House of Eratosthenes

Archive for the ‘Deranged Leftists’ Category

Things That Make You Go Hmmm… IV

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

Back in 1988, I was instructed that I should believe, along with everyone else, that the “notorious” Willie Horton ad was racist. Or maybe “they” told me I should think that several years later. I don’t remember the timeframe, all I remember is that in this bizarre guilt-by-association tactic lots of other Republican communiques and operatives have been slimed through the establishment of some tenuous connection to that horrible, awful, terrible racist Willie Horton ad.

We all know what an awful ad that was, even though very few folks have ever seen it. I had understood that Willie Horton was some kind of a violent offender who had been sent to prison for a long time, and under the governorship of Michael Dukakis he had been released, or escaped, and allowed to re-offend. The Democrats didn’t like having this pointed out and had managed to convince a lot of people it was inappropriate to discuss it…which may or may not have meant it was unfair to blame Dukakis for this re-offense or potential re-offense.

Well in that new Ann Coulter book, the point is made that the facts in this case are just as damning against Dukakis, and against modern liberalism in general, as you could possibly imagine. Yes Horton re-offended, breaking into the home of Cliff Barnes and Angela Miller, binding Mr. Barnes to a chair in his basement, torturing him for hours, repeatedly assaulting and raping Ms. Miller. Horton was an escapee from a weekend furlough, and no, to any sane person Horton had no business whatsoever being subject to a little “break” in his prison sentence. His crime was robbing a seventeen-year-old gas station attendant, attacking the attendant after the money was handed over, stabbing him nineteen times and shoving him in a garbage can to bleed to death.

To me, Horton had always been in my “undecided” file because there were a lot of facts that had not been made available to me. And there I’m referring to the thumbnail biographical sketch of Mr. Horton, as well as the content of this oh-so-offensive ad.

Well, the facts regarding Mr. Horton can be found in the book. I found the ad when I was searching the innernets, looking for someone to supply the devil’s-advocate point of view. Coulter being Coulter, I thought I should be able to find someone who didn’t like what she had to say, and perhaps be able to get their side of the story. I thought right. This fellow is none to fond of her, and has done an exemplary job of stating the case against the Horton argument, as she presented it.

In 1988, Ann Coulter was probably too busy finishing up law school to follow the Bush-Dukakis race very closely, but she devoted a chapter of her latest book to the infamous Willie Horton ads. There are no citations of sources for the excerpts included in this post, which is just as well, since most of the “facts” are anything but…

From Ann Coulter’s Godless (Chapter 3, p. 66):

There are actually two Willie Horton ads, and they are generally conflated. Both were terrific ads. The Bush campaign’s Willie Horton ad never showed a picture of Horton, which complicated their sneaky plan to appeal to Americans’nearly hysterical hatred of black people. The only ad to show Horton’s face was produced by an independent group that included Horton’s victims, Cliff Barnes and Angela Miller. The victims’ ad was made on a shoestring budget and was probably seen by about six people in West Virginia.

Actually, Ann, there were four Willie Horton ads.

One official Bush campaign ad called “Revolving Door.”

Two ads “produced by an independent group that included Horton’s victims, Cliff Barnes and Angela Miller” respectively in each one (a clip of the Miller spot can be seen approximately 1 minute 50 seconds into this YouTube video). And those ads began running in California where presumably more than six people viewed them.

There’s more, but…it would be misleading to say the best is yet to come, because the counterargument doesn’t get any more compelling than that. Ann Coulter said there were two ads; this guy found four. The producer of the “weekend passes” video used to work for Roger Ailes, and if there was a more solid connection between the video and the Bush Sr. campaign someone would’ve gotten in trouble. But as it was, nobody did.

So to recap. Liberal policies exposed the public to dangerous criminals. Cliff Barnes and Angela Miller paid the price for this. Someone thought this was a legitimate issue for the campaign of 1988 and made some videos reporting the facts — accurately. Our liberals didn’t want people to know the facts, and challenged the legality of this. Our liberals lost. This made them mad and so they started waging a P.R. battle. And for reasons nobody can rationally explain, we all started giving our liberals everything they wanted in this P.R. battle and we’re still doing it.

Meanwhile, the facts say when we put these guys in charge of things, violent criminals are allowed to hurt people. Reality is supposed to get more complicated than that, present us some confounding factoids deep down in the wrinkles when you study them up close, that put everything in a gray area. But when you start looking into it, that isn’t what happens at all. It really is that simple. Dukakis had a policy that was idiotic, and emblematic of what our modern liberals tend to do when they have power. Criminals go free, and innocent people are hurt.

The rest, really, is just a bunch of red herrings.

Regarding the comments section of the post that’s been linked: There are seven comments at this time. Four where the left-winger who’s criticizing Ann Coulter “holds court” among the like-minded; nothing is as good for getting a tea party going as some colorful Coulter-bashing. So he gets his high-fives and pats on the back, and then comment #5 is from “Anonymous.” This all takes place shortly after the post went up, which is roughly the timeframe of the book’s publication on 6/6/06. Anonymous is not me. You’ll just have to take my word for that…anyway, the comment is of the “you missed the point” variety — which I find to be accurate — reminding the left-winger what the subject matter is. Releasing life-sentenced murderers on weekend furlough is freakin’ insane.

And then comment #6 is just a joy to behold. You’ve heard it said that liberals have empty arguments and indulge in name-calling when they are cornered. You may not have believed it…well…there’s your proof.

And then comment #7 is just an exercise in lack of self-restraint, from me. Well…not really. I’d do it again. For one thing, if you can’t keep your mouth shut on just one thing, I think this is a great place to let things slip. Vicious murderers being treated like they’re in prison for contempt-of-court, or keeping a library book too long, or jaywalking or something — and innocent people being hurt as a direct result. There’s no reason for it to keep happening. It’s become a matter of routine, and that’s a poor reflection upon all of us.

And for another thing, I’m genuinely curious about the counter-argument. Maybe this guy didn’t present all of it. Why is the word “racist” applicable to this whole situation? So far, based on the facts I’ve been able to collect, the “R” word got dragged out because Horton happens to be black, and there is a mix of black and white actors walking through the “revolving door.” Yeah that’s right — the ad is racist because they didn’t choose an all-white cast as a metaphorical presentation of the guy who brought the whole subject up, who in real life is black. And…unmentioned in the “revolving door” ad. So is he really on-topic? If so, the ad is racist, if at all, against white folks. If he’s off-topic, then the only argument I can see that the ad was racist, is that it wasn’t skewed against white people quite enough.

I’m just not following.

If I had to pronounce my uncertainty unacceptable and require myself to come to the most sensible conclusion I can, it would have to be that “racist” is just something liberals say when they know they’re wrong. That does seem pretty solid. It passes the “twenty people” argument — it would be easy to round up twenty liberals who think the Willie Horton ad is racist. I doubt like hell that if I could interview them one at a time, I’d get back one single explanation as to why it is racist. I’d guess if there’s any single answer I’d get back from two of those interviewees, or more, it would be “I dunno.”

Of course, there’s only one sensible thing to do here. If I continue to open my mouth every time I’m not sure of what’s going on, eventually I’m going to get into trouble. So I had better stop talking about it.

And maybe that’s exactly the point, huh? We keep exploring the issue, liberals are exposed as people who let vicious murderers out of jail so the murderers can hurt people. So we had better stop exploring it. Don’t want to get into trouble.

Posted in Lying Liars | 1 Comment »

By Which Others Shall Be Gauged

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

Ya just gotta see this. It is a new standard for hypocrisy, inveigling, and obfuscation. I award it a hundred points out of a possible hundred, and vow to protect it and display it and bring it out again, each time I wish to measure another example.

It starts with a revelation Monday that the palatial digs of Al Gore, that pied-piper of global warming, the twenty-first century’s Chicken Little, chews through — get this — twenty times the energy consumption of the average home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

This may come as quite a shock to folks who loudly advertise how much they hate blogs, and get all their news from the alphabet-soup cable channels and the Daily Show. To “neo-cons” like myself, it’s all par for the course. For a generation or more, the “environmental movement” has diminished into nothing but a two-tiered set of rules for us all, one tier for the “ordinary” folks and one tier for the elite millionaire grown-up hippies like Mr. Gore. We are to apologize for our existence while scuttling about in our little plastic-aluminum sedans that look like lightswitches, and they are to move freely around the world in their Gulfstream jets whenever they want. Ah, but what if you share the political leanings of the glitterati without sharing their status? Then you get to buy a hybrid, and start closing your eyes when you talk and smelling your own farts. Then the glitterati will smile upon you…but kindly move your wretched wrinkly wage-slave ass out of their way when you see ’em coming, thank you.

Our liberals have become exactly what they call conservatives, whenever the subject of tax breaks comes up.

Well now. I was rather interested when I discovered this little statistic about our Former Next President of the United States, via Captain Ed Morrissey’s fine resource, and as is the case with everything I knew there was bound to be another side to the story coming down the road. And there was. First: It turned out the numbers were bogus.

Ha ha! No, that’s what I was waiting to see happen. You know, it could very well turn out that the numbers were bogus and Gore’s grandkids do their homework by candlelight when they come visit. But a lot of angry liberals have had their crack at this thing, and nobody’s stepped forward to say such a thing. No, the thing that happened first was that Drudge started reporting it — and so the lefties began to present it as a story from that nonsensical no-account conservative hobgobblin Matt Drudge. Y’know…like, it wasn’t actually from him, and even if it was, that by itself doesn’t mean it’s untrue…but if you want to conclude such a thing, the angry leftie telling you about Matt Drudge won’t utter a peep of protest. So don’t think about the numbers. Think about Drudge.

That was the first spin. I dunno if it worked. I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in it because as far as anybody can tell, the numbers are accurate. You light up your house all day, and you’ve burned up all the energy that Mister “Global Warming Will Kill Us All” needs for one single hour.

So it’s still a problem…demanding the Frankensten Monster of solutions. I mean, of P.R. solutions. Something that will put all other P.R. solutions to shame.

Well. Wait no more.

Gore Responds To Drudge’s Latest Hysterics

The right-wing is angry that Al Gore has won so much public attention and goodwill for his work on global warming. Determined to smear his efforts, Drudge writes in a screaming headline:

POWER: GORE MANSION USES 20X AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD; CONSUMPTION INCREASE AFTER ‘TRUTH’

Responding to Drudge’s attack, Vice President Gore’s office told ThinkProgress:

1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family’s carbon footprint — a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore’s office explains:

What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bring their footprint down to zero.

This is a masterpiece. Really. There are only so many things they can do to change the subject and divert blame from their revered High Prince of impending doom. And they have hit all the notes, as if someone had a paper-and-clipboard in hand with a bunch of checkboxes on it.

Carbon Offsets 5c One. They missed the point. Completely. The point is, Al Gore is saying our continuing survival has been placed into question — Manhattan getting flooded, etc. — because we’re having too big of an impact on the environment. Al Gore, through household energy consumption alone, has chosen to have twenty times as big of an impact as everybody else. Carbon offsets or no, he’s simply not taking his own proclamations seriously.

Two. They accuse the other side of missing the point, defining the other side as…anyone who would have a harsh syllable or two for their oh-so-put-upon High Prince Gore. How are Gore’s critics missing the point? Something to do with the carbon offset program…which bring us to…

Three. They get to make money for their friends off of Gore’s hypocrisy. Don’t criticize Al Gore! Buy some carbon offsets instead, like he is! Where’s the money go? Who knows? Who cares?

Four. When you start to read “Gore Responds,” the issue is Al Gore’s hypocrisy. When you’re finished with it, the issue is now “…and what are YOU doing to help the environment, like Al?” You have to admire it. They’ve been caught with their hands right in the cookie jar — or their buddy Al has, anyway — and they’ve turned it into a guilt trip on everybody else.

