The coach’s name is Mike Pollock Rice*. He’s fired, and on the firing itself I have no complaints. This is the coach who was caught on tape physically abusing the players, kicking them in the butts several times, as he did his coach-thing. I certainly see what he’s trying to do. My baseball coach was the same way, and I think most coaches are. So my disagreement with other people who agree the coach should have been fired, is not quite so much with the idea that he should’ve been fired, as with the question: What exactly is the difference between this coach, and other coaches who don’t have to be fired?

It isn’t anger. Coaches, coaching this way, are supposed to act angry. It’s part of the act. Nor is it loss of control due to anger or behavioral-disorder or substance-abuse issues. There could be some of that going on, but what I see in the video reminds me of that whole phony angry-coach facade. And it isn’t the results, for I know nothing of the results Coach Rice managed to bring, nor do I care. His technique just sucks. The spectacle is just dumb, and distracting, and I don’t think the coach is good at his job if that’s what it takes to do it. There is also some gossip going on about “homophobic remarks,” by which I infer he used slang that you’re not supposed to be using in this day and age. That probably had as much to do with the firing as anything else.

That having been said: My mind is blown that a firing, somewhere, at long last, can squeek on through the way this one did. Can’t help but wonder how many other firings need to happen, but don’t. How many times does someone show they don’t have the slightest idea what they’re doing. And, are left standing. Or even promoted.

This ties in to something else I noticed: People who favor gun restrictions, and that includes lawmakers who are pushing for gun-restriction legislation, who have “been working on [these bans] for years…been deeply involved in the issue,” and yet know precious little about it.

Here’s a woman who hasn’t got the slightest clue what she’s doing. Is she going to be expelled from the House of Representatives now, or at least asked to stop legislating against guns until such time as she educates herself? To be sure, the Sheriff of Lamar County made exactly that request, but it’s probably not going to go anywhere. To acquire knowledge, you have to admit you don’t have it yet. Legislators who support gun control haven’t been known to do that too often.

I think we need to admit something here, about firings and other corrective measures. These two examples are sufficient to highlight the trend, and I see no upside to the idea of gathering more, for the trend is defined: Ignorance and incompetence do not get anyone fired, or subject to any other action truly meaningful.

Cultural clashes do that.

The problem I see has to do with set membership. The rule is that you can get canned for supporting one culture over another, or rather for failing to adequately support the other. While you can’t be canned for incompetence — back in the day, of course, canning had everything to do with lack of competence, and not often about anything else. Today it’s really all about culture and doesn’t have much to do with the competence thing.

This change is effective throughout all of our modern society. But there are many cultures in our society.

Somehow, somewhere, it has been decided that this one culture should reign supreme. It must ALWAYS win; there can be no exceptions. What do we call this culture, now. We should try to define it, if it always has to win! That’s a lot of influence. We know it by the offenses it takes. Bullying, homophobic remarks, guns. It isn’t “politically correct,” for the politically-correct culture, while also defined according to the offenses it takes, is confined to offenses taken against verbal or written statements. Guns aren’t statements. Ass-kickings are not statements either, although I suppose that may be debatable. But this is not political-correctness, and it isn’t “women over men” since it takes just as vicious umbrage against a woman brandishing a firearm in self-defense, as against any man doing likewise.

It isn’t modern liberalism, either. It doesn’t have an opinion about labor-versus-management, or minimum wage, or affirmative action, or school vouchers. It holds a lot of appeal for people who do not self-identify as liberals. And its field of interest is very narrow. I can summarize it with a phrasing almost bumper-sticker-sized:

“When we make everything safe enough, nothing bad will happen, to anyone, ever again.”

Just outside a school on a 55 mph county highway, it isn’t good enough to take the limit down to 25. My recent experiences here in upstate New York show it has to be 15. I guess twenty-five wouldn’t show how much we care. This culture cares about children arriving at adulthood with all their limbs and with their hearts still beating, but with not too much else.

Can we call it “the nanny state” and be done with it? There is certainly some overlap. The Mayor of New York City trying to ban soda sales fits into the object of my inspection here, and it is certainly part of the nanny state. Pondering it some more, though, I find this doesn’t quite work. There are differences, and the differences matter. The nanny state is an organization, and it is a sale. It is narcissists in office who have power, trying to accumulate some more. This is more like the purchase. The nanny state made no move to fire Mike Rice, and it had no interest in doing so. Rice, I think, was not fired for lack of success; he was fired for the attempt.

The truth is, there are some unpleasant boyhood memories behind every real man. That is what it takes to put together a manly man who can do manly things. This is not a defense of Coach Rice’s unprofessional actions, it’s simply a statement of fact. In the same way knowledge begins with admitting you don’t know something, learning how to do things in a manly way begins with an admission that, in the here-and-now, the boy’s best is not good enough. And that can’t be self-admission. So an authority figure is going to have to step in and say, you screwed up. That’s where manhood starts.

This culture — which always must win — is endangering our very society, because it is opposed to that. As the nanny-state seeks to everlastingly grow by way of creating more and more rules, this culture seeks to everlastingly grow by altering the definition of “bad things happening.” It has progressed so far now, without anyone consciously noticing it evidently, that bad-feeling evidently qualifies. If nothing bad really happens, but someone feels slighted, then action is required. This, of course, has to be a selective thing. It’s okay to make a guy “feel bad” when he approaches the State Fair with a Leatherman on his belt, by commanding him to walk a mile and a half back to his car, and back again, to stow the threatening-looking device. And a twelve-year-old girl who wins a pistol shooting contest might feel good with a little bit of extra applause, but this feel-good-all-the-time culture will refrain from that, and command everyone else to refrain as well.

The Leatherman is not dangerous and the pistol is not dangerous. In some situations, they both have the potential to make someone safe.

So this culture is not concerned with safety or danger. It has definite ideas about individuals and what, or how, the individuals should be.

The common theme I’m seeing throughout it all, is that the individuals should not be prepared or equipped. Men should not behave in a way that suggests they have what men are supposed to have. Women are not supposed to act like women. Children should not learn to be more than children while they’re children; so at that instant of majority-age, they should be ambushed, surprised and indeed completely baffled by whatever life can throw at them.

This culture has a lot to say about sex, whereas its close cousin the nanny-state seems to confine most of its dogmatic rules to just about everything else. These rules-about-sex are not rules, rather they are softened to simple preferences. High-fives for the encouragement, and raps-on-the-knuckles for discouragement. The preference along the gender-divide is always toward a muting of it. The high-fives come for the woman who’s chopped her locks into something short, like what you might see on a little boy’s head, the classic “bowl cut.” Pantsuits on a woman get the high-five. I’m seeing a lot of “powerful,” “intelligent” female lawmakers who can’t show or say anything to prove they’re either one — except for their habits of wearing pantsuits so often, that after awhile of watching them you see it starts to look clownish, and think they’re trying to make fun of somebody. Watching daytime teevee with my in-laws, I’m starting to see why this is fashionable. This Kelly Ripa woman, I notice, has a beautiful face but a very unappealing and unfeminine way about how she swings her skinny body around. And it’s not just her. I’m noticing a lot of women on the teevee lately, swing their thighs around the ball sockets in their pelvises in odd, strange ways, ways that mothers used to teach their daughters not to do. The pants, the skinny jeans, the leggings, they all fit in with this, and the skirts don’t.

Men are not supposed to appear masculine. That is a beat-down. In the workplace, it is unsafe for a man to say or do anything manifesting his masculinity. Even speaking in a naturally low voice is to tread into unsafe territory. He shouldn’t do anything to show his heterosexual desires; it might make homosexuals, or their sympathizers, feel bad. For the time being, it’s still safe to mention the fact that you have a girlfriend. Mentioning the wife is a bit safer even than that. But seriously, for how many more years are these things to be well-advised in the ultra-modern, ultra-sensitive office environment? I see a future not too far off, where the marital status falls off into the broad, deep, murky waters of “don’t bring it up, there’s no upside to it.”

