Fact and opinion, which we call Pillar I and Pillar II. What you know, and what you’ve concluded about what you know.

Boortz says:

Obama’s gripe with Fox News is with the opinion and commentary shows, not the news shows. It might be nice if someone would sit The Community Organizer down and try to explain to him the difference between news and opinion. Hey, PrezBO .. you’re never too old to learn!

That’s gonna leave a mark.

Do you suppose it’s just that simple, that Obama doesn’t know the difference between news reporting and editorializing…because He doesn’t understand the difference between objective and subjective truth?

He does talk that way much of the time. “I just think…” “It seems to me…” “We can’t…” “We’ve got to…” Much of the time, His words reveal the carefree world of lightweight thinkers, in which thoughts are simply — thoughts. In such a world of marshmallow clouds, talking unicorns and candy rainbows, you don’t assemble a thought from something else, they just kinda pop into your head.

That would explain Afghanistan. Maybe He doesn’t have some crafty master plan, maybe He’s just waiting for a thought to pop into His head, and it hasn’t popped just yet.

Jay Leno makes fun of the situation. Because hey, other than the obvious trampling of the spirit if not the letter of the First Amendment…what else is there to suggest it can be taken seriously?

Hat tip to Sister Toldjah, who is chagrined along with everyone else with a brain that Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann apparently made the cut. Would someone somewhere like to justify that…somehow. Can’t wait to see it.

whoisthetrizzle spoke for me yesterday at Nealz Nuze…not completely so, but I found much wisdom in these words. And frankly, if anybody else doesn’t, I don’t trust ’em too much.

This is the last I will say about Fox News. I cannot for the life of me figure out what all the fuss is about. So Fox news has a conservative bias. Big deal. Let’s just go so far as to say that they in fact do not report any news but opinion only (I’m not actually suggesting this is true). What’s the problem? I’m amazed at how up in arms both sides are but the left in particular. To quote South Park, “I thought this was America!” I thought people were allowed to speak their minds with few exceptions. Anyone who promotes freedom and equality, especially the president, should always welcome opposing views. If the president of the United States (Obama or otherwise) truly cared about doing what is best for the people of this country then he would encourage everyone to study both a consenting view and an opposing view. Only by getting both sides of the story can one make a truly informed decision. Notice I said anyone who promotes freedom and equality. This does not seem to be the case with the current administration.

RevolutionOfCG answers his critics (not quite all the potty-mouth words have been bleeped):

This is not my idea of enlightened discourse. But it closely reflects a lot of the bullshit I’ve been hearing for a few years now…by which I mean the straw-man arguments being thrown in this guy’s face by the caricatures of his Obama-loving critics.

You know what really ratcheted this up in volume, and down in civility? That big slab of red meat Rush Limbaugh threw to the Obamamaniacs early in the year when he said he wanted Mister Wonderful to fail. That sent the signal out from the hive headquarters down to the lowliest ant: Get the word out, opposition to us is opposition to “doing nice things for people.” And then the leftists went into attack mode, and have been stuck there ever since.

Rush turned over a big rock so we could see the slimy venomous things scurrying around underneath. It was risky, but it paid off and it was a public service.

People who don’t value individual achievement and feelings of self-worth and commitment and duty, don’t want anybody else to value these things either. So yes, in my experience this guy is parodying his critics accurately; in fact, in some ways his illustration is a little bit too kind.

The Corner:

I keep hearing that Glenn Beck is just a blowhard opinionist, contributing nothing but hot air. If that is true, why do we keep learning news from him? About Van Jones, about ACORN, about Anita Dunn . . . I mean, isn’t that the New York Times’s job? No? What a strange era we’re living in.

Hat tip to The Macho Response (which has some images NSFW).

K, as in Kelly, as in Kelly Brook; and L, as in Leeann, as in Leeann Tweeden. The decision just gets tougher and tougher and tougher.

In the end, it has to go to Leeann. She’s got kind of a worldly-wise aura about her without being snotty or conceited about it, and I like her politics. Lovely as Kelly is…and sweet…borderline angelic. Wisdom wins the day, and I’ve always liked Leeann.

Alright, alright, alright. I’ll talk about the goddamn balloon:

Is that perfect, or what? American Spectator, by way of blogger friend Rick.

When I heard about the Dan Rather memos, my first thought was “What?? Proportional space, as in…kerning? Someone thought that came from a 1974 typewriter? Really?”

When the thundering din of global warming reached its modern crescendo, my reaction was “What?? World’s ending, and the solution is to pay higher taxes? Which will then be scattered to nebulous places, and nobody’s even asking where? People are falling for this?”

And when I heard about the balloon, I couldn’t help but think “What?? It was up there in the sky, and people couldn’t just look at it and figure out if a 40-pound boy was in it, or not? They thought it should zip around and bob to and fro exactly the same way, with or without?”

In all three cases my parting thought was “Who in the hell are the ‘ekspurts’ working on this, and what in the world are they smokin’?”

