Serially, from back at the very beginning, or include the year in the numbering and serialize it from 1 on January 1. Or, use names. Cartoon characters, zodiac signs, flowers, colors, hurricane-names, I don’t care which.

But it occurs to me that news breathlessly telling me about what’s going to happen with the cease fire, which is most of the news I hear lately, isn’t truly trying to inform me of anything. Oh the cease fire is set to expire? Which cease fire is that? And what do you mean, set to expire? Doesn’t the end of a cease fire nullify the purpose of having the cease fire in the first place, unless something is being done to get someone out of the way? And doesn’t that remain true regardless of the circumstances under which the cease fire ends? What good does it do to have a cease fire last throughout a Thursday, if it ends on Friday?

Just stating the obvious here, but if the sincere intent on one side or on the other is to keep fighting until the sun burns out, or until the enemy is obliterated whichever comes first, then a “cease fire” is nothing more than an exercise in dishonesty. That, and perhaps some cynical maneuvering in public relations; which means an exercise in dishonesty. The point is, we have people involved in the stopping of the fighting who aren’t trying to stop any fighting. They’re trying to put on a show, through the news, to get an audience agitated.

The same is true of so many of our seemingly-unsolvable problems that go on & on unsolved. The first step toward achievement is honest effort, and that’s what seems to be in short supply these days.

We number the Super Bowl. We number the Olympic Games. We number Fast and Furious sequels. Why don’t we use numbers where we need to be using them, to figure out what’s going on?

The American, hat tip to Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm:

One factor that is often overlooked in the debate over causes of income inequality is a shift in the distribution of working hours. The rich now work more than the poor.

The United States and most other industrialized countries have experienced a rapid increase in inequality since around the 1970s. Unsurprisingly, the discussion of inequality has become politicized. Some deny the increase in inequality entirely, in spite of overwhelming evidence. Others exaggerate the magnitude of inequality, for example by claiming that all income gains have gone to the rich.

The estimates of income distribution by the Congressional Budget Office avoids several common methodological problems. The CBO adjusts for declining household size and uses a broader definition of income that includes pension and health care contributions by employers. Between 1979 and 2010 in the United States, the top 1 percent’s share of pre-tax income increased from an already high 9 percent to 15 percent. It is an overstatement that the middle class did not witness any gains, but it is certainly true that gains were slower than in the past. Real median income increased by a disappointing 36 percent between 1979 and 2010. During the same period, real earnings of the 1 percent of highest earners grew by an astonishing 280 percent. One-quarter of income growth in the United States from 1979 to 2010 flowed to the top 1 percent alone.

This rise of income inequality is intensely debated, but its causes are not well understood. Potential explanations include skill-biased technological change, globalization, tax cuts, the expansion of the financial industry, low-skill immigration, and measurement problems that exaggerate inequality. Many of these explanations have merit, and it is unlikely that one factor alone explains the phenomenon. It has, however, proven difficult to determine the relative importance of the various theories, with multiple causes competing to explain a single phenomenon.

Some of this is questionable, at least. “Some deny the increase in inequality entirely”? Who? On what basis? Other parts of it are somewhat laughable: “its causes are not well understood.” A good example of manufactured confusion. In order to be completely baffled by this, you’d have to be completely baffled about how to generate an income, and most of us can noodle that one out effectively and quickly: You figure out what work pays the most, on a basis of per-hour, per-effort, how much you like doing it, whatever — and then you invest your time in doing that thing. If some of us are making more than others, then some of us must be doing more of that than others.

Which is not necessarily the same as saying we work harder. Although that would be the default assumption, and if some semblance of confirming evidence is all we want to see, the article itself provides us that much. Other people may be struggling on the lean end of the inequality curve even though they’re working very hard. But it isn’t showing them a benefit where it counts, in their billfold. They may need to be getting into another line of work. Is it so awful to say that? People say that to professionals in the technology industry, pretty much non-stop. Sometimes with justification, other times not so much.

But in the years mentioned, 1970’s-to-now, we have taken unprecedented cultural steps to rearrange our stigmas. Not, I hasten to say, entirely repeal them, just rearrange them. Tobacco bad, pot good, men bad, women good, straight bad, gay good, white bad, non-white good, private sector bad, public sector good…two lifestyles that have found renewed acceptance through this loud-but-quiet revolution, are 1) single motherhood and 2) sloth. Laziness doesn’t earn you the local scorn that it used to. Technology has made us sufficiently comfortable that we feel like we can afford it.

Because of that, the ownership of material goods has evolved, or devolved, into a matter of personal preference. It’s no longer a matter of survival, but more a matter of taste. Oh, so you like money; well, there’s more to life than making money you know! People lose track of what the cliché advertises even as they repeat it incessantly: I/we don’t like money. And, optionally: That makes me/us better than you.

Well, okay then. Unless we’re all forced to work as hard as we can, with our diverse desires made irrelevant by fiat, there is going to be inequality. Lots and lots of it. By design and by intent, albeit perhaps not conscious intent.

So why is anyone confused? Who are these people who are having trouble understanding?

