Archive for August, 2009

D’JEver Notice? XXXVII

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

If I could identify one thing about liberals that is more alarming than all the rest, this would make the top three or four I’m quite sure:

This uneasy relationship they have to the ancient and simple concept of a crime that demands punishment. It is, forgive the pun, a “tortured” relationship. In the vast pantheon of crimes that one man can commit against another, it would seem there are tiers of crime, and the tier has very little to do with the magnitude of damage caused. All but a few transgressions fall into some more modest “Yeah-But” plateau. As in, yeah this guy broke into that other guy’s house…but the other guy should have just let ‘im get away, at least then nobody would get hurt. Or — yeah, this guy mugged and raped a woman, but he’s a product of his upbringing, he is not to blame.

Yeah, that dictator over there may be a threat to us and he may be oppressing his own people…but if we went after him, we’d only be doing it for the oil, and anyway we would almost certainly become exactly what it is we are trying to defeat. Better to leave well enough alone.

And then there is that superior tier, of crimes against the philosophy of liberalism itself.

There is no “Yeah-But” get-outta-jail-free card here.

This falls into that larger file folder of liberals wanting “all” of society to operate under one set of rules, and the elite crust of that society operating under a different set of rules. Crimes against you, and your family, and your friends, should be let go. You need to heal, to grow, to get past it, and the only way you can get past it is to let the miscreant go. Let the original offense go unavenged. Because when you seek revenge, you’re just poisoning yourself.

All that Mahatma-Ghandi shit goes sailing out the window at breakneck speed, when the victim of a crime is liberal philosophy itself. The Ghandi-nonsense is histoire. Misdeeds, all of a sudden, absolutely, positively must be avenged. Letting it go…moving on…out of the question. It’s the principle of the thing, dammit! The world has to be shown that our way is the right way, and it must be shown this by force.

Liberals act very much like conservatives this way. They act like something somewhat above-and-beyond conservatism, this way.

With this inconsistency, liberalism fails to achieve even the minimal standard of what it most energetically strives to be: Be something for which knowledgeable and conscientious people can cast a vote.

Update: I should say something about Ted’s passing I suppose. The “liberal lion of the Senate” provided the younger generation with a striking vision, an invaluable lesson for young and old alike. That lesson being: A lot of people aren’t at peace with themselves, so they try to soothe their consciences by supporting bad public policies. Don’t be like that.

It’s a good lesson.

Didja ever notice, when hardcore left-wing types start describing someone with something that starts with “the conscience of the”…it always seems to be someone that, generally speaking, regardless of the position the rest of us occupy on the ideological spectrum — none of us would want watching our kids?

Top Twenty Badass Scenes in Movies

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

It’s got a thick layer of dust on it, something like two years worth…but criticizing lists is fun.

What got forgotten:

This

…and this

…and this. You got IV but you didn’t get I?

This had some good stuff. Like when Brad Pitt lanced that big giant fella.

And why are we forgetting all about Quint getting eaten by the shark? I would think that one would’ve been obvious.

All those imperial admirals getting killed. We talked about it all through that summer. It seems Lord Vader got some kind of a promotion. It made the movie.

The quintessential car chase, how could you leave that one out? Steve McQueen got you all honked off about something?

Jack Palance gunned that poor dude down and left him lying in the mud. Movie history.

Khaaaaaannnnn!!!!

Moral sermonizing against racism long before it was ever cool. Spencer Tracey does his acting with one hand tied behind his back, and turns in a classic. And yes, now you know it’s true that Ernest Borgnine looked like an old man when he was still young. Wonderful, wonderful overlooked gem. See this one if you have to pass up all the others.

If you can’t get hold of that one, set aside some time to look at Jimmy Stewart as a grumpy old southern farmer bastard. Yeah, he pulled it off and he pulled it off very well. It’ll make you think and it might even make you cry.

What we got here, is a failure ta communicate.

A one-eyed John Wayne.

Those are just off the top of my head…

Drunken Twits

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

The HotForWords lady, who has two degrees in philology, accepts reader submissions for a new word to describe Twittering under the influence.

How to Destroy a Leader

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Guilty people always have an excuse ready; every minute of every day. It is what they do, they’re always getting ready. That’s part of being guilty.

Bill Whittle has those thoughts and more.

I recall something about this in Atlas Shrugged. Henry Rearden is blackmailed into signing over his rights to Rearden Metal, and he makes the point to the state thug doing the blackmailing — if we really were the type of people you were threatening to make us look like, your threat of blackmail would have no effect on us. And the state thug says, of course, yeah I know. Whatever. Ya gonna sign that thing or are ya gonna make me wait all day?

Rather shocking the amoral things that are done by a state, when it engages in the masquerade of supposedly trying to do super-moral things.

Hat tip: Hector Owen.

Janeane is Projecting Again

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

But that’s okay, she’s a real funny lady. Who cares if she’s chock full o’ hate.

“The functionally retarded adults, the racists – with their cries of, ‘I want my country back,'” she said. “You know what they’re really saying is, ‘I want my white guy back.’ They apparently had no problem at all for the last eight years of habeas corpus being suspended, the Constitution being [expletive] on, illegal surveillance, lied to on a war or two, two stolen elections – yes, the John Kerry one was stolen too. That’s not tin-foil hat time. That’s just…”

That’s just — leftists can’t lose elections. Every single time they lose, it must have been stolen.

The alternative being that mainstream Main Street Americans who don’t give a rip about conservatives or liberals, one way or t’other, get just as sick of liberals as they do of conservatives, and twice as fast. It’s impossible for the medium-horsepower leftist mind to ‘fess up to something like that…and so those evil twisted Diebold machines must have been up to shenanigans.

And nobody can disagree with His Obamaness about anything without being a cross-burning racist.

