If it isn’t, I’m sure it’s worth an honorable mention at least.

So now everyone’s wondering where Rick goes from here, now that he’s come within eight votes — not points, but votes — of overtaking Romney. People set out to say why everyone else should dismiss him, end up just reciting a bunch of gossip about who or what Santorum hates, as if they know him personally or something…apparently feel like they’ve done an awesome job, and walk off looking for the next opinion to loudly have.

I’m really not sure what to make of all this, other than: The opinions of my fellow Americans reveal precious little about what life would be like under a Santorum administration. It would be a shake-up in priorities, which you would think would be a welcome thing since nobody can really name what the priorities are right now, other than the First Couple going on lots of vacations, and the First Dude giving lots and lots of speeches, and things sure the hell aren’t working the way they are. But a popular viewpoint has arisen, and who knows maybe it’s a majority viewpoint, that the priorities are fine the way they are even though nobody can say what they are. Well let me revise that, I can and I did. It ends up being a pretty silly and skewed set of priorities. It’s no wonder the economy sucks, especially when you have more rules to follow when you’re producing something than when you aren’t, and the producers are quitting because, like Francisco d’Anconia, they’re tired of being evil.

It could be said that the jobs market is working just fine; we’re getting exactly the economy we’ve requested.

Our electoral process, on the other hand, is a different matter. I do not know why I should dread a Santorum presidency. That is not to say I’m still looking for reasons to shy away from him as the nominee. I do have some concerns about the family values agenda when, from what I’ve heard, it’s an issue much closer to Rick Santorum’s heart than the jobs/economy thing. To me, these two matters are related, offshoots of a common ancestor with the jobs thing being a decidedly more direct descendant of it, therefore receiving the higher priority. That common ancestor of political issues is being proud of your own existence. We have found a way to loathe ourselves when we put non-producers on higher pedestals than producers, because we’re saying those who provide the things we need, by doing so, are evil. And we’ve found a way to loathe ourselves when we say the most spectacular way to be the best person possible, is to simply tolerate others and not hate…which is not any zenith of human achievement, it is the very least we should be demanding out of each other. It is a baseline. Aspiring toward a baseline is just a fancy way of not doing anything.

Besides of which, let’s face it there is such a thing as a “homosexual agenda.” And, within it, I do see a subtle undertone of hostility against heterosexuals with large families…like Rick Santorum, for example. Pejorative terms like “breeder” cause me some concern, the same kind of concern we’ve been taught to have when someone uses similar terms to describe homosexuals. Yeah it isn’t politicians using the term “breeder,” it’s just activist crackpots so I probably shouldn’t read too much into it. But it says something about the movement. And it is just a little more evidence of the self-loathing agenda. If you’re ashamed of your existence, you’ll behave exactly the way the left has telling us we should behave. Don’t emit carbon, go for a green burial when you’re dead, don’t breed. Leave no legacy except the nice things people will say about you…which will be something like…what? He didn’t emit much and was very tolerant? What was his name again?

Back to Santorum. I have heard one complaint consistently, and it really, really bothers me. I mean, a lot. And not about Santorum. I hear over and over again, that his levels of charisma are modest. I can understand this as a concern, since after all if Santorum is the Republican nominee, he’ll be going up against the super-awesome mega-wonderful Barack H. Obama. It’s a legitimate concern for Republicans to have. Hey, I have it. I’m thinking of dismissing him because of it.

But I hear it stated with genuine hatred. People say Rick Santorum lacks charisma, exactly the same way they would say something like…Rick Santorum left gum on a bus seat. No, that’s not personal enough, since anyone could ride the bus and sit on gum. Rick Santorum stayed over at my house and left his socks on the coffee table — disgusting!

No, not severe enough.

Rick Santorum slept with my wife. There. That’s how they say it. Rick Santorum lacks charisma….and his lack of charisma is a premeditated, personal attack against me. If…I live…to be a hundred…(right eye starts to twitch)…I’ll NEVER FORGIVE THAT RICK SANTORUM! For lacking charisma.

This goes back to way, way before Rick Santorum (who, as a phenomenon, is less than forty-eight hours old right?). I can think of many examples of this besides Rick Santorum, among Republicans as well as democrats. Although I can think of more Republicans who’ve had the problem, and without a doubt, the loathing against the Republicans was much more intense. To be a not-a-party-guy is viewed as some personal slight, almost on the level of a criminal offense. Dullards are seen, by many — I know not who they are, but they’re awfully loud — exactly the same way a more rational person would see a thief, or an arsonist, or a vandal. Some transgression has been committed, something profound that cuts to the quick, and it speaks poorly of the character of the person who committed it, who now owes something by way of recompense. All his fortune, a pound of flesh, prison time or something. For being boring.

Let me just state the obvious: This is not good decision-making in action. This is not how we want to pick the occupant of the most important job in the entire world. Charisma…well, I suppose it does have something to do with the job, no getting around that. But it isn’t all of the job. And I have the theory germinating in my head, because I’ve not seen much to contradict it, that the healthier we are as a nation, the less charisma is going to have to do with this job.

Nor do I believe a charismatic individual occupying this job, can pull us back from the brink of being unhealthy. Hey, if nothing else has been given a fair shot over the last three years, that idea certainly has, right?

Can’t aspire toward the successes if you won’t recognize the fails.

Came home just a bit early to catch my fiancé watching yet another episode of hot-wisecracking-thirty-somethings-poking-and-prodding-room-temperature-dead-forty-somethings-to-solve-crimes, trying and failing to wrap it up before my key hit the lock. That didn’t annoy me nearly as much as leaving it on the station when the six o’clock news came on. Remember the six o’clock news? They’re still doing it, even though nobody’s watching it…and the reason nobody’s watching it, became clear, when Diane Sawyer proceeded to tell us about the sharks evolving to adapt to climate change.

In the waters off the eastern coast of Australia, marine scientists report a first: 57 cases in which two species of shark are interbreeding. The local Australian black-tip shark is mating with its global counterpart, the common black-tip. They’re similar, but they are distinct species.

“It’s very surprising because no one’s ever seen shark hybrids before,” said Jess Morgan of the University of Queensland, the lead researcher, as quoted by AFP. “This is not a common occurrence by any stretch of the imagination.”

Why would this happen? Why would two shark species hybridize after apparently keeping to themselves before? Morgan, whose team published its findings in the journal Conservation Genetics, said she thinks a change in climate may be part of it.

“If it [the Australian black-tip species] hybridises with the common species it can effectively shift its range further south into cooler waters, so the effect of this hybridising is a range expansion,” Morgan said. “It’s enabled a species restricted to the tropics to move into temperate waters.”

Suffice it to say that Sawyer’s report emphasized this bit about climate a bit more, using the well-known catch-phrase “climate change.” That thing you’re making happen by using toilet paper, throwing out trash, not signing the Kyoto treaty, driving to work, etc. No, all that scolding was not included in her report. But you don’t have to wait long to hear some…

So the point is, if you assemble all the pieces into a big picture, a picture of what we’re being told when we show zero skepticism about anything and just believe everything we’re told, we aren’t unplugging our cell phones when they’re done charging so this human activity is causing a heavier saturation of carbon in the atmosphere and creating new species of sharks. Nobody’s saying that, but that’s what gives the story legs. You have a defined threat to humans…how grave a threat it is, the stories do not say, but it’s easily defined because you have sharks moving in to waters where they weren’t present before.

The Yahoo story is more explicit: Climate change in the first paragraph.

Scientists said on Tuesday that they had discovered the world’s first hybrid sharks in Australian waters, a potential sign the predators were adapting to cope with climate change.

The mating of the local Australian black-tip shark with its global counterpart, the common black-tip, was an unprecedented discovery with implications for the entire shark world, said lead researcher Jess Morgan.

“It’s very surprising because no one’s ever seen shark hybrids before, this is not a common occurrence by any stretch of the imagination,” Morgan, from the University of Queensland, told AFP.

“This is evolution in action.”

