Blame Bush?
I really doubt those cameras have sound. But, see, I’m just like an Obama voter…if it’s fun to think something’s true, I’ll suspend my disbelief. At least when it comes to fat people breaking copy machines with their asses.
Archive for February, 2009
Office Prank Gone Wrong
Thursday, February 12th, 2009Steve’s Arrests
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009If they’re fake, the cop is a pretty good actor. So’s “Steve.”
Good enough to make me grin.
They Monopolize Emotions
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
The one thing that made by far the biggest impression on me about the joyful, tragic, thigh-slapping ya-gotta-be-kiddin’-me tale of Henrietta Hughes, is the list of comments under the story at Fort Myers News-Press (hat tip: Boortz). It’s just like Wikipedia — half a quart of relevant information for those willing to study the article itself, plus a five-gallon bucket of it if you’re willing to simply click through to the “Talk Page.” Henrietta’s a plant. Obviously. It’s a little silly that there’s any debate about it. And President Obama saw to it she got everything she wanted…since she was on camera, and he’s a bleeding-heart lib. Then he made sure he got the publicity for it. So far, everyone’s doing what they can be expected to do.
Well, you’re not likely to meet Henrietta Hughes or Barack Obama. What is useful, is to study the behavior of everyday folks. These are the people with whom you have to share a subway ride, or a freeway, or an office building. And this is a fascinating window into the souls of all of us.
Do select the option to read the oldest posts first. Pretty please. See what I see? For the first page and a half, no critical thinking whatsoever — none. Oh joy! She got a house! And she’ll live happily ever after!
This is how people think. It’s the “doughnut rule”: Once someone’s picked out the first glazed, or maple bar, it’s fair game. You can measure the consumption in pastries-per-minute. But until that first one’s been picked out, the box just sits, and sits, and sits. No one wants to go first.
That’s the way with noticing, by President Obama’s behavior, that it’s nearly impossible for Ms. Hughes not to be a plant. And, that if everything’s on the up-and-up, her problems are just beginning because of the taxes that have to be paid on her new home. And — gosh, it’d be nice to have some more details about what happened here, like how she got into this rally, what her 37-year-old son’s situation is, how things got to this point, and that really ugly one…what are all the other homeless people supposed to do, just wait in line for The Divine One to descend from heaven somewhere near them?
This is why I want you to read oldest-first. See the doughnut-rule in action. One or two dozen glittery comments from folks who’ll just let the naked Emperor parade right on by. By the third page, people have been given license to type in exactly what’s unsettling about this, what’s giving them second thoughts.
But the intellectual lightweights continue to lash out.
I think my favorite was AuPouvoir:
2:55:07 PM
I would like to know what else Mrs. Hughes needs, and how I might get it to her.3:40:56 PM
Replying to wickedlyscarlett:I am so tired of these gimme gimme gimme types of people. Gimme a break!! They’re leaches!
You need to sit back and reflect.. there but for the grace of God, go YOU!3:41:47 PM
Replying to grannym1:I am glad she is getting help, but SHE WAS PLANTED IN THE AUDIENCE. Someone knew of this problem and pulled strinsg so “Obama of the White Momma” would look good. This woman is no
better off then my grandson who can not get disabbilty or health insurance, unable to work, needs a hip repacement more whiney stuff. etc. So excuse me but poltics are just that. Obama of the White Momma, need more that this showy stuff. So get behind me Satan and lets help the economey instead of showing off !
You should be ashamed of yourself. I don’t even know you, and I’m ashamed of you.
You see the pattern I’m seeing?
You have the goo-gooders — and you have the every-man-for-himself s.o.b.’s. You have feel-good emotions — and you have logic and reason.
The goo-gooders do not deal in logic & reason at all. Many among their ranks will admit this readily. Who cares about what causes what, and what is the effect of what, when Ms. Hughes’ story just makes you feel so gosh darn good? Others will put up some kind of phony masquerade pretending that they are, in fact, dealing with logic…or a superior base of knowledge, anyway. We all are, after all, just a paycheck away from living in a car just like Henrietta Hughes, are we not? So you s.o.b.’s need to just think ahead, and anticipate where you’ll end up someday. Henrietta Hughes is you!
Now the s.o.b.’s work with a mixture of logic and emotion. Logic as in: Eh, Obama can’t give anybody a damn thing without taking it away from someone else. If massive blessings are about to rain down on someone due to the blessings flowing from the Substitute Jesus, there will have to be an equivalent plundering from someone else.
Here, we run into a basic fact about people and the way they behave. Parents, telling their children how people work, out of politeness leave this out…along with lots of other things. In fact, it’s right there on the list of Things I Know Now About People That I Wasn’t Told When I Was a Child — Item 16:
People who are overly concerned about their emotions, don’t want anyone else to be overly concerned with thinking.
So you see, this is why AuPouvoir is ashamed of someone she doesn’t even know. She’s overly concerned with her emotions, she doesn’t want grannyml to be concerned with thinking…even if it’s thinking about others who are worse-off than Henrietta Hughes, and/or are perhaps more deserving of assistance from others. This really has very little to do, and probably nothing to do, with helping others worse-off. It’s about a cheap and easy way to “prove” you’re a decent person.
If this reads like I’m picking on AuPouvoir and people like her, I’ve only just begun. There really is no appeal in cheap-and-easy ways to prove you’re a decent person…if, deep down, you already think of yourself that way. In fact, if you’re truly concerned about lightening the load of others, the very last thing you’re going to do is upload a post to the blog of the Fort Myers News-Press saying you’d “like to know what else Mrs. Hughes needs” so you can get it to her. If this was your concern, you wouldn’t even need to have it pointed out that gosh, maybe there are some other folks just as badly off as Ms. Hughes who haven’t managed to attract the publicity. You wouldn’t need to have that pointed out to you. You’d already know.
But the real scolding comes for the every-man-for-himself s.o.b.’s who deign to show their emotions. See, the goo-gooders are unhappy when the s.o.b.’s vocalize their thoughts; but they’re really, really unhappy when the s.o.b.’s vocalize their emotions. That, right there, is encroaching on the goo-gooders’ turf. It’s a turf thing; definitely a turf-thing. To the dedicated goo-gooder, emotions have one purpose and one purpose only, and that’s to showcase to each other what incredibly decent people we are. And goo-gooder is the only way any humans should ever be. All those other ones should just dry up and blow away.
They want a complete monopoly on emotions. They get to have their emotions — you aren’t allowed to have yours. Not unless you join them.
These are not stable people. For a number of reasons. For one thing, if they got exactly what they wanted, they’d be miserable. There wouldn’t be any humans left except goo-gooders…emotional goo-gooders…constantly communicating their emotions about how much they want to help poor people. Which would just stiffen the competition. They’d have to talk & type that much faster, to maintain their “King of the Mountain” status in wanting to get more help to Henrietta Hughes. It isn’t about helping Ms. Hughes, or talking about helping Ms. Hughes. It’s all about relativity. It’s a competition. A race. As in, ha ha, I’m better than you, I want to help Henrietta Hughes more than you do.
