A certain department store, one of very few where I have bothered to open a charge account, is offering 15% off until Sunday. Since my girlfriend has a heart of gold she spent a good chunk of time last night trying to nab up some clothes for my kid off the website, but the website was too stupid to comprehend that she wanted the clothes shipped to his Mother’s place and the bill sent to us. So it fell to me & the kid to go in and take care of it while she went to her job today.

On the way there I thought to myself…duh…hey…waitaminnit, today’s Black Friday.

Time in: 11:30 a.m.
Goods picked out: 11:55 a.m.
Time in the checkout line: 11:55 a.m.
…

That’s as far as we got. By 1:15 p.m. I declared the line had made inadequate progress to justify sticking with this plan, and we came home to attend to our chores. We have a very light workload today, but the long and the short of it is this: I don’t see why we spent all that time to work our way 25 feet. That’s three minutes plus something per foot. The math — it doesn’t add up.

It just reeks of the kind of experience that has degenerated to a certain depth, because & only because people tolerate it.

There was only one time that I saw a sales associate pair up with another sales associate, to march out onto the sales floor and help ONE customer find something. But you know what? That’s enough to get me pissed. This other shopper, and pardon me but I think we were every bit as important as she was, made up her mind she had to have something but couldn’t find it, and needed help. Precisely what we encourage people to do all over the place. Ask for help when you need it. The associate she found, didn’t know the answer. He went and got someone who did. Together, the two of them completed her shopping experience. Everyone did everything “right.”

Except that’s two people who could have been working a register. This is why I think this is a good metaphor for life in America. We’ve got people who are determined to get everything, nevermind how much help they need. Other people are determined to find what they need without any help at all, even if they have to settle for fewer things. Supposedly, the “I need help” people are doing things right and the “I don’t need help” people are doing things wrong.

But…that help that everyone needs…like ringing up the sale…when you are ready for it, it isn’t there. People are spread too thin. So some very mundane everyday tasks are demanding a whole lot of time, to the point where they can’t reasonably get done.

Time out of everybody, regardless of which path they chose.

We bagged it. Abandoned the mission. To the best I can see, we were the only ones to do this. And I cannot understand why. I understand why we didn’t quite find what we wanted in the first place; we breezed on in late in the morning, on a day when shopping starts at 4 or 5 in the morning. And I can (kind of) see why people think of this as a refreshing, energizing experience — if they do that. Time seems to pass differently at different times of the day. If you happen to like shopping, I can see it might be an effervescent experience to ring in the Christmas shopping season with a 4:00 run to the store, followed by a 7:30 breakfast at Denny’s or whatever.

But I cannot understand three hours in line at one store. No matter what day of the year it is. I don’t care if you’re buying a fucking kidney. And I’m proud as hell of my fellow Americans who are standing up to the TSA and saying “no more”; but I don’t understand why the same thing isn’t happening with retail shopping. I’ll tell you this — it’s happened with me. I’ve reached my “timeout value.” Any network software application is supposed to have a timeout, that way if one network component locks up, the entire network isn’t gridlocked. Peers wait for responses from other peers, and if they don’t get it within a specified window, they generate errors. Your browser does this. If the web site doesn’t respond, it times out. That’s where I went. Timeout.

This economy is on a death spiral. “Black Friday” is one chance, one of very few chances, for it to get back on track. If there’s one thing this country does not need, it is for every man, woman and child’s retail shopping experience to take three hours, in one store, just because that’s part of the ambiance. How many people would have made it off Titanic if the line to the lifeboats moved like that?

Punch it up, swipe the card, print the receipt, and bag it all. Move on to the next customer, then keep on going. What’s the problem?

As for me and the kid, we’ll just have to find a different way to get ‘er done.

Saw a lady jogger run against our green light, risking her neck to save a few seconds. After we just got done waiting eighty minutes for nuthin’. There’s Folsom for you: Whoever’s willing to do some waiting, ends up having to do ALL of the waiting while everyone else just sort of glides right on through. I’m starting to remember why January is my favorite month for getting the hell out of the city and sitting in a hot tub, naked as the day I was born, by the ocean with a curvy woman of cheerful demeanor and a bottle of freshly-bought wine. I’m recalling why the same experience in the summer months, relatively speaking, is wasted on me. The suburban living has a way of wounding me all throughout the calendar year, and the holiday season rubs salt into it.

Eighty minutes to move twenty-five feet. And we had a good forty more feet to go. I just can’t get over it. I’m still going to be thinking about it, tonight, when I’m supposed to be sleeping. I can tell that right now.

Byron York writes in The Examiner:

We’re fast approaching the halfway point in Barack Obama’s term. With Nov. 2 behind him, everything the president does will be calculated to boost, or at least not harm, his chances of re-election in 2012. What’s not clear is whether he fully appreciates how badly the coalition he led to victory in 2008 has frayed in just two years. A look inside his poll numbers suggests that if he cannot turn around some key trends, he’ll be a one-term president.

Just look at the exit polls from 2008, which reveal the demographic contours of Obama’s support. Compare those with Gallup’s weekly analysis of the president’s approval rating, drawn from multiple polls broken down by age, gender, political philosophy, and the like. Throw in some insights from the midterm elections, and the mix shows a dramatic deterioration in Obama’s 2008 support. “His majority coalition is not there,” says Republican pollster David Winston. “What he put together, at least in the way he put it together, just isn’t there.”

Start with voters who call themselves independents. Obama won 52 percent of them in 2008; now, according to Gallup, he is at 42 percent. Obama’s party as a whole fared even worse among independents in the midterms, losing them to Republicans by 19 points. If Obama does anywhere near that badly in 2012, he’ll lose.

Next, women. In 2008, Obama won 56 percent of female voters. Today, he’s at 49 percent. If that number doesn’t improve, he’ll be in deep trouble. (Obama is also down with men, from 49 percent in 2008 to 44 percent now.)

Even younger voters, a key part of Obama’s coalition, are peeling away. In ’08, Obama won 66 percent of voters 18-29 years of age. Now, he’s at 58 percent. That might seem pretty good, but not when you consider his deterioration among other age groups. Obama has dropped 5 percentage points among voters in and around middle age, and 8 percent with voters above 65. If those trends continue, he’ll lose.

Obama, His reputation aside, is not a formidable candidate. The “formidable” part has to do with His skills, and His strength profile is actually exceedingly narrow and comes down to a singular specialty: He can make things look like things they really aren’t.

People who specialize in this do not become stronger as they remain in the limelight, because as they are better known, the one candle-flame that illuminates their entire suite of useful skills is gradually extinguished. Yes, He does have an air of “sophistication” about Him, or something that looks like sophistication. But at this point, why should we even bother to debate whether there’s something there or not? Why even go there?

The sophistication is being used to sell us things we would not otherwise buy, because these are things that are bad for us. It is not being used for any other purpose. Is it? Doesn’t it all come down to an ability to close sales with us that otherwise would not happen — by arresting a rational evaluation of the cost/benefit of the sale that would otherwise take place? Isn’t that all Obama has to offer when you get down to it?

Oh yeah, he’s black. Half-black. And He’s unusually brazen about His hostility against the free enterprise system, more likely than most past Presidents to sell us on legislation and executive orders that attack it. But like I said before, “Can’t we find a black President who isn’t so communist-ey?” His unusually consistent predilection for backing policies that inflict harm on the free enterprise system, comes from that one magical superpower to make things look like the opposite of what they truly are. So in a way, that doesn’t count. And having black skin has turned out to be nothing more than a gimmick to shut up dissenting voices by calling them racist. Which, when you think about it, is also derivative of that one special superpower.

Our First Holy President has only one thing to offer us, and more and more among us are waking up to the fact that it’s a toxic thing. Generally, voters don’t “un-figure-out” things. So when I hear this talk about “The Republicans are dead unless they can nominate someone who can take on OBAMA!”, lately I have begun to tune out. It’s not like picking out the right rocket launcher to take out King Kong. From what I’m seeing here, transparency is key. Obama has a shot against anyone who arrives and says “I have a plan…trust me…I’ll get this economy back on its feet, but I’m not going to tell you how. You need to elect me to find out what I’m going to do.”

But if the challenger is open and honest, and says something like “Businesses aren’t hiring because we’ve made it evil to make money, they don’t trust the government, they don’t want to make themselves into targets…I intend to change all that” — Obama can order the moving truck right there & then.

