FrankJ takes the one hundred and first Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award.

With relative ease, I might add:

How hard would it be for a browser to say, “This webpage is about to play annoying music; do you want it to?”?

However — we do have to grant an honorable mention to another entry. This one, also, is from FrankJ. Same post.

Sadly, “Bush sucked” and “Bush was way better than Obama” are not mutually exclusive.

So I see we’re getting another one of those “Congress addresses a court decision in the wake of a smackdown” situations on Net Neutrality.

U.S. regulators would get authority over Internet-traffic practices of companies such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. for two years in a plan being weighed by congressional staff, two people involved with the talks said.

Legislation letting the Federal Communications Commission regulate Internet service providers was being discussed with industry representatives yesterday by aides to Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the private talks.

The two years would give the FCC and Congress time to permanently resolve a long-running fight over rules on net neutrality. Internet-service providers would be barred under such regulations from selectively blocking or slowing content going to subscribers while favoring their own offerings and those of business partners.

“I’m pleased that Chairman Waxman and the other members of Congress who are involved are making a real effort,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said today at a news conference in Washington. “I admire and I appreciate the effort and I hope it succeeds.”

The compromise would let the FCC claim authority over Web service delivered over wires, such as by cable and fiber-optic lines, while allowing the agency to write less-stringent rules for wireless services such as mobile phones, the people said.

The smackdown actually happened several months ago. You might have missed it — fellow Right Wing News contributor Melissa Clouthier captured the decision, linking to a Google cache from Wall Street Journal:

A U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Federal Communications Commission overstepped when it cited cable-giant Comcast Corp. for slowing some Internet traffic on its network, dealing a blow to big Web commerce companies and other proponents of “net neutrality.”

In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the FCC exceeded its authority when it sanctioned Comcast in 2008 for deliberately preventing some subscribers from using peer-to-peer file-sharing services to download large files.

The push is on to somehow — any way it can possibly be done — put the Government in the driver’s seat. What is strange about this situation, what the public doesn’t really understand, is this: The situation has been made more urgent for those who support Net Neutrality, in the wake of a policy framework agreement between Google and Verizon. Which brings about some, although by no means all, of what they were wanting.

It lets some of the pressure out of their movement. It allows a portion of the crisis to go to waste.

ZDNet did a decent write-up on it a few days ago:

The proposal offered by the companies contains seven elements. They are:

* Make the FCC’s current wireline broadband openness principles fully enforceable at the FCC. Those principles ensure that consumers have access to all legal content on the Internet and can use any application, service or devices of their choosing. The Comcast court decision called the enforcement of those principles into question, the companies said.
* New enforceable prohibition against discriminatory practices would prohibit wireline broadband providers from discriminating against or prioritizing content, applications or services that cause harm to users or competition. The principle includes a presumption against prioritization of Internet traffic – including paid prioritization.
* Transparency rules. The proposal creates enforceable transparency rules for both wireline and wireless services which requires broadband providers to give consumers clear, understandable information about the services they offer and their capabilities and to provide app and content providers with the information they need about network management practices.
* The FCC’s role and authority. The proposal provides for a new enforcement mechanism for the FCC. Specifically, the FCC would enforce these openness policies on a case-by-case basis, using a complaint-driven process and could move swiftly to halt violators, including the authority to impose a penalty of up to $2 million.
* Allow broadband providers to offer additional, differentiated online services, in addition to the Internet access and video services offered today. The companies note that it’s too soon to predict how these new services will develop, but examples might include health care monitoring, the smart grid, advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options. The proposal includes safeguards to ensure that such online services are distinguishable from traditional broadband Internet access services and are not designed to circumvent the rules.
* Different rules for wireless – for now. The still-nascent mobile landscape is changing rapidly. Under the proposal, most of the wireline principles would not apply to wireless, except for the transparency requirement. Also, the Government Accountability Office would be required to report to Congress annually on developments in the wireless broadband marketplace.
* Finally, the proposal supports the reform of the Federal Universal Service Fund, so that it is focused on deploying broadband in areas where it is not now available.

The Hard Left, which generally seems to move on things like this as a singular entity, is not cool with this. The unicellular organism, aptly represented by Susie Madrak and Josh Silver, is apoplectic.

The deal marks the beginning of the end of the Internet as you know it. Since its beginnings, the Net was a level playing field that allowed all content to move at the same speed, whether it’s ABC News or your uncle’s video blog. That’s all about to change, and the result couldn’t be more bleak for the future of the Internet, for television, radio and independent voices.

Which I find at once both amusing and sad. Silver’s argument is an ultimate absurdity: We’ve gots ta have some new rules, because the way things have worked up until now is just great.

