…when everybody and his pet dog applies for, and gets, a waiver from it?

Of course, I’m talking about ObamaCare:

The number of temporary healthcare reform waivers granted by the Obama administration to organizations climbed to more than 1,000, according to new numbers disclosed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS posted 126 new waivers on Friday, bringing the total to 1,040 organizations that have been granted a one-year exemption from a new coverage requirement included in the healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago.

I think it’s past time for the rest of America to receive a waiver. This behemoth is a huge mistake, nearly everyone coming to that conclusion though many kicking and screaming.

Repeal this job killing beast. Sooner rather than later.

Well, why should anybody be surprised. We elected the presidential candidate with the most appealing personality. We got someone charming, confident, and who has managed to go through all of life without being told “no” very often…a man who can sell anything, but doesn’t have a head for details because it takes effort to develop a head for details, and the necessity has never been there. So it fell to Congress to come up with the details. They did it in secret. They laid such a rotten egg that they could barely get it through the Senate, with 59 friendly seats in that chamber and a truckload of bribes.

Charisma…gravitas…hopey-changey wonderfulness. Call it whatever you want, but if this is what it nets us I say we can do without it. Whoever said charm is a good thing in our president, anyway? It appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, and I think I see why now. Charming people don’t get told “no.” That’s the whole point of being charming, is it not? And their ideas, on average, are not very good.

Da TechGuy explores the weirdness with which some of us are all too familiar…and has to be discussed, because a lot of other people are completely unaware of it. How compassionate is the modern left? How loving & lovable? They are humanitarians the same way Joy Behar is an underwear model.

The NYT talked a bit about Koch today and told about his philanthropic work:

Mr. Koch, a billionaire who is perhaps best known for his family’s contributions to conservative causes, got a standing ovation from scientists, Nobel laureates and politicians of various political stripes as he opened the new David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which he gave $100 million to help build.

Yup $100 million for cancer research I was curious how the left would react. So I went to Wonkette to check it out

David Koch is super sad about how the mean poor/working people are upset because he’s funding and directing the destruction of government unions nationwide. This makes him feel bad! And even though the deeply secretive David Koch never does an interview, the New York TImes somehow managed to get him to speak, on the occasion of David Koch being honored for giving millions of dollars to a cancer research center, because he has cancer and wants to cure his own cancer, even though he owns an evil forestry empire that insists formaldehyde (a carcinogen) is not a carcinogen. See, when poor people get cancer, it’s because they suck. And when rich people who exploit nature and humanity get cancer, it’s time to send $100 million to some little people who can maybe take care of the problem.

Ok I wasn’t really curious, I excepted exactly this, and the comments were even more fun, take a peek:

Here’s one

The only upbeat part of that article is that David Koch has cancer. Everything else is just Koch-sucking.

and Barbara:

I’m really sorry about his prostate cancer. I hope that it doesn’t spread to his anus. If he has to have an asshole transplant, he will be the first person to have the transplant reject the donee.

doc zoom:

It would be inhumane to publicly rejoice at the news that a fellow human being has cancer.

I will therefore rejoice only in private.

And these are not exceptions, they are typical of the comments left. Remember if you disagree with the left politically and do something about it, you are evil and deserve a painful death.

It’s time to psychoanalyze. I’m no mental health professional and I don’t play one on teevee, but any functional adult should be able to gather the clues and figure out something about what they mean. They’re all around us. Go to any public medium that benefits from a mixed audience, by which I mean it isn’t a right-wing blog, and say “[Insert name of conservative person here] has positive characteristics,” and then sit and watch. The barbed comments will come, and quickly. It’s not an if but a when, and there isn’t a lot of waiting involved in the when.

Do conservatives act this way? Uh, not really, no. Generally the response will be to think out loud (or think through typing) until such time as they’ve made the decision not to support the person being discussed, or that person’s efforts. Yes, this can take quite a negative turn but I have yet to see such a thread devolve into a meandering toxic chain of post after post after post wishing death on the person or celebrating the fact that he has cancer. With the left, it is almost routine. It’s just like TechGuy said — obstruct their agenda, and you deserve death. An informal contest will be started, on the spot, to see who does the best job of wishing death upon you. When’s the last time a conservative did that?

No, my point isn’t that conservatives are all angels. My point is that the left is toxic. There is something in the worldview that persuades them to become…well, the exact opposite of what it is they pretend to be. “Tolerance” — out the window, forgetabbowdit, it was never, ever here. Everyone who agrees with us, agrees with us, and whoever doesn’t, shouldn’t even be walking around living. How dare they.

And they do not police their own.

I think it might have something to do with lowered standards. Conservative might say something like “I do not know personally, for a fact, that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii” and he’s already in trouble, under a magnifying glass. It is forgotten in the space of a heartbeat that for those of us born after 1961, this is the only sensible observation we can make about it, and ditto for anyone born before that date but who wasn’t in Honolulu personally watching Mrs. Dunham deliver. So the conservative doesn’t need to get to “I wish so-and-so was dead” or “I’m so glad so-and-so has cancer.” Liberals do it pretty much all the time.

It has nothing to do with “blowing off steam.” If it did, they’d blow off the steam and it would be over. That is not the case.

They’re showing off for each other.

Had a friend forward me the article where Robin of Berkeley looks into this. My leftward-leaning “blue dog democrat” former colleague was offended that Sarah Palin was being compared to Jesus Christ. Now when you read the article itself, you find this comparison was never made, directly or indirectly. She might be talking about this passage…

And then, out of the blue, Sarah Palin, like a majestic bird in flight, swooped onto the scene of a depraved and deprived nation. With her children and grandchild, her religion and her patriotism, Sarah is the antithesis of everything the progressives stand for. Palin is not just pro-life, but she emanates life — and good, clean living.

And what does the left do? They try to drag her through the mud to sully her. The hardcore among them want to eliminate her, even if this means putting her life at risk.

But I’m just not sure this is the passage that offends. There never is a good fit for this. I think the point of the piece went whistling above my former colleague’s head, and the point is: people have a tendency to become hateful when they see someone else doing something right, where they know they have done wrong — when the evidence of their senses compels them to see something positive in a place where they just don’t want to see it. I think we all have it in us to react to that with an intense, visceral hatred that comes out nowhere else.

That is true, especially, when we are participating in a group fellowship.

And it is particularly true among our leftists. They’ve got their minds all made up about who’s good and who’s bad, and any lately-arriving evidence doesn’t figure into it. That’s problematic, but what is even more problematic is this: They are engaged in a deliberate process of defining right and wrong according to an agenda, which on an individual level, they don’t completely comprehend. Koch, for example, is demonized because he is spearheading opposition to the teachers’ unions over in Wisconsin. Among those wishing death upon Mr. Koch, how many of them understand the ins & outs of the negotiations between the unions and Gov. Walker? I’m reasonably sure some of them are missing some of the key facts. I’ve had “discussions,” myself, with some leftwardly-leaning folks who are willing to admit as much. But the passion is not diminished by this, not even a tiny bit.

