Heh.

Nightfly serves up a big plate of solid, healthy, hot lean mental meat as he points back to us.

In their [progressives’] world, nuance means verbiage and jargon and contextualization and all that other post-modern buzz. To make things plain is to be “black and white,” and so they are not only disinclined to say what they’re really on about, they are incapable. Their brains short-circuit when called upon to try it, but their mouths keep going all the while, and you get a gigantic pile of words that seem spilled out of a dictionary, waiting assembly. Anything deeper than a slogan, protest sign, or bumper sticker – say, the philosophy behind them – is going to be indecipherable if you don’t have the mental decoder ring.

That one might make plain a complicated topic, or a subtle difference between two thoughts, has perhaps never occur[r]ed to them. Nuance is clearer in broad daylight.

It’s really counterproductive to try to do all of this work to understand what a hardcore leftist actually means, when by the time you’re finished with the latest manifesto, they’ll have shifted ground again and your mental map will be out-of-date. To save time, we should just write “HERE BE DRAGONS” across the top and be done with it.
:
The thing is, by constantly shifting ground like this, a dishonest person will often carry the day – they want to make it too tiring to keep up with them, so they can be free to do whatever they please. When it comes to social institutions, however, they please primarily to act like parasites. They feed off the life of the group without any contribution and rot them from within; when notice is finally paid and action is finally taken, they complain loudly that this is their home, now, and it’s mean to cast them adrift, and they’re the true genuine organism. So might a cancer speak when the doctor comes to cut it out.

Hawkins hits another bulls-eye.

1) The Sell Outs
2) The Purists
3) The Appropriators
4) The Bubbleheads
5) The Compromise Fetishists

I’m especially pleased that the sell-outs made #1. In which, I would include this guy along with some others…

Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy. — Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005)

What is democracy, anyway?

Wisconsin Crying Man Mike seems to believe it is dead & done, whenever his fellow Wisconsinites participate in an election and a majority of them vote for something he doesn’t like? That would tend to indicate “democracy” is…um…well…Mike getting his way, contrary to the wishes of a majority of his peers. Funny, I thought that was something else.

But E.J. Dionne (hat tip to Terri) evidently is on Boo Hoo Mike’s side on this thing. “It’s called democracy,” says Dionne, finishing strong after going three garrulous and creepy paragraphs, describing in intricate detail how our elections are to be run to Dionne’s liking.

…so here is a modest proposal: A small group of billionaires, aided perhaps by a few super-millionaires, should form an alliance to offset the spending of the other billionaires and super-millionaires. They might call themselves Billionaires Against Billionaire Politics. These public-spirited citizens would announce that they will match every penny raised by the various super PACs on the other side.

In principle, they could commit themselves to balancing off whichever side — conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat — is dominating the airwaves and the fundraising. The idea would be to destroy the incentives for the very rich to buy the election. If shrewd wealthy people realized that every $10 million they put up would be met immediately by $10 million from the other side, they might lose interest in the exercise.

As a practical matter, it’s conservative dollars that need to be offset, so this balancing act would likely be financed by non-conservatives. George Soros, Warren Buffett and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg come to mind. But there may be other, less high-profile wealthy folks who want to do their patriotic bit. The hope is that this would be a one-shot deal. After one nuclear winter of an election, rich partisans could agree to mutual disarmament.

“Should form…might call…would announce…could commit…the idea would be…would likely be financed by.” Reminds me of that sock-puppet group-identity “person” who was on here, insisting over and over again, “best estimates are 3.5 to 5.0 C increase” in the global temperature over the next century. Things got weird when I started to focus on what exactly that word “best” meant, in that context; did it really mean “most likely”? Or something else?

Progressives have a strange relationship with the time stream, just as they have a strange relationship with that word “democracy.” Just as they seem to define “democracy” as “everyone does everything my way, whether they want to or not” — they speak of future events as if they have occurred in the past. More specifically, they speak of them as if it is entirely responsible & safe to forget all about probability.

And the idea of a bunch of billionaires gathered around a big table, led by the erstwhile George Soros, as if re-enacting the famous Thunderball scene, cracks me up. Especially the part where “Number One Soros” announces his displeasure and uncertainty about whether the group is headed in the right direction or not, and the time has come for a quick conference call to E.J. Dionne to make sure they’re doing everything the right way.

My goodness…proggies do so love to hand out these commands about what other people should do with their money. And their votes. And they’re always absolutely certain about what is going to happen — occasionally, in very impressive detail. The question naturally emerges: Is Dionne predicting what is going to happen, or simply communicating his wishes? I am absolutely certain that if I were to critique and attack his rambling missive based on one of those premises, he or his apologists would insist that he really meant the other (and I’m an overly simplistic dolt for not immediately recognizing it). If you read his words carefully, you’ll see he describes both wish (“the hope is that this would be a one-shot deal”) and likelihood (“it’s highly unlikely that any of this will happen before November, so…”). So which of those two purposes emerges as the primary one? I don’t think E.J. himself knows. He’s just indulging a lazy midsummer fantasy. Hey, if you could make a living at it, you’d do it too!

The more I learn about the left-wing set, the more I think there is a part of the brain missing, damaged, or under-developed. Think about it: What is your reaction when you hear someone say “Hold it, let’s settle this democratically and put it to a vote”? What is the first thought in your head? Normal people hear that and think “Oh great…I’m gonna get screwed here.” Second thought, more sober and more sluggish: “Well, I should trust in the judgment of my peers if we’re going to be living in proximity to each other, and if my position is correct, I should be able to present it in a compelling way.” But your first thought is: Darn it, I’ve taken the time to figure out the right answer, I know it’s right…why are we opening it up to a decent chance that the wrong answer might carry the day, just to make everyone feel like they’re participating, when they might not even care. In sum: Normal people with fully working brains, see “democracy” as what it really is. It’s an exchange. We’re all going to give up a lot of control, now, so that later on we can say “right or wrong, this was the decision of those who took the time to participate.” It does not make the final outcome more correct, or even more virtuous, nor is it supposed to. It solves no problem at all, other than the complaints that might properly be aired, later on, that so-and-so was not consulted.

In fact, democracy is like money that way. Somewhere I read a quote from someone about money: If you happen to receive a whole lot of it, whatever problems you have that are money-related, will be helped, and whatever other problems you have, won’t. Seems so simple — why even bother to say such a thing? Later on, when I had some personal experience with this, I got a whole new perspective. That’s what it takes, you have to live it yourself to see what’s really being said here. Well, democracy is like that. Whatever problems you have that are related to resentments about this person or that person not having a say, will be addressed, and all the other problems will not be. All this is self-evident to those of us who see democracy as what it really is; those of us who are not brain damaged.

On the left, people are missing that. Maybe they’re conditioned to bypass that circuit altogether — or, they’re accustomed to this word “democracy” referring to something other than what it really is supposed to mean. They never seem to think anybody, who counts for anything or has a bearing on the outcome, will ever disagree with them. Perhaps they have a plan in place to make sure of it…putting the deceased on the registration rolls, stuffing ballot boxes, et al.

They want things put to a vote, but it is contrary to their way of living & perceiving life, ever to be prepared to lose.

Some guy named Michael Stafford:

I’m a life-long Republican. My political affiliation has been woven intrinsically into the very fabric of my being.

When I was young, Ronald Reagan bestrode the world like a colossus. I grew up watching the Cold War end-game play out as Reagan faced down the Soviet Union- which really was evil- and helped break the long night of communist repression in Eastern Europe. He was my hero.

Indeed, my first political act was passionately lobbying my fourth-grade classmates…blah blah blah…
:
[credentials]
:
Today, however, I am a registered Republican no longer.

