from my never having drawn a benefit from being associated with some annointed victim-status ankle-biter activist class.

But when I see an activist uproar of any kind, I see raw, naked jealousy. These populist mobs band together, and before they even discuss how they want to make the world a better place in any great detail, they’re talking about how to deal injury to other classes of people…Class-driven activist movements *are* jealousy. They play Robin Hood taking things away from one class, and giving those things to another class. And Becky, I refuse to believe any progress has been made anywhere, in anything, because of jealousy.

These angry movements are just like FDR’s New Deal — the designated problem was ultimately solved not because of ’em, but in spite of ’em. It simply isn’t possible for a modern society to tumble onward into the ether that is the future, centuries at a time, continuing to marginalize the talents and contributions of people because of the color of their skin or their gender or sexual preference. The first time you need to get *real* work done, and there’s some dearth of talent available to assist you in doing it, you’d be forced to get the hell over it. Black…white…if he lifts his load, what the frickin’-frack do I care?

No, I’m not giving Jesse Jackson credit for bubkes. He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t have the mindset necessary to make real freedom available to people. He’s just a rabble-rouser, a black-n-white bean counter, a headline grabber, an ambulance chaser. And worst of all, he’s smart enough to figure out that the day we have real equality is the day he’s out of a job, so he’ll do whatever it takes to stop it from happening. The man’s just a victim-monger and a rather disgusting spectacle of victim-mongering at that.

I stand behind those comments with respect to Ms. Gandy, Ms. Ireland, Ms. Yard, et al, as well. Throughout the years those people are all guilty of advocating new rules for the benefit of “everyone” when what they really had in mind, was the exact opposite of everyone. They’ve held themselves up as uniters while laboring to divide us. Sarah Palin is living proof — throughout the decades, they were jousting at windmills. Where’s the chauvinist pig just aching to vote for McCain, now threatening to stay home because now he’s gotta vote for a GURL? Where is that guy? Obviously, his presence was exaggerated. It’s undeniable now. And that is why they can’t stand her.

When I was a little kid, being told we had these movements in the sixties that made us enlightened and so forth, I believed it uncritically. As I grew a little older, I had these little alarms going off in my head, which I then tuned out as I was instructed to tune them out. When I grew to maturity, the problems became undeniable. And now that I’m an old man, I just find this mindset offensive in the extreme: We were a nation of racists and bigots back then, and no longer are.

Let me take on that last one first: We’re as bigoted as we want to be, any time we want, toward anyone. All it takes to set us off is the sense that those around us are willing to accept bigotry, and we’ll roll out as much of it as can be managed. I would point to Dr. Helen’s column on Pajamas Media about the male-bashing for my examples…but that’s just the first armload. I can find many more.

Secondly: We were a nation of bigots before? Sure, we had separate entrances and drinking fountains, etc. That’s true. But it’s also true there were people around back then, who knew that was wrong, and said so out loud. And really, I don’t think there would be quite so many outspoken dissenters today. We have become exceptionally proficient at discriminating against people. Like I said, all it takes is a sense that people within eyesight and earshot will be accepting.

Thirdly: Presuming we are enlightened now (false) and weren’t back then (false), for reasons that will become evident if you so much as skim over the comment I left for Becky, there are some real problems with crediting these pitchfork-and-torch-bearing populist mobs for this enlightenment that supposedly took place. Real problems. It’s a logical impossibility for a benevolent sense of symbiosis to culminate from a spirit of snarky and spiteful gettin-even-withem-ism. It simply cannot be done, I would argue.

No, here’s what happens. If there are more people around to do work than there is work to be done, people look for ways to justify their existences. And they’ll do what’s called “circling the wagons” in order to make that happen. They’ll band together. By sex and by color, they’ll band together, exaggerating the achievements of those who look like them, and dismissing whatever contributions were made by someone different.

If there’s work to be done, and not enough people to do it, they’ll stop doing this. They’ll be forced to. Think about…passing buckets of water to people of different sexual preferences and skin colors, when the house is on fire and the fire truck hasn’t shown up yet. Think about…piling up sandbags when a river is threatening to overflow its banks. Think about…little green men drifting down here from outer space with those ray beams that disintegrate what they touch, declaring war on our planet. Go on, discriminate against blacks, gays, or women. Try to do as much soft-discrimination as these left-wing activist groups do on a daily basis. Just try.

You’ll be ripped apart, and skinned alive. Rightfully so.

But when the work disappears, we’ll be right back at it again. Whoever is empowered to make an office look like something…will make it monochrome. If it suits ’em to make it look vanilla, they’ll make it look vanilla. Or chocolate. Or all-female, or like the weekend Bible-study class. Whatever makes ’em comfortable — as individuals. They’ll surround themselves with the like-minded; they’ll do it every time. Those who protest against it most vociferously, are the ones most competent at practicing it when it suits ’em. And when there’s little or no real work to be done.

We’re not past any of it. Quite to the contrary, our urgent work is at a low nadir, and we are now consumed in a process of justifying ourselves when we can’t be justified because we’re not trying to do anything. And so the National Organization of Woman, as Becky observes, ends up endorsing a the ticket that does not have a woman on it — endorsing it for propping up the political agenda. That’s because the agenda is what it’s all about. It has nothing to do with the chicks. It never did. The (perceived) anger of all those chicks, the ones Kim Gandy has in mind, has been the pressure that drove the turboprop attached to the engine shaft of this supposed “womens'” movement. But a bundle of far-left political agendas, is all it ever was or ever will be. And, ironically, those far-left political agendas had to do with preserving twentieth-century prejudices and bigotry for as long as they could be preserved — driving wedges between classes of people who don’t look like each other.

It never had anything to do with the chicks from day one.

With a Sixth-Grade Teacher’s Red Pen…

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

How Come I Would Make the Economy Better by Barry ObamaMan, blogger bud Duffy is on fire lately. This is great stuff he found at Suitably Flip: What would happen if a sixth-grade teacher applied normal standards of correction to one of The Chosen One’s speeches?

Your vague and sometimes nonsensical writing suggests a very limited understanding of the topic and I have to wonder if you’ve read any of the assigned background material.

For your re-write, I would also suggest you revise your awkward thesis that markets are unregulated and that government control is the answer.

Specifics, Sen. Obama. Specifics. Even sixth-graders have to use ’em. Of course, they aren’t all The Real Deal…but it’s all good. Embrace the responsibility. If you can.

Like all good satire, it raises a good point. Too many of our bad decisions in this modern age, are made because someone expressed a simple situation as something too complicated to be explained, or evaluated some other situation that really was complicated, in overly simplified terms. Many of our other bad decisions came about because someone confused extremism with moderation. This situation of which Sen. Obama wrote, is an example of both of those. With this crack of his about “a philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary,” he earns a big fat mark from the teacher’s red pen by leaving the plane of truth and reality, making her wonder if he read any of the assigned background material.

The fact of the matter is that America is now going quite a few generations without lending any meaningful support to any philosophies hostile to “even common-sense regulations.” We would probably benefit by coming up with such a philosophy, and engaging some public policy based on it — just once in awhile. We regulate the snot outta everything. If a sixth-grade teacher comes along and demands examples out of me, I’ll just repeat the challenge I laid down over here. And I would fill in the examples as…health insurance; educating our children; refining oil and getting it to the gas pump; providing electrical power to people and businesses; and with our latest crisis, I’ll add mortgaging a home. These are excessively regulated industries.

Now, regulating the snot outta everything by itself would be okay, I think…but when we run into problems that result from this regulation, we have this tendency to exempt the regulation as we look for what might have caused the problems. To the contrary, our tendency is to blame the regulated capitalism as if it were unregulated, and then come up with some more regulation.

Obama is supposedly a walking incarnation of change from this worldview. He has yet to say how so. In fact, I’m looking forward to this sixth-grade teacher going through that speech next. Hope she has a few spare red pens.

Thomas Lifson: McCain’s Invisible Advantage

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Interesting I just tripped across this American Thinker article. Just last night I was wondering out loud to The Squeeze if I should consider, at this possibility, another “friendly wager” with a hardcore left-leaning liberal about how the election would come out. I guesstimated that there was about a four-to-six-point swing, historically, between what the polls say and how things turn out on Election Day. Said six-point swing, as people will recall from John Kerry’s unexpected defeat in 2004, is toward the benefit of the Republicans.

Along comes Lifson to explain why that might be.

The Democrats know very well that their strength lies in voters’ feelings rather than analysis, and so they choose slogans and labels aimed at creating fear of ‘mean-spirited’ Republicans or ‘domestic spying’ on ordinary Americans, and avoid directly addressing specifics of policies. They create positive images of the government “taking care of people,” and, above all, reject close examination of the outcomes which could be expected given the realities of human nature. The very format of most television, with no room for rational back-and-forth discussion or critical analysis, enables the flinging of labels.

Republican conservatives have generally been far less sophisticated at this game. By its very nature, conservatism is based on reflection and a due regard for the complexities of change and the flawed nature of the human creature.

As a result, Democrats and their allies have paid close attention to image management, and with the help of their friends in the entertainment industry, they have become extraordinarily skilled at it…
:
However, when American politics enters what I earlier called attention season, Americans un-obsessed with politics begin to pay attention to actual arguments made by the candidates. When there is an atmosphere of crisis, and voters have reason to believe their personal welfare and safety may be at risk, they ponder whom to believe, and talk about politics with others.

It’s an interesting theory, I wonder if it works that way.

