Politico. File under “Feeding on their own”:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bashed White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Tuesday night, even as the president’s top spokesman continued to backpedal from his assertion that Democrats could lose control of the House in the November election.

The fusillade from Pelosi and other Democrats at a closed-door meeting escalated an already fiery clash between the White House and its own party in Congress. During the tense evening meeting, the speaker grilled the top White House aide in attendance, senior legislative affairs staffer Dan Turton, about the impact of Gibbs’ comments.

“How could [Gibbs] know what is going on in our districts?” Pelosi told her members in the caucus meeting in the basement of the Capitol Tuesday night. “Some may weigh his words more than others. We have made our disagreement known to the White House.”

Then she turned to Turton and asked him to acknowledge that Gibbs’ comments had been damaging to the Democratic cause, Democratic insiders said. Gibbs was not in the room for this meeting.

Ah…really, when you think about it, it’s impossible for Gibbs’ comments to have been “damaging to the democrat cause.” Unless, that is, the democrats have been marketing themselves — and some have suggested for quite awhile that this is the case — to people who are unintelligent and/or are altogether missing any kind of working memory.

The democrat party loses favor with voters here and there, now & then. In 2000, 1980, 1968, 1952, 1920. We fire them when we figure out their policies don’t work. The same thing happens with the GOP.

If they were simply able to separate themselves from this “People’s Revolution” nonsense, it wouldn’t be so damaging. But they can’t separate themselves from it. Every single campaign has to return to the same kids’ fantasy:

America has been held hostage because of the dirty ol’ so-and-so’s who get erections over the idea of war, want to give tax breaks to the wealthy, build more prisons and guns, turn American into a theocracy, and — worst of all — remind brittle hostile women with daddy issues of their dads. We have an election, the democrat party wins, and the streets turn to gold and candy and marshallows and the unicorns are freed and the chains and leg irons melt off our bodies and sunbeams trickle on down and gas is free and…and…and…Puppies. Kittens. Rainbows.

If they’d just tear themselves away from the “Our Election Is The Beginning of Nirvana” craze, they wouldn’t have to answer that most awkward of questions: If they fix everything and make life all perfect, how come we keep getting sick of ’em?

Cross-posted at Cassy’s place.

The Bastidge was required, if you read things literally, to disclose his race.

Thought this was still America. Maybe I was mistaken.

I thought his solution was most creative. It’s still unsatisfactory.

The Founding Fathers shot the British for levying new taxes all willy-nilly, claiming the colonials were represented “virtually.” Shot them. Blew ’em up. Sank their ships. I wonder what they’d do about shenanigans like these. Seriously, are we human beings or jelly beans?

Can’t remember if I did this before. My memory says absolutely yes, but my search engine says absolutely not.

Regardless, it just gets funnier every time I look at it.

Changing the shirt colors was a stupid move on Rick Berman’s part, one of many. Yes it’s cheesy and campy and kinda stupid. But I still remember my earliest childhood memories when Captain Kirk would announce “Spock, Bones, Scotty, Chekov, Uhura, Sulu and Lieutenant Kowalski meet me in Transporter Room Three.” And we’d all look at each other and go, “UH OH!”

Good times.

So sez I.

Portfolio is here. Hat tip to William Teach, posting at Linkiest.

…which is the slang-speak we use here, at The Blog That Nobody Reads (anyway), for — you guessed it — FaceBook! And yes, keen-eyed observers have noticed that although we are indeed on it, we really don’t spend much time there and we take it a little bit less than completely seriously.

As a blog, we go back to 2004, the year of Facebook’s origin…way before it emerged as any kind of a phenom. It’s just hard for us to see it as a serious player.

Melissa has a study in hand and it’s a little mind-blowing, although the contents therein are not altogether unexpected.

Young women are becoming more and more dependent on social media and checking on their social networks, according to a new study released earlier today by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research. In fact, as many as one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up, even before they get to the bathroom. [emphasis mine]

That’s a little bit excessive. Me, I power on the mini-notebook on my way into the bathroom, and when I come back out again I check my e-mail…then find out what’s going on in the world. Then maybe blog something while the coffee’s brewing.

See, that’s sensible. Blogging is a more manual process. And it doesn’t really revolve around feedback. Facebook is a cocktail party, blogging is more like a billboard.

Hey, while we’re discussing differences between blogging and FaceBook, let’s dig into my “Beat Up On FaceBook” file. It’s fun to make fun of FaceBook.

1. FaceBook is a blog you wind up with a little key
2. FaceBook is a blog printed up with pleasing primary and pastel colors
3. FaceBook is a blog that, when you drop it in the bathtub, it floats
4. Blog is to CAD program as FaceBook is to an Etch-a-Sketch
5. If FaceBook was a movie, it would be a guilty-pleasure flick…like “Joe vs. the Volcano” or “Road House”
6. FaceBook is a blog you can gnaw on to help your teeth come out
7. Forget my earlier snarky comment about an automatic transmission; you have to pedal FaceBook with your feet to make it go
8. FaceBook reminds me of that crocodile in the comic strip who can’t kill the zebra living next door and his parents get all ashamed of him when he orders out for cardboard tubs of fried chicken
9. FaceBook is a blog that says one of five things when you pull on its li’l cord
10. FaceBook is a blog you push along on the ground while making an engine sound with your lips
11. Facebook is the Jar Jar Binks of blogging, with much better public relations
12. Facebook is a blog carrying a little tiny dog around in a purse
13. “Blogger” uses a bottle opener; WordPress twists the cap off with its bare hand; FaceBook punches a little hole in the box with the straw that was taped on to the side
14. If “House of Eratosthenes” resided primarily on FaceBook, it would be made out of Lincoln Logs
15. FaceBook is the “Twilight Series” of blogs
16. FaceBook is a blog that comes with crayons and a puzzle
17. If FaceBook was really a book, it would be something by Dr. Seuss
18. If FaceBook was an entree, it would be a grilled cheese sandwich that your momma could’ve made you at home
19. Blogging can be crackers, beer nuts or cashews; FaceBook is Teddy Grahams and, sometimes, Cheerios in a little sandwich baggie
20. When FaceBook writes its own name, it wishes it ended with the letter “i” so it could dot it with a little heart

