Yup. I’m reasonably sure the twits who argue with me on the innernets are college kids. I do hesitate somewhat since these munchkins are polite, and not in a fake sell-you-something way, but in what looks like a healthy, wholesome way. Then again — there is a camera rolling.

I’m just watching in a state of awe over the vast magnitudes of energy being churned into this exercise of not-going-there. And you know what “there” I’m talking about: Redistributing a GPA is different from redistributing money, because I have a GPA worth redistributing but I do not have money worth redistributing — they’re different because you’re talking about me in one of those and you’re not talking about me in the other one of those.

This is the trouble with problem-solving with feelings. It isn’t a problem with bad arguments being accepted, quite so much as with decent propositions being rejected. In just the last few years, I’ve seen a noticeable uptick on this while arguing with dweebs on the innertubez. Which is certainly not scientific, but still. It bothers me seeing the acceleration of this: I reject such-and-such…but…I have nothing to offer about why it should be rejected. If someone hits me with it again, I’ll be in “got nuthin'” mode, but this doesn’t bother me in the slightest, I’ll not lose a wink of sleep over it tonight.

This is not good. This is a very bad thing. If the opportunity is presented to fight it, we should.

I’m old enough to remember when it was not that way. When, if someone hit you with an equivalency argument you didn’t like, and you couldn’t handle it, you’d be at least disturbed about it and you’d walk away mumbling to yourself, trying to figure out if there was a meaningful difference you’d overlooked. Or, if maybe you just got schooled because you needed to be, and had to re-think something.

It’s like our young currently-in-college set, the leaders of tomorrow, have discovered that weird super-power. You know, where you make unappealing thoughts and facts vanish instantly simply by laughing at them. Have to give props to blogger friend Phil if that’s the case — he’s on to something there.

Thing I Know #183. When an education has given you the ability to dismiss ideas more quickly, it’s not really an education.

Hat tip to Kaye Dowdell Taylor.

Philip Greenspun has an explanation:

If we divide everything by 100 million, the numbers begin to make more sense.

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Hat tip to blogger friend Rick.

But it’s so much better now, isn’t it, now that our First Holy President just gave us His latest “best speech evar!” and injected us with all kinds of feel good hope and change and junk…plus bashed the Republicans, which as any fool knows is the key to all problem-solving and happiness.

Well, I didn’t watch the speech. But if there was something substantial in it, I think I’d have heard of it by now. Nobody seems to have a kind word to say about it anywhere except Paul Krugman, who must know something since he won a Nobel Prize in economics. But Krugman’s treatise on the good things about the speech, amount to matters of taste and nothing more. “I like this, I like that, I can live with this other thing.” And this is the only sentient living being I can find who seems to have liked it. I can summarize it in one sentence: “Cut military spending increase everything else, me likey that it happies me.” Yeah, the Nobel Laureate makes about as much sense as your average LOLcat.

Well, Lee Doren also watched the speech. And unlike your average Nobel Prize recipient, Doren actually makes sense.

Remember: We had to borrow $16.5k. Now, with the $38.5 billion “savings,” assuming you take every nickel seriously in that, we need to borrow $16,120.

And President It’s-All-About-Me fought kicking and screaming against that. Birther Zero wanted to keep the premium cable subscription.

This needs to be made a centerpiece of the 2012 election: The democrat party has enjoyed an opportunity for — by then — six years, to show us what they’re all about, and the rest of us have enjoyed an opportunity to observe and learn. For four years, we have seen what they have in mind when they sell us a leader for the very highest executive office in our nation’s government.

The part about how they can’t do math, is a pretty good reason not to leave them in charge of anything ever again.

But when we see what they have in mind for a “leader” — watch Doren’s video all the way through — it shows how urgent the need is to get them booted out. See, Barack Obama has no leadership skills because He was not selected for any leadership skills. Go on, point to a single situation where you can say “this is much better because Barack Obama decided X and not Y.” Something besides getting Obama, or an Obama crony, elected or appointed to something. Name just one. There isn’t anything.

Obama is a political weapon. He gets up, He makes a “best speech evar!”, and when He sits down again He and His friends have more power than they had a few minutes earlier, and His enemies have less. That is His occupation; His primary skill set; His only skill set. It is what He does, His life calling. “Community organizer,” remember?

He needs to go, because this has nothing to do with actually solving a problem.

And His political party needs to go, because in their mind, these two things are synonymous — crush our enemies and all the details will work themselves out.

David Burge, whom you may know as Iowahawk, had something interesting to post at the Hello Kitty of Blogging which you may know as Facebook.

Those who may have been distracted by tax day & all the associated festivities, may have lost track of the other meaningful bits of this particular time of year. It’s mid-spring now, which means people who recoil in horror, for some reason, at the sight of a nice-looking girl in a swimsuit, have now had about six months of bliss. They haven’t had to experience the agony of seeing that anywhere, for all this time, and they’ve now gotten it in their heads that not seeing nice looking girls in bikinis is some kind of a “universal human right” or something. This has become a seasonal thing over the past few years, I see. Some nice looking girl has a picture taken of herself in a bikini right about this time, and finds herself in a mess of trouble over it which nobody — and I do mean nobody, and that includes the troublemakers — can coherently explain.

The University of Waterloo in Canada has suspended a team of students who built a racecar after a female member was photographed posing next to the car in a bikini and high heels.

University spokesman Michael Strickland said the temporary suspension is in response to an “inappropriate and denigrating” photograph that appeared online, as well as in Tuesday’s edition of the Waterloo Region Record.

“The decision also considered the guidelines in place to ensure the safety of students,” Strickland wrote in an email to FoxNews.com. “The university’s engineering design centre, where the photo was taken, has rules covering the type of equipment that can be brought in as well as the manner in which it can be used.”

Mmmm, hmmm, “safety.” Yeah. Lady in a swimsuit might get someone hurt. Can’t have that!

I hit the “like” button next to Joe Clark‘s comment:

Bet if it was a male student, and they took the car into the local gay pride parade and did obscene things with it, the university would hail the display as a shining example of the university’s values.

Further evidence there is a schism taking place between two kinds of people who simply can’t live together, and that a really tall fence needs to be built or else someone — one side or the other — has to get banished to an island.

I’m rapidly approaching the point where if the island option is chosen, I don’t care that much which side is subject to the banishing. I’ll miss Trader Joe’s, but let’s face it, even within three miles of the closest one I don’t go there that often. Of course I don’t go to Hooters that often either. Both of them cost like crazy.

But when the gender-benders and the goths and the hippies and the gay-pride-paraders start scraping the bottom of the barrel like this, it just becomes obvious they’re in sterilization mode. They’re running out of things to get rid of. “Pussying ourselves, pussying ourselves, pussying ourselves some more…let’s see…what else…I know! Girls in bikinis! Straight men with hairy chests just might like that, we better get rid of it. It’s for ‘safety’!”

Just build the damn fence and be done with it. Yeah, I find chaw tobacco as disgusting as anybody else, but I can live with people who chew it. I can’t live so easily around people who have problems with pretty ladies. Especially if they are so used to saying nonsensical things that they start to wax lyrically about the safety hazards involved with bathing suits…that’s pretty far afield of the reality I know & understand.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel and Right Wing News.

Re-discovered blogger friend Terri takes the one hundred and eleventh Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award. On the subject of “civil disobedience on a paper plate” (you have to skim through this New York Times article about San Francisco “food raves” to see what’s going on), she observes:

Ahh the odd belief system of the left. “We can tax as needed to afford our progressive state and then revenue will just magically rise. But when there seems to be a correlation between high taxes and free enterprise (the good kind) we’ll work around it because we’re revolutionaries! Viva Che!!”

Okay, that’s more than one sentence. It isn’t the first waiver we’ve granted and it won’t be the last.

