Archive for March, 2012

The Failed “War on Women”

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

Dana Loesch writest at Breitbart’s Big Journalism:

A trio of polls released yesterday shows the harsh reality from which the embattled President Obama and the media hoped to deflect by fabricating a “War on Women.”

The newest Washington Post/ABC poll shows that the majority of Americans strongly disapprove of the way in which the President is handling a number of issues, chief among them the economy and gas prices. According to the March 10th, 2012 poll released yesterday a net 50% of those surveyed disapprove of how Obama is handling the job of president with 39% “strongly disapproving” and only 28% “strongly approving.” This is up from the net 46% taken on February 4th of the same year.

On the economy, 50% “strongly disapprove” whereas only 20% “strongly approve” of the President’s management. His negatives greatly outweigh his positives on everything from his handling of Iran, the budget deficit, Afghanistan, and on “the situation with gas prices” where 52% “strongly disapprove” of his job performance. It represents an increasing trend.

The latest New York Times/ CBS News poll:

At a time of rising gas prices, heightened talk of war with Iran and setbacks in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama’s approval rating dropped substantially in recent weeks, the poll found, with 41 percent of respondents expressing approval of the job he is doing and 47 percent saying they disapprove — a dangerous position for any incumbent seeking re-election.

The last of the trio comes from Rasmussen which illustrates how a full 59% of the country view Obama as “more liberal” than they are themselves.
:
If the incumbent wants to win a second term, focus on fixing what’s broken — the barrier between big government and private enterprise — and staying out of what isn’t. There’s no need to purposefully victimize women for the sake of using them as pawns in an election. That itself is an act of war on women.

Related: Jammie Wearing Fool:

Three groups that supported him in 2008: The young, women and less affluent are abandoning him in droves, but somehow it’s the GOP that’s got a problem.

When he gets blown out in November, it’ll be reported as “Obama Unexpectedly Loses 40 States” or something along those lines.

Also, from Frank J. Fleming at IMAO:

With the GOP war on women, it’s just too bad Ted Kennedy isn’t around to drive women to safety.

Heat Ray Unveiled

Monday, March 12th, 2012

Too late to vote on it, nevertheless, I’m all in favor if they let me pick the targets.

Star Wars on Bagpipes

Sunday, March 11th, 2012

And your favorite Dark Lord of the Sith on a unicycle.

Double Standard

Sunday, March 11th, 2012

The trouble with the Fluke matter is, we need to get off it and on to other things that are far more important; and, at the same time, we don’t.

On the one hand, the matter is settled. President Obama has been so hugely embarrassed by the whole contraception-mandate thing that His pals on Capitol Hill figured out there was no way of saving Him short of the Winifred Skinner technique: Put some sad sack in front of the cameras and tell a tall tale about the woe and misery involved in this one loser trying to cope with life. Oh, how can this happen in America! We need reform! This is all old ground for us by now, there are “real” problems elsewhere that need solving.

On the other hand, there’s something important taking place that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. The Sandra Fluke thing, with the slut issues and the free speech issues removed — and, yes, I’m ready, let’s do that — is revealed as a Winifred Skinner thing. We’ve got these politicians who are supposedly “serving” us, and they’re supposed to have such fine and upstanding character, chosen from the best and brightest among us. And, as respect for the legislative branch in particular, and our government in general, continues to sink like a bowling ball dropped over the Mariana Trench, they continue to put these losers in front of microphones to guilt us into more unaffordable social programs. On Planet Liberal, the Constitution is meaningless, and the only constitution that applies is an unwritten one. It’s got something to do with inventing new rights every now & then, by means of drama.

If anybody calls them on it, they invent more rights for themselves, on the spot, again, by means of drama. Specifically, they should be allowed new influence and powers because their feelings were hurt just now.

If this tactic appealed only to the other sad sacks strewn across the country, it wouldn’t work. Yes, we’re in an idiocracy for the moment, and that means every new year finds us weaker and more pathetic than the year before, which may mean each year there are more sad sacks than there were one year previous. But they’re still in the minority. The problem here, as I see it, is empathy: We’ve got these “moderates” out there who work honestly and hard, and pay their own way, but they want to show some compassion toward those who must live off the efforts of others. They fail to distinguish between those who are indigent by circumstance and those who are indigent by choice. They behold, to use a metaphor I’ve used previously, the local widow and the town drunk. They see only commonalities between the two, and no differences.

They’re entirely decent people, but since they are not part of the solution, they’re part of the problem. Perhaps we should dispense with the diplomacy: They’re suckers. They bought every little cock-and-bull story told to them about Sandra Fluke, by The Left, over the last two weeks. Wolfed it all down, and begging for seconds. Sandra Fluke told truth to power! Georgetown gals need three thousand dollars for their ovarian cyst medication! Ban Rush Limbaugh because he said something legal but offensive!

Remember when the radical Islamists out in New York wanted to build a Victory Mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks and the liberals started calling everyone racists who didn’t want to roll out the red carpet? They said it was all about something called “religious freedom” and claimed to have always held a deep genuflecting respect for the principle. And then demanded that we not chortle at the thought…lest they become offended. Just so adorable! Well, this time the thing they’ve always believed going back to the very beginning, is that anyone who so much as thinks the word “slut” should be vaporized on the spot. Yeah, them. The “Sarah Palin Is A Cunt” people. Don’t crack a smile, whatever you do! Choke it down! Wouldn’t want to offend them…

Yeah, it’s a double standard. But let us perceive it for exactly what it is. Wisdom from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account:

The Modern Left does not HAVE a double-standard.

the Modern Left IS a double-standard.

That is their mission, that is their message…so yeah, they said “hey Rush shouldn’t use that word” and they end up embarrassed because, it’s on tape, their guys have been using that word, much more frequently, and other words much, much worse.

If the same opportunity was presented to them a hundred more times, they would have plowed right into the same embarrassment and self-inflicted damage a hundred more times. This was all quite unavoidable. It’s what they are. Special rules for special people, and lowered standards for whoever they define to be victims. It is their primary position and their core value system.

This applies to all issues on which there is significant disagreement between conservatives and liberals, at least all the issues that are not exclusively concerned with building a police/nanny state. The formula is ever-present on issues foreign and domestic. X has endured Y…and because X has endured Y, we have to have Z and, furthermore, you are not allowed to say anything about X that isn’t absolutely flattering. Z is a consolation prize to X, punishment rained down on the head of whoever did Y, or some combination of those two. That is the leftist position. On everything.

They are anti-equal-protection advocates. Across the board. They want special privileges for defined elites. That is the product they are selling.

Double StandardPalestinians aren’t bombing Israelis, they’re just fighting back the only way they know how, after Israelis used American weapons to incinerate their babies.

We took the land away from the Indians, oops Native Americans, so they should have their own fishing seasons.

If we can somehow manage to dredge up some passionate argument against the way you got the evidence, then it never happened and you “must acquit.”

And if we can’t do that, then the poor convicted rapist/murderer guy had a rough childhood and is not to be blamed.

Blacks can use the N-word, whites can’t.

We’ve got to recognize same-sex marriage, because, who are you to tell people who they can’t love?

Women make seventy cents on the dollar compared to men, so now that the marriage is over, he needs to pony up the cash to keep her in the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed.

We need to keep Affirmative Action around, with quotas, for, oh, so-many more years or so…

You can’t build that dam, the snail darter lives there.

No drilling, no pipeline. Caribou mating season or something…blah blah blah pristine.

Hillary Clinton’s husband messed around on her, so she is eminently qualified for just about everything.

Don’t call them illegal immigrants, call them undocumented, they work hard follow the law…et cetera.

Rick Walker bad, public sector unions good.

Andrew Breitbart bad, Shirley Sherrod good.

I could keep adding to that list all day…but what’s the point…once the pattern is defined and understood, it is visible in everything they do. And in each case, it is a measurable event that the plane of reality is being abandoned — because, in each case, if someone within the victim class is provably guilty of some transgression, the liberal position is going to consistently be offered that reason and justice must be derailed (simplest example of this would be in the illegal-immigration problem).

