Archive for May, 2010

Train vs. Tornado…

Friday, May 21st, 2010

…from the ass-end point-of-view of the train.

And how was your day?

Hat tip to Boortz.

Lockheed AC-130

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Hat tip to Buck.

Ace is Picking on Valerie Plame

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Well, good.

The Obligatory Rand Paul Post

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Terrorists are probing America for weak spots. Once they succeed, they’ll move into high gear on this. Actually, the very reason they’re checking out our weak spots is because, shark-like, they smelled blood on the water in the first place.

The estimates that 5,000 barrels per day are being let loose in the Gulf of Mexico, may be vastly understated.

A little girl told the First Lady, right out there in front of God and everybody, that her mother doesn’t have papers.

In 2009, for every three dollars in tax revenue our government collected, it spent five.

The President of another country came to our Congress and gave a speech. He singled out one of our states and unloaded a whole bunch of crap all over it. He was not boiled in oil for this. He wasn’t yanked off stage, he wasn’t even booed off stage. Quite to the contrary, one of our two major political parties — the one in power right now — cheered wildly.

Meanwhile, our Attorney General, at last report, still hasn’t read the Arizona law he so vociferously criticizes. Our Homeland Security Secretary also hasn’t “reviewed it in detail.” This is our egghead administration…our Englightened Ones. Their coronation was supposed to signal once and for all that it’s pronounced NU-CLE-AR, and their wise policies would make us all wonderful and happy. Well, how much can their opinions be worth if they aren’t based on fact?

President Obama is replacing His Director of National Intelligence.

Should I even go into the hot new “scientific” debate about whether the planet is cooking or freezing to death?

There is an awful lot of news out there. I make it a point to crack open Memeorandum at least once a day so I can stay up to date not only on what’s going on, but on what “they” think is particularly worthy of extended discussion and analysis.

In response to the natural question “who exactly is ‘they’,” I cannot provide an answer. What is ironic is that this makes the nameless faceless “they” a lot more important, not less so. Someone is grasping for a whole lot of power, and succeeding at getting it.

See, whoever this “they” is, “they” think the one thing that is truly deserving of extended analysis is this: Rand Paul’s position on the Civil Rights Act that was signed into law when he was one year old. And not the senate candidate’s real position on it, oh no: But his ostensible position. How it could be interpreted. The faceless nameless “they” is making sure we’re all up to speed on the wild, fragile, wild-ass-guess ruminations, interpretations and inferences of yet another faceless nameless “they.”

Now if you’re not a lazy, casual consumer of news, the meaning of this is unmistakable: Rand Paul has just become a threat. Once a Republican has become a threat, we have this informal tradition that all of the printing presses and all of the airwaves and all of the web servers have to be filled with whispering. He will be incompetent or he will be evil, perhaps both. Typically, the way we decide this is with the “Pearl Harbor Rule”: If the Republican was born before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he is evil incarnate like Jesse Helms or Dick Cheney; if he was born afterward he’s a dope like George W. Bush or Sarah Palin. It’s all about fear. We need to scare the brittle man-bashing females with daddy issues into thinking the country is about to be run by their parents, we need to scare the minority advocacy groups into thinking the place is about to be taken over by the KKK. Or, we need to scare the snooty, condescending, phony-baloney intellectual atheists into thinking it’s going to be transformed into a theocracy, under the tutelage of some moron who can’t even spell the word “dinosaur” — which, by the way, he’s convinced was lumbering around 4,000 years ago doing beast-of-burden work for Fred Flintstone.

Rand Paul was born well after Pearl Harbor, yet somehow the test has been twisted around. The best way to fight him is to portray him as a racist, not as a dimbulb. I guess that just goes to demonstrate the passage of time.

James Taranto opines on the non-issue:

Taken at face value, the question itself–How would you have voted if you had been in the Senate as an infant?–is silly. It is a reasonable question only if it is understood more broadly, as an inquiry into Paul’s political philosophy. The question within the question is: How uncompromising are you in your adherence to small-government principles?

Paul gave his answer: Pretty darn uncompromising–uncompromising enough to take a position that is not only politically embarrassing but morally dubious by his own lights, as evidenced by this transcript from the Courier-Journal interview, provided by the left-wing site ThinkProgress.org:

Interviewer: But under your philosophy, it would be OK for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?

Paul: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part — and this is the hard part about believing in freedom — is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example — you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things…It’s the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.

Again, Paul could have given a “straight” answer to the question–a flat “no”–that made clear his personal disapproval of discrimination while evading what was really a question about his political philosophy. Far from being evasive, Paul has shown himself to be both candid and principled to a fault.

We do mean to a fault. In this matter, Paul seems to us to be overly ideological and insufficiently mindful of the contingencies of history. Although we are in accord with his general view that government involvement in private business should be kept to a minimum, in our view the Civil Rights Act’s restrictions on private discrimination were necessary in order to break down a culture of inequality that was only partly a matter of oppressive state laws. On the other hand, he seeks merely to be one vote of 100 in the Senate. An ideologically hardheaded libertarian in the Senate surely would do the country more good than harm.

I’m not sure why it’s a fault to believe in the First Amendment, and to keep standing up for it when the establishment intelligentsia comes after you for doing so. And I’m thoroughly lost on why Paul is the one on the defensive here. Who are all these people who find fault with what he said? Don’t they believe in free speech and free enterprise? Or do they believe in it only to a certain point? They think government should interfere with how a private business is run? In what other scenarios is this permissible? Do they recognize a line, and if so, are they involved in moving that line? Do they tolerate someone else moving the line?

Half a century ago it was a Woolworth’s lunch counter, in the mid 1990’s it was breastfeeding. Does the business manager have anything to say about anything, ever? Are all businesses merely subsidiaries of the all-powerful glorious federal government?

Must all ethical conundrums be resolved through federal law? Should we keep legislating and legislating until we all think the same way about everything?

Those questions, in my view, are what we should be asking; his primary victory notwithstanding, I see Paul as less of a newsworthy item, far less of a threat, than those who seek to criticize him. After all, Rand Paul has merely won a nomination. He may very well never be seated in the United States Senate. And even if he is, as Taranto points out, he’ll be one of a hundred. If he’s rigid and uncompromising as that one-out-of a-hundred, what of it? Isn’t it a logical contradiction to insist that all hundred senators must be middle-of-the-road fair-weather-friend wafflers, for the sake of moderation?

Contrasted with the younger Paul, the people who are deciding that this is some kind of a scandal, that it is worthy of more attention than the fact that the current administration’s decisions about state laws are based on a whole-lotta-nuthin’, are making their “policies” right freakin’ now. They do this by declaring what is a scandal, what is not, and that we should all fall in line and be concerned about this thing but not that thing.

We cannot unilaterally decide as individuals whether they’ll succeed at that or not. But we can certainly decide as individuals whether they’ll be met with any resistance. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that this faceless nameless “they” is not used to meeting up with any.

Walmart Manager Stabbed

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Yeah, that’s not good. Girlfriend murmured something about this to me as she came to bed last night.

A shoplifter at a Walmart store in Folsom stabbed a manager as he tried to take back the stolen merchandise, police said.

The scuffle took place Thursday afternoon at the store on the 1000 block of Riley Street.

Folsom police said the attacker ran across Glenn Drive and onto a bike trail.

The manager walked across the street to Folsom Fire Station 35, where he was treated and eventually transported with unknown injuries.

Folsom police officers were searching a landscaped area near the main entrance to the store Thursday evening.

The attacker is wanted for robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and other charges, police said.

Yeah I know, it’s Walmart where all the riff raff hang out. Nothing to see here.

That really isn’t the situation at all. I know this piece of space well. It’s 3.7 miles from my front door by bike, across the street from our local post office. Wally-World and the fire station form a sort of archway dividing a thriving business district from an upscale residential full of houses we’ve seriously prospected at one time or another. A hundred yards around the corner is the park where we took my son when he was a toddler, and across from that, the other park where I taught him to catch a ball.

