Well, good.

Terrorists are probing America for weak spots. Once they succeed, they’ll move into high gear on this. Actually, the very reason they’re checking out our weak spots is because, shark-like, they smelled blood on the water in the first place.

The estimates that 5,000 barrels per day are being let loose in the Gulf of Mexico, may be vastly understated.

A little girl told the First Lady, right out there in front of God and everybody, that her mother doesn’t have papers.

In 2009, for every three dollars in tax revenue our government collected, it spent five.

The President of another country came to our Congress and gave a speech. He singled out one of our states and unloaded a whole bunch of crap all over it. He was not boiled in oil for this. He wasn’t yanked off stage, he wasn’t even booed off stage. Quite to the contrary, one of our two major political parties — the one in power right now — cheered wildly.

Meanwhile, our Attorney General, at last report, still hasn’t read the Arizona law he so vociferously criticizes. Our Homeland Security Secretary also hasn’t “reviewed it in detail.” This is our egghead administration…our Englightened Ones. Their coronation was supposed to signal once and for all that it’s pronounced NU-CLE-AR, and their wise policies would make us all wonderful and happy. Well, how much can their opinions be worth if they aren’t based on fact?

President Obama is replacing His Director of National Intelligence.

Should I even go into the hot new “scientific” debate about whether the planet is cooking or freezing to death?

There is an awful lot of news out there. I make it a point to crack open Memeorandum at least once a day so I can stay up to date not only on what’s going on, but on what “they” think is particularly worthy of extended discussion and analysis.

In response to the natural question “who exactly is ‘they’,” I cannot provide an answer. What is ironic is that this makes the nameless faceless “they” a lot more important, not less so. Someone is grasping for a whole lot of power, and succeeding at getting it.

See, whoever this “they” is, “they” think the one thing that is truly deserving of extended analysis is this: Rand Paul’s position on the Civil Rights Act that was signed into law when he was one year old. And not the senate candidate’s real position on it, oh no: But his ostensible position. How it could be interpreted. The faceless nameless “they” is making sure we’re all up to speed on the wild, fragile, wild-ass-guess ruminations, interpretations and inferences of yet another faceless nameless “they.”

Now if you’re not a lazy, casual consumer of news, the meaning of this is unmistakable: Rand Paul has just become a threat. Once a Republican has become a threat, we have this informal tradition that all of the printing presses and all of the airwaves and all of the web servers have to be filled with whispering. He will be incompetent or he will be evil, perhaps both. Typically, the way we decide this is with the “Pearl Harbor Rule”: If the Republican was born before the attack on Pearl Harbor, he is evil incarnate like Jesse Helms or Dick Cheney; if he was born afterward he’s a dope like George W. Bush or Sarah Palin. It’s all about fear. We need to scare the brittle man-bashing females with daddy issues into thinking the country is about to be run by their parents, we need to scare the minority advocacy groups into thinking the place is about to be taken over by the KKK. Or, we need to scare the snooty, condescending, phony-baloney intellectual atheists into thinking it’s going to be transformed into a theocracy, under the tutelage of some moron who can’t even spell the word “dinosaur” — which, by the way, he’s convinced was lumbering around 4,000 years ago doing beast-of-burden work for Fred Flintstone.

Rand Paul was born well after Pearl Harbor, yet somehow the test has been twisted around. The best way to fight him is to portray him as a racist, not as a dimbulb. I guess that just goes to demonstrate the passage of time.

James Taranto opines on the non-issue:

Taken at face value, the question itself–How would you have voted if you had been in the Senate as an infant?–is silly. It is a reasonable question only if it is understood more broadly, as an inquiry into Paul’s political philosophy. The question within the question is: How uncompromising are you in your adherence to small-government principles?

Paul gave his answer: Pretty darn uncompromising–uncompromising enough to take a position that is not only politically embarrassing but morally dubious by his own lights, as evidenced by this transcript from the Courier-Journal interview, provided by the left-wing site ThinkProgress.org:

Interviewer: But under your philosophy, it would be OK for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?

Paul: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part — and this is the hard part about believing in freedom — is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example — you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things…It’s the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.

Again, Paul could have given a “straight” answer to the question–a flat “no”–that made clear his personal disapproval of discrimination while evading what was really a question about his political philosophy. Far from being evasive, Paul has shown himself to be both candid and principled to a fault.

We do mean to a fault. In this matter, Paul seems to us to be overly ideological and insufficiently mindful of the contingencies of history. Although we are in accord with his general view that government involvement in private business should be kept to a minimum, in our view the Civil Rights Act’s restrictions on private discrimination were necessary in order to break down a culture of inequality that was only partly a matter of oppressive state laws. On the other hand, he seeks merely to be one vote of 100 in the Senate. An ideologically hardheaded libertarian in the Senate surely would do the country more good than harm.

I’m not sure why it’s a fault to believe in the First Amendment, and to keep standing up for it when the establishment intelligentsia comes after you for doing so. And I’m thoroughly lost on why Paul is the one on the defensive here. Who are all these people who find fault with what he said? Don’t they believe in free speech and free enterprise? Or do they believe in it only to a certain point? They think government should interfere with how a private business is run? In what other scenarios is this permissible? Do they recognize a line, and if so, are they involved in moving that line? Do they tolerate someone else moving the line?

Half a century ago it was a Woolworth’s lunch counter, in the mid 1990’s it was breastfeeding. Does the business manager have anything to say about anything, ever? Are all businesses merely subsidiaries of the all-powerful glorious federal government?

Must all ethical conundrums be resolved through federal law? Should we keep legislating and legislating until we all think the same way about everything?

Those questions, in my view, are what we should be asking; his primary victory notwithstanding, I see Paul as less of a newsworthy item, far less of a threat, than those who seek to criticize him. After all, Rand Paul has merely won a nomination. He may very well never be seated in the United States Senate. And even if he is, as Taranto points out, he’ll be one of a hundred. If he’s rigid and uncompromising as that one-out-of a-hundred, what of it? Isn’t it a logical contradiction to insist that all hundred senators must be middle-of-the-road fair-weather-friend wafflers, for the sake of moderation?

Contrasted with the younger Paul, the people who are deciding that this is some kind of a scandal, that it is worthy of more attention than the fact that the current administration’s decisions about state laws are based on a whole-lotta-nuthin’, are making their “policies” right freakin’ now. They do this by declaring what is a scandal, what is not, and that we should all fall in line and be concerned about this thing but not that thing.

We cannot unilaterally decide as individuals whether they’ll succeed at that or not. But we can certainly decide as individuals whether they’ll be met with any resistance. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that this faceless nameless “they” is not used to meeting up with any.

Yeah, that’s not good. Girlfriend murmured something about this to me as she came to bed last night.

A shoplifter at a Walmart store in Folsom stabbed a manager as he tried to take back the stolen merchandise, police said.

The scuffle took place Thursday afternoon at the store on the 1000 block of Riley Street.

Folsom police said the attacker ran across Glenn Drive and onto a bike trail.

The manager walked across the street to Folsom Fire Station 35, where he was treated and eventually transported with unknown injuries.

Folsom police officers were searching a landscaped area near the main entrance to the store Thursday evening.

The attacker is wanted for robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and other charges, police said.

Yeah I know, it’s Walmart where all the riff raff hang out. Nothing to see here.

That really isn’t the situation at all. I know this piece of space well. It’s 3.7 miles from my front door by bike, across the street from our local post office. Wally-World and the fire station form a sort of archway dividing a thriving business district from an upscale residential full of houses we’ve seriously prospected at one time or another. A hundred yards around the corner is the park where we took my son when he was a toddler, and across from that, the other park where I taught him to catch a ball.

