Twenty-Two Facts About California That Make You Wonder Why Anyone Would Still Want To Live In That Hellhole Of A State…geez guys…why not just go ahead and stick my freakin’ name in that headline.

California Governor Jerry Brown declared a “fiscal emergency” in his state on Thursday, but nobody is even pretending that such a declaration is actually going to help matters. Brown wants to cut even deeper into the state budget (even after tens of billions have already been slashed out of it in recent years) and he wants to explore ways to raise even more revenue. Meanwhile, the standard of living in California is going right into the toilet. Housing values are plummeting. Unemployment has risen above 20 percent in many areas of the state…
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Of course on top of everything else there is the constant threat of wildfires, mudslides and earthquakes. One day a really “big earthquake” is going to hit, and once that happens many people believe that the geography of the state of California could be permanently altered forever.

But what most people are focused on right now is the horrific financial condition that the state of California currently is in. Governor Brown recently summarized his analysis of California’s financial condition with the following statement: “We’ve been living in fantasy land. It is much worse than I thought. I’m shocked.”
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The state has become a rotting, festering hellhole that is getting worse by the day. Yes, some really good people still live there, but there are some really, really good reasons why so many people are leaving the state in droves.

Yes, some really good people still live here. Gee, I’m having a Sally Field moment with that. You like me! You really, really like me!

Maybe my perspective is just skewed. I spent some years in Seattle…liberal shithole…and then Detroit, that would be a ditto. So I apply low standards to the Sacramento area, I admit.

I don’t think I’d be able to tell a front page of the Seattle P-I apart from the Detroit Free Press apart from the Sacramento Bee. I read way more than my share of all three of those — and, looking back on it, they all looked the same. “Wah! Wah! Social programs running out of money! Waaah! Deficit! Waaaah, gotta raise taxes! Wah!”

You put liberals in charge, that’s where things go. So, in truth, that’s a big reason why I’m not leaving quite yet. All our major cities, all across the country, are headed here. All run by left-wing tax-raising idjits. Where’s my sanctuary? Where’s Nirvana?

But I do have to agree with the article. It’s getting bad.

Commentary Magazine:

During the recent recession, the U.S. Congress passed two large economic stimulus programs. President Bush’s February 2008 program totaled $152 billion. President Obama’s bill, enacted a year later, was considerably larger at $862 billion. Neither worked. After more than three years since the crisis flared up, unemployment is still very high and economic growth is weak. Why have such large sums of money failed to stimulate the economy? To answer this question, we must look at where the billions of stimulus dollars went and how they were used.

It’s a “War Games” situation: Fascinating game, the only way to win is not to play.

Here’s something else that’s fascinating: Can we achieve some agreement on the low nadir of the administration of our 43rd president, and the high zenith of the administration of our 44th? Both are easy questions. Even if you agree with me that the invasion of Iraq was necessary, and overdue, you’d have to concede the point that this one act, more than any other by any president in modern history, was singularly responsible for that president losing the greatest share of popularity, measurable or otherwise. This, without a doubt, would be President Bush’s low point.

The crown jewel of all the achievements of Barack Obama, for sure, would be the Reinvestment Act. Oh, I’m sure the strident liberals would have much more fight in them about defending ObamaCare, but that’s only because of necessity. For the top spot on Obama’s list of accomplishments it’s got to be the Reinvestment Act.

Now…step back and look at this situation. Doesn’t this say it all? President George W. Bush’s greatest failure…or, let’s call it his greatest setback…identified a measurable goal and achieved it. Obama’s greatest triumph also identified a goal. And there’s no way you can even begin to say that goal was reached. You can’t even come close to saying such a thing.

Conclusion: To maintain that George Bush was a bad president, and/or that Barack Obama is a good one, you must necessarily declare an open hostility toward, or at the very least a nonchalance toward, the setting and the reaching of measurable goals.

An amendment up for consideration in the House:

Backed by top GOP leaders including House Speaker John Boehner, Republican Rep. Mike Turner is introducing a constitutional amendment to ban the federal government from owning corporations in whole or part following aggressive intervention by the Treasury Department during the financial crisis.
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Turner’s constitutional amendment “would stop a bailout where the end result is that the federal government owns a private company. The federal government would still be able in financial crisis situations to step in and provide loans, loan guarantees. But I think it’s particularly troublesome to Americans that the federal government could end up owning private industry,” he said.

Hmmmm…seems at first blush like a good idea, although I’m open to whatever arguments may exist that it might not be one. And, it must be said, not only has this thing has been a boondoggle from start to finish, but from all I’ve managed to learn about it that does seem to be the one spot where the whole thing came undone. The government bailout. Government calls the tune, everyone else has to dance.

And it warms my heart seeing some legislation proposed that is somewhat consistent with the real founding principles of the nation. Limited government. Laissez-faire.

Let the debates begin…

Telegraph.uk:

The University of East Anglia set up two investigations into emails stolen from its Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which sceptics claimed showed scientists were willing to manipulate the science behind global warming.

Both inquiries cleared the researchers of scientific impropriety but campaigners insisted that questions remained over the openness of research and the content of certain emails.

An investigation by the Science and Technology Committee into the official inquiries is the latest effort to get to the bottom of the matter.

Andrew Miller, the Labour Chairman of the Committee, said the previous inquiries had failed to answer the allegation that in some of the stolen emails researchers appeared to be encouraging each other to delete emails.

Sceptics claimed these emails may refer to how researchers tried to influence the climate change debate.
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Graham Stringer, a Labour MP on the Committee, said there are questions over how the scientists chose the figures they used to back up the case for global warming.

He said the ‘missing email’ may refer to how researchers tried to further influence how their science is accepted by the scientific community.

He said both reports had failed to answer these questions.

“It does not say this is the end of the scientific case for global warming but it does say that people at the centre of this research did some very bad science,” he said.

“It is not a whitewash, it is the establishment looking after their own. They are not looking hard enough at what went wrong.”

Not sure if transparency is an issue, but from what I’m reading here it certainly looks like independence of the audit is one. The UEA set up two investigations nto what the UEA did, and in so doing gave the UEA a clean bill of health?

Move along, folks. There’s nothing to see here…

Lately I challenged a “moderate” to come up with one, and she wasn’t able to think of anything. Maybe eventually someone will be able to think of a tactic…like for example the so-called “nuclear option” of getting rid of the filibuster in the Senate…but a tactic is not a position.

