Have a happy one, and spare a thought for those who have sacrificed, and those who still serve.

Update: Cartoon of the day: via Don Surber.

The Hill reports on Mac’s remarks, without comment, to get their lefty commenters all riled up and it works beautifully.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has said he thinks Sarah Palin could defeat President Obama in next year’s presidential election, but he’s far from certain that she will actually jump into the race.

The GOP’s standard-bearer in 2008 also shrugged off his former running mate’s poor standing in many polls, saying she would have the opportunity to turn that around if she did make a bid for the White House.

“That’s what campaigns are all about,” McCain said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I’ve never seen anyone as mercilessly and relentlessly attacked as I have seen Sarah Palin in the last couple of years,” the Arizona senator added. “But she also inspires great passion, particularly among the Republican faithful.”

I find this to be the most agreeable statement coming out of John McCain’s mouth in quite some time.

Can Palin beat Obama? That’s an easy question; the much harder one is will she. It’s up to her to jump in, and then it’s up to Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida to figure out whether they like her better than His Wonderfulness. If it comes down to that, and that’s a big “if,” her odds are much better than average.

Like all other big decisions, the Presidential Election of 2012 can be decided the way Architects decide things or it can be decided the way Medicators decide things. If the voters in the Penn/Ohio/Fla triumvirate think like Architects, she will win, and if they think like Medicators then He will win. And in any free society, that’s going to be a tough call. There are forces at work that naturally position the “front” in such a battle close to the fifty-yard line; that is to say, when either side dominates it labors under a heavy burden of disadvantage.

It’s very similar to the way an old metal alarm bell works. The clapper comes in contact with the bell, a circuit is closed which trips a relay, activating a magnet that pulls the clapper away from the bell. The circuit is then broken, the relay shuts off the magnet and the return spring moves the clapper in contact with the bell again. Think I got that right…some of the details might be flipped around. But the point is, the machinery operates in a perpetual cycle. That’s exactly the way Architect/Medicator conflicts work.

The Architects — those who think their way through life’s problems rather than feeling their way around them, the ones who couldn’t care less what popular consensus is because it has no bearing on what the correct answer is, the Henry Reardens of the world if you will — become dominant when the outlook is bleak. People see their own livelihoods attenuate, and figure out they just can’t afford any more cockeyed decisions. So they delegate the decisions to someone who thinks things through sensibly, who offers solutions based on if-this, then-that. Once the Architects dominate for awhile, things get better because the decision-making process has a natural tendency to evolve intelligently. Whatever is tried, and fails, is pitched overboard because that is what thinking people do. Thinking people also put more stock in decisions that have been shown to be successful.

And so things improve…problems get solved…and, after awhile, the clapper moves away from the bell. People get it in their heads that there are no problems that need to be solved, therefore the point to life, if there is one at all, is to be entertained and happy. And so they start to turn on the Architects and put more faith in the Medicators. Interestingly, they manage to do this without ever acknowledging any problems ever got solved, that anything ever got better. That’s exactly where we were two years ago; we needed Barack Obama to solve “all these problems” that George W. Bush created for us. But the unemployment rate was just beginning to snake upward from the 5.5 percent where it had been for awhile, nosing up through the sevens. That would be a pretty sweet deal now, wouldn’t it? How about gas at a buck sixty-one, any takers?

But we have “all these problems”; nobody can describe them in any great detail, but they’re not too bothered by that because they’re thinking like Medicators. Not too keen on details at the present time. And so you get this happy talky laughey jokey fun-to-watch guy who speaks in vague bromides and looks good in a suit. Makes people feel so good. He must have the answer to “all these problems”! It really doesn’t make much sense when you think about it. But it isn’t being thought about, it’s being felt about.

So we put the laughy-talky-Guy-Smiley in charge of things…and…the relay is tripped. We get a bunch of silly decisions made. But deep down, people feel — feel — like that must be okay. They won’t admit it out loud, but their feeling is that they can afford some foolish decisions now & then. But then, of course, you get to a point where it’s been a very long time since anyone can remember a decision made by the looks-good-in-suit guy, that wasn’t foolish. And that’s where we are now.

What’s the last thing Obama handled sensibly? Alright, let’s go ahead and count the shoot-bin-Laden thing…that decision made lots of sense. Anything else? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?

Aw that’s okay. Obama looks good in a suit. And THERE’SJUSTSOMETHINGABOUTHIMICAN’TEXPLAINIT!!!

But you know what? The “details will work themselves out because Obama’s awesome” thing is on a steep decline. It’s gotta be that way. People are suffering, they’re having trouble buying enough gas to get to work to earn the paychecks that buy the gas.

Nobody really knows what Obama’s going to decide to do next. His decisions aren’t all completely bad, but it may as well be a random decision-making process. It’s racist if I compare Him to a monkey throwing darts at a dartboard, and it’s racist if I compare Him to a Magic-8 ball. The point is, it’s like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get…uh oh, maybe that’s racist of me too…

But when you’re having trouble getting gas so you can go to work, this “that’s racist” stuff isn’t gonna cut it. The situation becomes one adroitly summed up by my Facebook friend Mike Simone,

If you voted for Obama in ‘08 to prove you’re not a racist, you’ll need to vote for someone else in ‘12 to prove you’re not an idiot.

Clang! We’re having trouble buying gas and food. We can’t do anymore experimenting with these randomly-deciding, feel-good Medicators. It becomes a natural event in the course of the human experiment, that the Medicators are told to take their beer summits and stick ’em. Just can’t afford the silliness anymore.

Now the people who might be compelled, every now & then, to vote for an Obama will never admit this: But the clapper will meet the bell, it is quite unavoidable. Feeling your way around life’s challenges, as opposed to thinking them through, falls out of fashion. It has to. At a certain point, when things continue to go wrong because there’s too much feeling & not enough thinking, eventually it doesn’t feel good anymore to make these feel-good decisions. And when feel-good decisions don’t feel good, then what’s the point?

Palin-haters sound very silly when they try to deny this. They sound like this guy:

That woman is not going to run for President. She’s just doing her bus tour and movie to raise money to pay for her house in Arizona. I’ll say it again: she’s not running for President. If she was, Faux News would’ve fired her just like the did the other Faux News contributors who were thinking of running for President. She’s an idiot. I can’t say it enough.

“She’s an idiot I can’t say it enough”…reworded only just slightly, and I suspect this re-wording is much closer to the truth…becomes an abject exercise in the purest cognitive dissonance: “Everybody needs to stop mentioning her name I can’t say it enough.” Now, whether you have your biases toward the Architect way of managing things or whether you like the Medicator way of managing things, it’s a cinch that if you’re starting to worry about the refrigerator being bare and the gas tank being empty, you’re probably not going to be all that pleased with the biggest decisions in your economy made by the representative of lunatics like this guy, who thinks with all the clarity of a dog chasing its own tail. Does he even know that “Faux” rhymes with “Dough” and not with “Fox”?

