…just socialist.

I recognize that [President Obama] gave a speech about how badly he wants there to be more jobs. But in it, and afterwards, you will notice that he has proposed a bunch of bullcrap that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with advancing the economy or increasing employment significantly. Some of the reactions to this have accused him of incompetence, political idiocy, or general stupidity; this is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. Maybe he’s not incompetent, or stupid, he’s just socialist. He doesn’t want to promote any prosperity if it means strengthening capitalist tendencies – what use is that, if it makes a bunch of people happy with less socialism? Instead he only ‘wants’ to promote jobs via socialist-fantasy methods. Those methods have no chance of working but that’s okay because actually creating jobs isn’t their main goal, their main goal is making him look like he cares and thus (perhaps) keeping him in power four more years to socialize the economy, and meanwhile (to the extent they’re passed) ratcheting up the socialism again.

Most commentary about all this has this blind spot for this man’s ideology. Why is it so hard to admit that he is a true-blue believer in socialism and what that means? This basically gives him a pass because at some point the ‘incompetence’ articles will stop and the ‘he’s learned from his mistakes/comeback kid’ articles will start. But his ideology does not change and has never changed.

One could protest that it doesn’t matter — either way, we’ve seen it in action and The Change Sucks, as they say. But you just know Sonic’s right about the “comeback kid” articles. Sometime after the holidays, when people shopping for Christmas on plastic are getting their first bills, and the cooler temps will help shove The Second Summer Of Jobs further into history. I notice the media tends to think that way: Is three or four months enough to put us into a whole different era of time? Yes if there’s a thirty- or forty-degree swing involved in the seasonal temperatures; no, if not. So sometime after the holidays the question will arise: Geez, this economy stinks on ice, what’s being done about it? Too bad our current President is so incompetent…ah, but He’s been learning from His mistakes! Maybe there’s a ray of hope!

Me, I think President Obama is human just like the rest of us, meaning (lowercase the ‘h’ on purpose here) he operates with competence within a limited and defined scope of concern. The scope of concern, in this case, is P.R., and there is incompetence, by design, addressing anything outside that perimeter. He waits around for something to happen, and when it happens the task to be fulfilled is to dispense narratives. If the thing that happened is a bad thing, the narrative is going to be that it would’ve happened anyway and thank goodness we had the Reinvestment Act to keep it from becoming a total disaster — besides of which, it was the other guy’s bad policies over the last decade that caused it to happen. If it’s a good thing that happened, well then All Hail Caesar. Just like a nightmare boss. Good thing happened, well look at this wonderful thing that happened under my tutelage. Bad thing happens…oh, it’s that klutz [your name here], didn’t implement my policies correctly. Tried to tell ‘im.

As to the central concern of Obama’s socialist ideology: Yes I’ve had this brewing in the back of my head for awhile. It is a case of the fox guarding the chicken coop, is it not? I think the independents side with the conservatives on the desire of what is to happen next: Please let the economy recover without our having to spend any more money since we know there is a consequence to all this. In fact I perceive some of the more reasonable liberals join in that. But will Obama make it happen? Not unless there is something in it for Him; not unless, as the economy is so revived, America fundamentally changes her posturing toward a more socialist bent, like under FDR in the thirties. In left-wing-land, that is how you get into the hall of fame, by creating programs that can never be dismantled, never never not ever, that transfer wealth from people who create it to people who do not — and make it an exercise in futility to work hard. I think Sonic’s right: Any prospect of healing our economy, without getting something like that sold, will be a non-starter with Obama and His administration. Even though that’s exactly what The American People want & need.

Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than in the example (the post is chock full of good solid ones, read it from top to bottom) about gas prices. Nevermind the democrats’ track record on gas and energy prices; just review the archives of their campaign promises. It becomes clear in short order that anyone who supports democrats in the hopes that gas prices will become affordable, or stay that way, has committed a glaring transgression in forming such a rosy prediction. The transgression is not so much having an opinion different from one of mine; it is having an opinion that is supported entirely by non-existent, made-up things.

Maybe the question should be explored, with at least as much energy as the by now routine exercise of prowling through Sarah Palin’s garbage dumpsters whether she’s running for something or not: How about just ask democrat office-holders and candidates whether they intend to bring gas prices down. Can we start with just that? Hey, maybe we can find a new campaign slogan for democrats next year: “Vote democrat in 2012! Keep gas prices really high!” Or, “Re-elect Obama in 2012! Necessarily bankrupt the coal industry!”

Spotted in Ithaca.

From Prof. Jacobson.

Just about a year ago I made an entirely valid criticism against the global warming religion. Consuming a great many words to make the point that something called “mean earth temperature” is based on surface readings of an object with a very cool surface and a much larger and very heavy core, I then noted:

It is the natural hazard that an argument must expect to encounter, when it is based on two-dimensional measurements of a three-dimensional thing. This hazard is insurmountable. The only way you can get around it is to take the Earth, throw it in a huge blender, crank it up to puree, and stick a thermometer in the resulting mush. That would be an accurate measurement of “mean temperature,” provided entropy has been reached.

Obviously, we aren’t doing that. We look at land masses, take readings and average them out. Just think on how much that ignores. It’s staggering.
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This thing we’re supposed to associate with the very word “science,” is based on the notion that a much larger thing can be measured by the average of a randomly-selected, much smaller sample…and under ordinary conditions the resulting number should remain absolutely, positively static with no measurable variance whatsoever.

Where else do we believe in such a thing?

I wish it were better written than my usual stuff. It should have been; it was not the product of an hour-long fresh-coffee-consumption-in-underwear session full of hasty gropings for nouns & verbs — like this is. Five or six years prior to that posting, I had conjured up in comment threads all around the intertubez the concept of the “Freeberg celestial blender.” It would be quite a silly thing to do if real science frowned upon it. But of course, real science does not frown upon it; couldn’t if it wanted to. There are three dimensions, there are two dimensions. Completely different worlds. Like I said, the hazard is insurmountable. Perhaps that’s why the “blender” concept is never discussed in establishment circles.

I don’t know if Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever reads my blog. I have always taken it as a given that hardly anybody does. But how then do you explain this gem which appeared in his resignation letter from the American Physical Society on Tuesday:

The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.

I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered.

This one absolutely, positively fell short of altitude needed to register on my radar…as in, I watched the clip, and consciously decided there was nothing worth discussing here…until I saw the official explanation.