And certainly, the married women are not supposed to mention their husbands. This has become the normal pattern now, especially among the famous and high-profile celeb females who are married: The stud isn’t worth mentioning. It’s amazing how far into the details they can go, discussing their childrens’ names, school adventures, strengths, handicaps, imaginary play friends, lost teeth, and all the rest of it without ever mentioning the stud, even once. This is again, I suppose, a nod toward sensitivity: Some womens’ children don’t have a dad. Other women have to map out which dad is the dad to which kid, and the level of complexity has exceeded what we wish to discuss in polite company with new acquaintances. But, also, you have to wonder how important is the mapping; if the connections that make up the map don’t matter, then neither does the map. So, there is her, there are her kids. Just like a mother cow with her calves.

When we think about and talk about homosexuality, an irony ripples across the surface of this culture-that-must-always-win. Men, women and children are not to be prepared or equipped, and if they are prepared or equipped, they should not act like they are prepared or equipped. Weaknesses may be accentuated, but strengths should always be muted down, lest someone be made to feel bad who is lacking those strengths. We are not allowed to show that we have gifts. An inclination toward heterosexuality is to be treated likewise; if you are a man who prefers women, or a woman who prefers men, you should tone this down so that homosexuals can be made to feel like they’re not being excluded. Heterosexuality, therefore, is to be treated the same way strengths are treated; homosexuality is to be treated the same way a handicap is treated.

For this to make sense, the culture-that-must-always-win must treat heterosexuality as a gift…

The culture-that-must-always-win, therefore, has to contradict itself. I suppose this is why we don’t want to examine it in any meaningful detail, we don’t like what we might find out about it. It isn’t enforceable, until & unless everyone is bound to get in some trouble, for there is no way for anyone to behave appopriately all of the time.

We should talk about this more. Feminism doesn’t always have to win; “black power” doesn’t always have to win. Even Barack Obama doesn’t always have to win. But this weird culture that doesn’t even work, and is opposed to children and adults knowing how to confront the challenges that life has to offer, has to win. All of the time.

If that’s the way people really do want it to work, then fair enough, I bow to the whim of the majority. But let’s discuss it, out in the open, first.

*Rice, not Pollock. Commentator nightfly is right, I got my butt-kicking basketball coaches mixed up.

More and more, I continue to hear that “the market for Java programming is really taking off!” as, with increasing frequency, when I open up a new browser tab with some long-sought article or other information loaded into it, some web ad will creep in and float in on top of it so I can’t read any further. I see a connection between these two things.

I’m seeing other signs that, as the economy continues to suck, more and more products and services are being provided to “consumers” who aren’t really consumers because we/they don’t want whatever they are. The phone calls from telemarketers, carefully positioned around our dinnertime, become more frequent. A lot of them have to do with “taking surveys,” which I dunno, is that some kind of effort to get around the do-not-call laws? Well, I suppose it is to be expected. If you’re in business to provide something people actually want, it won’t be enough for people to want it, they have to be willing to part with cash in order to get it. That would be a lot of wait between the wanting right now, so I can see how it’s more appealing to provide something people don’t want. It’s clear to me that this wouldn’t be a simple marketing trick either, there’d have to be some innovation involved. Well, sadly, it looks like we’ve done it.

Even worse, the markets have adapted. Among those lucky enough to have a job, there is a growing problem of all these occupations, and the abundance of energy associated with them, being invested in providing things for which nobody asked. And so we have an addiction. If, tomorrow, all the commerce were to stop happening until such time as a real consumer stepped forward with a real demand and some real assets to back it up, a whole lot of people would be suddenly thrown out of work.

I also note that the legislative activity has stepped up quite a bit, possibly as a result of all this. A lot of things I hear about Congress doing, I see, is stuff entirely separated from any detectable constituent demand. Know anyone who was jamming the Capitol Hill switchboard wanting an Internet sales tax? Me neither.

It puzzles me that economists don’t talk more about this. Capitalism, at least the capitalism with which I’ve been acquainted, has a lot to do with want. Free want. It has to do with genuine consumer demand. This kind of capitalism is not quite so much being attacked right now, or being positioned for its destruction, quite so much as for its replacement. It’s a post-W2 job, post-desire “capitalist” world. In this world it is easy to “succeed,” but hard to find any opportunities to do so while actually building something valuable. I fear we may be on the way toward those opportunities drying up entirely. Then we’ll all pay the price…but not immediately. We’ll put it on layaway.

Not a good road for us. We should stop, turn around, and head back.

Update: I’m reminded of a Hello-Kitty-of-Blogging update I made early Saturday morning. Most of my weekend updates get zero likes and zero commentary; that was not the case here. It even got re-shared twice, so I guess it hit a nerve.

Pre-Occupy, our word was “if”: “If you give me that money, I will give you this product or service…with which you can do things.” Now, our word is “until”: “You will not be able to do your things, until you stop everything and…” Pay attention to our demonstration, get the degree at our school, join our labor union, contribute to our “charity,” buy carbon offsets, get permits, grease some palms…

We have evolved from a society in which people put bread on their tables by helping each other to get things done, to one in which people put bread on their tables by stopping each other from getting things done — until certain conditions are met.

We wonder why we’re more contentious, and why the standard of living is slipping when so many people are “working” so hard. The answer is in where the work is going. There are lots of occupations out there, requiring a whole lot of activity and energy and “creativity,” that don’t have much to do with actually building anything.

Prelutsky is scaring the dickens out of me. Which I’m sure is a delight to some opinionated people out there who, as opinionated as they may be, aren’t going to be willing or able to say why they take delight in my consternation:

There is a trial balloon, or at least a rumor, floating around that suggests there just might be a Hillary Clinton/Michelle Obama run for the White House in 2016. Some are actually referring to it as a dream ticket. More like a nightmare. But I am willing to make book it doesn’t happen. Anyone who actually believes Mrs. Obama would play second fiddle to the honky bitch probably thinks that if that idea doesn’t pan out, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny might consider making a run for the White House. At least those two seem to like each other.

Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama make a “dream ticket.” I’m still at a loss to figure out what anybody sees, by way of positive characteristics, in either one. Let me guess, something to do with being super-duper smart and/or not “tak[ing] any [slang for used food] from anybody.”

I find this annoying for two reasons: One, what follows these often-repeated homilies, can be assured to be missing any specifics. I realize everything cannot be imbued with specifics. But I’m annoyed when these sound bites are given a sense of urgency, or enthusiasm, and are still missing the specifics. Especially when the specifics are so badly needed. We’ve had a long time, by now, to see some evidence of how smart Hillary Clinton is, and almost as long to see how smart Michelle Obama is. To date, the only example either has been able to bring, is by way of which fellow they respectively chose to marry.

I can’t think of a single job I’d want either one of them to do for me.

The other reason I find it to be annoying is that these two pushy broads, both of them, are…well, they’re annoying. They both seem to be working at it. I don’t like watching them or listening to them. If I had to make an appointment with either one, to have a conversation with them or simply to hear them speak, I would dread it and think of every excuse in the world to miss out on it.

And that seems to be the appeal. There is a template here, and the template doesn’t seem to be put together to impress women, but to impress men like me. Negatively. Shrill, unpleasant women who fit in the template, end up with this large and enthused following, because they are likely to give men headaches. No other characteristic is required in this template, no is any other characteristic needed. Annoy men. That’s good enough. Is that really what’s going on here?

And who is in the following? Who is churning up all this excitement over the idea that the latest female pol or celeb is repellent to men?

I know people don’t like it when I notice these things. Throughout the years, I’ve shown a tendency to get into a lot of trouble for noticing things that aren’t supposed to be noticed. But you know, Hillary Clinton seems to put an awful lot of energy and effort into being a shrill, unpleasant bitch. Ditto for Michelle O. To ignore that they’re trying to do it, seems itself to be impolite in its own way; when someone tries so hard to get something done, isn’t noticing their efforts the very least we can do?

It works the other way, I notice. If a woman, real or fictitious, shows some man-appeal for whatever reason there is a predominant view in our contemporary culture that this is a liability against her, and an imperative exists that she should be treated like something toxic. Sarah Palin should never be heard from again. As far as cartoons go, Wonder Woman and Lara Croft both should cover up their legs, which since I live in California, I find pretty amusing…you busybodies have any idea how many real pairs of beautiful female legs we can see down here every year? It’s completely awesome. And the cartoon characters also have to shrink down their boobs.