Five. This is just in the “frosting on the cake” department: The verbs and adjectives. Angry. Smear. Screaming. Desperate. You need to sprinkle these in, densely, as they’ve done, when you rely on spin instead of reason and common sense.

This is far too good to let go. You really don’t have to wait very long at all, in this politically charged climate, for The Left to come out with a scolding expose or rebuttal that hits two, three or even four of those. It is an occasion to bump into a single crown jewel covers all five so thoroughly, and that’s why this is a new yardstick by which similar scolding screeds will be measured.

One thing though. And a reasonably intelligent seventh-grader should be able to understand this. If you buy into the idea that Gore’s purchase of carbon offsets somehow vindicates him from the charge that he’s gulping through twenty times as much juice as the rest of us, then necessarily, you have to take it as proven that wherever the carbon offset revenue is going, it’s doing some good. Not only that, but that it is a hundred percent effective. And, that the offset-for-offset computation, weighed against the ecological-footprint size upon which it is based, is accurate. Pinpoint-accurate. Verifiably so. Remember, Al Gore is using up ten times two times You…the numbers stand unchallenged as his toadies and mooks have showered us with their predictable fury and spittle and righteous indignation. The numbers have not been disputed. Presumably, barring the arrival of new information, the numbers are accurate.

Gore is indeed using up all the power of a sorority house with hairdriers running full power, in all rooms, day and night. And yet — he stands blameless. Because of the carbon offset purchases. Which we must know, therefore, work every bit as reliably and as effectively as they’re supposed to…

…why and how, then, is there a global warming crisis? I mean, I don’t pretend to understand how the carbon offset program works, but it must work pretty well. Let’s just buy up enough carbon offsets to choke a horse, and pollute as much as we want. I mean, Al Gore has shown us how, and it must be okay if he’s doing it, right? By this logic, the situation is well under control. Where’s the crisis?

Posted in Lying Liars, ManBearPig | 2 Comments »

Makes Special Sense

Monday, February 26th, 2007

So after the democrat party got all the kinks wound out of their Six for ’06 platform last year, sanded off those burrs, buffed out those streaks, ironed out those wrinkles — how much sense did the result make to those who were, and are, ostensibly the beneficiaries of it?

Not much, when you weigh the words of former paratrooper Michael Fumento regarding Bullet Point #1, which told us they’d “Double the size of Special Forces to destroy Osama Bin Laden and terrorist networks like al Qaeda.”

First, doubling can only be accomplished by going a disastrous route – making special ops no longer special. Second, false solutions crowd out real ones. Much can be done to improve the quality of our armed forces, but this Democratic proposal doesn’t make the grade.

Just as it’s disturbing that in 31 pages the Democrats couldn’t devote a single line to how they plan to achieve their lofty goal, it’s unsettling that they can’t get their definitions right. “Special Forces,” properly speaking, refers to U.S. Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. But, as Drew Hammill in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office confirmed to me, what the Democrats want to double is the much broader group of “Special Operations Forces” – SOF in military shorthand, or just “special ops.”

Further, just as they don’t seem to know what special ops are, it’s doubtful the concocters of this soundbite know what goes into creating such troops or what a doubling would entail. But in consulting with special ops leaders, trainers, and members – indeed, by merely looking at the numbers – it quickly becomes clear that this “plan” is pie in the sky.

Hat tip to blogger friend Buck, who credits Chapomatic, and also achieved an early nomination for our Best Sentence award:

“Special,” in the Dem lexicon, has more to do with things like the Special Olympics than Special Forces. I despair of the Dems ever understanding the difference.

Posted in Elections, Lying Liars | 2 Comments »

What Is A Liberal? V

Monday, February 26th, 2007

What is a liberal? Many things define what the word has come to describe nowadays…few of them good. And a big chunk of them fall under this brief essay by Gary Kamiya, which was linked at Jawa, which in turn was linked by Good Lieutenant.

In a nutshell: Yes, they know they’re whacked-out wombat-rabies bollywonkers crazy. That’s why they’re high-fiving each other and calling everybody else stupid.

Make sense now? Wonderful. Ice cream has no bones, turn on the radio I want to fly a kite, they’re coming to take me away haha.

Is there life after Bush?
We’ve been hating him forever, but he’s leaving. Now we have to decide what to do with the rest of our lives.
By Gary Kamiya

Hating George W. Bush sometimes feels like a full-time job…I’ve been forced to deal with this wretched president for so long that hating him has virtually become part of my identity…Pretty soon, we won’t have Bush to kick around anymore. And I’ve started wondering: What are we going to do then? …Maybe we Bush-haters are extreme and obsessive. But Bush made us this way.

You can tell from the ellipses sprinkled in there like raisins, I’m facing a challenge teasing it in a way that it makes sense. Kinda like making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But Mr. Kamiya demonstrates that all things do not have to be sane, to be revealing.

I’m not using Dowdisms to change the meaning of anything. Go read the whole thing.

One more time: These people want to decide what our public policies are going to be, foreign and domestic. And when they talk about “dissent == patriotism” they aren’t talking about dissent against them or their compatriots; they want blind obedience in that area. Once we’ve had a chance to inspect what they think and what they want to do, the more responsible folks among us wouldn’t trust them to walk the dog. Want proof? You only have to click.

Update: You know, I’m doing some more thinking about this and, as I attempt to find out anew what makes these people tick, a thought occurs to me that raises far more questions than it answers.

If I hate somebody or something…let’s just strip all the emotional turmoil out of it and call the thing “X” instead of “George Bush.” If I hate X, and I’m accepted into a community wherein all others present similarly hate X, there really isn’t going to be a lot to be said when you discount all the marginal conversations that could be fairly categorized as off-topic. “Hate to threadjack, but…” type-stuff, “when is this feature on your blog going to be available again,” stuff like that. Maintenance issues aside, there isn’t going to be much call to exchange ideas.

I mean to put it more concisely, if I hate X and you hate X, what more is there to be said? I suppose we could come up with new and creative ways to express our hatred of X, turning the whole pointless exercise into a more stimulating vocabulary-building experience. Loathing X, pontificating grandiloquently against X, for hatred’s sake spitting my dying breath at X, et al. Or, we could compare notes on what widely-visible fountainhead of opinion strikes us as being unfairly biased in favor of X, and resolve to ensure nobody ever drinks from that wellspring without a large grain of salt. Or, we could have some extremely brief conversations about “this is my reason for today for hating X.” And I would expect once we agree that this is a valid reason, the conversation would shift to something else.

Or…I suppose we could come up with personal priority lists about reasons for hating X. I could offer the opinion that “Reason #43 on your list is significantly weightier than Reason #27, which I consider to be a tangential issue” — and then we could debate that.

I see very little of the above on DailyKOS or other left-wing resources. I think it’s fair to say most of what is actually offered therein, is a lot of bloviating about how much smarter the people in there, are compared to the rest of the normal folks out here.

Which is remarkable in itself. Since, a few personal entanglements aside, they don’t appear to know a great deal about one another, apart from their shared dislike of George W. Bush. It’s almost as if…I would say, exactly as if…the hatred of George W. Bush is some kind of litmus test for intelligence. If you share it, you pass, even though your facts can be wrong, your grammatical construct can be atrocious, and your spelling looks like you’ve been letting a cat walk on the keyboard, and your logical arguments have more holes than your average kitchen sponge.

But if, by process of elimination, we’re down to just a lot of huffing and puffing about how much smarter our blue-staters are compared to our red-staters — or mostly down to just that and nothing more — how much liberal stuff could be uploaded on a daily basis? I mean, anywhere? What’s the point of mentioning it over and over again? If there was truth to it, of the self-evident variety or otherwise, the contributors themselves should be able to see they’ve crossed into the “doth protest too much” territory at a breakneck pace, and move on to something else.

I suppose that criticism might have merit wherever it is directed. Even here, to some extent, some might say. But good heavens. In all of human literary history, has any medium of written communication become so voluminous, so repititious, about so little, as the left-wing blog during the Bush II presidency? I suspect Mr. Kamiya has correctly identified a “future hangover” concern that is entirely meritorious, but severely underestimated just how much of a problem it will be.

Posted in Bush Derangement Syndrome | 1 Comment »

Snookered?

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

It’s in the entertainment section of Yahoo News, but apart from that there is no evidence that the editors understand this is satire. Certainly nothing offered to the more gullible amongst the readership.

…transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showing conversations between Messrs. Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the Magic 8-Ball make it clear that the ball had the deciding vote when it came to the administration’s pre-war planning.

At one point of the transcript, Mr. Bush asks the Magic 8-Ball flat out, “Does
Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction?”

The ball responded equivocally — “Reply hazy, try again” — prompting the president to repeat his question.

Once Mr. Bush asked the question again moments later, the Magic 8-Ball was more definitive: “Signs point to yes.”

At the White House today, spokesman Tony Snow defended the Magic 8-Ball’s role in gathering pre-war intelligence but said that the ball had left the administration in 2004 to spend more time with its family.

Posted in Lying Liars, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

Fans of Gore

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

Former Vice President Al Gore has the backing of Jimmy Carter (we learn via Hot Air and we learn that via Karol).

And, he has the support of communists too.

I repeat myself, huh.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Deranged Leftists, Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

Are Democrats Americans?

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

There are a lot of people walking around amongst us, apparently generating all the brainwave energy needed to get dressed in the morning and put one foot in front of the other as they walk around, who nevertheless think Democrats are more “American” than anybody else. I’ve never understood it. I’ve always taken it as a given that they have a vision for what America is supposed to be, which is different from my vision…but okay, we can “agree to disagree” as they say. And, I’ve been taking it as a given that if I could have insight on their personal background and the things that happened to them, then perhaps their different vision would make some sense to me.

I’m referring here — mostly — to being raised in a very strict religious environment, and nurturing a rebellious streak that just didn’t gel with it. There is some stuff in America’s history having to do with freedom to worship has one individually chooses, and not being told what to think about things. Issues like that, make this an easy thing to entertain.

Issues like this, do not…

The [Texas] state House on Thursday rejected a Democratic amendment that would have banned splash guards with images that are “obscene or hateful.”

Tempe Democrat Ed Ableser sponsored the amendment. He said he’d seen a splash guard that used a derogatory term for black children and said he wanted to make sure that people with hateful motives didn’t inflict them on others.

Democratic Rep. Theresa Ulmer of Yuma supported the amendment and said it fit with lawmakers’ other efforts to crack down on pornography and sexual predators.

DEMOCRAT is supposed to have something to do with freedom of expression, and thinking for onesself, right? And yet…this is hardly an isolated situation, is it? Democrats come along and say, hey, if someone sees this symbol or that symbol, such-and-such a thought is going to go through their head and we can’t have that now, can we? And I know they’ll have these contraband thoughts since, being a registered Democrat, I’m an expert amateur psychologist and I know better than anyone else what people will think when they see this thing.

I suppose both parties do this at some time or another.

But Democrats do it far, far more often.

And they’re supposed to be about freedom of expression. Freedom of speech. Thinking for yourself.

They have that “rep”; and sometimes, for reasons I think should be clear now, I fail to see how they got it or why they’re thought by so many to be worthy of hanging onto it.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

A Poll I’d Like To See III

Friday, February 23rd, 2007

Part of the reason for my unfriendly reaction to the latest “girls and young women traumatized by sexy pictures” thing is that it is tired. It is gawdawful tired. Tired, and unsolicited. I didn’t wake up the last three mornings in a row thinking “gee, I wonder if girls and young women get traumatized when they look at sexy pictures.”

Everybody who does polls and studies, likes their polls and studies to be read by someone. And yet, once again, the researchers at the APA did the study they wanted to do. Ostensibly to sound the alarm about something hitherto ignored…and yet…the study said what many studies before have already said.