He’s poison to our economy, we can all feel it, more and more people are willing to admit it. None of that is going to change. America’s history of re-electing Presidents who are bad for the economy, is thin, threadbare, practically non-existent. Don’t get cocky? Anybody who bothers to vote is as un-cocky as they need to be. This guy’s toast.

Ah, yes! Like having an itch under a cast finally scratched. Cracked:

Movies need you to be scared of the bad guy and impressed by the badass. The method for getting you to buy into this is often the same: by looking the part, and by having other characters go on and on about how badass someone is.

But often when it comes time for said badass to actually, you know, fight somebody, he tends to be profoundly disappointing — even if nobody else in the movie notices.

Yes, yes, yes. We’re supposed to think a designated character can really bring it, but when it’s showtime…

Nothing. Boba Fett doesn’t do a goddamn thing. Somehow people forget that.

Yeah that is a crime of some kind. But then again, it’s a little unfair having Quint on this list isn’t it? The “build-up” is a cat-and-mouse game in the second half of the movie, which is what made it great. And yeah, Quint smashed the radio and fried the motor, thus reducing his two shipmates into floating shark food. But that was his role. It’s the classic Pandora’s Box situation in great movies: “Uh oh, we’ve unleashed this force we cannot control, maybe that wasn’t such a swell idea.”

I count Muldoon, also, as a character that brought what he was supposed to bring. It’s a situation where one character’s purpose is entirely spent building up the properties of another character, which is an entirely valid move. The monsters of the island, you see, are just as intelligent as we are, and they’re really, really sneaky. Now, I’ll grant that the audience should figure this out when the raptors have started opening doors. But that happens during the final climactic battle, so that’s a bit late isn’t it? It’s the classic Thunderball two-bomb rule: The unthinkable disaster that doesn’t quite take place at the end, should be foreshadowed by the smaller, somewhat tolerable disaster that actually does, sometime earlier. Blood had to be shed. And hey, once again, that was this character’s designated purpose. He was a stormtrooper out of Star Wars. Just happened to have some speaking lines.

As for Scarecrow and Fett — yes, definitely. Maybe Bishop, too; I do recall feeling somewhat disappointed over that. And the others I just don’t care about.

I’ll have to think of some additions to this as time permits…

DailyMail.co.uk:

Anne [Petch], who runs the Heal Farm shop near Kings Nympton, said: “The True Love Roast has a bird for each of the 12 days of Christmas.

“It uses skinless breast meat from several birds of each species with flavours that work well together.”

The roast contains turkey, goose, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon squab, Aylesbury duck, Barbary duck, poussin, guinea fowl, mallard-and quail with herb and fruit stuffings.

Anne added: “It takes about 45 minutes to build the roast. However, it takes at least three hours before that to bone the birds and another couple of days to make all the stuffings.

Hat tip to one of my Hello-Kitty-of-blogging friends, who graciously opines, “fuck a turducken.”

Click to embiggen.

The lady of the house, who was allowed to sleep in thanks to my diligent efforts, noted that the whole big ball o’ meat was all done by 1pm at 325 degrees. She further notes that this is roughly what happened last year.

This year, though, I think we’ll have twice as many pot pies to give away.

There’s some guy on the teevee named Judge Joe Brown. I’m thankful Judge Brown has his job and seems to like it. As far as I’m concerned he can keep it.

Thankful for friends, for family, and for my blogger pals.

Phil’s post impresses me.

As does Buck‘s. As far as I’m concerned, he is fully qualified for this job and I don’t care if the reference to “Mr. Thompson” is lost on him.

Neo-Neocon.

Mark.

Daphne.

Andy.

Rick and Ron.

Irish Cicero.

Pirate William.

Bob Belvedere.

Gerard.

I have so many friends and I’m thankful for all of them. I’ll update this as I think of some more, and check out their Thanksgiving posts. I mean no slight to those who I forgot…there are so many, hope you don’t take it personally.

One last thing:

“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

Update: Found a better compilation of the original…

Update: Per the request/demand of Buck, in the comments, click to embiggen this montage of after-cooking Turbaconduckeney goodness:

Stossel tells the tale one more time:

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That’s why they nearly all starved.

When people can get the same return with less effort, most people make less effort. Plymouth settlers faked illness rather than working the common property. Some even stole, despite their Puritan convictions. Total production was too meager to support the population, and famine resulted. This went on for two years.

“So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue the next year also, if not some way prevented,” wrote Gov. William Bradford in his diary. The colonists, he said, “began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length after much debate of things, (I) (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land.”

In other words, the people of Plymouth moved from socialism to private farming. The results were dramatic.

“This had very good success,” Bradford wrote, “for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many.”

Andrew Sullivan is upset about this.

Thank God the famously capitalistic Native Americans were there to share with the pilgrims bounty from their private plots of land, tilled as if by the invisible hand itself.

He hasn’t much else to say, just complaining about people saying stuff, with a sarcastic sign-off. We could call it a “debunking” but we would have to re-define what it means to debunk something. The irony is, Andrew Sullivan is illustrating how a collectivist-oriented ideology warps one’s thinking into a prerational shape: You are to be persuaded to reject an idea, with the revelation that one or several among your peers happens to dislike it.

I’m all done researching this, as I’ve already looked into the details in two or three Thanksgivings past. Stossel’s recital of them (to the best I can recall) are accurate. And you don’t need to look into history to ascertain that people work better and harder when they personally enjoy the fruits of victory and bear the burdens of failure. Pretty obvious, really.

Speaking of word definitions, I was thinking of creating a “Sully” as a noun to describe someone who likes to put contentious ideas out on the Internet where they can be seen by as many people as possible…including ideas in the spirit of “that guy is wrong and me and all my friends are right, take my word for it”…and refuses to allow comments under such screeds.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. I’ll have the holiday post up as soon as I upload the pre-dawn TurBaconDuckEn cooking photos.

Update: Reason.tv has looked into it as well, and put together this video which makes me contente:

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Salon.

The War Room Hack Thirty is a list of our least favorite political commentators, newspaper columnists and constant cable news presences, ranked roughly (but only roughly) in order of awfulness and then described rudely. Criteria for inclusion included writing the same column every week for 30 years, warmongering, joyless repetition of conventional wisdom, and making bad puns.

I do enjoy watching people get picked on for repeating opinions, particularly passionless, tired opinions, and trying to claim credit for them.

Richard Cohen was placed in the Number One spot. Good choice.

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen has been a columnist since 1976. He’s good friends with Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn. He works one day a week. At a certain point, in that exceptionally privileged and cushy position, his brain disintegrated. He’s not so much an old liberal who grew conservative as he is a simplistic old hack who believes his common prejudices to be politically incorrect truths and his Beltway conventional wisdom to be bracing political insight.

As a warmonger, I must take issue with the criteria though. Any time a war starts, it’s an entirely valid opinion to have, that there might have been a way to avert the war — although you might not agree with this yourself. Most of the time, the same goes for the opinion that the war was unavoidable. A lot of the time that position will be deserving of a certain respect, even from people who disagree. Although I can’t say “always,” some wars are just stupid. And I suppose there are always going to be people living during every war who insist this war is one of the stupid ones.

But “hack,” to me, just means one thing: You get paid to write something; you finish up this sample of your lifetime chosen craft, this representation of your workmanship, and you hand it in without saying to yourself “okay, does this justify someone throwing down some hard coin to pick up a copy of the product in which my work appears?” You don’t ask yourself that question, you make a habit of not asking yourself that question — and it shows. That’s a hack.

And you’re hackier when you’re oblivious to this. You say something tiresome and tedious like, um, let’s say…”Dick Cheney reminds me of Darth Vader.” And then by your words and actions communicate the expectation that you are to be congratulated for this searing insight and fresh humor. Gah. Makes me barf a little in my mouth just thinking about it.

For twenty years I have made it a hard rule that wherever I am living, I should buy the primarily-representative local newspaper at least once a week. But over the last five or ten, I’ve let that slide. And it’s not because of the Internet. It’s a quality issue. Newspapers…in fact, pretty much all printed media…have deteriorated into pamphlets that say the same thing over and over again: Such-and-such a social need has been increasing, women & minorities hardest hit, and there’s no money in the kitty. It’s not like I want to hang on to the two dollars, it’s more like I just can’t seem to find the time. It’s a one-note dirge that never seems to change in tone or rhythm.

The list must be print-media only. Can’t see any other reason why Bill Maher would not be on there.

