“Obama” is is actually a Kenyan word; it refers to a large mistake made in the recent past, with great flourish and usually by a large number of people, and the tender egos of the ones who made it will not allow them to admit to the mistake.

Actually I just pulled that out of my ass just now. But it’s pretty believable at this point.

His Wonderfulness is convening a panel and taking suggestions. I’ve seen this before, and in the long run I have never, ever ended up happy with this kind of “leadership.” It’s disappointed me in school, it’s disappointed me at work, it’s disappointed me on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The oh-so-wonderful leader who is super-duper-wonderful, and when it comes down to arriving at that vital component of leadership which is the idea — the oh-so-wonderful leader solicits suggestions. Hey, if ya gotta do it, then ya better. But if coming up with the idea is not your cup o’ tea, then what makes you oh-so-wonderful?

Is there a school of thought out there, somewhere, that seriously thinks when a broken and hopeless people become hungry for oh-so-wonderful leadership, that what they’re craving is a showman who will claim credit for their best ideas with great panache, and oh-so-stylishly divert the blame to others when the worst ideas fail to pan out? There are people out there who think this is a rare and precious talent, and we need more of it?

I’ve never understood it.

You do have to give Obama high chutzpah marks for pulling this stunt, though

Seeking to show he is serious about reining in soaring budget deficits, President Barack Obama on Tuesday will kick off the work of a panel he created to try to solve the nation’s fiscal woes.

Obama has given the independent, 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility broad leeway to suggest remedies for the debt and deficits.
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Obama has given the panel until December 1 to report back on its recommendations, enabling it to deliver its report after the November U.S. congressional elections.

Now, granted, Republicans under Bush were not exactly paragons of spending control, hence their low approval ratings from Conservatives. And Bush could have forced the Democrat controlled Congress to reduce spending during his last two years. That said, when Obama took over the White House with Democrats in full control of Congress, he apparently said “hey, Republicans, let me show you what out of control spending really looks like.” We then received the boondoggle know as Stimulus (which economists say failed). He signed a record high budget bill. He signed several special budget bills…

[D]oes anyone think that the answers to the budget problems will be “quit spending so darned much!”? Or, do we expect them to be “raise taxes along with implementing a VAT”? Democrats will not reign in any sort of spending. Remember that Pay-go rule they instituted, and then broke within 11 days? The one they have ignored ever since? Remember when Obama said he would go through the budget line by line and do away with pork?

If the Leader is supposed to be superlative and not a merely average leader…but He has to borrow His ideas from somewhere…then you know you’re looking at the Unconstrained Vision of Humanity identified by Dr. Thomas Sowell. It is a path that only leads to one place, and that place is Debt Hell.

Well, unless you’re a member of Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate. So make that two places.

I have to agree with the last part of Teach’s comments, although it certainly gives me no pleasure. This is all about the VAT. The VAT and the Tea Parties. Obama needs the Tea Party house fire to, if it cannot be extinguished, at least burn out slowly and not flare up any further. He needs to implement an idea without owning the idea. That is, of course, what commissions are all about: To introduce, or lend support to, ideas that would spell career suicide for an individual public figure were they too strongly affixed to his name. They’re all about the National Enquirer Effect. You know, nobody will admit to buying a trash-tabloid magazine, so if you believe what you’re told then you must conclude no one is purchasing it anywhere. And yet somebody is. That’s precisely the way a commission works. Nobody who was in attendance came up with this poison-pill of an idea. Someone must have, but there’s no single name next to it; it’s just “the commission recommends.”

Hello, VAT.

All you folks out there arguing about how we need the very smartest people in the country in our positions of leadership, this is why I give you that peculiar look. This is why I say we need someone not quite so sophisticated. Because when lowbrows like me are told the problem is skyrocketing debt, and asked what to do about it, we say things you only hear from a rube…like “Quit spending so goddamn much.” The tragedy of the times in which we live, is that “intelligence” is being re-defined as a habit of veering off from an unsophisticated boring answer like that, into other things. And, when the time comes to put some quality thought into whether or not that’s the kind of “intelligence” we really need, we vote on it.

I’m sure the time will come when we vote that we can’t afford anymore of this, and I’m reasonably confident we’ll vote that way at the very next opportunity. But that’s many months away, and I don’t think you even want to comprehend how many dollars. We need some unsophisticated, boring thinking more than anything else…and we need it PDQ.

One of my favorite counter-arguments in action. By now it’s old news, but in case you haven’t heard of it here’s a summary. Muslim cleric asshole blames earthquakes on scantily clad, immodest decadent women. So the immodest western decadent women go scantily clad en masse at a designated date and time to see if any earthquakes result. I love it — someone comes out and says something boneheaded, you accentuate the boneheadedness of it by taking it a zillion percent seriously. Pretty much what I do with global warming. Ooh, that reminds me, the coffee’s done I’d better unplug the pot. Only got one planet.

Thus far, everyone who’s heard of Boobquake has been asking the same question: What if an earthquake really does happen, what then?

ReelGirl shares this concern:

And I’ve got to wonder: what would it mean if the breast baring does actually bring on an earthquake? I guess the cleric would be proved right, but it would be kind of a cool testament to female power. Not a big, long earthquake, nothing that hurt anyone, just a quickie.

I guess no one knows what will come of Boobquake yet. The only thing evident so far is that women are smarter than men. If men were more intelligent, they would’ve thought this up years ago. Or maybe they did.

Fortunately, Yours Truly is sufficiently mature and restrained to let that comment go and not say anything about it.

Eh, no I’m not.

Nope, no man has ever thought of anything like this. Your superior intellect is 99% proven…and it’ll be completely undeniable if you post some more pics of your smartness.

The Facebook page is here.

And since you’re wondering, yes it did make Wikipedia. The last paragraph of which (at this time) is pure gold.

That morning, at 10:59 am (0259 GMT), a 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck 195 miles off the coast of Taitung, Taiwan, at a depth of 6.2 miles. McCreight insisted that this Taiwan earthquake alone was not statistically significant, but that she would continue to monitor seismic activity for the next 24 hours. Other participants pointed out that the earthquake in Taiwan occured early in the morning, prior to the official start of the experiment.

Sciencedammit!! Inconclusive results! More experimentation is in order.

What is needed is…and this is a stupid man’s idea, right now, right here…a Boobquake Tour^TM. Yes, 45 cities in four months, or something. A cast of regulars moving from one site to another to another in a great big bus, being joined at each stop by the locals. And then we could monitor the seismic activity all summer long. On, uh, you know, the earth’s surface that is. Then, I’m sure Seddiqi would end up good and embarrassed.

Hat tip to Right Wing News dude John Hawkins.

It gratifies my heart to see a column like this called “incredible“. It is a simple and durable stone-by-stone, brick-by-brick, layer-by-layer perusal of sturdy, irrefutable logic. Perhaps I should go back to writing up blog posts the same way I write software, then I can do some incredible stuff too.

Regardless, this is pretty awesome:

The source of all rights is the right to life, and its sole implementation is the right to property, the right to use the products of your efforts to sustain your life. The rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness are the rights to enjoy your life and use your property. Rights are an objectively necessary requirement of human life, principles which apply equally to all persons and at all times. In sum, rights are freedoms for rational beings to take the actions necessary to fulfill and enjoy their lives. Any alleged “right” which violates these rights is not a right, but an excuse for a crime.

