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.

Good President.

Bad President.

The “Bad President” stuff is about eighty percent accurate as far as the really high-level and obvious fact-checking goes. That’s about fifty or sixty percentage points higher than normal with Palin haters.

However, it continues a trend I have found to be absolutely iron-clad: Of the eight “Bad President” slides that bear some passing resemblance to the truth, all make it their business to predict what someone else is going to think or do.

She’s supposed to be this intellectual lightweight, but nobody can form any sensible thoughts about what she’s going to biff, how she’ll manage to piss in her boot, which pooch she’s gonna screw.

Nobody can say how she’s going to suck, exactly, without bringing some third party into it. That says something.

It doesn’t strike me as the kind of attack an incumbent can lay down against a challenger. If you’re the incumbent, and the economy sucks ass, and you’ve been presiding over it, then we know beyond any doubt what mistakes you can make and we don’t need to bring anybody else into it at all.

Now to be fair about it, I do find some of the “Good President” slides to be lame. And the absolute lamest one would be “First Woman President.” Hope this doesn’t come off as bigoted or sexist, but this white male has absolutely had it with “firsts.” I’ve been hearing about ’em for forty years. Lately they haven’t done us any good; our First Black President is a communist who uses His skin color as a weapon against dissent, thereby dividing the country.

Actually, you know the one thing I like about Palin being a woman? It isn’t going to net her a single female vote, in fact it will lose her tons of ’em. Our females don’t seem to be too excited about her. Girls would rather have Hillary. They feel most comfortable with female authority figures who are unappealing to men.

But enough about that. I think the “Friend to Working Class” slide is worth mention, doesn’t quite score a bulls-eye but it does come close.

We’ve been hip deep in liberalism for a long time. By that I mean, liberal extremism has started to look like moderation (see previous post).

Perhaps the oldest tenet of modern liberalism has been control of the means of a society’s production of goods. And today, this is really what the yelling and the fighting are all about. People tend to spend their entire lives either being producers, or not-producers.

Of the not-producers, the soldier represents the not-producer we actually need. Defense is vital. It isn’t supposed to actually produce anything, save for that which is used to provide the defense.

All the other not-producers we can do without. We’ve got a very long way to go before we can realize that objective; all of our leaders, recently, seem to arrive with resumes that are very impressive, but not-productive. Our latest President is only the most stellar example, since “The Community Organizer” demonstrates fairly often that He has no idea how the economy actually works, and by demonstrating it, actually hurts a lot of people. But it’s a problem that predates him, and who says it has to be this way?

Maybe, just maybe, the first step toward fixing our many ills is to put someone in charge who has been a producer of goods that actually help people, and thinks like a producer of goods that help people. It is, without a doubt, the remedy we most urgently need right now.

U.S. News and World Report:

In a crushing body blow to the pushers of the so-called “Fox Effect,” which claims the conservative media is dragging the left into the center, UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose in Left Turn claims that “all” mainstream news outlets have a liberal bias in their reporting that makes even moderate organizations appear out of the mainstream and decidedly right-wing to news consumers who are influenced by the slant.

“Fox News is clearly more conservative than ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and National Public Radio. Some will conclude that ‘therefore, this means that Fox News has a conservative bias,'” he writes in an advance copy provided to Washington Whispers. “Instead, maybe it is centrist, and possibly even left-leaning, while all the others are far left. It’s like concluding that six-three is short just because it is short compared to professional basketball players.”

Sort of a Dunning-Kruger effect in reverse. As it’s been pointed out many-a-time here, when you go through your entire day leaning left, you come up to building or a signpost that happens to be properly aligned, the perception is going to be that the structure is leaning right.

Hat tip to Boortz.

The author developed a calculation to figure out the “political quotient” to find the bias of media outlets and the average slant of an organization.

Groseclose opens his book quoting a well-known poll in which Washington correspondents declared that they vote Democratic 93 percent to 7 percent, while the nation is split about 50-50. As a result, he says, most reporters write with a liberal filter. “Using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see.”

Yes…we’ve noticed this part, as well. The fektoid, or a fact whose veracity would survive a skeptical inspection while its relevance would not.

One of the most powerful and unaccountable ways to inject editorial punditry into the news pages, where it does not belong, is by means of the decision of what to include in the first place. What to leave in, what to leave out, what to repeat interminably. Absolutely no accountability to this whatsoever. Hey, we left it in because “it’s news.” In fact, if we don’t feel like telling you who made the call, we don’t have to.

Abu Ghraib was the ultimate fektoid. Now, for the thirtieth day in a row, our top news stories — hey, did you know there’s a prison called Abu Ghraib? Guess what happened there!

