As in sixty years late?

Fights over children — who gets custody, how much for child support — are at the heart of any family law court on any given day. The faces change, but the stories and disputes rarely do.

So it is on today’s docket in the Los Angeles courtroom of Judge Elia Weinbach. At least on paper. The dispute between Rosemary Douglas and Urban Joseph Grass over back child support seems familiar: She claims he never paid; he says he never knew.

In this case, however, the mom has a head of gray hair and has been collecting Social Security for more than a decade. The father was born in the heart of the Jazz Age, when a fellow named Coolidge resided in the White House. And the “child” in question is that only on some yellowing piece of paper. In real life he is a retired grandfather.

“He was ordered to do something. He didn’t do it,” said the 81-year-old Douglas. “He didn’t challenge it, not legally anyway. I’d always thought about this. It was never far from my mind. Finally I decided, why not? Why not try one more time?”

The story began in 1950. Douglas got pregnant and was not married. She insists Grass was the father and that he wanted nothing to do with her. After her son Gerald was born, she said she went to court to get an order for child support because she had no alternative.
:
Now a widow, Douglas said she could use the $57,000 that she claims Grass owes her, which includes ever-rising interest. But more important than the money, she said, is the principle. When she managed to locate him in Texas, she hired a process server to deliver court papers.

“If a judgment is rendered, you have to satisfy that judgment,” she said. “He owes this.”

Well yeah, if he really owes it then go to town granny. I do think he’s entitled to a test, especially if you’re socking him with interest. And the “could use the money” part is really objectionable I must say…especially in view of said interest.

I got slammed by something like this, and it wasn’t child support. My child support payments are made typically early…which is out of necessity…that’s a story I’d rather not get into. But this other thing on which I was technically in arrears, having to do with the creditor’s lawyer popping out of the bushes after decades, demand letter in hand, charging as much interest as is technically possible — that was messed up. I found out through that experience that lawyers routinely advise their clients to do this. Hunker down for a dog’s age, let the interest rack up, and then ambush the bastard and charge him through the nose.

It’s a word to the wise. You’re responsible for knowing the “final” situation involved with each transaction beyond the shadow of any doubt, even if life’s eddies and currents don’t make that easily manageable. Your idea of “final” might not really be final. I learned it, and I learned at a discount because I fought that gouging and I mostly won. But I was lucky.

Great argument for tort reform. And yes I’d include child support in that. “Could use the money”? This contradicts the spirit of American civil law, IMO. Wrongs should be redressed, but if one party’s financial comfort is an issue before the court and the other’s is not, then the parties are not on equal footing. Getting slapped with sixty years of interest when you’re a retired light-colonel and 81? Yikes.

The “child” is a grandfather. Hehe, that’s rich.

Oh well. Hope there are some opportunities to stay tuned into this one. Although I doubt it…and something tells me all things are not necessarily as they appear.

Chris Currey begins his tale thusly…

I am an old Republican. I am religious, yet not a fanatic. I am a free-marketer; yet, I believe in the role of the government as a fair evenhanded referee.

Stopped reading. What’s the fucking point?

Leaving the rest up to The Other McCain, who is at least getting some laughs out of it.

You belong in the purge-bowl, pal. With a courtesy-flush. You’re as much an “old Republican” as Fidel.

Purge them. Wipe out any trace. Deport them on boxcars. Tar and feather them. “Fair evenhanded referee”…feh. I used to have some healthy curiosity about whether these people were sociopathic liars, or whether they just completely missed the point altogether. I do not have this curiosity anymore, it’s done left me.

It is an attack, again, on definitions of things. A failure to comprehend basic cause-and-effect. Here, one last time let us treat the mindset as something on the up-and-up: What, specifically, is it about the government that makes the people within it so fair and evenhanded? What makes them so noble and so wise that they, many of whom have never worked a day in their lives, can approach the President or the CEO of Acme Widget Co. who may have been producing widgets for fifty years or more as-man-and-boy…and tell him the right way to make widgets?

But I’m done with that. This is not on the up-and-up. This is a liberal. A hardcore egg-sucking dog of a liberal wearing a disguise, and it’s a crappy disguise at that. Begone with you, and everyone like you, and take your hammer and sickle with you.

While I was sitting in the smoke-filled saloon in the middle of nowhere, I did manage to whip out my phone and see what was on Phil’s page. Pretty interesting stuff actually. He’s got some relatives who are pulling out the ol’ moderation/extremism bit trying to prop up this albatross — You have to have some central planning, what about the interstates? — etc.

This is, as I pointed out, a lie. Progressivism, socialism, call it what you will; it’s a shark, it doesn’t stop. Moderation is conservatism. It’s far more accurate to say “of course you have to leave some things up to the people to decide…the ones who are most closely impacted by whatever it is.” To which, socialism is about, saying no to that. Nyet. Nein. Everything worth deciding has to be brought to the Kremlin. The only decisions to be left up to the people, are the decisions that headquarters has decided to leave up to the people. For the time being. Cosmetically. But the super-duper smart people at the epicenter decide everything worth deciding. No exceptions allowed, none.

Coincidentally, when I got back from the trip I found Glenn Reynolds discussing exactly that in great detail…and why it’ll never work.

Any economic planner who attempts to [centrally operate a diverse market] will wind up hopelessly uninformed and behind the times, reacting to economic changes in a clumsy, too-late fashion and then being forced to react again to fix the problems that the previous mistakes created, leading to new problems, and so on.

