Sippican:

She simply refused to remember anything unpleasant, and seemed to forget nothing else. She regaled her children and grandchildren with stories of Cuchulain and Medb, faeries and wee people, Naomh Padraig and his clovers and snakes; a living encyclopedia of fun and fantasy.

She saved what little money came her way, and bought and sold things. Her long lost relatives would send her this and that from the Auld Sod, and she’d sell them to Yankees who collected such as her family had, as if the Irish were as exotic as Babylonians, not right across the Irish Sea from their own forefathers.

RTWT.

The announcement is that there will be no national anthem tonight and “we do apologize for that”…and then, something happens.

The 124th award for BSIHORL (Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately) goes to one of my Facebook friends who commented in an explosive thread about the right wing’s so-called war on women.

It is a statement for the season, and context is entirely unnecessary:

I don’t see how “not paying for” is the same as “restricting access to.”

Lest you be wondering, no, as far as I know this inquiry was never directly answered.

She has discovered the Flukeness. Resistance against buying something & distributing it for free, is on par with making sure people can’t get it.

Campaign 2012, Washington Examiner:

Vice President Joe Biden addressed 87 wealthy Democrats last night attending a fundraiser at the home of Sen. John Kerry in Georgetown. As they dined on grass-fed New York strip steaks and white truffle mashed potatos underneath a outdoor tent, Biden criticized Republicans for being out of touch.

“These guys don’t have a sense of the average folks out there,” Biden said according to the pool report, “They don’t know what it means to be middle class.”

87 guests paid a minimum of $10,000-per-couple to attend the dinner.

Nothing to add.

Stanley Fish writes in the New York Times.

The double standard that is in the news these days concerns Rush Limbaugh, who called Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown, a “slut” and “prostitute” because she told Congress that her university’s health plan should cover the cost of contraceptives.
:
…some on the conservative side of the aisle have cried “double standard” because Ed Schultz was only mildly criticized (and suspended for a week) for characterizing Laura Ingraham as a “right-wing slut,” and Bill Maher emerged relatively unscathed after he referred to Michele Bachmann as a “bimbo” and labeled Sarah Palin with words I can’t mention in this newspaper. If you are going to get on your high horse when Limbaugh says something inappropriate, shouldn’t you also mount the steed when commentators on your team say the same kind of thing?
:
If we think about the Rush Limbaugh dust-up from the non-liberal — that is, non-formal — perspective, the similarity between what he did and what Schultz and Maher did disappears. Schultz and Maher are the good guys; they are on the side of truth and justice. Limbaugh is the bad guy; he is on the side of every nefarious force that threatens our democracy. Why should he get an even break?
:
Rather than relaxing or soft-pedaling your convictions about what is right and wrong, stay with them, and treat people you see as morally different differently. Condemn Limbaugh and say that Schultz and Maher may have gone a bit too far but that they’re basically O.K. If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair. “Fair” is a weak virtue; it is not even a virtue at all because it insists on a withdrawal from moral judgment.

I know the objections to what I have said here. It amounts to an apology for identity politics. It elevates tribal obligations over the universal obligations we owe to each other as citizens. It licenses differential and discriminatory treatment on the basis of contested points of view. It substitutes for the rule “don’t do it to them if you don’t want it done to you” the rule “be sure to do it to them first and more effectively.” It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.

Sometimes, you almost have to feel sorry for the Modern Left. They got a little bit of encouragement with this issue, and they doubled-down so hard that now their mask has slipped off. And they didn’t even win anything.

In response to why should he get an even break, James Taranto states the obvious:

A disregard for fairness tends to alienate those who don’t already agree with you, and the attempt to consider the other side’s arguments fairly makes one’s own arguments more robust. If the Times were to reject the Fish Rule and actually make an effort to give the “bad guys” their due, it might be easier to find a documented case of someone changing his mind after reading a Times editorial.

In the same sense that applying theatrical outrage evenly and indiscriminately would make an argument more robust, applying it with calculated and unapologetic “that’s just the way it’s supposed to be” bias malnourishes that same argument in ways most visible to those hearing it and least visible to the person offering it. In fact, people tend to forget this, but we’re already going out on a limb when we say an argument is more likely to be correct when it is less offensive. We really haven’t got much business accepting just that much; how many offensive arguments have we seen, that turn out to be right? How many avoidable mistakes do we see made, based on thinking that has been declared somewhere to be less offensive than some alternative?

But Fish’s recommendation here leads to reasoning that is not only predictably flawed, but reliably circular. His side wins because his side has been judged — by those within it — to be less offensive. And it is to be judged as less offensive because it’s supposed to win. It’s about as useful as a wagon with one wheel a few inches bigger than the other, for exactly the same reason, traveling the same course; it is non-utilitarian because it ends up in a spot not remarkably different from where it begins. “We’re just plain right, why go into all this boring detail” sums it up nicely.

Here I must pause to notice yet another subtle thing about the Fluke debacle: Of all the arguments for Limbaugh’s…uh, I’ve lost track of what exactly it is they think they’re trying to do to him, let’s called it “conviction of the crime”…the one that manages to arouse the greatest sympathy from me, is that “slut” is a word to be avoided because it is deliberately vulgar and coarse, not technically accurate, potentially defamatory, et cetera. In short, we must expunge this piece of slang from our vernacular so that the discourse can remain civilized, elevated and lofty.

But the people who put their eggs in this basket, so to speak, don’t seem too interested in lofty discourse. I’m seeing Fish getting filleted in the comments section, and the consensus objection seems to be: Limbaugh’s a jerk, you don’t need to offer this apologia for a double standard, we’re not applying one…see, this is what I’m talking about. Caveman arguments of “us good, him bad.” It fails to consider ideas, even as it goes through the meaningless motions of, supposedly, evaluating them meticulously. It uses elementary-school-playground reasoning even in the midst of condemning elementary-school-playground taunting. Those people over there are wonderful and awesome, can never have a bad idea; those other people are horrible and terrible and can never have a good one. Well, it is an election year, I suppose our expectations must be relaxed.