No neighborhood deserves to be terrorized, of course. But at the same time it’s a real sock in the gut seeing a community like Wholesome-Folsom, which has worked so hard throughout so many years to be among the very best places you can think about raising kids, get all stabby.

Glad to see the manager went and sought medical assistance on his own. We drifted off to sleep hearing that he’d been “stabbed repeatedly” and not knowing what to think about that.

Hot Facts About Star Wars

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

“The Wussification of the Workplace”

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Anchoress, hat tip to Gerard:

A man I know began working 20 years ago at a large corporation that he deemed it a pleasure to work for. The CEO and founder was (gasp!) a commoner, an ordinary engineer who had an idea and ran with it. Perhaps because he had worked for a living, and had not simply stepped out of a “good” school with an MBA, he knew how to treat the people who worked for him; compensation was generous; enthusiasm and imagination brought perks, and morale was high. People worked late because they were excited; they wanted to keep working.

Then the CEO sold his enormously successful company to a corporate giant. Out went the upper management that had been honed “from the ranks,” as it were. In came the suits; the “sophisticated” men and women, “from the right schools,” who could talk about what wine went with what entree, or their walking holiday in Burma, but had no understanding of the dreamers (and engineers are dreamers, before they are anything) whose knowledge and imaginations they needed to ensnare and encourage, and whose intelligence and dignity deserved respect.

Not just respect, but inclusion.

Morale quickly went down. Working for suits who knew all the “theory” of business, and how to read numbers, but had not the least understanding of what made a “human resource” so resourceful, the engineers and developers and testers and marketers and admins began to rush out the door as soon as the clock struck five. The fun was gone, the energy sapped; enthusiasm was no longer on the radar.
:
These suited MBA’s can’t seem to get it. Huddled in their enclaves, they have difficulty understanding that a hard-working engineer with excellent problem-solving skills, a positive outlook and a knack for team-building needs more than an official performance review that ends with a condescendingly vague note about his being “a valuable member” of the collective whole.
:
The men who built the Empire State Building stood on bare planks to work in the sky; paradoxically, they were grounded in reality, not theory. They did not have to concern themselves with tones and timbres; nor did the educated architects who dreamed up skyscrapers. One suspects that if either the man on the beam or the one with the blueprints had been approached by a tanning-booth-bronzed-and-manicured corporate bureaucrat, and asked to enumerate their “goals” as part of their “performance review” they both would have hooted at him in derision. “My goal,” the first would say, “is to not fall. It’s to stay alive so I can pick up my pay, have a beer with the wife, raise the kids and get into heaven a half-hour before the devil knows I’m dead.”

Anchoress the latest to discover the Architect-and-Medicator paradigm. I must say, every year that I see roll on by, instills in me a tiny bit more reluctance to refer to this divide in male-female terms. I keep running into these tough-as-steel Dagny Taggarts, along with their opposite pussy beta males, who upset the trend. It isn’t boy-girl. It is a way of doing one’s daily problem-solving.

Architects think.

Medicators feel.

The Architect yearns to make a difference as an individual.

Medicators long to join a collective.

Architects draw a perimeter around what they do, and enforce the perimeter, as well as the rules inside it.

Medicators seek and destroy. They become aware of something within earshot or line-of-sight that isn’t adhering to protocol, and go all control-freakish all over it.

Architects see the world as a confluence of autonomously-working objects, which come into contact with each other, and in so doing create cause-and-effect relationships with each other. This is how the Architect learns how to do things. He doesn’t see it as “grab your pencil this way, and draw the line.” He sees it as “When you drag the pencil across the paper, it makes a line.” There’s a big difference between those two statements.

The Medicator is unlikely to come up with new ways of doing things, because he learns step-by-step. What he knows how to do is all scripted, and he is therefore doomed to always learn, at most, just a piece of how to do it. Which suits him just fine. Push this button. The light will come on. But what if the light doesn’t come on?

The Architect labors toward a state of things which has not been seen before. If it has been seen before, he can’t wait to get off this project and onto a “real” one.

The Medicator labors toward a state of things that was seen exactly this time last year. He prepares reports. They are not excellent reports; the best they can be is identical to last year’s. The fabric of his very innermost mind is clerical.

The very best outcome the Architect can envision for his work, is something that ends with “er.” Taller. Bigger. Faster. More powerful. Stronger. Farther.

The very best outcome the Medicator can envision for his work, is the word “compliant.”

The world needs both to spin properly. But if both work together and conflict is entirely avoided, the Medicators will get rid of all the Architects because they care more about what everybody else is doing, and it’s in their nature to get rid of whatever doesn’t conform.

And so a civilized society will hang onto its own cajones only when its Architects become Architects with teeth. When the Architects become fearsome-when-cornered. When they are ready, willing, able — and permitted — to utter those all important words, “Begone From Here, You Medicator, And Go Do Your Medicating Someplace Else!” When the project perimeter can be enforced again.

Because every wonder-machine-of-tomorrow, needs a garage in which to get built. With big ol’ heavy wooden doors that can be locked shut.

He Basically Served in ‘Nam

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

I work in a highly technical job and it continues to come as a surprise to me when I hear people there using the word “basically.” The B-word means, in my experience, that you’re stating something for the record because you want people to behave as if it’s really true, but you aren’t really willing to put your name up next to it without some insulator. That’s what the word “basically” is for, it is an insulator. It has no other purpose.

In my world, that means it might as well be a negator; it might as well be synonymous with “not.” Maybe that’s Dick Blumenthal’s problem, maybe he should have told people “I basically served in Viet Nam.”

I do hate that word.

I basically think poor Blumenthal is being given a bum rap here, and a raw deal. Basically, I agree with the old dictum that every time a democrat is caught lying, a Republican somewhere must have done the same thing, because there is basically perfect symmetry at work here. Basically, all they’re trying to do is help the “little guy” — who is basically you and me — and when they tell you something you can basically trust ’em.

And it’s such a tragedy this “anti-incumbent mood” is driving so many of them out of office. A real shame. Basically.

Virtue Police

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

They’re suffering from a Rodney Dangerfield problem, can’t get no respect (hat tip to Cas).

When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition.

But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping.

A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix.

For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop.

According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.

Old Iron thinks this is hilarious.

Me, I’m just waiting for the same thing to happen here. It’s just too bad we don’t have any “virtue police” who strut around begging for an ass-kicking.

Or do we (hat tip to Boortz)?

Yes I know these are kids and I shouldn’t be hoping they get beaten up, and I also see it is a parody. But we do have “virtue police” of our own.

It would seem both countries are bit overdue in the “civil disobedience” department. It would be nice if a tree hugger, at any age, started waggling a finger at someone for…not littering, I’m with ’em on the littering thing, I hate litterers…but something altogether acceptable. Like having a dorm room fridge. Or drinking out of a styrofoam cup. And then, how did Old Iron put it? Get his ass handed to him by a girl in a Ninja outfit.

It would make my day. Just sayin’.

Memo For File CXII

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

I’m waiting to see if I’m going to lose my big toenail.

You see, the Daddy Fridge that sits outside and assumes the responsibility for storing all of the alcoholic beverages, sits at a certain height above the ground. The door is pressed shut with a magnetic seal, possessing sufficient power to suspend a suitcase full of overfed ferrets from a light fixture so it won’t fall. There is significant jerking force required to rip the thing open, and the door has a certain mass to it. The lower part of the door is elevated above the cement at a height greater than the fleshy part of your foot, but less than your toenail…

Cringing yet? You can see what’s coming?

