John Hawkins has collected some quotes from the coach. He had put ’em up when Wooden’s exit was merely a rumor; at this hour, it is established fact.

My kinda fella.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

You can do more good by being good than any other way.

Discipline yourself and others won’t need to.

That first one just digs in to the crux of this post of ours, which blogger friend Buck didn’t like. Since Coach Wooden managed to say in just a few words what we awkwardly stammered out over the course of hundreds, we think he would’ve had a better appreciation for what we were trying to say.

Character, reputation. One’s internal, one’s external. Character can survive just fine without the reputation to go with it, but a good reputation isn’t worth a damn without the character to back it up.

Meh heh.

Thanks to KC.

Boortz links to Reason:

The coming battle over President Obama’s nomination of Donald Berwick to the top spot at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is, like the health care reform debate before it, a struggle between centralizers and decentralizers. Indeed, Berwick is an almost prototypical centralizer. In particular, he has repeatedly expressed fondness for Britain’s NICE, which does cost-benefit analysis for the country’s government-run health care system (ie: rationing).

Reason, as you can see, links to its own archives from about five days previous:

The American health care debate occurs primarily between two factions: On one side are the centralizers. They prize equality of care and access, and believe that, to the extent possible, health risks should be spread proportionally amongst the populace. They argue that health care is sufficiently complex that most individuals cannot make decisions for themselves. And they say that the responsibility for making tough decisions about how to keep health care costs under control ought to be made by enlightened, well-intentioned policy elites.

On the other side are the decentralizers. This faction prizes the subjective preferences of individuals, and takes the line that centralized decision making does not account for individual variations in responses to care, and is a poor substitute for local, personal knowledge. Further, they argue that artificially redistributing risk obscures the true cost of care, and inevitably—and uncontrollably—drives up prices and spending.

Centralizers end up sacrificing everything for this equality. Whether their ego is festooned to the concept and they cling to it until the bitter end, as the centralized capabilities plummet, plummet, and plummet some more; or, if they indulge in some kind of reckoning before any of it gets underway, and consciously acknowledge equality is the supreme virtue — I’ve never been able to figure this out about them.

I can’t find a nurse to fluff my pillow, that’s quite alright. I can’t find a nurse to fluff my pillow and you can — oh dear, some new previously-undiscovered “human right” has just been violated. We have some inequality. Can’t have that!

Looks like Architects and Medicators to me. Medicators are fixated on what other people have, whereas Architects consider such a matter to be almost entirely irrelevant. Architects want to hone a personal skill and then see to it that their personal fortune, for good or ill, is inextricably intertwined with that skill. Their projects are localized and cordoned off by means of some kind of perimeter. They want to tape a 48″ x 36″ vellum to a board, and spend a few weeks concerned only with those few square inches, and nothing outside of that space.

Medicators want security. Not so much a high standard of living, but lots and lots of assurance. They want consistency, none of this “fat times lean times” stuff. And they’re inherently controlling and jealous, so this preference toward centralization ends up being a natural one. They don’t see project perimeters, they don’t see connections between projects and the persons who own them. Everything, even a task as personal as raising a child, “takes a village.”

I submit that the centralizers are simply Medicators who are doing what makes sense in their world. None of us are really specializing in anything, we’re more like a crew on a great big spaceship…a crew without any positions or ranks. And so it just makes sense that all the resources have to be put in a great big pot.

Except someone has to watch the pot. And so their model ultimately defeats itself, because oopsie, now we have to have some superiority, some ranking, some specialty. Someone has to say yea & nay as the resources are distributed from the pot.

And so when an Architect votes, he votes for a clone of himself who has the time to go to City Hall, or the Board of Supes, or the Capitol, that he does not have. Someone who is likely, the likelier the better, to make the very same decisions he would make if only he had the time to be there. And the outcome of these decisions would be positive.

When a Medicator votes, he votes for someone who is not a clone of himself. He looks for someone much, much better; a superhuman; a demigod. And the decisions this demigod would make? They would not necessarily be the decisions the Medicator would make — instead, they would be the decisions found pleasing to nameless, faceless, anonymous strangers. And the outcome? Who cares about that, what is important is that the decisions would be found favorable. To…somebody.

Kevin at Smallest Minority is picking on the Brits, and they deserve it.

Taxi driver Derrick Bird got into his cab with a .22 rifle and a shotgun, and went on a shooting spree in Cumbria, England. He killed twelve and wounded another 25 before offing himself.

His rampage lasted three and a half hours.

It was ended, as most of these are, by a man with a gun. In this case, himself, once he’d decided he was done preying on a defenseless victim pool.

England has been on a long death-by-a-thousand-cuts path to complete disarmament since the 1930’s. The last two “turn ’em all in” bans came in 1987 after Michael Ryan took an AK-47 clone, an M1 Carbine and a semi-automatic pistol on a shooting spree in Hungerford, killing sixteen before he offed himself. The result of that was a ban on all semi-automatic and pump-action rifles larger than .22 rimfire caliber.

The British public was told it would make them safer.

When you think about it, it’s really almost impossible for these things to end any other way isn’t it? The gunman could have some kind of a seizure or he could run out of ammo. Oh I suppose a police negotiator could soothe the gunman’s disposition from a great distance through an amplified megaphone.

Other than those three things, there really cannot be an end to it that doesn’t involve someone packing heat.

Karl Rove:

White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod argued earlier this year that health-care reform would become more popular after it passed, boosting Democrats in the midterm elections. “We have to go out and sell it,” he told the National Journal, adding in an interview in Newsweek that “people [will] see the benefits that accrue to them.”

That’s not quite how it has worked out. ObamaCare is becoming more, not less, unpopular. The Rasmussen poll reported the week after health reform’s passage in March that 55% of likely voters supported its repeal while 42% did not. A Rasmussen poll last month showed that 56% backed repeal; 39% did not.
:
Finding it hard to cover costs under the bill’s formulas…doctors [will] refuse new patients and one out of every six hospitals and nursing homes could start operating in the red. And while Medicaid would cover 16 million more people, there might not be enough doctors to treat them.
:
October will see the first round of Medicare cuts. Up to half of seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage coverage (a program that allows seniors to receive additional services through a private health plan), or at least some of their benefits under this program. Watch for the administration to try to keep companies from notifying their customers of benefit cuts or premium increases before the election.
:
Then there are employers and their workers. According to a survey by Towers Watson, a human resources consulting firm, 88% of companies plan to pass on increased health-care benefit costs to employees, 74% plan to reduce benefits, and up to 12% will drop all coverage for employees. Retirees won’t fare well either: 43% of employers that now provide retiree medical benefits are likely to reduce or eliminate them thanks to the new health legislation.