Something with an “all” or “always” or “never” in it, that isn’t necessarily appropriate. Something as strident and uncompromising as our current liberal president’s famous decree — “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

Invading Iraq? That might seem a promising answer at first. But if it really passes the test, you need to be able to state the antithesis of it in such a way that the antithesis would be more moderate, and I don’t think that’s possible with the invasion of Iraq. Let’s see…”We have to demand absolute proof there are WMDs before we remotely consider any military action.” That doesn’t sound moderate to me. “Every sovereign nation on the entire earth gets to do whatever it wants, and nobody can touch it.” That doesn’t sound moderate either.

A lot of what I see in the Constitution is extreme. “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That certainly qualifies…but…is it really extreme to demand our elected leaders follow the Constitution? Also, there’s a difference between the Constitution providing a right, and merely recognizing a right that is already there. Don’t infringe — don’t encroach, don’t trespass. Are old men being extremist when they tell kids to keep off the lawn?

I notice this is a much simpler challenge if we try to point out an extremist liberal position. Abolishing the death penalty is extremist, because that would say you don’t care what the case is, who murdered who, how it was done, how sure we are of it. Doesn’t matter, capital punishment is off the table. That’s a good example of extreme. Also: There’s something wrong if the rich get a tax cut and the poor don’t get it…even if the tax cut is a rollback of a prior tax increase, that affected only rich people. Or, the state agency has to grant this concession to the union, nevermind what it costs or whether the budget is going to be a complete disaster at the end of the year — just do it. That’s extreme. Anything that says “just do this now, and let the details work themselves out later,” I think, you could fairly call extreme.

I keep hearing about these “extremist conservatives”; there has to be an extremist-conservative position somewhere.

I’m tellin’ ya, I’d much rather have Bob cut my lawn than your average Sarah Palin hater. He’s more emotionally stable.

Daily Mail:

Dominic Raab, a new MP tipped for high office, said men were getting a ‘raw deal’ from the cradle to the grave following years of anti-discrimination legislation favouring women.

He pointed out women in their 20s are now paid more than their male peers, who work longer hours, retire later and die earlier.

Mr Raab, the 37-year-old MP for Esher and Walton in Surrey and a former chief of staff to David Davis, called for an end to what he called feminist bigotry.

He said men were blamed by society for the banking crisis, discriminated against by parental leave rules which favour women who want time off and ignored by the courts when relationships break down and they seek custody of their children.

I detest whining. But I detest intellectual dishonesty even more.

A good test for intellectual honesty is, can you justify a cultural protocol to an intelligent observer who is not from the culture, and thus was not availed of an opportunity to become gradually acclimated to that culture. Could you justify it to the space alien renting out living space in your laundry room. To an intelligent caveman thawed out from a 20,000 year old ice block. To a genie. To Mork From Ork. To your grandchildren who are yet to be born…

Yeah, see, we treat the sexes equally because we despise discrimination in all forms. And so a man loses custody of his kids if he…um…has testicles…and a woman might lose custody of her kids if she is a complete coke fiend and has her own meth lab and extracts the organs out of her kids to give to her pimp in exchange for her next hit of acid and…and…and…

See, this is where we’re a little bit nuts. “We comes a long way but we gots a long ways to go” is not a good excuse when you’re all about, treating people exactly the same, but at the same time treating them different. Because, with an I.Q. of below 70, with a sugar-caffeine headache, without your first cup of coffee, fresh out of bed with a head full of pillow-hair, after four hours of sleep in six days…you should still be able to tell the difference between discriminating and not-discriminating.

But we can’t. We treat women one way, men another way, and we call it non-discrimination. I’d expect better out of a zombie, freshly dug-up and freshly re-animated.

C’mon…this can’t possibly be the first time you’ve heard of this. Can it?

Washington Examiner:

Democrats have lambasted Republicans for years for believing in “Voodoo economics.”

Well, the evidence is mounting that economic superstition is alive and well in the nation’s political circles, though it has nothing to do with a fondness for tax cuts. It’s instead the crazy belief that the government can spend its way to prosperity for the rest of us. Underscoring this conclusion, the Ways and Means Committee in the new GOP-majority House released a report titled “It’s Official: On Unemployment and Jobs, Democrats’ 2009 Stimulus Was a Huge Failure.”

The Ways and Means report provides a number of striking reminders about the predictions the White House made in January 2009 while urging the passage of their $814 billion Keynesian spending bill. By January 2011, the stimulus bill was supposed to have lowered the unemployment rate to 7 percent. It now stands at 9.4 percent, and the report notes that “the unemployment rate would be 11.3 percent if it included all the ‘invisible unemployed’ — American workers who have simply given up looking for work.” The report also claimed that the stimulus would create 3.7 million jobs by now, for a total of 137.6 million jobs in the American economy. Currently, there are 130.7 million jobs. Since passage of the stimulus, 47 of the 50 states have lost jobs; overall, the private sector has seen 1.8 million jobs disappear.

I’d like to know what the rebuttal is, aside from the standard change-the-subject.

Thank goodness we did this or else even more jobs would’ve been lost?

The GOP-led Ways and Means committee is making it all up?

You’re-a-racist?

Seriously, I would like to know how they plan to respond to this. Let us review: The economy is collapsing because of FaPoBuAd (failed policies of the Bush administration) so we have to stimulate it to keep it from entirely bottoming out…the taxpayers have to give us all this money so we can check out these key ways we can stimulate the economy. And oh my goodness, it turns out to be a matter of giving a billion dollars at a time to our friends! That, and putting all of the nation’s interconnecting traffic thoroughfares under construction at the same time. Yeah, that’s a great way to stimulate the economy.

If you need to get something from Folsom to Auburn or vice-versa in order to run your business — the road you would be using has been torn to shreds for just shy of about two years now, thanks to Obama. There’s really no practical way around it. My girlfriend works in Roseville, and it affects her. Every time I lend her an assist I can’t help myself, that’s where I say “if I ever did like Obama, this, right here, all by itself, would be where I change my mind.” The economy is barely treading water…so…let’s tear up all the roads! It’s a Fish-Called-Wanda situation, calling it stupid would be an insult to stupid people.

And now the facts are in and they say it didn’t work. Well, duh. How on earth could it.

But has there ever been an oxygen-breathing creature on all of Creation, less capable of learning from experience than the dedicated Keynesian?

Update 1/25/11: Aw, darnit all, we didn’t even get our road problem fixed with this boondoggle.