William the ConquerorI am not altogether sure what worked me into my agitated state this weekend. I do remember something had sapped my patience, and it was time for a refill. And so out I went, to the balcony, to tap into the Daddy Fridge and replenish my supply of mead. My sense of awareness suitably diminished, I pried the door open out of its powerful magnetic beam, and the heavy tempered-glass door went crashing into my toenail, driving it into the fleshy part of the toe. This, naturally, infuriated me. Such insolence! How dare this inanimate object presume to tell me what’s what and what-for. And so I channeled my surge of adrenaline toward slamming the beast shut, so it should know its proper place…bottles of sparkling water atop the fridge, sent flying in all directions by this display of bravado.

Like a Neanderthal brandishing a club, I gripped my twelve ounces of ale by the neck, slamming the screen door shut behind me. And I made it known that, in my capacity as Lord of the Manor and Master of all he surveys, I had asserted my dominance over this inanimate object and taught it a lesson about who rules the roost. A lesson it shall not soon forget! Ha ha!

The Queen of the Castle then informed me that I seemed to be getting some inanimate blood on her inanimate rug.

Nonsense! Quick as a flash, His Lordship sat all cross-legged Indian-style on the couch, pulled over his mini-notebook to continue reading His Royal E-Mails, and in one deft motion pried the metal top off of his mead. But then — hark, what is this? A sanguine solution, warm to the touch, began to pool up under his royal butt cheeks where his toe rested. His Lordship looketh down and beheld the thick reddish liquid gushing out of his extremity.

Begone with ye, intoned Her Ladyship. Hie thee thence to the bathroom sink, and let me not lay eyes upon thy chauvinistic ass until thou hast bandaged thy wound, and acted to stem the flow of thy bodily fluids upon my living room finery.

And so the household patriarch did sterilize his own self, quite obediently, as best he could. He doth knowest his place in the castle.

So who has emerged victorious in that melee, man or machine? I claim victory, for I have made my message clear. One does not throw the fight merely by emerging from it wounded. But I am hoping to keep that toenail. In the next day or two, we shall see.

On a different subject: At the beginning of April, we acquired some new neighbors who live downstairs. We think they might be giant insects in human costumes; humans aren’t supposed to have that many kids. I’m sure they’re breaking the fire code six ways from Sunday. But that is not the worst of it.

They seem to be foreclosed-upon homeowners. Every single one of their fifty-or-sixty kids m-u-s-t have a bicycle, and these are chained out in front of their apartment. Nobody is allowed to wear shoes inside…so these are strewn about as well. Dinner in that household is late, like 9:30 or 10:00. I can tell this because they are fond of East Indian spices, including Curry, Clove, Fennel, Turmeric and sweet Chutney. I’ve given up trying to figure out which among these provokes the allergic reaction my girlfriend has in the wee hours of the morning.

Naturally, each one of the precious chillun’s has a teevee bigger than the one we have in our living room…and the one in their living room, is a freakin’ monster. And naturally, they like to have the volume cranked. Heavy on the bass.

FurballI was just noticing our new neighbors, friendly as they were, seemed to be doing just about everything wrong without even realizing it. Almost felt bad for them. Almost. One day, I had intoned out loud…or silently to myself, I cannot remember which…there’s only one thing they have not yet done. They have yet to acquire an annoying, cantankerous, anti-social, rodent size irascible little yip-dog.

Guh…Morgan. Bad Morgan. Dumb, dumb, bad ol’ Morgan. Why did you have to go and think that?

What do I call the new arrival? HFH for Hound From Hell…or SWT for Snowball With Teeth?

I heard the miserable cur before I saw it. I was hauling home some groceries and I saw a little boy about seven years old coming the other way, but before he came around the corner I heard the barking and the yipping and the snarling and the yelping. This is Folsom, so at first I thought nothing of it — our suburb is filled with people who think they’re walking their dogs, when the dogs are really walking them. But this really was a wild beast. Big as a softball maybe, but still thoroughly dedicated to the ways of the jungle. The scrawny kid continued to pull on the leash in a vain effort to estabish dominance, as I had (more successfully) done with the refrigerator…

And as we crossed paths, something surreal happened.

I began to feel this sensation on my ankles. As if a starving kitten somehow thought I was carrying milk down there. I thought…could it be? No. And I peered down between the grocery bags in my arms, and sure enough, the little demonic furball somehow was laboring under the delusion that my jugular was down there and was lunging for it. The little boy continued more futile endeavors to assert human supremacy, and I continued on my way. “Oh my God,” I thought to myself, “that was the one thing they hadn’t done yet.”

Our apartment unit is the preferred location for birds to build their nests. I know this. I have conducted an informal survey all around the building. Other units have zero nests. We have four.

There is bird shit all over the place. Birds dive at us as if they’re the residents, and we are the interlopers. Worse yet, by international treaty, the government I support with my taxes says the birds are correct about this. It is illegal to relocate a bird’s nest. I suppose we’ve put these laws together to demonstrate our benevolence and harmlessness as a biped species, to get the avians to like us more better. Well, let me tell you, it ain’t workin’. Unless lifting your tailfeathers and leaving a big ol’ trail of white crap all over my stairs, and then dive bombing me on top of it to add insult to injury, is some Audubon Society way of saying “we think you’re just swell” — and I have serious doubts about that — they fucking hate us.

The blessing in all this? I know I’m sensitive to these slights only because my biggest problem in the world…for now…is that by Friday night I might be down to nine toenails. I don’t have any problems bigger than that, and for this I am thankful.

But still, it’s death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts. There are piles and piles of bird shit. My girlfriend’s upper respiratory system closes down some mornings, if we forget what’s going on and leave the windows open, which used to be a favorite summertime ritual of ours. And on the weekends there is that yip-yip-yip-yipping from that untamed, wild furball. I’ve lived in Folsom for a lot of years by now. Poeple who think they can train their dogs, and can, do not annoy me…people who cannot train dogs, and know they cannot train them, also do not annoy me. People who hang onto their untrainable dogs, thinking they can train them while the dog proceeds to whip them into shape — I find that annoying. I see it as a form of animal abuse.

Female VikingMaybe this makes me chauvinistic…again…but it is clear to me that dogs have been built to respond to the sound of an adult, male voice. If when you belt out a command, either for real or in rehearsal, and it doesn’t come out as an octave below middle-C or lower…then, I’m sorry, but you do not have what it takes to train a dog. The canine ear is not going to listen to you. It’s long past time the world became aware of this. Watching these grown women and little boys “walk” the dogs here and there, after awhile it just starts to wear on you. The soprano and alto voices, curtly telling “Oscar” to heel, stop sniffing that, come, sit, sit, sit…and Oscar doesn’t give a shit about any of it. It really starts to get tedious after awhile, all that ineffectual squeaking. It isn’t that I hate dogs. I just don’t think dogs are being treated fairly, if we’re going through the motions of training them but not really training them.

I ordered a disc from Uncle Matty. We’re going to view it one time, for content, then bundle it back up again and leave it as a present, in the middle of the night. It’s about the most neighborly way to handle the problem. We’ll just make that a gift from a secret admirer, if ya will.

But no one is sick. Nobody is coming after our paychecks. No one’s dead, no one’s dying. I’m walking with a slight limp, but what of it? I am descended from Vikings. If they walked around with a slight limp, it meant one thing: A battle had lately been concluded, and if they were around to do the limping then they must’ve won. You should see the other guy!

The Daddy Fridge — whether it’s ripping out chunks of my flesh or not — is stocked full of delicious cold suds.

Life is good.

Yer a-Peein’

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

19. Is Europe all that & a bag of chips?

That’s from my list of twenty-five questions…that, uh…well, I never did come up with a good name for that list. It’s a list of questions that, if I know how you’re going to answer one, I know with something approaching perfect certainty how you’re going to answer all of the others.

Cylarz is unequivocal:

No. What kind of stupid question is that? Before they were the continent of socialism and immorality, they were the continent of tyranny and petty grievances among one another. Our forebears came here to get away from all of the nonsense going on there.