This points up a unique trait of our modern left, one that in a sane universe would bar them from having any influence on anything, anywhere. They aren’t “left” at all; they aren’t anything. People who live on the left-to-right spectrum, anywhere, have to follow their own rules. These advocates we call “The Left” exist, not on a classic French Napoleonic/royalty spectrum of left-to-right, but on that other spectrum, authoritarianism to “libertarianism to point of anarchy.” And they occupy the two extreme ends.

Straddling this impossible divide offers them an ideological nimbleness denied to other movements, and which anyone on the outside of the leftist movement, over the longer term, cannot afford. They say, “we need a rule…” and then they say it again and again and again. Once met with the natural consequences of living in such a rigid, overly-regulated “perfect” society of their own making, they simply sidestep it all. Like Terri said above: “Because we’re revolutionaries!”

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel and Right Wing News.

Daily Caller, by way of Instapundit.

Yup, I resemble that parenting style.

Credit to one of my friends over on the Hello Kitty of blogging.

Jay Cost is engaged in the usual criticism but with a unique twist: President Obama is out of His element in His new job, because He is the product of our nomination process for that job. Therefore, His inadequacy is a much bigger problem for us that is not limited to just Him. Cost makes an interesting case.

Unfortunately, since George McGovern ruined the presidential nominating system in 1971, there has been a new potential item for the presidential CV: navigating the byzantine process of primaries and caucuses better than any competitor.
:
Unfortunately, gaming the nomination process plus having no significant experience in government turns out to be a grossly insufficient combination for presidential leadership. Day by day, week by week, we are becoming more aware that, when it comes to the political dance in Washington, [President Barack] Obama is foxtrotting with two left feet.
:
[a bunch of examples]
:
When you get right down to it, Obama hit his high point at Iowa’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner in November, 2007. It’s been downhill ever since – with one verbal gaffe or policy misstep after another.

Of course, the media overlooking all this stuff does not make the problem go away. And the proof is in the pudding: the right can’t stand him, the middle has abandoned him, and now even the left is criticizing him out in the open.

Let’s face it: this president is just plain bad at politics.

To me, the power of such an argument comes not so much from the examples, but from what one can reliably anticipate in terms of rebuttal. We need not speculate idly about this; the rebuttal would have to concern itself with the history Obama made. The hope, the change, the smiles and the tears of election night ’08, the enthusiasm at the inauguration…all that great stuff. Surely, whoever brought that kind of excitement must have the talent to back it up somewhere. Surely this must be someone who is unique in some way, right?

Something like that.

Trouble is, we’re all unique. Here lies the hazard of avoiding details; one tends to trap oneself in a fantasy world, in which anything said anywhere about anything, must necessarily be missing the details. It’s just like seeing yourself on HDTV without the proper makeup — once someone adds the details back in, the picture that results is not so flattering.

What’s the trouble with our nominating process? It isn’t the integrity. That part of it worked just fine. The champion deserved to be the champion; Barack Obama is the best of the best of the best. At what, though — there is the problem.

I, among others, tried to point out that this was not a successful producer of positive results who was being built up by our strange, surreal, emotion-driven nomination and electoral process. For this, myself and others were called rigid, inflexible, conservative Republicans, and then tea party bigots, and then just plain bigots. Nothing like a good session of name-calling to sweep aside whatever points and counterpoints happen to be unpalatable in the moment, huh. But the substance of an argument is not so easily swept aside. It manifested then, and manifests now, a problem that is with us and growing. And that problem is this: We have yet to have installed an executive to deal with the nation’s many problems. The number of people who want to believe we have, is irrelevant. The passion with which they believe this, is also irrelevant.

It seems every other month or so, I hear from somewhere “Obama really hit one out of the park!” But with the passage of a little more time, the ugly truth emerges: It was just a speech. Some of the people who agree with Obama really liked it, because it made them feel better than their enemies, whom Obama successfully smeared, or marginalized. But if the speech contained any policy points, they were not policy points assured of making the situation any better. And that’s assuming there would be action taking place consistent with the speech — another question altogether.

Obama is not as big as the issues He was elected to confront. And that is not even because the issues are big, or because He is small. The issue of fiscal discipline is actually pretty mundane. But it takes an effective executive to truly conquer it.

And Obama is just…Obama. Not big, not small, just average. A mediocre politician selected by a process built to seek out and reward mediocrity. He sounds kind of sophisticated when He says the word “uh,” and that’s about all He has going for Him. Or for the rest of us.

Update: Until I actually watch the President’s much-talked-about speech from yesterday, front to back, consider this to be my comment upon it. I’m confining my commentary to things that I know, and as safe as I may find it to be to presume things about that speech, I don’t know it so I shall remain mostly silent on it.

But I do have to say, given the track record I’ve been watching unfold, and the other commentary I’m hearing about it, things like this do not surprise me.

…Obama offered little of substance other than rhetorical bombs aimed at Paul Ryan, accusing him of trying to kill an entire generation of retirees while offering nothing specific to oppose it…

Uh huh. Fits right in with the theme. The President is a superior fit for the nomination process but the nomination process is wholly inadequate for the job at hand, and therefore, so is He. Unless the job at hand is to belittle the other side. Some of our liberals, and let’s be fair some of the conservatives as well, seem to think that is exactly the case. A little ridicule, some mocking, diminish the other side and the job is done. Everything else will work out.

They’re wrong. And because they’re wrong, Obama is just a bad fit for the job. Not up to it.

I was just noticing this myself:

In light of the recent budget debate and the unveiling of Obama’s long-term deficit plan .. the liberal wealth envy crowd has come out in full force to make sure that their ideas be heard. What are their ideas? Well there is really only one idea and that is: Increase taxes. Why? For the purposes of redistributing the wealth.

A narrative has emerged on the left side that President Wonderful must not have the chops for negotiating because the Republicans took Him to the cleaners. This in the wake of the much-publicized eleventh-hour “keep the government running” agreement last week to “slash” $38.5 billion. Saturday Night Live had a monologue parody in which Obama talks up what a wonderful negotiation process it was since everyone went away from it unhappy. There’s a lot of truth in that. A lot of Republicans are unhappy because the target amount was 100 billion, and of course 38.5 is not 100. Well, the democrats are unhappy too.

Here’s my question: Why, exactly? I mean, you take out all the “don’t cut my pet project” people, and out of the ones that are left — there are still quite a few, from what I see — there remains unhappiness. That’s where I am curious. What’s the problem?

And no, don’t go digging into the budget line items trying to find a problem. You’re already pissed that any cutting took place at all. I would like to know what the beef is.

Because spending simply cannot stay where it is…it is out of the question for it to go up…sure anything is possible over the short term, but my point is the situation is unsustainable. If we have people involved in this process who are always going to be pissed when there’s any cutting at all, nevermind where it is, then this whole “negotiation” ritual is a rather empty one isn’t it? That is, unless a real leader emerges who has the stones to tell one side — preferably, the spend-more crowd — “nope, not gonna work that way, and if you wanna get mad then you just go ahead and get as mad as you want.”

And I think these “don’t cut anything,” advocates of generally higher spending, are out there. I think they have overlap with the inner circle of key players. I think an important part of liberalism right now, is to say “Yes. More spending. Higher taxes. We want taxes to go up, and spending to go up — and we don’t care what the spending is — until such a time as it is utterly futile to try to provide for your own interests through your own efforts in this country.” In fact, I expect to come under the quite righteous and accurate critique that this is just pointing out the obvious…

Well, if that’s your position you’ve a right to it. You even have the right to try to seek some influence — and, unfortunately, to achieve that influence if you can.

But I think if such a movement exists, it should be fully exposed. Seeing as how its continued existence is fundamentally incompatible with the country’s.

Too much to ask maybe?

Carrie Lukas writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day—so dubbed by the National Committee for Pay Equity, which represents feminist groups including the National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority, the National Council of Women’s Organizations and others. The day falls on April 12 because, according to feminist logic, women have to work that far into a calendar year before they earn what men already earned the year before.

