One thing I’ve not yet been able to figure out. Apparently, what caused the shock waves to reverberate was this sudden deviation from the carefully constructed paradigm that Weigel was the token conservative “blogger” at the Washington Post. But if that comes as such a shock — how come nobody was wondering what Weigel was doing on this “Journolist” in the first place? As the listserv’s founder says:

At the beginning, I set two rules for the membership. The first was the easy one: No one who worked for the government in any capacity could join. The second was the hard one: The membership would range from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left. I didn’t like that rule, but I thought it necessary: There would be no free conversation in a forum where people had clear incentives to embarrass each other.

Okay, so you have this forum for more intimate, carefree and candid chatter, in which the membership runs the gamut “from nonpartisan to liberal, center to left.” Which really means the membership ranges from extreme-left to extreme-left.

When extreme leftists get together and start talking about things like, oh…Dick Cheney…Sarah Palin…Hurricane Katrina versus BP Oil Spill…what do you expect to have happen? Is the scandal that Weigel failed to keep a civil tongue, or that his phony-conservative mask was torn off? Because anyone who’s applied a little bit of diligent thought knew what Weigel was already.

Best guess I can make is, the guy doomed himself the minute he decided to participate. “Free conversation” among hardcore leftists means talking smack. It doesn’t go on too long before there’s a dick-measuring contest about who can talk the most smack, the nastiest smack, the most toxic smack, the smack least fit for public consumption. And there’s no trophy for second-best.

Was Weigel supposed to possess the maturity to stay above it all?

That’s rich. When a stalker set up housekeeping right next door to Palin’s house, and Palin had the audacity to jot down a Facebook note about it, Weigel had this to say:

Can somebody explain to me how this isn’t a despicable thing for Palin to do?

The man has no credibility with me whatsoever. Anybody who sheds tears over his failed glory, has no credibility with me either. If he’s really such a hard worker, then he can apply himself someplace where integrity doesn’t matter.

But don’t go telling me he’s a man of principle who got a raw deal.

Why not? Bruce Kesler does as decent a job explaining it as anybody else:

Ezra Klein’s juicebox-level of Leftist propaganda-feed group-think journalism and the defenders of General McChrystal’s crew of wisecrackers as being abused by the Rolling Stone’s reporter have something in common: Neither are willing to stand in public behind the truth that anything that passes from one’s lips is public property.

Yes, if one explicitly says to another “Private” or “Secret” or “Do not quote”, that might be respected. And, it might not. If you don’t have discretion or maturity, why expect that of others who also may not or have interests other than covering up for your lackings?

And, if one says to oneself that anything I say should be properly stated and reflect my views, and I will either stand behind it or explain why and how I was wrong or off-mark, then one is acting with integrity to oneself and others.

To feel otherwise is immature and irresponsible. It is an abuse of one’s public position to not be forthcoming and transparent.

This is particularly so when entrusted with the ears of millions of Americans on important public issues, or the fate of millions of Americans and allies’ lives.

In my garage, I have boxes full of literally thousands of published pieces I’ve written during and since college. That’s 46-years of comment and analyses. Many, most?, are easily available on the web. I’m also surprised at how many correspondents have archived my emails, when I haven’t. If any want to publish them, have at it.

I said it. I stand behind it, or will answer for it.

But, I will not hide behind some notion that I can be allowed to deceive or excuse or cry when someone quotes me.

But, then, I am not a careerist feathering my nest by expecting tolerance for having a lack of respect for myself, for others or for my responsibilities and ethics, and thinking I have some sort of right to be deceptive or a manipulator.

Be an adult, be a professional, or get the hell off the stage, or be exposed for a child playing with other people’s lives and too self-concerned to admit it.

We need more public and private integrity, straight-talk and standing behind it, openly, not less or any more excuses for being immature kindergartners playing with other people’s trust or lives.

Weigel was let go so that the Washington Post could preserve its own credibility. My prediction is that this will ultimately fail. But said prediction depends on the character and integrity of those who consume the news; if they are what I think they are, the Washington Post will fare no better at the conclusion of this episode, as they would if they’d gone ahead and kept Weigel on. When real people learn about a real world through real reporters, there is no need to separate what the real reporters say in “private” from what they say out in public. It shouldn’t be necessary.

On the other hand, if these consumers of news disappoint me and show the attention span of a fruit fly, the experiment will have been a success. The Washington Post will have grown to accommodate the expectations of its readers, by thickening and fortifying that all-important wall between the fiction spread across the pages, and the reality behind it all.

The product will have been improved. And we will all come to a reluctant agreement that the product is falsehood. How can it be any other way, when the messengers who bring us the “news” only think themselves fit for continuing survival when their prejudices remain concealed?

Update: The Fox News “Unprofessional Comments” scandal needs to be attached to the end of Kesler’s list. It’s a fitting addition to this post because it’s precisely what I’ve been talking about:

The phony, forced laughter belies the social purpose: There is no need to announce the fact that such-and-such a person thinks Sarah Palin is a big dolt. The need is to announce the willingness to announce. This is the real reason why the credibility is taking a big hit. The news is being reported by people whose primary agenda, if you can call it that, is to maintain membership in an informal social circle. They have to show that they think jokes made at the expense of Palin, and those like her, are funny. They have to prove it over and over again or they might get drummed out. You can hear their fear of this in everything they say. Every syllable.

I must run some edits on the audio, try to isolate and clean-up that horse laugh. I can’t even tell if it’s one guy doing it or two. They all sound alike, these American Castrati.