Yesterday morning the radio guys were talking about the balloon. One of them made a keen observation: We have reached a point in our societal evolution, and it is a sad point indeed, one where “famous” and “infamous” mean exactly the same thing for all practical purposes. A celeb’s a celeb.

Simultaneous with that, I think we’ve reached a point where real expertise is dead. An expert is no longer someone who offers an opinion that reflects truth — an opinion on which you could wager something that is tremendously valuable to you, like the health of a loved one or your life’s savings. An expert is simply someone who will offer an opinion that will find a hospitable reception with large numbers of others, whether it has merit or not.

Which lowers the bar tremendously, because it means anyone who shares the same opinion is also an expert.

So really, the word ends up meaning just whoever states the popular sentiment more forcefully and a bit earlier than the average bear. And there’s an exorbitant cost to be paid for this. Popular theories — typewriters in 1974 put out stuff that looks like this, there’s a boy in the balloon, the world’s gonna end and you have to pay more taxes — produce awkward, in some cases insurmountable, conundrums. Inconsistencies that would force a real expert to reject the theory without regard to how popular it is, or at the very least ask a brand new round of hostile questions about it.

And now that we’ve re-defined the word “expert,” nary a peep is uttered.

Not good. Funny for a day or two in the right setting, but over the longer term, not good at all.

Roger Simon, writing in Pajamas Media:

Like many Americans who spend hours in their cars, I have heard [Rush] Limbaugh a great deal – and I often disagree with him because he is more ideologically conservative than I am. But not once have I heard him make a statement that was racist. Not even close. But that doesn’t stop Keith Olbermann (and many others) from putting words in Limbaugh’s mouth he increasingly seems never to have uttered. Indeed, they did not have verifiable evidence in the first place that Rush had said such a thing. They simply “wished” it were so.
:
What we have then among the media and Internet race-baiters is a form of nostalgia for racism – a longing for the days when you could simply brand your enemies with the “r-word” and discredit them and everything they have to say in one extreme melodramatic gesture.

Yes, it’s reactionary and, no, it’s not working.

We’ve been sold a big ol’ bill-o-goods here. A year ago we were being told just elect Barack Obama, and racism will be a thing of the past. How could it not be? A black guy as President. It would be impossible for anyone to proffer the notion, even for an instant, that any vestigial remnants of racism remained anywhere.

And our reward has been precisely the opposite. Forces loyal to Obama, with His consent or without it, have become highly energized in the perpetual pursuit of marginalizing opponents by any means necessary. And their boss’ skin color, far from being irrelevant, gives them an easy cudgel for at least attempting to do this. Every single day.

The Limbaugh episode proves that if, in their current assignment of pulling out the ‘r’ word yet one more time, they find they don’t have any ammunition — no problemo. They’ll just make some up.

But this isn’t actively planned by Obama, and it isn’t all Him. There is a slimy, insidious “coattail effect” at work here: If someone else has something to gain from this race-card, which doesn’t have to be played with intellectual honesty anywhere…then hey, as long as we’re on the subject…

And so in 2009 it seems we haven’t gotten over it. We’re practically taking a bath in it. What’s the solution? Soft stigma? Lots of work to be done there; if you’re a liberal and you manufacture some quotes from Limbaugh about James Earl Ray, or about the wonderful benefits of slavery, it seems you’re surrounded by peers and pals who think now you’re just a swell guy. It would take a lot of stigma to offset that kind of adulation.

How about good old-fashioned lawsuits for libel and slander? That has a way to go too. Last I checked, Limbaugh did a capable job of defending himself in the Wall Street Journal…and now Al Sharpton is threatening to take out a suit against him.

So I don’t know.

There it is. We were promised something would be going away forever, and now it’s all over the place, rather like someone disposed of a wet turd by throwing it in a fan. Only two possibilities remain: Large numbers of people, and I do mean large, will get mad as hell about this.

Or, we’ll continue to wallow in the stink, because not enough people got mad enough about it. So whoever’s dishing it out will conclude it’s all okay, and behave accordingly.

So far, it would seem what has been taking place, is the second of those two. You can make your own decision about whether to be happy, sad, or indifferent about it. What it says about Obama’s value, in terms of performing as the product He was supposed to be, is undeniable. He’s the polar opposite of what His country was promised.

Glad you voted for Obama to register your dislike of all those Bush spending deficits. How’s that workin’ out for ya?

The GAO is not having a swell time with it…

Weaknesses in the economy and financial markets–and the government’s response to them–have helped boost federal budget deficits, which reached a record level in fiscal year 2009, the General Accountability Office reported on Thursday.

The situation probably won’t improve any time soon: “While a lot of attention has been given to the recent fiscal deterioration, the federal government faces even larger fiscal challenges that will persist long after the return of financial stability and economic growth,” the report says.

The GAO has been publishing long-term fiscal simulations since 1992, in response to a bipartisan request from Congress. According to the GAO, lawmakers asked for the projections because they were concerned about the long-term effects of fiscal policy.

Lawmakers were right to be concerned, the latest report indicates: “GAO’s simulations continue to show escalating levels of debt that illustrate that the long-term fiscal outlook remains unsustainable,” the August-October 2009 assessment said.