Technology/Office type stuff. Yes, Morgan is indulging his rare habit of writing about his vocation, and on a Friday night.

This one just spoke to me, and it’s been in my “tall” stack of stuff ever since. Time to put it where I can search for it, it’s decent enough. And so, so true.

Consider the following 3 step model of project management:

1. Proposal. The engineering team proposes a cool idea for a product that will make millions of $, Rs, Baht or other currency.

2. Random Wait. Management makes a non-committal response and waits a random amount of time. Some management styles encourage their managers to produce an intermittent buzzing noise during this time, to convey to the team that they are working.

The engineering team starts work.

3. Drop! Manager says “No!”. The project gets cancelled.

The job of the engineering team is to get the product finished and in the customer’s hands before the “No!” descends. [emphasis mine]

Right about now you’re double-checking that link to see if I got this from Dilbert. Nope.

The last two lines are killer, and I mean that in a good way.

Survival Strategy: Since projects can get the axe at any time, the only reliable way of getting the project out of the door is to have finished the work before going to management for approval.

Then, once approval is granted, you use the time gained to work on the next project. <grin>

It’s as good as any other, as far as I’m concerned. Wisdom from my blogger buddy Mark up in Puget Sound…

There is a brand of conservatism loose in the country that is seeking to compete at the game of “cool” with our more practiced liberal friends. Personified by the likes of GOP Chairman Michael Steele and to a lesser degree Mike Huckabee, they are square sorts who instead of embracing their squareness try to come across as “hip” or “with it” by adopting what the culture deems as cool at any given moment in the form of painfully forced “jive talk” or playing bass in a TV band. As soon as they pull this “Look, I can be cool too” persona out of their bag of tricks they have lost me. Like Pat Boone covering a Fats Domino tune, it might be a perfectly nice song but he is bound to butcher it. Better he stick to sappy ballads and crooning love songs because that is who he is. I may not like his music but I can respect him for remaining true to himself and being comfortable in his own skin. Isn’t that the real definition of being cool?

Daphne is frustrated, demoralized and fed up.

Hope Is Not A Strategy

A break was in order, a pass of a few days from my usual daily walk in this wired world of breaking news and streaming hot words. Ten seconds after I fired this baby up, surfing with the speed of light, I had a serious craving for a hit of good blotter to go along with my coffee.

Seems nothing has changed, the world is still strange and people continue to hash irate consonants about the strangeness of life. Fireworks flew, governments produced their usual bucketful of farce and we, the opinionated people, made a lot of pointless noise.

I can see November from my window held particular sway in the faux rebel wing of the conservative electorate this weekend. Children’s wishes blown on the fluff of dead dandelion heads, blind lambs placed in the lion’s mouth, the faith of a new-born saviour expected to rise from the dead ashes of a corrupt body politic.

The insane delusion that Washington will behave with prudent sanity once a new slate of fresh Republicans are seated seems to be predicated on a few gossamer threads pulled from gilded fairy tales. A wisp of nothing supports this ardent belief, but it has become the holy grail of conservative punditry.

Obama and his cohort of mendacious bottom feeders continued to live up to my low expectations. I’m beginning to wonder if the majority of his administration aren’t slightly retarded. Which made me consider the possibility that black folks in general might be wobbling on the shaky edge of low intelligence as they’re the only ones still enthusiastically singing on the president’s bandwagon. (But, hey, we still have Michael Steele.) Hell, even the rich West coast liberals are fleeing their infatuation with the golden boy like he’s a walking cholera epidemic and we all know they’re not exactly the brightest bulbs decorating the democratic plank.

I must say, I’m not familiar with this “insane delusion that Washington will behave with prudent sanity once a new slate of fresh Republicans are seated.” That’s a new one on me. Most of the people who are looking forward to November with cautious hope, like Yours Truly, are thinking more along these lines: Things are messed up and getting worse. Kiddies are in charge. They don’t seem to be planning a goddamned fucking thing anywhere — it’s all just “display the emotions we expect you to display,” whether you are in their administration, on their (my) payroll, or happen to be working in the custard shop offering to comp their orders if they’ll lower your taxes.

The kiddies running everything come from a world in which there is something sacriligious about saying: “I have observed A and B and I see A causes B. Let’s look at ratcheting down A if we want to see less of B, or bringing in a whole lot more A if we happen to like B.” In other words, no cause-and-effect thinking allowed. You might say they have established a religious order against it.

