Research Example No. 1

One eerie, foggy, rainy night [i]n 1889, Igor finally got it right. He dug up the fresh corpse from that day’s funeral. This allowed his master to complete some top secret research he had been working on for years, which led to the following starting discovery: When Dr. Frankenstein touched the left half of the brain with his electrode, the monster began to perform complex mathematical computations, to organize his dorm room immaculately, and to dress like a nerd. When he would touch the right hemisphere with his electrode, the monster would begin to play the blues on his guitar, to produce bad movies, and to render political opinions based on bad public policy and faulty data.

How To Stay Humble When You’re Smarter Than Everybody Else, pp. 47-48.

Two days ago I briefly touched on the Climategate scandal in the middle of my thoughts about our society’s recently maturing caste mentality:

Scientists are to contribute studies to the IPCC…if their work has been subject to “peer review.” If not, then whatever they have to say doesn’t mean anything, even if they are real scientists. But gosh darn it, if we have to re-define what peer review is, we’ll go ahead and do that then! And, of course, you can’t participate in the peer review, if your works have not been peer reviewed. So it ends up being a cyclical, nonsensical criteria. Nothing more than a gentleman’s-club. I’m in. You’re out. I count. You don’t. We’re right. You’re wrong. Behold: the new “scientific method,” fit for a post-modern world saturated with, and drowning in, institutionalized thinking.

This has never helped the human race. It never once helped us to figure out the earth is round. To the contrary, this is precisely what kept it flat.

This championship of process-over-outcome is not by any means a failure; it achieves precisely what it is supposed to. It divides thinking people into two groups, one of which never makes any mistakes and the other of which is never right about anything. Real life very seldom actually works that way, and so through this thinking style the committee engages in a circular travel, and in so doing divorces itself from reality. This is the task that was attempted, whether anyone wants to admit that or not.

I don’t know if the Review & Outlook editors of the Wall Street Journal read my blog. I’ve always been of the mind that hardly anybody ever does…it isn’t called The Blog That Nobody Reads for nuthin’, ya know. But how else, then, do you explain this gem which popped up just a few hours ago?

This September, Mr. [Michael] Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: “Those such as [Stephen] McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.” Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.
:
“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.” In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.

A more thoughtful response to the emails comes from Mike Hulme, another climate scientist at the University of East Anglia, as reported by a New York Times blogger:

“This event might signal a crack that allows for processes of re-structuring scientific knowledge about climate change. It is possible that some areas of climate science has become sclerotic. It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”

The response from the defenders of Mr. Mann and his circle has been that even if they did disparage doubters and exclude contrary points of view, theirs is still the best climate science. The proof for this is circular. It’s the best, we’re told, because it’s the most-published and most-cited—in that same peer-reviewed literature. The public has every reason to ask why they felt the need to rig the game if their science is as indisputable as they claim. [emphasis mine]

This is the danger of process-over-outcome. Certainly, you can value outcome over process, and still have lots of rules about what you’re doing — if there are consequences to flouting the rule. Wash your car from the top down OR you’ll use up more water and your car won’t get as clean…water your Christmas tree twice a day OR it might die, dry out and catch fire…wash your hands before preparing meat OR you might make yourself sick.

There is no such consequence for this “peer review” as it is embraced by the chicken-little crowd. None that services the interests of the rest of us, anyway. Of course, if you base science on what any-ol’-Joe happens to say, you just might end up making an ass out of yourself. That’s the traditional premise for it.

But here we have a situation where the CRU scientists made asses out of themselves anyway, with their wagon circling. Granted, most of the humiliation came from the collusion about the wagon-circling rather than the wagon-circling itself. But what does that matter? It looks, to the public, like something anti-scientific…and there’s no defense against that, because in the end anti-scientific is precisely what it is.

Ultimately it all comes down to this:

These guys were not trying to stop the world from cooking. What they were trying to do to the world, was get it to buy the stuff they were selling. “Science” was reduced to nothing more than a label to affix to the sales pitch.

1. My mind wanders to an evil wishing well…imagine a man can toss a penny into it and be robbed of some years of his virility, his hair, his teeth. But he gets to pick one and only one thought his wife will never have again. Burned out of her head forever. Feminism makes me feel sexy even when I can’t stop stuffing my fat face…I need a dog…our son should be put on Ritalin…
2. Are Hooters’ waitresses absolutely, positively, without exception, in all fifty states, always over eighteen years old? Because if they aren’t, that would be just too weird.
3. When Superman flies somewhere at super-speed and lands again, shouldn’t he always be covered with a layer of fried bug-guts?
4. Does PETA get mad when dockworkers scrape barnacles off the hulls of the boats?
5. Elementary school elections should be done Chicago-style. One of the candidates should promise all the kids malt liquor and cigarettes in exchange for their votes. We have a Chicago guy as our President now.
6. Dumbass, you always remember the toothbrush and deoderant but you keep forgetting the hairbrush.
7. With regard to that wishing well. I wonder how often it would have gotten a penny back in the olden days. Perhaps as often as Robert Louis Stevenson’s bottle imp changed hands? Nowadays, I suppose the pertinent question would be how often the pennies would have to be cleaned out of it.
8. Hotel room has no grounded 120V outlets. At all, whatsoever. I didn’t know that was possible anymore. Did I step into 1968?
9. If we want honest government, we should make a habit of voting for the candidate who puts us to sleep. The first thing a professional liar learns is to be fun; being convincing is Lesson Two.
10. I want to see a family comedy in which the mom does what the dad usually does. You know. Figure out she’s a selfish jackass; resolve to improve, do a better job of listening to what her husband and kids want, and not to spend so much time at work.
11. Has James Bond ever used a disguise or a pseudonmyn that’s worked for him for very long?
12. I keep hearing people need to come together and stop being so contentious. I think they don’t argue enough. Here’s some evidence. “Violence never solved anything!” First time someone said that, someone else should’ve stood up and said “That’s a load of crap.” It didn’t happen, so we get to hear that over and over again, even though there isn’t a grain of truth to it.
13. Big Brother was trying to do to the people, exactly what our Founding Fathers were trying to do to the three branches: Tear apart any connection between them, sever any relationships, stop any conspiracies from forming by inhibiting the necessary underlying feeling of trust. Under Obama, is the government doing a better job of keeping us from trusting each other, or are we doing the better job of keeping people in government from trusting each other? Answer that, and you have answered which vision we most strongly resemble.
14. Are slasher movies made by fundamentalist church people? Look who bites it: Girls who show off their boobs all the time, druggies, fornicators. And then there are the jocks and the nerds. Of course, the cute girls who take showers don’t make out too well either. Especially when their response to a power outage is to light a candle and walk backwards, slowly, whimpering.
15. A family-owned greasy-spoon diner with unsecured wireless. That’s pretty awesome! California can forget about it. We got rid of anything family-owned quite some time ago…save one. For the past few years when I travel out of state, a small greasy-spoon is more and more of a novelty to me. And cigarette smoke actually smells good.

This guy is a carbuncle on the ass of the free market and deserves a good flogging.