Hey yeah, she’s a crazy lady. But you just remember. Her, and her kind, are making all the decisions right now. Have a nice day.

The Trouble With Ted

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Cassy unloads, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer fella…

[H]e’s using his final days to try and maintain his lifelong grip on the power and authority he’s enjoyed his entire life. The family that considers themselves royalty is surely above such things as voters determining who takes his seat, or abiding by laws. And now, the man who murdered Mary Jo Kopechne has sunk to yet another low. In 2004, Kennedy had the Massachusetts succession law upended when John Kerry was running for president, fearful that Republican Governor Mitt Romney would fill Kerry’s seat with — believe it or not! — a Republican. And now that there’s a Democratic governor, he wants that succession law reinstated, probably to ensure that another Kennedy gets his seat.

Kennedy wants the Legislature to upend the succession law it passed in 2004, when – at his urging – it stripped away the governor’s longstanding power to temporarily fill a Senate vacancy. Back then, John Kerry was a presidential candidate and Republican Mitt Romney was governor; Kennedy lobbied state Democrats to change the law so that Romney couldn’t name Kerry’s successor.

They followed his advice with gusto. When the final vote took place, the Boston Globe reported, “hooting and hollering broke out on the usually staid House floor,’’ and House Speaker Thomas Finneran acknowledged candidly: “It’s a political deal. It’s very raw politics.’’

It still is. Now that Massachusetts has a Democratic governor, Kennedy is lobbying to restore the gubernatorial power to name an interim appointee. That would guarantee Democrats in Washington two reliable Senate votes from Massachusetts, even if Kennedy isn’t there to cast one of them.

Kennedy has already been out of the Senate for the most part for the last 15 months due to his battle with brain cancer. He’s missed most of the votes in the Senate anyways; if he’s so concerned about the people of Massachusetts having two voices represent them in the Senate, then he should resign, and let the people choose who fills that seat. The Kennedy family has already claimed the seat as their own. And while Massachusetts voters idealize the Kennedy family as their version of “Camelot”, they are in reality far from it and our Founding Fathers surely would not want this kind of corruption taking place.

The Lunch Czar

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

It came by e-mail…

What Happened to Candidate Obama?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

The very symbol of calm, reasoned, insightful, broad-minded, and — hah! — humble pontifications on world affairs…something seems to have become distorted over the last seven months or so. Jennifer Rubin seems to have an idea or two about what might have gone wrong.

Obama’s candidacy was defined (to the exasperation of conservatives) by idealism, appeals to bipartisanship, and competency. He is now short on all three — which explains why his support among voters and especially independents (who were susceptible to pledges to end old-style politics) has plummeted.

As for the idealism, no president has sunk so far so fast. Candidate Obama chastised Washington as a place where good ideas died. He summoned young voters with high-minded slogans and Kennedy-esque rhetoric. Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush were mere politicians; he was the leader of a whole new era in politics.

Now? Opponents of health care are stooges, evil-mongers, and villains. Citizen activists are to be reported to the authorities for spreading misinformation or ridiculed. The candidate with the superior temperament has devolved into a peevish president exasperated that mere citizens would question his wisdom or stand in his way.

Joe Biden, Elder Statesman

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

What is the biggest threat to both our security and our liberty, in the modern age?

It’s liberals defining for us what is sensible and what is nuts. This estranges us from prospects for our continuing survival, as well as from our freedoms. They’ve turned it all around. What makes sense, we treat as something strange; what’s odiously surreal, we now treat as the very pinnacle of logic.

How do they do this?

They follow Item #2 on the list of ways to motivate large numbers of people to do dumb things without anyone associating the dumb thing with your name later on. Which is to identify the thing you want done, and socially stigmatize its opposite. Every single thought, every thought promoted and every thought opposed, is on one side of the other of a new social stigma. This is why it is so popular lately to think unrepentant murderers enjoy an inalienable right to life but also that innocent unborn babies do not.

And what is the very pinnacle of their achievement here?

The notion that Vice President Joe Biden is some kind of senior, wizened, composed, diplomatic, dignified, knowledgeable elder statesman.

That’s a modern event. In the years to come, perhaps it will have to surrender its “Best Lie Ever” trophy to some other popular canard that comes along. But for this year, it is at the tippy-top of the list. No liberal democrat, no matter how loyal, really believes it down to the marrow of his bones; and if any one among them really does, there is a soul that is genuinely lost. This would be a weak and feeble mind that has completely, irreversibly given up on the notion of perceiving things in the world around it by relying on its own abilities and faculties.

It has become one of my favorite litmus tests for figuring out whether or not a liberal who wants to argue about politics, retains the minimal level of competence required for such a thing. Is Joe Biden a venerable, competent elder statesman? Are you buyin’ into that?

They Must Be Angry White Men

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

We’re reaching back, or rather digging down, into our “stuff for blogging” stack. There’s some great stuff with a thick layer of dust on top, that has not yet made it into the scroll.

This is a wonderful bit of creative writing from Neo-Neocon:

Obama’s race is the gift that keeps on giving. It will continue to do so until we see the unlikely spectacle of hordes of Angry Black Men rising up against him. That’s the only thing that will get those poor Angry White Men off the hook—and maybe not even that.

The fact that the opponents of health care reform speaking up at the town hall meetings are clearly motivated by extremely substantive issues other than racial hatred of Obama is irrelevant to Michael Crowley. In fact, many of them are also at least as furious at Congress and the person of one White Woman Nancy Pelosi, as well as a number of Very White CongressMen.

But repeat after me: they are White. They are Men. They are Angry at Obama. They are Angry White Men.

And don’t let the fact that some of them are women confuse you, either…

It goes on like that, and keeps getting better.