So let’s yank out that one element. If you don’t live in a world in which things happen because of other things, you cannot vote. Go home, watch television, grow up for four more years, and then we’ll see if you have made that first step toward handling real responsibilities.

This system is not quite that broken. And it is durable. It can handle people reasonably disagreeing about the facts, what is known from the facts, what is to be done in response to what is going on as has been derived from the facts. Dissent leads to discourse, and discourse is the lubricant of a republic like ours.

But it’s got to be discourse among adults who live in the real world. Purge the system of all the mental-kids who’ve consciously decided they can’t handle it.

How did I sum it up yesterday…

Anyone suffering from a self-destructive impulse can’t vote. Anyone carrying a large burden of guilt, which can be relieved only by pretending wet is dry and up is down, cannot vote. Anyone who’d rather watch American Idol than educate themselves about the issues so they can vote knowledgeably, should go right ahead. Fast forward through every commercial for all I care. Just stay home. It’s what you want to do anyway.

Then we can quibble about whether there’s such a thing as a Laffer Curve (there is), whether we should keep drugs illegal (hell yes), and whether our 51 bankrupt governments suffer from a spending problem or a revenue problem (it’s not a revenue problem).

But the — let’s call it what it is — BULLSHIT about apology tours, “Interstate Commerce Clause on Steroids”, global warming, suing Arizona, “Sit down and talk out our differences with our enemies,” and this-is-the-first-experiment-with-socialized-medicine-[that-will-work]-I-really-really-promise…will all come to a stop. As it should.

We lunged down this bunny trail of despair when we decided…I say “we,” because no one single individual living or dead seems to own this…that we are a “democracy,” and a democracy is more “robust” or something if more people participate in it. If the bar is lowered. If we pour some silly ideas into a great big stewpot to intermingle with the sensible ones.

It’s just not true.

We live in a representative democratic republic. One in which The People, not just the elected & appointed officials who serve them, have responsibilities they/we need to meet. It is a system that relies on a presumption that The People know how to think sensibly, and are doing so.

Matt Ridley writes in the Huffington Post:

When I was a student, in the 1970s, the world was coming to an end. The adults told me so. They said the population explosion was unstoppable, mass famine was imminent, a cancer epidemic caused by chemicals in the environment was beginning, the Sahara desert was advancing by a mile a year, the ice age was retuning, oil was running out, air pollution was choking us and nuclear winter would finish us off. There did not seem to be much point in planning for the future. I remember a fantasy I had – that I would make my way to the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, and live off the land so I could survive these holocausts at least till the cancer got me.

I am not making this up. By the time I was 21 years old I realized that nobody had ever said anything optimistic to me – in a lecture, a television program or even a conversation in a bar – about the future of the planet and its people, at least not that I could recall. Doom was certain.
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I began to pay attention and a few years ago I started to research a book on the subject. I was astounded by what I discovered. Global per capita income, corrected for inflation, had trebled in my lifetime, life expectancy had increased by one third, child mortality had fallen by two-thirds…
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Not only are human beings wealthier, they are also healthier, wiser, happier, more tolerant, less violent, more equal. Check it out – the data is [are] clear. Yet if anything the pessimists had only grown more certain, shrill and apocalyptic. We were facing the `end of nature’, the `coming anarchy’, a `stolen future’, our `final century’ and a climate catastrophe. Why, I began to wonder did the failure of previous predictions have so little impact on this litany?

We’re bored.

I would say all the predictions of failure and doom have themselves been doomed to failure, save for one: As life becomes more comfy and we’re faced with fewer real challenges, the bottoms of our feet and the palms of our hands, along with our bellies, have become soft. And the skin has become thin, thin, thin. Everything offends save for that which is designed, conceived and expected to say absolutely nothing.

We start to elect leaders who we must think are wonderful, pure and powerful, we aren’t allowed to utter a syllable of doubt about it — and yet they’re never actually responsible for anything.

We start to loathe ourselves. You’ll notice the world is never about to end because of an overpopulation of cats or dogs. Or locusts. It’s never because of too many cows farting. It’s always my species, but not me. How conveeeeeenient.

This means I get to toss out some orders and get extra cranky if people hesitate to follow ’em. The prophesies of doom always seem to lead back to that. Do what I tell you to do, and stop doing what I say you shouldn’t be doing, or the planet will die.

Armageddon is not breathlessly anticipated. Very rarely does anyone talk about the entire world ending, for any reason.

— Item #42 from My 42 Definitions of a Strong Society.

What Mr. Ridley saw in his youth was a great big gaggle of bossy obnoxious people, trying to take the place over. Which they did for a little while. Until we pulled our heads out of our butts. For the last couple of years we’ve been cramming ’em back in.

Hat tip to blogger friend Gerard.

…and left-wing opinion. So says Dennis Prager.

Take all the time you need. But no matter how much time you take, you probably won’t come up with any examples.

Here are examples of major world issues and what is deemed “world opinion.” They happen to all be Leftist views as well.

— hatred of President George W. Bush and admiration of President Barack Obama

— Manmade carbon emissions lead to global warming and devastation of the environment. Therefore, the world’s nations must tax carbon-based energy.

— The American invasion of Iraq was morally wrong, motivated by desire for oil.

— Israel is bad, as exemplified most recently by the Turkish flotilla incident.

— The American free-enterprise system is inferior to Europe’s welfare-state systems.

