Hat tip to Kate at Small Dead Animals.

Update: They’ve configured their embed code to auto-play, so I have replaced the embed with a link.

I want to bitch up a storm when other blogs have auto-play, see. Can’t go bitching about it if I’m doing the same thing…cool video though. I could go fiddling around with the code trying to shut the auto-play off, but there’s no time for that right now.

We do not hand out the coveted Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award casually. We certainly do not hand it out just because certain individuals out there deign to request that it be granted to them.

But ya know what? That isn’t a disqualification, either.

Mike Simone, one of my friends over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging, is well deserving of the one hundred thirteenth BSIHORL award because of this bumper-sticker-suitable entry:

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.

I’m sad to say, the evidence of Mike’s correctness is all around us today, April 27, 2011, the day His Holiness decided to release His own long-form birth certificate. The blogosphere has gone supernova over this. Actually, not really. It is faintly rumbling. Maybe we should call that “stirring.”

The right side of said ‘sphere is yawning, saying (roughly paraphrased) “Good. Now we can stop paying attention to whether He’s a legal President, and start paying attention to what a gawdawful President He is.”

And the left side of it is screaming “RAAAAAAAACISM!” So you see, nothing is really changed too much. Except, those birthers who were supposed to be maniacal and never satisfied by anything, so what’s the point of releasing the long-form? Actually they’ve been reasonably quiet.

And the end of the day, it’s looking like just another thing King Barry The First should’ve handled differently from the way He did. Oh, and the date 4/27/11? I have a standing challenge for any Obama fan to argue this particular date was a good one to release the long form…according to the interests of the country. I have no doubt it was in the interests, or at least perceived to be in the interests, of the democrat party or of Obama’s re-election campaign. Even then, it looks like an asset that quickly turned into a liability, like something that exploded out of control. Some “tiger by the tail” thing that escaped inept management.

But show me how it was in the interest of America for its President to release His birth certificate on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of April, in the third year of His first term.

And oh my goodness isn’t this more than a little bit awkward:

“We don’t have time for such silliness,” the President said this morning. And then he flew off to Chicago to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

It’s just strategic thinking beginning to end. And I mean that adjective literally, the way you read it straight out of the dictionary:

strategic : designed or trained to strike an enemy at the sources of its military, economic, or political power.

So if you grant Barack Obama the benefit of every possible doubt — and in His world, you damn well better, because as I explained in the post previous He isn’t used to anything else — He really came out on top here! He really socked it to those birther teabagger Republicans. And that’s what it’s all about!

Go look up at that definition again.

Well, two problems with that. One, I don’t think so. I don’t think “Teh Won” won. My standing question “how does it help the US of A to release this on April 27, 2011?” remains a standing question; it is unanswerable. Unless you’ve been living in a hole, you know Obama was painted into a corner by that fellow with the bad hairpiece whose name cannot be mentioned out loud on April 27, 2011. Rhymes with “plump.”

Obama let go of the saucepan handle after He already got a third-degree burn. He didn’t release any document; the document jumped out of His scorched fingers. Once again, inept management. And it looks like it.

Two: My April 27 query is unanswerable because the plain fact of the matter is Obama did not act out of concern for the welfare of the country. Obama acted — again! — to the benefit of Obama.

Obama failed to preside. He acted, again, as His own public-relations manager. And then He failed to attend even to that relatively miniscule task with any degree of competence.

My friend Mike addresses those who labored to prove to — whoever — that they weren’t racists back in 2008. The one flaw in this message is that those who are capable of hearing it, don’t need it. It is self-evident that Obama is not a healer of racial divisions, and cannot be one. He’s too…strategic. And therefore He is inherently divisive. It’s always going to be that way because it always has to be that way.

Add up the following: the attack on the “stupidly” acting Cambridge police, Eric Holder’s “cowards” and “my people,” Justice Sotomayor’s “wise Latina,” Van Jones’ rants against white polluters and mass murderers, the president’s declarations like the following: “And if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘we’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us….’” Or the following, “We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.” Or the race, class, gender video appeal to “young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again.” What, then, is left of a supposedly racially neutral presidency?

In other words, if Obama had modeled his presidency after a Colin Powell’s or Condoleezza Rice’s tenure as secretary of State, then race would have been seen as incidental, not essential, to his character and agenda, and support for his presidency would have been predicated solely on principles rather than appeals to particular identity groups. The current rising racial awareness is no accident, but essential to focus support for liberal issues in traditional terms of polarization, victimization, and increased racial identity — especially as independents get frightened and peel off. Since 2009, we are less seen as an integrated, assimilated, and intermarried melting pot, but more a mosaic of competing interests that predicate their rival claims on society based on race, class, and gender.

Bloc voting and identity — the “base” — aid the Obama agenda; race as inconsequential does not. Before Obama, the now explosive and globally viral video of two young black girls’ savage beating of a white transgendered victim in a McDonald’s would have been one of many tragic morality tales about the generic dangers of drifting into the wrong places at the wrong times in an unsafe contemporary America. But after the precedent of the Skip Gates presidential intervention, the question naturally arises — when and when not does the president intervene in local issues, in symbolic terms, to offer the nation a teachable moment on racial bias: when an elite professor is inconvenienced in private or an adolescent is almost beaten to death in public?

Hat tip for that last one to blogger friend Rick.

Obama’s many shortcomings, I’m afraid, are much bigger than Obama. George Washington would have been horrified at the “brand-name politics” that engulfed the presidency sometime during the twentieth century. Every single President [insert surname here] has to demonstrate what is uniquely wonderful about a [insert surname here] administration. The presidency is supposed to be bigger than any one man, bigger than any one name. When the nation first got started, the vision was that these executives would be mere custodians, or stewards, each attending to the task in a way that would be most obviously beneficial. They had their partisan squabblings about what that was, to be sure. But the dream was that this squabbling would recede into the background. It’s a dead dream, now.

In fact, it’s much worse in this century than it was in the last one. We take it for granted that a “wonderful” administration is only supposed to be wonderful to a select few people. This President here, will deliver things to that constituency over there…everyone else should just resign themselves to going without. And then when he gets voted out of office, it’s that other constituency that will benefit from it, and the previous beneficiaries need to become accustomed to not counting for anything for the next four years…and so it goes.

So these three years without showing anybody the long form? That was a clue. Maybe, for the kind of healing our nation really needs, the right president has yet to be born. But if he is living among us, over thirty-five, ready to assume the mantle of that executive power…Barack Obama was not the guy. Because we knew early on that He fits the mold of my Monopoly-brat. He runs into a rule, and where George Washington would dismount his horse, bow courteously, and comply with the rule — it seems to be Emperor Barack’s place to exploit every little margin of doubt, every little loophole, to His advantage so He can stick it to the people who need to have it stuck to them.