Now if you read these carefully, you see this is a story about the change in what humans have perceived. To say that the sharks are breeding in this way and they haven’t been doing so before, goes well beyond what the researcher is saying. The event has to do with humans making the observation; it is an event of discovery. But such an event isn’t really of any interest to anyone who doesn’t work in shark research, except maybe for someone planning to go sailing or surfing in the waters in question. So it’s been picking up these subtle little spins, until…

…well, it seems from the comments like there have been a few drafts of this story, giving different weights to the climate change angle. Someone at some point said “Hey waitaminnit, what are we saying here?” It’s very sexy and salable to say human activity is causing a change in the atmospheric climate patterns, and this is affecting how sharks are evolving. It’s like something straight out of one of those creature-feature movies on Netflix instant that I put on, to retaliate against my lady and her hot-wisecracking-thirty-somethings-poking-and-prodding-room-temperature-dead-forty-somethings-to-solve-crimes shows. Rich guy who runs big company, who you know is a bad guy because he wears nice suits all the time even late at night…does something boneheaded, like dump toxic sludge down a drainpipe, or implant a microchip in an alligator’s brain to make it more aggressive…a bunch of stuff happens…the bad guy in the nice suit gets eaten by the monster near the end. The big sharks are coming to get us, for using our hairdryers! It’s what we’re ready to hear, we’ve all been nicely programmed.

Only problem is: It’s pure nonsense.

Someone figured out it comes off that way, and revised some drafts. But not before someone else ran off with it and put it on the air.

Realized, after I entered a comment on Professor Mondo’s blog, that I’d made a point not often made by myself or anyone else. It’s an important one because it explains why a lot of good, honest people are talking past each other.

I look at it a little bit differently: To demonstrate his worthiness of the mantle of “love ‘im or hate ‘im, he’s the only one who can beat Obama so you’d better line up,” Mitt needed to triumph over this thing like Fat Man and Little Boy triumphed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You’re an educated man well accustomed to dealing with statistics. You’re in Mitt’s corner, albeit far from enthusiastic about it…certainly not the only one. How many of the delegates who voted for Mitt, do you think, could be described in this way? Do you suppose each one has a squishy counterpart in the Santorum camp? Hah!

It’s an exercise in determining the relative mass of two objects, by taking a glance at their physical sizes. Just as density is important in measuring masses, enthusiasm is important in picking who’s gonna win.

I very often hear from the independents, who after all are the ones who really decide elections, how embittered they are that they haven’t seen a president they’ve liked since Ronald Reagan. Hear it over and over again: Last decent one was Reagan, Reagan, Reagan. I don’t understand why these squishes are seen as more electable. Nobody feels too enthusiastic about ‘em because nobody likes ‘em, and nobody likes ‘em because they can’t trust ‘em. And that’s not an insult to Gov. Romney’s character; these candidates are “seen,” wrongly, as being more electable. Illusionary or not, it’s a critically important asset, from their perspective, so naturally they’ll do whatever it takes to maintain it. So every question that comes up, they check the polls. They may have tons and tons of personal integrity and character off the job, but once they clock in, they might as well not. Reliable as bouncing footballs.

People are not like bits in computer memory, either one or zero. They’re more like the fractional representations in between. Enthusiasm matters, and it matters a lot. We count these things in integers, so our framework of perception causes us to miss out on this again and again and again.

Besides of which, if enthusiasm doesn’t matter and people really are just a bunch of ones and zeroes, frankly I think Obama has this thing locked up. You’ve got someone who was never fooled by the Obama malarkey, ever, back to Day One, who’s out of work, his medicine costs two or three times as much because of ObamaCare, understands down to the marrow of his bones that we can’t afford any more of the nonsense…that’s still just one guy. Offset by teeming hordes of Obama Zombies, brainlessly muttering “Oh yeah, okay, whatever…hope and change…don’t wanna admit I was wrong in ’08, so hope and change…” Obama takes that state. Maybe it’s a battleground state. Then you go to the next state and see the same thing happen.

Obama’s not going home next year unless he’s sent home by a differential in enthusiasm. Which is manifestly possible. Even likely, I think. But Mitt can’t deliver it. Why can’t he? Because the guy who can’t afford his medical treatment anymore, cannot appreciate a vision of success in that direction. He’ll make it to the polls on a rainy day. A couple of his friends, who understand the same issues, and their gravity, and have the same opinions about it, won’t. The Obama zombies, meanwhile, I’m thinking two will vote if you find me three. I’m pegging the residue of 2008’s “I wanna be part of this (Obama) thing” spirit at about 67 percent. Six in ten seems low, seven in ten seems a bit high.

And now, in the words of Jack Woltz, let me be even MORE frank. I am less persuaded than ever before by this talk of “Romney is the only one who can take it.” I am worried. I’m worried about Romney. I always have been. It worries me when, if I want to drag a net and snag a whole bunch of negative chatter about a candidate, my best prospect is to drag said net through the people who are supposed to be supporting that candidate. And this is the perception I have of Romney’s supporters. They are all declaring their allegiance, and they come from all sorts of walks of life, they disagree about many other things and agree about Mittens…yes, that much is encouraging, to be sure. But if they only agree about him because they desire a tactical advantage, there’s no real agreement there. They agree they want to win. Well who doesn’t?

Mitt gets the ABO enthusiasm — Anybody But Obama. Okay, on election day if the weather isn’t good, is ABO going to net you the 67 percent to match the Obama Zombies? That fighting spirit of “Yeah, yeah, okay, I said Mitt was the guy…back when the weather was a lot different than it is now…okay, let me go get my coat.” I don’t think it will. The economy will improve — or, at least, there will be some flimsy statistical signs, like last month when the unemployment rate dropped after so many people gave up on trying to find a job. November of ’12, there will be a few more nuggets like that, and the media will play them up. Ten people support Mitt Romney because of ABO right now — I will bet you at least five of them don’t vote when the time comes. And that’s five out of ten who insist Romney’s the guy “because we’ve gotta beat Obama no matter what and nobody matches Romney for electability.” These aren’t bad people or dumb people or unreliable people, but I think a majority of them will get caught up in something else. They’ll be watching reruns on Election Night. Yeah, I’m serious.

The same holds true for Romney himself, once he’s elected. The thing that has to be appreciated here is that, on all the issues that really matter, what’s common sense to the common folk is intolerably right-wing to the elites. Just to pick some examples: Illegal immigration. Or: Schools changing their methods rather than receiving more money. Or the Big Kahuna: Government trimming wasteful spending instead of raising taxes. Global warming and drill baby drill. The people get it. We’re not divided, not as much as we’re represented. To make these seem like contentious issues, you have to offer a bigger soapbox to the left, you have to skew the samples when you do your polling.

But once you so skew and once you so misrepresent, for the reasons I was spelling out as I entered my comment at Mondo’s, politicians like Romney will listen to and act upon the results. Faced with a choice between pursuing a common-sense not-whackjob-liberal course of action, and avoiding a good healthy George-W.-Bush sliming, a Romney will do whatever it takes to avoid such a sliming.

Reagan would pursue the common-sense solution.

Refer back to my observation about the indies, and the legacy of The Gipper. Therein lies the lesson. People appreciate leadership. They don’t appreciate sucking-up.

Karen Singer Avrech, Ph.D. at Big Government:

Recently, an aggressive media campaign has been launched by Let’s Move, a government-funded fitness initiative led by Michelle Obama.

As you will see in this TV spot that’s airing, one of many, the message of the Let’s Move campaign is quite simple: Lying to your children is fine because it’s good for them.

:
This is a paradigm for how the Obama administration views and treats the American public. They are the all-knowing parents and we are the clueless children who will be herded and prodded, by any means necessary, into government mandated programs that are, they assure us, ultimately “good for us.”
:
Under the guise of a smiley, benevolent state, Michelle Obama, Big Sister, is making a bid to lead the ignorant masses to a better life. And where have we seen that strategy before?

It’s the justification for Obamacare, a Byzantine universe of laws and regulations that is guaranteed to ratchet up the cost of health care, drive physicians out of business, destroy competiton [sic] in favor of a government monopoly, and ration medical care especially for the elderly and those afflicted with life threatening illnesses.

It’s also the fuel that sustains every murderous Socialist and Communist regime that’s ever existed, dictatorships whose morality is best summed up thusly: the ends justifies the means.

I actually like what Michelle Obama is trying to do. Of course, that’s the case with every plan that’s ever come out of the left for the last hundred years — the goals, as stated, are just fine. The problem is with the implementation, which always seems to have the side effect of making statist bureaucrats more powerful. Did I say side effect? Funny how, overall, that objective manages to get accomplished and the objectives that got the problem sold in the first place, don’t quite seem to ever be satisfactorily met. Someone remind me what the First Lady’s authorities are under Article II of the Constitution again?

