So Oprah wants to know if Sarah Palin would invite Levi Johnston for dinner.
This curiosity about conservatives forgiving people is fascinating to me because it is so insincere. It isn’t even curiosity. Palin’s answer was, after all, perfectly decent and should have put any true curiosity to rest. But this isn’t the end of it, of course. The question will be raised again and again and again…of the conservative capacity to forgive, not of the liberal capacity to forgive.
And when you think about it, there are other answers Palin could have given that would be just as decent. “He took advantage of my daughter and the only way we’d have him for dinner is as target practice” would have been just fine. Maybe not politically palatable, but after all Levi’s done you certainly can’t say that would eliminate the Palins from our mythical community-of-decentpeepul.
In this age of Chicago brass knuckle politics, I have a lot more curiosity — real curiosity — about the liberals and their capacity to forgive and invite people over for Thanksgiving dinner. If 2009 really is the Year of Healing, and Thanksgiving is the season we’re finally going to start feeling it, here’s a list of ten I’d like to see. And no, I won’t be holding my breath for Oprah to be asking about these.
Anyone see this happening?
1. Campbell Brown could invite Sarah Palin over for Thanksgiving dinner.
2. President Obama could invite Joe the Plumber over for Thanksgiving dinner.
3. David Axelrod could invite Fox News over for Thanksgiving dinner.
4. Bill Maher could invite Dick Cheney over for Thanksgiving dinner.
5. The DailyKOS folks could invite Karl Rove over for Thanksgiving dinner (brave, brave Karl).
6. Charles Johnson could invite Robert Stacy McCain over for Thanksgiving dinner.
7. The NAACP could invite Clarence Thomas over for Thanksgiving dinner.
8. Code Pink could invite over some of our soldiers who volunteered to go to Afghanistan — volunteered! — over for Thanksgiving dinner.
9. The National Organization of Women could invite Ken Starr over for Thanksgiving dinner.
10. Mike Todd could invite blogger friend Rick over for Thanksgiving dinner.
The last of those might require an explanation so I’ll give a one-liner and a link. As Rick explained, he is the only breathing soul on the face of the planet ever to be banned from Mike’s blog. It’s obvious Rick is, at last report, beyond forgiveness, which is interesting to keep in mind when one observes Mike extolling the virtues of forgiving everyone.
Liberalism is a cheap way to look like a decent, forgiving person. The hatred they have for conservatives, is the hatred reserved for people who have no need of such a mask, felt by people who do.
Andy adroitly sums up what’s going on with Nidal Hasan. Not so much the man, not so much the crime, not so much the human tragedy that resulted, but the cognitive dissonance taking place within the skulls of the good folks who are supposed to be telling us what’s going on.
Faced with the obvious – that Hasan is a jihadist, an America-hating, Islamic murderer, the media still did their level best to paint him as the innocent victim. That wretched tactic having failed them, presumably because America is very quickly getting to the end of its patience with this shit, the media limbers up, pins its ankles behind its egos, and will be piling on so much evidence of Hasan’s guilt that the only natural reaction from apologists and pusillanimous hand jobbers the world over will be to blame, accuse, and denigrate the US Army for either being too stupid to detect it, or choosing not to stop it.
Another artful deflection of responsibility and reality by the sweatily throbbing, self-engorged media juggernaut.
All those seeking an example of what Andy is describing, need look no further than this exchange between Bill O’Reilly and Sally Quinn. It is quite unbelievable. But if you can somehow track down the audio, toss me a link wouldja? And give it a listen. Because man, that is even more unbelievable.
O’Reilly says she’s brilliant. Me, I’m wondering how in the world the woman gets out of bed and gets dressed in the morning. I don’t mean that to be insulting. I just find her method of thinking things out to be…well…how do you get anything done this way? Like strangling someone with a wet noodle.
O’REILLY: “Impact” segment tonight, the controversy over how to define Major Hasan continues. According to a new Rasmussen poll, 60 percent of Americans want the Fort Hood shooting investigated as a terrorist act. Just 27 percent think it was a criminal act to be dealt with in civilian court.
But in the media, it’s a different story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUINN: There’s been so much focus on the fact that he’s a Muslim. When the focus should be on the fact that the military did not pick up on the fact that this guy was emotionally disturbed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O’REILLY: Joining us now from D.C. is Sally Quinn, founder of “The Washington Post” feature on faith. So why can’t we do both here, Ms. Quinn? I want to find out.
QUINN: Actually.
O’REILLY: .about the Army and what they knew and why they didn’t take action. But why can’t we call the guy a Muslim terrorist because he is one, and investigate as well? I mean, you seem to have a problem with the Muslim terrorist designation.
QUINN: No, actually, I don’t. I — what I think is that right now, everybody is trying to simplify the situation. And it is extremely complicated. There are so many different factors involved. And we don’t know a lot.
O’REILLY: Okay, but.
QUINN: I mean the guy may well be a terrorist.
O’REILLY: I’m one of the guys.
QUINN: The way Timothy – yeah.
O’REILLY: I’m one of the guys trying to simplify.
QUINN: Right, okay.
O’REILLY: So I’m going to say how I see it and you say — you tell me where I’m wrong.
QUINN: Okay.
O’REILLY: Okay.
QUINN: Okay.
O’REILLY: Here you got a guy who is a troubled man. You agree?
QUINN: Right.
O’REILLY: Okay, troubled man . We start there. He gets a poor evaluation at Walter Reed, where he works prior to Fort Hood. Not doing his job very well. Transferred out to Texas.
Then they find out, the FBI does, that he’s emailing a big shot in al Qaeda in Yemen. Okay. So now we have a troubled man who’s interested in jihad. He’s interested in al Qaeda for some reason. All right? So far you with me?
QUINN: I’m there.
O’REILLY: Okay, I’m simple, I’m keeping it real simple.
QUINN: Yeah.
O’REILLY: Okay, so then for some reason, he blends the jihad with the troubledness, picks up a couple of guns, and murders 13 people and wounds 30 others. Okay. I am ascribing that to his jihad philosophy combined with whatever neurosis was eating him was eating him. Simple, right? Am I wrong?
QUINN: Well, actually, that’s very complicated.
O’REILLY: Why? What’s complicated about that?
QUINN: What you just said. No, well, because I mean, Timothy McVeigh was called a terrorist.
O’REILLY: And he is.
QUINN: And I don’t know whether that’s the right.
O’REILLY: Was.
QUINN: .yes, probably he was.
O’REILLY: He was. Terrorist act, you blow up an office building.
QUINN: Yeah.
O’REILLY: .and you kill people. It’s a terrorist act.
QUINN: This guy was clearly disturbed. He was clearly – I mean, jihad means many different things. You know, he was Muslim. Most Muslims believe that violence — they’re against violence. But there are a large number of Muslims who.
O’REILLY: But he was a Muslim interested in jihad.
QUINN: Yeah.
O’REILLY: He was a Muslim emailing al Qaeda. He was a Muslim screaming “allah akbar” when he was gunning people down. Come on. I don’t get why you guys, and I’m generalizing with a minute.
QUINN: Wait a minute. I’m not…
O’REILLY: I don’t get it. I don’t get why you don’t call it what it is. He’s a jihadist.
QUINN: Well, that may well be. And I do think that there should be a lot of investigation about this. Not some, but a lot. Starting with how did he get into medical school? How did he get through.
O’REILLY: The Army put him through school. He enlisted in the Army and they did everything for him.
QUINN: Why was he treating patients? Why were they not picking up on the fact that he was making speeches and saying that this was a war — that Iraq and Afghanistan were wars against Islam.
O’REILLY: All of that is valid.
QUINN: I mean, all of these. The guy had red flags coming out of his ears.
O’REILLY: Fine.
QUINN: So yeah.
O’REILLY: And we need to know that.
QUINN: Right.
