Ralph R. Reiland writing in Pittsburgh Live:

President Obama’s program for more jobs includes a call for the government, starting in January, to take more money from “the rich,” from the nation’s key job creators, a strategy that’s intrinsically irrational and counterproductive — unless you think that all jobs should be with the government.
:
An analysis of IRS data for 2007 shows the top 1 percent of income earners receiving 22.8 percent of total income and paying 40.4 percent of all federal income taxes. Similarly, the top 5 percent of income earners received 37 percent of total income and paid 60.6 percent of all federal income taxes.
:
In the high-tax era of the late 1970s, pre-Reagan, the United States was a net capital exporter, with American individuals and companies investing more abroad than foreigners were investing here.

Cuts in income taxes at every level, reductions in taxes on capital gains, and cuts in the highest income tax rate during the Reagan years, from 70 percent to 50 percent and then 28 percent, turned that capital loss around and created what the National Bureau of Economic Research called “the longest sustained period of prosperity in the twentieth century,” the creation of 17 million new jobs from 1981 through 1989.

Obama is moving in exactly the opposite direction.

The theme of Republicans being anti-science was still in a state of crescendo during the 2004 election; I recall it became an even more prominent fixture in 2006 and 2008 and may have been a primary contributing factor to their defeat.

What captures my attention about this, though, is not that the democrat party holds itself out as superior leadership in the “supporting science” department, but where. Having made a sweep through my political memory about this issue, and being satisfied that it is a functionally exhaustive one, I dredge up three public policy questions to which this has been applied.

1. The planet is on the brink of dying off because of our toxic human fumes;
2. You cannot properly do stem cell research until you first grind up some babies;
3. The theory of evolution proves this is a godless universe.

I’m not counting all the chatter about the who’s-who of “X has a Blackberry” and “X can’t figure out how to use an iPod.” I’m ignoring it because I think it’s stupid.

So I can’t think of anything beyond those three. What do the three have in common I wonder? That’s the “D’Jever Notice” moment: Humans have all the origin, all the destiny, all the sanctity, and all of the entitlement to a continuing existence of a cluster of bacteria on a kitchen sponge. It all seems to come back to that. We are an infestation and nothing more than that. There’s no reason for anyone to love our species save for what we are going to become later.

If something comes up to substantiate it, our liberals shout it from the hilltops and make sure everyone hears about it over and over again. If there’s something to suggest otherwise, they ignore it. That isn’t an illustration of science, that’s cognitive bias.

Those aren’t white coats they’re wearing; they’re straight-jackets.

And, at times, that is not so hard to see.

From bLaugh.

Consumerist:

Cops love finding iPhones at crime scenes because the phones carry so much priceless data about your usage habits, or as the cops call it, evidence. That email you typed months back about feeling stabby when you drink? It’s still there because there because the iPhone captures everything you type to help fuel its spellcheck abilities—even emails you thought you deleted. And that’s not all.

* Every time an iPhone user closes out of the built-in mapping application, the phone snaps a screenshot and stores it. Savvy law-enforcement agents armed with search warrants can use those snapshots to see if a suspect is lying about whereabouts during a crime.
* iPhone photos are embedded with GEO tags and identifying information, meaning that photos posted online might not only include GPS coordinates of where the picture was taken, but also the serial number of the phone that took it.

Neal Boortz was saying something this morning about some musician guy running for President of Haiti or Jamaica or Cuba or something. Whatever it is it’s got something to do with this clip.

I’ve been doing it the wrong way all this time!

No, I’m seriously re-thinking how I’ve been tying my shoes now. This is bound to get extra confusing.

Blame Hector Owen.

With the dropping of a gavel…once again.

I just don’t see this as a terribly big event. The pattern has been nearly perfect, has it not? Gay marriage appears in a court, and it wins…it appears at a ballot box, and it loses. I’m looking for a break in the trend, and there hasn’t been one yet, so the trend is going to be the story until such time as it is disturbed.

And what is the story about this trend? Our courts are defining for us, over our protests, what marriage is.

I do think it’s pretty sad this legal framework, and culture, that we’re setting up. The adoptions that will take place, effectively guaranteeing that the child(ren) will entirely grow up without the benefit of a female mother, or a male father, as the case may be. The specific instances I don’t find quite so tragic — two gay parents, a whole lot better than none at all, right?

The tragedy is the culture. We will be required to pretend, on pain of civil suit, that a motherless or fatherless household is just as good as a two-parent home with a genuine mother and a genuine father.

Which takes us to exactly the same Ground Zero destination point, to which all left-wing ideas inexorably lead…

This particular individual isn’t contributing anything truly irreplaceable and may be discarded at will.

“Kidzmom” and I disagree on just about everything. And I do mean everything. But since we split up, she has always acted like there is no substitute on this entire green planet for my fine self when it comes to fathering that child. And I have reciprocated on the subject of mothering him. The boy had to go under the knife yesterday. Know how many phone calls there were to the next state over? I lost count. Why? Because like all strong wise men, I know my limitations. I can’t mother.

Some human efforts are irreplaceable. This is the idea that our society is gradually losing. And the people are not in favor of it. Generally, we want to matter, and we want to matter as individuals. Not as a herd of livestock that has to be managed and told by our aristocrats what is a marriage & what isn’t a marriage.

It’s a religious concept. Now government is telling us what it is. That means, with enough time, government can define for us all other aspects of our religious “freedom.”

One or two other sensibly-minded gadflies are joining with my fine self on an experiment, to find out what happens to lefties who use their “let me further persuade you to my point of view with my dismissive attitude” technique — when it doesn’t work. The result, so far, is: What started as a left-winger bitching about the bad press Obama was getting over skipping the Boy Scout centennial, has popcorned into a thread just shy of eighty comments about all sorts of stuff.