But I can’t help retaining some admiration for a genuine outsmarting. Clinton playing his games to get out of Lewinsky-gate, is not in the same league; he didn’t outsmart anyone. This is an outsmarting.

And at the very least, it’s worth a few chuckles.

“Jane Giles,” the “overdue account,” and the drawing of a spider.

“Megan Roberts” and the Blockbuster video late fees.

I own Logan’s Run, and I’ve often had exactly the same thoughts about that computer. One piece of data that doesn’t meet the validation criteria, and the city is destroyed. The following year Luke Skywalker blew up a space station as big as a planet, by firing something into an unprotected “exhaust port.” A few years earlier, Spock told Norman “I am lying” and all the robots freeze in their tracks and stop working.

Not sure what was running on these things, but it had to be something from Microsoft.

And you see by the way David skates past his unpaid bills, the humans don’t work too much better than the machinery.

I suppose that’s the price we pay for technology. We get a system that works as long as everything that goes in, is precisely what the system expects. Otherwise it all goes ker-blooey. David draws a parallel between the City of Domes computer, and “the Blockbuster ‘returned or not’ database.” Uh, yeah. If he didn’t notice that connection, I would’ve.

David Thorne’s site is over here, and his Wikipedia entry is here.

“Subjective, but still educational.” That is the summary, part of it anyhow, from Fourth Check Raise to whom we owe a grateful tip of the hat.

Here’s your link.

Hat tip to Gerard, we have a new blogroll addition called Exercise in Futility. Most recent post there, How to Destroy a Liberal’s Worldview.

In response to “what about rape” question, ask: “Is your father a rapist?” (the answer will be no). Follow up with: “if he were, would I be allowed to shoot you dead right here, right now?”
:
“How much does the atomsphere weigh?” (the answer is 5 quadrillion tons, aka 5,000,000,000,000,000 – that’s 15 zeroes).

“If the humans pump 1 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, how many years will it take to increase the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere from 0.038% to 0.04%? (The answer is 25,000).

Great stuff.

So this appealing-looking, seemingly-harmless male figure is placed in a position of trust and he turns out to be a venomous viper. That kind of thing I just love all to pieces. Especially if it’s a woman, like in Hand That Rocks The Cradle. It’s so predictable. Backstory in the first twenty minutes; plot thickens at the end of the first hour; some horrible tragedy and/or injustice takes place as the second hour unfolds. Final conflict begins a hundred minutes in, and then the killer suffers some grisly demise. The innocents live ever after but not altogether happily, just wisely. Their lives changed forever.

This thing though, just pisses me off. Know why?

You have the oldest kid, who apparently is the star of the show.

You have the evil stepfather.

You have the estranged bio-dad.

These guys could be triplets. Why? Why?? Why can’t you make the bio-dad look kind of like…I dunno…Nick Nolte’s mug shot.

Yes there are subtle differences. The kid is younger, of course. But there will be a climactic battle. Probably in the dark. People falling in water. Getting dirty. Bloody, maybe. And I’m supposed to sit there with five beers in me, and go…”ooh…I hope…uh…that guy wins, and, er…that guy over there…loses. Yeah.”

It’s simply beyond my capacity. Can’t keep up. Even their hairlines are more-or-less the same. Is the creativity-shortage that powerful? Did Ron Perlman ask for too much money?

I need to come up with some kind of name for this thing with guys’ haircuts and grooming and costuming. Maybe “Beverly Hills 90210 Syndrome.” I’m not asking for too much here, I don’t think. Guys in real life look quite different. In movies, I do not want them looking like identical twins if 1) they’ll be getting in a fist fight, 2) they’ll both be fucking the same girl, or 3) both of those. Show some goddamn creativity. Put one of them in dreadlocks. Make one of them bald. Add some depth to the characters, at least so that I can tell people apart. You’re taking enough of my money.

Maybe after it comes out on video I’ll find out it’s a terrific flick. But that’s how I’m seeing it, if at all. And that’s a great pity, because I’m part of the audience they think they’re chasing.

The seventy-fourth award for Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) goes out to Smitty who is blogging at The Other McCain. He is righteously schooling Rick Moran for Moran’s latest…uh…”I hate Sarah Palin so that makes me a really smrt guy” whatever.

Beats him like a drum, then signs off with this beauty:

To tweak Nietzsche, socialism is the opiate of the bureaucracy, but addiction lacks middle ground.

If a plan for $12 trillion in new debt had even the slightest chance of being the right way to go, and it was being argued honestly, those who promote it wouldn’t be working so hard to ratify it through stigmatization of the opposite. Stigmatizing the opposite is Item #2 on the list of ways To Motivate Large Numbers of People to Do a Dumb Thing Without Anyone Associating the Dumb Thing With Your Name Later On. It works like this: “He’s a bad man, so if he doesn’t like something, whatever that is must be a wonderful thing.”

A couple months ago I heard one of the radio guys say something quote-worthy (Smitty’s gem remains the champion of BSIHORL#54, but let’s just drift off topic for a moment to mention this)…paraphrasing here…

If you could somehow find a real live Nazi who happened to be opposed to Barack Obama’s health care plan, he might be correct about that one thing.

Exactly.

We’ve lately taken to pondering the benefits and liabilities of some plans and potential plans that are, shall we say…impactful. Influential. Irreversible once put into effect.

The energy we have been spending, on both sides, examining the less desirable human traits of those who oppose our point of view, whatever that might be, is pretty high. That’s an understatement. The expenditure of this energy is off the scale.

Nazis can be right. About things that aren’t connected with Nazi-ness. It’s possible.

Dumb people can be right.

Stinky people can be right.

Call ’em what you want…big ol’ poopy heads can be right.

We shouldn’t be spending any energy discussing the human-personality attributes of those who are on this-side or that-side of a decision. It’s entirely irrelevant. The merits of, and legitimate objections to, the decision itself — this is entirely sufficient to demand as much of our attention as we can afford to disburse. Especially in view of the things we are trying to decide.

Moran, although he occasionally agrees with me about some things, has become emblematic of what’s wrong with the way these things are argued and why we have become divisive lately. He’s seeking to make friends with people by inventing, or obsequiously adoring, third grade insults.

Who’s divisive?

Yer doin’ a heck of a job, Geithny.

It is a TV Trope with a whole lot more examples of it, than you might at first think.

Humans Are Bastards

“If there’s one thing you can say about mankind
It’s that there’s nothing kind about man”

— Tom Waits, “Misery is the River of the World”

“Lady, people aren’t chocolates. You know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.”

— Scrubs (the one thing both Cox and Kelso agree on)

You Suck taken to the extreme.

When compared to other civilizations, or another species, Humans are a bunch of bastards. They are all greedy, heartless, violent, cruel, selfish, egotistical, thoughtless, and in extreme cases, evil, as opposed to the other species, which will be better if not far superior: they are all peaceful, live in harmony with nature, are naturally good, floss after every meal, etc. Ironically the species in question almost always looks and acts just like humans anyway.

