Archive for the ‘Slow Poison’ Category

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Olbermann Apologizes

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

I get to link straight to the FARK thread on this one since it was green-lit, meaning you don’t need to be a member of TOTALFARK in order to see it. Just click on the YouTube logo at the top and away you go.

I think some of the comments from the Olby apologists are pretty important here.

The apology is for having pointed out what a crazy whack-a-doodle Rudy Giuliani seems to be, when you pretend that Giuliani said something that Giuliani did not, in fact, actually say. Actually, it’s somewhat less sincere than that. Giuliani said something, the Associated Press somehow began circulating a mythology that Giuliani said something else, the mythology reached Olby, Olby helped promote the mythology, AP issued a retraction, Olby followed suit.

To Olbermann’s credit, his apology clip contains an excerpt of Giuliani’s comments. From that, you are eqiupped with all the tools necessary to make up your own mind…an unusual move for Olby, but one can see how circumstances might persuade him to turn over a new leaf and step out of that cloistered citadel of “everybody tells everybody else what to think all the time.” What is not so clear, however, is how Giuliani’s remarks were mangled in the first place.

Nor am I clear on the thinking of the Keith-Oh fan base. To be sure, Olbermann’s doing a few things here that he doesn’t necessarily have to do, but each and every one of those things is reactive in nature. But more important than that, he got into this trouble by passing the second milestone on the way to insanity; in other words, he navigated the First Traid of the Nine Pillars of Persuasion out of sequence. And in that sense, his apology is just as out-of-step as the blunder that originally made the apology necessary.

To bottom-line it, he heard something, he believed it uncritically, he re-broadcast it, he learned about a retraction from the original source and then he re-broadcast that. And for the second re-broadcasting, his fan base is telling everyone within earshot that we’re all supposed to hold Olby in high esteem for his vaunted personal integrity.

This strikes me as trying to have things both ways. The apology is a reflection of your personal integrity, while the original screw-up is not? I dunno. When I look at the facts and decide what they mean for myself, it seems Olbermann is just some guy who reads or watches products from the Associated Press, believes every word of it without checking it out, does his bit to re-broadcast it to whatever extent he can, and takes bows for the AP’s retractions while disclaiming any involvement or responsibility when the AP fumbles.

I mean, an eight dollar pair of amplified speakers can do that.

Except stereo speakers don’t make careers out of being angry. At least now when I see Keith Olbermann being angry about something, I’ll know there’s a good chance he hasn’t the slightest idea whether or not his anger is based on anything real.

I get angry about things too. Pig-bitin’ mad, sometimes. I can make Olby look like Mahatma Ghandi, depending on what’s under discussion. But I can get only so mad, up to a certain level, beyond which I have to check things out and find out what’s going on. If I get angrier than that, then I’ve got to do this…or make a priority out of it. It’s tough on the ol’ ticker you know, I’ve only got so many occasions to get angry before it’s time to cash things in. I’d like my anger, therefore, to be based on something real. So anger compels me to check things out. That’s what normal people do.

So what use would I have for a guy like Olby, who shouts first and checks things out second?

Posted in Everyday Dimwits, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 4 Comments »

Energy Thermometer

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

Had this cool idea when I first rolled out of bed this morning. It makes more and more sense to me every time I think on it.

You know that “Doomsday Clock” the anti-nuclear egghead scientists rolled out during the cold war era to show how close to midnight we were getting, the “moment” when we’d supposedly use our amazing nuclear arsenal to blow up the planet? My son has been asking me here & there about the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius, and I was describing for him how both scales are based on 0 to 100 but use different definitions to define those two calibration points.

Well, Rick has been thinking some more about that Cristy article, as have I…

I’ve had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don’t think I will add “0.0001 Nobel Laureate” to my resume.
:
I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never “proof”) and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.
:
Suppose you are very serious about making a dent in carbon emissions and could replace about 10% of the world’s energy sources with non-CO2-emitting nuclear power by 2020 — roughly equivalent to halving U.S. emissions. Based on IPCC-like projections, the required 1,000 new nuclear power plants would slow the warming by about 0.2 ?176 degrees Fahrenheit per century. It’s a dent.

But what is the economic and human price, and what is it worth given the scientific uncertainty?

My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit “global warming.”

So what’s the whole global warming movement about? If it was about keeping poor kids from starving, it wouldn’t be posing this threat to them…if it was about curtailing the carbon emissions into the atmosphere, people wouldn’t be flying around in private jets to promote it.

It’s not about stopping us from supplying people with energy. I think it would be far more accurate to say it’s about stopping us from providing that energy independently.

Which, already, we don’t do. You build a power plant, nuclear or otherwise, you have to get permits, file environmental impact statements, zone, design, approve, get blessings from Department of Labor, OSHA…

Just like any business. But someone has figured out, you can hamstring us by regulating businesses in general — or, you can hamstring us so much more effectively by regulating businesses that produce energy all other businesses use.

That’s what it’s all about. Greenhouse gases are just a distraction. A cow farts and burps greenhouse gases that are far more potent than anything you’ll produce by driving down the road. But cow doesn’t do anything to drive commerce. It just makes beef steaks and milk products, that’s all. So nobody even bats an eyelash at the cows. It’s our technology-related greenhouse gas output that has to be attacked.

As I said, we already don’t produce energy in the private sector with free-enterprise independence. We have the standard regulations. We have the Endangered Species Act. Our elected officials prohibit the production of energy, which is needed by poor people more than anybody else…or, they control the production of that energy. Their decisions determine, in whole or in part, who lives and who dies. Global warming is just a way to get some more of that going on.

I propose a thermometer. A thermometer, just like the Doomsday Clock. An “Energy Thermometer.”

Zero degrees means private industry produces the energy we need, with complete independence. A hundred degrees means the public sector determines all, and if private industry has any role to play whatsoever, it is simply to do what government says.

This would be a valuable thermometer. It would define the real purpose to all this fear-mongering and weird, other-worldly legislating. The above mentioned Endangered Species Act, for example — which has few defenders anymore, but pointedly nobody’s rushing to take off the books even at the dawn of our most long and drawn-out campaign season ever — probably boosted the “temperature” on such a scale by a good fifteen to twenty degrees.

Let’s build a thermometer like that. Then we could see the real point to these anti-technological, anti-capitalist movements we get from time to time…and we could measure their achieved effects, as well.

Posted in Ayn Rand Spins, Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Western Civilization | No Comments »

Pearl Harbor and the Death Penalty

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Yamamoto

“In my view…the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation rather than simply ignoring duly enacted constitutional laws and sabotaging the death penalty.”

— Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, commenting on the Atkins v. Virginia case

We got an awful lot of self-righteous people, usually with no small amount of condescension and just plain-ol’-snottiness, telling us the death penalty is inconsistent with “evolving standards of decency” or some such rot. More often than not, those snots live in well-to-do ivory tower enclaves and are unlikely to suffer personally from the vagaries of people who have no respect for the sanctity of human life but run free anyway.

One of Associate Justice Scalia’s colleagues does a dandy job of representing these goo-gooders — who are just barely enough in-touch with what passes for a moral compass, to avoid dispensing justice, even when it’s their designated occupation and sworn duty to so dispense.

I’ve already lost this link once, and now that I’ve found it again I wanted to save it onto this page so I’d never lose it again. It’s a great article, because it cites exactly what I’d cite, and highlights exactly what I’d highlight.

Lawprof and legal journalist Jeff Rosen had a very interesting New York Times article about Justice Stevens a week ago. The whole thing is much worth reading; but here I wanted to comment just on one part:

[Justice Stevens] won a bronze star for his [World War II] service as a cryptographer, after he helped break the code that informed American officials that Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese Navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, was about to travel to the front. Based on the code-breaking of Stevens and others, U.S. pilots, on Roosevelt’s orders, shot down Yamamoto’s plane in April 1943.

Stevens told me he was troubled by the fact that Yamamoto, a highly intelligent officer who had lived in the United States and become friends with American officers, was shot down with so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration. The experience, he said, raised questions in his mind about the fairness of the death penalty. “I was on the desk, on watch, when I got word that they had shot down Yamamoto in the Solomon Islands, and I remember thinking: This is a particular individual they went out to intercept,” he said. “There is a very different notion when you’re thinking about killing an individual, as opposed to killing a soldier in the line of fire.” Stevens said that, partly as a result of his World War II experience, he has tried on the court to narrow the category of offenders who are eligible for the death penalty and to ensure that it is imposed fairly and accurately. He has been the most outspoken critic of the death penalty on the current court.

I recognize that much can get lost in such pieces, even when they are written by experienced, thoughtful, and sympathetic interviewers such as Rosen. Perhaps Stevens gave some further explanations that were omitted, or perhaps Rosen’s paraphrases are not quite right. But what I see in the article strikes me as a perplexing chain of reasoning.

There follow three bullet points which, if you’re a right-thinking rational individual like me, will line up hand-in-glove with the explosions of “Whisky Tango Foxtrot” percolating between your ears as you read through Justice Stevens’ hackneyed preponderances.

Justice John Paul Stevens has, at the very least, achieved the first milestone of insanity and probably the second as well. He’s in some wonderful company there. But more seriously than those, he’s failing to uphold his sworn duty. He is what Scalia was talking about in the quote above.

Posted in Overlawyered, Phony Crime Solutions, Poisoning Justice | 6 Comments »

Reasons to Not Trust Scientists

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

This article is cynical and inflexible and uses deliberations of fact in a childlike way…for example, “There is no such thing as objectivity and logic is a tenuous, frail, possibly mythical animal…”

But I see a lot of merit in each of the points that it makes. In fact, I’ll bet there are a lot of folks who have a big problem applying these considerations to scientists, but would have no problem applying them to others.

Like bloggers.

In fact, the article is really all about being human. So you could fairly apply these, or at least consider them, in regard to carbon-based life forms in any profession. Like…it occurs to me…journalists. But like Winnie The Pooh says, that is a story for another day.

I tell ya, every time I see people pontificate about the glowbubble wormening ManBearPig, and someone all-but-‘fesses up to just believing what “scientists say” on the strength that hey, they’re scientists, at least I’m not blindly going along with what someone else says…as if to say, y’know, we’re all following pied-pipers I’m just following the right one…it gives me a real “don’t know whether to laugh or cry” moment. And kind of a sharp migraine.

Posted in Phony Egghead Studies, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

Best Sentence XIX

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Time once again for a Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award. “I wish I’d been smart enough to say that,” says fellow Webloggin contributor Bookworm…and no, that’s not the glorious Best Sentence. She is simply commenting on the article which I, too, think worthy of high honors.

But as I often point out to my kid, we live in a universe that has a great many other things on it’s mind beyond the supposedly sacred obligation of keeping us constantly entertained, so often there’s an education before the payoff. Let’s take a few paragraphs, being the grown-ups that we are, to get that done.

It starts with Blogger Friend Phil’s expose on Friday about Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and his forty compatriots who signed the “Hush Rush” letter. Actually, it starts a good deal before that…but I predict this is the point in the story where history will look back and find the eyes of “most” folks have glazed over.

Rush said something about “phony soldiers” on his radio show.

Reid & Co. put a fanciful spin on his remarks, re-invented them as saying something Rush did not, in fact, say; and then they wrote up a letter to try to get him silenced.

May I explore a bunny trail here? Since we’re adults and we have attention spans…let’s use ’em…we have got to find a word for this someday. This thing liberals do. Where you come up with this accusation out of thin air, and you know the facts aren’t on your side so of course there will be a discussion about whether the accusasion is true or not — which it isn’t. Then, you see to it that instead of being pursued…the discussion is instead prolonged…since, if the discussion were pursued, it would be a very short discussion indeed.

The casual observer will assume the accusation has some merit to it, but that’s a secondary payoff. The primary reward is that there is something you don’t want discussed, and now you’ve generated a distraction from it.

The classic Vaudeville version of this is “When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife?” For the uninitiated, the trick is that if you aren’t a wife-beater, there’s no correct way to answer the question. This is a close cousin to that. You come up with an argument which, plainly, has an inimicable relationship to truth and common sense — like — “we need twice as much money so let’s raise the tax rate twice as high.” I offer the counter-argument that plainly puts the kibosh on yours: “If you raise the tax rate significantly, people will change what they do to pursue their individual interests, and you won’t raise the revenue you expect to; this is basic economics and has proven to be an accurate prediction of human behavior, time and time again.” And you say, “you want the government to run out of money and you want poor people to suffer!”

It is an unfounded inference, one that enjoys no genuine confidence. You would not bet your life, your liberty, your treasured possessions on the axiom that I want the government to run out of money, or that I want poor people to suffer. But it’s an effective counterattack in the political realm, because now we’re going to have a long drawn-out discussion about whether I want the government to run out of money and the poor people to suffer. The genesis of the discourse has to do with whether supply-side economics works. It’s about the Laffer Curve. But with enough energized emotions at work…we’re not talking about that, are we? We’re talking about a sadistic streak I’m supposed to have, that nobody’s really going to bet anything worth keeping that I actually have.

That’s what we need to name, some day.

That’s exactly what Harry Reid and his pals did. They knew Rush was not trying to say all soldiers serving now, who do not agree with The Great Rushbo, are “phony.” That was not the spirit of anything he said or did. I know. I’m a member of Rush 24/7, I’m entitled to have that entire show, I do, I’ve listened to it. He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything like it.

But Rush is not a stranger to politics, at all. And so…he did zip, zero, nada, butkus of the stuff neophytes do when confronted by this. He did not stutter or stammer or “homina homina homina” or “I’m sorry if my words were interpreted” or any of that nonsense Don Imus did. Read Phil’s post to find out what Rush did, if you need to.

And then, as Phil pointed out, Harry Reid backpedaled. But you have to look close to see what happened. Harry Reid’s new spin on it, is an expression of enthusiasm for the help being extended to the Marines and their families, an effort started by Rush, which Reid did not aid in any way except unwittingly. Being a stranger to the whole situation — knowing how to read and to think, but having no background information at all — you’d think Reid cooked up the whole idea and Rush grudgingly lent his support.

What a crock.

Bookworm has, for now, the very best chronicling of the whole sorry affair. If you’ve read his far, you’ve got the attention span you need to handle it, so I recommend you go there now.

There. Now you know what’s going on. And I think I can promise you if you’ve only heard about it from CNN or MSNBC or Larry King or any of those big figureheads…it was a paradigm shift, wasn’t it.

On with the BSIHORL award, to Captain’s Quarters commenter PackerBronco. It’s not one sentence, it’s two…and they say all that needs to be said…

The conservative thinks of a free-market way of raising private funds to aid a worthwhile causes and backs his commitment with his own money.

The liberal asks other people to donate funds, doesn’t donate any of his own money, and tries to take credit for the generosity of others.

Zing!

Update: Just received this via e-mail, under the heading “office gossip.” It seemed very fitting to the subject at hand:

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Noble Warriors, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 4 Comments »

Manhood As Wasabi

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Poor Rick was asking What’s Happened To Men?, and I happened along. Heh. You might as well have asked Rosie O’Dumbell about what brought down the World Trade Center. Just because I’ve opined on this over and over and over again, doesn’t necessarily mean there’s some finite reservoir somewhere that has been bled off. I’m just hitting my stride.

The setup is the author of Seraphic Secret taking his laptop into a computer shop to get it fixed and running into an unlikely fan trying to get her iPod repaired. I’m not familiar with this book, or the author, or his blog. Seems he wrote a great deal about how he met his wife, and his fan found it quite touching.

And she despaired…Why are the men like you all taken?

“Anyway, here’s what I want to know: what’s happened to men? They’re like all pussified—excuse my language—they’re so sensitive they’re barely men. Look around the store: half the guys in here are wearing more jewelry than I am, and that guy over there—”

She points to a man who looks sleek as an Italian sports car.

“Metrosexual. Uh-huh. That’s like code for gay, right?”

I say nothing.

“Wisdom, wisdom, I need some wisdom in my life.”

“Did it ever occur to you that the way you dress and display yourself attracts a certain kind of man?”

“Oh-oh.”

“Look, I don’t know you. I’ll shut-up.”

“No, I wanna hear.”

“The ink, the dye job, the piercings, they present an image. A face to meet a face, so to speak. I’ll be honest, I saw you before you spoke to me and I was put off by how you looked.”

I really liked this post Rick linked, because it raises an issue so complex that any way I try to attack it has to start out like the blind man trying to get a “look” at an elephant. There’s lots of facets to it. I’m afraid in my bloated and meandering response, I failed to adequately highlight what really fascinates me about this.

Manhood is dying. I’m not the first to notice it and I won’t be the last. (I’m pretty sure I’m among the most poorly-compensated individuals, among those who have written about it.)

And…in tandem with that unfortunate phenomenon…womanhood is on her deathbed as well. They’re both in hospice. Real men are disappearing because real women are disappearing — and vice-versa.

My observation about the movie culture, either is, or looks like, a huge tangent. I do think it’s important. I think noticing what Hollywood has been doing throughout the years has a certain “pay the piper” attribute to it; if you don’t take it into account up front, your thesis will be incomplete unless you factor it in later. Popular viewpoint is in kind of a box-step waltz with Hollywood. Hollywood gives us what we want, and as they give us subtle deviations from that, they mold and shape what we’ll be wanting the year afterward. What’s even more important than that, is that Hollywood consciously knows this, and they use it.

In replying to Rick, I identified this post-modern Hollywood phenomenon I called “Die Hard syndrome.” A man does something manly, which has a direct affect on dozens of people. Saving them from being blown up, or burned up, or whatever. It’s exactly what Matt Dillon did every single week, back in the day. But following the Womens’ Lib stuff, it is treated like something that was never done before. Wow…a good man finds himself in a position to thwart a bad man, and he does it. Movie-making is changed overnight.

But it isn’t. If you’re in your seventies now, when you were a little kid you saw good guys duking it out with bad guys all the time. If you’re older, maybe you had to make do with hearing it on the radio. The fascination was then, as now, that the timeless battle between good and evil was captured here.

And this is my point: We never get tired of this. We are told that we should, and we believe it.

When someone comes along and pops the bubble, we’re fascinated. But we aren’t discovering something new for the very first time; instead, we are slaking a long thirst, after being denied for a long time what we always found captivating, and were told we didn’t want. But we never stop craving this.

I first had my epiphany about this years ago. It was a couple of years after Star Wars came out, and I realized as I gradually matured that the spaceships and the explosions and the lightsabers had very, very little to do with what I loved about that movie. It was the Hero’s Journey. Luke, just like King Arthur and perhaps hundreds of other fictional and legendary heroes, grew up in obscurity and came to realize he held the hope of an entire people to escape darkness and oppression. It’s a story of hope.