MediaMatters has weighed in, with a statement from the First Lady’s communications director:

Kristina Schake, communications director for First Lady Michelle Obama, made the following statement about these attacks:

The words, meaning and context in these claims are all wildly off the mark. The First Lady was commenting to the President on how moving and powerful it always is to watch all that America’s firefighters and police officers do to honor the flag. It was an emotional moment on a powerful day and she was awed by the ceremony and all that the flag symbolizes.

The First Lady was moved in a powerful way? She was emotionally awed by the ceremony? And she was commenting during this snippet to the President about it all? It seems to me that damage control is now in full swing.

You should’ve kept your mouth shut about it, Ms. Schake and MediaMatters. The explanation is worse than the incrimination.

Who, exactly, made the call that this was something that required comment? And did the person who concocted the excuse actually watch the video before concocting it?

It is barely plausible…only just barely. As in, you could believe the explanation if you fervently wanted to. And then, if you’re in that situation, everyone who sees it a different way is: (Yawn) (Deep breath) stupid unsophisticated evil twisted babykiller neocon dumb unprincipled lacking in nuance greedy selfish self-loathing blah blah blah…

I dunno. I’m still inclined to grant Michelle Obama the benefit of the doubt, I don’t really know what was said. But that is a really fishy explanation. It doesn’t gel; there’s more to explain after it’s offered, than before.

I’m going to file it away in my ever-thickening folder marked, “Flattering or exculpatory things I know about Obama only because lots of loud angry people are ready to say nasty things about me if I believe otherwise.” Obama’s a Christian, His birth certificate is genuine, He loves America, Bill Ayers was just a guy living in His neighborhood, He is wise and all-knowing, but had no idea all the nasty things Jeremiah Wright was saying before He quit that church…that’s the way these things usually go. There’s no proof of Obama wrongdoing, but no evidence that lets Him off the hook, either, lots of people are ready to fling insults at whoever doesn’t just drop it and let it go. So another item goes in the file.

After awhile, ya know what? The thickness of the file says something…something not said by any one among the items in it. When it seems every single open question about Obama comes back to that, it means something.

For His Holy Eminence. The name of the jobs act was actually stolen by the Republicans, Obama’s performance at His own job has hit an all-time low again, His efforts to “create or save” the jobs of others are now under investigation and it seems they should be…and…that other thing hovering over everything else like a bad stench…the unconstitutionality of the signature monstrosity.

Quick — talk about something else. I know Mr. McGinniss’ book has been in the works for awhile now…takes time to get those houses rented & peek in all the windows…but, to repeat a sentiment that has found voice before, the timing is interesting. That seems to always be the case with muck and slime.

The rest of us can learn something from this, I think. If a calculation is indeed being made, that would mean news about an Alaska housewife who holds no office and makes no meaningful decisions at all, is retaining market value as a commodity — yes, news is a commodity, didn’t you know? — while The One, who’s supposed to be deciding everything worth deciding, is completely screwing everything up. The calculation could be wrong, but I think we can rule that out as a possibility, for if it was a wrong calculation it would be calculated this way over and over again.

So the timing is purely coincidental, or else our priorities are completely cocked up. Or else the masses are really, really good at multitasking, maintaining an encyclopedic knowledge of the most influential, the least influential, and presumably everyone on the spectrum in between. I think we can rule out that last one as well; hearing a lot of grumbling out there about “haven’t decided who I wanna support just yet” and an occasional protest of “haven’t got time for this need to work & pay bills & spend time with my family & pick up milk on the way home.”

I’m going with, our priorities are cocked up. So go get that milk. Pick up a National Enquirer while you’re at it.

Meanwhile, back to the pilot in the cockpit who doesn’t seem to know jack squat about flying. Quite a week for Him…wonder if it’s time to start feeling a little bit sorry for Him yet? Should we perhaps revoke the voting rights of whoever doesn’t want to manage his own problems in life — sees it as Washington’s job to take care of everybody, and the voter’s job to vote in someone cool and wonderful and awesome to make all the right decisions? Obviously that model doesn’t work. And I don’t think the people who believe in that model, will stop believing in it just because it’s demonstrated that it doesn’t work, across a presidential term…or a decade…or generations…or a lifetime. They’re entrenched in it and will never abandon it. So should they be participating in the decision? When you think about it, their whole worldview is one of avoiding decisions and putting someone else in charge. So disenfranchising them from the voting process would really be nothing more than giving them precisely what they want anyway. Maybe we should start thinking about it, very seriously.

James Bovard writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Last Thursday, President Obama proposed new federal jobs and job-training programs for youth and the long-term unemployed. The federal government has experimented with these programs for almost a half century. The record is one of failure and scandal.

In 1962, Congress passed the Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) to provide training for workers who lost their jobs due to automation or other technological developments. Two years later, the General Accounting Office (GAO) discovered that any trainee in this program who held a job for a single day was counted as “permanently employed”—a statistical charade by the Department of Labor to camouflage its lack of results. A decade after MDTA’s inception, GAO reported that it was failing to teach valuable job skills or place trainees in private jobs and was marred by an “overriding concern with filling available slots for a particular program,” regardless of what trainees actually needed.

Congress responded in 1973 by enacting the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). The preface to the new law noted that “it has been impossible to develop rational priorities” in job training. So instead of setting priorities, CETA spent vastly more money, especially on job creation. Notorious examples reported in the press in those years included paying to build an artificial rock for rock climbers, providing nude sculpture classes (where, as the Pharos-Tribune of Logansport, Ind., explained, “aspiring artists pawed each others bodies to recognize that they had ‘both male and female characteristics'”), and conducting door-to-door food-stamp recruiting campaigns.

Between 1961 and 1980, the feds spent tens of billions on federal job-training and employment programs. To what effect? A 1979 Washington Post investigation concluded, “Incredibly, the government has kept no meaningful statistics on the effectiveness of these programs—making the past 15 years’ effort almost worthless in terms of learning what works.” CETA hirees were often assigned to do whatever benefited the government agency or nonprofit that put them on the payroll, with no concern for the trainees’ development. An Urban Institute study of the mid-1980s concluded that participation in CETA programs resulted in “significant earnings losses for young men of all races and no significant effects for young women.”

And…incredibly…it gets worse. Go read.

Look what Cassy found…

Dude…just do your job. If you ever did get some kind of thrill over telling those big bad homophobes to “get over it,” that time has passed…DADT is repealed…all the arguing and yelling was supposed to have been about the opportunity to serve your country. So serve. I mean, that is the next step where all your energies should be going right now, if the intentions expressed were honest and sincere.