This is a significant point, and it is important that more people become fully aware of it. It will affect the outcome of the election this year. Since around the time of Bill Clinton’s victory twenty years ago, The Left has enjoyed easy victory by peddling their nonsense to the moderates I mentioned above — the charitable, kind-hearted, hardworking moderates. Who are suckers. Because those suckers cannot tell the widow apart from the town drunk, and make no effort or achievement toward understanding there are people walking around determined to live off of the sweat of others. People who think only idiots work hard. And why shouldn’t those town-drunks think such a thing, if their lives have been devoted to suckering the sucker moderates — and it has always worked?

The passionate leftist approaches the sucker moderate and recites the formula: X has endured Y, therefore we must have Z. The sucker-moderate decides it the way he decides everything else: By finding whatever can be perceived to be the most “extreme” position on the issue, and rejecting it with great zeal, and great visibility, almost ceremoniously: I denounce that! But they select that most-extreme position emotionally and not logically. Because, logically, “Rush Limbaugh should be taken off the air” would be found undesirably extremist, but somehow these overly-emotional sucker-moderates settle on “Sandra Fluke can pay for her own personal items” as the extremist ethos that must be expunged from our delicate societal sensibilities.

The paradox is this — and, this is why The Left is just as ready as anybody else, to stop talking about Sandra Fluke. They don’t want what follows, to sink in. They don’t want the sucker-moderates to become aware of it. It’s unaffordable, from their perspective and position; this would give the whole game away.

The truth is, you cannot buy into “X endured Y and so we must have Z” without surrendering your believable credentials as a moderate. There is nothing to limit the Z. One of the clarion calls used by The Left in the Fluke debacle has been: “Nobody has said she wants the government to pay for her contraceptives, she just wants her insurance to cover it!” The truth is: Nobody has said that and nobody needs to. Granting her victory in the argument she’s really trying to make here, there’s nothing stopping that next step, is there? The whole testimony was all about how unaffordable it is, for any ordinary Georgetown student, to take on this particular expense all by her poor hapless helpless self. That is the point she was seeking to make.

Here, as is the case with all other liberal positions on the issues — there is nothing to limit the Z. They are inherently extremist positions. You are not able to say anything negative about X; you cannot even think things about X that are less than flattering; therefore, it is not logical to expect any limits should be applied to Z. It is ever-expanding. Always one Capitol Hill testimony, or Wall Street protest, away from the next event of expansion.

To the sucker-moderates, a week ago this was a simple issue: Rush Limbaugh called someone a slut, do we sucker-moderates like that word? No, that’s an easy call, so…yes, he should apologize, and what a terrible person he is. That makes Fluke an angel, along with everyone supporting her, they’re all wonderful people. But now that they’ve had a chance to mull it over awhile, The Left is scrambling for a distraction, which is rather surreal when you ponder that Sandra Fluke was a manufactured distraction from something else, herself, in the first place. The sucker-moderates are starting to see the hypocrisy laid bare and it looks ugly. See, they only want to side with the leftists; they don’t want to admit that they’re becoming converted leftists themselves, they’ll never tolerate that. Ever. Paraphrasing Upton Sinclair, they’ll buy into the system but they’ll never buy the label.

And, they’re starting to become aware that the check they’re being asked to write, is a blank one.

You know how bad this situation really is for The Left? The sucker-moderates are starting to wake up to the fact that, deciding public policy issues according to things like emotion, and sympathy for only a few of the impacted parties within the equation, is not only unfair but unrealistic. They are forming a new awareness that such a situation is encumbered by Herbert Stein’s Law: Whatever can’t last forever, won’t.

That particular awareness could be fairly described as the very definition of being a conservative!

This Is Good XCVII

Sunday, March 11th, 2012

I’ve Made Up My Mind About Apologies

Saturday, March 10th, 2012

And what I’ve decided is, I don’t like ’em. I’ll go further: I can’t stand them. I fucking hate ’em.

Okay I’ll make one single exception to that: If it’s like when James Caan snapped at Robert Duvall in The Godfather, and then immediately said, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that — if it’s a case of, the grown-up side of the brain hasn’t been in charge, and it just took control again and is in a process of making things right — then, and only then, I like apologies. Then, and only then, apologies are okay. When there’s some definable difference between what just took place, and the way people really are, when the person apologizing is admitting to something like “Ah, there’s a steering wheel in my head and I let go of it just now, I’m not gonna do that again, and what I just said is not real.”

But we don’t get to see that now too much, do we?

I’ve heard repeatedly from the left that Rush Limbaugh’s apology was insincere, and he should have taken an example from Ed Schultz’ apology to Laura Ingraham:

It rubs me the wrong way, frankly, that the left seems to think this is the model to which all other apologies must aspire. It isn’t that I think it’s inadequate; I don’t. It’s from the heart, and it leaves nothing undone. But I don’t like to see a grown man grovel. And, let’s face it, they like that. Can’t get enough of it.

Shortly after his apology, Ed Schultz saw a snake slithering by, and decided to rub its belly. He reached waaaaaaaay up from where he was, on tippy toes…couldn’t quite get there…gave up, slouched over, continued shuffling along, saw a hole in the ground, jumped into it, then grabbed the hole and pulled it in after him. Total humility in the wake of total humiliation. Every leftist watching is positively giddy with excitement over the way his shoulders sloop. This is why they hate westerns with the hero in the big hat walking tall after saving the town. This is the polar opposite: The obliteration of the individual. If only the same thing happened to Rush Limbaugh! And Karl Rove and Ollie North, while you’re at it.

The leftists who say, Schultz did it right and Limbaugh should learn something, are guilty of having lost track of their own argument. Their protest against Limbaugh, and this is not conjecture on my part because they’re stating it word by word themselves, is: He’s sorry for having been caught. He’s apologizing because he’s losing advertisers and trying to stop the revenue hemorrhage. Okay, that’s a fair point because, truth be told, that’s exactly why I’ve come to loathe apologies; more on that below. But — did Ed Schultz do such a great job in the clip above, that he’s immune from the same criticism? Go back and watch it again. Yes, he’s contrite, and reading from a script that could only have been written by someone who truly empathizes with the offense. But it could also be fairly characterized as an apology given only because a revenue stream is showing signs of drying up. You could see the whole ritual being skipped, if the advertisers weren’t getting ready to bail. Maybe they’ll admit it and maybe it won’t. It doesn’t matter, because it’s true. It’s just another apology for having been caught.

The contrite Ed “setting an example for my grandchildren” Schultz doesn’t really have a moral objection to calling women sluts if they disagree with him politically. Because if he did, he wouldn’t have said this:

And with that, I don’t wanna talk about Schultz anymore because this isn’t about him.

What this is really about, is: I am hearing, in the past few years, at what appears to be a continually accelerating pace, a crescendoing drumbeat of people expressing these “sincere” apologies for behavior they fully intend to do again. Or at least, with the same situation presented to them, would do again. Yes, I believe this is true of Limbaugh; I have listened to him way too long to believe otherwise. He has had a name for it going all the way back to the beginning: Illustrating absurdity by being absurd.

Here’s how it works. When someone presents an argument that is so ludicrous, that it falls apart simply by being taken seriously by somebody, Rush — takes it seriously. It is as effective as it is logical. Yes, I’m going on the record: He had nothing for which to apologize here. I don’t care if he says otherwise and I don’t care that he did apologize. This is the real reason why the apology was ineffective. There was no call for it in the first place.

Therefore, show me a thousand people who feel he needed to make the apology, I’ll show you a thousand people dedicated to the idea that his sin was irredeemable, and any apology would be irrelevant. Have him go back and give a Schultz-apology, and it wouldn’t matter one bit. Not a single mind would have been changed. The apology was a mistake. Or at least…battle tactics aside…the apology was a mistake. Limbaugh made a mistake giving it. And I say “battle tactics aside” because it is becoming more and more clear to me that the liberals made a mistake demanding it.