As I’ve said many times before, this is going to be an interesting election, whether Palin jumps in or not. We’re voting on common sense itself. Can life’s most vexing and challenging problems be solved with yet another bacchanal, festooned with phony Greek columns? Or as the situation continues to deteriorate and the price of gas soars past five, six, seven dollars a gallon, does the time come where you have to start thinking like a grown-up?

McCain’s right. She absolutely does have a chance. I’m not pleased at all that it is improved when our country’s buying power and start of living continue to diminish; that is a real tragedy. But it is what it is.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

So says Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel. The full excerpt is:

Intel is on pace for what Otellini predicts could be the company’s best year ever but said other businesses are not so lucky. “A lot of companies are sitting on the sidelines right now,” he said, due mainly to a lack of clarity about taxes and regulation.

“Take the uncertainly out. Businesses can’t invest until they have fewer variables and right now there are just too many variables,” he said. [emphasis in original]

Or, as a tire company executive put it some three quarters of a century ago, during a dress rehearsal of what would later become Obamanomics: “[The investor] will not risk financing new ventures if the government take is greater than that of the average gambling house.”

In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I’m an Intel employee.

There is so much good meat in this article that brings us the two quotes above, it’s like a half-year-early serving of TurBaconDuckEn and I don’t know where to start with it. Although BlogUncle Gerard knew exactly what to do. He went after the tastiest morsel on the lovely, juicy, glistening, baconey-goodness salty carcass.

What would happen, if, heaven forfend, Obama actually went into business himself?

Oh my, he had fun lifting & linking that one. Yes, the High Prince of Hope and Change, Birther Zero, Mister Let Me Be Clear, founder of the “Office of the President-Elect.” The Teleprompter King. The very archetype of the non-productive telling the productive what to do, and feeling perfectly entitled to do so…not because He was sworn in on January 20, 2009…but simply because, since childhood, nobody has ever told Him “no.”

What if He was part of an effort to — not sell some stinky piece of legislation that is so pus-filled and rancid that everybody and his dog needs some kind of “waiver” from it — but create a product, bring it to market, and move it along to the consumers who can use it? And at a profit? Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the last six years, you know He has some considerable skills. But are they applicable to useful pursuits? In any way? Any at all? Any mission that has something to do with helping people…in ways other than forcibly taking money from one class of person and giving it to another?

The anecdote about George McGovern suggests the intensity and magnitude of surprise that awaits “Professor” Obama in the Driscoll hypothetical.

But there is more yummy goodness here. Obama manifests great talent at non-productive things, and doesn’t manage to suggest any talent at all in things that would actually create other things. But that, by itself, offers no evidence of any contempt toward the private sector. Notice I said “by itself.” Just because you have a lack of aptitude for tending to a discipline, doesn’t mean you harbor actual disdain against that discipline.

The wifey, Mrs. O, took care of that part:

“We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do…Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.”

But the real problem — what is asphyxiating our economy in the here and now — is perhaps best summarized by another anecdote near the very beginning:

Adolf Berle, Roosevelt’s assistant secretary of state, sounded for all the world like Hank Paulson or Timothy Geithner when he argued in the late 1930s for a “modern financial tool kit.” Tool kit means “let me fiddle around” and not “let us agree together on rules and abide by them, together.” [emphasis Driscoll’s]

It’s a quote from Amity Schlaes, author of The Forgotten Man.

What we are to learn from all this, is that investors are people. That sounds like I’m pleading for some kind of sympathy for their benefit, which is where the progressives tune out. That’s the world in which they live — light on the “if this is done, that happens” and extremely heavy on the “it’s so-and-so’s turn to get all the attention, advantages, pity and praise.” But this isn’t about pity or praise, it’s about the other; the if-this-then-that.

Because they are people, and thinking people, they go through a process before they shake loose of the bucks. As Chairman Otellini points out, uncertainty about the outcome, and the variables that contribute to the outcome, affect the decision to shake loose; they’re less willing to do it. That’s just the way sane, reasonable people can be expected to behave.

As I thought some more about the Theron Trimble interview, my mind did this sort of a flip-floppy thing like a fish on the bottom of a rowboat right after you caught it — it tends to do that. And I managed to dredge up this quote from H.L. Mencken:

Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time.

In the years of my youth, when leftists were still in the process of taking over academia, and the grade schools, and the newspapers and the alphabet-soup television networks and anything else that had to do with communicating…this had slowly morphed into something like “conservatism is the nagging fear that someone somewhere is having a good time.”

Post-Reagan, this morphed-Mencken idea might be ripe for another re-think. When it comes to after-tax money kept in a personal wallet or purse, it is consistently our left-leaning friends who are consumed with a quaking, shivering, pulsating, apprehensive fear that someone, somewhere might have cash to spend on having a good time.

No, no, no, they say. Give back to the community. Go ahead and have a good time, as long as it doesn’t involve money that could be going back to Uncle Sam…unless, that is, you’re one of these special people. Anyone with the last name of “Obama,” “Kennedy” or “Clinton” can go ahead and be rich. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates and George Soros can have lots of mney, as long as they say or do things every now & then to help advance leftist causes. Deny global warming, and all bets are off — fork it over.

But I heard that undertone from Theron Trimble yesterday. Florida taxes gently, Florida doesn’t have an income tax…Neal Boortz says “yeah, why do you think I’m here?” And Trimble, very clearly, disapproves…and not just a little bit.

The fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time — with their money. And doesn’t owe anybody anything, nor is looking to anybody to protect them from any imminent, looming threat. Looking forward to making more loot tomorrow, living a happy, independent and secure life.

That is their ultimate nightmare scenario. They have a genuine phobia about it.

Wisdom, from me, over at Rhymes With Girls and Cars.

I recall seeing somewhere someone made the point this is an aspect of modern leftism: An inordinate fascination with linguistics. Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics. To a liberal, if you find ten different ways to say the same thing, you and those around you become ten times more worldly. Naturally, expending the same magnitude of energy pondering ten different things with a single language, would make you an unsophisticated dullard.

Or, thinking about only one thing with one language, with ten times the diligence…maybe succeeding in anticipating some important facet, preventing a disaster.

We’re trying to figure out where this thing came from, where the word basura is used to describe trash. Sonic Charmer says it must be people who think Spanish-speakers are complete idiots. I agree with the logic in his theory, I can’t sign on to the theory itself just because I know better. It’s the danger inherent to all generalizations. My boss, the dead one, started the thing back in the old job of writing “basura” on the cardboard boxes to be discarded, and I know he was just being considerate. Efficient, too, probably. You put some big bulky box where you think it will get pitched, come back in Monday to find it still there, that’s annoying & counterproductive in an office environment.

But no, he didn’t have a condescending or mean bone in his whole body. Unless he thought all kinds of people were idiots and was just really good at hiding it…mmm, hey, waitaminnit…

But I do have to say, Sonic is right. You would have to be a complete imbecile if you spoke Spanish, and you saw something marked “trash” instead of “basura” and didn’t know what it was. I would think, if you’re in another country you should be ready to see some signs put down in a language that is not yours, and also be ready to figure out the easy ones & respond to them.