And this is my main point.

We love hope. But there is this counterforce — conscious or not, I don’t know really — that continually rises up to make sure we don’t get hope, we aren’t even told stories that involve hope, and we should be lulled into believing we don’t really like it when we do.

Never was this more evident than in the longest gap between James Bond movies, the 6½ years between License To Kill and Goldeneye. There are reasons for this. James Bond has always been ensnared in a messy processing of legal disputes over ownership, and after Timothy Dalton’s latest this had overheated the 007 engine block and siezed it up tight. A rebuild was unavoidable. Besides, I’m told, Dalton was something of a dud. These explanations were laced with more than a kernel of truth, so they seem valid.

But they don’t explain everything. I can see things for myself and I can tell when I’m being sold a bill o’goods.

Before Bond’s hiatus, and since, there has always been this whining background noise that the superspy is a “relic.” It’s time to “move on.” Lately, this has taken on a surreal dystopian fantasy-world quality as Bond has become a steady, reliable, and growing multi-million dollar franchise. The critics say one thing about what we want, the market says the opposite thing. The critics won’t shut up. They keep preaching at us that we’re tired of watching a six-foot white guy save the world, and we’re too stupid to grasp the message.

But the effort to supress, does indeed supress. For all of us who like to watch the good guy thwart evil, even if we’re willing to accept ethnically diverse heroes in this role, we’ve still got a bit of a wait. The little freckle-faced boy of yesteryear, waiting in anticipation of the next Tom Mix episode, got a steady diet. His grandson of the same age, now, receives a grudging, pulsating series of burps.

But “Die Hard Syndrome” isn’t about the pusating and the burping, and it isn’t even about Hollywood’s peevish resentment at dishing out to us what we want to consume, that they say we don’t or shouldn’t want.

It’s about the second, third or fourth installment of each of these masculine heroes. The weakening. The watering-down.

It’s about the revelation, in Bond’s eigtheenth installment, that the suave MI-6 operative jumps out of his mistress’ beds, not to confront some spine-tingling adventure that lays in wait for him ahead — but to abandon, in fear, what he just left behind. This is true of masculine heroes across the board. The strength must give way to weakness. ALWAYS.

McLane himself has to whimper to his new sidekick what a lonely business it is being a hero. You eat a lot of meals alone, he says. Two things are going on here, and they’re both bad. One — someone, somewhere, is mighty unhappy with the idea of a hero saving the day, and proving himself to be up to the challenge when it confronts him. The strength that was involved in saving lives, has to be shown to be compensatory for some related and interlocked weakness somewhere else. Two — you can kiss that implied post-scripture of “if he can do it, you can too” — GOOD-BYE. No longer is John McLane some randomly chosen specimen of manhood, showing what manhood can do, and how badly we need it something bad goes down. He’s some kind of a cursed Messiah. His blessing is a curse, and not only that, but he no longer represents the rest of us. The Die Hard storyline becomes a series of funny things that happen that show how unique McLane is. He can save the day because he’s different from, rather than similar to, the more “usual” guy.

The decline was even more rapid with Indiana Jones. Oh thank goodness, a virile quick-thinking American man was in the right place at the right time to keep Hitler for catching the Ark of the Covenant! By the next installment he’s off on little more than a slightly gory Scooby-Doo adventure. The one after that, he’s whimpering about not getting due attention from daddy.

And then there’s my favorite example…since it’s happened many, many times now…
Thing I Know #203. Superman’s adventures are only fun to read about when Lois is still clueless about who he really is. As soon as Clark Kent lets her in on The Big Secret, everything gets lame.

Think about it. When did the comic book series get lame, both pre-crisis and post-crisis? When did the Dean Cain series get lame? When did the movies get lame? It all turned soft and brown at the same event. Lois, I think it’s time I told you something…

Further examples could be forthcoming, but I don’t think they’re necessary and this is long enough already. And oh, I do appreciate the need to define a character further after he’s appeared in a plurality of installments. The audience has a natural desire to know; the storytellers have a natural desire to flesh him out.

But a background story is not one-and-the-same as a chronicling of personal weakness. Superman’s weaknesses, James Bond’s weaknesses, John McLane & Dr. Jones’ weaknesses…they seem forced. I have doubts that anybody was yearning for a catalogue of these. I perceive a differential between what was ordered and what was delivered.

We have commoners who know what they want, like what they like, dislike what they dislike…and then we have elites who are always trying to correct the commoners, to mold and shape their individual tastes. It seems to me the elites have been trying to go cold-turkey on the male save-the-day action hero, to inform us that we hate him and never liked him to begin with. That didn’t work, so now the new strategy is to ration him. We can only see a strong man define manhood by using resourcefulness and cunning to save the innocent from the wicked, every couple of years or so. If that. And then, we have to be told it’s not in the stars for us to be like him. He’s not a role model…not like Rooster Cogburn or Matt Dillon.

We have this belief that a little of him goes a long way. We’ll get tired of him. He’s a spice, just like ginger, horseradish or wasabi. Main courses, of which we get a steady diet, are…other things. The Doofus Dad. The strong-willed woman. Gangsta rappers. Punk and pop singers. And I’m left to wonder — what evidence is there that people really have an unquenchable thirst for such dysfunctional things, or that their apetites are so weak for what is arguably more wholesome?

Looks like a case of the few dictating the tastes of the many, if there ever was one. Hollywood spends billions of dollars a year making movies. They should be conducing research, one would think, into what we really want. It would be worth a pretty penny, would it not? Well, then where is the hard evidence that we’re ready to nibble around the edges of the strong resourceful manly-man, with long intervals between samplings, while we long to glug-glug-glug away from sunup to sundown, on all this other crap?

I doubt there is any such evidence. Surely if we can watch a quartet of shrill, scatter-brained women talk over each other every damn day on The View, we’ll not be suffering nausea if we see manhood constructively applied more often than every twenty-four months or so.

And as the Seraphic Secret post makes clear, our plutocratically-controlled diet does more than just screw up the boys. A generation of weak men makes for a generation of weak women. Both sexes reach adulthood, tragically, being virginal to the simple adventure of seeing something messed up…coming up with their own plan about how to fix it…and following through. “Solving a problem,” to them, means there is a multiple-choice question on a test, some authority figure knows what the right answer is already, and they’re supposed to echo whatever that answer is.

Assuming that’s all there is in their worldview by age eighteen, and I have little reason to think there’s more to it than that, ponder how incredibly disabling that would be. Our children are being told that yes, from time to time, the world must be saved. Maybe. But they shouldn’t envision themselves as being up to answering the call. It has to be some unfortunate antihero, specially designated for this task from birth, compensating for a related but oppositional weakness.

So “eat your meat and vegetables so you can grow up to be just like him,” suddenly, seems an awkward thing to say now. Why would the little moppet want to do such a thing? Even if he finds the adventures inspiring, he’s bound to see them from without, as somebody else’s adventures. But decades ago, mommas said that to their li’l boys that very thing about meats-n-veggies. All the time. And half the time they were talking about Superman, who isn’t even human.

Posted in Poisoning Masculinity | No Comments »

On The Slang Term “Neocon”

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

There is this word I’m hearing used a whole lot lately. It’s subjected to a gallon of repetitive use, and a half-pint of definition; and, maybe a teaspoon or two of inquiry and inspection when people are willing to admit they’d like to know more about what it means, which from what I can see, is something that hardly ever happens. In short, it seems everybody’s using this word, nobody really has a meaning in mind for it, nor is anyone insisting on one when it’s used. Which is often.

It’s a pejorative term. But it’s a jealous term. It is applied to people who are doin’ good, and due for a come-uppins. It is to be applied to people who have too much to say about how things work, and shouldn’t be able to decide what they’re able to decide.

The White House, and all departments in the executive branch, is supposed to be chock full of people who fit this term that no one’s willing to define.

The term is neoconservative. The slang, shorter version is “neocon.”

I have been wondering about this before; can’t remember when. But as is my typical remedy, I resolved to go to Wikipedia and believe without question every word I find there. Well, the last time I went through this exercise I remember seeing a bunch of antisemitist drivel, or at least, lots of NPOV (Neutral Point-Of-View) description of antisemitist drivel. It seemed to be powered off an association between Norman Podhoretz and the “neoconservative movement.”

I remember thinking how disturbing this continuation was. Antisemites have been receptive to the notion, for centuries, that the Jews are a bunch of dirty so-and-sos who run everything and are due to be taken down a peg. They pop up every generation or so with a new way to make this message appealing…and here in the early 21st century we’ve got some nameless faceless yokels running around calling people “neocons,” with an insinuation that neocons are dirty so-and-sos due to be taken down a peg. So can I look into the term without Godwinning myself? I have doubts now.

It does seem that sympathy for Israel is a defining characteristic of the “neocon.” Nobody has stepped forward and insisted that being a neocon has something to do with being a Jew. But that does seem to be the case. If you’re a neocon, you have to first-and-foremost be a warmonger, but secondly you have to side with Israel against Palestine. Or there’s an expectation you will do this.

Let’s put it this way: If you really are a warmonger but your sympathies are against Israel — let’s say you want to see Hamas drive Israel into the sea — you’ve got quite a long time to wait before anyone calls you a “neocon.” Odds are it won’t happen.

The Urban Dictionary ended up being more helpful than I thought, although I had to read down a little bit to get to the meat of things. And there were a few surprises in store. The first handful of definitions did exactly what the U.D. is supposed to do: Describe what people are intending when they actually use the word out on the street, textbook definitions be damned.

1. neocon

Morally idealistic conservatatives. neocon is short for neo-conservative. Neocons separate themselves from Republicans that are traditionally fiscal conservative.

Slang – Crusading republican.
Slang – Neocons exist separated into two very distinct groups. The largest, group one, are the people below the 99th income percentile. They are religous and/or war-mongering blowhard lemmings who follow the second group; The second group is made up of the top one percent. They cut taxes for themselves, borrow trillions (second term pending), and their behavior is largely the subject of this blog. Of necessity, they pay Rove to pipe tabloid for the Rats. Lemmings rather. Whichever, they both work.
Vlugar – White bible thumping trash.

The draft-dodging neocons running the white house are threatening our future as a great nation.

2. Neocon

Neoconservative. Criminally insane spenders that believe in killing brown people for the new world order. Huge Orwellian government, unfathomable amounts of spending, bomb tens of thousands of people to death to rearrange the globe. Take the worst aspects of the liberal and conservative positions and combine them into one and you would have a NeoCon.

Neocons are the greatest threat to life, liberty and property this country has ever known.

3. neocon

Neoconservative. Originally used to describe left-wingers who crossed the floor, neocons are on the authoritarian right, rather than the traditionally conservative libertarian right. They tend to be very pro-war and adopt the mentality of “We’re better than you and we know it.”

Some more vulgar people call them Neocunts.

“I don’t really like Kerry, but I’d rather see him in power than those horrendous neocons who currently run things!”

I really think I might like definition #6, sub-definition #3 the best…

6. neocon
:
3: Complete and utter dirtbags of pure, unrefined trash that only look out for their own wealth and contribute nothing to the betterment of man kind.
Worthless. Malignant. Junk.

In an act characteristic of the Nazis, the neocons are now proposing that all people who make less than $50,000 a year be exterminated in concentration camps along with the gays, ethnic peoples and atheists.

So you see, it’s not just a simple pejorative. There is hate locked up in this word. I’m still uncertain about what it’s supposed to say…just as uncertain as I was before, maybe even moreso. The word clearly has racial connotations, targeting people who are white, and insinuating that the persons so targeted are the ones with a racist problem.

And I’m starting to doubt this because whatever agendas are bottled up and being subtly referenced here, they seem to be carried aloft by the people using the term, not so much by the people referenced by the term. “…unrefined trash that only look out for their own wealth and contribute nothing to the betterment of man kind [sic].” That kind of sounds like someone approached the “neocon” with a proposition that involved separating him from his money, and the neocon had the audacity to say no.

I have reasons for wanting to know this. I get called a “neocon” quite often, because…well, as a rational, reasonable and logical freedom-loving American, I want terrorists dead. The more the better. Roll the smoking carcasses on in, get ’em counted and roll in some more. It makes me smile, seeing them dead like that. But I’m willing to be reasonable; if a terrorist should be allowed to live because we might get information out of him that leads to more dead terrorists, I’m all for letting him live. Until we get that information. And verify it. THEN kill him. I dream of the day we’re told, “we just can’t produce any more dead terrorist bodies, because it seems we’ve run out of terrorists.” That would be ideal.

Conventional wisdom says this won’t happen because when you kill a hundred terrorists, you make two hundred more. My response is let’s put that to the test. I’ll bet there’s a point where you run out. Hell, the same people who doubt this about terrorists, are the very same ones saying exactly that about penguins, polar bears, snail darters, trees…etc. etc. etc. We’re constantly accusing ourselves of making things extinct. Let’s be guilty of it in this one case. Find out what’s possible.

This is supposed to make me a “neocon” but…go back and read those definitions again. I’m supposed to want to spend more money. I’m supposed to hate brown people. I don’t care about brownness…white terrorists, green terrorists, purple terrorists. Kill ’em all. And another thing, I’m cheap. Lots of ex-wives & girlfriends will confirm that. I drive an eighteen-year-old car. When it comes to killing terrorists, even, I hope they do it as cheaply as possible. That way they can kill more terrorists.

This doesn’t seem to fit the description. Sometimes I think when people call me this, it doesn’t have to do with my appreciation for mile-high stacks of terrorist carcasses at all. Sometimes it seems to have something to do with my surname. Freeberg. You know the secret here? It’s not a jewish name. It doesn’t even really exist. Watch the first act of The Godfather, Part II, and you’ll see how my grandfather got this name. This was very commonplace at that time. My grandfather went through exactly that office. Albin J. Freeberg and Vito Corleone might very well have been bumping into each other.

So I’m not Jewish, I’m not wild about spending money. But I do love reading about terrorists getting killed. I honestly don’t know if this word applies to me. I need to get it defined to figure out if that’s so.

So getting back to it, you know, this is a very strange word. There is giving information to someone, and there is inviting someone to hop onto a bandwagon. This n-word seems to have a lot more to do with the bandwagon than with the offering of information. It says more about the person using the term than the person described by it. Let’s sit down with what we’ve gathered so far, and try to form a picture about the user and see if we get further. Such a person has utopian tendencies because he resents the “neocons” for “contributing nothing to the betterment.” This suggests anti-capitalist leanings. Powerful ones, albeit timid ones. He doesn’t want to admit what he is. He’s probably a “Pie Person” — someone who believes if one guy got a bigger piece of pie, someone else must have gotten a smaller one. He’s not too crazy about President Bush. For all the diverse viewpoints about what the term means, nobody seems to doubt the President is one — even though the President, himself, is not thought to be Jewish — and that the current administration is crammed full of’em. The user of this term, it seems clear to me, likes non-white people better than white people, to what degree I’m not sure. He’s a pacifist, certainly; of all the traits that are supposed to be criticized when you call someone a “neocon,” the willingness to make war is foremost.

I’m gathering the poor fellow has delusions that something is about to happen. There’s this massive takedown of the neocons looming on the horizon. The word is almost always used to describe people who are in a position of power, and are about to not be anymore. There is this none-too-subtle suggestion that we are living in some kind of Age of Neoconservatism, have been for two or three decades, and are now seeing it’s final days.

Wow, I’m almost describing that stringy-haired homeless guy in all the movies with the sandwich board that says “THE END IS NEAR.”

Beyond that, it starts to get a little tough to shed more light on it. But Definition #15 helped a lot.

15. neocon

A combination of “Neo”(new) and “Con”(conservative).

“Neocon” is the term for both a new and old (reborn) form of Conservativism. A break from the Reublican party and return to more traditional Conservative values. This represents a fracturing of the Right. Neocons tend to be young, idealistic, and even dogmatic activists. They tend to have above-average intelligence and education. They are very similar to the movements of the 1960s, but with different core values. They are both pessimistic about the current system, and optimistic about the difference they can make.

It is difficult to lock Neocons down to a specific set of values, because they come from a wide variety of backgrounds (including minorities and gays) and have a wide variance in their ideals. Overall, Neocons are pro-life and support the death penalty. Many neocons are religious or “spiritual” in one way or another. They are not necessarily Christian, although that is the religion to which most of them subscribe. Neocons preach tolerance and coexistence without political correctness. They tend to strongly support both the First and Second Amendments of the Constitution. Neocons support Capitalism, but view being beholden to corporate interests with great distaste. And while compromise is a necessary evil in politics, when in doubt, neocons will stick to their guns. Too much compromise is the hallmark of selling out. They believe that the current political process has become so corrupt that no politician can get anywhere without selling out to various interests.

Neocons view the increasingly centrist philosophy of Republican politicians with the same distaste that their radically Liberal opponents feel for the Democrats. Both of the Big Two parties have been migrating towards the center for some time now, leaving behind many on either side. This is manifested by the power wielded by third-party candidates, which was decisive in determining the outcomes of the 1992, 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. (And resulting in much backbiting on either the Left or the Right afterwards)

This is a new age in American politics. The rise of neoconservativism was one of the more unforseen and underestimated political developments in the last two decades. With similar fracturing on the Liberal side of the political divide, the power-hold of the Big Two parties (Republican and Democrat) is being shaken, and voting for a third-party candidate no longer means you are just “throwing your vote away.” The future may be a very interesting time for all of us, Liberal or Conservative.

“The neo-conservatism of the 1980s is a replay of the New Conservatism of the 1950s, which was itself a replay of the New Era philosophy of the 1920s” (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).

As for accuracy, I’m inclined to go with a couple morsels scribbled hastily under #17: “Any person who is winning an argument with a liberal,” and “Catch all term used by liberals when they think they’ve been using Nazi too much.”

But let’s get back to Wikipedia, because it seems pretty clear if we can find a textbook definition, that won’t do us very much good compared to a history of how the term came to be. U.D. Def. #15 makes it clear there is a rich legacy to this word.

