Realized, after I entered a comment on Professor Mondo’s blog, that I’d made a point not often made by myself or anyone else. It’s an important one because it explains why a lot of good, honest people are talking past each other.

I look at it a little bit differently: To demonstrate his worthiness of the mantle of “love ‘im or hate ‘im, he’s the only one who can beat Obama so you’d better line up,” Mitt needed to triumph over this thing like Fat Man and Little Boy triumphed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You’re an educated man well accustomed to dealing with statistics. You’re in Mitt’s corner, albeit far from enthusiastic about it…certainly not the only one. How many of the delegates who voted for Mitt, do you think, could be described in this way? Do you suppose each one has a squishy counterpart in the Santorum camp? Hah!

It’s an exercise in determining the relative mass of two objects, by taking a glance at their physical sizes. Just as density is important in measuring masses, enthusiasm is important in picking who’s gonna win.

I very often hear from the independents, who after all are the ones who really decide elections, how embittered they are that they haven’t seen a president they’ve liked since Ronald Reagan. Hear it over and over again: Last decent one was Reagan, Reagan, Reagan. I don’t understand why these squishes are seen as more electable. Nobody feels too enthusiastic about ‘em because nobody likes ‘em, and nobody likes ‘em because they can’t trust ‘em. And that’s not an insult to Gov. Romney’s character; these candidates are “seen,” wrongly, as being more electable. Illusionary or not, it’s a critically important asset, from their perspective, so naturally they’ll do whatever it takes to maintain it. So every question that comes up, they check the polls. They may have tons and tons of personal integrity and character off the job, but once they clock in, they might as well not. Reliable as bouncing footballs.

People are not like bits in computer memory, either one or zero. They’re more like the fractional representations in between. Enthusiasm matters, and it matters a lot. We count these things in integers, so our framework of perception causes us to miss out on this again and again and again.

Besides of which, if enthusiasm doesn’t matter and people really are just a bunch of ones and zeroes, frankly I think Obama has this thing locked up. You’ve got someone who was never fooled by the Obama malarkey, ever, back to Day One, who’s out of work, his medicine costs two or three times as much because of ObamaCare, understands down to the marrow of his bones that we can’t afford any more of the nonsense…that’s still just one guy. Offset by teeming hordes of Obama Zombies, brainlessly muttering “Oh yeah, okay, whatever…hope and change…don’t wanna admit I was wrong in ’08, so hope and change…” Obama takes that state. Maybe it’s a battleground state. Then you go to the next state and see the same thing happen.

Obama’s not going home next year unless he’s sent home by a differential in enthusiasm. Which is manifestly possible. Even likely, I think. But Mitt can’t deliver it. Why can’t he? Because the guy who can’t afford his medical treatment anymore, cannot appreciate a vision of success in that direction. He’ll make it to the polls on a rainy day. A couple of his friends, who understand the same issues, and their gravity, and have the same opinions about it, won’t. The Obama zombies, meanwhile, I’m thinking two will vote if you find me three. I’m pegging the residue of 2008’s “I wanna be part of this (Obama) thing” spirit at about 67 percent. Six in ten seems low, seven in ten seems a bit high.

And now, in the words of Jack Woltz, let me be even MORE frank. I am less persuaded than ever before by this talk of “Romney is the only one who can take it.” I am worried. I’m worried about Romney. I always have been. It worries me when, if I want to drag a net and snag a whole bunch of negative chatter about a candidate, my best prospect is to drag said net through the people who are supposed to be supporting that candidate. And this is the perception I have of Romney’s supporters. They are all declaring their allegiance, and they come from all sorts of walks of life, they disagree about many other things and agree about Mittens…yes, that much is encouraging, to be sure. But if they only agree about him because they desire a tactical advantage, there’s no real agreement there. They agree they want to win. Well who doesn’t?