Here’s how I would do it, assuming it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to make kids fit and thin, by means of putting messages on the airwaves and on YouTube…which I don’t accept…but anyway. You show someone moving around. Like Beyonce with the green leggings.

Except, instead of trying to get kids to like rap music — which they do, already, way too much — perform some feats. Out on the field. With measurements. A few years ago, before Michelle O even came along, I was doing my own “Let’s Move” program on Thanksgiving day. I was out riding my bike down the Jedediah Smith trail, a couple people were jogging out there and the man decided to use my moving bike as a benchmark, just to see if he could keep up. Or, maybe he was trying to rob me. But it looked more like he was using my speed as a benchmark…ten miles an hour. Rather pokey speed on a bike, but it’s really smoking when you’re on foot. You have to work your way up to that. Beyonce might be able to do it. Starting the training in childhood would probably help a lot.

Imagine the power of getting a bunch of kids talking about something like that. Kind of a Jerrod of Subway Sandwiches in reverse. My boss said once, in a meeting, whatever we measure gets improved, and whatever we don’t, doesn’t. Pugsley ran ten miles an hour in episode nine. He ran five miles in forty-five minutes in episode eight. Huh, I wonder if I could work my way up to that?

But there are two big problems with this. One, I don’t approve of the government managing people this way. If people draw inspiration from the government, receive their signals on how to prioritize the things in their lives and act on them — something is wrong, then. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

The other big problem is, and this is really the point: The Obama administration wouldn’t go for it. No leftist would. Measuring, and then celebrating, a human achievement? An individual human achievement? No can do, we’re all in this together! So start the music, get the rhythm going, ditch any scorekeeping…and get moving to that…a big massive-crowd grind-and-wiggle, in which individual identity is completely swallowed-up and lost in the crowd. That is not in harmony with Michelle Obama’s stated goal, since you can “harmonize” your body with a number like this, off in the background, without losing a single calorie. Just sorta move your arms around and you’re in.

Conclusion: Let’s Move is not about making kids fit, or stopping them from becoming fat. It’s just like gay marriage. It gets people to talk about inconsequential things, so that, like a deceived daughter running up & down stairs looking for a purse, we can’t & don’t concentrate on holding our so-called “leaders” to account, making sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

Update: Completely off-topic comment, but I was noticing on New Years Eve, with that wretched Lady Gaga number, this dance format has been enjoying a resurgence of sorts for awhile now…the “lead” dancer moves around and then the “backup” dancers, as individually identifiable as Star Wars stormtroopers, move around in sync, wraith-like, in the background.

I know it’s been around for a long time. It got a big boost back when moving/talking pictures first achieved viability. But in this generation it is the way to choreograph things…again…I wonder…could 2012 be the year the insanity stops? Seems Britney Spears gave it a big boost which, with the benefit of hindsight and after repeated exposure, and rather underwhelmed with the lack of creativity, I see was not helpful.

At 0:48, I see the forecast is a high of 63 and a low of 47, provided one considers San Francisco close enough to reflect our locale.

Thank you, Mia. Always nice ta know what’s goin’ on…

Wisdom, again, from my Hello Kitty of Blogging account (seems these links require membership/registration before you can follow them)…

So we’ve got anti-war people on the left and anti-war people on the right. Then we have the other. The anti-war people make two glaring mistakes: They presume that, in a conflict, one side or the other can unilaterally decide (without surrendering) the conflict should stop. The other mistake they make is to presume anyone not in their camp, must be completely lacking in any respect for human life whatsoever.

Both of these suppositions are demonstrably false.

And the irony is this: As anyone who’s been present can attest, when anti-war and pro-war people get together, a mini-war erupts right then & there. And then the anti-war people consistently show the worst pro-war tendencies in that mini-war. They dehumanize the opposition, marginalize it, trivialize it, and in sum, just state their viewpoint of the situation over & over again with little or no effort made to exchange or evenhandedly-evaluate ideas.

Their oikophobia is demonstrated easily, when you observe how frustrated they become that the “real” war and the mini-war drag on and on, and they clearly think the solution to BOTH conflicts is a simple one. But within the real war, even though they often insist there aren’t any meaningful sides defined, they consistently want one side to do all the appeasing; that would be the side made up of their purported fellow countrymen. The more alien side, according to them, doesn’t need to do any compromising at all. Obviously you have to recognize sides in order to consistently favor one over the other.

Perhaps, here in the United States, our anti-war movement is more irrational than most because our military is still a mighty one compared to other countries. Think on it; you have two countries, A and B, and a conflict erupts and let’s just arbitrarily say B is making a demand of A that happens to be an unreasonable one, and A possesses a distinctly superior military force. In that case, B’s acquiescence to A is the logical solution to the conflict. An anti-war movement sincerely motivated by a desire to see the end of the conflict, would choose that position to advocate.

But if the anti-war zealot happens to belong to country A, by pushing for this solution, he would meld his rhetoric into the rhetoric used by the pro-war movement of country A. Which would be an inconsequential consideration for someone who wants to end the conflict and thinks logically about actions and consequences. It wouldn’t matter.

Therefore, the anti-war zealot who calls for A, his own country, to do the compromising while B, the foreign country, sits back and enjoys the fruits of the conflict — must be motivated by a desire to distinguish himself from the “real enemy,” meaning, fellow countrymen who are not part of his movement. This would be the polar opposite of the coming-together-as-one-world that anti-war people say they want, and here in the states we get to watch them exercise it consistently.

And by rewarding the more belligerent entity in the conflict, with concessions and bounty that would not have been forthcoming had the conflict not started, they provide a clear incentive for more, future, conflicts.

They aren’t anti-war at all, when you look into it. Not in America they aren’t.

Just what we needed.

Does getting pepper-sprayed count as extra credit?

Columbia University is offering a new course on Occupy Wall Street next semester — sending upperclassmen and grad students into the field for full course credit.

The class is taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, who boasts about her nights camped out in Zuccotti Park.

As many as 30 students will be expected to get involved in ongoing OWS projects outside the classroom, the syllabus says.

The class will be in the anthropology department and called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement.” It will be divided between seminars at the Morningside Heights campus and fieldwork.

On her blog, Appel defends OWS, arguing that “it is important to push back against the rhetoric of ‘disorganization’ or ‘a movement without a message’ coming from left, right and center.”

Addressing the safety risks of fieldwork among protesters, she writes on the syllabus, “I can say with absolute certainty that there is no foreseeable risk in teaching this as a field-base class.”

She said her allegiance won’t keep her from being an objective teacher.

“Inevitably, my experience will color the way I teach, but I feel equipped to teach objectively,” Appel told The Post. “It’s best to be critical of the things we hold most sacred.”

So let’s see…we have this Occupy movement made up of college grads who have discovered their diplomas are worthless in the job market because there is no demand in the field of Native American Womens Basket-Weaving or whatever. (I made up that particular vocation, it doesn’t gel with reality because a basket-weaver would, one presumes, provide a product every now & then that someone could use.) As a result, we’ve had Airhead Autumn in which these business districts of various cities have been flooded with malcontents who want something, but cannot coherently say what it is they want.

Now we have a useless college course inspired by the movement. When, if it could be said the movement was started by anything at all by way of frustration of the layman, said frustration had to do with the uselessness of college coursework when tested by the supply and demand of real life.

Hamster. Wheel. Squeak squeak squeak squeak…

Mkay, I’m gonna go ahead and say it. I just don’t get football.

Stopped for a bite to eat in a sports bar that is within walking distance, so I could have a couple of glasses of Guinness. There was some kind of game on today. I noticed something about the fans I had not previously noticed about football fans: The moments of disappointment are every bit as important to the spectator pastime as the moments of jubilation.

Spectator pastime; there is my problem. I’ve never gotten pleasure from watching other people do things. From what I observe of it, this spectator activity causes these outbursts of extraordinary emotional spike, and some of the pleasure has to do with sharing the emotions with others. I’ve never managed to get into that, ever. And this is something I’ve been noticing for a long time…a very long time…

But regarding today’s epiphany, that the moments of letdown are every bit as important to the watching-experience as the moments of triumph. The more I think on it, the more confused I become. Let’s go over the common elements, shall we? Some crucial maneuver is being engaged by a “player”; the player is a complete stranger to the spectator, who has no control over the player, none at all. The player is executing this maneuver in order to make some progress toward winning the game, which is an objective of extreme importance to the spectator. Maybe he’s made a wager. Or maybe he just feels like he has. So he, and the player, labor under a common interest in the outcome.