That some among us naturally gravitate toward such a realization, is a psychological weakness. It is a disease. They reach conclusions about things because this has such an appeal for them, which is a problem because when you’re thinking honestly, you come to the conclusions supported by the facts, not the conclusions you want to reach; but that the appeal is there at all, is a second problem.

Our worst laws and policy decisions come from this.

An attractive and talented, if somewhat irritating, younger actress from the here-and-now…Olivia Munn. She emerges victorious from the installment last week, and is challenged by a blast from the past: Pamela Hensley, Princess Ardala from Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century.

So who snags it?

This time it’s a voice thing. They both irritate, but Hensley irritates less.

Besides of which, I got an eyeful of The Princess when I was thirteen or fourteen. That does something to a fella’s…eh…recollection. In the year, Hensley was the babe. And who can forget those horns.

Blogger friend Gerard is none too fond of Townhall.com (warning, not-work-safe language behind the link). He is not alone, but what makes his displeasure pleasurable is his expression of it.

The man writes the finest poetry when poetry is the furthest thing from his mind. The local climate has something to do with it, I think. Seattle was my stomping-grounds for four years. Of course, I wasn’t that creative.

Krauthammer:

…Khalid Sheik Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life — and KSM, a second act: “9/11, The Director’s Cut,” narration by KSM.
:
So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.
:
It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.

What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war which the U.S. itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

A grateful hat tip to Neo-Neocon, who had already made my “short stack” with a wonderful post she had up yesterday…which could be even more devastating…

Ask the 1993 WTC prosecutor what he thinks

So, if the Left’s best argument for trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the civilian justice system is that we’ve done so well getting terrorists convicted there before, why is Andy McCarthy, the prosecutor of the case they cite the most—the 1993 WTC bombing—so dead set against it?

He’ll tell you himself:

For what it’s worth, I think the team I led in the Blind Sheikh case did an excellent job, and we also convicted everybody. But that is not the measure of success. It’s not whether the government wins the litigation; it’s whether the national security of the United States has been harmed more by having the trial than it would have been harmed by handling the detainees in a different manner.

Further, if we are going to have military commissions at all (and Holder says we will continue to have them), it makes no sense to transfer the worst war criminals to the civilian system. Doing so tells the enemy that they will get more rights if they mass-murder civilians.

The question is not whether the prosecutors are able, whether they’ll do a spectacular job, and whether they’ll get these guys…The issue is: What damage will we sustain by doing things this way, and is there a way we could do them without sustaining that much damage.

*sigh*.

If you needed this annual reminder…you’re welcome.

Are you flying to grandma’s for Thanksgiving? Think twice before trying to take leftovers home with you on the plane.

Mashed potatoes are usually thick and gooey, and cranberry sauce wiggles and jiggles. The Transportation Security Administration considers both to be liquids.

It may sound strange, but you can’t pack those in your carry-on bag. More obvious no-nos include gravy, salad dressing and soup.

British court lunacy. Perhaps coming here soon.

A former soldier in England has been arrested and convicted (and may even go to jail for five years) because he found a gun in his yard and he turned it over to the police. I presume this is in part a reflection of the anti-gun ideology embedded in UK law, but don’t prosecutors and judges have even a shred of discretion to avoid foolish prosecutions and/or protect innocent people from absurd charges? Here is the news report:

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”. Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year. The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon. In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.”

… The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden. In his statement, he said: “I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges. “I didn’t know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him. “At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall.” Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

… Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a “strict liability” charge – therefore Mr Clarke’s allegedly honest intent was irrelevant. Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

… Judge Christopher Critchlow said: “This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge. “The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.”

It’s what naturally happens when the people governed by a government cease to be citizens, and become subjects instead. Look what he has in his hands. Off to jail with him.

Tea. Crates. Boston Harbor. Ker-sploosh.

A legislative branch absolutely, positively out of control:

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D.-Ore.) says that Congress derived the constitutional authority to make Americans purchase health insurance as part of its “very first enumerated power.” He was referring to the language at the beginning of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which says: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

CNSNews.com asked Merkley: “Specifically where in the Constitution does Congress get its authority to mandate that individuals purchase health care?”

Merkley said: “The very first enumerated power gives the power to provide for the common defense and the general welfare. So it’s right on, right on the front end.”

Before CNSNews.com could ask a follow-up question, Merkley’s press secretary pulled him away, apparently to attend an event.

Related: If Obama is So Bright, Why Does He Keep Drawing on the Auto Insurance Analogy?

Since Barack Obama charged into the spotlight with his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, we have received constant instruction from our high cultural arbiters about Obama’s supposed intellectual prowess.

Never mind that when speaking without his teleprompter, Obama typically appears ineloquent and befuddled when forced to think on his feet. Or that despite having taught Constitutional Law, he has confused rudimentary provisions of the Constitution itself.

To his apologists, Obama’s elevated chin and inspirational cadence from behind his teleprompter are conclusive evidence of his brilliance. National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman even lionized Obama as “the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.”

But if those sycophants are correct, why does Obama constantly say things that are so facially absurd? Examples are legion, from his misstatement that the world stood “unified” during the Cold War to his suggestion that our economic difficulties somehow derive from structural flaws within the healthcare, education and energy sectors that overactive government must now “fix.”

But his recent habit of analogizing automobile insurance with health insurance may set a new low for someone so supposedly brilliant.

In an interview this week with ABC News’s Jake Tapper, Obama declared that Americans should be forced under penalty of law to purchase health insurance under the House legislation, just as we’re allegedly required to purchase auto insurance already:

“What I think is appropriate is that in the same way that everybody has to get auto insurance, and if you don’t, you’re subject to some penalty, that in this situation, if you have the ability to buy insurance, it’s affordable and you choose not to, forcing you and me and everybody else to subsidize you, you know, there’s a thousand-dollar hidden tax that families all across America are burdened by, because of the fact that people don’t have health insurance, you know, there’s nothing wrong with a penalty… Penalties are appropriate for people who try to free ride the system and force others to pay for their health insurance.”

There are just a few problems with this theory, which should be obvious to anyone who has devoted serious thought to the matter…

RTWT.

Morning Call:

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city’s largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

“We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn’t targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city’s decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said “there’s to be no volunteers.” No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

Don’t go fucking around with the union, or they’ll start “looking into” you.

Let’s Think About That:

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live.

They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, “How was the trip?”

“It was great, Dad.”

“Did you see how poor people live?” the father asked.

“Oh yeah,” said the son.

“So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?” asked the father.

The son answered: “I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

“We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.

“We have servants who serve us, but they serve others. We buy our food, but they grow theirs.

“We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.”

Then his son added, “Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.”

Just saw it on O’Reilly Factor, and New York Daily News says it’s true…

Go get ’em, Dirty Harry.

“[E]verybody’s so screwed up. It seems like our country’s in kind of a morbid mood, because of the recession or whatever.”

We’re “becoming more juvenile as a nation,” he said. “The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.”

We have been on an ascent. Now, maybe we no longer are.

When you’re on an ascent, there is responsibility involved. There is also a certain deprivation, which calls for a certain resourcefulness; you’re laboring from a lower point, on up to a higher one.