What else would you expect from the guy who thinks it’s His place to make the oceans recede? No, that is not a manufactured quote. He really said that.

Twenty-twelve is coming fast. Prove you’re not an idiot.

I have to admit, if you woke me up out of a sound sleep this morning — and although tortured and interrupted with sneezing fits, it was sound — and said “Hey Morgan they’ve found life on Mars…OR…President Obama has released His birth certificate,” I’d have snuffled, rolled over, sneezed yet again, reached for a hanky and murmured something like “Slithery-wriggly or creepy crawly? Animal or plant? Does it look like a Jim Henson muppet?”

So Birther Zero has ceased to be Birther Zero — about three years too late. Who’s nuttier, the guy who refuses to release it for no reason, or the guy who insists he should be able to see it?

Obviously Obama has been painted into a corner; wouldn’t have done this if it were not for The Trumpster. So He’s going to turn this to His advantage, try one last play at the roulette wheel of “make the birthers look nutty and therefore make Obama look un-nutty.” I predict He’s overplayed His hand on this one, and it won’t pan out. Obama looks strange; not just to me, but I think to “middle America.” There was no reason to sit on this thing — but He did.

What’s the most innocent explanation for this bizarre, strange behavior of Barack Obama?

Ever play Monopoly with a five-to-seven-year-old who you can already tell is going to grow up to be a lawyer? Four rolls of the dice out of every five, leads to someone reaching for the box lid for yet another reading of the rules — because the kid has picked up, from somewhere, that he can always win whenever there’s doubt. Just make a grab for the benefit-of-doubt and if it doesn’t work, hey, nothing lost. The game takes freakin’ all day. And always, always, always, you’re the nutty one…even on those rare occasions when the box lid declares future-lawyer to be so unquestionably in error, that even he accepts the result (with a big ol’ pout), even then you’re nuts for having made an issue out of it. Even when it turns out your understanding of the rules was the correct one, you’re still in error for having said so.

Imagine the tot growing up with that personality, and then learning how to manipulate people politically on top of it all. Refuse to release the long form birth certificate, unilaterally dictate “this is good enough” when the rules don’t actually say one way or another…a big fight erupts coast to coast and…the patient watches it all go down. With a sick kind of a smile on the inside. His one motivation is “how do I play this to my advantage.”

That’s a mental illness, I think. But that’s who’s in charge. Scared yet?

Back to my old stand-by question: Is this someone you’d want to have watch your house when you go on vacation for a week?

I’d rather the newspapers get collected and the plants get watered by…a birther. An average birther. Seriously — he’s got a “McCain/Palin” or “Ron Paul” bumper sticker and he insists on seeing documents? Stacked up against my watch-the-house test — that’d be a plus.

But Barack Obama II has a quirk. He thrives on conflict and He’s gifted at making it look like it’s the other guy who’s doing that. I don’t want Him watching my house, let alone my country…and I don’t think your typical die-hard democrat wants Him watching his house, either.

Update 4/29/11: Gold.

Obama’s greatest victory of the entire past year — his crowning achievement for the past twelve months in the most powerful office in all the world — is his celebrated triumph in successfully producing a common form of secondary identification.

As of right now, that’s what he’s running on: That he, like 88% of all non-incarcerated adults in America, has access to his own personal records.
:
And for the past two nights I’ve endured Chris Matthews telling me about Obama’s “brilliant” “Perry Mason moment,” how masterful he was in all of this.

This is what he’s doing victory laps on right now. That’s what Chris Matthews is praising him to the heavens for. He’s grinning like King Shit of Fuck Mountain, and bathing in rapturous applause, because he accomplished something considerably less difficult than opening a Netflix account.

Pardon the word — are we not treating the President of the United States like a retard?

Obama 2012: Because Yes, We Can. Two, three years…that’s our turn-around.

Obama 2012: He has access to His personal records.

Obama 2012: If by “awesome” you mean “can produce ID,” then He definitely is.

Obama 2012: Yeah, really, that’s who He is. Take our word for it, or else!

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”

— Susan Ertz.

Heh. Yeah, that works…

Credit to Bud Hammons.

Update: Michael O’Hare, in one of the private groups over on the Hello Kitty of Blogging, threw together a nice little list of one-liners with an interesting point on the end:

Obama Admin is
1. obstructing exploration.
2. Obstructing drilling.
3. Denying oil drilling permits
4. Applying tough EPA regulations on the oil industry
5. Obstructing Canadian Shale Oil pipeline
6. Printing more money
7. Messing up the Middle East Policy
But MSM says its oil speculators.

There’s another item that needs to go on though. And this item is part of an issue that is bigger than the gas industry or the oil industry.

Think back: When a commodity — any commodity — begins to increase in price, and the commodity is a staple of life, or could be thought of as a staple of life, particularly for the indigent and the rustically-living…how do democrats go about bringing the price of that commodity under control?

Think of health care and rent and retail gasoline…and breakfast cereals…and automobiles…

There ya go. Hearings. They investigate. Investigate and regulate. They shove their fat putrid faces into the teevee cameras, jam that index finger straight up into the air, stand on a soapbox and make solemn vows “to get to the bottom of this” by golly. And then they start sniffing under the skirts. Hold circus sideshows. Then they put a bunch of requirements on the books that the “corporations” open their doors to “regulators” and boy oh boy, they’d better not even think of shredding anything!

Which creates what those corporations call a “cost of compliance.” Which is then passed on to the consumer.

Actually the whole thing is bigger than the petroleum industry. The democrat party actually makes use of a very narrow selection of tools for bringing prices of things down. They provide cosmetic and substantial hostility to the process of bringing the whatever-it-is to market…increasing regulation…fighting the production of the raw materials. Along the way, they make some friends, and it seems only natural that their friends should be given control of the distribution of the whatever-it-is. Control of distribution, and monopolistic marketing power — usually, to the overseas producers of the commodity in question, in this case Brazil.

Don’t forget the labor. It has to be unionized. Naturally…these things do not bring the price of the widget down, they shove the price up skyward. It’s very predictable. I’d be disappointed in an eighth-grade graduate who couldn’t predict it. But they don’t get caught at it, because by this time the emotions are running high and too many people have stopped paying attention.

The democrat party doesn’t make things more affordable. It isn’t supposed to. I don’t understand why people think that is within its function or its intent.

Update: Back to the subject at hand…more visual evidence of the “sticky note campaign” in action from the fine food stores in Georgia, thanks to Melissa…

Join the campaign here, and help support it here.

My country, the United States, does not have royal weddings because we do not have royalty. We also have not plunged headlong into the black hole of western socialism, unlike Mother England. But seeing that we’re skating along the event horizon and have been for awhile, can this Yankee be blamed for his obsession with the latter?