How about finding out what people want to know, and then going and figuring out whatever that is?

Here’s a hint, researchers and pollsters. Listen up.

I would like to see a study conducted on Democrats. Democrats who use the phrase “Swift Boat” as if it is a verb. I can’t help but notice when you do a pinpoint-precise Google search, you get back an impressive number of results and each and every single one of those results, seems to have something to do with a Democrat being all big-n-bad.

You know, that thing they call “swaggering” when President Bush does exactly the same thing.

Well. I would like a poll to tell me what this phrase means when you use it as a verb. Does anybody really know? If you ask a hundred Democrats in serial fashion in an isolated setting what this means, do you get back one single answer?

Posted in GroupThink Nonsense, Lying Liars, Women in Skimpy Clothes | 1 Comment »

Imus Puts Liberals In Their Place

Friday, February 23rd, 2007

I feel sorry for our liberals, really I do. They’ve achieved a sense of cohesion across the American landscape, about something they oppose…but all they can do with that cohesion is barely touch it, they can never quite grasp it. They certainly can’t translate it into something they support.

In fact, how many words can they get out about this thing they oppose, and why they oppose it, and how they oppose it, before the cohesion slips away from them like a slippery fish? About…four or five, tops.

Don Imus nails them to the wall about it.

In the final analysis, they’ve managed to champion this American ideal, and none other: Being at war sucks, and we don’t like it. That’s it. That’s all.

The minute they embark on anything else, like “…and we wouldn’t be in this one if George W. Bush didn’t lie to us,” they’ve lost whatever audience they’ve had.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Justification for Invasion, Lying Liars, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Vision for Victory | No Comments »

Speaking For Everyone

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007

Another good link from blogger friend Rick: Do the donks speak for America?

By a 53 percent – 46 percent margin, respondents surveyed said that Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw troops from Iraq.
:
Also, by a 56 percent – 43 percent margin, voters agreed that even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.
:
By a wide 74 percent – 25 percent margin, voters disagree with the notion that “I don’t really care what happens in Iraq after the U.S. leaves, I just want the troops brought home.”

Democrats to shout in unison “It doesn’t matter because it’s from Drudge” and “You are mischaracterizing our position and questioning our patriotism” in 5…4…3…

Posted in Deranged Leftists, My Blogger Friends, Vision for Victory | No Comments »

Poignantly True

Tuesday, February 20th, 2007

Via Midnight Blue, via Flopping Aces, via Brutally Honest.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Vision for Victory | No Comments »

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

Tuesday, February 20th, 2007

It’s not going to be difficult to find some people who would think of this as a dream come true:

If Hillary Rodham Clinton wins the presidency, some top Democrats would like to see her husband, former President Bill Clinton, appointed to serve out Hillary’s unexpired Senate term.
:
“President Clinton would excel in the Senate,” said Paul Begala, who helped Bill Clinton get elected and served in the White House as a top aide.

“Why not?” Begala added. “He excelled as attorney general and governor of Arkansas, he excelled as president and he’s been a model of the modern Senate spouse.”

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, agreed.

“Clinton is a natural for the Senate,” Sabato said. “He loves to talk and schmooze. He could be a great vote-organizer. Majority Leader Clinton?”

You know what would be far more difficult? Finding someone, besides a paid Democrat party hack, who can tell you why this would be such a great idea. Clinton in the White House, Clinton leading the Senate. It’s clear someone thinks if a little of something is good, more of it is better. The “it” is Democrat-party leadership…which does what for us, exactly?

Liberalism I ask because lately when the Democrat-party tells me what it’s all about, it doesn’t seem to be about adding things in to anything; it seems to be about taking things away. “Re-deploy” and all that. Two Clintons for the price of one, again. Eh, you can’t really impeach President Bush twice, or end a war twice. So, what exactly is the nutty topping to this sundae?

Struggling to reconcile this with the negative campaigning the Democrat-party has been doing, I can only think of one thing we would get “more” of with Clintons at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, which would justify twice-the-excitement: More assurance against certain things. One Clinton would kinda-sorta keep Republican things from happening, and two Clintons would really, really keep them from happening.

So I guess we’re talking about…tax cuts? Two Clintons would boost our taxes twice as high, whereas just one Clinton would stop at eliminating the 2003 tax cuts? Or perhaps…gun control. One Clinton would make it illegal to own an assault rifle, and two Clintons would send a potential rape victim to jail for trying to defend herself with a .25-cal automatic?

Oh wait oh wait, I know what it might be. Support the troops twice as much, and oppose their mission twice as hard? Or oppose twice as many terrorists and support their mission twice as much?

I’m just not coming up with any answers that make good sense. I wish someone else would step up and tell me what this is all about. I’ve been told for six years now that the Republican position on things is extremism and involves some “cowboy mentality” and the Democrats are all about being centrist and moderate so the rest of the world will like us a little bit better.

How do you drum up a whole lot of enthusiasm and excitement…about twice as much centricism and moderation?

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

KOS Demands To Know

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

Internet Tough Guy Well, chalk this one up as a win. A giant triple-scoop sundae win, with a nutty sprinkling of humor…but also a drizzling of caution.

The Edwards campaign has accepted the resignation of blogmistress Amanda Marcotte, the potty-mouth anti-Catholic shill who writes for the hard-left-wing feminist resource Pandagon. It’s a story of the unsuccessful straddling of the chasmatic divide between blogging, in which the need to please everyone is non-existent, and politics, in which the need to please everyone is…well, everywhere.

What I find nutty and humorous, is the DailyKOS guy insisting on finding out what happened.

Which ’08 Dem doesn’t want our support?
by Kagro X
Fri Feb 09, 2007 at 01:30:51 PM PST

Just yesterday, I outlined why the response to the manufactured controversy over the John Edwards campaign bloggers was the responsibility of all Democratic campaigns, and not just Edwards’:

[T]he real power of this game is that it separates Edwards from the Democratic pack, and isolates him. It allows the other Democratic candidates — after mopping their brows and thanking their lucky stars that they’re not (currently) in the cross hairs — to do the right’s work for them by taking the path of least resistance and either watching silently from the sidelines, or actively distancing themselves from him.

That gives the right undue leverage on our side of the aisle. Leverage to which they are not only not entitled, but which is revocable at our say-so.

The loudest voices calling for Edwards to dismiss his bloggers are — and no one can doubt this — never in a million years going to vote for him, either in a primary or a general election. So why are they allowed to drive his decision-making? Not because they can withhold votes from him, but because they can cause Democratic voters to do so instead….

But to the extent that the netroots seek to demand a show of loyalty by Edwards, that same demand must be made of every Democratic campaign. Today, the target is Edwards. Tomorrow, should this vendetta prove successful, the target could be anyone.

This fight, if Edwards is going to be called upon to make it, must be everyone’s fight. If the other campaigns cannot demonstrate that they would have displayed the same courage we call upon Edwards to display, then they benefit from the right’s strategy of divide and conquer. And to the extent that they benefit, they give a pass to and encourage such attacks in the future, and are powerless to stop them when the next one comes. All they can do is hold on tight, cross their fingers, and pray they’re not the next target. And that’s no way to win anything. Certainly not the White House.

Well, it’s not yet 24 hours later, and guess what?

Someone just didn’t have enough respect for you:

Bloggers heralded the decision to keep them; the Catholic League was outraged, and a top adviser to a rival campaign took a shot: “Apparently they’re more afraid of the bloggers than they are the Catholics.”

Who did it?

I want to know.

You want to know.

And now, they’ll be desperate not to let you know.

I’m just a silly little blogger, but I have this advice for whoever did it: Don’t you ever let me find out.

Ha. I love this stuff. Bloggers…not just any ol’ bloggers, but the folks who make the plural into a pejorative, lacking the maturity to even acknowledge, let alone accept, that other folks might have disparate viewpoints on things. Bloggers, of a decidedly leftist tilt, who are just a bit too aclimated to the blogging environment — press some keys, the computer will do whatever you tell it to do. Along they come, swaggering into the barroom of politics, in which anyone sober enough to mount a barstool must be appeased. And they can’t handle it. They’re used to ruling the roost. Here in the setting not for the meek, power must be shared. It’s too much for them.

Heh. Heh. “Don’t you ever let me find out.” I just love that one. Hey Sparky…your ability to mobilize the masses with your vast power of bloggification, has been weighed. It’s been measured. It’s been balanced against the similar attribute possessed by those you seek to tick off, and your side has been found to be lacking.

You really want a rematch?

Anyway. Now for the caution. There’s this meme going around that Marcotte got sacked, and she got sacked because she uses the fuck-word a little bit too much. This is taking flight along the hardcore-conservative side, in which the fuck-word earns universally the derision it deserves in some situations…and giving rise to a sentiment that bloggers who use the fuck-word had better look out.

I can’t hop onto that bandwagon for two reasons: One, obviously, I use the fuck-word around here. Two, it wouldn’t be logical or effective. Let me expound on Two somewhat…I could, tomorrow, take an oath to never again use the word “fuck” on my blog. It fuckin’ stops right now, mkay? Answer me this, then. Toward what end? To show that my points are so good, so sensible, that I can make them without using the word fuck?

Yeah there would be a grain of logic in that. I’d be able to see it; the people who agree with me, would be able to see it. And to persuade others toward my point of view, sure, I can do that without using the word fuck. But — what then am I to say about people who still blog about fuck this, fuck that, fuck whatever…I must be superior to them now, right? I must. If not, there was no point to my oath to stop using the word fuck.

And there was a point. Therefore, I’m a lot better than they are.

So what happens next time someone else comes along, who agrees with my point of view, and is not so enlightened as to stop using the fuck-word. What of that? If I can sit on my high, squeaky-clean anti-fuck pedestal and look down about all the other bloggers still swimming in this filthy sewer of fuck-word slime…are my opinions not being derogated anyway, by my own logic, when they’re being sympathetically echoed by bloggers who still use the word fuck?

So my note of caution is this. Be careful about the moral of the story. Marcotte didn’t get sacked because of her potty mouth. She didn’t even get sacked; she quit. The lesson is this: Blogging is a method of communication. Nothing more. It opens a new doorway to things not tried before, because there are aspects of it inherently incompatible with the political arena. If that were not the case, bloggers wouldn’t be saying anything new, and if they weren’t saying anything new we wouldn’t be talking about them.

And so it becomes a logical necessity that there are contagions in the blogosphere that don’t fit into what we’re used to seeing. And it’s not just the fuck-word. It’s this practice of deliberately trying to tick off the Catholics just to get high-fives and pats-on-the-back from your liberal buddies…like Ms. Marcotte does. Or, for taking the time to point out things you’re not going to be told by anyone who seeks to promote and preserve a public reputation.

Politicians can’t back this stuff. They might think they can, but they can’t. Their mission is to make everyone happy; bloggers have a mission that is directly opposed to this. Especially on the left, I notice. Every leftist agenda, it seems, is somewhat fuzzy on what exactly it’s supposed to achieve or how it’s going to go about making such an accomplishment…and much sharper about which demographic it’s supposed to tax, slander, over-regulate, and to sum it up in general, cheese off and make unhappy. Every leftist agenda seems to have such a target. Parents, white people, men, religious people, people who sell stock at a profit, beneficiaries of an estate.

What do our liberal politicians do? They paper over this intentional injury with euphemisms. What do our liberal bloggers do? They advertise how much damage they’re going to do against the targeted class. Go on, read some liberal blogs for a few minutes. So the marriage between liberal bloggers and liberal politicians is doomed to unhappiness and divorce, I’m afraid. The similar marriage on the conservative side, for similar reasons, is doomed to a similar fate.

Rather fascinating to be living through this experiment and thus to be invited to attend the wedding reception. I’m just not going to be spending a lot on the gifts and I’ll not be hanging around the reception for very long. The Edwards/Marcotte falling-out is an inevitability that awaits all who initiate the same enterprise, regardless of political leanings…and a generation down the road, we’ll be looking back on the practice the same way we, today, look back on pet rocks.