But don’t worry about that. Worry about who’s getting kicked off of American Idol.

The FARK folks are weighing in on the Axelrod comments about Fox News. It’s shaping up about how you’d expect.

And then Scannit offers this(2009-10-19 06:55:44 PM)…

I have an IMHO observation on how liberals and conservatives deal with people or organizations that differ with their views.

A conservative will invite a liberal/moderate to listen to someones’ opinion on the radio, watch a news segment or read a particular author. A conservative welcomes opposing points of view as part of the vetting process. Call it ‘competition’.

A Liberal seems to want to silence [or] put out of business any opinion or competition that differs from their view. They will mock, belittle and try to chastise someone that would actually listen, read or watch someone with THAT point of view.

Case in point. My father-in-law is a BIG liberal. At 83, he’d probably put a lot of liberals here to shame with his views and debating skills. He actually told me (while I was dating his daughter) that he felt the government should do Everything. Gov’t was the End-All, Be-All.

Now I differ greatly with [his] views, but he has the right to say and think anything he wants, he’s earned everything he’s got and he’s well read in his views. He just feels that others don’t deserve things they’ve earned.

So when I tell him a quote from Glenn Beck or something from Mark Levin, his response was to scoff at me and say “You gotta stop listening to them”… He will not even consider an opposing viewpoint. Just get in line and stop your griping, its the only fair thing to do. What I would call a typical liberal.

Reminds me of this.

With liberals these days, everything has to be centralized. We can’t have news to prepare us for debate about things; we have to have debates about news, and once the debate is concluded we have to keep the news “clean” and “pure” so there are no dissenting opinions about anything.

And man, is The Holy One ever ticked. Mister Cool is really wantin’ to lay down the hurt. Again.

In unusually harsh terms, Mr. Obama cast insurance companies as obstacles to change interested only in preserving their own “profits and bonuses” and willing to “bend the truth or break it” to stop his drive to remake the nation’s health care system. The president used his weekly radio and Internet address to challenge industry assertions that legislation will drive up premiums.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say, ‘Take one of these, and call us in a decade.’ Well, not this time.”

Rather than trying to curb costs and help patients, he said, the industry is busy “figuring out how to avoid covering people.”

“And they’re earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exemption from our antitrust laws,” he said, “a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.”

The president’s attack underscores the sharp break between the White House and the insurance industry as the health care debate moves closer to a climax. When Mr. Obama took office, he and his advisers had hoped to keep insurers at the table to forge a consensus. But as the months passed, the strains grew — until this past week, when industry-financed studies attacking the Democratic plan signaled an open rupture.

Hat tip to Neo-Neocon, who adroitly summarizes the state of things as they are…

I can’t recall this level of invective from any American president in my lifetime…Everybody’s a liar except him. [emphasis mine]

I’d like to take this opportunity to reprint Item #9 from 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:

Inject a Snidely Whiplash Into the Situation, Even When There Isn’t One

People have an ingrained instinct to fight each other. They tire quickly of fighting forces of nature, such as the human propensity to spend unearned money, gravity, inertia, or anything of the like. Those things are timeless and inexhaustible. But a human opponent is exhaustible.

You don’t need to offer a possibility of victory, in order to fire up the collective adrenaline of a group of ignoramuses. To simply roll out a communication medium by which the many can convey their dislike of a few, or of a one, is sufficient. In fact, you’ll find it is quite adequate to communicate the message only to that one guy! Letter-writing campaigns — they are nothing more, than this. Just a coordinated attack to blitz some dirty so-and-so with a bunch of boilerplate e-mails…that say nothing more than that the dirty so-and-so is a dirty so-and-so. From a bunch of malcontents who already are on record thinking the dirty so-and-so is a dirty so-and-so. And the dirty so-and-so knows it, and the malcontents are already perfectly aware of that. Purely redundant hustle-and-bustle, in other words. This is far more inspirational to people than you might initially think.

It’s a sad thing about people. If they find someone needs help, they’re moderately aroused into action to make sure that person gets help. But if they catch wind that a dirty rotten so-and-so has gotten away with shenanigans, they feel much more passion about setting things “right.” Overall they’re in a much bigger hurry to inflict pain than to offer aid and assistance where it’s needed.

This is most true of the people who are most energized about conveying the opposite impression. Of all our neighbors, the cruelest and meanest are the ones with all the theatrical “compassion.”

Says more about the rest of us than it does about Obama.

But it might be a productive exercise to cast a jaundiced eye toward whatever politician makes a speech, a year, or an entire career out of churning up hatred. There are people overseas who really want to kill us. Do they have to earn “profits” or “bonuses” before Our Holy President can work up some lathery emotion against them for a change?

Hey…maybe that’s the solution to the problem. Someone get the word to the White House that Al Qaeda is making a profit. And they’re receiving bonuses.

They’re helping to save the planet. Yay!

One bordello, hoping to stave off falling demand in the economic crisis, has begun offering discounts to customers who pedal bicycles to the door.