I came to the decision to leave the GOP not with a heavy heart, but with a broken one.

I reached this point through a long series of awakenings and realizations…

And what are those?

…the Republican Party has come unhinged. Its fevered hallucinations involve threats from imaginary communists and socialists who, seemingly, lurk around every corner. Climate change – a reality recognized by every single significant scientific body and academy in the world…

Okay, I think I’m done here. Fuck off, Moby.

moby

An insidious and specialized type of left-wing troll who visits blogs and impersonates a conservative for the purpose of either spreading false rumors intended to sow dissension among conservative voters, or who purposely posts inflammatory and offensive comments for the purpose of discrediting the blog in question.

The term is derived from the name of the liberal musician Moby, who famously suggested in February of 2004 that left-wing activists engage in this type of subterfuge: “For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you’re an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion. Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, ‘What’s all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?’”

The strategy has been frequently attempted on conservative blogs, but has not been nearly as effective as Moby envisioned, since false rumors are easily debunked by fact-checking minions, and cartoonishly extreme commenters often get immediately identified as mobys and banned.

“While I agree that it is vital to monitor incoming international phone calls from terrorists, President Bush has gone too far.

By secret executive order, he has instructed the NSA to place hidden cameras in the girls’ locker rooms of Washington D.C. (Dirt bag City) Islamic schools. His desire to find out ‘what is under all those burqas’ is beyond the pale.

Maybe the Dhimmicrats are right. If he would do this, what else is he capable of? Let your voice be heard! I for one will never send the RNC money ever again. And, no, I am not a moby.”

Not sure what really prompted the article. I doubt that it’s hostility to socialism, and socialism’s new ruse of undermining the free market by way of the “climate change” scam; that’s been going on for quite awhile, or at least, it’s supposed to have…

Much more likely this is an emboldening-effect from Jeb Bush’s poorly-informed comments.

Over at Kingjester’s blog, a decent round-up of liberals showing their true colors on the “tolerance” issue. I was just poring through that, and then re-reading the many linked comments and columns and various other epistles involved in Ace’s critique of Sandra Fluke’s latest bit of chicanery. And I have this observation to make…

Well wait, let’s get this out of the way first: Who is the brain-dead idiot who suggested to Ms. Fluke she should include a sentence such as “It is hard to believe we are having this conversation today, the 47th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut…”? Whose idea was this? Hers? What’s the up-side?

Is there someone rising out of bed to greet each new day, thinking, “Oh, this is the whatever-anniversary of such-and-such a Supreme Court decision”? If so, then is this not a rather tricky bunch of balls to be juggling in early June, when SCOTUS tends to decide things? That’s the way it works, isn’t it…dads, grads and Supreme Court decisions. How, exactly, does this change the thought process? Oh, it’s the 47th anniversary of Griswold, so now I am especially offended…

Why do proggies do that? What is that, some kind of social-status thing? Ooh, look at me, I’m extra smart, I know this is the 47th anniversary of…gah. Okay, enough of that. Back to the primary thing here.

My observation is this: I have written before of this perception, occurring to myself and to many others, that seems undeniable — people and institutions self-identifying as “liberal” or “progressive” participate in a certain mindset, one not existing harmoniously with the classical definition of “liberal,” which is moving and rounding a rather sharp corner in recent years. Being a political movement, this mindset seeks approval, but since it is dysfunctional, self-destructive and illogical, it must conceal what it really is in order to gain this approval. As Ace has noted, Sandra Fluke herself has demonstrated this ably by repeatedly using the word “access” to describe a fully-funded entitlement. “Advocates” such as Ms. Fluke, therefore, are trying to secure this “access” which is the fully-funded entitlement; and if the fully-funded entitlement is not fully-funded, then “women” have lost their “access.”

We can gauge the priority of this bit of subterfuge, as appreciated by this late left-wing mindset, by observing the mindset’s behavior when the subterfuge starts to cost it something — namely, the approval of the ideologically non-identifiable, the “moderates.” And I don’t mean by that, the phony-baloney green-party types who say “I’m neither conservative nor liberal” and then line up to vote for democrats. I mean the real ones. The ones who actually decide elections.

It seems, within that camp, there is an emerging consensus driving toward: Heck ya, women should have this “access to contraceptives” but only in the classical sense, not what it means on Planet Sandra Fluke. Simply put, I/we don’t want to have to pay for it. And, no, Gov. Jan Brewer is right, sorry Sandra but there is a religious freedom thing going on here that ought to count for something.

What does the modern hardcore left-wing proggy mindset do? Does it start to split hairs and say “Oh no, we never said that, we said this other thing…” as it has done with other issues? No. It does not. It doubles down. That’s my point; you can learn a lot about how a thinking individual or group values something, by observing what it is willing to sacrifice for it. So, on the issue of “access to contraceptives” translating into full-funding, and genuine old-fashioned oppression against the religious beliefs of individuals and their organizations, we see the proggy mindset digging in and doubling down, even at the expense of the cherished loyalty of the true moderates. They willingly sacrifice the latter for the former…so the former must be important to them. It doesn’t matter if they’re willing to admit it or not. Their actions speak loudly.

What’s the motivation? Hostility toward religion? A desire to weaken the nation and its culture, through a lowering of the birth rate? A pre-meditated attack on personal responsibility and financial solvency of the individuals, through the forceful imposition of a fiat economy? I believe it is a combination of all three. But I’m most interested in the last of the three. Can we just all admit it: They aren’t very much interested in “access,” as in, the contraceptives still cost a nominal amount of money, but the economy is doing so well that you can’t find a woman anywhere who is truly unable to get hold of them when she wants them. That scenario doesn’t interest them at all. They’re looking for a wedge to drive between birth control and trade. Stop this business of products-and-services-for-legal-tender, let’s replace it with our fantasy, the lining up at a kiosk somewhere, receiving a ration, if & only if all the papers are in order. Free stuff good, free trade bad. That is the real agenda.

Now, turning back to Kingjester’s assortment of anecdotes, it occurs to me that to this mindset we just got done studying on the birth control issue, “free speech” has a particular and peculiar test: Their exercise of it, seems to have a lot to do with denying it to others. The “others” are, of course, dissenters and not allies.

The thought that occurs to me is this: Since we should never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, I am reluctant to conclude that we’re seeing a premeditated effort to muzzle the non-liberals. That is only the ultimate effect, not the intent. I think the thought process in place is as follows, and this is my observation: If you have some (free speech), that has to mean they are missing some. After all, that is how they look at money, is it not? It’s okay for you to have, oh, one or two hundred dollars in your bank account…maybe four digits in the balance instead of three, if you’re about to sit down and pay your bills. But if you are “two-comma” wealthy, that’s bad, because that has to mean someone else is missing something.

Well, my observation is, that is how they look at free speech. They have it — a monopoly on it — or else, they do not have it. It’s true binary thinking, they can process the number 1 or the number 0. They can’t process fractions.

Just like Ms. Fluke, et al, on the birth control issue. “Access” means nothing short of Aladdin-and-the-Genie access: I want it, ++poof++ there it is. If that objective is not fulfilled — 1 or 0, not fractions — then there is nothing but vast emptiness of space, and “access” has been denied.

I’m old enough to remember two presidential elections ago, when they were making a big deal out of “nuanced” thinking. Senator and candidate John F. Kerry, so went the litany, was capable of seeing the world and the issues in it, in “shades of gray”; this was to be contrasted with “cowboy,” black-and-white thinking, personified by that undignified and unsophisticated Texas rube President George W. Bush.