Update: Bill O’Reilly doesn’t think the way I do. His arguments are filled with “you do this” and “you don’t do that” and such and such is “beyond the pale,” whereas I’m more of an if-you-do-this-that-will-happen kind of a guy. He works with commandments, I work with consequences. He’s Pillar III and I’m Pillar IV.

So we have the same sentiments about this whole thing but we have different ways of pointing it out. Those sentiments can best be summed up thusly: These women are loonies.

His segment can be found here. Embedded below.

Posted in Challenger Scandals, Deranged Leftists, Flogs | 1 Comment »

On The View

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

I do not like to comment on topics in which my knowledge is limited; especially when my knowledge is far inferior to the knowledge possessed by just about everyone else. And I do not like to “blog” about cool ideas. Cool ideas, to me, are for Palm Pilots. If they make it to the blog, they make it there after being sanded and polished and polished again. Even then, of course, one should be ready for an education. Perhaps somewhere on the globe, someone else has been finding new and better ways to get the turbocharger on a Porsche 911 working just a little tiny bit better, while he himself has been struggling to make a stone wheel round. In front of a large audience, that is the risk you run. And what is the “blogosphere” besides the ultimate in large audiences.

But…such a humiliation can be educational. And some ideas are so just plain cool that I do not care if someone else has already thought of it…if they haven’t, I don’t really care if someone steals mine. The important thing is to jot it down.

This is just cool.

I’ve been reading the comments on this post over at The Jawa Report about that reprehensible television show called “The View”. I do not know very much about The View. I have seen clips from it on YouTube and…you know, that is just about it. And I suppose I’m getting a tainted sampling by seeing clips of the show on YouTube. I’m imagining there may very well be a staggering amount of footage that contains less talk and more common sense, and for that reason never makes it to YouTube. Like, I only have an opportunity to become aware of the most brain-dead sludge from all the show has had to offer. Would it then be fair to form an opinion? Hmmm.

Well, that would depend on the opinion. Like: It’s freakin’ impossible to carry on a reasonable conversation with everyone talking over each other like that. And Rosie O’Donnell is a dense loudmouth bitch.

Am I in need of a more scientific method of sampling of the available footage, which in turn might negate or mollify some of that sentiment? Really? There don’t seem to be any indicators that this is the case. Lacking any such indicators, I have to presume that I know pretty much everything I need to know. It’s not as if the subject matter is terribly deep to begin with? I haven’t heard anyone say The View is terribly complex or multifaceted. So…

…here is my idea…I understand the ratings issue continues to be a crisis…

…so let us say I’m the producer who runs everything.

We continue to depend on Rosie O’Donnell as our ratings savior. We just change the format a little tiny bit. Rosie’s doing most of the talking, right? Okay, we have her start off the show. Every single episode. Someone just tosses out the topic, and we get to hear what Rosie as to say. Blah blah blah, sentence after sentence.

From inside a soundproof booth. We get to hear her through loudspeakers. Yadda yadda yadda…and of course, while Rosie’s inside the soundproof booth, the other three gals are outside. They have their thumbs pressing down on dead-mans’ switches, and while they press the buttons Rosie can still be heard. On and on she goes — but when two of the three outsiders decide Rosie has said something that demands a response, and stop pressing the switches, the loudspeaker goes OFF.

Rosie is silent. And the other three gals can talk over each other responding to what Rosie has said.

For added fun — Rosie has no way to know if her switch has been cut, or not. All she can do is keep on moving those lips and gums, blah blah blah. The other three girls would be free to critique Rosie’s sentence structure, her analytical skills, her etiquette, and…then…maybe they could take an informal vote about whether it’s too soon to let Rosie talk again. Or to be heard again, rather.

I’m tellin’ ya — I would miss a freakin’ court date to catch an episode of that. I think a lot of other people would like to see it, too.

Babba Wawa, you can have that idea for free. You’re welcome.

Posted in Celebrity Halfwits, Deranged Leftists, Is It Really a Man's World? | No Comments »

Ignoring Them Is The Answer

Saturday, February 10th, 2007

When the Angry Left directs us to worry about global warming instead of terrorism, it’s an implication to me that they know what to do about terrorism. And yet they don’t act like it. I’m not sure at all what they think we should do about it. Show tolerance? I heard Michael Moore himself say one time “there is no terrorist threat” or words to that effect…so do they mean to challenge the idea that there are terrorists? Does the Angry Left have some fastening to the “9/11 was an inside job” crowd?

Or do they think it really happened, but want us to do something else about it…without telling us what that something-else is. They seem to show a lot of unity when they discuss what we should not be doing. When it comes to alternatives, the unity suddenly vanishes.

Well, the time has come again to gather yet another tantalizing, but by no means sustaining, morsel as we try to noodle this out.

Glenn Beck’s simplistic view of the war on terror and radical islam reared its ugly head once again tonight.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0702/09/gb.01.html

MANJI (voice-over): Ahmed has a son, Habib.

(on camera) Would you be proud to have Habib become a martyr?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): It would be my wish for him to die as a martyr, because if I don`t fall as a martyr then he will be able to intercede for his family with God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BECK: Back with Irshad Manji. That kind of stuff I don`t understand. America doesn`t understand, how do you defeat that without killing them?

First off, the man in the video (at least to the viewers at home) wasnt identified as a “terrorist” or anything of the sort. All we know is that he is a muslim and said what he said. Glenn Beck, who may have seen the documentary and knows that the man is an actual terrorist, jumped to the conclusion that he was one.

In Glenn Beck’s world, the only way to defeat terrorists is to kill them. How many “terrorists” is he willing to kill? A thousand? A million? 50 million?

And someone please tell Glenn Beck that killing terrorists is not the answer. For every “terrorist” you kill, you probably create 10 more.

Chris

You see what I mean. Don’t kill the terrorists…and oh by the way, you are wrong to call them terrorists.

I read the transcript. I missed the part where Beck specifically called this fellow a terrorist. But why should I have any objections if he did? The intent is certainly there.

That's a paddlin But I wish to inspect something else for a spell. I wish to inspect this thing about killing one terrorist and creating ten more.

Not that I have doubts that this happens; I’m sure it happens. Heck, I’ve seen it happen in comic books an awful lot. I have no doubt the effects are there. But is this 10:1 statistic to be read literally, or in the figurative sense? Ten-to-one is a whole lot. That would make it an utterly hopeless scenario. And I guess that’s the point — to illustrate the killing of terrorists as a hopeless scenario.

I can see why that’s necessary. Anyone who pays even a passing glance to the situation-at-hand can see leaving the terrorists alive is quite hopeless. It’s obvious. When you leave them alive, they kill people.

So if you want to disuade people from supporting that, I guess you have to illustrate the killing of terrorists as equally hopeless. Whether the facts support that, or not.

Now what exactly do the facts support? Could it be this has some merit to it, but is an exaggeration? Or could it be an understatement? We kill one terrorist…and twenty new ones pop up? Maybe a hundred?

Uh…do we even care?

I find this argument to be breathtaking in its disingenuousness. It isn’t something that applies to a situation in which the observer genuinely cares about the outcome. Think about a terrorist putting a plan into motion that will kill…YOU. Or your parents, your kids, your wife, your dog. The authorities ponder the prospect of neutralizing the terrorist before he destroys you and all you hold dear…and then the authorities say…well, shit, we kill this guy we’ll make ten more.

Does that make sense to you?

Sure, only if you don’t have a stake in the outcome. If you think for just a moment that the terrorists are laboring toward the destruction of something important, the answer is obvious. Kill the one, wait for the ten to pop up, then kill them. If you get a hundred after that, then kill them too.

We play whack-a-mole…so we don’t play sitting-duck. I do like whack-a-mole a whole lot better. As to the perennial M*A*S*H question, lordy lordy, where does it ever STOP? Hell, I dunno. Go ask the terrorists that.

It’s not a “neocon” talking point, and it’s not bloodlust, and it’s not empty-headed machismo. It’s common sense. It’s a sensible response to a demonstrated threat. If we want to live to see tomorrow, the force-of-evil is put in the position of wondering when things stop. The unstoppable, unthinking, force-of-nature that dishes out a predictable response to a stimulus that was contemplated by someone else — that’s left to us. Do X to our people, and Y will happen. A cost-benefit analysis will reveal X to fall short of justifying Y…and that is when it stops.

“Chris” says that’s not the answer. He fails to say what is. Hope he’s got something better in mind than just “ignore them they’ll go away”…

I hope that.

But I doubt it.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Vision for Victory | No Comments »

Collaboration Is Needed

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

…amongst our friends on The Angry Left. I recommend some kind of big national convention, with an extra-extra-early first draft of the 2008 democrat party platform to follow.

They need to figure out what really cheeses ’em off. Something does. They need to direct their attention away from the lame duck President soon…which they might do. They might. They might not. They might keep President Bush at the center of their message, up to and past the point where he’s no longer relevant, leaving the electorate sucking air in pondering what a Democrat President would do from 2009 to 2013. They might go sailing right over that cliff. It seems clear to me that their success is tied to their ability to get the horse in front of this wagon.

Well, I do not want them to succeed. I want them to fail. But I don’t want it to be a cakewalk for Republicans, either. When a Republican wins over a strong Democrat, we get presidencies like…Lincoln’s. The current President’s first term. Reagan’s first term. Yes, Jimmy Carter is weakness personified, but he was the incumbent. When the challenger is mortally wounded before the contest even starts, or is a strategic weakling, the victorious Republican gives us leadership like…Nixon’s presidency. Reagan’s second term. Bush’s dad’s term.

So I want Democrats to give Republicans a run for their money. Not like John Kerry in ’04. That was a statistical squeaker, but Kerry was a weakling. Even today, nobody knows what the hell he was saying. And nobody’s more pissed at him than the average Democrat.

And so, next to Democrats who agitate the public with messages that are overly-simplistic and easily-digested, nothing irritates me more than Democrats who agitate the public with messages that are self-confusing and hopelessly-tangled. The message cannot be clear, if the reason for dissatisfaction is not clear. And I daresay in the annals of political dissatisfactions in American history, no grievance has ever achieved so much volume with so little definition or cohesion, as the one our Angry Left seeks to mobilize now…that they’ve been trying to mobilize for six years. It’s as if they themselves are wholely unable to answer the question: Why is it that you guys are so angry anyway?

To those who say there is no confusion about this, I offer the ramblings of this poor agitated soul over here. Something to do with “netroots and grassroots.” Having declared that he will not support John Edwards after the fair-haired one fired those two ditzy liberal female bloggers, he seeks to answer the mystified query from his peers:

This seems crazy to me. This is going to be your make-or-break issue? This? Not Iraq, Iran, health care? Nothing that could happen over the next 12 months could change your mind?

And he does have an answer. Or two. Or more.

I don’t understand any of it, myself. But I think you guys had better get together and put your house in order. You’re not yet ready to contend.

Posted in Bush Derangement Syndrome, Deranged Leftists, Flogs | 1 Comment »

What Is A Liberal? IV

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

I’ve been hearing about this film clip and I was looking over Good Lieutenant’s site last week I came across it, and I’ve been trying to get around to watching it ever since. It’s a debate between Justice Antonin Scalia and ACLU President Nadine Strossen on how we should go about interpreting the Constitution.

Not really sure if Scalia came out ahead here. I’m not sure because…Scalia and Strossen have two different perspectives on pretty much everything. That’s why there’s a debate in the first place. To be sure, if I could somehow agitate a young mind into being interested in constitutional interpretation, before he or she had an emotional axe to grind against any one group of people, and that freshman mind could see these film clips — in that setting, Scalia has a decisive advantage. And what an incredibly healthy experience that would be.