This is the trouble with revolutions. A lot of people in this day & age, can’t seem to stop having them. Is it a problem having openly-gay people serving in the military? It’s pretty obvious by now that some people are always going to have one answer to that question and other people will always have a different one…they won’t change their minds…but now in addition to being a contentious issue, it’s a useless one. It’s been decided. Decided by fiat — you can’t tell people what opinions they’re supposed to be having. So useless or not, it will remain contentious.

However: Is it a problem having these perpetual-revolution types serving in the military? That, I would hope, would not be an open question among thinking persons for very long; I would hope it isn’t contentious at all. It’s a no-brainer. It’s just like having someone serving with a hard chemical dependency, in the sense that reality becomes disconnected from their behavior. Whether remarking about their own homosexuality or somebody else’s, they protest for years with “get over it”; the military gets over it; it’s time to roll out a newspaper and…they splash “get over it” on the front page when the “it” has already been gotten-over? How much longer is this going to be kept up?

Cassy said it very well:

It is one thing to repeal DADT and to let gays to serve openly. It is quite another to flaunt it, to shove it down our throats like this. Why is it, I wonder, that we need to know who is gay and who isn’t? Why do our faces have to be rubbed in it? I really don’t need to know who in my husband’s unit is straight or gay, but for some reason, I guess we simply HAVE to know. We not only must know, but we are apparently required to approve of it.

And I’m curious: why are we the ones being told to get over it? It seems to me that the exact opposite needs to happen. [emphasis mine]

Bulls-eye. We are really depending on a national defense that can keep its mind on its job; arguably the single most important job anybody in the country has. One of the key arguments for repealing DADT, repeated ad nauseum, was that it was exactly this brand of basic professionalism that would not be put in jeopardy. Well, this is evidence of said jeopardy — not because of homosexuals openly serving in the military, but because of that disconnected, feel-good druggie-high of “I told them to get over it again” chemical rush going through someone’s bloodstream.

Some people are sore winners. If national defense isn’t relying on such people, it’s simply sad. If it is, then it’s something more than just sad.

Perry is on the EPA. Well good:

“The EPA kills jobs. Perry only kills ‘g’s…we need jobs, not fully pronounced present participles.” Yeah, I like that one.

The White House’s policy is nicely described in this Boston Herald article:

Many analysts — including yours truly — have made the mistake of arguing that the Obama administration has no energy policy. But the evidence increasingly reveals that the administration does indeed have an energy policy, one that is designed to reduce access to fossil fuels by raising their price, thereby making “alternate” or “green” energy sources more attractive.

The administration’s approach is constantly on display: Use government policy to raise oil and gas prices, subsidize alternative energy sources, then mandate the use of the latter. The EPA, far from being a rogue agency, remains an important tool for implementing this policy.

Well hey, that was the idea right? The song doesn’t go “Obama’s gonna do what we want Him to do”…that would probably be racist. No, it goes like…

He’s gonna lead us, guide us, make us do the right things, capiche? That’s the vision, we all just stand around in the soup lines waiting to be told what to do. Then we find out, and we go do it. Yes we can!

So how’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?

One of my most original thoughts is something I desperately wish was not such an original thought: Some of the luminaries among us who are to be worshiped just because everyone else worth worshiping seems to be worshiping them, I think are nuts. What they’ve got, in my opinion, is far more worthy of being diagnosed as a mental disorder, maybe even a mental illness, than a lot of other things that really are diagnosed as said disorders.

So it brought me great pleasure to see, if I ever could put a patent on this idea, that opportunity has closed now. The idea’s been stolen, and the occasion merits. Paul Krugman, with his unwise deeds and his unwise words, brought it on himself.

And so we have a round-table discussion on what’s wrong upstairs with Paulie. It’s about goddamn time.

One of my favorite coffee o’clock sites for figuring out what happened the day before, is Memeorandum. It is a non-partisan news feed that groups the stories into a nice hierarchy, by topic…with one big drawback…if this whack-job Paul Krugman writes something, somehow that automatically ratchets upward to the tippy-top of the page in the biggest font they’ve got. You can’t always figure out what’s going on with the Memeorandum stories without actually clicking through & reading the original piece, and many’s the time I’ve flailed around trying to figure out what the heck happened here, only to emerge with nothing more than: Paul Krugman had a brain fart. It’s annoying.

Wonder if that will keep happening after this. Someone at Meme has liked Krugmeister a whole lot up to this point, that’s for sure. I have no idea why.

We sure are doing a great job in this day and age at dismissing people as whack-jobs who ought not be dismissed as whack-jobs, and failing to dismiss as whack-jobs people whose surreal babblings never should have been seriously considered in the first place…

Bearded bitter buffoon? That’s an insult to buffoons. How about overrated, acrid, toxic, grandstanding ass-munch?

Science doubts manhood, again.

Testosterone is responsible for everything from facial hair and Adam’s apples to a deepened voice, muscle development and a strong libido in men. Apparently men don’t need the hormone so much after becoming parents, though! Researchers at Northwestern University have found that levels of testosterone drop significantly after men become fathers.

As reported in the UK’s Daily Mail, those with newborns and those who spend more time doing child care had the biggest drops in testosterone levels:

For those with a child under one month old, the decline was around 50 per cent, but it remained consistently lower than their childless counterparts ‘until their offspring is at least a year or two old’.

The men who reported caring for their child for between one and three hours per day saw the greatest decline, which the authors said was not accounted for by stress or sleep deprivation.

While this might sound like bad news, the researchers think it’s a good sign. In an interview with Time, the study’s lead author, biological anthropologist Lee Gettler said, “… it means that men are apparently hard-wired to respond biologically to fatherhood. It’s a fresh perspective, given that the conventional wisdom describes traditional societies as those in which men are hunter-gatherers, while women on the home front forage for berries and care for kids … Humans wouldn’t have been as successful if fathers weren’t helping.”

Way to go, dads!

They missed the point. Didn’t even follow the evidence. Didn’t even implement sound logic.

How does it necessarily follow that, if a man should maintain his level of testosterone after becoming a father, he has to be a bad father? And the “traditional” and “conventional” wisdom, how did that come about? Did we make up all the stories about men being hunters & gatherers? What about the fathers back in the agrarian era, having kids…and then having a bunch more? Evidence of testosterone post-fatherhood. What happened?