This kind of touches on a provocative nugget I dropped into this morning‘s post, which I might very well be repeating a few more times in the weeks and months ahead. Hell, I might have it embroidered on a cloth and hung on a wall:

It is a prerequisite now, before one steps up to a debate to oppose carbon cap-and-trade bills, to offer the ritual disclaimer “I believe global warming is a serious problem and that it is caused by man.” The data no longer back this up…When liberals step up to a debate to insist that taxes should stay high and be pushed higher…they do not labor under any social necessity to say “I believe the Laffer Curve is real,” the way their opponents have been similarly nagged to say “I believe global warming is real.”

In a sane universe, if you were required to profess any particular opinion just to be taken seriously, that opinion would be a lot closer to “The Laffer Curve is real” than “global warming is real.” But the verbal talisman — the modern Speakeasy passphrase — in our world it has to do with global warming.

Let’s face it. Liberals today have complete control over our prevailing notions about what’s a sensible thing to say and what’s just plain nuts. And rationality and logic haven’t been deciding those things for us. Those things have been decided by this: Liberals make a demand of us, and we grant the demand no matter how asinine and silly it is. So that maybe we aren’t called racists.

What kinds of things have we decided are nuts and stupid and crazy this way? Stuff like…maybe it’s a bad idea to elect a President because He happens to show a lot of personal charisma, when He doesn’t discuss any specifics of what He’s going to do when He gets into office. Or…if the Constitution says we have a right to keep and bear arms, golly gee, maybe we do. Or…if we want to turn the economy around, maybe we should liberate businesses from taxes and regulations, rather than piling on more.

You know. Really wild, radical, crazy hateful stuff. Yeah.

Moving to the Center

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

“In the presence of a man who insists humans breathe air, and another who says that humans breathe water, you do not stick your face in the toilet bowl fifty percent of the time.” — Morgan K. Freeberg

A powerful case is being made that President Obama needs to move toward the right in the months ahead; indeed, that His presidency may depend on this.

This is the failure of American politics. Moderation is very often a reinforcing agent and a nourishing agent. Observing this pattern, at times we are seduced into thinking moderation is emblematic of all that is good; we make the mistake of drawing on the metaphor from nature, thinking of the mighty oak that survives the storm not so much by being thick and strong, but rather by bending a little. There are many problems with this: Evil is constantly on the lookout for cheap and easy new ways to appear good, and this ends up being one of them. Also, the mindset tends to lead us toward the polar opposite of what we are seeking. After a time, as we desperately seek someone with something to say, the mindset directs us toward the vacillating leadership of those who have nothing to say.

It is particularly mismatched to situations in which the debate is about which of two cups has the poison. Which, I would argue, is a hypothetical that fits just about all the disagreements we confront today. When the answer that emerges is “drink from both but sip slowly,” the consequences are not helpful to what we’re trying to do.

But it’s refreshing seeing the give-some-of-it-up dictum stuck onto the democrats for once. In my memory, the only time I’ve ever seen them cautioned by their own or by outsiders to moderate the tone, the cautioning has more to do with this: Do every little thing you’ve always wanted to do, and do just as much of it, but proceed slowly so you can get the albatross sold. That’s not moderation, that’s shuffling us toward the brink of the cliff at a relaxed, leisurely pace.

I have a nice road/offroad hybrid bike, and I happen to live at the base of the tallest hill for miles and miles around. To me, slipping in to the granny-gear isn’t even a compromise, it’s simply a fact of life. It means reaching the top in fifteen minutes as opposed to…well…not reaching it at all. And it would be just plain stupid to say “Morgan had to give up some of what he was doing because he was forced to shift into first gear.” There’s a difference between speed and distance.

This article seems to suggest Obama needs to give up on some goals that involve distance.

Good.

Mr. Obama’s bet was that his personal popularity would be enough to push his agenda through. Perhaps that would have been possible before the $787 billion economic stimulus package, the $410 billion omnibus bill that funds the government, the House-approved cap-and-trade bill, and so forth. But these big-ticket spending bills have helped define what the president means by “hope” and “change,” and it is through this prism that the American public now views his health-care proposals.

Public skepticism increased when the Congressional Budget Office issued findings contradicting Mr. Obama’s claims that his health-care reform would lower costs. And the more Americans have learned about the specifics, the more they dislike the plans. The president understands that he loses when he talks about substantive issues, which is why he’s been fudging on the public option. He may not understand that he is closing the gap between his unpopular policies and his personal popularity in the worst way a president can: by reducing his own credibility.

Back in 1994, Mr. Clinton faced pretty much the same problem. Though he too had won the White House promising to be a new kind of Democrat, his first two years had a distinctly liberal tenor: battling over gays in the military, promoting a new energy tax, turning a promised middle-class tax cut into a huge tax hike, and trying to push through universal health care. Though he continues to deny GOP contributions to his success, after his 1994 health-care defeat, Mr. Clinton did what all smart pols do: He appropriated the most appealing parts of his opponents’ agenda.

The result was a new Bill Clinton, embracing everything from deregulation and welfare reform to the Defense of Marriage Act. In his 1996 State of the Union, he even struck a Reaganite chord by announcing that “the era of Big Government is over.” From this newly held center, Mr. Clinton advanced his presidency and pushed, both successfully and unfairly, to demonize Mr. Gingrich. Mostly he got away with it.

The cycle continues: America steps up to buy into more of this poison liberalism, when and only when 1) her head is filled with thoughts irrelevant to what it is she is buying, usually by means of some distracting debate about personalities; 2) when times are truly desperate and she sees absolutely no alternative to it, or 3) it is buried deep within an inseparable package that includes components, either in style or in substance, of liberalism’s opposite. If none of those three apply, in America it’s a no-go.