I know there is at the very least a counterweight to what Lifson’s talking about. If you’re suddenly compelled to pay attention to something and you should’ve been paying attention to it all along, but have not been, human nature will be to form whatever opinion is easiest. This, I’ve always had the impression, is the target of the democrat image-management tactic. And they keep doing it so it must work…of course there’s that matter that they keep on losing…

PalinBut I still think Lifson is on to something. Because depending on where you live, your decision making activities during “attention season” are going to be driven not so much by pressure, but by a vacuum. That’s not necessarily true where I live, where you can regularly glance at sun-bunnies catching some rays in their tiny bikinis after Halloween (which is awesome, by the way). But…that’s Sacramento. Most places around this country, there are all kinds of distractions right up until Labor Day, after which there’s a shortage of things to do for fun.

Simply put: What people do, mostly around the clock, is non-discretionary. The kids have to be helped with their homework, lunches have to be packed, work has to be done, time clocks have to be punched, bills have to be paid.

People are inclined to pay this kind of attention to things. There isn’t too much else to do. Making up your own mind about something isn’t quite the same as playing beach volleyball. But hey. It’s something. With shrouds of mist hanging around when the sun comes up, and the sun coming up a little later in the day…making a serious decision independently doesn’t seem quite so much the pain in the ass it used to.

And I don’t think the argument of “If we defend ourselves, the world will hate us” survives this “attention season” quite so well as other arguments less politically correct, but making more sense. Like, for example, “If it’s less expensive to employ people, more people will have work” — or — “If we pretend terrorists are entitled to rights they don’t really have, they might be set free when they really ought to be killed.”

I’ll bet if you analyze elections in years past, you’ll find that the seasonal change has had a significant but seldom-discussed impact like this. The poor democrat party has had this tendency, to refine the message during the months without the letter “R”…when people think about Coppertone and beach balls and meadows filled with clover, how hard it is to stay awake with a body covered with sunburn and a belly full of beer.

But that isn’t when we actually vote on this stuff, is it?

If it’s dark when you get home from work…there’s frost on the pumpkin…you’ve got the time to read the paper, and when you settle down on the couch with your sweetie to watch the boob tube you tend to turn to the news. And you don’t want sound bites, you want complete stories. Suddenly, it doesn’t make any sense to be told asinine things like “we can beat global warming if we all work together but I’m not going to give you any specifics on exactly what it is we’re trying to do.” Or “the oil companies are gouging us at the gas pump, so we’re going to tax the ever luvin’ snot out of them and that’ll fix everything.” Or “Barack Obama is dedicated to bringing change to our nation’s capitol, and that’s why he picked a lifetime Senate fixture as his running mate.” If such snippets of malarky make sense to anyone at all, they only make sense to someone soaking up sun in the day, and looking forward to more of the same at night. They do not resonate with people who spend their days coping with post-Labor-Day responsibilities, enjoying the luxury of goofing off for only a few precious minutes a day, or not at all.

Will Manly

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Blogger friend Virgil sends along, in an off-line, a reproduction of this editorial that appeared in June. It’s in the form of an open letter to Senator Obama, speaking on behalf of those bitter people in small towns who cling to God ‘n guns. Breaking some of my own rules about teasing, I’ll excerpt just the delicious uppercut at the end, but you really should go read it all.

You’re wrong about why small-town Americans don’t vote for Democrats.

We don’t vote for Democrats because we’re self-reliant so we don’t like the government trying to “solve” everything for us. And because you tell your rich friends in San Francisco that we’re dumb. And because, each election, whichever one of you is running for president traipses all over the country telling us you have all the answers, that you’re the one on our side, that you understand and respect our way of life.

But each time, a little bit here and there slips out — and by the end of the campaign, we can tell what you think about us. And we manage to learn who you really are.

And we see you’re just a horse’s ass.

Coincidentally, blogger friend Phil excerpts a comment expressing sentiments very close, but flowing in the opposite direction. It’s just a comment underneath an article he finds entertaining, but I think it’s an important comment because it’s one we’ve heard many times before:

What is going to happen if Obama loses is the biggest Brain Drain this country has ever seen. I already know many colleagues and associates who have relocated to Europe where there’s less prejudice against intellectuals and a more realistic societal model. It won’t be the fault of the left when it happens. The know-nothing US electorate will have had two chances to make the correct decision and throw the neocon bums out. Those of us who knew better all along, who saw 9-11 not as an excuse for war but as an opportunity to show America’s greatness by rising above it, who protested against the Iraq invasion while most of the country was still in the throes of Bush-worshipping wishful thinking, will only be victimized by the rest of you gullible fools for so long. This is your last chance to get it right – or you WILL be on your own.

The commenter would probably find himself in easy, pleasant company with Jeneane Garofalo, who thinks all Republicans should be jailed. Almost in the same breath as the one in which she brags about how much more tolerant and open-minded she is than those closed-minded pinhead Republicans.

Here’s the money quote:

GAROFALO: First of all there is no evidence to support that the current incarnation of the Republican party, hyphen conservative movement, has any tethering to decency, kindness, tolerance, open-mindedness. What do they stand for? Torture as a policy. They stand for homophobia. They stand for no reproductive justice. They stand for denying global warming.

FUND: So what should we do? Jail them?

GAROFALO: That would be great!

Look what you have going on here. Two sides, each one wishing the other would go away.

One side is weary of being micro-managed. As Will Manly points out, “you have all the answers” but you think “that we’re dumb.” Now contrasted with that, the commenter Phil found tells us to shape up or else they (all those who agree with him…huh…wonder if he personally checked with each one) will leave us to our just desserts! Phil’s headline says it all: Is That a Promise?

But the side represented by that commenter, supposedly with his one-way ticket already in hand, doesn’t really seem to want to abandon anyone or jettison anyone. Not completely. That other side seems to be saying, check your opinions at the door, but bring your wallets because we need to “come together.” Taxation without representation. Fight global warming — we don’t have any goals in mind for that at all, the important thing is that “together we can do this.”

The lesson? Tolerance is an opposite word — be wary of anyone throwing it around. Too many of those folks have Garofalo disease; you must agree with them, or into the hoosegow you go. They’re tolerant of your billfold. Your opinion, not so much.

This fatigue expressed by Will Manly…you know, once you put some real thinkin’ energy into this stuff, you see this is what tolerance really looks like. And if there is any residual doubt, you can travel through the midwest, through “flyover country” as Rush calls it. Drive on through. Try to find the spot where Ma and Pa Kent rescued Baby Clark from the rocket ship. Look at corn and wheat fields ’til they make you dizzy. Stop in at a diner where people are still allowed to smoke if they want to. You’ll be very hard pressed to find any Garofalo disease there. Very few people will want you to go to jail for expressing a contrary opinion. They do their stuff, you do your stuff, you don’t tell them what to do, they won’t tell you what to do.

But doesn’t that raise the specter of disaster should one or the other of you get into trouble?

Actually, no. Go ahead, get a flat tire out there, or lock your keys in the car; see how much help you get. Then go to some urban enclave of a nice blue state and repeat the exercise.

The left doesn’t really show tolerance. They don’t show a respect for diversity. They talk a good game, but what they really bring to the table is immaturity — “do it my way, or I’ll pick up all my marbles and go home.” Obama’s been proving it, and people like Garofalo are helping to prove it some more.

Karl Rove and Pig Lipstick

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Blood on Gorelick’s Hands

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Thank you Duffy. It’s about time this stuff was pointed out.

This is what happens when public servants mold and shape policies to prove what wonderful people they are. Moderation is the first casualty. Gosh, it just seems to make sense, doesn’t it — if a little of something proves you’re a great guy or gal, a whole lot of it would prove you’re just a walking bundle of amazement, wouldn’t it? “These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance” — Sorry, Jamie. In the real world, people will come to whatever conclusion they want to form. There’s no such thing as a policy that will stop that. Not in a society that allows freedom of speech and freedom of thought. In fact, it’s best just to presume that all politicians are scumbags, and when the time comes to form policies, form them based on that premise. That way nobody has to prove anything.

But you thought you had something to prove. And that you could somehow prove it. God only knows what unknown misdeeds, what skeletons in your closet, for which you were trying to atone, to gulp endlessly at some elixir trying to slake the thirst of a guilty conscience.

Whatever. You reformed policy to try to prove what a great wonderful public servant you are…going beyond what the law requires. And then people get killed. End of story.

Thanks a bunch.

It Never Was About the Chicks II

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Rick brings us a link to a wonderfully worded piece by Jonah Goldberg which, arguably, stands guilty of belaboring the obvious. But being “plainly linkable,” in Rick’s words, it could have saved me some typing in some places…like here f’rinstance…and perhaps some other works I don’t feel like hunting down at present.

Goldberg’s words speak for themselves and need no introduction. Although I couldn’t resist putting bold on the especially scrumptious tidbits.

Whether or not Sarah Palin helps John McCain win the election, her greatest work may already be behind her. She’s exposed the feminist con job.

Don’t take my word for it. Feminists have been screaming like stuck pigs 24/7 since Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate.

Feminist author Cintra Wilson writes in Salon that the notion of Palin as vice president is “akin to ideological brain rape.” Presumably just before the nurse upped the dosage on her medication, Wilson continued, “Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She’s such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it’s easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.”

And that’s one of the nicer things she had to say. Really.

On Tuesday, Salon ran one article calling Palin a dominatrix and another labeling her a sexually repressed fundamentalist no different from the Muslim fanatics and terrorists of Hamas. Make up your minds, folks. Is she a seductress or a sex-a-phobe?