O’REILLY: But you — you have a hard time saying the words “Muslim terrorist.” and so does Obama. He has a hard time saying it. I don’t know why you guys aren’t saying it. Why? Why?
QUINN: Well, I think, you know, first of all, there are different kinds of terrorists as I said…
O’REILLY: He’s a Muslim terrorist. What do you mean different kinds of terrorists? He kills people under the banner of jihad. That’s who he is.
QUINN: Right.
O’REILLY: What — look, what do you want him to come to your house with a strap-on bomb? The guy did it for jihadist reasons. Allah akbar. That’s the slogan. Emails al Qaeda. Ms. Quinn, you’re a brilliant woman. And I’m not saying that facetiously. You are. This is – – a third grader gets this. And you’re resisting it. I want to know why.
QUINN: No, Bill, you’re making a very good case. I mean, he’s a Muslim. And he may well end up being a terrorist. We don’t know for sure.
O’REILLY: I know for sure.
QUINN: Okay.
O’REILLY: 90 percent of the people watching me know for sure.
QUINN: Right.
O’REILLY: I don’t know why you don’t know for sure. What else do you need?
QUINN: Well, I mean, you know, you can call the guy who blew up – you know, who shot up the Holocaust museum a terrorist.
O’REILLY: Did he yell “allah akbar?” If he yelled “allah akbar” and he emailed an al Qaeda in Yemen, I’d call him that, Ms. Quinn.
QUINN: Okay, he’s a Muslim terrorist.
(LAUGHTER)
O’REILLY: Thank you. Sally Quinn, everybody . We appreciate it. A long road but we got there.
Yay, he got her to say it.
Yay.
This is shocking and unreal. If you wrote it up as fiction, no publisher would touch it. But here we are.
Update: Thanks to Louz, here is the embedded video.
Reader cylarzwants our reaction to this guy‘s analysis of the upcoming elections in ’10 and ’12. And it would appear the interest is focused on this particular passage:
Given that two of my three predictions were wrong, it’s safe to say I suck at analysis. Which is actually good news because I don’t see the Republicans taking the House next year, and I can see Chairman Zero handily winning re-election. I’d only say all three races – NJ, VA, and NY-23 – have lessons in them for Republicans. 1. Connect conservative positions to practical policies that solve problems. 2. Choose candidates that appeal to the base.
My reaction? Good blog. I like it. It’s heading straight to the sidebar.
Regarding “Basically God” and His ability to win re-election in ’12, with a healthy reinforcing of His mandate in ’10, I would have to say…agree, with the “I can see” part of it. In fact, my opinion is going to be that if Republicans just dedicated themselves to running exactly the ticket they ran last year, from now until the end of time, then Holy Man will spend that eternity just beating ’em like a drum over and over again.
Why? Because the contender that was run a year ago was democrat-lite. The message was “We’re like those other guys in some ways, but not in other ways…but trust us, we’ve borrowed from all the parts of them you happen to like, and we’re different from them in all the ways you don’t like, or at least if you knew what you were doing you wouldn’t like it.”
It turned — it will turn into — a “Better the Devil You Know” thing. Yeah that’s right. Enjoying a greater opportunity to run for President and remain secretive about His policies at the same time, than anyone else since perhaps the founding of the nation…Barack Obama emerged as “The Devil You Know.” It’s not Him, it’s us. The way we’re put together. When we’re confused about our options and feel we don’t have the time or the inclination to learn about them, we look around and look at what everyone else is doing, then do that.
Most folks who’ve been to school practiced this pretty consistently from first grade through twelfth.
The advice that comes from “Teh Resitance” makes good sense. Appeal to the base first.
I can already hear the moans and groans. There’s Rick Moran and David Frum, both pretending to represent lots of people they really don’t represent…”but that’s not incluuuuuuusive!” And there’s this other long-time reader we have who has expressed a similar concern on more than one occasion. Newt Gingrich has joined them lately. They say if people are driven out of the party, the party’s numbers will dwindle and it will remain a loser party forever. If it at least makes the effort to reach across, then maybe the magic of the Reagan Democrats can be allowed to work once again.
Yeah, I remember Reagan. You know what stood out about Reagan? He was a real leader and it showed. If the bureaucracy said one thing and Reagan said something else, Reagan would decide things Reagan’s way. And no, it wasn’t Nancy’s astrologist deciding things, it was Ronald, and the result wasn’t unpredictable. It was the opposite. Ronald Reagan was going to do what Ronald Reagan said Ronald Reagan was going to do.
Folks, those days are gone. The bureaucracy has gotten much tougher; the American bureaucracy, as well as the party bureaucracy within the Republican and democrat parties. This machinery is m-u-c-h tougher than any of the individuals we have seen.
And the individuals aren’t even promising anything like this. Those who claim to be “moderate,” on both sides, are the very worst at this. John McCain, I think, is perhaps one of the best illustrations of the problem. Yes, he’d be a “maverick” and he’d decide things in a way that would tick off conservatives as well as liberals…he’d decide in whatever way made sense. Whatever made sense to John McCain. Predictable? Nah, not hardly. On abortion, maybe. Principled? Sad to say, no. “Why would you raise taxes on anyone in this economy?” was one of his golden moments. But he didn’t take it into The Smoke-Filled Cloakroom Where Things Are Decided…when it came time to have those meetings about bailouts & such. Nope, for just a few minutes Keynesian economics made perfect sense. They made sense to John. That was all maverick-y and so forth, but it wasn’t principled.
And so it goes with the whole stinkin’ lot of ’em. John Kerry would be the next-best example. His speeches were nothing more than rationales. Sen. Kerry already figured out what he wanted to do about this, that or the other…God only knows how. And then he showed off his remarkable talent at giving a speech to make whatever it was sound somewhat appealing. To morons, anyway. Different John, same story. Good ol’ John, he figured out this dry, boring subject matter that I can’t watch or read for too long, and now he knows what to do so I don’t need to worry about the details. Trust John. There must be something about that name.
John Kerry lost the election to the incumbent President…who, although his popularity was already in a decline, was for the most part predictable in how he would decide this matter or that one. You might not agree with what he was going to do, but you pretty much knew what it was. So 2004 was another “Devil You Know” election.
If Republicans buy into the nonsense about “you guys are just so un-hip right now” and go all centrist-y, they will do so to the detriment of their identity and become “The Devil You Don’t Know.” They’ll start to look like Charles Durning doing his dance in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. That’s a great way to hang on to a seat once you’ve got it, but it’s a lousy way to try & get in.
When you’re trying to get in, people want to know what you’re going to do. When you’re a “moderate,” it means you use your own “common sense for each decision that comes down the line”…which sounds good, but it also means people don’t know what you’re going to do. Plus, the other guy, being the incumbent, enjoys an attribute of familiarity.
So in that scenario, President Obama enjoys the incumbency and the familiarity that goes with it. Plus He’ll still have oodles and oodles of that charisma-or-whatever. So the blogger would be right then.
But here’s a question for the moderates and reach-across guys: Can you name one single issue which is a better example than all the others of how this reaching-across will work? Don’t tell me…let me guess…same-sex marriage, right? If Republicans will just roll over and get behind marriage-definition-creep, why, the homosexuals and activists and sympathizers will just desert the democrat party in droves! Right? You’ll win them over with the “We vote that way too” move.
Wake up, fellas. Seriously. Attempts have now been made to legalize same-sex marriage in…I dunno how many states by now. More than twenty I think. The score is oh-for-whatever. The states that allow it, have been strong-armed into allowing it by their court systems. Thus ends that argument. This is not a political loser for Republicans, and it damn sure isn’t a way for Republicans to pick up “Reagan Democrats” by pretending to be something they aren’t. That wouldn’t work any better in ’10 and ’12 than it did in ’08.
Such a strategy would necessarily argue the following: “We think we look more appealing than that other guy, when we pick out the elements to our party you’ll find abhorrent, and take steps to hide them from you.” That simply isn’t persuasive.