Bubba got into a reasonable exchange of ideas with a knowledgeable executive who really knows his business…you know, the kind of “sit down with our enemies and talk out our differences” the left wing is constantly telling us we need to have.

Didn’t work out so hot.

Or it worked out awesomely, depending on your point of view.

Sonic Charmer notices something:

Everyone knows that you’re supposed to be able to take the paper off a drinking straw by grasping it gently by its sides, banging it briskly on the table in one clean vertical motion until the top of it pops out of the paper, grabbing that top, and then sliding the paper off easily in one piece.

For some reason, this no longer works.

Pastorius has an explanation. Oh my goodness, it goes back to China once again. And…disturbingly…it makes perfect sense. The straws are being made in China, and wrapped in chopstick wrappers that are designed and built for the purpose of holding chopsticks but sized for the purpose of holding straws.

Well…IMO, no it isn’t a good development. But if it leads to a situation where every red-blooded man & boy is expected to be carrying a knife on his hip, I’m for it. Kinda.

That would be anti-American propaganda.

Lang Lang the pianist says he chose it. Chairman Hu Jintao recognized it as soon as he heard it. Patriotic Chinese Internet users were delighted as soon as they saw the videos online. Early morning TV viewers in China knew it would be played an hour or two beforehand. At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.”

The film depicts a group of “People’s Volunteer Army” soldiers who are first hemmed in at Shanganling (or Triangle Hill) and then, when reinforcements arrive, take up their rifles and counterattack the U.S. military “jackals.”

The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades. CCP propaganda has always referred to the Korean War as the “movement to resist America and help [North] Korea.” The message of the propaganda is that the United States is an enemy—in fighting in the Korean War the United States’ real goal was said to be to invade and conquer China. The victory at Triangle Hill was promoted as a victory over imperialists.

The 2012 Republican commercials practically write themselves.

I think among independent voters, the ones who decide our elections, there is a significant saturation of belief that America has been due for a dose of humility and I don’t know if that’s a majority viewpoint, but I do see it as an unshakable one among the people who hold it.

The message that needs to get out, I think, should be one of “Okay, assuming we had it coming…that’ll do. We’ve had enough of it.” I think most people would sign on to the idea that having anti-American songs played live in the White House, will suffice.

I’d like to hear that little jingle. On a GOP commercial, within the next twenty-one months, or else someone needs to go find a different line of work.

From one “Bryan Stone, Boston University School of Theology”

Twas a Postmodern Christmas, when all through the regime
Not a concept was stirring, not even a meme.
Essentialist dogmas were nurtured with care,
And imperialist ambitions still hung in the air

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While grand narratives of progress danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just performed gender before taking a nap.

The end of that second paragraph made me giggle.

Hat tip to Professor Mondo.

And the fallout that followed…Van Helsing at Moonbattery has a lovely collection of tweets like this one:

He adds something I find a little bit off-topic, but uplifting: “The high water mark for left-wing lunacy was the election of the Manchurian Moonbat. The floodtide of foolishness has begun to recede.” I certainly do hope so.

The irony is, these people are the ones who are failing to keep up with the times, to get-with-it. Evil sinister shadowy corporations, feeding off us good people, stopping us from saying anything about it…yadda yadda yadda. Starring Cliff Robertson, Robert Redford and Hal Holbrook I suppose? Catch it on ABC at 9:00?

Some of our leftists simply stopped learning about how the world functions right after Watergate. Conservative politicians and evilcorporashuns are the cause of every single bad thing that ever happened. They’re like the wicked witch in some ancient fairy tale, where if there’s any other source of evil, or if bad things just plain happen without anybody making them happen, it would complicate the story to the point where it becomes unworkable.

Of course a lot of people stuck in Watergate were born well after Watergate. That is sad.

To call them useful idiots, would be to give them too much credit for usefulness.

For some reason, I was thinking about ghost movies. Ghost Story (1981), Stir of Echoes (1999) and The Ring (2002) are three of my favorites; they all have it in common that the ghost is the first & final step in a trail of clues to be followed, in something that is just as much a detective story as a tail of the supernatural.

The Ring, though — or, something else somewhere — seems to have started something. As a movie-watching culture, we seem to have formed a pinpoint-sized laser-focused idea of who is supposed to be following clues and figuring things out. We are no longer going to accept anybody who’s too remarkably different from Naomi Watts. Bruce Willis can’t do this anymore and neither can Kevin Bacon or Kevin Bacon’s family…the odd thing is, once The Sixth Sense (1999) successfully installed the “pre-teen creepy kid” thing it seemed like it would hang around forever.

But what’s really got some staying power is the “awesome looking gal who should be naked but has all her clothes on”…figuring out what’s going on, following the trail of clues. If there is anything to be learned she will be the one learning it.

This is not to say, however, she’ll be doing what Nicholas Cage did in National Treasure (2004). There, they had the star figuring everything out, while everyone else just stood around and watched. That got silly, and then they kept on doing it a few more times. When you’re inserting a parody of it into the movie itself, and into the very first installment of the franchise yet, it has been taken very, very far. It still ends up being an enjoyable flick, but it probably could have been something better.

No, the chick-that-should-be-naked-but-is-wearing-all-her-clothes does not act this independently. She takes information in from others with this wide-eyed, naive, “what do you mean by that” look on her face. She needs the knowledge of the men, who are specialists, possessing knowledge that is narrow but deep. Or, they’re stupid ornery redneck sheriffs representing PATRIARCHY! But usually, they’re friendly handymen or morgue attendants or realty agents or whatever. They provide the pieces of the puzzle and she puts them together. While keeping all of her clothes on.

Once The Grudge (2004) came out, followed by Skeleton Key (2005), the die was cast: She has to be a blond. A doe-eyed blond who looks fantastic naked, or next-to-naked, but you’ll never be able to check that out here because she’s going to keep all her clothes on. While she asks the men how things work, and gathers the pieces to put the puzzle together to figure out where the ghost came from and what it wants.

Now, that I find interesting. We don’t want to watch raven-haired girls figure anything out and we don’t want to watch men figure things out. Unless it’s Nicholas Cage…and we don’t want to see Nicholas Cage figure anything out from asking anybody anything, we want to see him find clues and mutter to himself.

But really, the people we want to see asking questions, admitting they don’t know something so a wise man can fill them in on the one tiny piece he knows about, are gorgeous blond women with big blue eyes. With great looking bodies. But wearing bulky long-sleeved sweaters throughout the entire film.

What’s the take-away from all this?