Just about everyone who’s observed anything lately agrees, now, that our country needs to take on a more civil tone as we discuss our differences.

That means this kind of leftist group-think is going to have to recede. It’s not good for the country. It needs to go on the wane. We need to allow it, of course, since it’s a free country & all. But that doesn’t mean it has to be encouraged.

In fact I see no reason why it should be accepted any more than a swastika on a flag hanging by some guy’s house. That might be “allowed,” too, in a free country. But it would be caustic, hateful, hurtful and dumb. Just like the comments made by the Wonkette people, which are to be found in a lot of other places besides Wonkette. One way or the other, the swastika flag would come down, I think, so I still don’t understand why this other toxic banner is flying in so many places. While those who fly it, and encourage each other to do likewise, proceed to pretend they’re the exact opposite of what the rest of us can plainly see they are.

…about the Dads coming home. Like this one —

From here.

With a grateful hat tip to Instapundit.

Big Government:

Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert wants Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether the liberal group Common Cause should lose its nonprofit status, after a conservative website published footage of protesters calling for the lynching of conservative Supreme Court justices.

The footage shows enraged protesters making inflammatory and threatening comments about Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as well as Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas.

Gohmert said that the inflammatory remarks are more troubling given the attack on Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords earlier this year.

“We shouldn’t have any organization, especially one that says it’s nonpartisan, out there stirring up hatred and animosity to the point that people would say, “Let’s string up a justice of the Supreme Court as well as his wife,” Gohmert said.

Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. Where’s our new civil tone?

Over at Film Drunk. This is how you do it:

Something something Gemma Arterton’s butt

Stephen Frears is best known as the director of Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, Mary Reilly, High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things, and The Queen, and his latest is an adaptation of Posy Simmond’s British comic strip, Tamara Drewe. It stars Gemma Arterton, who may or may not be cute enough to make up for her obnoxious over-enunciating. I can’t decide. Anyway, the plot seems to be that she gets a nose job and then bangs everyone. Looks great.

According to Wikipedia, the plot is a little bit more extravagant than that. But not by much:

Set in Ewedown, a fictitious village in Dorset, England. Tamara Drewe, a young and attractive journalist, returns home with the intention of selling her now-deceased mother’s house which she has inherited. Locals are amazed at the improvement in her appearance after she had a nose job while away. Andy had been interested in her when she was a girl, and when he sees her now it is clear he is attracted. Across the valley is a neighbour’s house where authors stay to work on their stories, but the husband, Nicholas, keeps having affairs while his wife stays at home providing food and lodging for her patrons. At one point he embarks on an affair with Tamara, after she finishes with boy-band drummer Ben, whose dog Boss enjoys chasing cows. Andy has been asked by Tamara to work on the house so she can sell it, and he becomes aware of the affairs, as do two local schoolgirls (Jody and Casey) who cause some havoc by throwing eggs at cars and interfering with Tamara’s emails. Jody ‘loves’ Ben and when he leaves Ewedown after the Tamara affair, Jody uses her wiles to lure him back, where she is found out and told-off. Meanwhile Beth, the jilted housewife running the writers’ retreat, is befriended and then loved by one of her lodgers, and she easily persuades him to stay when her husband Nick is killed in an accident. By this time the true love of Andy and Tamara brings them together, Tamara deciding to stay in Ewedown after all.

So the first review did hit all the high points — she gets a nose job and then bangs everyone.

As far as seeing it, well I only recognize Mary Reilly, Dirty Pretty Things and Dangerous Liaisons. They all moved pretty slowly, so I think I’ll wait for it to come out on Netflix instant. But yes, Gemma is certainly a looker.

Tim Kowal:

[L]et’s not pretend that liberals want to stop with just preventing their neighbors from dying bleeding in the street. They also insist on legislation to prevent their neighbors from being hungry, fat, underpaid, overpaid, jobless, overworked, pensionless, discontent, demoralized, bored, underutilized, untrained, unskilled, feckless, useless, or otherwise pitiable for whatever reason. When the haplessness of man has become the universal incitement to political action, there can be no end to the work of an energetic and meddlesome state.

Hat tip to Professor Mondo.

Okay, fine, one more joke at the expense of Mr. Winning…

With a grateful hat tip to Robert S. McCain.

Flying snakes.

The facts are accurate, so far as I can see, and the viewpoint is an entirely legitimate one. Is there any substantial reason to be offered why every sixth grade class should not spare the nine minutes to view this from beginning to end?

Back in my day, we were entirely ignorant of just how much unchecked power had been moved around, when it happened and why. We remained ignorant of it into adulthood; some people maintain their ignorance to this very day, in fact, work hard at it.

William A. Jacobson has had enough. The Obama administration, through the actions of those who seek to defend it and apologize for it, has done more to aggravate racial tension in our nation than any force of national politics in the last twenty years or so. And Obama Himself is not innocent.

If you have followed this series, you have seen the absurd depths to which liberal pundits and political operatives will go to inject race into non-racial situations, and to explain almost all opposition to Obama as implicitly if not explicitly racist.

This stereotyped view of opposition to Obama derives not only from liberal dogma, but from Obama himself.
:
Remember, Obama made his bitter clinger comments before there was a Tea Party movement, before there was opposition to what would become Obamacare, before Sarah Palin was a national figure, and before Obama had even won the nomination.
:
While Obama says he wants a post-racial American, in fact Obama bitterly clings to bitter clinger stereotypes.

Leftist ambitions have a balkanizing effect on people by their very nature. And leftist politics do not, and can not, unify people.

Go through the entire list of leftist positions on things…one by one. Put together as big a list as you can possibly manage — now, take out the ones that have to do with giving the state new powers over its citizens. So take out ObamaCare, take out the First Lady’s anti-obesity initiative, take out gun control…

There’s still an awful lot left there, isn’t there? But out of what remains, you’ll notice something interesting: Every single agenda item can be summed up with the statement “Group X should have Right Y.” And, more disturbingly, you’ll see the leftists are saying anyone outside of Group X should be deprived of Right Y. So they spend a lot of time and energy saying certain people don’t count in some way. You don’t count as a person if you’re still in your mother’s womb. You aren’t really being double-taxed if your parents’ estate is subject to the Death Tax. You don’t have a right to work if you don’t belong to the union — at least, not a right so sacrosanct as the right enjoyed by people in that union. It isn’t logically possible to discriminate against you if you’re white (you kind of have it coming anyway). Girls are entitled to set-asides in higher education, even when they outnumber boys in the student body, are performing better academically, have always been the focus of our society’s efforts to make people safer and more secure, and on average have much brighter futures than their male counterparts.

Everyone inside some perimeter is to receive some entitlement — and anybody outside of it, doesn’t count in the same way. You’ve got to join our club in order to get the perks.

This doesn’t unify people, doesn’t bring people together. It fragments them, drives them apart. It’s been true of leftist politics for generations, Obama is just the latest demonstration of this truth.

Blogger friend Phil has an open mind, and has been talking to some smart people.