But this any-weapon-near-to-hand approach is an obvious sign of how scared the Palin-o-phobes are.

Gloria Steinem, the grand mufti of feminism, issued a fatwa anathematizing Palin. A National Organization for Women spokeswoman proclaimed Palin more of a man than a woman. Wendy Doniger, a feminist academic at the University of Chicago, writes of Palin in Newsweek: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”

It’s funny. The left has been whining about having their patriotism questioned for so long it feels like they started griping in the Mesozoic era. Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.

Since we know from basic science that Palin is a woman — she’s had five kids, for starters — it’s clear that these ideological thugs aren’t talking about actual, you know, facts. They’re doing what people of totalitarian mind-sets always do: bully heretics, demonize enemies, whip the troops into line.

The academic feminist left has scared the dickens out of mainstream men and women for so long, the liberal establishment is terrified to contradict feminists’ nigh-upon-theological conviction that female authenticity is measured by one’s blind loyalty to left-wing talking points. This is a version of the Marxist doctrine of “false consciousness,” which holds that you aren’t an authentic member of the proletariat unless you agree with Marxism. [emphasis mine]

It’s got nothing to do with the broads.

If you’re a dude, and you happen to be the President of the United States, using your office resources and your authority to scare up some oral sex from your office interns, and committing perjury to cover your tracks and deny the other women you’ve abused their day in court…feminism will protect you.

As long as you are faithful to the agenda.

If you’re a strong-willed, intelligent, articulate woman and you manage to shatter a glass ceiling or two…feminism will be there to trip you up, to attack you, to slander you, to lend aid and comfort to your enemies.

Provided you aren’t friendly to the agenda.

It’s all about the agenda. Supporting women, increasing the standard of living of women, safeguarding the rights and privileges of women, looking out for equality of women…that’s got nothing to do with it at all.

There can be no denying this.

And there really has been no meaningful metamorphosis.

Which, of necessity, must raise the question about whether feminism had anything to do with defending or offering any help to the fairer sex, going all the way back to Day One. Women were just a means toward a desired end…the entire time…the entire forty years plus.

And our society fell for it. What a twisted, disgusting, sick joke. What a national disgrace.

Paleofeminism II

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

On the last day of last year, I said

I hope 2008 sees the end of this brand of feminism, I really do. The subject of the link in question is Page 8 of possible reasons Home Improvement jumped the shark, and “Guest” writes in with…

The show jumped with the “sandwich episode” where Jill really started to assert her own special brand of aggressive feminism. It was angering to watch Jill call her son a sexist because his girlfriend did his housework; the problem couldn’t possibly be on the girlfriend’s end, it must be the EVIL MISOGYNIST BRAD at fault because he LET her do his housework. In the end, everything was resolved, of course, when Jill converted everyone over to her point of view, aka the right one, including dimwitted Tim, who, of course, buckled under his wife’s demands yet again. Was there ever a single episode where Tim said, “Tough crap, Jill, this time it’s my way”?

I was watching this episode with my ten-year-old son, and found myself answering some complicated questions.

I went on to point out the flaw in Jill’s logic. I was garrulous, so let me sum it up in a single short paragraph here:

It’s the knight who is drawing this tangible benefit from the lady’s attentions. What, exactly, is he supposed to do according to this moral code handed down on high from matriarch paleofeminist Jill? The answer according to the script of the episode was — STOP the thoughtful girlfriend from making him sandwiches. Yeah that’s right. Snatch the peanut butter and jelly right outta her hands. That’s the scripted answer; the answer, in spirit, was “I don’t know.” That’s the trouble with paleofeminism. Paleofeminists won’t admit that their goal is really to get rid of men — but the elephant comes lumbering into full view in the middle of the room, when they are observed spraying instructions and orders at everyone in earshot, like some fully automatic rapid-fire trebuchet — or to invent a metaphor more functionally fitting, a claymore — and at the same time don’t know what to tell the men to do. We’re sexist pigs if our girlfriends make us sandwiches…how, then, do we remedy the situation and stop being sexist pigs? Catch the samrich-makin’ bitch in a full nelson and force her to drop the mayonnaise? It just doesn’t make any sense.

SardoSo I had good reason for wishing 2008 would see the end of paleofeminism. Very good reason. I like it when pretty ladies make me samriches. That’s because I’m sane.

Good reason…but not high hopes. And rightly so. For the frost is nearly upon the pumpkin, and what did blogger friend Cassy Fiano find for us. That’s right, another screeching screed at Feministing.

Check out this 1970 ad for bath oil (via Found in Mom’s Basement):

The text reads:

Sure. You live with him and take care of him and hang up his clothes. But just because you do the things a wife’s supposed to do, don’t forget you’re still a woman.

One of the nicest things you can do for a man is take care of your skin. That means Sardo. No other bath oil or bead has Sardo’s unique dry skin formula. It’s pure bath oil. The richest. The best. 3 out of 4 women saw and felt and loved the difference after just one Sardo bath.

How about you? Why don’t you do something soft and young and special for him. Feel wonderful all over with Sardo.

Wow, this is really taking some early-nineties Bryan Adams to its sexist extreme. I wonder if, when she wipes her ass, she’s also doing that for her husband?

Cassy unloads. And as usual, it’s pretty priceless:

What’s hilarious is how offensive the feminists say this ad is, but the commenters have zero problem whatsoever insulting and deriding the man for the hair on his arms. So it’s OK to criticize men for their looks but not women? What if a bunch of men were making fun of a woman because of something beyond her control, like her arms being hairier than normal, these same women would be shrieking with outrage.

It’s stories like these that make modern feminism so out-of-touch with reality and the average woman. When you’re worried about trivial bullshit like an ad from thirty years ago, or a Bryan Adams video that’s over fifteen years old, and make abortion the holy cow of your entire movement, and then call it fighting for women’s rights, it makes people not really take you very seriously. The thing is, there is real sexism in the world, and real women who are fighting real oppression. Most of this does not take place in the Middle East, but modern American feminism finds things like thirty-year-old bath oil ads and abortion more important than, oh, say three girls being buried alive for the “crime” of choosing their own husbands.

What motivates these bitter women? It obviously is not the “rights” of the modern woman. If it was about that issue, the girls being buried alive would at least register as a blip on the radar, one would hope. In fact, the samrich issue would not — Brad’s girlfriend wants to make him a samrich, she can go ahead and make him a samrich…the “choice” is hers, you see.

*sniff* *sniff* Smells like…some sort of collective bargaining.

Yes, that’s exactly what I think it is. Start out slow, and slack off. You get hired on to the team, which pumps out eight widgets per man per hour — you start cranking out twenty widgets an hour, boss gives you a big atta-boy, life will be all wonderful. Until you go home from work that day. It’s your co-workers, you see. You’re making ’em look bad.

This is exactly the same principle. You’re a woman, taking baths in oils to make your skin soft for that man o’ yours, make him a samrich or two…you know how those uppity men are, sooner or later they’ll start talking! And this puts pressure on the other jealous wrinkled up old gals. Can’t have that.

Perhaps this is why the feminists aren’t too interested in the teenage girls being buried alive, Cassy. See, not being murdered is an individual right. Forcing one amongst your peerage to start out slow & slack off, so that mediocrity can continue to be confused with excellence, that is a group right. A collective-bargaining right. Don’t do good works as an individual person, because you’re making the group-collective look bad.

Lower the expectations. For the good of the collective.

Just as union management demands to step into the role of the “real” boss…the wrinkled up old paleofeminist harpies are demanding to become the “real” husband. That hairy ape you’re living with, he’s just in the way. Don’t do anything to please him, or we’ll make you sorry.

Okay that explains everything — except one thing. With all this Sarah Palin news floating around, we’re already getting a crash-course that the feminist movement is pulling a bait-n-switch on us. They’ve been pissing and moaning that not enough women are winning high offices because not enough women are seeking those high offices…and that must have something to do with us grubby, awful, icky sexist men. Along comes Gov. Palin. To a rational mindset, she would appear to be the fulfillment of everything the feminists had been demanding all these years. Well, the feminists don’t like her, which proves the “womens’ rights” movement never had anything to do with women, and most certainly didn’t have much to do with their rights. It was all about a political agenda. Putting pressure on people to vote for unqualified angry women, was just a tactic for enacting that agenda.

What’s really awful for the feminist movement, is that Sarah Palin and the attacks against her don’t clearly state this for the understanding of whacky bloggers like myself. These events make all this plain to the average, Main Street voter. It’s the kind of damage only self-evident truth can do.

So why now for the attack on the Sardo ad? Why choose right here-and-now to really solidify that message to us…that feminism is all about marginalizing men, and driving a wedge between the sexes — that it has little or nothing to do with womens’ rights? It’s as if Feministing is terrified someone out here was not quite clear on things, and wanted to make sure the message was really spelled out for everyone.

Heyyyyyyy, here’s an idea. Let’s make the 2008 elections all about this. Vote McCain/Palin if you want men and women to get along, vote Obama/Biden if you think whenever a lady is softening up her skin or making samriches for her man, someone should jump in and force her to stop, whether she wants to stop or not. In the name of womens’ choice.

Meanwhile, if any nice-lookin’ ladies come along and start making me hot juicy pies and fetching me cold beers, I fully intend to support womens’ rights. I intend to let them. Sorry if that offends anyone.

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XX

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

…but The Blog That Nobody Reads is #26 on the list of My Favorite 40 Blogs For 2008 (Version 3.0) at Right Wing News.

Yay!