Observation #1 about this:

Just hours before the 9/11 terror attacks, Bill Clinton told a group of Australian businessmen that he passed on a chance to kill Osama Bin Laden, according to a revelation by an Australian media outlet.

Only 10 hours before the first plane struck the World Trade Center, Clinton explained at a conference in Melbourne that when he was President, he let the chance to kill Bin Laden pass because the operation would have also killed hundreds of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, according to a Sky News Australia report.

“I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama Bin Laden — he’s a very smart guy, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him — and I nearly got him once,” Clinton says on the recording of his speech. “I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him.”

“And so I didn’t do it,” the former commander-in-chief adds.

How come it is that we’re only finding out about it now? They were public comments, were they not?

Observation #2. It is a well-worn TVTrope that has ruined many movies that might have otherwise had some great potential. It ruins the movies because the sentiment is completely pointless. Kill bin Laden and you’ll be no better than him? Hours after the comments were made, bin Laden succeeded in killing ten times as many people as President Clinton mentioned as living in Kandahar. I don’t expect U.S. Presidents to predict the future, but I do expect them to learn from mistakes. The trope just doesn’t work in real life. It was given a more than fair shot here.

Observation #3. Leaving aside the thoroughly-worn-out trope and looking at the broader issue, I notice liberals consistently speak in this cadence, there’s almost a rhythm to it, like iambic pentameter. “Oh yes of course [insert common sense conclusion here], BUT the thing is, there is this [insert some dazzling road-flare distraction here] and so we must [insert silly thing to do here, which they end up doing].” The road-flare distraction is usually something based more on emotion than on reason, like so-and-so “felt the sting of race/sex discrimination” — and so, we need to pretend that person is an authority on some subject, when he or she actually isn’t. Or, income inequality. In Clinton’s example, at least, there is some connection between that final silly-thing-to-do, and the emotional-distracting-road-flare thing: Because he chose to do nothing, the people in Kandahar did presumably live. That redeeming linkage is more the exception than the rule with these lefty “Oh yes of course X but we have to consider Y and so we must Z” statements.

But then again, how’d that work out.

This is much worse than being merely mistaken; it is a methodology inclined to systematically select wrong conclusions, and produce bad outcomes. It’s like the difference between a liar and a bullshitter — the liar has to maintain a conscious knowledge of what truth is, whereas the bullshitter doesn’t care. This is more like lying. It identifies the conclusion common sense would dictate, and then it gravitates toward something that is not that, so that the super-sophistication of the deciding authority can be advertised — look at me, I decided on this opposite thing rather than the common sense thing, that proves I saw the road flare. Because, heck, I sure wouldn’t do that odd thing for any ol’ reason, would I?

We’d be much better off just doing the common-sense thing, swatting the fly. That was proven true in this case. Most of the time, it’s going to be like that. Liberals have a wonderful methodology here for producing wretched results.

Captain Capitalism on Keynesian economics:

Let us say that Paul Krugman is 100% correct.
Barack Obama is 100% correct.
Janet Yellen is 100% correct.
And John Maynard Keynes himself was 100% correct.

My question is simply – so what?
:
It forces the will of a few government bureaucrats and politicians on the masses because “they know better.” It dares to suggest some people know what’s best for you AND GRANTS THEM THE AUTHORITY to intervene.
:
They are nothing more and nothing better than the modern day Catholic church killing people for reading the bible or being literate. They wish to retain their power by keeping the masses ignorant about economics. But unlike Europeans during the Dark Ages, most Americans are willing to be fattened and satiated watching The Bachelorette and getting some “great apps” at Applebee’s. Just remember come next fourth of July our founding fathers aren’t rolling in their graves as much as you’re merely pissing on them.

I notice Keynesians and non-Keynesians often talk past each other; the message of the non-Keynesians is not quite so much one of, “your compass is wrong and the bearing of our port-of-call is thataway,” but rather, “to get to our port of call we need to be able to steer the ship.” Or to put it more precisely, “you are not the Captain of this ship.” It isn’t so much a question of what policies, but who should decide them. Moment-to-moment, not decade by decade.

Keynesians, generally, are liberals; and in our modern times we know of no ignorance with any greater depth or darkness than the ignorance liberals have about the motives of their opposition. They take pride in knowing nothing about it, and maintaining a determined apathy as well as the ignorance.

As an economic theory, it robs itself of credibility by showing a persistent lack of interest in results. And what exactly is economics, if it doesn’t have something to do with results? And yet when a Keynesian strategy fails, its proponents will insist it was the execution that was at fault and not the plan. Either way — where is the change before it’s executed again? How much does the ship, directed from some office hundreds of “nautical miles” away, really change direction? The learning just isn’t there. The course change can’t even be measured in degrees. They just keep on cruising.

Or rather, commanding someone else to cruise. In a ship they didn’t build, and they won’t be going down with it when it sinks.