Of course, Mr. Rove may very well be wrong. The President might be right. We might be looking at a new government program that was designed to make things more affordable. And that has succeeded in this effort.

For, as I have said repeatedly, the very first time in modern American history.

The analyses…the polls…the logic…the third-grade math…history…might all be wrong.

Wouldn’t bet on it.

Hat tip to Linkiest.

Thing I Know #76. Old married people who share an e-mail address, just like they’re used to sharing a real mailbox, can’t be reached by e-mail. Not really.

National Post, Canada:

In yet another nod to the protection of fledgling self-esteem, an Ottawa children’s soccer league has introduced a rule that says any team that wins a game by more than five points will lose by default.

The Gloucester Dragons Recreational Soccer league’s newly implemented edict is intended to dissuade a runaway game in favour of sportsmanship. The rule replaces its five-point mercy regulation, whereby any points scored beyond a five-point differential would not be registered.

Kevin Cappon said he first heard about the rule on May 20 — right after he had scored his team’s last allowable goal. His team then tossed the ball around for fear of losing the game…

Too much effort goin’ on out there, we gots ta cut down on all that effort goin’ on out there. People tryin’ too hard.

Not enough goofing-off happening.

Hat tip to Kate at Small Dead Animals.

All the world’s history of government falls into two chapters: You have the older chapter of agricultural societies, in which a single individual does whatever he wants to do, engaging a machinery of bureaucracy to carry out his dictates with all sorts of hidden agendas at that layer — they all claim to be acting on behalf of God. Then, after the Industrial Revolution, you have a similar arrangement in which one individual does whatever he wants, with the assistance of a bureaucracy chock full of hidden agendas, and they claim to be acting on behalf of a new god called “The People.”

Neal Boortz says (and he’s absolutely right) —

Now remember how this administration works: never let a good crisis go to waste. The financial collapse, housing, the auto industry, healthcare – the narrative is this: first you have to have to create or exaggerate a “crisis” and then the government swoops in to fix it. By “fix” I mean, take it over. Run it. Permanently. Just remember that there is no such thing as “temporary” to the federal government, or any government, for that matter.

Acting on behalf of The People, our government is getting ready to pounce on “The Oil Companies” and take them over. Basically take them over. Oh, how I do loathe that word “basically”; for whoever truly labors to communicate with honesty, no-holds-barred, this word has no meaning and no purpose.

Not clear on what I mean by that? Watch this.

Yeah it’s all about a different word. “Sociali– uh, er, ah, basically…”

I do not typically approve of sarcasm being used to completely support a point. When that is done, the entire argument is typically dragged down into the lower realms of idiocy, stupidity and abject silliness. But some things are patently absurd and can only be revealed as absurd through exaggeration. What our god-kings are trying to do with “Those Oil Companies” has started to come under this heading. The theme that is permeating throughout all of these plans, the core underlying philosphy, is bollywonkers.

Let us illustrate the absurdity.

Don’t let them drill anywhere. Inland, offshore. And slap a huge excise tax on any oil imported. Regulate how the oil is imported, regulate how it is exchanged, regulate how it is refined, regulate how it is transported. And then regulate the regulators. Slap a big fat surcharge on anything these Bad People do with the oil. Demand a new environmental impact statement anytime a gas station so much as sells a new brand of chewing gum. Tax their refineries, tax their trucks, tax their pumps, tax their buildings, tax their land, tax their office equipment, tax them when they pay their taxes. Slap a national ceiling on gas at the pump, gasoline futures, light sweet crude, cap their bonuses, cap their salaries, audit them whenever they declare a dividend, when the stock splits, make ’em pay, pay, pay. Make it impossible for anyone to make a profit in that wicked business, anywhere, anytime, doing anything.

Then let’s all stand back and watch those gas prices fall like a stone!

Basically.

Let’s pop back into the real world for a second now…

What we have with this oil spill, is a lesson in the folly of appealing to Gaea. We had all sorts of strict environmental rules put in place, and successfully enforced. They didn’t even all have to do with the petroleum products industries, a lot of them just had to do with preserving this-or-that bear/bird/seal/moose whatever. Our oil exploration efforts were pushed way out to sea in order to comply with these environmental dictates, and now you see the results.

Gaea’s pissed. Of course it makes sense for her to be pissed now…but what about our move to push the oil drilling out to sea, to preserve the snail darter and the Mynah bird? Don’t we at least get an A for effort? Is Gaea gonna tell us she’s really upset about the oil in the gulf but she appreciates what we were trying to do?

This is the trouble with government’s third chapter, in which the guy-at-the-top and the hidden-agenda-bureaucracies purport to represent this new god called Gaea: The outcome is predetermined. Mankind is never at its best, or even at adequate. It’s always a screw-up.

Had we just called the whole thing off and told the environmentalists to go piss up a rope, there wouldn’t be an oil spill in the gulf right now. That’s a fact.

Mister Vice President, sir, as soon as those papers are finalized I think you might be ready to report in.

Update: Ahh…who doesn’t believe in coincidences? Look what just popped up on the news wire.

My dear girl, keeping Dom Perignon above 38 degrees is like listening to The Beatles without earmuffs.

Eugene Robinson’s ignorance stuns and amazes me. Is there a longtime Robinson reader out there, somewhere, who can point me to the last time this writer has ever recognized an unintended consequence of something?

It would benefit him to see that Charles Krauthammer piece to which I linked Sunday, but I’ve got a feeling it would be a case of leading a horse to water.

It’s a pretty simple situation.

When you drill in a mile of water, and a pipe ruptures, it is really, really hard to shut off the flow of oil. Of course it’s a monumental task to clean the oil off the flora and fauna once it gets into the water.

We need oil. Now. We cannot import it all.

So let’s drill on land. And if someone comes up with some species of mammal that might possibly, maybe, perhaps, we don’t know, find it difficult to live/eat/hunt/breed around the resulting apparatus, we show them a few dead oil-covered pelicans from the Gulf. If they still have something to say, then just walk away because they’re only weighing one side of the argument.