I’ll tell you what will be persuasive, though: Principled policies. Don’t just appeal to the base; put the base in charge, and start with an honest and decent respect to the individual. Tell people how you’ll let them keep more of their — not just money, but — autonomy. To make their decisions and live their lives.
Talk some more about cause-and-effect: When you let people negotiate their own transactions, the economy takes off. When you handcuff them with a lot of nonsensical rules, when you take their money away and channel it into hairbrained Keynesian scemes, the economy sputters and dies.
People lose interest in cause-and-effect when they can afford to. In 2008, things had just turned sour,but people could still afford to do this. In 2010 and 2012, we’ll all be much more interested in cause-and-effect.
Take advantage of that, and the blogger will be wrong. The campaign slogan should be something to the effect of “When you sacrifice all else to be popular, you fail at everything including that.” Is that too long? Probably…because I came up with it myself. So let’s steal one: Elections Have Consequences — there, that’s perfect.
Don’t show Barack Obama as stupid, or weak…since He isn’t. The criticism toward Obama should be that He is an extraordinarily competent and polished packaging of all the ideas we don’t need right now. Talk about Swindle-Us packages; talk about the Fort Hood massacre, show some video clips of Holy Man’s reaction to it, and discuss how political correctness hurts real people. Talk about Afghanistan. Explore the difference between thinking like a toddler, and thinking like a grown-up. Underscore the point with footage of indoctrinated youths singing songs of worship to He Who Argues With The Dictionaries. Talk about things leading to other things, and you have to think with some maturity in order to see it. This is the problem with Obama. He represents a departure from adult thinking, and this country needs now like never before to engage in adult thinking.
In my mind’s eye, I see video of small businesses putting “NO HELP WANTED” signs in their windows, with “The Candyman Can” playing as background music. But the final note should always be optimistic. Optimistic and sincere. Thinking like a baby got us into this fix, thinking like a grown-up will get us out.
The whole argument has a way of relegating the marriage issue to back-seat status, doesn’t it?
Stossel – I like it all, but especially the title.
The U.S. House of Presumptuous Meddlers
As an American, I am embarrassed that the U.S. House of Representatives has 220 members who actually believe the government can successfully centrally plan the medical and insurance industries.
I’m embarrassed that my representatives think that government can subsidize the consumption of medical care without increasing the budget deficit or interfering with free choice.
It’s a triumph of mindless wishful thinking over logic and experience.
Dressed as ‘zombie soldiers’ killed in combat, ‘ghosts of war victims,’ witches and healthcare fairies, members of Code Pink menacingly paraded in front of a captive audience of children one block from the White House, who waited along the sidewalk in front of Decatur House just off Lafayette Park for a Halloween party hosted by President Obama.
Last Saturday, the President hosted several hundred military families for trick or treating. Also invited were children of White House staff and about 2000 children from eleven D.C. area elementary schools.
In a press release published at their website, key Obama ally Code Pink – a group co-founded by one of Obama’s top funders Jodie Evans, announced they were targeting military families for what can only be called psychological abuse by conducting a macabre protest of the war in Afghanistan as the families waited in line to enter the White House grounds.
It gets much better. Who is Jodie Evans? Her Code Pink biography introduces her thusly:
Jodie has been a community, social and political organizer for the last 30 years. She has used her skills,for the protection of the earth, to give voice to communities and people who go unheard and unseen, in the area of human and civil rights, to protect the rights of women, to raise the minimum wage for farm workers, to protect dolphins, in El Salvador in the early 80’s and with Zapitistas since ’94.
From 1973 to 1982, she served in administrative capacities in all of Jerry Brown’s campaigns and in his staff and cabinet as Director of Administration. Breakthroughs in wind and solar energy happened while she was overseeing the office of Appropriate Technology.
During the years between 1985 and 1990, she took time off to be a mother while running the Hereditary Disease Foundation and founding the Grief Recovery Center after the death of her daughter. During this period, she was very active as the west coast board member of the Women’s Campaign Fund, chair of the federal candidates committee of the Women’s Political Committee, member of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee. She also raised money for out of state women candidates for federal offices and pro choice groups CARAL and Voters for Choice. With a group of women friends concerned about bringing children in to this world founded Environmental Media Association.
And on and on. Minimum wage for farm workers, and saving the dolphins.
If you only read our mainstream media you would certainly think that Code Pink’s Jodie Evans is just another soccer mom caught up in the heady world of grassroots politics.
For whenever Ms. Evans is mentioned by our watchdog media we are never told a word about her background.
Like Alzheimer sufferers, our truth-seeking journalists treat Ms. Evans like a brand new person with a blank slate each time she appears in the news.
:
[T]o describe Ms. Evans merely as a co-founder of Code Pink hardly does her justice. For she is a longtime professional America-hater, who has used her ex-husband’s billions to promote her radical causes.
Jodie Evans is a radical activist and Democratic fundraiser best known as the co-founder (along with Diane Wilson, a Wiccan calling herself Starhawk, and Global Exchange’s Medea Benjamin) of Code Pink for Peace. Evans also works closely with Leslie Cagan, the pro-Castro leader of United For Peace and Justice.
From 1973 to 1982, Evans worked in administrative capacities in the political campaigns of Jerry Brown, who during those years served as California’s Secretary of State and then Governor. She also held a cabinet post as Governor Brown’s Director of Administration.
Evans…founded the Grief Recovery Center after the death of her daughter. During this period, she held various positions with the Women’s Campaign Fund, the Women’s Political Committee, and the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee. She also worked as a fundraiser for out-of-state female candidates for federal offices, and for the pro-abortion organizations CARAL (the California subsidiary of NARAL Pro-Choice America) and Voters for Choice…
In 1990 Evans partnered with Tom Hayden and Cathryn Tiddens to open an environmental department store, Terra Verde, in Santa Monica, California.
In 1991 Evans ran Jerry Brown’s presidential campaign. She also produced the radio program We the People with Jerry Brown, a daily leftwing talk show. From 1994 to 1998, she produced the documentary film Stripped and Teased: Tales of Las Vegas Women…
Over the years, Evans has supported such activist groups as Citizen Action, Neighbor to Neighbor, the Earth Island Institute, the Interfaith Task Force on Central America, the International Overseas Education Fund, and the Los Angeles Women’s Foundation.
Jodie Evans… sits on the board of directors of the Rain Forest Action Network (RAN), a coalition of anti-capitalist, anti-corporate environmentalist groups. RAN’s co-founder Michael Roselle also founded the Earth Liberation Front, which the FBI ranks alongside the Animal Liberation Front as the foremost domestic terrorism threats in the United States. According to the FBI, during the past seven years those two groups have been responsible for more than 600 criminal acts and $43 million in damages…
In addition to her Code Pink duties, Jodie Evans also sits on the advisory board of the International Occupation Watch (IOW) center in Iraq, which Code Pink helped establish. The organizers of Occupation Watch — Medea Benjamin and Leslie Cagan — explicitly declared their purpose in setting up headquarters in Baghdad was [to] thin U.S. forces by getting soldiers to declare themselves conscientious objectors.
:
Ms. Evans is a very rich and powerful woman, thanks largely to her divorce settlement from the billionaire capitalist Max Palevsky in “common property” California.
Max Palevsky (born 1924 in Illinois) is an American art collector, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and computer technology pioneer. He served in the US Army as a meteorological officer during World War II. Palevsky first worked on a computer project at Bendix, and went on to work at Packard Bell. He convinced the company that they should enter the computer business and helped develop the PB-250 at Packard Bell, which was modestly successful. After raising around $1 million in venture capital, he left Packard Bell to found Scientific Data Systems of California in 1961. Within a year they introduced the model 910 computer, which made them profitable. Initially, they targeted scientific and medical computing markets. Palevsky sold SDS to Xerox in 1969 for $920 million…
Medea Benjamin has her own story. I’ll not go into it because this is running on pretty long, Google’s out there, and the point’s been made.
