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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.”

Speaking of hall monitors…I’ve been noticing this for awhile, out on the bike trails. In fact, last summer it happened to me again and CylarZ was right there next to me.

There is a certain type of walk-jogger out there. People say “all of so-and-so looks alike” — in this case it’s really true. It might be just one person following me around the county. Maybe a specter that’s haunting me. But, I think it’s multiple people who happen to resemble each other very closely…she’s in her fifties, give or take, has an awkward hair-do that isn’t feminine at all. Kind of like Lois Lane back in the Silver Age, or Hillary Clinton just after the Hillary-Healthcare debacle. She doesn’t seem to care about her appeal to the opposite sex, but has tanned her skin until it has the complexion of Naugahyde.

When normal people cross each other on a bike trail, they tend to make some sort of positive gesture to strangers. Kind of a “here we are, out here, huh?” sort of a thing. It’s just a continuation of something that’s been going on for hundreds of years…probably. This woman-specter, I notice, uses these fleeting few seconds to mumble some sort of rule at me.

Sometimes, it is an established rule that I have flouted deliberately because common sense dictated that an exception would be safer for all concerned. Other times, the rule is not so well established. On the one incident I cited above, it was about which side of the trail should be occupied by bicyclists vs. pedestrians, and it was doubly silly, because if Naugahyde-lady merely bothered to turn around and see what was approaching us, she would have realized the problem: Everybody has their own interpretation of the rules. In the end, if you’re on a bike or some other piece of equipment that can approach the 15 m.p.h. speed limit, and you see a thicker glut of pedestrians approaching, you just have to check your speed and then move about in whichever direction makes the best sense. It’s actually the dogma-driven adherents to “written” rules who make the situation more dangerous.

But, the mentality is remarkable. Would I use the few fleeting seconds of possible communication, between myself and a total stranger, to bring a rule to their attention? Oh definitely, I could see a scenario in which I might do that, or at least, consider doing that. But it would be an exceptional case.

These Naugahyde-Lois-Lane-haircut types seem to be embracing it as a way of life. And over the last decade or so, I have noticed the situation comes up more frequently. Also, that my breaking or following rules seems to have less and less to do with it.

Not sure why people say this is a boring topic. It’s fascinating to me, endlessly fascinating, that the makers-of-rules know with laser precision exactly what the rules should be regarding gallons, inches, times-of-day, pools, car-washing, watering lawns, washing walls…and yet are completely-freakin’-lost about how to enforce it all.

I mean, it’s all understandable in some way. It’s the sequence that baffles me. I come from another planet, third one from the star, inhabited by homo sapiens that have red blood; in my corner of the universe, enforcement tactics would come first and the parameters would come later.

Who the heck are these people? Where do you find them?

“Six to nine p.m., that certainly ought to do it! Another successful session of rule-making, we are to be congratulated! Okay, now how do we enforce?”

You were all “hall monitors” back in high school, weren’t you?

Something tells me I should be using my outline processor to capture this stuff, instead of my blog, since there is breadth & depth to this and both dimensions are important. That’s usually a tip-off that outlining is the way to go.

But related events are coming in fast and thick, and I’m more concerned about the breadth than the depth. I’ve done the depth already, a few times. I’ll probably be doing it here, too, before I’m done.

I’m seeing three topics of immediate concern:

One. Our modern society, as obsessed as it is with female achievement, doesn’t seem to be interested at all in providing girls with what children really need to become competent and capable adults: Challenge (H/T to Gerard again).

Are girls so totally fragile and glassine, so pathetically weak and easily crushed that gentle parenting to protect and guide them will destroy their gentle souls? Is the delight in science and industry such a guttering candle flame that it is snuffed by even the mildest breeze?

Two. Our society, apart from that, seems to be enthusiastically embracing a mindset that is immature at best, and at worst, insane: Women should be able to decide, on behalf of straight men who are attracted to women, what sexy is. Erm, no, as Captain Capitalism points out, straight men actually decide what sexy is, in a woman. Gotta let us decide something, ya know…

…the women who agree with Brenoff see themselves as diamonds in the rough, caged birds that whose songs are incredibly beautiful, but those infantile, privileged men refuse to recognize them as such. But all the other birds believe our songs are beautiful! Sorry, but singers don’t get to decide what their listeners will find pleasing to hear. A person simply cannot decide what others desire in their lives. It is puerile to demand other people prop up the delusions you have about your life.

