Hat tip to Gerard.

On Friday I said:

I’ll put up something to make you feel better about the holiday, as it approaches. At least I’ll give it my very best shot.

Re-discovered long-time blog bud Terri delivers:

Victor Davis Hansen has this covered (bold is mine):

Individual freedom in America manifests itself in ways most of the world can hardly fathom — whether our unique tradition of the right to gun ownership, the near impossibility of proving libel in US courts, or the singular custom of multimillion-dollar philanthropic institutions, foundations and private endowments. Herding, silencing or enfeebling Americans is almost impossible — and will remain so as long as well-protected citizens can say what they want and do as they please with their hard-earned money.
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This year, a minority of babies born here will resemble the look of the Founding Fathers. Yet America will continue as it was envisioned, as long as those of various races and colors are committed to the country’s original ideals.

The Founders’ notion of the rule of law, coupled with freedom of the individual, explains why America runs on merit, not tribal affinities or birth.

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While EJ Dionne just doesn’t get it.

Our nation confronts a challenge this Fourth of July that we face but rarely: We are at odds over the meaning of our history and why, to quote our Declaration of Independence, “governments are instituted.”

Only divisions this deep can explain why we are taking risks with our country’s future that we’re usually wise enough to avoid. Arguments over how much government should tax and spend are the very stuff of democracy’s give-and-take. Now, the debate is shadowed by worries that if a willful faction does not get what it wants, it might bring the nation to default.

This is, well, crazy. It makes sense only if politicians believe — or have convinced themselves — that they are fighting over matters of principle so profound that any means to defeat their opponents is defensible.

Then he goes on to explain how those damn tea partiers just don’t understand their own movement. If they did, then they would bend and we could all go forward.

What he doesn’t get is that government spending needs to be reduced BEFORE taxes go up.

If government spending continues to grow at the rate it has grown in the last few years we’re all going to fail. If the government can’t show that it is willing to give up some of it’s spending, and leave it like that for a little while, I bet we’d all be happy to pay a little more to get some of this freaking debt reduced. But NOT with a government that thinks our money is their money.

Dionne does not get it.

We are a free people because we insist upon it. Not because the federal government grants it. That IS a principle so profound that it’s worth standing your ground.

Robert at Small Dead Animals has a special treat for the readers there: The Fourth of July Declaration by Prager University.

We’re out here by the seashore for the long holiday, losing our “rented beach house” virginity. Got a Weber kettle, fire pit, and close proximity to the beach. Making good use of all three, declaring a little independence of our own.

Happy Fourth, everybody.

Unbe-freakin’-lievable.

Twenty-eight hours after a housekeeper at the Sofitel New York said she was sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, she spoke by phone to a boyfriend in an immigration jail in Arizona.

Investigators with the Manhattan district attorney’s office learned the call had been recorded and had it translated from a “unique dialect of Fulani,” a language from the woman’s native country, Guinea, according to a well-placed law enforcement official.

When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: “She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,’ ” the official said.

It was another ground-shifting revelation in a continuing series of troubling statements, fabrications and associations that unraveled the case and upended prosecutors’ view of the woman. Once, in the hours after she said she was attacked on May 14, she’d been a “very pious, devout Muslim woman, shattered by this experience,” the official said — a seemingly ideal witness.

Little by little, her credibility as a witness crumbled — she had lied about her immigration, about being gang raped in Guinea, about her experiences in her homeland and about her finances, according to two law enforcement officials. She had been linked to people suspected of crimes. She changed her account of what she did immediately after the encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn. Sit-downs with prosecutors became tense, even angry. Initially composed, she later collapsed in tears and got down on the floor during questioning. She became unavailable to investigators from the district attorney’s office for days at a time.

Now the phone call raised yet another problem: it seemed as if she hoped to profit from whatever occurred in Suite 2806.

This particular strain of the feminist movement — the Anita Hill offshoot, the “Women Never Lie About This Stuff” strain — has been aging rather poorly. It has now devolved into that brand of silliness that only possesses a passing similarity to common sense, from the perspective of people who’ve lived through its maturity; the ones suffering from the “frog in a pot of gradually warming water” syndrome.

Expose it to someone intelligent and sensible, who makes an acquaintance with it in one dazzling instant — a Visigoth or a Hun who’s been frozen for centuries, Mork from Ork, your great-grandchildren who read about it in history books and then come asking you about it, My Favorite Martian — and there’s no way to explain it logically, or even, why & how we were hoodwinked by it.

What’s this? A certain demographic group never lies about this stuff, so you just presume it’s on the up-and-up? Send men to prison, end their careers? You call that justice?

But yeah. We’ve been living under this system for generations now.

Don’t pick on the girl.

They tell me I’m wordy where everyone else is brief. It has not escaped my notice, that they say this about things that seem to be sufficiently complex that the “brief” people never seem to be finished discussing them…but that’s a rant for another day…

There’s lots more wrangling to be done about that Ohio decision, and the only thing that can be stated with confidence is that Anthony Kennedy will end up making the final call. One thing I know for an absolute certainty, is no matter how ObamaCare turns out, more is coming afterward; we aren’t finished with statist politicians beseeching us to support this-or-that centrally-managed scheme. That’s going to go on and on. The non-productive people will always want to make rules about how the productive people produce. And suckers will fall for it. When you get a bill for $2,000 after having a cut stitched up over the weekend in the emergency care center, there’s something appealing about a plan to “fix it.” Or “reform” I guess is their favorite catchphrase. Maybe that’s the answer. Slime that word “reform.” Kill off every appealing buzzword they find.

But this crap is going to go on. When my grandchildren are suffering senile dementia, we’ll still be hashing this stuff out.

Here, I’ll make it REAL simple. I’ll be brief where everyone else is garrulous. Just to shake things up a bit.