— The American health care system is inferior to that of all other wealthy countries.

This list in no way differs from a list of Leftist positions. Nor would any other list of “world opinion” positions differ in any meaningful way from Leftist positions.
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…The world’s media and virtually all international organizations are Leftist in their politics, and they both define “world opinion” and in turn shape it.

Of course, there are other powerful institutions in the world that shape public opinion. But virtually none contravene the Left-wing views of the world’s media and world organizations on world issues.

The price to be paid for betraying individuality is that you aren’t allowed any. You’re given a list of opinions you are to have, and that’s that.

Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

— Samuel Adams

…make more sense than some other people’s deliberate thoughts.

My favorite pollster is Pew because that’s the sound lasers make. Pew! Pew!
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Saw Eclipse with SarahK. We’re now even for her carrying my child.

There were like 80 tertiary characters in Eclipse. Couldn’t they have killed off at least one to try and make some dramatic tension?
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Can’t the far left leave leading this country to people who actually kinda like it?

Hat tip to Neal Boortz.

KFOX-TV:

There is typically an American flag that flies high in front of METI Inc., a federal contractor in East El Paso. But instead, the flag is lying flat inside and the flag pole is on the ground outside after a storm last Sunday.

“The wind and the rain knocked over the flag pole, causing the flag pole to lie on the parking lot overlooking Boeing Drive,” said Rebecca Orozco with METI Inc.

But it is the condition in which employees found Old Glory that shocked everyone, until they checked their surveillance video.

“After watching the surveillance videos we noticed that it was a good Samaritan who we suspect was a homeless man that came to the rescue of the flag around 1:40 in the morning,” Orozco told KFOX.

In the surveillance video you can see the homeless man in driving rain and wind carefully folding up the American flag military style and then placing the flag pole off to the side.

“It was an amazing experience to see that, it was very heartwarming to see that a homeless man or a good Samaritan who was walking around that area at that time of the day in the rain will come to the rescue of the U.S. flag,” said Orozco.

Orozco said she wouldn’t expect that kind of act in a late night storm from anyone, especially someone who has so little to give.

“Knowing that so many people have turned their back on him, he never turned his back on this country,” she said.

KFOX found the man who didn’t turn his back on the flag. His name is Gustus Bozarth.

“It’s a small respect, folding the flag like that,” said Bozarth.

He lives in the back of a warehouse just feet from the flag he saved. His only comforts are a small television and his two loyal cats named Lynx and Bobcat.

Bozarth said he’s roamed all over this country, and while working security in Tampa he learned how to properly fold the flag.

Despite being homeless, he still has so much love for his country and so much respect for his flag.

“For American freedoms, freedom for America, freedom for a lot of Americans,” Bozarth told KFOX.

“A homeless man who has nothing at all, he still holds on to his flag, he still holds on to the hope of his country, and that to me says a million words,” said Orozco.

METI Inc. officials hope to have the flag back up as soon as possible.

Does this ever invite commentary:

Police in Wellington are investigating the sudden death of a man at Reading Cinemas.

The 23-year-old’s body was found by a staff member at the Courtenay Place theatre, shortly before 8.30pm last night. It is believed he had been watching Twilight: Eclipse.

A cause of death has not yet been identified.

I’m not a big fan at all of Twilight movies, I’ve discovered. I’ve come to see them as a viciously swirling potpourri of all the things I do not want to see in movies ever again. Most of those things, anyway.

I found this out by way of FARK, where I also discovered two of the best comments:

Dr.Zom: “Twilight is like soccer. They run around for 2 hours, nobody scores, and its billion fans insist you just don’t understand.”

Hsaiotei: Lone man in theater full of teenage girls. Either fapped to death, or the subharmonic vibration of all that pubescent “Squeeeeeee” liquified his brains.

Can’t add anything on to that.

After I handed down my sub-bedrock review of that piece of crap New Moon, my girlfriend asked if we’d ever be watching Eclipse in the theater. Pig will fly first.

Like they used to say on The Man Show “Movies Men Don’t Want To See” segment: I wouldn’t watch that steaming turd if you super-glued my nut sack to a cannon ball and fired it into the theater.

Don’t wanna die, after all.

Click the pic.

Via FARK.

At dawn the telephone rings…

“Hello, Senor Rod?” This is Ernesto, the caretaker at your country house.”

“Ah yes, Ernesto. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?”

“Um, I am just calling to advise you, Senor Rod, that your parrot – he is dead.”

“My parrot? Dead? The one that won the International competition?”

“Si, Senor, that’s the one.”

“Damn! That’s a pity! I spent a small fortune on that bird. What did he die from?”

“From eating the rotten meat, Senor Rod.

“Rotten meat? Who the hell fed him rotten meat?”

“Nobody, Senor. He ate the meat of the dead horse.”

“Dead horse? What dead horse?”

“The thoroughbred, Senor Rod.”

“My prize thoroughbred is dead?”

“Yes, Senor Rod, he died from all that work pulling the water cart.”

“Are you insane?? What water cart?”

“The one we used to put out the fire, Senor.”

“Good Lord!! What fire are you talking about, man??”

“The one that destroyed your house, Senor! A candle fell and the curtains caught on fire.”

“What the hell?? Are you saying that my mansion is destroyed because of a candle??!!”

“Yes, Senor Rod.”

“But there’s electricity at the house!! What was the candle for?”

