Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I’m completely disgusted with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s so-called “testimony,” but I’m even more disgusted by my fellow Americans who see nothing wrong with it.
Jonah Goldberg blames Clinton.
The most dramatic moment came early, when Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson tried to get Clinton to explain why the State Department blamed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in Benghazi on an impromptu protest over an anti-Muslim video. In a rehearsed moment of spontaneous outrage, Clinton yelled back, “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided to kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”
It is a measure of Clinton’s cult-like status on the left and among much of the press that this passed for a satisfactory, never mind impressive, response. But it’s also a tribute to Clinton’s gift for mendacity that it worked so well.
Even among the administration’s harshest critics, people seemed at a loss to fully explain what difference it makes whether the administration’s spin was true or not.
The remarkable thing here, to me, is that it worked. I also see it as the source of the problem. Clinton herself is merely a manifestation. She’s a sleazy, opportunistic lawyer/politician and she’s going to try whatever works. And for many a year now, it has seemed to me that in her case, everything does, and everything will. She’s a symbol and not a servant; a symbol of jilted women. Jilted women, abandoned women, rejected women, unappealing women, unfriendly women, and yes ugly and low-ambition women as well. Any woman who has ever cut corners in the efforts made to appeal to men, or has ever felt a pang of resentment over the invitation to so appeal. After half a century of man-bashing militant feminism, this is a big voting bloc.
Unhealthy as hell. But even that is not the true source of the problem.
The source of the problem is not monopolized by women, be they ugly and unappealing or otherwise. It is not monopolized by democrats. It is not monopolized by sleazy opportunistic lawyer/politicians. It applies to us all, lately:
We distinguish between friends and enemies. That part’s pretty darn easy. Women against men, gays against straights, blacks against whites, ninety-nine-percenters against ones. Blue-staters against reds. We don’t have any problem drawing lines, and recognizing them once they’re drawn.
as I see people waxing lyrically about Hillary’s “performance” as she willfully obstructed this Senate panel from accomplishing its task, I am reminded (by Cylar Z, actually) of a Thing I Know that I made the effort to jot down years ago, specifically Number 76. We’re losing track of our ability to recognize the “middle.” We see enemies and we see friends. But we do not see friends who:
– only pretend to be our friends, but are really enemies;
– are true friends, but are incompetent;
– truly are our friends, but also try to be friends to someone else, and end up with divided loyalties;
– work toward our interests and are competent, but implement bad practices and therefore do not bring about good results;
– think they are our friends, and sometimes are, but keep secrets from us they shouldn’t be keeping from us;
– operate in our best interests, and tell us what we need to know, but tell a bit too much to others.
Summing it up: We’ve got a lot of people walking around who labor under the delusion that once someone is defined as some kind of a “friendly,” that absolves them of anything & everything. Which means, there is never a time for having any sort of come-to-Jesus meeting with them, a none too pleasant chat about “I deserve to be able to expect more from you.” That is not happening.
It’s bigger than the Hillary mess, but the Hillary mess was a pretty good demonstration of the problem. We we have our Secretary of State, the nation’s top diplomat — we don’t have any other one — reminding us that the whole point is to find out what happened, and therefore “what does it matter”…what the hell happened. Sheer nonsense.
Lost amid the hubbub, is the blindingly obvious: Our nation deserves better.
That is the ability that has been eroded beneath our feet, for awhile now. It’s deteriorating into a real crisis. People don’t have the ability to say “you are my friend, my partner, my agent, and maybe you think you’re doing a fine job, but there is a problem and I deserve better.” Processes, methods, lines-of-communication are not being improved. They are crumbling.
Like I said, Hillary is merely a manifestation.
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Yes. Dear Jesus, yes.
The only explanation for Hillary’s continued success is that there are a lot of women out there who watch her perform and say “yes, I wanna be like that.”
Which is probably the most frightening sentence I have ever typed.
- Severian | 01/25/2013 @ 11:33Michael Ramirez is in good form on this subject. Cartoon here.
- Captain Midnight | 01/25/2013 @ 11:35