The other thing is, they want anyone not like them, to go away. Not to lose arguments…but to disappear. That is always a sign of instability. But as a general rule, every-man-for-himself s.o.b.’s are more productive than goo-gooders. People tend to get bitter about having things taken away from them, when they had plans insofar as what they were going to do with those things.
So the goo-gooders can’t really afford for the s.o.b.’s to go away, because someone has to be fleeced in order to fund their plans to get houses to people like Henrietta Hughes. They want something that, because of their own ambitions, they can’t have.
I suppose I could’ve left these thoughts un-typed. If President Obama’s chosen strategy is to put people like Ms. Hughes in his audiences as plants, I could’ve pointed this out any ol’ time. Indeed, I do think this is the Holy President’s Grand Strategy, and I do think there will be many, many more occasions to comment on it later on.
But when I do, I’ll make a point of observing not so much how He behaves, and how His audience-plant-of-the-month behaves…but how others behave. There won’t be a lot of variation to it. The doughnut-rule will apply, and Item #16 will apply too. So, too, will Thing I Know #266:
People will flock, like moths to flame, to a way of showcasing some inner decency that is costless and doesn’t really mean anything.
These are constants in the human condition.
Lukewarm Reception
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009It amounted to a do-over for tax-cheat and guy-who-runs-the-I.R.S. Timothy Geithner.
For Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner as much as for the troubled government program to bail out the financial system, Tuesday amounted to a do-over.
Initial reviews for the man and his plan were not good, however. Stock markets slid through the day, perhaps spurred downward by withering punditry on the business-news cable channels faulting Mr. Geithner for not providing more details, particularly on stemming home foreclosures. Senators of both parties lodged similar complaints at a hearing.
“I haven’t heard yet how we’re going to solve this problem,” Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, told the Treasury secretary more than three hours into the Senate Banking Committee hearing.
With a formal speech, live television interviews and then his Senate appearance, Mr. Geithner announced the Obama administration’s overhaul of the Bush administration’s bank bailout program, which had proved largely ineffective at getting credit flowing again.
I have a really thin paperback on my bookshelf. It’s called “Government plans to meddle in the economy, that worked.” It’s up there, sandwiched among “Republicans who survived scandals,” “democrats who didn’t” and “Movies made from video games that don’t suck.”
Seriously. As I just said last night, I’m flabbergasted at how quickly this whole party is over. “Party,” not as in political party, but that huge cocktails-and-LSD bash that was The Annointed One’s inaugural festivities. Where’s all that hopey-changey goodness? I wish I was happy about all this failure as the Obamatons keep saying I/we are. I’m not. I’m about as happy as I am when I’m watching one of those scary movies, and the girl’s walking backwards after the lights have gone out, muttering “Bobby is that you? It’s not funny anymore”…and doing drugs…and fornicatin’…pretty much breaking all the rules. And you have the scary music going on, and she hears a noise but it turns out to be the cat…and then she runs into the REAL KILLER and gets her head lopped off. Yeah, just like that. “*Sigh* Couldn’t have seen that one coming.” How quickly we reach the turning point, is surprising. That we did — not so much.
Unconstrained Manner
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009Across the pond, pretty soon you’ll have to get a Mother-May-I from Her Majesty’s governmental nanny-state goo-gooders to buy an airline ticket or whatever they call it over there…
The UK’s so-called “environment czar” last week raised the possibility of rationing air travel, limiting UK citizens to just a few vacation trips abroad by air per year in order to reduce the impact of carbon dioxide emissions.
Adair Turner, chairman of the independent Committee on Climate Change that advises UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, made the proposal before Parliament’s Environmental Audit Select Committee on Feb. 5. In remarks widely reported by UK media, Turner said, “We will have to constrain demand in an absolute sense with people not allowed to make as many journeys as they could in an unconstrained manner.”
Neal Boortz is wondering how long we have to wait until the same policies swim up over here.
Probably not too long.
Ships. Tea. Crates. Boston Harbor. Ker-SPLOOSH.
Well, That Didn’t Last Long
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009That killer rush of hopey-changey goodness, that is.
The headline isn’t what grabbed me. It was the fact that the FARK thread already had 27 comments, even though it had been red-lit, which is a little unusual. (So if you want to read it, you have to purchase a TOTALFARK membership.)
Oh, and just so you don’t have to ask…yes, there are some Obama defenders in there. And their argument is…Y-A-W-N…if you don’t agree with them about everything, you’re an idiot.
Which is the same argument six-year-olds use when they’re really, really ticked off.
Just you remember though, the one thing you cannot accuse The Annointed One of having done, is breaking a campaign promise. He made very few of those.
Danica Patrick in Bikini and Stilettos
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009Title says it all. Click the pic…
Practicing Obamanomics in Everyday Life
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009Fellow Webloggin contributor Joshuapundit…this needs no further comment from me.
Which isn’t unusual; it’s a little unusual, perhaps, that I can see it needs no further comment from me…anyway, on with the show.
A hilarious way of practicing Obamanomics and `spreading the wealth around…..’:
Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign the read “Will Vote For Change.” I thought that was hilarious.
Once in the restaurant, I noticed my server had on a “Obama 08” button, so I thought this was a superb opportunity to see how this works in real life.
When the bill came, I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama concept of spreading the wealth around. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip as an economic stimulus to the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed away …apparently he has no concept of Hope n’ Change.
I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I decided he could use the money as a stimulus. The homeless guy was grateful and thanked me.
At the end of my experiment in economic stimulus, I realized the homeless guy was happy to take money he did not earn, but the waiter was really angry that I gave away the money he earned even though the homeless guy needed the stimulus more,based on my criteria. Obviously the waiter was Rich, and doesn’t understand that the homeless guy needed and deserved the money more, based on Obamanomics. The homeless guy,however, was happy with the Change.
I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.
And I guess the waiter just needs to get used to working for the change he voted for, hmmm?
Yes They Can!
Monday, February 9th, 2009Look what blogger friend Rick found.
In the meantime, we have some immediate struggles on our hands But the good news is that the broad movement that elected President Obama and larger majorities in the Congress is up and running.
This movement, or if you like, this loose coalition in which labor plays a larger and larger leadership role, can exercise an enormous influence on the political process. Never before has a coalition with such breadth walked on the political stage of our country. It is far larger than the coalition that entered the election process a year ago; it is larger still than the coalition that came out of the Democratic Party convention in August.
The task of labor and its allies is to provide energy and leadership to this wide-ranging coalition. Yes, we can bring issues and positions into the political process that go beyond the initiatives of the Obama administration. But we should do this within the framework of the main task of supporting Obama’s program of action.
We can disagree with the Obama administration without being disagreeable. Our tone should be respectful. We now have not simply a friend, but a people’s advocate in the White House.
When the administration and Congress take positive initiatives, they should be wholeheartedly supported and welcomed. Nor should anyone think that everything will be done in 100 days. After all, main elements of the New Deal were codified into law in 1935, 1936 and 1937.
Of course, change won’t be easy. The pressures to weaken, even mothball, progressive, anti-corporate measures will come from many quarters.