Fox News:

A Republican senator alarmed by the Obama administration’s cooperation with Russia on a missile defense agreement says he has the votes to reject a nuclear arms reduction treaty that has been a top priority of the White House.

An aide to Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona told Fox News on Wednesday that the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty won’t pass during the lame-duck session, potentially dealing a death blow to the deal, which faces Republican opposition in the Senate that is expected to grow next year when the party gains six seats.

Many Republican lawmakers are concerned that Obama has improperly linked missile defense and arms control.

Someone explain arms reduction to me. I’ve not understood this since the SALT days…and in all that time I’ve never gotten a warm fuzzy feeling that anybody else gets it either.

A guy might not have a gun…and want to do you harm.

Another guy might have a gun, and not want to do you harm. In fact, if he has the gun and you aren’t harmed yet, that’s likely to be the case.

So since armed people may not have malevolent intentions…and unarmed people might very well have some…this establishes that the possession of arms is a property that is non-correlative with the readiness and willingness to bring harm. And, for that matter, with the threat level.

If the readiness and willingness and threat level of a person or party does not descend, commensurate with that person or party’s stockpile…then what t’heck are we doin’? We haven’t even gotten to the question of “what if they tell us they’re disarming and they’re really not?” The entire foundation is a flimsy one. It’s one of these smartest-person-in-the-room ideas. Make a world without weapons, and presto we’ll have a world without fighting.

Well, that’s what you have to believe in order to have any faith in this being the right direction.

So that whole premise needs some scrutiny, I think. Arms limitation? Arms reduction? What effects arrive from the realization of that goal, that we or anybody else is going to like? How’s that work? Where’s the evidence? Does history offer some stories to help bolster our faith in this process, or are we just cruising forward in this direction on blind faith and some empty theories that sound good?

Okay, time to stop talking about the Wonder of Wasilla.

This is by far the best scene out of the whole damn movie. Embedding disabled by request. Dang it all.

A certain blogger friend couldn’t resist an offline smack-down, which I’m going to leave there.

But this is for you. D’Oh!

Elizabeth Wurtzel at The Atlantic, by way of my blogger pal and friend-on-the-Hello-Kitty-of-Blogging Melissa Clouthier.

Yes, there are women who are successful in the Democratic party, but none of them are successful because of their feminine wiles, none of them have played up their sex appeal the way Palin has. MSNBC’s female host is Rachel Maddow, who is completely good in all manner of ways that good can be good–but still I must ask: Where are the policy babes?

I know, I know: all of you are saying that it’s a good thing it’s like that, it’s a sign that liberals have integrity and blah blah blah. But I think you are kidding yourselves. It’s a sign of another thing: that liberal men are wimps who can’t handle the hot potato that is a combination of feminine sexuality and female political brilliance. [emphasis Melissa’s, and mine too]

Oh yeah. Hillary Clinton is a “policy babe” and so were Donna Shalala and Madeleine Albright — the liberal men can handle them. Hillary can deviate from the liberal playbook a little bit, too, if she wants.

But let’s just say, if you have a daughter at a dating age that looks like Sarah Palin, you might keep the shotgun a little bit handier than if she looks like Hill, Donna or Madeleine.

I think the issue is a compromising weakness. Not an overwhelming one, just one that makes a death blow possible. And convenient. A “reset switch” (heh), if you will.

Let Hillary and Donna and Madeleine and the two Janets run around saying whatever they want — if anything uttered by them is disagreeable, at least we know at the end of the day we’re all superior in one regard. Such a “kill switch” is an important feature to an insecure mind.

And so we get these oh so powerful women on the democrats side, who are also oh so capable and oh so articulate and oh so intelligent. But, they’re ugly. Not a beauty contestant among the whole lot of them. Throughout years, decades, generations. As I’ve observed before: Such a track record of consistency can only be achieved by means of constant, consistent and concentrated effort. Is it rude to notice it? It seems rather rude to ignore it!

In this “all Palin all the time” news cycle, which I state again was not my idea, not started by me, and I don’t even approve of it…there is a fascinating conversation going on at Daphne’s haven of jadedness. In which Joan of Argghh! makes a pointed observation:

Like Morgan’s last comment, I see way too many people swayed by the irresistible Narrative of the media and the blogosphere that says Palin is . . . whatever.

But you provide nothing about your own assessment based on what Palin has presented to your own personal sensibilities. How do YOU think about her candidacy? And why?…You point us to other accolades you’ve given about Palin as a person, but offer no thoughts except “hell no!” about a Palin candidacy.

This is being directed at conservatives who are slow to accept, not at liberals who are quick to reject. But I see the criticism fits both camps. There is a quick, surface-deep, almost lazy dismissal…actually, it is lazy. Just of a sentiment that could best be described as “of course, we all agree that she should go away” — when we do not all agree with that, if we all agreed it wouldn’t be necessary for anybody to say anything. Quite to the contrary: The ankle-biters are getting frustrated and frenzied because the good-looking doltish woman is hanging around too long. Won’t she just go away already!

She needs to go away already or else…what, specifically, is about to happen?

I understand the conservatives somewhat. The fear is easily defined: She’ll get further along in the nomination process than she should, and with all her baggage she’ll cause damage to somebody else. Maybe proliferate the reputation conservatives have for being unsophisticated, incurious buffoons. Obama will cruise on into the campaign season deciding all of a sudden He knows how to use a Blackberry once again, and pick up all kinds of votes from independents who yearn for a political leader who easily digests challenging details…which they then duck. Oh, who cares how it all works, those are votes, dammit!

Well, I disagree with the conservatives because being on the defensive has been shown to be a losing strategy. And anybody who dismisses that point reveals himself to be paying far less attention than he’s trying to project.

But the liberals on the other hand. They have been caught, once again, projecting. Fear Of Strong Women! That modern plague of misogyny, which is supposed to be the target of their glorious crusade, one of just a few.

They’ve got it worse than anybody. As Melissa puts it:

Liberal men suffer the worst Madonna-Whore complexes of all. They cannot handle mom and sexy in one package–mostly because that woman would never be interested in them, therefore, they reject what they cannot obtain. As betas they’re stuck with the mousy and miserable women. You know, the women at the Code Pink march or the Amen Pew at church. Either way, they don’t think of obtainable women as sexy. Sexy equals scary.
:
[T]hey need to recognize their impotent desire and juvenile objectification and start engaging real women. Take a class. Get some skills.

Isn’t it time to get over this? This fear, envy, loathing…it’s all so destructive and keeps good women out of politics on both sides.
:
In a more reasonable world, Sarah Palin wouldn’t be causing this fuss. Well, no more fuss than any other person in political life. But she’s breaking barriers. It’s time to let them fall and engage women in a real way.

It’s hurting our nation because it hurts our perception of strong leadership. Cowardliness in liberals who refuse to notice “hey, that woman is uglier than the South end of a dog facing North” — is perceived by other liberals as courage. This has been a constant liberal drumbeat for a generation or two now, that you’re a good person for not-noticing something.

A passionate interest in whether a woman is good looking or not, is perceived as some kind of noble apathy. People who care deeply are perceived as not caring at all.

It’s all done to define a selected demography, of straight men who notice if a woman has taken the time to look decent, and dismiss them. Not their perceptions or their inappropriate lustful desires or their chauvinistic worldviews, but them. As people. Such people are substandard, irredeemably so, and are to be dismissed from our society…as we “progress” toward making that society all-tolerant and all-accepting. So a perfect society being built for the benefit of some and for the neglect of others, is perceived as the perfect opposite of what it really is…as a society in which “everyone” has a home.

That isn’t what the vision really is. It’s a place where everyone has a home, only if you re-define what “everyone” really means.

And when you boot out the men who enjoy looking at pretty ladies, you have to boot out the pretty ladies as well. They can be tolerated, only grudgingly, but they aren’t allowed to count. And their opinions cannot matter.

Not very egalitarian-looking after you study it awhile, is it? But that’s the modern world we have been building, and so far, continue to accept.

Barack Obama will show faith in the free enterprise system, before I ever buy a Toyota Highlander. And this “Nathan” kid is the reason why:

Who in the hell has a problem with Flo from the Progressive commercials, with this moppet running around loose? He’s got the same problem as Fashion Princess.

Get that kid some chores fast. A chores list and a paper route. He’s hoisted a little too high on the Maslow pyramid for his own good.