The persuasive-dismissive-attitude thing is being retried and retried. It’s developed into something of a nervous tic for them.

Socialism isn’t bad at all. It has worked quite well in a number of other places. Why? Well, because when and where it has worked, it has been restrained by the best impulses of Capitalism. The all or nothing meme is getting really worn out.

Here in the United States, I would posit that Capitalism works best. But only when it is restrained by Socialistic impulses. That’s why our Capitalist system worked, more or less, swimmingly from 1945 to the early 1980’s. There were economic ups and downs, but no cataclysm. The only clusterphucks we’ve known economically have come in 1929 and since deregulation in the 1980’s. Why? It’s not because the Gilded Age Presidents or Ronald Reagan were pure evil. Liberals who talk that way presume these men WANTED to destroy America. And that’s just nonsense. They meant well, were sincere and were, clearly, sincerely wrong.

Socialism is no evil, unless it us unbridled. In North Korea and the old Soviet Union, it was unbridled. Capitalism is no evil. In fact, it is pregnant with the potential for great good. When it is bridled. Since Ronald Reagan (and in fairness, I should note that some deregulation was championed by the supposedly liberal Jimmy Carter), we have had nothing but a succession of extreme Capitalists as Presidents. Barack Obama is simply a Capitalist, but not an extremist. If nationalizing Willard “Mitt” Romney’s health care reform plan is Socialism, then Billy Sunday’s tent revivals were Roman Catholic masses.

Socialistic restraints have kept capitalism bridled. Our messy capitalistic-socialist hodgepodge is the best of both worlds, or something.

I guess when I see socialism making these big messes, like the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac situation, and blame them on capitalism…that’s just the wonderfulness oozing out.

So I replied:

Capitalism places the opposite participant in a transaction (seller, if you’re the buyer; buyer, if you’re the seller) in the same position of authority that socialism invests in some centralized dictator who is far less interested in the outcome, knows a whole lot less about the nature of it, and is consistently an asshole.

Capitalism has no need to be bridled. It is self-bridling. It is equally risible to talk about bridled & non-bridled socialism; it is inherently unbridled. Any & all charter documents that seek to place limits on power, socialism labors to undermine. Once the ruling party gets it in their head they want to do something, anything standing in the way is exactly that and nothing more. Just an obstacle to be defeated.

And the socialism-isn’t-bad guy came back with:

Capitalism is self-bridling? OMG. Morgan, that is possibly the most clueless thing I have ever heard any intelligent person say.

Tell that to the people in Anniston, Alabama; Mossville, Louisiana; and Lima, Ohio. Tell that to the families of the miners killed in West Virginia or the workers killed on the BP Oil rig.

Unbridled Capitalism is no different than unbridled Socialism. Both lead to negligent homicide.

This orgy of deregulation must be stopped, just as the orgy of oppression in the old USSR had to be stopped.

Heaven help me, it’s the dreaded OMG retort. It’s been the juggernaut of arguments since the debates that took place in ancient Athens.

What is this guy, twelve?

Yes Jim. Self-bridling. Capitalism has its restraints built in. They may be disappointing to a pipe-dreamer who’s come up with a vision, unenforced by reality, of what the self-restraints ought to be (socialistic governments are absolutely NOT self-bridling). But they’re there.

You sell something, the buyer has to agree to the price and the terms. Otherwise you go out of business. You buy something, the seller must agree or you go home empty handed.

Government does something like, oh…regulate BP? BP writes in the answers to the audit in pencil, the auditor traces over it in pen. The mentally flaccid will say “Aha! See? That’s a failure of capitalism!” But it isn’t. “Regulatory oversight” was put in place, and it was found not to work.

Hey wouldn’t it be sweet to have a job like that? You’re supposed to do something…and when you use the time to stare at porn all day instead of doing your job, it’s the other guy’s fault.

You want unbridled? Look at Obama or any other leftwing dictator asshole. The rules say He can’t do something, and whatever that rule is it’s just a minor irritant, nothing more. That’s what I call unbridled.

Or if you insist on something in the private sector, look to the businesses that employ illegal aliens. There’s your “unbridled.”

Capitalism is self-bridling. Obama makes it a lot more expensive to hire people, and in keeping with the law, the corporations lay people off. And then this is supposed to be the fault of capitalism somehow.

But I never said the bridling had to be comfortable for everyone. Businesses that want to operate out in the light, do what must be done in order to stay legal. And then it’s their fault, even though the leftist government comes up with the policies. Often, in contravention to the Constitution and other laws.

Obama shakes down BP, has the “audacity” to pick up the phone and order them to put billions of dollars in a pot. Hey, is that your idea of self bridling? Just curious.

No reply posted as of yet. There are other dialogues going on in this thing…so I expect to see this particular train of thought Cheesecake-Nazi’d out. Ooh, bright shiny object.

But this theory of mixing together…oh my, how I’d love to set the cross-hairs of a .50 cal. upon it. This is an idea that needs to die. It is toxic. It ranks high on the list of things that have diminished the opportunities of the generations of Americans, now to levels beneath that enjoyed by their parents. It’s killing the country, this “epoxy theory.” Socialism, capitalism. Mix ’em together, shake the bag a few times, and what you get is twice as good as either one by itself.

Over and over again, we see that is not what you get. Whatever the effort is, whatever the industry is, the results are the same: The productive are strapped to a sort of gurney, and the non-productive figure out they can attain a higher lifestyle by being dicks. Then they gather around the bloated succulent victim, bare their fangs and suck like the craven vampires they are. The next generation is taught to be vampires, not bloated succulent gurney-meat; and can you blame them? Real jobs are for losers.