The language about Norman Podhoretz had been diminished considerably from what I had last seen, but I did find this, and at first I thought it might be a big help:

As a term, neoconservative first was used derisively by democratic socialist Michael Harrington to identify a group of people (who thought they were liberals) as newly simulated conservative ex-liberals. The term stuck because neoconservatives were confused with true conservative.[4]

Now, that’s interesting. One click took me to the Harrington article which explained the following:

…Harrington wrote The Other America: Poverty in the United States, a book that had an impact on the Kennedy administration, and on Lyndon B. Johnson’s subsequent War on Poverty. Harrington became a widely read intellectual and political writer. He would frequently debate noted conservatives but would also clash with the younger radicals in the New Left movements. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. referred to Harrington as the “only responsible radical” in America, a somewhat dubious distinction among those on the political left. His high profile landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.[3]

By early 1970s [Trotskyist leader Max] Shachtman’s anti-Communism had become a hawkish Cold War liberalism. Shachtman and the governing faction of the Socialist Party effectively supported the Vietnam War and changed the organization’s name to Social Democrats, USA. In protest Harrington led a number of Norman Thomas-era Socialists, younger activists and ex-Shachtmanites into the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. A smaller faction associated with peace activist David McReynolds formed the Socialist Party USA.

In the early 1980s The Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with the New American Movement, an organization of New Left veterans, forming Democratic Socialists of America. This organization remains the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, which includes socialist parties as diverse as the Swedish and German Social Democrats, Nicaragua’s FSLN, and the British Labour Party.[4]

Harrington was appointed a professor of political science at Queens College in 1972; he was designated a distinguished professor in 1988. Harrington died in 1989 of cancer. He was the most well-known socialist in the United States during his lifetime.[5]

So some wild-eyed socialist got us to throw away trillions of dollars on the Great Society program, and came up with this derogatory term for anyone who wasn’t along for the ride. That’s pretty much it. I mean, the history part of it.

But I found out a little more. I’ve got this weird habit with Wikipedia that comes from not quite believing anything I read a hundred percent…I keep clicking on the “Talk” tab. I find it interesting. Harrington’s talk-page had an item of additional interest in it.

An anon editor removed the quote from William F. Buckley to the effect that being the most prominent Socialist is America is akin to being “the tallest building in Topeka Kansas.” I found this kind of an endearing quote and am inclined to restore it. Any discussion?

And I was thinking, that’s Buckley at his finest right there. But say…I wonder…what does the discussion page behind “Neoconservative” look like? Maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong. Maybe that will tell me everything I need to know.

All Those Archives!Well, Good Lord. No wonder the article itself used to have all these interesting things that I can’t find anymore.

“It is simply discourteous to the other editors to make very significant edits without any edit summaries at all to let others know what you are doing with the article…”

“Please dont be so condescending that I have to “learn” to use certain mechanisms…”

“I’m frankly disappointed that you would proceed immediately to re-introduce disputed material without having responded to any of the editors over the past week during which the page was protected.”

“Please stop the nasty personal attacks. Please refer to me–as is basic simple courtesy for any Wiki editor–by my user name. Thanks.”

“God, your awfully thin skinned for someone who styles himself as such a major enemy of “the right”. You really are just a classic cliche of a bully who constantly name-calls whoever you don’t like and is totally emasculated when the tables are turned.”

“Have you tried Viagra? It might make you a more secure editor. Projection indeed! LOL!”

“Why do you so have your panties in a bunch about this Chip?”

“This is just harrassment pure and simple, which is all you know how to do, and yes, I repeat, you are a totalitarian!!!”

“I’m going to request mediation. This article seems desperately to need it.”

And so it goes. As to the actual claim that Harrington originated the term, I was able to pin down that citation and find it online with Google Books…here (chap. 2, pg. 55)…it’s E.J. Dionne opining about things, and to my disappointment there’s no reference or supporting evidence to this. There isn’t even a citation to any specific Harrington work. For all I know, Dionne may be simply opining about Harrington’s authorship itself.

While the New Left was rebelling at liberalism’s left flank, a group of intellectuals who shared some of the New Left’s skepticism began a revolt on liberalism’s right. The revolt of the neoconservatives was far more successful, and they continue to have a powerful impact on American politics.

Neoconservatives initially rebelled against the label neoconservative. They didn’t even invent it; the late Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, did. Harrington’s intent was to make clear that a group including many who called themselves liberal was in fact a movement of newly conservative ex-liberals. The label eventually stuck because it was so apt — and because over time, so many of the neoconservatives came to accept that they were conservatives after all. By the 1980s, in any event, the term conservative was anything but an insult. Irving Kristol, often described as the movement’s “godfather,” was one of the first to accept the label. He described himslf as “the only living and self-confessed neoconservative, at large or in captivity.” Conceding that political labeling was more a leftist than a conservative craft, Kristol said that conservatives sometims had to live with the handiwork of their foes. “The sensible course, therefore, is to take your label, claim it as your own, and run with it,” Kristol declared. He and his comrades did just that.

Neoconservatism has received so much attention because it was one of the clearest signs of a realignment in American politics. Neoconservatism represented the defection of an important and highly articulate group of liberals to the other side. Precisely because they knew liberalism from the inside, the neoconservatives were often more effective than the old conservatives at explaining what was wrong with the liberal creed. And on many issues, the neoconservatives were right or partly right — and usually interesting even when they were wrong.

Okay, so the word describes Irving Kristol, albeit with his own consent and even with his own participation. The hatred and resentment against those evil Jooooooooos pops up yet again. Well there are other things popping up yet again. As I noted before, neocons have some voice in our policy, a voice thought now to be in the winter of it’s existence. They are Jewish, they are affluent, and what I find to be most telling is that they used to be democrats. Usage of the term says more about the person using it than the person being described by it, so the spirit cloaked under the term is one of loathing, probably resentment over the switchover.

It’s kind of like how Clarence Thomas is loathed much more than Antonin Scalia even though, as far as the persons doing the loathing are concerned, the two justices rule the same way. Thomas is black. He’s thought to be guilty of some kind of betrayal that doesn’t apply to the Italian-American justice. So I guess the only way the Jews can be tolerated by the hard-left democrats, is if the Jews vote the way they’re supposed to…if they “know their place,” you might say.

Once they slither under the barbed wire, peel off that yellow star, and go voting where they aren’t supposed to be voting…they get called “neocons.”

Interestingly, it sounds like a portmanteau involving “neo-Nazi.” If Nazi tendencies have anything to do with this term, they underly the usage of it. It’s a classic case of projection.

There are individuals in mind for this term, and that’s what makes it really unique. It was used specifically to refer to Irving Kristol, as Dionne pointed out; to the extent I can do any of what’s called “research,” it seems formulated more to refer to Podhoretz, at least in the written sources I find. Out on the street, meanwhile, it looks like a reference to Paul Wolfowitz.

In context of the 2008 elections, it is a challenge to the Wolfowitz Doctrine. It invites a debate on this…which would be worthwhile…but it doesn’t really invite debate at all. It smears, it slanders, it gives people instructions about what to think.

It is a word-weapon brandished by socialists. It is a machinery deployed to rope the peacenik hippies, the stoners, the antisemites and the reverse-racists into the big tent of socialism.

These are interesting times, aren’t they?

You call someone a “socialist” and you can take it to the bank, someone’s going to insist on a long, drawn-out debate about the precise meaning of what you just called them, even though it’s unnecessary because it’s pretty well-established what a socialist is. You call someone a “neocon,” and we aren’t supposed to discuss that at all, even though there’s next-to-no agreement about what that word means.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Western Civilization, TIK 52 | 5 Comments »

Best Sentence XVIII

Friday, October 12th, 2007

Last month I shamelessly plugged this blog’s pages in a thread over on Pajamas Media, under a point/counterpoint article saying that an abortion was no more destructive to the rights of any other being, than ordering a cheeseburger with fries. My point was that this mindset was applicable in some way to just about every issue we’re arguing about now. There’s always a perspective someone wants to take on things, that starts with a premise that we are not glorious beings put in a glorious environment to fulfill a glorious purpose.

And the mindset slithers around and knots itself up into a messy ball of faux-logic, arriving at a conclusion having to do with “rights.” Well before ‘fessing up to this jaundiced view of our higher existential purpose, or lack thereof. And by the way, “every issue” means pretty much that. Abortion: We aren’t here to do much of anything, and so the mother has a right to terminate her pregnancy. All who dare to assert something else, or even to question this, must be shouted down. God in schools: We’ve got to get Him out of there. Intelligent Design must be pulled out of the science course, and put in the philosophy course, if it is to be put anywhere at all. Minimum wage: Nobody’s work is really that much more important than anybody else’s, so the services least in economic demand must be forced up to a certain level. Gun rights: You do not have a right or responsibility to protect your own family, that’s what 911 is for, and so you must surrender your guns, or at least register them so they can be taken away later. Torture: If the CIA is indeed protecting us from anyone, and this must be doubted everlastingly without any resolution one way or t’other, they must not resort to torture in what they do. No matter what. Death penalty: We must not do it, end of story. As for the guy who killed someone and the specific act that ended up putting him on that gurney, well, that’ll happen from time to time; but the important thing is the state must not kill to show that killing is wrong, even though it is.

All these people start from the axiom that no Higher Power put us here to accomplish anything more important than ourselves. Which must result in, in fact I would argue is a consequence of, the idea that life has but one purpose, and that is to be happy. They start out from that philosophical landmark, and trudge along a well-worn path to some magical valley filled to the brim with all these must‘s. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. They strive for a life with fewer rules in it — they end up just like Gulliver tethered down to the sandy beach by all those Lilliputians. The conundrum of self-contradiction is obvious.

I’ve expressed this over and over again, to the point where I’m like a broken record. I’ve just not been able to find a way to do it in a single sentence.

But someone named “James” did. On September 26 at 8:52 PM. Using the rhetorical question, thereby pulling down the latest Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award.

As an atheist who lives an evidence- and reason-based life, would you be kind enough to give me the scientific proof for the existence of human rights?

Ding ding ding. Certificate, trophy, medallion…coupon for dinner-for-two at Black Angus…whatever. You covered everything, before you reached the first dot. WELL done.

Meanwhile, let us inspect the monotheists like me who believe in a “sky fairy” toiling away with our silly taboos. Somehow, we seem to be the only ones left with the ability to truly intellectually open a “must” to question and scrutiny. And this is a very surprising thing. To doubt the existence of God or any other deity, is supposed to be a precursor of reasoned thinking. In fact, it is supposed to be a result of that. It’s supposed to lead to a “free” life, with fewer rules in it. How can it not? Here’s this entity constructed for the purpose of telling people what to do, with omnipotent authority, and you just got rid of it. And you’d think that’s exactly the way it works.

Here’s the rub, though. In real life, it’s completely opposite from that. Atheists cannot question the must, anymore than you can bend your elbow backward, touching your middle finger to the tip of your shoulder blade. The parts just don’t bend that way. Us sky-fairy-believers have our set of “musts”…all the atheists can do, is dismiss those outright, and maybe go to some length to be seen dismissing, so they can chalk up some kind of atheist-brownie-points. As for the atheists’ own “musts” — and they do seem to have a whole wheelbarrow full of them, compared to us — those pretty much just stand, self-evident. There’s no ensuing debate about them. The atheist will not, and cannot, participate in an exploration of where they lead…or from where they came. They simply are. It is an astoundingly anti-intellectual mental state to assume, for one that is supposed to be derived purely of reason and fact. Think, again, about Gulliver staked down on the beach.

If I choose not to believe in the atheist’s “must,” it’s just further evidence that I’m intellectually underpowered. These are really genuinely oppressive “musts” because they test the intellect, rather than the other way around. Gulliver can’t squirm, Gulliver can’t wriggle.

This is the paradox. We have the instinct to live free lives. But we can only do this by being religious. Which means, ultimately, that we have been tasked to achieve something glorious, of such a great magnitude that we can’t comprehend what it is, by a consciousness with greater authority and importance than what we possess ourselves.

To repudiate that, is to repudiate freedom.

Posted in Gawd Is Bad Mmmkay, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

Media Dishonesty Matters

Thursday, October 11th, 2007

I was skimming over this great list of lying liars that was linked from Tom the Impaler, and strangely, it was in that exact instant that #24 began to be interviewed by my local radio guys.

No, I didn’t call. A pirhana might think a prairie dog a tasty treat, but predators should stick to their chosen territory. A liar our thirty-ninth President may be, but he’s still a smart man, and the Lord of the Sound Bite which I’m not.

But I would love to see something done to take this guy down. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a class of sixth- or seventh-graders was assigned to study the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for two solid weeks…and then on Friday, sit down as a group and come up with twenty-five phrases that have something to do with what America is all about. With the text of those two documents fresh in their minds, get a good list of twenty-five things going.

And then, that Friday afternoon, Jimmy Carter is invited to address the class — and is presented with this question. You’ve said repeatedly that the current President is a disaster for the country. What do you, President Carter, envision as the ideals of that country?

Monday morning, the class cross-references the terms Carter used in his answer, against the list they drew up. Come up with an overlap. Make it a percentage. The results go on the innernets.

I venture to say we’d never hear from the windbag again.

He’s just not talking about what we call “America.” He’s talking about something else.

Posted in Bush Derangement Syndrome, History, Poisoning Western Civilization, TIK 70 | 1 Comment »

Not Buying It

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

I’ve got a mild buzzing migraine that I can tell is going to get worse throughout the day, and I’m in the mood to be pithy. Let’s see if I can veer off my more usual schtick of the zillion-word essay.

John McCain, President Bush, and I are in agreement. This is rare. The Senator went on record to say he agrees with the President’s veto decision against expanding the children’s healthcare program.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, told CNN Wednesday he agrees with President Bush’s veto of legislation expanding a children’s health insurance program, saying the bill provided a “phony smoke and mirrors way of paying for it.”

“Right call by the president,” the Republican White House hopeful told CNN’s John King. “We’ve laid a debt on these same children … that we’re saying we’re going to give health insurance to.”

The bill, which would cost $35 billion over five years, is meant to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to provide coverage to an additional 10 million children.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a different view. Because, once again, it’s all about the chiiiiiiiiilllddddddrrrreeeeeeeennnnn….

Today the President had an opportunity to sign a bipartisan bill that will bring health care to 10 million children in families struggling to make ends meet. Instead, President Bush used his cruel veto pen to say ‘I forbid 10 million children from getting the health benefits they deserve.’

And my beef, here, is about the radio airwaves. The boob tube bluster. The water cooler chit-chat. Surely, the “average” American sees things Speaker Nan’s way, right? Not a single thought about the expansion of the welfare state, it’s all about the poor precious babums vs. the “cruel veto pen.” Hells bells, if democracy worked we’d have fully-funded door-to-door baby formula delivery and diaper-washing service, with not a single thought as to who’s paying for it.

I am NOT buying it.

I have been scolded, as a “blogger,” for jousting with liberal straw men that don’t really exist. And this time, I’m inclined to believe the scolders are right. I think, if you can find me some people who see this Speaker Nan’s way, you will be sampling from a truly elite whacko-fringe group. I think at this point, most people understand that the Government doesn’t “bring” a damned thing — it confiscates. What it does bring, it confiscated from somewhere else. At this point, if you still have need for it to be pointed out to you, you’re never going to get it and I don’t think there are too many people in that club.

That goes for those who are in favor of the bill President Bush vetoed, by the way. I’m calling ’em out. I don’t think they give a damn about the chiiiiiiiiilllddddddrrrreeeeeeeennnnn. That’s just an excuse. Oh, here and there you’ll find some weepy chuckleheads who are going to honestly wonder how the poor whelps are going to make it now, but by-and-large this is something different. It is a debate about what is to become of America, and her ideals, and people on both sides of the fence see it that way.

Next subject: Why did this vet cut down the Mexican flag? Was he really upholding the law, and his country, or is he bigoted against Mexicans?

I predict some folks are going to swarm out of the woodwork and advance the notion that Jim (insert last name here after verifying correct spelling) is just a racist bigot, or at least that is what they honestly think about him. Not buying it. Flying the Mexican flag over the U.S. flag is against the law in Reno, and furthermore, Veteran Jim’s comments on Mike Gallagher’s program are a hundred percent correct. We have become culturally spineless on the matter of standing up for our nation — it’s customs, legacy, principles, language, and border. We aren’t cowards, and we’re not trying to save our hind ends; rather, we’re afraid of being accused of racism. The thing is, though, I’m not buying that any of the folks who stand ready to accuse others of racial hatred, really mean it. Sure they do the accusing. But it’s nothing more than an activist tactic.

Why in the world should they not resort to such a tactic — it works like a charm. What would have happened if Veteran Jimbo had not popped on to the scene with his Iraqi Freedom Knife.

A fun mental exercise in which I’ve invited people to partake, those who are worried about the “racist” angle, involves albinos. Suppose our nation bordered another, that was populated by albinos. Leave all other aspects in the illegal-immigration debate…every single minute, insignificant, arcane detail…unchanged. Just pretend it is albinos climbing the fence — people with lighter skin, instead of darker skin. In fact, while we’re at it, apply this exercise to the “Is Islam a violent religion or not?” issue and to the “Should we profile by race at the airport?” issue.

Leave everything else unchanged, just think about the skin color. Make it lighter instead of darker.

You’ve changed everything. What we “can’t” think and “can’t” say, suddenly, now, in our thought exercise with the albinos, we can. And what we can say now, in this otherworldly thought-exercise, suddenly, we can’t. People who are in reality opposed passionately to racial profiling, suddenly, are going to be in favor of it. People who are opposed to Veteran Jim taking down the flags with his big knife in our universe, in that thought exercise, suddenly would have no problem with it at all.

And all you’ve really changed, is that instead of these issues involving people with darker skin, you’ve tweaked the issues so they involve people with copy-paper-white skin and pink eyes.

We’re supposed to be all a-twitter about racism. What is racism, but an unreasonable weight placed on the factor of skin color in the making of decisions?

So I’m not buying the racism angle, not even a tiny little bit. I do not think we’re doing any worrying about racism at all; not even as much as we should be. What I think we have been doing, is practicing it. People take patently absurd positions on these issues, allowing foreign flags to be flown above their own country’s flag when it’s clearly against the law to do so, demanding that Scottish grandmothers with red hair be frisked at the airport in the name of “randomness” — because of dark skin. It’s the hue that results in these decisions that, otherwise, logically make no sense whatsoever.

What really amazes me is that while both Mexicans who cross the border illegally, and Muslims who support terrorist organizations in some way, can lay claim (with some tiny kernel of truth) to the “I’m doing it because I’m so poor and put-upon” defense — there is very little in history to connect the two societies with each other. In fact, you could make the argument that the most meaningful and tangible connection between the two, by far, is the fact that we in America happen to be arguing with each other about both those demographies at the same time. They haven’t got anything to do with each other. Or very little.