There is something about the way European political leaders talk that just sets my teeth on edge. And it isn’t the sound of their voices (although there is that, too). There’s something in their consonant-punctuated resonance that produces a sharp pain…whereas when His Holiness President Soetoro drones on with His uhs and His ers and His “let me be clear” and His “make no mistake” and His “for far too long we have”…all I can report is a dull ache. The euro-pansy produces a special agony where Chairman Zero brings only monotony.

I think it is this: They seem to deliberately confuse the objective with the subjective. They speak of priorities as if the priorities have some timeless quality to them, as if it has always been this way and shall always be this way as long as the rivers flow and the rocks sit around; but what they really mean is “while I am in office.” And it is to be implicitly understood that the latter of those is what they really mean. It is as if they are trapped in that revolving door of proving what wonderful decent people they are, and then thirty second later, proving it all over again. European or not, that has always bugged me.

And not without reason. It leads to bad policy. Their crime is perpetuating it, ours is refusing to pay attention:

You might think that Europe’s economic turmoil would inject a note of urgency into America’s budget debate. After all, high government deficits and debt are the roots of Europe’s problems, and these same problems afflict the United States. But no. Most Americans, starting with the nation’s political leaders, dismiss what’s happening in Europe as a continental drama with little relevance to them.

What Americans resolutely avoid is a realistic debate about the desirable role of government. How big should it be? Should it favor the old or the young? Will social spending crowd out defense spending? Will larger government dampen economic growth through higher deficits or taxes? No one engages this debate, because if rigorously conducted, it would disappoint both liberals and conservatives.

Victor Davis Hanson writes of “The Other European Volcano” that has resulted from Europeans failing to rigorously conduct this debate…and we still enjoy the luxury of choosing to pay attention, or wallow in ignorance.

Over here, we were often lectured by “progressives” that almost everything Europe did was better — subsidized mass transit, free college tuition, extended maternity leave, early retirement, and “soft-power” diplomacy. Indeed, Obama’s presidential campaign was in some senses a stealthy referendum on Europeanization. And once he was elected, his moves to raise taxes, expand government, expropriate some private industries, run up exponentially increasing deficits, subsidize environmentalism, and triangulate with enemies and allies abroad were European Union to the core.

Few wanted to listen when it was pointed out — well before the Greek meltdown — that on key questions of demography and immigration, the future ofthe European Union was bleak. The very idea that, in historical terms, socialism , agnosticism, pacifism, and hedonism were not only interrelated and synergistic, but also suicidal for civilization, was considered crackpot.

Want a eulogy? One that pulls no punches? One that really lowers the boom on all the nonsense, shedding every last scintilla of diplomacy? Look no further than George Will:

“The coining of money,” said William Blackstone more than two centuries ago, “is in all states the act of the sovereign power.”

But the EU is neither a state nor sovereign enough to enforce its rules: No eurozone nation is complying with the EU requirement that deficits not exceed 3 percent of GDP.

The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament no one other than its members wants to have power, a capital of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist, and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring. The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction — that “Europe” has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.

The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration. Gone are the colorful bills of particular nations, featuring pictures of national heroes of statecraft, culture and the arts, pictures celebrating unique national narratives. With the euro, 16 nations have said goodbye to all that. The bills depict nonexistent windows, gateways and bridges. They are from … nowhere, which is what “utopia” means.

That’s a-gonna leave a mark.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering which of those you should pop open and read top-to-bottom, I would recommend the last of the three, followed by the second-to-last. Messrs. Will and Hanson are writing about a grave subject, perhaps the surest destroyer of civilizations in all of human history, which is the relaxation of fiscal discipline. Europe, now several centuries into the old sport of confusing the subjective with the objective, is banishing failure, eliminating real-world consequences from the sustenance of red ink. “No nation will be allowed to sink beneath the weight of its recklessness” is how Mr. Will puts it.

But without consequences, what arresting force is there? Has any living thinking organism, be it a nation or an individual, ever called a stop to the writing of more and more checks without sparing a thought for the checkbook register? It’s just like any other measurement in mathematical theory: Without a meaningful zero point, it’s all relative. And there will always be some items dangled in front of the check-writer, begging to be bought. They’ll always be there; and we’ll always “need” every single last one of ’em.

The zero point has been banished to oblivion. And so the money will have to freely flow. It would be something tantamount to treason to suggest anything else; and without a doubt, it would place the speaker’s wonderfulness in serious question.

Failure. Universally available, and free. No person, enterprise or industry is “Too Big To Fail” — ever. Failure is regarded as something that is always possible, to be avoided at all costs, but never to be ignored or sidestepped once it is earned. Depriving a man of the failure he has justly earned, is rightfully seen as just as deplorable as depriving him of wages he has justly earned.

Item #4 on my list of 42 definitions of a strong society.

This is the problem with Europe. They are trying to eradicate failure, and in so doing, jeopardizing whatever ability they might’ve once had, to be strong.

“Duty to Die”

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Dr. Sowell, who is a national treasure at any age:

One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have “a duty to die,” rather than become a burden to others.

This is more than just an idea discussed around a seminar table. Already the government-run medical system in Britain is restricting what medications or treatments it will authorize for the elderly. Moreover, it seems almost certain that similar attempts to contain runaway costs will lead to similar policies when American medical care is taken over by the government.

Make no mistake about it, letting old people die is a lot cheaper than spending the kind of money required to keep them alive and well. If a government-run medical system is going to save any serious amount of money, it is almost certain to do so by sacrificing the elderly.
:
Talk about “a duty to die” made me think back to my early childhood in the South, during the Great Depression of the 1930s. One day, I was told that an older lady — a relative of ours — was going to come and stay with us for a while, and I was told how to be polite and considerate towards her.

She was called “Aunt Nance Ann,” but I don’t know what her official name was or what her actual biological relationship to us was. Aunt Nance Ann had no home of her own. But she moved around from relative to relative, not spending enough time in any one home to be a real burden.

At that time, we didn’t have things like electricity or central heating or hot running water. But we had a roof over our heads and food on the table — and Aunt Nance Ann was welcome to both.

Poor as we were, I never heard anybody say, or even intimate, that Aunt Nance Ann had “a duty to die.”
:
It is today, in an age when homes have flat-panelled TVs, and most families eat in restaurants regularly or have pizzas and other meals delivered to their homes, that the elites — rather than the masses — have begun talking about “a duty to die.”

Back in the days of Aunt Nance Ann, nobody in our family had ever gone to college. Indeed, none had gone beyond elementary school. Apparently you need a lot of expensive education, sometimes including courses on ethics, before you can start talking about “a duty to die.”

Early this morning I posted a list of twenty-five questions that reveal…something. Something about the individuals that answer those questions in one way or another. I boldly asserted that if I knew how a fellow would answer one or two of these questions, I could divine with great certainty how he would respond to the others. Question #11 is “Does the inner decency of a people, or lack thereof, show through in the laws passed by their governments?”

I note, with great interest, that the people who would answer in the affirmative to this particular question — seem to unerringly support new rules for our civilization, that do not manifest or encourage anything close to what I would refer to as “inner decency.”

Your Obligatory Christie Post

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

So I’m in the middle of a crazy day…a “No Meetings, and Thank God” day. I haul my chicken rice bowl back to my desk and, in the middle of a compile, I bring up Gerard’s page to see what’s going on. There’s this video embed I make a note of watching that evening…and then at Joan’s place I see exactly the same thing. I just glanced at a couple of comments before I realized I had to watch this right away. So out came the headphones, and I hit play.

Oh, Sweet Jesus. This happened in The Land of the Turnpike? Do tell?

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

Yes, let it become a trend.