No neighborhood deserves to be terrorized, of course. But at the same time it’s a real sock in the gut seeing a community like Wholesome-Folsom, which has worked so hard throughout so many years to be among the very best places you can think about raising kids, get all stabby.

Glad to see the manager went and sought medical assistance on his own. We drifted off to sleep hearing that he’d been “stabbed repeatedly” and not knowing what to think about that.

They’re suffering from a Rodney Dangerfield problem, can’t get no respect (hat tip to Cas).

When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition.

But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping.

A member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Saudi religious police known locally as the Hai’a, asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another, as it is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix.

For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop.

According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.

Old Iron thinks this is hilarious.

Me, I’m just waiting for the same thing to happen here. It’s just too bad we don’t have any “virtue police” who strut around begging for an ass-kicking.

Or do we (hat tip to Boortz)?

Yes I know these are kids and I shouldn’t be hoping they get beaten up, and I also see it is a parody. But we do have “virtue police” of our own.

It would seem both countries are bit overdue in the “civil disobedience” department. It would be nice if a tree hugger, at any age, started waggling a finger at someone for…not littering, I’m with ’em on the littering thing, I hate litterers…but something altogether acceptable. Like having a dorm room fridge. Or drinking out of a styrofoam cup. And then, how did Old Iron put it? Get his ass handed to him by a girl in a Ninja outfit.

It would make my day. Just sayin’.

19. Is Europe all that & a bag of chips?

That’s from my list of twenty-five questions…that, uh…well, I never did come up with a good name for that list. It’s a list of questions that, if I know how you’re going to answer one, I know with something approaching perfect certainty how you’re going to answer all of the others.

Cylarz is unequivocal:

No. What kind of stupid question is that? Before they were the continent of socialism and immorality, they were the continent of tyranny and petty grievances among one another. Our forebears came here to get away from all of the nonsense going on there.

There is something about the way European political leaders talk that just sets my teeth on edge. And it isn’t the sound of their voices (although there is that, too). There’s something in their consonant-punctuated resonance that produces a sharp pain…whereas when His Holiness President Soetoro drones on with His uhs and His ers and His “let me be clear” and His “make no mistake” and His “for far too long we have”…all I can report is a dull ache. The euro-pansy produces a special agony where Chairman Zero brings only monotony.

I think it is this: They seem to deliberately confuse the objective with the subjective. They speak of priorities as if the priorities have some timeless quality to them, as if it has always been this way and shall always be this way as long as the rivers flow and the rocks sit around; but what they really mean is “while I am in office.” And it is to be implicitly understood that the latter of those is what they really mean. It is as if they are trapped in that revolving door of proving what wonderful decent people they are, and then thirty second later, proving it all over again. European or not, that has always bugged me.

And not without reason. It leads to bad policy. Their crime is perpetuating it, ours is refusing to pay attention:

You might think that Europe’s economic turmoil would inject a note of urgency into America’s budget debate. After all, high government deficits and debt are the roots of Europe’s problems, and these same problems afflict the United States. But no. Most Americans, starting with the nation’s political leaders, dismiss what’s happening in Europe as a continental drama with little relevance to them.

What Americans resolutely avoid is a realistic debate about the desirable role of government. How big should it be? Should it favor the old or the young? Will social spending crowd out defense spending? Will larger government dampen economic growth through higher deficits or taxes? No one engages this debate, because if rigorously conducted, it would disappoint both liberals and conservatives.

Victor Davis Hanson writes of “The Other European Volcano” that has resulted from Europeans failing to rigorously conduct this debate…and we still enjoy the luxury of choosing to pay attention, or wallow in ignorance.

Over here, we were often lectured by “progressives” that almost everything Europe did was better — subsidized mass transit, free college tuition, extended maternity leave, early retirement, and “soft-power” diplomacy. Indeed, Obama’s presidential campaign was in some senses a stealthy referendum on Europeanization. And once he was elected, his moves to raise taxes, expand government, expropriate some private industries, run up exponentially increasing deficits, subsidize environmentalism, and triangulate with enemies and allies abroad were European Union to the core.

Few wanted to listen when it was pointed out — well before the Greek meltdown — that on key questions of demography and immigration, the future ofthe European Union was bleak. The very idea that, in historical terms, socialism , agnosticism, pacifism, and hedonism were not only interrelated and synergistic, but also suicidal for civilization, was considered crackpot.

Want a eulogy? One that pulls no punches? One that really lowers the boom on all the nonsense, shedding every last scintilla of diplomacy? Look no further than George Will:

“The coining of money,” said William Blackstone more than two centuries ago, “is in all states the act of the sovereign power.”

But the EU is neither a state nor sovereign enough to enforce its rules: No eurozone nation is complying with the EU requirement that deficits not exceed 3 percent of GDP.

The EU has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament no one other than its members wants to have power, a capital of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist, and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring. The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction — that “Europe” has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.

The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration. Gone are the colorful bills of particular nations, featuring pictures of national heroes of statecraft, culture and the arts, pictures celebrating unique national narratives. With the euro, 16 nations have said goodbye to all that. The bills depict nonexistent windows, gateways and bridges. They are from … nowhere, which is what “utopia” means.

That’s a-gonna leave a mark.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering which of those you should pop open and read top-to-bottom, I would recommend the last of the three, followed by the second-to-last. Messrs. Will and Hanson are writing about a grave subject, perhaps the surest destroyer of civilizations in all of human history, which is the relaxation of fiscal discipline. Europe, now several centuries into the old sport of confusing the subjective with the objective, is banishing failure, eliminating real-world consequences from the sustenance of red ink. “No nation will be allowed to sink beneath the weight of its recklessness” is how Mr. Will puts it.

But without consequences, what arresting force is there? Has any living thinking organism, be it a nation or an individual, ever called a stop to the writing of more and more checks without sparing a thought for the checkbook register? It’s just like any other measurement in mathematical theory: Without a meaningful zero point, it’s all relative. And there will always be some items dangled in front of the check-writer, begging to be bought. They’ll always be there; and we’ll always “need” every single last one of ’em.

The zero point has been banished to oblivion. And so the money will have to freely flow. It would be something tantamount to treason to suggest anything else; and without a doubt, it would place the speaker’s wonderfulness in serious question.

Failure. Universally available, and free. No person, enterprise or industry is “Too Big To Fail” — ever. Failure is regarded as something that is always possible, to be avoided at all costs, but never to be ignored or sidestepped once it is earned. Depriving a man of the failure he has justly earned, is rightfully seen as just as deplorable as depriving him of wages he has justly earned.

Item #4 on my list of 42 definitions of a strong society.

This is the problem with Europe. They are trying to eradicate failure, and in so doing, jeopardizing whatever ability they might’ve once had, to be strong.

Dr. Sowell, who is a national treasure at any age:

One of the many fashionable notions that have caught on among some of the intelligentsia is that old people have “a duty to die,” rather than become a burden to others.

This is more than just an idea discussed around a seminar table. Already the government-run medical system in Britain is restricting what medications or treatments it will authorize for the elderly. Moreover, it seems almost certain that similar attempts to contain runaway costs will lead to similar policies when American medical care is taken over by the government.

Make no mistake about it, letting old people die is a lot cheaper than spending the kind of money required to keep them alive and well. If a government-run medical system is going to save any serious amount of money, it is almost certain to do so by sacrificing the elderly.
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Talk about “a duty to die” made me think back to my early childhood in the South, during the Great Depression of the 1930s. One day, I was told that an older lady — a relative of ours — was going to come and stay with us for a while, and I was told how to be polite and considerate towards her.