These are not everyday women concerned about world peace, America’s reputation before the world community, or the welfare of our “troops.”
These are die-hard anti-semitist communist pukes. They are part of a movement that stretches back not seven years, but more like seventy. A movement that has used the legal profession in America to bring down the country. To use the threat of litigation and criminal prosecution to make it unappealing and unpalatable to stand up for the country in the arena of public debate. Their motivation is supposed to have something to do with human decency. They’re using what is supposed to be an occasion of fun, to get in the face of a captive audience of little kids who haven’t done anything to anybody. That settles the human decency angle, I think.
As far as President Obama’s involvement? I think it’s pretty damn incriminating…but it’s just my opinion. You could quite legitimately argue this is pure “guilt by association.” Ms. Evans is just a friend-of-Obama. Just like Rev. Jeremiah Wright. We don’t know to what extent, if at all, Mister Wonderful authorized this.
In my world, it just goes into that ever-thickening “What If George W. Bush Did That?” file. And it’s become a very thick file indeed…in fact, come to think of it, what if George W. Bush did do that? Invite kids, the sons and daughters of our fighting forces, to the White House for a fun and scary Halloween. And then Karl Rove jumps out in costume to accost the kids, bully and intimidate the kids, in order to get some kind of message across?
This year’s shamelessly swiped image is shamelessly swiped from over here. I thought it was the best-looking of the bunch. Even though it’s from last year…
[Update: I decided I just can’t stand having the wrong year in there like that, so I copped a modified version from over here.]
It bears repeating. On the list of things to be done When I Start Running This Place and become Dictator of the World Forever…Item #3 on the list says that within any given municipality, every single damn veteran therein gets Veteran’s Day off or else nobody does.
This is one of those things that, if Mork From Ork was living in your laundry room and he came asking you about it one day, you’d never be able to explain it. People who are not vets — get Veteran’s Day off. This guy I met down at the post office who is a vet — he has to work. How come that is?
There are no good answers. That’s because it’s one of those things we do that don’t make any sense.
Anyway. The day ahead beckons. Rant done.
Happy Veteran’s Day, veterans. We are the folks living in the fortress, you are the wall. You can exist without us, but we cannot exist without you. Thank you.
Let the government run the schools, and it may end up teaching your children values that offend you. Let the government have new powers to fight terrorism, and it may use those extraordinary powers in the pursuit of ordinary crimes. Let the federal government give the states money for highways, and it may eventually use its money to impose its own rules on the states.
In the Obama era, the slippery slope has gone vertical. Instead of “eventually,” the feared extensions of government power come immediately.
An indigent has made an unexpected and startling claim that his deplored economic status is the natural consequence of his own poor decision-making:
The incident occurred near the dumpster behind the Shop Rite store in Brooklyn, when Willard Kookish, formerly of 435 Subprime Lane in Nutly, NJ, casually told a reporter that “my problems are my own fault.” The veteran New York Times reporter Ken McLiar, who has been searching area dumpsters for a 3,785-part series on people who are homeless due to the evils of American capitalism, admits he was astonished by Mr. Kookish’s bizarre confession. When asked to elaborate, Mr. Kookish went on to say, “I went through college drinking and smoking dope and never learned anything. I’ve had many job opportunities but didn’t bother to show up. My family left me a nice house to live in but I took out home equity loans on it and spent the money on hookers and gambling. When the housing boom collapsed I lost everything. I made bad decisions and here I am bearing the consequences.”
Nobody really quite knows what to make of this. Taking responsibility for your mistakes? Your life sucks because of your own errors of judgment and you don’t want to blame someone else? What the hell is this? What planet are we on?
Experts, on whom the incompetent depend to explain the complicated world they fail to understand, are unanimous. “It’s Reagan’s fault,” says Professor Wilton Chumpley, a consulting sociologist from the University of Twerp in Belgium. “Remember how in the 1980s that actor-president mislead people into thinking they could spend their own money and run their own lives without expert help? And then you had that crackpot economist Milton Friedman falsely claiming that the government shouldn’t be responsible for directing people’s existence. It made less sense than the UFO stories, at least for smart people like myself. But, tragically, some fools took it seriously; it ruined their lives.”
President Obama has not commented publicly on the controversy but has privately told aides that “former President Bush is not getting off the hook for the economy, the War in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina or Willard Kookish’s failures on my watch.” Sources speculate that Kookish’s mortgage default will be added to the list of indictable offenses against former Bush Administration officials.
John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind behind the sniper attacks that left 10 dead, was executed Tuesday night as relatives of the victims watched, reliving the killing spree that terrorized the Washington metro area for three weeks in October 2002.
He looked calm and stoic, but was twitching and blinking as the injections began, defiant to the end, refusing to utter any final words. Victims’ families sat behind glass while watching the execution, separated from the rest of the 27 witnesses.
That’s so much more civilized, and so much more respectful to human life, than to hunt around for excuses for the next twenty years to keep this guy breathing and eating and writing books and granting teevee interviews. No contest.
For a second there I got my one-man-jihad guys mixed up. Thought it was the Fort Hood murderer they just put down. Got all excited there; thought the world had suddenly come to its senses.
Well, seven years is alright — an improvement, anyway. Someday, perhaps, justice will be swift enough that murderer and victim will be embalmed on the same day. Yeah, we’ll never quite get there, but it’s a nice thought. Murder as nothing more than a form of suicide. It would still happen now & then…but imagine the lives that would be saved. That’s change I can believe in.
The other one-man jihad is another story. More on that later. For now, it’s one down. Yay.
The funny thing about all of this is that no matter how bad all their ideas are, no matter how disastrous their governance has been, no matter how many horrible things they have done to the economy and this country, what really is killing the Republican party is that deep down, they are just complete assholes. You see it in the way they treat women, you see it in the way they treat minorities, you see it in the way they treat homosexuals, you see it in the way they treat anyone who is not a white Christian, and you see it in the way they treat anyone who disagrees with them slightly about anything. They just have no respect for anyone, and it shows. People don’t like to be treated like crap, and grown-ups don’t want to be associated with people who yell “You lie” or scream “socialism” or “Hitler” or accuse you of being a terrorist whenever they don’t get their way.
If you read the Corner or the Weekly Standard, or listen to any talk radio or any of the mouth breathers on Fox, or read any right-wing blogs, you will instantly know what I am talking about. You can’t help but notice that they are just loudmouthed jerks, stubborn bully boys, and insensitive and insecure cads. James Wolcott once wrote that Eric Cantor looked like the “pricky proprietor of the Jerk Store,” and that could be applied to the majority of the prominent Republicans out there. I guess that should be suspected from a movement in which the only thoughts are “Fuck you, I got mine.”
I was not aware there was such a simple and clear correlation between one’s position on the ideological spectrum and one’s asshole-ness. Wow, I must be a real moderate. If you were to task me to find a right-wing asshole, I’m pretty sure I can find one without too much trouble…if you asked me to bring you a left-wing asshole I could bring you a few of those too. Anywhere in between. Assholes, assholes, assholes.
Cole has a much simpler and prettier view of the world — all the assholes are clustered down by one end.
Hey, does that mean if I really am an asshole, I can stop being one just by agreeing with John Cole about everything? Or at least fool people into thinking I’m not one?
The liberals look at the rest of us and say — I think you’re stupid, now prove you aren’t by backing my shitty program. I think you’re an asshole, now prove you aren’t by backing my shitty program. Always, always, always, the character of the person being recruited figures into it…and always, there’s something for the recruited to prove…because the shitty program cannot be sold on its own merits. It always boils down to “You have to support it, because otherwise I’ll think the worst about you.”
And the program seems to have consistent characteristics as well. It makes the living of life easier, but less worthwhile. Takes the resistance out…at taxpayer expense…but once you’ve overcome that declining resistance, you’ve accomplished less and less because you’ve enjoyed the opportunity to accomplish less and less.