“For the funeral, Senor Rod.”

“WHAT BLOODY FUNERAL??!!”

“Your wife’s, Senor Rod. She showed up very late one night and I thought she was a thief, so I hit her with your new Taylor Made Super Quad 460 golf club.”

SILENCE……….. LONG SILENCE………

“Ernesto, if you broke that driver, you’re in deep shit!”

I don’t participate in threads underneath my cross-posting at Right Wing News, because I notice when you get what I refer to as the “is-not-is-too” effect — and I expect this is a term I need not define — it makes the comment thread explode. That’s a legitimate thing to have happen over at a place like here, a “some guy’s blog” blog. I’m really not happy with encouraging it anywhere else.

But certain things demand a response. And I thought this was completely awesome.

I cross-posted my thoughts about how conservatives disagree with liberals & how liberals disagree with conservatives; my point being that the ways & means of disagreement are not the same, it’s an asymmetrical divide. These people we nowadays call “liberals,” according to the evidence that has come to my senses, seem to have a worldview built around some folks belonging & other folks not. And as you endeavor to answer the obvious question “belonging to what, exactly?” every answer you get back, that stands up to scrutiny, is sinister.

They can accept some ideas and not others. They won’t tolerate the idea of anyone walking around thinking a thought that is sacrilegious, but at some point during a conflict they manage to make their peace with the idea that you’ve got a wrong thought — in fact, invariably, pronounce that all of your thoughts are wrong. And this is just fine. There is a spooky smug satisfaction in their aggressively non-threatening faces, whereas just minutes before they were getting all riled up that anybody anywhere might be disagreeing with them about something. See, they’re confused about the goal. They don’t know what it is they want: 1) All persons and things in existence must agree with them; 2) All persons and things that disagree with them, must be marked that way; 3) All such persons and things in disagreement must be walled off, and made ineffectual. They shift rather breezily among these, it seems to me, because they’re not thinking clearly.

That, or there’s some Armageddon ahead. Some sort of secularist “rapture.” Those of us who disagree with liberals and are wrong, will never be made right — and that is quite okay. How come that is, is my question. They still hunger for their perfect paradise full of people with clean thoughts, free of contamination of & by us knuckle-draggers who believe scores should be kept in competitive school games, and Sarah did a good thing by keeping Trig. We’re allowed to go on thinking that, and things are still alright — even though they plainly don’t have the maturity to actually accept this. The implications are a little ominous.

Anyway. Huck Upchuck seems to me to be a somewhat cerebral liberal. Suffering all of the popular maladies that interfere with clear-headed thinking, but still possessing some measure of grace in an ability to recognize good manners in others who don’t agree with him about every little thing. This shows some capacity for thinking as an individual, so I’ll probably plug him into the blogroll if it seems like the right thing to do.

But the myopia revealed in this comment was & is stupefying, I say:

Freeberg: I hope you’re paying attention to this thread, because down in the nitty gritty of it you can find this from The Dick Nixon, directed at me:

Considering Nixon despises each and everyone of you liberal POS’s who enabled The Obamateur to fuck the country up, Nixon could really care less about

1. Your opinion.
2. your opinion.
and 3. your opinion.

We should have left you banned.

I hope you take note, and think to revisit your thesis. After all, you did write this:

It’s about hate, too. How many conservatives do you know who would like to put Barack Obama and Joe Biden in a big iron pot, fill it with oil, light a fire under it and watch ’em cook? Heard a lot of that kind of hate lately? Me neither.

I think The Dick Nixon’s comments qualify, don’t you?

Eh…nope.

Frankly, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I had a co-worker in an office who would argue things this way. There is A and there is B. I have discerned common attributes between A and B, and from these I have determined A and B are exactly the same. Since A and B are exactly the same it invalidates whatever point of yours I am seeking to attack…

And so, he saw no difference whatsoever between the Islamic radicals who attacked us on 9/11, and Timothy McVeigh who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Except, of course, that McVeigh was white! So I must be a racist for wanting to do something about these other people, and the only way I could ever redeem myself was to go after McVeigh with the same level of energy and ambition, or something.

But, uh, McVeigh was already dead said I. This somehow didn’t seem to matter. It was a difference between A and B, and all differences between A & B were being shunted aside.

Huck, I really do think my meaning was clear so I see no reason to go back and re-write it. But I will spell it out for you. When I talk about putting a liberal figure in a big iron kettle and boiling him in oil, I am not talking about something like banning from a blog. Boiling in oil is not the same. I am talking about physical and deadly injury — audibly fantasizing about it. Lusting after it. Causing excruciating agony in the person who is the object of hatred, just to show how odious you find his thoughts to be…

If anything, the other person’s dismissal could have been thought to correlate to my other comment about liberals. Up above. The breezy, casual dismissal of the person with the wrong-thoughts, accompanied by the smug smirk. But even that connection doesn’t really work. My complaint about the lib-dismissal followed by smug smirk, as I’ve said, is that these are liberals who clearly have a goal in mind where everyone in existence agrees with them, and there’s nobody left alive who disagrees. And once you cross that line with them, suddenly they know every thought in your head is a wrong one, and that’s okay. Like I said: It’s ominous. Makes you want to know what the liberal knows. Is there some giant flyswatter somewhere about to hit you?