We’re plunged into a thoughtful deliberation about the double standard established by, enjoyed by, and perpetuated by, liberals. The “mainstream” people who actually decide elections are becoming more aware of this double standard. That’s bad for liberals and good for everyone else. For every pound of ass-flesh Rush Limbaugh loses to this, the situation now is that the Establishment Left loses two pounds, and I perceive that this point-of-diminishing-returns was crossed sometime between noon and eight o’clock Wednesday. That, too, is good.

But that doesn’t legitimize Rush’s decision. This situation would have occurred, along roughly the same timeframe, were the apology withheld.

The problem is this: The apology loses value when it is used as an instrument of deceit. And with the trajectory where the custom is headed, it is to be used as an instrument of deceit more and more frequently, and for other, more sincere, purposes more rarely. The left is finding Limbaugh’s apology wanting, and I think they should. Rush is offering them an empty packaging with nothing inside. The point they’re missing is that this empty packaging is more than what was owed.

I do think Bill Maher deserves some props for this tweet:

Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh but he apologized, liberals looking bad not accepting. Also hate intimidation by sponsor pullout

I’ve taught my son that an expression of gratitude is obligatory, if someone does something kind for you that they didn’t have to do. According to that litmus test, Maher gets a high-five. Perhaps a cynical cost-benefit calculation went into it. In fact, it’s likely. Maybe the asshole gets out of bed every morning thinking “What can I do to make conservatives lose something and let liberals win something?” That’s likely too. Almost certain. But it doesn’t matter, because he didn’t have to do it.

I don’t like apologies anymore. They do not do much to improve situations. I will admit here that I am nursing a grudge against the implement when my quarrel is really against the implementation, much like a gun-hater might hate guns because of some disaster brought about by one carelessly wielded gun in the possession of someone who never should have been allowed to touch one. So with that in mind, I understand this is not a completely fair grudge. I don’t care. The gun analogy breaks down, because we spend, rightfully, a great abundance of effort and energy on making sure guns are used only by people who have some business with them, and understand the common-sense rules that apply to them.

We sure suck at doing the same thing with apologies. The apology has become the very emblem of inept government.

In fact, I dislike the whole model of government that supports, and is supported by, the image of the prominent and influential public “servant” issuing an apology. Seriously, what am I to learn from such a display? Let us start with the common theme that applies to all of them: Had a thought been germinating in my cranium that the wrong folks are in charge, the “press conference” is intended to dissuade me from that notion. But the apology is directed at multiple people, is it not, for I by myself am not sufficiently important to pry an apology out of people who have power over me. And the apology is issued at a specific time, in the wake of a specific event; what I’m getting at is, there must have been a prologue to the apology. There had to be a logical reason for people to think this person is unfit for the office he holds. The apology is intended for the powerful to get the last word in — against observed reality. In short: The apology is not about contrition, it is about power. Someone else, who has power the apology-issuer does not have, rightly or wrongly has stirred up a tempest in a teapot and done some thinking on behalf of someone else. The thinking says that the words or deeds of the person issuing the apology, once entered into the record, are terminal to that person’s fitness for the office he holds. Somehow, the act of issuing the apology is going to reverse course, it’s going to alter the outcome, which means a deal has been struck and now someone is going to do some more thinking on behalf of someone else. Unless the apology fails, that is. Then, too, it isn’t about contrition, it’s about power.

So can we stop with all the high-minded and supercilious nonsense about what a proper apology looks like?

The more I look at these apologies, the more I hate them. I only see the Limbaugh apologies, which make me think “Whose boneheaded idea was this,” and the Kennedy/Chappaquiddick ones that make me think “Why are you wasting my time, we know what you are now.” All I see anymore are two factions, each of which possesses some kind of power the other doesn’t have, one of which is corrupt, and in some cases both of them are — forming an agreement to partner up with each other when they don’t really want to. All I see is a reluctantly codified pact between two inimical forces. A corrupt pact. So-and-so is going to keep his job…Cui bono? Cui plagalis?

The peanut gallery is supposed to look on it and say “Oh, well that’s a relief. For the last day or two I’ve been troubled by a feeling that we didn’t have wonderful awesome people in charge of everything,” then go back to worrying about the important stuff. Something to do with someone on the idiot-box getting voted off or out of something.

Darn, it looks like I’ve once again taken a simple thought and exploded it into a dry, meandering epistle on my blog. I’m so, so very sorry about that. Think I’ll go cross-post it now.

The Big Match

Friday, March 9th, 2012

Blondes versus Brunettes.

What Deserves an Apology and What Doesn’t

Friday, March 9th, 2012

From here.

President Obama explained that he felt it was necessary to console Miss Fluke because he was thinking of his two daughters, Sasha and Malia.

“One of the things I want them to do as they get older is engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on,” the President said at a news conference last Tuesday. “I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don‘t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.”

But by accepting this explanation, one is left wondering why the president didn’t console, say, conservative author Laura Ingraham when she was called a “slut” or Sarah Palin when she was called things far worse than anything uttered by Mr. Limbaugh.

I’ve been noticing something about these apologies and non-apologies, and the Gohmert clip bears this out for the most part. The apologies that are skipped by President Obama, if they were given, the point of error would be traced back to a judgment flaw on the part of no one, save for President Barack H. Obama (or people who directly report to Him). A great example: That silly “beer summit.” Rather than making a “teachable moment” out of it, it would have made perfect sense for the President to apologize for jumping the gun on judging police action in a local matter. It would have been a lot quicker, too. I think it ultimately would have been less damaging to the administration. It would have come off looking like an oh-well. Gee, it seemed to make good sense at the time. I guess when you give a lot of speeches you’re bound to slip up somewhere. Shucks, I’m human, no harm no foul.

But Barack Obama is a demigod, that’s why we make a point of capitalizing the H when we refer to Him. Admitting to an occasionally flawed decision, is beneath Him…so…we had to have a “teachable moment” with glasses of beer. All because He Who Caused The Oceans To Recede can’t admit a mistake.

And the apologies He does have time to give — I haven’t re-scanned the Gohmer clip from beginning to end with just this in mind, but it seems whenever He does issue an apology, it’s an apology for something someone else has done. People try to get me to read His biography, explaining that it’s a “love letter” to America, pointing out things the country must stop doing that it’s doing wrong…I don’t think I like the sound of that, sounds like, as they say, a love letter from O.J. to Nicole. But that fits into the pattern. Every bad decision that needs a re-do, in the Obama universe, is something that was decided by someone other than Barack Obama.

This is not the trait of a personality that makes for good leadership.

Cute Face, Acrid Attitude, Wireless Ear Plug and Wikipedia

Friday, March 9th, 2012

And you have Soledad O’Brien of CNN. Complete with an amazingly knowledgeable understanding of Critical Race Theory.

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien’s venomously sarcastic interview with Breitbart.com editor-in-chief Joel Pollak culminated with her throwing out her definition of “Critical Race Theory” in the heat of her interview over the Obama/Bell Tapes released last night. Pollak had already requested that O’Brien define the term more than once, and at the 1:45 mark in the video below, she finally does. One problem–O’Brien’s definition appears to be lifted almost word-for-word from a wikipedia page, presumedly hurriedly communicated to Soledad in the midst of her interview.

Much later on in the clip, I recall she specifically asked Pollak something, he said something poignant and meaningful, and she mumbled about how she didn’t hear him because someone was speaking in her earset, but moving on…

This after playing the race card against Pollak, with disastrous results.

And then there’s this:

Throughout the day, there have been numerous edits to the wikipedia entry for “Critical Race Theory,” including the elimination of “white supremacy” as a key element (an element referenced by Joel Pollak during his interview with Soledad O’Brien and the existence of which O’Brien scoffed at throughout their conversation). At the time of this update, there had been 26 changes today alone; up until today, the last edit had been mid-February, and before that, just one in January.