Somewhere, in the intellectual plane, sometime in the last eight years, a philosophical pancake appears to have been flipped. And I find the national discourse has become extraordinarily contentious about issues that were not even on the radar eight years ago — my observations tell me this is due, in no small part, to the fact that progressives are missing this capability of “nuanced thinking” they once touted so highly. They have all the world’s accumulation of something — no one else, anywhere, can produce so much as a morsel of it — or else they’ve been unfairly denied any of something. They can’t & won’t share their toys…even though, ironically, that is exactly what they’re supposed to be making other people do. It is an ultimatum that exists in their minds and not in reality. And, someday soon, someone really ought to let them know. If that’s possible, that is…

Maybe that should be a voting-eligibility test. You have something; this other person over here, who is not you, also has some of it. Maybe he even has more. But you still have what you have, and he doesn’t have what he has because he took it from you, he just has his and you’ve got yours. Are you capable of comprehending this? If your mind is limited in such a way that you have to mish-mash that into something else before you can engage it, well then sorry. Some of the issues on this ballot you can’t have, demand a level of mental acumen that, for whatever reason, you’re not bringin’. Thanks for making the trip.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Smacked down by the President of Estonia, in public. Via Twitter.

And then, his moment in the limelight, giving a speech on Obama’s Recession…to an empty room.

Hat tip to Maggie’s Farm.

Also, I don’t recall seeing another wretchedly mediocre & predictable Paul Krugman column ratcheted up to the tippy-top of the Memeorandum page with a big bold headline lately. It’s unusual for a week to pass by without that happening…whenever that happens, after I’m done reading it I wonder if Krugman’s Mom isn’t the Memeorandum editor. Maybe she resigned the position, or got sick, or something.

Or, maybe someone who used to like him, no longer does. That can happen, you know.

…and proxy outrage. Someone with power bowdlerizing something from public display, so that some undefined and yet-to-materialize someone else will be spared offense. Once again, the thing being ripped away and buried is a beloved, cherished thing, and the strutting martinet seems to have little grasp of the simple idea that telling people “I have found offense in this thing you value, as an extension of yourself” is, in itself, more than a little bit offensive…so if the object of the exercise is to avoid offense, it must be a fail.

Greta Hawkins, principal of PS 90, the Edna Cohen School, won’t allow kindergartners to belt out the beloved Lee Greenwood ballad, also known as “Proud to be an American,” at their moving-up ceremony.

Five classes spent months learning the patriotic song, which skyrocketed in popularity after the 9/11 attacks and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
:
But Hawkins marched in on a recent rehearsal and ordered a CD playing the anthem to be shut off, staffers said.

She told the teachers to drop the song from the program.

“We don’t want to offend other cultures,” they quoted her as explaining.
:
Department of Education spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti gave The Post an explanation staffers said they never heard — that Hawkins found the lyrics “too grown up” for 5-year-olds.

The song starts: “If tomorrow all the things were gone, I’d worked for all my life. And I had to start again, with just my children and my wife, I’d thank my lucky stars, to be livin’ here today.”

Scaperotti said the department supports the principal’s decision. “The lyrics are not age-appropriate,” she said.

But Justin Bieber’s flirty song about teen romance, “Baby,” was deemed a fine selection for the show. Hawkins had no problem with 5-year-olds singing lines such as, “Are we an item? Girl, quit playing.”

The other songs: “We’re All Together Again,” popular at Scout campfires; “The World is a Rainbow,” which celebrates diversity; “Shake Your Sillies Out” by Raffi; and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from “Toy Story.”

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

The Bieber ditty has since been similarly ejected. New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, true to form, has doubled-down on stupid on the God Bless The USA matter…and songwriter Lee Greenwood holds the distinction of making, by far, the most sensible remarks with regard to this.

“The principal has decided she’s not going to sing that song. It’s the principal’s decision, and we support the principals,” Bloomberg said during a press conference at the Bushwick HS campus.

[Schools Chancellor Dennis] Walcott said, “Now as far as Justin Bieber, I understand some of the issues people raised. It’s my understanding that song will not be part of the ‘moving up’ ceremony as well…I support our principals along that line.

But “God Bless the USA” was not put back in the program — drawing a rebuke from singer Greenwood and political leaders.

“I’ve been singing my song for 30 years. I sing it everywhere — Carnegie Hall, grammar schools,” Greenwood told The Post yesterday.
:
“I think [Principal Hawkins is] confused between allegiance and worship. I don’t think it’s a religious issue to salute the flag. You always respect the flag. That’s just simple for me. A religion that says you can’t do that is out of place,” he said.

“I’m just disappointed. I’ve sung it at many elementary schools myself. It’s always a wonderful moment,” he said, adding that the students get “wide eyed.”

I recall a little while ago when Rush Limbaugh was compelled to apologize for calling a slut a slut. The apology he issued was, specifically, about having “created a national stir.”

And it is with interest that I note the low standards imposed on this slithery, spectral, complaining thing…which asserts and re-asserts its cultural existence by bitching and belly-aching about American-identified and America-centric traditions, and yet you are not allowed to call it anti-American. It wriggles through our public ceremonies and our public discourse, or waddles, or ambles, pick your verb — it “creates national stir” all over the place, offending many, with good reason, and it seems those best-of-the-best among us who are elected and appointed to uphold our evolving notions of decency, consistently fail to call upon this vile slithery thing to apologize for the stirs. If there’s some reason why a radio talk show host should be held to higher standards, it is lost on me. Can it not be said that this vile slithering waddling thing seeks to alter our culture? Accumulate power? Eliminate choices? Shape and mold our children? And yet, the beatdown is never lowered upon the thing; because, with strategic shrewdness, it refuses to take shape.

Someone wants to discuss private sexual activities in front of a congressional panel, and you call them out on it — well, you’d better do it without creating a national stir, or you shall be shunned, whoever does not shun you shall be shunned, he who does not shun he who did not shun you, likewise shall be shunned…

We toil away under the legendary Chinese curse — we live in interesting times.

I’m pleased as punch that President Obama’s idiotic remark about the private sector “doing fine” is getting so much play and so much attention. But, truth be told, the enormous damage this is bound to do Him in the upcoming election, is not the true source of my pleasure, or at least, not the primary one; rather, I am gratified to see a mask ripped off a vicious monster, a monster much bigger than Barack Obama, one that has been on the political scene much longer.

To understand what I’m talking about, think about these conversations you & others have had with a dedicated, hardcore lefty type…the part where you start to figure out this is a lefty type. You know, where they start to defend the indefensible; from Palestinians dressing up their kids in explosive belts and sending them into crowds of Israeli civilians, to able-bodied people here at home, making a lifestyle out of our social services, womb to tomb and generation after generation. Or start to wax lyrically of the “qualifications” of people who really don’t have any qualifications at all…Hillary Clinton, for example. Note how little has to be done by these people & groups who receive and benefit from the progressive sympathies, to receive said sympathies. Suffering. Oppressed. Worked very hard. Discriminated against.

The cognitive dissonance that says, when Al Gore has a larger carbon footprint than the average American, somehow, at the same time, he really doesn’t.

The truth that emerges, is that being a modern lefty has a lot to do with re-writing social protocols. And an important part of that, is declaring who is & is not to receive public sympathy. Distressingly, it seems they have it all figured out who is to be denied this public sympathy, and why, before they have a good understanding of who is to become the focus of it, and why.

It was in this context that President Barack Obama said the private sector is doing fine. What He really meant to say is, alright, okay, the private sector isn’t doing well at all, but let’s concentrate our attention and energies on the other thing, which is the public sector.

So Barack Obama thinks the private sector is “doing fine” the same way radical feminists think men and boys are doing fine. The same way a hip Hollywood lefty might think Sarah Palin is doing fine. The same way Cindy Sheehan thinks George W. Bush is doing fine.