But they both have darker skin. Darker than — that hated Archie Bunker guy.

And so the issues that affect them, we treat exactly the same way. The situation has deteriorated to the point where the United States has a border less meaningful than the border of…just about any other country on the face of the earth. It makes no sense. It’s supposed to make sense to the people who disagree with me about it, people with a different point of view, perhaps buying into the “doing what is necessary to feed their families” angle. I don’t think that’s it. I’m not buying it. I think the open-borders types don’t give a damn about the anchor-babies. They just want cheap labor, they’re acting out of white guilt, or both.

It’s racism pure and simple. They’re insisting on utterly irrational decisions about people with darker skin, just because of that darker skin, and for no other reason. Take the skin color out of it through the “albino exercise” and their position becomes indefensible, even to them.

We’re supposed to be a color-blind society. We’re supposed to stand up to, and confront, racism wherever we find it. We haven’t been worthy of conferring that kind of compliment onto ourselves; the big “We” seems to like racism just fine, so long as it’s the right flavor.

Well…thus ends my attempt to say something pithy. Gonna go take some Aspirin and get my day started.

Posted in Illegal Immigration, Poisoning Western Civilization, Services Abuse | 2 Comments »

A Paragraph

Friday, September 28th, 2007

The date of publication of Atlas Shrugged is the twelfth of October. October 12, 1957…fifty years ago. Here’s where I found out about that…

Even though many reviewers weren’t impressed with “Atlas Shrugged,” it still left a major mark. Ayn Rand inspired many, many people; most of them highschool or college students when they first read it. Although it’s not a literary masterwork, it still sells some 150,000 copies each year. People’s lives continue to be changed by it. And for that, Rand should be respected.

Damn straight. And it’s a sad, tragic thing that it is become more and more relevant to our lives with every passing day.

You know about the world of Atlas Shrugged? It takes place in a dystopian future in an unspecified year, in a sort of alternate universe wherein the world is caught up in an industrial revolution, but one in which air freight was never possible and never implemented. In this world, the entire world has gone drunk on socialism, and America remains the sole hold-out…descending threateningly into the molten scrap heap that has already engulfed all the other countries.

I’ll quote one paragraph. Just one. If this doesn’t raise some eerie similarities with the reality plane you get to hear about each evening when you click on the news, each morning when you read the paper…well, you should probably move on to the next subject. But give it a read first:

We’re all one big family, they told us, we’re all in this together. But you don’t all stand working an acetylene torch ten hours a day – together, and you don’t all get a bellyache – together. What’s whose ability and which of whose needs come first? When it’s all in one pot, you can’t let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? If you did, he might claim that he needs a yacht – and if his feelings is all you have to go by, he might prove it, too. Why not? If it’s not right for me to own a car until I’ve worked myself into a hospital ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked savage on earth – why can’t he demand a yacht from me, too, if I still have the ability and have not collapsed? No? He can’t? Then why can he demand that I go without cream for my coffee until he’s replastered his living room?…Oh well…Well, anyway, it was decided that nobody had the right to judge his own need or ability. We *voted* on it. Yes ma’am, we voted on it in a public meeting twice a year. How else could it be done? Do you care to think what would happen at such a meeting? It took us just one meeting to discover that we had become beggars – rotten, whining, sniveling beggars, all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights and no earnings, his work didn’t belong to him, it belonged to ‘the family,’ and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his ‘need’ – so he had to beg in public for relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife’s head colds, hoping that ‘the family’ would throw him the alms. He had to claim miseries, because its miseries, not work, that had become the coin of the realm – so it turned into a contest among six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that *his* need was worse than his brother’s. How else could it be done? Do you care to guess what happened, what sort of men kept quiet, feeling shame, and what sort got away with the jackpot?

See anything familiar?

If you think you do, or if you think you might…it’s six bucks.

Timeless. I wish it were not.

Update: Here, the date of publication is listed as October 10.

Should try to pin this down. Whatever the exact date is, over the next two weeks there will likely be a mild uptick in the hubbub among the group-minded about what a dreadfully tedious book it is, and everyone should be advised to pronounce it juvenile and boring without actually reading much of it, or any at all.

With it’s tangled hodgepodge of interrelated sociopolitical themes, this “magnum opus” is actually pretty simple. It’s a manifesto that says some people are horrified at the idea of accomplishing something useful, or allowing anyone else to do so. And that in any organization or society in a decline, those people end up running things. Excellence and mediocrity switch places. This makes the decline more certain and inescapable.

I’m repeatedly instructed to believe, especially after having read the book, that I should find it to be a silly, meandering and pointless treatise, invariably by people who have not read it. Basically…that I should dismiss it. What keeps getting in my way, is that the core theme dovetails so nicely with what I’ve observed about people myself: When they do little to distinguish themselves, they get peevish and cranky about the very idea of someone else doing it.

Posted in Ayn Rand Spins, Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Western Civilization | 1 Comment »

Best Sentence XVII

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

The winner of the “Best Sentence I’ve Heard Lately” award is, once again, Ann Coulter. Hey, what can I say, she tries harder than most other folks. It’s her schtick; she makes it her business to win these things.

And like the girl with the curl, when she is good she is very very good. It’s actually two sentences this time:

The editors of The New York Times have been engaging in a spirited debate with their readers over whether doctors are wildly overpaid or just hugely overpaid. The results of this debate are available on TimeSelect, for just $49.95.

Posted in Blogs vs. MSM, Deranged Leftists, Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Universal Healthcare | 2 Comments »

Forcing Them Into Tolerance

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

Two priceless quotes.

Thing I Know #8: It is hard to get people to argue about private matters, but easy if you can somehow turn them into public matters.

A concerned parent in Evesham Township, New Jersey: I’m losing my tolerance for the amount of tolerance I’m supposed to tolerate.

At issue is the district’s program designed to comply with New Jersey requirements for a “diversity curriculum.”

The film, “That’s a Family!”, looks at diversity through the eyes of children who talk about their own families. One child talks about having mixed-race parents. Another talks about living with a divorced parent. Others talk about single parents, traditional parents, adoptive parents.

And then there’s the child who says, “This is my mom. Her name is Betty. And this is my other mom. Her name is Kim.”

What really gets under my skin about this is this presumption of what goes on if the matter is simply left unexplored. As if we’re all predestined to turn into a bunch of Archie Bunkers if some sweater-wearing blue-stater doesn’t get to us first, and teach us how to be tolerant.

I know better. First-hand.

What gets people intolerant, is watching a bunch of blue-state liberals take over the curriculum and start deciding, on in place of the parents, that the kids should be exposed to the same-sex live-in issue when the parents might not be cool with it. You know, that just might cheese some people off.

Isn’t it funny? When people discuss the benefits of “tolerance” — not pencil-neck bureaucrats, but real, flesh-and-blood Main Street people — invariably, when they have something good to say about it it’s because they want less anger in the world, and they hope a greater amount of tolerance will displace the anger.

And then when the bureaucrats start teaching little kids how to be tolerant, it seems to have a symbiotic relationship with anger. As in, “We’re going to teach you how not to grow up to be a filthy so-and-so like that no-good redneck Archie Bunker.”

What other motive can be behind exposing kids to same-sex households in a controlled environment? What if, within that child’s experience, the matter is simply left untouched. And one day he goes home for some after-school milk-and-cookies with his friend Jimmy…who tells him…this is my Mommy and this is my other Mommy. Does anybody, anywhere, seriously think the kid’s going to freak out on the spot?

No, I don’t think anybody thinks that. Not unless the kid has been learning hatred at home.

In which case, the purpose of the program is to displace the parents’ values. Oh yes, for a righteous and noble purpose…make sure those bigoted parents can’t contaminate the next generation with their bigoted filth.

Well, I see some value in that. But when the purpose is confined to that, it’s a little disquieting. If the kids have been learning tolerance at home…and if they’ve been learning nothing about the issue at home…they’re outside the designated scope of the program. It’s for kids that have learned things at home that the teachers don’t like. So line up kids, we’re going to make sure you’re sterilized of any slime and bug larvae you might have picked up in that gutter from whence you came.

It’s certainly a camel’s nose issue if nothing else. Today the kids will be cleansed of any home-schooled values about same-sex couples they might have picked up, that the academics don’t like; tomorrow, it’ll be voting ideology, religion, gun rights, NASCAR races vs. Soccer.

I dunno. It’s tough to live out on the west coast and see it as a mecca of individualist values. But there is something invading our Atlantic seaboard, it seems to me. My girl grew up in upstate New York, she came out here to California because I was able to fool her into thinking I’m some kind of desirable and sexy dude…we like to tease each other now and then about which state is doing a better job becoming a Peoples’ Republic. Out there in this swath that stretches down from New England, to the beltway of DC, something’s going on. This whole “screw those brits, let’s dump the tea in the harbor” spirit has been driven out. Forcefully, from my point-of-view. I feel it every time I have to rummage around for quarters so I can go through those damnable turnpikes.

And hatred-versus-love toward same-sex households — there’s no two ways about it, that’s a private matter. It’s being turned into a public matter, so we can waste a lot of energy arguing about it. Not so we can be more “tolerant.” That isn’t part of the plan. If it was, the heat would dissipate over time with these diversity curricula, and that isn’t what I see happening by a damn sight.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 2 Comments »

Omigawd, That’s a Dude?

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Via Rick, we learn about this…person. I had a real “It’s Pat” moment when I found out it wasn’t female.

I should add that I’ve met my share of genderly nebulous individuals and they weren’t such incredibly whiny bitches.

However, it’s a real first for me to bump into a YouTube clip with over 700 video responses. Well done…uh…er…sir.

Posted in Everyday Dimwits, Is It Really a Man's World?, Poisoning Western Civilization | 4 Comments »

Sweden: Men Are Bad

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Let’s work up this headline the way they’d do it on FARK:

Bad ManToday’s phony egghead study about women being good and men being bad, brought to you from Sweden.

Men are worse for the environment than women, spending more on petrol and eating more meat, both of which create greenhouse gas emissions. These are the conclusions of a new report by the Swedish Foreign Ministry.

“Three out of four cars in Sweden are today driven by men. Around ten percent of all drivers, mainly main, account for 60 percent of car journeys,” report author Gerd Johnsson-Latham told Svenska Dagbladet.

Huh. I’m a man, and I’m probably in the ten percent that accounts for 60 percent of all car journeys.

I’d guess out of the hundreds of thousands of miles I’ve driven, perhaps fifty-five to sixty-five percent of them were miles I drove because a woman sent me there. Oh, but wait we’re counting journeys, not miles, and I can understand why: My car pollutes much more badly in the first three minutes after I’ve started it up, just like any car. Well…trips to the grocery store tend to be pretty short, mostly within those three minutes — so by journey instead of by mile, it might be closer to seventy-five percent. At some times in my life, such a quotient would slink up toward ninety.

What do the Swedish propeller-beanie wearing eggheads have to say about men causing global warming by driving around in their cars after women have asked them to? Gosh…I just don’t know.

I’ll keep an eye out for any Americans touting this study, with little or no reservations about doing so. I’m reluctant to seriously imagine I’ll come across too many examples of this. For all our faults, Americans are a little bit better at sniffing out phony egghead studies that were churned out from some pre-existing agenda. Some of us lag way behind in that department, but it seems we’re overall better than some places in Europe, notably the Scandinavian ones…in spite of what we’re constantly told.

And this one’s just so blatant. Wow, they managed to kill three birds with one stone: men; the internal combustion engine; the consumption of red meat. Ooh, we gots a study that says all three are bad, bad, bad. No ax to grind here!

Sounds like a high-level overview of a Saturday Night Live skit. But no, it’s real.

Posted in Europeans, Is It Really a Man's World?, Phony Egghead Studies, Poisoning Masculinity, Poisoning Science | 1 Comment »

Steep Discount for Move On

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Terry Trippany, CEO and Chief Bottle Washer of Webloggin which currently hosts House of Eratosthenes, wrote up a revealing piece at Newsbusters about money changing hands between the New York Times and that advocacy group I like to call “Move On From Some Things, Dwell Obsessively On Other Things Dot Org.” Since, hey, let’s face it — that’s what it’s all about. democrat President lies under oath, move on…Florida is certified for President Bush in 2000, just keep picking at it like a little kid with his finger in his nose.

Betray Us?For the last handful of years, I’ve noticed being a good little leftist is all about telling others what to think. Move on from this…don’t move on from that…forget this…remember that. Never even think of allowing anybody to make up their own minds about things. Conservatives argue things, liberals chant things.

Really, since about the Great Depression our “progressives” have been hostile to the concept of the individual, so this is all to be expected.

What I really don’t get, though — and maybe this should make it on to the Things I Don’t Get list, because it really does baffle me — is the news monopoly. The dictatorship-ism of it all. I’ve encountered a lot of leftists, who don’t seem to even suspect they themselves are really leftists…bemoaning the dwindling number of corporate entities owning the news outlets. Much of this is inspired by the Murdoch acquisition of the Wall Street Journal, and on the surface it doesn’t seem to be a leftist argument. I personally find it pretty compelling. The theory is that our news drifts toward a railroad-baron-era monopoly, as the corporations that bring us our news, start to merge. Really, this just makes sense. The argument just boils down to this: Competition is healthy. What good American can argue with that?

Other than the speaker using the word “corporation” as a slur, like Ralph Nader, there isn’t much that’s even leftist about it.

But then I see our leftists going from that…to instructing me to believe, like Virginia’s daddy, if I see it in the New York Times it must be so. HELLO…big, leviathan, evil corporation? Monopoly? This was a concern just a minute ago?

Guess not.

So “Trip” finds out about this transaction and writes it up. Gets linked by Boortz, who for the moment has managed to screw up his archive page for September 12, so I can’t give Neal Boortz the customary hat tip with linky goodness like usual; I will when I can. Here’s the high level stuff. The notorious ad accuses General Petraeus of betraying his country, using a play on his last name. There is an argument used to support this accusation, and the argument is…well, the typical leftist bullcrap. He didn’t say what we leftists think he should have said, so that’s a betrayal.

See, when you’re a liberal-donk, you always start from the premise that someone owed you something. Must be a great way to go through life, in spite of the disappointments that must surface day after day.

The ad is freakin’ huge. The least you can expect to pay for a placement such as this is about $167 large. “Move on from some things, pick at other things like a skateboarding kid with a scab on his knee dot org” paid…drum roll, please…65.

Financially, so far as anybody knows, “Move on from some things dot org” is doing pretty well. The New York Times is NOT. Neither one of those is purely a private organization, so the public is entitled to know pretty much everything…and nothing has come to light to excuse this. In sum: If this isn’t an “in-kind contribution,” nothing is.

And there’s another angle to this as well, when one considers the laughable fantasy that the National Rifle Association or any other conservative-friendly group might get such a sweetheart deal. The “liberal press” angle. This is just one more piece of evidence to toss on the pile. It’s devastating, just like when the staffers at the Seattle Times erupted into applause upon hearing Karl Rove’s resignation. We are to presume when we read news out of a paper, it has been gathered with a sufficiently decent respect for truth and honesty, that we can make decisions based on what we read. This presumption depends on the supposition that there’s some objectivity at work here…some maturity. Maybe it’s impossible to be completely neutral when you’ve got a working brain and red blood in your veins, but if you do have some vicious slant and you’re a journalist, we the readers expect you to leave that at home.

Well…we’re running out of reasons to expect that.

It’s a “Why We Need Blogs” moment if ever there was one. Blogs are put together by loudmouths like me. We can lean right, we can lean left…whichever way we lean, we might as well ‘fess up about it because there isn’t much point trying to hide it. But newspapers on the other hand — they try to hide it. And it’s not like they can lean any ol’ way. They tend to slant left. They’re institutions. Institutions tend to harbor acrimony toward the individual, and when you’re hostile to the individual it just makes sense to lean left.

Which does wonders for the “move on from some things and stick to other things like krazy glue dot org” pocketbook.

Well — really, I think the public owes a thank you to the New York Times. Look what they let us know about for forty cents on the dollar: When you’re a left-wing activist group, you tend to define truth, honor and loyalty according to whether people say the things you like. This is a valuable chunk of information, and I know of some people who need to be told about it. Maybe if the Old Gray Lady gets in too much hot water, the feds should bail her out. And maybe, just maybe, that situation won’t be too long in coming.

Posted in Blogs vs. MSM, Elections, Iraq and WoT Stuff, My Blogger Friends, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 1 Comment »

Jackasses Ride It Out, Pachyderms Fall And Stay Down

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

When I was younger, if you defined for me a “scandal” as something that blows over if it affects a democrat but ends a career if it affects a Republican, I would have dismissed this as just so much whiny paranoid conservative right-wing garbage. But now, after so many years of seeing it work that way with so few exceptions, I’m just amazed it’s taken me so long to accept it. I find it even more amazing people can’t just look at what’s going on and just see it, like, instantly.

About the most charitable interpretation you could apply is that as a country we have an abrupt limit to our patience where hypocrisy is concerned. Republican politician says we need more “family values,” his donk opposition says no, we need people to be less judgmental — both get caught in scandal — I suppose you could have a greater desire to see the conservative bite the mat, without being prejudiced against conservatives. There you have a situation where both sides did something wrong, but only one side is a hypocrite. Maybe that’s all that is happening.

We can award forgiveness to our perverts and our white-collar criminals and our liars, just not to our hypocrites.

This is a worthwhile theory, and it can survive some scrutiny…even significant scrutiny. But not too much. Once you start to look at some other issues besides the famleeeee valyoooooz, you tend to make a rather surprising discovery about hypocrisy, and our tolerance of it. It turns out we have some. We have quite a bit.

Take tax policy as an example. if you’re serving as a “progressive” donk politician and you’re pissing and moaning about the public debt, how we need to “roll back the tax cuts of George W. Bush” so we don’t add on to the deficit too much, and to do that we need to soak the rich — I don’t think it’s the slobbering rabid right-wing Republican in me who wants to know if you’re mailing something extra to the federal treasury every year because you don’t think you’re being taxed enough. That’s not a right-wing question; it’s a neutral, and reasonable, question. Just because our print-media people aren’t inclined to ask it, doesn’t mean it isn’t the natural question to ask. Certainly not when you start bragging about how rich you are personally, and see this just proves how righteous you are because you want a tax policy that’s going to be unhelpful to you personally because you’re willing to “sacrifice.” I don’t think wanting to see your check stubs for those “extra” taxes your paying, is partisan. It’s just common sense. You think we don’t tax rich people enough, you’re rich yourself, you’re even bragging about it…show me your canceled checks for the “extra” taxes you’ve been paying. It’s perfectly legal to pay more taxes than what you owe in this country. The treasury won’t say no.