The hits just keep on comin’ for CNN.

When is someone going to provide a decent news network for people stranded at airports?

Captain Kirk Fights Obama the Messiah

Friday, March 9th, 2012

Blah blah blah.

Outrage

Friday, March 9th, 2012

Wisdom from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account:

I don’t know if, in modern times, people can feel real anger or outrage anymore. I realize it seems like we’re erupting; I realize it doesn’t seem a month, or even a week, can go by without someone getting pimply-faced white-hot outraged about something.

But it seems, if you show me a hundred occasions of such outrage, I can show you a hundred people who want some rule changed, some object to be perceived and treated as its polar opposite, some fundamental rule of common sense to be stood on its head. It has become inevitable, expected, like the crashing sound on the floor after glassware or flatware has been dropped.

All of which means, I’m lately having a tough time accepting outrage at face value. I think we all are.

Thought is not complete without linkage to Thing I Know #52:

Angry people who demand things, don’t stop being angry when their demands are met.

“USA! USA!”

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

You can’t say that, it’s racist.

Blogger friend Phil has another viewpoint on this. Since the other school was, in fact, American, it made no sense to take “USA!” as a cheer for the victorious team, therefore it was reasonable to infer racial overtones. I have seen some comments from people who are familiar with the locality, residing there currently or having resided there previously. And their words lend weight to the notion, I must say. Although it must be said this is just a couple of people, nameless disembodied voices on the Internet, and they do seem to be packing an agenda that has something to do with finding racism everyplace they look.

None of this has to do with my complaint, however: It’s proxy, third-party offense taken. The school officials found it racist? What business do school officials have imagining racism? I’m not saying they don’t, if the evidence has arisen. This isn’t it. If it’s code for something deeper that’s a real problem, well, wait for some better evidence to come along. If there’s a real problem there, it shouldn’t be a long wait, right?

There’s another problem with this though: The students involved in the chanting were punished. Not grilled about “What t’heck did ya mean by that?” and then punished. This is a significant point. “Both districts are now trying to move past this disturbing incident,” they say…uh, waitaminnit, the districts made the incident. Seriously, what disaster would have ensued had the whole thing been let go? One team wins, a trophy is presented, the crowd chants “USA!” and nothing is done about it. Why, I believe I sat through such displays myself when I was in high school. Couldn’t tell you for sure. Didn’t pay much attention because it isn’t worth it.

If I did hear USA! USA! as the Sehome Mariners cruised on through to victory…and I’m leaning toward yes, I think that was a frequent occurrence…well, that would mean Alamo Heights fans need to work on their displays of racism because they’re sucking at it right now. They’re not changing anything in a meaningful way, to get the message across. To the best of my knowledge, while I attended Sehome, our guys didn’t play against any non-American teams.

So on the basis of my own personal experience, if on none other, I have to conclude the school officials manufactured this crisis. Unintentionally, maybe. But events are unfolding in this situation, differently from the way they used to “back in the day,” because and only because the behavior of the officials has changed.

“Why I Still Support Barack Obama”

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

It’s from one lefty to a bunch of other lefties who’ve abandoned President Obama for not being lefty enough. Yeah I know, you were thinking “Oh good, mystery finally solved”…so was I.

The bullet points are interesting. And very well written, as far as implementing the lessons from, uh, “How to cover up your BS and make it look like something that isn’t BS.”

– Obama abolished the United States’ use of torture and the CIA’s secret prisons.

– He restored the liberal internationalist approach to foreign policy and made an historic outreach to the Muslim world.

– He stabilized an economy that was spiraling into a depression.

– He expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit and made major investments in job training, education, infrastructure, clean energy, housing, and scientific research.

– He saved the automobile industry by saving General Motors and Chrysler.

– He forced the health insurance companies to stop excluding people with pre-existing conditions and to stop dropping people when they got sick.

Rather unsettling how many bullet points on this list are simply efforts, with no matching achievement and therefore no mention of the results that ensued. “Made an historic outreach to the Muslim world,” for example. Would the Obama administration want to be graded on the results? I suppose the country owes the President a debt for proving once and for all that it doesn’t work…now we can quit arguing about it. That’s something.

“Stabilizing the economy” corresponds nicely to an analogy involving a sheepherd whose flock is plagued by a wolf that snacks on two or three heads in the herd every day. At some point, the sheep depletion rate will taper off — when there aren’t any more sheep left. While the shepherd does nothing…the snack rate still reaches zero. And that, boys and girls, is how President Obama stabilized our economy.

One question remains, and it is a reasonable one: So what would it take?

Constrainted Versus Unconstrained

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

Sowell wrote about it, and then Palin wrote about what Sowell wrote about it. Now Whittle explores it.

No Comment About Maher and Palin

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

Patriot Guard Riders

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

“We’ve got this thing covered.”

Godspeed, Neptunus Lex

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Another good one goes. I’ll check back later to see who’s written what.

Thanks for filling us in, Terri.

Moocher Class

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Boortz is on a roll this morning:

Why do we have deficits?
:
Two political scientists, Jody W. Lipford and Bruce Yandle, did a study on taxation in America. The results of their study led them to the conclusion that our progressive tax system where high-income earners sustain a high tax burden is simply unsustainable. The reason is simple: the number of moochers are growing, while the number of producers are shrinking. That’s a fact. “The share of total federal taxes paid by the bottom 40 percent of households has fallen from 9.3 percent in 1979 to 5.2 percent in 2007, while the shares of the tax burden borne by the top 10 percent and one percent, respectively, have risen steadily,” according to their research. This acts as nothing but an incentive for people to vote for government services that they don’t have to pay for.

Voting is the lazy-man’s work. Going to the voting booth once a year or so and voting for Democrats is much easier than waking up at 4am, working three jobs, earning paychecks, and driving home in the dark. Our progressive income tax system has enabled the moochers. In fact, “during the period 1979-2007, the increasing progressivity of the federal tax code is associated with greater government debt and entitlement spending.” Coincidence? I think not.

Our forefathers predicted this. In 1810, political theorist John C. Calhoun foresaw this problem:

“The necessary result, then, of the unequal fiscal action of the government is, to divide the community into two great classes; one consisting of those who, in reality, pay the taxes, and, of course, bear exclusively the burthen of supporting the government; and the other, of those who are the recipients of their proceeds, through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into tax-payers and tax-consumers.”

We were warned, but then along came the Sixteenth Amendment establishing the income tax. These political scientists Lipford and Yandle believe that the Sixteenth Amendment “nullified the prior constitutional restraint on the size of government and enabled one group of citizens to vote themselves benefits at the expense of another.”

There’s a woman in Michigan named Amanda Clayton. You can read about this lovely little moocher right here. Last fall Amanda won $1,000,000 in the state lottery. Today she’s still on welfare and using food stamps? Why? She needs the help to pay her bills. This is mooching raised to an art form. Care to guess how she would probably vote in November?

He continues:

More research from a team at Cornell University found that “incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people’s ideas.” An example they provide is on tax reform. “They found that if people lack knowledge of tax reforms, it was incredibly unlikely voters would be able to identify the candidates who are actual experts.”

Considering that research, is it any reason why Americans vote for politicians like Barack Obama and shun tax reform ideas like the FairTax? They wouldn’t know a decent tax reform or a tax expert if it literally bit them in the ass!

In one of the studies, researchers asked participants to grade grammar quizzes. “We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students.” In other words, incompetent people can’t even recognize the correct answers when they saw them.

Yeah, he’s engaging the same libertarian whining about the Fair Tax that we saw indulged in by the good leftists after John Kerry lost the election, Americans are too stupid for a democracy. Well, maybe there’s something to it. Did you see the clip about the lottery winner using her bridge card? That’s an example of it playing out right in front of your eyes, when you think of it. Here she is, confronted with how inappropriate it is for her to be buying groceries subsidized by people who simply are not as financially solvent as she is now that she’s won her half million dollars. And her answer is: I don’t have an income and I’ve got bills to pay. Recipient of $500,000 saying this. And she’s completely ernest about it.