Fellow Right Wing News contributor Melissa Clouthier, not wanting to give the Shirley Sherrod treatment to Pete Stark, put up an embed to the full eighteen-minute video. We shall follow suit.

If I were writing this as a work of fiction, the publisher would beat me over the head about this particular character. Not enough creativity going into the Congressman’s name. Stark. As in, Congress’ contempt for their constituents is laid starkly bare. “There hasn’t been a less subtle, less imaginative name for a character since General Grievous” s/he’d say.

Melissa puts it best:

The condescension and the superiority of this man is what’s so amazing. Our elected officials believe that they’re our rulers.

Aw, that’s okay. These are the people who feel perfectly entitled to tell us what kind of health care we’re going to have.

Wall Street Journal:

Voters in Missouri overwhelmingly opposed requiring people to buy health insurance, in a largely symbolic slap at the Obama administration’s health overhaul.

The referendum was the first chance for voters to express a view on the overhaul, although turnout in the state was low and Republican voters significantly outnumbered Democrats.

With all precincts reporting, 71% of voters supported Proposition C, establishing a state law that says Missouri cannot compel people to pay a penalty or fine if they fail to carry health coverage. Twenty-nine percent voted against the proposition.

The state law runs counter to the federal health law President Barack Obama signed in March, which calls on most Americans to carry coverage or pay a fine.

Boy I’d love to hear some arguments from those twenty-nine percent. The left-wing argument is typically molded and shaped, often cynically, to fit a trope of “freedom” and “choice” but this one would have to be molded and shaped to fit a trope of “Whatever Obama Says Must Be Right.” Freedom & choice have nothing to do with it. It can’t even be perceived that way by the addle-minded. Not unless the counter-propaganda tries to make that happen. Must be some kickass counter-propaganda; even 29% impresses me.

The New York Times opening paragraph is awesomely snort-worthy:

Missouri voters on Tuesday easily approved a measure aimed at nullifying the new federal health care law, becoming the first state in the nation where ordinary people made known their dismay over the issue at the ballot box.

I know, I know, the first thing you’re taught in journalism school is to find a way to fit the “Why Do I Give A Rip” into the first line. And Senators and Congressmen have made known their opposition at the ballot box; “ordinary” people have made known their opposition at the tea party rallies. There’s still a first here, so it must be mentioned.

But the “ordinary people” is just delicious. It reveals exactly how the extraordinary people at the New York Times see things, and most likely without anyone at the NYT being wise to it.

I’ll bet anything that the White House is pissed over it. “First, what do you mean first? There’s going to be more?? This is biased coverage! We can’t get any credit for the wonderful work we do in this shitty economy…that, uh, has resulted from the Failed Policies of the Bush Administration (FaPoBuAd)^TM.”
Back to the Wall Street Journal:

Supporters of the state law said Congress was overreaching by requiring people to buy coverage, and they called the proposition a chance to stand up for states’ rights.

Opponents included the Missouri Hospital Association, which said that if the mandate isn’t enforced some who can afford insurance will get a free ride and pass the costs on to those who are insured. The association spent about $400,000 on direct mail in connection with Proposition C, according to its filings.

A union spent 400 large defending the concept of individual responsibility. Hehe.

You don’t trust what unions have to say about Obama’s plan. You just don’t.

gallup.com, via HotAirPundit:

A majority of Wyoming, Mississippi, and Utah residents identified as conservative rather than moderate or liberal during the first half of 2010, making these the most politically conservative states in the U.S. The District of Columbia had the greatest percentage of liberals, along with four New England states: Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, and Massachusetts.

I’m counting eight of the top-ten liberal states on my “have-visited” list, and four of the ten conservative states.

And let me tell you, this is absolutely bowling me over. Because I have another list in my head of “most-friendly” states. And actually, the ones that rank highest are not on either list. I’d put Tennessee up on top, followed by Ohio.

But these liberal states — the people I’ve met there were not by any stretch mean, just generally unhelpful. Kinda grouchy.

Pretty much exactly what liberals say our conservatives are.

Yeah it’s old news by now…their mad ravings are all just psychological projection.

Bristol has split with Levi again. So it’s time for another session of Palin-Go-‘Round. You’ve already been through a bunch of frames so by now you know exactly how the game is played:

1. Sarah Palin does something, or says something, or someone says or does something to her;
2. Liberals come up with some clever catch-phrases about it, eager to show other liberals how nasty they can be;
3. You skim through all the toxic things they have to say as they seek to impress each other;
4. Stop to consider: These are the people who want to manage health care for all of us. Scared yet?

Palin-go-round is always sickening but it’s always rewarding too. Liberals who want to show other liberals how nasty they can be, play to win. They know there are no points awarded for second-worst.

Here are your quotes. And one more time: These people want to make decisions about your health care. They think they have a right to do it because they’re extra-special, extra-intelligent, extra-evolved, extra-civilized and extra-decent people.

“This attention-seeking tramp gets everything she deserves.”

“The wonderful Palin family. Trailer park values we can all follow! A shinning example for all our youth.”

“At least this leaves Levi free to resume attacking Sarah without those mother-in-law concerns.”

“ha ha ha ha ha another loser on Palin’s family, like daughter like mother, a bunch of LOOOOOOSERS!!”

“what a bunch of morons. i don’t know who is stupider, her or her mom.”

“Hopefully , the Alaskan trailer park trash will stay out of Washington DC.”

“she got played because she’s an idiot..her whole family is nothing but trash and dumber than a sack of hair. “

“This Bristol seems to be the silliest dim wit just like her mother the queen of mendacity and vapidness.. The whole family borders on the absurd. They are the laughing stock of any intelligent person.Would that we could house them all in an igloo on an iceberg sent out to sea with the poor polar bears Sarah so hates.”