The only way to violate individual rights is through the initiation of force. A person who initiates force against you is attempting to negate your means of survival by forcing you to act against your judgment as to what your life requires. The only moral use of force is in retaliation against those who initiate its use. The sole proper purpose of government is to protect its citizens’ rights by banning the initiation of force and placing its retaliatory use under objective control. The purpose of the U.S. Constitution was, and is, to establish and maintain the supremacy of individual rights over our society and our government.
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There is no more time to evade this choice. Will we recognize the existence of individual rights and the full meaning of what they are and what they require, or will we accept the institutionalized slavery of enforced service of all to all, where ability is penalized and need is encouraged? [emphasis mine]

This kind of gets back to what I was talking about with regard to freedom. It is, when all’s said and done, an enforceable prohibition against some outsider interfering with your routine transactions, using some kind of genuine or made-up authority to coerce you into doing things his way.

You have it, or you don’t. There is no in-between. And if we’re all going to vote to manufacture for ourselves new “rights,” then that means we are surrendering the freedom of whatever poor dumb bastard is supposed to pay for it. And that means we’re surrendering the freedom of everybody; we’re making freedom into a non-significant, non-binding, non-give-a-fuck attribute of our humanity.

If you believe in any kind of a deity whose will was responsible for putting us where we are, then you have to believe we were designed and built for a more dignified existence.

His Holy Eminence graces us with the sound of His dulcet tones:

You say, that’s all fine and good, He isn’t fooling me! He’s talking about government auditors and legislators who’ve never held a real job a day in their lives, taking away the profit I earned fairly and with the full consent of my customers and stockholders. Commonsense? That’s just a code word for government intrusion. I can see right through Him!

But two out of three of us are falling for it. Yeah, you read that right.

About two-thirds of Americans support stricter regulations on the way banks and other financial institutions conduct their business, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Majorities also back two main components of legislation congressional Democrats plan to bring to a vote in the Senate this week: greater federal oversight of consumer loans and a company-paid fund that would cover the costs of dismantling failed firms that put the broader economy at risk.

President Soetoro, be He a two-termer or be He not, is bound to go down in history as a democrat demigod. In fact I’m pretty sure He’s going to be the first former President whose likeness will be struck onto legal tender currency within His lifetime. That side of the aisle has had an eternal tendency to choose their heroes according to how much bullshit could be sold over how little time, and what Barry is doing here is quite revolutionary. He’s selling exactly the same toxin as a remedy for the problem, that caused the problem in the first place…and getting away with it.

What makes businesses inherently non-sensible?

What makes government inherently sensible?

In the universe I call home, He’d be called upon to explain those; they are, after all, central to the merit-or-lack-thereof in what He is saying.

But not here.

Wonder if it was an infiltrator?

It’s a good thing this teacher, Terry Hoffman, is retiring. She’s a language teacher, but apparently she can’t even teach her students simple grammar. Maybe if she spent more time educating her students, and less time planning protests, they wouldn’t be confusing “our” and “are”.

Ah, but don’t go gettin’ mad just yet:

It seems like common sense, but people always tend to think that teachers are so poorly paid, and work so hard, and are just downtrodden and unappreciated. It would appear that this is a myth.

The key finding from the Manhattan Institute’s study seems to back that up.

When considering teacher pay, policymakers should be aware that public school teachers, on average, are paid 36% more per-hour than the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty and technical worker. They should be aware that the higher relative pay for public school teachers exists in almost every metro area for which data are available. Finally, they should be aware that paying public school teachers more does not appear to be associated with higher student achievement.

Mark Steyn has fun lowering the boom on Bubba:

I suppose the thinking runs something like this. All things considered, the polls on Obamacare aren’t totally disastrous, and the president’s approval numbers seem to have bottomed out in the low forties, and when you look at what that means in terms of the electoral map this November, you’ve only got to scare a relatively small percentage of squishy suburban moderate centrists back into the Democratic fold, and how difficult can that be?

Hence, Bill Clinton energetically on the stump, summoning all his elder statesman’s dignity (please, no giggling) in the cause of comparing Tea Partiers to Timothy McVeigh. Oh, c’mon, they’ve got everything in common. They both want to reduce the size of government, the late Mr. McVeigh through the use of fertilizer bombs, the Tea Partiers through control of federal spending, but these are mere nuanced differences of means, not ends. Also, both “Tim” and “Tea” are three-letter words beginning with “T”: Picture him upon your knee, just Tea for Tim and Tim for Tea, you’re for him and he’s for thee, completely interchangeable.
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Will it work? For a long time, Tea Partiers were racists. Everybody knows that when you say “I’m becoming very concerned about unsustainable levels of federal spending” that that’s old Jim Crow code for “Let’s get up a lynching party and teach that uppity Negro a lesson.”

Bill Clinton is to dignity what Ted Kennedy was to sobriety.

True hero:

The plane had blown an engine over the northern Arabian Sea, and the lead pilot, Lt. Miroslav “Steven” Zilberman, had to make lightning-quick decisions.

The E-2C Hawkeye, returning from a mission in Afghanistan, was a few miles out from the Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier. Zilberman, 31, was a veteran U.S. Navy pilot who had flown many times in the Middle East with the Hawkeye, a turbo-prop aircraft loaded with radar equipment.

The starboard propeller shut down, causing the plane to become unstable and plunge. Zilberman ordered his three crew mates, including the co-pilot, to bail. He manually held the plane as steady as possible so they could jump.

“He held the plane level for them to do so, despite nearly uncontrollable forces. His three crewmen are alive today because of his actions,” Navy Rear Adm. Philip S. Davidson wrote to Zilberman’s parents.

Zilberman went down with the aircraft on March 31. The 1997 graduate of Bexley High School was declared dead three days later, his body lost at sea.
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A copy of the medal also was given to his parents – Boris Zilberman and his wife, Anna Sokolov – who live in the Eastmoor area of Columbus.

“Now we have unbelievable pain,” Sokolov said this week. “He was our one and only son.”

After an April 8 memorial service in Norfolk and through conversations with fellow officers and friends, Zilberman’s parents have learned how highly regarded their son was.

“He saved three lives. He’s a hero,” his mother said.
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Zilberman had planned to go on to study medicine and hoped to become an emergency-room doctor. Sokolov said she learned that he spent his spare time reading organic-chemistry books.

He was about to take a new assignment in Pensacola, Fla., as a flight instructor. Rear Adm. Davidson, in his letter to Zilberman’s parents, said they should be proud of what their son did. Zilberman’s crew mates, he said, owe their lives to him.

“I know they will never forget him,” Davidson wrote. “I will remember him forever.”

Got something in your eye?

Something to keep in mind, next time you’re feeling like your life is intolerable because the line at the coffee shop is a little bit long and slow-moving.

This generation coming up, I tell ya. It’s enough to drive all hope for the future of humanity from the very marrow of your bones…and then you hear of stuff like this. And all kinds of questions just naturally explode in your noggin. Did people respect this guy’s enormous rock-hard wheelbarrow balls while he was still among us. What would I do in a situation like that, and is there a way to find out.

To the last of those questions, I’m pretty sure the answer is a negatori. You just have to pray. The answer to the others is a big fat I-don’t-know.

Godspeed, noble warrior.

July 4th is coming. And I know I cannot depend on my President, in spite of His astonishing number-of-speeches-per-year statistic, to ever mention the “F” word.