“It’s very difficult to find parking around here, and this option is better for our environment,” said Thomas Goetz, who owns the brothel Maison d’Envie, or House of Desire.

…simply by making more people dependent on government for the essentials of their daily lives.

Assertions that things would be much worse if Stimulus II had not been passed cannot be refuted because they are based on bald claims about numbers of jobs “saved.” Because those cannot be quantified, the assertions are unfalsifiable and analytically unhelpful. They are, perhaps, helpful to the administration by blurring the awkward fact that since Stimulus II was passed, the unemployment rate has risen from 8.1 percent to 9.8 percent, and probably soon will pass 10 percent.

But one-quarter of Stimulus II will be spent this year. Another quarter will be spent in 2011. Half will be spent in 2010, an election year. Which suggests that Stimulus II is, and Stimulus III would be, primarily designed to save a few dozen jobs — those of Democratic members of the House and Senate. When the democrats come up with a plan, it can’t fail. The unfalsifiability that Will identifies is an intrinsic attribute that is always present. Until you can create an alternative universe in which the democrat-plan was defeated but where everything else remained the same, there’s really no way to test it. Any of it.

But this feeling is still broadcast nevertheless…that you and I continue to exist because of them. Our jobs were “saved.” A million jobs might have disappeared on Obama’s watch, but without Him in charge the number might have been two million.

Same thing happens under the opposition, and of course it all works differently. Now you’re talking about “failed policies over the last eight years that created the mess we’re in now.”

That’s from Andy.

Trouble is, liberals understand just like anyone else that someday they’ll be gone, and like anyone else they have this primal desire to be remembered for something.

But in their unique situation the epitaph is the struggle itself. Normal people dream of a future in which their successors, perhaps their direct descendants, achieve what we today can’t even envision…making use of things we have completed, whose construction they, in turn, will not be able to envision. In other words — normal people dream of progress.

Liberals dream of a future in which their successors struggle exactly the same way they do. They nurture the same lusts that were visited upon The Foolish Old Man Who Moved the Mountains. Those who remember them…those who struggle with the “benefits” of the old man’s struggles…struggle in exactly the same effort that captured the energies of the old man himself. Same struggle. No progress.

Examples? Let’s start with every single social program you would care to name. Haven’t you noticed this; they’re all hailed as this-or-that liberal politician’s “lifetime achievement.” But they all have to be fiddled-with. Social Security has to be “shored up.” The Internet needs its own version of the “First Amendment.” We need more hate crime legislation, more gun control legislation, the minimum wage has to be hiked yet again, more more more more more.

It moves, sure enough; but it isn’t linear. It’s circular. Like a hamster on a little metal spinning wheel…is doing something that’s circular.

And they are the ones called “progressives.”

Go figger.

Anyway, I think this is what creates the contradiction, the dichotomy. The job must be “finished” — and yet, at the same time, a piece of the job must be left unfinished, so that those who come afterward can continue to work it over. It’s the only thing they have that has something to do with immortality.

Politico:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday that the Fox News Channel is “not really a news station” and that much of the programming is “not really news.”

“I’m not concerned,” Axelrod said on ABC’s “This Week” when George Stephanopoulos asked about the back-and-forth between the White House and Fox News.

“Mr. [Rupert] Murdoch has a talent for making money, and I understand that their programming is geared toward making money. The only argument [White House communications director] Anita [Dunn] was making is that they’re not really a news station if you watch even — it’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming.

“It’s really not news — it’s pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way. We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate but understanding that they represent a point of view.”

In the Newsweek dated later this month, Jacob Weisberg says Fox News isn’t just bad, it’s un-American.

There is no need to get bogged down in this phony debate, which itself constitutes an abuse of the fair-mindedness of the rest of the media. One glance at Fox’s Web site or five minutes’ random viewing of the channel at any hour of the day demonstrates its all-pervasive slant. The lefty documentary Outfoxed spent a lot of time mustering evidence that Fox managers order reporters to take the Republican side. But after 13 years under Roger Ailes, Fox employees skew news right as instinctively as fish swim.

Rather than in any way maturing, Fox has in recent months become more boisterous and demagogic. Fox sponsored as much as it covered the anti-Obama “tea parties” this summer. Its “fact checking” about the president’s health-care proposal is provided by Karl Rove. And weepy Glenn Beck has begun to exhibit a Strangelovean concern about government invading our bloodstream by vaccinating people for swine flu. With this misinformation campaign, Fox stands to become the first network to actively try to kill its viewers.

Typical liberal — “there is no need to get bogged down in this phony debate, just think what I tell you to think.”

Well, it’s true that a real debate has the potential to point out facts inconvenient to both sides, and become needlessly distracting. To me, it all boils down to just one thing:

I don’t recall it ever becoming an issue to the Bush administration whether-or-not, or to what degree, a hostile news media was allowed to ask scrutinizing questions or reverberate uncharitable opinions.