Market mechanisms, like pricing, do a better job than planners because they incorporate what everyone knows indirectly through signals like price, without central planning.

Thus, no matter how deceptively simple and appealing command economy programs are, they are sure to trip up their operators, because the operators can’t possibly be smart enough to make them work.

I don’t know why the socialists argue about this stuff, I really don’t. They act like they have great big bundles of anecdotes they can bring to the table to prove, on an historical backdrop, that their way is right. And they don’t.

But this is the wrong question. The right question is one that deals with human psychology: Why is it that we are tempted, over and over again, to try out this failed experiment? If it’s a process of evolving the human condition and making ourselves better and better across the generations — doesn’t evolution involve rejecting the antiquated and unfit, as much as incubating and incorporating the new? Sometime, somewhere, something has to be dismissed. Socialism is as good a candidate for dismissal as any. As Phil points out, that does not equal the rejection of anything and everything that has been centrally planned. But you do have to reject anything & everything that has to do with local control, in order to show some hospitality or acceptance to the idea of progressivism/socialism.

Reagan’s quote really says it all, in my opinion: “If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”

Four in ten are democrats or independents.

The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group. Two-thirds of the group call themselves conservative, 26 are moderate and 8 percent say they are liberal.

The Winston Group conducted three national telephone surveys of 1,000 registered voters between December and February. Of those polled, 17 percent – more than 500 people — said they were “part of the Tea Party movement.”

Allahpundit has video of David Letterman interviewing a representative of the movement (hat tip to FrankJ). She comes off as rather non-nutty, non-birther, non-racist and live-and-let-live.

Too bad. The millions of dollars that have been spent trying to portray the tea party as the rightful heir of the Ku Klux Klan, is likely on par with what it takes to bring a typical summer blockbuster to the big screen. This sets that effort back a ways. “Letterman” is being crossed off the cocktail party invite lists as I write this, no doubt.

4-Block World, via Gerard once again.

Some time ago the former Governor of Alaska asked “How’s that hopey, changey thing workin’ out for ya?” Now that it’s been a couple of months, someone at DailyKOS figured out hey, that sounds like it could be a valid point, we’d better put together some stuff to at least pretend to answer it.

The end result looks pretty impressive.

Pretty damn well actually, in just one year President Obama…

Passed Healthcare Reform (ending preexisting conditions, giving small business subsidies for providing insurance, Creating 3.2M HC-related jobs over the next 10 years, closing the medicare donut hole in drug coverage, ensuring coverage for all kids up till the age of 26, covering 32 million americans, expanding medicaid to cover the rest, all while cutting the national debt by a 100 billion dollars) – Check.

Signed into law Tax Cuts for all middle income families, and 95% of all Americans – Check

Signed an Arms control agreement with Russia to dismantle nuclear weapons – Check

Reauthorized SCHIP to cover all Children – Check

Saved the entire stock market from collapsing (from a low point of a dow of 6000 within a month of Obama taking office, to close to 11,000 just an year later, basically preventing millions of retirement accounts from getting wiped out) – Check

Ended the ban on travel for people with HIV – Check

Stopped the dismissals of homosexual individuals serving in the military by the Pentagon (It’s the first step to dismantling DA,DT completely) – Check

Ended the federal crackdown on Medicinal Marijuana centers in CA – Check

Passed into law Mortgage Fraud Protections – Check

Ended the ban on Stem Cell Research – Check

Passed Student Loan Reform, and Used The Savings to Significantly Increase Financial Aid Loans and Grants – Check

Engaged in diplomatic dialogue with Middle Eastern countries, instead of using language like “Axis of Evil” that achieves nothing other than to piss them off some more. – Check

Passed Credit Card Reform (Minimizing Predatory Lending, Making the terms of credit cards clear, eliminating arbitrary rate increases) – Check

Since the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, have had the new job loss numbers from their peak right as Obama took office, go down steadily month after month, every single month like clockwork to the point that finally, this month is going to have job growth in the six figures (a trend expected to accelerate this whole year) – Check

Reversed the ban on sending foreign aid to countries with legal abortions (The Mexico City Policy) – Check

Signed the Expanded Hate Crimes Bill – Check

Helped stem down employment discrimination by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Act – Check

Of course, George Bush had a list like this; so did Bill Clinton. It’s really not that hard. Every little thing that promotes the President’s agenda, like halting the ban on stem cell research, you act like it’s an “accomplishment” on par with replacing a toilet, repairing a car’s busted exhaust manifold, patching a roof…

…and, of course, everything that costs money you pretend like it doesn’t. Or even better still, hazily imply that the President Himself is busting out His own wallet to cover everything. No burden being put on the backs of the taxpayer; Obama’s just “covering” everybody.

Go ahead and confuse the gonna-dooz with the hav-dunz. That’s always a favorite game among losers. Oh look, Obama saved us hundreds of billions of dollars on our deficit.

Interestingly, if you buy Palin’s book and look in the back of it, she’s got a “brag sheet” of her own and it doesn’t read like this. Hav-dunz are hav-dunz, period.

Perhaps that’s why the voters aren’t buying it…poor Obama…

In the survey last Friday through Sunday, the president gets tough treatment:

• Obama’s standing on four key personal qualities, including being a strong and decisive leader and understanding the problems Americans face in their lives, has dipped. For the first time since the 2008 campaign, he fails to win a majority of people saying he shares their values and can manage the government effectively.