Another e-mail from GBIL (Girlfriend’s Brother-in-Law). Tracked down a reasonable blogger-link here. This one seems to be making the rounds just lately…

I have little standing to be doing this since I’m a California resident, and my state seems to be in a contest with NY to see who can go bankrupt first. But hey. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and once people start doing things the wrong way they don’t stop until they’re surrounded by howls and protests that they need to do it the right way.

New York

The Governor Elect of New York is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out, bites the Governor, and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie “Bambi”, then realizes he should stop, the coyote is only doing what’s natural.

2. He calls Animal Control. Animal Control captures the coyote and bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it.

3. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead dog and bills the state $200 for testing it for disease.

4. The Governor goes to a hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for disease from the coyote and for getting his bite wound bandaged.

5. The running trail is shut down for 6 months, while Fish & Game conducts their $100,000 survey to make sure the area is free of dangerous animals.

6. The Governor next spends $150,000 in state funds, implementing a “Coyote Awareness” program for residents of the area.

7. The State Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease, throughout the world.

8. The Governor’s security agent is fired for not somehow stopping the attack and for letting the Governor attempt to intervene.

9. Additional cost to State of New York: $75,000 to hire and train a new security agent with additional special training re: The Nature of Coyotes.

10. PETA protests the coyote’s relocation and files suit against the state.

Arizona

The Governor of Arizona is jogging, with her dog, along a nature trail.

A coyote jumps out and attacks her dog.

1. The Governor shoots the coyote with her state-issued pistol and keeps jogging.

The Governor has spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP hollow-point cartridge.

2. Arizona buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that, my friends, is why New York is broke!!!

A former colleague from work snags the one hundred and third Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award.

Doing the wrong thing is still wrong even if everyone else is doing it. And doing the right thing is still right even if no one else is doing it.

And Yours Truly waxes Aristotelian in response:

[T]he very first step in figuring out the right answer is committing to a belief that there is one.

There is one. One and only one. An absolute answer that remains constant, now until the end of time, lacking any change in variables that are relevant to the question. There is a right answer, and any other answer that is proposed evaluating to a different value, has to be wrong.

To favor your sense of judgment over the consensus, and still know what you are doing, you have to have some confidence in it. To have confidence in your own judgment you need to have some way at arriving at the one true correct answer, with an accuracy potential greater than would be offered by random chance. And the first step in erecting such a system is to recognize the answer sought is an absolutely right answer, not a relatively right answer.

The tragedy of the times in which we live is that there are far too many people with opinions they want to guard jealously, who don’t want to take that initial step. And so they have to define “right” and “wrong” according to what everybody else is doing. When you think about it, once you sustain such a handicap, that’s about the most logical thing you can do.

Fact. Fifth paragraph in the story:

A man imprisoned for attacking two female joggers was found guilty Monday of murdering Washington intern Chandra Levy, wrapping up a murder mystery that took down a congressman and captured the nation’s attention a decade ago.

Ingmar Guandique was convicted of first-degree murder for attacking Levy while she exercised in Washington’s Rock Creek Park in May 2001. Her disappearance made headlines when she was romantically linked to then-Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif. Condit was once a suspect, but police no longer believe he was involved in her disappearance.

Speaking outside the courthouse, Levy’s mother said she’ll never be free from the pain of losing her daughter.

“I have a lifetime sentence of a lost limb missing from our family tree,” Susan Levy said after the hearing. “It’s a lifetime of a broken heart.”

Investigators eventually focused on Guandique, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, and brought formal charges last year. Prosecutors acknowledged they had little direct evidence but said Levy’s death fit a pattern of other crimes committed by Guandique in the park.

Nine years, mostly of wall-to-wall confusion, and we still have weepy apologists saying Guandique is “a scapegoat for a botched investigation.” Oh yeah, we need a much larger influx of illegal, undocumented labor when women and children are just sitting ducks already, and we don’t know who these people are.

Ms. Levy is just one of thousands of stories of what happens in the aftermath. And most of these stories never find the light of day. They don’t fit the “doing the jobs Americans won’t do” narrative. But these are real people getting hurt and killed.

This has been in my “stack” for about a week now, and I wanted to be sure and bookmark it. Prager has the audacity to come forward with what he has observed…

But one critic opened my eyes to an even deeper reason most liberals do not acknowledge that people are not basically good.

This is what he wrote:

“What a sad world it would be if we all believed as Dennis Prager that mankind is inherently evil.”

And this is what I responded:

“I did not write that man is inherently evil. I wrote that he is not basically good. And, yes, that does make the world sad. So do disease, earthquakes, death and all the unjust suffering in the world. But sad facts remain facts.”

“A distinguishing characteristic of liberals and leftists,” I concluded, “is their aversion to acknowledging sad facts.”

Years ago, a woman writer, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, first made me aware of this. She wrote about liberals rejecting many facts about male and female natures. She used the French expression “les faits de la vie” — the facts of life.

The left, she wrote, rejects les faits de la vie.

I believe this is so for two reasons.

First, as with my correspondent above, people on the left tend to be unwilling to accept the sadness and pain that recognition of such facts creates. Leftism is often predicated on avoiding pain. That is a major reason why the left dislikes capitalism and free markets. Free markets create winners and losers, and the left does not like the fact that some people lose and some win.

This antipathy to having losers expresses itself on the micro level as well. Many liberals oppose children playing in competitive sports because they can lose — sometimes by a big score. That is why many schools now emphasize “cooperation instead of competition.” They do not want children experiencing the pain of losing, let alone losing by many points. That is also why liberals introduced the absurd idea of giving sports trophies to all kids who play, win or lose. God forbid that only the winners receive trophies; the kids who didn’t win may experience pain.

Second, the left lives by theories and dogmas into which the facts of life must fit. That is why left-wing ideas are usually wishful thinking.

Last month, in one of my rare and shortly-lived fits of not bitching about liberals, I made up a new word to describe a particular flaw I had lately noticed in the thinking processes of thinking persons who were occasionally strident liberals. The flaw I was describing is closely related to the flaw Prager was describing: A sequence of events is described, with causes related to symptoms that in turn become causes of other symptoms. And it is (accurately) argued that the cause-and-effect relationships could happen. They are possible. To be more precise about it, they are plausible. Argumentum ad Plausible, or if you prefer, Argumentum ad It-Could-Happen.

The plausibility of the theory is confused with its proof. The enthused advocate shirks the responsibility of examining likelihood, and with that, the burden of inspecting what factors might make the desired outcome more or less likely. It-could-happen…and…yer done.

The problem that comes up for the rest of us, is that the plans are put in place, they fail, and — absolutely, positively nothing is learned from this. We’re going to have to do it again and again and again because hopey-changey guy has a plausible sequence of events to offer. Stimulus II (really!), cash-for-clunkers, TARP, raise minimum wage, legalize pot, the list goes on and on.

If you challenge them, you get another recitation of that List Of Events. They love reciting it. They love hearing themselves talk about it, they never skip a single step in the list. Just like a computer with a database — absolute integrity every time.

What they’re trying to do is convince themselves.

Reality didn’t do that convincing…and it won’t do it.

How did I put it?

No, see, the county government widens this highway with stimulus funds…and what you’re not taking into account, is they buy all this asphalt that they otherwise wouldn’t have bought, and the asphalt manufacturer, he goes out and buys some new trucks, and then the truck manufacturer hires some new people, and…and…and…

Like that.

It is an inability to recognize…and a hardened resistance against recognizing…les faits de la vie. L’fait, in this case, is that your plan is a Wiley-Coyote plan and it doesn’t work.

This is exactly what Thomas Edison was talking about with his thousands of light bulb designs. You come up with a plan, you implement it and then you find out what does not work in your plan. That last part is not fun but it is the most necessary step. What we’re dealing with, here, are inventors who only want to do the fun part of inventing. They are somewhat analogous to the amateur writer who writes a script or novella that he doesn’t want to see edited. All of the pleasure, none of the pain.

Confucius say, you just might be in the —

Hat tip to blogger friend Buck, who’d like to discuss something other than the Terror of the Tundra Sarah Palin right about now. And so would I.

Frank:

If We Can’t Defund NPR, Can We Cut Anything?
Posted by Frank J. on November 19, 2010 at 1:01 pm

So the vote to defund NPR was 239-171 against. Since I’ve never heard even one good argument why tax payers should be forced to pay for NPR and we need to cut money and one can hardly think of anything in the budget more unnecessary than them, I’m a bit surprised more Democrats didn’t vote for the defunding. Then again, they’ve been in a bit of mood lately for some reason.