Sandra Fluke is a slut, by the way. Applied to a woman, the word means a slovenly one. Slovenly means untidy, careless and neglectful in appearance, manners and repute. Go ahead, look ’em up. Her testimony was to the effect that the expense involved in birth control for Georgetown students, like her, was so great that it wasn’t reasonable to expect them to bear it, it was so great that it would have to be paid by someone else. It’s difficult to think of another item of personal maintenance that could be so intimate, meaning, a non-slovenly person would desire to take care of this without sham “hearings” on Capitol Hill. And, when the birth control is used for recreational purposes, it’s entirely optional. It sucks to be celibate because of a reason like this, but people do it.

If that option of chastity for sake of financial independence is somehow automatically ruled out, for recreational reasons, that’s a self-control issue. We’d have no problem saying that about alcohol, marijuana or gambling. Why not here? So the most credible way you could say Limbaugh is wrong in what he said, is: Fluke is not a slut, she’s a spokesperson for other sluts. And, her defenders have simply lost track of how undignifying it is, to choose to live a life dependent on others. They’re polishing a turd. Just like Gerard said: “I hope she thinks the damage she’s done to herself was worth it, because to get it she made herself into the kind of ‘damaged goods’ parents once used to warn their daughters against becoming. The rich irony is that she doesn’t even know it yet. But she will. She will.”

I’m not sure what is happening to the word “slut” here. It’s either being banned from existence entirely, or it’s becoming a woman’s version of the N-word (they can use it, others cannot), or maybe the outcome will be to Stanley Fish’s liking and the word will become an pejorative of progressive-only privilege. Or, no metamorphosis of nomenclature will take place at all. My hope is that, if it is in a process of Gandalf-The-White transformation, at the end of it all the word will be understood to mean: Someone who wants what she wants, even if someone else has to pay for it, involuntarily — and doesn’t care about that because she just wants it.

That would be good. That would be, perhaps, the best linguistic resolution possible. The more I think about it, the more I like it. We’ve needed a word to describe this for awhile. We have been suffering needlessly for the lack of having one.

Wisdom, again, from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account:

Ever notice the people who want “laws kept out of my/her uterus” are the same people who want lots and lots of regulation everywhere else?

Dana Loesch writest at Breitbart’s Big Journalism:

A trio of polls released yesterday shows the harsh reality from which the embattled President Obama and the media hoped to deflect by fabricating a “War on Women.”

The newest Washington Post/ABC poll shows that the majority of Americans strongly disapprove of the way in which the President is handling a number of issues, chief among them the economy and gas prices. According to the March 10th, 2012 poll released yesterday a net 50% of those surveyed disapprove of how Obama is handling the job of president with 39% “strongly disapproving” and only 28% “strongly approving.” This is up from the net 46% taken on February 4th of the same year.

On the economy, 50% “strongly disapprove” whereas only 20% “strongly approve” of the President’s management. His negatives greatly outweigh his positives on everything from his handling of Iran, the budget deficit, Afghanistan, and on “the situation with gas prices” where 52% “strongly disapprove” of his job performance. It represents an increasing trend.

The latest New York Times/ CBS News poll:

At a time of rising gas prices, heightened talk of war with Iran and setbacks in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama’s approval rating dropped substantially in recent weeks, the poll found, with 41 percent of respondents expressing approval of the job he is doing and 47 percent saying they disapprove — a dangerous position for any incumbent seeking re-election.

The last of the trio comes from Rasmussen which illustrates how a full 59% of the country view Obama as “more liberal” than they are themselves.
:
If the incumbent wants to win a second term, focus on fixing what’s broken — the barrier between big government and private enterprise — and staying out of what isn’t. There’s no need to purposefully victimize women for the sake of using them as pawns in an election. That itself is an act of war on women.

Related: Jammie Wearing Fool:

Three groups that supported him in 2008: The young, women and less affluent are abandoning him in droves, but somehow it’s the GOP that’s got a problem.

When he gets blown out in November, it’ll be reported as “Obama Unexpectedly Loses 40 States” or something along those lines.

Also, from Frank J. Fleming at IMAO:

With the GOP war on women, it’s just too bad Ted Kennedy isn’t around to drive women to safety.

Too late to vote on it, nevertheless, I’m all in favor if they let me pick the targets.

And your favorite Dark Lord of the Sith on a unicycle.

The trouble with the Fluke matter is, we need to get off it and on to other things that are far more important; and, at the same time, we don’t.

On the one hand, the matter is settled. President Obama has been so hugely embarrassed by the whole contraception-mandate thing that His pals on Capitol Hill figured out there was no way of saving Him short of the Winifred Skinner technique: Put some sad sack in front of the cameras and tell a tall tale about the woe and misery involved in this one loser trying to cope with life. Oh, how can this happen in America! We need reform! This is all old ground for us by now, there are “real” problems elsewhere that need solving.

On the other hand, there’s something important taking place that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. The Sandra Fluke thing, with the slut issues and the free speech issues removed — and, yes, I’m ready, let’s do that — is revealed as a Winifred Skinner thing. We’ve got these politicians who are supposedly “serving” us, and they’re supposed to have such fine and upstanding character, chosen from the best and brightest among us. And, as respect for the legislative branch in particular, and our government in general, continues to sink like a bowling ball dropped over the Mariana Trench, they continue to put these losers in front of microphones to guilt us into more unaffordable social programs. On Planet Liberal, the Constitution is meaningless, and the only constitution that applies is an unwritten one. It’s got something to do with inventing new rights every now & then, by means of drama.

If anybody calls them on it, they invent more rights for themselves, on the spot, again, by means of drama. Specifically, they should be allowed new influence and powers because their feelings were hurt just now.

If this tactic appealed only to the other sad sacks strewn across the country, it wouldn’t work. Yes, we’re in an idiocracy for the moment, and that means every new year finds us weaker and more pathetic than the year before, which may mean each year there are more sad sacks than there were one year previous. But they’re still in the minority. The problem here, as I see it, is empathy: We’ve got these “moderates” out there who work honestly and hard, and pay their own way, but they want to show some compassion toward those who must live off the efforts of others. They fail to distinguish between those who are indigent by circumstance and those who are indigent by choice. They behold, to use a metaphor I’ve used previously, the local widow and the town drunk. They see only commonalities between the two, and no differences.

They’re entirely decent people, but since they are not part of the solution, they’re part of the problem. Perhaps we should dispense with the diplomacy: They’re suckers. They bought every little cock-and-bull story told to them about Sandra Fluke, by The Left, over the last two weeks. Wolfed it all down, and begging for seconds. Sandra Fluke told truth to power! Georgetown gals need three thousand dollars for their ovarian cyst medication! Ban Rush Limbaugh because he said something legal but offensive!