• Twenty-six percent say he deserves “a great deal” of the blame for the nation’s economic problems, nearly double the number who felt that way last summer. In all, half say he deserves at least a moderate amount of blame.
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• By 50%-46%, those surveyed say Obama doesn’t deserve re-election.

Now, 2012 is still a ways off and the landscape of America’s politics is a rocky, jagged, sloped and complicated terrain. A lot can change in the time that remains.

But where American politics is complicated, Barack Obama is not. Words like “freedom” and “liberty” do not appear in Obama’s brag sheet and will not appear in any released between now and then. Everything He gives us, He takes away from somebody else. The rules He passes that supposedly make us safe, and supposedly improve our lives, are concerned with gladdening the hearts of extremist liberals from Haight-Ashbury first, and improving the lives of ordinary Americans, second. Ah, and if you’re paying your own way you are not what Obama thinks of as an “ordinary American.”

So He cannot, and will not, do anything to reverse course on this sagging approval rating. The only thing that will halt the decline is when it reaches bedrock. In Obama’s case, there are a lot of layers that will look like bedrock that really aren’t. I’m thinking…young people, inwardly realizing they’ve made a dreadful mistake, remaining egotistically invested in it and refusing to admit it was a mistake.

Those scaffolds will crumble as Obama’s approval continues to dip. Generally, young people who are enamored of a popular position, aren’t going to stick with it too long when it becomes unpopular. They want to be the first to drop it and move on, not the last. And then there is this natural curvature of time to consider. As a 43-year-old man, I may jealously guard some of the dumbass decisions I made when I was 41 and pretend they were wise decisions…or at least…not dumbass.

Back when I was 23 and even more dumbass and more stubborn, how did I feel about the dumbass decisions I made when I was 21? Would I have resorted to extremes to pretend those were wise decisions? Eh, not so much. The nature of youth is transience; I was flipping from one Morgan to another Morgan much more frequently. The ego was sensitive enough, but it just wasn’t there to be invested or protected.

Obama cannot count on young people. It’s just a fact. Exuberance is no substitute for real dedication.

And the biggest factor in deciding if we can have a Sarah Palin taking the oath in three years, is whether she wants the job. Oh sure you can look smart by bashing her and making fun of her for leaving the “G” off the ends of her words. But if you can’t keep her from winning the nomination that way — and you can’t — then, once that takes place, it’s a whole different ball game.

The Obama choice then becomes one of keeping all kinds of hardcore lefty policies in place, which we’ll be feeling in our pockets that we cannot afford…just to make sure people in the White House put the letter G on the ends of their words. Rejecting the quaint midwestern accents — in favor of the filthy, notoriously corrupt Chicago machine. Well, teleprompter or not, “cool” can’t cut through that. A well-timed quip from Tina Fey can’t cut through it either.

When the time comes for Obama’s advisers to say “That’s enough, Mister President; You must stop immediately and turn right, or lose in 2012” — He won’t stop. He doesn’t have what it takes. He lacks the humility.

Bottom line: If she wants it, the job is hers.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Look what Old Iron found…via Zombie.

Off-Topic But Related: I disagree with former Gov. Palin on that questionable word. I understand how it grates on the ears of those who have a close relationship with a special-needs child…

…but there are those of us who are parents of children who are not special-needs. Children who, nevertheless, ah…let us just say their communicative experiences with the academic world are not quite ideal. The cooked-up campfire-story made-up “learning disabilities”; if your kid is within three years or so in age of my kid, and he isn’t getting along with his teachers like gangbusters, you know what I’m talking about. We can’t call the kids inattentive or disobedient or bratty or ill-tempered or just plain mouthy, those options have all been eliminated. So we fall back on the phony-baloney learning disabilities.

Sorry, Sarah. If we’re manufacturing the goddamn things, we have to have some kind of a name we can call ’em.

Maybe it’s not quite so off-topic. In my mind’s-eye, I imagine this is the next issue to be pursued between “futureman” and the curious Eisenhower-era audience. Yeah that’s right fellas; we stigmatize against strength, and reward laziness and weakness. Then we wonder why our economy is in the shitter. I’ll bet you thought you’d already hear the worst of it, huh?

Hat tip to Linkiest.

Update: Since it’s my last night in town, my lady has taken a break from watching the gawdawful Extreme Makeover Home Edition bullshit so we can watch South Park, specifically The Snuke.

Those poor bastards in the photograph. When Future-man gets to the whole Clinton/Lewinsky thing, they’re all going to have a fucking aneurysm. I lived through it myself, and I still don’t get it.

He cheated on her — and then, the affair was dragged out in front of the entire country in lurid detail for over a year. When all was said and done, she was not only a sympathetic figure, but qualified to become a Senator representing a state with which she had practically no connection whatsoever…because she was a betrayed housewife. Just that and nothing more. That’s how sympathetic a figure she was.

But he was a sympathetic figure as well. Was, and is. Leader of the free world was simply unable to control his animal impulses. And got yelled at by his bitchy wife. We need to give him all the breaks we can.

If you don’t see what’s all cockeyed about this…well, hell. You thaw out some dude who was frozen in 1957, and explain it to him. See how that flies.

And then tweet it for me, with your breakfast.

Yet another sign that we’re becoming communists-in-all-but-name. The workers. The companies. The overworked workers, the bad evil companies.

Productivity is up, but the workers are working too hard. There’s no payroll increase because the workers are working like frightened idiots.

It seems it’s never time to breathe that sigh of relief. It’s always a disaster.