It is simpler to survive, but tougher to prosper.
Simpler to survive, but tougher to prosper…simpler to survive, but tougher to prosper…simpler to survive but tougher to prosper. Kind of like those witches in that movie — “light as a feather but stiff as a board.”
Anyway. You better help them or you’re an asshole. Got that message? Good. Now help them spread it.
So last year I read all about this and got excited, but my better half put a veto on it.
This year I’m going to try the overtures a little bit earlier, and see if I can’t get her to see things my way.
Five pounds of lovely bacon going with that bad boy. They say it keeps the turkey all moistened-up, with pig fat yet, and as an added bonus it is seasoned to perfection.
“We don’t know all the answers yet,” the Associated Press quotes President Obama as saying Friday about the Fort Hood massacre. “And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.”
Not only is the president right, his advice is tautological. Premature judgment is ill-advised by definition. But one senses in much of the commentary about suspect Nidal Malik Hasan a desire to avoid considered judgment as well — not just a reluctance to jump to conclusions, but a drive to go far out of one’s way to avoid ever reaching one particular conclusion.
There follows an impressive procession of quotes of people tryin’ like the dickens to avoid the one particular conclusion. It’s invaluable to have this entered into the record, but it seems to us James Taranto might have saved himself the trouble and just jumped ahead to this one:
[C]onsider the following insight from Susan Campbell of the Hartford Courant:
Much has and will be made of [Hasan’s] religion from people too ignorant to read a Qur’an, or too isolated to talk to a Muslim, or too stubborn to educate themselves. Even the Washington Post calls him a “devout Muslim.” But can a “devout Muslim” commit such acts? No more than a “devout Christian” can, no.
In fairness to Campbell, she posted this on Friday, before much of the above information had been published. Still, it seems fair to ask: Just who is jumping to conclusions?
I think we’ve reached a turning point, and the turning point is this:
Intellectualism has become the readiness, willingness and ability to call dangerous things safe, and safe things dangerous.
If you’re ready, willing and able to call dangerous things dangerous and safe things safe, you are a moron. None of this stuff needs to be debated. We only need to indulge in the name-calling, then relapse back into what we were doing just before disaster struck. When we change things, the more we change them, the less we need to discuss what we’re doing.
If you see nothing wrong with that, then you’re just a real smarty-pants. If you do see something wrong with it then it goes to show how stupid you are.
It’s one year ago and we’ve just elected “basically God” as our next President. I tell you “the next one after Him is going to be a Republican…and a year from now, most people will think so.”
Sure, you’d take the bet. Who wouldn’t?
Probably call for a paddy-wagon and lock me up in the looney bin. Who in the world could blame you?
And yet…one year and just a handful of days…here…we…are.
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of likely voters say it is at least somewhat likely the next president of the United States will be a Republican, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
The number has been trending in this direction since Democrat Barack Obama took office in January and is up 14 points since then.
Stunning. History-making. Whiplash.
Mister Wonderful is a bowling ball dropped over the Mariana Trench.
Daphne forwards on (via off-line) the brilliant prose of some overly-emotionally-invested pro-ObamaCare blogger who’s getting incensed about all the protests…and has decided to start calling people names. Real mature.
AIN’T NO PARTY LIKE A CONSERVATIVE TEA PARTY BECAUSE A CONSERVATIVE TEA PARTY DON’T STOP!
Seriously. You might have thought that the tea partiers had packed up their homemade often misspelled signs and their bejeweled flag t-shirts so they could get back home to their miserable lives but think again. They’re like a band of traveling gypsies who dress poorly and keep showing up uninvited. On Thursday thousands of activists who aren’t really sure what they’re protesting camped out at the Capitol for what was referred to as the “Super Bowl of Freedom,” sponsored by Republican members of Congress.
:
Naturally our own Rep. Jeb Hensarling was out there rallying the troops and, according to WP, standing in front of the tastefully done Dachau banner. Rep. John Carter pointed to the House office buildings and, apparently forgetting for a minute that he’s a House member, encouraged the protesters, “Go get ‘em!” No. Really. I have no idea why Texas gets a bad name.
The ubiquitous Jon Voight brought the D-list star power to the event, standing with the lawmakers and saying of Obama, “Could it be he has had 20 years of subconscious programming by Reverend Wright to damn America?” I’m pretty sure the only people who’ve been programmed are the feeble-minded and easily brainwashed protesters. Go get ‘em.
Well, perhaps it stings just a little bit being compared to Nazis because there are quite a few things that make the analogy work. Like the human-experimenting…the ultra-charismatic personality up at the tippy-top of the org chart…wonderful speechifying…the population-at-large claiming, perhaps truthfully in many cases, that they had no idea what horrors were being practiced by their own government…
Wasn’t so long ago the shoe was on the other foot, because our House Speaker was claiming she saw the protesters with swastikas and tried to spin it like the protesters were neo-Nazis. That didn’t work so well. Know why? Because if you can find a Nazi, and you figure out the Nazi is opposed to ObamaCare…the Nazi would be right about that one thing.
Anyway. Like I said in the comments. What is it about desiring control over your own life? Or what is it about not desiring control over your own life? Everything’s wonderful and you’re all happy, until someone else comes along and demands the freedom and responsibility you know you should be demanding, and that one event just sets people off. It’s like, if we were all just handed secret ballots on whether we want ObamaCare or not, the simpletons could vote yes, people who love liberty could vote no, and the simpletons would stay happy and content because they could labor on under the delusion that “everyone” agrees with them.
Maybe that’s the way we should be doing it. Just bypass Congress altogether. See if this is something The People want.
Awhile ago I pointed out that with the economy in its weakened state, one of the most hazardous things about being alive right now is that we are under continuous assault by stupid ideas that begin with the words “in times like these.” At work, at play, on the teevee, when you hear the words “in times like these”…or “with the economy the way it is right now”…or “with things the way they are” —
— you know the next thing to come afterward is blisteringly stupid.
Now, I don’t see the reason for this. Yes, we are flawed humans. And yes, when we hear those magic words we are left open and vulnerable to…whatever. But that doesn’t mean the next thing has to be damaging or stupid does it? Why can’t we say “with the economy the way it is right now”…and then follow it up with something that makes sense?
So I thought I’d come up with some ideas. Let’s spread the word around that with the economy in the crapper right now…………..
1. …We need to go ahead and let kids pray in school if they feel like they need to.
2. …We cannot take away any profit incentive from people who might come up with a good solution to our problems.
3. …We need to entertain every argument on its merits, rather than haul out the racism card against anyone who takes issue with Obama.
4. …We all must learn to compromise, and get along with less…even the labor unions.
5. …We need to be especially vigilant in making sure our representatives openly debate their legislation…or at least read it themselves.
6. …We need to look to wise people — or to ourselves! — for solutions to our problems. NOT Hollywood!
7. …We need to avoid the temptation of making deities out of false prophets who happen to have charismatic personalities.
8. …We need to leave talk radio unregulated, along with the Internet.
9. …We simply cannot afford to let people live who we know want to do harm to others. If they’ve been convicted and sentenced, off ’em.
10. …We need to avoid passing bad legislation just to assuage the guilty consciences of senators who drowned girls in their cars.
11. …We absolutely, positively have to abandon Keynesidan economics once and for all.
12. …We have to make it easier for people to buy things.
13. …We have to make it easier for people to sell things.
14. …We have to make it easier for people to start and grow their businesses.
15. …In general, we just have to do what we can to make things easier. Let’s leave cap-n-trade for later.
16. …We have to Drill Here Now, Drill Baby Drill!
17. …We have to encourage people to buy their own personal firearms, so they can protect themselves when they can’t rely on anything else.
18. …We simply cannot afford a seventeenth amendment anymore, and we need to go back to election of senators by state legislatures.
19. …We have to have tax holidays, the more the better. Nothing less will do.