The royal wedding seems, to me, a perfect metaphor for socialism. I would be shocked if it were confirmed to me I was the first to see it.

This unspoken silly agreement that all of us “commoner” folk are exactly alike, is buttressed by this equally silly and equally unspoken agreement that these few special people in the spotlight are somehow different. And here is unleashed a whole panoply of bizarre contradictions. Elizabeth rules by the Grace of God, her son Charles and grandson William next in line also because of the Grace of God. But is it not also through God’s Grace that the Monarch of Great Britain has been stripped of all constitutional power?

See all the throngs of people lining the streets, so anxious To Be A Part Of This Thing. But what thing is that? The promise is one of consistency, just like you can go into any MacDonald’s all over the world and expect the same menu and same experience. Today, Christmas Day 1066, all the days in between. It’s all the same. But — that would be boring. So we have these events like royal weddings. Events don’t count unless the situation afterward is different in some way from the situation before…but the situation is supposed to be unchanging. It is the promise of consistency, itself, that has produced this hungering for an event that would not otherwise be there. Another commonality with socialism.

But the similarity that really makes an impression on me is the promise of the happy ending. The air in London is fairly crackling with the electrical excitement over it. Good manners dictate you’re not supposed to mention what happened last time. You’re not supposed to say “I hope it goes as well as last time” and you’re not supposed to say “I hope it turns out better.” You keep that unsaid and un-thought.

Just like socialism. It’s tradition…but we’re all going to pretend this is the very first time it’s been tried. Without mentioning that out loud.

Nine hundred forty-five years since the arrow pierced King Harold’s eye at Hastings. Nine hundred forty-five years since the comet, since William landed at Pevensey and ate the sand. Their country is four times as old as ours, and yet their tradition is for those with short memories.

File this one under “Yep, I’ve met my share of people like this”:

“The President’s title, as proposed by the Senate, was the most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard of. It is a proof the more of the justice of the character given by Dr. Franklin of my friend. Always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes absolutely mad.”

Thomas Jefferson on the proposed presidential title of “His Highness the President of the United States and protector of their liberties” advocated by Vice-President [John] Adams in the Senate; in a letter to James Madison (29 July 1789) [emphasis mine]

Life would be pretty boring if we all had the same ideas all the time. But still…

The latest winner of the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award is Adobe Walls, who comments poignantly at Bob Belvedere’s place and thus earns a post linking back there. And here as well.

The biggest problem for Conservatives is that none of our leaders are as pissed as we are or, if they are, they are afraid to show it. Trump isn’t going away unless and until somebody can capture that anger. Trump is expressing that anger without really giving policies that address that anger. Until somebody does that, get used to seeing Trump on the news and in the Blogs day in and day out.

It still doesn’t seem to me, though, that self-identified “conservatives” have a shot at winning this election. They don’t have the numbers right now and they’re not going to have the numbers in November of 2012.

For the vote to be wrestled out of the grip of Obama, it is going to have to be decided by people who are paying more than they want to for gas, and understand it is Obama’s policies making it that way. But of course, for that to work, that selection must be made out of the people who need to pay for their own gas…

So now is it a bit clearer why democrats don’t like individual responsibility?

But that first sentence, that’s the Best Sentence. The conservative movement does not have any leaders who seem to be as pissed off as the people within it. Liberals don’t have this problem, I notice. Candidate Obama actually got points for being smiley, sophisticated, mature…”no-drama Obama” they called Him.

He came out on top after liberals evaluated His ability and potential to sell things.

Conservatives evaluate their candidates on their ability & potential to fix things. See, that’s an important difference. It is not one that works to conservative advantage.

“Thanks for nothing, Paris Hilton.” The article is a year and a half old, but it’s my understanding this problem has only gotten worse in the meantime.

California is seeing an influx of chihuahuas popping up at animal shelters, and it’s becoming too much for the state to handle.

Rather than take these unwanted pooches out back, and deal with them Old Yeller style, California shelters are pawning these rat-dogs off on the Grand Canyon State.
:
Shelter officials are associating the rise in the abandoned pooches to celebutards like Paris Hilton, who popularized use of animals as fashion accessories. When the reality of having to care for the dogs kicked in, it proved to be too much for a lot of wanna-be heiresses, and they dropped the quivering canines off at animal shelters.

According to California shelter officials, more than 100 of the dogs have been driven to shelters in other states, Arizona included.

I just thought of this when I saw a commercial for some Ashley Tisdale pop-music high school made-for-teevee whatever, with some warm gooey shapeless plot to it in which she runs around with some purse-dog in tow. I really don’t know what it’s about, but I do know the presence of the little rat-dog is much more important to the production than the contents of any particular story-line. Right afterward there was a PSA from some dog pound pleading for support to help keep the surplus animals from being neglected & abused…

Interesting juxtaposition.

This “rodent-dog in a purse” thing has gotta stop.

Mark gets the prize for the best Easter graphic. Blue Ribbon? What a dumb-bunny.

Happy Easter everybody.

Blogger friend Phil has a Thing I Know #34:

If A is “political” and B is opposition to A, then B is also “political”.

I find it funny that politicians are always accusing each other of doing things for political purposes.

Oooh…let that one sink in for awhile.

Don Surber:

From Paul Krugman: “Here’s my question: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as ‘consumers’? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car — and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.”

An economist would not write that paragraph because an economist would know that a patient is indeed a consumer, a person who makes decisions on this product line called medicine. As a consumer, the patient usually decides whether to buy medical services or products, when, where and how much.

Commenter Drake says:

What kills me is that the NY Times continue to pay six-figure salaries to guys like Krugman and Friedman who just mail in twice-a-week columns that are honestly on par with twice-a-day posts from probably the top 50 liberal bloggers. Who pays attention to these guys anymore?

What is Krugman supposed to be doing, anyway? Maybe he’s what Thomas Sowell is talking about, when Dr. Sowell uses the word “intellectual” as a put-down: Krugman’s specialty begins in the arena of ideas, and ends there as well, so there’s no way to measure how well the idea meshes with reality, therefore no way to measure Krugman’s competence.

Either way, it’s clear to me Krugman isn’t supposed to put down in writing anything truly edifying — the reader is not supposed to know any more after having finished a Krugman column, than he knew when he started reading. And I think it’s been clear to Surber for awhile too; he’s a bright guy, I’m sure he’s not just figuring this out for the first time. Krugman’s columns are just so much liberal agitprop, calculated to motivate the reader into voting for liberals next time the opportunity arises. He writes it, the Times prints it, and then Memeorandum ratchets it to the tippy-top of their scroll and anchors it there for a day or two.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

…when he’s making a mistake.