D’JEver Notice? IX

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

Two hundred twenty-one years, and a little bit of muddled, underdeveloped thinking from our leftist-secular super-duper-activist types, and…we go from no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States…to exactly that.

GIBSON: Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: The reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is. And I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let’s not pray that God is on our side in a war or in any other time. But let us pray that we are on God’s side. That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie.

GIBSON: But you went on and said there is a plan and it is God’s plan. [emphasis mine]

PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world, and that plan for this world is for good.

We could quibble about whether fine hairs are being split here, are whether the distinction has disappeared altogether. But let there be no mistake about it: Gov. Palin was grilled by our Fourth Estate for seeking a high office without properly embracing a virtual state-sponsored religion of atheism.

Methinks, if you’re cool with that — the object of the entire exercise must have escaped you at some point here. The country’s supposed to be all about freedom to worship as an individual and not be barred from public office by doing so, and we seem to have a lot of enthusiastic individuals working extremely hard to jettison that most cherished of individual freedoms.

“[A]ll men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” — Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779.

Un-Cronkiting

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Fascinating discussion going on at Dr. Helen‘s place, the inspiration for which is a Forbes column arguing the innerwebs have not offered us a tool that can unite us, but rather, a tool that crystalizes our differences.

The Web doesn’t bridge divisions; it multiplies and sharpens them. It doesn’t build consensus or national coalitions; it grows factions. Truth be told, the Web doesn’t network people at all–it lets them network themselves, which is quite different…During the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Nobody would ever say that about anything posted on a cronkite.com or a CronkiteTube.
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The challenge now is to get disconnected people to accept how little they can trust themselves and their closest friends. People who live overwired lives — which means the young, especially — may easily suppose that they have a very good picture of what all the rest of America is thinking. Quite a few of them are going to find out otherwise in a few weeks…

The thread underneath debates the merits and liabilities of spending time prowling blogs that disagree with one’s mindset. Sissy Willis points out the first thing that popped in my head…

The toe-curl factor is too great when I attempt to read “blogs and other sites” that “do not necessarily agree with [my] viewpoint.” I think they have bad ideas; they think I’m a bad person.

Add to that the observation that, if they’re there just to invent just so much b.s. about Sarah Palin faking her pregnancy or thinking dinosaurs roamed the earth 4,000 years ago, whatever-it-takes-to-win…the sensibility of Sissy’s pontificating becomes all the clearer. It is, almost literally, wallowing in muck (the word “muck” being a polite substitute for something else).

Why spend good time and energy seriously considering ideas that are so bad, that in order to be made presentable they have to be supported with lies?

dlb continues with a partially sympathetic line of thinking…

I’ve encountered this argument in various forms, but haven’t found it to be persuasive. Perhaps this is because I use the web to find the most credible sources that I can relevant to issues that concern me.

These individuals and institutions are often ignored by the MSM as they tend not to frame their arguments in the terms of a morality drama.

So rather than polarizing my views, I think that the internet has enabled me to recognize that those whom I disagree with are usually acting in good faith – that we share an ‘honest disagreement’.

In response to this, I would offer the notion that this thing we call the Internet has shifted the responsibility from broadcaster to receiver.

Walter Cronkite looks at the facts of what’s taking place on the ground, and comes to a conclusion. He disseminates the conclusion, under the guise of disseminating fact. President Johnson, apocryphally but accurately, surmises if he’s lost Cronkite he’s lost America.

Fast forward forty years — this web site says Barack Obama is a Muslim. This other web site says people who think Obama is a Muslim, are idiots. That other website over there says he attended a Muslim school. Another website points out he doesn’t anymore. Some web sites make things up, others don’t, others, stick to facts as best they can but get fooled by other websites that recycle garbage. Matt Damon thinks Sarah Palin wants to make America into a theocracy, and will, as soon as the old man bites it. Charles Gibson interviews Palin and tries to make her look like an airhead. Mark Levin gets ahold of the transcript that was edited to accomplish this, and posts the entire thing.

What is happening is caveat emptor. And it is a good thing. When you view the world through a Cronkite monocular, missing any perspective whatsoever, you may understand the principles of science and skepticism just fine and dandy — but you can’t very well use them, can you? You just get this tidy, sanitized, polished image of what’s going on, carefully cleansed of any contradictions large or small. So you can’t find the answers about what’s missing, if you don’t know what questions to ask. Therefore — yes, of course Johnson loses America if he loses Cronkite. This thinking stuff through, it isn’t even a responsibility Cronkite’s viewers surrendered…it was taken from them forcefully.

Left with the choice of simply believing versus not-believing, they had no opportunity to inject their own critical thinking into the process whatsoever. They might as well have been told their favorite color for a particular day was purple.

If being unmoored from that kind of Oceania drives us into separate factions, that’s a situation I’ll gladly accept.

In fact, it really makes me wonder what else we weren’t told before the Internet came along to divide us this way. A bunch of stuff…at the very least. And probably a good deal more than that.

Best Sentence XL

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

The Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award goes to Mike_M, commenter (#1) on the cross-posting at Right Wing News of the What’s Barry To Do Now? piece. The subject under discussion is this massively deep hole into which The Chosen One has ensconced himself — at last report, The Messiah has forsaken Will Rogers’ advice and is still digging — due to no external factors whatsoever, besides the meanness endemic to his “tolerant” supporters. His stockpile of electoral ammunition and tools, lackluster and lightweight from the beginning, is notably lacking in any instrument that can effectively deal with this situation and he’s left twisting in the wind, three or four percentage points behind, as Election Day hurtles down the road like a juggernaut, with no way to turn this thing around at all.

Mark’s point, as I understand it, is that the situation is even worse than that because — well, it’s a little silly that Obama is put in the position of competing with the vice-presidential nominee on the oppositing ticket, but since he is — we get to see every single week how differently he deals with a crisis, compared to Sarah Barracuda.

Palin is for all intents and purposes invincible because she’s not going to play the victim or go crying to the media for a break. The media has savaged her and her family in an unprecedented fashion, and she barely seems to notice. Obama calls the Justice Department when someone runs an ad he doesn’t like. [emphasis mine]

What better way to hammer that point home, than to offer an honorable mention in the BSIHORL award handouts to Dennis Miller for something he said earlier this summer on his “Miller Time” segment.

Again: The perspective changes; what is noticed, remains constant.

I don’t even notice the color of his skin, I do note the thinness of it though.

Secret Rooms

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

Revolving backs-of-fireplaces, sliding bookcases, hidden sliding chutes that open up under chairs just like in “Batman Forever.” Yeah, baby.

Door-opening mechanisms can be almost anything—a chess set, a Lysol can or a flip-up Shakespeare bust equipped with a fingerprint reader. Homeowners typically spend about $10,000 on the secret-room setup, but Creative Home Engineering offers rotating fireplaces that cost about $35,000.

[Steve] Humble has no desire to know what motivates his company’s secretive clients. “I don’t even know where a lot of the doors go,” he says. “I just ask the size of the doorway—I don’t need to know what they’re hiding.”

It Never Was About the Chicks

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

Lynda Carter, the former TV Wonder Woman, is the latest celeb nitwit to confirm for us that this whole thing about empowering women had very little to do with the women.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, you see, even though she’s doing exactly what the womens’ libbists told us women should be able to do…is the anti-Wonder-Woman.

Don’t get me started. She’s the anti-Wonder Woman. She’s judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how they’ve got to live their lives. And a superior religious self-righteousness … that’s just not what Wonder Woman is about. Hillary Clinton is a lot more like Wonder Woman than Mrs. Palin. She did it all, didn’t she?

No one has the right to dictate, particularly in this country, to force your own personal views upon the populace — religious views. I think that is suppressive, oppressive, and anti-American. We are the loyal opposition. That’s the whole point of this country: freedom of speech, personal rights, personal freedom. Nor would Wonder Woman be the person to tell people how to live their lives. Worry about your own life! Worry about your own family! Don’t be telling me what I want to do with mine.

I like John McCain. But this woman — it’s anathema to me what she stands for. I think America should be very afraid. Very afraid. Separation of church and state is the one thing the creators of the Constitution did agree on — that it wasn’t to be a religious government. People should feel free to speak their minds about religion but not dictate it or put it into law.

What I don’t understand, honestly, is how anyone can even begin to say they know the mind of God. Who do they think they are? I think that’s ridiculous. I know what God is in my life. Now I am sure that she’s not all just that. But it’s enough to me. It’s enough for me to have a visceral reaction. And it makes me mad.

People need to speak up. Doesn’t mean that I’m godless. Doesn’t mean that I am a murderer. What I hate is this demonization of everybody but one position. You’re un-American because you’re against the war. It’s such bullshit. Fear. It’s really such a finite way of thinking about God to think that your measley little mind can know the mind of God. It’s a very little God that way. I think that God’s bigger. I don’t presume to know his mind. Or her mind.

Let’s review. Gov. Palin is “judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how to live their lives.” She’s all about a “superior religious self-righteousness.” She hasn’t done it all, like Hillary has. She forces her personal religious views on the populace. She’s opposed to separation of church and state. She wants to put religion into law. She thinks she knows the mind of God.

Sources, please, Lynda?

One wonders how Ms. Carter feels about the cheesehead doc who lashed out at Gov. Palin, in that cute way media-connected docs do, by expressing “concern” over her decision to carry Trig to term.

As a vocal opponent of abortion, Ms. Palin’s widely discussed decision to keep her baby, knowing he would be born with the condition, may inadvertently influence other women who may lack the necessary emotional and financial support to do the same, according to André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.