Well, that is an interesting way of looking at it (hat tip to Weird and Pissed Off)…

There’s no energy left in liberalism, no excitement, just more rules, more controls, everything the punks hated. You can’t say this, you can’t think that, everybody read the memo – today we’re scheduled to be angry at people don’t want to subsidize our birth control!
:
What’s hilarious is that it’s us hidebound, repressed, sex-hating conservatives who are the ones trying to liberate liberalism’s victims from its fascisty clutches, but its greatest victims are the ones doing the most resisting.
:
Liberalism never tries anything new. It’s a greatest hits album from a crappy band. It’s like the latest incarnation of Styx when whoever the lead singer is announces, “Hey, here’s something off our new album” to the widespread groans of the fans. They just want to hear the classics – more regulations, more taxes, more dough for public employee unions, more stifling of innovation.

What exactly does conservatism seek to conserve? Civilization, the blessings that come from having it, and the definitions that make civilization possible.

From what does liberalism seek to liberate us? Those things — starting with the definitions. Marriage is not marriage. Illegal isn’t. The nation’s border isn’t here, and maybe the nation isn’t either. “Working families” often don’t. And often aren’t.

For what? A bunch of stuff that’s been tried before already. Their response to that is everything they can do to discourage everyone from remembering what happened before; and that’s their idea of looking forward, forgetting the past. Even the accumulation of knowledge must be re-defined. They think they’re learning new things, and teaching new things, when they proliferate ignorance.

It is the ideology of darkness and despair. It can’t be anything else. Wherever liberals have won, those among us who produce useful things toil under a new cumulative layer of influence wielded by those among us who do not produce.

Tries to, anyway. The ditz doesn’t stop talking.

It’s really hard to tell leftists things. If it came naturally to them to take in new information and evaluate arguments that weren’t already comfortable to them, they wouldn’t be leftists.

We’re really dealing with two laws here, from two different worlds, a world of reason and a rule of emotion. Just like the posters under one of the comment threads here who can’t answer a simple question like “is 2 equal to 3?,” she can’t answer a simple question like “Do you come from a lawless country?” (6:19). In the world of emotion over reason, everything that comes out has to be a speech. And you can’t learn anything while giving speeches.

It is dangerous to live under two sets of laws like this. But right now, we are. It’s illegal to enter this country without going through the proper process — but, ya know, not really. It’s allowable, in fact protected, for a city to name a street after a cop — but not really. Smoking tobacco in the privacy of your own home…legal, but not really. Smoking pot…illegal, but not really.

The President of the United States making up new laws as He goes along?

Decidedly unconstitutional and cannot be permitted…but…not really.

The trouble is, we’ve got an entire generation that can’t seem to ever stop rebelling against authority; and now it’s “matured” to the age where the people within it are expected to run things. And so we have a whole proliferation of enforcement problems, not just legislation problems. It’s a bigger problem than just illegal immigration.

Mickey Kaus:

Maybe we shouldn’t read too much into a press conference, but Obama certainly seems to be groping for a formal argument here that would set out the circumstances in which he is justified in bypassing the legislature described in the Constitution — Congress — and acting on his own. The argument would be: “Where the key interest groups of society — business, labor, religious organizations and the MSM (who else is going to anoint a bill “common sense … legislation”?) — are lined up behind a policy, then if Congress doesn’t act, the President can.

In short, it’s an argument for bypassing archaic elected legacy institutions when they stand in the way of modern government by interest group elites.

Via Instapundit.

Yeah, I can deal with that.

From here.

I like #3 the best. Hey Hollywood, how about a docu-pic about #3? Maybe release it in time for the Corps’ birthday on November 10?

*sigh*…

Many things worthy of notice in this clip, in which the House Minority Leader appears to have broken protocol to waggle her finger and dish out a lecture while the Chair was recognizing someone else.

The content of what that someone-else was saying, actually, doesn’t interest me too much. I’ve heard it all before. I’m even less interested in what Minority Leader Pelosi said in reply. It is the posturing that has slowly come to be an emblem of the times in which we live, and that nobody seems to have taken the time to name, even in slang. How could we have overlooked this?

I suppose we have difficulty recognizing it’s even there. We have difficulty even recognizing we have the difficulty, so indoctrinated have we been, and for so long, on the feminist claptrap that women are only just now beginning to gather some semblance of influence. It’s just not true. Our society is built on the spectacle of shrewish, “strong willed” condescending women with piercing voices, dishing out lectures to slow-witted gullible boys. We have the spectacle pounded in to our heads all of our lives, whether we’re men or women. It’s expected. Progressive liberals who happen to be unpleasant women lacking in pulchritude, which is to say most among their political class, count on it. The default response to the finger-waggling from an unappealing woman in a pantsuit with a piercing voice, is to acquiesce. San Fran Nan, obviously, expects it.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton counted on it, and used it to prematurely end the grilling she was righteously being given for her screw-up. And, it should be noted, she used it successfully.

Can you imagine a masculine figure pulling this off? Ever? Think of, Sean Connery in the very first Jame Bond film, introducing himself at the casino as “Bond, James Bond” — being grilled in a U.S. Senate committee on some act of denseness and laziness on his part, that got four Americans killed, including an Ambassador. Dismissing the whole thing by throwing a giant hissy fit and wailing “What difference, at this point, does it make?” It wouldn’t even begin to work, because it wouldn’t make any sense. He’d be put in his place; told, yes it is outrageous that these four Americans died, that’s why you’re here. Now answer the damn question.