Well I guess it came to a head with that liberal friend over on Facebook. I got a note from him yesterday basically saying why don’t we just talk about the things we have in common.

We’re not close, but we go way back. I don’t know why that makes a difference to me, but it does. Part of it is that I know he’s intelligent and I have hope that he’ll snap out of it. Which is one reason I challenged his constant dribble of links to articles telling everyone how stupid conservatives are. He says he posts them because he finds them “interesting” or “amusing”, and the gist of his message was, between the lines as my buddy in KC observed, “Stop Booing When All I Want is Applause“.

I said I would respect his wishes and basically stop countering his posts on his wall with my opinions. I’ll stand by that. I’m a man of my word.

But Morgan had a good point when I talked to him about it. He said in situations like that he just politely tells in a world where silence=consent and he does not consent — if they want his silence they need to post it somewhere where he can’t see or comment on it. Force them into the shadows for a change.

So … that dude’s granfathered in. Unless and until he breaks his own part of the bargain.

But … it goes against my Stop An Echo campaign. So I’ll need to watch my acquiescence in the future.

The left needs constant reassurance about following their agenda. I suppose they should need it; the rest of us have a track record of becoming disenchanted and revolted with it whenever we’re better informed about it. But that doesn’t explain all of their insatiable lust for more and more reassurance. Recently the current Defense Secretary said that “any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” That’s as much of a victory as they should ever want. That was the goal, after all.

But still the relentless campaign continues, like a juggernaut. At Thanksgiving, in the office, on Facebook, it’s always reminder-time. Bush stupid, Obama awesome, Palin a dimwit, Iraq a mistake.

Say a single word in rebuttal, and you’re the problem.

Well you know what? That’s the kind of double-standard that is effective only if the victim consents to it. Hence my comment to Phil about silence being consent. That’s what they expect, want, depend on. Chaos gets to babble away with whatever, it’s always the job of order to sit in respectful stewing silence.

Well, yeah. I don’t want to be a dick about it, but then again we’re talking about situations where the other person started the conversation. Which I notice is usually the case, especially with the Palin-is-a-dimwit conversations.

So yes, I have a reply. I think that’s fair — I do not consent. If they want to peel off with nonsense and struggle upward on their little social ladder, and not hear a single syllable of disagreement from anyone, it’s their job to keep the conversation out of my sight. They’re the ones who want it that way. They have to unfriend or unfollow me/us.

If they want a monologue instead of a dialogue, they have to say so. They have to admit that’s what they want. That their argument is too flimsy to withstand anything but obligatory agreement.

It’s called being stigmatized; being driven underground. And yes you’re damn right it’s high time it happened to them.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Now that Carlos “Winning” Estevez has peaked, and I’ve finally managed to properly learn the first name of one of my oldest blogger friends, let’s go for something that is solidly put together & makes some sense.

Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the United States has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance and imperialism.

A strange moral inversion, considering that Hussein’s evil was an order of magnitude beyond Gaddafi’s. Gaddafi is a capricious killer; Hussein was systematic. Gaddafi was too unstable and crazy to begin to match the Baathist apparatus: a comprehensive national system of terror, torture and mass murder, gassing entire villages to create what author Kanan Makiya called a “Republic of Fear.”

Moreover, that systemized brutality made Hussein immovable in a way that Gaddafi is not. Barely armed Libyans have already seized half the country on their own. Yet in Iraq, there was no chance of putting an end to the regime without the terrible swift sword (it took all of three weeks) of the United States.

Well, better put together & making more sense than that which it seeks to analyze, anyway. How do you explain fashion? It is, by nature, inexplicable, and it remains so in spite of generations of people who’ve made the attempt to xplick. Just the bell bottom trousers by themselves are an unworkable conundrum. We haven’t even gotten to the polyester suits, the muttonchop sideburns, the butt crack pants from the nineties…voting for Barack Obama…

I see all the talk about “blood for oil, how dare they, war criminals, blah blah blah” as on exactly the same level. Pet rocks, lava lamps, face tattoos, Good Lord how did we ever survive.

Thus it is with all the wailing, all the railing, against the invasion of Iraq for the last eight years or so. It still seems “hip”…kinda…to some. So the fad is staggering along. Well big deal, the droopy butt crack pants lasted fifteen years or so.

That hot new trend of leftist chanting against our move into Iraq, is ultimately going to take its place somewhere between the Whig party and Jim Crow laws. Solid, durable logic is not a requirement for an idea’s longevity across a decade or so; but for it to last throughout the generations, it starts to come into play. “Saddam was a harmless kitten” doesn’t meet the standard.

Who doesn’t love a great rack?

So hie thee thence down to Blog-Uncle Gerard’s place…although be forewarned, lowly serf, all icons therein are not a fit for thine appointed place of office toil.

Also, that the display runs alongside a picture of Ayn Rand. Our blogger uncle has a stellar track record of knowing what he’s doing…and it is true Lady Rosenbaum does find favor with us, along with stunning visuals of mammaries. But it’s the minty-toothpaste-and-orange-juice thing, ya know? Some things just don’t go together. Plus, the modern age philosopher-novelist is looking righteously pissed off in a way few can manage. Sophia Loren, by contrast, looks inviting and pleasant.

…at least in terms of our democrat presidents. A Facebook brain fart from Yours Truly, jumps back over here…

And that is really all that needs to be said.

Well, almost anyway. Regarding the last of those four names, Sonic Charmer has reached the final phase of the cycle. I’m at that same point with the other three.

Beth Shaw thought The One was unelectable, which was a big mistake. But she thought it for a good reason. She noticed it:

I have finally been able to put my finger on what it is that the democrats have been trying to keep the public from knowing. Barack Obama is boring. This is a secret. Its a super secret. Please don’t tell the democrats that we are on to this fact because they still have time to change their minds and put Hillary at the top of the ticket and get her 18 million voters back. Remember, she didn’t END her campaign, she just suspended it.

A campaign against Hillary would be fun too, but that’s a whole other story.

The man LOVES the sound of his own voice. He goes on and on and on and on. If you pay attention during his speeches – not to him but to the audience – you’ll notice that their eyes start glassing over. Then all of the sudden he’ll say ‘HOPE’ and they’ll all rouse up and start applauding and jumping up and down. When they settle down he starts talking again. Their eyes start glassing over and he goes on and on and on…

Michael Wolff noticed it in President Soetoro’s first year:

But now, at week 11, we’re face-to-face with the reality, the man can’t talk worth a damn.

You can see the fundamental mistake he’s making. Having been so successfully elected, he’s acting like people actually want to hear what he thinks. He’s the great earnest bore at the dinner party. Instead of singing for his supper, he’s just talking—and going on at length. The real job of making people part of the story you’re telling, of having them hang on your every word, of getting the tone and detail right, the hard job of holding a conversation, he ain’t doing.