When a conservative tells a liberal “I really don’t care about your opinion” it’s usually a way of toppling the liberal from a pedestal of gigantic ego. It’s usually directed toward liberals who fall into the common trap of thinking — I got this idea that popped into my head, therefore, that’s just the way things are. Corporations are evil. We can sit down and talk to our enemies and life will become all happy.

Swing and a miss, Huck. Banning someone from a blog is not the same thing as boiling him in oil.

To the blogroll this gentleman goes, straight-away.

I love me some Johnny Quest. When I was a kid I envied Johnny but wanted to grow up to be Race Bannon. Race was all man. He could whip anyone in a straight up fight and usually had a firearm close to hand. He wasn’t afraid to use it either. He regularly killed or otherwise caused the death of particularly evil Bad Guys or their Henchmen. Boat, explosion, firearm, tar pit, bridge or cliff, many a monster (both human and inhuman) met their fate at the hands of Race. Johnny, Dr. Quest and Hadji even got in on the action from time to time. The deaths were invariably met with steely resolve and honesty. No guilt or chest beating about the miscreant’s childhood or how it was all society’s fault. “He got what he deserved Johnny.” “There was nothing we could do Johnny.” “It was his choice Johnny.” Johnny was taught that choices have consequences, that right would always triumph and that justice and defense of self and the defenseless were worth fighting and even killing for.
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Every afternoon we’d sit on Papa’s chair and watch together. Where possible, we never missed an episode. Time I cherish, spent with a grandson I love more than my life and a fun part of my job as his grandfather.

A small thing without a doubt. There is so much more I have to teach him. I am acutely aware that he’s watching me, soaking in what I do, what I say, how I carry myself and interact with others. He has questions he doesn’t even know to ask. Knowledge he needs but isn’t yet aware of consciously. But he does instinctively know that I have at least some of his answers and he’s determined to get them from me. As I am determined to give them to him. To the best of my ability.

Hat tip to blogger friend Daphne.

Update: Oops, dude’s already there. Well, I shall have to make it a point to visit him more often.

A day of thanks for blessings, worrying about the future, and wishes for gifts.

For the thanks, new sidebar addition and fellow Cassy Fiano guest-poster Jim Fister speaks for me.

I can’t help but think how lucky I am to be in a country like this, especially on Independenc day. The flag is already flying. I can look back on the brave men who signed their death warrant in signing the Declaration, and I can look back at all the people who fought for independence and in the wars of aggression since.

Today, I think of the men and women who are still fighting for my independence, and that of all the people who agree and disagree with them in this nation. They don’t fight just for the people who like them, or who say thanks. They fight for the nation as a whole, and the principles for which it stands. And they don’t just fight, some stay home and support their family members, always wondering about the safety of the husband, the wife, the son, the mother…

It’s a debt that’s difficult to even know how to repay. But in a small way, at least I can provide a rest for two people who need some time together, and that little favor will repay in a small part the huge debt I owe to all our troops who are busy keeping us safe.

For the worrying about the nation’s problems, if you’re into dwelling on that kind of thing (and you should be at least some of the time), the best compilation is over here (hat tip to Linkiest):

For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
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During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
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Barack Obama is calling for a “civilian expeditionary force” to be sent to Afghanistan and Iraq to help overburdened military troops build infrastructure.
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43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.

And as far as the gift wishing, I would fall back on my 42 definitions of a strong society.

My own birthday is coming up and people are wanting to know about my gift wish list. I’d give it all up if my country could secure an everlasting lock on only one of those 42 things.

Now that’s a picture that oughta come in handy.

Wonder if they’ve got a fully-automatic version. Large caliber.

From Gerard’s Tumblr page.

I was wondering if this should make it in. When my face got all discolored as I tried to keep oatmeal off the keyboard, and I barely succeeded at this, I knew I had my answer.

Hat tip to Joan of Argghh!

The morning idjit-broadcast was running while I was gathering up my money clip and sunglasses and cell phone. The lighter side of the news was running off, for the moment, about blended families.

They can work, said the leggy anchor-babe. She started rattling off some names which included John and Elizabeth Edwards.

I paused from lacing up my sneakers. “Did I hear that right?” I asked.

“Yup,” said She Who Listens To The Morning Drivel.

“It’s as if they rise at midnight every morning and have a quick planning session about what they can do to stop people from taking them seriously anymore,” I said.

“Pretty much,” said She.

A quick kiss, and off I went to bring home the bacon.

Whaddya think? When the camera’s no longer rolling is the anchor babe just smacking herself in the forehead saying “Aiiieeee! Can’t believe I said that!” …?

Yeah, that there is pretty much my textbook definition of a bad idea.

Okay, so we’ve got James Bond becoming Jason Bourne; Superman’s a deadbeat dad; Indiana Jones is communicating with extraterrestrials; John Connor becomes a wimpy little she-male so he can make his bride look all big and tough; now the Champion of Themiscyra is being re-made into a Private Vasquez knock-off.

This is a bigger issue than skimpy star-spangled panties. The overall trend is that iconic, individualist characters are losing their identities. They’re being neutralized and reincarnated as stock characters.

It’s an abandonment of history. And that brings many perils. It’s a manifestation of a younger generation that is disinterested in what came before — they want all the things that will consume their attention, to be positioned for that consumption behind a narrow selection of avenues. They want comfort as they supposedly broaden their horizons; more comfort than can be realized while one is truly broadening one’s horizons.