Most of the silliest stuff you see in our nation’s capitol can be explained in three words: “This shit works.” That’s why we keep seeing it over & over again. Call it what you will. Call it the “I’m an aggravated middle-age female and I’m getting more aggravated, you better back down.”

If we seek to shame it, we need to name the people who are using it, not the act itself.

PWSHNSSMWWTF (n.)

Pantsuit Wearing Scolding Harpy No Sane Straight Man Would Want to Fuck.

The point that deserves emphasis here is that the PWSHNSSMWWTF wields, not miniscule influence or waning influence, but practically infinite influence. People are raised from childhood to listen to the shrewish yard duty teacher telling them don’t-do-that. They’re conditioned to immediately knock off whatever it is they’re doing. We have a whole political class that has learned to play the game, to literally put on the pantsuit and start screeching. Just like baby birds who got the worm that way. Well, like I said. This shit works.

It’s a lie within a lie within a lie. Women are not just now catching up in the “I get to end the argument the way I want” department. They’ve been way out in front, for generations.

And out of necessity, one might add. You’re supposed to listen to your Mother. What pandemonium would ensue had we been conditioned by natural forces toward any other behavior:

Still, I’m glad to see Congressman Marino is not caving. From what I’ve read about it, seems Minority Leader Pelosi was saying — repeating — some very silly stuff. Some boring bromide lacking in useful definition, about “immigration reform” or something.

Yes, you should listen to your Mom. Maybe your shrewish yard-duty teacher too. Hall monitors and those possessing the mentality, I’m not so sure about that.

But it has not escaped my notice, that when advocates of a political position or public policy idea start playing the “I’m an aggravated middle-age woman and I’m getting more aggravated so you better back off” card…start waggling those bony fingers…when they start playing PWSHNSSWWTF…the ideas they are advancing are execrable. It seems what they’re trying to defend is never, ever defensible; what they’re trying to stop is never, ever a bad idea, at least not in the way they’re portraying it. And what they’re trying to promote is always foolish.

It only takes one exception to undue such strident statements. And there may be one, but I’ve not seen it.

And so, just maybe, if an idea really is a good one — it might not be so out of the question to perhaps produce a person willing to take the soapbox and speak out in favor of the idea, who is easy on the eyes? And ears? Maybe even wearing a pretty dress. Or else let’s invoke the “Morgan Rule” about sexism, the “If I’m gonna be accused I wanna be guilty”…and say, get a dude to do it. Any one of those.

But spare us the pantsuits and the lecturing and the screeching and the waggling of the bony fingers. Not because the ideas are consistently bad, but because the image, in addition to being unpleasant, has become boring. Enough of this. I had to wait fifteen years or more for young men to stop wearing droopy jeans that expose their ass cracks. Time for this fad to fade into the oblivion of history as well. Or at least, it would be, if they let me decide that stuff.

But I only get to decide things for me. Nevertheless: When I see the image, my first thoughts are: 1) dumb, bad idea; 2) stalwart extreme let-winger, selling a dumb, bad idea; 3) ow, my ears. That’s what I think first. If I listen further, I don’t often see much reason to reconsider any of it. And I doubt I’m alone. Sorry, am I discriminating against ugly women in pantsuits? That’s not as bad as discriminating against pretty women, is it.

Well this is a bit awkward…

From Chive.

Instapundit, via PowerLine, via Young Conservatives. Picture says a thousand words:

Not sure why it is that lefties continue to get themselves in trouble this way. It’s like someone has “clued them in” that you can solve any problem that comes up by being a condescending snot.

“The piece,” by the way, is here.

Someone should take the time to inspect. Maybe we can discover a new mental disability that requires treatment…or, it could be something as simple as thumb-sucking in the echo chamber, never considering dissenting opinions, never opening cherished ideas to challenge. Which leads to thinking of these cherished ideas as ready-for-prime-time when they haven’t been exposed to the purifying storm of skepticism.

Which in turn leads to stuff like this:

Normal people who live on Earth and have red blood in their veins, right after the door swings open and just before the “Get away from him!” part of it, reflexively think: “Blam!” Guy’s just standing there, almost expecting it. Shoot me, shoot me!

Nobody in the Bloomberg-circle-jerk saw fit to discuss that part of it. Odd, since the man himself clearly understands the harm that is done when opposing ideas are silenced.

John Hinderaker writes in Power Line, not about President Obama’s domestic policy, but of His handling of foreign policy:

Now, Barack Obama has decreed that the American Atlas should shrug. Weary of its burdens and tired of being blamed for the world’s problems, America is withdrawing from its global leadership role. And the result, as in Atlas Shrugged, is disaster. Everywhere one looks, there is turmoil and violence. Russia is resurgent; China threatens Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines; Iraq’s Christians are being wiped out; Iran’s nuclear weapons program proceeds apace; the Sunni Gulf states seek new alliances; the Taliban is retaking Afghanistan; American diplomatic personnel are withdrawn from Libya as that country descends into chaos; al Qaeda extends its influence in Africa. The list goes on and on. The United States has gone Galt–everywhere except Gaza, where we are playing a discreditable role in support of a terrorist regime–and the forces of evil and disorder are on the march.