A strong March job-growth number — at a time when the economy is growing at only a middling pace — would suggest that the productivity boom has largely run its course. Regardless, the question of what caused the burst in workers’ efficiency is one of the great unanswered questions of the expansion and has huge stakes for the economy over the coming year.

“It is an episode that we’re going to — we, economists in general — are going to want to understand better and look at for a long time,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said at a hearing last week in which he described the productivity gains as “extraordinary” and acknowledged he had not foreseen them.

Businesses have certainly not been investing in new equipment that might enable workers to be more efficient — capital expenditures plummeted during the recession and are rebounding slowly. And the structural shifts occurring in the economy are so profound that one would expect productivity to be lower, rather than higher, as people need new training to work in parts of the economy that are growing, such as exports and the clean-energy sector.

So what’s happening? As best as anyone can guess, the crisis that began in 2007 and deepened in 2008 caused both businesses and workers to panic. Companies cut even more staff than the decrease in demand for their products would warrant. They were hoarding cash, fearful that they wouldn’t have access to capital down the road.

When demand for their products leveled off in the middle of last year, the companies could have stopped cutting jobs or even hired people back. But they didn’t — payrolls have continued declining.

Instead companies squeezed more work out of remaining employees, accounting for a 3.8 percent boost in worker productivity in 2009, the best in seven years. Which raises the question: Why couldn’t companies have achieved those gains back when the economy was in better shape? The answer to that may lie on the other side of the equation — employees.

Workers were in a panic of their own in 2009. Fearful of losing their jobs, people seem to have become more willing to stretch themselves to the limit to get more done in any given hour of work. And they have been tolerant of furloughs and cutbacks in hours, which in better times would drive them to find a new employer. This has given companies the leeway to cut back without the fear of losing valuable employees for good.

Dennis Prager:

Leftism, though secular, must be understood as a religion. The Leftist value system’s hold on its adherents is as strong as the hold Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have on theirs. Nancy Pelosi’s belief in expanding the government’s role in American life, which inspired her passion for the health-care bill, is as strong as a pro-life Christian’s belief in the sanctity of the life of the unborn.

Given the religious nature and the emotional power of Leftist values, Jews and Christians on the Left often derive their values from the Left more than from their religion.

Now, most Leftist Jews and Christians will counter that Leftist values cannot trump their religion’s values because Leftist values are identical to their religion’s. But this argument only reinforces my argument that Leftism has conquered the Christianity and the Judaism of Leftist Christians and Jews. If there is no difference between Leftist moral values and those of Judaism or Christianity, then Christianity is little more than Leftism with “Jesus” rhetoric and Judaism is Leftism with Jewish terms — such as “Tikkun Olam” (“repairing the world”) and “Prophetic values.”

But if Christianity is, morally speaking, really Leftism, why didn’t Catholics and Protestants assert these values before 19th century European Leftism came along? And, if Judaism is essentially a set of Left-wing values, does that mean that the Torah and the Talmud are Leftist documents? Or are the two pillars of Judaism generally wrong?

More questions:

Why are almost no Christians and Jews who believe that God is the author of the Bible on the Left?

Why are so few pro-life Catholics and Protestants on the Left? Do they not care about the poor?

Of course, that is what people on the Left believe. As the former head of the Democratic party, Howard Dean, said, “In contradistinction to the Republicans, we don’t think kids ought to go to bed hungry at night.”

They believe such things despite the fact that traditional Protestants and Catholics have created more institutions to take care of the sick and needy than probably any other group in the world, and despite the fact that religious Americans give more charity and volunteer more time than secular Americans do.

And why have the great majority of Orthodox Jews rejected the Left? For Jews on the Left, the explanation is simple: Orthodox Jews have primitive beliefs and, therefore, primitive values.

For the Leftist, all opposition to the Left, secular or religious, is primitive and usually worse. So this doesn’t tell us much. What might tell us much? This: With a handful of exceptions, Orthodox Jews know Judaism far better than non-Orthodox Jews do. Given how few of them are Leftist, this would suggest that Judaism and Leftism are indeed in conflict.

But that doesn’t matter to most Jews on the Left, because to be a good person, one need not know Judaism, let alone follow Judaism. One needs only to feel what is right; and, when in doubt, one can determine what is right from the New York Times, not from sacred Jewish texts.

Where the analogy breaks down is here: I’ve met quite a few folks practicing different religions, who were ready, willing and able to believe right down to the marrow of their bones, that whoever was not a member of their creed might be just as decent a person.

That’s just not true of what Prager sees as “Leftism.”

I wrote previously that leftists seem to be driven by an instinct honed by thousands of years of behavioral molding and shaping that comes from living in villages — and sending out, throughout the village, the message that if & when the famine comes, ostracize someone else but Not Me. So much of the time, when you argue with a leftist, it all seems to spiral inward back to the black-hole argument that the leftist is a wonderful person and you’re just a big stinker. Nevermind how distant from this the original topic is. It all just keeps going back to that. My theory is that the village-ostracism-during-famine ritual, by determining which instincts are to be evolved, refined, and carried forward, is what powers that.

I used to think it was just my experience; I am something of a big stinker, after all. Now that it’s a more modern world more intimately connected with itself, I realize many others are having this experience as well. Liberals cannot and will not stick to the subject at hand. They just feel this is the right thing to do — and you don’t. They’re compassionate and you’re not.