Dr. Lalonde said that above all else, women must be free to choose, and that popular messages to the contrary could have detrimental effects on women and their families.

“The worry is that this will have an implication for abortion issues in Canada,” he said. [emphasis Sister Toldjah’s]

I would suggest that anyone who fails to see the bullying and bludgeoning in that little news-bit, doesn’t know enough to recognize controlling behavior when it’s right in front of ’em. So that’s my piece of evidence to bring to the table — people are trying to control Gov. Palin, whether or not she’s trying to control other people. That’s my hand. What’s Lynda Carter’s?

I mean, her whole argument is based on this image she has of Palin. So where’s the proof?

A 1970’s feminist icon has run into a real flesh-and-blood functional feminist in 2008…and doesn’t know what to make of ‘er. Can’t see real feminism when it’s staring her right in the face. How sad. It never was about rights, opportunities, responsibilities or power for women. That never had anything to do with it. It’s about a political agenda, to which Real Feminist Sarah Palin is less than friendly. She’s shattering a ceiling alright. It’s like a giant Cone of Dumb that has encased us all these decades, pretending to be something it isn’t. It never was about the chicks. It was just a cynical tool to promote liberalism.

I think the comment I left in the Philly News sums up the balance of my thoughts on it…

We have a need here to turn WW’s golden truth-lasso around on her. Central to her argument is that Gov. Palin wants to control how other people live. Source, please?

Take the Obama/Biden position on any issue…any issue at all…and within that position, there is a desire to define a class of person (usually rich people) and destroy everyone in that class, or at least hurt them. It may be veiled. But it’s always there. There’s always a Snidely Whiplash due for a come-uppins’. Always. I can’t even say the same thing about every old WW episode.

So who’s really more controlling?

What’s Barry To Do Now?

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

Via blogger friend Buck: Peggy Noonan has some ideas.

No more scattered, listless riffs; back to the podium and the prepared—and focused—speech. Campaign as a duo, Obama-Biden, together again. Obama alone looks like he’s part of nothing.

You must aim your fire at the top of the ticket, John McCain, and not at this beautiful girl, Sarah Palin, about whom you can do nothing.

You can never kill her now. Forget it. She can hurt herself, but in terms of Democratic attacks she is bulletproof. You made her that—she wasn’t that way when she walked in.

Hope that Mr. McCain stops campaigning with her and spins her off into her own orbit, to small towns and medium-sized cities. It will cut his recent power in half. Some press will follow her, but mostly on gaffe patrol. They will want to keep their main lens on Obama and McCain.

This is going to be the only way to contain her power: Ignore it. [emphasis mine]

How bad is it for Obama…does it require a band aid, or surgery? Only time will tell. But early signs indicate that a metal can out of the medicine cabinet and a kiss from momma isn’t in the works. Blogger friend Rick points to Drudge, who provides a recap that fits in with a lot of other gaugings I’ve been seeing this week: AP; Gallup; Rasmussen. The angles of perspective change, but the situation remains substantially the same. The Messiah has some work to do.

That in itself wouldn’t be so alarming for those who have been so giddy and excited over this “change,” since a lot can happen between now and November. Chosen One’s hapless situation is more clearly illustrated when one ponders what he can, and cannot, do to dig himself out of this hole. The perception among his base has been that his side has a monopoly on new ideas. This is not only false, but hypocritical. And the hypocrisy is going to be his undoing, here, I think; if he really had some new ideas this would be nothing but a temporary hiccup.

Republican/democratBut he has none. So there’s only one thing left he can do, which is to slime the other side.

Trouble with that, is this is how he got in trouble over the last two weeks in the first place — as Noonan said, they made Gov. Palin bulletproof. She continues:

Here was the central liberal mistake [with Palin]: They used the atom bomb just a few days in. They used it so brutally, and yet so ineptly, in a way so oblivious to the true contours of the field, that the radiation blew back over their own lines. They used it without preliminary diplomatic talks, multilateral meetings or Security Council debate. They just went boom. And it boomeranged.

The atom bomb was personal and sexual perfidy, backwoods knuckle-draggin’ ma and pa saying, Tell the neighbors the baby’s ours. Then the ritual abuse of the 17-year-old girl. Then the rest of it—bad mother, religious weirdo.

All of this was unacceptable to normal Americans. They experienced it as the town gossip spreading rumor and slander before the new neighbor even got to put down her bags. It offended the American sense of fairness. And — it still lives! — gallantry.

Most crucially, the snobbery of it, the meanness of it, reminded the entire country, for the first time in a decade, what it is they don’t like about the left. Really, America had forgotten. Mr. Obama’s friends reminded them. Unforgettably.

Noonan’s virtue here is that she charmingly leaves things unsaid, a talent that continues to elude us. It is simply not possible for Barack Obama to appeal to the passions of his base and follow her advice. Those passions are consequential to having a club, filled with good, wonderful left-wing progressive people; that, in turn, is meaningful only if the club is elite. There have to be people who are not in the club. This is necessary, so the people in the club can think their happy thoughts about how much worse the outliers are, as human beings, compared to them.

For the most impassioned and loyal supporters of Obama and his hopenchange, this election is not about policy at all. It is about being, over doing. It’s about them being superior to others. They’ll insist on being reminded of it, constantly, for they do not believe in it. Things have changed since ’96, when incumbent President Bill Clinton lunged himself at challenger Bob Dole, extending his left hand with a big smile on his face. That was a classy move (Sen. Dole is permanently disabled in his right arm), and may have earned the former President some points. This isn’t like that at all. For all the talk of inclusion amidst the talk about hope and change, the Obama camp demands exclusion. It’s what the campaign is all about. They’re good people; everyone else is not.

It’s a pretty tough spot to be in. A lot can change in eight weeks, but for right now Sens. Obama and Biden are left with a problem, and no solution possible whatsoever. They’ll have to wait for some serendipitous event that might turn things around for them — hope for the best, and prepare for the worst.

H/T to Gerard for the graphic.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

I’m Voting democrat Because…

Friday, September 12th, 2008

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I’m voting Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust that the bad guys will stop what they’re doing because they now think we’re good people.
:
I’m voting Democrat because I believe three or four pointy headed elitist liberals need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would NEVER get their agendas past the voters.
:
I’m voting Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I’ve decided to marry my horse.

And many more.

Wright County Republican.

Women Can Be Dumb, Too?

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Prairie-doggin’ gadfly Mike R., who occasionally sticks his head out of his burrow over at Rick’s place Brutally Honest, suggests a change to the media meme about baby-boomers & younger gentlemen being smart and brilliant if they’re liberal, and dense and stupid if they’re conservative. Actually he’s trying like the dickens not to look like he’s “suggesting” anything at all…just bludgeoning and brow-beating with his opinion that Sarah Palin is a dimwit. But suggestion is the core of his offering. That’s the way trial balloons work.

[T]he pig with lipstick didn’t even know what the Bush Doctrine was.
Ready to lead?
[S]he wasn’t even ready for the interview.

I’d dare say that (and don’t let this go to your pin-head) even Rick Rice is smarter that [sic] Palin!

Someone’s already let something go to his pin-head, for I doubt like the dickens that Rick’s lying awake at nights trying to think of ways to convince Mike R. of his smartness.

Here’s the clip of which Mike R. speaks.

This is fueling a recent effort to portray Gov. Palin as a lightweight sort of chucklehead. See, you could interpret this as meaning she’s never heard of the Bush Doctrine before, and therefore she’s a complete stranger to the arguments that have been raging back and forth about the invasion of Iraq, and whether that’s proper. Where the hell’s she been living? Well the trouble with that is, that’s a little ambiguous — you could interpret it to mean she couldn’t recite the four pillars identified by Norman Podhoretz, or maybe she could but she expected to be drawn into some kind of “gotcha” over whether Podhoretz’ reinterpretation was correct. Her demeanor clearly indicates, to me anyway, that she expects this to be a line of questioning that is not only hostile, but unproductive.

For that, we have this cute little sound bite flying around to day that she’s a “moose in the headlights.”

So she doesn’t immediately identify the idea of pre-emptive military action. Huh. I wonder if Obama and Biden, between the two of them, can lay down the distinction between the nuances of pre-emptive action between the Bush Doctrine and the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Nobody’s wondering about it. They just call Palin stupid.

Interesting times. For twenty years, this has been working for our lefties whenever a hero rises on the right side of the fence, who happens to have been born sometime after Pearl Harbor. Say he’s a dimwit a few times, people will believe he’s a dimwit. Pre-Palin, however, the dumb idjit had to be a dude for this to work. Maybe that’s still the case. Maybe our young conservative ladies can, if the Big Lie technique works well enough, stop being slutty and bitchy like Ann Coulter and start being dense paste-eaters like the fellas. That’s the drawback with the Big Lie technique. The only way to tell if something works is to give ‘er a try.

Our most high-profile public officials born before Pearl, however, never were stupid (Reagan could be regarded as an exception, since he was supposedly senile and dim). Dick Cheney is Darth Vader. Strom Thurmond was a hick, but his enemies didn’t often comment on how stupid he was. He was just evil. Lauch Faircloth was evil. Jesse Helms was evil.

Don’t worry, conservative Baby Boomer men. Our moonbats won’t smear you as being evil, no matter how strong and effective you become. You’ll just be slandered as a moron. And if things go alright this year that’ll become an equal opportunity smear — it’ll work for the ladies too.