It is also an abandonment of individuality. There have been some awkward moments through the years as James Bond is presented to a newer generation, but up until now Bond has held his ground. Quitting smoking has been about the only significant nod to the changing times. He was who he was; you could take him or leave him. But no more. And perhaps as a direct result of that, Bond’s having trouble finding money to make his next film. Of course he is. What point is there to having him around?

A similar fate awaits Wonder Woman, I think. She has amnesia about her past, wears long pants, and is a street fighter. Gee. Like that’s never been done before. What’s next? I know! We can go La Femme Nikita, she can get busted and hired by a super secret Government agency under an assumed identity, and she has to complete the missions they give her or they’ll throw her in jail.

I wouldn’t have been opposed to a partial re-tooling and re-vamping. The invisible jet has been a joke for about as long as it’s been around. But making her into something she’s not, is just too much. It’s a suicide pact.

Update 7/2/10: James Hudnall at Big Hollywood is giving a very thoughtful treatment to the makeover, although by “thoughtful” what I really mean is “scathing.” Some of his points have a lot of merit. The owners/creators of this particular character, in the decades and generations past, have been caught paying an excess of fealty to the feminists. And it’s easy to see why.

From the very first time a pencil met paper to sketch out this character, the purpose has been to show that women possess potential superior to men. I suppose when a young artist picks up the tradition it’s only natural to listen to the militant feminists when they tell him “Yer doin’ it wrong.” But that’s no excuse for ignorance. If Wonder Woman is a symbol of the idea that a woman’s way is the right way, and she always has been that from the very beginning, then her costume is a feminist banner and so was the costume it replaced, and the costume that replaced, and so on. There is no victory over the patriarchy here.

Kind of reminds me of when the guy used the word “niggardly” in a city council staff meeting and ended up getting canned, even when he opened the dictionary and proved the word had no racist connotations. Perception-over-reality and all that. Facts don’t matter because “we all” see things a certain way.

So Diana Prince is in pants. Take that, chauvinist scum!

Thanks to blogger friend Joan of Argghh! for calling us out over there.

Steve Sailer:

…[T]he winners of WWII, America and Britain, kept their old-fashioned elitist colleges like Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge old-fashioned and elitist. The losers, like Germany, France, and Italy, after the war trashed their great universities on the altar of egalitarianism by going to open admissions. (In the U.S., CCNY was the only famous college to take the Spirit of ’68 seriously enough to dump selective admissions.) Today, that’s why ambitious Korean and Chinese students want to go to American or British universities, not to Continental ones: We won The War.

The French, not being fools, however, kept a number of small elite colleges, the grandes écoles, to publicly educate the small number of people who keep the place running. Not surprisingly, blacks and North Africans have a hard time passing the entrance exams to the French equivalent of Caltech at rates equal to whites.

Because entrance to the best grandes écoles effectively guarantees top jobs for life, the government is prodding the schools to set a goal of increasing the percentage of scholarship students to 30 percent — more than three times the current ratio at the most selective schools. But the effort is being met with concerns from the grandes écoles, who fear it could dilute standards, and is stirring anger among the French at large, who fear it runs counter to a French ideal of a meritocracy blind to race, religion and ethnicity.

France imagines itself a country of “republican virtue,” a meritocracy run by a well-trained elite that emerges from a fiercely competitive educational system. At its apex are the grandes écoles, about 220 schools of varying specialties. And at the very top of this pyramid are a handful of famous institutions that accept a few thousand students a year among them, all of whom pass extremely competitive examinations to enter.

… The problem is not simply the narrow base of the elite, but its self-satisfaction. “France has so many problems with innovation,” Mr. Descoings said. Those who pass the tests “are extremely smart and clever, but the question is: Are you creative? Are you willing to put yourself at risk? Lead a battle?” These are qualities rarely tested in exams.

Whereas imposing a quota will suddenly produce creative risk-takers. Right. That’s why Google was founded by Michelle Obama. [emphasis mine]

This is not exclusively a French problem. But it’s a pretty bad one.

Take a moment to think about the big picture of testing things. How can a test be flawed? There are two levels of sin here: A test can be non-productive, or it can be counter-productive. A non-productive test is blind and therefore random. Think of the airport passenger safety screener. If his metal detector is unplugged from the wall all day long, that’s what I’m talking about.

The next level beyond that would be profiling for terrorists. When you find a match, or when you X-ray the boarding party and find some individuals with crotch-bombs and shoe-bombs and liquid chemicals and guns — you wave them on to the plane and frisk the white-haired blue-eyed Scottish grandmothers.

These kinds of tests, I’m afraid, are counter-productive and not non-productive. They look for people who can follow instructions well. They look for the elite within that…and end up finding people who can follow extraordinarily nebulous instructions better than most anyone else.

Within a small sample this doesn’t do much damage. Over a larger one, it’s going to ultimately mean you’re sifting out the most creative resourceful people. Overall, the people who are best at responding to empathic signals from a stranger, are going to be the ones who aren’t very creative.

They will be confronted with an unorthodox situation, and their response will be to insist on a sequenced, numbered list of procedures to follow.

And in general, this has been precisely what has taken place. Inside of France and outside of it.

Hat tip to Dyspepsia Generation.

Kathleen Parker says Barack Obama is our first female President.