There are a lot of exceptions to this. And I find the exceptions even more fascinating: The trend seems to be toward stupidity. The Kardashian sisters can show as much thigh, and strut around with buxom bosoms, in prominence, to their hearts’ content. There is some simmering resentment against this, but it is muted. Their fame is not appreciated, among many, but among those many the fame is at least accepted as a fact of life. Not like, for example, Sarah Palin’s fame, which seems to be regarded by several among that same crowd as an actual problem that has to get solved with some sense of urgency. Palin is told to “go away”; the Kardashian sisters are not told that.

It seems to me that the typical straight man might appreciate looking at Snooki, KimK, Jessica Simpson, et al, but we wouldn’t very much like to be in the same room with any of them. We might like to screw them. We wouldn’t want to date them. I notice a consistent pattern wherein, where that situation exists, the muting-down of the resentment over the airhead-idiot-girl’s good looks, inevitably follows. Big boobs are okay. Boobs with brain, that’s a disaster.

If the woman is good-looking and might be a decent male-fantasy in the sack, but also is someone the man might like to take out for breakfast afterward because she knows enough to hold up her end of a conversation, she still might get a pass if she has the “don’t take any crap from anybody” thing going on. Like for example, Angelina Jolie. Not exactly my cup of tea, but there’s no denying she’s a good looking woman. But women don’t resent her or want her to go away. She might steal their husbands; the husbands might like getting stolen, might appreciate being around Angelina; but while the deed’s being done, the vision seems to be, Angelina would refuse to take bottom position. So there is redemption if there is a perception of female dominance.

The fictional characters, Tomb Raider and Wonder Woman, can’t bring this because in their case, at least classically, they have very tastefully been developed as asexual beings. Today we think of that as “it isn’t really established what their preference is, they might be lesbians or bisexual.” Sadly, that is about as close as we can come, today, to understanding “it has nothing to do with sex.” Yeah yeah, I know, Wonder Woman was originally a bondage fantasy. But after she gained momentum as a comic book character, she became something that today we evidently can’t allow: A heroine, who doesn’t have that kind of a social life because she’s a product developed for little kids — who happens to be beautiful. Beauty without sex. I guess we just can’t understand that now. So wear long pants, Wonder Woman, and shrink down those boobs.

We are not, it goes without saying, getting rid of any mention or thought of sex. We’re not even doing that for the benefit of little kids. Our societal beef seems to be against manifestations of hetero appeal.

Sometimes when you inspect things awhile, you find they don’t exist as isolated instances, but as extensions of something else. I’m starting to see this particular phenomenon that way. Consider that in our society, if you are an atheist then you have an absolute right to be one, and we have seen much agitation toward the preservation of that liberty. But of course it doesn’t stop there. No atheists are being forced to change their system of belief, for example, because a street has a certain name, but they obviously feel like they have some rights that are being trampled. Such a right must be: If I believe one way, I do not want to see any evidence anywhere that anybody else believes differently.

From all I have seen and heard and all the patterns I’ve detected, that must be what this is about. “I do not want to see evidence, anywhere, that men find women attractive.” There is much contention caused by this today, in this age in which we’re supposed to be so concerned about things being contentious, and wanting things to be less so. Well you know, I don’t think we really want that. If we wanted things to be less contentious, I think this pseudo-right a lot of people seem to think they have, not to see evidence of things, would now and then encounter a rebuke, or at least a challenge. That isn’t happening. What’s happening is we’re seeing the phony right asserted, more and more often, in more and more things. It shows up in a desire that women who obviously have a lot of appeal, should “go away.” Get out of here and take your infernal man-appeal with you! It isn’t the pleasing face or the supple thighs or the heaving bosoms, if it was that simple then Kim Kardashian would be getting chased off the stage too. It’s fear; fear of a good example. Fear that someone might start thinking “I wish X could be more like Y.” Simple jealousy. What your loyal old dog might be feeling, the night you come home with a new baby kitten.

So Michelle and Hillary might be a “dream ticket,” to some. This isn’t a bad thing because of the who, as in, who finds this to be a dream ticket. The peril is in the why. For quite awhile now we’ve had politicians being elevated to offices of real power, based on the kind of fear I’ve been inspecting and probing here. Doesn’t seem to be working out too well, I’d say. And, acknowledging that I’m not the focus group being chased by this dream-harpy ticket, nevertheless I’d have to expect that over the long term, things wouldn’t work out any better there either. Fear is not a good motivator for choosing leaders, especially leaders who are supposed to have real influence.

Phil forwarded on a Cafe Hayek Quotation-of-the-day post to me…the quote is from Mencken…

They like phrases which thunder like salvos of artillery. Let that thunder sound, and they take all the rest on trust. If a sentence begins furiously and then peters out into fatuity, they are still satisfied. If a phrase has a punch in it, they do not ask that it also have a meaning. If a word slides off the tongue like a ship going down the ways, they are content and applaud it and await the next.

It is timely because I was just commenting on a stuffy, committee-speak rebuttal-rebuttal from Western Washington University’s geology faculty, that appeared in the Bellingham Herald and then was forwarded to me by a certain older family member.

You know how these committee-speak rebuttal-rebuttals go by now. Boilerplate phrases everywhere. And just like vegetable oil, or an Obama speech, one half-gallon exactly the same as any other half-gallon:

We concur with the vast consensus of the science community that recent global warming is very real, human greenhouse-gas emissions are the primary cause, and their environmental and economic impacts on our society will likely be severe if we don’t make significant efforts to address the problem. Claims to the contrary fly in the face of an overwhelming body of rigorous scientific literature.

Vast and overwhelming! Flies in the face! Any statements of specifics are provided grudgingly, if they are provided at all. The economic impacts on our society will likely be severe? I wonder what the economic impacts are of being able to grow more plants and vegetables in an atmosphere that is warmer and has more CO₂. Looks like they ran out of ink before they could tell me…

Well, let me guess. Something to do with vastly and overwhelmingly settled science, or something. I should go get hold of the Fourth Assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and somewhere in there they’ll fill me in. Nobody can tell me exactly what page it’s on, because they haven’t had to go look it up, because everyone else already knew the answer and that’s why they’re going to tell me to go look it up.

Hello, sentence beginning furiously and then petering out into fatuity.

Without the benefit of Mencken’s quote, I replied with regard to the WWU litanies:

Reads more like prose than scientific commentary. Words like “overwhelming,” “vast” and “painstaking” are obviously unscientific, yet time after time I notice the written defenses of the global-warming con are consistently peppered with them. The authors seem to increase their use of these with each sentence, until they reach a summit of:

Science thrives on controversies; it rewards innovative, unexpected findings, but only when they are backed by rigorous, painstaking evidence and reasoning. Without such standards, science would be ineffective as a tool to improve our society.

That isn’t even true. When an Edison comes up with a new light source or an Eratosthenes figures out the size of the Earth, the best that the “standards” have managed to contribute to the advancement is to stay out of the way. Something they have very often failed to do.

There is an argument taking place here that is not being acknowledged: How does individual thinking benefit our society, and how does group-think benefit our society? Those who repeat the words of others that have been most-often repeated, seem to think it works like this: The individual comes up with any ol’ random idea, just like a random mutation occurring before evolution, but the individual lacks the vision or the ability to say, or to prove, that the idea is a good one. It’s just a fart in a hurricane until the committee sits down and subjects it to its many layers of vast, painstaking, overwhelming peer review; it is the committee’s place to say “you know what, you might have something there.” And then, thanks to the committee, we have a smart phone…

Those who inspect the details, see that the individual does a lot of work. That’s why everyone isn’t doing it! So before it leaves his desk, he already knows he has something and that it works. What he might not know, is that someone somewhere else may have a better way of doing it. He also can’t fund it. So it goes before the committee, which champions some innovations and kills off others. Like any committee, it doesn’t make its decisions for the benefit of mankind necessarily, but more out of political expediency. So it has the same chance of making the “right” decision as you or I have of calling heads-or-tails.

We all seem cleanly divided on which of those visions is the correct one. Those who are very opinionated and loud think it’s the first vision, those who’ve been through the process think it is the second vision. I guess we should do what the low-information-voters do, see who’s loudest and talks more, agree with them, and go back to watching “Jersey Shore” or whatever.