Drill-baby-drill is dead now? It just got vindicated.

Fox News:

A Michigan lawmaker wants to license reporters to ensure they’re credible and vet them for “good moral character.”

Senator Bruce Patterson is introducing legislation that will regulate reporters much like the state does with hairdressers, auto mechanics and plumbers. Patterson, who also practices constitutional law, says that the general public is being overwhelmed by an increasing number of media outlets–traditional, online and citizen generated–and an even greater amount misinformation.

“Legitimate media sources are critically important to our government,” he said.

He told FoxNews.com that some reporters covering state politics don’t know what they’re talking about and they’re working for publications he’s never heard of, so he wants to install a process that’ll help him and the general public figure out which reporters to trust.

“We have to be able to get good information,” he said. “We have to be able to rely on the source and to understand the credentials of the source.”

Go for it, jerk. In fact, after you get that one on the books why don’t you get word of it to our U.S. Congress. Maybe they can get a nationwide-counterpart bill started, in time to make an issue out of it for this year’s elections. Let’s see if the people are in favor of it. Run on it.

I like that idea a lot. I think you should do it.

Hat tip to Joe America, who is brother & annoying liberal gadfly to Mark.

Much more fun to be had at hipster expense, at Unhappy Hipsters.

Hat tip to At The Point Of A Gun, via The Other McCain.

David St. Lawrence has started to notice something:

Now that we are becoming a nation of work-at-home professionals, I notice a subtle addition to even the most business-like home offices.

It is quite apparent that we are being infiltrated by feline operatives, who under the guise of being helpful will pull valuable papers out the printer, walk across freshly sprayed artwork, and lie on keyboards ignoring the plaintive peeps of an outraged computer.

No wonder the New York Times comes across as a place; a desperate, cheerless, gloomy, dismal, hopeless place. This reflects no hope. No hope, no vision.

When Katrina hit, Bush was in his second term and his bumbling was not a shock to a country that had witnessed two-plus years of his grievous mismanagement of the Iraq war. His laissez-faire response to the hurricane was also consistent with his political DNA as a small-government conservative in thrall to big business. His administration’s posture toward the gulf region had been telegraphed at its inception, when Dick Cheney convened oil and gas cronies, including Enron’s Ken Lay, to set environmental and energy policy. The Interior Department devolved into a cesspool of corruption, even by its historically low standards, turning the Bush-Cheney antigovernment animus into a self-fulfilling prophecy and bequeathing Obama a Minerals Management Service as broken as the Bush-Cheney FEMA exposed by Katrina.

Obama was elected as a progressive antidote to this discredited brand of governance. Of all the president’s stated goals, none may be more sweeping than his desire to prove that government is not always a hapless and intrusive bureaucratic assault on taxpayers’ patience and pocketbooks, but a potential force for good.
:
We expect him to deliver on this core conviction. But the impact on “the people” of his signature governmental project so far, health care reform, remains provisional and abstract. Like it or not, a pipe gushing poison into an ocean is a visceral crisis demanding visible, immediate action.

Obama’s news conference on Thursday — explaining in detail the government’s response, its mistakes and its precise relationship to BP — was at least three weeks overdue. It was also his first full news conference in 10 months. Obama’s recurrent tardiness in defining exactly what he wants done on a given issue — a lapse also evident in the protracted rollout of the White House’s specific health care priorities — remains baffling, as does his recent avoidance of news conferences. Such diffidence does not convey a J.F.K.-redux in charge of a neo-New Frontier activist government.

But there is hope here, because there is a vision behind it (hat tip once again to Gerard).

Here’s my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?

Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama’s tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we’ve had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So we go deep, ultra deep – to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people? All spills seriously damage wildlife. That’s a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from the barren to the populated, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism and recreation?

Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they’ve escaped any mention at all.

But waitaminnit Freeberg!, I hear you saying. You cannot find hope and vision in the Krauthammer piece, he’s breaking all the rules isn’t he? He’s criticizing. He’s looking backward and not forward.

Yeah, I say, but Krauthammer’s vision is more realistic. For many reasons, starting with the plain and simple fact that he at least has one. Mr. Rich, on the other hand, is in a blind and frantic search for a national savior, some wonderful God-King-Man to put at the tippy top of our government which he seems to think should be properly festooned at the top of everything.

Another problem with the Frank Rich “vision,” if there is one, is the big elephant in the room: Sixteen months ago he got exactly the leadership he wanted, and here he is bitching. Frank Rich is finding out the hard way, just like Peggy Noonan, that the verticality does not work. We aren’t going to produce wonderful results, as a nation, just by putting our Most Wonderful People up at the top and letting everything work out from there.

Because when you do that, all you get back is stuff like this (hat tip to blogger friend Rick). Listen to the congressman describe what’s going on:

You don’t like what Krauthammer had to say because some of your best friends are tree huggers? Well fine, come up with your own idea. But first step back a few paces and take a look at the big picture. This nation needs oil. It cannot import all of the oil…and our own turf is filled with all these spots where the enviro-weenies say “can’t drill here, can’t drill there.” We put this charismatic speech-maker in charge of everything, and the only superlative we’ve gotten out of Him is a more soothing, dulcet tone as He proceeds to tell us that this-or-that cannot happen because the rules say you can’t.

But as Frank Rich points out, at least He’s been doing that “from the start.” Or, I believe the proper cliche is “took charge From Day One.” Well, here’s a news flash: That doesn’t help too much when taking charge consists of telling people they can’t do things. Especially because of ++snort++ environmental impact.

I do think overall the Obama administration is getting a bum rap in all this. If we really want to fix this thing and (more realistically) take steps to ensure it never happens again, or happens as rarely as is possible, we need to do some learning fast. Not quite come up with some new visions, as harshly evaluate the visions we already have.

A nation is not a cult. We do not select our leaders by figuring out who’s got the most charisma. Presidents of the United States do not stop oil leaks, nor do they halt Category 5 hurricanes. In fact, the President has no authority to guarantee a perfect outcome, or even an adequate one, for anything, anywhere. Read your Constitution; it is not an outcome-based position of authority.