So to me, in a land that is ideologically-centered but shows glaring intolerance of hypocrisy, we wouldn’t have any politicians like this. In other words, give me twenty legislators who want to hike the marginal income tax rates and the capital gains taxes and the death tax, you should be able to show me twenty legislators who’ve been sending in “extra personal taxes” at the end of the year because they don’t think they’ve been getting taxed enough. Well, guess what. We’ve got all kinds of creeps under the dome that want to raise taxes. Rich creeps, who hire accountants you and I can’t afford to hire, to snag every single loophole that can be snagged just like any other financially savvy rich person. If that isn’t hypocrisy, why, I don’t know what is.

And there’s more than just the tax issue. There’s gun control…we have hypocrites there. Politicians using firearms, or hiring people who use firearms, to buttress and safeguard their personal safety, simultaneously working overtime to make sure it’s illegal for you and me to do the same thing. Hypocrisy. Hate crimes…as I was noticing last week, Janet Reno liked to pick-and-choose what would be prosecuted as a hate crime, apparently according to who was doing the hating and who was hated. You know, there are some powerful arguments in favor of and opposed to hate crime legislation, but it seems to me if you’re going to prosecute hate crimes in one direction, you should be willing to do it in all directions. Otherwise — that’s another example of hypocrisy.

I’m not jotting this down to pass judgment on it, that’s for the electorate to decide…or, I’ll pass judgment on it in some other essay, where that’s more in keeping with the point I want to make. In this space, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on: Do we have a societal value or set of values, a universal moral code if you will, that bristles with hatred against hypocrisy down to the marrow of it’s bones? Erm…no. No, that’s not it. It’s silly to entertain it seriously even for a few minutes. We’re just fine with hypocrisy.

Even if it has to do with our leaders telling us not to do something, and then going off and doing that very same thing themselves. We will find a way to deal.

Now, nobody ever reads this blog, as I keep saying…but if you were to pore over the hundreds and hundreds of postings, you would see an ongoing theme where we catch “us,” as in the big “we,” pretending to be independent thinkers and making up our own minds on things…but in reality, getting told what to do, carrying it out, and looking back toward whoever told us to do it, so we can do what they want us to do next. In early 21st-century western civilization, this is the great tragedy of the human race. We like to think we arrive at conclusions independently — this is good, that is bad, we should stop doing such-and-such, so-and-so’s gotta step down — but…we don’t. We are pilot whales. We are lemmings. We think what we’re told to think.

We have to do this. How can we not?

After all, we’ve been sold on the idea that if two guys live next door to each other, one believes in Creationism and the other one believes in Evolution, they can’t be friends. Certain individuals, of course, have friendships they truly treasure, and with those ideologically-opposed friends, they become exceptions to the rule. But overall, the pattern holds firm. And it is truly sad. You think Atlantis existed, and your friend doesn’t…you think Jack The Ripper was a woman, your friend says otherwise…you think O.J. Simpson got away with murder, your friend says he was framed…you must stop being friends now. You’re not supposed to have anything to say to each other, except for periodic attempts to show each other how wrong you are.

So…to stay friends with people, we have to agree with them about things. We’ve lost the ability to maintain camaraderie with acquaintances who’ve looked at the same facts and formed different conclusions. If not lost it, we’ve allowed much of it to erode away.

And we’re a gregarious species. To our credit, we want to get along with each other.

So you see, logically, there’s no place else we can take that. We have to make sure we all think the same thing about a given situation. If everybody “knows” something is true and in our hearts, as thinking individuals, we know the opposite…we have to give that up for the sake of getting along with others. It’s got to be that way.

And in the right line of work, you get to tell people what they should be thinking, all day, every day. It’s really become rather useless and redundant to argue whether these kinds of professionals are slanted toward progressive political candidates and solutions. Everybody knows by now that they are; nobody’s saying otherwise, except the progressive candidates who are being handed sweetheart free-publicity deals and softball questions, and just a few of the journalists who are inclined to vote for them. To the rest of us, it’s become abundantly clear. Editors, columnists, people who are in the business of telling the rest of us what to think — they just like democrats.

Except the talk-radio heads. For a number of reasons, that’s different. I’ll get to that some other time.

But our print and electronic opinion-maker people, they really do love those democrats. Nowhere is this more plainly obvious, than in America’s newest tradition: The scandal. Conservative Republicans don’t survive them; liberal donks do. One scandal turns out that way, then another, then another…nobody questions it anymore. The questions are now reserved for milestones. How long till the conservative guy resigns? Is the liberal guy all done riding this thing out yet, or is there more to come? As far as how it’s going to turn out — there isn’t even any mystery to it anymore. Newspaper people want the Republicans to bite dust and for the liberal donks to hang tough…the rest of us obediently comply. And so this is the way things turn out. What was done, what we know about what was done — what, you thought those things had something to do with it? They don’t.

Yesterday morning, I tripped across Panda’s Thumb’s comment that scandals seem to afflict “Creationist” types disproportionately. I said the Thumb was correct, but not in the way the Thumb thought — the scandal has become an instrument in the surgical procedure that is the periodic removal of those who are religion-inclined.

…Panda’s Thumb is right: Scandals disproportionately afflict those failing to demonstrate an inimicable attitude toward religion, failing to embrace secularism. Scandals will continue to be pointed in that direction, toward those targets. The theory is correct, just not for the reasons thought.

That was yesterday. Today is today.

Effort to oust Doolittle grows
Embattled by scandal, he faces a possible fight to keep his seat.
By David Whitney – Bee Washington Bureau

One by one, Republicans are lining up to elbow John Doolittle out of the way.

Conservative Air Force reservist Eric Egland, who appeared in an ad for Doolittle last year, says he will run against the congressman in the June primary, and he’s already raised $100,000.

Moderate Mike Holmes, the Auburn city councilman who received 33 percent of the primary vote against Doolittle last year, says he will try again.

Last week, Roseville Assemblyman Ted Gaines, another Republican politically aligned with Doolittle, all but announced his candidacy, saying the congressman has lost his “moral ability to lead.”

Their collective message is that a federal investigation of Doolittle and his wife has become an insurmountable political obstacle.

If Doolittle doesn’t make plans to retire, they say he will have to be defeated in a primary to prevent Democrat Charlie Brown from capturing the 4th Congressional District.

Republican consultant Jeff Flint said it’s time for party leaders to take action to prevent Doolittle from seeking a 10th term next year.

“Eventually, the party leadership is going to have a serious conversation with him,” Flint said. “Those things tend to work better sooner than later. If you wait too long, it just taints the whole district. You end up losing the district even if the troubled incumbent is not the nominee anymore.”

What’s the story missing? It’s missing an event that made it imperative to do a write-up about the situation. Other than the elections next year, there isn’t one…there’s a scandal, with an associated hubbub that’s been waxing and waning for many years now. Nothing has happened with the scandal lately, nothing at all. It’s just kind of hanging out there. It was supposed to create a desired result, it has not done so yet — and so it’s time to write up a story about the “troubled” and “embattled” congressman Doolittle.

You see, our newspaper editors don’t get to decide how we vote. But they do get to decide what we talk about.

And if Doolittle was a liberal donk, this would not be happening. The layman doesn’t understand what Doolittle did wrong, and the scandal is over two years old. Granted, those are very dismal reasons for overlooking, or dismissing, a scandal. But let’s face it: For a liberal donk, either one of those would be more than adequate. Liberal donk does something wrong, nobody really understands what it was…well, that’s okay. Or…scandal grows around the liberal donk, two years into it the donk is still there — well, just forget it then. The public is “tired” of the scandal. You’ve “shot your wad.” “Move on.”

Both of those factors together? The scandal has crossed the two year mark, and nobody understood what it was all about in the first place? Hah! Forget it. A liberal donk, in that situation, would have nothing to worry about. He’d live to bury us all.

But Doolittle is a conservative Republican, with short fine slick black hair parted on one side.

Look at the week just gone past that this Sunday edition of the newspaper “bookended”: Yes, Sen. Larry Craig got taken down. In record time. Which further helps to support my theory…but something else happened. Hillary Clinton learned one of her most energetic fund-raisers was a fugitive on the run from the law.

That is a scandal. Hillary will survive it, relatively unscathed. Larry Craig did not survive his…Doolittle will not survive his either. Deep down, anybody who’s paid more than a passing glance worth of attention to this kind of issue, knows this is exactly how things will turn out. Why things are this way, nobody can explain. Not according to an innocent viewpoint about how our political society judges people, they can’t. By being cynical, and suspecting the worst, I think I’ve cobbled together a serviceable explanation above.

It is the only one…the ONLY one…that works. We just aren’t into right-and-wrong that much. We just don’t care. We’re into making sure donks live to fight another day, and elephants bite the dust. Our newspaper editors, you see, want things to be that way. And we all want to get along with each other. Therefore, we comply.

And we’re worried about “civil liberties” because some murderous creep down in Gitmo doesn’t understand air conditioning, and thinks he’s tortured when a machine blows cold air into his cell? I dunno, y’all…seems a better sense of perspective is overdue.

Posted in Blogs vs. MSM, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 3 Comments »

Creationist Scandals

Saturday, September 1st, 2007

Panda’s Thumb has an interesting theory for which support has been gleaned from the Larry Craig mess: that scandals disproportionately afflict creationists. Into the supporting data sets waltzes Sen. Craig, who in 1989…

…co-sponsored a constitutional amendment, the “Community Life Amendment,” to authorize teaching “the creation of the earth as accepted in Judeo-Christian tradition.”

I think Panda’s Thumb’s theory might have been in better shape if Sen. Craig’s name had been left unmentioned. It’s not too extravagant to suppose the Senator is innocent of the charges. True, he did plead guilty to a lesser charge, and there are other problems with the supposition — who the hell picks up toilet paper on the floor of bathroom stalls, how can you take it so calmly when a cop calls you a liar, and so forth — but it’s a little strange that so much legal hot water can be churned up out of so little evidence. This is bothersome to quite a few folks, some of whom hate Sen. Craig’s guts and think he’s guilty as hell. A prostitution sting can’t work this way. A lot of other things can’t work this way. A cop can’t bust you for fidgeting, making gestures, gesturing in manners anecdotally associated with…ripping off a stereo system out of a jeep. Pressing chewing gum against a bus seat. Jaywalking. Tearing the tag off a mattress.

And then there’s the thing loyal gentlemen Craig-haters club members refuse to discuss: Do you want to take a crap in a stall next to a cop? A cop who can’t leave his own crapper until he busts someone? Are you in control of where your feet are going and how they’re moving? Really?

So to include Sen. Craig, strikes me as a little bit of a grasping-at-straws exercise. If we’re counting scandals, and measuring them on any sort of a scientific basis, the Craig thing hardly emerges as a creme de la creme specimen, does it? No, if the Craig mess is statistically representative of any phenomenon, it is a phenomenon of people talking about things, and officials being forced to resign over those things — but not of those things actually being done.

And in this respect, Panda is quite correct. Just not in the way Panda thinks.

At this point, we have to confess to an ugly truth about religion. It is more than a belief in one or several deities. It always has been much more than that. It is a system which empowers the few to dictate behavior to many, and avoid any intra-societal debate about whether such behavior would be beneficial or not, or whether there might be alternatives. This is the stigma the secularists continue to slap on religion, and they are quite correct about this. Religion is an ancient method of keeping the riff-raff in line. This is what has kept it around for so long, at least throughout the middle ages. It’s undeniable.

Saying so doesn’t make you a godless heathen. You can admit this truism and still have a healthy belief in and respect for God. This confession has to do with the affairs of men, which is an enclave altogether separate from the dominion of God.

The thing is, though, religion works best when people struggle away in substandard lifestyles. Actually, when people have no lifestyles. This is easy to substantiate. Here we are in 2007, we have an unprecedented surge of atheism…oh, look how popular it is! Can’t swing a dead cat around without hitting an atheist, haughtily lecturing at you that the cat evolved from a ladybug, now there is no cat, and you’re such a drooling idiot if you dare to question his wisdom. Atheist book after atheist book after atheist book hits the best-seller list — there are even “A for Atheism” tee shirts. It’s a big business, one that looks more and more, ironically enough, like evangelism.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what’s going on here. People, we see fairly easily once we really start to pay attention to them and how they do things, aren’t so ready, willing and able to soar above the level of an easily-led zombie as they prefer to believe they are. They like someone else telling them what to do. They might not like the idea of it, and sometimes they’re less welcoming of it than other times. But over the long haul, they certainly can’t be counted on to nurse a viscerally-independent rebellious acrimony toward arbitrary and excessive authority.

Over the long haul, they’ll always make a place for it. For the “natural-born leader” who steps in and starts slinging around commandments…benevolent commandments, malicious ones, duplicitous ones, or just-plain poorly-thought-out ones.

And you can take it to the bank that someone will always be willing to step up and do exactly that. Blame God or blame Darwin — somehow, we have been hard-wired to live in tribes. Tribes with hierarchical command structures. Leaders…followers…neither class with a monopoly on survival-related genetic attributes, since after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, both classes are still here. Goin’ STRONG. No end in sight. Anyone who seeks to assert leading-and-following is learned behavior, only has to hang around groups of people while they do the leading-and-following for awhile. Watch the group put someone in charge. See how much sense it makes. Repeat the experiment a few times…the “learned behavior” theory will be quietly withdrawn in sheepish disgrace. It isn’t learned behavior. It’s genetic coding.

The methodology of communication between these two classes, the “network topology,” if you will, by which the leaders tell the followers what to do — this is the only thing that changes. It changes with technology. In an agricultural society, religion just seems like a natural fit. Try living as a farmer for a year without praying. Try doing it when you have fifteen kids, fifteen kids you need in order to get enough help with the spring planting or the fall harvest. Try it when, at best, you might be able to hope for ten of those fifteen to live long enough to have kids of their own, and only five of the fifteen to live to bury you.

Just try not praying then.

Once you realize that, you realize how cowardly atheism is. There is the factual cowardice of it; it is “right,” because and only because God is an entity whose existence cannot be proven. This means atheism cannot be debunked, and since it cannot be debunked it insists on being awarded the status of “proven,” when all it has achieved is non-debunkery, and a logical assurance of everlasting non-debunkery. No further proof than that. “I must be right, for you cannot say that I am wrong,” is what it tells us.

But there is also the fair-weather cowardice. Atheism pops up to accept accolades and embraces from our society, when it can. Once the starvation and pestilence and Great Depressions and Nazis and under-electrified rural areas and racial oppression have been relegated to the dustbin of history, with the lid of the dustbin riveted and welded in place — up pops atheism! We can afford to be atheists now, although our grandparents could not have. Nevermind that, we can be atheists now, so let’s have at it.

In the end, Panda’s Thumb’s error is to associate the word “scandal” with some kind of honest and even-handed delivery of hard fact. This is why I think so little of Panda’s example, since the Craig Scandal is based on postulation and not fact.

The Thumb has accidentally proven something problematic to the theory it intends to promote; it has stuck a rake handle into it’s own bicycle spokes. Scandals, as we know them today, are not about guilt. They are about control. They are about telling the “little people” what to think and what to do…exactly the task religion was achieving for the powerful, hundreds of years ago.

This is a process that has been repeated countless times in human history, each time a new sovereign has displaced an old one through a revolution. The difference now is that the new emperor, and the former one, are harder to identify. Neither one wore a crown, neither one was an individual, but rather they were & are aggregates of individuals. But now, as in revolutions past, our new ruler has to sweep away the remnants of government wielded by the old one. This is an essential last-phase of any successful revolution — the parliament and the councils and the census-taking establishments of the displaced king, must be broken down, then rooted out, then swept away, and the residue sterilized.

That’s what the new ruler is doing now, and that’s what atheism is all about. Godless people are much easier to control. They don’t think they were put here by a Higher Power for any glorious purpose…of necessity, they must think the whole point to their existence is to eat and poop and inhale and exhale, plus whatever ancillary purpose some employer somewhere might see fit for them to do. An employer which, of further necessity, they must think of as some kind of fool, or a big meanie, or both.

This is why atheists don’t often have too many nice things to say about other people, unless those other people are also atheists. I can pretty much promise you if an atheist happens to trip across this post, he or she will prove this point nicely. Better than even odds the adjective “stupid” will be embedded somewhere in the response, and will compliment yours truly.

Anyway, that’s what scandals are now. Pretty much. They are drummed up artificially, tossed out to us like T-bone steaks to hungry tigers, at times deemed convenient to interested parties. This is not to say everyone afflicted with scandal is innocent. But we might as well admit that scandals are being used as devices, since they doubtlessly are. The scandal is a new Layer 2 network topology — it displaces religion exactly the same way Ethernet displaced Token-Ring. It is a new mechanism to keep the proles and plebes in line, now that the technology is available to sustain a communication medium that relies on rhythm, and there is a pressing need for such a medium that does what the old one did, while eschewing any notion of a deity. Demand…supply.

So I think Panda’s Thumb is right: Scandals disproportionately afflict those failing to demonstrate an inimicable attitude toward religion, failing to embrace secularism. Scandals will continue to be pointed in that direction, toward those targets. The theory is correct, just not for the reasons thought.

Thing I Know #85. As the standard of living improves, people slowly lose their need for a Supreme Being, while their need for a spiritual leader remains.

Thing I Know #175. Atheists are supposed to value their independence, and be determined to live out their lives to appeal to no one, and at the pleasure of no one. But when they’re around other atheists they don’t act like this.

Posted in Gawd Is Bad Mmmkay, Incumbent Scandals, Poisoning Christianity | 2 Comments »

Memo For File XLV

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

I was watching some stupid show on cable television last night on one of those retro-channels, and nodded off.

Woke up somewhere around one in the morning. There was some other stupid family sitcom from about twenty-five years ago, give or take. The matriarch of the household was studying for her G.E.D. so she could get a better job, and the Lord of the Manor was throwing some kind of hissy-fit that she hadn’t consulted him first, and trying to stop her…to lay down the LAW. She started out all meek and submissive, and then chose to assert herself.

I nodded off again, this time until the coffeemaker went off. This time there was an entirely different family sitcom, in which the woman wore a black wig over her blond hair and the man was having some kind of conniption, once again trying to lay down the LAW. She once again, started out contrite, and then again, chose to assert herself.