Yesterday was the first 20% of a work week. I clocked out on time, and returned home in the daylight to attend to the personal side of my life. I noticed my evening hours were spent much like my daylight hours, trying to solve problems that were of someone else’s making and had grown in size over long periods of time. Only many hours after that, in the depths of slumber, did I realize the similarity between what was happening in these two different worlds. I also argued with someone about who should become the next President; this person and I happen to share the concern about my country’s massive public debt. So you could say there, too, the pattern persists. So that’s three worlds, three sets of problems, all alike.

The common theme I’m seeing is lots of people who are willing to take the responsibility of saying — “do not attack the problem from that direction there because it is not my vision that it be solved that way.” That much responsibility and no more. They are not willing to take the responsibility of saying — “it would be preferrable for you to stand over there doing nothing, compared to solving the problem in a way contrary to the way I had in mind.” But some variant of that, is exactly what comes out of their mouths. They hear of a course of remedy and they want it abandoned before it has been begun. They act like it would do some actual damage, but they can form no coherent explanation of how this would be. They counsel toward the status quo without actually counseling toward the status quo.

And so in all three cases a problem is created and allowed to snowball as no steps are taken to solve it, or the progress shown in solving it, is insufficient compared to the rate at which the problem continues to grow. In all three cases, there is a great abundance of ideas about what people should not do and a scarcity of productive ideas about what people should do. Nor has it escaped my notice that out of these vast stockpiles of ideas-about-what-not-to-do, many of those ideas — a clear majority — are centered around not a what but a who. Such-and-such a person needs to go away…or become ineffectual…be dismissed. It’s as if everyone wants to say “I have a vision of how this problem is to be solved, and my vision involves an observation after it’s solved that Person X was not part of the solution, therefore Person X should not be allowed to contribute.”

I suppose I could learn to accept that. But there’s one sticky issue: It has nothing to do with solving the problem.

Actually, there’s a second sticky issue. These people who insist the situation would be improved if certain targeted other-people become ineffective or marginalized or go away or “stop doing that” — since they’re so emphatic about this but so deficient in ideas that would have a chance at solving or mitigating the problem — reveal that they’re not interested in solving the problem.

I notice something else about these people who do not want designated/targeted other people to be doing anything. In many cases, it appears to me that they’re in a process of accumulating influence for themselves, when they already have much. Not that they possess dictatorial powers, nor are they in pursuit of any such thing. But it seems to me when you possess sufficient influence that large numbers of other people know who you are, and are inclined to respond to your recommendations, this power has to be grown or else given up. Or, that there is a perception it works this way. Embiggen the power or lose it altogether.

Now, I do not mean to say all these people made the problems in the first place. But it does seem to be generally true that the people who arrive later on to attack the problem, think more clearly about it. The late-comers work with the luxury of knowing, at least in the early stages, that they cannot be blamed. And so they investigate the causes with no incentive for covering up any meaningful facts. At the same time, they know they will be blamed if they fail to provide a constructive solution…and, in any case, are hated immediately by the people who are not newcomers. So their natural incentive is to find a solution.

You can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it, as they say. And so, it becomes rather unavoidable that one day, the “stop-doing-that” people are told to — stop doing that — by someone who actually knows what he’s talking about. And all Holy Hell breaks loose.

This is a best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is the stop-doing-that people remain in charge and no new people are brought in.

I’m seeing a list of twenty-nine big problems that aren’t getting solved (hat tip to FB friend Larry). Well, twenty-eight actually, that last one is rather silly. I cannot help but think about this, yet again. Just read through those twenty-eight. They’re all problems that have been growing for awhile, not getting solved and not getting smaller. Now ask yourself: What has anyone done in these twenty-eight problems to embrace the “can’t solve problem with the same mindset” mindset? Where’s the hairpin turn, or promise of a hairpin turn, or promise of turns that add up to a hundred eighty degrees?

I see Jon Stewart has made something of an ass out of himself. How did he do it? Two ways: He peddled some bullshit about Fox News viewers being misinformed; and, he’s the Naked Emperor now, everyone can see he’s been dishing out snarky snippets for years, hiding under the “I’m just a comedian” defense when he’s called out on his crap. So for many years now, he’s been the kind of person I’m talking about. Stewart’s “humor” seeks to marginalize certain designated, targeted people. To make them go away. And no, he doesn’t have any responsibility for making the problems better nor does he assume any…he’s just a comedian.