This is the real reason why you can’t argue politics at work, folks. This is the real reason why we are so damned contentious. The truth that nobody seems to want to admit, is that it’s the liberals making it that way. Once you define yourself as being morally superior to your opposition, it isn’t enough to make the point, strut like a peacock, “agree-to-disagree” and walk away. That creates a situation of silence-equals-consent. It becomes a moral imperative to do something to destroy your opponent, to stir up the crowd against him. To get the message out that the ostracism needs to take place and that time is of the essence.

Start the cannibalism right now, what’s the point of waiting until we’re hungry?

No transcripts or other remarks, I’ll just embed the two clips. And then echo what Noel Sheppard asked at Newsbusters: “This is what passes for journalism today?”

Modern western civilization is represented poorly by exhibits such as these; they are almost slanderous. If I were a caveman thawed from a block of ice, or an alien visiting our planet for the first time…or perhaps an angel or deity walking on Creation trying to get a feel for the human condition…I would be abysmally unimpressed with our intellect, and our willingness to feed it. I would find our curiosity underwhelming; damnably so. My take-away would be “they fill a big room, pretend to learn things, and make a big show out of attacking others they want to attack, while learning nothing. And then they cherry-pick sound bites out of the experience, broadcast it and call it ‘news.'”

In short, my one-line summary would be that we look for an emotional high out of every little experience, like a druggie feeding his habit. We learn nothing, we know we learn nothing, and we don’t care. It’s all for the high.

Conservative…liberal…whatever. It’s past high time we all got embarrassed about this. Maybe we watch too much reality-teevee.

Hat tip to Rick.

Interesting editorial by Shelby Steele in the Wall Street Journal; could be useful for those still trying to figure out who this guy is who claims to be our President.

It argues that the hardcore extremist liberal stuff is an effect more than a cause.

A historic figure making history, this is emerging as an over-arching theme—if not obsession—in the Obama presidency. In Iowa, a day after signing health care into law, he put himself into competition with history. If history shapes men, “We still have the power to shape history.” But this adds up to one thing: He is likely to be the most liberal president in American history. And, oddly, he may be a more effective liberal precisely because his liberalism is something he uses more than he believes in. As the far left constantly reminds us, he is not really a true believer. Rather liberalism is his ticket to grandiosity and to historical significance.

Of the two great societal goals—freedom and “the good”—freedom requires a conservatism, a discipline of principles over the good, limited government, and so on. No way to grandiosity here. But today’s liberalism is focused on “the good” more than on freedom. And ideas of “the good” are often a license to transgress democratic principles in order to reach social justice or to achieve more equality or to lessen suffering. The great political advantage of modern liberalism is its offer of license on the one hand and moral innocence—if not superiority—on the other. Liberalism lets you force people to buy health insurance and feel morally superior as you do it. Power and innocence at the same time.

I’ve heard it said that reporters fall under this spell too. They don’t get out of bed every morning wondering what the most left-wing pablum is that they can manage to regurgitate today; instead, they graduate from journalism school wanting “to change the world for the better.”

Well, okay then. Because of Obama’s crusade, and His inability to say no — the job goes to Sarah if she wants it. Even if you like this Be-A-Liberal-So-I-Can-Be-A-Somebody stuff, it quickly reaches a saturation point.

Especially when it costs real money.

There comes a point where you hafta get off the ride. That’s hafta, not wanna.

Telegraph.co.uk. Their headline is not quite accurate…but the difference is really just a technicality if you’re one of the producers:

Over its opening weekend at the beginning of March, only around a dozen people went to see Motherhood, a semi-autobiographical account of parenting in New York written and directed by Katherine Dieckmann.

The film took just £88 at the British box office on its opening weekend.

On its debut Sunday, takings at the box office were just £9 – the price of a ticket for one person.

Only one British cinema was given permission to launch the film earlier this month, with the film’s producers hoping that exclusivity would generate a buzz and lead to box office success by word of mouth.

Instead, cinema goers stayed away from the Apollo West End in record numbers in a move that will be embarrassing for Thurman, the star of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill who divides her time between London and New York.

And then — it gets funny. If you’re not one of the producers.

The spectacular failure of the film to find an audience has resulted in a row between producers and Metrodome, the company responsible for marketing the film in the UK.

When Jana Edelbaum, one of the producers, was told how badly it had fared at the British box office, she said: “You’re kidding? We must have broken a new record for grosses.”

But she defended the film, insisting that Metrodome was to blame and that she would demand a full explanation.

She said: “Think how much crap succeeds at the cinema. Motherhood is not bad. I’ve seen movies that are not half as good.”

Then it gets hilarious.

If you’re not one of the producers.

Barry Norman, the film critic, said: “I have never heard of anything like this before. This is not some small, independent movie.

“It’s astonishing that only about 11 people could be bothered to go and see Uma Thurman.

“The reviews were very poor indeed, but that alone isn’t enough to explain this. It’s a reasonable assumption that there was a marketing and advertising catastrophe, and people didn’t know it was showing.

“But Apollo cinemas aren’t in tucked-away places. They’re all prominently located.”

Gawd, this tickles my funnybone. I don’t know why. I think it’s the mindset…somehow, putting out a decent, watchable movie is just out of the question.

The reviews are in, and it’s a turd. But dammit, that still doesn’t explain why more people didn’t come to see our crap! It’s not like we stuck it out of the way or anything, it was right there in plain sight. What’s going on with the world? It’s getting to the point where if you leave a log on the sidewalk baking in the sun, people won’t chow down on it anymore.