I think it’s got something to do with the sex appeal of information. Already having the information is manly; think of all the old James Bond movies where M would say “Bond, what do you know about [fill in the blank]??” And Bond would show his manly side by turning all walking-encyclopedia for a minute or two, and M would congratulate him and maybe fill in one tiny but key missing piece of the body of knowledge. The pastiche of the manly-man-with-the-photographic-memory has been consigned to the scrap pile of…uh…memory. If you’re under thirty you probably don’t even remember what I’m talking about here, unless you own a complete James Bond collection like myself…

But even today, it is somewhat appealing to already have the information, so long as you don’t overdo it. Of course it’s difficult to discern these things, since nowadays masculinity itself is thought to lose its appeal if it’s overdone. And the cultural cut-off seems to be ratcheted downward, still, year by year. But still: We do not like seeing men asking questions. We like to think they already have all the information they need…and they don’t need much.

Women, on the other hand, seem to be more attractive to us when they’re asking questions. I’ve heard it said women and girls find it necessary to dumb themselves down and end up dateless if they’re perceived as too powerful, independent, capable. This is channeled into some kind of threat, in the eyes of those whom they would like to pursue. I still think this says more about who it is the ladies have decided they want to pursue, than it does about men in general. My own relationships have generally deteriorated when the woman acted too helpless. But…maybe there’s something to this. Certainly there is a perception out there that you can’t be too feminine, and therefore can’t be too attractive, if you don’t have some need for information and require someone better informed to fill in the gaps for you.

I wonder how we’d take it if it were up to a dark-haired girl to ask the smart man the questions, gather the pieces, put the puzzle together, find out where the ghost came from. Heather Langenkamp did okay, I thought. Of course, her eyes were blue. Saaaaaay…now there’s a thought. If it’s the inquisitive one asking all the questions, who has brown eyes, is the scene suddenly not quite as much fun to watch?

From what I can see, Hollywood is much more careful casting the “protagonist who needs to ask the questions and gather the clues together,” than they are about casting the guy-cracking-safes-and-karate-chopping-the-bad-guys. And they are probably right to do this. The rest of us seem to know exactly what it is we expect to see.

Still can’t quite figure out the “she should be naked but she’s wearing all her clothes” thing though. That, to me, seems like a question that was settled without enough thought, that would be best re-opened for further inspection.

I can’t recall the last time I saw a ghost-chasing protagonist woman displaying so much as her forearms. Or her ankles. Face…hands…that’s it. A great-looking flaxen-haired swimsuit model type with blue eyes as big as dinner plates, wearing a sweater so bulky you don’t even know what her cup size is. But she’s no shorter than 5’5″, and no taller than 5’7″.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.

The one hundred and sixth Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately is hereby awarded to HotAir commenter juliesa for the following:

This will have the same lifespan as the “civility” thing.

You’ll have to click on over to check out the context.

Thatisall.

Absolutely pathetic. Hawaii’s new governor announced at Christmastime:

Gov. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, who befriended President Obama’s parents when they were university students here, has been in office for less than three weeks. But he is so incensed over “birthers” — the conspiracy theorists who assert that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya and was thus not eligible to become president — that he is seeking ways to change state policy to allow him to release additional proof that the president was born in Honolulu in 1961.
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But on the matter of the birthers, Mr. Abercrombie grew serious. “I’m going to take care of that,” he said, though he acknowledged that they would be difficult to convince.

Riiiiiiggghhht. Because as we all know, anytime anybody says they want to see evidence of something, that automatically means they’ll never be convinced. The people who already have their minds made up are the open-minded flexible ones. Uh, er, or something.

How’d that work out Gov. Abercrombie?

Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie will end his quest to prove President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii because it’s against state law to release private documents, his office said Friday.

State Attorney General David Louie told the governor he can’t disclose an individual’s birth documentation without a person’s consent, Abercrombie spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said.

“There is nothing more that Gov. Abercrombie can do within the law to produce a document,” said Dela Cruz. “Unfortunately, there are conspirators who will continue to question the citizenship of our president.”

At the risk of damaging my reputation for humility…I’m going to quote myself again. From an off-line:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t know anything about Obama that is exculpatory or positive.

By “know,” I mean, achieve a state of awareness such that I can personally vouch for it, or some solid evidence that supports it. I “know” He is not a socialist or a communist only in the the same way I “know” He was born in Hawaii; legions of vocal people are lining up ready to make fun of me if I fail to accept it, or hesitate to accept it, or dare to believe something else.

I “know” Obama loves America the same way. Also, I “know” He was napping or tuning out when that bigoted pastor of His was oozing that communist America-bashing drivel for twenty years. I “know” He’s a Christian and not a Muslim this way too. I am to accept all these things without reservation, as if I had some personal background in it. Some of these propositions not only fail to find support in what logical, normal people refer to as “evidence” — they suffer from real problems created by the evidence. Obama believes in free markets, Obama possesses a deep and scholarly understanding of constitutional law, Obama is a brilliant public speaker.

I do see some solid evidence that Obama is sharp and effective in some of the things He tries to do.

But that stuff isn’t helpful to anybody but Obama’s closest friends. Or, over the longer term, to anybody but Obama.

I suppose this isn’t all Obama’s fault. He does have His own bubble of hyper-charisma around Him, it’s not entirely within His control. Whenever something unflattering is spread around about Him, His followers or groupies or toadies, call ’em what you will, climb all over each other to whip up the peer pressure to make it all go away. Which doesn’t by any stretch mean the ugly insinuation about Him has any truth to it.

I’ve pretty much made up my mind He was born in Hawaii, just speaking for myself…but do I think people are unreasonable when they show skepticism? Do I think true hardcore “birthers,” the people who are equally convinced He was born in Kenya, are unreasonable? Or out-and-out nuts?

Mmmm…no…sorry, I can’t make that call. I wasn’t in Honolulu in August 1961. They haven’t seen any hard evidence one way or the other, just like I haven’t.

The issue is hyper-credulity. The pro-Obama people, in fact the hard loyal left in general, may want to be given all the props & recognition & accolades for master-debating…for assertion, for rebuttal, for the highbrow intellectual smackdown. But that is not what they have been doing. Engaging in rhetorical battle, on an idea-against-idea basis, is not what they do.

They offer an idea, and if you are acceptable to them you will be absolutely credulous. You will accept whatever it is without a whiff of question or suspicion or skepticism. If you do not do this, you are unacceptable and trust me, that is where the argument is going next. You’re stupid, you’re indecent, you’re sexist, you’re a homophobe, you’re a racist, you’re a xenophobe.