Now that we’ve concluded another set, let’s think about this:

Liberal plans all seem to have it in common, that something fundamental to human existence is to be centrally managed by demigod central figures who are so wonderful that positive results are assured.

Because those demigod central figures, apart from being so smart…are nice.

But when push comes to shove, liberals don’t put a lot of importance on being nice. They put a lot of importance on being mean and nasty. This is supposed to be why they’re better than conservatives — they’re nice, conservatives are mean.

The only thing missing is the nice-ness. It’s missing from the achievement. And it’s missing from the effort.

Interesting.

With anticipation high and climbing with each image and trailer for the release of Tron Legacy (and it ranked first on our round-up of films to look forward to in the link below), the next best thing to do before the film is out was to have another look at the 1982 film, which was just as exciting on its release 28 years ago.

Since we had the Collector’s Edition on our shelves, we actually made two return trips to a film that pioneered filmmaking techniques because what the filmmakers wanted to accomplish had never been attempted before.

We were quite surprised to learn that most of the effects, which we’d ashamedly assumed were computer-generated accomplishments, were actually painstakingly hand-drawn animations, in a process that, even having heard how it was done, we still don’t quite understand!

What a great excuse to embed the legendary Tron Girl video.

Revolving Door Slammer (n.)

1. Any participant in a cooperative or collaborative process who seeks to assume dictatorial control over that process, by means of faking a withdrawal from it, usually with an effort to maximize the theatrical effect of the withdrawal. Everyone left behind is supposed to feel shamed, and begin a process of introspection that will culminate in getting rid of something in their protocols that is offensive to the person who is supposed to not give a fig one way or the other anymore.
2. More specifically, any of those qualifying for definition 1 who, soon thereafter, re-enter the process they just exited; this is typically because they were left unsatisfied by the results of the theatrical exit. If they’re emotionally disturbed they may do this several times in rapid succession, which causes proxy embarrassment in those watching them. It builds and builds and builds until someone grows a pair and latches the revolving door shut, while they’re still outside.
3. The term could also be applied to those who were never really part of the process in the first place, so long as they falsely represent their membership in order to exert this dictatorial influence over those who are genuinely part of it.
4. Also, to violators of the “Ann Landers Wedding Invitation Rule.” Yes, you’ve heard of it already and you know what this means. “I’m not coming if so-and-so is coming” is to be met by — and no exceptions, no matter what — “That’s too bad, we’ll save you some cake.” Bottom-lining it all: Someone who places so much importance in their own moral code…or something that’s supposed to be a moral code…that they’re willing to sacrifice something that’s important to other people. But they have no respect for anybody else’s moral code. Just their own.

Related: Yes, in case there is any doubt among those who care, I do find Anne Rice to be an utterly contemptible person. Liberal douchebag, homely unappealing nutty goth chick, control freak and drama queen. She’s managed to hit all the low points.

Or as blogger friend Gerard puts it:

Door. Ass. Bang. Dreadful woman.

Let’s just ignore the merits & demerits of this guy’s argument. His comment-posters are already handing him his own ass, and this is a road we’ve been down before many times.

One more phony-baloney Frum-like lamentation:

These days it’s getting increasingly embarrassing to publicly identify oneself as a conservative. It was bad enough when George Bush 43, the K Street Gang, and the neo-cons were running up spending, fighting an unnecessary war of choice in Iraq, incurring massive deficits, expanding entitlements, and all the rest of the nonsense I cataloged over the years in posts like Bush 43 has been a disaster for conservatives.

These days, however, the most prominent so-called conservatives are increasingly fit only to be cast for the next Dumb and Dumber sequel. They’re dumb and crazy.
:
Let’s tick off ten things that make this conservative embarrassed by the modern conservative movement:

1. A poorly educated ex-sportwriter who served half of one term of an minor state governorship is prominently featured as a — if not the — leading prospect for the GOP’s 2012 Presidential nomination.
2. Tom Tancredo calling President Obama “the greatest threat to the United States today” and arguing that he be impeached. Bad public policy is not a high crime nor a misdemeanor, and the casual assertion that pursuing liberal policies–however misguided–is an impeachable offense is just nuts.
3. Similar nonsense from former Ford-Reagan treasury department officials Ernest Christian and Gary Robbins, who IBD column was, as Doug Marconis observed, “a wildly exaggerated attack on President Obama’s record in office.” Actually, it’s more foaming at the mouth.
:

They keep popping up, like zits. These David Weigel wanna-bes; it’s as if they want to be caught in the same scam. Donkeys wading into the elephant party, with their cheap paper-mache elephant masks strapped to their donkey heads, “Huh huh! I wish so many of ‘our people’ weren’t racists, huh huh!”

Who’s the left-wing counterpart? Where’s the recovering liberal suddenly realizing our modern leftists are whacked in the head? There were signs being waved around during “war protests” comparing Bush to Hitler…signs saying “we support the troops when they shoot their commanders,” and such. Smiles, smiles and more smiles at these “vigils” that were supposed to “mark” the thousandth, or two thousandth, or four thousandth troop death in Iraq.

And let’s not even start with the “Bush Knew” conspiracy theories. These “conservatives” are really embarrassed about other conservatives? Really?

Pardon me, but I’m concerned about whether my children & grandchildren will have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. I don’t think that’s nuts or racist. Anyway. I said let’s not explore merits & demerits, and here I am doing it.

His mask is slipping. Because, to me, if you’re in the six-in-ten who think the country is heading in the wrong direction, you don’t have to defend anything about your personality or psychological profile. This is the reaction a rational person has.

You know what’s scary about liberals nowadays? They know how they want to hate, so much better than they know who to hate. Hate, as in…anger that is not provoked by any specific act. Anger directed at people for what they are, rather than for what they do.