D’JEver Notice? LVI

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

Ah, props to the radio guys, or whoever picks out their “best of” cuts for the weekend. I turned on the bathroom radio not knowing for sure what I was gonna get…maybe an infommercial about some wonder herb that would flush out my colon and make my dick bigger, maybe financial advice about adjustable rate mortgages, I swear I saw a UFO back in ’53, pesticides to beat all pesticides. Well something went right, I got information I could actually use: The back-story behind what they were talking about Wednesday morning.

Might as well start there: Jack got kicked off a jury. It must be exquisitely frustrating. (I wouldn’t know, the one time I burned up an entire day on the entrance exam, I was selected as an alternate, and then the primary got kicked off, so my wasted day was a prelude to a wasted week.) He got kicked off by ONE question: That one question is #21 on the list, below, that I built up around it. He said “choices,” and the defense attorney didn’t like his answer so out he went.

I approve of the question but I disapprove of how it was used. I think it should be asked of everyone in the courtroom, regardless of what’s being heard whether it’s criminal or civil. And then the judge should kick outta there anyone who answers the opposite way. Lawyers should lose their licenses over it. And blow right on through there, every last man, right down to the bailiff.

My “D’Jever Notice?” moment has to do with all of the twenty-five questions. They, outside of #21, are my own creation…I had been doing some thinking about this after Wednesday’s show, which was quite thought provoking. My Dry Cleaning lady had heard it as well and we had quite the talk about it.

Anyway, I have learned this over a number of years about people. If you find me a complete stranger, and tell me how he answered to one of these questions, I can predict with amazing accuracy how he will respond to another of the questions. And with that prediction confirmed, I can pretty much guarantee how he will reply to the other twenty-three.

1. Should we use the tax code to punish people?
2. Should our leaders be representatives of what the rest of us are, or should they be better than the rest of us?
3. Should anyone in our country work under a salary cap? Should we perhaps have a universal salary cap?
4. Do borders matter?
5. Clarity or agreement?
6. Does the minority opinion count?
7. If “there’s just something about him” that impresses you in a positive way, do you want to figure out why before he earns your support?
8. Does the wealth gap matter?
9. Security or prosperity?
10. Can we end poverty and famine? What about war, can we get rid of that someday?
11. Does the inner decency of a people, or lack thereof, show through in the laws passed by their governments?
12. Is a right really a right, if it costs someone else something?
13. If your kids grow up never learning how to do what you had to do because technology has made it unnecessary — that’s harmless, right?
14. Is it alright to major in a discipline that is highly unlikely to get you a job?
15. Should it matter how many men, women, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, straights, gays, handicapped are seated in Congress or the Supreme Court?
16. Is empathy important in a judge?
17. Is it alright with you that your daughter picked her current boyfriend because “he makes me laugh”?
18. Are businesses more likely than government agencies to screw people over?
19. Is Europe all that & a bag of chips?
20. Is a real man in touch with his feelings?
21. What got you where you are today, be it up or down: circumstances, or your decisions?
22. Should we let illegal immigrants in, and leave them them to continue doing the jobs Americans won’t do?
23. Should we worry at all about screwing up the economy by means of our various social-services safety nets, or are they inherently harmless?
24. Would you feel comfortable leaving your house, or your car, or your pets, or your kids in the care of the politicians who have most often received your support?
25. As we learn more about evolution, will it ultimately explain everything about every living thing?

Call Us Teabaggers

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

From Kini Aloha Guy.

Yukozuna!

Holder Nailed for Not Reading Arizona Law

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Good. This should reflect poorly on all the race-baiters and they richly deserve it.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has been critical of Arizona’s new immigration law, said Thursday he hasn’t yet read the law and is going by what he’s read in newspapers or seen on television.

Mr. Holder is conducting a review of the law, at President Obama’s request, to see if the federal government should challenge it in court. He said he expects he will read the law by the time his staff briefs him on their conclusions.

“I’ve just expressed concerns on the basis of what I’ve heard about the law. But I’m not in a position to say at this point, not having read the law, not having had the chance to interact with people are doing the review, exactly what my position is,” Mr. Holder told the House Judiciary Committee.

This weekend Mr. Holder told NBC’s “Meet the Press” program that the Arizona law “has the possibility of leading to racial profiling.” He had earlier called the law’s passage “unfortunate,” and questioned whether the law was unconstitutional because it tried to assume powers that may be reserved for the federal government.

Rep. Ted Poe, who had questioned Mr. Holder about the law, wondered how he could have those opinions if he hadn’t yet read the legislation.

“It’s hard for me to understand how you would have concerns about something being unconstitutional if you haven’t even read the law,” the Texas Republican told the attorney general.

The object of the exercise, aside from the instant-democrat-voters and the cheap labor, is anarchy. Every good destroyer of civilizations knows the first step is to take the illegal and make it kinda-sorta-a-little-bit-legal. This whole thing with skin color is just a diversion from what’s being done.

It was not quite so long ago when President Obama, Holder’s boss, presented a turkey of a health care plan to Congress…or to be more precise about it, Congress presented it to Him. There were all kinds of objections against it much more valid than the one about the Arizona law leading to racial profiling. Obama’s response was to give a zillion and one wonderful speeches, each one more impressive than the last…which is to say President Obama inhaled and exhaled during this time. In His speeches He regularly called to Republicans to “come up with ideas of your own” if they could. Which they had done, actually.

But it interests me that I’m not hearing that kind of rhetoric now. Arizona is being invaded and Arizona has given up waiting for the feds to enforce the laws; they’ve taken the job on themselves for the sake of gettin’ it done. We hear all this talk about “could lead to racial profiling” and I’m not hearing too often of anyone saying “Hey! If you don’t think this is the right answer, come up with some answers of your own!”

I find that interesting. Isn’t that just the logical inquiry, assuming these critics are to be taken seriously?

Update 5/15/10: FrankJ comments as only he can:

Eric Holder is really sure the Arizona bill is a bad bill worthy of condemnation even though he never read it. It’s kinda like with the Democrats saying how super important it was to pass the health care bill even though none of them knew what was in it.

So why don’t Democrats read bills? I can think of two possibilities:

1. They have magical psychic powers and can know what’s in a bill without reading it.

2. They’re illiterate.

The politicians often argue they’re just too busy to read all these bills they’re voting on and commenting on. Busy doing what, though? Don’t they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to make laws and enforce laws? Wouldn’t you think part of that generous salary would be maybe reading those laws? What exactly do they do all day to earn their money? They already have these useless jobs where just sit around and talk and occasionally vote; is it really so much to ask they do some honest work and read these important bills? The Arizona one they’re all freaking out about isn’t even that long.

Maybe we should write all our bills in Spanish. Then we can hire illegal aliens to read them since apparently that’s yet another one of those jobs Americans won’t do.

Money Pit

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Daphne is feeling homeowner pains.

I can’t believe that, in one year’s time, this is exactly where I’m going to be sitting if everything goes well. I’ve sat out this game for a long time now, mostly because of a wretched mistake I made in my early twenties, but now that we’re forty-something apartment rats it’s time to get on the stick and get back into the swing of things. The only way out is through.

But oh my goodness, does this rant of hers bring back some memories.

Republican Party Wins Back Supporters

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Wall Street Journal:

The findings suggest that public opinion has hardened in advance of the 2010 elections, making it tougher for Democrats to translate their legislative successes, or a tentatively improving U.S. economy, into gains among voters.

Republicans have reassembled their coalition by reconnecting with independents, seniors, blue-collar voters, suburban women and small town and rural voters—all of whom had moved away from the party in the 2006 elections, in which Republicans lost control of the House. Those voter groups now favor GOP control of Congress.

“This data is what it looks like when Republicans assemble what for them is a winning coalition,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff, who conducts the survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart.

He said the Republican alliance appeared to be “firmer and more substantial” than earlier in the year.