What the hell is the matter with our marketing wing? I remember the days when people would come running for a nice piece of scat, spoons in hand!

Via Gerard.

Hollywood’s adoration of communist dictators has always baffled me. The to-the-last-man saturation of it. What do communist thugs have to do with movie-making anyhow.

And so Sean Penn’s remark was of particular interest; and no, I don’t think he’s “kooky,” I think he just likes communists. As does most of Hollywood.

I wonder how Sean Penn would feel about reinstating the Hays Code. Maybe the rest of the country can work out a deal with him. A weekend in the pokey for anybody who calls the communist dictator a communist dictator…and if any movie ever glorifies crime, or depraved behavior, or violence against women and children, or showers us with yet more good-guys-kinda-bad or bad-guys-kinda-good…or contains any of the other things I don’t want to see in movies ever again…it gets shuttered up tight deep in a warehouse somewhere, forgotten, before it makes a single dime.

Yeah, that’s my open letter. How ’bout it Mr. Penn?

If you agree with James Clyburn about anything at all, that makes you a racist.

Our nation’s very latest spectacle in shut-uppery.

Times/Union:

Millions of white men who voted for Barack Obama are walking away from the Democratic Party, and it appears increasingly likely that they’ll take the midterms elections in November with them. Their departure could well lead to a GOP landslide on a scale not seen since 1994.

For more than three decades before the 2008 election, no Democratic president had won a majority of the electorate. In part, that was because of low support — never more than 38 percent — among white male voters. Things changed with Obama, who not only won a majority of all people voting, but also pulled in 41 percent of white male voters.

Polling suggests that the shift was not because of Obama but because of the financial meltdown that preceded the election. It was only after the economic collapse that Obama’s white male support climbed above the 38 percent ceiling. It was also at that point that Obama first sustained a clear majority among all registered voters, according to the Gallup tracking poll.
:
Today, among whites, only 35 percent of men and 43 percent of women say they will back Democrats in the fall election. Women’s preferences have remained steady since July 2009. But white men’s support for a Democratic Congress has fallen eight percentage points, according to Gallup.

In 2008 it was “Vote for Barack Obama or we’re going to call you a bunch of dirty rotten creepy racists.” In 2010 it’s “Barack Obama is still in trouble so we’re going to call you a bunch of dirty rotten creepy racists.”

These guys aren’t showing racism, progressivism, intelligence or stupidity. They’re just demonstrating a working long-term memory.

Maybe when our elections go back to being about the candidates, rather than about the inner decency or lack thereof within the people voting for the candidates — we’ll get a decent President.

All those in favor say aye.

Hat tip to Smitty.

Extreme right-wing white angriness, or angry whiteness, or something.

Hat tip to blogger friend Phil.

Update: Oopsie, this is not terribly helpful to the evolving meme.

Woke up from my nap hearing some amplified voice coming from the living room that was strangely filled with an inextricably intertwined smugness. It took a few seconds for me to realize it was a little bit too nasal to be George Clooney, and then when I heard some syllables about The Illuminati I realized it was Tom Hanks.

After he and the rest of the crew finished their ritual task of bashing the Catholic Church while pretending they weren’t bashing it, the next thing on the boob tube was a Nora Ephron vehicle about cooking and blogging, of all things. Yes, that’s two liberal puke-fests in a row, but Amy Adams has a pleasing looking face and a finely chiseled little bod. Although I must say: If cooking is your way of unwinding from a shitty day, and every single day is like that…and your idea of cooking is not yogurt and rabbit food stuffed in pita bread…and your daily exercise consists of hoofing it from the subway station…I do not think you’re going to look like Amy Adams.

Anyway, it’s entertaining enough. And the food+blogging theme made me think of Kini Aloha Guy. Who is on a tear lately about socialized medicine and with good reason. I’m surprised to see him taking all sorts of pictures of a building in Hawaii, one whose hallways I’ve walked myself…albeit for an entirely different purpose, thank God.

I’m not sure why he isn’t in the sidebar. He might have fallen off during that disaster from this January. Of course with all those names of his I’m going to have to do some more checking to make sure he’s really missing. Could’ve sworn I put him in, I remember doing it. Oh well. The “What’s For Dinner” photos are hugely entertaining, and enlightening as well. You should make a point of picking them up every day whether I’m referring you there or not.

So says Warner Todd Huston. Don’t object to it too quickly, he’s got some heady evidence on his side.

Osama bin Laden to chime in any day now.

Hat tip to blogger friend Buck.

Gerard linked to our friends at Rhymes with Girls and Cars — who abso-freakin’-lutely put their finger right on it:

We have reached the point where in our current political system the only things the left is remotely ‘liberal’ about have to do with sex, i.e. situations involving peoples’ genitals coming into contact. Oh yes, I’ll agree, the left is very liberal on matters involving peoples’ genitals coming into contact…

It’s just every single other sort of liberty imaginable that the left doesn’t care for.

In the English language, ‘liberal’ is not the right term for such people at all. It is an antonym for what they are, which is: authoritarian.

As if on cue, our other blogger friend North-of-the-Border, she of the dark pixie curls, KC — leaped forth with her screed against Ann Coulter who, because she said (actually, KC was altogether missing any specific examples) should not be allowed to speak at Ottawa U.

As if prodded by a cosmic Kismet.

As if put on notice that this point needed some proving.

Liberals. Authoritarians. Once antonymous, now ominously synonymous.