Some people are simply incapable of working through a paradigm shift. They’re like mental cannonballs, heading in one direction, not gonna change to a different one, no matter what. Blah blah blah, got it tough, life gave me a bum hand, need help, blah blah blah.

So they do what must be done, just like animals in a cage, to get hold of…well, things that are on some list that doesn’t change much, whatever the list happens to say. Laundry detergent, Little Debbies, cigarettes, hair coloring kids, tattoos, and oh yes don’t forget more lottery tickets. The welfare grocery card? It’s just another procedure. Like voting. A tax reform plan comes along, they hear by the grapevine they should oppose it, from some leftist hack outfit…and repeat it as if it’s their own opinion. And then strut around feeling like they’ve done some “research,” then of course vote that way. Even with a million dollars in the bank, nothing changes. It’s very sad.

And what Boortz is really complaining about here, specifically, is Dunning-Kruger Effect. When you don’t know something, you tend to not know that you don’t know it — your incompetence perpetuates a camaflouging effect upon itself, an inability in you to recognize your own incompetence. Yes, there certainly is some of that going on.

“It’s a Right of Conscience Issue”

Monday, March 5th, 2012

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

This “liberals must win whenever they act offended” rule has wedged us into a very strange and surreal little corner of reality here. People who maintain a personal objection against premature pregnancy terminations in whatever form, must now fail to prevent their own dollars from funding exactly that.

Meanwhile, better success is enjoyed by those who have similar personal objections against…uh…well, you tell me if this is sincere or not: They don’t want the word “slut” to be used on the Rush Limbaugh show. Rush’s show is not funded by their dollars, and oh, let me just cut to the chase, I’m calling bullshit on the whole idea that any of them have ever heard a single syllable out of it.

But they must win because they’re just oh so offended.

You, on the other hand, have to keep ponying up for that Fluke slut’s birth control.

“Will I Live to be Eighty?”

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

Received in the e-mail from GBIL.

I recently picked a new primary care doctor. After two visits and
exhaustive Lab tests, he said I was doing ‘fairly well’ for my age. (I
just turned SEVENTY THREE).

A little concerned about that comment, I couldn’t resist asking him,
‘Do you think I’ll live to be 80?’

He asked, ‘Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer, wine or hard liquor?’

‘Oh no,’ I replied. ‘I’m not doing drugs, either!’

Then he asked, ‘Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?’

‘I said, ‘Not much… my former doctor said that all red meat is very
unhealthy!’

‘Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating,
sailing, hiking, or bicycling?’

‘No, I don’t,’ I said.

He asked, ‘Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lots of sex?’

‘No,’ I said…

He looked at me and said,..

‘Then, why do you even give a shit?’

This Is Good XCVI

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

Dog and Bird Share Noodles

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

Sick of talking about him, and her. These are vile people who just nauseate me.

Let’s watch some adorable animals.

<a href='http://www.bing.com/videos/browse?mkt=en-us&#038;vid=7a2f5d60-0c4f-477b-8b95-8b00f229683b&#038;from=&#038;src=v5:embed::' target='_new' title='Dog and Bird Share Noodles' >Video: Dog and Bird Share Noodles</a>

I Made a New Word LIV

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

Flukeness (n.):

Propensity to lazily conflate an aggressive and hostile drive to ban some consumer good, with an entirely reasonable reluctance against providing it for free.

Related: Sonic Charmer is distressed about this inundation of mascots. “Every issue gets a mascot…I don’t want to know about these people. Stop telling me their names. Who decided this made sense as a way to discuss political issues?”

Maybe there’s another word that I need to go and invent. We’re losing dignity with this muscle-memory maneuver of “Put a pathetic and weak idiot in front of a microphone, and a new right is born.”

The good news is, we can have that sense of dignity back anytime we want to get it back. Just stop creating new taxpayer-funded rights by putting idiots in front of microphones.

DJEver Notice? LXXII

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

Perhaps because there is this perception that the availability of birth control devices — for free! — is a winning issue for democrats this election year, suddenly it’s all contraceptives, all the time. That could be because a winning issue for democrats exists nowhere else. We’re out of toothpaste: Contraceptives. Case of hemmarhoids: Contraceptives. Car won’t start: Contraceptives. Gas is six dollars a gallon, Iran’s getting a nuke, 3 a.m. phone call, public debt exceeds GDP, kids are graduating school without knowing anything, job market still sucks: Contraceptives, contraceptives, contraceptives.

Of course, the deeper and more meaningful issue is, as always, getting more votes from undecided voters. Look at it from their point of view, walking in the shoes of the guy whose job it is to get Barack Obama re-elected. Half the battle is to get the country thinking about recreational sex, at which point, it becomes all about the libertarians. You’ll never get them to vote for democrats, but it’s just as good to get them to vote against Republicans, and that job is done once you start talking about recreational sex; sex for purposes other than making babies.

ContraceptivesHey, I’m all in favor of sex for purposes other than making babies. Which is synonymous, for all intents and purposes, with the use of contraceptives.

But haven’t you noticed? Sex, with contraceptive devices, is a perfect metaphor for democrat policies. I mean, the big, deep ones that work out over a longer period of time. Even if the contraceptive devices don’t work.

The trouble with contraceptives is they enable the Idiocracy; only the incompetent reproduce, since it’s possible to screw up the application of a contraceptive device. And that is right in keeping with democrat policies. Here’s a sad sack that can’t, or won’t, make his own life work — we need a government program. The sad sack figuring out what he’s doing wrong, is out of the question, as is the sad sack learning to live with his self-imposed limitations. Put him in back of a conference table with a microphone on it, in front of Congress, and suddenly it’s a moral right. Then hold a vote on it, and now it’s a legal right. The hairpin turn happens when the sad sack drones into the microphone…see what’s happening there? Perfect reversal. Sad sack can’t make something work, so we all need to listen and learn. To the guy who can’t make it work. In fact, the reversal is perfect, since if you can somehow manage to make it work, you have more to learn than most other people. You, above & beyond all the rest, need to shut your mouth and listen to the wisdom of the guy who can’t make it work. It’s your only hope!

That’s my “DJEver Notice” moment. In the conference table setting, the incompetent wield influence denied to the competent. Exactly the same situation exists with birth control. The incompetent reproduce. The competent don’t.

The result is more and more rights; every time a sad sack speaks into a microphone at a conference table it’s another new right. Now that he’s here, that is…to provide all these rights to the lucky sad-sacks that are already here, we’re going to have to define a perimeter within which the rights are provided…so the little bundles of joy that are on the way, have to be defined out of existence. “Got a baby in her tummy” is something you can’t even use in polite, mixed company nowadays, since babies aren’t babies until they breathe actual air, and until then it’s a fetus. Pregnant women used to carry around babies that weren’t born yet. Now, they’re sort of…people-candidates.

This is distasteful to just about everybody, so we’re all obliged to refrain from discussing it — and just leave things the way they are, which is advantageous to the people who made it distasteful. But what if you think on it? It gets eerie, rather quickly. A person isn’t a person until it’s born…the supposition works with things that really, and demonstrably, are not people. It works with a car, can’t expect the engine to roar to life until all the parts are bolted in place. With people? Not so much…but the people in charge say so…so you see what’s happened here. People have been defined to be non-people, and those of us who’ve crossed the threshold are expected not to discuss it too much.

Meanwhile, why is it so important to stop babies from being born, and/or conceived? The plain, cold, hard truth of the matter is: Because children have become liabilities and are no longer assets. A hundred and fifty years ago, if you met a thirty-year-old guy who had six children, you’d think wow what a lucky and blessed guy…what’s he doing right, I wish I could be like that guy. Nowadays you have to think — uh, let’s see…child support payment multiplied by six…yeah, he’d better do whatever it takes to make her happy or he’ll end up living in a cardboard box. I said this is about the longer view, on the progressive side. And that’s it. Babies are liabilities and not assets; babies represent humanity; and that is the goal. Human beings cannot financially afford their own existence.