In years past, feminist leaders marked the occasion by rallying outside the U.S. Capitol to decry the pernicious wage gap and call for government action to address systematic discrimination against women. This year will be relatively quiet. Perhaps feminists feel awkward protesting a liberal-dominated government—or perhaps they know that the recent economic downturn has exposed as ridiculous their claims that our economy is ruled by a sexist patriarchy.

The unemployment rate is consistently higher among men than among women. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 9.3% of men over the age of 16 are currently out of work. The figure for women is 8.3%. Unemployment fell for both sexes over the past year, but labor force participation (the percentage of working age people employed) also dropped. The participation rate fell more among men (to 70.4% today from 71.4% in March 2010) than women (to 58.3% from 58.8%). That means much of the improvement in unemployment numbers comes from discouraged workers—particularly male ones—giving up their job searches entirely.
:
Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings. While feminists suggest that women are coerced into lower-paying job sectors, most women know that something else is often at work. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility. Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics.

Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can earn more.

These are generalizations, and of course generalizations are always problematic. You don’t have to check them against reality for too long before you run into the inevitable exception. And, of course, one decent exception reduces the generalization into a rough-thumbnail law-of-averages, nothing more.

But there’s the thing. Rough-thumbnail is plenty good enough, because law-of-averages is what it’s all about. That was, after all, the original complaint: Average woman earning such-and-such a percentage of the average man.

Nice scam while it lasted.

Spearhead, via Captain Capitalism, via Small Dead Animals.

I had made a passing reference somewhere to “The Three Things Morgan Hasn’t Got the Balls to Blog” and someone was wondering what those three things were. Well…this article does borrow some things from Thing #3.

The researchers placed nearly 700 people into groups of between two and five, then gave them problems to solve, such as visual puzzles, games, negotiations, and logical analysis. Here’s what they found:

Individual smarts doesn’t affect performance. The average intelligence of team members wasn’t related to team performance. So if you’ve got a team that’s struggling, putting a couple of really smart people on it isn’t going to help.

EQ–emotional intelligence– is more important than IQ. Good communication and good coordination make teams function well. To get that, you need people who are good at reading and responding to other peoples’ emotions. Teams that included even one person with superior skills in this regard had better performance.

A ’strong’ personality hurts performance. Groups where one person dominated the conversation or the decision-making, or where people didn’t do as well taking turns, had worse performance. This correlates well with other research that shows ’stronger’ leaders are often less effective than those who perceive themselves to be less powerful.
:
The researchers found one fairly simple answer: Add women. [that last emphasis mine]

Yes, that has been my experience. There really aren’t too many things on Creation less productive than a group of men.

But of course, that isn’t the least little bit politically-incorrect for me to be pointing it out. Why then would I not have the balls to blog it? Because this is part of a graph. Picture the X axis as being gender saturation; on the left, 0.0, the group is all females and on the right, 1.0, it’s all males. The Y axis is productivity and it enters a steep nosedive on the right side, approaching 1.0. In fact, on the square to its immediate left, 0.95, where you have a large group of one men with a single reasonably-intelligent reasonably-assertive woman at its nexus, productivity is at its zenith. Pull the female out, round up to 1.0, and with the men no longer having to prove anything or maintain some modicum of civility, it’s crash-and-burn time.

Why would I be afraid to blog that? Because of the stuff that goes on to the left of the 0.95; and that’s all I’m sayin’ about that.

People just aren’t very productive when they’re in their comfort zones. They’re not very smart in that state, either. That goes for both sexes.

The article starts to get new-age touchy-feelie toward the end, and dissolves into a puddle of Age of Aquarius silliness:

…Heidi Grant Halvorson suggests a number of ways any team can become more socially aware, and therefore, higher performing:

Create opportunities for team members to express their feelings, and for others to respond to them. Encourage face-time whenever possible. Cultivating a work environment where team members experiences are acknowledged and understood will create teams that are smarter, happier, and far more successful.

I don’t know how the ‘express your feelings’ bit would have gone over at some of the places I’ve worked–although if “creating opportunities to express feelings’ means just putting an end to some of the macho teasing I’ve seen, I’m all for it. But as the researchers found, you don’t have to break out the hankies to get reap the benefits of social sensitivity. Just try taking turns.

I recall one place I worked in particular became enamored of the “strong personality.” I didn’t fare too well under this management style; I must have one of the weaker ones. But I got the distinct impression everyone else in the room was as frustrated as I was with missing out on an hour or two out of the day, toward no higher purpose than to round out an audience of “Oh let us all admire what a strong personality [Mr. X] has.”

I really despise watching people show off like that — dictating what product should be bought, what feature is important, what button should be pushed what and lever should be pulled. Drives me right up a tree. Fills me with an acute sense of dread. I mean — here, I’ll just abandon all the suspense & come out & say what everyone with a brain is thinking already — if they really knew that much about it, wouldn’t they be in a back room somewhere, completely out of sight, earshot or mind of anyone, busying themselves with pushing the damn button or pulling the damn lever?

Had some thoughts continuing from the post previous. That’s okay, isn’t it? “The same subject, continued” appears I-don’t-know-how-many times in the titles of the Federalist Papers; that “Publius” dude had no problem continuing his thoughts from earlier. So it must not be a sign of arrogance, or if it is, that Publius guy must not have been too terribly humble. Anyway. I have some thoughts on the same subject, continued.

I’ve been wondering for awhile about the different definitions conservatives & liberals seem to have in mind when they speak of “The Economy.” In fact, I wonder about this pretty much every time I read a Paul Krugman column. I’ve tried to resolve it by looking it up in various dictionaries, and I’ve come to learn this intangible noun is so utterly lacking definitions-wise we may as well not have the word at all. Now conservatives tend to be supply-siders, meaning they believe in “trickle-down.” Liberals laugh at this…which seems to be the liberal solution to every single credible idea that poses a serious danger to liberal worldview.

But if you take supply-side-trickle-down seriously for a minute or two, you see it shores up the conservative view of “The Economy” rather neatly. When the economy is robust, the wealthy — those with investment capital to spare — can see entrepreneurial opportunities. A robust economy does not entail zero risk. But a relatively healthy economy would involve relatively diminished risk in the entrepreneurial endeavors, or at least, manageable risk. In this way, the wealth is spread around, since in order to realize the endeavor, the entrepreneur needs to add staff, or acquire goods & services. We then have movement in our “economy.” The economy itself, therefore, could be thought of as the actual movement. According to the conservative worldview.

The liberal worldview is simpler, and yet I have a tougher time figuring it out. I don’t need to observe too much to figure out what arouses liberal concern when “the economy” has beached itself like a sick whale: Poor people have it tough. Their beloved social programs are running out of cash, the class sizes in the public schools are swelling, the buses are stopping every twenty minutes instead of every ten, and as we just saw we have our “looming government shutdowns.” Of course, some of these “poor” people have bigger teevee sets than some of the not-poor-people…and have generally more comfortable lifestyles…in some cases, even higher incomes! You have to be very careful when you use the word, or perceive the word, “poor” around liberals. For that reason, liberals often like to use the term “working families” to describe these people. But that breaks more linguistic things than it fixes, for very often “working families” do not consist of families at all, and much of the time nobody in these “families” is even working.

So it’s best to think of “poor people” and “working families” as liberal special-interest groups, and beneficiaries of those groups. People our liberals happen to like; people that liberals don’t think should be sharing in any pain, for any reason.

Therefore, to the best I can make out, to a liberal the word “economy” refers to the absence of discomfort or concern among these not-poor not-working not-family beneficiaries of liberal social movements. The standard of living enjoyed, or not enjoyed, by these elites determines how well “our economy” is doing. And — this next part is key — to hell with everybody else. That does pretty much frame it properly, does it not? Find any one of these people the liberals consider to be non-persons…the “bitter clingers” out there, who actually stand a chance of one day being profiled on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs show. Describe some of the problems these folks might be having, to one of our modern-day liberals, and you’ll get nothing back in return save for a derisive sneer, a dismissive chuckle, and maybe a suggestion that the dumb schmuck should trade in his car. That goes double if the schmuck does something failing to meet with progressive approval. If, for example, said car sports a “McCain/Palin ’08” sticker. Or if the schmuck smokes tobacco, home-schools his kids, et cetera.