Three. The gamma male. Ah, the poor, sniveling wretches…

The third and lowest tier of male social hierarchy. Unlike the dominant alpha or the passive beta, the gamma male’s hallmark traits are clinginess, possessiveness, and manipulation. Since he is unable to compete with men above his social tier, he is prone to isolating and manipulating girls, and failing that, throwing guilt trips to keep them on a short leash. While a gamma male is often a self-proclaimed “nice guy”, his benevolence is merely a means to an end, which is usually trying to hook up with a girl he is obsessed with. Overly emotional and prone to feelings of unwarranted entitlement, the gamma male would rather blame all of his problems on other people than take responsibility for his own behavior.

Fleshing out the “outline” a bit under the high-level “node” that is Observation #3: I see someone took notice of this little tempest-in-a-teapot between John Scalzi‘s fans, and me & severian. I spoke of insanity up above, which has been defined as the exercise of consistent behavior with the expectation of inconsistent results. That fits what we’ve lately seen out of the Gammas quite well:

You can always tell when the Gamma male, who will never openly admit that his precious little feelings have been wounded, is having trouble maintaining his delusion, because he keeps returning to the point where it has been punctured, trying to come up with some spin on the situation that he can successfully sell to others and thereby convince himself.
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Note that despite all the reassurance he’s received from the other rabbits, it’s still not enough and he’s actively seeking even more. This is because he knows that his weakness, and worse, his pride in his weakness, makes him an object of derision and disgust by men and women alike. And the knowledge of that is painful to his ego.

Not sure how I fit into the tier system. I know I’m not Alpha, Beta or Gamma. Guess I’ve always been a sort of a “War Games” sort of guy: “The only winning move is not to play.” My kind, like the Alpha and the Beta, is naturally programmed by evolution to get a rush out of sex — the having of it, and the prospect of it as well. Gammas are a different breed entirely. It seems they achieve exactly the same thrill out of female approval. Their wires are crossed. Their mothers, or female caregivers, must have done something awful to them.

severian‘s original point, or a big part of it anyway, was that there is a certain element of danger to this business of bragging about your daughter outdoing you. How could I explain it to the intransigent-Gamma; oh right, I can’t. Well, I’ll explain it to everybody else then:

If the numbers of the Scalzi-daughter-bench-press have been discussed, they haven’t found their way to me, so I’m taking it as an unknown in the equation. Scalzi can bench press X, his daughter can bench press Y, and Y > X. That is known; let us now ponder the likelihoods. It is likely — at least, I would hope — we’re talking about something upwards of 150 pounds, which is mired deeply in the mucky layer of “bro, do you even lift???.” But unless his daughter is freakish, it’s not above what an average man can lift if he’s been working at it. And no, Gammas, I do not include myself in that. Been writing a fair amount of code over the past three years, have a bit of a T-Rex thing going on at the moment. Daughter’s a teenager who can out-lift her dad. We can probably peg this contest down to within 50 pounds. And the daughter, I take it, is in good shape.

Applying a reductio ad absurdum, let’s arbitrarily subtract a decade from the daughter’s age and pretend Scalzi was bragging about his six-year-old lifting more than he can. Now, we’ve lost our ability to provide a quality estimate about the weights being discussed, or much of it. We really haven’t a clue about what’s going on. Is he dictating this “tweet” from a hospital bed, with both arms busted? Is the daughter from the planet Krypton? I dunno. You don’t either. Point is: This is an ineffective way to assess the daughter’s suitability for feats that challenge physical strength — and, may very well involve danger.

Back from the reductio ad absurdum, we have restored the precision and can guess what’s going on again, within 50 pounds or so. But, the observation remains: This is an ineffective way to assess strength. And by “ineffective,” what I really mean is idiotic. Hey sorry John, you’re probably following the trackbacks and are reading this for yourself, and for the record — believe I said this already — I really liked Redshirts. You’re just plain wrong. I don’t mean, by that, that we’re engaged in some sort of cultural clash here and trying to figure out who’s going to impose his personal tastes on whom. It is, as a matter of fact, a matter of fact. Strength. Weakness. Those two are opposites, which means they’re not the same.

Better get word to your fanboys:

So run, kid. Beat the pants off of me. I did my damndest to help you fly, and if you soar above horizons that I can never reach, well, I think that’s what every good parent was hoping for. Instead of, you know, being an insecure douche who’s secretly engineering his kids to fail so he can feel better about his life.