What Google and Verizon have done, is cobble together a modern-day version of the Hays Code. Not so much in the content of their framework, as in its motive:

In the early 1920s, three major scandals rocked Hollywood: the manslaughter trials of comedy star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who was charged with being responsible for the death of actress Virginia Rappe at a wild party in San Francisco during Labor Day weekend of 1921; the murder of director William Desmond Taylor in February 1922 and the revelations regarding his bisexuality; and the drug-related death of popular actor Wallace Reid in January 1923.[citation needed]

Other allegedly drug-related deaths, of stars Olive Thomas, Barbara La Marr, Jeanne Eagels, and Alma Rubens, resulted in persistent calls for censorship and “cleaning up” of Hollywood through the 1920s. These stories were sensationalized in the press and grabbed headlines across the country. They appeared to confirm a widespread perception that many Americans had of Hollywood — that it was “Sin City”.

Public outcry over perceived immorality in Hollywood and the movies, as well as the growing number of city and state censorship boards, led to the creation in 1922 of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (which became the Motion Picture Association of America in 1945), an industry trade and lobby organization. The association was headed by Will H. Hays, a well-connected Republican lawyer who had previously been United States Postmaster General and the 1920 campaign manager for President Warren G. Harding. Hays immediately banned Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle from the movies, in spite of Arbuckle’s innocence, and instituted a morality clause to apply to anyone working in films. He also derailed attempts to institute federal censorship over the movies.
:
An amendment to the Code, adopted on June 13, 1934, established the Production Code Administration (PCA) and required all films released on or after July 1, 1934, to obtain a certificate of approval before being released. The first film to receive an MPPDA seal of approval was The World Moves On. For more than thirty years following, virtually all motion pictures produced in the United States adhered to the code. The Production Code was not created or enforced by federal, state, or city government. In fact, the Hollywood studios adopted the code in large part in the hopes of avoiding government censorship, preferring self-regulation to government regulation. [emphasis mine]

So it is exactly the same principle being applied. The industry convinces Congress, and the American People, that it is to some degree self-regulating. The pressure behind the legislation is somewhat bled off.

The major difference being — the Hays Code did not voluntarily empower a government agency to enforce rules against it, as the Google/Verizon agreement has done.

We see, once again, there really isn’t any way to gratify the hard left. They don’t accept compromises, even after having walked into the negotiations with absolutely nothing. The decision by the three-judge panel from half a year ago was unequivocal. Comcast, an evil monolith of a money-grubbing corporation, had been engaged in precisely the shenanigans feared by those who support Net Neutrality: They had blocked BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service, on their network. The FCC stepped in to say, shame-shame-everybody-knows-yer-name, we’re here to enforce a level playing field. Comcast took them to court, and they won.

So the rule of the law is clear. The decision that favored Comcast had nothing to do with “how do we get a level playing field,” it had everything to do with authority. The FCC simply didn’t, and does not, have it — game-set-match.

Now the industry, or at least two giants within the industry, is giving the FCC a sort of voluntary authority anyway. The left isn’t happy. The left is howling. It sees corporate skulduggery.

They aren’t representing the public will. The public is against this kind of regulation. Now why is that; don’t they want that level playing field? Do they want to have secrets kept from them?

Perhaps it would be good to explore my own opinion about it. On this issue, I don’t enjoy much potential for speaking for the majority; I’m a fringe kook. I’m really way out there. You probably don’t know anyone who sees this thing my way. But there is a likelihood that, once we explore my thoughts on it, we might come to understand what the average citizen thinks.

Think of a private meeting taking place within a private rental hall. If I act as the officer of an organization, and use those organization’s funds to rent the hall — or maybe we own the hall — can I, in the course of a meeting, interrupt someone in the audience, cut off his microphone, ask security to have him removed?

Yes, yes and yes. This would not be violating the First Amendment. It would be exercising the First Amendment. My hall.

Let’s go back and consult the rules again shall we:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances [emphasis mine]

You say: There it is in black and white, Freeberg! Everyone gets to say everything!

No, go back and read it again. Slowly. One word at a time:

Congress shall…

You can stop now.

It’s “Congress shall not,” not “Comcast shall not.” Comcast has a rental hall; it owns a network. It gets to shut people up there.

You see, we have been on a wrong path for a whole lot of years now. We took a wrong turn before the FCC even came into existence. Supposedly, because radio station frequencies constitute a “scarce resource” in the aggregate, the Federal Government gets to use the Commerce Clause from Article I of the U.S. Constitution, Section 8, to overrule the First Amendment. This is just wrong. Yes, I’m saying in the late 1920’s, we were wrong. The Commerce Clause does not amend the First Amendment; it’s the other way around.

You say “Freeberg, are you saying the FCC doesn’t have the authority to regulate radio stations and it should let them run all hog wild like that?” And I say — yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

If the Supreme Court itself says something contrary, it’s just wrong.

And SCOTUS did say something contrary…and it was wrong. The occasion was the Red Lion case from 1969. One of the last from the Earl Warren court, which by itself is a powerful reason to overturn it in my book.

The decision goes like this: Because radio stations are a scarce resource, the Government gets to restrict, abridge, censor, regulate, even though it isn’t supposed to restrict, abridge, censor or regulate.