He’s cold; he’s prickly; he’s uncomfortable; he’s not funny; and he’s getting awfully tedious. He thinks it’s all about him…

Robert Morrison notices it, and notices something else too:

Two million people gathered two years ago on the Mall to hear President Obama take the Oath of Office. It was assuredly an historic moment. But now, barely 25 months later, can anyone-supporter or opponent-recall a single memorable line from Inaugural Address? “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” He said that?

Mr. Obama has also suffered from the 24/7 news cycle. Franklin Roosevelt “Fireside Chats” were offered sparingly. FDR knew the presidency was a precious national resource and he did not squander it. His major speeches were carefully crafted for maximum effect.

Compare Mr. Obama at Normandy with President Ronald Reagan at the same location twenty-five years earlier. Reagan spoke movingly of “the Boys of Pointe du Hoc”-our heroic Rangers-in cadences that gave echoes of Henry V and Gettysburg.

Mr. Obama was said by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas to hover over the nations at Normandy “like a god.” Awesome, but what did he say there? [emphasis mine]

President Barack Obama is, in fact, known for just a few identifiable, glowing snippets and there are people who can recite them instantaneously. The problem is, those are people like me who disapprove of Him. We use the glittering verbal trinkets to make our Obama Speech Bingo cards, because they don’t actually mean anything. “Let Me be clear,” “Make no mistake,” “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” et al.

Where’s the counterpart to “One Man Makes a Majority” or “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself”? What can a slobbering Obama fan print up onto a tee shirt, or glaze onto a coffee mug, that won’t look silly?

It’s not too tall an order, is it? Shoot, I’m a blogger, widely ridiculed for my inability to say something in less than several thousand words…and after six years in “office” even I have just a few snippets some readers have found worthy of quotation. Doesn’t happen very often at all, mind you. But it seems to me, if I can pull it off and I don’t have any magazine editors babbling any glowing nonsense about my godlike superpowers, surely Birther Zero over there in the White House can say something that is both memorable and actually means something? Both at the same time?

Because to many among His supporters, that’s the one thing we were supposed to get out of this deal. The “ZOMG THERE’S JUST SOMETHING ABOUT HIM I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT!!!” voting bloc. C’mon, Barack…give ’em something. You’ve paid back everybody else, right? Where’s that super duper excitement and charisma-or-whatever so repetitively extolled two years ago?

Hand our leader a foreign crisis — like Libya. What does the president have to say about that? “This violence is unacceptable.” We don’t need a $400,000-a-year Commander-in-Chief and his $172,000-a-year speechwriter to tell us that.

Exactly.

He’s still a tough contender for His re-election bid, which suggests maybe none of this matters very much. But that contest is still in a state of uncertainty. And this is shaping up to be yet another argument, and by no means the first one, that perhaps this is a person who is good for a job different from the one He has, and that the job He has, requires a person whose talents are far different from His.

Hat tip to Boortz.

I know I’ve been linking to Kate at Small Dead Animals a lot, there’s a reason for that. You really should make it a regular stop if you aren’t doing so already.

Some of the things you’ll not find elsewhere — this bit of cognitive dissonance.

An online petition declaring this week “Ignore Sarah Palin Week” …. has attracted more than 32,000 signatures.

Nothing to add.

Via Michelle Malkin:

She adds…

AFSCME, UCFW, SEIU: Does this behavior make all our children proud and improve the national tone, like President Obama asked us all to do post-Tucson?

I wonder what Mahatma Ghandi would think of this…

The “peaceful protest” at the end — really, really creepy. “Cameras are rolling, guys!” at 7:00 — ditto.

I’ve said before that left-wing politics seem to have a goal of transforming people into barnyard animals. Usually, what I have in mind with regard to that statement is cattle…as in, overly-modernized family law that estranges the father, diminishes his role into one of sperm donor who leaves his contribution and then moves on, just like a bull. Or halfway-domesticated sheep, milling about, waiting to be told where to go & what to do…or hogs at the trough…

The union-politicking turns them into geese. Angry geese. The “moderates” who are fooled into supporting this stuff, I wonder if they realize how bad it gets sometimes.

George Lakoff:

—Dedicated to the peaceful protestors in Wisconsin, February 19, 2011

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women’s rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting, and on and on.
Budget deficits are a ruse, as we’ve seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement.

Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work, and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the President has discussed. But deficits are not what really matters to conservatives.

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: Empathy — citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility — acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions and empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one’s fellow citizens.

The conservative worldview rejects all of that.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don’t think government should help its citizens. That is, they don’t think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have over 800** military bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don’t have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, “Let the market decide” assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that. Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks, and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don’t deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life, a civilized society, and as necessary for business to prosper.

I found the “empathy” thing snort-worthy. It certainly isn’t true that conservatives “reject all that,” it isn’t even true that conservatives are any less accepting of it than our modern liberals. My dictionary says empathy is:

the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

And looking high & low for some stellar example of a failure of empathy, I guess I would need to inpsect…uh…oh, how about a George Lakoff editorial. Where he starts chastising democrats for helping those evil awful conservatives too much:

Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific “cuts” is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American — the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.

Plenty of money up there at the top. So just go get it. Nevermind the message this sends to people starting businesses, or thinking about starting businesses, or thinking about expanding them. Good luck, suckers, if you do manage to make a buck at it you won’t be able to hang on to it for long. George Lakoff sees your money!

How un-empathic.

The thing about equality draws a sad sort of chortle out of me as well. Equality? Good heavens, Lakoff’s little masterpiece here is loaded up, from top to bottom, with good guys and bad guys. He doesn’t see people as equally virtuous, and certainly, he doesn’t see it as a noble goal that they should all participate in a democracy with an equal vote. This isn’t the work of someone who sees people as “equal”; not even close. Does he seriously think he sees people this way? If so, he’s insane.

There’s a long diatribe about midpoint about a patriarchal household or some such, with a benevolent patriarch instilling discipline in the lesser house-members by telling them what’s what & what for. Not to belabor the obvious, but…well, I’ll go ahead and belabor it. This is pure projection. Who do you see in this equation being authoritarian…knowing best…stating unequivocally who’s supposed to make the rules, who’s supposed to snap-to attention and do what they’re told without giving any lip?

In my recent memory, that would be George Lakoff. Obama and the liberal politicians will tell the businesses and the “rich” what they’re supposed to pay, and those awful rich people will just pony it up. Through some kind of system of checks & balances? Lakoff doesn’t say; it comes off looking like every tax increase is just supposed to be an itch between a pair of ears somewhere, followed by a scrawling of a pen, and it’s done-and-done. Is that what he means? If so, what could be more “strict father”-ish than that?

I wonder how many conservatives George Lakoff knows. He’s telling us what it is they want, so it’s not an entirely irrelevant question.

A grateful hat tip to my old blogger friend JoAnn (sorry if I botched your name).

Yecchh…

San Francisco’s big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.

Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.

The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem.

Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite – better known as bleach – to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city’s treated water before it’s dumped into the bay. It will also be used to sanitize drinking water.

That translates into 8.5 million pounds of bleach either being poured down city drains or into the drinking water supply every year.