Yes, let us accuse Obama of mediocre leadership, when & where He deserves it. But let’s form some realistic and plausible ideas about where exactly it is that He deserves it. Why are we blaming Him? Is it because he didn’t say “Plug The Damn Hole!” with suitable authority, weight, majesty and flourish?

Count me outta that one.

The lesson here is pretty simple. You put people in charge who are fun-to-watch, and what you get isn’t leadership. Anybody who’s ever had trouble fitting a resume onto a single page already knows this to be true: Some of the worst bosses to have, are the ones who are most skilled at manipulating emotional tenor in others to get things sold. You only have to work underneath them a little while before you figure out their skill is in taking credit and avoiding blame. And if you know how to do that, why bother to learn how to do anything else?

So when you put the people in charge who are fun-to-watch, what you get is just another bureaucrat. Just another voice, more sonorous and soothing than most perhaps, but the syllables it strings together are the same as they were before so it might as well be Charlie Brown’s teacher. Nope. Sorry. Can’t do it. Make one exception and I’ll hafta make a thousand. Rules, rules, rules.

The most bitter disappointment is the one experienced by people like Frank Rich, who thought this would have some impact on what decisions would be made. You almost feel sorry for ’em.

It’s satire, but it’s good satire. Without the Onion logo and without me telling you, you would’ve bought it until halfway through. If you do a better job paying attention to current events…maybe all the way to the end.

Because there’s a lot of truth in it.

Hat tip to Linkiest.

Via Flixxy.

I like the space savings.

But I perceive a conspiracy to confuse medical requirements with just-plain-laziness and desire to live a cloistered, possibly prodigal lifestyle. My enthusiasm would increase measurably if I were to be assured of some workable breakwater between those things.

Come to think of it, I have exactly the same concerns about medicinal marijuana.

And she’s spilling her guts, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

I don’t see how the president’s position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president’s political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don’t see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They’re in one reality, he’s in another.

She is brilliant at what she does. But I’ve always had some reservations with what she does.

Eagle-eyed readers of The Blog That Nobody Reads, might notice on very rare occasions I’ll make some vague, perhaps irritatingly vague, statements about my own vocation which has something to do with technology and engineering. And project management too I suppose. These are things that have to do with two and two being four, and remaining four now and forever, without regard to how many people want it to be three or five, or nineteen, and how desperately they want that.

Nothing personal against Peggy, but this is something of the opposite of her own profession. As a speechwriter, and as a column writer, she makes it her business to be more concerned with having her finger on the pulse of…something. America, I suppose. She lives in a world where, if a whole lot of people are ticked off that two and two are four, then maybe we should sit down and talk about that awhile, maybe find out if we can come up with something different.

And that is a valuable insight to have. Presidents need it, and really anything political needs it…which is to say we all do.

But the woman has a long, long history of thinking about X-Y-Z when I’m thinking about A-B-C. This sometimes leads to her telling me what I’m thinking — I’m part of “everyone,” at least logically I am — and two-and-two-make-four people don’t respond too favorably to that.

In fact, now and then we receive an unpleasant reminder that two-and-two-make-four people are concerned with the workings of the universe, and peoples’ pulses are made up from that. This creates problems with the pulse-people, like Noonan, and it creates problems for them as well.

Like for example what she wrote twenty months ago:

A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, [Obama] did not respond with a politically shrewd “I have no comment,” or “We shouldn’t judge.” Instead he said, “My mother had me when she was 18,” which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn’t have to.

There is something else. On Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, Mr. Obama won the Alabama primary with 56% to Hillary Clinton’s 42%. That evening, a friend watched the victory speech on TV in his suburban den. His 10-year-old daughter walked in, saw on the screen “Obama Wins” and “Alabama.” She said, “Daddy, we saw a documentary on Martin Luther King Day in school.” She said, “That’s where they used the hoses.” Suddenly my friend saw it new. Birmingham, 1963, and the water hoses used against the civil rights demonstrators. And now look, the black man thanking Alabama for his victory.

This means nothing? This means a great deal.

Perhaps it is unfair to recall this and scrutinize it with the benefit of a year and a half watching the Holy Emperor screw up. In fact, let us file that under “probably” rather than “perhaps.” But this is important stuff. Every month, every week, we see someone making big, huge, irreversible decisions, in politics and out of politics, confident that this is the right way to go because their finger is on a “pulse.” We watch someone pull a Noonan.

It is laughable nowadays to consider that Barack Obama said “My mother had me when she was 18” rather than “I have no comment” or “we shouldn’t judge” just to show some grace. Nowadays, another sentiment has taken hold that Obama may be a man completely lacking in grace; this has taken hold because of our experiences with watching Him, and at 400+ speeches per year it is not trivial experience by any means. We know from the Cop-and-Professor-beer-summit debacle from last summer that Obama is not inclined to say “I have no comment” or “we shouldn’t judge,” and may be altogether lacking in the personal attributes required to string such words together.

No, He saw another opportunity to talk about Himself. Peggy Noonan interpreted this to be a display of grace. Beginning to see where I’m going here? Whether it’s your lifetime vocation or not, being too concerned with what others think can get you in a whole lot of trouble. It frequently leads otherwise competent, capable people possessing otherwise sound, reliable judgment to think with the heart and not the head.

Oh look at that baby bear, isn’t it cute? Let’s take it home. That would be another decision along the lines of what I’m talking about; on par with what Noonan did when she inferred that Obama had grace.

These are not good decisions. Their appeal is based on emotion, and emotional appeal can only be based on the immediate moment because there is no way to chart or predict where emotions are going to be further down the road. Also, they must be inherently narcissistic. It’s all about me. The stubby ears, the big brown eyes, the li’l pug-nose, everything that tiny bear cub has must be there to appeal to me, me, me. Just like when President Obama gets in there, He is going to do what I, I, I want Him to do.

We live in a universe that plain and simply does not work that way. A universe filled up with things that do not exist for our benefit. Like a mother bear’s protective instinct, and Obama’s incredible, perhaps unprecedented, feeling of self-importance.

Whoever told us Obama would see America as something placed in His care? Whoever told us Obama had a personality inclined toward stewardship — looking after something — seeing to it that some jurisdiction of His would fare better as He left it, compared to how He’d found it? Were there any anecdotes about anything, anything at all, involving more real responsibility than an assistant-professorship? We had people pointing this out, and it was dismissed as a bunch of conservative ankle-biting. I guess it’s hard to make it look like something other than that.