So now my viewpoint, whether you agree with it or not, is perhaps becoming clear. I do not respect the prior decisions that put the Government in charge of anything related to communication; in my book, “regulate” is functionally synonymous with “abridge.” I don’t see a need for a centralized authority that assigns radio station numbers, no matter how technologically compelling is the argument in favor of having one, to possess any effect whatsoever in the endeavor to conjure up federal authority where it does not exist — in fact, has been out-and-out banned.

Yes, I do think those old dead white guys from the 1790’s, were thinking of the Internet. We have abused their design on a fundamental level.

But here we come to the part where a Dictator Freeberg would really run roughshod over our existing frameworks, statutes and protocols. Here is where I would rip the heart right out of the beast.

And the odd thing is, here is where, I think, the majority sides with me.

I do not respect the authority of the Federal Government to codify, or enforce, any rules anywhere that deal with “non-discrimination.” I do not acknowledge any intrinsic ability within the government to enforce the very concept of such rules — or even to comprehend such a concept.

The Government discriminates. Period.

It engages in double-talk. It passes a supposed “Equal Protection Clause” within a constitutional amendment, and a century or so later it engages in something called “affirmative action.”

You see, the truth of the matter is this: Public agencies have an unfortunate tendency to view the world in terms of good guys and bad guys. They are friendly to some demographic groups and hostile to others. And I hate to break it to people who are still in the process of learning this, but it’s always going to be that way.

Companies see the world in terms of good guys and bad guys too. But the difference is, when the “bad guy” starts helping to pay the bills he suddenly becomes a good guy. So a privately held company will discriminate, and then at a moment’s notice, flip-flop. Rather comical to watch, really.

Government isn’t going to flip-flop until one voting bloc starts to outnumber another, a process which can take generations. Until then, the good guy stays good and the bad guy stays bad. Government discriminates. It really comes down to this: Government wouldn’t know “non-discrimination” if non-discrimination ran up behind it and kicked it square in the ass.

And this gets down to the heart of the matter. Go back and read the articles put up by devoted lefties Silver and Madrak. In my worldview, their sanity is being subjected to serious question. The chief executive of the Government — our President — six years in every randomly-selected ten, he’s a Republican, someone who is evil in every conceivable way according to these two. And their argument boils down to what? They’re upset not so much about what will be decided later on, but more on the question of who gets to do the deciding. They want more power to be entrusted in this entity that they think is thoroughly corrupt sixty percent of the time.

I’d rather listen to the U.S. Constitution…and to history. This is a situation in which they both say the same thing: If you really want something you could somewhat sensibly call “fairness” — you keep the Government out of it.

And yes, to oppose the Government’s regulation of the assignment of radio station numbers, is often ranked right up there on the scale of libertarian lunacy with opposing sidewalks, fire halls and police stations. Well, maybe people associate it with those but that isn’t how I see it. I’ll favor the sidewalks and firemen and policemen.

But Government has no role in “leveling” a playing field on the Internet. It is specifically barred from restricting our speech, and that means they can’t regulate it. They can’t tell us how to say it, where to stand when we’re saying it, and they don’t even have a role in protecting us if someone is trying to shut us up. Not if that guy owns the forum.

Why am I arguing that it’s “free speech” to shut people up? Because when public-sector busybodies ensure “everyone gets to have a say,” all too often this translates to making sure someone else doesn’t have a say; someone who isn’t part of the “everyone.” Yes, you can use free speech to make sure someone else doesn’t have free speech. It’s been done. Our Government has done it over and over again.

It comes down to respect for the right to property. That has to be the foundation of our other rights — because if it isn’t, then we have that situation where our rights come from the Government. And if our rights come from the Government, then that Government gets to take those rights away any time it pleases, and there will be no recourse, no appeal.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

— Misattributed to Ronald Reagan, apocryphal quote by Thomas Jefferson

The New York Times tells us what is wrong with what some of us are planning to do —

WANT to give affluent households a present worth $700 billion over the next decade? In a period of high unemployment and fiscal austerity, this idea may seem laughable. Amazingly, though, it is getting traction in Washington.

Stopped reading at this point. Why go on?

Out where people work for a living, this is not so laughable and not so amazing. Someone didn’t take the time to step outside the offices of the New York Times, where apparently it is considered wrong to make a profit at something, into the fresh air of the real world where people like to make money.

I saw a headline in the newspaper yesterday where democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown laid a charge down that opponent Meg Whitman has plans that would “help the rich.”

Another big-fat-DUH moment. We all want a better and stronger economy, right? What is an economy, but the opportunity to make money. And keep the money you make.

Jerry Brown is against this? Someone has some explaining to do, and I don’t think it’s Meg Whitman.

All in all, I think blogger friend Phil is right on track with that latest awesome quote he found from Ohio’s former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell:

We have become a culture where making money doesn’t entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

Reverse course on that, and I say the economy will do just fine. Make it okay to create business activity and realize a personal profit from it, and it’ll be good.

Make it possible for people to get rich, and people will do it.

Prove me wrong.

Man…there’s really no limit to how stupid the smartest-guy-in-the-room can be, is there?

He put together a nice list for everyone. Thought I would share it.