Mitt gets the ABO enthusiasm — Anybody But Obama. Okay, on election day if the weather isn’t good, is ABO going to net you the 67 percent to match the Obama Zombies? That fighting spirit of “Yeah, yeah, okay, I said Mitt was the guy…back when the weather was a lot different than it is now…okay, let me go get my coat.” I don’t think it will. The economy will improve — or, at least, there will be some flimsy statistical signs, like last month when the unemployment rate dropped after so many people gave up on trying to find a job. November of ’12, there will be a few more nuggets like that, and the media will play them up. Ten people support Mitt Romney because of ABO right now — I will bet you at least five of them don’t vote when the time comes. And that’s five out of ten who insist Romney’s the guy “because we’ve gotta beat Obama no matter what and nobody matches Romney for electability.” These aren’t bad people or dumb people or unreliable people, but I think a majority of them will get caught up in something else. They’ll be watching reruns on Election Night. Yeah, I’m serious.

The same holds true for Romney himself, once he’s elected. The thing that has to be appreciated here is that, on all the issues that really matter, what’s common sense to the common folk is intolerably right-wing to the elites. Just to pick some examples: Illegal immigration. Or: Schools changing their methods rather than receiving more money. Or the Big Kahuna: Government trimming wasteful spending instead of raising taxes. Global warming and drill baby drill. The people get it. We’re not divided, not as much as we’re represented. To make these seem like contentious issues, you have to offer a bigger soapbox to the left, you have to skew the samples when you do your polling.

But once you so skew and once you so misrepresent, for the reasons I was spelling out as I entered my comment at Mondo’s, politicians like Romney will listen to and act upon the results. Faced with a choice between pursuing a common-sense not-whackjob-liberal course of action, and avoiding a good healthy George-W.-Bush sliming, a Romney will do whatever it takes to avoid such a sliming.

Reagan would pursue the common-sense solution.

Refer back to my observation about the indies, and the legacy of The Gipper. Therein lies the lesson. People appreciate leadership. They don’t appreciate sucking-up.

Karen Singer Avrech, Ph.D. at Big Government:

Recently, an aggressive media campaign has been launched by Let’s Move, a government-funded fitness initiative led by Michelle Obama.

As you will see in this TV spot that’s airing, one of many, the message of the Let’s Move campaign is quite simple: Lying to your children is fine because it’s good for them.

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This is a paradigm for how the Obama administration views and treats the American public. They are the all-knowing parents and we are the clueless children who will be herded and prodded, by any means necessary, into government mandated programs that are, they assure us, ultimately “good for us.”
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Under the guise of a smiley, benevolent state, Michelle Obama, Big Sister, is making a bid to lead the ignorant masses to a better life. And where have we seen that strategy before?

It’s the justification for Obamacare, a Byzantine universe of laws and regulations that is guaranteed to ratchet up the cost of health care, drive physicians out of business, destroy competiton [sic] in favor of a government monopoly, and ration medical care especially for the elderly and those afflicted with life threatening illnesses.

It’s also the fuel that sustains every murderous Socialist and Communist regime that’s ever existed, dictatorships whose morality is best summed up thusly: the ends justifies the means.

I actually like what Michelle Obama is trying to do. Of course, that’s the case with every plan that’s ever come out of the left for the last hundred years — the goals, as stated, are just fine. The problem is with the implementation, which always seems to have the side effect of making statist bureaucrats more powerful. Did I say side effect? Funny how, overall, that objective manages to get accomplished and the objectives that got the problem sold in the first place, don’t quite seem to ever be satisfactorily met. Someone remind me what the First Lady’s authorities are under Article II of the Constitution again?

Here’s how I would do it, assuming it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to make kids fit and thin, by means of putting messages on the airwaves and on YouTube…which I don’t accept…but anyway. You show someone moving around. Like Beyonce with the green leggings.