The perils that are visited upon us when we never, never, ever tell the tree-hugging hippies “no.” Now, we have to provide our proper stewardship to the planet, the only one we have, Mother Earth, by pouring bleach into the system.

Something’s not quite getting thunk out all the way here, fellas.

Another hat tip to Kate at Small Dead Animals.

That dinner coming up where we were going to invite Barbara Walters and blogger friend Joan of Argghh!….and seat them next to each other. You know what, I think we might be putting that one off a little while.

Courtesy of Judicial Watch, via Doug Ross’ Journal, we see a fine example of what it means to discern the times you live in, and to judge a man by his actions. You weren’t crazy, you were right all along. In this instance, two men and one now-grandmotherly woman all chummy with the political pervert’s plans to undermine our country:

Furthermore, Kennedy approached the Soviets with an offer to help undermine Ronald Reagan’s 1984 presidential reelection campaign. Kennedy proposed a public relations blitz and mentioned his friends — Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters, by name — as willing to assist in the propaganda effort.

Read Doug’s post first. There are no civil words for media and political figures like these. So, fuck Water Cronkite, fuck the Kennedys, and fuck Barbara Walters.

Every now and then, someone will scold me for taking the trouble to link to a blog. Read the mainstream news intead, they tell me. And I usually come back with something about evolving to address the realities of a changing world; using one’s intellect to recognize truths, and adapt to them. I try to remind them that it is a world of selection. We don’t subscribe to one of two major local newspapers or tune in to one of three alphabet-soup networks at six o’clock to find out what someone wants us to think. That’s a very 1960 way of taking in your information; a teevee-tray-and-rickety-folding-table way of doing it. The cliche I use most often is something like “The era of Walter Cronkite is over.”

I have no regrets about presenting it that way. None at all. Relying on a single-source for your understanding of what’s going on in the world, should be recognized as a bad move even by the most casual observer. Because people want power. It’s human nature to try to figure out how to have a bigger effect on things.

So millions upon millions of people saw Cronkite as the kindly old trusted uncle we could all rely on to tell us the news. Well, bully for those millions. Cronkite obviously didn’t see himself that way, and that’s what really counts.

Viewing the world through Walter Cronkite’s presentation of it, is going to be recognized by history on par with treating a case of tuberculosis with burning incense and magic spells. Whether it was a ritual engaged day after day by millions and millions, doesn’t matter one bit. It’s a ritual that is aging very poorly, and time is only just beginning to leave its harshest marks upon it.

Time to admit it. We were hoodwinked.

Technology Review:

Any droplet that hits the ground at an angle leaves an elliptical mark. It’s straightforward to measure the shape of these ellipses and then extrapolate along their semimajor axes to see where they cross. This gives you the location of the vertical axis of the source.

But try determining the height of the source and you’ll soon run into trouble. The eccentricity of the ellipse tells the angle of impact but trace this back to the vertical axis and you’ll find that there can usually be more than one possible source height.

Forensic scientists have always had to rely on other clues to help them work out what the true height must have been.

Now Christopher Varney and Fred Gittes at Washington State University have found a way to solve this problem using elementary trigonometry. First, they derived a simple expression that links the launch height and angle of the droplet with its horizontal flight distance and angle of impact.

They then realised that although the launch height of a single droplet cannot be uniquely determined, it ought to be possible with data from many droplets released with the same launch angle and height but different velocities. In that case plotting a certain relationship between the angle of impacts and horizontal flight distances of all the droplets should produce a straight line.

But here’s the clever part. The technique only works if the droplets all have the same launch angle. If they have different launch angles it fails. But in this case, the plot produces a scatter rather than a straight line and so can be picked out as a null result rather than giving an erroneous measure of height.

That’s important in forensics. A “fail safe” technique is crucial for evidence that can be used to obtain a conviction.

Hat tip to Dyspepsia Generation.

Specifically, the education or lack thereof with regard to Texas children:

Texas likes to portray itself as a model of small government, and indeed it is. Taxes are low, at least if you’re in the upper part of the income distribution (taxes on the bottom 40 percent of the population are actually above the national average). Government spending is also low. And to be fair, low taxes may be one reason for the state’s rapid population growth, although low housing prices are surely much more important.

But here’s the thing: While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.

Oops, though:

Slight problem here, namely, the cause and effect relationship that Krugman implies. If low state spending leads to high state dropout rates, as Krugman suggests, then riddle me this: Why does California spend more per pupil, yet have a higher dropout rate? And why does New York spend even more per pupil than California and Texas, and also have a higher drop-out rate? And why does the District of Columbia spend almost twice as much money per pupil as Texas, and yet have a much higher dropout rate than Texas?

Don’t take my word for it: Here’s a chart showing the state dropout rates, and here’s a chart showing state spending per pupil. They’re not for the same year, but the trends are fairly consistent year to year. More government spending does not necessarily lead to higher graduation rates. It’s not that simple, especially in states where the requirement to educate the children of illegal aliens grows year by year.

I’m seeing Colorado is the next notch up from Texas in terms of spending per student, with a dropout rate of 6.9 to Texas’ 4.0. My native Washington State would be the next one up, and it is also burdened by a dropout rate greater than Texas’. Overall, the relationship these two metrics seem to have, assuming they have one at all, is rather tenuous. There seems to be more going on. I’m pretty sure a X-Y scatter diagram would bear that out. Like Tatler said, it’s just not as simple as spend-money-help-kids.

It very seldom is, with anything.

Tatler goes on to look into the lavishly paid administrators — not teachers. And of course there are two sides to this coin…the administrators seem to think they’re being compensated fairly. We all think we’re being compensated fairly, or are underpaid. But it all comes down to this final finish:

I find it pretty hard to justify making local public school bureaucrats rich, especially when taxpayers are hurting and the states are going broke. Perhaps Krugman doesn’t agree, and thinks we should just keep spending more without looking at where the money is going, or the impact it has when it is taken from the taxpayer. If that’s his position, he should make that argument.

It’s a transaction within a free economy, or quasi-free economy, just like any other — we are engaged in a process of finding the midpoint. We look for clues that we’re not spending enough on public school education, and we look for clues that maybe we’re spending too much. Right now, the evidence says the next move is a cut.

Now, to go leaping in there with guns blazing with your “Won’t Somebody Please Think Of The Children?!?” does not impress me as intelligent, preventative, let’s-stop-a-disaster medicine. It is a thwarting of the signaling network that makes a quasi-free economy work. It is deliberate sabotage; it is a blocking out, a strident rule that says “no matter what happens, this number can never go down.” It is childlike thinking, falling far short of what I would expect from a Nobel Prize winner in economics.

Gerard:

Whenever the objection is made that LeftLibProgism has failed everywhere it has been tried, the response is always that it just wasn’t tried on a large enough scale. This is the argument that the cure for bad pop music is to just make it louder. The implied endgame is that only when the entire world is remade in the LeftLibProg model, “world without end always,” will the promised utopia arrive. Hence the wrecking ball of LeftLibProg economics must be swung against the pillars of civilization until the whole structure comes tumbling in upon itself. With help from the scions of greed at the far end of maxi-capitalism this vision currently has a whisper of a hope of actually happening.