1: fool
2: gullible
3: ignorant
4: prone to hysteria
5: prone to conspiracy thinking
6: bad
7: immoral
8: silly
9: selling out your own economic self interests

Nick really doesn’t want anyone learning both sides of an issue; only the one side they can find, replicated over and over again, in the other news sources.

I found an example of what Nick must not want people to know. It concerns a private citizen’s group that has been finding rampant incidents of voter registration fraud.

“The first thing we started to do was look at houses with more than six voters in them” [Catherine] Engelbrecht said, because those houses were the most likely to have fraudulent registrations attached to them. “Most voting districts had 1,800 if they were Republican and 2,400 of these houses if they were Democratic…

“But we came across one with 24,000, and that was where we started looking.”

It was Houston’s poorest and predominantly black district, which has led some to accuse the group of targeting poor black areas. But Engelbrecht rejects that, saying, “It had nothing to do with politics. It was just the numbers.”

The task was overwhelming. With 1.9 million voters and 886 voting precincts, Houston’s Harris County is the second largest county in the country — and the key to Texas elections.

The group called for help and quickly got 30 donated computers and “tens of thousands of hours” of volunteer work. And then the questions started to arise.

“Vacant lots had several voters registered on them. An eight-bed halfway house had more than 40 voters registered at its address,” Engelbrecht said. “We then decided to look at who was registering the voters.”

Their work paid off. Two weeks ago the Harris County voter registrar took their work and the findings of his own investigation and handed them over to both the Texas secretary of state’s office and the Harris County district attorney.

Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Steve Caddle, who also works for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.

Caddle told local newspapers that there “had been mistakes made,” and he said he had fired 30 workers for filing defective voter registration applications. He could not be reached for this article.

Is it possible to embarrass and stigmatize all of the American people into becoming, and staying, ignorant of one selected side of each issue that comes along?

Only time will tell. At least, thanks to Nick’s openness and candor, we know that effort is out there. And thanks to the shenanigans of “Houston Votes,” we know how advisable it is — or isn’t — to stop reading & listening where complete strangers tell you you shouldn’t be reading & listening.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

…?

I’m a parent and I see right through this:

Big brother and little sister down in the rec room playing LC&TGoL together. You have a “Leap of Faith” which depends on one player leaping into oblivion and depending on the other player grappling him with her grappling hook and pulling him up. Which she starts to do…and looks like she’s going to do…then she drops him. Because it’s so funny. Big brother is sick to death of this level and if he has to look at it too much longer his head’s gonna explode, but little sister keeps dropping him because it’s the one time she can get back at him. And laughing about it.

What do you think happens?

My God…it really is true what I’ve been saying. VIDEO GAME DESIGNERS HATE PARENTS. Don’t know why. But after this it’s undeniable.

Five minutes…followed by shouting and yelling and screaming and crying…followed by “You two stop playing that game and go outside!” and “You’re banned from that game for a whole week now!”

Over and over and over again. It cannot play out any other way. Really think about it…how else could it go?

And they must know it too.

Wonder how I can get in on some of this fun? I’m getting down to the “If ya can’t lick ’em join ’em” stage with this thing. And heaven knows, I don’t feel a spirit of camaraderie with all the parents out there.

Where do good ideas come from?

There may be a better-thought-out explanation somewhere, but I’ve yet to come across one. Impressive insight displayed here.

Hat tip to RightNetwork.

He posted without comment, and I shall follow suit…

I met a fairy today that would grant me one wish.

“I want to live forever,” I said.

“Sorry” said the fairy, “I’m not allowed to grant wishes like that!”

“Fine,” I said, “I want to die after the Democrats get their heads out of their asses!”

“You crafty bastard,” said the fairy.

Way to go Andrew. And I wonder how many other “libertarians” fit into exactly this mold. You know, just because you want everyone shooting up, sending entire neighborhoods at a time into blight, without any consequences or recourse available to anybody else whatsoever, doesn’t make you a “libertarian.”

From Newsbusters.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

Hat tip to Kate.

ObamaCare: Even worse than critics thought:

» Obamacare won’t decrease health care costs for the government. According to Medicare’s actuary, it will increase costs. The same is likely to happen for privately funded health care.

» As written, Obamacare covers elective abortions, contrary to Obama’s promise that it wouldn’t. This means that tax dollars will be used to pay for a procedure millions of Americans across the political spectrum view as immoral. Supposedly, the Department of Health and Human Services will bar abortion coverage with new regulations but these will likely be tied up for years in litigation, and in the end may not survive the court challenge.

» Obamacare won’t allow employees or most small businesses to keep the coverage they have and like. By Obama’s estimates, as many as 69 percent of employees, 80 percent of small businesses, and 64 percent of large businesses will be forced to change coverage, probably to more expensive plans.

» Obamacare will increase insurance premiums — in some places, it already has. Insurers, suddenly forced to cover clients’ children until age 26, have little choice but to raise premiums, and they attribute to Obamacare’s mandates a 1 to 9 percent increase. Obama’s only method of preventing massive rate increases so far has been to threaten insurers.