The reasonable reader cannot help but wonder, how “good” an administration can be for the country if it’s so concerned about public relations, with so many “real” problems on its plate crying out for wise, practical solutions, be they popular or not. What kind of government needs to dispense guidance to its populace about what news to watch, and what news not to?

Fact-checked any Saturday Night Live skits lately Mr. Axelrod?

Fresh on the heels of the phony Limbaugh quote scandal, we find the iconic Obama image is based on a lie.

“Change you can believe in” is rapidly degenerating into “change you should take with a large grain of salt.”

In a strange twist to an already complicated legal situation, artist Shepard Fairey admitted today to legal wrongdoing in his ongoing battle with the Associated Press.

Fairey said in a statement issued late Friday that he knowingly submitted false images and deleted others in the legal proceedings, in an attempt to conceal the fact that the AP had correctly identified the photo that Fairey had used as a reference for his “Hope” poster of then-Sen. Barack Obama.

“Throughout the case, there has been a question as to which Mannie Garcia photo I used as a reference to design the HOPE image,” Fairey said. “The AP claimed it was one photo, and I claimed it was another.”

New filings to the court, he said, “state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used…and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong. In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images.”

Lots of reward for not very much talent. This is a situation that draws in people of low character. Lots and lots of them. To such an extent that after awhile it becomes futile to blame the substandard bits of human fluff for their substandardness. Kind of like blaming the dust bunnies for congregating in your computer’s power supply…or bacteria for multiplying in cheese. It’s just something that’s bound to happen…

Frank from IMAO doing what he does best…being smarmy, and having fun.

Conservative arguments against President Obama are becoming increasingly silly. They oppose Obama rescuing businesses despite all the jobs on the line, they’re against government taking control of health care from soulless insurance companies, and they oppose increased taxes on energy consumption despite the sorry state of the environment. And why do they oppose these most sensible actions? Because of their irrational, brain-dead obsession with liberty.

Of course, everyone likes freedom — to a point — but there are a number of loud, stupid Americans who just take it to ridiculous extremes…Liberty doesn’t feed your family. Liberty doesn’t heal you when you’re sick. Liberty doesn’t educate your children. A strong government can do all those things, but apparently that’s against liberty…

Just look at this ludicrous debate over health care reform. Of course the government should provide health care for everyone; how obvious can anything be? The government has the money and smart people working for everyone’s interests to make sure all get health care, so why would anyone be against that? …The advantage of having the government in control is that it makes sure the fewest number suffer, and those that do aren’t particularly important.
:
So what would be optimal in this country if we stopped the mindless liberty worship? I suggest slavery. Yes, I know it has a long awful history, but think about it. With slavery, everyone is guaranteed a job. Slaves get food and shelter. And we can make sure all needs are met by forcing people to take the jobs they are best suited for.

Slavery is true freedom, because it is freedom from want and worry. It may have been a horrible thing when racist southerners were doing it, but think of how great it could be if benevolent liberals looking out for the good of all were in charge. I would say it is, in fact, the ultimate progressive ideal.

But how are we going to sell slavery to people when they don’t even want a public option?

Denver Post:

The car alarm was blaring, and there was a light moving around inside.

A couple in the Colorado Mountain Estates subdivision near Florissant thought someone was trying to steal their car early Wednesday.

When deputies from the Teller County Sheriff’s Office responded at about 2:30 a.m., they discovered a young bear in the car.
:
[T]his bear — like so many others — was very smart and had learned how to open car doors.

But as the bear rummaged around the car causing extensive damage, the door closed and it couldn’t figure how to get out.

A wiser bear.

And something that used to be a car.

From The Correctness.

Ron Radosh, writing in Pajama’s Media about the war on Liz Cheney:

Maureen Dowd, the most overrated op-ed columnist writing today, penned the most mean spirited column she has ever written and perhaps the most inaccurate. She accuses Ms. Cheney of “regarding bipartisanship with the same contempt as multilateralism and multiculturalism,” and along with her father and sister, of leading “the charge against Obama, painting him as a wishy-washy loser who turned America to mush.”
:
[D]idn’t the Nobel Prize Committee respond to its critics by saying that Obama won the prize for contributing to a “world with less tension.” But as Sean Curvyn writes on his website (permalink), “It’s a less tense world. Tell that to the Chinese dissidents…By conceding to the Russians on missile defense, he is reducing ‘tension’ with Putin. By granting the Iranians further stages of delay before there are any real consequences for their pursuit of nuclear weapons, he is reducing ‘tension’ with the Persians.” As he quips aptly, “if only he could reduce tension with Fox News.”

Tony Blankley:

As boom- and bust-prone as high finance always has been and remains, the greatest systemic risk to our economy is not Wall Street. It’s the growing federal debt (and weakening dollar) being enacted by those Washington politicians — the ones who want to protect us from Wall Street.

It soon may be not a risk but a certainty of generations-long economic stagnation and hard times as a direct result of “unsustainable” and ever-growing national debt, driven by a federal budget almost half of which is to be paid for each year by borrowing money — primarily from China — and already weakening the dollar such that foreigners are trying to get rid of their dollars any way they can.