Fascinating thing this is: When it’s really self-evident someone has an unappealing quality, usually it’s not necessary to point this out. Palin gets a special exemption from this:

They are loud, eager to get their opinion on the record, to the point of being obnoxious. Nobody seems to be sitting in a corner anywhere quietly thinking to himself “Wow I wish Palin would go away she’s so unqualified.”

— Item #13 from my list of things I Notice About Palin Bashers.

And of course, Thing I Know #347 is & has been for awhile:

Funny thing about people and the connections they feel with each other when they badmouth third parties: I think that guy’s a psychopath, you agree with me, we don’t bond. You and I may disagree about other things much more important to us. I think that guy’s a liar, you agree that guy’s a liar, this too has little or no effect on our relationship with each other. But if we get together and decide so-and-so is a dumbass — suddenly we’re blood brothers. Our disagreements on any other matter become trivial. We agreed some guy is stupid, and that makes us family. We connect.

Kesler nailed it. These are the juicebox set. These are mental kindergartners. Insecure children, bonding with one another, the way the immature do on the playground.

“Girls are stupid! Girls have cooties!” And these are the people bringing us “news,” so that we can “make up our minds for ourselves” what is going on in the world. Nice.

No wonder we’ve got a President who thinks the solution to an oil leak in the gulf, is to extort money from oil companies, ban offshore drilling, and pass a special energy tax while the leak is still leaking. We deserve this.

Normblog:

There’s a style of argument you’ll meet with often in life, which means you’ll also meet with it often in the press and online. It consists of taking some straightforward and unobjectionable proposition and then exaggerating it to the point of absurdity. When the absurd version of it is challenged you can retreat to the more modest one. But then, of course, you could have started and finished with that and avoided talking nonsense in the first place.

Hat tip to Gerard.

Or she’s part of the reason why.

I’ve drawn a lot of flak on this and why I draw flak on it, has always been a mystery to me. Whether or not any drug should be legal, is a question on which the federal government has no jurisdiction whatsoever. Congress can declare things illegal, but only after it has been granted the authority to declare them illegal. Congress receives the authority it has through the Constitution and amendments to that document, and by no other means. It cannot grant this power to itself, nor can it be conferred upon the legislative branch by the other two.

If there’s a Supreme Court decision that says otherwise, it is quite simply wrong.

Making a drug illegal is a states’-rights issue. It would be better to legislate such a matter at the county level than at the state level. It would be even better to decide it in a township. Best of all, make it a homeowners’-association clause. The idea of one man, pointing at another man across the miles, lakes, fruited planes, degrees of longitude, into some locality he will never visit, and declaring what the other man may not consume, just repels me. It’s not just a constitutional question, it’s a question of sound law enforcement.

People have a right to decide how they’re going to live, and that means the local community has to reign supreme. People in Oregon have a right not to have their votes on such questions watered-down by people in California. People in Davis have a right not to have their votes on such questions watered-down by people in Folsom.

But — and here’s where I take the flak — in my corner, I’m voting no. Don’t legalize.

We do not need more of what this does. We do not need more Carrie Fishers.

They just aren’t that special.

I have made occasional reference to the fact that I grew up in a college town. In truth, I had a little bit closer contact with the spoiled-rotten, tweaker, can’t-think-straight, long-hair maggot-infested Ozzy Osborne wannabe kids than that.

The college campus was at midpoint between home and my middle school. My friends tended to be older, and in junior and senior years I visited them in their dorms. I did volunteer work for & with them. One of the more educational stints involved working as a disc jockey at their radio station. At the time, you could qualify for a Class D radio operator license at age thirteen, and so I did. This involved occasionally sitting in after-hours with the Program Coordinator and other artistes to plan out what we were going to do.

From these and other experiences, what do I know?

A great tragedy that has fallen upon our mature society, is summed up in ignorant comments like this:

I am certainly not ordinary. I think it’s been hard for my daughter. I know it’s not easy for her to have a mother who is bipolar and had a drug problem. My father had a drug problem. That stuff’s tough. It makes you grow up too fast. My daughter has had to be very strong to overcome some of my challenges and she is.
:
It’s hard to freak me out. I’ve had a lot of extreme experiences in my life.

She’s fifty-three and still talking like this. It is never stated outright, but you are supposed to infer that these “extreme experiences” that make it “hard to freak me out” and “[make] you grow up too fast” — there is something glamorous about them. These tragedies in the formative years give the speaker certain bragging rights. In spite of what has been screwed up as a direct result, these things are assets. They are recollected that way, treated that way.

In Fisher’s case, she’s passing it on down to the next generation. Oh look, I handed this bag of crap to my daughter; she shouldn’t have had to deal with it, but look how strong she is as a result.

Well now. There certainly is something to this, I’ll admit. Or rather, there could be. “Hard to freak me out” can be an advantageous quality.

Trouble is, in order to gain a win from that, you have to translate it into Kipling’s “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”. In other words, low-drama. Failing that, there’s no gain from this.

These people are not low-drama. Not even close. In fact, the net loss is rather profound because this business of “I’m just so jaded” leads, rather directly, to an inability to discern. And their judgment is seduced.

Look no further than the interview I’ve already linked, for a glorious example of this.

Is there anyone you haven’t met that you’ve always wanted to?
Obama.

I’m surprised you haven’t met him.
I know. I love him. Hopefully I’ll meet him sometime. I’m just happy he exists.