Of course, the analogy ultimately breaks down. In Atlas Shrugged, the world’s producers go on strike in order to show that the Left is wrong. Barack Obama has withdrawn the United States from its leadership role, not in order to demonstrate that the Left’s critiques are wrong, but because he believes them to be right. Unlike the producers in Atlas Shrugged, Obama means for the U.S. to “go Galt” permanently.

But things are not turning out as the Left expected. Those who thought (like Obama) that America is the source of most of the world’s ills, and if only we would keep to ourselves problems would disappear, are being refuted by every day’s newspaper headlines. So perhaps in the end, America’s going Galt in foreign policy will prove to be temporary, as the result of Obama’s experiment will be much like the dystopia that Ayn Rand foresaw many years ago.

Hope this is parody…

The View gals are “tired” of hearing about Bill Clinton’s philandering whenever the subject turns to Our-Next-President Hillary:

From Newsbusters.

Well, controlling the narrative is important when you’re selling a bad idea, and making Hillary Clinton our next President is a very bad idea indeed. The two ways you can control a narrative are to add on to it and to take away from it; what the The View gals are doing here is using social stigma to take-away. Don’t discuss those things Bill Clinton did or they will shame you.

This is not going to end well, unless they can add-on to the narrative as well as take-away from it — because there’s nothing there. At 2:00 the one in red says “She has done incredible work, shouldn’t we be talking about that?” Hillary-supporters should hope we don’t, because if we do, the first question is going to be “Okay…so…what, exactly?”

I’m not making it up. It really does go down that way. I say “does”; this is a trend that goes back quite a ways, and will continue for the foreseeable future.

I would not want to run a presidential campaign this way. But that doesn’t by any means indicate that I think she’s going to lose. We seem to be having a very tough time in our present culture, lately, making distinctions between success and failure. Hillary’s best hope is that we’ll continue having this kind of a problem, and continue to be distracted by the anti-intellectual emotionalism of these “tough times” Bill & Hillary have “weathered together” and such. That’s the most popular intellectual-sluggard way of making losses look like wins, to talk about “weathering the tough times.” Over-protective mommas constantly clear the obstacles — performance standards — for their spoiled-brat bubba whelps this way…Bill Clinton’s mother problem did it with him. You can even make it look like Detroit is being governed responsibly & well this way. Which means, it “works” pretty much anywhere, or at least has a good prospect.

This is Hillary’s only shot. She’s well-funded, so we’ll be seeing a lot of this over the next, uh…28 months…uff da. Yes, talk about Bill Clinton’s affairs, but only in the context of these storms “they” have “weathered together.” Not in terms of them actually happening. Never, ever, ever mention that they “happened” because Bill did them — and, certainly, never ever talk about how Hillary looked past them and ignored them. Say nothing that connects it to what Hillary would look past & ignore, on our behalf, as our Commander-in-Chief. That would be “shaming.”

Is my calculator really right about this, 28 months? Well, that is going to drag on painfully. On the other hand, it does give certain voters a long time to figure out some very basic things. Like, the difference between desirable & undesirable, between success & fail. About as basic as you can get. Here’s hoping.

I’ve long thought so. And now, people who agree with me also get to say high-minded things like “the study says.”

Rather than focus on inequality within the nation, lawmakers ought to be focusing on wealth-maximizing policies, Cowen noted. The system ought to be fostering overall growth, not redistribution:

“If our domestic politics can’t handle changes in income distribution, maybe the problem isn’t that capitalism is fundamentally flawed but rather that our political institutions are inflexible. Our politics need not collapse under the pressure of a world that, over all, is becoming wealthier and fairer.”

You don’t have to be around to observe too many American elections, to figure out that when the electorate is feeling desperate and jealous, democrats win; and when the electorate isn’t feeling that way, democrats lose. The job of the democrat party, therefore, is to stir resentments, particularly interclass resentments.

Also, to depress; make people feel like they can’t make it without help from the political machinery.

It’s been that way for awhile. But lately something is changing. The phony-academics, who are pushing for democrats to win and just pretending to be doing things that are academic, have gotten bolder. It’s become much, much easier to find one among their number who will swear up & down that “economic inequality” threatens to wreck everything, than to find one who’s willing to explain how.

Global warming could have caused it.

*sigh* Yes, yes of course, absolutely that could very well be the case. Probably is. Now, take your meds…I’ll go unplug the coffee pot and replace some light bulbs…

It began last night, as these things so often do, with a delivery from Amazon: Logan’s Run, not the Michael York movie which we own already, but the “spinoff” series which I think is more of a reboot. The special effects are pre Star Wars, although teevee seasons debuted around September back in the day, so it must have been about four months after the big revolution…so as you can imagine, that’s what happened to that.