Kind of a “wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire, and neither should you” sort of doing-fine.

It’s an important part of the modern progressive movement. This is a particularly execrable type of slithery fanged creature under the big rock just overturned; when otherwise-decent friends and neighbors start turning all dogmatic-lefty, this is where their humanity starts to drain out of them. When they start to pick up the battle cry, and pass it around, that this person or group, over here, should receive more sympathy from the public-at-large no matter what he, she, or they have done…and that other person or group, over there, should never receive any of this sympathy no matter what is done to them. When they start to get the idea that ideology is bigger than justice.

That is the point where they start to become political vampires. It’s when they start to declare that, when an undeniable wrong has been done to someone they have declared to be a target — or have declared some antithesis of it, to be an object of this desired grokking and social feeling of support — their passions are poured into some meandering and senseless monologue, the primary thrust of which is that justice can take a holiday on this one.

Certain undesirables cannot ever have grievances worth being addressed. Ever. They’re “doing fine.”

This is an important part of what being a modern liberal is all about. This is where they stop being nice, decent compassionate people, and start to become…what’s the word…jerks. Destructive, unbalanced jerks.

We do owe a debt to our current President for shining a light on it. Not every day some dark slithery nasty thing, through its ineptitude, kicks over its own big rock. We should make the most of it by learning as much as we can, while we can.

Three times.

He’s an insufferable scumbag. And that’s being kind.

Perhaps the most thoughtful deliberation about this latest Obama gaffe, is over here.

Second, here.

It’s become an “Everyone Else Is Blogging It, I Might As Well Do It Too” thing. But, yes, I agree with this and I like it…it’s worth capturing & keeping captive throughout the ages.

If everyone’s special, then no one is.

Think we’ll have a “The Incredibles” movie watching party tonight.

Going back through my archives, I see I first noticed this pre-Obama. There would have been value in describing the problem succinctly, but this was not within my efforts, nor within my achievements. Since then, I’ve made some references to it, on my way to noticing something else, but I’ve not been giving it the attention it truly deserves.

Now, it seems we are on our way a post-Obama age; whether future events show that to be overly optimistic or not, we will have to ponder the “big takeaway” from the slow-motion train wreck we’ve been watching. And, the more I think on it, the more the Fifty-Second Percent problem is the big takeaway.

Here it is, phrased as concisely and precisely as I can manage:

Visionaries within our political class can be sorted out into two groups. Not conservatives vs. liberals, but rather, leaders versus dictators. Our ability to recognize the difference between them, is invested in our opportunity to watch how they conduct their election and re-election campaigns. Leaders value the inspiration within the constituency, the collective will, to become a part of the vision. A dictator cares only about his power to compel the constituency to come along, regardless of, in that moment, whether or not they would choose to. The leader therefore wishes the virtues of his plan to become evident to as many people as possible; a dictator only concerns himself with securing the allegiance, at some critical moment, of a majority.

New paragraph. Tying it all together. Litmus test: A dictator cares a great deal more about capturing the votes of the fifty-first percent, than of the fifty-second. He couldn’t give a rat’s rear end about the fifty-second percent.

End definition.

Now, to swivel back around and observe the events in the manner to which we are more accustomed, to shift the paradigm back to the conservative/liberal divide…we notice something. The divide doesn’t move very much. That’s why my earlier piece is called “What is a Liberal?” A consultant on the conservative side might come up with an idea to win eighty percent of the votes, as opposed to fifty-one — if the idea is good, he’ll get attention. From all we’ve been seeing and hearing, the same is not true of the liberal side. For an example, I can point to nothing better than ObamaCare. From beginning to end, it was all about ramming through as much brittle, uncompromising, hardcore proggy-lefty-liberal goodness as could possibly be rammed, into the already ballooning billowing body of regulatory work, during a closing window of opportunity during which Congress was dominated by democrats. With such a saturation, that everyone involved understood damn good and well things wouldn’t be staying that way indefinitely.

Now, I’m sure there are exceptions — conservatives who seek to exert their will on the entire constituency after securing simple-majority approval, and moderate liberals who would fail the test, caring too much about building a genuine consensus. But, once you observe them for awhile, watching what they do & ignoring what they say — not many. (My description of a real leader, above, matches up well with what Obama was pretending to be.) Part of this has to do with the nature of liberalism & conservatism in the twenty-first century. This thing we call “liberalism” is more like “statism.” Really, it is. Come up with an idea for those in government, to tell those outside of government, how to do something…to exert power over them. You can bet money, the liberal will like the idea and the conservative will not. To hear the libs talk about it, theirs is the mindset of “new ideas,” and there is some truth to this. But the new ideas, are all new ideas about expanding the role of government. They only pretend to have anything to do with much of anything else…

So we should expect the so-called liberals to have become infected with this Fifty-Second Percent disease…burrowing, like a pig after truffles, for some time-window of opportunity during which extremist, government-expanding, bureaucrat-emboldening legislation can be rammed through. Theirs is the side of extremism. “Hey, how about we pass a law to…[expand the power of government some more].” Forgetting entirely that, down the road, here & there, government just might be run by those other guys. Conservative says, let’s not & say we did. That, essentially, is a moderate position. The conservative, after all, is not saying “the people who make the decisions now, without your legislation, the ones who are outside of government — they are perfect and infinitely wise.” That is not his position at all. His point is all about proper ownership of problems. Yes, mistakes can be made, and they will be made, but let them be made by those who can learn, and have a real personal stake in the outcome. Keep people free.

Liberal says: Because you are resisting my plan, I shall cast you in an ugly light, and convince lots of other people you are evil, wrong, prejudiced and dumb. That is an extremist position (it’s also pretty consistent, you’ll notice, as well). And so — yes. The liberal advocates extremist positions. It makes sense that he is going to pursue extremist tactics. “Pass the bill so we can see what’s in it,” you might say.

It is easy to see they are extremists, because all of their campaigning interest is invested in going after the fifty-first percent. They don’t care about the fifty-second.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

…of a bookstore, solely on the basis of one woman complaining.

Make sure you aren’t alone in the children’s section of your local bookstore if male (thanks to the reader who sent this):

Barnes & Noble has apologized after a senior citizen said staff at one of the retail giant’s Arizona stores ejected him because he was on his own in the children’s area.

Omar Amin claimed a store worker told him a female shopper had complained he was in the children’s area in the store in Scottsdale, The Arizona Republic reported.

The 73-year-old, who was alone at the time, said he was in the store to buy books for his two grandchildren, who live in Wisconsin.

He told the newspaper, “Men alone cannot be by themselves in the children’s area.

At least they apologized, though this is a sad state of affairs. Notice that just a woman telling the store that a man alone was in the aisle was enough to get this man ejected from the store. Have you noticed that a female voice telling an “authority” that a man is a possible threat is enough to convict him of ill-doing without any real proof? Pretty soon, men will not be allowed out in public unescorted by a woman or some authority. It’s pretty pathetic.

The story to which Dr. Helen links, expounds somewhat on the bookstore’s apology:

Mark Bottini, Barnes & Noble vice president and director of stores, issued a statement Monday apologizing to Amin.

“We want to apologize to Dr. Amin for a situation in which Dr. Amin was asked to leave the children’s section of our Scottsdale, Arizona store,” Bottini said.

“We should not have done so. It is not our policy to ask customers to leave any section of our stores without justification. We value Dr. Amin as a customer and look forward to welcoming him in any of our stores.”

Dr. H calls this a “war on men.” I wish the term applied better than it does; most wars are declared, they are fought, and hopefully one side or the other will prevail within a short time and it will all become part of history.