That said, the opportunities for working class and people’s gains are extraordinary. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Starring us in the face are some immediate challenges.
First, we have to support the passage of the President’s stimulus bill in the Senate.
Second, we have to bloc any Republican efforts to derail the nomination of Hilda Solis, the nominee for the Secretary of Labor. This is the first round in the battle to pass the EFCA. Some may think this is a struggle of only the labor movement. But nothing could be further from the truth. A bigger labor movement in this country would strengthen the struggle on every front. No one expressed this point better than Martin Luther King toward the end of his life.
Third, we have to join others in resisting evictions and foreclosures – not to mention cutbacks and layoffs at the state and city level.
Fourth, the wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan have to be brought to a close. As former President Lyndon Johnson realized too late, wars of occupation (in this case Vietnam) can quickly ruin a presidency that has great promise.
Well, you probably have other and probably better ideas.
In any case, we have our work cut out for us. But I think we can confidently say that change is coming. And we will build a more perfect union.
Yes We Can!
— Sam Webb, Chairman, Communist Party, USA
What are the ramifications of this? Why should we ignore it and “move on”? I can think of exactly two reasons. No more, and no less.
First of all, it is not a reliable mode of critical thinking to reject something just because a perceived enemy adores it. The Wedding Rule applies: If you announce “I’m not coming if X is coming” the hostess’ proper response is “That’s a shame, we will miss you.” Maybe, just maybe, Barack Obama can be a friendly and constructive President even though communists like him. Busted clocks being right twice a day, and all that.
Second of all, you really aren’t supposed to say anything bad about communists nowadays. We now have a plurality of generations brought up on the idea that there is something antiquated about inferring that people are evil just because they’re communists — some decent folks are born in communist countries, after all — therefore, there is something antiquated about reading nefarious things into the communist way of life. This plurality of generations has witnessed the sustained and intense slandering of Sen. Joseph McCarthy…who cares that he was right about some things? Why let facts get in the way? So nobody wants to be thought of as another Joe McCarthy. And when you talk about communists infiltrating the United States, masking their movement behind a friendly countenance, why, you sound like you should be muttering away in some creaky old rocking chair, wearing a plaid shirt crusty with your dried out drool. It’s better to leave these things unsaid.
And I can’t help noticing something.
The first reason is a wisened counsel against following the guilt-by-association thinking-framework.
The second reason is an example of it.
They cancel each other out. Completely.
Meanwhile, the communists have so infiltrated. We should know this. We’ve been fighting — or looking the other way while others fought — for their “right” to do so.
I also can’t help noticing something else: If you search the history books for elections somewhat resembling the cult-of-personality debacle that preceded President Obama’s elevation, you’ll come up mostly empty…until you start inspecting such “elections” in communist nations. And then they all look like that. A “free” press, held captive. Visual propaganda with the Dear Leader’s visage staring off to the left or right, somewhat upward…usually with accentuating spiritual-ific wavy things in the background, not quite defining clearly whether the icon is supposed to be depicting a temporal leader, or a spiritual one. At the center of it all, a guy really, really good at giving speeches, who can do nothing wrong — and nobody’s a hundred percent sure what His plans are.
The cult-of-the-personality is a well-established communist trait. Like Rick says, if Sam Webb’s ringing endorsement is really news to you, you must’ve had your head stuck somewhere for quite awhile. Maybe it’s time to start listening to the old man in the plaid shirt. But it might be too late.
Dick Cheney’s Apology
Monday, February 9th, 2009The Washington Post thinks he should be giving one. But our former Vice President will not oblige, so Don Surber wrote one for him.
“I’m sorry that so many people are unappreciative of the efforts to protect the nation from terrorists. We were so good that people took our efforts for granted to the point where they now portray as a victim the mastermind behind 9/11 — KSM — who beheaded reporter Daniel Pearl. If I could do it all over again, the White House would have been more graphic in telling this tale, instead of relying on the media to be fair, balanced and accurate in its coverage of the war on terrorism.”
Hat tip to Gerard.
Twisted Sister’s Friday Diversion
Monday, February 9th, 2009“Old Jews Telling Jokes“. From Twisted Sister.
It’s actually “Old Jews Telling Jokes That Really Aren’t Safe For a Work Environment.”
Where the Present Crisis Began
Sunday, February 8th, 2009Baron’s, via Hot Air, via Newsbusters, via Gateway Pundit:
We are in this mess largely because critical thought and moral judgment have been subordinated to the politicization of our economy, resulting in regulatory gaps and excessive controls of the wrong kind. Government regulations should be limited to those that increase and protect transparency and competition, protect public and private property, promote individual responsibility and enforce equal opportunity under the law. Even if the right laws and regulations could be found, they would prove insufficient to protect freedom and prosperity.
:
Today’s problems have their roots in programs and financial instruments that shifted the locus of moral responsibility away from private individuals and institutions to wider circles that were understood to end with a government guarantee. Heads of the top banks and financial institutions could approve substandard home-mortgage underwriting — prone to increased default — because those loans could be securitized by Wall Street and sold off to investors or to government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), with no likely recourse to the financial institution of origin.Our present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. Then in the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development took a fateful step by getting the GSEs to accept subprime mortgages. With Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements on loans they would purchase from lenders, banks could greatly increase lending to borrowers unqualified for conventional loans. In the name of extending affordable housing, this broadened the acceptability of risky loans throughout the financial system.
:
There is plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the political aisle. But the lesson should be clear that socializing failed businesses — whether in housing, health care or in Detroit — is not a long-term solution. Expanding government’s intrusion into the private sector doesn’t come without great risk. The renewing and self-correcting nature of the private sector is largely lost in the public sector, where accountability is impaired by obfuscation of responsibility, and where special interests benefit even when the public good is ill-served.
It’s not Bush-apologia, it’s just plain truth…and it’s important truth. This conundrum was not caused by a dearth of government meddling, but rather by an abundance of it.
Best Sentence LV
Sunday, February 8th, 2009The entry that snagged the fifty-fifth award Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) is delivered via the Counter-Feminist…I’ve bolded it:
This is a man’s world only in a metaphorical or superficial sense. It is not a “male dominated” world imposed on women. Rather, it is a world built on the common expectations of men and women. What some call “patriarchy” has been just as much a creation of women’s traditional expectations as men’s.
Coincidentally, this is exactly what my eleven-year-old son and I were talking about on our way to playing disc golf yesterday. He wanted to know more about Thing I Know #26…
There really aren’t too many things in the arena of human existence louder than a pair of women recognizing each other at a Starbuck’s coffee shop.
I explained that what women really are, is this: The personification of civilization. And civilization runs on protocol. (“Protocol,” we’d already discussed, has a number of meanings that apply to cocktail parties, foreign relations, computer science, and other things; but it always means “A set of things upon which you agree, that are observed so that you can communicate other things on which you do not agree.” My definition.)
That is the female role. With women and no men, protocol is established, codified, enforced, and the blessings flow from that; but things outside of protocol, go undone. With men and no women, there is a lack of protocol and anything that requires protocol, likewise goes undone.