Go on, find me an exception. One single dedicated leftist who has ever been told something besides “I believe that 100 percent”…and his response to that, in turn, was something along the lines of “that’s quite reasonable of you my good man, allow me to provide some further foundational support” as opposed to “why, you redneck asshole you.” Just find me one example.

They debate facts when it seems the facts are on their side. When it goes the other way they pull the switcheroo. That’s the way it works and it isn’t all Obama’s doing. So He doesn’t get all the blame.

But I must say. It is a little bizarre that every little thing we know about Him, once you strip away the bad stuff we know — and as a general rule, we know all that for certain — everything that’s left is just peer-pressure wild-ass speculation being rammed down our throats by enthusiasts who, as I said, are ready to spread ridicule upon anyone who believes something else.

And it can’t be good for us.

It also can’t be good that we’re re-defining open-mindedness to mean what closed-mindedness is supposed to be. Obama’s a Christian, that’s it dad-gummit, if you don’t believe it uncritically then you’re crazy stupid.

Nor can it be good that we’re re-defining closed-mindedness to mean…you’re just not buying it yet. Yeah, I think it is this bad. We have long ago begun to look at people who are still absorbing information as people who are not, and vice-versa.

Gov. Abercrombie was set on proving something once and for all, so that everyone would be forced to accept what he wanted them to accept. He failed. Also, I notice he failed due to things that would have been easily anticipated by anyone who’s paid the slightest bit of attention to the issue. Which means, if he’s been on the up-and-up here, he never was in a good position to be lecturing anybody on the facts.

But now that he’s failed, everybody is supposed to find that convincing and if they don’t, that’s even more proof how crazy & stupid they are.

In some ways, I think liberals’ ideas are not nearly as destructive as the methods they use to sell those ideas. Peer pressure is what you do in high school. It really isn’t the way the grown-ups in our nation need to be deciding things right now.

Dennis Miller has a rant about Sarah Palin (audio file). Actually, it’s a rant about the people ranting about Sarah Palin, and it’s pretty good.

Like I said earlier this morning over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging…and no, in keeping with my earlier moratorium, I am not going to link it, because this “I’m going to get attention by criticizing Sarah Palin” thing has gotten rather silly and I’m not going to help it along. But I said,

And yet…whenever we’re talking about her, it’s the people who are tired of hearing about her who started the conversation. Ain’t that somethin’?

Of course, you can tell by my pinup artwork I would like to see a President Palin. I want to see a President saying no to the left-wing balderdash, and then not apologizing to anyone for saying no to the left-wing balderdash. A real leader who will say “that’s cocked up right there…it will be all cocked up tomorrow, we’re not doing it, we won’t consider it until such time as someone proves there’s something to it. That’s my position and I’m sticking to it, and if you call me bad & filthy names for taking this position, guess what it isn’t going to change my mind one bit.” We’ve just had way too many so-called “leaders” doing their leading by way of avoiding criticism. We desperately need something else. Find me another candidate who will offer the something-else and I’ll consider supporting that candidate. Right now, there’s nobody in the running like that, and only one with a recognizable name worthy of any draft effort.

But here’s the point: That’s my take on it. It isn’t Sarah Palin’s. I don’t know if she’s running, you don’t know either…and she might not know. So venting your spleen about how unqualified she is to be President, is about as on-topic as noticing any other mother of a Dancing With The Stars contestant is unqualified to be President. Or, noticing any other reality show star is unqualified to be President. Or, noticing the hot dog vendor down the street is unqualified to be President.

This is all off-topic from Barack Obama…but at the same time…it needs to be said that these are exceptionally bizarre times for anyone to be noticing anybody is unqualified to be President. The energy would be more constructively spent worrying about the person unqualified to be President, who actually is President.

Does that mean I get to say “Palin for President!” and still criticize other people for saying “No, she’s unqualified!” Actually, yeah. It means exactly that. She isn’t running, so we get to talk about it being a good thing if she did. And you get to disagree if you want to. But if she’s unqualified, we’ll figure that out at the Republican convention or in the general election of 2012. You don’t get to unilaterally decide that.

These repeated attempts to do so, just go to show she is uniquely qualified. To run for the position, at the very least. And if she wins? It certainly wouldn’t be any worse than the situation as it exists today.

But the take-away from this is, whenever we’re talking about her, most of the time it isn’t the Palin fans like me who started the conversation. It’s the Palin haters who do that. Nor is it the Palin fans who are militant or hysterical about it. Again, it’s the ankle-biters doing that. They’re the ones with the uncontrollable reflex, the neurotic twitch.

Let’s just get that one thing straight.

Thanks to blogger friend Phil for forwarding this along in an off-line.

Art Horn, Pajamas Media:

This year, your government will spend in the neighborhood of $4 billion on global warming research, despite the fact that there has been no global warming since 1998, and despite all of the billions that have been spent so far yielding no conclusive evidence that using fossil fuels to make energy has any significant effect on Earth’s temperature.

The human component of carbon dioxide that is injected into the air each year is very small, on the order of 3%. Half the carbon dioxide emitted into the air by human activity each year is immediately absorbed into nature. Carbon dioxide is 8% of the greenhouse effect; water in the air is 90% of the greenhouse effect. By volume, carbon dioxide is currently at about 390 parts per million in the atmosphere, increasing at about 2 parts per million annually. In other words, carbon dioxide is increasing at a rate of .5% per year. Since human activity adds 3% of the carbon dioxide that gets into the air each year, the human component of the increase in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year is 3 % of .5%, or just .015%.
:
Redundancy on top of redundancy, piles of money on top of piles of money. All to study climate change, which, according to the theory, should be warming us rapidly, but, according to the data, has stopped. How much of the requested money these government agencies actually get is not yet known. The way they spend money in Washington, you can rest assured they’ll get most of it.

If you’re looking to cut the budget, climate change is a good place to start. If we don’t get a handle on Washington’s spending soon, and I mean very soon, climate change will be the least of our problems.

It has a lot of dust on it…and there’s no one particular recent event that makes it any more relevant now than it was before. Just want to get it into the database.

And, as always, it bears repeating:

Well, well. Yet another reason why they don’t want us reading or watching Fox News. It isn’t helpful allowing things like this to get out…

In his first interview since undergoing major heart surgery last July, [former Vice President Dick] Cheney said he thinks Obama has been forced to rethink some of his national security positions now that he sits in the Oval Office.