Janet Daley writes in Telegraph:

Like a mythical traveller seeking truth, a think tank has asked a profound question: what is fairness? And lo, the people have answered with (almost) one voice: what “fair” means is that those who are deserving shall receive, and those who are not shall be – well, not exactly cast out, but certainly not entitled to everything that’s going.

As we report today, Policy Exchange – supposedly the Prime Minister’s favourite ideas outlet – has done a brave and unusual thing. Rather than polling the public just on policy and voting intention, it has put a far more abstract moral issue before them. It instructed the pollsters at YouGov to find out precisely what the public thought the most powerful term of approbation in the political lexicon – “fair” – actually amounted to.

The quite unequivocal reply that was received (with breathtakingly enormous majorities in some forms) came as no surprise to this column. To most voters, fairness does not mean an equal distribution of resources and wealth, or even a redistribution of these things according to need. It means, as the report’s title – “Just Deserts” – implies, that people get what they deserve. And what is deserved, the respondents made clear, refers to that which is achieved by effort, talent or dedication to duty: in other words, earned on merit.

You know, it’s awfully funny. We’re pretty good at marginalizing opinions and ridiculing them if complete strangers tell us those opinions should be marginalized and ridiculed. We marginalize and ridicule the idea that Barack Obama should have been required to prove His place of birth with some piece of evidence more authentic than a pink piece of paper fresh off the printing presses that essentially says “the people running Hawaii right now believe it.” We ridicule people who think babies might be alive before they actually breathe air. Ridicule mothers who homeschool their kids, or show some kind of affection toward their father, acting like he matters. And oh yes, we are great at ridiculing people who have found Christ. These people are minorities and minorities are there to be mocked.

But this toxic minority of people who think of “fairness” as “everyone has the same amount of stuff no matter what”…they’re allowed to live among us. They won’t keep their opinions to themselves, either. Unlike the homeschool-Moms, they can’t point to a single productive thing they’ve managed to achieve with this, uh, unique opinion they’ve got. Not one.

In fact, there isn’t a single appealing thing about it other than this phantom mirage illusion they manage to put out, that their outlook on the word “fair” represents a majority opinion or consensus. Well, it doesn’t.

People want to help other people who are in need, but there’s a big difference between helping the local widow and helping the town drunk.

That name, Sarah Palin, brings out such eloquence from the Palin haters. Just wow…these people want more power and control. Well, can’t fault them for lacking enthusiasm I suppose.

Hat tip to Rebel Pundit, by way of At The Point of a Gun.

Time Out: 5:08
Time In: 18:11
Distance: 71.67
Scariest wild animal encountered: If bovine creatures count, a herd of cows I seem to have sent into a stampede. On one of those “okay if I do this again I don’t think I’m coming this way” shortcuts, it became a doubtful proposition as to whether I was still on a public road…this situation arises frequently out there. Never saw any barriers. I pushed on through and made my egress. But the cows didn’t appreciate it.

Didn’t break the distance record, but that was not the intent anyway. It was quite by accident that I came as close as I did.

I’ll put a map together when the opportunity presents itself…

Just dang, people.

After 5,852 posts and six and a half years, I misspelled a word. Okay?

And I’m actually seeing a spike in traffic as a result. How pathetic is that?

…to arrive at tax freedom day (article is now one year old).

Tax Freedom Day — the date on which Americans have earned enough to pay this year’s tax obligations at the federal, state and local levels — falls today, April 27th, for residents of Connecticut, giving them the latest Tax Freedom Day in the nation. This is 18 days after national Tax Freedom Day (April 9).

Rhode Island reached Tax Freedom Day on April 12th, Massachusetts on the 14th, and New York on the 23rd.

And why is tax freedom day important?

…Americans will pay more in taxes in 2011 than they will spend on groceries, clothing and shelter combined.

But it’s taken from the rich and then redistributed to “working families” so that makes it all okay, right?

You can tell there’s something fundamentally dishonest about it, because when the time comes to defend it, the defenders just want to talk about police, firemen, sidewalks and park benches.

Go Connecticut.

Liberals tend to fall for the false consensus effect, and conservatives tend to fall for something that could be thought of as its opposite.

This is an important observation, I think, so indulge me a few paragraphs to explain it. We have people who do real work, and people who don’t. Overall, you’ll find people who do work have a tendency to — as they said when we were growing up — “see what needs doing and get it done.” People who don’t work tend to bitch about what someone should do, wait until someone gets it done, and then contribute a bunch of “ideas” in some big gab-fest about where the product of the work should go. That’s what post-industrial-revolution liberalism is: Non-producers making rules about what should be done with the items of value produced by producers.

Where we’re at, now in the age of the Tea Party, is the producers have again been reminded that they can’t tune out of the political process and busy themselves with producing. So the producers, the conservatives, feel this conflict that is not felt by the non-producing liberals. Our inclination is to say “fuck this shit, I’ve got work to do”; kiss the wife & kids, go off to work, toil away, come home, pop open a beer, do our projects or watch teevee or whatever & go to bed. We put together our software or our bales of hay or our car parts or our pottery and figure that justifies our existence. But then the non-producing liberals come along and make their rules about what should be done with what we built. Or what should be done with the wealth generated by what we built. And so after we’ve built our things, or before we’ve built our things, or during, or wherever we can somehow manage to find the time — we must participate in this gab-fest about redistribution, and if we can’t manage to do that, the result is the same as if we never bothered to build anything.

Because that’s what really motivates our liberals. When you live out a non-productive life not actually creating anything of value, you don’t want anybody else to do that either.

Where the false consensus comes in, is: Our liberals are stronger when they make this common mistake — they congregate together and come to an understanding that “everybody” thinks the way they do. You hear this when a liberal politician makes a speech about American values. You know this part, you’ve heard it before, it’s where they start pulling things out of their butts and show us they have no clue what the Constitution actually says. They start off with this bastardized and corrupted reading of the fifth and sixth amendments…not about the speedy trial so much, but “innocent until proven guilty,” and then of course we’re going to make it harder every damn year to “prove” guilt, until the streets are crawling with violent criminals again. Then they meander from that to all the nonsense. Diversity. Yeah, it was Ben Franklin who thought to toss that one in, either him or James Madison. Open borders, lots of social programs, the rich should pay their fair share. Classically American values!

See, that’s false consensus at work. “Everybody in line-of-sight in this room agrees with me on this one thing; therefore, everybody with a pulse must agree with me on all other things.”

This opposite of false-consensus that hobbles the conservative mind, has to do with conjuring up a villain on some issues where, maybe there really isn’t one. And this is an important point, I think. We’re directing this energy toward the gab-fest on Facebook and on the blogs. We have all these other things we do where we’d rather be directing the energy, but experience has taught us we can’t do that and neglect the gab-fest because the end result of the gab-fest determines — dictates, unilaterally, I’d say — what will become of the fruits of our other labors. And it’s not too hard to pick up on the resentment we have over this conflict. We’re being painted into a corner, here, and dammit we don’t like that.