So we should put some real thought into what exactly this word means. Here are my suggestions — freedom is…

1. Relying on your own fortune, skills and good judgment for your survival and station in life, rather than on the decisions of others, no matter how friendly those others may seem to you at the moment.
2. The right to do things that may bring displeasure to others, regardless of how powerful they may be.
3. The absence of nuisance laws that are passed solely for the purpose of bringing your code of morality into line with someone else’s.
4. The ability to choose your charities.
5. Independence in selecting your ethical priorities.
6. Being able to do what you can, right now, without waiting for everyone else to be able to do the same thing.
7. Raising your children as you see fit, into the kind of adults you think the world needs.
8. Using your intellect. The freedom to say, as George Orwell said, that two and two make four.
9. Being entitled to everything that would be available to you — provided you could find it — if you were the only living person in existence.
10. Choosing what nobody else would want to choose, and still being able to choose it.
11. Being the full and uncontested owner of an hour of your own time, before such an event as you sell it to another.
12. Voicing an opinion without being ostracized for it.
13. Engaging in a partnership with a second party, without contending with the hostile judgment of a third.
14. Travel. Here and there you’re stopped from going into places, but nobody stops you from going out.
15. Being the guy in a teenage-slasher movie who dies first. You know, the guy who goes off by himself. Nobody stops him.
16. Your poorest judgment.
17. Your hourly blood, sweat and tears being invested in your system of values, and nobody else’s.
18. Being able to make decisions that lead to things being done, without waiting for a vote.
19. Doing things that don’t cost anybody anything, although they make them very angry…and then doing them again.
20. Explaining to your children that things don’t make any sense, when they don’t. Even though “polite company” must pretend they make more sense than they really do.

Jonah Goldberg is being way too nice.

The assertion that Barack Obama is a socialist became a hallmark of the 2008 presidential campaign. His opponent, John McCain, used Obama’s own extemporaneous words to an Ohio plumber as Exhibit A: “When you spread the wealth around,” Obama had said, “it’s good for everybody.”

Dude, that’s like exhibit A through Z. There’s nothing left to prove. “Spread the wealth around,” no matter how many different ways you want to interpret it, must mean as a first step take it away from the people who have it.

When you take it away from people who have it, that means you punish the productive people for being productive. Any definition of socialism that demands something beyond that, is an illegitimate definition. Period, end of story.

That, McCain insisted, sounded “a lot like socialism,” as did Obama’s proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy and high earners for the explicit purpose of taking better care of the lower and middle classes with that redistributed money.

Republicans believed they had hit a rhetorical mother lode with this line of argument in 2008, but their efforts to make hay of Obama’s putative socialism proved unedifying, if not outright comic. The National Committee of the Republican Party even formally considered a resolution on whether the Democratic party should change its name to “the Democratic Socialist Party” of the United States. The stunt was shelved infavor of compromise language lamenting the Democrats’ “march toward socialism.”

March toward? March toward??

In my lifetime — I have a head full of gray hair — the democrat party has not been on the side of those who have prospered according to the findings of the free market, on any issue, not one single time. Not unless you define “free market” as something having to do with deal-making inside the beltway. They are the party of rolodex-profiteering, and always have been. They’re “marching toward” socialism the same way little kids with shopper-in-training grocery carts are marching toward being annoying…the same way Barack Obama is marching toward being imperious, condescending and arrogant.

Who presided over this “shelving”? That’s what I’d like to know.

Given his conduct and rhetoric as president, we have every reason to reopen the question from 2008 and ask, quite simply, What kind of socialist is Barack Obama?

I have an answer: A successful one.

If you have kids, you really should go because it’s educational. It would be good to have them read at least one Steinbeck novel first.

Just two reservations: I think I actually lost something off my life expectancy from all the grabby kids. The crowd thickened slowly over the two or three hours we were there, and by the time we left I was in a poor disposition. The Bay Area has that effect on me. Although it was gratifying when I got that look-of-death from the brittle aging hippie lady who overheard me explaining to the boy that seahorses don’t need their females for anything. Bay Area hippies are a special breed; they seem to have put quite a bit of distance between themselves and the “make love not war” deal. It’s like the salt air mixes in with the drugs in their system and creates some kind of corrosive acid.

The other reservation was something I should have expected in the heart of Angry-Hippie territory: What I called the “Humans Are Bastards” room. All global warming, all the time, every square inch. Might as well have plastered an enormous Obama logo on the far wall, floor-to-ceiling. No doubt about it, our filthy species is frying the planet, can’t you hear the sizzling?

Your li’l darlings will learn all about the issue, except for one thing: All the uncertainties involved. That part is conveniently left out. I’m thinking of providing the aquarium with a donation…it is a worthy cause…along with a letter expressing my thoughts about it, both positive and otherwise. Because there are some parts of that final room that, I think, cross a line. Not because of my skepticism and my leanings — the items in that room, that I have in mind, are just plain and simply inappropriate.

Wise, wise words from Bookworm Room about the perils of identity politics:

Humans like labels. Without our innate ability to organize and categorize, because of the overwhelming amount of data we receive from the world around us, we would be dysfunctional. You can imagine some distant hunter/gatherer ancestor standing paralyzed before a brown thing, unable to classify it as plant or animal, safe or dangerous, edible or poisonous. That perplexed hunter/gatherer did not survive to pass down his genes. The one who was able to classify the object correctly as a bush waving in the wind, a sleeping bear, or the entrance to a cave was the one who was able to be fruitful and multiply. We are that well-organized person’s descendants.

Having an inherent ability, however, doesn’t mean that we have to let that ability control. We are all capable of killing but, if we’re moral, we don’t unless we have to. We’re hardwired for sex, but the vast majority of us can control our libidos. We tamp down on our fight and flight instincts, too, insofar as we’ve figured out that a stressful meeting with the boss isn’t license to hit him or run away.

In the same way, I do believe we can control the rampant categorization that constitutes identity politics. People are not labels. They are the giant sum of their parts, their interests, and their values. I have good friends who are gay conservatives, and I even know some Jewish conservatives. I know Asians who are slackers. These people are who they are, not what they are.

For a generation that was raised to shake off all the old stereotypes (and I still came into the world on the tail-end of the “Poles are stupid,” “Jews are greedy,” “Scots are frugal,” “Irish are shiftless,” “Asians are sneaky” tropes that were endemic in American society for so many decades), we seem awfully anxious to embrace stereotypes all over again. It’s just that we’re embracing entirely new stereotypes that still manage to lock people into straight jackets just as tightly as the old ones did.

I agree with Patterico.

This is beyond mere incompetence. This shows [RNC Chairman Michael] Steele has no idea what it means to be a Republican:

Why should an African-American vote Republican?

“You really don’t have a reason to, to be honest — we haven’t done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True,” Republican National Chairman Michael Steele told 200 DePaul University students Tuesday night.

Steele — a former Maryland lieutenant governor and seminarian serving as the first African-American head of the Republican Party — offered a frank assessment of the American political system.

It’s not a “frank” assessment, it’s a monumentally clueless one that assumes people need to be courted by political parties — as if the only issue for black voters is whether a party sucks up to them sufficiently. [emphasis Patterico’s]

There’s actually a lot of disagreement about this. Steele has his defenders; there are those who say this is an example of “gotcha” journalism, that one comment might very well have been taken out of context, you shouldn’t pass judgment until you RTWT (read the whole thing).

That argument just doesn’t hold up. For one thing, how do you take such a comment out of context? In what context does it make sense? Hold it, go off and read what Larry Elder said about the same subject, then come back and reply.

I’ll be happy to wait.

For another thing, if you do go read the article, which is about as much of a “The Whole Thing” as we can get hold of…you see there really isn’t any specific issue nailed down with regard to the GOP, any specific indication of what they’ve done or haven’t done. “We had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South.” This means what, exactly? Yeah, yeah, we’re all supposed to “get” something. But if Steele doesn’t specify what was done versus what he thought should have been done, then Patterico’s got the right idea.

Most of the Republicans I know, would sooner shove pencils in their eye sockets than vote democrat because they’re worried sick that their kids will be the first generation in recent history to live at a lifestyle less comfortable than their parents’…or that the kids will never be able to earn or keep anything. Tell me, please — what skin color is that?