The player biffs it…which causes a predictable surge of unhappy adrenaline in the spectator. What a clod! Damn him! And the spectator has to wonder, audibly, if the player has his head and his ass in the game, if the player cares about how things turn out. Or if the player isn’t just a complete dummy.

This is the source of my freshly found confusion — why do you want this? Why would you seek this out? Especially during tax season? Doesn’t real life offer more occasion for this than you could ever possibly want? The HR department of your employer. California state legislature. The IRS. President Obama. The meter maid. All these people have power over you, in that their decisions directly impact the outcome of things that you can’t control, but that definitely control you. And they all give us reason to wonder where their heads are. Whether they care, whether they’re idiots, whether they’re really on our side…

Football fans seem to be driven by a constant frenzied hunger, starved out of their minds, for something I get to “enjoy” in a greater abundance than any sane man could possibly want: The frustration of holding a stake in something that is being managed by someone failing to keep your confidence. What is it with that? Are they not put in this situation in their everyday lives? Or is it one of those things that, the more you get of it, the more you want? Kind of a weird, Stockholm-syndrome masochist whip-me-beat-me-make-me-write-bad-checks thing?

The super-duper-magical envelope is on the computer desk in front of me. It’s got every single Christmas shopping receipt, minus Internet orders. Every single one…save for the Sports Authority receipt. It’s like some magical little elf figured out I bought her the wrong size at that one store, snuck in, and made off with that one receipt. An elf named Murphy. I must have left the slip in the shopping bag when I pulled out the merchandise to wrap it.

Two-thirds of a quart of eggnog, and tomorrow is the expiration date. Om nom nom nom.

She works 9:30 to 3:30. I’m going to try to clean up this dive, plot out the finances, shower, trim the beard, maybe run down to the coffee shop and buy one of those old heavy newspaper things.

I’m thinning out my e-mail inbox. I’m one of those weirdos who never deletes messages…but last night, on a Facebook thread someone cried foul against a Ron Paul fan because the word “neocon” was supposed to be off-limits according to the rules of the thread. The Paulbot started squealing about his First Amendment rights to free speech being oppressed, and away we went. Paulbots: Deprived of “neocon,” “Eisenhower tried to warn us” and “wake up!” they have nothing left to say. But they’ll say it anyway.

I didn’t get all my filing of paperwork done. Got one box squared away, another two to go. Almost jammed the paper shredder three times.

Another Paulbot, this one part of my circle of friends and I have much more respect for her, is trying to tell me (again) that Palin was never doing anything more than chasing money. Must be nice to read minds.

I unleashed a rant about the scene with Will Smith committing suicide in a bathtub full of jellyfish. See if I tell you which movie that is, it’s a huge spoiler, and hopefully (maybe?) I’m doing right by you if I don’t say what the movie is. Hope that works, anyway…my beef is that the 911 responders would have been stung by the same jellyfish, and this makes him something of a jerk. Well, I’m told he left a note. I own the movie, I’ll have to watch it again. But still, a note? How about grab a can of glow-in-the-dark paint, and put letters covering the entire wall “WATCH OUT FUCKING DEADLY JELLYFISH” with a down-arrow.

My son called sometime yesterday, and hung up. I’ll have to see what’s going on.

Found a Linux client for Skype, and opened an account. Cute toy. But the kid hasn’t been online.

We had to dredge up some of our youthful vigor, since we weren’t able to find a live broadcast of the celebrations in New York. And so we had to do what normal people do, and stay awake until it was midnight in our time zone. Life is tough.

So what, in blogger world, made the biggest impression on me lately? Probably this…

Poor, poor put-upon Paris Kardashian wanna-be ladies. Someone please find them a frowny-face emoticon, I don’t think they can manage it themselves.

President Obama writes to me:

Morgan —

About the deadline tonight: It matters.

If you can, please give $3 or more today:

http://my.democrats.org/By-Midnight

To 2012,

Barack

I write back to President Obama:

Barack —

What’s so important about it? Behind Your link, the only mention of a deadline is dinner with You. Are You saying, dinner with You is what matters?

I don’t think you should put a lot of stock into me meeting this deadline. Here we get into something that, if President Obama agreed with me about each and every little issue, He’d still be irritating the piss out of me…and I know it’s not a racist thing because if He was white I’d be every bit as irritated.

This whole imperial-presidency thing. Kiss my ring. Touch my robe. You lucky schmuck, you…things matter when & because I say they matter. I never make mistakes because if I ever do anything wrong, it becomes, right on the spot, the correct way of doing it.

Forget about whether this is in harmony with our Constitution or the principles it is supposed to uphold. Forget about whether there is or isn’t such a thing as a national DNA, and whether our character would tolerate it. There are, right now, three living ex-Presidents; “five alive” is not unheard-of.

We can’t have a Sultan. Sure, we can have celebrities, and the president can be a celebrity…and I suppose if you’ve got a chance to have dinner with a celebrity, it might “matter.” But I can read between the lines, I understand West Wing metrosexual-speak. “It matters” doesn’t mean “it matters greater than zero,” it’s a catch-phrase that means drop everything else you might be doing now and think about only this.

This is a dumb idea. It demonstrates, clearly, to the undecided moderates who actually decide elections, that President Obama is not the solution, and may very well actually be the problem.

I hope, for the good of the nation, that He keeps doing things like this.

It matters.

Item: I notice it’s been an entire year since the “Don’t Touch My Junk” revolt against the TSA, which is now a whole decade old and has yet to stop a single terrorist attack. And in that year, I haven’t flown. Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I hope to see many years come and go before I fly. Not because I’m afraid of heights, but because I don’t like being treated like a barnyard animal to be herded around, the situation’s become completely unraveled and completely absurd. Confiscating cupcakes, fer cryin’ out loud.

Item: The current crop of presidential candidates is receiving some dismal report cards on the subject of illegal immigration. We should expect to see these grades diminish even further over time, since it’s clear that our votes are being diluted by invaders who simply hop the fence and punch ballots. We don’t know when they do it, but very little is being done to stop them from it so it’s silly to argue that they aren’t. Especially when our politicians, and candidates for their offices, work so hard at pandering to the invaders when the people whose votes are supposed to count, clearly want the problem to be addressed more directly.

Item: I see warning signs everywhere that, to put it plainly, make me want to vomit. This [blank] uses [chemicals/materials] known to [regulatory entity] to cause [malady]. Warnings everywhere. The list of things I can’t do is long, and growing longer, but I’m not any safer and neither is anybody else. Can’t jaywalk. Can’t order beer to be delivered with my pizza. The ammunition downstairs is going to last a good long time, since here in California firearms are only for the designated range…which means I only shoot paper targets. Not empty wine jugs like I used to do with my Dad. As for the poor unfortunates who are kids today, they have to wear helmets to do everything. Don Surber points out that me getting fat is now a national security issue…and so is everything else. Safe, safe, safe — whatever we can do, is something someone hasn’t quite gotten around to stopping us from doing quite yet. Whatever rules haven’t been written, haven’t been written yet.

What do these three items tell me about our guiding social ethic? Two things.

On a cosmetic level at least, it is very important to us that nothing bad ever happens to anybody, even if they richly deserve it. One of my favorite John Wayne quotes, which he likely never actually said, is “Life’s tough; it’s tougher if you’re stupid.” I don’t care if it’s apocryphal because it’s true, and don’t ask me how I know. Let’s just say I can vouch for it. Well, apparently someone doesn’t like that and is trying to undo it, to make life just as painless for stupid people as it is for smart people…which is not something that’s gonna happen.

Still & all, it is nice to see life valued.

Oh no wait, we can see that’s not really happening…because of the other thing we notice from the above items…notwithstanding the discussion to ensue about how effective these safety precautions might be, we see safety is not the most important thing. One of my most favorite things to observe & inquire is, on these commercial passenger jet trips I’m not taking, after I pass through the random screening and am safely ensconced into my seat, I will be required to power down my cell phone and any other electronic device. We’re not completely sure why that is, but it’s got to do with safety so we all just bow down and genuflect before the safety gods as we always do. Well hey…I’m seeing a burgeoning cottage industry crop up around diagnosing adults with learning disabilities…what if the pilot of my plane has a learning disability? The statistics, and the description of the symptoms, make it clear that this is a much bigger issue for my safety than any silly ol’ cell phone. Can I demand to be given this information? Can I switch planes? Maybe such a diagnosis should be a disqualification from applying for a single-engine or multi-engine pilot’s license.