Yet the sci-fi franchises which dot the landscape of seventies culture history served an auxiliary purpose, besides dazzling us with the special effects of people shooting each other with beams of light, and robots and spaceships and what-not. As one can easily recognize today by watching one episode after another, there was a need, perhaps a therapeutic one, to morally preen. Post-Watergate, the conflict was usually the way it existed in Logan’s Run: Unscrupulous bureaucrats running the city-state, keeping secrets, perhaps they were old men or perhaps robots. The drama was with their attempts to stamp out the opposition, the morally pristine hippie-children who dared to ask questions and were skeptical of the doctrines. Thus, the dystopian setting was a blend between Nineteen Eighty-Four and Star Trek, the latter of which must accept most of the blame for the uniformity and lazy writing throughout this era. I used to think that was just my perspective, from having been a “Trekkie.” More learning has persuaded me toward the conclusion that it isn’t; this is objective truth.

Our cultural schism is nicely encapsulated and represented by Star Trek, which to fans like myself, captured all sorts of passions that had nothing to do with the hippie-preening. The concept of the “final frontier” stoked my imagination. What fascinated the fans like me, were the episodes modeled after Forbidden Planet: The strong, decisive picture of manliness who leads this expedition, arrives at the alien setting with his two trusty and colorful sidekicks, and discovers some old codger with questionable scruples who runs the entire planet and has exactly one daughter running around in skimpy clothes, lacking any mother worth mentioned anywhere, who’s never seen a man before and needs to be taught how to kiss. And, there’s a mystery to be unraveled. Also, an unsolvable problem that has to be solved, or else they’ll all be marooned here forever.

But for our household, the mystery was why, when our local affiliate moved Star Trek up from six to five, Dad, who so often groused away about Star Trek being the most idiotic show on the air, suddenly started rushing home from work so he could be there at the opening credits. The point of fascination for me was the transporters, and the discovering alien planets. Then, it came to be about solving the unsolvable problems, the “What’s Captain Kirk going to do about this?” The best episodes for me are still the ones with problems-within-problems, like Friday’s Child and City on the Edge of Forever.

Years later, by the era of the Bald Captain, it became clear there is a whole different fan base, no doubt aptly represented by influential writers within the staff — they think the “plucky resourceful manly Captain” episodes are just a big waste of time, ditto for the display of special effects. They think the morally preening is the entire point. And the episodes that gratify them, are a crushing, snotty, lecturing bore to people like me.

Spock would find this “fascinating”: I struggle, in vain, to think of any one single episode out of any Star Trek franchise that offers fans like them, and fans like me, what we want. Seems the more opportunities Jean-Luc Picard and William Riker have to morally preen, and show the difference between themselves and ordinary scum of the galaxy, the less workable it is for them to show their plucky resourcefulness and problem-solving acumen. Almost like an addition equation involving a constant: P + R = K. There was, evidently, someone on the newer writing staff who thought that was the way it should work. They even had a robot to figure out what to do & get it done; the job of the humans was to react, and then dispense the snotty lecturing.

Back to Logan’s Run: The childish, “is-not-is-too” debates between the morally pure, intellectually vigorous hippies and the stodgy old martinets who ran the City of Domes, along with the “Sandmen” like Francis VII who obeyed the martinets without question — ironically — sound very much like any one of today’s exchanges about global warming. But the doctrinaire myrmidons who insist the dogma is true and that it’s too dangerous outside the city walls for anyone to venture safely into the unknown, sound less like yesterday’s Nixon administration defenders, than like today’s libs. The morally pure hippies who dare to question the doctrine, sound like they’ve been listening to Glenn Beck. Funny how that works, innit? That’s “fascinating” too.

The schism among sci-fi fans mirrors the schism among us with regard to everything else: What’s the point of life? What’s the point of the show? Some of us think it’s all about solving real problems. Others among us think the problem-solving is a waste of time, and morally preening is the entire point.

They think they are the forebearers of the ones who will one day invent Warp Drive and make all this possible — doing nothing, solving nothing, just lecturing. That, too, is fascinating, if not sane.

Narratives can’t co-exist with truth when they’re armored-up to prevail over truth. That’s the thing, see: If they’re victorious over any conflict that arises with inconvenient facts, then what they really are, is fiction. “Narratives” because they’re very convincing fiction. And a passive-voice culture that is as drunk as ours is lately on Bandwagon Fallacy, has to bear that in mind.

Factual Feminist Christina Hoff Sommers, on the oh so trendy Verizon ad:

From the comments:

Hold the fucking phone, “girls-are-smarter-than-boys-so-what-goes-wrong”? Why the fuck is this seen as an acceptable view when the opposite is seen as downright monstrous?

That’s the trouble with a passive-voice culture: No subject. The question is unanswerable, because there’s no one we can ask. Actually, the entire ad suffers from that problem. Who are these Dads telling their little girls that science isn’t pretty enough for them, or “let your brother do it”? They aren’t being targeted, only their actions are, so we can’t get any specifics. Do they outnumber the Moms telling their little boys “You’re doing it all wrong, AGAIN, here I’ll do it”? Without any specifics, it’s hard to tell.