20. …We can no longer afford to endlessly haggle with the dictators around the world who are obviously up to mischief. We need to take ’em down.
21. …We have to take extra precautions to make sure officers in our military aren’t wagering one-man jihads against their own country.
22. …We must waterboard, and do whatever else it takes.
23. …We have to depend on the family unit, and we have to stop making “Doofus Dad” movies.
24. …We need our children working, the younger, the better. It’s what they’ll have to spend their lives doing to pay all this debt.
25. …We need to leave Wal Mart ALONE.
26. …We all need to get behind Rush Limbaugh. The quotes attributed to him were FAKE. It’s a free speech issue. He could be any one of us.
27. …Children should be encouraged toward independence. They should learn to hunt, fish, tie knots, use a knife, sail, go camping.
28. …We simply cannot afford to raise taxes.
29. …No argument should be supported with “The Experts Say.” People need to learn to think for themselves.
30. …Presidents need to be making decisions, not speeches.
In turn, I had also been inspired to write my piece by the supreme idiocy of Michael Moore on a recent Hannity, when the filmmaker made the staggeringly naive observation that there are a mere “few hundred guys on monkey bars” roaming the world. Hannity shot back that we are talking about millions of terrorists.
A couple of hundred? I think there are a thousand just living around the corner from me in London’s Edgware Road! Moore laughed at Hannity and said it was absurd to treat terrorists like “they are some kind of nation.” My God, Michael, they are many nations.
Moore’s verbal tick of “only a wuss would be afraid of that” betrays a struggle the hardcore MoveOn liberals have been having with their feelings about masculinity. They cannot embrace it; they’ve figured out it’s politically expensive to repudiate it; all they can do is re-define it. And so they live in a world in which manly is good again, but now manly has something to do with sitting on the sidelines, on your ass, pretending out loud that safe things are dangerous and dangerous things are safe.
As last month wound down to a close, it was clear to anyone who ever knew the meaning of the term that Keynesian economic theory was being given a good ol’ try, and was failing the test on such a massive scale that it might never recover. At least, in a medium of honest practice and evaluation, it would never recover.
So I proceeded to pretend we’re all honest, and I wrote up the obit:
Keynesian Economics Dead Forever
Keynesian economic theory, which says the most wonderful thing you can do to the economy in a capitalistic society is pool everybody’s money into a big pot by force and then spend it in some unified effort rather than let folks hang onto their wealth to spend as they please — was disconnected from life support yesterday, time-of-death recorded soon after. It was then wheeled down to the morgue and a tag was placed on its toe. We’re all going to stop arguing about it now. Forever. All the economists who’ve been promoting it for the last three quarters of a century…the ones that are still around, anyway…will be issuing an apology for wasting so much of our time, attention and resources.
Now, I don’t know if the Wall Street Journal editors read this blog. I’ve always presumed that hardly anyone ever does. But how else then do you explain this gem which popped up on their “Review & Outlook” section over the weekend…
A familiar definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. So in the wake of yesterday’s report that the national jobless rate climbed to 10.2% in October, we suppose we can expect the political class to demand another “stimulus.” Maybe if Congress spends another $787 billion in the name of job creation, it can get the jobless rate up to 12% or 13%.
It’s hard to imagine a more complete repudiation of Keynesian stimulus than the evidence of the last year’s job market. We’ve now had two examples of such stimulus—President Bush’s $160 billion effort in February 2008 and President Obama’s mega-version a year later—and neither has made even the smallest dent in employment. [emphasis mine]
Seriously, how in the world would you keep the vitals going on this cadaver? How? Here’s a situation where you can’t even fall back on the tried-and-true alternate-universe method of “Oh sure, things are bad WITH our magical program, but Trust Us WITHOUT the magical program they’d be even worse!” Even that turkey won’t hunt here. The egkspurts were given their chance, pre-stimulus, to tell us how bad things would get without the magical program. Fast forward to today, and things are much worse with it than they were ever supposed to be without it.
The program failed.
The theory failed.
Case closed.
All you can do to keep the bones dancing, is to say…the right people weren’t in charge. Or something spoiled the experiment. Maybe George Bush’s global warming upset the economic plane somehow.
So much suffering across the generations. Just stop it already.
Illustration made available from Gerard, who last week was also responsible for calling our attention to this wonderful morsel of cinematic art: The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon (naughty, non-work-safe language).
It’s one of the stupidest things we’ve ever seen on YouTube. It’s probably the funniest as well, especially in the second half.
It seems an oddly well-fit metaphor here. Who is the guy running, Keynesian economic theory? Spoonkiller is reality?
Or could it be the victim is our job market and the relentless, pursuing wraith is Obama’s policies that continue to muck with it?
Bagdad Bob Gibbs let his mouth run away with him — no, really, it occasionally happens — as he addressed some of the shocking, disturbing images protesting the health care bills:
I will continue to say what I’ve said before. You hear in this debate, you hear analogies, you hear references to, you see pictures about and depictions of individuals that are truly stunning, and you hear it all the time. People — imagine five years ago somebody comparing health care reform to 9/11. Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler.
Hopefully we can get back to a discussion about the issues that are important in this country that we can do so without being personally disagreeable and set up comparisons to things that were so insidious in our history that anybody in any profession or walk of life would be well advised to compare nothing to those atrocities. [emphasis in linked article]
Go ahead and chase that link…to see how Mr. Gibbs was properly chastened.
Well, the Obamafans will never know about it, so I guess no harm done. Not the top of his game, though.
I just subscribed to this one a couple weeks ago because I like her delivery and she’s occasionally funny.
Her reaction to Levi’s “spread” is more entertaining than usual. Which isn’t much. More of a chuckle than a har-har. “Stupidhead.” I’m not showing this one off, just sort of bookmarking it.
The police officer who brought down a gunman after he went on a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base here was on the way to have her car repaired when she responded to a police radio report of gunfire at a center where soldiers are processed before being sent overseas, the authorities said Friday.
As she pulled up to the center, the officer, Sgt. Kimberly Denise Munley, spotted the gunman, later identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, brandishing a pistol and chasing a wounded soldier outside the building, said Chuck Medley, the director of emergency services at the base.
Sergeant Munley — a woman with a fierce love of hunting, surfing and other outdoor sports — bolted from her car, yanked her pistol out and shot at Major Hasan. He turned on her and began to fire. She ran toward him, continuing to fire, and both she and Major Hasan went down with several bullet wounds, Mr. Medley said.
Whether Sergeant Munley was solely responsible for taking down Major Hasan or whether he was also hit by gunfire from her partner is unclear, but she was the first to fire at him, the authorities said.
Sergeant Munley, 34, is an expert in firearms and a member of the SWAT team for the civilian police department on the base, officials said.
Mr. Medley said she had received specific training in a tactic called active shooter protocol, which was intended for this kind of situation.
“She’s absolutely a hero,” he said. “She had the training; she knew what to do. And she had the courage to do it — by doing it she saved countless people’s lives.”
The original 911 call came in at 1:23 p.m., and five minutes later Sergeant Munley had already shot the gunman.
Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the post commander, praised Sergeant Munley on Friday for reacting so swiftly and without hesitation. “It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer,” General Cone told The Associated Press.
Sergeant Munley began her career as a police officer in the beachside town of Wrightsville, N.C., after graduating from high school in nearby Wilmington. She quickly earned a reputation for fearlessness, despite her stature. (She stands 5-foot-4.)
Her partner in Wrightsville, Investigator Shaun Appler, recalled how Sergeant Munley saved him one night when she wrestled a large man off him after the man had pinned him down and was trying to take his gun. She earned the nickname Mighty Mouse for that, he said.
“She’s a ball of fire,” Mr. Appler said. “She’s a real good cop.”
In Britain, there is angst over the prospect of cops carrying guns.
Can you just imagine. What if a nutjob of this sort takes the time and trouble to really tool up, is not suicidal like Seung-Hui Cho…and there aren’t any armed cops?