I guess we must be talking about liberals, right? The tell-tale sign is right there: The kid must be soaring above higher horizons, because someone else was properly pummeled downward. Person A’s weakness becomes (somehow) Person B’s strength. Dude, that’s whacked. It’s almost as far out in the tall-grass as figuring out my secret game plan to engineer my kid to fail. And to think I’ve got that beatdown coming because I said something about pulling Scalzi’s man-card; my goodness, these people know so much they don’t really know.

There is some overlap, here, with Point #1. We talk about our aspirations for our children, particularly our daughters, to become all they possibly can. But the people who generate the most noise about this, I notice, are consistently opposed to actually challenging them.

This is destructive. It’s obviously destructive when people confuse weakness for strength. Here there is destruction against human potential. There is destruction against the challenges that build up that human potential, since these poor Gammas seem to be under the delusion that it is the spectacle of victory that makes growing children into strong, capable adults. There is also destruction against those children, themselves, since it is dangerous to pretend to assess someone’s true capabilities, while in reality only going through the motions of doing so. Not that I think Scalzi’s daughter is in this danger; Scalzi, I’m sure, knows the numbers involved in his glorious defeat. But other people reading about it don’t know, and it’s obvious there is this idea churning around out there that girls are being prepared for fabulous and glorious experiences as adult, when they meet the challenge of — beating the chestless old man, who didn’t want to win anyway. It’s not exactly a stringent test.

There is also the matter of disappointment. Competition is great for building up a child’s actual strength; it sucks as a way of building up their confidence, because it works far too well. The message never quite makes it across that there is always someone better, faster, stronger. Ironically, we have dealt with that here in the Freeberg household, during this first summer in which the teenager is taller than his old man. Yeah, great, actually we’re all pretty happy about that. That might surprise some of the Gammas who have gone a little bit off the deep end, speculating about me & my relationship with my kid. But we’ve also had to have the conversation — I’m sure they won’t understand this — that effort is required in other walks of life as well, and there’s always someone out there who’s taller. Boys who win competitions need to hear that; and they do. Girls who win competitions need to hear it too. I’m not so sure anyone’s pointing it out to them.

That takes care of the Gamma/Scalzi matter. If time permits, sometime in the days or weeks ahead I’ll flesh out the other two.

It’s called a “delicious quote” and I’m inclined to agree; it’s one of those gems that seem to have been meticulously designed word by word, not out of intent to deceive, but in the spirit of stringent quality control.

Attempts by experts in the field to defend the embattled messenger inevitably fall on deaf ears. When the firestorm is over, the media’s mindset always resets to a state of comfortable ignorance, ready to be shocked all over again when the next messenger comes along.
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What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand, is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists.

For example, virtually all psychologists believe there is a general mental ability factor(referred to colloquially as “intelligence”) that explains much of an individual’s performance on cognitive tests. IQ tests approximately measure this general factor. Psychologists recognize that a person’s IQ score, which is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, usually remains stable upon reaching adolescence. And they know that IQ scores are correlated with educational attainment, income, and many other socioeconomic outcomes.

Get with it, atmosphere! You’re holding up the show!

Reproducibility and predictability have a lot to do with saying what science is; with separating it from pseudo-science. With the climate, we have a situation in which the thing being passed off to us as “science” is clinging only just barely to the genuine, teetering on the brink of the abyss of the pseudo. And it seems to be aware of this.

The situation has deteriorated, because we’re not doing a good job of assessing what real science is, if our definition relies on the outcome of guesswork. And you know the situation is deteriorating when the so-called scientists are trying to put together a narrative, build up the anticipation, maneuver us into a “perception is reality” moment with the “atmosphere…get[ting] on board.”

…as discussed here.

It had no bearing on the outcome of anything, but still, it was an act of kindness that meant a great deal to the beneficiary of it. And that’s good to see.

Megyn Kelly…

“Perhaps the idealogues should think a bit more before trying so hard to mislead and divide us.”

From here.

Related: I don’t actually watch Fox News myself, what with it being on the teevee and all, but things like this compel me to consider changing that.

Seems everyone who comes up with reasons why I shouldn’t watch it, is put off by the idea of more people coming to find out about something they don’t want people to know. Regardless of how that turns out, this kid’s gonna go far.