How else do you get people to rely, pathetically and wretchedly, on government.

I notice, also, that there is something else creeping in very gradually; seems to have started all the way back with FDR’s Four Freedoms speech. This notion that, once we put a conference table and microphone in front of some idiot and figure out hey, we just manufactured a brand new “right” — it seems to be a steadfast position of the democrat party that, if the new right involves an expense, and you have to bear it yourself as opposed to the government taking care of it for you, that’s the equivalent of being denied the right. And of course, since it’s a right, that is eliminated as an option straight out of the chute. So the taxpayers have a new expense.

I believe this presents some opportunity for the conservatives, ironically enough. This is a question on which the democrats provide one answer and everyone else — including moderates and libertarians — provides the opposite one. Conservatives stand with non-conservatives. By and large, it seems democrats believe if you have a right to do something, you have a right to do that thing without personally bearing any expenses associated with it. Like I said over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging —

An exhaustive list of exceptions follows:
1. Running a business that hires people (that isn’t a S&L or a car company).

Yeah, that’s the end of the list, if you had any doubts.

Someone came along and suggested, smoking grass. We cannot recall a specific democrat plan to force the government to buy bags of grass for people who want to smoke it.

Not sure whether to add it to the list or not. If that is done, and the exceptions-list is lengthened to two items followed by an abrupt halt, then the exercise becomes something like painting on oil and canvas an image of a herd of animals, while in real life, the herd gallops along at a full trot. How are you going to meaningfully capture the snapshot, while the object is in motion? And if you toss aside the oil and canvas and go for a camera, what good does this do you? Because the situation we labor to recognize properly, becomes one in which these things are attacked in definable stages. Put the idiot in front of the microphone, manufacture and legislate the new right, then put another idiot in front of another microphone and have the new right paid-for by the taxpayer. The one or two items on the list end up being nothing more than a temporary gap between the two idiot/microphone project milestones. More democrats get elected, so new things are added to the list, and then the democrats get something paid-for — or try to — and something falls off the end of the list.

Didn't Have EnoughBut I don’t think this is a winning proposition for them. If Republicans can campaign just as well…but that’s a falsehood, since hey, they can’t, but if they could…then the democrats would lose just as many libertarian votes as they would gain. I mean, face facts: If you live in a society where you’re allowed to do everything that doesn’t hurt someone else, the way the libertarians want it, but you also have to pay, via your taxes, for the expenses that are incurred by idiots who also want to do the things they want to do, is that really a libertarian society? Most libertarians would say no. They wouldn’t want to; they’d hem and they’d haw about it, but I think they’d grudgingly concede, no, you’re not fulfilling the proper vision unless people are allowed to do these harmless things and then expected to pay for doing them. Therefore, they’d have to bite the bullet and vote Republican if they want to be taken even a little bit seriously. Not a favorite situation of theirs, to be placed in, but hey. You can’t call yourself a libertarian unless you can choose, rationally, from a range of choices that all suck…none of which tickle your funny bone. It takes a special maturity to be able to do that, and if you aren’t cultivating it, then why call yourself a libertarian?

In the case of the Fluke debacle, the women are in the same situation. You can drone on as much as you want about how it’s “inappropriate” for some guy on the radio to call Sandra Fluke a slut, and peel off with one euphemism after another, but at the end of the day, are you really showing respect to women when your position is that they’re dependent, helpless, weak, lack any kind of resourcefulness, and need the government to buy their contraceptives? Again, if a little disciplined thought is applied to the question, the answer would have to be no. In a society in which sex is just recreational, and nobody reproduces except the incompetent (because nobody can afford to), womanhood loses value. Women devolve from their previous stature, as our sisters and mothers, and guardians of virtue, definers of our culture, to a bunch of screaming, constantly complaining, trouble-making harridans who can’t pay for their own stuff. You can nag at anyone who points out the obvious, and if you cost the radio guy some sponsors and end a career here & there I suppose it’ll work…but not over the long term. Not if, by doing these things, you’re just proving the point.

It has become an essential objective within our society not to reproduce. Those whose role it is to become pregnant and create life, therefore, must lose value within that society.

So libertarians, and women, must vote for Republicans…or at the very least, against democrats…if they wish to be taken seriously.

I want the 2012 election to become a Sandra Fluke election. Not in spite of my desire to see Barack Obama lose His job. But because of it. His party is convinced this is a winning issue. I think they’re wrong.

“Run, Shoot, Communicate”

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

From The Art of Manliness: 4 Basic Life Lessons from Basic Training.

Run, Shoot, Communicate

Every morning we did PT, and every PT session included some sort of running. If we were ever on a real world mission and had to get to the objective, we knew we could run to it.

Next, if we weren’t on a live range, we were practicing basic rifle marksmanship drills. We knew that if we ever got into a real world firefight, these techniques would be second nature and give us the ability to protect ourselves and our teammates.

After that we communicated. Radios, written orders, hand and arm signals…eventually our squad got to the point that our communication was almost telepathic.

Our Drill Sergeant constantly reminded us that all we needed to be a successful Soldier was to be able to run, shoot, and communicate. If you can do those well and your squad can do them well, all of the extra stuff is icing on the cake.

Whorehopper

Saturday, March 3rd, 2012

What a great word.

One of my Hello Kitty of Blogging friends found it after I said

…[W]e’re missing a word we need, a male version of “slut.” A slut is a woman who will spread her legs for any dude, applying no discretion or decision process at all.

We need a word to describe the dudes who, having been granted access by these sluts, are young, inexperienced, childish and stupid enough to labor under the delusion that they’ve been given the same high compliment, that a non-slut-woman gives a man in the same situation. You know, a woman of virtue, who’s applying standards, and good judgment, and has made a conscious decision of “I’m looking for husband/father material and I think you’ve got it.” It’s been called the highest compliment a woman can pay to a man…

We need a word to describe these guys who screw sluts, and think they’ve been given this compliment, when all they’ve really done is something that requires less skill or remarkable human talent than shucking an oyster.

And then added to my thoughts with…

Maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on them. I was one myself once…and let’s face it, our society does absolutely nothing to teach young men the difference.

Well. Hello-Kitty Kommunity to the rescue:

…derogatory term generally used to describe a sleazy male in a position of power, who uses his position to have sex with females; literally, a person who “hops on whores”, i.e., a person who has sex with whores. The term does not appear to be in widespread usage, but tends to be applied more to sleazebag good ol boys from the American South. Newspaper/magazine editors, certain U.S. Presidents, and record company executives are common targets of the attribution.

It isn’t an exact fit; this seems to be describing middle-aged mature men of power and stature, who don’t care about whether the lady is giving-it-up because of his noble qualities & ambitions, or just-because…because of their position of power. I’m looking for a descriptive term for the young “blokes,” who achieve a similar apathy about it because of their youth and ignorance.

But it’s good enough. Whorehopper. We’re up to our eyebrows in whores & whorehoppers.

Warren Buffett’s Secretary Shouldn’t Have to Buy Sandra Fluke’s Birth Control

Saturday, March 3rd, 2012

Thatisall.

File it away under “Say it and watch liberal heads go pop.”

Update: The Great One caves in. Partially. But it’s still a cave-in.

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

My remarks at The Hello Kitty of Blogging stand. Yeah, Rush has to think about sponsors and I don’t, but I don’t care. There is rich irony in the idea that, when a narrative has developed that you are anti-woman because you noted something remarkable, demeaning and accurate about a particular woman, you can somehow bail your ass out of the trouble by insulting all women.

Waitaminnit. Sandra Fluke went up before Congress and made it known — publicly — that with all the sex she was having with guys who couldn’t be bothered to pick up boxes of rubbers, she needed daddy government to open the billfold and make her whole again. An apology is owed if someone points out this is unusual/unexpected behavior for a woman? And Rush…the apology is given?