Now, here’s the problem. If the liberal definition of a “robust economy” or a “vibrant economy” is zero discomfort or worry among the not-poor not-working not-family people that our liberals call “poor working families,” how then do we know, according to the liberal worldview, that our economy is doing well? I presume we should be sending some of our ace reporters — you know, from those old-fashioned twentieth-century real-paper “newspapers” — out to gather some tearjerker sob stories to put on Page B1 of the local edition, otherwise known as the “whine about some lauded social program running out of money” page. And then, they would fail to find such a person because all the not-poor not-working not-family poor-working-family people are doing alright.

Problem One: That isn’t going to happen.

Problem Two: If ever it did happen, the old-fashioned twentieth-century birdcage-liner newspaper would run out of things to put on Page B1. Which means the newspaper would lose the commodity it has been selling. Which means circulation would start to take a tumble. And, since that is exactly what has already been happening…we need not speculate recklessly to figure out what happens next. The tumbling circulation becomes its own sob story. So the economy remains threadbare, slipshod, catawampus and gunnybags.

It’s kind of like a case of boy-who-cried-wolf. You can’t sound an alarm that something is in bad shape, if you aren’t capable of ever acknowledging it’s in good shape — no matter what.

Suppose I wanted to just get past that problem, but still perceive of “the economy” the way our liberals do, as a measure of standard-of-living among our “poor” people. In other words, take a look at whether they’re doing alright or not, and evaluate it in such a way that I’m able to acknowledge a good, fair or poor measurement of how well it’s doing. Well, that’s quite a contortion. But if I persist in it, guess what? Our “economy” is doing okay and has been for a very long time.

Among the ranks of our “poor” people, are people living in homes. Poor people wearing shoes that cost much more than my Nike Air Monarch III’s. Poor people who have very large teevees, and some games to hook up to those teevees. Not the old-fashioned ugly gray Xbox I have, that has all my software-engineer co-workers snickering at me when they see it. But the 360 models.

The five-word House of Eratosthenes Salute to the United States of America seems apropos here: Our poor people are fat. It was true the first time I said it, and it’s still true today. What an awesome, kick-ass country. How many thousands of years of various civilizations has this planet seen, whose jaws would drop in flabbergasted envy at such opulence they’d barely be able to comprehend it. Fat poor people!

But there is an equal & opposite, five-word curse to go with it, now: Our companies are not hiring. But you know, only our conservatives care about that. According to the liberal worldview, “the economy” is doing alright. The only reason our liberals can’t see it is, they are not wired to appreciate success even when it is realized according to the terms they themselves have codified. They are, by nature, high drama. Everything’s a crisis, all the time.

I really don’t understand how people can live like this. Perhaps that is my own unique weakness. But if it was, I would think our twentieth-century real-paper fish-wrap “newspapers” would be doing better. As it is, I expect to have to tell my grandchildren about them, maybe catch a glimpse of a Page B1 on the other side of a glass, in a museum. In other words, I expect those newspapers to become history before I do. And I’m no spring chicken.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Story here. Paul Krugman speaks on behalf of the liberals.

Kind of interesting. From what I can make out, you have something called the “economy” and then you have government spending. Krugman is afraid the economy is too weak to withstand this hiccup in government spending. Now, conservatives are afraid the economy is too weak to withstand the withering effects of higher taxes. Princeton Professor Krugman, to the contrary, thinks higher taxes are just the ticket because in addition to the “economy” being in danger from the government-not-spending-money, the government is in danger of running out of this money.

So we have the economy, we have the government spending money, we have the money the government has to spend…we have higher taxes on the rich. Conservatives think the taxes on the rich need to come down, in order to help the economy. Liberals think the government has to spend money in order to help the economy. I’m entertaining the notion that maybe we’re quibbling about different definitions of an “economy” here without realizing it. I’m not too sure about that — but here’s one thing I am sure of. If I’m one of those rich guys, I’m going to change my investment strategies if taxes go up on the profits I make from my more successful investments. And that just might have an impact on the economy, I think…and on the tax revenues too. Because hey, if I just convert it all into gold ingots and lock it in a vault, there isn’t much tax revenue involved in that, right?

In fact, I would argue we’re already seeing the effects of this in terms of labor, payrolls, unemployment…and stuff…we have businesses doing their darndest to figure out how to keep functioning without hiring anybody. Why, because they’re evil? Probably not that; if you think businesses are evil, it follows that they always have been that way, whereas this higher unemployment rate is kind of an Obama-era thing.

But Krugman is right about the government running out of money. We just had a piece of shutdown drama, and we’ll probably have another one later this year. That must mean it’s a problem.

So in view of the fact that there’s so little time between the shutdown drama, and the U.S. income tax filing deadline, I figure there is only one thing to do. The Blog That Nobody Reads hereby issues a challenge to all progressives who agree with Paul Krugman, to waive their refunds this tax year. So the government doesn’t run out of money, and it can spend more, thereby saving this nebulous conceptual thing you progressives are trying to describe by using this word “economy.”

I don’t think it’s what everybody else is trying to describe with that word. But whatever it is, it must be something really important to you. So show us how important it really is. A little money where the ol’ mouth is.

Ya gotta admit, it’s a little awkward for you to be talking the same way Professor Krugman is, and then just a few short days later, claiming a refund from exactly the same treasury you’re afraid is going to run out of money. I mean, why would you do that? “Because it’s mine”? or “Because they owe it to me”? Property rights for thee but not for anybody else, eh? Stick to your own knitting; just waive the damn refund. You’ll be able to save enough dimes and nickels to watch Fahrenheit 911 or The Color Purple one more time, plenty soon enough.

Update: Ready for another video about whether we have a revenue problem or a spending problem? Once again, it’s not looking good for the “revenue problem” folks.

From Reason TV, by way of Ed Morrissey.

Once again: That web site for voluntary contributions to help reduce the public debt, is right here. Click it now, click it often, send it off to your wealthy left-wing friends who are losing sleep at night from not getting taxed enough. Since “everybody agrees” with this, there must be a lot of people in that camp.

Jazz Shaw has some thoughts on it over at HotAir. Included is this chestnut I recall from many decades past:

[Leftists] will frequently make the case that one of the defining characteristics of all strains of conservatism is “a deep, abiding fear that somebody, somewhere may be having a good time.”

Mmmm, hmmm. That one has aged rather poorly. It was certainly showing some haggard lines and other signs of wear & tear by the time President Barack “can’t turn our thermostats to 72 degrees” Obama was sworn in to office.

In fact, I would say over the decades, it has flipped around to something resembling the following: The defining characteristic of all strains of liberalism is that somewhere, the wrong people might be having a good time. Boy Scouts, stay-at-home Moms, gun owners, whites, males, straights, Jesus-worshipers, oil company executives, health care company executives, bank executives. These people are not feeling enough pain.

Jazz continues:

[T]imes have changed since I was a young man. Back then, men in their early twenties frequently were already busy with a job, mowing the lawn and working on getting a wife if they had not done so already. Going to college was more the exception than the rule, and young men graduating high school frequently went straight into the job market. We married younger, started families sooner, and generally expected to be somewhat “established” in life by the time we reached our early thirties.

Society has undergone a dramatic shift. Life in general is more expensive, particularly since we all have to have so many things which our parents never thought of. You’ve got to have a cell phone, a laptop, a high speed internet connection and 327 channels of cable television. (312 of which you will never watch.) It takes longer to save up the money to position yourself for marriage and two incomes are often required to maintain a modern lifestyle, so children are often put off until later in life.

How does this all translate into happiness, and its role in distinguishing conservatives from liberals?