My answer: It’s cultural. Culture impacts the mind, and the mind impacts the body. In the twenty-first century, there is very little cultural acceptance of real man-hood, especially post-fatherhood. Having a child nowadays means immersing oneself in a whole different world, chock full of preening snotty lectures about learning disabilities, colorful plastic toys jammed up your ass when you sit on the couch, a whole bunch of movies every single year all about what clumsy idiots the small-dee dad is and how we all need to help mom work him over so he doesn’t go to the office and do any of that work stuff. Dads are supposed to “be there” for their kids…which lately, is morphing into a weird definition of spending all their waking hours being around their kids. Go to the park, as if you’re a grandpa instead of a dad. Buy ice cream. And never, ever, ever allow your voice to descend in pitch below 440 Mhz. Not when there are kids around. Speaking anywhere below alto is worse than using the fuck-word.

Not sure who made that rule, but a rule it is. Walk around Folsom with me on a Saturday morning. Watch these grown men moan & whine non-threateningly at their kids.

Yes I think there’s something to the research. I assume they actually measured the hormones, and if they did and it produced the results they’re talking about, I’m not one bit surprised.

I just think the research is worthless if they didn’t take history into account — it didn’t begin yesterday morning. Things are different. And it’s an indictment…this is not good…because, news flash, there are other ways to stop a man from screwing around on his wife other than turning him into a woman. Appeal to basic human decency comes to mind, y’know? Once he’s made kids with her, a real man shouldn’t want to.

In fact I would go further: The lesson to be gleaned from this study is that human are unique, after all. We possess the intelligence necessary to use free will to decide if we want to accept humanity. Birds and beasts are “wired” to mate for life, or to scatter their seed around with wild abandon. It is, mostly, decided by their species. They have “wiring.” Humans don’t. We can breed with one partner throughout our entire lives, or we can breed like cattle. Or fruit flies. We ate of the apple and lost our innocence, so it’s all up to us, and the decisions we make speak to our character or lack thereof. That is our unique covenant.

We can debate whether or not it’s “scientific” to go cheering on such a trend in one direction or another. But I would hope we all agree that a researcher who says, it’s a good thing when a member of any species stops trying to be what it naturally is, shouldn’t be in research. This team has crossed that line, and is no longer “researching” into what is happening to hormonal levels after parenthood. They aren’t even researchers, they’re advocates.

That thing Tom Friedman does at around 0:47 to 0:50 — you aren’t supposed to be able to do it through text on an Internet thread, but I’ve seen lots of liberals do it in exactly that forum. I expect Friedman would bristle at being called a “liberal” and that isn’t descriptive of my meaning here, so let’s use a different term. “Vapid thinkers” maybe.

What Friedman attempts to do, is prove Social Security is not a “Ponzi scheme” by showcasing the formidable level of difficulty to be involved in ever convincing Friedman that it might be one. He’s being a Thing I Know #402 guy:

We’ve got an awful lot of people walking around who can’t seem to tell the difference between supporting evidence and their own intransigence. It’s as if they’re saying, “I am inflexible and therefore correct, I know everything because I don’t let anybody tell me anything”; and I’m expected to say, in reply, “I can see your mind will never be changed even if it is proven to you that you’re wrong…so I might as well change my mind and agree with you.” Did they meet with someone else, perhaps, who intentionally or otherwise accustomed them to such deference?

What Tom Friedman is showcasing, in fact, is something completely different: That he comes from a world in which people are intellectually flaccid, to such an extent they can be persuaded to decide crucial and complex issues with a “pfffft” or a “pfshaw.”

In the world from which I come, this clip shows up under a different perspective. I see one guy has presented a logical argument and another guy has not.

I have an effective way of dealing with Thing I Know #402 people. It goes like this: “Let the record show Rick Santelli has advanced a reasonable argument that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, and Tom Friedman has failed to present a reasonable argument that Social Security might not be one.” Just that. Let the record show — Friedman brought absolutely nothing to this little exchange but some dismissive noises and an eyeball roll, and a few moments of quality rational thought seem to naturally bring on an inference that he’s wrong. No, it’s not “effective” at changing the other person’s mind. But you can’t compress a fluid; and it helps to remind all present that there’s a big world out there, and Thing I Know #402 is for weenies who lack the maturity required to live in it.

So Mr. Friedman puts out a regular column of some kind, that people read? My goodness, that is worrisome.

…says the Speaker of the House. I guess the skillful politician drops seeds of hope wherever he walks, even onto a cement floor.

The proposals the president outlined tonight merit consideration. We hope he gives serious consideration to our ideas as well…

It’s my hope that we can work together to end the uncertainty facing families and small businesses and create a better environment for long-term economic growth and private-sector job creation…

The people who’d be creating the jobs, however, see a different side to it.

The dismal state of the economy is the main reason many companies are reluctant to hire workers, and few executives are saying that President Obama’s jobs plan — while welcome — will change their minds any time soon.

That sentiment was echoed across numerous industries by executives in companies big and small on Friday, underscoring the challenge for the Obama administration as it tries to encourage hiring and perk up the moribund economy.

The plan failed to generate any optimism on Wall Street as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average each fell about 2.7 percent.

At this point, if you’re still seeing Barack Obama as a healer of our nation’s financial woes, you’re either being paid to see Him that way or you’re one of a slender and dwindling minority of cheerleaders who are gushing about it for free. There are many things a person can do to earn respect and esteem when commenting on economic matters, but doing the exact same thing for free that others are being paid handsomely to do, is not one of those things.

Already linked to Gerard today, but this is too good to let go.

There’s enormous coverage, but no news. None of this is news, it is drama, portraits of courage and sadness. Last phone calls between loved ones, “the last time I saw him was when…”, “when I saw the first Tower fall I…”

And firefighters. Lots of firefighters. America wants its real life heroes unarmed and unthreatening.

Lots of sadness, but no anger. No one on TV is angry? The Towers didn’t fall, they were kicked in the face. How many politicians do I have to watch cry on TV? STOP CRYING. I already know it’s sad. Don’t tell me we are resilient, don’t tell me we’ll go on, are there people worried they won’t go on? Show me the country has some men in it, show me that we aren’t five year olds.
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Observe that the media has unilaterally decided that no American will ever again see the images of the planes being slammed into the Towers. “Come on, you’ve seen it enough times, nothing to be gained from that. Here’s a firefighter.”

I’m told anger serves no useful purpose. But sadness isn’t going to prevent this from happening again, sadness isn’t going to restructure the planet so that people don’t want to do these things. You might say anger won’t either, but I’ll take my chances.

No, anger doesn’t prevent things from happening. But anger is not the issue. Think on this — imagine yourself tasked to cut a lawn. You had other things planned for this block of time and you’re irritable and peeved; you want the lawn as thoroughly cut as you can possibly manage, and you want to spend the absolute minimum in terms of time, energy and effort to get it done. You want to mow that lawn the way a man buys a pair of socks at the mall. In & out in record time.