Pick a year. Like, for example, 1975. Would you say government has become more involved or less involved in the administration of medical care since 1975?

Wow, that was easy. Okay. Would you say medical services have become more customer-oriented, or less customer-oriented, since 1975?

More or less prone to screw-ups? I’m not talking about amputating the wrong foot. I just got done facilitating communication between a referring physician and a referred physician, just got them to agree the referring physician did, indeed, fax over the correct paperwork. Turned that puppy around in a week or two. You know, I could have used that time actually working at my job…so I could go home earlier…

It seems to me almost like a ritual. Oh dear, we didn’t get the referral. Oh dear, it’s wrong. You’ll have to call them back and…

How about cost? Would you get slapped with bill for two thousand bucks after having your hand stitched up in the emergency room — in 1975?

So, government has gotten much more involved. Customer service is down, screw-ups are routine and expected, costs are soaring out of sight.

No need to argue in a vacuum about what “would” happen with more government intervention. We already know. We know it for an absolute, tested fact.

Argument over.

The public school “unable” racket, that is. You know the drill by now. Bewildered parents are contacted by very prim and proper school officials, and politely corrected with regard to their previous mistaken notions that junior just might have the potential to live a normal life. No can do, parents. We’re here to tell you the kid’s Rain Man.

There does seem to be a broad and intense epidemic these days, of public school officials notifying parents that kids are unable to do things.

That coincided nicely with my son’s kindergarten administrators telling us that he’s: “unable to express ideas in front of a group, unable to selectively listen for sounds, follow multi-step directions,” and our supreme favorite: “unable to to complete assigned tasks in allotted time.”
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The school administrator that summoned us to discuss my boy’s “inability to complete assigned tasks in the allotted time” came in, plopped a slovenly 8″ thick, undifferentiated and dogeared pile of foolscap paper on the table, and was sipping from a franchise restaurant disposable hot coffee container unavailable in the town I live in. And although the meeting was held at their school, had been postponed twice already, and she has a secretary, she was a full twenty-five minutes late.

This is all part of a big octopus of bureaucracy, one that is engaged lately in a writhing, slithering effort of some kind — and, as is the case with any octopus of bureaucracy, no single tentacle can explain fully what it’s all about.

But I don’t trust this octopus. It’s calling in one parent after another after another, and delivering the same canned speech about junior-can’t-do-things. Assuming it takes itself seriously, it must be bearing witness to a skyrocketing disability statistic — and its response is to just keep on keepin’-on, not bothering to question anything, just call in the next parent to deliver the next speech, that yer-kid’s-an-invalid.

After a few years of this problem spiraling out of control with the tentacles all writhing around like that…eventually you have to blame the parents, for putting up with it. They don’t all react the same way Sippican did.

In which some grown-up hippie starts giving motivational speeches about choice being a detriment, and Lee Doren goes after him.

I think, in this one case, Mr. Doren is being a bit overly tough on the guy. Mr. Schwartz does have a point here. People do tend to under-perform, to their own lack of satisfaction, when given too many options.

The aging hippie’s mistake — and is this not always the case? — is to confuse the common with the ideal. People have been known to experience confusion when they are offered too many choices. That means, according to graying-hippie motivational-speaker Mr. Schwartz, that’s what will happen with all of us. A weakness borne by some, is a weakness that encumbers all.

And, once again, the structure crumples in on itself, falling in to that ages-old vestigial remnant: It’s beyond human capacity to be great. We all must settle for mediocrity, resign ourselves to being footsoldiers in some far greater construct, like carpenter ants slaving away for a queen. Wealth redistribution.

What did Reagan say about this? Crudely paraphrasing: If not a single one among us is sufficiently responsible to manage his own affairs, who among us is competent to manage everybody else’s?

This whole thing cuts straight to the quick of why I think leftists are full of shit, and maybe I shouldn’t opine on this on such a gorgeous, breathtakingly beautiful Friday night before a long weekend. But here it goes: The utterly phony sense of egalitarianism. It really makes me wanna barf. The contents of the package are the precise opposite of the covering. Supposedly, we’re going to make this perfect society where everybody is equal; but, in reality, the “normal” people are going to slave away, without the benefit of choice, and these ultra-special people at the nucleus of the atom are going to make all the decisions and tell the drones how to live. Because the drones are too simple and stupid to handle a decision.

Happy Friday, everybody. And where were you nineteen years ago?

Yeah, I’m at that age where, a few years ago, I’d see one of these new swimsuit models and think “Yeah, with a lot of awkwardness maybe I could have been her father, and therefore I shouldn’t look.” And now, it’s more like “Aw hell yeah, I can name the woman who could have been her mother.” In Ms. Upton’s case, I was already divorced from my first marriage at the time she was conceived. And she’s got me wondering how long it’s gonna be before I’m admiring ladies in swimsuits who could be my granddaughters. Ewww……

I suppose you just shouldn’t be thinking about the passage of time. Admire the curves…quit looking up birth dates in Wikipedia. That is the part that can’t lead to anything good.

June of ’92. Seems like just yesterday.

Once again: Ewww……..

I’ll put up something to make you feel better about the holiday, as it approaches. At least I’ll give it my very best shot.

Have a completely awesome and wonderful long weekend, everybody. And don’t forget what it’s about. Not that it’s a problem here…this may be The Blog That Nobody Reads, but we’ve got some smart nobodies here.

Robert at Small Dead Animals has to ask:

In last night’s Reader Tips, SDA regular ‘ET’ asked some important questions:

You know, I had thought that the MSM wouldn’t attack Michele Bachmann as they attacked Sarah Palin. Because, I thought that Bachmann was ‘in the Washington bubble’ while Palin was outside it. I was wrong.

They are viciously attacking her. So it’s not the Washington bubble that protects you from the MSM. Is it because she’s a woman? But they didn’t pillory Hillary Clinton that way. So – what’s the reason?