This is outside of Strossen’s preferred audience, though. Watch the clips; every rejoinder to what Scalia says is, at sum, a “what about” argument. What about these people, what about those people, what if this happens to you, what if that happens to you.

I was told liberals are “open-minded.” Scalia, here, is actually responding to the things Strossen is saying. Strossen seems to have a terrible case of CBTA.

I can’t prove what is going on here that I think I’m seeing…but it looks an awful lot like…just to speculate…

A lot of kids are going into law school to become the next John Grisham hero, determined to “make the world a better place” — for selected classes of people. And Nadine Strossen has formed her talking points by speaking to them.

Why do I think that? It’s got to do with the “but what about” stuff. And this thing about Law of Nations. Good golly, do I have that right? Scalia attacks the practice of looking to foreign courts for judicial precedence — a direct contradiction to the oath justices take before they are seated, if you ask me. Strossen refers to language that appears (not even sure I’m applying her comments correctly here) in Article I, Sec. 8 wherein the powers of Congress are enumerated. Is that really what she means?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This whole thing is a losing proposition. You ask reasonable questions about liberal viewpoints and go look things up when liberals refer to them…you end up in a big cul de sac every damn time. It isn’t what they’re after. They’re recruiters, and they’re used to doing their recruiting in environments where they’ve already gotten some kind of a boost — pre-selection of the audience, indoctrinated animosity against middle-aged white guys, lots of hours spent watching cable television.

All in all, a good clip. I think they should show it in the sixth grade. Among the kids who are successfully persuaded to pay attention, I predict Scalia would make lifetime converts out of the ones who have no axe to grind as of yet, and Strossen would make lifetime converts out of the ones who already do have one.

Well, not “lifetime.” Judicial activism is just like affirmative action: It has the potential to make lots of sense to every person, until said person becomes a victim of it. I think I can just about promise that if you’re on your way to court yourself, as a prosecutor or plaintiff or defendant…if you really do think you’re in the right on things, you are going to want the judge to be thinking the way Scalia is thinking. Seems to me the Strossen model is tailor-made for people who want an uneven playing field.

“Law of Nations” comment aside, I didn’t see her grapple with the logic of Scalia’s viewpoint one single time. Everything else she said was cast from the “you can’t do that, you might hurt (so-and-so)” mold.

Posted in Deranged Leftists | 1 Comment »

On Libby’s Trial

Sunday, February 4th, 2007

I can see there is one forensic skill that has risen to involve paramount importance in reading about the Libby trial: The ability to distinguish objective statements from subjective ones. I’ve come to that conclusion because over time, I’ve observed a skill that has snowballed into a crushing level of weight and importance in writing about the trial, involves mixing objective and subjective statements together so that they all look alike.

Yeah, that’s right. On this subject, writers and readers assume opposite roles in an inimical relationship. Writers seek to bewilder and confuse readers, and the few readers who are interested and genuinely curious, seek to drag said truth kicking-and-screaming out of the writers.

What else am I supposed to think. After all, what happened here — within the story. What’s the most that could have happened, and what’s the least that could have happened.

Cheney’s shadow hangs over Libby trial
Testimony points out his role in trying to dampen Joseph Wilson’s criticism
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Updated: 9:37 p.m. PT Feb 3, 2007

Vice President Cheney’s press officer, Cathie Martin, approached his chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on Air Force Two on July 12, 2003, to ask how she should respond to journalists’ questions about Joseph C. Wilson IV. Libby looked over one of the reporters’ questions and told Martin: “Well, let me go talk to the boss and I’ll be back.”

On Libby’s return, Martin testified in federal court last week, he brought a card with detailed replies dictated by Cheney, including a highly partisan, incomplete summary of Wilson’s investigation into Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction program.

Libby subsequently called a reporter, read him the statement, and said — according to the reporter — he had “heard” that Wilson’s investigation was instigated by his wife, an employee at the CIA, later identified as Valerie Plame. The reporter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, was one of five people with whom Libby discussed Plame’s CIA status during those critical weeks that summer.

Highly partisan, incomplete summary. Those descriptors are subjective, not objective — you don’t find them to be “true,” instead, you either agree with them or you don’t. So what happened? Scooter Libby, apparently after having consulted with the Vice President, produced a summary of Wilson’s fishing expedition that left out something someone else would have wanted left in. Oh, NOES!!! The Vice President is doing things different than the way things would have been done by someone else who is not the Vice President!

I mean, am I misreading that? In what way?

Read the rest of the story. It seems to imply that Libby just found out from Vice President Cheney that Joseph Wilson’s wife had a hand in sending the ambassador to Nigeria, and lied by omission when he said “he had heard” this was the case. If indeed that is what the story is implying, do we have that information? And come to think of it, what would that be, objective or subjective? You could say it’s objective…you could…if it could be objectively measured that Scooter should’ve spilled what someone else thinks Scooter should’ve spilled. Well, the phrase “someone else thinks” removes this matter from the realm of objectivity.

That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be mentioned. What it means is, by itself, this is not news.

There are two defenses I can see that are suitable for both Libby and the Vice President’s office. They both deal with the “perjury trap.” The first comes under the category of “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm” and it is from, of all people, Ann Coulter.

The way Libby remembered it, NBC’s Tim Russert was the first one to tell him. But the way Russert remembers it, he didn’t tell Libby about Wilson’s wife. (And the way Wilson remembers it, he was sent to Niger by Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.)

Try this: Who told you Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife? Who told you a bipartisan Senate panel concluded that Joe Wilson was lying when he denied that his wife had sent him to Niger? While we’re at it, who was the first person to correct you on your pronunciation of “Niger”? I don’t remember, either — and I’m not running a war.

The second is the product of a Clinton-lovin’ liberal by the name of Marc Perkel and, as such, it relies on confusing the objective with the subjective. Like they say in hokey pokey…that’s what it’s all about. The specific subjective notion is that the perjury trap is “abhorrent.” It must be abhorrent, because a court found it to be abhorrent.

Oh no, Perkel’s comments are not written with regard to Scooter Libby’s trial. The subject is Clinton’s impeachment trial in the Senate. I’m gonna rag on this guy for a few paragraphs. His introduction promises, by implication, a logically durable argument and he doesn’t deliver.

Perjury Trap / Legal Perspective / Definitions

In the case of United States vs. Chen, 933 F.2d 793, 796-97, A perjury trap is created when the government calls a witness before the grand jury for the primary purpose of obtaining testimony from him in order to prosecute him later for perjury. United States v. Simone, 627 F. Supp. 1264, 1268 (D. N.J. 1986) (perjury trap involves “the deliberate use of a judicial proceeding to secure perjured testimony, a concept in itself abhorrent”). It involves the government’s use of its investigatory powers to secure a perjury indictment on matters which are neither material nor germane to a legitimate ongoing investigation of the grand jury. See United States v. Crisconi, 520 F. Supp. 915, 920 (D. Del. 1981). Such governmental conduct might violate a defendant’s fifth amendment right to due process, Simone, 627 F. Supp. at 1267-72, or be an abuse of grand jury proceedings, Crisconi, 520 F. Supp. at 920. See generally Gershman, The “Perjury Trap”, 129 U. Pa. L. Rev. 624, 683 (1981).

The Chen case goes on to say, “If a court divines that the purpose of repetitious questioning is to coax a witness into the commission of perjury . . . such conduct would be an abuse of the grand jury process.”

Perjury Trap as applied to President Clinton

The facts of the matter are rather obvious. This whole process, ever since Starr was appointed was an Impeachment in search of a Crime. Having investigated Whitewater, TravelGate, FileGate, the Foster Suicide, and a number of other artificial scandals, and having failed to find a crime, Starr was running out of things to investigate. Then one day Linda Tripp comes forward with a tape of Monica Lewinsky talking about having sexual contact (not sexual relations) with the President. Starr interviewed her without a lawyer and attempted to put a wire on her to get the President.

In spite of the fact that Starr had actual knowledge of the Lewinsky affair, he failed to reveal his knowledge to the President’s counsel. The idea was to catch the President by surprise in the Jones deposition. As we all know, having sex is neither a criminal act nor an impeachable offense. However, it is extremely embarrassing and it is something that most of us would tend to lie about. In fact, we as a society have a lot of sexual phobias and because we Americans can not face our own sexuality, we as a society deal with it by lying about sex. In other words, lying about sex is an established American custom. I would point out that although most people consider the President’s behavior to be sinful, sexual behavior is a human instinct that is more powerful than reason and is necessary for reproduction; and, if not for such instincts as depicted by the President’s behavior, the human race would have been extinct millions of years ago. But that’s another argum ent that I will save for another day. My point here is that because our American culture will not face sexual behavior from a realistic perspective, it is normal and expected in our society to lie about sex. This is especially true if you are an elected official.

Perkel leverages this reasoning with “the combination my of legal skills, my political skills, and the logical disciplines my of being [sic] a computer programmer.” It is the last of those, grammatically scrambled as it may be, for which I have the most respect. It is the only one of his credentials I can match, and I apply reasoning skills to what I’m reading in the news each and every day — skills I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t programmed computers.

But there are some key differences between Mr. Perkel’s background and mine.

For one thing, I would never use my achievements as a computer programmer, just by themselves, to convince someone to listen to the wisdom of my argument. It’s pretentious, and I think it would be ineffective. People don’t understand it. Anyone who does understand where such an argument is going, probably understands it because they’ve programmed computers themselves, and I can pretty much promise they will look at it differently. You’ve got better-than-even odds they’ll figure out that programming is an activity you might as well just pass up if you lack the reasoning and deductive skills to look at things, and figure out what they mean. And to strategize. And to organize. But — people being the way they are, if a hostile mindset does indeed have this background, he’ll use it to fortify his own argument.

“That guy’s programmed computers. He must have strong reasoning skills. I’d better listen to him.” Never heard anyone express those ideas in sequence…about me or about anyone else. It’s just not the way people work.

And that brings me to the second difference.

If an observer does indeed have adequate reasoning skills, from the experiences of computer programming or from something else, the application of those skills to Mr. Perkel’s argument is going to take place as his argument is pursued. One statement at a time. As a thesis. What’s Mr. Perkel’s thesis? Perjury traps may violate the fifth amendment. He found a court that says they do, and that they are abhorrent…although he concedes the Supreme Court has yet to comment on the issue. But it’s all a red herring in Clinton’s case anyway, because “lying about sex is an established American custom.”

I wonder what this guy has programmed. Here he is writing about the “logical disciplines” he has from his computer programming, carefully defining where the legal jurisprudence has been created and where it has not been created, and then rather than following this logically he just dismisses it all by saying truth doesn’t matter.

So whatever a logical discipline means to him, at least within the scope of Clinton’s impeachment, it’s got something to do with a concept antithetical to what’s true…not something that rests upon what’s true or can establish what’s true.

Perhaps because of this, he’s lost track of — again — what’s objective and what’s subjective. Perjury traps are “abhorrent.” All right, I agree. But who says so? Just because Perkel and I agree on this, doesn’t make it universally so. It’s an opinionated statement. Someone else might say otherwise. And…lying is expected in matters of sex. Really? Even in grand jury testimony? Expected by who?

Clippy Hey, ever use software built by a computer programmer wholly unaccustomed to dealing with the viewpoints of others? It’s pretty frustrating, and most computer users have been through the experience at least once. Maybe Mr. Perkel has unintentionally identified what’s wrong with how some computer applications are built. Computer programmer thinks when you’re writing a letter, you must want Mr. Clip-It to jump up and say “It looks like you are writing a letter!” and offer some helpful tips. Eh, very few people want that. But somewhere, a computer programmer figured out, heck, if he was the guy writing the letter he’d want to see Clippy. Ipso facto, that’s what everybody else wants too.