She was called “Aunt Nance Ann,” but I don’t know what her official name was or what her actual biological relationship to us was. Aunt Nance Ann had no home of her own. But she moved around from relative to relative, not spending enough time in any one home to be a real burden.

At that time, we didn’t have things like electricity or central heating or hot running water. But we had a roof over our heads and food on the table — and Aunt Nance Ann was welcome to both.

Poor as we were, I never heard anybody say, or even intimate, that Aunt Nance Ann had “a duty to die.”
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It is today, in an age when homes have flat-panelled TVs, and most families eat in restaurants regularly or have pizzas and other meals delivered to their homes, that the elites — rather than the masses — have begun talking about “a duty to die.”

Back in the days of Aunt Nance Ann, nobody in our family had ever gone to college. Indeed, none had gone beyond elementary school. Apparently you need a lot of expensive education, sometimes including courses on ethics, before you can start talking about “a duty to die.”

Early this morning I posted a list of twenty-five questions that reveal…something. Something about the individuals that answer those questions in one way or another. I boldly asserted that if I knew how a fellow would answer one or two of these questions, I could divine with great certainty how he would respond to the others. Question #11 is “Does the inner decency of a people, or lack thereof, show through in the laws passed by their governments?”

I note, with great interest, that the people who would answer in the affirmative to this particular question — seem to unerringly support new rules for our civilization, that do not manifest or encourage anything close to what I would refer to as “inner decency.”

So I’m in the middle of a crazy day…a “No Meetings, and Thank God” day. I haul my chicken rice bowl back to my desk and, in the middle of a compile, I bring up Gerard’s page to see what’s going on. There’s this video embed I make a note of watching that evening…and then at Joan’s place I see exactly the same thing. I just glanced at a couple of comments before I realized I had to watch this right away. So out came the headphones, and I hit play.

Oh, Sweet Jesus. This happened in The Land of the Turnpike? Do tell?

Yes, let it become a trend.

Ah, props to the radio guys, or whoever picks out their “best of” cuts for the weekend. I turned on the bathroom radio not knowing for sure what I was gonna get…maybe an infommercial about some wonder herb that would flush out my colon and make my dick bigger, maybe financial advice about adjustable rate mortgages, I swear I saw a UFO back in ’53, pesticides to beat all pesticides. Well something went right, I got information I could actually use: The back-story behind what they were talking about Wednesday morning.

Might as well start there: Jack got kicked off a jury. It must be exquisitely frustrating. (I wouldn’t know, the one time I burned up an entire day on the entrance exam, I was selected as an alternate, and then the primary got kicked off, so my wasted day was a prelude to a wasted week.) He got kicked off by ONE question: That one question is #21 on the list, below, that I built up around it. He said “choices,” and the defense attorney didn’t like his answer so out he went.

I approve of the question but I disapprove of how it was used. I think it should be asked of everyone in the courtroom, regardless of what’s being heard whether it’s criminal or civil. And then the judge should kick outta there anyone who answers the opposite way. Lawyers should lose their licenses over it. And blow right on through there, every last man, right down to the bailiff.

My “D’Jever Notice?” moment has to do with all of the twenty-five questions. They, outside of #21, are my own creation…I had been doing some thinking about this after Wednesday’s show, which was quite thought provoking. My Dry Cleaning lady had heard it as well and we had quite the talk about it.

Anyway, I have learned this over a number of years about people. If you find me a complete stranger, and tell me how he answered to one of these questions, I can predict with amazing accuracy how he will respond to another of the questions. And with that prediction confirmed, I can pretty much guarantee how he will reply to the other twenty-three.

1. Should we use the tax code to punish people?
2. Should our leaders be representatives of what the rest of us are, or should they be better than the rest of us?
3. Should anyone in our country work under a salary cap? Should we perhaps have a universal salary cap?
4. Do borders matter?
5. Clarity or agreement?
6. Does the minority opinion count?
7. If “there’s just something about him” that impresses you in a positive way, do you want to figure out why before he earns your support?
8. Does the wealth gap matter?
9. Security or prosperity?
10. Can we end poverty and famine? What about war, can we get rid of that someday?
11. Does the inner decency of a people, or lack thereof, show through in the laws passed by their governments?
12. Is a right really a right, if it costs someone else something?
13. If your kids grow up never learning how to do what you had to do because technology has made it unnecessary — that’s harmless, right?
14. Is it alright to major in a discipline that is highly unlikely to get you a job?
15. Should it matter how many men, women, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, straights, gays, handicapped are seated in Congress or the Supreme Court?
16. Is empathy important in a judge?
17. Is it alright with you that your daughter picked her current boyfriend because “he makes me laugh”?
18. Are businesses more likely than government agencies to screw people over?
19. Is Europe all that & a bag of chips?
20. Is a real man in touch with his feelings?
21. What got you where you are today, be it up or down: circumstances, or your decisions?
22. Should we let illegal immigrants in, and leave them them to continue doing the jobs Americans won’t do?
23. Should we worry at all about screwing up the economy by means of our various social-services safety nets, or are they inherently harmless?
24. Would you feel comfortable leaving your house, or your car, or your pets, or your kids in the care of the politicians who have most often received your support?
25. As we learn more about evolution, will it ultimately explain everything about every living thing?

From Kini Aloha Guy.

Yukozuna!

Good. This should reflect poorly on all the race-baiters and they richly deserve it.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who has been critical of Arizona’s new immigration law, said Thursday he hasn’t yet read the law and is going by what he’s read in newspapers or seen on television.

Mr. Holder is conducting a review of the law, at President Obama’s request, to see if the federal government should challenge it in court. He said he expects he will read the law by the time his staff briefs him on their conclusions.

“I’ve just expressed concerns on the basis of what I’ve heard about the law. But I’m not in a position to say at this point, not having read the law, not having had the chance to interact with people are doing the review, exactly what my position is,” Mr. Holder told the House Judiciary Committee.

This weekend Mr. Holder told NBC’s “Meet the Press” program that the Arizona law “has the possibility of leading to racial profiling.” He had earlier called the law’s passage “unfortunate,” and questioned whether the law was unconstitutional because it tried to assume powers that may be reserved for the federal government.

Rep. Ted Poe, who had questioned Mr. Holder about the law, wondered how he could have those opinions if he hadn’t yet read the legislation.

“It’s hard for me to understand how you would have concerns about something being unconstitutional if you haven’t even read the law,” the Texas Republican told the attorney general.

The object of the exercise, aside from the instant-democrat-voters and the cheap labor, is anarchy. Every good destroyer of civilizations knows the first step is to take the illegal and make it kinda-sorta-a-little-bit-legal. This whole thing with skin color is just a diversion from what’s being done.

It was not quite so long ago when President Obama, Holder’s boss, presented a turkey of a health care plan to Congress…or to be more precise about it, Congress presented it to Him. There were all kinds of objections against it much more valid than the one about the Arizona law leading to racial profiling. Obama’s response was to give a zillion and one wonderful speeches, each one more impressive than the last…which is to say President Obama inhaled and exhaled during this time. In His speeches He regularly called to Republicans to “come up with ideas of your own” if they could. Which they had done, actually.

But it interests me that I’m not hearing that kind of rhetoric now. Arizona is being invaded and Arizona has given up waiting for the feds to enforce the laws; they’ve taken the job on themselves for the sake of gettin’ it done. We hear all this talk about “could lead to racial profiling” and I’m not hearing too often of anyone saying “Hey! If you don’t think this is the right answer, come up with some answers of your own!”

I find that interesting. Isn’t that just the logical inquiry, assuming these critics are to be taken seriously?