Commenter elaine adds:

The thing that made America different was the idea (reality?) that class isn’t fixed; that we can move up or down the economic ladder. This isn’t true in other countries. Even now, if you make money in most of the world, you still can’t live down your humble roots. You see some of that snobbery in America today, and it seems most often to be espoused by LeftLibProgs. Oh, they usually couch it in more clever or subtle terms, but that’s what it really boils down to.

Michelle Obama’s childhood obesity initiative — that obesity is a national security issue if all those poor and middle class males are too fat to be soldiers — smacks of this attitude, that the poor and middle class white males aren’t fit for anything better than to be used as cannon fodder for the whos of this nation. They don’t have the right to open their own businesses and be their own men, if they were born into families of humble means…

It’s fast becoming clear to me that many of the LeftLibProgs in high places see the rest of us as pawns they play with on a chess board. Serfs who make the goods and pay the taxes to support their lavish lifestyles. They don’t care about us, though they’re adequate at pretending to. (Clinton’s “I feel your pain” comes to mind as an example.)

For too long, we’ve bought it. Every time they’ve framed the debate in more winning terms, the rubes have fallen for it. “It’s for the children” — say that, and you’ve won the argument. So the teachers in Madison have called in sick and deprived their students of their lessons, but those teachers are selflessly striking “for the children”…

It would be laughable, if the underlying problem weren’t so serious.

Hat tip to Weasel Zippers, via Boortz.

The man who needs no introduction. Washington Post:

Frank W. Buckles died early Sunday, sadly yet not unexpectedly at age 110, having achieved a singular feat of longevity that left him proud and a bit bemused.

In 1917 and 1918, close to 5 million Americans served in World War I, and Mr. Buckles, a cordial fellow of gentle humor, was the last known survivor. “I knew there’d be only one someday,” he said a few years back. “I didn’t think it would be me.”

His daughter, Susannah Buckles Flanagan, said Mr. Buckles, a widower, died of natural causes on his West Virginia farm, where she had been caring for him.

Buckles’ distant generation was the first to witness the awful toll of modern, mechanized warfare. As time thinned the ranks of those long-ago U.S. veterans, the nation hardly noticed them vanishing, until the roster dwindled to one ex-soldier, embraced in his final years by an appreciative public.
:
Mr. Buckles, who was born by lantern light in a Missouri farmhouse, quit school at 16 and bluffed his way into the Army. As the nation flexed its full military might overseas for the first time, he joined 4.7 million Americans in uniform and was among 2 million U.S. troops shipped to France to vanquish the German kaiser.

Ninety years later, with available records showing that former corporal Buckles, serial No. 15577, had outlived all of his compatriots from World War I, the Department of Veterans Affairs declared him the last doughboy standing.

Here’s a theory. Suppose the day the Empire of Japan surrendered thereby bringing World War II to an end, you were given a thousand dollars to invest. Every year since then, you form your investment plan according to the Oscars.

I think you’d be very, very far ahead if you were to buy securities in the years in which the Oscar-winning movies had lots of tits & car explosions. And if you were to roll it all over into cash, in the years in which the Oscar-winning movies were highly deficient in tits & car explosions, again, you’d be very far ahead.

Bullitt got an Oscar. The Godfather got three Oscars. Lots of tits & car explosions.

Raiders of the Lost Ark did even better, with 4 Oscars. Reagan was in his first year, so if you invested in our economy in that year you would have done very well. Especially if your investment was Microsoft. Of course, being built for little kids, Raiders didn’t have any actual tits. But it did have an exploding truck, and lots of other yummy violence. It was good clean fun built for rug rats who would later grow up into hairy-chested, beer-swilling, meat-eating men like me.

Tonight, I don’t think anything that wins is going to have any tits or car explosions whatsoever. I’m hoping True Grit manages to nab something, and it doesn’t have either one. And in 2011, what’s the sensible investor doing? Heh heh heh…think of greenbacks stuck under mattresses where they’ll never be found.

Long term, we don’t have anything to worry about. When we’re making movies with tits & car explosions again, the economy will come around.

Update: For other reasons, Facebook friend Melissa Clouthier opines that the festivities suck. From what I saw, I would guess that “The Kings Speech” deserved a lot of the gold that it got…I’m not similarly convinced on “The Social Network,” that looks like a name-recognition thing to me. Both of these are guarded opinions as I’ve not yet seen either film. I did see True Grit, and I’m surprised it got frozen out. Also saw Inception, which I’ll rate as a “meh.” Maybe good enough to buy, but not at full price, I’ll wait until it’s down in the ten dollar range. Which could take quite awhile.

I have yet to glean so much as a shred of evidence that there are any tits or car explosions in any one of those four. Which, all by itself, suggests we are in a cultural abyss. And, that we aren’t willing to do what it takes for the economy to do better.

It’s just like the hemline theory involving short skirts and the stock market. How does the rule go about correlation and causation…let’s see if I can do it from memory…

If A correlates with B, then
1. A causes B;
2. B causes A;
3. There is an unseen C which causes both A and B;
4. Or, it could be just coinkeedink.

If the truth lies behind option #1, then we can lessen the pain considerably by shortening those skirts, and awarding more Oscars to movies with tits & car explosions in them. If the truth is behind #2 #3 or #4, then we can find out more about my theory by gathering some more data…which means it’s to our advantage to do these things anyway.

Personally, I think it’s #3. There is an unseen C, which is our readiness and willingness to do things that are fun. How much do we want to live our lives, without guilt. We live in guilty times right now, we manage lives that are ruled by the manufactured single word “s’poseda.” Or, to be more precise about it, that other manufactured single word “not’s’poseda.” Men are not’s’poseda appreciate nice looking women…at least not too much. Movies are not supposed to have loud explosions in them that gratify grown men, no, they’re supposed to have loud explosions in them that gratify children below the age of fifteen. Which are different explosions. Oh yes, they are.

We’re not making any money, because we’re not’s’poseda. The very gas we expel from our lungs several times a minute in order to stay alive, is supposed to be toxic to the planet. Our very existence is damaging, so goes the prevailing know-how, and we’re not doing anything to redeem ourselves of this, nor can we. So we live life like guilty thieves. Like craven rats, scavenging what we can to stay alive. We may ensconce ourselves into a lofty standard of living by doing so, but if we don’t feel good about doing it, we’re not going to create and maintain a vibrant economy.

And our movies, by and large, are going to suck. Along with our award ceremonies.

We need more movies with tits & car explosions. Stat.

Dr. Helen, who is Mrs. Instapundit, makes an interesting point about incentives with regard to that Kay Hymowitz book everyone’s been talking about lately:

What would happen if a regular Joe, not an alpha male, came into class and gave his true opinion about the topics at hand, say in a psychology or sociology class? What if that opinion was non-PC, such as: “I think that men should not have to pay child support if women can have abortions,” etc.? How far would that man get in school? Would he graduate? Would he even pass the class? Even if men won’t admit it to themselves and women like Hymowitz overlook the problem, it exists.