Now if it’s up to you to determine the mental positioning and emotional profile of each blade of grass, how would you condition them? And I say the answer is: Precisely the way our media and our so-called “leaders” have been conditioning us. Sad and not angry. Every single swath you mow down, the yet-to-be-cut blades on the next swath over say to themselves….aw, how sad. Where were you when that happened? Conforming with each other barely enough to lean in the same direction, so you can take care of ’em when you come around again.

You would push for a complete extirpation from this particular lawn, of any sense that a blade of grass is worth something. You’d want the blades of grass to get mopey, depressed, but not outraged in the slightest. Your goal would be to make them suicidal without being aware that they’re suicidal. Lining up like lambs for slaughter. Then you can get it all done, dump out the clippings and still make your tee time.

The issue is not anger; the issue is a sense of the value of human life. We’re losing track of what is really important. Losing track of this simple and easily-grasped idea that, the twenty-five-year-old firefighter who responded to the crash of Flight 11, and was ripped away from us forever by the crash of Flight 175, should today be thirty-five…and isn’t. There should still be another fifty years ahead of that fine man. And there aren’t. He’s forever 25. It’s true of him and the thousands of others — that is what we have lost. That is the mindset, stolen from us, but only passively, relieved from our possession after we willingly gave it up. By the chattering-class over here, not by terrorists. The terrorists took the lives, the media took the sense & sensibility that those lives were worth something.

We’ve become like the lawn, waiting to be mowed. At least, that is the picture that emerges from the boob tube. Vast barrels and bushels of mopey sadness, not so much as a dollop of natural anger. Our media remembers that something was removed from us, but they appear to have forgotten that a hostile act was involved. It is a blight against all of us that so much footage can be watched, and there won’t be any mention that this was an unnatural act, committed deliberately by hostiles.

Update: Mark Steyn, writing on exactly the same theme, is taking note of what does & doesn’t make it on to the peace quilt.

How are America’s allies remembering the real victims of 9/11? “Muslim Canucks Deal with Stereotypes Ten Years After 9/11,” reports CTV in Canada. And it’s a short step from stereotyping to criminalizing. “How the Fear of Being Criminalized Has Forced Muslims into Silence,” reports the Guardian in Britain. In Australia, a Muslim terrorism suspect was so fearful of being criminalized and stereotyped in the post-9/11 epidemic of paranoia that he pulled a Browning pistol out of his pants and hit Sgt. Adam Wolsey of the Sydney constabulary. Fortunately, Judge Leonie Flannery acquitted him of shooting with intent to harm on the grounds that “‘anti-Muslim sentiment’ made him fear for his safety,” as Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported on Friday. That’s such a heartwarming story for this 9/11 anniversary they should add an extra panel to the peace quilt, perhaps showing a terror suspect opening fire on a judge as she’s pronouncing him not guilty and then shrugging off the light shoulder wound as a useful exercise in healing and unity.

What of the 23rd Psalm? It was recited by Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer and the telephone operator Lisa Jefferson in the final moments of his life before he cried, “Let’s roll!” and rushed the hijackers.

No, sorry. Aside from firemen, Mayor Bloomberg’s official commemoration hasn’t got any room for clergy, either, what with all the Executive Deputy Assistant Directors of Healing and Outreach who’ll be there. One reason why there’s so little room at Ground Zero is because it’s still a building site. As I write in my new book, 9/11 was something America’s enemies did to us; the ten-year hole is something we did to ourselves — and in its way, the interminable bureaucratic sloth is surely as eloquent as anything Nanny Bloomberg will say in his remarks.

In Shanksville, Pa., the zoning and permitting processes are presumably less arthritic than in Lower Manhattan, but the Flight 93 memorial has still not been completed. There were objections to the proposed “Crescent of Embrace” on the grounds that it looked like an Islamic crescent pointing towards Mecca. The defense of its designers was that, au contraire, it’s just the usual touchy-feely huggy-weepy pansy-wimpy multiculti effete healing diversity mush. It doesn’t really matter which of these interpretations is correct, since neither of them has anything to do with what the passengers of Flight 93 actually did a decade ago. 9/11 was both Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid rolled into one, and the fourth flight was the only good news of the day, when citizen volunteers formed themselves into an ad hoc militia and denied Osama bin Laden what might have been his most spectacular victory. A few brave individuals figured out what was going on and pushed back within half an hour. But we can’t memorialize their sacrifice within a decade. And when the architect gets the memorial brief, he naturally assumes that there’s been a typing error and that “Let’s roll!” should really be “Let’s roll over!”

Might have posted this before, but it’s worth doing again…

I’d say right about now, we’re somewhere around the 8:30 mark…where they’re pouring the elixir on the ground and the charlatan salesman is yelling “Now now gentlemen, no need for violence.”

You need to be very careful when a desire to hang on to freedom is characterized as somehow weird, anti-social, intransigent, dangerous or nutty.

Build things, that is. Build and rebuild.

On the anniversary, Sonic Charmer is inclined to leave it alone. I’m leaning somewhat toward his side of things. Advice Goddess Amy Alkon is having trouble with the F-word, as am I…ultimately, I decided to go the same route as Don Surber.

Others remembering include Tea Party Tribune, Rick, Phil, Buck, Robert at Small Dead Animals, Neo, Ace, Rottie and Gerard.

Caught a couple of fresh-grilled hamburgers at the company pool party yesterday, somewhere around three in the afternoon. They were a little on the rare side, and I rode my bike home some seven miles, getting a flat on the way…lots of dehydration, more sunburn than was planned, some indigestion from the raw meat, which means Friday evening was spent in a nap. And all this culminates in the conclusion that as of this morning I was starving. So I rode my bike to a local sandwich shop. It’s a “Hof Brau” imitation thing where they carve up the meat right in front of you. Right next door to where they had a mail stop for my Netflix drop-off, so that was pretty cool.

So in line in front of me, is a momma and her whelps. She’s about a decade younger than me…I have no idea where the dad is…there are a couple of male ten-year-old tow-heads in Judo outfits, and a pair of teenage trollops decked out in the “cootchie cutter” super-tight jean shorts I wish the ladies would be wearing in their mid-to-late twenties or so. So we’ve got two ten-year-olds and two sixteen-year-olds. And I was struck by the “mother ship” configuration going on here…Mom was just barking out order after order after order, command after command after command. Really something to watch. You go here, you go there. The tow-headed kids are having salads — wonder how that came about. So the guy behind the counter is asking the little guy what kind of cheese he wants on top and the Mom is interrupting her own commandment-dishing-out exercise long enough to yell over “He probably wants blue cheese”…and then an issue is somehow made of the idea that salad consumed by a person wearing a Gi, is likely to become salad worn on the sleeve of the Gi. So she instructs the little cretins to roll up their sleeves. Oh no she doesn’t; she has one hold his arms out, and she rolls up the sleeves for him while she continues to belt out Great Santini commands in all directions.