I don’t think NPR will be as lucky with the next Congress, and if you’re going to start cutting the budget, might as well start there. And before anyone is like, “It’s only a couple million; who cares?” I say try embezzling $50,000 from the government and see if they’re like, “Oh, that’s just pennies; would cost more to prosecute you.”

Of course, they wouldn’t say that; all of a sudden, they’d be the taxpayer’s loyal pit-bull. You just don’t see any of that “flesh eater in the service of the weary taxpayer” behavior when it comes time to form a budget. All the money-wasting scams from last year have to stay in, no need to look at objectives met or objectives failed — nothing’s changed except for what’s new, and what’s gotten bigger.

Fiscal responsibility in spades whenever fiscal responsibility involves being a dick. Not at all when fiscal responsibility involves living in a rational universe and acting like a reasonable, thoughtful person. Isn’t that the way it always goes?

With the holiday coming up on us, there’s a lot of attention being paid to the groping. If that comes as news to you then I don’t know where you got your head stuck…but the point that seems, to me at least, to get lost in all this is how little these searching strategies have to do with the likelihood of actually stopping anything bad from happening.

Which means the real scandal doesn’t have to do with the molestation. It has to do with failure of the mission.

Hat tip to Boortz.

Althouse:

Al Gore explains his mistaken support for the government’s terrible ethanol policy.
“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

So… self-interest then. Where’s his self-interest taking him these days?

Hat tip to Instapundit.

It’s an interesting property of the era in which we live. We have these mystics who talk down to us and tell us we need to…well…let’s call it what it is, convert to their religion. We have what it takes to become decent but we’re not there yet. We need to act in the interests of others, and against our own. Then, and only then, can we be purified.

The mystics act in their own selfish interests, time and time again, right in front of our faces. A few cynics like myself take note of this, there’s some eyeball-rolling but never a big wake-up call. Across the board, the — let’s call it the evangelical structure — remains intact, there is no crumbling, no razing to the ground.

If anything, the structure becomes reinforced and re-entrenched. The mystic, by acting in his own selfish interests while lecturing us that we need to cease & desist from doing that very thing, has reasserted the notion that he’s much better than we are.

I’m off work.

I left the office Friday, at high noon, to go fetch my son. I stayed overnight in Fernley, NV, then plowed onward to his mother’s place which is in Elko, which is almost Utah.

Listened to The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I strongly recommend this. Think of it as, in the conflict between Architects and Medicators, this is a productive argument in favor of the way Medicators do things. And I note the irony: Of all the people I’ve met in business who were in greatest need of listening to this audiobook, they were all Medicators. They were trying to achieve the lesson taught here, and somewhere they got off-track and plowed headlong into the opposite direction.

People who live in Folsom, California, drive like idiots. Except for yours truly. But really. Of all the adventures I had over those nine hundred miles, the ones that truly flabbergasted me were on my back fucking porch. Especially that guy in the pickup truck ahead of me on the exit ramp who got a green light, pulled forward twenty feet, and fucking stopped. Dude. Seriously. What the fuck. What the fucking-fuckety-fuck. Just go to the DMV and turn in your license, I’m fucking serious. Fucking asshole. Die in a fucking fire.

Other than that, I haven’t much of an opinion…

Dad can’t make it down from Bellingham. His fleet of cars, most of which are older than me I think, cannot offer a single vessel that is functional. He’s 79 and his upper respiratory system is offering a seasonal challenge; those two factors, by themselves, are very often fatal. He didn’t book his travel when he was supposed to, so he is demanding a commodity demanded by countless others at the same time, which is fiscally impractical, and Whatcom County is at 23 degrees Fahrenheit. Highly unusual. Anyway, our get-together required more advance thinking than it received…so…it’s a bust. Major bummer. The older generation will have to stay holed up 800 miles away, but at least the younger generation is here.

The groceries were delivered today. We have the five pounds of bacon for the TurBaconDucken. We also have massive quantities of foodstuffs for a couple of old people who aren’t going to be here, including an abundance of White Zinfandel.

I see I’m on track to receive 400 blog hits from midnight-to-seven-p.m., which is what I usually collect all day long. During the holidays, I do not like to see this, people. There’s not much to talk about other than Sarah Palin…and you really need to get up off your computers and go spend time with family and friends. Time is fleeting. Come on, altogether now…Start Button…Shut Down. Call a relative, the older the better, get things coordinated. Book a hotel, fly-drive-swim-teleport, whatever, stop off by a local eatery or deli or grocery store and step across their threshold with something nourishing that smells good. Break some bread.

Dredge into some stories about things you lived through together, and share the thoughts you had about it. That’s the best. This thing the reality-teevee people do every fifteen seconds — “When [blank happened], it made me think/feel [thing]” — that’s what you should be doing. Think of some good things to say about those who are now six feet under, how they could’ve handled something, and how they did handle it. And then lift a glass. Leave ’em wanting more, but leave late.

You know that’s what this week is really all about. So c’mon…what are you doing here?

Update: Thanks to Gerard, some footage of traffic in Seattle. This is testimonial to why Dad can’t come…and also why Seattle is recognized less as a brain heartland than as a retirement haven for grown-up hippies.

You don’t say.

Dire or emotionally charged warnings about the consequences of global warming can backfire if presented too negatively, making people less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.

“Our study indicates that the potentially devastating consequences of global warming threaten people’s fundamental tendency to see the world as safe, stable and fair. As a result, people may respond by discounting evidence for global warming,” said Robb Willer, UC Berkeley social psychologist and coauthor of a study to be published in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.

“The scarier the message, the more people who are committed to viewing the world as fundamentally stable and fair are motivated to deny it,” agreed Matthew Feinberg, a doctoral student in psychology and coauthor of the study.

The first white-coat-pocket-protector-egghead, Robb Willer, has a page over here with lots of other studies and research works listed, courtesy of some curious FARK member.

I don’t mean to attack the propeller-beanie-egghead, but I’ve been noticing this trend with “research” material and I think it’s a measurable one. Let me state it by means of example: I am doubting like the dickens anybody ever woke up some morning, be he a propeller-beanie-pocket-protector type or some normal person…and said to himself…”Self? I wonder how social order might be possible when individuals are tempted to behave selfishly? Maybe I should look into that and write a research paper about whatever it is I manage to dig up.”

I think papers like these begin with the finger-waggling lecture, and then all else is filled in around it. Can’t prove it, but not exactly going out on a limb on that one. And I think research papers like these represent a fairly new trend. Not an instantaneously new one; if you’re old enough to be my parent, and you’ve been working in the university system your whole life, you might have found this situation when you started: Papers written by eggheads who knew exactly what they wanted the paper to say, before they “discovered” a single thing. Exercises in confirmation bias.

And I’m no spring chicken myself. This seems to be a sixties thing. Maybe it’s all Rachel Carson’s fault. Just a thought; agree with her work or not, it’s definitely an example of what I’m talking about and I haven’t been able to find too many examples before Silent Spring. But who knows, maybe it goes clear back to Freud.

It certainly is a problem we should engage. All kinds of higher-education professionals like to dish out that tired old bromide, “I’m not here to teach you what to think, I’m here to teach you how to think.” That is a pledge, a promise of sorts, and it seems to me the rest of us are doing a fairly lackluster job of holding them to it. Whenever an egghead makes up his mind what a paper is supposed to conclude, and then starts gathering the data, that promise is being violated.

Oh, and as an aside: Tuning out, when someone starts trying to sell you on the idea that “the planet is doomed unless you do what I say”…is what intellectually healthy people do. Yeah, even when the facts aren’t all in yet. There’s such a thing as figuring out when someone’s trying to bullshit you.

Hehehe. Idiot.

You’re going to have to watch this video to find out what that statistic is, because I’m just like that. A meanie-cow.

You can say this is all a world-economy thing, or that it’s Bush’s fault. Meanwhile, these people have to keep on waiting and waiting…and sooner or later, every thinking man and woman has to ‘fess up that current policies matter. You keep staring and staring at that flower bed with nothing growing in it, and it becomes inescapable that something has to get re-evaluated. Fertilizer, location, watering…something is bollywonkers & gunnybags and it’s not 2001 tax cuts or a 2003 war. It’s something still in the system.

That’s not a Republicans-versus-democrats screed. That’s just something you need to admit if you are a sane person and don’t want the problem to continue indefinitely.