This liberates women from certain things that burden men. A little girl, for example, can make a lot of noise and a little boy cannot; girls are adorable, they can get away with it. Sure, if she makes enough noise, eventually there’ll be a smackdown. But the leash is much longer. Expect silence from a boy, and get something else, the line’s already been crossed. Expect silence from a little girl, get something else, it’s free entertainment for awhile. Aw, isn’t that cute! My son hates that part. But as I pointed out, that’s really a double-edged sword. Don’t feel too abused, because we got the long end of the stick on that coffee shop thing. When you’re old enough to grab a coffee, you’ll go in and grab one, and if you see one of your pals there you can go on about your business after a simple nod. “Hey Bob, how’s it goin’ buddy?” Maybe a howz-the-wife-and-kids if you’re feeling really talkative.
You don’t have to make that whooping sound.
A woman sees another woman at the coffee shop, protocol requires her to behave as if this is a real event. It requires the kind of reaction you’d show to…cancer finally having been cured. No, you have to think on a bigger scale yet: The world, somehow thrown out of orbit, now somehow having been re-aligned. If they once had occasion to see each other regularly, but no longer do, a hug is also required. Imagine if women greeted women at the coffee shop the way guys acknowledge other guys; just imagine that. That would be a slight. That would be a “dis.”
Other women would find out about it.
It really is quite out of the question. That’s protocol for you. And this is why, if women made absolutely no decisions at all, the world would be a truly dreary place. Men are utilitarian creatures. We fix stuff; we do that. We are “libertarians” by nature. That usually works pretty well, because this is mostly a libertarian world.
But not completely so. Protocol is a good thing. There are too many things you can’t do without the protocol. And so we value the opinions of women. But here’s the deep, dark, dirty secret, and I fear putting the Big Reveal on this one, will get me in more trouble than discussing TIK #26 ever could or will:
We’ve valued what women have had to say for quite awhile. Well before suffrage.
For example, what is a mud room? You think, in a world in which men made all the decisions, we’d have had such a thing as a mud room? No, we would not. Things like mud rooms, antimacassars, doilies, and separate buildings for horses came into use as observations of protocol, and these protocols came about because your great-gramma had a helluva lot more to say about where great-grampa put his muddy boots, than you’ve been led to believe.
And that’s why women are so incredibly loud when they’re at the coffee shop, and they recognize someone. And that someone is just as loud. “Oh, how ARE you?? So good to SEE you!!”
There really isn’t anything human beings do that is any louder. But don’t bitch about it. You’re looking at the reason the rest of us, man and woman, have any capacity for communicating with any others among the rest of us. Whatsoever. Don’t believe me? Work in an office full of only-men sometime.
My son had a question I thought was pretty funny: “What would happen if men greeted each other in a coffee shop the way women do?” Oh gawd. Do not go there!
I told him that would be off-the-charts weird. Oh and one more little thing…you’re not going to tell your teacher or your mother about this little talk, are you?
Just observing protocol, you know.
The Meaning of Sarah Palin
Sunday, February 8th, 2009Her intellect — she clearly possesses some aptitudes, and is clearly missing others — is something worthy of inspection. Her qualities, all-in-all, as a leader are even more worthy of inspection; after all the lawyers prowling through trash cans in Jueneau, and hackneyed satire on Saturday Night Live, her credentials as an anti-corruption crusader remain intact.
But more worthy of examination compared to anything else about her, is the culture war she clearly represents, whether she intends to or not.
The reaction to Palin revealed a deep and intense cultural paranoia on the Left: an inclination to see retrograde reaction around every corner, and to respond to it with vile anger. A confident, happy, and politically effective woman who was also a social conservative was evidently too much to bear. The response of liberal feminists was in this respect particularly telling, and especially unpleasant.
“Her greatest hypocrisy is her pretense that she is a woman,” wrote Wendy Doniger, a professor at the University of Chicago. “Having someone who looks like you and behaves like them,” said Gloria Steinem, “who looks like a friend but behaves like an adversary, is worse than having no one.”
This preposterous effort to excommunicate Palin from her gender suggests that the kind of new-order feminism she represents—a feminism that embraces cultural traditionalism and workplace egalitarianism at the same time—is especially frightening to those on the feminist Left because they recognize its power and appeal. The attempt to destroy Sarah Palin by rushing to paint her as a backwoods extremist was not a show of strength, but rather a sign of desperation.
Yuval Levin. Hat tip to Sister Toldjah.
Isn’t it funny. By the end of the third quarter of 2008, a “middle of the road American” was receptive to the idea that we should “put Barack in charge — he can’t be any worse than those idiots running things now.” That’s at the end of eight solid years of “those idiots” running things…and millions of George Soros’ dollars used to give those middle-of-road Americans ideas, and fool the middle-of-road Americans into thinking they thought of those ideas themselves.
Eight years.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s been just over two weeks, and it already seems more than reasonable to “put Sarah Palin in charge, she can’t be any worse than those idiots running things now.”
Two weeks.
People make fun of Palin…and they don’t even understand how they’re making her look better, than they would if they simply kept their mouths shut.
Case in point — courtesy of Harvey at IMAO:
They Should Call it WhySarahPalinIsSoFreakingAwesome.Org
Posted by Harvey on February 4, 2009 at 10:00 amHere at IMAO, we usually focus on the negative. And mock it mercilessly. But today I celebrate the positive.
Celebutard Ashley Judd (Who? I have no idea. I’m guessing she’s one of those no-talent, casting-couch pass-arounds that’s famous for being famous.) has offered her imprimatur to a site called EyeOnPalin.org. Upon hearing the news, I assumed it was just another Palin slander site like SarahPalinExposed.com or ABC.
Boy was I ever wrong.
This site has everything a Palin fan could want. Except maybe significant quantities of frequently updated content.
:
Sarah Palin not only kill wolves, she kills them FROM A MOVING AIRPLANE!Not quite as cool as belittling Democrats from a stationary podium, but a close second in my book.
Plus the site give all these great reasons to vote for Sarah Palin if she blesses us by running in 2012. These headlines practically write their own campaign commercial:
• Palin battles for ANWR drilling
• Palin does no favors for musk oxen
• Palin supports in-state gas line
• Palin Fights Endangered Listing for Belugas
• First wolves, now polar bears
• Environmentalists Assail PalinOh, and there’s something for the kiddies. A pdf drawing of a wolf for your wee ones to print out and color. Please note they have to draw in their own airplanes and streaming bullets, which is probably just the site’s way of encouraging children to develop their artistic skills.
But if I had to choose the thing I like best about the site, it would be the fact that the WORST picture they could find of Sarah Palin looks better than the BEST picture they could find of Ashley Judd.
Somewhere on TOTALFARK I had questioned the necessity of Speaking Truth To Power against Republicans in late January 2009…as deeply ingrained a habit that may be for some of our luminous celebs. I compared Judd’s curiously-timed campaign to bring the truth to the people about those evil Republicans, to engaging in a debate with your much-dumber kid brother about whether he can collect $200 for passing Go, when the board’s chock full of hotels that belong to you from St. James’ Place to Boardwalk and he’s mortgaged clear up to his ass.