On a descent, there is no sense of individual obligation because it’s widely understood we’re descending. Nobody feels a responsibility to get out of the way, or get in the way.

And there’s no demand for resourcefulness because you’re sinking from a higher point down to a lower one. To whatever extent good old-fashioned creativity may be in supply…the demand for it is less than that.

Phil’s been playing around with graphics.

It’s not all his fault. As you’ll see at his place, we have been a corrupting influence on him.

Ah well. We’d apologize, but our Commander-in-Chief seems to be much more skilled at that kind of thing.

Update: Now that we’ve delved into our daily stack…we find this piece overlaps so well with Phil’s funny graphic, that neither one of the two justifies a post of its own. They fit in very nicely together, though.

Why Does Obama Keep Bowing?
President Obama’s silent bow is yet another way of apologizing for America’s misperceived arrogance and superiority. He has found yet another way to pander and apologize without ever uttering a single word.

There he goes again. The president, when he met the emperor and empress of Japan in Tokyo on Saturday gave the typical deep bow expected from subjects not peers.

You would think the president would have learned his lesson when he caught such wrath for “bowing” to the King of Saudi Arabia earlier this year. American presidents do not bow to anyone. They do not bow to heads of state, monarchs, potentates, popes or any other mere mortal.

When President Obama bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia earlier this year the White House rushed to spin it away. They claimed that it was not a “bow” at all. The White House stated that the president was “stooping” to look the feeble king in the eye while shaking hands. Well, you can fool some of the people some of the time. The pictures and the video said it all. — Obama bowed to the Saudi king.

The White House’s take on the president’s latest “bow-movement” is that, while it was a bow, it was done pursuant to protocol. That is an outright lie. There is no such “protocol” for a president of the United States to bow to anyone for any reason.

Graphic shamelessly swiped from blogger friend Rick (click for larger).

Every time I see Obama bowing…or apologizing…the following dialogue keeps running through my mind.

Oh honey!!!!

What?

You only brought home two cans of bread crumbs!

So?

I wrote down four!!

Really? It looked like two.

No! We need four!!

Hi folks! Can I just say something? This is all the fault of America. America messed up your shopping list. Yup. And we’re very sorry about it.

(Husband and wife, exasperated, in unison) Please get out of our kitchen, Barack Obama.

Right…by the way, you’re not making those mashed potatoes right. You need to mix the milk and butter in like this…

OUT! Now, Barack!

Right. I’m gone. Go back to your guns and your Bibles…

Robin of Berkeley writes in The American Thinker. Get ready for something dark, dark, dark. You can only agree with this if you’ve seen something in human nature, something that will rob you of your faith in it, however incrementally, forever.

And I do agree with it. Every last word.

It’s a chilling moment when the light goes out in someone’s eyes. A once-radiant child hardens from abuse. A woman’s heart shrinks after her husband’s abandonment.

The person looks the same, maybe acts the same. But something is gone, and what’s lost is irretrievable. It’s like when a person dies: in a heartbeat, the soul vanishes.

I witnessed this alteration recently when I visited my goddaughter, a radiant girl. Her mom, a hardcore progressive, has started exposing her to the darkest elements of the left. And the last time I looked in the girl’s eyes, the light had gone out. Disappeared. Just like that.

I see this phenomenon every day: a light dimming. The friendly shopkeeper snaps at me. My cheerful neighbor seems flattened.

And you hear it in the news: people acting strangely, going off the deep end. The most bizarre behavior becoming the new normal.
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Why now? This may be the most important question of our time. Why are some people reaching the boiling point? Why do many others look vacant, like an Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The shootings at military bases, from Little Rock to Fort Hood — why now?

It’s Obama, of course.

Liberals will excoriate me for writing this. They’ll insist that bad behavior is not Obama’s fault. He’s a man of peace.

But study the phenomenon of cults, and the dynamics are always the same. The leader can incite violence without ever getting his hands dirty. Obama is controlling the marionette of the masses.

If Obamamania is a cult, then Obama is the cult leader. Cult leaders routinely pull the strings of their followers. The most extreme example is Charles Manson. He rots in prison for murders he never committed. He didn’t have to do the dirty work. His brainwashed charges did his bidding.

I’m not saying Obama is a Charles Manson. There are varying degrees of manipulation, from using sexy blondes to entice men to buy cars all the way to hypnotizing them to drink poisoned Kool Aid. But there’s a common denominator in all mind control: manipulating people through mind games.

As soon as Obama came on the scene, the programming began…
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First, the vultures starting swooping down on Hillary. Obama chose not to call off the dogs.

Then thugs invaded caucuses. Again, silence.

Which led to vicious misogyny against Sarah Palin and threats on her life. From Obama: not a peep.
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Obama’s greatest magic trick? Brainwashing the masses to believe that racism is a greater danger than radical Islam, and that Obama himself is in constant peril.

Opposing health care means you oppose Obama. Oppose Obama and you’re part of a vast right-wing racist conspiracy.
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Mother Teresa was once asked how she coped with serving the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. She responded that what she saw in the cities of the United States was much more disturbing, because it was a “poverty of the spirit.”

Poverty of the spirit. No truer words can be spoken of the progressive Left.

I engaged the Frum crowd. The Brooks-babies. The Moranistas.

The folks who would perform home-self-surgery with rusty spoons to make sure someone with the letter “R” behind his name wins the next election…and toward that goal, desperately want the party to move to the “center.” And for that reason, Sarah Palin absolutely cannot win the nomination. Which means she cannot be considered. She’s dim, she’s dopey, she’s “unqualified,” she’s bad at Trivial Pursuit, she’s too good-looking, she’s a dumb ol’ girl. What we need to do is repeat 2008 all over again and nominate some “maverick” who votes with democrats a whole lot of the time. Because, y’know, that worked out so well.

The party means everything. The party must win. And so we have to get the party to stop acting like the party it’s supposed to be. Otherwise, who knows, maybe “we” will win, but the guy representing us might…reverse the growth of our bloated government, let people keep their guns, start treating illegal aliens like they really are illegal aliens, put our poor people on the path to financial health rather than giving them more social programs, and just generally, y’know, act like people are worth a damn and are supposed to be here doing something worthy.

I don’t typically address these people because I don’t know if they’re friends or foes. It seems the only way they agree with me is in this perception that we share a common enemy. They want to see more people elected with that label. The letter R. I’m not even on board with that. After the shenanigans pulled in New York, the party apparatus ranks high on the list of people & groups I don’t trust. So the Frumistas are supposed to be kindred spirits with me, disagreeing with me on this fundamental principle, and that one and that one, but laboring shoulder-to-shoulder with me to elect people I don’t trust anymore.

And with all the hubbub about Sarah Palin’s book, Rick Moran saw another opportunity to light into her one more time but this time put out some effort to show some calmness and cool-headed-ness about it. Very light treatment to her density and stupidity and vapidity. In fact, where he did give that treatment, he qualified it thoroughly…

[T]here is an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism that undergirds her anti-establishmentarian shtick. She has made her shallow, depthless understanding of the world into a badge of honor, and indeed, her supporters push the idea that this is a positive good, that having a president as unversed in nuance as they are of policy and programs would be kind of neat. Sure would be a switch from all those brainy establishment elitists who don’t want to roll back the New Deal and Great Society, making this country into a true conservative paradise.