But Obama’s in charge and Europe loves us, so everything will work out all swell right?

KATU News, Portland, OR.

Flags are OK again at an Albany apartment complex after the property manager reviewed the policy and decided she didn’t have the legal standing to ban flags from the exteriors of apartments and vehicles parked at the complex.

“If people want to fly any flag of any nationality, it’s their right,” said Barb Holcomb with Oaks Apartments.

KVAL News also contacted the American Civil Liberties Union to ask whether the policy banning flags from the apartment complex violated any laws. The answer from the ACLU: No.

But Holcomb said she received different legal counsel that led her to believe she is wrong to ban the flags.

“When a tenant rents the unit, the inside of the unit belongs to the tenant,” Holcomb said Wednesday. “All automobiles and things attached to the automobiles are the personal property of the tenant.”

Seems like obvious stuff, no?

Well the previous story was quite the “WTF??” moment.

Jim Clausen flies the American flag from the back of his motorcycle. He has a son in the military heading back to Iraq, and the flag – he said – is his way of showing support.

“This flag stands for all those people,” said Clausen, an Oaks Apartment resident. “It stands for the people that can no longer stand – who died in wars. That’s why I fly this flag.”

But to Oaks Apartment management, Clausen said, the American flag symbolizes problems.

He was told to remove the red, white and blue from both of his rides, or face eviction.

“It floored me,” he said. “I can’t believe she was saying what she was saying.”

Very reasonable editorial in the Democrat Herald that managed to make the point everyone else seems to have missed:

One has to sympathize with apartment managers in an increasingly litigious age, where people quickly take umbrage for any reason or no reason at all. But once you respond to these challenges with a rule that in an American town it’s against the rules to display the American flag on your own motorcycle or your own car, you have gone too far.

It’s quite reasonable — in settings in which a management has the proper legal authority, which is another issue — to issue bans on message-paraphernalia that include flags but carry a special exemption for Old Glory. The apartment management easily could’ve, would’ve and perhaps should’ve gotten away with this if they went that common-sense route.

But NO…(from the second story linked above)

Resident we talked to [sic] who had been approached to take down their flags all told us the same thing: that management told them the flags could be offensive because they live in a diverse community.

Attempts to find out for ourselves why management would ban flags were unsuccessful. KATU wanted to talk to management at Oaks Apartments, but no one has returned our calls. The woman we were told had made the decision said she was “not going to answer any questions.” [emphasis mine]

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Try this on: Just take the USA out of it to suspend the emotion, and think through this logically. You are a native of Country X and you are happy and proud to be a native of Country X. You also have a brother who is a native of Country X and has chosen to enlist in X’s all-volunteer military force. You don’t know if you’ll ever see that relative again…but you fly the flag of Country X to show your support.

Then you’re told because the community — inside of the borders of Country X — is diverse, the flag will have to go, because someone might be offended.

The issue is obviously not Country X’s superiority. It’s Country X’s culture, and whether or not Country X is allowed to have one. It should be obvious to anyone…anyone at all…that the scenario above would be hideously offensive to the flag-waver of Country X. How could it not be? And yet you’re being told a theoretical offense taken by someone…someone not only unidentified, but someone who has yet to happen-along…somehow trumps your very real, and very justifiable, present, current, right-now offense.

That, undeniably, is a second-offense.

The problem isn’t quite so much the manager’s passions against her country, although I suspect that is present as well. The problem is that, because the bell-curve of attention spans is shaped more like a backward-ski-slope than a bell, businesses have taken to communicating their actions and motives in well-worn cliches, like “in an effort to reduce our carbon emissions,” “to help save the planet” and “because we live in a diverse community.”

As my example illustrates, with the US of A removed and therefore all the passion connected to it removed, even the lazy observer can easily see: This is bullshit. If the object of the exercise is to remove or reduce the potential to offend, it is a fail on a massive level.

The Hill, via Hot Air, via Stop the ACLU:

Alarms are being rung about just how many African-Americans will vote without President Barack Obama on the ballot, and the New Jersey and Virginia governors’ races in three weeks will provide the first major test since the 2008 election.
:
The question at this point isn’t so much whether black voters will turn out at 2008 levels, but how big the drop will be — and then, whether it carries into the 2010 midterms.

Tom Jensen, a spokesman for the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, has been among the most outspoken. He said the high number of Democrats with districts that are significantly black means such a turnout shift could be disastrous for Democrats.

“If what looks like is going to happen in Virginia plays out on a national level, I do think Democrats will lose the House,” Jensen said.

All three links at the top have some interesting discussion about this.

I’ve got money riding on this. Frankly, I consider it to be won already. There was something “special” about last year; nobody believes this more fervently than democrats. If you’re in the democrat party, you are required to believe it. If you don’t think there was something special about what happened last year, it is grounds for disciplinary action up to and including expulsion.

Barack Obama won the presidency by an impressive margin in the electoral college…and 53% of the popular vote.