But with our experience we have now that we didn’t have then, we see there was something to it. Stewardship is, among other things, a personality. It is a long term looking-after of something, with a sense of conviction that you’re beginning each day with the rewards, or the wreckage, of your performance the day before.

Obama doesn’t have it. We haven’t seen Him actually maintain anything, besides relationships; and human emotions being what they are, with relationships you don’t work with the rewards or the wreckage of your work the day before. Obama, from the best information we’ve managed to seize about Him, seems to have spent a lifetime being blissfully insulated from the conditions of things.

Fer chrissakes, we don’t even have a story about a bicycle lovingly maintained, or a household pet. He doesn’t have the “guardian” personality. He is not, by personal inclination, a steward of something. There is no evidence whatsoever to indicate a refinement of the requisite skills, or a personal interest in refining them.

There is much evidence to indicate otherwise.

Sorry you’re shocked, Peggy. Had you taken the time to ask yourself some questions others were asking, it would not now be so surprising.

Hear endeth the lesson: Putting your finger on a pulse is an educational thing to do, only so long as it remains educational. So long as it involves taking additional information in. Once you start ignoring some valid observations because your finger’s on the pulse, it ceases to be an exercise in education and it becomes one of ignorance. Every now and then, there are consequences to this…because, when all’s said and done, we do live in a universe in which two and two make four.

Ben Smith, Politico:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a rare foray into domestic politics today, offering her view that — given America’s high unemployment — wealthy Americans don’t pay enough taxes.

“The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues [America currently does] — whether it’s individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms,” Clinton told an audience at the Brookings Institution, where she was discussing the Administration’s new National Security Strategy.

Clinton said the comment was her personal opinion alone. “I’m not speaking for the administration, so I’ll preface that with a very clear caveat,” she said.

Clinton went on to cite Brazil as a model.

“Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — they’re growing like crazy,” Clinton said. “And the rich are getting richer, but they’re pulling people out of poverty.”

Both Clinton and Obama campaigned for president on promises to allow the Bush tax cuts for wealthy Americans expire this year, a plan that is now part of Obama’s budget. The move will effectively raise taxes sharply on people earning more than $250,000.

The Administration’s new formal strategy document makes the case that domestic economic strength is crucial to influence abroad.

And get a load of the comments underneath. Although, to be realistic about it, there may be more overlap between Politico commentators and taxpayers, than between likely voters & taxpayers.

Dare I hope that the “tax the rich” swill has been declining in popularity just as quickly as the Obama administration for the last year and a half? Could it be there is a palpable feeling that left-wing social experimentation can only be afforded in limited doses, and we’ve exhausted our quota?

Could it be that people are getting worried we need to turn around and back out of this cul de sac…before we become another…uh…Brazil?

See, I have this idea in the back of my mind that nobody is falling for this. We’ve got politicians selling it, who don’t really believe in it. They’re generally well-off personally, after all. Are they mailing extra cash off to the Treasury? Whatever surplus it takes for them to feel like they’ve been taxed enough?

We’ve got college professors and left-wing economists saying that narrowing the wage gap is the way to go. Do they ever make calls, maybe place bets on ’em?

We’ve got a lot of people who say they believe in taxing the rich. None of them are rich, or if they are, they don’t see themselves that way.

Some teevee station went out into the streets of New Jersey to find out what ordinary residents had to say about Gov. Chris Christie. He’s taken the position directly opposite from Ms. Clinton about taxing the rich. I found these comments telling:

“I’d rather see a tax on millionaires…It’s about time we stopped paying for everyone else.”

“Taxing the millionaires sounds great. The only concern I have is the millionaires have the ability to take their money and leave.”

Like, duh.

Should I even get started on how things are going in the Golden State? Nah, you probably don’t want to read about that. All our economic situations are plenty depressing enough. Ah, don’t tell me let me guess: We here in California aren’t taxing the rich enough. That surely must be the problem, right Hillary?

Hat tip to Gerard.

All seven Republicans on the judiciary committee have asked the Attorney General to name a special prosecutor.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder today, all seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee “urge the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Congressman Joe Sestak’s claim that a White House official offered him a job to induce him to exit the Pennsylvania Senate primary race against Senator Arlen Specter.”

AllahPundit at HotAir has more:

Darrell Issa, who started the drum-beating about this, is calling it Obama’s Watergate and potential grounds for impeachment, and went as far this week as to threaten Sestak with an ethics complaint if he doesn’t come clean. Here’s the key federal statute, although it’s not the only one in play potentially: Karl Rove cited three criminal provisions on Monday night that could conceivably have been violated.

Sec. 600. Promise of employment or other benefit for political activity

Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

The defense, I assume, will be that no job was explicitly “promised,” just sort of hinted at in order to preserve plausible deniability. E.g., “Gee, Joe, it’s a shame you’re running for Senate. We were thinking about you for Secretary of the Navy in two years.”

Byron York is skeptical.

The first reaction of most observers is that, barring some new revelations, there is little or no chance the GOP senators will get their way. Holder has already rejected one such request from Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, and in the Senate, the Democrats who control the Judiciary Committee are not calling for an investigation. With Democrats in control of the White House, the House and the Senate, the president and attorney general don’t have to do anything. On the other hand, Republicans controlled the White House, House and Senate at the time of the Plame affair, and a Republican attorney general appointed Fitzgerald. But that only happened after a media firestorm over the CIA leak matter, and there has been no such storm over Sestak. Without a public outcry, and with Democrats controlling all the levers of power, Holder and Obama are free to deny all investigation requests from Republicans.

Yeah. They’re not dictating what Holder is going to do, they’re making it more expensive for him to do it. Good on ’em anyway.

So how’s that transparent-administration workin’ out for ya?

BlackFive links to the risible parallel-monologue dialogue:

I didn’t have much of an opinion on Joe Sestak before today…But I’d like to make a couple of observations about his claim to have been offered a position in the administration by the White House in return for ending his primary challenge to Arlen Specter. The first is that if indeed this offer was made by one or more members of the Obama administration, it was corruption, a felony. The second is that it was Joe Sestak’s legal obligation as an American, and more importantly his duty as a retired Admiral, to report it to the authorities as soon as it happened.

The third observation — and most important — is that Joe Sestak did no such thing.