And yet, by leveraging those three, with a go-slow approach, liberalism’s salesmen just might get the job done. Simply by exchanging that least valuable of all commodities, speed. America herself may eventually be sold the pig-in-a-poke that is information-age socialism.

That’s the challenge. To send America down the sad trail of so many countries that came before her — starting with world superpower, and ending with becoming just another filthy little wealth-confiscating socialist mudpuddle.

The advice for President Obama is good…for Him. I hope He does not take it. It would be bad for the country. What’s good for the country is to recognize the debate for what it is: Should we drink the poison or should we not? Those who say we should not, have been pressured, constantly, for the last year or more, to moderate their tone. It is a prerequisite now, before one steps up to a debate to oppose carbon cap-and-trade bills, to offer the ritual disclaimer “I believe global warming is a serious problem and that it is caused by man.” The data no longer back this up, but the necessity of offering the disclaimer — somehow — remains.

When liberals step up to a debate to insist that taxes should stay high and be pushed higher…they do not labor under any social necessity to say “I believe the Laffer Curve is real,” the way their opponents have been similarly nagged to say “I believe global warming is real.” As we bully and bludgeon our politicians and other advocates to be more moderate, when it comes to recognizing what is & isn’t so, we have become very choosey in selecting which side is being nagged toward the “center” of sipping poison slowly. If this situation is changing now, that is what I call a welcome change. But I’m going to hold off on the celebrations until I see where the change is going.

Because the guy writing the article is a hundred percent right: Clinton was handed a heaping piled-high plate of defeat. Clinton managed to turn it all around, and pretty much get everything else done besides the health care, by selling the poison liberalism with the three distracting agents listed above combined with a go-slow approach. He shifted into granny gears and got the job done. He sold us his bag o’ crap, and in so doing defined a way for all his successors to accomplish more of the same thing.

Take Your Daughter to Death Star Day

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Better Star Wars parody than the average…

Apparently the Stormtrooper Family has been seeing a few too many Doofus Dad movies, and has bought into the tired ol’ trope of “Daddy doesn’t give two shits about us because he spends too much time working to keep us fed, clothed, medically insured and drowning in all the toys that capture our interest for five seconds at a time.” Of course, in the case of that big tall guy dressed in black, that might really be true. Most of the time it’s a crock.

Back to the subject at hand…”Binky” was kind enough to link us, a few times. Then because of his links we realized we screwed up one of our slugs. Lost track of our roman numeral titles. It happens. So we fixed that somewhat, thereby severing Binky’s link, we think. Tried to find Binky’s address to let him know of our screw-up, as a courtesy, since it’s our screw-up and his link that got screwed up because of our screw-up…but we can’t find an e-mail address for the guy. That makes us feel bad, so we’re going to link back to him as a consolation.

But also, we liked the Star Wars clip. It are teh funny. It makes fun of Star Wars, and Doofus Dad movies, both. We like both of those. Making fun of them, I mean.

Handrails

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Ace just noticed that handrails don’t exist in the Star Wars universe.

I thought he might’ve stolen the idea from me, but when I explored my archives I found this bitch-pitch of mine somehow hadn’t made it into The Blog That Nobody Reads. I’ve been saying for years this has been a staple of the sci-fi genre — the absence of certain things. From anywhere.

1. Birthdays
2. Old women
3. Young men (at least, not too many young men)
4. Handrails
5. Dissenting viewpoints

Every single planet is populated by some wizened old geezer who’s going to be among the very first talking moving things you meet when you land on it, and happens to run the entire planet. His motives are somewhere between suspect and nefarious. And his lovely buxom daughter, who appears to have been conceived without the benefit of any mother living or dead worth mentioning. She’s never seen a young virile man ever before. She needs someone to teach her how to kiss.

And maybe pick out a wardrobe that would cover everything up. But first she needs to be taught how to kiss.

Everyone speaks absolutely flawless English.

Characters tend to be defined at the group level. Someone approaches a group with an offering of peace, or commerce, or to join forces — there is a spokesman for the group. What happens next just bugs the piss out of me: The spokesman thinks awhile, and then says “We agree.” Very rarely does anyone say something like “that’s quite an interesting proposal, give us an hour or two while we go off and think it over.” Nothing interesting happens there. Nothing like: Fredo wants to do right by the family but he’s humiliated and smarting from being passed over…or…Sonny has a famous Sicilian temper and doesn’t trust Tom like he should even though they were best friends in childhood…nothing complicated like that. Nope. Groups are atomic. There are no sub-factions developing within them, that would take time to explore, and in sci-fi every minute is prohibitively expensive. So — the group agrees. Event defined. Get to the next event in the story. Quick. And when the end product turns out to be boring, don’t blame the writers, you obviously didn’t have enough cute CGI creatures or blow up enough stuff.

The birthday thing: How in the world did Luke and Leia go four years not realizing they had the same damn birthday? The only possible answer is that in the Star Wars universe they don’t have ’em. All those stars in the galaxy with different planet revolution intervals, it’s just too much of a hassle to keep track. In all my years of watching and reading science fiction, as the writers flail around desperately trying to find ways to build the characters, failing at it more often than not, I’m reasonably sure the only birthday celebration I’ve ever seen was on Buck Rogers.

Prevailing Viewpoint

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Had this thing growing in my head for a little while, since last week sometime, not being entirely sure where I was trying to take it. I’ve got a feeling now that I’ve put some definition into it and squeaked out the first ten bullets, it’s going to explode into a hundred or more in short order.

It’s amazing all the things we just presume are true, just because large numbers of other folks are already presuming the same thing. Isn’t it?