Do you think Tea Party is just people who are pissed that there is an African American president?
Yup, and the fact that they chose to call themselves “teabaggers,” which is slang for a certain act involving b***s. It sort of says a lot. I would say a mouthful. Looks like it’s very upsetting for them, but he’s brilliant. The thing is, he’s half white but that’s still not enough — for them it’s all white or f**k off. I think we don’t deserve him and certainly teabaggers don’t deserve him.

Okay, in an ideological sense I disagree with this and if you are familiar with some of my past comments, it would be redundant for me to explain why.

Fisher got some facts grossly wrong about the Tea Party movement, and even if you lack sympathy with it, they’re probably easy to spot so I won’t point ’em out.

As I said, these jaded-druggie-rock-n-roll kids suffer a weakness in discernment. This is my critique about those final paragraphs in the interview. By now, it’s hardly news to anyone that Barack Obama is a rather ordinary politician. Agree with His policies if you like, but you haven’t heard any talk about “He’s Sort Of God” lately and there are a lot of reasons for that. He’s an excellent speaker, a kind of mediocre politician, a poor executive and — well, how I rank him against the other presidents is not germane to my point.

I’m sure Fisher would rank Him differently from the way I would, and I cannot fault her just for this. Life would be boring if we all agreed on everything. I do fault her for being in love with someone she’s never met.

You’re seeing a manifestation of what all those lectures from your parents, maybe from your high school health class, from your gym teacher, were about. Carrie Fisher cannot think straight. She is damaged goods.

She is a walking incarnation of the reason I would vote to keep drugs illegal. These people have “been through a lot”; they think they’re special because of this, and they’re wrong. They’re rather humdrum. Their ranks are swollen and they are common. I can write their little “been through a whole lot” speeches, for them, with blistering accuracy, entire phrases at a time. Because that’s how they talk, in cliches.

Each one speaks as if he or she is the first to go through this, when it isn’t true. This is the great tragedy. This is why they think they’re special when they aren’t really special.

And this discolors the lens through which they view all others. They seem to show great reliability in seeing extraordinary things as ordinary things, and — more often than that, perhaps — ordinary things as extraordinary things.

They do the greatest damage when they see healthy things as unhealthy things and vice-versa.

Their solutions to problems are the exact opposite of what common sense would offer. I don’t know if this can be completely explained by what follows, but I’m settled on the idea that this is, at least partly, because they perceive the components of the problem as more-or-less the opposite of what they really are.

There is a huge underwater spigot of oil that is contaminating the gulf. Their solution is to put a “boot in the neck” of the oil company that caused it, and — while that company is still in charge of cleaning up the mess — extorting billions of dollars out of them to put under the control of lawyers. And let’s see…what else. Pass cap and trade, ban all offshore oil drilling for some indeterminate period of time, impose some new taxes on the other oil companies that aren’t culpable in this — as well as on the customers purchasing their products — and use the proceeds to fund research into “alternative fuels.”

See what these plans all have in common? This coveted resource which is oil, and all products that are derived from it, which includes energy — is to be made more scarce. So these people want to run everything. And they’ve lost touch with reality to such a great extent that they cannot even maintain a working comprehension of the basic laws of supply and demand.

Also, the non-productive are treated as if they are productive. And, again, vice-versa. Yes, lawyers make big heaping truckloads of moolah. It’s never failed to amaze me how, when it’s time to toss up the evil-awful-greedy-rich-people on the giant display screen for the two-minute-hate, it’s always supposed to be some kind of a “hedge fund manager,” maybe a CEO who started his company by building a real thing that helped real people…and not a lawyer.

Little bit of a side-trail here: Isn’t it rather breathtaking the free ride lawyers get? It’s gotten to the point that there are two things in this whole freakin’ country: Things that work the way lawyers say they should work, and things that will work that way someday soon as they get around to it. But for all our various problems we’re supposed to blame all these other rich people.

Back to the subject at hand about these residual druggies, who may or may not still partake, but have divorced themselves from clear-minded straight thinking…

They will object most vociferously to the criticism that sticks the best: They are malleable. It is easy to sell them things if you just push the right buttons. These people are so jaded, their gears are so stripped, they’ve grown up so fast and it’s so hard to freak them out…that it becomes quite a simple matter to tell ’em what to think, and they don’t even know it. They can be told who to hate, and they’ll follow right along.

They lie to themselves, so what they say to others cannot be trusted. They all seem to have it in common that they are, ostensibly, in search of a life they can live out in peace, free of interference from others. This is absolutely, positively, not what they want. They want everyone living, of whom they will ever gain a working knowledge, to be tethered to a yoke and then they want to have control over that yoke; or someone they “love” to have control over that yoke.

They want the commoners to be controlled, and they want a special, non-universal, exclusive, elite class to do the controlling. They’re in favor of democracy, of course — but only if & when the correct side wins. Otherwise, someone must have tampered with the ballot boxes. They’re fair-weather friends to democracy.

They want laws that help “everyone,” laws that “everyone” likes especially if there is some part of the “everyone” that actually is hurt by the laws, and hate them. They like the laws even better, then. They want laws that cause injury to some of us, and then they want to make sure everyone who disagrees cannot have any voice in the process.

What they really want is slavery. This is why they go through this business of ostracizing the dissenters, slandering them, gutterballing them. And now, if you have some beef with the unprecedented Obama deficits and you’re worried that your kids & grandkids won’t be able to keep any of their paychecks, you oughtta be joining the Ku Klux Klan. Nice one, Carrie.

My bottom line?

We just don’t need any more people acting this way. We don’t need more people thinking this way. We have more than enough already. Case closed.