You know, the older I get, the more I see human brains as batteries; they can be used by themselves, or coupled up with other batteries. With one critical exception — batteries are designed for interachangeable use. A TV remote might take one, a flashlight might take six or eight. You may move one battery from one to the other, and back again. The battery doesn’t care.

Brains are a little different. People condition themselves their entire lives to think independently, or to think as part of a crowd. Wouldn’t this be living proof? It doesn’t make sufficient sense, to pass the high threshold of demand imposed by the individual thinker, to suppose that prominent, promising conservative women are dimwits…and are starting to be dimwits in 2008. To suppose, up until Gov. Palin came along, conservative women were God-worshipping gun-carrying hicks who were bitchy and wore short skirts and spewed racial epithets but at least had some respectable intellect…and all of a sudden, after Labor Day of this election year, they’re as stupid as the conservative men. As if an asteroid came crashing to earth and somehow made things that way. No, you need group-think to accept an idea like that.

Well, I understand. Desperate people have to do what they have to do. And it seems we have an awful lot of people running around who can do only that. The meme is how they do their thinking. All the time. About anything. There is no other kind of idea worth pondering. You could say their battery can be used only when clipped in to a common device with other batteries.

Welcome, new political meme, new “idiotic right-wing woman” meme. The first step to your surviving the exigencies of infancy, is that Gov. Palin actually has to show herself to be a dimwit. Not just once or twice, but a few times. Good luck on that. If reality confounds this, and it surely will, you can always bullshit your way through. We’ll just see if you’re still around next year. You read about it here first, folks.

Not that it’s likely to count for much in the broader picture of history. My money says by the time Sarah Palin removes her hand from the Bible in January, we’ll be back to the competing talking point of “Stepford Wife.”

Update 9/13/08: Via NewsBusters: Mark Levin got hold of a copy of the complete interview transcript, and underlined & bolded the parts that were edited out. Give it a read.

She’s not quite so much a dimbulb now, is she?

This Is Good LIV

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Seven paragraphs of solid win from Alex, commenter at Rachel’s blog.

Not much to the setup. It’s another Euro-weenie screed about how when America elects a President this year, we have to keep the “world opinion” in mind…read that as, do what people tell us to do, those who purport to represent the world opinion, but who in reality haven’t even begun to go door-to-door finding out what the world opinion is. Just a bunch of control freaks. Or one control freak. Who wrote a Euro-weenie column.

Link here.

Alex’s response below.

Giggity.

Howdy there — just one of your provincial American readers weighing in on your latest missive, which was so full of Wrong that it’s hard to figure out where to begin to rebut it, and which I can’t hope to rebut in full without devoting much more time to composing an e-mail than you really deserve, so I’ll just touch on a few high (low) points, and maybe mock you a bit while I’m at it.

First off, you mention the prospect of “A generation of young Americans – who back Obama in big numbers – [turning] cynical [and] concluding that politics doesn’t work after all,” in a manner that suggests you think that would be a /bad/ thing. That figures. Those of us who still value freedom, however, and want less socialism and for the government to meddle less in our lives, would like nothing more than for the young generation to wake up and realize that politics is for suckers. Maybe, in their new-found cynicism, they’ll go out and get real jobs, in which they can actually create things and generate wealth and prosperity — rather than seek out new ways to leech off taxpayers, curtail freedoms, and serve as a drag on the economy. Waking these kids up sooner rather than later is as good a reason to reject Obama as any.

As far as what the rest of the world thinks about whom America should elect, I recall this isn’t the first time you’ve trotted out the idea that Americans need to take the rest of the world’s opinion into consideration. In fact, didn’t you suggest four years ago that since the American president affects the rest of the world that everyone in the world should get to vote? That column gave all of us a big laugh over here. Well, OK, not all of us; just the few of us who read it. But in case I didn’t write you then to give you my opinion, I’ll tell you now: that sounds like a capital idea, and we’ll get right on it — just as soon as the rest of the world gives us full reciprocity in voting in /their/ countries’ elections too. After all, the leadership of those other countries affects Americans too, such as when we rely on purported allies to help us out in putting diplomatic and economic pressure on regimes that threaten us and our allies without undercutting our efforts behind our backs. And let’s face it — it would really be safer and cheaper for us if we could just vote the leaders of hostile countries out of office instead of having to deal with them through diplomacy, economic sanctions, and threats of military action. Actually, I really like this idea: let me know when I get to vote in the next UK parliamentary election, won’t you?

But for the time being, it might baffle you, but we Americans are still going to elect a leader that we think is going to act in the best interests of America. That doesn’t mean participating in some global popularity contest. While some people think it may be sort of nice for America to be liked by European bureaucrats and effete poncy patronizing Pommy columnists, the rest of us don’t really care whether you like us or not, and we’re not about to elect a transnational socialist in order to gain your admiration. In fact, those of us Americans who still value individualism and freedom wear the derision of your type as feathers in our caps. You don’t have to wait until November for the American finger — you can have it right now if you want.

And as for your speculation on whether Obama’s defeat will be “deemed to have been about race” … well, of /course/ it will be so “deemed” — because that’s the spin everyone who supports him will put on it, whether true or not. Even if we clearly reject Obama because of his socialism; his adherence to the discredited McGovern/Carter/Brzezinsky/Vance/Christopher/Albright school of pacifist-internationalist appeasenik foreign policy; his hostility to economic liberty; his close ties with the Blame-America-First contingent of the Left; his scheme to nationalize the health care and energy industries, along with whatever else he and his ilk can get away with nationalizing; and his insufferable Ivy League prick (translation to UK-speak: “posh git”) personality … everyone who wanted him to be elected will already have their minds made up and will scream loudly that it was about race. You know what, though? We’re not about to be mau-maued into voting for this turkey just to avoid accusations of racism, because we know that even if we elect him, we’re /still/ going to be accused of it whenever we don’t do exactly what our self-professed betters and racialist/multiculturalist would-be commisars want us to do: we can’t win with them, and we can’t break even either. Which is why we’re going to invite them to kindly pound sand up their asses while we reject Obama anyway, for our own reasons, and let the chips fall where they may.

And finally, if the rest of the world wants Obama as a leader, they can have him. Once he’s defeated here, the UN is welcome to him. We’ll have a great time watching him bask in the world’s adulation while aiding and abetting the world’s various kleptocracies, thugocracies, socialist bureacracies, and tyrannical regimes in trying to undermine American interests while leeching off its foreign aid largesse. Seriously — take Barack Obama. Please.

I guess that’s it for now. Cheerio, old boy — looking forward to your next humo(u)r column.

Alex Xxxxx
San Francisco, CA

More on the same subject. Some will like this one even better. It comes to our attention via Boortz, and it provides an up-to-date complete electoral map of The Chosen One’s expected fortunes on Election Day. Enjoy.

September 11, 2008

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Do take the time to check out:

1. Via blogger buddy Buck: Remembering 9-11, by Steeljaw Scribe.

2. September 11, 2001 – My Story, by blogger friend Rick.

3. Seventh Anniversary Plans for 9-11-08.

4. Neptunus Lex: Remember.

5. Mudville Gazette: 8:46 – We Will Never Forget.

Maybe more later today, but it’s not quite yet light outside and I have a day I need to go start, so this can’t be taken as an exhaustive list.

Add to it in the comments below — with links, please — if you see fit.

Suggest you write to your left-winger Senator, Congressman, state legislator, city councilman or Presidential candidate. In view of the undeniable fact there are these whack-a-doodles out there who want to kill Americans, what will those public figures do to make sure the whack-a-doodles are killed first? Be polite and respectful, but do keep in mind you deserve an explanation that does not contain the words “George Bush,” “For The Last Eight Years,” “Halliburton,” “Blackwater,” “Cheney”…and most definitely not “Inside Job.”

It really is the number one most important issue of this election or any other. And as ugly as “kill them before they kill us” may sound to those who were raised to maturity on PBS specials and hallucinogenic drugs, it really is the only reasonable and responsible position to take.

Evil is recognized by us for what it is, or else it speaks and acts on behalf of all of us. There can be no in-between. That’s what we learned on September 11, 2001. That is what people mean, whether they realize it or not, when they say “Never, ever forget.”

Thing I Know #112. Strong leadership is a dialog: That which is led, states the problem, the leader provides the solution. It’s a weak brand of leadership that addresses a problem by directing people to ignore the problem.

Update: As is typically the case, The Anchoress’ round-up puts my own to shame, although neither one supersets the other.

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XIX

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Just out of curiosity, I loaded “The Blog That Nobody Reads” into Google. Throughout this blog’s nearly four years, we have called ourselves this, and since then lots of folks have taken note of it. More than a few of them have wanted to claim this subtitle as their own…and have graciously deferred to our virtual trademark (which we don’t really have).

We trip across — get this — this guy named Davis Freeberg — Freeberg, same spelling and everything — who says “I Started A Blog Nobody Read.”

In response to the question yet unasked, no. There’s no relation whatsoever. Actually, it’s not his real name. He says,

Professionally Davis Freeberg is an investment advisor in a non technology related field and uses his pen name to separate his investment career and identity from his thoughts and opinions on new media and technology, both fields which neither he nor his firm advise or offer services for professionally.

Morgan K. Freeberg, on the other hand, is the real name of a real flesh-and-blood guy. Which some people think might be a little foolish. And who knows, maybe they’re right. Whatever. Morgan K. Freeberg is a real Freeberg, and has balls.

Bloggin’…it ain’t for the timid.

Anyway. Quite the ko-ween-kee-dink. Thought I’d share with all the nobodies who don’t stop by and not make the time to not read The Blog That Nobody Reads.