They know how they want to hate, well before they know what the target is. In November of 2008, it was anybody who voted for anybody besides Barack Obama, because these were people who tried to obstruct the Glorious Agenda. But it was a muted hate, because that was a minority and thus ineffectual.

Now it’s six in ten. And now it’s a hate that can melt steel. They’ve got all these well-rehearsed speeches defining what exactly the enemy is…but they don’t know who it is, and they don’t care.

These people are the reason we cannot discuss politics in the workplace. Their plans have been given a more than fair shot, the plans have failed, they’re feeling sensitive about it and they’re looking for an outlet for their rage. All ready to marginalize the other side as fringe, knowing full well they are far more deserving of this.

Do conservatives really have hate? I’m sure there is an individual here & there that is hateful…but for the movement overall, “anger” fits so much better. We’ve got our taxes being ratcheted up at the end of the year, as a panacea for an economic malaise that didn’t start until the democrats took over Congress back in ’07. Our President doesn’t know what He’s doing, and He was supposed to know everything. We were obliged to hand all the controls and power tools off to grown-up children, and we see the wreckage that results today.

Now we’re supposed to blame it all on the people who didn’t want to see it happen, and did all they could to prevent it.

A rational, reasonable person gets angry.

But anger is nothing like hate, especially liberal hate.

And a professor should know, this universe runs on facts that are indisputable…two and two are four…arctangent of 1 is 45 degrees…therefore, on principles. If you care about the principles you really don’t care who is representing them — ya phony.

Liberals make lousy paper mache masks.

To the best I can figure out, Neal Boortz’s words are accurate…and I have no time at the moment to massage them further, so I’ll just lift ’em.

In terms of honesty, that ancient question beckons: Do we rank used car salesmen beneath politicians, or the other way ’round? I believe the question has just been answered.

Apologies to used car salesmen.

Now you have to love this bit of nonsense. Once again we’re seeing how valuable our system of government education is to the Democrats. After all, you could never pull this off with an educated electorate.

You know, don’t you, that taxes are going up at the end of the year. At the beginning of the Bush presidency the Republicans simply didn’t have enough votes to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. The Democrats insisted on an expiration date of December 31st, 2010. Now … since those tax cuts will expire and taxes are going up .. The Democrats have decided it might be a good political ploy to start referring to this as a “Republican Tax Increase.

Nope … not kidding: House majority leader Steny Hoyer says that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts is a “Republican tax increase” for “working Americans” and the Democrats have “no intention” of allowing it to go into effect. Hoyer says, “We have no intention of allowing the Republican tax increase — that their policies would lead to — to go into effect for working Americans. Period …. We’re going to act and make sure that the Republican phase out and increase in taxes does not end as they provided for in the laws they passed.”

This is just amazing. Now we have a lot of economists telling the Democrats that if they don’t extend the Bush tax cuts our economic recovery will be damaged. Democrats don’t want to cut the taxes on the top producers. They know that their base constituency loves taxing the rich … but they also don’t want to be seen as increasing taxes during a recovery. After all … what if the experts are right? What if increasing taxes on the very people who we’re depending on for job growth stalls our recovery? Well, that’s easy! We’ll just call them “Republican tax increases” and let them take the heat!

Again .. not to belabor the point … but you can’t get away with this if the voters are truly educated and informed.

Hat tip to Dave in Texas.

Seiko:

Texas Instruments:

“A stopwatch that sweeps like fire, the first stopwatch of its kind in the world.”

The ninety-third award for the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) goes to commenter lowerleavell who is trying to talk some sense into progressive blog proprietor Ed Darrell. I can’t fault LL for this because I’ve been using up a few minutes here & there in the same futile endeavor.

From out of the stream of paragraphs and words, like Venus emerging from the ocean waves, steps this gem:

The auto industry is a great example of what happens when liberalism succeeds – it just gets bigger and bigger until everything falls apart.

S/he did say “a great example,” not “the best example.” It might be a fun mental exercise to come up with some other great examples. I live in California, so the first thing to put on the list is just a gimme for me. The Golden State, where everything’s getting bigger and bigger until it all falls apart.

And then there’s the health insurance industry. We need to add on to that “Whenever something goes wrong, all the politicians say the problem is not enough liberalism in the situation yet.” Which, come to think of it, applies to the auto industry, and California, just as well.

Teaches’ unions. Socialist countries. Just about any agency in the federal government…and the governments of most of the fifty states.

They’re all like cheap party balloons. Just get bigger and bigger, and you know sooner or later — probably sooner — there’s going to be a loud bang followed by sounds of despair from whoever owned the balloon, mixed in with some plaintive begging for another balloon.

Anne Rice, founder of the sparkly-vampire craze of the naughty-aughties, is no longer Christian.

The “Interview With The Vampire” author, who in recent years has spoken publicly about her faith and written a series of novels tracing the life of Jesus, wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday that she was finished with organized Christianity.

For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outside. My conscience will allow nothing else.

She followed that post a few minutes later with more details:

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

As far as I’m concerned, she can believe what she likes. But there are two things about this that cheese me off…outside of the ugly, false slander against Christianity.

One, she’s a revolving-door-slammer. And I think you know perfectly well what I mean by that. “I’m out” means a cessation of interest, and I would expect so accomplished a writer to string together some words more in keeping with her true sentiment. She’s not out. She seeks to use shame to shape and mold something into her way of thinking.

Our world would be a much more tranquil place if everyone who applied the rhetorical flourish of the Grand Exit, could be somehow required to adhere to it. And stay out.

The other thing I don’t like is that it reminds me of Meghan McCain. Yes, I’m comparing a literary giant to a bubble head. Because it fits. Anne Rice is doing to Christianity precisely what McCain has been doing to the Republican party.