For generations the teachers’ unions have been telling us they need more money “put into education” and we have obliged them, as the knowledge demonstrated by our public school grads has deteriorated more and more and more. Now comes a report that says the states least accommodating to this are showing the best educational results (hat tip to FB friend Arnold). It draws on a multitude of studies to demonstrate this, and the message is clear: Yet another problem that hasn’t been solved, only exposed to cosmetic indulgences, which are supposed to look like attempts to solve.

And then there is Barack Obama. Where to begin? The man is so much more popular, personally, than any one of His policies. And how could this not be the case? How could His policies not be wretchedly unpopular? The unemployment rate is officially tracked, and the under-employment rate is not — both are known, though, and both are unacceptably high. It’s only too obvious what is causing them. But Obama’s policies are not pondered in public and don’t appear to be thought out too well in private. They just sort of pop up. “I’ve decided X.” Everything that goes wrong, we’re supposed to blame on George Bush to prove we aren’t racists. But if you’re Obama, how do you go about not looking like the problem, when you pop up with these bad policies at random times throughout the week, month, year? Like a Pez dispenser. Just because you’re a cream-coffee-color Pez dispenser, doesn’t mean you get a pass! Looking for work is not a fun experience in any situation, but it is a whole lot less fun when the jobs aren’t there and aren’t coming.

The point is: I think we have a good bearing on how these big problems are created. They don’t materialize overnight; they grow in stages. And I’m afraid all of western civilization has become rather adept at growing them, like the body of a cancer patient in the late stages is adept at growing tumors. I hope that metaphor doesn’t apply in too many ways, but at least in some ways, it fits well.

We have these people going through the motions of coming up with good ideas, when all they’re really doing is seeking influence. And they’re not seeking new influence. They’ve settled on the idea that they do have power other people do not have, and they must grow that power or else lose it. And so they come up with ideas that might look like problem-solving ideas, when in actuality they’re just ideas to consolidate and expand power. Then, they come up with ideas that might look like problem-solving ideas when they’re really blame-diverting ideas. That last one comes from an obvious necessity.

I’ve got a feeling if all the ideas carefully disguised as problem-solving ideas, were really intended to solve problems instead of to do something else, we’d all be in a lot better shape.

E. J. Dionne is attracting a lot of attention this morning with this work:

An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.

What’s got Dionne upset is identification. Proving that you’re you when you vote. Which means proving you are eligible to vote, and that you’re voting once only.

Problem? Dionne says so, for two reasons: Hey, the fraud is no big deal therefore we should ignore it — and, the corrective measures are “not neutral,” they’ll have different extents of change on different demographics. I think that’s it…

The laws are being passed in the name of preventing “voter fraud.” But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place. Some of the new laws, notably those limiting the number of days for early voting, have little plausible connection to battling fraud.

These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young. It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments.

It seems to me that Dionne’s points answer each other. If fraud is not that big a deal and we can just ignore it without suffering a consequence, then all the hand-wringing and worrying about invalidating votes among this-or-that race or national origin, likewise, should be much ado about nothing. The depressing effect on the Obama vote, likewise, will be insignificant. If it isn’t insignificant — in fact, if it tilts the playing field in such a way that The Great One loses His bid for re-election when He otherwise wouldn’t — then that would mean the corrective measures are overdue, in fact it would suggest that His Holiness never should’ve been elected in the first place.

Dionne needs to go off somewhere and get his talking points straight.

Hat tip to William Teach, who adds,

Democrats know that requiring ID would only solve some of the issue: people can easily spoof with fake IDs or with their regular ID. What they want to accomplish with this line is to set it up so that when Obama loses, they can blame the GOP, saying that Obama lost not because of his being the most incompetent president ever, but for their “racist” and “anti-democracy” voting policies.

Anyone with a long-term memory that is working and active, will see immediately that Teach is right. For the last twenty years, give or take — certainly for the last ten or eleven — there is a great hue & cry about “stolen elections” whenever the democrat loses, in elections national, regional or local.

When the democrat wins, even by a tenth of a percent, these same loud angry voices proclaim “The People Have Spoken!”

Making voters prove they are who they say they are, thereby ensuring voters only vote once, is unfair to democrat candidates therefore we shouldn’t do it. You know, I wonder who falls for this sort of argument. I’d say if that person is a so-called “moderate” then he should just drop the label, get off the fence — over on their side, which is where he is anyway. Come clean. Work your fingers to the bone trying to get more democrats elected, in some position where you’re supposed to be doing that.

Because if Dionne’s protest carries weight with you, you’d probably be happier doing that anyway.

This miserable.