How insulting to women everywhere. You know, they’re called “the fairer sex” for a reason. Showing a little bit of discretion is what being a lady is all about. Ms. Fluke can’t be bothered to…and it has become culturally impermissible to notice anything is different about her now, like all women are like this?

Obama LadiesSandra Fluke and Nancy Pelosi created the situation. Other women did not. What is Ms. Fluke is she isn’t a slut? The original comment stands; if she went up before our nation’s legislative body and said, I need taxpayers to buy my birth control because I can’t be bothered to…what do we call that? My fiance wasn’t up there doing that. My dead mother wasn’t up there doing that. If one woman is doing that and then we aren’t allowed to notice anything different about her, that’s like saying they’re all like this.

I’m trying to think what could be a worse statement to make against all sexually mature women. Can’t think of anything. What an insult. What a disgrace.

The rules are not surprising to anyone. Because this is The Blog That Nobody Reads, which is very much different from a radio show with twenty+something million listeners, we were able to call it — and we did — nearly six years ago.

Thing I Know #58. To insult a man says nothing about other men, but for some reason, anything said against one woman is perceived to be said against everything female who ever lived.

For reasons no one can coherently explain, but that everyone understands from the elementary school playground onward, there is pressure on women to all be the same. And there is pressure on the rest of us, to think of them as all the same. No one woman can be slutty or stupid, or else the person who points out that she is, is imagined to have intoned that all women living or dead are exactly the same way, even though he said no such thing. That is what is happening here; that is exactly what is happening here.

No, sorry, not buying it. Sandra Fluke is a whore and a slut — because if she isn’t one, then that must mean that all women are expected to do what she did, or have the potential to do what she did…which makes them all whores and sluts. Well, that’s not a real woman. Sorry, it just isn’t. When you go up on Capitol Hill and say, I can’t afford all these contraceptives I’m burning through and the government has to help me with it, you’ve created a situation that defines something unusual and remarkable about you…even if you’re a woman. To say otherwise is to say something against women that is, really, more demeaning than…um…well, I can’t think of anything worse. I really can’t.

Just call a whore a whore and leave it as it is. We really don’t have any choice. Pelosi and Fluke chose to create this spectacle, the rest of us didn’t choose it…and here we are.

Update: Okay, I’m really pissed off, and when I’m pissed off sometimes I use my Hello Kitty account to “filter” my comments, put them up there, see how they look…partly because, Hello Kitty has become something of an “antenna” by which I try to find out how the rest of the world thinks — that part of the world that doesn’t see things the way I do. Not sure if this is a bad habit or not. I’m using a litmus test of “Would the alternative be a better choice?” And the answer for the time being is no, we all need to be making an effort to figure out what motivates the “others” out there, to try to understand, to learn from them when it’s possible…try to grow.

That having been said though, some of these sensibilities we form are derivative of “hard” sciences. I like to use Orwell’s example of two-and-two-make-four to illustrate this. Some things can’t be negotiated just because the majority, or the authority, wants a different answer.

And once again, the media, and the people to whom the media reports, are all doing a rather shitty job of defining the real issue. It’s somehow left to me to explain it.

It’s funny how things look entirely different when you remove tangential elements from a story — things that should be irrelevant anyway, but seem to be more important because they arouse an emotional response. In the case of Rush Limbaugh having to apologize to Sandra Fluke, those tangential, irrelevant things would be: Fluke is a woman, and women have sex.

Imagine Sandra Fluke is a dude. He goes up before Congress to say, I need taxpayers to pay for my headache medication, and occasional perforations of my skull to relieve the pressure of bleeding on the brain, because I like to hit my own head with a hammer. I do it a lot, In fact, I think I’ll do it right now…whee! ++Wham++.

Famous radio personality goes on the air and says, what a fucking idiot.

He’s subsequently forced to apologize.

You can see more clearly from this hypothetical that there are some important issues that aren’t entirely clear in the Sandra Fluke mess. We are individuals; individuals make choices and some of these choices are bad ones. To be a strong society, we need the individuals who make bad choices, to watch and learn from the other individuals who do not make the same bad choices — not the other way around.

Image Credit: The Peoples Cube.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Let’s Call It “Taibbi Defense Mechanism”

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. — Gen. 5:24

So whoever didn’t get the news, Andrew Breitbart dropped to the ground Wednesday night, or early Thursday if it was after midnight, walking near his home. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. I remember when my mother suffered a death that made no sense at all, and since she was loaded with talent we rationalized that God needed her for something. It made sense and it still does. It makes sense with Breitbart. And now, Andrew Breitbart is doing in death what he did so well in life: Exposing the plain fact that, whoever chooses to lean left politically to make themselves more decent people, had better pick some other way to get it done because that method falls short.

We needed that and we still need it. For far too long, and for far too many people, left-wing ideology has been a litmus test for human decency. It doesn’t work and the consequences have ranged from the slightly disappointing to the tragic.

The first exhibit to be offered by the warrior from beyond the grave: Matthew Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone: Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche.

Click through and read it yourself, for I find the comments much more remarkable than any of the content. I write, specifically, of the comments that defend the piece and launch these counterattacks against anyone who finds something in it to…well, gee, I dunno, what do you think. Some guy with political opinions different from some of the staff in Rolling Stone literally drops dead, and before the body is cold, this respectable publication puts up an article calling him names straight out of a sixth-grade school playground.

And here is my observation. Actually I have two observations, a minor and a major. The minor one is: Leftists don’t quite so much judge you and find you wanting if you disagree with them — although they do — it’s more like, they judge you unfit if you disagree with them and are effective in stopping or reversing the agenda. This makes sense. You had it figured out already, didn’t you, that this is not a conflict with ideas quite so much as a conflict with political agendas. So someone like me, who writes for a Blog That Nobody Reads but hasn’t achieved what Brietbart managed to achieve; and the several acquaintances I’ve made who also write for blogs, some bigger some smaller, who are in more-or-less the same boat. If we drop dead, we’ll still all be bad people, but Breitbart is a super-duper bad person even though, among the rest of us, his political leanings would have been unremarkable. Some of us would be more rightward-leaning and some of us would be less so. It isn’t about ideology, it’s about achievement.

But that’s the minor point.

The major point to be made is, when loyal leftists engage this battle of political agendas…the culture war…and write smut like this. They do not respond to criticism the way Andrew Breitbart responded to criticism. Breitbart, it has been pointed out many times, wore it like a badge of honor. He was fully aware, you see, of the truisms made in that above, minor point. He re-tweeted the most vile tweets made about him. As Taibbi mentions, and this is central to the point Taibbi is making as I understand it — Breitbart would have tweeted links to the Taibbi piece.

The major point to be made, from the comments defending Taibbi’s editorial, is: Liberals respond to criticism about their most deplorable comments with wall of defensive flak that demonstrates confusion between approval and comprehension. Read the comments yourself and you’ll see what I’m talking about. If you don’t love Taibbi’s piece, you don’t “get it.”

I don’t think this is a cynical peer-pressure maneuver. It might have started out that way, or not, but it is not that. I think it is pure defense-mechanism. Here they are with all these lifelong-nurtured and sustained liberal opinions, investing various amounts of energy in keeping them strong and broadcasting them to whoever will listen. Why? (And why do you have to spend energy keeping those beliefs…I don’t have to spend any energy at all to remain convinced that. let’s say, there are three feet in a yard…but let’s let that one go.) You do it so people will understand, or be inclined to believe, or be persuaded — or to force people to understand — that you are a good person. To form a crowd, or become a part of one, that is all on the same wavelength…and to elevate your stature within that group.