There are only two possible interpretations of Steele’s comment. One, he thinks the message of the GOP ought to be that it can appeal to something color-aware, it can do as good a job at this as those other guys, and there are no other issues that really matter. Or two, that the message should be one of fiscal restraint and personal freedom…but blacks aren’t responding to that message. And this would be the fault of the people forming the message and packaging it.

I find both of these indefensible. And the second of those two doesn’t really even make any sense.

The message isn’t sufficiently complicated to require color-specific marketing. The party of dissent should never labor under such a problem; the two positions are too far apart. The message from the folks currently running everything, whose agenda will be put to a referendum, is also simple: Put the “Age of Aquarius” kids in charge of government, and then have government make all of the decisions.

Minorities have to be lured into resisting that? They have to have an “outreach” program before they can see what’s wrong with that? I don’t think so, Mr. Steele. I really don’t think so.

On Earth Day, blogger friend Buck could see Komsomols from his house.

And here’s the latest shot across the bow for us troglodytes who tend to turn a jaundiced eye on the whole Earth Day thing… from “How to Green Your Parents,” in yesterday’s NYT…

Thursday is the 40th anniversary of the original Earth Day. Over the years, the impact of this once seminal day has lessened. Earth Day brings people together for nice gatherings and noble efforts but has, for the most part, made sustainable action more of an annual event than a daily habit. We’ve got to change that.

Here’s a move in the right direction: launching this Earth Day is Green My Parents, a nationwide effort to inspire and organize kids to lead their families in measuring and reducing environmental impact at home. Not just on Earth Day, but every day. GMP’s initial goal is to have its first 100 youth advocates train and educate 100 peers (who will then turn to 100 of their respective peers and so on), with the aim of saving families $100 million between now and April 2011.

Robin of Berkeley records her on-the-job observation that being such a Komsomol can be tough on the ol’ mental stability (hat tip again to Gerard):

My twenty-something client Emma, a survivor of the Berkeley public schools, had a coughing fit during our session. I helpfully got up to get her some water. When I handed her a cup, she looked at it, incredulous.

Her voice quivering, she asked, “Is this Styrofoam?”

I said yes. She stared at the cup, mesmerized by this forbidden fruit. When she finally found her words, she said, “I’ve never seen Styrofoam before. We learned in school that it kills baby birds.”
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When Emma returned the next week (thankfully), I asked about her reaction. She flooded me with stories about indoctrination by teachers. One of her earliest memories was singing songs on Earth Day, prayerfully, when she was five.

A sensitive soul, Emma became terrified that her beloved Earth would perish, and that she’d be culpable. Starting in third grade, she became an environmental fanatic. Emma went ballistic on her disabled grandmother when the old woman threw a bottle in the trash.
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How did I help Emma snap out of her trance? I simply imparted truths that someone should have communicated years ago, like the following:

Emma, you’re a wonderful, good-hearted person. You deserve to be here. Your life is a blessing. It’s OK to drive your car or to take a bag from the store. You deserve all these things and more. Besides, the earth has been here for millions of years and will be here long after your great grandchildren are gone.

Now, if the planet is not about to crash and burn, why turn children like Emma into eco-warriors? Why condition them to take three-minute showers and lambaste their elders?

The Left’s underlying goal: to convince all of us that we don’t matter. Our happiness, our cleanliness, our ease of living, our money, and our time…it’s the government’s business, not ours. While Marxist theory celebrates the proletarian, in actuality, people become interchangeable cogs in the collective wheel. [bold emphasis mine]

This is really all about tombstones. At one extreme end of the spectrum, you can have a green burial. The opposite end would be to have the biggest tombstone in the entire cemetery, maybe with a statue of yourself standing over it, and an eternal flame in your hand perhaps? Which of course would look extraordinarily silly if you had not done something to earn it.

A green burial takes that pressure off.

But if you opt for the “When I’m gone I’m gone, I’m not gonna try to leave anything behind, don’t look for me to do anything” route, it makes you pretty cranky if you suspect everyone else isn’t following along. I can only imagine what that’s like. Waitaminnit! All you losers are going to be remembered a hundred years from now and people will have forgotten all about me? That’s not fair! I’m the good one!

There seems to be a connection between this “saving the planet” stuff and the instant-gratification, live-for-pleasure thing. This is not what I would have expected. But I suppose it stands to reason. If you truly live life to serve others, you would be performing a better service if people felt compelled to remember you for it. Therefore if you rebel against the one, you would of necessity be rebelling against the other. And who wants to be remembered for living a life of pleasure? I can just see it now: “This statue is dedicated to the memory of X, who played a lot of video games.” Eck, how embarrassing.

Hat tip to Joan of Arrgghh!

Shocking, yes, I know…

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer today signed a controversial immigration bill into state law, advancing a politically charged debate that is already having reverberations in Washington.

“Respect for the rule of law means respect for every law,” said Brewer, a Republican. “People across America are watching Arizona.

“We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act,” Brewer added. “But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation.”

What a hussy. Where’s she get off?

His Eminence is not pleased.

“Our failure to act responsibly at the Federal level will only open the door to irresponsiblity by others,” [President Barack] Obama said. “That includes for example the recent efforts in Arizona, which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

Obama added that his administration could join the fight. “I’ve instructed members of my admininstration to closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation,” he said, adding that it was “misguided.”

I think I’ve finally figured out what “basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans” means on Planet Lefty Liberal Scumbag. It means lawbreaking hooligans and responsible productive citizens switch places. The lawbreakers get away with whatever, with an Officer Barbrady in tow instructing the South Park citizens to “move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.” And business owners and executives are treated like thieves, with bonus-czars breathing down their necks, enforcing “basic fairness” and “social justice” if they’re caught being too productive.

Profit is evil. If you want to make a personal profit, go work for Barry. That’s the only place where you’re allowed to get rich. And, our approach to any given problem is first & foremost to make sure no one can make a profit by finding a solution to it.

Actually fixing the problem?? That’s gotta be violating someone’s “civil rights” somewhere.

The White House’s reaction is nothing more or less than a firefighter’s union, bringing buckets of gasoline to a house fire. And outlawing water.

MediaIte via Confederate Yankee:

Today in United States v. Rod Blagojevich: following up on his 2008 claims that then-Senator Barack Obama was one of a few people who could testify to his innocence, his defense team issued a motion today to subpoena the President to testify in court. Most of the juiciest bits involving Obama’s role in choosing a new Senator are blacked out, or so we thought. It turns out a lucky PDF glitch gave us VIP access. Who wouldn’t want to see the blacked out part? Let’s investigate!

In sum, it’s “not a particularly damning conversation.” But it could be the tip of the tail of a very large brontosaurus. And, the evidence on the basis of just this, at least strongly suggests the President told a fibber. Not a “you’ll never see your taxes go up by one dime if you make less than 200k” fibber, but one of the bad ones, where you’re really, really not supposed to get caught.

Which brings up another thing that the evidence strongly suggests. This came out of yet another improperly redacted PDF file. I think it’s a little unfair to saddle Holy One with the technological ineptitude of every li’l government employee, but it kind of puts a damper on the whole “modern new tech-savvy administration” parade we were “all” supposed to have been throwing.

Come to think of it, where did the tech-savvy reputation come from anyway? Barack Obama has an iPod? Something tells me that particular historical item is not going to age well.

Occasional commenter PhysicsGeek has his own place and you really should head on over when you can spare the time. His ancient dusty old archives (two, nearly three months back) contain some stuff good enough for our most recent:

A group of 40 years old buddies discuss and discuss where they should meet for dinner.