This is not to say that Palin is stupid. She’s intellectually lazy. I wouldn’t necessarily call her incurious in a George Bush sort of way but neither would I refer to her as possessing the innate intelligence of a Ronald Reagan who actually did change the narrative about himself. Reagan had an active, curious mind and the good sense to reach out to experts who educated him, as well as filling in knowledge gaps by reading voraciously. Palin does not seem to have that spark, that drive, that hunger for knowledge that anyone as ill informed as she admits herself to be should possess. Therefore, I hold no hope that she can transform herself into a reasonably well informed politician.

This, too, ranks high on the list of people-and-groups-I-don’t-trust. Know why? Because horror of horrors, Rick Moran said something bad about Tundra Princess?

No, because it’s a phony argument.

If the argument to be made is “Stop it with the Palin nonsense…she’s not reasonably well-informed, and she can’t win” then the solution to the concern would be to go ahead and enter her name as a serious candidate, and at the 2012 GOP convention she’ll receive the vicious clobbering she so richly deserves. And then a nominee will emerge who has a much better chance of taking on Obama.

That isn’t good enough for the Frum/Moran crowd. That isn’t even close to good enough for them.

They do not want Sarah Palin to not be nominated. They do not want her to make room for someone who has a better chance. What they want, is for her to not be considered. Any further. As of right now.

Phony, phony, phony, phony, phony.

Commenter buquet (#45) gave more credit to this concern about intellectual capacity, and addressed it very well…

I think some of the “anti-intellectual” comments about Sarah Palin and the Tea Party crowd miss the point. Most people I know just want to see some common sense in Washington. We have an “intellectual” as President who surrounds himself with “intellectual” advisors (about half of whom seem to be Marxists or former Marxists). They are rapidly moving to gain more and more government control over our lives and freedoms.They are also spending money in absurd quantities that will ultimately diminish the standard of living for most middle-class Americans. I am convinced that it doesn’t take a great mind to be a great President (although I wouldn’t object). Common sense conservatism and practical decision-making abilities are much, much more important as our current President is making so painfully clear.

On the decision to “drill baby drill,” we have a simple situation. A superpower nation is sinking rapidly toward third-class status because its own environmental rules forbid it to make use of its own resources, and those rules should be repealed.

On the decision to invade Iraq, we confront someone dangerous, who’s been in command of dangerous weapons on-and-off for a quarter of a century, who thinks he’s too good to honor the treaties that were supposed to make him safe.

On the decision to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, on the other hand, we confront a chemical. A chemical we make when we breathe. The idea that it is somehow dangerous is more a religion than science — it is a religion that says humans, by their very nature, are a toxin upon the planet.

On the War on Terror, we are forced to fundamentally re-define, perhaps for the first time since the Civil War, what it means to fight. How wars are engaged. How armies should be tooled up. How enemies are defined.

Buquet has it completely right. How do our “intellectuals” handle these issues? They hold hands and jump, together, into this “Bizarro” world in which everything is the opposite of what it really is — then they make decisions that will impact other people, by the hundreds of millions, but not them. The simple things are made complicated. The complicated things are made simple. The dangerous things are made safe. The safe things are made dangerous. Terrorism is a “nuisance,” all the respectable scientists agree we need to tax ourselves 1% of our GDP to save the planet, Afghanistan needs to be given more time so we do the right thing, Kalid Shiek Mohammed has to stand trial in Manhattan, we have to make it easier for illegal aliens to vote and get more benefits…the list goes on and on.

It is frequently said that Washington DC is a strange place. Persons all up & down the ideological spectrum murmur, in disapproving tones, about this otherworldly place that seems to sit in its own universe, from which these laws radiate outward to bind and ensnare the rest of us “real” people. Why is it like this? Because we vote that way. We keep electing these damned “intellectuals” who pretend safe things are dangerous, dangerous things are safe, complicated things are simple and simple things are complicated. And they listen to fat moviemakers who can’t even keep mustard off their shirts who go around saying asinine things like “there is no terrorist threat.”

This is a Pogo moment, folks: We have met the enemy and he is us.

We move through this in stages. First stage: There are no wrong answers. We stop believing two and two are four. If you say two and two are five, there must be some alternate perspective through which the problem can be viewed…perhaps some life configuration I’ll never understand, and when you view it through that lens maybe two and two are indeed five. By extension, if you say three, or thirty-three, there must be some other walk-of-life by which that makes sense as well. Ultimately, all answers are correct…

…the next stage of deterioration is the one in which “four” becomes the one answer that can be wrong. Look at all the rest of us working so hard to empathize with others, to try to explore all these corridors and back-alleys through which two and two might add up to five. And here you are, Mister Knuckle-dragger. Probably speak no other languages but English. Probably never been to a foreign country. You probably drink non-organic milk and eat non-organic vegetables. Four. Sheesh! What a rube. No nuance.

In two steps, we enter the Bizarro world. First there are no wrong answers, then the right answer is the one wrong answer possible. At that point, everything has to be upside down. It is the age of the “intellectual”: Safe things are dangerous, dangerous things are safe, complicated things are simple and simple things are complicated.

How do Presidents greet Emperors? They bow way down.

What’s the perfect gift for the Queen of England? An iPod.

What do you do when you’re all out of money? Spend it real fast.

How do we treat terrorism? As a nuisance.

How do we support the troops? By voting for the 87 billion before voting against it.

How do we commemmorate the fall of the Berlin wall? Send Hillary. The President’s a busy man.

What do we do about Afghanistan? I dunno…and don’t ask me again, you’re not involved in the process! Need more time.

Seriously, what can we do to jump-start this economy? Stimulus, and a decidedly un-American nanny-state health care plan. Right now.

What is our national heritage? We’re cowards about race.

Haven’t we done anything good, ever? Sure, we elected Obama. Now let the apologies begin. For us, not for Him.

Drill baby drill? Only in your wallet.

Isn’t that a tax? No.

But my dictinary says so. I don’t care, it’s not a tax.

This intellectualism stuff arrives at the cost of common sense. And it’s pretty easy to see why. In politics, all positive personal attributes must find a way to manifest themselves. You cannot have intellectualism without a manifestation of the intellectualism. And the manifestation of intellectualism is — two and two are five. Some answer has to be given, to each question that comes along, that deviates from what would be patently obvious. Two and two cannot ever be four.

This is why the Frumistas are outside of my circle of trust, and they’re going to be staying out there for a long time. They don’t ever address this. They just say “intellectual.” Republican party needs to be more intellectual. But meanwhile, the intellectuals make bad decisions because that is their job. They must oppose common sense. And the Frumistas, in turn, end up opposing common sense. They don’t have to prove anything to us about their ability to make correct decisions, not even once-in-awhile. We, on the other hand have to prove to them that we can oppose common sense. All the time. Don’t even consider Sarah Palin, not even for another minute, not for another second. The Frumistas are getting all agitated with us.