I see Shelton, Washington is not amused.

Can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t…just one pain-in-the-ass rule away from everlasting happiness.

The way these people talk, just scares me. “Values of the community.” Haven’t they ever been in the minority, about anything?

Instapundit, by way of Maggie’s Farm:

Under a regulation proposed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, any homeowner – regardless of income – who falls 90 days behind on their mortgage will automatically become eligible for reduced interest rates, extended time for payment, or other relief. The Post reports:

Some analysts worried that the new program could encourage borrowers to deliberately miss payments in order to become eligible for the program.

“The primary issue is whether this will encourage borrowers to strategically default on their mortgage in order to get the modification. This risk exists because the new program does not require the borrower to demonstrate financial hardship,” Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Gugenheim Partners, wrote Wednesday. “

FHFA said Fannie and Freddie would use existing “screening measures to prevent strategic defaulters.”

Yeah, I’m sure that will work. Does doing the “right thing” even matter anymore, or does it just make you a doofus?

From the article:

In the past, to be eligible for a mortgage modification, borrowers had to provide documentation they had a financial hardship. They will no longer be required to do so — though providing such documentation will make borrowers eligible for more substantial monthly savings.

“This new option gives delinquent borrowers another path to avoid foreclosure,” said Edward DeMarco, the acting director of FHFA. “We will still encourage such borrowers to provide documentation to support other modification options that would likely result in additional borrower savings.”

Predictable. Tragically so. And a mighty but weakening nation becomes weaker still.

Monday, someone steps in a puddle; Tuesday, a nation mourns the tragedy. Wednesday, our government announces a program to provide clean, new, dry shoes to anyone who steps in a puddle and by Thursday, everybody’s looking for a puddle in which to do their stepping.

By Friday, there is government-provided training on how to find puddles.

Come the weekend, the liberals are mocking the intelligence of conservatives who have had the audacity to notice & point out what’s going on. It becomes comedy fodder for The Daily Show, Colbert Report and Saturday Night Live…after the weekend, the cycle is repeated as someone gets a paper cut…

From The Emperor’s New Clothes:

Everyone said, loud enough for the others to hear: “Look at the Emperor’s new clothes. They’re beautiful!”

“What a marvellous train!”

“And the colors! The colors of that beautiful fabric! I have never seen anything like it in my life!” They all tried to conceal their disappointment at not being able to see the clothes, and since nobody was willing to admit his own stupidity and incompetence, they all behaved as the two scoundrels had predicted.

A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.

“The Emperor is naked,” he said.

“Fool!” his father reprimanded, running after him. “Don’t talk nonsense!” He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy’s remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:

“The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It’s true!”

The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn’t see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.

With that bit of background, we now turn to the latest post up at Rhymes With Girls and Cars:

I don’t understand what ‘exchanges’ are supposed to be, in the context of Obamacare. We are constantly told that ‘exchanges’ are a huge part of it. And that there’s a lot of effort involved in ‘setting up an exchange’. Some states will, some states won’t. Etc.

I don’t get it.

To me an ‘exchange’ is a room with some phones. Actually, you don’t even need that. It’s a bunch of guys in a room exchanging stuff. Actually the room is optional, they could be out in a town square somewhere.

So why do they need to ‘set it up’? Why is it so much effort? I mean okay, I guess they’ll buy some computers, office space etc. But besides that?

On the flip side, why is it so important? What’s so magic about it? Once these ‘exchanges’ exist, what will happen? Is there a big demand amongst insurance companies to ‘exchange’ stuff (insurance contracts – I guess?) with each other, and if there is, why aren’t they setting up the exchange themselves, or if there’s not, how will setting one up help anything?

It would be pretty nice if we had a President who was obliged to answer some unwelcome questions now and then, so we could get this kind of information from, let’s say by way of example, a free and independent press diligently scrutinizing those in power, lending transparency to the daily functions of government. That way we could have enlightening dialogue rather than a bunch of polished little talking points being put in circulation.

For lack of that, we have me, with my years and years of experience in software development, server engineering and project management in the health care industry. And from that impressive background, I can condescendingly pat you peasants on the head and give you the benefits of my wisdom, ho ho! And the answer to your question is, “What is an exchange?”…and all the rest of your little questions…is…

…um…

++blink++

Well, tell you what. Let me get back to you on that.

Let me be clear, make no mistake, for far too long we have, blah blah blah…woozie wuzzel?

Forbes takes a look at the family-values folks’ contention that the polls must be flawed. The situation is, the voting patterns in the states are supposedly going in one direction, and the polls are going in another. So, supposedly, the polls must be skewed.

The op-ed concludes:

So, do [Tony] Perkins and [Gary] Bauer have a point here? Are the polls, which consistently reveal a growing majority of Americans supporting the LGBT communities right to marry, wrong?

Not a chance.

Indeed, rarely have polls from all sides of the political spectrum lined up so tightly with even the Fox Poll out a few days ago indicating that more Americans support same sex marriage than those who oppose it.

Well, I agree with Perkins and Bauer on the way this issue would go, at least locally, but I think they’re wrong and the Forbes column is right. Kind of an easy call. Same-sex marriage is hip and happening.

As far as what I want to see happening, well, I’m having a tough time getting my dander up about it. I’m not gay. Whatever passions I can bring to this issue have to do with peripheries. My resentments are stirred when I see politicians defining new classes of innocents to be made easy prey for trial lawyers looking for new ways to litigate. And, that’s what I think this is; no, I don’t think we need any more of it. I also see it as a distraction. We’re trying to figure out if a nation can be defended, by way of some mindset that comes up with every excuse under the sun to not defend things, unless those things are things that bring harm to other things. We’re also trying to figure out if a comatose economy can be revived, by way of some mindset that says there’s something wrong with being rich, and that every product or service that can cost money, has to cost as much money as it possibly can. We’re also trying to figure out — bizarrely — if a statement worded in such an unambiguous way as “shall not be infringed” might have a loophole. To me, those are the issues that really matter. Gay marriage is just a way to get politicians elected who are on the wrong side of those three issues, when deep down, everyone knows those politicians are on the wrong side of those three issues.

But there is something else that bugs me about the gay marriage. Or rather, about the people pushing it. I see it as an established fact that, if the consensus view is not already on their side of the net, it is certainly headed in that direction and at a pretty rapid clip. Same-sex marriage proponents are not behaving the way I would behave, if the consensus view was moving in my direction at a rapid clip.

I would not be taking this to the Supreme Court, or any other court. Why would I? The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. If we’re in the process of creating a new civil right, isn’t it better to create it through a manifestation of the public will, especially when you believe the public is coming around to your point of view on this thing? Isn’t it better to tell the dissenters “Sorry you don’t like same-sex marriage, but you’re outvoted on this thing” than, “Sorry you don’t like same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court has ruled that you need to tolerate it”? We already have that situation with the abortion thing. Has that made it any less contentious of an issue? I’m imagining myself as a homosexual who wants to get married, and I can’t help but think — please, God, yes, let’s go for that first one, the out-voting thing. If all I want to do is get married, and not to tick anybody off.

There is one other thing the gay-marriage proponents are doing, in response to this favorable shift in public sentiment, that I would not be doing if some pet issue of mine were to be enjoying the same benefit: They’re applauding a bit too hard & heartily, for the politicians who are latecomers. They’re too accepting of their fair-weather friends. I’m writing specifically about Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama, who did their evolving last year, and as late as the year-before still hadn’t done the evolving just yet, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who evolved just now.

Why all these giddy congratulations on the evolving? After it’s safe? That’s not evolving, that’s known as wetting your finger and sticking it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. It is an old metaphor to be applied to the political class; it is not a term of endearment.

This is bizarre. We’re supposed to be talking here, according to the tedious litanies, about some kind of a “basic human right.” That makes it even more bizarre. If same-sex marriage can be compared to abolition, this is like starting to support abolition somewhere around the time Ulysses Grant starts his second term.

I care about gay marriage just about the same way I care about global warming. If you want to “go green,” you go ahead and do it, just keep it out of my face. I don’t want to be reminded of it constantly. I don’t want to be taxed for it. Let’s just keep it framed as what it is: A disagreement about an issue, between two mortals, and it need not be hashed out all day every day. But it makes me nervous when, in a weak, sputtering economy like the one we have right now, so many people can be told so easily what their priorities are supposed to be.