Update 6/20/10: Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

I’m just on the light side of 44 now, and in a flash of insight I lately realized that nearly all of the things that have infuriated me beyond all reason…or simply irritated me mildly…have been done by people anxious to prove they’re wonderful. If only people weren’t so desperate to find new ways to prove their wonderfulness, my disposition would be considerably sweetened and I’d probably have a lot more years ahead of me on terra firma right about now.

Those people did these things to define themselves as wonderful people, because they assumed these empty rituals would get it done. How do we convince them this is not the case? Here’s where my flash of insight went off. Maybe…just maybe…they assumed this because nobody ever took the time to tell them any differently.

Okay. Well, I’m telling you differently. Right now. These things do not make you a better person, and if you think they do, you’re wrong.

Raising a child makes you a better person. Conquering a deeply-held fear, or learning a new talent, makes you a better person. Helping out in a soup kitchen, exercising in the morning, holding the door open for a good-looking lady — these things make you a better person.

The following things do not…repeat NOT…make you a better person. They do not change the outcome…except for a few of them, in which case, they change it for the worse. Let’s just get that one thing clear. Word needs to get out, you cannot improve yourself by doing any of these things.

1. Outlawing capital punishment
2. Banning guns
3. Sitting down to talk to our enemies
4. Unplugging the coffee pot after it is done making coffee
5. Unplugging the cell phone when it’s done recharging
6. Inventing new “civil rights” like, for example, someone can use the opposite-gender restroom when they’re a pre- or post-op tranny
7. Taking the convict’s unpleasant upbringing into account during the sentencing
8. Paying more taxes, opposing tax cuts or supporting tax increases
9. Taking the blame for a conflict in which the other party is clearly in the wrong
10. Forgiving someone for the mistake that killed your friend or family member
11. Apologizing for things you fully intend to do again
12. Buying things for your kids, indulging your kids, becoming your own kids’ “best friend”
13. Looking for the union label
14. Knowing who got kicked off American Idol last night
15. Avoiding generalizations
16. Being technologically ignorant, “not knowing a single thing about com-pyoo-ters”
17. Knowing other, non-English, languages
18. Telling jokes
19. Talking smack about Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, Neal Boortz, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Laura Schlessinger, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, Tony Snow, Glenn Beck, Oliver North, Ted Olson, Ted Nugent, Laura Bush, Pamela Geller, Mary Katherine Ham, James O’Keefe, Andrew Breitbart, Dan Riehl, Cassy Chesser, Victor Davis Hanson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, et al.
20. Raising awareness of…whatever
21. Audibly itemizing your husband’s faults to your friends
22. Refusing to bring him a beer
23. Owning a li’l tiny purse-dog
24. Taking sides when your friends are getting a divorce
25. Recycling
26. Driving a hybrid, or converting your car to burn vegetable oil
27. “Totally-respecting” someone/something
28. Believing & repeating every crackpot theory about your kid’s supposed “learning disability”
29. Laughing at jokes you don’t find funny
30. Telling a pretty girl she’s pretty (she already knows, you’re probably creeping her out)
31. Calling them “undocumented immigrants”
32. Siding with the underdog
33. Calling corporations greedy
34. Speaking in an unnaturally high voice (when you’re a man)
35. Crying during a movie
36. Siding with the majority, doing what lots of other people are doing, or showing “solidarity”
37. Removing “In God We Trust” from our nation’s money
38. Supporting an expanded welfare state
39. Getting married
40. Going to church
41. Living under socialized medicine
42. Denouncing the tea parties for being “too white”
43. Demonstrating
44. Playing the lottery
45. Putting a green burial in your will
46. Remaining childless
47. Converting the faithful to atheism
48. Watching “Sex in the City,” or living the lifestyle
49. Getting a grant for “art” paintings or sculptures
50. Forcing your guests to remove their shoes before they come into your home
51. Going vegan
52. Blocking Hooters from opening a restaurant in your neighborhood
53. Giving money to a panhandler
54. Trapping an insect in a glass, carrying it outside, and releasing it as opposed to flattening it
55. Approving a home loan for borrowers who cannot maintain it
56. Sustaining an affirmative-action quota in hiring, contracting or enrollment
57. Wearing something cute
58. Voting for or hiring someone who’s black, Hispanic, handicapped, Native-American or female
59. “Preserving a woman’s right to choose”
60. Not-waterboarding; just feed ’em three times a day and nicely wait for ’em to feel like talking
61. Getting a tattoo
62. Decorating your living room with African or Native-American artwork
63. Carving a “tofurkey” during Thanksgiving
64. Greening your parents
65. Filing a sex-discrimination or weight-discrimination lawsuit…against a place like Hooters
66. Giving your sister/girlfriend some additional encouragement to get a divorce from her husband
67. Dumping more rumors on the Internet about Sarah Palin or Nikki Haley
68. Banning score-keeping during a kid’s soccer game
69. Using hemp products
70. Buying condoms for your kid because he/she is “gonna do it anyway”
71. Legally changing your middle name to “Hussein”
72. Forcing little boys to play with dolls
73. Pushing young girls to enroll in computer science courses they don’t really want to take
74. Wearing a ponytail (men)
75. Going to a gay wedding
76. Enabling a co-dependent
77. Providing a soft shoulder for your “girlfriend” to cry on, with her latest high-drama pity-fit she got from dealing with her OTHER boyfriend
78. Raising your own grandchildren, while your children go out and make more grandchildren
79. Protesting war. It isn’t just hanging around because some people think it’s a swell idea, ya know
80. “Tarting up” your eight-year-old for an on-stage performance — sick, sick, sick
81. Changing lanes without signaling; you aren’t brave, you don’t look brave, you’re actually a fool
82. Boycotting Arizona
83. Supporting a needle exchange program
84. Requiring privately-owned restaurants to allow breast-feeding
85. Raising the minimum wage
86. Supporting wholesale energy price controls
87. Supporting rent controls
88. Supporting a higher capital gains tax
89. Supporting the death tax
90. Using an iPad
91. Using an iPod
92. Sending over a hundred text messages a day to your friends
93. L-O-U-D-L-Y recognizing your friends in a coffee shop, like a cannon going off, so no one within earshot can think about anything else
94. Giving birth at home
95. Getting married in the nude
96. Telling BP to “Plug The Damn Hole!”
97. Teaching your kids all about “conflict resolution”
98. Just about anything you can do to “preserve a child’s self-esteem”
99. Using a cloth grocery bag
100. Doing things the way they do them in Europe