“I think he’s learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he’s learned from experience. And part of that experience was the Democrats having a terrible showing last election.”
:
“I think he’s learned that he’s not going to be able to close Guantanamo,” Cheney said. “That it’s — if you didn’t have it, you’d have to create one like that. You’ve got to have some place to put terrorists who are combatants who are bound and determined to try to kill Americans.”

All together now:

DUH!

This is one subject on which Obama looks like a complete dumbass. Speaking for myself, I always prefer to believe if someone got elected to something…anything…then that person must know something. Besides of which if you’re in politics, you have enemies, and those enemies will always want to make you look stupid. So the stupid-ness of politicians is something I think is naturally overstated.

But this Guantanamo situation, knowing what I know today about it, still looks exactly like what it did at first. OBozo was completely flummoxed and bamboozled, ambushed in a surprise attack by reality.

“Okee dokee, now that I won and I’m the President and everything, let’s just let all these falsely accused and mistreated ordinary Americans out! Oh dear…oh, my…it looks like some of them really are bad. Oh, what to do what to do…”

I mean, it has to be more complicated than that. I find it hard to believe a master showman like Barack Obama can talk this thing up, day and night, month after month year after year, and never once give any serious thought to the possibility that maybe someone in Gitmo would like to hurt people and can’t be released. He never even considered it? Nobody in His inner circle even considered it? Not once?

Every little smidgen of information I’ve learned about this, supports that spectacular, unbelievable narrative. That they really did come to believe their own claptrap, and got snookered when they found out things aren’t that simple.

Calling it irresponsible is an insult to irresponsible people.

From here.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

From Neal Boortz:

The Christian faith makes it possible for us to accept that which cannot be changed, to meet disappointment and sorrow with an inner poise, and to absorb the most intense pain without abandoning our sense of hope, for we know, as Paul testified, in life or death, in Spain or Rome, “that all things work together to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. – Martin Luther King, Jr

There ya go. Shepherd for the sheep, in a chaotic, messy, painful world.

Royal Marshall, Neal’s producer, had a heart attack and passed away at his home over the weekend. He was 43. I’m really feeling for these people right now because I’ve been in exactly that situation…right after New Year’s…and it really sucks big ones. There’s nothing quite like hearing someone in the office get off the phone and say, “[insert name here]’s dead.”

But my boss was 52 and his health had been in something of a down-slide….a relatively sudden down-slide, but it was still there. This was a healthy young man, from what I read, no warning at all.

May time heal the wound with grace, may the memories remain fond, and may Royal’s example endure and inspire.

Another “why they hate Palin” piece, this one by Evan Sayet. This one I had teetering on the brink. In fact, I wasn’t even going to read it all the way through, but the way it starts is delicious:

It just happened again.

I spend a fair amount of time at my local coffee shop. I like to do my writing outside and, besides, it gives me an opportunity to try and initiate political conversations with the people who pass by — my hope always being to begin to enlighten them as to what conservatives really believe (and not just what the leftist media tells them.)

Today, the conversation turned to Sarah Palin and my latest acquaintance blurted out: “Oh I hate her.” Since she did not yet know my politics, and since we were in Los Angeles, it is clear that she expected to hear back what you usually hear back in this city: “Yeah, I hate her, too.” Instead, I asked her why.

At this point I could have predicted her response because it’s the same response you get from liberals no matter who on the Right you’re talking about: “Because she’s stupid.” I replied: “Being stupid is no reason to hate someone, but tell me, which one of her policies do you disagree with?” It wasn’t hard to predict her response: “All of them!”

I continued to push. “Well, then, if it’s all of them, it should be easy for you to name one.” Her reply? “They’re too many to list.”

“So don’t list them, just give me one,” I said.

This went on for awhile until my new acquaintance finally admitted that she didn’t know any of Ms. Palin’s policies. Before she ran off – Democrats always run off when asked to provide facts to justify their hatred for Republicans – I looked her in the eyes and said, “If you don’t know any of her policies, perhaps you should look into them.” She promised she would. She won’t. If there are two things you can count on with Democrats, they are filled with hate and empty of facts.

Now, I suppose any time you trounce someone in an argument one-on-one, and then write up a column or a blog post about it to describe a generalized phenomenon, it’s a treacherous business you undertake. It might feel good at the time to beat somebody, after all, but there’s always someone else who’s better at debating…and it is an important thing to take into account after you’ve finished wrestling with a true lightweight, and emerged victorious simply by asking questions.

But as most of us understand by now — extrapolating this as a generalized phenomenon is more than fair. More than fair. How often has the exact same conversation been repeated? Countless times. The average liberal can no more name what exactly it is he despises about Sarah Palin, than he can name what exactly it is he likes about Barack Obama. “There’s just something about” keeps floating to the top.

The middle of Sayet’s column, not wanting to be unkind about it, but it’s a retread. It might as well have been printed up in September of ’08. In fact, there’s at least one “fact” that’s wrong. So I was going to pass it on by…but then…Sayet runs into some points that, although they have been made before, haven’t been made before too often. Not given how important they are.

They bear repeating:

And Sarah Palin ran a small business. Democrats don’t run businesses. In fact, Democrats don’t do anything. If you eliminated from the voting roll everyone who did nothing other than talk – the academic, the newscaster, the actor, the politician – and those who game the system, collecting welfare and years of unemployment benefits and “workman’s compensation” and food stamps, how many people would be left voting Democrat?

Zing.

Let’s put it this way, if having had a job – having done something that required either physical labor or risking one’s own money – were a prerequisite to work in the White House, Barack Obama would have to fire 94 percent of his top advisers. That’s a real number. Ninety four percent of Obama’s top advisers have never done anything like run a small store, paint a bridge, wire a house for electricity or anything else other than flap their lips.

Double-zing.

This is the genesis of the notion that Palin is “stupid.” Liberals are convinced that there’s something “the matter” with people who have jobs. This is what they mean by “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” Kansas being a place where people work – Hollywood, Cambridge Massachusetts, the TV studios in Manhattan are places were people talk. To the liberal, anyone who has a job must be stupid, after all, not everyone is as good a talker as they are, but surely everyone can find one excuse or another to sit at home and collect welfare.

Trifecta complete.

Now, at this point we’re very close to the end of Sayet’s column and he doesn’t explore this too much further, insofar as how it would pose a danger to progressive institutions for Palin to be seriously evaluated as a candidate for high office. So he finishes off here, right where the real story has just begun.