It’s exactly the same situation. What are you afraid of? Where exactly are these decisions being made that Ashley Judd doesn’t like, with democrats running everything? Alaska? She waited until the elections were over to tell us about wolves being hunted in Alaska? The national election went exactly the way you wanted it to, and you have to follow Sarah Palin back home and try to rally the lower-48 to dictate how things should & shouldn’t be done up there? Every square inch of soil in the union should have everything done on it, done the democrat way? Since we all know from looking at San Francisco, Chicago and Washington DC how great that works out?
That’s a neurosis. That’s a mental illness.
Does my heart good to see Harvey poking that kind of fun at it. There is truth in it. For many of us, Sarah Palin looks better after the criticism has been flung at her, than she did before. That whole “Troopergate scandal” is yet another example of it. She figured out someone should be fired, some guy supposedly got in the way, so she whacked him. Well, good. That’s the definition of a good leader. You figure out something needs to happen, people can count on you making it happen even if you run into some resistance.
Half the problems in politics — using the word “politics” loosely here, as it applies to any effort to shape policy involving multiple egotistical people — are caused by people who never truly think about the decisions they make, before they’ve got them made. They make enemies out of anyone who tries to bring in a different perspective. The other half of the problems are made by people who re-think things endlessly, never deciding anything. In so doing, they put the most contentious factions in charge of everything. We have 206 weeks to observe some more examples of both of those.
Don’t blame me. I voted for the non-lawyers. And it’s always been my vision that the nicer-looking of the two should really end up in the top spot. It’s looking more and more like I’ll get that wish, with just a little more waiting. Becoming more and more certain every day.
Obama’s Cabinet
Sunday, February 8th, 2009Well…I’m sure things will work out much better from here-on-out. Presidential administrations very often straighten-out and fly-right after stumbling out of the gate. It happens frequently. Frequently. Let me think…lemme think…
I’ll get back to you on that.
On the other hand, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen one cartoon sum up such a big mess, with just the right mix of biting humor and poignancy. Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News.
Everything You Know About the Vietnam War is Wrong: Part One
Sunday, February 8th, 2009Fellow Right Wing News contributor Kathy Shaidle.
This is not optional-reading…or shouldn’t be.
“Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.”
— Eddie Adams, photographer who took the (widely misunderstood) photo above
Pretending to Value Experience
Sunday, February 8th, 2009I thought it was interesting a few minutes ago when I noticed my local paper’s editorial section has four cartoons — all four of them are dedicated to a common theme. That these “Wall Street executives” are receiving huge bonuses and compensation for their experience, and it’s just a big crock.
One sympathizes. Who among us hasn’t worked for a large company, and seen his own division placed under the tutelage of a “seagull manager.” Who among us cannot recall one or several seagull managers brought in from the wreckage of some previous failure, often compensated to ludicrous extremes both in the past & present. Who among us cannot recall the resulting plummet in morale. Yes, experience can be overblown; in fact, the purported effort to compensate “appropriately” for experience, can be a half-hearted effort to camouflage something that could be called, with more than a hint of accuracy, bribery.
What is of interest to me, is Mr. Geithner’s fiasco. It’s just in our rear-view mirror, not too much distance between where that is, and where we are. We just went through it. For those who have been living in a cave, Mr. Geithner had thousands of dollars of unsettled tax issues, bearing the imprint of the weakest excuse there ever was — “I forgot.” The position to which he was nominated, is our nation’s top tax dude. And he was confirmed. Why? Because in times like these, we need his experience.
This is merely the latest example of the oldest rule in Washington: “Do as I say, not as I do.”
So is there anything at all that we could call the Geithner rule, something that takes the news and hardens it into precedent, allowing at least some of us a measure of forgiveness for our own innocent mistakes?
I think so, but you’ll have to bear with me. It goes like this:
Mr. Geithner got a pass on his tax problems because we really, really like him. So he gets a highly individualized form of amnesty. Sort of a personalized “olly olly oxen free.”
Also, we really, really need him. It’s almost like what Princess Leia said in Star Wars: “You’re my only hope.”
So if there’s a Geithner rule, it is extremely narrow. I believe that we should call it the olly olly oxen free, Obi-Wan Kenobi amnesty. If you are the nation’s only hope, you might qualify.
Here’s a simple test: Is your name Timothy F. Geithner? No?
See you at the audit.
Yeah, I think the rule is just a tad different. It has to do with experience. It’s a precious commodity if you work in government, especially if your job is to take money away from people who earned it. Not so much if you work in business and are tasked with making things happen that actually produce the wealth that the government will be taking away.
With its experienced people running the collection proceedings, and what-not.
Do you realize the utter devastation this mindset encounters if it is opened to just a tiny bit of challenge? Let’s try it: Once in awhile, here and there, a businessman will be experienced and his experience will really count for something — compensated or not. Money will then roll in, which means Geithner’s IRS will come knocking. To take that money. The continuing operations of the government will be counting on it, since experienced people like Geithner will be moving the money around, not actually producing it, which is an entirely different thing.
The experienced people running our government will therefore be tasked with “appreciating” the experience of others…for the purpose of confliscating the money that resulted from that experience. Not for the purpose of compensating it appropriately. Only they, with their experience moving money around, may be compensated for their experience — which, in turn, is useless if there’s no money to be confiscated or moved around.
In fact, they’re about to use their experience to limit the compensation that may be made for experience in the private sector. Yeah, right now that limit is to apply only to firms that accept bailout money. If it passes. But that’s for now.
Bottom line: We’re still in the process of figuring out if there’s really a bunch of “hope in the air” after this changing-of-the-guard last month. Perhaps the status quo is much better now than it was previously. Perhaps it does make sense in the final analysis. Maybe the folks running the show really know what they’re doing. But if that’s the case, experience counts for — something extreme. All, or nothing. One or zero. No fractions allowed.
And it counts if you work in government, which produces nothing, and doesn’t count at all in business — where we absolutely, positively, must expect things to improve if the economy is ever gonna get turned around.
One wonders what these maybe-experienced, maybe-not business people are doing to create that money if whatever experience they have, doesn’t matter for squat. The mind boggles. If your scheme is to fly into Vegas and play the tables, you have to have experience to do that, right? If it involves just doing some kind of rain-dance and hoping it’ll rain dollars and quarters, I would think experience would count there, too. So what is it we think these people do? Just grow hundred dollar bills, like an old man growing hair in his nose & ears?
Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
Reality TV
Saturday, February 7th, 2009So I’m getting some static about items #23 and #24 on my list of what might possibly be putting the Big Reveal on you being a stupid idiot…
#23. Watching reality television.
#24. Talking about what you saw on reality television.
As you might expect, I’m getting the static from people who consider themselves reasonably smart, but watch reality television and then talk about what they saw on reality television.
Let’s recap what “reality television is,” okay?