Indeed, Munley acted under lessons learned from Virginia Tech:
Reviews in the aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech, where 32 died, found that first responders’ decision to be careful and wait for backup probably cost lives as that gunman moved unchecked from classroom to classroom as law enforcement massed outside.
Those findings had found their way to Fort Hood’s Special Reaction Team, which had practiced an entirely new protocol for at least a year before Thursday afternoon’s rampage here, in which 13 were killed and at least 28 wounded.
“The lesson from Virginia Tech was, don’t wait for backup but move to the target and eliminate the shooter,” says Chuck Medley, chief of Fort Hood’s emergency services. “It requires courage and it requires skill.”
It also requires arms.
I have another “imagine” moment — the opposite end of the spectrum. Imagine the liberal horror scenario in which it’s “like the wild west,” as they say. A gun on every single hip, and the familiarity with that device, and associated skill, brandished as brazenly as the hardware itself.
Gunman does his gunman malice. Charges in. Rifles blazing. Yells “Aaaaiiirrggghh!” just like Rambo. Now, how long would that last?
I’ll rant about the news coverage later. Munley is well deserving of a spotlight.
Regardless of who is right or who is wrong, it seems to me when victories by one faction over the other are scored in a society’s significant political events, the assault that lead to the victory more often than not has been spearheaded by the battering ram known as the question-mark.
We may debate why that is, but for the purposes of this immediate thought that isn’t too important. What is important is that when one sincerely thinks one is right, and one sincerely seeks to make “points” against one’s enemy using the question-mark, one can do this honestly or dishonestly. An example of doing it dishonestly would be the attempt to legitimize same-sex marriage. “What’s normal?” “What’s a normal marriage?” Or, to make the devastating battering-ram extra heavy and extra pointy…”who is to say what a normal marriage is?”
The honest way to do it would be to find genuine contradictions in the argument of your intellectual opponent, and use the question mark to highlight them rather than to portend a spooky other-wordly future in which an there’s an elite aristocratic layer of corrupted clergy who go around deciding people’s marriages. (Just by way of example, in our plane of reality, if you don’t trust or like a clergyman — don’t have him perform your wedding ceremony. Problem solved.)
There is a great deal of fussing…and it probably rises well above the consternation, conflict and uncertainty that actually exist where it counts…about what the conservative base is to learn from the NY23 contest this week. How is the conservative message supposed to be advanced in a way that it takes hold? Here’s an idea. Use the question mark. And use it honestly. If it is to be used honestly, the immediate task that arises is to find a crack in the wall of the hardcore liberal fortress, against which the battering ram can be used. A crack that is a logical contradiction. Need we labor long or hard to find such a crack?
Their core mission as they see it: To create a wonderfully advanced society, free of any problems or as free of problems as possible…functioning for the benefit of, and in the interest of, everyone. It sounds so nice I want to sign up right now. I’m reminded of the vision’s toxicity when I simply look upon the machinery that is put in place to deliver the utopia. Health care, for example. Sarah Palin’s death panels, far from being an urban legend, are part of a natural force like gravity. They are quite unavoidable. All programs must be managed by someone. Management is ultimately about making decisions about resources in order to fulfill the most vital tasks within the great body of work that is to be attempted day-to-day.
In this way, the dream of utopia turns into a nightmare rather quickly.
Not only that, but most of the time the American electorate realizes it. Three election cycles out of every four…or at least two out of every three. We spend more time retreating from the utopian nightmare than we spend advancing onto it.
What we realize is the contradiction. The attempt is supposed to be to make a kinder, gentler nation for everybody. But somebody has to steer our great society as it makes its “progress” toward this vision, as a single moving object on a single course. Devil’s in the details. When you get down to the real-world decisions, like does this taxpayer qualify for head-of-household status, or is that company too big and should it be forced to break up…someone has to get screwed so that someone else can come out on top.
This is the direct antithesis of building a society “that works for everybody.” As a crack in the wall, it’s a gaping huge one. And a lot of folks who are tinkering with the idea of keeping our nation’s Congress friendly to The One, and perhaps re-electing Him, would be interested in knowing that. Or being reminded of it.
So I propose going forward into ’10 and ’12, the movement be built up around this simple…honest…question:
Maybe. I’m sure when your ass is constantly being kissed 24×7 for a couple of years, whenever it stops and it’s time to pull the trousers back up, it probably feels like a thumpin’.
With a grateful hat tip to the guy who lifted our Palin-in-hot-pants poster, Diminished Expectations. To the blogroll he goes, and we’re gonna check back often.
D’JEver notice that lately when we talk about what’s required of a person who aspires to be our nation’s next President —
When we’re talking about a democrat, it seems we’ve all or mostly settled into a belief that it’s a sales job…a cheerleader job…it demands a talent that has something to do with “instilling beliefs” in people…”calling on” people…making people step up to do what those people already know they should be doing anyway.
When we’re talking about a Republican, suddenly it seems we change our minds and in the blink of an eye, the job transforms into something that has to do with playing Trivial Pursuit, or something like it. I dunno. Maybe we’re being somewhat consistent on the “making people feel” stuff. Suddenly we’re feeling un-confident because the person cannot list the ten avatars of Lord Vishnu in the correct order.
I’m a little less concerned about what newspapers Sarah Palin reads, than about whether Barack Obama can locate Afghanistan on a map. Seriously. Thomas Jefferson famously said “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” Makes you wonder if Punch Sulzberger has access to a time machine.
Rush Limbaugh giving his thoughts, responding to Chris Wallace…who falls into the tired old meme…wow, do you think Sarah Palin’s ready? Can she speak the seventy languages we demand out of people who want to be President — when they’re Republicans? Balance three basketballs on her head while juggling enraged wombats in heat and riding a unicycle? Use her mind tricks to convince an Imperial Stormtrooper these aren’t the droids he’s looking for?
I disagree with Rush on something near the end, though. Politicians do get dragged through things. And while what Sarah Palin endured is certainly…ah…unique — there are some other things that might be worse, that are not going to be happening to her. I think if you’re married and you cheat and get caught at it, then try to hang onto your career with bloody fingernails while the powers-that-be have decided it isn’t in the cards…that can get ugly. Or you can be a white male who is caught mistreating women. A Republican white male, that is. A Bob Packwood. Not saying Packwood didn’t deserve what he got, but I think that was worse than what Sarah Palin went through.
Be that as it may — smiling through it is not a rarity at all. We have it in abundance. That phony, painted-on parade-beauty-queen smile. It’s almost a form of pollution. And yeah, they can keep it up through thick & thin.
Palin’s smile, I think, is genuine and that is what makes it unique. Limbaugh should have elaborated on this for that is what he truly meant…
Anyway, the dichotomy is interesting. People are ready to swear on a stack of bibles their thoughts haven’t been manipulated. And yet they all march in lock-step on this: “Do you think Sarah Palin’s ready to be President?” Unvoiced subtext: With all the responsibilities and demands that the job entails? Like performing brain transplants everyday using just your thumbs?
Whether or not Obama’s ready, and suddenly we’re talking about a whole different job. Of COURSE He’s ready! Sure He’s got a few nutty ideas, like when you have more debt than you can ever repay you should take out more debt. But nevermind all that, He makes you feel so good!
So on the GOP side of things, who gets the blame? The seat was considered to be a safe Republican one…if Owens had some special, perhaps local agenda he was publicly embracing, I’ve yet to hear of it. Obviously the voters were recoiling from something.
Is there something inherently nasty and off-putting, as I have been repeatedly told, to be a “tea party” guy? Just standing up for more freedom and lower taxes somehow takes on an acrid, visceral tone? People still get the feeling they can’t look at themselves in the mirror unless they do their bit to send Barack Obama out and apologize to the world and throw around money we don’t have?