» Obamacare will force seasonal employers — especially the ski and amusement park industries — to pay huge fines, cut hours, or lay off employees.

When is the last time any “landmark” legislation brought down the cost of something?

Couldn’t happen to a nicer fella:

If the women at the feminist group The New Agenda do not hear an apology soon from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his “sexist” comment, he will be facing more than just a few frowning fems.

At a New York fundraiser hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg earlier this week, Reid praised New York Democratic
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for being the “hottest member” in the Senate.

When Politico asked Reid’s office for a clarification, spokesman Jim Manley said, “What can I say, she made The Hill’s ‘Most Beautiful’ list. Of course, he also went on to praise her skill and tenacity and described her as an effective member of the New York delegation as well.”

Amy Siskind, president and co-founder of The New Agenda, told The Daily Caller that if Reid does not promptly voice regret, she and her group will be building a coalition against the senator and demanding a mea culpa.

“We believe Senator Harry Reid needs to issue an apology,” Siskind said. “He had a chance to clarify his comments and instead of clarifying it his spokesperson just said, ‘yeah, that’s basically what he meant,’ and in this day and age if that is the way he is going to refer to one of the seventeen women in the Senate, then you know he should just get back on his dinosaur and go back to Nevada and stay there.”

Hat tip: Inst.

Wonder if Amy Siskind has a nice pair of legs. I’m a sucker for nice looking legs.

Can’t you envision a couple of dinosaurs reading about that quote, and going “Hey! Dang it, I find that offensive!” Also, it kind of looks like she’s trying to say something none to flattering about people who live in Nevada. Someone should ask Nevada people what they think of this. I’ve been to Nevada, there’s people living there…if you drive far enough you’ll eventually see some.

Dinosaurs I’m not too sure about.

…being able to deal with making a choice, on some level more sophisticated than “which option do I like better.”

This is what the arguing is all about lately. Our country has just been wrenched through a sharp S-curve. We had a President who made a habit out of telling people the situation as he saw it, and to hell with whether they were ready to hear it or not; now we’ve got a President who’s spent His entire lifetime learning He can always win, as long as He acts confident and to hell with whether He’s telling people what’s true, as long as it’s what they want to hear.

That is why there is so much arguing lately and why it is so heated. When you lack maturity, you have the luxury of defining truth according to taste. This causes strong antisocial feeling because, necessarily, it must mean anyone who says anything contrary must be a liar.

There are still quite a few people walking around who think the previous President lied about everything. Of this, alone, I cannot begrudge them. President Bush was a politician; diagnosing politicians, especially politicians representing opposing parties and movements, is something we all do pretty much all the time.

The way they decided he was a liar, however, all too often was something like this: I don’t like what he’s saying. It makes me unhappy. That makes him a liar.

What was he saying? The world is always going to be dangerous and unstable, until such time as the Saddam Hussein problem is addressed, head-on, militarily.

If you lack maturity — maturity, the way I’m defining it here — of course that’s a lie. It isn’t soothing. Doesn’t fill you with happy thoughts head to toe.

If you’ve acquired this maturity and made it your business to deal with things the way they really are, it’s a big fat DUH.

The reason it seems lately we can put so much effort into problems that really aren’t that complicated, and continue to see success elude us, is that there are a lot of people who lack maturity. It just isn’t required of us that often. We’ve got fewer and fewer people working for a living, and those among us who are fortunate enough to work, all too often are simply following instructions. The “quality” of what we do is determined entirely by how well we’ve followed the steps. So engaging reality, in addition to being frightening, is becoming a dying art.

Lately, even people who’ve worked themselves into that ultimate level of independence, running their own business, are occasionally found to lack this maturity. Think, as a consumer, how many products and services you buy — and after they’re delivered, you have the final word on whether they’re adequate or not. This is a metric caught in a steep decline. Hamburgers are built the way they’re built; if you like them, oh that’s fine, but that’s because you happen to like the burger the way they build them here. Nobody had to approach you, find out what you want in a burger, and put some real thought into how to fulfill the requirements you had in mind.

The same is true of cars. Even houses. This house is built this way because that’s the way they build ’em here, now do you like it or not?

So the result is a society filled with craftsmen, and their employees, who just follow steps.

Any given human ability that is difficult to maintain, will fade just so far and then bounce back if it is required. This one, sad to say, isn’t. And so I see parents trying to teach their children to make choices that will turn out to be the right ones…how to decide things. And they make the mistake of saying “do you like this one or do you like that one?” The child will learn to decide this as a matter of taste, because that is the path of least resistance. This failure will be corrected later on if there is a need for it to be corrected.

But there probably won’t be any such need.

And so we decide what to do based on what we like. And we decide who’s a liar based on who, within proximity, is detected saying anything contrary.

We want to exist with each other in harmony, and we want to be capable. I’m afraid we aren’t doing a good job asking for either one of those things, so we’re facing a future that is missing both. Unless something changes.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Sorry, I just can’t climb on this bandwagon.