We do not need gasoline to be made more expensive so people will be given an incentive to burn less of it. If you really think that’s going to save the planet somehow, you’re entitled to your opinion, but don’t come crying to me a year later about the retail sales figures slipping. Buying retail usually involves driving places. Like, duh. And we certainly don’t need more excuses for civil cases to be filed against priests, wedding planners, and cake decorators who’d rather not participate in same-sex ceremonies. Again, you’re entitled to your opinion, but if we’re really concerned about how hard it is for people to make a living, then the last thing we need is for our government to busy itself with new laws that begin with the phrase “the sale should not go forward unless…”

And haven’t you noticed? That’s pretty much all our government is doing lately. Um, are we concerned about the economy, or aren’t we?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wants to know:

If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same. And if that were the case then the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour,” she said, speaking to Dr. Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who has studied the economic impacts of minimum wage. “So my question is Mr. Dube, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn’t go to the worker.

The Fog of Law has an excellent answer for this.

It did go to the worker – in the form of lower prices. Once upon a time, almost all banks charged fees; the increases in technology enabled them to give banking services away for free. Increases in production technology enables people to pay less for better cars. Everyone who is reading this is benefiting from the increases in computer technology that enable them to buy a WiFi enabled tablet for about a tenth of the price of a late 1980s Apple IIE. As Thomas Sowell repeatedly points out, more houses were connected to the internet at the end of the twentieth century than were connected to running water at the beginning. But if we were legally required to pay inflation-adjusted salaries to plumbers to install water pipes into our house, to account for the increased ease of doing so, it’s likely that fewer people would have running water, let alone internet.
:
To use an example that may be familiar to Senator Warren, lawyers used to keep a team of secretaries for each attorney. Now, each attorney needs a smaller, albeit much more productive, support staff. The one lone remaining secretary isn’t making four times as much money, but the clients are no longer paying for four secretaries, so their bills are lower. Likewise, the secretary can now go out and buy a refrigerator for less money than she would have paid back in the ’60s, because it takes fewer people to build it, and she can open up a free checking account, since the bank is passing on cost savings to her. Ultimately, she gets more for her salary, just like everyone else does – which is far better than getting more salary to buy the same amount of stuff (i.e. the Warren plan).

A “dry run” at not-solving a phony problem, so we can get our pretend-to-solve-it skills at peak performance [for] when we start not-solving the real ones.

Words of wisdom from me, over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging.

Veering off on a tangent, in a piece of correspondence, I elaborate “off line”:

People are frustrated, bored, want to go through the motions of building something great and grand. But…They are destroyers, not creators. You ask them what they’re building, they can’t answer. You ask them what they’re destroying — they can. You ask their political opponents “What are those people over there trying to build, and what are they trying to destroy?” and the answers you get back, are identical to the answers you got from the participants in the movement themselves; only the terms are less glittery, less flattering. Example: The democrats want an “estate tax” and the Republicans call it a “death tax.” They disagree on the terms, but they agree on the implications of it and how it is supposed to work. What does it build? What does it destroy? Nobody can say what it builds. Well, it turns out a lot of human energy is going into things like that. Building things is scary. If someone comes along to quiz you about it, you have to say how it’s all supposed to work. And then when you actually do it, you have to get everything right. That means developing skills. Otherwise you do something stupid like put the wrong kind of fuel in the President’s limousine.

So in anticipation of the scrutiny and the assault of other destroyers, people find it easier to be destroyers; they’d rather do the quizzing, than be the ones who are getting quizzed.

I remember a very smart guy, the Chief Financial Officer for a company I once fooled into hiring me, and promoting me…came up with a real gem, which I must paraphrase and probably paraphrase poorly. Here goes. In government, even the people at the very top of the structure lack the authority to make anything go. But everybody, all the way down to the mail room, can bring the authority needed to put a stop to something. Everyone can stop something. Nobody can make it go.

Well, it isn’t true of just government. Authority and wherewithal to make things go, to build something new, are rare things. Because these things are rare, they are therefore precious. That the discipline involved is difficult to master, makes them even more rare and more precious. The authority and wherewithal to destroy such efforts, to bring them to a stop, are in abundance. The ritual of the destroyer quizzing the creator, obliging the creator to stop his creating if he can’t answer each question honestly, accurately, completely and to the satisfaction of the person asking. Doing that kind of quizzing is easy and fun. Being on the receiving end of it is frustrating, and not fun.

This is where I become truly embarrassed when I hear about the wrong fuel being put in the President’s limousine. The problem isn’t quite so much lack of skill. Heck, who am I to criticize, I never did find out if it was gas in a diesel engine, or diesel in a gas engine, and I’m at the point where I don’t give a hang. The problem is that it just wasn’t taken seriously, and I know why. The leadership is in the business of destruction because destruction is easier. They like to pretend they’re building something cool. They can’t say what it is they’re building. And, they lack the greater discipline required to build things.

Quoting Spock again:

As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create.

Here’s your first pic…

To find out what it’s all about, go read up over here. Bojangles is tops, in my book. I’d like to buy him a cube steak. Katie too.

Hat tip to Nightfly.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Bloomberg:

Restaurants are reeling from their worst three months since 2010, as American diners spooked by higher payroll taxes cut back on eating out.

Sales at casual-dining establishments fell 5.4 percent last month, after declining 0.6 percent in January and 1.6 percent in December, according to the Knapp-Track Index of monthly restaurant sales. This was the first three months of consecutive declines in almost three years, with consumers caught in a “very emotional moment,” said Malcolm Knapp, a New York-based consultant who created the index and has monitored the industry since 1970.

“February was pretty ugly” for many chains — and probably will be the worst month of the year — after January delivered an “initial blow” while Americans grappled with increased payroll taxes and health-care premiums, rising gasoline prices and budget debates in Washington, Knapp said.
:
U.S. paychecks have shrunk this year after Congress and President Barack Obama let the tax that funds Social Security benefits revert to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent. Meanwhile, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded has risen about 12 percent since Dec. 31, to $3.69 (3AGSREG), including a one-week jump of 17 cents between Jan. 27 and Feb. 3, based on data from Heathrow, Florida-based AAA, the largest U.S. motoring organization.

“That one-week spike was a killer; it destroyed sales in the first week of February,” Knapp said.

Wow. And yet the liberals will continue to argue we need to raise taxes so the economy can get moar-better or something…are we still in the period where this stuff is blamed on George W. Bush? For many of them, we probably are.

I don’t see how they can persist in denying things like this. I suppose the restaurant industry is something that lives and dies according to the discretionary parts of our budgets; the missus and I probably haven’t been eating out as much as usual since the year started, either. So maybe liberals just don’t understand the concept? They think everything is like gasoline, where you pay whatever it is whether you like it or not?

In truth, though — nothing is really that way. Not even the gas. Just the taxes.

United Liberty:

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a part of the Department of Education, has a section on its website dedicated to kids. The site has various facts and resources that kids may find interesting. It also has a “Quote of the Day” section.

While this section may occasionally provide insightful and otherise worthwhile quotes, today’s quote is from a historical figure isn’t exactly a role model. Here’s the quote directly from the website:

“Our attitude towards ourselves should be ‘to be satiable in learning’ and towards others ‘to be tireless in teaching.’” — Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong was a ruthless dictator who was responsible for as many as 65 million deaths in his communist Chinese regime. So yeah, he’s a completely stand up guy. Who cares if he killed 65 million people, right? He wanted people to learn. [/sarcasm]

Well, hey it’s true: Education is a good thing. Trouble is, that word can mean a lot of different things. It can apply to an increase in knowledge, or going by the way it is most popularly used these days, it can also be used to describe a process of conformity. The line between can be surprisingly fuzzy. I remember puzzling over this when I was in grade school, myself, way back at the beginning. Second or third grade, maybe. Teachers hate cheating; they hand out these papers with questions on them, you have to fill in answers, and no looking at your neighbor’s paper. Nosiree! But when they say “can I see a show of hands,” heads swivel left, heads swivel right, everyone wants to know if the other guy’s got his hand up…and the teachers don’t care about that one little bit. In truth, I didn’t think much of it at the time. Nowadays I think back on that more and more, and see it as the “flashpoint,” of sorts, where many of our society’s problems start.