Instead, what we get are a bunch of non-answers from Joe Sestak to direct questions from David Gregory:

MR. GREGORY: What, what job were you offered to stay out of a primary race by the administration?

REP. SESTAK: It’s interesting. I was asked a question about something that….

…happened months earlier, and I felt I should answer it honestly. And that’s all I had to say about it because anything beyond that gets away from what we just spoke about.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

REP. SESTAK: What are the policies that are really going to help people who’ve been slammed by the economy…

MR. GREGORY: All right, but you’ve campaigned on transparency. It’s part of the politics. You talked about standing up to the White House when they’d fielded a candidate–made a deal with Arlen Specter. So isn’t it in the–in the spirit of transparency, were you offered a job by the administration? And what was it?

REP. SESTAK: I learned, as I mentioned, about that personal accountability in the Navy.

MR. GREGORY: Yeah.

REP. SESTAK: I felt I needed to answer that question honestly because I was personally accountable for my role in the matter.

MR. GREGORY: What’s the answer? What’s the job you were offered?

REP. SESTAK: And–but anybody else has to decide for themselves what to say upon their role, and that’s their responsibility.

MR. GREGORY: Yes or no, straightforward question. Were you, were you offered a job, and what was the job?

REP. SESTAK: I was offered a job, and I answered that.

MR. GREGORY: You said no, you wouldn’t take the job. Was it the secretary of the Navy?

REP. SESTAK: Right. And I also said, “Look, I’m getting into this…

MR. GREGORY: Was it the secretary of the Navy job?

REP. SESTAK: Anything that go–goes beyond that is others–for others to talk about.

Yes yes, personal accountability. They teach that in the Navy. Got it. Now here’s the thing. According to Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod, no such inappropriate offer was made to Joe Sestak. Which means: Someone is lying.

Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod — obviously dispatched from a central location with coordinated talking points — take an Officer Barbrady “move along folks, there’s nothing to see here” approach. You think that means they’re clarifying what’s going on? Think again.

“NOTHING inappropriate happened,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says about the job offer that Rep. Joe Sestak, now the Democratic nominee for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, claims the White House dangled to induce him to back away from challenging incumbent Arlen Specter. “It has been looked into,” adds White House senior adviser David Axelrod, and “nothing inappropriate happened.”

Can’t even get a yes or no. But move along. We looked into it.

Phew! Good thing we have an ethical, transparent administration in charge of things.

The headline is from commenter Durka-Durka, who speaks for me.

Creepy. Really creepy.

Here’s Palin, giving McGinniss a little advanced publicity for his stalker’s journal, though she doesn’t have much choice, given the bloodsport that is Alaska politics, I suppose. (Sigh.)

Spring has sprung in Alaska, and with this beautiful season comes the news today that the Palins have a new neighbor! Welcome, Joe McGinniss!

Yes, that Joe McGinniss. Here he is – about 15 feet away on the neighbor’s rented deck overlooking my children’s play area and my kitchen window.

:
Politico contacted McGinniss’ son, who offered this response:

Sadly, she’s right. We tried our best to intervene, but alas, the heart wants what it wants. We can only pray for him now. He’s convinced that Todd will step aside and when the time is right, he’ll be there, right next door, to pick up the pieces.

I guess maybe he intended that as a crack about Palin, rather than his dad… I don’t know though. Palin didn’t suggest that McGinniss had some sort of romantic obsession, just that he was creepily spying (which he is; that’s going to be the marketing campaign for his book, of course). It was just the son who brought up that angle.

Unbelievably, David Weigel thinks Palin is the one that’s done something wrong here. Uh, come again Mr. Weigel?

Palin informs her readers that McGinniss is “overlooking my children’s play area” and “overlooking Piper’s bedroom.” Alternately sounding angry and mocking, she refers to “the family’s swimming hole,” which at first reference sounds like she’s accusing McGinniss of checking out the Palins in their bathing suits, until you realize the family’s “swimming hole” is Lake Lucille. And she posts a photo of the space McGinniss is renting, captioning it, “Can I call you Joe?”

Can somebody explain to me how this isn’t a despicable thing for Palin to do? She describes McGinniss as the author of “the bizarre anti-Palin administration oil development pieces that resulted in my Department of Natural Resources announcing that his work is the most twisted energy-related yellow journalism they’d ever encountered.”

Another way of putting it would be that McGinniss is an investigative journalist who wrote his first best-seller at age 26 and was shopping a book about Alaska and the oil industry when Palin was named John McCain’s running mate.
:
Has McGinniss gone to an extreme to get a story? Well, we don’t have his side yet — not that this has prevented every other media outlet from typing up Palin’s Facebook post like some lost Gospel. But assuming he’s rented the house near the Palins for some period of time, assuming the Palins know he’s there and that he’s writing a book, then what, exactly, is wrong with this? [emphasis mine]

Dude. He’s stalking her to get his story.

You’re just so blind. Let go of the Palin hatred for a second or two. Just dang, if Joe McGinniss burned her house down would you come down on her for using up his matches and gasoline?

Can someone please rent a house next to David Weigel’s for five or six months? As long as you got your writing career started at age 26, he doesn’t have a problem with it. Bring your binoculars.

The word means so much to us, and we take so little trouble to define it.

Late night talk show host Jay Leno managed to connect the BP oil spill to the tea party. Lack o’ something called “regulation.”

JAY LENO: Well, to me, BP is a perfect example. BP seems to have done this on their own. They don’t pay attention. They essentially make their own rules because they pay off everybody. That’s what the Tea Party wants. That’s unregulated and look what happened.

DAVID GREGORY: Right, but in this case, right, you have a breakdown of regulations that led to getting contracts and their technology breaking down. But, right, I mean at some point, the government is the only entity that can clean up after a huge mess.

I’d sure like to know what magical power, what birth star, blood line, what is it exactly? — What’s supposed to make these government regulators so much wiser than the people they’re regulating. I’ve talked and talked and talked to these “we need more regulation” people and none of them have ever been able to tell me.

I doubt highly that Jay Leno, David Gregory, or any of the rest of ’em have ever been as close to the application of such regulations as yours truly. Trust me, if you love sausage…

In fact, what I’m reading about the regulations that were applied to BP all seem to say the same thing: There were regulations, and they were applied. The people who were in charge of applying those regulations did a shitty job. Yeeaaahh…you know what, that doesn’t look to me much like fixing or preventing a problem. That looks to me like finding a scapegoat while you’re pretending to get something constructive done, and frankly it brings back feelings of deja vu.