1. The merit of a relatively conservative argument is measured in its advocate’s willingness to compromise, which means to reject certain key parts of it; the merit of a relatively progressive argument is measured in its advocate’s willingness to do the opposite.
2. Freeing a man who killed innocent people proves you are “civilized” and “compassionate.” Stopping such a man from killing innocent people just goes to show you’re some kind of a knuckle-dragging rube.
3. If you have an opinion about how your congressman should vote, you should write to him and explain it so he can maybe take the time to write back and tell you whether or not you got it right.
4. If you pass the right law, you can make the people who are bound by it into better people.
5. One sure-fire way to improve an economy is to lower the standard of living of people who invest in businesses, and increase the standard of living of people who don’t.
6. I admire someone with the courage to do what he knows is right regardless of what anyone says, but he’s a drooling idiot if he doesn’t do it exactly the way I think he should.
7. You don’t know what you’re talking about unless, when you’re looking for superior wisdom, you look to the kids who haven’t been around very long.
8. Since it’s the entire world that might fizzle out, we’ve only got one shot at saving it; we’d better confine our efforts to little tiny immeasurable things things like unplugging our coffee pots.
9. The right to vote should extend to everyone, unconditionally. The right to earn a living, speak your mind in a town hall meeting, defend a family — not so much.
10. The key to economic recovery is to authorize our government to take lots and lots of our money away from us, and then possibly give it back to us again.

How Expensive is Liberalism?

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Pete Du Pont explores, writing in WSJ Opinion:

One has already been signed into law by President Obama: an increase in the tax on tobacco, to $1.01 a pack of cigarettes from 39 cents, and to as much as 40 cents a cigar from a nickel–increases of 159% and 700%, respectively. This is expected to bring in $8 billion a year. Next up is a possible increase in alcohol, beer and wine taxes, raising about another $6 billion annually, and perhaps another $5 billion a year on sugary drinks will be enacted.

Then come a series of substantial tax increases that are on the Washington agenda that, if enacted, will create real problems for our country’s economy.

First, allowing the expiration of the previous Bush administration tax cuts at the end of 2010. These reductions increased government tax receipts by $785 billion (just as the Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts increased tax revenues) and gave us eight million new jobs over a 52-month period. The cuts go away if Congress does nothing, raising tax rates on the top earners will to 39.6% from 35%, and on the next-highest bracket to 36% from 33%. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that 55% of these tax increases will come from small-business income.

Next comes Rep. Charles Rangel’s additional tax increases, a part of the House health-care bill. The House Ways and Means chairman calls for a 1% surtax on couples with more than $350,000 in income, 1.5% on incomes more than $500,000, and 5.4% on incomes more than $1 million. The extra tax would kick in at lower levels for unmarried taxpayers. And if promised health-care cost savings don’t materialize, the surtaxes would automatically double.

Best Sentence LXX

Monday, August 24th, 2009

The seventieth award for Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) is hereby awarded to Maggie’s Farm:

Let me get this straight…

We’re going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn’t read it (and who smokes) with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s nearly broke.

What possibly could go wrong?

And don’t you dare say a disparaging word against the government’s ability to “compete” with the private sector, or I’ll call you a birther right-wing whack-job who’s probably a racist.

Shame on Us All

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Gerard is taking stock of where the blame and shame should go, with regard to the release of Lockerbie bombing mastermind Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, whose eyes are downcast, hat pulled down over his face, nose tucked into jacket collar, as he boards the plane home — to a hero’s welcome.

Who else should be looking downward, wistfully, at a ground they wish would swallow them up on the spot? Who else toils under the heavy burden of a boulder of guilt and shame on their shoulders? Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill? The entire Scottish government? Scotland herself? Just the moral imbeciles and reprobates who write overly-obsequious columns defending the decision? Perhaps, as Gerard’s headline says, the entire civilized world?

I vote for the last one.

It’s a topsy-turvy world in which we live. You don’t see these “tributes to our decency” written up about decisions to do things that make it more likely innocent people will live to see another day. No, you don’t; the extension of the right to live, somehow being connected to the personal decency of the authority who decides to make that extension, always seems to be granted to people who would murder others, or who would preserve the lives of those who would murder others.

“Civilized” behavior has come to have something to do with preserving those who destroy, or destroying those who would create or preserve. If you preserve those who create or preserve, or destroy those who would destroy those who would create or preserve, it seems no one’s ready to call you civilized. Those who are ready to call you a barbarian, on the other hand, have to queue up in back of a very long line.

Time to dig out that Bible quote again, you know the one…the one we like…Isaiah 5:20. This time I’ll let you Google it.

Obamacare Constitutional?

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

Maybe not

One of the more troubling components of the ObamaCare bill wending its way through the House is the inclusion of individual mandates to carry health insurance. What gives Congress the power to dictate that choice to American citizens? A single document enumerates Congressional power, and former Department of Justice attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey have some trouble finding that power in it. They argue, with appropriate citations of precedent, that HR3200 and any other bill that attempts to impose mandates will violate the Constitution:

Although the Supreme Court has interpreted Congress’s commerce power expansively, this type of mandate would not pass muster even under the most aggressive commerce clause cases. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the court upheld a federal law regulating the national wheat markets. The law was drawn so broadly that wheat grown for consumption on individual farms also was regulated. Even though this rule reached purely local (rather than interstate) activity, the court reasoned that the consumption of homegrown wheat by individual farms would, in the aggregate, have a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce, and so was within Congress’s reach.

The court reaffirmed this rationale in 2005 in Gonzales v. Raich, when it validated Congress’s authority to regulate the home cultivation of marijuana for personal use. In doing so, however, the justices emphasized that — as in the wheat case — “the activities regulated by the [Controlled Substances Act] are quintessentially economic.” That simply would not be true with regard to an individual health insurance mandate.