…Obama displays many tropes of femaleness. I say this in the nicest possible way. I don’t think that doing things a woman’s way is evidence of deficiency but, rather, suggests an evolutionary achievement.

Nevertheless, we still do have certain cultural expectations, especially related to leadership. When we ask questions about a politician’s beliefs, family or hobbies, we’re looking for familiarity, what we can cite as “normal” and therefore reassuring.

Generally speaking, men and women communicate differently. Women tend to be coalition builders rather than mavericks (with the occasional rogue exception). While men seek ways to measure themselves against others, for reasons requiring no elaboration, women form circles and talk it out.

Obama is a chatterbox who makes Alan Alda look like Genghis Khan.

The BP oil crisis has offered a textbook case of how Obama’s rhetorical style has impeded his effectiveness. The president may not have had the ability to “plug the damn hole,” as he put it in one of his manlier outbursts. No one expected him to don his wetsuit and dive into the gulf, but he did have the authority to intervene immediately and he didn’t. Instead, he deferred to BP, weighing, considering, even delivering jokes to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner when he should have been on Air Force One to the Louisiana coast.

I do find this a little bit unfair to the fairer sex. The criticism against His Eminence isn’t quite so much all-talk-no-action (although it is some of that); it’s that His motivation in any given situation is to adjust the emotional tenor. All vibe, no outcome.

This isn’t quite realistic. I’ve personally known of some chicks who can kick male ass all over the place when it comes to taking control over an outcome.

But Barack Obama, sad to say, is not one of these ladies. He’s one of the lesser girls…the unpleasant shrews…the ugly-girlfriends…the mothers-in-law. The available energy all goes into some dictatorial effort to tell lesser beings how they are supposed to feel.

To make a decision that alters the state of things — that takes balls, sad to say. And we don’t have a President with balls…sad to say. We won’t have one until Sarah Palin’s hand goes on the Bible in 2013. Until then, the closest we get is control-freakishness about our feelings.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

By “The Davids” what I mean in this case is Frum, although there are others. People who sell themselves as reformed or repentant conservatives, to other people who have no idea what a conservative really is and are never going to know. Conservatives who are “social moderates,” long to reach “across the aisle” — who voted for Barack Obama, not as a protest against the George W. Bush free-spending (heh!), but because “There’s Just Something About Him!”

It’s becoming a protracted back-and-forth. Miss out on this, and you miss a lot.

The conservatism I know is not a movement at all, nor is it a resistance. It is the ability to store and recall memories over the longer term, with a willingness to use it. It is the decent attention paid to history, when it tells us:

Charismatic people can make shitty bosses.

The people who live in a country don’t become wonderful people because of the laws passed in that country.

That government governs best which governs least.

An economy thrives when the conditions in which it operates involve certainty, and it withers in the face of excessive risk.

Decent wonderful people have stupid ideas pretty often.

In fact, it isn’t that rare an occurrence that a raging idiot has a unique idea that turns out to be the right one. (Therefore, when you hear of a new idea, discussing the attributes of the person who came up with it is a complete waste of time.)

When you raise taxes to fix a shitty economy, it doesn’t work.

People really need to experience success and failure as individuals. If consequences are equalized across a society, the passion dissipates, and work without passion is always an inferior effort.

There aren’t that many paychecks being signed by poor people.

People become naturally fractured and balkanized from each other when they speak different languages, profit from different advantages, or labor under unique burdens.

People don’t work hard to maintain assets that were given to them.

With apologies to our current President — or maybe, without ’em — there really isn’t any particular point at which you’ve made enough money.

Anyway. Brock, Brooks, Frum, Weigel — there’s just something about that name “David.” They get a business opportunity and suddenly, there’s an awakening. (Not with Weigel of course, he was busted in a scandal; not that he was fooling anybody.) Oh my! We have to do this one thing — elect Obama, pass ObamaCare, whatever. I’m still a conservative mind you! Although I’m ashamed at some of my fellow conservatives, because it’s true we’re all a bunch of bigots. Except me! But I’m still a conservative. Just a moderate one.

If conservatism was a movement, some of this would make sense…or might possibly make some sense.

But it isn’t. Conservatism, boiled down to its essentials, is an insistence that weighty decisions need to be based on reality, because reality is not relative. It rests on a certain foundation, and that foundation is a constant thing, laid from the cement of the laws of the universe. You don’t get to opt-out of it. So-and-so is funny, such-and-such is boring, this guy has a Nobel Prize, this guy is charismatic-or-whatever, he’s black, he’s gay, she’s a chick — these are distractions, and that is all they are.

They don’t change the outcome. Or maybe they do, but if they do then a wrong is being done. And it’s probably a great wrong, greater than other wrong it seeks to remedy.

I perceive of three palpably different attitudes out there about government running things.

The first one sees no problem whatsoever about one more thing being run by the government. Nationalize Starbucks. Put price controls on milk and cereal. It doesn’t even matter if we can’t outlaw gravity, we should pass the laws anyway because if we don’t then it says we want to be heavier.

The second says government can’t run a damn thing. Anything it touches turns into a committee project, and committee projects all turn to crap. It is King Midas in reverse.

The third attitude is sensibly moderate. It says there are some things that need to be run by government because they cannot be run by anyone else. Government will certainly screw things up here and there, but with the things that are properly under its control, if the political will is there then the job will get done.

I used to have the last of these three attitudes. I am gradually swiveling around to the second.