Hat tip to Linkiest.

I’d like to see a powerful narrative launched about “Boys who are raised from toddlerhood to be lazy little shits” — if anyone would like to have my opinion:

From here.

So I was jotting these ideas down in the blog, wondering if they should be in an outline processor first…before that I was jotting down other ideas on the Hello Kitty of Blogging, wondering if they were a better fit in the (real) blog…

So I was saying something a few months back about how the high-drama male-female stuff, which we can monitor by way of news feeds, blogs, social media, etc. seems to show a seasonal uptick at that time of year. I know it was early February, because I was calling out the release of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue as a possible (almost definite) cause.
:
I now have the impression that the 2nd half of July is another season. Fathers-of-daughters are going public with their hopes & fears about raising their little girls, and frankly they’re saying some very silly things. Add to that, the democrats putting out false and misleading, even more than usual, propaganda in the wake of the Supreme Court decision about Hobby Lobby.

If an alien from another planet crash-landed on Earth, and was forced to learn about women by browsing political blogs and social media, while being denied the opportunity to personally meet them, what would he think about them? Probably that they & their fathers & brothers long for them to be strong capable and independent — but that they’re anything but. I don’t know why we illustrate women this way. Real, flesh-and-blood women are strong and capable, and can do things. They *can’t* do everything men can do, that’s a myth. But they can do a lot of things men can’t. And all in all, they deserve a lot more respect than they’re shown…especially from the noisy types, male & female alike, who claim to be “liberating” them and “totally respect”-ing them.

Regarding this seasonal thing. I was reading this latest bit of malarkey about how women should be able to tell men that some lardass in a bikini is every bit as sexy as Kate Upton…and I just figured it out. It’s simple.

February, there’s this reaction to the SI swimsuit issue…and then, by right about now, we have a few more people who have some actual recent experience waddling down to the beach in their thongs and monokinis or whatever, and not getting back the reactions for which they had hoped. It is pessimistic foresight versus resentful hindsight. In both cases, the real problem is people wearing swim wear for reasons other than swimming. Too much drama. Normal people like you & me come back from the beach with a sunburn to which we have to apply some sort of balm, maybe wait to peel off…whereas this lardass, along with so many like her, has to write a Salon column all about “our cultural perceptions of what is and isn’t beautiful.”

Being a dude is so awesome. If I happen to be lugging around a little too much of the winter blubber to look good in swim trunks, I just, ya know, WEAR the goddamn things. I don’t have to get some giant social movement going to re-program women to find fat middle-age computer guys in swim trunks attractive, I just wear ’em and look ridiculous, period-end-of-story.

One of the most pernicious deceptions our various social movements have plied on us, is this promise that with the right kind of social engineering we can get rid of anyone anywhere saying “I like this thing and I do not like that other thing.” It’s complete crap. People have been doing this for tens of thousands of years and there’s no stopping them from doing it. In fact, it has not escaped my attention that when it comes to women appreciating the look of athletic-looking men, nobody seems to be in any big hurry to. In some walks of life, particularly with impressionable kids, we have so much drive to teach them to define their fickle preferences about candy bar brands or ice cream flavors, and stick to them, insist on them — essentially, try harder to be spoiled brats. In others, we call it “discrimination” and kick off this weird ritual — that’s what it is, that is all it is, since it will never have any lasting effect — of scrubbing preferences out of people, so that some tub of goo who never bothers to peel herself off the couch to walk around the block, supposedly can enjoy the same adulation as Kate Upton in the middle of a shoot.

What a load of nonsense. And yes, there’s a certain pulse to it: Twice-yearly. Just figured it out. I’m a bit ashamed it’s taken me this long.

Those democrats sure are good people.

On Wednesday, Mike Dickinson, the Virginia liberal Democrat running for the State House, offered a $100,000 reward for nude photos and/or videos of Kendall Jones, the 19-year-old Texas Tech cheerleader who recently made news with a series of hunting photos on her Facebook page.

“I have 100k to anyone who has nude photos or videos of #kendalljones at Texas tech (sic),” Dickinson tweeted. “She deserves to be a target.”
:
Unfortunately, these hate filled statements are fairly common for Dickinson. He recently stated that a “dead teabagger is a good teabagger,” referring of course to some Tea Party candidates.

To be fair, there are some who are not like this. They just don’t know what they’re supporting.

American Thinker:

To show how mindless this liberal proposition is, the “red state welfare” argument appears to be entirely based only on how each state voted in the most recent presidential election. This results in entirely junk science.

First off, states that are either “haves” (i.e., give more to the federal government than they receive) or “have-nots” (i.e., get more from the federal government than they give) do not just arise overnight. State finances take decades to develop as either “haves” or “have-nots,” so looking at only a single election is meaningless. Rather, we need to look at how a state has voted over several decades to obtain any relevant insights.