Update 5/15/10: FrankJ comments as only he can:

Eric Holder is really sure the Arizona bill is a bad bill worthy of condemnation even though he never read it. It’s kinda like with the Democrats saying how super important it was to pass the health care bill even though none of them knew what was in it.

So why don’t Democrats read bills? I can think of two possibilities:

1. They have magical psychic powers and can know what’s in a bill without reading it.

2. They’re illiterate.

The politicians often argue they’re just too busy to read all these bills they’re voting on and commenting on. Busy doing what, though? Don’t they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to make laws and enforce laws? Wouldn’t you think part of that generous salary would be maybe reading those laws? What exactly do they do all day to earn their money? They already have these useless jobs where just sit around and talk and occasionally vote; is it really so much to ask they do some honest work and read these important bills? The Arizona one they’re all freaking out about isn’t even that long.

Maybe we should write all our bills in Spanish. Then we can hire illegal aliens to read them since apparently that’s yet another one of those jobs Americans won’t do.

Daphne is feeling homeowner pains.

I can’t believe that, in one year’s time, this is exactly where I’m going to be sitting if everything goes well. I’ve sat out this game for a long time now, mostly because of a wretched mistake I made in my early twenties, but now that we’re forty-something apartment rats it’s time to get on the stick and get back into the swing of things. The only way out is through.

But oh my goodness, does this rant of hers bring back some memories.

Wall Street Journal:

The findings suggest that public opinion has hardened in advance of the 2010 elections, making it tougher for Democrats to translate their legislative successes, or a tentatively improving U.S. economy, into gains among voters.

Republicans have reassembled their coalition by reconnecting with independents, seniors, blue-collar voters, suburban women and small town and rural voters—all of whom had moved away from the party in the 2006 elections, in which Republicans lost control of the House. Those voter groups now favor GOP control of Congress.

“This data is what it looks like when Republicans assemble what for them is a winning coalition,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff, who conducts the survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart.

He said the Republican alliance appeared to be “firmer and more substantial” than earlier in the year.

Mr. Hart noted that, to his own party’s detriment, a series of major news events and legislative achievements—including passage of a sweeping health-care law, negotiating a nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia and making a quick arrest in the Times Square terrorism attempt—has not measurably increased support for Democrats. “A lot has happened,” he said, “but the basic dynamic of the 2010 elections seems almost set in concrete.”

A big shift is evident among independents, who at this point in the 2006 campaign favored Democratic control of Congress rather than Republican control, 40% to 24%. In this poll, independents favored the GOP, 38% to 30%.

It would seem someone has “squandered” some “goodwill.”

The pattern will continue because of, not in spite of, “passage of a sweeping health-care law, negotiating a nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia and making a quick arrest in the Times Square terrorism attempt.” The health care bill is a turkey, disarmament is nothing but ostrich diplomacy, and the whole Times Square thing is a scandal that ought to involve a massive purge from our government’s highest offices and maybe a guillotine. Once again terrorists were thwarted by their own inept bomb-making.

We are so lucky to have Obama be our President right now! Really, we are. If we have to have Him, I’m so glad we’ve got Him when the terrorists seem to have started sucking at their jobs.

I can just see the terrorist boss right now, pacing to and fro in his cave in Pakistan or wherever: “Come on you shitheads, we’ve only got six months left before our window of opportunity closes! Let’s get hold of some decent fuses here and use ’em right!”

Back in ’94, I made a special point to bring in an extra special dinner on election night so I could watch the returns come in and thoroughly enjoy myself. This year, I think I’m going to call a caterer. No matter how it turns out, we need to look past it, onward into the future and ask ourselves the question that really matters: How do we make sure we never need to learn this lesson again? How do we talk to our young people, with their dwindling attention spans, and get the message across to them that government does not exist to give you an emotional high or to keep that high sustained; it is there to butt out where it doesn’t belong, to make responsible decisions where it does belong, and that freedom and opportunity are much more important than more & more nanny state programs?

Obviously, the first step is going to have to be a conservative coalition that sticks to its knitting, and doesn’t make the mistake of acting like a rancid rotten incumbent power when it’s been an incumbent power for awhile. But you can’t stop there; all of the blame doesn’t go there. The voters have to take some of the blame.

MediaMatters has put together a list of right wing bloggers and pundits who have actually deigned to notice that Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the President’s nominee to succeed Supreme Court associate justice John Paul Stevens, is a frump-a-dump.

The Blog That Nobody Reads didn’t make the cut. Oh well.

Our concern is not so much with the Solicitor General as an individual, but with the trend overall. And this, we submit, is something that should concern everybody…especially career-minded women who happen to be gorgeous. The pattern would seem to indicate they need to stop wasting their time, at least with regard to any career endeavor adjudicated by a progressive. It seems there is a memorandum somewhere forbidding career advancement for any female endowed with as much pulchritude as Sandra Day O’Connor. It’s outta the question.

There is some measure of twisted, inexplicable pride wrapped up in ignoring the obvious when it’s right in front of your face, and has been paraded before you for decades. Or, as our resident gadfly Arthurstone says…

That would be a perfect slogan for liberals. “We are decent people because we ignore facts.”

And that’s why I consider this to be a serious issue even though I really don’t give a fig whether the most powerful female progressives in our government look like Alyssa Milano. The existence of the “uglier than O’Connor” memorandum should be proven or disproven…since that would be discrimination…something progressives say they oppose. But if such a memorandum does not exist, then Arthurstone’s ignorance is metaphorical for something else; it’s a manifestation of something larger and more dangerous.

Just go shopping sometime — not at Wal-Mart though. Someplace else. Look at the women you find there. How many are ugly? How many are babes? I’d put Sarah Palin at about the eightieth percentile, meaning one-in-five are even hotter. (Sorry Sarah.) How many look like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Donna Shalala, Janet “System Worked Perfectly” Napolitano, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor? Maybe one in four. Our Secretary of State may be the beauty contest winner, so let’s make her the waterline. It rises to one in three.

If you were to task me to fill all these positions with women who were qualified for them, without regard to how they looked, I’d never be able to stack them with women who uglier than two thirds of the general population. I wouldn’t be able to do it. Not unless I was really, really trying.

See how Palin’s been treated? I don’t think that’s because of a Couric interview. I don’t think it’s because she’s a conservative or even quite so much because she kept Trig. What you’re seeing, in Alaska, is the attitude our hardcore liberals have against pretty women. An appealing female countenance is a form of success and they cannot stand success. Well, you look at Kagan and see what you want, but that’s what I see.

I would never be able to go out in that shopping mall and find a woman who looks like Elena Kagan. So yes, you’re right Media Matters, the remarks could be called crude and classless. If they came from someone in a position of real power rather than from a bunch of shock jocks, I might join you in demanding some kind of apology. But if you’re trying to convince me that noticing the trend is indicative of some ugly personality defect, that this is the picture of a mindset we do not want making important decisions about things…sorry, you march in that parade alone.

Arthur has shown where this other kind of thinking, this “count me among those who ignore the facts” thinking, comes off the rails. If you have apathy, and you want to advertise that you have it so people might be led to believe you’re decent, then you have to care about people noticing your apathy. Which means you have to lose it. You have to become a walking breathing lie, you have to become the opposite of what you are pretending to be. And that is why, IMO, progressives seem to be entrenched in this habit of hiring and promoting ugly women. They are eager to put up meaningless symbols that ostensibly show what wonderful and decent human beings they are.

Probably to compensate for something. Yes, just let that thought percolate awhile.

Update: I see Harvey didn’t make the cut either. He should’ve. What’s the deal, MM? You’re getting sloppy.