It raises a distinct possibility that some of our Spanish speakers are guests, are not supposed to be on this side of the border for some reason, and don’t think of themselves as being in another country. Now, that’s a problem. That pushes somewhat out of the field of illegal immigration, and into what could be called an actual invasion. Sort of a lazy, meandering “I don’t think of it as an invasion” invasion.

So no, I don’t agree because I can’t…but I definitely see where he’s going with this. It goes right along with having to Press One For English. We’re having a cold, soft civil war right now, trying to figure out if the United States is an English-speaking country or a multi-language country. It is a muted argument, because when people think of conservative-versus-liberal disagreements they tend to think of abortion and taxes. But this is just as important: Once you teach a child how to count to ten, should the next lesson be about how to add? Or should you go on to counting to ten in Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Swahili…

From The Other McCain.

It’s amazing all the freedoms the rest of us get to enjoy, that Governor Palin apparently isn’t supposed to. Existing, breathing oxygen, riding on a bus, making money…

McCain — er, that would be the one whose writing we enjoy, “The Other,” Robert Stacey — goes on to find out about something else that has not vanished: Decent writing at Wonkette. Really! Flawed (two “for” instances in the first sentence), but poignant and flows nicely.

We don’t like Meghan McCain because she is a multi-millionaire and gets writing jobs for which she is utterly unqualified for, not because of her breast size or her butt, neither of which concerns us at all. When you make her “a victim of the Internet” because she posts pictures of her big boobs, which for most women are considered an asset, then you let her off the hook for being an ultra-rich Republican who is taking writing jobs away from talented non-rich people. Even clicking the NYT link is probably forwarding her “writing career,” which exists solely because her dad is a failed presidential candidate from four years ago. Thank you for your co-operation. [New York Times]

Ironically, Meghan McCain is the one writing “Wonkette” style:

I love skulls. I have 10 of them. I love the way they look in my place. I have one on my night stand; one on my desk; crystal ones in my kitchen; one that’s filled with vodka; some with diamond eyes.

Semicolons instead of bangs, but still. Like it’s chopped! Into little pieces! Like sushi!

I wish Wonkette learned to like Ms. McCain…not pleased seeing rancor come out of that corner of the universe. Wonkette, Meghan, they’re like two sides of the same coin. Like the hero & the villain out of a comic book, or pulpy old action movie, “We Are Not So Different, You And I.”

The Meghan/Wonkette duo seems, or seem, to be laboring under a delusion that the continuing existence of the universe depends entirely on some designated object of loathing not getting any attention. Meghan is concerned that there isn’t a news blackout on Palin, and Wonkette is concerned that the same isn’t happening with Meghan. Normal rational people, meanwhile — myself, Robert McCain, Sarah Palin — don’t give a rip, and I notice we are very seldom the ones to bring up these contraband subjects. Meghan McCain talks about Sarah Palin much more often than Sarah talks about Meghan. Meghan talks about Sarah much more often than Sarah talks about Sarah.

What is it like to live like this, with all this concern about what total strangers, whom you have no way of meeting and thus will always be strangers, might be talking about & thinking about? Good heavens. Even real writers manage to dredge up concern only about something vaguely resembling this: Will they think about my latest piece long enough to put some money down on it? And then they move on. The Meghan/Wonkette crowd on the other hand, has made it their own personal migraine to fret away about where the attention of complete strangers should not be going.

Meh. That’s just strange. But no more so than blaming your lack of dating on a former state Governor who currently holds no public position.

Hey, is that why a completely unskilled and unqualified junior Senator got elected to the White House? So the whole country would stop paying any attention to Sarah Palin? Just another promise on which He’s failed to deliver? Come to think of it, has Meghan ever gone on record to say she voted for her Dad? Hmmmmmm……..

Well, I’m not going to be thinking too much of Meghan McCain — but as far as I’m concerned, anybody else can watch or pay attention to whatever they want. The only thing I want to know about Ms. McCain is the one thing she doesn’t seem to want to describe about herself: What is it about the Republican party that makes her want to be in it? Some Republican position on some issue, somewhere? Any at all?

But don’t worry about it, because kids’ punishments are confidential.

KION 46, via Treacher, via Instapundit.

They don’t, sez Neal Boortz. And the video backs him up on that.

I do think the Republican guy was kind of a dick, but…even with that, it seems a little early for the “take my ball and go home” tactic. You’re essentially saying one plus two make minus-five…you’ve offered absolutely nothing to back this up except “President Obama has submitted a wonderful plan.” Absolutely nothing.

Nothing except — Stop Booing When All I Want is Applause!

These are the people who will be tough to beat in 2012 huh? I just don’t know about that…ever since January of ’09 it’s been all, “You know our plans will work because we’re so wonderful and awesome, or at least our guy-at-the-top is!” America is thoroughly sick and tired of hearing it. Fed-freakin’-up. And they’re still at it, because they have nothing else to say. So they’ll keep this up for…get ready for this, sit down, emphasis on…another year and a half. Eeeyah…seventeen months, and change, of “the square root of three must be googleplex, because Obama’s awesome.”

Christ on a cracker, I wouldn’t wanna be them.

Boortz interviews the author of a newspaper essay that says we should balance the budget by raising taxes on the richest one percent.

If you know Neal Boortz, you know this is going to be entertaining. Mr. Trimble explicitly uses the word “wealthy”; I’m just listening to the first few minutes of it now, I wonder if there will be clarification on exactly what this means. Assets or income? What kind of assets, what kind of income?

Update: Oh…at about 4:00 we get it…one percent per year. Raise taxes each year for the foreseeable future ten years. Wow, yeah that oughtta work well.

The essay is here. Have to read it when I get time.

I see at about 6:15 Boortz has inflicted a gaping flesh wound. Nice to hear.

From here.

Refusing to govern.

ADA abuse.

Raise awareness!

Hat tip to Sonic.

Unexpectedly. And corporate profits fall.

Hat tip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, who asks the pointed question:

Notice how economic news that most Americans could easily predict always seem to catch Reuters by surprise?

Hmmmmmm………

…pesky, pesky data.

Hat tip to William Teach.

Credibility problems.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

Liberated.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Hate mail.

What a putz.

In full retreat, a humiliated and somber Ed Schultz opened his MSNBC show on Wednesday night by apologizing to Laura Ingraham for using, on his radio show, “vile and inappropriate language” to describe her, language he did not repeat. On Tuesday, the left-wing host had slimed the conservative talk radio host as a “right-wing slut” and a “radio slut.” (After Schultz’s statement, Thomas Roberts hosted the rest of the hour.)

Schultz pleaded: “I am deeply sorry, and I apologize. It was wrong, uncalled for and I recognize the severity of what I said. I apologize to you, Laura, and ask for your forgiveness.” He added that “I also met with management here at MSNBC, and understanding the severity of the situation and what I said on the radio and how it reflected terribly on this company, I have offered to take myself off the air for an indefinite period of time with no pay.” The official NBC management statement, however, said he had agreed to “one week of unpaid leave.”