When it comes to measuring the combination of unemployment and inflation, it doesn’t get much more miserable than this.

In fact, misery, as measured in the unofficial Misery Index that simply totals the unemployment and inflation rates, is at a 28-year high, reflective of how weak the economic recovery has been and how far there is to go.

The index, first compiled during the soaring inflation days of the 1970s by economist Arthur Okun, is registering a nausea-inducing 12.7—9.1 percent for unemployment and 3.6 percent for annualized inflation—a number not seen since 1983. The index has been above 10 since November 2009 and had been under double-digits from June 1993 through May 2008.

Via Boortz.

From here.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Slides here.

Hat tip to fellow Right Wing News contributor Craig Newmark.

Hat tip to Stable Hand at Jawa.

Journal-Sentinel:

The question now is what comes next for labor. In interviews with union leaders, academics and others who have followed the months-long fight over Walker’s budget, organized labor appears to be regrouping on two separate tracks.

One is turning their still formidable war chest toward the recall of six Republican senators in Wisconsin in the hopes of turning the Senate back to the Democrats.

The other is a lawsuit that a consortium of labor unions filed last week in federal court, saying Walker’s collective-bargaining legislation, in effect, created two classes of public-sector workers. The unions say that makes the collective-bargaining law, which is scheduled to go into effect June 29, unconstitutional.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse, by way of Instapundit.

By way of an offline from Rob Bariton.

I would go one step further: Useless people talk about rules.

Blogsister Cassy turned me on to this story over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging. It takes place in Corpus Christi, TX…which I find somewhat surprising…

…Judge Longoria was firm in his criticism of [mother Rosalina Gonzalez’] behaviour, and told her it was unacceptable.

He said: ‘You don’t spank children today. In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel. You don’t spank children. You understand?’

She answered: ‘Yes sir.’

Gonzales will also has to pay a $50 fine to the Children’s Advocacy Center and attend a course of parenting classes.

She has lost custody of her daughter and two other children, all of whom are being looked after by their grandmother.

I’m sure there is another side to the story, but the facts spelled out here seem to be complete. There isn’t a trace of abusive behavior — not unless you’re one of those busybody hippie pinheads who counts all physical punishment as inherently abusive. The buttinsky mother-in-law noticed the little girl had a red ass and called authorities.

Meanwhile, diagnoses of “learning disabilities” are skyrocketing…during this age supposedly free of corporal punishment.

I have yet to meet a single 4A Cheerleader who’s managed to ask why there are more diagnoses, or even to drum up some superficial curiosity about it. “We know more now than they did then” is about as much scrutiny as they can manage to apply.

Can’t spank our kids. So the kids do whatever they want to do…unless, that is, they are advised that the grown-ups don’t want them doing something.

If that doesn’t work, it’s off to the behavioral health specialist to order a diagnosis. Like a take-n-bake pizza. Oh, yeah, he has trouble paying attention alright. He’s been diagnosed. We know he has trouble paying attention because we told him what we wanted him to stop doing, and he didn’t stop doing it. Don’t spank him whatever you do.

To be filed away for the next time someone tells me “That’s not true!” Also, regretfully, for the next time someone tells me I should move to Texas…

Four thirty a.m., in the middle of nowhere. No bears sighted yet.

Bloggin’.

Drinking coffee, too.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

Update: Note for file: Our mission of “Just a few last minute items on the way” was seriously impacted by a substandard provider of foodstuffs.

Observation: if the muzak being piped in is a steady diet of “crooner” songs…some loser begging his Jezebel to please not leave, please come back, baby, baby, begging you please…you’re in a crazy-cat-lady store. There’s no good selection of anything but candy, liquors, cigarettes and cat food.

Update 6/19/11: I shall not name the store. But I can give you the measurements of it, from my mental imprint: The meat department was all of 48″ wide, give or take…the pet food aisle was thirty or forty fucking goddamn feet long. The candy aisle was as long as the pet food aisle, but no marshmallows for shmores. That’s, you know, just too kid-friendly. No good for watching Jerry Maguire over and over again interspersed with Sex in the City reruns. Ice cream, though — yes they had ice cream. Hard liquors galore, and wine, wine, wine…for the whine, whine, whine.

Could’ve sworn there was a Raley’s in that neck of the woods. Had there been, it would have been a much quicker provisions-grabbing mission, with no need for a follow-up further down the road — and therefore, one hell of a lot cheaper.

Damn crazy cat ladies, with their crazy cat lady food stores.

We had quite an interesting day yesterday. For a very long time now, everyone in my family has been putting all of our money into a certain bank. We just got word one of the officials at that bank resigned. A bank executive named “Weiner” who had lately become embroiled in a “sexting” scandal.