It’s rather lost on me, since I don’t necessarily buy into the notion that the purpose of life is to be happy. I have often said here & there (too lazy, once again, to go digging into the archives) that conservatism in our modern, contemporary age could be best characterized as the possession, ownership and use of a long-term memory. The readiness, willingness and ability to say “We’ve tried that before; so unless there’s some meaningful difference between this time & last time, kindly keep it out of my way.” Liberalism is more like a circular trip on an amusement park silly-go-’round. History always began yesterday morning. So we haven’t tried this before. And if we did, and it failed, it must have been because…of something. Didn’t spend enough money on it. Wrong people were in charge. This time, it’s sure to work.

But happiness itself? It seems to me that both sides are in favor of happiness. They just define it differently. With conservatism it has more to do with a sustainable society. If I’m in a lousy rotten mood with a dour expression on my face, but my kid is assured of having all the options I’ve had plus something, then I’m “happy.” That remains the case even if he is going to spend a lifetime in a lousy rotten mood. If he’s on track to do more with his life than I ever could’ve with mine, then I’m “happy”; if his ever achieving as much as I did, starts to slip into the ether of lost dreams, then that makes me unhappy. The XBox 360 or whatever doesn’t figure into it.

With liberalism, “happiness” seems to have something to do with your state of mind when you’re inclined to re-elect and re-elect your (democrat) representative generation after generation after generation, until he’s in his nineties. Which usually translates to you enjoying access to something of value that you did not earn.

Even if that situation — as we have been reminded this past week with the “looming government shutdown — is demonstrably unsustainable. If Rome is burning or the barbarians are at the gate, but you’re still getting your lucre, then you’re “happy.”

It’s midnight EDT, and Politico has something.

After a long day of trading offers, the White House and House Republicans reached agreement Friday night on a budget framework that would cap 2011 appropriations near or below $1.050 trillion while cutting domestic and foreign aid by more than $40 billion from the rate of spending at the beginning of this Congress.

Behind the closed doors of special meeting of the Republican Conference, Speaker John Boehner presented the package to his party as at least an agreement in principle and said at one point: “We have a deal.” The Senate should now feel confident enough to move ahead with a stop gap spending bill to avert—or at least shorten—any shutdown beginning at midnight.

I’d sure like to know the mentality at work with people who think this is an okay way for our country to function. I know they must be lacking in any useful long-term memory since, as I’ve written before, the newspaper headlines never really seem to change. “[Program/agency] in trouble! Budget shortfall! Wah!” And then there’s a tearjerker story of some sad sack who’s utterly, completely dependent on the government program who just doesn’t know what he or she is gonna do. Crack that paper open again a couple months later, or a couple years later, and it hasn’t changed any. The program is different, the agency is different, but the rest of it is the same. Budget shortfall! What’re we gonna do??

See, this has always intrigued and befuddled me. Clearly, what separates them from everyone else is the fact that they don’t value independence…I mean, personal independence. Wouldn’t this kind of experience sort of, y’know, motivate them to value it more highly?

It’s here. Perhaps this will remain the definitive one, perhaps there will be others.

I knew it could not be long in coming. The way it was described in that press conference, did not make a whole lot of sense to me. I have the impression this system is sort of a jerry-rig approach, full of cotter pins, duct tape and band aids, and that such an oopsie was inevitable.

In fact, in all my years with supporting computer applications, this is the primary source of oopsies. It isn’t that such systems take their first breaths of life on somebody’s desktop machine with Microsoft Office products that are designed for — let’s face it — some guy to keep track of his seashell collection or what-not. That is, after all, the most effective way of figuring out what you want the application to actually do. It’s that they stay there. The plant becomes too big for the pot.

At some point, there is a “database migration project” to a client-server platform, or three-tier platform, which costs engineering resources and project management resources and design resources and software licensing dollars and down-time. More often than not, it doesn’t happen. That seems to be what happened here, and it’s got me wondering where else it isn’t happening and what other mistakes are being made.

What’s the result? Situation: Very much like parking a fine vintage Packard in a garage made out of Lincoln Logs. Inappropriate for the magnitude of data, inappropriate for the importance of the mission and worst of all, loaded up with the potential for human error. Outcome: Exquisite embarrassment. Yet another vote-counting scandal. An obvious lack of confidence.

And a bunch of crazed left-wingers forced to choke on their words. Well, that part I like. And a whole lot.

But it still isn’t a good thing.

People tell me there is something wrong with my blog, because this post or that post has too many commas in it, or has unclean pronoun reference. Or, this group of sentences here toward the end of a paragraph, don’t really add anything.

You know what? I agree with all of them.

But I still tell them to stick it. When I write these things, more often than not I’m dealing with all kinds of distractions…people asking me “does this dress make me look fat”…what was the name of that movie we saw back in whenever…what should I do when I get this error message. It isn’t a structured editing process by any means. You know what my editing process looks like? I get done with fighting the editor, I hit “publish,” I get the little WordPress spinning wheel thing. And after about five seconds I say out loud “well go fuck yourself, I’m going to get another cup of coffee.” Then I get myself another cup of coffee, by which time it’s usually finished and I view the home page and scan it for some obvious, reprehensible, offensive to God and Creation itself errors of all kinds.

Then I say, enough-is-enough-is-enough and I shower up and go to work.

Point is, if I held off on publishing anything that had yet to run through a proper editing cycle, I’d never write anything.

On more than one occasion, I have gotten the distinct impression that is the point. I get the feeling there is this sentiment out there: “I have thoughts I have not been allowed to express, or have been unable to express, or have been too lazy to express…and if I can’t express anything, nobody else should be able to either.”

Also, on more than one occasion, I have noticed the people who provide the distractions to me while I’m trying to write something, are the same people who provide these “helpful” criticisms once it’s put together so they can see it.

You know, I can tolerate criticism all day and night. It’s jealousy I can’t stand.

This one has been all over the innertubz, the radio, the teevee…and the Associated Press, from what I understand, has been trying to sanitize it. Apparently in vain. It’s Barack Obama’s “Marie Antoinette” moment:

Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle.

“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

What a dick. Just no other way to say it.

Afterward, the 8-mpg-figure was dancing around in my brain and it gave me cause to recall something. Remember when His Holiness was first inaugurated as our first demigod President? He got a special chariot out of the deal, something the Secret Service referred to as “The Beast.” Remember how many miles a gallon it got?

Barack. Obama. Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm!

Or, as they say over at Gerard’s place: “Oh, we are thinking about a trade-in, schmuck!”

Quote from one Alfred E. N. Gray, by way of Boortz:

“The secret of success of every person who has ever been successful lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.”

I’m thinking I like this husband. I acknowledge the multitude of exceptions to my observation, but I have found it to be a (yet another) fair generalization to make:

Reality teevee shows take as long as they do, because for every minute of something happening there are nine additional minutes of “When [blank] did or said [blank] it made me feel [blank].” To say I find this annoying would be an understatement, so potty-mouth and I are on the same page.

Hat tip to Gerard.

Since sometime in the second half of the twentieth century, we have had this rule in place that is unwritten and yet rigidly enforced. If someone were to take the time to string it into actual words, it would read something like “Any observation about people with exceptions to it, along with any observation that may have an exception to it is to be blocked, on penalty of ostracism.” Sometimes in grade school it is crystallized into the form of “It is wrong to generalize.”

Nowadays, it seems the perimeter has shrunk although at the same time, hardened. “All things noticed about a class of people, particularly a class of people represented by any organized victims-advocacy groups, are to be discarded before anyone acknowledges the thing noticed, such that it may as well not have been noticed.” So the enforcement is no longer against certain ways of thinking, it has subtly changed into a pit bull safeguarding the interests of political advocacy groups. For example — in 2011, I can say “it seems I am much less safe on the highways when the driver of the next car has a very low head, rising not too far above the steering wheel.” It is a generalization; certainly, still not looked upon too favorably. But it no longer draws any genuine offense because it doesn’t specifically target any one particular group. There is a “Could Be Construed As” standard that still has some teeth, and this could be construed as an attack upon Asians, or old people, or vertically challenged.