Congratulations to blogsister Cassy for getting hitched over the weekend. And by the way, she’s once again reading Feministing so you don’t have to. Where harpy gargoyle and ex-Edwards-blogger Amanda Marcotte is being interviewed. Just let the words wash over your ears and eyes…

For me, women’s rights and liberalism are, in my mind, pretty hard to unhook, and it fascinates and amuses me that you see conservatives complain that feminists are always with the democrats, as if there’s ever going to be a form of conservative feminism. You look at someone like Sarah Palin trying to wear that mantle, and you see the flaw in trying to be a so-called conservative feminist, which is that you’re not very pro-women. Women need things for equality that tailor very neatly to the general liberal agenda: Clean environment, universal healthcare, civil rights, individual rights, bodily autonomy, things like that. I fail to see how the two agendas are all that different. The flipside, of course, is that most liberals I know, whether they call themselves feminists or not, tend to agree with the general feminist goals. The only real opposition that you see to those goals is coming from the right.

…The healthcare battles were truly awful, because Bart Stupak was allowed to run around on television, portraying himself as some kind of morally upstanding icon, whereas, what I was seeing was an idiot who didn’t understand the issues and was being duped by a bunch of Republicans. And I saw no investigation whatsoever into the fact that he had all these connections to Republicans that he wasn’t really talking about – except on The Rachel Maddow Show. That was probably the thing that has made me angriest because it nearly brought the healthcare debate to a close. And I think it’s hilarious that he’s retiring and thinks he’s the target of harassment now. He should take a day at an abortion clinic and find out what it’s really like to be a target of harassment and abuse. And of course, the thing with Stupak is that most of the threatening emails and phone callers that he was getting were from the right. They don’t take well to a perceived betrayal at all.

What I think is hilarious and infuriating and makes me LOL and grind my teeth together and let loose a big ol’ gut chuckle and get angrier than Marvin the Martian and tickles my funnybone and chaps my hide, is this awkward-beyond-any-description working-in of “It makes me (some superlative term) angry” and “I find amusing.” I grew up in a college town and I’m well acquainted with this. There is no intentional irony going on there; the contradiction speaks to the general thoughtlessness of it. It’s a cliche the college kids toss into their monologues after they’ve been told a few times too many how unbelievably smart they are. This makes me sizzle with fury; this makes me laugh out loud. I find this to be unforgivable, I find this to be comical.

If you hear these words phonetically, you understand the situation. Four-five-and-six-syllable words that real people don’t use, like “stereotypical” and “patriarchy” and “heteronormative” just slide off the tongue. Each consonant carefully articulated, but the entire overwhelming syllable-sequence is over and done with in a heartbeat, like rapid fire from a machine gun. It is well rehearsed. Know why? Because the dedicated feminist talks like this all day.

As to the nugget of thought that goes with this tsunami of syllables: Some of the aborted babies are female. Just that one fact by itself, entirely brings down her house-of-cards. Back to Womyn’s Studies 101 classroom with ya.

As Cassy points out, what we call “feminism” today does not equal what feminism was at the beginning. People like Amanda have been allowed to re-define it too much. Think about it: If I were intent on molding and shaping our modern society so that women were more expendable and had less of a role to fill, what would be the issues most worthy of my support?

Well, I would try to push a lot of abortions, which stops women from taking on what two thirds of us now say, and have said for awhile, is a woman’s most important role. Just like our modern feminists. And, I would work like the dickens to sell gay marriage so that I could re-define the institution as something that doesn’t necessarily have to include a woman. Just like our modern feminists. What would be my third-most-important issue? I dunno; I’d care most about those two. What’s their third-most-important issue? I dunno that either. Lately, most of the “feminist” outbursts that make their way to me, concern one of those two. “Environmental” stuff maybe? Marcotte specifically identified “Clean environment, universal healthcare…” So okay, if it can be used as a euphemism for turning a thriving beacon of prosperity and free trade into yet another filthy socialist mudpuddle, she’s for it. So if you’re in her camp, you want to do things that make women less important in our culture, you want to sell socialism, and outside of those there really isn’t an awful lot to it other than being generally unpleasant and nasty.

Thing I Know #322. Feminism exists today to make women disposable; it attempts this by confining their energies to those specialties a man could pursue just as capably.

I have never entirely understood this. They pressure girls and young women to “pursue a career” when the girls and young women don’t really want to; they browbeat everyone within shouting distance into believing the girls and young women can run a department, or run a fifty-yard-dash, better and faster than the dudes. But when you think on it for awhile — what of it? If all the women all over the place dropped out and concentrated on mothering, we’d find a man to run the department. We’d find a guy who can run the fifty-yard-dash. Even if the best and fastest woman is superior to the best and fastest guy. What, on the other hand, is to happen if all women abandon mothering? I can’t get pregnant. I can’t give birth. Once the child is born, I can’t mother it. We’re supposed to be finding ways to make women important, respected, valued. Feminism’s actions are in direct conflict with the stated goal. They should’ve worked to bring women this much-valued “choice” — along with the responsibilities that go with it — and then left well enough alone. Instead, it’s more like they brought women the choice and then pressured them regarding what choice to make, and now, as Cassy pointed out, the whole “movement” is nothing but a perversion of what it once was.

Regarding the socialist bumper sticker issues, if you do buy into that stuff, there’s another problem with what Marcotte said up there: Men and boys need a “clean environment” too, and we have health care needs too. If there was anything left of her argument after that earlier broadside fusillade, this last one would finish it off.

This is the problem with modern feminism. It dwells far too much on the negative, and as Marcotte demonstrates, people who devote themselves to it don’t have to walk too far down that toxic road before they can’t think straight anymore.

For those who need to be told…

Parents of future warriors, be you conservative, liberal or somewhere in between: Would you not agree with me that, perhaps, this is taking things just a bit too far?

A proposal to grant medals for “courageous restraint” to troops in Afghanistan who avoid deadly force at a risk to themselves has generated concern among U.S. soldiers and experts who worry it could embolden enemy fighters and confuse friendly forces.

Lt. Col. Edward Sholtis, a spokesman for Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who commands NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that no final decision has been made on the award, which is the brainchild of British Maj. Gen. Nick Carter.

“The idea is being reviewed at Headquarters ISAF,” Sholtis said. “The idea is consistent with our approach. Our young men and women display remarkable courage every day, including situations where they refrain from using lethal force, even at risk to themselves, in order to prevent possible harm to civilians…That restraint is an act of discipline and courage not much different than those seen in combat actions.”

Oh, but it is different.

I understand what you’re trying to do here Col. Sholtis, and I have no doubt that your movement is recruiting many who display far better judgment when they make other decisions. And I’ll readily agree that when our troops do have this courage and it makes a difference in the outcome, that yes that’s a more preferable outcome at least in the short term.

But honoring it with a medal, specifically to encourage our side to reach that outcome more often? That fails to take into account the situations in which they’ve been placed; what their five senses tell them about it. Also, there are some enemies involved in this little skirmish and the message this sends to them is not helpful. Doesn’t a two-star think of such things? I would’ve hoped that someone would bring it up.

Screw you guys. If my lad is headed into your little theater in the years ahead, I’m raising him to take care o’ business; that if he’s ever in a situation where it’s him or the other guy, then sorry but it’s gonna be the other guy. I’m a capital-D Dad, and I figure that’s my job.

But I thank you for helping to decide what we’ll be doing this weekend. We can do some target shooting, get some fresh air, have a man-to-man talk about things, and when it’s time to head in we’ve got the entire collection of Rambo sitting on our DVD shelf, right next to Patton.

Like Grandma Freeberg used to say: “My boys aren’t cannon fodder.”

Hat tip to FrankJ.