Just think this out: You have an institution. Someone like Anne Rice or Meghan McCain wants to join it…maybe they do and maybe they don’t…and a situation develops because you have already figured out your institution relies on A, and A cannot exist with B. Therefore, your continuing existence relies on an intolerance toward B.

Now, that is almost certainly a matter of opinion. And your tradition of excluding B might even be wrong, if your premise that A and B are mutually exclusive, happens to be incorrect.

But my point is, whether this interloper acts consciously as a destructive agent or not, they are still destructive. It is a destructive thing to say “I love this thing over here and want to be part of it…I think it’s just adorable…and so it disappoints me when it doesn’t tolerate everything like I think it should.” To require an object to tolerate everything, even things that are injurious to it, is destructive to that object. It really doesn’t matter if the destruction is intended or not. Everything cannot tolerate everything. That’s just the way the universe works.

I see my Rice/McCain analogy continues to work when one considers what exactly the point of contention is: Homosexuality. The author and the socialite pipsqueek, both desperately want to be part of something, but their consciences will not permit it because they want more tolerance shown to homosexuals.

Well in Anne Rice’s case, the logical error is the one committed by the blind men feeling up the elephant. She’s ticked at some guy named Bradlee Dean, and has decided his views are representative of all of Christianity.

So working from the same logic, I could say all homosexuals and their sympathizers want to arrest and imprison anyone who will not support their agenda, as they did with Dale McAlpine. That is not the case, of course. The world’s a big place. There are homosexuals, and homosexual-rights advocates, who aren’t going to support the hate speech laws; and even the ones who do, will typically acknowledge something is terribly wrong when you can be arrested for providing your opinion, or your interpretation of scripture, to someone who specifically asked. In short, my extrapolation would be bigoted. It would be ignorant. It would be precisely what Anne Rice did here.

To dictate to an institution what it should tolerate, and deny it the God-given right to figure out for itself what is & is not compatible with it, is to ultimately destroy it. I don’t think Rice’s intention is to destroy Christianity; not on purpose. But she does intend to re-shape it to her liking.

She doesn’t intend to leave it. That’s just a dramatic license, to give more punch to her message. If there was substance to it, she would have done it more quietly.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel and at Right Wing News.

The way she was…

See what I mean? Even when she was flubbing her lines, there was something about her. I can’t think of the word for it and there’s no use flailing around for it, since I already have my own “Script Girl” who has loads of this whatever it is. But the new girl, up top, doesn’t have it.

She’s too generic. Like she was pulled out of a big warehouse full of pretty things, each one just as suitable for the task at hand as the next. Not much personality there.

Oh well. Keep watching the space. Maybe the old one will come back.

Man, this really isn’t good. Wonder Woman in long pants, Script Girl becomes a generic perky weather girl.

Something tells me this afternoon’s entertainment is going to involve fresh air, shooting something with a gun, and lunch at a Hooter’s restaurant.

Hat tip to Mean Ol’ Meany.

Dennis Prager. This one has a couple of weeks of dust on it, just got it in the e-mails today.

If every school principal gave this speech at the beginning of the next school year, America would be a better place.

To the students and faculty of our high school:

I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.

I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.

First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships.

The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity — your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American. This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans.

If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity-, race- and non-American nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America, one of its three central values — e pluribus unum, “from many, one.” And this school will be guided by America’s values.

Hmmmm…

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly took aim at “unmarried women” at a recent fundraiser and in an interview with TPM, saying that they overwhelmingly support President Obama and are all on welfare. Democrats aim to exploit the comments to pressure the more than 60 Republican candidates who have earned Schlafly’s endorsement.

“Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you’ve got to have big brother government to be your provider,” said Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum and infamous for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

It is revealed in the audio, although not in TPM’s article, that Schlafly had a coherent point to make about this. Side note: Hey TPM, do you realize that under our new Shirley Sherrod standard, this means you can be sued?

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Schlafly’s point is just one that intelligent and observant people have been noticing for a very long time now.

The democrat party has positioned itself as a savior for people who are in desperate situations. And so — as you might logically expect — their strategies have evolved into ways to make people more desperate…and to make more people that desperate.

Yes, Schlafly should apologize. She should say “I’m sorry I ‘singled out’ — no pun intended — the single moms. They are, as I noted at the time, most statistically significant to Obama’s victory, but the problem is so much bigger than them. Other people on welfare, for starters. The illegal aliens who shouldn’t be voting in the first place. All those people who would rather be gainfully employed who had their jobs taken away by Obama’s policies. Even the banks! The banks who now depend on government largess to keep from folding, the automakers, the car dealers. The dependency, the addiction to paternalistic government, it’s everywhere. Our country decided two years ago it wanted hope and change, and now we see what that is and there’s nothing hopeful about it.”

Something like that.

So let me get this straight democrats. You want to stigmatize and scandalize the Republicans for putting forward the appearance of making a plan to stop this? This is going to make all of America really angry with them, huh?

Go to town. Do it. Can’t wait to watch it happen.

New York Observer:

Mike Grimm, a G.O.P challenger for Mike McMahon’s Congressional seat, took in over $200,000 in his last filing.

But in an effort to show that Grimm lacks support among voters in the district, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, the McMahon campaign compiled a list of Jewish donors to Grimm and provided it to The Politicker.

The file, labeled “Grimm Jewish Money Q2,” for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home.

“Where is Grimm’s money coming from,” said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon’s campaign spokeman. “There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees.”

As a point of comparison, the campaign also provided in-district and out-of-district fundraising totals from McMahon and Grimm’s G.O.P primary opponent, Michael Allegretti. However, they did not provide an out-of-district campaign filing from Grimm, but only a file of Jewish donors to him.

Nelson said that the list was compiled by the campaign’s finance director, Debra Solomon and that she did not know exactly how the finance team knew who was Jewish and who was not.