To insist there will not be a turnover next year, is to insist that people vote a certain way by a 3% margin when there is something special going on…and by something between 0.1 and 2.9 when there is not something special going on. Well, three percent, by any sensible reckoning, is well below what registers when there’s something special going on. The flippin’, she’s a-comin’.

Unless you don’t think there was something special going on.

I found out you could get the entire series for ninety bucks or something, and sprung for it sometime in early summer. I recalled vividly from my childhood that by the fourth or fifth season things got painfully repetitive.

I did not realize the pattern was chiseled in granite from the very first minute of the pilot episode. Doe-eyed buxom woman who needs to be taught how to kiss, her kindly grandfather/professor/uncle/stepfather with the heart condition, the rich guy who’s hassling everybody, his two hired goons in leisure suits…fifteen minutes from the end Bill Bixby gets locked in a freezer or vault and the old guy has a heart attack. Grrr!

Good ol’ seventies. You feel this gratitude to the people who put it all together for us, hope Lou Ferrigno is doing well and Bixby’s last days were happy ones; but at the same time you have to wonder how we ever survived.

Jessica Biel.

Kelly Brook.

Oh me, oh my. I’m supposed to pick one, is that it?

Well, this is going to seem downright petty. Jessica, vision of loveliness that she is…has narrower hips. It would seem she has a slightly more anorexic bustline. And she’s always had this crease on her upper lip that I’ve found a little bit odd.

None of those are disqualifiers, but there’s a little bit of a problem here: Kelly doesn’t have any such things. She’s just pure beauty.

So it’s Kelly…by just a whisker. Yeah, aren’t I a stinker?

National Review Online…

Democrats and Job Creation…or Not

The Wall Street Journal reports about the sense of panic that Democrats are feeling right now faced with the fact that stimulus and increase in unemployment rates seem to go hand in hand. As a result:

This explains why political panic is beginning to set in, and various panicky ideas to create more jobs are suddenly in play. The New York Times reports that one plan would grant a $3,000 tax credit to employers for each new hire in 2010. Under another, two-year plan, employers would receive a credit in the first year equal to 15.3% of the cost of adding a new worker, an amount that would be reduced to 10.2% in the second year and then phased out entirely. Why 15.3%? Presumably because that’s roughly the cost of the payroll tax burden to hire a new worker.

The irony of this is remarkable, considering the costs that Democrats are busy imposing on job creation. Congress raised the minimum wage again in July, a direct slam at low-skilled and young workers. The black teen jobless rate has since climbed to 50.4% from 39.2% in two months. Congress is also moving ahead with a mountain of new mandates, from mandatory paid leave to the House’s health-care payroll surtax of 5.4%. All of these policy changes give pause to employers as they contemplate the cost of new hires—a reality that Democrats are tacitly admitting as they now plot to find ways to offset those higher costs.

I wonder what level of unemployment Democrats need before they start considering actual rate cuts. A cut in the payroll tax would stimulate the economy instantly by cutting the cost of employing people. Is that really too hard to understand?

The article is here. For more on the inability of the government to create jobs, go here and here.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Of all the democrat policies that are well-defined, the ones that have something to do with business are the most antithetical to common sense. These are the policies that a dull-witted mind, somehow becoming gradually more sharp and lucid week by week, would figure out are full of baloney at the earliest date.

They boil down to essentially this: We’re going to make it more expensive, awkward and uncomfortable to engage in business-activity-X, and equal or greater numbers of people are somehow going to be motivated to keep right on doing it.

That doesn’t work; therefore, anything connected to it, closely or distantly, also doesn’t work.

…that speak perfect English.

The 20 worst science and technology errors in films

Being a science-geek film fan can be exhausting. It’s hard to watch some films without wanting to shout at the screen “but that’s not how evolution works” or “computers can’t do that”.

It’s pedantic, annoying for your fellow moviegoers, and utterly nerdy, but some of us can’t help it.

So in an attempt to scratch that geeky itch once and for all, here is a list of 20 of the most infuriating science and technology errors in movies.

1. Aliens are basically humans with silly foreheads

The Enterprise, thousands of light-years from Earth, encounters an alien spacecraft. The matter transporter beams one of their number aboard… and lo and behold, it’s Famke Janssen with some makeup on her forehead.

It’s a similar story with Vulcans (pointy eared humans – see also Romulans), Ferengi (grotesquely deformed humans) and Klingons (humans with Cornish pasties attached). Humanity looks like it does through a very specific set of evolutionary circumstances. Why should aliens look anything like us?

Hat tip: Dyspepsia Generation.

Atlasphere…

Dear Atlasphere Advisor:

I am struggling with an observation that I have made at my workplace, which seems to be a recurrent theme in large companies. When I look around at my peers, I’ve come to realize that the quality of one’s work, while recognized, is not always the key to success. There is an aspect of “networking” which seems to predominate when rewards are doled out, especially in the form of promotions or special projects.

This is not to say that my company doesn’t recognize effort and merit. However, it does seem that the more likable, social, “schmoozy” individuals can either be top performers or mediocre and will yield the same recognition and rewards. It does seem that the more friends one has in the right places, the less actual effort is required in performing one’s job duties.