Where both instructor and student start to envision mimicry as a substitute for high performance and deep thinking.

Quoting a communist dictator on the national education website doesn’t help the situation. Actually, why do we even have a national education website? Or a national education agency? Oh wait, scratch that, I think I know…I said it myself, “education is a good thing.” So the same casual-thinkers who are going to put their faith in this phony syllogism…so-and-so supports something called “education,” education is good, therefore that guy is good…they will tend to be the same ones who figure, if you’re serious about it you’re going to be making a federal program out of it.

We don’t know how many lives were lost to Mao’s Great Leap Forward and we likely never will. The one mystery about this we might be able to solve in the generation or so ahead of us, if we really try, is: How come Americans fail to take communism seriously? We’re supposed to believe in, and stand up for, things like equal opportunity, speaking out when you see something is wrong, transparent government, service within that government being service-first prestige-last, stuff like that. Even without taking into account the millions of deaths, and tortures, and “disappearings” and the dismal economic conditions that follow communism around wherever it goes, by its very nature it is opposed to all these values we’re supposed to hold dear. Why do we tolerate it, quote from it, and on many occasions find ways to ridicule whoever would speak out against it?

Was just given cause to think about this…

For those who can’t spare the 65 seconds to watch all the way through, someone’s prepared a cool animated .GIF:

Not sure what got me on that. I was reading Gerard’s site, and I happened across something there…this, I think. Which led me to this. Oh, dear. Oh yes, that must have been it. Definitely yes.

If the latest news out of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in San Francisco is accurate, those who both worry about the dangers of manmade climate change and support the legalization of marijuana are going to have to make a tough choice.

According to a report by Evan Mills, an energy analyst at the lab, the growing of marijuana indoors uses 1 percent of the U.S. electricity supply and creates 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year. That’s not including the carbon dioxide produced by exhaling pot smoke.

The chief source of the energy expenditure comes from the special plant lights required to grow cannabis indoors, which require 500 times as much energy as bulbs needed for reading. Other factors, including air conditioning, ventilation, and humidity control, also contribute to the cost.

++Meow!++ Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh…

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

…that would be the tax that is already owed, but not yet collected — from employees of the federal government. We’re all equal, but some of us are more equal than others. Daily Caller, by way of Mr. Teach at Pirate’s Cove:

Citing figures indicating that more than 100,000 federal employees owe more than $1 billion in federal taxes, a House committee on Wednesday approved legislation that would require the firing of government workers who are “seriously tax delinquent.”

The legislation, introduced by Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, advanced through the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It now has to pass the full House to be implemented into law.

“Most taxpayers file accurate tax returns and pay the taxes they owe on time, regardless of their income,” Chaffetz, a Republican, said during the hearing Wednesday. “Federal employees and individuals applying for federal employment should do the same.”

The Federal Employee Tax Accountability Act of 2013 requires the termination of employment for tax delinquent federal employees, while also prohibiting the hiring of new federal employees with a substantial amount of delinquent tax debt.

“The intent of the bill is simple,” Chaffetz said. “If you are a federal employee or applicant, you should be making a good faith effort to pay your taxes or to dispute them, as all taxpayers have the right to do.”

Chaffetz explained that the term “seriously tax delinquent” is defined as having an outstanding federal tax debt where a notice of lien has been publicly filed.

The bill exempts employees who can demonstrate financial hardships and an effort of working to settle tax liabilities.

Democrats on the committee opposed the bill. Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the committee, said the legislation “seeks to demonize federal employees rather than ensure their compliance with tax obligations.”

“By requiring agencies to fire employees for not paying their taxes on time, the measure actually undermines the ability of the government to collect the unpaid taxes,” Cummings said. “It is much, much, much more difficult to recoup the delinquent taxes from someone who is unemployed.”

The article goes on to lay out Congressman Cummings’ alternative suggestions for resolving the delinquent tax issues.

Oh, oops, no wait. I made up that last part. It’s not there; I looked for it. And I looked for it because the first thought in my head was, if I were Elijah Cummings, I’d have spent a moment or two thinking about, gosh darn it if I really don’t want this to happen, I’m sure my words will carry much greater persuasive weight if I could offer a solution of my own.

These are really funny, strange people. When there’s a problem they want solved, and their solution involves sorting people out into these different levels of privilege, they’ll hold back nothing in getting that solution applied even if the problem is a non-problem, like for example the climate change scam. Although there are many others. But when elsewhere, there is a real problem, and the problem is that we’ve already been sorted out into these different levels of privilege, the “Everybody On Equal Footing” party doesn’t want that problem solved at all.

They won’t even acknowledge it. Rep. Cummings thinks the problem is getting hold of the billion dollars. Isn’t that cute?

The mystery is, to what extent were they ever devoted to equal privilege, equal rights, equal protection under the law and equal opportunity.

To what extent they are devoted to such things today, there’s no mystery at all. That much is crystal clear.

Wish I had the idea that John Hawkins had. I could probably come up with another 25 items before my wife even has my breakfast ready.

But his five are pretty good, in that most of them, some 80%, are practical. They have a definable effect on what gets done by the guy losing his man card, and what doesn’t, and on how things turn out.

Update: Was reading this…

That’s the funny thing about women. They’re always trying to tame men and then the moment they pull it off, they get bored with the wolf they managed to carefully craft into a poodle.

I’ve been noticing that for awhile. There is the courtship/seduction then the fun times then the proposal then the marriage then the errands errands errands errands errands…(deep breath) more errands…

Several years later, you see what they expect out of each other every day, and a lot of couples lapse into that pattern: He doesn’t expect a damn thing, and what she expects is, a timetable of very simple tasks to be met. Or else there will be complaining. In a lot of other cases, the simple tasks are never more involved than “make sure you’re out of the way.” Some wives skip straight to the complaining — if he did it right, she’d never know what to do with herself. It’s a very sad thing to see.

Not hard to see, though. There’s the misconception. Lots of married couples think there is absolute privacy here, nobody on the outside understands. They’re like the lovers in the office who think no one knows what’s up. In reality, very few things are more obvious.

Anyway: I’ve always thought of a metaphor involving a wild stallion, and a little wooden hobby horse. It’s in the instinct profile of a fertile woman: Engage that good wild man-energy, run with it, harness it, tame it…and then get rid of it, and spend the rest of your days tolerating the empty husk of what’s left. Peevishly. I feel badly for both of them, but what can you do.

Interesting piece of data appearing in the Washingtonian yesterday:

Journalist and political blogger Matthew Yglesias bought a three-bedroom, three-bath condo on Q Street in Logan Circle for $1.2 million. In a converted Victorian rowhouse, the unit has original exposed-brick walls and a private patio. Yglesias writes about business and the economy for Slate.

Andy at Ace of Spades wants to know:

So, party at Matty’s this weekend? I mean, I’m sure he won’t mind if we crash the joint, what with that myth of owning private property and all.

Looks like validation of a theory of mine: It isn’t about who-has-what, it’s about who merits the having of it.

Hat tip to Daily Caller, by way of Instapundit.

I no longer give a crap if it’s gas instead of diesel or diesel instead of gas. The reports have gone both ways. And, you know, it really doesn’t matter…

Also, it seems clear it’s a matter of miscommunication, likely involving some crucial bit of information that has a classification rating. It’s possible that the guy whose hand was on the fuel pump handle did everything exactly right. I would even consider that a likelihood.

But no matter what…it is yet another embarrassment for the country. And it’s a perfect metaphor for the situation. The guy at the top of the food chain gives wonderful perfect speeches but has never held a real job. So yeah. Some crucial details that involve making things actually work, are not going to get the respect and the attention they command…and things will get screwed up. It is pre-determined.

Remember all those limo problems President Bush had?

Me neither.

Dunno. Better read up to find out.