Figured This One Out Himself

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Yup, I agree with that

Anytime somebody starts a sentence with “in fairness,” or “to be fair,” he has either just said or is just about to say something decidedly unfair, and usually pretty sarcastic.

In fairness, I do it all the time.

On Perfection

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Blogger friend Virgil sends along his thoughts about Bill Maher’s asinine monologue — the one that ridicules, among other things, Baby Trig and his big sister Bristol.

Virgil writes:

Basically for many many years, we have [always] hired PERFECT people who have no baggage, defects, etc..

Problem is, as I get older and wiser, I now realize that they are perfect because they have NEVER done anything outside their comfort zone.

Hopefully I will get the names right here, but give me people like Lincoln who failed 6 or seven times.
With those failures, comes wisdom which you can’t get from a book or a college.

Give me people like grant who drank way too much, but when people approached lincoln about him he said “Find out what he drinks and send a case to all of my officers”

you ask for perfect, you get nada…

You know what? I’m going to put aside what, exactly, offends me about Maher’s comments…although those items of offense are significant and numerous.

What Virgil is addressing when he says “ask for perfect, you get nada” — is — bathosploration.

Opposite of Exploration. A progressive movement over time which endeavors toward an ideal, rather than toward a frontier. This makes fulfillment of the Exponential Growth Instinct absolutely impossible over the long term.

Which is important, because the Exponential Growth Instinct is…

The desire endemic to the human condition, to achieve something on par with what’s been achieved before, but on a more massive scale. This compulsion has a symbiotic relationship with the health and vitality of the human spirit; neither one can truly thrive without the other.

To bottom-line it — we are programmed by a deity…or, if you prefer, we are molded and shaped by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution…to try to do tomorrow what we did yesterday, plus a whole lot more. If we can’t do this, we end up unhappy.

And any time you hear someone using the word “perfect” you have to watch out for comes next. You have to be wary even if you detect a sense of that objective, even if no one actually uses the P-word; and I certainly catch more than a whiff of that when people complain about Alaska’s “mooseburger” governor. They want perfection.

The trouble with perfection, is not that it will everlastingly elude you. You might actually catch up to it — and that is where the trouble starts. Perfection is antithetical to exploration. It is bathosploration; a ludicrous descent into a downward spiral of nit-picking away at ultimately meaningless flaws that aren’t even flaws.

Whether we’re talking about selecting candidates for high office, or cleaning up a house, the predicament in which we ensconce ourselves is the exercise in Trudging Toward Zero:

That part of Bathosploration that endeavors toward an ideal rather than toward a frontier. It is a sanitizing process, that starts from some measured level of contamination and endeavors toward eradicating as much contaminant as possible. Activities of this type can be gratifying to some personality types, because they are definite in scope, and achievement against pre-established goals is always measurable. If there are hazards to be involved then they are absolutely predictable in magnitude. However, trudging toward zero can be boring for other personality types, and regardless of who is involved it is ultimately susceptible to the Bathosplorific Crash

Read over that first sentence again. It endeavors toward an ideal rather than toward a frontier. There is, therefore, some “ground zero” of what the thing is supposed to be. And once reality aligns with that, the dog has caught the car. We end up frustrated because our exponential growth instinct can no longer be fulfilled. All we can do is detect more and more minute bits of residue in the reality-to-ideal delta, and eradicate them on a more and more surgically-precise scale.

Which leads, inexorably, to the bathosplorific crash.

The depressing and frustrating sensation people experience when they have been engaged in Bathosploration and realize they cannot fulfill the Exponential Growth Instinct without re-defining their goals.

And THERE is the treachery of perfection! It is not an infinity. It is a zero. You do not acquire it by accumulating things; you acquire it by getting rid of things. It lies at the end of a sanitizing process, and therefore, has very little to do with existence itself. It has little or nothing to do with life. It is a low nadir. It is cleanliness. It is stillness. It is death.

What does this have to do with Gov. Palin? Is this yet another plea that we should lower our sites, and excuse her little imperfections? Kinda. Sorta yes, sorta no. The case against Gov. Palin has not yet been made. Look at Maher’s clip minute by minute, second by second, frame by frame. What’s his argument? He calls her a redneck, makes fun of her youngest child with the birth defect, announces that he doesn’t quite yet know how to pronounce her name (?!?). Calls her “mooseburger.”

The theory of the Bathosplorific Crash says if you indulge in the labors toward an ideal rather than indulging in the labors toward a frontier, you will indulge in a patently absurd exercise of sanding off burrs that stick out from the pattern of a stencil — and, ultimately, achieve nothing of note, because you will have succeeded in systematically expunging anything remarkable or extraordinary in the raw material you were given. You will ultimately succeed at nothing, save for reproducing a pattern that was defined elsewhere. And throughout this, you will nurture and incubate within you the instincts of an explorer — which will come into conflict with your actual achievement after you’ve completed the work of a walking, talking, breathing copy machine.

And then you have your bathosplorific crash. That moment when you realize the goals toward which you have been working, frustrate the passions within you.

I think we’re at that point. We’re actually several years past it. Barack Obama represents the zero. As it comes within our power to be able to elect him President, it comes within our power to be the dog whose teeth graze up against the bumper. He puts on a good show of resembling a “Perfect Being” — although for a modern Messiah, he is quite dirty in many places. But he talks his talk. He enunciates. He articulates. He wears a suit well.

And he’s inexperienced. Inexperienced in a way that really matters. He is as clean as he is…which isn’t very clean at all…because he hasn’t really held a lot of jobs in which there is a real potential to measurably fail at something.

He says he is the change we have been waiting for. He’s absolutely right; that is exactly the problem. He is not, contrary to the rhetoric of his followers, a remarkable person. He is wholly unremarkable. He’s a soft-spoken, articulate, presentable, outgoing average-man who is not spectacular, and that’s his appeal.

Bill Maher has found some comedy sound-bites he can throw out that make it sound like it’s a good idea to trash Sarah Palin, and support Barack Obama. These sound bites are valuable and precious to him, and to his audience. I find that telling. Things become valuable and precious when they are rare. If these people were backing a decent candidate, the sound bites that make that evident, wouldn’t be so valuable and precious because they wouldn’t be rare. But for that to come about, that candidate has to stand for something…be something…offer himself or herself to us, after trudging toward a frontier rather than toward an ideal. Into infinity rather than toward zero. Which means, as an interesting person with some stories to tell. Like Sarah Palin.

Not like Barack Obama.

He doesn’t offer the cleanliness that is the least we should have in hand after a bathosplorific pursuit. But he offers the zero in abundance. He matches the cookie cutter. He is unscrupulous and stands for nothing. Palin, although a neophyte to politics, is a neophyte in ways that are good. And we know what she’s all about, because she’s done stuff. We can debate it, but at least we have something to debate — because she has had jobs in which it is possible to fail.

Glad I got that off my chest. Next, sometime soon, I’ll go through what was in Maher’s monologue that crinkled my eyebrows up together and made my teeth grind. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Uppity Rednecks Need to Mind Their Place

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

…seems to be the underlying sentiment of Women Against Sarah Palin. “No Redneck, No How.” Yeah, now yer talkin’. Maybe we should prove permit numbers to proper blue-blood New Englanders who see fit to run for important seats in our nation’s capital…makin’ big important decisions and junk. The rednecks think they’re up to it. How dare they!

I got the link off of Dr. Casino’s page, which you should really check out if you get the chance. The Blog That Nobody Reads has been getting a little bit more traffic from there as of late, even though it’s only mentioned there one time.

Dr. Casino has taken steps to register legal protection on his original image. It’s still okay with him that the photoshopped version fly around far and wide, though. He uses words designed to imply, but will not categorically state, that “Elizabeth” is on board with those of those wishes. This will be interesting to watch — lots of folks would like to discuss the origins of the ‘shopped image that (Palin-bashing) Dr. Casino would love to see repeated ad-nauseum, and when they do, displaying a reduced version of the original just seems natural. But Dr. Casino says no. Don’t. Dr. Casino’s lawyer’s pager is about to explode.

By the way, the discussion blogger friend Phil and I have been having about the word “uppity” is a rather interesting one. We pretty much see eye-to-eye on it so there’s not much of a debate to be had. But furthermore, I think it fits in well with the headline of this post, because the consensus-driven definition of the adjective seems to include –

1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance;
2. Said exaggerated sense rises to the level of simple significance;
3. The norm, against which this sense is contrasted, descends to the level of insignificance;
4. Therefore — the implication is, people are uppity when they think they matter, even though they belong to a class which should preclude this from happening.

I don’t think this all necessarily follows from a simple use of the word “uppity.”

But I do think it all necessarily follows from the “Women Against Sarah Palin” website’s criticism of Gov. Palin. I don’t see how you can get around it. She thinks she should count. How dare she??

Best Sentence XXXIX

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Lileks, commenting on Heather Mallick’s screed, funded by the Canadian treasury. Let’s set it up first. You saw our link to it here. Our neighbors to the North, of all political stripes, whether they like it or not, get to pay out of their own pockets for such well thought-out wisdom as this:

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn’t already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America’s name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

So why do it?

It’s possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she’s a woman. They’re unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.

But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating themselves and reading columns like this one? I’m a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

I’m a blogger who understands that from that point onward, the Mallick bitch-fest heads downhill. Fast.

WhippedSo is James Lileks.