So, I won’t go anywhere near my personal opinions of the skanky-assed shock-jock white-supremacist that is called Ann Coulter… oh wait.
I just did.
I despise everything that she represents and says. And I will probably get my Canadian Libertarian ass chewed off for saying the above… be told about how stupid I am or how wrong I am for thinking she is a waste of space and energy on this planet.
Whatever: bring it on. If you agree with her then your racist views will speak for yourself.
:
There are limitations.
In everything.
Including democracy.
That’s life.
Simply because a VERY large majority of Canadians disagree with Ms. Coulter and are exercising their right to protest does not make Canadians fascist. And receiving fair warning to educate yourself on the laws of the land… does not equate to human rights violations – especially comparing Canada to those of Iran, Nazi Germany and Cuba.

So I entered a reply, which I thought was perfectly in keeping with the spirit of classical liberalism. But, perhaps because of the mood KC is in, comments to her system will have to go through moderation before being made visible. Hehe. The irony…

And you know what this means. Yeah, I wasn’t feeling too trusting of the universe in general when I hit the “Post” button. Had the wonderful prose loaded into the clipboard, I did…

Okay, so noted; Coulter shouldn’t be allowed to speak because she’s a bitch. Who else?

Maybe it’s the straight white right-handed six-foot-tall male still in possession of all 21 digits in me talking…but I have a litmus test for laws like this. Let’s call them “Only As Much Free Speech As We Want You To Have” laws — for that is what they are. They are not liberal or progressive, they are quite the opposite…authoritarian.

My litmus test is, I want to see someone from the “wrong” demographic prosecuted according to these laws. I want to see feminists thrown in jail for publishing books that say all men are potential rapists. I want to see black people prosecuted for beating up on white kids just because they’re white. I want to see liberal radio networks forced to put in 30 and 60 minute blocks of conservative programming for “equal time.”

And if I do not see such reverse polarity, I view these laws as what they all, in likelihood, really are: One-sided attempts by specialized advocacy grievance groups, to seize power, and maintain it. Maybe you resent my litmus test but at least concede that it’s fair (it is…for such a law to be brandished as a one-bladed sword, is disingenuous and autocratic)…or maybe you aren’t even willing to concede that it’s fair.

But either way, isn’t it quite out of harmony with a “university”‘s purpose to blockade a scheduled speaker, before she’s said anything? To effectively plug its fingers in its ears and go “la la la I can’t hear you”? At this point I’m much closer in age to parent-of-college-kid than college-kid…and this kind of thing makes me want to cinch up the purse strings REAL tight. This is higher learning? Listening to the other side receives such low priority, and protesting receives such high priority?

What a wonderful experience it would have been, for the university to select ten or twenty of their brightest from the debate team — have those finalists pepper Ms. Coulter with their questions — and then, in the aftermath, hold an open forum about whether they did a good job, what better questions they could have selected, what points should have been made, and horror of horrors, what utterances may have been indulged by Ms. Coulter that made one or two people think about some things not previously thought-about.

Seriously. If that’s so unthinkable, just disband the university and send everyone home. Because, then, frankly I don’t see the point. Everyone’s got their minds made up, why bother to get dressed and go to class every morning.

I don’t care what you call the country, or what the ideological flavoring is of the speaker who is being sent packing. Or what your precious laws are supposed to be accomplishing.

Once you start saying “Waitaminnit…we have to make sure if your speech affects people, it doesn’t have a bad effect on them, so we’ll put some sensible precautions in place” — you have crossed a Rubicon.

I don’t see liberals as liberals anymore. I don’t necessarily see them as authoritarians either. I see them as people who simply cannot imagine — ever! — that power will ever be wielded by persons who fundamentally disagree with them about things. Management is given the authority to say “You May Speak…You, Over There, May Not” — and liberalism seems to be the proclivity to say “Hey, yeah that’s cool.” It invests the trust in total strangers first, and asks questions later.

Oh but yeah, on that other matter. Genitals coming into contact with genitals. Men sticking their penises up the assholes of other men. On those issues, yes, they remain “classic” liberals.

I got a mass e-mail from the chairman of the democrat party earlier this morning, and it was a little spooky because I’d just been hearing the guys on the radio talking about it. To summarize it, it says: Our opponents are heaping abuse on our “heroes,” threatening them, using racial epithets, smashing up their offices. Will you chip in five bucks to help us defend these “heroes”?

The years roll in, the years roll out, the lies stay the same. We over here are goooooood people, those people over there are rotten stinkers. Anything — anything — to keep from actually discussing the benefits and drawbacks involved in the actual policy. I was noticing this just as Holy Man was being sworn in some fourteen months ago. The campaign slogan might as well be “Now that it’s settled Republicans are a bunch of dirty rotten stinkers, let’s turn our attention to what dirty rotten stinkers those Republicans are.”

I see a weakness with this. The weakness is, when you deliver this kind of sales pitch you have to hand down the decision on what has been decided. Yes! Those Republicans are such awful people! You aren’t letting the “mark” make up his own mind about things because you cannot afford to. It’s always a more powerful sales pitch when the mark is allowed to make up his own mind.

This is how democrats see people: as marks. If they could sell it that way, they would. But they can’t. So the mark has to be forced into turning his own decision, into a personality popularity contest between democrats and Republicans. Well, this is fragile. Among the actual voters, the politicians from either party aren’t too terribly popular right now.

So I saw this video at Daphne’s place. And I had me an idea.