Remember when the radical Islamists out in New York wanted to build a Victory Mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks and the liberals started calling everyone racists who didn’t want to roll out the red carpet? They said it was all about something called “religious freedom” and claimed to have always held a deep genuflecting respect for the principle. And then demanded that we not chortle at the thought…lest they become offended. Just so adorable! Well, this time the thing they’ve always believed going back to the very beginning, is that anyone who so much as thinks the word “slut” should be vaporized on the spot. Yeah, them. The “Sarah Palin Is A Cunt” people. Don’t crack a smile, whatever you do! Choke it down! Wouldn’t want to offend them…

Yeah, it’s a double standard. But let us perceive it for exactly what it is. Wisdom from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account:

The Modern Left does not HAVE a double-standard.

the Modern Left IS a double-standard.

That is their mission, that is their message…so yeah, they said “hey Rush shouldn’t use that word” and they end up embarrassed because, it’s on tape, their guys have been using that word, much more frequently, and other words much, much worse.

If the same opportunity was presented to them a hundred more times, they would have plowed right into the same embarrassment and self-inflicted damage a hundred more times. This was all quite unavoidable. It’s what they are. Special rules for special people, and lowered standards for whoever they define to be victims. It is their primary position and their core value system.

This applies to all issues on which there is significant disagreement between conservatives and liberals, at least all the issues that are not exclusively concerned with building a police/nanny state. The formula is ever-present on issues foreign and domestic. X has endured Y…and because X has endured Y, we have to have Z and, furthermore, you are not allowed to say anything about X that isn’t absolutely flattering. Z is a consolation prize to X, punishment rained down on the head of whoever did Y, or some combination of those two. That is the leftist position. On everything.

They are anti-equal-protection advocates. Across the board. They want special privileges for defined elites. That is the product they are selling.

Palestinians aren’t bombing Israelis, they’re just fighting back the only way they know how, after Israelis used American weapons to incinerate their babies.

We took the land away from the Indians, oops Native Americans, so they should have their own fishing seasons.

If we can somehow manage to dredge up some passionate argument against the way you got the evidence, then it never happened and you “must acquit.”

And if we can’t do that, then the poor convicted rapist/murderer guy had a rough childhood and is not to be blamed.

Blacks can use the N-word, whites can’t.

We’ve got to recognize same-sex marriage, because, who are you to tell people who they can’t love?

Women make seventy cents on the dollar compared to men, so now that the marriage is over, he needs to pony up the cash to keep her in the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed.

We need to keep Affirmative Action around, with quotas, for, oh, so-many more years or so…

You can’t build that dam, the snail darter lives there.

No drilling, no pipeline. Caribou mating season or something…blah blah blah pristine.

Hillary Clinton’s husband messed around on her, so she is eminently qualified for just about everything.

Don’t call them illegal immigrants, call them undocumented, they work hard follow the law…et cetera.

Rick Walker bad, public sector unions good.

Andrew Breitbart bad, Shirley Sherrod good.

I could keep adding to that list all day…but what’s the point…once the pattern is defined and understood, it is visible in everything they do. And in each case, it is a measurable event that the plane of reality is being abandoned — because, in each case, if someone within the victim class is provably guilty of some transgression, the liberal position is going to consistently be offered that reason and justice must be derailed (simplest example of this would be in the illegal-immigration problem).

This is a significant point, and it is important that more people become fully aware of it. It will affect the outcome of the election this year. Since around the time of Bill Clinton’s victory twenty years ago, The Left has enjoyed easy victory by peddling their nonsense to the moderates I mentioned above — the charitable, kind-hearted, hardworking moderates. Who are suckers. Because those suckers cannot tell the widow apart from the town drunk, and make no effort or achievement toward understanding there are people walking around determined to live off of the sweat of others. People who think only idiots work hard. And why shouldn’t those town-drunks think such a thing, if their lives have been devoted to suckering the sucker moderates — and it has always worked?

The passionate leftist approaches the sucker moderate and recites the formula: X has endured Y, therefore we must have Z. The sucker-moderate decides it the way he decides everything else: By finding whatever can be perceived to be the most “extreme” position on the issue, and rejecting it with great zeal, and great visibility, almost ceremoniously: I denounce that! But they select that most-extreme position emotionally and not logically. Because, logically, “Rush Limbaugh should be taken off the air” would be found undesirably extremist, but somehow these overly-emotional sucker-moderates settle on “Sandra Fluke can pay for her own personal items” as the extremist ethos that must be expunged from our delicate societal sensibilities.

The paradox is this — and, this is why The Left is just as ready as anybody else, to stop talking about Sandra Fluke. They don’t want what follows, to sink in. They don’t want the sucker-moderates to become aware of it. It’s unaffordable, from their perspective and position; this would give the whole game away.

The truth is, you cannot buy into “X endured Y and so we must have Z” without surrendering your believable credentials as a moderate. There is nothing to limit the Z. One of the clarion calls used by The Left in the Fluke debacle has been: “Nobody has said she wants the government to pay for her contraceptives, she just wants her insurance to cover it!” The truth is: Nobody has said that and nobody needs to. Granting her victory in the argument she’s really trying to make here, there’s nothing stopping that next step, is there? The whole testimony was all about how unaffordable it is, for any ordinary Georgetown student, to take on this particular expense all by her poor hapless helpless self. That is the point she was seeking to make.

Here, as is the case with all other liberal positions on the issues — there is nothing to limit the Z. They are inherently extremist positions. You are not able to say anything negative about X; you cannot even think things about X that are less than flattering; therefore, it is not logical to expect any limits should be applied to Z. It is ever-expanding. Always one Capitol Hill testimony, or Wall Street protest, away from the next event of expansion.

To the sucker-moderates, a week ago this was a simple issue: Rush Limbaugh called someone a slut, do we sucker-moderates like that word? No, that’s an easy call, so…yes, he should apologize, and what a terrible person he is. That makes Fluke an angel, along with everyone supporting her, they’re all wonderful people. But now that they’ve had a chance to mull it over awhile, The Left is scrambling for a distraction, which is rather surreal when you ponder that Sandra Fluke was a manufactured distraction from something else, herself, in the first place. The sucker-moderates are starting to see the hypocrisy laid bare and it looks ugly. See, they only want to side with the leftists; they don’t want to admit that they’re becoming converted leftists themselves, they’ll never tolerate that. Ever. Paraphrasing Upton Sinclair, they’ll buy into the system but they’ll never buy the label.