Finally it is agreed upon that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen restaurant because the waitress’s there have low cut blouses and nice breasts.

10 years later, at 50 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss and discuss where they should meet. Finally it is agreed that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen because the food there is very good and the wine selection is good also.

10 years later at 60 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss and discuss where they should meet. Finally it is agreed that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen because they can eat there in peace and quiet and the restaurant is smoke free.

10 years later, at 70 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss and discuss where they should meet. Finally it is agreed that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen because the restaurant is wheel chair accessible and they even have an elevator.

10 years later, at 80 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss and discuss where they should meet. Finally it is agreed that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen because that would be a great idea because they have never been there before.

That godless heathen small-tee tim, who I named, came up with a great observation at Rick’s place. The occasion is Barack Obama’s speech about financial “reform,” and it’s about that R-word.

Ah yes, “reform”. Just like they did with ‘housing’ and ‘healthcare’. Next will be ‘Cap & Tax’, then Illegal Immigration’ and ‘Gun Control‘…“reform”.

Howzabout ya’ll just stop already with the “reform” nonsense ‘cause that word doesn’t mean what you think it means. Screwing us doesn’t hurt less because you name it something else…Barry Sotero.

Semantic double speak may work on the minions who bought into the Hope/Change, unicorns and rainbows for everyone, let’s be part of something historic, never mind the dude has never held a job that generated revenue to cover his own paycheck much less the billions that the companies he now wants to “reform”, but it doesn’t mean squat to the rest of us O (sh*t) man.

Though there is one “reform” I’m looking forward to – NOVEMBER.

And it got me to thinking.

You know, we have a pretty dismal track record with seeing through that word and you cannot really blame our politicians for using it. It works, what? A hundred percent of the time or something close to that? Quick, what’s the last thing that was called “reform” that didn’t pass. I think it is a hundred percent. I think if I had a car that started as often as “reform” gets signed into law, I’d keep it forever. So would you.

But you know what? That doesn’t mean that everything called “reform” has to be a bad idea. Once in awhile, we can put together legislation that makes sense, that would help the country, and put that salesman’s word on it. Just to shake things up a bit.

So I came up with a little list.

1. ILLEGAL Immigration reform. As in ILLEGAL. Did I say ILLEGAL?
2. Putting-up-with-communist-assholes reform.
3. Domestic drilling reform. Drill-baby-drill.
4. Portraying-the-military-in-movies reform.
5. Aggressive interrogation reform. Which means start doing it.
6. This-Is-Sparta reform. If our soldiers rough up terrorists we don’t throw them in the brig, we give ’em medals.
7. Deficit spending reform. Budget deficits simply aren’t allowed anymore. Learn to deal, Congress.
8. Birth certificate reform. Just pull the thing out, President-Elect, like I have to do when I apply for a passport.
9. ACORN/Census reform. Anyone who put you guys in charge of this, is banned from public service for life.
10. You-go-first reform. Congress makes laws that affect the rest of us, Congress lives under those laws first.

Now, I don’t care if you’re a conservative or a liberal. Those are good ideas, right? Well…maybe our bedwetter liberals would balk at the waterboarding. But is it really a liberal position that terrorists get to saw off the heads of American journalists while they’re still alive, desperately gurgling through their severed windpipes — but that our bravest, finest young men and women should spend twenty years in Leavenworth if they so much as slap the guy? That’s really a liberal position?

If that’s the case, then who in the hell is worried about November? Make that a central issue, take over the House and Senate, and bang you’re done. President Soetoro calls up to say “I’d like a bill sent to my desk to help spread the wealth around” and you tell Him no.

But back to the original point.

It’s like saving the planet. Things that bring harm to the planet, you’ll notice, are never inconvenient things. Toilet paper that scratches your ass is not bad for the environment; assholes who drive around in convertibles with their tops down, and their speakers going boom-chicka-boom, are not bad for the planet. Comfortable, cushy toilet paper is bad for the planet, and that truck you like to drive that comes in handy, is bad for the planet. It’s the same case with that word “reform.”

Joe McCarthy once said of Gen. George C. Marshall, “If Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country’s interest.” That is supposed to be a notorious quote; I don’t see why. To me, exactly the same principle apples to that word “reform.”

If the word were simply random and arbitrary, rather than a passcode for destroying this country from within, the laws of probability dictate that some of the laws festooned with this label would serve the interests of the country, and the people living within it.

That isn’t what I’m seeing. I cannot currently recall any exceptions to the trend: That which is attached to the name “reform” is antithetical to common sense.

In fact, I just thought of an eleventh: Reform reform. If the bill is brought to the floor of either house, and it has that odious word in the title, it is summarily dismissed. Seriously, why not?

Don’t let a crisis go to waste. Have you ever considered how embarrassing it’s going to be if future generations actually pay attention to what was said, right about now, and when? They’ll be all like “So Rahm Emmanuel got caught saying ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ — and then, after that, Barack Obama gave one speech after another with the word ‘crisis,’ hundreds of speeches a year, years at a time??” Yeah I know, junior, I’m having trouble figuring it out myself and I’m living in it.

Obama blamed “a failure of responsibility,” according to excerpts from the speech provided by the White House, saying “it is essential that we learn the lessons of this crisis, so we don’t doom ourselves to repeat it.”

“And make no mistake, that is exactly what will happen if we allow this moment to pass – an outcome that is unacceptable to me and to the American people,” Obama will say.

Alright, get out the daubers and cards and let’s get this party started. Lessons, crisis, teachable moment, responsibility, make no mistake, let me be clear.

But there is a problem. What was that Einstein said about you can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it? How about with the people who created it?

Everyone from disgraced former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to analysts at the Brookings Institution and Barclays Capital to the GOP leadership and Rush Limbaugh has noted the reeking political opportunism in the air.

As the New York Post reported Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee immediately bought sponsored Internet ads on Google that direct web surfers who type in “Goldman Sachs SEC” to Obama’s fundraising site. “It’s time to hold the big banks accountable,” the money-grubbing DNC message bellows. But just like his crony capitalist predecessor George W. Bush, Obama has relied on Goldman Sachs and Wall Street power brokers to engineer massive government interventions to “rescue” failing businesses with the tax dollars of ordinary Americans.

While irony-challenged Democratic candidates like mob-linked banker Alexi Giannoulias in Illinois (who hopes to fill Obama’s old Senate seat) call on Republicans to return their fat-cat Goldman Sachs donations, the Democrats are silent on the $994,795 in Goldman Sachs campaign cash that Obama bagged.

The democrat firefighter comes bringing buckets of gasoline.

When he throws the gasoline on your burning house and the flames leap up higher, and you notice it, he makes fun of you for noticing it.

And then he lets you know that union rules prohibit you from doing anything to fight the fire yourself.

Then you find out he set the fire in the first place.

And he makes fun of you for noticing that.

A graphic creation of blogger friend Phil.

The lefties can see it too. Have you picked up on that surge of desperation lately? It’s like having the entire Alinsky book thrown at you at once, whereas before the ObamaCare bill it was more like one chapter at a time. They done screwed the pooch but good, and they know it.

Hat tip once again to Boortz.

I’m a little leery of comedy being given a platform specifically so it can be used as a weapon. After awhile it stops being funny, since humor isn’t the primary mission.

But for now, from what I see the jokes are okay. Barack Obama jokes are still fresh, and will be for quite awhile because there’s this soft rule that He’s a Holy Man and you’re not supposed to make fun of Him. And yet inwardly, when people evaluate Him with their faculties of common sense, in their heart of hearts and skull of skulls they all know He’s become something of a joke, so the joke is kinda just sitting there ready to be made. Every punchline has a little bit of an “ooh” to it, as in I-can’t-believe-he-said-that.