And they’re not pleasant people. Moran, at his own spot, you’ll notice began to be outnumbered. He remained civil. But he did predict in his own paragraphs that he’d be subjected to some kind of abuse by the Palinistas like me, and it didn’t happen. Once again, the Palin folk were expected to exclude others, to insult others, and it didn’t happen. But the poison did come back ’round the other way. Quickly. And reliably.

Our blogger friend down in New Mexico is the classiest of the bunch. He’s not dished out any poison like this, ever. The nastiest thing I think I’ve ever heard him say about Palin, was “what’s all the fuss about?” and he honestly wants to know. But that’s an exception and not a rule. He is not a fair representation of the rest of the Frumistas. A more typical representation would be this from michael reyolds (#33)…

Me? I’d send her money. I love the idea of her being the face of the GOP. You’re really not getting this: Democrats are laughing and doing their best to epoxy Palin onto the GOP. The more times we can say Palin’s an idiot and Palin is the GOP, the better.

The “Palin is an idiot and the democrats want the GOP to nominate her” thing deserves a special mention.

Moran says Palin is not like Reagan. He’s wrong. Somehow, he does not remember Ronald Reagan’s time in office the same way I do. The two figures, Reagan and Palin, are indistinguishable in the way they address a crowd, how they relate to that crowd, how polarizing they are, what they do intellectually with the readin’ and the writin’ in their off-time (to the best I can see). And in the insults hurled at them and what they do to bring ’em on, they are absolutely identical.

Palin is not being called a dimbulb because she’s a dimbulb. That’s quite easy to see. Even for an “intellectual.” I see perhaps scores, maybe hundreds, of dimbulbs every single day. I feel no urgency in pointing out each one that comes along. There is no importance attached to noticing each one…not the same importance attached to, say, swiveling my noggin around to catch a glimpse of every lovely female with a nicely-endowed chest. Truth is, I have no idea how many twits I see everyday and neither do you. Until they get in our way it isn’t an issue that is worth any energy.

Sareh Palin’s dumbass-ish-ness, somehow, is worthy of an expenditure of energy. Vast, vast amounts of energy.

That isn’t how you treat a dimbulb. That’s how you treat a threat.

The Frumistas, drawing on the words of people like “Michael Reynolds,” say the Palinistas are playing right into the enemy’s hands. It is they who are playing into the enemy’s hands with this “intellectual” nonsense. They are playing into a battle plan the democrat party has been deploying for forty-five years now. It has served the democrat party very well during that time. If the newest Republican is non-threatening, ignore him; if he’s a threat, but can be portrayed as a lightweight, portray him that way and call him an idiot; if neither of the above two apply, call him evil. An effective, simple plan…but too simple. Its time is coming to an end. The anxiety that “intellectualism” feels to demonstrate itself, by consistently selecting the wrong answer to every question that comes along, is bringing down acute pain upon people and with the debt our government is racking up, common sense says it’s bound to get a whole lot worse.

The plan will, out of necessity, be retired. It is unavoidable. And there will be some disaster that will happen to the democrats that will make this retirement absolutely imperative.

Hopefully, that will happen in 2012. This is not a certainty. But it’s a possibility; there can be no reasonable disagreement with that.

It is the Frumistas who need to join the rest of us…if, indeed, they are lusting after the prospect of the democrat party getting pummeled. Me, I don’t care about such things anymore. Like tens of millions of others, I’m just fatigued by all the nonsense. A return, please, to common sense. To recognition, where it counts, that dangerous things are dangerous and harmless things are harmless.

Right now, there’s only one person who’s showing any promise of delivering such a return. Out of all the generals who are fighting that enemy of common sense, there is only one Grant, only one Patton. Only one general renowned for stirring up real, old-fashioned fear, real trembling in the enemy’s breast.

That George Patton general happens to be a girl this time ’round — if she chooses to return to the battlefield. A church-going girly-girl. Deal with it. Deal with it, or get out of the game and go home.

Mike Allen, writing in Politico:

President Barack Obama made no effort to conceal his irritation when his press corps used the first question of his maiden Far East trip to ask what was taking him so long on Afghanistan.

Jennifer Loven of The Associated Press had asked: “Can you explain to people watching and criticizing your deliberations what piece of information you’re still lacking to make that call.”

“With respect to Afghanistan, Jennifer,” the president scolded, “I don’t think this is a matter of some datum of information that I’m waiting on. … Critics of the process … tend not to be folks who … are directly involved in what’s happening in Afghanistan. Those who are, recognize the gravity of the situation and recognize the importance of us getting this right.”

Accuse the accuser, criticize the critic.

But if the data are all there, taking additional time has very little to do with “the importance of getting it right.” Two and two are four; it doesn’t matter if you answer that within thirty seconds or three seconds, or if you take all week. The answer is the same.

Ian Swanson, writing in The Hill:

Last year’s deficit was a record $1.4 trillion, up more than $900 billion from the previous year. The budget was inflated because of much lower tax revenues, which were down because of the worst recession in generations, and government spending intended to stimulate the economy and rescue the financial industry.

That situation is not expected to improve soon given 10.2 percent unemployment that is expected to grow.
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The Associated Press reported this week that the administration is telling agencies to brace for either a freeze in discretionary spending or 5 percent cuts.

[Sen. Judd] Gregg [R, NH] said he would support a move to freeze discretionary spending, but warned Democrats it would not be difficult for the GOP to use the deficit as an election-year issue.

“We almost don’t have to do anything to explain it,” said Gregg. “This is not difficult to understand. We don’t want to be a debtor nation. We don’t want to be a third-class nation.”

So Obama bowed.

And there is much buzz about it. WindsOfChange.net:

Count me among the exasperated at Obama’s willingness to bow before royalty – it’s funny actually, that such an avowed progressive (the group that believes in dissolving the connections of power) is so willing to reify power by being so deferential to hereditary royalty.

Stop The ACLU points to an impressive assortment of other reactions.

How are Obama’s defenders to spin it? Like this:

A senior administration official said President Barack Obama was simply observing protocol when he bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko upon arriving at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Saturday.

“I think that those who try to politicize those things are just way, way, way off base,” the official said. “He observes protocol. But I don’t think anybody who was in Japan – who saw his speech and the reaction to it, certainly those who witnesses his bilateral meetings there – would say anything other than that he enhanced both the position and the status of the U.S., relative to Japan. It was a good, positive visit at an important time, because there’s a lot going on in Japan.”

But this explanation does not square up against the impressive portfolios of other heads-of-state greeting the same Emperor. Like for example at Hot Air Pundit. And Astute Bloggers. And Weasel Zippers. And Donklephant.

There is another way to backlash against the Obama critics, and this one is unsettling. Not for its substance which is straight out of the Alinsky playbook. But rather for its knee-jerk-ish-ness…its mindlessness…its auto-pilot-ness…

The Moderate Voice:

It never ceases to amaze me how much more importance contemporary conservatives place on the form of democracy rather than the substance. Bowing to the leader of a country in which bowing is a respectful greeting when meeting any new person is a betrayal of democracy. Show trials in which convictions are gained using torture, hearsay testimony, and suppression of evidence are defenses of democracy.