Where a real war is somewhat akin to an explosion, this is more like a slow-burn. The problem is with the drawing of lines. Good manners, and the desire to live in and help buttress a strong, well-functioning society, these all demand a certain deference to the fairer sex. It takes a certain sophistication to be able to maintain that without treating the male as a second-class citizen.

What we’ve done in some quarters is, somehow, to eject all the things that really are part of this code of chivalry, while retaining all the things that are not. Offering your umbrella to a lady during a downpour, opening the door for her, removing your hat, these are thought to be antiquated notions. But losing arguments to her, even when the facts are not on her side, is like a minimal, baseline obligation; as is, on occasion, ejecting people from retail establishments and other environments when they haven’t done anything wrong.

Wondering if I’d consider going back, were I in Dr. Amin’s shoes. Seems like a drastic measure to hold the entire franchise accountable for the actions of one delusional female shopper, plus a power-mad clerk with poor judgment. On the other hand, accepting the apology with a “no harm, no foul” attitude seems almost like acquiescing to a caste system. The problem, as I see it through this situation and with some others, is that once a woman’s feelings enter into conflict with a man’s interests and truth & fact are not squaring with her beliefs, some sort of injustice becomes an inevitability. We seem to have developed this impulse to declare reality subordinate to good manners, and then go further, looking for the earliest & easiest opportunity to display our hostility toward the reality.

All this, while you stand a good chance of being mocked and ridiculed, maybe even scolded, if you pursue the more traditional & sensible notions of Vive la Difference. Stand and offer her your seat on the bus? What’re you tryin’ to say? How dare you.

From the U.S. Army.

…and in a good way. Roger L. Simon:

…[T]he Bradley Effect has resurfaced dramatically in a different manner in the Wisconsin recall vote. The polls — and, yes, the exit polls as well – were showing Scott Walker in a narrow victory. But he won beyond anyone’s prediction.

Apparently, the silent majority of Wisconsin voters didn’t want to admit to nosy pollsters and anyone else that might be listening that they were opposed to runaway unions, runaway spending, or the Democratic administration. They just wanted to cast their votes. And they did.

This Bradley Effect, then, is not like the Bradley Effect of yore. It’s about race to some degree, but I suspect there are much larger components of being fed up with elites of all sorts, interest groups, media groups, union groups, all sorts of groups telling the average citizen what he should and shouldn’t think, openly or covertly threatening to ostracize him or her for not going along with the pervasive liberal status quo.
:
And needless to say, the mainstream media are going to be doing mental cartwheels, trying to think of ways to spin this. It’s not going to be easy. The sons and daughters of Grub Street are going to have to explain away a horrendous economy. They invented Barack Obama (quite literally); now they are going to have to live with him.

It has been said that an election is the only poll that matters. We sure are fascinated with all the other ones, when the elections aren’t happening…one has to wonder if it isn’t due to the innate subconscious understanding that the polls are almost certain to make fools out of everyone who pays attention to them.

Perhaps, when all’s said & done, the economy is a better crystal ball. Once the misery has set in and the suffering becomes personal, it’s a tough row to hoe for any tax-n-spend incumbent to survive. People who have struggled, I think, get it. It’s like breathing. If you can’t pay for your power and your food and your hot water, nothing else matters. Certainly you don’t care about vaguely and dubiously “constitutional” marriage privileges for some small minority of the population.

I’m thinking there’s a “Bradley Effect” with empty cupboards & gas tanks. The 2008 Obama voter who’s now out of work and doesn’t see anything getting any better anywhere, while the public sector employees retire with fat and exorbitant pensions and his leaders lecture him about turning his resentment toward something called “Wall Street,” is being asked to sustain the status quo out of a sense of obligation to some four-year-old-pledge to be a more highly-evolved and more highly-aware good-person. That would be a tough sell even if the pledge was panning out.

Was refreshing my memory about the plot events in Bartleby, the Scrivener which we were tasked to read back in tenth grade by mean ol’ English lit teacher Mr. Andersen, who hated his job and it showed a lot. This was not as onerous a task as it seemed at the time, since it weighs in at a svelte forty-five pages or so. Researchers have picked up on the idea that Melville had a hidden message here, but there’s always some question as to what exactly it might be…at least, to those establishment types who seem to always be having the final word on things, the ones who more ordinarily get to do the writing.

It is also possible that the story is unconnected to any of the speculations above and simply a piece of fiction about an unusual character who sprung from Melville’s rich artistic imagination.

Since high school, I had occasion to read The Fountainhead…before which, I was inspired to do so. Fountainhead is not “svelte” and it doesn’t exactly flow along, so I imagine the same is true of just about everyone who’s read it. Minus, the ones who are forced to do so by their mean ol’ teachers…

But, no, what Melville was trying to communicate, was & is not a mystery at all. In fact, the two stories are the same, if compared only along the periphery of the central message being so communicated. Whatever ambiguity is built into the Melville side of the comparison, is simply an elegant nuance. It is the right way to embed commentary into fiction: “Whoever is receptive will get it, and whoever doesn’t get it likely never will.”

Bartleby is unique in that the types who are in positions to comment on what it could mean, as a general rule, are the ones who aren’t going to be receptive to it. I mentioned that Fountainhead has the same message; it is, therefore, for all intents and purposes, the same story. Howard Roark would prefer not to…

Both men disliked Roark. He was usually disliked, from the first sight of his face, anywhere he went. His face was closed like the door of a safety vault; things locked away in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that. He was a cold, disquieting presence in the room; his presence had a strange quality; it made itself felt and yet it made them feel that he was not there; or perhaps that he was and they weren’t.
:
“You’re fired,” said Cameron.

Roark stood, halfway across the long room, his weight on one leg, his arms hanging by his sides, one shoulder raised.

“Am I?” he asked quietly, without moving.

“Come here,” said Cameron. “Sit down.”

Roark obeyed.

“You’re too good,” said Cameron. “You’re too good for what you want to do with yourself. It’s no use, Roark. Better now than later.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s no use wasting what you’ve got on an ideal that you’ll never reach, that they’ll never let you reach…”

It impresses me that you see exactly the same complaint coming from people who are not “scriveners” and are not building architects…people who can make an even sturdier claim that their occupation is to be original and creative. Movie script writers, that would probably be the most extraordinary example available in our times…although that could be an outsider’s mistaken perception, since the same complaint continues to emerge from the most talented within that vocation, repeatedly.

How does Stephen King feel about Kubrick’s adaptation of his book? [“The Shining”]
Initially King was flattered that Kubrick was going to do something of his. Later he expressed disappointment in the film. “There’s a lot to like about it. But it’s a great big beautiful Cadillac with no motor inside, you can sit in it and you can enjoy the smell of the leather upholstery – the only thing you can’t do is drive it anywhere. So I would do every thing different. The real problem is that Kubrick set out to make a horror picture with no apparent understanding of the genre. Everything about it screams that from beginning to end, from plot decision to the final scene – which has been used before on the Twilight Zone”

Sometimes, the creative differences are highlighted at the beginning rather than at the end. Maybe that sounds like an opportunity to avoid lots of grief, but, in an irony, that’s when things really get messy.

Writing is a business and as the old saying implies, business is the opposite of personal. Recently, however, I’ve written something that’s extremely personal and that I want to be made into a movie. It’s semi-autobiographical, so how could I not be deeply attached to it? So even though I am practically hackish, I’m emotionally on the other side of the spectrum regarding this work. The problem is that I wrote this screenplay knowing that it would require successfully making the longest long shot in the world – above and beyond the normal entertainment industry walls that keep would-be talent corralled in obscurity. My screenplay is based on my experiences with a real life performer. I wrote her into the movie and it’s named after her, so she would have to sign off on it before it got made.