Does it work? Well speaking for myself, I’ve never met anyone who’s seen Clippy, who doesn’t want to kill him. He’s like Microsoft’s answer to Jar Jar Binks.

But some of our programmers live in tiny worlds, where Clippy is a sight for sore eyes. And lying about sex is expected. They’re simply unaccustomed to dealing with the viewpoints of others, unless said others already think in the same way. They may be experienced at figuring out what to type in to make the computer do this-or-that, but there’s other stuff to be done too. Like, when the computer does something else, you’ve got to figure out why it’s doing that. And even more importantly than that, and more germane to “logical disciplines” you pick up from programming and apply elsewhere — nobody’s actually going to tell you to make the computer do that. You’ve got to figure out what the user is going to want.

Mmmkay, anyway back to the subject at hand. Objective…subjective. As far as the modern culture and the prevailing viewpoint therein, and the history of that prevailing viewpoint — we’re at an interesting crossroads. People are acting mighty peculiar. Conservative, liberal, other…it seems everyone wants to be applauded for their ability to think things through. Nobody wants to be accused of thinking things, just because someone else gave them instructions to think those things.

But look at what’s up here. Scooter Libby hands Cathie Martin a note. Cathie Martin thinks something should have been on the note that isn’t there. She testifies to this effect and someone else figures this is news.

What useful information has been passed around here? Looks to me like we got some testimony out of Martin, that she thinks things should’ve been worded differently. No shit. I’m sure a lot of folks are going to think this post should have been worded differently. Did anything else newsworthy happen that day? Anything? Hello? Buuueeeellleerrr?

Posted in Bush Derangement Syndrome, Deranged Leftists, Poisoning Justice | No Comments »

FARKLibs Hate This

Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

As I become older and more mature, I’m looking at FARK with a whole different perspective. I don’t take quite so much puerile delight in the B.U.F. that permeates the overwhelmingly liberal membership there. The ad hominem attacks they use, the argumentum ad authoritarian, the circular reasoning, the snarky snippets they throw around, and the stark prejudices and biases all these disorders evince, as if any evincing were needed…these all start to bore me.

Aw, who the hell am I kidding.

What better way to spend fifty bones a year. Entertainment, wit, talent, AND you get to watch the widespread destruction of the ability of individuals to think things through logically, on naked display before your very eyes — the single gravest threat to America and the civilized world in the twenty-first century. Scene by scene, act by act. The people who’ve fallen prey to this are not yet ready, willing or able to hide their delusions like our traditional-deluded. They advertise their foolishness. Exuberantly. Jubiliantly. You see, they’re looking for high-fives and pats-on-the-back from their liberal buddies.

Anyway…

…they really hate this. It’s a tongue-in-cheek — kinda sorta — argument about this whole groundhog-day tradition resembling, in a number of ways, the prevailing viewpoint and the amazing control our leftists have come to exert over it.

Punxsutawney Phil is a Left-wing operative
Comparing Leftists to groundhogs actually makes sense
Tom Kovach
February 2, 2007

The subject might not be as far-fetched as it seems.

Compare the facts about Groundhog Day, and its famous weather “predictor,” Punxsutawney Phil, with the methods of Left-wing operatives.

1. Punxsutawney Phil suddenly appears on the scene from a “hole” of obscurity. If not for massive promotion by the Left-leaning news media, would anyone have ever heard of Punxsutawney Phil?

How many other connections does he find? More than you think.

Just in case you missed it, and you care — and I doubt both of these — the consensus among the FARK membership is that you should not be reading this, and you will become stupid if you do.

You’ve been warned.

Update: Another thing got a chilly reception there lately: It turns out that yes, soldiers really have been spit-upon by self-righteous hippies. It’s not an urban myth. Whoops, secret’s outta the bag now.

Posted in Deranged Leftists | No Comments »

“Bush Does This A Lot”

Saturday, January 27th, 2007

Oh he does, does he? And by “this” what we mean is, leaving the “ic” off of Democratic…

Bush misses ‘-ic’ but hits a nerve

WASHINGTON – The president, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, left out a tiny little suffix that means a whole lot to some people. He did it so subtly you could have missed it. Just a little “-ic.”

Bush started the speech on a bipartisan note, honoring the first Madam Speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, and calling on the country to come together.

Then, “I congratulate the Democrat majority,” he said, dropping the last two letters of “Democratic.”

Bush does this a lot, and while it’s hard to say whether the omission was intentional in this instance, it is a semantic tactic that has been part of Republican warfare for decades. It’s a little thing, a means of needling the opposition by purposefully mispronouncing its name, and of suggesting that the party on the left is not truly small-“d” democratic. [emphasis mine]

Okay now President Bush has been in the oval Office for six years now and maybe my memory is a little rusty. But I seem to recall it being widely accepted as a little bit of a smear, a sign of disrespect intentional or otherwise, if the President of United States was consistently referenced using his surname alone. And I seem to recall that rule held for members of Congress as well. “Guess what Feinstein is up to this time?” would be snide. “Murtha is running his mouth off” would be smarmy. Agree or disagree, you were supposed to be paying due respect to the office if not to the occupant. Congressman. Chair/Chairman. Senator. President.

Our liberals wanted it to work a different way after December of 2000, because they didn’t think George Bush should have won the presidency. As usual, to get them to stop complaining we went ahead and did it the way they wanted, and he’s been “Bush” ever since.

So this tempest-in-a-teapot about “ic” — what is that? Are they saying they want to go back to the old way now?

Posted in Bush Derangement Syndrome | No Comments »

Kermit the Blitz

Friday, January 26th, 2007

Everybody else is posting it, I might as well too.

NO, I do not think the question was “outta line.” But the response certainly wasn’t either. Cheney’s was a class act. There’s a lot of “whodya root for” moments going on out there; this is not one of them.

Posted in Celebrity Halfwits, Deranged Leftists | 2 Comments »

On Baby Videos

Friday, January 26th, 2007

Did Timothy Noah ever have anything against the baby video industry, before he could connect President Bush to it?

Posted in Bush Derangement Syndrome, Deranged Leftists | No Comments »

Helping Howard

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007

Last year I registered to receive updates from the Democratic National Committee. Yesterday morning, I received this.

Dear Friends,

I want your help.

My friend, Senator Jim Webb, has the honor of giving the nationally televised response to the president’s State of the Union speech tomorrow night.

He’ll be preparing his remarks tonight and tomorrow, and I want you to make your hopes, your dreams, and your thoughts about the state of our union part of our Democratic message.

Please take a moment to make your input part of the process by sending a note to Senator Webb as he prepares his remarks — we’ll deliver your message:

http://www.democrats.org/stateoftheunion
:
Thank you.

Governor Howard Dean, M.D.

My response:

Dear Dr. Dean,

Without regard to who belongs to what party, just speaking as an American I’m awfully tired of debating whether our current President is bad, or inarticulate, or stupid, or laboring under a delusion that he’s Chosen By God. When he’s going home in two years no matter what, we cross the point of diminishing returns awfully quick when we go down the “slander George Bush and everything will all work out” bunny trail. You’ve beaten that dead horse into a crater full o’jello. Enough. The man is a non sequitur. I suggest you treat him like one, or else you risk becoming one yourself.

Psychopaths are out there trying to kill Americans. That’s the Number One issue. What is the Democratic Congress going to do about it?

In answering that, I would start with the seven hundred mile fence. What is our new Congress going to do to actually get it built? What is our new Congress going to do to make it into a twenty-one-hundred-mile fence?

How about the student visas the nineteen hijackers used to get into the country? What will the 110th do to make that more difficult? How about an end to “random screening” at the airports? The potential for authoritarian abuse is obvious…will the 110th look out for the interests of everyday Americans, by standing up to this potential for authoritarian abuse?

Your party has a history of demanding fidelity over principle, as the nation saw in the last election with the Lieberman/Lamont debacle. That didn’t work out so well for you. How about a nice, symbolic resolution from the 110th Congress apologizing for the internment of Japanese-American citizens, calling out Franklin Delano Roosevelt by name? For FDR’s legacy to stand unblemished, America has to approve of what he did. This is unacceptable. For the good of the country, acknowledge the blemish is there. Stop hiding it. Show us you have what it takes, to recognize something putrid when it’s within your own tent.

May I suggest February 19, the 65th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, as an appropriate date to pass the resolution?

While you’re at it, deliver a good scolding to former President Carter. This country needs a lot of things right now, but “outspoken” ex-Presidents seeking to divide us — nobody with any intelligence at all thinks that’s one of them.

Americans desire representation by a legislature that truly represents them. I like the Democrats’ idea of demanding “paper trails” at the ballot box, eschewing electronic voting mechanisms that apparently cannot be audited in case of dispute. I suggest a “Paper Trails All Around!” campaign — demand paper trails at the ballot box, AND identification from those who come out to vote. No I.D., no ballot. Make the Democratic Party, into the sound-and-accountable-elections party.

Americans desire accountability from their elected officials. “I was snookered into voting for Iraq” is just a way of avoiding accountability, and everybody knows it. Drop it. Just…drop it. If you haven’t got the brains to avoid being snookered, you haven’t got the brains to serve. Here’s an idea. Make it the position of the Democratic Party, that Saddam was a good start. You’re supposed to be dedicated to making life safer. Obviously, there are a lot of dangerous people on the world stage. Round ’em up. Stretch some necks. If you must show us how bad the current administration is, show us how it doesn’t move fast enough.

Americans desire a position from the Democratic Party on the United Nations. Something possessing certainty. Not mealy-mouthed. Find something good to say about how the U.N. has handled this whole Iraq business…which I doubt you can do. Or else, kick ’em out of Manhattan for good. I hear there is a campaign to make the Democrats look like “real men.” Be manly. Make a decision.

Some people are under the impression the Democrats want to punish rich people just for being rich. They think the Democrats are a bunch of rich people themselves, a money-saturated hodge-podge of hypocrites who want a different set of rules for other rich people, and attention-span-disabled drunkards who don’t know or care how many digits are in their net worth, happy so long as there’s enough loot for the next bottle of scotch. Disabuse us of that notion. Stand firm against the death tax. Keep the Bush tax cuts in place — since they’ve worked.

Drop the “For The Children” cliche. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows it’s seasoning used to disguise the taste of something that is thoroughly rotten.

Beyond that, I hesitate to add any more. Two years isn’t that long, after all. You have your work cut out for you; if I round up a hundred people who like Democrats, and ask them what you’ll do about the terrorist threat, nobody’s ready to advance the notion I’ll get back one single solid answer. So change that. Tell us your plan.

I do have one thing Sen. Webb can do right before his rebuttal. He could print out this excellent prepared speech by Jules Crittenden, and in the course of the State of the Union speech, cross out whatever overlaps with what President Bush is saying. Then, in the rebuttal, simply read what’s left over. http://www.pajamasmedia.com/2007/01/the_state_of_the_union_is_a_di.php. Hopefully, President Bush picked it up himself, and will leave little-to-nothing behind for you. If that’s the case, assure us that you’re going to stand with him.

Hey, a guy can dream.

Remember: Bellyaching about the President is SO last year. Sen. Web says “this admini-” — and I’m going to change channels before he gets to the “-stration.” He says “Halli-” and I’m gone before he gets to “-burton.” In saying that, I speak for millions. You know it to be true. Get with it.

Thank you for soliciting my opinion, congratulations on your victory, and best wishes in your efforts to legislate for this great nation.

Morgan K Freeberg
http://www.peekinthewell.net/blog

We’ll just have to see what happens.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, History | 4 Comments »

Time Machine Lunacy

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007

It occurs to me that if one wants to be committed to a looney-bin, without lying about anything or deceiving anyone in any way, a time machine set to the right year will do the trick. The right year, and a carefully-selected tidbit of factual disclosure.