What struck me was the reaction of the four kids. The two jean-short-sluts, of course, immersed themselves deeply in “Best Friends Forever” hobnobbing, jibber-jabbering to each other a mile a minute while all the people and furnishings and air space around them disappeared. The two tow-heads did what boys will do, taking a more individualized approach, daydreaming about Pokemon or Fred Flintstone or something. Mom continued to belt out orders as if she was the center of attention…and nuclear powered.

Mercifully, I was allowed to line-jump. I got my grub. They got theirs. I got a pub table, teen trollops got another pub table and Momma and Judo artists got a booth across from the trollops. When Momma had to excuse herself to go resolve biological issues, things got real interesting. Wonder sluts began assaulting the martial artists…something to do with wiping salad dressing on the Judo outfits or something. Martial artists are not just sitting there & taking it, they’re dishing it back out. It was pure chaos. And, on some level, rather healthy and therefore appealing; a wholesome chaos. Mom’s gone, let’s act like people again.

Momma emerged and there was a predictable smackdown as she busied herself with restoring order. Each of the four combatants was entirely innocent — you could just see the golden halos over their heads. Momma barked out some more orders, replied with a wordless upraised hand to this-or-that protest, and made some superficial motion toward actually consuming food.

Anyway. It’s just interesting, to me, that nobody has any interest or ability to socially interact as normal people until the momma bear is gone. And that only has to happen for about five seconds or so.

Let’s just cut to the chase here: Kids do not take care of what they see someone else is already managing…or trying to manage. They will not join in any team effort with Mom, to “help” get their own food ordered. Frankly, I wouldn’t either. If Mom takes over the whole show, they quietly fantasize about the ground swallowing them up…and yeah…that’s what I would be doing, too, if I were them.

Learning disabilities? Social immaturity? Let me just state the obvious — that which everybody knows to be true, but everyone’s too smart to say out loud except me. Kids do what they can see needs to be done. They are not going to participate socially until such time as an avenging angel descends on us, spreads pixie dust around all the Moms, and silences them. Is that not sexist enough yet? Shut UP, moms. Let the kid order his own salad.

Or else…I don’t want to hear a single word about ADHD. So long as I see the adults show the behavior I saw today, I will expect to see the kids showing the behavior I saw out of them. The operative formula here is something like: Social competence in the kids, plus words-per-minute out of the Mom, equals C, a constant. So zip it. Let’s see what your kids really have going on.

I imagine a hundred out of a hundred mothers will reply that this advice, for this reason or that one, somehow doesn’t apply to them. How I wish that were truly the case.

Update 9/11/11: You know, it occurs to me — over the last twenty years, what is the caricature of the parent that has been most stigmatized other than the deadbeat dad…it is the overly-involved dad, sitting in the front row at the soccer match, yelling at the whelp to do everything that’s needed to score the goal. Win! Beat! Get! Grrrr! From the beginning, I’ve been a little confused and disoriented as to which entity I found less sympathetic; the Great Santini dad who’s ruining what should be a pleasurable outing for everybody, or his critics. Who are these people who are signing their curtain-climbers up for soccer and then working so hard to make it into a non-competitive sport? And since when is it the worst thing a dad can do, to want his kid to do something well — how’s that even make the list? What happened to burnings & beatings and sending ten-year-olds out on liquor runs?

But this thing with the moms who won’t shut up, it’s exactly the same thing. It has the same effect. The only difference is, the pushy moms are interfering to stop their kids from living life, and the pushy dads are interfering to stop their kids from losing a game. If you accept the premise that both are doing damage, the dads at least stop doing the damage when the game is over and the van doors slide shut.

Here we are all puzzled about why learning disabilities are skyrocketing; I’ll bet if you round up lots of SLD kids, you’re not going to find too many with dads berating their game performance on the soccer field. But I’m pretty sure you’ll find they all have pushy moms. I’m really not sure how & why the moms are getting away with this behavior that does this kind of damage to our society. Is it just because they’re girls?

Just run the words through your head a few times: The President is going to give a speech to address the jobs crisis. Think about our brief and flirtatious history with President Obama; how many speeches does He give in a year? How many speeches has He already given about the economy? Run the words through your noggin yet again. The President is going to give a speech about jobs. This date, this time! Be sure and tune in!

I’ve been working in technology for twenty-three years now. That’s counting just the time I’ve been thrown in with a bunch of other tech geeks in that “Lord of the Flies” situation that seems to follow us around throughout our entire careers. So believe me, I have met my share of big egos. But from all I’ve seen and heard, it seems there is this threshold of ego that can be defined in this way: If a problem emerges that is new in nature or vague in definition, the subject will confront the problem by giving a speech.

I think, at that threshold, we fulfill a meaningful litmus test of a true mental disorder.

And it would not surprise me to learn that the dozen or so words I asked you to reiterate to yourself, to cast a renewed spotlight on the plain observation that they are nonsensical, led directly to the Republicans’ decision that no rebuttal would be made — that they decided right there & then that none was necessary. Just sort of says it all, ya know? President Obama has figured out the job crisis is sufficiently serious that He must do something to provide a remedy, and right now…so…He’s going to give a speech. Now who, exactly, is hearing about that and thinking “All RIGHT! Things are sure to get better now!” Anybody? Anywhere?

Yes, it’s a mental disorder. It’s a learning disability, too, since you can’t take in any new information while your lips are moving.

We shouldn’t become enamored of our own pessimism…there is no constructive observation to be made there…but we can’t improve the situation as it really exists, if we don’t recognize how bad the problem is. And it seems to me that within government and academia, as well as with some businesses, most or all of the executives who hold real power and decide real things with real authority, are afflicted with this mental deficiency. A problem comes up, and Step One is to give a speech. Is that all that’s needed to address the problem? A lot of them seem to think so.

And really, where I start to become alarmed is where I prognosticate about what would happen in an advanced civilization in which everybody who was a power-broker of any kind, was mentally feeble in this way. I imagine no new things would get built that do anything useful; or, very few would do that. I imagine the things that used to work years ago, would start to crumble and fall apart. And, uh, well? Isn’t that exactly what’s happening?

Armed gunmen have taken over Nakatomi Plaza! All right, it’s time for some decisive action…so everyone gather around! I have something to say to you!