Anyone who does any of these things, or has ever done these things, or has ever thought about doing any of these things (for the purpose of proclaiming your inner personal wonderfulness) — I have a question for you. Why are you feeling un-fulfilled? Why are you going through these empty rituals? Why are you trying to earn the adoration of strangers you will never ever meet again, effectively asking them to adjudicate your worthiness as an individual?

This is a serious problem, although it doesn’t explain all of the serious mistakes made in recent human history. Just the huge ones, maybe.

One other question: What is the nature of this wonderfulness you’re trying to prove? Is it absolute or is it relative? By which I mean, are you asking to be graded on a curve?

There are amazing, vast quantities of energy going into this “proof.” It’s probably way overdue to ask such a question.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

And I disagree. In fact, I’m struggling to figure out what exactly is the objection. I’ve heard Coulter has this reputation for being incendiary and sarcastic and I understand that is true.

Our blogger friend in New Mexico strongly prefers P.J. O’Rourke and has put up, as Exhibit A, an O’Rourke piece wishing for newspapers to save their own necks (possibly) by printing pre-obituaries on the left-wing luminaries who are still among us but could exit momentarily. This seems, to me, an exercise in simply getting away with more. Fantasies about living people dying? “What if Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck wished people dead?” is such an obvious rejoinder to make, I’m a little embarrassed to type in the words.

I have enjoyed many of O’Rourke’s works and admire the man greatly. Something must be flying over my head, because I don’t see this piece as his best. It is a single idea, nominally witty, with a whole lotta words burdening it. Besides of which it’s a little on the mean side. Like I said, who else can get away with wishing living liberals dead?

This so-often-deplored sarcasm — you don’t have to study the situation long, to figure out the sarcasm is deplored less or more depending on the identity of the person putting it out — is clearly receiving a bum rap. Sarcasm can be used to make some good points, points that cannot be made any other way. In moments when our collective attention span has been chiseled away, to such an extent it becomes a precious commodity, sarcasm can become indispensable.

Here‘s an example of what I’m talking about:

[I]t would be a little easier for the rest of us not to live in fear if the president’s entire national security strategy didn’t depend on average citizens happening to notice a smoldering SUV in Times Square or smoke coming from a fellow airline passenger’s crotch.

But after the car bomber and the diaper bomber, it has become increasingly clear that Obama’s only national defense strategy is: Let’s hope their bombs don’t work!

If only Dr. Hasan’s gun had jammed at Fort Hood, that could have been another huge foreign policy success for Obama.

Is the Obama administration’s counter-terrorism strategy really one of hoping the bombs don’t go off? It’s doubtful you can find a piece of paper lying around somewhere with those words appearing in sequence upon it. But it is what is put into practice, not what rolls off the printer, that really counts right?

And it really doesn’t matter how many people find this kind of writing to be abrasive and nasty. Not if the reason they’re finding it to be abrasive and nasty, is that it happens to be accurate.

As for whether it’s important to reflect on this, I’ll leave that to you to decide. Speaking for myself, I’m not coming up with many things that could be much more important than that. Our government is governing us the same way my son safeguards those toys of his that he outgrew awhile back; they’re “his,” but if someone came by and took one of them away, he’d never in a million years notice it. The protection, in fact the mere inventorying, is purely passive.

The current administration’s counter-terrorism strategy is to hope the bombs don’t go off, says Coulter. Don’t like that? Point out some bit of evidence that refutes this, or at least challenges it. Or if it’s worthy of our attention but you don’t like seeing Coulter raising the issue, point the way to someone else bringing it up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bingo, Rep. King.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You never wrestle with a pig, because you both get dirty and the pig likes it. It’s good advice that has endured throughout the ages. I have always appreciated it (although some among those who’ve known me the longest, may call this into question). It’s a reminder that we are not all the same, we’re not all living life for the same purpose, we’re not all getting the same things out of it — and, also, that there isn’t anyone among us who genuinely “loves to argue politics.” Nobody fits into that; not a single soul.

Half of us see an opportunity to figure out what, if anything, lures otherwise mentally capable colleagues into whackjob bullshit opinions. The other half of us see an opportunity to pursue an ancient dream to re-make the entire world into carbon copies of themselves. And, of course, the other half of us would much rather talk about what’s for dinner tomorrow night, who’s getting kicked off American Idol, and whether it’s a good idea to put on a jacket before leaving the house.

And all three of these halves must acknowledge there’s at least a possibility that the entire thing is a waste of time. We all see the wisdom in the timeless dictum about wrestling with the pig.