And so, I think, it’s important to develop a sense of looking at all the people who disagree with us, and figuring out who’s real and who is just an illusion. Our tendency has been…and this is the opposite of false consensus…to hear of some voice of someone who disagrees with us, and leap to the assumption “that is a real person speaking sincerely of his opinion and he represents God only knows how many millions of other dickheads.” We need to be leery of this. There are too many talking points out there being regurgitated.

Yes, I’m speaking of Astroturfing. To read the Wikipedia article on Astroturfing and skim the Recent Examples (political) section, you’d think the progressive side never does it, ever. This has been a very silly situation with that page that has been going on for quite awhile. Read up on the “Ellie Light” situation. Wikipedia editors and admins are well-intentioned, honest folks — except when they’re not.

Heck, just listen to what some of the supposedly real people have to say. The woman who interrupted Lou Barletta’s town hall meeting for example —

While he was going through a slide projector presentation about the Medicare changes proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), a woman raised her hand.

“Excuse me, I’d like to get something off my chest,” she said, standing. “You seem to think that because I’m not effected [sic] I won’t care if my niece, my grandson, my child is affected. I do care. What you’re doing with this Ryan budget is you’re taking Medicare and changing it from a guaranteed health care system to one that is a voucher system where you throw seniors on the mercy of for-profit insurance companies.”

“You said nothing in the campaign about I’m going to change Medicare, now you voted for a plan that will destroy Medicare,” Linda Christman, 64, said. Christman is president of the Carbon County Democrats for Change, according to Barletta’s office.

A concerned citizen who happens to be a democrat activist? Or a democrat activist who happened to have some time to turn the town hall into a circus? You be the judge of that…but these cliches are dishonest. “Throw seniors on the mercy of for-profit insurance companies.” That might get a “real” citizen excited, but it’s not an honest expression of real-citizen concerns. Real citizens are concerned that their nieces (that’s the next generation), children (next generation) and grandchildren (two generations forward) won’t enjoy some absolute, unconditional guarantee from the government that we can’t afford as of right now anyway?

That’s bullshit. Plants and puppets. Puppets and plants.

One of my favorite examples of this, lately, is all this polling that says the public supports public sector unions over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. You know the drill…

As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
:
Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them.

Riiiiight. Because if there’s one classically American value that really counts for something, it is that nobody who is a member of a union should ever feel the effects of a recession, ever. They shouldn’t have to wait for their raises even when the economy sucks, they shouldn’t ever have to worry about layoffs. Such indignities are for the rest of us. And after governments take some money away from us in the form of taxes so they can function as efficiently as possible, we need to have some other part of government, also funded with our tax dollars, to “negotiate” with…uh, somebody…so it all ends up being a jobs program that costs as much as it possibly can. Yeah, nobody has a peep of protest to offer against that except a bare majority of those extremist Republicans.

My other example is this drive to teach gay history in the public schools —

Over forty years ago, African Americans demanded public school districts and other educational institutions to reform their curriculum in order to reflect the experiences and histories of folks other than white men…in the years that followed, other ethnic groups and women would follow suit and push schools to revise their curriculum to be more reflective of United States history.
:
These battles over what and whom should be included in public school curricula are far from over; e.g., Texas State Board of Education approves revising textbooks to eliminate the civil rights movement, and Mississippi becomes the first state to implement a civil rights curriculum for grades K through 12. But it appears that public school curricula may undergo an entirely new makeover with the recent news that the state of California is close to becoming the first state to require the teaching of gay history.

According to the Associated Press, the California Senate approved the landmark measure a week ago, but it still needs to get a seal of approval from the Democratic-controlled Assembly and Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. If the legislation is a success, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people will be added to the lengthy list of social and ethnic groups that schools must include in social studies lessons. As early as the 2013-2014 school year, the California Board of Education and local school districts would be required to adopt textbooks and other teaching materials that would cover the contributions of LGBTs throughout history.

It is, of course, a stupid idea because the parallel does not exist. You conduct a class and say “Here’s Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb” and you’re not going to get too far before everyone can see this is a white guy. And so if we grant the black-history argument every conceivable advantage, then we eventually acknowledge, alright if you’re a black kid you might feel a sense of estrangement that doesn’t apply to the white kids.

But you’re probably not going to cover the fact that Thomas Edison was straight. I mean, he was, wasn’t he? Gee, I don’t even know that for sure. In all my learning about Edison, the subject simply never came up which is exactly my point.

But my other point on top of that point, is even more important: I don’t think there’s anybody I need to convince of that. Who’s really for LGBT history month? Who’s pushing this? A bunch of well-intentioned but mistaken liberal dipshits who could be my co-worker or my neighbor? Doubt it. Yes, it passed the Senate. Gov. Brown would sign it if it landed on his desk; of that I have no doubt. So yeah it could become law.

But I don’t think anybody’s being fooled by this turkey, anywhere. You have some “citizens” who are for it, but again, they aren’t uninvolved citizens. They’re egghead quacky docs and education professionals who stand to make money off the new curriculum.

This is a hazard that applies to conservatism that doesn’t apply to liberalism, since conservatism makes sense. All ideas, whether they make sense or not, must eventually find some opposition somewhere. And nothing really makes more sense than “it should be more lucrative to be a producer than a non-producer, not the other way around” — and — “if you subsidize something you’ll get more of it, if you tax something you’ll get less of it.” Those ideas make so much sense that nobody should be disagreeing with them. But, since they are ideas, someone, somewhere, will.

But that doesn’t mean those are real people. They’re plants. We’re living in the age of the plant. The whore who is paid money, or recruited as a volunteer, to pratfall and faint when Barack Obama makes a speech. It is a reaction, I think an expected one, to this recent development of blogs and social media and the Tea Party. Since the liberals have monopolized the previously-mentioned gab-fest about where the fruits of labor should be directed, and the producers have understood they need to mount a resistance at that gab-fest, a fierce battle now takes place on that hilltop. Both sides perceive that this tiny plot of land holds premium strategic value, and both sides are correct about this. They’re trying to get the first word and the last word.

Liberal non-producers are engaged in this battle because of their natural instincts, whereas conservative producers are engaged under protest. We are very much like the founding fathers rushing off to the battlefield, or off to the halls of Congress, wondering if the wife & kids can look after the farm in our absence. We’re conflicted by that, and furthermore, we don’t like to think some of our friends & neighbors are liberal jackasses. We mind our affairs with some degree of foresightedness, we make decisions deliberately, and that includes decisions about which friends to have. It bothers us to think some of our close friends can be so mistaken about things. It doesn’t seem to bother liberals to think derogatory thoughts about their conservative “friends”; they just write ’em off as gun-and-Bible-clinging assholes, and go about the day.