Is it because she’s a conservative? And the MSM are not a free press but a propaganda site for the left – both in the US and Canada?

Here’s one recent prominent example. Here’s another. More than a little interesting, is it not, that the Media Party seems perfectly fine with such open misogyny?!

No, it doesn’t have anything to do with a “Washington bubble.” And my fellow Palin fans will be distressed to learn of my doubts that it has too much to do with the uppity female’s perceived ability to win a race. In other words, if you can find me a conservative female who’s not a threat, one who’s a complete non-starter, I think she’ll be on the receiving end as well. I also have doubts that it’s all liberals who are dishing this stuff out.

I think what you’re looking at is socially awkward men, who have spent a whole lot of their lives thinking of themselves as not-socially-awkward. They’ve learned to relate to women on an extraordinarily narrow communication path. Use the word “totally” a whole lot, leave the toilet seat down or at least talk about leaving the toilet seat down, say “women’s right to choose” a few times and she’ll jump into your bed. Hey, it worked before…

You’re seeing the distress that comes with the sudden realization that women are people, and people are complex. That’s why the most acrid vitriol comes from comedians; their livelihood is fastened inflexibly to their ability to relate to people, and they’re just starting to discover, when all’s said and done, that they suck at it.

All Women Don’t Have The Same Values. That can be a scary thought, to those who think they know all there is to know about women, because there wasn’t too much to learn in the first place. Their perception of the fairer sex is being knocked around a bit — and it’s a perception that hasn’t had to deal with any disturbances, any tremors or reverberations, since age fifteen.

As usual, he has to find a special way to do it better than everybody else:

He doesn’t use the word, but this is a SNUL. A good-sized chunk of all Internet content at any given time, is SNUL; a bunch of bloggers singing a commonly-motivated, but disconnected, chorus of Sorry No Updates Lately.

It’s good to see SNUL becoming popular lately. It is post-summer-solstice. Here in California, there is a crisis that has come about because of the March, April and May cloud cover. Our ladies are frantic, it’s been years since firework stands went up while their legs were this white. And so SNUL beckons, and the jorts come out. The margaritas, they aren’t going to be sucking themselves down you know.

Blogger friend Phil thought highly enough of the acronym to make a special graphic for it:

And now, I have a SNUL of my own. In my case, it’s got to do with paying the bills…see you at beer o’clock tonight.

It’s obligatory. And I don’t use the O-word the way it has come to be commonly used in the blogger world, as a sort of a sneer against a topic that has been overly-exposed. This is really important.

And some of these errors have been made many-a-time and been around awhile; they really cheese me off. Like, for example, #1 and #5.

As far as the importance overall, Aaron at Patterico sums it up as well as can be managed:

I consider it nothing less than a journalistic scandal that this piece was (1) a cover story, (2) written by their Managing Editor, (3) who serves in an organization dedicated to teaching other journalists about the Constitution, and yet it is rife with factual errors, including many that are obvious simply by reading the Constitution.

Every few months or so, someone will say a word or two audibly, or perhaps type in a comment to the same effect, in an effort to propound a feeling of futility with regard to blogging. Sometimes it’s an innocuous question, but the message is always the same and it isn’t being put just to me. Something in the universe, some entity or construct vague and undefined, is unsettled and in an unsatisfactory state when I have my say, and if I shut up, then something vague and undefined is then, somehow, made good and right.

I don’t know for sure what drives this, because such critics won’t define what they seek to leave undefined. In fact, that appears to be the focus of their criticism; they like seeing things continue to be undefined. So that’s my best idea: They come from a world in which, when definition is likely to lead to conflict, it is better to avoid the definition and therefore the conflict. They are anti-Pragers, in other words; they’d rather have agreement than clarity.

Leaving aside the obvious question — “what good is the action of agreement, if you don’t know what the contents are?” — I cannot help but wonder where freedom fits into it. The man who values clarity over agreement, can be said to value clarity and freedom over agreement. Can the same be said of the man who values agreement over clarity? In that conflict, can freedom take the side of agreement? Can it be opposed to clarity? It is difficult to see how. One cannot expect to remain free for very long, extending agreement and the obligation that goes along with that agreement, to undefined covenants.

Some of our leftists insist the rest of us think of the attack on Glenn Beck’s family as an isolated incident, one that is not emblematic in any way of leftism or what it does to the soul. They are not willing, I notice, to even superficially engage in any behavior that would motivate an abandonment of the stereotype. They won’t scold their fellow leftists, they won’t call for the perpetrators to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, they won’t confront the legacy of thuggery that is interwoven with the history of organized labor, they won’t look within, they won’t have the same “national dialogue” on leftist strong-arm tactics they routinely insist the rest of the country should have about gender or race. They just want everybody else to stop — period. Don’t think thoughts that obstruct the progressive agenda, even if those thoughts are based on facts that are proven accurate.

What if someone from the right, or maybe from the Tea Party, engages in physical violence in this way? If & when such a thing takes place, it isn’t everybody-else’s-fault. I expect to see one statement after another after another, to the effect of “we can’t have this” or “we cannot be defined through deplorable acts like this.” The people noticing the thuggish behavior, and coming to their own conclusions that derogate the Tea Party movement, would be just natural occurrences — something to be expected. But when the left grapples with the same awkwardness, it’s the fault of the people who do the noticing. That’s what has to be stopped. The thuggish behavior, in turn, is what is natural and is to be expected. Stopping it would be like stopping the wind or the tides. I find that interesting.

You know, perhaps they do have a point. The left in this country is not trying to attack anything that is meaningful to us, important to our way of life…nothing really sacred. Just expendable, trivial, throw-away items. The authority of the individual to live life as he sees fit, religion and the culture that goes with it, lives of babies, sexual innocence of children, wages and the unique specialties that earn them, profits that come from the risk of our capital, motherhood, fatherhood, chivalry and the obligation to protect women, the duty to confront evil, international borders, the God-given right to self-defense, and the love of the country that has made it possible for us to survive, prosper and pursue the continuing betterment of ourselves.