The problem, as I see it, is that passing judgment on whether another human being is wonderful or godlike or sneaky or dirty or rotten or a scoundrel or a scruffy-looking nerf herder…it’s tempting. It’s fun to play god. On the other hand, pondering the destiny of the country, toward independence or toward bondage or toward oblivion…well, that’s kinda dull and boring.

Percentage of GDP? That’s the most boring thing of all. Tax policy? Ugh.

What resolves all of these difficulties? One key phrase:

“They are worried that we are not dependent enough on our government.”

Or…

“They are worried that we have too much control over our own lives.”

This shifts the discussion over to where it belongs, in such a way that the entire conversation remains alluring and appealing to our primal instincts. The observer is left to ask “They are worried about…what was that again?”

The opponent that is trying like the dickens to sell this nanny-state health care scheme, can pull all sorts of tricks to try to dismiss this. The opponent can say “oh, you’re just a shill for big pharmaceutical products, trying to make people pay more.”

The problem there is with the facts. There really isn’t much in the legislation that saves money. The legislation, from all I’ve been reading about it — to say nothing of the process that hammered it in — is mostly concerned with power. The difficulty has been getting people to pay attention to this.

Not everybody wants power over their own lives. But just about all of us are rankled with resentment and distress at the thought of some stranger telling us what to do. And the issue of the busybodies actually having an agenda to push things off in that direction — well, that is really what needs to be discussed.

And here’s a way to do it. Not by making these people look like strange, weird aliens through a colored lens; show them to be strange, weird aliens, by showing what is real. Just come out and say what this whole thing is really all about: Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer want more people to be dependent.

It wont win over everybody. But it will turn the conversation toward where it needs to go.

You might have been seeing some headlines here and there about how democrats are all for erectile dysfunction medication for child molesters; here’s what that’s about.

The idea is that by securing even a slight adjustment in the language, the Senate will have to send the bill back to the House of Representatives for reconsideration. Drawing out the process makes it more likely for it to be tripped up.

On Tuesday, the GOP put its strategy into action, with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okl.) introducing an amendment beyond agreeable. Titled “No Erectile Dysfunction Drugs To Sex Offenders” it would literally prohibit convicted child molesters, rapists, and sex offenders from getting erectile dysfunction medication from their health care providers.

While it will undoubtedly be difficult for Democrats to vote against the measure (one can conjure up the campaign ads already), the party plans to do just that.

Allahpundit adds:

Everyone get the joke here? If the Dems amend the reconciliation bill for any reason, they have to send it back to the House for yet another vote. So anything the GOP proposes — anything — they’re basically bound to vote no on. And Coburn knows it. One tasty shinola sandwich, coming up! Although I’m confused: If, as the left has convinced itself, ObamaCare is pure win for them politically (see, e.g., today’s ridiculously overhyped Gallup poll), what’s the aversion to another House vote? In fact, why not ping-pong the bill back and forth between the chambers for another month, loading it up with ever more crowd-pleasing amendments? It’s time to own the glorious political victory that looms in November, liberals.

Hat tip to Cassy Fiano.

Fox News, and others, are reporting that the bill is headed back to the House anyway.

The follow-up health care bill being considered by the Senate will have to return to the House for final congressional approval, after the Senate parliamentarian determined that two Republican challenges will succeed in stripping out language in the package.

Altering the bill in any way means it has to return to the House side, which first approved the package of changes Sunday, since both chambers must pass identical versions.

Democrats don’t appear worried. Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said the House could easily approve the expected changes. The Senate is expected to complete work on the bill Thursday afternoon, and the House could take it up again the same day — or push it off until Friday.

The package of changes, which is being considered under “reconciliation” rules allowing the Senate to approve it with just 51 votes, is the final piece of the legislative puzzle to the health care reform package signed into law Tuesday. Health care reform is officially enacted, but House Democrats wanted the package of fixes to change the way it’s financed and address other concerns.

The glitches have to do with Pell grants for low-income students.

A senior Senate Republican leadership aide told Fox News that Democrats had tried to improve the cost of the bill while simultaneously piling on Pell grants “without mandating the spending.” The aide said Democrats claimed the grants would increase, but were relying on a “future Congress” to find the funding.

“They can’t do that,” the aide said. “This was one of 100 gimmicks used to keep the score down.”

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Hat tip to Rick.

Real tolerance:

When I heard Coulter was coming to Canada I figured attending the event would be worth the entertainment value, if for nothing other than to witness the unhinged reaction that was sure to follow. Ottawa U didn’t disappoint.

When I arrived there was a line of a few hundred, maybe a thousand people outside the Marion building. A few of them were chanting in front of the cameras but the line was otherwise better behaved than for a typical rock concert. The size of the line was no doubt a bit of a problem because the room held no more than 400 (my estimate).

Since I had registered for the event ahead of time I had no trouble elbowing my way to the front, verifying my name was on the list, getting inside and chatting briefly with Ezra Levant.

After a while the fire alarm went off, the obvious false alarm having been dealt with we sat down expecting the event to start.

Instead Ezra announced that police told him it would be “physically unsafe” to bring Ann in due to the “unruly mob” outside. There was certainly no issue, or even noise, inside the auditorium.

The cops ended up shutting it down.

So if there’s a space alien living in your spare bedroom and he’s counting on you to fill him in on all your Earth customs, would you be able to explain this?

The left is concerned that we put policies in place that work for everyone…and that everyone have a voice.

But only the cool parts of “everyone.”

Cracked.

Keep your eyes closed, Marion.

Hat tip to Nation of Cowards.