Or could it be they were recoiling from the instability. The heat that was radiating from that big crack in the middle. The wobbling. The self-contradiction. The “We’ll get your vote by being exactly like those other guys…except not quite so much.”
Looks to me like the second of those two. John McCain was certainly wobbly, certainly trying to get in (to whatever extent he was really trying) leveraging the “Not as much of a democrat as that other guy” approach. He wasn’t visceral. He wasn’t nasty. Yes there was a lot of campaign propaganda coming from the Obama camp that McCain/Palin represented meanness, ill will, toxicity, poison, acid, snips snails & puppy dogs’ tails. And yeah I think a lot of hardcore democrats bought into it, but those were folks who would never have voted Republican anyway.
I think when people choose leaders they want to choose someone who’s going to stick to something. They’ll choose someone who’ll stick to something ugly, over someone who doesn’t stick to anything. When people vote, it seems they vote with the expectation that as soon as the guy’s sworn in, he’ll go meet behind closed doors with Satan himself. Someone whose interests are directly contrary to the electorate’s. And so a wobbly-guy who’s voted in, will produce decisions worse than a fairly-sturdy guy who can remain consistent about what he’s pushing, even though he might be pushing the wrong stuff. No reflection on Doug Hoffman. But the GOP party machinery was obviously completely taken-fer-a-ride on this thing. They spent too much time in smoke-filled back rooms just like it was the Tamany Hall days, and I think that flipped this thing over.
It makes sense, and people do seem to be voting that way consistently. Consistently. How many people have we seen run on this “I’m not all-right or all-left, I’m just in the middle somewhere”? When has it ever worked? It hasn’t, because “in the middle somewhere” means every single decision is up-for-grabs. No…people aren’t wild about fringe-kook stuff. They just want to know what they’re getting. They always choose a transparent packaging. Always. Well, except for where the really charismatic hopey-changey people are concerned.
Twenty-four hours ago it looked like Hoffman had this thing locked up. Some of the news reports I read were droning on about how much he had to worry about in 2010, as voters…blah, blah, blah. Well, it’ll be interesting to see if I read the same stuff about Owens and his chances in 2010.
At the beginning of last year, I saw something wrong with the little-i…something so wrong that I included it in my essay of What’s Wrong With the World.
Notice how every hot luxury item now, the thing you get your significant-other to show how much you love them, has a name that begins with a lowercase “i”. There is deep psychological symbolism involved in this. “i” is a pronoun we use to reference ourselves…as individuals…usually capitalized, but here, curiously, not. It’s as if we have been conditioned to think less of ourselves. Lowercase “i”…as in…”i’m so glad i have this personal music player because i wouldn’t be worth much without it.” Or, “i hope people will think better of me now that i have a phone that everybody else would like to have.”
These items represent the culmination of energetic research and development, and tend to be quite capable. But people don’t want these items for what they can do…people want the items for what they are.
:
[W]hat arouses this wonder about things that begin with “i”, is a curious brand of self-contradictory confusion. Everybody wants to be like everybody else…but not really. They want to be different, to have what nobody else has…but not really. All this passion is aroused from the fact that so many others want the item in question. Or to be more precise about it, so many others recognize the item in question. But not so many others have it just yet.
It’s an attack upon the individual, but not a complete one. The individual’s desire to be somewhat unique, is what drives the marketing here. But only somewhat. The individual desire to show his individuality not by being a real individual, but by being part of an elite crew…with some members in it…but not too many. Recognition is widespread, almost universal. Actual peerage is narrower and more coveted. That’s the key. The capability of the technological hardware, or lack thereof, is a decidedly second-hand consideration.
Now, I don’t know whether Weisshaupt reads this blog. I’ve long maintained that hardly anybody does. But how then would you explain this gem which appeared at Townhall this weekend:
[M]ost iPhone users are liberals. They are people who WANT a Mommy and Daddy watching over them. iPhone developers must navigate a Byzantine approval process that is so bad, that some even stoop to using Microsoft’s .NET to get things done. Apple tests and approves every application offered on the iPhone to make sure they all play nice together. This of course ensures the phone will deliver the beautiful and slick user experience Apple has decided its users will have. The iPhone is a good example of the “one-size-fits all” top-down mentality of liberals. If you want a different experience from what your masters thinks you SHOULD have and SHOULD want, you are just SOL. The lowercase “i” in iPhone doesn’t occur by accident. The individual just isn’t as important, and the “Phone” takes precedence.
Weisshaupt also included this YouTube clip which helps to make the point. Perfect. Wish I’d known about this.
Hat tip to Dr. Melissa Clouthier, who is not in favor of the analogy even a little bit. She protests. Almost viscerally. As if she has an iPhone herself, it seems.
Sorry Melissa…I see your point, and if you muted your message a little bit, perhaps said something more fluid like “the analogy has problems,” I might have gone along. But fails from the very beginning?
It’s not a failure from stem-to-stern, no. Can’t agree; there’s something to it. Of course, I don’t have a Druid and I don’t have an iPhone so I can’t completely disagree either.
But a culture has been built up around the iProducts; a culture appealing to some, abhorrent to others. The decisions about how the products are to be supported, are made according to an understanding of this culture. How the product is supported, in turn, affects the decisions people make about whether to buy one or not…depending on whether they find that culture appealing. And the culture is decidedly antagonistic toward the concept of the individual making autonomous decisions about how to live his own life.
You know what’s a fantastic illustration of what I’m talking about? Microsoft. They stand alone in being consistently…inconsistent. They put out a product, and the product makes all these assumptions about not only what I want to do, but how I want to do it. The assumptions are wrong and I end up hating it. Next time, they put out a product that is more easily customized to the work-area I’ve put in place, and I end up liking it so much I’ll pay full price for it years and years out of its support window. (Just licensed Excel 97 two weeks ago.) Then they come out with some other pig-in-a-poke that goes back to telling me how to work, and to add insult to injury, makes some decisions about what menu items I don’t want to see anymore and what big friendly in-your-face buttons I’d rather see instead. I end up wanting to throw the goddamn thing against the wall.
The difference is that I — capital-I — and others like me, have this “work-area” at all. If your mission in life is more along the lines of simply fitting in, you might not have one; or if you do, it might play second-fiddle in importance to the next veiled leviathan’s attempts to manage every facet of your life for you. It is a virtual work area, not a fixed location. I’ve put it together piece by piece; there are projects in it, initiated for purposes known only to me. The projects have versions, they have task lists, they have resources, they have prerequisite tasks…I’m above every single one of those…and beneath all of them, are the tools. When I buy a doodad or a gizmo, it’s a tool. Just like the newest guy on the boat mops the deck, and I’m the Captain. You fit into my boat, or I’ll throw you the hell overboard. You just joined the crew and you want to run the whole thing? Not here, bub.
But that’s me.
Other folks are perfectly content to have the newest product step on board and “take charge.” I recall a certain election a year ago that’s turned out rather dismally…and out of the teeming masses that voted for Mister Wonderful, still over half of them still can’t manage to admit the experiment’s been a failure. I rest my case. It’s like Joker said in Dark Knight: (some) folks couldn’t possibly care less what the plan is, just so long as there is one. They want to be managed.
There’s a real cultural divide here, and Apple is firmly on one side of it. I’m not entirely sure how safe it is to say all iPhone users are liberals…but I think it’s pretty safe to call it that nearly all liberals are iPhone owners, or would like to be.
This year’s shamelessly swiped image is shamelessly swiped from over 
Nobody really quite knows what to make of this. Taking responsibility for your mistakes? Your life sucks because of your own errors of judgment and you don’t want to blame someone else? What the hell is this? What planet are we on?
Update: You know what this…along with my 
Sergeant Munley — a woman with a fierce love of hunting, surfing and other outdoor sports — bolted from her car, yanked her pistol out and shot at Major Hasan. He turned on her and began to fire. She ran toward him, continuing to fire, and both she and Major Hasan went down with several bullet wounds, Mr. Medley said.