“I can see Russia from my house!” never had that going for it.

If this is a weapon, it displays promise of being a potent one. Let’s hope they do better than Air America.

They’re pulling out the big guns now:

Liberal Democrats and their friends in the media have tried just about everything to dismiss and discredit the tea-party movement. They’ve accused Americans who are anxious and angry about a rapidly encroaching government of being racists, extremists, birthers, pawns of a corporate “AstroTurf” effort—and, now, potential Timothy McVeighs.

No less a figure than Bill Clinton seized on the occasion of the Oklahoma City bombing’s 15th anniversary to lecture tea-party activists, first in a speech last week to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, then in a Monday New York Times op-ed. “Have at it, go fight, go do whatever you want,” he said in the speech. “You don’t have to be nice; you can be harsh. But you’ve got to be very careful not to advocate violence or cross the line.” In the op-ed, he wrote: “There is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government.”

Taken strictly at face value, these statements are unobjectionable. Yet given that the tea-party movement has been peaceful and law-abiding, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mr. Clinton is engaging in a not-so-subtle smear campaign.

In doing so, Mr. Clinton is taking a page out of his own Presidential playbook. Five days after the 1995 bombing, he delivered a speech in which he denounced “purveyors of hatred and division.” He said, “They leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable. . . . When they say things that are irresponsible, that may have egregious consequences, we must call them on it.” A news report at the time noted that Mr. Clinton made these incendiary accusations while “never putting a noun to the pronoun.”

Mr. Clinton’s opposition to “demonizing the government” would be more credible had he been heard from on the subject during the first eight years after he left office—when, for example, Hollywood demonized George W. Bush by releasing “Fahrenheit 9/11,” or when Mr. Clinton’s own former Vice President railed against the man who beat him in 2000: “He betrayed this country!”

Instead, Mr. Clinton’s effort to exploit the memory of Oklahoma City looks like a partisan cheap shot. In his speech last week, the former President observed that, unlike the Boston Tea Party, “this fight is about taxation by duly, honestly elected representatives that you don’t happen to agree with, that you can vote out at the next election.” Our guess is that the next election is what he’s really afraid of.

The fight is about out-of-control entitlement spending by duly elected representatives who were told, in no uncertain terms, that their constituents opposed it by three-fifths to two-fifths.

It’s about being marginalized as a rube, a ruffian, a mobster, a racist, a hack, a thug, an arsonist, a thief and a liar if you don’t go along with brand new national debts so incredibly exorbitant that your grandchildren will only dream about having a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

It’s about one energy crisis after another, during which time our liberal politicians tell us we can’t drill here or there because it might make things a tad uncomfortable for some kind of stinkbug. It’s about a prolonged economic malaise, during which time our liberal politicians attack our businesses as if the businesses were monsters, rather than legally recognized entities chartered for the purpose of making money. Tell executives of those businesses they can’t make bonuses over such-and-such an amount. Nationalize entire industries and then have the gall to say you aren’t doing it. And (don’t forget this step) BlameGeorgeWBush.

It’s about having our shoes piddled on, and being told it’s raining.

The most historically significant note jotted down by “Tea Party” in the history textbooks of tomorrow, I think, will not be that they fixed something that was broken, but that they demonstrated something else was broken. They have been, more-or-less, a model for what dissent should be in America. They have been what everybody says they want: Self-disciplined, contained, principled and peaceful disagreement. The way their movement has been treated, by the modern aristocracy, the think tanks, the legislators, the executives, the establishment media, the academia, by overly-bloated self-important huckster ex-Presidents, et al — has been nothing short of scandalous. It really is a national disgrace.

Yup, I definitely approve:

The Arizona House on Monday voted for a provision that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate if he hopes to be on the state’s ballot when he runs for reelection.

The House voted 31-22 to add the provision to a separate bill. The measure still faces a formal vote.

It would require U.S. presidential candidates who want to appear on the ballot in Arizona to submit documents proving they meet the constitutional requirements to be president.

Phoenix Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema said the bill is one of several measures that are making Arizona “the laughing stock of the nation.”

Mesa Republican Rep. Cecil Ash said he has no reason to doubt Obama’s citizenship but supports the measure because it could help end doubt.

I approve because I’m with that last guy. I’d bet a l-a-r-g-e amount of money Obama was born in Honolulu. But the precedent we’ve set by leaving things as they are, is a terrible one.

This country is being overrun by ankle-biters. By which I mean, people who resolve disagreements by means of ridicule, avoiding things like evidence, inferences, conclusions, all that good stuff.

The way I see it, Obama has never had a reason for demurring on the issue of releasing the long form. I think He sees the ankle-biters the way I do; as an important constituency. And this is His nod to them. We’ll argue this thing your way. By making fun of anybody who doesn’t just decide it the way we want…like we’re little kids or something.

I’m not saying He was born in Kenya, but enough is enough. I present a personal check, I show my driver’s license. I apply for a job, I show my social security card or my passport. I get sworn in as President, and…clue?

If the little people have to do it, the big people have to do it. Period, end of story.

What the hell, the electrons don’t cost anything. Let’s clutter ’em up.

Here’s the backstory. Blogger friend Westsoundmodern embedded that video, we’ve been talking about it on & off — not because it’s got good lookin’ women in skimpy clothes in it, but because the conversation that ensues just brings out the worst and most thoughtless in liberals. We like to make a study of both of those, good lookin’ women in skimpy clothes, and the disconnected, incoherent thoughts that swim around in the addled brains of liberal douchebags. So keen-eyed nobodies who visit The Blog That Nobody Reads, will note we have been returning to this.

“Joe America” just uploaded the capstone to the pyramid of dumbshittedness a few hours ago, and it really is something to behold:

Morgan,

I agree, if people are calling tea-baggers racest without cause, they are being racist. My comment was directed more at Westsound’s blatant sexism and belittling of any woman who thinks she can get by on her talent and brains alone. Maybe someone like Helen Thomas doesn’t give a crap whether someone like you find her attractive or not. I guess if you’re paying for fashion advice, you go to the woman at the Macy’s make-up counter; if you’re paying for some sort of specific expertise, one that requires education and knowledge, I personally don’t care what they look like; Results are what matter – Substance.

I think a lot of people look at the photos of the tea-party protests and wonder: where are all the non-white people? Maybe only white people are rational and dislike being taxed in to the ground? I don’t know… But as far as I can tell, they don’t seem to have any real solutions, just complaints about being taxed too much. Well, me too. I just get tired of whiners and complainers that have no viable solutions. They’re just wasting everyone’s time – in my opinion.

Questioning the patriotism of someone that balks at invading another country is a far cry from telling someone to get out of the way if they don’t have any solutions to the mess we’re in. A monopoly on free speech? Oh yeah, those damned minorities keeping the white man down again…..

I don’t know where you live, but around here there are plenty of literal creationists and born again nut-jobs. I’m not calling them crazy, I’m just saying that anyone that believes that god created the world in seven days is a nut-job. I don’t car how long days were back then – It’s flat out crazy-talk, and goes against all scientific thought.

Sarah Palin says she believes in creation. The only difference is that she uses the old “days were way longer back then” explanation. It’s all just degrees of mental illness to me. If I told you I believe that God came down and punished half the people in the world by making them have dark skin, and I’m descended from the white (good) people, so I’m never supposed to breed or worship with all the dark skinned people (like the Mormons believe: http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_racism.html) you would call me crazy, intolerant, or racist – maybe even against Mormons? – Unless of course you were a Scientologist, then the Mormons would side with me in calling you crazy. It’s all relative I guess. People can believe anything they want; and I have the right to deem them total nut-jobs. It’s a free country after all.