When the turkey’s been carved and the cranberry’s been passed around and that cranky McGovern-voting-granduncle can’t restrain himself from picking a fight any longer…you might want to point this out and see what happens.

Thanks to blogger friend Virgil for dropping the link in a comment.

All Palin all the time, today. Not my idea; everybody else’s.

Seven months ago I had it figured out: If She Comes Gunnin’ For it, the Job’s Hers. Last week I took a hard look at this statement of hers that she could snag it, placing a little more scrutiny on how she’d fare in the battle for the nomination.

This morning, Frank Rich writes a similar exploration of her chances of becoming the nominee. It is peppered with creative insults directed toward Republicans in general and Palin in particular, but…see for yourself…

If logic applied to Palin’s career trajectory, this month might have been judged dreadful for her. In an otherwise great year for Republicans she endorsed a “Star Wars” bar gaggle of anomalous and wacky losers — the former witch, Christine O’Donnell; the raging nativist, Tom Tancredo; and at least two candidates who called for armed insurrection against the government, Sharron Angle and a would-be Texas congressman, Stephen Broden, who lost by over 50 percentage points. Last week voters in Palin’s home state humiliatingly “refudiated” her protégé, Joe Miller, overturning his victory in the G.O.P. Senate primary with a write-in campaign.

But logic doesn’t apply to Palin. What might bring down other politicians only seems to make her stronger: the malapropisms and gaffes, the cut-and-run half-term governorship, family scandals, shameless lying and rapacious self-merchandising. In an angry time when America’s experts and elites all seem to have failed, her amateurism and liabilities are badges of honor.
:
Republican leaders who want to stop her, and they are legion, are utterly baffled about how to do so. Democrats, who gloat that she’s the Republicans’ problem, may be humoring themselves. When Palin told Barbara Walters last week that she believed she could beat Barack Obama in 2012, it wasn’t an idle boast. Should Michael Bloomberg decide to spend billions on a quixotic run as a third-party spoiler, all bets on Obama are off.

Of course Palin hasn’t decided to run yet. Why rush? In the post-midterms Gallup poll she hit her all-time high unfavorable rating (52 percent), but in the G.O.P. her favorable rating is an awesome 80 percent, virtually unchanged from her standing at the end of 2008 (83 percent). She can keep floating above the pack indefinitely as the celebrity star of a full-time reality show where she gets to call all the shots.

If Palin makes the decision to run — and, as Rich correctly points out, she has not and may not — she faces two high hurdles: Becoming the nominee for the Republican party (or something else perhaps?), and taking down the incumbent. Rich’s purpose is obviously to launch a salvo against all those ideological positions he hates, and so he has placed the emphasis on the former question and not the latter.

But my challenge stands: In January of 2013, someone is taking the Oath of Office for the Presidency of the United States. That much is a near certainty. How can it not happen? Events could unfold as they did in that John Cusack movie, or aliens could attack us, or China could call our debt and we’d have to sell everything to buy our next helping of oxygen to breathe. Or the world could blow up, or God could unplug the whole thing. Barring those alternatives, someone is getting sworn in.

So let us walk through all of the possibilities systematically. For reasons that will become abundantly evident, Palin-bashers are terrified of doing this…but let’s do it anyway.

If it’s the incumbent who is to place His Holy Hand on a Bible and sonorously intone that oath, this economy is going to have to get substantially stronger or He can just forget it. All of we who lay some claim to our own sanity, agree on this right? By 2013, the electorate is not going to persist in this dogma of “I guess Bush screwed things up really badly and You just need more time.” Obama’s personal charisma is formidable, but at this point we have a reasonably sturdy understanding of the limits to what it can achieve. It can get a democrat elected President when a Republican President is being term-limited out, and people are fed up with an unpopular war that seems to have been instigated by him. It can buy that incoming democrat President a super-majority in the Senate — just barely — and a little tiny bit of time. A breathtakingly small amount of time. That’s it.

It can’t do anything like exempt Him from the timeless and eternal rule of American politics that if you’re the sitting President, and the economy sucks green eggs, you’re deader than Constantine. Period, end of story. Obama sees the economy turn around, or He’s out. You need to sign on to that much, or you’re just plain nuts. Or a shill. Or both. Either way, that’s the reality of the situation, Obama will be held accountable for results. Perhaps for the first time in His life.

Is the economy going to turn around?

My hope is that it levels off, but — well, how do I say that nicely. “Level off” is an optimistic assessment. A stimulus isn’t going to do anything better than that, because this economy isn’t suffering from a lack of cash, but rather from a lack of confidence. The businesses simply don’t know what to expect next. This government needs to get out of the way. It needs to get libertarian real quick, or you can forget it.

Under Obama it isn’t going to get libertarian. Not possible. So I hope the economy stagnates, not because I want Obama to lose but because that really is the best possible outcome. I don’t even want to look into the alternatives that could really happen and you don’t want me to do that either.

A Dick Morris type will start working in the White House, tell Obama to take a sharp right turn, and Holy Man is gonna listen? You dream. You’ve forgotten the nature of The Man. Nope, it’s just more pencil-pushing rules from here to the end of 2012. Lots of bureaucracy, lots of centralized authority, lots of half-cocked legislation and you’d better believe a whole lot more speech-making peppered thickly with “Make No Mistake,” “Let Me Be Clear” and “Change.”

So we’ve supped at the sumptuous buffet table of what Obama has to offer us, grown weary of it, and there are no more dishes to bring out from the kitchen. Variety is not this chef’s game and it never was. Check, please.

So it isn’t Obama. Could we have a situation like 1968, where He decides if He isn’t going to win He isn’t going to play? That certainly would be in keeping with His personality…but only if He could face up to the prediction that He would lose. Again, you forget the nature of The Man — Barack Obama cannot even face up to the possibility. Since being born in…aw, I don’t wanna get into that, it’s out of scope…He hasn’t had to consider it. It has not been a possibility. He’s spent a lifetime being a pre-declared winner, pre-declared by fiat, and He’s thoroughly spoiled on this.

Could the democrats figure this out, and pressure Him to step aside? Could they force His hand, running a competitor up against Him during the primaries? Don’t be silly. The democrat party does its thinking like an insect’s hive; it’s all cooked up at the top, it all trickles down to the lower ranks, and if you don’t go along you’re out of the club. Just like a labor union with a little less kneecap-breaking.

So the dems are losing this thing. Whether they act like it or not, this whole thing is slipping out of their fingers and they’ve lost it already. So back to the President-Elect taking the oath in two winters. Is it…Newt Gingrich? Is it Mitt Romney? Tim Pawlenty? Mike Huckabee? Bobby Jindal? You need to go back and read Frank Rich’s column. Or, if you’re more into reality, take a look at what blogger friend Gerard Van der Leun gathered about it. Yeah, we’re in there a few times…but still, they’re good points.

And then you have to look at how Republicans see…what is the proper name for it. Let’s call it equity. Heard the story of the little red hen who wanted to bake some bread while all the other barnyard animals just yawned, napped, made some ObamaCare emergency room visits, cashed their stimulus checks and watched reality television all day? That’s a Republican fairy tale. It’s still a conservative party, and it doesn’t look too kindly on one person doing all the work, as Palin’s been doing this year, while everyone else sunbathes away…followed by some suit-wearing “electable” smiley guy swooping in and reaping the rewards. Well okay, some of the politicians might approve of that. But the voters who will be participating in the primaries, aren’t too fond of that. Generally, they’ve read the hen-story before. And they figure, if it’s just one person who’s done all the work, then the hen-story rules apply. The bread is yours. Doesn’t matter if you’re a dumb ol’ girl who wears slutty airline stewardess glasses. Let the democrats worry about stuff like that.

So the distinguished looking gentlemen wearing their nice suits, who are white, straight, male, six-feet tall, sixty years old, oh so dignified and distinguished looking and respectable — have sat this whole thing out. Palin jumped in and did all the work. Okay, maybe you’re part of the “Republicans could have taken the Senate if it weren’t for her” crowd. That’s silly, but okay you’re entitled to your opinion…still….she did the work. She was out there. Sorry, I don’t care how nicely you can smile and how good you look in a suit. You can’t sit out there and let someone else do everything, then leap in and say “Okay, you have to nominate me I’m going to represent your party in the general election now.” It just isn’t going to fly.