I’ll spare you the emoting and just let you know that it didn’t get past her manager. Basically, his client isn’t interested in acting right now. And that’s a real shame because this story is amazing. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a pretty cynical guy – I call it being realistic, but whatever. Knowing that, I have so much faith in the quality of this story that I foresaw nothing but success for this script. Granted, the script wasn’t rejected per se – I don’t think the manager even read it – so this rejection isn’t a referendum on my talent, but the fact the script isn’t going anywhere is heartbreaking.

This kind of thing is all over the trivia sections in more than a few of your favorite films, if you take the time to look.

It says something that this hostility to creativity endures across the centuries. I think we perceive it through a very fractured prism because, for any installment in this saga that makes its way to our conscious recollection, the installment is narrated by one side or the other; the iconoclast who is at war with the establishment, or the establishment itself. We very rarely enjoy a “stereo” view of any one part of it. When one side of the conflict wins in the contest determining who gets to tell the tale, that side wins big. Like they said at the beginning of Braveheart, “Historians…will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes.” That’s the way history works. Each chapter is told by one side or the other, and we seldom to never manage to get hold of the perspective.

Most times, the establishment wins. This is by definition. Establishments are built to prevail, and their internal workings have to do with settling conflict, on the inside, behind opaque walls, by process of elimination. In Bartleby’s case, Melville, the iconoclast, emerged victorious because his legacy benefits from a brighter luster of immortality, than any picayune play or script review. The “We’re not completely sure what he meant to say here” thing, is the establishment’s attempt to get even. At least, that’s how I see it.

Potty-mouth not-work-safe language warning in effect.

Gerard always manages to find the good stuff.

Feminism is just like any other progressive discipline. It’s all about little self-appointed Sun Kings telling you what to do, to manage all of life’s more trivial challenges…and, for the bigger challenges — well, do you really wish to know what it is?

She knows it because she knows it because she knows it…because she knows the Constitution. Six-three it will be.

[House Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi, in reference to how the nine-judge court will rule, said, “6-3. That’s it. 6-3.”

She was then asked why she was so confident about her prediction, “Do you have a crystal ball or what is your confidence — you wrote the bill but why do you have this confidence?”

Pelosi said: “Because I know the Constitution. This bill is ironclad. It is ironclad.”

“Nobody was frivolous with the Constitution and the health of the American people in writing the bill,” she said. “So, that’s where my confidence springs from, the merit of the bill and the nature of the Constitution.”

Well…it’s not exactly a remote possibility. If I understand her correctly, she’s predicting Anthony Kennedy will do what she wants and so will Chief Justice Roberts. It’s the way she’s concluding it that is objectionable. Progressives have a way of doing this, they pick out the scenario that is preferred, and just repeat it over and over again. By “preferred” I do not mean “optimistic.” The Earth becoming a dry, burned out, uninhabitable husk due to human activity, with yet-to-be-born young people crying out in anguished indignation to the oldsters who are around today, “Why did you let this happen??” and the oldsters reflecting sadly on how much they suck, as humanity flickers out of existence like an oxygen-starved candle flame…that is one of their preferred outcomes. Which they “make” true, simply by repeating it with great flourishing confidence. It’s really how they “know” just about every little thing they think they know, all the way down the line…

…The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so. — Ronald Reagan (link goes to page that automatically plays a sound clip).

But the vote is going to be six-three. That is what will happen…also, your kitty cat has a good feeling, today’s the day she will catch the red dot. She can feel it in her whiskers.

A little while ago I noted that a lot of states in Europe provide for a fuse to be tripped whereas America does not, and maybe Europe’s got the right idea. I’m referring to the tradition of the “no confidence vote”; you saw it in Phantom Menace, with the plot events rushed along in a futile attempt to help tease out some coherent story. They don’t wait around for elections, if the consensus arises that a change has to be made. They get it done. Maybe, I opined, we should look at this.

My wise and patriotic readers really spoke up, and put me in my place. I’m left thinking that’s probably right, as a general rule when the states and Europe do things differently, we here have our reasons and we should be proud of not borrowing ideas that are bad ones. Perhaps I should correct my course, and in the spirit of avoiding the horrors that are attendant to pure democracy, we should stick with our regular election system.

At least, that’s what I thought right up until this latest blow-up about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the soda ban.

I dunno. Europe’s solution still seems heavy-handed; it’s the kind of thing you put in place — as is the case with a lot of what Europe does — when you invest enthused but unwarranted trust in the prevailing consensus.

But Bloomberg seems to have an actual mental disorder here. Somewhere I saw a YouTube comment about this, someone made the point that if you just repeat this a few times…we’re simply forcing you, we’re simply forcing you, we’re simply forcing you. It becomes clear what is going on. At the very, very least, it is cockeyed screwed up priorities. Got everything else solved over there Mike?

Also, I had said something about a test to be applied to these public officials — when you see their face on the teevee with the sound turned off, do you lunge for the remote with this sickly feeling in your gut, of “What’s s/he up to NOW??” I’m a good distance away from New York City, in fact I’ve never been there, but based on what I’m seeing & hearing it seems to me that Bloomey is just about at that point. I’m certainly ready to find alternatives to doing things the European way…I’m ready to look good & hard before going that route…but I’m not ready to let go of this part of my comments, because there’s something wrong about living in fear of your so-called “leaders” day to day. In fact, that part of my earlier commentary is about as American as apple pie.

And I’m sad to say, this is what’s happening. It’s going on in quite a few places. It isn’t just Mike Bloomberg. Senators, mayors, governors, the President, His Holy Executive Branch, all of ’em really…they’ve become freakin’ Swords of Damoclese, hanging by fragile hairs over our necks, and we have little idea what they’re going to be doing next, or when.

The only thing of which we have any real confidence is, the next idea they have that will actually affect us in some way, will be stupid and bad. I guess it’s really all coming down to: My proposed solution is anti-American, true, but the nature of the problem is just as anti-American…so…my question then becomes, where & when do we realize the benefits of not doing it? There he is, the European-style jackass, smugly telling his subjects, er, constituency what they can & can’t eat. He is referred to, with not just a little bit of justification, as a “Napoleon.” And he fails the teevee-no-sound-test. You don’t have much idea what he’s going to do next. But you know the idea will be stupid, and bad…and he’s just one of many.

With no external force acting upon the object, it will continue on its present course. He does not see himself as a mere ordinary citizen serving a limited length of time in an office of humble public service. He’s just addicted to the adrenaline rush of ordering things, and getting them, and the novelty/rush has worn off so now he wants to do it for everybody else. It makes just as much sense to tell everyone how to tie their shoes, where their car radios should be set, and what their favorite color is supposed to be for this week. It’s not supposed to be like this.

So what do we do? My original solution was far from ideal, and may be unworkable. By its very nature, yes, it is un-American. But so is leaving the problem unattended. These narcissistic pricks are completely out of control.

The Blaze. Another actor is turned off.

It’s hard to believe in the presidency anymore. I voted for Obama, I love Obama, but I don’t want to see Obama on “The View,” I don’t want to see him playing Frisbee, I don‘t want to know that it’s $40,000 a plate at George Clooney’s house, and I adore George Clooney. Hey man, I‘ve got a friend of mine who’s got a $7 an hour job at Dunkin Donuts and he can’t get a $9 an hour job over at the country club because there are so many people in front of him. I believe that the president should be his desk all day. I don’t want to see him on vacation, I don‘t want to see him at Martha’s Vineyard, I don’t want to see Mrs. Obama in Spain. No, no, I do not want to see that because everybody’s struggling. These CEOs shouldn’t be taking all this money. No Rolls Royces. No private planes.

The “don’t want to see” stuff really says a mouthful; that’s the whole deal right there.