What is it like to paint on Kate Upton‘s nude body? Only one person can truly answer this question and her name is Joanne Gair, a New Zealand-born makeup artist who has worked on the SI Swimsuit issue for 14 years. Though she still handles many traditional makeup jobs, Gair has carved a niche as the premier bodypainter in the industry. New York Magazine recently spoke with Gair about her career and painting SI’s cover model in the buff. The interview is well worth reading and here are a few of the more interesting quotes:

How the models prepare for a bodypainting session:

I need all the hair follicles removed as best they can, otherwise it gets done on the day. Hair follicles only show when you start airbrushing. Even if you think you have none, as soon as you blow air on skin, the follicles stand up and you can see them because they get coated with color. So you need to make sure that’s not there, because with high definition you’re going to see everything — and I mean everything.
:
What it’s like working with Kate Upton:

I first met Kate when she was 18, and she was so excited. I know a lot of people say this, but it’s true — she is completely comfortable in her own skin. She brings a great deal of life to the moment. She knows how to calm down and go into a zen state and relax, but she finds humor in all of it, and really keeps morale up. It’s very enjoyable working with a live canvas that has so much personality.

No plot, no motive. But fun to watch, and everyone has the same favorite-part of course…

(Language warning)

From here, and hat tip to Gerard.

GoneWithTheWind comments on capitalism, over at Maggie’s Farm.

This post-subscribing thing generates a lot of e-mail, but I’m picking up the impression that, nevertheless, I should make a point of doing it more often.

Capitalism is “normal”. It has been around forever and is more like a law of nature then a invention of man. The dramatic increase in capitalism coincides with and is a result of freedom. The freedom of individuals to practice capitalism openly and in many different ways. To the extent there is any moral negative to it is not the result of capitalism but simply the inevitable result of human nature. We are not perfect beings and we use many things including religion to attain personal gain often at the expense of others. babies do it right out of the womb and most humans do it until their last breath. Everything from taking the last cookie to using sex to get what you want to taking money by false means is human nature and not the result of capitalism or religion or any external factor.

I consider the Wikipedia definition to be a great example of how one distances oneself from reality by relying too much on textbooks, and laboring with too much effort to produce answers found to comport with their content:

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of capital goods and the means of production, with the creation of goods and services for profit. Elements central to capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, and a price system. There are multiple variants of capitalism, including laissez-faire, welfare capitalism, and state capitalism…

All veritably true, as usual. And unhelpful in the endeavor of defining something.

When we discuss capitalism, we are discussing trade. Exchange of goods and services. And free of coercion, including regulatory or tax-related coercion. The traders act like owners of the commodities being exchanged, or representatives of those owners, saying yea or nay to the proposal based on their consideration of the value of the commodities. If such selfish evaluations enjoy primacy above all other considerations in the arrival at the yea-or-nay, then we have capitalism. If they don’t, then we don’t.

Some of the attacks upon capitalism we have seen, lately, have to do with perversions, not displacements, of it. A bank that is “too big to fail” and assents to faulty loans with the understanding that the government will shield the bank from the undesirable consequences, qualifies for my definition. In fact, that’s the whole problem with too-big-to-fail. The phrase packed barely enough punch to allow the negotiators to get away with it — in the urgency of the moment, third-quarter of 2008. The process went forward, with the grudging approval, or at least lack of will to protest it into stoppage, of the public. But that smattering of goodwill has not aged well, I think.

Getting back to the subject at hand: It’s a good point. Capitalism is normal. You have A, I have B, it is natural that our situations are different and you may value A more than B, while my material values are the opposite. We trade. One or the other of us suffers, if one or the other of us is in the wrong, which will happen from time to time. But overall, we will both be correct, because with repeated exchanges we will learn whatever it is we need to learn. The exchanges that endure over time, therefore, will be the ones that are mutually profitable.

It’s odd that the people who have the greatest positive exuberance for “evolution,” nurture the most bitter and churlish resentment against capitalism. The latter endures only as a proper and functional implementation of the former. It therefore possesses all of the noted characteristics: Big improvement over long time, as a result of everyday happenstance within much shorter time, involving success, failures, discomfort and demise. Throughout it all, the organisms learn, and the organisms improve. It is the same process, in all the ways that really matter.

I’ve had exactly this thought, many a time and long ago. So I must have been an old person for quite awhile now.

From the Brother-in-Law, in the e-mails:

An Observation on an Age Old Question

I mowed the lawn today, and after doing so I sat down and had a cold beer.

The day was really quite beautiful, and the drink facilitated some deep thinking on various topics.

Finally I thought about an age old question:

Is giving birth more painful than getting kicked in the nuts?

Women always maintain that giving birth is way more painful than a guy getting kicked in the nuts.

Well, after another beer, and some heavy deductive thinking, I have come up with the answer to that question.

Getting kicked in the nuts is more painful than having a baby; and here is the reason for my conclusion.

A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, “it might be nice to have another child.”

On the other hand, you never hear a guy say, “You know, I think I would like another kick in the nuts.”

I rest my case.

Time for another beer.

Hat tip to Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm.

Of course it makes good sense that living things within an ecosystem have an effect on that ecosystem, and vice-versa. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Within the environmental movement, wherever science fails to show that we have to stop commercialism and development in order to continue surviving and/or become decent people, their special brand of religion will fill in the gaps. It’s a curious consistency they have about it: If a human did it, it must be poisonous. They’re not worried about cows releasing methane into the atmosphere, unless the cows are living on a farm run by a human, supplying a market of beef consumed by humans. Greenhouse gases are not the problem, in the environmental doctrine, the problem is that humans put them there. Anything humans put anywhere, is a problem.

From Sippican, by way of Kate at Small Dead Animals.

Got a family matter going on, the details of which are entirely irrelevant. As is typical of family matters, lots of involved/related people get a “vote” in what’s going on, but not really; you’ve probably had some family matters, and you know how it is. People make it clear they’d like to have your buy-in, but nobody has veto power, the thing is going to happen no matter what. So, you go through the motions of gathering information…after awhile, you start to feel like the doctor must feel when he’s giving an examination to a patient who’s eating or smoking himself to death, and won’t do what the doctor says. Just performing an autopsy a few months early.

So I have made the acquaintance of a professional who was selected by someone else. The thing that interests me is not that my questions are unwelcome; it was the way she went about letting me know she doesn’t like my questions. Reminds me of when we had another family matter about something entirely different, and my brother started making e-mail inquiries to a professional he did not select, the conversation went pretty much the same way.

After those experiences, I see this clip of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, avoiding questions that compare the cost of the White House tours — an expense that is a victim of the dreaded “sequester,” demanding as it does some $74,000 a week — to President Obama’s vacations. Again, the focus of my interest is not that Carney wants to avoid the question. It’s an awkward subject, and hey, it’s Jay Carney, this is what he does. He does very little else, from what I’ve seen. The focus of my interest is the technique:

I would summarize it thusly:

You: I’m concerned about [blank]. Since I have that concern, [question].
Other person: I don’t care about [blank]. [Topic change]

Like the first YouTube comment points out: “I wouldn’t say he avoids the question. He just makes it clear that he doesn’t care.” Precisely, and actually what he did was both of those things.

It is more than evasive. It is controlling. It is dishonest. It is intellectually lazy.

And I’m going to come up with a name for it right now: Transparency Deficit Disorder. Maneuvering of the focus of the discussion away, consciously or otherwise, from inspection or disclosure of some matter whose opacity is strategically desirable to the speaker, by means of bullying. The forceful imposition of one person’s attention-deficit problems upon another, at an opportune time.

I see it outside of politics just as much as I see it within politics. It is now about as widespread as a text-messaging acronym among high-school age kids, and it seems to have reached a popularity crescendo at about the same time. “I don’t care about that, and neither should you” is the sentiment. It is the opposite of inquisitiveness. Over a longer period of time, it is bound to make us stupid. There is no other outcome possible.

The time frame must have been fairly recent. Had Tony Snow or Ari Fleischer been asked something, and practiced such maneuvering, there would have been a full-blown scandal. So if this was on the rise during the Bush years, it must have been kept separated from politics. But, maybe it started within our nation’s politics. Perhaps when the anti-war movement sort of dissipated and drifted off into the ether, with the election of a democrat White House, this made non-inquisitiveness the order of the day.

Either way, I’m not liking it. I certainly don’t like bumping into it, several times a day, over entirely unrelated matters.