But let’s be honest, this wasn’t Tourette syndrome or any involuntary spasm. There are a whole lot of people running around thinking something like — sexism is bad, racism is bad, we should enforce etiquette, we should end careers of people caught saying the wrong things, indeed we need to look for reasons to do so…but if you successfully advance a conservative agenda and you belong to a minority group, or you are a female, then all bets are off.

That’s what this is really about. That’s what it has always been about. Second-class citizens who aren’t entitled to the same things, namely the same expectations of respect, to which “normal” people are entitled. There is this sentiment out there, embraced by large numbers of people — they aren’t all on teevee — that women and minorities carry some special obligation to be liberals. A white male taking up a position somewhere to the political right of Hillary Clinton is a jackass and a jerk and a “teabagger” or something; but a homosexual or a woman or Hispanic or African-American doing the same thing, is to be subjected to the prerational curse of ostracism. You shall be shunned, whoever does not shun you shall be shunned, whoever does not shun he who did not shun you shall likewise be shunned.

In keeping with that, Schultz shunned Ingraham so he wouldn’t be shunned. He had to do it, and with the same events playing out again he’d do it again. We’ll see a whole lot more of this, because that is how it works.

Seems very contrite, very sincere. Just like Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking…but let’s take a look at the original crime.

See, I’m wondering: When Ed Schultz apologizes for using that word and promises never to do it again, does that mean — the Ed Schultz show is going to discuss the issues, the ramifications of doing A versus B? Or at least the ramifications involved of doing A versus not doing A? As opposed to the ritual garbage of attacking “the Republicans” for daring to support something other than ritual leftist dogma? I doubt it. There is symbolism involved in that word “slut,” and what is represented has absolutely nothing to do with being an indiscrete slovenly woman of ill repute. Laura Ingraham was sent down a chute into a refuse pile because she deviated from the expected thought process: Think about your “next-door neighbor,” spend the money, screw the taxpayers, and everything Obama does is wonderful. Anyone who wanders out of that rigid outline is sub-human and that’s all we need to discuss. If a woman or minority wanders out of that rigid outline then it counts double, in fact there’s a virtual perceived bounty to be awarded if you trash-talk them. Just make sure the right people are paying attention when you do it.

I’m glad there’s nothing but a smoking crater where he was standing a short time earlier, but that’s the leafy part of the weed. The root is fully intact, and it is this: Liberals believe in derailing any discussion that becomes thoughtful enough that their own ideas are treated with anything but instant acceptance. They believe in marginalizing the opposition as a primary means of exchanging ideas. They believe in prerationalism. “So, we’re all on board, right?” is the only sentiment they see as valid in any meeting-of-the-minds about anything…they don’t know what to do with dissent and they don’t even know what to do with questions. If they encounter any skepticism at all — even the talk-show dickheads, like Schultz — they pretty much wing it from that point, with far more concern about climbing their own little social ladders than bringing the situation to a beneficial resolution.

And sometimes…a lot of the time…the results are very ugly.

Hmmm. Well, glad to see this is still making the rounds. Nicely captures the Obama-narcissistic-personality “You Should Be Thanking Me” aspect of the modern leftist movement.

I recently went through my day being mindful of what taxes do for me. I took a shower in clean water. I drove to work over safe, well-maintained streets. I was free to practice a profession of my choosing. I am able to do this work because I got my degree at a California state school and passed the California Board exam to earn my license.

On the way home, I stopped at an FDIC bank to take out some money that I had earned and am allowed to keep to support myself and my family. I stopped at a grocery store and bought safe food to eat due to various government regulations. I took my dog for a walk at a beautiful regional park. I picked up a takeout dinner at a restaurant inspected by state inspectors. And I went to sleep in peace.

Government exists to provide us with tangible things that an individual cannot provide for himself. I am so tired of people complaining about taxes as if they get nothing in return. It takes money to run a government that allows us to live our lives as we do.

So, let’s be grown-up about it and raise taxes to keep California from becoming a third-world country.

Got that? History always began yesterday…and California teeters on the brink of becoming “a third-world country”…because of, oh, nuthin’ in particular, but it needs to raise taxes to pay for more regulation to keep from becoming one.

California does.

Yup.

The “I am able to do this work because I got my degree at a California state school and passed the California Board exam” is particularly snort-worthy. Evidently the author, grown-up Susan Wong who I’m sure is paying extra taxes to reflect the level to which she thinks they should be raised, didn’t think it necessary to write such a letter while she was sitting on an unemployment line waiting for someone to make the key decision: That hiring Ms. Wong was worth the extra time, effort and money involved with meeting regulatory requirements. That part of it just wasn’t worth talking about?

This is precisely the point where it becomes a legitimate discipline of scientific research in the mental health field. Wouldn’t it be more productive to stretch leftist statism over a psychiatrist’s couch, and pepper it with questions about what its parents were like and what its phobias are, than to argue with it interminably over the innernets? The patient seems to have made up its mind to charge on ahead…Taxes! Regulation! …ignorant, or apathetic, or both, of its own goals, whether said goals have something to do with solving a problem, what the nature of the problem might be, how exactly it got here…

…whether the other 49 states are having any better luck dealing with the same problem, or what they might be doing differently. And meanwhile — government, for some reason, simply doesn’t have the capacity to do anything wrong. Corporations, on the other hand, simply don’t have it in their character to ever do anything right.

And by & large, these are exactly the same people who think it’s a good thing that the movie & teevee culture has turned its back on the “classic western” genre or anything anywhere built around straight-up good-versus-evil contests. Better to have these shades-of-gray people to reflect the nuances present in real life. Hooker with the heart of gold. “I have to steal it in order to save it.” He’s got to assassinate the ambassador or the super-duper bad guy will kill his daughter. Sure Anakin turned to the Dark Side, but he did it for love. It’s not the black hats & white hats the offend our liberals, it’s what is represented; they like having a little good in the evil, and a little evil in the good. It makes for a whole bunch of interesting debates. So it’s always too soon for a remake of Gunsmoke, but we can remake everything else…

But when it comes to their own plans, government can be Shane and anything in the private sector can be Jack Wilson. Simplicity is perfectly fine then. When…uh…when we’re talking about real life? The real life that was supposed to be emulated by these movie characters with all these shades of gray they needed to have, to better reflect real life?

An explanation is required. If one is not forthcoming, we need a sound theory. Three possibilities emerge:

1. It’s pure cognitive dissonance, and should be treated as a mental disorder.
2. I’m mistaken. This Susan Wong person who “wrote” the e-mail, or the author who originally wrote it, along with the many leftists who say it speaks for them…they’re different from the people who cringe at the classic western with the white hats and the black hats. There’s no overlap, it’s a figment of my imagination.
3. It’s not so much a conspiracy, more like a primal impulse or a gut instinct — things are generally more satisfying when people are “debating” what goes on in a movie and what it says about the characters, than when they skeptically inspect government policies that actually might have a measurable impact on large numbers of people.

Maybe there should be a fourth option that combines #1 and #3…a certifiable mental illness that calls for endless discourse about issues that bear little actual impact on things, and an “elephant-in-the-room” silent treatment directed toward other issues that bear much greater impact.

I’d lean toward that one.