Except, instead of trying to get kids to like rap music — which they do, already, way too much — perform some feats. Out on the field. With measurements. A few years ago, before Michelle O even came along, I was doing my own “Let’s Move” program on Thanksgiving day. I was out riding my bike down the Jedediah Smith trail, a couple people were jogging out there and the man decided to use my moving bike as a benchmark, just to see if he could keep up. Or, maybe he was trying to rob me. But it looked more like he was using my speed as a benchmark…ten miles an hour. Rather pokey speed on a bike, but it’s really smoking when you’re on foot. You have to work your way up to that. Beyonce might be able to do it. Starting the training in childhood would probably help a lot.

Imagine the power of getting a bunch of kids talking about something like that. Kind of a Jerrod of Subway Sandwiches in reverse. My boss said once, in a meeting, whatever we measure gets improved, and whatever we don’t, doesn’t. Pugsley ran ten miles an hour in episode nine. He ran five miles in forty-five minutes in episode eight. Huh, I wonder if I could work my way up to that?

But there are two big problems with this. One, I don’t approve of the government managing people this way. If people draw inspiration from the government, receive their signals on how to prioritize the things in their lives and act on them — something is wrong, then. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

The other big problem is, and this is really the point: The Obama administration wouldn’t go for it. No leftist would. Measuring, and then celebrating, a human achievement? An individual human achievement? No can do, we’re all in this together! So start the music, get the rhythm going, ditch any scorekeeping…and get moving to that…a big massive-crowd grind-and-wiggle, in which individual identity is completely swallowed-up and lost in the crowd. That is not in harmony with Michelle Obama’s stated goal, since you can “harmonize” your body with a number like this, off in the background, without losing a single calorie. Just sorta move your arms around and you’re in.

Conclusion: Let’s Move is not about making kids fit, or stopping them from becoming fat. It’s just like gay marriage. It gets people to talk about inconsequential things, so that, like a deceived daughter running up & down stairs looking for a purse, we can’t & don’t concentrate on holding our so-called “leaders” to account, making sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

Update: Completely off-topic comment, but I was noticing on New Years Eve, with that wretched Lady Gaga number, this dance format has been enjoying a resurgence of sorts for awhile now…the “lead” dancer moves around and then the “backup” dancers, as individually identifiable as Star Wars stormtroopers, move around in sync, wraith-like, in the background.

I know it’s been around for a long time. It got a big boost back when moving/talking pictures first achieved viability. But in this generation it is the way to choreograph things…again…I wonder…could 2012 be the year the insanity stops? Seems Britney Spears gave it a big boost which, with the benefit of hindsight and after repeated exposure, and rather underwhelmed with the lack of creativity, I see was not helpful.

At 0:48, I see the forecast is a high of 63 and a low of 47, provided one considers San Francisco close enough to reflect our locale.

Thank you, Mia. Always nice ta know what’s goin’ on…

Wisdom, again, from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account (seems these links require membership/registration before you can follow them)…

So we’ve got anti-war people on the left and anti-war people on the right. Then we have the other. The anti-war people make two glaring mistakes: They presume that, in a conflict, one side or the other can unilaterally decide (without surrendering) the conflict should stop. The other mistake they make is to presume anyone not in their camp, must be completely lacking in any respect for human life whatsoever.

Both of these suppositions are demonstrably false.

And the irony is this: As anyone who’s been present can attest, when anti-war and pro-war people get together, a mini-war erupts right then & there. And then the anti-war people consistently show the worst pro-war tendencies in that mini-war. They dehumanize the opposition, marginalize it, trivialize it, and in sum, just state their viewpoint of the situation over & over again with little or no effort made to exchange or evenhandedly-evaluate ideas.

Their oikophobia is demonstrated easily, when you observe how frustrated they become that the “real” war and the mini-war drag on and on, and they clearly think the solution to BOTH conflicts is a simple one. But within the real war, even though they often insist there aren’t any meaningful sides defined, they consistently want one side to do all the appeasing; that would be the side made up of their purported fellow countrymen. The more alien side, according to them, doesn’t need to do any compromising at all. Obviously you have to recognize sides in order to consistently favor one over the other.