Something tells me “Kidzmom” and I will both be able to relate to this one.

Hat tip to Viral Footage, via Linkiest.

Washington Post: Impact of War:

A cassette tape is waiting for me. It sits in a small bubble mailer on my night table. It stares at me when I walk in the room; it beckons to me as I walk out. But still it sits there and waits. It is the last thing. The last thing he sent to me from “over there.”

There is no note inside, just a regular old-school cassette tape. The outside of the envelope is addressed in his handwriting. “Love, Poppa Bear” is written on the back. I’ve opened it to look inside, but I haven’t yet drawn up the courage to listen.

I know what I can expect to hear. The same things he always told me. He’ll tell me how much he loves us and misses us. He’ll sing to us–he always sang to us. Probably our favorite songs, maybe some new ones. He’ll talk to the baby, he loved talking to her and she loves to listen to him. The first time I saw her smile was when he talked to her on the phone from “over there.”

From Innominatus.

Embedded by Andy in a comment about blogger pal Buck‘s crappy day.

Diversity Lane, via blogger friend Rick.

Cracked:

Women See Mauve, Men See Purple

A couple is staring at paint samples, the wife enthusiastically discussing the merits of aged ivory over albino Caucasian while the husband starts chewing off his own arm in hopes of escaping this hell where “white” has 30 different names.
:
What Science Says:

The gene for seeing red is only carried by the X chromosome, which puts men at a serious disadvantage for seeing the color spectrum. Color, after all, is defined by our ability to perceive red, green and blue, and every other color we see is based on combinations of those three.

This means that while men, having merely one X chromosome, might not be able to see red at all, women and their double X chromosomes have a 40 percent chance that their vision includes a broader expanse of the spectrum than their male counterparts.

Why this colorful superpower? It goes back to food again. While the men were out killing dinner and developing that radical spatial perception of theirs, women were gathering fruit and vegetables for the salad course. Having the ability to distinguish between the shiny red berries that taste good and the shiny red berries that can kill you was an important survival skill, and the women who didn’t pick the death berries lived to pass on their genes.

I was explaining this to my son after we went to watch Iron Man 2, and my girlfriend needed to visit the facilities before we headed over the hill to go home. The human genome evolves…and it evolves on either side of a gender barrier. Just about anything that would come in handy when you go out to kill a wild animal and bring it home, men are going to excel in that particular skill. Anything that involves guarding a bunch of helpless babies from hazards as if you’re a momma bird guarding a nest, women are going to be much better suited for it. Going a couple of hours without taking a leak, obviously that’s our department.

This article was a bit tougher on the ladies than I would’ve been, though. Of the six items, only two of the write-ups made our sisters look somewhat good. Naturally, it goes without saying #6 was by far my favorite. Bearing in mind these are generalizations…they don’t apply to all women. Or all men either.

Volokh:

The president went to Harvard, and barely defeated a primary opponent who went to Yale. His predecessor went to Yale and Harvard, and defeated opponents who went to Yale and Harvard, and Harvard, respectively. The previous two presidents also went to Yale, with Bush I defeating another Harvard grad for the presidency. And once Elena Kagan gets confirmed, every Supreme Court Justice will have attended Harvard or Yale law schools.

I know that Harvard and Yale attract a disproportionate percentage of America’s talented youth, but still, isn’t this a bit much? Are there no similarly talented individuals who attended other Ivy League schools, other private universities or (gasp!) even state law schools?

This is an abdication, not a usurpation. You can’t just say “I went to a wonderful school,” walk up to some seat of power and sit on it. You need the consent of those who would not be sitting on that seat, with your sweet ass cheeks filling it up. You need the consent of the governed. And so the blame goes to the rest of us who did not go to Yale/Harvard; we’re looking for supermen to make all the tough decisions for us.

Thing I Know #263. The one thing that’s wrong with higher education that nobody ever seems to want to discuss, is that it is valued through something called “prestige.” Get this prestigious diploma. Get that prestigious degree. Attend a prestigious university. My alma mater is more prestigious than yours. Trouble is that genuine learning has very, very little to do with prestige. It is, arguably, the exact opposite.

A commencement ceremony is not what learning looks like. Mike Rowe, covered head to toe in some kind of animal shit, is a far superior portrayal of real learning. I’m not saying you have to be humiliated in order to learn, my point is that when it’s just a lot of theory with a bunch of must-ought-shoulds holding it together, there’s no validation; and without validation there is no evidence of any fastening to reality. Just the professor’s say-so and that’s it.

So the professor says this guy did well enough; the guy who hires and promotes the guy, believes what the professor says about him, although those two will never meet each other and neither one knows who the other one is. So nothing is proven by anybody to anybody else about the competence of anyone. It’s just a bunch of things written on paper by complete strangers. The system still works to some extent as long as there is universal recognition of what makes a student’s learning ability adequate, superior and excellent; and, there is some. But all the values are not universally shared, so the competence only translates into upward-mobility where there happens to be some overlap. Where there is no overlap, the upward-mobility is only enjoyed by those who show competence in good old-fashioned ass-kissing. The results is a government of ass-kissers, of people whose grasp of disparate hard subjects may or may not be firm, but who show a competitive advantage at things like Motivating Large Numbers of People to Do Things Without Anyone Associating the Dumb Things With Their Names Later On. And throwing out buzz words & catch phrases like “make no mistake” and “let me be clear.”

But for all of the leaders to come from the same two schools? That’s arguably worse, that deteriorates the situation further. The answer to Volokh’s question is an emphatic yes…IMO. But I don’t get to decide this, it’s really up to the rest of the country to figure out if we’ve allowed these floorboards to rot enough.

Andrew Breitbart is interviewed at Gateway Pundit.

“By aiming everything at the media I’ve pretty much done the one thing they ask you not to do. ‘Please accept the premise that we’re fair, and let’s move on.’ No. I’m not going to accept that premise.

“For these people to tell me with a straight face that they don’t come to the media and their jobs from a political perspective, from a left-of-center perspective, is just a bald-faced lie.”
:
“I want to break down this politically correct paradigm. These are rules that tell conservatives: you’re not allowed to say this, you’re not allowed to think that. This type of Orwellian thought crime crap is what I’m fighting against.” [emphasis in original]

Hat tip to Irish Cicero.

Via Gerard. You can figure out the logic for yourself just fine, right? Americans eat way too much processed junk, so their/our behavior has to be brought back into line by means of a special tax that will effectively force us to eat tofu, hummus, carrots and arugula.

Enter Prof. Boudreaux with some save-people-from-themselves powers of his own.

Dear Prof. Popkin:

A segment on WJLA-TV’s 11:00pm newscast yesterday featured you endorsing a tax on pizza. You justified such a tax on grounds that Americans today eat too much “junk food.”

Believing Americans to be too dimwitted or lacking in self-control to choose for themselves what to eat, you obviously also believe that college professors possess the moral authority to propose that government dictate the contents of other people’s diets.

So the rules of civil society, as you see them, are apparently these: If Professor divines that Person isn’t acting in Person’s own best interests, government should obstruct Person’s efforts to live as he or she wishes and prod Person to live instead according to how Professor wants Person to live.

I, too, can play by these rules.

I propose that all articles and books advocating that government intrude into people’s private choices be taxed at very high rates. Socially irresponsible producers of such “junk” scholarship churn out far too much of it. As a result, unsuspecting Americans consume harmfully large quantities of this scholarship – scholarship made appealing only because its producers cram it with sweet and superficially gratifying expressions of noble goals. These empty intellectual ‘calories’ trick our brains – which evolved in an environment that lacked today’s superabundant access to junk scholarship – into craving larger and larger, even super-sized, portions of such junk.