Captain, we’ve hit an iceberg and the ship is expected to sink within the hour! Okay, get all the passengers up on deck right now. But there aren’t enough lifeboats! No, we’re not bringing them up to put them in the lifeboats; I’m going to give a speech to address this crisis.

Sir! The Huns are at the gate! They carry torches and they are setting fire to our city! Right, now get all the residents into the village square pronto…is this microphone working?

I think it starts in childhood. I think what happens is, Junior speaks to a large crowd — some people are just built to — and earns some accolades from parents and teachers because the speech-job is better than average. The thing of it is, if you watch the parents and teachers congratulate students for doing a better-than-average job in a spectator environment, you’ll notice nobody ever does it halfway. Nobody ever says “you didn’t suck as bad as usual” or anything like that…no muted-tone “nice job.” Isn’t that funny? Grown-ups seem to have this fake exuberance that is directly proportional to the number of people who watched the performance. “Nice job” is for the budding artist who grinds out his handiwork when nobody is watching. That poor kid will never be carried around through a crowd on his buddies’ shoulders. But the aspiring gymnast or football player or speechmaker pulls in the can’t-find-a-way-to-express-it-adequately applause and accolades and high-five — that’s where the real atta-boy is. When the talent & strength is observed by a large number of spectators, simultaneously. Then, it seems this unwritten rule emerges that if a positive thing might possibly be said about what was accomplished, then that thing has to get said, and emphasized in every possible way.

Could this alter the course of a child’s natural development? It is manifestly absurd to try to deny it. That’s why it’s done. But the alteration is not completely positive…

So I guess these people, in childhood, are overly-indulged. And from this they form the impression that their speeches can solve everything. Bring the unemployment rate down, heal the sick, save the planet, turn water into wine, drive off an alien invasion, cure AIDS and Cancer, make a perfect sandwich, land a man on the moon a few years afterward…

People tend to lose sight of the self-evident fact that speeches don’t do these things.

And they go crazy. Yes, crazy. Don’t forget, Barack Obama gave the Queen of England an iPod — loaded up with His speeches. To this day, no evidence has emerged that the President has ever understood what might be wrong or inappropriate about that. It pretty much underscores exactly what I’m talking about here, doesn’t it? So I would like to see an ICD-9 number assigned to this; it would be a reasonable move. Sort of an offshoot of NPD (301.81), but not quite the same thing. Much, much more dangerous.

I mean seriously: How big of a threat can a mental disorder become? Let’s say, if a walking textbook incarnation of the disorder becomes President of the United States, and as a direct result of that, a whole bunch of national problems get worse and none of ’em get any better. So I ask again: What exactly is it we’re seeing right now? If this doesn’t make it sufficiently important for us to start recognizing this hitherto-unrecognized mental disability, then what does?

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

From Maggie’s Farm, by way of Gerard.

Update: Just to help define why it’s too much to swallow, and not good for anybody.

From Roger Kimball, by way of Glenn Reynolds.

Maybe I should revise my opinion about these shout-fests where the two sides talk over each other. Up until now I’ve regarded it as a non-edifying, even stultifying, forum because it simply isn’t possible for any new information or revelations to come out amid all the flotsam and jetsam.

Apparently, not only might I have been wrong about this, but my perception may have been the exact opposite of the truth.

Was it even a slip-up??

From The Blaze.

I very often hear of our progressives comparing the national economy to a gas engine. Their point, as I understand it, is that all the ingredients can be there for high performance — valves closing as they should, spark, fuel, aspiration and so forth — and the net output might be zero simply because the machinery hasn’t been started. So lack of motion equals lack of motion. Prime the pump. Close the switch. Spin the crankshaft and off we go.

It leads to a mistaken conclusion because the economy is much more like a pair of wild animals. If the species are compatible and the attraction is there, nature will take its course, and if it doesn’t then something’s wrong. Or…if it really is a gas engine, the “starter” theory is mythical. An economy with all the working parts in place & in good order, will take off with no starting necessary. If it isn’t running, that’s your reading on how good the parts are & how well they’re fitting together.

If we are to fit the liberal message and strategy into the gas engine analogy, the plan is to siphon the gas out of the tank while the engine is running, until such time as the engine quits. When it quits, indulge in your “starter” theory, charging the taxpayers somewhere between half a trillion and a full trillion per yank…a service the liberal will have to provide, since everyone else is too stupid.

And don’t anybody even think of putting more gas in the tank because that would be greedy.

The subject is the “new tone,” you know, that “civility” thing.

Mr. President, we all remember your eloquence in Arizona last January, when you declared that irresponsible rhetoric had no place in public discourse. You said,

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

So, did you mean that? Because it seems like if you meant that, you would have been mortified to follow Hoffa’s incendiary rhetoric, and you would have found a way — with smart diplomacy — to have corrected him; you’d have been horrified to know your Vice-President was calling his fellow countrymen “barbarians” and you’d have suggested that maybe “Joe was just a little excited, but I’ve talked to him.”

Instead. Silence.

My father always told me that “silence implies consent.”

It is the tragic nature of demagoguery that it can be effectively practiced in a passive style as well as in an active one, in fact it adds an appealing attribute of plausible deniability when it is practiced passively. A “wing man” or a “pit bull” can lunge in for the attack while the leader of the movement stands back and observes. The incriminating association is made only by the few in the minority who practice their talents at noticing what is done, not merely by what is said; some among those who remain will insist that all in attendance must indulge a game of pretend, recognizing a separating partition that isn’t there.

Just a meaningful repudiation, is all the Anchoress requests of her President. And her humble request is left unfulfilled.

Silence is consent.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

Sonic Charmer has found a humdinger to be filed away in the folder marked “For when lefties tell me to just shut up and listen to the economists.”

The key paragraphs:

A couple of hours after talking to an ABC correspondent about the woeful job numbers and what might be done to improve them, I was in the Bloomberg TV studios debating a guy from Heritage. He went on for several minutes about the damage being done by high taxes, excess regulation, business “uncertainty” about future tax hikes and regulatory burdens. I asked Bloomberg’s host whether he was aware that corporate profits relative to national income had just hit a 60-year peak? He had heard rumors to that effect. Was he aware that taxes on corporate earnings were at a 60-year low? The Heritage guy had heard that might be the case.

Then why was uncertainty about taxes and the future burden of the Affordable Care Act holding back business investment and hiring right now? If managers thought taxes or regulatory costs might go up in the future, wouldn’t it make sense to take advantage of today’s low taxes and lower burdens to invest and hire today? According to the “uncertainty” argument, businesses are fearful they might face high taxes and extra health costs in 2016 or 2018. Shouldn’t they expand hiring right now and scale back employment when they actually face higher costs (if they ever do)?