Perhaps, here in the United States, our anti-war movement is more irrational than most because our military is still a mighty one compared to other countries. Think on it; you have two countries, A and B, and a conflict erupts and let’s just arbitrarily say B is making a demand of A that happens to be an unreasonable one, and A possesses a distinctly superior military force. In that case, B’s acquiescence to A is the logical solution to the conflict. An anti-war movement sincerely motivated by a desire to see the end of the conflict, would choose that position to advocate.

But if the anti-war zealot happens to belong to country A, by pushing for this solution, he would meld his rhetoric into the rhetoric used by the pro-war movement of country A. Which would be an inconsequential consideration for someone who wants to end the conflict and thinks logically about actions and consequences. It wouldn’t matter.

Therefore, the anti-war zealot who calls for A, his own country, to do the compromising while B, the foreign country, sits back and enjoys the fruits of the conflict — must be motivated by a desire to distinguish himself from the “real enemy,” meaning, fellow countrymen who are not part of his movement. This would be the polar opposite of the coming-together-as-one-world that anti-war people say they want, and here in the states we get to watch them exercise it consistently.

And by rewarding the more belligerent entity in the conflict, with concessions and bounty that would not have been forthcoming had the conflict not started, they provide a clear incentive for more, future, conflicts.

They aren’t anti-war at all, when you look into it. Not in America they aren’t.

Just what we needed.

Does getting pepper-sprayed count as extra credit?

Columbia University is offering a new course on Occupy Wall Street next semester — sending upperclassmen and grad students into the field for full course credit.

The class is taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, who boasts about her nights camped out in Zuccotti Park.

As many as 30 students will be expected to get involved in ongoing OWS projects outside the classroom, the syllabus says.

The class will be in the anthropology department and called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement.” It will be divided between seminars at the Morningside Heights campus and fieldwork.

On her blog, Appel defends OWS, arguing that “it is important to push back against the rhetoric of ‘disorganization’ or ‘a movement without a message’ coming from left, right and center.”

Addressing the safety risks of fieldwork among protesters, she writes on the syllabus, “I can say with absolute certainty that there is no foreseeable risk in teaching this as a field-base class.”

She said her allegiance won’t keep her from being an objective teacher.

“Inevitably, my experience will color the way I teach, but I feel equipped to teach objectively,” Appel told The Post. “It’s best to be critical of the things we hold most sacred.”

So let’s see…we have this Occupy movement made up of college grads who have discovered their diplomas are worthless in the job market because there is no demand in the field of Native American Womens Basket-Weaving or whatever. (I made up that particular vocation, it doesn’t gel with reality because a basket-weaver would, one presumes, provide a product every now & then that someone could use.) As a result, we’ve had Airhead Autumn in which these business districts of various cities have been flooded with malcontents who want something, but cannot coherently say what it is they want.

Now we have a useless college course inspired by the movement. When, if it could be said the movement was started by anything at all by way of frustration of the layman, said frustration had to do with the uselessness of college coursework when tested by the supply and demand of real life.

Hamster. Wheel. Squeak squeak squeak squeak…

Mkay, I’m gonna go ahead and say it. I just don’t get football.

Stopped for a bite to eat in a sports bar that is within walking distance, so I could have a couple of glasses of Guinness. There was some kind of game on today. I noticed something about the fans I had not previously noticed about football fans: The moments of disappointment are every bit as important to the spectator pastime as the moments of jubilation.

Spectator pastime; there is my problem. I’ve never gotten pleasure from watching other people do things. From what I observe of it, this spectator activity causes these outbursts of extraordinary emotional spike, and some of the pleasure has to do with sharing the emotions with others. I’ve never managed to get into that, ever. And this is something I’ve been noticing for a long time…a very long time…

But regarding today’s epiphany, that the moments of letdown are every bit as important to the watching-experience as the moments of triumph. The more I think on it, the more confused I become. Let’s go over the common elements, shall we? Some crucial maneuver is being engaged by a “player”; the player is a complete stranger to the spectator, who has no control over the player, none at all. The player is executing this maneuver in order to make some progress toward winning the game, which is an objective of extreme importance to the spectator. Maybe he’s made a wager. Or maybe he just feels like he has. So he, and the player, labor under a common interest in the outcome.