Just a bunch of miscellaneous stuff like that. The really important things, they’ve left alone. So they’re not really all that bad.

But seriously, let’s get down to brass tacks on this “don’t point that out” stuff: People who have chosen not to take a stand, do not have neutral feelings toward others who decide to take the same stand. It’s no different from stopping a mugging, or helping to put out a house fire. You decide to mind your own business, someone else decides to do it differently — he makes you look bad, and you hate him for it. One crab refuses to let another crab crawl out of the bucket.

No, I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.

Boortz is taking notice of the headlines in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It is not a problem unique to that paper:

In the wake of yet ANOTHER federal judge’s smack down of a state’s (this time Georgia) attempt to enforce immigration laws the federal government refuses to enforce, some of Georgia’s finest illegals decided to have a little protest in downtown Atlanta. Not just a protest – they decided it would be cool to sit down in the middle of a busy downtown intersection and tie up traffic for a while.
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Now .. for the newspaper. Political correctness rules! Now I’m dealing with the online version of the AJC here, so I really can’t tell you what headlines were used in the printed version. But you can click here for the main page. Middle-left you will see “Six arrested at immigration law protest.” Sub-titles include “Demonstrators block downtown streets” and “Students risk deportation.” “Students?” That’s how we identify them? They’re criminals – here illegally – and we identify them as “students?” And just why are they students? Are they being supported by taxpayer funds in some state education institution? Then click on the “Students risk deportation” link and you’ll see another headline: “Immigrant youths demonstrate, risk deportation.” “Immigrant youths?” Immigration is a legal process. These aren’t immigrants. They’re part of an invasion. The headline should have the word “illegal” in it somewhere.

Terri is mulling over the six-in-ten rule, and can’t make any more sense of it than I can.

The democrats are infuriated to watch the government do its thing, six years out of every ten, under Republican — and therefore evil — management. During those six years out of ten, the government is the very incarnation of evil. Overthrowing “sovereign nations that did not attack us,” getting inner city kids hooked on crack, waterboarding “detainees” who didn’t do anything…et al…but then the other four years in ten the best thing we can do is expand the government’s authority, give it more functions to perform.

And the functions are intimate and personal. Health care. Food inspection. Creating jobs with the Obama-stimulus…which, as Ed Morrissey notes, passed with no significant Republican support at all.

[T]hey’ve begun to notice that no one is paying them much attention, especially not Obama:

House Democrats feel like jilted lovers.

They’re looking down Pennsylvania Avenue for some sign of affection from President Obama in the White House. But all they feel they’re getting in return is the back of his hand.

“How is it that the House Democrats played such an important role [in the majority], and all of a sudden [the White House says], ‘Forget it, we’ll work with the Senate and the Republican leadership?’ ” asked Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), vice chairman of the Democrats’ Steering and Policy Committee.

Er … seriously? Perhaps Cuellar needs a little help with mathematics. Republicans have a fairly significant although not historically large majority in the House, and therefore can pass almost anything through normal rules without any input from Democrats. Cuellar and his caucus are irrelevant to any budget deal.

Cuellar should be very familiar with this phenomenon. When it came time to discuss a stimulus package in early 2009, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi locked Republicans out of the law-drafting process. Obama at that time told Republicans, “I won.” It turned out to be a big political miscalculation, since Democrats ended up passing Porkulus with almost no Republican support (only three votes in the Senate), and its failure ended up being blamed squarely on Democrats. Now, Cuellar and other Democrats want people to pretend they matter, but even Obama can’t muster up that much imagination.

This is the scary thing about democrats in Congress. It’s like they have a blind spot in any direction that involves someone else deciding something.

There’s a certain software company I’ve criticized often, because their products work extremely well when they work — and they don’t when they don’t. The deciding factor seems to have something to do with whether I’m using the products in the way the engineers anticipated when they built them.

There is value in this, of course. Thirty years is a long time to be using a company’s software products, so something must be working. But if it only works when I do things exactly the way I’m supposed to, it makes you wonder what in the human/machine coupling really is the human, and what is the machine. Who’s using who. Well you know what? I don’t like having that relationship with my office equipment…and I don’t like having it with my government. I’m not given much motive to change my mind about it, when I see the government operates under the premise of “Yay, we’ve been voted in, we’re here for life, everything is always going to be decided by us and our pals.” It’s just not a good way for a system to work.

This is actually how I first became aware of Ed Darrell. A J.P. Morgan analyst, Michael Cembalest, did some research on the business experience of the Obama cabinet officials — or rather the lack thereof. He found that the experience of this cabinet in the private sector, compared to that of previous administrations, is extremely low. Darrell has yet to find a progressive cause he doesn’t like, so he took issue with this.

Something you need to know about the way Ed Darrell argues. He has experience as, or has tried to become, or wishes he could become, or has studied to become…a trial lawyer. And so he argues like one. And what I mean by this is, he goes after the definitions first, followed by inclusions and exclusions. He’s got some argument to present about why A should be thought-of as B…and C is to be excluded…and everyone should be fixated on D. He seems to think such initial engagements will be hashed out in front of some authority figure, like a judge, and the outcome of that initial engagement will be decided in his favor — which will oblige everyone to think of A as synonymous with B, or to exclude C, or to fixate on D.

That is not how grown-ups actually argue, of course. When you think like a mature adult, first thing you settle on is the outcome desired; if we don’t agree on that, then of course there’s nothing to argue about. Next, you figure out what the facts are, which is where the argument has potential to become a learning experience. Darrell does contribute helpfully to this, when he tries to get everyone fixated on D. Trouble is, he doesn’t want anyone thinking about anything else. Also, that D very often turns out to be a fektoid, a fact whose veracity would survive skeptical and critical inspection, but whose relevance would not. DarrelLogic, therefore, becomes an exercise in endlessly deliberating, on a circuitous road track, whatever Ed Darrell wants to talk about and nothing else. If it helps the progressive agenda, you are to fixate on it, and if it doesn’t, you are to exclude it.