And, they’re starting to become aware that the check they’re being asked to write, is a blank one.

You know how bad this situation really is for The Left? The sucker-moderates are starting to wake up to the fact that, deciding public policy issues according to things like emotion, and sympathy for only a few of the impacted parties within the equation, is not only unfair but unrealistic. They are forming a new awareness that such a situation is encumbered by Herbert Stein’s Law: Whatever can’t last forever, won’t.

That particular awareness could be fairly described as the very definition of being a conservative!

And what I’ve decided is, I don’t like ’em. I’ll go further: I can’t stand them. I fucking hate ’em.

Okay I’ll make one single exception to that: If it’s like when James Caan snapped at Robert Duvall in The Godfather, and then immediately said, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that — if it’s a case of, the grown-up side of the brain hasn’t been in charge, and it just took control again and is in a process of making things right — then, and only then, I like apologies. Then, and only then, apologies are okay. When there’s some definable difference between what just took place, and the way people really are, when the person apologizing is admitting to something like “Ah, there’s a steering wheel in my head and I let go of it just now, I’m not gonna do that again, and what I just said is not real.”

But we don’t get to see that now too much, do we?

I’ve heard repeatedly from the left that Rush Limbaugh’s apology was insincere, and he should have taken an example from Ed Schultz’ apology to Laura Ingraham:

It rubs me the wrong way, frankly, that the left seems to think this is the model to which all other apologies must aspire. It isn’t that I think it’s inadequate; I don’t. It’s from the heart, and it leaves nothing undone. But I don’t like to see a grown man grovel. And, let’s face it, they like that. Can’t get enough of it.

Shortly after his apology, Ed Schultz saw a snake slithering by, and decided to rub its belly. He reached waaaaaaaay up from where he was, on tippy toes…couldn’t quite get there…gave up, slouched over, continued shuffling along, saw a hole in the ground, jumped into it, then grabbed the hole and pulled it in after him. Total humility in the wake of total humiliation. Every leftist watching is positively giddy with excitement over the way his shoulders sloop. This is why they hate westerns with the hero in the big hat walking tall after saving the town. This is the polar opposite: The obliteration of the individual. If only the same thing happened to Rush Limbaugh! And Karl Rove and Ollie North, while you’re at it.

The leftists who say, Schultz did it right and Limbaugh should learn something, are guilty of having lost track of their own argument. Their protest against Limbaugh, and this is not conjecture on my part because they’re stating it word by word themselves, is: He’s sorry for having been caught. He’s apologizing because he’s losing advertisers and trying to stop the revenue hemorrhage. Okay, that’s a fair point because, truth be told, that’s exactly why I’ve come to loathe apologies; more on that below. But — did Ed Schultz do such a great job in the clip above, that he’s immune from the same criticism? Go back and watch it again. Yes, he’s contrite, and reading from a script that could only have been written by someone who truly empathizes with the offense. But it could also be fairly characterized as an apology given only because a revenue stream is showing signs of drying up. You could see the whole ritual being skipped, if the advertisers weren’t getting ready to bail. Maybe they’ll admit it and maybe it won’t. It doesn’t matter, because it’s true. It’s just another apology for having been caught.

The contrite Ed “setting an example for my grandchildren” Schultz doesn’t really have a moral objection to calling women sluts if they disagree with him politically. Because if he did, he wouldn’t have said this:

And with that, I don’t wanna talk about Schultz anymore because this isn’t about him.

What this is really about, is: I am hearing, in the past few years, at what appears to be a continually accelerating pace, a crescendoing drumbeat of people expressing these “sincere” apologies for behavior they fully intend to do again. Or at least, with the same situation presented to them, would do again. Yes, I believe this is true of Limbaugh; I have listened to him way too long to believe otherwise. He has had a name for it going all the way back to the beginning: Illustrating absurdity by being absurd.

Here’s how it works. When someone presents an argument that is so ludicrous, that it falls apart simply by being taken seriously by somebody, Rush — takes it seriously. It is as effective as it is logical. Yes, I’m going on the record: He had nothing for which to apologize here. I don’t care if he says otherwise and I don’t care that he did apologize. This is the real reason why the apology was ineffective. There was no call for it in the first place.

Therefore, show me a thousand people who feel he needed to make the apology, I’ll show you a thousand people dedicated to the idea that his sin was irredeemable, and any apology would be irrelevant. Have him go back and give a Schultz-apology, and it wouldn’t matter one bit. Not a single mind would have been changed. The apology was a mistake. Or at least…battle tactics aside…the apology was a mistake. Limbaugh made a mistake giving it. And I say “battle tactics aside” because it is becoming more and more clear to me that the liberals made a mistake demanding it.

We’re plunged into a thoughtful deliberation about the double standard established by, enjoyed by, and perpetuated by, liberals. The “mainstream” people who actually decide elections are becoming more aware of this double standard. That’s bad for liberals and good for everyone else. For every pound of ass-flesh Rush Limbaugh loses to this, the situation now is that the Establishment Left loses two pounds, and I perceive that this point-of-diminishing-returns was crossed sometime between noon and eight o’clock Wednesday. That, too, is good.

But that doesn’t legitimize Rush’s decision. This situation would have occurred, along roughly the same timeframe, were the apology withheld.

The problem is this: The apology loses value when it is used as an instrument of deceit. And with the trajectory where the custom is headed, it is to be used as an instrument of deceit more and more frequently, and for other, more sincere, purposes more rarely. The left is finding Limbaugh’s apology wanting, and I think they should. Rush is offering them an empty packaging with nothing inside. The point they’re missing is that this empty packaging is more than what was owed.

I do think Bill Maher deserves some props for this tweet:

Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh but he apologized, liberals looking bad not accepting. Also hate intimidation by sponsor pullout

I’ve taught my son that an expression of gratitude is obligatory, if someone does something kind for you that they didn’t have to do. According to that litmus test, Maher gets a high-five. Perhaps a cynical cost-benefit calculation went into it. In fact, it’s likely. Maybe the asshole gets out of bed every morning thinking “What can I do to make conservatives lose something and let liberals win something?” That’s likely too. Almost certain. But it doesn’t matter, because he didn’t have to do it.