That’s why people believe things that cannot be proven because they’re simply not true — and no evidence will ever arrive to support such things save for evidence produced by flawed experiments and deliberate cherry-picking. Things like, when you raise taxes the economy does better, we “ease the pain” of working families who are struggling when we make the gas prices go up, a higher minimum wage lowers unemployment, those bad guys will stop being mad at us when we apologize for burning the Koran, we can end war if we just sit down with our enemies and talk out our differences…and the like. Industrial-era carbon emissions raise something called the “earth mean temperature” even though, as said metric has been measured over the last ten or fifteen years, it hasn’t been going up. People repeat all this balderdash anyway to make themselves better liked, and that’s why they do things like call a family man, in the first twenty-four hours since his demise, a “douche” in a major glossy publication that his four children and widow will almost certainly see, hot off the presses. In this round-about way of thinking, and in some otherworldly universe, it makes them better people.

And then it doesn’t work, when they’re criticized for it. Because the critic is saying such obvious things, like: You know, if you followed the classic-mom advice “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” — no disaster would ensue. That would have been the preferable way to go. Deep down, inside, they already know this…so they lash out.

They confuse, like I said, approval with comprehension. You aren’t granting the former, so you must not possess the latter. You don’t “get it.”

Memo to Taibbi, et al: Got it. It’s crystal-clear and I, and others, understand perfectly — a “respectful” nod from one warrior to another, a little salute to the Viking’s funerary boat before you launch the flaming arrow and set it all ablaze. We see exactly what he’s trying to say, we get it…and wrap your head around what comes next…we’re still doing what you’ve learned to do, pretty much constantly, by way of reflex more than conscious thought. Judging the work and finding it meritless. We’re doing both of those things, understanding fully and disapproving. Yes, at the same time.

The Question Remains Open

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

Michael Barone, Why Liberals Like Taxing the Wealthy. Boy, did I ever get excited when I saw the first paragraph, I’ve been wondering about this for a long time.

I have long been puzzled by the enthusiasm with which many young liberal bloggers cheer on proposals to raise tax rates on high earners. I can understand why they might favor them, but not why they seem to invest so much psychic energy in the issue.

Note the fine and subtle distinction. This is why the question goes unanswered. You can be for something…as a matter of obligation, or prerequisite necessity involved in supporting some other thing closer to your interests because the two issues are inextricably connected. Or, you can be like a little kid wanting a particular toy for Christmas. So there the push for a specific proposal, and then there is the zeal behind the push. This is about the zeal. It is there, it is widespread, it is sincere, it is intense. What gives?

Lefties want taxes to be higher. Young lefties who’ve never worked a day in their lives, want these taxes to be higher. These assurances are made that the “taxes will only be raised on those who make more than 250k (or 200k)” and they believe this uncritically, but they don’t even seem to be interested in that part of it. They don’t seem interested in who’s spared, they don’t seem to be interested in how much money rolls into the Treasury, or where it goes afterward.

The whole thing looks like a zeal for destruction. Like the bad guy on the second-to-last page of a glossy comic book, “I don’t care if I live so long as you die.”

Barone goes on to note this, himself…

One argument for higher rates is that increased revenues will reduce the federal budget deficit. But do liberal bloggers really care all that much about budget deficits? These same people often rue the fact that the Obama Democrats didn’t plow an additional $1 trillion into their stimulus package.

I think the answer to the puzzle can be found in a remark Barack Obama made during the 2008 fall campaign — a remark that seemed to go mostly unnoticed.

ABC’s Charlie Gibson asked candidate Obama if he would raise capital gains taxes even if, as in the past, that brought in less revenue to the federal government.

Yes, said Obama. “I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

Ponder that answer for a moment. A candidate for president — president now — said he wants to take more money from people who earned it even though doing so would produce less money for the government.

Stranger and stranger. Barone provides an answer toward the end:

Higher tax rates on high earners, even if they produce less revenue, are an attempt to centralize power in government and to limit the autonomy and countervailing power of individuals in the voluntary sector.

Which is why the liberal bloggers cheer them on. And why they eagerly join the Obama White House in demonizing the Koch brothers, who donate large sums to conservative causes. (Disclosure: I have spoken at two Koch conferences and was reimbursed for travel expenses.)

The Obama Democrats don’t want their funders like George Soros getting competition from the likes of Charles and David Koch.

Okay, this makes good sense, because these are very simple concepts that can be perceived by a primitive, undeveloped mind, and in the liberal bloggers we’re dealing with primitive, undeveloped minds. That’s not an insult, that is a statement of fact. Really, just read the comment threads over at DailyKOS or ThinkProgress or democrat underground sometime. You’ll see a lot of babbling about “the common good” with little or no actual concern for it.

The primitives have a vision for the very rich, at least, the very rich who fail to support left-wing policy initiatives and causes as George Soros does. It isn’t death and it isn’t obliteration and it isn’t out-and-out elimination from financial existence; but it is elimination from the ranks of the extraordinary. They want the rich to be taken down a peg or two, to become ordinary. Soros and all the rich lefties in Hollywood don’t have to be taken down, they can stay rich and therefore elite and extraordinary.

The liberal bloggers do not agree with Chris Christie that Warren Buffett should shut up and write a check. They would, if they were honest about their motives. But they don’t. This pattern has remained consistent: To a liberal loudmouth, a liberal rich loudmouth can stay as rich as he likes and become even richer, there is no disruption to this delicate proper order of the universe there. It’s quite alright for fellow progressives to cross this barrier into obscene levels of net worth; all others who have so crossed, must be defrocked of their assets and therefore of their position. It has to do with ideology, and financial position.

So they’re like dogs. They are regulating the order of the pack. Content to live out their lives under the tutelage of an alpha male, or several alpha males, but we cannot have a plurality of factions of the alpha males. There needs to be one and only one direction for the pack to be heading.

But another question remains open. One of the few things modern liberalism shares with classic liberalism is its passion for a narrative involving a benevolent revolution. Liberals have always lusted after an event, a re-enactment of the storming of The Bastille. Prior to the event, the entrenched elite power oppresses and exploits the commoners unfairly; you have the revolution, and then all live in freedom and equality.

Their canine re-enforcement of the existing power structure is a direct contradiction to this. They are engaged in a mass group effort to destroy…who? The rich and powerful — rich and powerful who do not think the same way some other rich and powerful people think. So they are essentially carving a statue by destroying every part of a block of marble that does not look like what they want the statue to be. Eliminating resistance. And they’re doing it to eliminate a plurality of directions, so that there can be only one. Laboring toward the singularity by destroying the plurality.

It seems, to me, like their passion is invested in keeping things simple. If we’re all ordinary, save for those who lead us and the leaders all think the way we do, and we think the way they do, then none of us (or very few among us) have any need to engage in critical thought. So ultimately, they are working to simplify thinking…and the specific strain of more complex thinking they are trying to pare down, is revolutionary thinking. Questioning the virtue, the correctness, and perhaps ultimately the fitness, of those in charge. It is a direct contradiction toward what a real “liberal” is supposed to be.

And yet, when they see the rich people who do things to stay rich and get richer, things that actually provide needed products and services to other people…all of a sudden, they’re good little revolutionaries again. The entrenched power structure has to be overthrown, grrrr! It’s like, if you’re a rich person engaged in trade, which helps other people along with yourself, you’ve got to go, but if you’re a pure parasite then you’re alright. Investors? Well, it all seems to come down to where your investments are, or who you support.

My tentative theory: They approach adulthood and they become aware of two power structures, one commercial and one academic. Let’s face it, you can be very young and very dim and this split will still not escape your notice…and, the left-leaning young people are simply responding to incentive, making a choice about which power structure to support based on which one will demand less work out of them.

It is a theory in the process of being formed, and I’m not sure how much faith I can place in it. But they do all seem to share a hostility toward the thought of: There are contributions made by everyone, it’s done on a cycle, sooner or later the rotating arm comes toward your position on the periphery and then you’ve got to do some good, hard, old-fashioned work. That does seem to be the part that arouses special loathing out of them. Perhaps I owe an apology toward the harder-working dogs, for comparing passionate young liberal occupiers & bloggers to the canine set. These kids more closely resemble the rodent-doggies that are carried around in purses. You know. The really noisy ones.