Nevermind the ramshackle structure of the flawed argument, just look at the point that is being made: “Darn that reality, it refuses to comport with my theories, how shall we punish it?” It is a classic example of Thing I Know #400.

Lately I’m noticing a prevalent and widespread sickness in which opinionated people conflate or confuse their preferences with regard to what should happen, with what might make sense. In other words, they cannot understand “surprise” events, or events contrary to their vision. They are often heard to protest that such a contraband event is senseless. They say this when in fact it is perfectly reasonable given the antecedent events related to it — what is senseless, is the failure to anticipate that it would happen.

Particularly applicable to the field of economics, which must be a study in the approximate prediction of human behavior — for, if it cannot be practiced to facilitate that, then it has no purpose whatsoever. So yeah, what are you guys studying, exactly? What are you smoking?

No, I don’t have an economics degree and I’m asking the question anyway. Find a way to deal.

As far as the argument itself, Sonic has already dissected it thereby dirtying his hands. No point to me jumping in & doing the same.

Hat tip to Captain at Small Dead Animals.

Cassy’s pissed, and rightly so.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The trouble with women is that women are people, and people are flawed. So this isn’t really a woman thing. I notice when people get into a group setting, especially online with that semi-safe semi-anonymity, and say “Is it okay if I…” there are two things that are going on. One, the right answer is no and they damn well know it; two, they’re hoping to make it into a yes. Psychologists have a specific term to describe this: Validation.

In my book, that’s a betrayal of wedding vows already. The husband didn’t marry hundreds and hundreds of future best-friends-forever who have yet to be met and maybe, in some cases, have yet to even be born. He didn’t marry a bunch of semi-anonymous female busybodies on the Internet. Why should his married life be affected, in any way, by the opinions spouting forth from such outsiders? He married a woman…one woman…one mature and capable woman, which means that woman is duty-bound to come up with her own ways of handling things.

This is an equal-opportunity complaint. Lately I’m just completely bowled over by the number of ways some people conjure up, to demonstrate they never were ready for marriage — without coming out & saying it or even admitting it to themselves. It’s not a country club membership or a fun hobby to try out for a little while.

The Atlantic.

I’m only 23 and it’s been barely over a year since I graduated from university. Yet already the work environment and the consequences of the “real world” have warped and degraded me. All I have are feelings of disillusionment and betrayal. If I were a mood ring, the color would translate to somewhere between quite desperation and self-loathing. I work full-time at a temp position that under-utilizes me. I make sure not to finish work to quickly, for fear it doing so will only shorten my employment. Before that I worked in retail. Before long, I may end up back there.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Hmmmm…interesting.

Compared with other children with absentee dads, kids whose fathers were active parents in early and middle childhood had fewer behaviour problems and higher intellectual abilities as they grew older — even among socio-economically at-risk families.

Hat tip to Gerard.

Jewel adds:

Somewhere, the shrill and dying voices of barren, bitter feminists is rising to some crescent moon, uncomforted by their futile attempts to alter reality, which has so disappointed them. They have found out what the Weather Worshipers have found out: That Nature doesn’t really need them as protectors. Reality always finds a way.

James Hoffa, Jr., warming up the crowd for the President, says “let’s take these sons of bitches out.”

Media Matters is outraged that anybody notices, but Jim Hoft is having none of it.

So the focus of MM’s complaint is a video clip in which Fox seems to have skipped forward to the good part with the sons-of-bitches…leaving out the bit about voting. From reviewing the second clip, it seems this is a valid complaint but it’s also a trivial one. How many times a week have we been admonished to treat the office of the President of the United States with respect — by people who can’t tell the difference between respect and reverence? And then go on to make introductory speeches for the President with language like “take these sons of bitches out,” or defend people who make speeches like that. Respect for the office of President? We need someone to pick & choose when that is due, and when it is not, I guess.

The weasel who comes on to defend Hoffa, says it strikes him as “disingenuous” to complain about Hoffa when you have these Tea Party people “roaring” and “foaming at the mouth.” Nothing provided to back up that story; guess we’re not supposed to ask for it. Okay so the defense is now complete. Everybody does it, and Hoffa didn’t.

Progressives just love to talk about “the video takes his remarks out of context” and they just love talking about what the other guy did. Both tactics divert the argument into thicket patches of details, and it takes time for fair-minded people to sift through the details. How much time do you have every day for watching YouTube clips?

Meanwhile, the whole “context” thing is a complete bunny trail. Go round up a hundred people who think it’s inappropriate for Hoffa to make these remarks. How many, do you think, believe he was actually threatening physical violence?

Most of them, I think, will see it the way I do: It manifests a mindset, an us-versus-them mindset. These are the people who are not supposed to have that mindset. They want to bring the whole world together, supposedly. Overcome differences, world without borders, we’re all in this together, blah blah blah et cetera.

Megyn Kelly notes that everyone on the left seems to be getting a pass for putting this nastier “get the sunsa bitches” sentiment to voice — everyone seems to be getting excused by their colleagues, very few on the progressive side are trying to police their own. I think they’re playing a game of “let’s see where the boundaries are.” Ever have a relative who made it into adulthood without ever having been meaningfully disciplined? Every now and then they’ll make some slight against somebody, and better-than-even-odds they’ll do it without being aware of it, and get called on the carpet for it. The response? Anger. Theatrical, audible anger…and it’s anger because of what happens next. What happens next is a change of subject. Now just a minute, are you accusing Bubbins of something? How dare you. Oh yes, let’s all have a long, drawn-out circular conversation about whether it was fair to expect Bubbins to have known he shouldn’t do that…were his words taken out of context…Officer Krupke, I have a social disease but deep down inside me there is good. Bubbins will get an apology out of the person from whom the conflict emerged — or, he will get a proxy apology, a consensus decision that Bubbins was the victim here. Either way, Bubbins wins.

So give it a try, Bubbins! “HOW DARE YOU PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH!”

They’re in a game of throw crap at the wall, see if it sticks. Like the dysfunctional and over-indulged brother or cousin…the one who is constantly blowing up in some kind of rage, without appearing genuinely angry about anything, usually right after having stepped in something and getting caught. The one who, typically, is never given any meaningful responsibilities.

But these people are in charge right now.

Update: Neal Boortz thinks what we’re seeing is the rage of a large hungry beast that has lately been starved. He’s got links to data that back this up, and more examples to offer of the predatory rage.

Blergh.