“She herself is Jewish so she knows a lot of people in that community,” Nelson said.

++ BLINK ++

Whoah.

Not to worry, Jennifer Nelson has been fired. I’m sure that’s Andrew Breitbart’s fault.

“These comments were entirely inappropriate and there is no place for this kind of behavior. I was outraged by these unfortunate remarks which were unauthorized and are in no way indicative of my beliefs or of my campaign,” said Congressman Michael E. McMahon. “I am proud to represent an incredibly diverse community and to enjoy an incredibly diverse base of support. Any comments that could serve to divide our community along religious or ethnic lines have no place in our community or my campaign. I sincerely apologize for her comments, and as she has since been terminated from our campaign, there will be no such incidents in the future.”

I’m still not sure which political party it is from which McMahon hails; I’ll try to find that out. Whichever one it is, I call upon them to work to purge the ugly anti-Semitic nastiness in their midst.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

Greg Plum has gotten hold of a memo from the DCCC leadership that says no. No matter how bad our product is, there’s no revolution coming.

Republicans will need to win 39 seats to take back the House. Democrats will win at least four Republican seats (the best opportunities include: LA-02, HI-01, IL-10, DE-AL, FL-25). As a result, the real number of seats Republicans will have to pick up to win a majority is at least 43. To win 43 seats, the NRCC would need to put 70 to 80 seats in play. The NRCC have simply not put that many Republicans seats in play and do not have the resources or caliber of candidates to do so.

They still have a lot to worry about, IMO. Exhibit A: They’re worried! Now, why are they worried? Supposedly we had a revolution back in ’08, and put some wise, benevolent spiritual leaders in place who have been toppling the old ways and erecting a government that works for “everybody.” The Death Star is all exploded and there’s nothing left to do but dance with the Ewoks on the Endor forest moon.

How could we ever back away from that? Who’d want to? If the policies are the best ones that work “for everybody.”

Well, it seems there is a feeling in the air that the Obama delivery is not equal to the Obama promise:

Last month Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Fed, warned America that without more care being taken it could have a Greece-style debt problem. The president seemed to regard this warning as so self-evidently absurd that he quickly asked Congress for another $50 billion for various social projects. Last week, benefits for the long-term unemployed were extended for another six months at a cost of $34 billion. The health care programme is forecast to cost at least $863 billion. The total deficit this year is to be $1.47 trillion. America’s debt is likely to be $18.5 trillion by 2020, though it will be so low as that only if growth is maintained at 4 per cent: it is currently 3 per cent, and rocky.

Unemployment is 9.5 per cent and forecast to stay there for the time being. There are three million more jobless than when Mr Obama came to power, and unemployment among teenagers is around 25 per cent. The very constituencies to which he made his greatest appeal – the young and the disadvantaged – still suffer. This is despite the $787 billion stimulus programme last year, much of which was sucked into America’s corrupt and inefficient local government system, or did favours for congressmen and senators, or provided wonderful pay days for trade unionists, or in some cases all three at once. The President sought the stimulus on the grounds that it would stop unemployment rising above 8 per cent; so that has been an expensive failure. All Mr Obama appears to have done is wave the money goodbye. Last week, trying not to sound provoked, Mr Bernanke announced that there was “unusual uncertainty” about economic recovery. The dollar fell against sterling and even the euro.

Mr Bernanke wants a renewal of Bush-era tax cuts for people earning over $250,000 a year, which are due to expire on December 31. So do many Democrats, who fear that removing incentives and purchasing power from the better-off will harm recovery by reducing consumption and employment. These are arguments familiar from Britain, about the equally damaging and pointless 50 per cent rate. The response, by Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, is familiar too – the “rich” must take their share of the burden. It is equally specious here; the political importance of bashing the (presumably Republican) wealthy plainly exceeds what is good for the US economy.

What we’re seeing is not so much a discredit to liberal politics, or Mr. Obama, or Keynesian economics — but rather to the idea that government needs to be in the equalization business. Remember the comments to Joe the Plumber? “I just think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody”?

Government cannot do this because government doesn’t have an off switch. It inherently lacks the ability to say “Okay that’s it, you’re not a bad dude anymore because you’ve paid your fair share. You’re not rich anymore, you’re no longer evil, we’ve hired enough women that men no longer enjoy an opprobrious statistical advantage, we can stop subtracting test points from Asian students now.”

The task of equalizing something carries with it an implicit expectation of the ability to monitor; to measure. The story of “civilized” governments identifying specific demographics for a run of gettin’-even-with-em-ism, is much older than the American republic herself. This monitoring, spotting, declaring the equalization to be all fine & good mission-accomplished, is something that has never taken place. In short: All we’ve seen these governments do is identify good guys and bad guys. Assume a comfortable position and let the pummeling begin.

I remember from thirty-two years ago that this is how Carter lost his job. It wasn’t a fiery rage, and it isn’t that in the here & now, against Obama. At least, the feelings are not nearly as inflamed as they were four years ago against George Bush, on the other side.

Rather, there’s just a muted, but palpable, feeling of what can best be described as fatigue. The shopping spree is over. We can’t afford any more of it. And maybe the reason we can’t afford any more of it isn’t quite so much that it’s an overindulgence of a good thing…but that it was just a stupid idea from the very start. We’re waking up. Believing in ourselves. It’s always the first step to really solving a problem, you know.

And you can’t support Obama if you believe in yourself. He’s worked hard for a long time to make Himself the perfect walking incarnation of paternalistic government, the feeling of co-dependency that goes with it, helplessness, and truckloads and truckloads of guilt.

Time to move on.