And so, I think, it might be productive to keep in mind which liberals are real people and which ones are phantoms and plants. Keep the bullshit detector on high alert. The New York Times won’t fess up about the deceptive and leading questions being asked in their polls, Wikipedia won’t be honest about what astroturfing really is or where it’s really being used. We really don’t have the time or energy to be participating in this too much. They do.

In fact, I’m seeing an up-surge lately in the left-wing cliches being flooded into the social media, since the unemployment rate found its new Obama-era home between nine and ten percentage points. Maybe they’re being paid to do it and maybe they’re not; does it really matter? These are still phony positions that, by being offered audibly, sometimes create phony controversies. The California legislature obviously needs an overhaul in its priorities — whether that is possible or whether it isn’t, and I’m inclined toward the negative on that one, the first step is going to have to be the public leads it by example. So many other things are much more worthy of discussion. Like, for example, the high volume of red ink on the balance sheet of our federal government, and on our state governments and local governments. I’d say that’s Issue #1.

So leave the farm to the wife and kids and approach the battlefield. Make it a good fight and a decisive victory; a complete rout, everywhere you carry the banner. But then choose those battlefields very carefully, that’s my take-away from all that. This is an enemy that is fighting us on all fronts, and one of those fronts is information warfare. They’re coming at us with fake attacks as well as real ones.

I cannot help but wonder how much of this effort, which seems to resemble real combat in more ways than one, is being supported with our tax dollars. Directly or indirectly. That, too, fits the Revolutionary-War analogy. Colonials fought British soldiers who were furnished with shot, swords, rifles, horses, and red coats — all funded with taxes paid by the blue coats. They, like we, were placed in the sadly laughable position of paying for their own hanging.

So you see me walking up to some guy, and I tell the guy “Eat poo! Because then I’ll be your friend and stuff. And it’s tasty! And if you don’t, I’ll be all, like, whatsa matta with you, you too good to eat some poo?”

And you come running up and advance the quite sensible argument of “Dude…no. No! That’s just wrong! You’ll get e coli and ptomaine and God only knows what else. Case of bad breath at the very least. Don’t eat poo.”

And then I come back with: “Hey, hold on there now. You have to eat something. You can’t go just eating nothing. You’ll starve to death. That guy over there wants people to starve to death. He’s bad! He doesn’t want anybody to eat anything.”

That third thing there is like what I’m hearing from the President lately, and a lot of His admirers. “I think America wants smart government (dramatic pause)…it wants a lean government (pause) …it wants a[n] accountable government (pause)…but we don’t want no government.” (0:47 to 1:03, here (hat tip to Hot Air).) Okay, now. Who, lately, have you heard seriously advocating an overthrow and complete dismantling of the government?

Far be it from me to speak for every citizen from sea to shining sea who feels some sympathy for the tea party movement. But I think it would be more accurate to paraphrase the platform as one of: Stop spending more than you’re taking in, because we are not going to be distracted from the red ink on the nation’s balance sheet by a bunch of gimmicks. Or: When a trillion dollars in outlays was unthinkable just a generation ago, and two trillion was unthinkable just a decade ago, boosting the spending level by a whole trillion dollars in one year is probably not a great idea. Especially if, while you’re doing that, you’re looking for whole new ways to spend even more.

See, this arguing style has a way of flipping things upside-down — it turns the moderate side of the argument into the extreme side, and thus the extreme side into the moderate side. To rationally thinking people, “eat poo” is an extremist position. My ludicrous and silly example at the beginning of the post inverts the equation, and makes the poo-eating proposition look moderate and any attack upon it look extreme (assuming you’re dim enough to buy into it). Well, that is what the President is doing.

The situation with our nation’s finances is such that “Whoa, slow the fuck down!” is just the reasonable position for any thinking man or woman to take. And I’m afraid that is considerably understating the matter. We have only the barest, slimmest chance of avoiding the fate of Greece, and that’s relying on the premise that Barack Obama is made into the one-term President that He richly deserves to become.

“Pay no attention to those teabagging rubes in the back” is a position that can only be taken by a charlatan…or one who is convinced he will somehow escape any personal responsibility in our nation’s resulting financial mess…or one who is both of those. “And come, gather ’round, let’s find new creative ways to spend even more” is pure insanity.

Uncle Kenny dealt with it this way.

We should all be writing letters that make Uncle Kenny look like a lovable teddy bear. Letters to senators, letters to congressmen, letters to state legislators, letters to the editor (if your local paper still has some circulation), blog posts, and keep fighting those liberal jackasses on Facebook.

They think we don’t give a shit about debt. It’s an old, moldering rotten corpse of an antiquated idea from the New Deal era. God willing, we’re seeing the final internment of that festering carcass. But I suppose there will always be some petty jealous jackals that can’t stand to see willingly unproductive people treated to their just desserts. They’d rather play their game of make-believe, that people who actually generate wealth must have stolen it from someone else, and people who’ve done not a single worthy thing their entire lives and have no talent at anything other than wearing a suit nicely and speaking into a microphone eloquently, are somehow responsible for every good thing that ever happened to anybody.

And they have all this contempt for the rest of us, for getting in the way of this childish fantasy. Well, pardon us all to holy hell.

Sorry. People who don’t produce, don’t get to lead. And insisting that a government live within limits just like the people it taxes, is not the same as insisting that it go away. It isn’t the same as anarchy.

For no particular reason. Call my complaint department if you’ve a mind to.

I see in some parts it looks like they hired the cameraman from Quantum of Solace. “Yo dude…shaky cameraman with a bad case of DT…pretty girl. Over there. Point the camera at the pretty girl. Over there, please.” But you know, I’ll find a way to deal.

Hat tip: Viral Footage, via Linkiest.

Megan McArdle explains the problems involved in trying to make up for the profligate spending of an out-of-control government by simply hiking taxes on the filthy, hated rich. Of course, anybody in California who’s actually been paying attention, will find it to be old news. But it still has to be said:

Without arguing about whether our tax system is fair or not, the fact is that the federal income tax is the most variable part of the code, and the federal income tax is now very progressive; it collects most of its revenue from people at the top. (Whether it should collect even more is an argument for another day.) Because it collects most of its income from people at the top, and because the incomes of the wealthy are more variable than the incomes of the poor and middle class (Warren Buffett’s income can drop by $300,000; mine can’t), we’re going to get deep troughs in recessions, and high peaks in boom times. We will get particularly high peaks when the booms are delivering huge chunks of income to a handful of people in a very short timeframe. According to the CBO, capital gains receipts alone, which more than doubled in Clinton’s second term, accounted for more than 30% of the increase in income tax receipts above the rate of GDP growth. Obviously the ancillary ordinary income, like banking fees, also contributed substantially. Between 1996 and 2000, payroll taxes increased a tidy 30%. But income taxes increased by 55%. In 1996, social insurance receipts were about $500 billion, while income tax receipts were $650 billion. By 2000, payroll tax receipts had grown to $656 billion–but the income tax was collecting over a trillion. Today they’re roughly at par again (though that won’t last–social insurance contributions will drop as the worker to population ratio declines.)