After 45 years of being told they are pigs, sexist, and good for nothing, men have quit trying to please others, so they slap on a baseball cap and don’t talk much. And with good reason.

According to Hymowitz, these child-men are all used to a freewheeling life of going from girl to girl and video game to video game. Hymowitz mistakenly believes that men are suffering from the limits of American individualism.

Though she reluctantly admits that the “materials available to young men are meager, and what is available contradicts itself,” she comes up with this ridiculous conclusion: “At bottom, they are too free, a fact epitomized by their undefined, open-ended, and profoundly autonomous pre-adulthood.” She ends the book suggesting that young women will have to get a better understanding of the limitations imposed by their bodies (Huh?) and young men need to man up.

My question to her: Why should they?

What do you have to offer these men you call child-men if they do man up? Are you going to ensure that they have fair access to their children should they divorce? Will you make sure that they aren’t hauled off to jail if the wife makes false accusations of domestic violence? Will you let them keep the earnings and property that they worked for over years rather than have them turned over to their wife, even if she cheated and was abusive? Will you shield the millions of men who live in fear of their significant other but have nowhere to turn for help? Will you make marriage, in other words, as valuable to men as you think it is for women?

A is to B as C is to D, Reagan is to the democrat party as men are to society. We haven’t abandoned it; it abandoned us.

The male brain is a beautifully designed thing for processing unlimited varieties and permutations of motivated behavior, and only a finite selection of unmotivated, protocol-driven behavior. In other words, two or three hundred things you need to do to keep your arm from getting caught in a corn harvester, or to keep a boar hog from trampling you when you’re hunting it, the male consciousness can handle just fine. That other stuff you do just because, because you’re “s’posda,” because of tradition, because someone said so…we can follow about maybe half a dozen of those. Cover your mouth when you sneeze. Open the door and let her go first. Take your damn hat off.

Dr. Helen’s complaint comes from something ugly feminism did in the last half century. The activist movement realized that we men, quite different from being the oppressors they were painting us as, actually behaved deferentially to our mothers and wives because of a short list of “no-nos” that had been passed down from father to son. And so they took the easy way out, returning some of that imagined oppression by adding some items to the list.

At first this seemed reasonable. Don’t smack a female co-worker in the ass. And then it got less reasonable…don’t treat her as just one of the guys unless she gives her consent to being treated like one of the guys. And less reasonable…once she says she wants to be treated like one of the guys, you’d better do it, or we’ll end your career. And less reasonable…don’t put a calendar on the wall of your cubicle with women in swimsuits that look better than her, although she can put up whatever she wants.

And less reasonable than that: Don’t say or do anything that might make her feel uncomfortable. And she is the ultimate authority on whether you have succeeded at this. Even though she might be a nut.

Until it came down to the ultimate: The intent of the offender does not matter legally! The perception of the person offended decides everything! These rules are put in place to help ensure a comfortable, safe and non-threatening work environment for everyone! All in the same breath, unbelievably enough.

I live in California where we have “Furlough Fridays,” meaning every so many weeks it’s been pre-determined there isn’t enough money in the kitty to keep our state workers employed. Campgrounds up in the foothills have become much, much harder to reserve since this came about. I get to watch it happen; from my balcony, I have a splendid view of the ribbon of Highway 50 as it winds up a hill, from downtown Sacramento up into the El Dorado National Forest. It’s the only way to get there.

I know exactly what a Friday night used to look like. And I can assure you, that this is what a Thursday night looks like in more recent years. Tail lights upon tail lights upon tail lights. State “workers,” voting with their feet, showing us exactly how anxious and eager they are to live in this world they have helped to create for the rest of us with all of its modern rules. I wonder how many of them are male state workers. Doesn’t this speak volumes? Well, I’ve got about as much of that fat state paycheck as I’m gonna get, might as well start the weekend early…and so what do they do? They get the hell out. The people who live closest to the heart of our “evolving” civilization want no part of it, once Thursday afternoon comes and they’re given a choice.

Doesn’t that make sense given the rules in place? “We’re going to make this workplace environment extra extra safe for everyone. And so we’re going to put you in a cubicle next to someone who could be borderline insane. If you say something this person doesn’t like it will end your career. If you do something this person doesn’t like it will end your career. If you don’t say or do anything, and she finds it creepy, it could end your career. Those are the rules, to keep this envi– uh, hey, wait, where are you goin’?”

Captain Capitalism (hat tip again to Kate) adds:

The “man world” is DIRECTLY related to the economic crisis we face today AND IS ALSO THE SOLE SOLUTION to our economic problems today. It is the forefront of the battlefield and is precisely where all economic analysis should be focused (that is assuming we care to solve our little economic problems we face today). You want the recession to end? You want unemployment back to 4%? You want oil back below $2 a gallon? You want the US back on the road to supreme economic and military dominance and security? You want a world where your precious little children actually have a future? Put men back in charge (of course, what is funny, is if things keep going the way they are, men will inevitably end up in charge again, but it won’t be the nice ones who appreciate democracy and the sanctity of women).
:
In the meantime you will forgive us if we just plain opt not to marry, breed, or just in general, participate in society. Because, well frankly, what’s the upshot?

In the meantime, enjoy the decline!

And a decline is what it is. The more machinery we get installed into this ever-self-civilizing civilization, the quicker people — men — want to get the hell away from it once they’re given the option.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

It is a mark of maturity — and, sadly, in our modern age a rare one that is diminishing into nothingness before our eyes — to visualize a possible improvement to a situation, and yet simultaneously concede that there’s no great transgression being committed while we’re waiting for the improvement to come about; no gross violation of human rights if the improvement somehow fails to materialize. Wouldn’t that be refreshing? “I think it should work such-and-such a way; but if someone disagrees with me, or presents an obstacle, I’ll just deal with it like I would deal with any other dissenting opinion. I won’t carry on with maximum drama like justice and human dignity themselves depend completely on my whiz-bang idea.”

Victor Davis Hanson bemoans this loss of situational perspective:

We live in a therapeutic age, one in which the old tragic view of our ancestors has been replaced by prolonged adolescence. Adolescents hold adult notions of consumption: they understand the comfort of a pricey car; they appreciate the status conveyed by a particular sort of handbag or sunglasses; they sense how outward consumption and refined tastes can translate into popularity and envy; and they appreciate how a slogan or world view can win acceptance among peers without worry over its validity. But they have no adult sense of acquisition, themselves not paying taxes, balancing the family budget, or worrying about household insurance, maintenance, or debt. Theirs is a world view of today or tomorrow, not of next year — or even of next week.