1. Set the stage for something that is about to happen (30 seconds).
2. Something happens (15 seconds).
3. Someone is interviewed about how the thing made them feel when it happened (just over 8 minutes).
4. Commercial break of somewhere around a good five minutes.
5. Go back to Step 1, and repeat this four times. Then roll credits.
Now here’s the part that I find really entertaining. What do people say right before an episode of reality TV is about to pop up on the idjit box, hmmm? What’s that thing they say? What’s the last thing they say at work when they talk about the episode they’re about to race home to watch?
I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen. Right?
Well, here’s what’s going to happen. Four minor things — more likely just three. And lots…and lots…and lots of talking about how people felt when those things happened. With breathy woodwind background music.
One more little thing. I conservatively estimate that corporate America could save about $50 billion every single year, if we could all agree on some number. Let’s say 37, just for grins. Let’s all just agree that Code 37 is an acceptable substitute for “Last night so-and-so was voted off, and this was contrary to my expectations, OMIGAW!!” If people could just say “Code 37 on Marko” or “Code 37 on Angela” or whatever, they’d be spending a couple seconds on these inane conversations instead of the better portion of an hour, our nation’s lost productivity would be trimmed off overnight, people would get much more done, and maybe we could save the economy.
It’s bound to work better than that stupid stimulus — which, just for the record, is Item #40.
Type A’s and Type B’s
Saturday, February 7th, 2009Fellow Right Wing News contributor Melissa Clouthier is unimpressed with one of Barack Obama’s classic mistakes — exhibiting a classic telltale sign of bosses who don’t really understand what they’re doing, The Enlightened One is surrounding Himself with people unlikely to challenge whatever ideas of His might need challenging. That’s exactly what George Lucas did when he invented Jar Jar Binks.
[Obama] has surrounded himself with bland yes-men at every turn. First, it was Biden as Vice President. The latest is Tom Daschle at Health and Human Services. Mickey Kaus says:
Mickey’s Assignment Desk: Wherein lies the greatness of Tom Daschle? Just asking! … P.S. He’s always seemed to me the model of the modern Senate Majority Leader–i.e., the 50+ prima donnas that make up a majority don’t want a strong leader who might crowd their games, so they wind up with a Daschle, an amiable man who will not challenge them. …12:11 P.M.
So not only is President Obama acting immature, he’s surrounding himself with people who won’t challenge his wrong thinking and acting. That’s just great.
President Barack Obama is not acting like the leader of the free world. He’s acting like a kid who snuck into the White House and is playing pretend behind the big desk. Time to pinch yourself, President Obama, you’re really there and your words, actions and attitude matters.
Matter.
So anyhow, I just had to share my thoughts, because that’s just the kind of guy I am. And I’ve seen, perhaps, more management-mistakes made than the average bear. At least enough to make it a little tougher than usual to bite my tongue. And I’ve not been one to rise to that challenge anyway, why start now?
…I was giving the laymens’ reference material (Wiki) on Type-A and Type-B personalities a closer look, and I found the conventional wisdom made more sense than I had previously thought. I think most people misunderstand it. Type-A’s are generally not “secure” — the opposite is the case. Their grandiose displays of pomposity mask their internalized feelings of inadequacy. They are the guy driving the enormous or expensive set o’wheels, poorly endowed within the trousers.
One of the symptoms of a poor management style, is to fill all the subordinate layers of management with Type-A’s: All opinions expressed most quickly and most forcefully, must be most correct. Another classic symptom is to fill all the subordinate layers with Type-B’s because you yourself are Type-A. I think the latter of those two most accurately describe[s] the situation in our new executive branch.
What Gave You Away?
Saturday, February 7th, 2009How it is understood that your brain is a moped engine powering a Humvee — and so quickly, with such certainty, by so many. Where exactly is that “I’m a moron” sign located? You’ve checked and checked, it doesn’t seem to be written on your forehead, but people around you act as if it is. What’s clueing them in?
There are more folks wondering about this than we know. Gonna add to this list as I think of more…
…but at the moment, the only one truly worthy of comment is the one at the very bottom.
1. Walking around with your fly open.
2. Using “y’know,” “totally” or “basically” more than three times within five sentences.
3. Unplugging your cell phone and your coffee pot…to help SAVE the PLANET.
4. (Men) Wearing a football jersey three sizes too big for you.
5. Medicating your son for his “abnormal” behavior, that is, in fact, quite normal behavior for a boy.
6. Pursuing a conversation with someone fifty feet away across a parking lot for more than a minute.
7. Speaking of a tax cut as something that “costs” money.
8. Taking a picture with the lens cap on.
9. (Men) Wearing a baseball cap backwards.
10. Calling someone greedy for simply wanting to keep something that belongs to them.
11. (Women) Speaking of the demands you make on men, and your refusal to ever be satisfied with their attempts to meet them, as if that’s an endearing quality.
12. (Men) Marrying a woman who brings nothing to the table except her incessant demands.
13. Ordering a fancy coffee drink with whipped cream on top…taking special care that it is made with NON FAT MILK…
14. …and then bitching away about your household budget while you slurp a morning-beverage that costs four bucks.
15. Hitting Reply-All button, “I Agree!” and Send, when you get a message specifically requesting people not to use Reply-All all the time.
16. Wishing aloud that politicians “of both parties” would find a way to “work together” and “get more done” without exploring what exactly would get done.
17. Wishing aloud that our country would “sit down and talk with our enemies” and “stop offending our allies,” without elaborating on what agreements should & shouldn’t be made, which allies these are supposed to be, or how exactly they’ve been offended.
18. Using the words “strip bar” to describe the Hooters restaurant chain.
19. Chastising someone else for being stupid, for simply disagreeing with you, while making third-grade mistakes with homonyms like “your” and “you’re,” “our” and “hour,” “their,” “there” and “they’re,” and “one” and “won.”
20. Using the word “majority” to legitimize an opinion, as if you wouldn’t want to be doing that selectively.
21. Three thousand dollar rims on a one thousand dollar car.
22. Hearing of one man’s sad tale of the life he shared with an unscrupulous female, and the wreckage his life became afterward, responding with the timeless non-sequitur “Not all women are like that.”
23. Watching reality television.
24. Talking about what you saw on reality television.
25. Advertising your opinion that Sarah Palin is stupid when you’ve never actually met her.
26. Getting a tattoo on your face…
27. …consisting of images or words you wouldn’t want your grandmother (or your job-interview guy) to see.
28. Using the word “loving” as a euphemism for homosexual.
29. Climbing into the cage to make friends with the wild animal at the zoo.
30. “The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.”
31. Leaving the bathroom with a foot and a half of toilet paper stuck to your shoe.
32. Gun control. You know, to “get rid of all these guns lying around.”
33. Skateboarding in a parking lot.
34. Driving several miles with your blinker on.
35. Extolling the virtues of some country’s “free” education and/or “free” health care.
36. Talking about how you’re overweight because of your “metabolism” or your “genes”…when your mouth is full.
37. “Irregardless.”