I don’t like apologies anymore. They do not do much to improve situations. I will admit here that I am nursing a grudge against the implement when my quarrel is really against the implementation, much like a gun-hater might hate guns because of some disaster brought about by one carelessly wielded gun in the possession of someone who never should have been allowed to touch one. So with that in mind, I understand this is not a completely fair grudge. I don’t care. The gun analogy breaks down, because we spend, rightfully, a great abundance of effort and energy on making sure guns are used only by people who have some business with them, and understand the common-sense rules that apply to them.

We sure suck at doing the same thing with apologies. The apology has become the very emblem of inept government.

In fact, I dislike the whole model of government that supports, and is supported by, the image of the prominent and influential public “servant” issuing an apology. Seriously, what am I to learn from such a display? Let us start with the common theme that applies to all of them: Had a thought been germinating in my cranium that the wrong folks are in charge, the “press conference” is intended to dissuade me from that notion. But the apology is directed at multiple people, is it not, for I by myself am not sufficiently important to pry an apology out of people who have power over me. And the apology is issued at a specific time, in the wake of a specific event; what I’m getting at is, there must have been a prologue to the apology. There had to be a logical reason for people to think this person is unfit for the office he holds. The apology is intended for the powerful to get the last word in — against observed reality. In short: The apology is not about contrition, it is about power. Someone else, who has power the apology-issuer does not have, rightly or wrongly has stirred up a tempest in a teapot and done some thinking on behalf of someone else. The thinking says that the words or deeds of the person issuing the apology, once entered into the record, are terminal to that person’s fitness for the office he holds. Somehow, the act of issuing the apology is going to reverse course, it’s going to alter the outcome, which means a deal has been struck and now someone is going to do some more thinking on behalf of someone else. Unless the apology fails, that is. Then, too, it isn’t about contrition, it’s about power.

So can we stop with all the high-minded and supercilious nonsense about what a proper apology looks like?

The more I look at these apologies, the more I hate them. I only see the Limbaugh apologies, which make me think “Whose boneheaded idea was this,” and the Kennedy/Chappaquiddick ones that make me think “Why are you wasting my time, we know what you are now.” All I see anymore are two factions, each of which possesses some kind of power the other doesn’t have, one of which is corrupt, and in some cases both of them are — forming an agreement to partner up with each other when they don’t really want to. All I see is a reluctantly codified pact between two inimical forces. A corrupt pact. So-and-so is going to keep his job…Cui bono? Cui plagalis?

The peanut gallery is supposed to look on it and say “Oh, well that’s a relief. For the last day or two I’ve been troubled by a feeling that we didn’t have wonderful awesome people in charge of everything,” then go back to worrying about the important stuff. Something to do with someone on the idiot-box getting voted off or out of something.

Darn, it looks like I’ve once again taken a simple thought and exploded it into a dry, meandering epistle on my blog. I’m so, so very sorry about that. Think I’ll go cross-post it now.

Blondes versus Brunettes.

From here.

President Obama explained that he felt it was necessary to console Miss Fluke because he was thinking of his two daughters, Sasha and Malia.

“One of the things I want them to do as they get older is engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on,” the President said at a news conference last Tuesday. “I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don‘t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.”

But by accepting this explanation, one is left wondering why the president didn’t console, say, conservative author Laura Ingraham when she was called a “slut” or Sarah Palin when she was called things far worse than anything uttered by Mr. Limbaugh.

I’ve been noticing something about these apologies and non-apologies, and the Gohmert clip bears this out for the most part. The apologies that are skipped by President Obama, if they were given, the point of error would be traced back to a judgment flaw on the part of no one, save for President Barack H. Obama (or people who directly report to Him). A great example: That silly “beer summit.” Rather than making a “teachable moment” out of it, it would have made perfect sense for the President to apologize for jumping the gun on judging police action in a local matter. It would have been a lot quicker, too. I think it ultimately would have been less damaging to the administration. It would have come off looking like an oh-well. Gee, it seemed to make good sense at the time. I guess when you give a lot of speeches you’re bound to slip up somewhere. Shucks, I’m human, no harm no foul.

But Barack Obama is a demigod, that’s why we make a point of capitalizing the H when we refer to Him. Admitting to an occasionally flawed decision, is beneath Him…so…we had to have a “teachable moment” with glasses of beer. All because He Who Caused The Oceans To Recede can’t admit a mistake.

And the apologies He does have time to give — I haven’t re-scanned the Gohmer clip from beginning to end with just this in mind, but it seems whenever He does issue an apology, it’s an apology for something someone else has done. People try to get me to read His biography, explaining that it’s a “love letter” to America, pointing out things the country must stop doing that it’s doing wrong…I don’t think I like the sound of that, sounds like, as they say, a love letter from O.J. to Nicole. But that fits into the pattern. Every bad decision that needs a re-do, in the Obama universe, is something that was decided by someone other than Barack Obama.

This is not the trait of a personality that makes for good leadership.

And you have Soledad O’Brien of CNN. Complete with an amazingly knowledgeable understanding of Critical Race Theory.

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien’s venomously sarcastic interview with Breitbart.com editor-in-chief Joel Pollak culminated with her throwing out her definition of “Critical Race Theory” in the heat of her interview over the Obama/Bell Tapes released last night. Pollak had already requested that O’Brien define the term more than once, and at the 1:45 mark in the video below, she finally does. One problem–O’Brien’s definition appears to be lifted almost word-for-word from a wikipedia page, presumedly hurriedly communicated to Soledad in the midst of her interview.

Much later on in the clip, I recall she specifically asked Pollak something, he said something poignant and meaningful, and she mumbled about how she didn’t hear him because someone was speaking in her earset, but moving on…

This after playing the race card against Pollak, with disastrous results.

And then there’s this:

Throughout the day, there have been numerous edits to the wikipedia entry for “Critical Race Theory,” including the elimination of “white supremacy” as a key element (an element referenced by Joel Pollak during his interview with Soledad O’Brien and the existence of which O’Brien scoffed at throughout their conversation). At the time of this update, there had been 26 changes today alone; up until today, the last edit had been mid-February, and before that, just one in January.