A progressive tax revenue system is necessarily “top-heavy”; and top-heavy things are inherently unstable. Note that this argument doesn’t even venture into the human-behavior aspect of this — when the financial consequences of a decision are changed, do people still decide that thing the same way? If that were true, there’d be no “economy” for us to argue about. And since it isn’t, the change in behavior that is to follow a “tax the rich” scheme is easy to predict: Less profit involved in capitalistic ventures, means fewer capitalistic ventures.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Noonan:

In this week’s polls: An Ipsos survey says 69% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, up five points since March. Zogby has only 38% of national respondents saying Mr. Obama deserves re-election, with 55% wanting someone new. Mr. Obama carried Pennsylvania in 2008 by double digits; a poll there this week shows only 42% approving of his leadership, with 52% disapproving. Gallup had the president’s support slipping among blacks and Hispanics, with the latter’s numbers dramatic: 73% supported him when he was inaugurated, 54% do now. Support among whites on Inauguration Day was 60%. Now it is 39%.

We’re all so used to reporting the general trend of these polls that we fail to see their significance: The more that people experience his leadership, the less they like his leadership. There’s no real reason to think upticks in this direction or that will seriously change this. Another way to say it is that there have been upticks that might have benefited the president, and so far they haven’t.

No further comment needed here, I think.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

So sez Kate at Small Dead Animals…as she links to this.

It’s been this way for awhile, you know.

…[T]axpayers with the highest 400 AGIs (who made on average $345 million in 2007, the majority of which came from capital gains which are taxed at a maximum rate of 15%) were taxed at an average federal income tax rate of 16.62 percent, with effective tax rates within this group ranging from 0% to 35%.

These statistics signal a tax system that is not only progressive, but one that is convoluted and unfair.

I remember my liberal social studies teacher making the case for a progressive tax system. We had a conservative one and a liberal one, and they were fast friends with each other. This was some thirty years ago, you see. Different era. Anyway, the argument had something to do with a “waitress.” She needed every nickel to stay alive or something.

When I was in tenth grade, that did make some measure of sense to me. It still does. But there are prob-a-luhms you know…like…with all the social programs for which one becomes eligible when one earns only the bare minimum required to survive, can it truly be said that the bare minimum can be defined so starkly and so clearly? The necessities required for survival, after all, have much to do with what is offered to the eligible.

In fact, is anybody in America in danger of starving to death because their salaries & wages are too much on the skimpy side? Any kids with swollen bellies in American cities, desperately trying to catch rats & pigeons so their starving bodies can get some protein?

I shouldn’t be able to find any poor people with big teevee sets, right? Certainly, no poor people with teevee sets bigger than those owned by some of the “wealthy” taxpayers who subsidize them? Does my social studies teacher’s argument still hold water if the waitress’ kid wears $300 sneakers to school? What if the waitress has a $500 tattoo?

No, my point is not that everyone in the bottom 45% is able to afford such luxuries.

My point is that when some of them are…and that is undoubtedly the case…we are no longer talking about money required for survival. The necessities of survival have, in one way or another, been provided, thus freeing up the cash for these non-staple items. And I don’t necessarily have a problem with that either. Other than this: Don’t characterize it as a discussion about what’s needed to survive, when that is not what we’re really talking about.

Also, 45% is awfully close to 50%. If half of us are not paying any income tax at all, and the matter being referred to the electorate is “should we provide more alms,” then the “we” in that question has lost all practical meaning. If it’s a minority among the electorate doing the providing the question becomes more like one of “should we make those guys over there give us more stuff?”

And we’re way too close to that situation in 2011.

Grappling Hook Head

One who begins with the end in mind, such that his vision of the end result is strong, steely and unshakable, like a metal hook sunk deep into a granite wall; while any the variables involved in getting there are outside of his concern. These people can be hazardous to the success of a project if they know barely enough about the details to monopolize the political power. The tendency is for them to envision the completion of some “favorite” minor task, as the end delivery product, so their “grappling hook” vision concerns the completion of some relatively minor task rather than the completion of the overall project itself. Their knowledge is deep but narrow.

The thinking of a grappling-hook-head, and the impracticality of it, can be summed up in a single statement: “In the course of running this touchdown, when I reach the twenty-yard line my right foot is going to be on this spot.”

In technological pursuits, the grappling-hook-head becomes quickly enamored of the use of a particular tool. A purebred bureaucrat is notorious for inculcating a “Not Invented Here” environment. The grappling-hook-head fosters an environment of “Nothing Invented Here Except This One Thing.”

In their exuberance about all the details involved in achieving one particular task, and from the frequent regurgitation of well-thought-out implementation considerations involved in that one task, the grappling-hook-head very often ends up taking over much more complex and involved projects that contain many elements unfamiliar to them. This is often not a result of their own instigation, but rather of the perception that the individual has achieved a “perfect blend” of political mastery and technological know-how. This is a disaster, because when the grappling-hook-head encounters something unfamiliar, his favorite response is to double down and re-immerse himself in the workings of his favorite tool, and how it will bring about the optimal results in his favorite miniscule task. The project then proceeds without any top-level design existing anywhere, on paper or in somebody’s head, nowhere at all — noodling out how things are going to get done stem to stern. Middle management has no incentive to put one together, and senior management doesn’t know enough to force them to.

The one situation for which a grappling-hook-head is least prepared, is the one in which the favorite-miniscule-task is successfully realized by some alternative means. Once the grappling-hook-head ensconces himself into a position of political or organizational power, a perfect storm ensues when such an alternative emerges, especially when new evidence arrives suggesting the favorite-tool brings the inferior results, and the alternative method brings better ones.

The resources of the project are then spent on some heated duel between these two methods, only one of which may be implemented to achieve this relatively meaningless task. In this situation, there isn’t too much else that rises to the grappling-hook-head’s attention, and delegation of responsibility is very low. To the extent it exists at all, it is in a state of decline.