It’s interesting watching what passes for comedy in one eon, through the lens of history in some “future” eon. It helps to restore your perspective. Like for example — how is it an entire society got fooled, for a whole generation, into thinking this was entertainment? Some hotshot television producer who doesn’t know jack-squat about real domestic squabbles, assembles a theatrical troop to tell those filthy commoners what they are arguing about in their living rooms, and a bunch of other bigwigs who also wouldn’t know a real domestic squabble even if it bit ’em square in what passes for their testes, get together and green-light it.

I’ve married and dated some dimwit women in my time, and it’s probably fair to say of all the tiffs you can possibly have with each other under a roof, I’ve participated in…well…probably most of them. Which is not a badge of honor by any means, but after such a sumptuous banquet I doubt there are too many dishes left from which I haven’t sampled. Trust me. TRUST me…I have never, ever, squabbled with a woman about her hair color, or thrown some kind of bitch-pitch because she wanted to acquire some new skills and make herself a better person.

This is where I get e-mail from petulant women who actually went through the experience. Save yourselves some time; I’m sure here and there, it’s happened, just like lightning strikes people sometimes, and sometimes jet planes crash into mountains. My issue is with how often such things happen — the frequency. Already, the patriarch who has some kind of beef with his wife or paramour making more money, is Number One on my list of Things I Doubt. I don’t personally know of any man who has this peeve, nor have I ever. It can’t be that common.

Why make that the point of something that is supposed to be comedy? Is this some kind of hidden agenda? Kind of a “we’ll pretend to be entertaining you, but what we’re really going to do is lecture you to be more supportive of that womens’ lib stuff.” Now and then, this can be overlooked I suppose. “Comedies” can be poignant, and every now and then they can stop being funny. I can see how this adds depth. But why should an entire generation have been defined this way?

It’s fair to say some pudgy middle-aged guy falling asleep in front of the retro-channel when he should be in bed, jolting himself awake every two hours to see what’s on the boob tube at that minute, is something of a “random sampling.” And if it’s fair to say that, what does it say that my random sampling continually ambushes me with another snotty, whimpering lecture from the Hollywood ivory-tower types, who are essentially complete strangers, that we should stop being such chauvinists and bigots? That isn’t what I call “now and then”; this is closer to what I would call “all the damn time.” And at that point, it ceases to be comedy.

It has to, right?

One more thought: If what we’re seeing here is some definition of what feminism really is, or is supposed to be, I have to ask if it was supposed to add to this assortment of other definitions, or replace them. If it is additive, well then that was quite the menagerie of agendas we went through all those years ago, wasn’t it? Given that they were all arranged under the singular banner of “feminism”? I mean, what are we up to…equal pay for equal worth; womens’ right to abort pregnancies; women going to work if they want to; smashing the glass ceiling, which is a somewhat different item from allowing women to work in the first place; coercing men into doing more chores, even if their wives are among the ones who DON’T work; promoting cultural icons of heroes who are more sensitive and less masculine, and heroines who are more caustic and unfriendly, and less feminine; making it artificially difficult to open strip bars, or to patronize them.

To that overly-complex stewpot we should toss in some other issues that seem, on the surface, to be gender neutral — but are designed to appeal to the female mindset. Things that wouldn’t have had a prayer of passage before suffrage. Nanny-state stuff. Wage and price controls, universal health care, hate crime laws, mandatory sensitivity training.

And now we have: Encouraging family squabbles about hair color and other such trivial nonsense.

Looking back on the feminist movement — if it was more sincere, wouldn’t it have been somewhat simpler?

I oppose illegal immigration. Some people agree with me, because they’re a bunch of damned racists…and people like me, are engaged in a never-ending struggle to promote our cause, while separating ourselves from people like them. That job is NEVER done. Well…some feminists support equal-pay for equal-worth, because that’s fair — and other feminists genuinely hate men. The sitcoms I saw last night, were put together to appeal to people of both sexes who genuinely hate men. People who like to indulge in extravagant fantasies about men ordering their wives around, make your hair this color, don’t get an education, don’t work. I don’t think equal-pay for equal-worth has an awful lot to do with that. This was hate, pure and simple, disguised as something that was supposed to draw laughter.

Not as bad as feeding Christians to lions…but sort of meandering off in that general direction. And we’re still tolerating it after thirty-five years.

How come equivalent pressure wasn’t put on the feminists, and still isn’t put on them to this very day, to clarify the message so the rest of us can be assured that hate isn’t part of it?

Posted in Is It Really a Man's World?, Poisoning Masculinity | No Comments »

Zahn Rule

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

I’m not keen on the sole-source, especially when it deals with the private lives of celebrities and one can easily see it’s giving far more air-time to one side of a dispute than the other. So I’m inclined to ignore this…but lacking that level of dignity, I’m inclined to believe only part of the article without the customary heavy-questioning. Just two things: That Paula Zahn carried on an affair behind the back of her husband of twenty years, for a significant chunk of that time, and that she’s trying to put the screws to him in court. Seems to me if either one of those was a falsehood, there’d be little profit in spreading it and it would have been easily detected before the presses were fired up.

The illicit, years-long love affair between Zahn and business big Paul Fribourg was sizzling even as Fribourg hit the golf links with Zahn’s real-estate magnate husband, Richard Cohen, sources told The Post yesterday.
:
Sources declined to discuss any details of Zahn’s “love book” or where exactly it was found, except to say, “She was indiscreet.”

The former CNN anchor’s affair with Fribourg became public knowledge in April, when it was announced that Zahn and Cohen were parting ways after 20 years.

“He’s told friends her affair just took his heart out,” the pal said.

Friends said Cohen had believed the relationship was a recent development, but Zahn’s book shows their relationship was much more “long-term” than Cohen had ever suspected.

Let me just state for the record that I am absolutely, positively opposed to criminalizing marital affairs. BUT…

Zahn, 51, and Cohen haven’t yet filed divorce papers, and Cohen’s friends said he thought they were trying to work out an amicable agreement until Friday, when Zahn socked him with a lawsuit demanding he account for the whereabouts of her estimated $25 million in earnings over the past 20 years.

The suit accused Cohen, who’s acted as Zahn’s financial manager since 1986, of putting much of her money into “highly illiquid limited liability companies.”

It also charged that “some of her earnings had been diverted to Mr. Cohen’s individual account . . . for his own use and benefit.”

…there is something especially unseemly about swimming through life like a shark, grabbing what you can, and then once the feeding frenzy comes to a stop for whatever reason suddenly insisting that everything in life should pasteurized and it all ought to be fair. Regardless of my personal preferences about what people should & shouldn’t do, I’m impressed with the realization that an institution that has degraded to this level, cannot possibly endure long. That goes for the institution of marriage, and it goes for civilization as well.

Does that mean unfaithful spouses should leave a marriage with just the clothes on their backs, and be happy they got just that? Well…yes. I guess that’s exactly what I’m saying. Husbands too.

What kind of integrity can we bring to contracts we sign in all other aspects of life — apartment leases, auto loans, mortgages, employment contracts, whatever — if it’s codified into civil law that people can enter into marriages, and just live the parts of the marriage that they happen to like, abandoning the rest? To allow that to go on, redefines adults into children.

I say, let’s start respecting choice. If adulterers want to live a life of adventure, we should let them…and make it so they can keep “their” property right up until they get caught. Seriously, what is the downside of that? Think of the alternative. The alternative is to say that one party in a contract can exploit the other party, by declaring when life is a “Lord of the Flies” chapter — and when life is to be utterly sterilized of anything that might be regarded as unfair…simply by being the first between the two parties to so declare. It would be saying whoever gets the pork chop is the first one to grab it off the plate. That is the antithesis of civilization itself. It’s NOT a private matter, it affects us all, in fact it’s a shame on all of us that we’ve put up with this.

Adulterers are scum. Unfaithful husbands, unfaithful wives — if they don’t like their lives, let them start new ones. Fresh, clean, and possession free, like the minute they were born.

Posted in Glad I Learned About This, Is It Really a Man's World?, Poisoning Justice | No Comments »

Tortured Debate

Monday, August 27th, 2007

Alberto Gonzales has resigned from his post as U.S. Attorney General, as Charles Krauthammer and I thought he should’ve a long time ago.

This makes me think about something:

I was on a thread somewhere and I got into a bit of a dust-up with some rabid left-wingers on the torture thing. I was pointing out something no different from what I had pointed out in other places, before: I’m not completely sold on the idea that this is “wrong,” and I find it deceptive to lump “humiliation” together with the stuff that comes to mind when you use the T-word. Namely, bodily mutilations, fire and steel. I don’t see these as the same thing and I don’t think there are very many people, at all, who see them as the same thing. To pretend these are on the same footing, in any way, is fundamentally dishonest.

And in my assessment of the argument, the “Torture Is Wrong” doctrine depends completely on those two things being the same. Once you acknowledge they’re different, you realize something: This really is all about de-fanging the United States. It’s about making sure we can’t do anything to win the war, besides getting shot at. Just because a lot of “Torture Is Wrong” people aren’t after that, doesn’t mean there’s some other motive behind it. There isn’t. It’s about emboldening one side of this war, by putting the other side — us — on a short leash, and letting them do whatever they want.

Now, this argument doesn’t have much currency. In the dust-up in which I lowered myself to participating, the left-wingers expressed their horror at my different ideas so all the other left-wingers could see them doing it, and that was the end of it…in short, they argued from personal incredulity…

…but my argument doesn’t have currency outside of left-winger-land, either. People, to their credit, are generally very keen on the idea that governments are corrupt and it’s up to the people represented by those governments, to straighten them out and keep them straightened out. This is a noble goal. Of course, the immature mind is selective about this; he is more receptive to this when the party opposed to his, is the one in power. In other words, the dullard falls prey to the “My guy is okay, the other guy is messed up” mindset.

That’s where our left-wingers are coming from right now. The other guy is in power…so now, the government can do bad things. Alert Mode On. Once a “good guy” is in the White House, we can get back to worrying about confiscating guns, images of Moses in courthouses, price-gouging in the kids’ cereal market, not enough blacks on cable TV sitcoms, and are the taxpayers paying enough that Grandma can buy medicine and dog food for her dinner. And naturally, if any of these problems go unsolved — and trust me, all of them will remain essentially unchanged, no matter how much time is spent solving them — it won’t reflect poorly on that “good guy” in charge. He’ll be “trying.” It’ll be like the nineties all over again.

But for those of us who want the United States to win the war, one issue remains. I’m not sure what you can do to get information out of a “detainee,” if 1) Torture is wrong, and 2) Torture includes everything less-than-comfortable. What then? You’d have to just sit around waiting for him to feel talkative, wouldn’t you? I mean, what else is there?

Well, it turns out this was prophetic. Now that a successor will have to be nominated for Gonzo, we’re about to be dragged through the torture debate. The newspapers and the cable television and the alphabet-soup-network commentators have their own ideas — make that “idea” — about the angle on this story. As usual, the bloggers have a more interesting, enlightening, and multi-point perspective on the issue. Simply put, we have a few more questions about it.

I wish to contribute my own questions to the discussion. The question I thought of since the dust-up was:

What if we were to abolish torture, and not tell anybody?

You see, over the years I’ve noticed something about people. When they say “you shouldn’t do X” and the only answer they can provide as to why, is “because X is wrong” — they typically don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not X continues to be done or not. What they really want, is to be seen intoning to someone that X ought not be done because X is wrong. They’re performing. Style over substance. So my question is…what if we were to do exactly what they want, but only on the layer that deals with substance?

What if the world were to continue to believe we were torturing people, and meanwhile, behind the scenes, we didn’t do it? What if someone were to be completely deserving of the credit of making us stop torturing people…but not get any of the credit for stopping us? That would be like going to the golf course alone and getting a hole-in-one with nobody around to see. But if it’s about right-and-wrong, that’d be okay wouldn’t it?

Granted, this would violate the Living With Morgan Rule #1, in which, deploring false accusations, once I’m accused of something I want to be guilty of doing it. But leaving that aside. Suppose the world community is left to conclude we’re waterboarding these guys and subjecting them to the batteries-in-a-pillowcase debriefing sessions. But meanwhile, behind the scenes all we do is wait hand and foot on Ahmed and Muammar like waiters in some five-star restaurant…all day long, and then the next day we do it again. If they want to talk, we listen. If not, we serve up another banana-nut muffin and make sure there’s a good selection between grape jelly and orange marmalade.

Now, would that be okay? I mean, we wouldn’t be doing anything “wrong”; just, a lot of folks would be laboring under the misconception that we are.

I would have to expect, realistically, my plan wouldn’t get a lot of takers. It would, however, have a unifying effect on those who place more importance on reality itself, than the popular perception of that reality. Those on the “right wing” would rightfully conclude I’d be throwing in the towel on the prospect of getting any information out of these guys. They’d say, as a direct result of this, people will die. I don’t have any information that would contradict this; I don’t think anyone else does either. And those on the “left wing” who ought to be celebrating at our government somehow becoming “ethical,” would doubtless find something else that isn’t up to snuff, and start complaining about that.

Of course, for those who are concerned about image, by design the situtation would remain unchanged. I expect they’d go on and on about polls, and disapproval, and international-community this and we are seen that.

I would expect something else, though.

A lot of substance-over-image left-wingers, would hop the turnstyle. They’d start to worry more about image of what’s going on, than about what’s actually going on. I mean, that’s the part of it that would still suck…so they’d simply change what they find important.

At this point, let’s end the mental exercise. It has achieved what it was tossed out to accomplish. The torture debate has nothing to do with what is actually happening; it has to do with the public image of what is happening. It’s all about perceptions. Let me repeat: The debate is ALL about perceptions. It has butkus to do with reality.

When people say “we should not torture because it is wrong,” what they really mean is “we should not torture because it can be presented as being wrong” or “we should not torture because I can get lots of people agitated over the idea that it is wrong.”

Torture really being wrong, has nothing to do with it. That’s why nobody’s going to stick their neck out and sign on to the idea that “if we stop torturing people we will become noble.” Nobody’s saying that, and nobody will say that.

But they’ll sure as hell say the opposite. They’ll say “people despise us because we torture,” even though they’ll never say “people will start liking us if we don’t torture.”

So their argument is lacking in substance, because it isn’t about substance. It isn’t supposed to be. This is why my “solution” wouldn’t be any solution at all. It fixes the substance while leaving the image unchanged…in what is essentially a public-relations issue.

But the P.R. guys don’t have a solution either. Before we started arguing all over the world about torture, we were arguing all over the world about the invasion of Iraq. How many people do you know who have negative feelings toward the United States over this torture issue, who didn’t have negative feelings against the United States about going into Iraq before we started arguing about the torture issue? I mean, count everybody — people you know, public figures, celebrities…can you think of anyone? I can’t think of a single person.

It’s not exactly a hot news item when liberals and democrats rally around an issue that is phony. This one has captured the mainstream, what you might call the “heartland.” It’s easy to understand why, because who wants to be strapped to a waterboard? It doesn’t seem very appealing. But when you dissect this issue, it turns out, surprisingly, to be more phony than most others. The substance-angle is nonexistent, and the style-angle is ineffectual and goes nowhere. It’s just a talking point in circulation among America’s enemies — those who fight us overtly, and those who insist they’re “patriotic” but never seem to have a kind word to say about the country.

Of course it is an effective talking-point, and it is around, posing problems for us, because of our actions. But since bringing a stop to those actions — in style, as well as in substance — wouldn’t make anything any better, I’d like our senators to do a good job explaining to us why they’ll be debating it, before they do so debate it. I’d like to see them do an excellent job justifying this. I have strong doubts they’ll even perform an adequate one.

Posted in Incumbent Scandals, Overlawyered, Poisoning Western Civilization, TIK 52, Torture and Civil Liberties and What-Not | 1 Comment »

Disagreement

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

I got back a very thoughtful off-line mini-essay from John at The Expanding Introverse, with whom I disagree about certain things. He points out that he and I do agree about other things, although on balance I think we disagree about more things. But John has the balls to also disagree with other folks, with whom he’d be inclined to agree, since those other folks also disagree with me.

Follow? The guy thinks for himself.

This is becoming something of a lost art, I’m afraid. One of the reasons I’m glad to have met the nobodies who don’t stop by to not read The Blog That Nobody Reads, is occasionally they have the big brass ones to disagree with moi. “Out there,” away from blog-o-ville, you don’t see that often anymore. What goes on with alphabet-soup-network television commentary, and to a lesser extent in newspaper commentary, is more like “I agree with you, you agree with me, we both disagree with the guy behind the tree, now let’s just get together and say so over and over again.”

Disagreeing takes BALLS. Disagreeing, I mean, as a conclusion of reasoned thought — not as an agenda item, something you knew you were going to do before a single word was spoken, simply because of the identity of the person with whom you chose to disagree. Real disagreement takes balls, and I’m afraid even with the medicinal balm of the blogosphere arriving in the nick of time, it’s still on life support.

John’s still wrong about some things…but I’ll get that fixed in time. Meanwhile, he’s more part of the solution than part of the problem. Welcome, sir.

Posted in My Blogger Friends, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

On Attacking Real Men

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

Someone was wondering about the 200+ things I know, and asking if there was any theme that permeates through all of them, or most of them. I would say if there is a core theme, it’s got to do with the way people tend to work. If they themselves operate according to what is widely accepted of them, and they see someone else “coloring outside the lines,” if you will — they’ll use up an excessive amount of energy reigning the maverick in. They’ll do this without any cost-benefit analysis of any kind. Without understanding the point of the rules they’re practically enforcing, or satisfying themselves that anybody else understands the point.

And if we can’t bring people into line with rules we don’t understand, we will ostracize those people.

There is a name for this. It is called TTWWADI.

In short, we are wired to live in villages. It is in our genetic programming. We’re pre-disposed to live in villages with rules we may or may not understand, and to banish people in those villages if they don’t conform to the rules we don’t understand. But what I’m calling out, goes a little bit further than simple TTWWADI; there are other tragic habits we have, too. When we meet strangers, we are programmed to reach a series of inferences that have to do with whether the strangers live in our tribe, or could be accepted into our tribe.

This is in conflict, generally, with what our parents taught us about strangers. Most of us were brought up by our parents to treat all strangers as — well, you know, strangers. You’re supposed to look at him as someone who could be a good guy, might be a bad guy, in all likelihood is okay, but don’t trust him too much. Most of us think we’re doing it the way Mom and Dad told us to. But very few of us do that, because the genetic programming is more powerful and effervescent than the environmental. That printed-circuit in our brains compels us to reach a snap-judgment about the stranger, one which our parents never told us to try to reach.