The hits just keep on comin’ for CNN.

When is someone going to provide a decent news network for people stranded at airports?

Blah blah blah.

Wisdom from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account:

I don’t know if, in modern times, people can feel real anger or outrage anymore. I realize it seems like we’re erupting; I realize it doesn’t seem a month, or even a week, can go by without someone getting pimply-faced white-hot outraged about something.

But it seems, if you show me a hundred occasions of such outrage, I can show you a hundred people who want some rule changed, some object to be perceived and treated as its polar opposite, some fundamental rule of common sense to be stood on its head. It has become inevitable, expected, like the crashing sound on the floor after glassware or flatware has been dropped.

All of which means, I’m lately having a tough time accepting outrage at face value. I think we all are.

Thought is not complete without linkage to Thing I Know #52:

Angry people who demand things, don’t stop being angry when their demands are met.

You can’t say that, it’s racist.

Blogger friend Phil has another viewpoint on this. Since the other school was, in fact, American, it made no sense to take “USA!” as a cheer for the victorious team, therefore it was reasonable to infer racial overtones. I have seen some comments from people who are familiar with the locality, residing there currently or having resided there previously. And their words lend weight to the notion, I must say. Although it must be said this is just a couple of people, nameless disembodied voices on the Internet, and they do seem to be packing an agenda that has something to do with finding racism everyplace they look.

None of this has to do with my complaint, however: It’s proxy, third-party offense taken. The school officials found it racist? What business do school officials have imagining racism? I’m not saying they don’t, if the evidence has arisen. This isn’t it. If it’s code for something deeper that’s a real problem, well, wait for some better evidence to come along. If there’s a real problem there, it shouldn’t be a long wait, right?

There’s another problem with this though: The students involved in the chanting were punished. Not grilled about “What t’heck did ya mean by that?” and then punished. This is a significant point. “Both districts are now trying to move past this disturbing incident,” they say…uh, waitaminnit, the districts made the incident. Seriously, what disaster would have ensued had the whole thing been let go? One team wins, a trophy is presented, the crowd chants “USA!” and nothing is done about it. Why, I believe I sat through such displays myself when I was in high school. Couldn’t tell you for sure. Didn’t pay much attention because it isn’t worth it.

If I did hear USA! USA! as the Sehome Mariners cruised on through to victory…and I’m leaning toward yes, I think that was a frequent occurrence…well, that would mean Alamo Heights fans need to work on their displays of racism because they’re sucking at it right now. They’re not changing anything in a meaningful way, to get the message across. To the best of my knowledge, while I attended Sehome, our guys didn’t play against any non-American teams.

So on the basis of my own personal experience, if on none other, I have to conclude the school officials manufactured this crisis. Unintentionally, maybe. But events are unfolding in this situation, differently from the way they used to “back in the day,” because and only because the behavior of the officials has changed.

It’s from one lefty to a bunch of other lefties who’ve abandoned President Obama for not being lefty enough. Yeah I know, you were thinking “Oh good, mystery finally solved”…so was I.

The bullet points are interesting. And very well written, as far as implementing the lessons from, uh, “How to cover up your BS and make it look like something that isn’t BS.”

– Obama abolished the United States’ use of torture and the CIA’s secret prisons.

– He restored the liberal internationalist approach to foreign policy and made an historic outreach to the Muslim world.

– He stabilized an economy that was spiraling into a depression.

– He expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit and made major investments in job training, education, infrastructure, clean energy, housing, and scientific research.

– He saved the automobile industry by saving General Motors and Chrysler.

– He forced the health insurance companies to stop excluding people with pre-existing conditions and to stop dropping people when they got sick.

Rather unsettling how many bullet points on this list are simply efforts, with no matching achievement and therefore no mention of the results that ensued. “Made an historic outreach to the Muslim world,” for example. Would the Obama administration want to be graded on the results? I suppose the country owes the President a debt for proving once and for all that it doesn’t work…now we can quit arguing about it. That’s something.

“Stabilizing the economy” corresponds nicely to an analogy involving a sheepherd whose flock is plagued by a wolf that snacks on two or three heads in the herd every day. At some point, the sheep depletion rate will taper off — when there aren’t any more sheep left. While the shepherd does nothing…the snack rate still reaches zero. And that, boys and girls, is how President Obama stabilized our economy.

One question remains, and it is a reasonable one: So what would it take?

Sowell wrote about it, and then Palin wrote about what Sowell wrote about it. Now Whittle explores it.

“We’ve got this thing covered.”

Another good one goes. I’ll check back later to see who’s written what.

Thanks for filling us in, Terri.

Boortz is on a roll this morning:

Why do we have deficits?
:
Two political scientists, Jody W. Lipford and Bruce Yandle, did a study on taxation in America. The results of their study led them to the conclusion that our progressive tax system where high-income earners sustain a high tax burden is simply unsustainable. The reason is simple: the number of moochers are growing, while the number of producers are shrinking. That’s a fact. “The share of total federal taxes paid by the bottom 40 percent of households has fallen from 9.3 percent in 1979 to 5.2 percent in 2007, while the shares of the tax burden borne by the top 10 percent and one percent, respectively, have risen steadily,” according to their research. This acts as nothing but an incentive for people to vote for government services that they don’t have to pay for.

Voting is the lazy-man’s work. Going to the voting booth once a year or so and voting for Democrats is much easier than waking up at 4am, working three jobs, earning paychecks, and driving home in the dark. Our progressive income tax system has enabled the moochers. In fact, “during the period 1979-2007, the increasing progressivity of the federal tax code is associated with greater government debt and entitlement spending.” Coincidence? I think not.

Our forefathers predicted this. In 1810, political theorist John C. Calhoun foresaw this problem:

“The necessary result, then, of the unequal fiscal action of the government is, to divide the community into two great classes; one consisting of those who, in reality, pay the taxes, and, of course, bear exclusively the burthen of supporting the government; and the other, of those who are the recipients of their proceeds, through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into tax-payers and tax-consumers.”

We were warned, but then along came the Sixteenth Amendment establishing the income tax. These political scientists Lipford and Yandle believe that the Sixteenth Amendment “nullified the prior constitutional restraint on the size of government and enabled one group of citizens to vote themselves benefits at the expense of another.”