The player biffs it…which causes a predictable surge of unhappy adrenaline in the spectator. What a clod! Damn him! And the spectator has to wonder, audibly, if the player has his head and his ass in the game, if the player cares about how things turn out. Or if the player isn’t just a complete dummy.

This is the source of my freshly found confusion — why do you want this? Why would you seek this out? Especially during tax season? Doesn’t real life offer more occasion for this than you could ever possibly want? The HR department of your employer. California state legislature. The IRS. President Obama. The meter maid. All these people have power over you, in that their decisions directly impact the outcome of things that you can’t control, but that definitely control you. And they all give us reason to wonder where their heads are. Whether they care, whether they’re idiots, whether they’re really on our side…

Football fans seem to be driven by a constant frenzied hunger, starved out of their minds, for something I get to “enjoy” in a greater abundance than any sane man could possibly want: The frustration of holding a stake in something that is being managed by someone failing to keep your confidence. What is it with that? Are they not put in this situation in their everyday lives? Or is it one of those things that, the more you get of it, the more you want? Kind of a weird, Stockholm-syndrome masochist whip-me-beat-me-make-me-write-bad-checks thing?

The super-duper-magical envelope is on the computer desk in front of me. It’s got every single Christmas shopping receipt, minus Internet orders. Every single one…save for the Sports Authority receipt. It’s like some magical little elf figured out I bought her the wrong size at that one store, snuck in, and made off with that one receipt. An elf named Murphy. I must have left the slip in the shopping bag when I pulled out the merchandise to wrap it.

Two-thirds of a quart of eggnog, and tomorrow is the expiration date. Om nom nom nom.

She works 9:30 to 3:30. I’m going to try to clean up this dive, plot out the finances, shower, trim the beard, maybe run down to the coffee shop and buy one of those old heavy newspaper things.

I’m thinning out my e-mail inbox. I’m one of those weirdos who never deletes messages…but last night, on a Facebook thread someone cried foul against a Ron Paul fan because the word “neocon” was supposed to be off-limits according to the rules of the thread. The Paulbot started squealing about his First Amendment rights to free speech being oppressed, and away we went. Paulbots: Deprived of “neocon,” “Eisenhower tried to warn us” and “wake up!” they have nothing left to say. But they’ll say it anyway.

I didn’t get all my filing of paperwork done. Got one box squared away, another two to go. Almost jammed the paper shredder three times.

Another Paulbot, this one part of my circle of friends and I have much more respect for her, is trying to tell me (again) that Palin was never doing anything more than chasing money. Must be nice to read minds.

I unleashed a rant about the scene with Will Smith committing suicide in a bathtub full of jellyfish. See if I tell you which movie that is, it’s a huge spoiler, and hopefully (maybe?) I’m doing right by you if I don’t say what the movie is. Hope that works, anyway…my beef is that the 911 responders would have been stung by the same jellyfish, and this makes him something of a jerk. Well, I’m told he left a note. I own the movie, I’ll have to watch it again. But still, a note? How about grab a can of glow-in-the-dark paint, and put letters covering the entire wall “WATCH OUT FUCKING DEADLY JELLYFISH” with a down-arrow.

My son called sometime yesterday, and hung up. I’ll have to see what’s going on.

Found a Linux client for Skype, and opened an account. Cute toy. But the kid hasn’t been online.

We had to dredge up some of our youthful vigor, since we weren’t able to find a live broadcast of the celebrations in New York. And so we had to do what normal people do, and stay awake until it was midnight in our time zone. Life is tough.

So what, in blogger world, made the biggest impression on me lately? Probably this…

Poor, poor put-upon Paris Kardashian wanna-be ladies. Someone please find them a frowny-face emoticon, I don’t think they can manage it themselves.