But whatever the cause, it’s worth inspecting the thought process: Government can’t do anything wrong, or if it ever does, it’s wrong so little of the time that the lack of frequency of the wrong-ness brings the occasion down to the depths of statistical insignificance. Government is the clock in a roomful of clocks, the one that was synchronized down to the second to the official atomic clock a few weeks ago, or that enjoys the reputation of keeping the most accurate time, or is perceived to deserve such a rep because it is the most expensive (!) of all the clocks. There are no unintended consequences of government policies. There’s something about being on the government’s payroll, that makes a person instantly pure, ethical and wise. Government actions always work, or if ever they don’t, the thing to do is to double-down and try it again because you didn’t do enough.

But of course, more than half of the time the United States President happens to be a Republican…at which time, this same government turns wretchedly, abysmally evil. And then, government can’t do anything right. But we are not to think of this when we ponder the implications of having government manage the most intimate aspects of our lives. It’s like a complete non-starter or something.

Why do we allow these people to vote in politicians? And the ones who are politicians, why do we let them write legislation that, once voted in, cannot ever be repealed and just hang around like a fart in an elevator? Why do we give them such power? These people, crazy or not, shouldn’t be allowed to own potted plants or pets.

Victor Davis Hanson sums up life in the Golden State. It isn’t pretty by a damn sight.

Tens of thousands of prisoners are scheduled by a U.S. Supreme Court order to be released. But why this inability to house our criminals when we pay among the highest sales, income, and gas taxes in the nation? Too many criminals? Too few new prisons? Too high costs per prisoner? Too many non-violent crimes that warrant incarceration?
:
Our schools rate just below Mississippi in math and science. Tell me why, given our high taxes and highest paid teachers in the nation? Can the governor or legislature explain? Is the culprit the notoriously therapeutic California curriculum? The inability to fire incompetent teachers? The vast number of non-English speaking students? Derelict parents? How odd that not a single state official can offer any explanation other than: “We need more money.” What is the possible cure for the near worst math and science students in the nation? Yes, I see it now: the California Senate just passed a bill mandating the teaching of homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered history, just the sort of strategy to raise those English composition and vocabulary scores among the linguistic and arithmetic illiterate.

Try driving a California “freeway” lately, say the 101 between Gilroy and San Luis Obispo or the 99 between Modesto and Stockton, or an east-west lateral like the 152 between Casa de Fruita and Gilroy, or the 12 between Napa and Stockton. In other words, just try driving across the state. These stretches are all nightmarish death traps (the concrete divider on the two-lane 12 is a sick joke, a sort of kill-contraption), no improvements from 40 years ago when there were 15 million fewer people and far better drivers. But how did this happen when we pay the highest gasoline taxes in the nation; where did the revenue go? Is there some cruel joke I’m missing — a stash of billions in gas tax money buried somewhere and never used?

That just sums up life in California right there: Is there a big stash somewhere? A big palette of hundred dollar bills being used to level out a table with a shorter leg, or maybe for extra insulation the attic? Otherwise, it doesn’t add up. It’s like handing over your paycheck to your lovely wife, month after month, year after year — but the the bank account is still empty, the bills still show up past-due, every single one of ’em…and dinner is always liver & onions or ham hock soup. Or that ever-popular modern-American single-income-household cuisine, I-didn’t-feel-like-cooking-let’s-order-out.

VDH is on to us. Our state treasury is a black hole; the astronomical metaphor applies every single way it possibly can. The escape velocity has long ago exceeded c, the speed of light, and nothing in our known universe can escape it. The gravity well only increases with every bit of detritus and flotsam that becomes so ensnared.

It isn’t very happy reading, but it is necessary reading. Especially if you are sharing this state with me. Or rather what’s left of the state.

Hat tip again to Gerard Van der Leun.

Quoth me, this weekend, after the supposed end of all Creation:

See, there are two reasons why people might care that you were here once: You got up off your ass and did something, or you were here when it all come to a screeching halt.

Getting up off your ass is hard.

Therefore, we have this perpetual fantasy, going on and on since 1000 AD give or take, that the world is ending. It’s just people who wish to be significant, people who want to matter, but don’t want to be bothered with getting up off their asses.

I don’t know if James Taranto reads my blog. I have always taken it as a given that hardly anybody does. But how else do you explain this gem from Best of the Web yesterday?

Doomsday superstitions seem to fulfill a basic psychological need. On the surface, the thought that God or global warming will destroy the world within our lifetimes is horrifying. But all of us are doomed; within a matter of decades, every person alive will experience the end of his own world. A belief in the hereafter makes the thought of death less terrifying. But so does a disbelief in the here, after. If the world is to end with us–if there is no life for anyone after our death–we are not so insignificant after all.

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

However — it should be pointed out these ruminations on the feeling of comfort, or placation, to be found from embracing the latest world-is-ending merry-go-round…whether borrowed from these unread pages or not…represent just an afterthought after Taranto has made a larger point, which we did not make here:

Why are only religious doomsday cultists subjected to such ridicule? Reuters notes that “[Harold] Camping previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994.” Ha ha, you can’t believe anything this guy says! But who jeered at the U.N.’s false prediction that there would be 50 million “climate refugees” by 2010? We did, but not Reuters.

This is an interesting question. At first, it seems the answer is obvious: The U.N. was snookered by peer pressure. I remember all the bullying like it was yesterday, all the “thousands of scientists agree with this and who in the world are you to say otherwise?” Caving in to peer pressure might be a sign of weak intellect, but it certainly isn’t a sign of insanity. If it were, that would mean eighty percent of the people with whom we attended high school, and perhaps more, were nuts. So that’s out. That’s the allure of peer pressure isn’t it? If everyone agrees with you, it doesn’t matter if what you did makes any sense, or not. You must not be nuts. Camping, on the other hand, might very well be clinically insane.

But here we come to another interesting point, a fortunate point into which we have blundered, and we owe this to Taranto. The results are pretty much the same. Coming to the wrong conclusion because you were taken for a ride on the bandwagon; coming to the wrong conclusion because you’re a nutbar. The results are exactly the same. Now, why are we concerned about people being insane, again? Why do we bother to make this differentiation? If it has something to do with the decisions being made, then why do we act like it is of absolutely no consequence, when obviously phony things become ostensibly real — just because lots of people have bought into them?

Come to think of it, are there any stories out there of Harold Camping reacting with sneering condescension to any skeptics out there against his flawed Judgment Day prediction of 5/21/11? Any stories about him working “behind the scenes” to get such skeptics shut down, or rather, shut up? I have yet to read any such thing about him. The global-warming hysterics, on the other hand…

Over thirty years ago, maybe thirty-five, my late mother got me turned on to James Michener books.

From Centennial, Chapter 12 — the book, not the teevee miniseries:

She was a soft-spoken, gray-haired woman of fifty, carrying a jar of honey. It seemed unlikely that she was lying, for men whispered, “Her husband and sons were hanged. She is thirsty for revenge.”