You know the answer to this already. It’s a complete non-starter to talk about what the afflicted can be disqualified from doing. Heck, it’s a stretch for us to admit blind people shouldn’t drive cars. Now if you want to talk about what the diagnosed qualify for, we can drone on about that all day long.

So from this, I’m discerning that we have two rules in place — on which we never actually voted, but from which we’ll brook no deviation, we’ll tolerate no violation, and yes, we pass judgment on the character of our fellow citizens according to not only their compliance with these rules, but their enthusiasm for so complying. One, we don’t discriminate. Ever. If we do, we make sure we discriminate in the “right” direction. Two, human life is precious. It is so precious that we have to make sure everyone is out of danger, all the time, no matter what, and we seem bound and determined to keep writing more and more safety rules until everyone lives forever.

But here is the strange, weird, inexplicable thing about this guiding social ethic: We’re not that militant about the safety thing, because there is a decided elevation of Rule One above Rule Two. If we have to discriminate to save a life, all of a sudden our safety is about as important as yesterday morning’s used coffee grounds. And I also notice, thinking on it some more, that there is a noticeable and repeatedly-demonstrated “appearance of impropriety” aspect to Rule One that does not apply to Rule Two. Fulfilling the substance of Rule Two, is an objective made inferior to the fulfillment of the cosmetics of Rule One.

And so what I find immediately perplexing, here, is that vertical alignment between Rule One and Rule Two. Would it not make a great deal more sense, and manifest a more sincere respect for the values enshrined in the rules, if Rule Two were to be elevated in importance and passion above Rule One? Things the way they are, our message seems to be: You have an absolute right to stay alive forever, and once you’re alive you can enjoy the benefits of non-discrimination, just keep in mind that if we have to discriminate against someone else to keep you safe and alive, you’re screwed. What, then, is our goal? What is our vision? A level playing field or no playing field at all? It starts to look kind of like Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. Or a competitive sport taking place on such a level-playing-field, with no score kept, everyone gets a trophy for showing up, except if you are caught saying or doing something politically incorrect you get disqualified from the game and can’t go out for pizza afterward. There’s something phony about that; either everyone counts, or some people don’t, but you can’t have it both ways. Would it not make more sense to say: You have a right to exist, and since you’re here we’re going to work as hard as we can to make sure you’re treated fairly — short of putting undue jeopardy on that other guy’s right to exist. That, it seems to me, would make better sense.

Maybe I’m biased because I’m a six-foot-tall straight white guy still possessing all twenty-one digits, but I think we’ve got it cockeyed, and since this is a matter far too important to be entrusted to the doltish voters, I’m not sure what can be done to fix it. I suppose it’s encouraging that we as a society have managed to maintain such strict control over three distinctly separate levels of priority: Non-discrimination, life is sacred, and everything else. That does require some sophistication. But even that, I’m afraid, is viewing the situation through rose-colored glasses.

A more cynical perspective would be that we aren’t interested in making anyone safe at all, we’re just concerned with ass-covering. And, as Surber opines, the people we put in positions of power just like to push others around. Maybe it’s a case of, a certain job will attract a certain personality type. These jobs have authority invested in them…so that’s the personality type they attract. Bullies.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Another good one from GBIL.

Snopes says the status is undetermined (warning, link goes to the popup-infested Snopes website).

Apart from the sentence “Alex would be better off simply accepting my teachings without resistance,” which I find to be more fishy & suspect than the rest, given that the teacher has acknowledged said “teachings” were inaccurate in the paragraph previous — I’m inclined toward accepting the letter overall at face value. I’ve come to be aware, over the years, of a mindset in our public school rooms that says the real value of “education” hasn’t got much to do with education. These are the people that say the students aren’t there to learn that two and two make four, quite so much, as to learn how to behave in public. And these seem to be the same people who insist, whenever the schools fail to achieve either type of learning, the solution is to fund the system “properly”…

I also gather the impression these are the same people showing hostility toward the idea of any sort of absolute truth. This has been of vexing concern to me for quite some time, as it should concern anybody who toils at a vocation dealing with things that work a certain way because, and only because, something is true. You can’t have “your” truth when you’re building an airplane that requires so-many pounds of lift under its wings, or a bridge that requires support in this-spot and that-spot so that a so-heavy truck can drive across it.

I don’t know if the letter is real. But if it is, it is evidence of a subtle cultural conflict that we know is taking place. And we definitely have a stake in how it turns out, because this country needs to produce more planes and bridges. Of the kind that really do what they’re supposed to do.

I’m going to peg her as a lib. My fellow Starbucks patron was a redhead, still good looking although just a little past her prime. I’m thinking she was a lib because she was coaching her adorable little tyke to figure out EXACTLY what the little moppet wanted. Lefties have this strange fascination with picky kids. They seem to think we’re suffering from a shortage of them and in danger of running out of them.

My dated tee shirt exhorted people against putting democrats in charge in 2008, and her reply seemed to have something to do with not putting Republicans in charge…except she didn’t have the mettle to actually say so, instead her comments had to do with both sides sucking equally. Uh huh…the old stop-expecting-anything argument.

Not sure if that’s where she was going. It’s not working with me, because I’m not looking forward to the upcoming simplified tax form:

Besides of which, you can’t realize a success if you can’t recognize a fail. That’s like, pre-pre-pre step one. If you’re going to make a chili you really think has a chance of winning, or if at the very least you’re going to try not to poison the judges, you have to form an understanding of what doesn’t go in. Spot the fails.

Now if our lefty advocacy groups and election committees are forming a “grassroots” effort to keep the current crop in charge, and the argument they’re trying to put in circulation on the social networks and in the coffee shops is one of “Ah, what’s the use, both sides stink on ice, just bend over and relax your sphincter, maybe apply a little bit o’ lube and it’ll go in easier” — and that’s the very best argument they have to offer — that’s a pretty good definition of a fail. Especially in this case, right? Obama was elected with a super-majority in the Senate, and He said the economy would get better and the oceans would start to go down. And then Holy Man was given two-to-four years along with trillions of dollars for His pet projects. Now it’s time to face the music and we’re back to golly-gee-it’ll-take-time-for-Him-to-fix-the-screwups-of-the-last-guy…yeah, well, sorry there’s a certain shelf life for that line, and it’s done past it.

Saw an e-mail being circulated, someone makes the point that the nation can survive Barack Obama, but it cannot survive the ignorance that got Him elected. That’s my viewpoint on the situation. The thing that’s really going to kill us is this sense that, since both sides are bad, it really doesn’t matter who’s in charge and what’s-the-use-of-trying. I understand and respect that people have their reasons for feeling a sense of futility. My request is that if they must demonstrate this sense of futility and defeatism, they do it by staying home and not voting. That’s only reasonable, I think. It may not be an effective expression of the apathy, but it would be an honest one. And hey, if we’re looking for an honest expression of apathy, then the question arises naturally, in fact, pretty much out of the very definition — What the heck do you care?

I’m seeing a lot of concern about the swelling dependency class. Been seeing it for years. In 2009, some 59 million tax returns showed no liability. My point here is, although this shows a real problem with “skin in the game” and it does herald the rapid approach of a tipping point, at the far end of which we’ll see a perpetually-defeated and disenfranchised minority laboring under the yoke of paying for all these wonderful bennies, this is not our biggest problem.

I think the biggest problem the country has right now, bigger even than the dependency class voting in crooks and thieves to grab free stuff and give it to ’em, is that other voting bloc represented and appealed-to by the Ann-Margret look-alike in Starbucks. The ones who feel a sense of resignation, a sense of what’s-the-use-of-trying, but somehow — inexplicably — feel passionate about this sense of resignation, and eager to spread it around as much as they can. Come to think of it, this has a lot to do with teaching your kid to pick out exactly the perfect flavor of granola bar at Starbucks. She’s from my generation, and this is one of the more risible weirdnesses of my generation — we’ve been conditioned to think choosing solves everything. Would you like me to steal your money by holding you up with a gun, or a knife? Burn your house down with gasoline or oil-soaked rags? The important thing is to express, to take an active part in the process!