But it is not considered “super duper wrong” like it would have been before. In other words, we have very subtly done away with our deploring of certain ways of thinking, with the “enter every single new experience with people with zero baggage, and a brand new blank slate” thing. In times past, generalization itself was thought to be always unfair; making use of a long term memory was absurdly equivalent to denying someone, somewhere, opportunities and therefore “rights.” Well, unless it was a generalization the communists might like. “Business executives are cold-blooded reptiles” has never been politically incorrect, or discouraged in any way.

Well, like Baxter Black said: I acknowledge the multitude of exceptions to my observation. When you start out with that; and acknowledge the plain truth of the matter, that greater proportions of one declared class engage in a certain behavior than of some other declared class; and, consider the action of voting to re-elect President Obama — it is interesting what remains on the table.

Neal Boortz proceeds to catalog it thusly. And it’s a fair question for these fair generalizations. Who, after all, could have been paying attention over the last three years, and come to any conclusion available, other than that we’re looking at a failed experiment?

As I’ve said before, I take issue with the thing about women being wired for security while men are wired for opportunity. In times past, I say, it might very well have been true; but it’s time for a re-think. Are men, nowadays, wired for opportunity? Pfeh. If that’s the case, let them prove it, better than I’ve seen them prove it up ’til now. And I’ll be generous about it — dudes, if you’re going out to cut your own wood, change your own oil, fix your own machinery, plumbing, wiring, heating/AC ductwork, then I award you points. If you have opted for a job that pays on commission, or some kind of a bounty, has no flat salary, you get points too. Who’s left standing around with no points? A bunch of dames? A bunch of skirts? Their mothers, sisters, wives and girlfriends…nobody else? I’m thinking not. I’m seeing a lot of men who can’t make rational decisions about their own lives, unless & until everything is completely safe…at least in appearance. Men who can’t tell their next pink slip apart from an order of execution — who lack the ability to envision what is to become of their lives, the day after the current full-time job comes to an end.

Another disagreement: I must side with the commenters who have pointed out to Boortz that he has erred in skipping over the very young people. They are significant. Obama can count on them, and I think He is. You know what they say; you can’t have a heart if you vote Republican at twenty-five, and you can’t have a brain if you still vote democrat at thirty-five. As Rush Limbaugh said in his book, “that statement is at least half true.” But I find it a fair generalization to make that voters, up until about age thirty, don’t really give a rip. Oh, they’ll vote to “be a part of this thing” and so forth, but they won’t take the time to learn the details about what they’re doing.

I think in 2012, Barack Obama can count on young voters, feeling the pressure to participate…but, not taking the time to answer critical questions that pertain to Obama’s administration. Like, for example, “how exactly does a drilling moratorium help the situation with the oil seeping into the gulf?” Or, to cite another example, “what exactly is ObamaCare supposed to do, to bring medical costs down and make better care available to a greater number of people?”

If you had to contend with some kind of knowledge obstacle, to demonstrate some capacity of understanding for our policies and the effects they have before you could cast a vote…Obama would be a dead duck, with His amazing talents for speechmaking and crowd-pleasing rendered a mere nullity and nothing more. Might as well call up the moving truck right now.

There’s only one fair generalization needed, really: Barack Obama is depending on voters accustomed to feeling their way around problems, rather than thinking their way through them. Voters who have been conditioned to think they are assured of an acceptable outcome of each new situation, if only their emotions are in a good state, and kept that way until some concluding event.

Mental children, in other words.

And why not? It’s brought us such wonderful things, like…uh…hold on, I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Well it’s not over yet.

Am I hearing this right? Are these multiple generations of male hippies apologizing for rape? Sounds like a confession to me.

Give ’em a fair trial, lop off what they seem not to value anyway and toss their ponytailed carcasses in the clink.

To engage in further dark fantasy would be to embark upon a road I fear does not end…but it would also be to join them, on some level, so I shall concentrate on other things.

Rather surprised this has not already become a “Everyone Else is Blogging It, I Might as Well Do It Too” thing. I imagine it will be going viral soon.

Thanks to Rob, sending around the good stuff by way of e-mail, again.

Thanks to blogger friends Phil and Buck for confirming it isn’t just my imagination. Of course, the occasional HTTP 500 errors confirm that, but we needed confirmation the problem is getting worse.

It seems to happen between 9 and 10 PDT on weekdays. My domain provider has confirmed it’s a “roommate” problem of sorts, I’m sharing a physical bank of machines with other clients and one of them has been sucking the cycles away. They’re going to investigate the problem over a few days, read some logs, etc., possibly move things around if necessary.

So it’s not just your imagination, either. We’ll be following up in a couple days to make sure there’s real progress.

Daphne is letting loose once again, and making it look easy.

A silent tide is sweeping across the country among family men of a certain age. Men who’ve decided that they are done living on the government’s terms, shrugging off the tight-fitting version of suburban success with an ease they never thought possible. They’re walking off the reservation on their own terms, without anyone taking slightest bit of notice.

These men don’t show up at Tea Party rallies, march on Washington or join militias. They go to work, love their wives, pay their never-ending taxes, fees, surcharges and diligently raise the next responsible generation. Most people would call these solid men our nation’s backbone.

Many have served our country, in war zones, with distinguished honor. They gladly earn their bread while supporting complete strangers who don’t, can’t or won’t work. They span the spectrum from blue collar workers to successful entrepreneurs. A number of these good men have been sniffing the wind for the past two years and they’re calling it a day. Bolt holes are being created, money is being transferred out of the market and into solid commodities, debt load is being reduced with an eye towards further economic collapse. Politics have become meaningless to this breed, they’re done, disgusted, fed up with whole cesspool. These men are looking at American life in a whole new way.
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Flying under the radar, getting out from under the yoke, becoming free men, rather than shackled dogs or besuited grey ghosts, is the juice fueling their passion. These men don’t want to argue politics and they have no interest in fighting, not anymore.

These men have decided that what they want most of all, is to finally start living.

It is, perhaps, impossible to definitively determine how many societies have crumbled this way. Someone gets the bright idea to improve things and make them kinder and more compassionate, by making them kinder and more compassionate. As in, force some class of schmucks to do something they otherwise would not do. And then they do it again and do it again…after awhile, nobody bothers to even begin to explain how this next incremental erosion of freedom is supposed to solve the stated problem. We just do it a few more times. And then, finally, lo and behold we do build a super advanced society that works for “everyone.” But by this time we become well-practiced in re-defining “everyone” to mean something besides “everyone.” We re-define it to cover non-productive people, who don’t have jobs, don’t want jobs, or have jobs that cannot and do not produce anything of value to anybody. We create a society that works for them, and to hell with those other people, the people who keep it all running.

So our super-magical perfect society leaves them…before they leave it.

It isn’t the first time we’ve been down this road. Far from it.

Atlas Shrugged is opening on April 15. Have you demanded that it be shown in your zip code yet?

I’ve been conducting guided tours through California with extended family, and I’ve seen the question emerge as I execute my assigned captain-of-vessel duties from behind the steering wheel, many times in a variety of different phrasings, “What is California?”

The comment has arisen that lane-splitting is hairbrained and stupid. I am inclined to agree. Lane-splitting, for the uninitiated, refers to the practice of going between cars when you’re on a motorcycle. It is legal here in California, and in not too many other places.

I must admit that if I was on a motorcycle I’d probably not exploit this. But I also must admit that I hope California keeps this allowance in place, for one reason and one reason alone: This state is completely pussy-whipped in all other respects. In all other scenarios, all other situations, all other institutions, in all other walks of life. In fact, I shouldn’t compare it to female anatomy or female appendages or female characteristics because it isn’t fair to females. I do find this to be anti-male, but anti-male is not the same as female.