Because if Obamandias is re-elected, and this is just a matter of simple common sense, you can tap dance around it all day if you like but it’s still true: He can’t spend the next four years killing Osama bin Laden a few more times.

But He can spend that block of time re-appearing on daytime talk shows. Which is precisely what He’ll do. Fly around, play golf, make the most Super Awesome Mega Wonderful Speech Ever, play more golf, crack some jokes about how Michelle won’t let him do something…and, when the country’s pain becomes even more severe, remind us that He inherited this mess. In front of microphones. And teleprompters.

And then He’ll appear on some more shows.

The killer knockout punch against the idea of re-electing Obama? If He loses…the list of things He will be doing, will be no different. Not even a tiny bit. You take out the impact of all the executive decisions that Romney & O would decide differently…and we can argue awhile about whether there’s something considerable there or not…what we’re left with is, who is going to pay for Obama’s jet fuel between 2013 and 2017. That’s about it. You should vote for the President if you want more pug-ugly liberal spinster women being nominated to the Supreme Court, and if you want the taxpayers to pay for Michelle’s vacations and Barack’s speeches. Those are the two big gains. Barack Obama having stature and profile…people listening to Barack Obama…Barack Obama flying around the country, having teleprompters and adoring fans…that isn’t part of the choice, if these factors don’t change between the choices. We’re essentially voting on where the bill is sent.

Oh yeah, the actor is Steve Guttenberg, from Three Men and a Baby, Short Circuit and Police Academy.

Some people do much better on radio than on video, because of their looks.

Whittle’s not a bad lookin’ guy, he’s got something else going on. Not sure what. But while his videos are alright, and occasionally very good, on radio he’s in a completely different mode. He just comes alive. He’s in his groove.

Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark.

This impressed me when I first saw it. And, perhaps to my shame, I think back on it now & then…so if that is all it takes for a movie scene to possess philosophical weight, then, ludicrous as it may seem to say so, this has got it. Even if it’s a Sam Raimi movie.

Boortz:

It is generally accepted that it costs somewhere in the range of $120,000 to $150,000 for the private sector – that’s the evil capitalist, free enterprise sector – to create one job. This covers not only the salary that will be paid to the new worker, but to investments in space, materials, equipment, marketing efforts and other costs associated with job creation.

OK … that’s the private sector. But since we have a president – for now, at least – who thinks that it is the government’s responsibility to create jobs, let’s look into THOSE numbers for a few minutes…
:
Under Obama’s stimulus bill – actually written by Nancy Pelosi – it cost anywhere from $540,000 to $4,100,000 for each job created. The private sector does this for $120,000 to $150,000 … but for government the cost is, at best, four times that … and up …. Way up. If you just go for the median you’re spending over $3 million for each job produced.

Hehe.

Talk about awkward.

When President Obama hosts former President George W. Bush at the White House on Thursday to unveil his predecessor’s official portrait, he’ll pay tribute to the man whom he has blamed lately for everything short of an outbreak of the flesh-eating virus.

The war in Iraq? An unnecessary and costly diversion that was Mr. Bush’s fault, according to Mr. Obama.

The worst recession since World War II? The president says Mr. Bush and the GOP are to blame.

Soaring deficits? Mr. Obama’s mantra is that he inherited the red ink from the Republican.

The Wall Street collapse? See “Bush, George W.”

Loss of America’s prestige in the eyes of the world? Mr. Obama has laid that allegation on Mr. Bush’s doorstep, too.

At a fundraiser in California last week, Mr. Obama used Mr. Bush as his foil to raise more money for his re-election campaign. The president began by criticizing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for planning “bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans,” deep cuts in funding for education and Medicare, and deregulation of the banking and insurance industries.

“But that’s not new,” Mr. Obama told the crowd. “That was tried, remember? The last guy did all this.”

…by the chastity of Lolo Jones.

In a recent interview on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” 29-year-old American hurdler Lolo Jones told Mary Carillo that Olympic qualifying is nowhere near as difficult as her struggle to remain a virgin until marriage. Jones said she publicized her vow of chastity because she wants other girls who have made the same decision to know that they are not alone and that it’s not easy.

Gekas, the columnist, became “irked” when Jones used the phrase, “gift I want to give my husband.”

With this archaic notion of “value” placed on a woman’s virginity comes the belief that exclusive rights to her womb should be saved for the highest bidder; that it is a commodity to be bought (in most cases by her husband) and sold (usually by her father). And if she gives it away or, God forbid, it is taken from her, she loses value as a woman and as a human being.

If Jones had said “I want to share my first experience with a man who loves me and is committed to me; and who I love and am committed to,” I would’ve tipped my hat to her and been on my merrily unchaste way. If she had said, “I’m doing this for myself, because I only want to be with one man,” I would’ve thought, “Do your thing, sister.”

Instead, she perpetuated the vulgar notion that a woman’s virginity is proprietary. And she did it in the spirit of setting a good example.

Virginity is not an object, it is not a possession and it is not a gift you can give someone. It is a state of being, and the transformation from that state to the state of not being a virgin isn’t something that can be owned by anyone except the person to whom it applies, and even then it is less possessive and more existential.

I’m sure Jones and I would agree that at its best, sex is one of the deepest, most profound ways two human beings can connect. And I’m sure that is one of the reasons why she has chosen to wait until marriage. But to “give” it to a man is to suggest that it is about him more than it is about her and that’s what irks me.

Oh, boy. Did Gekas notice, each and every time she got twisted-off here, she needed to justify her anger with this little “sounds like” game she’s playing…can’t get angry at what Jones actually said, so she has to use these glue-phrases like “suggest that it is” and “with this belief comes this other belief.” Were she to engage in an actual back-and-forth, two-directional debate about this, in which each side enjoys equal opportunity to respond to the other, which is doubtful — I’m sure she’d cry foul if she found retorts coming back her way based on things she almost said.

Heck, I’ll do it right now. Her peevish rant has the look & feel of a big ol’ feminist monsoon, inspired by nothing more and nothing less than someone female doing something nice for someone male. Her thundering screed suggests that this is the true ignition point of the fireball, the actual epicenter of the quake. No, she didn’t come out and say it, I’m just playing the Alexandra Gekas “sounds like” game, just filling in some gaps here.

And more accurately than any time she did it, I’ll bet.

We’re seeing this a lot with the thirty-something crowd…the Manhattan-purple-shirt-and-skinny-necktie, “I wanna be a guest on the Daily Show” crowd. The American Castrati. They favor left-wing politics generally, but will admit to this only when it is convenient to them to do so…but you can pick them out when they use phrases like “archaic notion” and make references to people owning other people, when it doesn’t apply logically. And, if they’re women, if they see something nice being done for a man a hundred times, they’re pissed off & bent out of shape a hundred times.

I made a reference to the Architect and Medicator split last time I saw this take place, which I think was correct then and I think it is correct now. Back then, the chestless male actually used the phrase rhetorical proximity.

It’s a good phrase, a good way of describing it. And a bad way to decide things. People who need to make decisions that are correct — earn their daily bread by doing that thing, how do the carpenters say it, “measure twice, cut once.” — they can’t do this. It is purely a Medicator thought process. Just look at the mindset, will you: “I’ve made this decision to loathe A, because I already loathe B, and I have perceived this connection of equivalence between A and B…even though I know it is unsustainable since A and B are not the same…I feel that they share enough similarities, or are sufficiently ‘proximate,’ that I can ignore the differences.”

That is the common error between the two. They could both be geniuses, and their reasoning skills would still be below par…because reasoning is not what they’re doing. In both cases, they’re forming opinions by pretending two things they know darn good & well are not the same, are the same.

And you can’t arrive at reliably correct answers that way.