And no thanks, to what I consider a “crazy person” running the free world. I don’t care if you get your ideas from the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, or a book brought down by an Alien Angel, it’s all the same to me. It’s not what I believe in, and you can keep it to yourself, thank you very much.

Now, if deeply religious people could be elected to public office and be expected to govern with a secular hand, that might be different. But I have yet to see that happen in real life. And it only seems to be getting worse…..

And, you try writing writing more than a few sentences on your Iphone. Fosell, fossell, fawcell. oh well….

Regards,

Joe

Some observations I make about this:

One. Joe, like many millions of others, doesn’t really work with facts. He just goes through the motions of doing this. WSM “belittl[ed] any woman who thinks she can get by on her talent and brains alone”? Really? WSM came in afterward and called him out on it, to which Joe said…well, nothing. Palin believes in Creation, “she uses the old ‘days were way longer back then’ explanation”? What’s that supposed to mean? Palin’s views on Creation have been vastly exaggerated, this isn’t news to anyone who’s been paying attention. But it seems Joe’s willing to buy into every little thing he’s heard about her…and I’m supposed to believe every word too, because some anonymous guy who can’t spell things on his iPhone tells me to believe it.

Two. Joe can’t conclude anything once he does have the facts. He says “People can believe anything they want; and I have the right to deem them total nut-jobs.” Let’s see what else Joe has the right to deem. When I object to Obama sympathizers trying to gain a “monopoly on free speech” Joe “deems” that to mean “Oh yeah, those damned minorities keeping the white man down again.” Oh yeah, Joe. Sure. Whatever you deem.

Three. When Joe bases his ideas on something, he bases it on — other peoples’ ideas. He doesn’t say the idea of a seven-day Creation “goes against all scientific evidence” — he says it “goes against all scientific thought.” Now, there are lots of different ways to interpret the seven days, but Joe seems to have his mind all made up. He’ll interpret it in whatever way he “deems,” and once he’s done deeming that he’s ready to deem any adherents to be “nut-jobs.”

Four, and I’ve saved the best for last: Joe’s priorities are mistaken. Anyone who wants to be our next President can go to church every week, believe every single word out of the Bible, even view it through a strictly fundamentalist lens. Noah’s Ark, the eclipse of the sun getting stuck — everything, lock stock and barrel. That really isn’t going to affect much of anything.

When the current President is a “nut-job,” He “believes” a massive new entitlement program is going to save us money, and we should all be thankful to Him for cutting our taxes as soon as we’re done bitterly clinging to our guns and Bibles. Because of that, my children and grandchildren probably can’t earn a goddamn thing, and neither can yours, or Joe’s.

I think I got this guy pegged: He’s a secularist. He doesn’t think people can do anything good if they’re religious, and he doesn’t think people can do anything bad if they’re secular. He’s one of these smarmy atheists who have it all figured out, there is nothing up there because he’s figured it out that way.

Joe doesn’t figure things out, though. He’ll never admit this, but he swims with the tide. He’s one of these characters who, with a time machine, I can motivate to take on any opinion I want him to…just by figuring out what period in which that opinion is popular, and transporting him there. You want a Joe who believes in slavery? Coming right up. A Joe of Salem who thinks we need to hunt all the witches down? I can do that too. A Joe who wants to crucify all the Christians and feed them to the lions? No mean feat…how about a Joe who believes the Lancastrians rule by divine right? Or the Yorkists? Or Julius Caesar? Or wants to help participate in Caesar’s assassination? I can do it all, just give me Joe’s warm-putty-like mind, and a time machine with a precise dial on it.

People like this have no balls, no fortitude. That’s why Joe is so incensed about the lack of intellect in an ordinary citizen of Alaska whom he doesn’t personally know. Just think about that, now. You might conclude Sarah Palin’s a big ol’ dummy because so many people are saying so. Tentatively. Must be something to it, mustn’t there? That much is reasonable. But to get emotionally wrapped up in it, is a little nuts. You can only pull that off if you lack courage.

People like this are like jellyfish, just drifting with the current…left…right…whatever. If we all played a “truth or dare” game in which we sat in a room and talked about our experiences going against the consensus, poor Joe wouldn’t have jack squat to say. And I think he’s upset about it, if you want to know the truth. Maybe that’s why he gets so nasty over not-a-whole-lot. And that’s why I think Joe is important; there are a lot of people like him.

They go left when left is popular, they go right when right is popular. They hate themselves for it and are therefore constantly, indescribably, rude. They’re the anti-Charlton-Hestons.

Mkay, we’ll take note of that and file it for future reference. Hercules has completed his first labor.

Sen. John McCain praised a tough Arizona anti-immigration bill that will let police arrest people who aren’t carrying identification, the latest move in McCain’s rightward shift in advance of a tough Republican Senate primary this summer.

“I think it’s a very important step forward,” McCain said Monday. “I can fully understand why the legislature would want to act.”

It’s a dramatic switch for a senator who supported comprehensive immigration reform with Democratic lion Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) just four years ago. McCain is facing a primary challenge from the right in former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

His office later said his comments did not represent an endorsement, though a spokeswoman would not condemn the bill, either.

It’s not an enormous issue now, but I remember a few years back the news was thick with mention of some “needle exchange program” whereby city governments would spend good money providing free, clean needles to druggies who were shooting up illegal drugs. I see it as pretty much the same issue. When “illegal” is right there in the name of what is being done…it just seems like government shouldn’t be helping with it.

Because if government is going to help with it, even only passively, by looking-the-other-way, then what we have is a situation in which some crimes are super-duper-illegal and other “crimes” are kinda-sorta-illegal. Where it is implicitly understood that you’re “gonna do it anyway” so we’ll just work that whole thing, under the surface, if you will.

You know, we have the equal-protection clause for a reason. Shenanigans like this, by which I mean the status quo, without the new Arizona bill, violate the ever lovin’ snot out of it, IMO. I break a traffic law and I really-really did break it, it’s okay to entrap me by means of road signs that aren’t even legal. And this other guy over here, is breaking a different law…so now we have all these anti-laws that make it harder to catch him doing it. Can’t pull him over, can’t ask for papers, can’t refer him to the feds, can’t do this, can’t do that.

“Toad Tunnel” laws. That’s what they are. Bypass routes specifically constructed to penetrate a barrier, so that creepy-crawly and slithery-slimy things can get from one side to the other. Yeah, maybe that seems harsh when we’re talking about the folks down on their luck who just want to send money back home to their families. Well, you might be thinking of that; I’m thinking of kiddy-diddlers. That’s not true, you say? None of the twelve or twenty million are up to such shenanigans? Prove it. You can’t. They’re illegal.

And they’re gonna use your toad-tunnel laws. You know what happened to the real Toad Tunnel? Aside from the fact that it cost a goddamn fortune and became a laughing stock, snakes started using the toad tunnel to ensconce themselves in the fenced in “protected wetland” on the far side, and engorge themselves on the “endangered and protected” frogs. Yet another reason for the parallel to the immigration “laws.” Your intentions don’t really matter. You move up the food chain, and the predators up there are more capable of making use of such devices, than the relatively harmless specimens further down.

So hell yes this is overdue. Now back to Mac:

Immigration reform advocates were bewildered.

“He risked his political career for immigration reform, and now he is compromising his principles to fight for his political life,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice and a longtime immigration reform advocate.

Under the Arizona law, which passed the state Senate today and sent to Gov. Jan Brewer (R), police can arrest anyone on “reasonable suspicion” that they are an illegal immigrant. If they’re not carrying a valid driver’s license or identity papers, police can arrest them.