But those of us in the first half are occasionally confronted with a conundrum: What if it isn’t a pig? What if it is something even lower? What if it’s a mollusk? Something that doesn’t like or dislike mud, but simply lives out its existence in it as a simple fact of life? There can be value in studying these creatures. No pride, certainly. But edification.

Particularly with regard to how many of the mollusks there are, and how quickly they’re breeding. It might tell you there’s a storm coming.

And so I’m not proud of lowering myself to picking through the mollusks over here; but the page belongs to somebody I consider to be a blogger friend. Although his gadflies have made it clear what they think of me. In fact, they have very little else to say, which is why I call them mollusks.

Arguing, arguing, arguing, not a single observation made, not a single conclusion offered about a goddamn thing. It all spirals back inward to the tired old left-winger black hole of “I’m a good person and you’re not.” A theatrical gallop out the door with a hefty slamming of it, followed by more of the same.

The approval of gastropods like these, is the payoff for gerbil-faced men who pretend to like women who despise them? Membership in their little clique, is the payoff for pretending Queen Latifah is just as sexy as Beyonce?

The world in which I’m allowed to audibly notice the beauty of ravishing women, may shrivel down into the size of a tennis court by noon tomorrow. If so, that’s my world. Women work pretty hard to make themselves up so we appreciate them, and I intend to notice it. Bonus points for ’em if they bring me cold beer and hot wings.

Whoever’s upset about that can get just as snippy with me as they want.

With regard to the conversation itself, how it went, and what it tells me about what is going on with our country and the discourse in it, I can only say this:

My wrestling match with the mollusks was a successful one. If I were swimming around in the muck with iconoclasts, it would have been a waste of time. But these were not rugged individuals, they were commoners. That is the objective. When you define right and wrong according to whether a consensus of your peers does or does not allow something into your little collectivist perimeter, then by definition you become a bandwagoneer, one who defines good versus evil according to whether someone is already doing the same thing, and how many of them there are.

The conversation tells me something useful. And what it tells me is alarming.

This is the reason why political dialogue is so damn contentious. Right here. This is why you can lose your job if you discuss politics at work. Our left-wingers are doing it to us.

They skip right past the reasoned, logical, tried-and-true “Tell Me Why It Is You Think That” exchange of ideas — and lunge, like a jackal after a jugular, into the only part of the argument they are capable of understanding:

You think this, I think that.

I’m wonderful.

You’re mean, you’re bigoted, you’re intolerant, you’re dumb, you’re unsophisticated — you’re substandard.

You are to be shunned, and whoever does not shun you shall be shunned. You are to be ostracized, and anyone who doesn’t ostracize the likes of you brings discredit upon himself…

…and that includes our employer.

It’s something straight out of the union headquarters. On paper, they’re constructing a perfect world in which nobody ever fucks with anybody else’s livelihood. But in reality, fucking with people’s livelihood is what it’s all about. “Nice marital status/community stature/career/job ya got there; be a shame if something happened to it.”

That’s the problem with joining a crusade that is glorious, and not merely good. Your conscience becomes an extraneous and useless appendage. Then it becomes a casualty. Your capacity to think as an individual, runs pretty much the same course. Those two prospects, to me, are plenty hideous enough.

But I’m required to pretend wretched ugly women are good-looking, and genuinely good-looking women are no different?

This horrifies me. Think of the repercussions — they are there, whether the mollusks foresee them or not. If one woman cannot be more physically appealing than another, then nothing can be superior to anything else. Not anywhere. Without pretty women, there can be no sweet-smelling fresh air, no delicious food, no awe-inspiring music, no inspiring ideas. Ultimately, all movies must be Zardoz, scores cannot be maintained in any game, all meat must be tofu, all beer must be flat and you can’t have dessert after your dinner. No variety to anything anywhere. The supreme is bludgeoned down into a common layer, gossamer-thin, with the mediocre. It brings to mind what I was bitching about over here — only our superstar politicians are allowed excellence, the job of the rest of us is to emulate each other and stick to the baseline like a snail on the ground.

What a pathetic fucking two-dimensional world. Let ’em keep it.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

A “wealth gap” hurts an economy, and greater equality among the classes helps it. We measure the economic health of a society by how great the population is within its “middle class.” Evolution is responsible for everything we see in all living things. Global warming is real; those leaked e-mails don’t mean nuthin’. You hear that? They don’t mean nuthin’! Nuthin’, nuthin’, nuthin’!

Saddam Hussein was a harmless teddy bear who never would have have hurt anybody if he were left alone. The Constitution applies to terrorists who’ve never been in this country. Kids are unharmed, or even helped, when they are adopted by two mommies or two daddies. Socialism isn’t all that bad. Tea parties are racist. Any supposed “conservative” who opposes gay rights must be gay himself.

Keynesian economic theory works.

The Eighth Amendment was intended to empower judges to make up new laws as they go along, to codify our “evolving standards of decency.” The Second Amendment, on the other hand, has outlived its usefulness and should be ignored. It never was intended to apply to the people in the first place.

Have you ever noticed this about those frequent occasions on which left-wing suppositions contradict common sense — the subject at hand is always something that offers great difficulty in being refuted or proven? By which I mean compellingly proven. To a mindset initially hostile to that which is being proven. You can open your copy of the Constitution and turn to where the Second Amendment says “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”…which ought to be good enough. But it isn’t of course. You have to wait hundreds of years to find out if the oceans are really going to disappear…you don’t really know if God built things, or if it was all evolution. No telling what would happen if we left Saddam where he was. I was just thinking about other things that can be absolutely, positively, indisputably proven — easily. Liberals never seem to want to take those on with their condescending, bullying tactics.