I don’t think the democrats can win another term just by appealing to the people who want to be given free stuff. I think, if that’s the game plan, the electorate will eventually wise up. It always has. People get tired of it. The real danger, from what I can see, is with the Pleasure of Being Nasty voter.

I don’t think we’re going to be done in by the voter who is demanding a net gain. I think the viper we’ve been holding at our bosom is the voter who’s acclimated to a net loss, the one who’s resigned himself to getting screwed.

You’re reading that and you’re saying “Why Freeberg, that’s completely absurd! You’re saying the ones who are most likely to re-elect Obama and all His friends, are the ones who recognize that this is nothing but a big ol’ band of bloodsuckers and thieves — and say so constantly?”

And I reply, in turn: Yes. Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

People who feel a sense of defeat, want like the dickens for everyone else to feel the same sense of defeat. Or, at least, be forced to live under it.

You play a game of Monopoly with four people, two of the players are bankrupt and no longer in the game — they don’t want the other two to be playing for much longer. It’s a part of human nature no one wants to talk about.

I think the big spoiler of 2012, who can really make the elections go the wrong way, is the voter who’s expecting the shaft. He’s at the point now where the disappointment has been so long expected that there will be a whole new disappointment if there isn’t disappointment.

He doesn’t have any expectation left for an honest government, so he doesn’t want anybody else to have such an expectation either. He doesn’t have any sense of hope left, so he doesn’t want anyone else to have some. And worst of all, when His Divine Eminence gives all these “uh uh uh” speeches about getting even with the millionaires-and-billionaires on their “corporate jets,” I get the feeling He’s addressing people who know they’re about to get screwed, the ones who understand they’re about to lose even more. They’re straight out of the Pleasure of Being Nasty experiment.

They want to lose a portion of what they have left, maybe all of it, just to make sure someone else loses something too. And the really sick thing is, they think it’s a net gain for them, if the magnitude of loss they are about to sustain is less than the loss sustained by the other guy.

They lose a nut. Some stranger they’ll never meet, loses two.

You can’t realize success if you can’t recognize fail. I call this a fail, because — if for no other reason — the government, which means that creep in Congress, that crook everyone recognizes is a crook, and nobody has anything good to say about him, certainly not about his integrity or his character or his trustworthiness as a steward of public resources…he makes off with three nuts.

If we know someone is spending resources foolishly, it’s a fail when you give him more. It doesn’t matter who’s bearing the burden; an increased investment in something stupid and dumb, means a fail. Maybe that’s what the slogan needs to be.

Out of the 50 Best Political Quotes of 2011:

Poverty in Egypt, or anywhere else, is not very difficult to explain. There are three basic causes: People are poor because they cannot produce anything highly valued by others. They can produce things highly valued by others but are hampered or prevented from doing so. Or, they volunteer to be poor.

Walter Williams.

Gerard really knows how to find ’em. A comment that serves as a fitting epitaph for twenty eleven, and a less than cheerful fanfare for the beginning of twenty twelve. Commenter magicbeans:

I hate this field. What we should have had was Christie, Palin, Ryan, Rubio, West and Jindal. That could have been amazing. Instead we got the second stringers and its just impossible to make a choice that doesn’t feel like a disappointment. At least for me.

My own personal choice is to draft Paul Ryan for 2012 but it isn’t going to happen. We will be stuck with Romney or Gingrich and if we manage to win who knows if they will do what needs to be done to shrink the government. Their history says no.

The most passionate desire of the electorate, and the taxpayers, is crystal-clear. And even at this early stage, the most likely achievement of the 2012 election event is going to be to give the national agenda a mighty shove in the opposite direction. The new year isn’t even here yet, and it’s looking a lot more like 1936 than 1980, just because of the disappointing line-up arranged by the opposition.

Once again, it’s an apt time for the “Palin Must Go Home Now!” peanut gallery to line up and offer their apologies for the damage they’ve done. But we can’t hold our collective breath waiting for it.

Prelutsky:

One of the many things that make liberals so obnoxious is their hypocrisy. For instance, when campaigning against Christmas symbols, they make a mantra of “separation of church and state,” although those words never appear in the Constitution. They appeared in a letter that Thomas Jefferson addressed to the members of the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association. While insisting that a person’s religious beliefs were a personal matter, he did not expand upon the Constitution’s very specific wording, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Nothing there that prohibits communities from doing whatever they want to do in the way of celebrating Christmas or any other religious holiday. It’s only Congress that is limited. The Founders had a legitimate distrust of the federal government and they didn’t want to risk the establishment of something akin to the Church of England. But they weren’t quaking in their boots over decorated fir trees standing in the town square or people wishing one another a Merry Christmas.

When it serves their purpose, liberals like to quote Jefferson and pretend that he is one with them. However, pretending that Jefferson, the man who filled his Declaration of Independence with references to the Creator and inalienable rights, those rights that can only be granted by God, was an atheist is the sort of self-serving rubbish that liberals make a practice of promoting.
:
The world of liberalism, I’ve concluded, is full of bubbles. There’s one bubble filled with liberal arts professors, another filled with mainstream journalists, a third for defense attorneys, a fourth for actors, screenwriters and directors, and so on. These bubbles serve as self-contained universes. It’s not that these vacuum-packed elitists are unaware that other people exist, but they regard them as a sub-species, only fit to buy their newspapers, watch their TV shows, purchase their CDs and pony up their kids’ college tuition. They refer to these suckers contemptuously as the folks they fly over. But even at ground level, liberals feel that they tower, morally and intellectually, over these inferior specimens.

My friend, Bernie Goldberg, who spent nearly 30 years in the trenches at CBS studying liberals in their own environment, came to the conclusion, as he wrote recently, that liberals regard themselves as moderates for the same reason that fish are unaware they’re wet. They simply have no other frame of reference.

Carve that one into every marble building along the Capitol Mall, right at eye level: It’s only Congress that is limited. And then put a wreath on the building. It’s okay to express “Occupy Wall Street” thoughts and ideas within line-of-sight of a federal building, even though many taxpaying citizens do not agree with those thoughts and do not support them. So what the heck. Hang a wreath.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

PolitiFact has been receiving some blowback from progressive bloggers. It’s happening because they named, as the lie of the year, a democrat party lie which is, of course, not something that is supposed to be happening. For writing about this backlash they are now receiving some more.

But FactCheck agrees with them about the lie-of-the-year thing, and so does The Washington Post.

File this one under “It feels like abuse when the ass-kissing stops.”

Ezra Klein, founder of Journolist, the cyber-star-chamber in which lefty journalists could conspire with each other to massage the news for the benefit of the all-important lefty agenda, opined that the fact-checker model is probably unsustainable over the long term. I agree with him, but not for the reasons he offers.

The problem that has been consistently encountered, is with the sensible concern. In 2009, Sarah Palin had a sensible concern about “death panels” and that ended up being the Lie of the Year back then. Turned out, she was right. Ah, but PolitiFact could claim they were in the right as well — and they did: “There is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person’s ‘level of productivity in society’ to determine whether they are ‘worthy’ of health care.”

See, that’s the problem: A so-called “fact checker” can — as part of his mission statement — turn a blind eye to anything that is a worrisome, even likely, near-future development, which would of course capture the the attention of an interested stakeholder who thinks these things through logically, but in a human-like way. There is a sensible concern that you’ll start a fire if you smoke while pumping gas in your car, even though we can’t find anecdotal evidence of this actually happening. There is a sensible concern that talking on your cell phone will screw up the controls of the passenger jet in which you’re seated, although it could be characterized as a “myth” because, again, it hasn’t happened. Come to think of it, our post-9/11 procedures for boarding that jet in the first place, are based on sensible concerns (although this is debatable) that have yet to stop any mid-air act of terrorism, or any other debacle, one single time.

Washington Post has named it one of the biggest lies of the year, that President Obama has “apologized for America.” It rates four Pinnochios. And yet, does it really make sense to dismiss the claim? Can an observer do just that, and claim the “facts” are on his side, confident that something hasn’t gone sailing over his head? Hasn’t an apologetic stance been an established overtone, intentionally infused with and consistently associated with the Obama brand, since the campaign trail?

And yet on Planet Fact Checker, this is jettisoned as a loathed urban myth. It never happened.