I know the frustration with Obama is in the air and it’s palpable, like the electricity you can feel when a desert thunderstorm is near. We who were never fooled by Him, should be grateful for the materialization of she who was once fooled by Him and wised up.

Sorry, the only reaction I really want to see is a swift smack across the face. I’m just as upset with her as I am with any Obama voter, in fact more than the average. Velma Hart is not nineteen years old. She knows you don’t grow eggs in trees, and that you don’t have money in your checking account just because there are still checks left in the book, and that just because your laptop is “wireless” doesn’t mean you never have to plug it in.

I’d like to see her sent to a thousand hours of community service, telling kids in high school how not to pick a presidential candidate. Just like people who got busted for drunk driving.

Yes, I’m quite serious.

This country’s system of government depends on people recognizing their responsibilities when they vote. Just like a car is designed around the idea that its driver knows what he’s doing.

Now we’ve got a failed trillion-dollar stimulus plan, and we’re planning a second one. Every baby born is thirty large ones in debt, we’ve got one hell of an inflation hobgoblin getting ready to kick our asses. Don’t even get me started on ObamaCare.

None of this was necessary.

We owe it all to people like Velma.

++Smack++

Glenn Reynolds snags the one hundredth BSIHORL (Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately) award. Ding ding ding ding ding!

It’s more than one sentence, actually. But as is usually the case…that’s alright.

he government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

Hammer. Nail. Bang!

With a grateful hat tip to Bob Belvedere.

Hat tip to Wheels Within Wheels.

What the– ??? This is the opening that might’ve been?

I suppose that’s not too different from the way all the shows opened back in those days. There’s a lesson here, about thinking outside the box.

Instead of that…we got this. Arguably the small screen’s greatest intro ever:

From Time Magazine, via FARK, which has a lovely article explaining how Hollywood is looking for new villains and atheists might be them.

I just can’t believe it…

There’s Just Something About Him, and He Really Lays It On the Line…

[Hedge fund manager Anthony] Scaramucci told Obama, “We have felt like a piñata,” complaining that “we certainly feel like we’ve been whacked with a stick.” Obama responded that Scaramucci needs to put things into perspective:

Now, you know, I have been amused over the last couple years, this sense of somehow me beating up on Wall Street. I think most folks on Main Street feel like they got beat up on…There’s — there’s a big chunk of the country that thinks that I have been too soft on Wall Street. That’s probably the majority, not the minority.

Kinda makes you go all weak in the knees, doesn’t it? Yes, socialists get mighty particular when it comes time to decide who’s going to get sympathy and who isn’t. They like to decide that stuff ALL by themselves.

Their ideas can’t be made to appear palatable any other way.

I’m pretty sure it never occurred to His slavish followers that the average evil hedge fund manager isn’t too keen on emotions & feeling…and this probably isn’t where Scaramucci was going with what he said. I’m going to just take a wild stab at it that Scaramucci was talking about risk versus profit, the very fabric of the good capitalist’s universe. Something like…well, if we’re going to just dangle like piñatas when all’s said & done, why bother to invest anything in the first place? And if we choose not to do that, your people on Main Street are the ones who suffer. They probably know it, too.

As for majority and minority, President Soetoro probably needs to sit down and read this, with smelling salts within arm’s reach.

With the exception of Fox News, nobody in the media will cite this poll because it’s Rasmussen. The Democrat Party and the media take a selective approach with Rasmussen. They’ll cite him when they like what he shows while ignoring him when they don’t like what he shows. They won’t cite this Rasmussen poll because they won’t like what it shows:

Fifty-two percent (52%) of Likely U.S. Voters say their own views are closer to Sarah Palin’s than they are to President Obama’s, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Just 40% say their views are closer to the president’s than to those of the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate.

This is bad news for Barry from top to bottom, pretty much. But if you click through to Rasmussen’s piece, you see another nugget of something interesting:

The Political Class doesn’t like Palin. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Political Class voters view her unfavorably, while 60% of Mainstream voters have a favorable opinion of the former governor. Eighty-one percent (81%) of voters in the Political Class say Palin is bad for the Republican Party, but 51% of those in the Mainstream say she’s good for the GOP.

A split between the upper-crusters and the hoi polloi! How exciting! Now then Your Holy Eminence, you were saying something about Main Street?

Recall George Will’s summary of the situation, and you can see why the typical “Main Street” voter agrees with Palin:

[T]he recession has reduced household wealth by $10 trillion and that only 25 percent of Americans expect their incomes to improve next year. So they are not spending, and companies, having given the economy a temporary boost last year by rebuilding inventories, are worried. Hence, rather than hiring, companies are sitting on cash reserves much larger than the size of last year’s $862 billion stimulus. [emphasis mine]

President Obama — the one with whom no “majority” agrees, unless it’s the majority within the Political Class — seems to be applying an “underwear gnomes” strategy to the economy.

1. Apply the Alinsky rule to the “hedge fund managers” and other evil capitalists; pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, isolate it from sympathy…make sure they become unpopular and stay that way.
2. ????
3. We all have jobs.