The tax I propose would reduce Americans’ consumption of this mentally debilitating, university-processed junk that serves only to inflate its producers’ egos and consulting fees while it makes the rest of us intellectually flabby and clogs our neural pathways with notions that are toxic to each individual who reads it and to the entire body-politic.

As a nation, we have a duty to prevent our fellow citizens from mindlessly ruining their minds – for when any one mind is damaged by the consumption of junk scholarship, the rest of us are harmed by the resulting obesity of the state.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

I shall have to update the House of Eratosthenes Glossary with a new term, “Pizza Tax Thinking.” You cannot effectively attack something without giving it a name, and this thing has needed a name for awhile.

But I like Prof. Boudreaux’s approach as well. Let’s tax liberalism. Tax it progressively, so that moderate liberals are only mildly penalized, and wild-eyed “Bush Caused 9/11” zealots take it up the chute. They can afford it. They need to pay their fair share.

Fellow Right Wing News contributor Melissa Clouthier on the new Supreme Court nominee:

Like most politically interested Americans, I’m gobbling up all I can find about Elena Kagan. And the portrait that’s emerging looks very familiar. In fact, Elena Kagan looks a lot like the man nominating her for the Supreme Court: She is young, smart, brash, inexperienced, possibly socialist, calculating, and affable.

The choice says more about President Obama than it does Elena Kagan. He likes himself and wants the qualities he possesses on the Supreme Court. [emphasis mine]

Update: Noticing the trend remains unbroken — that left-wing politicians consistently nominate homely white women to positions of vast power, not average women by any means…pulchritude-challenged women I wouldn’t be able to go out and find, on any day, on a bet. I think it only appropriate that we offer a nod to Arthurstone and immortalize in (virtual) granite his attempt to show us what a decent human being he really is, in a way that means the most to him:

The “fact” in question being that liberal women are ugly.

That just defines modern liberalism. It’s all about showing what a wonderful human being you are, over and over again, by ignoring facts. Ignoring…hmmm…ignoring…what’s the adjective form of “ignore”? What’s the intangible noun form?

Are liberals really ignoring the substandard aesthetics of their female nominees to positions of power? Number of acceptable-looking liberal women is constantly one-or-zero, depending on whether Alyssa Milano has allowed her hair to grow back or not. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Someone is trying to send a message. “Ignoring” it just seems like bad manners. But whatever turns your crank, Arthur.

Update: Guess who can’t look away from the gaydarscope.

Rick brought up a good column last week that didn’t quite make the cut although it came very close. It would’ve been a done-deal if we hadn’t already harped heavily on the “What in the world is wrong with liberals??” theme before we saw it. Which was something of a shame because it did a better job than most, of explaining the smart-as-a-dickens guy we all know who becomes a left-winger anyway:

To become a conservative, I’ve had to learn a whole new language, one based on reason. If conservatives want to understand the liberal mind, they should consider becoming bilingual, too.

Liberals live in a stratosphere centered on emotions and magical thinking. If you’ve tried to reason with your daughter and she looks at you blankly; if your neighbor changes the subject during your compelling arguments; if your cousin says this about Obama: “I don’t know why. I just like the guy”…that’s why.

After I ‘fessed up last week to once being besotted with socialism, a reader had an epiphany. He wrote that maybe liberals are just plain stupid.

I’m not going to disagree with this. There are innumerable examples from both the famous and the anonymous:

— The most illustrious of all leftists, Noam Chomsky, still maintains that the Khmer Rouge did not slaughter millions of Cambodians.

— Liberal luminaries Annette Bening and Naomi Wolf defend radical Islam, including the dreaded burqa.

— After journeying to Cuba, members of the Congressional Black Caucus bragged about the stellar conditions there.

— Michael Moore thinks that the Cuban health system is to die for.

— Anita Dunn, a former special assistant to Obama, stated that Mao is one of the people she admired the most.

If these are the more informed liberals, what about Jane and Joe in the street?
:
Liberals are certainly capable of intelligence. They may be adept at their careers and hobbies. But the problem is that their naïveté and a delusional way of looking at the world impedes common sense and street smarts.

Further, when liberals take the time to tune in, they get their “information” from progressive propaganda. And they don’t question the Left’s authority.

That’s the biggest problem — not questioning the party line even though there are obvious gaps and gaffes. A big reason for this is fear.

I had a telling e-mail exchange with a liberal friend. When I wrote that I thought Obama was a Marxist, she responded, “Don’t say that! You’re scaring me!”

Robin of Berkeley is discovering Architects and Medicators, I think. Medicators arrive at solutions to problems as the fulfullment of a quest for emotional stability, satisfaction and high. That’s why, when people on this other “side” inspect the methods involved with containing Iran, curing global warming or “reviving” our nation’s economy, we find the stated plan to be so much at odds with the stated goal: The connection simply isn’t there. The people who are most enamored of the stated plan, haven’t even taken the time or trouble to look into it. It’s all about the emotional outcome.

As Robin has learned, when you think like a builder — like an Architect — you’re not walking on their soil because you’re not walking on their planet.

Well. Apparently, your President and mine was reading Robin of Berkeley’s article — voracious reader, He is, as you know — and He said to Himself “Hey! What that Robin of Berkeley said doesn’t make any sense. I’d better do something to make what she wrote make some sense!”

Prophecy fulfilled.

Renaissance of January 2009…officially over. Delivering a commencement address over the weekend, Holy One sonorously intoned:

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter…With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you; it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.

Fox News captured a slightly different transcript:

“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”
:
Obama also lamented the spread of social media and blogs, through which “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction.”

“All of this is not only putting new pressures on you,” Obama said. “It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.”

“We can’t stop these changes,” he said, “but we can adapt to them. And education is what can allow us to do so. It can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time.” [italicized emphasis mine]

It wasn’t so long ago we were “all” so “hopeful” of this new age in which we’d have a President who knew how to pronounce the word “nuclear,” believed in evolution over Creation, and — what’s that other thing? Had an iPod and Blackberry and knew how to use them?? Hey, whatever happened to that?

For years — decades even — I have stewed and steamed and ground my teeth together, steam coming out of my ears, when introduced to people who would smile broadly at me and boast “I don’t know annnneeeeeeeething about computers!!” The intent has always been to make me feel important, I’m sure. But it’s an insult because it points out that there must be something good about being technologically ignorant, even if it’s only a social kind of good. Well, now I have a new reason to look forward to the end of the Obama era, and I know their kind are in charge now. This is a transgression against one of My 42 Definitions of a Strong Society:

41. Weaknesses are not coveted. Nobody ever brags about, or connects an identity to, an inability to do something other people can do. People do not greet new acquaintances with that most odious of self-introductions, “I don’t know anything about computers.” People don’t form relationships around weakness. People don’t say “That’s my friend Carol, she doesn’t know how to cook.” They say “That’s my friend Carol, she’s the best interior designer around.”

Old Iron notes that He Who Argues With The Dictionaries has apparently found a new constituency to toss under the bus. I would expect the next dumpster to be hauled away from 1600 Pennsylvania is going to be chock full of iPods and Blackberry devices, now that the lowly staff workers have discovered this new decision up at the top that technology isn’t cool.

Anyone who can do hexadecimal math in their heads, please report for interrogation in the nearest dungeon. Recant your testimony about the Earth revolving around the Sun, and that’ll be the end of it. Don’t know what all the fuss is about with color teevee, I can’t see the difference — and get off my damn lawn.