Palin represents something much bigger than Palin. It isn’t hockey moms or Momma Grizzlies or lipstick or GILFs or nice-lookin’ legs. What she represents is perceptive intelligence, the kind of intelligence you have to have if you work for a living, but don’t have to have if you talk for a living. You need to perceive…and based on your perceptions…make a decision that affects how, and if, you’re going to be getting your work done.

If you paint that bridge, for example, it will mean something to you if the wind is blowing too fast that day. So to do this job you’re going to have to take in some facts, and not just use them to puff up a report that services your political agenda — but modify your behavior according to those facts. Can’t fly the plane, the runway is too icy. Can’t milk the cows, it’s too cold. People who talk for a living don’t need to think this way. Their behavior is unintelligent and unconditional. Really, look into it; check out what they do, and take special notice of how incredibly constant it is.

Give a speech, and make sure it’s wonderful. Spend money. Raise taxes. Give a shout-out to someone you know who’s sitting in the audience. Talk about civil discourse. Raise money for your campaign, or someone else’s campaign. Produce a report. Raise awareness. See to it people know how to get the benefits if they are eligible. Maybe you need to start a second program to raise awareness of the existence of the first program. Show your support for a progressive cause. Rally the crowd. Make people feel good about themselves. Raise more money. Give a speech. Remind people how far we have come. But also remind them there is still a long, long way to go. Raise taxes. Give a speech.

My point is not that these things don’t do what they’re supposed to do…although, most of the time, they indeed do not. My point is that these behaviors are constant. It doesn’t matter what the situation is. These are going to be the things to do. Because they are constant and not determined by any particular situation, they are inherently unintelligent. In fact, if you put an intelligent person in the position of doing these things, over time he will have to develop a disrespect, almost an animosity, toward truth, logic, evidence and fact.

You can’t afford to be doing that when you build a building, scrape the barnacles off a boat, or load logs into a truck. In fact, in those jobs if you’re unintelligent the way our “leaders” are unintelligent, someone might very well get killed. So you need to show the intelligence God gave you in those jobs, and in addition, you have to be resourceful. Every time you make the call that it’s too ____ to do ____, if the job cannot be delayed then you need to find some different way of doing it. And that, in turn, means wandering off the prepared script. So now you really have to use your brain to figure out how, following this new process you’re making up as you go along, people might get injured, and acting on the spot to prevent that from happening.

I suppose this might look like I’m saying we’ve metastasized into a society in which unintelligent people make rules for intelligent people to follow; which, obviously, would be a regrettable situation.

Yes, that’s precisely what I am saying.

And every status quo, for whatever reason, has its defenders. When the time comes to change it there’s going to be some resistance.

And that’s why the establishment hates Sarah Palin so much. Surely you’ve noticed a lot of the hate has very little to do with Trig. A lot of the hate has very little to do with ideological position. She’s upsetting the establishment; the non-partisan, non-intelligent establishment.

Hat tip to Linkiest.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.

Via an off-line e-mail from rob.

Can you watch this without a goofy grin on your face?

This girl’s going places.

From here.

Hat tip to Linkiest.

Sonic Charmer has an intriguing idea:

I’d only add one thing to mkfreeberg’s James Bond wish list, and it’s a complaint I’ve had about the Bond films for a while now: It’s time for the Bond films to become period pieces.

These are stories of the ’50s and ’60s. They were written in the ’50s and ’60s and take place in the ’50s and ’60s. Set them in those time periods for crying out loud. They don’t try to set ‘Three Musketeers’ stories in modern-day France; having James Bond, WWII veteran, running around fighting cybervillains in the ’10s for a female M. and ‘Cool Britannia’ is just ridiculous. Is he 90 years old? This isn’t merely a matter of slavish devotion to historical verisimilitude on my part or anything. Part and parcel of what makes Bond interesting is the Cold War mise en scene (even if at times it’s masked by having him fight made-up villains like SPECTRE). Terrorism notwithstanding, we simply don’t have that atmosphere now. But they did then. So that’s when they should take place. In my ideal Bond movie there should be vintage ’50s era cars, East Germany should exist, Bond (and all other adult males) should wear a suit and hat everywhere they go, his watch should have a radium dial that glows, the women should smoke cigarettes with filters, trains should be glamorous and mysterious, there should be secret codes or stolen plans on microfilm, his key field equipment should be a trick leather briefcase. Et cetera. Come on, you have to admit this sounds good! But none of those things would work in a movie set today; it only works if you set them in that time.

Bond is the longest-running movie franchise ever. MGM just got out of bankruptcy and Bond 23 is the first thing they announce. It is clearly a cash cow, and will never die. Which just means that at some point the anachronism will become too obvious and unworkable; thus, if you think about it freezing him back in his actual time period is something that has got to happen sooner or later. So why not now? I’ll keep watching the Daniel Craig Bond films and I appreciate the ‘reboot’ effort they’ve represented, but what I’m really waiting for is a real reboot back to real Bond stories – the ones that haven’t really been made since, maybe, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

I’ve been mulling this over in my head all day, and the more I think about it the more I like it. I still see a potential problem; as I wrote there, James Bond exists first & foremost as a male fantasy, a target of “I wish I was doing this”…and that does seem to work better as “I wish I was doing this right now.” Well, you can’t wish you’re fighting with Bulgarian thugs who are throwing explosive briefcases at you to make the world safe for a communist overthrow on behalf of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics…right now. But I dunno. Does that really have to get in the way? We take these little trips back in time pretty much constantly in the land of cinema.

I think it’s up to the gentlemen to decide this. Not to trivialize the female attraction to the Bond saga, but…well, it is trivial by comparison. It’s all “Connery was sexier than Moore” and “Ooh that Pierce Brosnan is just so suave” over there. If James Bond is put back in 1958, the lady fans will adapt to this just fine.

The male fan is a bit trickier. We’re thinking…I wonder if I could do something like that if I was in the same situation. How awesome would it be if I could. And for us to do that, does it really have to take place in 2006, 2008, 2012? I’m thinking…if it’s handled right, no it doesn’t.

And I’ll bet a 1955 Thunderbird tricked out with machine guns behind the headlights would be mega-awesome.

One thing would be missing though: The “Tom Clancy” factor involved in the technology. James Bond films should inspire a debate about whether such-and-such a thing is possible or not. Remember the dialogue from Goldfinger? “You’re joking” (acting legend Connery, wearing his very best puzzled-and-perplexed face). “I never joke about my work, double-oh-seven.”