The pattern continues. Only a dolt would dare to question the perfection of Holy Man Obama.

CBS News.

The usual crowd of armchair patriots is having a collective fit over President Obama’s decision to greet Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko with a bow.

A bow? I kid thee not.

You can just hear the valley-girl speak. Omigaw!

Rockey the Liberal Rottweiler responds to Alan Colmes’ blog post about it:

The problem here is that President Obama understands something that the rightwing extremists just can’t comprehend: that people’s opinion of you begins with whether or not you are polite.

And, as we all are well-aware, the word “polite” is not in the radical rightwing republikkkan lexicon.

Yeah, nothing endears me to people quite so quickly as the oh-so-polite behavior of calling me a Klansman. Well done Rocky.

More Omigaw stuff at Washington Monthly:

As part of his Asian trip, President Obama met today with Japanese Emperor Akihito. In keeping with Japanese custom and diplomatic protocol, the president bowed.

If you’re thinking this was an inconsequential moment, especially as compared to the significance of the trip itself, you’re underestimating the right’s propensity to embrace nonsense.

As Sister Toldjah points out, though, this is far from nonsense.

It never fails that any criticism of President Obama from conservatives is met with the usual “they’re overblowing it/they’re being stupid” cry from some on the left, and this weekend is no different. In response to the legitimate outcry over the President bowing at a clear 90 degree angle to Japanese Emperor Akihito, liberals at blogs like “The Moderate Voice” (does that place even have any moderates posting there anymore?), Alan Colmes’ blog, and others are blasting conservatives for getting upset at our President allegedly “observing a cultural custom.”

Think again. Both Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit dug up a 1994 New York Times piece back when the first Obama bow controversy emerged, and Ed reposted the link to the article again today. In it, the liberal NYT talks about a tradition among American Presidents that does not involve bowing:

It wasn’t a bow, exactly. But Mr. Clinton came close. He inclined his head and shoulders forward, he pressed his hands together. It lasted no longer than a snapshot, but the image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan.

Canadians still bow to England’s Queen; so do Australians. Americans shake hands. If not to stand eye-to-eye with royalty, what else were 1776 and all that about?

Gerard’s headline raises an entirely different train of thought in a single elegant statement: “If a US President Had Just Done This in January 1942 It Would Have Saved Everyone a Lot of Trouble.” The message won’t sink in where it’s needed. The idea that national pride is a bad thing — for certain countries — is a religion all by itself.

From reading both sides of things, one thing becomes abundantly clear: To whatever extent, and to whatever audience, the bow from President to Emperor is an appropriate show of respect — to be frowned-upon only by nonsensically puritanical chuckle-heads — it began to be so legitimate only in the instant President Obama did it.

And this is what is rather alarming about it. The protocol isn’t quite so much that such an expression is okay; it’s more that things begin to be okay when He Who Walks On Water does them.

What if our 44th President were to come down with a case of severe senile dementia? It seems we’re one brain-itch away from a truly earth-shattering “don’t know whether to laugh or cry” episode. If President Obama were to be afflicted with The Madness of King George, whatever remains of our code of social taboo would be warm putty in the hands of a lunatic. In the space of minutes it would become quite alright…as in, don’t you dare criticize or else you show your own neanderthal-ness…to eviscerate adorable puppies on the White House lawn in broad daylight…to strip down bare naked and rub peanut butter all over your nipples and buttocks…to diddle nine-year-old girl scouts…to defecate into the punch bowl…to…well, lengthening this list any further is not only vulgar, but pointless. The point to be made is: Where is the line drawn? President Sottero is Cool By Definition. Whatever He does, for whatever reason, must be not only allowable — but chic.

And on that train of thought I know exactly where I saw this form of psychosis before. Finally figured it out, I did. I saw it fourteen years ago give-or-take, in a zany little family comedy by Adam Sandler called Billy Madison. A young boy has an accident — “young” as in, young, but not so young that this is something that could be broadly accepted — and Adam Sandler drenches his own crotch with water to make it suddenly-cool to piss your pants.

This is what the hardcore left is doing with President Basically-God. This is precisely it. He Who Argues With Dictionaries pisses his pants at 12:15, and by 12:20 you’re a dumbass rube if your own crotch is still dry. “Everybody Pees Their Pants”. They’ll use their amazing superpower to re-write and re-wire our circuitry that declares right-and-wrong…to make it right. Barry did it, so it must be okay.

It seems pretty harmless when we’re talking about bowing. Especially in Japan. But this isn’t harmless, it’s dangerous. Like I said: It’s not the decision made, it’s how it’s made; the knee-jerk-ish-ness. That is the real story. That is what needs inspecting. The hardcore thirty-eight percent or whatever it is, who’d follow President Wonderful anywhere. They really, really would, and we’ve arrived at the point where the fanatical worship is no longer American, or even remotely compatible with American ideals.

President Obama did something wrong here. He’s capable of screwing up — the potential has always existed — and He did screw up. Just admit it. If you can’t admit it, you have a problem. Get help now.

Scratcher, at Makes My Brain Itch:

Andrew Sullivan Finally Has A President – Now What About The Rest Of Us?

I just read Andrew Sullivan‘s take how President Obama is handling his Afghanistan decision…

What we are seeing here, I suspect, is what we see everywhere with Obama: a relentless empiricism in pursuit of a particular objective and a willingness to let the process take its time. The very process itself can reveal – not just to Obama, but to everyone – what exactly the precise options are. Instead of engaging in adolescent tests of whether a president is “tough” or “weak”, we actually have an adult prepared to allow the various choices in front of us be fully explored. He is, moreover, not taking the decision process outside the public arena. He is allowing it to unfold within the public arena.

NOW he takes his time? We’re to view his deer-in-headlights vaporlock on Afghanistan as wisdom and engaging the public? Damn shame this wasn’t how he handled TARP… or the Stimuless… Or Healthcare Reform… With FOUR proposals available to him, he rejects each with no strategy of his own to put forth, and Sullivan seems to think he should be commended for his indecision?! Name ONE other time this President let any other “process take its time”.

Again — I see enormous harm being done to civilization, by a destructive force that is allowed to endure because it does not have a name.

Normally, when someone is diminished in some way, any way at all…a murderer is executed, a child is disciplined, a driver has to appear in court for failing to observe a u-turn sign, a military force is repelled, a military force is attacked, a horse head is left in a bed, the U.N. sends a strongly-worded letter…a message is sent. That is the real point to all of these things, and a civilized society depends on this.

Certain factors feed in to the effectiveness of the message. One factor is time. Obviously, “If you kill people we’re going to get you” is not as effectively communicated if it takes twenty years to execute the murderer, compared to if it takes twenty days.

Another factor is the potential for compromise. Think of the child being disciplined. Want to spoil a child rotten? Keep right on disciplining him — but make it a regular habit to consider everything. Consider that the child didn’t get a “fair warning,” that he didn’t really mean to do it, but yeah he screwed up but someone else did too…et cetera. Even if the child ends up getting whacked in the butt, or having his stuff taken away, the message is muted. If it’s a simple formula — you did it, there are consequences — the discipline is effective.