He’s on our side, or else he’s with those other guys.

What is really unfortunate about this, is this programming inclines us to re-define truth according to that tribal compatibility. We tend to presume someone is lying or is mistaken, if we’ve already concluded they’re incompatible with our tribe — even if the subject on which they’re speaking is well outside of our understanding. If we’ve already concluded they’re part of our tribe, or could be part of our tribe, they could wax eloquently about the most bloated nonsense for hours, and we’ll believe them without question.

When people behave this way, it logically follows that the first thing they attack is whatever might lift them — might have already lifted them — out of the existence of some stoop-shouldered grub-sucking savage. They tend to punish invention and creativity. That’s what is so dangerous about blind conformity — it disguises itself as a necessary agent of life, but really it attacks life. It’s a step down. And that is the core theme to all the things I know. It is not so much an epiphany, as it is a criticism. It is a criticism of civilization’s unfortunate tendency to tear itself apart, to deprive itself of all the things that made it possible in the first place. Of civilization’s intrinsic leanings toward a sort of patricide.

So if there is a “vanguard” Thing I Know, one item that represents most of the others but speaks more clearly than any of those, it would probably be Number 130.

REAL menSome of us refuse to act this way. When we’re told we’re “supposed to” do something, we want to know why. We don’t do this so we can be seen acting smarmy; we do this because it makes sense. When we buy things that require assembly, we (within reason) throw away the instructions as part of the first step. In short, we trust our ability to think rationally. To play chess with life…if you are hip with that metaphor. We figure that ability, and the using of it, are indispensable parts of our purpose on this planet.

If someone needs help, we help. If we need help, we analyze how it is we came to need the help, and resolve to do things differently next time. If someone helps us, we reward them, make ourselves more like them, and encourage others to be more like them. We are not parasites…

…we are men. We are REAL men.

We observe, we perceive, we conclude, we question. When one-two-three instructions are readily available and easily obtained, we insist on figuring things out for ourselves. Others point at us and laugh…but they are around to do the laughing, only because of us, or people like us, or someone who did things the way we do them. We know this. Those who point and laugh know this. Everybody knows this, we just don’t talk about it out loud: Following instructions, doing things for reasons you don’t internally comprehend but someone else somewhere might — has to do with getting yourself accepted into something…and nothing else. It has butkus to do with blazing any kind of trail. It has butkus to do with helping people, or building anything. It has butkus to do with finding something, and leaving it in better shape than the way you found it. To do any of those things, you’ve got to turn on your brain and think like a big boy.

I’d like to record two links about real men. No, they are not porn. They are long, windy epistles. They are both, insofar as I can gather, about men the way I have just defined men, above. Not nerds, not jocks. Not even male people, strictly speaking…I personally know of more than a few women who are “real men,” in the way they look at the world, and they are wonderful people — remarkably feminine when they want to be.

So you see, being a MAN is a state of mind. It is a way of living life. We owe everything — everything — to real men…and we’re engaged in a process of trying to get rid of them, a process nobody can logically explain.

The first essay is Is There Anything Good About Men?, by one Professor Roy F. Baumeister. We learn about it from blogger friend James at News Blog Central. And the other, which we find via our other blogger friend Misha at Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, is The Pussification of the Western Male by one Kim du Toit.

My advice is to make time…read them…both. And when you’re done, take a long, hard look at the bandwagon-people, the folks with such strong opinions about how other people should do things, just because that’s the way things should be done. People who try to cudgel you into agreeing with them, not by arguing their positions logically, but by citing polls that say how lonely you will be otherwise. People who don’t know what it’s like to go against the crowd, have never known this, and don’t want anyone else to know what that’s like either.

And then look at the “fem-bigots,” the people who — whether they realize it or not — harbor some pissy, juvenile desire to get rid of all real men. People who insist on advancing safety at the expense of opportunity, and furthermore, insist that everyone everywhere do exactly that. People who are never fully satisfied in their mission to make everyone around them think this way…and look at the world this way. People who will push and push and push for this, until we’re all just plodding through life, solely for the purpose of hanging around a little while longer, and for no higher reason than just that. People with seemingly-infinite inventories of mens’ liabilities, and would respond only with paralysis and a sneer if asked what might be good about men. What Prof. Baumeister referred to as “gender warriors” when he wrote, “gender warriors please go home,” or half of his intended reference, anyway. The “man-bashers.”

You’ll see something interesting about these two groups of people: They’re the same people. Not always…but almost always. You’ve got to work at it for awhile before you find someone who qualifies for one of these descriptions, and not the other. Conclusion: Whether the authors of the essays realize it or not, and whether their man-bashing critics realize it or not — this is not about homo sapiens who have reached maturity and are equipped with penises and testicles. It is about persons, of both genders, who think independently. Real men, and women who think like real men. I expect things have always been this way and always will be this way. The non-real-man people — people who want to do all their thinking through the “tribal council” — will want everybody else to do their deep thinking through proxy as well, because that’s what they’re doing.

Real men, it turns out, are just as scary as they’ve been popularly believed to be. But it isn’t the muscular body of a real man that is scary, or his need for deoderant, or his hairy chest…it is his mind. People who don’t use their brains, are terrified of people who do.

Posted in Poisoning Individuality and Reason, Poisoning Masculinity | 2 Comments »

Poll: Anti-American Sentiment Grows Worldwide

Friday, August 24th, 2007

…especially when compared to the European Union…

European and world views of the United States and President George Bush have dramatically worsened since 2000; the trend has intensified since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. There has been a decline in perceptions of the United States throughout the European Union, including in such traditional U.S. allies as the United Kingdom and Poland, and in Muslim and Latin American countries, according to annual polls undertaken by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Pew Research Center and the BBC World Service.

I got one comment on this: I believe it unreservedly. Let’s say we’re talking about another country, a country with which I’m not associated in any way at all. I’m forming an opinion of Country X. A bunch of people from Country X, maybe serving in that country’s legislative body, appear in front of cameras and say stuff to the effect of…Country X should have less power, the guy who leads Country X is a liar and a simpleton and wasn’t even legitimately elected…

…and then, just to be fashionable, start indulging in a whole lot of self-deprecating pablum about more trivial matters. Our country tells other countries what to do, we’re a big bully, we torture people, we use up all the world’s resources, we do more than our share of polluting, our people are rude, blah blah blah. These are the leaders from that country.

Do I really even need to do some research on Country X to decide it sucks? You could hardly blame me for skipping that part of the exercise, huh.

So taking this at face value, I see it as a great argument for going back to the whole “politics stops at the water’s edge” thing. I mean, America is being compared to the European Union…or at least, our image is being compared to the image of the E.U. When is the last time you’ve heard leaders of the E.U., come out and opine on an international forum about how much the E.U. sucks?

American leaders do it all the time. Maybe the time has come to stick a sock in it.

Not that this article could be agenda-driven or anything…

Anti-Americanism has ebbed and flowed in the past. The current wave has arisen in reaction to the perceived and actual policies of the Bush administration and the invasion of Iraq. In the 1980s and again today, anti-Americanism became mainstream. In the 1990s, anti-Americanism was marginalized, and this is likely to happen again, with the arrival of a new U.S. president and the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq.

Yeah, no ax to grind here!

Who are these people all over the world who seem to hate us most fervently when we defend ourselves and support our own national economy? It seems to me there’s no self-policing mechanism involved with these haters; no self-imposed limit on how much hating they can do, given the right circumstances and the right opportunities. And it also seems to me they make lousy friends. Food for thought?

Posted in Poisoning Western Civilization | 3 Comments »

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… IX

Monday, August 20th, 2007

The Village Voice lied. They told a big fat fib.

I say that with a wink and a nod; I don’t really mean it. The story begins with a guy named Rudy Giuliani, who is running for President of the United States right now. He’s been saying a lot of stuff the Village Voice doesn’t like: He has a competitive level of experience dealing with terrorism; New York City was better prepared for the 9/11 attacks than any other place in the country; putting the command center in World Trade #7 was not my fault; Democrats don’t understand the nature of the terrorist threat; and, every effort was made by Mayor Giuliani and his staff to ensure the safety of rescue workers at ground zero.

Now, the Village Voice has come into some evidence that raises problems with all five of these. And so they chose to — I dunno why, maybe someone made a hasty judgment, didn’t get enough sleep, got in a fight with their wife that morning — anyway, they chose to publish their problematic facts & factoids about these statements under the headline…

Rudy Giuliani’s Five Big Lies About 9/11
On the stump, Rudy can’t help spreading smoke and ashes about his lousy record
by Wayne Barrett
with special research assistance by Alexandra Kahan
August 7th, 2007 9:44 PM

Why are these things lies? Well it turns out, the five things Giuliani said — are opinions. They are subjective. They are communicative of personal sentiments, which are not directly substantiated by concrete facts, nor are they directly refuted by concrete facts. They’re simply doctrines of belief.

And without descending into Socratean dissections of philosophical classifications of things, I thought I’d scribble down a few of my thoughts. I think I did a reasonably articulate job of it — unlike some people — so I’ll just let those words stand as they were written originally.

I had to save this article from The Village Voice because it’s a source of perpetual amusement to me how the liberal mind defines the word “lie.” If they like chocolate chip mint ice cream, and I say plain vanilla is better, that qualifies. At an even six feet, if I make the statement that I am not a tall man, and they can rustle up someone to showcase who’s 5′10″, that qualifies too.

I think just about everyone would agree if I borrow a dollar from you, and promise to pay you back tomorrow with absolutely no intention of doing so, that would be a lie. But they always want to go further.

Further, as in saying: No, you don’t need to engage in intent to deceive, in order to lie. You’re a liar when we say you’re a liar.

Chocolate chip mint ice cream, versus vanilla, is a matter of personal preference. Six feet tall being tall, is a matter of relativity. That is the meaning of subjective: Conditional on the viewpoints of an observer. Not necessarily measurable. Sure you’ve got tape measures that say “Six Feet Zero,” but that’s an absolute measurement, not a relative one. When you define someone as being a “liar” based on six feet being tall or not being tall, the issue under consideration becomes relative. These are elusive matters to a simple mind, especially to a simple mind that has already settled on the mindset desired, and therefore has little practical reason to take more complex things into account.

I could’ve gone further. “That Bob in the cubicle next to mine, is a crook and he should be fired.” That is two subjective statements, each of which may seem to be objective in nature, if and only if you are a raging simpleton. One is an inference; the other one is a proposal for a course of action. Both may be “correct,” but both are almost certain to be opposed to other proposals that may be equally valid. If you think you caught Bob stealing something, maybe what happened was the stockroom had a different inventory of pencils and sticky-notes than what you thought. As to whether he should be fired, well, even if he did lift a pack of erasers and take them home, perhaps the case can be made that he should be kept on anyway. Maybe Bob makes a lot of money for the company.

The point is, when a subjective statement goes masquerading as an objective one, it’s always good to do a little extra investigation. Taking someone’s word for it? Eh…I wouldn’t do that. Odds are, the person telling you what to think, wouldn’t do it either.

Well anyway, I guess VV picked up a significant amount of traffic and referrals from this hatchet job on Giuliani, so on Friday they took an extra lap around the track to accept their kisses and rah-rahs and applause…and then they did something rather bizarre.

Hate Us or Love Us
posted: 6:38 PM, August 17, 2007 by Michael Clancy

“Hate Us or Love Us” is a weekly look at the hate and the love that people show the Voice. Bonnie Ruberg served up a two-week double-shot of the love, and, of course, the hate. Look for it every Friday.

The New Republic and CBS—along with political blogs and bloggers alike—hailed Wayne Barrett’s “Rudy Giuliani’s Five Big Lies About 9/11.” TNR said the story “absolutely devastates Rudy Giuliani’s claims about fighting terrorism.”

Matthew Yglesias and Ross Douthat at The Atlantic wonder what effect the piece will have on liberals vs. conservatives.

Meanwhile, Republican voices grumble something about lies and chocolate chip ice cream. [emphasis mine]

This subtle commandment to the Village Voice readership about what it is they are supposed to fail to comprehend, is almost a divinely-ordered manifestation of the truism of one of the more wretchedly worded Things I Know, namely #14.

The brain is not the only part of you that has a tough time absorbing arguments you don’t like. When you read such things the words seem blurry. When you hear them the syllables run together.

I was thinking someday I should re-word that altogether. Something with an almost Shakespearean lilt to it, about how quickly your attention span shrivels up when you sense something isn’t going to appeal to your prejudices. No matter how the wording is improved later, I think the sentiment is clear. Many among us, make conscious or all-but-conscious decisions to plead intellectual fatigue, when exposed to new ideas we don’t think we’re gonna like — such as, in this case, maybe what Giuliani told weren’t really “lies,” but simply articulations of belief with which some self-important pundit or commentator, somewhere, has a problem.

To the mindset that has already judged Giuliani to be a shameless liar and staked some kind of political capital on it, there is no simple way to word this. You can plunge deep into “Dick and Jane” levels of juvenile sentence constructs…it won’t be simple enough for them. It will be contrary to the prejudices. So the eyes will tear up, and the auditory canals will swell shut.

Suddenly, as if on queue, the Village Voice which did all this digging about Giuliani’s statements, and unearthed all this documentation about where the emergency headquarters in New York City should go, and who said so, and when…suddenly, they have the attention span of a flashbulb. Something about chocolate chip ice cream…indeed. Heh.

Meanwhile, I’m just flabbergasted at the notion that I have a role to play in representing a demographic of grumbling, ice-cream-eating “Republicans.” Memo to Village Voice, Giuliani isn’t even my guy. Really, it doesn’t get any more complicated than what I said:

How the liberal mind defines the word “lie,” is a source of amusement to me. Perpetually. It never ceases to make me chuckle — somewhat sadly, but you have to giggle a little bit if you don’t want to cry. You pick out some interior paint with the wife, you like ivory white and she likes eggshell…does she then get to call you a “liar” whenever you say ivory has a nice look to it? Reasonable minds would have trouble signing on to that. From where I’m sitting, it seems Giuliani’s “lies” fall into the same category. He thinks democrats fail to comprehend the terrorist threat; you would like it if people showed resistance to this. Candidates you like, would suffer if the electorate agreed with Rudy on this point, and candidates you dislike, would probably prosper.

Nevertheless, there are reasons for people to come to the same conclusion as Mr. Giuliani. As I commented in my original write-up, the democrats have been working awfully hard to get people all worked up about non-terrorism-related issues. It could be reasonably asserted they’ve placed more energy into this effort, than into any other. In 2007 they’ve become kind of the “Don’t Worry Be Happy” party when it comes to international terrorism.

So can you call this one of Rudy’s big lies? Really? I suppose you could, if you expand the definition of “lie” extravagantly enough, expanding that bulls-eye to “Rosie-O’Donnell’s Ass” dimensions, so that anyone with opinions different from yours is telling “lies.”

But would that be honest? Really?

Well, I’d better stop here. Wouldn’t want to prattle on longer than you can pay attention.

Posted in Deranged Leftists, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 1 Comment »

I Made a New Word V

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

CalCUCKODOX (n.) : A male movie character whose wife or girlfriend cheats on him. In spite of this, the producers of the movie fully intend that you somehow sympathize with the slut who started sleeping with someone else without leaking to her main man a single syllable about any reservations she might have had about their relationship. He is a rustic construct representing nothing more complex than simplistic rules, tradition, convention, all with an air of stuffy patriarchal mildew. A portmanteau of “cuckold” and “orthodox.” As a fictitious character, he is inserted into the story for the purpose of representing a value or system of values, and the rival for his affections is also inserted to represent a system of values and not much more. His role is to impose traditional rules of behavior on his sweetheart, and to be dumped by her once a more exciting and unkempt stud comes along, who is almost always from a lower economic class.

In Titanic it is Cal Hockley, played by Billy Zane. In Legends of the Fall it is Alfred Ludlow, played by Aidan Quinn. In The Piano it is Alisdair Stewart, played by Sam Neill. In Braveheart it is Edward, Prince of Wales, played by Peter Hanly.

In spite of the abundant screen time and depth of emotional interaction building the character, and the mesmerizing complexity of the story overall, such a character plays absolutely no role whatsoever besides being dumped and getting pissed about it. He is simply a cog in a vast machinery constructed to promote rebellion over tradition.

I’m just jotting this down for my own benefit. This is a “woman’s movie” cliche…now that I’ve gotten attached to a wonderful, mature and intellectual lady who doesn’t go for this kind of crap, I may never figure out what it takes to construct these popular chick flicks. But it’s clear to me there is a formula going on. It is not a very complex formula at all, and the Cuckodox plays an important part of it.

Well, we know it can’t take a lot of real empathy to construct such a thing. If you were to task me to come up with the most misogynist persons of all time, living or dead, James Cameron would have to come up near the top of the list — he of Titanic fame. Titanic, the most profitable dumb-womyns’-movie ever.

He dumped his fourth wife for the woman who would become his fifth wife…who he met on the set, fer chrissakes.

But that’s just one sample. The slutty-womans’-movie keeps on chugging along, like an Energizer Bunny of movie genres, even today. You need more ingredients than a Cuckodox to make one…but not too many more. It’s a pretty simple stew, and one day I’ll put together the complete recipe. Then — I dunno what. Maybe by then these things will have finally gone out of style.

But I’m pretty sure this is a staple ingredient.

Posted in About Me and My Blog, Movies, Poisoning Masculinity | No Comments »

Depression is Over-Diagnosed

Friday, August 17th, 2007

MarvinWe learn via BBC News that a troublesome mental health professional has gone on record and made the startling claim that depression is being over-diagnosed.

Too many people are being diagnosed with depression when all they are is unhappy, a leading psychiatrist says.

Professor Gordon Parker claims the threshold for clinical depression is too low and risks treating normal emotional states as illness.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, he calls depression a “catch-all” diagnosis driven by clever marketing.
:
The professor, who carried out a 15-year study of 242 teachers, found that more than three-quarters of them met the current criteria for depression.

He writes in the BMJ that almost everyone had symptoms such as “feeling sad, blue or down in the dumps” at some point in their lives – but this was not the same as clinical depression which required treatment.

He said prescribing medication may raise false hopes and might not be effective as there was nothing biologically wrong with the patient.

He said: “Over the last 30 years the formal definitions for defining clinical depression have expanded into the territory of normal depression, and the real risk is that the milder, more common experiences risk being pathologised.”