The otherwise uninsured would be required to buy coverage, not because they were even tangentially engaged in the “production, distribution or consumption of commodities,” but for no other reason than that people without health insurance exist. The federal government does not have the power to regulate Americans simply because they are there. Significantly, in two key cases, United States v. Lopez (1995) and United States v. Morrison (2000), the Supreme Court specifically rejected the proposition that the commerce clause allowed Congress to regulate noneconomic activities merely because, through a chain of causal effects, they might have an economic impact. These decisions reflect judicial recognition that the commerce clause is not infinitely elastic and that, by enumerating its powers, the framers denied Congress the type of general police power that is freely exercised by the states.

Well, double-hmmm. And to think it’s a constitutional law professor pushing it. How’d this get past Him?

Update: Speaking of abiding by the Constitution, Rick brings us video of some worthy commentary from an informed and somewhat righteously blazing leatherneck, who swore an oath to defend that document and sees to it that he is good for that oath. Not to be missed:

Courteous and respectful to everyone, friendly to no one. And what an appropriate place for it. Why don’t you head on over to his YouTube home page and thank him for his service to our country. Twice.

Water Soluble Bikini Really Works

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

Well, that’s a relief.

Trailer Dissolvable Bikini: does it work? from Clint.be on Vimeo.

D’JEver Notice? XXXVI

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

Another post at Feministing, and this is among the one-outta-ten posts that do not confine themselves to that erstwhile topic of “I hate this thing over there so much, help me hate it.”

Which of course can mean only one thing: Celebrating the killing of unborn babies. No, not just celebrating; today’s feminists don’t stop at celebrating, nor does Jessica Valenti. Crusading for more people to do it, and to do it casually. Up to, and past, the point of giving people instructions about whether they are supposed to feel sad or not.

In another win for reproductive justice this week, a federal judge called a South Dakota anti-choice law – which mandates that doctors tell women seeking abortions that the procedure increases the risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts – “untruthful and misleading.”

On the suicide issue, Schreier was convinced by multiple studies showing women who get abortions have no increased risk of suicide. The state provided arguments, but no evidence, to the contrary, she said.

“Because such a risk is not ‘known,’ the suicide disclosure language of the statute is untruthful and misleading,” Schreier wrote.

You know, because there is no link between abortion and depression.

The bad news?

But the judge upheld a portion of the informed consent law, which says abortions “terminate the life of a whole separate unique living human being.”

Well, I’ll take a small victory. For now.

Keep plugging away Jessica darling; You’ll be able to define humans out of existence any year now. You’re James Taggart, and I’m afraid what happened to him in the last few pages is what is one day going to happen to you, for precisely the same reason. I don’t want to see it happen but I don’t see how it can be avoided.

Ever notice this about the modern feminist movement? It’s supposed to have something to do with re-making our society, solidifying the role of women who live in it. So that they remain important to us, and our society becomes culturally encouraged to recognize that importance; to offer them the dignity they deserve.

And in its most recent phases of evolution, what are the two most indispensable positions? They are head & shoulders above all the rest: pro abortion, and pro gay marriage.

Those are the two positions most emphatically antithetical to the role of women in our society. The two positions most assured to belittle them, to confine their labors to things men could do just as capably. To condemn the female sex to roles most marginal, most replaceable, and least respected…at least when compared to motherhood. Feminism is supposed to make the female vibrant and vital, and yet as the years go on by it continues to nurture this petulant, pissy resentment against motherhood.

Pro abortion…pro gay marriage.

Some “feminist” movement you’ve turned out to be.

“Death Panel” is as Good a Name as Any

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

Charles Krauthammer exposes an ugly truth about these various efforts we’ve undertaken in the modern age to build our dream Utopian society that works “for the benefit of everyone”: A central pillar to the vision, is now and has always been, one of creating an exclusive club very much like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Unfortunately, he exposes this ugly truth not by realizing it about others and responsibly pointing it out, but by being a part of it.

Let’s see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I’ve got nothing against her. She’s a remarkable political talent. But there are no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

Speaking of debasing the debate…if you pop that link open and read it, you’ll see the next several paragraphs after this snide little salvo, Krauthammer goes on to most articulately make Palin’s point.

The good Dr. Melissa goes after the good Dr. Charles with some points he should have been able to realize on his own. The truth is, even when Krauthammer makes Palin’s point apparently without consciously realizing he’s making Palin’s point while telling Palin to shut up, he fails to capture exactly how bad things might get. But the point isn’t lost on Melissa Clouthier any more than it’s lost on Sarah Palin.

Taken on its own, Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 is not a death panel. It’s more a death recommendation.

Dr. Krauthammer forgets though, that this isn’t the only death-related provision of the bill or of this health care legislation generally. The counseling is an indicator of intent. While a doctor is financially incentivized to have a death discussion, the government program will, by nature of sheer numbers, want people to choose, as President Obama says, a “pain pill over surgery.”

Further, the government, and a bureaucratic board of 27 appointees will be deciding care for people. That is, 27 people will be answering questions like: who receives care? Who qualifies? Who doesn’t? In what circumstances? It will be a bureaucratic answer and bureaucrats, who cannot be sued and have no incentive beyond cutting costs and appeasing political special interests. Individual needs will get lost in the collective good. Some people will die because of these choices.

This Utopian society we’ve been trying to build that nobody living or dead has actually seen…I’m just fascinated with it. During the planning and construction, someone is always being excluded from something. Old people should just die, former Governors of Alaska should just shut up, those people shouldn’t be in this town hall because they’re too well dressed.

We’re trying to find a way to get “everyone” covered, no matter what, so nobody’s excluded.

Before we talk about that, we should have Sarah leave the room.

She has the annoying habit of pointing out that this plan might give us an incentive to kill people.

Which, according to Krauthammer’s own words, is exactly right. She’s gotta go.