Darrell ends up frustrated a lot, the few times I wade into the fray, because of course there is no judge ruling that I have to think of things the Ed Darrell way. His objections are not sustained, mine are not overruled.

And, for the matter under discussion, I note that as the time has rolled on past since Cembalest’s original article from November of ’09, Ed’s attack upon it has been reduced in credibility. President Obama has continued to prove that if He does know something about the private sector and how it works, it isn’t enough…or if it is enough, then Obama doesn’t much care about it, or isn’t trying to make the economy any stronger. It’s interesting that between Darrell and myself, I could be inferred to be the one defending our current President, with a sort of “Well how much would you expect Him to know about it?” defense. Ed Darrell could be construed as attacking the President, with an attack that looks something like “He knows damn good and well what He is doing, if the economy remains this anemic it must be because He wants it to be.”

Which I don’t think is what he’s saying. But that’s where his argument leads.

Obama worked for a law firm and sued people. According to DarrelLogic, that is “private sector” experience and therefore anybody who says “Obama’s never worked in the private sector” should eat their words.

Ya buyin’ it, Your Honor?

Looks like the future’s in good hands…

Hat tip to Facebook friend Kayla Anderson. If you have an account there, you can see I was so tickled pink with this nonsense about “party of civil rights” that I put up a link to blogger friend Phil’s history lesson. But, of course, those other college kids…Kayla’s pals, who are busting a gut over this bit of unintentional hilarity…probably don’t need to see that.

Many’s the time I’ve made a comment about what I’d teach in sixth grade, fourth grade, kindergarten, etc. Most of those comments reveal that the teaching career of Teacher Freeberg would fizzle in a day or two. In college, I think, Professor Freeberg would be more inclined to go with the flow. The damage has already been done, by then. For a time.

Probably, what I’d do, is lead an interactive class discussion titled “Now that we’ve all decided the more lefty ya are, the better, what are we gonna do to fix everything?” Because with some of the ideas today’s college-grad libs are coming up with, I think even that translucent experience would be an improvement.

I mean, imagine it: A reasoned, properly skeptical, intellectually vigorous discussion supervised by your Prof…what do we do to fix the world. Not gonna teach ya what to think, gonna teach ya how to think. We — legalize gay marriage? Elect a black President? Don’t cut any social programs, raise taxes on the wealthy? Any other ideas?

Can you imagine a college professor, of the non-communist kind, asking at the end of every single bright idea “Okay, then what happens? How does your idea change the outcome of something? What could go wrong?”

It might not change any minds, and it might not thwart the path of these Leaders Of Tomorrow toward ideological disaster and silliness. But I gotta believe it would interrupt the momentum. And that looks to me, from watching the video, like what’s needed here. These vapid young tykes are short on steerage and long on momentum. And they probably think they’re “independent” thinkers, too. It’s a national tragedy.

Pundit Press.

Hat tip to Linkiest.

Candidates, candidates, candidates. I’ve been hearing for the last year or more about the candidates that will emerge, are bound to emerge, oh Lordy please won’t they please emerge. We need more and better candidates.

And I have to keep listening to this for another year.

It’s about time someone spelled it out. We’re only getting three candidates. That includes the ones who are already in the running, and the ones who might or might not enter later. Each and every single one. It adds up to three. If you haven’t faced up to this yet, then you need to.

M is for Milquetoast. Otherwise known as “Who the hell are we kidding, we all know I’m gonna lose.” We Californians are accustomed to seeing this every time Feinstein or Boxer come up for re-election; the Republican challenger is always one of these, and there’s this depressing undertone of “alright let’s just get this over with.” But the advantage is, this guy can get his history wrong, his spelling wrong, his table etiquette wrong and nobody’s going to go after him about it. You won’t hear about it over and over again. There’s a reason for that: He isn’t a threat.

O is for Obama clone. We’re not going to have any of these in 2012 unless His Holiness is raptured, or finds something else He’d rather be doing. So this one is included here, because my formula-of-three works for all modern election years, not just 2012.

P is for Palin clone. Constantly heckled, constantly ridiculed, tons and tons of what’s called “baggage,” or instructions from our wizened lamestream press that we’re supposed to think so-and-so is a dimwit, and if w don’t repeat it then that means we’re the dimwits.

And then there’s…no…there is no and-then. There’s no wise, smart, sleek, sophisticated, popular Republican guy who can threaten the establishment and deflect the resulting criticism. Just those three and that’s it. Cute-and-harmless…same-ol’ same-ol’…and, threatening person the media hates.

Yeah, this is a rant. I’m sick to death of people saying “I’ll find a candidate to like as soon as one comes along, for now I just like to criticize.”

M, O, P. That’s all there is, there ain’t no more. You’re not getting a fourth one.

That which will fail, that which will preserve, and that which might actually change things and therefore must be torn to shreds.

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing” — Aristotle.

Not only do our socialists hate being called socialists, they aren’t overly fond of their own socialism. Victor Davis Hanson:

Greece is the locus classicus. Why are the Greeks protesting? Against whom? They obtained long ago the promised bloated sector and high taxes that all schemed to avoid. Their alma mater EU is hardly a demonic capitalist-run plutocracy, but a kindred socialist state. Is Greece an oil producer, industrial powerhouse, high-tech innovator — anything that might explain the sort of upscale life, modern infrastructure, legions of Mercedeses, and plush second homes that one began to see in Greece after 1985?