Reading between the lines, I’m a little bit…no, not just a little bit…taken aback by these remarks about “the craziest claims can quickly claim traction…new pressures on our democracy…can’t stop these changes but we can adapt to them.” He’s talking about passive censorship, a sort of censorship-by-neglect. He wants to dismiss ideas that have already, inconveniently for Him, found a voice. He has lost sight of the lesson of Thing I Know #183:

When an education has given you the ability to dismiss ideas more quickly, it’s not really an education.

To those of us who have argued with our left-wing colleagues in person, and left-wing strangers over the innertubes (I’d like to think I’m more diplomatic with the former than with the latter), this is nothing new. We will recognize straight-away what He is really talking about:

Knowledge is a state to be reached by means of purification, not by accumulation; and learning is a subtractive process, not an additive one. You say “such-and-such happened,” liberal says “Let me see your sources!!! GRRRRR!!!!” and you go “fine, here’s a link.” Liberal reacts with a “That came from (fill in the blank)!!! GRRRR!!!!” And out it goes.

So in the world of the left-wing neanderthal, which is a subset of liberalism, it’s really all about becoming a more perfect being; and sometimes the imperfection has something to do with knowing things that shouldn’t be known. Learning is, therefore, a process of un-seeing things, a process of forgetting. People who can’t work iPods and iPads are more worthy, closer to some deity, than people who know how to work those things.

I suspect this fissure has split liberalism deeply; that fissure between the liberals who think learning involves learning, and the liberals who think learning involves forgetting. Dear Leader has just switched sides. You’re smarter now if you’re stupid.

And you can only learn through a stenciled process of filtration. You become smarter by not being exposed to things. You need to stop watching Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck. You have to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. And you have to stop reading The Blog That Nobody Reads. Stop. Right now!

So my brother has put up a photo in memory of our mother in the Hello-Kitty-of-Bloggin’. I suppose I should recognize this as a worthy example; now that I think on it, it isn’t right to let Mother’s Day go, year after year, just because I’m the only one in the household who doesn’t have one. It’s not just a day to engage in wild commercialism over teddy bears in mugs, cards, portraits and breakfasts.

Mom was called away from us seventeen years ago. A year and a half before that, she worked her way through all sorts of prescribed remedies for cancerous brain tumors, rapidly arriving at the oldest one medicine has for anything: Take her home and make sure she’s comfortable. She outlived the diagnosis a whole bunch of times, and then fell into a deep coma. As the pieces of what made her what she was, passed on into history stage by stage, her body gave up on trying to sustain what was left. This was sometime between 6 and 7 o’clock in the evening on Saturday, February 27, 1993.

The other end of her lifespan I’ll leave to my late Uncle Wally:

Danny, who was now driving the old Stevens and displaying an active interest in girls, needed a regular income to sustain his racy life style. I had achieved varsity status on the Prospect High basketball team and was looking for new and larger worlds to conquer. Bobby, two years my junior, had not yet exhibited the same restlessness, but soon his strong commercial inclinations would involve him in the general revolt. For the moment, however, our fathers’ firm opposition thwarted all of these noble aspirations.

Then one day Mom stunned us with an altogether unexpected announcement. As we finished our supper and prepared to troop upstairs she informed us, a trifle awkwardly, that there would soon be another place at the table.

“Who’s coming” Bobby asked. “Relatives?”

Mom and Dad exchanged a conspiratorial smile. For a change, Dad’s mood seemed less somber than it had been of late.

“Well, yes,” said mom; “but not the kind you are thinking about.”

Our mouths fell open and for once we were at a loss for words. Danny was approaching sixteen, I was fourteen, and Bobby was twelve.

“You mean a baby?” Danny finally blurted out.

“That’s right,” Mom said, obviously pleased with herself at taking us so completely by surprise. Mom was then forty-two and, by our unenlightened reckoning, light-years beyond the proper — or biologically possible — age for childbearing. Up to that moment the possibility of any further increase in our family had no more entered our minds than had the prospect of entertaining a visitor from outer space.

From that moment this great coming event dominated our every waking thought and overshadowed all other considerations. The spare room was cleared and converted into a nursery. Dad set to work making a crib. We boys were at pains, for once, to spare our mother any undue effort.
:
For the time being the dolor of the Depression was relieved at our house by the prevailing mood of expectancy. Not a little of the excitement hinged on the question of the newcomer’s sex. Another boy? Our parents looked at each other and paled. Surely, not another boy!

Ten days into the new year of 1934 a healthy, squalling baby girl arrived and settled all the speculation. She was christened Mary Ann and immediately became the center of all our attention.

Perhaps someday, someone will rise to the task of capturing in the written word what took place in the 59 years between these two moments. Some buried treasure lies undisturbed because it isn’t thought to be worth the trouble; other rewards sit there neglected because the effort is too daunting. This would fall under the latter of those. You knew Mary Ann Freeberg, or else you didn’t, and if you didn’t then the English language provides a poor arsenal of tools for describing her to you. I’ll only say her memorial service was filled to capacity for a number of reasons that can be explained only through the heart, the soul, and the human spirit.

Perhaps with thoughts and words too. But you’re a better writer than I am if you can figure out how.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Update: Okay I will say this much: I think she would’ve gotten along like a house-afire with Classic Liberal’s grandmother (hat tip to Chris Wysocki, by way of Smitty at The Other McCain).

Blogger friend Phil:

Stossel’s excellent rant

This was John Stossel’s closing monologue at the end of last night’s program on government bullying.

There are only two ways to do things in life: voluntary, or forced.

Voluntary’s best, and it’s most of life. It’s how we pick our friends, our religion, career, hobbies, and so on. It gives individuals freedom and flexibility. It leads to constant improvement because when your choices are voluntary, if you want people to attend your school, or baseball game or fly your airline you have to please your customers.

But government doesn’t have to please anybody. Government gets to use force. OK, they have to please us because we can make some changes every four or eight years when we vote, but they’re usually minor changes. The permanent bureaucracy doesn’t change. It. Just. Grows, and exerts more force.

Now – we need some force, we need government to keep the peace; keep people from killing us. Or stealing from us. But why do they get to decide what the rules of baseball should be?

It’s telling that Senator McCain had trouble making [the point that it’s part of the business of Congress to regulate baseball rules concerning steroid use] … there’s no good reason Congress should be involved. They’re just sanctimonious and they want to get their faces on TV. And the public and media encouraged them. America’s constant refrain that “there oughta be a law” invites politicians to bully their way into parts of life where they have no business.

Government shouldn’t dictate to airlines what they can charge, and why should government tell students [..] that you MAY NOT work as an intern for me? You’re not slaves. If you don’t like working for free, quit. Do something else. Why do the politicians arrogantly assume they have the right to interfere with our right to make a contract?

And it’s not like the government’s bullying has such a great track record. The Interstate Commerce Commission used to control all of the airline prices. And the system was awful. Thank goodness Jimmy Carter got rid of it.

Now the government orders you to send your child to this or that school. But then they do a lousy job teaching them.

In fact, I can’t think of anything government does better than the private sector. Can you? Can you name one thing that Government does more efficiently than private companies?

I’ll give you $100 if you can.

The military and things that Government, only government does, don’t count. I’m talking about anything where there’s competition. Are government bullies ever better? I don’t think so. I’ve never had to pay this bet. I’ve offered it for many years.

Who do these politicians think they are? They fail and fail, make life worse and run up horrible debt and then they say they want more power? What hubris!

[..]

Remember, only two ways to do things. Voluntary, or forced. Voluntary’s better. The Founders understood that, and that’s why here in the Declaration and the Constitution they write so much about limiting government’s power. They understood the danger of big government and the bullies it breeds.

It’s time to say “politicians, you’ve gone too far. Let us lead our own lives. That’s the freedom we deserve.”

– John Stossel