I would argue that the entire exercise of building this society is, from the foundation on up, riddled with contradictions. It has no clue as to whether it wants to honor the fundamental God-given right of humans to exist and to fight for that right to exist…it doesn’t know. Because its answer to that is both a yes and a no. Both of them rather emphatic. And so it labors under the heavy burden of an inherent contradiction. It ends up fighting itself. That’s why it’s failing.

When Dr. Clouthier cross-posted this at Right Wing News, Commenter CavalierX cut right to the heart of the matter in one deft motion, like a skilled surgeon wielding a sharp scalpel. Every single syllable of his is loaded with wisdom, you know this to be true because every single syllable of it could have been mine.

I generally like Krauthammer, but he’s an ass if he thinks there’s no such thing as a “death panel” just because the words “death panel” don’t appear in the bill that hasn’t been written yet. Someone’s going to have to make decisions on what qualifies people to recieve what treatments, and you can call it a commission, bureau, cabinet, task force or board — they will decide who lives and who dies. “Death panel” is as good a name as any.

While I Was Away

Friday, August 21st, 2009

From here.

Hat tip: Gerard.

B and C

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Beyonce Knowles and Carly Zucker: A super-hot WAG goes up against genetic perfection.

Advantage Knowles. Nothing beats genetic perfection. The woman looks like she was grown in a lab…in a good way. Every single inch, from her eyebrows to her ankles, is as succulent as it can possibly be.

But Zucker is a feast for the eyes, and has better than even odds of prevailing in another match-up.

D’JEver Notice? XXXV

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

I read stories like this one and this one; I see men whose principles and intellect I genuinely respect, get snookered by the idea that anything that could be called extremism must always be bad (think on that a moment or two, and let the irony just wash over you).

And it hits me like a brick in the balls…

The plague of the twenty-first century, which has reached the status of a worldwide epidemic, is simply this: We have defined civilization as ignorance and apathy with regard to who is, and is not, worthy of our trust. We have defined it as a worldview that there are no standards to be imposed on anyone who enters into any contract, written or implied, or any exchange of dialogue, terms, agreements, compromises. We have settled on a bankrupt philosophy that says any midpoint between two mindsets that start out divergent, nevermind the original cause of their being divergent, must irrefutably exist as some optimal point of beneficence and reason.

In short, we have defined civilization as a determination to negotiate with anyone and everyone. If you are willing to negotiate with people, but only certain types of people, we have settled on a viewpoint that you are the definition of a barbarian, and others who negotiate first and ask questions later ought to be your role model as you try to improve. The truth is the exact opposite of that.

The truth is, if civilization has any definition at all, it is a recognition of tiers of humanity. Not along lines of gender or creed or race or birth class; but of values. Civilization is opt-in, and the opting-in has to do with respect for fundamental social codes. Starting with — Don’t kill people.

People who respect these things cannot negotiate with people who do not. They can sure as hell fool themselves into thinking they can; that’s easy. But to achieve a lasting framework of agreement, depends on confining that framework within the boundaries of people who respect these basic values.

Our modern disease is that many of us think it’s possible to form alliances between decent people and savages. What’s even worse, is we’ve begun to re-define humanity as a readiness, willingness and ability to engage in this delusion. Even worse than that — we have started to define this as some kind of leadership, as our modern yardstick of statesmanlike conduct. To compromise with people who are unworthy of compromise. We’ve been treating this like a badge of said statesmanlike conduct: Sit down at a negotiating table with a venomous creature, get some pictures taken of you while you’re there, and this somehow shows you’ve got what it takes.

May we awaken from this sickness quickly, and may our awakening be costless to the innocent. But I’m afraid the muse of probability doesn’t smile on that wish.

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Lockerbie Bomber Freed

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

It’s rapidly become an “Everyone Else is Blogging It, I Might As Well Too” thing, but I have to do it anyway because it fits into something we’ve been discussing here of late; specifically, is it always a rationally moderate thing to compromise with people? All people? All the time? No matter what their values are?

The Lockerbie bomber has been freed on “compassionate grounds”:

The only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing returned home Thursday to a cheering crowd after his release from a Scottish prison — an outrage to many relatives of the 270 people who perished when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded.

President Barack Obama said the Scottish decision to free terminally ill Abdel Baset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds was a mistake and said he should be under house arrest. Obama warned Libya not to give him a hero’s welcome.

Despite the warning, thousands of young men were on hand at a Tripoli airport where al-Megrahi’s plane touched down. Some threw flower petals as he stepped from the plane. He wore a a dark suit and a burgundy tie and appeared visibly tired.

He was accompanied by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, who was dressed in a traditional white robe and golden embroidered vest. The son pledged last year to bring al-Megrahi home and raised his hand victoriously to the crowd as he exited the plane. They then sped off in a convoy of white sedans.

International photographers and camera crews — along with most Libyan broadcast media — were barred from filming the arrival at the airport, which decades ago had been part of a U.S. air base.

Al-Megrahi’s release disgusted many victims’ relatives.

“You get that lump in your throat and you feel like you’re going to throw up,” said Norma Maslowski, of Haddonfield, New Jersey, whose 30-year-old daughter, Diane, died in the attack.

“This isn’t about compassionate release. This is part of give-Gadhafi-what-he-wants-so-we-can-have-the-oil,” said Susan Cohen, of Cape May Court House, New Jersey. Her 20-year-old daughter, Theodora, was killed.

I am not questioning the humanity of the Lockerbie bomber.

I am challenging the civil nature of those who freed him. They turned justice on its head for no better reason than to prove what swell folks they are. What they really accomplished was the exact opposite.

They’re worse than creeps. They have revealed a code of “ethics” that besmirches whatever contract comes into contact with it. Forget about governing a jurisdiction; people like this can’t be trusted to know right from wrong any better than a dog can be trusted to pay a mortgage on time.