So a raiding party was organized, with this woman, still holding her jar of honey, serving as cout and Frijoles himself in command. They forayed eastward and the woman led them to a small valley where Colonel Salcedo had been forced to hole up, awaiting reinforcements, and when Frijoles saw that Salcedo was indeed among the troops, he became frenzied and led three suicidal charges into the mouths of the guns, and the federal soldiers were overwhelmed and slain one after another, but Salcedo was kept alive and taken prisoner.

He was a brave man. His thin mustache did not quiver when he faced his mortal adversay, and he stood firm in his polished German boots. Apparently Colonel Frejoles had long anticipated tis moment, for he knew precisely what he wanted to do. With his own hands he stripped Salcedo of all his clothes save the gleaming boots. Then he staked him out on a level piece of ground, where the sun would strike him evenly and roast him to death. Each hand was lashed to its own stake; each ankle tied to its stake, with all ropes pulled taut. He would be dead by nightfall.

But for the woman that was not enough. Into each orifice of the naked man’s body she trickled a thin stream of honey: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, anus — all were smeared so the savage ants of the desert would find them. And then the woman and Frijoles withdrew to watch the sun and the insects go to work, and when the screams were most agonized, Tranquilino asked, “Can I shoot him?” and Frijoles said, “No.”

End of chapter. Like…whoa.

Books is more savage than anything on the teevee, including Quentin Tarantino products. And chicks bring the beatdown with less mercy than dudes, anytime…when the occasion calls for it. Even in real life, where things don’t necessarily have to make sense — has any bereaved husband or father avenged his family in such a way? Makes Charles Bronson’s Death Wish franchise look like a Sunday picnic.

Blogsister Cassy linked over at the Hello Kitty of Bloggin’ to a story at HotAir about some ultra-urban everlastingly-angry male athlete, or rap artist, or whatever…going on record, babbling some kind of foolish nonsense about “the streets”:

Same old story: Order cannot prevail over chaos, until & unless order first surrenders to chaos.

Well, I don’t perform for a living with some hackneyed angry-tough-male act; I build stuff for a living, and if my stuff doesn’t work then I’m out of a job and that’s when I hit “the streets.” So I think this gives me cause to look at things differently. One of the first things I noticed…

It’s interesting nobody ever seems to say something like “lower taxes or there will be a crime wave” or “less regulation or there will be a crime wave.”

Hours later, I was notified of a change in the arrangements coming up picking up my son. Nothing big, an extra 160 miles, two ways, another tank of gas, and — really, this is the only thing I don’t see as an insignificant irritant — an extra five hours. You know, no biggie. “Kidzmom” knew I’d make her squirm over it, and I did just for ritual’s sake. But I’m not really put out anything…so it was a ritual. And I went on with it, pretty much as a favor to her, so she could go back to the local wife who over-promised her, so she could go back and club her husband over the head, who got some kind of itchy thought between his ears that started the whole shitball rolling downhill…on to me. And my fiance. Where it is sure to roll. Since we deliver on things. See, it’s the same principle as “watch how crime picks up if you take away our game.” The people who deliver on things, must yield; the people who don’t deliver on things and live life just minute-to-minute, get to decide things for everybody else…when, since they live life minute-to-minute and don’t plan anything, they don’t even care. They’re put in the driver’s seat anyway.

Like I said: Order cannot prevail over chaos until such time as order surrenders to chaos.

Where exactly goes that get you?

I’ll answer that: It gets you here…

It’s designed to protect the President from terror attacks but Barack Obama was left red-faced after one of his armour-plated Cadillacs was brought to a halt as it left the U.S. Embassy in Dublin.

The gigantic bomb-proof General Motors vehicle, with eight-inch thick steel on its door, didn’t even make it as far as the road outside the consulate.

The car had to be abandoned after the collision in front of waving crowds while Mr Obama and his wife were en route to his ancestral home in County Offaly.

Luckily, the vehicle that broke down was the spare limo used by the President’s Secret Service protection team.

Mechanics rushed in to rescue the vehicle which was lodged helplessly on the ramp, while onlookers stood and watched – some of whom took video footage and photos.

The cars, worth over $1million, is 18ft in length, weighs 8 tons and 8in thick armour plating on its doors.

When the President is riding in one, the vehicle is officially known as Cadillac One. However, it’s more apt nickname is ‘The Beast’.

Specially built for Mr Obama, the General Motors GM.N vehiclse boasts its own oxygen supply in case of chemical attack and puncture resistant, run-flat tyres reinforced with kevlar.

However none of this, it appears, could overcome the might of a lowly speed hump.

Hang on, I’m going to pick this up in just a second…be right back…hang on…++snkckxx++

BWAAAAAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAA!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!! BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ++giggle++ ++snort++ (wipe tears from my eyes)

What’s so funny about this? I had more wisdom to dispense at the Hello Kitty of Bloggin’…

The really delicious irony here is: What is a speed bump? It’s a device used for traffic management, by means of interfering with the efforts of motorists who get too big for their britches…you know, the riff-raff. Obama’s immobilization comes from His coming into contact with the onerous regulatory device…much like one of His close pals who might have forgotten or neglected to pick up the ObamaCare waiver. The result? The whole parade comes to a screeching halt. Whereas, if He was tootling around in my 4-cylinder 2006 Honda…or in His predecessor’s chariot of choice…it would have been nothing but a bump in the road, literally.

See, our country…our disaffected, and bored, country…laboring under the delusion that life at the time sucked somehow, like we were getting our teeth kicked in by our (chuckle) tarnished reputation around the world…when, in reality, things were actually going pretty well for us, apart from the fact that our economy was imploding because liberal politicians were making all kinds of bullshit mortgage guarantees and, in fact, manufacturing the so-called “toxic assets” we came to need their special magic brand-new programs to clean up…which didn’t work. Apart from that, we actually had life pretty good. The House of Eratosthenes “real motto for America” applied well, in those days, as well as now: “Our Poor People Are Fat.”

But we felt oppressed, so we voted in an Alpha Male to run the country. The kind of guy who never has to change plans to accommodate somebody else…quite the other way around. A super special boy-god-king kinda guy. It’s His World The Rest Of Us Just Live In It!

And then He got Himself a super car. Because hey, when you’re riding around telling your lowly subjects to stop emitting carbon, eight miles a gallon is only the most reasonable rate to gulp down that diesel fuel. Five miles a gallon might be better…or gallons per mile…whatever.

But my point is, isn’t this a constant in chaos-before-order land? We’ve got these so-called “alpha males” — who, really, are just buffoons when you get down to it. Just clowns. They don’t build anything, they don’t make anything work, they just show off. They enjoy the finer things in life just because of their super-awesomeness, and we know they have this super-awesomeness because they’re enjoying the finer things in life. So their very existences become circular arguments. Their admirers sit on the sidelines and moan and wail away something to the effect of…”Well, the cycle must have gotten started somehow right? There must be something special about that guy, right?”

Uh, yeah. He expects it because His mom…small-m mom…was low class and didn’t teach Him any better. He’s a jackwagon. He’s a dick. A lot of the time…nearly all of the time…it’s no more complicated than that. Beginning to get the picture? What we have been taught, since middle school, to think of as “alpha males” are really phony alpha males. The clowns. No-talent guy-smileys.