The salacious details to this are rather unimportant. Perhaps, if you’ve been following the news, you might’ve come across some happenings in a similarly large institution, and you could use that to sort of fill in the holes. All that is really worthy of mention amounts to this: It took a long time for this little drama to wind up, because it emerged that banker Weiner can’t or won’t manage a portfolio, his personal credit card debt, his sex drive, his household or for that matter anything else. The picture that emerges is one of a shallow, pugnacious little jackass, and it doesn’t reflect too terribly well on the bank, to wit: The degree of jackass-ery under discussion exceeds any little story you have to tell about your casually-jackass boss or neighbor. This bank allows for, and encourages, jackass-ery on a hitherto unknown scale.

That’s not a slam. It’s a reasonable conclusion to draw based on the events.

Last night we had a serious family-table conversation about what to do with our money. It came down to: Should we put more money into that bank, or less? Well, how long of a conversation do you think that was? How uncertain do you think we were about the final verdict?

Now I come to the point: As a practical matter, as far as the domestic issues are concerned, all this democrat-Republican arguing comes down to a question of whether to invest lesser or greater volumes of our income in the government. (As a philosophical matter it’s about God and the dignity of man; but as a practical matter it’s about the loot and where to put it.) I’d say “wealth” intead of income, but we really don’t have any wealth in this country anymore, and the policies are really about income anyway. When democrats clamor for higher taxes and Republicans balk at this, we’re arguing about — if we should turn over lots of money to the government are we digging our way out of the hole, or are we making it deeper.

To pretend it’s happening with a bank, changes the dynamics. At least with the democrats, it does. It shouldn’t, and I think they know it shouldn’t, but that’s the way it works.

Anyway. I really don’t like political scandals. My beef with them is not that they distract from the nation’s business, for I think the nation’s number one item of business is that we have trillions of dollars of our money being thrown around by fools and tools who have been selected according to a dazzling, stupefying, Weiner level of ignorance about what money is. Nor is my problem that the scandals lower the level of dignity and respect accorded to our Congress, since it seems whenever I have doubts that this dignity/respect should be as low as it is, it seems my doubts are consistently proven wrong — it continues to turn out we were giving them way too much of this respect. Along with our money.

My issue with scandals is that scandals lead to jokes. It’s unavoidable. And jokes tend to make it harder to remember an important thing: These jerks and jackwagons are taking our money and they’re giving it away to other jerks and jackwagons. Meanwhile, people who create products and services people can actually use, are asked to do more with less.

Sure the jerks-and-jackwagons get hit with “scandals” here & there, and every now & then the scandal takes one of ’em down. But let’s be honest: The scandals only drive someone out of office about half the time, and how bad the scandal is, or what it implies, doesn’t determine the outcome. Show me a hundred democrats who get into trouble with scandals, and I can show you ninety-nine jackasses who fared better at it than Congressman Weiner. Probably more than ninety-nine. The scandals are used as procedural maneuvers to remove people who’d stand in the way of this “give money away to other jackholes” process.

In fact, flip around the above. Show me a hundred Republicans who get into trouble with scandals and I can show you ninety-nine resignations from office. Probably more than that.

A democrat who has to resign because of a scandal, is rarer than a democrat unicorn. A democrat unicorn who has cyan and magenta stripes, whose fur is made of velveteen, with six legs, who not only thinks our taxes should be raised but also pays extra to the treasury. A democrat unicorn who not only insists “the rich” should help the less fortunate, but does it himself. And actually noticed the day Katie Couric resigned because he was really watching her. And Keith Olbermann too. And puts the little six-legged unicorns in the public schools he insists our own kids should be forced to attend.

Anyway, that’s the situation. A scandal actually took down a democrat. That’s your sign that the scandal got out of the “control” that is typically supposed to be part of all scandals; the wagons circled ’round, and it didn’t work.

And when scandals get out of control, you should be watching — for this reason and pretty much none other — because that means, for a short time, your government is transparent. Unintentionally so. It’s a good time to pay attention.

I’d bounce that one off your liberal friends, it’s a good ‘un if I do say so myself. Maybe save it for that McGovern-voting granduncle at the Thanksgiving table: What if it happened to a bank executive? Or a “hedge fund manager”? Or an oil company executive? Would this tell us something about where we should be putting our money? Why or why not? Well, with a member of Congress does it work any differently, does it reflect on the institution any more or any less? Why or why not?

Cross-posted at Brutally Honest, Washington Rebel and Right Wing News.