Mr. Hart noted that, to his own party’s detriment, a series of major news events and legislative achievements—including passage of a sweeping health-care law, negotiating a nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia and making a quick arrest in the Times Square terrorism attempt—has not measurably increased support for Democrats. “A lot has happened,” he said, “but the basic dynamic of the 2010 elections seems almost set in concrete.”

A big shift is evident among independents, who at this point in the 2006 campaign favored Democratic control of Congress rather than Republican control, 40% to 24%. In this poll, independents favored the GOP, 38% to 30%.

It would seem someone has “squandered” some “goodwill.”

The pattern will continue because of, not in spite of, “passage of a sweeping health-care law, negotiating a nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia and making a quick arrest in the Times Square terrorism attempt.” The health care bill is a turkey, disarmament is nothing but ostrich diplomacy, and the whole Times Square thing is a scandal that ought to involve a massive purge from our government’s highest offices and maybe a guillotine. Once again terrorists were thwarted by their own inept bomb-making.

We are so lucky to have Obama be our President right now! Really, we are. If we have to have Him, I’m so glad we’ve got Him when the terrorists seem to have started sucking at their jobs.

I can just see the terrorist boss right now, pacing to and fro in his cave in Pakistan or wherever: “Come on you shitheads, we’ve only got six months left before our window of opportunity closes! Let’s get hold of some decent fuses here and use ’em right!”

Back in ’94, I made a special point to bring in an extra special dinner on election night so I could watch the returns come in and thoroughly enjoy myself. This year, I think I’m going to call a caterer. No matter how it turns out, we need to look past it, onward into the future and ask ourselves the question that really matters: How do we make sure we never need to learn this lesson again? How do we talk to our young people, with their dwindling attention spans, and get the message across to them that government does not exist to give you an emotional high or to keep that high sustained; it is there to butt out where it doesn’t belong, to make responsible decisions where it does belong, and that freedom and opportunity are much more important than more & more nanny state programs?

Obviously, the first step is going to have to be a conservative coalition that sticks to its knitting, and doesn’t make the mistake of acting like a rancid rotten incumbent power when it’s been an incumbent power for awhile. But you can’t stop there; all of the blame doesn’t go there. The voters have to take some of the blame.

Our Fairy Tale and Its Moral

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Christmas crotch sizzler, Army base shooter, Times Square truck bomber. That’s three. Three strikes and you’re still not out.

Newlywed Cassy takes note of the fact that, disturbingly, our Dear Leader is cutting funding where it counts. I guess counterterrorism isn’t “shovel-ready”:

After the attempted Christmas Day bombing, Obama stayed in Hawaii and played golf. His administration has botched the investigation of the Fort Hood jihadist. And now, we’ve had the attempted car bombing in Times Square. How did Obama handle that? He cut New York’s anti-terror funding just 11 days later:

Eleven days after the botched plot to bomb Times Square, the Obama administration on Wednesday slashed some $53 million from the city’s terror-fighting budget.

“For the administration to announce these cuts two weeks after the attempted Times Square bombing shows they just don’t get it and are not doing right by New York City,” fumed Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

To top it off, the news arrives as President Obama comes to town today amid buzz he will meet with the very cops who helped thwart the bombing.

Obama will also be tapping the city’s deep pockets for the Democratic Party.

“The President seems more interested in raising money for political campaigns than providing New York the money it needs to defend itself against Islamic terrorism,” said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee.

Bingo, Rep. King.

This has apparently been in the works since December, but one would think that after New York was the subject of an attempted terrorist attack, he would reconsider. Even Chuck Schumer is astounded by this. Obama clearly doesn’t understand the concept of homeland security, and I’ve got a feeling that he probably wouldn’t care even if he did. He’s perfectly fine trying to squeeze more money out of New Yorkers for himself, but he isn’t willing to spend a little to keep them safe. If this administration, the most spend-happy administration in decades, isn’t willing to spend money on something, then you know it’s got to be low on their priority list.

Whereupon I entered a comment about exactly what it is we elected. This is true wisdom from Yours Truly. You should write it down and keep it in your back pocket; refer to it again whenever His Holiness does something strange, and keep looking at it again long after we finally get rid of Him. Because this is what Cheerleader Management is all about, and it isn’t limited to the presidency.

This has apparently been in the works since December, but one would think that after New York was the subject of an attempted terrorist attack, he would reconsider.

This makes the situation worse, IMO. It makes it worse because it makes the whole parable much simpler, almost suitable for condensation into a Hans Christian Andersen or Brothers Grimm fairy tale. See, “we all” voted for Obama because the desire was for a champion to emerge who would soothe our emotions and make sure “hope is in the air.” We got precisely what we wanted. A cheerleader. Managers like Obama do not labor to alter the outcome, with regard to anything save a narrow sliver of issues within their immediate concerns. They are status quo. What they manage, is our emotional reaction to things. They are there to encourage us to accept things we otherwise would not.

They are like the customer service representative on the phone, who wastes our time, letting us figure out for ourselves we are talking to the wrong person. Changing nothing, just throwing useless bromides at us to stop us from litigating.

I have other words for those other matters on which Obama wants to be a force of advocacy, as opposed to “leadership.” On those matters He does real harm. But I think the more potent lesson for us all to learn is with regard to these management issues in which His harm is passive. Anyone who’s worked for any length of time, has had a boss like this. It does not make you want to go to work any earlier or work any harder.

He’s a fake yo-yo trickster, just like K-Strass. We like to think our primal layers of intellect, just as a product of human evolution, are sufficient to keep from being snookered by emotion-managers like this. Well, we’re wrong. Just like K-Strass will keep fooling teevee network after teevee network, politicians like Obama will keep working themselves all the way to the top where they’ll make their craven, do-nothing, status-quo, dithering-in-Afghanistan type decisions. And as long as they talk a good game we’ll just keep falling for it. By which I mean the Big We…not every single one of us, just enough of us to make the decision to get fooled one more time.

It’ll keep happening. As long as there are rocks on the ground and the river is still flowing, and there are people who feel their way around their problems rather than think their way through them, the “Rah Rah!” manager will stick around, using his talents to prevail on us to accept miserable situations we otherwise would not. Our genome lacks any defense mechanism that would enable us to effectively cope. We’ve not had to develop one in the past…not in a past that is meaningful to the slow process of evolution. It is, for the most part, a mass-communication-age problem.

Leave Elena Alone!

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

MediaMatters has put together a list of right wing bloggers and pundits who have actually deigned to notice that Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the President’s nominee to succeed Supreme Court associate justice John Paul Stevens, is a frump-a-dump.

The Blog That Nobody Reads didn’t make the cut. Oh well.

Our concern is not so much with the Solicitor General as an individual, but with the trend overall. And this, we submit, is something that should concern everybody…especially career-minded women who happen to be gorgeous. The pattern would seem to indicate they need to stop wasting their time, at least with regard to any career endeavor adjudicated by a progressive. It seems there is a memorandum somewhere forbidding career advancement for any female endowed with as much pulchritude as Sandra Day O’Connor. It’s outta the question.

There is some measure of twisted, inexplicable pride wrapped up in ignoring the obvious when it’s right in front of your face, and has been paraded before you for decades. Or, as our resident gadfly Arthurstone says…

That would be a perfect slogan for liberals. “We are decent people because we ignore facts.”

And that’s why I consider this to be a serious issue even though I really don’t give a fig whether the most powerful female progressives in our government look like Alyssa Milano. The existence of the “uglier than O’Connor” memorandum should be proven or disproven…since that would be discrimination…something progressives say they oppose. But if such a memorandum does not exist, then Arthurstone’s ignorance is metaphorical for something else; it’s a manifestation of something larger and more dangerous.