See, the problem isn’t with these kinds of people. They’re always going to be like that. The immediate problem is, America has become temporarily infatuated with returning to the womb…we didn’t stick to our knitting, we began constructing a new royal family, someone Chosen By God to rule. Two universes were brought into conflict, because His Royal Majesty Barack The First was awarded an awesome wonderful set of wheels befitting His high station…but alas, had to contend with a roadway built for ordinary mortals. With a speed bump. His Deity-ness was compelled to bring one saintly foot into contact with the place where civil engineers work overtime to hurt the drivers, to make driving a painful experience “For The Greater Good.” Were the vehicle to remain massive and awesome, but the speed bump left out of the equation, all would be well. Were the speed bump to remain, but the vessel to be more humble, His Royal Schedule would continue throughout the day unmolested. It is where the two came into contact, the temporal and the divine, where trouble unfurled.

See, the problem is not the people. The problem isn’t the speed bumps, and the problem isn’t the thugs who get face time on some teevee interview where they get to threaten people. The problem is the social contract. The reliable people, the producers, the people who make things that didn’t exist before, the service-people, the people who actually deliver on things…are positioned, systematically, down at the end of the whip. There, they deal with all the chaos and the uncertainty — manufactured by others — only because they have demonstrated that they can. At that far end of the whip which gets cracked, they deal with the things of their own making as well as with the things made by others who are not as reliable as they are. The other people near the handle, who are agents of chaos, then do not have to deal with the things of their own making…because they have demonstrated, repeatedly, that they would not be ready, willing or able to. And so the disorder that they create every hour of every day, by failing to deliver on what they said they would do…is systematically drawn off of them, along with the associated consequences. The things they would not know how to build, like Kevlar-armored limousines with 6.5L diesel engines, are given to them. The lower hoi polloi are left to deal with the speed bumps…except when the exalted saintly alpha males drive over them by mistake.

Eventually, the whole system is shown not to work…but those consequences, too, are drained away. Mechanics rush in to take care of the disabled “Beast,” while His Holiness makes use of a spare Beast.

And for those criminals who make crime happen in “the streets” just because some football game is not being played — we have this screwball lawyered-up defense industry, to offer the “accused” their supposedly “constitutional” rights.

The real tragedy here is that Ray Lewis is right, just not in a way he expects to be right. There’s an “eighty-twenty” rule at work here: Twenty percent of us are dealing with eighty percent of the consequences of human failure, human unreliability, human fickleness. Another twenty percent of us are responsible for manufacturing that eighty percent of human unreliability, where it did not exist before. Those two twenty-percents, are not the same. They’re at opposite ends of the spectrum.

The twenty percent that does the dealing with the eighty percent of human unreliability, are also responsible for producing eighty percent of the wealth. And then everybody makes a big deal out of the fact that fifty percent of the wealth is enjoyed by ten percent of the people, well you know what? No duh.

But there’s a “tip-over” aspect to this. If twenty percent of us are creating eighty percent of the missed deadlines, or gaps in the social contract, which are then absorbed by the twenty percent at the other end of the spectrum…people see this happening, and it provides a powerful incentive for the next generation to become the chaotic twenty percent, rather than the orderly productive twenty percent. And in a few years, you know what? It’s not an eighty-twenty rule anymore. It’s more of a ninety-ten rule. And then a ninety-seven-three rule. And then a ninety-nine-one rule.

At some point, things do tip over, I think. It would have to be that way, would it not? At some point, the productive/orderly individual would become so scarce, that he’d stop losing control and start to gain it back again…write his own meal ticket, as it were. He doesn’t bust blood vessels or work himself into an early grave producing more. He just produces whatever he produces…and everybody else can fight like wild feral creatures over who gets to consume.

Whereupon, we run smack headlong into the original definition of “alpha male” in the first place. The top dog who gets the first pick. But you know what? The top-dog among a bunch of wild feral creatures, is still a pitiful, pathetic, wild feral creature.

And so Ray Lewis gave our country some pretty good cause, I think, to be embarrassed. He showed that our civilization, in some parts at least, is a dysfunctional civilization that cannot continue in its present form. He spoke on behalf of that other world, the world in which the chaotic, destructive, non-producers get what they want. By offering to the orderly, productive producers — not value to be traded for products and services received — but threats.

And our current President embarrassed the country too. The abortive journey of The Beast, as I noted, was metaphorical. It shows that this working relationship in our civilized nation, in which a non-producing, chaos-oriented “alpha male” of a scavenging beast, is freely given the spoils of the work of all the lower-ranking, but productive, producers. And comes to rely on it; can’t do without it. And is given a steady flow of it.

But becomes stalled, incapacitated, and helpless anyway. The argument does not ensue, only because there is no point having it, no rebuttal is possible: Our way of life is not sustainable. The people we have invested with the power to make rules, do not know enough to make anything else — they can only jab their fists or fingers in the air and pronounce that this, that, or some other damn silly thing, “should” be a certain way. Israel’s borders should be over here, that wealth should be spread around it’s good for everybody…et cetera. They can’t do anything else. The people who know how to make things people can actually use, have bored us, and so we have made sure all the important decisions are made by lesser, non-productive people. The supposed “alpha males.” Who know how to opine, and speechify, and not a damn single other thing.

Who end up being laughing-stocks when their limousines get stalled. Who end up waiting around for a real alpha male, to bail their unproductive non-producing super-pontificating phony-alpha-male asses out of trouble yet another time. While they stand their in their failed glory, before the snapping digital cameras.

So the question that naturally arises: What’s the point of having an alpha male at all? If the people who get to decide who the alpha male is, can’t put any quality thought into what makes one?

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.

…in order to give rich people tax cuts.

Thanks to Newsbusters.

This kind of thing interests me because it cuts right to the heart of what is “right wing” and what is “left wing.” Supposedly, the terms came into use during & right before the French Revolution; you were right-wing if you were a royalist and backing Louis XVI, and you were a lefty if you backed Napoleon.

Today, it seems to me both sides are for some kind of freedom, at least if you believe in a literal way the words used by each side to describe itself…”right wing” is defense of our economic freedom, “left wing” is defense of some other kind of freedom. Someone, somewhere, must be lying since if it were that simple, an amalgamation of some kind would be inevitable wouldn’t it? We’d try to find some way to enjoy all kinds of freedoms. That’s not happening — nobody seems to be breaking a sweat trying to make it happen — so one side, or the other, must be not quite so chummy with the concept of freedom as they’re presenting themselves.

And then it occurs to me: What policy advanced by the left — anywhere! — is there to make some product or service easier to acquire in a free market? Or merely to preserve the status quo, for that matter…I can’t think of a single one, across all these issues. If there can be organized labor, they want it. If there can be a minimum wage, they want it raised. If there can be some bit of onerous regulation, they want that, and you’d better believe if there can be a tax they want that too.

It seems the only way they ever want it easier for anybody to be able to get hold of something they need, is if there’s a plan for that thing to be given away for “free,” compliments of the taxpayer. Oh, sorry…the “rich people.” Right.