In all other matters, “One Regulation Away From Complete Bliss” is the order of the day.

California is, in its own way, rather disgusting. It is egregious. It is extremist. It is…dare I string the words together in this sequence…brutally secure. Yes, that does capture it, I think.

Everybody has to be healthy and safe. Siskiyous to Rio Grande, Sierra Nevada to the surf of the Pacific, every single square inch. Everyone must have an absolute guarantee that they will stay that way — healthy, safe, cancer free, organic, sterilized, non-radioactive…happy and content. And everyone has to have the feeling that they are absolutely safe. All the time.

This objective is not possible in this universe of reality, and so: It is always the right time to make another law. So yes, I do agree the lane-splitting is potentially hazardous — I don’t see any reason to keep it legal, at all, save one — if it is outlawed, our pussification is complete. While this stupid suicidal practice remains legal, there is a layer of insulation separating California from the brink. It is the one way you can use your resourcefulness, and your drive, and your rugged individualism to get ahead of the crowd. It’s dangerous. California allows it and not too many other states do. We need more things like that, not fewer.

We were heading toward one of our favorite places in the National Forest, and Dad was noting how attractive the wilderness was. And it is. Well cared-for, has that looked-after feel to it. And these aren’t acres and acres we’re talking about; it’s square miles and square miles.

But we weren’t in the National Forest yet.

And herein lies my observation. Not quite so much a liberal/conservative thing; more of a statist/libertarian thing. What is it we keep hearing about national forests? “Protect it! Make this parcel of lands hands-off to developers! Make it so it can’t be developed!”

Here I’ll just come out and say it. I don’t think those people bother to come out to where we were. I don’t think they go to national forests. I don’t think they enter the periphery near the forests, where we were. Because what we were looking at destroyed the entire paradigm. “Make this a national forest so it is protected from development” assumes, implicitly, that anything outside the borders of a national forest is going to get developed. Or at least un-maintained. Un-looked-after. That obviously is not true, so the entire argument crumbles under the weight of its own inherent silliness.

The same is true of any government entitlement program. When you say we need to raise taxes so the government can make ends meet, and then we need that government to provide a program so the beneficiaries of the program can do…whatever…what you need to presume, for that idea to find support, is that a dollar left untaxed is a dollar that won’t be used to help anybody. Well, people use their after-tax dollars to contribute to charities. So there goes that.

Education, too. How many times do we hear, lately, that we need to route more of these dollars to “education.” Implicit in that is — well, it’s the same. We’ve built this leviathan construct bureaucracy to educate people. Therefore, there must not be any way to get educated outside of this bureaucracy. Now if you presume that and refrain from challenging it in any way, or tolerating any challenges to it in any way, it makes sense. But if you tolerate challenges to it, once again the whole argument crumbles. And why would you refuse to tolerate any challenges to it? On a word-for-word basis, nobody even has the balls to advance this supposition anyway.

I don’t mean to flesh this list out to the point where it becomes exhaustive. But there are more examples, of course. ObamaCare. People going uncovered, dying, diseased, medical costs through the roof, blah blah blah — because there is freedom. Because there is choice. Like Venus arising from the ocean waves, this idea springs forward from nothing that all these problems will simply go away if people are forced to do something. Forced into the “public option.” Forced to buy insurance. Same thing as what you saw with the national forests. Stopped. Hindered. Obstructed. Made to do. Forced. Must. Should. Can’t.

How have these acts of force solved our problems? How will they? How can they? I say, go ahead and ask the questions; you’ll probably notice what I’m noticing. The answer never seems to come. It’s like the sacrifice of some barnyard beast to some primitive deity. Do it, and the rains come and we have crops…unless they don’t, and we don’t, in which case, well, heck. We must not have done it right. Do it again.

Is the global warming scare still on? I’m not even sure anymore. Let’s consider adding that to the list. Let’s see if I can describe this crisis accurately: Something called the “mean earth temperature” has gone up by a degree or so over the last hundred years or so. Solution: “cap and trade” scheme of some kind, and maybe a tax. There it is again. Force. Make. Bludgeon, beat-down, coerce, penalize, regulate, legislate, enforce, fine, imprison.

May I proceed to point out the obvious? Here, I’ll state it word for word and ruin the suspense: We are surrounded by fellow citizens who think of force as an adequate substitute for logical thought. If they were to enjoy some mystical immediate translation of their every thought into action, the problem would remain unsolved. Or, let’s state it properly: We find ourselves wholly missing any logical substantiation for the idea that the stated problem might be solved.

The involvement of force, is the only ingredient in the proposed solution that might incline a person to think the situation would be improved. But since when has that really solved anything?

Gun control. Prohibition against trans fats and salts in restaurants. Don’t invade Iraq unless the U.N. says it’s okay. No “gaming” unless you’re in a licensed casino. No home-schooling. Can’t turn your thermostat to seventy-two degrees.

When there’s another “crisis” with an oil leak in the gulf, the answer is a drilling moratorium. What is a moratorium? It is the word “can’t.” So there it is yet again. Can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t.

I say: Fine, give it a try. Forbid people from doing things, to your heart’s content. But hey, I’m a moderate. I say…do it, and at the same time, remain open to the possibility that it isn’t working. That last half of it is not being done.

I see it as something like an involuntary facial tic. Or a hand-washing compulsion. Some challenge arises and the resolution to the challenge is not immediately obvious. So these people, who lack basic talents involving maturity and resourcefulness, immediately just scurry to their corner of protection and comfort and say — forbid X from doing Y and that will make everything come out all fine.

And don’t ask me how. “I don’t care, Obama is awesome!” and let’s move on to the next topic.

But these are the fellow citizens who are supposed to be our deep, talented, nuanced thinkers. Yeah, uh huh. You figure that one out, you drop me a line okay?

Update: It seems this particular brand of insanity does not sleep, or even rest. Hat tip to Instapundit.

Can someone come up with some kind of special treatment, or program of confinement, or drug, to get these poor wretches the help that they need?

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.

William Jacobson, among others, is having a chuckle over this. Looks like someone at the Los Angeles Times had the wrong link copied into the clipboard whilst engaging in an attempt to direct readers to Obama’s re-election website, and pasted in the Times’ site address instead.

I just got done trying to find my way around President Obama’s website. I was trying to drop a brief reply, asking the President specifically what He plans to do in His second term that He can’t quite seem to get accomplished in His first. It’s a fair question, isn’t it? Whatever it is, it seems to be important enough to drive this historical, billion dollar campaign fund-raising effort.

Even knowing we’re talking about Barack Obama here, the “excitement,” contrasted against the absolutely complete lack of substance about goals & processes for reaching the goals…is nothing short of stunning. It’s worse than 2008. Without the ritual bellyaching about George W. Bush, there isn’t enough structure to get the excitement generated — not enough to even get started on that.

Just a lot of “okay, it’s time, let’s get started.” Like an elementary school teacher leading kids off a bus onto a field trip…but not to the petting zoo or fire hall or something cool & fun…more like, to some museum everyone’s already seen.

I was trying to ask pal Barry what’s up, and what I thought might get me to an e-mail reply page, got me this instead.

I don’t know about you, but I found “Ed” to be particularly pathetic. Toxic, even. The video would have been better if he’d been entirely removed. In the middle of a video that’s supposed to get me all excited and jazzed, but is completely lacking in “President Obama is for [blank] and to get that done He intends to do [blank],” here’s Ed to counsel and preach to me that he doesn’t agree with Obama on everything, but he respects Him. Hmmmmm…yes, that is very inspiring. Gas prices have doubled, unemployment seems to have found a natural new home at around nine percent, and the top dog is doing things we disagree with. But He’s respectable, “we” respect Him.