To a Republican voter, that looks exactly like what it is: a usurpation. They don’t look too fondly on that. The democrats might approve of such a thing, after a whole lot of in-fighting about who’s gonna win and which designated-victim-group enjoys the more exalted aggrieved status. If that’s what you’re used to, Palin’s nomination will come as a surprise to you. But there still are some differences between these two major parties, especially when you factor in the personalities of the voters who are faithful to them. And this little-red-hen-baking-bread story, or rather the lesson it teaches, has a lot to do with the biggest difference.

So no, it isn’t Gingrich Pawlenty Romney Huckabee or Jindal. It sure as hell isn’t John McCain. Now you’re down to George W. Bush, and he’s been term-limited out.

I will concede that the Supergirl-costume part of my inauguration day fantasy may not be a winning bet. Even with global warming, the winds off the Potomac in January are a little nippy for those red hot pants…and I’m a little unclear how they’re going to manage the 20th landing on a Sunday.

As to the rest of it, we’ve explored all of the alternatives and the probability of all of them, added together, doesn’t amount to much. Yes, they’re all possible. But only tangentially so. As possibilities go, they are freakish outliers…each and every single one of them. Except, maybe, for her choosing not to run!

If she comes gunnin’ for it, the job is hers.

Packing votes for Bristol the Pistol?

I shall not be participating. Mind you, John Hawkins is not calling for votes to be stuffed or dummied-up or cast by dead people or registered to hundreds of people named “Mickey Mouse” who all live at the same address. All he asked, here, was “how do we help her win?” Furthermore, among those who are ready to log on with hundreds of machines with different IP addresses and rig the system for Bristol Palin — they’re doing something I wouldn’t do, but I’ll not think the worse of them for it. I’m not doing what they’re doing, because I just don’t give a rip. Yes, the “you’re becoming the very thing you hate” deal does apply…but only so much. Assuming the ballots are really being stuffed, or can be — they’re altering the outcome of a silly reality teevee show, not unilaterally deciding who’s going to represent Minnesota in the United States Senate.

I should make it clear here that I am not pursuing any kind of high ground. I’m one of those unfortunate disableds who cannot arouse passion in trivial, meaningless things. I’m not a sports fan, can’t tell you for sure what sport the Miami Dolphins play, cannot list the first names of the Kardashians, I don’t know if America’s Got Talent is still on the air or not. But a first-term Senator from Chicago is elected President, end-runs around the Constitution and puts our country into levels of debt George W. Bush never even could’ve dreamed about — suddenly I start paying attention. Hey, what can I say. I’m funny.

Nor do I sympathize much with the “we must not lower ourselves to be like them” types of conservatives. I do admire them for trying to be good people, or to prevent themselves from becoming bad people. But I think when they pursue these fantasies about their chivalrous behavior affecting the outcome, they’re fooling themselves. They’re missing out on a key point: There is a reason we admire civilized behavior when people argue. It’s like passing a water bottle around a circle of people, with an obvious social taboo against backwash. You can observe this or you can ignore it; but the outcome is only affected by those who ignore. You can’t sip cleanly out of the bottle and undo the backwash, right? That’s the way arguing is. Once someone’s polluted the environment, the deed is done and there’s no going back.

We saw it with the Tea Party. A movement can be filled stem-to-stern with people who behave decently, interact courteously, salute the flag, call older people by “sir” or “ma’am,” pick up their own trash at demonstrations. And at the end of the day, whoever wants to put the hate on is going to go ahead and do that anyway. Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, and for no other reason — because no minds will be changed.

Anyway, Maggie Block had something to say about helping Bristol Palin win:

What about the fact that her dancing really and truly SUCKS! No offense John but why the “us vs them” attitude”? Aren’t we all people 1st, Americans 2nd, with affiliation somewhere down the line? I was rooting for Bristol, (I think her mother is an ignorant wolf shooting hick) I hoped she would do well, but the girl can’t dance. Maybe I am naive, (being that I’m a liberal democrat) but there is more to life than politics… I[t] shouldn’t matter if her Mother is Sarah Palin, Princess Diana or the antichrist.

Ms. Block is missing something. John Hawkins did not start this absurd situation. I don’t want to speak for him, but there is a phenomenon taking place here and there is urgency in recognizing it. The current happening seems to be merely a symptom, of something much bigger that is always with us whether there’s something to manifest it or not.

I don’t know how she missed out on what’s going on. Someone who lives completely outside of the whole matter, I could see them being ignorant about it. But anyone who’s paid the slightest bit of attention knows something about the Bristol-Derangement-Syndrome churning away out there, which reached a frenzied boil once Brandy was eliminated.

An extremely abbreviated and lazy round-up of examples…spelling and grammar mistakes left uncorrected…

Like politica like dancing

I am so close to wretching… and wretching… and wretching. I’m sure the only thing that has kept me from doing so is that I haven’t yet had the appetite to eat anything! I won’t bother taking the time draw the analogies between Bristol, her dancing ability and the voting results as compared to republicans in general and the downhill state of our nation…

Anonymous

Bristol can NOT dance. This is not about talent or ability it’s about the Tea Party voting block conspiracy. I’m not watching the show anymore, not just this season.

AnimeGirl229

The teabaggers strikes again! I mean seriously what do you expect? someone made a website of how to vote for bristol I know they tring to avoid trying saying it, but it has to be said she has made it through all this time because of the tea party.

Tim

You people do realize that the “Stars” part of the shows title refers to the non-dance professionals that the show keeps on staff… Palin is not a star by any stretch of the imagination.

Hypocrit, yes (I can’t wait for her kid to see all this in about 15 years), Teabagger tool, absolutely, but she is no Star. She should never have been on the show to begin with. The fact that she has made it this far only proves that this show is no longer about talent or who the best is.

“Most Improved” only counts when you improve beyond your competetors, as opposed to the “Hey, I didn’t fall down, doncha know”-category.

sharon lopez

I think dwts are about to lose a lot of their ratings.It was a travesty that Maks and Brandi got booted off.When politics enter something like dwts,then I think it’s time for the producers to sit back and evaluate what is happening.If Bristol Palin win this season,I and a lot of other people will stop watching dwts.It’s a wonderful program but politics is ruining it just as it does everything else.The ratings keeps dwts going and if they drop,so will the program.

The end-of-sentence-impaired k_s_w48

Don’t tell me this BP was not some political scam going on if her Mother was not SP she would never have gotten as far as she did so don’t tell me BP got this far because of being popular with the audience I agree this is just a big scam of a show I’m sure DWT will loose much of their viewing audience after this show.

Steed2

What makes it look like a conspiracy is the infuriating spin ABC is putting on this! Why not just admit, we didn’t plan for the response, we tried to improve the show and maybe tried too many things, and the judges felt like they couldn’t judge Bristol at the same level and be fair. Over and done with. But instead we get Brooke, Tom, Producers, and anyone ABC can trot out doing the political spin tactic… “American voted and Bristol won her place.” Maybe some of America voted, but long-time viewers and voters have not been able to get in to vote for other dancers since week 4 and nothing was done about it! I’m one of them, I know that frustration so don’t tell me all of America voted for Bristol, they didn’t! To speak to your point faye5830, another spin point, “Bristol is the most improved and deserves her chance.” She is the most improved, because she was so totally lousy to start with. But she has NOT come up to the caliber of a finalist. Not even close! It is a once in a lifetime chance that she unfairly receives instead of someone else more deserving getting that fair once in a lifetime chance! And the spin that starts me seething, “all the complainers don’t vote and don’t understand the show! ABC! How dare you! I have loyally watched every episode of every season, voted for some winners and some losers, I have tried to vote each week this season and except for the first two weeks I have not been able to complete my phone calls because the phones are blocked and unless I want to stay up until 3 in the morning, which I did last week, I have been unable to cast votes online! I know that it’s a percentage system so even if you give Bristol a lower score than others, because she is at the bottom of the leader board means nothing, because in most weeks she was only 4% below the leader hence the fact; if the judges had given her the lower scores she deserved she may not have made it. The fact is Faye5830 there have been contestants in every season people complained about. Nicole was a pro, Pamela was too sexy, Emmit had the NFL behind him, and, significantly Kelly Osborne couldn’t dance. But none of them had the extra unfair advantages Bristol has been given and if they made it to the finals, when they did, they were finals caliber dancers and based on last week, Bristol clearly is not. Want all of this bitterness and anger to go away? Treat all contestants the same! If one is judged easy, they all get judged easy! If fans from one side are log-jamming the phones, add extra lines, if one contestant has their name all over GMA one day, then another one gets their name all over GMA the next day, or better yet, none of them ever do! The Erin Andrews segment on GMA Tuesday saying “everyone is voting for Bristol” with 3 hours of voting left without any mention of anyone voting for Brandy, Kyle, and Jennifer is the type of Palin pandering that makes people livid!