I was just wondering what we’d see if that were to happen. So I made a little list. What if it was about…something immediately recognizable. Water being wet?

1. The clear and indisputable fact that water is wet, is found to have an obstructive effect — don’t ask me how, let’s just go with this, okay? — on some highly energized left-wing agenda item.
2. That same day, some darling intellectual attracts attention by announcing that, actually, water’s wetness has always been a myth.
3. Sarah Palin says water is wet, drawing from her experience helping out with Todd’s fishing business, and is promptly ridiculed all over the place for being an unsophisticated fish-gut covered crazy Eskimo whore.
4. Barack Obama delivers an inspiring speech, says water has never been wet, and manages to work in one of the “Let Me Be Clear,” two of the “Make No Mistake,” one of the “For Far Too Long We Have,” six “Uh”s and He manages to mention Himself an astonishing thirty-six times.
5. All kinds of Sunday morning pundits declare this latest one has got to be Obama’s BEST SPEECH EVAR!
6. Ann Coulter writes a column about Barack Obama’s speech. Several “conservatives” go on record saying they think the sarcastic comments were beneath Coulter’s stature, disrespectful of the office of President, and uncalled-for. Liberals make fun of her for being a skinny blond chick although some of them comment they wouldn’t kick her out of bed.
7. Glenn Beck goes on record saying water is wet.
8. Keith Olbermann says Glenn Beck is the worst person in the world.
9. With the issue becoming heated and controversial, the Reflecting Pool in the Washington Mall is drained.
10. Huffington Post publishes a column by some guy who surely must know what he’s talking about, being a Hollywood celebrity and all, stating that water is dry. His thesis proves this by denouncing people who’ve said it is wet and calling them all sorts of names pulled straight off the elementary school playground.
11. John McCain delivers a speech in the well of the Senate confirming that water is kinda wet and kinda dry.
12. A school teacher directs a class of children who, on their own of course, “wrote” a catchy song about water being dry and that anybody who says it is wet is quite stupid.
13. The New York Times publishes an unsigned editorial waxying lyrically on the dryness of water.
14. The United Nations passes a resolution that says water is dry. The Science Is Setted.
15. Meghan McCain tweets on her Twitter page that although she thinks the Republican party is just as cute as a button and she just wants to pick it up and give it a big hug and take it home — kisses! — it needs to be promptly ridded of all these ignorant rubes who think water is wet. Young people don’t like that.
16. Matthew Yglasias says water is dry. Hydrogen — DRY! Oxygen –DRY! Nothing else in there! Stupid conservatives!
17. TPMuckraker puts up a column that says water is dry.
18. Washington Post prints an editorial proving water is dry.
19. L.A. Times prints an editorial proving water is dry.
20. Fox News does an expose proving that water is wet.
21. PETA expresses outrage that Fox News’ segment the previous day was humiliating and unkind to the fishies.
22. Keith Olbermann says Fox News is the worst person in the world.
23. Some suicidal maniac shoots up a school or an army base or an IRS building, and several “news” organizations get ahold of some old writings of his, displayed on their web sites and then hurriedly pulled off after twenty minutes or so, implying that he was one of those deranged kooks who think water is wet.
24. Bill Clinton emerges from retirement to say water is dry, but that the really important thing is that we all learn to get along with each other.
25. DailyKOS puts up a post about water being dry, but most of it consists of disparaging comments made against people who think water is wet and how they also think dinosaurs walked the earth six thousand years ago.
26. Neil Cavuto does a segment asking if we’re making too much of a rush to judgment about water being dry?
27. Jon Stewart ridicules Neil Cavuto for ending too many of his statements with a question mark.
28. Keith Olbermann says Neil Cavuto is the worst person in the world.
29. Democratic Underground links to a story about some Republican who thinks water is wet, and within a few hours thousands of comments appear under it wishing death on him and his entire family. Nobody anywhere pays the slightest bit of attention to this.
30. Sean Hannity challenges liberals to take a shower before they go to work every morning, but not to bother drying off with a towel before getting dressed. Chris Matthews responds by (missing the point entirely) shouting, “No, you do it! You first!”
31. Keith Olbermann says Sean Hannity is the worst person in the world.
32. Jimmy Carter emerges from retirement to say water is dry and the Israelis are killing innocent Palestinian children.
33. The Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) takes the position that water is dry. Andy Stern, President of the Union, visits the White House five times in a single day to have some meetings about it.
34. Some prominent conservative commentator is forced to apologize for calling anti-war liberals a bunch of bed-wetting sissies, when it is thought (by no one willing to use their actual name) that he was making a side reference to this new hot controversial issue about pee being wet or dry. He apologizes two more times, and then his career is ended anyway.
35. Keith Olbermann says that conservative guy who lost his job is the worst person in the world.
36. Saturday Night Live does a skit on the issue of water being wet or dry. They have Sarah Palin’s look-alike, Tina Fey, say something abysmally stupid and by the end of the weekend millions of people are convinced Palin actually said it.
37. Janeane Garofalo says anybody who doesn’t immediately acknowledge the dryness of water is a racist who is just trying to get back at Barack Obama for being elected President.
38. The first Star Wars movie becomes a left-winger’s favorite, because Mark Hamill emerges from the fight with the garbage monster with his hair all puffy and blow-dried.
39. Because the issue has become so incendiary, all swimming events have been banned from the Olympics.
40. Berkeley becomes the nation’s capital of dead houseplants.