Hell’s bells, I coulda told you that. The signs are all there. “Ask your doctor about” commercials on the teevee. Speaking just for myself, this is damning evidence in the courtroom between my two ears. Sure, developing a new drug or medicine is an expensive and financially risky proposition, and once you’ve secured the patent you’ve got a right to recoup your investment just like any other good capitalist. But there’s something terribly wrong with sending flocks of potential patients into doctors’ offices to “ask about” things, especially things specifically designed to alter an emotional state. Somehow, that just rubs me the wrong way.

But there are other things. There’s all this subtle lecturing about the clinical state of depression, with an implication that those of us who have not suffered from it are unfit to comment on it or form reasoned opinions about it. Well, that is probably true in some cases. What about some of the other cases? Do we have safeguards in place to make sure people are not placed on mind-altering prescriptions, when all they are is unhappy? You don’t have to interact with people for too many years at all, before you meet some folks who are genuinely unhappy and don’t know why, because their life experiences have been too narrow and they lack the emotional depth required to figure out what might make them truly happy.

The subtle “it’s a valid medical diagnosis” lecturing is sufficiently exuberant to reach pro-active status — as in “just in case anyone thinks there’s nothing to this, they need to MYOB.” I wouldn’t have too much difficulty at all finding examples of that. But I have yet to see anyone say something like “just in case anyone thinks we’re not doing anything to keep this from being over-diagnosed, here’s what we’re doing to prevent that.” The abundance of one with a complete dearth of the other, raises my red flags.

Is over-diagnosis at least possible? It strikes me as incredibly awkward to try to mount an argument that it could not be. Sure, you can achieve genuine happiness without reaching emotional maturity, but it seems self-evident that you can’t identify genuine happiness without reaching that maturity. False happiness is incredibly deceptive.

In fact, there’s something about spending too much time or energy worrying about happiness, that strikes me as a possible sign of that lack of emotional maturity. I’ve often heard some folks say “the four years I spent in San Francisco, was the one time I was really happy,” or if they come from broken homes they might say “the time we lived in Albuquerque, was the one time that as a family we were happy.”

Personally, I haven’t been able to do this too much — point back to some eon in my own life story, and say “that there is when I was happy.” I can single out some stretches and say “that’s when I had it really good, but I didn’t realize it until I made some dreadful mistake and brought it to an inglorious end.” I can certainly do that a handful of times. But I can’t come up with a single moment when I was sitting around contemplating how deliriously happy I was. Exquisitely miserable, yeah. But on those occasions, if I could march into some doctor’s office and ask about some goop that would make me all happy-happy-joy-joy, I wouldn’t have been interested. I knew what was making me miserable and it wasn’t something any goop would fix.

But here’s what really scares me: How come I have to wait until late 2007 to see a sawbones with some balls point out that this over-diagnosis is a possibility? How come when you run an article going the other way…”depression is real, so if you think you suffer from it be sure to contact your doctor and ask about medication”…it’s okay to print it up without including the opposing point of view. Whereas, with this guy pointing out the possibility of a diagnosis, by the time you get to the fourth paragraph they’re already running the obligatory devil’s advocate, and one gathers the impression there would be an unpleasant conversation with someone somewhere if they did not:

But another psychiatrist writing in the journal contradicts his views, praising the increased diagnosis of depression.

Professor Ian Hickie writes that an increased diagnosis and treatment of depression has led to a reduction in suicides and removal of the old stigma surrounding mental illness.
:
…Professor Hickie said if only the most severe cases were treated, people would die unnecessarily.

So you have to include an opposing view if you dare to run an article in the BBC News, and apparently in the British Medical Journal as well, poo-pooing the crescendoing diagnosis of depression. But it seems a safe assumption if you run an article praising it instead, no opposing view is necessary.

Why is that? Well…we could say if you are suffering from diagnosis and you fail to get a prescription of what you need, your life might be in danger. But your life might be in danger, as well, if you’re suffering from what Dr. Parker calls “the milder, more common experiences” and actually acquire a prescription you don’t really need. I mean, mightn’t it? I’m not a doctor or a suicide counselor, but it seems a safe assumption to make.

Whereas, people make money when things are prescribed, and they don’t when they’re not.

So what I’m seeing here, is an industry with a need to police itself, failing to do so. Until I see evidence that there’s something else going on. Skepticism like Dr. Parker’s, if there are no concrete facts to directly contradict it, shouldn’t be so occasional. Something’s wrong here.

Posted in Phony Egghead Studies, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | No Comments »

Methusaleh Fad

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Via Rick, we find out that Rachel saw a thug.

Even though nobody reads this blog, the nobodies who do, are well-acquainted with my attitude about droopy trousers. In a way, I’m grateful that they’re here because they help to clarify what goes on when people think in groups. The question that would remain unsettled, if not for them, goes something like this: When you make a decision as part of a large group, are you simply less likely to reach a rational conclusion? Or could it be that you are predisposed to arrive at conclusions that are irrational?

Baggy pantsThe baggy pants fad, and fashion in general, help to answer this. If group-think simply had a disorienting effect on us, depriving us of the attraction that we have toward logical ideas when doing our thinking in solitude, the “bad fads” would have about the same lifespan as the good ones. Baggy pants is an objectively bad fashion; its irrationality is measurable, and not a matter of personal opinion. Boys who insist on wearing their baggy pantaloons every day, interrogated by outraged parents, defend the practice because “the girls like it.” That is probably the most durable test we can construct for bad ideas — someone’s offered an opportunity to defend them, and their defense is going to be to punt to someone else.

Plus, you can’t run in the damn things. If there are activities to be associated with fashion items, the activities associated with this one all seem to be illegal. Well, I just think when you break the law, you ought to be wearing something suitable for running.

The lifespan of a healthy dog or cat has been surpassed by the baggy pants fad: about twelve years, give or take a couple years. Quick — name another fashion item that has endured for six. Beehive hairdo? No. Goatee? Not yet. White go go boots? Mutton chop sideburns? The preppy look? Not even close.

If there is to be a Methusaleh fad, a fad lasting longer than any other in modern times, does the the droopy-drawer look even begin to offer qualities that would distinguish it as a reasonable candidate? Well let’s see…it accentuates the male crack. You know, I don’t swing that way, but it seems doubtful to me that even people who are attracted to men, want to see that. It’s impractical. Twenty years ago it was fashionable for girls with huge breasts to be wearing tight sweaters. Good times…well, you can do a lot of things in a tight sweater. You can’t run with baggy pants on. I think you can run better wearing a bag of cement than you can wearing some baggy pants.

As for the message sent with the fashion fad, this has got to be the most disastrous attribute of the “can smuggle a watermelon in my crotch” craze. It is worn by spoiled urban parasitic youth who want to look more masculine than they are. It got started, it would appear, as a calling card among gay men. So let’s say the potential for ambiguity seems to run a little high here.

Good fadIt’s the longest-running fad in modern times. Those teeny bikini bottoms the ladies used to wear on their swimsuits, riding low on the hips…that’s an example of a “good fad” if ever there was one…they looked great. After two or three years some nameless faceless unaccountable invisible fashion emperor in New York, declared enough was enough. “Boy shorts” are now the “in” thing for feminine swimwear. No such moratorium has been declared on these hoodlum-pants that hoodlums wear doing their hoodlum things, right before leading the police on a hoodlum foot chase that they can’t maintain because their hoodlum pants keep falling off their hoodlum butts.

Maybe it’s all a secret plan to foil crime. I dunno. But the evidence is in: When you go along to get along in a large group, you aren’t simply dissuaded from making logical decisions, it seems you’re actually motivated to make illogical ones. There’s one — just one — twelve-year-long fad in modern history, and it has to do with failing to accomplish the sole objective of wearing clothes, presuming there can be only one: getting your damn ass crack concealed and keeping it that way.

Posted in Everyday Dimwits, GroupThink Nonsense, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 4 Comments »

Spreading Doubt

Tuesday, August 14th, 2007

Don’t you just love that headline? It’s not mine. But I’m going to steal it. I’m going to use it next time I’m the protagonist in an argument, and the thing I’m trying to support is fragile and dubious to the point of being a caricature of itself. “I don’t have a tax liability,” I will tell the tax man; and when he comes up with the fliers and circulars and other printed materials the Internal Revenue Service has printed up to handle problem cases like me, I’ll just ignore any logical points on his side and tell him “see, there you are spreading doubt.”

“God is a man and He wants you to get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich.” My lady might use logic to open this assertion to scrutiny, i.e., wouldn’t the Divine Being make His will better known to her, if He were to shrink my waistline instead of expanding it? Lately, I’m lacking that cosmetic “could use a sandwich” look. And if her place is in the kitchen, how come her feet can fit into shoes? “Aha,” I’ll say, “you are a doubt-spreader.”

In yesterday’s edition of Newsweek, editor Sharon Begley is exactly what she calls others. Her article, The Truth About Denial, tattles on a “well-funded machine” that is “running at full throttle — and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.”

I would have to ask which side is really pushing the throttle of a well-funded machine.

To compile an inventory of actual fact presented by Ms. Begley, and correlate it with the inventory of points she wishes to make with those facts, is to undergo a truly surreal experience. Exhibit A is the public opinion polls. By now, anybody who’s paid attention is well aware of how these work: More and more people are convinced global warming is a real problem and it’s man-made, so anybody left at the kiddie table had better get with it and hop on the bandwagon. Y’know, before it’s too late and all. But NO…that is not what Begley wants to tell us. She’s going the other way. The public opinion polls show we’ve been pretty slow to drink the Kool-aid and demand seconds, and this is evidence of the sinister workings of that well lubricated machine.

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was “a lot” of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was “mainly caused by things people do.” In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world’s economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is “a lot of disagreement among climate scientists” on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.

Now, read that again. Two polls, or sets of polls, one year apart. Last year, 64 percent of us were skeptics. We thought there was “a lot” of disagreement among scientists. That metric has dropped from 64 to 39 in just twelve months. The point here, if I’m understanding it right, is that this evil machine is humming along as a model of efficiency because the 39 are still there.

Wow, if I were on an iron lung I really wouldn’t want a machine that works that well. In fact, when you think about this a little while longer it becomes evident that there must be another, better-funded, better-oiled, higher-performance machine at work here. I wonder when Begley will talk about that.

Oopsie, there I go spreading doubt.

Here’s something I’d like to know about the diabolical doubt-spreading machine: Why? I mean sure, you’ve got idiots like me who doubt global warming even though we’re not in a position to watch the pro-global-warming scientists compile their reports and don’t have access to the actual raw data, beyond the charts and graphs each side finds expedient to present to us. But we’re just big dummies, part of the 39% who don’t get it. We’re rats being led into the ocean by the Pied Piper of Hamlin, just doing what we’re told. What about the Piper? If you follow our food chain upward, you’re going to get to the big bosses, and I guess these are oil industry executives and the scientists they’ve bought off — people who know the planet is facing certain doom, and are fooling imbeciles like me into thinking it just isn’t so.

What’s their angle in this? They want to sell more petroleum products and increase the dollars-per-share in the corporations they manage…on a dying planet? This seems like a plan, assuming it does indeed exist somewhere, that could use a little bit more thinking-out.

But there’s more. How’s this for an eyebrow-raiser:

It was 98 degrees in Washington on Thursday, June 23, 1988, and climate change was bursting into public consciousness. The Amazon was burning, wildfires raged in the United States, crops in the Midwest were scorched and it was shaping up to be the hottest year on record worldwide. A Senate committee, including Gore, had invited NASA climatologist James Hansen to testify about the greenhouse effect, and the members were not above a little stagecraft. The night before, staffers had opened windows in the hearing room. When Hansen began his testimony, the air conditioning was struggling, and sweat dotted his brow. It was the perfect image for the revelation to come. He was 99 percent sure, Hansen told the panel, that “the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”

The theme that permeates this article, and is supported in all other paragraphs, is that there really is no reason to doubt global warming aside from the sinister manipulations of public opinion that have been engineered through this doubt machine. And yet — for reasons that still aren’t quite clear to me — Begley thought it would be appropriate to toss in a humdinger of a reason, existing entirely outside that machine.

I’m sorry. I don’t wish to offend anyone. But it seems inescapable to me: if you can read about politically-motivated congressional staffers sabotaging the air conditioning system in the capitol to make the next day’s session a whole lot sweatier, just to be able to sell global warming as a public relations product — and not feel at least the stirrings of good old-fashion logically-based non-machine-inspired doubt, not even a tiny bit — you’re just nuts.

I realize people can go to great lengths to sell things to the public, and those things can still turn out to be true. But the subject under discussion is the public’s inability to decide the issue outside the realm of politics, through a sensible weighing of fact. And when you go through the pro-global-warming exhibits and start pitching out anything that’s just a lot of rhetoric, including the “Six thousand scientists ALL agree that blah blah blah,” you’re not left with a whole lot. Temperature went up about 1.5 Fahrenheit, so they say…pictures of sad-looking polar bears on the covers of magazines. That’s about it.

Contrasted with the facts about the global warming cheerleading machine: People monkeying with the air conditioning in the capitol, people writing up scary articles because it’s their job to do so. With very, very few exceptions, everyone playing this thing up has a career connected to it. And that includes Mr. Gore. It seems to be really hard to find anyone trying to “raise awareness” of global warming…who isn’t in the business of doing exactly that. Someone who’s genuinely trying to save the planet. And this kind of dovetails into that long list of things we’d be doing if the dire warnings had truth and confidence behind them.

They don’t. The dire warnings are just slogans, and it’s pretty easy to prove that they are this and nothing more.

We’re running out of time, if we procrastinate a little more it might be too late, is that it? Here’s a challenge: Try to get a global warming chicken little to stick to that theme, throughout the exploration of a plan that is supposed to fix the problem. Changing light bulbs in my house to a greener model. Mmmkay, so if I don’t do this, and soon, we’re going to cross some point of no return. If I use the new light bulbs all will be well? Or it will extend the window of opportunity to act?

What is this wonderful thing we are supposed to ultimately be doing, or getting ready to be doing, as we nibble on our fingernails wondering if we can be stirred into action quickly enough? Has anyone measured how long we have to get ‘er done? Can we see some statistics on this? Not vague stuff like “act before ten or fifteen years or it might be too late.” Specifics. Carbon tons. Saturation quotas. Dates. The global warming hype machine is demanding hefty sacrifices; it relies on these global warming climate models that the machine continues to keep telling me about, every week, every month, every year. This is what those models are for — digesting some statistics, producing others.

How come when I ask about these specifics the chicken littles keep telling me to “open such-and-such a report” or “go to such-and-such a website”? Why aren’t the specifics out there? I mean, I think that’s a reasonable question — people like Sharon Begley are concerned that the climate change denial machine is working oh, so incredibly well. This seems to me to be an opportunity to make it work not quite so well. So how come someone hasn’t already done that?

How big is Sharon Begley’s car, anyway?

Posted in ManBearPig, Poisoning Capitalism, Poisoning Individuality and Reason | 2 Comments »

On Stare Decisis

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Speaking of Rick, I was thinking about this disturbing quote from last week that he’s resurrected to haunt Sen. Charles Schumer. It seems the accident that befell Chief Justice John Roberts has the potential to be more serious than I, for one, was led to believe.

Of course, Schumer’s partisan ramblings are no more tasteless now than they were before the accident. That is not the point. Lord knows, I’ve got my share of salty things I’ve said about political opponents, and I hope no harm comes to those opponents but you never know. And of course I’d feel awful about it, and my words would stand as an albatross around my neck. So Schumer’s embarrassment here, assuming he’s decent enough to have some, is something I see as a “There but for the grace of God” thing.

But with apologies to the senior Senator from the state of New York, I do think there’s something worth inspecting here. The issue is this legal principle that so recently was sensibly enshrouded in elitist cloaking and dead language, called stare decisis.

Were we duped? Were we hoodwinked? Were we too easily impressed with the charm of the nominee Roberts and the erudition of nominee Alito? In case after case, our most recently confirmed justices have appeared to jettison decisions recently authored by their immediate predecessors. Although Roberts and Alito both expressed their profound respect for stare decisis at their confirmation hearings, many of their decisions have flouted precedent.

Now, Latin is a language that was never in common use in the United States. Someone in American history, therefore, made a conscious decision that this principle would be a good one to insulate from the knock’em sock’em robot arena of populist frenzy. I wonder what that someone would think about an elected official trying to agitate the elecorate into a convenient sentiment that the judicial branch is due for a shakeup due to stare decisis issues.

The complete phrase is stare decisis et non quieta movere which translates roughly to “stand by decisions and don’t disturb settled matters” or “stand by decisions and do not move that which is quiet.”

And my observation is this:

Lately, whenever liberals complain about stare decisis, it seems to me they’re never addressing that which is quiet. Quite to the contrary, the issue at hand is something rather tempestuous, officious, vibrant and lively…anything but settled. I can’t think of a single exception to this.

In fact, I’ll go further. Lately, it seems whenever the Supreme Court hands down an opinion that “flouts the principle of stare decisis” by sending a fox running over the grave of previous decisions our liberals would just as soon see undisturbed — if you look at those previous rulings, you’ll find about as much stare decisis as you’ll find under my toenails when they need a good clipping.

In other words, liberals like decided opinions to stay decided, if & only if those decided opinions, themselves, stirred everything up and shook it all upside-down.

It’s a good thing I’m not on the Supreme Court. My decisions, of course, would be quite correct because I make a lot of sense. But the comments I’d be unable to restrain myself from making in the aftermath, would be disastrous. I’d defend myself by saying something accurate and profoundly stupid, like “Hell yeah I promised I’d uphold stare decisis, and that’s why I voted to overturn that decision from the Warren/Burger courts that they’re mad at us for overturning. Because man, that pig-in-a-poke just sucked at stare decisis.”

And that would get me run out of town on a rail. But I believe it would have the potential to start a debate we desperately need to have in this country. There are a lot of decisions from the Supreme Court, still on the books, that suck at stare decisis. Liberals like Schumer have taken on this unfortunate and insulting habit of using that obscure Latin phraseology, which they damn well know their constituents don’t understand overall, to inflict a great assault on stare decisis under the guise of presumably defending it.

Anyway. Best wishes go out to John Roberts. He seems to be, personally, a very decent man and he’s exactly what the Supreme Court needs at this time. Signs look good. Once my wish is granted that he resume his station in full possession of his health and faculties, I’m sure history will record him to be President Bush’s second-greatest achievement.

Posted in Poisoning Justice | 1 Comment »

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