If someone could be good enough to expound on this thing, starting in the middle of the whiteboard with that big empty box. The one with the question marks. We could use just a little more detail there.

Even though, for twenty years or more, I’ve had all sorts of Jimmy Carter fans getting in my face, raising & simultaneously answering that very question. To be filed under “Questions Nobody Was Asking.”

And now, O.B.E.P. (Our Best Ex-President) is leaping up to the podium and grabbing that trophy for himself.

What a stupid statement to make. What a stupid question. Who’s your favorite President — probably Lincoln or Washington, right? Washington doesn’t impress me as a good ex-President at all. Lincoln was even worse!

It’d be nice to have a President who served capably enough, that nobody gave a rat’s ass whether he was a good ex- or not. Carter’s successor, arguably, managed to achieve that. To bad Carter didn’t.

I’ll give Jimmy this much: The day he started being our ex-President, he became something a lot of people had been wanting to see him become.

Fifty dumb liberal quotes.

Some of my favorites:

10. Rosie O’Donnell: “Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.”

11. Al Gore: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”

12. Congressman Hank Johnson on Guam: “My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize,”
:
23. Joe Biden on History: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.”

24. Ted Rall: “Over time, however, the endless war in Iraq began to play a role in natural selection. Only idiots signed up; only idiots died. Back home, the average I.Q. soared.”
:
28. California Senator Barbara Boxer: “Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, ‘Thank God, I’m still alive.’ But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again.”
:
36. Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, DC: “I am clearly more popular than Reagan. I am in my third term. Where’s Reagan? Gone after two! Defeated by George Bush and Michael Dukakis no less.”
:
42. Congressman John Dingell on freedom: “The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re passing legislation that will cover 300 million American people in different ways, it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”
:
45. Radio personality Ed Schultz on elections: “If I lived in Massachusetts, I’d try to vote ten times … Yeah that’s right, I’d cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. Because that’s exactly what they are.”

Hat tip to Linkiest.

David Brooks has been abducted and replaced by someone pretending to continue writing his column.

Many of my liberal friends are convinced that the Republican Party has a death wish. It is sprinting to the right-most fever swamps of American life. It will end up alienating the moderate voters it needs to win elections.

There’s only one problem with this theory. There is no evidence to support it. The Republican Party may be moving sharply right, but there is no data to suggest that this has hurt its electoral prospects, at least this year.

I asked the election guru Charlie Cook if there were signs that the Tea Party was scaring away the independents. “I haven’t seen any,” he replied. I asked another Hall of Fame pollster, Peter Hart, if there were Republican or independent voters so alarmed by the Tea Party that they might alter their votes. He ran the numbers and found very few potential defectors.

The fact is, as the Tea Party has surged, so has the G.O.P. When this primary season began in early February, voters wanted Democrats to retain control of Congress by 49 percent to 37 percent, according to an Associated Press-Gfk poll. In the ensuing months, Tea Party candidates won shocking victories in states from Florida to Alaska. The most recent A.P./Gfk poll now suggests that Americans want Republicans to take over Congress by 46 percent to 43 percent.

Nor is there evidence that the Tea Party’s success has changed moderates’ perceptions about Republicans generally. According to a survey published in July by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Americans feel philosophically closer to the Republicans than to the Democrats. Put another way, many moderates see Democrats like Nancy Pelosi as more extreme than Republicans like John Boehner.

Nor is there any sign that alarm over the Tea Party is hurting individual Republican candidates. In Ohio, Republican Rob Portman has opened up a significant lead on his Democratic opponent. In Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul is way ahead, as is Marco Rubio in Florida. In Illinois, Republican Mark Kirk has a small lead, and Linda McMahon has pulled nearly even in Connecticut. Sharron Angle, a weak candidate, is basically tied with Harry Reid in Nevada.

This does not mean that moderate voters are signing up for the Glenn Beck-Sarah Palin brigades. Palin has a dismal 29 percent approval rating, according to a June Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. But it does mean that the essential dynamic of this election is still the essential dynamic. Voters are upset about the economy, the debt and the culture of Washington. The Democrats are the party of government and of the status quo. They have done their best to remind people of that.

If you’ve been reading Brooks for awhile, you know this is pretty far from his usual schtick. Perhaps this is why he’s being eaten alive in the comments section.

But when a policy has been voted in, and a consensus arises that it’s been taken about as far as it should be taken, and the decision comes about whether to scale it back or to double-down — the voice that says we need to double-down, and to hell with anybody who has reservations about this, is a pretty good definition of “extremist” isn’t it? I’m hard pressed to think of a better one.

Especially when money is involved. When the reluctance comes from fiscal sobriety, a feeling that the tab should be closed out before it gets racked up any higher. Once that becomes a palpable feeling, it’s more likely that it has been felt a little bit late than a little bit early.

So no. You’re not very likely to alienate moderates by saying “Yes, I agree with you; it’s time to stop spending.” If they are alienated by that, then they aren’t anything that could be reasonably addressed as “moderate.”