Just go shopping sometime — not at Wal-Mart though. Someplace else. Look at the women you find there. How many are ugly? How many are babes? I’d put Sarah Palin at about the eightieth percentile, meaning one-in-five are even hotter. (Sorry Sarah.) How many look like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Donna Shalala, Janet “System Worked Perfectly” Napolitano, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor? Maybe one in four. Our Secretary of State may be the beauty contest winner, so let’s make her the waterline. It rises to one in three.

If you were to task me to fill all these positions with women who were qualified for them, without regard to how they looked, I’d never be able to stack them with women who uglier than two thirds of the general population. I wouldn’t be able to do it. Not unless I was really, really trying.

See how Palin’s been treated? I don’t think that’s because of a Couric interview. I don’t think it’s because she’s a conservative or even quite so much because she kept Trig. What you’re seeing, in Alaska, is the attitude our hardcore liberals have against pretty women. An appealing female countenance is a form of success and they cannot stand success. Well, you look at Kagan and see what you want, but that’s what I see.

I would never be able to go out in that shopping mall and find a woman who looks like Elena Kagan. So yes, you’re right Media Matters, the remarks could be called crude and classless. If they came from someone in a position of real power rather than from a bunch of shock jocks, I might join you in demanding some kind of apology. But if you’re trying to convince me that noticing the trend is indicative of some ugly personality defect, that this is the picture of a mindset we do not want making important decisions about things…sorry, you march in that parade alone.

Arthur has shown where this other kind of thinking, this “count me among those who ignore the facts” thinking, comes off the rails. If you have apathy, and you want to advertise that you have it so people might be led to believe you’re decent, then you have to care about people noticing your apathy. Which means you have to lose it. You have to become a walking breathing lie, you have to become the opposite of what you are pretending to be. And that is why, IMO, progressives seem to be entrenched in this habit of hiring and promoting ugly women. They are eager to put up meaningless symbols that ostensibly show what wonderful and decent human beings they are.

Probably to compensate for something. Yes, just let that thought percolate awhile.

Update: I see Harvey didn’t make the cut either. He should’ve. What’s the deal, MM? You’re getting sloppy.

Amanda Marcotte: Feminism Is What I Say It Is

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Congratulations to blogsister Cassy for getting hitched over the weekend. And by the way, she’s once again reading Feministing so you don’t have to. Where harpy gargoyle and ex-Edwards-blogger Amanda Marcotte is being interviewed. Just let the words wash over your ears and eyes…

For me, women’s rights and liberalism are, in my mind, pretty hard to unhook, and it fascinates and amuses me that you see conservatives complain that feminists are always with the democrats, as if there’s ever going to be a form of conservative feminism. You look at someone like Sarah Palin trying to wear that mantle, and you see the flaw in trying to be a so-called conservative feminist, which is that you’re not very pro-women. Women need things for equality that tailor very neatly to the general liberal agenda: Clean environment, universal healthcare, civil rights, individual rights, bodily autonomy, things like that. I fail to see how the two agendas are all that different. The flipside, of course, is that most liberals I know, whether they call themselves feminists or not, tend to agree with the general feminist goals. The only real opposition that you see to those goals is coming from the right.

…The healthcare battles were truly awful, because Bart Stupak was allowed to run around on television, portraying himself as some kind of morally upstanding icon, whereas, what I was seeing was an idiot who didn’t understand the issues and was being duped by a bunch of Republicans. And I saw no investigation whatsoever into the fact that he had all these connections to Republicans that he wasn’t really talking about – except on The Rachel Maddow Show. That was probably the thing that has made me angriest because it nearly brought the healthcare debate to a close. And I think it’s hilarious that he’s retiring and thinks he’s the target of harassment now. He should take a day at an abortion clinic and find out what it’s really like to be a target of harassment and abuse. And of course, the thing with Stupak is that most of the threatening emails and phone callers that he was getting were from the right. They don’t take well to a perceived betrayal at all.

Marvin the MartianWhat I think is hilarious and infuriating and makes me LOL and grind my teeth together and let loose a big ol’ gut chuckle and get angrier than Marvin the Martian and tickles my funnybone and chaps my hide, is this awkward-beyond-any-description working-in of “It makes me (some superlative term) angry” and “I find amusing.” I grew up in a college town and I’m well acquainted with this. There is no intentional irony going on there; the contradiction speaks to the general thoughtlessness of it. It’s a cliche the college kids toss into their monologues after they’ve been told a few times too many how unbelievably smart they are. This makes me sizzle with fury; this makes me laugh out loud. I find this to be unforgivable, I find this to be comical.

If you hear these words phonetically, you understand the situation. Four-five-and-six-syllable words that real people don’t use, like “stereotypical” and “patriarchy” and “heteronormative” just slide off the tongue. Each consonant carefully articulated, but the entire overwhelming syllable-sequence is over and done with in a heartbeat, like rapid fire from a machine gun. It is well rehearsed. Know why? Because the dedicated feminist talks like this all day.

As to the nugget of thought that goes with this tsunami of syllables: Some of the aborted babies are female. Just that one fact by itself, entirely brings down her house-of-cards. Back to Womyn’s Studies 101 classroom with ya.

As Cassy points out, what we call “feminism” today does not equal what feminism was at the beginning. People like Amanda have been allowed to re-define it too much. Think about it: If I were intent on molding and shaping our modern society so that women were more expendable and had less of a role to fill, what would be the issues most worthy of my support?

Well, I would try to push a lot of abortions, which stops women from taking on what two thirds of us now say, and have said for awhile, is a woman’s most important role. Just like our modern feminists. And, I would work like the dickens to sell gay marriage so that I could re-define the institution as something that doesn’t necessarily have to include a woman. Just like our modern feminists. What would be my third-most-important issue? I dunno; I’d care most about those two. What’s their third-most-important issue? I dunno that either. Lately, most of the “feminist” outbursts that make their way to me, concern one of those two. “Environmental” stuff maybe? Marcotte specifically identified “Clean environment, universal healthcare…” So okay, if it can be used as a euphemism for turning a thriving beacon of prosperity and free trade into yet another filthy socialist mudpuddle, she’s for it. So if you’re in her camp, you want to do things that make women less important in our culture, you want to sell socialism, and outside of those there really isn’t an awful lot to it other than being generally unpleasant and nasty.

Thing I Know #322. Feminism exists today to make women disposable; it attempts this by confining their energies to those specialties a man could pursue just as capably.

I have never entirely understood this. They pressure girls and young women to “pursue a career” when the girls and young women don’t really want to; they browbeat everyone within shouting distance into believing the girls and young women can run a department, or run a fifty-yard-dash, better and faster than the dudes. But when you think on it for awhile — what of it? If all the women all over the place dropped out and concentrated on mothering, we’d find a man to run the department. We’d find a guy who can run the fifty-yard-dash. Even if the best and fastest woman is superior to the best and fastest guy. What, on the other hand, is to happen if all women abandon mothering? I can’t get pregnant. I can’t give birth. Once the child is born, I can’t mother it. We’re supposed to be finding ways to make women important, respected, valued. Feminism’s actions are in direct conflict with the stated goal. They should’ve worked to bring women this much-valued “choice” — along with the responsibilities that go with it — and then left well enough alone. Instead, it’s more like they brought women the choice and then pressured them regarding what choice to make, and now, as Cassy pointed out, the whole “movement” is nothing but a perversion of what it once was.

Regarding the socialist bumper sticker issues, if you do buy into that stuff, there’s another problem with what Marcotte said up there: Men and boys need a “clean environment” too, and we have health care needs too. If there was anything left of her argument after that earlier broadside fusillade, this last one would finish it off.

This is the problem with modern feminism. It dwells far too much on the negative, and as Marcotte demonstrates, people who devote themselves to it don’t have to walk too far down that toxic road before they can’t think straight anymore.

Where Not to Make Out

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

For those who need to be told…

“Courageous Restraint”

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Parents of future warriors, be you conservative, liberal or somewhere in between: Would you not agree with me that, perhaps, this is taking things just a bit too far?