So yes, the fact-checker model cannot survive long, just as you’ll not be very long driving a car that lacks any suspension. The fact checkers skate on by, liberated from any fact-checking by anybody else that actually counts for something, so long as they can claim a competitively tall soapbox…so long as they issue their verdicts in such a way that they’re liked by whoever might have a taller soapbox. But on the rare occasions like this one, when they must go the other way, they get picked apart. And then, whether their “fact checking” stands up to logical scrutiny or not, an ugly truth is bound to come out: That fact checkers are human, possessing all the frailties and weaknesses of humans, including gullibility and prejudice. The motion is a jostling one, and like the jostling car without the suspension, it’s bound to fall apart sooner or later.

It’s a temporary way of getting a taller soapbox. A flash in the pan fad, like Rubik’s cubes and poodle skirts. The desires on the part of the readers to get hold of some solid, unbiased information is much more timeless and permanent. The same cannot be said for today’s way of providing it, since, as the lefty bloggers have so aptly demonstrated, the fact checker only retains his credibility when he tells his readers what they want to hear.

I thought this was particularly well done.

I LOL’d, as they say.

Happy Friday, everybody. Merry Christmas.

Credit to Prof. Moore’s magic Facebook page.

You think that’s a reference to the Lemon Test. No, it isn’t…but it is that particular topic. Things, usually things that are part of a cherished tradition, that some busybody with authority thinks need to go the way of the Dodo bird because they’re not secular enough in nature.

My prongs are not part of any kind of test, they are observations. Observations which, from what I can tell, endure from one “War on Christmas” incident to the next…not a single one of the three ever falter or fail. There may be exceptions, somewhere, but I’m still waiting to find some. I thought of the first two when I was writing about this a short time ago, and thought of a third one as I was commenting at blogger friend Daphne’s place.

Thus far, each of the parts in the unholy trinity is universal:

The misplaced perception of injury. It seems in Anno Domini Twenty Eleven, this strange notion has set in that to deny the existence of a particular class of people is morally equivalent to actively trying to obliterate said class of people. Somehow, the atheist and the Buddhist and the Hindu and the Muslim are supposed to suffer some actual injury when they see a Nativity display on an Air Force base, like a slug writhing in agony beneath a salt shaker. The rules have not been written anywhere or vocalized by anyone — they’re too silly — so I have to figure out what they are by deductive reasoning, which tells me: You may doubt the existence of these alternative systems of belief in private. But if you display something that suggests you don’t know they’re around, that’s when the “rights” have been violated. So we all have this brand-new-manufactured-basic-human-“right” that total strangers should believe in us and our non-Judeo-Christian creeds; or, at least, if any of these total strangers do not believe in us, we have a right not to be reminded of them — our right is to remain ignorant of their ignorance. Oh, and we only have this right as members of groups, not as individuals. So if I chose not to believe in God, you’re infringing on my rights if you refuse to believe I don’t believe in God. Strangely, The Almighty is entirely lacking in exactly this right. Seems almost like a case of discrimination. Why, it is, come to think of it — they can doubt Him, but I’m in heap big trouble if I deny them. Publicly.

The protection of the command decision from the hostility of public opinion. The United States Congress did not vote on a new rule that forbids its members from writing the phrase “Merry Christmas” to constituents; a commission did that. That’s the constant. It’s always a commission, or a three-judge panel, or a board, or the concern of the community. Nobody lowers the boom with one of these crazy hyper-secular rules, and then campaigns for re-election on a platform of “I’m the guy who.” And I find that to be very strange, because the rule is supposed to be put into effect because of the exquisite agony someone is suffering due to the Christmas lights, or hearing people say “God bless you!” when they sneeze, or whatever. Supposedly, the constitutional integrity of our republic is in dire jeopardy before some super-sensible double-talking pipsqueak figures out we can’t have seasonal holly hung from the street signs downtown. If the crisis is that serious, how come these brave public servants who avert it on our behalf, don’t want to bask in our adulation and gratitude? I mean, ever?

The anonymity of the complainant. Together with the skimpy numbers of the complainant…the weakness of the arguments of the complainant…the fictional nature of the complainant! We ordinary people, in the United States anyway, enjoy a constitutional right to face our accuser. Not so with God, Jesus, Santa Claus, Old glory, or any other iconic figure caught in the cross hairs of one of these hyper-secular, busybody, pulled-out-of-someone’s-ass rules. From the anonymous airman who wrote to have the Nativity scene removed from Travis AFB, to the apartment manager lady who demanded an American flag be taken down because someone in the “diverse community” might be offended…we’re never actually introduced to anybody who’s born the brunt of this abuse of having to lay eyes upon such an icon. A goodly measure of the time, the strutting martinet in question will actually go on record and admit there is no such complainant, the offensive display is being removed as a precaution, for the benefit of the theoretically offended. Now give this one a good think…when is the last time you wrote a letter to City Hall, or your boss, or your apartment manager, or anybody else in charge — from just you! — letting them know something made you uncomfortable, or you wanted something changed, and got that kind of satisfaction? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have an experience like that to share, nor do I know anybody who has. Like, wow! These must be some great letter writers!

Let’s just quit beating around the bush. This has nothing to do with religion at all. The American Flag doesn’t represent a religion. Christmas tinsel is not religious. Nobody’s lying awake at night, chewing their fingernails in apprehension that some portion of their tax dollars are being spent on displays that are associated with a popular view of Creation that they don’t share.

This is an attack on tradition. It is a coordinated attack, one that is insulated from the ballot box, out of concern that it could not survive a chance brush with it. If those who are sympathetic to this attack, felt that they could still engage in it after they were told “Wait for a real live person to be offended, then give us a call, we’ll have a town meeting about it” — they’d be doing exactly that.

But they cannot press their attack on those terms. Because it would be like nose-picking with a wet noodle, and they know it. And then the voters would be able to tell them what they thought of that excessive waste of time…and they know that, too.

Ann Barnhardt, in On Vomiting and Crazy Eyes, 12/19/11-2116 MST, hat tip to Gerard:

If you asked me who I would rather have a conversation with: an atheist or a “my truth your truth bullshit” pseudo-Christian, I’d take the atheist, without hesitation every time. You can have a productive, informative conversation with an atheist. An atheist actually believes something. He has a premise, and he believes in his premise, and is probably able to defend his premise in a rational way. In other words, there’s some meat on those bones.

In contrast, the “my truth your truth bullshit” (MTYTB) pseudo-Christian is a vapid, inane empty shell. The lights are on, but Dude, NOBODY’S HOME. To wit, Oprah Winfrey…The Truth just IS. It EXISTS. IT IS WHAT IT IS, or to quote God Himself speaking to Moses in Exodus 3:14, I AM WHO AM. 1+1 equaled 2 from all eternity, and 1+1 equaled 2 before any human being had yet pondered the question, and 1+1 will continue to equal 2 forever. Even if every person falls into some mathematical stupor or heresy and collectively become convinced that 1+1=5, 1+1 will still equal 2. That will never, ever change.

The Truth is a PERSON, more personal and more real than you or me. His name is Jesus Christ. What the MTYTB pseudo-Christians are actually doing is denying the existence of God and instead setting themselves up as “god” because they cast themselves as the arbiter and standard of “truth”. Hence, “my truth”. What utter, abject evil. Even the atheist does not do this. The atheist still maintains that there is an exterior truth to himself, and that the truth is that there is no God. The atheist is WRONG, but at least he doesn’t deify himself and still acknowledges that there is an external, referential matrix.

That’s part one. In part two…

Pick your side, but spare me, and more particularly, spare Christ this “my truth your truth” pantheistic Oprah Winfrey slackjawed bullshit…
:
If a culture subscribes to the “my truth your truth” line, then what inevitably happens is that the people who have the coercive power in a society begin to impose “their truth” upon everyone else. In other words, whoever has the guns and the power to imprison becomes “god” and sets the standard of “truth” in a society. We are watching this happen right now before our very eyes. The Obama regime is telling Catholics that they WILL provide contraceptives and abortions because these things are “rights” according to “their truth”. They are also telling Catholics that they WILL place adoptive children with homosexuals, and very soon they will also demand that Catholic priests marry homosexuals, because homosexuality is “normal” according to “their truth”, and they have the power to destroy people via the IRS and other governmental bureaucracies, so therefore “their truth” wins. They are telling the MF Global customers that the expectation of respect of property rights and the enforcement of contract law is unreasonable and that confiscation and theft of property by their cronies is now permitted according to “their truth”.

These psychopaths will go to any lengths, any extreme, to deny an external standard of truth, because as long as they can delude themselves and their followers into believing that lie, they set the rules, and the world and everything in it is theirs for the taking.