Hayworth called McCain’s Monday comments “political gamesmanship…born of political convenience – driven by his need for personal political gain.”

Why do they keep shoving microphones into the faces of jerks like this? McCain is compromising his “principles” now? What principles would those be?

I thought the whole point of this “reform” was to provide a “pathway to citizenship” so that if you can’t find a way to immigrate to the states legally, down the road such a way would be provided to you. Does Mr. Sharry have some kind of plan that, in the meantime, these illegal aliens should just keep on tootling around in their unregistered, uninsured cars without driver’s licenses? And we should all just look at other things more fun to watch, while the “snakes” among them slither through the tunnel to molest our women, kidnap our children, robbing, looting, murdering whenever it suits them?

Here’s what people are missing: If you make it alright to break this one “little” law that says “don’t cross this border unless you have the right papers” — you have to excuse everything else. All other laws are meaningless. You can’t enforce a law against someone if you don’t even know who it is. And so yes, it becomes a lawless underclass, a lawless culture. The fact that some of the people who dwell within, do follow the law…now that they’re here, now that they broke that first one…really doesn’t have anything to do with it. What’s relevant is the enforceability of the laws you have left, and that fell off the map when you said it was alright to scale the fence. From that point forward, the other laws only have a constraining effect upon those who choose to live by them voluntarily.

Good on McCain. This doesn’t make him a “good conservative” all by itself, but it is an educational moment. “Reform” people, if they’re honest, shouldn’t have reservations about what’s being done now and if they do, they shouldn’t be prattling on about “principles” being violated. It’s the enforcement of laws that are on the books already. Nothing unprincipled about that.

Not the right time to form conclusions about who’s a good conservative or who’s a bad conservative. We don’t know enough…or we’re not finding that out here, anyway. But it is a good thing to watch, to learn things we need to learn. About who’s motivated by what.

So our current President is some idiot woman named Palin, right?

I ask, because it seems all over the blogs and the message boards there are liberals making an issue out of her fitness-or-lack-thereof for the presidency. To hear them tell it, we’re simply not worried about anybody else. Nobody else is currently occupying that office. We’re not worried about anyone else being an incurious dolt or looking out of His depth.

And then there is the matter of character.

Roger Kimball proceeds with the well-deserved skewering.

I believe that the editorialist for Investor’s Business Daily got it exactly right about the second part of Obama’s response to the rallies: “Thanks for What?” he asked.

Why should they [the tea partiers] be thankful? As the president himself said on his weekly radio address a week ago, “one thing we have not done is raise income taxes on families making less than $250,000; that’s another promise we kept.”

In fact, that wasn’t his promise at all.

Here’s what candidate Obama really said in September of 2008: “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

Got that? “Not any of your taxes.” The claim of no tax hikes on those below $250,000 as a result of the current administration’s policies is completely and utterly false.

A report from the House Ways & Means Committee’s GOP members notes that, since January 2009, Congress and the president have enacted $670 billion in tax increases. That’s $2,100 for each person in America. At least 14 of those tax hikes, the report says, break Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000. Roughly $316 billion of the tax hikes — 14 increases in all — hit middle-class families, the report says.

This comes in addition to recent data from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office showing U.S. spending and indebtedness growing at an alarming rate. Government spending now totals 25% of GDP, a quarter above its long-term average. By 2035, it will hit 34% of GDP at current trends — a 70% increase in the real size of government in just 25 years.

Ha, ha, ha. Very amusing, what?

What should we make of Obama’s merriment? What does it tell us about his sense of humor? What does it tell us about what an earlier age would have called his “humor,” his character?

The first thing to notice about this moment of hilarity is how consonant it is with other Obama rhetorical eructations. For example, how similar in spirit it is to his challenge to Republicans after Nancy Pelosi managed to ram the presidential health care legislation through Congress. Instantly, there were calls to repeal the law. “My attitude is,” Obama told a crowd in Iowa, “go for it” — as if it would get them anywhere!

Obama’s amusement at the spectacle of dissent was also consonant with the remarks of candidate Obama disparaging all those “bitter” folks who “cling to guns or religion” instead of getting with the big government, progressive leftism espoused by Barack Obama.

Most of us would not buy a car, used or new, from a salesman who bursts into derisive laughter at the prospect of we, the customers, making a decision displeasing to the salesman. A salesman who thinks It’s All About Him. That’s the very picture of what it takes to move the customers across the street, to the other car lot.

There are some folks who’d still wanna stick around, if the salesman is an extra good speech-maker. But you have to be in the mood for that kind of thing. You have to be, to coin a phrase, fat dumb and happy. Or young dumb and happy, as the case may be. Well…once people have been ripped off, they’re not that way anymore.

But Obama really needs to stop His followers from all of this Palin noise. Today. It’s hurting Him badly. It’d be one thing if she was already running against Him…even then, all this deliberation about whether she’s qualified or not, when He’s the one who’s already in there, would look pathetic and whiny.

But she isn’t even doing anything. Just giving speeches, raising funds, uploading Facebook entries like millions of other citizens. So to start the argument now just looks rather un-champion-ish. It looks like, if you could point to an Obama policy that’s turned out to be a good one, you’d be doing that; but instead here you are selecting a random ordinary unelected citizen — supposedly one of the dopier ones, according to your own argument — and comparing Him, to her.

That’s the only way He can look good at this point?

It doesn’t address what is broken. What’s broken, as Kimball points out, has to do with character. Barack Obama’s job is so much bigger than He is, that He doesn’t even know what to do. He’s like a three-year-old who’s just mastered the fine art of running, joining daddy and his friends for a casual Saturday morning game of touch football, running the wrong way while everyone good-naturedly chuckles, and maybe films it for later. Just doesn’t know what He’s doing.

He comes from the Alinsky mind-mold in which, when people act like they’re not buying in to what you’re offering, you ridicule them, make fun of them, “freeze it and personalize it” as they say. Well, Saul Alinsky didn’t say what to do when everyone becomes a detractor, and they get that way just by means of common sense. Obama isn’t thoughtful enough to see that this might call for a different tactic, so He just keeps on keepin’-on. We’re so unsophisticated, we’re so racist, we’re not good enough for Him.

Putting it in plainer terms, he comes from a faraway land in which, the best way to motivate the masses to say “yes” to a question, is to stop that question from being asked in the first place. His inability to flex in this tactic is becoming a serious problem, now that the question m-u-s-t be asked. Obama’s idea of leadership is to call us a bunch of rubes; our response to this, should be to ponder the worthiness of this bespectacled chickee over here who isn’t running for anything?

Here’s a news flash: Sarah Palin may very well never run at all. If she does, the likely moment for her to throw her hat into the ring would be sometime around Thanksgiving 2011, a year and a half away. Probably later than that.

Our Obama zealots have been busily deliberating whether she’s good enough for the job, for a year and a half already, right now. They won’t ask this of the “Sort Of God” who’s already in there.

It would be poetic justice if, when the time came, that was turned into yet another Obama disadvantage. Come to think of it, isn’t that a good qualification for the job? That there’s some serious thought going on, some deliberation, about whether you’re good enough for the job, rather than the job being good enough for you?

Advantage Palin.

Makes me cross my legs in empathic agony just reading about it. Yeesh.

I’m going to take what may be a controversial position on this, and say I am quite opposed to men getting their scrotal sacks caught in these devices. Certainly isn’t the outcome I would have in mind. Yes, by all means, inspect those puppies.

I used to think you were only mildly disturbed but now I can plainly see your nuts.

A little pink toy plastic one.

Hmmm…