Cloward-Piven

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Learn:

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty” in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called “crisis strategy” or “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven’s early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. “Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one.
:
This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements — mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown — providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.
:
The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York’s welfare crisis horrified America, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in “the end of welfare as we know it” — the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements. Both Cloward and Piven attended the White House signing of the bill as guests of President Clinton.
:
Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.

Let’s not negotiate with these people. No matter what. Let’s just renounce this supposedly-noble objective of trying to find a midpoint or “common ground.”

I’ve spent a lifetime having it beaten into my head that only crazy old men in plaid shirts crusted with their own drool babble on about anything that comes close to “communists trying to ruin our way of life and tear down our country.”

But as I learn more about the turmoil that was taking place around the time of my birth, I find the facts point more and more toward this as the proper way to look at things. You don’t need to drink vodka and wear a big fur hat with a red star on the front to be a commie.

And negotiating with one is like negotiating with a rattlesnake. It is the straddling of a divide that stretches from one universe to a wholly incompatible other universe. It is a compromise between order and anarchy, creation and destruction, good and evil. It doesn’t take much at all to deserve a spot at a conference table, but one unalterable standard must be that you have to want a spot at the conference table. And commies don’t want one. They just want to tear things down.

Hat tip to Boortz.

World’s Longest-Serving Bartender Retires

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

At least, if you think you’ve been tending bar longer, to make a claim you’d have to ‘fess up to breakin’ the law…because this gentleman started as early as early gets.

Angelo Cammarata, whom the Guinness Book of World Records recognized as the world’s longest-serving bartender, is coming up on last call.

At least at Cammarata’s Cafe, the West View watering hole where he’s been pouring for most of his 77 years of tending bar.

The place, which he still helps his sons John and Frank run, has been sold, and the Cammaratas will be out of there within weeks when the new owners are approved by the state.
:
He laughs at the notion of other job offers; the owners of the new place, Danny’s, asked him to stay on. But he’s ready to finally actually retire, so he can take care of his wife, Marietta, at the Ross home where they moved a few years ago after decades of living above the bar.

“Closing after 77 years” read hand-lettered signs out front, offering customer-appreciation $1 drafts and $2 bottles right up to the day-long party that will end it all.

“Camm,” as people call him, started serving beer at his father’s North Side grocery the moment Prohibition ended at midnight on April 7, 1933…His immigrant father built a bar on that site in 1935 and Angelo kept working there, taking a break to serve in the Navy in World War II.

He’s 95, and from his picture looks about 75. Well played, Camm. Happy retirement to you.

O’Reilly Flips Out

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

We’ve all heard it, or most of us have heard it…over, and over, and over, and over and over again. This is, I believe, an enormous mistake on the part of those who are trying to impress us with the audio. There is so much taken away with discarding the visual.

For one thing, it’s a whole new level of funny. I laughed my ass off. And the other thing, perhaps closely related to the first thing, is…I’m somewhat inclined to see things Bill’s way here. The older I get, the more of a visceral reaction I have to the unclear instruction. You know how “unclear” is an anagram of “nuclear”? That’s because of me. Good instructions, most folks can follow — that’s why they’re good instructions. Shitty instructions take a special skill, and I don’t gots it. The more life challenges me to produce this talent I don’t gots, that I never once in my life implied to a single soul I gots, the more aggravated I gets. Big time. It’s like a one-legged man being challenged to kick butts. The five hundredth time, you’re ready to stand up on something, break something, and yell “I get it I get it I get it I get it, everyone can do it I can’t! Now stop it already!” I can feel the blood getting hotter as it is piped up into my head through my jugular. Maybe there’s more Irish in me than I thought.

Earlier this week I was in traffic court being led down this line and that line like a head of stupid livestock…and yet, even though I was livestock, I was still being called upon to make decisions. Nobody there understood these decisions. Rampant confusion. The impulse was damn near irresistible to jump up on the nearest table and yell at the top of my lungs, “Mutherfuckers, if it came naturally to us to follow shitty instructions we wouldn’t be here in the first place!”

But ya know, maybe that wouldn’t have gone over so well.

Bill O’Reilly shows wisdom (well…limited…this is the age of the YouTubes) in knowing where he can throw a temper tantrum. But he’s no more sanitized than I in his use of the King’s English, so watch your volume level and share the experience with some mature hardy souls who might appreciate it.

Driving While Female

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Woman DriverThey’re gunnin’ fer the gals:

A nationwide crackdown on drunken driving that starts tomorrow will feature sobriety checkpoints, saturation patrols and a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign.

It also will focus on women, who represent a growing percentage of drunken drivers, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said yesterday.

“Impaired driving is an issue that cuts across all segments of society and, sadly, the number of arrests of women driving under the influence is on the rise. This is clearly a very disturbing trend,” Mr. LaHood said at a news conference in Washington, D.C.

He cited FBI statistics showing that arrests of women driving under the influence increased by nearly 30 percent from 1998 to 2007. Over the same period, DUI arrests of men decreased by 7.5 percent, although men still were arrested four times as often as women.

An analysis by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that the number of impaired women drivers involved in fatal crashes increased in 10 states last year, including Ohio and West Virginia, despite an overall decline of 9 percent in drunken driver crashes. In Pennsylvania, the number of female drunken drivers in fatal crashes declined from 67 in 2007 to 54 last year.

“Women are driving more like men and, unfortunately, have picked up some of their dangerous habits,” said Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, which is participating in the enforcement blitz.

Hmmm. I think this one, I’ll just leave up there…without comment. Quit while ahead.

For Now, We Dance

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

And we didn’t get here by saying “Oh, we’re willing to compromise and be moderate…that proves we’re reasonable…” We got here by the opposition being unreasonable. And with everyone realizing that on their own.

A certain faithful reader needed to see that. Now then. On with the dancing.