In truth, socialist Greeks are furious that they have impoverished themselves and demand that private money and far harder-working Germans bail them out — but why so, when socialism should not need outside capitalist-generated dollars? Could not the Greeks, Soviet style, set up a Cuban collective, and adjust their lifestyles (there goes Kolonaki culture) to their means, living in an opportunity of result utopia with a huge public sector, more siestas, high but ignored taxes — with a collective good riddance to those awful intrusive German bankers?

Here at home, Obama got his ObamaCare. Why, then, did he grant hundreds of exemptions — many to northern California liberals? Should they instead not have lined up to volunteer to implement such a wonderful, long-needed entitlement?

He said energy would rightly sky-rocket, given his determination to curb fossil fuel production (cf. “bankrupt” coal companies). Why then is Obama concerned that gas hit $4; is not such a high price a welcomed retardant to burning hot fuels? The higher the gas prices, the more that subsidized wind and solar power, and electric cars are attractive, and thus the more we enjoy “sustainable” power. Right? Am I missing something about this desire within our grasp of “living within our means”?

Hat tip to Kate at Small Dead Animals.

It did make quite a scene, so I figure first names are unimportant; Chris Wallace does a decent job of bringing the audience up to speed, at the beginning, anyway.

The upshot? Fox News viewers are much better informed. Eat it, Jon Stewart.

From here.

It has been mentioned before and it will be mentioned again…

But that’s complete nonsense, actually. The truth is, speaking generally, people suck at it.

You missed some Friday night fun if you didn’t go here. It all started when blogger friend Mark’s feet were held to the fire…in a loving, caring way, I’m quite sure…for his failure to return the toilet seat to its proper, feminine-friendly, downward position.

We all know what the smart hubby does. He complies, quietly. Well Mark’s smart — so maybe he did that. But he couldn’t resist writing up a treatise wondering what honest men have been wondering since the toilet seat was invented, or at least, since suffrage. Here, I’ll paraphrase:

Duh, hey…if you can do everything I can do, and I’m to think you can under pain of social ostracism and a sumptuous buffet of other penalties…how come you’re so weak and helpless you need me to properly position your commode for you?

Each gender was aptly represented in the ensuing discussion — which, as you can imagine, made things more fun. As you might further imagine, I have discerned that the clean break in the consensus, adhered very cleanly to the boundary that lies between said genders.

And then, as prognosticated, Blogfather Gerard made an entrance and it definitely got more fun. With a title of “If Men Can Put It Up, Bitches Can Put It Down,” he’s pulling no punches.

Perhaps I’m in the minority here once again. Perhaps not. But to me, it isn’t half as objectionable laboring under the burden of putting the seat down — Mom raised me to do that, and these days, I don’t even have to — as it is to wrestle with The Grand, Onerous Dichotomy.

I think the fellas know what I mean.

Girls strong. Girls powerful. Girls smart. Girls capable. Girls can do everything we can do, and don’t you dare think otherwise.

But they’re queasy, writhing, squirming and helpless if we don’t get things ready for them for their most intimate personal tasks, because they are completely incapable of doing it themselves. Even the ultra-feminized variety who makes twice as much loot as you do, and manages to work it into every single conversation…bites your arm off at the shoulder if you so much as dare to open a door for her…cannot handle a curved piece of plastic tilted in the wrong direction at two in the morning.

Both of these, the strength and the weakness, we gentlemen are required to accept without so much as a hint of skepticism or reservation.

We can do this. But not without an instinctive eyeball-roll. And I hate to break it to you gals, but we’re all doing the eyeball-roll. Even the sickeningly post-feminist she-male men who speak in the high voice and use the word “totally” a lot. They think it’s silly, too, they just don’t have the balls to say it out loud.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Whenever an object or image is to be stricken down, covered up, wheeled away, dismantled, redacted, etc. in atonement for the offense taken by a second party, or to prevent such feelings in a third, you’re looking at a caste system.

You’re looking at a new rule, a “soft” rule, which cannot apply in both directions, so you’re seeing one class of person elevated, by intent and by design, above another. Such a taboo is inherently asymmetrical. The power to enforce it cannot exist in an egalitarian society, and an egalitarian society cannot thrive while such a taboo can be enforced.

Gerard had a sidebar item up that really made me go Hmmmm. Which is by no means a first.

An “ideological Turing test.” You’re familiar with Paul Krugman of the New York Times. Well, the Laureate said something interesting during an interview.

Isn’t there a sense among liberals that, “We’re in the right so we don’t have to pay too much attention to conservative or Republican arguments”?

In my experience with these things – which I find both within economics and more broadly – is that if you ask a liberal or a saltwater economist, “What would somebody on the other side of this divide say here? What would their version of it be?” A liberal can do that. A liberal can talk coherently about what the conservative view is because people like me actually do listen. We don’t think it’s right, but we pay enough attention to see what the other person is trying to get at. The reverse is not true. You try to get someone who is fiercely anti-Keynesian to even explain what a Keynesian economic argument is, they can’t do it. They can’t get it remotely right. Or if you ask a conservative, “What do liberals want?” You get this bizarre stuff – for example, that liberals want everybody to ride trains, because it makes people more susceptible to collectivism. You just have to look at the realities of the way each side talks and what they know. One side of the picture is open-minded and sceptical. We have views that are different, but they’re arrived at through paying attention. The other side has dogmatic views.

Bryan Caplan (linked above) has a comment:

…[T]he beauty of the notion of the ideological Turing Test is that it’s a test. We don’t have to idly speculate about how well adherents of various ideologies understand each other. We can measure the performance of anyone inclined to boast about his superior insight.

How? Here’s just one approach. Put me and five random liberal social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let liberal readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn’t really a liberal. Then put Krugman and five random libertarian social science Ph.D.s in a chat room. Let libertarian readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn’t really a libertarian. Simple as that.