Seems like a silly question, I suppose it is one, but it is becoming the question of the hour:

The left has a decision to make: Is it going to try to repackage the starry-eyed romance and dreamy magic of Barack Obama from four years ago or build a rationale for his reelection based on lessons learned and a plausible critique of the president’s performance in office. Perhaps it will need to acknowledge that the idolization of Obama was a one-time phenomena and that voters, desperate for some results, will be impatient with proselytizing from the Obama camp.

A good test is approaching. Next Monday, June 4, will be the four-year anniversary of the speech candidate Obama gave celebrating his delegate count, which would make him the certain Democrat nominee. He took the occasion to state what he thought his presidency foretold. Of his own nomination victory, Obama said, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.” He let others really lay it on thick. You would think the retrospective absurdity of this quote would make liberals a little cautious, if not embarrassed, and cause them to rethink how they enabled Obama. We will see how this is hidden or celebrated in the next few days.
:
Many on the left have lost any insight into their own bias; nothing Obama says is over the top, and nothing he has done lacks significance or inspiration. Likewise, nothing Romney says or has done amounts to much. By forcing a halo upon Obama, suggesting dark hearts among any who don’t see it and follow, and ignoring the virtues of a decent man like Romney, does not serve the president well. It stirs resentment among voters who chafe at being told to love him or else.

Hat tip to Ace of Spades, by way of Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm.

The Washington Post item links to a Frank Bruni column called “The Emotional Tug of Obama”…which I don’t know how to excerpt…well…ah, here’s a suitable nugget of silliness:

He still personifies the hope, to borrow a noun that he has used, that we really might evolve into the colorblind, fair-minded country that many of us want. His own saga taps into the larger story of this country’s fitful, unfinished progress toward its stated ideal of equal opportunity.

And that gives many voters an emotional connection to him that they simply don’t have to most other politicians, including Romney, a privileged and intensely private man whose strengths don’t include the easy ability to humanize himself…

Some people never learn, I suppose.

As far as the strategic question about how to sell President Obama, it’s purely a cost/benefit decision and they probably did not make the wrong one. It’s self-evident that the product did have this much sizzle, four years ago, to get itself sold; question is, does it retain it. All stupid fads have a shelf-life. But there’s never any logical predicting, it seems, about how long the shelf life is going to be, now is there?

Who knows, maybe the country will double down too. We’ll round it out to a full eight years of being starry-eyed…we’re just not that interested in things that work, we just want to feel inspired. Be seen swearing slavish devotion to the right things…abdicating our own responsibilities to make the right decisions…and do a lot of mooching.

Well on the upside, it gives us an excuse to watch this again:

Legal?

Weasel Zippers doesn’t think so (hat tip to Boortz).

Attorney General Eric Holder, the IRS, and the liberal lawyers at the ACLU will brief several hundred pastors in the African American community on how to participate in the presidential election — which the Congressional Black Caucus chair expects will help President Obama’s campaign.

I have my own doubts, I must say…nevermind the baloney about “not supporting any particular candidate” and how that supposedly passes muster with the IRS tax exemption business.

How is it, I wonder, that this “wall of separation” continues to breach open at these convenient times? These government officials have determined Judeo-Christian religions teach this “theological responsibility” so they’re taking the initiative to tell the pastors how to do their pastoring.

Where’s the ACLU? How come they’re not filing suit? Are they that busy with the prayer banners that they have no time for this?

America: Her Finest Hour is Yet to Come.

Besides shutting down productivity entirely, in some cases, regulation makes everything cost more than it would otherwise, from our labor to real estate, and from automobiles to the price of milk, bread, and gasoline. For several decades, debt was a relief valve for the rising cost of regulation, which eats away at the value of what we earn with productive work. Now the regime of debt has largely shut down.

But Americans aren’t rioting in the streets over this. We are tightening our belts, in order to get ourselves right with the future. Don’t overlook the significance of this. For every kid in the Occupy movement, there are hundreds his age finding whatever jobs are available and working hard, learning to be reliable employees and team players – and paying bills, saving money, and looking to what they can do about their own futures. These young people, alongside their elders, are holding society together, with discipline and quiet, unheralded daily courage.

Don’t give up on Americans. And don’t give up on liberty.
:
The good news is that America is the world’s example of what can be achieved by people who are not beholden to a god-like government. America is not paralyzed today by the character of our people, the scarceness of our resources, or the terrors of our future. America is paralyzed because our once-small government has grown on principles that are unworthy of us: invidious principles of despair, anger, resentment, and fear.
:
Do not fear that Americans can’t do well with less government. Something military officers learn early, if they are wise, is that you don’t control men: you believe in them. And when you do, there is no limit to what they can accomplish. The heroes who lie in our cemeteries, with the small flags waving bravely over them on Memorial Day, knew that.

From Newsbusters.

…[I]t is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word “hero”? I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen…

++blink++

Well okay. First impression: I need to update the Architect and Medicator thing, if only to help along my own understanding of the split, because this is an important characteristic I’ve missed. Medicators live in a whole different universe, in which the answer you give to a question is no more important than how you got to the answer. Which leads to all sorts of problems. In this case, the correct answer to “Is the dead solder a hero?” is yes…just as it is on Planet Architect…but it’s important to do a lot of hemming and hawing about it first, lots of hesitation, clearly communicating the reluctance. Just like President Obama taking a whole year to figure out what to do about Afghanistan.

Which brings us to my second impression: Someone needs to come up with a new word to describe this. “Liberal” doesn’t do it, “progressive” doesn’t do it, “spoiled media brat” doesn’t do it and “American Castrati chinless chestless pusscake” doesn’t do it.

A new word demands a precise definition. Here it is: What I seek to describe is this not-so-recent errant mindset, that arrives at a logically untenable and unsustainable conclusion. Which is — the likelihood that the next war will actually happen tomorrow, is somehow linked to to the reaction we show to the concept of war today. Carried to its extreme, it is a thought pattern that says we can, by working together, banish war forever merely by not liking it, and communicating within some subtle window of opportunity the fact that we don’t like it.

Their dysfunction, their inability to cope with life, is demonstrated easily: “Yes they are heroes” is a meaningfully different answer from “Yes they are heroes, although I hesitate to say so because it is rhetorically proximate to justifying war.” So the hesitation and the legalese disclaimers change the character of the person answering, and the concern is over the justification of war…what conclusion can be drawn, other than, we have a great shot at banishing war from the human condition if only we show a properly consistent distaste for it? But this says nothing, other than the well understood fact that the war hater doesn’t understand the sentiments of the non-hesitant ones. He perceives that he possesses a moral monopoly, where none exists. What sane man or woman loves war?

And what does a soldier have to say, about sending himself or herself into one? Once the planes are in the air and the boots are on the ground, it is what it is. They’re heroes, one & all.

These pussy beta males are going to get us killed.

What do we call this misguided sense that we can end war, which has persisted since the day Cain struck down Abel, merely by displaying the fact that it makes us unhappy? What do we say about people who apparently were raised from infancy, laboring under the delusion that they can have this kind of effect on current events, through some theatrical, grandiose and bumptious brandishing of their individual tastes?

What do we say about their mothers? Once we’re talking about motherhood, I’d like to stick to positive remarks and leave all the rest unsaid. But it seems undeniable that something in the raising was, tragically, left undone here. You’re that much of a stranger to bad things, that are bound to come raining down upon you and upon others, regardless of the reaction you show toward them? You think the universe cares that much about the approval you choose to offer, or choose to withhold? You think you’re that important? Really?

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. — John Stuart Mill

Update: “Educated beyond one’s hat size.” Very apt description. We’ve got a lot of that goin’ around lately…