Furthermore, it’s equally nonsensical to just consider how a state votes for the president. We also need to look at how each state votes for its senators, representatives, and even governors. Given how Congress has the “power of the purse,” this is core to assessing how a state’s welfare status relates to its Democrat versus Republican voting record. And this is where the “red state welfare” hypothesis disintegrates.
:
At the senatorial level, how can you call North Dakota, Louisiana, and West Virginia “red states” when their voting record is overwhelmingly Democratic over the past three decades? Even South Dakota and New Mexico fail the “red state” test. West Virginia hasn’t had a Republican senator since before 1960!

On the other side of the aisle, New Hampshire — supposedly a blue state — has only elected a single Democratic senator (the currently serving Jeanne Shaheen) since 1980. Minnesota and Colorado also fail the blue state designation based on who they have put in the Senate over this timeframe.
:
The “red state welfare” vitriol in the left-wing media has been intense. Witness these statements from a 2011 Business Insider piece on the topic:

“[R]ed states … are overwhelmingly the Welfare Queen States. Yes, that’s right. Red States — the ones governed by folks who think government is too big and spending needs to be cut — are a net drain on the economy, taking in more federal spending than they pay out in federal taxes. They talk a good game, but stick Blue States with the bill … Go ahead and bookmark this article. The next time some smarmy teabagger tries to tell you it’s liberals who are ruining the country and spending us into oblivion, kindly point them to the evidence that shows it is GOP states, not Democrat states, who are Welfare Queens. It is GOP states who spend more than they collect in taxes. It is GOP states who are out of balance, nationally. See if they still want to cut off funding when it means no more socialism for slave states.”

Here is what Slate had to say last year:

“Now, one more cross-reference: these facts compared with the know-nothing rhetoric of the Tea Party. There are only two ways to parse that result: one is ignorance — which we should be willing to forgive in anyone as long as they revise their views when faced with reality. And the second? Selfish hypocrisy. How else can you explain the fact that the denizens of the most welfare dependent states in the country — dare we say, those who enjoy the most benefits from socialism — profess to abhor welfare?”

Fascinating storyline the liberals tried to construct. Too bad it is entirely false.

Via Hit & Run, by way of Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm and Inst.

Reminds me of this classic:

Jefferson used the phrase “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. There are some theories, and other theories, about where he got this and what he may have meant by it.

Common sense, though, tells us we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights, that among these rights are Life…Liberty…and, the accumulation of property or whatever else tickles our fancy if we’re not into that sort of thing. Some people aren’t into making money. Some people, although they refuse to admit it, even to themselves, loathe the stuff. If they get some of it, they’ll find a way to burn it off. My own theory is that Jefferson recognized this; his financial picture at the time of his final decline, suggests he may have been among them. At any rate, the American Revolution was inspired by the desire for greater opportunity to embrace risk and engage in commerce, but its blessings were intended by those who supported it, to fall on those who had no such desire, even those who opposed it.

Common sense also informs us that our friends, the liberals, are opposed to the Pursuit of Happiness, unless it’s a faceless government agency that’s actually engaged in this pursuing. Satisfaction and contentment, in their world, are too good (via Instapundit) for the individual: “You didn’t build that.” That’s why Rush Limbaugh makes fun of them with his famous catch-phrase, “Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.”

Mencken had something to say about this too, when he defined puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” It is increasingly difficult, in our modern times, to enjoy or pursue this happiness without creating a situation in which liberals see a problem. And whenever liberals see a problem, when we take the trouble to inspect it we find, much more often than not, someone close to the center of it being happy.

Misery, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to get them too excited unless they can recognize some inequality involved in it. In other words, someone being spared from the misery, sets ’em off. If everyone is equally miserable, they’re alright with that. Their continuing support for ObamaCare proves that.

Related: Twenty examples of what liberalism REALLY is.

Keep forgetting this girl’s name…I’ve tried everything else I can try to get it “bookmarked,” might as well try this…

“I didn’t realize how many other people in the world would care.”

Her submission video:

VDH:

She is not a very good speaker, and is prone to shrill outbursts and occasional chortling. She has a bad habit of committing serial gaffes (e.g., speaking too candidly), and what she says on Monday is often contradicted by her rantings on Tuesday. She seems cheap and obsessed with raking in free stuff. When Bill steps in to correct her mistakes, either sloppily or out of some strange psychological spite, he usually makes things even worse.

I honestly don’t understand why she has fans. Anywhere. They must be angry about something; people tend to think they’re looking at something amazing and fantastic, when they’re actually evaluating something mediocre, when they’re pissed off about something.

Hillary’s fans are exceptionally angry. Why is that? Answer that one, and you’ve unlocked the secret to her popularity. But too many people who make it their business to bring us something called “news,” don’t want that secret unlocked.

Her fans sure are angry. They make decisions very poorly.

Prelutsky:

As I see it, the fact that young women actually expect that people with whom they’re not having sex should provide them with free birth control pills is clear evidence that the real war is the one being waged on the American taxpayer and commonsense.

His neighbors are calling Him the worst President ever.

Via Goddard.

“It doesn’t matter, just keep spending because that somehow makes things better.”

From here.

“People don’t invest the appropriate amount of time in studying the people who would represent them.”