I’ve been there, and if I have to have brain surgery I think I’d prefer to have it unregulated. Maybe, maybe not. But I certainly wouldn’t count on regulation to prevent disasters. If it’s going to happen, it would be simple regulation. The door’s hinges are on the inside of the wall or else they’re not.

Half-wits like Leno and Gregory are talking about…and this is a well-rehearsed script by now…robust, beefed-up regulations that will really fix what was broken here.

It isn’t unlimited faith in government. It is a cowardly avoidance of specifics. Government regulators are supposed to prevent an oil rig from blowing up…how, exactly? They can’t answer. They don’t know enough about the situation. They just wanted to participate in the discussion and say something that sounds powerful.

But their plan depends on government being wise and, perhaps in some way, superhuman and perfect. That’s why it is important these people not have anything to say about anything. They lack the perceptive powers to realize that people don’t become perfect just because they manage to affix their names to an agency payroll. Too many episodes of X-Files, I suppose.

It’s exactly what we saw last year with the financial meltdown, remember that? “We need stronger oversight to check the greed that made this mess in the first place!” At least, in the case of the BP oil spill, we have yet to see strong evidence that the “oversight” actually caused “this mess in the first place.” That albatross continues to hang around the neck of the 2008/09 meltdown.

Our continuing survival may depend on finding a better definition for the R-word. Either that, or somehow stop twits like Jay Leno and David Gregory from voting. The crazy-loop whirlpool of stupid is small enough and tight enough that it is now predictable: Regulation causes a problem, blame goes flying around, people start pointing fingers, and then the intellectual lightweights come out of the woodwork to say “Goodness, what a mess, we need some more regulation.”

Word to the wise: Maybe not.

Here‘s the vision that jumps into my head when I think of “more regulation,” Jay Leno. What is it that you have in mind? And based on what exactly?

I’m just loving what Ann Althouse wrote this weekend:

If you’re going to criticize the new social studies curriculum adopted by the Texas Board of Education, you’d better quote it.

Or at least link to the text. And if you choose to paraphrase and not even link, and I have to look up the text myself, and your paraphrase is not accurate, it is my job to embarrass you by pointing that out.

“RTWT,” as they say, which is a modern-day acronym for Read The Whole Thing. Go, do it. I’ll wait.

Back already? Here’s a link to Dean Acheson. Julius Rosenberg. The Venona Project itself.

This is not the impression you got when you read the Washington Post story now is it? No, it’s not. The FACT of the matter, FACT in capital letters, is that they were communist spy fuckbags. They were guilty guilty guilty!

Something is wrong with Ms. Althouse’s permalinking, it’s probably The Good Lord’s way of telling her she needs to move her butt off of Blogger. But that which is supposed to be Comment #127, from New “Hussein” Nam, speaks for me:

No, this is the Washington Post. Except for the NY Times, this is the newspaper in the country that sets the tone. The very best journalists in the country are gathered together in these two places to create what are seen as the world’s two best newspapers.

Whenever they do something, it is deliberate. Nothing occurs in the pages of this newspaper without the express consent of its senior editors, people culled from the absolute cream of our nation’s crop.

And so you have to ask yourself … if the cream of our nation’s crop is deliberately mis-characterizing easily check-able facts … what exactly the fuck is really going on in our country?

I mean, who do these people think they’re fooling.

If some podunk fucking law professor in Wisconsin can fact-check their asses and show them to be complete fucking tools without even leaving her wine-soaked veranda, what exactly does the Washington Post think it can get away with?

And yet … they did it. They went ahead and ran this shit.

What does that tell you?

It tells me that they do so with complete fucking disregard for whether they’re caught lying or not. They don’t fucking care. They believe (whether it’s true anymore or not) that what they write BECOMES the truth. [italicized emphasis in original, bold emphasis mine]

Now, to figure out why I’m agreeing so strenuously there is a fair amount of reading for you to do. While you’re chasing off after all those links, you might want to take a breather and watch this:

It is an amateur-ish bio-pic about one Steve Benan, which I called up in order to educate myself. All you’re going to really learn is that young Mr. Benan blogs, and does it for a living. How admirable. And just for the record, although his political leanings are different from mine by a good angle, I agree with pretty much most of what he said about blogging and how it is cleaning up our discussion & thinking about current events…

However, I had to take young Master Benan out to the woodshed on his own blog. For the simplest of reasons, he’s a fucking goddamn craven pussy liar.

I’m wasn’t [whoopsie!] acquainted with the name Steve Benen before, but I am now. You’re going in my Liar File because I know I can’t depend on anything you say.

I included a link to an earlier poster, Algernon, who summarized things thusly:

Once again you state that Rand Paul “opposes the Civil Right Act” [sic]. That isn’t true. To this point, I figured you needed a short phrase, a quick restatement of the case, but this is inaccurate and misleading. He has, specifically, voiced an extreme libertarian view with respect to Title II — he does not oppose the Act in its entirety and you are continually claiming that he does.

The fact that you repeat this over and over is very disappointing. I’ve been reading your blog every day for a long time and this really bugs me.

Let us be fair, this is not exclusively Mr. Benan’s sin. For several days now the “blogosphere” has been covered with the slime and the muck and the ooze of craven lying pussy liars, intent on convincing multitudes that Rand Paul wants all the black folks drinking out of separate fountains and using separate entrances at all the fine eating establishments.

What comes next is not a representation of my fine self as a blogger, but as a consumer of blog feeds, and of news in general: I shall not be putting up with this shit anymore. These are whistle-stop lies in the age of the YouTubes, and as God is my witness I do not know what in the hell you fuckfaces are thinking. Your lies are a hundred and ten years behind the times, maybe a whole lot more than that. There are other bloggers out there.

Seriously…SERIOUSLY…how did you think you’d get away with this shit?

Yes, there is rage here. Rest assured, it is not the rage that comes from wasted time. You would be so humiliated, mortified, embarrassed, if you have one stinking shred of respect for yourselves or for the truth, if you could just catch a glimmering of what a quick and effortless chore it is to catch you at this time-honored tactic of churning out lies that used to work oh so well. Have a care and give it some thought, will you — if your intended victim has his suspicions so aroused, the entire chore is over and done with in the blink of an eye.