38. Beginning any statement about your political views with “Hey hey, ho ho.”
39. Talking about childrens’ “self esteem.”
40. Talking about the “stimulus” as if it is a job-saver, rather than a left-wing giveaway.
Lately…*sigh*…this shit all looks the same to me.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
Grahamnads
Saturday, February 7th, 2009This pays off part of his negative balance for Grahamnesty. I can’t ignore Grahamnesty, but I can’t ignore this either. Even with his hand in his pocket the whole time (and what’s up with that??)…it’s pretty daham good.
Of course the only time it was great was that “my time” comment. YEAH. Way to leave a mark!
Brilliant points on your part too, Babs. Because democrats are never theatrical. We all know that…
</sarcasm>
Update 2-7-09: Added the second clip, for sake of perspective. Also I don’t think that gem of a “my time” smack-down was in the first clip. Maybe I should watch it a fourth time to make sure…
Also, something that hadn’t caught my attention before. Sen. Boxer makes reference to one or several occasions on which former President George W. Bush sent down a bill twice as big.
I’m going to have to reach out to the nobodies who never stop by to not read The Blog That Nobody Reads, for help on this one. When did Bush/#43 ask Congress for $1.7 trillion in one bill??
Also, I’ve run into this on occasion with the “little” dems…the ones who don’t get elected, don’t make the rules, just get punch-drunk on the “Bush and the Jooz Caused 911 as a Pretext to Go Into Iraq” kool-aid. And then argue all day & night with good Americans like you & me over whether Sarah Palin is a dumbshit or not.
The cute little tactic is “If you aren’t on record saying bad things about Republicans, then you aren’t allowed to say anything against me and my beloved democrat party.”
Nothing like it would be permitted in any debate engaged for the purpose of finding logic and truth, and it certainly wouldn’t even pop up in debate engaged for the purpose of seeking “bipartisan” compromises. This tactic labels the opposition as exactly what it, itself, is. Only centrists may speak; you’re not a centrist if you say bad things about my team, and haven’t said anything bad about those other guys; if you’ve said bad things about the other guys, but not about my team — you’re a centrist and you may speak.
None of which is a terribly exciting revelation in the context immediately under observation. Anyone who’s been watching this, with something working at the top-end of the brain stem, knows this pig-in-a-poke doesn’t have a damn thing to do with saving jobs, it’s just a reward for whoever made it possible for democrats to win the election. But I find it interesting when democrats who don’t know what’s going on, deploy the same tactics as the democrats like Boxer, who do.
Maybe it’s printed up in those newsletters they mail out. Or maybe their neurons are all telepathically connected to some central “mother ship” somewhere.
Update 2/8/09: Oh jeez leweez…I figured out what my distinguished hippie-moonbat Senator was babbling away about. George Bush wanted to “spend” $1.4 trillion with his tax cuts back in 2001.
This puts Barbara Boxer’s statement (purely by coincidence, since at the time, I had no idea where she was going with this) on the list of things you do & say that reveal you’re a moron — Item #7.
I’m struggling to figure out how anyone, no matter how ideologically moonbat-ish, no matter how deranged, could truly, within their heart-of-hearts, think of these as the same thing vis a vis “spending.” Forcing us to spend money on a laundry list of Keynesian crap, is the antithesis of a tax cut in every possible way, is it not? One puts money into a burgeoning public sector spending spree, the other one takes it out. One allows us to keep the money we earned, the other one does not.
I can see how you call one “spending” and I can see how you call the other one “spending.” But to characterize the two of them as the same thing, so you can say “you can’t wave a big stack of paper around now if you didn’t do exactly the same thing back then”…which is what she’s trying to say, as I understand it…I don’t see how that argument resonates even with people who would be friendly to it.
If you run for President, but you’ve consumed hallucinogenic drugs, there’s going to be a scandal. I’m noticing the same is not true of our Congress. That is something that needs to change. And we certainly shouldn’t be allowing them to chase the dragon while they’re at work. Now, is that the case? Things like this give me serious cause to wonder.
Stimulus Through Euthanasia
Friday, February 6th, 2009Gerard has come up with an idea. I wonder if it’s parody, or if he’s just taken a couple steps in front of the parade to figure out where it’s going? He does seem to have the direction nailed down accurately.
And “hope” & “change” could be described as having something to do with it…
The summary execution of every man and woman in America over the age of 65 brings two immediate benefits to the United States.
First, it eliminates any call these 37 million Americans might have on Social Security and Medicare. The savings and positive cash flow that will accrue from this government program are obvious.
As we all know, the Social Security Administration (SSa) essentially bet, many years ago, that a lot of people who paid into this Mother of All Ponzi Schemes would simply not live to collect their benefits in any significant degree. It was a “You pay but don’t play” sort of deal. As long as the dead suckers outnumbered the living suckers, all was copacetic.
:
And since the dead can’t use the services of Medicare beyond a cut-rate body bag and the rental of a gurney journey to the mass grave next to the spent fuel rod storage site in Nevada, trillions will be saved here as well. In addition, hundreds of thousands of hospital beds will be made available to the morbidly obese Baby Boomers when they just have to lie down and take a break from scooting about in their electric “mobility chairs” after an exhausting day of downloading porn at work.But wait. There’s more.
Not only would this herd cull, this mass kill-off, save many trillions of dollars in SS and Medicare payments, it would also deliver that single thing that most Americans have been praying for in the last few months — their own personal bailout, otherwise known as “an inheritance.”
From house trailers to mansions, from piggy banks to Swiss bank accounts, the elderly among us have been, let’s face it, holding out. What good is money to a person too weak to withstand a weekend in Vegas? What good is money when the main purchase at the market is dog food rather than shade-grown, free-trade cruelty-free foie gras? No good at all.
The Boondoggle
Friday, February 6th, 2009Current draft of what I’m planning to send to my Senator and my other Senator.
Yup…hope it works…
Dear Senators,
“Boondoggle.”
This is the one word I hear used, more often than any other, to describe the stimulus plan. I hear that from people in your own party as well as from the Republicans.
When Congress acts unwisely, typically the bill has to become a law, and we have to wait a few months or years to see that this word applies. This situation is unique in that the B-word has not only surfaced, but become dominant, while the bill is simply being discussed.
That’s a warning. I don’t think you can ignore it without working hard at ignoring it.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear this boondoggle is nothing more than a laundry list of things lusted-after by your party, and its patrons, to soothe feelings of discontent and angst felt by those who’ve been out of power for just a few years. To pay back, at taxpayer expense, those who helped the 2008 elections shape up the way they did. It’s as if you’re anxious to demonstrate that the real split between yourselves and the Republicans isn’t about whether or not to run up an irresponsible debt, and spend taxpayer money on irresponsible things…it’s about whether such hijinks should be engaged by professionals or amateurs. And the Republicans are the amateurs. You’re about to show us how it’s really done.
I know that’s not the message you want to send, so this taxpayer hopes you both reject this “stimulus” boondoggle altogether. After all: Some of this “change” you’re supposed to deliver, is supposed to be a change from reckless spending and a skyrocketing debt. Can you be trusted to deliver on that? So I say, go to the people who are counting on you to pass this boondoggle, and tell them: We tried to sell it to the taxpayers. The taxpayers aren’t buying it. We’ll have to find some less offensive way to pay you back.