If Bond movies take place sixty years ago, all that stuff has to take a powder…all the “maybe Popular Mechanics will have this on the cover in another five years” fantasy gear. I would miss that, but to be honest, I could do without it.

Ed Driscoll has an impressive collection of links to be sprung on anyone who’s fixated on the notion that facts and reason have a well-known liberal bias:

At Ricochet, Rob Long writes:

The left likes to portray conservatives as “anti-science.” They even like to talk about a “Republican War on Science.”

Science, though, seems to be getting it from the left, at least as often.

In the NYObserver, Bill Wasik reviews Seth Mnookin’s new book The Panic Virus:

Near the beginning of The Panic Virus, Seth Mnookin’s definitive, infuriating history of the myth that vaccines cause autism, the author relates a story from a Park Slope dinner party he attended in 2007. Mr. Mnookin was discussing pediatric health with a new parent in his early 40s who explained that he and his wife had decided to delay their child’s vaccines. On what sources had he based this weighty decision? Questions along these lines were met with murk. “I don’t know what to say,” the man replied. “It just feels like a lot for a developing immune system to deal with.”

It was this F-word—feels—that left Mr. Mnookin justifiably gobsmacked, and it serves as the departure point for The Panic Virus, an attempt to explain how thousands of otherwise sophisticated Americans could make a fatuous decision to opt out of what is arguably modernity’s greatest medical achievement. Most children “exempted” from vaccines (a fittingly ridiculous term, as if the kids place out via AP exam) are not low-information progeny. They are being raised in college towns, in wealthy suburbs and in tony urban enclaves like Park Slope, by the sorts of parents who are otherwise given to grave tut-tutting about the anti-science stances of others—the climate-change know-nothings, say, or the ovine devotees of the garish Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.

Perhaps the tide is slowly turning; as Investor’s Business Daily noted earlier this month, just before all eyes understandably turned to Tucson, junk science has come under increasing scrutiny:

A study debunking vaccines by a scientist in the pay of trial lawyers was found to be “an elaborate fraud.” Meanwhile, the “Great Garbage Patch” turned out to be a sea myth. Science has some explaining to do.Scientific inquiry, once perceived a noble redoubt of objective truth-seeking and enlightenment, is doing a bang-up job of dragging itself down to P.T. Barnum-style snake oil-elixir hype, given the amount of fraud being exposed almost daily.

Of course, mistakes happen in any field of inquiry, but these are politically motivated ruses intended to advance an agenda.

Meanwhile, in the London Telegraph, James Delingpole quips, “‘Why will no one listen to us any more?’ wails [manmade global warming] propagandist.”

Perhaps this headline from the London Independent in 2000 might answer that question.

The Left claims to be friendlier to science, and yet it works by figuring out what the conclusion is supposed to be, and then massaging and selecting the facts to fit into that. This process is oppositional from how science really works.

I was watching 10 today and suddenly I had a thought…

The movie is thirty-two years old now (!), so I trust I’m not giving anything away to anybody when I point out that in the end, the hero realizes the object of his lascivious fantasies is a shallow bitch with little to no redeeming value as a human being. So he goes back to his slightly frumpier lady-love, confesses how much of a horse’s ass he’s been, and enjoys true love…kind of a “bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” sort of thing.

A few years later, John Cusack did the same thing in a movie called The Sure Thing, eventually getting it through his thick skull that Daphne Zuniga was the one for him.

My observation is that when the primary promotional artwork for the movie has something to do with the pelvic area of a young lady in a bathing suit, this is a constant. Hijinks shall ensue as the protagonist feeds his own fantasies, usually egged on by his overweight goofy sidekick, and sees his entire world shrink around some feminine object of imagined carnal bliss. In the final ten minutes he finally is alone with the object of his pursuit, and is like the dog catching the car. Just as the doofus dad figures out 1) he’s a liar, 2) nobody can count on him, 3) he’s missing out on being a father and 4) he’s lower than whale dirt, the doofus philanderer comes to a similar epiphany. Everyone hates him, and should. He’s scum. His frumpy girlfriend is the real goddess, and this naked Aphrodite in front of him is just a waste of time.

Just watched Frat Party and Sex Drive. Now, those are on the low end…but it’s still embarrassing how stilted and tropish the story lines are. Makes me unhappy to have sunk 90 minutes into it, even if it isn’t exactly my prime viewing time.

It’s funny, isn’t it. The women don’t spend a movie lusting after some stud, and then finding out at the end that it was the wrong dream…and their kids are never having emotional breakdowns because momma didn’t make it to the piano concert. It’s always the dudes. I’m still not sure what this means, but I am sure there are some people making bank for being creative who aren’t all that creative. And, in an indirect way, I’m paying ’em.

They’re just hocking the same wares over, and over, and over again. Like thirty-two year old hot dogs or donuts.

Surber speaks for me.

The left suddenly wants civil discourse.

Bite me.

The left wants to play games of semantics.

Bite me.

The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.

Bite me.

There is grown-up work to do now. Liberals ran up the federal credit card, destroyed the American medical system and undermined the rule of law — which is the foundation of capitalism — with a bunch of unconstitutional fiats from the president and his bureaucracy.

The economy is a mess. The president “inherited” a 7.6% unemployment rate. It’s now 9.4% — after we spent a record $787 billion on a stimulus.

I was not consulted on that stimulus. I had a very good argument against it. I said the money supply was too large and printing more money would fail. I said let the economic downturn run its course.

Lefties were too busy celebrating the 2008 election to listen.

When people protested lefties made vulgar remarks about tea-bagging and giggled.

So screw you and your civil discourse.

I don’t want to hear it.

I have been screamed at for 10 years.

It’s my turn now. I am not going to scream back. But I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I say or how I say it. I refuse to allow the same foul-mouthed, foul-spirited foul people who dumped on me to now try to tell me what I may or may not say.

Amen.

When “civil discourse” arrives at the cost of the left accumulating more power, and they still want it, then I’ll believe them. Or I’ll give it some serious thought at that time, anyway. Until then it’s just lip service.

The American Left has a long-standing pattern of promoting unity when they perceive themselves to be at the top of the resulting unification; negotiations when they perceive themselves able to fully direct the compromise that would result; peace, when “peace” means everybody has to agree with them. In other words, they are fair-weather friends to these things and have been for a long time.

When a lefty has to choose between civility and power, and consciously chooses civility, do let me know. Until then, a lefty demanding a more civil discourse is just a fox offering to guard the hen house.