Blogger friend Phil relates a tale about the Thriller From Wasiller:

Had a conversation with a woman at work today. Apparently she forgot my answer the first time she asked several months ago, but she asked “why is there a picture of Sarah Palin on your wall?”
:
I’m a supporter, I told her. She couldn’t believe it…[She] says she’s not into politics at all and she never voted before she got married…but now she does…get this…to cancel her husband’s vote.

She said “I won’t send you my cartoon of her then. You wouldn’t appreciate it.” Then she described it to me. It said something about we didn’t go through X number of years of women’s suffrage to put Sarah Palin in the White House.

I said “I don’t get it, anyway. Is it because if she doesn’t agree with you then she’s not a real woman?” She looked puzzled for a second and replied “Let me think of another way to put it.” and fumbled around for a few seconds.

I said “You can’t, because that’s exactly what they meant.”

What it really, of course, boils down [to] is that [Palin] doesn’t believe in abortion as birth control, she doesn’t sound like most people they know, and she’s way too pretty — and she’s everything women’s suffrage was really about (she was the Governor of a State for crying out loud!) and that pisses them off. She’s supposed to be agnostic…demand a woman’s right to kill her baby at any point during a pregnancy, think that being a wife and a mother is somehow a form of slavery…oh, and she’s supposed to look like Helen Thomas.

I’ve had my own experience dealing with these bitter, crusty females. who are part of the Palin Hater Brigade. And my experiences lead me to believe that last item in Phil’s list is the most important one.

It isn’t political ideology. Not quite so much. Think about it…a man who is aspiring for high public office, or has maybe achieved it, holds opinions about things that do not like. How do they feel about this? If that man is George W. Bush and they happen to be really excited about liberal politics, maybe they’ll launch their blood pressure into the stratosphere at the mention of his name, just as they do at the mention of Palin’s. But other than that, no. If they’re not that much into politics, just leaning left, receiving the newsletters from the DNC at home, feeling somewhat strongly about “woman’s right to choose” but regretting that abortion has to happen anyway…just another white straight conservative Christian male isn’t going to launch them into a frenzy. He’ll just be a dick, as far as they’re concerned. He will be a mild irritation. He won’t turn their faces purple. He won’t make veins stick out of their necks. He won’t send them into a sputtering fit.

Not like Sarah Palin.

In fact, I venture to guess given enough time, I can find a few conservative, Christian, Republican people who agree with Sarah Palin…I’m talking here about women, mind you…who are just as angry with her as the Birkenstock-wearing liberal hippie flower-child women. Angry over nothing. Political opinions have very little to do with this.

Power & Pulchritude: What’s Allowed

There is a large, and perhaps still growing, contingent of mostly females who believe it’s quite alright for some among their sisters to be prettier than they are. And more powerful. Just not both.

Our current President has had an opportunity to nominate replacements for, what, two Supreme Court vacancies now? And both nominees are ugly toad-like women. You only have to analyze the statistics so long before there is an ugly truth revealed to you: Someone is being satisfied with this unbroken trend. It has to be the case. If you sent me out to find women this homely and unappealing, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I wouldn’t know how to start. Two out of two of our vacant seats on the Supreme Court have to go to homely women? This is what “best qualified” looks like, huh. Yeah. Tell me another.

It shouldn’t come as news to anybody who’s been around the block, that women are jealous creatures. My theory about this is that there is a curvalinear relationship. It’s rather like children pushing miniaturized shopper-in-training grocery carts when you run in to the store to buy a gallon of milk: Two unattended children pushing these wagons from hell into your ankles, are together four times as obnoxious as just one. Three such children would leave your ankles nine times as bruised.

My thinking is that among women reviewing the situation, another woman who possesses both authority and beauty is like mixing the rocket fuel and liquid oxygen together. The situation becomes much more explosive than it would be if she had one of these qualities but was missing the other.

There’s a code-of-honor taking place to reinforce this, which Palin is violating it seems. And for better or for worse, it seems this leaves me without other data points I can use to test my theory — I don’t know of any other women accepting or pursuiing positions of real authority, who are gorgeous and strutting around. So I cannot make a comparison there. But I can make a comparison to men. There is something going on with the fellas.

They have a different curve. Like I said over at Phil’s place:

Males, on the liberal side of the fence, can be as pretty or as homely as they like. It does seem that if you want to run for President, you have to be somewhat pleasing to the eye. Henry Waxman won’t be running for President.

So with real power, among liberals, men have to be at least as handsome as John Kerry, and women have to be at least as homely looking as Hillary. Outside of that, you need to accept some constraints on your power, as must we all really. Unless you are in a position to provide indeterminate benefit to the progressive cause, like Barry & His pals. Then, you can be a sultan, with a nation assembled solely for your pleasure. Tell the lesser mortals to conserve on their carbon emissions and vacation in the gulf, then take off for Maine, with your family dog in a separate jet. The sky’s the limit. It’s all good.

Now let’s just get one thing clear here: I cannot explain any of this. I’m just making observations, gathering data, plotting points, trying to make sense of it all. You’ll have to look to our collectivist-minded and our left-wingers to figure out what’s really going on here.

But I do think we should get it straight who’s keeping women under a “glass ceiling” here. It isn’t the political right. And it isn’t men, for the most part.

Oh no!

There are currently only 232 million IP addresses left — enough for about 340 days — thanks to the explosion in smartphones and other web-enabled devices.

“When the IPv4 protocol was developed 30 years ago, it seemed to be a reasonable attempt at providing enough addresses,” carrier relations manager at Australian internet service provider (ISP) Internode John Lindsay told the Herald.

“Bearing in mind that at that point personal computers didn’t really exist, the idea that mobile phones might want an IP address hadn’t occurred to anybody because mobile phones hadn’t been invented [and] the idea that air-conditioners and refrigerators might want them was utterly ludicrous.”

Nothing sells quite like the next Apocalypse.