THIS is why Christ said that he would VOMIT the lukewarm out of His mouth, because the “my truth your truth” bullshit leads directly to hell, even though it promises to deliver a “tolerant, ecumenical utopia.” When a society falls to that evil philosophy and no one will stand and fight with “crazy eyes” for the Truth, then people will suffer and die by the millions. The ecumenical utopia you are waiting for can never and will never exist because, unlike you, the forces of evil actually believe in their satanic philosophy with a burning passion and thus will never, ever compromise or rest until they either fully infiltrate and take over or are utterly defeated. There is no third way.

And that’s why…

Thing I Know #330. A man who doesn’t know the difference between a fact and an opinion, is not to be trusted in delivering either one of those.

If everyone with a couple brain cells to rub together is capable of manufacturing truth from within, then what we’re left with is a dogma custom-built for the personality that cannot admit it’s ever wrong about anything. No conflict ever arises to confront it, because nothing in the entire universe can be measured.

What sort of personality is attracted to such a dogma? Not, contrary to appearances and rhetoric, the sort that finds compromise attractive or appealing. This is the crazy-eyed personality that wants to get to the fun part, and skip past the parts that are too boring…you know, the part where it wins, and anybody who disagrees, loses.

…er…”puppy” Christmas…

Hat tip to blogger friend Buck.

A parable.

Once, there was a man who had to deal with rats when he had a major infestation in his home.

The rats’ normal environment became unable to support them all, and they began coming down from the hills looking for new digs… and decided they liked the man’s house. They were perfectly happy to hunker down in the attic, garage and basement with free access to the goodies in the kitchen and pantry. And once they had moved in and saw what rich booty was to be had, they were determined to take over.

At first the problem wasn’t evident. The man would see an occasional rodent scurrying around in the basement, and being a live and let live sort, it never bothered him too much.

As more and more rats began showing up, their presence became much more noticeable. The man made an effort to understand the rats and their needs. The thought even crossed the man’s mind that he and his neighbors, by living in the area, owed it to the rats to try and coexist peacefully. After all weren’t they entitled to live on the planet too?

The People’s Cube:

Twas an Occupy Christmas, when all through Zuccotti
Not a creature was stirring, not even the naughty.
Their demands were all sorted and stacked with care,
In hopes that Obama Claus soon would be there.

The Progs lay smug in their makeshift beds,
While hopes of entitlements danced in their heads.
Adorned by those cool proletarian caps,
Most had to sleep near where Comrades had crapped.

…and it keeps going on like that. Timely, funny and fresh.

San Fran Nan insists that must be the case:

“Christmas is 10 days away,” said Pelosi at a press briefing on Capitol Hill today. “The president and Democrats in Congress have been very clear. We’re not going home without enacting a payroll tax cut for America’s working families and extending unemployment insurance for millions of Americans.”

“The payroll tax cut that the president proposed would put $1,500 in the pockets of 160 million Americans,” she said. “The unemployment insurance extension is not only good for individuals. It has a macroeconomic impact. As macroeconomic advisers have stated, it would make a difference of 600,000 jobs to our economy.”

Pelosi did not name those “macroeconomic advisers.” She continued: “Again this is important because this is about the safety net not just for these individuals, but for our economic system that, in times of unemployment, we have a safety net and that is important.”

This is a constant in progressive rhetoric, I notice. Put the money where we tell you to put it…and, see, when you do that, [whoever gets it] is going to spend it, and that will invigorate the economy and create jobs. Wheeeee! Whereas, if the money was left with whoever had it in the first place, who knows what they’d do with it. Wipe their butts with it or something…

Neal Boortz does his best to present the counterpoint, although some certainly won’t appreciate the message too much:

The fact is that the money for unemployment benefits comes from somewhere: either we get it from taxes or we borrow it. This is money that could have otherwise been productive in our economy or money that we didn’t have and now we have to pay back (with interest) sometime in the future. Hence why Nancy Pelosi’s theory is flawed. We can’t create jobs by simply shifting around the wealth.

Last time we were having this back-and-forth about unemployment benefits and jobs, this guy explained it very well:

If it seems counter-intuitive that paying people to not work actually raises the output of a nation, that’s because it is.

Nevertheless, a number of major media outlets have repeatedly quoted reputable economists as saying that the best way to boost the nation’s economy is to continue extending aid packages to America’s unemployed workers. Depending on the economist, the quoted return is anywhere from $1.61 to $1.90 for every dollar spent on extending unemployment benefits.

The logic here is that recipients of unemployment benefits tend to spend the money soon after receiving it, and they spend it on essentials such as groceries and bills, rather than on frivolities like dining out or going to the movies. Since the benefits are spent this way, it creates a ripple effect that actually helps drive the economy.

Unfortunately, the positive impact of these benefits on the economy is neither sustainable nor viable over the long term. Although the short-term benefits provide an immediate relief, it is the kind of relief an addict feels after a fix. The initial high will eventually fade and the pain of withdrawal will settle in worse than before.

In fact, the addiction analogy works on a number of levels when it comes to extending unemployment benefits. Although the relief felt by both the economy and the addict is real, the source of the relief is artificial. Rather than experiencing the genuine economic relief that comes in the form of an increased demand for goods and services, the federal government is infusing the economy with borrowed capital that must eventually be paid back. This means that even after the economy begins to recover, the effects of the recovery won’t be felt by the bulk of Americans until this borrowed money is repaid.

And for those who are demanding some hard research, rather than theory (even though what the theory is saying, is that you can’t sit in a sailboat and make it go by blowing into the sails), there is some:

Simply put, it took people with unemployment benefits longer to find jobs than those without benefits. That alone may indicate that unemployment insurance is a disincentive to find work, but the study’s author, Dr. Carl Van Horn, says that is not exactly accurate.

“Younger workers with limited labor experience are much less likely to be eligible for unemployment benefits” said Dr. Van Horn, and they don’t even apply for benefits.

The study found that unemployed workers who had not received unemployment insurance in the past year were somewhat younger and had lower incomes to begin with than unemployed workers who had received benefits.

Dr. Van Horn says those younger workers tend to, “…earn slightly more than minimum wage, they are high school graduates, they cycle through jobs very rapidly and don’t stay in them for long periods of time. They are the working poor they are struggling to get a job and move on.” He went on to say, “The middle class are more likely to be eligible for unemployment insurance and for them to find a replacement job that is at or near their previous earnings is much more difficult in this recession.”

Other findings indicate just how hard it is to get back on your feet in this economy. Forty three percent of the people in the study found full- or part-time jobs and just over half them took pay cuts in their new positions, while 41% were still trying to find jobs and 16% gave up and dropped out of the work force.

“What we found is that number one most of them have been unemployed for so long that receiving unemployment insurance is not sufficient to stave off the financial crisis they are experiencing” said Dr. Van Horn.

He hopes the study will dispel what he calls myths about unemployment such as “everybody gets unemployment insurance.” Dr. Van Horn says that’s not true, only a third of unemployed Americans right now actually receive benefits. He points out that some, like those younger workers, are not even eligible, others have exhausted their benefits and some never apply.

“The most important thing (about the study) is that a large number of people who don’t get unemployment insurance and even if you get unemployment insurance, it’s not a vacation, not a picnic. It doesn’t solve the financial problem they have.”

One rule of inference and prediction that has never let me down is: Everybody adapts, in some way, to everything. If consumers are feeling tight with their dollars, the businesses are going to anticipate a dwindling revenue stream and look for ways to cut expenses. If everybody picks up a certain amount of money being unemployed, then even valuable employees will be “parked” by the businesses — let go, told to re-apply, maybe we’ll re-hire you when things turn around again. If it actually works that way, then the employee has been converted into a sort of rental commodity. Rent the employees just like you’d rent a car: Define the need, pay for it as long as you need it, when you’re done return it to the state which is the actual owner of the “car.”

The government as a temp placement agency. I suppose there’s no shortage of people running around who think that’s how it’s actually supposed to work.

Once upon a time, I was a temp. It worked great for my needs, back then. I was 21, and my apartment rent was the only financial obligation I had on the entire planet.

Envision a future in which this is the picture of the average American subject/citizen. What would Speaker Nan have to say about how well the economy is doing, in such an America?

Come to the yuletide side of The Force…it is your desssssstiny…

Hat tip to Miss Cellania.