A proposal to grant medals for “courageous restraint” to troops in Afghanistan who avoid deadly force at a risk to themselves has generated concern among U.S. soldiers and experts who worry it could embolden enemy fighters and confuse friendly forces.

Lt. Col. Edward Sholtis, a spokesman for Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who commands NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that no final decision has been made on the award, which is the brainchild of British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter.

“The idea is being reviewed at Headquarters ISAF,” Sholtis said. “The idea is consistent with our approach. Our young men and women display remarkable courage every day, including situations where they refrain from using lethal force, even at risk to themselves, in order to prevent possible harm to civilians…That restraint is an act of discipline and courage not much different than those seen in combat actions.”

Oh, but it is different.

I understand what you’re trying to do here Col. Sholtis, and I have no doubt that your movement is recruiting many who display far better judgment when they make other decisions. And I’ll readily agree that when our troops do have this courage and it makes a difference in the outcome, that yes that’s a more preferable outcome at least in the short term.

But honoring it with a medal, specifically to encourage our side to reach that outcome more often? That fails to take into account the situations in which they’ve been placed; what their five senses tell them about it. Also, there are some enemies involved in this little skirmish and the message this sends to them is not helpful. Doesn’t a two-star think of such things? I would’ve hoped that someone would bring it up.

Screw you guys. If my lad is headed into your little theater in the years ahead, I’m raising him to take care o’ business; that if he’s ever in a situation where it’s him or the other guy, then sorry but it’s gonna be the other guy. I’m a capital-D Dad, and I figure that’s my job.

But I thank you for helping to decide what we’ll be doing this weekend. We can do some target shooting, get some fresh air, have a man-to-man talk about things, and when it’s time to head in we’ve got the entire collection of Rambo sitting on our DVD shelf, right next to Patton.

Like Grandma Freeberg used to say: “My boys aren’t cannon fodder.”

Hat tip to FrankJ.

Parenthood…and Trees…

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Something tells me “Kidzmom” and I will both be able to relate to this one.

Hat tip to Viral Footage, via Linkiest.

“Promises a Marine Widow Cannot Bear to Hear”

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Washington Post: Impact of War:

A cassette tape is waiting for me. It sits in a small bubble mailer on my night table. It stares at me when I walk in the room; it beckons to me as I walk out. But still it sits there and waits. It is the last thing. The last thing he sent to me from “over there.”

There is no note inside, just a regular old-school cassette tape. The outside of the envelope is addressed in his handwriting. “Love, Poppa Bear” is written on the back. I’ve opened it to look inside, but I haven’t yet drawn up the courage to listen.

I know what I can expect to hear. The same things he always told me. He’ll tell me how much he loves us and misses us. He’ll sing to us–he always sang to us. Probably our favorite songs, maybe some new ones. He’ll talk to the baby, he loved talking to her and she loves to listen to him. The first time I saw her smile was when he talked to her on the phone from “over there.”

“Jennie Was a Friend of Mine”

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

“So…How’s Your Day Going?”

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

From Innominatus.

Embedded by Andy in a comment about blogger pal Buck‘s crappy day.

This Is Good LXXII

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Diversity Lane, via blogger friend Rick.

“Six Absurd Gender Stereotypes (That Science Says Are True)”

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Cracked:

Women See Mauve, Men See Purple

A couple is staring at paint samples, the wife enthusiastically discussing the merits of aged ivory over albino Caucasian while the husband starts chewing off his own arm in hopes of escaping this hell where “white” has 30 different names.
:
What Science Says:

The gene for seeing red is only carried by the X chromosome, which puts men at a serious disadvantage for seeing the color spectrum. Color, after all, is defined by our ability to perceive red, green and blue, and every other color we see is based on combinations of those three.

This means that while men, having merely one X chromosome, might not be able to see red at all, women and their double X chromosomes have a 40 percent chance that their vision includes a broader expanse of the spectrum than their male counterparts.

Why this colorful superpower? It goes back to food again. While the men were out killing dinner and developing that radical spatial perception of theirs, women were gathering fruit and vegetables for the salad course. Having the ability to distinguish between the shiny red berries that taste good and the shiny red berries that can kill you was an important survival skill, and the women who didn’t pick the death berries lived to pass on their genes.

I was explaining this to my son after we went to watch Iron Man 2, and my girlfriend needed to visit the facilities before we headed over the hill to go home. The human genome evolves…and it evolves on either side of a gender barrier. Just about anything that would come in handy when you go out to kill a wild animal and bring it home, men are going to excel in that particular skill. Anything that involves guarding a bunch of helpless babies from hazards as if you’re a momma bird guarding a nest, women are going to be much better suited for it. Going a couple of hours without taking a leak, obviously that’s our department.

This article was a bit tougher on the ladies than I would’ve been, though. Of the six items, only two of the write-ups made our sisters look somewhat good. Naturally, it goes without saying #6 was by far my favorite. Bearing in mind these are generalizations…they don’t apply to all women. Or all men either.

“Isn’t This a Bit Much?”

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Volokh:

The president went to Harvard, and barely defeated a primary opponent who went to Yale. His predecessor went to Yale and Harvard, and defeated opponents who went to Yale and Harvard, and Harvard, respectively. The previous two presidents also went to Yale, with Bush I defeating another Harvard grad for the presidency. And once Elena Kagan gets confirmed, every Supreme Court Justice will have attended Harvard or Yale law schools.

I know that Harvard and Yale attract a disproportionate percentage of America’s talented youth, but still, isn’t this a bit much? Are there no similarly talented individuals who attended other Ivy League schools, other private universities or (gasp!) even state law schools?

This is an abdication, not a usurpation. You can’t just say “I went to a wonderful school,” walk up to some seat of power and sit on it. You need the consent of those who would not be sitting on that seat, with your sweet ass cheeks filling it up. You need the consent of the governed. And so the blame goes to the rest of us who did not go to Yale/Harvard; we’re looking for supermen to make all the tough decisions for us.

Thing I Know #263. The one thing that’s wrong with higher education that nobody ever seems to want to discuss, is that it is valued through something called “prestige.” Get this prestigious diploma. Get that prestigious degree. Attend a prestigious university. My alma mater is more prestigious than yours. Trouble is that genuine learning has very, very little to do with prestige. It is, arguably, the exact opposite.

A commencement ceremony is not what learning looks like. Mike Rowe, covered head to toe in some kind of animal shit, is a far superior portrayal of real learning. I’m not saying you have to be humiliated in order to learn, my point is that when it’s just a lot of theory with a bunch of must-ought-shoulds holding it together, there’s no validation; and without validation there is no evidence of any fastening to reality. Just the professor’s say-so and that’s it.

So the professor says this guy did well enough; the guy who hires and promotes the guy, believes what the professor says about him, although those two will never meet each other and neither one knows who the other one is. So nothing is proven by anybody to anybody else about the competence of anyone. It’s just a bunch of things written on paper by complete strangers. The system still works to some extent as long as there is universal recognition of what makes a student’s learning ability adequate, superior and excellent; and, there is some. But all the values are not universally shared, so the competence only translates into upward-mobility where there happens to be some overlap. Where there is no overlap, the upward-mobility is only enjoyed by those who show competence in good old-fashioned ass-kissing. The results is a government of ass-kissers, of people whose grasp of disparate hard subjects may or may not be firm, but who show a competitive advantage at things like Motivating Large Numbers of People to Do Things Without Anyone Associating the Dumb Things With Their Names Later On. And throwing out buzz words & catch phrases like “make no mistake” and “let me be clear.”

But for all of the leaders to come from the same two schools? That’s arguably worse, that deteriorates the situation further. The answer to Volokh’s question is an emphatic yes…IMO. But I don’t get to decide this, it’s really up to the rest of the country to figure out if we’ve allowed these floorboards to rot enough.