Consider the joy that would reign if someone wrote that “Democrats, racial guilt-mongers that they are, really believe that African-Americans will vote for an African-American just because he’s an African-American.” Of course Republican men don’t believe that women will vote for her just because she’s a woman. It’s surely a factor, but there’s the possibility that they will vote for her because she is not a woman like Heather Mallick.

Then he lays the smackdown. Yes, it’s more than one sentence; it’s an entire paragraph.

But how glorious it is. Richly deserving of the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award.

You have to love the “Sexual inadequates that they are” line as well; if there’s one thing that’s amused me in the last two weeks, it’s the screechy distaste of Ms. Palin coming from men who embodied the Modern Alda Paradigm of masculinity, which is to say they are nervous around cars, think guns are icky, had their own Snugli, have wives in corporate jobs who make more money than they do, and still get dissed behind their backs because they can’t figure out how to make the bed. The Lost Boys, if you will. Now, some women can’t stand Sarah Palin for their own reasons, personal or ideological; same with men. Some men, however, are made deeply uneasy by her, because she’s the one who ignored the sensitive poet-guys in high school for the jocks, and didn’t seem to grasp the essential high-school truth that it’s cool to be a loser. But that’s rank psychoanalysis, and we won’t stoop to that.

And then…drum roll…he does. Well, not really. But he goes chasin’ after this meme that has been the elephant in the room, for a generation plus — some men aspire to become real men, other men go into politics. We haven’t been allowed to talk about it, and now we are. Lileks makes full use of the opportunity.

H/T: Buck, who adds:

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is world-class snark. Good snark. Great snark. Biting and oh-so-on-point snark. No one, and I mean NO ONE on Planet Gaia gets on a roll quite like Mr. Lileks. You’re truly missing something if you don’t read the whole thing.

Yeah…gonna have to go ahead and agree with you on that one.

Obama Would Like to Sell Some Sexism Vouchers

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Gerard explains the most degrading interpretation possible of Obama’s “fish” comment, to those who need it explained, and it stands a fair chance of being the correct one.

But let there be no mistake about it. The above clip and quotes are two sexist jokes with a soupcon of a dirty joke thrown into the last one.

And I say that as a former professional in field of dirty jokes.

I say professional because, for several years in a previous life, I was responsible for the editing of the Jackie Martling “Jokeman” page at Penthouse Magazine. It was one of about five areas I had to edit at the time and it was my least favorite, but I did it because it was part of my job.
:
And by linking the “Pig with lipstick” reference to the stinking fish reference, Obama gets to ooze out some filthy and sexist humor with maximum deniability. He’ll go the “Who? Moi?” route on this one. Already, in classic Obama fashion, he’s claiming that he meant something else entirely. John McCain, I think.

Of course, it could be claimed, as it will be claimed, that he simply wasn’t aware of how what he was saying would sound. For a man whose foreign policy rests on the assertion that he can literally talk his way to world peace, that’s even more unnerving.

Last week, I explained how our sexism voucher program worked. It recognizes that some post-modern feminists have built an entire worldview around this myth of men, running around, scared stiff of female authority. Well, now that this has been exposed as a myth, the sanity of these post-modern feminists is in peril. So this cap-and-trade scheme of sexists offsets, addresses this by allowing sexists to purchase the “right” to say nice things about Gov. Sarah Palin and other worthwhile ladies — we do this by paying someone else to do sexist things on our behalf. We can do this. We can come together to bring the pollution of female flattery, under control, and make sure it is “offset” so the net female-flattery footprint (FFF) is under control.

Know what?

I think Barack Obama may very well have a whole armload of sexism vouchers to sell into the system after that one.

Simply…amazing.

Further thoughts from Rick here.

On Ending War

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Some guy named Christian Liberal entered a comment on my son’s blog. I wasn’t familiar with this character, but thought his arguments were interesting. You’ve seen this isolationist/pacifist stance before; it comes down to three words, “end the war.”

So because I’ve seen this asserted so much, and the debate that logically continues from that pursued so little, I thought I’d leave the following nugget as food-fer-thought.

When two sides are at war with each other, how many sides does it take to decide to end it? One side, or both?

The whole issue really comes down to just that. And you know, it’s a little bit silly to imply that when two sides are at war, one side can unilaterally decide to end the war.

Palin and the Common Good

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Mike has come up with the most valid reason to question the wisdom of voting for a ticket with Sarah Palin on it. The most valid one expressed so far.

That, of course, says very little. But the point is, Mike’s opened a dialog that I think is worth having, and I hope Gov. Palin is questioned on it. Firmly.

And he’s right — she did use that dreaded phrase 10:10 into this video.

I’m not going to brush this off or pretend it didn’t happen. I do think Mike’s reading way too much importance into this, since her small-government credentials are established now both in rhetoric and in fact. I just think it’s a phrase ripe for abuse, is all. She should address this.

Don’t You Dare Call Him Judgmental

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

I think freedomanddemocracy needs a more prominent forum in which he can express his views. He makes my point for me; I could type and type and type, all afternoon long, and I couldn’t express on purpose what this guy is expressing by accident.

He says because he’s a liberal, he isn’t being judgmental. Then he goes through the entire video being exactly that.

He’s a liberal after all. I’m not calling him that — it’s his word.

Very much like a guy who wants to molest kids, becoming a volleyball coach. Or a guy who likes to beat people up, becoming a cop. Or a guy who likes to give orders to others who make more money than he does, becoming an airport security screener. If you want to judge people you become a liberal; then, you get the situations in which you can practice your chosen craft, along with no insignificant degree of what would be called “cover.”

Phil adds a link to this cartoon to a comment. Seems appropriate to the subject immediately under discussion:

Bigotry is subtly different from sexism. Kate, living North of the border, gives us a taste of what kind of bigotry her Canadian tax dollars buy for herwhether she wants them to or not:

…Sarah Palin … fit of pique … the white trash vote … sexual inadequates … she isn’t even female really … Alaska hillbilly … “white trash” … trailer trash … rural, loud, proudly unlettered … toned-down version of the porn actress … overtreated hair, puffy lips … “pramface” … roughneck fuckin’ redneck … prodding his daughter … ratboy … fizzing with rage and revenge … vicious and profoundly dishonest … good fast listing… nervous wreck with deeply strange hair … the hick vote … ordinary hillbilly … racism? … racism … “rectal fissure” … tense no-hoper ladies … white female marginals …

On the other side of the coin, Cassy is getting some help out, and this movement is really starting to take off. Wunderbar! Watch and learn, freedomanddemocracy.

John Hawkins gives a rundown on the credit due for this clip, here.

Diane, commenting in the thread below (#34) has some bumper stickers available on eBay. You need to go look at the bumper sticker, just to see her comments. Just a sampling:

I woke up this morning to people on the radio speculating on the exact time, place and moment that Bristol Palin became pregnant. This was being talked over as a way to attack Governor Palin as an unfit mother, who should never had been Governor. “If we just prove that she was ‘being Governor’ at the time of conception, then we’ve got her”.

What on earth has happened to people? Only women who remain childless can run for public office? Only women with perfect families can run for office? The mothers’ of special needs kids are disqualified? If a teenage girl gets pregnant and her mother should quit her job in disgrace?

I will not allow Sarah to stand alone. I am Sarah Palin!

No, no freedomanddemocracy guy. No way are people like you being sexist. No…freakin’…way. Just keep slingin’ that liberal slop, and we’ll think the best of you. We’ll be forced to. You’ll make sure.

That’s what it’s all about, right?

Feminist Definition

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Becky brings to our attention yet another screed at Feministing. Highlights:

1. People are referring to Sarah Palin as a feminist and/or as a liberated woman.
2. This is distressing to Jessica Valenti, CEO of Feministing, because Sarah Palin is not a feminist.
3. It is even more distressing to her that the mainstream media is referring to Gov. Palin this way.

It’s become rather typical for the feminist blog, or flog, to fail to define for us why we should join the flogger in being outraged at something. But it’s a little unusual for the flogger to fail to intone why she is outraged at something. The crux of the complaint seems to be that there are attributes of definition for someone who seeks to be known as (or is proffered by others as) a feminist, and Sarah Palin is missing some of those. But even though the comment thread has grown to 57 items as of this writing, Valenti refuses to disclose what those items are or should be.

Seems to have something to do with abortion.

Can someone clue me in on how & when abortion came to be a feminist thing? Yeah women get pregnant and guys don’t, I get that…but abortion itself can be an anti-woman thing, you know. All it takes to stand the whole juxtaposition on its head is to start discussing societies in which babies are aborted because they’re girls — and suddenly abortion is related to womens’ rights in a whole different way.

Commenter nestra (#1) pointed things out more articulately than I think I could’ve…

So using a constructed title such as “feminist” requires that the person holds to every single one of a set list of beliefs (as defined by who?), but identifying as a male doesn’t require a y chromosome.

That’s an interesting way of changing the rules to fit your own ideals, Jessica.

But it wasn’t nearly articulate enough to penetrate Jessica’s bulletproof bubble of selective attention deficit disorder —

Huh? Nestra, I’m not sure what you’re saying here…

Yup, I’ve met my share of these folks. Selectively clueless. “I don’t see how what you just said, is related to my goal of forcing more people to agree with me!” Freakin’ timewasters. CBTA.

The question that remains is, is there some “set list of beliefs” for feminists? Jessica is on record as saying both yes and no, from where I sit, depending on what answer she can give that’s most convenient to the point she’d like to be making.

Maybe she should go think this out a little bit better. Some people do better thinking when they’re given something to do. Like, for example, go get me a cold beer and make me a samrich.