Hello good people of 2006! I’m from the future. Democrats are going to take over Congress, and one of the first things they’ll do is ask for direction from those whackjobs at DailyKOS. You think I kid! I’m as serious as a heart attack.

See what I mean? Off you go, and here’s your straightjacket. And yet…here we are.

Hello good people of 2005! I’m from the future. Democrats are blaming George Bush for hurricanes. Yes. They really, truly are.
Hello 2004! George Bush is thought by many to be the most “hated” President ever, and it looks like he is, even though he’s won more popular votes than any President in history.

It’s just awfully tough for me to believe we would be allowed to keep our freedom as responsible, sane people, after uttering such drivel. It all makes sense now; in fact, in some quarters you’ll be subjected to some form of verbal assault if you don’t go along with it. But we wouldn’t be able to explain it to the people of yesteryear. We’re like the frog sitting in a pot of water, raised to a rolling boil degree-by-degree.

Hello 2003! We have captured Saddam Hussein and he’s been executed; we’re having a lively debate about whether this makes the world any safer. The folks who think it was a bad move, have pretty much won the debate, even though they are never — ever — called upon to say what should have been done differently.
Hello 2002! Evidence has been produced that the people in the U.N. voting against an invasion of Iraq, are on Saddam Hussein’s payroll through the oil-for-food program. To the tune of billions of dollars. What are we doing to bring them to justice? Nothing. Actually, hardly anyone ever talks about it.
Hello 2001! I dunno what to say to you…just hug your kids. And may God be with you.
Hello 2000! If you give Republicans control of all three branches of government, Democrats will try their very best to win you back by…calling you a bunch of fucking goddamned idiots and hoping that will change your mind. Ultimately, it will.
Hello 1999! Don’t worry about President Clinton’s legacy. He’s doing more to try to hide it, than anyone.
Hello 1998! Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California.
Hello 1997! Little kids are going to start performing oral sex on each other because the President said it wasn’t really sex. He’s going to stay just as popular as he is now, if not moreso.
Hello 1996! We’re debating about whether Saddam Hussein was ever a dangerous fucknozzle; the people who insist he was a harmless misunderstood old teddy-bear, are winning.
Hello 1995! We got a “Pelosi Revolution” that’s just like your “Gingrich Revolution.” It involved between a quarter and a third as many House seats changing hands, as what you just went through…but our media tells us it means far, far more. And you wouldn’t believe how differently they’re treating it. It’s working, too.
Hello 1994! Your “co-President” is going to get her husband’s ass handed to him in the upcoming mid-terms with her socialized-medicine scheme. It’s going to make history — and yet, twelve years later, she’s going to start pushing the same product all over again, running for President “in her own right.”
Hello 1993! I’m from the future. Your brand-new President is going to lie to you. About a marital affair. On television. Waggling his finger at the cameras…and I mean that literally. And then he’s going to get caught by his own spunk, spurted all over a blue dress. DNA tests and everything. He won’t be run out of town on a rail, in fact, there will be a cult following devoted to him and how he “got away with it.”
Hello 1992! James Bond is gone for awhile, but eventually he’s going to come back. But while you’re settling into this era of political-correctness and female-friendliness, I can’t begin to describe what you’re about to do to the White House.
Hello 1991! Saddam Hussein’s going to be left in charge. This will be proven to be the wrong decision. The United Nations will make every single mistake about him they possibly can, including — get this — taking billions of dollars in bribes from Saddam himself, to veto enforcement of Resolutions 678 and 687. And yet, I daresay, there is no one in my time who is opposed to the U.N., who isn’t also opposed to it in yours. Not a soul, so far as I know.
Hello 1990! In about five years, it will become highly fashionable for mens’ pants to slip WAY down so their butt cracks stick out. You won’t be able to get away from it, and it will remain highly fashionable for about a dozen years.

These things make some measure of sense to us because we’ve been acclimated to them slowly. They would make sense in no other time.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, James Bond, Justification for Invasion, ManBearPig, Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, World Government | No Comments »

Best Sentence VI

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

Cited by fellow Webloggin blogger Bear, at The Absurd Report, and credited to Terry L. Get a load of this:

JImmy Carter’s Nobel Peace Prize has about as much meaning as a Wedding License has for Bill Clinton!

Posted in Deranged Leftists | No Comments »

Now, That’s What I Call Focused

Friday, January 19th, 2007

A little bit too focused.

I would call the situation somewhat grim. President Bush says we need to deploy more troops to Iraq, and that the success of the mission depends on it. A lot of people are saying this isn’t going to do the trick. There is some powerful evidence that both are correct, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if both are correct, something bad is about to happen.

Too focused And via Boortz, we learn that Miss Perky Perky had some comments about her press gathering. It makes me wonder how many people completely depend on her to find out what’s going on in the world, whether they realize it or not; and among those who do, what all they’re missing.

Last Wednesday, President Bush gave his address to the country about “the new way forward” for Iraq, and lots of journalists—including me, of course—were in Washington to cover it. But before the Big Speech, there was the little-known Big Meeting.
:
As I was looking at my colleagues around the room—Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer, and Brit Hume—I couldn’t help but notice, despite how far we’ve come, that I was still the only woman there. Well, there was some female support staff near the door. But of the people at the table, the “principals” in the meeting, I was the only one wearing a skirt. Everyone was gracious, though the jocular atmosphere was palpable.

The feminist movement that began in the 1970’s helped women make tremendous strides—but there still haven’t been enough great leaps for womankind. Fifty-one percent of America is female, but women make up only about sixteen percent of Congress—which, as the Washington Monthly recently pointed out, is better than it’s ever been…but still not as good as parliaments in Rwanda (forty-nine percent women) or Sweden (forty-seven percent women). Only nine Fortune 500 companies have women as CEO’s.

That meeting was a reality check for me—and not just about Iraq. It was a reminder that all of us still have an obligation to ask: Don’t more women deserve a place at the table too? [emphasis mine]

Okay, one…at…a…time:
All of us have an obligation to ask — all of whom, exactly? People who vote for the President? Or people who hire and promote news executives? It would seem the second of those is more germane to the complaint, but it’s the first one that is more compatible with a sweeping pronouncement of “all of us.” Does Ms. Couric really mean to imply that by voting in a guy she doesn’t like, we “all” gave some kind of license for the gals to be crowded out away from “the table”?

Obligation? To who? What is the worst that happens if we don’t ask this? The Perkolator will frown upon us disapprovingly, with her lower lip stuck out? What’s the best that happens if we do ask? As Katie points out, we already started asking this 40 years ago. We don’t see starship captains on TV anymore whacking a “Yeoman” on her miniskirted ass when she brings him 23rd-century coffee. And if you’re in a position to hire or promote one candidate over another, and you exclude someone just because she doesn’t have a penis, all it takes is for someone to prove it and your career is at an end.

From that position, where exactly are we supposed to go?

Sixteen out of a hundred senators, and Katie’s unhappy. It’s clear we can only make her happy by means of a seventeenth senator…and some more and some more. I’m going to go way out on a limb here: If I get to pick how these new lady senators do their voting, and it seems I should be able to do this because Couric doesn’t even begin to address the issue — I will be much, much happier with the 35 new female senators than Couric herself. So her statement of what, exactly, has cheesed her off here, is a bit imprecise.

We’ve all done imprecise jobs of articulating what’s causing us distress. What’s remarkable is that just speaking for myself, if I’m noticing something’s still broken after forty years of fixing stuff, I’m going to put lots, and lots, and lots of effort into noticing just where we might have gone wrong. I might not succeed. But I’ll put in the effort. If we go forty-five or fifty years without fixing it, I’ll put in even more effort next time.

Couric doesn’t even try. Skirts are missing at the table. No fair. Whine whine whine.

And then. What are we to do about this, exactly? Why the silence on this aspect of it…when it ought to be the whole point, if the whining is worth doing in the first place? I see one of the commentors, “joycewest,” took the time and energy to research Rwanda’s situation in Parliament. One third of it must be female by law. Huh. The Perkolator went out of her way to cite Rwanda; I wonder how many other countries with legislative chambers she passed over to get to that one. Does she want a similar quota here? She says we have “an obligation to ask” something and she must realize, simply asking it is obviously not going to solve anything, especially since we have already been asking it.

Speaking of the “obligation”…what about choice? Aren’t we suffering a little bit of scope creep here, if the feminist movement was supposed to be about womens’ choice? Maybe, just maybe, Katie’s the only lady in the room because she’s one out of just a few who would make the decision to be there in the first place. Doesn’t she approve of the choices other women might have made, not to be there?

Let’s face it, it’s at least possible some women would make decisions different from the decisions Katie would make if she were they. It is possible…not only that, but among all the artificial means of keeping “skirts” away from the table, that’s the only one that can take place in this country that is legal.

Finally, I see this is an exercise in CALWWNTY. Does Katie Couric really intend to sound the call for yet-another march in the womens’ movement, now entering the fifth decade of progressive feminism? Is this really something she herself would find inspiring, if someone else was blowing the bugle and bellowing those magic, insulting words…Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet?

Really?

As Tom Cruise might say…Katie, Katie, Katie, you’re glib. We’ve opened up choices for career-minded women. We’ve outlawed discrimination against them, and we’ve even rearranged our cultural norms and taboos. Most remarkable of all, our society has made the new choice for women about whether to work a career, or stay home, into a real choice. And from the ladies who’ve made decisions differently than the one you made for yourself — you have profited handsomely. Come to think of it, among the folks who define some level of personal income as “obscene,” I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t qualify you yourself for that; provided, of course, they were only told what you make, and not who you are.

Well hey, some of us understand that when you send a woman into an important meeting like that, there are women who will pick up on the big stuff. There are these Islamomaniacs, you see? They’d just as soon stone you to death for letting an inch or two of tantalizing knee show above those fashionable tall boots of yours during the morning news show — and by the way, they want to kill Americans. They will go out of their way to do it. Will die to do it. As many Americans as possible. Some of us understand there are women who will keep track of the big picture. Some of us realize there are women who will maintain this sense of perspective, at least as well as any man.

But if you want to remind us that there are exceptions, well go ahead. Twist my arm. But I fail to see how that advances the womens’ movement any further.

Posted in Blogs vs. MSM, Celebrity Halfwits, Deranged Leftists, Vision for Victory | 1 Comment »

Another Thing I Don’t Get

Friday, January 19th, 2007

Maybe I should add this to the list. President Bush…I’m just finishing up six years of being told, and I mean non-stop, one of the many complaints against him is that not only does he make bad decisions, but he lacks the humility to acknowledge that he made a bad decision.

Hey, I’ve had bosses like that. I can see it.

And now the talking point is switched around, because he has changed course. Any flattering comments in this story? Anything about oh, joy, we’ve had this glaring problem in the Oval Office and now things are starting to improve? Anything about how we should count our blessings because, hey, he’s repentant, but learning?

Ha ha, ho ho. You should live so long.

The Bush administration said yesterday that it has agreed to disband a controversial warrantless surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, replacing it with a new effort that will be overseen by the secret court that governs clandestine spying in the United States.

The change — revealed by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee — marks an abrupt reversal by the administration, which for more than a year has aggressively defended the legality of the NSA surveillance program and disputed court authority to oversee it. [emphasis mine]

He sucks as a President, because he never changes his mind. He sucks as a President, because he abruptly reverses things.

Which is it? On what planet could it possibly be both?

Posted in Bush Derangement Syndrome, Deranged Leftists, Torture and Civil Liberties and What-Not | 1 Comment »

Priorities

Friday, January 19th, 2007

Alternative Strategy I’m really glad they got their plan for victory in Iraq defined to everybody’s understanding, eliminating any & all uncertainty and ambiguity…before moving on to this. Hey, well done folks.

Hat tip to Texas Scrbbler for the image, credit to Cox and Forkum.