I know that smarts, but your continuing political survival isn’t possible any other way. Even in California.
Here’s what taxpayers like me find most distressing of all: A trillion dollars is about to be gambled on Keynesian economic theory. Yes, the name is not often used with regard to this issue, but that’s what it’s really all about. Speaking for myself, it would really do my heart good if members of Congress would debate this the way things used to be debated, with at least an attempt at honesty and transparency, perhaps putting some noted economists on camera to discuss the merits of Keynes’ ideas — as well as the arguments against them. As it is, it seems everyone in Washington capable of appearing in front of a camera or a microphone, accepts Keynesian theory as a foregone conclusion and proven fact. Well, it isn’t. It’s a dubious notion at best. Winston Churchill said it the best: “…for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
Let us keep the money we earned. Do that, and the economy will fix itself. You already know this; we know it; you need to be told that we know it.
Please vote no on the boondoggle.
These People Are in Charge!
Friday, February 6th, 2009…and there’s gonna be some changes around here!
Did you just feel that wave of hopey-changey just now? I felt it!
Failed Presidential Cabinet Appointments
Friday, February 6th, 2009From 1789 to right this very minute, guess how many there’ve been?
Go on, take a guess, try to get it in the ballpark.
Star Trek Meets Monty Python
Thursday, February 5th, 2009The Beast
Thursday, February 5th, 2009Obama’s a better President than George W. Bush, because his limo is much bigger.
Asked if she wanted to drive it, [Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano,] the former Arizona governor replied: “You know, I haven’t driven for almost seven years.”
Bush’s limo appeared quite delicate next to the mean-looking Obama-mobile which had a scary front grill that looked like a plate of steel fangs and huge tires that could frighten potholes.
And forget about a spare tire, the trunk looks like it could fit another car in it if the limo gets a flat.
A second monster limo is in production and will be added to the presidential fleet when it’s ready. Guess it will be called “The Beast II”
Elsewhere in the news, Sen. Boxer is putting forward a great big bunch of “global warming principles“. For all Americans to follow. And by “all Americans” I mean you and me…not Boxer and Obama. Of course. They’re too good. Not like us.
Boxer chairs the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the starting point for global-warming legislation in the Senate. (A fellow Californian, Rep. Harry Waxman, chairs the House committee that will simultaneously launch its own global-warming push.) Her announcement today gave no details on emission-reduction targets or a host of other issues closely watched by business and environmental groups.
But it made several broad promises, in keeping with Boxer’s pledge for a less complicated bill than the cap-and-trade push that failed in the Senate last year. Among them:
* To reduce emissions “to levels guided by science to avoid dangerous global warming” and to set targets that are “certain and enforceable,” as well as adjustable.
* To maintain state and local anti-warming efforts.
* To utilize a market-based system — that means cap-and-trade, as opposed to a carbon tax, which some economists favor to reduce emissions.
* To use proceeds from the sales of emissions permits for a variety of uses, including: support for consumers, governments, businesses and workers (presumably to help offset higher energy prices under the system); investments in alternative energy; preserving wildlife and ecosystems threatened by warming; and money for developing nations to help them respond to warming.
* To ensure a “level global playing field … so that countries contribute their fair share to the international effort to combat global warming.”
Those left-wing politicians get more and more awesome every single day! Who knows what other rules they’ll be passing against us tomorrow, that they also won’t have to follow themselves.
One thing confuses me though.
Does their awesomeness create this two-layer set of rules, one for them and one for everybody else? Or is this “Do As I Say Not As I Do,” the thing that inspires their awesomeness? Or is it all just a big mystery, and their awesomeness all just falls into that big sloppy file folder marked “There’s Just Something About Him (Them)”?
Bugatti Spanks a BMW M3
Thursday, February 5th, 2009And here’s one of my favorite videos of the mighty W16, thousand-horsepower engine being put together…
A Disqualifying Amount?
Thursday, February 5th, 2009Phil spotted something that made him want to grab a bag of popcorn.
Three time zones away, we’re tossing one in the microwave too. This is great stuff.
Are they selling popcorn? This is almost cheerin’ me up.
At yesterday’s White House briefing, ABC News’s Jake Tapper asked whether Obama worried that the nearly $200,000 in back taxes and penalties owed between Geithner and Daschle will “undercut the president’s cry for an era of responsibility.”
“Both Secretary Geithner and Secretary-designate Daschle are the right people for very important jobs,” press secretary Robert Gibbs replied.
“Is there an amount of money in unpaid back taxes for any nominee to the President’s Cabinet that would be considered disqualifying?” needled Fox News’s Major Garrett.
“I’m not going to get into hypotheticals,” Gibbs answered.
No link there, but you can check out the crunchiest details here. Most every kernel popped, too.
I wonder what the Founding Fathers would say if you could dig ’em up, light ’em up or thaw ’em out. If you believe everything you read in the public school system, they’d say “Yupsiree, I knew when we wrote those documents they wuz perfect in every way, godlike things.” I’ve never completely subscribed to that theory. Perfect stuff is built by perfectionists, and perfectionists are never happy.
My opinion is, they’d unanimously agree the experiment has failed.
What was the central focus? To create a nation of laws, not of men. To create a society in which all are beholden to the same law, no man above it.
It’s become a freakin’ joke.
And I don’t think the Founding Fathers would blame our politicians, either. They’d blame us.
The Decade of Anarchy for Its Own Sake
Thursday, February 5th, 2009And nobody can tell it better than Daphne. Boy, she really rights good for a chick*.
One day you’re sitting at the kitchen table eating your pancakes, watching your apron clad mother pour your dad a cup of coffee with one hand while spooning oatmeal into your baby brother’s mouth with the other. The next day, dad’s gone, something called divorce explodes in your house, and mom’s showing up for meetings with the Mother Superior in a mini skirt and go-go boots. Or worse, she’s hanging out upstairs in Lila’s apartment, drinking Sangria, reeking of cheap incense and pot, wearing love beads and painting anti-war posters with smelly hippies.
Daycare and babysitters became the norm. Not enough money was a constant. The word no a daily refrain to any request. Meals eaten in front of the TV, strange boyfriends enter and exit the stage with frequency, untended children in outgrown clothes roam the neighborhood, the man named Dad abdicates into a pale ghost of a figure, if not a distant memory. Small vestiges of the life before still remain, but they aren’t enough to keep a child moored on solid ground. The parents are striding headlong into the age of personal fulfillment, dragging their hapless kids along for the ride with the last vestige of adult responsibility they possess.
But everybody’s happy, right? Millennia old social conventions and chains of traditional expectation had been broken, adults were free to follow their whims without condemnation from the neighbors and society at large. Patriarchy had been buried, women had rights, Vietnam had been lost. The air was sweet in the land of no remorse or consequence. Until it wasn’t anymore.
Hat tip to Blogger Friend Buck.
*Yeah, I’m just being a smartass. A chauvinist-pig, homonym-confused smartass.