Using a black light to check an apartment for cat urine stains, that takes much, much longer.

No, my rage comes from having my intelligence insulted. Good gravy, how stupid you must think we all are!

Stupid, or unconcerned.

This Rand Paul thing is starting to take the form and shape of…actually, it took this form and shape a few days ago now…some good old-fashioned “classic” bigotry. Our left-wingers haven’t been so saintly about this, have they? Not now, not ever. Aw, them uppity black folks are so emotional, we’ll tell them Rand Paul wants to put them back on the plantation and they’ll just believe it. Black people are too stupid to know how to use Google!

Well, they’re not, and I’m not. You really need to drop this, like today. You aren’t planting any new thoughts in anybody’s minds at all. Except that people like you have absolutely zero respect for their readers, regardless of their skin color. Here I’d use the analogy about pissing on shoes and saying that it’s raining, but I don’t want to insult any shoe-pissers out there.

You people should be banished from Internet connections for decades at a time, right along with identity thieves and malware authors. Seriously, I really mean that. Without your “product” enriching our lives, what is the world missing?

Josh Painter says Sarah Palin is “so living inside the White House that they should be charging her rent.” Meheheh.

On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked by host Bob Schieffer to comment on Sarah Palin’s statement on “Fox News Sunday” that the Obama administration has a cozy relationship with Big Oil:

“Sarah Palin was involved in that election, but I don’t think, apparently, was paying a whole lot of attention,” Gibbs said. “I’m almost sure that the oil companies don’t consider the Obama administration a huge ally – we proposed a windfall profits tax when they jacked their oil prices up to charge for gasoline.” “My suggestion to Sarah Palin would be to get slightly more informed as to what’s going on in and around oil drilling in this country,” he added.

Gov. Palin wasted no time in firing back. She tweeted:

“Mr. Gibbs, BP gave over $3.5mill to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with with the largest amount going to Obama”

Moments later, she sent another tweet:

“During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years… Dispute these facts.”

The time has come to say it:

If the Obama administration is the picture of “sophisticated” people, and Sarah Palin is the antithesis, then nobody in their right mind should want to be what Gibbs calls “informed.” It’s obvious what he has in mind doesn’t have quite so much to do with uncovering facts, or committing them to memory, but cherry-picking them.

It isn’t that I think Palin is smarter than Gibbs. But it’s become undeniable that she is generally better prepared for reasoned, logical discussions involving those troublesome things called facts, than anybody who works in this White House on a more official basis. Cherry-picking is, lately, about all any liberal wants to have to do with the facts, and they’re hoisted by their own petard over this again and again and again.

Suggestion for the administration: If you’re going to willingly enter into an antagonistic relationship with the people who live in this country you seek to “rule,” stop living in a West Wing monologue. Put some thought into what the opposition is going to be saying about things, and prepare. Gibbs’ gaffe could only have been committed, here, by someone rigidly accustomed to living and working in a cloister, someone thoroughly unacquainted with real disagreement. It is the kind of error made only by someone surrounded by yes-men. It was a “George Lucas thinks up Jar Jar Binks” type of mistake.

Holy Man’s donations from big oil in general, and BP in particular, was hardly a low profile story. But it comes as no surprise to me at all that there may be some hardcore lefty types, perhaps even some highly placed in our nation’s executive branch, who are entirely unaware of it.

Expect more embarrassing boondoggles to take place before this drama’s done.

Okay, I may as well go ahead and acknowledge it.

The Blog That Nobody Reads has a brand new gadfly…although we don’t know if he/she/it will take on the persistence, incoherence and uselessness of the typical liberal gadfly, so for now let’s just call it a gad-maggot.

In a post called “Oh snap. You got me there,” some proud progressive guy named TBogg who may or may not be the gad-maggot in question, takes note of a provocative piece of artwork that appeared in our pages in which we acknowledged the juvenile level of discourse taking place with regard to the Tea Party movement. Points to TBogg for figuring out (roughly) the meaning behind our funny name, but you can make up your own mind how to grade his various conclusions that germinate from this.

From another one of those blogs with a fancy-schmancy name like Parmenides Surveys The American Experiment At The End of History, meant to convey to the reader that there is deep thoughts and intellectual rigor by the shit-ton to be mulled and savored … until the blogger actually posts something and then, you know: just another dumb-ass with a computer and no social life.

What a devastating attack that would be, if I were still twenty-two.

And an impressive array of likewise-thinking comments, seventeen items in total as of this writing. Not a single coherent thought behind any one of ’em.

I’ve mostly shrugged off the ankle-biting. Partly because I’m not altogether sure why I’m attracting this ridicule for the specific attempt toward thinking in a logical, mature way, like a guy who measured the diameter of the earth before the invention of satellites, planes, et al. Why does this earn scorn? Is it my achievement or lack thereof? Or for merely putting forth the effort?

I’ve maintained for awhile that some of us, a good-sized chunk of us, come from a virtual-other-world, in which one is expected not to put in the effort. My theory is that these are quasi-adults, the weird other species we see before us when children are given every little thing they need or want in life without working for it…and then they mature. You see, there is no need for responsible logical thinking when you have that kind of enviable life. And is it really enviable?

No matter. If TBogg or some among his audience thought more kindly upon this ancient and perhaps dying practice of thinking like a grown-up, perhaps one among them would have figured out the graphic was not my creation, but that of Kini Aloha Guy.

Who at last report was doing a far superior job of bringing the fight to them, compared to what I’d be doing. Well, anyway, I guess you can peruse the pages of tbogg.firedoglake.com if you want to see how people do their blogging when they have social lives…sit on the edge of your chair quivering with suspense as you read about basset hounds getting jealous of each other, and Holy shit I forgot it was Wednesday night and I’m supposed to blog about something. The rest of it us rather mundane left-wing crap. You know the drill: “Oh I do not like this thing over here. Here is a link. Help me make fun of it.” Lather, rinse, repeat.

Exit question, and it’s a rather ancient one: What is their big problem with freedom & liberty, anyway? Is that like the axe-murderer boyfriend who says “if I can’t have you no one else can have you either”?

…from the ass-end point-of-view of the train.

And how was your day?

Hat tip to Boortz.

Hat tip to Buck.