This is supposed to be an automatic situation, and yet there are all these overtures for people to enter into it. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know…you gotta “network”…ya gotta “schmooze”…

I have a great comeback for it. “I know where I saw that before; high school. I graduated quite some time ago and don’t care to go back.”

What people need to remember about this is that it is a request, not a statement of things the way they are. You can say yes or no. Just say no.

Hehehehehehe………I was thinking exactly the same thing, although only #2 and #8 come close to what I had in mind. Which is something like “((name)) pointed something out and, by golly, I hadn’t thought of that.”

Despite countless speeches and news conferences, did you ever hear President Obama express the following ideas?

1. Not everything is a federal issue; some things are for the states to decide.

2. I hear what you’re saying and you have a good point.

3. One of the beautiful things about our constitution is the liberty given to individuals to pursue their dreams. There is great opportunity in our country to succeed.

4. In an effort to stimulate job growth and despite the objections from my party, I am working with Congress to reduce taxes for small businesses.

5. I am saddened by the cycle of poverty that exists in our major cities, and here is a way we can empower the next generation to break the cycle and fulfill their God-given potential….

This parent says, if you’re responsible for putting together a headline like that, you need to quit and go work for President Obama. Make lots of money so you can retire to a life of nothing-ness after we get rid of Him.

Technically, it’s completely accurate. But it is a lie, produced from an agenda of lying.

Reporter: “What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?”

Sendak: “I would tell them to go to hell. That’s a question I will not tolerate.”

Reporter: “Because kids can handle it?”

Sendak: “If they can’t handle it, go home. Or wet your pants. Do whatever you like. But it’s not a question that can be answered…This concentration on kids being scared, as though we as adults can’t be scared. Of course we’re scared. I’m scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can’t fall asleep. It never stops. We’re grown-ups; we know better, but we’re afraid.”

Reporter: “Why is that important in art?”

Sendak: “Because it’s truth. You don’t want to do something that’s all terrifying. I saw the most horrendous movies that were unfit for child’s eyes. So what? I managed to survive.”

Not having seen the movie, I’m willing to speculate that the content probably resembles the advertising pretty well…I’d bet some money on it…and if that’s not the case, so what?

In my day, we had Jaws. Now that looks just about as cheesy as anything else from 1975, especially if you’re watching it in your living room on a winter afternoon over a bowl of hot buttery popcorn.

But in the middle of the summer when you turned nine? When there’s nothing to do but go swimming? Yeah, you just chuckle all you want at this skinny kid furiously scanning Lake Whatcom for dorsal fins…laugh it up. You be nine years old, go see that movie on a Friday night and go swimming on the following Saturday morning. You do that stuff and then get back to me.

I’m in Maurice Sendak’s corner on this one. A moment of “boo,” and the piping hot tears streaming down the chubby cheeks is testament to the idea that it should never have happened. On what planet? Where is this otherworldly place in which kids have to be bubbly and content 86,400 seconds per day? They don’t even get that in the womb for chrissakes.

Wall Street Journal…

Yesterday AHIP released an important PricewaterhouseCoopers study showing that the Finance bill would on average add some $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013. A decade from now, family premiums would cost $4,000 more than if Congress did nothing, and singles would pay about $1,500 more. Hardest hit would be the individual market, with rates rising by 49%, but even the largest employers would see increases between 9% and 11%.

The study’s findings won’t shock anyone who’s read the bill’s details, but its provenance might: In a deal cut earlier this year, the insurance industry acquiesced to rules requiring them to take all comers, regardless of health status or history, and also charge them more or less the same premiums. In return, Congress would subsidize individuals to buy their products and provide new customers by requiring everyone to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty.

A spokesman for Finance Chairman Max Baucus dismissed the AHIP report as a “hatchet job . . . bought and paid for by the same health insurance companies that have been gouging too many consumers for too long as they stand in the way of reform yet again.” Talk about ungrateful. If insurers really had been standing in the way, —or even willing to educate the public about an agenda that will raise consumer prices—ObamaCare might not now be rushing to passage.

The irony is that AHIP is now arguing for a more left-wing bill, claiming the Baucus plan isn’t “universal” enough. The Congressional Budget Office thinks it will cover only 91% of the population, in part because Democrats reduced the “individual mandate” tax on people who don’t buy insurance.

Huh…we pay 166% more in premiums so that the 47 million uninsured, or 30 million uninsured, or whatever number it is today…gets reduced to…er…what’s nine percent of 300 million?

As to why the costs are going up, PowerLine summarizes things neatly:

Now, think about it: if you know that you don’t have to buy health insurance when you are young and healthy, but if you should get sick, or just get older, you can apply for health insurance at any time and it will be illegal for the insurance company to turn you down, what would you do? Obviously, you would defer buying insurance unless and until you get sick. This means that the pool of those who are insured will be lower quality, and the cost therefore higher for everyone who buys insurance. It is as though you could wait until you die, and then your heirs can buy life insurance on you.

This isn’t reform, it is stupidity.