Maybe there’s a way for the bar to be lower than that. Having trouble thinking of one at the moment…

Still, there’s a real chance this might actually work. It’s going to be an interesting race. Sort of like a literal race, from one end of a barnyard to the other, among two animals, chickens or goats maybe, neither one of them feeling too much oomph about it or offering much clarity of thought about space, geography, where the finish line is…maybe a couple of feral creatures inebriated on liquor. To build up such an analogy any further is to drift into the realm of award-winning bad metaphors and I’m probably there already.

Point is, I expect each side to be excited and motivated solely by the weaknesses hobbling the other. Not entirely sure about the Republican challenger, since I don’t know who that is yet. But President Obama certainly does have that problem — His billion dollar fundraising campaign shows none of the excitement He seems to think He can bring to it. And if it does ever come to find this excitement, it will be agitated into effect only by the weakness on the other side.

So I’m not altogether sure why He has seen fit to deliver this to us now. Maybe someone, somewhere, has done a calculation and figured out it’ll cost a billion dollars to get His sorry ass re-elected.

Good for Him that the LA Times is helping Him out where it can.

I’m divided about Charlie Sheen, although not by any means unresolved or uncertain. As a matter of fact, there are many things in life about which I think it would do me good to learn a bit more, but there are very few subjects on which I have less curiosity than Charlie Sheen. Among the things about which I am ambivalent, I think it is fair to say Charlie Sheen represents the one item on that list about which I possess the lowest level of curiosity, the one item on which I have the least to learn.

Do I need to elaborate upon the reasons for which I feel ambivalent? I have some sympathy for when he’s asked why he likes hot looking women…as if it’s some kind of mental illness…and he replies, “duh.” Not only am I on Charlie Sheen’s side in that exchange — I am deeply, deeply suspicious of the man who is not. Charlie Sheen ranks much higher on my scale of acceptability, than some virtual gelding who goes through the motions of pretending “proper” men should not find attractive women to be attractive. I think those lightweights are selling out their own sex, but I also think they are much worse than that. I see them as liars, who are complicit in an effort to ruin the lives of others who speak truth.

From what I have read, Charlie Sheen is a working man. He shows up for the job on time, and he delivers. He seems to be a pain in the ass to any kind of employee, boss or co-worker…but not because anything that has to do with getting the job done. I think he’s a dick, but I think the guy who fires him because of some personal friction, is a bigger dick. In short: I have contributed productively to successful projects, working shoulder-to-shoulder with people who disagreed with me about things. I have little interest in forcing everybody else to do likewise. But I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who fail at this. I figure if I can do it everybody else can too. I think the “team player” thing has been vastly, vastly overdone, in all walks of life. I think we have neglected the getting-done of the job at hand, even if it’s a silly job like show business, to this “lesson” more properly relegated to the second-grade classroom of “learning to work together.” I think Charlie Sheen fails at this, is proud to have failed at this, but the goal is substandard, nonsensical, useless and childish in the first place. I think it needs more resistance. When Sheen/Estevez puts up his resistance against it, I am in his ball park and I am on his side.

Next item of Sheen-mania: “Winning…”? I’m ambivalent about this more than anything else. Yes, it sounds pretty stupid and yes it probably should. It’s also a falsehood in my opinion. I have a few people in mind who I think are “winning” or have been “winning.” Charlie Sheen has not been on that list. He is certainly not on that list now!

But why do I not like Charlie Sheen? Not because of any one thing he’s uttered in particular; he’s going through the motions of being this rugged-individualist guy who doesn’t care what anybody thinks. And it is the polar opposite of the truth.

Charlie Sheen is trying to get attention. I cannot respect people who try to get attention. They keep saying all kinds of stupid bullshit things.

Like for example…this.

9:18 – “Nothing terrifies a troll more than its own reflection,” Sheen continues, before shifting gears into politics. “In a recent poll, they told me I’d bring down that whore [Sarah] Palin. I don’t have time for that nonsense.”

9:20 — People start booing Sheen. Not playing around, but actually booing him. Sheen yells, “I already got your money, dude!”

We here happen to like Sarah Palin, but let’s leave that alone. We happen to be friends with lots of people who don’t like Sarah Palin, if Charlie has something insulting to say that by itself doesn’t make him a bad person.

And it’s not necessarily the word that brings it to my attention.

It’s the entire family of words. Trollop, whore, cunt, twat, plate-of-warm-meat, jezebel, tramp, bimbo, gang bang party favor, tootsie, hoe-bag, strumpet, tart.

Nouns that indirectly refer to the organ that is between a woman’s legs, for the purpose of implying that the target of the insult has sexual intercourse with an inordinately large number of men, or has a great number of sexual adventures of a casual nature across a relatively brief expanse of time.

Calling all people who do not like Sarah Palin — and let us say, for the purpose of argument, that I am also a person who does not like Sarah Palin.

Why would you go calling her a whore? It just makes us look like dumbasses.

Now let’s re-emerge back in reality, and acknowledge that I do, in fact, like Sarah Palin: I already know these Palin haters are dumbasses and don’t need to see anything by way of ancillary proof. But it does prove what I already know. They’re dumbasses.

Why do you go calling her a whore? Can you think of any way in which she is qualified to be on the receiving end of such an insult, even remotely? No, you can’t. I say this makes Charlie Sheen, and all the other Palin haters, look like exactly what they are. People stranded in “opposite land.”

I would rather have Palin watch my house while I was on vacation, than Charlie Sheen. And I think most of the Palin haters would rather have Sarah and Todd watching their houses than Charlie Sheen, while they were on vacation. I think they know what I know. I think this is why they hate her so much. It’s like Stockholm syndrome; they have this inexplicable fascination with, and attraction toward, flaky unreliable scumbag ditzy slutty people. And so they project these slutty attributes upon clear-thinking reliable people who are not sluts, that they know are not sluts.

They try to make an issue out of Sarah Palin, and “tea party people,” being well-read or not well-read. But it’s all nothing but a big smoke screen, a big red herring. Being erudite or worldly or having a passport has nothing to do with it.

She possesses good judgment and is wholesome, and they hate her for it.

But why call her a slut or a cunt or a hoe-bag or a twat, or any of these derogatory words for women who have indiscriminate, frequent or vast magnitudes of sex? Why do that?

After years and years of moving in next door to her to spy on her, and comb through her trash, there was not a single sexually titillating thing discovered about her except — correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is an exhaustive list:

– Her daughter got knocked up
– She showed her legs, wearing running shorts, with awesome looking legs sticking out of them, on the cover of a magazine, and it was a damn good-looking cover since Sarah Palin’s legs are so good-looking…
– Some bikini picture had to be photoshopped. That means it wasn’t real. Which means, they couldn’t find a real picture. Which means, you know what her legs look like but you don’t know what her stomach looks like.

That’s a whore? You can’t even find an old boyfriend pre-Todd? Just one? Someone who will spill some secrets? Just one? After all this energy spent looking…it would not be an overstatement to say an entire industry has been built on this effort, between August of 2008 and the moment in which I’m writing this…still, there is nothing. That’s a whore, huh?

Sorry Charlie. You’re a falling star, burning out. But I think you know that already.

Title of this post taken from the comment made by cruzin77.

Cross-posted at Washington Rebel.

His weekly column is here.

He is even enviable in the way he chooses to word things. During the audio book on the way back from Nevada, I was particularly impressed with the phrase, “I acknowledge the multitude of exceptions to my observation.” The occasion was a comment made about the difference between girls and boys as they interact with horses. Gender differences, in other words. We sometimes talk about gender differences here; it sort of teeters on the brink of the precipice of “Three Things Morgan Doesn’t Have the Balls to Blog.”

So I think I’ll borrow the phrase, when it is needed, going forward. “I acknowledge the multitude of exceptions to my observation.”

…in everything he says, about anything. I mean the dude does talk about capitalism and money an awful lot. He must know something about it, since he’s a great big fat rich capitalist guy & all.

I just hope it doesn’t get me into any kind of (logical) trouble. Like so —

Hat tip to Kate at Small Dead Animals.

Of course we do.