I continue to be amazed and befuddled that we tolerate this. We’re split about whether the New Way Forward is a groovy idea or not…okay, I can certainly understand that. Here’s the thing: I don’t see anyone saying we can withdraw, and expect everything to work out in our favor over there. I don’t see a single soul stepping up to the plate and saying that. I see left-wing lunatics and Move-On-Dot-Org people and Hollywood halfwits as far as the eye can see…people who would like me to support Democrats, want me to do it so bad, they’d piss rusty nails to make it happen. But nobody’s willing to form the syllables necessary to say the words, “we can pull out and bring everybody home, and it’ll ALL WORK OUT.” Not a peep about that.

So they want us to change the subject. And, on the whole, we let them decide that for us.

Eh…I’m not getting it. If you have an I.Q. equal to or greater than what’s possessed by that tub of cottage cheese you forgot in the fridge last month, you should be able to see — this is something that requires a real decision. Do, or do not…but do what you think will lead to a good outcome. Or a non-bad outcome. A second-grader should be able to grasp this.

So Republicans point out that Democrats haven’t come up with a plan…and this is excused, ipso facto, as a right-wing talking point. Eh, it’s not a talking point. There’s real things at stake here, and that’s not gonna change even if we pull every single soldier home. It’s inexcusable to let a bunch of politicians build up momentum for their own team, and start enacting agendas to — let’s cut the bullshit, okay? — CHANGE THE SUBJECT. And never once put any leverage behind their own idea for solving the problem.

It’s not their fault, folks. It’s ours.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Vision for Victory | No Comments »

The Jaywalking Professor

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

Neal Boortz is being tough on this guy, a visitor to our shores with a tale of police brutality he’d like to tell. I don’t exactly agree with Neal’s reasoning. I simply don’t know enough about it to sign on to what he’s going. Boortz is a radio guy, and evidently he went on air and made some comments in the professor’s favor, to later retract them and apologize after reading the professor’s take on things (link requires registration when it gets in some funky mood that the web page programmer himself probably doesn’t understand). What was the infraction committed within the professor’s remarks?

He’s blaming the questionable behavior of the Atlanta Police on…aw, well who the hell do ya think?

I found that in Atlanta the civilization of the jail and the courts contrasted with the savagery of the police and the streets. This is a typical American contrast. The executive arm of government tends to be dumb, insensitive, violent and dangerous. The judiciary is the citizen’s vital guarantee of peace and liberty. I became a sort of exemplar in miniature of a classic American dilemma: the “balance of the Constitution,” as Americans call it, between executive power and judicial oversight.

I have long known, as any reasonable person must, that the courts are the citizen’s only protection against a rogue executive and rationally uncontrolled security forces. Though my own misadventure was trivial – and in perspective laughable – it resembles what is happening to the world in the era of George W. Bush. The planet is policed by a violent, arbitary, stupid and dangerous force. Within the USA, the courts struggle to maintain individual rights under the bludgeons of the “war on terror,” defending Guantanamo victims and striving to curb the excesses of the system. We need global institutions of justice, and judges of Judge Jackson’s level of humanity and wisdom, to help protect the world.

I dunno, man. It’s clear from reading the comments in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that there’s some vast untapped repository of information about this, that is outside of my reach. But a lot of the people in the Professor’s camp on this one, have a disturbing tendency to confuse “having a degree” with “being right.” Um, excuse me. At issue is whether or not America is retaining its original ideals, and chief among these ideals is the idea that you get your fair day in court here — even if the dispute in which you are engaged, concerns another party with a much higher social status. We don’t think you’re in the wrong here, just because you’re a pauper and your plaintiff is a Lord. We don’t fine you a sixpence if you’re the son of an Earl, and a half-crown or a jail sentence, for doing the same thing if you’re not so well connected.

Things just don’t fly that way here. That is what America is all about.

And here these chuckleheads are, deciding the professor must be in the right, simply because he is one.

And as Boortz points out, quite correctly, not a very good one at that. He thinks rough police handling in Atlanta has something to do with our President. I don’t know why he thinks this because he feels very little need to establish why this connection exists. But it’s gotta be messed up, whatever it is.

I’m just not willing to decide the handling against him was within-bounds, just because he’s got some screwy ideas.

But having said that, this makes more sense:

I think that we all know that a simple “I’m sorry, officer, I’ll be more careful the next time” would have been more than sufficient. Clearly it escalated beyond that. Is it possible that the good professor used some of his “George Bush is Stupid, America is violent, dangerous and arbitrary” nonsense on the cop?

Why, that would reqiure a heck of an attitude problem. Looks to me like the prof has exactly that.

Posted in Bush Derangement Syndrome, Torture and Civil Liberties and What-Not | No Comments »

Stuff That’s Tough

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

What's the Chinese symbol for I was doing that thing that our leftists say people like me never ever do, which is listen to others. The subject is Sen. Barbara Boxer, my junior delegate to the Senate. Once again, for reasons unknown to me and never ever explained to me, a sitting Senator was allowed to pretend she was making an inquiry to our Secretary of State…and drone on at length into the microphone as if she was some freakin’ valedictorian or guest-speaker at a graduation ceremony or something. She’d end a sentence with a question-mark, which on the planet from which I come, means it’s obligatory for the other party to start talking in an effort to supply the information that was requested. And then…just…keep…prattling…on.

“Who pays the price?” Boxer asked Rice, who is unmarried and doesn’t have children. “I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with immediate family.

“So who pays the price? The American military and their families.”

Democrat senators, Republican senators. I don’t care. I have never understood why we tolerate this in our Congress. Questions are questions. Answers are answers. Speeches are speeches. Different things.

But I suppose I should get to the content of Sen. Boxer’s whatever-ya-wanna-call-it…since that has been shown to be much more offensive to many more people.

Well now. If she has any point to make here at all, it’s that there is a first-tier and a second-tier of people who may have opinions about the war. Perhaps people in the second tier should have some influence over things, although decidedly subordinate levels of that influence. Or perhaps none at all. One thing is for sure: If she thinks all opinions should be considered on their merits, regardless of the sources of same, or the personal stories behind those sources…her comments are confusing and useless. So the source is meaningful. The terrace-landscaping must hold. Some classes of people have “better” opinions than other classes of people, and this classification has to do with having draft-age children. It seems only through blatant backpedaling, could Boxer herself assert anything different about what she meant to say.

Disclaimer: I have one (1) nine-year-old son. We don’t know how long the war will last, so it’s a matter of opinion whether this places me on Boxer’s first tier or on her second tier.

Ask me if I give a rat’s ass.

I am so utterly sick and tired of this drawing-of-lines about which class or classes of people among us, are allowed to execute policy or form opinions about the war, and which class or classes of people are not. For one thing: It is SO fucking phony. If Dr. Rice was a Clinton cabinet official doing her level-best to get the “Bush lied people died” canard out there, and the “redeploy now” and the “Saddam Hussein was no threat” and the “it’s all for oil” and all the rest of that stupid left-wing Ted Kennedy claptrap…Boxer wouldn’t give two shits if Condoleeza had kids or not. Do I really need to prove that? I shouldn’t have to.

That’s Thing One.

Thing Two:

According to Sen. Boxer’s words, the issue is with “who pays the price.” Well, now. If having a child killed in a war involves paying a price, and I believe it does — how about being that child? How about being the guy in the wrong place at the wrong time — nineteen forever? Can it possibly get more personal than that?

Excuse me Sen. Boxer. This country has a history of drafting MEN. But not women. So going by your logic…why don’t you get your ass in the kitchen and bake me some pie, while us men smoke cigars and figure this whole thing out. No, don’t blame me, that’s your logic. Personal price, remember? In fact, you identified yourself as not exactly being in the thick of this whole thing…defending it later as “how [you] felt.”

See, now we’re muzzling a different demographic. No longer is it Bush administration officials…it’s the gals. The logic hasn’t changed. But I’ll bet — and I’m talking my bottom dollar here — we’ve got a whole different sub-selection out of those among us, who are offended. I’ll bet my rent money on that. Hey gals, it’s the Boxer rule. Personal price. What the hell were we thinking when we let you vote, anyway?

Can we just shitcan this whole you-can-have-an-opinion-but-you-cannot thing. Puh-leeze.

It’s so phony. You have to have military cred to have an opinion…until you’re a military vet who supports President Bush, and then the rules have to change. Everybody knows it works that way — seldom is it mentioned, but everyone understand this. It’s not about the creds. It’s not about military service or “have you ever traveled outside of the U.S.” and it’s not about being eligible for the draft and it’s not about having kids of military-service age. It never was about any of those things. It’s about grasping for straws, and finding another phony-baloney reason to protest the war, and finding ways to muzzle those who might support the war.

Anyway. Back to the subject at hand, I was reading through the letters and I came across this, apparently from someone who’s not too sold on the war in the first place.

It’s easy to point a finger and accuse others.

What has Boxer done to stop or prevent a war? If this is what the Democrats are becoming. I doubt that I will ever vote Democratic again.

Now, this raises an interesting question. What has Boxer done…what have any of the Democrats done…to actually prevent this war. Or, I would add, to win it. Or to do anything…something that involves “paying a price,” personal or political. Just name the agenda. Pro-war, anti-war, forcing rotten public school districts on kids who’d be able to have a better choice if only a voucher system were in place, leaving millions of barrels of crude untapped in Alaska while maniacs in the Middle East use our oil money to fund terrorism, killing babies, getting white guys fired so lesser-qualified women and minorities can be hired instead. Just go through the list.

When has a left-winger…I mean a policitally influential one, an elected one….sacrificed anything? Even done something so trivial as, subordinating one agenda in favor of a different, more important one, where the two agendas conflict? As opposed to simply declaring to everyone within earshot what they ought to be thinking and then changing the subject?

You know, we could start here. Respect for the right of women to live their private lives as they choose — the stated goal of feminism — versus, Barbara Boxer’s brand-spankin’-new reason she cooked up to bash the Bush administration. Bush-bashing-item #23,576 if I’m counting right. How about setting an example for paying this extraordinarily meaningless price — Boxer, or those who are considering whether to repudiate her asinine comments from within, could say: “We have other ways to bash George Bush and his minions. Sen. Boxer is extremely proud of using her creative energies to find yet another, but we’ll let it go in the interest of preserving this higher ideal.”

They seem to have a rule against that. There is no verticality to the things they want to get done; nothing outranks anything else. If two positions are found to be in conflict, the sheeple are told what to think, maybe a sarcastic barb is tossed out Daily-Show style to draw a titter or guffaw or two, and the subject is promptly changed.

One of many reasons I don’t think they’re going to be holding on to this gig for two long. Real life simply doesn’t work that way. In real life, conflict forces a choice, and said choice involves…well, exactly what the dingbat senator was discussing. Tough stuff. Paying a price. Big one, little one. But something. Getting rid of something you’d just as soon keep.

And real life says, when such a choice is not made, this is a lack of leadership and it summons all the plagues that any crisis of leadership will bring. I guess our liberals are dedicated to “bringing it on,” as they say. In all matters. At all times.

Swell. Get ready for a fun ride.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Vision for Victory | No Comments »

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Things That Make You Go Hmmm… IV

By Which Others Shall Be Gauged

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What Is A Liberal? V

Snookered?

Fans of Gore

Are Democrats Americans?

A Poll I’d Like To See III

Imus Puts Liberals In Their Place

Speaking For Everyone

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Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun

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Ignoring Them Is The Answer

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What Is A Liberal? IV

On Libby’s Trial

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“Bush Does This A Lot”

Kermit the Blitz

On Baby Videos

Helping Howard

Time Machine Lunacy

Best Sentence VI

Now, That’s What I Call Focused

Another Thing I Don’t Get

Priorities

The Jaywalking Professor

Stuff That’s Tough