So adolescents throw fits when denied a hip sweater or a trip to Disneyland, concluding that it is somehow “unfair” or “mean,” without concern about the funds available to grant their agendas. We see now just that adolescent mind in Wisconsin. “They” surely can come up with the money from someone (“the rich”) somehow to pay teachers and public servants what they deserve. And what they deserve is determined not by comparable rates in private enterprise, or by market value (if the DMV clerk loses a job, does another public bureau or private company inevitably seize the opportunity to hire such a valuable worker at comparable or improved wages?), or by results produced (improved test scores, more applicants processed in an office, overhead reduced, etc.), or by what the strapped state is able to provide, but by what is deemed to be necessary to ensure an upper-middle class lifestyle. That is altogether understandable and decent, but it is entirely adolescent in a globalized economy.

Why so? In a word, the United States is not producing enough real wealth to justify a particular standard of living among its public workforce far superior to counterparts in the private sector. We are borrowing massively abroad for redistributive entitlements. We fight wars with credit cards. We talk of cap-and-trade and “climate change” without prior worry about how to fuel the United States, as we sink in perpetual debt to import well over half our oil. We have open borders and pat ourselves on our backs for the ensuing “diversity,” without worry that illegality and lack of reverence for federal laws, absence of English, no diplomas, multiculturalism instead of the melting pot, the cynicism and chauvinism of Mexico, and recessionary times are a perfect storm for a dependent, and eventually resentful, underclass extending well into a second generation, one that fumes over why things outside are not equal rather than looking within to ensure that they could be.

Who would not wish pristine 19th-century rivers to run all year long? But that same utopian rarely thinks like an adult: “I want water releases into the San Joaquin River all year long and am willing to pay more money at Whole Earth for my produce to subsidize such diversion of irrigation water; I do not wish any more derricks off Santa Barbara, so I choose to drive a Smart car rather than my Lexus SUV. And I want teachers to be able to strike, and receive $100,000 in compensation and benefits, and therefore am willing to close down a rural hospital in Wisconsin or tax the wealthy with full knowledge that many will leave the state. I insist on amnesty and open borders, and will put my children in schools where 50% do not speak English, and live in the barrios to lend my talents where needed to ensure parity for new arrivals. I want cap-and-trade and so believe that the lower middle classes should pay “skyrocketing” energy bills to subsidize such legislation.” And so on.

Finally, the adolescent thinks in a rigid, fossilized fashion in explicating the “unfairness” of it all, unable yet to process new data and adjust conclusions accordingly. So we now hear that the evil corporate/Wall Street nexus is turning us into a Republican-driven Third World — apparently unwilling to see that among the largest contributors of campaign cash were unions, and both Wall Street and international corporations favored Barack Obama in the last election, the first presidential candidate in the history of campaign financing legislation to opt out of the program in order to raise even more “fat cat” money. Just because one is a former Chicago organizer does not mean he cannot be the largest recipient of Goldman Sachs or BP donations in history. Railing against Las Vegas jet-setters does not mean that one cannot prefer Martha’s Vineyard, Vail, or Costa del Sol to Camp David.

But I think this snippet really says it all:

There are lots of issues involved in Wisconsin, in the impending financial and fuel crises, and in the sense of American impotency abroad. Yet a common denominator is a national adolescence, in which we want what we have not earned. We demand the world be the way that it cannot; and we don’t wish to hear “unfair” arguments from “bad” and “mean” people.

Hat tip once again to Gerard.

It would be almost the textbook illustration of intellectual recklessness itself to, when an undesirable but possibly meritorious idea is seen ambling into the discourse, simply shunt it aside, effectively stick one’s fingers into one’s ears and yell “la la la la.” The sin we see committed lately goes somewhat beyond that I’m afraid — we marry up the unpalatable idea with the identity of the person or group presenting it, and then effectively exile that entity from the discussion and all subsequent discussions.

If I can take yet another swipe at those emblems of ultimate intellectual flaccidity, the Palin haters, to me the sentiment seems to work like this: “Oh, her again, won’t she shut up and go away once and for all? Let’s talk about how much we hate her, constantly, unceasingly, and with great passion, until she is no longer mentioned.”

But on the subject of the adolescent mind. Yes, there is a fundamental requirement to adult thinking that is missing here. Read that as, thinking in such a way that all of the ramifications of a decision, positive & negative alike, are anticipated, offset, prevented, paid in full, amortized…somehow dealt with. And no, I’m not talking about predicting how many fives, tens, ones, quarters and nickels will be in your pants pocket on Tuesday, January 28, 2025. See, that’s how it starts — I’ve lived with this attitude, and I understand it. Wondering naturally, in an adult way, “how are we going to pay for this” is seen not quite so much as gloomy, but obsessive. That’s the mental illness. The patient has been disciplined to separate the dance to the tune from the paying of the piper, and to think of this exercise as one of planning carefully around “what really matters.” The dancing, the eating and drinking and fun stuff, is envisioned as a functional, workable, thirty-thousand-foot view. All that dour sad stuff like “this is out of line with what we can afford” is seen as a detail. Therefore, if thinking about it does have some bearing on the final decision, then whoever paid attention to it is guilty of losing themselves in the details.

Just stick to the important stuff! Our kids need this! It’s for the kids, what about that is so hard for you to understand you old fuddy-duddy?

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

Caroline Baum finishes strong and I supposed I shouldn’t excerpt that part of it, but hey. It’s a wonderful column that just might save your weekend, that happens to have been put together upside-down. The final note is a perfect summary for all that came before.

For every number homegrown America-haters spit out to show our best days are behind us, there’s an offsetting statistic that points to our underlying strength. The solution isn’t a war of words or statistics. It’s the recognition that many of the characteristics that made the U.S. the envy of the world are still intact or begging to be resuscitated.

The naysayers don’t appreciate American exceptionalism and never will.

I was particularly surprised by the GDP per capita statistic, and even moreso when it was broken down further into GDP per employed person.

You know, it’s awfully funny how we think about this stuff. I doubt you’ll have any trouble at all finding an agreement across party/ideology lines that our country’s employment picture, in the near future as well as the distant one, is going to be affected in large part not only by how many of our children are educated, but by the depth and content of that education. Can they translate a hexadecimal number, can they refute from memory a quote Alexander Pope didn’t really say, can they name the thirteenth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. This concern is supposed to be driving a number of sympathies with the public school teachers’ unions, the skirmish currently taking place in Wisconsin being a case in point.

But nobody ever seems to stop and ask what our teachers are doing about this. There are a lot of pieces that have to be present and working in a child’s education before said child is given any kind of a boost in his potential to contribute to the country’s GDP. “Yay, he got a passing grade” or “Yay, he passed the state competency exam” isn’t going to get it done. I think, deep down, we all realize this…

So where are the follow-up questions? Especially from those who sympathize with the teachers. They, after all, are generally the ones quickest to spout off with the doom-and-gloom statistics Caroline Baum is offsetting here.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News and Washington Rebel.

GBIL (girlfriend’s brother-in-law) is broadening my horizons again, through the e-mails, in unhealthy ways.

Years ago my Dad came up with a good one and I still don’t know where he got it. He said life is like a roll of toilet paper. Seems like it’s gonna last forever when you first get it started, and as you get closer to the end that goddamn thing starts spinning faster.