My challenge: Nail down the logistics, and I’ll happily bet money that I fool more voters than Krugman. Indeed, I’ll happily bet that any libertarian with a Ph.D. from a top-10 social science program can fool more voters than Krugman. We learn his worldview as part of the curriculum. He learns ours in his spare time – if he chooses to spare it.

I would bet money on Caplan’s side, but I think he’s over-complicated it.

Krugman has made a key error here, and it is not an uncommon one among liberals. He’s bragged about the keen insight and intellectual forensic ability among his fellow liberals, generalizing recklessly. As far as what can betray a non-liberal masquerading as a liberal, he’s offered a weak example: George Will’s article on Why Liberals Love Trains. I’ve taken pieces from it myself because it is damning and insightful.

It is George Will at his best. But it is not flattering to the progressive agenda. It is, therefore, silly and rather Krugman-like to cite this as evidence of how talented liberals are at spying counterfeits amongst themselves.

Krugman made a mistake with his phrasing, In my experience with these things. That was a blunder. It brought him down to the level of riff-raff like me, and I have experience with these things too.

If he wants me to “explain what a Keynesian economic argument is,” I can oblige him, fool him into thinking I’m a liberal hour after hour after silly hour, without getting the technical aspects of it even approximately right. All I need to do is keep my comments positive with regard to what the progressives are trying to do, and the effect it has had. Roosevelt saved us from the Great Depression, and then Reagan ruined us, Clinton saved us and then George W. Bush with those horrible awful tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent blah blah blah.

See the litmus test among liberals has nothing to do with knowledge. It has to do with faith.

You doubt me? Let Krugman apply his ideological litmus test to Peggy Joseph, the woman who thought Barack Obama was going to pay her mortgage and put gas in her car. Think she can explain Keynesian economic theory to the satisfaction of a Nobel Laureate? Not terribly likely. So when she steps in it, you think Krugman will blow the whistle on her, claiming she’s a phony liberal because she biffed some critical technical detail involved in the theory? Think he’ll call her out as a Rush Limbaugh fan in sheep’s clothing? Or will she get a pass? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count…

So if it falls to me to participate in such a test, I’ll just stay away from the knowledge and spout endlessly about my faith. Be another Peggy Joseph.

There are some things that make me hesitate. When you get to the part where an economy implodes, or explodes, or tips over like a Jenga tower, or does something disastrous because too much of the wealth is “horded” by the elites at the top, I don’t understand the mechanics of that. I can’t walk you through the steps. I cannot explain why Man A is doing just fine so long as the much wealthier Man B possesses only so much a greater share of property — but once Man B acquires a good deal more, Man A is suddenly in trouble. Can’t explain that. But I think that’s okay…I think my knowledge is deficient in a place where everybody else’s knowledge is likewise deficient. In fact, a key reason why I can’t expound on that part of it, is I’ve not seen any material I can emulate. True-and-blue liberals are always changing the subject before they get to that part of it.

So I’ll just stick to the phrase, “I don’t really know that much about this part…” and lapse back into glittering generalities. And then, just to really close the deal, every now & then I’ll act angry. “Not paying their fair share,” selfish, common good, et cetera.

Display the right emotions, you’re in. Knowledge is irrelevant. If liberals had knowledge they wouldn’t be liberals.

Thanks to William Teach at Pirate’s Cove.

Gateway Pundit points to the Facebook page of the former Governor we’re all supposed to stop talking about, but which everyone seems to be discussing, everywhere, all the time, with no let-up in sight.

Imagine our surprise when reading media reports today that the “One Nation Tour” has been cancelled. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Oh, wait, that’s because it hasn’t been cancelled. (Good ol’ media… you never cease to amaze!)

As I said myself at the end of the east coast leg of the tour, the summer is long, and I’m looking forward to hitting the open road again. The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan.

I wouldn’t think it to be such a slow news day that, what with numerous wars and serious economic woes concerning Americans, a bus is driving news stories today. The next leg of the tour continues when the time comes. In the meantime, no one should jump to conclusions – certainly not the media with their long track record of getting things wrong or just making things up.

Can we just stop pretending?

If, after these last 34 months, the Palin flash-in-the-pan finally fizzles out for good — there will be a renewed lease on life for the career of whoever tells us about that first. That situation pushes up the value of Palin news among the left. Nothing else can and nothing else does.

To acknowledge the plain truth of that, is to acknowledge Palin has some potential for driving the outcome of future events.

Now there are many on the right who are convinced Palin’s influence on future events, is toward the negative. “Nominate her, and it’s another four years for O, guaranteed!” You’ve heard that before. But I don’t think those people carry much demand for the Palin-finally-gone-for-good storyline. I don’t think their hyperactivity and adrenaline glands are driving this much. I think most of them are sincere and they view her as a distraction. I know, from talking to them, they’re frustrated that no other strong candidate has emerged. I think they want that process to continue. They’d like to see Palin disappear, but they’re not passing up stories about O.J. Simpson confessing to a murder, to get to a story about Palin losing her moxie.

It is the left that views the neutralization of Sarah Palin as a watershed moment. And this plays right into their true individual motivations. Everyone wants to be the next Woodward/Bernstein…the one lone voice in the crowd who figured out what’s going on first. And remembered that way.

How many “Party Like It’s 1773” moments have they suffered by now? They don’t care. They’ll keep embarrassing themselves over and over, each time with more gusto than the time before.

Fox News.

A group of New York City atheists is demanding that the city remove a street sign honoring seven firefighters killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because they say the sign violates the separation of church and state.

The street, “Seven in Heaven Way,” was officially dedicated last weekend in Brooklyn outside the firehouse where the firefighters once served. The ceremony was attended by dozens of firefighters, city leaders and widows of the fallen men.

“There should be no signage or displays of religious nature in the public domain,” said Ken Bronstein, president of New York City Atheists. “It’s really insulting to us.” Bronstein told Fox News Radio that his organization was especially concerned with the use of the word “heaven.” “We’ve concluded as atheists there is no heaven and there’s no hell,” he said.