That would be the former Congresswoman from Georgia, Cynthia McKinney…

A former U.S. congresswoman slammed U.S. policy on Libyan state TV late Saturday and stressed the “last thing we need to do is spend money on death, destruction and war.”

The station is fiercely loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and her interview was spliced with what appeared to be rallies in support of the embattled Libyan leader.

“I think that it’s very important that people understand what is happening here. And it’s important that people all over the world see the truth. And that is why I am here … to understand the truth,” former Rep. Cynthia McKinney said during a live interview.

Much that is objectionable here. The overall tone is the same ol’ hippie nonsense, that all war is a product of misunderstanding and we can make it go away if everybody understands each other. I’m becoming cumulatively impatient with this, since I started reading it all as a confession of ignorance with regard to world history — which is chock full of brand new wars flaring up among people who understood each other just fine.

But what really frosted me was when she started picking on Holy Man:

The former Georgia representative also slammed the economic policies of U.S. President Barack Obama and said the government of the United States no longer represents the interests of the American people.

“Under the economic policies of the Obama administration, those who have the least are losing the most. And those who have the most are getting even more,” she said. “The situation in the United States is becoming more dire for average ordinary Americans and the last thing we need to do is to spend money on death, destruction and war.”

Somewhere in a closet is a placard marked up with “Under the economic policies of the [insert name here] administration, those who have the least are losing the most.”

My son and I rode the light rail downtown, back in ’09, and ran into a real live communist. He was all excited about attending his commie demonstration in downtown San Francisco, all about how we can’t take any more oppression from The Man & all, with a special keynote speaker Michael Moore! Yay! The election had only just happened, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing…the election had gone just the way Moore wanted, had it not? The hope, the change, whatever happened to that?

It was like speaking Latin to a dog. When you’re a revolutionary, history always began yesterday morning. So, yeah. There are people out there who think of Barack Obama as a symbol of all the ugliest right-wing shibboleths — blood for oil, corporate greed, keeping grass illegal, blah blah blah. And we need to get rid of Obama so we can bring the government back to The People…but they’re not Tea Party people, they’re high-drama lefties who don’t really care who’s running the show at any given time, that guy needs to go so we can Take Our Country Back. Perfect bliss is constantly one revolution away. The entire life being lived out on a turning point; the inevitable straight-away is something that simply doesn’t fit into their comprehension.

I dunno who they think they’re fooling. Themselves, maybe? But you don’t need to pay attention for too long before it becomes clear these people are never, ever going to be happy.

Warning, contains naughty language like “son of a bitch” for example…

From Trevor Loudon, once again arriving via e-mail from GBIL.

Hmmmm…not sure about this. Wonder Woman is looking sluttish, sloshing around & getting ready to pop out. Still, you have to appreciate it when someone rolls Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, DC and Marvel into a great big burrito and works some “give-a-damn” into it…even if the end-product remains a sloppy mess.

Leia and WW are both easy on the eyes, that doesn’t hurt.

Click for enlarged version. Not-mixed-audience-appropriate subject matter, not to be read before sharing the public roads with your fellow motorists…

Thanks to GBIL (Girlfriend’s Brother-In-Law) for forwarding these in the e-mails again.

Now that I’m engaged, should I be calling him FBIL? Just wonderin’…

I got schooled over on WizBangBlog by this insightful commenter…he presumes I’m recommending the Republican campaign be confined to economic issues, when what I’m really recommending is more like these issues should take the lead. But I figure that’s my fault, since as the writer I never really made this distinction.

Regardless, these are good, well-thought-out comments:

It’s about far more than the economy -freedom, the constituion [sic], the right to keep and practice your faith, innocent life, no more Kelo, no laws created by handfuls of robed masters in courts, no more lifetime leaders, no more abuse of the public treasury by the ruling class to entrench themselves and their friends, no more support for mind altering educational games, no more eco-worship -just eco-sense, no more coddling and encouraging radical enemies -preparation for our own reverse jihad makes perfect sense etc.

It’s in regard to this post over here, which was picked up by blogger friend Rick.

So to summarize, we have — economic autonomy. And then we have sovereignty of the individual. The first has to do with business transactions; if I value your money more than some possession I have, and you value my possession more than that quantity of money, is it a done deal? Can we just conduct the transaction without a pastiche of government regulations and special taxes? And coupled in with that, are the consequences of thinking otherwise. Simply put, the job market sucks right now. The whole economy sucks. “Could be better” just completely fails to capture the depth and magnitude of misery that shrouds us…needlessly, might I add.

Here’s a better explanation, than most, of how this cause-and-effect is coupled up:

And then the second one, captured by the WizBang commenter, has to do with human dignity. The relationship we people have with our government. Up until the Heller decision, I would have said gun control was the most brilliant beacon of an example-issue representing this broader concern. Now that that’s more-or-less a dead issue, and the right side won, I’d say it’s health care. Across the board, the thing being argued about is an Archimedean lever-that-moves-Earth.

Can we position such levers properly, and then entrust them to these super-smart people whom we elect, and more super-smart people whom those elected people then appoint — to manage our private affairs just so, more beneficially than we would? That’s another debate that has been dragging on for a good long time, and likely won’t be permanently resolved one way or another. I have the impression we are arguing about how people have chosen to manage their personal lives: Through individual responsibility, or through surrender to some other party who will then decide all the hard stuff. People aren’t going to change the fabric that makes them up, so we’re going to just keep arguing about this.

This second issue is summarized by Ronald Reagan, when he said something like “if none of us can adequately manage our own affairs, then who among us has what it takes to manage everybody else’s?”

But these two issues — let go of the economy so it can thrive, and let go of the people so that they can decide things personally and responsibly — in my mind, are linked. And yes, that includes the right to be born. The whole argument of “until you cross this finish line, you legally don’t exist” is frightening, because if that applies to this class of person over here, then where else can such a rule be applied? And is such an argument really based on respect for the rule of law? I see many who insist on this vaginal-finish-line litmus test, completely flip-flop on their outlook on the complex issues when the subject turns to illegal immigration; suddenly they become “world without borders” people, and if the law says you’re in the country illegally, well then gol’ darn it, that law must be wrong. Hello? Now, how is the unborn baby not a person, again?

What underlies all this is the notion of “rights” and what they are. If you have a right and everybody agrees you have it, but they only agree because they happen to be pleased with it, then it could be said you don’t have the right at all. Rights don’t really count for much unless you can hang on to them even when it irritates the ever luvin’ fecal matter out of the many…or the powerful. And here is the problem with the centralized authority, with the so-called “rights” being adjudicated over-broadly by the “robed masters in courts.” Because then, the rights become conditional; something about non-interference with “The Common Good” or some such. Which means, in the final analysis, the rights no longer exist in any way at all. You only get to keep them when someone powerful decides it’s relatively costless to “let” you have them.

So yes, that’s what the election of 2012 should be about.

But I don’t necessarily see all these things as separate issues. In my mind, they are all inextricably intertwined.