New York Times:

Patricia Reid is not in her 70s, an age when many Americans continue to work. She is not even in her 60s. She is just 57.

But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments, escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.

College educated, with a degree in business administration, she is experienced, having worked for two decades as an internal auditor and analyst at Boeing before losing that job.

But that does not seem to matter, not for her and not for a growing number of people in their 50s and 60s who desperately want or need to work to pay for retirement and who are starting to worry that they may be discarded from the work force — forever.

Since the economic collapse, there are not enough jobs being created for the population as a whole, much less for those in the twilight of their careers.

Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group — 7.3 percent — is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession.

After other recent downturns, older people who lost jobs fretted about how long it would take to return to the work force and worried that they might never recover their former incomes. But today, because it will take years to absorb the giant pool of unemployed at the economy’s recent pace, many of these older people may simply age out of the labor force before their luck changes.

Blame Bush?

Really.

Hi and welcome to U.W. Whitewater! My name is Marijuana Pepsi Sawyer and I am thrilled to be working among the outstanding individuals in the advising center. I hold a B.S.E. in Elementary Education from U.W. Whitewater and a M.S.E. in Higher Education Administration from Georgia Southern University. I enjoy cooking, fishing, shooting, motorcycling, traveling, golf, and spending time with family, friends, and loved ones.

How does Gerard find such blogger ambrosia? Google Reader wouldn’t do this for you. He must have spies.

Inside a movie, there are objects. Characters are objects, the cars they drive, and the “maguffins” they steal from each other, are objects. These objects are stateful things. They are sane or they aren’t sane, living or dead, lit up with magic or not. When an object changes its state, you could say an “event” has taken place.

A character learning something is definitely such an event, since the knowledge-base of that character is a state. The audience has a knowledge-base too, so when something is revealed to the audience, that is an event. String together a bunch of events, and you have a story. Do it right, and you have a good story.

I’m not entirely sure if the time-honored tradition of telling a story in a movie is gone for good. But it certainly does seem to be on its way out. Let me see…what events happened in Resident Evil: Afterlife? There are quite a few deaths, but a lot of them don’t stick. I’m not talking about people dying and then becoming zombies; that would be two events. I’m talking about undoing the death event — “Marion wasn’t in the basket that went into the truck” and “We don’t know what death means to a Vulcan,” that kinda stuff. That’s cute when there are other, real, events driving a story. When there are few or no other events, it’s just annoying.

With only the minor characters dying and staying dead, we’re left with: Uh, not much. There was a tidbit of enticing information learned by the main characters about a boat; a plane was landed and took off; a plane crashed; another plane was flying and it landed on a building.

A bunch of people got together, and moved from Point A to Point B.

That’s about it. A selected group of badasses proved over and over again what incredible badasses they were. One character even ran up a wall & did a flip, to land behind the big bad guy who was chasing her into the wall. Wow, I’ll bet you never saw that before didja?

This movie’s primary strength is that of all the things it fails at doing, it never really tried to do. But you know what? That only excuses so much. The visual effects were great, but that only provides so much.

There just isn’t any substitute for a good, strong story. That’s why movies should not be made from video games…and for the foreseeable future, I think I’m done with them now.

Also, there wasn’t enough boobage.

Andrea Tantaros writes in a NY Daily News editorial:

Originally, the Tea Party was discounted as “manufactured anger” and mocked by Washington elites. Even some on the right refused to take it seriously.

After it was announced that [Christine] O’Donnell had won, Karl Rove discredited her on Fox News, saying: “It does conservatives little good to support candidates who…do not evince the characteristics of rectitude and truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for.”

But Rove, George W. Bush and many incumbents, including President Obama, are the reason we even have the Tea Party movement. Bush ran up deficits. Obama quadrupled them. To many disgruntled conservatives, Rove was behind Bush in giving us open borders, tax cuts that expire, Medicare Part D and busted budgets.

The current alternative from the left is even more cuckoo to voters: higher taxes, a new health care regime, more rights for terrorists, disregard for immigration law and constant apologies to other countries. Now that’s nuts.

So, with mud on their faces, both sides of the aisle are trying to shred the personal credibility of the outsiders. They’ve blasted O’Donnell for not liking porn and blasted [Carl] Paladino for liking it too much. They call O’Donnell a liar in a year when the Democratic Senate candidate from Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, lied about serving in Vietnam, and Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters face serious ethics charges.

It’s getting ugly and it’s gonna get even uglier. A parasitic industry is being dismantled.

Last three days or so, on Memeorandum, the top headline on the page has had something to do with Christine O’Donnell’s past statements or purported shortcomings. You’d think she was running the place. I’m not relying so much on Memeorandum anymore. They’re enablers of the status quo, and they seem to have a rule in place that Paul Krugman’s articles must grab the center-limelight the second they come out, no matter what he has to say.

And let’s not even get started on newspapers or cable teevee.

The electorate is trying to send a message. This time, they’ll not be placated or distracted by anyone’s wonderful personality or speechifying. They want smaller government and they’re entitled to it.