I’m filing it because many’s the time I’ve been engaged in a discussion about what the First Amendment does permit and doesn’t permit, what it expressly prohibits and what it does not prohibit.

And I frequently run into the “nobody’s saying” hair-splitting thing progs like to use…they fall back on it often. Nobody’s saying take all indications of religion down from everything. Just keep that marble cross out of the public library! Put it in a church instead! Grrrr!

As a general rule, people who demand their arguments be treated with surgical precision, microscopic delicacy, “oh no I said this I never said that,” have no problem at all taking a sledgehammer to the other guy’s argument.

But yes. For the record. The atheist movement is a movement to establish a religion. They want control over what is in public view. No religion but theirs.

And sorry to say, but — once you start to ponder how everything got here, their religion is, indeed, a religion. It settles uncertainty by manufacturing certainty, on nothing more than blind faith. That’s as good a definition as any. And it applies, practically, as well. Ken Bronstein has a private view of the universe, what it is, how it got here, etc. and he’s upset because he’s seen a sign that someone, somewhere, believes something different. He’s exactly the kind of religious zealot from which the First Amendment is supposed to protect us.

Free expression clause. Look ‘er up, Ken Bronstein!

And he shall have it, because this is pretty damn good. The subject: Why are the people who know about computers, much more reluctant to help a buddy out with his busted computer, than the people who know about cars who help their buddies out with their broken cars?

And the short answer is: Because people don’t look at cars and computers the same way. Therefore, they don’t treat the people the same way who fix their computers, as the people who fix their cars.

But, see, Darlene, you’re VASTLY the exception here. When was the last time your friend dropped by and asked you to build them a car in your spare time, supply all of the parts yourself, and teach them how to drive it? That’s what it is every time someone says, “Hey, man, can you help build a website/database/program for me?”

Whenever you *DO* help someone, after that, IMMEDIATELY and FOREVER, anything that goes wrong with that machine until the end of time is your fault. The refrain is, “it worked before you did whatever you did.” The analogy here is you replace your friend’s alternator, and then, while they’re driving back, they pop a tire, and expect you to buy them a new tire and put it on because, hey, before you touched their alternator, the tire was fine. No amount of explaining how they are unrelated systems will get their attention, either.

When you have a mechanic’s shop, you have hours posted on your door. When you’re “good with computers”, people have NO qualms about calling you at 3am to ask you to get rid of this virus they picked up while surfing porn. (Oh, and, by the way – if they *DO* have a virus, and you’re dumb enough to volunteer to fix it, you’re looking at a MINIMUM of 50 hours of your time fixing it – NOT counting the “it worked until you looked at it funny” comments that go on until you just BUY them a new machine to get them to shut the fuck up – and THEN they want you to transfer all of their data for them.)

Explaining that the problem they’re having isn’t something you do doesn’t work either. I’m a network security guy. I deal with routers, switches, firewalls, and intrusion detection. I’m called upon for shopping advice for Macbooks, laptop repair, Windows consultations, virus infections, which store to go to if one wants to buy a wireless router, helping to build websites, and a host of other bullshit that I neither want nor care to know. When I say things like, “That’s not my specialty”, the response is *ALWAYS*, “Oh, all that computer stuff is the same.” Well, no, fucker, it’s not. You don’t go to your podiatrist and say, “Hey, man, can you pull out this brain tumor? That medical shit’s all the same.” I spent a shitload of time, money, and energy getting a master’s degree in Information Security, and, at last count, 14 different security-related certifications, and not a single fucking one of those had shit to do with fixing a browser because some dumb fuck decided to install every single toolbar that offered itself up to them.

But, using your analogy – do your friends INTENTIONALLY wreck their cars on a weekly basis and then bring ’em to your house to have you fix them at your own expense? How long would you keep that friend if they did?

Now those of you with a Hello Kitty of Blogging account can see Darlene Kozak has a rejoinder to this. She’s a FB friend with sensible opinions and I have high regard for her, but the response of “guess you’re not as close to your friends as I am to mine” is exceptionally sad because she isn’t alone here. She represents many who just can’t quite get clued in to what Mike’s trying to say.

People don’t realize it, but they’re making a demand for commitment and obligation that goes so far beyond reasonable, and once they go that far, the situation ceases to be about friendship. Thus, they’re the cause of the disintegration of the friendship, and they don’t even realize it.

It gets back to a very old question about human compassion. How is charity for the widow any different from charity for the town drunk. Answer: The town drunk creates his own situation, day after day. It matters.

We’ve got a lot of people walking around who aren’t any nicer than the average guy, and no more wicked either — just normal on that axis as normal can be. And they’re not stupid, but they can’t see this critical difference. Charity for the widow makes us better people. Charity for the town drunk makes us more primitive and savage, because we’re creating a framework doomed to collapse on itself.

But it’s the other people who are the creation of the real problem. They people who are proud of “I don’t know anything about computers!”

…[M]y experience with these people is — they aren’t trying to know something and being incompetent at it. They are PROUD of not knowing anything about computers. Sometimes they use it as an introduction to people. “I don’t know anything about computers!” Some of them, disturbingly, flaunt this lack of knowledge like a badge, or title of nobility, like they’re more worthy people because of it. Like, gee, that makes me feel real good. What’s that say about people who know something about computers?

“I don’t want to know about any of that stuff” is a common refrain.

He’s absolutely right. Touch their computers, and from then on when that computer behaves in any way different from the way they expect, it’s your fault. You have to make time to fix it, and the kicker is YOU owe THEM when it’s all done…for the hour or two or three they missed not being able to do whatever it is they do…and that’s if everything goes right.

Neo-Neocon has been reading something interesting.

Hat tip to Gerard.