There’s a woman in Michigan named Amanda Clayton. You can read about this lovely little moocher right here. Last fall Amanda won $1,000,000 in the state lottery. Today she’s still on welfare and using food stamps? Why? She needs the help to pay her bills. This is mooching raised to an art form. Care to guess how she would probably vote in November?

He continues:

More research from a team at Cornell University found that “incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people’s ideas.” An example they provide is on tax reform. “They found that if people lack knowledge of tax reforms, it was incredibly unlikely voters would be able to identify the candidates who are actual experts.”

Considering that research, is it any reason why Americans vote for politicians like Barack Obama and shun tax reform ideas like the FairTax? They wouldn’t know a decent tax reform or a tax expert if it literally bit them in the ass!

In one of the studies, researchers asked participants to grade grammar quizzes. “We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students.” In other words, incompetent people can’t even recognize the correct answers when they saw them.

Yeah, he’s engaging the same libertarian whining about the Fair Tax that we saw indulged in by the good leftists after John Kerry lost the election, Americans are too stupid for a democracy. Well, maybe there’s something to it. Did you see the clip about the lottery winner using her bridge card? That’s an example of it playing out right in front of your eyes, when you think of it. Here she is, confronted with how inappropriate it is for her to be buying groceries subsidized by people who simply are not as financially solvent as she is now that she’s won her half million dollars. And her answer is: I don’t have an income and I’ve got bills to pay. Recipient of $500,000 saying this. And she’s completely ernest about it.

Some people are simply incapable of working through a paradigm shift. They’re like mental cannonballs, heading in one direction, not gonna change to a different one, no matter what. Blah blah blah, got it tough, life gave me a bum hand, need help, blah blah blah.

So they do what must be done, just like animals in a cage, to get hold of…well, things that are on some list that doesn’t change much, whatever the list happens to say. Laundry detergent, Little Debbies, cigarettes, hair coloring kids, tattoos, and oh yes don’t forget more lottery tickets. The welfare grocery card? It’s just another procedure. Like voting. A tax reform plan comes along, they hear by the grapevine they should oppose it, from some leftist hack outfit…and repeat it as if it’s their own opinion. And then strut around feeling like they’ve done some “research,” then of course vote that way. Even with a million dollars in the bank, nothing changes. It’s very sad.

And what Boortz is really complaining about here, specifically, is Dunning-Kruger Effect. When you don’t know something, you tend to not know that you don’t know it — your incompetence perpetuates a camaflouging effect upon itself, an inability in you to recognize your own incompetence. Yes, there certainly is some of that going on.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

This “liberals must win whenever they act offended” rule has wedged us into a very strange and surreal little corner of reality here. People who maintain a personal objection against premature pregnancy terminations in whatever form, must now fail to prevent their own dollars from funding exactly that.

Meanwhile, better success is enjoyed by those who have similar personal objections against…uh…well, you tell me if this is sincere or not: They don’t want the word “slut” to be used on the Rush Limbaugh show. Rush’s show is not funded by their dollars, and oh, let me just cut to the chase, I’m calling bullshit on the whole idea that any of them have ever heard a single syllable out of it.

But they must win because they’re just oh so offended.

You, on the other hand, have to keep ponying up for that Fluke slut’s birth control.

Received in the e-mail from GBIL.

I recently picked a new primary care doctor. After two visits and
exhaustive Lab tests, he said I was doing ‘fairly well’ for my age. (I
just turned SEVENTY THREE).

‘Then, why do you even give a shit?’

Sick of talking about him, and her. These are vile people who just nauseate me.

Let’s watch some adorable animals.

Flukeness (n.):

Propensity to lazily conflate an aggressive and hostile drive to ban some consumer good, with an entirely reasonable reluctance against providing it for free.

Related: Sonic Charmer is distressed about this inundation of mascots. “Every issue gets a mascot…I don’t want to know about these people. Stop telling me their names. Who decided this made sense as a way to discuss political issues?”

Maybe there’s another word that I need to go and invent. We’re losing dignity with this muscle-memory maneuver of “Put a pathetic and weak idiot in front of a microphone, and a new right is born.”

The good news is, we can have that sense of dignity back anytime we want to get it back. Just stop creating new taxpayer-funded rights by putting idiots in front of microphones.

Perhaps because there is this perception that the availability of birth control devices — for free! — is a winning issue for democrats this election year, suddenly it’s all contraceptives, all the time. That could be because a winning issue for democrats exists nowhere else. We’re out of toothpaste: Contraceptives. Case of hemmarhoids: Contraceptives. Car won’t start: Contraceptives. Gas is six dollars a gallon, Iran’s getting a nuke, 3 a.m. phone call, public debt exceeds GDP, kids are graduating school without knowing anything, job market still sucks: Contraceptives, contraceptives, contraceptives.

Of course, the deeper and more meaningful issue is, as always, getting more votes from undecided voters. Look at it from their point of view, walking in the shoes of the guy whose job it is to get Barack Obama re-elected. Half the battle is to get the country thinking about recreational sex, at which point, it becomes all about the libertarians. You’ll never get them to vote for democrats, but it’s just as good to get them to vote against Republicans, and that job is done once you start talking about recreational sex; sex for purposes other than making babies.

Hey, I’m all in favor of sex for purposes other than making babies. Which is synonymous, for all intents and purposes, with the use of contraceptives.

But haven’t you noticed? Sex, with contraceptive devices, is a perfect metaphor for democrat policies. I mean, the big, deep ones that work out over a longer period of time. Even if the contraceptive devices don’t work.

The trouble with contraceptives is they enable the Idiocracy; only the incompetent reproduce, since it’s possible to screw up the application of a contraceptive device. And that is right in keeping with democrat policies. Here’s a sad sack that can’t, or won’t, make his own life work — we need a government program. The sad sack figuring out what he’s doing wrong, is out of the question, as is the sad sack learning to live with his self-imposed limitations. Put him in back of a conference table with a microphone on it, in front of Congress, and suddenly it’s a moral right. Then hold a vote on it, and now it’s a legal right. The hairpin turn happens when the sad sack drones into the microphone…see what’s happening there? Perfect reversal. Sad sack can’t make something work, so we all need to listen and learn. To the guy who can’t make it work. In fact, the reversal is perfect, since if you can somehow manage to make it work, you have more to learn than most other people. You, above & beyond all the rest, need to shut your mouth and listen to the wisdom of the guy who can’t make it work. It’s your only hope!