So many times when I have to contend with some kind of screw-up, on my part or on someone else’s part, it really doesn’t matter which one…as I triage the wreckage and try to figure out the point of failure, time after time it all comes back to a lack of access to, or availability of, or pursuit of, information. Someone did not disclose something, or someone did not take the time to learn it. In one form or another, information was not given the respect that it deserves, as an enabling agent of productive and discerning human effort. Again and again and again, this emerges as a root cause of some disaster, great or small…

I’m taking it as a tip-off that the people engaging their TDD are representative of, and accustomed to dealing with, a wholly different sort. What they mean to say is, of course, “that was a bad question.” But what they signify to me is that it wasn’t a bad question at all, it was a good one, and a little bit too good of a question. And they’re signifying something else to me as well: Insincerity.

I’m going to be pretty happy when we’re done with this fad. It’s going to demand a lot of patience.

Meanwhile…I don’t care if other people don’t care. It’s not answering my question.

Update: Actually, I see from my written archives this has been getting under my skin for, off-and-on, somewhere around seven years…

Thing I Know #112. Strong leadership is a dialog: That which is led, states the problem, the leader provides the solution. It’s a weak brand of leadership that addresses a problem by directing people to ignore the problem.

Not this site, but the official website for Steak and Blow Job Day. That would be today, March 14th.

You can “like” it on the Hello Kitty of Blogging, over here.

If you’re still unclear on it, the Urban Dictionary provides edification:

Celebrated on March 14th, Steak and Blowjob Day is a holiday for men, celebrated the month after Valentine’s Day — a holiday for women.

The idea is simple: no cards, flowers, candy or other whimsical gifts. Ladies, you simply bestow your partner with a steak and a blowjob. Not necessarily in that order.

From Gizmodo.

Discovered by BIL, the Brother-in-Law.

During a discussion, with Cylar Z over at The Hello Kitty of Blogging, I pointed something out…

I get the distinct impression that we’re all arguing about something here that doesn’t have anything to do with guns. Like Mencken said, puritanism is the fear that someone somewhere is having a good time; liberalism is a fear that someone somewhere is taking charge of a situation, protecting themselves, making a profit, doing something to adapt to reality or make life better for themselves in some way.

I was thinking that during the health care debate. I see them pushing toward a single-payer plan and I think…okay…your cousin or your niece or somebody, got a blood condition and ended up dying because they couldn’t get medicine, now you want a guarantee for everybody, I can certainly understand the motive. But then they go on to: After we provide this public “insurance” coverage, you can’t go and supplement that by buying your own plan, or if you go see a doctor and pay for it out of pocket, then you should be fined or jailed. And I think, well, what’s the motivation there? I can only conclude that their passions are tied up in this other thing — nobody should ever be able to help themselves.

Of course, I’m talking about the modern, post-1968 American liberalism, not the classic liberalism.

I was inspired to go down this road because of this article he put up about what’s going on in South Dakota…

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard on Friday signed a bill allowing teachers to carry guns in school, making his state the first to enact such a law since the Newtown shooting tragedy.

The bill was pushed by gun-rights supporters who say arming teachers could help prevent tragedies like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 students and six educators died. The law, which goes into effect July 1, will allow school districts to arm teachers and other personnel.

But the measure prompted intense debate in the capital, as several representatives of school boards, school administrators and teachers opposed the bill during committee testimony last month. They said the measure could make schools more dangerous, lead to accidental shootings and put guns in the hands of people who are not adequately trained to shoot in emergency situations.

I can just see it now: Eek, a gun-carrying madman, he’s shooting us, do something. Sorry, I have my pistol and I have my bullets, but I have not been adequately trained to shoot in emergency situations. The whole pattern of thinking suggests someone who wouldn’t know an “emergency situation” if it walked up and kicked him square in the ‘nards. Doesn’t the very phrase itself implore whoever might be present to do something fer Chrissakes?

This is the kind of thinking you get when people pay a lower social penalty for yelling “no” than for yelling “yes.” I think I can pretty well guarantee, nobody at the meeting, or interviewed, would stand behind the statement: We think if the situation arises, we will get a better result if the new policy is not in effect. At least, I think that might be true. I think, it isn’t that they actually believe a no-guns policy will bring a better result; I think, in their minds, the objective of bringing a better result is a ship that’s sailed out of sight, it isn’t on-topic anymore.

That’s why I get frustrated when committees decide too many things. We all like to pretend it isn’t true, but committee decisions are mostly about social victories and social defeats. Committee decisions, therefore, tend to be meaningless but nice-sounding, boring bromides. Training! Yeah, you have to have training!

Just like the firefighters who didn’t save that drowning guy. The deep thinkers go through all the right motions and put on this appearance that they’re thinking things through in this “emergency situation,” but their decision ends up being one of “if I’m dangling off the cliff and there’s nobody to pull me up who’s attended the proper training, I’d rather fall.” Just complete balderdash.

I’m trying to understand this thinking. I think what they may be trying to do is point our society in the right direction; like, if we say “you can’t save that guy unless you have been properly trained,” a few years following such a proclamation we’ll have a bunch of people running around who’ve been properly trained, when otherwise, we might not. So they don’t mean to say, I want the guy to drown. They mean to say I want lots of trained people. Kind of like me, when I put my car keys or sunglasses in a very, very special place and thereby force myself to recover my deteriorating abilities to remember things, then end up completely panicked when I can’t find them again.

But I take that sort of silly “opportunity” because it’s a situation in which nobody will pay the penalty if it doesn’t work, save me. That’s the whole point. And it isn’t that I’m trying to do right by others, it’s more like I don’t want to be embarrassed: If I’m losing my faculties and a disaster must ensue, let it be a controlled disaster, which I must endure and sort out in solitude, so I can at least see where I stand.

This does not apply to complete strangers, standing around helplessly, waiting to be mowed down by a guy with a gun. By the only guy around who has a gun…because the teachers might be lacking in the proper training, and so have been disarmed. This makes no sense to me at all. And then you have those other issues. The health care. We have lots of big cars around my area, which annoy me just as much as they annoy the liberals. But you know, a V-8 pickup truck with a ball hitch, say what you want about it, but it is capable. You can’t tow a boat up to Folsom Lake and launch it with one of those silly smart-cars. And the liberals are not annoyed by the same thing that annoys me. They’re seeing someone poisoning the planet — read that as, somebody who has been told what to do by liberals, and failed to obey. I see someone who is extremely likely to not own a boat, who bought a big car so they can sit way up high, feel safe, and drive like a jackass.

Could it be jealousy? The way I was raised, if you and I are doing something and some special challenge emerges, you fix it while I cannot because you prepared yourself somehow…to me, that is a message that I should go get hold of whatever that thing was so that next time I can be ready. So if pliers are needed, you have just taught me I should carry a Leatherman or something. Could it be there are other people out there who, going through the same experience, react with something like “he should not have been able to do anything I can’t do”? That’s about the only way I can make sense of this. I remember the first Mrs. Freeberg used to get upset with me if I used “big words,” which caused a lot of tension because I didn’t know what a big word was. And, if I learned how to do anything she couldn’t do, or grow facial hair, or do anything she couldn’t do. Years after the divorce, I discovered to my surprise that I’d been married to a democrat.

So, maybe that explains everything. “I can’t do that, so I don’t want you doing that either” is the real sentiment, “not unless you’ve been properly trained” is just the window-dressing, the sheep’s-clothing. Helpless people, who’ve lost their ambition for ever extricating themselves from their helplessness, want everyone else to be helpless.

This would fit my operating theory that left-wing politics, in our day and age, are nothing more than failure to mature past about middle or high school. It’s all about doing what you want. The other guy does something you can’t do, you want to go all tall-poppy on that guy and chop him down to size; if you can do something he can’t do, you want to climb to the highest mountain and shout it and brag about it. Obviously, acting on both of those wants is injurious to the long-term functioning of your society, because it requires disparate levels of social allowance — you must be privileged to do things the other guy can’t do. A more egalitarian alignment is required, for the good of a long-functioning and peaceful society. In one of those situations, or another, you must behave in ways not necessarily to your own liking at the time, to be patient, and/or improve yourself. As normal people mature, they learn things like this. But, of course, nobody ever said we were all required to.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.