If the favorite tool is in fact discovered to bring inferior results, a great tragedy arises: the grappling-hook-head sets out trying to be an Ayn Rand hero, and metastasizes into the perfect Ayn Rand villain. He uses his “phantom” but superficial knowledge of technological workings, charisma, charm, force, “strong personality,” et al, to take over the project assuming he hasn’t taken it over already, and forces all things to be done his way. The results that arrive afterward are substandard, or maybe even disastrous. His solution to this is to insist, in an even more shrill tone, and with even more zeal than last time, that more things be done his way. (After all, there’s only one explanation to be considered about why the problem wasn’t solved by now; somebody must have done something wrong.) Thus, the crisis that developed from their last big screw-up, provides the urgency which is channeled into the impetus for their next incremental seizure of power. And so a vicious cycle develops.

I’m drawing on more personal observations than I can count as I write this up. So if you’re reading this, and you and I worked on something together, rest assured this isn’t about you. If you really think it is, I can guarantee it isn’t just about you. It’s about, oh…five, six, seven or so experiences I’ve had over the years, that I can think of right off the bat. I have to try pretty hard, myself, not to become like this. It’s part of being human. And I have to be humble; I like to think that by simply paying attention to this, I’m successful all the time, but of course life doesn’t work that way.

You really don’t need to wait too long to see this happen, because humans aren’t wired to receive that most unpalatable of thoughts: “My wonderful idea has been given a fair try here, and it just isn’t good.” Cutting our losses doesn’t come easy for us. We can learn how, but we just aren’t wired for it.

Ken Blackwell:

[W]e’ve become a culture where earning money doesn’t entitle you to it; but wanting it does…

Or, as Charles Payne put it:

* The harder I work the more I owe society.
* The less I work the more society owes me.

How did we get here? By the efforts of people who feel an intense terror down to the marrow of their bones at the slightest suggestion of the formula all thinking men and women know to be unalterably true:

Every significant enterprise we’ve seen from this government since January 20, 2009 has been an exercise in willful avoidance of this.

What motivates people to avoid it? Pain. Hard work to be expended tomorrow is easy; hard work to be expended today is a terrible prospect. Hard work that was avoided yesterday is a profound regret. Too many of us have pasts filled with three, four, five-hour blocks spent watching the idjit-box…knowing, deep down inside, that this expenditure of time, now lost forever, might have been spent creating wealth. They don’t need anyone to tell them. They know.

So they lash out at whoever didn’t do it that way. “Rich get richer, poor get poorer.” “Took advantage of a tax loophole.” “Not contributing their/his/her fair share.”

But aw gee…something about circumstances. Opportunities. Didn’t go to college, couldn’t graduate from high school, blah blah blah.

That’s my own tune, actually. I’m a high school grad myself, come from the wrong side of the tracks. It isn’t that my sympathy for this is low; it’s more like in a state of decline. And you know what? It damn well should be.

We’re not Oliver Twist. This isn’t London in the 1840’s. You can grab a nice laptop for $300, and software that will make it useful for something for another $100. Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, anything else you want is just a mouse-click away, and free.

That’s not to say getting a job is easy in Obama’s America. It isn’t. But getting the skills? You just have to want to, and that’s as good-as-done. Oh yes, I agree you could call that something of a trite and ignorant statement in times past. But it’s certainly true now. Work and wait, work and wait, make some good decisions, and you’ve got a valuable and salable skill.

You doubt me? Resurrect some guy from 200 years ago who had to grow his own vegetables to stay alive; bounce the idea off him, after you’ve disclosed what exactly this “Internet” is. Then try whining at him about how tough you’ve got it.

This one statement is just a little bit more awesome than the rest of it:

The Greens are trying to frame this election as an epic battle between them as the cosmopolitan and enlightened forces of light versus those dumb and uneducated reactionaries who are trying to bitterly cling to an idealized past. I mean, that is pretty damn rich coming from the party whose every social, cultural and economic goal can essentially be summed up as return to the small tribal societies of the Pleistocene.

And I’m liking the title, too.

In a flash of brilliance, I just coined that term.

Somewhere in the archives, and I’m too lazy to try to figure out which archives I’m talking about let alone go digging through them, I came up with some other name for the theory that goes with this. Or maybe I just took note that the theory needed a name, since it doesn’t have one, and it’s important. The theory is that if you line up the potential nominees of the party not in power and sequence them according to their approval ratings in the polls, you are looking at the sequence of their likelihood for beating the incumbent. In this case, Barack Obama. If the polls say the sequence is Romney, Huckabee, Trump, Palin, Paul then the likelihood of sending Obama packing is Romney, Huckabee, Trump, Palin and Paul.

I think the theory needs a name because, just to be clear, I think it deserves a beatdown it’s only going to get if it has a name. I don’t believe in this theory and I think the wrong people believing in it at the wrong time has done our nation incalculable damage.

The most successful conservative Presidents — there haven’t been many — were not nominees of least resistance. They were, overall, nominees of greatest resistance, in other words, whose nomination was prologue and/or epilogue to a contentious fight. Actually, I think that might be true of both parties. If you’re a liberal democrat, and your loyalty is to the liberal agenda rather than to your country, you’d have to look at Barack Obama as quite a decent President. He’s getting a lot of things done for the party, isn’t He? And His nomination, lest it be forgotten, came at the conclusion of a bruiser of a fight. If our media were more inclined to discuss things unflattering to the liberal establishment, it might even have been an embarrassment.

The conservative movement, on the other hand, has no need for a nominee of least resistance. In fact, its need for rejecting such candidates has never been greater.

Update: Another thought. This is much bigger than politics, by which I mean bigger than Republican/democrat electoral politics. It pertains to business as well; anything with an organization.

To actually nominate a nominee-of-least-resistance, is to say nothing. That is the primary asset and that is the primary liability. There are some situations and issues, to be clear, where this might be a smart way to go. Sometimes you want to obfuscate. I might buy that this is always sneaky and a bit underhanded, but I can’t buy that it’s always dumb.

The Presidential election of 2012 is not one of these situations. The message that resonates once the nominee is nominated, needs to be crystal clear, reverberating, penetrating, even shattering.

We tried it the other way two and a half years ago. Can’t afford anymore of this.

Update: In any medium in which every position conceivable is guaranteed to meet with its opposite somewhere, clarity guarantees a fight, and lack of clarity provides strong assurance of avoiding a fight. I think most people get this — to such an extent that clear people, just by being clear, are seen as spoiling for a fight even if all they’re trying to do is be clear.

And unclear people are seen as trying to avoid a fight…which is very often the case. But then, this opacity is seen as synonymous with maturity. Big, big mistake; huge mistake. Because now you’re providing an incentive for people to be unclear, and the surest career path for people who are practiced at being unclear. Now, who’s that going to be? You think that’ll be someone you’d like watching your house while you go on vacation?

This whole situation is so well defined, you can express it as a mathematical equation.