You know, there is a simple reason for why we are so damned contentious. We wish to be. We argue about stupid bullcrap that isn’t worth the arguing. Our liberals seize on purposefully ironic things that are antithetical to common sense and threaten us with social excoriation if we dare to call them out, and then we accommodate them.

It’s not going to get any better with time, you do realize. Not if we continue to tolerate it.

I’m bestowing the eighty-sixth BSIHORL (Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately) award upon Prof. Thomas Sowell, not just because the sentence is good, but because it is important in this day and age. In an interview with Investor’s Business Daily, he is asked to define intellectuals. Much of the interview would later be spent making the same points we saw during John Hawkins’ interview. But defining the word, as is often the case with defining-of-words, is an ingenious and eye-opening approach:

I define intellectuals as persons whose occupations begin and end with ideas. I distinguish between intellectuals and other people who may have ideas but whose ideas end up producing some good or service, something that whether it’s working or not working can be determined by third parties.

With intellectuals, one of the crucial factors is their work is largely judged by peer consensus, so it doesn’t matter if their ideas work in the real world. [emphasis mine]

The “peer consensus,” of course, is a cosmetic substitute for the third parties. If it were my quote, I would change third parties to “stakeholders,” or something less awkward and more precise than that. Owners of the situation that is subject to influence by the merits of the idea.

The ideas are ideas outside of practice. “Properly maintaining your automobile has been found to be beneficial toward gas mileage as well as vehicle life” is an idea. But it is a practical idea, one validated by real-life events, and outside the scope of what Dr. Sowell means, I think. We are awash in intellectuals peddling ideas that do not and cannot contain the words “has been shown to.” “Is good for” is a much more common fragment among the intellectuals and their ideas. “A robust, thriving middle class is good for society.” “I just think when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” “Unplugging your coffee pot is good for the environment.”

The other minor itch left unscratched by the Sowell definition, I would say, is the intellectual mindset. A lot of us non-intellectuals have ideas and our ideas are also full of “ifs,” “whens” and “woulds.” But when we have these ideas we have some curiosity about whether it would really work, and if so, then what bits of it would have to be refined. We are frustrated by the fact that we cannot gauge this until such a time that a prototype or proof-of-concept vehicle has been constructed. And so we feel an urge to build said prototype, and the urge festers if it is not satisfied in some way. We are frustrated that the idea is remaining an idea and nothing more than that.

Intellectuals also want to build their machinery, but “prototype” has nothing to do with it and there is no “proof of concept” about it. The dream, it seems, is the universal scope of influence itself. The frustration is that we have not “made it happen” yet, which means to commit to implementing the idea, non-incrementally, over every available square inch. No crevice or hamlet or valley should escape it. And when that happens, and the data flow back starkly indicating the idea is a crappy one or requires some alteration, the intellectual offers a rather stunning lack of curiosity about this. The criticism is to be marginalized somehow, or else the details are to be left to others.

As long as I’m jotting down my notes about this, there is one other thing I notice: The intellectuals are often subscribers and not originators, nor do they pretend to be originators. President Obama, for example, does not claim (to my knowledge) to have originated the idea that “when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” But I’m sure He would be eager to offer His subscription to this idea, as a testament toward His credentials as a brainy intellectual fellow. Ditto for Paul Krugman and Keynesian economics, Eve Ensler and global warming, Christopher Hitchens and not-believing-in-God.

And I would offer these as cherry-on-the-cake, supplemental additions to the definition. Intellectuals are ready to add to their virtual curricula vitae by listing ideas they did not invent, and would not pretend to have invented. If they do invent some kind of an idea, they are disinterested in the prospect of seeing it evaluated by those who would hold a stake in the idea working out well. They do not provide much impetus or motivation for the idea being put into a prototype, and are only interested in discussing the idea insofar as they can be congratulated on having it — not given suggestions on how to improve it.

They’re pretty easy to detect, because their ideas don’t have a lot to do with cost/benefit. With a practical non-intellectual, this is the origin of the idea: “I’m paying a lot of money to do X, how can I get around that.” “I’m spending a lot of time doing X, is there another way.” “These poor saps are having to send their product clear over here and wait for it to come back before they can get started on this other task over there…how can we sever this prerequisite relationship between these tasks, so they can be worked in parallel.”

With the intellectuals, the appeal of the idea is the irony. That is what makes them scary. The idea has to contradict other ideas, which may be presumed to arrive first. Too much of the time, the idea flouts common sense in order to do this. That would be okay, if the intellectuals possessed the same drive to have the idea validated in the plane of reality that the rest of us do with our ideas.

But, as has been explained above, they do not.

I’ve been thinking I want to start a gallery of people smiling into cameras while they talk on cell phones.

To me, that’s like the ultimate give-away. Must socialize…must socialize…every hour, every second, must constantly bathe in chit-chat. I suppose I should cut some slack to hot girls. They can take a good picture doing just about anything. But for everyone else — don’t you realize you’re having a picture taken of you with a phone being held up to your ear?

There’s something slipping off the rails here. You should be able to do pretty much anything if it’s a candid shot. That’s the definition of candid. This one looks borderline…it bothers me a little when people pose for pictures and don’t say “Oh hey, hold on a second, (insert name here) is taking my picture.” (Phone goes down.)

It’s just a complete failure to figure out where exactly you’re attention is supposed to be going. It’s a give-away that you expect others to pay attention to you, but you can’t be bothered to reciprocate. Really a way-off-into-the-deep-end WAGTOCPAN move.

But, like I said. Fetching visions like Audrina earn a pass. For reasons that should be obvious.

Update: That’s it.