A couple of things appear repeatedly, and I can’t help noticing them.

When you hear people say that Bristol’s mother, Sarah, is some kind of a dolt or a dimbulb or a dumbass — you get the feeling that if they were stating their feelings honestly, they’d be saying something like “I want the world to know I think Sarah Palin is a dumbass.” An excessive zeal to get their feelings on the record. When you apply some critical thinking skills to the situation, you see there is no call for any drama whatsoever. None. There are people who hate Sarah Palin and Bristol Palin, there are people who like Sarah but agree Bristol’s dancing leaves much to be desired, there are people who appreciate both of them. Everybody’s had their say. Nobody’s changing their mind.

There is a great enthusiasm about predicting what is going to happen. People will stop watching the show, the ratings will plummet, the show will get canceled…supposedly, the need to so opine, arises from the absolute certainty that these events are to take place. Well, if they’re so certain then why not just wait to see what happens?

As is the case with Maggie (herself), excessive (use) of (parentheses). And bangs!!!!!!

Lots and lots of anger. Over the wrong person getting eliminated on a reality show? I have to acknowledge that, sure, people get grumpy and upset all the time over “voting off the island” not going the way people expect or desire for it to go…but, and this latest part is only obvious, this isn’t that. It isn’t just that. There are extra ingredients in the mix. This is a toxic, bubbling stewpot with more seasonining than the usual batch.

My own response to Maggie follows:

I remember being accused of racism when I opposed the Ground Zero Mosque; the argument was that I would’ve gotten pissed off about it earlier if my motives were honest. Maggie, it seems to me this particular argument would apply to you. There’ve been a few dancers on DWTS who sucked donkey balls and still won out, haven’t there? I don’t pretend to be able to offer an exhaustive dossier, but I don’t think you can either.

Watching libs get all bent out of shape does little-to-nothing to gratify me or make me happier with life. But I do think there’s something wrong with people when they get bent out of shape at that name “Palin.” Think about it…she’s got a funny accent, she’s a housewife, she used to be the Governor and *maybe* she’ll run for something. A mature, capable, reasonable mindset that happens to disagree with Sarah Palin on the issues — would not get angry about it. There’s something unhealthy going on lately, and we need to learn what it is so we don’t elect any more sucky-ass presidents like The One we have right now.

For examples of what I’m talking about vis a vis the mosque issue, you can read up over here. You’ll see the other side has very little else to say besides “we think you’re a racist” and this accusation of racism is based on nothing more than this “where were you when” argument.

What am I to make of this? I’ll tell you. And the conclusion I’ve drawn about this, is a little bit out there. If it is true, it says a whole lot about humans and it isn’t good. But I’ve had a lot of time to watch Palin Derangement Syndrome by now, and I’m reasonably sure about what comes next.

I think this is all about race, but not about any one particular race. And I don’t think this is your typical strain of racism. It is not color-based. It does not seek a preservation of, elevation of, or special privileges for the similar; nor is it hostile toward the different.

This kind of racism is flipped around. It is racism against the human race. Sarah Palin, you see, should not be elected to any office associated with special honor or authority, and Bristol Palin should not be elevated to any position that makes her superior to Brandy or to anybody else. And quaint little midwestern accents, or decisions to carry Trig to term and not abort him, don’t have a whole lot to do with it.

The desire, here, is for special powers and perks and privileges to be reserved for special people. The issue is the responsibility that goes with that kind of power. See, you elect a hopey-changey demigod like Barack Obama to the presidency, and each of the rest of us get to toil away in a relatively anonymous, mundane existence. We’re spared from even having to learn enough about our own government, to immigrate legally to the country, were we not already born here. We don’t need to know that Congressmen are elected to two-year terms and Senators are elected to six-year terms, or any of that other complicated stuff. You see the mindset? All that stuff is too big for us, it’s too high of a bar for us to reach. We just to to work with our lunchboxes and thermos bottles…sit in our cubicles doing whatever…come home, eat dinner, and watch dreck on teevee. Like Dancing With The Stars, for example.

We hear much about the rabid, fire-breathing far-left types who are putting pressure on Obama to stick to the agenda. Out of those who continue to support Him and maintain their approval, I’d peg those types at about one in five, maybe one in three. I think what remains is much more responsible for this inexplicable white hot bitter hatred directed against the Palin family.

The Palins of Alaska seem poised to do precisely what was done by the Kennedys of Massachusetts. And yet there are so many who love the Kennedys and loathe the Palins. I’m saying — the battling between Republicans and democrats doesn’t have as much to do with it as it might seem at first. If I am right, then here is the real sin committed by Sarah Palin and her family: The Palins did not “undock” before embarking on endeavors of greatness. They did not separate themselves from the rest of us. They did not make themselves different…and so they are alienating a key constituency. They have offended those who seek to separate themselves & their peers from the remarkable, and maintain that separation.

I think these people are motivated simply by a desire to avoid responsibility. They don’t want to actually own anything. The only time they want to have an effect on something, is when they’re part of a large crowd having the effect so they can, when the time is right, get lost in it. They voted for Obama “To Be A Part Of This Thing.” That is their idea of doing something. Getting swallowed up.

They live out their entire lives never truly taking point on something, so they don’t want anyone else doing that either. That’s what I think. They don’t want to be reminded that we’re all together — because that would mean, if they don’t like something, they have every bit as much business coming up with a plan for fixing it, as Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, or anybody else. That’s too much “change” for them to handle. That is what I mean by “un-docking.” When Palin didn’t do it and pursued a high office anyway, she ticked off the lazy people…who know, inwardly, without anyone pointing it out, that to be a “Mama Grizzly,” you have to get up off a couch.

Look how these people do their threatening, when the time comes to offer a threat. They’re going to stop watching a show. Ooh, impressive! Hey, if the batteries in your remote are less than three years old, you can do that with a twitch in your thumb.

So that’s what I think, it’s just plain laziness. There really is no other reason, logical or otherwise, for anybody to hate the Palins this much. Resigning a governorship is not sufficient provocation, carrying a Downs Syndrome baby to term doesn’t make the cut either, and neither does lasting a few extra rounds on a reality-dancing show.

The anti-Palin phenomenon pre-dates Sarah Palin herself. It pre-dates the term of time during which most Americans have known about her, it pre-dates her actual lifetime…it may pre-date the industrial revolution.

It is among the least productive distinctions of the human condition. It is within the worst that our species has to offer. It is cowardice. It is laziness. It is jealousy. It is resistance to human achievement itself.

It deserves excoriation, condemnation, retribution, and ultimately extinction. Just as much as any other kind of racism.

So hell yes, provoke them. Get this vile crabs-in-a-bucket mentality, this “ordinary people have to be ordinary” worldview out in the open. We’ve tried ignoring it, and the result is a full-frontal assault and threat against the continuing survival of the nation we love, from within; a threat more dire than any she has faced, possibly since the end of World War II. So a confrontation is necessary, and you can’t confront something that persists in hiding itself.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

From here.

Thanks to blogsister Cas for putting it up at the Hello Kitty of blogging.

But he thinks he has discovered a constitutional issue.

It would be adorable if it were not so loony.

Hey, look! She’s got communication skills far beyond her years, and she’s sociable! Exactly what parents and teachers cherish most nowadays — now you get to see what it all looks like.

Hat tip to Boortz.

We need more kids exactly like this, right?

Next busybody plying me with a lecture about how school is just as much for developing social skill as for academic command knowledge of the material, gets this video whacking ’em right upside the head.

Very pretty girl. Somewhere there’s a toe-headed towheaded boy (thanks, Rob) who, in about a decade, will be married to this…and, in another, having had to listen to this drivel all day every day, will become but a shell of his former self.

We’re strange. We idolize, appreciate and crave very strange things.

Blogger friend Andy thinks about love and diversity; and opines, succinctly, thereby snagging the latest BSIHORL (Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately) award.

You can love diversity all you want, just don’t expect it to love you back.

Diversity might not have anything to do with alienating people, or ostracizing people, or vanishing people or destroying people. But only if it is absolutely, positively random. And it can only be verified in this way if it is transparently random.

Once it gets into “We need more X and we need less Y”…it’s about targeting and eradicating classes of people. Quite unavoidable, really.