Yet another factor is opacity. That is, with regard to the decision to punish, or to allow the fire to rain on down. If the punishment might happen and it might not…but the connection between action & reaction is blurred, morphed, made ambiguous and hazy…it becomes just a random bad-thing-that-might-happen. Like a weather pattern. So part of the message needs to be “If you do this, that’ll happen, if you don’t do this, then that will not happen.” Consistency is key. The authority has to commit to things, like criteria, parameters, magnitudes. If the outcome depends on someone’s mood, then for anyone to modify their own behavior in consideration of such a thing, would be mostly pointless. They’ll be far less likely to do it.

The ultimate example of an effective message, is sticking metal tableware into an electrical outlet. The result is instant, jarring, and for all practical purposes, certain. Very, very few people do that twice.

For an example at the other end of the spectrum, I guess we have President Obama and Afghanistan. What’ll happen next? Nobody knows. President Sort-Of-God has to go off and think some more.

Over the past few days I’ve fantasized repeatedly about a world in which homicide is punished so rapidly, that the embalmer flies out to take care of the bodies of the victim and the murderer on the same trip. The point is — allowing that such a thing was possible, just imagine what would happen to the murder rate if we lived in such a world. By the same token, imagine how safe the country would be, if attacking us was an exercise similar to pissing on an electric fence.

This is what is under assault right now: The clarity of the messages. Justice delayed equals justice denied. There has to be more time, more thinking, more complexity, more obfuscation, more apologia, more…whatever. More ingredients in the stew. More of anything but action.

This is occasionally defended as something in service of respecting the Constitution. What part of it, I wonder?

Cross-posted at Cassy Fiano.

Joe Herring writes in the American Thinker:

I recall a conversation I had with a young coworker in the latter weeks of Obama’s campaign for president. Joe the plumber had just exposed the redistributionist bent of the candidate, and I expressed my assessment of Mr. Obama as a not-so-closeted socialist. My coworker then quite earnestly asked, “What’s so wrong with socialism?”

I initially assumed he must be joking, although his face gave no indication. I stared at him dumbfounded, only later realizing I must have looked like a palsied old man — my mouth working wordlessly, the incomprehension as evident on my face as the sincerity on his. It eventually dawned on me that he really didn’t know what was wrong with socialism. I began reciting the litany of horrors: the crimes of the Holocaust, the purges of the Soviets, the thuggery and inhuman brutality of the statist regimes of the last century. The Nazis, for crissake! How could he not know about the evil of the Nazis? He listened to all of this, nodding his understanding as he recognized some of the events I described, but I could still see a question behind his eyes. While he had been taught of the existence of these atrocities, he had not been clued into the one commonality they shared. They were all perpetrated by the adherents of various forms of socialism. Indeed, such crimes were the only outcome possible.

At this point, some of us get distracted about how & whether it is possible to practice plumbing in certain counties in Ohio without a license. Among those of us who have and use the ability to remain tuned in to the central question. some of us are left asking “How are such crimes the only outcome possible?” And they would do well to become acquainted with F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which does a great job of describing the rise of Adolph Hitler without explicitly describing Adolph Hitler.

It’s human nature. Once the factions start gutter-sniping each other, “The People” lose their desire for a wise leader and begin to nurture an unhealthy lust for a strong one. An emulsifying agent. A greeeeaaaaaaatt speechifier. One who cannot be opposed, even as he moves to codify his stupidest and most counterproductive ideas into law, without his critics paying a heady price for so criticizing. Sound familiar?

And then, as Herring explains with a clear, concise and poignant summary of Von Hayek’s tome, it gets worse:

With an economy of words that showcased the significance of his conclusion, [Von Hayek] pointed out the Achilles heel of collectivist dogma: for a planned economy to succeed, there must be central planners, who by necessity will insist on universal commitment to their plan.

How do you attain total commitment to a goal from a free people? Well, you don’t. Some percentage will always disagree, even if only for the sake of being contrary or out of a desire to be left alone. When considering a program as comprehensive as a government-planned economy, there are undoubtedly countless points of contention, such as how we will choose the planners, how we will order our priorities when assigning them importance within the plan, how we will allocate resources when competing interests have legitimate claims, who will make these decisions, and perhaps more pertinent to our discussion, how those decisions will be enforced. A rift forming on even one of these issues is enough to bring the gears of this progressive endeavor grinding to a halt. This fatal flaw in the collectivist design cannot be reengineered. It is an error so critical that the entire ideology must be scrapped.

Von Hayek accurately foretold the fate that would befall dissenters from the plan. They simply could not be allowed to get in the way. Opposition would soon be treated as subversion, with debate shriveling to non-existence under the glare of the state. Those who refused compliance would first be marginalized, then dehumanized, and finally (failing re-education) eliminated. Collectivism and individualism cannot long share the same bed. They are political oil and water, and neither can compromise its position without eventually succumbing to the other.

Ah, but talking in wistful, admiring tones about the wonderfulness of He Who Argues With The Dictionaries makes you seem so hip!

Hat tip to Washington Rebel.

Hat tip to Primordial Slack.

Don’t look now, but there’s another scandal about the Caribou Barbie tundra dimbulb who can’t get anything right…

PowerLine has done the best job summarizing this one (hat tip to The Corner), I think.

The AP starts with this one:

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking “only” for reasonably priced rooms and not “often” going for the “high-end, robe-and-slippers” hotels.

THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) for a five-hour women’s leadership conference in New York in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000.

This is frankly pathetic. Palin says she didn’t “often” stay at high-end hotels, and the AP counters by saying she did, once. Yes, that’s why she said “not often” rather than “never.” What is indisputable is that Palin sold the Governor’s private jet and flew commercial, thereby saving the taxpayers a large amount of money and qualifying her as a frugal traveler.

The rest are about as lame. Here is another…

PowerLine includes a rather gratifying zinger directed toward Sen. John Kerry, who could use some “fact checking” lately. I suppose they could have picked out any one of a number of Kerry’s colleagues as well. But they very solidly qualify the statement “funny how the press fact-checks some things but not others.”

Yeah…ya got that right. I think we’re living in the age of the decline of “fact checking” as an institution…or slogan. I see a future in which we’ll look back on it as something like pet rocks. History teachers will tell their tenth-grade students “So then CNN fact-checked it…” and the students will automatically think “Ah, so the liberals had to get in the last word.”

Wishful thinking on my part. It took me until my thirties to interpret the phrase that way. But I’m sticking by it, because lately that’s what it means.

It’s not good going through life supporting “truths” that only seem sensible if you vigilantly and militantly make sure those truths have the last word on things…ALL…THE…TIME. This is one of those things you don’t have to be too bright to figure out for yourself, and I honestly wonder about the people at AP and CNN who don’t quite seem to catch on. How’d they get where they are? Did they do something? Do someone? Or was it eenie, meanie, miney moe?

I decided this was the best one; if not, one of the best. Found it way back here.

I’m definitely going back here, again and again and again.