That’s my “DJEver Notice” moment. In the conference table setting, the incompetent wield influence denied to the competent. Exactly the same situation exists with birth control. The incompetent reproduce. The competent don’t.

The result is more and more rights; every time a sad sack speaks into a microphone at a conference table it’s another new right. Now that he’s here, that is…to provide all these rights to the lucky sad-sacks that are already here, we’re going to have to define a perimeter within which the rights are provided…so the little bundles of joy that are on the way, have to be defined out of existence. “Got a baby in her tummy” is something you can’t even use in polite, mixed company nowadays, since babies aren’t babies until they breathe actual air, and until then it’s a fetus. Pregnant women used to carry around babies that weren’t born yet. Now, they’re sort of…people-candidates.

This is distasteful to just about everybody, so we’re all obliged to refrain from discussing it — and just leave things the way they are, which is advantageous to the people who made it distasteful. But what if you think on it? It gets eerie, rather quickly. A person isn’t a person until it’s born…the supposition works with things that really, and demonstrably, are not people. It works with a car, can’t expect the engine to roar to life until all the parts are bolted in place. With people? Not so much…but the people in charge say so…so you see what’s happened here. People have been defined to be non-people, and those of us who’ve crossed the threshold are expected not to discuss it too much.

Meanwhile, why is it so important to stop babies from being born, and/or conceived? The plain, cold, hard truth of the matter is: Because children have become liabilities and are no longer assets. A hundred and fifty years ago, if you met a thirty-year-old guy who had six children, you’d think wow what a lucky and blessed guy…what’s he doing right, I wish I could be like that guy. Nowadays you have to think — uh, let’s see…child support payment multiplied by six…yeah, he’d better do whatever it takes to make her happy or he’ll end up living in a cardboard box. I said this is about the longer view, on the progressive side. And that’s it. Babies are liabilities and not assets; babies represent humanity; and that is the goal. Human beings cannot financially afford their own existence.

How else do you get people to rely, pathetically and wretchedly, on government.

I notice, also, that there is something else creeping in very gradually; seems to have started all the way back with FDR’s Four Freedoms speech. This notion that, once we put a conference table and microphone in front of some idiot and figure out hey, we just manufactured a brand new “right” — it seems to be a steadfast position of the democrat party that, if the new right involves an expense, and you have to bear it yourself as opposed to the government taking care of it for you, that’s the equivalent of being denied the right. And of course, since it’s a right, that is eliminated as an option straight out of the chute. So the taxpayers have a new expense.

I believe this presents some opportunity for the conservatives, ironically enough. This is a question on which the democrats provide one answer and everyone else — including moderates and libertarians — provides the opposite one. Conservatives stand with non-conservatives. By and large, it seems democrats believe if you have a right to do something, you have a right to do that thing without personally bearing any expenses associated with it. Like I said over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging —

An exhaustive list of exceptions follows:
1. Running a business that hires people (that isn’t a S&L or a car company).

Yeah, that’s the end of the list, if you had any doubts.

Someone came along and suggested, smoking grass. We cannot recall a specific democrat plan to force the government to buy bags of grass for people who want to smoke it.

Not sure whether to add it to the list or not. If that is done, and the exceptions-list is lengthened to two items followed by an abrupt halt, then the exercise becomes something like painting on oil and canvas an image of a herd of animals, while in real life, the herd gallops along at a full trot. How are you going to meaningfully capture the snapshot, while the object is in motion? And if you toss aside the oil and canvas and go for a camera, what good does this do you? Because the situation we labor to recognize properly, becomes one in which these things are attacked in definable stages. Put the idiot in front of the microphone, manufacture and legislate the new right, then put another idiot in front of another microphone and have the new right paid-for by the taxpayer. The one or two items on the list end up being nothing more than a temporary gap between the two idiot/microphone project milestones. More democrats get elected, so new things are added to the list, and then the democrats get something paid-for — or try to — and something falls off the end of the list.

But I don’t think this is a winning proposition for them. If Republicans can campaign just as well…but that’s a falsehood, since hey, they can’t, but if they could…then the democrats would lose just as many libertarian votes as they would gain. I mean, face facts: If you live in a society where you’re allowed to do everything that doesn’t hurt someone else, the way the libertarians want it, but you also have to pay, via your taxes, for the expenses that are incurred by idiots who also want to do the things they want to do, is that really a libertarian society? Most libertarians would say no. They wouldn’t want to; they’d hem and they’d haw about it, but I think they’d grudgingly concede, no, you’re not fulfilling the proper vision unless people are allowed to do these harmless things and then expected to pay for doing them. Therefore, they’d have to bite the bullet and vote Republican if they want to be taken even a little bit seriously. Not a favorite situation of theirs, to be placed in, but hey. You can’t call yourself a libertarian unless you can choose, rationally, from a range of choices that all suck…none of which tickle your funny bone. It takes a special maturity to be able to do that, and if you aren’t cultivating it, then why call yourself a libertarian?

In the case of the Fluke debacle, the women are in the same situation. You can drone on as much as you want about how it’s “inappropriate” for some guy on the radio to call Sandra Fluke a slut, and peel off with one euphemism after another, but at the end of the day, are you really showing respect to women when your position is that they’re dependent, helpless, weak, lack any kind of resourcefulness, and need the government to buy their contraceptives? Again, if a little disciplined thought is applied to the question, the answer would have to be no. In a society in which sex is just recreational, and nobody reproduces except the incompetent (because nobody can afford to), womanhood loses value. Women devolve from their previous stature, as our sisters and mothers, and guardians of virtue, definers of our culture, to a bunch of screaming, constantly complaining, trouble-making harridans who can’t pay for their own stuff. You can nag at anyone who points out the obvious, and if you cost the radio guy some sponsors and end a career here & there I suppose it’ll work…but not over the long term. Not if, by doing these things, you’re just proving the point.

It has become an essential objective within our society not to reproduce. Those whose role it is to become pregnant and create life, therefore, must lose value within that society.

So libertarians, and women, must vote for Republicans…or at the very least, against democrats…if they wish to be taken seriously.

I want the 2012 election to become a Sandra Fluke election. Not in spite of my desire to see Barack Obama lose His job. But because of it. His party is convinced this is a winning issue. I think they’re wrong.